Off to the Island

Ok, this will be fast, mostly because I leave for the airport in 10 minutes. That's right, I'm off to Prince Edward Island for almost a week to visit some relatives (and my parents who are vacationing there as well). It'll be a nice break from work and everything here in Ottawa, though I am missing Tony's 4th birthday (Ive's little brother). Little kid's birthdays are so much fun and we had such a blast last year that I'm sad to say I'm missing it this year. Anyway, I don't know if I'll get time to post from PEI with all the visiting, golfing, and hopefully sleeping that is going on but I'll definitely post when I get back.

I can't believe I forgot this

There is a new Less Than Jake album out! I can't believe I didn't post anything about it. I was just listening to it while packing and I just thought, "these are some awesome songs, wait, I don't think I've told anyone about this". For those of you that don't know who Less Than Jake are, they're only my favorite band. They're an awesome ska/punk band out of Gainsville, Florida and they've been around for quite some time. It's the kind of music that just gets me going no matter what mood I was in. Their new album (B Is For B-Sides) is a collection of b-sides that got cut from their last album. Most of these songs are good enough to even be on Anthem (their last album). Check them out on the web and then go buy an album or two if you like the upbeat music.

"Because is it whatever it takes to get you by? What's the right thing to do in this crazy mixed up life? Sad or sober or stong or with closed eyes. Would you still make all the right decisions? Would you accept someone's forgiveness in this life?

I've read all the books and I still don't have all the answers. And that's fine. Whatever it takes to get you by."
- Less Than Jake from Showbiz? Science? Who Cares?

Bourne again

So I've been meaning to post a few times in the last few days but I keep getting interupted by something else so I'm just going to do it from work.

Last Saturday we went to the Bourne Supremacy after Mike and I went and bought the Bourne Identity special edition.  The special edition isn't much more special than the regular version but it was cheaper and came with a free movie pass to the Bourne Supremacy so I thought why not.  I wouldn't say the new movie is any better or any worse than the first one but it's a bit different.  The car chase is really the only scene I have any problems with.  Don't get me wrong, it's a great scene in general and a way more realistic car chase as far as movies go but the camera is constantly changing and shaking around.  This is obviously a cinematic choice but one that I don't particularily like.  All I can say is go see if for yourself, it is a really good movie. 

Last night I went back to pool league for the first time in a few weeks.  I was a little rusty but somehow I got a little lucky and managed to win the A-tier for the week.  Tournament is coming up in a few weeks so I'd better get some practicing in if I want to make a run at one of the titles again.  This pool league is definitely one of the activities I'm going to miss most in Ottawa.  Not that I can't play pool back in Edmonton but the atmosphere of the league and the people that play in it is almost impossible to duplicate so I probably won't even try, though I definitely will get out to shoot some stick whenever possible.  I mean, if I was rusty after a few weeks, just think of how much my newly found skill at pool will go missing if I don't play for a few months.

The two best words in the English language: de-fault

So we have our first win in my Saturday soccer league. We even managed to beat the top placed team...by default. They didn't have enough players to play so we won 1-0 by default...well, you have to get that first win somehow. We still played (they just borrowed players from some other teams) but I really didn't have the energy. Last night we went to the Heart and Crown for some good times on the patio. Afterwards we decided to go back to Ive's friend Mark's house to watch a movie and drink some more. Good times continued until 4:30...a little late (or early, depending on how you look at it). So I didn't actually get to sleep until 5. And for some reason I was up before 9. Good thing I slept some this afternoon after getting back from car stereo shopping with Mike. His stereo for his car is going to be pretty sweet once it's installed. Tomorrow I plan on cracking down on that report and probably playing some more music, boy have I been regretting not playing more music in the last year.

My weak lips and lungs

So since getting the silent brass and kicking my butt back into playing my trumpet I've realized that I'm really out of shape. Yes the way that you all think, but I'm talking more about my lips and my air capacity. Playing this last week has shown me how much I've let my "skills" slip by not playing much over the last year. I also realized how much I missed playing. Now if I can get my tone back up to an acceptable level and not make myself out of breath playing only one song I'd be a lot happier. All in good time I guess. I should have some time this weekend since everyone seems to be gone away or busy with something else. Besides soccer I really don't have anything planned and it doesn't look like much is going on so I'll probably spend my weekend playing trumpet (and Jay's guitar whilst he's out camping and canoeing) as well as some video games. I should also really get cracking on that internship report...but that's not as much fun so we'll see how much time I make for that.

Actual update

So I just realized I blabbed on about movies for the last post and didn't really say anything else. Well, I hurt my knee again...playing soccer, again. It's not as bad as last year though. It comes and goes and I could probalby get along ok doing almost everything physical like normal but I'm skipping badminton tomorrow (even though I really don't want to) and I'll likely miss soccer on Thursday too. Besides hurting my knee (which happened when I got kicked in the back of the knee for some unknown reason) the game on Sunday went very well. It was a beautiful, hot day (too hot some would say) and the other team didn't have a full lineup and wasn't overly good anyway. So we managed an easy 5-0 win. I didn't get any goals (partly being sidelined didn't help that) but I did manage to get into the action quite a bit. For some reason we play better on Sunday afternoon games then our regular weekday games. I guess we're all just tired from working so hard all day (inside joke description: almost all of us work for the government). We're going to have to get a win on a weeknight sometime (I hope).

Other bit of update (which I meant to post last night but was too tired) is that I went to the Evanesence concert last night. It was AWESOME! Not just Evanesence but the opening bands as well. My one complaint was how long Evanesence played (only 1 hour) but with Breaking Benjamin, Seether, and Three Days Grace each playing before hand, the concert was long enough and had enough great music. Anyway, if you get a chance to see either Three Days Grace or Evanesence live, DO IT. Even Breaking Benjamin was really good (Seether was ok but not totally my cup of tea). Next big concert on the horizon: Warped Tour 2004 in Montreal. Can't wait for that one. Hoepfully it'll be as great as last year's.

I Robot...well not really but you get the point

Ok, so I've seen a few good movies lately and I thought I should fill you in. First, in case you didn't see me mention it before, go see The Terminal. Not long after that I went to see Spiderman 2. Good movie, I liked it better than the first one, but that may also be because I've been playing the game so much (which is the best game I've played in a while too). Next was King Arthur. Now for those that know the fictional legends of King Arthur, this is a little different. They based the movie a bit more on the "real historical" legends rather than the fictional legends made based on "history" (I'm obliged to put the quotes in since I've already been given a hard time for saying that King Arthur might have actually existed in history). But I still liked the movie despite some lackluster comments from some people *cough* Wei and Mike *cough*. It had a decent enough amount of action with a decent enough story. It wasn't as good as I had hoped though (it didn't quite live up to my expectations of it being as good as First Knight). And lastly, in case you hadn't guessed from the post's title, I went to see I Robot tonight. It was a surpisingly good movie. I didn't expect a whole lot from it but I really enjoyed it. Even if you just take away the actual story, it's still interesting to me to see how the movie managed to portray the way life could be in 2035. Very cool. And the plot just adds to it (even if some of you will find it a little far fetched). So yeah, it's been a busy month for movies, and as far as I'm concerned, it won't change anytime soon with The Bourne Supremecy and The Village coming out. Happy movie going!

Silence is deadly

Well I guess I've got a whole week to update so this could be a little long since it has been a busy week. I'm finally back to feeling normal again, all these strange sicknesses have gone away. I'm left with a bit of a runny nose and cough but that's been getting better too. So I started playing badminton again on Wednesday. Frank and Wei invited me to go with them to Nepean to play. Boy am I rusty. And speaking of rusty, I've started to play my trumpet again. I went out yesterday and bought a Silent Brass (hence the title of this post). For those of you that don't know what that is, it's basically a mute that you put in the end of your trumpet that picks up the sound and mutes it almost completely but outputs into a little gizmo that you can plug earphones into. So it's like shoving a microphone into your instrument while muting it. It's been great so far. I'm way out of practice but with this I'll feel more inclined to practice more since I won't be disturbing anyone.

