Month: April 2008

Freedom comes at a high price and that price is the fact that the things you’ve avoided doing creep up on you all of sudden.  Case in point – checking Vero’s taxes.  Woops!  I’ve been putting that off and I had forgot that they were due today since she owed the Government some money.

After work I headed to her house and we tackled the taxes.  She had already done the run-through and after a few visits to the CRA website for clarification, she owed a cool 7% of what she made last year.  Not too shabby at all.  Thank tuition for that my friends.  She ended up setting up an electronic payment through her bank so it was easy enough to send the money to CRA.

After that was all done, I played around with the guitar as Troy had suggested I lower the key to 705 from E to A.  It was going well until I hit one chord change and the vocals did not line up at all.  I tried a few other times but it was hard to wrap my head around changing a vocal line I loved so much.  So I will keep trying and Troy and I will hook up via phone to hash it out and see what we can come up with.

Vero made this amazing meal – spaghetti squash.  It was some squash cut in half with spaghetti sauce over it and some cheese melted over the top.  It was much like spaghetti in the fact that you just took your fork into it and the squash came out in strands like noodles.  I enjoyed it although it was a little too much as there was a side helping of more spaghetti sauce on the plate.  We both realized it was a little too much for us to eat.

Mel, Vero and I then headed out to Gatineau to have a piece of cake for Marie-Claude’s birthday.  We were also on the lookout for a mountain lion named Boomer which had been reported to have escaped near Maniwaki the night before.  You can never be too careful where there’s a wild cat roaming around.  (Sidenote: The lion was apprehended the morning after.  No one was harmed in the process.)

We had a great piece of chocolate cake that Jean-Francois made and we watched the Canadiens game.  After the heated game, Jean-Francois introduced me to a French called “Les Bougons” which is a show about a family who are on welfare and try and do everything to avoid paying for anything.  It was quite funny and Jean-Francois actually appeared in the show!  There was this scene where the son of the family wants to lose weight so he wraps himself in tin foil and sits in the sun.  He then takes it off and looks into a mirror and Jean-Francois was the reflection!  He did some muscle man poses which mimicked the actor’s mannerisms.  It was quite hilarious.  I love how Vero’s friends (and Mike and I: Soon to Be!!!) are on TV.

My three days of Freedom were great and I couldn’t have asked for a better time.  When my course is over in the middle of June, I plan to make the most of the summer and have something planned every day.  Even if it is just reading a book in the backyard with a beer.  😉

http://www.nme.com/news/pink-floyd/36311

This is an amazing rock story. Roger Waters loses an inflatable pig in the sky last week. Let’s be honest…it will show up on Ebay in the near future!

***update*** The pig has been found.  If I was the one who found it in my driveway, I would have kept it as a piece of rock history.

I had dropped my car off at Mazda for a plethora of things to get done to it (including the free lock reinforcement which will supposedly hinder any attempt to break into it AGAIN) and unfortunately I received a phone call during the day telling me that my rear brakes were shot and the front ones had a few months left in them.

Fortunately, I have never owned a car long enough to need the brakes changed.  Unfortunately, I found out that it would cost upwards of $800 – $900 to change both sets and I coughed into the phone.  I said that my Dad and I would do it ourselves so he would stop asking me if they could do it for us.

Alas, this is the life of being a car-owner and I will have to suck it up and change the brakes.  The good news out of all of this is that I was talking to Eric and he reminded me that he helped Simon change his brakes a few weeks ago and he thought that Simon wouldn’t mind helping out on the task at hand so I am very appreciative that Eric will give Simon a ring and ask him about it.  I’m sure it will save me a few bucks on labour costs.

Speaking about labour costs, (WARNING – RANT!), I brought the car in for the 96,000 KM Service check.  Please note that the car is not under warranty anymore.  So in the end, after giving the car an oil change and giving it the once over, it ended up costing me $260 due to 2.5 hours of labour costs.

