21/6/01-to the few that read this site, im still in the process of retweaking it.  when ive got to make a change on the title/side bars, ive gotta do it to 151 pages.  so in order to make the back/next buttons appear and in order to eliminate multiple advertisement bars, ive got to go through the code for all pages.  this gets time consuming, and for that reason, its taking a bit to tweak (hey, i racked my brains to get the unpolished product up, the polished product can take a bit longer)

its not been the most interesting  week.  again, mostly work's been going on.  i went out with jon and scott one night and we went to shoot pool and to dennys.  jon left for belize on monday so not much is doing around here otherwise.  saturday and monday were tough days at work because i was off by 20$ both days.  and in light of recent bank events, im more scared people would think i took it rather than scared of whatever they do to me insofar as my job goes, even if im only summer help.  but the last 3 days were perfect balances, so thats atleast somewhat redeeming.  the rest of the weekend was rather uninteresting like i said, we got randys one night and they messed up the order.  i went over a budget with my dad (looks like i might not be getting my guitar from the store until i get enough money to pay my dad, who's gonna get it).  but im extremely excited about the guitar.  jess went away on vacation this week, so work's been even more boring since i cant rag on her.  other than that, since im on this budget, i cant do as much (although im not sure bout that...)  i wish there was some cheap, non-boring way to fight boredom.  i started up the new mp3 of the week section, check that out.  bought the new blink-182 cd.  im gonna make an honest attempt to review that today or tomorrow, and last night i went to see swordfish with chris (3 1/2 stars), so i'm gonna review that now since i havent done a movie review in a long time.  actually most of my reviews ive been slacking on.  and then after that i'll get back to tweaking.  and margaret got a job at fleet so thats good for her...fellow banker.  oh yeah, and i heard for arts frosh this summer, it might be 2 booze cruises, 2 pubcrawls, 737, the scavenger hunt, and a day at the beach.  and since im group leading, should be as awesome if not better than last year.  ive been talking to christine from my floor when shes on msn, and thats cool, cause i still like her a bit, and she definitely reminds me of mcgill (possibly cause shes still there).  theres different people whose faces ive been missing out seeing, and hers is one of them. which brings me to the next thing: jon and scott are coming up labour day weekend.  which is gonna kick ass cause it'll be the triple birthday celebration, montreal will be beautiful, frosh will have ended so things will be a little less hectic even though school is starting.  new years would kick ass too, but not as many people will be on campus and snow will hamper me showing them around, but labour day weekend means more people will be on campus, the weather should be nice, we'll be still settling in the apartment, theres no pressure of classes yet, im psyched.  hey, its not been interesting,  why not have a hodgepodge of ideas...?  there was one more, but i forgot it.

ps. im convinced chuck pahlaniuk is the camus of the 90s.  im reading the newest novel, choke, and its amazingly like the myth of sisyphus.  if ever i had some comparative literature class where i was allowed to compare authors ideas over time, i'd do one on the two of these guys and mainstream existentialism...

"You gain power by pretending to be weak. By contrast, you make people feel so strong. You save people by letting them save you. All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog. People really need somebody they feel superior to. So stay downtrodden. People need somebody they can send a check at Christmas. So stay poor. 'Charity' isn't the right word, but its the first word that comes to mind.
...It's the martyrdom of Saint Me."
~Choke, Chuck Pahlaniuk (author of Fight Club)

14/6/01-well, the past couple of days have been rather boring.  mainly all ive been doing is updating this site.  i had some input from margaret, and some input from jeff wilhelm on what would help make a good website.  keeping in mind that im not the computing programmer that he and his php coded site are, mines definitely not as complex.  however, i tried to make it easy to use.  im hoping people will like it.  its hard to update stuff outside the text itself though, because anything i do on one page, i have to change on all 151 other pages.  i can just see how much im gonna have to do when i take off the mcgill countdown timer.  oh well.  my goal this time around was to get people coming not just to the reflections part of the site, but other parts as well.  someone hit my israel page today and it technically wasnt even open.  however, i also added keywords so some search engines might be able to pick it up.  pretty much, this site was created off a more complex and graphic framework of the ranetides.com page.  from there it was editing everything to be my own, create my own graphcs, etc.  in the end, all that looks the same is the left bar and top.

