Things have a nasty little habbit of happening here on 30 seconds’ notice. That kind of happened on Friday. Mom was in a fair bit of pain, and ended up going to Ottawa to get herself checked out Friday morning. There’s speculation that it may or may not be something similar to what she was dealing with in January. If it is, it’s nowhere near as severe so it can be left to either heal on its own or be delt with in a month or two if it’s not getting any better or worse. That left us free yesterday, and her particularly pain free, to spend some quality time with my nephew.

His parents were in Ottawa for their own reasons–I suspect it had a lot to do with a shopping trip and a stop off at the casino, so he belonged to us for the day. He’s almost 6 months old now, and you might argue he looks more like a 9-month-old or older. Already he’s fitting into clothes etc for up to 12 months in some cases. So yeah, spending time with him pretty much took care of the majority of the day. And, yes, was exhausting as hell–but I’ll take it.

It of course meant today was an easy day, with the only thing worth going out for being a trip to the Santa Fe Restaurant for supper–if you’re in the Pembroke area and do not stop in to this restaurant, you’re ripping yourself off. Just sayin’. They do everything from prime rib to Italian to yes, Mexican. Costs a little more than most places, but you’ll probably not be ordering dessert. Or breakfast the next morning. I’ve been home for 2 hours and I’m still stuffed.

There will be nephew pictures posted up here at some point. Most likely, later tonight. As for right now, there’s a hockey game on, caffinated things in the fridge, optionally alcoholic things to be put in said caffinated things, and a laptop that still needs to be tweeked just a little tiny bit. And I need to explode. Excuse me while I go do that.

Not for the first time, I ended up adopting a shift-worker’s routine. Specificly, a night-shift. By 8:00 this morning, I was contemplating sleep. By about 2:30, I was contemplating not being. And yet, since the end of November I was doing very well at, well, not doing that–largely because I had one thing or another to do during actual daylight hours. While I love this recent bit of downtime, it’s only served to prove me right. I was not meant for a 9-5 schedule. Unless it’s 9:00 PM to 5:00 AM. Hey, any tech companies in the Ottawa/Pembroke area need a geek for graveyard shift? I’m looking.

I’ve had a problem for the last couple years. Fortunately, it’s an easily solved one. Just about everything I’ve watched since about 2004 has been downloaded, or otherwise ripped from DVD’s borrowed or rented from elsewhere. This includes movies, TV shows, even the occasional hockey game–hey, I didn’t always have Leafs TV. The reasons are two-fold.

Movie companies have gotten incredibly sneaky with what they stick in that first track of current DVD’s. The one track you can’t actually skip/fast forward past–usually it just contains the FBI warning that says you can’t copy them. They’ve gotten good at cramming previews and other advertisements onto that first track. I’ve heard it said that some DVD’s actually have enough un-ignoreable advertising on there that you could theoretically run into the kitchen, whip up a quick snack, and come back in time to hit play. Download the movie instead, and snap. Problem solved.

TV shows have a similar problem. Only they actually make that problem slightly worse on TV. A typical hour-long show, minus advertisements, only actually lasts about 45 minutes. But they interrupt the show every 5-10 minutes for at least that long filled with commercials. It gets worse during live events, such as the olympics. I swear the advertising doubles at that point. And, as usual, they go to commercial during a semi-important portion of the said live event. Well, at least they didn’t cut off during most of the Canadian portions of the events.

My solution to both problems, except for the whole live events thing, is the almighty torrent. About 95% of everything I watch can easily be found, and downloaded, via that means–anything from CSI to Deep Space 9, and a few of the less popular shows that got me through highschool. Yeah, the MPAA may have a thing or three to say about it, but well, I have a thing or three to say about unwanted ads, too. I’d say we’re even. The only difference is, I won’t spend money to take down the MPAA. Yeah, I’m a pirate when it comes to TV shows. I also have a difficult time caring. You can blame the MPAA, and ads. I do. And I sleep just fine.

