Or is that nerdiciously? Whatever! I like the title now, so that's one thing to chalk off my list before I die.

I got home, and Michelle sent me over to my neighbor's with Brendan to pick up yet another computer desk. That makes three in my possession. My old one is in Kristen's room where I foolishly thought she'd use it to work at instead of piling up generic pieces of paper, rocks and other trinkets of her own design. Oh well, it leaves more room on her floor for the more important stuff. The one my parents gave me is now my main desk. I work tirelessly here to bring you quality entertainment and keep myself from any semblance of a social life in Calgary.

I thought I'd put the new desk...Aw, who am I kidding! There's no real reason for having it that I can think of. Not unless I'm about to go corporate and branch off into the basement where we're actually putting the desk. I guess I need to hire a secretary now.

So I was conversing with Mercedes via email today, and she related something rather embarrassing that happened to her in a very professional situation. What was it, you ask. I'm not telling you; are you crazy? I just wanted her to squirm thinking I was going to tell the world about her little problem, but, oh no! I'm going to let the world use their imaginations. Bwaaaaaaah!

Yup! I'm changing it, though. It's just too big! I was going for a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" feel, but I think I can compact the size just a little bit. It may look neat, but it's a bit of an eye sore at that size. Besides, there should be a picture of my handsome mug up there, don't you think? Do I hear snickering? Does someone want to stay behind after the dismissal bell, hmmm?

Last night was interesting because it combined two of my lives into one: my work life and my home life. My company had an open house, and while my first thought was, "Ugh! I go to work for approximately 9 hours a day; why would I want to waste my evening there, too?" I am extremely glad I went!

First off, after I got home I re-informed the kids that we would be leaving for my office building in about an hour. I say re-informed because either we didn't tell them (Michelle and I) or they just forgot. I had to re-inform Michelle in the morning when I phoned to wake her up because I'm pretty sure she had forgotten because I didn't tell her or she just forgot. She's working now, so she has a lot on her mind. I must stress that I do not think she wasn't working before, just that the wage I was paying her for her domestic engineering skills was so piddly that I wouldn't put it on my resume as a job if I were here. Wait! Am I digressing? I'm digressing...

First off, after I got home I told the kids we were leaving for an open house at my office buildings (there's two side by side). Their response to my request that they clean themselves up a little was to wash their faces, brush their hair and put on dresses. Rylee would put on a dress for any occasion! She would put on her best dress to celebrate the un-birthday of herself, her majesty, Princess Rylee. Heck! She'd put her best dress on to celebrate a cool breeze. Kristen, however, wears a dress with the frequency of a leap year. I'm not sure if she thought it was a very special occasion, but when I pointed out that her mother and I were wearing jeans it still didn't deter her from wearing one. Hmmm...

Secondly, and to make a long story short, the volunteers from my company put on a host of fun events for the kids. There were computer activities, marshmallow tower building, mini golf, a scavenger hunt and more. The open house was scheduled from 6:30pm to 8:30pm and we were there for the whole thing. My one regret was making supper before we got there. There was food on all five floors that my company occupies in two different buildings. I ate anyway! Also, Kristen and Rylee met my boss’ kids who are roughly the same age and both girls as well. They got on famously! Of course, Rylee gets along with most people, trees and imaginary bipedal manatees, as well.

My family got to see my office which, I will admit, I cleaned up before they came. I hope that their view of my blank walls will inspire Kristen and Rylee to draw me many pictures for my viewing enjoyment. I need pictures since my boss doesn’t like it when I doodle on the walls wth my crayons.

You know how you get a friend to read your blog? You write about him, that’s how!

So Shannon finally phones me last night and gives me some lame excuse about not calling me the night before due to work or the plague or something, and we finally discuss a bit about our web-comic. While we’re doing this, he’s trying to talk to me on speaker phone while he does dishes or changes into a dress or something, and I note to him that his end sure sounds terrible. It’s full of static and it's like trying to carry on a conversation with a McDonald’s employee through the drive-thru speaker back in the mid-eighties.

I tell him that it’s about time to invest in a good phone, and he tells me that, no, it’s time to invest in a good phone plan. He’s currently using VOIP from one of those cheap carriers…Primus or Vonage, I think. He informs me that he’s going to drop them like a bad habit. Not like one of those really bad habits like smoking or crack, but one of those bad habits that are easy to drop like poking yourself in the eye or bungy jumping with the cords attached to your boxers. A bad habit that isn’t really habit forming, is what I’m trying to say.

