Animethon 19 was this weekend. I wish I knew what a great convention this was before now- one year, maybe in 1998 or so I blundered into it and it was tiny. There were maybe a dozen people in a classroom watching an anime movie, my friend and I popped in to watch for a bit and then we left, and that seemed to be the extent of it. Turns out it's grown since then. I think I heard there were something like 7000 people there over the course of the weekend- not bad at all. I went on Friday thinking I would zip into the artist alley since I knew Drake Tsui would be there, and wound up making a weekend of it. Even brought the family out on Sunday.
One of the things that I think is really cool about it is it's been held at Grant Macewan College (University now) which is one of my favorite buildings ever. Crazy towers and spiral staircases and walkways and a big clock and stuff.  Great quad-type greenspace outside which provides great backdrops for cosplay photography.
Downside- they announced at the closing ceremony that there would be no Animethon 20 unless a whole lot of people stepped up to volunteer and share some of the load. More details here.



 

 

 

There's this old railway that runs kind of parallel to sections of our haulroad. It's part of the Coal Branch. It was used mainly in the 1920s to service the coal-mining towns . Lots of interesting history there, but of course the way my brain works I just like looking down at the twisted remnants and pretend I'm in some future Mad Maxy apocalypse where we all pilot giant robots to extract the last dead black guts from the earth. . . and hey look the future is now!  But anyways.
China Miéville's new book is called Railsea and about a whole planet where there aren't oceans but rather one vast sea of railroads. The sealife is giant moles (moldywarpes) and other burrowing creatures monsterized for the purposes of awesomeness. Trains ply the rails trading amongst nations and uncovering salvage of varying vintages. The cover says it's kind of a Miévillian take on Moby Dick (Miéville covers Melville!) but really the only other books it's actually like are other Miévilles. Which is fine by me. 
This is now the second book China has written about trains, so I imagine he's a bit of a trainspotter or train nerd or whatever but it's not like you have to be one too. Trains never really impressed me much growing up but I do love giant monsters and mysterious derelicts from another age. 
Derelicts like these, you might say:

  

The House
 (for Steve)

So you're driving around in rural Alberta and it's not the Alberta you know with mountains and foothills it's just flat prairie far as the eye can see, maybe the odd hoodoo here and there and they definitely are odd. And then there's a town, no leadup, no sign, just town. Not much of a town, for sure, but still a town. The bank is in an atco trailer sharing space with the local realtor. There's a gas station. They have a surprisingly nice playground though, and you're not really sure if that's a nice thing to say about it or kind of mean since it's the only nice thing you can think of to say about it.
But of course you're not just driving around randomly- you have somewhere to be. The house is in a nice enough neighbourhood, big old trees and well-manicured lawns, the picture of smalltown Alberta, could be 1960 for all you know. Hell, there's even some sort of 1960s rocketshiplooking extendovan on the street. Is that a barbecue you can see in its window? There's always some weird thing in the driveway when you come here Steve says.
There's old cars, too, hot rods in various states of repair, and toolboxes and a stack of cartons of protein shakes in the driveway. In fact, the last time you were here a year or so ago, there was a stack of protein shakes, right there . . . that's not the same stack is it? Steve deftly avoids the elderly mother of the owner who is outside gardening but you stop and talk and she tells you the same story she told you last year about how great it is that this house was built using lumber from old government buildings that were demolished to make newer government buildings. From the outside the house is maybe a little more ornate than you would expect in Alberta, a little more fortressy-looking, but otherwise doesn't really seem like it was cobbled together from spare parts. It's only when you go inside that you see it. That you're not really in a normal house.
Your eye isn't really drawn to any particular thing at first, since there's so much to absorb. Over there is a pair of outboard engines, and here's an old red wagon, and some antique bicycles and guitars and a display case with oldtimey telephones and gaslamps and whatnot inside, but then you see to your left that this floor is actually only there to provide a catwalk so that you can look down on the basement where two whole cars are being worked on or built or something in what amounts to a Victorian style library with bookshelves two storeys high, complete with a grizzly skull next to a hippie love sign and some reader's digest books and a knight's helmet and a faux Egyptian bust. Of course, most Victorian libraries didn't have an entire wall devoted to a mural of Camelot or somesuch at sunset, looking out over the ocean. And there's the cars. Two of them.
But whatever, you're not here for that. Instead you climb the spiral staircase which has what one can only hope are structural support beams painted up to look like spruce trees. How do you like my spiral staircase the owner asks you. Yeah, it's . . . fancy you say. Yup, they're way safer than normal staircases he says. Because you know, if you fall, you won't go all the way down. You nod thoughtfully, but refrain from saying what you are thinking, which is that most normal staircases have railings and not just open spaces between the steps. And is that landing for the attic just free-floating plywood? Upstairs is why you're there, and you do what you came to do.
There's dust and there's bugs and there's the debris and detritus that you knew would be there. It doesn't matter. The owner, having displayed a certain tendency towards packratishness, is easily persuaded to keep much of the stuff. Most of the rest goes in the garbage, including piles of old expired medication. I can give you the number of the agency that disposes of expired meds the owner says. Sure you say, and when he turns around you toss it in the garbage. It's going to the dump where it won't be a danger to junkies looking to get high so who cares.
When you're done you try to make a clean getaway but the owner comes and says there's more stuff in the attic, and he leads us further up the spiral staircase. Someone lives up there, you discover. A mouldering mattress with sheets that haven't been changed in way way too long, and a plasma tv and a dr phil book on the nightstand about reclaiming your relationships. It's stifling hot and you instantly want nothing more than to leave. This guy's lived here two years now with no heat, can't talk him into moving downstairs the owner says. And he pushes aside the tarp wall and leads us past piles and piles of lumber under a roof made of that greenhouse stuff they used to use, kind of translucent plastic or whatever. How has this place not burned down you wonder. Anyways there's a bit more to do so you do it and get out of there.
And if you're still with me after all that, you might be wondering what the hell I'm talking about, what is this house. This house. It defies description. All I can say is it's the saddest place in the world.

Michelle's dad passed away on Friday and we were down in Calgary for the funeral. It was a hard time but there were some things I will definitely always remember. Pallas especially was amazing, she and Naia stayed with me in Edmonton the first night while Michelle went down to take care of some details, then we drove down on Sunday.
Naia was sick and mostly just sucked her thumb and stared forlornly. Pallas asked quite a few questions, like "What's a funeral?" "It's where we go to say good-bye to Papa Zunic forever." "But I don't wanna say good-bye forever, I want Papa Zunic to get better." "I'm sorry, sweety, that's not how it works." "But but, who's gonna be Uncle Steve and mommy's daddy now?" "No one, sweetheart."
Later she decided to sing a song, called the Going to Calgary song. It went like this: "Don't be sad, we're going to Calgary tomorrow. Don't be sad, we're going to see mommy." and repeat. I told her it was a great song, the only thing was, we were actually going to Calgary that very day, not tomorrow. "I know Dad, that's just how the song goes."
At the funeral she actually appointed herself an usher, more or less, hadning out one of those memorial cards to all the guests as they came in. She even told me to go back to what I was doing because she was busy working. Anyways, the funeral was good.

There's this brilliant guy named jouste on deviantArt who always draws the most unique and original character designs with these crazily hilarious bios. Finally a game company took notice and hired him to do some work on their new game Shellrazer, which comes out today. Giant turtles vs orcs and stuff!  Very cool.  I bought my copy so now Pallas and I will have something other than zombie-bastruction strategies to discuss at suppertime. Right now I'm working nightshifts so I haven't actually had a chance to try it out.
Here's the link. Only 99 cents!

Michelle saw some Halloween costumes at Costco yesterday and called me to see if she should buy one for Pallas, even though it's not even close to Halloween yet and who knows if she would still care about superheros by then. "Who cares?" I said, "Get her one for today!" Every day is a good day to dress up as Spider-man! Pallas agrees, because she was super excited! "I'll be the best Spider-man ever, I promise!" she told Michelle. So we spent the better part of yesterday fighting bad guys together- I may even have donned my Green Lantern costume from last years's Halloween. Cosplay day at casa homie bear!
Speaking of cosplay and the like, I just watched Comic-con Episode IV- A Fan's Hope. It's a documentary that they filmed in 2010, they year we went. So it was pretty cool, trying to find me or Michelle in the crowd shots (because then we could update our IMDB page) but I didn't see us. I did see lots of the cosplayers I met and photographed though.

So not only did I get piss-tested for that incident with the pickup truck a couple weeks ago (though described just a few posts down) but last night I got written up for it as well. But why? I wish I got to keep a copy of the form they make you read and sign. It said something like this:

On June 26th you had a pickup truck go into reverse and land in a sump, resulting in loss of a light vehicle. Any repeat occurrence will result in discipline.

 Hmm, I wonder how I can remember not to let any more trucks self-slam into reverse and drive into a sump so that I don't get disciplined? Because that seems like something I would forget.... and isn't being written up being disciplined? Anyways, there was a space for me to respond, and I did, thusly:

So, an inanimate object has a mechanical failure and I'm to blame?          That's how you spell                    B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.

Also, no berm- bullshit. And, not even my job. Bullshit!

And in the space where I was supposed to sign, I wrote in "I'm not signing this."

Anyways, later I regretted my choice of words a bit. Technically, the Ford was not inanimate. The very fact of it being far too animate was the cause of the whole problem- it was a failure of inanimation. Well, these guys are hardly literary critics- I think they'll get the message.

I asked my union vice-president about filing a grievance, and he said he would be too happy to do so though by the time it got through, the ninety days of my disciplinary term would be up anyways. And there's really no consequences to being on the disciplinary term, so other than my disgruntled sense of injustice, not to mention my 11-year perfect record prior to this, it doesn't really mean anything. But goddamn it they just pissed me off!  Plus I want a new iPhone!

Pallas went downstairs this morning and informed Michelle, "Mommy, I've been thinking, I think I need to go to the library to buy my own Hulk books."
So of course I took her, thinking we would just grab a few of those learn-to-read books, but they didn't have any. So we grabbed Ultimate Spider-Man Volume 1, a Clone Wars Visual Encyclopedia or something, Winnie the Pooh and an animated movie called Hulk vs Thor. All her picks!
On the way home, she asked me about Hulk.
"Hulk's a good guy?"
"Yup!"
"He's not a bad guy?"
"No."
"But sometimes he gets very very angry?"
"Well, yeah."
"But he's a good guy."
"Exactly."
"He's friendly."
"Yup."
"But only when someone tries to bastroy him he fights them."
"Yeah."
"Green Hulk means go, Red Hulk means stop!"

Naia Peanut is in the 3rd percentile for weight. She is quite wee, it's true. But not unhealthily so. We are just a small people, us Homie Bears. Well, my dad's pretty big but he's the anomaly of our family, I think. A couple of years ago, I was edging up to the 200lb mark, and trying mightily to surpass it. Being 140lbs all through high school and university, hitting 200lbs was a big deal to me. Since I was a casual runner and worked out some, I figured the extra weight was all muscle, baby. Michelle tactfully informed me otherwise. So then I started running a little farther, and hitting the weights a little harder, and pretty much overnight I dropped down to my current weight which is in the 173-178 lb range, which includes, if I may be so immodest, some respectably cut muscles. Not bad for 37 years old.

I think I can mostly thank my genetic legacy and body type more than any iron discipline on my part- you should see what I eat at work. And at home...

Anyways I bring it up because I just  read The Cure for Everything! which was written by a local U of A guy, Timothy Caulfield. Pretty good book, just trying to debunk all the myths and misinformation out there about fitness and healthy living. That, and AJ Jacobs' Drop Dead Healthy have been my literary nutrition of the last few days. The messages are pretty similar and pretty simple- the only truly surefire way to lose weight and live healthily is to eat right and get lots of exercise. Easy, but hard.
I do have one question, though. Here's the thing- a guy like me, probably only supposed to eat around 2200-2400 calories a day, give or take, that may even be a little generous. For a completely sedentary person, less. I don't know if I've ever eaten that little. Doing the math a bit, I wonder how it is that I'm not way fatter? I don't run that much, and indeed, Caulfield asserts that, for all the many many benefits of exercise, weight loss just isn't one of them.
One possible answer, appropriate enough given the title of this blog: poo.
I'm not being funny or trying toilet humour, I'm serious. No one ever talks about the calories lost to poo. I guarantee you our bodies are not 100% efficient at sucking every single calorie out of the food we eat. So how much of the devastatingly bad food choices we make every single day wind up getting flushed out of us unabsorbed? Probably varies, and I'm not trying to provide another excuse for terrible eating, but it's gotta be some right? I know- I'll ask google.
Hmm, Google doesn't really know, or at least, I don't really feel like wading through all the internetz garbage such a search turned up.
Best guess: some.

Michelle took Pallas to see Brave today. We'd been wanting to go as a family, but it turns out it's a perfect mother/daughter movie anyways so it all worked out. (My amazing parents generously took both girls for the weekend so Michelle and I could have a beautiful, peaceful 7th anniversary. We saw Prometheus, which was beautiful, though not that peaceful. So yeah. Babysitter exhaustion fair enough!) The best story Michelle told me, though, is that when Pallas saw the giant poster for The Amazing Spider-Man she said, "Spider-Man! Hi! What are YOU doing here?"
Speaking of Spidey, I just read Avenging Spider-Man: My Friends Can Beat Up Your Friends which I thought would be a visual feast, what with Joe Madureira's artwork, but it turned out to be all about the excellent writing of Zeb Wells. Essentially a Marvel Team-Up for the new era, I liked the two stories where he teams up with Hawkeye and Captain America the best. Nice, character-driven stories (with lots of action, sure) that are the types of comic stories that stick with you.

This story would be so much better with pictures. Then I could just say, "So, this happened:" and show you a photo and leave it at that. But I was unable to get photos of the incident in question because my camera was in my backpack, which was in a pickup truck, which was in a sump. Also in the backpack:
 -Cellphone. Normally I don't carry my phone with me at work since there's no coverage out there anyways. Not sure why I had it that night.
-iPhone. This is my Mom's old iPhone which she gave me to replace the iPod which died on me a few months ago. I just use it as an iPod, for music and podcasts, though only in my Kress truck, and the night in question I was fuelling pumps in a pickup truck and had no need for it.
-National Geographic, June issue. Fun fact, I've read every page of every issue of National Geographic since at least 2006, when my mother-in-law started buying me a membership each year for xmas. Streak ended!
-The Mastermind of Mars, half-read. Apparently it's still floating away down there.
-A Fighting Man of Mars, unread. In case I finished Mastermind.
-aforementioned Olympus digital camera. Waterproof and unharmed!
-foodstuffs of varying composition but uniform deliciousness, ruined. Though I ate the $3 protein bar after it was recovered, dagnabbit, them things are expensive!
-sundry other items of lesser value
 Anyways, the iPhone may not come back to life, though it was previously thought killed when Pallas dunked it a mug of coffee, so you never know. My cellphone is probably ruined, but good news- the SIM card was alright so I transferred it to Michelle's old phone of the same model which she no longer needs ever since I got her an iPhone 4S.
All that happened is I backed the truck down parallel to a pump to throw some fuel in it, and I stepped out to open the fuelcap on the pump when it kind of went thunk and slipped from park into reverse, whereupon it accelerated surprisingly quickly into the sump. There was no berm around the sump so it flew right in. Earlier I had noticed the transmission not going into park so I took it down to the washbay to wash out the linkage, after which it was working fine. Or seemed to be, anyways.
 So now I'm looking at my pickup truck which is sort of propped up on an angle, lights shining, over half-submerged and not accessible at all. My first thought was for my backpack. Then I realized the radio was in there and no one else knew I was down there, in the bottom of this very deep pit, with walls that are so bad they actually brought in a radar dish to monitor it, and so I would have to walk out. At midnight with no light because, though I had just asked for batteries for my headlamp not a half hour previous, I was told there are no batteries for peons such as myself. Did I mention all the grizzly bears that have been hanging around? Not that I was too worried about them, grizzlies are waaay too smart to be down in that pit by themselves at night.
What really pissed me off about the whole thing is they piss-tested me for that! On my incident report I'd written a fairly straightforward narrative of the events, highlighting facts I felt were relevant, such as that fuelling pumps is not my job. Then when I found out they wanted to drug test me, I wrote an addendum as follows, word for word inasmuch as my memory serves:
On the advice of my shop steward I am assenting to a drug test but I would like to register my extreme displeasure at the unjustness of this decision. NOT my job. NOT my fault. NOT my problem.

I wish I'd thought to write, "Furthermore, you owe me a new iPhone!" Anyways, I didn't get to be there for the funnest part, which is recovering the truck, since I was busy peeing into a cup. But I was told it was a lot of fun, and as an interesting aside, apparently my backpack floats.
There are some photos so it's possible someone will smuggle me a file or two, it's kind of funny.

Over at the John Janzen Nature Centre they had a Fairy Forest Midsummer Eve thing, and the whole place was completely overrun by fairy princesses. It was a fun daddy/daughter date to do, Pallas loved it. There was singing (she wanted to suggest bimoceros as her favourite animal for one song but nothing really rhymes with bimoceros). And then when one of the group leaders asked what fairies do, well the answer is obviously that they go to Pixie Hollow. And then Disney's trademark lawyers came and ceased and desisted the place down.

 

It was definitely Bear Week at work. Every day I saw at least 1, usually 4, and I think I saw 8 different grizzlies, possibly 9 though of course it's hard to tell which are the same ones twice. A friend was  driving to work when his truck was charged by a very angry boar, whom we saw a few minutes later but by then he was running into the bush with a sow. Hopefully to relax a bit. If we're going to see bears, it's always this time of year and then after Canada Day or so we don't see them anymore, so I think they are after the relatively easy protein to be found in all the baby elk, sheep and moose hanging around.
This picture here was of a mama I saw on the way to work one morning- which is why I was able to use the Nikon. Of course, early morning so the light wasn't amazing. Her cub was with her too and I got some photos of them both- nothing magazine quality, but better than nothing.
But the best was yesterday, just as I was driving my haultruck, crossing a bridge I saw that blonde sow that had been hanging out all week, running down a road full tilt, then going up on her hind legs and generally acting fairly aggressive. Then I saw the mama moose and her baby. Mama moose actually chased the grizzly into the bush. From my vantage point it was so obvious that the grizz just had to scooch around mama moose and she woulda had a tasty little mooseburger to share with her cub, but it was not to be. This time.

Finally saw my first grizzlies of the year!  I took some photos but they didn't turn out too good, but got a good long look at a blonde mama and her cute lil cub. They were up on a ridge and then came down just like they was mountain goats. Earlier this year I saw a cougar and a bobcat, so it's been a good year.

Pallas is maturing into a perfect little comic book geek like her daddy. A couple weeks ago, I was giving her a lecture about something, how important it is to listen to daddy and all that, and she pointed at my shirt which features various Marvel heroes such as Wolverine and Thor, and interrupted me with, "Is that Hook?"
"Why yes, that IS Hulk."
"Hook is my favorite!"
"Yeah me too! I love the Hulk."
And she skipped away happy as can be, lecture forgotten by both parties.
Also she is learning about secret identities, and knows that Peter Parker is Spider-man, and that Batman and Hook are both named Bruce, though they have different last names.
And then today at lunch, she asked me about the Green Lantern animated series she likes to watch.
"Daddy, why when Green Lantern is lying down and having a moment and Red Lantern fights him?"
"Uh, well, I guess Red Lanterns don't really respect moments." In our family, when we need to decompress and get away from the craziness, we say "I just need a moment."
"But Green Lantern was having a moment!"
"Yup. Well, that's how you can tell that Red Lanterns are really good bad guys. They fight you even when you need a moment."

Watch this in high def on the biggest screen you have:

The transit of Venus is today, and the next one is not for a long long time. NASA has some pretty amazing photos:

I was listening to the Radiolab podcast on Colors the other day and thought I came up with the most important scientific epiphany of all time. See, us humans have three color receptors in our eyes, red, green and blue (or yellow, I forget exactly), and those working in concert allow us to see the millions and millions of shades we see. Seems like lots, right? But other animals have more, some have 6, and mantis shrimp even have some crazy number like 18 of them. Well, listen to the podcast because obviously I am garbling some of the details. But here's what I immediately realized:

The reason why we've never seen a sasquatch is their fur is in the colors we can not perceive! Obviously!

