My property tax statement arrived in the mail today. Paying the tax is one of the necessary evils of owning property but I’m ok with it. My property assessment arrived a few months earlier. That statement said my apartment only appreciated about $1K compared to last year. Because of that, I had been guessing that the property tax this year wouldn’t be much higher than last year’s. As it turned out, I was right. In fact, it was about $60 less than the previous amount.
The total amount I have to pay is about $1600. I’m eligible for a home owner’s grant every year and that knocks the number down by about $600. In total, I’ll wind up paying just over $1K. My taxes pay for a lot of things in my municipality, including paying for the schools in my area. I was thinking they should let me teach a class or two at the local high school. I’m not sure how paying school taxes entitles me to teach at local schools but I still think it would be fun. I’ve always enjoyed teaching though I’ve never done it at the high school level. Maybe it’s for the best since I hear high school kids can be mean.
So a few days ago, I noticed an itch near my left eyelid. I used a finger to scratch it and didn’t think anything of it. Later on that day, I realized why I was itchy. Between my left eyelid and the bridge of my nose grew a small bump or a bit of swelling. At first I thought it was a pimple but when I get pimples, they don’t itch like that. I think something bit me. Could it been a mosquito? Possibly but usually I get much itchier when skeeters bite me. If it is indeed a bite, what could have bitten me? It kinda creeps me out that something could have bitten me that close to my eye. Yikes!
It was a long weekend last week and the overriding theme for me the entire three days was sleep. With naps factored in, I think I may have slept on average about ten hours a day for all three days. This was perhaps a sign that I’m not getting enough sleep during the week.
In light of this, I’m going to try to do the adult and mature thing by going to sleep “early” tonight. I know many of you, my loyal readers, are responsible folk who manage to get a respectable seven to eight hours a night but that only happens to me when I’m on vacation or unemployed. My body clock just isn’t wired for me to be an early riser. Anyways, I’m gonna slip between my Super Friends sheets now.
As long as Saturday Night Live remains popular, the show will continue to foster and build comedic talent. Like clockwork, talented people on the show rise from being unknowns to true comedic stars. On the weekend, the talented Kristen Wiig exited the long running show. She wasn’t the first to leave the show after becoming a rising star and she won’t be the last. Some SNL performers get the honour of a last farewell sketch. In recent years, Jimmy Fallon, Tiny Fey, and Will Ferrell were lucky enough to get such honours. Almost always, the farewell sketch is more sweet than bitter and happy rather than sad. The skit that honoured Wiig, however, was amazingly bittersweet and a very touching tribute. After such strong female cast members like Fey and Amy Poehler left, Wiig took the opportunity to really make the show her own.
The emotional end of the show caught many people by surprise, if social media were to believed. Wiig will no doubt continue to nurture her burgeoning movie and writing career. I will miss Penelope and the Target Lady.
As many of you noticed early this year, I was a bit concerned about what I was going to wear to my friend Joel’s wedding in March. The invitation called for black tie and after going through the various options, I settled on a custom made black suit from Indochino. I wound up loving my new black suit as it is the best fitting suit I have ever worn.
I have another wedding to go to in a few short weeks at the beginning of June. The wedding is for my cousin Gloria, who will be married at a golf course in Montreal. I want to wear my black suit again but I’ve read differing opinions on the appropriateness of wearing a black suit to a wedding. I’ve consulted many sources on the Internet. Some say a black suit is fine (without question in a black-tie scenario) and is totally acceptable if you wear it with a colourful shirt and/or tie. Others say a black suit should not be worn to a wedding.
I’m leaning towards bringing my black suit to the wedding. The adage that one should not wear black to a wedding is an old one and I think it’s becoming outdated. As long as I don’t show up in a pure black and white outfit, I should be fine. I have my eye on a nice lavender shirt and tie combo, which should look lovely at the reception.
Here’s something new, why don’t we all take a survey?!?!?! Yay! Exciting! The Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia is doing a survey on code readability. You can write the same piece of code in a dozen different ways, changing the amount of white space you use, where you put braces and brackets, and so forth. It’s really more about aesthetics than the content of the code itself. It helps if you know some programming but don’t worry about skewing the results if you not a programmer, just answer the questions about your background truthfully so they can toss out your data if necessary.
Here is the survey. As a final note, I did not rate any of the code snippets with a four nor a five. I thought all of them could have been written with more readability in mind.
When I was a kid, nothing entertained me more than anything that had to do with science-fiction and comic book characters. It was difficult though, liking those things because there were far less movies and TV shows with those themes than there are today. With comic book characters especially, it just wasn’t an accepted part of mainstream entertainment. When I was kid, Superman was the only superhero franchise that Hollywood had enough faith to make. I know the Man of Steel is an iconic character but I personally thought he was really boring as far as superheroes go. I longed for the day that every superhero could get their own movie. I would have to wait several long years before anything like happened. In fact, I’d have to wait until I was well into my 20s before the “golden age” of superhero movies were upon us.
I had to wait that long because all the other geeks who thought like me had to grow up as well. As kids, we had no power. There was no way to tell Hollywood we wanted to superhero movies and even if we could, kids don’t have a lot of spending power. Once we got older though, we were no longer just kids who liked superheroes, we were adults who had money who were willing to spend that money on superheroes. We also started having kids who learned to like superheroes as well. Thus began the era where superhero movies were popular and profitable.
As a kid, my ultimate entertainment dream was to see a movie that featured a whole team of superheroes. They would all have their separate movies and then come together in one spectacular team-up movie. Characters could also appear in each others movies in one single unified fictional universe. At the time, this was crazy to want because they weren’t even making any superhero movies outside of Superman.
Now you might be thinking, this already came to pass with all the X-Men movies. While technically they are a mutant team of superheroes that appeared together in a single film, none of the characters had individual solo movies made first. All the characters were crammed into a single film that really did not allow for extensive character development (except for Wolverine because he was special).
The Avengers is the movie that fulfills the dream I had long ago. All the main characters appeared in previous movies and have their own legitimate movie franchises. They didn’t even have to waste a single minute in bringing the audience up to speed on any of the characters. Marvel has spent the last three years building up to this movie. No one goes into The Avengers and has to ask where that Stark guy got his suit. No one wonders why that guy’s hammer is so powerful. No one questions why that round shield can deflect anything. In most cases, each character had a two hour long character development piece done for them before The Avengers even started. It is the true film that I had been waiting for since I was a child.
If I could be honest though, I always thought that if my dream would come true, it wouldn’t have been The Avengers who did it first. As a kid, I preferred The Justice League over The Avengers. They had more famous members and they had Batman… Batman! Though it’s easy now to see why The Avengers made it out first. While Marvel has been almost flawless in bringing its intellectual properties to the big screen, DC Comics appear to be stumbling like a drunk in an alleyway with no pants on. It’s really stunning how good one company is and how terrible the other is. With the exception of Batman, DC Comics just don’t know how to make a superhero movie (and they best be kissing Chris Nolan’s ass for decades). Keep in mind they have Superman and Wonder Woman in their stable, yet all we get is the weak-ass Green Lantern. A Justice League movie would be a license to print money but they can’t even get that going.
This evening, I somehow wandered into YouTube videos of planes landing so you’re gonna get to share that with me. The above video is from the old Kai Tak airport from Hong Kong. Before the new airport was built, planes had to take a crazy right hand turn before doing the final approach to the runway. I got to experience this myself about four times when I went to Hong Kong as a child. Some of those landings were even at night, which made it quite interesting.
So I went and saw a movie at the new theatre that opened up below where I live. It was a Saturday night and it was not as busy as I thought it was. It was pretty much all awesome. I bought tickets for myself and my buddy and his friend an hour before the show started. I was able to select my seats. That meant we didn’t have to the in the theatre early to claim good seats. That also meant I was able to be in my apartment literally just minutes before the show started. It look me less than five minutes to leave my place and then be standing in the theatre lobby. I have become spoiled now.
The theatre was brand spanking new and everything was shiny and polished. It will be the newest I will see any theatre be. All the screenings are digital so The Avengers were crystal clear to me the entire time. When the movie was finished, I was back up in my apartment before even the credits finished rolling (yes, I know about the shwarma scene).
It is hard to imagine people have to drive to a theatre in this day and age now!
This is just a reminder that it’s Mother’s Day here in North America this Sunday. So please remember to do something nice for your Mom this weekend. My sister and I are taking our Mom for brunch on Saturday. I picked out a lovely card for Mom this evening. I hope she likes the Transformer theme I picked out!