The Simpson Blog

The Ottawa Citizen reports a Liberal MP from the Toronto area appears in a recruitment video for the Scientology organization: Mr. Lee says he hasn't got involved in the church's attempts to win charitable status from the Canada Revenue Agency as a religious organization, but he says he would probably help out if asked. "They're not whiners. They just go out and do it. At some point, I anticipate they'll be successful." Unknown if he's aware of the organization's criminal history in Canada .

The hurricane missed us. It ended up taking a turn south of Nova Scotia. We got plenty of wind and rain, but nothing particularly dangerous. Just another poopy weather night. Gotta say, smoking on the balcony in a storm is no fun. Still haven't found the box where I packed the nicotine patches. So far, the living room furniture is set up, the dining room is arranged, the bookshelves (a bunch of 'em) are there, the bedroom furniture is laid out, and the computer room is in progress. PandaManda has done a heroic job setting up a ton of stuff while I've been at work. Still have to set up the home theatre and get the wireless network configgered and set up email addresses with Eastlink. I have a hunch that someone is leeching off my wireless network right now -- the blinky lights that show wireless use are blinky-ing, and I've got nothing plugged in that would be making them do that. Gotta get in and set up the BigAssSupernet with a password, encryption key and all that wha

I seem to remember telling some people in September that I fully expected to see a hurricane within months of moving to Halifax. Well, it sucks to be right. Granted, we're not getting smacked head-on, but all this wind and rain is just icky to look at. In other news, the apartment is coming together. More on that when I get more bloggable time.

My clothes are getting loose. I'm getting a jaw line. I've lost some weight. Partly from all the hills and all the walking -- about a half-hour to or from work if I choose, plus lots of hills ... partly from lack of snacking and sporadic eating. My breakfast ritual used to be a chocolate chip muffin and a chocolate milk on the way to work. Now I grab a foot-long Subway Club sub from Subway, a chocolate chip muffin from the Tim's at the Esso, a 500mL chocolate milk, an energy drink (Red Bull or 100% compatible clone) and a Gatorade or equivalent sports drink. Half sub, milk, crack-in-a-can to start, drink the Gatorale through the day and gobble the second half of the sammich between newscasts mid-afternoon. Still leaves me starving at the end of the day, but overall I'm shrinkin' in all the right places. Once my clothes, furniture and girlfriend arrive, I'll be getting some actual exercise to build some muscles under my furry frame. Lookin' forward to it.

So, Tom Cruise and Kate (formerly Katie) Holmes have been doing some couch-jumping as of late, and are now expecting her to give birth. Well, she'd better have good tolerance for pain. No drugs. No screaming. No crying. Elron Hubbard insisted in Dianetics that any sounds made during birth (hell, even before birth...from conception on) could be misunderstood by the fetus/child/thetan and create engrams . The Dianetics ritual has been discussed in various reports in recent days. A Scientology web site attempts to put Hubbard's birth claims on par with breakthroughs in obstetrics, despite officials claiming that Scientology is an applied religious philosophy that does not try to impinge on medicine: while it has taken five decades for the scientific and medical communities to begin to catch up with the discoveries of L. Ron Hubbard in recognizing the awareness of the unborn child, they are now virtually part of the medical mainstream. One Scientologists' birth-focuse

I'm slowly learning the local linguistic twists. I really don't want to sound like I'm "from away" when we go to air on the 11th. Among the differences I've already noted, some obvious, some not: shallots = SHAW-luts, not SHALL-uts micmac = MIG-maw, unless you're talking about the Mic Mac Mall Dalhousie = like it's spelled, not as in Port Duh-LOO-zee Dartmouth = DART-muth, not -mouth Agricola St = ah-GRIC-o-LUH, not like a farmer's soft drink Gottingen = GAW-tih-jen Cunard St = imagine Preston Manning saying the french word for duck Duffus St = not pronounced "doofus" Amherst = ammerst, not am-herst Tatamagouch = ends in goosh, like push or tush For all I know, I spelled some of those wrong. Still learnin'. Other notes noted... Chocolate milk is more readily available in 2% m.f. So that means I've effectively doubled my daily intake of badass m.f. And I've been charged deposit on cans/bottles of pop/juice/etc.

Finally got a phone hooked up. It took a coupla days of trying to convince the folks at Aliant (somehow related to Bell, I'm told) that I didn't consider my land-line installation complete until I could pick up my phone and get a dial tone. They were standing by the fact that their remote testing and central office inspection showed everything working fine. Finally a studly-looking phone dude showed up Sunday noonish, hooked up a tester-majig in the jack, went downstairs and actually hooked up the wires between my phone line and the building feed . Yes, there was dial tone going into the building, but my wires weren't plugged in. Jee-zus! Anyway, Kitty has arrived. The TV has arrived. Amanda's plants have arrived. Shower curtain is finally up, after a trip to the dollar store and two to the Wal-Mart to get the right-sized rings. Things are comin' together. Before the TV, I was listening to a lot of Kool-96, the classic hits FM station, on my little Grundig travel ra

There's a corner half a block up the road from this cafe where I've been blogging where three of the four corners are donair/pizza places. What's a donair ? Kinda like a gyro, I guess. But I've never had gyros. It's thinly sliced strips of meat shaved from a big rotating lump that's kept hot in front of burners. The meat shavings are fried up and put on a heated pita that's about half the size necessary to wrap the meat shavings. Diced tomatoes and onions are added, under a mess of some kind of sauce. It's wrapped in aluminum foil and served up in a perfect state to fall onto your lap. But it's gooood. I was scared to try donairs because nobody would tell me what's in the hunk of meat that rotates all day. Most common answer: "kinda like what's in hot dogs -- you don't wanna know." Okay, now I almost don't wanna know, because it might spoil the enjoyment of eating them. I had one last night and I'm still burp

I don't remember ever going to summer camp... at least not the typical away-for-a-week, among-a-buncha-strangers, far-from-home type. This past week of training for the Rogers News Experiment was nearly everything I imagined summer camp would be.   We gathered on Monday in a hotel meeting room, just a bunch of (mostly) strangers around a long table, assembled from as far away as Yellowknife for a project that most of us knew only a bit about. Over the span of a week, we were fed a lot of information, put through challenges, and shown some interesting sights. A tall ship cruise through the Halifax harbour at night, a lovely dinner downtown, and for a few brave souls, a rockin' night of karaoke at the Oasis. It's one kind of bonding to work with a crew of people over years and years, as some come and some go, with egos and baggage along with skill and talent. It's another experience to take forty strangers and put them on task, on deadline, with a liberal dose of fu