Too Bleedin' Cold

Minus-29 outside this morning... fortunately, the car turned over when I went out to start it. It was too cold for the remote car starter to work, so it was a manual jobby this morn. It was pretty effin' cold outside... it didn't take long for the wiry pieces of my hair to stiffen up. Luckily, it wasn't too terrible... the drive to work, I mean.

At the moment, I'm watching over the news dissemination inbox in case of a press release that we're expecting comes in. There's a small chance that I will have to look at it and get it started for Ernest while he's in transit to the office. It hasn't come in yet and Ernest shouldn't be too much longer getting in... so it's looking good so far.

On Friday, I bought a couple more CDs... Damien Rice's new one, "9" and the Fratellis "Costello Music."

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I haven't quite found that the new Damien Rice had the same immediate impact (as a whole CD) as "O" did. Songs like 9 Crimes and Rootless Tree are obvious and powerful, needless to say I love them to death. The Animals Were Gone is definitely growing on me and a few of the other ones are coming along.

The Fratellis, on the other hand, is a wicked album. Very comparable to the Arctic Monkeys in the playfulness and catchiness... but maybe a little more melodic and full. I'm dead impressed by it.

I should be close to doing my favourite song of the year... it's already the end of November and it doesn't look like we should be expecting anything of any merit to be coming out before the new year. That should get me to write a bit more on here, eh??

Well, in the midst of doing this post, that news release came in and I finished it up. Woo hoo for me!!

So... what else is new, you ask? Yeah, I tried giving Barb a ring last night to see what she was up to, but she ended up having shifts yesterday evening and has a meeting tomorrow night, so she isn't really available there either. She did mention she might have Thursday night off, so I've got my fingers crossed. There is definitely a little bit of a change in her attitude about going out of late I've noticed. She does seem to be a bit more keen and a little happier on the other side of the phone... I really hope I'm not looking for more than there actually is. Ah well, I'll do what I can again to see what happens. I told her that I would skip floor hockey if she's available on Thursday night. I haven't been able to make it to floor hockey for a while now... it's been like 3 weeks since I last went. Between events and a head cold, it's been pretty bad for me on Thursdays.

Sunday night, Chris and I went for a couple beers at the Yard and to watch the Calgary/Anaheim game on the TV. It turned out that there wasn't many people in there and Ash was working out front... by herself for the back half of the evening, as she sent one of the new girls home early. It was pretty dead in there... but there were still people filtering in after 9:30pm... and it was pretty effin' cold outside as well. It was sort of surprising. For the most part then, we were hanging out with Ash... she wasn't quite her flirty self, which was kind of refreshing. She was still rather concentrated with her conversation... but it didn't really seem like much. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?? By the end of the night though, there was a little bit of concern as there was a drunk that Gerald, Chris and myself had to usher out for Ash... Gerald coming out of the kitchen, of course. Otherwise... that was pretty much the evening.

That's pretty much the update there... my head seems to be a little clearer, but there's usually something lingering around that could cause some trouble here and there. I'm definitely thinking about Barb more... I've really got to keep myself in check. I was thinking about writing a bit more last night, but didn't really in the end. I'll probably make some additions to the Scribblings sooner or later, it's been a lot of those thoughts lately. I'm staying in tonight for the new episode of House, so I should have some time to do some writing then.

In other news, Jen is still driving me straight up the wall. Fortunately, Marcus and his friend Angela, who I was actually out with for a few drinks on Friday, may be in need of a roommate sooner rather than later, so it's definitely being tossed around in my head and if Jen's crazyness continues and I still don't get much relief in the head cold department, I'm gonna cite animals, mostly the cat, really, and get the hell out of there. Oh... that'd be kinda sweet. Marcus and Angela have a place that shares the same alley way as the house I'm in now in Kensington, so I'm really moving down the block, which would be fuckin' awesome! It wouldn't change pretty much anything. A quick transition. I might check in a little bit later tonight... I don't think I'll have anything new, per say, but I might... you never know.

What's Been Goin' On?

I thought I would check in again this morning... the workload after a holiday Thanksgiving is next to nil... so I have some time to kind of keep up with some writing today. I will see if I can do any recapping of what's gone on since a week ago Wednesday.

First things first though... I need some more coffee. Just a second.

Well, just coming through the third quarter deadline for the bulk of my clients, things should slow down just a little for me over the next couple weeks at work. Those deadlines are absolute killers, especially when everyone drops it all on me at once. Yeowsers. And now since it's the end of the year as well, I'm getting a lot of mining technical reports and annual reports starting to drop in and they are large enough to choke some donkeys.

From the last post, I posted the day before the Legends of Hockey game... that was not a bad evening. I was hoping to take Ash to that, but when we were texting each other during the day, she ended up disappearing on me... knowing full well that the shift that she was trying to switch with someone had to be done by her. But she didn't even text to say so... so I was kinda choked at that. It did end up being somewhat of an office outing... Marcus got a couple tickets as well and Fred & Nancy brought a couple kids. It was a pretty good evening, but no one really wanted to stick around for the charity auction, so we all went our separate ways in the end.

After that scheduling debacle with Ash, I was giving her a hard time as to her disappearing on me... something that sort of made her rather sheepish for the rest of the weekend when I was out and about at the Yardhouse. She's certainly good at driving me nuts. So again, I've sort have let her go again.

Barb on the other hand... yesterday being the US Thanksgiving and all those mights I listed in the last post... they did sort of come to fruition. We finally ended up getting together yesterday for a few drinks and a chat. There was a little something in the air with her last night... we spent a few hours just hanging out and chatting like we normally do... but she did have that little extra desire to do something... she was keen on hanging out and she seems keen to do more stuff. She's off on Monday and Tuesday, so I'm gonna give her a text then and see what, if anything, can happen. I'll probably pick up a couple Snow Patrol tickets here in the next couple days... she would like to go to that in April.

I wouldn't go so far as to say things are really looking up as of yet... but ya never know.

The early part of the week, I was devastated by a pretty good head cold. I was finding myself with a bit of DayQuil in the system at work and then I would come home to a couple NyQuil and then straight to bed. I was in bed before 8pm both Monday and Tuesday. I didn't quite sleep all that well, but I certainly tried. It seemed to help a bit... as I felt pretty good on Wednesday. So much so, that Chris and I went out to watch the hockey games and found Gerald not working and watching the Canucks/Wings game and well... BAM! I wasn't sick Thursday morning because of the cold... I'll tell ya that much.

Gerald and I whooped it up pretty well on Wednesday night... and I have now come to the conclsion that all Red Bull products and their mimics are not good for me anymore. I get such an upset stomach with Red Bull now... it's unbelievable. It was the main cause of most of my discomfort yesterday. I had to go find some Pepto Bismol to quell the discomfort. So... no more of that!

Oh the memories of all that Vodka/Red Bull... give me a moment while I have a flashback.

Cue the music... wavy transition... flashback... pop! And we're back.

Well, that's about the best of a recap as I'm gonna give today. I'm not gonna promise much more writing over the next little while. The hockey pool is still keeping me really busy and such. It might be more of something for the summer or if I have a lot of downtime at work. No promises... that's all I can say.

Hurried Post

I've only got a few minutes before I should get some work done... it's gonna be another busy day. Damn quarterly deadlines. Everyone has 'em.

The new haircut has so far gone over alright... I'm quite impressed. It's such a nice change of pace for me. Very little maintenance... that's what I like. It's been rather shocking for most... ha ha... especially since everyone I really know now around here has only just met me after England and I had long-ish hair since then... so SURPRISE!

I actually got in contact with Barb again... I was talking with Benny the other night and he was asking if I had talked to her. Frankly, I hadn't even been thinking about her lately. So in lieu of that, I sent her a 'name that tune' text message... of which the answer was 'Downtown' by Neil Young (what a tune!). It was a set of messages that she jumped in and asked all the questions and asked what I was doing next week... so we might get together on Thursday next week... I have the day off for the US Thanksgiving holiday, so lunch might be in order.

At the Christmas Party on the weekend, Fred and Nancy gave some of us VIP tickets to the Hockey Legends game this Thursday at the Saddledome. It came with tickets to the charity auction shindig afterwards in the club lounge at the 'dome. I had checked to see what Ash was up to... she's supposed to work, but said she'd look into it. Again, not holding much hope... I tried texting her last night, to no avail. I'm kinda hopin' she gets back to me by tonight... I did say to Dad that he should come if all plans fall through. He'd really enjoy it at least.

Anyways... it's now reaching 8am... gotta get a major project goin' here this morning. Catch ya later.

Already A Week?

Wow... all this lack of motivation has been doing me in on the Tales, it looks like.

Yesterday, I would have written, but between the quarterly deadline for filing being today and getting my hair cut off last night, it was pretty busy.

There was the Xmas Party on Saturday night... which was good.



The night up at the Delta Lodge in Kananaskis was alright... service was a tad shotty and both Fred and Trevor got sick, so that put a damper on the whole thing. All in all, it was pretty alright.

On Friday afternoon, which I had off, thanks to Veteran's Day... Chris and I went and saw Borat. Fuckin' awesome show that is... I laughed my ass off. So incredibly offensive... and as a person who isn't offended that much... it's just plain funny.

Well, I thought I would quickly check-in... I hope to be doing very little in the coming evenings, but we all know how that goes for me. But I will try to check in a bit more later.

Been A Few Days, Eh?

Bored of writing... I think that's really what it's all about. I mean,that's what the lack of posting is about. I know I was rather prolificat it... but now... not so much. I was really using this as a tool tofigure out a lot about me... and really, I'm finding that me is reallybeing sorted out. So unless I've really got something neat to say,maybe I won't be too rushed to write anything.

I mean, I'm not really caring about the Blogosphere at the moment...having the hockey pool work more hours for me than not, than it wouldseem to me that it would make more sense to concentrate on it than theinconsequential nature of the Tales.

The weekend in Kamloops was very quick and went a lot better than I had expected. I really enjoyed seeing everyone... all who was really missing was Tegan and Kenny & Rachael. Otherwise, Megan & Erin were about and Tony & Nicole, although busy with all the wedding prep, were about. I have most of them on MSN, but it's been pretty rare to chat with them, which I kind of hope that I can nip in the bud. Even seeing Sue, although a little hesitant at best, was still not too bad. Everything went really well... the ceremony only lasted about 15 minutes on Saturday evening and the reception was okay... although after dinner and the speeches, the party thinned out quite quickly and we even left before 11pm. Dad starred in the reception after giving a hilarious speech which brought down the house.

The whole thing was rather quick as the drive there and back were kind of long, but seeing everyone made the scariest drive ever (getting there) worth it. The drive to Kamloops was very treacherous through the Roger's Pass in the Rocky Mountains with every bit of weather imaginable coming down on the roads. Once I got out of Revelstoke, then the darkness which began to set in. With the wet roads misting, the snow and rain falling, the wind gusts and a slightly dirty windshield made the whole thing even more dangerous when oncoming traffic made it impossible to see. I was following tailights in my blindness for about 3 hours or so... it was quite scary. Especially when the taillights would pull away a bit, I would push the car a little faster and catch up... it was kind of exciting in the end.

On Sunday, when I left for home, I left fairly early... around 10am PT/11am MT... that way I thought I could make it through without any problems with the weather and fortunately, weather didn't really play much of a factor on the drive home. It was only raining at best and the weather on Saturday was kind of warm, so the roads were only left with wet spots. In comparison, it took me about 7.5 hours to get to Kamloops (or worse) and only 6 hours to get into the city limits of Calgary.

Besides seeing everyone... I managed to get to a Shoppers Drug Mart for this year's edition of the Canucks calendar. Woo hoo!! It's gonna be the little things that excite me, really. Now I just gotta find a Keira Knightley calendar soon. If I find one in town, I'll probably be super-excited.

This week at work, I'll be expecting some quarterly reports and I have to put together a presentation for my EDGAR department for a meeting on Saturday. Saturday will be the company's Christmas Party out in Kananaskis Country. We're all geting together and doing up some brainstorming for new names, logos and protocol in each of our departments for growth. I've got to come up with some guidelines and numbers from the past year and do a small, yet informative presentation to make the department work a little smoother. So, I think I'll really try and tackle that here today... I don't know what the rest of the week is going to look like, so this might be my only sustained chance to get it all together.

I really have to get used to this Flock Blog Post program. It does the automatic paragraph functions in HTML and I'm normally used to pressing Enter twice instead of once for the lines in between. Grrrr....

There got it.

Let's see... what else is new and exciting? Well, there's nothing exciting really. I tried a little harder last week to try and convince Ash to meet me for lunch, but that didn't quite work. She did however text me after work on Friday to apologize... which doesn't normally happen. I tried to see if she was working on Sunday night, but there wasn't any response. Chris and I showed up regardless for a beer as he was bored out of his mind... I don't think he got up to anything while I was gone... probably did a lot of code writing there in the basement.

I think last week, now I can't quite remember as I might have been slightly cut at the time... that Gerald called me one night and said that his roommate, albeit crazy one, is moving out of their place soon and he would have an extra room. I think I'm gonna take it, but I'm gonna need to talk to him about it soon. Jen, this morning, who didn't have any work to go to, got up in the middle of my routine period this morning and jumped in the shower. I don't know why... but she did. So I just stormed out of the house, pretty pissed off, and left for work. She also tried her best to not wake me up last night as she had Tony over for a pow-wow. I thought she was working last night and as I really hadn't slept too well from Thursday night on... I took a sleeping aid to knock myself out early. It was working and then those two walked in. The thin walls were not used to my advantage, although I think I did make it to sleep at a reasonable hour. The shower this morning did really get my goat... and I'm gettin' rather tired of living with her animals. It's just the small things that are annoying me about the place... and then she'll be putting up her xmas decorations, which will be gay... so, if I can get out of there soon... I'll be a happy camper.

I think tonight, I'll be meeting up with Fred to go to the Flames/Stars game. That should be alright... I'll have to get some money for him before going as the tickets will probably run around $50. That should be a good way to get out of the house. I'm sure i'm gonna need a reason tonight. I'll have to dig up my Stars jersey to antagonize the fans in the building. Maybe... I can't really stand behind them though... it would just be rather funny to be antagonizing, especially if they win... but they lost to Vancouver last night... and well... back-to-back nights like that are hard to believe that a win will come out of it.

Now, it's quarter to 10am this morning and there is still no sign of Marcus. Wonder if he pulled the pin. Strange... but the Deerfoot is also kind of treacherous some days, although Ernest made it here no problem. Ah well... we'll see.
problem. Ah well... we'll see.

November?

Temperatures below zero... snow on the ground... yeah... it's November alright.

Halloween's plan went down a treat... avoided the house... watched the game... had a few brewskis... it was pretty standard issue. Had a couple at the Yardhouse after depositing my paycheque... chatted with Erin for a couple... just until Chris was ready to head over to FATS for the Canucks game. He rang... went home to drop off the laptop and grab a jersey... then we were off. Had the worst ribs ever at FATS and a few beers... Canucks lost... that was my night in a nutshell.

Man... I've really dropped off the face of the writing Earth, eh??