Thursday, August 31, 2006

Saints Row



If you have an Xbox 360 then you need to buy the new game Saints Row from THQ. If you liked playing GTA then this is the game for you. It may be a complete copy, but it has much better graphics, sound, and overall quality. I have to admit that it is quite the addictive game that just might keep you up late. My buddy Bob said that he played it the other night until 4 in the morning. You could download the demo for free from the Xbox Marketplace only available through the 360. I don't know what else to say, but to go and buy it now, and maybe I might see you online and we could play each other and cause some havoc in Stillwater.

[Buy now]

Friday, August 25, 2006

Canadia (the lost post)

Hello -- please forgive me for any grammatical errors, pure sporadic nonsense, or the extreme tardiness because I wrote this over the past 3 weeks and did not feel like fixing it. (pure laziness on my part and the craziest 3 weeks of my life) Just sit right back, grab something tasty and a cold beverage of your choice and enjoy.

The following events take place between August 2 and August 9, 2006. Previously on.....wait that is another show...

I am surprised we are here in Canada after yesterday. I don't know where to start, my brother and sister in law not having a passport or their birth certificates, getting on the wrong plane in Seattle, my brother loosing one of his bags, not knowing how to get a hold of our car rental, to waiting for ever for our car to be ready. When we arrived at Sacramento the lady at the check in asked my brother for ID and all he had was his driver's license, she asked for a passport and told him that he will be taking his chances on getting back in the States without a passport. He didn't seem to concern and figured that my other brother could overnight those documents. We then proceeded on to Seattle and arrived ahead of schedule, my brother had some form notarized to help him when we came back. Then he said he was going to go and get some food. Well then they say now boarding flight 2825 and my brother is nowhere to be found. Then my brother shows up with everything under the sun and we all have something different to eat. I grab my food and go and check in and the lady says that we are only waiting for your family. In Seattle they have you walk down on the Tarmac and of course there were two planes, but I didn't see the 2nd one, I just followed the other people in front of me. Next thing we are sitting on the plane and some guy comes in and says your sitting in my seat. Then another one comes in and says you are sitting in my seat, and says we are going to Portland right, and then we are like OH Crap. Then we get off the plane and headed for our plane as they are preparing to close the hatch. We arrived in Edmonton and go through customs and they tell my brother that we may or may not get through customs with those forms he has. We grab our luggage and my brother is one of his bags he gave to someone as we walked onto the Tarmac in Seattle. We decided that it was put on the plane to Portland and had to fill out some paperwork. Then we walked outside to find our car rental place Dollar and walked around looking for it. Finally we found a phone and called for someone to come and pick us up. Then at the car rental place we found out that we did not have an expedition like what we were expecting, but a Dodge Durango. We sat for over an hour, since it was in the middle of an oil change. Finally we took off to our rental in Edmonton that we got off of vrbo.com.
We stayed at the house for 2 days and went to the West Edmonton Mall, which had an indoor water park, amusement park, hockey ice rink, and 12-plex movie theaters with an Imax screen. We just drove to Safeway to buy food and cooked it at the house. The place had 3 bedrooms and slept 10 people, 2 washrooms (Canadian bathroom), and high speed Internet with wireless, DVD and cable TV. The airlines called us and said that they found the bag and told us that it would be in around 9pm on Thursday, but of course there was some kind of delay, so called and waked us up Friday morning around 6:30 to tell us that it wouldn't be to the house between 9 and 10, but that was not guaranteed. Matt decided that it would be best to have it shipped to Quill Lake, our final destination for my mom's town's 100-year anniversary and my mom’s side of the family reunion.

