Month: June 2006

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Lay Those Stones Down

Saturday’s operation of laying down my patio stones went off without a hitch. With the help of Rob and Mike, I can now look at my walkway and realize that there’s no way that there will ever be any rain trickling towards the house.

Saturday started off with a start out of bed and into the car to go check out garage sales for a crowbar. I have determined that no one ever parts with their crowbar, but they do part with halogen lights for $5. Sweet deal.

After picking up a crowbar at Canadian Tire, I started hauling out the stones and shortly afterwards, Rob and Mike showed up. After an hour of messing around, we realized that it would be a lot easier if we had the proper tools for the job, so off to Home Depot we went. Let me point out that this entire day went smooth due to Rob doing some bricklaying back in the day in Paisley. His knowledge helped us out immensely.

The day was done by 3:30 and I can’t say we worked too hard. However, I have realized that drinking beer while working in a 35 degree day isn’t the smartest thing to do. I was feeling pretty sluggish around 2:45 so I thought some H20 may do the trick. After we were refreshed, the job was finished pretty soon after that.

I dig the jobs that would probably only take 2-3 hours if we busted our ass, but take all day because we don’t feel like busting our ass.

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Top Bonds

  1. Sean Connery
  2. Pierce Brosnan
  3. George Lazenby
  4. Timothy Dalton
  5. Roger Moore

Thanks to Kevin for bringing this up.

Discuss.

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Reviews

Review: X-Men: The Last Stand

How the heck can I review this movie without spoiling some of it? Being an X-Men fan of old (someday I’ll get back into comics…like when I retire!), this franchise is near and dear to my heart.

Unfortunately, to go along with my spoiler free policy on Palmer’s World, I suppose I can’t get into too much detail here, so I’ll throw a pro/con list out here.

Pros

  • Beast was AWESOME!!! So cool. Way cooler than Nightcrawler. Well, I suppose this is true if you actually like the Beast better than Nightcrawler.
  • Decent ending (? if it is?) to the whole mutant vs. human storyline. The 3 movies revolve around it – I can see the next movie just focussing more on one villain (ala James Bond).
  • Storm – Hey! She got to speak in this movie!
  • Excellent clip after the credits which follows the comics (from what I can remember of them) and opens up the new storyline I think.
  • Good action?

Cons

  • Well, if you’re fan of the comic books, then this movie may irk you a little because it goes against comic lore in a few ways. But if you don’t read the books, then you will probably find it enjoyable (as many friends have).
  • Angel – Come on. Did he even speak in the movie? Way too little screen time. Should have been cut out of the movie.
  • More characters like Angel – A slew of characters introduced for little or no reason.
  • Juggernaut – Ugh. I don’t know…I don’t know. In some ways it was cool to see him, in others, he was kinda silly.
  • Deaths – Am I spoiling the movie if I say someone dies? So be it. Someone dies. Kind of unnecessary.

Yeah, so…all in all, definitely not as good as the other two X-Men…but not the worst movie ever. Benoit thought it was so horrible that he put it in league with The Incredible Hulk. Good lord, that movie was awful…but X-Men 3 was nowhere near as bad. I equate X-Men with the equivalent of a bad comic book in the series – you still love the X-Men and what they do, but the comic just wasn’t the greatest (but you still like it anyhow). It’s like with anything you like – take a TV show for example. There’s good ones and bad ones.

Oh! Let’s take James Bond and the whole Roger Moore era for example. Boom. Point proven. A low point in the James Bond history. Not as low as Timothy Dalton though. I liked him better as an actor compared to Roger Moore, but I didn’t care for the rogue agent story they were going for in…License to Kill? Or was it The Living Daylights?

If you don’t read the comics, you’ll like the movie. If you read the comics, you will be disappointed, but hopefully not TOO disappointed. I would say that if the movie had another 30 minutes added to it, it would have been great. I found they cut down a lot of stuff that would have been better if they added 5 minutes to each major sequence (like a fight vs. Pyro and Iceman…give it 5 more minutes and it would have been mint.)

I invite whoever wants to chat it up with me about specific points in the movie to do so (I know Benoit has been waiting 2 weeks to talk about how it was the worst movie ever. I’m not sure how I want to oppose his points. It wasn’t the Hulk, but it sure wasn’t Spider-Man)

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Volleyball – Monday Nights

If anyone out there is a fan of superpiking volleyball, then head on out to Orleans on Monday nights at 6:30 – Petrie Island.

In lieu of my class being over for the summer, and I have a little extra time on my hands, I figured we should start up some fun volleyball for the rest (beginning?) of the summer.

We’ll start this coming Monday night at 6:30 and decide whether or not this is a good time for all of us or not.

iplaying: Stepchild – Solomon Burke (Don’t Give Up On Me)

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King of the Hill

This morning I had to go to the West Block at Parliament Hill to watch some MPs in action.

I must admit that I feel proud when I step onto Parliament Hill for business and not while being sloshing drunk (ala Canada Day. That’s the only day that I’m like that on the Hill. It’s not like it’s a monthly event people). I walk up and think “Hey, I’m not here to sight-see, I’m here for business!”

Granted, this visit wasn’t the most exciting as I was only there to observe a Standing Committee meeting, but there was this one time years ago when I was in a meeting in the East Block and then I had to follow some official type back to their office and instead of walking across the grounds, we walked UNDER the ground in a tunnel which connects the Main Block with the East block. COOL! I felt like I was in my own little secret passageway. It was wide enough for a golf cart.

Anyhow, I’m sure some of the more politically minded friends that I have (read: Paul Duffy) would have enjoyed it a lot more, but I can’t knock walking up to the Hill on a beautiful morning and checking out the going-ons inside the walls.

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Help!

So this Saturday I’m embarking on the ‘let’s level my patio stones so they water doesn’t drain TOWARDS the house.

Seeing that this is a giant job, it will consist of the following elements:
– 4 guys
– beer
– bbqed meat

I was wondering if anyone out there could help me with some details? Here’s how I envision the process:
1. Lift stones.
2. Redtribute sand.
3. Lay patio stones down.
4. Make sure they are on such an angle that a tennis ball can start rolling away from the house (learned this from the house inspector).

Other than that, I’m thinking that’s it? Eric was mentioning maybe renting a compactor but I don’t really know if that’s necessary?

Offer the Palmer some advice!

***Update – after reading Katie’s comments, I’m not sure if I made it clear that what we’re moving are those giant patio stones that go up a walkway…like there are five or six of them…I’m not talking about the brick sized ones. I’m not sure if that makes a difference or not.***

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Memory

Memory: Bad Hair in Grade Nine

So today Krista noticed some white gunk in my hair. It was the stuff I put in my hair, but usually it’s fine.

Turns out that last week while golfing, I left my bag in the hot, hot car and the stuff melted into some random paste like substance. It’s not bad, but sometimes there are chunks that just don’t get rubbed into the hair and they stick out like bad dandruff. Doh!

This brought back a memory of me back in Grade Nine science class. Back in Grade Nine, let’s just say I wasn’t the most popular dudes in school (that subsequently happened in Grade Eleven when I was the Ladies Man. To those people who read this blog and are from KDHS, stop laughing now. Carol, I’m looking at you!), so in an effort to be cool I decided to try and style my hair a little to get rid of the cowlicks.

Well…that ended badly when some kid was talking to me and then said “Ryan, what the heck is in your hair?” and then they proceeded to laugh at the fact that there was this giant solidified glob of stuff in the front of my hair. Then everyone else decided to laugh also. Ah, the beauty of high school. I think at that point I said screw it to styling my hair and started growing it out.

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Reviews

Review: The New Jedi Order

We all know my faithful readers love Star Wars that they love it when I talk about it and they tell all their friends also. Crack a beer, here’s another review.

For the past six weeks, I’ve been reading The New Jedi Order series which is a 25 book opus in the Star Wars universe. It involves some new bad guys coming and kicking ass from another universe and everyone is having a hard time with them.

The books are an average of 300 pages long so I find them short reads now (compared to years ago where this would have taken me a month!) so I think I may end up finishing the series in the Fall. I’m currently six books in. Maybe the 8th. I’ve lost count.

I gave up on the Star Wars series when this came out because:

  • 25 books is a lot
  • I figured I should start reading other books out there. When I was a teenager, it was rare that I read anything else.

Anyhow, I am enjoying this series as they nod towards other events in the timeline of the movies and books. All characters of old come out and there is reference to events that have happened in the past – for example I just read a part where Han Solo and his kid are in the Mos Eisley cantina and they make a joke about how it never goes smoothly in that joint.

A lot of faithful Star Wars readers didn’t care for the NJO for the sole reason that it changed the way the universe is played out and it really takes away the emphasis on the old characters. Let’s be honest though…if you have a set of books and they are spread out over 25 years past the time of the last movie, your main characters ARE old so you need to focus on the new blood. I don’t mind that really. Luke Skywalker is much better as a wise old master than he was when he was a young buck not knowing what the heck he is doing.

One thumb up so far on the series and I am sure the other one will rise as soon the Jedi start kicking some ass.

iplaying: The Golden Path – Chemical Brothers – Singles 93-03

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Mythbusters: Rust

So last night Mike showed me some engine guards for his motorbike and how he removed the rust off of them. It was looking pretty slick.

How did he remove the rust?

With some tinfoil and some Coca-Cola.

I was amazed.

Eric watched an episode of Mythbusters in which they demonstrated that this is in fact, true.

I remember I stopped drinking dark pops (well…I don’t drink that much anymore anyhow, compared to years ago, it’s all water and juice and beer now) because I read what Coca-Cola was used for – such as cleaning up murder scenes. I figured if it can clean up rust, what the heck is it doing inside my poor fragile body?

Anyhow, this is a post to say kudos to the Mythbusters. I enjoy their show and they give us practical advice.

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Memory

Memory: Batdance!

Back in 1989, Prince released the greatest song in the world – Batdance! Tim Burton asked Prince to write a slew of songs for the new (well I suppose it was the first at the time) Batman flick that we all love (although I must say I like Batman Begins better).

I remember watching this video of all these Bat’men’ dancing around and wondering why the heck they had things popping out of their chest.

Oh, Ryan, how young you were back in 1989. Little did I know that they definitely were not Batmen.

Thanks to someone on the Wolfshack for putting the memory of Batdance into my head. Now I want to go listen to the song because I just remember it being chaotic.