I'm still alive.

Well, my blog has taken the well-beaten path travelled by many of my previous blogs. I start out strong, but life gets busy and suddenly it's been 2 and a half months without a post. I'm not going to just discard this one though, as was my previous method. Hopefully in the new year I can start getting a few more posts out.

Recently I have been hearing some ads for a contest being run at one of the stores in my city. For Christmas, they decided that every day, at every store, someone would win back the money from what they purchased that day. It sounded like a pretty good contest; I mean, who doesn't want to shop for free? But at the end came the disclaimers. "No purchase necessary, see in store for details."

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't "winning your purchases" require buying something in the first place? How can a contest be "no purchase necessary" when you can't win anything without a purchase?

Of course, this isn't the first time that a company has run a contest that raised my eyebrows in this regard. There was once a bag of chips that proclaimed "Win [insert desirable prize]! No purchase necessary, see inside of bag for details". However, that at least had a shred of realism to it. Perhaps you could also visit the website for details, or obtain the information through some other means. In fact, if all you have to do is read someone else's bag of chips to figure out what you're supposed to do, then technically there really is no purchase necessary to win the contest. This store, however, wasn't even trying to pretend to follow the rules.

I thought that contests were required by law to be "no purchase necessary", but it turns out that isn't true in Canada. You can make someone purchase your product in order to gain entries, so long as you ask a skill-testing question. That strikes me as an incredibly odd way to run things, but I'll save that for another day. If this is the case, why even bother with the claim that purchases are not required to win a prize?

I do suppose you could technically enter to win back the $0 that you spent. Perhaps I should go do that now, I could really used the money.

Someone dared me to do it.

I woke up this morning with the sudden realization that I desperately needed a new teddy bear. I know it probably seems strange, but they've advanced so much since I last got one! If I went to the Build-A-Bear shop I could pick what kind of teddy bear, clothing, even give it a beating heart. Though I wasn't so sure on the beating heart thing. It sounds kind of creepy to me.

First things first: I got up and grabbed a cup of coffee. As I drank it, I watched Oscar and Wally, my pet t-rexs playing in the yard. For those of you who don't know, I found them abandoned in a park, fairly freshly hatched and clearly not going to survive unless someone took them home and took care of them. Of course, I forgot how big they get. Handling one is okay, handling two...it's a lot of work. On the bright side I get to pick one each day to ride in to work. A lot less people have been cutting me off since I started riding in on a t-rex.

Today Wally seemed to be in a better temperament, so I chose to take him to the mall. This time though, I made extra sure to bring his feeding bag. You all remember what happened the last time I forgot it. DISASTER. Anyways, I got to the mall, tied up Wally with the other dinosaurs, and almost skipped to Build-A-Bear. I was so excited. I've never actually built one before.

Unfortunately, when I got there it was just being closed. Apparently a winged monkey had escaped from the zoo and had decided to make the store her home. Can't blame her, with all the cuddly things just laying around in there. But until the zoo could send someone to pick her up, the store had to be closed for everyone's safety. Those monkeys can be vicious when they feel threatened. I walked around the mall for about 30 minutes, and when I saw the store still wasn't open I decided to head home. I didn't want to leave Wally unattended for too long, he can be a bit of a mischief-maker!

So I didn't get my teddy bear today. Perhaps I'll try again tomorrow. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I hear some screaming outside. I need to go check if the boys are getting into trouble again.


If any of you are a little confused, I was challenged to make a blog post that included a teddy bear, two t-rexs, and a winged monkey. This is the result. Hope you enjoyed it!

DO NOT WANT

I went to bed last night feeling just fine. I woke up today with a cold. Or, at least, what I assume is a cold. My head is stuffy, my nose still manages to run like a faucet, and my throat is rebelling against me. It was early, the sun wasn't up yet, and I had a day full of work and school ahead of me. If I was less broke I may have called in sick, but my bank account urged me to get up and be a responsible adult.

All the way to work I was praying that it would be an easy day. I work with developmentally disabled adults and while there a lot of days, bad days are usually REALLY bad. At first it was looking good. My client that I work with was in a good mood, all laughs and smiles and funny jokes. Our ride to the program was pleasant, with lots of awesome music on the radio. Everything was going great. Then, when we got to the program, my client informed me that her bag was wet so her juice must be leaking. No worries, that's easy enough to deal with. We get inside and I ask to see her bag. I look through it to make sure everything's okay. It wasn't juice that was leaking. There, hidden in the bottom of the bag, was a rotten, liquefied apple.

DO. NOT. WANT.

Normally I do okay with stuff like this. But for whatever reason today I couldn't handle it. I gagged. I will admit to seriously considering just leaving it for the next person to find. Instead, I did the responsible thing and composed myself and helped the client take care of it.

Not a great start to a friday.

More productivity equals less brain power

The brain is definitely a muscle. Okay, not literally, but at least figuratively. The more you exercise your brain, the more useful it becomes. Like a muscle. Also, if you stop using your brain, it atrophies and then takes work to get it back to where it used to be. Like a muscle. And finally, if you overuse your brain, it starts to get tired and act funny. Like a muscle. At least, that's what happens in my case.

Today was my day for catching up on school work. I did some editing on a group lab report. I completed a quiz for my astronomy class. I rewrote four-and-a-half lecture's worth of notes on how to condition your muscles. It was all very productive, and it felt good to finally get caught up on all of my studying. But today was also my day off, which meant I spent the morning sleeping in and my early afternoon catching up on the internet, followed by the required procrastination time. I didn't get started on my school work until 5pm. Not so good.

At first I was powering through it, but as the hours passed my hand-brain coordination was slowly waning. The words I was writing out took a bit more effort to process, and I kept adding random g's in places they don't belong (seriously, where did I find a g in "creatine kinase"?). Just as I was deciding that maybe it was time to call it a night, my boyfriend sent me a text letting me know that it was "tim" to make some tea, and he was just going to put his clothes in the laundry and call me in a "non". A SIGN! I giggled at his autocorrect fails, and sent him a quick text asking why Tim was making him tea and how long a non was before packing up my school work. As I happily put my books and pens away, a thought slowly dawned on me. When he said it was time to make tea, he also said something about studying. Why would he be studying? He doesn't go to school. My brain struggled to process what had happened. Eventually, I went back to the text message and confirmed that niggling thought. He hadn't sent that text. I had.

I had a good laugh at myself and went to clear up the confusion. The hand-brain coordination continued to remain at an all time low as I talked about "tra" instead of "tea" and typed symbols instead of letters. When my boyfriend called a few minutes later, he listened quietly as I stumbled over my words trying to tell him what happened (the mouth-brain coordination also becomes compromised). At the end of my story, his only response was "you should probably take a break from studying for a while."

We are now at 2 hours since I stopped studying and brain function is almost back to normal. Only the occasional errant letter or two. Lesson of the night: 4 hours of straight school work is probably a few hours too many.