Yes, I love my family. And yes, I even love spending 2 weeks or so chasing after a couple of dogs–one of whom still technically belongs to me, after all–while family flees the country. But, I also love when the two weeks or so is over and I get to come back to my apartment and actually relax. I had no idea how tired I was until I walked through the door and realized I didn’t have to be anywhere for, like, ever if I was so inclined. And I just might be so inclined. I feel like I’ve kind of been all over the place since the beginning of the year, mostly because I sort of have. I do believe, if things end up working out that way–and I’m gonna try damn hard to convince them to work out that way, the remainder of this month and maybe half the next will be spent doing absolutely nothing beyond the obvious. The obvious being, flaking out, looking for work, trying to stay sane, watching the olympics, throwing back the occasional coke–hey, I need my caffeine, dammit–and trying to coax a laptop that it really really really desperately wants to get back to behaving for me. Really. More on that when I figure out exactly what’s wrong with it. In the meantime, I’m home. I’m supremely tired. And the laptop’s not doing anything productive for the rest of the night–mostly because I’m rebuilding things. In short, this means I’m going to go find me some caffeine. Or my bed. Whichever’s closer.

Since birth, I’ve had glaucoma, which has resulted in, among other things, my retinas being detached–a significant contributing factor to my not having sight. When I was younger, the resulting fluctuations in eye pressure glaucoma triggers made for some very insane headaches. It was discovered that those headaches were as a result of the pressure quite literally being out of controll. Several surgeries later, and they managed to fix that–I’ve gone years without having headaches to that extent or that frequently. The headaches I did get after that point were, well, no different from the types of headaches anyone else would get–and a lot more manageable.

Possibly because of my higher than normal pain tolerence, or because I’ve had and survived more powerful headaches, a typical headache usually doesn’t bother me. I can and usually do go through a normal headache day without breaking stride–anyone who wasn’t me likely wouldn’t know I was dealing with a headache. Where most folks would be reaching for the tylenol or something like it, I’d usually just turn down the TV.

Lately though, I’ve been dealing with more frequent headaches of the type I actually have to take notice of. These particular headaches, one of which I actually spent last night taking care of, usually take up residence right behind my left eye–the one that hasn’t suffered as extensive damage from my dealing with glaucoma. And, more often than not, they usually result in me having to actually take it easy for a few hours until they pass. In the event that doesn’t work, I have been known to pop a tylenol or two to get rid of the last of it.

Because I’ve had pressure issues before, and the symptoms are somewhat similar, I’m partially wondering if it may be the result of the glaucoma starting to get a little more out of controll again. It hasn’t happened since I was like 3 or 4, but that’s not to say it hasn’t started. Since my left eye has pretty much not been all too badly harmed by it, short of the detached retina and the need to replace a cornia, it might very well not be beyond logic to suggest that we might have a tiny case of reappearance in that eye.

Since I’ve been curious anyway about exactly how undamaged the optic nerve actually is in that eye, and–though I don’t know that I’d actually go through with it–if there was a way that, should the nerve still be relatively healthy, it could be put to some use in an attempt to at least give me partial sight, I’ve thought about getting myself in to see a specialist anyway. Never having had sight before, it’s not something I’m all over getting or my world will never be the same or anything, but I like knowing what my options are, should I someday decide hey, this is worth considering. In doing that, I may also bridge the headache topic with the specialist at that time, should I decide to actually go that route. Not to suggest they’re definitely related, but it would be an excuse to see one way or another. Until, if, I actually get around to doing something like that, however, it’ll be business as usual for me. Including whichever down time I need to deal with another just like it. It’s only a few hours–my day’s not completely written off as a result, so I don’t see it as a huge deal. Besides, it could always be worse–I hear migraines are hell.

Over the few months leading up to the Christmas holidays, the original cordless phone set I had for the apartment–one of those older two-handset jobs–was really starting to let go of, like, everything. I had one who’s battery might last 30 minutes, and another who’s battery might last 30 seconds. My parents, who bought me those phones a few years ago, had the exact same ones–and were having at around the same time the exact same problem. I can’t even remember what model they were, but turns out they were pretty well crap. They were promptly replaced in both households by phones made by Panasonic instead. We got our hands on one of those digital answering systems–the phones, 3 of them for my place this time, come with their own built-in answering machine so you’re not paying someone for voicemail. I didn’t exactly plan to use that, but it’s nice to know they have that option.

We got them set up, and were introduced to a rather neat little surprise. It seems, though we didn’t know this at the time, the handsets in use at my parents’ place come with the option to have call Id information read out to you via text to speech built into the individual handsets. Now, granted, you can’t use the same method for being able to go back through your history of missed calls, but this is perhaps the second model of phone I’ve actually seen it implemented on–the first, a corded model several years ago, quite frankly made me want to pitch it out the window. And the thing wasn’t even mine. Naturally mine didn’t come with that option, but it was still nice to see some of them did.

