Oh man. Long time no update. Here we go.

Friday (Saturday?) before last I went over to Birdo's, pre-Miami Bar. We chilled in the kitchen with Nick and his girlfriend. Nick showed me a sweet hat he got for 3 dollars in Chinatown. Guess I need to check out Chinatown. Then the "other" roommate came out in a costume/uniform/outfit/??? - I'm not sure my description will do this justice. Picture a balding, late-20s philosophy grad student with a beer gut wearing a tight black mesh t-shirt, skin-tight red pleather pants, and a two-inch thick choker. With a silver dangly-thing. Oh, and a furry black toque/hat thing. I managed to hold in my giggling. Apparently he was going to a goth bar or something - do they all dress like that? That must be why there is no goth scene in Medicine Hat. No man dressed in that outfit would last 5 minutes in my hometown...

After that incident, I headed out to Miami Bar with PB. No more goth-man incidents, but good times were had.

I went to Montreal's Old Port on Sunday with A. I like the Old Port. It has character (and the Science Center! Science!!) Generally I don't think that I live on an island, but you can't help but notice at the Old Port. Plus we got coconut buns in Chinatown (I forgot to look for the hat). Coconut buns are awesome. The Old Port is awesome. Sunday was awesome.

Craft night bombed on Monday, everyone but the Bruce was a no-show. The craft was popsicle sticks and glue - not the best ever. I lacked inspiration but Bruce made a bad-ass statue. We ditched the Cock and Bull after one pitcher and headed out in search of grungy pool. And then we discovered Fats Pub. The new sketchiest place I've been in Montreal. Fats Pub puts Miami Bar to shame. The cues were warped and the tables were covered in what was either a) little rips from bad jump shots or b) stab wounds. Beer wasn't too bad, and I watched two homeless guys try to pick up the bartender. They gave her their numbers, so maybe they weren't homeless? I swore I recognized one of them. There were gangster-looking teenagers in baggy jeans pumping money into VLTs. I wonder where they get all that money.... Bruce chatted up a crazy man who told us about his "Golf with a VR6" about 300 times. He gave it away in Vancouver and now he parks Ferarri's for a living. We backed away slowly, scored some sweet 99 cent pizza, and that was that.

Friday I went over to Afro Mike's for a bit of cards. And beer. We played a game that we half made up, but when I got home, A. knew it and the real rules. Her rules were way harder then ours. I'm glad we played our version, although I still got beat. We played some awesome catch in the kitchen. The rule was we would stop when we broke something, but the gods were with us. I knocked a beer bottle off the counter, but it didn't break! It was a sign, I think. The game continued until we got bored and watched some Family Guy before heading home.

Last night I went bowling at Legends with the work gang. Happy Birthday Guarav! Legends is in the old Montreal Forum, where the Canadiens, or "Habs", used to play. They turned the building into a sort of mini-mall type thing, there's a Future Shop, some restaurants, a movie theater and Legends, which is kinda like an uber-sports-bar (think Schank's). They kept around a lot of the Canadiens stuff, which is cool. Center ice is still there, they kept some of the seating, and a Rocket Richard statue sits in a penalty box. Hockey purists would probably be horrified, and a lot of it is kitsch, but if you look a bit you can get into some of the less public areas that weren't re-done. They definitely still have a hockey rink feel. There are lots of old posters and plaques hidden away behind the doors. Lots of history in that place...

After Legends I went to Cock and Bull again with C-Bird and Nick. Twice in one week! I'm a social butterfly! We got the best table in the joint, and the work crowd joined us later on. Colin wished he had some maps and a dagger so we could plan some sort of pirate adventure. It was just that kind of table. Plans were made for a Mexcan peyote desert voyage, and the Expos' home opener. Colin loves the Expos. On the way home I stopped in for the second best General Tao Chicken in Montreal (it sez so in the window). It was good but I ate most of it semi-cold this morning, which probably knocks it down to fourth or fifth best. I'll definitely go back...

It's tax time and I'm a happy, happy man. Thank you student credits!

I will leave you with this little "nugget": Apparently the new big thing in Japan is poop. Really. You can get it gold-plated or in flash form. Choice quote:

Yo job hunters. Check this out. Discreet is hiring 4 (yes, that's right, F-O-U-R) QA people. For "junior" and "intermediate" positions. Here are linxorz, in case you are interested and/or just desperate...

QA Analyst 1 – Animation Modeling
QA Analyst 1 – Animation Mapping & Texturing
QA Analyst 2 – Animation, Character Animation
QA Analyst 2 – Animation Rendering

I borrowed Colin's digital camera a few weekends ago to take pictures of all the cool stuff in Montreal. Needless to say, I failed miserably. However, I did get a few that are cool. The first is this tricycle-riding biker character that I see around all the time. He's pretty old but he rides a mean trike. He'll run you down if you aren't careful. I would have got a better picture but I was afraid he'd see me and lay tire treads across my pancreas...

This cow is in front of the Musée des Beaux-Arts. It just showed up one day in a clearing of snow. I guess it's art:

Montreal is full of awesome buildings, but I think maybe my favorite place is the main campus of McGill. All the buildings there are old buildings with sweet stone architecture. Left below is like the English building or something - they have plays there - and the right one is the Science Library. That's a fsckin Science Library. Look at it! Round rooms! Pointy cone-roofs! (my vocabulary is awesome, isn't it).

The metro shut down this morning. Fire or something. Stupid metro. Eventually I found my way onto a Special bus that took me to work. It was nice out, I should have walked...

Some on-line gamer punks are off-site linking to my images and sucking up all my bandwidth. I tried just renaming the images, but it looks like they found them again. Guess it's time to try more drastic measures (like replacing the pictures with goat porn....)

It's snowing here again. Argh.

Check out this brilliant hack. I'm not sure if that actually went out on the air, or if it's just a modified tape, but either way I think it's great.

Tommorrow is St. Patrick's day. There is a huge parade. I didn't go last year, and was severely chastised. So this year I'm going. I'm supposed to go to the Cock N' Bull at 10 am. Morning. I can't believe they are open that early...

I've been sick this week. Weird throat thing. It sucks, but I think it's getting better. I tried to go to the CLSC (that's what walk-in clinics are called in Montreal) twice, but they only see patients between 8am and 1pm, and if you aren't there right at 8, you've got at least an hour wait. I went at 10 and the guy said it was a 3 hour wait and they weren't taking patients. And my health card that I got in November expires at the end of the month. You cannot imagine how hard it is to get (and apparently keep) a health care card in this province. WTF. That's what I have to say. WTF.

So I guess Wednesday was St. Patty's day, but I celebrated it last Sunday at the Montreal St. Patrick's day parade. Now, I haven't seen a lot of parades. The parades in Medicine Hat are not fantastic. Mostly Shriners and go-karts. They are over in an hour or so. The St. Patrick's day parade here lasted for 3 hours. Now, the parade still wasn't great. There was one giant green pope-float (at least it looked like a pope), but I only saw it from the metro I was waiting at, a block away.

I was supposed to meet some people at the metro. I waited an hour. Normally I wouldn't wait an hour, but I was watching a police drama. Some kids had parked a suburban under a fire escape, pulled it down, and climbed onto the roof of a building to watch the parade. The fire escape was the spring-loaded kind that goes up if nothing is holding it down. Shortly thereafter, about 15 cops showed up. They were trying to figure out how to get up on the roof, to get the kids down. The kids didn't know they were there. I watched those cops for half an hour. They tried the buliding next door. They tried ladders. They stood on dumpsters. They drank coffee. But they wouldn't touch the suburban. Those kids were clever. I didn't see how it ended, because my people showed up and we went to the parade...)

Anyway, while I was watching the police drama, the giant green pope-float went by. It was big. I saw some other cool stuff in the parade too:

• A shitload of people. Somebody told me that the average attendance is 300,000. Yes. Three. Hundred. Thousand. I don't know if there were actually that many, but it took us 10 minutes to cross the intersection at Crescent. That many people.
  
• A shitload of open liquor. It's the one day of the year where a non-homeless person can stand on Ste. Catherine and crack a tall can barely concealed in a brown paper bag, mere steps from two cops leaning against a squad car. Apparently there had been a lot of warning about how they were going to "crack down" on open liquor, and have "zero tolerance". But if there were any within-a-few-years-of-legal people there without open beers in hand, I didn't see them. Oh wait, I did see one guy without a beer. He was pouring vodka into his coffee. Maybe he had to work later...
  
