That is a lot of pee

I've lived in Calgary just over 13 years now and still don't have a family doctor.  For a normal person this might not be a big deal, but for me and my chronic health concerns I should be seeing someone on a regular basis.  Until now I've just been going to walk in clinics, but it's probably about time I get a family doctor.

There is a walk in clinic right by where we live that I've been going to since we moved here.  It's nice and new and clean and I haven't any problems.  I was talking with the pharmaphist/diabetic educator there and she suggest I got across the road to a clinic that is accepting new patients.

I met with this Vietnamese doctor, Dr. Vu, and he seems nice.  He gave a lab sheet for a bunch of tests because he wants to see what my numbers are and such.  I thought it was simple stuff, take some blood, pee in cup and get some wires hooked up for an ECG.  The blood and ECG was easy stuff, but the pee in the cup was actually pee in a JUG!

When I saw the lab tech bring out that jug I was like "What the hell is that?!"  It's a freaking jerry can!  Anyway, I'm supposed to collect all my urine over a 24 hour period and then take it back to the lab.  Now I have to clean up my fridge, so I have room for my urine jug because you have to keep it cool.  I was thinking it would be funny to purposely drink a ton of water just to see if you could fill that 4L jug.  Seeing the look on their faces at the lab when you went back to ask for a second jug because you already filled the first one would be classic.  Don't forget to eat some asparagus too.

Enough about my pee, enjoy the rest of your day.

Wascally Wabbit

What's up?  Nothing exciting going on here in Calgary hence the lack of updates.  The weather has been pretty lame and colder than usual for this time of year.  On Thursday it was foggy and the moisture in the fog froze as ice on the ground and pretty much everything.  There was something like 200 car accidents that day alone.  When I looked outside it didn't look that bad, but then I stepped out and almost slipped and fell three times before I even made it out of our yard.  My car was covered in ice and it took me 10 minutes to scrap the windows, but it was more like chipping than scrapping.  Blowtorch please.

It snowed again last night and when I looked out the kitchen door I saw we had a visitor.

There are a couple rabbits running around here.  I just hope it isn't the freaky bug eyed rabbit, that dude gives me the creeps.   I posted his picture on here once.  His bug eyes make him look insane like he'll slit your throat just because he doesn't like your shoes.

Sleep on it

Check out my new mattress! A couple weeks ago I woke up at 5am with my back in severe pain, I couldn't even lie down or sit down.  I called in sick to work and went to the doctor later and he said I had a twisted muscle in my back.  He asked how I did it and I said "Sleeping?"  How is it I can hurt myself sleeping?  Remember when I hurt my wrist?  Same story.  Anyway, he just gave me some acupuncture and sent me on my way with a doctor's note for a few days off work.  I love my job so much that I only took that one day off and worked all weekend.  I even went back Saturday morning for some more acupuncture and then immediately went to work.

After working all day I would come home and sit on my worn out couch and then go bed on my worn out mattress and those two things weren't exactly helping my back get any better.  My mattress was from Ikea and I had it like 7 years and it had a huge dent in it from where I always slept and offered no support for my back at all.  I decided it was time to upgrade and bought a new mattress from Sleep Country.

It cost $970, but I will be using it everyday, so it's money well spent.  I bought it on a Thursday and then had to wait until Tuesday for it to be delivered.  It seemed like it took forever to get.   I'm not sure what model I got, but I think it's a Simmons with lumbar support and has the thickest pad on the top.  After sleeping on it for a few days the twisted muscle of my back went away, but my back started to hurt in other places.  I guess my back wasn't used to sleeping on an actual mattress and the lumbar support was actually hurting my back.  It has been a week now and it's getting better, I just have to break in some more.  Maybe if I jump on it, it will soften up.  If I really hate it I have 60 days to exchange it.

Since I just bought a new mattress I don't have the scratch to buy a new couch too, so I had to move some stuff around in the living room.  I had a green leathery (not real leather) type chair sitting at the end of the couch in the corner.  I dragged this out and moved  the couch down and moved the chair to opposite end for me to sit on.  It's give a bit more support and reclines a bit, so I can "kick it".

On an unrelated note I bought Airheads on DVD at the thrift store.  I haven't seen that movie in so long!

Time to cancel the cable

After posting about free cereal samples this morning I put on my "outside" clothes and hopped in the car and headed to Dollarama.  Since Cash Converters is right beside Dollarama me and Cody had to check it out "just because".  Cody found volumes 2 and 3 of the Real Ghostbusters and they are pretty nice sets, each set has three discs and even extras!  Whoa!  I bought the movie Out Cold because on the cover of the DVD it said "Animal House on ice!"  It stars Jason London and Zack Galifianakis as a pair of partying snowboard buddies and Lee Majors plays a sleazy land developer.   Once we got over at Dollarama I got a few food items, but nothing to talk about except for this weird protein drink. 

21 grams of protein!!!  It doesn't actually have much sugar in it which is why I bought it, plus that fact that it's frosty chocolate flavor helps too.  I tried it tonight and didn't bother to read the can and the part where it says to shake it up.  It tasted like Yoo-Hoo and I didn't like Yoo-Hoo that much.  Since I didn't shake it up once I got to the bottom of the can there was all this sediment left over, it was kinda gross.  Unfortunately I bought two cans, so I still have to drink one.

My car has the worst cup holder ever in it.  I had a bottle of Coke Zero sitting in it that I had bought at Dollarama and I didn't get the cap all the back on when I put it back in the holder and when I turned a corner the bottle fell out and sprayed all the car.  It sprayed on the windshield, the dashboard, me, and Cody, but mostly Cody.  It was a bit messy.  I had a pair of mittens Elaine knitted for me sitting the back seat and had to use those to wipe up the mess.  Now I'll just get lazy and not finish cleaning it up, so the dash will be a sticky.

We pulled in the parking lot at Smart Buy, formerly known as Bianca Amor's, and cleaned up the mess and went inside.  If buying some DVDs at Cash Converters wasn't enough we went into Smart Buy and bought more DVDs!   They had a bunch of Shout Factory TV DVDs for $10 per set.  Cody bought Parker Lewis Can't Lose seasons 1 and 2 while I bought The Weird Al Show complete series.  I also got the Dana Carvey Show for $5.  We watched the first two episodes of Parker Lewis and the first episode has a hot teenage Milla Jovovich guest star.

We also watched the first two episodes of The Dana Carvey Show.  This sketch comedy show suffered the same fate as The Ben Stiller Show with it only making 9 episodes (only 8 aired) before getting canceled.  It's from 1996 and stars future comedic legends Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert.  It has a lot of political humor which makes it feel extremely dated, but it still does have it's funny moments.

The Weird Al Show features commentaries on all 13 episodes by Weird Al himself.  The series is from 1997 and for some reason I thought it was older than that.  I also got Dukes of Hazzard season 5,  which is the one with Coy and Vance.  Rounding out my DVDs I also got Them! and Panic in the Year Zero/The Last Man on Earth double feature.

I decided to take a break from showing you crazy pictures of me, so I'll show you a crazy picture of Cody showing off his "goods".

That is the haul of DVDs that we got today and as you know we already have a huge pile laying all over our living room that we still have to watch.  I think it's time to cancel the cable in an effort to motivate us to start watching more.

Even though I was busy writing about free cereal offers, doing my laundry and buying DVDs I still found time to bake a pie.  I didn't make the pie, I just baked it.  A couple Cranbrook ago I stole a frozen apple pie out of my parent's freezer.  It was one of the Pee Wee AA hockey pies they sell to raise money.   It turned out pretty good, I didn't even managed to burn it.

Cody had two pieces, so it couldn't have been that bad.  Anyway, I'm off to watch some Dukes of Hazzard.  YEE-HAW!!!

Free Crap

I like to tip you guys off to free stuff like Cheerios t-shirt or Kashi cereal samples and I'll keep that cereal theme going with free Fibre Plus samples.  I just saw a commercial literally two minutes ago for free Kellogg's Fibre Plus cereal sample.  Since then I ran upstairs, went to the website and filled out the form for my free sample, then started writing this.

Click on over to the Kellogg's Fibre Plus website and get started on your free sample.  I'm warning you that you have to answer three questions before you get to the form, but I'm not sure if there is actually right or wrong answers.  I didn't answer the questions truthfully, I just told them what they wanted to hear so I would get my free sample.  Remember Mike that you have to lie in order to get what you want, that goes for stickers and free cereal samples!  I choose the berry blend flavor.  I didn't see anything that would say how long it would take for the sample to arrive, but it had better be soon.

Did anyone get the my "joke"?  A post about free "fibre" cereal and the title is "Free Crap".  Get it?  It's funny right?

Snack time

In response to Cam's question about the crabs being BBQ, the answer is "I don't know."  They definitely have some red stuff on them and some kind of little "balls" stuck on them.  I'm not sure exactly what the stuff is, but according the ingredients lists the package only contains crab, salt, and monosodium glutamin aka MSG aka tha flava.

What I didn't tell you is that I also bought a package of sesame dried fish for myself.  The ingredients lists the main ingredients as fish, what kind of "fish" that is I have no idea.  They looked  surprisingly good in the package especially with the sesame seeds on them.  Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving.  I tried ONE and I didn't like it.  Despite the fact I hated it the moment it hit my tongue I still managed to at least chew and swallow it.  I still have the rest of the package if anyone wants it.  Cam?

I'm not sure if anyone remembers this, but way back when I had my MySpace blog, I posted a bean picture inspired by the Cam bean story.  I thought if Cam could eat beans and toast, then I could too, so I tried it and then realized that no I could not do it.   My hat's off to you Cam.

Recycled beans picture!  Luckily I still had this on my camera's memory card.

Today is the third and final day of my three days off from work.  I'm not complaining about having three days off from work, but I'd rather they weren't all consecutive.  I'd rather work a day then get a day off, work a couple days then get another day off and so on.  Breaking it up is better than getting a bunch of days off in row because it just makes it that much harder to go back to work.  I didn't completely waste my three days off I did a couple things.

On the first day Cody, Dennis and I went for breakfast at The Belmont, a diner that only does breakfast and lunch.  We got there around 11am, so it wasn't that busy.  The Belmont is super small, so there isn't much room and even though it wasn't busy we still couldn't get a table or booth, so we had to sit at counter/bar on stools.  Get a booth or table because my crummy corner stool seat was too hard on my back.  I am so old!  Cody and Dennis got blueberry pancakes and I got french toast.  It was pretty good even if it is some hipster joint.  It did cost us just over $52 for the three of us, but we left $60 cash because that's how we roll.  They have a breakfast dish called the Cody Scramble, but Cody didn't even get it! 

After "brunch" I went and got my shaggy mop cut.  It was getting so long I could almost comb it, if I had a comb.

GOTTA CUT 'EM ALL!

The weather hasn't been that great lately, but Wednesday it was supposed to start warming up, so I decided we head down to Chinatown to pick up some movies.  Cody had the day off, so he came too.  I'm too cheap to pay for parking downtown, so I always park up on the hill and walk down across the Centre St. bridge to Chinatown.  As I said it was warming up, it wasn't actually warm yet.  I couldn't decide if I should wear my North Face jacket which would be too warm or wear my lighter jacket which might not be warm enough.  I decided to wear my lighter jacket and then froze.  :-(

Cody and I walked down to the Dragon City Mall where at the movie place I got four movies; Goemon, Ong Bak 3, Reign of Assassins and Detective Dee.  They even have bootleg movies in Blu-Ray format.  I stuck with regular movies and my Sony Blu-Ray player wouldn't even play them, so I had to use my old $50 Philips-plays-anything DVD player.  In the same mall I went to the candy/snack store and Honey World.

I bought these little snack crabs for my dad.  I wonder if he'll actually eat them?

The cola flavored Hi-Chew is awesome, the lychee is good, but the soda sucks.  Next time I'll just get cola.  I've had these before, plus I think the name is cool.

Bootleg!  I bought this Kamen Rider knock off figure at Honey World which sells a lot of toys and junk, a lot of them being imitations.  I liked this from for lots of reasons, the packaging, the figure, and the fact that it has launching fists.  The figure itself is die cast and comes with five(!) sets of fists which can be fired from the arms.  I don't know how old it is, but the packaging certainly looks older.  I want to give it a try, but I'd rather keep it in the package.  It's probably safer too as it's probably die cast from a lead.  It's made in Taiwan, so I'll ask Murray if he can find me some more.

After Dragon City we went to Jing Jing bakery and got a chocolate roll and then to Ti Ti Vietnamese Subs.  I dragged Cam there the one time he came to Calgary and he absolutely loved it, he wouldn't shut up about how great it was.  The weather wasn't that great and Ti Ti is ridiculously small, so we had nowhere to go and eat our subs.  We had to walk back up the hill and then eat them in the car.  I drove and Cody got crumbs all over his seat!

Today, Thursday, was a little quieter as I took in the recycling, bought some groceries, went to the post office and went to Phoenix Comics.  Not that exciting except I came home with my very own Fonzie!

Sit on it!

Yep, that's an original Mego Fonzie doll from 1976.  He's in pretty good shape too except for some hear on his head.   You can fold his thumbs down, so he's not always giving a thumbs ups.  The best part is that he actually does give a thumbs up.

Pressing down on the lever on his back will lift his arms up, but you have to make the "AAAYYYY" sound yourself.  If something isn't cool, then you can rotate his hand around to give a thumbs down.

The Fonz says, "Get lost you nerd!   AAAAYYYY!"

March 6th, 2011

As you can see I'm totally jazzed because today, March 6th, is the release date for the newest games in the Pokemon series, Black and White.  I actually pre-ordered mine at EB Games, so I would get a special Celebi that I could use in the game.  This is actually the first time I've pre-ordered anything and I even left work a hour early so I could go pick it up.  Interesting side note is that EB Games sucks and I will not be buying games there anymore.

At first I was gonna get Pokemon Black because it just sounds more bad ass, but White's legendary Pokemon Zekrom, dude on the cover, looks cooler.  I've already played a hour of it and one of the big differences from past games is the camera.  It's more dynamic and moves around which I like.  I haven't had enough time playing it see what new game features and mechanics they've added.  But out of the three starter Pokemon I went with Tepig, the fire type, and yeah he looks like a pig.

With last year's game, HeartGold, I tried connecting it online through the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection, but couldn't get it to work, my DS didn't like my router.  I tried changing the WPA settings and I even bought a Nintendo USB Wi-Fi stick and I still couldn't get it to work.  I gave it a quick try tonight and I still couldn't get it online with our router, but one of our neighbors doesn't have a password on their router, so I was able to get online through there.  Haha, thanks! 

Hopefully, I'll get around to finishing Pokemon White as I never did finish Pokemon HeartGold.  I was so close with only Red left to fight, but his Pokemon were at such high levels and I was too burned out to level grind my team up. 

Is it weird for me to be playing Pokemon?  Maybe, but I also like to shoot and blow stuff up in Bad Company 2, so maybe they cancel out.  What can I say, I'm versatile.  I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this, but if you are then I know you want to see this picture again.

GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL!!

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.