What We Did On Tuesday

I hung out with Nicole #2 All day. We had an absolutely fabulous day. Good to see that drunk Nikie still yells at Anderson. Profusely. And, old arguments still keep coming up.

Case in Point: Let me take you back. Three years Ago. Hessels' back yard in Blyth, Ontario. Why am I speaking in such punctuated sentences I wonder? Nikie looks at my feet and tells me I have "fucked up feet" (Conrad, 2002). My response: "No, you have fucked up feet" (Anderson, 2002). We just had this argument again outside my apartment. Here's one foot:



and here's the other foot:



Whose got the sexier foot? You be the judge. BTW this post has also been approved by Conrad.

The Maddy: Account Two

Friday night. Maddy. Nicole Conrad's in town. All of these factors come together and culminate in one hell of an entrance into the second last weekend of June.

Kevin has already blogged about the evening, but apparently we all must recount our impressions of our drunken haze. The following would be MY combination of thoughts on the evening...

1. Overhaulin' IS better than Pimp my Ride. And that's saying a lot... Pimp my Ride is pretty good. But in Overhaulin' they fuck with you. And fuckin' with people is what life is all about.

2. When I introduce Nicole Conrad as Nicole Conrad, people are polite and congenial. When I introduce Nicole Conrad as Drunk Nikie, instant recognition flashes into their eyes, and stories that I have recounted about years past are recalled. I do have to say though... Professor Drunk Nikie is much different from Grad Student Drunk Nikie: Professor Drunk Nikie doesn't yell at me (as much), and seems much less in control of her motor faculties.

3. An "isobaric distension stimuli" should be an "isobaric distension stimulus" or multiple "isobaric distension stimuli". Now I'm just being ornery.

4. There are WAY to many thin blonde 20-something year olds who don't know how to hold their alchohol. Or maybe they are bulimic. Either way I heard way too much wretching the the washroom.

5. Even when you sit in the corner of the bar, for some reason every single goddamn person has to squeeze through to get somewhere. And their politeness is perfectly inversely correlated with the amount of hair product that they use.

6. Rugby is a bitchin' sport. After the Maddy, Chris, Michelle and I went to watch a rugby game at Skalliwags (at 3am... and there was at least a hundred Brits and Kiwis there). I have never watched the sport. Luckily, Chris did not seem to annoyed at the multiple questions re: rules throughout the game. What I like about it: I can see how American Football evolved from Rugby... and I love American Football. But Rugby has ALL the great things about American Football, but adds the offensive excitement and continuity that is present in sports like hockey or basketball. I'm looking forward to watching a game sober.

Got home by 5:15 am, and got up at 6 pm Saturday. To go out again. I'll blog that tomorrow. I'm so behind on this damned thing.

Some Celestial Event...

No words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet. So beautiful. I had no idea.

What a brilliant show. What a fantastic time we had.



The Knowlses had a good time too.



As did the rest of the 40+ year old crowd.



See how civilized everyone is? Middle aged folk were spooning all over the lawn. Sweet nothings were whispered in many an ear tonight, let me tell you. Then James came on, and all felt right with the world.



This is the way the concert-going experience should be. Here is a list of the songs that I called Hessels for:

1. Slap Leather
2. Fire and Rain
3. Frozen Man
4. Mexico
5. The Water is Wide
6. Carolina on my Mind
7. Sweet baby Jane
8. Country Road
9. How Sweet it Is.

I may have missed some. I think I at least gave her some sense that she was there. Now, off to bed for pleasant adult contemporary dreams.

Today is the REAL First Day of Summer

And so it begins. To kick off the summer season, we will be heading down to the Molson Amphitheatre to enjoy James Tyalor (did I mention we were going to see that?). Also, the Other Nicole:



gets into town tonight. That means that this weekend is pretty much pooched. She'll be here until midweek, then off to the Hammer she goes. Then to add the cherry, Lynne:



gets into town next Friday. For a month.

Can my liver handle it? Tune in over the next several weeks to find out.

Face Off

Following in the footsteps of Michelle, I have tried to maintain a distance from this blog while at school (I'm trying to get my manuscript done in the next couple of weeks...why the hell would I take a break from writing to write more?). But sometimes stories must be relayed while they are still fresh.

I went out for a movie last night with Hessel's bro. We went to see "Africa, I Will Fleece You", a sub-titled documentary about the political and cultural history of Cameroon. It was a very good film that got me thinking (I'll post that later though). When I told Hessels I saw him, she asked me if he told the following story:

So Hessel's bro was walking in Yorkville a while ago (the to-be place in Toronto if you want to spot celebrities that may be passing through our fair city...Hemingway's is apparently Russell Crowe's favorite joint). He walked by a table of girls who all started screaming and pointing and oh-my-godding (Hessel's term). He turns around to see what this mania is directed towards... turns out, its him. Apparently, they thought they had just spotted Nicholas Cage walking through the Yorkville streets. I would post a picture of him to demonstrate how much he DOES look like Nicholas Cage, but seeing as I don't actually have permission to blog this story, I don't feel it would be prudent for me to post even more personal info.

Hee Hee.

Adult Contemporary Bliss

As Kevin (aka uberGeek) has been espousing, we're going to be seeing a bit of "Fire" and "Rain" in less than 48 hours. Sitting on the lawn, enjoying the glory that is James Taylor. Man, is it going to be sweet. Hessels, buddy, wish you were going to be here. You can expect a phone call if James should "Slap Leather" (you'll probably get one anyway, but especially if said song is played).

Also, I've secured tickets to see Sufjan Stevens in September. He is touring to promote his second "State" album, "Come on Feel the Illinois" HAHAHAHAHA (this was after his first State album, "Greetings from Michigan", undoubtedly the best Indie Christian Folk album to come out since Reagan). Hessels' bro is coming with me.

Plus, Coldplay on August 2nd. David Gray is playing on August 1st, but I don't think I can make it. Rufus Wainwright and Ben Folds are August 9th. Matt Barber is in and around for the next month promoting his new album, "". I'm just waiting for Mark Kozelek to come to Toronto... then my schedule will be complete.

Seeing as the plan for the "Summer of Promiscuous Sex" appears to be taking a header off the 56th story, I guess the "Summer of Fan-fucking-tastic music" is going to be the new mantra.

Booyeah.

The Andersons are Back in Canada

Well, my parents are official residents of Canada once more. They moved all their stuff up from Atlanta last week and have now officially movied into the new house in Avonton. If I haven't explained, Avonton is a small little burg of about 43 people that is located between St, Marys and Stratford. A google search of Avonton yields 230 sites, the vast majority of which refer to the Avonton Presbyterian church (the only non-residential building in the hamlet). So its pretty small. If you haven't seen the place yet, here's a picture:



taken from Avonton Road (the "main drag"). These pictures are from the archive by the way... I still haven't found the cable for my battery recharger (What DID I do with that I wonder? I need to find it for this weekend... both James Taylor and Nikie Conrad are going to be photo fodder for sure... )Usually its pretty relaxing up there, especially in the backyard by the Avon river looking upstream:



or downstream:



This visit, however, was a little more harried. As Don and Eva just moved, there are boxes everywhere. Everywhere. I cannot believe how much crap they have accumulated... and this is ten years AFTER their children have moved out. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to help them move as much stuff as they would have liked (knee). I feel guilty leaving that much moving and unpacking for 2 60+ year olds to deal with.

I also seriously fucked up their DSL while trying to install a wireless router (I mean really... I was working in Windows 98, on a Pentium II... and I'm a MAC person. I don't know what the hell I'm doing). Unfortunately, the service line for the ISP is only open from 9-5 on Monday to Friday. You gotta love small towns. As such, Eva doesn't have internet access for the next couple of days. She's pissed because she needs her Skype, being the social butterfly she is.

Even though they've only been back for 5 days, they're right back in the swing of things: when I got there on Saturday, they had just come back from meeting with their breakfast group (this was at 4 that I got there), Dad went to a Stag for an old friend of mine on Saturday night, and Mom was heading up to the Stephens' cottage for a few days today. If anyone ever wonders where I get my social tendencies from... well... I come by them honestly. Glad to have them back.

Even More Newly Acquired Info

The best way to present a poster is with an open bar. I developed balls I didn't even know I had. Also: makes 3 hours seem like about 15 minutes. What a good poster session.

Newly Acquired Information

We are in the midst of our Vision conference, which has sucked up most of my time for the past week. This conference is unbelievable: 8 talks a day, each talk being 45min-1hr. Jesus Christ. And its all computational, so there's a lot of Bayesian formulas being integrated. My poster is in an hour (Open bar!), and that should be a hoot and a half.

I thought I would share the 3 most interesting tidbits of information I have learned through 24 hours of talks:

1. With every saccade (eye movement), vision is suppressed for 50ms. With the average number of saccades that one makes everyday, just looking around, that means that vision is suppressed for 90 minutes. Put another way, the average human is functionally blind for 90 minutes everyday without even knowing it (Daniel Wolpert).

2. The probability that a natural scene will be generated from a white noise distribution in an 8 bit 256x256 image is 1:10^179500. Put in context, the probability that an asteroid will hit the earth in the next year is 1:10^5 (David Field). I'm thinking of setting up a background program to just start randomly generating noise images... I want to see if I can entice Zaphod to show up in my lab.

3. The brain is complicated (George Sperling).

Its the small stuff really.

Pegged It...

Now that I'm not focussed on hairy legs, I realized that my physiotherapist looks exactly like Luke Wilson. Without that funny square back jaw. It makes the brutal muscle massage a little more tolerable.

Three Brief Thoughts...

I haven't been good at keeping up with this blogging thing. That is because I have lost the battery power supply for my digital camera, and events don't seem nearly as entertaining unless I have the accompanying photography. However, since I realize that people ARE actually reading this (thanks for all the well wishes regarding my knee!), I will try and be more diligent. Here are three ephemeral points:

1. Back to the knee: the damn thing clicks everytime I walk up stairs. All I can think about is the physiotherapist telling me that without the ACL, the two bones will just keep rubbing together. I have decided to have the surgery.

2. I have steadfastly maintained for the past 3 years that one of my five deserted-island CDs would be Parachutes-Coldplay (the other four being Led Zeppelin III-Led Zeppelin, Fully Completely-Tragically Hip, Greatest Hits Vol.3-John Denver, and Room for Squares-John Mayer). There is a good chance that this may be replaced by Coldplay's new album, X&Y. I've only had it a week, but what a fantastically brilliant album. Fuck what the critics say.

3. A great example of why I love living in this city (and by extension this country). Just got back from having a couple of pints with Vik down at the Pour House (by Dupont subway station). When we tried grabbing the subway back, there was no-one at the token booth. Vik spent a couple of minutes trying to hunt down a token dispenser so she could buy a ticket (I had my pass). I walked up to the booth and saw a sign: "Back In a Minute: Please Dispense Money for Access". I called her over to put her money in. She could have SO EASILY walked through without paying. And its not because she was honest that my nationalism swelled (I like to think that I hang with honest people...except maybe you Tsang), but because the three people behind her also dispensed the required $2.50 for the TTC. Damn we're an honest people.

My Very First Physiotherapy Appointment

If I forgot to mention it: it turns out that the whole "Jumping into Nancy Kanwisher's Boat" incident resulted in a complete tear of my ACL. Complete. No ligament no longer. To start rehabilitating the damn thing, I went to my very first physiotherapy appointment this morning. And this was when I realized that one should ALWAYS shave ones legs (in the words of Gord) Fully Completely.

Damn, my physiotherapist is cute.

I had the foresight to wear shorts today, as I figured that someone would need to look at my swollen knee. But I forgot to shave the upper part of my legs. Really, it's a waste of time 99% of the time, as I wear pants or capris 99% of the time. Little did I realize that physiotherapy involved the amount of personal contact that it does. In fact, there was even some light massage (tight hamstrings from limping for the last month). Completely embarrassing.

We had a lovely conversation though (so what if it was mainly regarding my level of activity and he was wearing a wedding ring?). I am now booked to see him twice a week for the next few months. Shucks. My new Mantra: shave full legs regardless of planned activities for the day.

Unfortunately, I now also must consider surgery. Physiotherapist seems to think I should do it. I'm starting to think I might have to as well, if I want to maintain my sanity. Boo.