• Dave Bronstetter. From the CBC yo! I wouldn't have known it was him, but an adoring fan was screaming his name like a teeny-bopper at an N-Sync concert. I won't name names, but you know who you are...
  
• The Prime Minister. That's right. P-dog. Paul Martin himself. And he was walking. Now, I don't really follow politics, so I don't know if I'm supposed to like Paul Martin or not. I know he's got that whole cruise line scam going on, cuz sometimes it's in the free French paper that I read on the metro. I don't know all the words, but I just sort of assume that the paper is going to be biased on this one. It's French. He's not. He's the Prime Minister. They have to bash him. But he was in the parade, anyway. Walkin' along with quite an entourage of photographers, etc. I was impressed by the walking, at least...
  
• Montreal Sanitation Efficiency. After about 3 hours, the parade ends. If you are a local, I guess you know this, and instinctively know when to leave. We didn't. And it's not obvious, because inches behind the last float is the Montreal Parade Cleanup Army. The first couple were just garbage trucks, and we thought maybe it was just some sort of "artsy" float, or parade-going garbage men. Right before them were fire trucks, EMTs and cops, so maybe it was the "city services" part of the parade. Well, it wasn't. They were just cleaning up, and we stood there watching, half-expecting horn honking or waving or some sort of parade-type behavior. Nope. Just cleaning.
  
  Behind the garbage trucks were street sweepers, and then the weird Montreal sidewalk-cleaning things. These are hard to describe. They are shaped like golf carts, but with more protective plexiglass. And they have a giant hose. A giant hose that extends from the back of the machine, over the roof, and hangs down in front, all the way to the ground. Like an elephant's trunk. They drive around and suck stuff up with the hose. I love those machines. Some days, I think that must be the best job in the world. Just driving around on the sidewalk in a golf cart, sucking stuff up with a giant hose. Bliss? Maybe...

After the parade we went to the Cock n' Bull, which was pretty crazy. And also kind of sad, because it was gorgeous outside, and we were in a dirty, dark, smoky bar, paying a 200% markup on the regular beer price. But sometimes that's just what you have to do. At least it wasn't green...

After that, we went to Moe's for shitty poutine. Ok, it wasn't shitty, but it was no Mondo Frite. (Mondo Frite gives you mayo samplers. Did you know there are different kinds of Mayo?? I don't mean, like, different brands. I mean flavors! And they are delicious. Who knew?!?)

Then, at 4pm, I went home. And slept.

Rest of the week, I worked and slept. Boring. A is in Nelson, BC, and I'm home alone. I don't like being home alone, I creep myself out and think I hear noises and stuff. Someone told me that everyone needs an outlet for their paranoia, and I guess mine ishome invasions. I just remember to lock the door. And the deadbolt. And the chain-thing. And sleep with a baseball bat. In the tub. Who says I'm neurotic...?

Ok, internet link time. This comic at penny arcade pretty much sums up my experience interacting with anonymous people on the internet (although, I must admit, I too was a victim of the Fuckwad curse...). And the trailer for this Casshern movie looks super-cool, even though it's in Japanese and I can't understand a word they are saying (except Casshern).

Finally, a little classified ad I noticed in the free paper this morning. Montreal really is a lot more liberal than where I'm from...

(Recherché means "Seeks". My babelfish-assisted translation is "Would buy quality cuban, amazonian shrooms, 100/150$". The classified ads!? Did deregulation happen and nobody told me...? )

I dropped an iron on my foot today. Well, actually I didn't drop it, so much as it fell off a shelf in the closet and landed on my foot. But the effect was the same: it hurt. It still hurts. Stupid iron. And last night the calf on my other leg had some sort of spasm. It hurts too. I can't even limp properly because it hurts to stand on each leg. So I'm avoiding standing, and whining on my website about it. And taking lots of tylenol. Thanks, painkillers!

