The Great Pumpkin(s)

Found a great pumpkin carving website (http://www.zombiepumpkins.com/) and decided to do up a few nice ones. I did the ghosts, Winter did the dragon. (Tweaked the colours a bit for clarity)




Happy Halloween!

Update from Rome

While we were talking around outside the Coleseum today we got handed flyers for 3 different pubcrawl things, that seemt to actually be an amazing deal, except weàre too cheap to spend the money at this point (it actually seems to be a good deal, considering alcohol is basically twice as expensive at bars and resaurants compared to home), and weàre scared weàll wake up in some random ruin somewhere the next day!
Speaking of pub crawls, we were woken up by some buy in our hostel yesterday who was apparantely puking his guts out...for like 2 hours, so that was interesting :p This hostel is by far the most sketchy place that weàve stayed. It basically looked like it used to be an apartment, and they kicked the guy out 5 minutes before we got there. There were clothes in the closet and random bottles of water around the room! There was also a tiny figure out a man with a chainsaw above the mirror, we fully expected to be murded by some chainsaw maniac in the night, lol.
The trip into Rome was pretty cool though, we met up with a bunch of random Canadians and Americans and we had 16 of us travelling from one side of Italy to the other, we basically took over an entire train car. It was nice to hang out with people who speak english!

Trip Update Update from Venice, Italy

Today was our second day in Venice, which is an amazing city. Yesterday we walked all around and shopped at the little glass and mask shops, the glass work is beautiful. The city itself is like nothing Iàve ever seen, today it was raining but we went anyway, and got lost for about an hour trying to find out way back to the boat we take from our campground. Luckily we decided to pull out our map after a bit of random walking, or we would have been lost forever!

Days are starting to blend together, weàre having tons of fun, but we always have to think pretty hard about what day it is, where we were yesterday, and even where we are right now!

Eurotrip 2006 - Update from Munich

Finally found an internet cafe that´s cheap enough for me to type this all out!

Swizerland was amazing, we stazed (Iäm just going to ignore the kezboard errors, Iäm sure zouäll get it.) in Lucerne, which is just outside the Alps. It had an amaying view of the mountains across a huge lake. The citz was prettz small, so we walked around most of it during the daz. Imagine having small cobbled streets with buildings running down both sides, and everz building was filled with trendz clothes and food stores. It was like an amaying outdoor mall! We also went to see a giant 20 metre lion carved into some cliffs, but it was under restoration:p We could still mostlz see it, though. I was tempted to buz a swiss watch (basicallz everz store sold them), but reallz, thez werenät overlz cheap. In fact, wine in France wasnät that cheap either (although it was good).

Speaking of cheap, weäre in Munich right now, and I canät believe how cheap beer is! Thez sell it everzwhere and zou can walk around the streets with it. At one store we were in there was beer for .30 euro a bottle, which is like...42 cents! We went to Olzmpic park and sat in a beer garden drinking some sort of wheat beer called Weissbeir, which was quite tastz...although the girls didnät seem to like theirs :p

Tomorrow weäre going on a tour of the castle that thez modeled sleeping beautzäs castle after (Neuchwanstein...or thereabouts). It should be fun, itäs a bike tour and we also get to go swimming. The girls were quite insistant about visiting the ´princess castle´!

Iäll see if I canät update again sometime soon, but for now, I need some sleep!

Muay Thai Kickboxing

Contrary to popular belief, there *is* more to my life than drunken partying and robot costumes. As such, this post contains no mention of alcohol, and no pictures of intoxicated party goers...I'll make up for it some other day.

A couple months ago I took up Muay Thai Kickboxing, in a bid for some sort of exercise that would also let me hit things. I can say without a doubt that Muay Thai is the most challanging physical activity that I've ever undertaken. Prior to joining, I thought I was a pretty fit guy (and I suppose I was, relatively), but when the instructor tells you to go get some water after doing the 'few things' written on the blackboard, and that turns out to be 100 pushups, crunches and squats, you quickly learn that there are vast degrees of 'in shape'.

The classes basically consist of 45 minutes of intense cardio workout, combined with pushups, crunches, lunges, and other excerses that you can do without equipment. The second half of the class focuses on actual kickboxing skills, which are a challange in their own right. The instructor explicitly stated in the first class that there is no spiritual aspect to Muay Thai, the point is quite simple, "kick the crap out of someone". Of course, I'm not at all a violent person, but it's quite nice to know that what I'm learning can be applied, if I ever need it.

The more I do it, the more I love it. I skipped todays class (had to finish up some school work), but found myself doing a number of random excersices in my basement. I've heard that excercise is addicting, I suppose that's a good thing. Now I just need to find space for a punching bag...

Lindsay & Justin's Wedding Social Pictures

Amazing social, we all wish Lindsay and Justin the best!

I've amalgamated all the party picture links onto this new handy dandy page:

http://offtopicproductions.com/Pictures/PartyPics.html


NB: I didn't caption the social pics, 280 pictures is just too much, even for me:-p

Ode to Bender

First, the pictures (there you go, Arj), then the interesting story. Reverse chronological order.

Total Build Time: ~13 hours
Total Cost: ~100 dollars


So there you have it, I finally finished the costum about an hour before the Malpratice social on Saturday. I'd been up until 2am on Friday working on it and then spent another 4 hours Saturday afternoon after work.

Everything pretty much went as planned, although the drinking system was pretty much last minute and random. Pouring drinks into the funnel was pretty cool, although it did result in a rather stained shirt. People seemed to think it was neat, and started pouring in random alcohol, which probably wasn't so good for my liver.

The social was a blast though, I'm pretty sure that every person with a camera has their picture taken with me. The costume limited visiblity a fair bit though, so I really have very little idea of who I talked to all night long. Luckily I had Winter and Allison to lead me around all night and make sure I didn't fall on my back and not be able to get up:-p

At the end of the night I took the costum off and we were sitting on the stairs outside of University Center, with the costume just around a corner above us. When my brother arrived to pick us up we discovered that someone had SWIPED BENDER! Needless to say, it really sucks to lose something that I put so much work into. I suspect that the costume thief may be planning on wearing it to the Commerce Social tonight. So if you happen to be there an see a guy in my Bender costume, please feel free to punch him in the teeth (that being about the only area on the costume not covered with hard plastic). If the costume can be salvaged, so much the better.

At least it all makes a great story!