Ken and I just went to see Man of the Year at the Paramount theatre. It’s been in theaters for a few weeks so we had a small audience but there were tons of scenes that had everyone laughing. I thought it was a great movie, but it got rather slow towards the end. Fantastic performances by all of the big names. Robin Williams’ other most recent movie, RV, didn’t break past my “meh” filter from the commercials, but this one was good.

Bithnar wanted me to use “Bill the Cat” in his sig. Along with the text “Better living through Alchemy” ..

My brother just called to let me know that our dog, Bear, just died at the vets. He and my parents brought him to the emergency room earlier tonight because he was vomitting and acting “dazed”. They said it looked like Bear had eaten my dad’s work gloves, and also had a tumor preventing him from going to the bathroom. They were keeping him overnight, and were putting him on an IV when they said his liver ruptured and he died. Bear was only about 7 or 8 years old so this was rather sudden. Back in August the vet had mentioned an ear infection and some possible other problems, but they took x-rays and I assume everything was fine because I didn’t hear anything further.

He wasn’t the best behaved dog, he definately had a mind of his own. He didn’t always come when you called or stop barking when you wanted to sleep. But he had a very unique and playful attitude. He lived for bread. He would sleep with his mouth open over the air conditioner vents on the floor. He always watched from the window whenever anyone left the house. Inside the house he didn’t so much “bark” as “sing”.. A low “rowrarrarr” when he wanted something and a short “ruff rawr” when he was trying intently to get you to give him a piece of your dinner.

His ungraceful barreling around the house often made us worry for any collectible items around, and his tail took out whole sections of the christmas tree every year. But he was a happy, sometimes hyper, fluffy brute. We’ll all miss him.

Nefeticaz wanted a flamey colored sig, I used his robe as the background. I had some nice folks at GameRenders.com help me by cutting out his flame pet.

I got my Animal Talk newsletter today from the Toronto Humane Society. There was one article in it that really ticked me off..

From the Newsletter:

China slaughtered 50,000 dogs in a government-ordered crackdown after three people died of rabies. Dogs being walked were seized from their owners and beaten to death on the spot, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported. Led by the county police chief, killing teams entered villages at night creating noise to get dogs barking, then beat the animals to death, the reports said. Owners were offered 63 cents per animal to kill their own dogs before the teams were sent in.

I looked for more articles online and found these:

MSNBC

BBC

We saw the musical, Wicked, for the second time last night at the Canon Theatre. But let’s back up..

That morning I was working on my wedding scrapbook and researching various programs and options for a digital scrapbook and finally came up with a good option. I plan on making scissor and paste books ™ for special events like weddings, and a digital “yearbook” for everything else. I didn’t get to sleep until about 6am. Then I woke up around 10am coughing up a lung, and needed to take my inhaler, which hurts. My whole body feels like it’s shaking, I feel dizzy and I usually already have a headache from coughing. After about an hour, my body starts to hurt like I’ve run a marathon. It usually takes about an hour for my coughing and watery eyes to calm down after I take the inhaler, so once I was able to get back to sleep, I was out for maybe an hour before Ken woke me up because someone was at the door. It was a package delivery but I didn’t get to the door in time so there was just a notice. After complaining about feeling crappy and being super tired, I managed to fall right back asleep for another hour.

Then it was time to get up and get ready for our day out. We took off to get Ken’s cousin and her friend from Kitchener at about 2:30pm. We’d given Ken’s cousin 2 tickets as a birthday present and included transportation and dinner. We arrived at her place at about 4pm and then picked up her friend. We hit some major traffic back in Toronto, but we managed to make it to Tappanyaki (Ken’s cousin’s dinner choice) by 6:20pm. Our chef was on a roll, he made joke after joke and had the whole table cracking up. Last time Ken and I had him he cracked us up with alot of Japanese/Chinese joke, but this time he had man/woman, and husband/wife jokes as well. We had to skip dessert because it was 7:30pm by the time the cook was done, so we hurried down to the Canon Theatre.

Ken dropped us off at the door and we ran to the ticket booth. They said we had 3 minutes left before they started. I told Ken’s cousin and her friend to go on inside so they wouldn’t miss the beginning. Since I’d already seen it before, I would wait for Ken. Once Ken arrived, we waited for the ushers to be able to seat us, which was during the set change to Shiz. There were alot of changes in the show, Galinda was much more self-absorbed, Ken’s cousin said later that she was reminded of the character Karen from Will & Grace. She had a fantastic voice though. Ken and I agreed that Elphaba was a better singer when we saw it last year, but we didn’t dislike this one. Her voice just seemed strained. Everyone loved the show, there were enough minor changes to keep Ken and I attentive and his cousin and her friend were enthralled. There were lots of people dressed in costume for Halloween. Lots of Dorothy’s, Elphaba’s and Glinda’s.
After the show we came back to our apartment for a little while. I wanted to show Ken’s cousin my wedding scrapbook that I’ve been working on, he wanted to show her where we live since she’s never been here. And we had a gift to give her, a small ornament. It has Glinda’s crown and wand and a pair of ruby slippers.

On the way back to Kitchener, we listened to the Wicked soundtrack cd. We dropped the girls off at around 2am, and on the way home we got hungry so we stopped at Perkins. We walked in the door at 4am checked our emails and went to sleep

We had a great time! We made plans to meet Ken’s cousin and her friend again for the One of a Kind show. I can’t wait