Ok, so yet again I forgot my freakin’ iPod and the noise in the Queen West Starbucks is at deafening levels. Considering that I like to totally annihilate my eardrums and hearing anyway by playing the music in my earphones at max volume, regardless of the song, the fact that I am finding this place “too loud” is a little disconcerting.
We got screaming babies, sickening doting mothers (Tee, I know you won’t be annoying like these ones who look like they couldn’t actually figure out how to tie their shoelaces if they had to…not that they have to, because their Jimmy Choo/Louboutin/Manolo Blahnik shoes don’t have laces, silly), a thousand grating ridiculous teenagers who aren’t at school because of that pathetic concept of Spring Break and who are talking about Disney movies, how “sick” they are and how much of a bitch Tiffany from grade 11 is, a jumped up prick who thinks he’s Joe Businessman in his cheap shirt, nasty trousers, leather jacket and bad tie trying to tell some skinny young woman a lecture (she’s obviously an employee/lower down on whatever pyramid) and a weird old guy who kind of smells. Fuck. Totally an iPod playing something that hurts its so loud kinda day. The only way to shut out the crap and let my brain focus on serious shit through the white noise and I left the bloody thing at home.
Talking iPod, I’ve currently been on a downloading spree….lots of cool new tunes to pump through my liquid brain. Although, I’ve got a couple of songs that, while I currently think they are cool, also totally make me a freak, possibly gay and certainly a little too middle-aged white guy trying to be hip. But hey, when you like a song, you like a song, so what am I supposed to do?
You see, what it comes down to is my workouts. “Huh?”, I can hear you mumble over the digital highway, “what the frak has that got to do with musical taste?” Well, when I hit the treadmill or start doing my workout, I’m always in front of the TV. Now, I find it hard to really concentrate on an in-depth show, when I run or workout, because I find both running and working out to be activities I still positively hate. Sure, I’m doing them quite a bit throughout the week, but at the same time, it doesn’t mean I have to like it. So when I run, I feel like my head is going to implode, that my chest will simply stop sucking in air and that my legs will give. Working out, it’s like my arms will collapse halfway through a lift and I’ll brain myself with a big weight (well, big in my eyes, puff-territory to a meathead though) or that the strain in my back and stomach will combine to make me squeal like a little girl. I hate it, but it’s good for me, so I suck it up. To distract myself from the pain, I put something on TV that occupies my attention, but which doesn’t require any actual strenuous thinking. I like to zone out (particularly running). So, on comes MuchMusic. Have you seen the shit they play recently? Music is mostly bad these days (yep…sounding old). But then there are a few songs that totally catch me and which, because they are played over and over and over and over, get stuck in my head.
Why else would I have a little T-Pain, MIA, T.I. Featuring Justin Timberlake and Flo-Rider on my iPod? Maybe I am just getting younger? Oh my god, I’m turning into Benjamin Button and I haven’t even seen the film or read the book?!?! This explains the fact that I will soon be able to fit into skinny jeans (the missus, Tee and Heather think I should get some…but is that a skinny comment or the fact they think I am gay?), that I listen to MuchMusic again and that I’m sitting in Starbucks for the free wifi everyday!
Oh, one last iPod rant. Why is it that every single time I open iTunes there is a new update that needs to be downloaded. I get that they constantly want to improve and upgrade their service, but seriously …
Oh yeah … and on a computer-related issue, what is with Twitter. Everyone is loving it. Again with the old man vibe, but come on, isn’t it the same thing as the Facebook update, except that that is all that it does??? I find Facebook to be a love-hate thing for me anyway, so why on earth would I want a tool that lets me update the general friend-public about my every moment and vice-versa? “Chris is in the car”, “Chris is at the park”, “Chris just saw a dead squirrel”, “Chris just gave himself his weekly enema”….Jesus. I already drive you lot batty with overly long blog postings, but to wind you all up throughout the day with frequent updates, well, we’re talking postal territory. And by “postal territory” for you less-knowledgeable types, I mean it’d be enough to drive you so crazy you walk into your work place with a sawn-off shotgun and start blasting.
And can you imagine if someone like Trish got her hands on this??? (Oh, “Hi” Trish, sorry I haven’t been emailing loads in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been some kind of crazy busy). For the love of god, we need to start a campaign to end this ridiculous application.
Outside of rant-land, we’ve had a remarkable spell of nicer weather here in Toronto. Not enough that it reminds me of tropical climes, but it’s been a welcome change. Well, sort of. It meant that we had a good game of football on Saturday and walking the pup yesterday was delightful in my spring coat, but it has also meant that I have had to collect a bunch of dissolved dog poop out of the now de-thawed back yard, that everybody and their dog/grandma/mewling sprog was in the off-leash area of the park yesterday and that there are more jack-ass teenage thugs strolling around.
It’s also Fashion Week here in Toronto. I’d love to enthuse about it and get you all excited that such a fabulous event in yet again raising it’s annual head here in the City of Great Things, but I have no friggin’ clue what it actually is. Someone wrote that it is like the Toronto Film Festival, but, with all due respect, that’s bollocks. The Film Festival is something that ANYONE can get into, because it’s movies!! The world of “fashion” is a weird display of circus-like freaks that I have never understood. I don’t think I am alone in this either, so I am guessing there is a large percentage of the population that is also wondering what the hell goes on at Fashion Week and why so many people get so excited about it. I am also imagining that it probably costs the City and the Province money for this gig, which means its money out of yours and my pocket to host it (well more your pocket than mine, because I don’t currently have an income).
On the business front, Peter is back and settled in and we’re going to get things rolling within the next few weeks (well that is the plan anyway), so keep your ears open and your eyes peeled (God that sounds gross doesn’t it? Why would you peel your eyes? Sounds excruciating).
It may not happen this week if Peter is still nursing a hangover from Saturday night. We managed a 4:30 a.m. finish to the evening. It was supposed to be a pub crawl down Ossington from Heather’s house, except we never made it out of her door. Peter introduced us to a new drinking game. The fundamental concept is you have to guess if your face down card is higher or lower than the face up “table card”. If you are wrong, you down one of the glasses full of various alcohol-filled concoctions on the table. It gets messy fast, but, to be fair, is also a shit-load of fun. We’ll be giving that one another go, I’m sure.
And to finish the blog for today, big shout out to my brother and Lynsey (his fiancée), because they set a date for their wedding….looks like I’ll be in Scotland in September….
Monday, March 16, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Crotch-smacking, bucket-wearing, Florida ranting long-lost blog
So another week rolls by and another blog message mid-week flits and flops on the side of the weathered path of life. I really do have to amend my ways. Of course, it was much easier to write a blog when there were less satisfying distractions to hand….the pup, the missus, friends, telly, XBox, computer games, iTunes, etc., etc. But enough. A little more consistency is required.
I discovered some disturbing, but helpful news in the last week (particularly disturbing to the missus 'cos it costs a little cash on an almost daily basis)....I can get boot loads more work done if I bugger off from the house and find a wireless hotspot (read Starbucks). Not sure why (well, actually I do know why), but if I take my iPod, my bberry and the laptop to a Starbucks and work for two or three hours, I get the equivalent accomplished of what would take me about four to five hours at home. Granted, I only get two hours free wifi in a Starbucks, but I’ even organized for that. I pop in, work offline for about an hour (I still have email coming in on my bberry), then log on and get my research aspects done with the remaining two hours. It's been working brilliantly.
But why? Why do I need to be in a busy environment with people milling uselessly around me and blabbering on about inane shit that really doesn’t mean squat, requiring me to put on my iPod and blast my eardrums, in order to get motivated and get shit done? I don’t know, but it’s working.
The downsides to my newfound stream of creativity and productivity are that the pup doesn't have the benefit of my company for half the day, I don't get to take breaks in my undies, lying on the couch, watching rugger or The Sea Hunters (more on this in a moment, because I am growing to loathe myself for that one trait) and I can't crack on the ol' XBox for some unmitigated violence for a brief respite. Oh, and it usually costs me about $4 something, because I get a redeye, followed by a tall mild in a grande cup. Well, ok, it has cost a little more a couple of times, because I also have been to Starbucks in Chapters, which inevitably lead to me buying a book or magazine while I am there. I am trying now to avoid such Starbucks, the temptation is simply too great. It's like putting a fat Texan in a McDonald's and telling them they can only eat salad.....no, wait, that wouldn't work, McDonald's salads have a higher calorie count than their burgers....ok, it's like putting an anorexic in a room full of toilet paper and telling them to just use it for its natural application....ok, that was just bad. Anyway, you get my point....book stores are like crack to me.
But on the bright side, I finally managed to rip off the draft of the shareholders agreement; I've put together a rudimentary plan for how to approach various targets client groups; jotted down ideas for website and logo; written a draft mission statement/roadmap; researched target markets; contacted pools and even looked into Richard Florida’s machinations for ideas and inspiration (thanks for the suggestion, Danielle).
Let me just rant for a second about this whole Richard Florida thing for a second. For those of you who aren't Toronto-centric (and some of you who may be but just don't give a crap), Richard Florida is an urban studies theorist, who focuses on social and economic theory (thanks, Wikipedia). The University of Toronto and the City of Toronto are currently feting Florida as the city-planning guru that can lead Toronto in the right direction…basically, he’s the best thing since sliced bread. In a nutshell (and there may be some of you who research this and come up with a slightly different opinion, but hey, whatevs), his major hypothesis has been that very educated and "Bohemian" people flock to certain urban centres and it is the retention of these people that will allow said urban centre to truly flourish and grow. In league with that hypothesis, he has recently been suggesting certain steps that Toronto could take to grow into one of the world's true major cultural and influential global cities.
Some of his suggestions and observations are very cool ideas (such as getting a bullet train system in place between Detroit and Montreal with Toronto as the central hub along the route, not looking to the US for inspiration …like we needed a hint for that, the US is in a tailspin), but I can’t shake this feeling of “yeuch” when I hear about his ideas. For one, he is almost exclusionary in his model…he argues that cities should do more to keep the artists, the creative class, the gay scene (he’s a huge supporter of increasingly larger gay communities, which I guess is cool, although I think we shouldn’t need to have a “community”, to me I think that if someone is gay, then cool, but it should be so accepted that there shouldn’t be a need to live in gay collectives), the Bohos, but he never really addresses the impoverished, the disenfranchised, etc. While I am all for a very large creative class in Toronto, it smacks a little of Nazism in an odd way. Don’t go getting all righteous on me and pointing out that the Nazi’s persecuted artists, gays, bohos, etc. I’m not talking 1939 German Nazi’s, I’m talking of Nazism in general. Look after the “select” and ignore the “dirty”. I would love Toronto to grow and be a cultural icon, but we really do need to address some social issues in this City.
What is even more ironic is that this guy lives in a fancy house on the ravine in Rosedale. He’s just so damn elitist.
The other slight beef I have with this is that the concepts he is coming up with are fine, but I imagine they have been bandied about before. Nothing is starkly original. It’s just that because this guy says it, suddenly it is brilliant.
Anyway, enough ranting.
Let’s get positive. I’ve finally started feeling a little warmer in my home and sorta-native land. It only took a month. I guess the rising temperatures have also helped. We even got to a balmy 14 degrees last week. Even if there was a slight windchill with it. I still don’t get why some people get idiotic though when the weather is mildly warmer. I saw two or three guys out in shorts. Seriously. 14 degrees and you think it is shorts weather? Knobs.
Last week the milder temperatures actually almost killed me! No, really, I almost died. You would have had to go blogless forever more. The rapidly rising temperatures made the ice rink that is the dog path in High Park (where I walk the puppy) turn into a sliding sheet of death. It was like someone had taken a zamboni out to make the ice nice and smooth. Even off the beaten track, every step was hair-raising and a potential disaster waiting to happen.
