Back to Toronto. Back to work. Back to the MBA*. Back to (more) humidity**. Back to cats instead of kids & dogs.
* but not for long!
** but with air conditioning!
[tags]toronto[/tags]
Category: Daily life
"Sort of like plagiarizing a comic strip"
Ken Jennings freaked me out today. It’s kind of a long story, so stay with me.
Last night I was reading a chapter on business ethics in my textbook (no, really!) and it briefly touched on a bunch of the biggies…Rawls, Kant, Mill, and so on. I guess it must’ve lingered in my head, because this morning in the shower I started thinking about Kant. That immediately got me singing the Bruce’s Philosopher Song from Monty Python, and then I started thinking about the excellent movie Quiz Show (imdb). If you haven’t seen it, it’s about how Charles Van Doren went along with the cheating on the quiz show 21, deceiving the public. There was one particularly funny scene:
Van Doren, contemplating the moral implications of being given the answers: “I just wonder what Kant would think of this.”
Freedman, trying to get him to do it, and not having a clue who Kant is: “Uh…I think he’d be ok with it.”
So I laughed about that in the shower this morning, and then today I saw this post on Ken Jennings’ blog about Charles Van Doren. Now, Charles Van Doren isn’t a topic that comes up in my regular everyday routine, so to think about him so clearly twice in a few hours…weird. I got a little freaked out…started checking over my shoulder. Kind of a Truman Show moment.
[tags]ken jennings, rawls, kant, mill, monty python, charles van doren, quiz show[/tags]
That fresh-from-the-dentist's-needle feeling
I guess I should have known this was coming: when Nellie was sick for five days, many of which were spent lying in bed and/or not going to work, it was only a matter of time before I got hit too. I felt it coming Thursday, started sneezing yesterday but managed to get through dinner at Fieramosca last night, and then finally got punched in the head this morning. Now I’m rifling through Kleenex and sucking cough drops that are making my entire tongue & mouth numb. Summer colds suck.
Luckily I don’t have that much to do today…maybe this is a good excuse to watch some of the movies clogging up the PVR.
[tags]summer cold[/tags]
It's all relative
Hey, working from 8 ’til 8 doesn’t seem so bad when you worked from 8 ’til 10 the day before.
[tags]sleep, work[/tags]
We interrupt your regularly scheduled blogging…
I have nothing important to say, other than to report that I am basking in the fleeting euphoria of having hit the ‘submit’ button on my term paper tonight. I am not particularly proud of it, but I feel good that was able to get it done under some ugly time contraints…and with 72 hours to spare, no less.
I now have 3 nights of reading, followed by a night off, followed by three nights of working on my very last assignment MBA ever, then a visit from KG, then a 5-day trip, then a holiday, then four nights of finishing off the last assignment, then three days to read the final preparatory cases, then three days of nothing (!) followed by my last intensive & exam ever…at which point I am done. And if it seems depressing that I have every day allocated like that, believe me when I say it’s even worse from this side. I’ve been living like this since June 20, and it’s going to last until the middle of September.
But then…oh ho ho, look out, general populace. You are not ready for the kind of shenanigans I will get up to with free time on my hands. It’ll be like Cat Thunderdome up in here.
[tags]mba[/tags]
"Godfather can't tell the general we don't do windows."
Today was a good day. I finished writing my paper (just needs a final read-through and a second set of eyes), took care of some other little things, got a little work done and managed to keep the place in order while Nellie tried to sleep off a cold that’s knocked the wind out of her. Even got some school shit taken care of that I didn’t plan to complete until tomorrow night, so I’m a little ahead of schedule.
33 days left. Not done yet, but I can see the finish line.
.:.
We watched the second episode of the new HBO series Generation Kill tonight. It’s good so far, kind of what I think Band of Brothers would have been like if it were about a different generation and a different war. Still, there’s a lot that’s similar: logistical problems, incompetent officers, and so on…and that makes for good TV. But like my friend Stephen said, I’ll watch anything made by David Simon and/or Ed Burns now.
[tags]mba, generation kill[/tags]
This is our house.
Today we went to our first Toronto FC game down at BMO Field. The weather called for showers and possibly even thunder & lightning, so we fully expected to get wet. I also expected to see a win, since FC were playing the expansion San Jose Earthquakes.
We took a streetcar packed with red-clad fans down to the exhibition grounds and found our seats; good view of the field, right in the middle, good sightlines. Last time I was there (for a non-FC game) I was on the other side, so it was good to get the other angle. We were in one of the calmer sections, far from the likes of the Red Patch Boys, U-Sector and North End Elite.
The game itself ended in a 0-0 draw, a disappointing result for Toronto. San Jose (more often than not described as “lowly”) mustered only a few moments of offense, so the game was Toronto’s for the taking…they just couldn’t find any scoring touch. Several failed runs, lots of crosses sailing right through the box with no one to put a head to it, even a missed penalty…nothing went right. The crowd was pretty vocal about their disappointment. It’s hard to watch your team struggle like that. They were also pretty vocal about the officiating, which was…questionable.
We lucked out with the weather. It never did rain, beyond a few sprinkles here and there…not enough to really get wet. And it didn’t get too hot either; when the sun finally broke through, the breeze from the lake kept it tolerable. A few minutes after we got home it really started to pour…glad it held off.
Pretty fun time, all in all. We have tickets for one more game in September, after the MBA is done and the film festival is over. I look forward to not having any pressing deadline on a Saturday afternoon other than getting to the soccer pitch on before the first goal.
[tags]toronto fc, san jose earthquakes[/tags]
Three weeks of mornings
Now that I am in full scramble mode to write my final term paper, I have resigned myself to the likelihood that I will not have an evening off* until Jul 24, the evening it’s due. Last night we had a drink and dinner at the Auld Spot with CBGB and got caught up on baby Liam’s feats of strength, and then came home to tie off some small errands.
This morning we had brunch at Toba with my friend Joe and his girlfriend, then grabbed some pretzels, cheese & strawberries from St. Lawrence Market north and visited the Vu condominium sales centre. We’re not looking to move any time soon, just wondering what’s out there in the neighbourhood. Already we feel like we want more space.
Anyway, it occurred to me that the only leisure time I’ll have in the month of July will likely happen before noon on Saturdays and Sundays…so I enjoyed the hell out of this one.
* except the two Summerlicious dinners next week. And the FC game two weeks from today.
[tags]auld spot, toba, vu condominiums, toronto fc[/tags]
"Wow, that's…really warm."
I spent yesterday eating great food and enjoying even better company. First, squeezed into a solid 10-4 block of meetings, was lunch with William Azaroff. I had only spoken to William through his blog, Facebook, Twitter and over the phone once or twice, so it was nice to finally meet him in person. We had lunch on the garden patio at Fieramosca, and I could’ve happily stayed to chat and bask in the wonderful weather (and food!) for much longer than the two hours we spent there. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to catch up again in a couple of weeks when I’m in Vancouver; I guess it depends on how married I am to my hotel bed after six days of hiking.
After work T-Bone had some people over for a barbeque. I was concerned about the weather — thunderstorms were forecast for the evening — but sunshine carried the day and the rain held off until after everyone had finished their rather sumptuous feast…and then it really came down. I lost count of how many shrimp I ate. Other highlights of the evening: free shots of Carlsberg at the pre-bbq LCBO run; PC being, um, doused by his 2-year-old son; Nellie and I dominating at SceneIt?. We were pretty tired though, so even though we got home shortly after midnight it wasn’t long before we both crashed.
Today’s been…well, honestly, today’s been an exercise in avoiding the inevitable: a paper that’s due Monday. Here’s hoping I can kick my own ass into gear.
[tags]william azaroff, fieramosca, carlsberg, sceneit[/tags]
I realized two minutes later that it was "balcon"
The warm (and by warm I mean screaming hot) weather has made for a very fun 18 hours. After leaving work yesterday I arrived home to a barbeque in progress with Nellie and CBGB. We made veggie burgers and drank (among others) Bavarian Weissbier and took solace in the cool breeze on our balcony. Sometimes that breeze was almost too much; at one point it blew some Tostitos out of the bowl and sent them skittering across the balcony. After our guests left we cleaned up (barely) and watched Battlestar Galactica. Getting! So! Good!
Nellie had to get up early for a hair appointment, so I used the morning to clean up (read: recycle the beer bottles), catch up on my news addiction, run some errands, buy more of that weissbier and take some pictures of all the puppies down the street at Woofstock.
Playing with dogs is good for the soul, even if my cats did look at me askance when I got home. Now I’ve finished off the list of little things that I need to get done before settling in for a long afternoon of MBA and Euro. Life could certainly be worse.
[tags]weihenstephaner hefeweissbier, battlestar galactica, woofstock, euro 2008[/tags]
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 