We all know the routine by now. Stop blogging for a period of time, make excuses about being busy in real life, then post something. So today I am going to skip the sour appetizer of various reasons why my life is so important and busy, when it really is not, and move directly onto a lukewarm spew-de-jour. Prepare yourselves for a brief incoherent spewing of alphabet-soup.

Since spring has hit, I have started running again. While I can maintain a decent pace and run a good distance, I am in horrendous shape compared to where I left off yesteryear. Why must it be so cold for half the year up here? Maybe I really should bite the bullet and get a gym membership at a place with an indoor running track (I am treadmill adverse). Ah the excuses.

Aside from the usual generic goals of run harder, faster, and longer, I am going to give a few running events a crack. I am not aiming to win anything, but if I do have certain goals to attain during my first attempt at semi-competitive running. First up, Carol and I will be doing the old half-marathon in Toronto. The goal of this race will be to finish mid-pack. Second up, Carol and I will reunite with Grace, Karen, and Ervin to attempt some sort of a mountain relay. The goal of this race will be to not become bear food. Now that I have declared my intentions, time to really get moving.

Anyway, this concludes the brief note today. Sorry that the quickness in this preparlation leaves it is not particulary spicey or sweet. I am on call all weekend for the kidney team, so off I go to bed now.

Like pounding a large red brick into my face, the transition to daylight savings time each year is a mild nuisance that leaves me slightly dazed and disorientated. Sometime in 2004, George W Bush was sitting on the toilet contemplating his next great idea. I suspect this was the same place where excreted the axis of evil, made regular the war on terror, and of course made the big sploosh that backed up everyone's drains, weapons of mass destruction and the invasion of Iraq. At that time, the colonic moment of brilliance he expelled into the world was shifting the transition to daylight savings time earlier. Then in 2005, the government of the United States, aka: the collective democratic will of the American populace, agreed that this idea smelled good and was perhaps even palatable. However, since us Canadians are the tail that wags on the American dog, whatever comes through this pooch's system is ours to roll in too.

I am certain that having an earlier daylight savings time is fine and dandy if you live down south on the ranch with President Bush. For the rest of us, it means waking up and going to work when the raccoons are out to play and the rooster is still sound asleep. To change daylight savings time, the sensible thing would have been make it on the same day as the European Union. Status quo, there was a one week difference. Now there are three. Then again, those snooty Europeans, are they ever right? What was it that the French said about Iraq? What was that about weapons of mass destruction? Oh snap!

Speaking of the French, another kind of French, I visited Montréal for the first time last week. The journey there was epic, second only to Moses and the Israelites leaving Egypt for the Promised Land. Okay fine, perhaps I am being a bit melodramatic, but we did take a number of large detours and wander the barren Southern Ontario landscape in a Caravan for several hours. This was all in part due to a freak snow storm that hit that day. There may have been a golden calf or two involved as well.

The chief residents' conference was hoot, but the stay in Montréal was too short. I did manage to check out Festival Montréal en Lumière, eat some fried dough beaver tails at Queues de Castor, enjoy some French cuisine complete with an angry little waiter man from Paris, and of course, gorge on smoked meat sandwiches at Schwartz's Bifteck. Montréal is a beautiful city and I definitely need to go back again soon.

Photos / Montréal - go to section

- 95 New Photos!

Three weeks. Three whole weeks is the span of time of which there has been a drought of updates. Tonight however, a moment will be spared to gather up thoughts and recent experiences and deliver them through the copper threads that snake about our little world.

I have actually joined Facebook, which is a modest contributing factor to my dearth of blog entries. Facebook is essentially the next step in the evolutionary cesspool of internet self-worship and personal whoredom. It is quite sad really, as I already feed and gorge my ego enough on this blog. I think if I stare any more closely, I might tip over and drown in my own narcissistic river. For the people that have not flocked with the rest of us lemmings, Facebook is an online community inbred from the same gene pool as cousin Xanga, uncle Friendster, and mother-sister MySpace. A critical and beneficial difference is the ability to limit access to your "page" to people on your "friend" list, to greatly reduce the chances of undesirable individuals such as pedos, pervs, and severed other-halves from perusing your details. If it so tickles your fanciful thoughts though, you can choose to expose yourself to every lefty keyboarder out there. The deficiency of Facebook though, is the lack of proper blog functionality. Think of it as humanity evolved from its primitive predecessors, but somewhere along the way losing opposable thumbs. So like trying to go about daily life without thumbs, I find lack of blog capability on Facebook to be mildly gimping.

Recent times have been modestly busy yet paradoxically uneventful. My days have been spent interviewing medical students applying for residency, covering call, working on research, and then subsequently being infested by a nasty gastrointestinal virus. The concluding item in that inventory took five pounds off of me, by virtue of the daily un-eating of sustenance through both top and bottom ends. I am in much better spirits now that proper gut motility is restored, though I am still looking to regain that weight.

Medical students and interns fear for your brains. I have been chosen to be a chief resident next year. Rawr. I had tried to remain incognito under an inverted cardboard box with eye-holes style until the official announcement. However, Mike (also chief resident in waiting) gets excited and likes to spread alarm good news. I actually enjoy flying low to the ground and achieving all my goals unnoticed, but now I am coming up through the clouds and onto the radar again. I hope I can exhibit some penguin-like smoothness and grace.

Photos / Med Show 2005 (Old School Goodness)- go to section

- 32 New Photos!

On Tuesday January 30, I got a phone call from Gabe.

According to witnesses, earlier that day, Gabe made a mad dash from work after a mysterious phone call. One of the local EBGames stores had Nintendo Wii's arrive, and the lucky man got one of them. When he gave me a call, there were three systems left.

I ended up calling the store, and they informed me that there was only one system left. In anticipation that I could not arrive in time to scoop it up, I started calling the other EBGames stores. Two of them had already sold out. Two stores had not received anything. So I too made a mad dash to the EBGames with only one system left. Unfortunately, like a fat boy trying to make it to the candy store, I was too slow and too late, and left hungry and just tasting what could have been. The last Nintendo Wii was gone.

Then a thought entered my mind. A delivery truck may be going around from store to store to drop off shipments. I drove over to one of the stores that had not received anything. When I arrived, they had fresh corrugated cardboard boxes on the floor and five Nintendo Wii consoles. Without any sense of self control or hesitation, I whipped out my credit card and bought a Nintedno Wii, an extra Wiimote, an extra Wii nunchuk, a classic controller, and the Legend Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Several hundred dollars poorer, I waddled out of the store with my goodies, with a sense of excitement that I had not had since my parents bought my sister and I a Super Nintendo for Christmas in 1992. Mind you, the original Playstation and Final Fantasy VII my sister bought me in 1998 was pretty awesome too. But yes, the Wii is more exciting for me than the N64, Gamecube, and PS2, combined.

Last night we had an impromptu Super Bowl party at my apartment, which pretty much resulted in us literally watching 2 minutes of the game. We ended up spending all our time playing Wii Sports, and Fight Night on Aneez's Xbox 360. Haha.

I owe Gabe. We are planning on having a Wii party soon too, it should be great fun.

Photos / Wii - go to section

- 13 Photos!