HAP-py New Year

I will be spending the night with some friends watching Team Canada beat the US, the Leafs beating New Jersey, and...well that's all. I'm sure the rest of the night will be spent with a little glug-glug, burp-burp, hiccup-hiccup, and hopefully nothing else.

Kat, your gift frieking rocked which, in turn, means YOU frieking rock! :) Thanks. The Su-Doku book will make the bathroom a much more pleasant place and the Hitchcock's will make the...TV a much more pleasant...thingy. Thanks again.

A larger update is forthcoming.

Happy '06!!!

Dave

Happy Holidays and New Year Tout Monde!

Heys guys, so this is my first chance on a WORKING computer in a long while, and I've only got 6 minutes left on it - booked in the CP lib. Sounds like everyone's having a good holiday season. Things are pretty quiet at my end. Haven't been feeling so hot since I moved home - I think its a sign I shouldn't be living here anymore. Been having my sad moments and looked to AD to bring some laughs but its not quite the same either. Lucky you Kat with the AD - your father is a very smart man!
Thanks for the awesome CD Amanda. You couldn't have found a better one. When Krista and I went to see Sarah Harmer in Guelph I was commenting on how I love her so much yet have only bought one of her cds, so this is a great addition.
I'm still working on plans for New Years. I think I'm spending it with Jamie and Landon, who both came up in October, and some other ppl at Krista's grandparents place in Ottawa, sans the grandparents. Her uncle's also having a party there. He's in his early 30s with friends in their mid-20s to mid-30s, so perhaps New Years will be a interesting one. :)
Anyways, things have been pretty quiet living in this small town of mine, and really wishing I had got a place in Ottawa for this new co-op job. Really not looking forward to 5:15am on Tuesday.
I was supposed to have the Internet at home by now, but surprise, surprise, my computer won't let Sympatico Internet to load, and the tech ppl couldn't find a solution. Sending it into a computer store to see if its fixable or just chuckable - really hoping chuck-worthy. Nothing would bring me greater joy.
Anyways, time's up. Hope everyone's enjoying their holidays and Santa checked his list twice.

Sue

A moment to myself...

Hey all :) Remi's parents left this morning and Remi's at work tonight, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to post while I have a minute. Christmas was great for us. I missed my family a lot, but I got to talk to them on the phone quite a bit. Not the same, but good anyway. We got spoiled out here - new sheets, a blender and a fondue pot (haha - "it's a fon-do not a fon-don't!") from Remi's parents. Mine also sent presents out - some clothes and books, etc. Good stuff anyway. Remi's brother, Julien, and his fiance, Megan, got us a new tent for camping! It's from MEC so it's bound to be excellent. We're going to start some hardcore camping (according to Remi) this spring/summer, so we'll try it out :) And how was Present Day for you guys? I guess Channukah is still going on, so anything good Dave?

Anyway, nothing is new out here. I'm enjoying my job at Shoppers. There's so much to learn! The computer system is really hard for me to work with because it's quite different from what I'm used to, but that's ok. I'm learning! Something Amanda might find interesting: when Shoppers switched over to their new Windows-based HealthWatch system, the provincial drug plan out here wasn't compatible, so pharmacies in BC have to use a modified Zadol system! It's very DOS, but it's not bad. Also, people can still collect points on Rx's out here! But anyway, it's going well. I'm working on my own now after a week of shadowing another technician, and I think it's going ok.

That's about it for me. I'm missing you guys a lot out here now that New Years is approaching! I think Remi and I have plans though!! I was worried we would be losering it up out here, but some of my former co-workers, now friends, are having a house party so that should be fun :) Not as cool as you guys, but fun anyway.

OK, I'm off. Post soon guys!

Merrrrrrrrrrrrry X-Mas

It's 11:05pm and I'm sure you're all tucked away in your beds awaiting Santa. I'm not. I'm Jewish. In fact, it's kinda lonely on Christmas Eve. L to the onely if you will. Actually, it's kind of fun to think of everyone going to bed with smiles on their faces. I always get excited the night before Channukah. There's nothing like waking up to the smell of potatoe latkah's and seeing all of the Channukah decorations and menorah's with candles. And this year is perfect for anyone buying gifts for Jewish friends: you can shop on Boxing Day! I'm heading to Vortex (the used record store) first thing with my friend Chris and we're going to browse like we've never browsed before! I'm really only in the market for Arrested Development and Scrubs, but I highly doubt they'll have either because...well...the shows are just so darn good that noone would sell them!

I rented Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night and it's a good thing that I have it for a week because I have to watch it at least one more time. I can't decide if it's the saddest or the happiest movie I have ever seen. I smiled harder than in any other movie (as much as Garden State), but I also wanted to cry. And I am now in love with Kate Winslet.

