Angry Rant

Posted on April 19, 2007 by Mike

Sensitive ears, avoid your eyes.

———–

To: The dimwit standing next to me on the train platform.

Yo! Moron! What the fuck are you trying to prove? Who the fuck do you think you’re kidding standing there holding your goddam Energie-Cardio bag while smoking a fucken cigarette? Are you trying to make believe that you give a shit about your body when you’re willing to pollute YOUR lungs AND mine with your cancer stick? You may as well shove it up your ass. At least that way the smoke you’re blowing will cause some entertaining fireworks.

I’m sure having a “wonderful body” is a great goal… even while you’re all blackened and corrupted inside.

Stupid shit.

————

Note: last week I saw another woman doing the same thing right outside the YMCA. I know I should mind my own business but the stupidity factor enrages me…

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Early BDay Gift

Posted on April 18, 2007 by Mike

Just came back from another wonderful lunch with a dear friend of mine. We went to our usual spot at “Trattoria Zia’s” near Phillips Square and had another amazing meal 🙂

It’s great to just be able to sit back and take a moment to enjoy life’s moments and talk about the future. 🙂

She even surprised me with an early birthday gift (without her remembering that I turn 40 next month 😉 ). She gave me the 5 volumes of the Spiderwick series! Nice little hardcover books with some really nice art in them. I definitely look forward to reading them and also like the idea that I can have James and Melyssa read them, too! 🙂

All in all, a very nice afternoon 🙂

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Shustering Schools

Posted on April 16, 2007 by Mike

I’ve had some news recently regarding the Joe Shuster Awards and schools that I’ve been meaning to mention for a while.

As I wrote a while back, I had some concerns recently regarding the level of “comic book” acceptance/ knowledge/ etc from kids in schools and wondered if there was something that can be done about it. After all, we’re basically at the point where Comics need to reach an audience of kids who’s parents probably were never into comics when they were younger, either! And what seems to be the biggest “grab” of attention comes from video games and manga.

Anyhow, I had given copies of the Joe Shuster Awards posters and postcards to both my son James and daughter Melyssa to distribute. James gave some away but his “duty” was to bring a poster and postcards to the librarian at his school for display and handing out. (Thanks again, Lu!)

Melyssa, on her own volition took her poster and postcards to her homeroom teacher who had it plastified and hung on the wall! And then, during one of their computer labs, the teacher had them log onto the site and vote! What a great incentive! 🙂

This basically touched upon 12-year olds (James) and 10-year olds (Melyssa). Today, I was told that the son of a co-worker whom I gave a package to took his poster and postcards to HIS high school and gave them out at the comic-book club. So, we got some exposure to 16-year olds, too!

I like how this small idea panned out and the reactions to it. Gives me a few more thoughts in regards to further expansion upon that for next year, too…

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Oh maan…

Posted on April 16, 2007 by Mike

What a way to start a Monday…

Power failure last night. Okay, no problem. I knew of it because the UPS on my pc started beeping. So, I got up and turned the UPS off, took my pager to check the time: 3:30am. No problem. Power comes back on and I have to get up and switch off the DVD that’s having a bit of trouble loading the disk that’s in it. Check the pager: 4:45am. Okay, still time.

Kyle wakes up and starts chatting away in bed. I check the pager: 6:15am. Wow. He went back to his earlier wake-up time. Okay, no problem. I’ll get up and take care of him to get him ready for daycare. Chantale gets up, too.

We go about our morning routine, having a bite of breakfast, and I head to the car to clear the snow(!). It’s a really peaceful morning and I’m happy that the schedule is great. It’s 7am. I start the car and my eyes wander to the clock… 8:00am. My last train leaves at 8:20am!!! I rush back in the house and tell Chantale what happened and I apologize like crazy and run away to the train station.

How nuts is it that the ONE “clock” that was not adjusted for DST was my pager? Bah.

Walking to work in that strong wind and biting rain was no picnic either. No wonder that it’s almost 10:30am and I already have the stirrings of a migraine (ya know, that pain behind the socket of my left eye…)

*sigh*. Definitely time for coffee…

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Silence.

Posted on April 13, 2007 by Mike

The recent online silence from quite a number of people makes me wonder if the wonky weather is the culprit behind it. Everyone is so out-of-kilter because it’s snowing (and sticking!) when it should be warm and sunny that their daily life is in turmoil.

On the positive side, it makes it easier for me to catch up… even when I go offline myself for a few days and nights…

After spending wednesday night rocking kyle to sleep until the very wee hours of the morning, he checked out fine at the doctor’s yesterday. lots of TLC plus a warm-mist humidifier made it so comfortable that although he was unhappy being put to bed at 7pm, the crankiness only lasted a few minutes after which he simply babbled to his stuffies. Before 8pm he was sleeping peacefully and stayed that way until 7am this morning! After living through yesterday with only 2 hours of sleep from the night before, I can tell you I was extremely grateful.

I’m still quite tired today but I feel better knowing that he’s feeling better and is in a better mood. This weekend, we work on installing the hanging ceiling in the new room in the basement (I don’t believe I’ve mentioned that I’ve finished the full plastering and painting of the room last weekend… I’m very happy with the results!). I’m picking James and Melyssa up at 1pm on Saturday as Melyssa has baseball practice before then (now I know I didn’t mention this fact! Because of James’ operation, his doctor has recommended he not do any sports for a few months. Melyssa decided that if she couldn’t join Soccer (her mother’s against it) then she would at least join Baseball. So, this will be her first year 🙂 It will be fun to see her play and I’ll go encourage her as often as I can (considering the upcoming responsibilities and new baby, etc)).

Woah. I know I’m tired when I realize I spent maybe 1 minute typing that above sentence and finding myself starting to ramble…

As usual, I have plenty more to say especially as there have been numerous happenings and thoughts going on in TRW, but I’ve got stuff to work on right now. So, I’ll leave you with one of the thoughts that was going through my head wednesday night as I tried to soothe Kyle. If you’re familiar with Anna Nalick’s “2am Breathe” you know how it goes 🙂

“2am and I’m still awake rocking my son
If I get him calmed down, he’ll no longer be
Threatening the sleep and rest he should be in…
And I feel like I’m wiped sitting here in this chair
Cause he’s hurting and sad and screaming in pain
And I know that the medicine will help soothe when it kicks in…”

2am Sleep by Mike Aragona (with apologies to Anna Nalick) 🙂

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*pop*

Posted on April 11, 2007 by Mike

…that’s the sound of my head exploding… my eyeballs flying off my face… and smacking into my monitor.

you’d think it would be a little more “squishy” sounding…

*peeks head out from calendar and paperwork* … unbelievable. Over a week of silence. Not on purpose, however. Just… NO… time…

Forget “voice post”. I’m looking forward to the day of “thought post”. At least that way when I’m thinking about something worth blogging about, it would happen at the same time! 🙂

I don’t want to say I’m a little punch-drunk, but the last two+ weeks have been extremely intense. Most if not all the projects I’ve been involved in have had major activities/ milestones and I’ve been on an insane go-go-go! because of it. Everything should be in place now, so I can go back to monitoring and following up versus building, planning, delivering, evaluating, etc.

Heck, maybe I’ll even be able to take lunch and GO outside! They tell me there’s sun there sometimes…

oh, wait… Comicopia issue 100 deadline is 7 days from NOW? … *thud*

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Monday

Posted on April 2, 2007 by Mike

Yes, it is. For those of you who haven’t seen the Harry Potter slideshow, head over to Yahoo Movies to view 22 pics.

Today was Chantale’s first day at home since her contract ended on Friday. I’m feeling quite relieved by the fact that I won’t have to worry about her spending up to 3 hours driving every day. This also means that Kyle will not have to go to the guardian every day, and on those days I’ll do my best to catch the 6:30am train so I can come to work early and finish off some of those long-standing items that although not high priority, still need to be completed.

The Joe Shuster Awards Retailer Packages have all been compiled and sealed (with generous help provided by James and Melyssa on Saturday) and delivered to Quebecor last night. Diamond will get them on Wednesday and Canadian Comic Shops will get them on the 11th. In the meantime, I had a number of postcards left over so I gave James a bunch to bring to school. I’m hoping the library (waves to luvenditti) will be able to display/ hand them out. I got the idea after talking to James for a bit about how many friends at school knew or read comic books. Turns out… hardly none. (I’m referring to N.A. comics, by the way. The main “comic” reading work seems to only be manga). So, I thought that handing these postcards out might at least get SOME kids interested in the idea of Comic Books and/ or at least make them realize the great Canadian talent we have. We’ll see. Lu, if this won’t work, I’ll understand 🙂

I got home late last night to find another emergency job request for SEP. Funny enough, it involved completing the original document I had gotten at the beginning of last month that was canceled due to not being able to agree on the price. It was now a go, and a GO FAST. Luckily, I have a very understanding wife who knows the money coming in from that will go to pay for things we need to prepare for our new arrival 🙂 Happily enough, there will be more SEP income in the first three months of this year than 2005 and 2006 combined! I guess the Universe does provide in times of need…

Okay, I gotta split again. Way too busy…

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Zodiac Killer

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Mike

Greetings.

Had lunch with Gabriel Morrissette today to discuss various items as we usually do 🙂

He showed me an advance copy of Soleil Productions’ “Zodiac Killer” of which he has 11 pages in it. Get yourself a copy 🙂

Very nice… 🙂 I’ll be heading to Librarie Fichtre soon and making sure I get myself a copy (along with other amazing BDs like Magasin Generale v2, Les Druids v2, etc). He gave me a long poster of the book cover which I plan to hang on the wall behind me at work 🙂

I’m still rushing like a madman, but at least the weekend is almost here! Yeah! 🙂

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Buon Compleano!

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Mike

Hey! In all this mad dashing about and projects coming out the yinyang, I almost forgot to call my mother today to wish her a happy birthday!

Funny/ true story some of you may have already heard before.

Growing up, we always celebrated my mom’s birthday on April 1st. It’s the date on her registration/ birth papers. Well, it turns out that my grandfather was a bit of a joker and that my mom was actually born on March 29th. However, seeing as back in those days you had to go to another village to record the birth and it took him a bit of time to do so, he decided to put down April 1st as the date of birth since that was the day he was registering her 🙂

heh heh. I have fond memories of my mother’s father, even though I only ever recall seeing him twice. Once when he came here, once when I went to Italy. He’s still often in my thoughts, though, just laughing away with us whenever we’re enjoying a joyous moment. My Grandfather, the Jester 🙂

Happy Birthday, Mama!

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Weird… or Wired?

Posted on March 29, 2007 by Mike

What’s weird is that I realize I’ve been absent from not only LJ but the Net itself for a while. I’m not entirely sure why that’s been the case, but a lot of it has to do with just having too much to do. Heck, I only just recently realized that deadline for Comicopia 100 is LESS than a month away! (For those of you on LJ whom I’ve emailed, can you confirm if you received it? Also, if you have the email addresses for others ex-members, could you be so kind as to forward it to them? It would be nice to hear from as many as possible…).

By the way… the cover is gorgeous 🙂 You’ll see it soon enough 🙂

What else? Work has been insane/ intense. Seriously. Wow but this week has been heavy. Next week should be calm enough (mainly because we’ll be kicking off this major project we’ve been scoping this week, implementing/ closing another, and keeping a third on the road) so I’ll be able to tackle some of those medium-priority items (trust me, there are a LOT of those, too!)

Home? Renovations have been moving slowly recently. Did pick up 8 gallons of paint on Monday so we’re prepared for a lot 🙂 I’ve finished sanding the new room’s closet and so the primer can go on there while I start the first coat of finish on the room itself. Still have some work to do on the windowsill but got a nice idea on to go about it.

S.E.P. had another contract to complete for today which I managed to finish last night. After finally getting my hand on the corrected cheque, I was able to cash it yesterday as well. Felt nice to not see a negative bank balance.

I went to Quebecor to pick up the posters and postcards for The Joe Shuster Awards to be shipped to retailers. I’ve started the manual process of packaging the postcards and posters along with a letter to retailers, into envelopes with a JSA return label. These will be sealed and boxed to return to Quebecor on Sunday so that Diamond can pick them up on April 4th and have them in Canadian Comic Shops on April 11th – Giving everyone One Month notice until the end of on-line voting.

That’s basically the next thing I’ll be doing after which I can re-concentrate on the renovations. Until/ Unless another contract comes up… 😉 However, I still have much left to do for Comicopia, too…. eeeeep.

Gotta run again…

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