So lately I've been really wanting to make my own template for my blog. Like all the buttons and the background and everything. Right now, even though I have adjusted it a good bit, it's a template that I picked from a big stack when I created this blog. I like it, but it's not ME.
To further go down this path of making my own unique blog page, I had two choices.
1) Kindly ask my girlfriend who makes extremely awesome websites in her (very limited) spare time to make something for me.
or
2) Learn how to use a few VERY difficult programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. Also, I would have to keep up my grades and there are finals coming soon and I've been sleeping very oddly lately and.... well you get the picture.
The obvious answer is #1 - ask Kat. So that is why I am going with #2. Because I like doing things the complicated and randomly unnecessarily wrong way.
Step 1 of making a new website - On to Photoshop!
Photoshop is an extremely powerful tool that lets people do basically anything they want to a picture. It has transformed the magazine business and has basically made any picture you look at fake. And any time you see and image and you think that it is real, just ask yourself, "Did they REALLY blow up the Death Star?"
Before I show you all my first foray into the land of digital photo editing, I would like to show you, very quickly, what this tool does in the hands of professionals (that's what she said).
Sunday, Kat and I decided to go out for a little cruise around Montreal. I've lived here for about 3 1/2 months and there are many thing I still haven't seen. I know the area around my school very well, and obviously the neighborhood we live in, but there are large chunks of the island I've yet to see.
I invite you to come on a mini-tour with me. Filled with wonder and passion. Danger around every corner. Asians with cameras! Come now, shall we?
Driving to the east end of Montreal, there is a gigantic green orb perched on the side of the mountain. It is Saint Joseph's Oratory.
(SOURCE) Like the Sears Tower, you can see it from far away and it is cool. As you drive further east, another monster looms out from behind the buildings and trees. It is the Olympic Stadium. (SOURCE) It is where the Expos used to play. It is truly a magnificent sight.
I didn't take either of the above two photos, I just google-jacked 'em. I just wanted to give you an all-encompassing journey through our Sunday. So after the stadium, we head south. We cross the bridge and pull off to take pictures of the whole island. Kat and I got some really cool ones.
You can click on them for a bigger size. So now comes the fun part. We are driving up to the spot where we took these pictures and its really secluded. It's snowy and cold and a Sunday on an almost deserted island. Well the island isn't really deserted - there's an amusement park and a casino there. But right then it was deserted. Or so I thought.
So Kat pulls off into this snowy parking lot kind of thing, and sure enough, there is a busload of Asian tourists taking pictures of everything in sight. It was quite funny and Kat got this nice picture of the bridge with some of our friends in it. The truth is that I am no different than them. We were driving around Montreal so I could take pictures. Well except that we weren't on a chartered bus. And there isn't this long standing stereotype that fat Americans and their Canadian girlfriends compulsively take pictures. Or is there?
The last stop was this gigantic metal sphere thing. The funny thing about it is your insticnts ruin the picture. Instinctively, you get closer to something you are going to photograph. And if the thing is small, you are a better person for having done that. Compare that to something that is, say, huge and cloaked in trees. Then you just get twigs and metal bars and a Canadian flag. As I was taking this picture, the unmistakable rumble of a diesel engine started to get louder as a bus of our Asian friends drove up, point-blank, to the large metal dome. I bet their pictures SUCKED!
Things have been getting close to GO time. There is only one more week of school for me, only one month to get your Christmas shopping done, and oh yeah my sister is days, if not hours, away from having a baby! On top of all of that, it's been COLD out. Like "Oh shit I really do live in Canada" cold. But that is the path I have chosen.
Friday I had to give my group presentation and we KILLED. The mini-U.N. as I have dubbed us, gave a coherent presentation about Tim Hortons and I was very proud. In addition to our speech, Tony, the Chinese guy I told you about HERE, got to experience a great first that I was a part of. Let me explain.
As the groups were presenting (we had to do a 10 minute group speech about any company - we chose Tim Hortons) many gave samples of products. A group that did Second Cup gave away coffee, the group that did Hershey's gave away Kisses, and the group that did Molson gave away beer. Yes, at noon, in an accredited university in a democratic country in North America, beer was given away.
The group poured it into little cups and people could take as much as they wanted. I had a cup and immediately wished that this group had gone first as the beer was quite warm by then. Well Tony got himself a lil' cup of beer and had a gigantic grin walking back to his desk. He told me that he's never had beer before but always wanted to try it.
