• swissmiss: “the thumb thing”

Really. I want one. Go ahead. Feel free to buy it for me. It’s only $3.00.

Come on… someone?…

I outsmarted myself this morning.

The word on high was that we were getting a SNOWSTORM overnight. Oh, you should have seen the panic ensue. Babies were slaughtered to appease jealous gods. Houses were barricaded with stone and puppies. Black marketeers would accept nothing but gold or uncut Turkish heroin for even one bottle of water.

We take our storms seriously around here.

So I set my alarm for a good hour earlier than normal, expecting to be up in the vicious and cruel pre-dawn hour of 6:00, removing bucketloads of snow WITH MY BARE HANDS (and a shovel) while every single one of my neighbours would sleep in until, oh, let’s say “noon”, and then, en masse, enter their driveways with their snowblowers and, a scant 90 seconds later, depart for their assorted daily employments, errands, and meanderings.

I covet their snowblowers.

Anyways… alarm goes off… and I lie in bed for a moment, luxuriating in the warmth of a warm bed topped off with a small black and white cat lying across my legs. But I cannot wait for long. I have a task ahead of me. After a deep, soul-wrenching sigh, I throw the covers off and trudge to the window. Pushing aside the blinds, I steel myself for the first glimpse of what is sure to be a back-shattering morning.

Nothing.

No snow. None. Nada. The driveway is as black and as cracked as normal. (No, the cracks did not spontaneously repair themselves over night. Much to my chagrin.)

Looking back at the bed, I realise that my morning now stretches ahead of me like a vast empty landscape.

I have time to get stuff done.

So after My Lovely Wife gets up and heads for the shower, I head downstairs to get a jump on the day.

I make some lunches. I pour cereal into bowls. I give The Large One and The Small One their early morning snack/fix.

And I make coffee.

Normally, I make just enough coffee in the morning to fill up my travel mug and then I don’t even get my first sip until I’m halfway to work. With as much time ahead of me, I can have a cup at home. Heck, I can make coffee for My Lovely Wife. I rub my hands with glee at the sheer decadence of life.

So I get the coffeemaker percolating along merrily, and I get out three mugs: my travel mug, My Lovely Wife’s Cafe Du Monde mug from our honeymoon in New Orleans, and a Christmas mug that I have yet to put away. Trying be as efficient as possible, I take this time put two spoonfuls of sugar in my travel mug, put two spoonfuls of sugar in my Christmas mug, and put no spoonfuls of sugar in My Lovely Wife’s. (She’s sweet enough.)

Intermission: At this moment, I would normally apologise to My Lovely Wife for the above comment, but as it has most likely put her into a diabetic coma, it’s a moot point.

After showering and getting dressed, I head back downstairs, pour the coffee into the Cafe Du Monde and the Christmas mug, leaving the travel mug empty (because there’s no reason for it to get cold before I leave for work, is there? No, I thought not). I take the coffee and breakfasts upstairs, handing off My Lovely Wife’s to her, getting a “Coffee? But, I didn’t ask for coffee!” I take that as a compliment, swell with domestic (yet masculine) pride, and head into the computer room to eat my breakfast, drink my coffee, and read the next episode in Magazine Man’s The Case of the Poop on the Stoop.

Time passes.

Suddenly, it’s three minutes before we have to go and I have things to do. I run downstairs and give the Boys their last allotment of food until supper. I put our lunches by the front door. I turn down the heat. I pour my coffee into my travel mug, add two spoonfuls of sugar to my travel mug (right about now is when the light bulb should be turning on), pour my coffee and add the cream, and head out to the car to drop everything off and scrape the windows. Moments later, My Lovely Wife appears and off we go.

Five minutes away from home I grab my mug, raise it to my lips, and that’s when I discover that four spoonfuls of sugar in your coffee is not a pleasant thing to discover while driving at 95 kilometers per hour.

Because, at that point, you want to use your car as a weapon.

• halifaxultimate.ca: “Free Chris Dabrowski”

Thought I’d share this from one of my Ultimate buddies:

Hello,

My name is Chris Dabrowski and I play ultimate.

About three years ago I was living in a house on Edward St. and one of my roomates started a fire because of an unattended candle. The fire caused about $80,000 worth of damages. The landlord’s insurance company paid for the damages and tried to recoup their costs by going after the previously mentioned roomate. He had no money or assets and was forced to declare bankruptcy. Seeing that they were not going to get their money from my roomate the insurance company decided to sue the rest of us on the lease.

I had nothing to do with starting the fire and I even tried to put it out and called 911 preventing the fire from maybe doing even more damage.

I didn’t have insurance at the time and I cannot afford a lawyer so I am fighting this thing on my own dime. We are getting popular opinion on our side and pushing to get this story in the media. We are going to give the insurance company lots of bad press and get them to back down.

If you want to help fight the power, you can support the cause by buying a t-shirt and spreading the word. The shirts are sweat shop free American Apparel. They come in a variety of colors and sizes. $15 each.

If you have friends who work for any of the major (or minor) media outlets in the city pass this info on and get them to do a story on this.

Spread the word. Friends of friends need to know about the revolution.

If you want a shirt email me at

kryzd(at)hotmail(dot)com

Chris

Got myself one of the shirts last night.

Fight the power, people.

• On2 Technologies: “Night of the Living Dead”

This one here is a good old-fashioned gut-shot Zombie Tuesday.

Got yourself a few hours to sit in front of your computer?

This is it. The one that started it all. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

All in Flash.

(As it’s in the public domain, it was a perfect choice for On2 to transfer into Flash 8 video.)

Enjoy.

(Thanks, Dad!)

Ahhhh… another sip of sweet blessed coffee and I race through a few posts on Bloglines.

Hitting Gizmodo, I see a really interesting post of the development of a quantum microchip. Fascinating!

Immediately below it?

A post on dummies used to practice rectal examinations.

(Just writing that made me flinch.)

The sheer incongruity of these two posts entering my brain at the same moment sent me reeling, clutching at the desk in front of me in order to avoid collapsing to the floor in a spasm of mental dissonance. (Or bad coffee. One of those.)

However, the cherry on the top of this little brain-busting concoction came at the hands of Boing Boing:

Fruit Helmets for Cats.

My brain has turned to mush. I’m now good for nothing else today.