Kev

Ange, Matt, Kieran, and Guinness are in town this week as part of Ange’s trip back to take her verbal internal medicine exam. This is the one that is like being put in a pressure cooker, while your head is placed in a vice and holes are drilled in your toes and filled with turpentine. I can understand it, I want people to be sure that the folsk being tested can deal with having someone’s life in their hands.

She passed, and spent a few days relaxing and they’re now visiting with a few folks. Today, the folk at lunch was me, and the whole Kealey family came to visit (Ange is my sister, in case you’re wondering who the hell I’m talking about). They broughtspicy meat and pickled eggplant on focaccia sammiches from La Bottega, along with some Orangina to wash it down. It was fantastic.

We got to shoot the breeze for a couple hours, and I got to hang with Kieran for a bit. He’s grown quite a bit since Christmas, and is quite the cutie with the perma-smile. Matt is obviously enjoying fatherhood, and everyone is doing well. We hung on the balcony, and snapped some pics while we enjoyed the 28-degree weather.

It was great to see them, I was sorry they had to leave.

So yesterday was my birthday. It’s the first year I’ve actually realised I’m getting older, in spite of that process starting on the original birthday a number of years back. I’ve been feeling my age the last little bit, and I think a lot of it has to do with the amount of time I’ve spent injured over the past year, and how it really knocked me off my running goals and hockey and ultimate leagues.

The past year started off as a tremendous challenge, where I was pretty miserable and made everyone else around me miserable (sorry Kris, let us never speak of that telephone company I worked for, again). It finished off as one of the best of my life. I had an amazing Christmas, which led into a new job that I really like, a vacation with an incredible person, and a kick-ass new place to live. Talk about finishing the year on a high!

In spite of all this I have, as mentioned, felt a little creaky lately, had not been looking forward to the day, and was a little down Sunday eve following a difficult weekend with my dad. He has retinitis pigmentosa, and his eyesight has deteriorated to the point where formerly simple tasks (like seeing the mate point of a joint) are very difficult. As a result he gets frustrated, and takes out the frustration on the folks he loves. It can be very draining, but what’s even worse was realizing that there’s nothing I can do to fix it. That’s life, and sometimes it’s very hard to accept that you can’t control everything, which in turn makes you (well me, anyways) sad.

Ok, I’m babbling. The point is, in spite of all the good, I was feeling a little down on the eve of the anniversary of the day some mailman’s (my dad blames him, anyways 😉 ) kid popped out, because of a few things beyond my control. At the end of the day yesterday, that had all changed.

Thanks to everyone who sent gifts, cards, e-cards, e-mail, and phoned wishing me a happy day. I was floored; it made me feel pretty damned good, and chased away a lot of the creakiness and sadness. You all reminded me life is good, and that I’m incredibly lucky. You’re all an amazing group of people, and I’m not sure what I’d do without you all.

I owe you all big, thanks for a Happy Birthday. I’m not feeling old, either.

Here’s to continuing the streak from last year, and keeping the little black cloud firmly in place over 483 Bay Street (sorry, Sam… well, not really… just pass it on to someone else as soon as you can).

Mike Hoye pointed this site out in the channel today. It’s a competition for pictures taken in the pursuit of science. The awards are sponsored out of Princeton University, and there are some truly beautiful pictures in there. Each picture has a brief writeup on what the picture is and, in a lot of cases, how and why it was taken.

Fascinating stuff, and fair warning, it will suck up some of your time once you start clicking. Some of my faves include The Rock Blooms, Colour Wheel, and Taconic Orogeny.

If you’re a regular reader of fark, you know that there are certain interweeb icons which continue to pop up time and again. In one of the daily photoshop competitions, someone put together a pic which (I think) defines fark and its sense of humour pretty concisely. That picture is here, and it’s awesome. If you don’t read fark, you probably won’t get it. That’s for the best.

Tonight marked the first BBQ at the new pad. It was seventeen degrees, not a cloud in the sky, and no wind. The sun was setting, and it was just a perfect eve for a q.

I made a maple-ginger-beer marinade for some chicken breasts, and prepared some steamed broccoli with lemon butter and some “special” baked potatoes. To accompany dinner, I had a Calama Merlot (from Chile, only $9.60 at the LCBO) which was excellent. I sat on my deck and just kinda took everything in. People were out on the streets, neighbours were BBQ-ing, kids were two-wheeling. It was peaceful, it was comfortable, it was good.

This is why I moved.

So after watching the Serenity trailer a few times last week, I wanted to know what track was playing as River started to kick a little ass. After some hunting, I discovered that it was called Skylight, from Overseer. With two solid tracks (the other coming from SSX3: Accessory to Boarder), I’m going to have to keep an eye out for some more of his stuff. The track is available on the Blade: Trinity soundtrack, and the rest of the soundtrack isn’t half bad, either.

Coop, I have found myself playing it a number of times the last few days, too.

J had a pretty cool idea while playing with Google maps. This is a shameless copy of that idea, plus just a wee bit of verbosity.

It’s kinda cool—yet ridiculous—when I look back at all the different places I’ve lived in. From the start of writing this post, its turned from a “hey, look at all the places I’ve lived” to “a brief history of kev”. Funny how that works.

This post is crazy long, so to see the rest, click the “more…” below.

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So I fired iTunes up earlier this aft and just hit play. No playlists, no party shuffle, no filtering of any kind. Just picked a spot, and hit play. Everything was fine until it hit Alanis – Now is the Time. This is the CD she made when she was annoying all of us before Rough Rider games at Landsdowne Park and Ottawa 67’s games.

It’s bad. It’s really bad. She kinda screeches while trying to be a pop star. And yet, I listened to the whole thing. I still think it’s pretty awful. I can’t bring myself to hit delete though. What’s wrong with me? I have a lot of crap music in my collection. That one ranks pretty high up there. If anyone ever offers it to you, please decline.

Evan is one of the folks who make up pintday.org. His writing style is humorous, and I wish I had one-tenth of his style and flair. Even if you don’t agree with everything he writes-which is pretty much guaranteed-you will enjoy reading it.

For the last little while, Ev’s been completing the Architecture program at Dal. We’re not sure why, but I understand it has something to do with tech being a dead end. He’s posted his thesis online, and it’s a great read. He weaves the history of beer with folklore, and puts forth a pretty compelling argument to turn breweries into something that match the history and message brewers give when they talk about their craft.

It provides some interesting insight into the process, and provides his view of how you’d meld the craft and the community the craft is performed in without losing either of the two. It’s the first time I’ve ever read an architectural document of any kind, and it covers a lot of ground on the thought process behind a design project. It also involves beer, so it’s hard to wrong with that in my books.

A good read. Recommended. No, really, I’m saying this about a thesis.