A puzzling puzzle.

Every time we have family over for an event, a puzzle comes out. It's a tradition. However, we also will rarely, if ever, do the same puzzle twice. Meaning that for every get together we have, we need to buy a new puzzle. More often than not a trip to the toy store will be made for this exact purpose, but occasionally we stumble across the perfect one unintentionally. This is what we thought we had done for my brother's birthday. Soon we were to learn how wrong we were.

It all started out innocently enough. We were on a walk through a small shopping district in our city when something in the window of a shop catches our eye. It's a puzzle, very different from the ones we've been doing and therefore a nice change of pace. It was 1000 pieces, our standard, and had a picture of a fairy looking at herself in a mirror that is surrounded by candles and cobwebs. My mom and I both agreed that this was the puzzle we HAD to have, and that day we walked away full of excitement about our find.

After weeks of patiently waiting my brother's birthday finally arrived. As soon as I woke up I excitedly dumped the pieces onto a table and began sorting out the edge pieces. In the process, a realization slowly dawned on us: there was a lot less colour in these puzzle than we had originally thought. In fact, everything was a shade of either beige or grey, with the occasional little dot of colour here or there. As a started trying to assemble the puzzle, I discovered that the pieces also were the type to fit together even when the weren't supposed to. It took us most of the afternoon just to get the outside edge together. We're usually very good at puzzles, but this was our achilles heel.

When buying the puzzle, my mom had commented that we always finished our puzzles so quickly and maybe this one would take a bit longer. She turned out to be right, but much more than expected. The puzzle is still upstairs a day later, with barely more than the edges done. Perhaps a month from now you'll get a post from me celebrating that we finally finished. That, or we finally just burned the pieces and are pretending the puzzle never existed. One of the two.

Not-So-Fast and Furious

I am not a brave driver. I've had a few accidents before that happened due to basic mistakes on my part, so I don't often take many risks. That said I drive a standard car, and secretly, deep down, it makes me feel a little bit bad-ass. Now, I don't do much to encourage this feeling of bad-assery. I drive at a reasonable speed, I take corners carefully, and I certainly do NOT do doughnuts or burn rubber or drag race. But when I drive to work I have a brief moment where I feel like a professional stunt driver.

The whole thing happens when I'm getting onto the bridge out of my suburb. There's a highway leading up to it, and immediately after my on-ramp is an off-ramp into a shopping area. Each time I drive I turn onto my on-ramp and start to speed up. I shift from 2nd to 3rd, from 3rd to 4th, from 4th to 5th, gaining more and more speed as I approach the highway. I've got one hand on my steering wheel, one hand on my shifter, and music blaring from my radio. Sometimes I even have aviators on. The on-ramp ends and its time for me to merge. I pick a spot between two cars and go for it. With a flick of my fingers I put on my turn signal and smoothly glide into the lane beside me. As I'm starting this manoeuvre, the cars that I've picked also put on their turn signals and change into my lane. It's like a graceful dance performed at 80 kilometers an hour. As soon as we swap places we go our separate ways, without looking back.

This happens to me every time I go over this bridge. And as much as it's a simple, everyday manoeuvre, I come out of it feeling like a rock star. At least, for a few seconds.

Nothing to see here

Well, it had to happen sometime. Yay for writer's block!

I'm quite overdue for a blog post. The fans are demanding one. But day after day I think, I need to do a blog post. What's something funny that happened to me recently? And the question just hangs there in the air, unanswered. Of course there's some funny things that have happened at work, but due to client confidentiality I'm not sure I can share them. A blog is not worth getting sued over.

Day after day the blog sits here, feeling neglected. Yet I can not bring myself to look at it, for I know that I can't give it anything new. It would be like showing a dog a piece of bacon, and then taking it away. I don't want to tease my blog. It wouldn't be fair to the poor thing. I can only ignore it for so long though or else the blog will die, and I certainly don't want that. So here I am, writing whatever comes to my head, making a sort of meta-blog post. Fun, isn't it? Okay, not really. But it's the best I can do, all considered.

Here, to make up for it, I'll give you a funny picture of a cat.

You're welcome.

This blog has been hacked!

So, today I got to my blog and noticed I was locked out. At first, I thought of going to the blog locksmith, assuming I had lost my blog keys because I'm often clumsy and stupid like that... until I realized the lights were all turned on. I'm not very athletic, or anything. In fact, I'm pretty damn lazy, but I did my best to climb to a place where I could see inside and I noticed Danielle there, running around the place, playing with my crayons and my sheets of virtual paper!

I felt an immediate rush of rage. It wasn't just a normal rage... it wasn't the sort of rage you'd want to keep inside your house... a rage that needed to be released... it was an outrage!

Disregard the terrible pun... the point is I was aggravated and mad, so I decided to get back at her, and I came over here for payback while she played around in my blog. Luckily, the blog door was unlocked, and I looked around with an evil grin on my face, thinking what to break first.

I approached the little dandelions that decorate the background, you know the ones...

I took a deep breath and blew hard enough to blow a motherfucking brick house, but the dandelions didn't move.

I took a closer look and noticed the dandelions were made of a strange polymer. So yes, in case you were wondering, they are strictly decorative dandelions.

Frustrated, I walked around the place to see what else was around, and much to my surprise there was only one place to go:

One room... I suppose you could say this place is a loft-blog. That's cool, keepin' it simple...

Anyway, I went to a wall where she had pictures of all her followers. I took out this pen I always take with me to make penis funny drawings on bathroom stalls and drew mustaches on all of them:

Ha!

After walking a little I noticed the floor was no longer green, it was brown instead. I figured that was the bathroom and wondered how the hell I got so far, and it took me about half an hour to find my way back to the dandelions. I was unhappy with my lame attempt to desecrate this blog, so I took one long look at the title, wondering if there was some way I could defile that before I took off.


I was sort of happy now, so I went back to my blog. She wasn't there anymore, and I was able to go in. I looked around the place to see what she had done with the place, and I found nothing out of place. Then, when I went to the front page, I noticed this awesome post, already written, and a note that said "you work so hard, I figured you could use a day off."

I looked at the other side of the note hoping she added something like "there's spaghetti leftovers on the fridge", but that's all there was. Still, I felt bad for taking things so far without knowing for sure, so I grabbed a bucket of water and soap and came back here to undo my misdoings. 

In retrospect, it was a terrible idea, since there was a faucet on this blog so there was no need to carry a heavy bucket full of water all the way from my blog... but yeah, I guess that explains why you just caught me here red handed with soap on my face. As for the not wearing pants, it's damn hot here in blog-Canada. Wait, what was the question, again? Anyway... I'm done cleaning, so I'm gonna head off now. Before I leave, I'm gonna stop by the subscribe button. You should too, it's over there on the right. Bye!
Oh, and don't tell Danielle that you saw me...



ACK! MY BLOG! Well, at least he cleaned everything up. In all seriousness though, go check out our guest blogger at his bog, Award Per Day. You won't regret it. In fact, you'll enjoy it. Guaranteed.

Told you I was a klutz

I'm not sure if that's something I should be bragging about.

Yesterday I got the privilege of seeing my brother's apartment that he just moved into last weekend. I unfortunately was not around to help him move in, so everything I knew about it was second-hand information from my parents. All I had heard was that it was really nice and that it was a 10 minute walk from his work. Yesterday also happened to be the day that my boyfriend flew back to Ontario, and I had to drop him off at the airport at 7 in the morning. Which meant waking up at 6. Not to mention, it had been an exhausting week. So once I dropped him off, I went home and took a nice, loooooooong nap. A 4 hour nap, to be precise.

When I woke up my sense of time had gone a little wonky, and before I knew it I was running late to meet my brother and I didn't even know his address yet. Once I got that figured out I rushed down there as quickly as I could. I parked my car across the road, hopped out, and set off at a brisk pace towards his front door. There was a slight zig-zag in the sidewalk which I approached without a second thought. I cut the corner a little to closely, and suddenly my little toe, totally exposed to the elements by my flip flop, collided with a nice big rock. Hard. I took a few deep breaths until the worst of the pain passed, then prodded my toe gently to make sure I didn't dislocate or break it. Satisfied that I should be okay, I headed up to check out the apartment.

While my brother took me on the official tour and caught me up on life away from our parent's house, I gradually became more and more aware of a throbbing pain in my toe. For the most part I ignored it, briefly calling attention to it only to amuse my brother with the story of how the injury happened. After chatting for a while he asked if I would like to go for a walk with him down by the water. Why not? I thought, sliding my flip flops back on and being very careful to walk on the inside of my foot. This turned out to be not such a good decision. Soon after we left my whole ankle was starting to hurt because I was not walking on my foot the way nature intended. When my brother asked if I was okay walking in flip flops I informed the shoes weren't the problem; rather, my potentially broken toe was causing my trouble. Given that I was still happily walking beside him, he came up with what was likely the best answer he could think of. "Huh," he said, then tactfully changed the subject. We walked a little farther before agreeing to turn around, after which I promptly headed home and stuck some ice on my toe. Too little, too late.

This morning I attempted to gently slip my feet into my runners so I could ride my bicycle to work. After approximately 1.75 seconds it became painfully clear that closed-toe shoes were not going to be an option today. I dug through my closet and pulled out my only pair of work-appropriate sandals that I could find, which happened to have a strap that crossed right through the middle of my bruise. They were better than the runners though, and my only option. Overall they did fine most of the time, except when I forgot to walk on the inside of my foot. And when I kicked a chair with the same toe. That hurt even more than when I kicked the rock.

Of course, being a klutz, injuries like this are not exactly rare. I still have bruises and bumps on my shin from two months ago when I tripped and bashed my leg on a stage, and I have a few random bruises whose origins are a complete mystery, even to me. I like to tell myself that being a klutz is beneficial; after all, I've never broken a bone despite my best efforts. The years of bashing have strengthened them and made me nearly indestructible. Heck, I could probably be a superhero.

...in my dreams.

Can I help you?

Some days, I'm a little bit special.

Right now I'm staying at a hotel with my boyfriend. The hotel is about a 15 minute drive from where I actually live, but as he's only visiting for a week I want to spend as much time with him as possible. However, both of us are still working. I finish my day about 3 hours before he does, which I rather enjoy because I have some time to get stuff done before he shows up.

Yesterday we were invited to have dinner with my parents. The boyfriend and I agreed that when he finished work he would stop by and pick me up so we could head to my house together. I got back to the room after a long, exhausting day and decided to have a quick nap. Two hours later I woke up with just enough time to shower and get ready before he headed over to get me. I jumped up and got ready as quickly as I could, then headed off to wait for him outside. I got in the elevator and casually reached over to press the button for the main floor at the very bottom of the panel on the left-hand side, forgetting that the button was actually a few rows up. Instead I press the emergency call button.

Immediately, panic starts to set in.

First, I press the button a few times to see if I can turn it off. No luck. As the phone starts ringing, I glance up at the floor indicator to see if the elevator was still moving or if I managed to get myself stuck. All I saw when I looked up was a big "X". Not good. Finally, someone answers the phone and, very calmly, says "Does anyone there need assistance?" Quickly turning beet red, I admitted what had actually happened and I was assured that it was no problem.

Later I found out that the elevator ALWAYS says "X" at that point because there is no second floor, and I'm sure that I'm not the first person to press the wrong button. But every time I get in the elevator now I double check which one I'm pushing before I actually push it.

An explosively good time.

I love living in Canada. I would not trade it for the world. However, I'm actually a dual citizen because my mom is a landed immigrant from the States. She moved up here to be with my dad, but all of her family is spread out more or less between South Dakota and California. Every once in a while we go down to catch up with these relatives. The family in California we visit for Christmas, but there's no better time to go visit the rest of the family than during the yearly get-together for Independence Day. Not only do we get to hang out with relatives we rarely get to see, but we get to blow up some fireworks.

After this year we're not sure when we'll be able to come back, so my parents brought down a bigger budget for explosives to make sure we got as much enjoyment out of it as we could. This year also ended up being quite eventful. On Sunday we all packed into the rental car, realizing for the first time that we had NO idea where the seatbelt was for the middle seat in the back. My mom eventually bit the bullet and just told my dad to drive safe as the store wasn't very far away. Thankfully the drive was perfectly boring.

Walking into the fireworks store is kind of like walking into a candy shop when you're a kid. There's so much choice, and you want to get as much bang for your buck as possible. Last year we got a "power pack" and really liked it, so I made sure to grab one. It's a fairly large pack, so the owner came over and tried to take it and put it behind the counter. I quickly declined, I didn't want to pass up one of my few chances to carry large amounts of fireworks just because I could. After some deliberation, we managed to agree on a sizeable number of packages and individual pieces that should put on a good show. After loading them all into the back of the car we climbed back in, and my younger brother reassured my mom that not having a seatbelt was a good thing because in a crash she "would be safely ejected from the vehicle...BEFORE it explodes."

The next day we not-so-patiently waited for the sun to set so we could put start blowing things up. We used the excuse of  "getting rid of the lame stuff" to set off a few spinners and bottle rockets in the middle of the day. As night approached though, we noticed some storm clouds forming just north of us. We had a beautiful sunset as a backdrop, and soon enough lighting started up off in the distance to add a little something extra to our display. We decided to just get started, and my family, along with a few other relatives who had bought some fireworks of their own, got down to business.

