Urban hunters

So yesterday morning I walked out the front of our apartment complex and was startled to find two coyotes out the front. They were also quite startled and immediately bolted away further up the block. I was quite surprised as I've never seen a coyote before. I noticed they had been eating something so I wandered past. Sadly, it was what I expected after hearing about coyotes in Vancouver. It was the remains of a kitty. I won't go into the gritty details but it was definitely a deceased kitty. The crows woke us up around 5:30 in the morning squawking quite hard so I had my answer. I moved to the other side of the street and watched the coyotes. I could only see one of them and it was watching me not moving. I eventually continued up the block and watched it run back to the spot. Didn't see much else after that. It was sad that a kitty bit the bullet but at the same time it was amazing to see urban adapted animals.

So I've seen raccoons (saw one last night on the way home just strutting up the street), now seen Coyotes, the last thing to see in Vancouver is bears. Or Cougars, but I know how to get round them due to that handy description of how to scare them off from Falsedans shelf. I'm hoping my urban encounter with bears will be from a far distance and involve no harm to myself or anyone else.

Vaya con Dios little cat.

If you want to drink and drive, don't forget to take your car

So Wednesday was Bjork and it was good night out. As I stated in my earlier post I won 4 tickets so I took Shan, Rob and Rena out to Deer Lake Park. We were a little worried that we were going to be late as doors opened at 5pm but it turned out that music didn't really start until 6ish and when we arrived at 6:30 and this bizarre icelandic guy (i believe this was an assumption although i'm pretty sure he did say he was from the "wonderful iceland") has his "music" pumping while we found a place to sit. It was a bizarre mix of spoken word and music. It generally rambled about being in his house drinking, hanging out with friends and life lessons. Apparently, "if you want to drink and drive, don't forget to take your car" was a lesson that speaks volumes.

And then Bjork came on. Her weird little tellytubbies ran onto stage with their instruments and then the music started. It started out with some of her new music and then went through a few of her old favourites. It was awesome to hear Army of Me live (on of my favourite songs). I think the cutest thing was the way she said "thank you" at the end of each of her songs. It was a good night out and we had a blast. Thanks for the lift home Rena.

Later in the week Shan and I rented some movies. Finally got to see Slither staring Nathan Fillion in all his glory. The movie itself was not that great, but he acted his heart out and did a great job in a so so movie. Also hired Night at the Museum and was surprised at the movie as it was quite fun, leave your brain at the door.

This weekend we're going to see Pirates of the Caribbean this weekend and I still have 28 weeks later and even though I've been warned off it, trying to see Spiderman at a matinée if possible, but trying to avoid full price fare.

Taking the good with the bad

"Hi is this Jaime"
"Yes it is, how can I help"
"This is XXX from Georgia Straight, did you recently enter a competition with Georgia Straight?"
"I've entered a few lately, which one is this about?"
"Which one would you like to win the most?"
pause
"Is this about Bjork?"
"Yes, you've won 4 tickets to see her next week and a free CD"

WOOOO!

I've always wanted to see Bjork live but never really wanted to pay the high prices in Australia and never thought I'd have a chance getting tickets here as they go fast. And yet 4 tickets just land in my lap. This is like the 8th thing I've won from Georgia Straight and heres to many more.

Shan lately had her operation to see if it was possible to detect the cause of her Pulsatile Tinnitus. When she got out, shes been in a sad state of migraines and nausea the last few days. We're kinda worried since this migraine pattern was similar to what started the pulsing in the first place. We joked this morning that it was possible that since its been 2 years since this began, maybe it will go away and be on a 2 year cycle. Fingers crossed it doesn't get worse.

What I've been up to

Its been a while since I blogged. Been real busy.

Last Sunday, Shan and I celebrated our first wedding Anniversary by exchanging presents and then having a wonderful dinner out at our favourite Greek restaurant. She gave me a fantastic painting print of Michael Sowa and I gave her Katamari Damacy. She is playing it as I blog this.

Went to our first house party on 21/4. It was themed "Pink and Drink" so I wore a pink tie. Was a great time, Beer and Karaoke = pure bliss. I got up in front of people I didn't know and bashed out "I want to break free" by Queen and "Mr Vain" by Culture Beat. And they were some of the top picks ;) Not a single option was after 1990, it was awesomeness incarnate. I have pictures which I will load onto Flickr later.

Shan went in for her operation last friday, yet again disappointed by the medical professionals of the world and got bumped from her appointment to have it rescheduled to another week. Just because someone was "urgent". I realise that emergency patients have precedence but it just seems Shan gets shafted no matter how she tries to improve her health through hospitals.

Been following the Canucks almost religiously (which is odd for me in that I like sports but tend to be more of a player than a watcher apart from the world cup). They were doing real well and then had a lull and then came back to win against Dallas. And currently they are playing the Anaheim Ducks. Their first game was not great, but then again, they had no break where as the Ducks have been resting on their laurels. However they came back and won the 2nd game to bring it 1-1 for the games. And why? Because I cooked that night and said I was cooking for the Canucks. So from now on, whenever the Canucks are playing, I shall be at home cooking, or at least cooking that day in some capacity if I want to go to the Pub. Shan has also got her old Jersey back from her mum to also bring them luck.

This morning, I finished off Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. It was a really really good read, I highly recommend reading it. I find it amusing since I remember when I worked for Borders that the book was on the shelves and I thought "I should read that" but it was in the "3 for 2" section and although a Booker prize award winner, I was turned off by that. Although not as Indian immersed as Holy Cow was by Sarah Mcdonald (of Tripple J fame) it made me start thinking of India again and how we'd all talked about "going". Maybe it could be a trip to look forward to in the next few years, maybe as a "hive" trip. Who knows, but India is definitely a place I would love to visit.

Got home tonight after seeing Hot Fuzz (watch for spoilers in wiki entry) and again I am trying not to over hype it, but I had a really really good time, thankfully the trailer didn't contain all the jokes, Simon Pegg was great and so many cast members you'll recognise and it makes it that much better!

Coming soon: Shan's Birthday is on Wednesday next week, so big week ahead. Catchas on the flipside.

Sick

Haven't posted for a while, went to a kick ass party last weekend which I'll post my pictures later (especially the one with the Beluga Whale breaching).

As the title reads, Shan and I both came down sick last Sunday and I'm only just now back at work after taking 2 days off. That really sucks being sick, I don't agree with it, nor do I want any of it. Whoever keeps signing me up to the sick list would you kindly desist and allow me to get on with my work. I mean, because of you I missed out on seeing the lecture "Diseases of the Colon, Rectum and Anus" and also a lecturer being weighed down with 2 wireless microphones, a pager and a cell phone has his pants fall down in front of his class. I mean honestly, I missed pure "comedy" thanks to the flu.

Just thought I'd share.

Woo!

Canucks are now 3 -1 against Dallas. Fingers crossed.

Grindhouse

Grindhouse rocked! Anything I could say would mar what a brilliant (if gory) film. I went in under the impression that Terror Planet would rock and that Death Proof was going to be kinda meh, but they were both equal rock! Go see it. Just be prepared.

Go Canucks Go!

Tonight is the first game of the playoff's for the Canucks. Its local and it'll be on 7pm sharp. I could start the trash talk but having seen trash talk fall back on the talker, I think I'll let the Canucks do their thing.

Boo to Dallas.

Go Canucks Go!

588 pieces later

Last night, Shan finally got around to clearing the table and we started working on the new Creator Lego Dragon I bought a few weeks back. It was fun to be building lego again, but this is not the batch of lego which for the last couple of years has been "100 pieces and one huge base piece" which has little challenge to it, this contains 588 little pieces which go to form the whole firebreathing dragon with light up breath. Took us together about 1.5 hours while watching the hockey and arguing over "I want to build this piece" "no i want to build this piece" "OMG! It has toes!".

There was a special glow brick which lights up the Dragons breath. It can be seen here, demonstrated by my lovely assistant, Shannon.

Shan demonstrates the lego light
Uploaded by wulfansur

The finished product is below. For the full build process go to my flickr and look at the "Lego Dragon" Set. His wing span is 75 cm's long, I was seriously impressed.



Apart from the wonderful world of lego, nothing much else is going on. We're widening our boardgame group. And I'm undergoing a project to run a D&D campaign with 2 other DM's in the Eberron setting. When I've got further with the wiki, I'll post the link.

The other day I got to see a crow with a twig in its mouth. It studied the twig for a full 5 minutes. Then flew around to several different trees on either side of the street and each time measured the branches and the twig several times. It finally settled on one tree and laid the twig on two branches and then flew off. I hope it comes back. It was fascinating, and I got to watch this all to the music of Assemblage 23. It felt kinda right.

300

OR the gayest movie since frisky summer (j/k).

