I had a busy day today, and I got a lot done. I got up around 10am and did a one kilometre swim followed by breakfast and a shower. The house has been a bit dirty lately so I then clean for like 2 hours, dusting and vacuuming and fixing up the kitchen a bunch. Also did 4 loads of laundry. I then walked almost to Bloor to get a haircut, then back to the Eaton's centre to get some new shorts for summer (because my old ones were all from the time when I was 30 pounds heavier -- I'd just been wearing too big shorts the last year or two). I also looked in some other stores and hit up MEC to get some new clothes for climbing. I got home, had some supper and wrote some emails, then installed the new Ubuntu on my laptop. Finally I have Linux again. I had to delay that installation because of a bug with my laptop model, but that is fixed with the latest release.

Now it's late, or it feels late because I'm tired, so I'm going to go to bed. Tomorrow I think I'll relax a bit and read or something.

Tonight I went with Matt and Adrienne to Ghandi Cuisine for supper. They claim to have "the best roti in Toronto" and I agree that it was really damn good. It's hard to judge this though because there is Indian style roti and Caribbean style roti. Both are curry based but they are fairly different tasting. Anyway, I like both. I had the butter chicken roti and it was really yummy. The bread was fresh made when we arrived and the curry was super spicy (even though I only got "medium" spicy level). I like it when tasty food is also so spicy that it makes my ears sweat.

I walk by the Hummingbird Centre for the Performing Arts every morning on my way to work and they always have a billboard or two advertising upcoming shows and such. Today was new billboard day (or maybe it was yesterday, I only see it on my way to work). The new billboard proclaims the new show to be "So hot it probably contributes to global warming!"

I know that it can be a good marketing idea to latch your product on to current events/issues that are popular with lots of people. And global warming is definitely a big issue right now. But it seems wrong to me to exploit an issue like that for marketing purposes.

The other problem I have with this is that it's not very clever. I mean, if you're going to sell out global warming at least do it in an amusing manner. At face value the statement is only amusing for a couple seconds, and not very amusing at that. There is the possibility that the statement is in fact much deeper and subtle though. The word "probably" in the tag line may be just hedging, but it could also be a sly reference to the dispute about whether or not global warming is caused by the actions of people, or whether it is a natural phenomenon. However I sincerely doubt the marketing people thought of this. I think they just didn't want to say that the play DOES contribute, since that would turn it into a negative, while saying "probably" implies a more joking tone.

Which leads to my final point. I find that in my writing and talking I often use words like "probably" or "possibly" and others that leave wiggle room in the interpretation of my communications. I don't like when other people do this so I'm going to try to stop doing it myself. If you aren't sure about something, then I think you should say that you are not sure and thus cannot make a definitive comment. It is still fine to communicate any information you have, but to say something like "X is PROBABLY a result of Y" is about as useful as saying nothing at all. Instead it would be better to say that "things A and B relate X to Y but I do not no if X is a result of Y" and then allow the person you are communicating with to make up their own mind. However, it is hard to change the way you communicate overnight, and of course I answer to no one here, so I'll write however I want. I only said I'd TRY to change, heehee. :)

Um...wow, that got a bit long and random. Maybe I shouldn't read signs as I walk to work and apply my mind to something useful.

I lost the will to post for a while, but it's come back now, so here I am.

This weekend was pretty awesome. I went to Waterloo to visit Mike after his last exam ever. He had a party at his rez room and Alex and Keizo were there too (along with a bunch of other people I was less familiar with). It was fun and after hanging out till about 3am we went to get some Campus Pizza. I miss Campus Pizza a lot! There's nothing better at 3am. I also had a Cadbury Creme Egg, for like the first time in 5 years or something. It wasn't bad, apparently I've been eating them "wrong" and that's why I thought I didn't like them.

On Saturday Alex and I helped Mike pack up the last of his stuff (which was more than expected, but we were silly for expecting less). Then we went to the Tea shop (another legendary thing I miss from Waterloo) and got some food and drink. It was a bit cold though because they had the AC on (already!!) so we went over to William's and sat on the patio for an hour and a half. One sunburned arm later I was very happy and sleepy, so we got in the car and headed for London.

Upon arriving in London we stopped at my mom's place for a bit, then to Mike's parents for some truly amazing, home made key lime pie. Absolutely delicious!! It was for Mike's birthday since he'll be somewhere in Italy on the actual day.

On Sunday I met up with Mike and his parents again to walk through Gibbon's park to the Covent Garden market. It was really nice walking along the river and it's always fun to sit at the market and just chat/relax for a couple hours. After the market we went to Novack's and then visited with Alex's mom for a bit at her Garden centre. Then I got on a train and headed back to Toronto.

So basically this was a super chill, super relaxing weekend, that was perfect in every way. Happy!

For some glorious reason, my company observes Easter Monday in addition to Good Friday, so this was a four day weekend for me. I'm not questioning this because this had to have been the most relaxing weekend I've had in a while. I went home to London for the first time in like 2.5 months, and I basically just sat around the whole time. I ate lots of good food, got a bunch of chocolate and read a bunch of Ayn Rand's, The Fountainhead. I also watched The Departed and the newest episode of the Office (finally!). Finally I got an orchid from my mom for Easter/house warming. With this addition, my plant collection has doubled in size! Thanks mom!

