I just saw Jewel's new video called Intuition. It's absolutely hilarious..! Good for her!

just down the street

Yesterday we moved, to the "Royal Pinnacle", which is basically Empress Walk. It took us 3 trips with the Hertz cube van. Stan was nice enough to call the night before and volunteer to help us out if we needed him. With my dad aging and my mom and her sprained wrist we definitely needed the help. I'm so glad my brother has gotten so big so that he could help us. Some of the stuff was pretty heavy. Plus I got a bad back and bad knees.

I'm not gonna lie, moving sucks. It's tiring and a lot of the stuff you move is pretty dusty so you get pretty dirty from it. My legs, back and arms are killing me right now.

I like my new place though. I have no couch, no lights, no internet, no cable, no telephone. But it's cool though, I could go down for groceries in my PJs.. I could go to work in my PJs. HAhaha
I sleep on a mattress on the floor.. it's like i'm a student again

On sunday, I woke up took a shower and came upstairs, but no one was up. They all slept in. No church. Easter Sunday. So for the first time ever, our family missed Easter Sunday Service. Wow.

In the afternoon, we started to really heat up on the packing. It was total chaos in the house, boxes everywhere, and I was sneezing every 30 seconds because everything was so dusty. Mir called me, she was with her sis and apparently they were on foot towards my house. We went out to play some frisbee. I tried throwing it the 'cool' way, and I think I almost got it down. That hour we spent playing made me realize I need much more exercise than I am getting. I was totally exhausted from it, Mir was pretty tired too, but her sis was not at all. Afterwards we came back to my house for juice. It was funny, Mir asked me if I was gonna introduce them to my parents, and I was like 'uhh.. no..' cuz i couldn't remember her sister (angela)'s name. Funny stuff. So they must've thought I was pretty rude and introduced themselves. HAHA.

pre-moving

Yesterday I took about a third of all my clothes to the condo, plus a box of text books. I was able to put all my clothes into the closet, either on the hangers or in the shelves of the closet (which i didn't even know existed til i opened the closet yesterday!). Part of me is sorta dreading the move, because I will be without cable TV and internet for at least a week. I suppose I can go down and check out the gym, or maybe.. read or something.. heh

The Leafs lost last night. I went to bed after the 2nd OT because I just could not stay awake. They lost, which is good in the way that I didn't waste my time staying awake to watch it happen. Today at work my boss offered me two game 6 tickets, for $150 each. I thought long and hard on it, but finally decided I'd rather keep the money for a tungsten, or dvcam.. or, just save it period. I would have taken my brother with me, we celebrate so jubililantly at home when the Leafs score, I was thinking it'd be pretty wild to do it with 20 thousand other people. Maybe next time, when I'm making say, enough money that I can throw away that kind of money in one night. Hah

I've got TONS of work to do now.

Monday we were supposed to move some things over to the condo. I wasn't clear on what I needed to pack to bring there, so we ended up not moving at all. And of course yesterday Smallville was on. Yesterday was April 15, the day we had both been waiting for since 2 months ago when the show went on a brief rerun string. Yesterday's episode "Visitor" was pretty good, except for the minor holes that their writers always seem to have. For instance, how the heck was that kid Cyrus able to build that huge contraption without anyone noticing? And if it wasn't really a communication tower, what the heck was it? What were those sounds he was hearing when he was in the school lab? Wouldn't anyone with within the state be able to see that light shoot up into the air? Why doesn't Clark just scan every suspicious person for meteorite fragments instead of wasting a whole episode trying to figure out if he's for real or not? Finally, can Clark see through himself?

With that said, being a big Superman fan I still love the show. It's still pretty entertaining and bit by bit Clark will learn more of his powers and why he was sent to earth. Somebody asked me about the music for the show, this can all be found at this site. Be wary of reading the spoilers though, the site is extremely accurate..

I checked out The Animatrix, an anime spinoff from the Matrix. It's all free, downloadable from the web. It's really nice. The graphics are stunning and I really like the stories.

We are going to move some stuff to the condo tonight, since there's nothing on TV to stop us =P. Apparently I will be living there by Monday night next week, so I had better start packing. My mom and I had an argument last night. We will be moving one of their bookshelfs to the condo, and I suggested storing all of the books there in the storage area of the building, since no one has touched those books for as long as I can remember. For some reason she took offense to that and said she wanted to keep the books on the shelf in the condo. That really made no sense to me, why waste the space with books that no one is going to use? Why fill up perfectly useful shelf space with books no one ever uses? Bah, maybe I am missing something or insensitive, or maybe I'm too practical. I've always been the type to throw things away if I know I won't use them again -- unless the stuff has sentimental value.. I dunno. The thing is my room right now has bookshelf built into the closet. I won't have those shelves at the new place. So I guess I'll have to move all my stuff down into storage and go back and forth whenever I need to use my books. That sucks..

Last week everyone on the 19th floor of my building at work was sent home for quarantine from SARS. Yesterday, 2 more people from the 20th floor were sent home. It sounds like it is moving it's way upstairs --- I work on the 27th! Today I'm having a meeting with some people who work on the 20th. If I had a choice I wouldn't go, but I guess I don't. It would really suck if I got SARS. Dying isn't so bad, but we live with our grandparents so there's risk to them for sure if I got it. Plus my brother just got healthy from being sick the last few weeks, and he and I both have asthmatic histories.

On Friday, Genesis held a coffee house. I was quite surprised, people brought in quite a few new people. There were many new faces as well as some old, people coming back to visit I guess. I had invited a friend but actually a group of my friends had gone out to celebrate a birthday that night. I feel kinda bad for not going but I only found out about it a few days ago, weeks after Coffee House was planned. I took part in the skit as an extra, playing one of the passengers on a subway train. The skit was about a guy who somehow died because of a train, and it was focused on his discussion with God about why he wasn't going to be going to heaven. It was a pretty good skit, with Andrew doing the dead guy and Stan doing God's voice.

On Saturday, in the morning my mom and I drove to scarborough to give our bird away to a family friend. My bird is/was a cockatiel, named Woody. When we first got Woody, he and I developed a pretty good relationship. He would gladly hop onto my outstretch finger and let me pet him and play with him. He used to sit on my shoulder while I did the dishes or other chores around the house. I remember one time I had him on my shoulder and I went out to check the mail box. All of a sudden he start flapping his wings and he started flying down the street! I was so scared of losing him I ran out onto the street in my barefeet and chased him down the street. Eventually he got tired (he doesn't normally fly a lot), and landed down on the ground, I picked him up and carried him back home! I even taught him to say "hello Woody", and "Kiss Kiss!". At first I tried to teach him how to whistle the Leave it To Beaver theme song, but it was really hard for him, too many variations and tone changes. As I went to school we grew apart. Birds are really stupid, most likely the reason for the expression "bird brained". Each time I tried to play with him he would reject me because he forgot who I was. He would hiss at me, and try to bite off my finger. He once bit almost clean through my father's thumb! As he became more and more hostile me and the rest of my family stopped playing with him. He was a menace, and he developed an annoying shreak, and he would do it over and over again, especially in the early mornings. Lucky for me my room is right below him so he would wake me up every morning as soon as daylight hit. It was so darned annoying! Anyway, the Woody era has ended as my family doesn't believe he'll make the flight down to Nevada with them.

Saturday afternoon we went to check out the condo. It was all cleaned out, except for the guy's sock drawer. He even left some unopened packages of socks.. score! We didn't do any moving but we booked the moving elevator for the afternoon of Easter Monday. I will probably move bits and pieces throughout this week and next, but we'll try to move all the furniture on that day. Oh, they also left the light fixtures, one over the dining room "area", and one at the front. I really liked them and was hoping they'd leave them. They are blue with the silver chrome that I really like. SCORE!

On Sunday, my brother went early for a 25 km hike. Apparently it was training for a trip he will go to later on to Algonquin, a science/nature trip with his school. That's pretty wicked.. I remember in Grade 11 BIO we went to a place called Bark Lake to do similar types of experiments with nature.

Service was extra long. They cancelled communion because of the SARS scare and replaced it with about 15-20 minutes worth of prayer. I fell asleep during one of the prayers. Some bad news: our missions conference speaker James Hudson Taylor III had to be quarantined because someone in his office might have gotten SARS! Apparently around 50 people had to quarantined. Service ended at around 11:10, giving us 20 minutes of break in between service and Sunday School. That was a bit worrisome for me and my mom, she prepared snacks (a lot of them!) and I didn't know if there'd be enough time to serve them. Luckily for us, my mom is a great baker, she made cakes and I didn't even get one. I went to get a cup of tea, and when I came back to the snack table, everything had been cleaned out!

After church I went home, and at around 3:30 Lon came to pick me up to do fitting for a tuxedo for his wedding. SteveChin and I are groomsmen, and JonSit is the best man. It's pretty funny how weddings are such a great big hoopla, but really moreso for the parents or the bride and not so much for the groom. I think the biggest thing about weddings for the groom might be the engagement, and possibly at the ceremony itself. Fears of all those movies where the girl doesn't show up.. haha. None of us seemed to know anything about styles of tuxes. Each time the girl showed us a design, we pretty much looked back at her blankly, not knowing what to choose. Thankfully Yvonne gave Lon a few instructions so we managed to pick a style. Getting fitted/measured isn't fun. You feel like you're being measure up. I found myself almost trying to suck in my belly when she measured my waste. I felt like I was on display.

After that, Lon drove me down to newmarket where yvonne had been with sylvia, who was having a rock-climbing birthday party. I was to meet up with them there and join them for dinner. We ate at a Thai restaurant owned my Syl's uncle. They were short staffed and Syl and her sisters had to serve as waitresses! The food was amazing though. I still have never tried Pad Thai because of the fried eggs in it. I really ate a lot though, I am still full even now as I type. The desserts were pretty awesome, I ate and kept eating even though I was so full. I knew I had reached the end when I burped and some food came back up.. haha.. gross..

I heard a really funny story yesterday. I don't know if it was just a rumor going around, I couldn't find any proof online of it. Anyway, here's what happened. Some married man who worked at the world trade centre was having an affair with another woman. On September 11, 2001, this man had taken his mistress out to the park and knew nothing about what had happened at the WTC. Apparently his wife called to see if he was alright, and to cover up his affair, he told her he had been at work all day and was fine! LOL

Oh, I forgot to add something to the last post.

GO LEAFS GO!
GO LEAFS GO!
GO LEAFS GO!
GO LEAFS GO!
GO LEAFS GO!
GO LEAFS GO!
GO LEAFS GO!

What the heck is wrong with the Ottawa Senators? This year, I felt like they would be great. I picked them to finish 2nd or 3rd in the league, and instead they finished first. I really felt like this year they'd be good. Especially since they wouldn't have to face us in the first round. Man, Ottawa chokes against Toronto for some odd reason despite being a far better team than us. This year, game 1, they lost, 3-0 to the lowly Islanders. This is a sad day indeed for Ottawa fans.

Meanwhile my bro and I were jumping up and down and embracing eachother after the empty-netter by Mogilny to seal the deal against the Flyers tonight. What a wild game, where the Leafs played HORRIBLY and still eked out a 5-3 win!

Things are looking half decent at work in terms of my looming contract deadline. I've been getting pretty decent reviews from my fellow team members which has translated into my boss attempting to sign me on for another two years! That's really encouraging! This morning when he told me this I remember thinking how great God is. Many times people asked me why I'm not moving down to the States with my family and sometimes that made me question, why aren't I? So I left it in God's hands. The deal my parents gave me was that I could stay if I could get a job. In November, God granted me this miracle and got me one, and now He is working on helping me secure a future. I know this is all mish-mash and a possible 'jinx', but I am just doing my thing and letting God take hold of my future. God IS great!

Oh yeah, during service on Sunday (btw, it was a horrible sermon, reminiscent of M3C days) I came upon the decision that I would get a Tungsten T. The idea of being able to record the sermon while playing games and listening to mp3s is too real to me. I need that.

We've had really bad weather the last few days. Freezing rain, and coldness.. windy.. and a bit of snow. We had about 3 inches of pure ice, which my brother and I spent 5 hours on Saturday chipping away off our driveway. We had some fun doing it, by competing to see who could get the biggest "chip" of ice. I had one about 1 square meter. It was pretty sweet. We made a lot of them and made sculptures and tables from them. I thought about doing our own stonehenge, but instead we just made a bunch of them and spread them around the lawn.

It's kinda neat when it's that icy. Even the snow on the lawn was so frozen you could walk right on top of it with it breaking. But it was a lot of work, and after 5 hours of it my bro and I were totally exhausted.

The day before, fellowship (coffee house) was cancelled because of the weather. I went to see the basketball with kenric. We sat in the Sprite Zone. I've never been to ACC before but I was pretty impressed with it. We had the cheapest seats in the house, but I could see the game perfectly. It appears that every seat in the house can see the games quite well. It is even better than the Corel Centre in Ottawa. The game itself was awesome too, the Raptors we being doubled by halftime, and in the end of it lost by almost 30 points. Needless to say I was ecstatic with the final result. However, there was a small damper in it, in that the Raptors didn't manage to reach 100 points, despite only needing 2 points in the final minute (3 possessions) to reach that mark. The audience is granted free pizza when the Raptors score 100 or more points. The boos came raining down as time ran out. This had to be this worse case of mediocrity I've ever seen any team display. And to be able to pull it off for a full 48 minutes, that's impressive. I've seen teams play poorly for stretches during a game, but not for the whole game from beginning to end! Go Raptors! Go Lenny! Welcome to our city Lebron!

On Sunday my brother went to a game too. This time the Nets helped our cause by beating us by 9 points. The team woke up though, they actually played basketball. But they lost, and lost Vince Carter in the process too. Carter played 1182 minutes without getting injured. So much for my pool, I betted he'd reinjure himself within 150 minutes.

I'm not starting regret the cell phone deal i got. I got a one year deal with Telus. But now I've been starting to think about getting a new PDA, and regretting that I have this commitment to this particular phone. I've been reading tons of reviews about the Tungsten T (people call it their TT), (which is confusing because I think of the really cool Audi, when I hear TT). A lot of the users use a Bluetooth enabled cell phone, which can directly communicate with the TT. One guy said he never takes his phone out of his pocket anymore. He uses the earphone/mic thing, and uses his pda to dial his phone. Well obviously the TT will have way more space to hold phone numbers that the cell phone! That's pretty wicked..

I need to find a store that has the Tungsten T on display, not some crappy plastic model that most of the stores seem to have. I need to be able to play with it, otherwise it will never win. I have played with my co-worker's 1910, and the one at the Staples near my house. My co-worker bought his for $500 at Best Buy, but Staples sells it for $650! What a difference! And unfortunately you can't see the canadian prices for best buy. Their Canadian website has nothing on it!

Right now I'm leaning towards the Tungsten T because of the free camera deal. It only does 640x480, but it seems like such a cool idea, and since I'm buying this thing for the sheer novelty, then I should go for the deal that gets me the coolest stuff. I have an ad I've found that has it for cheaper than FutureShop, so I can take it to FS, and show it to them. They're "lowest price guaranteed" will kick in and force them to give it to me 10% off the price I found. That brings it down to around the price of the 1910. Then, I'll be getting a Tungsten for the price of a 1910, plus I'll get a free camera!

And then there's the Dell Axim, which has basically everything that the T and 1910 have except bluetooth. It even has the scroll wheel from the Sony Clie. And, it's cheaper than both! What it doesn't have, is the small size of either the T or the 1910, and there is no rebate on it. But, if I were to order the Dell in the States, say through a relative, then I'd get a free 64 mb compact flash card for it!

My gadget urges have returned. One of my co-workers started looking into Palm's Tungsten T handheld, and he and I were both looking at the website reviews and specs. Then, the new DBA who joined our group last week had the new HP 1910 iPaq. It looks pretty wicked, nothing like the big bulky iPaq's that I'm used to seeing. This one is sleek, it plays mp3's and has voice recording. So the last day or two I've been trying to compare the two.

The Tungsten T seems like the best deal right now. It's small and compact. Moreso cute than the sleekness of the 1910. It has the cool 'transforming' slide open Matrix-esque thing. It has voice recording. It can play mp3s, with the proper software installed. It costs about $600. It's color. Palm OS 5. It has a headphone jack. It's equipped with Bluetooth technology. Right now, Futureshop is offering a mail-in rebate for it that gives you a free camera attachment to it.

The 1910 is just $500. It's sleek and sexy. Very very thin. It runs the Pocket PC 2002 edition. The screen is bigger than the T, and it has higher resolution. Since it's a Microsoft platform, the syncing is obviously better. It has excel and word, and you can get Winamp for it (which is free, not like the mp3 player for palm).

The key is though, that the hp thing looks so much cooler, but the palm is more practical, but more expensive at the same time. Neither of them are compatible with any of the stuff I bought for my Visor, which btw, I don't even touch anymore.

Hmm..