When does the friggin passport requirement start? Mine is expired I can't seem to find any consistent/accurate info online. Someone told me it was this month but I really wanted to go to pride in Toronto and there is no way I am spending $200 for passports to go.

This page updated Mar 21st, 2008 says

Passports will be required for all land and sea border crossings into the US as of June 1, 2009.

So was the person telling me June just wrong or is that site wrong, anyone know. If not I am going to go to Toronto tomorrow for one last time.

I would imagine this is going to hurt trade a lot as it makes it ever more inconvenient for Canadians to shop here.

I can't decide if this is the saddest or coolest story ever. According to this article on yahoo news, there is this tribe in South America that has never been contacted by modern humans. In the pictures below they say that the natives are trying to attack the aircraft with spears. I can't help but laugh at the thought of this, however, culturally insensitive that is. I mean what do they think it is? They must have this wild stories about the outside world. It makes me wonder why none of them has run away to find out what is outside. Maybe they are so scared by outside. Is it really possible that there are people that have no idea about the rest of the world. I thought that was so over.

Members of an unknown Amazon Basin tribe and their dwellings are seen during a flight over the Brazilian state of Acre along the border with Peru in a May, 2008 photo distributed by Survival International.

Survival International estimates that there are over 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, and says that uncontacted tribes in the region are under increasing threat from illegal logging over the border in Peru.

I think the saddest part of the whole thing is that their houses aren't half as nice as the bower bird nests. Here you can see David Attentborough showing one of their nests

I had the most amazing current glazed quail with side of scallopped potatoes at Europa Bistro on Elmwood with (e:mike). We sat and ate at the bar. I think it was the best food I have had in years. I wish the picture was better but it was really low lighting and I didn't want to use a flash.


Ont the way out, we were standing near one of those blinking cameras when homeless thug guy approached us and asked if he could have $5. $5 - what the fuck is going on there. I mean I know the Elmwood Village is in the top ten places to live in the world or something, but really $5? No homeless person asks for $5 in my neighborhood. If these guys really get $5, do you think that they start to "own" corners and fight each other for turf. Glad to see that the cameras were doing there thing, lol.

We started growing hay and clover for the tortoise in part of the backyard last year. The clover leaves are so big, check out this picture. He loves to eat them.


We also have these crazy looking purple and white irises. I kind of like the yellow and purple ones better but they are also very pretty.


We went to eat at Cozumel with Gaylin on Monday - Memorial Day. She is leaving buffalo soon ;( We ate those yummy rock shrimp. It is by far one of the bst appetizer's in the city.


I have this obsession with convenient stores that have become houses of worship - they look so fucking tacky. Does anyone else think this? If I was god I would be offended - maybe its my catholic upbringing.

Its not a new kitchen, but its the next best thing. It was such a super deal but it was so hard to deliver it ourselves, move the old fridge out, clean it all, move the new fridge in. I love it though. It has a door alarm, although the doors self shut anyways and water filter for the ice. Plus it has this great turbocools mode, that turbo cools the fridge after its been open a while. Best of all it only costs $60/year to run.

The old refrigerator goes out.


And the new one comes in.

Six of us went canoeing yesterday down the Oak Orchard Creek in Media. (e:matthew), (e:terry) and I, pat, terri and dave. Two canoes and two kayaks. Unfortunately, the one blow up Kayak had a funky oar. (e:terry) decided to just paddle with it take apart which is a little different than you would normally kayak.

::Download Flash Video::

We made a couple of stops along the way to play frizzby, reshuffle beer, etc

At one of stops there was this beer tree and I asked Dave if he thought it was inspired by the beer tree at St. Patrick's Day beer tree (e:paul,43734) and he said that, that particular beer tree was there for at least 10 years. So now I have to ask myself - is this a coincidence or did this beer tree inspire the other one - or are beer trees, a dime a dozen and I just never saw one.



Dave in the creek.


(e:terry) with some fancy rolled shorts


I found some clam shells that looked way prettier in the sunshine of real life than in this pic.


Most of my trip looked like this:

::Download Flash Video::

(e:terry) decided to test out standing up in the canoe when dave shouted drop your shorts and (e:terry) mooned the whole gang.


There were lots of other canoers during most of the trip and you can see from this pic that Terri - not (e:terry) - had no shirt on, which was of major interest to the straight canoer guys we past.

This tree house on the water, was the coolest one I eve saw. The one disappointing feature of our house is the lack of tree-house capable trees. This means we will need a cottage at some point.


We are almost at the end of the road.


Between hiking, tree chopping, refrigerator moving and canoeing, my body is so sore. Now we have to get the new refrigerator in place, argh.

Yesterday, in lieu of setting up the refrigerator we decided to chop down some dead trees in the backyard and go hiking at the Gorge. Today, after some seriously axing yesterday morning - my hands are killing me.



Here is (e:matthew) climbing in the tree and breaking off branches before we cut it down.


Basra is a bit obsessed with getting his face in the sprinkler from the sprinkler system. It is so cute, I should have taken a video.



On the way to the Gorge, (e:james) got all crumbtastic with some yum yums from the coop.



Like they throb a ton and I can't even hold the toothbrush right when brushing my teeth. Thanks to my stupid crohn's I never take pain meds which should make our canoe trip today fun. At least I will be outside.





Once we got down there, (e:matthew) threw a rock at my head. Luckily, I survived.


Just kidding, it is a rust puddle. (e:terry) love to perch on rocks


and he also loves caves. So finding this river cave was like a dream cme true for him.








(e:james) and (e:terry)




What I want to know is, who the fuck is Kyle?


These pictures of Sea Weed remind me of the "painting with light" pictures I used to do (e:paul),/32329 with the nokkia 7710 with the slow shutter speed.







There are all these awesome little pools filled with water.


(e:terry) love being on the most dangerous edges.


After the hiking trip we went to One Eyed Jack's in Lockport. Their smoked wings are awesome. On the way there we stopped at Smoking Joe's to get gas. It is not much cheaper than the $4.01 in America.

The parking Story Ending
(e:matthew) and (e:terry) got to talk with the priest from the church who was unaware of the property lines and other drama according to (e:matthew). Apparently, everything worked out great and they are moving the dance camp pick up/drop off to the North St side of the church which solves the problem for us!

Work
Work was great. I did a successful demo of two projects to two VPs, the time lines for the projects seem realistic right now, we are getting two new people and the two people we are thinking about going with seem great so far - according to (e:mrdeadlier).

Food
Then after work (e:terry), (e:matthew) and I went out to lunch at Saigon on Elmwood where I had the most delicious pork chop/shrimp combo. It was only like $8.00 and quite filling.



Shopping and workout
After that we decided to stop by Home Depot to look at refrigerators. You guys might remember that I wanted to get this one Jenn Air Model (e:paul,44379). So we went to go see if they had it at Home Depot.

I can't believe anyone really needs an oven in their grill, seriously.


(e:terry) made it clear we were just looking and not buying one. The didn't have the Jenn Air, but to our surprise they had a floor model that was very similar (minus vacation mode and open door alarm) for super sale. (e:enknots) friend Jake was our sales guy and he managed to get us an even better deal plus 10% off as it was 10% off appliances over $399 day. Which means we ended up with a $1699.00 refrigerator for $1068 which is quite awesome deal. The one hitch was that, because it was a floor model they don't offer shipping.

So we rented a truck form Home Depot. Has anyone else done this. their truck rental is awesome. It is only $19.99 and unlike Uhaul, there are not 106 extra fees that bring it to like $100. However, it is only for 75 minutes but if you are just moving stuff around the city, that is usually enough.

It was a rough operation considering that it weighed 320 lbs and we barely weight that much between the 3 of us. Somehow, we managed to get it home and into the foyer. Because it is so deep we had to take it a apart a bit to fit it in the doors. Then we deiced to break for the day and deal with getting the old one out tomorrow.













Linwood and the red sqaure
I wondered what was up with this red square on this empty house on the 400 block of Linwood. At the block club meeting the building inspector explained that the fire dept put this symbol on all the houses that were abandoned, to let other firefighters know. Unfortunately, the housing dept also put this exact same symbol, in the same color on all the houses scheduled for demolition which cause a lot a drama - as you can imagine. The building inspector said they were going to have a meeting to discuss this issue. It seems so insane that they didn't work together on that. Shows you that all government is disorganized.

He also said that now that people know this is the symbol for houses to be demolished some overzealous block clubs began to pain tthe symbol on houses they wanted to get rid of. I am sure this house is worth around $300,000+ - I hope they can get it on the market ASAP and turn it back into a house.





random pics
Totally unrelated pictures from my camera.

What the heck is up with the scientologists and their extreme paper waste. Its like every surface is covered with Scientology propaganda. Here you can see a flyer on the ground in the parking lot at the corner of North and Main.


This morning there was something crazy going on at the Salvation Army on Main. There were at least five police cars pulle dup to it as I walked to work.


What are all the religious symbols on this coexist bumper sticker?"


I forgot to post this before but when we went to go see the (e:paul,44413) Death Note movie, at the end the screen became a windows desktop. I guess they just palyed a DVD or something. It was weird to see the start menu so giant at the regal.

After all the drama with the driveway and the parking situation, some parked in our driveway again. There was no one monitoring the situation like they promised. The woman got out of her car and went into the church for about 10 minutes before coming out and driving away.

Its so frustrating because I really do not know what to do anymore. Imagine if you neighbor just started having guests over that parked in your driveway all the time. This woman wasn't even hovering, she just parked and got out.

I went to go see Death Note with (e:imk2), (e:metalpeter), (e:jenks), (e:tibruon1724), dan, and faben. It was pretty great. Poor (e:enknot) - he missed it but he would have freakin loved it. I think it is the first time I have ever been to a movie with such a jazzed up fan base.

The storyline was pretty good. It was like a live action. I would suggest seeing it tomorrow if you can.

Wikipedia link:
Anime Site:
Live Action Movie:

There is a sequel coming out and there is even a prequel about L who was by far the hotest of the main characters:

What is the dollar value of four months of freetime? This is the question I keep asking myself for the last hour.