With Proper Training…

Yaeka and I arrived in Vancouver around noon which gave us a good 7-8 hours for city exploration. Vancouver turned out to be your average city, except it was Canadian! Pointing out all the amazing differences between this foreign country and our homeland were the main sources of humor during our self-guided walking tour, but we found other things to laugh at as well.

The first thing you see coming across the Granville Street Bridge is a ton of construction on new skyscrapers. There was an incredibly large amount of new construction going on in the city and lots of big cranes moving about. While walking around we took a break on one of the public benches to watch a crane lift up huge containers of cement. After a while I realized that it was pretty dangerous being so close to a crane and that it could easily crash down and squish us. I know this because a guy I work with used to work on a crane at Lake Union in Seattle and one day the foundation of it collapsed and he had to jump out as fast as he could!

After parking Rupert in his temporary home for the day, we decided to locate the venue so that we wouldn’t be scrambling to find it at the last minute. We noticed that there was already a line forming and just had to take a picture of them to show you how ready they were with lawn chairs. So really a Pixies fans are almost as dorky Star Wars fans. Anyway, later on we found out that maybe they weren’t total losers and simply were wanting to get one of the hundred tickets to be sold the day of the show, but when you think about it, if they weren’t losers, they’d already have tickets like me and Yaeka.

All the driving and stress of entering a new country had made us hungry so we went on a walk around Vancouver to hunt down some food. We went towards the water away from the venue (which turned out to have a million food places near by) and ended up at Coal Harbour park. It was a pretty nice place tucked away between several new tall buildings.

On the way back from Coal Harbour Park we passed an office building with a little water pool (no fountain…lame) and in it was a duck. Apparently nothing compares to the fresh chlorinated water of this shallow pool, not even the beautiful water of Coal Harbour. While taking this picture, an obnoxious Canadian couldn’t resist quacking at us. Canadians are jerks!

Finally, an hour or two after beginning our hunt for food, we decided on Tsunami Sushi, a place we passed within the first ten minutes of our hunt. It has the same concept as a local place called Sushi Land in Bellevue, but this place was much cleaner with better service and instead of a conveyor belt, the sushi floated around on boats! Awesome!

After getting food, we headed back towards the venue and the dirty part of town. There was actually garbage and gum on the ground as well as multiple adult video stores. We stopped into a Sony store and investigated the cost of a new CD player, but it turned out not to be worth it with the insane sales tax and the weaker dollar. The salesman informed us that “Those days are over for you” regarding our previously awesome exchange rate. Anyway, we walked by this couple. The guy was way shorter than the girl as you can tell by the diagram drawn on the photo.

On our journey to find new foreign places we found a 7 Eleven and decided to check out if it was the same as the ones in the U.S. Well it had an incredibly huge magazine section that could probably knock the socks off of a Waldenbooks any day as well as a huge candy section that included bulk candy! But better than that was all this crazy Canadian candy that I’d never seen before. We decided to get a whole bunch of that crazy Canadian stuff as you can see.

We decided that this particular candy bar sucked. What also sucked is that my original plan to get a 20 oz. soda and point out how funny it was that it was marked 591 ml was foiled by the excellent deal on a 1L bottle. Foiled again by those clever Canadians!

The remaining time before the concert was spent walking around the very same streets, but this time we stopped in at the excellen Fritz’s European Fry Bar and got some yummy fries with honey mustard dipping sauce that seemed to be made primarily made of mayonaisse. While there, I was also made to look foolish because I couldn’t tell if this one coin I had was a quarter or not and the clerk just had to tell me that it was a quarter. Why can the value of the coin be more obviously written? Come on Canada cut me some slack!

How minds can change quickly in this world of ours. I have officially decided as of about 5-10 minutes ago that I will NOT be purchasing a motorcycle/scooter. Even though gas out here is averaging over $2.00, it just wouldn’t be worth it to take on the extra payments. Yet another dream crushed, but soon, soon I tell you, I’ll be back on top!

