Month: April 2009

So I am assuming that most readers are familiar with the ridiculous acronym of ‘laugh out loud’ or LOL.

The thing is, I think this is overused and should only really be used in situations where you DO laugh out loud. Case in point, I was messaging a colleague at work and they replied LOL but I could clearly realize that there was no real laughter out loud. Even a simple ‘Ha!’ would have sufficed.

Now I realize that the Internet is a sham altogether.

On Thursday night, Vero, Mike and I hit the open road for the drive up North. Scratch that…it was not an open road at first. It was jam packed with rush hour traffic getting out of Ottawa. It was horrible. I don’t think we made it out of Ottawa until an hour later. Then we encountered not one, but two bridges being worked on near Renfrew. After Deep River it was smooth sailing but we ended up rolling into town around 3AM. Way too late for us folks.

The next morning I arose, had some lunch and said goodbye to Vero who was heading out to Hearst to prepare for her sister’s baby shower. I took the afternoon to compile some study notes for my upcoming Macroeconomics exam and chat with the folks. Maureen and John came over later for some supper and John showed us a great RC simulator game (although I didn’t have the coordination to get the thing flying too much!) and afterward, I headed over to Maureen and John’s place for a few beer. I had grand plans to get the old gang of us together but it was hinging on a bunch of elements…in the end, Mike was toast after drinking all day with his family, I never heard from Dana, and I never heard from Eric and Annie but that’s definitely to be expected as they have tons of family to visit with the kids and all. Either way, I had fun at Maureen’s place and we ended up watching Empire Strikes Back (which Vero has admitted to wanting to watch!).

The next morning I continued my study notes and then headed over to Mike’s for a quick beer and a visit before heading to Hearst for the evening. When I arrived there were a ton of people showing up for the baby shower. The men took their place inside the kitchen while the ladies propagated to the solarium where hilarity ensued. I showed the men the trick with a coat hanger and how it can detect energy fields in each other. Here‘s information on that for those who want to learn more. Anne-Marie definitely looks pregnant these days and it’s quite exciting to think that a baby is coming to the family in a few months time!

The next morning we went to an amazing brunch (the chicken pot pie…yum!) and then we had to hightail it back to Moonbeam to get to William’s baptism. This will have been the last time I have entered this church in Moonbeam considering I don’t think I know anyone else that will choose to get married or have their children baptized there. Even though I pride myself on the amount of French I can speak/understand, I must admit that in a religious context, some words are a mystery to me so I usually just follow along with the sound of what people are saying.

Nothing too exciting happened at the shower like demons rising up or witches coming to steal the baby, although Vero and I spied a vat of holy water there just in case. Burn the Witches! Afterward we headed over to Annie’s sister’s place and had a drink and chatted with Eric’s parents for a bit before heading outside to push Dana’s car out of the snowbank. Did I mention that it had snowed back home for the past three days? Ridiculous! I had packed away my winter boots and had to bring them up North! We then headed to the Konopelky’s for a quick drink and then I dropped Mike off at home where he proceeded to make a spectacular leap over a big puddle but ended up slipping into it and soaking his good pants! Vero and I visited for a bit where we checked out Mike’s Dad’s new toy…a beer fridge where you press a button and it ejects a beer for you at the bottom. Brilliant! I had a good laugh when Carol came in the day before and let us know that she received the same thing for her birthday and Danny was really excited that they were taking this home with them and Carol said something to the effect of “It’s MY birthday gift.” I couldn’t help pointing out the fact that she should know the point of sharing considering she teaches it to her daycare kids all the time! Har har.

We had a great ham dinner for supper and then Maureen started hauling out some old videocassettes and we stumbled upon some old home movies that none of us knew existed; namely Mom and Dad’s 25th Anniversary video from the first year they had the cottage, as well as some old Super 8 video footage from 1975 onwards. That was quite funny to watch as it’s funny to see your parents and their friends so young. It also gave me some great ideas about using the footage to make a video for our song ‘705’. I have been explaining to Vero that I want us to make a video which would be a typical Northern Ontario roadtrip….but have the visuals look like the washed out, yellowish Super 8 films of yesteryear. Now, with this footage, we think we can perhaps incorporate it somehow and make it all the more personal considering Troy and myself show up in the footage at various points. We’ll see what we can do.

The next morning we headed back along with Danny and Carol leading the pack until North Bay where we ate at the mall and then said our goodbyes. It was hell once again getting through the bridges in Renfrew and we didn’t end up home until after six. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t live in North Bay!

