Month: January 2011

The OCG with OCD

You know how it starts with “There’s a lot of crumbs in this toaster” and ends with taking the whole kitchen back to studs? Yeah, that. I’m the Original Canadian Gangster with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Today I cleaned the fridge.

This is the before shot.

Now before I show you the after shot, let’s talk about the before state of my fridge a little. If you look closely, you can see a Styrofoam container with chicken breasts leaning against a Dijon mustard container. You can see mangoes in the vegetables drawer. You can see an eggplant right on the edge of the fist shelf, a ziploc container on the edge of the second shelf. Short containers in tall spaces, tall things in short spaces. Yogurts on two different shelves.

Chaos.

Now here’s what I did without throwing anything away. In fact, I even added a juice container.

This is the after shot.

Of course I started by cleaning the inside of the fridge and all the shelves themselves. I swear I’m the only guy in the world who knows that those glass inserts actually come out of the plastic frame if you pry hard enough.

Notice how all the yogurt is huddled together. Notice how tall items are on a tall shelf, and short items are on a short shelf. when they share a shelf, taller items go in the back, and shorter items go in front so we can read the labels – which are all facing forward in case you didn’t notice. Fruits are in the fruits drawer, vegetables in the vegetables drawer and meat is in… The meat drawer. Notice how nothing is precariously perched at the edge of a shelf, and how nothing touches the inside surface of the fridge to facilitate better airflow?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I just realized I didn’t clean the items in the door.

What’s in a name (or a tagline)?

A few days ago, I made some minor style changes to this blog.

One of the biggest changes I made was to the tagline, going from “May you find what you’re looking for” to “Cruel but Hilarious”. I even made a new banner.

The response from the blogging community was awesome. The general consensus was that the new tagline was not really me. I agree.

Using the power of e-mail, I contacted many friends and asked about potentially better taglines:

You’ve all been nice enough to comment on the new design and/or tagline. Thank you. I agree with some of you that the tagline needs some work. I really like the “Cruel but hilarious” comment that Sybil Law made, but you’re right that it’s not really me.

1) Use a previous tagline. Those include:

  • Canadia’s Favorite Blogger
  • Canadia’s Blogger
  • Canada’s Blogger
  • [Evil Genius]
  • May you find what you’re looking for
  • No more mister nice guy

2) Use a new tagline

  • I take comfort in the knowledge that your obituary will be nowhere near as humorous as mine. (been using this for years as my sig file on GMail)
  • If I’m going crazy, I’m taking you with me.
  • I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. (Love this Edgar Allan Poe quote)
  • Lost in thought (unfamiliar territory).

What say you? Anything you like? Any ideas you’d like to share?

Once again, the response was great. Once  the dust settled and all the votes were tabulated, the clear winner was “Canadia’s favorite Blogger”. So I made this new banner:

(I’m putting it here in case you’re reading this through a feedreader)

So here you have it, I’m back to my original post Avitaween 2009 tagline. 😉 So tell me what you think*.

Oh. I also received interesting suggestions:

  • <Canada>Favorite Blogger</Canada>
  • 1. RUN 2. LAUGH 3. GOTO 1
  • </Mister Nice Guy>
  • [meh]
  • “Lesombre: The L Word that’s not Lesbians.”
  • Canadian Ninja
  • The Best of Web 2.Eh
  • O.C.G. (Original Canadian gangster)

And I think I might use those – and the original rejected taglines – as post titles soon…

* The use of “Canadia’s Favo(u)rite Blogger” in no way implies that other Canadian Bloggers are not also awesome and favorite in their own way.

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne ?

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !
and surely I’ll be mine !
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pu’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn,
frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
and gie’s a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
for auld lang syne.

How did you celebrate Rabbie Burns day? You did celebrate, right?

One bullet short of a full gun (31)

  • Escargot. Now I know what it feels like to have to carry all the stuff you own on your back. This is what my LovelyWife wanted me to do before we left for Mont-Tremblant this week-end.
  • One Skier, one Boarder. I now have one skier and one boarder more in the family. Both kids to introductory lessons, and they were both really good at it and had an awesome time. You can see pictures on Flickr.
  • One more inch, and I’ll be the King. One less inch, and I’ll be the Queen. It was really really cold on the mountain.
  • I have wood, and I’m looking for sheeps. Of course I’m talking about The Settlers of Catan, not some frat-house party.
  • Thank you. Suze and Mike were awesome.

In pure Call of Cthulhu tradition, I’ll keep the last bullet for myself for when the madness finally comes.

The Last Sleepover

Zoé went to her last sleepover yesterday.

“How can you know it was her last sleepover?” I hear you ask out loud in your office / living room / favorite coffee shop.

Because I’m not really a dumbass. I just comb my hair in  a certain way and that makes me LOOK like a dumbass.

“So how was your sleepover?” I asked.

“The girls had fun scaring me all night. They pretended that someone was at the front door, and was trying to get inside the house. In the end it was really funny, but I was a little scared.” She explained.

“How did they manage to do that?”

She then told me about the configuration on the house, and how one friend pretended to go to the bathroom but really went knocking at the front door instead, how they all went down the stairs but never went all the way to the door and ran back upstairs, where they called (pretended to call really) the girl’s dad , mom and brothers but no one would pick up their phone. It was all really scary but they soon admitted what they were doing and everything was fine. They had fun.

Except she never got to that point.

We were parked in the coffee place parking lot, waiting for LovelyWife to pick-up some tea for her office. I had tilted the rear view mirror, and was asking her about her night.

“So how was your sleepover?” I asked.

“The girls had fun scaring me all night. They pretended that someone was at the front door, and was trying to get inside the house. In the end it was really funny, but I was a little scared.” She explained.

“How did they manage to do that?”

She then told me about the configuration on the house, and how one friend pretended to go to the bathroom but really went knocking at the front door instead, how they all went down the stairs but never went all the way to the door and ran back upstairs, where they called (pretended to call really) the girl’s dad…

I made “WTF are you talking about?” with my eyes.

[Awkward Pause]

I said: “Did you know there wasn’t going to be any adult in the house for that sleepover? And why didn’t you call me when you realized you had no supervision?”

“I didn’t want to have to come back home.”

So because there were no adults present at the sleepover, but more importantly because Zoé knew it was wrong to not call me when she realized no adult was there, and mainly because she tried to pull a fast one on me, Zoé went to her last sleepover yesterday.

For a while.

For a long long while.

I’m going to have to find ways to rebuild that trust as fast as possible.  This is not going to be easy.

Pumpkin

I couldn’t stop laughing in the grocery store. There I was looking for some pumpkin purée…

Do you see it?

Look closer…

Please tell me I’m not the only one finding this really funny and really hard to do. 😉