12/31/2006

trip home part 2

12/31/2006 – 11:25 am
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After the Wal-mart, we went back to my aunts house and had some lunch. What surprised me is that there was no snow on the ground, and was kinda warm. For the most part, I only wore my quilted hoodie while I was there. After lunch, my aunt took us for a quick tour of Calgary, and some shopping. We got nanny her Christmas present and went up to the top of the Calgary Tower. At the towers gift shop, I found a hat that I am still kicking myself for not getting. I was a knitted toque with ear flappys and a nice white maple leaf on the front of it.

When we got home again, I called the airport again, and was told they thought our bags had landed about 3:30 and were gonna be making their way through customs, so I gave them the address and double checked the phone number. And waited. And waited. And waited. Finally about 7pm or so my step father got the call, and said that a Christmas day delivery was not acceptible and we needed them her as soon as possible as there were childrens Christmas presents in them. We had supper and watched some tv. My aunt, uncle and cusin went out for a friends place and came beck around 1ish. at 1:30ish the doorbell rang. Finally! our bags got there, so Crystal and I went into wrap mode to get everything squared away and under the tree. For the first time I played Santa, and ate the cookies and drank the milk. The cookies were great, and the milk was cold. Finally around 2am we went to sleep.

CHRISTMAS DAY.

We got up to the sounds of Christams music in the living room. My aunt, uncle, and grand parents were awake. But no sign of my parents or cusin. So after a cup of coffee, I decided that since I was awake, and it was 8am, everyone should be awake. So I got my shoes and jacket on and went out to the camper, and pounded on the door. I told them it was time to wake up and open presents. I scared my mom, and heard her yelp a little. About 10 minutes later, they came in and we started to open the gifts. Everyone was very happy with the gifts that we brought. My mom cried when she opened hers. It was the American flag Crystal had crocheted for her. And my Granpa said his book I got him was perfect. That made my day.

After the presents, and lunch my uncle offered to give us a tour of Calgary, on the back of his motorcycle. We couldn’t say no, it was a beautiful day. So one by one, Crystal and I got dressed in full leathers, and chaps, and hopped on his bike. I was the first one. I had never been on a bike that size before so I was a little nervous. I had a blast driving around for about a 1/2 hour. all around. I think i would have enjoyed it alittle more, if I had goggles or something cause when my uncle got up to speed, I couldn’t open my eyes cause the wind was whipping so fast. When we slowed down abit and the wind subsided, I could look around. It was very cool. Who would think on December 25th we’d be riding around on a motorcycle in Canada? I woudn’t have!

Christmas Dinner, was terrific! We made homemade noodles (yummy!) and had a great turkey, mashed potatos, and all the fixings. I could only have one plate cause It was so good. Besides, 1/2 my plate was homemade noodles! For the rest of the night we sat around and talked. Man, was it nice to see my family again!

End part two.

By Ed | Posted in holidays, life in general, news from home | Comments (0)

trip home part one.

12/31/2006 – 10:59 am
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I was gonna just write: “What she said…”. But I thought I should write alittle more than that.

Our trip north for Christmas.

The day had come, so we got up, showered and dressed, and made our way down to Robins with the fuzzy to get her new cage all ready for her. Crystal put in some hammocks and I got her food dish and water all set. We watched pickle roam around her new bigger cage. She was like what Crystal said: A velociraptor from Jurrasic Park. She had to test every bar on her new cage for weakness. Well she found one. She figured out that she could get her head in between the bars, all the way up to her shoulders. That kinda freaked us out a bit, so I drove to Home depot, and got some chicken wire to wrap around the cage. That seemed to work. So as she got settled, we got some of the Christmas presents under the tree.

Then we got ready, and drove to Wal-Mart to pick up Robin so she could drive us to the Airport. She drove us to the airport wishing us a safe trip, and we made our way to the desk to check in, and get our bags searched via the x-ray machine. As we stood and watched, they found something that was suspisous. My bottle of coffee syrup. I told them I could probably tell them what it was, they told me in a few seconds they could tell me what it was too. So they took it out of the 3 bags, and swabbed it. Thankfully revealing that it was just a bottle of coffee syrup, and they was no trace of bomb on it.

So after that we went through security, took our shoes jackets, belts, etc off and went through the metal detector. Simple! Now with 2 hours to kill before our flight we sat around, walked around, and finally got a quick bite to eat at I think was a TGIFridays to go. It was hella yummy, and I mentioned that they would make a killing if they put one of these in every mall.

So we got back to our gate, and boarded the plane, and took off like 20 minutes early. Little did we know this was gonna be the last early flight of the entire trip. Believe it or not we actually landed in Cleveland early too, by about 10 minutes! So we found out where our next gate was, and went to find something to eat. We wanded over to a little bar, where the service was friggin terrible. I ordered the smothered fries, and a Bass. With about 5 minutes before our plane to Denver took off I got the fries and ate as fast as I could, I left a $1 tip cause the bartender sucked ass.

DENVER.

Lets just say, the Denver International Airport, smelled. Course It had good reason for it. A couple of days earlier about 2 feet of snow had been dumped in the area. and up untill that day, 5000 people were stranded there. When we got there, from what I heard only about 2000 people were still there. Boy were they ever. Dogs and little kids were all over the place. I felt bad for the people stranded there, as they had to fly stand by, while everyone with current tickets got to get through. When we got there, found our gate, we were informed that we had a 2 hour wait. So thats what we did. I grabbed us some McDonalds, and we played out gameboys, and I caught a quick cat nap. There were some many people there, the lines to customer service looked like the lines to a walmart on black friday. But from what I could see they were in somewhat of a good mood. Maybe just resigned to the fact that they were gonna be there for a while. Thankfully we weren’t.

We finally got on the plane. And took off. Yay! Only a few hours late. The flight from Denver was uneventful.

We landed in Calgary around 1:30ish in the morning. Let me tell you if you ever have to go through customs, go through it at that time. It was only our flight going through. I went through as a Canadian, showing my birth certificate, and we both had no problems. As we were walking to meet my parents, Crystal saw them first. I didn’t recognise my step father as he shaved off his beard, and only had the moustache. My mom didn’t see us and she was crying cause she didn’t think that we were comming, but started to smiled when we got a couple of feet away from them. Here unfortunatly is where we had problems: Picking up our bags. From what we could gather, our bags were never put on the plane in Cleveland. So we filled out the paperwork, and went to my aunts house to sleep.

And sleep we did.

When we got up the next day I introduced Crystal to my Grandpa, and my uncle. We had breakfast and I called the airport to find out about our bags. They were still looking for them. So since we didn’t know when and if we were gonna get them, we headed off to the local Walmart to get some clothes.

End part one.

By Ed | Posted in holidays, life in general, news from home | Comments (0)

7/24/2006

Homeland Security: Why the Grey is Banned in the US

7/24/2006 – 6:23 pm
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On February 12, 2005, the four members of The Grey, were headed from their home base of Ottawa, Ont., to a show in Ogdensburg. N.Y. They never got there. Hayden Menzies tells Econo what happened.

The GreyWe were going to Ogdensburg New York to play one, potentially non-paying show.

When we got to the border, we, regrettably, lied at first about whether or not we were playing because we were uncertain whether or not we needed visas for a potentially non-paying show. After looking on the internet and searching our van, [the American border guards] saw that we were supposed to play and hauled us in for interviews one by one for the next 6 hours. We were fingerprinted, photographed and expedited as illegal aliens from the United States.

The supervising officer did all the talking, while the officer in training did not say much at all, but his signature was on all the paperwork.

The main question we were asked was if this is how we made our living. Funny since one of the reasons they suspected something was fishy, was when they found a book in the van with merch sales (an oversight on our part). The book had pretty sad looking numbers, like making $20 total from a show. They couldn’t understand that we did this for fun.

We were treated as terrorists at first. When we first went, one by one, into the room with the interrogating officer they used that line about “America is at war, and Canada may not take that seriously…” and “since 9-11, we take these things seriously.” Then they realized that we were not making any money doing what we do, and that we were more naïve than anything else. Some of the other guards even told us that the whole thing was bullshit, and that it was overzealous and a waste of paperwork.

The decision to deport and ban us from the US was made entirely by officer Kurt Tennat, the supervising officer. He said he had consulted his supervisor by phone, but we don’t know for sure. No court proceedings, no legalities, no chance.

The experience soured us on border issues, but as far as America as a whole, our opinions are pretty much the same. The border happenings sort of exemplified our feelings regarding the U.S. and its political endeavors–confused and misguided, but hopeful that, despite the many problems, there are a lot of good people who, if given the right information and the chance, could change how things are run.

There has been some letter writing from Brian Lowit [the head of our label. Lovitt] and ourselves. We’ve written to our members of parliament here in Canada, to U.S. senators, and American Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. So far, there hasn’t been too much in the way of positive response, but we’re still trying. There is an appeal process but it is a long shot and it’s not cheap.

As of filing, Menzies and his bandmates are still banned from entering the United States for the next five years.

WoW that sucks. They shouldn’t have lied, and gotten all the information they could about any and all visas that they might have needed.

The actual article Used without permission, its the american way! lolomgwtfbbq!

By Ed | Posted in news from home | Comments (0)

9/8/2005

Reason why Canada kicks ass #456

9/8/2005 – 9:23 am
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I saw this on a Canadian community I’m a part of.

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - A Canadian search-and-rescue team reached a flooded New Orleans suburb to help save trapped residents five days before the U.S. military, a Louisiana state senator said on Wednesday.

[Read More...]

By Ed | Posted in news from home | Comments (1)