Hey! Flickr now allows people to upload 90 second video clips! That is pretty cool considering years ago I had wanted to store my videos in one neat little spot and never found a good place for it (other than YouTube I suppose). I am excited to try this feature out.
For years now, there hasn’t been any good chicken wing deals in the area. It used to be that I could get 10 cent wings around the area but it’s like there is a chicken shortage somewhere.
Trish, Krista and I were walking past the James Street Feed Diner when I spied a sign that said ‘All You Can Eat Wings for $10’. Now, after some quick math I realized that if I could eat 40 wings, that should come out to a half decent price per wing in this day in age.
We called up Mike and Vero to meet us and we had a good feed of wings. Unfortunately my eyes were bigger than my belly and after the initial basket of 20 wings I was done. Knowing when to stop, I realized that, yes, I paid a little too much for wings this day, but someone pointed out that usually one pound of wings goes for $10 at this place and I ended up with two pounds for the same price, hence I got a steal of a deal! I left in good spirits.
But really, why can’t we find some nice cheap wings anymore? I even remember there was a place that had 1 cent wings…now that was a little on the crazy side. I swear they were pigeon wings and not chicken wings. I digress…
On a side note about purchased eats, last week I went to breakfast with Spencer and there was a new girl at the bagel shop I go to. I asked for some salt and pepper on my LT and this woman laid that salt down like there was no tomorrow! Plus, she managed to put it on top of this random piece of romaine lettuce (when the heck did they start having romaine lettuce at this place?) so the tomatoes couldn’t even absorb it. I didn’t think much of it until I bit into the salt lick of a sandwich. It was quite hard to take. I ended up going there again this morning with Krista and didn’t think about it when I asked for salt but there she went again, pouring out a kilogram of salt onto my sandwich. Case in point, don’t order any more salt with the meal. Put some on yourself if need be. Yeeeuck!
Saturday Vero, Mike and I headed out to a fund raising breakfast event called “Breakfast for Joleen”. Turns out that Joleen has a brain tumor and while the parents prospective workplaces have been nice enough to extend some compassionate leave for awhile, I guess it is running out so there was a fund raiser to help out the parents during this time of need. Mike and Mel (I believe?) know these two parents personally, hence how we found out about this.
In the end, we pretty well missed the entire breakfast/silent auction hoopla considering we rolled into there around 11:30 in the morning and the thing started at 9:00. We still paid for our breakfast and helped ourselves to some pancakes, eggs and a sausage. We took a look at some items that Mike, Mel and Duncan got at the silent auction including a computer (!) and a nice box of brownies which we took a gander at.
There was also a blood bank on hand which had information on how to give blood but they also tested what type you were! I had never done so and I now know that I am O+. I guess I will start donating blood when they come to work as they usually do every once in awhile.
We then chatted outside for awhile about Véro’s play and other randomness and then headed to Véro’s for a beer and then we headed home to get a quick bite to eat to hold us over before the night of fun. It was Karilee’s birthday party (although I think her birthday is actually on…Monday, April 7?) down at Fratelli’s in New Edinburgh.
After having a beer back at Véro’s again that evening and watching Wedding Crashers (as Duncan had never seen it before), we hopped in a quick cabride to go to Fratelli’s which had just opened recently in New Edinburgh. Supposedly there are a few Fratelli’s in town but this was the first time I had been to one. Mike and I headed upstairs above the restaurant to say hello to his friend whom he actually helped move into that apartment a few weeks back. It was a slick apartment. I like the apartments with the high ceilings and the long hallway connecting all the rooms together.
We then headed into Fratelli’s, took our seat, said hello to Matt, Karilee and company and settled in for the ride. I quickly noticed that Duncan wasn’t in the restaurant (and he had come with us) and I found him outside chatting with an old work friend. When I headed back inside I noticed that no one had ordered drinks yet so I went to bar, ordered some drinks and was about to take them away when they said “Oh no, we can bring them to your table!”. I have a feeling that as soon as I was about to walk away, their manager walked by and was wondering why I was picking up my own beer. Hey, that’s what you get when you’ve been sitting around the table for a good fifteen minutes! In the end, I put the beers back on the bar and said they could drop them off to me and that still took five minutes.
That would have to be my only minor complaint about Fratelli’s. Every new restaurant has some growing pains so I won’t hold it against them. The food was superb, their bread was superb and the ambiance was great. I had some great conversation around me (and found a fellow comic book fan and we chatted for a few moments) and I think all had a good time. Vero ended up showing up after 10 o’clock since her play was done. I can’t wait to share a picture of how crazy her hair is for her play. It is quite zany!
We ended up leaving Fratelli’s around 11:30 and I personally didn’t feel like heading downtown to a line-up at the Heart and Crown so a few of us headed to the New Edinburgh pub which was down one block and we said goodbye to Matt, Karilee and…Sophie-Lynn? Can’t remember her name…it looked like Karilee had a great time but I heard she hurt her ankle afterwards so that sucks.
The New Edinburgh Pub was in full force with a band playing in the other side of the bar. We ordered a beer, sat down and listened to Trish’s story about her trip to the Dominican Republic. She had some great stories to tell and I encourage you to ask her about it the next time you see her. The Dominican Republic sure saw it’s fair share of people I know this year; myself, Vero and her family, Ferda & James, Trish, Krista and Jill…I think there were a few people from work also that I knew headed down there. It’s quite the hot spot (pun intended!) for Canadians I guess.
Friday I ended up over at Eric’s to play some Settlers of Catan. We had purchased this game for Eric and Annie for Christmas and he had yet to haul it out so we took a crack at it. This would probably be the fourth/fifth time I had played it. The first two times were horrible, the third time I kind of got the hang of it. Like anything in this world, I think it’s best when you go on an adventure with people at your own knowledge level.
So Friday night brought Mike, Eric and I together not really remembering or knowing how to play so the instruction manual came out, we had a few mis-starts (due to board setup and whatnot) but we loved the game entirely. We played for four hours and by 1:30AM I was ready to pack it in but it was such an evenly matched game that we had to see who would win. Mike ended up winning two games and Eric won one. We ended up loving the game and look forward to playing it again.
Can we also point out that there must be so many different schools of thought in terms of strategy for the setup of this game…is it better to spread your pieces out to get better resources, or to put them into high probability rolling areas? Time will tell.
“these eyes have never seen a more beautiful sight. these ears have never heard a more beautiful sound. these taste buds have never tasted a more beautiful sandwich.” – me, after going to Gooney with Maren.
This morning on my way to school, I decided to drop by to see Maren and get a bite to eat at lunch. She suggested a place on Laurier and O’Connor called Gooneys. She mentioned getting a salad.
While leery of a salad bar kind of place, she mentioned there were sandwiches and knowing that this was the key to my heart (and stomach!) we headed there in the wet, wet snow that has appeared over Ottawa. What the heck? First they are calling for a warm weekend, now it’s sloppy wet snow.
Upon entering, this place put a smile on my face. In the corner, there was this guy playing the blues on his sweet, sweet electric guitar an mini-amp. What the heck? Isn’t this a sandwich shop?
Well yes it is, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have some atmosphere! Maren warned me that the lineups get pretty large around noon so we hurried with five minutes to spare. The menu was awesome. Not awesome like I usually say awesome, more like a jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring kind of menu. Tons of different sandwiches with soup combos, salad combos, you name it, they got it.
I followed Maren’s suit and ordered the roast beef and decided to get the Works. I can’t even remember what consisted of the works other than some eggplant and ten other toppings. They wrapped it up in a nice shell of wax paper, sliced it, pased it over in a nice tray and voila!
We grabbed a seat right in front of this guy playing his blues guitar. I was in heaven. He even threw in some Georgia by Ray Charles. Unbelievable.
The sandwich was so amazing…I don’t know what they put into it but it reminded me of my favourite sauce from New York Subway in Toronto on Queen Street West. I couldn’t get enough of it. I was loving every moment of it.
Coupled with amazing company of Maren (always good conversation…mainly dealing with her upcoming trip to Mexico next week!), amazing eats and amazing treats for the ears, I will definitely return to Gooneys for a bite to eat. Go early and beat the rush!
iplaying: Apartment Story – The National (Boxer) – this is a fabulous, fabulous album. Palmer approved. Will write more later.
Last night Mike and I scored free tickets (courtesy of Véro, HEY, I can do accented characters through this website software now! Great!) to see the play she is in – Lavalléville.
Véro has been preparing for this for about six months so I was quite excited to see what they had come up with. Lavalléville is a play written by André Paiement
who is some big playwright from Sudbury who spearheaded some Northern Ontario theatre scene. Clearly I am not well versed in this subject matter so we could also ask Véro for a chat about why this guy was a big deal.
This play was deemed the ‘quintessential’ Northern-Ontario play…it takes place in Lavalléville where there is no real outside contact with the rest of the world so they dress a little strange, their mannerisms are a little odd and if they do get word from the outside of the town, they are either scared or in awe of it. For example, Véro’s character plans to leave Lavalléville to a place called Montreal, Canada where she has heard that women can get paid to sleep with men; all you have to do is wear short skirts and high boots. This is quite the revelation for all those that hear this.
The story really revolves around Diane’s (Véro’s character) wishes to leave the town and the hopes that a big-wig from Toronto, Canada will come and like what he sees in the town and invest in it (or buy it? I didn’t really catch the difference…).
This play was over the top hilarity. The characters are in caricature mode, meaning that this is not a serious play whatsoever. The outfits/costumes were quite out of the ordinary. Véro’s hair probably stood a foot off of her head. One gentleman dressed as Napoleon while another woman dressed like Madonna (circa 80s). The energy on the stage was incredible. It was such a energetic play…usually I’ve seen plays which are introspective and subdued…this one was like watching a full-out comedy ten feet in front of you.
Mike and I both thoroughly enjoyed the play. It was highly entertaining and it was great to see Véro (and all the others!) hard work pay off into a spectacular spectacle (please note my spectacular vernacular). Véro over-acted her part (which was planned) so she is quite the crazy person on stage. Plus we got to see her sing a solo number, dance a little around the stage and *gasp* kiss another guy. Mike nudged me during that part of the play. Heck, I knew it would happen and that’s what actors do…right? 😉
Go show some support to Véro and the others and see Lavalléville! Tickets are $12 each ($10 for students/seniors) and it’s playing Thursday, Friday and Saturday, each week until the final showing on April 19 (which I will be at). You can find more information here:
My friend Rob asked me a question about starting a bursary. Recap: Rob is a good friend from back home that we lost touch with but have recently found again. It’s like my favourite Thundercats toy has been found in between the couch cushions!
Anyhow, Rob is a high school teacher and he is thinking about starting up a bursary. Here’s some details from him:
I sit on a committee that choses who gets what bursary for those that graduate. I would like to create a bursary myself and give it to a deserving student. Where you (and others) come in is setting up a criteria for said bursary. I don’t want it to be for a highest average or course specific. There are way too many of those already. I was thinking along the lines of most improved or something. The only thing is most improved in what? I have no idea. What kind of bursary would you like to see given?
I thought I would throw this out to the masses to get a bunch of different opinions. In terms of most improved…sounds like a good idea actually. I know that my Great Philosophers professor indicated that her marking is subjective on a variety of factors, one being that if she sees you did poorly on the first midterm but really improved on the second midterm and the exam, then she would weigh the mark more with the improved marks because it shows that you’ve grasped the material after being scared from the first midterm. 😉 So I don’t know how bursaries usually work, are they for the entire high school term or just the final senior year? Either way, I suppose you could easily find the most improved in terms of marks by finding the largest variance between the beginning of the (term/senior year) and comparing it to the last. Of course, this would need to be a positive variance, we aren’t talking about giving a bursary to someone who bombed.
I don’t think you would meet much resistance on giving out a bursary for most improved but I hope to heck that it doesn’t create this new culture in school where students who know they don’t have good enough marks to get the usual bursaries (like for being the smartest, happy go-lucky kid in school) would just fail their first test so they can come back and destroy the second test, hence, creating a spot in the running for most improved. You gotta watch out for those students…they’re shifty like that. And smart.
What other ideas do we have out there for a bursary for high school students? Share the wealth of your brains.
I just finished reading Life of Pi upon Eric’s suggestion. Unfortunately for myself, I thought I had more to read this morning so I only brought the one book with me on the bus and it turned out that I only had three pages left. Woops?
