Weekend
Friday demanded exercise. So, seeing as I needed a new stabilizer bolt (just like May 31st last year), I got on my bike and decided to bike to Carling Motors. Five kilometers in, my rear wheel got wobbly. At first, I thought the wheel had shifted, but when it got worse, I got off and noticed that my tire had actually split in several places and tube was sticking out. Not a good way to start a trip.

Not willing to give up, I stopped at a friend's house along the way and asked for duct tape. He brought out that, and fabric tape, which is even better. We released some pressure on the tube, wrapped the fabric tape tightly around the wheel (through the spokes), then covered that off with duct tape. After that, the trip had 29km left in it, and the tape patches held fantastically.

I recently tried something new. I poured some Baileys into my pocket flask and ordered a large ice-cap at Tim Hortons. I proceeded to drink about a centimeter of the slush, then poured in the contents of the flask and gave it a good mix. In terms of good alcoholic beverages, this could definitely be a winner.

While yesterday was a day of relaxation, today required attendance to church. My sister had her first communion at St. Isidore's. I don't go to church much, and when I do it's almost always the Polish church downtown. It always strikes me how much less formal the English churches tend to be. The whole atmosphere of the mass at English churches is more light hearted and less serious-feeling. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I'll take the pipe organ to the guitars. The quote of the day comes from the priest himself: "What this church needs is more people who are on fire." Context or no context, that sentence stuck.

The big event of the weekend has to be the finale of Enterprise. Did it live up to my expectations? Not quite. Did it disappoint? Not quite. I liked the Next Generation nostalgia, but I felt the Enterprise plot was a little weak. This seems to be the general reaction in all the reviews I read. At the same time, a lot of people seem disappointed by Riker looking at Archer's career to help decisions. They say there is no connection between the two. At first I would agree, as perhaps it was not made completely clear, but this comment really cleared it up:

A laughable review...
I just watched the episode. Riker's decision is supposed to parallel Trip's decision, not Archer's. That massive misunderstanding on your behalf completely voids your review. Get it?

Picard ~ Riker
Archer ~ Trip

Hence the final scene with Trip and Riker.

It was also nice seeing the CG Enterprise-D. Last time we saw a CG Galaxy class starship was in DS9 in the big space battles where they had to keep the vertex count and texture resolution low. The end result was a ship that looked worse than the physical model used during Next Generation. Now, they had a significantly better version of it. The last scene ("These are the voyages...") was perfect.

Wow, this one wins for length.