Orchid, Yellow

Matt has a bunch of the old James Bond movies on DVD, so tonight we watched Octopussy and it was pretty glorious. In fact I'd have to say they packed in more ridiculous things than I've ever seen in a single Bond movie (thus making it the best ever). I regret not taking notes as we watched it, because I can't remember them all now. But I will say this, the power of the circus is not one to underestimated. I also was not aware that it was possible to have a knife fight on the wing of a flying plane.

Saturday we went up to a Portuguese bakery to get donuts, although they were more like elephant ears or beaver tails or whatever. But they were better than those, more dough, and even more deep fried. We also went to a random Italian store and I bought some random pasta. That night I stewed some tomatos and peppers and other stuff down into a really yummy sauce. I added some fresh chili peppers as well, probably a bit too many because it was sooooo spicy. Very tasty though, I love making sauce from scratch.

Today I went with work people to go climbing at "Of Rock and Chalk" up near Newmarket again. It was not bad, but they had like three simultaneous birthday parties going on, so it was loud and obnoxious and sticky with children. Not very conducive to a good climbing experience.

I like reading blogs. For the most part I read the blogs of my friends, but they have become fairly reticent of late (thank you, Word of the Day). So, I've been forced to branch out into reading the blogs of strangers. It's more interesting than I thought it would be because some are extremely well written and hilarious. Now I'm not saying that my friends are illiterate shut-ins, but none of them are English majors and a lot of them are like me, just blogging about what happens to them. Which is exactly what I want from my friends, so that I can keep up with them. So yeah, my friends are awesome. But their blogs fill a different purpose for me than the random Internet blogs.

I've added two such random blogs to my links page, although currently one is not available to the public (she gets paranoid sometimes and makes the blog private for a week or two). The available blog [redacted] is incredibly amusing. I just caught up on the archives tonight and this will definitely be one I follow for a while. It may be a bit offensive, but only if you're offended by inappropriate and occasionally crude remarks about various and non-specific groups of people, activities, world events or New York City.

I'd like some more random blogs to read but haven't found any others yet. If anyone has a good one let me know.

To complete the title of my post, I want to buy more plants for my house and possibly my desk at work (although work decorations are an area I'm extremely lacking in so that will be harder). This weekend Matt wanted to buy a cactus so I went with him to a random store that sells plants on Queen street. I was hoping to get an orchid because, if I had to pick a favourite flower, that would be it. Anyway, the orchids at the place looked pretty sickly, so I got a cactus like Matt. The one I picked appeared to be in flower as it had 3 nice looking pink flowers growing from the stalks. I was happy and took it home. However, upon closer inspection of said cactus I noticed what looked like hot glue around the base of the flowers. Yep, the place glued what I now realize are paper flowers to the cactus. Very disappointed, I ripped them off and threw them out because otherwise the cactus would be a plant of lies, and no one likes lying plants. Cactii have a hard enough time being liked as it is being covered in prickly things. They should at least be honest. Maybe I'll refrain from watering it for 6 or 8 months and then give it a bunch all at once to encourage it to flower. That's how it works in the desert right?

I recently posted that I didn't think I'd be able to handle the stress of playing poker for real money. Well I played for cash last night with Alex and a bunch of his roommate's friends. Turns out I was wrong and I handled the stress just fine. I think I'll go buy myself something nice.

Yesterday morning I swam a kilometre right after getting up. Today I went climbing hard for two and a half hours. The result is that I'm incredibly sore, but my brain is alert and happy. I've been less than happy lately due to a combination of things, so this is a nice pick me up. It's amusing because I'm really just tricking my brain with a natural drug, id est, endorphin.

Climbing was fun today because I went and bought new climbing shoes this morning (I think the endorphins are also increasing my desire to be a consumer). They're more technical shoes that give me more control and precision on extremely small foot holds. The translation of that is they smash my toes all together and bend my foot so that all the weight is focused on the big toe. So right now, my feet hurt, but I'll get used to them and they'll shape to my foot a bit after a few outings. They're not really meant to be comfortable. They do in fact improve my climbing though so I'm happy I got them.

I finished watching the Office (up to the last aired episode) and I can't wait for the next new one. I also watched Thank You for Smoking with Jen on Saturday and it was pretty amusing and thought provoking at the same time. I do recommend.

We (nine of the usual peoples), went to see Fido tonight and everyone loved it! I'm glad that my over hyping was completely justified. I guess it's pretty hard not to love a Canadian zombie comedy.

After the movie we went back to Chris' place and played Wii until about 10 minutes ago (living in the same building makes getting home pretty quick). That was fun like always and I totally destroyed Chris in Tennis.

Now, instead of going to bed, I'm going to go Mike Jutan style for the rest of the evening and watch the last three episodes of the Office. The show just keeps getting better and better and I'm glad I decided to watch it. Too bad I'll be all out of episodes soon though.