Category Archives: Friends and Family

Friends and Family, Me

Weddingpalooza

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Steve and Anne's wedding

Tis the season to get married!  Had a lovely wedding in Ottawa this past weekend with a lovely couple and a great group of friends.  Tonight I have a wedding reception in Niagara Falls.  If I didn’t RSVP to that, it would have been a bachelor party in Toronto.  Next weekend I get a break and will be participating in a 3 day flintknapping workshop (making stone tools and weapons…way too awesome!) and if I’m lucky a lot of Turkey with the family.  The following weekend I am back on the wedding train with a wedding in Toronto.  Then the following weekend I have an engagement party to attend.  Phew, I get tired just thinking about it!

Hmm, what else.  Starting my second month of the Insanity workout on Monday.  I can tell you flat out that it is the most physically demanding thing I have ever done.  But I love it!  After that, gonna startup P90X Plus.

Signed up for singing class.  Lol, I don’t know what mind altering medication I was on when I decided to do this, but I must admit the first class was very enjoyable.  I think I am going to learn a lot from this.

Still churning away at MBA applications.  I must say, they do take a lot more work then I had anticipated.  But at the same time, you really do learn a lot about yourself thinking about how to answer these questions for the essay portion.  Its a rather enjoyable experience.

Oh, and I have two cats that are living with me.  One scratches and bites me when I pet her.

Other than that, just counting my blessings.  I have great people in my life, and far too often forget the ridiculousness of my fortune.

Friends and Family, Geekery, Me

Hello! Still here…

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I was just messing around with my twitter tools plugin.  It hasn’t updated my twitter updates for the last couple of weeks since I switched hostign providers so I was wondering if it was broken.  Looks like everything is ok.  Last time I was messing around with the blog apparently a few people who subscribe to my friendfeed or twitter account got spammed gloriously with all of my test posts.  I tried to delete them right away but it was too late, they were already out there in the cloud!  This dang interweb, its just way too fast for an old timer like me, lol.  I have noticed a reduction in my facebook friends as well.  I am probably going to guess they do not like the way my friendfeed has the ability to completely dominate their home page when I go on a crazy sharing spree.  Lol, oh well.  Be safe, my good fellows, I bid you farewell.

My parents gave me their 37 inch lcd TV on the weekend.  So its sitting in my place taking up massive amounts of space.  I was messing around with it and have it acting as a second monitor to my computer.  It works beautifully with Windows Media Center.  Today, I’ve been using remote desktop on it to remote into the office.  For some reason, the mouse wasn’t working.  I couldn’t figure it out and it was driving me crazy.  Turns out I was using the mouse to my laptop, which was off, and not the mouse to my computer.  FAIL.  My brother got me these sweet wireless headphones that I absolutely love.  I used them last night listening to some music while making dinner, to lying on my bed listening to some paraliminals, whereas before I had to drag my bed over to my computer because my wired headphones weren’t long enough.  Awesome!  And now, I am complete.  Good day.

Friends and Family, Life, Me

Holiday Stress.

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Well I hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas and took advantage of the Boxing Day sales.  I know I most certainly did.  I got a really snazzy computer that I can’t wait to play with.  I also got a ton of money, but I gave it to my mom.  She told me that I should keep it, and I said I would but I would be donating it so she decided to keep it instead.  She’s going to use the money to buy clothes and toys for some of the kids of my Mom’s employees.  Aaawwww, how nice.  *tear*

Christmas can be very stressful.  I have a confession to make, I wasn’t looking forward to something.  Every year, our entire family meets up at a family owned restaurant and we have a turkey lunch and there are some gift exchanges.  I went last year, but hadn’t gone in the previous 5 years prior and wasn’t planning on going this year.  I don’t like going because I really really reallyyyyy don’t vibe with a lot of the family members there.  But my mom always insists that I go, and so this year I obliged again dreading it on the inside.  I’m sure some of you may know the feeling I’m talking about. 

When I talk about compassion, I personally really struggle with it with this side of the family.  I guess you could call it one of my big sticking points.  For many years I tried and tried for them to like me, but for one reason or other just couldn’t make any ground.  I just haven’t cut through their arrogance and pompous attitudes and their hostility.  Ever since I was a kid, it has been like that.  This year was no different.  As soon as I walked into the place, my uncle says to his daughter (who is currently dating a guy in my industry), “Hey, here’s Martin!  The engineer, he’s in IT!”.  And she quickly snapped back, “SO?! Am I supposed to be his friend now?!” and gave me this icy cold stare. OUCH!!  The worst part is I didn’t even SAY anything.  I got hacked for just showing up.  I just smiled and said Merry Christmas and just let it roll off my back and excused myself from the room.  But I know in previous years if she busted that out on me I probably would have threw some stuffing at her (not really, but it would have really ate me up inside).  I REALLY dug deep and was pulling up buckets full of compassion from my ocean.  “It had nothing to do with me, she just resents her dad for belittling her in front of people all the time, probably.” is what I kept telling myself (I told my mom later about this story and she confirmed it).

Other things happened at this gathering that I could talk about, but I’m sure you can relate to not getting along with at least one member of your family and then having to spend time with them during Christmas.  Its not easy, even when you consciously try.  Even when you can be the more mature one, holding onto that energy afterwards can really tear you up inside.  Sometimes family gatherings can get really stressful.  Combine that with the pressure of buying gifts and it really is a recipe for disaster.  I tend not to sweat too much about it, this year I received a gift I didn’t give a gift back to in return but I hope they bought the gift for me out of the goodness of their heart, and wasn’t EXPECTING anything back.  I very rarely reciprocate a gift (just ask any of my close friends), and I feel no guilt not reciprocating either.  I shouldn’t have to, and neither should you.  I buy gifts when I want to buy them, not because I have to.  Just like I don’t feel any guilt for not showing up to any family gatherings.  Its not natural, to force family to get together even when some members don’t want to (that would be me in this case). 

All of this holiday season should come from LOVE, and yet it very rarely does.  It has become a CHORE, it has become ARTIFICIAL, it has become CONSUMERIST.  Actually, its been like that since I was born, just like many of you reading this blog.  We were BORN into this brainwashed season.  Just one of the many.  I hope some of you are starting to see how much of this really does influence your thoughts, behaviours and emotions.  Christmas can be incredibly rewarding, or it can be absolutely dreadful, both for the very same reasons.  Which would you rather choose?  I loved this Christmas, it was pure awesomeness deluxe.

Friends and Family, Life

Poise from Pops

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A big happy birthday to my Dad, today.  he’s getting old.  Dad has had a rough year.  He’s been laid off from his job, the crapping economy has made it harder to find one with hiring freezes and the like, he doesn’t have a car because it broke down (on the last week at his job), his brother’s and sister’s and mother’s health have been poor, his investments have tanked, and just general boredom sitting at home without much to do except look for a job.  but my father, one thing about him that he has better then anybody i know is poise.  he’s always so composed.  i never understood it, and i never asked him how he does it (cause he probably couldn’t explain it to me) but i’ve always admired that about him.  he just laughs things off like its no big deal.  when he got hit by a drunk driver 20 years ago while riding his bike home from a long shift at work, he was seriously messed up.  he still gets really bad headaches because of it.  he never complained about it, never asked for any handouts, he just continued moving with poise and strength for his family. i can’t even imagine the backbreaking labour on the farms in the blistering hot sun with little to eat except a bowl of rice.  it boggles my mind.  and yet that was his reality for years.

poise, its an amazing thing.  maintain it, especially if you are a man.  its your duty to be strong for the people you care about.  its your duty to be poised for yourself.  but as i like to say, if you stumble, its ok.  just try your best.