It Finally Happened...

..."Surfer, Dude" starring Matthew McConaughey is finally available on DVD and Blu-ray (I think he plays himself) and I've moved to Thunder Bay. Both are momentous, life-changing events.

Can you tell which of the two photos above is from the set of "Surfer, Dude" and which one is just the Bongolier hanging out in his natural habitat?

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of phlegm, Snowmageddon/Windpocalypse, Christmassing, Boxing (Day and all our worldly posessions), moving and, now, watching TV.

I had been battling the beginnings of a cold for over a month and it finally took hold during the week before Christmas. I think I'm the only person who was happy to get sick this season. I was getting tired of waiting for whatever was brewing inside me to finally fill my brain with mucousy goodness. When random sore throats and general fatigue finally blossomed into a full-blown cold, I was elated. Even though I had turned into an Advil Cold & Sinus commercial, I was happy because Sean came home on December 16th.

Sean and I fell back into our normal routines rather quickly. Me, coming home from work, eating the food that Sean had prepared (see the picture of cookie mountain below) and then retreating to the office to watch Buffy and knit Christmas gifts. Sean, returning to his studies and/or doing something else productive. We got some packing done while Sean was visiting. We thought we had made a good dent in the packing before Sean left, but what we didn't realize is that the hard part about packing is not the packing of the majority of your stuff. The hard part is packing the dregs that you don't want to get rid of, but there's no logical way to pack it. I think the last box that I taped up had miscelaneous pens, markers and scissors, our front door mat, a piece of the lawnmower and a screwdriver in it. The cooler was packed with a pair of rubber boots, the hanging wire rack from the shower and a feather duster.

Christmas Eve was spent at my parents' place in New Hamburg. This was Sean's first Christmas Eve with the Seyler clan and our usual tradition of having cabbage rolls prevailed. In addition to the cabbage rolls, my mother also made the best meatloaf I've ever tasted. It was made with Lamb and Beef (consistent with another Seyler family tradition of having two meats at every meal) and a zillion delicious cheeses/fillings.

Mmmmeatloaf!

Cccccabbage rolls!

Before we headed out to my parents' place, Robo was doing his usual job of "helping" me wrap gifts. As you can see, his choice of places to sit on the bed was quite strategic. It's hard to be annoyed with him when he's so darn cute.

I decided to not pull my annoying aunt act with my nephews on Christmas eve where I gush over how tall they're getting and how I used to hold them as babies, blah, blah, blah. Instead I chose to just glare at Michael while he stood beside me, growing at a furious pace.

That glare could compete with Angela Basset, Queen of Glares. I think she won that title at the Teen Choice Awards in 1993.

Once the Christmas festivities were finished and Sean was safely returned to the North, my mother and I started packing. We spent all day on the 27th and 28th packing up the house. We created a fun game called "Where's the Cat in This Room?" Let's play with the pictures below, shall we?

Where's the cat in this room?

No cheating, now...

There he is!! Hiding behind the tapestry!

Where's the cat in this room?

There he is!!

He probably peed in that box while he was in there.

Where's the cat in this room?

There he is!

The movers came on the 29th to pack up the place. Look at my living room all empty and sad.

One of the movers, named Yves, looked very much like Yosemite Sam, without the guns and general rambunctiousness though.

While the movers created a virtual game of Tetris with household goods, I did, um, well, nothing. I guess that's what I paid for - to do nothing. I knitted on my throne.

I'm now in Thunder Bay staying with the Middletons. Our stuff will be delivered on Monday (fingers crossed - the TBay area is supposed to get 30cm of snow between today and tomorrow). And the worst part is that our x-country skis are packed with our household stuff in the truck :( Well...I guess I can go pick up a copy of "Surfer, Dude" to keep me occupied!

Two Posts for the Price of One...Freehundred Dolars

Double play!! Two blog posts in two days. I need to make up for all the weeks I missed.

I visited the Bellevue office for a week in early January and I have to say, it's always a pleasure to go there. They've successfully kept a small company feel that is very refreshing. Some examples below:

These two home-made signs are taped on or above the ancient shredder they have in the office. Why they don't have a newer one, I don't know. Probably because they spent too much time unjamming the shredder after putting 14-16 one-dollar bills through it all at once.

My previous visit to the office was just after Halloween in '08 and the office was adorned with Halloween decorations. During this visit, the office was decorated in non-denominational seasonal decorations (I have them well trained), but they found a way to incorporate the Halloween decorations into the seasonal decorations. I think they were celebrating the hallowed "Decemberween".





And then there was this guy...



This D-bag was walking around departure gate S1 at Sea-Tac yaking away on his B-tooth. He was ripping a strip off of the person on the other end of his mobile device. I heard him say this, "Shut up. No, seriously - you need to stop talking. You're an idiot. He's an idiot. Stop talking. Shut up. I need you to go tell that idiot that it's not going to happen that way..." This style of communication went on and on. I had to shut off every HR valve in my body to keep from giving him a talk about effective communication and the power of patience. I wanted to do this to the dude.



I was pleasantly shocked to find the Vonderful Goot Game of Dutch Blitz in a local game store. I thought it was only for Waterloo Region Mennonites who want to act out their animalistic violent tendencies through alternative cards and those of us who want to be just like them. I love how it's sandwiched between "Malarky" and "The Great Dalmuti". In less classy game stores it would be sandwiched between "Bullshit" and "Vagina Wars".



I don't know what was going on in the picture below, but it made me laugh. I had parked beside this car and something caught my eye as I was walking away. The entire steering wheel was covered in tiny post-it notes. Why? I don't know. Maybe it was a rental and the person renting it was OCD and didn't want to touch the steering wheel because of germs?



So, while we're on the topic of all things South of the border, there are a few things that I've seen grace the tvs in my hotel rooms that I felt were blog-worthy.

First, The Phantom Gourmet. The Phantom Gourmet is a show about food, but it's staged and edited like a sports program. The show chronicles all the best foods in the New England area. Awesome, you say. But wait...it's not all types of foods. It's just fast foods. This show displays food in a way that is so close to pornography, it's kind of disturbing.



Who the heck is Paula Deen??? Is she related to Jimmy Dean? If so, he's probably mad that she's out hawking pork products for another sugar daddy - Smithfield. Watch some of the commercials at the link below and you'll understand why Paula will slip into a pork coma within the next two years. My favourite is "The Birthplace of Bacon".

http://smithfield.com/about/advertising.php

When you were a kid, did you ever meet certain adults and even though you were just a kid, you could tell how sad and lonely the adults were? Seeing them in all their sadness made you plead to the coolness gods to never let you become so reprehensibly creepy? Well, the Hip Hop Magician is one of those adults.

http://www.hiphopmagician.com/

The dead look in his eyes, the mouth slightly agape in most of the pictures - this man is a clown and is clearly treated like one by everyone he meets regardless of their age.

I really shouldn't be so critical when this is what Canadian TV has to offer the world...



Bruce Cockburn probably wrote and performed this song for the Calgary flames to massacre. It's similar to when Marge made Homer a decoy cake to ruin so that he'd stay away from the good cake.

We Will Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Hi everyone.
I went on a short hiatus which involved a busy week, a weekend in Thunder Bay and a week in Seattle. New post coming soon. Stay tuned...

Surprise! I'm Wearing Pantyhose!

Last weekend I canceled all my plans (yes - I had plans. Shocking, but true...Sarah Wolf can vouch for me!) and made an impromptu trip to the North to visit Sean. Earlier in the week, Sean told me an anecdote about how his classmates had been asking if I was going to be attending the NOSM Holiday Party. Sean was sick of telling people about how we're buying/selling a house and that I'll be moving to Thunder Bay in late December or early January, blah, blah, blah, so he gave up and told them that I don't exist. That was my cue to promptly and unexpectedly exist. NOW IN TECHNICOLOUR!!

I surprised Sean at the holiday party. When he saw me, he yelled, "you ass!!" Love you too, barf face. I met the med school crew, danced with the med school crew and was crucified by the karaoke stylings of the med school crew. They seemed like a good group of folks who love to have a good time. Sean noted that med school students tend to study hard and then party hard at periodic intervals.

We had a great night with a little drinking, a little dancing and a moderate amount of prancing. We got home really late - like 12am. We're so wild.

On Saturday we did exciting things, such as signing our mortgage papers, trying in vain to find a BB USB cord and test-driving Hondas. Saturday night we went to a get together that was full of Sean's friends from highschool. It was nice to meet some of the people that Sean has told me so much about.

As mentioned earlier, we test drove some Hondas. We were going to test drive a Honda Fit because we figured we could buy something small to toot around town in. Unfortunately, Sean's usual compact car issue befell us - the dreaded centre console. Horror!!!
Because of Sean's gigantism, not all cars are appropriate for him. Kind of like that tall guy that gives Nelson his comeuppance in that one episode of the Simpsons.



Some compact cars are very uncomfortable for hime because they render his arms as useless as T.Rex's (the King of Dinosaurs, not King of Glam Rock). In a car that's too small for Sean, his arms end up being pinned to his chest by the steering wheel because his knees are nestled violently on either side of his shoulders.



The Honda Fit, for some reason, has an unnecessary outcropping on the centre console. It's like a corner where no corner really needs to be. Why, oh why? He got in the car and immediately said "well, this won't work", understandibly.

See the corner below.



See the corner sticking into Sean's knee.



After we failed to test drive the Fit, we tried a CR-V. We both liked it, but it's a bit pricey. Keep your eyes peeled for used CR-Vs!

Look at how cute Sean looks in his CR-V.



Note the centre console isn't ideal, but we've dealt with worse.



I really liked the fact that the temperature control was on the passenger side, which means that since Sean does most of the driving, I would be in a position to surruptitiously turn up the heat.



I liked the secret compartment. I'm like a raven...very distracted by shiny things. This fact is the reason why I trust Sean to make all the major purchase decisions.






We drove by our house to be. Sean wouldn't stop to let me peek inside. He said it was creepy. I thought I could be stealthy enough to not attract suspicion, but Sean did not trust my Bond-girl-like moves.



Note the trailer on the back of the truck. That's right...get your stuff out of our house (although, you can leave the pineapple mirror).



I gave the house the thumbs up.

We took the CR-V back to the dealership and while Sean and the dealer talked shop, I perused the dealership for interesting, shiny distractions. I found a whole car full of them.
The dealership was having a toy drive for Christmas and there was a CR-V that was just full of toys. In it, I found this toy, which I immediately found intriguing.



Under the part that says "Glamm", it says, "The Extra Ordinary Girls". Now, I would have thought that if a toy was intended to be extra ordinary, the legs of the doll wouldn't be about five times the length of the torso, unless this is a doll representing me in grade 9. Trust me, I was extra ordinary.

On Sunday, I departed.

The trip was short and sweet.

Hey, Sean! No more test-driving! I found our perfect vehicle at the airport!



Has anyone seen the cops on these at the airport? These are even nerdier than Segways. I think this is part of the results of the inquest into corruption in the Peel Police dept. They need to ride these lame scooters until the ranks are free from drug-fueled corruption.