Saturday, March 09, 2002
Wednesday, Alexa and I went to Kitanoya Guu with Garlic with Debi. We tried to get Marc and Mike to come too but they bottled. Alexa was on fine form, charming, funny, articulate. I am so proud of her. Debi seemed a bit subdued but we had a pleasant evening. We had to sit on the floor and I was stiff from playing basketball. It was an effort. Debi left when we got back to my place so Alexa and I had a hot tub and slept like babies.
posted by John Woakes 11:22 AM
Thursday, Alexa’s 35 birthday today. I got her to go for a pee while I donned “Elephant underwear”. David Carr lent me these. They are minimalist underwear where the front is an elephant and your penis goes in the trunk and it is a tight fit. The back is just bit of elastic and the elephant’s head is tufted with pube. Her real presents where 2 books. Plane Insanity by Elliott Hester and Holy War, Inc by Peter L Bergen. The first is by a flight attendant and tells of life and things that have happened to him. Supposed to be funny. The second is about bin Laden by a guy who has actually interviewed him (before Sept 11). Nice contrast I thought. Both were reviewed by Salon which is where I got the idea for them.
posted by John Woakes 11:41 AM
More Thursday, Alexa worked till about 7:30 so I met her at work and we went to Capones and had a very nice dinner and a bottle of Burrowing Owl wine. Then back home for birthday rumpy-pumpy. I love that girl. We always have sex on special occasions.
posted by John Woakes 11:44 AM
Friday, Alexa says we have to go running in the morning! We do, about half and hour. It means an early start. I feel it. It has been a long time since I went running. I had lunch with Marion. She came to the office to pick me up. We went for Sushi. It was mostly small talk. There was a guy there who she knew. She said that they go and see movies in the afternoon, umm, interesting. I didn’t probe. She is doing a decathlon on Saturday – run, bike, run. I must ask her how it goes. Alexa came over about 7:00 and we are both very tired. I go out for take-away Thai and she has a soak. We are in bed by 10:00, read a bit and then sleep.
posted by John Woakes 11:56 AM
Wednesday, March 06, 2002
More Saturday, Alexa phoned and said she will be in about 11:00 pm. So I had a gentle evening pottering around till she got in. It was good to see her when she finally arrived.
posted by John Woakes 4:48 PM
Sunday, Tom and Donna had us over for breakfast at my place. They were leaving at 11:30 back to Toronto. Finally got my place back. Alexa cycled home to do chores and I cooked dinner for us. A very tasty chicken and potato dish.
posted by John Woakes 4:50 PM
Monday, read 300+ emails, always a problem when I have been away for a while.
posted by John Woakes 4:52 PM
Alexa’s mom had a funny turn. She got temporary amnesia while shopping. She ended up in hospital. She seems fine now. They wanted to give her a CAT scan but they were taking so long she discharged herself. Typical Cartwright (well the female variety). She is back home but there is a friend staying till the 18th so someone will be there if she has a relapse.
posted by John Woakes 4:59 PM
Tuesday, Sonya phoned. She had just got back in town and wanted to go out for dinner. Alexa is working like a dog at the moment so we left her a message and went to Capones. She turned up at about 9:30. It was a fun evening. Alexa seems more relaxed. I went back to her place.
posted by John Woakes 5:00 PM
Saturday, March 02, 2002
Tom got a bunch of us to go and see Christopher Lawrence at Sonar. We meet up first at Tribeca for drinks and dinner. We got to Sonar at about 10:00 and it was very quiet. The first dj was good. CL was billed as Underground Trance. I found it hard to dance to. The rhythm is fast. It got better. We left at about 1:20 and most of us walked home. I got asked where the street walkers/workers were by a guy in a car. After about 5 “What”s, he said “I need a whore”. Oh sorry mate, can’t help. Got home about 2:00 and felt tired all the next day.
