Month: April 2011

The other day Vero asked me a question that I was troubled with answering…is my favourite band the Smashing Pumpkins or Pearl Jam?

Years ago, the answer was Smashing Pumpkins. Nowadays, unsure…I get excited by Pearl Jam’s live element more than the Pumpkins. But the Pumkins have always been there for me…

It wasn’t until this morning when Billy Corgan made some huge announcements that I knew the answer will always, and forever be…The Smashing Pumpkins (with Pearl Jam running a close second!)

– New/old song ‘Owata’ being released in the next few weeks: Owata has been around since the 20th Anniversary tour. This will be the first time being released as a studio recording. Sweet! This will also be the tenth release from the Teargarden by Kaleidyscope project which I have been enjoying thoroughly. Granted, who wouldn’t have wanted ‘As Rome Burns’ to be the released song?
– The Teargarden project is taking a detour…into album territory!!! He couldn’t pull himself away from the album concept for long…especially with the new lineup of the band! They will enter the studio this spring and hopefully release something this Fall. Saweet. It still will be part of the larger Teargarden concept though. Here’s hoping that they have a physical release for Lightning Strikes and Owata…maybe included in the album?
– Tour this August/September! That is wild and may coincide with my upcoming trip to Europe in September as well.
– In MASSIVE news, the Pumpkins have (after ten years) reached a settlement between themselves and EMI…so they can go ahead and release anything they have ever made, recorded, etc. First up, reissues of the albums: 2011 will give us Gish, Siamese Dream and Pisces Iscariot, on vinyl as well, with unreleased stuff. Very cool. In 2012, Mellon Collie, Aeroplane Flies High (whoa! Didn’t see that one coming!) and Adore will be re-released, along with unreleased material AND ON VINYL! I have been searching for Mellon Collie on vinyl for literally 16 years. Way too high for me to buy it off of Ebay. But now it shall be mine. My preciousss. Afterwards, Machina I & II released…this is very interesting considering Machina II has never been released other than on 25 vinyl copies. Plus they will be combined into one package with a re-ordered tracklisting as originally envisioned. PLUS a possibility of a new mix. That is huge huge huge news. I’m very stoked over the reissues.
– My favourite news of the bunch is the fact that they now have the rights to release anything they wish…this means they can go into the Vault and release the ‘last’ show on DVD, or live concerts, or rare stuff, or whatever the heck they want. This is what I’ve been waiting for these past ten years.

Epic news from the Pumpkins front. Billy has been known to get fans excited and then not go through with some stuff, so here’s to hoping every one of these plans stick!

I decided against going up to Kapuskasing for the Easter weekend which no doubt disappointed my family a little (hey, who wouldn’t be disappointed if they can’t see me?!) but they said they understood and I made it my mission to not just laze around all weekend long but to get some honest to goodness work done.

Friday started off swell…I helped Vero clean up the entire house for the arrival of her parents.  Unfortunately she wasn’t feeling well all weekend.  I let her nap while I hauled our new patio set into the backyard and assembled it.  Special thanks to Nanny for helping out with the purchase of that particular patio set!  It is quite the beauty.  We picked up the Camden collection from Canadian Tire after extensive searching around town.   Do you know that it’s pretty well impossible to find a patio set that doesn’t have a glass top?  We hate glass tops.  We finally stumbled across this beauty and decided upon it.  Here’s to many years of good use!  The assembling went well, other than the fact that I dropped a nut in between two planks on the deck and Lord knows where that ended up.  I searched for twenty minutes!

We then went to Vero’s sister’s place for some excellent spaghetti and good conversation.  Vero’s parents were staying until Wednesday as Andreane is returning home for the summer and they were helping her move out of her apartment.

Saturday morning I peered outside and it was raining.  A perfect opportunity to paint the basement!  I had been itching to paint the basement for awhile as it was holding back the dream of my concert posters on the wall, as well as hanging the TV on the wall.  The basement consisted of one side painted in a light brown, the other in a colour that I like to call ‘shit brown’.  No joke.  I was tired of it.  So I decided to match the paint job on the one wall to the other.  Luckily I found an old bucket of paint that I brought to Home Depot so they could find a match.  It wasn’t a perfect match, but it was the closest it could ever get!

Arriving home with some supplies, Danielle and Gaetan graciously offered to help and so we set up our work area, applied our first coat and stopped for lunch.  I had purchased the expensive paint/primer in one and I’m not sure if I needed to.  The Home Depot paint person indicated that I should be fine with regular paint with two coats, no primer but then I mentioned that I was thinking of the paint/primer combination and she thought I might be able to do it one coat.  One coat definitely wasn’t enough when it came to changing a dark brown to a light brown.  Either way, good to know for next time!

Early afternoon, the second coat of paint was applied (over top some nice dart holes in the wall!) and I put a fire on in the wood stove (no squirrels this time!) to warm up the basement and help speed up the drying process.

Onto the next project…mounting the TV!  It took a lot of visualizing and a beer in hand to figure out exactly where I wanted to place it.  I had to keep in mind the eye level of people sitting down as well as how I wanted shelving to appear on the wall around it.  I settled on a certain distance and marked the wall and by that time Vero’s family had come back from shopping which was perfect timing.

Everything was set to go…I drilled the hole into the stud and then I was holding the wall mount in place while Gaetan was inserting the bolt.  But he said it wasn’t grabbing to anything!  What the heck?  We pulled it off the wall, grabbed the stud finder, confirmed that we were in the stud and couldn’t figure out what was going on.  In the end, we removed the electrical box on the wall and I fished my hand up the wall to find out that (with bad luck) we had hit a knot in the wood!  Argh.  No matter.  Now that we knew about it we simply readjusted and everything worked out fine.

The TV on the wall is actually quite sweet.  I didn’t realize I would love it’s aesthetic this much, but I really do feel a TV deserves to be mounted onto a wall.  We even watched the Habs game that night on the television and there was excitement in the air (not because of the game, because of the TV!)

The next day we spent puttering around the house…I cleaned up the garage, cleaned the BBQ…I’m not really impressed with the BBQ at this moment…you can already see some areas that have rusted on the stainless steel…to the point where the grease trap broke off!  I think I should have tried to clean the BBQ BEFORE the winter instead of afterward.  Ah well, I have learned a lesson.  I should also look for some BBQ cleaner spray which will cut the grease down.  I used dishwasher soap which did the trick but I’m sure there is a foam out there that is easier to use.

Not going to lie, I set up the hammock and had a little nap outside as well.  What a beautiful, beautiful day on Easter!  Plus I made a batch of beer and saw a white bunny rabbit in my backyard that night!  What are the odds of that happening on Easter!?  Are white rabbits domestic?  I thought so.  I wonder if it had escaped?  We also played a card game of Golf which everyone seemed to enjoy quite a bit.

The Easter weekend ended with us traveling around Ottawa looking for a few things…Ikea was one of our stops for some ideas of shelving.  I finally became disgusted with the fact that the colours weren’t what we had in mind and I vowed to make my own bookshelves.  This is quite the ambitious project and I didn’t kid myself into thinking it would take a few weeks.  I figure as a novice woodworker with not many tools, this venture can take me an entire year.  But I shall start out small like Dad suggested.  Perhaps a small shelf, or a bookcase to get the feel of building something.  Then I can move onto bigger and better things like making a hidden doorway to the storage area.  Ha!

Batch #4 happened on a beautiful Sunday afternoon after cleaning the BBQ and the garage.  I wanted to show Vero’s parents how it was done.

Nothing really out of the ordinary happened with this batch…pretty standard fare.  It takes HOURS to cool down from boiling though.  What a pain!

I did happen to take a hydrometer reading so that was foolish of me.

Three days later, I checked on the batch and it looked it severely bubbled over/through the fermentation lock.  There was beer on the floor and on my white shirt sleeve which was touching the top of the fermentation lock.  Upon closer inspection, it looked like the fermentation lock was still in place and bubbling away.  What’s strange is I also made a 4.5 gallon batch thinking I could get a higher alcohol content with less water.  So I find it quite strange that the thing fermented/created enough pressure to blow a little.  Any ideas as to what may have happened?

Update:  Well, because I failed to measure the original gravity, I have no idea what the alcohol content is.  Either way, it came out to be a fine tasting batch of Dark Ale, or as I have called it, Darktin as Vero’s family was up for the event.  I must say that I enjoy my other batches more…the dark ale is definitely an acquired taste and an entire batch is a lot to take in.  Plus, since it’s an acquired taste, it’s hard to let people try it and enjoy it if they don’t care for the darker beer.  That being said, I think in the future I will stick to one batch as experimental for yours truly, and the other for a beer that pleases myself as well as others.

