Lovely weather

Although today is a bit chilly, it marks the fourth day in a row of sun and blue sky. I'll recap the prior three:

Friday
The evening started with me being a bit ambitious and cooking some chicken chasseur for Ginny and myself. I think it turned out all right, but I feel like I should have cooked it maybe another 5 minutes. The only other annoying outcome was cheese-grating my thumb while making the Dauphinese potatoes. Thankfully no blood made it into the meal, and it clotted rather quickly.

Ginny kindly asked me along to a Writing Centre party that night. I knew a couple of people there, and I recognized more simply from being on campus for 12 years. The highlight was the punch. I had seen several months ago what it's capable of doing to other people -- so I decided to try it out. It was very tasty. But as rum was a primary ingredient, it just builds up and hits you all at once. After about my eighth glass, I was reportedly swaying a bit. Midway through, I saw a new batch getting made -- and knew I was in trouble.

Saturday
A bit groggy waking up for sure. But I had to take advantage of the weather, so I ran a few errands downtown. That evening, the French choir had a performance at the Ramada, where Canadian Parents for French was having a banquet. The performance went very well, and I'm very proud of the trio who did their part. The setup was kind of lousy for this performance, though. I ended up having to bring my own keyboard, set it up in the warm-up room for a couple of pieces, and then tear it down and set it up in the banquet room, and then bring the whole works home. Exhausting.

After that, we headed to Mike's, a friend of Rob's. And that was a great evening of standing around and shooting the shit. It was also a fairly late evening, with a turn-in time of about 4:30am.

Sunday
Which certainly makes rising for brunch at 9am a bit difficult. Nevertheless, J&J and myself headed to the Bagel Cafe and then for a stroll around Duckworth and Water. I ran a couple of more errands that afternoon, and then in the evening, Ginny and I headed back to Mike's place for a BBQ. First one of season, in April no less! Chowed down on some steak and potato salad, and then we watched the Howard Stern movie.

It was a pretty full weekend. Now back to reality...

Happy St. George's Day!

Good, that will suffice for a title. Guess I'll do a point form recap.

Curling
My office went curling last Friday as a social event. Ginny had never been, and had expressed curiosity, so I invited her along. She provided a recap of the events on her blog, so I shan't duplicate here. Suffice it to say, it was a little more dangerous than the participants were banking on.

Chinese Buffets & Food Processors
...are apparently good ways to kill a Saturday. Ginny and I headed to the Bird's Nest on Stavanger for their buffet, and I think we got our money's worth. Afterwards, we headed to Canadian Tire, as I had heard that food processors were on sale. Both of us walked out with new appliances, though I still haven't tried mine yet...

Feeling Saucy
I made a brown stock on Saturday night. I now feel comfortable in letting it simmer overnight for the 10-12 hours necessary. Afterwards, in a fit of ambition, I made an espagnole sauce from it, which required another 4-6 hours of simmering. And then last night, I made a demi-glace sauce from both of them, which 'only' required about an hour of simmering. It damn-well better be good, since it required 15-20 hours to make. I hope to try it out on a chicken dish either tonight or tomorrow night.

French choir
This has been taking up a lot of time lately: practice on Sunday, Monday, and tonight, and then a performance on Saturday. For the performance, I'll have to bring my own keyboard -- times are tough ;)

Refund!
Got my tax refund today. Woo! That should pay for my professional dues, if I ever get my...

P. Eng
So I found out that one of my references did not send in the required form. Apparently he either didn't receive it, or misplaced it. So there's a set amount of bullshit; how it's divided between PEG-NL and the reference is the only question. Another form is on the way to him, and it's my (faint) hope that it'll be returned in time for the next Council meeting on Monday. Even if this long shot comes through, I'm informed that there may not be a quorum. These meetings are of great importance to the attending members, I see.

I'm very glad that I followed up on this. As registration is a "performance objective," I'm rather anxious to get this put to bed before my next review.

What to do with $1200 of unused silicon...

Warning: This post is a little geekier than ordinary. It also may be a tad useful :)

Since getting my netbook, I've had little (zero) use for my old laptop. What I did like about the old laptop was the extensive collection of media files I had ripped from my CDs. And growing weary of the old routine of switching CDs in and out of my player like some kind of caveman, I decided to permanently hook my laptop up to the TV via S-Video. Bam! I could access all my files from Media Player, and even have the funky visualization.

Over the last week, however, I got two things that augmented this setup greatly:

PC Remote Control
It kinda sucked having to haul the laptop out to switch albums, skip tracks, etc. So after a little poking around the net, I found a remote control. It comes with an USB IR receiver. No drivers, no fuss. It has all the common media controls (play, pause, skip, etc.) as well as a mouse control near the top. It even has common PC shortcuts. I was a little leery of it, as it isn't exactly brand name quality, but at C$15 on eBay, I figured it was worth a shot. No regrets. And a whole lot cheaper than some of the other remotes available.

Sesam TV
Unfortunately, Windows Media Player has really tiny fonts and is not meant for viewing at a distance. And while I could do everything with the mouse control on the remote, it was a wee bit clumsy to use. So, once again, poking around the net, I came up with a whole bunch of hits for "Media Center" style software. I tried three: XBMC, based on the XBox, which had an annoying habit of omitting the first 10 seconds of a song (FAIL!); MediaPortal, which is that damn loaded down with unnecessary extensions that performance slows to a crawl, not to mention that I couldn't get the display to work; and then finally, one called SesamTV. Very simple, elegant, and intuitive interface: all functions can be accessed with the arrow keys and enter. It's basically a front end for Windows Media Player, so all the visualizations, as well as any DRM media files, are accessible. And best of all: free.

Anyways, I just thought I'd share. I was about to get a set-top box like the WD TV, which, with the required external hard drive, would have set me back $300. For $15, I was able to turn my otherwise useless laptop into a media hub. Sweet!

Now I gotta go and find some other way to blow $300... ;)

Birthday/Good Friday Pub Crawl recap

This was an overwhelming success, and I thank all who attended for making it so.

The evening started with Milley, Ginny, and myself having some fish and chips ordered from the Big R. Not usually my first choice when it comes to F&C, but Ches' phone line had the annoying habit of either a) being busy, or b) never being answered. Big R came through and had our meals ready in 40 minutes. Something got lost in translation, since our 2 piece meals became 3 piece meals... but I guess that's a good problem to have. Alas, I was unable to finish -- my heart forbade it.

So here are the pubs visited, and a brief recap of each.

1. Rose and Thistle -- Met up with all the attendees: Craig, Andrea, Hanz, Laura, Mel, and us F&C crew. It's not a dive, of course, but it's a good first stop.
   
2. Bar None -- This place is almost exactly how I remember it from two years ago. (Minus the squid jerky that was there that one time - Ginny was vexed that this (imaginary) promise was unfulfilled) I don't think the "regulars" were too thrilled with us being there, but fuck 'em: we tripled the population of the place. The highlight is the incredibly creepy painting on the left wall.
   
3. Nautical Nellie's -- I love this place. Unfortunately, the air was thick with seafood aroma after a long Good Friday's worth of cooking. This played havoc with Andrea's allergies, so she and Craig both had to nip out for a bit. We clued up after discussing the fish chart on the table, and tangentially, sculpins. The important thing is that that makes sense to me and a few others.
   
4. Stetson Lounge -- My first time in this place. And we were determined enough to plunk down the $4 cover. It immediately paid dividends. Oh man. First of all, it wasn't so much a bar as it was a cougar exhibit (but to give credit, the bar was tastefully appointed). Secondly, Craig had an incident involving bathrooms which left us howling. I won't get into the details, but suffice it to say we took off fairly quickly thereafter as we were getting a bit of stink-eye from the patrons.
   
5. Fiddler's Pub -- The crown jewel of the pub crawl we had 2 years ago. I was flabbergasted at how (comparatively) full the place was. The best part was that the guy who made it so memorable that one time was there again! And he was in fine form: causing shit behind the bar, wandering into the employee-only section, yelling out whatever was on his mind... God love 'im.
   
6. Folly -- This was the great find of the evening. It's not a pub, and it certainly wasn't on the list, but we were kinda hungry and this place was on the way. Formerly Tangled Up In Blue, it's now an all night place specializing in burgers and pizzas. The food was awesome and the service prompt, even for our large table. Move over Celtic Hearth, we've found a late night place that doesn't suck.
   
7. Jay Dee's Lounge -- On the list, but sadly CLOSED when we got there. This was the only minor disappointment of the night. Some other time, though. In need of another dive, we hiked up the hill to the...
   
8. Peter Easton -- Why not? Didn't stick around there too long, though, as fatigue started setting in. We watched in lazy amusement at two very large dogs who were all over each other.
   

The list was shorter this year, but then, we're all two years older ;)

Now I can take a break from the booze for a while: more social drinking than full-on binging. It gets expensive...

Of Getting Older (pt. 30)

So it's happened: I've turned 30. But I actually feel healthier than when I was last in my 20's, since I just overcame a flu. HaHA!

Let's see... a recap of the last two weeks:

We had tickets to beer fest on Saturday night (March 28), but that didn't stop some of us from heading out on Friday night as well. Myself, Ginny, and Jon met up at Christians for a few pitchers. That night got a wee bit crazy, thanks to some random guests who showed up at our table: some the good kind of crazy, one who was definitely the bad kind of crazy. Jon did an admirable job of summarizing the encounters here.

The beer fest went largely as intended. The selection was a bit disappointing, but that didn't really matter. Pounded back a pile of beer, but failed to partake of the free food there. The thought process at the time was "More food will mean less beer"... which in retrospect would have been the sensible approach. I wasn't too bad until we got to Christians (tempting fate?), but then the 3-4 screeches did me in...

Work has relaxed considerably as of March 31. I'm down to one project now, at least until the suspended one resumes (still don't know when that will be). So I'm loving it. The stress of the days prior to the end of fiscal caught up with me in a big way last Wednesday -- I came down with some kind of jungle flu which put me out of commission for three solid days. Thankfully I recovered in time to take in Ginny's deferred second half of her birthday celebrations -- a night of sucking down pints at the Duke, what could be better?

Indeed, nothing came to mind, because I did the same thing last night as an impromput "day-of" birthday celebration for myself. :) The big part will come this Friday, when we do a pub crawl... should be a hoot!