A Budman Christmas

For a holiday which I don't celevrate, I had a pretty damn good time this year.
It was very relaxing and I really needed that.

On Christmas Eve, I got out of work an hour early (6pm instead or 7pm) and headed downtown to my friend Eric's for a Jews Night Out Party. The night was supposed to be anight of just playing xbox but ended up entirely different. I got treated to vegetarian take out Chinese food (who would have thought that general toa tofu would taste so good?). Then we played a round of Scene It - Friends Deluxe Edition (who would have thought how annoying that theme song could really be?).

The rest of the night was spent playing cards and listening to music.
Note: when at a party with a homosexual couple and you're asked the question of why you don't like a certain song (Daniel Powters - Bad Day to be specific), do not answer with "Because it's GAY!"
Note 2: When such an answer is used, the proper thing is to try and ignore having said it and not to try to fix things by saying "oh I didn't mean it like that? I just mean um... that I don't like that song... um...."

Christmas day morning was spent watching Nacho Libre. This was followed by heading to my brother's house. At his place we played Scrabble. It was a really fun game with words such as "aloof" and "ching". My favorite move was getting "oy" and "yenta" at the same time! I ended up winning by totally fluke. I was behind 17 points but I got rid of all my letters and my brother was stuck with only 1 letter... whcih happened to be Z worth 10 points! Haha it was awesome.

By afternoon, I learnt that the open invitation and Scrabble was just a ploy for my brother to get to come over so he could slave labour me into helping him remove stuff from his ceiling in his basement that was being renovated.

Two hours later, we went to his brother in law's and had, you guess it, Chinese food!

The night ended with watchign Running On Empty, a really boring movie with River Phoenix and Judd Hirsch.

All in all it was fun times!

Merry Christmas all!

Spring Cleaning in December

Now that I'm done school, I'm cleaning out my room. I stumbled on a bunch of old records from my brothers collections. They seem to have a lot of great stuff that was popular back then (Example: Pink Floyd - The Wall/George Micheals - Faith). My question is, are well known records of any value, or is it just rare stuff? I'm not hoping to sell them for money or anything, just curious on how these things work.
(For some weird reson my brother has multiple copies of Tears for Fears...)

Kareoke Queen

Sunday night was Kevin's birthday celebration. Since I hadn't had a chance to celebrate completing school, I decided to go all out.
We went to Boite a Kareoke and sang our hearts out. I did quite a few songs, even Backstreet Boys - I want it that way (but with changed lyrics. I want it that way = Which backstreet boy is gay, etc.)

Here are photos and video (!) from the night:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v155/registeredname/Kareoke%20Night/

I'm DONE!!!

Two exams and a presentation later (the latter 2 being a complete joke), my final day at Interdec College is complete. It's been a grueling 15 week/3 semester year of school and it's finally OVER! Now I don't know what to do with my life...

Well thats not entirely true.

The plan for now is to work full time at Old Navy while simutaneously having fun and working on my portfolio.
After the holidays I'm hoping to hit up the job services office at my school and see if they can help me find a job. In the meantime, I was given contact info for a 1 month stage in NDG that are looking for someone to build a simple website for them. If I can do that and still work at Old Navy i would totally consider it.

Now that I"m a professional graphic designer, don't all ask me for favors at once.

I CAN"T BELIEVE I"M FINISHED SCHOOL FOREVER!

Just stay calm...

Next week is my final week of school. In exactly 1 week from today I will be a graduate of the graphic design program at Interdec College.

I've been pretty on top of things that I'm not too stressed but it's been tough staying clam with all my projects and exams and the fact I've been sick every 2 weeks for th epast 2 months.

On the bright side, I just got an extension on one of my craziest pieces yet!

On the down side, I was just informed that the computer technician of the school took it into his own hands to attempt to update the computers in the room we use and in the words of director of the school, ended up "crashing the whole room". So apperently, all the data MAY be saved but the room is unusable right now.

THANK GOD I backed everything (I hope).

In need of a beer SO BAD!

(but i"m not stressed!)

What a pleasant surprise

Today, in the midst of doing school work infront of my computer, hence shuting myself to the outside world, my mom enters my room with a huge smile n her face. She then motions to someone outside my room to enter as well. In walks Kishan Salgado,a friend mine from when I was kid. We used to play together while growing up until about the age of 12 or so which is when his family moved to Toronto. I hadn't seen him in about 10 years!

He was in town for the hockey game with is girlfriend and decided to check out the old neighbourhood since a couple of other peopel we used to hang out with still live on the street.

Wow that was a crazy suprise and it totally made my day!

The Soundtrack To My Life

recently, on Mariana's blog was a post about making your own movie soundtrack. It's simple: take your mp3 player/computer,etc. and put it on random. Each song corresponds to a life situation.

As of late, i feel like my life parallel's more and more to a teen comedy movie (think american pie but way funnier).
Here's the soundtrack to my life:

Opening Credits: Who Cares - Gnarls Barkley

Waking Up: Why Do I Keep Counting - The Killers

First Day At School: Unconditional - The Bravery
(yay glam rock)

Falling In Love: Song for the Dead - The String Quartet
(No wonder I have trouble meeting someone, i'm obviously insane...)

Fight Song: Fallen Leaves - Billy Talent
(at least THIS song makes sense)

Break up song: What's It Like To Be A Ghost - Taking Back Sunday
(wow ait really is a breakup song.. I think... it's angry though!)

Prom: The Grace - Neverending White Lights ft. Dallas Greene
(wow movie Josh has a way cooler prom than real-life Josh)

Lifes Ok: The Good In Everyone - Sloan

Mental Breakdown: On-Line - Gnarls Barkley
(watch out, I'm going to snap on MSN one day...)

Flashback: Sing - The Dresden Dolls

Get Back Together: Chances - Xavier Rudd
(wow, Australian alt-country slow rock with didjeridoos!)

Birth of Child: Hang 'Em High - My Chemical Romance
(gee, I can't WAIT to be a dad...)

Final Battle: Get it Together - The Go! Team

Death Scene: From The Ritz To The Rubble - The Arctic Monkeys

Funeral Song: Star Bodies - The New Pornographers
(I AM a star!)

End Credits: Three Or Four - The New Pornographers
(thats reffering to how many sequels there weill be, apprerently I'm NOT dead after all. Budman lives!)

Some of it really scares me how cool/accurate it is...
I also find it funny how I have 908 songs on my player with 50 groups but I got repeats of groups for the above...?

The Budman Update

I've got one more month of school until I am officially a graphic designer (ok, I guess officially starts when I get hired...). I've been really busy as of late and things will only get busier. That being said, this blog probably won't be updated too often until after Dec. 15th when I'm done school. For those who actually come and read about my adventures here's a recap of what i've been up to lately:

-Been working on 6 final projects for school, each will be amazing (I hope).

-Still working at Old Navy but was lucky to get my schedule down to 2 days a week.

-Saw the Tragically Hip in concert for the first time. I think it's every canadians duty to see them at least once. It was a pretty good show. Loud.

-Got to see Sean, who was in town from Scotland. Us improv folked, laughed, cried and played games together it was loads of fun.

-Got my ass kicked in pool by Emilie, (I scratched the 8 ball 3 times).

-Bought Bonobo's new album Days to Come and it's AWESOME! It's way more upbeat than his first CD and different due to the addition of vocals.

-Bought a 2 DVD set of Looney Tunes cartoons and am dying to find people to watch it with me.

Ok back to work...

*End Transmission*

Cobra Commander Talks Halloween

I know this post is late, but I couldn't help it! I've been busy fighting the 'Joes!

On Saturday, I was invited by the Society of Evil Bad Guys to a social gathering to talk about plans for taking over the world, evil inventions, and of course, girls. Leaving Destro and The Baroness for some "Alone Time" (Destro likes the hard whips...), I arrived at the designated headquarters. I got to chat with Venom, The Joker, Alex (from Clockwork Orange), The Zombie Scare Crow, and this new guy who didn't even have a name. He didn't even seem to have any super powers or anything. He just sort of bled out all over the place. I guess his evil plan is give harmful disieses to his enimies.

After an hour, Joe and Daniel Hawkins (from my favorite band the Darkness, next to Clay Aikin, of course) picked me up so we could rendez-vous at our equally evil friend, White Trash Bashalder. There, I got to have the most delightful chat with Teen Wolf. Did you know that Pert Plus really works? He never has a split hair, ANYWHERE!

Shortly afterwards, I recieved a call from Jackie Kennedy. Ok, the secret is out, her husband was the one who funded COBRA's operations in the 60's. After his death his wife and I remained friends. We'd chat over tea every thursday. She was in the neighbourhood and invited me to a shindig at a loft converted to a dance party.

I had to walk through an alley to get to the place, so I knew it HAD to be good. Inside I saw all kinds of characters - Thing 1 and 2 from Dr. Seuss, A Telletuby (the drunk one), both Borat AND Ali G, evil genius Tony Clifton, and evn Darth Vader. Woh that guy is such an asshole. He steals the designs from my metal mask and didn't even give me a chance to have a picture with him, let a lone simple thanks. I already gave the orders to Destro to detroy the Death Star. Take that, bitch!

I was crashing downtown and needed to attend the party at my final destination (Destro phoned and said he needed the place to himself, that dirty dog).
Upon reaching the apartment, I encounted more interesting people including the most evil person of them all, Chris Dye, the lawyer!

By 2:30am, The Joker and his friends crashed the party then decided crashing 1 party wasn't enough and ask me to direct him and his companions to the loft party. After kidnapping Adrienne, we returned to the Loft Party, dropped them off and then returned to Adrienne's in time to see all of her guests leave. This made her sad. I added all of those people names to my list of "people to kill". Zartan will be occupied for a while.

By 4am I was fast asleep. By 9am I was wide awake.

At 2:30pm I decided to invade Old Navy. Unfortunately they confused me with someone else and forced me to sell clothes. Little did the costumers know that I swapped all the good quality clothes with cheap imitations! Muhahah! (What, thats not evil enough for you?)

Not only did I leave my mark behind but I came in second place for best uniform ever designed (and won an HMV gift certificate).

Finally by 7pm I returned to COBRA headquarters and got a back to work on planning to destroy the G.I.Joes!

Pictures of my night can be found at:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v155/registeredname/Halloween%202006/

Halloween 2006: Making of Cobra Commander

In the past years I've dressed up as crazy characters. This year, what started a a pretty crappy voice imitation, turned into a pretty wicked costume.

This year's costume was a challenge for me. A lot of it needed to be sown and I don't know how to sow.

I researched online and found a great way to get the costume started. First I went and bought a chef uniform jacket:



and with the help of the ever awesome Amy, dye master extraordinaire, dyed the jacket blue:



There was a pocket on one of the arms which I cut in half and made int lapelles. Gold buttons were also sown onto the jacket.

I wanted to make the costume as home made as possible and I went and bought actual fabric:

The blue fabric was used to make the hood which I sowed onto a visor (with the front removed) to give some support on my head:



The fabric was then tacked in on the bottom to give it more rounded look.

The red fabric was used to for the logo on the jacket, which was completely sown on piece by piece

For the smaller logo, I traced the logo with a marker first and then just cut it off in one piece. I turned out so much better than had I cut it into piece by piece:



I bought a couple of belts and used carboard and black tape to make a gun holster:



(Augh, I can't seem to upload anymore photos... Thanks Blogger! You just nee to use our imagination)

A clothes line was into pieces and then twisted them to make a wider cord which was taped togther and sown onto the jacket into place.

Finally, red ribbon was used to make stripes along the pants.

Ok OK! So my mom helped me, what?

Using a 1$ security shirt I bought at a thrift shop as an undershirt, and the linning of my ski gloves, the costume was complete to give this years Budman's Crazy Costume.

Wedding Time (no not me...)

Before I got sick ( I caught a stupid cold), I had a nice break from school work by attending a wedding in Toronto. My cousin Lori got married and it was a lot of fun. It was a different kind of wedding from one I've ever been to since it was a joint wedding (the groom, Dan, is Christian). They tried combining the two religions customs. The most interesting part was when they made both the groom and bride step on a glass. The music was ok (a DJ) but then the groom's brother who has his own cover band, went on stage and they played 80's covers and it was really well done. i got to rock out on the dance floor.

I also learnt a way how NOT to pick up a waitress. When at a restaurant and trying to get the e-mail of a waitress, when she screams out load something along the lines of "AUGH! just great! I got peabut butter all over my arm!", do not, I repeat do not reply with "Do you want me to add some jelly to that?" (hey I thought it was funny...)

Whats your genre?

Have you ever looked at your genre list on your MP3 player? I'm not sure if it counts for all players but on mine (Creative Zen Vision:M) the songs can be listed by genres as labelled by the files themselves. Since it's all manually done, I think different people give the same genre different names. I found mine to be pretty interesting.

The list is as follows:
Acappella
Acid Jazz
Alternate rock
Alternative
Alternative & punk
Alternative rock
Alternative-rock
Ambient
Demo
Desert Rock
Easy Listening
Electronic
Electronica & Dance
General Alternative
Grunge
Hard Rock
Hardcore Punk
Indie
Other
Pop
Post-punk
Power Pop
Progressive Rock
Punk
Trip Hop
User Defined

Just Relax

For past little while, I"ve been getting busier with school work. I've felt like I've been on the verge of a breakdown. Today, though, after evaluating what needs to be done and for when, I've realized it's not SO bad. It's still mad crazy trying to finish everything on time but when it's over, the outcome of my stuff is going to be sweet. I promise when I'm done school to post up my stuff that I've done.

Best Day Ever!

No I didn't win a million dollars or got asked by 2 hot girls to join in their threesome, but saturday just turned out to be a really great day. Being that it's the long weekend and having to work both sunday and monday, Saturday was the only day available for me to have fun so I took off a day from doing homework.

I started the day with improv which was an excellent workshop led by Bryan. We were only 5 and had to do it outside which to me was bonus since it was so nice outside. I really learnt a lot at workshop that day and had tons of fun.

After lunch, I met up with my buddy Joe and we headed down to the Old Port to play Manhunt. The turn out was great. We had about 20 people and it was so busy in the area making th egame a ton of fun.

Following manhunt, Joe and I visited my friend Nadine who just had eye surgery done. Without her glasses, she was looking foxy. We had to bail early because I was invited to go watch a movie with my brother in the west island. Joe convinced his roomate Stephane to come with us he and drove us all the way to my house!

The night ended with the movie we saw - The Departed. All I will say is that it's the new Martin Scorsese film, it has an all star cast, is a remake of a Hong Kong film, and is about a cop who goes undercover in the mafia and a mafia guy who is undercover as a cop.

GO SEE THE DEPARTED!

Tired of Looking 17 pt. 2

At Billy Ruffian's request:

Tired of looking 17

After being mistaken for being the age of 17 all the way to 22 several times in the past few weeks, I've decided to grow an aweful beard (it doesn't really connect all the way...) a.k.a I've been too lazy to shave and I'm using this surely as an excuse.

Lets see how long this lasts.

Also tonight is LOST!

Steady As She Goes

Tonight I saw the Raconteurs perform live. Those not familiar with who they are, they are aband comprised of Jack White from the White Stripes, Brenden Benson (a semi-famous solo artist) and half of a band called the Greenhornes. I liked their music on the CD but all I can say is that it KICKED ASS hearing them live. It was one of the best shows I've seen in a while,up on my list with my Franz Ferdinand experience. You all missed out by not being there (especially you Norm).

As a side note during the intermission between opening band Dr. Dog (which were pretty good and had one guy that was like Neil Young and one guy that was like Joe Cocker), this pretty chick started talking to me. She was talking to me about all these great shows she went to and how she drove all teh way from Vermont just to see this one. She was eyeing me a bit before the show started and I will admit I got a bit excited when she decided to strike conversation with me. That is until I found out she was only 16:
Her - "Yeah so my school is a lot smaller than the ones here so it's always fun coming to such a big city"
Me - "So you go to a community college or university"
Her - "No I"m in high school"

If The Raconteurs ever release a live CD I suggest you get it.

Some High School Reunions Don't Suck

A couple of months ago I bumped into someone I went to high school with during one of my shifts at Old Navy. We played phone tag for a while but finally got together tonight. We ended up at Winnie's to chat about whats been going on in the past 9 years! I found out she used to me married, she found out my mom still makes my lunch. In the end she even treated me for dinner! In return she told me I have to bring to her to an improv workshop because it sounded so cool to her.

Win win situation.

Great News

After a waiting period of 5 weeks, my mom finally got the results from her surgery. Everything came out negative. There were no traces of cancer anywhere else. She has to have radiation done to ensure all the bad cells are gone but no chemo.

A relief for everyone.

Is this blog getting boring?

Unfortunatley, nothing super exciting has been going on lately to really rant about. I feel like more and more I find myself looking for things to write about to keep this blog going. When I first started this blog, it was entertaining because it was new and I kept adding fun links to click on but it got hard to keep it up. Then I switched to ranting on all my girl problems which I no longer have (now my girl situations are just non-existant ratehr than problematic). The blog definitely hit a strong point with my Australia trip since I had tons to talk about. Since I've been back I guess I started with what my plans were and then a bit of things I was doing in school here and there but I found it difficult to post all of my art work. Fortunately I think I recently found a solution to that problem so keep posted soon to see ALL the stuff I've been doing since I started school.

I"m not sure what direction this blog should go into next. I guess I can always make it a porno site... naw that wouldn't work... ANy suggestions? In my photoshop class i"m learning a new technique everyweek, so I"m thinking maybe I"ll add a new technique on here just to show you all the kind of stuff i"m learning. Sound like fun? Also my dream is to one day have a web comic going but thats far away from happening since i need: ideas, create a look for the comic, and time, which I don't have much of.

So dear readers please don't stray far away. I'll think of something!

Just don't want to grow up

Although it has been 2 years since I've graduated from McGill University, yesturday I was at Activities Night. For those of you who have not attended McGill, Activities Night is a clubs night where all the clubs set up a table and explain what they are all about in exchange for new members. Still being a member of McGill Improv, I thought it was my duty to come and help out. I also set up a small booth for Montreal Manhunt. 36 people signed up for Manhunt and were super enthusiastic, while we got 6 pages of e-mail for improv! Tomorrow is our first official workshop and I'm hoping a lot of people will show up. There seemed to a be a lot of people who actually knew what improv was and had performed in the past, so maybe out of the 100 or so people who signed up, some will actualy be interested in keeping McGill Improv strong since there aren't that many members anymore.

Suprisingly (to me at least), while I was there, I happened to bump into a bunch of people I had known. Then I headed down to Gerts with Adrienne and we had a beer together. Guess some things will never change.

