Out of My Depth and Out of My League
I had a bit of a panic attack last night. I was thinking about Eugene and how he passed away at 66 and realized if I were to pass away at that age I would have already lived half my life. Now, for those of you who don't know, I have a thing with death. I find sleeping to be a little too close to death and the idea that I would never regain any sort of consciousness for the rest of whatever freaks me out. It kept me up for a good chunk of the night which sucked because I had to be up so early. I think I finally passed out sometime after 3.
My alarm buzzed at 6 and I awoke, groggy, grumpy and tired. I had a .tel morning meeting with Lara and her networking group. I stumbled into the shower, got ready and headed out the door thinking I was late. Lucky for me, Lara was running a little behind too so no big. We got to the meeting place, grabbed a seat and some coffee and settled in. Lara introduced me to a few people and we chatted as we waited for the presentation to begin. Now, for those of you that don't know, a .tel is a new domain. Difference between this and most domains is that the a .tel domain name is set up as a digital business card. You can upload all sorts of information about yourself to it and when someone visits it they can have all your info in one spot and if they'e on a smart phone the info can be one touch links. Handy. I had been aware of this previously but I wasn't completely convinced I wanted to fork out $20 a year for it. I had my site that had an easy url to remember, and I updated the info in it frequently. I also used vCards, traditional biz cards and bump, mover for trading info with people. I wasn't completely convinced I needed to pay for another method of contact information storage and distribution. After listening to the seminar and finding out about the addition of Google Ad Sense, and my current transitional state, the a .tel began to make more and more sense. They also offered up a gift card for half price so in the end I bought two cards for $10 a piece and bought TeakSato.tel (teak.tel was already taken) and TaxiCalgary.tel. The latter was an idea that I "borrowed" from the demo. As a person who has frequently DDed for friends as well as having some friends get injured from being involved in drunk driving accidents (not as the driver), I'm a big proponent of the Arrive Alive campaign. I have often encountered friends as well as situations myself where I needed to call a cab but couldn't remember the number. With so many people surfing the internet wirelessly, this seemed like a great idea to a) promote the concept of not drinking and driving and b) potentially make a little residual income from the google ad sense. My plan is to get a bunch of my friends involved in becoming my street team and guerilla tagging bars, clubs and other areas where alcoholic beverages are served and promoting the TaxiCalgary.tel site. If I can become the default URL to call cabs, I could stand to make some really decent residual income. At least, that's the plan anyways.
After the morning meeting I wandered back towards the core. It was still early so I thought I would see if Ian was up. I knew he had the day off and I thought if he was up we could get some breakfast. I decided to check out the Olympic Superstore at the Bay and see if they had any massive sales going on to get rid of their supply of stuff since the Olympics were over. While I was waiting for the store to open, I helped a lady from the Bay run some stuff up and down some stairs into a storage area which she greatly appreciated. Felt it was the least I could do since I was sitting there anyways just reading the paper. The store finally opened and I wandered down to the Olympic section. Much to my surprise hundreds of people were streaming in to buy Olympic goods. I couldn't believe it. Really? It's still this busy? Maybe it's because of the Paralymics. I was actually surprised to find some of the things they did have. here were some international hockey jerseys (China, Sweden and the US), some international clothing including a full suit from the Russian contingent with Sochi 2014 on it and some long coats from the Chinese contingent. Made me wonder what their selection was like during the Olympics. Would have liked to have gotten my hands on some Japanese stuff if it was available. I settled on a long sleeve Canada shirt and an Australia dri-fit shirt. I debated between Australia and New Zealand but in the end I thought the Australia one was juuuuuuust a bit nicer. I also picked up a few stuffies for my cousins kids.
I had turned my ringer off for the meeting so I missed three text messages from Ian. I did manage to get a hold of him though and he swung by to pick me up from the Bay. We went to a little French place and had a lovely breakfast. The waffles there were quite good. Ian told me I had to have one with breakfast. Glad I did. I had Les Boulettes for breakfast. Two poached eggs, spicy Moroccan meatballs and cilantro. Came with grilled focaccia and hummus cucumber salad. Wasn't really feelin' the hummus first thing in the morning but the rest was very tasty. Only bad part was the spicy meatball burps I got for about an hour afterwards. We decided to run a few errands including getting me a glass coke bottle from the Coke stand in the Bay (it wasn't open until 11). I had always been annoyed that they always featured these glass coke bottles in the commercials but you couldn't get them up here so when I saw it, I got giddy. I had only had one other opportunity to drink from the iconic bottle and that was back in Halifax. I do love me a glass bottle. It just tastes better. I'll tell you why. When a soft drink is bottled in glass, the way it goes in is the way it will taste when it comes out. With plastic, the carbonation actually escapes through the plastic over time so the manufacturers actually overcarbonate the drink to give it a longer shelf life. There's your edu-ma-cation for the day.
Ian decided to drive out to Richmond to watch the movie. I think the rationale was the times worked out better. There were an AMAZING amount of retarded drivers in Richmond. I don't know if they were all just trying to live up to their stereotype but it was baffling how many we saw. Come to think of it, it wasn't just Richmond. Ian said that all the idiots are on the road when I'm in the car with him. Uh... whatcha sayin there Ian?
We hit the Daiso so I could get a few cheap drinking glasses and another mall to try and find a Resevoir Dogs poster (no luck there). While we were at Aberdeen Centre I had a bit of a strange encounter. I noticed the Ferrari store had been replaced by a Lamborghini store so we wandered down to have a look. There were two Gallardos parked in the space and I asked if it would be alright if I took some photos. The girl behind the counter said no problem so I knelt in front of the white one and started snapping photos of the emblem on the hood. She came over and asked me to stay behind a belt barrier that had been set up around part of the car. Uh... ok... Now the reason for the confusion was that the other grey Gallardo had no such barrier so I could go up to it as close as I wanted and they didn't have a problem with it at all. They appeared to be pretty much identical cars except for the paint. Weird...
We got our tickets for She's Out of My League, then hit the pub across the way for a snack before watching the film. The show was actually quite good. When you see the trailer for it, you get the impression it's another one of those low rent comedies where all the funny part are in the trailer and is filled with all sorts of Hollywood cliches. This film actually managed to avoid a lot of that and had quite a few scenes in it that were very funny to watch. It was surprisingly good. I'd definitely recommend it as a renter. 50/50 on paying full price at the theatre but I don't think you'd be disappointed.
After the show we headed back to Ian's to see if his place was full of drunk lab techs. Laura had gone out drinking with some of her co-workers for the evening but the place was empty when we got home. We popped in The Dark Knight, Ian made us some KD and we settled in for the evening. Laura got home around 8:30ish and when the movie was done I was feeling pretty beat. Three hours of sleep and a full day of activity did me in. I got a lift back to Lara's house and as I was doing a little cleaning and unpacking from the day's outing, Lara came down and knocked on the door. I told her how the rest of the morning meeting went as she had to cut out early to go to an appointment and told her about my new .tel purchases as well as the rest of my day. Lara wanted to watch the third movie we had rented earlier in the week. I was kinda tired but I was feeling a second wind coming on so I went upstairs to watch the show. War Inc was surprisingly bad. Well, at least it wasn't MY cup of tea anyways. The show starred John Cusack, Marissa Tomei, Ben Kingsly and Hillary Duff. Now with the exception of Hillary Duff, those are all really high calibre actors. Two are academy award winners and the other is highly decorated. How could I go so wrong? It was weird. That's all I'll say.
All in all, a big day out.
Reason to smile today: Lots to smile about. a .tel, Coke bottle, day out with Ian, Surprisingly funny film. All were great.
Something I learned today: I learned quite a bit about a .tel today. I think the concept definitely has it's merits. For those of you students who are reading this, I would say consider this as your lives are highly transient right now and it would be good to put this on your business card so you don't have to keep printing up new ones every time you move.
I had a bit of a panic attack last night. I was thinking about Eugene and how he passed away at 66 and realized if I were to pass away at that age I would have already lived half my life. Now, for those of you who don't know, I have a thing with death. I find sleeping to be a little too close to death and the idea that I would never regain any sort of consciousness for the rest of whatever freaks me out. It kept me up for a good chunk of the night which sucked because I had to be up so early. I think I finally passed out sometime after 3.
My alarm buzzed at 6 and I awoke, groggy, grumpy and tired. I had a .tel morning meeting with Lara and her networking group. I stumbled into the shower, got ready and headed out the door thinking I was late. Lucky for me, Lara was running a little behind too so no big. We got to the meeting place, grabbed a seat and some coffee and settled in. Lara introduced me to a few people and we chatted as we waited for the presentation to begin. Now, for those of you that don't know, a .tel is a new domain. Difference between this and most domains is that the a .tel domain name is set up as a digital business card. You can upload all sorts of information about yourself to it and when someone visits it they can have all your info in one spot and if they'e on a smart phone the info can be one touch links. Handy. I had been aware of this previously but I wasn't completely convinced I wanted to fork out $20 a year for it. I had my site that had an easy url to remember, and I updated the info in it frequently. I also used vCards, traditional biz cards and bump, mover for trading info with people. I wasn't completely convinced I needed to pay for another method of contact information storage and distribution. After listening to the seminar and finding out about the addition of Google Ad Sense, and my current transitional state, the a .tel began to make more and more sense. They also offered up a gift card for half price so in the end I bought two cards for $10 a piece and bought TeakSato.tel (teak.tel was already taken) and TaxiCalgary.tel. The latter was an idea that I "borrowed" from the demo. As a person who has frequently DDed for friends as well as having some friends get injured from being involved in drunk driving accidents (not as the driver), I'm a big proponent of the Arrive Alive campaign. I have often encountered friends as well as situations myself where I needed to call a cab but couldn't remember the number. With so many people surfing the internet wirelessly, this seemed like a great idea to a) promote the concept of not drinking and driving and b) potentially make a little residual income from the google ad sense. My plan is to get a bunch of my friends involved in becoming my street team and guerilla tagging bars, clubs and other areas where alcoholic beverages are served and promoting the TaxiCalgary.tel site. If I can become the default URL to call cabs, I could stand to make some really decent residual income. At least, that's the plan anyways.
After the morning meeting I wandered back towards the core. It was still early so I thought I would see if Ian was up. I knew he had the day off and I thought if he was up we could get some breakfast. I decided to check out the Olympic Superstore at the Bay and see if they had any massive sales going on to get rid of their supply of stuff since the Olympics were over. While I was waiting for the store to open, I helped a lady from the Bay run some stuff up and down some stairs into a storage area which she greatly appreciated. Felt it was the least I could do since I was sitting there anyways just reading the paper. The store finally opened and I wandered down to the Olympic section. Much to my surprise hundreds of people were streaming in to buy Olympic goods. I couldn't believe it. Really? It's still this busy? Maybe it's because of the Paralymics. I was actually surprised to find some of the things they did have. here were some international hockey jerseys (China, Sweden and the US), some international clothing including a full suit from the Russian contingent with Sochi 2014 on it and some long coats from the Chinese contingent. Made me wonder what their selection was like during the Olympics. Would have liked to have gotten my hands on some Japanese stuff if it was available. I settled on a long sleeve Canada shirt and an Australia dri-fit shirt. I debated between Australia and New Zealand but in the end I thought the Australia one was juuuuuuust a bit nicer. I also picked up a few stuffies for my cousins kids.
Ian decided to drive out to Richmond to watch the movie. I think the rationale was the times worked out better. There were an AMAZING amount of retarded drivers in Richmond. I don't know if they were all just trying to live up to their stereotype but it was baffling how many we saw. Come to think of it, it wasn't just Richmond. Ian said that all the idiots are on the road when I'm in the car with him. Uh... whatcha sayin there Ian?
We got our tickets for She's Out of My League, then hit the pub across the way for a snack before watching the film. The show was actually quite good. When you see the trailer for it, you get the impression it's another one of those low rent comedies where all the funny part are in the trailer and is filled with all sorts of Hollywood cliches. This film actually managed to avoid a lot of that and had quite a few scenes in it that were very funny to watch. It was surprisingly good. I'd definitely recommend it as a renter. 50/50 on paying full price at the theatre but I don't think you'd be disappointed.
After the show we headed back to Ian's to see if his place was full of drunk lab techs. Laura had gone out drinking with some of her co-workers for the evening but the place was empty when we got home. We popped in The Dark Knight, Ian made us some KD and we settled in for the evening. Laura got home around 8:30ish and when the movie was done I was feeling pretty beat. Three hours of sleep and a full day of activity did me in. I got a lift back to Lara's house and as I was doing a little cleaning and unpacking from the day's outing, Lara came down and knocked on the door. I told her how the rest of the morning meeting went as she had to cut out early to go to an appointment and told her about my new .tel purchases as well as the rest of my day. Lara wanted to watch the third movie we had rented earlier in the week. I was kinda tired but I was feeling a second wind coming on so I went upstairs to watch the show. War Inc was surprisingly bad. Well, at least it wasn't MY cup of tea anyways. The show starred John Cusack, Marissa Tomei, Ben Kingsly and Hillary Duff. Now with the exception of Hillary Duff, those are all really high calibre actors. Two are academy award winners and the other is highly decorated. How could I go so wrong? It was weird. That's all I'll say.
All in all, a big day out.
Reason to smile today: Lots to smile about. a .tel, Coke bottle, day out with Ian, Surprisingly funny film. All were great.
Something I learned today: I learned quite a bit about a .tel today. I think the concept definitely has it's merits. For those of you students who are reading this, I would say consider this as your lives are highly transient right now and it would be good to put this on your business card so you don't have to keep printing up new ones every time you move.
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