Who's Awesome?

That's right, it's me!

I could have included this in the last post, but it was long and this deserves its own place.

I'm a don for Spring 2007! Go me! Minota Hagey, its a residence with 70 upper year students and 2 dons, which is nice because I feel better about the whole thing knowing it's going to be a tag team style match.

Oh, I also have a general question for my readership about said long post below. I find when I post a long post, my commentary and creativity start to suffer. I just kinda dictate what happened, without making it entertaining. I always like Liam's long posts, because its punctuated by hilarious commentary.

So are my long posts kinda boring? If so, I'm going to try to focus more on the important stuff, and make it less of a timeline. Lemme know!

-Danger

An Eventful Week Indeed

Firstly, I'd like to share a quote with you that I found funny:

"It was once projected that a million monkeys with a million typewriters could, by random typing, eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the internet, we know that this is not true."

That's from my Math 239 prof's web page. Apparently he's kind of a big deal. Anyway, I just checked it today so that I could check what my current marks were, and make sure he had them written down correctly. I like his quotes page, if nothing else, so here it is:

http://quoll.uwaterloo.ca/

Many things have happened since my last post, so let's get started, shall we?

My last relevant post was about Wednesday night. Fast forward to Thursday! So Binks, Jordan and I decided that a good night's sleep is for suckers, and all met at Binks's place at about 11:00 to play some Starcraft. Admittedly, we didn't play video games for the whole time, but that doesn't change the fact that we ended up parting ways at about 5:00 am. I would give a blow by blow breakdown of my glorious conquests, but there are more interesting adventures to write about, and my consciousness is waning as midnight approaches. Suffice to say that I admire Binks's will to fight to the last man. "Never give up, never surrender!" I salute you, comrade in arms!

So Friday comes along. I'm up at 8:30, because I'm a grade-A class attender, and if Jordan can do every Friday on 2 hours of sleep, then so can I. I even got a haircut between my first and second classes (there's an hour in between) and I look fan-fucking-tastic. Total knockout, seriously.

I got some useful stuff done after my classes were done, because I'm so damn responsible. I got some Civ 3 time worked in there before dinner, and it was wonderful. I've been playing the same game for the whole term, but it is reaching a thrilling conclusion, and perhaps may even be completed by Christmas, since I'm done on the 16th. Knowing I had an exciting karate seminar to go to the next morning, I figured I'd be tucking in at a highly responsible 11:00, to catch up on some of my lost sleep. Since that would have been boring, and this story is being included in a post, you can reasonably conclude that such was not the case.

I got around to talking to Jenn on MSN at about 9:15, and she claimed to be "very bored." With me being the only familiar contact still at UW for the weekend, combined with my policy of rescuing a damsel in distress in all situations, regardless of the degree of distress, I agreed to go the movies. Plus, I was feeling strangely awake. Superplus, I wanted to see "Stranger than Fiction."

We acted fast, but not fast enough to get to Galaxy Cinema with any real sort of choice of movie to see. We ended up seeing "Deja Vu" since it had good reviews, and it hadn't started yet. It ended up being a pretty good movie, I'd say it's worth watching just for that "hummer scene" when he's chasing the guy. It'd take too long to explain, so either ask me in person or see the movie. Suffice to say, it was the "idea" that was cool, the action was what you could see in most movies.

We got out of the movie at about 1:00, and I showed off my incredible ineptness when it comes to flagging down a taxi. Really, I wanted to try walking back since I'd never walked that route before, but it was rather foggy and cold so I don't think Jenn was going to go for it. I'd need a tough-as-nails companion for that journey, so it had to wait. I figured 1:00 wasn't too bad a time, I'd still get 6 or 7 hours of sleep.

Nope. So Jenn and I got pizza, and ate and chatted it up at her place. That was fine, since I don't see Jenn too often, but I was kind of surprised when I found out it was 4:00am. Ouch. I headed home in that freezing fog, which was good because I always find I fall asleep better if I'm jumping in bed after I've been freezing cold.