Went to see Frank Miller's 300 last night and boy what a silly movie. I had the giggles for part of it as the movie was so over the top, which is exactly what I had hoped for. It was very artistically pleasing and flowed quite well. Having never read the comic, I was not completely sure what to expect (apart from the trailers that have been playing non-stop) comic wise from the film. I am a fan of Ancient History so I knew the actual battle and events that lead to the battle so I wasn't completely out of my own depth, plus I have seen the 1962 film "The 300 Spartans". But as Shan was saying, "They could only make 2 types of film, the highly accurate film, or way over the top artistic film, non of this Troy wishy-washy bullshit" and I couldn't agree more.

I won't talk further about the film as (a) If you don't know anything about the Battle of Thermopylae go read about it, its a very well known, (b) I hate to spoil movies for people, especially when they haven't been released in countries that people might be reading this from.

[spoiler/opinion alert]

When you get to the end of the film, don't you reckon that Xerxes had a total Zod complex?

I lost you in the trees... finally

Todays title was taken from the xkcd comic.

Well after a week of going to the gym and Shan has finally got to a point where she can exercise again, we both headed off to the gym. Gym was pretty much the gym but as usual Shannon and I are very competitive, healthy, but still competitive.

However, why the title I hear you ask? (or at least now that i've put the thought in your head). Well as we were walking home we were discussing the amount of weight we need to lose to be "healthy" and came to the decision that it was about the weight of a small child. So we lovingly named our weight "Hansel" and "Gretel". We have decided to lose them in the forest and will thusly go to the gym each week until the old witch gets them. So far they've followed us home, but eventually we'll lose them. For good. Its probably going to require changing addresses as well ... you get the picture ;)

Shannon is teh Winner

With the highest mark of 16, Shannon along with many calls of "rigged" with much grace and skill, won the prize of Chocolate Oscar. Gracious enough to share her ill-gotten gains. Here is a picture of her, coveting the head.

It was a fun night, some people won awards they should have, others were "surprises" but almost expected. I'm glad Scorsese finally won an Oscar. I really enjoyed the Departed, I just wish Scorsese had won an Oscar for something more original than a remake.

We drank far too much wine and today was just hell to begin with. Halfway through though, someone offered me a free lunch and everything was back to normal.

Who will win?!

The Oscars are upon us. The time of red carpets, bad fashion choices and movie awards.

And to celebrate, we're keeping with Hive tradition and holding an Oscars party. However this year its going to be a bit different. We have a prize. For being able to pick the most Academy awards of merit (on this sheet), they shall win this chocolate crusader. And if you look real close, you can see he has gold flakes embedded into his exterior (and throughout said the nice lady at the chocolate store). It kinda reminds me of the Critic, 'cause now I want one more than ever!

Anyways hears hoping that Shan or I win the Oscar. I did consider Making up a version of the Oscars but sadly I cannot pull of a convincing Ellen. I'll post a report when its all over as to who won.

And I promise Anna that there is no chance I will leak who won what, that would be mean..... ;)

Foiled!

This morning I walked into the Lecture Theatre where I work to find 5 pirates with swords, knives, guns and a woman tied to a train track they conveniently brought with them. They said "Hand over all your technical equipment or the girl gets it" one of them seem to have a loaded train in their hands threatening to put it on the tracks. Luckily, I'd had training in what to do in this situation (there was a course a couple of weeks ago which I now have certification for) and said the words "Parley". Unfortunately, they weren't pirates, they knew that that would throw me off my guard and thus charged me like people wanting to do harm. Lucky for me, my certificate had covered this eventuality and I splashed the henchmen with red paint. This made them shirts red and I was able to run around the room until the first commercial break where they promptly died. I then fought the leader to a standstill on the battlements, wounded him in the side and he jumped into the moat and swam away to fight again another day. I freed the girl and she married the train.
All in all, a good days work.

[note: This account is a rather stylish and fantastical account of how this morning I scared off an attempted robbery by coming to work early. I merely turned on the lights which scared the thief off. I then called for help and security and then stood at the opposite end hoping there was no one in the control room. Unfortunately I had lingering fears that John Ryder was waiting for me up there with two semi-trailers and I wanted someone to avenge me should that be the case. But which version would you want to hear, the truth? or the "truth"?]

Sean Bean: The man who lives?

Sean Bean has been in about 35 films and to date he has survived maybe 4 of them (give or take a few). So when I won free tickets to the remake of The Hitcher I was hoping for another point toward his "haha I lived" quota.

