Something that should be watched...

Sara Machlaclan's new video is utterly brilliant and is something that everyone should watch.

It moved me deeply, it made me think and feel (mostly guilty, considering all the things mentioned in it and how much I'm spending on the wedding).

So, click on the link and watch. I have a feeling that, sadly, it's not something that's going to get much airtime on all those music channels.

Not much to add...

Except for the fact that on October 10th, 2004, I will be marrying the most beautiful woman in the world.

This picture was taken yesterday, just after our Engagement Photo session down at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary.



Yeah, you're right. I am a lucky, lucky man.

I’m spreading love like a terrorist now

Well, we had our "Engagement Photo" session with our photographer yesterday down at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary. I never realized that such a beautiful place existed just 5 minutes from downtown. But it does. Absolutely gorgeous in there, especially with all the fall colours.

Anyway, the photo session went well and it will be interesting to see how things turn out, as we get one print of our choice to display next to our guest book in a glorious display of narcissism. Or something.

Not much more to say right now, unfortunately. I was hoping to put together a fascinating, interesting entry today and seem to have failed miserably.

Oh, one small rant: I can't believe how many goddamned service charges Ticketmaster tacks on to ticket prices. We just bought tickets to see Sarah Slean in concert on the 28th of October. I was quite happy that tickets were only $22.50, then was quite frustrated when the total ended up being around $60.00 for two tickets. Lets see... $1.50 facility charge... $3.00 "convenience charge" ... PLUS a $2.50 charge just to go and pick up the tickets.

That's the one that makes very little sense to me, in all honesty. Ticketmaster charges you a minimum of $2.50 per ticket, no matter what you want to do. I walk from my office, down to the Ticketmaster booth near me, stand in line, present my credid card and confirmation number to a person behind a desk, who then prints out the ticket, and I have to pay for this.

I suppose in all honesty this is a good idea. I'm going to start recommending to all businesses that they start this practice. Go to Future Shop for a CD, the cashier adds on a "Cashier Charge". Restaurants should start adding in a "Cooking Charge" and a "Seating Fee".

It reminds me of the bill I got from Direct Energy two months ago ... I used almost NO GAS that month. Literally - we didn't have the furnace on at all, I think, for the whole month. The charge for gas? Less than $1.00 - no kidding. The total bill? $32.78. Yeah.

Well, that was a longer than expected rant. Sorry about that.

Although, Sarah Slean's new CD is out today (according to her website), so all fans of good music should pick up a copy.

And, so, I shall leave you with these tidbits:

A sign that the world is surely coming to an end: Shania Twain's new single is a duet with Mark McGrath. You know, the guy from Sugar Ray. Something about having a "party for two". Yeah.

Lyric of the day: "I’m spreading love like a terrorist now"

That is all.

untitled

she is high on the American dream,
drunk on the permanence of violence.
she said she loves the beauty of war,
the incessant glory of it all,
a Pat Tillman memorial parade.
supressed photos of starred and striped coffins
arriving from overseas
conveniently overlooked.

Whew. Disaster avoided.

It's a good thing there are intelligent people out there like the people on this plane. It's actions like this that ensure that The Terrorists (they deserve capitalization now don't they? Being a physical, identifiable entity, right?) NEVER WIN.

Flight canceled after passenger discovers Arabic-style handwriting in magazine
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Midwest Airlines canceled a flight ready to take off for San Francisco after a passenger found Arabic-style handwriting in the company's in-flight magazine and alerted the crew.
The plane, carrying 118 passengers and five crew members, had already pulled away from the gate at Mitchell International Airport on Sunday evening. It returned to the gate, the passengers got off, security authorities were notified, all luggage was checked and the aircraft was inspected. Nothing was found.
The passengers were put up in nearby hotels and booked on a Monday morning flight.
The writing was in Farsi, the language used in Iran, said airline spokeswoman Carol Skornycka. She said she didn't know exactly what the writing said but was similar to a prayer, "something of a contemplative nature."

Hum de ho hum

Well, not much coming to mind today.

Did manage to pick up my copy of the Angels in America DVD at HMV for $40 which is pretty good I figure, for a six hour movie.

