November 2005 — The Tugboat

November 29, 2005

Foreword

This could be the last entry for November. Wow, has it been a full year since I started this web-posting mania. It has. Congratulations to me on a full year's service. To celebrate I've ordered pizza. I have had readers on and off, some more on than off. I would like to take a moment to recognize some admitted readers: Wade Jarvis, Will Mathews, Matt Wood, Mike Ward, Adam Brown, Dave Hawken, Annie Belandis, Ashley Hewett, Anna Reid, Megan Phillips, Lacey Phillips, Phil Hawken, "His Worship" Mayor H. J. Hawken, my parents, and many more non-admitted viewers. I'd like to thank those listed and encourage you to continue to show your loyalty to my work here. If you wanted to be mentioned then you should have told me that you check this out. Doing so in the future can afford you the chance to see your name printed here in the all the pretty colors for all the world to see. So, I say, "Stand up, be counted."

Politically Charged Opinion Time

That segue allows me to move into my next topic; the fall of the government. Our dumbass politics are so ridiculous that it hurts me on the inside. Sure I don't know much about it, but I do know this, I don't like it. The two "major" parties are so insanely the same on almost every issue I've heard about that its foolish to even vote for one over the other. Sure there are differences, that you can see from the slanderous ad campaigns that both sides shamelessly run, but fundamentally they are the same save one difference. The Conservative party is in cahoots with Bush and the USA. If elected I fear some irreparable damage to our resources and identity. For the years the States have been after our water and I feel that the Conservatives are just stupid enough to give them that. If elected they'll probably sign us over and we'll become the Northern States. That may be dramatic and cynical but I think it could happen. On the other hand we have the untrustworthy Liberals. They are liars and scammers. This has been shown at all levels of government, from the lies and underhandedness of Dalton in Ontario to the super scam sponsorship scandal of JC. How those buggers stayed out of jail is beyond me. Some dude steals a car and he goes to jail; they steal millions, nay billions of dollars and they get a slap on the wrist, if that. You say, "hmmm, almighty Chase, you may be on to something here." Sorry kids, nothing will come of it except some big dog and pony show to shut up Joe Taxpayer, you'll duly note that there was a large hub-bub in the early going then they just gradually faded off as it slipped off the radar, its place on the news taken by the latest celebrity gossip. Ya, that's the real system, one that pulls the wool over the eyes of the average Canadian. Why does it happen like that? Who do you think runs these so-called inquiries. It's the best buddies of the accused; other politicians. Dave Chapelle, God rest his soul, said it best with his skit about regular crime court and white collar crime court. He knows, he knows. So who can you vote for? Can you pick the slimy, sell everything Bush-lap-dog Conservatives or the low-down lying and stealing Liberals, it's almost too tough to call.

Conclusion

To conclude and re-focus those who skipped the preceding part, which I'm sure is most of you, I'd like to say that I for one will be voting for the NDP in the upcoming election. You'll think, "that Phillips, just throwing away his vote." It's not throwing it away if everyone recognizes and throws it away with you. One stone against a wall will only do cosmetic damage, but a butt-load of stones will do structural damage and could topple the wall and free the people or something. If that's not eloquent enough for you then just vote NDP and see what happens.

November 26, 2005

Its night now, and we've wrapped up the fifth official sports Saturday festivities. Mike Ward was not in attendance as he had to travel home for personal reasons. Gordo missed his first week ever in the history due to an unsightly philosophy paper coming due this week. It made for a threesome in a hockey sense. As in three of us played hockey. It was the first time hockey was introduced and it was a hit. Literally. Well the rest of the week went off well leading up to the sports. The final talk was given less awesomely that I had hoped. The room was cold and all the presenters were shivering, it was bad. I did alright, good enough to get a high mark, hopefully. I finished the two quizzes too this week. That leaves me with one quiz to go and then the year is done. Exams of course but then off to the freedom. Anyways, I'm watching the Leaf game so I'll get back at this later. Enjoy the living.

November 23, 2005

Well its Wednesday and I'm nearing the finish of my major assignment week here. I had a butt-load of work to do and I think its starting to affect me mentally. Not in a bad way either. I've been looking for stuff to work on instead of looking for ways to get out of work. I wonder if my attitude is changing back to the hard working one I used to have when my marks were significantly higher. Only time will tell. I use all my time to do school work now and I'm really focusing in on my last presentation. It was supposed to be a group presentation but there is an odd number in the class and guess who ended up working alone. If you guessed me then you were of course right. I'll be giving a talk on the effects of glyphosate on soil. It should be a good dry one. Nonetheless, the paper is done, the powerpoint is done and I just have to hand them in to the TA to make sure they work on his crazy Mac computer. The paper is worth more than double the presentation. Let's all cross our fingers. The semester is winding down with only one week upon the conclusion on this one and then exams and then the sweet trip to the homeland and best of all, the sweet lazing around for three weeks, it will be glorious, although the lazing doesn't really get going in my family, always lots to do for farmers. Anyways, not much else to report on except the first two group presentations I did this week went off without a hitch. More later in the week, stay tuned.

November 20, 2005

Phillips back in the saddle already. Well, I guess its partly to motivate the provider, Wood, to improve his posting consistency. That, and I have some stuff to talk about. The first thing I should mention is that nothing happened between Mike Ward and those younger girls. Although he did spend the night on the floor of a residence room with one of them. He had the restraint and foresight to know we would lambaste him for doing anything, but he mainly held off for his own reasons. Second, as probably mentioned there were a bunch of NL kids down here and the turn out for sports Saturday was phenomenal. We had 8 participants, the highest yet. The football was lackluster at best but the soccer was huge. We played a short game first with one team winning 7-2 we decided we would have a quick game to 3 and then go back to the football. One team was down 2-0 early. That team was my team, Team Osmosis, named for our selectively permeable defensive efforts. That's when Phillips emerged from the goal and led his squad to the offensive end with a quick goal and a helper to tie the game. The Golden Goal was excruciating, with end to end action for next two hours. No one could beat the keepers and by the end everyone was exhausted, so much so that the football was settled on field goals. We all went home after to recuperate.

Upon completion of partial recoup we had to head out to a hot tub party. The effort put into the party was sickening awesome. There was a rented inflatable arch outside, the kind that has to be plugged in and is illuminated. It was ridiculous. The hot tub was in full swing when we arrived and by the time we left people were using it for other purposes that made other people not want to go into it, if you know what I mean. There was a large crowd, many new faces, many old. It was a good time for all. We walked home through the forest, which is why we wore work boots to a party. I felt it was clever and stylish. Work boots with jeans make me look and feel like an a**ki*ker. If you catch my drift. So we walked home, the whole 60 minutes of walking, we saw maybe 4 deer and rarely needed the flashlight, except to traverse large ponded areas. My body is in agony today, well mainly my one ankle. So I seek rest and also I have a fair amount of work to complete today with three presentations for me this week. It's a bitter sweet thing to have them all the same week. On the bright side you get them all over with, but on the dark side of the force you have to do three presentations in a week. Oh well, after that it will be cruise time until exams, which are in just over two weeks. Until then, I'm Joe Namath, good night.

November 18, 2005

Well, I have just returned from the most embarrassing time of my short adult life. I went to support my cousin Phil in having a party with some of his friends from home. I know a good number of them and they were cool kids in high school. Kids change when they get drinking. I just felt too old to be there and it was weird and boring. I guess I'm just not cut out to watch younger people drink, especially since I've been sober for over a year and I'm a good 4 years older than all of them. Mike Ward on the other hand had no trouble stepping into the situation. Some of the females present seemed to have some kind of thing for him when he was in high school and I suppose they were hoping to act out their fantasies with this older more traveled Mike Ward. All I can say for him at this point is that I hope he was drunk. If anything does happen and I'm sure it will I can honestly say that I will torment and tease him about it for the rest of his natural life. He knows its coming too and encouraged us to wait until tomorrow before we make fun of him, I can wait that long, after all, I have the rest of my life to tease him. Anyways, moving on...... I've downloaded the first season a show called Dead Like Me. Its not that great of a show but I enjoy it, season two is enroute. In other news, I got some good deals on DVD-R's today, 25 for $12. You can't beat that with a stick and I have no idea why you would want to beat any kind of audio visual equipment with a stick of any kind. Enough tomfoolery, I have to get some sleep done, I mean work in, I mean sleep in. Dammit. Ok, I'm going to sleep now, rest in peace.

November 15, 2005

On the eve of my last midterm of the semester I come to you. The week is rainy and dismal and so is the mood. Poor Annie has exceptional marks, and is ultra prepared for her med school, she submitted her application months ago and she was pumped. However, she found out yesterday that one of her reference letters didn't make the trip to wherever it is that these things go to. She called her person and they said it was sent so she's fretting pretty hard these days. If it is not there then they could reject her application and she would be denied entrance which would result in her wasting a year of her life doing something else. This hardcore fretting and worrying is not good for house morale. There isn't anything that we can do to help but wait and be supportive, It sucks. I hate midterms too, just thought I'd toss that bone out there. But to cheer me up I've been listening to "Maybe Tomorrow". The band hasn't been identified but its the theme from the Littlest Hobo tv show. This show was a mainstay for my weekend when I was a kid, in case you don't know its about a German Sheppard who travels into towns and cleans up criminal situations for the cops and generally helps people. The show was awesome and the song is even better. I just picture that dog running down the road ever time I hear it. So that's where I am in my life here. Now I delve into the wonderful world of food science.

November 13, 2005

Well we did it. We set a goal to accomplish and now we've done it. It went by without the fanfare and prestige that we had originally thought would accompany its completion but infiltrating the nest of girls across the street happened without so much as a spirited whistle. This doesn't mean that everyone wasn't not excited (awkward sentence much...). Mike of the Wards was very much pumped, it was he who actually got talking to the girls and invited them over. At least we got to meet the neighbours. He went downtown with them to the bar scene, we're still awaiting his return to our house.

Yesterday's sports Saturday we well enough. We had 5 guys this week which lead to two rounds of football and soccer. Brown substituted for Mike, son of J.M., who was not able to concentrate on the sports. Another huge development yesterday was the completion and successful test flight of El Tigre, pictures to follow. This had been an ongoing project for Brown and I, mostly him but still, ongoing nonetheless.

Friday night was the night that I took advantage of the free tickets Monsanto supplied to me for that evening's Guelph Storm game. Bringing Phil and his friends and Dave and Brown bringing their women constituted 4 extra tickets that I paid for. So half of the eight got in free. I was reimbursed partially. The Storm were destroyed by the Sudbury Wolves and super sophomore Benoit Pouliot. There was nothing for the fans save one nice goal in the first. The rest of the game was just awkward passing and attempted skill plays. Some fights would have been nice. There was much disappointment among the lads I was sitting with. So there you have it, a brief report of the last couple of days in the life of the great and modest Chase Phillips.....esquire. I don't own an esquire watch, I just like saying it.

November 9, 2005

To me its still the 8th but officially its past midnight here. I'm coming to you now on account of our hockey game. We played a far weaker team but only won 3-2, scoring the winner with under 30 seconds to go in the game. We like to make it interesting for the fans. In the game big Chase rumbled coast to coast and nearly potted a beauty. This really raised the eyebrows of all three fans in attendance. Ah well, after a round of hot smoothies from Tom Horntons we returned home. And then just now, mid post I lit a lighter in front of a can of Axe Deodorant for men. That is hilarious, especially since I did it until the excess spray around the nozzle lit on fire. Watching a big man shake a can while laughing hysterically is apparently quite funny. We laughed really hard for about 3 minutes, including some floor rolling. Good times with near death. This post is coming soon after the last one and for good reason. Turns out Dave in his wisdom secretly sent me my computer pictures some time ago, I found them today. So y'all can have a looksy at them for whatever reason, maybe it turns your crank I don't know. Why do you have a crank? I don't have a crank. What makes you so special that you should deserve a crank. I'm definitely going to look into crank acquisition.

Now that I've got enough filler I'll attempt to go to bed here. The adrenaline still in my system coupled with the sugar from the hot smoothie is going to make that a challenge but I imagine with the proper motivation and pillow alignment I'll manage to do it. Ya, that's right. Lately if my pillows aren't just so then I can't get to sleep for the life of me. I'm beginning to think that its purely psychological. I might conduct some sleep experiments again to gauge my response. I did some research in the summer on what was a good amount of sleep for my body. I came up with these results: 5 hours of sleep made me feel well rested and allowed me to function very well. 6 hours of sleep left me tired and restless all day, which dragged on forever. The same result for 7 hours of sleep but it was harder to get going in the morning and got harder each day. 8 hours left me rested and ready to function but the days seemed to get longer as the week wore on. 9 hours of sleep was awesome all around; and beyond that, there was no difference. I did each time for a full week and mildly noted the effects mentally so not much documentation is around to prove my theories but I know what works for me and that is all I set out to do. You should probably conduct your own research if you need to know. If not then just live you life like all the other sheep. Low blow? Well tough beans sally. It getting late, I'm making less sense and prattling on now. Anyways, I'm out then, enjoy.

November 7, 2005

Well the weekend has drawn to a close. There was blood, broken toilets, orange throwing, and purple helmet. Sounds like the making for a real mess, not really; except for the oranges, from what I heard. That's what happens when you throw a bunch of Northern Ontario kids and alcohol into a university residence. I wasn't involved in everything but I was present briefly for both nights. It was good times had by all in the end. We also had another successful sports Saturday this time featuring football and soccer. Europeans probably just blew their mind reading that last sentence but that is what went down. Gordo and I repeated as football champs and were upset on the pitch my Dave and an unlikely Chris, who was making a guest appearance for the absent Mike Ward. Just a word of disappointment to Phil, nice show-up, no show. In other news, I baked a cake today, by myself. It is to honour the watching of CSI tonight. Don't ask, it is a long and complicated story, just like I'm a complicated man and no one understands him but his womannnnn. No? Shaft? Anyone? Alright, alright, I've got some reading that I've been diligently saving here so I better get into character here and play the part of student. I just thought I'd let my readers know that I'm still alive and survived, quite easily, the attack of the Northerners. That could be a good movie......patent pending. Don't even bother. And a big Guelph hello to Wade, one of the few that have stayed with the Chase Phillips Experience through the thick and the thin, mostly the thick. I haven't been thin in years. Hi yo!

November 4, 2005

Well the visit with the Lance was enjoyable and somewhat brief. Afterwards Dave's friend Nicole came over and we all watched the O.C., embarrassingly enough. I finished off my tough week with a big quiz this morning that I nailed shut. I'm working on some movies today and I transformed our garbage ridden garage into a sophisticated gaming room. I cleaned it and then put up the card table and some chairs is the translation. I've got a pair of papers to initiate some effort on this weekend and a day for sports planned for tomorrow. It should be grand, especially since I found the kicking tee for our football in the garage. That will really add to our sporting fun. So I've got these movies to handle and then who knows what I'll get mixed up in next. I could even end up at a bar, who knows. My lady front that was at a time looking prosperous has once again dried up. I don't put much stock into it anymore and I'll let fate decide my.....uh....fate. I'm bored of this so I'll advance to my next activity; which is undecided.

November 1, 2005

New month, check out October 2005 for more. Ok, the preceding was just put up so I could say that I'd gotten into November. Now it really is November. I'm busier than a country kitchen here but I still find time to post one up here. Before I continue studying for my pending midterm tomorrow I thought I'd toss out a comment about group presentations. They suck. That being said I'll follow with the fact that I actually enjoy doing group work but the presentation part is bad. I'm not totally horrible at it but I don't relish the opportunity. I also don't enjoy sitting through everyone else's presentation. That has got to be the most difficult thing in life to do is listen to someone else ramble on about god knows what and have to pay attention in case they ask you a question which as presenters we were encouraged to do. So that's the hot button right now at this instant if you were to take a snapshot of my mind. You might also see that my cousin Lance is making his first visit to us in our student based home tomorrow or Thursday. This is much anticipated and hopefully things work out that we all get to go out for supper with "The Lance". Night labs and meetings could prove to be a factor. That seems to be enough text there on the screen so I'll turn my brain over to the wonderful world of plant disease. As if my mind wasn't diseased enough. Hiyo!