When · Siva · Danced, · Your · World · Crumbled · Away.

Hey Everyone. I recently became a reporter of Akron's local music scene for an online magazine, Examiner.com. If anybody in the Akron/Kent area is in a band, or knows somebody in a band that would like a piece done on them, let me know! I just posted my first piece with more to follow soon. Check it out. Also, be sure to click "subscribe" to get updates. This is also how examiner.com tracks my readership and I get paid!

http://www.examiner.com/x-30398-Akron-Local-Band-Examiner~y2009m12d3-A-Record-For-The-Community

So this post will only make sense to those of us living in border states, or maybe even just Ohio, i dunno.

My whole time living in Ohio, I've handle and treated Canadian change like USD; stores take it, shops take it, even though vending machines don't take it, until last year you could use it to pay tolls on I-80. But what has always struck me as odd is the denominations that trickle their way out of the Great White North.

For those that may not know, Canadian change looks and feels like US change minus some cosmetic changes and their loonie and toonie. loonie and toonie is the nickname for their one and two dollar coins respectively. I have never seen any of those in circulation in the US probably because they are so obviously different. But what I do see is lots of pennies which makes sense, and then quarters. Rarely do I see nickles or dimes.

Which bring us to my question. wtf? The logic would be that you would see pennies the most because they are in so copious of amounts and then see the other three coins some what equally, but no, it's always a quarter. I have a couple canadian quarters in my pocket now (and the inspiration for this post). I have occasionally seen dimes floating around but almost never nickles,

Which leads me to one obvious conclusion: Americans hate Canadian nickles and dimes!(That, or nickles and dimes have a far lower minting run than quarters, wish is far less exciting an answer).


I think any Canadians that read this eljay are further north than say Ontario, but I wonder in what frequency, if at all, they see US change filter across their borders?

I go thru spells where i think the only way to fix things here in the US of A is to hit a cosmic reset button.
Those thoughts are swelling the more i read about Obama's amazing speech on race. pundit's, while mostly praising the speech, still say things like:

"intellectually flawed"
"too honest"
"too cerebral, too heady"
"lacking substance"
"complex and long for our short attention speech"
"nuanced in ways the average american can't understand"

and then i read articles where they talk to some "average, blue-collared" americans and all i see evidence of the truth of these pundits words.

The only way to fix is to flush it all away, indeed.

Many years ago, I lived in this small two bedroom house that happened to be situated in front of a modest city park. At the time, i was living with this guy and we were both slobby, poor college kids. The summer, we decided to have this big bbq/party. Set a volleyball net up in the park, cleared a lot of the furniture out, tore Scott's band equipment and cleaned the basement. (Chelsea, you may have been here. Joey was there and it was when i was hanging out with Kris Keglovich)

We provided refreshments: Hawaiian chicken, bbq ribs, couple of kegs of beer and.....peel and eat shrimp, a lot of it (how did two poor college students afford all this? it's amazing what you can get for cheap or free when you work in food service, trust me.)

A guy named Spider (it was a time in my life when i knew people like spider), showed up with a tank of medical grade nitrous and set it up in the basement. So now, not only did we have drunk people, we had drunk people giggling and weaving on nitrous.

The night progressed uneventfully and Scott and I, along with a couple brave, faithful souls, began the herculean labour of cleaning it up the next morning. Remember that peel and eat shrimp?

we were finding shrimp shells two months later.

The point of this story is that sometimes people try too hard to make a good impression, or go that extra step to make things "just right," and that sometimes this extra effort actually causes more work and is a bigger pain in the ass than if the person had just kept it simple.

The shrimp was nice, but it wasn't necessary for the party to be a success. And in the long run, it was a true inconvenience. Ask yourself how many times you've found yourself going "that extra step" to make things better and it only ends up making things more complicated.

Hmm, there's some tao in here somewhere.

hi.
i got my tickets.
i'm going to spain for ten days which i will probably parley into shorter trips to andorra and italy. I booked a flight to malta. malta...good knights.

i will spend a day in dublin as well (Aer lingus had the cheapest flights).

also, i am doing some major changes to the eljay. It's becoming friends' only and i've cutting my list down a lot.

To be blunt, many of you don't care what i have to say and i don't care about what you have to say. I'm getting rid of the deitritus.

If you know me personally, you won't be cut. Otherwise, you are gone unless you plead your case other to the contrary.

Some of you (Mordicai) are too interesting for me to leave...the rest, not so much.

want to stay in: you have until 22 march to let me know.

thank you and good night.

I am planning my trip to europe this year and the only "for sure" is my return to Valencia, Spain. I loved that place. I may fly aerlingus or Icelandair, it depends on time,price and other destinations. So, as a result, i will spend some time in either Ireland or Iceland (both countries i've been to previous). That being said, my plans have about 4-6 days open. Which of these countries do you think i should visit? your vote really will be factored into my final decision.
thanks for your help!


Poll #1154288 What way does Leon's wind blow?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

What countries should leon visit in europe this year?

my lovely lauren is quite a photographer and she loves cats.

here's some pics of my two of my cats by her.


first, the moody Bucky gets some classic black and white treatment


That fool with the tongue is Paperclip. Bucky's blue eyes in the background seems to say, "why did you rescue this thing from the dumpster?"


Another one of pretty kitty Bucky.

That's it for now, Take care all!