A great Easter weekend and it was nice to see the family. I’m sure everyone had a great Easter weekend as well. Here’s two jokes that I heard during the weekend, one from my father and one from Mr. Townson.

Q: How can you tell if the chocolate Easter bunny you have is female?
A: The female ones have the hollow head.

Three Newfies die in a car accident and head up to the pearly gates only to find that Saint Peter is locking up for the long weekend. Not wanting to hang out until the weekend was over, Saint Peter asks that they each tell him a religious holiday.

Newfie 1: Thanksgiving.
Saint Peter: Why is that significant?
Newfie 1: Because we give thanks to our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Saint Peter: Very well, you may enter.

Newfie 2: Christmas.
Saint Peter: Why is that significant?
Newfie 2: Because that’s when we celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Saint Peter: Very well, you may enter.

Newfie 3: Easter.
Saint Peter: Why is that significant?
Newfie 3: Well, first there is the Last Supper.
Saint Peter: Yes, and what else?
Newfie 3: Then the Lord is crucified on the cross.
Saint Peter: Yes, go on.
Newfie 3: Then his body is buried in a big cave with a boulder pushed in front of it.
Saint Peter: Yes, yes!
Newfie 3: Then later on in the weekend they discover the boulder has been pushed aside.
Saint Peter: Yes, and then what happens?
Newfie 3: Jesus comes out of the cave, sees his shadow and returns for six weeks.

Hope everyone had a great Easter weekend!

iplaying: Sick Muse (Metric – Fantasies)

On April 9, 2009 at 4PM, I went to Hurdman station in hopes to get a bus up the Vanier Parkway to get close to Conventry Road. I had been on a bus before but couldn’t remember the number so I went to consult the bus station map. It indicated that the #3 bus went up Vanier Parkway as well as the 103 which was an express route. I searched around the area for a schedule for either of these routes but had no luck.

No matter, it was the middle of rush hour and I knew that the bus going up Vanier Parkway would come fairly often so I waited at the stop for the bus. I did find it odd that there were no stops with a listing for the #3 route, so I waited at the 1C stop that had the #103 listed and I recalled that this was the stop that I had been picked up by the bus before.

Unfortunately, in the span of 50 minutes, no #3 or #103 had come by and I had to head back downtown to go to a class at the University. I was hoping to get to Conventry to pick up my car from Canadian Tire, but time had run out.

I was frustrated with the ordeal and couldn’t understand why a #3 had never come my way. I mentioned this to my roommate later that night and he said he was pretty sure that the #3 wasn’t running along Vanier Parkway any longer and that the #9 (a new line) had taken over.

Sure enough, after consulting your website, this seems to be the case.

I am sure that notices and signs were up at Hurdman long before the bus route had changed as OC Transpo seems to have a good reputation of informing the public of when a bus route will change. But in my case, for a person who is not too familiar route, I rely on the transit map which is available at the bus stop.

Can there be an updated map placed at the Hurdman station, or at the very least, a notice on the board indicating that the #9 has taken over the place of the #3 route which used to run up Vanier Parkway? That woul be swell.

Thanks!

Last night I arrived to find that our Who DVDs had arrived!  Turns out that when we saw them back in 2006 (entry here), they had been filming every concert and releasing them for purchase.  For many years I’ve toyed with the idea of picking up a copy but it was kind of expensive.  But all of a sudden, a few weeks ago I stumbled onto the fact that they discounted their prices and in the end, Mike and I ended up with a copy for ourselves at a smoking hot price of $23 with all the taxes, duties and exchange rates encompassed into that price!

Note: After reading my review of the show, I realized that Marc-Andre and Sam were at the show.  Sam, here’s where you can order yourselves a copy or get one off of us:  http://themusic.com/encore/thewho2006/

We popped the DVD into the player last night to see how it was.  It’s hilarious that the DVD definitely has a better view of the stage than we ever did up in the 300 Level!

It’s a pretty decent DVD.  It looks like they had a camera on Pete, on Roger, on the drummer and then one that captured a larger viewing of the stage.  The DVD looks like it focusses more on Roger and Pete and not a lot of wide angles of the stage.  I’ll have to watch the entire thing to gauge the entire DVD, but my initial thoughts are that this is an amazing keepsake of a concert you’ve been to!  Much better than an audio CD!

In the mail, I also received the new Arcade Fire documentary Miroir Noir.  Mike and I perused the bonus disc of TV performances from the Neon Bible tour.  We grew tired of watching them as they kept playing ‘Keep the Cars Running’ in each performance!  I am anxious to see the documentary as it is created by Vincent Moon who has a unique style of filming.

I also received the Fantastic Four Masterworks Volume 1.  That’s a pretty neat item.  Essentially, back in 1987, Marvel Comics started releasing hardcover Masterworks volumes, which reprinted old comic books because it’s just too hard to get a hold of the old ones nowadays.  Well, at least in 1987 it was hard without the Internet!  😉

So the Masterworks come out in hardcover format which was quite pricey (Let’s say $50 a book) but they just started releasing them in softcover this month!  I am pretty excited as the only old Marvel comics I ever got a chance to read where the X-Men and Spidey comics.  So last night I read the first Fantastic Four issue and it was pretty cool to see where they started out from.

Last night I had a real taste of what an accident can feel like. It was quite slippery on the roads (as discovered by Vero and I slipping our way across the Hilton parking lot to the car) but in my mind, it did not immediately register that there was ice on the roads as soon as I got behind the wheel.

We headed towards the Highway 5 on ramp and there were a few cars waiting to turn left onto it. As I applied the brakes I caught a patch of black ice and the car was out of control.

I have to admit that my mind was on auto-pilot and not clearly thinking about what to do. I don’t recall thinking “I must apply intermittent pressure to the brakes”, I just did it. I started heading towards the median on my left but then realized that I would still rear-end the car in front of us. Without thinking about it, I tried swerving to the right to get into the two lanes of traffic and luckily the tires must have hit a good patch of pavement and it gripped and we made it out of the trap.

The only thing that was going through my mind at that point was that it was probably better to potentially hit a car on its side by swerving right than to hit some person from behind. I never had the time to look to see if there were cars to my right or not. We’re talking the span of this entire event was three seconds so some fast acting was in order.

My heart racing, we continued down the road and eventually turned back towards the on-ramp. I’ve never been in a close call like that before and it was quite scary. Now that I can reflect on it, I must say that driving experience subconsciously helped me out in this case as the habit of pumping the brakes on ice just inherently happened.

That was the end of our night.

The beginning of our night started off with me heading to Canadian Tire to get an oil change. After heading to Best Buy and then back to the waiting room at the store, I watched some TV, had a snooze and started wondering where the heck Vero was as she had said she would be there at 5:45 to pick me up to go visit her grandmother who was in town on a bus tour, staying at the Hilton at the Casino Lac-Leamy.

6:15 rolls around and she shows up and we head out to the Ramada Inn in Gatineau which is across from the Casino. Let it be noted that the only thing Vero’s grandmother told her was that she was staying at ‘the usual hotel’. Well, for the past five years, that usual hotel was the Ramada Inn. Unfortunately for us, when we arrived there, there was not Grandmother Cantin waiting there! We had the front desk guy call the Hilton and sure enough, they were over there.

Vero, her grandmother, uncle and I headed towards the Casino to go to the Banco buffet. I’m pretty sure I’ve been to this place for a work Christmas party and it’s a nice joint. The buffet was also excellent and we had some good times. I will be seeing her again shortly as Vero, Mike and I are heading back up North for Easter break. In fact, I found out a slew of us are heading up North, including Eric and Annie as well as Dana! Quite the crew!

Finally, FINALLY, the remastered Beatles albums are coming out this September!  I swore at one point I had a savings account to buy all of these albums.

The greatest news of all is that there will be a separate box set of the mono mixes as well!

You see, here’s a little history lesson for those born after the sixties.

In the early 60s when The Beatles started out, stereo technology was not around.  It was all in mono therefore all their instruments were mixed for a mono release.

Then stereo started catching on so it would be commonplace for awhile to mix both in mono and stereo and release both versions and you could pick up whichever version your system could handle.  Think of it as a comparison between DVD and Blu-Ray films.  They are the same films but with some differences.

Here’s a real interesting comparison between the two mixes of the Sgt. Pepper’s album, taken from Wikipedia:

The Beatles were present during the mixing of the album in mono and the LP was originally released as such alongside a stereo mix prepared by Abbey Road engineers led by Geoff Emerick; the Beatles themselves did not attend the mixing of the stereo version. (The mono version is now out of print on vinyl and was not officially released on CD.) The two mixes are fundamentally different. For example, the stereo mix of “She’s Leaving Home” was mixed at a slower speed than the original recording and therefore plays at a slower tempo and at a lower pitch than the original recording. Conversely, the mono version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is considerably slower than the stereo version and features much heavier gating and reverb effects. McCartney’s yelling voice in the coda section of “Sgt. Pepper (Reprise)” (just before the segue into “A Day in the Life“) can plainly be heard in the mono version, but is nearly inaudible in the stereo version. The mono version of the song also features drums that open with much more presence and force, as they are turned well up in the mix. Also in the stereo mix, the famous segue at the end of “Good Morning Good Morning” (the chicken-clucking sound which becomes a guitar noise) is timed differently and a crowd noise tape comes in later during the intro to “Sgt. Pepper (Reprise)”.

