Time Lag

So I'm lagging behind, sue me.

I've got some important news, my school actually approved my petition... How nuts is that? You want to read the university jargon included that essentially calls me a moron and says this will never happen again? Read on!

"NOTE: This examination was scheduled to be written on Friday May 1st PM 2 - 4. The official Arts and Science examination schedule for S/Y courses was made available to all students on February 13th 2009. Examinations are scheduled for 9:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m., and or 7:00 p.m. only. The Faculty expects student to be attentive to information that is given and do not wait until the last minute to contact the instructor for examination preparation.

Timetable Misread - Your illness began AFTER this examination was to be written. Under no circumstances will the Faculty grant special consideration for a missed examination due to your own error again."

See that? They think I'm slow! Ah well, all is well that ends well. I suppose I just have to pass the bloody thing and get it over with. This however means lots of reading I really, Really, REALLY don't want to do.

ALSO! I have to go apartment hunting again, and this time on less of a budget and without a viable room mate! My line of credit isn't nearly as paid off as I'd like, so this is going to be a little tough to say the very least. Do eight month (ie: school year long) leases exist in the city? I'll get back to you.

Onto my job! My best friend is gone and I have a loudmouth co-worker who likes to complain about me to my immediate boss when I'm not around, life is grand aint it?
Mind you, this same co-worker likes to talk smack about everyone and is generally an all round complainer...so it's not really like he's singling me out, but come ON man, knock it off.

The love life! What love life? Things were momentarily up, with a nice swift kick in the nuts to bring me back down. Lovely.

Osap! Tells me my parents make too much money, even though I pay all my own tuition...perfect... I might be able to get something out of them, but that's more debt on top of my student line of credit. At least I won't have to pay it ALL back, and it's got a nice tax kickback though. This is assuming any of it works out though, and right now it's kinda sketchy.

The Tower! Just winding down with Wizard and Glass, 630 pages in and counting, Rolands tale of youth is almost over and I likely wont be able to move on in the series until after my differed exam date, which will be sometime in Aug but remains TBA.

I don't have time for a social life, and I've got too much on my plate without it, but it's the only way I can stay at all sane. I'm feeling really lost at sea for the time being.

As always faithful few, I appreciate that you bother to read. One of these days I hope to do more than periodically rant.

Chase

Anomalies and Forgotten Instances.

I was riding the subway today from Yonge and Eligible to Union, and noticed a fair number of good looking young people on the platform with me. Some hipster, some just eccentric looking, all of them looking pretty cool and friendly.

Didn't think much of it, what's a dozen good looking people? I just figured they were friends or a group or something and that was as far as it went mentally. I won't play innocent, the girls short shorts and gorgeous legs caught my eye (I love this city) but again I didn't think too much of it.

It wasn't long that I was on the train that I noticed one of the cats was dancing in the isle of the sub car, rocking out to his Ipod, seemingly oblivious of the looks he was getting but dancing none the less. An middle aged guy beside me made a loud noise that took my attention momentarily and with a dip of my head I was back with Roland and his Ka-tet as they approached Blaine's cradle.
Falling in and out of my novel is something I'm quite used to.

When I bounced back in reality I noticed the cat with the fro wasn't the only one who was having their own personal dance party, a VERY cool chill looking girl was doing ballet. At opposite ends of the sub car I didn't think they were with one another, but in hindsight I should have known.

One by one my sub car stood and started dancing. Turned out to be almost 80% of the riders were in on it, each with an Ipod or MP3 player, each in their own world of music that was inaudible to everyone else.

Looking behind me I saw the car behind me was also full of dancers, I have to say it was pretty cool sight. I watched silently, smiling to myself and to the dancers when I managed to catch their eye.

Once we reached Bloor I heard an audio announcement informing my fellow TTC riders that unless this "jumping" stopped the train would not continue and that they would clear the trains if need be.

Talk about your ultimate kill joys right?

Out danced the dancers, in walked the new riders, and on went the train.

One lady beside me made some bitter comment to the effect of "at least someone came to their senses" , suffice to say I thought this lady needed to take a very large stick out of her ass.

Just like that the event had come and gone, my fellow riders who joined just a stop later had no idea what had taken place, it likely won't be documented in the paper, so I thought I'd capture the memory before it leaves my consciousness.

Wish I'd taken video... I hope to see it again.

Thanks for reading Faithful Few

Tower followers, Blaines slo-trans engines are running full tilt, onto Wizards and Glass.

The Tower.

Recently, The Tower has been calling to me.

It's like a dull ache behind my eyes, throbbing insistently, thudding endlessly. It is the urge to tongue a cut on the roof of my mouth that can't seem to heal. It feels like standing of the deck of a ship that's just hit troubled water and started to take them on... the slow sinking feeling you have in the pit of your guts that makes the hackles on the back of your neck stand on end. Fear washing over you in a cold wave,long before the icy sea ever reaches your feet. Crawling it's way menacingly up to your knees before surging forth and hitting your belt line. It is the knowledge of what is to come that instills this anguish, this NEED.

I Know that I won't be able to resist the murky depths that await me. The sea of pages laid forth by a King over tumultuous decades. The Violence and Hardship, The Heart Break...The Rose...it's all there for me. I've been cast along the path of the beam, tossed into the street and under the wheels of a Cadillac by a priest. Or just a man who claims to be.

I stand in The Way Station.

I travel under The Mountains, the slow mutants beckoning.

I will palavar with The Man In Black.

I stand before a door, with hinges that connect to thin air, and open it.

This and so much more I WILL do, because it is Ka, and you my faithful few will follow my journey, as we are Ka-tet.

I walk, somewhere Charlie is sounding off his steam whistle, smiling that smile...

I don't trust him, and that's the truth.

I'm afraid, and that's the truth...

The Tower calls me forth into The Wastelands...and I'm helpless to resist.

And that's the truth.

Lost in a Sea.

So I've not been keeping this up in the fashion I might have liked. I do have a number of interesting stories and photos to share, and they've been piling up on me, but I've been running around so desperately that I've yet to dump them here. They don't call me The Absent Minded Man for nothing now do they?

I'm still working a 45 hour week, and probably spending a solid 5 hours a night out with friends. I'm sleeping an average of 3 hours a night currently, it's interesting how much you can get accomplished in a 21 hour day.

I have a small story I'd love to share that was originally going to be a little longer, but I need a transfer cable for my phone that I don't own, and uploading the photos to go with the stories is a bit of a Macgyver-esque job. So I'll do what I can, here we go:

Catto Houghton, an amazing young Toronto artist invited my good friend Zach and I into her studio to take an insiders looks at her new showing before it became open to the public.

Zach and I were out skating around Toronto late at night, as we often do, just to check things out, clear our heads and see what our city has to offer. On the night in question we were skating down Queen St. West and checking out the galleries when I stopped to snap a pic of a brightly lit little studio with some amazing portraits.

After seeing Zach and I, the girl inside who was cleaning up started towards the door. I thought she might be locking it, in case she was worried we might try and walk in on her, after all it was already after midnight. But to my surprise, she invited us in to take a private look around.

Pictured is Zach and Catto, and my longboard, all in the reflection of the glass looking out onto the street while giving you an idea of all the work we were checking out, it really worked out neat. Click to enlarge.

She gave us a wicked walk around, discussed her gorgeous oil paint portraits and shot the shit for probably a solid half hour, It was really a surprisingly cool little adventure, here are a few close ups of her portraits:

Please check out Catto's Site here : WWW.CATTOSTROPHE.COM

Yack yack yack. Get a job!

So I'm back at work again,

Scheduled for forty + hours a week. This means my massive unrelenting school debt doesn't quite scare me as much as it otherwise might have, but it also means that my time is now devoted to work.

Getting to and from work means either an hour and a half on the cab/train/bus, or an hour drive in with one of my best friends and co worker. Easy pick right? Take the ride with your buddy, the conversation, the rock tunes, inside jokes and all the rest of it.

The only downside is that this means I'm going to come and go from Pickering every day and night five days a week, and I still have my apartment and life in Toronto to attend to. It's strange cause I don't have a lot of ties to the city, but it offers a life style I really enjoy and the few ties that I DO have, are ones that I'm going to miss the hell out of.

I don't know how to straddle my two worlds. It's something I'll have to learn to do though, cause there's no way in hell I'm spending rent money on a place I never go to.


GOOD NEWS:

That longboard down below? The one that's tragically shattered in two? The one and only creator Ivan "Danger" Frasier got wind of it's demise and sent me a message saying he'd build be a new one free of charge. Suffice to say I'm buying the man some beer. Not sure if he's going to blow the dust off another older piece or make one from scratch. No idea if he's re-making the one I lost or a totally new design.

The really cool part? I could care less what he does. Of course it will matter when I ride it, but I'm entirely confident I'll love whatever he throws at me. I feel like I won a mini lotto, and am totally stoked.

Also stay tuned for an exclusive article on a wonderful Toronto artist I met, who let me into her studio after midnight to check out her brand new pieces.

Looking up

-Chase

The Tower Calls. 165.

Meds

Just a quick update.

It's just shy of 6 am and I can't sleep. My throat has a familiar sting to it and I'm a little worried.

I just had strep throat about a week ago, was taking antibiotics for it, and it was almost unnoticeable.

However, I left my pills in Toronto and am now back in Pickering...the thing about antibiotics is that you HAVE to take them all... my body is noticing that I haven't and I'm really hoping it doesn't get infected again.

Still riding the crazy train

-Ivany

The Tower calls. 135.

Lost Longboard.

And...the good times keep on rollin.

I am, and have been, a skateboarder for quite a long time now. It's something I did as a kid to initially fit in with some of my friends, it was what I then considered supremely rad. I sucked of course, especially compared to the guys I skated with, but I loved it. I soon figured out that I liked the feeling of cruising around more than attempting to do tricks. I say attempting cause I was a short uncoordinated fat child who couldn't ollie to save his life.

But I digress...

When I hit university I very quickly got sick of paying for / riding the subway, and started looking for an alternative. I considered biking and rollerblading but I'd have no where to lock up a bike and I'm straight, so those two options were out. I decided to pull out an old skateboard and ride the distance from Union Station to my U of T campus.

It was fun, I really liked it, it felt good to be on four wheels again. Dodging pedestrians gave me back that slightly edgy feeling I used to like so much as a kid. Suddenly I wasn't cattle anymore.
I was a missile.

There was a slight problem though, I still couldn't ollie if you paid me, and there were a fair number of street car tracks in the way. With tracks so deep they could swallow your wheels whole...they posed a threat, and I was painfully chucked into traffic on a few occasions.

I noticed some guys riding longboards on campus and decided that was the solution. Larger wheels, longer wheelbase and more momentum should do the trick right? Within about a week I had hunted one down on Craigslist and was truly becoming a side walk force to be reckoned with.

That was almost two years ago. Something like 20 boards later and what has to easily be hundreds of K's under my wheels, well it's safe to say it's becoming something that defines me.

Not too long ago I was given something pretty special by a friend of mine. He used to make longboards in his garage a few years before and had a few decks left over from his previous efforts. I always thought it was awesome that he'd made his own, and upon some requests we struck up a deal and I took (what I thought to be) the nicest deck he had left.

That was only a few months ago. Yesterday that board was run over in the street and cracked clear in two.

It had quickly become my favorite board, with it's odd shape, birch construction, almost non existent grip, and complete and utter lack of concave...well I was surprised how much I loved that board.

The strange "fish" like shape allowed me to dig in my toes and heels while carving to make up for the lack of concave.

The birch construction made it light, flexy, and easily to carry around.

The hand applied sand grip allowed me to ride barefoot without shredding my feet.

It was a thing of beauty.

I was in the street when I noticed a silver SUV behind me. Pulling onto the side walk I hit a piece of raised concrete that caused my board to shoot out behind me. Into the street.

Like a basketball rolling out in front of a car, so my board rolled slowly and painfully under the front wheels of that SUV and with a sickening crack was run over. I told the lady not to worry, it wasn't her fault...hung my head, and carried what was left of my Longdex back to my Toronto apartment.

Life's peachy aint it?

R.I.P

The tower calls. 65.