the old on the outside

oh my gosh! Proof of Life has the actor who plays Ouromov (sp) in one of my favorite movies, Goldeneye! This gets better and better! And we haven't even gotten to the part where Russell Crowe shoots things and blows stuff up yet, either.

Ahhh, I'm at Katie's house (FINALLY) and we're watching Proof of Life (with Russell Crowe, baby!) and chilling. Today was harrowing. Took the greyhound bus to Toronto, which was alright for the first part of the trip until Peterborough, because there were two hilarious girls in the seat behind me. Hilarious in that the stuff they said...well, you just can't come up with humor like that. I'll call them left and right (as in girl to my left, girl to my right) and here are some tidbits that I couldn't resist jotting down...

(any comments of mine will be in gold)

---------------------------------------------

Right: "Ottawa...is that how you spell it? *tee hee*"

Right: "Let's go to B...let's go to New Brunswick."
Left: "What, right now?"
Right: "Yeah, we can do it. We can hitchhike again."
Left: "I should've gone to Alberta."
Right: "We could, right now!"
Left: "Well, I wanted to be a model, and his ex-wife's a model, so I know she'd hook me up."
Right: "We should go, like right now."

Right: "Well, he didn't insult me."
Left: "Well he insulted me!"
Right: " *giggle* I know!"
(Right is obviously very concerned.)

Left: "Hey, it's my birthday today! I hate this, I ruined my birthday. I mean, like I wanted to take my mom out for dinner for having me, and raising me for all these years, and to show my appreciation and that I care for her...but instead, we hitchhiked to Ottawa."
(I had to try soooooo hard not to laugh aloud at this.)

Left: "I'm like, here's my boyfriend. *scoff* "
Right: "Like, seriously? *scoff* "
Left: "Yeah, like 'thanks for not like, he's the most like, beautiful thing.' *scoff* "
Right: "Wow. *scoff* "

Right: "You didn't even see a black Trans-Am, cause they don't have black Trans-Ams!"
Left: "Yes they do!"
Right: "No, they don't!"
Left: "Yes they do!"
Right: "No, they don't!"
Left: "Yes they do!"
Right: "No, they don't!"
Left: "Yes they do!"
Right: "Well I was looking through Jason's Trans-Am magazine and they were all red."
Left: "I bet people think we're dumb because it sounds like we don't know what we're talking about."
Right: "Well we don't know."
Left: "But we're not dumb."

Left: "I'm sorry, but people make Ottawa out to sound all nice, but I don't like it - it's too respectable for me."
Right: "I like it, I want to be classy."
Left: "Well everyone looks down on me."
Right: "Right. Is that a Trans-Am?"
(it was a minivan)

Right: "How do you spell 'sexy' ? *giggle* "

Right: "Well hey! We're in Blake's area, we may as well keep an eye out for the Trans-Am!"

Right about this time, I'm figuring right...what are the chances that these two are gonna spot a Trans-Am...

Then, a gorgeous blue Trans-Am, spotless and shining, pulls up beside us at the red light. RIGHT beside the bus. I'm waiting, waiting for their response...nothing. And after a whole red light, it slowly drives away, the silver TRANS AM letters gleaming in the sunlight. They didn't even notice it.

(just passed the City of Kanata building)
Right: "What town is this, Kitimat?" (Kitimat is in BC)
Left: "No, dummy, it's Katimivak." (Katimivak (sp) isn't even a PLACE, it's a PROGRAM.)

Finally, they got out at Peterborough, and the rest of the trip just wasn't as entertaining.

6 pm: I'm not sure if it's a good sign that the seat in front of me has completely fallen off, and is lying on the floor...

7:17: Hoo boy. What a crazy day. After I got off the bus, I had to catch the subway. No wait, I had to FIND the subway. Then I had to take that to the GO station, and then I found out that the next train to Oakville - where I'm meeting Katie - doesn't leave until 7:43. Poor Katie. I hope she was planning on being late...

7:45: Onboard the GO train, FINALLY. Headed to Oakville. There's a grumpy old man in the seat facing mine, who wasn't too happy when I asked if I could put my bag in the empty seat next to him (he said yes, but he wasn't happy). So far all I've eaten today was a chicken wrap and a mocha cappucino McFlurry today.

8:15: "Oakville's the next stop." Possible the most wonderful words I've ever heard. (except for my own of "it's done!" concerning the 24-hour video project. *shudder* )

8:20: And I'm here! Finally!

11:24: I'm watching tv in Katie's basement, relaxing. Katie's gone to bed cause she's gotta get up to go to work tomorrow. But only till about...noon? I think? Some good dexter's laboratory, then the beginning of Proof of Life (with Russell Crowe!) and then it was off to bed. After the movie, I'm gonna check email and maybe, MAYBE try to write about Montreal, and then it's too bed for me as well.

Sigh. Running late, as usual. DAMN!
And I was all ready, and everything, too.
actually posted at 12:08 noon

Ahahahaha. Well, here's a funny thing from Montreal. What do you suppose this sign is supposed to mean? No cherries?

No time at all to post. Gotta frantically get ready for going to KATIE HOOD'S tomorrow, and then to GORDON'S the next day, and then to CANWON the next day, and after that who knows.

Spend today further exploring Ottawa, continuing where I left off Monday. Bought a few things. Then went to a shadpub at The Clocktower pub with Alex, Mikey, Frodo, and a guy from Shad Waterloo 94 whose name I can't recall at the moment. When I post in more detail (tomorrow, maybe) I'll recap on this.

I gotta plug Megatokyo.com right now - check out this and most especially THIS. Wow. My gosh. Pirogoeth rocks my world.

And while I'm in the anime-style mood, damaged.anime.net has some really, REALLY good stuff - although some (okay, many) of the art pieces are not for the weak at heart. (read: GRAPHIC)

Aaaaaaaaaargh I'm mad! *RAGE*
I can't BELIEVE I just lost that much work. That was like a freaking essay. No, more like a damn thesis paper. (at least that's how it seems to a tired mike)

I hate blogger. Intensely. I wish blogger would die. now. painfully. as I am. stupid blogger.

I actually wrote this huge post about it, but STUPID DAMN BLOGGER said it's a "bigbody" and woudn't post it, and promptly lost it. I'm talking like a HUGE amount of f*cking typing.

montreal was weird. post about it tomorrow.

2:21 am now, Mikey's preparing for bed, and I'm doing the same. We're aiming at leaving for Montreal FAIRLY early tomorrow. (yeah right.) This trip has been already full of things of note, as evident from the long scrawling posts below. And it's not even the actual REUNION yet! Apparently there's a shadpub Wednesday, so hopefully we'll be able to make it to that, and then afterwards...I still don't know what's happening exactly with Toronto and Canwon itself.

Ottawa Discovery #7: A player on the Ottawa Senators lives ACROSS THE STREET from Mikey! But he doesn't know who it is! If I were actually a Senators fan this would probably be of more interest to me. As it is, it's on the "whoa - cool!" level of interest.

I saw a number of cool (or at least amusing) places today.
1 - The Beer Store
2 - Planet Coffee
3 - The Extreme Pita

I also saw this guy who looked EXACTLY like Matt Noel! I was looking at some sunglasses and he came up and says (he surprised me) "Hey, how's it going?" real casual-like. I almost blurted out "Matt? What are you doing here?" but then he went on and said "Can I help you with anything?" I was too surprised to really respond, just mutter "Uh, just...looking, thanks." I mean, this guy REALLY looked like him. Insane. The long lost Noel twins, I swear.

I never did get any reading done last night. Jaws was too much intellectual development for one night.

NICE! I just got Gordon's invitation email - I'd tell Mikey but he's fallen asleep. Oh well, good news for him in the morning!! :) Hooray!

Oh my, what the HELL is this site? Do yourself a favor and learn just how low the net can go. (don't worry, it's nothing graphic or pornographic or anything)

We saw a homeless person on the streets today. What sets this guy apart from the like 15 others I saw throughout the day? This one had a sign. A sign that read "SPARE CHANGE FOR WEED!!"

:)

We were searching for change so we could take a picture when he got up and walked away.

haha...spare change for weed. Well, at least he was honest.

Well, Mikey just came back. He had met an old friend and had been talking to him for the last...37 minutes.

Hmm, you can pay $15 to stay here (at the internet cafe place)(it's not really a cafe, either) overnight. That's cheaper than hotels! Course, there's no bed, no bathrooms (well I guess there is bathrooms) no showers, etc...

DAMMIT MIKEY! WHERE ARE YOU?

8:45 pm right now. I'm writing this from an Internet cafe in downtown Ottawa. Mikey's beside me, playing counterstrike. He said we were here to pick up a game, but now we're inside at the computers. I don't know what's going on. Big surprise, huh??

Today was interesting, we left the house about 3 or 4...can't remember...and he dropped me off near Parliament Hill, on Bank street. He went to work and I walked up Bank to Parliament Hill, took some pictures, etc etc, then wandered down to the Rideau Centre for awhile. Here's some more stuff that was written on business cards throughout the day.

Wait, there's this big guy giggling like a schoolgirl a few computers down...now I'm scared.

---------Business Card Records------------

4 pm: Well, Mikey just dropped me off in downtown Ottawa, on Bank Street. It's 4 pm, he's going to work and I'm making my way up Bank to Parliament Hill and the Rideau Centre. This damn rain is probably rusting the grind plates on my shoes. Stupid rain. Fortunately, the heavy rain stopped just as I got out of the car to be dropped off.
4:11 pm: It's too wet. Too many puddles. I have to take off the plates - as soon as I find a dry place to sit down. Oh, also I can see at least 7 buses right now all on the streets, whizzing about. Crazy.
4:16 pm: Damn it all. I spent about 6 minutes taking off the plates, then got up and walked around the corner and BAM - no rain at all. No puddles, no rain, nothing. Bone dry. *sigh*
4:17 pm:
5:45 pm: I'm outside the Shoppers Drug Mart of the Rideau Centre, waiting for Mikey to pick me up. I went to Parliament Hill and then down to the Rideau Centre, down Rideau street a ways, then back to meet Mikey. It's insanely packed with people and buses. I'd phone Mikey but I don't have a quarter.
6:11 pm: Well, Mikey got hung up in traffic and is now going to meet me in another 5 minutes.
    Ottawa Discovery #5: Ottawa pay phones (or maybe pay phones in general, I don't know) don't give you change for a loonie if you use one to make a call. Bastard phone company. *grumble grumble*'
    Ottawa Discovery #6: Ottawa drivers are borderline crazy. While waiting here, I've seen at least three near-misses, with both driver and walker seemingly oblivious to their near disaster.

---------------------------------

It's now 9 pm, still in the internet place, and mikey's...well, mikey's gone. He got up and just walked out of the room. I don't know where he went, he just left. Considering this is a Korean internet cafe, and I do not speak Korean, this could be...interesting. Combined with the fact that a few computers down the guy that was giggling is now either laughing or crying (I can't tell which), and the fact that the room is virtually silent save for the whirr of an air conditioner (luckily, right next to me) and this becomes even more...odd.

We ate at a Viatnamese Noodles restaurant for dinner, it was pretty good. Mikey ordered this HUGE bowl of noodles that he didn't finish. I just had a small bowl.

James and Frodo, sorry I never called you, we got started way too late. Tomorrow we're going to Montreal, but Mikey says that Thursday we should all (we being us, James, Frodo, Amanda, Alex - I think that's everyone) try to get together for dinner or something. Thursday we're going to just hang out, Mikey says. After Thursday, we have no idea what's going on. I don't think Mikey is even sure if he's going to Canwon for sure yet. I don't know.

(actually posted at 9:07 pm)

Well, it's 12 noon Monday, Mikey's just dropping his friend off, who was here helping him with course registration. For Carleton U, they do it over the phone - which unlike registration back home. (click here for explanation) So he's got that all done, and now I think we're heading out. Plans are hurriedly and unorganized-ly (that a word?) for meeting up with people both here in Ottawa and in Toronto later in the week.

actually posted at 12:26 noon

Ah! Forget the reading, JAWS is on!

Well Mikey's long asleep and I'm not tired (strangely enough) so I've found some reading material to keep myself entertained. Let's see, there is...Crime and Punishment, Wuthering Heights, and...a Transformers Choose-Your-Own-Adventure.

A good mix, if I do say so myself.

Actually posted at 2:03 am Monday morning

DO YOU LIVE IN TORONTO? HOW WOULD YOU LIKE THE CHANCE TO HOST A PAIR OF MIKES?! LIMITED TIME OFFER!

In case that wasn't obvious, me and mikey are still looking for a place to stay in Toronto. Any takers? I swear, we'll be good and not stash any shopping carts in our rooms this time. :)

I'm putting my cds in the cd-rom drive but they're not playing. ...stupid winamp.
Ah, here we go. Thank goodness for the default windows Cd Player.
Cd 1 - Canwon Punk Covers
(actually posted at 8:13 pm)

Ha! I rule. I was looking through mikey's Carleton University calendar, seeing what he's taking and whatnot. He's taking software engineering, so I wanted to check if the programming courses are the same ones I took last year. In the Carleton calendar the courses are listed by number - like Computers isn't Comp 100 or Comp 123, it's 94.110 or 94.121. So anyways, the courses he's taking are 94.xxx level courses, so I open the book to a random page - 53.110. So I think "Okay, guess the computer ones are further on." Flip flip flip. "Ah, here we are, 94.110." I'm looking at the course descriptions when Mikey comes in and goes "Oh my gosh!! How'd you find that??" I look at the header of the page, and it turns out it's not numerical course descriptions - it's the Software Engineering page. I thought the courses were listed in order, and just HAPPENED to flip to the correct page. (Sure enough, I look at the previous page and it's 38.xxx level courses) Mikey hadn't been able to find the software engineering page; through my dumb luck I (accidentally) found it on my first try.

I rule.

actually posted at 5:14 pm

Ottawa discovery #4: the channels here are not QUITE the same as Vancouver. Why? Because like half (it seems like) of them are in French.

Monday Mikey's gotta go to work, so he's gonna drop me off downtown (Parliament Hill) and I'm going to wander around town a bit. Heh, cool. His mousepad is a soccer field. What else? Oh, Mikey's family speaks mostly Korean. How much Korean d'you suppose I speak? :)

time actually posted: 4:56 pm

Ottawa discovery #3: it is really HOT here. This from a guy who works 8 hours a day outside in Kamloops (read: dry, hot, semi-desert) weather most every day.

Ottawa discovery #2: the channels here are the same as the channels in Vancouver! (like 29 is Muchmusic both here and in Van, 30 is TSN, etc etc blah)

it's 9:13 right now and I'm 'settled' I suppose. Mikey's got a - hold on, there's a squirrel running along the power line directly in front of this window. That's another thing, there's TONS of squirrels running about here. Unfortunately I guess a lot of them meet untimely demises on the roads; I saw at least two or three dead ones on the way here from the airport. Anyways, what was I saying? Oh yes, Mikey's got a flash project he needs to get done for his job, but other than that, our agendas are free except for the top priority on both our lists right now - sleep. My flight got in at 6 am this morning, and he had to get up and come meet me. So he's tired too.

One nagging detail we haven't figured out yet is where we are going to stay in Toronto...hm.

Oh well!

Mikey: "Here's a computer you can use. It may be a bit different, though."

Me: "Oh? How so?"

Mikey: "It's in Korean."

Needless to say, I did not meet with a great deal of success with that computer. It actually toggles between Korean and English every time you press shift-space (which I found out after I had given up on it - I'm writing on Mikey's comp) and so gave me the oddest blend of writing I've ever seen.

The following was originally composed on a series of business cards I found in the airport, because me, mr. "journalism" :P did not have any paper on which to write.

--------

Well, I'm in Ottawa, it's 6:07 am and Mikey's on his way here. I've gotten practically no sleep in the past couple days, between packing, finishing a few projects, and then last night on the flight. I was up till about 5 am saturday morning doing last-minute stuff, flew to calgary, spent the day with relatives and caught a night flight to Ottawa. At first the to-ottawa flight seemed like it was going to really SUCK because there was a big fat sweaty guy sitting next to me in my row of three seats, in the middle (I was on the window seat). Mercifully, he got called away. He must've gotten upgraded to first class or something, because I saw him later as the passengers were getting off the plane. Oh, in the airport before the flight, I saw this guy who looked amazingly like Sean - same hair, same build, everything. I had to double back and take another look. Of course it wasn't Sean, it was just some stranger. But on the flight, guess who else was in my row? Yep, the Sean lookalike. He just slept the whole flight. Lucky guy. Try as I might, I just could not fall asleep. So I ended up half-dozing, half-watching the inflight movie, which had Sylvester Stallone and was about racing, like real Grand Prix F1 racing, not Fast And The Furious racing. The young guy in the movie (the hero of sorts) even said a line that's also in the Transformers movie: "Not bad for an old-timer!" The coolest part of the movie is probably when Stallone and the young guy take the race cars out onto the busy streets of Chicago at full speed, wearing their regular clothes.

Mikey's house is very neat. When I failed miserably at using the Korean computer (his sister's) he brought out a laptop for me to use, but we (read: he) couldn't get the internet connection going. So I'm working on his while he's eating breakfast; I had some biscuits on the flight. The biscuits are my favorite food, cheese and herb biscuits from Red Lobster, where I ate dinner the previous night. (I smuggled some biscuits out of RL and onto the plane. Those dumb stewards only came around to give me a tiny cup of water once though. :P)

My first observation in Ottawa? Some of the lamppost on the way back to Mikey's house from the airport have these large cartoon figures attached to them - there were about 15 or so (?) of these cartoon-posts.

One hour ago I was utterly exhausted. Now I'm fine. Guess who's gonna be basically dropping dead later today? Yeah, it's me.

edit: the time I posted this was actually 8 am, Ottawa time.