Amanda, Flashwear is officially in Toronto. I was pumping gas tonight and I looked up at this Rogers billboard for the new Razor phone. It was completely dark and then bits of the sign lit up until it was completely lit, then it started over. So unless this is a totally different concept, there's a Flashwear sign one minute from my house!! I was so amazed that I went $1.36 over what I intended to pump. Sooo...if you can just have Nick stick that $1.36 cents in the mail that'd be great. Yeahhh.

So Merry Christmas you guys:) Hope it's a fun, eggnogg-filledwithvodka day!

Dave

Wouldn't you like to spend christmas on Christmas Island?

"Christmas time is here... Happiness and cheer... Fun for all that children call... Their favorite time of the year..."

I'm going to a barn party tonight. I've always wanted to go to a party like the one Ebenezer Scrooge went to in his youth and revisits with the ghost of Christmas Past. I don't know if that's what it's going to be like, but a girl can dream. Plus, there stands a good chance of nog and mulled cider or wine being there, so it can't be too bad. I'll let you know if my dream comes true.

I went to a party last Friday, and let's just say it wasn't my shining hour. I think I passed out about midnight and had to be drug out of the bathroom by Kayla, after divesting the contents of my stomach of course. What befuddles me is that I got sick off of 4 drinks. The only thing I can think that happened was that I hadn't had dinner before that, but I was snacking during. Oh well, it still ended up being an interesting night. If you're looking to entertain a group of drunken individuals, try Twister; it's sure to please.

Our tree is not up yet. All week I've been trying to motivate my parents to get their arses in gear, but my frustration is getting the better of me. I'm hoping that while I'm gone tonight, the tree may magically appear. We will see...

Anyway, I've just been wrapping, baking, decorating, sending, and shopping this past week. Taking it easy and doing the typical stuff. We are planning on going down to Raleigh after xmas, but I'm going to drive separately so that I can come back for New Year's. I don't have plans yet, but that doesn't mean I won't. I would love to be with you guys for it. I wonder how long it would take to drive from Raleigh to southern Ontario... but I digress. Anyway, I need to go. The barn party (aka the "Ho Ho Hoedown" - isn't that great!) awaits.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

And I'm finally sort of connected

Hey all. Sorry for the severe lack of postage on my part, but today is the first day I've had access to a computer! My house is literally in shambles and between moving boxes/furniture from room to room, finding a bed to sleep in (my Mom is on the couch), and generally finding a way to walk through my house, I haven't had the opportunity to get online to post! In fact, in three weeks we won't even have a bathroom as it's being gutted. Our fridge is set up in the living room, our stove isn't plugged in, and 95% of my stuff is packed away in our basement! OK, I think that's all the complaining I'll do in this post.

And aside from the complaints, I really couldn't be happier at this location. I'm about 45 seconds from the subway and 2 minutes from Rogers Video. I finally have neighbours who are Jewish and a backyard that does not look onto the projects. Oh, and I haven't heard one gun shot yet!

OK, my Mom needs to get back to work so I have to head off, but I'll leave a much bigger post over the next couple of days.

Miss you all...I had one of those moments yesterday while looking at pics on my camera phone. I came across a pic of you Sarah, Kat, and Amanda wearing the "Rock All Night Squared" shirts at the Matt Good concert (or the High Voltage concert).

Happy Holidays/Christmas/Channukah/Kwanza/Tet:p

Dave

Happy Christmas!

Remi and I went and cut down our tree today! I'm very excited about having a real tree. Smells very yummy ;) Here are a few pictures of our adventures today. By the way, this is OUR blog people, not MY blog! Get posting!

Happy holidays to everyone :)

This is me hugging our find!















Going in for the kill! They supply the hacksaw at the tree farm, called Gogo's, by the way.














OH MERCY! There's nowhere to tie the tree to! We ended up tying around the roof of the car, so we drove home with ropes hanging everywhere inside the car ;)












After trying to pick up the tree like a big stick... She was very excited about it ;)














We got the tree inside and it was about 3 inches too high, so we had to cut a bit off the base.














A couple decorating shots...

































FINAL PRODUCT :)






















And that is our Xmas tree photo diary :) Hope you like it! Again, happy holidays!

Still non-wintery in BC

Remi and I have been using the past few sunny, warm-ish days to take Mags out to Jack Point, a place I've posted pictures of before. Right on the ocean! :)

Snowy in Ontario, eh??

Re: the ringing of the bells

I thought you might depreciate this Fourhman. I was walking into work yesterday and I passed a woman ringing the bells for the Sally Ann (Salvation Army for any of those who don't know this nickname). She sure was ringing the bells, however unenthusiastically, but she was wearing a frickin' IPod!!!! WTF'nF???? Can you really call that "giving back to the community" if you can't even hear people wish you a Merry F'in Christmas as they donate to a worthy cause?? Do you think she goes home at night and feels good about herself??? I'm disGUSTED!

That is my rant.

In the spirit of brevity

I really can't get around to writing long drawn out storoes about my life here... Sarah seems to cover it enough for both of us. Not to mention, most of them are so incredibly boring that they don't entertain anybody but me.

Here's a good one though. This is a gooeyduck, the people out here love it for more than one reason...

And, I leave you with a funny video of Siskel and Ebert.
http://www.break.com/articles/siskelebert.html?t=4431

Remi

My faves

This was HARD:

Amanda: "If it’s got no bones in it, it’s not a wing, it’s a NUGGET!"

Kat: (this comes send to "When I think of sex, I think of the act of love-making") "At least when I did it, it wasn't my doing."

Dave, on Elton John: “Maybe he’s an omnivore.” (WTF? Is this so odd??) / "What was his name? Long neck? Rubberneck? Littlefoot!"

Me: "I have never worn these boobs"

I'm not going to pick a quote for Sue because I know she has a bazillion funnier ones than are posted online. What happened to typing the pad, Dave??

Favourite exchanges:

West: I am eating your testicle right now.
Dave: How does it taste?
Vernooy: Testerific.

Dave: You can drink from the men’s tee or the lady’s tee.
Sarah: I’ll drink with the mice! (WTF was I talking about?)

Vernooy to Sarah: “Let’s smell each other’s ass cracks”
Dave’s response: “Okay”
(It is not sexy, Dave)
Fourhman: “Dave is R. Kelly”

Amanda: I’m committing you tomorrow.
Sarah: Yay! Commission!

Dave: It smells like Cool Water.
Sarah: You couldn’t just said chlorine.

Favourite extras:

Gerry: "It's a bit nipply out here. My vision's convexed."

Nick: “That’s not what I’m saying, Sarah, you wench of doom.”

That was fun :) I miss you guys!

I'll wish you happy holidays if I want to!

Okay, so I think this whole mess with being pc with the holidays and then the christians fighting back has gone a bit mad. Last night I saw on the news a thing where some group has made bracelets saying "just say Merry Christmas," meaning that they want "Merry Christmas" instead of "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays" said to them. Good grief, as if it's a horror for someone not to assume that you are a Jesusphile. Now, what really got my goat was that today while I was ringing bells with my 'rents, a women puts in a buck and my dad and I did our usual thanks, he said "merry christmas" and I said "happy holidays." The woman looks at me, points her finger and says "No, it's merry christmas!"

I was shocked! First of all, excuse me for thinking about the two other major holidays that happen to occur this time of year, not to mention others that are unknown to me, and secondly, last time I checked, christmas qualified as a holiday! So go fuck off with your whiney "I don't want to include others in my party" attitude. It's people like you who get others killed. Arrgghh!

Phew! Sorry about the rant, but I needed to get that off my chest. Other than that setback, things have been good. I have two more "exams" to go before I am done with university! Yahoo! I really wanted to party it up the other night, but I realized that I can't truely party unless I'm with y'all, so it'll have to wait 'til a later date. Plus it was a wednesday night, so I was totally in the mood for Trash, but you know the rest. And I have received my offical letter from UoG saying that a spot is saved for me in the Feb 22 commencement ceremony. At this point, I plan to "walk the line" (as someone recently quipped), but it's not written in stone. So, if you can make it to Guelph that weekend, be prepared to help me celebrate.

Signing off.

"shake dat laffy-taffy, dat laffy-taffy, dat laffy-taffy"

Oy Vey!

Just so you can all laugh at me, here's what I had on the title page of a paper I handed in to my prof via email:

"So I don’t need to really cut anything because I used numbers for referencing within the text, but see what you think. Check to see if I’ve changed all my references over to numbers too :) Love you."

I had asked Remi to edit my paper and I left this little note for him and then forgot to remove it before submitting it to my prof. Her response:

"I’m guessing this was meant for someone else!"

OMG ;) I'm a freakin retard!

*SIGH*

Hi, all. So this morning I called Shoppers to find out what the dillio was with that job I applied for and he offered it to me. So I took it, being the only real choice I have, financially speaking anyway. And now I'm just torn up wondering how I'm going to quit Save On. I wrote a little letter for Richard, but I don't quite know what to say. I've never quit a job because I found another one before, and certainly haven't ever left behind such an amazing bunch of people for any other reason than I was moving. I had a good cry about it, but I don't think I'm done. I'm certainly going to cry talking to Richard later this afternoon. Life is a major drag. I really wish money didn't make the world go 'round.

I QUIT

Just so you all know, I will no longer be working at HomeSense. I quit today, lying to my boss that I would soon be into more hours at the pharmacy (I didn't want to hurt his feelings, he's super-nice). I might be into some more hours at one of the other Save Ons, though. I haven't heard from Hell Mart yet, but we'll see about that too. I'm going to do some calling tomorrow. I'd like to stick with Save On because I'm making good money and I'm actually a technician there. The Shoppers here doesn't let their techs type!! How can I busy myself if I'm not typing 'scripts?? *boring* But we'll see. I may be forced to take that one (if it's even offered) if I can't get transferred to the busier Save On. Anyway, I'll keep you guys posted.

I feel you on the not getting out enough, 4man. I'm thinking about taking up TKD again starting as soon as next week. I'm dying of both boredom and lack of activity.

I hope the Xmas shopping is going well for everyone! I'm pretty much done, Manda, expect your package soon! I'll let you know the mail-date so that you can watch for it. NO OPENING UNTIL CHRISTMAS!

Later, gators

I climbed a knob

Wow, I felt really outta the loop, seeing as it has been a week since I last checked the blog. My computer is fuxored (what's new?) so the availability has diminished. I'm at school right now and figured I'd reward myself after my quiz on silicate mineral identification (nerd=me), and check in to see what kind of action was happening here.

I really haven't been up to to much besides reading about Gothic churches and its precursors and trying to remember the chemical formulas for such pretty rocks as quartz, chabazite, and labradorite (named after, you guessed it, Labrador!) . Also, I've been pondering whether peacocks are domesticated and where their native habitat would be, as well as why the fighting styles of men and women differ - as in men throw punches while women claw, bite and pull hair. I will be doing some research after I finish this post, but as you can see, school has been my main activity lately.

An exception to that is I went for a hike yesterday with my friend John and we climbed up and down a knob. For those of you who do not know, a knob is a term for a hill and knobs are a series of hills. Honestly, I don't know if it's just a southern Indiana thing or what, but down here there are knobs. (Some knobs are better than others, as in that pictured at right.) Anyway, it was nice to be outside, since I haven't been very much at all since I stopped working. Sad and pathetic, I know. And you can tell a difference in my gut because of it, or at least I can. So, even though it's getting nippley outside, I have to be persistent and keep my level of activity up, especially with the holidays coming.

Speaking of holidays, I'm also signed up to ring bells with my parents this week (for the Salvation Army). Man, I haven't volunteered since, like, high school and it feels really good. Even though I could absolutely use some money myself, I'm spending my time helping someone else raise money. But that's what the season's for, no?

Well, that's about all I have for now. I'll end with the requisite "I miss you guys and wish this was in person instead of online," but don't think for a moment that it is not genuinely felt.

Checkin' in

I figure that doing short posts every so often is kinda like dropping into one of your rooms and chatting for a few mins...not overstaying my welcome, and hopefully providing some laughy-laughs. And a little bit of retardation. There's always room for retardation. And there's not quite enough of it on this board. The retardations at about a 7; we need it at about an eleven. Sorry, I watched Spinal Tap the other night and I just had to throw in a reference.

So it's amazing how much changes in a week. Exactly seven days ago I was stumbling around in Trappers, bumping into random people, meeting some girl from Ottawa and then just walking away when I got my beer, and then passing out when I got home. And one week later, I'm studying economics, having random conversations with my housemates, meeting...noone, drinking a bottle of water, and then passing out as soon as I'm done studying.

So how many clementines have you all gone through so far this year? I've gone through one crate and had about ten of someone else's crate.

I ate an entire No Name (not-so) deluxe pizza in about 20 minutes and felt very nausious afterwards. I added some tobasco sauce to add an extra punch and it really didn't help too much! So, in conclusion, don't eat an entire No Name pizza - especially in 20 minutes. I mean, I was hungry and would have stuffed anything down, but maybe next time I'll just go with the tried-and-true pasta. mmm with four cheese sauce...

I haven't heard from Jess since last Tuesday when I emailed her to check in. I know she's busy, but I figured that by now she would have at least seen what's up. I'll drop her a line and see if she wants to grab a coffee during a study break some time soon. I really want to get to know her some more!

Oh, Sarah, I bumped into Caitie from Lennox and she told me to say hi to you. So there you are!

I think that's about it. My Leafers blew a 3-1 lead tonight and lost. I wasn't pissed off at all! F'n cock-gobblers.

Here's the link to that t-shirt site. I can't find the 'Arrrrr' shirt because you get random shirts when you click on the links. You'll see. This one is priceless, though: http://www.bustedtees.com/shirts/aweso

Dave