What’s In The Suitcase? Day Twelve

General

I wasn’t the kid on the block with all the cool toys. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t wearing burlap rags and pretending a shoe box was my best friend, no. Being the youngest of 5 kids meant most of my toys were either generic (Look! A farm set of no discernible brand!) or worn out hand me downs that passed through years of abuse from 4 older siblings (Wee! A Spirograph with 75% of the gear wheels missing!). Don’t get me wrong, I was a happy kid. But I lived next door to an only son of a wealthy lawyer. You could imagine what his toy box looked like. He had enough LEGO to make the engineers of the Burj Dubai seethe with jealousy. He was so ignorant of how good he had it. For example, he had die cast metal SHADO vehicles but didn’t know a thing about the show they came from, which drove me crazy. When I tried to explain to my parents that I needed a SHADO Mobile with real firing missiles from the British science fiction show UFO I got a farm set of no discernible brand.

I also remember a friend having a ride-’em toy that made me insanely jealous. The name escapes me. It was round, you sat in the middle and it had two major wheels on either side of you that you cranked for motion. It was the closest a kid could come to wheel chair fun without stealing a wheel chair. I also recall the wheels had a hippy, swirly pattern on them…

I digress. All this just to say I got my first Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots game when I was 41. Hell of a time to wait.

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What’s In The Suitcase? Day Ten

General

These sandals I bought for our last cruise. The last one, where ten of us, all bearish, all hungry, went on The Explorer of the Seas and were dubbed “The Bear Pack” by one of the ship’s crew. Good times.

I use to have a pair of Tevas that I kept for years and years, long after the velcro failed on them. I bought them only for white water rafting down the Ottawa River in the early ’90s. One trip, I flipped out of the raft and as my arms flailed around in the surf, in horror, my hand hit something. I grabbed. I came up for air and discovered that one of my sandals was missing. And that I had said missing sandal in my hand. They were now dubbed my lucky shoes. It wasn’t until I started to wear the Tevas around town that I discovered that I had bought a whole size too large and I was literally flopping and tripping around in them like a drunk clown.

These particular sandals make me happy. Not like… “Let’s get some shoes!” kind of happy but they do hold a lot of memories from the last couple years.

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What’s In The Suitcase? Day Nine

General

Somewhat late today. Sorry. We started the day by taking Billy Dee Williams and George Hamilton to the vet for their shots. There they wanted us to shuck out nearly $400 for Xrays, stool softeners and…kitty enemas. I shit you not. And neither does Billy Dee Williams. We decided that we’re going the natural route and feed him more wet food than average, which helps him pass stuff.

After we went shopping for new shoes for me. The Merrills I bought in June for our Disney trip are already worn down to treadless slippers. Pictured here are my new KEENS I got for $80. The angle of the picture makes them look like their Shaq Size 16s or something. I wish. I am loving the no lace tie ups on them!

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Courageously Gobsmacked

Art, Celebs and Media, Personal Bits

Okay any past comments I’ve ever made about Richard Ouzounian over at the Star are off the table. He’s given my brother’s play, Courageous, 3.5 stars out of 4.

You may recall I was privileged to be able to read a near-final draft of the play last month and I’ll be honest, after my first reading, I didn’t think it was going to be accessible to the general public (my brother nervously confessed he was worried about “this one not being any good” as we left a family dinner). However, I’m in agreement with Richard O when he says that Micheal’s writing “make(s) your head spin long after the curtain has fallen.” I’ve been thinking a lot of the nuances within the play, the writing, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

If I can get some free tickets.

Ping. You’re Filled

Personal Bits, Tech

This morning my jaw feels like I got too close to the wrong end of a donkey (is there a right end?). You see, I had a filling done yesterday and for 12 hours I thought it was a technical marvel of modern dentistry – the least amount of discomfort for a filling I’ve ever experienced. Now I’m just sore.

As I’m bibbed, laid back and mouth cranked open, the dentist whips out a tiny, seemingly harmless probe and taps it on my gums next to the targeted tooth. Seconds after that he pops into my peripheral vision with a larger needle with a tube running from it and heads straight for my mouth. I’m expecting the pain but to my surprise there is none. The first tap was a quick local where the larger needle was to go in. I couldn’t feel anything, obviously due to the spreading freezing agent, but he did manage to move my whole head by shifting his hand slightly. Which made me wonder just how deep in was this needle. As I speculated that the needle was well under my tooth, a machine behind my head started to sing.

It was like being in a cockpit of a jet aircraft experiencing a crash landing. The first alarm was a female computer voice saying “PLB!” Or “TLC!” or something. I was told that was short for “I Stab at Thee, Vile Tooth!” or some such nonsense. Basically a reminder of what the dentist was about to do – either upper or lower single tooth anesthetizing. After that, three distinct tones played out over the machine: One “ta da!” ping to tell the dentist that the needle was indeed inside the ligature under the tooth, one “doo dee doo dee doo” ping to let the dentist know that freezing agent was being delivered to the nerves and a bizarre steel drum “da tah da!” to signal the finish.

So I was left for 3 minutes to let my single tooth to come accustomed to the freeze. After that, nothing. No pain, no discomfort, nothing to even complain about. The tip of my tongue was numb but the rest of my face was normal, compared to the last few fillings I’ve had that have rendered me a slobbering idiot. The drilling and the filling took less than 25 minutes and by the time I had taken the elevator from the 19th floor to the street, the freezing was already subsiding.

Today, as I said, my mouth is sore but nothing to get all dramatic about. I expect that will subside soon.

I can remember my first filling where all I can recall is a huge syringe, rubber dams, the room filling with the smell of tooth dust, enamel and fear and finally, me fainting in the waiting room on my way out the door. Like teens today not experiencing non-remote control tv, they’ll never know the horror of the importance of good dental hygiene.

What’s In The Suitcase? Day Seven

Celebs and Media

This shirt was acquired last summer at the Fan Expo. In the middle of the room is a massive Borg cube festooned with geek/nerd/retro shirts. I could easily spend a whole paycheque there. What folly.

I wish I could (legally) watch the 4th season of Venture Bros. Take heed, Teletoon and G4 TV! Time to pony up some better shows for your “more adult cartoon” time slots you put on after 9pm. I’m getting tired of Futurama (sacrilege I know, but you can only watch it so many times before you want to claw out your eyes) and the Drinky Crow Show is just not doing it for me.

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