There are worse things than massive storms...

Long time no write. Too much going on. My mother visited, which was nice, hopefully for her too. She was kind enough to buy me a homebrew kit for Christmas, which I promised not to use before then...

Of course I'll wait till Christmas.

Yeah, sure. Wait 3 months for free beer. Like that was ever going to happen! I consider the final product the present, so since the first batch has a high chance of being rancid and put down to practice I feel that it's okay to start now. That way I should get a successful batch done just in time for Christmas dinner.

So, yes, there are worse things in America than massive storms apparently. This is the start of expressing my annoyance with stupid adverts that have no grounding in reality. There are a few, which I must remember when I see them. Amanda picked up the US postal service one which now causes us both to shout at the telly. They are promoting online stamp purchase, which is fair enough. A sensible web service to introduce. But seriously, is there really "...nothing worse than waiting in line for stamps." as the poorly paid actor proclaims?! Those poor bastards on the eastern seaboard have been lashed by the biggest storm ever to have hit America, but I'm sure they find comfort in the fact that they don't have to wait at the post office to get their stamps. They can print them out when the power goes back on. And when their house gets rebuilt. I know there has to be a bit of artistic license to push a product, but it surely has to have some realism to it! I wish I could find a link to this ad.

Dollar ads are also pissing me off. It's like the pound saver menu ads for McD's, where they show someone with a pound coin and all the fantastic options they have. Here it's the same, a smiley lady with a dollar coin walks into Tim's all happy that even though she only has a dollar in her pocket, she can still get a coffee. What the ad doesn't show you is her coming out empty handed because that dollar doesn't cover the tax added into it. It's not a dollar, it's a dollar and 2 CENTS! Grrrrrr. And just as an aside, the only place that you seem to get tax included in the price is pubs. Either that or beer is tax free. And going by the cost, I doubt that...

Anyway, that's my advert rant done. I'll move on to bad gym chat. This will involve a bit of a digression. I have no choice but to pay fees for use of the uni sports centre (which is called a the Physical Activity Centre, I assume because you get that acronym PAC which satisfies the Canadian need to make words out of initials). So I feel I should get at least some use out of the facilities. For me this stretches to using the showers after going for my lunch time run. It always amuses me when I walk in on a nice sunny day that there are many fools running on treadmills staring at the telly. What's the point of running if you don't go anywhere? Anyway, I hadn't really thought that there might be differences in foreign communal (male) changing room, or locker room, etiquette. So only too late did certain questions occur to me. Is stripping everything off normal? I'm I going to look like a wierdo getting naked in front of my locker? At first it seemed that people were showering in swimming trunks and I had misjudged it. Fortunately not though, possibly the first folk I saw were swimmers. So, for starters it was a bit surreal not knowing what the socially acceptable behaviour was in the 'locker room'. Now, I'm using the phrase 'locker room' intentionally, not just because that's what it's called here. But also because the whole layout reminds me of the rather homoerotic 'locker room' scenes from Top Gun; lines of lockers with a narrow bench in the middle.

They probably 'PAC' it in in there...

This is bringing me towards my point. Well, I suppose I have a few points. One is that, like the Top Gunners, there are a lot of well toned men hanging about, whose torsos are devoid of hair. This is not natural. Unless Canadian men have a genetic predisposition to having no body hair, there is a lot of waxing going on. Since when did it become masculine to remove all ones body hair? I also keep expecting to see name stickers appear on the lockers with things like "Moose" or "Combine" written on them. All very very alien to me. So the prevalence of body waxing is my first problem with the uni gym. The second one is the boring chat between the regular pushers of heavy metal, talking about how much they benched etc. etc.. It's like walking into a cliche. I actually heard these words the other day, "Yeah, I'm in here 6 days a week, working two muscle groups a day." To which his buddy replied, "What's your diet like, you must need a lot of calories,"... "Yeah, lots of meat, raw eggs in the morning. You have to get into the protein powder too. I'd be in 7 days a week, but my doctor said I need to have at least one day resting. So I do a hard cardio work out on that day. Go hard or go home, man! Go hard or go home!".

This guy was fat.

And had no body hair.

Go hard or go home. That shit only applies to the likes of the Sub Club, Arches, Space or (add your preferred hedonistic nightspot here). Go hard or go home. I went home. Twat.

Well, I've banged on enough about shit that annoys me! I was going to review some books I've been reading, but it's late now. Here's some extremely short ones. I may go a bit more in depth later.

Albert Brooks - 2030 - Good. A 'what if' of America spiralling into more and more debt. Future satire.

Irvine Welsh - Skagboys - Gratuitous Trainspotting prequel. Good, but gritty realism somewhat undone by the gratuitousness. Avoid if you are small minded about recreational drug use.  

Iain Crichton-Smith - Consider the Lillies. Highland clearances from the eyes of an old woman. A good read if you've run out of books and your mum has left it behind...

Chow for now.

Oh yeah, and here's another mix. Not that anybody listened to the last one. Which was technically much better!

Autumn cleaning

Clearly I have less motivation to write rubbish now that there are pubs around. I'm t6hinking of becoming the consummate hypocrite and transferring to twitter. The character limit I seems to suit my current productivity levels, both in blogging and actual work. Yup, struggling to get writing at the uni. Fortunately I've had some classwork and some labwork to allow me to pretend I'm actually working! Never mind. Snow forecast for midweek, so I'm sure the enforced shut in will help!

What's been happening in Saskatoon? Same old same old. I did the KinSpin 5k fun run organised by the kinesiology department. It's a pretty nice event, very laid back. I think I annoyed the girl who went on to win by leading out the first 500m. We both got a bit confused at a badly marked corner. I made a conversational comment, but she just ignored me and pulled off into the distance. The race itself wasn't that competitive. There was that girl who was wearing a triathlon club t-shirt, and older guy who ran past me and straight to the portaloo at 2.5k, and a younger guy who went past me, but I went past again in the last 500m. I didn't see anyone else during the race. I think I prefer being in the pack. Easier to keep the pace up. You may have worked out that I was 2nd across the line. I think this is more a result of poor planning rather than any performance on my part. There were two other races on the same day in the city, and the uni cross country team had a meet too. And although I ran 19m17s, I also measured the course as 4.5km. So not exactly a terrifying speed! I would recommend the event to anyone. It's a true all abilities event, and has a good atmosphere. I'm assuming there were no positional prizes, although I may be wrong and have looked very ignorant by disappearing 5 mins after finishing...

Fitness stuff is boring though. More fun is going to student events where there is forced social interaction. I really hate things like that, because it plays to my weaknesses. Mainly not being very talkative, especially with people I don't know. So that usually leaves me standing on my own feeling like the proverbial spare one at a wedding. There were 2 free beers promised though, which is enough to bribe me in! Also, I did actually sort of know a few people, so it was as horrifyingly awkward as usual. And of course, I was one of the last to leave the pub at about 2am. And sorry, but no hilarious stories of drunken idiocy! I'm almost disappointing myself!

There's probably a lot more that has been going on, but I have a shit memory, so if I don't get it down at the time, it doesn't get written! That bodes well for thesis writing... I am getting annoyed that I've seen a few funny signs, but haven't had time to get a photo, as we're generally driving past them. The only one I can remember just now was;
"End of Summer Rim Clearance!" Becasue you wouldn't want dangleberries heading into Autumn!

Apart from yet again posting my latest mixing of tunage HERE, that's your lot for today!


UPDATE
Talking about running races where speed may not be the main focus, the Glasgow Men's 10K has had its funding axed. This is terrible news for lots of reasons, one being that it is actually a good event at getting your average walking heart attack Scottish male doing something healthy (a truly all ability event), and another that it's the race I like to beat my friends in. Except Jamie Crawford. He's not my friend on race day. Anyway if you feel moved to help out, you can read about it and donate HERE.

Choons

As promised, some bad mixing. With Amanda away, I have the run of the house. Which means I can freely play loud repetitive music. Yay!

Bought these tunes the other day, this was my first full listen through, which was coinciding with my first attempt to mix them together.

Hear how bad I am by clicking here!

Mixers

Many mixers this week. Well, the first one is from a week or two ago actually. Having a surprising surfeit of cash this month, I decided to do the sensible thing and buy some expensive electronics that I don't know how to use. I am now the proud owner of a Behringer DDM4000 mixer (http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/DDM4000.aspx). I am able to justify this to myself as I got it second hand, for a reasonable price. And in a place like Saskatoon, where country music is king, second hand half decent mixers don't appear very often! So if you look at it, you can see it has a lot of glowing buttons. I don't know what any of them do. My cable collection has also expanded. Not least because I also had to get a sound card to handle the MIDI capabilities of the mixer (don't ask, I don't know). So if you include all my traktor scratch (http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/dj/traktor-scratch-a10/) kit, and the need for a computer to run it, as well as the TV and the stereo, there are no fewer than 24 separate cables piling up behind my 'multi-media station'. And I hate cables. It is also getting really hard to remember what should be connected where. So when I tried to connect up my laptop to put music on last night, it was really annoying that I couldn't work out why it wasn't working. I checked every cable with no success. It should have been a case of plugging in one cable and turning the mixer on. In the end I just hooked up another cable. Of course, I'm sure it was nothing to do with having had several beers, and that I didn't press the relevant switch on the stereo for the correct output, which I did this morning...

I really should charge advertising for that paragraph... Anyway, a last few notes on the mixer. I've been purchasing a couple of new tunes, so will hopefully be posting a mix soon. I've had a few plays with it, and I have to say I'm a bit disappointed. I seem to have managed to make the same error as I do when buying new badminton racquets. I now have two racquets that cost over 100 quid each, but I really should have returned them because neither made a significant improvement to my game. It seems I have a similar problem with the mixer. So in summary, I have a mixer I don't know how to use, connected up to software I barely know how to use, controlled by decks which I was never very capable of using. And I'm shit a badminton.

Other mixers. There are a lot of 'new student mixers' going on at the start of term. I ignored them all last year, mostly because I'm a miserable bastard and don't really enjoy trying to make small talk in a room full of people I don't know, who have different ideas of what 'sociable drink' means. That and no one else in my office seemed interested either. After a few additions over the year, we seem to have a more sociable group this year, so I might be tempted. The only issue would be the getting inappropriately drunk. But as long as I can drag some people down with me, that would be okay! I don't hold much hope that the events themselves will be very entertaining. There is far too much earnestness and eagerness to learn, or eagerness to show eagerness to learn. No realisation that you can be eager to learn, but also have a lot of fun getting shitfaced once in a while (or another healthier hobby if you prefer). It often seems like a waste to me that most of the post first year students take their studies far too seriously. The money may be rubbish but the major advantage is that you will not find any other work arena where you have so much freedom and flexibility. Why waste that studying? Why is the union empty on a friday at 4.30? Having said that, the more studious atmosphere has probably helped me to be reasonably successful in my studies so far. And there is the strange feeling some days that you've stumbled onto a 'college years' type movie set. What with there being a very defined campus, where all the buildings are built in the same style around a central grassy area, where there are attractive young people throwing frisbees or 'footballs', or sitting on the grass reading notes in folders. Hell, there's even a homecoming football game next weekend!

UofS bowl. Very 'college years'. Not the best angle to show it off, but you get the idea...

Final mixer. As I mentioned, we now seem to have a good sociable core. So since I came back from my mountain retreat, I've been trying to get a regular friday after work booze session going. We have at least 4 people in the office who like a beer or two. I think the magic number is 3, to get a decent social dynamic going. Or at least 3 if I'm one of the people involved, since I'm a shit conversationalist. We've just about managed two fridays in a row now, although I need to work on defining what I mean by "an after work pint". For some reason the impression is that it means having one or two pints before going home for dinner, not what I actually mean, which is go to the pub for 4.30 and not go home until you fall asleep, or the last alcohol serving place shuts for the night. Cultural differences... Anyway, I may have to duck  out of beering next friday myself, as there's a 5k race at the uni on Saturday. And since I seem to have some deep rooted issues where I assume that members of any university team are arrogant and elitist, I want to go along and beat as many of the athletics team as possible. Although I'm not sure that my current approximately 21 minute pace will be good enough.

Short shrift

What's been happening over the last week then? Not a lot really. It's the great thing about being back in a city; having lots more activity options, and being able to choose to be inactive.

One thing I've been doing is trying to buy some new shorts. I only had four pairs of casual shorts and 2 paris of multi-purpose sports shorts when I got here, which is probably just about enough. Definitely more than enough for summers back home. However, my bike was kind enough to cause arse ripping-out of two pairs, leaving one decent pair and one pair I don't really like. I also managed to destroy the shorts I use for running the same way. All very interesting to you I'm sure. The point is, I need shorts, and I've been struggling. The first thing I'm struggling with is style. I'm not sure if shorts have changed since I last bought them, or Canadian shorts fashion don't appeal to me, but I just find everything boring, hideously coloured, or big baggy and heavy and looking like something that someone who says " duuuuuuude" a lot. The second problem I seem to be having is going to the right shops. I still don't really know the shops which only have ladies clothes. So I often find myself wandering into a female clothing shop, thinking I've finally found some nice shorts and then realising that the sizes don't seem familiar. So no success so far. Luckily it's near the end of summer. My other shorts problem is entirely self inflicted. I need shorts for running, and shorts for playing football (soccer...). However, I don't like football shorts. They are just weirdly thin and baggy and not useful for anything else. And running shorts are just indecent and no one should be allowed to wear them. So trying to explain what I'm looking for to the very helpful shop workers here will usually cause frustration. "So you want shorts to run in, but not running shorts, and you want shorts to play soccer (football...) in but not soccer (football...) shorts?"... No shorts purchased. I may have to start shopping online.

We also had a barbeque at the weekend, with some work folks and other friends and neighbours. Summer is running short and I am running out of time to get inappropriately drunk outside! It's a new experience actually being able to plan a bbq since there is a reasonably good chance that it will be dry what ever day you plan it for! No last minute texts to your mates because Saturday afternoon has somehow managed to remain dry and sunny, and getting to the supermarket at the tail end of the burger buying frenzy when the choice of meat is somewhat diminished. So having it all arranged about a week in advance was somewhat of a novelty. Of course it did rain on Saturday. Luckily not for long. Amanda also tells me that the hosts always provide the majority of the food. Again, something different. I'm used to just providing the grill. Also rather strange is the inclusion of salad type dishes. I'm not really sure how you prepare that on a flame grill, so I left that to Amanda. Salad has no place at a bbq as far as I'm concerned. Lettuce and tomato for your burger is about as far as that should go! It was a nice evening, and I managed to not get embarrassingly drunk. Probably a good thing as I have to work closely with several of the people there! All things considered, I think the adrenaline rush of the supermarket burger run at the last minute and drinking all the available alcohol is a bit more fun! But at least you can bbq 90% of the summer here. I'll work on the drunkenness. Probably won't take long these days...

Vicarious losers

Back by popular demand. Well, 3 people who have too much time on their hands and my mum. And my mum is probably pushing for it because I have been very bad at calling her recently.

What's new? Nothing. Do I have time for this? Probably. Can I make it interesting? Probably not. But we'll see. I'll be keeping an eye on the page view count to see if I'm wasting my time or not!

Off to try and think of funny things to write about life in the flattest place in the world.

Much love. xx