I really don’t understand this too much and maybe someone can help me out.  This is the first time I’ve brought the car in for a service appointment after the warranty has expired.  Is this a proactive move on my part?  Should I now become reactive and just wait until something breaks?  They did point out the need for new brakes and they also pointed out that I need my transmission flushed out (another $200).  But here I’m thinking that I could have saved myself $200 if I just didn’t bring it in for the service appointment, and really, what real use is the service appointment anymore if I am not under warranty?  I think I shall leave it to the commenters of this website to let me know what I should be doing now.  I am going to assume that I should stop wasting my money in bringing it in for a service appointment and just be reactive.  Although there are slight proactive things I can do like look into how long it takes for a transmission to need flushing and mark it on the calendar and just get it done, instead of having someone look at it for $200 and then say “Oh yeah, you should get this done.”

Anyhow, so there you have it.  I need new brakes and I await hearing back from Eric/Simon.  I’m quite excited to change the brakes as I feel that if another person can do it, I’m sure I can also (if I have the right tools of course).  I would like to thank my friend Pierre for giving me the idea of doing it myself after he told me of a time he changed the brakes on his Dodge Neon himself by following some instructions he found on the Internet.

God bless the Internet.

Day Two of my Freedom was fine other than that as I got to take a ride on the O-Train (which I love.  I love trains.) to pick up the car and then I headed home where we all had steak and veggies for dinner and I watched an old Spidey episode with Vero and she loved it.

So after a weekend of studying for my Great Philosophers exam, I started to understand a little about what all these philosophers had to say and also realized that they are all on different pages from one another.  In the span of the past three months I have studied the works of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes and we briefly touched about Nietzsche.  In the end, I really enjoyed what Socrates/Plato and Hobbes had to say and even though a lot of people like what Nietzsche has to say, I really didn’t get enough of an introduction to him (literally on hour of lecture) to form an opinion.  I will keep my philosophy text book with me over the years and perhaps I shall read about him in the future.

Monday morning comes along and I know that I have to make my way to the gym on campus to take the exam.  This is the first time I will have to go to the gym for an exam and I vaguely know where it is.  I give myself enough time in the morning to hunt it out before 9:30.  At 8:30 I arrive on campus and head towards the Moriset building.  I see a bunch of students studying, gabbing, drinking coffee, taking notes so I know I’m in the right place.  Vero told me it was in the basement so I head there and don’t really see an entrance to the gym.  Only an office called Sports Services.  So I head back upstairs and up another flight and I realize that I can literally see the gym from up above…I see the desks all lined up nice and pretty beckoning for my ass to sit down and divulge my knowledge for three hours.  Alas, I cannot find the doorway.  Using my higher intellect, I realize that perhaps the entrance is outside the building so I head outside and tour the perimiter but there are only emergency exits.  Finally, with 30 minutes to go, I break down and call up Vero and wake her up.  “Vero, I can see the gym but I can’t get to it!”  It takes her a few moments to collect her thoughts and try to realize where I am in the building but then she hears me mention the office of Sports Services and she says “You dummy!  That’s where the gym is!  You have to go through the turnstiles and walk down the hall!”

That made me feel better in the sense that I now knew how to get to it, but at the same time I felt like a dummy as my higher intellect must have been fried from all that studying and I should have made the connection.  Either way, I made it to the exam with plenty of time to spare and wrote my heart out for the next 2.5 hours.  I would say that out of four essays, I did well on two of them, so-so on the third, and not so well on the one about Nietzsche.  My only saving grace on the one about Nietzsche is the fact that she knows she only touched upon him so she didn’t expect mastery of the material.

Winter Term ’08…done!  I felt like a free man.  There was a skip in my step!

As a free man, I tagged along with Mike and Vero to a photography exhibition at Cube Gallery down near Parkdale (my old hood!  I love that area of the city!).  Mike’s friends had a few exhibits going on as it was the Algonquin College photography graduation exhibition.  Essentially every year, the first and second year students get to post a few examples of their photography (as well as have their portfolio on hand) for everyone to peruse.  They also have awards given out during the night (in which one of Mike’s friends one both a $500 gift certificate as well as an iPod Touch.  Luckeeeee.).  Krista and Julie also showed up to the madhouse which was the event.  It was packed to the gills.  I felt like I was in the Great Canadian Cabin on a Saturday night around 2AM circa ’99.  They had beer on hand though which put a smile on my face (as it was also very cheap…$3 a cup!  I love student living) and some of the photography was pretty impressive.  It made me want to dabble in the art.  Mike dabbles and comes up with some really great stuff.

We then headed towards Chinatown to get some CamKong food inside us (CamKong, only the greatest Vietnamese in town!) and were distraught to find out that it closed up shop!  I was devastated as it truly was amazing place for food.  I know that Holly is crying as she reads this as it was also a favourite joint of hers…in fact she told me that a long time ago, whenever she would go out on a date, she would ask to go there…even upwards of seven times a week (I jest, I jest.)

So Julie recommended this Pho joint on the corner and I had my first taste of pho and it wasn’t too bad at all although I did have to bite into the hot pepper which nearly killed me.  I even started hiccuping and I was wondering if my heart was going to stop!

All in all, Day One of My Freedom wasn’t too shabby at all.

You know what I’m loving right now? I downloaded the old, old, OLD Spider-Man cartoon from 1967. I can’t even believe this is from 1967 considering I saw it as a kid and thought it was new then.

I am loving every moment of watching this old school cartoons. They bring back so many memories of the Spider-Man cartoon. Let’s recap what is so blissfully amazing about this series that (considering it’s from 1967) everyone reading this should know about (unless you are from out of North America originally as a child. Sorry Ferda!)

The Opening Sequence: Vero and I had a good laugh last night when the first thing that appears are the words IN COLOR! It didn’t even say it was Spider-Man we were watching. This reminds me of watching The Fugitive when it shifted from black and white to colour. Anyhow, clearly around 1967 colour television was a big thing.

The other great part about the opening sequence was the amazing theme song that after forty years, people can still hum the tune to! Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can! I’m telling you, there isn’t really a better theme song than this. It also points out that he has radioactive blood and likes to hang out in the chill of night, at the scene of a crime.

The Animation: If you watch enough episodes (heck, even if you watch three of them), you notice that the animations get recycled A LOT. Oh, there’s Spidey swinging across the city…there he is rappelling down his web to the street corner…there he is webbing a flagpole (which mysteriously has no flag on it) so he can swing from it….oh, there he’s running across the screen. It’s always the same and that’s what I love about the show. It’s funny to think about the old school cartoons and how they recycled the animation cels. “Wazzat? We need Spidey hanging upside down? No worries! I have that cel right here.”

I read on Wikipedia that the show had its funding severely cut in the second season to the point where they just substituted Spidey animations into an existing episode of Rocket Robin Hood. That is quite hilarious and I swear I have noticed this as a kid as Spidey was fighting the same villains that Rocket Rocket did in the past hour.

Upon thinking about it, a lot of the old cartoons I watched (Spidey, Rocket Robin, Hercules) all looked the same. After some digging I found out that some Canadian company called Krantz Films did a lot of the voice acting and animations for these shows!

The Characters: So far, most of the characters are bang on in relation to their comic book counterparts (which is not surprising considering Stan Lee and John Romita had an active advisory role in the creation of the series) but a few of them are a little off and I wonder why they took creative license to do so. Like The Lizard doesn’t end up having one arm missing. Or the identity of Mysterio is not Quentin Beck. Strange.

The Story: I would have to say that 50% of the story is usually Spidey swinging around the city, which is great. I wish I could write good television like that.

All in all, I had seen this series available on DVD a few years back and passed it up but I’m glad that I found it lurking on the Internet and I will enjoy having a good laugh at the show over the next little while. The beauty of it is that there were usually two episodes per half hour show so I can easily watch an episode over dinner.

I am thinking of having a Spider-Man party where we could have Spidey playing for the masses. Would that be of interest? Reliving the youth and all?

So I headed out to Carp on Friday afternoon to go to Jamie’s wake.  Carp is this village outside of the Ottawa boundary (or is it part of the mega-city now?  I’m not sure) but either way, I had to stop and get directions at one point after traveling around the village and not finding the funeral home.  I finally found it and I should have known it would be the spot where the entire street had cars parked alongside it.

I made my way to the front door with a bit of embarrassment as I had taken off my dress shoes at work and it wasn’t until I was at the funeral home that I realized that I had my sneakers on.  Oh well…it’s not like Jamie would mind (at least I hope not!).

There was quite the lineup into the place and I stood in line for about 30 minutes before getting in sight of the room.  I saw Paul there and we chatted for a bit.  I must admit that the funeral conversations are…awkward.  I mean, here are these people whom I haven’t seen in years and the only times I’ve ever really seen them is at Matt’s cottage party or other areas of fun.  So there really isn’t much to say in a case like this…we asked what we were both doing in life now and commented a little about Jamie but overall, it was just awkward.  I think it’s awkward because I felt like we couldn’t have a true conversation at the moment and talk about any new films we’ve seen or when’s the last time you’ve seen ‘so-and-so’.

I made my way through the line and shook hands with the family and paid my respects.  I didn’t hang around too long.  I must admit that it shook me a little to see someone my own age having passed away.  I didn’t think it would shake me but it did.  I’ve only seen older people who have passed on so it was kind of a shock.

Oh yeah!  I forgot my original intent for this thought…the line-up!  I had heard that the line-up was just as long during the evening as well.  This got me thinking that it’s crazy how many people you are affiliated with if you grew up in the same town forever.  For example, Jamie grew up around the Ottawa area so there’s a lot of history there…which equals A LOT of people who show up to pay their respects.  I really couldn’t get over the number of people there.  Then I thought about my own funeral (which tends to happen for me in these circumstances) and thought that I have this scattered number of people that I know…whether it is family or friends, but they are all across a widespread area.  Anyhow, I just thought it was great that A LOT of people came out to pay their respects to such a great guy.

I chatted with Scotty on my way out and quickly said hello to Steve and Ken who were at the back of the line.  It was good to see them and hopefully I’ll see them in a different setting in the near future.

Random Note: I loved how Jamie’s cowboy boots were on a pedestal.  That’s him, through and through.  Rest in peace Jamie.

IMG_1480, originally uploaded by palm0014.

Unfortunately, a friend of mine has passed away recently. I do not have many details as to how Jamie passed away…what’s even more unfortunate is that he leaves a wife and three children behind. It’s a shame that this had to happen. Jamie was a good guy. I used to see him a few times a year at Matt’s cottage parties as he had grown up with Matt’s crew (whom have become a big part of my friend circle in Ottawa…Duncan, Mike, Matt, etc…). He always liked his country music and to have a good time.

Considering I only knew him through friends of mine, I can’t really speak about him too much so I leave the comment section open for anyone who would like to say something about him. However, don’t feel obligated either. ***update***Actually Rob pointed out that you can leave a message to his family via the Ottawa Citizen Legacy website. Probably a better spot for comments.

Click here.

For those who have not yet heard of this and wish to pay your respects, here is some information about the wake being held tonight in Carp as well as the funeral on Saturday.

http://www.tubmanfuneralhomes.com/display_obituary.php?record=1119

In a moment of egotastical fury, I will post a quote from my friend Sara:

“I’ve decided that you write your blog in a similar fashion to Kevin Smith. I think you guys would be friends if you knew each other.”

This is probably the greatest compliment a person could receive.  Being compared to Kevin Smith is like winning a ride in KITT for a day.  It puts a smile on your face.

For those of you who don’t know, Kevin Smith is the creator of such memorable movies like Clerks, Mallrats, Dogma…he’s also quite the geek which is great.  His love of comic books knows no bounds.

While looking up what Kevin Smith was up to, I stumbled upon mention of him appearing at the New York Comic Convention this past week and there was mention of a Bob and Doug McKenzie animated series coming out next year!  That is great!  I do enjoy Bob & Doug.  Did anyone else see their 2-4 special last year?  I introduced Vero to Bob and Doug through that special and she thought they were amusing.