I went and saw Bubba Ho-Tep last week with Afro Mike (who I think I stood up last night - sorry man!). It was fantastic. It's about geriatric Elvis (who isn't dead) and dyed-black JFK (who isn't dead either - just wheelchair-bound) in a retirement home. Now, I know it sounds great already, but it gets even better, because they have to fight off an Egyptian mummy who lives off of souls (which he procures through the most delicate of orifices). Cheesy? Maybe. Brilliant? Yes! The dialog and music are ridiculously over-the-top, but they pull it off.

That's been my only action for the week. I watched The Recruit, which was predictable trash, and the European version of Traffic (called Traffik). The plot is more or less identical to the American remake, but it's 6 hours instead of 2. Sort of a waste of 6 hours, now that I think about it. If you add that 6 hours to the 4 times I've watched the American version, that's 14 hours of the same plot. And it's not even a good plot. Thanks, movies...

Oh, and we had a fire.

It was a small fire. See, we have...or had...this little home espresso machine. It's not one of the expensive ones that you plug in - this one is just a little hourglass-shaped thing made of tin that you put on the stove. You put it right on the burner, with some water and espresso-ground coffee in the bottom half, and the boiling coffee bubbles up into the top half. Then you lift it up by the plastic handle and pour out your black gold. The handle doesn't melt because the container never gets very hot - it's made of tin, and the water absorbs most of the heat. Of course, if you leave it on the burner for long enough, all the water boils away and it starts to get really fucking hot. So hot, in fact, that the handle melts and starts dripping down onto the burner, and of course starting on fire.

Luckily we have a door to our kitchen that can be closed, so neither of us heard the thing whistling, or noticed the smoke, for about an hour. Then we opened the door and that lovely, toxic smoke rolled out along the ceiling. And then we closed the door, because, well, burning plastic really smells bad. We took turns holding our breath and running in, to turn off the burner, open the window, turn on a fan, etc. Then we both showered again, because we reeked of burning plastic. Once you smell like it, you don't really notice, but I'm sure my co-workers would have loved it.

That was Friday morning. When it was raining. So the air was nice and humid and stagnant. Right now, the smell is just getting to the point where you don't notice it unless you hang out in the kitchen for a while. Needless to say, I've been eating take-out - thank god for General Tao Chicken.

Link time. A reads this mimi smartypants site that is pretty good. She read me this entry about Charlie. In case you were thinking of passing it up, I quote:

From the same site I discovered this link to the Hot Pockets website. You remember Hot Pockets. There were commercials. Anyway, look at the creepy people in the top left corner. What's in those Hot Pockets, to make them stare like that - Heroin ?!?

Speaking of Heroin (now there's a segue), there is an ad on this site who's hook is that Cheaper Music Means More Money for Drugs. I guess you can't really argue with that, although I wonder how many people who need an extra 5 bucks to support their meth habit are still buying CDs. The same ad prominently features a bare-chested mullet-man wearing cutoffs and knee-high tube socks, making the advertised cheap music of rather questionable value.

In any event, don't be tempted by the free MP3s offered on that page - most of them are shit. I've listened to 3 and they were all crap.

And now for the value-add - the job tips that keep you coming back for your next hit. Discreet is hiring again. This time for a UI designer. Link-Action. Discreet has a sweet building in the old port and free espresso, so if you have UI sk1llz, send in resume. It can't hurt, you slackers.

So I quit my job today. That was exciting. I'll be heading back to Calgary sometime in late April, exact arrival date depending on mode of transport. I'm going to work in a lab at the UofC for the summer, and then in September I return to MSc action. Should be interesting....

(Man I've been wanting to post that for a long time....)

What else? Not much. "Mad Props" to RDL on finishing the MSc.

Then there's this guy. Cool bike.

Remember how I said whoever came up with Pac-Man must have been fucking nutso? Well, I was right. Ok. Maybe not fucking nutso. But a little strange, no? Seems like Pac-Man was all for the ladies....

You'd think that I'd have more enthusiasm for actually filing my tax return and getting my refund. But I don't. What's wrong with me?

A few weeks ago my website hoster/provider people switched over to a new system. They didn't bother to copy the mail forward I had set up though, so if you sent anything to rms@unknownroad.com in the last two weeks, I just got it now. Oops. Replies are forthcoming...

Moving across the country is a huge pain in the ass. I accumulated quite a bit of stuff here. Desks, tables, kitchenware - you know, things. The plan was for me and A. to get a U-Haul and drive it back to Calgary. That plan isn't going to happen for several reasons. One, that's about 5 days of driving 10 hours a day. I don't think either of us would last that long without completely losing it. Two, it would cost at least $3000. Yes. That is Three. Thousand. Dollars. In real money. $2000 just for the rental, and at least another $1000 in gas. So that's not going to happen. Our stuff isn't worth that much. It's going to be cheaper to just buy new stuff. It's all from IKEA, so I guess I can get the same stuff...only newer. Ahhhh, IKEA....

Want to move to Montreal and work for Discreet on 3D Studio Max? Try sending in a resume for one of these sweet positions. The first one doesn't say anything about needing 5 years experience, so recent graduates might have a chance. Where were these jobs when I moved here ?!? T-Wiz sez Discreet is "tha bomb". 4 weeks vacation. First year. And they have free espresso. I went for an interview there last December. Their building is in the Old Port, in a converted warehouse. I was very jealous. (The interview was for a 4 month summer contract, I got an offer in February but I'd rather go to Calgary and play in the iLab...)

Oh, and if you're in the Calgary Area and don't want to leave, the Banff Centre (tm) has workstudies in the Media and Visual Arts (MVA) program. Check out the list of available positions here. A lot of the deadlines are passed, but I know they have been extended because the positions are not filled. That's right people, I have connections. Anyway, working at the Banff Centre as a workstudy is a pretty sweet gig. I did one two summers ago. You work (some) of the time, and you get a day a week to "pursue your artistic interests" or whatever. Mine involved doing A/V for conferences and some basic audio postprocessing. The rest of the time I could basically do whatever I wanted. So in exchange for light work that is usually at least semi-interesting, they pay something like $400 a week and you get to live in Banff. Really, why wouldn't you apply ?

I found this monstrosity on the "inter-net". What. The. Fuck. Ok, I'm not the biggest fan of body jewelry. I can't really fathom why anyone would want to get extra holes, just so they can attach bits of metal to themselves. For some reason, everyone else seems to think this is a good idea. Ok. Fair enough. You want to pay someone to make a hole in your ear / nose / eyebrow / nipple / foreskin / clitoris, no matter how excruciating, so you can dangle metal bits off it? Go nuts. But your eyes? Your eyes! You need those! Look at the eye in the picture - is that a happy eye? Sure, it has a heart in it. But don't let that fool you. Look at the veins! They are not happy! Why not? Because someone poked a piece of metal in them. There isn't supposed to be be anything in our eyes except...well...eye. There are doctors out there who are taking people's money in exchange for putting stuff in their eyes that isn't supposed to be there. Doctors! And they're calling it "fashion". I call it highway robbery. You want a piece of metal poked in your eye? I'll do it, cheap.

We found a way to move all our stuff to Calgary on the cheap. Well, on the cheap compared to the ridiculous sum of three thousand dollars that U-Haul wanted just to let us drive our stuff across the country. These MultiCities Moving Inc people will do it at 55 cents a pound, plus GST. A guy came yesterday and estimated the weight of our stuff - 1600 pounds, or roughly 800 bucks. So for $3000 we can drive our own shit across the country, or for $800 we can get someone to come and carry it for us, and do all the driving. Not a tough decision. And his estimate was ridiculously high. On his form, each of our "desks" is estimated at 100 pounds. Our desks are tables from IKEA, and I could lift all three at once. Can I lift 300 pounds? No. Can I lift 100 pounds? Well...maybe. Anyway. Cross-country moving on the cheap. Nice. The downside is that the truck leaves on the 15th, but we don't fly until the 18th, so we'll be sleeping on the floor. The other downside is that if they lose my box of research papers I am going to be an angry, angry man.

That means I'll be in Calgary on the 18th. Our flight leaves at 8 am. There is a sort of going-away party here on the 17th, so I expect that 8 am flight to be absolutely miserable. Our stuff arrives on the 20th-ish, then I'm going to head to the West Coast for a week or so, and camp in a tent in places with names like "Tofino" and "Long Beach". A assures me that these are some of the most beautiful places in Canada. I'll buy that, but I'm uncertain about the part where we live in a tent for a week. I looked on a map and it's a loooong way from Vancouver. I've tented before, but we were always a short drive from civilization. As long as we pitch the tent far enough away from any barbed wire fences...

