thebitterguy

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I am a lousy philanthropist.

I donate a portion of my paycheck to the United Way here at work each year. I do this for a number of reasons.

The first is because the United Way does a lot of good in the community, helping the less fortunate. That is the good reason.

I also do it for tax purposes, since I get a portion of that donation back each year. The past couple of years, we have also gotten Angel Days at work, which are a bonus vacation day that we only get if we donate a certain amount of our pay to the UW each year. I think it's equal to a single day's pay.

I appreciate that day, and wish they'd offered it to us earlier.

I also do it for the convenience. It's $20 off my pay each pay period, no muss, no fuss, don't even see it. I do nothing on my end, except having an actual opportunity to tell those less fortunate that I gave at the office.

Cynra & I also give to charity during the holidays as a gift. Usually the local food bank, but also to the Heart & Stroke foundation and the thing where you buy livestock or immunizations for people in the third world.

Man, it feels really weird to talk about this stuff for some reason.

• 15:21 Dammit! I'm out of seeds for Cherokee Purple heirloom tomatoes! #
• 19:28 So if this is a species killing pandemic, I'd like to say it's been a pleasure knowing you all. #
• 19:49 Fuck you too Lewis Black. twitpic.com/404rp #
• 19:57 All I'm saying is this show better not suck as hard as Carlin's did. #
• 21:49 That was, in fact, an awesome show. #
• 22:31 Cab drivers in Greektowb appear to be doing their darndest to be compensating for any drunks they're getting off the roads. #toronto #
• 22:43 "Oh, yeah, we'll just shut down the DVP for an entire weekend. No one uses the fucking thing!". #
• 00:51 Someday George Lucas will explain the star wars holiday special. His explanation will include the phrase "cocaine's a heck of a drug." #
• 01:30 I can hear my pulse pounding in my skull. Wow. #
• 13:54 Anyone know what I can do with an old xbox? #

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Via Gorman.

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mr_weasel is the oldest non-family member. umario, of course, is the winner, what with him being my brother.

BTW, if anyone knows an openings for Chemical engineers in Berlin, he's looking! Can't speak German, yet.

Well, this weekend is Transformers Con, a fan run celebration of Autobots and Decepticons, will be held at the Doubletree hotel on Dixon. It looks like a very cozy show, and will have a dealer's room as well as some guests, including voice actor Dan Gilvezan (Bumblebee/Slipstream/Peter Parker).

They're having a game night tonight, which I can only assume must include the Transformers Risk game. Good times.

Info can be found at TFCon.ca.

Xposted to toronto and thebitterguy.

{sarcasm}Someone should, of course, start a petition to complain that they're holding their con only a week before GI Joe Con. This is obviously their attempt at cornering the 80s Cartoon Toy nostalgia con market. {\sarcasm}

A while back, I expressed my desire to visit the gravesites of Canada's Prime Ministers.

I got off to a good start, getting to see the gravesite of Sir John A.

I kind of stalled out after that.

I went back to the Government's website and dl'd a PDF. I'm rather upset that two of the early PMs were buried in Halifax (Thompson and Tupper), and I missed out on my chance to visit their final resting places when I was down there.

I'll probably endeavour to add Alexander to the list when next we go to Novi via Sarnia. Or possibly make a trip on Rememberance Day. Or just go on some brisk winter morning.

Mackenzie Bowell, one of the PMs who had the most indignities heaped upon him, is buried in Belleville, which makes him an easy trip to make whenever I head to visit ACB.

Laurier and Borden are both buried in Ottawa, and I think Cynra and I are due for a visit up there.

Arthur Meighen is buried in St. Mary's, which is an hour and a half from home.

Mackenzie King is buried in Toronto's Mt. Pleasant cemetery, which is supposed to be a nice place to visit anyway (if you can avoid the claustrophobic vampires! Man, that book sucked). King is one of the most interesting of our national leaders, having led the country through World War II with counsel from his mother. Who was dead at the time.

The biggest obstacle to the whole thing is RB Bennet, the poor bastard who had to handle the recession of the '30s. He's buried in Surrey, England. That would be somewhere near France, I think.

That brings us up through the PMs who ran the country up until the end of WW II, which I think is a good start.

It looks so easy, written down like that.

edit: I wrote this a month and a bit ago, but forgot to post it. I have, in the interim, visited the resting place of Alexander Mackenzie in Sarnia. I have not visited Mr. Bowell's grave yet, but probably will over the spring.

So, this past weekend we took Cynra's car to her mechanic to get her oil changed and her brakes checked (verdit? Fine!) and while there we asked if they might be able to also switch out Supercar's oil. Since they don't have anyone in who's licensed to work on diesels, they passed. So, being several hundred klicks past my "service now" light, I called the dealership.

First off, I couldn't leave a message for the service rep I normally deal with, which was annoying. Then, when I did arrange a dropoff, it was at 9:15 (I start work at 9. Hmmm). And it wouldn't be for two weeks.

So Cynra & I will be doing more carpooling in her car. Which is always fun.

God, I miss the independant mechanic I used to go to. Shame he moved to Bermuda to work on a golf course down there. I should become a diesel mechanic.

Demeaning and sexist and evil.

And a little awesome.

So the weekend was interesting. Cynra & I took our rides in to get the seasonal tire switching done, which was helpful. We went for breakfast with atomiks; he gave us a ride down to the breakfast place, since our cars were in the shop.

I had planned to attend the Fan Appreciation event at the MTCC, but since I didn't know if the merchant I needed to visit to get my two Sinestro Corps HC figs I wanted was going to be there, it seemed too much of a trip for a Bill Sienkiewicz autograph.

We did go downtown to catch Fanboys with kinra. The film was not nearly as bad as many people say. I'm not gonna go so far as to say it was great, but it didn't suck. I'm just glad it made it to theatres in one piece, eventually.

We met up with Uday for dinner was at Salad King, where I returned from a visit to the loo just in time to keep kinra and Cynra from coming to blows over the BSG finale.

We went to Uday's spacious pad at College & Yonge (Space not included) before heading home, where we discovered that Cynra had lost her cell phone along the way, which sucks. I put a block on the account, and have called the theater and the dinner venue to no success. Ah, well, she's had it for exactly Three years so I guess it's paid for now.

Sunday was quieter, due in no small part to the fact I had a headache that felt like someone had slammed a spike through my right eye into my brain. I powered through it to do some shopping, but then came home and laid on the bed weeping until around seven. Sucky. I'd hoped to do some gardening (seed planting in seed starting medium, at least) but ended up just spending the day in a pissy mood. The bouncing midgets getting eliminated from TAR helped not at all.