And then it did happen. I was trying to come down a small relatively steep embankment. I was roughly following a path, but as it was nicely glassed over, I was treading along the sides on the more roughened snowy ice. One foot slipped. It was like watching the missus fall over (did I ever mention this before? The missus has this uncanny knack of falling over and hurting herself ever so slowly. She does this often and while it is not fun for her, it never fails to crack me up. I know that sounds mean, but if you were there when it happens, you’d laugh too. She takes like three or four seconds to hit the ground. You fall, I fall, the world falls and boom…..we’re on our asses. Not the missus. She starts falling and she’s all “no, arghhh”, “I’m fallinnnnnnnngggggg”. It is like watching a slo-mo moment on the telly or in a film. Think Will Farrell slow-mo going “nooooooo” and you’d get the idea. And the sound effects, they totally remind me of that skit by Eddie Murphy when his aunt falls down the stairs….was that Delirious or Raw? Her last fall was in Koh Phanang. She hurt her knee, but even she had to laugh when I re-enacted her fall). Anyway, my foot slips and I try to regain my balance with my other foot, but it too starts sliding and before you know it I am literally ice skating down the slope. Poor little saplings and some arsehole-not-so-small saplings are pinging off me left, right and centre…twigs stuck to me, branches crashing, wood flying. I’m about to totally wipe out and hit Spring Road (which is cement and ice-encrusted) and have things end very badly, when a particularly large sapling helpfully stops me…..by having my crotch embrace it. Sure it was painful, but I guess I lived.
And I shouldn’t whine so much, the poor puppy has had a shitty week. Bailey has a hotspot on the side of her neck. How a dog gets a hotspot in the middle of winter, I don’t know, but the vet had to shave it and we have to clean and dry it twice a day. It’s an ordeal for her and us. First, she hates the cleaning and drying with a vengeance. Second, she has been wearing a bucket for the last few days, particularly when I am out of the house. This is because, left to her own devices, she scratches the hotspot with her paw, which opens it up and makes it bleed. It’s drying up, but the poor bugger hasn’t slept properly in about four days. On top of which, she gets all anxious to have some exercise when I take her out, but up until yesterday, she had to remain leashed and even sometimes bucketed on her walks. I’m hoping it clears up by the weekend, so that she can get back to normal and truly enjoy some of these milder temperatures.
I discovered some disturbing, but helpful news in the last week (particularly disturbing to the missus 'cos it costs a little cash on an almost daily basis)....I can get boot loads more work done if I bugger off from the house and find a wireless hotspot (read Starbucks). Not sure why (well, actually I do know why), but if I take my iPod, my bberry and the laptop to a Starbucks and work for two or three hours, I get the equivalent accomplished of what would take me about four to five hours at home. Granted, I only get two hours free wifi in a Starbucks, but I’ even organized for that. I pop in, work offline for about an hour (I still have email coming in on my bberry), then log on and get my research aspects done with the remaining two hours. It's been working brilliantly.
But why? Why do I need to be in a busy environment with people milling uselessly around me and blabbering on about inane shit that really doesn’t mean squat, requiring me to put on my iPod and blast my eardrums, in order to get motivated and get shit done? I don’t know, but it’s working.
The downsides to my newfound stream of creativity and productivity are that the pup doesn't have the benefit of my company for half the day, I don't get to take breaks in my undies, lying on the couch, watching rugger or The Sea Hunters (more on this in a moment, because I am growing to loathe myself for that one trait) and I can't crack on the ol' XBox for some unmitigated violence for a brief respite. Oh, and it usually costs me about $4 something, because I get a redeye, followed by a tall mild in a grande cup. Well, ok, it has cost a little more a couple of times, because I also have been to Starbucks in Chapters, which inevitably lead to me buying a book or magazine while I am there. I am trying now to avoid such Starbucks, the temptation is simply too great. It's like putting a fat Texan in a McDonald's and telling them they can only eat salad.....no, wait, that wouldn't work, McDonald's salads have a higher calorie count than their burgers....ok, it's like putting an anorexic in a room full of toilet paper and telling them to just use it for its natural application....ok, that was just bad. Anyway, you get my point....book stores are like crack to me.
But on the bright side, I finally managed to rip off the draft of the shareholders agreement; I've put together a rudimentary plan for how to approach various targets client groups; jotted down ideas for website and logo; written a draft mission statement/roadmap; researched target markets; contacted pools and even looked into Richard Florida’s machinations for ideas and inspiration (thanks for the suggestion, Danielle).
Let me just rant for a second about this whole Richard Florida thing for a second. For those of you who aren't Toronto-centric (and some of you who may be but just don't give a crap), Richard Florida is an urban studies theorist, who focuses on social and economic theory (thanks, Wikipedia). The University of Toronto and the City of Toronto are currently feting Florida as the city-planning guru that can lead Toronto in the right direction…basically, he’s the best thing since sliced bread. In a nutshell (and there may be some of you who research this and come up with a slightly different opinion, but hey, whatevs), his major hypothesis has been that very educated and "Bohemian" people flock to certain urban centres and it is the retention of these people that will allow said urban centre to truly flourish and grow. In league with that hypothesis, he has recently been suggesting certain steps that Toronto could take to grow into one of the world's true major cultural and influential global cities.
Some of his suggestions and observations are very cool ideas (such as getting a bullet train system in place between Detroit and Montreal with Toronto as the central hub along the route, not looking to the US for inspiration …like we needed a hint for that, the US is in a tailspin), but I can’t shake this feeling of “yeuch” when I hear about his ideas. For one, he is almost exclusionary in his model…he argues that cities should do more to keep the artists, the creative class, the gay scene (he’s a huge supporter of increasingly larger gay communities, which I guess is cool, although I think we shouldn’t need to have a “community”, to me I think that if someone is gay, then cool, but it should be so accepted that there shouldn’t be a need to live in gay collectives), the Bohos, but he never really addresses the impoverished, the disenfranchised, etc. While I am all for a very large creative class in Toronto, it smacks a little of Nazism in an odd way. Don’t go getting all righteous on me and pointing out that the Nazi’s persecuted artists, gays, bohos, etc. I’m not talking 1939 German Nazi’s, I’m talking of Nazism in general. Look after the “select” and ignore the “dirty”. I would love Toronto to grow and be a cultural icon, but we really do need to address some social issues in this City.
What is even more ironic is that this guy lives in a fancy house on the ravine in Rosedale. He’s just so damn elitist.
The other slight beef I have with this is that the concepts he is coming up with are fine, but I imagine they have been bandied about before. Nothing is starkly original. It’s just that because this guy says it, suddenly it is brilliant.
Anyway, enough ranting.
Let’s get positive. I’ve finally started feeling a little warmer in my home and sorta-native land. It only took a month. I guess the rising temperatures have also helped. We even got to a balmy 14 degrees last week. Even if there was a slight windchill with it. I still don’t get why some people get idiotic though when the weather is mildly warmer. I saw two or three guys out in shorts. Seriously. 14 degrees and you think it is shorts weather? Knobs.
Last week the milder temperatures actually almost killed me! No, really, I almost died. You would have had to go blogless forever more. The rapidly rising temperatures made the ice rink that is the dog path in High Park (where I walk the puppy) turn into a sliding sheet of death. It was like someone had taken a zamboni out to make the ice nice and smooth. Even off the beaten track, every step was hair-raising and a potential disaster waiting to happen.
And then it did happen. I was trying to come down a small relatively steep embankment. I was roughly following a path, but as it was nicely glassed over, I was treading along the sides on the more roughened snowy ice. One foot slipped. It was like watching the missus fall over (did I ever mention this before? The missus has this uncanny knack of falling over and hurting herself ever so slowly. She does this often and while it is not fun for her, it never fails to crack me up. I know that sounds mean, but if you were there when it happens, you’d laugh too. She takes like three or four seconds to hit the ground. You fall, I fall, the world falls and boom…..we’re on our asses. Not the missus. She starts falling and she’s all “no, arghhh”, “I’m fallinnnnnnnngggggg”. It is like watching a slo-mo moment on the telly or in a film. Think Will Farrell slow-mo going “nooooooo” and you’d get the idea. And the sound effects, they totally remind me of that skit by Eddie Murphy when his aunt falls down the stairs….was that Delirious or Raw? Her last fall was in Koh Phanang. She hurt her knee, but even she had to laugh when I re-enacted her fall). Anyway, my foot slips and I try to regain my balance with my other foot, but it too starts sliding and before you know it I am literally ice skating down the slope. Poor little saplings and some arsehole-not-so-small saplings are pinging off me left, right and centre…twigs stuck to me, branches crashing, wood flying. I’m about to totally wipe out and hit Spring Road (which is cement and ice-encrusted) and have things end very badly, when a particularly large sapling helpfully stops me…..by having my crotch embrace it. Sure it was painful, but I guess I lived.
And I shouldn’t whine so much, the poor puppy has had a shitty week. Bailey has a hotspot on the side of her neck. How a dog gets a hotspot in the middle of winter, I don’t know, but the vet had to shave it and we have to clean and dry it twice a day. It’s an ordeal for her and us. First, she hates the cleaning and drying with a vengeance. Second, she has been wearing a bucket for the last few days, particularly when I am out of the house. This is because, left to her own devices, she scratches the hotspot with her paw, which opens it up and makes it bleed. It’s drying up, but the poor bugger hasn’t slept properly in about four days. On top of which, she gets all anxious to have some exercise when I take her out, but up until yesterday, she had to remain leashed and even sometimes bucketed on her walks. I’m hoping it clears up by the weekend, so that she can get back to normal and truly enjoy some of these milder temperatures.
Here's the little bucket-head:
Oh…..and I am getting in great shape!! I know work out and run days of the workweek and if there is no football, I work out at least once on the weekend too. Running, weights and stretching. Kinda scarily though I know weigh somewhere between 175 and 185 pounds. That’s a bit too skinny, so I am working on getting more muscle mass. Just picked up some new weights from good old Walmart this afternoon! The one thing all this working out has told me though is that I really really miss my $9 Thai massages!
Ah well, Peter got back yesterday. Time to focus and get this beast off the ground. I’m off to have a chat with the lad now. New blog soon, I hesitantly promise…..
Monday, March 2, 2009
Getting wood and getting serious
Sometimes it’s just nice to get down and dirty and feel like a contractor. Get your minds out of the gutter….I helped out my friend Will today finish off his living room and dining room floor (we were laying new bamboo hardwood floors) and even though I feel as though I have been kneeling on pebbles for a few days, there is something “guyish” and satisfying about using a pneumatic stapler and getting a sweet looking floor laid out. Plus it gave me a good old dose of good karma.
Which is good, because I needed a little pick-me up feeling today….Wales lost its game against France the other day, which started me feeling a little blue, then I got drunk on Friday night and Saturday night, plus I ate like a pig all weekend, so I just felt absolutely tuckered and wrong. Getting manly man felt like the right thing. I probably should have worked out today, like I planned to too, but that’s seems to have slipped by me today.
Perhaps this will be the stimulus I need, as I feel as though I have hit a rut at the moment….the last few days or so, I just can’t get motivated….anyone have any ideas of how to get a firecracker lit under my arse?
The only thought I have so far is that each day I need to get out of the house with the laptop and spend about three hours in a Starbucks and three hours in another coffee store to keep focussed on working on shit. I know, I know, I’ll become a total caffeine freak, but I think it’ll be less distracting, despite a constant flow of people. Here in the house, there is a computer (with games on it), an Xbox, a puppy who wants to play, the treadmill and weights, the telly, the fridge…just too many distractions….damn, need to get lean and mean….
Which is good, because I needed a little pick-me up feeling today….Wales lost its game against France the other day, which started me feeling a little blue, then I got drunk on Friday night and Saturday night, plus I ate like a pig all weekend, so I just felt absolutely tuckered and wrong. Getting manly man felt like the right thing. I probably should have worked out today, like I planned to too, but that’s seems to have slipped by me today.
Perhaps this will be the stimulus I need, as I feel as though I have hit a rut at the moment….the last few days or so, I just can’t get motivated….anyone have any ideas of how to get a firecracker lit under my arse?
The only thought I have so far is that each day I need to get out of the house with the laptop and spend about three hours in a Starbucks and three hours in another coffee store to keep focussed on working on shit. I know, I know, I’ll become a total caffeine freak, but I think it’ll be less distracting, despite a constant flow of people. Here in the house, there is a computer (with games on it), an Xbox, a puppy who wants to play, the treadmill and weights, the telly, the fridge…just too many distractions….damn, need to get lean and mean….
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