Calvin's Weblog

Who knew that beer could be so dangerous???

There are a lot of dangerous and deadly things you can do with a bottle of beer. Drop one off the top of the Empire State Building, and it's a deadly weapon. Crack someone upsite the head with it during a bar fight, and it's a deadly weapon. Consume copious quantities of it then go joyriding in your Hummer, and it's a deadly weapon... but I don't think I've ever seen a beer that's just "sitting there" minding it's own business become so violently dangerous ... that is, not until this Saturday.
Some background: As part of my new budget for 2005, I've cut my alcohol budget in half. Yeah, I know, if you need to BUDGET your beer, you're probably buying too much of it. Well anyway, part of my plan was to make more beer at home and buy less beer from the outlets. I've made butt-loads of beer at home before, and can get my CPB (cost per bottle) down to 28 cents by using cheap ingredients, refined sugar, and tap water... pretty good deal compared to the $2 a bottle at beer store prices, but the quality of the home brew is so poor, and the effort you've gotta put into it is so great, that I decided to wimp out this time and go to a U-Brew place and have them make my beer for me. The CPB of going to one of these places is about 90 cents, which, when you know how low THEIR cost must be, seems like a royal rip off, but it's still half the price of commercial beer, with the same quality - so, that's my excuse.

Saturday was bottling day, and Carole and I made an event of getting up early, and going down to bottle (and sample generous amounts of) our fresh new beer. I use plastic 500ml bottles, but the people right next to us had glass Corona bottles, and they looked really cool. We had to twist on the hard plastic caps, one by one, but they got to use a cool capping machine. I said to Carole "You know, these bottles have really been useful over the years, but capping and cleaning them sure is a pain in the ass, we should get some of those cool glass bot..." BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!

Glass shoots across the room in all directions - landing all around us, but miraculously not hitting either of us. The two people in front of the Corona bottles weren't quite as lucky, though nothing a few bandaids didn't fix - fortunately! The sound was like a gunshot, and the blast was intense. We had absolutely no idea what happened - I was so startled that the beer I was filling was foaming over the top and over my hand... Carole was stunned too - looking at the large chunks of jagged glass that hit on either side of where she was sitting - one of them actually sitting on the counter right between us.
The U-Brew operator calmly saunters over and exclaims "Hairline fracture. That happens to glass bottles occasionally." He looks around, picks up a hunk of what used to be the mouth, and says "Yup, see? There was a crack. Too much pressure." He turns around, drops the hunk into the garbage and says "You gotta watch out for those..." as he walks away.
The guy sitting at the filling station next to us gives his rattled, beer soaked wife a examining once over, then glances down at himself and realized that his arms are bleeding. "You got any bandaids?" He queries timidly in a trembling voice.
"In the bathroom." the proprietor replies as he casts a motioning glance down the hallway.

Carole and I look at each other as if we're both about to say the same thing... "On second thought, these plastic bottles are just fine!"

In other news, I'm having a lot of fun with my new DVD burner - I burned seven movies this weekend, plus we actually got out to a theatre to see Hide and Seek. It wasn't at all what I expected, and didn't think it was nearly as well done as it could have been, but real killer did elude me until the very end - so who knows, maybe they did a good job... or maybe there were so many red herrings, false leads and pathetically contrived twists that I just gave up trying. I liked the camera work, and Dakota Fanning is absolutely amazing, but I made a rule decades ago... any horror movie that resorts to the old "screaching cat jumping out of the closet" gag for a cheap thrill is obviously limping along on weak writing and is desperate for real suspense, and therefore a BAD movie. This may be a narrow minded analysis, but guess what... they did it - in a DeNiro movie no less... that's another sign of a bad movie actually, when a modest budget film spends all their dough on getting a couple big name actors, that usually means they're compensating for a weak script. Ah, enough from me... you be the judge.

I also won a couple online poker touneys this weekend - all for play-money, but it's still fun to win!

My Wife the Shark

Carole and I went to a no-limits Texas Hold'em Poker tournament Saturday night. No, not to watch - to actually play! Crazy, I know... we've never played poker before (well okay, we know the rules - but playing in a tourney isn't about knowing the rules!) but since it was only a $20 buy-in, we figured "what the hell, it'll be fun - let's give it a shot!"
I spent all of last week learning no-limits betting strategy, learning how to play position, which hands are best in which position, how to read the other players, etc, and spend about 10 hours practicing in online poker rooms. Carole didn't really want to know all the technical details, but Friday night I summed it all up for her as "if you're in early position, bet these hands and if you're in late position bet these hands". My hopes were that she'd stay in the game long enough to have some fun, and that I myself would at least last two hours. That was the goal...
After three hours we were both still in the running, and 15 minutes after that, it was down to the last table. We had BOTH made it to the last table! Carole had been betting just like I told her - folding amost everything, and only staying in play if she had high pocket pairs or suited face cards. She still had aproximately the same amount of chip in front of her as when we started. I, on the other hand, was down to my last 300 (the $20 buy-in gave us $1250 in chips).
The rest of the players at the last table had at least $6,000 in front of them. I was out in another 10 minutes, but Carole limped in with the underdog stack.
The big better's tried to bully her stack, but she stuck by the rules and if she had made it past the flop, that meant she was holding. Everytime they tried to 'all-in' her, she went 'all-in' and won their pots. Another hours went by. She had doubled up three times. Everyone was out now except Carole, and one other player. He held about $12,500 and Carole had about $5,000. Carole drew pocket Aces and bought into the flop - her adversary figured this was his chance, and went all in, thinking she'd fold and he'd chisel another $1000 out of her stack. Wrong! She went all-in too... all the women were rooting for Carole - in fact, most of the guys were too... everyone was watching the flop,turn and river with baited breath and when the smoke cleared, Carole's pocket-rockets stood, she doubled up again, and now held a commanding lead! About $10,000 to $7000.
About another nial biting half hour passed, and Carole had him down to his last $3000 when he pushed all-in again. She folded. It turns out he had bluffed... "Calvin, I folded a pair of fives! I would have just won if I had kept them!!!! Your rules suck!" - "Hey, they got you this far, didn't they? That was the right move... sure, you lost that time, but how many times have you thrown out a low pair tonight that would have been beaten if you had kept them?" Pretty much everyone agreed that I was right, but still, I had to admit, that hand could have been the game for her. After that, her momentum was shaken, and her foe had renewed confidence. He fought his way back to even, then into the lead. It was now about 1AM and Carole was down to around $2000. She hesitated to call pre-flop, and he sensed her weak hand - when she did call, he went all-in... and she followed. It wasn't a great hand - she should have folded, but with only enough chips left to but into one or two more hands, it was do or die time... and with the flop came trips for Carole's nemesis. Game over - but one hell of a game well played! We left $40 in the hole, but with one hell of a great story to tell.
We'll be back next month for sure! Carole's got the bug... and I'VE got some serious practising to do! Oh, by the way, you may be asking yourself - if they were my rules that got Carole so far, why was I out so early? Well, it was a case of "do what I say, not what I do"... it takes a cool head to throw out a low pair pre-flop when you're convinced it's probably the best hand on the table... I couldn't do it, hell I probably still wouldn't do it. In fact, I was actually betting unsuited 10, 9 in big-blind position, knowing full well it was a terrible thing to do - I just couldn't shake that though of "what if the straight actaully flops? I'll win!" Bad, Bad, Bad. And again, super-kudos to my wife the shark. She was sooo worried about not being able to bluff - but as it turned out, she didn't even need to bluff - she just played it cool.

Jam Packed, but Good weekend

Ah - it's good to get back to work, where I can finally wind down and rleax after this weekend. We had a lot of plans. but at least they were all good. Friday night I recorded bass for the first six songs on the forthcomming Scarecrow Balcony album. Saturday we had Carole's staff Christmas Party downtown (yeah, I know... it's a little late for a Christmas party, isn't it!!!). There was a blizzard that night, which made for BRUTAL driving conditions - the worst of which was just getting down the mountain ... the first mile was the worst, but the whole drive was nerve wracking.
Here's something amazing - I guess when I parked downtown, I must've forgotted to lock the car... I NEVER forget to lock the car, but when we got back to it, it was unlocked, all the maps were pulled out of the glovebox, all the compartments were opened, papers were strewn, and my sunglasses were missing... someone had rummaged through the car! What's so amazing about that? Other than the $8 pair of sunglasses, they didn't take anything... not the CDs, not the FM transmitter for my mp3 player, not the loose change, not the Entertainment Value coupon book in the glove box... so who knows, maybe it was just someone who wanted to give me a warning... lucky. very lucky.
After the party it was raining, the roads were slushy, but fine for driving - so we swung by Wayne's place at 1AM to catch the end of Patty's 'welcome home' party. We scared the crap out of them, they thought we were the cops banging on the door because of all the loud noise... that was pretty funny... so after a brief stay, we were home shortly before two. We needed our rest, 'cause we had a wedding to attend on Sunday.
So, "how long will it take to drive to West Van?" Carole asked.
"I guess about 40, 45 minutes depending on the traffic..." I say.
"Well, we've got to be at this wedding at two thirty. I don't want to be late, so let's leave at one o'clock, okay?"
"Um, Carole, that'll get us there 45 minutes early..."
"When it comes to weddings, it's better to be early that late! We're leaving at 1."
So guess what... we were 45 minutes early. There was no way I was going to go in that early, so we drove around West Van for about 25 minutes before deciding that twenty minutes early was acceptable. Guess what? We were still the first to arrive - and to make for a REALLY long day, the wedding didn't even start until 3:30. BUT, all waiting aside, it was a great wedding. Just like the party the night before, awesome food and free drinks. We ended up leaving at 7:30 PM, only because I had somewhere to be at 8:30 - again, I was 25 minutes late for that appointment, yet still managed to be the first to arrive.

So, long story short - I fell of the bandwagon this weekend - eating lots and drinking moderately (five drinks a day is moderate, right?) so now that the smoke has cleared, it's back to system detox time. I didn't have any gallbladder problems at all over the weekend, but I don't want to push it - so it's back to miso broth, lemon tea and rice crackers for me today. I'm also amazingly still 198 lbs... even after all that eating. With one brief exception about 9 years ago when I did a cybergenics cybertrim program, that's the least I've weighed since college.... twenty six pounds less than my alltime high, which ironically was exactly one year ago.
In case anyone was worried, I'm feeling much better - but I'm still gonna be watching it - at LEAST until I get the surgery.

I really shouldn't, but this is too good to pass up!

I just got a security alert - which I probably shouldn't talk about, but this is WAY to good to pass up - I hope everybody tries this ... it's CRAZY!!!

Here's the alert:
--Google Search Leads to Security Webcams
(5 January 2005)
A simple, well-crafted Google search can provide access to numerous
security webcams, many of which are presumed private. Webmasters should
keep the webcam pages password protected and use the robots.txt file to
instruct Google and other search engines indicating that the directory
should not be spidered.
Here's an article

And so I checked it out, and here's all you have to do:
Type this into GOOGLE: inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="
And you'll get results of THOUSANDS of security cameras.
Not all of them work any more, I guess people are starting to catch on that their cameras are online... but if you flip though the pages, it'll take maybe ten or twelve tries, and you'll hit a camera that's working... it's not just the ability to watch live streaming colour video of say, some mall, but you can actuall pan the camera, tilt it, follow people, zoom - it's CRAZY!!!!

Gallbladder's suck ass - but not as much as our medical system...

I dunno... maybe I just don't know how good we've got it ... maybe the rest of the world has to wait even longer than we do... what pisses me off though is that I desperately need surgery, but I have to wait. I have money, I wanna pay whatever it takes to stop this pain, but that would be against the law - I have to wait. I've been to emergency, but I still have to wait. On the radio this morning they said there may be up to 6,500 names of deceased people on waiting lists that are making the lines look longer than they are... and that got me thinking - maybe these people wouldn't be dead it they weren't forced to wait so long!!!

So after I went to emergency before Christmas, my diet has consisted of not much more than lemon tea, chamomile tea, pepermint tea, steamed vegetables, and the occasional rice or fish dish (with a couple noteable exceptions - ie: the 7 course dinner on New Years Eve). I'm 26 lbs lighter than I was this time last year (which I guess is probably healthy - but it's certainly not fun!), and the last couple weeks I haven't had any energy to do ANYTHING. What's worse, it doesn't even matter what I eat now - I'm having gallbladder attacks for no reason now. For instance, Friday I had lemon tea when I woke up, and a pear a half hour later. I had pepermint tea and steamed bokchoy with lemon-herbs and soy sauce for lunch, I had a snack in the afternoon of a single piece of sliced deli black forest ham (yeah I know, that was a no-no) and a glass of water, and for dinner I had chamomile tea, steamed beet tops and more steamed bokchoy. Four hour after that I had an attack. What's worse is it hasn't stopped since. Today's now Wednesday and it STILL hurts. Not bad enough to take a pain killer (I HATE taking drugs anyway - and won't take a painkiller until the pain is unbearable), but kinda like Chinese Water Torture. When it first starts, you say "Oh, this is no big deal, I can deal with chronic pain if that's as bad as it gets" - but after a few days it starts to wear you down. It hurts to breath, so you breath as infrequently and as shallow as possible. It hurts to eat, so you eat as infrequently and minimally as possible. It hurts to move, to think, to shit, to smile, even to sit in front of a computer and complain about it on your blog... so you do everything as little as possible - but before you know it, all that's left in your life is the dull, constant pain, and it drives you down... It sucks. I hate it.

I'm kicking myself because my doctory told me 18 months ago that I had gallstones and that I could either live with it until they cause me grief, or I could book a surgeon to talk about getting my gallbladdder removed. I said "Ha! I've never had a gallbladder attack, I'll just make sure to eat a little better and I'm sure I'll be fine! If I ever have an attack, I'll come back and we can talk about getting surgery." Well, it was one year after that, that I had my first attack - the next week I went back to the Dr. and said "Let's book that surgeon" - sure thing - no problem - except that there's a 6 month waiting list to even get a CONSULTATION! That was five months ago. So now I'm trying to make it to February 10th. I've still got a month to go before seeing the surgeon, and I don't know if I'm going to make it - but other than taking drugs to mask the pain, (which is OBVIOUSLY only there because something is VERY WRONG!!!) there's nothing else I can do. Sure, the emergency room doctor told me that if I experience any signs of jaundice, that I should come back immediately for emergency surgery, but, just my luck, I'm currently jaundice free... silly me though, I DID have all the signs for the week after my very first attack, but I didn't know what it was then - and that particular problem cleared up quickly.

So, you think that Feb 10th is going to be my salvation day? Not even close... that's just the consultation with the surgeon. IF he says "Yes, you're a candidate for surgery" THEN I get put on the SURGERY waiting list... if I'm LUCKY it'll be three months, if not, another SIX...

This is killing me - litterally. I think I've been a pretty good sport about it so far, but I'm at my breaking point now. I want to whine, I want to bitch and complain, I want to lose control and jump up and down and do whatever it takes to get this surgery and get all fixed up... okay, I take that back. As a colleague suggested yesterday, I suppose there are still a few things I'm not willing to try...yet... "Just call 911 and say 'since I need emergency surgery, but the doctory won't do it yet, I've decided to do it myself. Please send an ambulance, I think I've made a mistake.'"

Sorry this entry is such a downer, but hell, I'm allowed to be a little pissed off when my life's on the line, aren't I?

Okay, I'm done venting - no, that's not true, I'm not even close to done, but I'm going to stop typing now - it hurts too much.

Snow White Blanket

It was nice to wake up to fresh snow this morning - it meant that it must be warmer outside. Everyday since the beginning of the year it has been -5 when I get in the car to go to work, but this morning it was zero... a nice, balmy change. We're not used to sub-zero here!!! I know the rest of Canada is calling us WestCoasters wussies right now, but sorry... it's true.
So we were only supposed to get a skiff, but it ended up snowing straight from about 4Am 'till about 1PM - all told, there was about 6 to 8 cm of snowfall.
I took my camera to work today, in anticipation of seeing some nasty accidents out of my window today, and while there WERE a couple of fender benders, there was no carnage worthy of a snapshot. Once it was light enough, I took this pic - this is right from my office chair, looking out my window at the intersection 'o' death:

And here's what it looks like behind me - looking north at the TransCanada highway - which was at a dead stop (westbound) for over an hour... musta been some great carnage just out of view!

At 10AM, me n' my peers trekked across the parking lot to the coffee shop (I got peppermint tea). A couple hours later we decided to take a "snow day afternoon" so we bundled up and portaged across the road and up the campus trail to the bar:

It's almost 6:00PM now, and it hasn't snowed much in the last four hours, but they're saying on the radio there will be another six to ten cm tomorrow - but the clincher is, it's supposed to be -8 overnight, so the roads are going to be FROZEN SOLID... as much as I love living at the top of a mountain, I am NOT looking forward to driving to work tomorrow!!!

Happy New Year!

I'm back - back from a well deserved, and well appreciated escape. Carole and I escaped to Vancouver Islands for a really nice 5-day getaway and didn't get back 'till the afternoon of the 1st. I read three books, got a mud bath, lounged in the outdoor hottubs of two different spas. ate the best (and most expensive) seven course meal of my life, and even managed to quaff a few glasses of really nice champagne. Carole got a facial, and ate all the food I couldn't... I actually did okay on the eating myself, but only gained back 4 pounds of the 24 I had lost - I made it through the holiday season alive!!!

I've put about 120 albums into my MP3 player now, and have really put that thing to good use - it's great for the ferry!

It was cool having New Years Eve alone at a resort - it was such a beautiful night - crisp, but clear. You can imagine how amazed we were when we woke up to 3 inches of snow, and watched another 3 inches fall during breakfast... it was strange though... the ferry was 20km away, and there was no snow there (at all) when we got in the lineup... and we must've looked pretty funny driving home with three inches of snow still on the roof of our car, through a beautiful 8 degree - blue sky day in Vancouver... but now, it's negative four - still a beautiful day, but much colder. Still, this has been a great way to start the new year.

I'll post some pictures of our getaway if/when I can get around to it.