Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 


I've been meaning to step back up this little bit of nowhere all week. Really, I have. It's not that I haven't been irresponsible. It's not like I've being seeing other blogs behind its back. But true to form, corollaries to Murphy's Ineffable Law (or is it: Murphy's Effing Law?) have dogged me every time I planned to sit down and listen to the clickety-clackety sounds my fingers scuttling across the keyboard. Pleasantly enough though, most of these distractions have been welcomed and were planned in advance.

On his whirlwind trip through Ontario, my Dad paid a long-overdue visit (which Mel & I really must repay by paying him and my grandparents a long-overdue visit to Nova Scotia), and by some miracle of good fortune, I managed to procure two straight days off for the occasion. It's strange how the most we did was tour KW and show him how the city's changed...or in some cases, devolved...and we all seemed perfectly fine with it. Maybe that's the coolest part about family: the simple act of spending time together after prolongued absences feels like time well spent. (Granted, this all relies heavily on you not wanting to kill your family members after being around each other for only fifteen minutes.)

My Dad also regaled me with his brief visit to Toronto, where as he put it, "I saw this enormous crowd lined up to get autographs from Bouncy."

Mel: [???] "Bouncy...Bouncy...don't you mean Beyonce?"

My Dad: "Meh, sounds close enough."

^-^ You can see where I got my sense of humour from.

After we parted ways so he could continue on to Oshawa to visit our grandfather (and from there, travel to Ottawa to visit an old friend now dying of cancer), it was all about Gabezilla. Presents were given (and subsequently tested by Gabe for tastiness), cake was devoured, marshmallows were sacrified and good times were had by all. The rampaging toddler enterred the terrible two's last Wednesday...and I don't think any of us have noticed any changes...beyond Gabe deciding that an already 12 hour day for himself should be capped off by refusing to even remotely slow down until 3am.

I don't know what fuels Gabe's seemingly endless supply of energy, but if we could bottle it and sell it, we'd run Red Bull and Jolt right out of business. That, or else contract we him out to a demolition crew. Hey, he's got a hardhat now from one of his birthday presents, so it could work!

Beyond that, I've been playing around with a new word processing program that is exclusively designed for writing and formatting screenplays. (And yes, this is one of those sketchy "Don't ask how I acquired it" moments.) Working with a system like this is vastly different from anything else I've encountered before. It also didn't help that I had no user's manual to consult and pretty much had to experiment with each new feature as I went along.

To the best of my knowledge, this haphazard method of learning can be best likened to being blindfolded and then sent off to try whack a sleeping rhinocerous in the testicles with a stick. Sometimes my efforts were rewarded with some very impressive results. The rest of the time, I swear an invisible hand actually came out from the computer screen and bitch-slapped me for attempting to molest its functions.

So now I possess the ability to create authentic scripts. There's the odd chance this may filter into next year's Confic, but we'll have to see about that.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a mug of mint-flavoured hot chocolate and an episode of RahXephon calling my name. (The latter of which I'll have to ignore and instead help work on an English paper Mel has to finish up before the night's out.)

Oh, and I should also ask: has anyone seen a solitary, black cotton sock? It appears one of mine decided to venture off into the great unknown somewhere between the rinse and spin cycles of our local washing machine. My pairs of socks are already becoming an endangered species as it is, and the disappearance of yet another sock could upset the delicate balance of nature. So if you do happen to stumble across a black sock who has lost its way and is trying to get back to the rest of my collection, please let me know.

Today's Lesson: winterwear is already out in stores. Deal with it. (I've already had to cry tears for the scarves now proliferating our bunks...)
posted by Phillip at 9:40 PM