Life of Pi is written by Canadian author Yann Martel. It is mainly a novel about the life of Piscine “Pi” Molitor Patel who is a boy from India whose father is a zookeeper. At one point, they all pick up and move to Canada but along their way the ship they are on sinks and Pi is left along in a lifeboat along with a Bengal Tiger.
The majority of the novel revolves around how Pi survived his voyage at sea with this tiger for 227 days which is insane when you think about it. He had to figure out how to live off the sea and not disturb the tiger who was in the boat with him. You know he survived because in the beginning of the novel the author talks with a ‘future Pi’ who is living in Toronto.
I found the beginnings of his journey very interesting in that he explained what happened in the first days (it’s all told from a first-person perspective) and how he dealt with the huge tiger in his boat and how he took care of himself during the time. The rest of the novel gets a little tiresome as you KNOW he survived the ordeal so when you read about his thoughts of life at sea and the pain and hardship he went through, it got a little boring knowing that the biggest event of all (someone saving him) was right around the corner. I definitely found myself speed reading through some aspects of the book (like when he spoke about the skies and the seas…come on, get to the good stuff!)
However, I must admit that I am pretty upset right now as I had thought this book was non-fiction! The tale was very gripping thinking that this actually happened to someone! It was quite the page-turner at some points. For those of you who have read the book, I am hoping you can see how easy it was to feel that it was real, considering the author interviews Pi in Toronto! Now that I know it’s fiction…meh. I don’t know…I guess it’s still a good read. The ending is quite amazing actually.
In the end, I did enjoy this book. It had a very interesting section regarding religion and how Pi took it upon himself to be a practicing Christian, Mulsim and Hindu, reasoning that he loves God in all forms. It was interesting to see how the figureheads of the religions came down on this 8 year old boy and told him he couldn’t that but in the end they left bewildered and wondering if they had it all wrong. I’ll have to reflect on it some more I suppose…it was a page turner but I am wondering if I would felt differently if I knew it was fiction.
Many times have I waited at a bus stop or at an intersection or anywhere where there is traffic. 99% of the time I am in my own little world listening to my music or looking at the birds in the sky.
1% of the time I am highly alert to everything going on around me in fear that an out of control driver would smack me. Let’s be honest, I’m going to think that this doesn’t happen too often.
Unfortunately it did yesterday as a car plowed into a bus stop and killed a woman yesterday. Horrible, HORRIBLE! That is a scary thing to think about.
Read here.
On a totally unrelated note (other than the word nightmare), I had this crazy dream this morning. I dreamed that my alarm went off and I went to the washroom and when I got there it was kind of full…of stuff. Like furniture. Mike had moved some stuff into the washroom for some reason. I just said nothing and moved to the shower where I found some cases of beer (now that I think of it, I think all the stuff from the garage was in the bathroom) so I moved them. Oddly enough I wasn’t upset but when I turned around to see the empty shower, it was FULL OF STUFF…shelves of stuff. I flipped! I started yelling for Mike and both he and Eric came into the scene as I was yelling at Mike. “How could you put all this stuff in here?! Don’t you realize that I need to go to work and to do so I need to take a shower in the morning?! Do you realize how long it will take me to move all this stuff?”
All along no one is saying a word during my rant and when I am done Eric says “But he had to make room for his family. Don’t you care about his family here?” Bewildered, his cousin Adam entered the scene (Note that Mike doesn’t actually have a cousin Adam that I know of, let alone that funnily looked exactly like Mike but a little shorter. But they both had the same hair, glasses and beard. I had a good laugh.) and then I apologized for the outrage saying that I didn’t know his cousin was staying with us and then I woke up.
Strange!
Punta Cana. Martine 336, originally uploaded by palm0014.
We had planned to go out in these great underwater sea-doos which looked like something out of a James Bond film but in the end we decided to head out to do some snorkeling. It was a good day for it…nice and sunny, no real bad hangovers from the wedding before…all was well in the world.
Gaetan, Vero and I headed out on a boat which brought us along the coastline to a spot with a bunch of coral so that we could snorkel. I must admit that when we first got the snorkel gear a bit of fear came over me as I found it hard to get used to breathing out of a tube and not through my nose. However, I realized that if I calmed my breathing (and fear!) down, there would be no problem.
