For me, this has been a weekend of naps. While this is enjoyable on occasion, I hope I don’t make a habit of it. Still, I had me some good naps.

Haiku!

Love the letter T.
Without it, where would we be?
Also, love your legs.

Amid naps I got a new level of Adventure Dennis up, though. So that’s cool. And I see no reason I won’t find some old Contains2 story and put that up later tonight.

Also, I get the impression that Geocities is supposed to be dead by this point, as I spoke of in the past. I still seem to be able to reach the ol’ AWBC, though. The suspense is literally making me wonder when it is going to die for real.

This weekend I got to visit the merry old land of Winnipeg. It was a great weekend for being there as well. I had been leery because the previous weekend was apparently snowy, but this weekend was pure goodness weatherwise. Just some of the things the weekend gave to me: Experience in navigating corn mazes, a chance to see District 9 in a theatre for cheap, seeing a building with Louis Riel’s name on it and just generally adding to the number of places in this world that I’ve been lucky enough to see. (Oh, and I got to hang out in the company of two cool people). Not bad.

Having spent my weekend with travel, I didn’t get a chance to make a new Adventure Dennis as I might have done. In its place I’ve dug up Abominable Hairman vs. Thompson, a flash cartoon from Contains2 and put it back on the Internet where it belongs.

So, here’s a post that I’ve been thinking about doing for almost a year now, but being really bad at Internetting I just haven’t got around to it until now. Anyway, here goes:

Some guy at work recently called me “Pat”. Of course, by recently I mean about a year ago. It was a guy who works in a different part of the company whose name I didn’t even know, so his calling me Pat just struck me as being off somehow. I mean, lots of people call me Pat, but it is usually people who I now better. Often times even people that I’ve known a long time prefer to call me Patrick. This, I assume, is because if I am ever asked my name or if I ever have to sign something or introduce myself I will, without fail, call myself Patrick. I have often had people ask permission to call me Pat before they start to do it. Like “Do you mind being called Pat?” and I have to say “No, I’ve been called worse.” or something. And it is true. I have been called plenty of things (Some things I have been called: Patrick. Pat. P. PDR. Patty. Pappy. Peder. Pee Doctor. Doctor P. Pudrig. PDFNR. Pat Smear. Patroclus. Peacock. P-Cock. Patty Cakes. Mother Theresa. Patrick Rydol. Patrick Drywall.) So anyway, I don’t know why I found it caused me pause to hear this work guy call me Pat, but it did. I guess the moral is, I’m complicated.

On the topic of being named Patrick: I don’t like meeting other people named Patrick. Never have. I believe this is a problem that has mostly to do with my name being common, but not too common. If I were named Chris or Adam or Mike or John or some generic name like that, I’d probably be used to running into Homonyms. Or if my name was something really obscure, like Ordob, Wibbung or Hamham, well then I’d probably be so surprised to find someone with the same name that I’d actually like it. As it is, I’m just at that point where I don’t have to regularly deal with other Patricks so I don’t build up a tolerance, but I do encounter them often enough to be bothered. I guess the moral is, I’m complicated.

Man, my beloved homestreet of Quinpool Road sure has been going through some minor but frequent changes of late. Not all of them for the best. Example: At the Royal Bank up the road there was a security camera that I used to talk to when I was making ATM transactions (I offer no explanation as for why I did this), but recently they re-designed their ATMs and the camera on the ceiling next to it has been removed. I assume there is a camera in the new ATM somewhere, but I don’t know where. How am I to know which direction to ham it up? Egads, what a predicament.

Up the road: The Iranian restaurant with really awesome rice is gone, replaced by a Sushi place. And I only got to eat there twice! Granted, for all I know the sushi place has excellent rice as well, but I’m not a big sushi fan, so why exactly would I go in to find out, huh? I wouldn’t.

The travel agency I have used in my too infrequent trips around the world has moved to a street about twenty minutes away (on foot). And I never got in to thank them for how hard they worked to help me get to China. I didn’t want to go in unless I actually had a travel-related reason. Of course, with that attitude I would have to come back and thank them for the trip I set up when I thank them for the China trip and it would continue forever. Perhaps when I use them again I will, upon my return, bring them muffins as a thanks and then hopefully I won’t feel so bad about thanking them without immediately booking another trip. I’ll have to keep that in mind.

Over the Summer, three businesses directly across from me (I can see them from my window Right Now) got big fancy murals painted on them. Not bad, I admit, but one of them Vogue Optical no longer has a sign on front that identifies it as Vogue Optical. Sure it has a mural of Halifax on the side of the building which, if you pay attention, you can find some glasses painted in there. Also, I don’t know why I care if the sign is there or not. I might be getting old.

And perhaps the most confounding is a change that I noticed in my very own building just yesterday. The door in the lobby which leads to the stairwell has been replaced. Replaced by a door which looks way, way worse. I find it strange that a building which has made so much effort in making itself more presentable in the years I have lived here would purposefully replace a good door with a bad one. I figure the reasons must be one of these: The old door was damaged somehow, which I wish I had seen for my own entertainment’s sake, or they sold the old door to keep our rent down. I’m pulling for that to be the true one.

One thing, though, the store connected to the Irving is now branded as a Circle K. I don’t even remember what it used to be called, for sure. I want to say Blue Canoe, but that might have been a hallucination I had. But anyway I assume the Canadian store that was there was bought out by the American Circle K in some Corporation-Style Shenanigans. I approve of this because now I can say “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K” any time I want! Any time. And that is one of the best things I can think of.