Superfluous Matter
Leaping

Can't let February 29th go by without a post!

Family Day

This weekend was an unexpected long weekend as we in Ontario celebrate "Family Day," a new holiday invented by the provincial government. I didn't really spend time with family, but it was still a nice break.

Friday night my brother came to stay with us as he missed his connecting bus to visit his girlfriend in Belleville. Something happened (not sure what yet) that made it so that his bus left Waterloo two hours late. Of course he still had to stand outside for those two hours because it's Greyhound and they're not very good at telling the people standing in line in the cold what's going on. Ahh...memories. So Anthony stayed on our couch and we had some Pizza for supper. We also watched four episodes of "Flight of the Conchords" which is truly an amazing show.

Kim has an exam for a course for work coming up so I spent the rest of the weekend doing things that took me away from the apartment so she could study. Saturday I went on a big shopping trip for things that I've wanted to get for a while. I picked up a knife block with knives, new running shoes and shorts for the gym, season three of The Office on DVD, a bunch of books, some new batteries for my key fob, and finally, a Playstation 2! The PS2 I managed to get used from EB for only $40! It seems to work great so far and it even came with the network adapter! Not sure what to do with the network adapter but in any case I can now play Guitar Hero again! Yay!

Saturday night Kim and I joined Toni and Patrick and Adrienne at Matt's place for pizza and cake. The cake was a super tasty chocolate truffle cake from Dufflet on Queen West and was really really good. I got to talk to Patrick and Toni a bunch about fun camera stuff and even got to try out the wireless flash feature on their new Nikon D300. It's pretty cool what you can do with a proper flash and it made me rethink my original disdain for all things flash (I prefer the light of the scene, not artificial light). It turns out I just need to spend more money on better stuff. Haha. Anyway, after supper Toni and I went down to Chris's place to play Star Munchkin with him and Justin. It was very "Chez Geek" like and quite amusing.

Sunday I went climbing in the afternoon after watching a bunch of the Office with Kim in the morning. It was a good outing, and I did a fun climb where I was trying to emulate being shorter by never reaching more than three inches above my head. It made the climb much harder and really forced me to use better technique. When I got home Kim and I made some yummy pork chops with cream of broccoli soup and vegetables and rice. Then we watched a lot more of the Office; we're almost done season three!

Today I met up with Adrienne and we went to the Autoshow at the convention centre. I've never been before and it was pretty good. I'm not really thinking of ever buying a car so I was mostly interested in all the super fancy things but I did enjoy sitting in a Mini Cooper. If I were to buy a car I would want a small one, but most of the small ones I've sat in are very uncomfortable for me. The Mini wasn't cramped at all though so that was pretty cool.

Valentine's rose
Valentine's rose
Mercedes something or other
Mercedes something or other
New Dodge Viper
New Dodge Viper
Ooooh, it's a red car
Ooooh, it's a red car
Totally a southern belle car
Totally a southern belle car
A blue and white car!
A blue and white car!
That car has a trunk, awesome!
That car has a trunk, awesome!
Lamborghini lineup
Lamborghini lineup
Lamborghini Countach 25th anniversary edition
Lamborghini Countach 25th anniversary edition
Lamborghini Diablo
Lamborghini Diablo
Lamborghini concept car
Lamborghini concept car
Maserati...nice
Maserati...nice
Ferrari
Ferrari
Mazda concept car...runs on Ethanol!
Mazda concept car...runs on Ethanol!
Food Weekend

This weekend was pretty lazy, I played some Mario Galaxy, read a bunch of my book and watched almost all of the first two seasons of the Office with Kim. Good times! We also made some really good chili (with a loaf of sourdough from the market) for supper on Saturday and I made some healthy Muesli stuff to eat for breakfast. It's oats with a bunch of different dried fruits and vegetables. Thanks Mrs. Jutan for the recipe!

Muesli...mmm healthy
Muesli...mmm healthy
Chili with shredded cheese and sour cream!
Chili with shredded cheese and sour cream!
Shaky Growl

I went to see Cloverfield with Kim tonight after a quick supper of Butter Chicken roti from Gandhi Roti (mmm...roti). Anyway the movie was pretty good, obviously no deep meaningful content, but definitely one of the best monster movies I've ever seen. I read some critic say that this was what the late-90s remake of Godzilla should have been, and I think that was a very apt description.

It's all shot first person sort of Blair Witch Project style, but with a better quality camera. It's pretty shaky which can be disorienting and unpleasant at times, but I found that I eventually got used to it.

Whenever I see a movie about some sort of disaster and it's effects on large cities I think about how bad it is to be in a large city when anything out of the ordinary happens. There's basically no way to get out of the city and there are so many extra bad things that can happen (like buildings falling over when giant monsters fall into them). Anyway, I comfort myself knowing that Toronto wouldn't be a very interesting place for monsters or other disasters to come visit, so I'm probably OK here.

Birthday Surprise

Last Friday Matt and Toni hosted a surprise birthday party for Patrick at Matt's house and it went really well. Everyone even managed to keep it a surprise. We had sushi and pizza and all kinds of other snacks and drinks and I think maybe thirty people showed up.

Saturday night I played Chris's new version of Ticket to Ride with him and Patrick and Toni. Board games are fun, but I never get to play any of the ones they have enough times to get any good at them. They always seem to have new ones.

Anyway, Sunday was climbing in the morning (which was excellent) and then I played Super Mario Galaxy with Kim for like 6 hours or something. The game is primarily one player, but a second can help with some small things as the main player moves throughout the level. Anyway Kim started a game while I was climbing and she seems to be a bit addicted now. It's pretty amusing.

Sunday night Kim and I went to the gym for some proper exercise and that went pretty well. We met Chris there and he showed me a couple stretches and things which is good because I'm pretty incompetent.

2008-01 | 2008-03