posted by John Woakes 3:53 PM
Saturday, saw Di for brunch. It was a beautiful sunny day so I got my bike out. I first went to Sports Junkies to pick up the money I got for selling my snowboard. It was a glorious day and I really enjoyed the bike ride. We sat outside in the sun. Di has some strange friends. Taylor has 2 boyfriends who don’t know about each other. The other one stalks her boyfriend and listens to his voice mail (she cracked the code). Di always complains about finding it hard to meet new people but is only looking in horrible night clubs. She has started a new job working for the City of Coquicklum (ouch – that isn’t right). She calls it sleep-working. She seems pretty chipper but it is a long commute and she needs more brain stimulation. Damian walked by. He was out looking for milk in a bottle that had a sell by date past tomorrow. Milk tastes better out of a bottle!!?? Had a sort of long cycle home. The sun was just amazing and False Creek beautiful. I phoned Ran from Science World but they are in the States at the moment.
posted by John Woakes 4:26 PM
Wednesday, February 27, 2002
Monday, went to see the guy from Investors Group. We started off a bit tetchy. I was like I know what I am doing and I don’t agree with what you are saying. He was saying I shouldn’t invest so much in Pivotal. But I do like that they know their tax stuff and the life plan idea. I worked out he wants my monthly money that I am at the moment using for the Employee Stock Purchase Plan. He then said he wanted $10,000 to start and $50,000 in 3 years. I can work with that what with Mon’s inheritance coming through. It did get me thinking that I should max my RRSP this year (i.e. in the next 3 days). I got a RSP loan and did it the next day.
posted by John Woakes 10:31 PM
I am staying with Alexa at the moment because Tom is at my place. In fact I am typing this on her antiquated IBM ThinkPad. I was looking forward to spending some time with her. Turns out she has to go to Toronto and Ottawa on Wednesday and won’t be back till Saturday night. Monday, she gets back from work after my financial thingy. Tuesday she gets home about 10:30 and Wednesday she is gone. So I have the place to myself – which is cool. I like my own company. We will just have to do the togetherness thing some other time.
posted by John Woakes 10:38 PM
I started Pilates today at lunch time. I only turned up an hour early. Duh. It was interesting. My head juts forward. My shoulders are rounded. My ribs stick out. My bum sticks out. My hamstrings are at one with my bum. Not a pretty sight. But I have well developed calves – phew, one saving grace. It was hard, very hard to do the exercises. They require a lot of concentration and very unusual muscle control. I could feel it in my stomach afterwards. She said I need to work on my hamstrings as they are very tight. I signed up for the Intro package. 3 more sessions in the next 8 days. I really hope it works out and that I can get on top of it. I really like the goals.
posted by John Woakes 10:49 PM
I went to see the film Microcosmos at the Ridge tonight on my own. Alexa is away and I could not get anyone else to see it. It was charming – the life of a meadow at insect level. Not a great brain workout but very beautiful, at times funny and with very little dialog. Two snails making out was amazing. They end up caressing each other sort of standing on the ends of their shells. It was actually very sensual. The last piece, a mosquito coming out of it’s pupa was quite stunning too.
posted by John Woakes 10:58 PM
Looks like Mon’s money is coming through. I got an email from Hatti and Mike asking for bank details for the deposit. Looks like if I go with the Investor’s group and pay off my RSP loan I won’t have too much left. I was thinking of taking a month up at Whistler for my sabbatical which would be next year. That might be out of the question now. So a new idea – cycle across Canada. Obviously needs some research but I seem to remember someone saying it could be done in 6 weeks. Would doing it on my own drive me nuts? Or could I get Alexa or Martin to join me for parts of it?
posted by John Woakes 11:08 PM
Monday, February 25, 2002
On Tuesday I went to a Financial Presentation put on for Pivotal by the Investment Group. One of the things they talked about was leverage where you borrow money to invest and make a packet. I decided to get an RRSP loan and look into it. They phoned me up and made an appointment for next Monday.
posted by John Woakes 2:35 PM
Wednesday – special moment in time at 20:02, today 20/02 year 2002. I got an email from Brenna saying the symmetry will never happen again – but it will on 21:12, 21/12, 2112, not that I plan to be here for that one.
posted by John Woakes 2:39 PM
Thursday, wanted to go boarding but the hill was closed due to excessive rain. Not good. I was all kitted up and about to leave the house when I thought I would just check the snow line. David and Alexa were there. I tried to phone Sally to tell her and ended up chatting with Troy for about 30 minutes (a record!). Dave, Alexa and I decided to go out for dinner as we had a car for the night. We went to the Clove on the Drive. It was cool. Good food and we talked about sex and intimacy. Alexa invited him up to Whistler for her birthday.
posted by John Woakes 2:49 PM
Friday, Tom is in town. He came into the office and we arranged to go for a drink before Alexa and I go for dinner with Debra. I got talking to Donna his girlfriend and it turns out her and Alexa went to school together. Alexa recognizes her instantly when she turns up. Alexa has a class photo with the two of them standing next to each other – aged 11. We eventually leave to go and have dinner with Debra, Jen and Nadine. That is quite a laugh. Jen and Nadine are in really good form and we chat about all sorts of stuff. Debra has dyed her hair various shades of blond and red and it looks great. Makes her look younger. By the time we get home I have drunk quite a bit. Alexa performs the impossible, again, as we have successful sex for both of us!
posted by John Woakes 2:58 PM
Saturday, we head up to Whistler in the afternoon after I bottle 30 bottles of home made Shiraz. It is hectic but we make it. We get there as the others (Tom, Donna, cj, Mike and Mike’s brother Wojtek) get off the hill. We actually see Tom and Donna getting into the elevator. We get some beers while they get changed and washed. We end up going out to the Mongolian Grill. My first time. You choose your food and they cook it. It all looks good and I choose the most, 3 time as much as Alexa. Go to bed stuffed. The next day is a beautiful cloudless sunny day. It is cold but not windy. We hope the hill will be quiet because Canada is playing USA for the gold medal in the winter Olympics at 12:00. The hill is hard packed and the powder, what is left of it, has a thin crust on it. The lower runs are icy but we have a good day. Canada wins 5-2 which is a fairly tale ending for Canada as the women’s team beat the US too for the gold too earlier in the week. We catch the bus back as does Tom and Donna (just, by about 20 seconds). I am bushed. Alexa and I have a bath and a beer together and an early night.
posted by John Woakes 3:14 PM
Monday, February 18, 2002
Okay, last Thursday (Valentine’s Day) Alexa, David and I went snowboarding at Cypress. It had been sunny all week so we were expecting icy conditions. It was hard packed but not too bad and very quiet. We even ended up in the trees a fair bit. Anyway we were feeling confident so we decided to try out the Terrain Park. David had now got a helmet (mandatory in the Terrain Park). There was one solitary boarder in there doing the half pipe (very well). We all tried the half pipe. It was steep and icy hard. We all got a few turns in about 1/3 of the way up the side. We laughed at the patheticness of our performances but now know we can do it. Then I suggested climbing back up and trying a jump. I went first and didn’t even have enough speed to get up the jump much to Alexa’s amusement. She went next, sort of made it over the jump, landed it more or less and then fell in a clump. We cheered. Then heard a plaintive “I’ve hurt my hand”. I boarded over to her and she was in agony. We put snow on her hand but the pain would not subside. We eventually got down from the hill and into first aid. Some crepitus was detected and a splint and sling administered. I was sure she had broken a bone. Anyway we went to the pub and over a beer decided strategy. David drove us to the hospital. We dropped her off, then we went home and I changed and went back for her. It was a quiet night at the hospital and she was just coming back from her x-ray as I got there. She had a sprained ligament in her thumb. They put her in a half cast and we got home about 1:00 am. This was our romantic Valentine’s night. The ironic thing was that less than a week earlier her mom, having watched the half pipers in the Olimpics had tried to get Alexa to promise not to do the half pipe which she refused to do (being a “Hard Core Boarder Chick”). She is proud that her injury was gained in the Terrain Park and is keen to get back on the hill again (although she is looking into getting wrist guards). My little HCBC – I am very proud.
posted by John Woakes 8:57 PM
Saturday, Alexa cooked a very nice dinner. She has her TV out (shock, horror) to watch the Olympics. We watched the men's 1,000-metre short-track event. It was very amusing. Here is the text of an article about the winner.“The luckiest man at the Winter Olympics is an Australian speed skater who once sliced his right leg open and almost bled to death on the ice only to recover and break his neck.
Okay, so Steven Bradbury has had a few misfortunes. Saturday night made up for that. Saturday night was Bradbury's big payback, his windfall of falls. The young man from Camden was nothing but aces start to finish. If he had been a gambler in Las Vegas, they would have barred him from every casino on the strip. Instead, he got a gold medal, the first Winter Olympic gold medal in the history of Australian sport.
Here's how it happened: In the men's 1,000-metre short-track event, everybody fell down and Bradbury won. It happened in the quarter-final, in the semi-final and it happened again, for third time on the same night, on the last corner in the final. Everybody fell down and Bradbury won.
Short trackers have a habit of falling down and taking each other out like pins in a bowling alley. But what happened for Bradbury was beyond anything anyone had ever seen before, a fall classic that played to Bradbury's advantage until he crossed the finish line with his arms raised in victory and a crazy grin on his face.
Even on the podium, where he stood above silver medalist Apolo Ohno of the United States and bronze medalist Mathieu Turcotte of Canada, a thoroughly amused Bradbury couldn't stop shaking his head as if he'd just heard the funniest joke in the world.
"Obviously I wasn't the fastest skater out there. The nature of short track is there are a lot of crashes, but to have four guys go down all at once is not a commonplace thing."
Neither is Bradbury's short-track career, which has produced as many near-death experiences as accomplishments. At a 1994 World Cup in Montreal, Bradbury fell in a heap with Canadians Fred Blackburn and Marc Gagnon and impaled his right thigh on a skate blade. The gash was so severe Bradbury lost four litres of blood and needed 111 stitches. He said he would have died if it hadn't been for the fast work of the paramedics who treated him.
Then in September, 2000, Bradbury fell while training in Australia and crashed headfirst into a barrier, breaking the C4 and C5 vertebrae in his neck. For six weeks he wore a metal halo.
But even after two horrific injuries, Bradbury refused to pass on a sport that had taken him to the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Winter Games. Instead, he wanted one last go at the Olympics so he could "walk away satisfied." Never in his wildest dreams did he expect to walk away as an Olympic champion, the guy who stayed on his feet when everyone else was skating on banana peels; Australia's new Olympic hero, whose brilliant strategy was to stay behind the leaders in case they fell down.
"The quarter-final I ran out of legs with a lap to go and I had three guys go by me, but two of them went down so I got through. The semi-final I went in planning on riding on the back looking for accidents or collisions or something so I could sneak up. And they went down again. Same deal in the final.
"They were my tactics and they worked like a charm."
In the final, Bradbury was so far behind his rivals he could have stopped and asked for directions. He looked like a guy trying to hail a cab. Then all of a sudden China's Li Jiajun went down. Then Korea's Hyun-Soo Ahn went down and took out Ohno and Turcotte, and Bradbury cruised past thinking, 'Hang on. This can't be right. I think I won.'
Convinced he wasn't going to win a thing here, Bradbury had sent a pre-race e-mail to Ohno asking for a favour. When he isn't competing, the scruffy-haired Bradbury manufactures speed-skating boots and Ohno, everyone's favourite to win gold in the 1,000, was wearing a pair of the Revolutionary Boot Company's best on Saturday.
"I sent [Ohno] an e-mail saying, 'If you win a medal can you try and give us a mention?' But I guess I don't need him to do that now," Bradbury said.
No, the good-luck charm that skates like a man doesn't need much of anything now. His place in Olympic folklore has been sealed.”
posted by John Woakes 9:03 PM
Sunday, Rachel phoned to say that they were moving to Ottawa in a week and did I want to come for pot luck brunch. I made my cauliflower and banana salad and headed over. It was gentle chaos with dogs, kids and friends trying to talk. After that I popped over to Marion’s to get the money Steve and Pat left for me. Marion was preparing late lunch for 6. We chatted for about an hour while she cooked. We said we would have lunch this week some time. I am not sure how I feel about this. I was a bit nervous going up to the house and it felt strange not being able to talk about Alexa. Am I now regretting wanting to be friendly with her? It is definitely weird for me.
posted by John Woakes 9:29 PM
Alexa came over after I got back from Marion’s and we had glorious afternoon nooky. I love that girl. I then made wild mushroom tart for dinner. This is the same dish I tried to make on New Year’s Eve and ended up dropping it upside-down on the oven door. I managed to not drop it this time and we both thought that it lacked a certain something compared to the NYE time. Perhaps it was the champaign.
posted by John Woakes 9:48 PM
Wednesday, February 13, 2002
Meet Steve and Pat at the bus station. We yacked all the way to Whistler. Well I yacked – they were pretty zonked. Anyway it was a good holiday. We had a great room, nice pool and hot tubs and the snow was pretty good. Pat struggled a bit on the hill. Steve and I just wanted to blast everywhere and Pat was more cautious ie slow. The last day we had 33 cm of new snow. It was amazing. People getting stuck all over the place. Got back late Thursday night – tired but happy.
posted by John Woakes 8:19 PM
Alexa was boarding when I got in. She turned up about midnight more tired and beat up than I was. She had taken a hard fall. It was really good to see her.
posted by John Woakes 8:21 PM
On Sunday I had a lesson at Cypress. We did jumping. I took a hard fall and my neck is sore and stiff. It is amazing, once you lose the jumping ability you crash every thing else. Well at least I have 4 more years till the next Olympics ***JOKE***.
posted by John Woakes 8:23 PM
Finished Random Passage which I had taken to Whistler to read. It was a great read even though there is no story as such and the ending did not resolve one of the main characters life. It was also hard to keep track of all the characters as babies were being born nearly every chapter. It had great atmosphere and as we were in Newfoundland only months earlier it all made sense.
posted by John Woakes 8:29 PM
Tuesday, we went to see Monster Ball. It was disappointing. It was slow and thoughtful but the subject matter required more passion. It had its moments.
posted by John Woakes 8:29 PM
Sunday night, I went to Marion’s as it was Steve and Pat’s last night. The plan was to go out for dinner but Steve was not well so Marion cooked. Marion was in good form even with a hangover. Her and Pat (plus the other girls) ended up at the Yale on Saturday night and danced the night away. I managed to drink 2 bottles of wine (and a can of beer). I was a bit tidily but didn’t feel like I drank that much! I was probably nervous. I promised to burn PJ for her and she will gopher money from Pat and Steve to me. It was a very pleasant evening and we caught up on news of friends and family.
posted by John Woakes 8:45 PM
Paid up for the Life Balance program $39 US so not cheap. Look forward to really getting my teeth into it and my life all sorted out!!! The Motley Fool now charges for use of the boards. I signed up for 2 years. I need access to the boards to get the screen picks. Hopefully the Mechanical Investing board will have a lot less traffic now it cost money to join. More US dollars on the Visa card. Hope it is worth it. Got Avantgo working on my Palm again. Ahhhh. I am having problems with the Fool site. I cannot register via the Palm and 750K is not enough to load their channel even though they claim it will only require 60K or so. Other tech news is my CD burner/player has decided it doesn’t exist any more. Hopefully it is just a matter of settings/drivers but bugger I don’t have time for hassles like this.
posted by John Woakes 8:47 PM
I almost forgot - Alexa cooked dinner for Sonya and Claudia on Saturday. I did a woaksie salad. Claudia told us about her going to see ABBA mania and Alexa put on her ABBA gold tape. Well that was the lighting of the torch paper for Claudia. She proceeded to sing and dance to every song. She exhausted us and we were just watching and laughing.
posted by John Woakes 9:09 PM
