The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
A few quick bits that I will expand on later:
– Lugging 30 pounds of prezzies is fucking heavy
– Met Michel and Sara at Weinsteins. Food porn. Watermelon porn. All good.
– My cat is now fucking HUGE! yet still insane and addicted to catnip.
– I have been awake for 2 hours and doing computer tech support for 1.5 of them. Such is my lot in life.
More later, must go eat.
The key points from yesterday:
I finished wrapping most of the presents up this morning while Katy was having a nap. It's good that she's finally getting some rest – it'll do her good. I want this trip to be stress-free and fun-filled. I'm looking into how we're going to get to Montreal tomorrow. I'm thinking the train, because that would drop us off directly at Bonaventure, right at the Salon des Metiers d'arts.
It's weird a bit to be back in Canada. It seems that I really settled into Cambridge life. When I walked into my folks' house, I saw all the old surroundings and all my old stuff that I couldn't bring. Like my TV. Damn, that thing was big. From talking to Katy, it probably wouldn't even fit inside our flat.
As to the title of this post, I'm currently fixing my dad's computer :)
In continuing with our “way the hell too early for xmas” traditions this year, katy wanted me to cook a traditional xmas dinner tonight. So, we had stuffed chicken, bacon-wrapped-sausages (apparently, it's traditional here) and a ton of trimmings. Suffice it to say, we're both full as we had food for a complete family and there's only two of us.
Excuse me while I go digest now.
Except for the complete and utter lack of snow hereabouts… blergh. Only 18 days until I leave for Canadia, joy! Like Katy says, it can't come soon enough. It'll do me good to see friends and family again. Hopefully the shoulder from doom will be kind to me on this trip though. It's been acting up again and I've been waking up stiff as a board for the last two weeks. Not cool, not cool at all.
I've been reading an interesting book by Jon Grimwood called 9Tail fox. The bio reads:
Sergeant Bobby Zha of the SFPD is desperate to find out who murdered him. But he also needs the answers to some other questions. Like, why is he in another man's body? Why is someone trying to kill him, again… And why is he being haunted by a nine-tailed Celestial fox?From the shell-shattered ruins of Stalingrad in 1942 to the present day politics of San Francisco's Chinatown, 9tail Fox is evocative of place and crystal clear in its depiction of character.
It's not bad. There are bits and pieces that make prevent it from being excellent – one of which is that the author keeps thinking that you know the book and storyline just as well as he does, so he keeps making these hints that you think you should understand, but just don't and they're not explained so that just makes them frustrating. Besides that though, it's been keeping me entertained so that's always a good sign
Things at work are becoming interesting. In the span of 2 days, half a dozen people have contacted me about putting bits of the ontology lookup service I've been working on into their applications. Very gratifying. I'm almost done with the first draft of the paper I'm going to submit and it's being reviewed by my boss today.
The price tag of the shopping list laid out in the classic holiday song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is sharply higher this year, hit by such modern-day woes as higher energy and gold prices and concerns about the avian flu, according to an annual survey unveiled Monday.
PNC Advisors, which has charted the cost of the gifts laid out in the song for the last 21 years, put the price of the items this year at $18,348 in 2005, a 6.1 percent increase over last year.
Some presents will be difficult to get at any price this year. The threat of avian flu has restricted the international shipment of birds, thus preventing the purchase of three French hens from France, although there are domestic breeders of French hens which helped keep that gift's cost in line. But all the fowl mentioned in the song cost substantially more this year due to the increased delivery costs from higher energy prices.
Oil isn't the only commodity raising the gift buying prices this year. The “five golden rings” given on the fifth day now cost $325, up 27.5 percent due to rising gold prices.
Even the good news on pricing is a troubling sign for gift givers, as the salaries of most of the workers detailed in the song — the maids-a-milking, lords-a-leaping, pipers piping and drummers drumming are the only gifts for which prices are holding steady. The maids-a-milking each got paid only the $5.15 minimum wage, making an hour of their time the cheapest gift on the list.
The only workers in the song to see increased pay is a modest 4 percent gain for the “nine ladies dancing,” based upon information given to PNC by Philadanco, the Philadelphia Dance Company. They also were the best-paid service providers on the list, earning $508.46 each.
Ordering the gifts over the Internet will cost true love shoppers a premium, again due to the increased delivery costs this year. The overall Internet cost is estimated at $29,322.80, up 5.7 percent from 2004 and a premium of $10,973.93, or nearly 60 percent, from shopping in the more traditional manner.
For the gift giver who goes all out and gives the repeated gifts for each day as detailed in the verses of the song will pay $72,608 for all 364 items, up 9.5 percent from the $66,334 price tag in 2004. That's a much bigger increase than the 1.6 percent increase last year.
Source: http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/28/news/funny/holiday_12days_pricetag/index.htm
I realize that I've been less than chatty online recently. Slow news week, really. Things are ok for the most part. My back's been acting up a bit and Katy and I aren't really sleeping well. Her cough wakes her up at night and she's been having weird dreams. She's also been trying to roll me out of bed during the night and I have to poke her to give me more room so I don't fall out of bed.
Things at work are going nicely. Got my confirmation that my contract is extended past the probation period for the full 3 years. Got a raise. Playing with lots of new technologies which will look good on my CV when the time comes (though I honestly have no idea where I want to go after this place – but that's not for the here and now). Hopefully I'll be able to release a new version of my project live early next week implementing some nice new features and performance improvements.
Things on the home front are going well too. Our xmas tree is nice (though we need to buy a nice star to put on top of it). People keep harassing me to know what I want for xmas. I don't know. I don't want anything, really. I have everything I need, and most of what I want. I'm in reasonably good health and good spirits and I have love in my life. I'm truly blessed.
I was acutely reminded of this earlier this week. I went to the chippy near my place to get some chips for dinner a few days ago. It was a pretty chilly night; the first frost of the year. I was bundled up, so it wasn't really a problem. As I was walking, I ran into a little old lady at the crosswalk. I didn't really pay much attention. I got to the chippy, ordered and waited for my food. While I was waiting (and for a reasonable stretch), the old lady hobbles slowly into the chip shop. She was walking with a cane and had to brace herself against the door frame to walk up the step that leads into the shop.
She looked old and frail, dressed in typical old lady clothing: a battered fake fur coat and a fake leopard fur hat with flaps. There was this aura of sadness around her. I don't know what makes me say that. It just really hit me. She was holding an empty plastic 4L water jug in one hand, which she bent over slowly to put down, and a sainsbury bag in the other, which seemed pretty heavy as she was transferring it from one hand to the other, slowly flexing her hands to try to get circulation going back into her hands. Her hand was all red and marked (you know the feeling, when you're carrying lots of heavy plastic bags and they bite into your hands).
I really noticed her feet. She was wearing open toe sandals, the kind that are really just one sole and are held in place by loops between your big toe and all the rest of them (like flip-flops, but not the cheap plastic ones). Anyway, she was wearing sandals in weather what made me glad to have my winter coat and boots. She'd wedged some a bit of fleece between the loops of her sandals and the top of her foot to try and keep warm (I guess), but her toes were open to the rather frigid air. Her feet were grey. This might be pure speculation on my part, but I'm thinking that she has trouble bending down and those sandals are the only shoes she can put on.
The whole encounter lasted maybe a minute. My order was ready and I left. I don't know who the lady was and what her story was. She was a complete stranger and for all I know she's the happiest woman on earth. She just made me realize that I have a hell of a lot going for me right now, and that my complaints probably don't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. Here endeth the lesson.
Katy and I decorated our xmas tree this weekend. It's ours, all ours!!! It's purdy!
Shit like this freaks me out when it happens. Katy was channel surfing and stopped on Family Guy. My only exposure to that show has been through LJ icons and the random bits that Sara's quoted. I was only half watching the show when I thought of one of those Sara quotes: “I've licked my share of peanut butter”. 5 minutes later, I kid you not, Brian the dog says that exact line. Woah, dude!
Katy and I spent ooodles of money today on xmas prezzies. Yaay! Funfunfun. Pretties and shinies and tasties and smellies. Still have a bit to cover, but most people are well under way. It's been a weird day. The Grogan clan and I spent the day outside and shopping to change our collective thoughts. Other interesting incidents occurring today were Katy poking me in the eye with her finger and being offered a Star wars balloon, finding out that all of the computers we wanted to buy were discontinued and out of stock and me spending over an hour in a bookstore and coming out bookless. How sad is that?
… I'm leaving on December 19th. Katy worked out her leave schedule for the holidays and we're going to be in Canadia from the 19th to the 27th. So that means I'll be spending a few days in Montreal before the holidays, xmas at the folks' then fly back to England. Katy works on New Years, so we'll see if we can convince her folks to spend the weekend in Cambridge and have a booze fest :)