Month: July 2014

Last evening I got bit by some mosquitoes for the first time in about two years. Along with our mild winters, mild summers, and beautiful scenery, Vancouver is also blessed by a lack of mosquitoes… usually. I’m not sure if it was the heat wave that brought them on but they somehow presented themselves while I slept. My windows weren’t open any more than usual, they’ve been wide open since the beginning of June. In any case, my torso and legs have now been blessed with some lovely red and slightly itchy welts.

Let’s hope this doesn’t continue, even if I want the great weather to persist.

I didn’t get as much sleep as I wanted last night. It was hot and it was more difficult to sleep than normal. In the early morning, a constant breeze materialized, which made things better.

The start of the day was hot. It was hot all the way to work. A coworker of mine was all sweaty in the elevator ride up to the studio. Once we got inside, we were greeted by the sweet comfort of air-conditioning. I cooled down quite quickly but it didn’t make me want to leave the studio at all. For lunch, a few of us darted across the street to restaurant. Normally, on a sunny lunch hour, the patio would be packed with people. Today, it was devoid of eaters, not a soul wanting to brave the hot temperatures.

After eating, we ducked back into the studio. I usually take a walk in the afternoon but I decided to stay within the sheltered coolness of air-conditioning. I was lucky to ride home in an air-conditioned train car. Perhaps it will be cooler tomorrow.

The province of British Columbia is suffering under a heat wave currently. Parts of Vancouver reached a high of about 30 degrees Celsius over the weekend. It was cooler out by the water but apparently it was much hotter as you went east. Some parts of the province sweltered under 40 degree temperatures.

Now I know some people live in parts of the world where such heat is routine and normal but this is rare for these parts. For Vancouver, the temperatures in the summer are around the low to mid-20s. I will pass along an interesting anecdote. I work with three Brazilian students who are here for the summer. One of them is from the desert region of Brazil. I didn’t even know such a place existed but that’s beside the point. Last week, he complained about heat here in Vancouver. So, I think it’s ok to call this a heat wave.

In previous posts, I’ve written about an e-mail account that I don’t use for anything. It’s a generic e-mail account that comes with your ISP. I’m sure a lot of you have had at one time something similar. For many people, an ISP e-mail account was their first ever e-mail address they had. Of course, the online world is more sophisticated now and people mostly use dedicated e-mail services like Gmail. I can’t remember the last time I e-mailed someone and their address was an ISP account.

Well, every few months, I like to log into my ISP account to see what crap has been sent to me. It’s mostly spam but sometimes I get some interesting messages. A few weeks ago, I saw a message that wasn’t spam and that had a few attachments. The message had been forwarded to me from someone. It contained tax returns for two women. Now I could have done the right thing and just deleted the message but I didn’t. I opened up the tax returns and looked through them. Judge me if you wish but I was just curious. The returns contained a lot of personal info: full name, address, birth date, social insurance number, and of course, financial information including income. After looking at the returns, I deleted the message, attachments and all. I didn’t copy any of the information down. I couldn’t even tell you what the names of those women were.

People should be really careful about where they send information. The sender of this message could have easily avoided this problem by just double-checking the e-mail address. What if I was someone who was really morally corrupt?

This particular YouTube channel was brought to my attention by a former coworker. I haven’t had the proper amount of time to figure out why it exists. I do like the golf-style TV commentary though.

This happened a few months ago but a man named Kevin Strahle attempted to drink a gallon of Tabasco sauce in one sitting. Strahle is also known by his YouTube persona, the L.A. Beast. He is a competitive eater and makes a living off his YouTube channel. You might be surprised to learn this but people like Strahle and others make a decent amount of money by filming various eating challenges.

Strahle has filmed himself eating things like a cactus, the hottest peppers in the world, boiled Coca-Cola, five pounds of gummy bears that cause diarrhea, and much more. It’s fascinating watching his various feats of eating strength. While I was watching these videos, I was also cognizant about how much money he was making. YouTube doesn’t release figures but I’m ballparking that Strahle probably pulled in at least six figures in the last twelve months.

