Category: life

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War Update; Calgary Trip Update; Oscars Predictions

Last night I went to Anna’s roommates birthday party. I was watching the news when the first guests arrived and we learned about a marine (an engineer actually) stationed in Kuwait who threw a live grenade into a tent filled with other Marines. The blast injured about 13 people and killed at least one. Apparently the Marines had had some problems with this guy and were planning on leaving him in Kuwait when it was time to move into Iraq. What a crazy world we live in.

Another interesting article I read this morning explains that many Iraqies would rather kill their own officers than fight the US.

It looks like my trip to Calgary has been cancelled because Anna is not going down to the States with her parents after all. I’m going to work on my animation instead.

It’s Oscar night and I’m sure Anna-Maria and I will be tuning in. Steve Martin is hosting and I read an article about where he’s getting his jokes from, which I thought was interesting.

So with the nominees list open in my other window here are my predictions:

BEST PICTURE – The Hours
MUSIC (SONG) – Chicago
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE – Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt)
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE – Ed Harris (The Hours)
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE – Renée Zellweger (Chicago)
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE – Julianne Moore (The Hours)
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM – Ice Age
COSTUME DESIGN – Chicago
DIRECTING – Chicago
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – Bowling for Columbine
FILM EDITING – The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
VISUAL EFFECTS – The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY) – The Hours
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY) – Gangs of New York

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My Commentary on the War

According to CNN.com 21 deaths have been confirmed among coalition troops — 14 Britons and 7 Americans. Pretty good considering half of them were killed in a helicopter crash which was an accident. The war (according to the media) is going according to plan so far, but I still think their will be more trouble and more deaths as the ground forces get closer to Baghdad.

In other news…

I talked to Mom on the phone this morning. She wanted some help with the settings in Eudora. I don’t think she ever did get everything fixed, but hopefully she is happy now that she got that Austin Powers sound changed back to the default Eudora sound. I guess, “You got mail! Yeah baby” would get irritating after the first time you heard it.

WSI / Swim Related Update

I applied for a job at the Max Bell pool. I’d rather work there than the other places that I’ve been applying because they pay much more money! I have completed about half of the 10 hours I need co-teaching to complete the course and yesterday Pat, the guy that does the hiring, came up to me and asked me to be a timer for a life guarding competition that the Max Bell is hosting. I think the fact that he knows my name and asked me is a good sign. So that’s what I’ll be doing next weekend.

Nasty Water

The water in Lethbridge tastes bad. It has tasted bad for about a week now. I think it is from all the spring run off, but the river seems really low. More updates as they come. Have a good Saturday.

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Roommate Update

I’ve come to the conclusion that my roommate isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Don’t get me wrong he seems like a smart enough guy, but he definitely doesn’t think long term. When I say long term, I actually mean a couple weeks. For example, last night I came home to find my roommate in the kitchen sporting a brand new piercing in his bottom lip. Some of you reading this may think — “Man! Jeff’s roommate is so cool!” He probably thinks he’s pretty cool too, but he won’t think he’s so cool when: #1. the money spent on a piercing would have come in real handy for food, and #2 when he can’t get a job because no one wants to hire someone with a piercing on his face.

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News

Roommate News
My roommate came home last night. This is Scott, my first roommate — the one that rarely shows his face. He’s the best roommate ever. Anyway he came home sometime around 4:00 in the morning. He’s not exactly sure when — I guess he may have been a little intoxicated. I didn’t even realize he was here until I got up to go swimming. After swimming I came home and he told me that last night he got into a huge bar fight with 4 other guys. Apparently one of them hit his girlfriend, and he retaliated — well three other guys got into the fight and as Scott relates the story, he tells me that he kicked all four of their asses. I guess they never realized he is a bouncer and is some kind of Karate black belt. He didn’t look bad at all as far as cuts or bruises go, but he was really sort of mad about the fact that they ripped his favourite shirt.

Room Mate News Part Deux
Jason, roommate #2, is gone to Calgary. He is having his girlfriend look after the rabbit!!? Speaking of the rabbit it was beginning to really STINK! For some reason I wasn’t sure if it was the rabbit or Jason, so I didn’t say anything. Luckily for me Anna-Maria mentioned to him that it was time for him to clean out the cage. He asked, “Does it really smell?” When Anna confirmed that yes she could smell it right when she walked in the door he just responded that, “I must be immune to it”. You wouldn’t believe how much better my house smells now.

Tepee Prize
I forgot to mention that when I was in Medicine Hat and I was pulling out of the driveway I heard on the radio that they were giving out free film as a prize. What you had to do was find the lady in the Taco Time cruiser and viola – you win! I thought well that would be nice but I’ll never win anything like that, but then she said I’m in Southridge at the Tepee. Things couldn’t have worked out much better for me, so I drove right over there and won a free 24 roll of film and two tickets to the play, “Noises Off”. I haven’t decided if I’m actually going to take Anna-Maria yet (it’s showing in Medicine Hat this weekend and next weekend only) because I don’t know how much I want to be driving that road. (As you will see what I mean soon).

Swimming in the Hat
There is a swim meet in Medicine Hat on the 14th and 15th. I really should enter it but that will mean going to Medicine Hat two weekends in a row. I’m sure Mom and Dad will be so happy. The other reason that I sort of don’t want to enter this meet is because I’ll have to pay the $30 entry fee, not to mention I’m kind of out of shape from not practicing much lately. I better bite the bullet and just go.

Anna-Maria’s Audition in Calgary
Anna-Maria is auditioning for York University on Monday in Calgary. I don’t think I’ll go because that will mean skipping more swim practices and missing my music 1000 class. She is pretty excited and a little stressed out about it. I’m confident that she will do great. She has to read two monologues and sing for them. Probably the worst part for her, if this is actually true, is that she heard that the auditions are done with everyone that is auditioning watching all the others preform. She thinks that’s quite mean of them… and is specifically concerned about how she will feel if someone else preforms the same monologue or song as her. I told her, just do it better than them. I have such good advice don’t I?

Dinner at the New Spring Family Restaurant
Last night Anna-Maria, her friend Lynley and I went to the Theatre Xtra play called, “The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie”. It was a serious play about a fat kid who is picked on and has a less than wonderful family life. Ah, I don’t think I’d recommend seeing this one because frankly it’s pretty depressing. Anyway before the show, we went for Chinese food (which incidentally reminds me what I’m going to have for lunch). We ran into Tracie’s grandma, grandpa, and cousins. They told me to say hi to Gary and Tracie, so “Hi guys”. That, my blog reading friends, about wraps up this very long post.

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Vacation Update

I am back from my trip to Calgary. I was supposed to go to Medicine Hat, but I’m putting it off until tomorrow. I went and saw About Schmidt (Official Trailer) with Anna and her sisters. It is definitely a movie made for the pre-MTV generation. Possibly the worst most jarring part was seeing Kathy Bates’ naked body — what a shock.

Gary and Tracie gave me a couple of VHS tapes that I’ll have to watch sooner or later. Raising Arizona and Born in East LA.

I didn’t go to Medicine Hat on Wednesday like I had originally planned. I didn’t feel like it today either, so because Anna-Maria and my parents are all sad that I didn’t come to Medicine Hat yesterday or today, I’d better get some sleep so I can get there in the morning.

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Peer Gynt Cast Party and WSI Course Completed

Last night Anna-Maria persuaded me to reluctantly come with her to her cast party for Peer Gynt. Although I was really tired when we finally left at 2:30am I am glad we went. It was a fun time, and I’m beginning to know a lot of the Drama students now.

I haven’t officially passed the class yet. I still have to do ten hours of co-teaching lessons and then I pass. I must say that I’m pretty happy to be done with it though, today was my last day of classes at the pool.

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Happy Valentines Day! (No School Today)

For Valentines Day Anna-Maria bought me a book called, “If… (Questions for the Game of Life)”. It has “IF” questions in it to make you ponder what you would do if certain situations were possible or had to happen what would you do. Here are a couple of example questions from the book, “If you could spend one whole night alone with anyone in history, whom would you chose? If you could suddenly possess an extraordinary talent in one of the arts, which would you like it to be? If you could commit one crime without being caught, what crime would you commit? If your plane were about to crash and you had time to write one quick note, to whom would you write, and what would you say? If you could run any single company, institution, or organization in the world, which would you choose?

My reading week vacation starts today. I’ll have lots of time to play around on Plastic.com and Fark. I think perhaps we should have a photoshop contest on our own blog. What do you other bloggers think?

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Adventures in Photoshop and Shopping at Cosco

Anna-Maria LemaistreYesterday I took some digital pictures of Anna-Maria for her application to the National Theatre School in Montreal. The best ones were taken outside and then I photoshoped them so that they had a completely white background. She had some taken in one of those two dollar photo machines at the mall, but they were way overexposed and basically useless. Anyway when I got to Cosco to have them developed — well I had saved a bunch of them on CD but there was only one that I really wanted and it was the only one that I saved in .tif format. As you might be guessing Cosco doesn’t develop tifs, jpegs only. I was somewhat frustrated but what can you do? Anna went out this morning and had them developed; they look great.

I took Anna’s roommate Zee along with me in case they asked why the name on the Cosco Club Card said Anna-Maria so that she could say, “Oh that’s me”. And when it came time to pay she did in fact pull through and say, “yep, I’m Anna”. Even though the picture of Anna on the back of the card is half worn out, Zee still looks nothing like her. Almost immediately after claiming to be Anna, Zee started talking with me about Anna’s play and if we should go see that movie The Ring, “Anna and her sisters really liked it!” I couldn’t believe her and I’m sure the guy thought we were quite the imposters / losers but he didn’t say anything.

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Peer Gynt

Anna’s play opens tonight. Read about the details. Although that’s obviously not Anna-Maria in the picture, she will be playing a pig troll (among other characters), which means that one of her costumes will look like that one in the picture.