Me: Babe, can you stop making that noise with your leg please?
Vero: Uh, I thought that was you.

The beginning of an adventure at dinner last night.

We got up slowly from the table and realized the sound was definitely some other thing in the house.  We went downstairs armed with broom sticks and a dustpan (where’s a baseball bat when you need one?) but the sound stopped.  We returned to the table and a few minutes later the sound started again.

We eventually deduced it was something inside the chimney of the wood stove.  Thank the lord that it was there, and not up in the ceiling tiles like I originally had thought!  The question, is, how to get to it?  What was it exactly?  We asked these questions back and forth and wondered how we would deal with this.

At one point we realized it had gone all the way down into the wood stove.  Of COURSE this had to be the time that I never bothered cleaning the glass window to the fireplace so visibility was quite low.  Vero grabbed a flashlight and she said she could definitely see something moving in there whereas I saw nothing.  She said it looked like a mouse tail.  Fair enough, we can handle a mouse!

Armed with a garbage bag to catch the critter on its way out, and Vero armed with the broom in case I missed it…I explained that if our grandmothers could smack a mouse with a broom, we surely could!

So we opened up the door a little…but nothing much was happening.  It’s kind of hard to poke a broom inside the wood stove and expect a critter to come towards us!  If anything it’s going to shy away!  So we opened up the door a little more.

This is when all hell broke loose.  As I remember it Vero yelled out “It’s big…IT’S BIG!  IT’S BIG!!!” and in my mind I’m thinking “What the heck is it?”.  Vero also recalls that I jumped back into the stairwell at one point screaming like a little girl, but I definitely don’t remember that part.  🙂

So out of nowhere this brown thing scurries right past my garbage bag and onto Vero’s broom stick and climbs up it.  To put this into context, this is all happening in one second flat.  This sucker is fast.

The memories of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation come to mind and I yell “SQUIRREL!!!”.

Yes, we had a squirrel in the basement.  Trish would have fainted.  So here the squirrel is running around in the basement and things start popping into my head.  “Don’t let it get in behind the bar!  It better not go into the well area!  Ahhh!  Get it out from behind the freezer!”

Luckily we were smart enough to close the doors and try and get it to go upstairs and out through the garage.  This critter was cunning…it bounded over furniture, climbed my guitar, had a run over the drum kit, hid behind some boxes a few times…at one point hid INSIDE the freezer (in behind it where the mechanics are).  When it got close to the wood stove it would scale the brick wall like Spider-Man and would jump from the wall through the air towards us.  Screams were heard for miles away…it was hilarious, thrilling and annoying all at the same time.  At one point I thought I had shattered the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling as my broom stick went for a wild swing.

EVENTUALLY we finally got the squirrel to start walking up the stairs.  Vero left me in the dust as she slammed the door to trap her and the squirrel inside the stairwell.  I followed once I knew the squirrel had moved outside.

Luckily for us the thing had jumped into a grocery bag.  Perfect!  I scooped up the grocery bag, ran through the garage and at the last moment realized it was trying to jump out so I dropped it onto the driveway but then accidentally stepped on its tail and it ran back into the garage!  Doh!

But at this point, the job was done.  We realized the scared thing would hide out until we left.  We left the garage door open and assumed it would leave once the coast was clear.

At least, that’s what we’re thinking is happening as I type this.  Who knows if the squirrel decided that his life was so boring that he would rather have a few giants chasing after him with broomsticks.

We surveyed the scene afterward and shared tales of our hunt and laughed at the absurdity of girls screaming and how I jumped five feet backwards when we realized it was definitely larger than a mouse.

Good times had out in the country!

Here’s a little tale about how I shipped some items to Ogdensburg NY and saved a few bucks.

I was planning on ordering a wall mount for my flat screen TV from monoprice.com considering it was a full-tilt, swivel type wall mount for a cool $35.  I’m not even sure where I can one for that price elsewhere!  Best Buy has one that says it’s full motion  for around $200.  That’s quite the price difference!

Unfortunately, to ship an item this size to Canada, it would have cost an additional $70 in shipping costs.  I would still save compared to paying $200 at Best Buy, but how would I be able to save some more money?

I have heard tales of people shipping their packages to Ogdensburg NY which is 45-60 minute drive from Ottawa, ON.  There are a few options available, but let’s chat about the UPS Store in Ogdensburg.  http://www.theupsstorelocal.com/2946/community.htm  They have some informative web pages that give you guidelines on how to pick up your package.  Simply put your name and THEIR address as the shipping information, and they will hold the package for $5/week in their warehouse.  You pick it up, pay your $5, head to the border, pay the HST and head on home with your savings!

You can also check out your family name in a database which will confirm if your package had arrived or not.

I hit the road around 9AM on Saturday and headed for the border.  There weren’t that many cars at the crossing so I made it to the UPS Store around 10AM.  There were already a good twenty people there from Canada (judging from their license plates) in there picking up their package.  The owners of this particular UPS Store were incredible.  They had a list of packages that had arrived in the past week and they would find your name on the list, cross it off, and go fetch your package.

My particular trip wasn’t as swift as the others waiting in the store.  They only had one of my packages (the wall mount) but they couldn’t find my Pearl Jam box set!  Luckily for me, I did have the tracking confirmation that it did arrive in Ogdensburg the day before.  He checked the listing in the system and for some reason the package had shipped without a name attached to it.  Strange!  30 minutes of searching the warehouse didn’t produce anything so we ended up phoning the Ogdensburg Post Office hoping they accidentally shipped it there instead.  No dice!

In the end, this very helpful gentleman brought me in the warehouse and laid down the law.  He said we would have to search for it.  Perhaps my name was misspelled or something.  We figured out how the big the box would be roughly and went to town.  I didn’t have much hope after searching for an hour in the warehouse.

The heavens did answer my prayer and on the last shelf that I was searching, I noticed a box that would have been roughly the same size as the box set.  I pull it down from the shelf and sure enough, there is a package from the Pearl Jam Ten Club!  It was addressed to a ‘Rich Grant’ or ‘Rick Grant’.  Strange!  Quite the mix up.  I was wondering if there was a Rich Grant out in the world who had shipped it to Ogdensburg as well?  Either way, after an hour of searching the warehouse, I walked out with my box set and the wall mount in hand for a cool $10USD.

However, I did find out three days later that the Ten Club had given me the wrong tracking number and there definitely was a Rick Grant who had ordered the same package to Ogdensburg!  Sorry about that mate!  I guess it’s a combination of Ten Club giving me the wrong tracking number, and the UPS Store giving me someone’s else’s package that led to this end result.

Here’s the breakdown of how much I saved by picking these items up in the States.  At this point, Canadian and US Dollars are pretty well on par so no need to calculate the exchange rate.

Gas – $17.
Toll Booth Entry – $3
Price per package per week – $5
Toll Booth Return – $3
HST at the Border (depending on whether or not the Border Services Guard wishes you to pay) – 13% of the value of the item (not including shipping).
===
$28 + HST

So, as long as the savings on your item is under $28 + HST + Whatever you feel your time is worth, then it may definitely be in your best interest to head for the border!

In my case, I have heard horror stories of Canadians having to pay not only $20 extra for shipping for their Pearl Jam set (which is good according to the calculations), but also a $46 Duty charge COD!  So in the end, I saved $66-($28+$19.5)(HST) = $18.5 savings.  Mmm…some may want to stay home for that savings.

However, coupled with another item, I save on the gas and toll booth charges.  So if we assume that at Best Buy I would pay $200+HST for my wall mount, I essentially saved: $226- $35-$10(shipping)-$5(UPS Store package cost)-$4.55(HST Costs at the Border) = $171.45!!!  What the heck?!  That’s quite the savings!  However, this isn’t quite true considering I would have simply ordered the one from Monoprice which would have been $105 so the savings on that would have been $50.  That’s still money in my pocket.

I’m also looking at returning to get a vacuum cleaner.  Looks like I can save $80 on that purchase.

All in all, I think that if it’s worth my time and money, I will definitely go down to Ogdensburg to pick up some items.  As a smart consumer, it only makes sense.  Yes, I’m sure if you’re name is Mike, you will argue about supporting the Canadian economy.  But at this point in my life, if I can save myself a total of $68.50, that’s $68.50 I can use to buy a beer for my buddy who is the naysayer.  🙂

***UPDATE***
Years later, I have continually used this service and it’s fantastic.  I haven’t had any issues like I had when I had to search for my package from Pearl Jam.  Walk in, grab your package, walk out…fantastic service.