Jeffrey Vanneste’s Personal Blog

I’ve been working quite a bit the last 2 weeks and Rachel has been super busy with school so I decided we should have a night off.  We walked down to one of the main streets by our apartment and found some Italian place to eat.  They had this thing where you go and put different flavours of butter on bread and then you grill the bread yourself.  It was pretty awesome cause you put like 8lbs of garlic butter on one piece and lie to yourself that it’s still healthy.

After supper nothing is as romantic as Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.  Rach has now seen all the Star Wars movies.  Mission accomplished.

Tomorrow night one of Rachel’s friends is having a halloween party.  I’ve hated halloween since elementary school.  I dreaded the days where we would get dressed up and the teachers would make us walk through every classroom up and down the aisles.  In Kindergarten my Mom dressed me up as Ronald McDonald.  It all went down hill from there.  I think by about Grade 4 or 5 I had already started copping-out from the whole dressing up thing and coming up with original ideas like “ghost” or “man in box”.  I avoided dressing up until grade 12 where me and Brent decided we would dress up for the school’s Halloween dance.  We figured we would rent some costumes and go all out.  Brent decided to rent a king costume which consisted of a cloak and a crown.  I rented a Three Musketeer costume which was the full deal, boots, pants, sword etc.  We get to this dance and like no one else is dressed up.  So here I am standing in my musketeer outfit and Brent in his king outfit.  Brent simply puts his cloak into the coat check and continues on as normal leaving me to look like a goof.  My hatred for Halloween is renewed.

So after that dreadful story, I have no desire to go to any Halloween party.  When I get dragged out I come up with Halloween costume ideas that require me to not dress up at all.  One year Rach dressed up as Britney Spears, I was her college boyfriend.  Another year I went as “a black hole that sucks up all the fun”.  I’m thinking this year I might go as “that annoying guy who refuses to speak French”.

[tags]jeffrey,rachel,montreal[/tags]

Scott Adams (the guy who makes Dilbert) also has a really funny blog that he posts to almost every day. A few days ago he had an awesome comment for when he lost the internet at home.

They say that dogs lick their own genitalia because they can. But I think it’s at least partially because they don’t have the Internet.

I have nothing else to add.

[tags]jeffrey,geek[/tags]

 So Rachel figured I should go and get the tire fixed on the RAV4.  She made an appointment at the nearest Toyota for 8:15am (that’s 6:15am real time).  Sure, I’ll get up early one day, but then Rachel tells me I have to get there by myself.  Ya right.  After complaining a bunch and finding out Rachel was working a few blocks from where Toyota was she decided to come with me most of the way.  After I dropped her off I managed to get lost within a block. 

I eventually saw a big sign for Toyota and started to look for a service door of some kind.  The thing is that this was essentially downtown Montreal so there is no big automall like in Saskatoon.  I end up finding this little sign pointing into a back alley saying something about Toyota and then a bunch of French words.  I figured this had to be the service bay.  Half way down the alley I find a big garage door that automatically opens so I drive in and start patting myself on the back.  I park the car and look around, I’m in the back of the Toyota show room, not a service bay.  So this guy comes up and assumes I’m in the wrong place and offers to show me how to get to the Toyota service bay (which apparently is a few blocks away, can’t they just keep everything in one building?)  I end up going up and down one way streets until there is another Toyota sign and an automatic door.  This time it has a ramp up to the 2nd floor.  Whoever thought of a service bay on the 2nd floor? 

Rachel had told me a guy’s name who she knew spoke English so I went to each desk until I found the guy.  He figured it would take about an hour to get the tire fixed (Rach told me 20-30min), good thing I brought my DS.  2 hours later they come and get me and let me know that the tire is fixed, cost $18.  The English guy sends me off to pay with the receptionist.  I start off with my normal ’please speak English banter’, “Hey, how’s it going?”.  She bites, “Good.”  She asks for my name so I start to spell it out, “vanneste” and she writes “vannisti”.  I’m like ”no, no, it’s vann-E-st-E, EEEEEE.”  She ends up giving me paper to write my name on.  Problem solved.

Getting back to the apartment wasn’t too bad.  Montreal has all these stupid rules where you can’t turn at certain times of the day.  It’s like ”8:47am, drive straight only, 8:48am go wherever you want.”  Of course the street I need to turn on doesn’t allow turning left so I end up going for blocks and blocks and they never let me turn left.  Eventually I just turn around in a gas station and go back.  I finally arrived home, stabbed free.

[tags]jeffrey,montreal[/tags] 

Yesterday at the end of the day the landlord decided to come and pay a visit.  He wanted to check if the hole in our bathroom ceiling had been fixed yet.  No, no it hadn’t.  He said he was going to come by today to fix it but has yet to show.  I’m not sure why he had to ask if the hole had been fixed (being that he is the one who is suppose to fix it), I’m sure as hell not doing it.  When he was leaving he asks me if I knew that our RAV4 had a flat tire.  I had no idea (I haven’t left the apartment in quite awhile).  So I jumped in my Bubble Boy outfit and went downstairs.  Sure enough, we have a flat tire. 

Rach figures we just drove over a nail or something.  I think it was a gang of at least 20 (french) masterminds who broke into the building and chose our RAV4 to vandalise.  They were like, this guy speaks English let’s get him.  Sure there was no proof that the tire was slashed, they were that good.  So, since we have free road side assistance for a couple years we called up Toyota and had them change the tire.  I’ve never seen a tire being changed before.  I’m pretty sure I can do it on my own now.  Yes, I’m that lame that I don’t know how to do trivial tasks like changing a tire.

Rach is off to O.Noir tonight (without me).  I’ve been working a lot on our next release which is suppose to come out pretty soon.  I bought Splinter Cell for 360 today so I will be taking a break from work to give that a try.

Oh, and Rachel told me she hasn’t seen Star Wars episode 3 yet.  I don’t know why.  I will remedy this catastrophe as soon as possible.

[tags]jeffrey,montreal[/tags]

Rach sent me a message today asking if I wanted to go out for supper on Saturday.  Sure I was down with that.  The catch, she wanted to goto this artsy restaurant called O.Noir.

Already the rage in Europe, Australia, L.A and New York, now O.NOIR – Canada’s first-ever restaurant that invites you to experience food, drink and conversation like never before – IN THE DARK!

That’s right.  You get served by blind people in pitch black.  Why would you put yourself through this?  Maybe the food isn’t expensive?  Hell no.  The menu is online and with ~$40 for a meal (well really look at the plates, is that a meal?) I just don’t understand.  As Chris said “they could totally put pubes in your meal and you would never know”.  Indeed.

Anyways, there is no way I’m going to that restaurant.  I’ll order a pizza and eat with my eyes closed if I want to live adventurous.

[tags]jeffrey,montreal,food[/tags]