Wow when Italian Leather just isn't good enough

My wife is definitely the fashionista in my house however I do lend my opinion on some of the stuff she looks at. This one was just too tempting. I was pointing out how some shoes are just crazy expensive even when they're on sale. I liked this shoe and started to rant on the price until I bust out laughing.

I don't know at what point it became legal, but I'm pretty sure making shoes from people breaks some kind of laws.

I could rant and rave about my battle with Hyundai but that's not over yet and I don't have anything happy to report.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.

Remember that other week from hell?

This is its big brother.

I haven't be posting lately because I've been waiting for the sun's rays to break through my gray skies. Well... that ain't fucking happening so here's my bitch post.

Last Thursday night instead of hanging with the homies watching the Senz stomp Crosby I was stranded at a highway McDonalds because my 4000KM old Tiburon died at the age of 5 weeks. Unbelievable! However, thankfully I still have a warranty. Turns out the clutch and the flywheel are both completely toast and guess what? They're not covered by warranty! Regardless at this early an age naturally the dealership that sold it to me will help me out. NOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. They all but flipped me the bird! By the way Kingscross Motor Sports is the most corrupt organization of thieves known to man and I hope Anthony Chung mistakes tic tacs for his heart pills.

This weekend the wife and I went to pick up a "prize" we won (we thought at a wedding show) in Mississauga (1 hour drive.) Turns out it was one of those sales promotion blitzes where stupid people get hosed out of their money. Surly sales people like myself apparently get marched out the back door to an empty parking lot.

Then just today on my way to pick up my lovely wife from her workplace (since we have only one car) I forgot the turn to her workplace and in a bone head move decided to try to get over to the right lane in time and clipped a Chrysler 300. Undoubtedly he's going to send me some bogus 1000 dollar bill fore his "repairs" (it's a scuff mark.)

So far this week I'm looking to be down anywhere from 2-3000 dollars and it's only Tuesday.

Alcoholics aren't born, they're made during weeks like this

So you Pens fans were sayin'?

Don't worry I'm not going to start boasting or making any Jinxing statements about tomorrow night's game. I just thought I'd like to remind Penguins players that the Senators... they're not afraid of you. Not only do you have to contend with Alfredsson growing a pair of testicles you've also got to deal with players just stepping up their games. Corvo and Neil both come to mind. Corvo already has a pair of goals and Neil scored a beauty on the break away in the first game. Everyone on Ottawa is showing up for their games, and in Game 3 when we weren't so stellar, Rayzor came through with the big stops. The series ain't over yet, but if the Penguins want to stay alive they're going to have to contend with a Sens squad that's firing on all cylinders.

See you Ottawa tomorrow Crosby, get a good rest. You'll need it.

Cardiomygod

Man! Once again to anyone who attributes my not-being-fatness to “genes” or “metabolism” need only take a quick peek at my schedule this week to realize otherwise. Tonight I’m going to be hitting the gym for the first time in a while (given a mass build-up of guilt) due to illness over the last couple of weeks. I’ll probably do about 45 minutes of weights and 45 minutes of cardio on the Elliptical. So that’s day 1, I’ll probably do chest/shoulders/tri’s as legs will not be an option. Tomorrow at lunch I’ll be playing hockey for 1.5 hours with my boss and co-workers. Wednesday I will likely hit the gym again at lunch for back/bi’s. Thursday is 1.5 hours of hockey at lunch and another hour in the evening. Then on Friday another one hour game after work.

Putting in about 5 hours of hockey this week should be good given my recent drop-off in offense presence. 1 goal over the past 2 months of hockey is pretty pathetic since I play wing. I’m hoping I’ll get at least one goal this week at least. I’ve been missing a lot of shots by not only shooting them over the net but over the boards. I’m cutting down my Sherwood hockey stick because I’ve noticed it’s longer than my other sticks. So right now I’m blaming that for my recent scoring draught.

It’s easier than blaming it on my complete lack of skill.

Aye aye Captain!

Wow. So who is this crazy Swede?

For years now I've been a huge Alfredsson critic. The fact of the matter is I have on many an occasion said, "Trade his ass!" Personally I feel I've been justified, last year Alfredsson's playoff tally was 1 goal and 3 assists in 10 playoff games. Come on! You're the fricken Captain! Well that's what I've always said...

Now I'm changing my tune like a fan-boy bandwagon jumper. The thing is I knew Alfredsson was capable of more, and now he's showing it. About freakin' time for sure but hey, better late than never. Personally I thought Alfredsson absolutely demolishing Roberts with a bodycheck was a symbolism that transcended the scoreboard. Series is going well... who knows how it'll end, but if this keeps up it'll be all over.

Alfredsson riding that little bitch Armstrong was also a beautiful scene

Lucky bounces and flukes do not a comeback make

Well I, like LosRicos, wasn't completely surprised that the Pittsburgh Penguins took down the second game of the playoffs between the two teams. Honestly though I thought the Sens still looked like the better team. Ottawa hit at least 3 posts and had a couple of shots that woulda-coulda-shoulda. Would I like to have gone up 2 games? Of course. Do I think it's time to pee our pants? Not exactly, all the same it's important that we take down this next one tomorrow night. If we play like we did today minus the first period, I think it's very likely we'll win tomorrow's game. I make no promises though.

Speaking of the game Hats-off to Alfie. I've been one of Alfredsson's staunchest critics in the past decade and have often said he needs to be traded. Actually I'm a huge fan of Heatley for captain. However, these first two games Alfredsson has been stellar. He might not be lighting up the scoreboard but he's definitely playing with heart, and I'm loving that. Who knows how it'll turn out... fingers crossed.

Thank God it's a best of 7 and not a best of 3

Shootin' blanks!

Wow, what a terrible night of paintball. Generally speaking I dominate the field when I play paintball most nights. Tonight the competition wasn't particularly fierce but I just couldn't get anything going. I was missing easy shots and overall stinking up the field.

On top of that my pods opened up mid-game and spilled about 15 dollars worth of paint all over the place. Not only that my custom Lexan trigger I built for my paintball gun? It broke in mid-game. Needless to say not my finest hour.

Next time I'm going for blood!

I did kick the crap out of my brother in law in one game though so all is well

1 down 15 to go

Well well well. I do recall telling the Penguins fans that if they were expecting an Ottawa Senators marquee "Choke" they might be surprised. Little did I know that Ottawa would not only outplay Pittsburgh but would in fact destroy them. Our defense were stifling, the forecheck was devastating and second and third string players were lighting up the scoreboard. The game was riddled with penalties and I'll admit the Crosby goal could've been allowed, but in the end I don't think any of it would've mattered. The Senators came out with something to proove and they proved it. We're not going to lay down and take it. Saturday's game should be interesting and I think Pittsburgh will bounce back but I think it would only take a first period push by Ottawa to really unnerve these kids. All-in-all I couldn't have expected much better in an opening game. Great jobs sens. Go deep!

We have only begun to fight

More things I would and wouldn't do with my Tiburon

Okay tomorrow will DEFINITELY be a hockey post so today another car post Why not!

Sunday I talked about 3 potential Tiburon upgrades I've seen around the weeb, so here are three more!

Front bumper aluminum grill: Don't know what it is about the grill effect but I have to say I like it. Unlike the body kits with big plastic mouldings and "ground effects" the addition of the grill adds a visual improvement to the front of the car while not drawing too much attention. I think if you saw it on a Tiburon you'd just assume it belongs there, which doesn't make people in Civics want to "drag" you on the "quarter mile." Which is good and bad. I would like to smoke your Civic.

Turbo Charger: More power! This effectively turns your Sporty Coupe in to a legitimate Sports Car and screams with balls. Not to mention you can tuck it all beneath your hood and have infinite power to destroy almost any vehicle on the road in acceleration. The problem? Other than the $3000 dollar price tag and the divorce there are a few issues with a Turbo charger. Maybe the fact that you'd likely have to change your engine headers, catback, exhaust, intake and clutch and add a torque dampener to even control the additional power at the crank so you don't drive into a orphanage the first time you hit the gas.

Lowering Springs: So you want to really carve those turns? You have to lower your center of gravity. Easiest way to do that is with lowering springs. And good news they don't cost that much? Bad news your ride probably won't be very smooth since you have less of a buffer between the ground and the frame of your car, because a sporty stance requires stiff suspension. Really the killer for me is when you have to take the long way around at the mall because you don't have the clearance to drive over a speed bump. The Tiburon is already startlingly low to the ground and I have a strict "Speedbumps be damned" policy that would not work with this.

I would've wrote longer but I have to poo

Flightless Birds of Fancy

I am quite surprised to find an American sports writer calling Senators VS Penguins in 5. I'm not even that confident. Of course if you read the comments attached to the article you'll see a huge army of Penguins fans quickly turn this around and say that the Penguins will destroy the Sens.

What is there reasoning for this defeat? The regular season series and the choke factor. I personally find it funny how these teams that rarely make the playoffs can say, "We're going to beat the Senators because they choke in the playoffs." Well while you're jerking yourselves in your 200 dollar Reebok Crosby jersey you might be forgetting a couple of things. The "Former Stanley Cup Champions" last year might've though they'd take out the Choking Senators... until they got spanked in 5. I'm not denying that we choke in some big games but the Penguins are missing a couple of big factors.

We don't care about you. That's right Pens fans, we've never been beaten by you. Leafs, Sabres, Devils.... we got some history. The Penguins, not so much. Not to mention our wet-behind-the-ears goalie. Not so wet any more. Oh ya and Crosby? We got Heatley, not too shabby either. I pretty much think we got you covered in every aspect. So you Penguin fans have yourself a great day tomorrow, go to bed with dreams of choking Senators, and a failing Emery in your head, but Wednesday you're coming to the capitol of Canada.... and we're going to play some fucking hockey!

CAN I HEAR A HOO-WAH!

What would I do and not do to my car?

Okay most of the young guys I know are already harassing me about "Tuning" my car. Am I going to tune my car? Hells no, she's under warranty. But if my wife can talk about 400 dollar dresses I can talk about performance upgrades. So lets talk Tiburon Upgrades! I might do this on and off and it gets a little meaty so lets limit it to three upgrades a post :)

Cold-Air Intake: The cold air intake is a pretty simple modification. Stock air intake pulls air into the fuel mix through a series of filters. More filtering equals more constriction of air flow. Taking colder air into the fuel mix also tricks your car into adding more fuel into the mix. More power, no obvious rice-boy look and you can pick one up for under 100 bucks. All good.

Angel Eyes: On one hand, it looks pretty cool. The inner coil of LED lights sits inside your regular headlights and your running lights now look like some cool glowy eyes. Sure it looks nice but A) It's expensive as hell ($480.00) and B) You're screaming rice-boy. A little too showy for the near-30 white boy in the sports coupe.




Racing Cat-back and Exhaust: Like a Cold-Air intake, higher flow is your friend and constriction takes away your power. However in regards to your exhaust less constrictive airflow means your normally quiet exhaust sounds a little more like a kazoo. The "Fart Can" effect. It generally amplifies your car's engine sounds. So on a 4 Cylinder Civic it sounds weak. On a V6 engine it might have a more-powerful rumble. Still Ghey as all heck! This is practically like an all-access pass to ricedom.

Of course even if it's a cool upgrade no vehicle upgrade would ever meet wife approval anyway :p

I have failed, but at least the Leafs might lose

Well, I finally fell off the rails. I could make the excuse of "Sick as a Dog" but I could've used that excuse a week ago. But anyway I made a good run at it. I did my two weeks and now I'm going to simply try to post often. No big glorious declarations, I'm just gonna post my ass off.

Anyway looks like your Ottawa Senators will be taking the hometown advantage away from those nasty penguins. Now we just gotta see a dominating destruction of Pittsburgh in the first round.

Marc-Andre Fleury is ranked 28th among goalies in the NHL, Emery is ranked 14th so goaltending goes to Ottawa. Pittsburgh has the 5th highest Powerplay in NHL, Ottawa 15th. Points for Pittsburgh. Ottawa has the 8th place Penalty Kill, Pittsburgh, 17th. Ottawa again.

Ottawa has 5 players with over 20 goals, Pittsburgh 5... we'll call it a draw.

Okay stats suck... we're going to kick their asses and Crosby is going to cry like a girl.

Go sens go golf leafs golf

Fine a Cliffhanger it is!

Well Thursday night's loss to Pittsburgh pretty much leaves us with one game to win hometown advantage against the Penguins. However there is still more pressure on the Penguins as they have to win their game on Saturday night, if they lose it doesn't matter what Ottawa does.

According to NHL.com, "The Bruins (35-40-6) have lost 10 of their last 11 games, including matching season-high five-game losing streaks. Boston, however, leads the season series with the Senators 4-3-0, including a 3-2 win in the last meeting March 27." Why we've had such difficulty against such a mediocre team I don't know, perhaps it was the whole trading Chara thing.

In the Pittsburgh camp, "Pittsburgh is 4-1-2 versus the Rangers this season, but lost 2-1 in the most recent matchup on March 19. New York is 13-2-4 in its last 19 games and clinched a playoff berth with a 3-1 win over Montreal on Thursday."

Sounds like Pittsburgh has the advantage on Saturday night but that will remain to be seen. A lot of my co-workers are thinking the Pens will take the Sens in the first round. I wholeheartedly argue this point stating that despite our less than stellar playoff performance we have a whole heck of a lot more than Pittsburgh. And this year not being in 1st place we don't have any pressure on us.

For the Leafs fans the playoffs start tonight, except it's a best of 1.

My Wife wears the blog pants in this family.

Wow in a mere fraction of the time it has taken me to get more than 10 hits a day my wife has managed to create a following. On her slow days Ma Petite Chou is pulling down 130 hits a day which I think is more like my monthly total. She's been linked to from a lot of the more popular fashion blogs out there and today she was added to the Fashion Blog List on Elle Magazine's website

I guess it goes to show you that having a focus on your blog (and working your butt off on it) can definitely pay dividends. All the same I find it hard to update every day when talking on dozens of topics I could only imagine if I had to narrow it down.

Either way I definitely have "Teh Envy"
In other news my voice is still gone so no one can hear me complain

Oh baby she's a-comin'

Well there you have it folks. Two games left for our beloved Senators 2007 Regular season. I think I can pretty much be quoted verbatim for saying, "I don't want Ottawa to finish in 1st place in their division, I don't want the added pressure." Well there we go I guess I get my wish. All the same I rather they had home ice advantage.

To do that they simply need to do one thing, beat Pittsburgh on Thursday. Pittsburgh are two points behind Ottawa in the standings so by beating Pittsburgh on Thursday Ottawa will widen the gap between them to 3 or 4 points, then even if Ottawa loses and Pittsburgh wins their last games Ottawa is safe. I still haven't called Rogers about getting a temporary HD box, but it doesn't look like such a package exists. Woe is me! Not having cable I don't even get TSN so my plans of hosting all the games here might fall through. I'll keep you posted.

By the by, I include some Leaf info in there too, cause a playoffs isn't a playoffs unless we put out those stinking Leafs!

Oops I left my voice at home

Damnit I knew I forgot something!

Well I was off all day yesterday due to illness but decided today I was going drag myself into the office come hell or highwater. There’s a long weekend coming up and I thought it’d be uber suspicious for me to be taking two days off sick during a 4 day work week. Actually when I woke up this morning I felt pretty good. I brushed my teeth, used a little mouthwash, popped a Strepsil and a couple of Tylenol Cold & Sinus. I felt a lot better than yesterday and thought I could face the day. The drive was pretty easy and my head was feeling clear so I thought I was finally out of the woods.

Then I tried to talk. Tried being the operative word. I tried to say “Good morning” to a coworker upon arrival in the office and it kind of came out like “Kroaknin.” I mustered a raspy “Morning” after a couple of attempts. It’s continued like that pretty much all morning so far my voice coming and going and breaking up in awkward honks and croaks. I’m glad I don’t feel as bad as yesterday but it still makes it really difficult to do my job. Best of all I have a customer meeting in the afternoon where I’ll have to talk for a solid hour. Looks like another early night tonight with some more Vicks Vaporub and soup.

Honk

I walked into the fires of hell, and had a great time

Post #14

Well I was at home sick today which kind of sucks but at least it gave me some quality time on the couch in my bath robe. This is time I probably should've spent lying in bed but instead I opted to sit on the couch in front of the LCD.

That's because the poor souls of Cryodiil were crying out to me. Crying out from beneath the flaming portals of Oblivion. Oblivion is a PC Game from Bethesa Softworks that has some seriously impressive lineage being the sequel to Morrowind a monster of a game in its own right.

Having faced an addiction to Morrowind a few years back I knew what to expect with Oblivion. In no time I had my silver haired, blue-eyed wood elf loaded up with a quiver of arrows and ready to take on the world. First thing you'll notice about this game is that it is gorgeous. It's the prettiest game I've ever played. Trekking across the land of Cryodiil is actually part of the enjoyment in Oblivion, at times I'll just stop and look at the flowers blowing in the breeze. That is of course until a screaming flaming portal to hell opens up in front of you and it gets nasty. The story isn't going revolutionize fantasy stories, the death of an empire, rise of an evil power, all of course to be unravelled by the player, the hero of the story.

So the game looks great, and the story is pretty cool, how does it play? Like butter! The AI is smarter than in Morrowind and my old trick of walking around a rock while pelting an enemy with arrows just doesn't fly any more. However there's nothing like picking off a goblin right between the eyes with an arrow and watch him get knocked over backwards and tumble down a hillside. The physics are well represented and the effects are beautiful. What can I say, love the game and hey it has expansions coming so if I can actually finish this quest (which I never did with Morrowind) I have even more content to look forward too. I recommend you check it out if you got a beast of a PC to run it. It's the game that makes systems cry.

Hey you don't get all that beautiful flowers-blowing-in-breeze for nothing

Under the Weather

Ugh. Being sick sucks, being sick on the weekend sucks more! Yesterday it was a slight tickel in the throat, a little bit of a cough, all right so far. The there was this morning, body aches, razor blade thoat, nasal congestion, the whole 9.

After spending pretty much the whole day on the couch feeling like crap I'm pretty sure I'm justified in calling in sick tomorrow. I wish I could feel better so I could actually enjoy said sick day. Methinks it's gonna be a whole lot of rest and liquids and not nearly enough videogames and loafing.

Anyway I'm too tired to type any more. You'll have to entertain yourself. Oooh go check out the hockey standings, and keep hoping the Senators will finish in at least 4th.

Ib all stubbed ub.