So this weekend/week has been filled with soccer. I had my regular game Thursday (we lost to the top team in the league, no surprise) plus the game Saturday morning (we lost again but I did manage to stop a penalty kick) but this week I also had to ref the early game Saturday (10:00) and we play again this afternoon. So a soccer filled weekend, at least I'm starting to get in shape. I think I pretty much stuck myself with the keeper position on my Saturday team. I've played the last few weeks as the goalie since no one else wanted to and since I did manage to make a few saves (by some fluke), I'm pretty much stuck there for the rest of the season. Not that it's totally bad, it's just that I like playing striker a lot more. Hopefully I'll be up at striker this afternoon. Speaking of which, I'd better get my gear together and head for the bus soon. Updates should come more often now, especially since the blog hosting service has a bunch of new features I want to try out.

Nothing like the shakes

So I got over the fever I had Friday but kept the cold (read: cough and runny nose) but I managed to shake off sickness for only 48 hours or so. Yesterday after poker I wasn't feeling very good and when I went to bed my body was shaking uncontrollably...probably not a good thing. Anyway, didn't get much sleep even including the nap I took after leaving work early today so I'm going to bed now but first I thought I'd fire off a quick update on the weekend.

I got stuck reffing soccer Saturday morning since we needed someone to ref and of course I was stuck holding the bag as captain. Not that I really minded that much but kind of inconvenient when you were quite sick the night before. So after reffing that game we had our normal Saturday morning game and I was stuck in net again. I think I'm going to end up there on the Saturday team for the rest of the year (which I guess is ok but I'm not very good). At least this time I made some saves and we managed to pull off a 0-0 tie. I credit half of that shutout to Marcel because he saved my ass a couple times. In the afternoon I helped Marcel move across town to Jarett's building and then it was off to Mike's for another birthday party. It was a lot of fun. We barbequed chicken on the roof of his parking garage. Yep, that's right, he has a little park on the top of his building's parkade so you can go have a barbeque there. Good times again. I think we'll have to have a birthday party every Saturday night now, even if there isn't a birthday. Sunday was pretty boring for the most part. Cleaned my room (I can see the floor again) and the balcony and then hosted poker (where I lost again) at night. So that pretty much wraps it up, time for bed...at least the shaking stopped after my nap this afternoon so I should be able to sleep tonight.

Wearing sweatpants in the middle of summer

Ok, so I'm sitting here in my sweatshirt and sweatpants with my blanket wrapped around me...and it's July! Why you ask? Because I'm sick! I don't know how this crept up on me. I mean, I went golfing this morning and all that was wrong was a little bit of a cold (sore throat, stuffy nose). When I got home I wasn't feeling any worse, but around 4:30 when I finished watching Old School (thanks to Jay for getting me that movie for my b-day by the way) I felt like crap. It started just with a bit worse of a cough and feeling just generally crappy, but it progressed into my head feeling like it was on fire and the rest of my body shaking and freezing. So of course I went to bed and got all wrapped up in the covers to take a nap. Problems arose when I had some problems stopping coughing and breathing normal long enough to actually fall asleep. At least now I'm starting to feel slightly better. Hopefully when I wake up I'll be well enough for Soccer and Mike's birthday party (happy birthday to Kevin by the way, and belated happy birthday to Mike). Ok, enough whining for one day, I need to try to actually sleep.

Oh, and apologies for the rant if it was a little overboard this morning. I was still fired up about that and you all know how competitive I can get. At least I managed to keep my cool on the field and not do anything stupid.

Another extra note...poker here at 7 on Sunday...let me know if you're coming.

Quick rant

Ok, not much time for this one but since I was planning on posting last night but was too worked up to post, I'll do it now. So we had soccer last night at the RA Centre. We were playing a team that we were tied with in the standings and probably should beat. And I think we probably would have...except for the incompetent ref. Now for those who don't really know me, this seems like a normal complaint that comes up after many of hard to take losses, but for those who do know me, I have a pretty good understanding when it comes to officiating sports. I ref hockey, I have the odd bad game, I can empathise if that's all it was. But this guy was incredible. And it wasn't just our team that thought so, the other team totally agreed. Unfortunately at the end it was my team that had more of the bad calls directed towards us. I mean, we had a player given a red card in the first 10 minutes of the game...and he barely touched the guy he tripped. Not to mention the fact that we almost had a brawl in the last 10 min when one of their players headbutted one of our defenders after a textbook slide tackle. But even if he would have made the proper calls for these obvious fouls, it still doesn't explain the fact that he couldn't call a corner kick/goal kick right all night and never knew which way a throw in was going. Even when one of their players kept saying, "No, I kicked it out, it's their corner kick", he still said goal kick. ARRRGG!! Well despite that I managed to play an alright game considering I had to move back to midfield to cover the guy who was given the red card. Oh well, hopefully soccer tomorrow goes better and there's always next week. At least today I'm not working and instead am going golfing. That'll be nice.

Happy Birthday to Me

Well, another year gone by and another year wiser...yeah, wiser, that's it. It's funny, I don't feel 22. Anyway, not much special going on today, just your average Monday, pool league and all. Besides, we already had my birthday party on Saturday, and what a party. I can definitely say I haven't had a birthday party that good since...well, a long time anyway (which is hard when you've only had 22 of them). We started out by going to the beach to play some volleyball, hang out, and get some sun tans (read: burns). After the afternoon at the beach we found our way over to Ive's house for a BBQ. And wow, did we ever have a lot of food: sausages, hamburgers, pork steaks, beef steaks, salmon steaks, salad, rice, potatoes, buns, veggies, and of course cake and various beverages (including some really yummy Jello shooters)...like I said, lots of food. We capped the night off by heading to Grace O'Malley's. For some reason I really like that place. Perhaps it's because all the times I've gone there they had a kick ass live band and good music playing in between sets. More good times. So I'd like to thank Ive and Anne-Marie for planning it and everyone that could make it out for coming. It was a great to have so many people come out and hopefully everyone else had as good of a time as I did.

Whoops, forgot something

Well, two things actually.

One: Thanks to everyone yesterday, it was a good time and I miss doing stuff like that every weekend like last year. We'll have to do it more often.

Two: My b-day party is Saturday at Mooney's for some v-ball at 1. See you there!

Warning: Long Post

Well since it's been almost a week since I posted last, I figured I should probably update what's been going on...but first, HAPPY (belated) CANADA DAY!

So last Sunday we (Jay, Anne-Marie, Kayla, and I, and eventually Wei) played some beach volleyball at Mooney's. Stupid wind kept blowing too much but we still managed to have some fun and play for a couple hours. The net held up well, I'm happy with my purchase.

Then as the (short) week cranked into full gear we decided to go to Farenheit 9-11 for cheap Tuesday. Unfortunately, the only good theatre that had it playing was on the far east end of the city (and I live in the west). So while the rest of my friends went for supper before the movie, I went to get my hair cut and go shopping before taking the 40 min bus ride to the movie. And even though I managed to beat everyone else there, the show was already sold out so we were left with a decision. I wasn't travelling across the city and not seeing a movie so we decided to go to the new Tom Hanks movie, The Terminal. One word...AWESOME! Even if you aren't a big Tom Hanks fan (like I am), it still is a very well done (and surprisingly funny) movie. Even Jay enjoyed it (and he's disliked almost all the movies we've gone to lately). So go see The Terminal. Ok, there's my one movie recommendation for June (yes I know it's July now).

On Tuesday I also picked up the new Tragically Hip album (good stuff!) and the Spiderman 2 game for Gamecube. So you can guess how I wasted all of Wednesday after work until late at night. Yesterday (Canada Day) was a blast. We (Jay, Anne-Marie, Ive, Antonio(Ive's little brother), and I) went downtown in the afternoon and despite almost getting caught in the rain, we had a great time. Tony's a pretty funny little guy and it was fun just walking around and seeing street performers and all the people. Then at night a bunch of us had a bit of a picnic down at a park next to the river. We got a fire going and cooked some burgers and hotdogs over the fire before playing and sitting around a bit before the fireworks. And the fireworks didn't disappoint. After heading back to the fire and cooking some more marshmallows and hanging out we finally called it quits. Drinking some last night probably wasn't a good idea since I (and almost nobody else) had to work today. Work is almost completely empty, but that is somewhat a good thing since I can get some more work done. Speaking of work, I should probably get back to it.

Wow this really is a long post.