“Hey, great speech.” “Best speech all night.” “Good jokes.”

As I walked into the house late Saturday early Sunday, people praised to me the speech I had written for someone to accept an award on my behalf. Maybe my speech was that good or maybe their experiences were confounded by any drinking they had been doing late Saturday.

I missed the Founders’ Ball for my chapter, where I had been awarded the alumni award. I worked Saturday night to cover Earth Hour and I shot a video of a candle-lit walk at a housing co-op.

I had an inkling that I might get the award when Levi e-mailed me to remind me to RSVP shortly after the voting for awards had ended.

Levi called Saturday afternoon. He confirmed my win and asked whether I wanted to write an acceptance for him to read. I had already considered a few lines.

Here is my opening:

(more…)

Hiro and I went to The Beer Store Thursday. I was taking in empties for money; Hiro was taking in money for fulls.

Both the deposit and withdrawal lines were huge when we got there. The deposit line was especially large because of this guy and his buddy.

Yeah, they had at least 21 cases. That is $50.40.

What did they do? They bought a case and got money back.

Hiro got PBR Honey for himself and PBR for Dave. I got $13,20, but some of that is the guys’.

After more than 3 gallons came in my window during the second weekend in March, a similar large volume came in a week later.

I called the property manager and she yelled at me and said she could not fix it. She did not offer any assistance in ameliorating the problem either.

The following Monday a roof crew came to clear snow and ice off the roof. I snapped this photo.

They yelled at me and I yelled back, eventually we got talking — with them still on the roof — and they told me that the people who put the shingles on just put them on bare plywood without any sealant. They cited that as the likely reason for the leaks.

It probably didn’t help that there were huge blocks of ice and mounds of snow piled on the roof.

That icy mess ended up outside our back window. Some of the ice blocks even had shingle stuck to them.

My window leaked gallons 11 Mar 2008

I bought this drink at the store Monday night. I opened it and took a sip; it was terrible.

There was clearly too much sugar in it. I looked at the nutrition facts.

• Serving Size 250 ml
• Calories 180
• Total Fat 4g
• Carbohydrate 28g
• Fiber 2g
• Sugars 25g
• Protein 10g

So, 100 out of 180 calories are from sugar. Chai, vanilla, and soy are all fine, but this drink Bolthouse Farms vanilla chai soy beverage is crap.

It is a tradition to have a dinner, perhaps a feast, for Easter. It is probably pretty common, at least, in North America to have turkey, though I feel ham may be moreso.

But how common is it to portion leftover meat evenly and weigh each on a scale. That is what we did yesterday.

We each got two containers containing about 280 grams of turkey.

Had Easter dinner at the house 24 Mar 2008

I was talking with Hiro and Dave this afternoon and Hiro brought up the topic of online voting.

I mentioned what I had read on Ping’s blog about his dissertation called “Building Reliable Voting Machine Software” and the “huge wild cheer” that it got at his convocation.

He also commented earlier on the California Secretary of State’s decision on the use of electronic voting machines for this year’s elections.

But on this topic of Ping and his dissertation. I like best the post about tracking his work and sleep time. He wrote a program with which he logged time he was working on his dissertation and time he slept and then graphed the data (How long does it take to write a dissertation).

I like the idea of tracking your sleep, work or other things can really help you sleep, work, or other more or better. It’s like biofeedback where see real-time measurements of physiological events you normally consider unconscious can help you to consciously influence them.

Doug posted a photo of him and a tower in Pisa, Italy, the leaning one. And . . . he is posing to appear as though he is supporting or pushing it up.

He recognizes how cliche this is in his comment:

When you’re in Pisa, there’s a whole row of people standing there with their arms up and someone crouched beside them saying “move your hands a little to the left, no, the other left”.

What I wonder is why don’t people at least also get a photo of themselves pushing the tower down.

In our house we have a huge stack of pizza boxes and it wasn’t until Lisa P. came over and said, “Hey, the leaning tower of pizza,” had anyone said such what really should be an obvious name.

An frozen waterfall spewing out of the corner of an apartment building on Duke Street. It is like a huge icicle.

I guess icemelt from the roof came and overflowed the drain pipe beginning as an icicle but continuing to flow and freeze until it grew into the huge ice tumor you can see in these photos.

I don’t think it will really be spring until this has melted.

We made Easter dinner at the house Sunday night.

It turned out to be only five of us eating. We had loads of food.

• Roasted butternut squash and yam soup
• Brussel sprouts
• Tortellini in four-cheese alfredo sauce with sausage, bacon, and cheese
• A roasted 16-pound turkey
• Homemade bread

• and we had ice cream later
• We also had Dave’s Domaine D’or red table wine and Inniskillin chardonnay

Check out this video of a lion attack: Lion attacks woman on camera

It was during a photo shoot for a Toronto Star magazine, Desi Life, which from the title I guess targets South Asians.

The articles don’t say when it happened, but it was for a photo shoot for the next issue which comes out tomorrow. So, I guess they held this to release it to promote the magazine.