I'm home for the long weekend. I had something of an adventure getting here, missing the bus to Toronto because of a
power outage which caused me to miss my train. Being the holiday, my alternate trains were sold out, leaving one that
left just before midnight (leaving me with ten hours to waste in downtown Toronto), or a first class seat on a 17:30. I
went first class. (I have fun looking like a student but recklessly tossing money away. Not something I try to do often,
but it's fun nonetheless). This is a complete waste of money if you don't drink, by the way. The meal they serve was
okay, but certainly not worth the $60 premium. The (as far as I could tell) unlimited free booze might make up for it,
though.
Today we went to Kingston to visit my sister, console her for having to study for finals and take her out to lunch. It
was kind of fun. Afterwards, we took the Glenora Ferry over to Prince Edward County to have a look around craft shops
and things. I stopped by this great little chocolatier in Bloomfield and, on a whim, picked up some chocolate covered
candied ginger. Different, and quite good, I thought. My sister didn't like it much, though.
I love the County. I've gone there on camping trips and Sunday outings since before I can remember. It's got lots of
folksy, rural charm, with farms everywhere and (increasingly touristy) small towns. A little frayed around the edges in
spots, but I figure that adds to the charm, rather than detracting from it. Nature puts on a pretty good show too. It's
just... nice.
Ah, home. It's just so comfortable coming back here. Too comfortable, probably. I don't feel like doing anything.
Well, I can probably use the rest. I should do the rounds tomorrow, though—checking up on people and stuff. I'd really
like to find out how some folks are doing. Maybe I should have made this stay longer. My mom's mad at me for going back
Sunday. Through some miscommunication, she made plans for an Easter dinner out. I hate to disappointer her. My mother
cares a great deal about holidays and special occasions. Special times set aside, when the world is supposed to be as
near to perfect as it can be. She's not really tyrannical about it, but her disappointment is evident if things don't
work out.
The site was offline all day yesterday. I think some lightning non-fatally confused my router-thingy. I power cycled it
this morning, but only after rebooting my machine and, thinking my ISP might be at fault, running a looping
try-to-connect-dammit script overnight. In rebooting, I forgot that I hadn't set up some key servers to start up
automatically, so things got a little fubarred around here.
Back to normal now, though.
Hm, the weather's been rather nice, so I haven't been extraordinarily driven to update lately. Ah, spring. Speaking of
which, a little more spring music:
I'm trying to look for a car at the moment. This is made difficult by my distaste for the whole car thing (nearly
getting run over by one yesterday didn't help, however much it was my fault. Signal, damn you!). Those little suckers
just inhale money, don't they? I'd really like to put this off for a couple years, but there's just too much stuff I'm
missing out on for lack of wheels. I kinda wanted to go to the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival on Saturday (despite the
rain), for example.
In other news, I found out today that the wedding ceremony for my best friend from high school will be family only,
which is fine and everything, but it's starting to look like the only wedding in which I'm going to be part of the
wedding party will be my own (knock wood). *sigh*
Oh gosh, I love spring. What a great day out there. I'm feeling so good about it, I don't even think I'll complain about
being couped up in the office. I'm just happy it's there.
And now for a little experiment. I was thinking of putting music up on the site, maybe as MP3 downloads or something.
The idea was that I toss up something to reflect my mood, or that just seemed cool at the time. But I don't want to be
an MP3 download site, so a streaming thingy might be the better choice.
Shoutcast is nifty, but it sucks up most of my limited bandwidth just for one listener. So
much for my Squirrel Radio idea. I don't know if I'll keep it up, but try this out anyway:
Oh, you need Winamp. But you've already got that, right?
I love that song. Lots and lots and lots. It's from the soundtrack
the The Hanging Garden, a good ol' drepressing Canadian movie. Great soundtrack.
Give it a try.