I guess I should get back to packing. Packing is much less stressful when you know that someone else is going to be carrying the boxes. And the whole 55-cents per pound thing makes it easy to decide if something should be packed or discarded. For example, I have this giant jar of pennies (again) but no desire to roll it and take it to a bank. I could bring it, but I'm not sure if transporting pennies at 55 cents a pound makes sense. How many pennies in a pound? Maybe I should go find a homeless person...

So, our mover-people came this morning and took all our stuff. We packed like crazy for the last 3 days...I think I was up until 4 am last night. Needless to say, I feel kind of zombie-like. Luckily, we don't have a bed anymore, and are just sleeping on therma-rests and sleeping bags. So I'm guaranteed to not get any more sleep tonight. Fun!

Last weekend I did quite a bit of meandering about the Montreal downtown area. I wish I had more time here. I fly Sunday morning at 8 am, and tommorrow is my last day of work, so I get a total of one more afternoon in Montreal. One afternoon! How am I going to do all the stuff I wanted to do before I left? I'm not, that's how...

Anyway, last weekend I checked out Chinatown. I scored some coconut buns. Coconut buns are excellent. I don't think you can get them anywhere else besides Chinatown, so if you're ever in Chinatown, find a bakery and ask for fresh coconut buns. You will not be sorry. I also got some Pocky. Not Men's Pocky though. I find Men's Pocky to be quite confusing. There is regular Pocky, and then there is Men's Pocky. It looks the same on the box. Does the Men's Pocky have some secret testosterone supplement in the chocolate? Does it put hair on your chest? I don't get it. ...Anyway, I got the regular Pocky, because Men's Pocky is creepy.

Speaking of Creepy, MONTREAL HAS A PERMANENT HAUNTED HOUSE! Not some lame-o ghost-story house, a real live Halloween-like Haunted House. But permanent. It doesn't come down November 3rd. It stays up, year round! I had no idea such a thing was even possible. I think it's only open when people book it, but still - permanent Haunted House! To cool.

Thanks to the playoffs, downtown seems to always be filled with screaming morons in Canadiens jerseys. Oh, and then there's the honking. I can handle it when it's post-game and the team has won. Ok, cause for celebration. But here they get started up in the afternoon, long before any pucks are being dropped. Cars decked out in Canadiens paraphenelia honking and screaming. Ok, they play hockey - we get it. Shut up now please.

My high-speed internet was turned off on Monday. I feel naked. I have to dial up to check my email. Email! What sort of a world is this, where no one else in the building has an open wireless router for me to scam fast internet off of? I'm distressed. It took me half an hour to change my address at the CCRA website, just so I can get my tax refund delivered to the right address. They use some big-ass java applets I guess. Oh, and they have the worst system in the world for resetting your password. Apparently when I signed up for the "e-Pass" a year ago, I had to pick answers to 5 questions - questions like "What is your least favorite food?". Then they give you a list of 15 choices or so. How am I supposed to remember which of the 15 I decided was my least favorite, when I don't really like half of them and it was a year ago? Favorite sport - 10 more choices. Fuck off. That's what I say. I eventually gave up, but I managed to find my e-Pass login and password written on a sticky note in my tax-shit folder. What good is a password-reset system if no one can remember the answers to all the verification questions? Difficult to use != security. When will people learn...

There is some guy looking in my window from across the...uh...space between our windows? Our building is "U"-shaped and he's on the other end of the "U". I wish he would stop. I'm not really sure he's looking at me, but he's looking in my general direction and it's creepy. (The curtains are in a moving truck somewhere...damn...)

We are leaving a lot of stuff here, so if you're in Montreal and need a table, or some folding chairs, or any of a large pile of books, or some mediocre IKEA dishes, or a wok, or a crazy carpet, you just let me know.

I wonder how long it will take to upload this....argh dialup...

I'm in Canmore. Surrounded by mountains. Nice...

My last days in Montreal were a bit crazy. Friday night I went out to Dieu de Ciel with the CimDev gang. The place was packed for happy hour, and there were a lot of us, so we did some standing. It was awesome to have all those people out at the same time. Some of us went to Bifteck aftewards, which smelled funny and was full of hipsters. I bought a piece of pizza from a man because he said "Next". I didn't really want the pizza, but I felt obligated. Maybe it was the beer. Anyway, I bailed on going to Miami after Bifteck, because I was sleepy.

Saturday I emptied out our apartment. It got kind of crazy at the end, when I started running out of time, and began hiding stuff in closet top-shelves just so I wouldn't have to find a garbage to put it in. I filled all the ones on our floor. One of them is packed with the contents of our fridge. It's pretty heavy, I hope the landlord doesn't hurt himself. I did a pretty shoddy job of cleaning the bathroom, but it wasn't exactly spotless when we moved in, so I only feel a little bit guilty.

Saturday night was Loft Party 3.0 at chez T-Wiz. I had a good time. The disco ball was an...interesting...touch. I tried to bring Gin and Tonic, but I couldn't find the Tonic part anywhere. A depanneur clerk told me that Club Soda was just as good, so I got some of that. He was wrong. Anyway, it was a good party. I had fun. I left at about 3 am, because I had to get up at 6 am to catch a plane.

Getting up at 6 am was not a good time. It was not fun. We scrambled out of our place and into a taxi, and on to the airport. All was going well, we checked our bags, we had breakfast. Then we went to go through security. Oh, hey, massive line! Nice! There was only 10 minutes until boarding time, and I started to freak out a bit. I'm paranoid about missing planes. I was travelling with A, who is less paranoid. I was assured that since we checked our bags, they would go through a lot of trouble to find us before the plane took off (apparently they have to unload our bags, in case we put a b-o-m-b in them...). Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but this did not calm my freaking-out-ness at all. The security line moved pretty quick, but that didn't really help either. By this point I was at the stage where if I stopped freaking out I would probably just drop on the spot, so I continued with the freaking out.

At security you have to take out your laptop so they can swab it for whatever they swab for. Cocaine I think. Anyway, post-swabbing I put it back in my bag. And forgot to do up the zipper. Then I ran down the stairs, holding the bag by it's handle on the top. At which point the part holding the laptop swung out - down - and I stopped running. So there I was, frozen on the stairs, my laptop in a little pouch dangling upside down above 3 flights of stairs. This was probably when the panic reached it's height. I slooowwwlly lifted the bag up to a point where I could snatch the laptop before it slipped out and, you know, tumbled down to certain doom. Then I had a sort of little freak out in my head, zipped up the bag, and resumed running.

Crisis averted. We got on the plane, we flew to Calgary. I took a Gravol but my stomach was too angry for me to get much sleep. I just sort of sat there in a state of half-conciousness. Fun times. We landed and headed to Canmore, where it was only noon-ish. I'd been up for 8 hours, it was only noon, and I was too hungry to sleep. I didn't get to bed last night until almost midnight.

So the last 2 days have been fun.

It was weird driving through Calgary on the way out to Canmore. We drove past lots of buildings and streets that I recognized, but have not seen for more than a year. It was like really strong deja vu that lasted for an hour. Sort of surreal. Anyway, I'm back. I think I'm going to go sit by a window and read a book. Or maybe just look at the mountains. They're big.

So, I'm back from Tofino/Vancouver. It was awesome. I have pictures and events to report. But that will come later. I'm kind of busy starting my new job.

Oh, and I'm getting married.

For some reason, being in Alberta makes it difficult to update my website. I'm not sure why this is. But today is the first time I've even considered updating. It may get long. Here goes.

Since I got back to Alberta in mid-april, AC and I have put over 10,000 kilometers on her Echo. That's a lot of driving. We went on a sweet vacation to Tofino (it's on Vancouver Island). We went back to Vancouver on May long weekend to do wedding stuff. The car went to Nelson with AC, but I stayed in Canmore. Oh, and we commute in to Calgary every day, that's an hour each way.

Yes, another hour commute to get to work. Just like Montreal. Only this time, my job isn't a soul-sucking pit of despair. (I'm not really going to get into explaining why it was a soul-sucking pit of despair here, you can ask me if you want to know. But here's a teaser: no vacation for the first year. 1 week for each of the second two years. That's 2 weeks in 3 years! 2 sick days a year, then it comes out of your vacation. !....!....!!...).

Back to here. I'm working at the Uni, doing all sorts of stuff. Mostly trying to figure out a way for people to interact with wall-sized displays, using things like laser pointers and infrared LED lights. Actually, that's sort of on the sidelines right now because I'm busy trying to get a wall-sized display going. We have one up now, the MAD boxes, which maybe I'll take a picture of one of these days. But we're building another one sans seams and it needs to actually get built.

I'm going to really geek-out for a second and mention that I scored us a graphics card that isn't even publicly available yet - the Matrox QID Pro. It does 4-screen accelerated OpenGL. w3wp. It's coming out soon (probably) but they gave us one and it's sweet. I also get to program some microcontrollers and do lots of soldering to try and make laser pointers that flicker (so we can identify different laser spots). It's nerd-vana...

I went to my sister's grad in Medicine Hat last weekend. That's right. Medicine Hat. I don't miss it. I saw lots of people that I graduated with, which was fucking weird. Mandy said she wanted me to put her picture up, so here we are:

I'm the un-shaven one. In the blue shirt. With the hockey mullet. I got a haircut, but it is bad. Where are the old Quebecois guys with their stack of Playboy's when you need a haircut? Not in Canmore, that's for sure.

Anyway, I'm back in Calgary....sort of....except for the whole living-in-Canmore bit. I'm moving in in September when the MSc starts up again. Until then, it's the commute.

Big game tonite, eh?

Time for the monthly update. I went to a "punk-rock" show on Saturday night at the Canmore Hotel (also know as "The Ho"). My ears are still ringing. It's Tuesday and my ears are still rining, and no end in sight. I don't even think it's getting quieter. Why are they ringing? BECAUSE I AM A CROCHETY OLD MAN! That's the only possible explanation....

The punk rock show was pretty good. I've never been to a punk rock show before, so I didn't really know what to expect. I've been to concerts, but only big concerts at the Saddledome. Those ones never have a bunch of sweaty drunk dudes throwing themselves against eachother. I abstained from moshing cuz I didn't want to lose my glasses. Apparently it was a relatively civil mosh pit - I only got elbowed in the stomach once! I guess two guys who were fighting also knocked me over, when they came sliding across the table behind me. Luckily, none of the shards from all the shattered beer bottles made their way into my flesh.

The opening band was Outright Defiance , who have a shitty website. But their music was ok. Not great, but not terrible. The main act was DOA. Apparently DOA is a punk rock legend, they've been around for over 20 years. The lead singer and guitarist, Joey "Shithead", definitely looks like he's spent a good bit of time in dive bars. I liked the opening band's music better, but DOA definitely puts on a good show. I actually noticed Mr. Shithead earlier in the evening - he was the only decrepit-looking old man wearing a tank top that said "Yes I am a Rabble-Rouser" on it. (There were other decrepit-looking old men around, but they were Canmore locals just there to play pool, and lacked the slogan-bearing tank tops). Anyway, when I saw him (at this point I didn't know he was the lead singer for DOA), I thought, "that man is hardcore". And it turns out he was...

Anyway, I screamed my throat raw and got very little sleep Sunday and Monday nights, and now I'm all sick and stuff. Plus the ringing ears. I'm a miserable wretch. AC convinced me to go se a doctor (being un-insured means you have to pay for doctor visits yourself, so you only go when you really, really need to - ie, not just a flesh wound). The doctor told me to suck it up and stop whining. (Well, he said to sleep and drink lots of water, but I was reading between the lines...)

(Mom: I will be insured in mid-July. Stop freaking out.)

Anyway, I'm sick and tired and I don't want to write any more stuff, so I'm just going to share a picture of myself with you. Not my whole self, just the back of my neck. Anand took it one day when my mullet was being sort of propped-up by my vest. He christened it my Mullet-Bra. Ailidh says it's getting to mulletude 5 level, but I maintain that it is no higher than mulletude 3.

I really, really need to get a haircut...