work has been okay.  the past couple days were really busy and ive managed to only be off by a penny in four days.  allison lee's been working with us the past couple days, its been cool to have another person i know working there at first federal.  luckily, the merger doesnt take place til after labour day, so by then i'll be long gone and it wont affect me as much.  but im getting to see some of the effects of big business.  all kinds of businesses that ive done, i must say ive had a few different experiences than workin retail all my jobs, and i guess its a good thing to have different types of character building jobs.  banking aint no weedwacking.

outside of work, ive just been doing this.  no one else is really around to do stuff with.  nicole and sarah dont talk to me anymore, andrew and i have conflicting work schedules so we barely get a chance to talk (although i never see him when im in at cvs), jules is at school but we hang out once in a while, margaret and i talk and i hang with her once in a while, jon and scott and i hang once in a while, but they havent seemed to be around (although, jon invited me to luis pulau, that evangelist that was in hartford this past weekend). i talk to erin once in a while, sarah d seems to be working also...angela and i maybe would do something sometime.  i still gotta do someting with nikhil also.  the problem is, i dont know his number and its unlisted :P.  other than that, not much to do.

i think i know the songs im gonna do for open mic night, probably 3 of them if i even get the time, now that the site is done, i can practice more.  hopefully i can get my new guitar this weekend, the other electric is still broken.  other than that, not much else is honestly doing.  i got a haircut yesterday and shaved my goatee off last night.  basically i think my face looks bad without facial hair cause it makes my mouth look tiny in proportion to my head.  so now myy mouth is tiny.  who knows.  i have no idea what i'll do this weekend, probably lawn mowing or fertilizing or something.  i gotta work saturday am, so that'll suck, but its 4 hrs overtime pay.  and tomorrow night maybe jon an scott and i will do something because  jon's leaving for belize soon.  bored.  work tomorrow.  more later...

9/6/01-AVS WIN THE CUP IN GAME 7!!! after 22 years, ray bourque finally got a chance to raise the stanley cup tonight,  probably one of the hardest championships to win, and after so long, the time finally came.  now the question asked over the next few weeks will be if this was the last season of the legendary defenceman.  now i know theres people out there who will think i'm a fairweather fan because i want an avs jersey, etc.  but the fact of the matter is, the avs became my second team ever since patrick roy left the canadians for the avalanche.  ok, so there's some traitorship in that move, but part of the reason i started following the canadians in kindergarden was because of patrick roy and chris frechette.  so his move was only natural to follow the avs also.  besides, ive been wearing my avs winter jacket since freshman high school year and ive wanted an avs jersey for a few years now, i think i'll get an away one.

yesterday was a 9.25 hr work day, but it went by pretty decently cause friday is a busy day.  no one out of the usual that was there at the bank, some people i knew.  my dad's proud that his son's becoming a public figure.  i was at the dance recital today and some people whom i've seen at the bank have said hi to me.  the other weird thing is thinking about some random person one day, and then seeing them the next.  like yesterday, i was riding down ellington road and thinking about mark tinsley, that homey from gym class in sophomore year who moved to e. hartford.  and all of a sudden, he shows up in the bank this morning. anyways.  so friday was work. apparently it was also the senior reception and all that other crap, and a bunch of seniors were making withdrawls from the bank for it.  interesting how much has changed in a year.  how many fewer people back home care.  how little i connect with more people back home.  i think if i didnt read it off andrews web site, i probably wouldnt have even known that this weekend even was reception.  i dunno, i guess its cause im bored and ive got nothing to do that i care so much about whats going on back here, yet too many southies abandoned me early on and each instance, each conversation is another mental note i take.  so sad for such "open minded" people to be more closed minded than they'd like to think of themselves.  interestingly, i was looking at elises yearbook and reading some of the senior quotes and i noticed that nearly everyone was mentioned at some point but me.  like for example, some people completely forgot about their freshman year as if it never happened.  chalk it up to people to quickly forget about you.  the true attribute of finding out who your friends really are.  the people i do stuff with here, i know arent about to drop me, and i have fun with them.  the rest-dont seem to know me...      and people wonder just why im anxious to get back to montreal, when most people want to enjoy their summer home.  nope, home is changed, people are changed, and i'd rather be back in montreal where the people are nicer.  and im always looking for people to show around the city.

got home from work just in time to run some kraft dinner in the nuker and pick up julian at the mall.  then it was off to powder fuckin hollow for the rane birthday bash.  traffic going up was miserable due to construction on the highway, but luckily we didnt miss any rane.  and on a side note---it was one year ago on this day, june 9, 2000, that rane released their "second" album, camelopardalis.  they celebrated today with an anniversary gig at mercury lounge in nyc.  amazing how far they've also come in their musical styles with about 5 new songs since.  wouldnt be surprised if 2002 yields another album.

opening for rane was some hard rock band, who tried too hard to be like godsmack or something. personally, i didnt like them too much, and then some guy told us they were gonna start a mosh pit and wanted us to join, but me and my friend julian declined. jules is on the list, but he doesnt really post. after what seemed like forever, the rock band got off and some girl started singing for a while. she wasnt bad, but whenever you wanna see someone else, you want the other people to get off the stage already. and being there to see rane, i wanted it over with. 

finally rane hit about 950. they opened with where we come from, which wasnt too bad, and then blindness. and blindness had the extended lyrics. after that, they were just taking requests all night. so they went into NES and from NES, did a short percussion jam into color. next up was a powerful fullness, which was awesome to hear. they did apple next, although they didnt carry the jam straight through from apple so it wasnt as cool, but the beginning of live apple has always been a fave for me, so i was glad they did that. following apple was hazelnut, which was 23 min long and the first part was dedicated to the rane crew. the second part where kurt does marimbas was dedicated to rick. and there was a long percussive jam in the middle and so anyone was invited up to beat tams, but only alexis, her sister and some other girl went up and danced. aprils uhart was probably one of my favourite hazelnuts, but this one was up there. 

gemini was after hazelnut and was really powerful, extending the jam into a cover of the beatles "dear prudence" and a minute of u2's "where the streets have no name" before finishing the final chorus of the song. next was bownicity, which is one of julian's favourites and he didnt get to hear it in probably a year, so he was excited. personally, i'm digging the jan 2001 penuches version, but this wasnt too bad, going straight into castles, with the shortened beginning. somewhere in the middle of castles, they started to cover the black crowes' "good friday" and led right back to castles. a rather good jam. then was at war with the moon, a new live fave of mine, particularly since my school answering machine had the part of the song thats about 6:50 into it as the background. center was next and was great as usual. by time center was over, it was already 1206am, and you could tell the crowd was smaller and more tired, so rane closed with two more. 

first was broca's aphasia, which has been making a comeback as of late. this was my third time hearing it live in a week. it it was neat cause everyone else thought it was new or something but we already knew it. i think i was more into it last night then i even was at the starstruck taping. really powerful, really emotional, and it's gonna be awesome to hear, but you know they're not gonna let it be taped, as evident by the dact that jesse wasnt there to tape it. when everyone sees it on tv, they're gonna be floored. 

lastly as promised, kurt did vocals for shocka in tha hottub, which got cut short on time because it was already 1219am. roughly 2 1/2 hrs, straight through, it was excellent. the tough thing was, every rane show is great, i dont know where to rate this show. but definitely, broca's made it worth the while.