Friday was quite an adventure with a full day of travel and foreign places all the way up in Canada. It was only my second trip to the Great White North — the first being with Flynn and Marty to Toronto — and my first to the western part of the country. This time, however, Yaeka was doing the driving in her reliable car Rupert, a ‘96 Honda Civic:

We managed to get a pretty early start to our day thanks to Yaeka’s suggestion that we both take the day off of work. Due to our early departure there was still a little bit of traffic, but have no fear because we were carpooling!

It took us a bit of time to take advantage of our high occupancy vehicle though because the bitches in the car above wouldn’t let us in get in the carpool lane! Bitch drivers (both men and women) watch out because we’re going to take your picture and post it on the information superhighway!

The whole traffic and bitch ordeal was made a little more relaxing with a little help from our friend the chocolate covered pretzel courtesy of Trader Joe’s. Thanks Joe!

It was really smooth sailing once we got in the carpool lane and got out of the congested Seattle metro area. There was only one concern I had and that was my lack of passport and/or birth certificate.

Luckily, Canada isn’t locked down and the border guard didn’t even ask for our driver’s licenses and I was able to snap this pic of the welcome garden into Surrey, BC.

The roads in Canada weren’t that different from those in America, but I found the lit lane divider/reflectors to be the smartest thing they had up there. You can’t really see them in the image above, but you can see an extra streak of light that wouldn’t normally be there.

Tune in next time details of our adventure in Vancouver!

I have to admit that I’ve never been into reunions at all. I think that they’re ridiculous attempts to regain long lost fame from over a decade prior. However, tonight, I’m breaking my steadfast rule against seeing reunited bands to see Pixies in Vancouver, BC.

I feel a little bit better about it being a small club (only 900 people) because it makes it seem like they aren’t totally whoring themselves out (yet), but they will be as soon as the late summer/fall come around and start playing the huge amphitheaters and festivals. Well I don’t know if they’re really whoring themselves out, but it is a rare thing to be able to see a band of such notoriety in a small club like this.

I’m not super excited/giddy/nervous about seeing one of the best bands in indie rock history like I would have been 6 years ago, but I’m definitely looking forward to it and not afraid to brag as this small tour mainly hit smaller cities and venues with many not able to get tickets. I’ll let you know how it goes, but I’m sure a good time will be had as this will be my first trip to Vancouver and Yaeka and I took the day off of work so we can have a full day up North together enjoying the sites.

For the last month or two, I’ve been seriously debating the purchase of a motorcycle/scooter. It wasn’t something very realistic until a number of things occurred:
1. Yaeka and I moved to Issaquah which lengthened my commute from 13 miles to about 35 miles
2. Yaeka began looking for a new job in the Seattle (as opposed to Tacoma) area

Right now Yaeka and I are carpooling which has numerous benefits including the carpool lane and Yaeka’s better gas mileage. My Astro van gets about 20 miles per gallon and that’s when I was just driving highway with no seats in the back. If you look at the bottom of the links, you’ll notice that gas here is not cheap. So what’s a guy like me that loves his minivan, but has a long commute to do? Get a motor bike!

Now I have no idea how a motorcycle works or even a scooter for that matter, but luckily there are places to learn. In fact, my motorcycle class is coming up in two weeks and after that weekend of learning I’ll have my motorcycle endorsement on my driver’s license.

The idea of a motorcycle is somewhat intimidating, however, especially the whole shifting gears part of it. I have it under control in a car, but using your feet to shift just seems a little too complex and as a result I’ve been looking into getting a scooter. Now I know you’re thinking that there’s no way I’d be able to keep up with freeway traffic on a little scooter, but there are some big ones out there.

I’m pretty much set on getting the Aprilia Scarabeo 500. It’s an automatic (like a scooter), but has larger motorcycle-sized wheels and can go up to 100 mph! On top of that it gets about 50 mpg. I had been looking at the smaller 150cc model, but it just would barely be unable to keep up with the freeway traffic.

If any of you out there have any recommendations, please let me know as this is a pretty big decision for me. It really is a win win situation though as I’ll get better gas mileage and still be able to use the carpool lane. Now if only I could stop rain from falling and magically make the price free, I’d be all set.

So I waste a lot of time while writing reviews and other website stuff — and life stuff too, I guess. Anyway, about a month ago I was introduced to Alchemy. It’s your typical Yahoo! Games sort of thing where you put block/shapes down and try to make things disappear by matching shape or color. Well I’ve become an addict. I’m convinced that I rule at this game and am curious how well you can do. I’ve managed to beat level 9 and gained “Master Alchemist” status. Can you beat that?

So the GOP has just released that online game JOHN KERRY: TAX INVADERS!. Overall it’s a pretty lame version of space invaders that doesn’t have that many levels. I just think it’s funny that organizations come up with such lame things to promote an idea. I should probably sign up for the DNC newsletter so I can get the anti-Bush version (probably called IRAQ INVADERS) of these games as well.

So Yaeka and I had big plans on Friday night. We were going to go see Kill Bill Vol. 2 and on the way have some dinner. While debating what to do about dinner on the way home, she suggested Cucina Cucina. I had never been there, was feeling a little Italian, and it was right next to the movie theater. What could make more sense?

Cucina has a slogan about being fast, friendly, and fun. Well to sum it up shortly, it sucked. First, there weren’t really any veggie options which sucked. We sat there at our table and debated what to do, maybe just leave, but then decided to stay and picked out what we’d eat. We did all this before the waitress even came by.

Finally, probably close to 10 minutes later (this isn’t the too fast part), the waitress shows up and took our orders, she was too slow to do the beverage bit first. So we order and get our water and like 2 minutes, seriously, our food shows up. Normally I wouldn’t complain, but it was just really weird that our food got there that quick. I think the reason Cucina’s menu is so limited is that they only had so much room for the huge vats of pre-made food that they scooped it from.

All right, so food is here quick, I guess we’ll start eating. Our waitress comes by about 5 minutes after we got the food and says, “That got here fast.” We reply yeah, still extremely confused when she asks “So anything for dessert?” Yaeka and I still had about one half to three quarters of our food left and she’s already asking about dessert?! We say no because really how do we know if we want dessert?

The rushed theme continued moments later when what I guess is a manager type (he was wearing a tie) that looked a lot like the host in Ferris Bueler’s Day Off at the French restaurant, walked by, then stopped and took two steps back. He looked at Yaeka and asked if she was done. She still had half a plate of food left! Yaeka said no, now more confused than ever. Shortly after our waitress came by with the check while we still had about half a plate left. It was one of the oddest things ever.

This is why I really really hate going out to eat a lot of the time. You end up paying more than you would making it yourself and there’s a very high chance of being terribly disappointed. I think a lot of it was that we got a bum waitress. She was sort of awkward and just really weird. I think she was a robot. The other tables seemed to be having regular interaction with their servers so that’s what I think.

I could understand if the place was hopping, but we got there before the big dinner rush so really it was just like they were operating at warp speed way too early. We were so bugged out by it that we filled out a comment card at the table and some busboy walked by nervous although he wasn’t part of the problem, but good for him for caring. I still plan on e-mailing them.

So whatever you do, don’t go to cucina cucina! Kill Bill was good though.

Well it seems to be that TechTV got it’s head back together and realized that the network really wouldn’t be the same without Leo Laporte. Hopefully once ownership transfers over this recognition of his importance to the audience of the station will continue. Until then, check out
The Laporte Report for the full story straight from Leo’s mouth.

There has definitely been a trend in commercials lately to be more funny and surreal, but this takes it to a new level. Possibly one of the most hillarious things I’ve seen and it totally beats the pants off any of those Superbowl commercials this year. You can see the rest of this guy’s work here.