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The optometrist appointment was a success.  It turns out that I can still read the letters on the board at 20/20 so he told me I have nothing to worry about.  It turns out that I used to have Superman vision (as he called it) after the surgery years ago.

That being said, he did give me a very light prescription in case I wanted to wear glasses while driving.  Other than that, he said I have normal vision and shouldn’t be worried about it.  He did recommend that I start coming in every two years for a checkup rather than waiting the eight years I did before.  😉

I’m stoked that there is nothing overly wrong with my eyesight but at the same time, it is odd that my eyesight has fallen from Superman proportions to normal Clark Kent vision.  The surgeons did say that over time, my eyesight would get worse with age which is something they can’t prevent.  But it’s strange to think that my eyes would degrade in an eight year span when I am still fairly young.

Either way, this is the body that I’ve been given and I’m glad that I still have 20/20 vision and I’ll start looking for a pair of glasses.  I believe Dad once said I can get a really cheap pair at the Pharmacy instead of buying some at the optometrist.

In other news, I think I have sworn off fish and chips for awhile.  I went to the Aulde Dubliner for Trish’s birthday dinner and I felt extremely full after the fish and chips last night.  It probably didn’t help that there were some nachos at the table beforehand.  But I really am not impressed with the fish and chips at any establishment lately…I prefer my fish in one giant chunk…as in, no batter.  Nowadays, it seems like there is 80% batter and 20% fish.  Ah well.  Perhaps I will stick with the wrap next time.

Sue Johanson is finally retiring and I say it’s well deserved!

For those of you who are not familiar with Sue Johanson, she had a call-in TV show back when I was a teenager (and perhaps back when YOU were a teenager) called the Sunday Night Sex Show.  It was quite entertaining.  I still remember when a bunch of us were sitting downstairs in my parents basement and we were flicking through the TV channels and stumbled upon this fairly older woman talking about sex.  To a teenager, it was mindblowingly hilarious but at the same time, this probably educated a lot of us in matters we were too afraid to talk/ask about.

Everyone’s favourite part of the show was probably her toy chest (although Wikipedia says it’s called her “Hot Stuff Bag”…I don’t remember that) but I personally loved when she would pull out these little wooden figures (like the ones artists use to pose into different positions) and she would….pose them into different positions!  Hilarious.

My fondest memory of Sue Johanson is when we were watching it one night and she was talking about activities you can do in the bedroom and she had this one thing she called “Hide the Weenie.”  We were all bewildered and wondered what this was all about.  A year later, Sue Johanson made her way to Queen’s University for a Question/Answer session and Eric rushed over to the room and asked her the question and he shared the answer with us the next time we all got together.  I always have a good laugh when thinking about Eric rushing over to ask that question.

I actually saw Sue Johanson on The Hour a few months ago and it was quite entertaining.  However, I’m pretty sure she mentioned that she was only airing her show in the United States now as she felt that Canadians had enough sex education over the past generation and that there was a severe lack of it in our neighbours to the South.

That being said, if you want to see her final show ever, it is airing this coming May 11 (day before Mother’s Day people!).  I don’t know if Canadians can still get the show anywhere or not, but if we can, please let us know!

Thanks to Sue for all the great years of educating people on sex.

Exuberant thanks goes to James for passing on this most excellent website concerning moustaches in the nineteenth century.  This reminds me that my annual moustache growing should be coming up soon to prepare for the month of August.

http://mustachesofthenineteenthcentury.blogspot.com/

I recently stumbled across Natalia Yanchak’s blog  which makes for some great reading…she is the keyboardist of The Dears (band out of Montreal whose album No Cities Left is truly a masterpiece and after an entire year of listening to it, I still don’t get tired of it.  It is on my list of albums to bring to the island with me).

When I was adding her blog to my blogfeed, I decided to finally bite the bullet and clean up the folder full of blogs which haven’t been updated in six months.  I felt bad doing so…I really enjoy reading my friend’s blogs but they must have either moved on completely to Facebook or have lost interest in the self-indulgent ways of updating thyself through the Internet.  Ah well.  I’ve left a few of them in the blog folder in hopes that I will see an update once in awhile, but have deleted the others.  So if you are one of my friends and decide to update your blog and you haven’t done so in the past six months, drop me a line saying there’s a new entry!  I’m not going to bother looking for it otherwise unfortunately.

Ah, blogging.  I wield so much power of thinking so many people read my blog and I can control your thought patterns eventually with my swaying words (“Support artists…think for thyself…Smashing Pumpkins forever…”) like a serpent you see in an Indiana Jones flick which can hypnotize the bejeezus out of you.

I’m heading to the optometrist in an hour.  That’s right…the laser eye surgery may have a finite lifespan. Too bad I was young and foolish and never had yearly checkups or else it may have actually been covered under warranty.  Ah well, I’m due for a nice pair of glasses right about now anyhow.  Perhaps some Buddy Holly?

Yesterday I piled all my old textbooks (well not the ones from college!) into my backpack and lugged them with me all day so that I could bring them to the University book store.  They offer a buy-back program and I figured there were a few (read: most of them) textbooks that I would never crack open ever again.

I was thinking I would get some half decent coin back for these textbooks but out of ten of them, I only sold two of them; one sold for $22 and the other sold for a whopping $2!  There as also another book that would have sold for $1 but I enjoyed it so I figured the least I could do is keep it.  The rest of them were not wanted as a buy-back (as in there was already a newer version available or people simply didn’t want them).

I must admit that I was disappointed that they couldn’t take most of my textbook and I had to haul them back home with me.  My next step will be to post them up on the University website in case a student wants an old version of a textbook.

Mental Note: If you want to sell your textbooks, it’s best to sell it as soon as you are done with it, otherwise there may be a new version that is released in the meantime.

IMG_1715, originally uploaded by palm0014.

*please note that the photo is from Trish’s upcoming album “Out of The Closet”

Last year, the Heart and Crown graced Trish’s birthday. This year…we seek out burgers tonight. Yum!

There’s nothing more I can say about Trish…she’s great, she’s beautiful, she’s caring and she digs sci-fi TV shows, the Blues and Smurfs. She also has a great blog of her own where she provides advice to everyone: http://evilsmurfette.blogspot.com/

Take a trip through Memory Lane to see what happened in years gone by around her birthday:
http://palmer.grumpster.com/?p=656
http://palmer.grumpster.com/?p=299

Other than that, all I can say is that I hope you have an amazing birthday tonight and I want to let you know that you’ll never get another gift from me that is cooler than the Chuck Norris photograph. I’m just saying that so you don’t get your hopes up tonight.

In a grand upset which turned over in my favour, REO Speedwagon and Styx have both bowed out of coming to Ottawa for the rescheduled date to see Def Leppard.  Opening for Def Leppard is now…BILLY IDOL!  Holy mackerel, this is amazing.  I am stoked.  White Wedding, Rebel Yell…you can’t go wrong.

– If you’ve never heard of Joss Whedon before, he is the creator of such great TV shows as Buffy The Vampire Slayer (never seen it), Angel (never seen it), Firefly/Serenity (seen it, LOVED it) and more recently he wrote 25 issues of an ongoing X-Men comic.  I recently started reading this series after hearing amazing things about it and I definitely have not been disappointed.  It’s actually the first time in a long time where I was shocked by a few things happening in the pages.  The only other series that really grips me like this is Fables.  If you are a fan of the X-Men and have given up on the comics for a long time, pick up the first run of Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon and Joe Cassady.  You will never be disappoitned.

– Last night Vero and I went to play squash for the first time.  Maren was gracious enough to be our instructor for the evening.  Unfortunately for me, I had forgot to bring the racket I have recently acquired from Claude (thanks mate!) but Maren had a spare one anyhow.

I would like to think that my trips to the gym have prepared me physically for such an endeavour.  While I was not really out of breath persay, my ass was definitely hurting after lunging every which way for this tiny black ball.  I had never felt such strain on my lower side muscles since last year when I was laying interlocking brick with Dad and you always had to bend over.

In the end, it wasn’t too bad and Vero and I really enjoyed playing it and look forward to doing so in the future.  We got the gist of the game down and Maren was a wonderful mentor as she went easy on us and didn’t inundate us with too much strategy.  She pointed out a few key spots to stand around, how we should swing and the rules of the game.  It was tons of fun and Maren said that since it’s the summer, there usually aren’t that many people using the courts so you can play for quite awhile without anyone interrupting you.  It’s also included in our gym membership to the Good Life Fitness Club and the only downfall is the fact that it is across town but that’s a minor point.

Thanks to Maren for showing us the ropes and we’ll definitely be playing against you in the near future!  (Like tomorrow.  Be there.)

– Underneath the ‘When it rains, it pours’ category, Vero has had a slew of interviews and decisions to make over the past few weeks and it paid off in spades yesterday when she went to see her old boss at Army News (an internal news network for the Canadian Forces) and she is now the Director of…something…Video Production perhaps?  Either way, she is pretty pumped about it and I am pumped for her.  This is quite the accomplishment considering the last time she worked for them was for a four-month long co-op term.  She really enjoyed her time there and looks forward to working with them again.  She begins work on June 2 and has a three month contract.  As they are affiliated with the government, the only way she can get a full-time position is to compete for the job which I’m assuming will happen in the future.  Either way, it’s been a long time coming but now we can all call Vero – Madame Director!  Félicitations!

I won an incredible bet the other night while Trish, Mike and I were over at Krista’s.  The girls were watching something on TV and I pointed out some guy on a commercial for another show and I said “Hey, that guy used to be in Dawson’s Creek.”  Krista denied my claim which became pretty heated and before you knew it, the gloves were off and the betting was beginning.

I knew I was 100% right so I was pretty imaginative in my betting.  I forget what I laid down in the process but it doesn’t matter as I won the bet.

In the end, I am receiving one case of beer as well as one lunch per week for the next FIVE YEARS while we are working in the same building.

Krista knows that I am probably moving to another building deeper into Gatineau in the next two months so she has nothing really to worry about but I made sure to throw in the next five years as part of the bet since you never know where our paths will cross again.

Betting makes for a wonderful time.  I cannot wait to see what she brings me as she usually has some great leftovers.