Of Molecular Turtles and Other Oddities

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Pollyanna says Hello to Ab Lincoln

I imagine everyone has forgotten about this blog which is well and good by me as I'm writing this for myself rather than anyone else. I find myself with a lot more time on my hands than typical and need to remind myself of a few things.

I tend to think that my life is somehow scripted and sometimes I find myself wondering how it all comes together so elegantly and with such poetry. Interestingly, I find that the rule of thumb for ethics, which I've heard is do nothing you would not be proud to see on the headline of of a newspaper is my way of life despite the challenges I face. Up until this point in my life I can say I have not done anything that I would hesitate to speak about. The value of the honesty with others and most importantly myself is a guiding principle. I intend to live by this standard as I do not have the capacity to be proud of the person I am if I did not. I could not say I am a good man if I did not. In short I would not be me, I would be lost.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Gez, the funny thing is when you really want to blog you never have the time. Right now I am working about 11.5 hours a day then on Monday and Tuesday class for three hours. The rest of my time is spent with a wonderful lady and doing assignments. Hopefully I will have time to blog about some things that have been on my mind lately. Hope all you out there are doing well. I look forward to reading blogs in December.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Ramblings of a Tired Mind

The time of year I look most forward to has arrived once again. No I’m not talking about the return of Los Cariñositos (The Spanish version of carebears) although they do have a new person doing the voice much less interesting than in the old days but let me know what you think..

Aside: In university I often watched the intro to of Los Cariñositos before going to school. I must say there are few better ways of starting a day.

What I am referring to is back country camping. This is one of the few things besides seeing the lovely Nikki that I really look forward to with all my soul. This sounds ridiculously silly but let’s look into the background of how this came to be.

A few years ago I was going out with a girl, much less wonderful than Nikki in oh so many ways. We had gone out for about 3 years and we usually saw each other at least once a day and when we didn’t we spoke on the phone endless

Note: I dislike speaking on the phone for more than 37.23 minutes a day to a single person.


Now at this time of year several years ago I realized something important, mainly that I didn’t want to marry this girl … ever. In retrospect I don’t think she really did anything wrong just little things like not realize how great I was which was why it was so hard to break up with her. After this I needed to disappear and think about things and my good friend Ruben came up with back country camping. (He’s a good fellow, although rather confused these days)

I won’t bother boring you with the details or more likely boring me since I already know them and am probably the only person that will read a post this long at a later date.

The great thing that I love about it is that I get to push myself to my limits. It makes you really realize how few things you need to be happy and gives you a true appreciation for everything. Also it teaches you self reliance, it’s just you and your coterie and the wilderness so you better be confident in yourself and your abilities. Another great thing is it really gives you time to think and reflect about everything with no distractions.

Note: It was at this time that I decided to never ever be with someone who I was not totally and utterly happy with. Also to never be with someone who does not totally appreciate me and does not treat me nicely (too bad it took so long to realize this)

Note: I have now found such a lady.

One of my favourite things about this yearly trip is I get to do it with my two best friends, as far as I’m concerned that’s pretty much all I need in terms of friends these days. Don’t get me wrong I have many people who I could have fun with but things wouldn’t be the same without Ruben and Nikki.

Note: I miss Nikki so much these days. I’m really looking forward to seeing her for 6 consecutive days. This is the best part of this years trip.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though some things may not be perfect like it may rain, there may be bugs, it could be cold I look forward to it because it lets me do the things that matter. Spent time with people I care about, think, push myself and use my wits.

I Returned Rejoice Rejoice

As you may or may not have noticed I disappeared from the world of blogging for a while. Thank you to CP and Nicole for the request for a return, that was super nice.

The short reason for me going AWOL was that it started to be more like a job than something fun. I felt like I had to do it on a specific day and had to have something interesting to say. While I am a wealth of information spewing it forth in a coherant manner can be difficult at times. Also there were points when I wanted to blog but thought I should save it for the end of the week.

After that break I now feel like I can once again dive in and have fun. I’ll update when I feel like it and not when I don’t. Hopefully you’ll find it interesting but I think I’ll be treating this mostly as a place to put my thoughts. Most people have a paper journal or something, as I did but most people also have a memory span of more than 3 seconds, as my poor gal pal Nikki can attest to. This means I have lost my journal yet again. Thank God for google and bookmarks or I would have forgotten this site.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

The Great Cabury Cream Egg Experiment Poll

Greetings and Salutations one and all. This is going to be a rather brief post, mostly for the sake that I would hate to go two entire weeks without posting. Things have been rather hectic and rushed of late, however, I should have time for a more relaxed and perhaps fun post next week.


In honour of the one year anniversary of me and blogging I will pay homage to one of my original posts. Yes you may have guessed it, the great Cadbury cream egg experiment. Please leave a comment with your idea of what I should attempt to make with cream eggs. There are a few restrictions 1) Egg’s can not be the sole or main ingredient i.e scrambled eggs. 2) It shouldn’t cause any damage to cookware. Other than that it’s up to you folks. If you’d like to supply a recipe all the better.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Step Away From The Animals

What a great response from all you folks in bloggy land. I have to thank you all for your support against the axis of stupidity. I promise you that we will win the war against idiocy and stupidity; as a matter of fact I’m doubling the amount of troops in this war at this very moment.

There were two things that I think I would like to talk about this week one is the goose terrorizing my company and the second is Shark Water. Since I don’t want to make this too long I’ll stick with shark water. Please avert your eyes and get a family member, neighborhood child, or trained pet with opposable thumbs to scroll down to the next section if you don’t want me to spoil the movie for you. Let me preface this by telling everyone that I love animals, particularly conserving them. I was in fact going to do my masters in salmon conservation or primate conservation but biotech pulled me away.

Now the brief story is this guy (Rob Stewart) has an unnatural some might say unholy obsession with sharks. In fact one of the opening scenes in the movie happens to be him underwater with a shark projecting out from his crotch and knee while he strokes it. Now I can understand the obsession and I understand why he presented things but it seemed to be filled with hype and not substance. At one point the movie shows he has a “brush with the ravages of “fleshing-eating disease”, I think he’s in Colombia. He keeps saying that there is this little red line creeping up his leg and such. I was hoping to see this little red line but it did not make an appearance, he also was having a jolly time in the hospital (I always thought flesh eating disease caused the limb to become swollen and red but help me out here S). Now let’s for a moment assume this was the case, the first thing I would do is get treated, probably hop on a plain for a developed country. But no our hero, decides he needs to stay because he loves sharks and if he leaves it might endanger his mission and he would rather lose his leg. Now how about we save the leg and come back to save sharks Rob! (His leg remains attached due to both him willing the disease away. I think it probably had more to do with the antibiotics myself)

My other point of irritation with this movie is the portrayal and information presented on sharks. He keeps saying sharks are perfect and that they have not changed at all in their existence. Both of these statements is wrong, different shark species have come and gone it’s their body structure that has remained unchanged. He also seems to have the assumption that sharks are his buddies and that they won’t hurt him because he’s lowered his heart rate showing he’s not scared. It’s really sad but this guy reminds me of “Grizzly Man”. This poor gentleman thought the bears were his frienda. He says they won’t hurt him and that if anyone else did this they would die in a documentary I recently watched. In the background of the shot is an arrow pointing to the spot that shows where a grizzly killed them. There are also factual inconsistencies that irritated me but I’ll stop to keep it brief.

Now for the interactive section of our show! If you’ve seen the movie tell me what you think and why. If you haven’t seen the movie are there any out there these days, fill me in. Lastly, what movies are you looking forward to? Myself there’s a documentary festival here in Toronto that I plan to attend and the movie I’m ashamed of looking forward to is Spiderman 3. Really who doesn’t think Spiderman is great!

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Of Morons and Other Oddities

It’s been a couple of long and hectic weeks hence the lack of a posts in the last week but I really would like to thank everyone for their birthday wishes. A few of you wanted to know how I essentially got by without a birth certificate and the short answer is that I filled out some forms, got other people to fill out forms, showed proof I was baptised in Canada and then got issued one.

Now I could (bore)regale you with stories of woe and peril from work but I thought I would (save you the boredom)hold you in suspense. Instead I will share an experience from my weekend. The most memorable part of the weekend had to be spending it with the Pie but not only because she’s fabulous, but because her roommate, Turdington, is a moron. You see, she had asked Pie if she could have a few people over for the evening since it was her birthday. Pie, being the gem that she is said okay and was even nice enough to say that a couple of people could stay over as long as they were not obnoxious. Pie, then went to work and I read and watched some T.V in her room. Her adorable little cat made it’s way out of the room and I decided to go get something to drink and waded through the crowd of about 15-20 people to find one of the them locking the cat in its cage and teasing/poking it. At this point I wanted to confront th individual but I thought it may make the Pie’s living situation worse than it would be upon her return. I then took the cat and spent the night holed up in her room.

The crowd decided to leave at some point to hit up a club which just so happened to be shortly before I went to pick up the Pie. Upon my emerging from the room the place was a total disaster, I cleaned up a little bit so that the Pie would not have to wade through peoples crap and went to pick her up. Upon our return the pie was upset due to the state of things but we still managed to spend some time together and catch up on the week’s events.

Fast forward to 3 a.m when Turdington stumbles in with her friend, boyfriend and 2 other (pricks)young males. They spend several minutes shouting and saying things like the Pie can go fuck herself and suck a dick. The reasons for this were and still remain unknown as we happened to be asleep and had not interacted with them. This was said by one of the (pricks) young males several times. My underestimate is approximately 50 times with Turdington doing little if anything to quite them down. When we think that perhaps they have quieted down the one prick young man starts pounding on the roommate’s door telling her b/f to “murder” her repeatedly. They later start pounding on the door asking about a cab that was supposed to come. The cab eventually comes and they leave at 4: 30 a.m, leaving the door open in the middle of the night in the process.

However, they returned at 6:45 a.m pounding at the door screaming why the f the door is locked. They continue this for a long period of time before the roommate decides to let them in. At one point the cat gets out of the room and the one (prick)young man yells kill it. This leads the pie to rush out and grab the cat and confine it again to the room. Later around 9 a.m the roommate runs into Pie and Pie tells Turdington that she’s not happy with the way things were and the one guy is an idiot. He the(prick)young man and they leave. I was forbidden from interacting with the intruders as it was thought that this might result in an escalation of matters (this was indeed a good idea).

So as you can imagine both myself and Pie are very tired. These events lead me to ask you folks some questions that might have interesting answers. Do you or your friends find yourself hurting or plotting the death of small animals when you get drunk? How do you act when your drunk, myself I tend to smile and laugh more but have never wanted to kill a cat. What can one do when their roommate brings home idiots? What is the worst thing you’ve done while drunk? Do you tend to spend time with people like this? At what age is one to old to have friends like that? When did murder become a synonym for sex? When they guy yelled out that he was going to kill the cat did that mean he was going to have sex with it or maybe just go to thirdbase? Why the heck do I say one so often?

On another note what the heck is with this stall in the bowling alley I went to yesterday? Could there possibly be a good reason to have both a stall and toilet beside one another? Perhaps it has something to do with male bonding.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Strange New World

I would really like to thank everyone for their happy birthday wishes. This year’s birthday was better than most except it was distinctly lacking in the Pea factor. Also I would like to give a special thank you to Ruben who was kind enough to take me to the Keg for dinner on the day itself. Another interesting outing was the day afterwards when my class mates were also nice enough to take me out for drinks, although I think they were secretly hoping that after enough shots I would self destruct. For those of you that were waiting for an update as to whether I got a chocolate cake my family got me a cappuccino cake, which I consider a victory as it’s somewhere in between chocolate and vanilla. Luckily Nikki, came through in a big way with not only a chocolate cake but with one covered with Cadbury mini eggs. I had a great weekend with her and can’t wait for my next one!


Now due to popular demand I will briefly go over my shady origins. It is my belief to this day, that I was either adopted or stolen from an affluent Jewish family. The evidence for this has been prevalent throughout my life.



Exhibit 1:
Most people feel as though they are very different from others in their family and this is also the case with me. This ranges from things like height, where I am taller than the other members in my family, to my interests. Strangely, almost everyone I meet thinks that I have a Jewish heritage rather than an Italian one. In fact at one point I went out with a Jewish girl and she had assumed that I was Jewish.

Exhibit 2:

As with most Italian families we have a very large one. Upon meeting me at a gathering I was told by many people that although they knew my parents had a daughter they had never heard of them having a son!

Exhibit 3:

In Italian families when your born you usually get something like a knitted plaque with your birthday written on it. I have several of these plaques however my date of birth ranges from 1980-1983

Exhibit 4:

There is a strange gap in my photo evolution. You see I mysteriously appear with my family in photos at the age of about 3 or 4.

Exhibit 5:

I do not have a birth certificate. When I questioned my family about this disturbing fact I was told they were not given one at the hospital when I was born.

The afore mentioned exhibits lead me to believe I was stolen from an affluent Jewish family. If I were adopted I would at least have a birth certificate. With that I throw it to you my readers given the evidence and my picture what do you think!