The movie itself was surprisingly good. I was expecting a gore film as the creators of this version were responsible for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror. However, what I got was a pretty good and tense horror film. I jumped at the right moments, said "don't do that" aloud in the cinema and held on to the edge of my seat.

I went with Rob, as Shan was too chicken, and he said it was pretty much like the original with some of the parts being verbatim dialogue. I think I still want to see the original as I'm a huge Rutger Hauer fan when he was getting the good roles like Lady Hawk, Blade Runner, Flesh & Blood and Salute of the Jugger (apparently called "The Blood of Heroes" in America).

All in all, I enjoyed it and felt I had successfully survived a horror film without any lingering thoughts of fear. Or so I thought....

James Bond in love

Last Sunday, Shan, Christine and I went to the cinema to see the new James Bond film. The film was one of the better James Bond films but for me read more of "heres the new James Bond" and not a full film on its own. That being said there were some very enjoyable parts of the movie. Daniel Craig was a pretty decent Bond, not the best, but definitely brought something new to the role and didn't just play the typical bond. There was a point in the film very early on, where the "baddie" turns up. Shannon leaned over to me and said "introducing the bad guy" and I lost it. Some may say that partaking of bud before a film is not the best idea, but I think I enjoyed it even more because of it. Either way I was in hysterics for a full 5 minutes before patrons gave me dirty looks.

Up next: Pan's Labyrinth. It looks Awesome!

5am

I was having the most wonderful dream about pineapples when this noise started. At first I thought it was my heart beeping to tell me that something was up with the pineapples. Then I was apple to crack my eyes open a bit to the pitch blackness and thought "the alarms is going off ... but i haven't heard that alarm before". Then my wits kicked open the door, "the phone" .. of course! I crawled to the phone hoping this wasn't a 5am "[family member/good friend] has gone into hospital and is probably never coming out again, would you like to [a] send them some flowers, [b] come and see them before they die or [c] help sign the DNR".

But I was surprised by 30+ of my good friends from Australia (including that Wingus Guy, you know who you are) ringing up to say "HAPPY NEW YEAR". My apologies if I sounded cranky from being woken up but i had only been asleep for 3 hours. I really appreciated the call and if Shannon hadn't been in a deep sleep she would have got on the phone as well, as apposed to the waving from the bed which was pretty tired. But thanks guys, it meant alot that you called.

Happy new year Future people, I hope I can return the favour.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

I would love to write a review for this book but that wouldn't be possible. I don't think I would be able to do the book justice. However what I can say is that I loved this book. Unlike other times I couldn't take this book with me on the way to work as its only 15 minutes to work and that's hardly time to read a book as I know, I would be reading and completely miss my stop. The book completely engrossed me and at 1005 pages, I didn't want it to stop. The ending was excellent and even though as I said before I didn't want it to stop, it was a highly satisfying ending.

I started out reading this book as a loan from someone else and ended up purchasing my own copy. I won't give it marks out of 5, 10 or 100. I will say I rate it highly and that it is probably one of the best fantasy novels I have read in years.

Read it, stop reading this blog right now and start reading the book. Seriously! If you've read it and enjoyed it you know what I'm talking about, if you didn't like it, your completely entitled to your opinion.

Christmas

Its been a while since my last post.

Leading up to Christmas I was pretty busy with work but somehow managed to get my Christmas shopping done.

Christmas Eve, we went over to Christine's and had a wonderful roast chicken, potatoes to die for and great stuffing. A friend of Shan's and her mum, Deirdre, was there so we had delightful company. We drank, ate and laughed ourselves silly. It was a great night.

Christmas day came. We prepared our Turkey for dinner and got ready to make breakfast for when Christine came round. Christine showed up with a tonne of presents of which we were not expecting. Some were from Shan, but due to her broken foot could not bring them home so left them with her mum. We opened a few before breakfast. What a haul! Its all a bit of a blur now, so i can't recall in what order we got things, so I'll list them all later. One we did receive before breakfast was a blender which helped us created the nicest pancakes ever for breakfast.

Upon finishing breakfast, we sat by the tree and exchanged gifts. I got shan some mittens and beanie (not a touke, you crazy Canadians) with a pirate skull motif, two books and an Ipod Nano (blue colouring). Shan got me Guitar Hero 2 (joy!) with the extra controller so we can play coop and head to head, BBC production of Pride and Prejudice (of which we have already watched, excellent 6 stars!), and the wifiest gifts you ever did see, socks, underwear and a jumper, all of which i desperately needed and was glad to receive. Christine got us the aforementioned blender, a rice cooker (to alleviate rice debates between shannon and myself) and a poker set (which I've been wanting) with dogs playing poker motif, which got us quoting Simpson's for most of the night.

