Compress This...

I recently went to the colon doktor. She said that my blood work and everything else is checking out just fine, and to keep up what I'm doing. I guess that means more Taco Bell and Powerade?

The past two months have been extremely busy for me. Two vacations plus my dad's visit have limited my "fun" time on the computer, but I'm not complaining. Let's recap:

My dad's visit was a blast. He came out to see Genesis in DC. The concert was of course a bit lackluster, but it was fun. But while out here, we had maybe the best week of weather we have had all year, so that made it perfect.

One adventure we had was with a compressor. I've been wanting to get one for a while for our car and bike tires, since all the air in my area costs about $0.75. I thought we could make a quick trip to Sears or wherever to pick one up. So we went to Sears and got one. When we got home, we realized it was not maintenance free (I'm lazy) so we returned it but Sears didn't have the one we wanted, so we headed to Lowe's to check out their selection.

We bought one at Lowe's with a digital readout for "easier use", but it didn't work too well. We returned that one for a "normal one", but my dad was concerned about the nozzle connection as it appeared cheap. We got it home, connected it to the bike tire, and the nozzle promptly broke. We ended up returning the whole thing, and after four-plus hours I had nothing but a bunch of receipts and credits to enter into Quicken to make sure it all worked okay.

Another of my vacations was to Reading, PA, for Skate America 2007. Aside from the skating, it was not a memorable trip. Darcy and I had about as much fun as we could have being trapped in Reading, but that is not saying much. That area just doesn't offer anything outside of the event, and that includes restaurants. Unless you want grease burgers, the food was the pits. Worst of all was inside the arena. They don't let people re-enter, and with z e r o vegetarian options for dinner and only soda pop to drink, I went almost six or seven hours without eating or drinking, all the while being trapped in a cold arena. The organizers of these events need to realize that food is rather important to most people, and not everyone eats chili dogs.

My last vacation was last week, where I went to Toronto with my friend T.R. He's never been there, so it was fun. We flew into Buffalo and went to Niagara Falls first. That was nice and not as cold as it could have been. The rest of the time was hanging around in Toronto, visiting Casa Loma, The Hockey Hall of Fame, and finally the Leafs/Rangers game.

Speaking of the Rangers, while at the hall we were given free tickets that allowed us to come back later that day for autographs from the Rangers. We did, and once inside the Great Hall (room with the Cup and other hardware) all 24 players from the Rangers were seated at tables and signed a poster given to us from the Hall. That was a nice touch and was well organized.

I have not been to Toronto in years, and things have changed. First off, with the Canadian dollar being worth more than the USD and a 15% tax, shopping was rather limited except for a few books. The food situation was also quite good, although my favorite Indian restaurant is gone and is now a Wing bar. And finally, CD shops are missing. HMV has plenty of good things, but given the exchange rate, most discs I was interested in were going for about $40 USD each, so I didn't buy much of anything.

Before flying back home we had lunch at Ilio de Paolo's Italian restaurant. Simply great food. A quick stop by Record Theater followed, although that store has gone downhill lately too.

Once back I got a fun throat infection that has kept me home the past five days. I played one game of hockey to raise my body temperature and that seemed to help. Maybe it was because I spun my first shutout since the surgery, but it was nice to play on top of my game, even though I felt sick the whole time.