I helped Chris move into my building this morning! I really liked his apartment too. I'm the type of person who likes to see apartments and is constantly curious about what they're like inside. I always try to peak in to my neighbours apartments when they open the door.

There were standard moving prizes after we had finished and I won the award for "Best Orbital Fortress of Doom." I'm so proud of myself!

Chris also has a Wii so we played a bit before I left. I'm not surprised that it is destroying the PS3 in the market, it was pretty legendary.

TV update! Last night was the final episode of The OC, which I have faithfully watched every week since it returned from hiatus after that first summer. It used to be an awesome guilty pleasure, but the last couple seasons it's been a bit...meh. They did have some good episodes earlier this season, but it faltered again at the end. I imagine that might be related to having to cram an ending in at the last minute (the cancellation wasn't definite until after this season had started airing). The final episode was fairly amusing, and it had a great ending, until they decided to tack on a 2 minute "5-10 years later segment" that showed everyone all happy and good. So lame. Have to get my guilty enjoyment from Grey's Anatomy now.

I've also been watching a bunch of Arrested Development (almost done season 2) and I can't believe I waited so long to do that. It's hilarious and brilliant! I also will be watching the US version of The Office soon, because Mike gave me a bunch of them and it seems to also be quite classic. It's nice that in the whole pile of crap that is TV there are still some truly awesome shows.

As far as sports on TV goes I watched more than normal recently (ie. more than nothing). I watched both the Superbowl and the Daytona 500, in high definition! Both events were slightly food motivated (that which was being served to me while I watched) but they were both still fun on their own.

I bought a laptop! Finally! I've been wanting one for a long time now, and I feel I've shown a good amount of restraint waiting as long as I have. This is my first new computer since I bought the one I took to university...FIVE AND A HALF years ago! For someone in CS that is pretty crazy. Matt bought 2 other computers since his first and he is starting to think about another now. The laptop is just a cheap Dell 640m, but money goes a lot further with computers now than it used to. It has a Core 2 Duo at 1.66GHz and 1GB of RAM. Just integrated video, but I wasn't planning on doing graphics stuff on it. I bought a cheap laptop on purpose because I still intend on building a new desktop in a year or so. It's so nice to have a laptop!

Last weekend was Rob's birthday party and it was super fun. I got him a bag of forbidden rice for his birthday. It comes from China and according to legend was only allowed to be eaten by the Emperor or those who he chose to allow (ie. concubines). We decided that Rob was not the emperor so he must have been a concubine. Good times! The party had lots of people and lots of cake but I didn't end up eating enough which may have been a mistake.

Before the party a bunch of us went with Rob to the Bier Markt for supper. The food was pretty expensive, but soooooooo good. I had veal schnitzel with these tasty spiced garlic mashed potatos and some special tomato sauce. I also had a couple unique beers, although I don't remember the names of either of them. One had a 10% alcohol content though and they were both pretty good.

Tonight I made tuna stir fry with cabbage, broccoli and carrots with soy sauce and lemon juice. It's the second time I've made it and it's really good. It is also super fast to make so I think I'll probably make it more often. In other tasty food news, I went with Mike to Trimurti on Monday and to Terroni on Tuesday for wing night. I must say I'm a fan of awesome food.

Matt and I bought a domain and webhosting from Dreamhost! It means that when the University deactivates my account this fall my blog will continue to exist! Phew! The world almost lost a staple of modern literature. Narrowly avoided cultural and social collapse. Good thing I got that domain. Right.

Anyway, the new official address of this blog is http://matter.sawkmonkey.com and you should update your bookmarks before the Fall if you don't want to be confused when my University account goes away. We got the domain www.sawkmonkey.com and it comes with unlimited subdomains so if anyone needs a quick hosting of something just ask.

In the near term I also intend to change a bunch of things around here and get a new look and layout and backend and everything.

I've been climbing a bit more lately. I got out this past weekend and again tonight and I will be going again this weekend at some point. I'm really progressing and it's pretty cool. It's nice to be able to do some harder climbs without struggling for half an hour. I also think it is improving my strength, but I don't notice anymore because I'm using more technique instead of just brute force arm work. I'm quite happy with how it's going. Now I just need to get some of my friends out so that I have more climbing partners.

Wing night was super tasty/random last night. We went to the Balkan Bistro, which is a family-run Turkish restaurant near Baldwin. It was just a little place (and there were 10 of us) but it was super cozy and the family was really friendly. The food (the important bit) was spectacular. I had something that I don't remember the name of, but it had veal, tomato sauce, eggplant puree and lots of random spices. Sooooo good. Every meal came with potatos, rice, something that I couldn't identify and a really nice salad. That is, the meals were way too much food (although I'm not really complaining). Jen and Matt got veal schnitzel and Rob got these really good pork dumplings that came in a creamy yogurt based sauce. Toni and Dave got this really interesting mix of ground beef and rice battered in an crispy egg mixture. I got to try them all and they were all really good. My favourite was definitely the dumplings though.

Tonight was climbing as usual and I had a really good night. I climbed a higher difficulty than ever before and I also climbed a couple from the difficulty immediately below much better than usual.

I collect the Simpsons on DVD (along with lots of other shows, but this story is about the Simpsons). They recently began releasing "special edition" versions of the box sets where the box is shaped like the head of one of the characters. Now this new box is kinda cool, but it looks nothing like the previous box sets and as such doesn't look right on the shelf with the others. Yes this is very anal retentive, but I can't help it. They should all look the same! Season 6 was the first one with the new box. Seasons 7 through 9 also have a new box, but you can still get the same thing in a normal style box as well. It's just season 6 that you can't get in a normal box.

So today I resigned myself to the fact that one box would look weird and picked up season 6 using a gift card from Christmas. I got home and opened it up, silently cursing the stupid non-matching box. But when I looked inside, there was a slip of paper advertising a website that lets you order a standard box for season 6!!!! So cool!!! I went to the website and all it costs is shipping and handling. So I'm ordering it right away. The order form even had a place to indicate your reason for wanting a new box, and one of the reasons was "Anal Retentive (box must be identical)." I totally picked that option.

So this has made me happy for the rest of the day, not just because my properly matching box needs have been fulfilled, but because someone out in the world acknoweldged my exact opinion and has done something to accomodate it. Thank you, awesome anal-retentive person, whoever you are.

I forgot to mention something from the New Year's party. Jen got Reena a roll of yellow duct tape (awesome!) and one of our guests made a frisbee out of it and some of my pennies. Here's an in flight picture!

Frisbee in flight!

So I held a New Year's party this year at our place here in Toronto and it went really well. We had around 20 people show up for at least part of the evening and everyone seemed to have a good time. It felt good to do it because I've always had New Year's celebrations with my friends at my house in the past, especially in high school. It was nice to do it again.

Also, although it is a lot of hassle and stress, I kinda enjoy throwing parties. The only thing I don't like is how you can't relax as much at your own party. It's neat to put it together and see everyone have a good time though.

Here are some amusing picture from the evening:

Alex and Andrew

Mike being crazy

Me in my fancy new shirt

A bunch of people, and Rob

Matt and Mike

Jen with cheese fudge

Me, Jen, Lisa, Brian

Tim and Andrew

Rob falling off a chair

Will

Rob has created a mini-blog for the Germany trip that goes into a bit more detail on some things. Take a look!