Fast-forward a few minutes to the group giving their presentation and I watch as Tony takes his little cup, places it against his lips, throws his neck back violently and dumps 8-10 ounces of warm Molson down his throat. I stared on in horror as he cringed his face up and shouted, "AHHHHHHH I DID NOT LIKE IT!" The group stopped presenting and everyone stared at him as he shook out the disgust. Truly a hilarious moment.
So here we are. Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. Although it wasn't very traditional here in Montreal (we didn't roast a turkey and Kat had to work) it still felt how I wanted it to. Kathryn and I had a great time together and I got to talk to my family on the phone. I cooked a grand feast and it was just what I wanted.
Some highlights:
The French on the Tofurkey. It was a festin fit for a roi.
The snowy backdrop to a late-autumn holiday. Oh and still no wolf blanket! (I know it's getting old now. I'll stop soon.)
The dinner spread I spent all day in front of a hot stove making. The spread basically looked the same after we ate because, as Kathryn told me many times, "There's only two of us!" And it turns out that she's right. I counted myself twice because I was by a mirror and I got confused.
It's tradition in my household that on Thanksgiving we go around the table and say what we are thankful for. Far be it for me to let 850 miles and the Boarder Patrol get in the way of tradition, so here goes.
I'm thankful for...
The greatest girlfriend in the whole world that is also my best friend and my biggest fan. She laughs at all my dumb jokes even when they aren't funny and she understands me better than I do myself. I barely deserve her, but don't tell her that! I LOVE YOU BABY!
My mother has a heart the size of most African nations' GDPs and she taught me how to love and laugh and how to treat people and I'll always be her little baby.
I have a sister that is the strongest, most beautiful person a boy could have as a big sister and she has blessed us all with the cutest baby in the whole world.
My mentor and role model and inspiration and best friend in the whole world is my brother. One day I'll step out of his gigantic shadow and make him as proud of me as I am of him.
I have a father that works like a dog at a job he hates to give my brother, sister, and me a fighting chance in this world. He is my hero and I love him.
There are many other things that I am thankful for, but those are the most important to me right now. After a month of B.S. posts, you had to know a mushy one was coming soon enough, right?
As most of you know, in Canada they have Thanksgiving much earlier than in America. It is the second Monday in October and this year was on October 8th. Ironically enough, Kathryn and I went to Chicago for Canadian Thanksgiving and we will be in Montreal on American Thanksgiving.
But we will not wallow around in late-autumn Thursdayness! Thanks to my parents and certain Canadian grocers, I am armed with an arsenal of vegetarian-friendly Thanksgiving recipes and goods.
Yes, we will be having an honest-to-goodness fat-ass American Thanksgiving right here in the great white north. We went shopping earlier and are ready to get our grub on. While shopping earlier, Kat kept saying, "Why are you buying so much food? There's only two of us." Two, indeed. Unfortunately for both of us, one of us happens to be a fat American.
Tomorrow night I have to prep the potatoes and then Thursday I'm ditching class to cook and eat and watch football and eat more and just have a grand day.
I'll keep you all informed as things shake out.
Oh and a quick note on the title. I haven't seen a full episode of the show ever and I NEVER watch it, but I really did watch The Bachelor last night. There was this surprise ending and it was all really crappy. AND I was reading a magazine throughout the show (really I was). So today, I turn to Kat and say "So last night I watched the finale of The Bachelor..." and she laughed very hard right in my face. For like 3 minutes. And then she said, "That should be the title of your next blog." And here we are.
Let me say that I love Starbucks coffee. Well, really their Iced Americanos. And I feel that Starbucks is a good company. They haven't changed their approach to doing things, they have raised the quality and people's expectations of coffee, and they are an American company that the world has a positive opinion of (i.e. NOT Wal-Mart).
But that doesn't mean that going to Starbucks to get coffee is always a pleasant experience. In fact, according to a very unscientific study taken today by a certain fat American man living in Montreal, Starbucks can sometimes be downright unpleasant! In all, I found it to be offensive to 3 of my 5 senses. Let me explain.
The 2 good ones:
- Taste. I love Iced Americanos, so they rank high in taste. Easy enough.
- Smell. This is only because 75% of taste comes from our sense of smell. Otherwise, this would be lower on the list.
The senses that were attacked by the Starbucks in Fairview mall:
- Sight. This was an unpleasant trip for my eyes because in general, people are kind of creepy. Take that to the next step and say that the people in a mall on a Sunday 10 minutes before closing aren't the best control group for a study on beauty. In the feng shui of people, they are the milk crates stacked up for end tables.
- Sound. Through a recent partnership between Apple and Starbucks, the iPhone and iPod Touch will be able to download music from the Starbucks you're in. Say you're in a Starbucks and you like a song that is playing through an overhead speaker, it will show right up on your iPod so you can download it for $.99
This is great, except that every single song that I have ever heard in a Starbucks has been horrible.
I rate bad music in my head by 1 of 2 scales. Either there is the playcount scale or there is the timer scale. The basis of either of these is how long you can listen to a song or genre or artist before you want to run away.
Examples:
This scores in the "Less than 1 Playcount and Under 1 Minute total time" zone of the scale. This means that the maximum I can listen to this is less than one complete play through and less than one minute. Bad either way.
This, on the other hand, would be in the "5 to 6 consecutive plays or 25-30 minute range" before I was done.
Get the basics of the scale? I hope so.
Anything I've ever heard at Starbucks has been in the "Instantly Done" category. As in STOP. So why would I want to download these songs? Moreover, why would I pay for them?
- Touch. This is directed at one man in particular. If I knew his name, I'd tell you so you could warn your friends about him. I don't though, so this will have to do: tall, dorky, French, and has one very bad habit.
"Oh God, Bebo, just tell me what is his bad habit!" you may be saying right now. Calm down.
Let me put it this way: If you are in a line (or as the Brits call them, queues) and you drop something, don't just bend over and grab it. Turn 90 degrees, check to make sure that you won't rub your French ass on people, then bend down to grab whatever it is you may have dropped. In the very unlikely situation that you cannot turn 90 degrees, then at least bend at the knees and not the waist. You, my coffee-drinking French companion of Starbuckery, have been blessed. You have been given the gift of having more than one moving joint on your body. See diagram :
I feel that I don't put enough personal stuff on here so I am going to try to let my peeps in on my biz-nass. I don't want to lose my humorous posts though, so I will try and strike a balance. I will also try to post once a day. At least, I'll not go two consecutive days without some new stuff. Don't be afraid to comment, either. I'll do better to keep banter going on that front.
So it's about 3 AM early Sunday and I feel good. Kathryn and I had a wonderful day. She woke up at 10 when my alarm went off many times and I kept slapping my nightstand and phone and book and iPod and glasses and everything else except the alarm. I slept until much later. We watched some movies, ate some Thai food, and I drank Perrier from a can! Yes, I have developed a small obsession with Perrier. Am I a dirty Euro-trash mineral water drinking jackass? Not yet. I'm still too fat.
1) 43 Things. Basically you make a pledge to yourself to do 43 things. You don't have to pick 43, you can just do 5 or how many ever you wish. You can also learn a lot about different cool stuff. Fun.
2) Chicagoist. A cool little news roundup from my motherland (and the land of my mother!). Also links along the top to similar sites of the crappy places of the world. Houstonist? Shanghaiist? Come on now, people.
3) Shirt Woot. Like Woot, every day at midnight they roll out a new product. They are American Apparel shirts with really cool or funny designs on them. $10.
4) RCRD LBL. This is a new site that is kind of like a music discovery site. All free (and legal!) mp3's for download. I'll be checkin it out free-quently! HAHA get it? Free... BAH.
5) I Can Has Cheezburger. Confession. I think these are absolutely hysterical. And Kathryn hates me for it. They deal is there are these things called Lolcats. You either love them or hate them. Also there is a spin off of Lolcats is a Lolrus who is apparently in constant search for a bucket. God, I feel like a tool after talking about all that.
6) Concordia University. This is where I go to school. Well not the website. I go to the campus in downtown Montreal. What, did you think I go to school IN the website? What do I look like? The guy from Tron? Well if I did, it'd probably be less like the real Tron guy (source) and more like this fat Tron guy (source)
Ahh the open letter. Nothing says "I'm planning on insulting you in a humorous and anonymous way with a splash of sarcasm to boot" quite like it. Without further ado...
AN OPEN LETTER
...to people on public transportation everywhere - Smile. Just a little. Life isn't that bad, is it? Oh and don't worry about showering or being an odd Pakistani with bad teeth staring at me. That part is all good.
...to my iPod touch - Je t'aime.
...to my horrible picture-taking skills - Hey, you do well enough to get by. Don't let them get you down!
...to people I am forced to be in groups with this semester - Don't bother doing work. I'll get that all done. Oh and thank you for not speaking English. Our group speech will be much richer because of it. And also you can't say "Fucking time Horton" in the speech. Just say "Tim Horton's." Not time. Tim.
...to Ted Nugent - You still around? If so, then die. If not, then thank God.
...to French people - The glasses you wear are ridiculous. I have scoured the internet for a good example and there just isn't one in 0's and 1's yet. Y'all are just gonna have to believe me that French people wear the most nasty, busted-ass glasses. The only example I can give: French - (source) Note the two-pronged attack where the arms begin that is so prevalent. And where they converge, we have a nice little treat! Some lime-ass-green. English - (source) What? Where's the arms and colors and randomness? Just some glasses? Bah.
...to OJ - You murdered two people and got away with it! And now your dumb ass is going to jail for an autographed football.
...to the dancing Indian boy -
Keep fighting the good fight.
...to the guy on the couch in the video above - You are FREAKING everyone out.
...to the brains behind Chinese Buffet Fu Lam in Dollard-des-Ormeaux - Occasionally we all feel that tap on the shoulder and whisper in the ear that is a great idea. Is it God? Is it the ghost of Leonardo da Vinci? Is it sheer random dumb luck? Could be one; could be all. What matters most isn't the source of our muse, but how we use it to make the Earth a better place. And you, my Chinese friend(s), have done just that. You took the mundane broccoli and made it a medley of broccoli, odd juices, and random chunks of indiscernible meat. Where others see green beans, you have the stugots to say "those beans need to have vomit-inducing octopus tentacles in them!" Even though as a vegetarian I am completely disgusted, it isn't because you are vile beyond words. It is because I didn't think of it first.
Not really. That's seriously disgusting. (Side note. In the link for the buffet, why are there 4 stars for service? IT'S A BUFFET! Unless this is some kind of egotistical vote, I have lost hope in the internet and its ability to fairly and objectively rate a local dining establishment.)
...to the bastard - Put the damned wolf blanket back. Please?
So I'm officially a cool kid. I have a shiny new iPod Touch!
(source) It's basically the coolest thing I've ever had. While some may disagree (sorry Mickey) it's Apple's way of saying "Sorry other countries, but you won't be getting the iPhone. Here's the next best thing."
As to how I got it, let's just say that if anyone asks about me, my name is Julio and you haven't seen me for like, at LEAST 6 months. Not really but that sounds like I am a total badass.
That's all for now. I'm going to play with my new iPod for the next several hours and I'll try and post something more original and comical, hopefully with pictures, in the next day or so. I just don't want to wait too long in between posts or else people forget about me.
Until then, in honor of my girlfriend liking pierogies more than The Godfather :
This may come as a shock to most of you, but I am in fact a procrastinator. This will occasionally get in the way of me doing things that I should. Take tonight for example:
11:00 - "Goodnight Kathryn! I'm going to work on my paper! I was going to work on it this Sunday but I'll go ahead and get a nice head start! I'm GREAT and PRODUCTIVE!"
11:10 - "Now that my email is all checked and I got all my books and everything, I'll sit down and start-a-writin!"
11:15 - "You know what I haven't had in a while? Some nice tea! Well that's probably because I kind of hate hot tea, but now seems as good a time as any to start up a nice lil' cup, yeah?"
11:18 - "Damn that tea is hot! I'll sit here and blow on it for 3 minutes instead of writing while the law of thermodynamics about heat being pulled into the air and getting turned into unavailable energy and all that gets it's groove on. No I'll just blow on it. For the next 3 minutes."
11:21 - "I think it's cooled off enough now to get a little taste. Annnnnnnndddddd - wow hot tea is kinda nasty. It would be much more to my liking if it was coffee. Now it's a time to get my write on."
11:45 - "Damn Food Network sucks at night!"
12:03 - "I think I'll have some chocolate cake to get the ol' battery charged up for a little wright-fest. Wow Wright is the name of the people that first flew. I was just on an airplane."
12:10 - "Got my cake on, got my water on, now it's time to get my Herzberg on."
