Overheard at "The Ship"

I went down to The Ship for happy hour yesterday where I overheard this little gem:
"How was your week?"
"Well, the Prime Minister of Canada isn't spanking me with a bible, but aside from that, not bad"

Later on, I went out to the Rose & Thistle to hear the first set of Blair Harvey & The Dregs. Blair was in fine form, as usual, howling and wailing away on the tiny stage. I ducked out in the break and went down to CBTG's (if the original CBGB stands for Country Bluegrass Blues - what does CBTG stand for?) to see if anything good was playing. Unfortunately, I was sucked in by the poster on the door which promised "non-stop pounding from 11 till close" by some band called Queen's Maid. If it weren't for the beer being sold, I could have sworn that I'd walked into an all-ages show. The band had to be 19 at the maximum, and were either missing an amp (or two), or had been told by the management (or their parents) that they couldn't turn the volume up. They were so damn quiet (considering they were playing Zeppelin, Idol and a few others that they'd massacred into oblivion) that I could have a normal conversation in the back of the bar. At one point, the lead singer stopped playing and thanked someone named Erica for something. I didn't catch what it was for as I was laughing too hard, thinking that he was going to go on to thank "my mother for driving us down here in the mini-van." It was that kind of show. I got a couple of photos to comemorate the event and I got the hell out of there.

Went over to Skylarkd's blog this morning while taking a break from studying piracy. She had this amazing animated avatar on her site. So, of course, you know I had to get one too....

Oh Crap! It''s "Delurking Week"

Oh crap...it's "delurking week" and I had to find out from someone else.

Snow and Classes...Wheee!

This post head is like that old internet video about the squirrel (WHEEE!), except instead of "gonads and strife" it's snow and classes. It has at last, snowed! And we are in for more of it tomorrow. And I've dropped one of my distance classes already. 3 days into the new semester and I'm already sick of it. The main problem with this distance class, is that there is no textbook and the powerpoint (the saving grace of pathetic teachers) slides that are supposed to help me are next to useless. So I've dropped it and hopefully in the fall, someone more qualified (or enthusiastic) is teaching it.
And onto the snow! I've noticed looking out my kitchen window that someone has already shovelled the walk! I do like the included snow clearing in this place, after the herculean snow clearing at my last place.
Up at MI the other day, the instructor for my stability class was reading the attendance list, when I heard a familiar name, and sitting behind me was a woman, that had sailed on the Picton Castle with me! I haven't seen her in 8 years. Needless to say (seeing as the class was only about 20 minutes long) we got the hell out of there and went to The Ship to catch up on history over some India beer.

First day of school.

My laptop decided that last night would be a good time for it to "up and die" on me. Actually it was probably my fault, as I was in the middle of my yearly "re-format the hard-drive and re-install windows" event. Apparently my restore disks are slightly corrupted (or maybe there is some sort of "you can only do this 3 times and then you should buy a new computer" code written into the operating system), or the system just doesn't like being erased and re-installed. Anyrate, I am now on the 4th installation of windows and at last it seems stable. It was a bit of a hassle that I didn't need on the night before school.
School has begun again! I saw a few familiar faces, but no one that I knew from my classes last year. I've only got the one class at MUN this year(1st year French), but my afternoons look to be pretty busy until spring break, with 3 hours per day of Stability up at the Marine Institute. People have been busy signing on to the distance education sites and introducing themselves. As soon as I come up with something interesting to say, I'll have to do the same.
The great unpacking is going well...well at least it's not totally stagnating. I put together a set of shelves and the kitchen table and tomorrow morning I hope to put together the big set of shelves and get the rest of the books out of their boxes.
I apologize to everyone whose link I deleted from the sidebar when I deleted the template. I've been hesitant to put them back up as I keep mulling over taking this blog to a different host. Stay tuned to this space for more news...

Setting Up

I'm now on my 3rd official day in new apt! It's gone from this:

to this:

The kitchen is put away, and semi-organized, the storage room is put away and semi-organized, the bedroom is a disaster, the bathroom is a disaster, the living room is half a disaster, and the dining room is still full of boxes, chairs and un-assembled IKEA shelves. Gromit has been set up in the kitchen (Lord of all he surveys), and I'm slowly taming the mess in the other rooms. At least I can cook for myself, and don't need to rely on take-out or friends to feed me. Self-reliance is very important. After months at sea, having my own place seems to be taking top priority over everything else. Even though, I know it's going to take weeks to get everything sorted out and put away, I can't seem to stop obsessing over the apartment. On a brighter note, school starts tomorrow and will give me something new to obsess over. But I did go see the professor who will be grading my technical report and she likes my topic, and suggested some ways that I might go about doing it, so I'm hopeful that the actual writing (which I've been dreading for months) won't be too bad.

New Year, New Apt, New Attitude (?), New Blog...

It's a brand New Year!:

1. Trashed the old template: Lost the links, the webcam, and the site meter. Feeling like I should start over with the blogging thing. Will try to blog more often and say something worth reading. More stuff, less gromit?
2. Most excellent new apt in St. John's: out of rabbittown, into the upscale part of town. close to downtown still (sort of halfway between the Ship and MUN), and close enough to the funky DVD store and still get the partridgeberry icecream at MooMoo's. It's good to have priorities in life.
3. Gonna be the public transportation King of St. John's this year. Jeep died an untimely death (okay, helped considerably by failing safety inspection), thankfully in a garage and not on the open road. Although would be nice to have car if only to take advantage of included snowclearing/plowing service at the new apt.
   
4. Got all my stuff in 1 place finally!! Looking forward to unpacking and cataloguing extensive book and DVD collection. Then to doing lots of baking and cooking utilizing new present from the folks.
5. School: 2 part thesis left to write (and taking French, just because I can) and feeling galvanised to get writing. Okay mainly to get done, so I can get out of debt, and get on with life.
6. More patience, less stress. More 'go with the flow' and less 'in control.' More humble, less arrogant. More exercise, less sloth. More Newfoundland, less Canada.