Shannon says that he’s going to switch to Shaw’s digital phone. Well, this just gets me going. I start singing the praises of Shaw’s digital phone and how it's given me nothing but pure joy since I had it installed. There was once where, for some unknown reason, it just stopped working, but it started again within a half hour. I don’t mention this to Shannon, not because it’s of any benefit to me (although, if there’s a referral plan, hopefully he puts my name down) but just because I didn’t deem it necessary. Shaw’s been good to me! They bring me Lost on Wednesdays.

Well, funny story! About 10 minutes into the conversation and after my buddy Mike arrives at Shannon’s and says “Hi!” to me, the phone goes dead. Not only that, but my internet stops working and the TV’s on the blink. Lucky for me my cell is through Rogers. I call up Shaw and it seems that cable’s out for all my neighbors on the same node. That’ll teach me to talk good about something, huh? And it's kind of scarey just how much I rely on Shaw now. Too many eggs in one basket, I guess.

Hey! Check out those two snazzy buttons on the left there. That was hard work, I tell you. Two minutes of my life I may never get back. The Animation Forum provided the graphic for their link, so I decide to make my own. Turns out it’s easy! For an added bonus, just hover your mouse over the TILAH button. Cute, huh? That font is called "Feast of Flesh!" Isn't that wonderful? I got that font and several others over at Blambot.

Hopefully I can rip some more free time from the continuum because there’s just so much I want to do right now. If anyone can lend me some spare time, I’d gladly repay you with gratitude. I have lots of gratitude! That’s what the bottle depot gives for my returns…

Shannon didn't call me last night!
Shannon's a big jerk!
He will now feel my wrath,
As I go violently berserk!

Thank you! Thank you! Don't clap, just throw money!

That mouse ripped me off, and now I’m telling the world. Holy cow! I can’t believe those guys are getting away with it!

So, I managed to lose my third bankcard over the weekend, and the terrible thing is that I’m pretty sure it’s only been a month since the first. Our cards, mine and Michelle’s, have been flagged twice now for suspicious activity. I guess there are a lot of bankcard scams out there now-a-days, and banks have to be quick to prevent it from getting out of hand. Even my sister was a target not too many days ago, but I won’t post the details of that because it’s not my business to tell. It’s hers! So call her at area code 250…Just kidding! I’m not giving out her personal information…unless you email me privately (mwah).

On Saturday I managed to get a replacement card for the second one that had gotten cancelled, and it was all shiny and blue. Previously, I would let my bankcard rot inside my wallet. I recall a time when my bankcard was nearly split in three pieces, and I still managed to feed it into the ABM to proceed with my transactions. Lately they can’t even get dusty without being cancelled.

The last one was my fault, though. There’s a Bank of Montreal (BMO) close to my house that has two drive-through ABM’s, and in the early evening on Saturday, Michelle suggested that we take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner and fun. It’s the place where a kid can be a kid, dontchaknow. So I stopped at the BMO to use the drive-through to empty my account so we could afford to go to Chuck. E. Cheese. By the way, does anyone remember it being called Chuck ‘n Cheese? I did a quick search on Google and came up with a few hits but nothing explaining the name change. I would appreciate any knowledge you might share on the matter.

We get to Chuck. E. Cheese, wait in line for about 20 minutes because everyone else in Calgary had the same idea and finally get a table. At this establishment you are seated and then have to proceed to the counter to put in your order which will then be delivered to your table. As I was about to pay for the order, I discover that my bankcard was missing. How could this be? I had just taken money out at the ba…OH CRAP! I left my card in the machine! I had no recollection of collecting my card but remembered that the machine was temporarily unable to issue receipts. Something clicked in my mind, informing the rest of me that I was to leave the machine after getting the cash.

Ever try to cancel a card in a noisy Chuck. E. Cheese over a cell phone that likes to blank out when there’s too much noise. Try it! It’s fun! Thankfully no other transactions were recorded after I pulled that boner, so now I have to get another new card today. I wonder if they’re going to start charging me for this service, but come to think of it, I probably am already paying for it.

Our pizza arrives at the table, and I’m thinking there’s something vaguely familiar about it. I have a pizza palate! I have actually looked at someone’s leftover pizza that they’d brought for lunch and told them where they ordered it from. Yes! I am that good! So you can be assured that when I say on Saturday I paid $24.00 for a $6.00 Delissio pizza at Chuck. E. Cheese that I know what I’m talking about. Is that legal? Are they allowed to pick up a variety pack at Superstore and sell it for 300% more than what they bought it for? That doesn’t seem right to me somehow. It’s been decided that if and when we go again that we’ll eat somewhere else first be it at home or another restaurant. What a rip! Kristen and I played mucho amounts of that basketball game with the moving backboard, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to play more basketball.

Head over to the animation forum using the challenge link on the left there; I’ve updated my portion with a very rough walk-cycle for my character. Pay no attention to the backgrounds and such as I just threw them in for reference. Let me know what you think.

For your amusement, here is a conversation I had with Shannon this morning on gmail chat. You may recall me talking about him; he’s the one that is working on Take it Like a Husband with me.

9:42 AM me: Hey!!!
9:43 AM Shannon: yes
me: Did you see the comic?
#$%&#
9:45 AM Shannon: Yes I think its great. I see you worked out the bubble issue you were having.
me: Yeah...it was simple! Give me a call tonight so we can plan some $%&# out, kay?
9:47 AM Shannon: what's with the $%&# language?
9:48 AM me: Just answer the #$%&ing question!!
9:50 AM Shannon: What #$%@#ing Question?
9:51 AM me: The one I asked with the #$%&ing language...call me tonight so we can work #$%& out, 'kay?
9:52 AM Shannon: Are you just messing around or are you mad about something?
9:53 AM me: Just messing witcha! You over sensitive #$%&!!!
9:54 AM Shannon: just tired
9:55 AM me: OH MY CRAP!!! ARE YOU GOING TO CALL ME TONIGHT YES OR NO FER CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!
9:57 AM Shannon: Why are you yelling?
me: I might kill you...
9:59 AM Shannon: Why?
me: Well, for one, you're not answering my question. And, two, for the betterment of mankind!
10:11 AM Shannon: I don't understand?
10:13 AM me: I'm pretty sure it's obvious, but I'm going to spell it out for you in single syllable words again: Will - You - Call - Me - Two - Night - ?
10:23 AM Shannon: How could I call you over two nights? Should I be on the phone with you more than 24 hours?
10:26 AM me: Listen, buddy, it's painfully obvious that you're being a smart ass, and you may think it's cute, but all you're doing is just adding to the pile that is my eventual wrath that will be delivered unto you. Do you really, really want to poke the bear, or am I gonna have to get out the morning star of butt-kick and send it to you first-class mail? Huh? What's it gonna be, smart guy?
10:28 AM Shannon: I am sorry but there are to many syllables in that message. Can you give me the coles notes version?
10:29 AM me: I hate you!
11:00 AM AM Shannon: But I love you...

As you can see, we’re the best of friends. His impending death may look like an accident, but you’ll be secure in the knowledge that I had something to do with…wait! I’m not supposed to give that information away. Aw, crap! How do you un-publish?

No! Get your dirty minds out of the gutter, all you poi-voits! Hump day is that magical day of the week that signifies the peak, or, as you were, the positive amplitude of the sine wave that is our ever repeating week. Take, if you will, this sine wave:



The very left of the sine wave represents Monday, the beginning of the week. It’s the unfortunate day where all we see in front is the beginnings of a very steep climb that’ll eventually lead to the weekend. The peak obviously represents Wednesday, or hump day because it is the hump we have to get over to access the downward slope that is Thursday and Friday which leads us into Saturday and Sunday (the bowl portion of the sine wave). You’ll notice that there is also an upward climb on the Sunday portion of the sine wave. This is significant in that it represents our unwillingness to admit that the weekend is almost over. Some actually refuse to acknowledge this area of the sine wave and find themselves out of a job on Tuesday because they slept through Monday. Let this be a lesson to you!

I am progressing in two or three of my little projects. The short story I’m writing for the CBC Literary Awards is near completion, and a lucky few of you will be able to read it and tell me how far out of my depths I am before I submit it. I might even submit two short stories, actually. I was considering revamping my “Urine My Seat” blog entry and submitting it under the nonfiction section of the contest. There are three categories:

- Short story
- Creative nonfiction
- Poetry

Needless to say, I am not going to enter the poetry portion of the contest. Each entry for the story sections must be between 2000 and 2500 words long; I think I could add a little flare to my true-to-life occurrence, don’t you?

My animation is coming along slowly as I don’t have as much time to spare for it at the moment. I truly hope that I can get something completed before the November 1st deadline (same deadline as the literary contest, as well). I’ve gotten a mock up of the walk-cycle for my old man and have been working on some stuff that I haven’t posted yet, so stay tuned.

Take it Like a Husband is ramping up a little! I’m still learning how to use certain software, but the overall effect is becoming very pleasing to me. Here’s an example:



I’m not too keen on the character design yet, but we have to start somewhere. This is actually an excerpt from the first comic, but I’m hoping to get back to it before the site is completed (*cough* Shannon *cough*). I know there are a lot of mistakes that I need to correct in this panel: proportions, varying line thicknesses in the back ground and Shannon has no eyebrows. Oh, and there’s no Spiral Café symbol on Catherine’s coffee cup. Some of you might be wondering why I drew myself with hair. The only answer I can come up with is: Shut up!

So, what’s been going on here, you ask. Well, you know my current projects, but what is the rest of the family up to? Let’s see…Michelle is currently job hunting after being royally screwed over by Employment Insurance (EI). She’s had a claim in since June, and she qualified because she was forced to quit her job to accommodate me in my career change. However, they neglected to inform her that because she didn’t have childcare in a city she’s never been to and just moved to that she wasn’t actually available to work and therefore didn’t qualify for EI on those days that she wasn’t available to work even though she wasn’t available to work because she knew no one to take care of our children while she set up roots in a city she’s never been to and just moved to and shouldn’t have wasted her time with EI in the first place…whew! Gotta catch my breath! So, yeah! The money she was expecting from the coffers she’s been paying into refused to cooperate with her at all and neglected to keep her informed while she stayed at home with the kids till school started. It’s not like we’re poor, but she was relying on that money before she started job hunting. I know there are a lot more disadvantaged people out there, but they should have at least kept her informed so she wouldn’t have wasted her time. She’s out job hunting now, so please keep her in your thoughts.

The kids have adjusted to school really well, I have heard. Tomorrow will be my first parent-teacher conference ever. Now we will learn the truth! Mwah hahahahaha! Kristen and Rylee are making friends left, right and center, but they still pine away for the ones they left behind in Victoria. We all do, actually.

So there’s a quick and dirty update. More self-centered than most, but what can I say? It’s my blog!

Who ever thought that my Alberta adventure would consist of so much non-adventurous activity? I’m just thankful that Michelle’s so supportive of my extracurricular activities. So, not only am I trying my hand at:

1. Writing a screenplay
2. Writing a short story for a contest due in November
3. Writing a children’s novel (actually, a few of them)
4. Starting a web comic with Shannon

But now I’ve gone and sunk myself even deeper by entering an animation contest. What basis do I have for actually joining something like this? None, other than a desire to draw, animate and tell stories. Why am I telling you this? So that the added fear of not completing something after I’ve told everyone what I’m doing will drive me towards the finish line.

You can check out mine and Shannon’s web comic at the link to the left (when we get the site up, obviously), and you can check out my animation progress at the Animation Forum. I go by the username Daft_Wullie, and you can check out my specific forum complete with storyboards, character designs and progress right here. I'll make a shortcut on the left for that, as well.

Thanks everyone for your eventual support and good tidings, and I’ll try to be funny by my next post. Ciao for now!

Rylee missed her first day of school already. Seeing as the kids’ first week of school was only four days long that means that Rylee hasn’t even completed a full week of grade three yet. She’s back today, thankfully.

Rylee is not one to miss school when she’s feeling ill; it takes a lot to knock her on her buttocks and keep her there. Actually, that’s true for both of my offspring although it would be for two very different reasons. Rylee, at her age, sees the fun that could and will happen around her for that day. Kristen sees the potential backlog of homework that she’d have to catch up on if she were to miss a day of school. I’m not saying that Kristen isn’t fun. It’s just that she sees a realistic view of what could happen. On the other side of the coin, I’m not saying that Rylee’s always stuck in a dream land of cotton candy clouds and elixirs of unicorn giggles. That’s only when she’s awake!

She came down with a slight case of puking on her bedspread the night before, and seeing as she had eaten dinner at her new friend’s house we just chalked it up to unfamiliar food. Michelle had to inform the mother of this new friend that Rylee may put on the front of being a vegetarian. She has done this before and gotten away with, if I remember correctly, eating a dinner of corn on the cob, mashed potatoes and ice cream. As a child, I probably would have mixed them all together let alone enjoyed them immensely.

Well, we cleaned Rylee up not before I stepped bare footed into a small wet spot on the floor. Oddly enough, the tine pile of vomit contained corn. We cleaned her up, as I was saying, and she went to sleep. She got up before me the next morning and seemed in good spirits but had a temperature, so Michelle kept her home for the day.

Later on, Rylee admitted to Michelle that she had swallowed a loonie. I remember a time I had put a coin in my mouth and accidentally swallowed it, but I don’t remember specifics. I can’t recall any pains about loosing the money, so obviously I was too young to appreciate the value of it. Or it was when we lived in the Philippines which meant it was a Peso, and I knew it wasn’t worth much anyways. Either way, I swallowed a coin. I do not remember what happened next or if it was ever recovered.

Last night when I was putting Rylee to bed we had a little talk about the cleanliness of coins. I told her that if, at minimum, the loonie she had swallowed were handled by a thousand hands prior to coming into her possession, there was a thousand hands worth of nose picking, bum wiping, crotch scratching bacteria running around on the coin’s surface. I know that this isn’t exactly true, but with Rylee you have to make the picture bigger and brighter to get your message across. She still picks her nose and pops the nuggets into her mouth from time to time, for crying out loud. Mmmm!

Rylee informed me that she had, ahem, passed the loonie into the toilet, but wisely did the math and came to the conclusion that the economic benefit of fetching the coin did not out weigh the disgusting process of actually retrieving it from its gross encasing. For that I am very proud of her!

Yesterday was an interesting day because at around 2:30 or 3pm my heart seemed to want to burst from my chest while my brain sizzled like a freshly opened soda. However, my work production increased 250%, and I was a bit more chatty than usual with my coworkers. Why? I’ll tell you in a minute.

After consuming lunch at my desk, I left the building to go to the convenience store for a diet Pepsi with lime but was disappointed to only find regular ol’ boring diet Pepsi. But on the way I noticed two humorous items which drew my attention away like the easily distracted child-minded person that I am. I’m going to tell them in reverse order because I find the first item funnier than the second item, and I thought you would appreciate them better that way.

Runaway Cart!

Please don’t think I look unkindly towards the homeless. They’re on the street, and there’s obviously a reason why they’re there. But yesterday as I was heading back to the office from my useless trip to the convenience store, I saw a gentleman with a shopping cart full of pop cans. What drew my attention at first was the rattling sound of the cart as it sped freely off the sidewalk and into the side of a very new looking Dodge truck. As far as I could see there was no damage, but the cart had tipped over and much of its contents spilled behind and under the truck. When I saw the owner of the shopping cart running towards the mess I was a little stunned. He was younger than me, pretty spry (as he was running) and kind of well dressed. It might be presumptuous of me to say that he was homeless, but if he wasn’t then he was definitely horning in on their business.

Do We Really Want to Eat Here?

Now, on my way to the under-stocked inconvenience store I witnessed something that I found very funny indeed. There is a restaurant very near where I work which is along the way to the store. I won’t give you the name since I don’t want to be responsible for its decreased business, but suffice it to say that it is a self-proclaimed pizza and steak house. The set-up inside consists of booths that rest up against full-sized picture windows so masticators can watch the traffic pass as they eat. As I passed by the window noticing the packed seats in the restaurant, the reflection of the glass showed me this:



Okay, okay! The smiling guy in the hat may not have been there, but his truck was parked right outside the front door of the restaurant. I don’t know about you, but if I’m the owner of a downtown restaurant the last thing I want parked outside the front door would be the guy responsible for getting rid of the roaches. In fact, the absence of the smiley guy is all that more ominous. What was he doing? Spraying for rats? Well, that can’t be because as far as I know Alberta is still considered the rat-free province. I hear they just turn them away at the BC and Saskatchewan borders, and forget about making it across from the US! Those border guards are ruthless. Just try sneaking an apple across! Or an IBM!

