Feasting With My Parents

For the last couple of weekends, and the next couple of weekends I've been out at the farm helping my parents prepare for the local fair. There is a lot of work to do but at least I know that they're going to keep me well fed.

On Friday night we had fried chicken which is one of my favorite meals. Saturday was spaghetti and Ribs, Sunday we had Lasagna and Steaks. Yup even if it was a terrible weekend the food would have saved it.

For the record it wasn't a terrible weekend but the weather sucked and it's awfully wet outside.

Quick Hits

Sorry I know it's been a long time since my last post. There's just been a lot going on, and nothing at the same time. Well nothing worth writing about anyway.

Volleyball has ended. It was good time, I had fun. We did a wind-up at Boston Pizza on Wednesday after we were done playing. So that's the end of that. We might play again in the fall. And I might play even if my brother doesn't, but it was a lot of fun playing together.

Things are going well at the Museum and I'm hoping to increase my hours in the next couple of weeks just to see how it goes.

It's pouring rain here right now and I love it. I love the rain and I love thunderstorms, easily my favorite part of summer.

That's about it for now. Enjoy your day.

I just got PWN'D

So remember that awesome board game I was telling you about ? Well my younger brother just kicked my ass! So badly that we didn't even finish.

His starting line was a 63 power ranking, you get a extra goal to start with for every power point over 52 so he had a automatic starting 11 goals. I had zero goals to start, so there was no way I could win a match. Even if I scored the maximum 3 goals per period I still would have lost by 2 goals.

Here's what his starting line up card looked like:

The 10s mean the power ranking, the card under the top middle card is the Hart Trophy for MVP. And the yellow chip is a long term contract chip meaning that I wouldn't be able to steal that player in Free Agency. Not that I had any money to do it anyway.

Oh well better luck next time I guess.

The New Website Love of My Life

A few months ago someone recommended that I join Goodreads.com. I wasn't really convinced because usually when my friends recommend books to me I end up disappointed because I don't like them as much as they did. But after dealing with the creepy Amazon recommendation I've been struggling to find a new source for book reviews to recommend some books that I might not pick up otherwise.

I love that once you rate a book it gives you recommendations of books in similar categories. Like the "best books of 2007" or "best science fiction", however I have noticed that a) when you chose a category there seems to be a lot of books by the same author, so if you've tried some of their stuff and you don't like it well then the list is kind of a waste for you, and b)Many of the books end up in best and worst lists, take Twilight for example it appears in both "best books ever" and "worst books of all time".

I guess you just have to take the time to read the reviews to figure out if you think you'll like it.
Edit: Just took a look at the "Worst Books of all Time List", and while I'm not suprised there were A LOT of books by conservative authors. But being a conservative I've kind of gotten used to this sort of crap.

Did I miss the memo?

Was there some sort of new law passed that speed limits were reduced by 10km/hr for the long weekend. I swear, everyone on the highway was going 90 today. I passed 3 semis on my way home and I almost never pass a semi because it's their job to get things to where they need to go as quickly as they legally can.

Also anyone who is collecting CPP should have their driver's license taken away. The drive out to my parents' was excruciating today.

I need a break

It seems lately that every time I need to make a decision I end up making the wrong one. Especially when it involves other people. I just don't know how to play well with others I guess. I'm trying to make the right choices for me or at least what I think are the right choices, but in the process I'm hurting those around me.

If you are reading this and you feel like I have wronged you in the past 2 weeks, I'm so sorry. I just need some time away from things to straighten out my head a little bit. I'm going out to the farm this weekend to get some good country air and hopefully get a better handle on things.

Enjoy the long weekend!

Amazon recommends...

Holy crap, you rate one shape shifter romance novel and Amazon thinks you're some sort of sexual deviant.

A while ago I bought some DVDs from Amazon.ca, since then I've been getting frequent e-mails about whatever they happen to have on sale this week. Sometimes I go back and check out what they recommended to me and I'll rate things if I've seen them or read them so that perhaps my recommendations are a little more accurate to what I actually like.

So a couple of months ago this book by Shelley Laurenston came up on the recommendations list. It was a romance novel, and you know every once in a while it doesn't hurt to do a little frivolous reading just to pass the time. So I read it, I liked it, I rated it.

Well today I go to check out my recommendations and a book comes up so I read the synopsis. And holy crap, they must think I'm some sort of freak over there because this books was just... I don't even know how to describe it. Essentially 3 brothers live in a hunting cabin, one of them finds this chick in the woods and brings her home. They then proceed (all 4 of them) to partake in romantic endeavors with each other. Now granted I haven't actually read the book, but holy shit. They're brothers for Christs sake! I don't know if I'm more disturbed that people have actually read this book and given it positive reviews or that someone actually wrote this.

What kind of world do we live in? And please Amazon just recommend nice normal books. Pretty please. Thanks.

Living the Dream

I'm about to start a new feature here at my blog. It consists of telling you every time I beat people at Big League Manager. But before I get into it, let me explain what it is.

Essentially it's a board game in which you run a hockey team. You pick an NHL team to represent you. Some people like to stick with one team, I like to mix it up a little usually choosing small market teams or teams that blow in real life.

Then you distribute the cash, you start with 2.6 million dollars in the bank with which to run your team for the year. Then you "draft "your players which essential means picking them off the pile of cards, you start with 2 first round draft picks. Then you proceed to choose 8 other players from the goalie, defenseman and forward piles until you have 10 total player cards. You choose 6 players as your starting 6: 1 goalie, 2 defensemen, and 3 forwards. The remaining 4 players make up your starting bench. Once you're done this the fun starts. You roll the dice and you land on squares which explain what you need to do next. It's kind of like monopoly in this way. Some of the squares require you to pay money to the league in exchange for the privilege of drafting a new player or signing a player to a long term contract. Some of the squares pay you money for random events like new ownership. Some squares require you to pick up a League Notebook cards, which are a lot like the chance or community chest cards in Monopoly. The best square though is the "play the match" square. Because the whole point of the game is to win the most matches and therefore win the game. You roll a dice with the numbers 1-3 on it for each period to determine how many goals your team scored in that period. The point is of course to score more points than your opponent. There are a lot of other intricacies to this game but I want to keep this description fairly brief. Win the most matches, win the game. If you want to know more about the game go here . If you're looking to try it out come visit. I'll take you on.

Today I picked up the Stanley cup expansion pack in which the top 2 players from the regular season play off to see who takes the prize. I took my Atlanta Thrashers to the promised land tonight, beating out the Edmonton Oilers and the New York Islanders who were managed by my brothers. That's right I'm awesome.

Today was Castle day

I didn't plan it, but pretty much all I did today was catch up on back episodes of Castle. If you guys haven't seen this show, well it's freaking brilliant. Yeah it's one of those murder investigation/cop shows. But it's much more of a Dramody than an actual drama.

The whole Beckett/Castle dynamic is so funny. Just finished watching the Dominatrix episode (Season 2, Episode 16 I believe) and all I can say is, hilarious.
Castle: What aren't you telling me?
Beckett: So much. So So much.
AAAAHAHAHAHA!

Seriously check it out.

Weirdness

I'm sorry about the lack of blogging I've been otherwise occupied as of late. Well that's not exactly true I've been around the internets I've just been trying to sort some stuff out. As you know I'm extremely cerebral so I spend a lot of time trying to sort things out in my head before I get to the point of discussing them with anyone.

But lately I've been really bored and kind of lonely, not in a sexual sense but just in a lack of attention kind of way so I've found myself trying something I hadn't done in a really long time. I turned to the chatrooms of the internet. First of all with all this new social media to people still use chatrooms? Apparently yes, although also apparently for more sexual endeavors than for meeting new people. But I have managed to find a few new people to fill my time.

But let me tell you a story about one of the people I met. I've managed to find myself an internet stalker. Now this is probably mostly my fault but I guess I just didn't expect things to get out of hand so quickly. Things started off innocently enough, just getting all the typical details, age, location, occupation, level of education stuff like that. He seemed like an alright guy and since I don't photograph well I didn't have any current pictures to share so when he asked if he could see me I decided to turn on my webcam. Again totally innocent nothing more than a head shot and he told me he thought I was beautiful, and who doesn't love hearing how attractive they are? But towards the end of that first conversation I should have realized things were a little off when he told me he'd miss me. I, of course replied that he couldn't miss me because he had just met me.

Over the next 2 weeks we briefly chatted almost every day, again very general hey how are you, what did you do today kind of stuff. But then one day he asked me if I was looking for a boyfriend and I said I wasn't actively looking. Then I asked him the same question and he told me he had a girlfriend, to which I was confused because well as of two weeks before he had said he was single. So I inquired further, which made me even more confused. So I decided to drop the subject and move onto something else. So as a joke I asked him if he ever talked about me to his friends and he said yes. So then the follow up was of course what do you say about me. His answer was that he said he had a girlfriend, he was talking about me!

And that freaked me out. I had known this guy for like 3 weeks maybe and he was telling people I was his girlfriend. So at this point I really didn't know if I should just block him so that he wouldn't be able to talk to me anymore or stick it out and see if things returned to somewhat normal. I haven't really talked to him since but he's left me some messages to tell me he misses talking to me. So maybe things could return to normal. I haven't blocked him yet but I'm not above doing it either if things continue to be creepy.

For now I'm managed to not give away too much personal information and he is half a continent away so I think I'm fairly safe, but you just never kn0w what kind of creeps you're going to meet.

I always forget how boring it is here

I came out to the farm for the weekend, because today is Mother's Day and I hadn't been home for a while. But now I'm about ready to go back to the city. It's not like I would be doing anything more at home than I can do here but it just seems a lot more boring.

Now that my parents are hooked up for wireless I can get internet on my laptop but it's slow internet so it probably going to take a whole night to download anything. I'm not really feeling like watching a movie and it's only like half an hour now until the hockey game starts. The Canucks really need to win this one.

Really I just don't feel like doing much of anything. I tried to take a nap this afternoon but that wasn't happening so I ended up catching up on episodes of the Vampire Diaries and Castle. But now I'm out of episodes and like I said the download speeds here suck ass.

One more thing before I leave, I really must watch my expression around my mom. She's very perceptive and as much as I love here there are just some things that I'm not ready to tell her yet or maybe ever.

I'm sick of the CBC

I'm about to say something that most conservatives have been saying for years. I'm sick of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and their obvious bias. For the most part when I don't like something I just avoid it hoping that if others do the same it won't survive. You know the whole voting with your dollars thing. This works for private broadcasters. People don't watch, companies don't buy advertising, broadcaster either changes programing or goes broke. Not so much with our national public broadcaster.

I'm alright with supporting Canadian programming. That aspect of the CBC doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the obvious political stance of the programming. Particularly This Hour has 22 minutes which hasn't been funny in quite sometime anyway. But again I normally avoid it. The problem right now is that CBC is currently carrying parts of the Stanley Cup playoffs so when I forget to change the channel to another before I shut off my TV I'm subjected to a regular attack on my political beliefs. Now I know that the writers of the show are just presenting their own beliefs but why are MY tax dollars going to support them?

Too Funny

You know how I tend to get a little obsessive over things right? Well this whole Sidney Crosby thing is going a little too far. No I haven't been watching every interview that's ever been done. That would take far too much time, though it's not like I have much else to do. But I did do a little Youtube-ing. And I found this:




Now until I saw this I had never heard this song, but it is rather appropriate, no? Also the Max Talbot dancing thing cracks me up everytime! He's hilarious.

Stepping back into the real world

Part of my illness (and probably most illnesses for that matter) is the desire to withdraw from life. I've done a fair bit of this over the past year. Sure I've been going to all my treatments and I still go to Tim Horton's regularly so I'm not a total shut in, but I have kind of made a point of not making plans with people.

This has had two different consequences, the first is that I don't really know what's going on with all of the people who had been a part of my life until I got sick. It also showed who would actually miss me if I was no longer a part of their lives. Those people who haven't even bothered to send an e-mail or facebook message in the last year.

But this post is supposed to be about my efforts to reconnect with some of those people before I really attempt to get my whole life back in order. I've chosen to start with the people who I feel will be most supportive of my efforts. At the same time I don't want people that I'm not quite ready to see to feel that I'm ignoring them or something. That's not the point. It's simply that some people are aware of what I'm going through because I've been able to tell them at least a little bit about what's going on.

Yes it's a small step. But it's a step.

"Honey, what's Sidney Crosby doing in our shower?" and other hilarity

You know you have too much time on your hands when you spend half a day checking out Youtube videos. The quality on this is pretty low but I thought some of these were pretty funny.

Nothing to Report

I know it's been several days since I posted anything but I just haven't had anything to say really. Here's a quick rundown of my weekend.

My older brother came over to do his taxes on Friday, which of course was the last day to file. I had the tax software for the whole family so everyone came here to do it. Everyone else just did it before the deadline.

Then he and I proceeded to play Big League Manager which he bought me for Christmas but I hadn't played yet. Essentially you run an NHL team so you draft player and make trades and sign free agents and of course play matches. It's actually a lot of fun.

On Saturday night my parents came in and took the whole family (me, my brothers and my brother's girlfriend) out to Tony Roma's for supper. It was super good. I haven't been to Tony Roma's in a while and who doesn't like ribs? Then Mom and Dad came over to our place so that Dad could replace the battery in my car. Technically I could have done this myself or paid someone to do this but I just never got it done. I think maybe my parents are lonely and want me to come home more often which requires a working vehicle. I also sent my cat home with them for a while. It's kind of a long story but I'm thinking about giving him up for adoption.

Sunday was a pretty slack day, I watched 2 hockey games and well that was about it. And so there you have my weekend update. Exciting stuff, eh?