I have no idea if Panasonic is actually starting to consciously make their equipment just that much more accessible, or if it’s another example of a measure of convenience just so happening to double as something you can use without requiring the ability to actually see your phone. The naive part of me would like to think the former, but here in the real world, it’s more than likely the latter. Still, it’s a nice touch for a phone system. I wouldn’t mind seeing this end up becoming a trend for other manufacturers. For the curious, here’s one of the models with talking call ID on Amazon. I wonder if it’s too late for an exchange…

I have absolutely no browser loyalty, whatsoever. I guess I haven’t had it for quite a few years now. For the most part, I’d use Internet Explorer–mostly because it was the default choice when I’d click on something and I didn’t particularly feel like changing it. But I kept Firefox around anyway, for those few occasions where something would come up that IE just wouldn’t play nice with. Or, more recently, in the event I came across a site employing CAPTCHA technology, which sadly neither browser’s come up with a built-in answer for yet. Recently though, meaning just this afternoon, I’ve decided it’s been a while since I did any real major playing with firefox. They’ve made a hell of a lot of improvements, or so the various sites who take note of such things have said, and I wanted to see for myself. So, as of right now and for at least the next couple days, IE gets kicked to the curb in favour of the open source alternative. It may only be a couple days–I haven’t quite decided yet. So far, it does seem to be running a little better on this machine, so it might stick around for longer than that. If nothing else, it’s a temporary break from staring at IE all day. Yeah, I know, you people who’ve been using it forever already can laugh now. I never said I was quick to change.

Of course, that realization didn’t quite hit me until Sunday, when I finally decided I’d stop procrastinating and go through some of what I pulled off my laptop’s HD last June before I whiped it and installed Linux. And the things I managed to avoid deleting since I bought the thing in 2004 or 2005 actually manage to scare me. Most noteably things that I forgot I was even involved in.

I’ve been hugely into role playing for a number of years. Since highschool, really. Most of my early creations, though, ended up lost between here and there when the first laptop I owned decided it would rather spectacularly break. Physically. Of course, it was a toshiba so that was kind of expected. But I kept, or tried to keep, logs of as much of the old days of RP as I could. Mostly as something to refer back to should a situation come up where I needed to.

One of my adventures in RP was a medieval style MUD, or multi-user-dimension/dungeon/whatever you want to call it, called Eternal Struggle. I played a variety of characters on that game–anything from the somewhat helpful healer to the cold blooded killer with absolutely no problem pinning you to the wall with your own knife. And he’d give you a pleasant little smile while he did it. Reading back through some of those logs, I reminded myself just how much of an asshole I can be. Sometimes, I surprise the hell out of me.

I play a couple of characters in a Star Trek game, too. Star Trek: A Call to Duty, to be accurate. One of those I’ve had going on since 2006. I forgot about some of the awesome RP I’ve been involved in with that one as well, including a sort of special event RP that went on for a couple months, where I got to hang out with and torment the hell out of a few people I didn’t used to talk to until then. One of these days I’ll get around to posting some of the stuff. But right now, I’ll just say, 4 years later looking back at some of these thinggies, I crack me up.

Sometimes, procrastination is a good thing. At least, it is when it comes to me. I’m kind of thankful I haven’t yet gone through and hit the delete key on about 90% of this stuff. Now, if I can just remember to put them somewhere where I can find half this stuff again. Eh, I’ll do it later.

I used to at least make an attempt to watch American idol every couple weeks. Mostly because I was living at home and we only had 2 working TV’s, both of which would usually be in use, but a small part of me found something about the show fascinating. It wasn’t necessarily any of the actual talent–there haven’t been all that many that I’ve seen that made me want to pick up the phone and repeatedly call in to vote, or clear my schedule the next week to see if they ended up bombing out or if they made it into the top fifty million. I thought it might have been the overall hillarity of some of these people who somehow got the judges to believe they could sing, only to have themselves booted when someone outside the actual broadcast could make the decision. Then, I figured it was the general amusement I got out of listening to people who thought they really really could sing, only to discover–not entirely too unexpectedly–they really really couldn’t. Nope, wrong again.

Why do I bother to tolerate a show like American Idol, when I’d much rather be doing just about anything else? Because at least once in a season, usually only once, you get that one particular fool who figures him or herself to be god’s gift to anything musically inclined, and there’s just nothing you can say or do short of tranking them that’ll make them shut up about it. My major complaint with American Idol? It only happens maybe once in a season. So after I see it, I no longer have any real interest in watching. So I usually skip out.

Take tonight’s show, for example. I watched it only because it was on, my mother had the remote, and I’m mommy sitting. And, admittedly, because if the show completely sucks at everything else, I can at least snicker at some of the things that come out of Simon Cowell. It didn’t disappoint on either front tonight, but now that I have no real interest in watching next week, I can make do with what I saw.

Near the end of tonight’s show, we were treated to a very stoned-sounding dood who thought, though I have no idea why–other than the fact he very well might have been stoned, that he could actually carry a tune without a half ton truck. And he chose to demonstrate his unquestionable singing ability with Amazing Grace–not exactly world’s most popular, or best really, song to begin with. That was mistake number 1. Mistake number 2, though? Actually having the nerve to be surprised when all 3 judges pretty much simultaneously decided he redefined suckitude. Mistake number 3? Insisting they were wrong and offering to give them an encore. Whether they wanted to hear it or not. The gentleman’s reward? A personal escort outside. In handcuffs. Whether he wanted to or not.

Now, why in the hell doesn’t American Idol show more stuff like that? That’d make the show about 5 times more interesting to watch. Hell, I might even manage to last through to the finals if they happened to have someone up there who, upon receiving the impression they’re god’s gift to anyone with ears, got told to go pack. Maybe I’m just abnormal, but seeing a person get all uppity like that about a few million people who all think he should be flipping burgers instead of singing would be worth sitting through the rest of the crap. My problem with American Idol really is that simple. They pretty it up too much. That’s probably why you only see maybe 3 or 4 of the people who end up going home–the others, they figure, are probably too strung out at someone having the nerve to prick their ego. And thus, there goes any entertainment value for me. Don’t get me wrong, Idol’s an okay show, if there’s nothing else on and I’m desperate. But it could be so much better. And I might walk away from a show not feeling like taking a nap.

Dear Idol producers. If you happen to be seeing something similar to this here entry, take it under advisement. I have a problem with your show. It bores me to tears. Thank you.

Also, randomly tacked on side point: I still maintain Simon Cowell should consider a career in politics. We’d then at least know what we’re getting, even if we don’t all agree with or like the guy. More than we can say now.

And it didn’t even take me banging my head against Google Reader. I’ve been looking for something portable to replace my current favourite, an RSS plugin for Outlook 2003. Mostly because, on days like today when I’m not sitting in front of my computer, as much as I love being able to have direct access to my feeds in Outlook, it helps me all of not at all at the moment. And I might have found it–at least a temporary fix, until it breaks or I find something better.

The software, written in python and running on any OS that therefore supports the language–I have it on Linux at the moment, is just called Planet. It takes one or more RSS feeds, such as the feed from this very blog, and merges them into a single HTML file. The design looks not a whole lot different from most blogs–the entries are sorted latest first, by date, and optionally by feed, with individual headings indicating the start of a new segment. It looks incredibly customizeable, although I’ve not yet actually gotten much time to play with it–a disadvantage of all my current subscriptions being, as said before, on my computer at home which is precisely where I’m not.

All the HTML, XML, and other such files are built dynamicly every update from templates. Those templates contain the raw HTML or XML code, plus a few variables understood by the program for printing things such as the feed name, entry title, when it was posted, etc. The program itself can be scheduled to run via Linux’s crontab command, or the Mac OS equivalent. Or, if you’re insane enough to have managed to get python running on Windows, you can suffer even more brain damage and update it via the task scheduler. I wouldn’t recommend it-windows has a nasty little habit of breaking task scheduler, but it’s your brain.

The only thing that would make me not recommend it for non-techy users is absolutely no problem for me–entirely manual instalation and configuration. Everything from determining how long between checks for new content–enter the crontab utility–to the addition of new feeds absolutely must be done by hand. Personally, even though it’s not really a huge problem for me, I’d still have much rathered it give you the option of just tossing it an OPML file and letting it draw the feed info from that. But then, I also have well over 100 feeds to transfer over when I get the time. Still, for what it does it looks highly promising. And, it can always go away if and when I find something better. But for now, it beats what’s currently out there for hosted solutions (No, FeedMyInbox, I don’t want to pay you $16 for the privelege of being able to have you email all my feeds to me. Sorry.). So, I’ll give it a try for a bit and either really love it or tos it out the nearest window. In the meantime, I have back entries of feeds to go through when I get home anyway, so I can take my time with the moving everything over to the new software. And it’ll definitely take its time.

