Carley's move

Well, I tried my best to help Carley move into her new house, but, unfortunately, with my toe and after having spent nine-and-a-half hours at work, I don't think I was very much help at all. I helped her move her couch into her living room, and offered to carry to DVD player and CDs upstairs, but I was told no.

Hopefully we'll be able to get a bit more work done before we have to go in to work tomorrow, but Carley's room may very well be the last one to get done, as all of her stuff has miraculously been stuck behind everything else. So, while she does at least have her bed set up (which is more than can be said for her brothers), but she doesn't have anything else there at all.

But, the house is very nice, with a huge backyard which I imagine will be home to a lot of soccer games and probably some games of golf. The only problem is that it could mean some long walks to work if Carley doesn't have a car.

Toe Surgery

Well, it's been a hell of a long time since I updated this, but, really, I've had my computer on for about a total of 15 minutes since then. So, lots to update, then!

First off, I had my toe surgery on Wednesday. It was the fifth time I've had this particular surgery, but the first on my right big toe (the previous four were on my left). It went very well; Carley drove me to and from, and I barely felt a thing, but that might also have been the insane amount of anaesthetic the doctor put in and how tightly the gauze was wrapped, but that's fine with me.

As of right now (late Friday night) I can walk around and drive totally fine, but my toe is very nice and gross, due, in part, to the silver nitrate the doctor used to cauterize the cut.

So, all in all, it went very well, with any luck I'll never have to go through it again, it's really rather a nuisance.

And thank you Carley! And Ben! Sorry to get you guys to do my bidding.

Finally got promoted

Finally, after my four-week sabbatical at the other store, and four months after our old store manager left, I got promoted to store manager until Janet comes back.

I've got the position until between July 31st (if Janet comes back) and August 31st (if she doesn't, and I take over until school starts), which means I'll be making a good bit more money, which should help out nicely with school.

And speaking of helping out nicely with school, Derrick informed me today that if I provide head office with proof of payment, proof that I've completed the course, and can prove that my program would relate to Blockbuster (I'm taking marketing), that I can get some of the money back. Boo-yeah.

Toe Woes (oh, I'm so clever)

For the fifth time in about as many years, I have to have surgery on my toe on June 23rd, at 2 p.m. This time, though, it's on my right big toe, which, up to this point, has been fine. The other four times have been on my left big toe. Yay.

But, my Carley will be with me, like she was last time, when we had only just started going out, and having surgery on my toe was probably not the best way to win her over for good. So, once again, I'll give her more than enough reason to contemplate fleeing from me!

It's just a 10-minute surgery, though, and really, I'm making a much bigger deal out of it than is necessary, because, well, I'm a suck. So, thank you Carley for coming with me again, and thank you Mum for giving me your damn toes!

The Day After Tomorrow

Now, this was a big movie! For everything that Troy lacked in scope as far as being an epic, The Day After Tomorrow made up for it. It's the kind of movie that needs to be viewed in widescreen, because, otherwise, it'd feel like you were missing tons.

As far as the actual story, it's pretty straight-forward: There's an ice age, lots of people freeze, everything gets covered in snow, and only Dennis Quaid survives (he's so plucky). Actually, the movie has a lot of time to build up why it's happening, as it ran just over two hours, but the explanation finally comes out in about five seconds (glaciers melt, dump all kinds of fresh water into the ocean, which disrupts to salt-fresh balance and screws up the North Atlantic current). The rest of the time is spent showing the audience all the damage.

The science of the movie takes up about the entire first half, as Dr. Dennis Quaid tries to explain to the incredibly stubborn American vice-president that greenhouse gases are really screwing up the climate, while the second half of the movie deals with the survival/love/everybody coming together when it really counts part of the story.

The vice-president does a very good job of illustrating America's often pig-headed view of the consumption of natural resources, as he continuously points out the economic costs of things like the Kyoto Accord. But then, of course, the President dies in one of the storms, the vice-president takes over and is all of a sudden nice and cuddly and thinks saving the environment is a great idea. Oh yeah, the States is really well known for accepting different ideas without a fight.

Jake Gyllenhal, who plays Quaid's son, is actually quite wooden throughout the movie. He shows very little emotion, even when he's being chased by wolves, covered in snow, pelted by rain, watching his girlfriend almost die, and re-uniting with his father after the storms have subsided.

One particularly amusing part came when the news anchors are recounting the devastating hail/typhoons/cyclones/snows around the globe, Canada suffers through unusual winds from the Arctic. You kind of expect to see them all out in their hot tubs. Kind of like the first single-digit-negative day in March when everyone starts walking around in shorts.

All in all, though, it was worth seeing, and definitely needs to at least be watched on video (in widescreen). Like I said, a very big movie. Just don't believe any of it. The story is definitely very interesting (I love disaster movies, because somehow they always seem to target major cities. Maybe city planners shouldn't build cities on fault lines and volcanoes and such), and the special effects and satellite shots of the storm let how see just how far reaching they are, plus the images of things like cargo ships floating down the middle of Manhattan Island and tornadoes wiping out the Hollywood sign give it a more concrete feel since you actually know where it's happening.

Oh, on one final note, everyone fled to Mexico to escape the climate change, where they were denied access to the country and had to cross the Rio Grande. Nice touch. They were only allowed into the country after the President agreed to wipe out all Latin American debt. Nicer touch.

Phone Scam?

I got a very interesting (and particularly concerning) call on my cell phone on Saturday. Carley and I were at a Wal-Mart in Brampton, when my cell phone rang. Of course, I assumed it was either Ben or my parents (really, who else calls?), but, instead it was someone asking if I spoke French (to which I answered "A bit"). At first, I thought it was Goat as the connection wasn't great and I figured that if it wasn't one of the previous options and I was with Carley, it couldn't be anyone else. But no, the mystery caller went on to tell me that he was talking to a woman who only spoke French and he needed me to translate (which my "uh...sort of" knowledge of French would obviously be an asset to). So, he told me he would call back and we'd have a three-way conference call together. He then asked my name, and introduced himself and hung up. I turned my phone off after this. I have a strange feeling that if I had accepted that call, that my phone bill would be through the roof.

This was most likely a scam of some sort, so anyone else may want to watch out (although I would assume that no one would be dumb enough to accept the mysterious conference call from the suspicious person who strangely got your cell phone number out of thin air).