Overseas adventure

Hey all, long time no talk :)

I had all the best of intentions of letting everyone know last week, but got too wrapped up in all the prep work to manage a post. Sorry, about that. But the good news is that I've just returned from a fun filled super exciting vacation abroad to England. Yup it may have been short, only 5 days, but it was sweet. I've never been to England before, and I have to admit, I loved it. Officially Erica and I were there for the wedding of her cousin Iain, which was out in Gillingham, Kent (about an hour outside of London) but we also got to spend an all too short 3 days in London.

It was really a great time, I loved London cause there was just so much going on. So much cool history everywhere, and just a great atmosphere. It reminded me of some of the best parts of New York. Sure there were some weird things, like the fact that everyone seems really unhealthy, eating crap food, and drinking non stop, but just getting to finally see all the places I recognize from Doctor Who made it all worthwhile.

I'm just getting back to a regular sleep schedule, and finally starting to be caught up on day to day, wedding, and work stuff so hopefully I should be getting back to posting on all sorts of regular, fun stuff again very soon. Until then, stay cool...

Yo, I'm back

Do you ever feel like all the old people on the plane just suck up the moisture. I'm so dried out. Planes are gross. totally make me feel like I'm getting sick. Gotta remember it's all in my head, persevere.

Erica and I got back yesterday around midday. We had a long time getting home, with troubles both mechanically, and with the dreaded border patrol. US customs is for chumps. I mean seriously look at the Canadian customs versus US customs. The guys who work at Canadian customs are young, friendly kids, often times its a summer job away from college. They are happy that you're coming to the great white north and treat you with the civility and courtesy of a guest. Oh they are still professional, but they don't carry guns, and they manage to do their job while still maintaining a positive image of Canada. Compare that to the US guards and its a whole other issue. Granted the people that work at the airports are slightly better than the ones at overland border crossings, but generally speaking US border patrol scares the heck out of me.They're gruff, armed, and seem pissed off just being there. It's a career of dealing with crap and they hate every minute of it. Did you known that because of forced quotas the most common people pulled aside at the airport checkout line are people of mid-eastern decent? well maybe that's not so surprising, but the second most pulled aside group is young white women. Why exactly? do they look dangerous? No, actually they are pulled aside second most because the border patrol has to meet their quota of (random) searches and knows that young white women will generally not give them any trouble. Very disturbing...

Ok, sorry for the rant. I've just woken up and am a little distracted / asleep still. Thanks to all the people who bought my stuff on eBay, it seemed to be for the most part a success :) I sold over half of the lots I put up and made, after all the shipping, and ebay/paypal fees (I think), around $240. That would've been more but I accidentally screwed up on the listed shipping costs, so some people literally got away with a steal. D'Oh! my fault though, good for them for noticing the mistake I guess. I'll probably re-list 2 or 3 of the lots that didn't sell, or maybe rearrange them to make a more attractive collection. I suppose my final resort is trying to sell them at work too. Which would probably work, only I would definitely lose money on it. As of now my plans for the money go about as far as picking up the Robotech Protoculture Collection, and a few more trades.

I'd better go get myself together for the day, its New Years Eve tonight. Hooray! We've got plans to go over to our friend Miriam and Florian's house for a small gathering, should be fun. I'm sure I'll be back with more later, I had a really good time in Toronto, got to hang with Erica's family, even had a bonding moment or two with her father. Seriously! and I got to catch up with my buddys Bernard, and Lisa. Good times all around. Ok, I'm off to shower lates.

buy my stuff... please

Hey everyone,

So I'm in Toronto now. Well, not exactly Toronto, but Caledon area, and as expected it's very nice. Unfortunately though, they lost our luggage in Chicago with all the Christmas hullabaloo at the airport, so we have no presents and are stuck wearing the same clothes until we get them back :( Thankfully that should be either tonight or tomorrow, and they're even going to deliver it to the house.

I did get into the city today and saw Bernard which was great.

What I really wanted to let you all know though, is that my items on eBay have finally gone on sale. I'm selling something like 430 comic books in 19 different lots (of 20-40 books a piece). I'm selling them cheap, so if you or someone you know might want some comics, please go check out my eBay Sellers Page for more info.

Thanks all.... happy holidays :)

A land far far away...

Tomorrow I'm heading out on the big Christmas trip. Off to Toronto to spend the holidays with Erica's family. It should be a really fun time. Family time is always good, maybe a bit stressful, but still good :)

So with that said, I probably wont be doing any serious updating here until I get back on the 30th. Usually the pop culture news is pretty slow this upcoming week anyhow, but I sure do wish I could see that Fantastic Four trailer clearly... Ah well, it'll be here when I get back.

So I hope you all have some fun plans for next week, and that all your holiday wishes come true. If you're looking for something fun, and festive to do online, check out this page for links to 101 Christmas videos. It's all there, from It's a Wonderful Life, to The Grinch, Frosty, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the Star Wars Holiday Special. Enjoy 'em while there here. Ok, I better go now, gotta finish packing. Lotsa love people. Peace out.

ps - yes Bernard, it's a personal post. deal.

A Trip to Maui

Well I got back from Maui yesterday and what can I say but wow. Seriously this was a great trip. We left last Thursday morning, and returned on the redeye Monday night. Thankfully no work yesterday, so I had some recovery time. And I needed it, this was an action packed trip. Fun in the sun was had by all.

There were seven of us on the trip, myself, Erica, Jan, Cecile, Olivia, and Erica's brother John and his girlfriend Jacqueline who flew in from Toronto. All of us San Francisco people had a condo right on the beach in Kihei on the South Western side of Maui. A good place with thankfully a washer dryer, a kitchen, and a balcony. I have to say even the beach right by our place was really just beautiful. Crystal blue water, golden sand, and good waves. But we did so much more than just hang out on the beach.

I've only ever been to the big island of Hawaii before, which was fun, but really big and seemed a bit slower paced than Maui. This island seems just perfect for someone like me, who doesn't want to hang out at a resort but actually try to do some things. Yea I was still pretty damn touristy, but I feel good about actually getting out and doing activities, as opposed to just lying around. Sure there was good quality beach time. In fact the boogie boarding at Napili Beach in West Maui was some of the best in my life. But we really made an effort to use our time well and see as much as we could.

That started on Friday really. Thursday night after we got in, we mostly just chilled, got our car and condo sorted then spent sunset in the surf and had a really good dinner. On Friday though we went out early and drove the infamous road to Hana. Basically its a stretch of highway around 30 miles long from which there are like 50 different stops you can make. Mostly to beautiful waterfalls, and hikes, but also to tide pools, or beachfront. I saw at least 9 solid waterfalls, and went swimming in every one. Including the one where I accidentally took Erica's new digital camera in with me. That wasn't really so good for the camera :( But thankfully other people were around and most everyone had camera's so give it a week or two and I'll get the rest of the pics from the trip. The SD card was ok at least so I saved the pictures I'd already taken. Below is a pic of the waterfall in question. Very inviting...

Anyhow, The road to Hana was a great way to start the trip, even thought there was just too much to see so we couldn't stop everywhere we wanted. I actually felt that way about most of my vacation. There was too much to see and do and too little time. What I did get to was great, but I could definitely have spent another two or three weeks there just doing activities and seeing sights before I'd want to stop and rest on a beach full time...

Case in point on Saturday we went for a sunrise bike ride from the almost top of the Haleakala volcano. It was, as expected, beautiful. Even though we had to get up at 4 in the morning. After that we raced off to some special beach for the afternoon, and then back to Kihei for dinner and drinking. I'm not going to go on and describe everything we did here, because well... I'm just not, it'd be way too long; but rest assured I loved it all. Some of the highlights: we went for amazing hikes through the rainforest, ate fantastic food pretty much all the time (including spam musubi), went boogie boarding and swimming a lot, drank and ate like kings, and went snorkeling on the reef out by the Molokini crater.

The snorkeling was maybe my favorite thing because there was just so much to see. There were fish everywhere, and we had a good tour on the boat. We even saw some sea turtles, which was just great! But really mostly I enjoyed spending time with good friends just having some solid fun. I may have gotten myself a bit sunburnt too; but it was worth it.

Obviously I'd definitely recommend Maui as a great place to go. I also would really recommend the Maui Revealed guidebook. It was absolutely fantastic. We literally would look up the same listings for activities, or beaches, or whatever in the Fodors, and the Lonely Planet; and Maui Revealed was consistently the best.

So I guess that's about all on Maui for now. I'm sure I'll mention it a bit more in depth on my podcast tonight, if anyone's interested. For now I'd better go catch up on all the fun and excitement in the world of internet that I missed. later all.

A little Transformers, and a lot of Nebraska...

Aaaahh!… it'’s a mystery worthy of Scooby and the gang!

Just kidding it's only me; Geoff. If you found me today through the mystery blog of the day over at A Yoga Coffee Outlook, I thank you for giving my little blog a look. If you look around you'll probably see that I'm pretty darn geeky... at least thats my impression upon first glance. But I think it might be more aptly be that I'm just geek cool. Right? hehe... yeah. Ok, so the fact that the most popular topic for my blog has been the new Transformers movie, admittedly might not be that super kewl, but hey am I blogging to make friends and influence people?! heck no! I do it for the kids... it's all for them.

Seriously though, can you really say you're not impressed with this fantastic new look at Optimus Prime? Really that's just cool. It's great the studio is on top of things. ie: as soon as the picture leaked they just said screw it and gave out high res versions officially.. Nice eh?

Prime back - Prime face

And honestly, I am very excited to see these guys hit the big screen. So what else has been going on with me lately, and/or who the heck am I? Well, I spent Labor Day in the warm embrace of America's heartland. That's right folks, Nebraska, effectively a state of grace.

I went for a family reunion. "But Geoff!" you shout, "you're from CANADA. There ain't nothin American bout you." Well that is where you'd be wrong. Both my parents are American, and I hold dual citizenship. Which is of course how I'm able to live so freely in this home of the brave. Credentials go a long way. Anywho, so I have these relatives out in Nebraska, not close relatives, but relativeses nonetheless. In fact, I'd never actually met any of these people before in my life. This was the Buel family reunion, and being a Chapman, I was thrice removed from the mix. That of course didn't stop my mother from convincing me and Erica to head out to Nebraska for the weekend to meet my second and third cousins, and I have to say that I was really glad I did. Travis is my second cousin, maybe 8 months older than me, and was from what I can tell the instrumental person in collecting all of these disparate relatives together. I was impressed that he managed to get everyone there too. Even though he said he had some troubles with the more local people, he pulled off a group of around 40 or so people. Here's a picture of Travis and me. I'll maybe try to put some of these up into a flickr group if anyone is interested.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn in downtown Lincoln which was fine overall. I'm not a super big fan of Holiday Inns, but this one was ok. For the record, my most favorite hotel ever is in fact a Holiday Inn; it's the now shut down (i believe unless this is it) Holidome in Brussels where I went when I was 8. Anywho, Lincoln is a interesting town, and when I say interesting I mean boring. It may be the state capitol, but the only thing it seemed to have going for it was the university. At around 200,000 people it is pretty much a university town. And since Nebraska has absolutely no professional sports teams, college football reigns supreme. Enter the Cornhuskers. Due to some weird fortune I was in Lincoln the day of the Cornhuskers first game of the season. An important but apparently easy game which they won no problem. Since I don't really care for football I can't tell you who it was against or anything, but I think like everyone was at the game. The waitress at restaurantnt said that on game days, it goes Omaha, Lincoln, and then the football stadium as the most populated places in Nebraska. That night Travis took me and some of my other cousins out on the town to a bar. It was pretty intensely full of football crazy kids, all decked out in red. Fun, but I wish there was something other to drink in that state than Bud Light... yuck.

Anyhow, the trip was great in the end. We went to the old family farm and had a BBQ. I was hoping for a hog roast but I guess not enough of the locals confirmed coming so it wasn't worth the hog. I saw tons of old photos of my grandma, great grandparents and even further back. The genealogy for my family is very extensively done, and we had a slew of photos and documents from literally 150 + years back. I mean I found a letter from my great great grandfather to his sister about watching Abraham Lincoln speak on his 'press tour' while campaigning for president. I've got a bunch of those scanned now, so I'll try to put those up into a flickr group too, cause those are really interesting. I also got to see a lot of my first cousins and more immediate family, some that haven't seen in upwards of 10 years. My sister and her boyfriend came down from Vancouver too which was super cool. Oh and one of my cousins had his two little girls with him, and his youngest Megan was just about the sweetest kid I've ever met. You know when you meet children that makes you immediately fall in love with them and want to have kids yourself.... that kind of kid.

Ultimately my only really bad thing I'd say about the entire trip was the food. It was soooo heavy. I mean, these people really treat potatoes and ketchup as their main vegetables. Everything was fried, or cooked with tons of oil. And it all just sort of sat there inside you. Yes it was tasty, but man it really made me wish I'd brought my running clothes.

Here are some of my choice photos from the trip. These are only the new ones not the olden day ones.. obviouslyly.

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Yeah there was some other stuff that happened too, but mostly speaking that was it. This blog post however has taken me like literally hours to complete because of all the pics, and it being so busy here today. So With that I'm going to sign off for now. Before I go though...

3 things that piss me off

• Erica lost her iPod in Nebraska
  
• The pilot to Heroes for NBC was supposed to be up on iTunes - see On Hold... for more
• Big Brother is infuriating (incl Boogie, the veto comp, Erika, CBS, girl talk, Will leaving, etc)
  

Later.

Santa Cruz Wrap-up

BlogBlogBlog….

Hi people, I’m back Bloggier than ever. Santa Cruz was great. A really nice time to get away. And we were with some very fun friends, so everything went smoothly. I’m not going to go into super crazy detail or anything, but there were a few things that I must mention.It was a very active vacation. I went running three times, and one of them was very intense, for like almost an hour along the seawall up on a cliff. I also went rollerblading three times, and for the most part learned to stop myself. I say for the most part because I tried to blade around town yesterday when we got home, and seriously almost died like a million times… But that said, I definitely got better at blading and have really started to break in the blades. Also, I played Ultimate Frisbee with a bunch of people on the beach. I know that might not sound like much, but trust me, it was a lot for me :)

Aside from all that active goodness, I spent time hanging out at the beach, lazing around the house, watched a very bad movie called London which you can read about on my Flixter page, spent time in the hot tub, read a very fun trade paperback called Superman: Our Worlds at War, and another comic, a great French noir crime story called Blacksad. Maybe I’ll review those on the blog here. We also, had a very fun bonfire on the beach, and watched some small fireworks. Oh and there wasa bit of drinking involved too. Finally though, and really most importantly I spent some great time hanging out with friends. We’re kind of a weird mish mash of international people, and we have our foibles, but ultimately I’ve got a pretty great group of people around. Most especially my girlfriend.

Ok, enough sappiness, Santa Cruz is a beautiful holiday beach town. If you haven’t been there and you get the chance go check it out, I wouldn’t want to live there or anything but it was totally a good place for a vacation. And renting a nice big house was definitely the way to go. Around this you'll see some pics from the trip, it really was a great time. Oh and with that one beach shot below, no, we weren’t in the middle of all that craziness, out beach wasn’t nearly as crowded. Definitely a fun time all around.

SC update

just a quick update from the wonderful world od Santa Cruz. I hope everyone had (is having) a great Americanada Day! I'm totally "livin' it up" down here. Been hanging at the beach. chilling at the super swanky pad and generally enjoying the heck out of a great vacation. We supposedly had internet access here at the house the entire time, but really it only just started working properly today, so I thought I'd send a quick shout out down the cyber-pipeline.

I've been out running every day with Erica, and our friend Olivia. Today we went for an amazing (and long) run along the cliff up just past the fameous Boardwalk with the big old wooden roller coaster. The cliff was beautiful, and although there wasn't much of a break there were a lot of surfers out hanging in the water. The run was with Daniel who'se pic can be seen below as our Sailing buddy. It was nice to finally find an athletic activity that I could do alongside Daniel and actually keep pace :)

I've also been out roller blading very day! which is great cause I'm finally getting a pace, and I actually managed to teach myself to stop properly today; so at least I know that I'm not going to die out there on the street anymore.

Shit I've gotta run. Beer run to be precise. Hasta la vista kids. See you on the flipside (ie tomorrow) .Lates.