Is My Heart Supposed to Beat This Loudly?

I did something yesterday that I haven’t done in over a year…I had a cup of coffee. The effects weren’t immediate, but when my hands started to vibrate so much that I could see through them I knew something weird was happening to me.

I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before, so when I got into work and plopped my butt down in front of my computer I knew that staying awake would be a chore. So I had a cup of coffee with none of that floofy poofy stuff like cream or sugar I used to put in it. I took a sip and immediately regretted it; not because it tasted bad! No! I regretted it because it tasted good.

When I was younger and my family and I used to live in Calgary, we would make the drive back to Victoria a couple of times a year to visit family and friends. Common on this trip were drive-thru stops so my parents could pick up a cup of nuclear hot coffee from McDonald’s and an Egg McNuthin’ for me and Wendy. I used to marvel at the smell of coffee; its aroma was rich and would encompass every breathable inch in the vehicle we occupied. It called to me with its siren song, and, since I was still a pre-teen, I hadn’t partook in the beverage yet.

On one particular trip I asked my mother for a sip (ahh, poetry). She took her coffee black, I believe, like she still does today. Two sensations were immediate in my mouth, one of pain and one of disgust. Many people have heard the story of the woman who sued McDonald’s because she spilt the coffee she had just purchased on her lap. You can actually read about her, Stella Liebeck, right here. It’s an interesting read as it tells the whole story and not just the “what the?!?” part of someone suing for a stupid reason. Where was I? Oh yes!

My mouth was seared, and my tongued took on that sandpapery feel that it takes on when it gets burnt. Thankfully mouths heal pretty fast because that is one annoying feeling. I rank it up there with that piece of skin that hangs from the roof of your mouth after you try to take a bite of piping hot pizza. The second sensation of disgust was brought on by the fetid diaper water that molested my taste buds. How could people drink this? What an untrustworthy beverage, I thought. Nothing should ever have a taste as terrible as that but have an aroma that angels sing about. Totally! Not! Fair!

But then yesterday I partook of the forbidden ambrosia and found it savory. Much like beer, coffee is an acquired taste, and I guess that in the time between retching about it’s flavour to drinking mass quantities of it with cream and sugar, milk and sugar or just sugar I had acquired its taste alla plain. Now I just have to stay away from it since the reason I quit it before was that I drank practically two pots a day and still had to fight to stay awake in class. The withdrawal headaches were akin to the Lord of the Dance and Stomp dueling it out in my skull.

I have to admit that the affect was quite funny to others, though. I popped my head into Andrew’s office to inform him that I had taken from the bean, and he laughed at how chatty I was. At one point I’m pretty sure the order of my words were breaking the space time continuum by racing each other out of my mouth. I would hate to see that fateful day when, as a result of a subsequential word escaping before its predecessor, a black hole forms and the universe is sucked in whole. That truly would be a day to stay in bed.

Wendy made her first trek from Creston to Calgary this evening, and she managed to pull it off in just under 6 hours. I have to give here credit since I was sure she wouldn’t have done it that quickly. Not that I doubt her driving abilities, but she had two boys in the car, one still in the toddler stages, and I was positive they’d have her pulling over every 20 minutes. And I was partly right. Wendy said they had to pull over lots since she had three bladders to contend with, and she still made it in good time.

I also have my cousin Brendan staying with us for a while, too. I am a little embarrassed to admit that when Rylee and I just got home from karate that I glanced and saw him sitting on the couch and did not immediately recognize him. I believe my exact words were, “Hey! I didn’t know you were coming, too!” I had thought it was Jakie (sp?). My cousin, and Brendan’s sister. His hair is really long, and from far away in dim lighting and with a low intellect, he looks like his sister.

So Wendy is here for a weekend of Calgarian fun. So we’re doing Calaway Park for the bazillionth time and the zoo for the second. No rest for the wicked I say.

Since I haven’t posted anything since the dreaded urine pants episode, I thought I’d leave you with a cool burnout video of last Sunday’s Race City Speedway winner, Pinkfoot: