Canoe/Jam review of the show.
4:10:03 PM   []

Koppang said house prices in Waterloo Region will continue to rise -- he forecasts an increase of five per cent next year, which would bring the average price to about $183,500 -- because of a shortage of listings.

In other housing related news, in the NY Times, Slashdot co-founder says that after the dust settled that, 'I was able to buy a house'.
3:14:10 PM   []

I left Thursday night and caught a ghetto Air Canada flight to London arriving the next day at Heathrow where I hopped on a bus to Oxford (they run every 30 minutes! If only the service from Waterloo<->Pearson was that good) where I promptly crashed at Nat's flat.

Friday night Nat and I headed downtown to find the D*e*c*i*s*i*o*n*s*o*f*t gang(link altered so that people looking for XML solutions don't stumble upon pictures of the head of development puking his guts out :) ). We ran into them in Jericho and then proceeded to All Bar One (one of Chelsea's haunts). It was around 8:00 as we were walking over and when Jenn said It's only eight fucking o'clock!. See in Oxford the pubs kick you out at 11pm so you have to start early (i.e. 5:30 like they did).

So there's been a lot of build up in the office to my arrival so Natalie's 26 year old boss, Gareth, proclaimed that their mission was to 'destory Matt both physically and mentally'. To accomplish this goal whenever someone bought a drink they had to buy me a tequila. Needless to say, we drank a lot. So much so that I pulled a lemon smile (John, remember our orange smiles?).

After the pub thing wore off we headed over to Gareth's for more alcohol then we headed out to Love, a club, again frequented by Chelsea (but we didn't see her) where we drank so more and Jenn flirted with a pole. (Un)fortunately Gareth got too drunk to destroy me and Natalie and escaped relatively unscathed.

Saturday we visited Mark and saw his dorm with a view.

Of course seeing as Gareth hadn't destroyed me the night before he took another run at me tonight in 'The Backroom'. I survived round after round of single and double vodka shots and then at around 1am he calls me up to the bar and we do a single, then a double and grab some Beck's. After trying to force some liquor onto Natalie he hits the bar hard. It's clear it's time to go NOW. After convincing drunk Natalie that leaving was the right thing we made our way to the door where the bouncers were quite eager to rid the establishment of drunk Gareth and we lifted his brand new that day Hugo Boss jacket from the coat check. We then stumbled home.

On the way we ran into the 24 hour supermarket which isn't open 24 hours. Natalie was drunk and so she started hitting the store and some drunk people came by, pointed, and yelled, 'this drunk mental bitch is slapping the metal!'. Too funny. We then pleaded with Gareth to follow us home stopping occasionally to scrap him off the road (he fell in front of a police car!) (he also ripped his pants and cut his knee). Once home Gareth proceeded to get very sick (start with this picture and click next). Nat didn't want me to take his photo. He's her boss after all. But pictures like this are just too good to pass up. We should frame this one :). We eventually got his taxi cab company's phone number out of him and had him spirited away. He blames his illness on a virus but I like to think that it wasn't the fact that he started drinking at noon that day but my strong stomach that got him in the end.

Meanwhile Jenn was at Cadbury world and brought home some chocolate.

Sunday we read the paper and tried to have Sunday roast but failed.

Monday we went to the cinema and saw 25 minutes of commercials (i.e. not previews) before seeing Road to Perdition. We then tried to go to 'evening song' to hear Mark sing. Unfortunately we got lost (though I don't know why) and were ten minutes late only to discover that you just can't sneak into church late like you can in Canada so Jenn was one of two people who sat through it and was even invited to read a lesson for Tuesday's mass. (Un)fortunately Jenn is very Jewish :). We then went for Indian food where Mark had a funny conversation.

Tuesday. I woke up 25 hours ago and caught yet another ghetto Air Canada flight home. Thankfully it was only 30% full so I had lots of space. And oh yeah, I saw the Hip tonight.

So, thanks Oxford gang! I had a great time and I look forward to Gareth attempting to destroy me when we all hit Amsterdam in November.
12:53:40 AM   []