hi floor, make me a sandwich

you know what i find a turnoff? Uggs. i dont understand how chicks think Uggs look good, because they look like really bad slippers. if youre a girl, and you wear uggs, please dont take offence, but really, they aren't that flattering. im pretty sure somewhere out there in the thousands of shoe stores that exist ther has to be some warm shoes that dont look like you wrapped a towel around your feet and walked out of your house. footwear that flows and flatters Good, big ugly fabric boot things, Bad.

anyway.

we had our hockey pool draft tonight. I'd say i have a fair chance at the top four. keep in mind i was 9th out of 11 people. we totally thought more first years would show and make thingsmore interesting, but sadly, they have continued to disappoint in the Hanging Out With the Cool Year thing.

i cant remember the exact order i picked in cause i split my list by position and not by round...

Lundqvist, Chara, Souray, Heatley, St. Louis, Nash, Jokinen, Toews, Tanguay and Sam Gagner.

a 509 message for a blog should have a laugh track. like on a sitcom when they have that laugh when someone does something you know they shouldnt do but they go ahead and do it anyway in a way that's just oh so funny? yeah that kind.

there were only three of us rocking jerseys for the pool tonight. Oilers, Canucks and Leafs. after class today i walked in to the lab to check the address of the pub again and there were like 7 or 8 of the first years sitting in there discussing econ and as soon as i walked in they all looked up, stared and went dead silent. so i was like "why did you all go dead silent" and one girl was like "it was because of your jersey" and i was like "yah it's prety awesome isnt it?"

true story.

i have to meet with the lady who's going to help me organize the photo exhibition tomorrow. looks like it'll happen in January sometime, so i have plenty of time to prep stuff for it.

i also did not know that chocolate whipped cream in a can was not new.

hi floor, make me a sandwich

i thought of a quirky title

today my mail consisted of a brown box, the contents of which were not brown at all. coupled with the awesome new Rocky gloves i picked up today with Mossy Oak Break Up pattern on them, im ready to 'shoot' some wildlife. hah. punny.
Realtree can suck it. Mossy Oak totally rules the world of cammo.
i think this semester is going by far too quickly. next wednesday i fly home for thanksgiving. it seems way too soon for that to be happening so where the fuck did september go?
next week we have to submit the first chunk of our capstone to our thesis supers. so today i sat in the lab and hammered out my comparative metropolitan governance presentation for next week so i dont have to do it this weekend and can instead work on my capstone.
i need a new book to read on the toilet.
today i overheard one of the first years commenting on the days financial meltdown saying something along the lines of "good thing we signed up to be in the public sector and not the private" and i thought "shit, is that what i really signed up for?" and then i mulled and pondered and still am to an extent about going all out for those federal servant jobs that lots of people get when they hit the exit door of this program.
if you'd asked me a year or two ago if i'd like to move back to ottawa i would have said yes. if you asked me now, i'd probably say no. last week in my cities class, my prof asked us if anyone identifies themselves as Vancouverites before Canadians. no one said yes, but not everyone is from vancouver anyway. i know i've always had this thing where i identify as Albertan over much anything else, but i think i can say that at this point i'd be proud to identify myself as a Vancouverite. I'm not an expert on the city by far but i dont think that matters. i doubt a lot of people are. chad once asked me if i thought of Vancouver as home. i think i said something along the lines of home is whereever i feel comfortable. so yes, now i'd say that Vancouver is home.
However, i will still hang up my Alberta flag right next to my Oilers penants because it's the right thing to do.

i thought of a quirky title

i have to save a churro and mini doughnuts

dario has pictures of the day's trek here. the most frightening part of the hike was while sitting under the big chunk of ice my camera fell off a rock while i had the timer on and i thought it was completely fucked cause the front part of the lens was crooked and i thought shit, that's not a good sign, but wouldnt ya know it that sucker popped right back into place and works just fine. well, the auto focus is a little slower now but whatever, it never broke anything so i can live with that.

id like to clarify that in the third video i dont actually want to see a dog jump off the cliff, but there were a shit load people people with dogs up there and prior to me turning on the camera i had mentioned something to the effect that it if a dog who liked to chase squirells was up there it would probably follow it over an edge.

based on the people we passed on the way down, here is a list of things people talk about on hikes:

group of young guys: dog shit

group of young women: apartment hunting and shopping

group of old guys in the shade: who gets the first bite of the white chocolate trail snack

young married couple: getting married

old married couple: young people getting married

group of old ladies: getting married AND young people getting married

group consisting of two married couples: being married and anniversaries

group of Sihks in traditional dress with dress shoes: im not sure, but i bet by the time they get up the hill far enough it would be something along the lines of 'fuck this, im wearing prada."

i'll leave it to you to decide who has the better trail conversation.

im not so much a morning person as much as i used to be, but i have to say that getting up at 6:30 on a sunday and being on the trial head before 8am is probably one of the most awesome feelings ever. especially when you hit the peaks knowing youre probably the first few people all day to set foot up there.

i should get my camera armour tomorrow or tuesday, so if the tentative plan to go for one more hike next weekend is a go, i might bring my D200 along for the ride. if i do i dont want to bring my 16-85, even though it gets better pictures than my 24-100. id rather risk the 24-100 getting smacked on a rock than the 16.

Man Made of Cookie is still the frontrunner.

i have to save a churro and mini doughnuts

crosseyed cat

ok ladies, question:

Man made of chocolate:

or man made of cookie?

crosseyed cat

i am i am i said im not myself

part of this whole self motivation thing involves forcing yourself to get up out of bed when your really really really dont want to get out of bed. i was going to get up at 930 today. i was awake at 930 today and i flpped one arm over the edge of the bed. it's a start. so im a half hour behind on my halfway planned out schedule today. whatever. i'll still get work done by being totally not exciting and shutting myself in a computer lab for a few hours and sitting there and typing stuff.

yesterday i heard some people on the bus who were actually talking about the canadian election. listening to people talk about canadian politics is funny because everyone thinks they're a fucking expert on the subject when in reality 99% of people know dick all about it other than the fact that they dont like one leader and they dont like another leader and completely ignore the fact that there actual policies at play here rather than just who speaks the best english.

i went for sushi last night. you know those Entertainent book things that are basically giant books of coupons? yeah we had one of those coupons and when we got to this place and looked at the menu al over it was like 'coupon does not apply to this this this this this this this this this this this or this." so i got annoyed and i actually counted the number of things on the menu it did and did not apply to and you could basically use the coupon on under 11% of the items available. what the hell?? having a coupon that basically forces you customers to order a fucking donburi dish does not leave a lasting impression of good service.

assholes.

i am i am i said im not myself

it's like that Dotminatrix printer paper

you know what s a good song? Hymn of the Big Wheel by Massive Attack. actually Massive Attack in general is pretty fucking good. it's good music to work to or chill out to or whatever.

i finished tallying the first bunch of my surveys. 12 surveys took a combined 8 hours give or take a half hour. that leaves 55 more to tally. then i get to go through all the data even more and more and more and more and more and more......and more. you get the idea.

i dont generally like to work at home. i could, but i never feel as productive at home as i do in the lab. not that's it's much of a lab... more like a room with a bunch of PCs running windows 2000 and far too many rolling chairs. i could even manage to get more work done at home than here and i'd still like i was less productive.

last year i had a general rule that i'd work here until 6 as often as possible. im going to shoot for the same this year. i also have this rule that if you're not up and awake and doing something by 11am, then you've pretty much written the day off. i know that seems kind of stupid given the fact that there are a lot more hours left in the day, but i've had that idea for years and i stick to it.

given the fact that i spend an inordinate amount of time sitting in the lab at school, it also means that i get to partake in the awesome tradition of having dinner to go from the chinese fast food place in the food court. fuck. yes. today i went for the chow mein, the dry pork and the lemon chicken. when i said lemon chicken the lady who owns the place got this HUGE smile on her face and was like "ooooh yes, lemon chicken, very good choice, is very good, i like very much!" damn straight it is. ok, for some odd reason i remember once when i was a kid my family went out for dinner at this chinese restaurant called the Blue Lotus and we ordered lemon chicken and I thought it was probably the greatest thing in the world next to kraft dinner with hotdogs and ketchup in it (come on, you know it's true) but for some reason after that night whenever we'd go out for chinese food lemon chicken would never ever be ordered. and i have no idea why, but ever since then, i've held this strange fascination with lemon chicken at chinese food restaurants. i dont even order it all the time, but i HAVE to check the menu to see if it's there. i have no idea why. but seriously, chinese fast food lemon chicken? totally for the fucking win. we also never went back to that restaurant ever. we switched to the Ginger Beef House. which was awesome as well, but then we stopped going there for some reason and switched to a choice of either Doan's or The Noodle Noodle. considering one is a vietnamese restaurant only one of them has lemon chicken on the menu, and it's never been ordered...SO WEIRD.

ok, im going to finish putting the demographic data in excel for these next ten surveys then im gonna header cause i have to go get my playstation back from chad.

it's like that Dotminatrix printer paper

if you want to destroy my sweater

i totally had an idea i was going to write about but now ive forgotten it and that makes it hard to write about...

duh...

i started recoding and tallying the data in my surveys today. im halfway through twelve of them. that took me about four hours. that leaves 55 left that arent half done...so, using a basic projection of time needed based on todays work that was done it should only take me...a long fucking time to go through all 67 of them.

i half listened/watched to Slacker Uprising while i worked. i wouldnt buy the dvd but watching it for free online was good enough. it's ok i guess. i'd give it a 7/10. i know it's supposed to remotivate people after the last election flopped, but im not sure how relevant it actually is anymore.

tomorrow im going to sit in the lab all day and code more. batshit crazy by the end of the day? most likely.

our hockey draft is next week.

if you want to destroy my sweater

i built this place with broken pieces

im not holding out for a win tonight, but im gonna say yeah the oilers will win tonight. whatevs. they'll be in prime shape come the regualr season anyway so im not worried.

i ordered cammo camera armour in class today because of this marvelous thing we call the internet and wireless and policy classes that see too many graphs being drawn on the blackboard and too little engagement. hoping for the odd moment of comic relief when the overhead projector takes on a mind of its own and decides to totally baffle your prof won't work all semester. why go cammo over solid black? come on. that should be obvious. or not. depending on how obvious you think it is or not.

rambling takes more fucking time to think than it ought to.

i found a new pair of Chucks yesterday. i wanted brown but they only had up to size 7 so i found the next best thing which was charcoal with red trim. it works well.

i want to go hiking again even though my legs are still giving me grief. suck it up legs, there's no bitching out in a few weeks when you have to haul thirty pounds of decoys, shells, and blinds through farm fields.

i get to do a photo exhibition through SFU with panel discussions and a public launch event this year. this year being sometime in the next two semesters. free publicity rules. awesomeness in attendance is mandatory. therefore, should you not come see it at all when it's on, I won't judge you as being less awesome but in my head I totally will be.

i built this place with broken pieces

completely without something

the worst doomsayers are your own thoughts. keeping you up at night with threats of uncertainty, making you wait up staring at the phone wanting it to ring, making the light in the window in the morning look cold. leaning on walls. leaning on walls what... they're the things that keep throwing sounds in your ears and sights in your eyes.
they;re the things that make you wonder what you actually see when you take a good hard look in the mirror and try to ask yourself what's there and you have a hard time finding an answer.
i have shelves and drawers and places to hang things. it's a compact landscape. a lot of the time it seems like im just along for the ride, watching from somewhere inexplicable. sometimes im the oddball sometimes im right in the mix sometimes im sitting in a park at night.
it's strange to hang on the thought that youre 24 and all you own by way of furniture are three ikea shelves and some milk crates.
im also bound and determined to discover a way to tell everything there is to know about a person based on their preference for either smarties or skittles.
if things made sense all the time that would be nonsensical.

completely without something

ain't no thing but a chicken wing Mama Sita

and the Smack Talk Warm Up begins.

PRESEASON IS STILL RELEVANT. GO OILERS!

caaaaaaaaaaaaanSUCKS.

ain't no thing but a chicken wing Mama Sita

eighteen pounds to the frame

im going to wake up tomorrow and my body is going to be like 'DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME!" and I know this because it's asked me this several times today, the first of which was probably somewhere between the second and third peaks of The Chief. and then after that was when Dario started to run down the goddamn path on the way down and of course it looked kind of fun so I also ran slash jogged down and only just about took a header into a rock slash tree four or five or six times...
so all the hiking guides say that you get awesome views from the top, which I don't doubt that you would, but considering we were on the trail by 8am and it was foggy and cloudy that didn't really happen. but that's ok because it was pretty much like hiking through a slasher flick for a few hours.
actually, we managed all three peaks in two and a half hours. not too shabby. and then an hour down of i-cant-feel-my-body running/joggin/jumping/slipping/waling/stumbling/crawling back down.
i know that everyone likes to crest a peak and be able to look out at a spectacular view, but there's something even beter i think about coming to the top and being completely envelopped by clouds and fog and only being able to see twenty feet. it's kind of like being on a big rock poking out of nothing and youre not sure what's around you but you dont really care because it's awesome. so here's the deal, i enjoy going hiking in the fog and clouds when harldy anyone else is around at all and being able to chill out on the top with a few buddies and just sit there without having to watch out for other people or listen to kids or whatever, so plz everyone go hiking much later in the day so as not to bust through the fog with all that. kthxbai.

we passed a church with a marquee that said "Jesus Christ: Deal or No Deal"

eighteen pounds to the frame