I was composing my Nobel acceptance speech in my head when I realized the flaw in my reasoning. Okay, there's probably more than one, but right away you can see that even if their fur was colored something we can't see, the light reaching us would still be blocking out the background behind them, so they would still appear as some other color. Brown, maybe. Dogs can still see us, even though they are colorblind (though not completely, as they have two color-rods in their eyes, rather than our three). So yeah. Oh well.

Alright well I think my repaired iMac is up and running and not giving me any troubles. As a bonus, this new hard drive seems to like Lion much better than the last one did, maybe because this one is a Lion native and the other one started out a Snow Leopard or whatever.  About the only thing that is forever lost is my little spreadsheet that I made that recorded how awesome I am- by counting all the miles I ran and pushups I pushed and so forth. Though the fact that I kept such a spreadsheet perhaps cancels out any awesomeness....
Speaking of awesome, Avengers. Yeah, you already knew that. We finally got to see it. Worth the wait. That Thor Hulk fight was waaaay better than the one from the made-for-tv-movie, The Death of the Incredible Hulk:

This poor neglected blog. I was hoping its tenth anniversary year would be a little more interesting than it has been, and then maybe retire it at ten years triumphantly, or reboot or something. Instead it is sort of just going out with a whimper.
My iMac piled up on me- just over a year after I got it. Lucky for me I got the extendo care warranty and I'm bringing it in Friday to get it fixed up. I lost a few files, nothing too critical though- not only do I have a 1 terabyte backup hard drive (AirPort Extreme, though of course I haven't backed up in a while)- but my photos have double and triple backup with Flickr and my camera card itself, so I think I lost a few photos that didn't make the cut to Flickr or keeping it on the card, but that's alright. Lost some Game of Thrones episodes, which are replaceable. iTunes downloads are all free to redownload and there's the iCloud and all that. So really, this is all actually a good thing as I have had nothing but trouble with the iMac since I installed Lion and hopefully the new hard drive and all that will just run smoother.

I got some great artwork this year. Katie Cook was there, which was huge for me. I made a beeline to her table as soon as I got there on Friday night and asked her to do a comission of Pallas fighting Darth Maul with her pink lightsaber. (Today she decided that now she has a purple lightsaber, so next time I'm at comic con and get someone to draw her fighting Darth Maul to make sure I get that right....) It turned out perfect! Katie can be found here. I also made sure to stop by Drake Tsui's table and get him to another one for me- Valkyrie, currently of Secret Avengers:
 

And I stopped by David Joyce's table, since last year he drew Caiera for me, and then on his blog he made me a sketch of Hulk aka the Green Scar (from Planet Hulk) and this year he did another of the Incredible Hulks, Jenn Walters. The Sensational She-Hulk, of course.
 

So I went down to Calgary for my 3rd Calgary Expo in 4 years. Took holidays from work for it, bought my pass months in advance, but due to extremely poor planning on their part, kind of had a mixy matchy weekend. By the time I got there on Friday there was only an hour left, since the doors closed at 8. 8! What kind of convention ends at 8?
Saturday was the big day, the entire cast of The Next Generation was reunited for the first time in over 20 years. It was announced that the fire marshal stepped in and shut the doors and so thousands upon thousands of people, those with passes or without, it didn't matter, were stuck outside. I had been inside for about an hour but stepped off the floor to have a sandwich before going to a panel (Robert J Sawyer was doing one on writing believable science fiction- and after that I was heading to the costume contest) and was then SOL for the rest of the day. Luckily I still had a great time talking to many many other convention-goers who were in a similar situation. ie I made the most of a shitty situation but it wasn't the day I paid for. I spoke to many, many people who weren't very happy at all- some had, like me, traveled from elsewhere, gotten hotel rooms, paid almost $500 for a photo with the Star Trek cast, and because the Expo organizers oversold, they were stuck outside with no apology. Even, in some instances, attitude from the volunteers. Calgary Expo, via their social media feeds, seems to have chosen to not acknowledge any error on their part, insisting that it was all the fire marshal's fault, and indeed, us convention-goers' fault for showing up all at once instead of in nice and orderly groups of two or three thousand. Today on the CTV News there was a report that the fire marshal has denied any involvement in shutting the doors, but I can't find a news article online to confirm, yet. Here's my photoset, though, got lots of great photos with all the other attendees who were stuck outside.
Sunday was a bit better, I got there early and stood in a crazy long line that went alomst the entire way around the convention grounds, and that was just for us pass holders. They cut off the door-ticket-buyers at 11 and many got sent home.

Back. Tired. Started to upload some photos but going to bed. Lots more to say tomorrow.

I'm heading to the Calgary Expo tomorrow!  I'm gonnabe ascited! Here's some of the geeky things I'm into lately.
Game of Thrones season 2, of course. Who isn't into that?
The Legend of Korra is finally here, and cheers to Nickelodeon for making the episodes available online for free, even for us Canucks. Sometimes we have a hard time watching tv shows from American websites, something to do with CRTC rules or something. (but wait, didn't you say you were watching Game of Thrones....) Korra kicks ass!  Worth the wait (it was announced at SDCC 2010, though I wasn't in the room at the time of the announcement, I think I was just down the hall...). A perfect show for Pallas, at least as far as having strong female protagonists to emulate. We like to fight bad guys, Darth Maul being a particularly persistent foe, he shows up several times a day to get his butt handed to him. By a 3yo girl!
Darth Maul shows up in the current season of Clone Wars, looking forward to seeing that on DVD. The Cartoon Network being one of those networks that don't let Canadians watch their shows. But that's ok, I have the entire original Marvel Star Wars series in Omnibus form! Finally finished reading it. I think it's really cool that the final (and my personal favorite) run was done by a female writer and penciller, Jo Duffy and Cynthia Martin. For the mid-80s that was a rarity. Hell, it's a rarity now.
And I'm rereading Perdido Street Station, this time for book club. Loving it just as much, maybe more, this time around.

Pallas has a new imaginary friend, though in true athenian from, she has her own unique twist on it- she takes on the identity of PallMall and says that Pallas is the imaginary one. Today Pallas fell out of my car but luckily PallMall (Pellmell! I dunno where she came up with that) appeared and really, she's as much fun to have around as Pallas.
Also, as I was trying to contain the chaos of two little girls, Pallas asked me if I was mad.
"No, I'm not mad, I'm just . . ." I groped around in my brain for the word that means "a little overwhelmed by how crazy it is to be responsible for two little girls who are not capable of sitting still for two seconds to get their shoes on".
And she said, "You're just fwustawated?"

This be what befalleth, Laurence!  This be what befalleth!