I haven't yet told you all about the topic of my paper. I shit you not - "How to Motivate Employees." Never say I don't understand irony.
Soon thereafter, I write the 3 page paper I have been dreading and stressing about for the last 7 weeks. An hour later, it was finished. I wonder what would happen if I just got shit done in the rest of my life? What would I be like?
I don't want this to be too negative or sound like I'm fuming about it or anything. I'm more disappointed.
Doesn't it seem like every time you have something good in your life some jackass comes and rips it away? I don't mean anything big, but the little things.
When you get a good spot on the bus, some old bastard hobbles over and waits for you to get up.
If you stay up late to watch Letterman, it's a rerun.
Or, say you build a Death Star. Some bastard comes along and blows it up. And maybe Darth Vader and the Emperor REALLY liked the Death Star. Like the two of them and their friends would laugh about it and then make plans to use it in all different sorts of ways. It wasn't evil. It was just funny.
Well the son of a bitch Skywalker that I estimate to live in about 1F came along and dropped a bomb on us all. Maybe it's because the winter, maybe because he read this and got embarrassed, but the reason is not important. This is what I came back to Montreal to find.
Yes the wolf blanket is gone. For all the uglyness it brought to that courtyard, it brought much more joy to our hearts and lives. I hope that Skywalker over there is using it at night and it is too warm and he gets really sweaty and can't find a comfortable temperature. That's the only justice I can think of.
So I've been home now for almost 24 hours, had 4 slices of pizza, drank 1 glass containing 4 shots of espresso with 6 ice cubes, redeemed 9 free songs on iTunes, and studied for 1 math test tomorrow. Numbers are beautiful aren't they?
The trip was many things, both awesome and sad. I will now give you my top and bottom things from my weekend (+ Monday) trip back to my hometown, the city of Chicago.
First the good things:
-I had the grand fortune to be with my sister on her birthday and at a time when she needed me. I love her dearly.
-My dog is still fat. This is good because she's so cute.
-I cooked for everyone for my sister's birthday and either everyone really liked it or they are good liars.
-My niece Nola is the most adorable baby imaginable. She weakens all around her to the most dribbling baby talk and games of peek-a-boo, and we are all more than happy to oblige.
-My brother is still skinner than me. And what's worse, he's pretty much lapping me with that. Yeah, it's cool though. It's nothing new.
-Leaving everyone sucks. It's sad, but I am blessed with a family and friends that understand that I'm following my heart and dreams in Montreal.
-Kathryn wasn't there. Everyone was bummed about that.
-I'm a jackass and deleted all of my music off my hard drive. Oh the difference between Ctrl-C and Ctrl-X.
-I had the grand misfortune of sitting one row in front of the single most annoying person in the history of the universe on the way to Chicago. Honestly he gave his friend sitting next to him as well as the rest of the fuselage a play-by-play of his boring existence. He was literally louder and more annoying than the jet engines of the Embraer ERJ 145 we were on. I hope wherever he is, he is miserable.
There are many more great things about going home. But now it's time to buckle down and get my skoolin dunn. There was one more thing about my trip that I don't know can be classified as good or bad. Unfortunately it will have to wait until tomorrow when I can get a picture of it.
Tonight we had the family over for my sister's birthday dinner and it was awesome. The only one missing was Kathryn. Tomorrow is hanging with the fat bastards of Chicago. We are going to eat mass amounts of FlatTop Grill.
I'm going to turn back the clocks and then go to sleep. Goodnight all.
So here I am, getting ready for the trip tomorrow, as well as my speech I have to do in class tomorrow morning, and I realize how much flying is a pain in the ass. I know that it makes the world a smaller place and a 14 hour car ride just became a "2" hour flight, but is it?
I have to be ready to go at about 4 and I won't get to my parents' house until after 9. But that also includes a time change (Eastern to Central). So it's a 6 hour trip. And what's more, I am worried about bringing my computer and external hard drive because I hate carrying-on and I've seen through the little windows at the airport how those beasts man-handle our luggage!
What is a man to do? I'll pack my crap and go wait in the long ass lines and take my shoes off and worry about how much our pilot has had to drink today and chew gum so my ears don't explode and then, finally, land and have a great weekend with my friends and family. And I love them all so much that I'd do it every day if I could. But I can't do that without, oh I don't know, maybe winning the lottery?