Sometimes, my mother and I have the strangest and most irritating conversations known to man. We had one such conversation that left me very much scratching my head in all sorts of confusion during a coffee run that got cut short yesterday morning. Within walking distance of my apartment, there’s a Tim Hortons location. I haven’t been here and organized enough yet to actually figure out how to get there from here without getting myself killed. But, it’s still been on my plans to do so. I brought that up with the mother over coffee at the said Tim Hortons location, initially on our way to maybe accomplish other tasks–although at the moment, it escapes me just what those other tasks might have been.

The thing to remember about my mother, and sometimes even I forget this, is she’s overly paranoid. She’s not quite at the level where she’ll wrap her house in something with some degree of protective coating or something at the slightest hint of a viral outbreak in town, but she’s reached the level where she gets a little jittery when I contemplate doing something as adventurous as taking the city bus in Ottawa. She gets a little anxious when I consider taking one of my cross-border trips–although she’d never admit it without some arm twisting.

So, when I mentioned in passing maybe getting around to actually figuring out how to get from A to B, I could tell right off it was defensive mom to the rescue. I thought she’d want to do her usual playing 20 questions about how I planned to do that, who I’d call, and would I be reachable in the process–she’s big on insisting I be available, even when it’s rather inconvenient for me to do so. Instead, and without blinking, she very calmly, and very casually suggested I should first investigate getting a guide dog before doing so. When I asked why she thought so, her answer just about floored me. Apparently, the dog will know if a car’s trying to cross in front of me, or is stopped in my way, and physically prevent me from crossing in that particular area. Because, you know, I wouldn’t be able to tell judging by the sound of the extremely not quiet engine that there was a quickly moving object about to take my face off were I to step into the street right about now.

Now, I have nothing against people who currently have, or have had, guide dogs. Clearly, it works for you. Or at least, at one time it did. It doesn’t for me. My reasoning is actually quite detailed, and will probably get an entry of its own up here at some point, but suffice it to say I get along far better by way of the cane than I would by way of the guide dog. And, in fact, am probably more likely to actually pay attention to things, simply because I won’t have much of a choice. Really though, I prefer that method of travel and am used to it, it hasn’t broken on me yet, so I don’t particularly feel the need to go messing with it. It’s not like one of my computers, or other pieces of recently tinkered with technology–I don’t particularly favour playing around with it until something goes sideways.

My mother knows this, and yet still she decided I needed a guide dog before learning a route to a coffee shop in a relatively small town. Ignoring the fact I’ve navigated Canada’s capital by way of the cane for a year and a half and nothing on my person shattered or otherwise stopped functioning. I think I can manage to maneuver my way a block and a half or whatever it is to fill my coffee needs without killing myself.

Needless to say, she was reminded of why I haven’t bothered and don’t plan to bother with getting a guide dog. And, as conversations like that often do, it kind of ended at about that point. I still don’t think she quite gets it, and she probably won’t. But I don’t generally like to overcomplicate things, really. For the kind of thing I was talking about, just in passing initially, a guide dog would definitely be overcomplicating things. I’ll probably go ahead and arange to figure out where I’m going and how to get where I need to be. She’ll probably have her miniature freakout session. Things will be just as they’ve always been. And I’ll hope to God we don’t have that particular conversation for a while. Once would be enough for me, thanks.

So I’ll go ahead and attempt to correct that minor malfunction now. The week’s been largely uneventful. Jessica got to her bus and to rochester in one piece, as usual. I went back to Pembroke, and hung out at my parents’ place for the evening–largely because, quite simply, this apartment would have been way too quiet to come back to after spending 5 or 6 weeks with Jess. I did eventually come back here, of course. And wouldn’t you know, it didn’t take 24 hours before my usual sleep schedule reascerted itself once again. granted, that was helped by the fact I’m not used to being able to spread myself out as much in bed–another side-affect of their being one less person living here. Monday and Tuesday were pretty well written off. I tinkered with the computer a little, and tried to figure out just why it is I’ve been experiencing about the reliability of a third world phone system where my internet connection’s concerned. Come to find out I was just choking it to death–go figure, moron. I finally unpacked and set up the laptop, so now begins the saga of trying to straighten that out. As for right now? On to attempt to determine whether I’ll be waking up or sleeping. There will be hockey posts coming. And a linuxy techy geeky post. Skip at will. You had your warning.

And in this case, our way involves all manner of creative thinggies that started last night. We took off from here at about 5 or so, and I proceeded to complete my own personal challenge to stay up since the morning before until past the official welcoming of the new year last night. My parents were having a sort of new years eve dinner, so we went over for that. It went a lot better than I actually expected it to, though largely because things have gotten a lot less dramatic in recent years. Mom made her usual spagheti and garlic bread, we hung out and talked, and then killed the rest of the night watching movies. At some point I’ll stop being an unmotivated slob and start posting movie reviews, but it’s probably not going to be today.

Today was spent mostly sleeping and recovering from the last two days. Then, the parents wanted to get together for a new years day dinner. Usually, it involves some kind of meat and potatoes at their place, but this year they felt like going out. Neither Jess nor myself were in much of a Chinese food mood, but that’s what the majority wanted so that’s what we got. It wasn’t all in all too terrible, just not something we were immediately looking forward to. Still, we enjoyed ourselves, not to mention filled ourselves to near busting. Now, the trick is to attempt to find something resembling a decent movie on TV, and try not to do the food coma thing. And to keep up with certain blogging traditions I’m trying to start up over here–those are next. The last few days were tiring, but definitely fun. I’d do them again if I could. Maybe this time next year, perhaps. And, possibly, with a few more people.

We have wicked awesome timing. You might even say we know all too well how to have fun. We had a little of that fun last night. I’d had a little alcoholic goodness left over from a previous spin of relaxation a while ago, so we cracked it open. A little music, a little dancing, and a little drinking killed the majority of the night. There wasn’t anything else going on around these parts, so we just kicked it here. We were craving wings, Mcdonalds and a few other things, but of course, lovely little Petawawa being what it is, that lead to about… oh… not a damn thing. Still, we had all manner of crazy fun. By the time the sun came back up this morning, one of us was contemplating sleep. And the other was contemplating a personal challenge.

That challenge, mostly of a random nature, was to see if going past the official count of New years without sleep could actually be accomplished. And the one taking that challenge was yours truely. Strange, perhaps. Borderline insane, well, maybe. Crazy? Well, you be the judge. I have no idea if it’ll actually happen, or if I’ll end up passing out by 1:00 PM. If you see Jess pop up on Twitter about waking me up, you’ll know it didn’t work. As for right now? I’m going to find me some caffeine or something.

It’s amazing just how things tend to slip away from you when you’re in the middle of one of life’s chaotic moments. We had one such the past week or so. As expected we took off on the morning, early, of the 24th–about 20 minutes before 2, to be precise. The fun didn’t take very long to start after that. When we left Rochester, we were fairly well on time. Maybe 10 minutes late. By the time we got to Buffalo, we’d made that up. And By the time we got to the border, we’d lost it again and then some. We were about an hour behind when we hit the border, thanks largely to a changing of the bus drivers and the new one apparently not having a clue what in the 7 levels of hell he was actually doing. Jess and I cleared customs easily, as usual, and that actually took a lot less time than we thought. Our bus out of Toronto heading for Ottawa was supposed to leave at about 6:30 that morning. Pulling into the Toronto terminal at 7, therefore, was a very bad idea. But we did it anyway.

Sitting around the Toronto terminal for the 2.5 hours or so it took for the next bus heading to Ottawa to show up proved not to be as entertaining as some of the other times I’ve had to do that. We got caught up on at least a couple hours’ sleep, and were otherwise several different kinds of bored sitting there. By the time we saw the bus that would take me home and her with me, we were well beyond ready to get the hell out of there or risk death by lack of anything to do or comfortable seating.

Fortunately we didn’t have the usually required incident on the way from either end of the trip–once it was weather, once it was a broken down bus, once it was just plain stupidity on the part of Grayhound–and things actually managed to go off perfectly without a hitch. Well, with the exception of we got in at 2:30 when it was supposed to be closer to 12:30, but we got in. We didn’t do much touching the computer that afternoon when we got home, and even less the day after–hello, Christmas. Welcome to Canada. I don’t think we even said a word on Twitter until Saturday–sorry to folks who actually expected updates this time. After an awesome, as usual, Christmas get together involving much visiting and much foodness, we came back here, went comatose for a few hours, and took the rest of the weekend thus far to just be lazy and relax. Hey, for the first time in a year and a half we were actually both on vacation. We deserved it, dammit. Now, post-trip to the grocery store to restock the fridge, it’s back to more relaxation. And, more random blog posts from the both of us. Including some random observations I keep meaning to actually toss up here. As for new years? All I know we’re doing is whatever comes up at 11:55 on Thursday night. It will probably involve alcohol. It will probably involve a blog post. And it will probably involve hillarity. ‘Til then, have the first attempt at a post since Rochester. I’ll be back with another one later. Maybe.

Our second last day here in Rochester was yesterday. Conveniently, it also doubled as Jessica’s birthday. In cellebration of the latter, we decided to do the bbq thing. So we hit the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, also known as quite possibly the best I’ve had since the last time we did it at my parents’ place. We’d been there before, though never for a special occasion like a birthday or anything, and only once before–back before Jess started her massage therapy courses. We left here at about half past 8 last night, or thereabouts, and by about half past 9 we were stuffed beyond belief, relaxed from various alcoholic beverages, and roughly $50 poorer than when we arived–all in all, not a bad outcome considering what we got out of it.

As always, the food there was beyond awesome. And, as always, neither one of us had room for dessert. Or, for that matter, breakfast this morning. And probably not for much of lunch later today. While we were ordering and subsequently eating, we heard a band setting up for a live performance so decided to stick around for an hour or so afterwards to check them out. Neither of us are into blues music, but the performance last night, by the Beale Street Blues Band (MySpace profile is over here), was actually pretty good. I caught myself almost dancing in my seat to a couple of their songs and I think Jess was ready to as well. The concert itself was free, and it being unexpected by either of us, made the outing just that much more worth the $50 we paid for it. Another thing you don’t see all too much of in Pembroke.

We came back at about 11 or 11:30, somewhere thereabouts, and proceeded to unwind. She says she had an awesome time, which was the end goal, so I guess my work here is done. I wasn’t really planning to make a real big thing out of it, just dinner, conversation, and relaxation. But sometimes, it rocks your socks when the party decides to come to you. And did it ever come to us last night.

It’s a rare thing when it happens, but a pleasant thing. On the odd occasion, when investigating exactly how much money I’m supposed to be putting into how many hands and how soon, I come across a small detail left over from October’s move that I thought I’d rectified, only to have it slap me in the face with a big fat no you didn’t. This happened yesterday. Well, actually, it’s been happening fairly often, but mostly yesterday. I was logging in to get an account number for something that demanded I waste no time in forking over my life savings, and the savings of my future children, to satisfy a bill payment. Well okay so perhaps not quite that bad. And in doing so, I come to two very distinct realizations. I’m not actually *getting* a large portion of my bills the way I’m supposed to be getting them–specificly, online. And I’m not getting them that way because Canada Post’s website still believes I live in my old apartment in Ottawa. That, and because I’d neglected to add one or two of my new accounts to the list of accounts for which to send me online bills, but largely it’s the former. So here I am, sitting in the new apartment now for 2 months, and I’m still grasping for the finer details of some of my newer required expenses (rental fee for a hot water tank, anyone?), and our postal service, which tries its very best to at times equal the US postal service, still thinks I haven’t moved. One would think that to be the third thing I change over–next to my phone number and banking info, but apparently, that’s not how I think. Sometimes, I don’t necessarily need technology to have a minor fail moment. And sometimes, surprise of surprises, technology makes my potentially minor fail moments look slightly more like moronic WTF moments. Which, while aren’t much better, I’ll still take. But, for a rare first, a crown corporation, under direct regulation of the Government of Canada, actually managed to prevent me from completely breaking things rather than being the reasin things end up breaking. I take back most of the things I said about crown corporations. Not all, just most. And I’ll probably say them again before 2010’s over, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get there. Until then, I’ll let the small surprise of Canada Post not entirely being useless sink in a little. Okay, that’s better.

As expected, Jessica’s graduation went off absolutely with no problem whatsoever. She got her diploma, we got a picture, and everyone got to relax a little afterwards with something alcoholic and good conversation. We hit a local bar after the cerimony for a drink or two, and to do some general talking/venting/otherwise unstressing, before coming back to the apartment and crashing. We took it easy on Friday, the only thing going on being Jess having had to do that earning money thing–I’ll never understand why it is that can’t just go away for a day. The evening was spent around the apartment, not really doing a whole lot. There was, of course, the usual talking, relaxing, and being all kinds of glad the routine gets to change for the better. Saturday was the interesting part of the weekend.

Since the beginning of the week, I’d been planning to have a private get together among friends in honour of Jessica’s graduation from massage school. She’d worked her ass off for the past year and a half or so, and didn’t have time to do a lot of that while she was doing it. So I sent a few emails around, made a phone call or two, and got a couple of Jess’s closest friends–and, conveniently enough, folks I’m becoming quite good friends with as well–onboard for our own version of a grad cerimony. That happened last night. The morning was spent at Wallmart, picking up what little odds and ends we needed throughout the week. After that, the only thing we did other than generally cleaning up was making a run for alcohol. And, after $52 and some change was handed over, we had the keys to some goodly awesomeness.

Julie and her husband came over at about half past 3, and after spending about an hour just shooting the shit, we cracked open the booze. Before all too long we’d gotten to the point where we were feeling more than a little relaxed. And when that happens, the randomness knows no limits. We did everything from vent about our respective employment or lack thereof, to mocking certain less fortunate people who weren’t here–thank god–to defend themselves, to even tossing out opinions, thoughts and points of view on the government and its benefit or lack thereof to the average joe. They left early, and Jess and I did a bit more drinking and talking. We expanded on a few of the points brought up, and actually had a very nice little debate going on–I kind of wish I could have recorded it. I think in parts of the conversation we got a little bit too caught up, but hey, that’s bound to happen when you’ve got two very opinionated people in the same room with alcohol.

It was well after midnight by the time she fell asleep. I went and flopped over about half an hour or so after by rough estimation–I wasn’t exactly keeping track of the time last night. It was well into the afternoon, about 2:00 or so, before we were both up and mobile for the day. I don’t think awake came until later, though. Today’s been spent pretty well recovering from that. The most exhausting task on our to do list at the moment is laundry, and that’s being done now. We leave for Canada again on Thursday, Jessica’s birthday is on Tuesday, and Wednesday’s probably going to be spent packing and maybe stealing an hour or two’s sleep. As for the rest of the week, I have absolutely no idea what if anything we can safely say we have planned. Maybe we’ll get lucky and plans will invent themselves. In the meantime, here’s the picture we got from Jessica’s graduation. It was taken on a cell phone, so quality may end up sucking slightly. Enjoy, or something.

I guess it’s made that much more appropriate by the weather we’re having outside right now. Since late-ish last night, I’ve been more and more looking forward to events scheduled to take place tonight. Roughly 12 hours from now, Jessica will have graduated from a year and a half of massage therapy training, and be just that much closer to being a therapist licensed for work in New York state. Which, conveniently enough, will put her just that much closer to being ready to get herself licenced for work in Ontario. I could tell, even if she wasn’t exactly awake enough when she got home last night to show it, that she was very much excited–and, though she’d never admit it, probably a little nervous–about tonight. The sad part of it is, I think I might be more excited than she is. I hung around in bed last night while she slept, not actually managing to get that far myself. About 2 and a half hours later, I got up and killed an hour or so on Twitter–hey, random socialization with all manner of strange people has its benefits, okay? When I finally did catch some sleep, it was all too brief–really, only about 2.5 to 3 hours, but it felt like less. And when I got up, you could have told me it was Christmas morning and I’d of believed it.

We’d both been looking forward to this pretty much since it started. I know as it got closer she was a little more stressed than usual. This was kind of her thing–what she’d set herself up to do, and not much was going to change her mind. Something you could be proud of, especially when you considered it had a lot of areas that prior to this course she considered weaknesses. I suppose, in a way, it kind of is our Christmas morning. After tonight, she’ll have her free time back. At least until she takes the board exam and starts working. Which means, for the next couple weeks, we’ll have our free time back. Yeah, I guess it kind of is like Christmas morning after all. And if you look at it like that, the fact it’s snowing yet again outside doesn’t piss me off quite as much as it probably should. I’ll take it.

The latter is obvious to anyone who’s actually using the service, but I’ll get to that momentarily. Jess and I spent the majority of this weekend thus far kicked back and relaxing. She graduates on Thursday, so we’re sort of trying to gear up for that. Also, because we haven’t really had a weekend where we can just sort of not do a whole lot of anything that often since I came down here. Friday was taken up largely with music, dancing, awesome food and a little alcohol. We turned the majority of her living room into a dance floor, and just had ourselves a slow dance or 4. We ordered from a new–to me, anyway–restaurant,