We took off to Quill Lake and stopped by Costco real quick and got some gas. We had over 450 miles to travel before we made it to our final destination. The speed limit was 100 KPH which is about 62 MPH for most of the trip, but we kept our Durango pegged between 130 and 140 KPH most of the way. We were able to cover more ground this way and we made a few pit stops along the way. Remember we had 3 adults and 2 kids under 10. One stop to mention was for lunch at a place called Taco Time in Lloydminster, I have never heard of it before, but now I see on their website that they are opening all over the place. I got this huge beef burrito, which was just delicious. They had mexi-fires, which were basically tator tots that were tasty too and the salsa they served with the meal was awesome. We made one final stop about 30 miles out at a gas station and paid $1.04/liter for gas, which was about $3.93/per gallon and we thought we were getting ripped off at the pumps. We arrived shortly after 4pm, which meant we drove an 8-hour drive in about 6 1/2 hours. Our Canadian family was amazed with our time across the country. That night we just had a BBQ at my moms place and enjoyed our time with the family, some of which we haven't seen in years, like a couple of my cousins I haven't seen in over 25 years. My moms place is really nice and it is one of the biggest homes in town. We had 11-15 people sleeping in beds each night and then 2 campers out side sleeping the rest for the next 2 nights. My mom had a campfire set up in the backyard and we quickly got that going and sat and drank beer until about 2am.
Most of us were up by 8am Saturday and were about to go for our breakfast that we paid for in our registration packet on Friday, but cancelled those plans when we were told that the line for it was over 1 hour long. We gathered most of the food in the fridge and began to make breakfast for 10 of us and my aunt and uncles did a fine job with breakfast. Next on the agenda was a parade that came right by the house, so we walked out to the corner and watched over 80 different floats go by. My mom had her hubby's 1952 Dodge in the parade for her bed and breakfast she runs in town. After that was over we came back in and hung out until supper (in Canada lunch = dinner, dinner = supper). We went to the fair grounds for our supper and got in this huge line and at the end were a plate of the general’s chicken. We weren't that thrilled, but how do you feed 2000 people other than out sourcing it to some kind of business. It was that bad of meal, and after that we went home for a bit, because the party didn't start until 9. They had 2 different events going on, one for the younger crowd with a man called Williams that is a one man band that sings cover songs, he records all of the back ground music, drums, keyboards, etc and then plays it back from his computer and sings and plays guitar. I had seen him 3 years ago when I went to my moms for Christmas and I was excited to see him again. Let me tell you one thing, Canadians love beer, if you have ever seen the movie Strange Brew, then you will know what I am talking about. Eh! Everyone was having a good time, and I never saw any fights or confrontations. I never even saw any RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the whole time I was in town. I heard later that their was 1 guy patrolling the bar area, but I never saw him. We headed home before midnight and lit up our camp fire and talked till 2am again and heard the funniest story fun one of my cousins that is just wouldn't be easy to type or even legal, since it involves lots of body movements to see the real excitement, but all I am going to say is that it one of the top 3 things I did, heard or saw.

On Sunday we got up at 8am again and attempted to get our breakfast again and this time we were successful. We just had the standard pancakes and sausage, but I love the sausage up there. I don't know why, but it is just delicious. From there we home for a couple of hours and then came back to town to see the car show and walked around for a bit, then we had to go over to the fairgrounds to play softball. The town set up a softball tournament with the 12 teams made up of family members. We started off pretty good and won that first game 9-2 and then had an hour to have dinner (lunch) and game 2 was a little more difficult. We were behind 0-8 and then it came back to us and started in the 3rd inning and went up 9-8. Then they tied it up at 9 and we ended that game 10-9. We didn't have any time to rest and were quickly rushed into game 3. We fell apart quickly, and after the first inning it was like 0-6. I was talking the umpire and he said that he usually played with this team, but he was waiting to have shoulder surgery and that only 1 or 2 people from the team were family and that the rest of team were players that played together every weekend. They were making double plays and catching everything and they had a couple of players that hit the ball out of the park every time. I think that final was 0-10 after all was said and done. We walked off the field with tails between our legs, but I think we all had fun. Only 2 out of the 13 of us that played have even stepped on a field in a couple of years.

We went home and cleaned up and prepared supper, which my mom made a Mexican feast. She cooked up some beef, friend taco shells, quesadilla and I made some enchiladas. I think we fed close to 20 people that night and there weren’t much left. Later that night we went back to the fairgrounds for a fireworks extravaganza. We were told that the guy who arranged it knew some people, you know the rest of that, and got this light show for $5000. We were impressed that it lasted almost a half hour and we probably parking within 50 yards from where they were being shot off. We got home about 10:30 and started up the campfire again. My mom interrupted our conversation with a "Look there" we all looked up and saw the northern lights. It was quite the finish to the weekend of celebration. Matt, Jenn, and I went driving out of town to try to take some better photos, but we pretty much unsuccessful. I got one picture that you can see a little. We didn't have much ice left for our drinks, so we put everything we had left in my uncles cooler and went to bed about 1:30am.

We got up Monday and lots of the family started to leave after breakfast and my uncle noticed his cooler missing. We heard from one of our cousins that lots of the kids were partying down the street at someone’s house with a hot tub. At this place our youngest cousin slipped and fell on a broken beer bottle, apparently the kids were sitting in the hot tub and throwing their bottles out w
hen they were done. We decided to go over to this place to see if we could find our cooler and someone saw it in back of our cousins car that told us about this party. We asked him about it and said that our youngest cousins friend put it in back of his truck when he fell on the bottle and they rushed him to the hospital, which was 20 miles away. We were all concerned and then found out that they transported him to a bigger hospital in Saskatoon, about 2 hours away. Around noon we headed out to my moms hubby's farm. It had been 3 years prior that I had been out there and I wasn't driving and the place was covered in snow. Why am I telling you all of this, well I got lost, not bad, I just missed the turn. After I arrived my brother came out and gave me crap and said that he drove out to see if he could see me, but gave up. The kids rode a pony and my niece was being attacked by horse flies. One got her real good and drew blood, it was funny because she ran inside the house and looked out the window in terror. We hung out with my mom and cliff and she fed us grilled cheese and fruit for dinner. We took off around 5 back to town to have supper with the family in town. My uncles had brought lots of fish with them and we had quite the feast. My aunt Bernie made this tarter sauce that was just delicious and all of the fish was great. I am telling you it felt like I put on 10 lbs while I was up there, we were always eating these huge meals. That night we gathered around the campfire just like what we did every night.

Now it was Tuesday and we started to realize how quickly our time away was coming to a close. We had a good breakfast and then headed out to my uncle's friends place that used to be do taxidermy. He had lots of elk that he got when elk meat was big, but now has almost disappeared in Canada. He said that the Koreans buy the antlers for the felt and that Americans come up and hunts his prized elk for game. We went out and petted one of his tamed elk that they fed when she was a baby. One of males actually came up to me (behind a fence of course) and sniffed my hand and let me touch above his nose. I was told that was not normal and that males do not come up to anyone, maybe he just saw the fire in my eyes and was attracted to me. It was pretty cool, but petting the beast left a mark, it was kind of reminded me when I got flat top hair cuts when I was a kid and then sticking my hand through my hair and I would have little pieces of hair and oil on my hand. On our way back to the house we were called and told that my mom's step-son-in-law Brian needed Matt’s and my help. Brian picked us up and took us to the fairgrounds and we picked up the fencing used all weekend and drove it to Weinards, which was 20 miles away. We drove like 45 MPH and it took forever to get there, but Brian is funny to be around. On our way home we had this semi truck pass us and Brian looked over and said I sure hope that is not what I think it is, then with a huge shot of the nastiest smell I have ever smelt in my life he said yep it sure is. It was a truck that went from farm to farm and picked up dead livestock and then drove them to some place to be made into glue or what not. We slowed down to 35 MPH to let him get ahead of us. WOW it was nasty. For our reward Brian invited us down to his place for a few beers and talked for a while. That night we were all alone with my mom and we cooked up the steaks we bought in Edmonton and had a good supper. We got to bed a little after midnight since we had to get on the road early to get back to Edmonton for our flight that left at 6pm.

Wednesday we were all up by 7:30 and we finished packing and went to town to have breakfast. We were kind of nervous since the restaurant is only ran by 1 person, she was cooking breakfast for us, filling peoples coffee and collecting the money. We said our good byes and hit the road. We had 450 miles to drive again. We made a few more pit stops on the way back a slowed to 100 - 130 KPH. Of course we stopped at Taco Time again and I had a chicken burrito this time. We watched Benchwarmers for the 3 or 4th time and we arrived in Edmonton around 3pm. We filled up the gas of the rental and dropped it off at the airport. We made it through security with ease, well I did, my brother talked to them for a lot longer than I did. Now we had 2 hours to sit and wait, I kind of find it funny now, I saw this room across the way that was designated a smoking room and then I saw this guy come out of it I can't stand smokers. Next we board our flight and I have the window seat and all of the sudden that guy I saw come out of the smoking room comes walking towards me and sits next to me, first thing he sticks like cigarettes. Next he gets comfortable and sprawls out like he owns the airlines. He was kind of big and scary too, so I didn't say anything. It pretty much was the worst flight I have ever been on, but half way through he got up and went the restroom and I was like yippee and then on his way back he found 2 seats in the middle of the plane not occupied and sat down. I was thrilled and pretended that I owned the airlines with my legs fully extended. Of course good things don't last forever. After about 20 minutes of what I call the part of the trip he was asked to move back to his assigned seat. I have no freaking idea why this was, but lets just say I gave those flight attendance a disgusted look at the end of the flight, I didn't say anything, because we just landed in Seattle and we still had another flight to catch and I had to work Thursday. I didn't want to make the evening news if you know what I am talking about. Kind of like Gaylord Focker in Meet the Parents if you can't picture what I am talking about. We had a hour and half between flights and we ate dinner and of course our flight was delayed and we didn't take off until after 9. I was happy because the view we had was out of the world. We flew up over the clouds to see a full moon with Mt Rainer poking up through sea of clouds, I tried to take a photo, but who would have guessed it, my battery died. I asked for my brothers, but no luck his camera takes really bad night shots and nothing turned out. We got into sac about 11:30 and that is about all there is to say about that.

Hope you had a blast.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Chad Vader - Day Shift Manager (episode 1)

Funny

Best Flash Animation of 2006

Might be early in the year to call it the best of 2006, but it just might be. Thanks to my buddy Jeremy for sending me this video, you need to check it out to see how cool it is.

[view]

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Sith Abandon Ship


If you are a fan of the Sith, then look no further than this shirt. Oddica has some interesting shirts for sale and right now they have some specials going on. First offer is 2 shirts for $32(regularly $20) or 3 shirts for $14 ea. and if you type the coupon code "uncrate" you get $5.00 off or coupon code "tell" you get $7.00 off for telling your friends about Oddica. If you want one, buy it now, because once they're gone, they're gone and you will have to wait for the reprint which is a little different from what I have seen.

[Oddica]

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Great White North


I am off to Canadia today, I will be back in a week. I will try to get something special for all of my readers, but I can't guarentee a model wearing a Canada Flag bikini. Sorry.......