Other variations between the two mixes include louder laughter at the end of the mono mix of “Within You Without You”, as well as a gush of laughter between the coda of the title track and the beginning of “With a Little Help From My Friends”, and a colder, echoless ending on the mono version of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”.

Considering the Beatles weren’t even in the ROOM during the making of the stereo mix, I feel that the mono mix is the definitive version, but here, after all these years, I’ve only heard the stereo mix because that’s the one that was released onto CD.

This is pretty cool news. KISS is going on tour this summer and they are planning some of their tourdates according to their fans voting for where they should play! So if you live in Kapuskasing, you never know! They also say that the voting will be based on the actual percentage of the population which is great news for smaller towns!

http://eventful.com/performers/kiss-/P0-001-000062428-9/competitions

This past weekend I headed to Paisley with Rob as his grandmother had passed away.  Turns out that they knew this may be coming at some point so the family had a great opportunity to see her the week before which is probably the best thing that can happen, I suppose.

Grandma Beech was a kind woman who always liked a good laugh.  She shared Grandpa Earl’s love for playing cards.  I had met Rob’s grandparents on a trip to Marmora one Thanksgiving weekend were we toured around in a camper.  It was quite the fun time although I paid for it on the Sunday after a Hallowe’en party gone wrong.  Hey, in fact, they had a picture of that weekend up in the funeral home now that I think of it.  I should try and get a copy of that picture.  Grandma Beech always had a good time wherever she was.  The last time I saw her was at Rob’s and she tried out the Nintendo Wii Fit game where she proceeded to have us in hysterics while she tried out the hula-hoop game.

We decided to head out on Wednesday night and it was good night of driving.  The most exciting part of our trip happened around Oshawa when the fuel light came on and from my vantage point, I thought we had awhile to go.  We ended up on the other side of the 400 HWY and were still goading each other as to how much gas we could suck out of the tank!  I felt like we were Kramer trying to run the car to the point of no return!  In the end, we found a gas station, filled up and I proceeded to look in the car manual to discover that we still had six litres of fuel to go!  We could have definitely made it places with that amount!

After the gas station, we were hitting the open roads of the Georgian Bay area where it’s a criss cross of roads linking farmlands together.  We stopped into McDonalds in Orangeville around midnight to fuel our hunger.  A random employee commented to us about how it would be real sunny the next morning.  We thanked her for the information and kept on trucking.

About ten kilometers away from Paisley, we came up over a hill and Rob yelled out and I looked up and there were not one, not two, not three, but FOUR deer in our path!  Rob slammed on the brakes and miraculously we didn’t even touch a deer, but cruised on by them all as they looked at us.  Rob said his grandmother must have been looking out for us.

The next day we awoke and it was a beautiful day out.  The snow was pretty well gone and so we picked up some drinks and headed to his grandmother’s house where we washed all the vehicles.  The rest of the day was spent visiting people and having a grand time and by night’s end, we were out in Cargill at Rob’s brother Kevin’s place and I recall us trying to feed some rye to a fly as well as me trying to tune an electric guitar with an amp that had a horrible buzzing sound to it.  I finally retired for the night while the party kept going.  I was probably the wiser of us all as there was no rest for the wicked the next morning and we had things to do.

We headed back into town and managed to get our suits ready and I even got a great haircut from Rob’s mom.  We headed to the funeral home and I paid my respects for awhile and then I headed back home once a crowd started to gather to pay their respects.  Rob’s mom was trying to trade me in for one of her sons so they could have a break from saying hello to the hundreds of people who showed up for Grandma Beech’s wake!

The next day the funeral was held which was quite lovely.  There were a few tunes played by a fiddle player.  Some great stories were told and the lunch afterwards was good as well.  We headed to the Legion later on for a few drinks where I read this interesting story of a resident of Paisley who was in the World War and how the soldiers had ‘rum rations’ every day and he loved being next to the guy who didn’t drink so he could get a double shot to keep him warm during the night.

We woke up around 4AM the next morning to hit the road and get back as Rob had some things to attend to back in Ottawa.  Quite the whirlwind weekend!

iplaying: Too Little Too Late – Metric (Live It Out)