I am quoting, of course, from Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: A Most Excellent Comedie and Tragical Romance, that lost Shakespearean play recently unearthed by Adam Bertocci.  Sir Walter is admonishing young Laurence Sellers on what befalleth when thou firsk'st a stranger 'twixt the buttocks. And what befalleth, of course, is Sir Walter wrecks yon corvette. Never mind that the vessel in question is not captained by little Laurence.
Mashing up The Big Lebowski and Shakespeare (and doing it well) is beyond brilliant. Being able to do it without using even one f-bomb is an accomplishment worthy of the Bard. There's even helpful footnotes and woodcuts just like we all had in our Shakespeare books back in high school. The Dude becomes the Knave.  "I must protest; the Knave mindeth. This will not stand, this uncheck'd aggression..."
But in the end, the Knave abideth.
Here's a bonus minimalist poster for The Big Lebowski that captures the spirit quite nicely.

Early on in The Big Lebowski, the Narrator (none other than the immortal Sam Elliot) describes The Dude as quite possibly the laziest man in the world. Certainly he's lazy, but I would say he's more a man who just prefers not to have a job. He's definitely not lazy when it comes to getting his rug back, and everything that follows from that. No, I'd say the laziest man in the world would have to be Dishwasher Pete (now, Dishwasher, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from...) aka Pete Jordan. Though he did manage to write a book called Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States so maybe he's not all that lazy either. He first came to my attention in one of my podcasts, This American Life most likely, and then that same week I saw his book in one of the bookstores I frequent, so obviously it was fate that I read it. Glad I did, I haven't laughed so hard in a while. He just wanted to wash dishes. Even chopping carrots was too much- once when a boss asked him, he deliberately chopped them way too thick. "Like this?" "No, thinner." So he'd do it paper thin. "Like this?" "No, thicker!" and he just did that back and forth a few times till his boss just gave up and let him be. Letterman even invited him on the show but he sent someone else in his stead. An impostor! So yeah, definitely a recommended read.
 I was washing the dishes with Pallas just tonight. She always pulls a chair over from the kitchen table to stand on. Lots of times she pulls my chair over, so today I asked her to take her own chair, since hers is already all ruined and wrecked from being spilt on and suffering sundry other abuses that only a toddler can impose. I've noticed that mine is starting to show some signs of damage from her overflowing destructive forces. So I said, "Pallas can you just use your own chair?"
 "Why?"
"Because yours is already wrecked and I like to keep the damage to a minimum."
Then she said something along the lines of what's wrong with a little healthy carnage?
"Well all the stuff you wreck costs money. Spending money on stuff just so you can wreck it makes daddy sad."
"But I don't want daddy to be sad."  She started crying.
"No, sweetheart, I'm not THAT sad."
"But I don't want daddy to be sad." Fullblown sobs now.
"Wait, I didn't mean sad! I'm not sad. More just, mildly chagrined."
"Sniff sniff. Okay." And then she was happy.

So the Commodore guy passed away today. It's too bad he never became a household name- in fact, I had to just now google it to remember what it is- Jack Tramiel. According to this obituary he wasn't part of Commodore anymore when the Amiga came along, but the Amiga was my first home computer- the original one and then, a few years later, the Amiga 2000 with an astonishing 20 Mb hard drive. But my neighbour had a Commodore 64 and we spent many hours playing Aliens and Rambo on it. Games were what I mostly did back then, and on the Amiga there was this kickass paint program called DeluxePaint which I spent many, many hours on but unfortunately my mastery of that never translated to any kind of affinity for Photoshop. Anyways.

We went and saw John Carter last night, and while I was a little disappointed, I don't think it deserves the fate it was handed as one of the biggest flops (in the financial sense) in history. Going in, I wanted to feel that director Andrew Stanton would clearly be the victim of studio honchos who felt that calling a movie "John Carter" rather than "John Carter of Mars" or "A Princess of Mars" was a wise marketing decision. Someone on my Twitter feed said that'd be like renaming Raiders of the Lost Ark "Henry Jones". Anyways. The movie had three separate beginnings, never a good sign and not one that helps vindicate the director, and was that Michael Chabon I saw sharing the screenwriting credits? And having just watched 4 seasons of The Wire it was a little jarring seeing Officer McNulty being, uh, whoever Officer McNulty was trying to be. Though it was fun seeing Julius Caesar and Marc Antony reunited- not to mention Posca! I do want to say that the Tharks were pretty much Tars-tastic. And they were pleasantly faithful to the source material, as pulpy and muddled as it was, so really, I guess I should just be thankful they didn't cast Rosie O'Donnell as an adorably spunky sidekick to Tarzan. I mean, John Carter. Speaking of flops, I just read Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops. As well as his memoir, The Big Rewind. My Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast pals are all friends with him and always borrow (ie steal) his ideas. So I thought I'd go to the source and read his actual books. Who would have guessed that the guy who came up with the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl led such a shitty life? Not shitty in the filled-with-terror-but-also-crazy-adventure way that Jeannette Walls describes in The Glass Castle. Just shitty in that he was so very angry and had no one on his side and thus wound up in mental hospitals and group homes. The sad thing to me is that not even Nathan is on Nathan's side, or it seemed to me anyways after I finished the book and couldn't really think of a single redeeming thing to say about him- not because there are none, but because Rabin himself seems to have gone out of his way to avoid pointing any out. Here's another flop, starring me! Someone took this video at work. The star was supposed to be the truck driver, who is a new trainee and also the brother of the guy taking the video. You know, take a video of the kid brother at his new job to show grandma kinda thing. I guess this would be an outtake.

NIght shift kind of kicked my ass this week. Went in early for an overtime, drove 32 rocktruck. Then the next night I was on shovel 10. The night after that, 21 loader (now with new engine). And then, pumps. Although that didn't last too long (someone stole my $200 Dunlop mudboots, and I'm kind of glad) before I was back on the loader. Finally, last night I started off life on 33 truck but quickly found myself on 14 watertruck since the dust was so bad in the pit ... I can't even think of a good metaphor. A sandstorm on Mars might be worse. Anyways, at no point did I touch my regular 43 Kress truck, though I did park 45 out of the way at some point.
I did listen to this fantastic Q podcast though, and I kept rewinding this song over and over again because it made me happy:

Wow where have I been right? Just busy. You know how it goes. Just bought a new dishwasher, which is one of those purchases that you need to do but it doesn't stop you from crying anyways. Hopefully this one lasts the 18 years the salesman suggested it would. The other one only lasted 6.
In other news, turns out Mike Daisey was fudging a few details in his "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs". Shame, because the issue (of shitty working conditions at Foxconn in China) is still more or less valid I think, but now no one will pay any more attention to it. When you're a writer, or a journalist, or a performer or whatever Daisey is, the only thing you have is integrity. Why you would throw it away is beyond me.
You know who does have integrity? George Clooney. And his dad. And Martin luther King III. Good for them.
Update- here's a thoughtful response to the Mike Daisey thing from a Macworld writer.

Oh yeah and before I forget, last week I switched the car seats for the girls from the 5 to the CX-5 so I could go out while Michelle was working. Such a pain, switching those around. Naia is still too little to be technically front-facing, I dunno why, it's just the law, but she's so close I thought about turning it around to save time. Then a little voice in my head told me not to take shortcuts when it comes to my daughters' safety, so I made it rear-facing. So off we went on our first adventure in daddy's new car! Pallas was pretty impressed. I think Naia was crying, but I can quite easily tune that out to concentrate on the road. Pallas says, "Daddy, Naia's upside down." Which I interpreted to mean that she was facing the opposite way that Pallas was used to seeing her. So I said, "Yup." A little later that little voice returned and told me that actually she was still facing the normal way, so I looked all the way up in the rear-view mirror and discovered that in fact Naia was upside down, or very nearly so, as her car seat had fallen over somehow. Some strap or other obviously hadn't gotten attached. She was pretty mad.
Incidentally, you might conclude from this photo that she is now front-facing anyways. That's just . . . mirrors. And photoshop. You know, photos really can't be trusted nowadays.

You probably already heard that Ralph McQuarrie passed away the other day. Sad. Obviously starwars.com and every major Star Wars site has tributes, and here's a nice simple one from JimSmash.

There it is! Pretty sweet. Fun to drive. Michelle took some photos with her iPhone, so there will be some mroe later but for now this is the only one she sent me. By the time I got it home I was running out of time and daylight. Sadly, since it doesn't have winter tires yet I will not drive it to Hinton tomorrow.
Weirdly enough, I just saw that one of my favourite blogs has a post about CX-5s. And the Lorax. And a picture of a CG CX-5. Apparently my car is Lorax approved. Though I dunno if The Lorax movie would be Seuss approved. And I, a coal miner, wouldn't be Lorax-approved, even though the Lorax book, if not the movie, is defintely Homie Bear approved.

So February's totals are 43.99 miles, or 70.8 kms. A little less than January but that's alright, today I made up for it a bit by running 8.16 miles. 2000 pushups, though, that's not too bad (for the whole month, not today).
So far my new Mazda has 0 miles on it, since it hasn't arrived yet.
The old Saturn had 233,333 kms on it earlier this week. Which, coincidentally, is exactly the diameter of Saturn the planet. Actually Saturn's diameter is 120,536 km so really I should just drive the Ion another 7000 kms to make two Saturn diameters. Then I can sell it more easily on kijiji- For Sale: 2004 Saturn Ion, black, comes with winter tires. No body damage unless you count the missing passenger mirror. Only two Saturn diameters on the odometer! $29,878 OBO.
Since a car with two Saturnian diameters isn't actually worth much on trade I am just going to keep it for driving back and forth from Hinton to the mine, which is about 70kms one way, ie the distance I ran in February.
Happy leap day!

Well looks like I bought a new car today- it's not here yet because the paint is still drying, basically. A 2013 Mazda CX-5, so new the first one (for demo purposes only) just arrived in Edmonton yesterday. Mine should be ready for pickup next week. Here it is. In the gray mica color, if I recall correctly. Should be right for me, fun to drive the monotonous miles week after week to Hinton and back, with a little more room than our Mazda 5 to take the kids to Calgary or whatever. Yeah, we have two Mazdas now.

Though I wish there were photos of the actual forest, this is still pretty cool- an intact 300-million-yo forest found underneath a coal mine. At our coal mine we think it's pretty neat when we find an intact 50-yo coke bottle or something (from the undergrounders who were there before us).
I am kinda sorta thinking about getting a new car. Something like this would be perfect, though I might also get a Mazda 3 or whatever.
And at the risk of just reblogging everything Gizmodo does, here is an animation of building a virtual Lego Millenium Falcon

I didn't make any new year's resolutions this year, since, you know, not trying to boast here but I got it covered. At least as far as physical fitness goes. So instead I decided to start keeping track of my workouts to see how I do month to month and see where I can improve and whatnot. Made a spreadsheet and everything. I just summed the total miles I did for January and came up with 49.84. Which is pretty good but damn! I didn't know I was like 25 feet short of making it an even 50 miles. Anyways I'm a Canadian and miles don't actually mean anything to me. Let's do a quick conversion here- 80.2 kms! There we go. That sounds better.
I bring it up because Michelle went to a see a speaker at her Teacher's Convention and it was this ultra-runner who ran across the Sahara Desert. Basically for the hell of it. Him and two friends- they made a documentary about it which we watched, called Running the Sahara. Pretty amazing show. If you read any of the reviews or comments about it, the thing that will jump out at you is what one viewer called the "complete assholery" of one of the runners. It's definitely true he could be assholish. But as I remarked to Michelle, I've read a lot of books about extreme expeditions- like climbing Everest or kayaking the Arctic Circle and such, and these kinds of Type A heavy duty driven bully-tending people are often right there in the middle, because these are the types that actually finish extreme expeditions. Not to defend the behavioural flaws that come along with that. Just saying. Me, I'm much more laid back but then again I've never climbed Everest have I? I hitch-hiked across Canada and stuff like that, but that's not quite on the same level.
Hell, I think running 80 kms in a month is pretty good.

Anyways. Heading off for nightshift again tomorrow, so I might as well make the most of this post since I hardly ever have time to blog when I'm on nights.
Finished a bunch of books lately. We readA Prayer for Owen Meany for book club. I dunno, John Irving is pretty highly respected, and certainly his writing skillz are fine, I just had a hard time with the idea of using a miracle to explore ideas of faith and destiny and all that. Because you can write any miracle you want when you're the writer. Generated good discussion though.
I just finished Neal Stephenson's Reamde. You probably know Stephenson is my favourite writer ever- well, him and Dan Simmons, and he didn't disappoint. Just a lot of fun, this one. There was a story about China on the news while I was reading it and for a second I was sure it was gonna be about the explosion in Xiamen.
Also, at work, I read the entire Soldier Son Trilogy by Robin Hobb. It took me a loooong time to get through those books with the limited time I have to read at work lately, but I'm glad I read them. Quite a unique book, a fantasy more or less, set in a world that is roughly equivalent to Victorian England but with an American frontier sensibility, but just as a reference point. I dunno, hard to describe, I liked how it was kind of the Avatar/ Dances With Wolves story but with waaaay more shades of grey than you usually get with those types of stories.

Here's a thought- why not let Pallas decide for herself if she wants to go see The Phantom Menace? So I tried an experiment today where I let her watch the DVD, thinking she would quickly lose interest and that would be that. Turns out she loves loves loves the lightsaber duel between Darth Maul, Obi-wan and Qui Gonn. As well she should, that's easily the best lightsaber duel in the whole saga. (Some of the CG Clone Wars episodes have fights that rival it, actually.) She watched it many times. "I want he to fight!" she said at the part where Darth Maul is looking through his monoculars on Tatooine.
Also, she likes that "Beauvio princess" (Queen Amidala). So maybe we'll go see it. Too bad there aren't fast forward and rewind buttons in movie theatres, though, her patience might wear thin on all the Jarjar parts. I know mine will.

So The Phantom Menace is being released in 3D this Friday. I knew it was coming but I didn't know it was so soon. I'm kinda torn about what to do, as far as taking Pallas goes. Pallas and I went to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D last week and she did really good, so that's not the issue. I was her age the first time I saw Star Wars, lo almost 35 years ago now. But that was Star Wars. The one where Luke Skywalker and Han Solo and Princess Leia are the good guys and Darth Vader is the bad guy. In The Phantom Menace Darth Vader is the good guy and he's a little boy. BUt Pallas has no idea that's who he'll be. I think I want her to experience it the same way I did- watching Star Wars first and then Empire, and then all the others. She's already been exposed to Star Wars, obviously- when the art teacher at her birthday party asked if anyone had a robot, she said "Boba Fett and Clonetrooper!" Who aren't robots at all but that's okay. Took me forever to realize stormtroopers weren't robots and that that backpacky thing doesn't say OIL. (What IS that thing, though? Does anyone know?)
Still. I want her to feel that shock when Vader tells Luke that if Luke moved to Russia he could call himself Luke Vaderovich. I don't want her to think Jarjar is better than Boba Fett.
And you know, there's another thing that as a parent I'm kinda questioning. In Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin turns to the dark side, he goes and kills a bunch of kids. Younglings, if I recall- so like 4, 5 yos. You watch it as an adult fanboy and you think, geeze, that's taking it a bit far, Lucas, but whatever. But how do you let your youngling watch that and then when he turns back to a good guy in Jedi, everything is ok? Personally I don't think you get to come back from that. Who knew Star Wars would bring such moral quandaries?
Well, there's one thing- it might not matter too much. Yesterday we were watching the CG Astroboy movie, and there's a part where a robot is given a negative energy core- he takes it in and says, all roboty voice, "Core accepted." Pallas turned to me and said; "Did you hear that? He said, "Hot summer." So even though we're watching the same thing, we're not necessarily seeing the same movie...

We've really been the beneficiary of our local hospitals- when Pallas was born she had to be immediately whisked to the then-one day-old Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Grey Nuns, where she was tooken care of very well. Then I didn't even hear that the Stollery Children's Hospital (part of the University of Alberta's network of hospitals) has a brand new emergency room for kids. How great is that? Just opened on Thursday, apparently, and last night Michelle and my Mom took Naia Peanut there. And she was looked after almost immediately- on a Saturday night no less. Wow.
She was fine, mostly. She's been sick for like ten days or something, but nothing to really be concerned about, but last night she started coughing so hard she threw up, and never really stopped coughing. And the scary part was she wasn't even crying, just coughing and coughing. Also she had some issues breathing- not that she couldn't, but that she was obviously working at it. Hence the trip to the hospital. So yeah, she's good, home and on the mend, looks like.
As for myself, I was home, though just returned from night shift hence not really qualified to make rational decisions,so I stayed to look after Pallas while my Mom went with Michelle to the hospital. So that was huge.
Anyways, just wanted to expand on the story a bit from my Facebook status and give the shout out to the hospitals who have done so much for us, and my Mom of course.
Cheers!

Perhaps you heard the biggish news in the geek world that the principle cast members of Star Trek: The Next Generation are reuniting at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. Kind of a coup for the Calgary Con, which is slowly growing into a respectable convention. For some reason they always seem able to nab big Star Trek actors- last year it was William Shatner himself.
Hmm. Just some random reason? I think it has to do with the proximity to Vulcan, Alberta, a small town not too different than all the other rural Alberta towns except they have a big homage to Star Trek in the form of a large model Enterprise and a tourist info centre done up to look like a space station. Anyways over the years they have gone all out, even getting Leonard Nimoy there for Spock Days once. So, you know. Calgary being the biggest city nearby, they get all the Trek stuff. That's my theory anyways. I'm more of a Star Wars guy myself but I have dabbled in the Trek world from time to time for sure.

Don't be fooled, it turned into another miserable windy day. But the sunrise was nice!

Here's a dirty word for you: verschmutzt. According to Google Translate, it's German for dirty. Earlier today I had no idea what it meant, and it was stressing me out a little. I worked overtime today, Sunday you know, twice the pay and all that, but I came in to run shovel which I haven't done for quite a while. They threw me on shovel 11, which is the rental shovel we got to replace shovel 8 and is identical to shovel 9. More or less. A few key differences, such as shovel 11 only comes in German for some reason. So the komputerschmitzen was telling me my somethingsomething was verschmutzt. What are you supposed to do with that? "Uh, dispatch, this is shovel 11. Can you send up a mechanic with a deverschmutzter? Yeah my luftwaffens are reading a little high on the verschmutzty scale. Ach du lieber!"
But thanks to Google Translate I know it was just telling me my air filters were dirty. Which is the coal mining equivalent of saying your battleship is wet.

It was Daddy/Daughter Date Day so Pallas and I went to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D. She did pretty good- she was engaged in the movie, and definitely engaged in the popcorn (hopcorn) and "special drink" aka Sprite. Sometimes she preferred to stand, and that's alright. The glasses didn't seem to bother her either. The Broadways touring show is coming to Edmonton soonly, though to be honest it looks like a not-as-good version compared to the local Citadel version Michelle and I saw a few years ago. Definitely would take her to that if it comes back!
Speaking of local culture, Michelle and I are going to the Symphony next week for her birthday! Sweet! It's been ages. Ever hear of Rachmaninoff? If I am not mistaken, the Consul in Dan Simmons' Hyperion is playing some Rachmaninoff in the opening scene of that book, one of my favourites ever. Also this piece was in the movie Shine which I should watch one of these days.

Motorcycle show! Because Edmonton riders gotta be getting antsy by now eh? What else are you gonna do but watch Sons of Anarchy and Long Way Round and wait for spring?



By the way if you wanted to buy me a bike but weren't sure which one to get me I would take one of these- and get the sidecar too so I can put Pallas in there:



But also I would take one of these for touring around with:



Actually it's just as well I have no money, I woulda bought one of each.

Remember my old car, the one I used to write love poetry to, the one I gave away at 360,000 kms because I thought it was getting a little unreliable for my trips to Hinton and back? The guy I gave it to tells me he just rolled over 500,000 kms and still gets 800 kms on a tank of gas.
Meanwhile, my Saturn Ion has given me trouble since day one, literally. The first day I had it I almost got stranded at the Safeway when it wouldn't start. Took a couple years but I figured out that little issue. Other minor things here and there went wrong, plus through no fault of its own a deer slammed right into my passenger-side mirror and tore it off. It does get beat up quite badly, driving to work and stuff. Anyways, yesterday it gave me a valuable reminder of why it's important to change spark plugs every 90,000 kms or so. Ah well, that's fine. Cost me some money and I had to leave it in Hinton, and then find alternate transportation home. Since it's me, I used the greenest method of all- my green thumb! And since it was Hinton, the guy who picked me up was my old pumpman cross-shift from work. Oddly, we spent no time at all reminiscing about those good old days. Mainly we talked about how great our new jobs are now that we are no longer on pumps.
Well. There's still the matter of getting back to Hinton. Maybe three magic words- kijiji and honda and civic . . .

While washing the dishes Pallas asked me about a stirring fork thing, obviously too big to eat with.
"Whose fork is this?"
"Well, it wasn't mine, and it wasn't yours, and it definitely wasn't Naia's, so it must be mommy's."
"Mommy?"
"Yup. You know what we call that?"
"Mommy?"
"That's an example of deductive reasoning."
"Deguckive weasoning?"
"Exactly. That's when we take all the evidence available to us and use it to draw a reasonable conclusion for questions we don't know the answer to."
Incredulously: "Is that possible?"

The headline said "Lost World" and Antarctica so naturally I thought they had finally discovered the location of the Savage Land with Zabu and Sauron but this lost world is under the sea, complete with new kinds of yeti crabs, so almost as good! More photos please!
You don't care about yeti crabs you say? Why do you even read this blog? But for you there is always the painting squirrel. Or the lion that plays football. Well, soccer as we call it in North America. When are we gonna see animals playing Canadian (or American if you insist) style football? A lion throwing a perfect spiral would probably garner a few views.

And then at midnight shovel 9 honked its horn, not so much to indicate that it was the new year as to tell me I was loaded so I could go to the dump. Woo!
Anyways happy new year to you! I'm off to work.

Night shift! Except, that should read Night shift! with one of those upside down exclamation points the Spanish language has which means the opposite of ascited. I'm sure in Spanish it means something else but only being half-Mexican I can only be half sure about such things. Tomorrow night, New Year's Eve, is not a statutory holiday so I am required to go to work! All night long! Think of me when you're having some bubbly! (where the !s are all understood to be upside down)

I keep meaning to do this experiment, but for logistical and lazinal reasons I haven't yet- I want to turn on my two iMacs at the same time and see which one gets on the internet faster. I truly suspect my circa 2007 17" 512 MB of RAM clunker that's still working off of whatever came before Snow Leopard (Housecat?) would win the race over my brand new 27 incher with 8 gigs of RAM running Lyin. I mean, Lion.
I know, there's me with the anti-Apple negativity again, right? But I love Apple, as much as I can say I love any corporation. You should see all the Apple hardware I have in this house. That ancient iMac I mentioned? Pallas uses it as her personal DVD player and it works great for that. My getting-to-be-ancient iPod Touch still works great, though it is too old to accept iOS 5.
It's because the expectations are that much higher. Apples aren't supposed to suck! So when they kind of do first you have a bit of defensive denial and then you're kind of gobsmacked. Each update comes and you think it'll get better. Not so far though. Wouldn't bother me if these updates weren't more or less forced down your throat if you want to keep updated with all your iOS stuff. (But I showed them- my iPad is still running iOS 3! Heehee!)
Is it too soon to joke about praying to Steve? Maybe, eh?
Well, here's a wish list for the next round of bug fixes and whatever:
Faster please.
You know that little icon that shows you when your iPod is done charging in your iTunes sidebar? Bring it back! Why you would take that away is a little baffling. It was there just last week.
That "fix" that was supposed to take care of webpages flashing white every now and then? Didn't work.
Is there any way to make the computer itself run cooler just by tweaking software? I doubt it but if so, make it so.
Make google stop changing gmail. Oh, right, enemies now, I forgot. Sorry.

8 Skeins of Danger tagged me and seeing as how he was instrumental in getting that meme I started going (ie he recognized the memetic potential and turned it into one) I thought I should play along. I did a similar one some years ago with Metallica so I thought I would do my other favorite band, The PIxies. Back in 1991, a bemulleted Homie Bear sat next to this really cute proto-goth in grade 11 English. We talked bands and though she didn't care for Sepultura and Death and Obituary as I did, she managed to turn me onto this cool band called The Pixies. Possibly on the very day they broke up, who knows. Though to be fair I think they broke up in 1993. The ticket stub held up by FX-7s is for one of their first shows after reforming. And I saw them again earlier this year performing Doolittle start to finish! Anyways:

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions.
Try not to repeat a song title.

Are you a male or female:
Here Comes Your Man

Describe yourself:
Gigantic

How do you feel:
Where is My Mind?

Describe where you currently live:
Planet of Sound

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Isla de Encanta

Your favorite form of transportation:
Levitate Me

Your best friend is:
Crackity Jones

You and your best friends are:
Dancing the Manta Ray

What's the weather like:
Stormy Weather

Favorite time of day:
Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons (so like, 6:35)

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
Debaser

What is life to you:
Blown Away

Your relationship:
Monkey Gone to Heaven

Your fear:
Break My Body

What is the best advice you have to give:
Distance Equals Rate Times Time

Thought for the Day:
La La Love You

How I would like to die:
All Over the World

My soul's present condition:
Oh My Golly!

My motto:
I'm Amazed

I'm gonna be ascited!!!!! That's how Pallas says she's eagerly anticipating Xmas. And this year has been absolutely magical watching her truly get into the spirit for the first time. She sprinted to sit on Santa's lap when it was finally her turn. And what did she ask him for? Presents!
I tried explaining to her the naughty/nice concept as a subtle way of hopefully influencing her behavior for the next few days. She listened solemnly and when I asked her if she thought she had been naughty or nice, she without hesitation asked, "But how Santa can come out from our chimney?" This is her biggest concern, of course, since our fireplace is one of those sealed gas ones that doesn't have an actual chimney. Even at not quite 3yo, Pallas can plainly see there's no way for the fat guy to pull that one off.
"Well, you know, Santa Magic."
And that's the heartbreaking aspect of all this Santa magic- that we are telling her these egregious lies, all in good fun, that she is wholeheartedly believing. I always thought I would be the parent who wouldn't teach his kids about Santa and all that, but somehow we just did almost by osmosis. Yeah, it's magical and soooo cute, but part of me really feels actually guilty.
I wish there was actual magic in this world that I could give you, little girl. I do.
At least I have something even better to give you- love.

Tobogganing!
Tobogganogganing!
Tobogganogganogganogganogganogganing!

Yesterday was Naia's first birthday. It's crazy how fast the time goes. We had a small family gathering in her honor. Though for Pallas's first birthday we made bookmarks and magnets and graven invitaitons . . . well, Naia doesn't care, she liked her cupcake just fine.

Speaking of babies, earlier this week my sister gave birth to a cute little boy so I have a nephew now. He came over yesterday for the birthday party and he's pretty stinking cute.

Been a busy week, just got back from Calgary for the weekend and now I'm in Hinton for dayshift starting tomorrow. How was nightshift? It was alright. I got to drive an ambulance (in a blizzard) for a guy who wasn't hurt or anything, just off food and meds for a bit too long. And here's a video I took of a loader loading a kress truck, basically the two jobs I do the most at the moment. Dark cause you know, night shift. But looks kind of cool in that post-apocalyptic way that pretty much defines my work environment.