Anyways, enough about money, let’s get back to drinking a gallon of Tabasco sauce. I won’t spoil the ending except to warn you that if you watch the video, it gets a bit messy at the end… ok, a lot messy. You have been warned.

I had dinner with a friend this evening after work, so I didn’t leave the downtown core until much later than usual. Going home, I took the train as usual but the crowd was slightly different from the commuter crowd.

Seats were plentiful when I got on but at the next stop, more people arrived and the seat next to me was taken by this young man. He appeared to be barely out of his twenties. He was nicely dressed but I could immediately smell his cologne. I have no idea what possesses men to put on copious amounts of cologne. Do they really think smelling so pungent is attractive to women? These aren’t pheromones buddy, it’s cheap body spray from Axe. I really wanted to move but by this time, all the seats were taken and I was beat.

Two stops later, things got worse. The seats in front of me vacated but then two young ladies grabbed them. It was clear they had been out for most of the evening. Both of them seemed to suffering from the summer heat. One was fanning themselves. Then the stench of stale body odour hit me. These gals seemed to smell like a homeless dude than proper young women. What I didn’t understand was they smelled like old sweat, not the stench of someone who recently exercised. It was gross whatever it was.

I almost bailed out of that seat but luckily the Old Spice dude found another seat to himself later so he moved away. That left me with the stinky chicks and that just tolerable.

I got home and showered immediately.

Well, my garbage disposal has been jammed for about a month now. Everything I have tried to fix it has been met with failure. The most common way to fix my particular jam involve using a hex key to manually turn the motor to free up the jam. Of course, the model of garbage disposal I have doesn’t have such a feature because my building developer picked the cheapest model they could buy.

I am this close to calling a plumber to my home for the first time ever. I’m not sure what else to do. This may sound weird but it’s quite possible that a plumber will make a visit to my apartment before a pizza delivery guy. Yes, that’s right, a fat-ass like me has never had pizza (or any food actually) delivered to my home.

Oh, if any one is curious, the guy in the video has his fly down the entire time. He even calls that out in the description.

Last week, I returned home to find a massive, giant streak of bird poop on one of the glass panels that line the edge of my balcony. Based on the size of this streak, about ten inches long by two inches wide, I’m assuming a bald eagle or a condor had perched on the railing, was facing toward my apartment, and took a whopper of a dump. In the four years I’ve been living here, I’ve seen just one bird on my balcony, so it’s rare (at least when I’m around) for a bird visit. Maybe this was an emergency poop.

Anyways, I was thinking I’d probably have to deal with this myself as I wasn’t sure when the window cleaners were coming to clean our building. They do this about once a year during the summer. Rather than being proactive and just cleaning myself, I procrastinated. Being lazy paid off, because today I saw a notice that the window cleaners are here this week. I’m also super lucky that bird decided to poop onto the outside of that glass panel. The cleaners are only obligated to clean the outside of the panel because they deem the inside to be accessible by me, so I gotta clean that side. Thanks bird for pooping the right way.

A raw leg of lamb has been sitting in my fridge since the weekend. I didn’t want it there any longer so I decided to cook it tonight. I got back kinda late from work though, so by the time I ate dinner, and had my two fingers of Dr. Pepper, time was running out. The recipe I use calls for first broiling the lamb on each side for about 15 minutes. I didn’t have time for that. Waiting for the oven to get up to that high temperature and then broiling on each side would have taken about an hour just for that one step. I had to improvise.

Since this particular leg was on the smaller size, it barely fit into my cast iron skillet but fit it did. I put the skillet on the stove top, added some olive oil, and let it get real hot. I seared the lamb on the outside for about five minutes. The lamb was nice and brown all over. Done! Saved about an hour right there.

I followed the recipe straight through after that. It came out of the oven looking pretty good. I’m looking forward to dinner tomorrow.