So Saturday I'm up at 8:00, and I've got to be at the CIF parking lot by 9:15. I get up, and start getting ready. Next thing I know I'm looking at my clock from my bed and it's fucking noon. Damn it indeed. I had really been looking forward to the karate seminar, since you always learn the coolest stuff at the seminars. Plus, they're awesome social events. It was in Toronto too, so if I'd held on a little longer I could have slept in the car.

I'm losing my "don't need sleep" abilities! I'm gonna have to do better next time. Nancy told me they learned sparring techniques, which is one of the most fun things to do. Sigh!

This post is going to be long. I've got a huge playlist of Billy Joel, and I'm sticking through this to the end. Those with heart conditions and pregnant women who claim I'm the father should probably leave now, if they haven't already.

So it's noon and I'm up. Being the optimistic type, I immediately set about salvaging my Saturday. I sent a message by carrier pigeon to a certain Mothafuckin' McKenna whom you all know and love. Sensing opportunity, he replied in kind, including a special 10-set of integers which would allow us to communicate over great distances using the our auditory senses. He expressed and interest in seeing "Stranger than Fiction," and he agreed to go cross-country to get there. A plan was formed! I would have my adventure!

So I met Liam at his place at around 5:30, and we set off for Galaxy Cinemas, leaving plenty of time for our 6:45 target show time. Being the resourceful fellow that he is, Liam had printed off a google map of our route, while I had merely glanced at google maps and intended to rely on my memory and line-of-sight. Good call Liam, good call.

We started out along the side streets around Liam's humble abode, until we gained our first line-of-sight view of our destination. From the Weber St. bridge we could see the giant Galaxy sign, so left civilization behind and began making our way through the wilds. Now, since some of my readers may be familiar with my "shortcuts" I would like to state that this course of action was agreed upon by both parties before heading out. Liam actually suggested that we could cut through the fields near his place, so I was not leading an innocent accomplice to their doom!

We started out by going through the tall grass and low bushes behind what appeared to be a junkyard. I didn't see the need for barbed-wire fencing to protect junk but apparently the owner did. Anyway, it quickly became apparent that Liam and I had failed to consider a few key details about a cross-country route. Firstly, at 5:30/6:00 at this time of year it's already pitch black, and there are few lights in grassy fields. Secondly, grassy fields beside highways are often home to large ditches, and full fledged creeks. Our first encounter with such an enemy came as we just finished getting around a large building (which I had mistakenly identified as a hill when we were a fair ways back). Since neither of us was keen to attempt to jump a fairly wide creek in the dark, we decided to try the other side of the building.

So we went the other way around the building and crossed the creek at some sort of bridge. This way meant that we had to walk along beside some barded-wire fence with security cameras all over it, but we figured we were probably on the safe side of the law, so it was all good. Since fences seem to be the name of the game in supposedly deserted fields, we also came upon one right before the expressway. No bard wire? No problem. Liam's coat is apparently near and dear to him, so he tossed it over to me before climbing over himself. So now we were at the expressway, and we could once again see the Galaxy sign. Progress!

Man, the more tired I am, the less details I include. Consider the above part 1, I'm going to save this and write the rest tomorrow.

Intermission.

Alright, please return to your seats. I'm up, and I'm typing.

Crouching in the grass next to the expressway we consult our trusty map again. We're right where we want to be, we just have to cross the expressway. Actually it wasn't so bad, since it wasn't rush hour traffic anymore. Liam suggested we walk along until we get to the bridge over King Street and then just jump down, since that's where we were going anyway. While that may have made for a more interesting post, I figured we probably wanted to reach the theater as unscathed as possible.

After another little stroll through a grassy field we came out beside the Galaxy parking lot. Not caring enough to find the official entrance we jumped this fence too. Destination reached! We made it, and were standing in line for tickets with about 20 minutes to spare. "Stranger than Fiction" is a pretty good movie, Will Ferrel is not what you've come to expect from him, he's actually acting in this movie, instead of being crazy. Good for him.

Our walk back was uneventful, since we stuck to the sidewalks.

Oh yeah, I also forgot about my hockey game on Sunday, so I missed it. Icetime is hard to come by around here, so I felt bad about that one. Oh well.

Tuesday was karate grading day, I'm orange belt now! Huzzah for me.

That's all for now folks. I'm at over 1600 words now and I have an assignment due tomorrow.

-Danger

Murder Most Fowl!

It was Thanksgiving in the U.S. yesterday...

On to business!

I noticed the other day on my bananas that some helpful soul had attached a sticker informing me that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was coming out on Dec. 5. And I was like "Wait, there's an advertisement for a movie on my food?!?"

It reminded me of the first part of this Futurama episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-0z3P4DyE

The part I'm referring to is in the first 3 minutes, so it won't take you long to watch.

-Danger

Small World

Alright, so tonight the karate club had a special guest instructor, all the way from Stratford! Huzzah for us! Anyway, he was a good guy, with a bit of that "Stratford flair" if you catch my drift. Maybe he was just eccentric, I dunno. Anyway, we did a bunch of ju jitsu stuff (which is one of my favourite things) and he brought 3 people from his dojo to help out. It was a good class, but my story really starts afterwards when we all went to McGinnis Front Row for.

I was sitting at the end of the table with a few people from the UW club as well as an orange belt guy and a black belt girl from Stratford. (As for names, ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.) Anyway, the orange belt guy is a 2nd year engineer and I happened to hear him utter the words "kind of a dick" when talking about someone in his program he knew. I gasped and immediately exclaimed "You mean Travis Ricard!" Guess what folks? He did mean Travis! What a small world.

In his defense, he said afterward that "he isn't really a bad guy, he just panics all the time and it gets on your nerves." So if Travis google's his own name, finds this, and is insulted by this guy's comments I would advise against the course of violence. I just thought it was funny that somebody I met randomly at a karate seminar would be talking about someone I went to school with in the bar afterwards.

Good times.

-Danger

Think of the children!

Oh boy, take a look-see at this:

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/061119/K111904AU.html

Global Orgasm for Peace?

My very first question was "when you say everyone in the world, aren't you forgetting something?" Like the fact that a good portion of the world is 12 and under? 8 and under? etc...

I don't think getting soldiers to wack off (I mean, they're wives/girlfriends don't go to war with them) will stop them from fighting, these guys have stamina. They're not 50+ years old like these organizers are...

Activists; giving themselves a warm fuzzy feeling while actually accomplishing dick all since the beginning of time.

-Dwight

Distraction!

Sigh, I have an accounting midterm tomorrow, but I can't seem to concentrate for it at all...

Will I regret it?

Well, maybe not, since there's so many "activities" we do in class I end up learning the subjects pretty thoroughly as we go. I'd still feel better if I could do some good solid studying. It doesn't help that all their suggested questions say "To Be Announced" for this section of the course on the course outline. I don't like using their website because whenever I go there using Firefox 2.0 it says "your browser is out of date and isn't compatible with this website." Um, no, actually your fucking site is out of date and needs to be updated, you dumb shit.

So long story short I have to use Internet Explorer, and that offends me on an ethical level. I think it's morally wrong to subject me to IE. Borderline inhumane.

I think my best bet is to go to bed now with an early alarm set, and hope I'll be in a more effective mood in the morning. The midterm's not until 2:30, but I have morning classes to go to so I won't have that much time. Should be fine though.

I'm really only posting this because I'm distracted. Plus, maybe you find this mini-rant entertaining.

That's all.

Weekday Update

So no big new news.

Amy and I talked, and we get along a lot better now than we have in the last few weeks (months?) of dating, so I think we're set. We talked a bit more freely now that we're more used to "not dating" and Amy seems to be a lot more clever and observant than I gave her credit for.

So that's good. We'll probably still do dinner once a week or so, since things ended on good terms and we're making a fairly comfortable transition.

If you're confused then you didn't read the post of Liam-esk proportions down below. Go do that now.

And since I realize my post seems ambiguous when I gave it a quick read through I'll just state that we both feel it's a good idea to break up and we're both officially "on the market" again, more or less.

Oh, and I must apologize to Jordan for trapping him as he tried to sneak out of the caf, he had the look of a dear caught in headlights. Well, he looked like he felt extremely awkward anyway.

Changes and Reactions

Well, I was gonna post this with a little bit more backstory, or some sort of reflection or something like that, but my thoughts don't stay constant enough to commit them to writing quite yet. I kind of bounce around between extremes, and I'm not really sure where things will settle yet.

So Amy and I broke up. Just for reference, it happened last Thursday (the 9th) and basically we just talked about it and came to the general, somewhat temporary conclusion that it was a good idea. There was no fighting or anything, it actually went really smoothly as far as I'm concerned.

Now, I've been in contact with some of my readership since then and I admit I didn't mention this bit of important news. The thing is, it's not that I didn't mention it because it's overwhelmingly devastating to me or anything. I just find it so damn hard to fit it in to regular conversation! I figure I mustn't show much change of disposition or something, I don't really know.

I ended up telling Jordan, and it was just thrown into the conversation and made terribly awkward for him. I figured it wouldn't fit into Binkle's roommate comments so I never mentioned it to him then, so don't be offended Binks.

I probably could have mentioned while LANing it up with Liam and Jordan, since at that point Jordan already knew and Liam probably would find it more relevant than most others, since he got along well with Amy. Whenever Amy visited last year she would always be asking "where's Liam?", "can we visit Liam?", and "why aren't we with Liam right now?"

I visited Beth on Sunday as I was passing by, but she was heading out. I got a "hello hug" out of it anyway. So I visited again tonight since I hadn't talked to her for over a month, plus I wanted to tell her about me getting an individual interview for donning. Anyway, the point is I also figured she'd be a good source of wisdom on the subject of dating (for some reason girls always seem to have more enthusiasm such things in any case) but I find there is no good way to pop that info into a general conversation! She also seemed busy, so I wanted to make sure I didn't overstay my welcome. Mind you I've found for the longest time I get dry-mouthed and rambling at odd times around Beth, so perhaps my failure to deliver the package should be more expected.

The point is that for some reason I'm not very good at giving the people around me the update. So I figured I'd make a post and let the rumor mill do its thing. So have at it!

As for details, I will sparsely provide them, and then answer more inquiries when things get hammered out. Amy and I agreed to have dinner on Tuesday and "decide" whether its a good idea to really break up, kind of a follow up sort of thing. We're both being cautious, I guess because we've been together for so long (2 years, 4 months and change) and neither of us has had such a serious break-up before.

Reactions on my part? Well, I didn't plan on doing that, especially since things are kind of up in the air, plus I'm not really set on anything yet. Here we go anyway, we'll see what I come up with. I've got a good Billy Joel playlist on and I'd like to let it run through.

On Thursday night I was pretty depressed about things. I had been semi-planning this sort of thing for a while, but after we had decided I realized how long we'd been together. It felt like a lot to give up, and a lot of change. One of my main gripes with the relationship was the fact that Amy always wanted to spend so much time together and I wanted to do other things, but upon the immediate reflection after a breakup that seems rather trivial.

I was feeling down on Friday too, but it's hard for me to determine how much of that was the breakup and how much of that was the pressure of my imminent Saturday morning midterm. I did dinner with Jordan and Binks, and then a Sobey's trip that was rather chilly. (Weather wise, it was a jovial trip otherwise) For the rest of the night I hammered my nose to the books and got studying. I talked to Amy on MSN while I studied, just kind of chatting back and forth about how we were feeling about stuff. We've been pretty openly communicating since Thursday, which is good because I'd rather make this as a rational decision. Amy seemed much more agreeable about the decision than I expected on Thursday, though I think she may do some back-peddling before Tuesday. We'll see.

Saturday I awoke bright and early for my 8:30 midterm and got in some last minute studying. It went quite well, despite my tiredness and by 10:30 (when it was over and I was home) I felt great. I thought about looking up where Waterloo's Remembrance Day ceremony was going down, but I figured I wouldn't be able to get there in 20 minutes anyway. The rest of Saturday was just plain awesome, I LANned it up with Jordan and Liam all afternoon, went to hockey at 7:00 (and scored) did my laundry and cleaning when I got back and then went and saw Talladega Nights (good movie) for free with Warrior Weekends. A good day, and I was starting to feel better about being single and sexy.

On Sunday I was awoken at 11:00 by my phone. My parents were offering to take me out for lunch and then home for supper since they had a big roast for tonight. Clearly this was sympathy since I told my mom about me and Amy on Friday, but I felt like having a few good meals. They told me they'd pick me up at 12:30, which was awesome because I wanted to visit Beth that day anyway and I figured the best time would be the present. I got myself fed, washed and generally hygienic and headed on out. However, as mentioned somewhere way above she was heading out that day (family stuff) and needed to change and get going. I was all like "that's fine, I was just passing by" (I'm so nonchalant). I did get a hug for reasons I can't quite stick my finger on, which somehow made me feel good for the rest of the day. Well, that and playing NHL 2004 with my dad and GoldenEye with Stu. But it was mostly the hug for some reason.

Today was all classes all day, but it went well enough. During Saturday and Sunday I felt good because I was distracted from the current situation, but today I think I've started really feeling like we're doing the right thing. I was worried before that I wouldn't ever find anybody else that I would really get along with, but I think staying in a relationship because you feel like you have no choice won't make that relationship very pleasant. Especially since I'm the kind of guy who always has a "plan B." I like to know where the fire exits are, if you know what I mean. So while I don't have any particularly negative feelings toward Amy, I think I'm feeling a lot more set in the decision. We'll see what happens tomorrow, I'll keep you posted.

I guess my princess is in another castle.

Something I saw in the MC

I have bigger, less hilarious news, but for now I'd like to share with you a poster I saw in the MC. Click on the image to make the words big enough to read.

Time Well Wasted

My toe is doing much better now, maybe I'll even post about it soon. Not now though, I had a different idea.

On Friday night I spent 8 wonderful hours with my one true love; Civillizations III. I bet you thought I was goind to pull an Aaron there. I know, I see his MSN names too, but fear not! I do not suffer from the same sappy symptoms of an enormous influx of extrogen.

I'm picking on Aaron because he doesn't read this. Also because I think his MSN names are funny.

That's right folks, I came back to my room at about 3:30 on Friday, fully intending to get my assignments for next week done when I say her. She was beautiful, sitting on the desk, wearing that CD case she knows I love. I decided my assignment could wait, after all it was only 3:30 and I was free all night. I could barely contain my excitement as I opened the case an firmly put the CD in the drive.

Time flies when you're having fun. I already had a game going, with about 7 Civs left in the game at the beginning of the modern era. As I started playing I was nailed with the devastating betrayal of a trusted ally! I hurried and rallied Then, just as I had taken back some lost territory and rounded out my territory I made a terrible mistake involving stacking a privateer and a submarine on the same square. Then...

You know what? I'm gonna stop there, because I could go on for pages and pages and you'll all get bored.

Anyway, I ended up playing for a total of 8 hours, taking a 1 hour break to make dinner and watch the Simpsons in the common room. And it was great.

I guess sometimes you just have to take a break.

So then this morning I did the carousel interviews activities for donning in Spring 2007. It was informal and pretty good, not full-fledged fun but it wasn't a waste of time either. I know my title may suggest otherwise, but this part is excluded. I also saw Beth there, though I didn't really get to talk to her because she was helping run it and she was pretty busy. I know she's gotta stay impartial anyway.

My parents came and picked me up at about 12:30 and brought me home. I decided to finally use my free 2 month trial of Xbox live and spent a great deal of the afternoon trying out my various games online. It wasn't as cool as I thought it would be, but it's alright.

So now it's 11:30 on Saturday night and I haven't done any school work in the last two days. I have 3 midterms coming up this week, so I wanted to get ahead too. But the thing is, I don't really even regret my slacking off. Now I feel like doing some work and getting things done, whereas before I was running out of steam. I'd say my Friday and Saturday goofing off was time well wasted.