Well, no post yesterday. Our network connection at work was pooched all day. No Internet, no email... And without those, I basically can't do my job at all.

Lots to talk about, so let's get going.

mmm... people soup

Joel's barbecue was excellent, as always. I've been going to Ronja and Joel's parties for years now, and every time I go there are new people. It's nice to meet all sorts of new people. They haven't heard my stories yet.

Plus there's a hot tub.

For the last few parties, Joel's been encouraging his gamer friends to bring over their computers and have a LAN party in the basement. This is cool enough, but I really, REALLY tank every time I play games like Quake III. At least one of those guys had figured out all the places where people come back from the dead, and was able to track me down within 10 seconds of coming back to life. Every... goddamn... time.

Besides, too much Quake makes me want to hurl. I'd rather play Crazy Taxi on the DreamCast. Woo hoo!

We left relatively early. Lisa was feeling ill -- we haven't had that much red meat in a long time, and combined it with seafood and beer...yick -- and was also working the next morning, so she wanted to get some sleep.

Ah, there's nothing like driving with a sick person. Especially when it's your dearest heart who keeps giving you updates on the worsening condition of her stomach while you drive as fast as possible and still keep an eye open for the closest place to pull over for an emergency, um, evacuation.

She felt much better on Sunday.

Sunday was a 'Damn Shithole' day for me. The day where I started getting sick of the mess we live in day in-day out, and started to clean parts of it up.

I'll put it bluntly. We're slobs. It takes a real effort on either of our parts to cart that candy wrapper over to the garbage can. Dishes mound up, we lose sight of our dining room table and you could hide a pit bull in our laundry pile.

Too much to do in one day. I focused on laundry and the kitchen (the two biggest and most feared tasks). Got the dishes all taken care of, the counters scrubbed, the toaster oven located... About three quarters of the laundry run through as well. It's so nice to have clothes again.

(Also spent an hour or so on the Nintendo 64. All work and no play...)

I would have got all the laundry done, but Lisa came home and mentioned Indian food.

One of our friends, Connie, had mentioned at the party that she wanted to go out for East Indian food. I've never had any before, so I was game. (Our household motto: Try everything twice - In case it's not done right the first time)

Connie turned out to be busy, so the four of us (Lisa, me, Ronja, Joel) headed down to The Kashmir to check it out.

With help from Ronja, who's had Indian food before, we made our choices and gorged ourselves on fine delicacies. Vegetarian and chicken samosas, butter chicken, egg wrapped in lamb, curried prawns, more naan than you can shake a wheat sheaf at, plus yogurt shakes and this ultra-sweet breed pudding for dessert. Wonderful. Even the bread pudding, which, visually speaking, resembled testicles in honey.

So, bloated and exhausted, we wedged ourselves back into the car and headed home. But it was only a short moment before I nearly killed a bicyclist.

We're pulling out of an alleyway, about to turn left onto this one-way street. I glance to the left to look for pedestrians, then right to watch for cars, and start forwards.

Lisa yells 'Look out!' and I hit the brakes. This cyclist comes to a stop inches away from my door.

Here's the thing: this idiot was driving the wrong way down a one-way street.

Okay, yes, I accept a little responsibility. I shouldn't have been so complacent as to assume that people would actually be following the rules of the road. But, you know, the first thing I learned about riding a bike was FOLLOW THE RULES OF THE ROAD! You DON'T go the wrong way down a one-way street!

There's a tacit agreement out there. You can't watch everybody else on the road, so there's this unwritten agreement between all drivers that if everybody follows those rules, we'll all be fine. There may be a dozen cars in one hundred meter space on the highway, but as long as everybody follows the rules, you don't have to know where each and every one of them is.

There's a difference between these rules and the actual laws. If you drive, you understand what I mean.

Why is it that cyclists think they are exempt from this code? You are driving a vehicle, sucker, and as long as you are sharing the road with me, your own safety depends on me being able to predict what the hell you are going to do.

Anyway.

We're driving home, and Lisa wants to take a detour to get a closer look at this little church she's seen from afar. So we wander off the beaten path. Nice church. Weird neighborhood.

It's one of these little pocket neighborhoods that was never planned. The streets go any which way, winding carelessly around each other. Five-way intersections, intersections where the 'straight-away' is a half block over. Stuff like that. I'm sure it's common in old cities like New York and London, but Calgary has hardly been a city for a hundred years. Most things go in straight lines here.

We even managed to find a street that doesn't just go two ways, like any decent, God-fearing street, but goes three ways.

We had to stop in the intersection and stare at the signpost in the middle. According to it, we were at the intersection of Scarboro Avenue, Scarboro Avenue, Scarboro Avenue and Shelbourne Street. From that one position, Scarboro Avenue went off in three different directions.

Crazy. I want to buy a house in the neighborhood just to screw with delivery guys.

"No, no, the other Scarboro Avenue. No, not that one either."

I'm going to borrow a digital camera at some point and go take a picture, just so you guys know I'm not messing with you here.

Anyway.

Work yesterday was really exciting, due to the aforementioned Internet problems. Came home early. Had a nap. Was about to get back to the laundry when Lisa called from Ronja and Joel's house (She'd been out with Ronja most of the day).

"They want to feed us."

Never argue with a free meal. Dinner of fresh sausage and garden vegetables plus a berry salad for dessert and another hour or so in the hot tub. Nice way to wind off a Monday.

One last little bicycle rant. On the way over to Ronja and Joel's, I saw a guy riding a bike while smoking a cigarette. Is it just me who sees a problem with that?

You sure talk a lot

You didn't talk so much yesterday

Do you gabble on tomorrow?

Take me home, big fella