At first it was fantastic. The next-door neighbour, on the opposite side from us at the thunderstorm, was setting off some impressive fireworks that added to our own show. The lightning to the other side sometimes made it hard to focus, but also gave us something to look at in those lulls when we were waiting for the next one to go off. The clouds in the background were turning shades of pink, accented by rays from the setting sun. The view couldn't have been more perfect. About halfway through though we realized the lightning was getting a little closer, and saw a tornado trying to form off in the distance. A few people got nervous, but most of us didn't give it much thought. When we were about 2/3 of the way through our supplies the wind picked up. Then the wind got cold. Everyone there knew this meant that the storm was coming towards us, and suddenly it was a rush against time to set off all of our fireworks before the rain hit. Safety was tossed out the window as we set our fireworks as far away as we could and watched nervously as the sparks were blown over our heads. Just as the rain started to pick up, my brothers and I managed to set off our last firework. Not long afterwards, the rain was coming down so hard that you couldn't set foot outside without getting drenched. The drive back to the house we were staying at was exciting, surrounded by pounding rain and constant lightning. Arriving there was less exciting, as we realized the power was out. A few candles solved the problem though, and gave a surprisingly peaceful ending to a crazy night.

I'm not sure when I'll get back to South Dakota. I do know that, as cool and exciting as this was, I hope next time Mother Nature calms down a bit and lets us blow stuff up at our own pace.

Bad timing

Back in high school, I had 4 friends that I was really tight with. Even when we first graduated, we made a lot of effort to keep hanging out and seeing each other as much as possible. Slowly but surely though, we started drifting apart. We got involved in new friend circles, matured, our interests changed...of the original fabulous fivesome, I've only stayed really close to one person. As a group though we still hang out from time to time, and it's always a blast to catch up with everyone.

This weekend one of my old friends decided to have a barbecue at her house so everyone could get together and see each other again. I was really excited as it had been quite some time since we last hung out. I marked it on my calendar weeks in advance so I didn't miss it. The only issue was that they planned it for 4:30pm on a Friday. I work until 3:00pm, so I knew that by the time I got home, had a shower, and checked my emails I'd probably end up being late. Not a huge deal as I was sure people would still be there, but I was curious as to what possessed them to think that was a good time for a barbecue.

When Friday rolled around, I rode home as fast as I could so I would have as much time as possible to relax and get ready before I had to leave. I still ended up heading out about half an hour late, touting a half-full bottle of wine my mom had given me on my way out the door. I stopped quickly at the grocery store to pick up my contribution to the potluck and then headed over. I arrived at her house, and immediately knew something was wrong. Not only were there no cars parked on the road, but my friend's car was not parked in her driveway. Suspicious. I called my friend. No answer. I called two of her closest friends that I knew where helping organize the whole thing. No answer. Finally I called one of my other old friends who I knew was attending and she picked up. We exchanged a few pleasantries and some small talk, but eventually the question had to be asked. "So," I said as casually as possible, "is _______'s barbecue today, or...?" After a brief silence, my friend laughed and informed me that the barbecue was, in fact, tomorrow.

We've all done it, it's not that bad. However, my attempts to contact people meant that not only did I have to explain the whole thing to my mom when I arrived home so quickly, but also to two of the friends I had called who noticed the missed phone calls and wanted to know what was up. I got to re-live the embarrassment 3 times as people laughed at my mistake. But hey, days like this are the reason I learned to laugh at myself, and I had an awesome story when I showed up to the actual barbecue the next day.

Why the people who design bike lanes are cruel

This summer, I am trying to bike to and from work every day as a means of saving money and getting a bit of exercise. When I first made this decision, I looked up the best bike route that would keep me from having to share the road with cars as much as possible. Off-road bike paths are obviously the prime choice, but they are few and far between. While things such as wide lanes and back roads with little traffic work well, the best option is bike lanes on the side of the road. 90% of the time, these are great. However, occasionally it seems the people designing these bike lanes decide to mess with my head. There can't be any other reason.

I have one particular road that I bike down on my way to work that is indicated as a bike route on any map that you can look at. For the most part, they've done a good job of keeping this road bike-friendly. However, there is an unfortunate number of places that I run into some very frustrating issues.

The Disappearing Lane

On the top of this photo, I've indicated the bike lane I ride down. Up until this point this lane is well-marked and puts lots of space between me and the scary drivers who sometimes like to pass by a little too close for comfort. About a block after this intersection, the bike lane is there, ready and waiting for me. However, as I have indicated at the bottom of this photo, the bike lane just...disappears. Sure, there's a sign that says "Share The Road". And sure, there's a mark on the road that indicates that bicycles are supposed to go there. But the actual bike lane? Nowhere to be seen. Not to mention this happens to be the busiest segment of the entire road, and I'm stuck blocking traffic with nowhere else to go.

A word of advice to anyone designing bike lanes: a painting of a bicycle on the road does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to make room for cyclists, or make drivers more receptive to sharing the road.

The Bike Route That REALLY Shouldn't Be A Bike Route

There's one particular intersection on this road that should not exist, period. It should be a nice, normal intersection with one road going east-west and one road going north-south. Someone managed to screw it up. Cars going through it are presented with a confusing mess of directions, turns, and lights. It would not surprise me if multiple times a day a car ended up going the wrong way in the wrong lane. For bikes, this presents an interesting problem. Going North, getting through the intersection is a simple process involving one light with a bike lane waiting for you on the other side. Going South is a nightmare. First you have to go from your nice, friendly bike lane on the right side of the road and cross two lanes of traffic to get into the left turn lane. On a quiet Sunday when there's no cars on the road? Sure. During rush hour traffic? In your dreams. After getting into the turn lane, you likely have to wait squished between stopped cars that don't want you near them and moving cars zipping past you at 60 km/h. When the light turns green you have to squeeze through two different turning points and try not to get hit, only to come out on the other side and discover that you have been deposited in the left hand lane instead of the right! Now you have to try and navigate your way to the safer part of the road while avoiding getting hit by a car from both sides. Again, during rush hour traffic there's no way I would even think of attempting this manoeuvre. Seeing as I bike home right as the roads are starting to fill up, I choose to go a bit further east in favour of a road that may lack bike lanes, but makes up for it with wide lanes and lower levels of traffic.

The Right Turn Lane

Now, I should start off by clarifying that I have nothing against right turn lanes. Most of the time, they're a very useful addition to busy roads. Even bikes can navigate them with ease, if they're dealt with properly. My favourite method that is used to seamlessly deal with cars that want to turn and bicycles that don't is having the turn lane branch off of the bike lane. This setup ensures that cars know that there's going to be bicycles that want to go straight. The drivers are going to be more aware of the intentions of nearby cyclists, and are less likely to cut them off thinking the cyclists are turning too. Should the cyclists be turning right as well, all they have to do is follow the right turn lane and the problem is solved! Everyone is happy (more or less) and the cyclists are as safe as they can be.

Sometimes, having the turn lane branch off of the bike lane isn't really an option. In the picture on the right, the right lane becomes the turn lane, so there's no way to get the cyclists wanting to go straight over to the other side. Now, most days I'm heading out early enough that there's not much traffic and I can just cut across to the lanes going straight, as indicated by the red arrow. However, should I find myself faced with an onslaught of vehicles that are not going to kindly let me cross over, the city has given me an alternative! As the green arrow indicates, there's a fork off the side of the road that takes me onto a separate path intended just for bikes. It gets me around the corner without forcing me to play chicken with cars, and lines me up with a crosswalk to get me back on track. Two equally good options, both getting me exactly where I want to go.

Occasionally, though I come across a little gem like this one on the left. I'll be bicycling along, minding my own business and enjoying life in the bike lane. I see the turn lane up ahead but I'm not too worried because I know there's lots of wonderful ways of dealing with this situation. All of the sudden I find myself heading straight into the turn lane and running out of bike lane fast. I see there's a crosswalk that'll get me where I need to go, but a quick survey tells me that there's no easy way for me to get onto the sidewalk so I'm not stopping in the middle of the road to cross it. I start slowing down and shoulder-checking like mad as I realize my only option is to cut across the turn lane. Unfortunately for me, there's loads of cars coming my way and it's nearly impossible to figure out who's turning and who isn't. Thankfully a kind driver noticed my panicky demeanor and stopped so I could safely make my way over to the lane going straight through. The worst part? The bike lane continues after the intersection. You are clearly intended to go straight through, whoever designed this lane just decided the cyclists were going to magic themselves over to the other side. Seriously, who does stuff like this?

I have a dream. A dream that one day, cyclists and drivers can share the road in peace, with clear indications of where people are going and lots of bike lanes so no one's blocking anyone.

One day, my friends, one day.

Drag queens are my heros

I mean, really. How could you NOT love that?

I think I was in high school when I first discovered drag queens. There's just something about them that calls to me. Maybe it's the flamboyance, the outrageous outfits, the crazy wigs and make up. Most likely, it's the fact that they aren't afraid to be themselves. These are men that have decided that they'd enjoy dressing up like a woman, and said screw the critics and did it! Of course, me being a female, and a straight one at that, I'm not really drag queen material.

Last night I went to see a show called "Fit for a Queen", which had performances from 10 different drag queens. Some were better, some were worse, and one did an absolutely FANTASTIC impression of Ella Fitzgerald (if I remember correctly) that brought the house down. It was beyond entertaining, and some of those queens were more gorgeous than most of the women I know. Of course, all of this just served to re-kindle my desire to be a drag queen. A totally unsatisfied desire.

When I got home I made a quick post on facebook about going to the show. As soon as I posted it facebook was recommending a fan page for drag queens, because it's stalkerish like that. I decided to check it out. When I read the description of the page, it talked about faux queens, or biologically-challenged queens, which are girls who perform as drag queens. THEY EXIST! Though they only seem to exist in the states. I live in Canada. Hmmm.

I have a feeling the next month or so will involve a lot of looking for faux queens where I live. My dream may yet come true.

I heart germs.

Okay, not really. But I am a subscriber to the belief that being a germaphobe does more harm than good. For one, preventing yourself from being exposed to germs weakens your immune system, making you more susceptible to getting sick when you do finally meet with one. But worse is that the overuse of antibacterial products helps create superbugs that are hard to kill because they're immune to everything.

I get it though. There are some pretty nasty bugs out there that you REALLY don't want to get. However, I've seen some commercials that are the epitome of taking things too far when it comes to avoiding germs.

A little while back I saw an ad where the actors made a big deal about not touching anything with their hands. It ended up being an ad for portable hand sanitizers that you can carry around in your purse. The message: you never know what your touching, so HAVE HAND SANITIZER AT ALL TIMES!!!! Well, how about you just wash your hands before you eat? Problem solved!

My all time favourite, though, has to be a new commercial out for automatic hand soap dispensers. They actually say that "you'll never have to touch a germy soap pump again!" Okay, boys and girls, let me explain this to you. When you touch the germy soap pump? You're doing it to get soap. Guess what you do right afterwards? YOU WASH YOUR HANDS! What does it matter if the soap pump is germy or not, anything you happen to pick up will soon be gone without a trace.

Like I said, if you want to avoid germs I won't begrudge you. To each his own. But really, advertisers? Really? I'm disappointed.

Birthdays gone wrong

My family went through a phase where we were really into using funny candles on birthdays. You know, the ones with multi-coloured flames or that play music when you light them up. I loved those candles, they added some flair to your everyday, average birthday cake. Recently, my uncle reminded me why we stopped using them.

Situation 1: The Best of Intentions

One year for my birthday, my grandma found a trick candle that wouldn't go out. Excited to have a laugh at my expense, she snuck one onto my birthday cake. After it was presented to me with a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday, she watched in glee as I skillfully blew out every candle with one breath. As I sat up, feeling smug about my achievement, one of the candles sputtered and came back to life. No problem, I simply bent over and blew it out a second time. Again, it sputtered back to life. At this point most of my family members had caught on to what my grandma had done and were snickering quietly. Except my uncle. Seeing that I was struggling, he licked his fingers, reached over, and put the candle out for me. The uproar afterwards was impressive, and my uncle was in the doghouse for the rest of the afternoon for ruining my grandma's fun.

Situation 2: The Zombie Candle

It was my younger brother's birthday. My mom found a candle that, when you lit it, would play Happy Birthday. After much eye-rolling and groaning when she got it going, my brother was eager to make it stop so he blew it out. The music kept playing. Then he tried the lick-and-snuff manoeuvre. The music kept playing. Next, he actually removed the candle from the base. The music kept playing. Houston, we have a problem.

At this point we were at a loss. How could we make it stop? As much as it was amusing at first, the tinny, overly-cheerful music was starting to get on our nerves. Finally we decided to submerge it in water and short out it electrical bits. I kid you not, the base not only continued playing but changed its tune and started playing This Old Man. We stood there, baffled, and started considering the possibility that this candle base may be haunted. We tried tons of different ways to kill it, I think we even found a battery in it and removed it, and nothing worked. Eventually we buried it in a bag of garbage and left the room to wait it out. It took hours for it to finally give up the ghost.

I believe that was the last time we used a funny candle. Somehow I'm not surprised.

It's the little things

Remotes are rather simple devices. You point it at something. You press buttons. It does stuff. But I never realized how under-appreciated my remote was until it decided to stop working.

The whole ordeal started off fairly simply. One day I went to use my remote, and even though it went through the motions my TV refused to wake up. I looked up how to program my remote, and eventually figured out I had to get the remote into program mode, press codes for the television until the button in the corner started flashing, take out the batteries, put them back in, and voila! The remote worked. Until the next day. So I tried changing the batteries and repeating the process all over again. Once again, the remote worked for a day before losing it again. And then it quit all together. Finally I resigned myself to the fact I had to get a new one. During the two weeks it took for me to actually get out and buy one, I simply went without. Never have I missed an inanimate object so much.

The biggest issue was that my TV doesn't actually go to all the channels on it's own. It can count to 15, and then skips to 70. Suddenly my show selection was limited, and I found myself watching lovely programs such as the Tyra Banks show *shudder*. You think I would just stop watching, but I like to have background noise when I'm hanging out around the house. Then I'd try and find out what else was on, but I'd look away for a couple seconds and miss the few channels I could actually watch. Eventually I just left my TV on one channel and watched it regardless of what was on. Ever heard of "Day of the Triffids?" Neither had I. It's weird.

Yesterday I finally got a new remote. Today I didn't like what was on, and the glee I got from being able to just flip around and see what was on was a little scary, to be honest.

On a completely unrelated note, I've decided it might be time for me to get out of the house more.

An eerie surprise

When I was younger I had an obsession with smilie faces. I had smilie face pencils, smilie face notebooks, and drew smilie faces over everything I owned. I also tried to pass on my love of smilie faces to other people. So one christmas I managed to find an (in my opinion) awesome pair of boxers for my dad. They looked a little something like this:

My dad, being the more boxer-briefs type, graciously accepted the gift and never wore it. Didn't even take the tags off. So years later, when I started wearing boxers in the summer as pajamas, the boxers got returned to me.

I've worn these boxers many times since then and never noticed anything untoward. Last night though, I woke up in the middle of the night for no good reason. I was warm, so I'd kicked off all of the covers. I rolled over, stretched a bit, looked down, and my crotch was glowing. Glowing. I didn't have my contacts in, so I couldn't clearly see what was going on down there. At first I thought there was a light shining from somewhere, but after a while of blindly searching (literally) I couldn't see anything that could be the source. Then I rolled over, and the glowing rolled with me. Finally I reached down and stretched out the boxers, and there smiling back at me was a glow-in-the-dark smilie face.

I'm sure I've been wearing these off and on for years, and this is the first time I've noticed this. Needless to say, it would have been nice to realize this when I was a little more awake and not in that state when you first wake up where the thought that you got spat on by a ghost in your sleep crosses your mind. Or maybe that's just me.

Office Scandal

At my work, there are a lot of people who choose to bike in rather than drive or take the bus, myself included. Luckily for us, the office has showers we can use to freshen up so us sweaty bikers don't stink up the whole place. This is especially important for me as I work at the front desk, and having a receptionist that looks and smells like she came straight from the gym probably wouldn't be all that great for business.

I work very hard at not waking up any earlier than I have to, so I've gotten into a good routine. Leave the house by 7:40 at the absolute latest, which gets me to work about 8:10. Take a very quick shower, dry off, get dressed and pretty myself up just in time to grab a cup of coffee and start work at 8:30. It's worked really well for me so far. Until today.

7:40 rolled around and I was still packing my bags. I was only a few minutes behind, but with my schedule a few minutes has the potential to make me late. I hop on my bike and pedal as fast as I can (which admittedly is not very fast) to try and make up for lost time. Miraculously, I get to work the exact same time I normally do, but the adrenaline was still with me so I grabbed my bag of clothes and rushed to the shower. After a quick scrub down, I step out of the shower and reach to grab my towel...which isn't there. I'd left it on the towel racks in the common area. Which left me in a bit of a pickle.

Now, to give you a good grasp of the situation, I drew out what the shower area in our company looks like:

(The weird curvy things for the doors are supposed to represent which way the door opens)

The towel racks are in the common area, and I know that my towel is no more than two steps away from the stall I was in. I also knew for a fact that I had forgotten to close the door to the common area, and that most of the people that work in the service department directly outside of the door had already arrived. I briefly tried to conjure up a way to open the door to my stall and quickly sneak over and shut the common room door before anyone sees me - I am, of course, butt-naked and dripping wet. I gave up on that idea pretty fast because if it didn't work and someone saw me, I wouldn't be able to look them in the eye ever again. I mean, we're at work. It's not a place where being seeing naked is excusable. Not to mention my dad works there, so it would then become incredibly awkward for him and the coworker. Just a bad situation overall.

Suddenly I realized that I could call the front desk on my cellphone because my friend covers the phones for the first 30 minutes of the day. If I reached her I could get her to come and throw my towel over (the stall walls don't go all the way to the ceiling) and I would be saved! Not half a second later I was dismayed to realize that I didn't bring my phone into the stall, so I woefully discarded that plan. What was left for me to do? I started work in 15 minutes, I didn't have all day to sit around thinking. Finally, reluctantly, I turned to the pile of discarded clothes from my bike ride in, picked up the long-sleeved running shirt I wore in, and started drying off with that. The fabric was horrible for absorbing water and left little bits of black fuzz everywhere, but eventually I got dry enough that I could get dressed and step out of the stall to get my towel without the fear of being exposed.

With that, my problem was solved. But I couldn't get properly dry before I got dressed, and didn't have time to get undressed again just to finishing drying off, so I spent the rest of the morning feeling damp and more than a little silly. Lesson learned: ALWAYS shut the door to the common room. And that Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy was right: always carry your towel.

Personalities at the office

This may make me sound crazy, but ever give inanimate objects personalities? Maybe it's a product of my boredom at work, but lately I've found myself looking at the machines I use at my office in a whole new light. Here's what I've come up with so far:

The Dot-Matrix Printer

This printer is an old dog that's been forced to learn a new trick. At my company it has two jobs: print cheques, and print invoices. The first it does no problem at all, clearly in line with it's original function. The second, not so much. First, it has trouble taking the paper. Then, once it finally manages to load properly and print it doesn't want to let go of the paper. And once I remove the paper, it has to be restarted before I can start the whole process all over again. The printer tries, it really tries. But clearly it struggles working with the larger size of paper, like an old man struggling to learn to use a cell phone.

The Desktop

My desktop is the newest piece of machinery that I work with. Which isn't saying much. Still, it reminds me of an overachiever, with one weakness. 99% of the time it works beautifully, completing commands with grace and ease. However, it seems to have a pathological fear of the fax program. When I load the program, the whole screen turns beige and it takes effort to everything back to normal. And every once in a while the desktop freaks out and shuts the program down.

The Fax Machine

This machine is a simpleton, straight up. It can do one task at a time, and that's it. Either it can send a fax, or it can print a confirmation. As soon as it's doing one, it's tiny brain it working at full capacity and NOTHING ELSE CAN BE DONE until that task is completed. Not to mention that sometimes it doesn't seem to understand what pressing the "send" button means. Poor, simple fax machine.

The Copier/Scanner

Ever read hitchiker's guide to the galaxy? If you haven't, the important point here is there a machine called Marvin. He's very depressed. And has this constant pain in all the diodes down his left side. The copier/scanner machine reminds me of Marvin. It does what it's told, but often not without a lot of grumbling. It constantly jams, and sometimes completely fails to send the scan where you told it to go. Occasionally, it will tell me there's a jam somewhere, but after opening all of the different compartments you find out it was making up a problem. Dealing with this machine is beyond frustrating. But when it decides to work it does everything we need to it do, so it doesn't get replaced.

See where I'm coming from, fellow Douglas Adams Fans?



The Printer

You know the stereotypical jock from highschool? The guy that's not too bright, but is good at sports so he's the figurative belle of the ball? That's our printer. It does a fantastic job of printing. Fast, efficient, and rarely breaks down. However, it struggles to process print jobs that aren't a basic word document. And sometimes, it has to think about each individual page of a job before it can print it. Not too bright, but still a good printer.

The Coffee Machine

The coffee machine is brilliant. A genius in its own right. But it does things his way. Want to use the same pot to put water in the machine that you're going to hold the coffee in? No can do. Once the water starts going in, coffee is going to be made whether you're ready or not. It makes a good pot of coffee in no time at all though, so what's a little inconvenience here and there?

Dear energy-saving light bulbs...

You have one job. Just one job. When I turn you on, I want to you make my world significantly brighter so I can get stuff done. You don't even have to look pretty while you're doing it. I'm not that picky.

Instead, I trudge up the stairs in the morning and flick your switch only to be greeted by a disappointingly meek glow, maybe two steps up from complete darkness. This does not work for me. I need to put in my contacts, shower, and do a few other things in my morning routine that all require the ability to see. Because of your lackluster performance, I end up leaving you turned on while I wander off with my glasses to check my emails or something until you decide that you're ready to work now, really. By then I've usually forgotten that I turned you on at all because I'm distracted by something else, until someone notices that you're just sitting there waiting for me and mistakenly turn you off. Then the whole process starts over again. Not very energy-efficient now, are we?

I know sometimes I wake you up very early in the morning, but that's no excuse. You knew from the start that this was an on call position, you have to be ready whenever I need you. I'm having some difficulty replacing you, but unless you shape up I'm going to search high and low for a lightbulb that's more willing to do it's job.

You have been warned.

Disappointedly,
Danielle

I hate job hunting.

It's that time of year again. Time to put myself out there and hope that someone wants to hire me for the summer. My ability to pay for the next year of school rides on my ability to convince someone that I'm the perfect person to hire for their job. Not those other 100 people that applied, no. Definitely not. You want to hire ME.

Like almost everyone on this planet, I absolutely loathe job hunting. But this year, I have a plan. I'm applying for job I've help before. Same company, same position. Having done this job before HAS to give me an edge of some sorts, right? Plus it's related to my degree, so double bonus!

I've been watching the website they post on diligently and waiting for them to post it. I miss checking it for a couple days, and when I come back THE POSTINGS ARE UP! Except there's 5 postings for one job. Strange. I open the first one up and my heart sinks. They've cut back the hours on the job, and now it's part time. Each posting it for working different days of the week: mon-fri, tue-sat, thurs-mon...you get the idea. I really need full time work, so if I apply for this I'll have to find a second part time job to work around the first one. After much humming and hawing, I finally decide to just apply for it. I work hard making my cover letter sound as professional as possible, double check to make sure my resume is up to snuff, and send it off.

Lo and behold, while I was applying for the first position they posted two full-time positions. THIS is the job I really wanted! So then I had to apply again, and explain in my cover letter that yes, I did just apply for almost the exact same position a few minutes ago, but this wasn't posted when I did that so will you please consider me for this job instead? Not quite the professional image I was trying to project.

Now it's the waiting game. I sit here for weeks on end, applying to other jobs that I don't really want to do in case I don't get this one. Even when I hear back from them, it'll only be for an interview. Then the waiting game starts all over again.

Only 3 more years of job hunting before I actually will end up with a career. Yipee.

My poor little car...

I am the proud owner of a 95' Chevy Cavalier named Alfie that has more clicks on it than there is people living in my city. He's a good little car that's put up with a lot of abuse. This weekend was no exception.

I was in charge of sound equipment for an interactive dinner theatre production that happened Saturday night. We had to rent 4 gigantic speakers, 4 speaker stands, 2 projectors, 7 mikes (all in carrying cases the size of large laptops), a mixer, a DI box, and about 20 pounds worth of cables to connect all of this. I called a friend over to help me fit all this stuff in my car. We started out by putting one of the speakers in the trunk. We grabbed the speaker, hoisted it up and quickly found out that it was a little bit too large to fit into the trunk easily. It took us about 5 minutes of twisting, flipping, and some fine-tuned adjustments to find a way to get this speaker to fit through the opening. Then it became clear that only one speaker would fit in the trunk.

Eventually we got the one speaker and all of the speaker stands in the trunk, pulled down the back seat and put the other speaker, the 7 mikes, and one of the projectors on there, put the other projector on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and loaded the seat itself with the cables, DI box, the mixer, and eventually another piece of equipment we rented to deal with our issues with feedback. Someone else had to take the other speakers. Alfie did not like carrying this much weight. Driving him was like trying to push a giant boulder up a hill; possible, but you feel every ounce of effort you put in.

When we finally unloaded at the location, I felt like my car was a clown car, with more stuff coming out of him than should ever have fit in. And at the end of the night, poor Alfie had to be loaded up again so I could take all of the equipment back to the rentals place. It's a good thing he's such a loyal, stubborn little car, or he probably would have given up on me a long time ago.

The cycle of exhaustion

I have had a very stressful week this week and it definitely doesn't show any signs of improving. This, combined with a few other factors, led to my brain being incredibly overactive last night and not letting me sleep. It's like being stuck in a conversation with someone who spends hours on end going into extreme detail about their day, from how many times they hit the snooze button to the difficulty they had choosing between a cheeseburger or a bacon cheeseburger for dinner. And the rest of my body was too polite to tell it to shut up so we could get some sleep. It took until 4am for me to be tired enough to ignore it and pass out. I had to get up at 6am.

And so begins the horrible cycle of exhaustion.

THE MORNING AFTER

When I first wake up after a night like this I'm always unbelievably alert. My brain has decided that I just had a wonderful 2-hour nap and I should be ready to go on with my day, forgetting that I was trying for a full night's sleep. My body gathers all of it's energy (I imagine it having a magical bag full of energy that it doles out, kind of like Santa giving presents to children) and, confused by the signals from my brain, believes that it has plenty left to get me through until bed time. Before either of them can correct this assumption, I pump myself full of caffeine. Now my body has more energy than it could ever use! This way I get through my morning without a problem.

THE AFTERNOON CRASH

My body spends the first part of the day handing out energy with glee. Taking a test? No problem, here's a bunch of energy to get you through it. Writing a blog? Why not, we have tons of energy to spare! More coffee? Why yes, please! Unfortunately I can't keep up this charade all day. I'm only willing to put so much of my spending money into keeping myself awake. Unaware that the caffeine supply is running low, my body continues to give out energy with reckless abandon.

Suddenly it happens. My brain says "body, would you mind climbing these stairs for me?" "With pleasure!' my body replies, reaching into it's magical bag. And realizing that there's not much left in there.

Full on panic mode starts. I go from being alert and ready to face my day to being barely capable to even deal with the stairs in front of me in a matter of milliseconds. My body hoards energy, giving out just enough to get me by, and watches fretfully as the supplies run lower and lower. It starts yelling at my brain "SLEEP! GO TO SLEEP! NOW!!!!", which is especially annoying when I am, say, driving my car somewhere. My eyes lose their ability to focus properly and I become clumsier than I already am as my brain fights between its need to shut down and its need to get me home first.

THE REST OF THE DAY

I become barely capable of functioning. My body resists any kind of movement, preferring to stay where it is and save the meager amount of energy that still remains. My brain is spending so much time fighting with itself that even forming a coherent sentence becomes difficult. All hopes of being productive are thrown out the window.

THE NEXT DAY

No matter how much sleep I get the next night, waking up the next day is like trying to dig my way to China with my bare hands. My brain has tired itself out from all the fighting yesterday, and my body is still in survival mode and refuses to give out more than the bare minimum of energy required. Sentences are slightly easier to form than last night, but any activity which doesn't require huge amounts of attention results in a strong desire to go back to bed.

It's not until the next night that there's any hope of breaking the cycle. Of course, my brain and body learn nothing from this experience, and happily repeat the whole thing a month or two down the road.

This blog is brought to you by amnesia

While I was driving today I came up with a fanastic idea for a blog. Wrote about half of it in my head, figuring I'd leave the rest for when I got home. And here I sit. I know I was going to do it in letter format, so I was going to start off with "Dear so and so".....

That's all I've got.

So instead, you get this picture. Enjoy.

Because ninja cookies make everything better.

Scanning is hard.

Today at work a coworker approached me with a book. He opened the book about 2/3 of the way through, indicated the first part of it and said, "Can you scan these pages so I can send them to our other plant?" I stared at the pile of paper he was showing me. It was a lot of pages. Our scanner is finicky and likes to screw things up partway through scanning them. I was answering phones as well and given the frequency of the incoming calls, running back and forth between the scanner and the reception desk was going to cause issues. I managed to squeeze out some sort of polite comment asking if he really wanted all of those pages. Thankfully he thought for a second and decided it was better to only scan the pages they really needed, and if they want any of the other ones they can let us know. So my work load was cut in half. Good thing too, as scanning turned into quite the ordeal.

First thing I noticed was that the book was too wide for the scanner. After a bit of fiddling I devised a way to scan one page at a time, although half of the pages were going to be upside down. I prayed I could fix them after the fact and set to work. I was doing pretty well at the start, and got about halfway through before the phone rang. I ran off to answer it, and ended up trapped on the phone for a good 2-3 minutes trying to figure out who this guy wanted to talk to. By the time I came back, the scanner had decided that I clearly didn't want all these pages I was scanning since I had been gone so long, and had thrown them away.

Attempt #1 is a failure. Start over. Lesson learned: if I will be away from the scanner for a while, go back and end the scan, then finish the phone call and start from where I left off. Piece of cake.

This time I get about a third of the way in before the phone rang. I ran over, answered it. Took a few moments for the person to get around to saying what they wanted, but passed them off fairly quickly. Or so I thought. Get back just in time for the scanner to beep and, once again, toss my hard work into the abyss.

Attempt #2 is also a failure. Start over. Lesson learned: just end the scan.

This time, I am prepared. When the phone rings I end the scan, no questions asked. It takes me three tries, but I get through it all. Finally. Feeling accomplished, I strut back to my desk to feast my eyes on the spoils of my efforts. I open the scanner folder, open up the first file, and......the scanner chose the wrong paper size. The bottom of all of the scans is cut off. They are useless.

Attempt #3 is still a failure. Delete and start over. Lesson learned: maybe I'm just not meant to scan.

I trudge back to the scanner and wander through it's various settings until I finally manage to force it to choose the scan size I want. Get about 4 pages in. Phone rings. End the scan to answer the phone. This time I actually check the completed scans to see if they worked. Bottoms of the pages are still cut off.

Attempt #4 is a failure too. Delete and start over. Lesson learned: I may be completely incompetent.

At this point one of my co-workers who covers the phones when I'm away from the desk offered to take calls while I finished this project. Thankful that I had one less thing to focus on, I told her my scanning woes and my issues with the pages being cut off. She replied, "Couldn't you do two pages at once, and use the legal-size setting?" As I was in the process of telling her how the book was too wide, the little voice in the back of my head woke up, took stock of the situation, and informed me that I was being stupid. If you imagine the scanner like a Word document, I was laying the book down as if portrait was the only option, and hence only letter-size. I completely forgot about landscape.

So I go to the scanner and rotate the book 90 degrees. Lo and behold, it actually fits now. I start scanning, and two minutes later I am done. I check the scans, and they are beautiful. My work is complete.

Attempt #5 is a success. Go back to my desk and remind myself that this is why I learned to laugh at myself. Lesson learned: the hair dye can cover the blonde, but it can't make it go away.

I suppose an introduction is in order...

Hello there, internet. My name is Danielle. You can call me... well, whatever the hell you want really. I'm not going to bother correcting you.

I am a crazy, tall, slightly weird but still very awesome person living in British Columbia, which happens to be pretty much the most amazing place ever. I have a boyfriend who lives in Ontario, which happens to be much less amazing than BC. In fact, I think the whole province of Ontario would be greatly improved if it just moved about 3 timezones to the west. I also have two brothers, two parents, and no pets. I'm currently trying to finish my bachelor's degree in Human Kinetics, though I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I love dancing, swimming, playgrounds, reading, puzzles, anything that's midly amusing, and writing. Hence the blog.

I have no specific plans for this blog. Mostly I hope to use it to share funny stories from my day, though I can't promise that I'll completely avoid the occasional woe-is-me pity party post. Feel free to skip over those ones. Overally, I'll usually make fun of myself. As you may have guessed from the name of my blog, I am not the most coordinated person, and I have a tendency towards blonde moments. Sometimes I will also use this blog to make fun of my loved ones. Why? Because I can.

I also have no specific timeline for making posts. I hope to put something up several times a week. That said, I tend to keep myself extremely busy, so sometimes my posting may become quite sporadic. Deal with it.

I'm assuming that very few people will actually read this blog, so I'll stop there. If anyone does have questions, feel free to contact me. Or just make something up in your head, it'll probably be more interesting anyways.

Love,
Danielle