Until we got to the spot. It is quite choppy once you get a little farther off the shore. I never realized how choppy the ocean can be out there! Armed with flippers and a mask, we all hopped in and went for the ride. The mask took a little getting used to….it wasn’t TOO bad to breathe out of it but if a wave came on top of you then you got a mouthful of saltwater…yuck!
At first I was swimming around some massive corral reefs in which they were very close to you…in fact the wave once smacked my knee into one (good thing it was just rock and not sharp corral!). After realizing that the waves would continue to smack me into these rocks, I decided to head to another area. I met Gaetan on the way who was having trouble with his mask. I think it kept fogging up and we figured it wasn’t tight enough.
Let me tell you, the ocean is quite the amazing sight once you lay your eyes to it through a scuba mask. It’s really something out of National Geographic. At one point I was literally swimming with hundreds of blue fish…the size of a perch. It was like I was a part of them. They weren’t scared of me at all. I was just one with them trying to swim along. That’s another point about the ocean…the fish don’t exactly swim…they just move with the ocean waves. It’s pointless to try too hard to move against the ocean…simply flow along. I still marvel at the fact that I was alongside hundreds of fish and they weren’t moving around quickly like you see minnows move around…it was just calm and they were along for the ride.
We stayed out there for a good 30 – 45 minutes but we had grown tired after all that time of sucking in some salt water and fighting against the waves. We headed back for the boat and Gaetan had mentioned that when he had removed his mouthpiece in the water one time, he had almost lost his teeth. I commented that it would have been funny as there would have been a fish with a great smile somewhere out in the ocean! We all had a good laugh.
I believe we paid around $30 for this excursion and it was well worth it. We had at least an hour on the boat (which is a great ride, although I was feeling kind of sick after swallowing some saltwater) and 45 minutes out snorkeling. Some people had gone on an all-day excursion which they said wasn’t too interesting as most of the time the boat just laid anchor somewhere and stayed there for an hour. I think they would have preferred this excursion more.
Have I already spoken about the excursions? While it cost a little extra money, I thoroughly took advantage of the location we were in and the opportunities they provided. I lucked out and had some great excursions. If I returned I don’t think I would try the snorkeling again but I would be up for a safari tour if it was a different area as well as the parasailing. The view was amazing from the parasail. Definitely worth the $200+ that we spent in total.
We returned to the beach and grabbed a bite to eat at the outdoor eating area.
At one point in the day, Vero and I headed down the beach to the merchants tents. This was quite a long walk down the beach but it’s not like we had anything else to do! When we got to the tents they sure knew how to wrangle us in with comments about how beautiful Vero is and how they have the best deals in the land. After haggling (which I still have to learn the fine art of) Vero ended up with a ton of jewelery with larimar (the stone native to the Dominican Republic) and I had found this neat shaker percussion instrument and also a gift for my Dad. Actually, as I write this a few months later, I realize that I have never sent my family their gifts from the Dominican Republic! Woops! I guess I’ll send them along with the next batch of Sopranos Dad! I was also trying out some hats but never found one that I really liked (which is funny because two months later I found one I liked in Giant Tiger of all places).
That evening Vero, Andreane and I headed to the Italian restaurant for a late eat. I must say that it was quite horrible. The service was bad, I got the wrong order and after we got our food served they never returned once in the 30 minutes afterwards. At one point I got fed up and we decided to leave the place. Enough was enough, I wasn’t going to spend the last night sitting in a restaurant!
We ended up back in our hotel room and Vero and Andreane had some bad sunburns so they needed some Aloe Vero. I was doubly disappointed that night as we had left the housekeeper another $5 that morning and I came back to find that the beer hadn’t been restocked! What the heck? At various points while I was watching a movie and they were applying Aloe Vero to themselves I kept putting my cold beer on Vero. I was like the 7-Up Man!
But at one point, Andreane was lying on her back and I put the cold beer on her stomach but she freaked out and the can tipped over her and then beer went all over her! THEN she flips out even more, jumps up, the can goes flying onto the bed and chaos reigns. There’s Andreane and the bed soaked with beer. All you could hear are screams from all over. It was quite funny. We threw the comforter out in the porch and got Andreane some clothes to wear. Vero’s aunt had heard the screams so a bunch of them came over to hang out for the rest of the night.