Daily Activities

It’s been 390 work units, 2777 CPU hours and exactly one year since I and my P4 1.5 signed up for the University of Berkeley’s distributed Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program.

Must learn more about Art Spiegelman, graphic novelist, 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner. Artists in Vancouver trade 2×3″ cards. Want to make my own. Shoegazers: Adjective for distorted guitar emo bands. “Seen this one?” “Ya, too much acting.” – Two lunkheads in a videostore, from BBC dark comedy series The League Of Gentleman. Eating at a…

Today is a very special day. The year is now one day longer. A lot of 100-year-old people are actually celebrating their 25th b-day (see below). Kids born today are falling into the same time bubble. Today should be a global holiday.

Been riding the bus more than usual lately and have noticed the late evening #27/28 can be quite the rambunctious affair. The other night four very young, well groomed Mexican exchange students (two boys/girls), probably high on friendship and adventure, were belting out a litany of Spanish pop harmonies while humoring a happy old drunk…

Doing some yard work for the girlfriend’s parents this week. Wrestled for two hours today with a man-size ornamental grass bush. Suffered minor abrasions and a small, bleeding cut on my forearm. Victory was eventually mine by hacking away at its dense forest of two-metre tall shoots with a branch trimmer, then going for the…

Standing with me on the 76 bus to the big boat on Friday were two first year rower jocks. Funny thing, snippets of their conversation were actually interesting. Definite keeper was when they described a friend of theirs who had recently undergone some hour-long erg, heart rate all 190, working himself so hard “his deodorant…

The Brother is coming over for dinner tonight. I’m de-thawing a 5lb lasagne and planning a fourth attempt at baking focaccia. Also vacuuming the furniture and floors and reclaiming the bathroom. The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988) is not on DVD yet, so will try and rent Kurosawa’s Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai) or…

Actually, I’m asking: How do you make a good pot of tea? Mine always seems bitter and I’ve been using a quasi-scientific method of elimination to determine the cause, but no luck. I try steeping in fresh boiled water for two, three, five minutes, or just leave the dang tea bag in there. I usually…

There are currently two men hammering, pulling and all-together dismantling the large back porch of my bachelor suite. The landlady has come through with her promise to replace the entire balcony, which hovers six feet over steep jagged bedrock and sags when walked across. Around 10 am the deck looked rather carefree and daring sans…

Access to the g-friend’s parental unit mobile (parent’s car), combined with a basic lack of essential nutrients, led me to spend over $100 in an orgy of food shopping on Saturday. I even used a grocery cart, which I usually contend feels too domesticated and gluttonous, rather than a hand basket.

Took to lunch yesterday at Sam’s Deli downtown with a couple museum chums of mine, one of whom works a few blocks away at the Royal BC. Had the special: tomato soup with egg sandwich, of which I only received one half of (the sandwich) from the counter girl. Fairly tasty nonetheless. Strolled back to…

Awoke disoriented (and naturally, disturbed) at exactly 4:44 AM this morning and could discern the leafless tree outside my window, menacing and skeletal in the orange glow of the porch light, stabbing the air at 45, 75 and 180 degree angles. What actually awoke me, I soon realized, were the deep bemoans and gurgles emanating…

Relationships are like classes; love is like your GPA: At first, each course matters a lot to your overall grade, but after a while a few bad classes don’t make a big dent overall, and sometimes you take a bunch of easy courses just to try and boost your mark. This seemed like a good…

Hy’s Seasoning Salt has been my favourite seasoning salt since childhood. Moms used to cover my green beans with its golden brown crystals. The red-capped, perfectly cylindrical bottle of Hy’s (name on the black and red label in medieval lowercase cursive) was always on the mantle of the kitchen stove. It was a really old…

Spent the weekend in Vancouver with the girlfriend visiting the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design and the giant Ikea store. Soul searching ensues.

Catching the #24 10:40 bus downtown to catch the #70 11:27 bus to Swartz Bay to catch the one o’clock ferry to meet the girlfriend and her little red car at 2:35. Bringing some books to read (currently Se

Was MSN’n with a friend stationed in France today when the word warm was used describe hair style. Whoa, I thought, I better not let on I don’t know about this trendy new Euro slang, which I figured was equivalent to like dope, or dang yo. But different from hot, which could also be the…

Little sleep, too much squash and a sick girlfriend: I think I grew a cold last night. Stomach been groaning (which, to be honest, may be because dinners these past months consist of rice, canned beans and that’s it). Felt the right nostril backing-up last night. Total clog in both canals now. Feel like a…

MSN’d with the girlfriend tonight. She’s currently studying abnormal psychology and today, whilst discussing psychopaths, her Cap College prof offered some sound advice: you want to avoid them at all costs. Though that sort of message maybe isn’t stressed enough in school these days, it still seems pretty intuitive. Yet it turns out text book…