i've just finished my ontario tax return. I contributed half as much in rrsp this year but got more refunds than last year filing as a quebec resident. i know what you'll say: quebec's child welfare is better, houses/rents are cheaper, etc... but just look at the last line of my tax declaration, damn!

today I was parliamentary secretary for an hour during the mock parliament debate in a parliamentary procedures training session. i chickened out of saying "6 gagillion" when I was answering a budgetary question. the high point of the day for me was i got to sit in the prime minister's seat in the main chamber. however what impressed me the most was the interpreters with their amazing ability to translate in realtime all while listening to and digesting what the members were saying. .e  22:59  1 comments [ leave comments ]

missed work yesterday coz I felt sick... could've been my spending too much time outside in the cold on sunday, on the canal taking pictures. i stuck the pictures on my now picture blog on msn space. i was feeling a lot better in the afternoon after sleeping past noon. was going to go to work for a couple of hours but ended up just meeting up with mick at the cock and lion instead.

didn't play poker coz tonite was the permanency outting courtesy of the five newly promoted at work (thanx for the beer, etienne, roger, chris, sylvain and roy!). at one point we were talking about people with several food allergies which got us thinking that we might all be allergic to certain types of food to some degree without knowing it, which to some degree might affect our wellness, our mood, our concentration, and maybe (since I'm a gambling man), our luck.

this week i'm on a special veggie and white meat diet: spinach, corn, lettuce and apples, plus thoroughly cooked chicken and pork. forbidden are red meat, rare meat, innards, broccoli, cantiloupe, any root-based vegetables and sharp broken glass. .e  23:59  1 comments [ leave comments ]

i used to use 19 as my number (eg, coldfire19) until recent years coz I felt bad that it's also bob's number and he has a good reason for liking it, too. so I relinquished the number (afterall, it's just digits) and had been numberless for quite some time.

having a number is useful in certain ways, such as using it for account name suffixes, temporary passwords, pager alias and/or lottery number.

i tried to get in the habit of using 237 (guess why) but never really felt attached to it. i think two-digit is the magic length. so out of the other 89 two-digit numbers there exists I picked 10. it has the immediate familiarity that I didn't get from the others. so from now on. I'm number 10. that's what I picked for the soccer jersey, too.

more pointless posts like this one to come in the future, stay tuned. (: .e  16:11  3 comments [ leave comments ]

people say shopping and buying stuff you like cheers you up when you've got the blues. so I set aside a few hours on tuesday to do some shopping. I was looking at different mp3 players and headphones, and a birthday gift for my mom. I checked out almost every model of players out there. the iPod nano led the bunch, but I was looking for something cheaper. then I walked by Sears, and it reminded me of something my mom would like. I sorta used up my mp3 budget on that instead.

mom liked the gift, and that cheered me up. .e  23:43  5 comments [ leave comments ]

i make myself noodles all the time, and tonite is no exception. it's easy to make a complete meal with a bowl of noodles, and it's fun (and delicious) to go all out with the toppings, too.take that, Pho Bo Ga!
I had lunch with Bob, Karine, Xavier, Pierre-James and the long-time-no-see Arianne at the Eggspectation at noon today. Service was slow but we could see the servers were doing whatever they could. Xavier is adorable and full of energy as always.

after lunch, I hit Elephant and Castle again for my usual sunday poker game. John, Ali-John and Mick were there, too, and they were doing very well for themselves. Ali eliminated my dad and me early in the game. Mick was blessed by the poker gods and was hitting every card he needed against the worst possible odds. by the time I left, john was watching from the sideline, and both Ali and Mick held a sizeable chip stack.

soccer is at nine tonite. i'll be playing forward. hope I come back in one piece. .e  16:34  0 comments [ leave comments ]

and a little bit of photoshopping...
.e  02:14  0 comments [ leave comments ]

I am barely awake, yet I can't fall asleep.

my nasal was bothering me I couldn't rest. when I do fall semi-asleep, I hallucinate and become very uncomfortable (usually result of a fever). maybe I should just take Aco's advice: get hammered and fall unconscious, even if I don't, I won't care too much about the cold anymore.

... maybe not tonite. .e  02:00  1 comments [ leave comments ]

I'm officially sick... scratchy throat, muscle aches, warm forehead, stuffed nasal...

and there's so much stuff to do at work...

just want to go home, turn on the music and hit the bed. .e  13:13  2 comments [ leave comments ]

tired and stressed, I have not been well since monday night. I don't see things taking a turn for the better in the near future either.

haven't been drinking lately, didn't feel like it.

14 days... no more point to count... .e  16:03  0 comments [ leave comments ]