The story of Henry, House Hippo, and Animal Prison is up on Melanie's blog now. Hello, new visitors, if there are any. Sorry I talked so much about wrestling in that last post. I was going to come up with something a little better for you, but... didn't.

This is my first blog post from my new laptop. It's very comfortable to type on, which I have never before said about a laptop. I will, however, need a new laptop bag. I think this laptop is too wide for my normal bookbag. Which is fine, because I think my bookbag is wrecking my pants, which is a story that you might think was interesting, but isn't.

The new laptop, while shiny and good for typing, hasn't been too exciting so far. I made restore discs and installed Firefox. Soon I will create a user account for Mika, install iTunes, and think about getting some other software on here. Pretty standard stuff.

No plans to watch any big game tomorrow. Might play some 1 vs 100 on the Xbox. Might nap. I'm fighting a cold right now. It hasn't been too bad - I credit the 20 pounds of oranges I ate last month - but I think it's just starting. And work is about to go nutty, so it should be a fun couple of weeks.

Okay, here is some spoiler space because this is going to get copied over to Facebook and I don't think an LJ-cut is gonna cut (ha?) it...

making space

making more space

I suppose I could just hit enter a lot but that might not copy over

HTML can be finnicky in how it deals with blank space

I tried having multiple LJ cuts but that wasn't working either

look at me go

can you believe I actually messed this up the first time

okay I figure this is enough now

if you keep reading this, it is your own fault

please note that this is about wrestling so you most certainly don't care anyway

You know, I know Edge was badly injured, and I know he was supposed to be gone for a very long time, and I know that he is prone to reinjuring himself every time he comes back from an injury, and it was obvious that he's not really in ring shape yet, and he's risking hurting himself further... but on the other hand, he won me some cash moneys. Hooray for Edge!

Very few things in wrestling really interest me anymore, but the annual Royal Rumble pool always suckers me in. This marks our eighth Royal Rumble pool and Dave's eighth consecutive loss. With this win, I become the second person to win two pools (Batista won me some money in 2005). Rob remains the only person to win back-to-back pools; I hope to join that club next year when I become the first person to three-peat in the pools.

It should be noted that the money I won in tonight's pool is less than the cost of the bus ticket from Regina I needed in order to attend. And I still have to buy my ticket home tomorrow. But still, it's the principle. The principle of sweet sweet victory.

I've saved the list of tonight's picks for posterity, and earlier today I went through all the old Rumble pool posts and dug up the lists of who everyone had.  I was sad to see that I didn't keep detailed records for the first two years. Maybe I have text files saved on old discs somewhere. Regardless, even the few of you who are interested in wrestling - even those who were in the pools - are probably not interested in this, so it's under a big LJ cut. 

( lists of names )

I was a little surprised to learn that only two of the wrestlers I've ever drawn have since died (Eddie Guerrero and Test). Wrestlers die all the time.

Worst teams? I don't have complete records for the first two years, but my 2003 team of Bill DeMott, Test, Tajiri, and Goldust was pretty bad, as was Rob's 2005 team of Hardcore Holly, Muhammad Hassan, Kenzo Suzuki, and Viscera. We had more people (and, thus, smaller teams) in the earlier years.

And now I have to think of something else to write tomorrow. I have a guest post coming up on Melanie's blog this week, and if any of her readers head over here, I really can't let wrestling crap be their first impression. Second impression is bad enough.

Twice in one evening, my goodness. It's almost like the good old days.

I'm probably taking the bus to Saskatoon this weekend because I hate to miss out on the annual Rumble wagering. I still haven't dug and shoved my car out of its spot. It's at least a two-person job, plus I am awfully lazy, and it got really cold out again. Besides, the idea of having two three-hour spans to lazily play video games or listen to music or read a book sounds nice.

So I'm looking at the STC bus map to check out prices and times. Next thing I know, I'm thinking that what I really need to do this summer is ride the bus as far north as it can go on a Friday and come back on a Sunday. That would be to La Loche, which is about a 13-hour bus ride away, not counting the several hours that I'd spend waiting around the glamorous Prince Albert bus terminal. And I'd have only one day between the trips to spend in La Loche. Not sure what one would do there if one wasn't interested in hunting or fishing anyway. Take pictures of lakes and trees? Actually, that sounds great.

I could shave off a bit of bus time by stopping slightly to the south, whether in Buffalo Narrows, Ile-a-la-Crosse, or Beauval, but the gist of it is always the same - leave early Friday, get in very late Friday, spend one day in a tiny remote settlement where speaking English is probably not going to be as useful as I am used to, leave early Sunday morning, get back late Sunday night. And presumably I would work on the Thursday before and the Monday after.

This idea shouldn't be as appealing as it is.

I've always wanted to go to Uranium City. I have no idea why. I know it's nearly a ghost town, and it's only accessible by air. And I'm guessing the cleanup of the uranium mines hasn't progressed much, so, you know, there's the radiation poisoning. But still, it fascinates me. I must do this sometime. Wish I knew why. Apart from the completely awesome name, of course.

A meme I stole from Melanie:

The Challenge: post photos of seven red things in my house, then tag seven other bloggers to do the same. I’ve never had luck tagging people so I’m going to suggest playing along if you want to and then leaving a comment so we can all see the red things in your home.

Posted according to the alphabetical order of the original file names:


biggulpcups.jpg: a collection of very old Super Big Gulp cups that I keep my pennies, nickels, dimes, and American money in. Rolling coins is easy; sorting them is a pain, so I do it as I go along. The Reese's Peanut Butter Cup tin off stage left is where my quarters get saved for laundry.


bookmark.jpg - I couldn't respond to a meme from Melanie without including at least one book-related response, so here's the tag on my bookmark. It's at this point that you've probably guessed that I have surprisingly few red things. I suppose I could have dug out a red book or two, but this is the one I'm reading now. It's not bad.


denimblanket.jpg - the underside of a denim blanket that my cousin made for me out of all of my old jeans. Very cozy for watching TV, playing video games, or just general couch-sitting.


fishes.jpg - Mika got me this picture for Christmas the first year that we were going out. I can't remember if the red fish is the boy fish or the girl fish.


scrabble.jpg - another present from Mika, also from the first year that we were going out - but this one was for my birthday. I guess maybe a couple of the DVD cases would count as red things too. (not the Leprechaun movies, unsurprisingly) (but sadly)


skelton.jpg - a poster from a Red Skelton show that my dad's uncle promoted, complete with a hand-drawn clown as part of Red's autograph. I didn't even think about his name when I was looking for red things, but I guess this is a pun? 


treatbowl.jpg - my Halloween bowl of cookies and whatnot is not red, but I guess most of the treats that I prefer come in red packaging. Like I said, I was stretching to find red things.

Man, it's ugly out. It ain't got no alibi. I am not looking forward to the walk to work tomorrow, but I'd rather walk in that mess than drive in it. Not that I can drive at the moment. I went out on Friday (had the day off) and did all my running around so I wouldn't have to go out during the weekend's forecasted storms. I took back my recycling, bought groceries, and got nice new gloves to go with my nice new parka. Of course, on Saturday morning, I broke the drawstring on one of my nice new gloves. Cussing, I went back to the store to return it. I got new gloves, came home, and promptly got my car stuck in my parking space. I guess that's as good a place to get stuck as any? I tried shoveling a lot - the new gloves are nice and warm! - but alas and alack, that car's not moving. Not that I have anyplace to go anyway.

Spent the day trying to teach myself how to iron. I think it went fairly well. My work shirts are now only mildly embarrassing to wear, which is a step up. Pay the extra money for the wrinkle-free shirts, kids.

I also ironed my placemats because that seemed like a good way to practice. They look better now too.

I also watched movies and cooked. I made myself a really great bacon and cheese omelet (12 points), some decent hot dogs (18 points), and the slow cooker is filled with chicken vegetable soup (around 32 points for the whole pot, so about 4 points a bowl, I figure) for the week to come.

Yep, back to counting points. It's actually gone fairly well over the past few weeks; I'm down a few pounds. Up a few million from before Christmas, still, but I'm getting there. Should have made a bit of a dent in things by the time I get to Calgary and it all goes to hell.

Tonight I went online and blew the entirety of my work computer loan on a massive Future Shop order. I had been thinking about getting a new laptop, and then I thought about adding various things and, uh... it snowballed. There may be an impromptu tech demo at work when it all shows up.

I put Skype on my netbook because I might not make it to Saskatoon for the Royal Rumble this weekend. I will join in on wagering even if I cannot be there in person. My username is exactly the same as the one as I use for this journal, which is also my own name. Add me if you are so inclined. I will probably never use it.

Listening to Joel Plaskett's Ashtray Rock. It's so great! I used to know it was great, and then I forgot about it for a bit, but it really is great. He's coming to town in April, opening for Barenaked Ladies. I'm gonna go. If anyone wants in, let me know - I'm buying tickets on Friday. I bet they'll be expensive.

1:55 a.m. Sleeping until 1:00 was a bad idea. Forget the walk to work; just waking up will be a blast.