dropped julian off, came home, showered and crashed.  woke up early this morning and went to my first working saturday.  since its summer, i'm basically working all saturdays, but it counts as 4 hrs overtime, so thats an extra 96$ to my paycheck.  i cant complain, money is always useful for habs games, expos games, bars, cds, all that other crap i spend too much money on at school.  came home at noon time after a short work day (bank open from 9-noon on saturdays), and so i just bummed around and read another chapter in choke.  then i took elise to strawberryfest to get some shortcake since lincoln streeter gave the bank some free tickets.  after that was the stupid dance recital at EH middle school for bonnie hayes.  i hate going to it, its boring, the songs are always the same, the dances are always the same, yada yada.  if my sister didnt get a 10 year trophy, i would have rather stayed home.   and so after the recital was the hockey game and some sun sun chinese food.  tomorrow is mowing the lawn in the morning/pm and then relaxing the rest of the day.  or lets put it this way, i better be chilling and doing something relaxing after a 44 hr work week of standing on my feet for the 44 hrs, doing 600k$ of banking a week...

7/6/01-saturday night, i went out to dinner with uncle frank and cousin adam, who were in til sunday morning, so we went to this place in southington called brix.  food wasnt too bad.  it was the first time i saw my grandparents since i left, but not much happened there.  the only thing was that i learned theres a difference between graduating from law school and being a lawyer.  apparently, you can graduate from law school and not be a lawyer, and cousin adam says not to be a lawyer because they're so inundated with work that theres no fun.  got home late and couldnt really do anything.

sunday was basically waking up late and not getting to the rane space til it was almost time for them to go.  so i didnt get to jam with the band.  which was a real disappointment because i brought my guitar and they already had everything packed up.  maybe another time.  so i left with them and rode in stoddard's passat with alan, trav, and trav's girlfriend, clarissa.  we got there and helped them get stuff out of the truck and what not. on not going to this one, i think lars shit himself.  twice.  made it to starstruck in plainville, which was this cheap karaoke bar.  dan and i said upon driving home that this tv show, life as you know it, wins the lame award of the year so far.  we just came to see the band and they roped us into being their audience.  it was completely no budget...

basically the rane set went something like this. they had to do a soundcheck, so they played at war.  really good, although
bowmans levels needed to be turned up a little.  thats why its called soundcheck.  then they needed more levels, so they kicked into the outro of kyte.  after doing the jam for a while, alan, then dan, and then kurt starts singing.  and kurt with his donnie brasco glasses thinks he's james brown and does the "shocka in the hottub" song.  so then he decides to improvise and asks for a topic.  now i had seen this guy with a mullet leave to go to the bathroom, so i yell out "mullet!" so he starts singing about how he loves bitches with mullets and then the guy with the mullet walks in.  hilarious.  and alan was throwing ranks at the comedian, who thought he was funny.  after the song, they played the single color to fill some time, and it wasnt anything too out of the ordinary, but another song in the list.  one of my new faves mainly because of the drumming, although no one wants to give me the lyrics.

then for the biggest surprise to some, although my prediction rode that they'd play this song, but they ended up playing broca's aphasia, taking it out of the archives and bringing it back to life.  i was sorry there wasnt so many people there to see it cause it was AWESOME.  not only did they play it once for the taping of the band, but they had to play it twice for the taping of the audience.  i tried calling lars, but i couldnt get through for some reason and missed the beginning of the first time they played it, but it was phenomenal, and definitely the marimbas were a better touch to the album.  AWESOME. 

and after the taping the guys started playing the kink's "you really got me" but cut it short cause they "hadnt learned the rest." all in all, lawki was a disappointment, but the band definitely didnt disappoint, and in some respects, seeing broca's live was better than going to the yankees game instead.  kudos to the guys for doing more than just one song.  and im gonna be on TELEVISION!!!!  no red dress, no psycho electric shock therapy, no diet pills with pep...just me and rane on the TELEVISION!!! 130 am, sunday on WB.  and we're gonna digitize it, put it on the net, and send it to ranetides.com.

monday, i went over to jons and sarah d, julia, and scott and i watched the yankees hose the redsox 7-6.  it was a pretty good game.  the guitar is still on layaway, although the rheostat on my present electric is busted and needs to be fixed so i'm out of an electric.  and i made a mistake.  open mic night is tues, july 17.  hopefully ill be doing some rane covers and originals i'll have to write.  other than that, its just been work and painting dena's bathroom.  and today, i bought the new chuck pahlaniuk book, choke.  looks good.  i read his first books, fight club and survivor, and own the third book, invisible monsters, but invisible monsters i have trouble getting into.  other than that, thats it.  stopped in cvs a few times but no one was there.  stopped in olee's a few times, caught up with derek sendrak who's going to montreal today.  allison lee started on the teller line this week, so we're adding to the younger tellers.  she's still pretty good looking...a woman came in to the bank today wearing a RED and WHITE mcgill shirt, so i was all excited cause other than mora judd and her mother, i wouldnt expect to see anyone in south windsor wearing a mcgill shirt.  let alone, red and white ones are hard to go by, even in montreal.  and jess from work might meet me and julian at powder hollow for the rane birthday bash tomorrow night.  should be a good concert.  hopefully they'll play broca's again. no one elsd wants t go to the concert tomorrow.  i reassess where i was at this point last year and where i am now and its completely different.  im friends with a lot less people now, for foolish reasons on their parts and stronger with the rest of them.  so i do more things with fewer people.  tomorrow night is senior reception.  interesting how many people are going tomorrow who went last year.  and who's doing what.  the more things "change," the more things stay the same.  so essentially its me and jules to powder hollow cause not only will no one want to go, but no one can go.  funny how life is.  i'll just go read some chuck pahlaniuk.

2/6/01-im getting worse and worse at writing.  lazier and lazier.  and yet shorter and shorter cause im just running down stuff since there's nothing really political right now that i have to express on.  apparently, nick is pretty settled in the apartment even though the workers still havent finished a lot of stuff.  i just called and the answering machine is finally working.  so thats good cause i'm getting more and more anxious to leave and go back up north.

last friday was work and then margaret and i were gonna go to see renata at the equator with scott.  problem was, when we got there, the equator was closed for memorial day weekend.  go figure, june 1 and may 25 arent the same day.  so instead, we were gonna go play lazer tag somewhere.  i thought there was one in windsor, so we took 291 over and  got off, took a left and kept driving, eventually ending in hartford.  so we parked the car in a lot in hartford and got out started walking around.  and walked around in circles a lot.  we were hoping to go to a club or something, but go figure, even hartford has nothing to do at night.  josh farr was working at the brickyard and he said he'd have let us in if the owners werent there that night, polly estas was 21+ also, and the rest of hartford was bars and whatnot.  instead then, we went to xantos and got some coffees and smores and then i dropped margaret off and we got jon and went to bumpers for some pool.  only jon and i played that foosball hockey game and he beat me 2-1 until i had to go home.

saturday morning, my parents left early to go to florida for a wedding,so it was just elise and me.  so we didnt do much other than she went to the mall, i picked her up, we went to guitar center to price guitars, went to mcdonalds to get food, went to the video store to get the whole nine yards (filmed mostly in westmount) and x-men and then picked up angela, who's trying to get over a breakup with her boyfriend.  go figure, i ask her out 20 times and she finally asks me out when she breaks up with her boyfriend...so the 3 of us watched beverly hills ninja and then the whole nine yards and then i drove her home.

sunday was a do nothing day although i helped margaret scan pictures and create a powerpoint presentation for her senior project on the art of chinese tailoring.  then, margaret, elise, and i went to see shrek.  good movie, my initial review is 4/5 stars.  i dont know if i'm gonna actually throw one up on my site, because i do that kind of stuff when there's something else to be done.  and i've got nothing to do and i'm lazy so i prolly wont do it.  in addition, i bought tool's new cd, lateralus, but that i have to keep, so i can review that album at another time.  after the movie, we dropped margaret off and went to bennigans for dinner cause my mom had a coupon for us.  so we had some brother-sisterly bonding and then came home, and my parents came back about an hour later.

monday was doing nothing also, in fact, so was most of the rest of the week.  again, work was work and ive been seeing some people i know here and there.  i think allison lee starts as a teller next week, so it'll be real cool cause margaret soucy also works there with me, and donna passed her certified teller test yesterday (though shes certified to be about a good 35-40 years older than me, so i'm not bothered by that one :i )  one day jon and scott came over and we watched the voyager premiere although i was so tired that i was falling asleep.  and thursday was game 3 of the stanley cup finals and the avs won it 3-1.  so they've got a 2-1 lead in the series, which is good because they're my second team behind the canadians.  and its not a fairweather thing, ive had my avs winter jacket for 4 years now.  ive been an avs fan since patrick roy went over there because hes one of my favourite goalies and he used to play for the habs.

friday was an extremely busy at the bank.  not only was it friday, but it was the first of the month also, social security check day.  193k$ of banking in 241 transactions.  i sat down for basically lunch, that was it.  busy busy day.  so then my cousins from rochester are moving into a house in windsor as dena does her internship in some new britian hospital and barry does his residency at bay path in springfield.  so we finally got some more cousins in the state.  so dena was here for the past 2 nights to close on the house yesterday and they're doing some moving today.  so i came home and she had dinner with us.  not long after that, i went and picked up margaret and jon and we went to the real renata concert at the equator.  really good show with a few songs that'll be off their new ep that they're recording in the next 2 weeks.  but from she walked with kings, they played "blue and white," "alicia," "february," and "60."  and from the live mp3s on their site, they did both "butterflies" and "of these things."  really good show although still not the same as rane.  i remember the first time i saw them was the first time i'd ever gone to the equator 2 years ago, they opened for rane and i went with margaret.  listening to them live was really nostalgic of mcgill because i often listened to their album on the way to class.  two funny things.  the first was there was this guy that looked exactly like joey fatone of nsync.  so during adios pantalones' set, he's so drunk from some booze he brought in that hes going nuts and almost no ones there.  the other thing was that renata's lead singer, kurt henneberry starts looking like he thinks hes bono from u2.  hes got similar glasses, he dances with his guitar, he holds the mic and uses hand gestures like bono...what comes next?  he covers u2's "walk on."  so adios pantalones, one of the big hartford advocate groove bands from last years grand band slam comes on next and surprisingly no ones there really.  and ive heard of them through the local music scene, so i wanted to atleast hear them.  not too bad, a tenor and bass sax, a trombone, bass, lead, and drums, not too bad.  we only stayed through 3 songs but one of them was a cover of soul coughing's super bon bon.  holy shit it was phenomenal.  its a pretty complex song, but they got everything from the bass, to the extra cymbals, to the correct feedback of the guitar...excellent.  we then left and went to drop margaret off and then pick scott up, go to dennys, and come home round 2.

today was the day we were gonna go to the yankees game but we didnt wanna chance the weather so we punted late last night.  instead i went to elises piano recital with the piano teacher i had since 8th grade.  not bad.  after the recital, i went to lasalle music to price their les pauls and ended up putting a 20$ deposit on my black one of these to have them put it on layaway.  sorta got yelled at afterwards for deficit spending, but 479$ is a lot cheaper than 579$  so hopefully i'll be able to pay the rest of it in full by the end of my month's layaway so that i can use it for when i play at open mic night on tuesday, july 16, at the equator club.

Past reflections: