Mike H's Journal

12:24am: American Thanksgiving: which meant I got to play half (probably more than half) a game of monopoly. The brother and sister I played, were a fair bit younger than I was and it was clear that they had not played a whole lot of monopoly. I tried to give hints on strategy as we played. Even so, I really enjoyed the game. I had a slow start only scraping up four pieces of property as the rest were distributed between the other players. Engineering a series of trades, I ended up with the light blue monopoly while the other players had the orange and the green. I eventually traded for the light purple monopoly as well in exchange for capital for houses to the orange monopoly player. I became the clear favourite as the other players landed on my light blues allowing me to develop hotels on my two monopolies. Then I hit the community chest card of street repairs and my six hotels cost me $690, of which I had $120 on hand. Meanwhile the orange monopoly player was eliminated by the green monopoly player leaving her with virtually all the property (mortgaged though). I landed on a 2 house N. Carolina Ave, and had to sell more houses.
The game was competitive when I had to go, I let the eliminated player take over my position.

11:14pm: I proposed on Tuesday.

I passed, but it was rough. I don't want to say too much about it just yet.

5:38am: "Don't you want to go to sleep?"
"Maybe I will"

10:17pm: Between Jack Nicklaus and Jack Nicholson, I can never remember which one is the golfer and which one is the actor.

1:52pm: An in-joke
So yesterday, on the front page of the newspaper was a story on Redbox which rents movies at $1 a night via vending machines. Vending machine ... who knew?

12:25am: A quarter year late.
I wouldn't say intentionally, but I've avoided writing here since June. Though back in July, when there was a large uproar about the leaked UW logo, I almost wrote my opinion on the subject. Well here it is now: I much preferred the coat of arms. However when I learnt that the heraldry would remain for more formal occasions, I began to imagine the new logo as a specialized logo like those used for athletics, or to be more consistent in purpose like the University of Calgary's wordmark. I still think there should be fewer lines in the W, but I have the feeling if it had been leaked as new university wordmark opposed to logo, there wouldn't have been as extreme a reaction.

6:52pm: It irks me when people preface a sentence with "I'm not going to lie (to you)". There's an implication that telling the truth is something that needs to be noted; that lying is the norm rather than the exception.

Add to that, that if you were going to lie to me, you wouldn't be telling me anyways and so absolutely nothing is gained by the statement.

9:26pm: I had to remail my US federal tax return in Toronto because I hadn't signed a line I was supposed to sign and it was sent back there. When I did my first US tax return, I remember walking into the post office, and seeing well sorta what you see in the movies and the Simpsons. This includes a large stone building with stairs to get to the doors, marble floors and bronze relief on the inside of postmen delivering mail, a long line with multiple windows where tellers help you. Quite different from my experience with Canada post being in the back of a Shoppers drug mart. I'm sure the USPS have small offices as well, but it seems the hub is closest to where I live. Anyways the point was that I wasn't sure whether there were any such buildings in Toronto. I mean the mail needs to be sorted somewhere, but it doesn't need to be a grand building - all you require is space.

Well during my trip I learnt that the Air Canada Centre was such a building. One of the days on my way to the conference, I noticed the signs about a restoration/preservation project to a building that I thought was only 10 years old. The signs talked about protecting the limestone relief from being damaged from the pollutants that came from the Gardiner. Moving backward to the sign which demarks the building history I learnt the history of the ACC. I recall when the location was being decided for the building that they had purchased the land from Canada Post, but it never dawned on me that there was a building there that they would build overtop. I had always (unrealistically) imagined that it was a vacant lot or if there was a building that it would be torn down first for the stadium.

5:38pm: In our garden, we have a patch of poppies. Although I know otherwise, the Rememberance Day poppies have conditioned me to think of poppies as small flowers, the size of violets, impatients or trilliums. Poppies are considerably larger.

10:46pm: Trip home
Flew home Friday morning, watching what I thought was the first half (turned out to be a much larger fraction) of Last Chance Harvey. Dinner was lobster. Saturday evening was a trip to Waterloo for Di's birthday/Snuggles & Catherine's convocation party. It was fun and I got to see people whom I don't usually see on my trips back.

Sunday was the first day of the conference. My sister wanted to see the closing ceremonies to the outdoor Cirque du Soleil show, Luminato, so I stayed after the last talk. I attended the general reception for dinner, before deciding to wander the harbourfront to see some of what Luminato had to offer. I saw some jugglers and some gymnasts (they did one hand-handstands while rotating their bodies around the z-axis). I saw a father and son playing chess. They noticed me watching and asked if I wanted to play a game. So I played a game with the son who looked like he was 5. He was very good for his age. I won, but he was adept at spotting traps and it wasn't until endgame before the game was out of hand.

Closing ceremonies were a disaster though. The first problem was I arrived early and had no problem walking to the back corner of the area, but my sister who arrived 5 minutes prior to when it was supposed to begin couldn't get to me through a mob of people. A lot of cell phone tag was played and we eventually found one another. Partly alleviating the problem before, rainy weather had pushed back the start of the closing ceremonies. Unfortunately it didn't start until 9:50. I had wanted to leave around 10:50 to make sure we definetly caught the 11:13 train. Then judging by how long it took for my sister to come in I told her around 10:15, we needed to leave soon, which she was pretty upset by. But unlike the half hour it took for my sister to get in, we were able to leave almost immediately and when my sister learnt what time it was 10:20 she was even more upset. We stopped by the telecast and watched on the screen a few more acts before leaving.

Monday went by quickly. There was a reception at the Hockey Hall of Fame, but I had to skip it on account of a family dinner. Tuesday was the day of my talk. It went well. It was a little unsettling to only have one non-speaker member in the audience when I began, but people trickled in afterwards (I think the keynote that preceeded my session went a little long). The early mornings from the conference took their toll on me though. I woke up Wednesday thinking I was coming down with something (also my sister was claiming the same thing the previous day). I found it a difficult to concentrate on the talks and developed a sore throat through the course of the day. As it was the last day the conference ended at 2:00. I had plans for dinner downtown though so I walked up to the AMC at Younge and Dundas and watched the Taking of Pelham 123. Met with Tersigni and Adam Weatherhead for dinner at a Thai restaurant.

Thursday I knew I was sick - though it wasn't debilitatingly so. Spent most of the day in bed to try and get rid of it sooner. Friday (unlike the rain we had Thursday) was nice and warm I decided to take a walk. I didn't have a good plan of where I was going and I probably went farther than I should have. In the end it was a good 2 hour walk and I had blisters from not having my regular running shoes with me. There was a father's day dinner with the extended family before we picked up the other sister who got in from London. Saturday had Carol go out with our cousin to a music festival. The rain we had meant that the original plan of tennis with Julie were cancelled, so instead we ended up playing games (even though Julie typically doesn't like them). Sunday we spent at the cemetary planting a few shrubs next to the stone. We had a late lunch/early dinner before I was dropped off at the airport. I might post some small observations I made during the trip over the next few days.

3:24pm: Today marks 20/06/09, which if you take away the slashes is the prime number that was designated to me from UW. More to post on my trip later