Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Happy New Year Everyone!

Haven't posted in a while so I thought I'd take a few minutes and get out a quickie. ;o)

Christmas was fantastic! I spent Christmas Eve with Aaron's family in Sherwood Park and had a blast. Dinner was insane, I haven't eaten that much in one meal in a loooong time. Then we all sat in the living room and opened presents... it was great to see everyone so excited. Aaron was a little worried that there would be family drama (apparently a time-honored Christmas tradition), but everyone was on their best behavior and a good time was had by all.

We spent Christmas night at Aaron's parents' house, and woke up (way too) early on Christmas for hot chocolate and Bailey's and Santa Presents! Santa had found some maddeningly difficult-to-open puzzle boxes online somewhere, and each of the kids got one with a $20 bill inside. I was the last one to get mine open but in fairness I think I also got the hardest one. :oP There were lots of other presents too, and I think Aaron came out the winner with a shiny new XBox 360 to play with. After presents, it was time to go back to Auntie Linda's house for more food, leftover from the previous night's gluttony.

All in all I had a wonderful time, with the best part being that our first real Christmas together was pretty much drama-free. This time last year, Aaron wasn't out to anyone in his family so it was great that everyone was so welcoming and accepting of my presence. I've been made to feel like part of the family, and I couldn't have asked for a better Christmas gift.

Today we're off to Fernie for what's looking to be a fantastic ski weekend slash New Year's party! I'm sure I'll have more to blog about next week, hopefully with pictures!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Where you been all night??

I KNOW you been cheatin on me... lemme smell yo' dick!

And of course the obligatory musical accompaniment:

Yawn

I haven't been sleeping well the past few days. Sunday night I got about three hours sleep, Monday night maybe two. I did a little better last night with a whopping five hours!

I'm pooped.

Hopefully I'll be able to saw a few more logs tonight.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Religion is Dumb

Last night I went with my brother and sister to see Religulous, Bill Maher's documentary on religion. I enjoyed it, since for most of the movie Bill was pretty much echoing my own thoughts on the issue of religion back at me, and it's always fun to have someone famous tell you how smart you are. ;o)

You could call me skeptically agnostic. I think it's unlikely that there is a supernatural, omniscient, omnipotent being who created the universe and listens to Littly Jimmy's prayers every night, but I'm willing to concede that it's possible. I think that atheism is almost a religion itself, with its own dogma and its own set of fanatics, and I'm not quite willing to slide that last little bit over to the there-is-no-god side of the religious continuum.

What I do believe, however , is that god does not exist in the form preached by the big monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). I think that all three of those are patchwork religions, pieced together by taking bits from other religions that came before them and mixing them all together. I think that initially, religion was a way for ancient people to answer the questions they had about their lives and their surroundings. Making up a story about how the sun is a fiery chariot being pulled across the sky is a perfectly reasonable way to explain something that would otherwise be wholly unexplainable. So, people made up their stories, and passed them on to their children, and before you know it, everyone took the stories for granted as being the truth. Eventually, some people figured out that they could take these stories and use them to control the actions of those around them: those who were not in power could use the stories to get power; those that were in power could use the stories to cement it.

Fast forward a few thousand years, and basically the same thing is happening. Parents teach their children about their religion, and after hearing the stories umpteen times the children just learn to accept them as fact. Those who are in power are still using religion to to maintain that power. The only difference is we should know better by now. Back in the Bronze Age, if a respected member of society told you that Earth and the Universe was created in seven days, don't really have a choice but to believe him. We should know better by now. We have all the information available that we could ever want, and yet people still cling to ideas that were conceived thousands of years ago. I don't get that at all.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Um...

TWICE I've seen this picture today, and TWICE my first thought has been "Geez, Michael Jackson is looking extra scary today... why is he in a wheelchair?" Are they really the same person? You be the judge:

Sunday, December 7, 2008

So much to blog about tonight

Pitter patter, let's get at 'er:
  • Canada's douchy Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, shut down our government on Monday by asking the Governor General to prorogue Parliament until the end of January. Near as I can tell, that makes him a proroguer, and all of us proroguees. I'll have mine with sour cream and bacon bits please.

  • I've been seeing ads for the Snuggie lately. The first time I saw this commercial was last week, and it completely cracked me up! Don't you just hate it when you're trapped under a blanket and can't get out?!! Something about the way that woman flails about trying to answer the phone is hilAReous!

  • My poor boyfriend is sick as a dog. I was feeling headachy and snottery most of Friday too, but whatever I had, Aaron has got it 10x worse. I went up to Edmonton as usual on Friday night, and since he was in no condition to go out we spent three quarters of the weekend chilling out watching movies. We did manage to go out and do a bit of Christmas shopping on Saturday afternoon... I think it took a lot out of my fella, but I'm glad he got out of the house for a little bit anyway. Anna came over on Saturday night to watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall with us... damn, what an insanely random and awesome movie! If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. I also recommend that you B your L on some Ts.

  • Why is it that otherwise intelligent people start driving like retarded monkeys after the first snowfall of the year? I left Edmonton earlier than usual tonight because we've had some freezing rain and snow this weekend, and I didn't want to drive after the sun went down and it got really cold. So, I left the city around 3:30, and the highway was completely dry. DRY. And yet, the whole way home, there were people driving 80 or 90 km/hr. The posted speed limit on that highway is 110; I normally drive 115-120, and most of the time there are people blowing by me like I'm standing still. Tonight, not so much. I can understand being cautious, but seriously, the highway was in perfect driving condition for 90% of the way home. It started to get a little slippery around the time that I was going past Lacombe, when the sun really disappeared. And of course, I adjusted my speed to something more cautious then too... I've driven enough in my life to know that you should adjust your driving to the conditions. I firmly believe that it's just as dangerous to drive too slowly as it is to drive too fast.

Friday, December 5, 2008

A Stupid Thing That I Learned Today

Who knew that John Ratzenberger was in The Empire Strikes Back? Certainly not me!

Monday, December 1, 2008

What a fun weekend!

I had such a good weekend!

Aaron and I drove down to Calgary on Friday night for my company's Christmas party. The drive was pretty good, even though the highway was ridiculously busy. The highlight was watching Aaron get changed into his dress clothes all while staying buckled up in the passenger seat, and then spending like an hour tying and re-tying his tie for like an hour until he got it just right. ;o) The Christmas party itself was fantastic! The buffet dinner was delicious, and we had a blast hanging out with my coworkers. Plus, Aaron and I got our caricature done and it turned out really well! I'll have to remember to post it once I have a chance to get it scanned. The party was at the Hotel Arts, which was a really swanky venue. There was all sorts of cool art up and down the hallway, and the rooms were top notch. My only complaint was that the pillows were really huge, which made it hard to get a comfortable sleep.

We spent Saturday hanging out with Aaron's old roomate Ryan and his boyfriend Jim, and eventually ended up partying at The Eagle. Shenanigans ensued, and good times were had by all. Except for Jim the next day. Heh.

A couple pics from the Christmas party: