Thursday, December 29, 2005

We are still in Vernon because Maggie the car is not working. That worked out well though. Jason generously gave me one of his World Juniors tickets so I was able to watch the Russia-Slovakia game in Kelowna last night. I went with Tod, who is Jason's friend with a contagious laugh, and Jason, who is not Jason but actually Jason's brother-in-law (almost). It was cool because it was a small arena so we were close to the players. Evgeny Malkin was fun to watch. He was drafted #2 overall in the 2nd to last draft, I think. He'll be playing at the Olympics in Turin, so yeah, he's good. At the end of the game he knocked over two Slovaks at once with a clean hit. A broohaha ensued and a different Russian and Slovak got into a fight. There was the full-on sweater over head action, and lots of haymakers in general. In like the last 3-4 NHL/WHL games I've been to there have been no fights (despite Cloutier's best efforts), yet I see one at an international European game. Go figure! Anyway, sweetness all around.

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Sunday, December 25, 2005

There is no pic at the moment because it is dark so I can't rummage around to find a suitable USB cable. I'm sitting here in front of a 19" ViewSonic LCD monitor, which is the hotness. I am at Jason and Jenn's house. They are Rock's brother and soon-to-be-sister-in-law, respectively (so the one named Jason is the brother? Oh, thanks for spelling that out Dave).

We drove down here yesterday, although we almost didn't make it out of hun city. Rock forgot to renew her insurance, which we found out when the RCMP left us a note on the windshield. Getting the note was much nicer than getting the 600$ fine which we were supposed to get. We lucked out because it was Christmas Eve, I guess. Rock is usally really good about things like renewing insurance, I guess it was the bustle of exams and holidays. Anyway, we drove down (we meaning me) on Saturday. When we got into Vernon we drove past this row of car dealerships, and I thought, "please have a VW, please have a VW." There was one, and what followed was a flurry of "punch buggies" so thick that its like has not been seen since the 1960s.

Jason and Jenn are very nice and have lots of cool things at their house. Having cool things at one's house doesn't necessarily make one very nice. But it never hurts, unless those cool things are nunchucks or throwing stars or something else sharp or blunt. They have 3 cats, 2 of which are shy, but the last is very fluffy and playful. They also have a flock of ducks that lives in their backyard. We watched Anchorman. That is a great movie!

Brick Tamland: I love... carpet.
[pause]
Brick Tamland: I love... desk.
Ron Burgundy: Brick, are you just looking at things in the office and saying that you love them?
Brick Tamland: I love lamp.
Ron Burgundy: Do you really love the lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it?
Brick Tamland: I love lamp! I love lamp.

I didn't really expect Christmas to feel like Christmas at any point during these holidays, since for me it is really 4 separate gift opening sessions. But today it did, so that was neat. Rock got me season 1 of Arrested Development on DVD. Boo-yah!
Tomorrow we might do something fun, or we might just lounge around and watch DVDs all day. Hey wait, that is fun!

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Thursday, December 22, 2005



Sometimes I like macs, but sometimes they annoy me. I’m just typing on Leah’s shiny white iBook G4. It seems like everyone has one of these. The 512mb of RAM are nice.

Anyway, I’ve been at my mom’s house with Rock for about a week now. We have just relaxed and hung-out with my sister and stuff. Also hung-out with Chris and Mikara et al, including their 2 month old baby human named Ava Soleil. I got to hold her and she smiled at me. She possesses a very good nature as well as distinct features and chubby cheeks. Dann and Tanya couldn’t come down from Ft. St. Nowhere, for various reasons. Much sadness. Tonight we are eating Christmas fish with my dad, as opposed to Christmas raclette (sp?) which we had with my mom and sis on Tues. Anyway, it has been nice and relaxing but I look forward to doing actual things, such as driving down to Vernon and then back up to PG and so on. Yewah! That ‘w’ was a typo, but I like it.

I’m also looking forward to starting school again. This is because I did well last term (gpa 4.13), which boons my confidence and makes school more fun. I feel like I read: “The Idiot’s Guide to Being Yourself.” It’s not that hard to do, but it's easy to forget what it is.

*warning: the rest is boring hockey stuff

So most of the Olympic rosters are out. I like Canada. Brodeur is a no-brainer, Turco is having a great season, and Luongo was great back in the World Cup in the semis against the Czechs. The defense is great. The forwards I like too. I wouldn’t have minded to see Spezza out there with Heatley, but at least he’s a reserve. I might have gone with Staal over Nash, since Nash has been out for a while, and they are similar pure goal scorers. But I guess they figure Nash will be 100% by Feb, and he does have a size advantage over Staal. I like the choice of Bertuzzi too. His season hasn’t been amazing but he tends to get up for big games. I thought Morrow would make it, since it seems most of the recent teams have had 2 defensive specialist type players (Peca, Maltby, etc). But they have Draper, who has been great on Team Canada. Also Smyth and Doan (who I guess will play with Draper) are great checkers, even though they normally do way more their NHL teams.

The Czechs don’t look super intimidating for some reason. I mean, Jagr and Hasek will always give you a chance to win, but they don’t have nearly the defensive depth of Canada. Slovakia has great offense, as usual, and Chara. But they still don’t have a proven goalie (just Budaj from Colorado). I haven’t seen Finland or Russia’s roster, but Sweden looks the best (other than Canada) so far. They always have great offensive and defensive depth, but this year they will have a decent goalie in Lundquist (sp?) who has been hot for the Rangers. Anyway, whatever.

Photo by Leah

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Monday, December 12, 2005


I wrote my last exam on Thursday, then I went to Rock's house. I ended up staying there until today, which I think is Monday, so that's like 4 days. I would normally think it a bit unusual to stay at the house of your girlfriend of 4 months for that long, but it is always completely natural; it's like I've always been there.

The McLeods are McReallyNice. The bunch living on Chestnut Avenue includes a mom, dad, grandpa, cat, another cat, 10 fish and dog/horse. Whenever I'm at Rock's house I feel really relaxed and happy. I don't know what it is (aside from the obvious), maybe they put something in the water. We don't really do anything spectacular. We just eat good food and play crib and walk in the woods and make snowmen and drink cocoa. It's like a perpetual Sunday afternoon. Why am I saying any of this? I don't know, that's just what I've been doing the last 4 days, and it has made me happy, so I thought I'd write some thing about it.

I wrote a long paragraph about how family comes in different shapes. It was about how the 2 parent/young children family is a fairly rare family structure if you think across cultures and time periods. I deleted it though because it would have taken it a while to make it into something coherent and not rambling. I'm trying to save all my clear thinking and expression up for next term. So if I just drool and say things such as "Dave no like" or "Dave big happy now," don't take it personally, if you notice the difference at all.

Roxanne and I will be coming down to Hun City on Thursday Dec 15 and staying until Dec 24. So if you live in the aforementioned city of Huns, hopefully I'll see you.

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Wednesday, December 7, 2005


Today kicked ass for all of these reasons:
1. When I woke up Mukherjee the cat was sleeping on my bed and was all purry and stuff.
2. My friend whom I haven't heard from since forever because he is travelling in India e-mailed me.
3. Roxanne! She's always a day-brightener.
4. Rock drove me to school and apparently we will be spending christmas with her brother and sister-in-law-to-be, which is cool!
5. The questions on my American Lit exam were exactly the ones I hoped would be on it, so it was easy.
6. My Am Lit teacher gave me this huge friggin' brand new book for free! She was just like, who wants this? And I was like . . . uhhhh, me? It's even stuff I like: post-WW2 American short stories. It must be worth like sixty dollars or something.
8. Rock gave me Oreos with chocolate coating which is a kind that I have never had before and I liked them because they were minty! MINTY!!!
9. Then the rest of the day was pretty normal. I napped in the library while it snowed outside. I wrote an night exam which felt OK but not as good as my morning exam. I got a paper back which is worth 40% and which took me like 5 days to write and it was an 85 which is OK I guess but I was hoping for better. I'm satisfied though because the comments made me realize it had problems so 85 was really the mark it deserved. The good news was that I got a 95 on my creative writing project which was worth 40% of my term mark.
10. Even the usually boring and cold busride/walk home was OK because Neelim (a girl from 2 of my classes) was going home at that time too and she's nice.
11. My Great Aunt Mary who is about 92 replied to a letter I sent her a few months ago. She said lots of cute old people things like: "on account of the price of gasoline" and "I wouldn't know how to use a computer." Best Wednesday during exam period ever! It's like my planets were aligned or some crap! And now cat is back on my lap and purring again. Hooray for everything!

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Tuesday, December 6, 2005










Hey! They found a new mammal in the rainforests of Borneo! It appears to be able to shoot laser beams from its eyes or at least hypnotize people. Also, it can turn invisible and control the weather! (probably)

Apparently changing the visual template of your blog resets any alterations you made to the code. They told me that would happen, but for some reason I didn't believe them. Anyway, that's why everything has been gimped lately. I changed it to white because I think it might be easier to read longish things that way. Plus it's white! Like snow and ptarmigans and pterodactyls!

I got a 9 out of 10 for participation in CanLit even though I only spoke twice the whole term. I think it was because I pointed out that a young Sandra Oh (Sideways, Grey's Anatomy) was an extra in something we watched about some Canadian author. The only other thing I said all term was something about . . . Icelandic Huldufolk, which was topical, believe it or not. I can't complain because it's fickle in my favour. Still, it's not exactly bulletproof pedagogy.

3 exams to go, shouldn't be super hard. In important news: I moved my bed to a warmer part of my room. The heating vent is now about 2 feet from my head. Listening to heat flowing through vents while falling asleep is the pinnacle of existence.

Completely unrelated: Here is a strangely hypnotic timelapse video of a week in the life of the Panama Canal.

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