Was rather disappointed to see the audience at the Emmys not give Tony Kushner a standing ovation last night, as he certainly deserved one.

All right. Can't say much more than the construction guy in the office is driving me mad with his sawing and hammering.

That is all.

meh.

Some randomness:

• I'm getting sick. I can feel it in the back of my throat.
• Bought a new microwave today from Leon's, and some new bedside tables. Microwave is too big for the shelf. Have to return it and get a smaller one.
• This is the 3rd last weekend before the wedding. Egad.
• I'm growing strangely fond of the lemony tase of Neo Citran. Yum yum.
• We'll be lucky to get 70 people at the wedding. Sigh. I was hoping for more ...
• Although, all the people who don't show up will miss out on one mighty KICK ASS party. The DJ rules.
• Just you wait until our entrance into the reception. Hoo ha. People shall be a'talkin' about this for years to come. (Now, talking in what way, I'm not sure. But it will either be "Wow, that was cool" or "Wow, that was stupid" or "Wow, that was arrogant" or "Wha? When do I get my dinner? I'm hungry."
• While most people seem to think it would be hell to work for The Donald, I think it would be very exciting. He'd probably motivate me (he reminds me a bit of this consultant one of our customers have hired, who's sole job is to make my life a living hell.)
• Said consultant-from-hell apparently has developed a great respect for me. Which is good I guess.
• 3 years at the same company and the raise was ... disappointing. The 3 year anniversay lunch was nice, and it was nice to hear them say "You're worth twice what we pay you. But the company makes no money. So we can't afford to pay you more, but we'll offer you 5% more. Could be worse, I suppose.
• Renegotiated an open-ended contract, though. So I can go back and whine for more money 4 months from now if the company hits it big.
• I wonder if I'll have a bachelor party. I'm putting money on ... no. (Dillan, if you're reading this, I gave you the names and numbers... doesn't have to be anything fancy. Beer and poker is a-fine by me. Hell. Beer even.)
• My enormously fat cat Salinger likes my laptop bag. He's currently burrowed into it and purring.
• Ok. Time for bed. Goodnight all.

The good die young...

R.I.P. Johnny Ramone

Mumbly, mumbly, mumbly

Some random mumblings for today.

I had high hopes for Mark Cuban's "The Benefactor", after seeing all those previews where he did crazy things like give money to strangers, and have kids run his companies, and stuff like that.

What a disappointment to find out that it's just another reality show, basically "Mark Cuban show's he's jealous of Donald Trump's fame and tries to replicate it, but in a caaaaraaaaaaayzay way". What it ended up being was a stupid reality show almost as stupid as "Who wants to marry my midget millionaire dad" or whatever.

The final decision between two people about which person to vote out being made by which of them won a game of JENGA? Come on. There's being weird and wacky and then there's TRYING to be weird and wacky.

Cuban's stupid show falls into the latter category. Ironic, really, that the first person who was kicked off the show by Mark "I'm drunk with wealth and power and making up for all that lost time in high school when I was ruthlessly picked on" Cuban was kicked off because he called the show "Stupid."

At least I got a smile out of that. I do enjoy good irony... especially when nobody seems to realize it.

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

Speaking of drunk with power ... looks like King Ralph pulled another trick out of his magic bag and stormed out of the healthcare meeting after being "disrespected." Now, admittedly, what Mr. Martin and his Liberal buddies did was pretty disrespectful, Klein's antics are getting tiresome.

Hey, you know what Ralph? We get very little respect from the Liberals and Easterners in general. Get used to it.

And for crying out loud STOP PLAYING INTO THEIR HANDS ALL THE TIME. How much do you want to bet that the Liberal party spin team was hoping, hoping, hoping against all hope that you would react exactly like you did? How much do you want to bet they desperately wanted you to act like a big baby when you were so rudely disrespected and storm out of the meeting?

Now, they can run ads and stories which dismiss you as a lunatic who is not interested in participating any group discussion about anything, and who cries and whines when he doesn't get his way.

I'm going to be unable to vote for you now, dumbass, if not only for the simple reason that you obviously don't understand how to play politics. And I don't want someone running my province who doesn't understand how to play the fucking game.

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

All right. That's about it for today ... oh, one last thing: Canada 3, Finland 1. Amazing goaltending by both Martie and Kipper, all goals will be scored in the 3rd period, Finland scoring early in the 3rd, Canada tying it up halfway, then a goal with less than 5 minutes left to take the lead and finally an empty-netter by Iggie to seal the deal.

Take your camera and shove it up your ...

Ahem.

Cancelled the psycho photographer this morning after getting a confirmation email from the very, very nice new photographer we met with on Tuesday.

Here's hoping things work out ... pretty good deal with the new photographer, though - we get an "engagement" session (which ironically will be taken less than 1 month before our wedding), unlimited coverage pre and during ceremony, and reception coverage, and minimum 250 unmarked proofs, all for the same amount we were going to pay the original photographer.

So the only addition is GST and an album and some prints; hopefully we can get an inexpensive one. We lose getting the negatives (the original photographer was including them), but that's not the end of the world as we'll be getting a pretty good scanner down the road anyway, and her reprint prices are pretty good. (That and the fact that she does a lot of digital editing/smoothing/etc. of the photos. So with the negatives not having that, they have less value than they would have otherwise).

However, despite the fact that the new photographer works out to being a few hundred dollars more (especially if we don't get our deposit back from the psycho photographer), having peace of mind that we now have someone we can trust and really like doing the pictures, well, that's a pretty good tradeoff as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway. Do you think I was friendly enough in my email to the psycho photographer? (Catharina Mendonca from Cat's Eye Photography)

Catharina –

As Stephanie and I mentioned in a previous email, we are disappointed you will be unable to provide coverage in the late evening on October 10th, due to your secheduling conflict. We had been very much looking forward to having significant coverage at that time.

As such, we feel that it is best for all parties involved if we find another photographer who is be able to provide the coverage range which we require.

Because we were not made aware that you needed a quick response to our enquiry about reception coverage, and as such you made plans which conflicted with our evening ceremony and reception, it would be appreciated if you would refund our deposit (or at least a portion thereof).


So, in short -

Psycho photographer: bad & gone (whatever you do, do NOT hire this woman)

New photographer: good & hired Terry Gray Photography

Budget: Increased by a few hundred dollars

Overall sentiment: Happy, but give me back my money, bitch.

Well hello again

Hello again, blog. It's been so long since we've been together. I've missed the beauty of your subtle curves, your wonderfully understated demeanour...

Well, something like that.

It's been (as I saw here this morning when I logged in) nearly a month since I've written here. Yowza. Sorry about that. I suppose I've been trying to recover from August, where I billed my clients just over 250 hours of work and of course had wedding details to plan.

So what's been going on? Well, work has settled down a bit at least, although it is still far too hectic for my liking. It will be intereting to see what happens when my contract at SEI expires next week. I'm hoping for a big pay increase but I'm not expecting much (ah, the joys of working for a small company that isn't making much money).

So there's been that, and then there's been the great "Photographer Disaster of 2004". Which, to make a long story short, has involved our Photographer somehow getting the impression that my question of "How do you provide coverage during the reception when you are eating a meal that could take two hours" meant "You don't deserve a meal." This misunderstanding on her part caused her to fire off a very nasty email to us in which she said "I'm having dinner with my family that night, so I won't cover your reception." This, being a disappointment of course, was only made worse by the fact she was very rude in her email, and the fact that we're having an evening ceremony. Which she knew about, of course.

So, the gist of it is that Stephanie and I no longer feel comfortable using her services and plan to cancel, forefeiting the $400 deposit. While this is an "ouch", I don't want (nor does Steph) to be in a situation where we're suddenly uncomfortable with our Photographer.

So that's the big update there. We meet with the marriage commissioner today and will find out what she thought of the ceremony we wrote. Other than that, things are now going along smoothly (even though it feels like we're running out of time... AIIIEEE!)

That's all I've got for now. Oh, yeah, except for one last thing: Way to go Jarome. Just keep up that level of play and we'll be just fine. It's about time you showed up! GO CANADA!