September 13th

Is 13 really that bad a number? I woke up this morning thinking th eworse thing about today was that it marks the 1 year anniversary of my return home from Australia (now I can't say I 'just' got back anymore). Upon taking the bus with my mom this morning, I later found out today was more than that, that today also marked the 2 year ammiversary of my uncle's death when he had a freak heart attack and passed away so suddenly. By mid afternoon I later discovered the day was hardly over. I was in class just returning from lunch at 1:15. We were waiting for 2 more students to return from lunch but the teacher decided to continue teaching. At about 1:30pm, they came in telling us that there has been peope shot at Dawson College just down the street. While the teacher was continuing with the class, I was reading on line the latest news on the situation. At the time there was rumors of 1 to 4 suspects involved and about 4 people shot. By 2pm my class got cancelled. Knowing that the metro would be out of whack and that for sure Atwater would be closed, my two friend Yusin and Amelie and myself walked down towards Boneventure Metro. I split up with them and headed to Pulp and Paper at McGill to pick something up and get some tea. While I was there, my friends who still work there were also reading about it and the rumors were spreading all over the net. I headed home by train to avoid the metro rush and when I walked into my house i turned on the TV. I was super suprised to find the news on CNN. It was truley starting to feel like the Columbine shooting. In fact on CTV but they even started to interview a former victimk of the Columbine incident. After watching the news for about 2 hours it is known that there was in fact online 1 shooter. There was a cop in civilian clothes that confused a lot of witnesses. The shooter was killed and it is thought the police are responsible but it is still possible he commited suicide. No one knows who he is, if he was a student or not. A bunch of people locked themselves in rooms to avoid the gun fire. Shots were fired all over the place and the final total was 20 injured. 11 people in the Montreal General hospital were being treated for gun shot wounds to the chest, abdomin or limbs. Last I saw on the news that 1 of the victims did die.

It's just crazy. I know it's a bit extremem to say it since I wasn't actually there but it is kind of freaky knowing this all happened about a block away. Normally my friends and I gfo to eat at Alexis Neon where the food court faces the back of Dawson, btu today I had a lunch and my friends walked to a cafe towards Guy rather than Atwater. Knowing tha tmost of us were freaked, I cant even imagine how the people who were right there when it happened are feeling right now.

Someitmes the world really is messed up...

Labour Day Wekend Blues

Tomorrow marks my return to school. I'm excited since I've been working ful time at Old Navy for 3 weeks and can use a cange of pace already. Don't fet me wrong, I love working there, it's just everything has changed and a lot fo my friends that I have made since working there have quit or been transfered. Three of the managers are different from when I started there last October. Which reminds me, it's almost a year since I've worked there! I'll get my "1 year of service" sticker soon!

I realize I never finished my Boston story so here's Part 2 of Boston:

We got up early and hit the city for some site seeing. We decided to go and check out the Boston Tea Party Ship until I finally asked someone at a hotel for directions to which we foudn out the chip got caught on fire a few years back and was in Maine being restored. After that we decided to just wander the streets and saw all the historical sites and fun attractions - Boston Common, The Beacon, Royal Gardens, Cheers, etc. We ate lunch in Chinatown and it was delicious. We walked around some more and then hit up Paul Revere's house, then headed back to the motel.

After a nice rest and watching of First Blood, we headed back downtown with the car. We actually went to the outskirts of the city and ate the the Cornwall, a really nice pub. Glen wouldn't stop commenting on this excellent sandwich he ordered.
After dinner we cabbed to bar scene at Quincy Markets and met up with Karen and her friend Jen and a married couple that was friends with them. While Glen was off doing his thing with Karen (just talking!) I was keeping Jen and the couple company and they must have had a few too many to drink because apperently I look exactly like Larry David. I can understand since I"m short, fat and bald. Then they decided I looked more like George Castanza.

Anyways, after a fun night of drinking we decided to head back home and coudln't hail a cab. All of a sudden this trolley bus decked out with lights, loud music and a smke machine shows up and tells us that for 5$ we can get a ride anywhere so we jumped on. It was pretty hapening on the bus with lots of people and the music and all. Thirty minutes pass an still no one exited the bus. I'm sure the guy was lost. We were driving around forever. Eventually every one got tired and started to sit. The music started to get annoying but luckily after about an hour on the bus, the generator blew and all the music and stuff stopped. Eventually we ended up at the car but by then I had fallen asleep and was woken up when we got there.

Sunday morning was an early breakfast and a nice drive back to Montreal with a quick stop in Lebanon for lunch at this really good sub place. ONce in Montreal, we were invited to stay at Glen's place for dinner. The highlight of the night was Glen's mom calling me Budman the whole time. Steve and Jay drove me home and that concluded a great trip!

Being my last day off before school starts, I'm hoping to finish some things on my computer so it's all ready for when I start school tomorrow. I'm almost done making web files of my graphic design work so I can post them up later.

Otherwise today feels like a pretty long and boring day...

On a sad note, I found out today Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter died today by getting stung by a stingray while filming his show. R.I.P. Steve Irwin!

The LOST post

OK I came on to update my blog just now and noticed that my last post, which I had wrote as an excuse to keep people entertained knowing I wouldn't be up to posting for a while, was never actually posted but saved as a draft. So here is that LOST post:

My internet has been down for the past couple of days so I have not been able to update and continue my story on Boston. I promise to continue it very soon. In the meantime enjoy these little snippets:

-my mom is feeling fine and her stitches come out tomorrow
-my buddy Glen is leaving tomorrow for BC. Good luck to you buddy and sorry! I forgot to chip in for the beer!
-I played manhunt on saturday and it ROCKED! I didnt' get caught in the second round and I ROCKED!
-All of a sudden all these people want me to do graphic design jobs for them, yay!
-I'm working all this week including tomorrow morning at 6:30am
-I start school next week
-I'm now off to bed

A Day To Be Remembered

Today is a day several things:
1) I havn't told that many people but now seems like the right time. A few weeks ago my mom got the results from her mamogram and the discovered a small tumor in her right breast. It was the size of a cherry pit. Today it was removed. My mom is doing fine and she's already itching to do all the crazy things she normally does. Our fingers are crossed that this is the end of it but the test results to see if there are anymore growths int eh neighbourhood will be available in about 2 weeks. So now we play the waiting game.

2) On another note, today just also happens to be my brother Mark's 40th birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK!

3) On the same note, today just also happens to be my buddy Owen's 22nd birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY OWEN!

Budman in Boston

This past weekend I went down south to Boston with my buddy Glen and his two buddies from high school, Jay and Steve. I will have to say that it turned out to be an amazing trip with no worries and everything just fell into place. The whole time we had very loose plans and just went with the flow.

Friday morning I got picked up by Steve and Jay around 8am. We headed to Glen's place in the south shore where we swapped cars. We had chipped in a got a rental for the weekend. I can't remember what model it was but it was a full sized car and it drove very well and had lots of leg room.

We made excellent time, only stopping once for lunch at some place called Pour Boys in Manchester. I was suprised when we past Lebanon, MA, because I thought the others were pulling my chain until I saw a sign.

We made it to our motel room around 5pm. We were actually staying in Beverly which was about a 40 minute drive from the city. We had rented a kind of an apartment type of room. It was fuly furnished, had 2 rooms, 3 beds and a pullout couch which I suprisingly had excellent sleep on. Breakfast was included as well and the owners were pleasent and very helpful with directions.

Not even there for more than 20 minutes, Jay, Glen and I went wondering over to the local supermarket and bumped into a girl named Gina who was on her way to the restaurant she works at. She recommended we go there for dinner and that she'd help us out with some tips on whats good to see/do, etc.

Once we settled in and got washed up, we headed out to Not Your Average Joe's where Gina was working. The food was quite good and Jay had fallen in love with this blueberry beer he tried called Sea Dog. It was quite good. We thanked Gina for her kindness and good service and she even admitted that she lived in the area and gave us her number if we wanted to get together or something. Actually our relationship with Gina over the 3 days was quite funny since by the last day she mentioned on the phone that she was the "Icon" of out trip which is actually hilarious since we played phone tag and never actually got together...

After dinner we decided it would be our best interest to actually drive down to the city rather then train there and cab back. Steve was kind enough to volunteer to not drink and we were off. We got kind of lost but ended up parking on this street called Newbury. We walked around and hit a few bars including The Other Side Cafe and Bukowski's. At Bukowski's I bought a pint of this beer called He'Brew. The tap handle was a little rabbi figure. I thought it was funny until I actually tried the beer which was absolutely HORRIBLE. It was REALLY strong and I couldn't finish it. By then I had a pretty horrible headache and thought I wasn't going to make it the rest of the night.

Fortunately, a friend of Glen's, Evy, and her two friend, Amy and Liz, came to meet up with us and the bar we went to was pretty happening that I hit a second whim and actually enjoyed myself the rest of the night.

The bars close at 2am in Boston so when we got kicked out, with a lot of direction asking, we finally made it out of the city and back home.

I decided to split up the trip story a bit as not to make each post too long. Expect to read more about it later.

Also, check out photos HERE!

Life Imitating Art

This afternoon, I leaving school to meet with my mom and was running late. I was at school copying files to my USB key. While doing this, I was listening to Mobile on my MP3 player. They are a band from Montreal and their album Tomorrow Comes Today is quite good. Anyways, they have a song called Montreal Calling and the video for it just has this guy (I think he's a thief and stole something) that's just running his hardest down the street. When I was ready to leave and start heading towards my mom, I decided I was so late I needed to run. Just as I started to bolt up the stairs and leave the building, Montreal Calling comes on my player and lasted almost the exact time it took me to get to where my mom was.

I'm so cool.

DONE!

After 3 months of hard work (the end was getting killer), I handed in my last file today at 11am. I may have seemed stressed as of late because of the work load but doing the actual work was a lot of fun. There are somethings I designed that are ok and others that I quite like and i dont hate any of it. In fact, for most of it, when I started workign on it I didn't think anything special but as I neared finishing the work it got better and better. I promise to post the things I made during my 3 weeks of vacation. It may take some time though because I really have to sort through everything, convert the files to web files and back it all up on cd. I'll probably space it out and post by course or something. Thanks to everyone who helped me through the semster!

As for my time off, I have 3 weeks to relax. Although, I had uped my availability at the Navy and they may recruit me for more hours. On the bright side, I like working and can use the money. Before I get all into work mode, I found out yesturday they goofed and didn't change my availability for next week so I'm only working 2 days unless they change it since I reminded them i'm available anytime (that goes out to all the ladies too) so I may get a chance to really relax for a bit.

Almost done

It's always comforting coming to school and the security guard at the sign in booth says "Welcome home"...

One week left! I can taste it!

Oops... I mean... SUPRISE!

So the otherday I was writing how I ALMOST spoiled my friends suprise birthday party by accidently mentioning some hints to her. Well it turns out that Yusin DOES read my blog and the party is cancelled. On the otherhand, instead of being disappointed with me she is quite excited and cheerful since it turns out every year someone she knows throws her a surprise party and let me tell you, this screw up was not expected at all.

Now, instead of meeting at her place for a suprise dinner, several classmates and I are gathering for dinner tomorrow night at Angelina and Guidos right accross the street from my school which gives me a chance to work hard tomorrow and then make a stroll over to the restaurant.

Speaking of school, I'm really feeling the fists of the homework really tightening around my neck and the more I try to rush through things the more i feel that I'm falling behind, so I"m quite happy to be celebrating mine and the other's birthdays to keep my sanity, haha.

Only two weeks left!!

Smooth...

My classmate, Yusin, is turning 25 on thursday. Amelie, another classmate, contacted me through MSN several times telling me about a get together at Yusin's for her birthday. In her messages she mention Yusin's dad a few times. In my head I kept thinking "why is Amelie inviting me and not Yusin, to her own party" and "what does her dad have to do with anything?" until today when I saw Yusin in class and said "So I heard about our little get together" and she says "what get together". At this point little spark plugs starting going off and everything made sense - it's a suprise party! Oooooops...... Quick thinking, I turned extrememly red and started making absolutely no sense until Yusin made me explain myself to which I replied that sometimes I mix up people and told her I was talking about my friend Nadine's party. I also explained to her how once I was invited to a party and saw the host at school and went to confirm the place and time until I realized the person was actually not who I thought she was but a complete stranger...(that really happened so it wasn't hard to make it sound believable). Well hopefully I didn't ruin anything and lets REALLY hope Yusin doens't read my blog... haha....

In other news, I saw Lady in the Water. I liked it but it got really mixed reviews and is not in anyway a scary/horror movie. It's more of a fantasy movie. Think The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe with less plot and a shock here and there rather than the Sixth Sense or Signs.

In the music front, I picked up a few albums as of late.
Thom Yorke - The Eraser. I like it but it;s kind of tough to get into. It's sooting at parts and very like some of the stuff from Kid A - more electronic and less band heavy.
Muse - Black Holes and Revelations. I'm having ahard time getting into it but it's not a bad album. The only song I can say I really like is the last one called Knights of Cydonia
Angels and Airwaves - We Don't Need To Wisper. I heard bad things about this one but decided to get it anyways. I havn't even listened to it yet except a second from each song to make sure they worked and from what I heard everything sounds the same.

Ok... so I didn't really gert that great music after al, now that I think about it...
well I need new music for my MP3 player. Anyone have anything they recommend?

Panic! At the Budman

Been hard to post more than once a week altely due to 1. being to busy with school work and 2. due to point 1, have not done anything that exciting to post about. That's not completely true though since sunday I went to go see a show with Norm.

I had bought tickets about a month ago to go see Panic! At the Disco. I was excited to take a break from school work and go out and enjoy myself at a show. Plus, I hadn't had a chance to really catch up with Norm in a long itme so it was fun talking about movies and comics and crazy things we rewmember from our childhood like Eerie Indiana (if you know what that is, you're cool!).

The show was at the Metropolis and the opening bands were supposed to be The Hush Sound and the Dresden Dolls. Which reminds me...

Another exciting thing that did happen is that my dad was over kind and bought me an mp3 player for my soon to be birthday (1 week today!). I picked out the Creative Zen Vision M. It's pretty awesome and definitely the most expensive thing I own at the moment. It plays music, videos, show photos, has a radio, voice recorder and can be used as a hard drive. Number of gigs: 30. Number of songs capable of holding: several thousand. Number of hours it can play video before dying: 4. Number of times I've almost dropped it already: 1...

Getting back to the topic at hand, I had downloaded both of the openers current albums but did not have a chance to listen to them. The show was suposed to start at 7:30 but instead started at 8:30 because the Hush Sound didn't make it through the US border. It suscks to because since then, I have been listening to their album and it's quite good. It's called Like Vines and it's very happy pop rock music. I highly recommend it if you just want to be put in a nice chill happy mood. The Dresden Dolls, on the other hand DID play and i didn't like them very much. THeir basically a girl on a piano and a guy thrashing on his drums. The music is... interesting.

Finally, Panic at the Disco came on at 9:30 and they rocked. The stage had a lot of props. There was a backdrop of a windmill with a this giant fan with lights all over it. They had in huge letters Panic! At The Disco with each letter that flashed in bright lights and let's not forget the moon with a mustache, the fake trees and the drummers drum kit that lit up to the beats.

During the set, they had 2 chicks and a guy dress up in cabaret 20 style clothing and run around doing crazy things. They played most of their songs in the exact same order as the album which was a bit of a drag but they totally suprised Norm and I when they covered Karma Police by Radiohead and Tonight Tonight by Smashing Pumpkins. Teh worst thing of it all was that we were probably one of the handful of peopel who actually KNEW those songs since almost EVERYONE was 16 or younger and mostly female(yes Norm and I DID feel a bit out of place). Even before the encore, they had a little interlude where the cabaret people were getting the crowd all exciting by talking about each band members likes and dislikes and how they are all single and looking for love.

The encore was great and they ended the show with the last song on the album which is one of my favorite song from them. Then during the last rendition of the chorus, the singer just jump out into the crowd! (I hope he jumped into some bounders because I doubt a few 14 year olds would br able to hold him up).

After the show, Norm and I walked through the Just For Laughs area and showed up just in time to get lost in this crazy fantasy thing where loud music was being pumped out of speakers and there were people manipulating giant hot air ballon sea creatures. It was literally out of this world.

And now something COMPLETELY different: I just recieved an e-mail from Eugene. I havnt' hread from that guyin a couple of years and apperently he stopped writing e=mails a couple of years ago but decided to start up again. His e-mails are LONG! I mean REALLY LONG! Take ther length of this blog entry and multiply it by 5, that's be about 1/3 the length of the e-mail I just recieved from him. I won't go into specifics about the content (actuallY i'm not even have done it yet and it's been about 20 miunutes...) but he was just writing how he's still in chem and he was taking a safety courseon radiation so he can learn how to work an x-ray machine to do tests on chemicals in his lab. The funniest thing I read from him was this:

The tech guy made them watch a movie and was talking about radiation and stuff afterwords:

Tech Guy: We all get gamma rays from background terrestrial based radiation
anyways, how much is living beside a power plant going to do to you

Eugene: Well, if it blows up, you might be in trouble. For instance, I
lived really close to one that blew up when I was a kid.

Tech Guy: Which one was that?

Eugene: Chernobyl

(He's dead serious, he was born in Russia)

Waiting Time

I'm currently at school. I've spent all afternoon working on this assignment for my photoshop II class. Basically, it's taking a scanned picture of woman from a magazine and then tracingit in photoshop using the dodge (shadows) and burn (hgihlights) tools. The result looks more like something that was done using a spray gun. I just finished doing the eyes and although not perfect (...yet?) it looks pretty wicked. However, due to the file being 425MB i ahev to wait 10 minutes until it's on my USB key. So here I am killing time.

Nothing new lately in my life except I recently got a raise at work. The yearly evaluations happen in the summer and mine was highly positive and I just have to continue dong what I'm doing. The want me to work there more btu with school, I'm going to have ot keep my 2 shifts per week limit.

Other than that, I got see see Adrienne, Mariana and Dustin who were both in town for Nikki's wedding (Mazol Tov Nikki and Rob!) and there was a party at Andrew's friday night so it was most of the improv gang back together again. It was a chill arty adn Bryan organized a kick ass version of the Family Feud on a whima nd it was quite funny.

The rest of this week I'm devoting to homework and will have to miss manhunt again :( Fortunately, I'm going ot be seeing Panic! At The disco on Sunday and that seems like a promising night for fun times.

Well the USB transfer is done. I'm out of here to shop for an MP3 player.

I Pod You Pod, We All Pod for iPod

My birthday is coming up at the end of the month (gah!) and my parents have insisted on buying me a portable mp3 player as a gift. So much so that my dad has the money all ready to be spent this second. Unfortunately I've been so busy with school I haven't had a chance to research what's good/bad, new, or actually what's even out there. I've never owned an mp3 player and am unfamiliar with even the common features. I have been told that although an iPod is the most popular it's not necessarily the best. I do know there are two main times - smaller ones that are flash memory and larger ones that are like hard drives. Right nowI can say that I'm not too crazy about being able to watch movies on my music player but the advantage of getting a big hard drive one would be being able to store some of my homework on it.

Anyone recommend a certain brand or model? Or even a good website to check out for reviews? Any suggestions can help point me in teh right way.

I Like Rocks A.K.A My Trip to Ottawa

Many months ago I had met Owen Hewitt through the McGill Improv Summit. Carlton University had come all the way from Ottawa to compete. I had again met Owen a month later during Vaganza 6. Since then he'd been inviting my out to Ottawa. I finally took up his offer and went out there this past weekend to celebrate Canada Day.

Friday evening at 5:05pm I was on a VIA Rail train headed to Ottawa. The whole ride was under 2 hours! I read a magazine half of the time and fell asleep for the second part. Once I reached Ottawa, Owen was there waiting for me. The two coolest guys in Ottawa were ready to party.

We reached Owen's lovely home where I met his parents and had a nice chat with his mom. She was very pleasant and had left us an amazing turkey dinner to eat. The highlight of the evening was when during our conversation, Owen's mom commented that I had to most elegant hands, to which embarrassed Owen. Also, him and his parents talked a lot about politics and history and religion - all subjects I"m not too knowledgeable on - which spawned our inside joke of "I like rocks..." Which one is to say when you are completely lost on the topic of a conversation.

After dinner, we had our first beer of the weekend. Well, Owen had more than one, but I'm a slow drinker and I had almost one. He showed his book collection and when I commented on how I always wanted to read The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, he gave me his copy! He even wrote a note. That means when he becomes a famous poet I may have in my hands a one of a kind item. I can't wait to read it.

The evening was spent at his long time friend's Tina's house. She was turning 22 and to celebrate her birthday had a few friends over. I met a few cool people and we all chatted in the kitchen which was the tiniest room in the house (see Andrew, it's not just at your place that this happens...). Tina was having a fun time drinking and I got to watch her play this checkers game where each piece is a shot glass and when you lose your piece you drink it. It was fun to watch because she started to drink all the pieces, the ones she lost and the ones she moved and just anyone she felt like drinking. Her boyfriend Steph showed up and he was a cool guy. Owen and I got him cracking up so hard. The highlight of the night had to have been when Tina fell on the ground and withered like a fish behind her couch.

Around midnight I think, we called it a night for we had a big day ahead of us.

I got woken up at 9am and headed down to the kitchen for soem of Owen's world famous pancake mix pancakes. By 10:30 we were out of the house and on a bus to the downtown area. Already I was starting to sdee red and white everywhere.

Once we reached downtown, there were already tons of people outand about. Owen was dying to go see one of his favorite performers, Buck 65, who was to perform twice that day, so we headed immediately to his stage. Unfortunately we showed up near the end but I got to witness one of the coolest things. A bunch of performers - Buck 65, Kinnie Starr, some guy who played amazing accoustic guitar and this group called K'Naan, were all sitting on the tiniest stage just listening to each othet while a bunch of spectators like myself and Owen were able to just relax and listen. It was the chillest thing ever. I really admired how the other artists bobbed their heads to the one that was performing. We had only come in on the last song but I was told that each artist played 4 songs and they each took turns. We had missed Buck 65 but shortly after the show got a chance to talk to him while he was selling/signing cds. Owen got him to sign his lucky hat and had a nice chat with him.

Right next to the cd table was a both with this special guitar called the Six String Nations Guitar which was handmade from a bunch of historical pieces aof wood and what not including a piece of Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle and gold from Maurice Rocket Richards' gold ring. I even got a picture taken with it and will have it sent to me by e-mail. There was even a suggestions ballad for a name for the quitar to which I could only come up with "The Canada". I know, original...

It being the hottest time of the day, we headed to the Highlander, a Scottish pub that Owen traditionally goes to every Canada Day. There we listened to soem duo play classic rock tunes while we eat great pub food and had some beer.

After lunch Owen was kind enough to give me a tour fo the city and talk about all the historical sites and buildings. He really knows his stuff especially since h's studying history and wants to be a librarian. Once our tour ended, we hit the grass and I dozed off enjoying the cool breeze. When I had awaken, the sky had begun to get grey but thankfully no rain. We walked off our haziness (I think the sun/beer mix had hit me) and we had a quick dinner just after finding out that France had kick Brazil out of the World Cup.

By 7pm, we were back at Major Hill's Park to catch K'naan, Kinnie Starr and Buck 65 perform ful 30 minute sets. When Buck 65 came on, everyone rushed the stage and really got into it. He put on a great set and Owen was rocking out.

After the show, we had bumped into thsi girl that Owen had been playing phone tag with and had a bit of a liking to. I only later found out he had met her only once before but we were going to try and hang out with her and her 2 friends for a bit. As we followed them, I noticed then and all day rather, that someone had been writing on the ground with chalk stuff about "Bring Peace and Justice" etc. I think i even made a coment to Owen. Then suddenly his friend stops and starts to take out chalk and write the same thing to which I immidiately thought "oh...".

Nothing much was going on so we ditched that group and were about to head home until I rememebered about the fireworks and convinced Owen to let me stay and watch them. He knew the perfect spot to view them and they were AMAZING! Some were SO big and loud that you could feel the ground vibrate and it looked like they were going to fall on you. It was spectacular.

On the way to the bus, I could tell that all the families had left, leaving behind tons of drunken people read to fill up the bars since it was only 10:30pm.

Once we got to his stop, we debarked and somehow ended up walking right in the middle of a group of 14-15 year olds since teh sidewalk was narrow. Figuring we;d split directions at any moment, Owen and I made no attempt to pass the first half of the group. Unfortunately this went on for what felt like TEN blocks.

The night ended winding down in Owen's basement watching a hilarious episode of South Park to which the gang goes to Canada and it is all done in the style of the Wizard Of Oz. My favorite part being on "French Canada being the Best part of Canada".

Sunday morning I managed to sleep in until 11am. Really needed that. Thsi time I had Owen's world famous pancrepes because they came out kind of thin but tasty none the less. To kill time, we went and caught Superman Returns. My brother didn't like it that much but I thought it was pretty good. The effects were crazy but the bad guy plot could have been a bit better.

We returned back to Owen's and had a delicious BBQ with his parents and his brother Andrew who had come from Edmonton to stay with them for a week or so.

5pm came and it was time for me to say my goodbyes and head to the train station. Owen left me off and I got inside just in time to board the train. Almost an hour and a half later I had returned home to Montreal.

All in all I had a great time and a much need break from school.

Sushi Party!

After a couple of weeks of craziness, I decided to drop all homework related stuff and focus on having fun. And fun I had.

Thursday morning I drove down to schol with the ol' van. I knew parking would be a bitch so I had planned to park in teh underground parking at in the building of my school. Unforunately I had a hrd time finding it and accidently drove down this incorrect very narrow, very curvy and VERY steep driveway to which I had to reverse out of (how I didn't crash the car I don't know...). Afterwards I found the parking lot and found a spot close to the elevator (with trouble getting into the spot. How I didn't crash the car I don't know...). I spent all afternoon fixing my menu project and I think it looks great. Sometime soon I will post the final edition of the menu of the made up restaurant I created called Bracha's (after my mom's hebrew name).

At 5pm I headed over to the rendez-vous point at Amin's (while almost breaking my dad's side mirror while exiting the car lot. How I didn't crash the car I don't know...). There, Amin, Norm, Lauren, Kevin, Mariana and Ian were there ready to hit the West Island. We took 2 cars and eventually met at my place. We decided on supplies and went shopping for food. Back at my house we spent the bulk of the evening making sushi using chopped cucumber, peppers, carrots and cooked smoked salmon.

Yes everyone got in on the fun:








Here's how most of sushi turned out:



and here's how my sushi turned out:



Once done, we did what you should always do after eating sushi - go play at a park! Yes, we relived our youth for a short while until we returned to my house to watch the Daily Show and the Stephen Colbert Report.

Then we literally crashed. Everyone basicaly mass slept on the pullout couch or occupied one of my spae sleeping areas. I wisely took my bed because in the morning the only complaint I got was about the house cuckoo clock which happens to go off EVERY 15 minutes.

Lauren had work at 9am so everyone save Ian and Kevin left at around 7am. I went back to bed however and only really got up at 10-10:30am. After cleaning up and eating, I brought the guys downtown.

Ian had wanted to be dropped off somewhere so he could watch the world cup. Fortunately a wicked spot opened up in time fo rme to grab it right in front of Carlos And Pepe's on Peel. Then when I went to pay for parking, Ian noticed a giant sign saying the place we were standing in front of was showing the game. We walk upstairs only to find a really fancy lounge with several T.V.s, couches and people wearing suits and dressy clothes, while I was wearing my cowboy hat and Ian was wearing a hoodie. Although we seemed out of place, no one cared and we stayed to watch the Argentina play Germany during overtime. Germany lost, but I thoguht it was a cheap win because they only won due to penalty shots. It was fun though, since Ian told me a lot about the World Cup that I had not known.

I then went home got soem errands done and got ready for my trip to Ottawa.

Small Break

I've been SO busy lately with school. It's just been project after project. Actually, the way it works, I should be able to multi task but it hasn't been happening. I've been working countless hours to finish somehting just in time and right after handing it in, I'd have to START the next project which in the last case, was the next day. This week, I've also got the house ot myself since my parents are in Toronto watching my nephew, Charles, while my brother and his wife are in Vegas for his 40th birthday trip (even though it's in August?!) so it's been quiet in the house and with staying up late all alone working on stuff, I started to go a little crazy... I hadn't something in today half assed btu got an extension and on top of that instead of actualy having ot redo my stuff due to the mistakes, all I have to do is write a note stating I understand what I did wrong and what I would do to fix them. My teacher rocks!

Thankfully, I'm at the end of the hump for a short while since all my next projects aren't due for a few weeks. I was totally dying earlier in class and was totaly about to fall off my chair. Things are going to get crazy again but in the meantime I'm taking a break starting tonight. I'm gong to go see Nacho Libre with my bro. Tomorrow night is a sushi party at my place which should rock. Friday I'm off to Ottawa to hang out with Owen and celebrate Canada day. Nothing beats his e-mail I recieved the other day:
Dude before you come i need to know a few things: 1. Is there antyhing you can't eat besides pork? 2. What time are you do in? 3. Are you afraid of titties? We'll be seeing plenty on Canada Day 4. When is your train back to Montreal?
Oh Owen, how much we'll have together.

I better get back to work since i"m still in class but a quick blurb: We use a program called Quark that basically is a text editing program (for layout in magazines, books, panflets, etc.) and a feature in it is called Jabber Text. It basically fills the area with random text. I had apractice example to do in class and this is what came up in the jabber paragraph:

The Klingnons fight Quark. one Jabberwokcy marries two.

Holy Crap I'm screwed....

I don't understand what I did wrong but school is just going crazy. I've been trying realy hard to keep up to date with things but today felt like it was all for nothing. I have this assignment due tomorrow. We basically only had a week to do it plus we have all kind sof assignments for our other 5 classes. The prof made a special class today to realy break into the assignment. My whole plan was to get most of it done during class and finish it off tonight for tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, the 4 hours of work I spent this morning was all lost. When I was transfering my file from my computer to my USB, I accidently transfered the file from my USB to the computer, thus erasing my new file with my old file. I tried cancelling the transfer once i realized my error, but upon doing so my new file diappeared completely. I t was frustrating but I kept my cool and realized I'd have to stay up late tonight to finish it.

There are 5 parts to the assignment and I was halfway through the first part this morning. Once the first part is done, the other 4 are the smae thing in different variations, thus would take less time to do. I finally finished th efirst part after a few hours and then flew through part 2. Things were looking good until I came to part 3 and was unsure what to do. Not to worry, I decided to just take a chance and get through the work, since it was already after 11pm. Then all of a sudden, what I was doing stopped working. I couldn't understand what was going on. Everything was fine and then it just stopped working. I then realized somehow I accidently changed one of the modes in the computer program. Unfortunately for me, I must have done it at the beginning for I noticed that both part 1 and 2 which I finished, were all set in the other mode. WhenI tried switching back to normal mode, all my work disappears meaning everything I did may be wrong.

Now I am frustrated and tired.

It' snto really a big deal since if I hand it in late I only lose 10% and now i cna really make sure i get everything right. It's just that I have another huge project due wednesday which I also have not finished and was planning on working on that tomorrow. Now that I can't I may ahve to hand that one in late too! I feel totaly swamped with work and don't understand how it happened all of a sudden.

I know I'll get through it all eventually but I just had to rant. It's shitty being in shitty situations.


It's 12am and I'm goign to be exhausted tomorrow which won't make getting my work done before deadlines any easier. I may have to become a hermit for a the next couple of weeks if this keeps up.

I could really use a hug right now...

Manhunt 5: The Return Home

Yesturday was the 5th edition of manhunt. This time it was held back at where it all began, Carre St Louis (crack park) at the end of Prince Arthur and St Denis.

This time, instead of it being from St Laurent to St. Denis and Pins to Prince Arthur it was Prince Arthur to Sherbrooke. For added bonus, it WASN'T raining AND we had the St. Laurent street sale to help for cover.

For the first game the hunter was Marc D. Rowland, he's the real version of the character Robert Patrick portrays in Terminator 2. I ended up at Sherbrooke and bumped into Jason whom organized Frosh with back in 2002, so that was cool. Afterwards I hit up St. Laurent and saw no one so I thought i was safe. I was wrong. I turn onto Prince Arthur and was spotted. I ran back through the crowd and turned into a parking lot which led to a dead end. In the end Andrew caught me. The rest of the time I spent hunting people and got a couple of victims.

Round two was a lot better. I ended up staying incognito for 20 minutes. I was walking aorund the streets and then due to a scare, ended up at Carre St Louis and didn't notice anyone with the orange arm bands. I walked around, sat on various benches and hid behind numerous trees. Ken was standing behind one tree the whole time but I ignored him for he was definitely not caught. Some bystanders were kind enough to give me the heads up of hunters hidden in the grass on teh other side of the park. A couple of 11 year old girls walked by me as I peeked out from behind a tree with my hood up and said somethign rude to me in french and placed their hands in my face like I was thinking of molesting them or something and them showing me I was way out of their league. Finally I decided to make myself comfortable against a tree, glancing around every now and then. I kept that up for about 10 good minutes until out of nowhere Andrew comes and gets me. I was so confused as to how he found me until he pointed out to me that literally 15 feet directly in front of where I was standing were all the hunters who decided to quit a few minutes early, relaxing by a bench. I can't believe I didn't notice them. Admitting my fate, Andrew and I decided to get Ken. As We chased him, the two people who were hiding in the grass, Adair and Rebecca, thought they were going to get caught and jumpped out of their hiding place. I saw this and immediately changed my course for them. In a quick effort to escape, Rebecca jumps into the fountain and gets soaking wet. Apperently it was both her and Adairs plan the whole time but Adair chickened out last second.

Fun was had by all and we got to converse about it over great bbq food and some beers. Can't wait until the next one. Unfortunately I won't be around for the immediate next one since it's on Canda day but for those who can, I highly suggest it!

Rocking out with your block out!

Friday night I went to see We Are Scientists and The Arctic Monkeys at The Medley. I had an extra ticket and was looking for someone to go with. In the end I went with Rachelle. I met her at Lauren's birthday party and she's Lauren's coworker at Starbucks. She's probably th emost positive enthusiasitic person I've ever met and never heard of either band but was really excited to go.

As for the show itself, I think I enjoyed We Are Scientists more than The Arctic Monkeys. I never heard of W.A.S. before buying tickets but I downloaded their cd and it wasn't bad. However, at the show, I really gotinto them because a) I knew all the songs and b) they had great stage presence. Their last 3 songs really rocked. The way the stage was set up, rather then take away the first band equipment and replace it with the second's, they had both drum kits on stage,one behind the other. Durting my favorite song on the album, I notice some guy walk on stage and take a picture of the crowd. At first I thought it was some roadie but then he sits down at the second drum kit and I immediately knew it was the Arctic Monkeys drummer joining in! He totally started to rock out with them. It was awesome to see TWO drummers do this kind of drum roll accross their kit at the SAME time!

After a great set, the Arctic Monkeys came on and they looked SO bored. The music was good but at this point I was farther away from the stage (we went for a bathroom break and lost our spot) and would have enjoyed myself in the mosh pit for I couldn't really jump around since it was so packed on the floor. When the singer did speak, you just couldn't understand him.

After the show I bumped into Dave Kolin. The last time i saw him was at the Franz Ferdinand concert. He STILL has to walk on crutches and he's going to rock concerts! He's truley crazy.

In the end, I did enjoy myself for having discovered a new great band, hanging out with Rachelle and buying a sweet Arctic Monkeys t-shirt (for almost the price of the show)

Celebrating Birthdays In Style Since 1998

Today is Aussie Lauren's 19th birthday! Happy Birthday! To celebrate a bunch of us had dinner at Le Taj a fancy Indian Cuisine restaurant. Norm had told me it was a dressy night for us, so I wore my blazer, shirt and tie all day since I couldn't go home and change beforehand. All day people at school were wondering why I was dresed so nice. After the twentieth response of "to impress you!", I got bored and decided to tell the truth.

After a long and frustrating day (actually week) in front of the computer and not getting good sleep, I felt totally at ease (and tired) at the dinner. The food was great (I had butte chicken) and the company was even better. I had bought Lauren two Canadian tank tops at Old Navy and she appreciated them (or is really good at lying, haha), while Norm and Amin bought her a wicked dark red cowboy hat. Now I have a partner to hit the streets with in our fancy shmancy cowboy hats. To check out photos of the night click HERE!

Tomorrow is work and The Arctic Monkeys show. Yay!

This One's For Norm

Been working all on an assignemtn that's due tomorrow. The assignment was to take something out of it's context. I don't how my crazy mind cam eup with it but I decided to take the poster for the Usual Suspects and replace them with characters from Looney Tunes. I drew all the characters by hand, then scanned them and traced it in Ilustrator and finally added color and text. I ran out of time and couldn't make all 5 characters so settled with 4. I'm totally exhausted and have a big day ahead of me tomorrow but promised Norm I'd post it before bed.
So here it is, enjoy:

Stupid Rain

So the weather has been really crappy lately and I think it was starting to get to me. Thursday I finished one of my assignments but jsut couldn't get into the next one. I finally gave up and headed over to Amin's where he was having a "dye your hair" party. Well sort of. Him and Norm dyed their hair the other week (his a blue mohawk and Norm,s head was completely purple save a bright red exclamation mark on the side) and wanted to redye their hair again to make it more vibrant. Lauren decided to add red streaks to her hair and due to peer pressure decided to let her bleach a few streaks in my hair. She did it pretty randomnly. You can't notice it but I could tell that the hair where it was done looks all frayed and thin. In fact whenI was thanking Lauren on my cell phone and explaining what had happened to my hair, I was in the car with my mom and upon hearing the words "dye in my hair" my mom stops the car, put it into park, turned on the inside light and started to examine my hair. It's a good thing I didn't dye it bright red...

Friday I worked all day and for the first time in a long time had a headache. At the end of work, one of the employees (a girl still in high school) comes and gives me a hug and says "that's because you look so sad today". See how much the weather affects me!

Saturday was no better, I tried working on my MP3 panflet, right now it looks good but I wanted to move on and add thigns to it and just couldn't come up with anything that looked good so I gave up. Thankfully I had something to take a break from it for saturday night I headed over to Lauren's apartment to celebrate her birthday. In fact it was the first event of a week of things involved to celebrate her birthday (lucky suck...). We had desdert, some drinks and even some skipping in the rain. I ended up getting home and going to bed at 3:30am.

Bright and early this morning I got up and went to work (well only at 10am but still that was 5 and a half hours of sleep) and actualy had a lot of energy. I realized that outside it was sunny for abit and maybe thats what changed my mood. In fact I was so good I asked a coworker if she wanted to go to a concert together (I have an extra ticket) but things got awkward because I then realized that all the other staff memebers were around us (we were all exiting the mall) and I think it toally looked like I was asking her out which probably isn't the best since a) we're not really supposed to date co workers (not that that is my attention) and b) my boss ended up being right next to me and overheard. I lost my cool and hid myself in my jacket. Once outside I said goodbye to everyone and forgot to get my coworkers cel number so I could remind her about the show since it was like a "that sounds cool, maybe I'll come" kind of answer. I don't know when I'll see her next since the next time I work is friday which is the day of the concert. Oh well, at least I didn't pull a Budman and actually asked her to join me. Baby steps.

Portfolio Update

I realize it's been a while since I've shown my progress in the work I've been doing for school so here's a few treats for my fellow friends and family.

For my image processing course, our assignment was to find a picture and make 7 copies. To each copy we had to make a drastic change like change the texture and color. Once that was done using this tool funciton in Photoshop called the History brush, where I was able to paint on top of the original using my 7 versions as if they were 7 different paints. It sound complicated but it's not at all.

Here is the original photo I used, a pictre of Sydney, Australia:



and here is what I came up with. I quite like it.



For my Visual Communication class, I have 3 small excercises I have to complete. I already finished the first 2. The first one was to make a self portrait without using your photo. In other words, to show something that represents you, soemthing that someon can look at and go "from this I can totally understand it's Josh". Wanting to be a little creative, instead of doing my first idea of making a collage of items that are meaningful to me and arranging them to look like a face or body (it's been done a lot), I decided to compile a bunch of words that represent me and arrange them so from far it looks like a picture of me.
Here is my result:



If you save it and then zoom in on my face you'll notice that my hair, mouth, contour of my face, glasses, etc. (basically everything except my clothes) are made up completely of various words. It took me a while to do but was more tedious than difficult.

Finally, the last new thing I have to show you all is the second excercise for the same class, which was to create a coin that has on the front some sort of image that represents my view on the economy. I don't really have a view but ended up somewhat choosing a view and came up with this.

More cool stuff to come, I promise.

Manhunt 4 et al

This morning on the way to class, I was sporting my cowboy hat, my shades and was listening to INXS - Guns In The Sky. I'm the coolest guy ever.

in other news, I went to Manhunt on saturday and it rocked. As usual, it was raining off and on but was enjoyable none the less. This time it was played at Parc Jeanne Mence. There was a lot more open space and less building and pedestrians (especially due to the shitty weather) than the other times we had played.

During the first round I was walking with Adair, figuring out our strategy on how to play at the new region, just as we turned the corner to see the first hunter. Adair used me as bait and quickly disapeared as I was hunted down. I cheaply tried my open umbrella trick ( at the guys face - I know I"m an asshole) but it failed and I was caught. I spent the rest of the round running after everyone one and got tired fast. I did manage to tag at least 3 people.

During round two I decided to try something different. I was tired of running and thought if I pretended i was a hunter the whole time I wouldn't have to run as much. I was wrong. Fortunately it kept me untagged for 20 minutes. I fllowed Amy for a good 15 minutes pretending to hunt her and she just kept walking ahead. To keep up my facade, I kept stopping to breatj like I was out of breath (for the most part I was) and at one point I even deliberately dropped my umbrella to give her a chance to run away. Then I spent the next little while chasing after everyone I saw. It totally worked until Emily (who had known I was not a hunter at first) had since become a hunter and saw me and came to gave a high but when I jumped out of the way and ran, my gig was up. Out of nowhere appeared Norm, and I was a dead duck.

After the game we headed to Phil and Adair's for the usual beer drinking, hot dog eating, resting party. This time they were kind enough to let us throw our socks in the dryer. Thanks guys.

On another note, last night I saw X-Men 3. I liked it and totally needed to disappear into Movie Land for a while but if I had to rank the 3 movies from favorite to least favorite it would be X2, X3 and then X1. This movie definitely had a lot of action but they killed off a lot of people which should have brought a shock factor but it lacked something, and they also introduced a lot of cool new people but again did it in such a way and didn't use them so much that it lost it's appeal. Plus there are like a billion characters in the comics that I don't see the point in making up new characters for the movie.

The Advetures Of Budman - Weekend Edition

My mom rushed me out of the house this morning, telling me we were going to be late for the bus. Then the metro broke down and she was worried I make my 8am class on time and sent me off to get breakfast on my own. So here I am in my class - all alone - just realizing class got moved to 9am on Wednesdays as of last week...

On the bright side, I finally have the time to write about my weekend which, as most weekends, was packed with fun.

Friday was my day off school and I was at Old Navy working from 3pm to 10pm. After work, my friend/boss Mike and I went over to my high school buddy Mike's house ad watched Hart's War. It's an older movie but I had heard good things so was iterested in watching it. It stars a pre-"I'm a hollywood bad ass" Colin Farrell and a "I'm starting to get too old to play bad asses in movies" Bruce Willis. In the end it was an ok film but I thought, being a war movie, it'd be more lke Savign Private Ryan, but instead the whole movie focuses on the racism that was going on in a POW camp between 2 african american soldiers and the rest of the camp. Not a typical war movie.

I had about 5 hours of sleep friday night for I had to get up early to meet Lauren downtown. I can't remember if I had spoken of Lauren before but a quick intro: She is from Australia and is travelling across the world. She is currently living in Montreal until the end of the summer. She only got here a few weeks ago, where by chance on McGill classifieds, met Norm and has since joined our circle of friends.

She had told me she bought a matress off of someone and needed help picking it up and moving it to her new apartment (which is not furnished). So I made my way downtown and we headed to pick up the matress. About 1 minute before we get there, I find out she had bought the matress for 10$ and had never gone to check it out. When we got it, it was old looking covered in all sorts of stains, but I'm sure really comfortable. Lauren didn't care, she said she'd wash it with disenfective and it beats sleeping on the floor. we carried it by foot to her new place that was just a few blocks away but unfortunately, we turned right instead of left and walked a few blocks in teh wrong direction before noticing our mistake.

Once we found her new place, her new roomate, Amy, let us in and we chatted for a while. Turns out the world is tiny. Amy just happens to be Norm's ex-girlfriend's best friend [Spaceball's quote: Lonestar - "What does that make us?" Helmet - "Absolutely NOTHING!"]

The rest of the day was spet helping out my Aunt. She's also moving into a new place. By far the funniest moment fot he day was when my mom asked me how the matress moving went. When I told her how dirty it was she screamed out in concern "That's DISGUSTING! She's going to catch AIDS if she sleeps on that!" Oh mom, how much I love you, haha.

Saturday night I went out dancing with Lauren, Norm, Amin, Kevin, Neil and Norm's friend Jetendra. Norm and Amin had just returned from NY and had dyed their hair. Norms is purple with a red exclamation point coming out the side and Amin's is shaved into a pseudo blue mohawk. I was sporting my new cowboy beach hat that I bought at Simons earlier that day.

We headed up to Jupiter Room in hopes of a packed place filled with dancing. Instead we found a dead place with hardcore porn on the TVs. Not just regular hardcore porn, either. Gigantic breast porn. Thankfully, they turned off the porn, replaced it with Caillou for a few minutes and stopped on Terminator 2. The place did get sort of packed and my friend Mariana and her friend were in town this weekend and decided to join us. It was great seeing her again!

After a while, the music got boring so we moved to Cafe Campus minus Mariana and her frien Rachel since they wanted to get up early and take full advantage of Museum Day. Cafe Campus was a lot better but packed. Highlights of the rest of the night include some random guy sticking his finger in my mouth while I was posing for a picture, and this random chick who decided to join our dance circle. Afterwards when we had left the place, Norm comes up to me and was like "You know that chick was totally into you but then you moved to the other side of the circle." Oh? "And then she gave up and went back to her friends who all gave her sympathy hugs for trying." Oh....

Norm was kind enough to drive Lauren and myself back to my house. No I didn't pick her up. On sunday was the Amazing Race 2 event organized by Hillel West Island and was supposed to be a race similar to the one on TV. To make things easier, Lauren crashed at my place. (That's for clarification for my brother Mark)

Suday morning, we got up around 11am and I got to make Lauren breakfast. Thankfully she wanted her eggs scrabled since it's the only thing I know how to cook! 12pm came around and my buddies Simon, David and David came to pick us up for the race.

The race was intense. I promise to write a full description of it in another post. My team ended up in 4th palce and Lauren's team bailed the race at the halfway point and she went home early, but had a lot of fun.

Sunday night I went back downtown to hang out with the gang and caught the last 30 minutes of Spaceballs (love that movie).

Freakin' Excited!

Since coming home I had to go into my room and relax a bit. I startd off with Thievery Corporation's Cosmic Game (highly recommended). I have since moved onto Pearl Jam's new album but it's started to get me excited again so let's see... Ah yes! Bonobo Live Sessions... Starting to feel chilled.

Wh was I so excited earlier today you may ask? Today was the deadline to submit your version of next years agenda cover. The winner gets his/her's version printed but even if it's not picked it's a great start for a portfolio.

Here's what I submitted:



I spent tuesday afternoon and all of today working on it. My idea was to do something similar to that IPOD commercial where all the CD albums are going into the IPOD. So I went outside and draw the school by hand and then drew it on the computer. Then I got pictures of items that represent the 3 programs that my school offers (design, beauty, and 2d/3d imagery) and traced them to give that logo look I have througout the poster.

I had to hand in a printed color version of the cover and since the store tht did the printing was open until 7pm, I had until 7pm to finish. being me, I finished at 6:55pm. I had about thirty minutes left when I finished tracing my last object and then had to figure out hw I wanted to lay them all out. The color background and the bottom green part I winged last minute. I also ran into a small problem in trying to cut part of something off which started to get me frustrated. Finally, I was done (i.e. ran out of time) and bolted upstairs to get it printed. Unfortunately my energy levels only increased because the printing wasn't working. Turns out it was just due to not having chosen the proper printer (we use the computer ourselves to print) and the guy working there didn't help at ALL. He looked totally lost and then walked away! So I waited a few minutes and then approached him talking to his coworkers and convinced him to try and help me again! it then printed and I handed it in. I felt SO MUCH better. It's truley an awesome feeling to hand in something you feel proud about. It's rewarding.

--

To get me even more excited when I got home, I confirmed things and it's official: Sunday I am participating in The Amazing Race 2.

No it's not the REAL Amazing race but its an event similar to the real show where we are in groups of 4 and we drive around the west island solving clues and doing physical tasks in order to reach the finish line. Thee are supposed to be great prized, a meal included and the weather is predicted to be really nice. Plus, Australian Lauren showed interest to participate and she will be joining the event but will be on another team (You're going down!).

Sunday's going to rock!

Ninjariffic

I don't know if this is some crazy coincidence or it wa menat to happen but lately I've been discovering these hilrious ninja related things on the net.

First it the really cool and funny Dr McNinja (http://drmcninja.com). Owen introduced it to me and I quite like it. The art is really cool and it reminds me a lot of Batman mixed with Deadpool.

Owen also introducedme to another comic featuring a ninja - White Ninja Comics (http://whiteninjacomics.com). This one however has nothing to do with ninjas and doesn't realy make much sense but I just love the creators wacky humor.

Finally, I was bored one day and stumbled accross something called Ask A Ninja (http://askaninja.com). It's great. It's kind of like Strong Bad e-mails (www.homestarrunner.com) except he's a ninja and it's live not cartoon (well not all of it). I also can't get over how muc the guy acts just like Gil. It's almost scary. And to add to that they had a videa called Ask A Samurai, some fan made a while back, and that guy sounds just like Jeremy.

I look forward to watching you read a ninja related comic before I kill you! (To uderstand that you need to go to one of the above links, but which one? Muhahah!)

Manhunt 3: Hunted by Men (and women and kids)

Today was the third meet of the Montreal chapter of Manhunt. As has been the case lately, it was raining all day. And like the last time I went, the rain stopped for the duratio of Manhunt only to continue once we were done. However, having rain led to an advantage for me for I had an umbrella which proved quite useful (more details below).

This time the game was held in Vieux Montreal. Our starting point was the Centaur theatre and we had a small within invisible boundaries to run frantic within. Lot os fun and interesting things happened today:

-Right before we began, a mother showed up with her son and his friend (both probably 10-12).

-During the first game I walked through a pay parking lot and the worker came up to me and said soemthing about a car. I responded yes to ensure he wouldn't yell at me for walking through the parking lot. The he responded with me following him to pay for the parking as to which I replied I had no car...

-After successfully staying not caught for 15 minutes of the first game, I got cornered in a small street with 5 people on one side and 3 on the other. As Maryam came up to tag me I thrusted my close dumbrella at her, pushed the button and tried to block her with the open umbrella. I failed misreably but it was worth the shot.

-Two guys decided it'd be fun to hide up a fire escape which led to them scaling accross a legde on teh second floor almost all around the building. Not cool...

-During the second game, Norm volunteered me to be the first hunter.

-My plan as hunter was to walk around with my umbrella up. First I noticed a guy hidding behind a dirt mound that after circling him and with the aid of a girl, cornered him and tagged him.

-I noticed a group of 3 people walking down the street and walked completely hidden under my umbrella. I kept getting closer and closer and they never noticed me until I gunned it too quickly and close dmy umbrealla and jumped accross an interesection, thus scaring the shit out of some tourists. I ended up scaring my prey away but caught up to the girl in the bunch only because she dropped her cell phone.

-Kevin Anderson got stopped by the police because they saw him running and thought had stolen something.

All in all, manhunt was great but can't wait to play it in nice hot weather.

After Manhunt, we walked to Phil and Adair's and had a BBQ. It was fun talking abotu the game to others and just plain meeting new people.

Cab't wait until the next one!

Budman in 2D!

I was playing around with Illustrator the other day and ended up tracing my face. Basically, I used an actual photo as a template and then used the Pen Tool to draw lines and filled them in with color.

Here what I got:



Thanks for all the good compliments (I've had it on MSN since yesturday) but really it wasn't that hard to do and it's nothing fantastic. However, I am learnig through experience that simple things can go a long way.

Moving a Step Backwards in Technology

So it finally happened, my portable CD player died. It put up a good fight. I bought it super cheasp near the end of my time in Australia due to my then portable CD player dying. I didnt' expect a lot outof it for 60 bucks but I didn't expect it to just die like it did. First a few of the buttons stopped working some of the time. Then the screen started to spit out chinese characters, which soon turned to pure random garbage and then finally a blank screen. Then there was a trick where I had to turn it on with the remote and then try again on the actual device to get it to start, kind of like a secret sequence of buttons to unlock a code (the Da Vinci code it ain't). Until finally nothing worked.

Being totally addicted to music, I started to go crazy after a few days until I found my old walkman which I carried around all day. Yes that's right, everyone is replacing CD's with MP3's and i'm replacing mine with crappy old cassette tapes. I don't have that many either. Out of my old collection running from the early 90s to mid/late 90s, excluding the old school white rap of House of Pain and the gansta combeback album of Run DMC, I've got Blink 182, Fastball, Radio Head - The Bends, and some hard NU metal mix I copied off someone that has Korn, Limp Bizkit, Tool, Rage Against the Machine and Marilyn Manson, among others.

Besides those, I also have a tape of Limblifter's Bellaclava. I completely forgot about it and how much I enjoyed it. For those of you not familiar with them, Limblifter where created by a pair of brothers who were in another band called Age of Electric. At first Limblifter was a side project and released an album, but when AOE broke up, they became a real band and released Bellaclava. It did well int eh canadian rock scene I think but then one of the brothers, the talented drummer, left the band with another member and joined the Canadian super group The New Pornographers. Apperently, the other brother recruited a whole new backup band and released a new album last year. I'm dying to get a copy of it even though it got mediocre reviews.

In other news, tonight I had gone to Brutopia to hang out with Improv friends, say goodbye to the lovely Mariana "It's pronounced Vee-Al!" Vial. I'm actually quite sad to see her go. Now that I came back from Australia, all my friends are starting to move away! On the other hand I've been making a bunch of newe friends as of late so it's balancing out but it's still sad.

It was also trivia night and one of the questions had to do with Australia! The question was "what color are Emu eggs?". Having seen them with my own eye's I knew they were green. Ny friends couldn't believe that I was saying the right thing but I insited and we got the point. Unfortunatly I dont' think my team won (I had to leave before the last question was answered) because we got about 4 or 5 out of 10 wrong.

Well next time i"ll memorize some trivia pursuit cars since that's where the questions came from.

Happy Mothers Day!

Today, at Old Navy, I was the Mothers Day door greeter. I had a giant vase with 200 carnations which i had to hand out to all the moms that came into the store. Suprisingly enough it, even by 1pm we still had a few flowers left to hand out. I was sure we would have gotten rid of them faster than in over 3 hours. The mothers loved me though and I was dressed all nice to boot, in a shirt and tie with a nice sweater. Some women were SO excited to get a flower (some even joked it was thir first flower i.e. the hubby didn't get then anything) while others were so grumpy and hated the idea of receiving a nice flower. Weird.

In unrelated news, Manhunt got into The Gazette! Check it out here!. I'm even mentioned: