K is for Keith

As if I didn't need any more stuff I got this in the mail the other day.  It's a letter "K" like for Keith because I needed something hip to put on my desk.  I know you are thinking, "Big freakin' deal, it's just a letter K!"  Well, that's where you are wrong!  In addition to being a letter K, it is also a super bad ass robot.

Tha bad assery is off da chartz!

A letter K that transforms into a robot?  Well yes, it is from Japan.   Because everything there transforms into a robot therefore making it cooler.  Don't worry you can get every letter in a letter/robot toy even if you have some stupid name that starts with X or Z.  Getting enough letters for an entire name would be a bit too much unless you have a short name like Cam or something.  I ended up ordering mine from the UK.

The concept is pretty cool and it looks pretty good in both letter and robot form, but it's not without it's flaws.  I was disappointed with the construction because right out of the package the legs are already really loose.  They need to be more stiff, so they hold together better in letter form.  Usually, Japanese stuff is pretty well made, so this a bit of a let down.   You dropped the ball on this one Japan!

Another weird thing about these little toys is that they also put candy in with it.  When I say candy I mean "A" piece of candy, not candy plural.  When I got my Phone Braver toy it had candy in it, my Bruce Lee figure had candy, etc.  Now there is nothing wrong with candy, but this is weird Japanese candy and not that good.  Maybe it's like seaweed flavor.  Throw in some gummy candy or sour balls and then we're getting somewhere.

Yummy candy??

Instead of getting robots to spell out your name, it would be funnier to get them to spell out hilarious and offensive words like FART, POOP, ASS, and the list goes on.

Stickers!! again...

On one of my past trips to Cranbrook I found a photo album that had some old stickers in it.  I did a post about it and Mike said something about wanting to see old skateboard stickers.  Well Mike, it looks like Christmas came early, but mostly likely late, but either way your wish just came true.

Just like I said they are in a Nike shoebox.  The Panaracer sticker on the top was from an uncut sticker sheet I got in a mountain bike magazine.  I totally cut it up.

The inside of the box with a old school Burton sticker right on the top.  It is kinda scuffed up which sucks.  If I ever see Jeff I should give it to him.

The Supersuckers was free with a Sup Pop order, I hope the Sup Pop logo was too, but I can't remember.  I paid for the Nirvana one.

Assorted Powell Peralta stickers.  I have the Public Domain sticker and still have the actually movie somewhere.  My favorite part of the movie is the free skate session with Ray Barbee, his sticker is right beside it.  I found some guy selling the Barbee sticker on eBay for $25!  I would totally let mine for a measly $20.  My brother had the Caballero deck with that Dragon design on it.

I like Vans one even though it's pink.

The "skate" zone sticker is actually a Powell Peralta sticker.  The Gouge sticker is so shiny you can see my reflection in the lettering.

I still like the big smiley T&C sticker.  I think Free-Wheelin is still around in Calgary too.  The yellow sticker with skeleton is from Ultra Designs, I think they were a skate company.

A few ski and snowboard stickers.

Misc stickers including the Onza one which came with a pair of bar ends.  The Air Time sticker I can't even remember what it is, maybe snowboards?  Awesome Keith name stickers and a KZZU sticker.  I don't even remember where I got it because I didn't listen to KZZU, I think maybe I got it from Cam.

That was most of them, but not all, just the good ones.   It's good to know that some of them might even worth a few bucks if I need some cash.  $25 for Barbee!  I thought I had a "Be Aware, Ski With Care" sticker, but it wasn't in there.  I hope I do and it's just hiding somewhere else, those were cool. 
 I also have a big Atomic Skis sticker, but it's one of the weird ones you stick and rub or something and it peels off leaving each individual letter on the surface.  There was also some safety stickers about a seat belts and a couple reflective drinking and driving stickers.  If it came in sticker form and it was free I would take it.  I only paid for the good stuff.

That reminds me of another sticker related story.  In high school they had the phone students could use for local calls, Mike and Cam you know where it was.  Anyway, I would call toll free phone numbers from ski and mountain bike magazines looking to get free stuff like stickers.  It didn't always work, but sometimes it did.  I got a free Power Bar sample and a sticker this way.  The sticker is stuck on my metal water bottle container and this was back in the day before metal water bottle containers were cool.   Sometimes I get tired of being so rad.

Day 5

I should've started last Thursday off as Day 1 since that was the first I was back in Cranbrook, so now my whole numbering system is messed up.  Day 5 should be Day 6, but since I never wrote anything yesterday then Day 6 should be Day 7.  Anyway, I'm back in Calgary.

The drive was pretty lame with road conditions that varied from good to holy-crap-I'm-dead.  The weather was good in Cranbrook the whole time I was there and then I get up to drive back on Tuesday and it's snowing.  The worst was just after the Crowsnest Pass where it was windy and snowing really hard.  With the blowing snowing you could barely see the road and the car in front of you and then a semi-trailer would drive on the other side of the road and all you could see was white.  It was scary.  I survived and made it back to Calgary, so I could go back to work bright and early Wednesday morning at 6am.  Yeah???

I brought back a couple things for future blog posts, so stay tuned.  I guarantee that they will be at least mildly interesting, but don't get your hopes up.

Day 4

My last full day in Cranbrook and I didn't go out and do a lot because I already went to everything worth looking at.  I met my parents for lunch at Cancun, the Mexican place.  The people who run it are from El Salvador,  so it's not actually "Mexican", but still way more authentic than Taco Time.  It's pretty good, I suggest you check it out if you have the chance.

After lunch I stopped the old Scarff residence to see what was going down.  I was filled in on all the goings on with everybody, even Lynne.  I even heard an interesting tidbit about Cam getting a PS3 and Gran Turismo 5.  I've been bugging him since the PS3 launch if he was going to get one and he kept saying no.  Even in the fall I e-mailed him about GT5 finally coming out and he was still saying he wasn't going to get one because he is strictly a PC gamer now.  But then he totally caved in and bought one.  HA!  You lied to me man!  I also got a cookie fresh out of the oven.  Good stuff, but I should've came a little later because the chocolate chip cookies were just getting ready when I left.

On Friday I went to the Hospital Auxiliary thrift store and they didn't have much, but I still got a DVD for Logan and fridge magnet for myself.  I paid for them and I told the lady I didn't need a bag, so I just put the magnet on top of the DVD case and started to leave.  Then she asks me if it was okay to do that.  I told her it was okay, the magnet only wrecks VHS and cassette tapes.  I give her props for even knowing that though.

My new robot magnet

Day 3

Didn't do much because we went skiing at Fairmont and I made it back without any broken limbs.  The weather was really nice, sunny and -3C, so perfect weather.  I forgot it was Family Day long weekend in Alberta, so  the parking lot was all full of Alberta license plates.  I didn't go for a full day, only a half day which is good because it's expensive!  A full day pass at Fairmont costs $39, which is pretty steep considering it takes longer to ride up the lift than it does to ski down.  Since it was busy and there were lines, it takes twice as long.   They only have one triple chair too.

I only made five runs on the chairlift and then spent another hour over on the platter lift with Avery.  He can't ride up by himself yet, so he had to ride up between my legs.  A platter lift is a lift for one and the disc shaped "platter" just goes between your legs and pulls you up.  Since Avery is so short the platter was like down behind my knees.  After a while it was starting to hurt and the steeper it got the more painful it was.  We would just go halfway up and ski down.  I would've taken him farther up, but near the top it got steep and the back of my knees/legs wouldn't be able to take it.

I did okay for not being on a pair of skis in 12 years.  I was pretty good on the groomed stuff, but when I went on the one black diamond run they had things got a little sketchy.  It didn't help that I was using a pair of brother's skis that are more for racing, they're pretty stiff.  Despite that I was probably better than most people up there.  They all got the good equipment and fancy gear, but aren't that great.  Posers!  I was in line behind some guy and he was all bragging to his girlfriend how awesome his skis carve and stuff and then I see him go down and he's no better than me.  Funny thing is that a lot people wear helmets now, but maybe if they didn't suck so much they wouldn't need them.

Also, Mike my old skis wouldn't have looked that out of place at the ski hill.  I saw some guy with the exact same pair and in the parking lot I saw some people with equipment I would've made fun of 15 years ago.  Speaking of vintage equipment, check this out.

Those are my skis poles and the Komperdell pole (left) is probably about 20 years old.  The Scott one is maybe 18 years old and I got it in Mt. Hood, Oregon.  I had broken the matching pole of each pair, so I made just a new pair out of the leftovers.  Recycle!

Day 2

Second day in Cranbrook means I went to more stores which means I will have less to do in the future.  My parents redid the basement TV room with some new carpet, paint, trim and a new TV.  What good is a nice new TV without a decent DVD player though?  We went to Wal-Mart and got a new a Blu-Ray player.  I was looking at the HDMI cables and theyhad  the rip off Monster cables for $50 and then the Philips cables for $30.  The Philips cables were only 3ft long, yet they cost $30.  Then they had some no-name HDMI cable for only $10 and it was 12ft long.  You're gonna get the same quality from it than the more expensive ones and you're gonna save $20.  Unless you bought the Monster cable, then you're just dumb.

When I come home to Cranbrook I always end up going bacl to Calgary with more stuff and this time is no exception.  Willie and I hit up some stores and I got a couple DVDs, CDs and DS games.  We went to the Salvation Army and as we were leaving we spottrf some little girl playing with a wind-up South Park Cartman toy.  Willie wanted the Cartman toy, so we had to wait around to see if she was actually going to buy it or not.  Unfortunately, she did buy it, so Willie went home empty handed.  I said the toy was not age appropriate for her.  If she can't watch the TV show, then she can't have the toy.

We also went to Giant Tiger, but I had already been there...sort of.  I was bored the other night, so I went to the Giant Tiger website and ended up ordering four movies.  The have a decent selection and the shipping is a flat rate of $4.95 no matter how much you order.  I ended up buying a Thai movie, a Japanese double feature and two 80's teen comedies.  They had Exo-Squad Season 1, but I passed on it.  Maybe next time because it actually costs twice as much over on Amazon.ca.  I bought more two more DVDs from the Cranbrook store to add to my enormous pile back in Calgary.

Shiloh and Willie now have the Scrapbook store in Cranbrook.  If you aren't sure where it is, its the one down the Prestige by the "Adult" store.  I know absolutely nothing about scrapbooking, but Willie says it's kinda nerdy.   Collecting Star Wars figures or comic books is WAY more cooler.  So I met Shiloh and she does exist.

Later that night I went to the hockey game with my parents.  My dad got a box and a bunch of employees from the shop came.  The box is nice because you don't have to mingle with the riff raff.  Although, that didn't stop them from coming in!  Some kid walked in looking for the washroom and some other guy walked in looking for his box.  He was looking for an upper box and I'm not sure why he didn't try the the door with the sign that had an arrow on it pointing up listing the box numbers.   If your looking for an upper box, why would you go to a lower box?  The Ice lost, but it was still a good game.  During the intermissions they brought out some Tim Bits players to play a four minute game.  I found these games to be as good or better than the actual hockey game.  These kids were so small and they had them skating the entire length of the ice when normally they would only play on half a rink.  While they were playing "Ch-Check It Out" by the Beastie Boys was going over the PA.  YEAH!

Day 1

First day back in Cranbrook and it's already boring.  I met my dad for lunch and we went to New May May Chinese Restaurant.  I didn't like it and will not be returning.  What's with the Chinese places in Cranbrook putting onion rings on the lunch buffet?  They do that too at the Marco Polo.  Some dirty redneck in front of me at the buffet put a pile of onion rings on his plate then dumped the sauce from the sweet & sour pork on them.  Yum?

If you remember back when I was all stoked about getting those DVD season sets of Knight Rider for cheap at Blockbuster, I had to check out BB here to see if they a similar deal.  They did!  Unfortunately, they didn't have anything really awesome, but I still got Sealab 2021 Season 4 for $12.99 minus the 25% off.   I have the previous seasons, but S4 wasn't supposed to be as good.  Good thing it was cheap.

After dinner we went to the hockey game and the Ice managed to beat Medicine Hat 4-1.  My only complaint is that I didn't win the 50-50 draw...again!  I only go with the hopes of winning a couple thousand dollars, but always get shut out.  Haha, get it?  Anyway, it's not like I'm asking to win the 649.  Dammit, one day I'll hit it big.

I'm back in Cranbrook!  I drove back today and will be here until Tuesday.  I guess this weekend is the Family Day long weekend in Alberta, but I didn't know that or plan it accordingly.

I drove back the south way and the roads were nice and dry all the way to the AB/BC border then they went downhill.  They kept getting worse the closer you got Fernie and I swear after the ski hill turn off it's like they just quit maintaining the roads at all.  Some sections you couldn't even see pavement, they weren't plowed, just packed snow and they weren't even sanded.  Then you hit the tunnel and suddenly the roads are plowed, you can see the pavement and eventually it's back to bare roads.  It's like an invisible line at the tunnel with roads on the Fernie side being crap and roads on the other being fine.  It's always like this, I don't get it.

I only stopped at place in Cranbrook and that was Liquidation World or as the cool kids call it "LW".  They even have a website now.  I bought the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 2CD soundtrack for only $2.50.  They had a bunch of other CDs for $2.50, but a few I was on  the fence about because I'd never heard of them.  I looked a couple up and might pick them up when I drag Willie there on Saturday.  Yeah, Willie!  Willie sayd I will finely be meeting Shilo.  Yeah, I've never met her as she is always "out of town" or "at work" and I was beginning to wonder is she was just a figment of Willie's imagination.  He's finally lost it!  Other than that not much planned except for going to at least one hockey game and skiing in Fairmont on Sunday.  Hopefully I won't break my legs at Fairmont, I am very out of shape.  I will let you know what happens.