Rob stopped by for a few hours in the afternoon. We played some guitar hero 2 and a large amount of Texas Hold'em. After a while Rob took his leave to go to another Christmas party, thanks for coming by Rob, shame you missed the Pavlova.

On to the Turkey Dinner. We cooked the Turkey for over 4 hours! It was so juicy. We had cauliflower, roast potatoes, stuffing, the works! The gravy was perfect, the Turkey succulent. The meal, excellent. We stuffed ourselves and the went to the couch. And then proceeded to watch the first half of Pride and Prejudice. As that went along we had Pavlova and were much sated.

Sadly shan's leg started to play up and we had to take her to St. Pauls Hospital. We were quite worried that it was a blood clot in her leg due to her broken foot, but the next day it turned out to be ok. I won't say more as I'm sure Shan will relate it on her blog.

So apart from that, Christmas was perfect.

Vistors from the 4th Dimension!

So I was halfway through Ziggy Stardust (on hard) when I started hearing this noise coming from outside. I looked outside and saw a police box suddenly turn into a taxi. Out jumped the doctor and his lovely assistant. It was a new doctor. I don't think i've ever seen the doctor with mutton chops. I went down to greet them and let these strange people into my home. The doctor said his name was "Bez" but i knew it was the doctor. His assistant was "Shoshe" but I haven't heard of her, probably a new to be released series.

After settling in we went to meet Shannon at the nearby restaurant Las Margaritas. We had a lovely dinner. After which, a little tipsy, wandered back to our place and ate Oreos while we conquered Guitar Hero 2. We went through on Easy and then did some challenges against each other. Heaps of fun. I especially loved the moving between tiers on the map. Reminded me a bit of this. A bit lacking on the track side I thought at first. This would change the following night.

The next day, we went to the Vancouver Aquarium. We hadn't been in a while and we weren't overly sure of what crowds would be like. However since it was slightly rainy we were able to get in and hardly had anyone to contend with. We got to see otter feeding, Beluga Whale show and the Dolphin show. When went to the other exhibits we were delighted to find that they had finished the previous construction and had extended the areas. The new area had spots where you could stick your head into a dome and see the whole tank around you. Those were pretty awesome and allowed for some very silly pictures to be taken. Also for the first time we we actually saw the sloth in the amazon exhibit. The Doc... i mean Bez pointed it out. And then started to tell us about how slothes with different toes can be really nasty. All I have heard in the past was that slothes occasionally killed people by dying and then eventually falling out of trees when sufficiently rotted and killed people by landing on their heads. But I suppose "Bez" was talking about mystical future slothes. I wonder if they ever tussle with the Daleks.

After leaving the Aquarium I left Bez and Shoshe in Shan's capable hands and went to my works Christmas Dinner. It was good to finally meet some of my colleagues from up North and from the Island. We ate and drank a little and then had a raffle, which was setup since they weren't allowed to pay for our drinks due to UBC policy. And guess what, I won something! I won a $50 gift voucher to Earls, which must have been fate since thats where I was going to meet Shan, her Mum and the time travelers after leaving the Christmas party. Upon arrival I had a lovely desert and a couple of girly drinks (which contained enough alcohol to floor a rhino) and then went back to our place to take the medium challenge of Guitar Hero 2.

And what a challenge. Firstly, I thought I was special when I got an encore at the end of the first tier. I thought I had was the bees knees, the cats pajama's and the elephants instep. And then Shoshe got an encore and then Bez got an encore. Now I don't want to discount their efforts as both of them were very good players but then we realised it was the bonus song going from one tier to the next. We played until almost 2am. At the end. Freebird. We were really sure we wanted to play it. So Bez did. It gave him several chances to back out, but he slugged on. And thus he finished it. 9mins long with 83% success. We were very proud and rewarded him with a robotic hand as his old one was completely used up. Solo Q to S really did him in. Then growing tired we crashed.

The next day we went for Brunch at Sophie's Cosmic Cafe. We ate a hearty brunch and then soon it was time for our time travelers to leave to go back to the future ... ok ok .. "Australia". We said our goodbyes as the taxi took them away from us into the future. I asked for horse races and lotto numbers, but "Bez" said that would change history and was not "allowed". Lucky for me he left Gray's Sports Almanac 2000 - 2050. And now I shall rule Vancouver forever!

Thanks for dropping by Bez and Shoshe, it was great to see you.