Category: Daily life

Wait…wasn't she some kind of Russian witch?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

While walking to work today I noticed a sign in a store window that read, “Clinical strength Cutera Yag.” I thought to myself, That’s good, ’cause when I eat* Cutera Yag I’d only want the strongest, most medicinal kind.

Seriously, I don’t know why anyone would even bother with the mild version. What’s the point of buying some Cutera Yag if it’s just weak-ass shit that won’t do the job. I mean, really. I should also point out that the store was in/near Yorkville, so you just know that all the crazy plastic ladies who lunch who hang out around there wouldn’t be having no substandard Cutera Yag.

* It should be obvious by now that I haven’t a fucking clue what Cutera Yag is. I also have no idea what one does with it…does one eat it? Smoke it? Rub it on one’s skin or else it gets the hose again?

UPDATE: a Cutera Yag is some kind of laser that destroys hair and veins. Or something. So there you go. You learn something new, expensive and retarded every day.

Et le but

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Last night I went straight from work to the Auld Spot, to meet up with Nellie & CBGB. A good unwinding was exactly what I needed, and a few pints of Dennison’s took care of that. However, I ate way too much yesterday (big breakfast, team lunch, big dinner, beer) and I still feel gross. Clearly I can neither eat nor drink like I used to.

I got home just in time to see the end of the Montreal-Buffalo game. Montreal was down 3-1 with less than three minutes remaining in the game, but scored twice late to tie it and then won it in OT. It’s a pleasant, if strange, feeling to see my team playing so well.

.:.

The plan for today: summon enough energy to go run some errands and buy some food, and then welcome CBGB over for Earth Hour this evening. We’re still not sure what we’ll do, short of turning off all electrical draw. I don’t expect a major difference in the appearance of downtown Toronto, but there are some promising signs.

.:.

A shooting occurred last night on board a TTC subway car, near where I used to live. Crazy.

[tags]auld spot, montreal canadiens, buffalo sabres, earth hour, toronto, ttc shooting[/tags]

Bratterscained

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Sorry I haven’t been writing much. Normally my brain is spinning with so much delicious wit, razor-sharp criticism and profound innovation that I find I need to spill some of it onto the blog, but lately I find I have only two modes: “work” and “recover from work.” I’m glad it’s a long weekend; I may yet be able to reclaim one of the other settings on that dial.

.:.

And how will I do that? By watching hour upon hour of college basketball, interrupted only by sleep and rich food. Yes, it’s March Madness time and while I haven’t been able to give it the attention I’d like, I’m still doing pretty well in my pool, so there’s that. In between games: dinner with M2 at beerbistro on Thursday (which I think made me sick in some weird way) and dinner tonight at Tutti Matti with CBGB.

.:.

Also in between games we’ve been trying to clear off the PVR. We have it down to about 50% now, having watched two movies and an episode of Extras. We waited a long time to watch the second season — not on purpose, we just never got around to it — and so far the episodes have been fairly funny, but this episode with Daniel Radcliffe killed me. Not because of Radcliffe (though it was pretty funny to watch Harry Potter throw a rubber at James Bond’s wife’s head) but because of a scene between Stephen Merchant and Warwick Davis. That might’ve been the funniest 60 seconds I’ve seen on TV in months.

Anyway, the two movies we watched were Bobby (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a terribly dull movie about a terribly interesting man, and Beowulf & Grendel (imdb | rotten tomatoes), not the recent rotoscoped film with Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie, but the one with Gerard Butler and Sarah Polley. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t that good either. As much as I love Sarah Polley, she seemed out of place here.

[tags]march madness, beerbistro, tutti matti, extras, ricky gervais, daniel radcliffe, harry potter, stephen merchant, warwick davis, bobby, beowulf, grendel, sarah polley[/tags]

With my feet in the air and my head on the ground

Dan Dickinson3 Comments

Sorry internet, I’ve been too busy to blog lately. Work is devouring most of my time, so it’s probably a good thing I’ve dropped any pretense of putting effort into the MBA. Also, daylight saving time is wreaking havoc on my brain-clock, making it hard to keep up with my usual distractions.  Thus, you shall get brief notes instead of piercing insights.*

  • I don’t really know how two Kara Keith songs ended up in my inbox, but I like the songs I’ve heard so far. I suspect I downloaded them via Chromewaves.
  • The last time Montreal was first in their conference this late in the season was 1993, which was also the last year they won the cup. I’m just sayin’. Weird thing about that year, though; they wound up finishing third in their division (let alone conference) behind Quebec and Boston, both of whom were powerhouses, and then won the cup.
  • Last night we took the cats to the vet (which I kind of enjoyed, ’cause it gave me an excuse to leave work at 5) and found out that Sonny, the one we refer to as “fatty”, “fat boy”, “sir fatness”, etc. has lost weight. He’s now a sleek, slim 17 lbs. I guess all those nights of threatening to kill him as he howled for food have paid off.
  • Thanks to ModernMod for sending me the Frames‘ cover of “Where Is My Mind.” I’ve been listening to it constantly.
  • My toe is…well, weird. It’s still the color of violent rage, but it’s not hurting. I ran two miles on it this morning, in brand new shoes, and hardly felt anything. This is my first broken pinky toe so I’m not really sure whether this is standard, and just ask me if I can be arsed to look anything up on WebMD.

* as if you ever get piercing insights here.

[tags]kara keith, montreal canadiens, fat cats, the frames, where is my mind, broken pinky toe[/tags]

Bling When You're Minging

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Definitely the most confusing headline I’ve read all day: Dustin the Turkey plucked to represent Ireland at Eurovision. OK then.

.:.

Today’s been a great Sunday, for one simple reason: I have done dick all. Having finished my marketing assignment yesterday, I decided today would be a rest & mental health day. I took it easy all morning and watched a movie (After The Wedding, a pretty good Danish drama) while Nellie slept, then went to have some brunch at a nearby pub. Brunch turned into a veggie burger and three beers each, and now we’re home finishing up the last little errands before Nellie starts her annual Oscar freak-out. I had a nap (this is a freakish occurrence; I never nap) on the couch before we called my niece for her birthday. I ate some ice cream. That’s as exciting as it got today.

Lazy Sunday = awesome.

[tags]dustin the turkey, eurovision, oscars, academy awards, after the wedding[/tags]

"I am Shiva, the god of death."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Quite an abnormal Saturday so far: Nellie was a) up before me, and b) up before 7AM. While I slept for another half hour she was off picking up breakfast & dinner from St. Lawrence Market and returning the movie we watched last night. We wanted to see Michael Clayton (imdb | rotten tomatoes) before the Oscars tomorrow night as it was only best picture nominee we hadn’t yet watched. It was very good, and shied away from convention just enough to be interesting but not weird, but I wouldn’t call it great. It wasn’t on the same scale as, say, There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men, but it’s definitely better than Atonement (which was described perfectly by Johanna Schneller in today’s Globe: “I’m not a big fan of Atonement. To me it’s like a local news anchor, handsome but hollow.”) and more typically-Oscar, so it’s hard to argue that it shouldn’t be on the list.

Still, all in all, what a list of best picture nominees. Atonement wasn’t awful by any stretch, it just didn’t wow me; in any other year it’d probably be a strong nominee. In that same Globe article when Elizabeth Renzetti lists a few recent best picture nominees — “Fatal Attraction, Working Girl, The Prince of Tides, in the name of all that’s holy” — you realize just how good a year for movies 2007 was.

[tags]michael clayton, st. lawrence market, academy awards, oscars[/tags]

So I says to Mabel, I says…

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It sucks seeing your weekend disappear before it even arrives. I’ve been working too late every night this week to get anything done on my marketing assignment, which is due Monday, and that means I’ll have to knock the whole thing off this weekend. I hope it’s not long. Or difficult. Or worth much.

.:.

For the second game in the row the Canadiens came back from a big deficit, even taking the lead in the third period, but they gave up two quick goals and lost to the Penguins. What they are doing is not good for my heart, people.

.:.

All these wacky hours is also hurting my music-listenin’. Right now this is what I have waiting in the music inbox:

  • annuals . be he me
  • devotchka . little miss sunshine soundtrack
  • duke spirit . neptune
  • ladyhawk . shots
  • rebekah higgs . rebekah higgs
  • siberian . with me
  • sigur ros . hvarf-heim
  • sigur ros . svarf
  • silver mt zion . 13 blues for thirteen moons
  • sons and daughters . this gift

[tags]canadiens, penguins, annuals, devotchka, duke spirit, ladyhawk, rebekah higgs, siberian, sigur ros, silver mt zion, sons and daughters[/tags]

"Man's grasp exceeds his nerve."

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It’s a cold one out there. The inner harbour is now frozen up; the S-curve you can see in the ice is cut by the Ward’s Island ferry.

.:.

It’s been a lazy long weekend thus far. Last night we watched a movie — The Prestige (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which we both quite enjoyed — and this morning’s been all about catching up on light errands while Nellie and the boys sleep in. This afternoon I think the plan is to hit Canadian Tire, do some shopping and maybe see a movie on the way home, then watch some NBA skills competition. I have to get as much stuff done today as I can because tomorrow will be taken up by reading marketing and doing work, and Monday will be taken up by me laying on my ass and doing my damndest to clear the PVR.

.:.

Here’s why I like the interwebs, and specifically Flickr: yesterday I got an email from someone organizing an environmental forum in Alberta, and she wanted to use a picture we took on our 2006 Rockies trip. Not sure why; it was a fairly unimpressive picture. Still, I told her to go ahead.

Today I got an email from someone who’s seen the pictures we’ve taken out our windows, some of which show a construction site just to our east. He recognized the site, and said his daughter bought a condo there. He asked if I would mind taking the occasional picture of the site so that they could see the building’s progress. I remember wishing we had someone to do that with our site, so I created a Flickr set for him and agreed to post a picture a month. Hey, it’s no skin off my back and it gives his daughter a vantage point she couldn’t possibly get otherwise, so why not?

I feel all warm and digitally fuzzy.

[tags]toronto harbour, the prestige, family day ontario, flickr, vu condominiums[/tags]

Hooray for schadenfreude!

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Today started off pretty crappy. Annoying, puking cats. Broken PVR. Lack of sleep. 2.5 hour meeting. It didn’t get much better either. Bad lunch. Headache. Frustrating day at work. I finally got home excited to watch the Canadiens game (in English for once!) only to find that Sportsnet was blacking the game out* in Toronto. Oh, and more cat puke. Argh.

However, just a few minutes ago events transpired to make my day, despite it having only a few hours of life left: after watching Montreal beat Ottawa 4-3 I flipped over to TSN where I saw…Florida 8, Toronto 0.

If my heart has cockles, they just got warm.

* I’ve never understood the whole local blackout thing. Or rather, I understand why it’s done, but I don’t understand why fans haven’t demanded an end to the archaic practice.

.:.

It’s pretty obvious to me now that music, once the most significant art form in my life, has diminished in importance. I’m still a big fan, but I simply don’t consume as much of it as I used to. In 2003 I bought 64 CDs. In each of the following three years I bought about 40 (some time in 2006, though, it became downloads and not CDs), but in 2007 I bought only 20. That’s still a lot for most people, but it corresponds to a decreased interest in seeking out new music, attending concerts (I go to maybe one a year now), reading music reviews, etc.

Movies, clearly, are my new crack. I was unable to watch as many as I would’ve liked in 2007, but in December I made up for it by watching 26. A friend of mine recently pointed out she probably hasn’t seen that many movies in her entire life. I watched 144 films (watched for the first time, that is…I don’t count re-watches) in 2006, and this year I plan to take a week’s vacation to watch 30 films at the film festival. That’s a lot of time and money spent on films.

I guess old obsessions don’t die, they just shift mediums.

[tags]canadiens, senators, panthers, leafs, music obsession, film obsession[/tags]