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Health, Life, Love, Random, Video
Holly’s photonic-puppy-peepers
01.18.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Holly had her laser eye surgery ten days ago, and was on vacation the entire time. Her company, coupled with my laziness, prevented me from doing any blog updating. I had intended to write all about her surgery on here, and post a video of the procedure, but didn’t want to do so until she was able to watch the video, and look at the images to give her stamp of approval (well, all but one… can you guess which one got fast-tracked and bypassed approval?). Or maybe I was just using that as an excuse to be lazy longer.

Anyway, here it is:

Holly’s Super Big Fun Laser Eye Adventure Here We Go Awesome!

It began with the usual waiting room stuff, then after a short wait we went into an office to have a preliminary interview with one of the nurse people. She told us what to expect, and how to take care of her eyes after the operation then asked if we had any questions. Holly asked her if she could tell her what her eyesight would be after the procedure – meaning 20/20, 15/20 40/20?? – and the girl said “Oh, you have what we refer to as three finger vision. Basically, if you can’t see the big “E” at the top of the letter chart, we hold up three fingers just to make sure you’re not blind.” – Yikes! After a few more questions, she told me if I wanted to I could watch them do the procedure. Of course I jumped at the opportunity, and am always ready with my camera.

I had to stand behind glass in another room for sterilization reasons, but they had a monitor showing the procedure which I was able to see. I took a video of the whole procedure, but split it into parts. This is the best one, and shows the end of the first eye, and most of the second eye.

She didn’t seem too bothered by the whole ordeal, but was in intense pain almost immediately after. I took her home and went to retrieve a prescription for pain medicine.

When we got home, Roan was glad to see that she was okay – he had been worried sick while we were gone. Then he asked what colour Holly’s new eyes were. I then realized he thought she had an eye transplant. I, being the clever, playful cobra I am, decided to tell him she had a pair of puppy eyes put in. Beagle eyes, that were the same colour. He believed me for a minute, but then Holly ruined the game with her truth bullshit.

Hopefully once her eyes are fully healed she can see zombies coming at her a little better.
Life, Random, Roanisms, Video
Morning time tea with Roan and me
01.18.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Roan and I have been partaking in a morning cup of ginger-mint tea (courtesy of Lesley) together lately. Gage and Holly usually leave first, then Roan walks later because his school starts at a different time. I started filming him one day, after he started telling me that his tea “…tastes like green 5 gum.”. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but I figured it was a Roan-ism. It turns out he had the name of the gum right, and I was the one who was displaying my ignorance. Either way, he’s cute as hell.

I had to stop filming him briefly because he was on to me. I lied and said I was looking at pictures I’d taken. I offered to show him a picture of Tabbouleh on his bed, just to prove it. After he believed me I resumed my deception. This is where the best part comes in. I’m not sure how we got on the topic so fast, but we began talking about animals and how many there are in the world. Then we quickly shifted to a discussion on the definition of “infinity”. This is one of my favourite parts – Roan says he doesn’t know what infinity is, but it’s a high high number… I say isn’t infinity the highest number?? and I love his response. “Mmmm hmmm” – like he’s clearly known that forever, then the sheer look of confusion on his face when I say “so how can there be more than infinity animals on the planet?

Hopefully there will be more of these to come. I like having chats with him like this because it reminds me of when I used to think like he does. I think I should make sure with him first before recording though. I wouldn’t want him to think we were making fun of him, and sharing it with the world.

**After Googling, the best answer I can come up with is between 3 and 30 million species on the planet. Slightly lower than infinity, but slightly higher than 1,000,095.
Animals, Photos, Random
Kanika <3′s tap water
01.06.10 | Permalink | Comment?

Anytime I walk into the kitchen and she’s not in her usual mitten-basket spot, Kanika runs over, meows, then jumps up on the counter to wait for me to turn the tap on. She’ll drink for a few minutes sometimes, and others she just has a few sips. She’s got cute fangs that I’m always trying to get a picture of, but I never have any luck. You can sort of see one of them in this photo (they really stick out when she drinks). I haven’t spent the time to figure out how to fully utilize my new camera – wasn’t sure how to compensate for the low light, high speed licks, and slow flowing water, but hopefully once I do I can capture her and her little fangs sticking out how they normally do. It’s sort of a mix between vampire goth teeth and dorky buck teeth.
Angry Art, Food, Life, Random
804,672m of freedom and fortune
01.06.10 | Permalink | Comment?

This is some of what I spent yesterday doing. These are tools that will appear in the book’s appendix. They are so far pretty fucking boring to make (or maybe I’m just tired of the whole thing at this point). I decided to make my own version of an appendix, with my own descriptions. I also modeled an axe, a beetle, and a timber strap. They were all pretty boring.

When Holly got home she took me to Mandarin for dinner because, we were both starving and neither wanted to cook or wait for food. The food was the same as usual – mediocre, but plentiful – and the fortunes were right on par as well.

This is perfect! Well, perfect aside from the fact that I had to do some minor conversion before deciding how fortunate I was, but still. Coupled with our previous fortunes from there, we’re not doing too bad for the next year or two.

After filling my belly with sushi, pizza, fried rice, spring rolls, cheese covered cauliflower, garlic bread, waffles, and a chocolate covered banana, we went to meet Holly’s friends at Niagara’s Best Brewery.

The beer was decent, but the seats were shit. I was really uncomfortable, but it couldn’t have been too bad, since without noticing we spent 4 hours there. Holly got a little drunk, so I drove home. Then we said our prayers and went to bed.

Tomorrow Holly gets her balls lasered, and she can’t wait. After that she’s on vacation for 10 days, and hopefully at some point after her eyesight is bad enough I can rearrange furniture and stuff so she walks into it. Because I love her.
Life, Love, Photos
Your snow is no match for our scarfs
01.04.10 | Permalink | Comment?

This is a photo of the backyard at Holly’s house right now. The snow is so high, but the picture doesn’t accurately depict it. It’s literally been snowing this big fluffy snow for 3 days now, with no breaks at all.

Thankfully Holly owns a snow-blower, or my back would be in major pain right now. Her driveway is huge, and would take me an hour at least with a shovel. I’ve had to use it 3 times in the last 24 hours, and I actually think I enjoy it. I just need to find my warm winter boots and it might be my new favourite chore.

The other benefit to the snow-blower is that I don’t have to rush inside afterward and strip off my layers of clothing because I’m sweating like mad, and have exhausted my energy reserves. This (coupled with my newly acquired Nerf gun) has been making me want to build a snow fort really bad. Unfortunately the snow is not pack-y at all, and is therefore practically useless.

Although it did provide a nice background for a walk with Holly last night. A walk which provided us both with a chance to sport our custom made scarfs, courtesy of the Queen Cobra.

That’s Holly bundled up with her new grey Silver Scarf of Power. It keeps her warm and grants her level 7 enchanted embalming radial attacks with +2 to hotness.

An here I am in my Super Space Invading Scarf of Skillage. It keeps that animal growing on my throat warm (although you’d think something with that much fur would stay warm fine on it’s own), and adds +5 to all skills and +1000 to deadly good looks.

Both worked awesome, and now lie resting for when their powers are next called upon. (Thanks mum <3)
Fuck Microsoft, Gaming, Love, Video
Love is: A fountain of red, spewing from matching exit wounds in the back of some zombie’s head
01.04.10 | Permalink | 1 Comment

We got tons of snow the last two days (and it’s not stopping), and that means I managed to talk Holly into killing Nazi-zombies with me for a little bit. She’s never willing to play because she “hates the stupid toggles” (she means analog sticks), but she was just bored enough the other day to try. She did pretty good for someone who has never played a first-person-shooter before. She still refuses to use her pistol and get points, but she’s evolving. Soon we’ll be pwn’n nubs together on the onlines. We can now get to level 11 or 12 on the easiest map, but she has yet to survive the zombie-dogs on my favourite map. I’m sure with more practice though, she’ll be as good or better than I am, and we’ll be singing Pack-A-Punch jingles together, while we splatter zombie guts all over each other.

I tried to get Holly to play Co-op Campaign on World at War, but it’s not a good game for seeing the enemies. You basically have to look for muzzle flare, and shoot dudes you can barely see 75% of the time (even without split screen it’s pretty tough to see dudes). I figured she needed more experience with the basic FPS controls, so I suggested we try Gages new Halo 3 ODST game. The enemies in Halo games are either bright colours or 10′ tall, or a combination of the two. We threw it in last night for about 30 minutes before deciding it was worse than Halo 3, and incredibly boring and frustrating. We gave up on Halo and agreed to never play it again.

I’m glad Holly was willing to try killing zombies with me, and even more glad she loves it. I like that she gets the adrenaline rush I get when she plays (maybe even more than I do – I never scream, ever). Hopefully it helps her understand why I have a hard time tearing myself away from games, and end up awake until 4am most nights.