Thinking Outside the Box

A while back I mentioned that one of my past students had come over to Canada for a month to study English. He arrived here early in January and studied on the weekdays. It seemed that there wasn't much in the way of homework, so his afternoons and weekends were free to go siteseeing and things. Disappointingly (at least to me) it seemed that the school he'd arranged his homestay and studies through didn't really organize any extracurricular activities for the visiting students. Knowing roughly how much the cost of coming here to study is, that was a big let down for me, and I can only imagine how frustrating it was for Shuhei. Since i also had to work full time, I didn't have much free time to show him around that much but I tried. Not having a car made it even more difficult! Rather than going into the details I'll just give a quick rundown of some of the things we did and places we went. First weekend: Calgary Roughnecks season opener Pic 1 Pic 2 Pic 3 Seco...

Went down to the Roughnecks game with a few friends on Friday night. It wasn't a terribly interesting game, at least it wasn't until the last few minutes. They'd been outplayed for almost the entire game and didn't start to play until the last 5 or 6. Of course they were in a deep enough hole by then that it didn't matter. Both teams flew back to Toronto for the second game of the back-to-back, which I'm sure wasn't much fun for the losing team. The loss was followed by a very shocking move: the first and only head coach was fired, also resulting in the assistant coach resigning. They played the game in Toronto without a new coach and won handily by all reports. What will come from this point is anyone's guess now. Today I spent a good part of my day walking around or on the local transit. Not exactly the most fun, but I was able to get all the items I was looking for and enjoy the sunny afternoon weather. Not tired enough from all the walking, I...

Yet another forgotten event popped into my head this afternoon: a concert I went to the night before my company Christmas party back in November. It was sheer luck that I happened upon the show actually, and if one were a believer in fate this is as close as I've ever seen to it. Anyway, at work that day I had been talking about music with a couple of co-workers, and had mentioned one of my favorite blues artists during our chat. I had heard he had a new CD coming out and was sad that I had missed his show a few months previous, which had been a week or so before my return from Japan. When I got home I was just settling in for what looked to be a quiet Friday night at home, and started flipping through the free entertainment paper. Nearing the last few pages I saw a picture of a guy who looked familiar, stopped, then stared, and finally clued in. It was Jim Byrnes, the guy I'd been talking about that very same afternoon. "When oh when was this concert?" I thought,...

Alright, I think I'm covered up to late November or so at this point. Could be I'm only writing for myself at this point...I don't know who's even reading this junk! :P Anyway, pushing onward into December. The first week was kinda disappointing, as one of my co-workers finished up his tenure and moved on to greener office space. Or something. Let's hope that it wasn't actually green unless it was the paint, because that would just be gross (and unsanitary) otherwise. With him leaving that leaves me as the only person in my department under the 40 year old mark. Now, I get along with the rest of the people easily enough, but it still isn't exactly all fun and jokes. Nor do we hang out during lunch or anything so it got a little boring. The time definitely passes more slowly when there's no one to laugh at, er I mean with, you. I soldiered on though and finally made it to the meagre Christmas break. Only getting Christmas and Boxing Days off mean...

Most of the people I know are more than cool with the fact that I'm basically a big kid who sets his own allowance. Once in a while though someone asks the question "what do you do in your free time?" and is a little taken aback by some of the answers. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then this post is for you. First as you may have already noticed by some of my previous ramblings and pictures. I collect toys. I collect a lot of things, but for now let's stick to that. Over the course of my life I have amassed a very sizeable collection, and it often gets raised eyebrows by the unitiated. Admittedly, I've been buying a lot less and have been actively trying to downsize, but it's still hard to find space for everything sometimes. So what do I do with all this accumulated plastic? Not much really. Most of it stands on a shelf or is packed away in boxes like almost every other man's collection, whether he's single or not. That's not to ...

Well it seems that I may have to eat a little crow over the last post there. In my hurry to recap the past few months I actually glossed over a few pretty major events. Definitely not cool, but at least I'm addressing it now rather than pretending my oversight never happened in the first place. The first event that I skipped over would have to be my friend's wedding out in Banff. Yes, I've been there a few times since I came back. I can certainly think of less scenic places to hang out, so uh...yeah. Anyway, it was really cool that they invited me up to see them exchange vows and have a good time. The ceremony was nice and it was good to see them both after well over a year. They're a good match. I was also able to see some other friends, one of whom was kind enough to give me a ride TO the wedding. It's a long walk from Calgary so I probably would have just stayed home. It was a nice change to be able to actually go to a wedding I'd been invited to. I missed a...

Some days, it just seems like there's a total lack of direction. Today isn't one of them, but with an hour or two less sleep it certainly could have been. This post however is entirely without direction. I just decided that I felt like typing more than staring at the TV screen. Why this screen is more appealing I can't really say. It certainly requires more thought and work to sit and type than it does to drool (only figuratively of course) in front of the TV. Well since the last post was on the topic of going back in time (without the fancy DeLorean sadly), I might as well continue on that track. I think I've pretty much covered September and October. For all you calendar-challenged out there that would bring us to *gasp* November! Plain and simple, not much of note occurred in November. At least, I certainly can't bring to mind anything terribly momentous other than the company Christmas party in Banff. That was a pretty swanky setup. Hosted at the Banf...

Ok, so I covered the whole 'found a job' thing a few days back. But what exactly did I do with my time before I found said job? Well, I spent a lot of time surfing the net and reading through newspapers looking for, and applying for various things. I had a few interviews, an offer that was appealing even though the money was way too low for my experience level and eventually lucked into this one by well...luck. It helps that my sister knows like everyone in in the city too. Of course there are only so many new jobs posted everyday so it wasn't like I could sit and apply for stuff for hours and days on end. I needed something to fill my time. There were a lot of books read, most notable being the final volume in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I have to say I wasn't that surprised at the ending, but it was probably the most suitable ending. There's a prequel comic book coming out very soon that should be well worth a read, and I'm pretty interested in c...

Not that it's ever actually been in hiding, but I suppose there are some of you out there who don't know that I am a huge collector of comics and toys. Well, while I was in Japan I happened upon the absolute coolest action figures I've ever seen: Microman ! The cool thing about Micromen figures is that while they do come as unique figures with their own backstory (don't ask me what it is, I can't read enough kanji to figure it out), there are also male, female and girl model blank figures available in like a trillion colors for people who want to make their own characters. So, I thought I'd give it a try and start with something easy: Symbiote Spiderman. I actually made this guy a little over a year ago, but was never able to take very good pictures of it until recently. It is just a black micro-male that I painted with a less-than-accurate Gundam marker. I think he still looks pretty cool though, and I even made a few little weblines for him to swing around on...

Ugh what a week. Work has been a serious chore this week. January and February are the big crunch time for this new company I'm at so everyone, their dogs and even the dog's fleas are in a hurry. Today was a vast improvement over the beginning of the week and I'm eyeing Friday to hopefully , end in a nice smooth finish. Have to wait and see on that one. As for the whole blogging thing, I don't have a vision or direction for what I'm going to post here. But then, from what I've read on a lot of others neither does anyone else so I guess I'm right on track. Totally unrelated, I realize that none of the pictures from last year's posts work anymore. I did some reorganizing of my online photos and broke all the links in the process. I'm too lazy to fix them, so they'll just show up as sexy red Xs. Isn't that hot? Let's see...oh yeah. On Saturday my friend goes back to Japan after being here for a month or so. I've spent a lot of ...