since i entered my thirties, birthdays have been less a joyful occasion of celebration and have been more of a countdown to my own mortality (i know i know... what a terrible attitude). however, this weekend my friends around the planet really made me appreciate them all and my good fortune by being available for arguably the best birthday i've ever had.

my company gives its employees their birthdays off from work, but i had a very important client meeting that had been scheduled for that day, and i felt compelled to attend i was very glad that i did though because i realized that i love what i do so much that i'm happy to be there even on my days off. dealing with the clients i do, solving the problems that i'm presented, and working with the people with whom i work - all of these factors make my work life incredibly enjoyable and i really can't imagine not doing this for a living - it's just where i want to be and that is an incredible gift in itself.

after work (yes - i spent pretty much the whole day at the office even though i wasn't working on work the whole time), a bunch of us went out for drinks at my favourite spot, alice fazooli's, after a few drinks, the main event of my birthday kicked off - radiohead was playing at my birthday party at the molson amphitheatre!!!!

a colleague at work had extra festival tickets for the rapidly-sold-out concert and since i'd never seen radiohead live before, i thought i should check it out. the concert was incredible - radiohead is one of the most imaginative, creative, f**ked-up bands ever and i'd always figured that there was no possible way that their live performance could recreate the mood and complexity of their recorded work. i was SO wrong. the real brilliance of their music - i see now - is that it is not all canned and contorted in a studio - but it's the music that they make as performers and artists live - it was simply awe-inspiring and mesmerizing. even more obliging was the fact that in spite of torrential downpours earlier in the day (turning the lawn where we were located in to a veritable mudpit), the rain stayed away while the concert was on which was a fantastic bonus. ironically enough, radiohead's new album is titled "in rainbows" and a huge rainbow blazed across the sky as if nature itself was to warm up the crowd!! too awesome!!! if you have the chance to go and see radiohead in concert - i recommend strongly that you sacrifice any possible cost to do so!  (extra birthday bonus #1 - go to the beer stand and have the girl there card you to check your age.  laugh out loud when she realizes that you are so far older than the minimum age that they are required to card you and then wonder if that girl is actually the girl with whom you are supposed to spend the rest of your life.  it can be very very rewarding - let me tell you.)

saturday, i took some time to do some errands and do some SHOPPING!!! as if the bank itself was celebrating my birthday, they raised my credit limit for the second time this year (this is extra birthday bonus #2) and i took the opportunity to get myself a spanking new 1terabyte hard drive (the geekiest of all possible gifts to oneself) and to buy a bunch of technical wear from lululemon! the real prize was a new cardboard scratchy ramp thing for the babies - i had one in calgary and i was astonished at how much they love it!!! i think that there might be a timelapse video that could come from that. in the evening, a bunch of friends joined me, and alice fazooli's once again, for drinks. it was great seeing old friends who i haven't seen for too long, especially since my trip to calgary, and work friends who i don't get to hang out with too often. we wrapped the evening moving to a party a good friend knew of in the king west club area and we enjoyed free drinks on one of the most millionaire-rooftop patios i've even been on. the cherry on top of the evening was a large chicken burrito from burrito boyz, and i head home to get ready for the third leg of the birthday trifecta!

sunday, i went to see my friend PYT at Canada's Wonderland! every time i go there (twice now), i am amazed at how much fun it is!!! i'm not talking about the little kiddie rides - they have some world-class roller-coaster action to which i am quickly becoming addicted! two times we went on canada's biggest new roller coaster, the behemoth. the first drop is simply incredible... you climb about 70m into the sky (you can see the ride from kilometers and kilometers away from the park) and then plummet at about 75 degrees nearly straight down to a ludicrous 125km speed that literally throws you into every other climb and turn like a slingshot! you can barely breathe from the air rushing into your face - but the speed pushes the air out of your lungs with a scream of excitement that is simply incomparable! i'm by no means a roller coaster aficionado - but i know that this was one of the best rides of my life and we were happy to queue up for an hour to take the thrilling three minute ride twice!

after this weekend, i am starting to wonder if i've lost my capacity for self-pity (extra birthday bonus #3)... i can scarcely believe how happy i am these days with the friends i have, with the way that i get to spend my time, and with the happiness that i'm finally reaping from my efforts over the past years. it might be time to throw myself into some more meaningful work to save the world now that i'm in such great shape! but before i do that, i want to thank everyone who did such a great job of reminding me that life can be very very full of fun, love and laughter!!!

- g

song of the day for adoring radiohead and their participation in your birthday festivities: there there, radiohead

the centrepiece of my week-off television-inspired vacation was to be a "what not to wear" inspired revamp of my wardrobe and overall presentment. while i didn't have any fabulous personal fashion consultants, nor did i have $5,000 to spend on a new wardrobe, i did have a will to pare down my closet and get a bit of a makeover, and it took over two weeks to bring it all together.

the first step involved whittling down the redundant and useless elements of my wardrobe. i've been living in t-shirts and baggy dress shirts too long and it was definitely time for them to go. all the fashion tragedies that i've been carrying with me since the 80s had been purged a couple of years ago, so the emotional trauma of parting with favourite patterned shirts or too-many-pleated slacks was dealt with long ago. now, the simple rule was if i hadn't worn something for a year, and didn't foresee myself wearing in the next year - out it went. and so, i amassed a considerable pile of shirts and t-shirts and a few pants that would never again be close to my skin. on a really positive note - none of those clothes were in terribly bad shape, so rather than having to throw out a lot of clothes, all of them made their way to clothing donations in support of cerebral palsy, which, i think, is a pretty decent outcome for some once-loved clothes.

the next step was to get some new clothes. as i said, i didn't spend two days and five grand scoping out clothes that would transform me as a man. i did go to mississauga though to get to some outlet stores. mexx was the most successful of these and i got a few shirts and some stylish shorts that made me look less like a college student and more like a guy with shoulders and a waist. good colours, sharp lines and a close fit keep me going back to mexx, and as i never seem to see anyone at clubs wearing the same thing that i am - so i think that it's a good fit for me - fashion-wise.

the final part of any good "what not to wear" episode is the hair and make-up. i was planning to do a spa day on my week off and maybe get a facial or something, but that didn't happen. after my vacation was over, i decided to crop the hair that i'd been trying to grow out since last winter. i thought the extra length would be counter-fashion and cool, but it hasn't been terribly successful for me, so i gave my hot stylist license to make me look good again, which she did, to my great joy.

sigh.

i'm glad that i've finally finished reporting on my five tv-based vacation adventures and can move on to more pressing matters like live as a mac in a pc-world, or the love of cats for all things cardboard. i need to shift the focus of my entries away from myself for my own personal well-being!!!

- g

i'm pretty proud of the fact that i don't drive much. i think that i've been to the $1.30/l gas pumps less than a handful of times this year. however, i recently realized that it's been almost two years since i've had an oil change and i was worried about the wear that i was putting on my 2003 honda civic's engine by putting off its regularly scheduled maintenance. besides, the "maintenance required" light on my dashboard was starting to bother me (after about 9 months) - so when i finally had a week off last week, i thought that it would be a good time to go and get my car serviced up.

one of the rationalizations for delaying its upkeep was that the honda dealership to which i take my car (in toronto) is way on the other side of downtown at centre honda, and that i would need spare time to drop it off and pick it up that i could barely afford while i was on the clock - on my vacation, i could hardly ignore the fact that i had the time to deal with this "to do" list item.  so, i finally took it in last week and also got a mandatory emissions testing. $500 later, i received confirmation of what i already knew - that my car was in tip-top shape, puts out barely detectable quantities of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide, and that it runs incredibly efficiently idling or revving.

i was so pleased with the results that i took civvie for a thorough detailing - which cost me a total of $4.00 at the local wand wash place at keele and st. clair. i also went to futreshop to look at new car stereos to which i could connect my new iPhod, but i couldn't be bothered to research the relative benefits of each. it turns out that i like my car just the way that it is, and when it's all paid off next month, i can start the process of properly japanimating it with neon lights and ridiculous racing components in earnest!!

- g

song of the day for being so much more by seeming to be so much less: viva la vide, coldplay

i've been living in my apartment for almost two years now and because it's an apartment and not a condo or a house, i've been content to treat it like a hotel room or somewhere that i would be able to leave in pretty much the same state as i found it. however, after realizing that it's been almost two years since i moved in, i've realized that there were a lot of things that i could do that would make living here more comfortable and homey.

i've had the same bathroom stuff for almost five years now, and the way i had things set up in my crowded little bathroom was inconvenient, disorganized, and not altogether pleasing. so one of the tv-inspired adventurees that i set for myself for this week was to make my bathroom a more comfortable and personal place to "spend my time". i always liked those shows where they didn't do anything structural or even wet a brush or added a sheet of wallpaper, but made a space more useful, inviting and attractive and i thought i could do the same with my apartment bath.

i went to solutions and the home outfitters to get some new stuff. i bought a couple of bins to double the amount of storage space in my bathroom cupboards (where all of my bathroom stuff was simply crammed into plastic bags and left there to pile up in a ridiculously inaccessible fashion) and i bought all new "espresso" coloured towels and clothes to provide a more neutral colour scheme than the sweetie ocean blue-green that i had had previously. i added an over-the-door set of hooks for towels so that i wouldn't have to screw anything into the walls, and i put up some picture frames with some of my artwork (now, when i stand at the toilet i get to look at the drawing i did of lara croft earlier this year - a very nice touch, if i do say so myself) and i even bought my very first cloth shower curtain which incorporates the browns, creams, and even the ocean blues of my former bathroom colour schemes, in a manly and sophisticated fashion. i also added some suction cup shower holders for soap and shampoo that will make cleaning the bathtub much easier and quicker, and keeps everything i need for showering at a suitable height.

i spent less than $300 on all of this - far less than it cost me to get my '03 honda civic tuned up and maintained this week - and i get to reap the benefits every time i step into the bathroom. the only thing that i have to be embarassed about is how long it took for me to decide to make these changes!

- g

ps.  i'm sorry that the photos are so crap - it's hard in a little bathroom to get a proper shot of the overall effect of the decor... of course, i need to ask myself how many people even bother to try :P