Angry acts of kindness

I had a few days this week that were incredibly busy. Wednesday was the first of them. I had work from 7:30-11:30 am, then a second job from 12:30-2:30 pm, and after that I had to go straight away to pick up a photobooth and drive it to an event, where I then worked from 4:00-10:00 pm. It was a very long day, and a very draining one.

The event I worked at in the evening ended up being in an enclosed area. As in, they were closing off several city blocks. However, when I arrived they hadn't set anything up yet. I dropped off the equipment and then asked where to park my car. I was directed to a parking lot a few blocks away, which I found out later was outside the enclosed area. Shouldn't be an issue though, right? We weren't taking down our equipment until the event was over, so surely they would let me back in. Wrong. I drove around for 20 minutes asking person after person to let me in, and every single one told me "we're not letting anyone in until everyone's out". No amount of arguing would sway them. Frustrated and exhausted, I finally went back to the parking lot I had been at earlier and decided we'd just have to push the stuff over. I get out of my car, and as I'm pulling out the dolly some random homeless guy approaches me and asks for change. I respond with "sorry, not right now," to which he responds "later then?" That was it. I officially lost it.

I turned to the guy and, no longer making an effort to stay calm, snapped, "Look, it's going to to be at least another 30 minutes until I'm finished with what I'm doing. If you want to wait until I'm done, then sure. I'll give you some change. But I don't have time for you right now." I slammed the trunk of my car shut, and starting to feel guilty I shot off a last "sorry, it's just been a rough day" as I stormed off to the event site.

As soon as I left, I regretted what I said. What if I pissed him off, and he decides to break into my car to look for something worth stealing? There's lots of people around, but that's no guarantee of safety. Not that there was anything worth stealing in the car, but paying for a broken window would suck. There was nothing I could do though, so I just went back to get the equipment. We loaded some stuff onto the dolly, and everything else already had wheels on it. Between my coworker and I, we managed to push all of the equipment the few blocks to my car. As we turn the corner to where I parked, I see a man standing next to my car. Great, I think to myself, he's still there. He's more well-dressed than I remember, but I wasn't paying that much attention to him the first time. The car looks okay though, so I suck it up and put a smile on my face. If he waited that long, he earned his change.

As we start packing the equipment, he's asking questions about what all of this is, what we do, how the event was. After I got everything secured, I dug in my wallet and found some change. I walked up to him, coins held out in front of me, and he backs up saying "Woah!" It hits me in that moment that this was not the guy that I was talking to earlier. I just tried to give change to a random stranger who was simply curious about what we were doing. He even helped us load the equipment in my car.

So, to sum it all up: I was tired a frustrated, went to give money to a homeless man who put up with me getting mad at him, almost gave money to a random nice guy. It was an odd night all around.

Even the best of intentions...

For most of May and the start of June, I spent my afternoons doing respite with a teenage boy who has a developmental disability. He was very high functioning and very active, so we got to do lots of fun stuff together. One of his favourite things to do, though, was play basketball, so I made sure that our last day together would involve playing some of his favourite sport.

Now, when I first started working with him I went out and bought a cheap basketball and pump as he was visiting from a different country and didn't have one with him. The basketball definitely didn't hold air all that well and needed to be touched up a few times when we used it, but that's what the pump was for, right? So on his last day, we headed down to his local basketball court and got set up. I checked the ball, and sure enough it needed to be refilled a bit. I put the pump in and had the client do most of the refilling. After he finished though, I checked it again and thought, It could use just a little bit more air. It turned out to be a bad decision. Two pumps in the needle breaks straight off, still in the basketball and now spewing air in the wrong direction.

I wish I had a picture of my face in that moment. Panic set in because I knew I had to fix this quickly but I didn't know how. My client was staring at me, probably trying to figure out why I didn't just give him the basketball already. He came over and grabbed it, causing air to rush out even faster than before. At this point he seemed to figure out was was going on, so he grabbed the rest of the pump and tried to just stick it back on the needle. Of course it didn't work, but it did give me an idea. Maybe if I managed to get some more air back into the basketball and then pushed the needle into it so it stopped leaking air....it wouldn't be perfect, but I was out of other options. I took the pump and ball back, lined them up, and two pumps in the handle breaks off in my hand. My client's shoulders drooped, and he called my name in a tone that just screamed "what are you doing to my basketball."

The ball had taken on a sad, dejected look, as if it had already given up on me. I wanted to fix this, I really did, but I was out of options. I made one last effort to push the needle into the ball, and even that didn't work. Defeated, I sheepishly returned the ball to the client. He attempted to dribble it, and it just smacked flatly onto the ground. We still managed to shoot a few hoops and have a good time, but every dull thud when it landed brought a new wave of embarrassment.

Really, who put me in charge?

All we wanted was an iced latte...

My boyfriend and I went on a trip to Niagara Falls this weekend. It's a place I've wanted to visit for a very long time, and since we had some free time during my visit we decided to go check it out. We booked our hotel room, planned our activities, and made restaurant reservations weeks in advance. By the time it was finally time to go, I was beyond excited. However, no amount of excitement could hide the fact that we had a four hour drive ahead of us. When we stopped for dinner, we both decided a little bit of caffeine couldn't hurt. Little did we know that it would become quite the ordeal.

We approached the Tim Horton's counter and, after scanning the menu, we both agreed that what we really wanted was an iced latte. Upon ordering, we were met with a blank stare from the person behind the counter, who then asked a coworker if they had iced lattes. The coworker said no. "We only have those in the summer," she explained, and then apologized and told us we'd have to order something else. At this point we indicated that it was odd for them not to have iced lattes where they're on the menu. She turned around, looked at the menu, and seemed shocked to see that we were right. Three other people came over to look at the menu, and all were surprised to see that they were now offering lattes. The person behind the counter checked with her supervisor to see if they were actually able to make iced lattes, and it turned out the answer was yes. That being said, only the supervisor knew how to make them.

My boyfriend and I stood aside and watched as the person fumbled through learning how to make an iced latte. We were getting a bit antsy to leave as we still had two more hours of driving ahead of us and it was already getting late. We waited patiently though, because people needed to learn how to make them and there was nothing we could do about that now. Eventually the supervisor came over and asked us if we wanted a donut, cookie, muffin, or anything to help make up for the wait. We chose and honey crueller, and not seconds after we were given it the person came over with an iced latte for each of us. They were tiny. After a moment of silence, my boyfriend asked, "are those really mediums?"

The person looked at each latte, then hung her head and let out a heavy sigh.

She offered to remake them, and when we refused they offered us more muffins/cookies/donuts, but we just wanted to get on the road so we took them as is and settled for the free donut we'd already been given. I learned my lesson and, the next time we were in Tim Hortons, I avoided the iced lattes. My boyfriend, however, didn't.

On the bright side, thanks to our efforts there are now two Tim Horton's employees who know how to make iced lattes. That counts for something, right?

This is me being picky

Okay, so I know it's no secret that about 99% of commercials suck these days. I also know that I'm probably the only person that does not bother to mute the ads, and so most of you happily live your life never realizing how truly bad these ads are. But I do listen, and there are a few ads that irk me right now because the people making them seem to have no clue what they're talking about. So, I'm calling them out.

Offender #1: Natural Defense Dog Food

This ad spends most of its time showing well-groomed dogs in various stages of harvesting and shipping plants, presumably for them to eat. Then comes the tag-line at the end of the commercial: "Health promoting extracts: if they could get them on their own, they would." The narrator lets you know exactly what extracts your dog is looking for, which come from plants like marigold and myrtle, and that this dog food will protect your pet for life.

Now, I'm not sure what dogs this company has met, but all the dogs I know don't seem all that concerned about eating healthy. They just eat pretty much whatever they can find. In fact, I'm almost 100% certain that even if dogs COULD get these extracts on their own, they'd choose to eat sausages instead. That's not to say that you shouldn't get healthy food for your dogs, but saying that the dog would choose healthy food is like saying your kids would love to eat broccoli if you would just tell them it's healthy.

Offender #2: Reach Total Care

This commercial boasts that Reach has created the new future in manual toothbrushes. How? By adding a hole to the handle for your thumb to sit in. They claim this increases your ability to control the toothbrush, and then say that the bristles fit better and clean better than a toothbrush without a hole. Doesn't it sound amazing?

First of all, not once in my life have I ever felt that I didn't have enough "control" over my toothbrush. This makes me very skeptical that this hole will somehow significantly improve my teeth-cleaning experience. Also, the only change to the brush that is mentioned is this hole, and yet they zoom in to show how the bristles fit better and clean better. To me, this implies that the hole in the handle somehow magically affects how the bristles fit to your tooth. I'm sure that's not what they mean, but that's what I take away from the commercial. And I call bullshit.

Offender #3: CTV

CTV wants you to watch the Olympics on their channel, so they've made a series of commercials showing how excited everyone is and inviting you to watch with them. The general theme of these ads is that the "spark that started in Vancouver" is spreading around the world, and now everyone believes. I'm not sure what they believe in, but they do. So watch with CTV, okay?

On top of the fact that this commercial basically makes no sense, I would like to point out that the Olympics have been around for a LONG time. This isn't even the first time they've been to Canada. So why do we in Vancouver think we're so special that we managed to send a spark around the world just by hosting them? People got excited about the Olympics long before we came around, and any excitement they're feeling this year has nothing to do with us.

Offender #4: Lysol No Touch Soap Pumps

I won't go on about this too long because I already talked about it here, but it deserves mentioning again. Seriously, it doesn't matter if you touch a germy soap pump, because YOU ARE GETTING SOAP TO WASH YOUR HANDS! Come on, people. You're smarter than this.

Now that I've spent a whole blog nit-picking on ads that no one really cares about, I'll finish off with two that did it right. They may not be super accurate, but at least they're funny. Enjoy.

Always read the label...

On Saturday I made the trek out to visit The Boy, and things just happened to work out that his friends decided to head out on the same weekend. I was really excited, since I haven't had many chances to meet them until now. We planned to meet up at Boy's house for some food and drinks, and then head out for a night on the town. It was a long trip, but everyone managed to get there safe, sound, and ready to have a good time.

We ordered in some pizza and everyone grabbed a drink that suited them. Boy had bought something he thought I might like to try: root beer flavoured vodka. We decided the best way to mix up the vodka was to add some ice, a little bit of water, and a little bit of vanilla to make a root beer float martini. It was suprisingly delicious, but seeing as is was basically straight vodka I decided that two were enough and I needed some mix in the next one.

When I was ready for a new drink, I raided the fridge and found an open carton of orange juice. The flavour of the vodka wasn't really strong, so I thought it would be okay. My first sip left me uncertain. It didn't taste bad, just....odd. The Boy tried it and told me to dump it down the sink right away, but one of his friends also tried it and he liked it. After another couple sips I decided it wasn't bad enough to waste and finished the drink without giving it another thought. The next drink I made I used plain vodka though, because although the first drink wasn't terrible it wasn't fantastic either. I walked back into the room, took a sip, and....it still tasted odd. I looked at my drink, confused, and informed the group that it might be the orange juice that was the problem. At this point, The Boy looks up and says, "Wait, which juice did you use? One of them might be expired."

Silence fills the room.

I walk back to the fridge and pick up the carton of juice. Not only was it expired, but it expired four months ago. And not only did it expire four months ago, but there was mold in the spout. Mold that I had completely failed to notice. And because I had failed to notice it, I drank a whole glass of moldy orange juice. Needless to say, the new drink was poured down the drain along with the rest of that carton. And the next drink I made, which used juice that was actually fresh, tasted much better.

Moral of the story: if you're using someone else's juice, it might be a good idea to read the label.

The definition of snail mail

For those who don't know, I am currently in a long distance relationship with a wonderful man who lives on the other side of the country. We're lucky enough to have him out my way for business trips where his expenses are covered, so we share costs when I travel out there. He's working full time and I'm in school which means that quite often it works best for him to pay first and I either mail him a cheque or give one to him the next time I see him. Such was the case last June, when I sent Boyfriend a cheque to repay him for some expense or another. Unfortunately Canada Post happened to be on strike and my envelope promptly disappeared and was never seen or heard from again. Or so we thought.

A couple days a go, Boyfriend and I were on the phone having our (near) nightly good night chat. After catching up on each other's days, he tells me that he got an envelope in the mail today. Figuring it must be something pretty exciting for him to tell me about it, so I ask what was in it. His response? "I don't know, I haven't opened it yet, but it's got your name in the corner."

.......it does? I hadn't sent him anything that I could remember.

After a moment of silence, I realize that maybe my lost cheque finally made it's way to him. He opens it, and sure enough there's my cheque, dated June 1st, 2011. It took them 8 months, but the postman did not lose my mail at all. As much as I would have loved for it to get to him sooner, I admire their dedication. They must have been facing a mountain of unsorted mail when the strike ended, but they sorted it and got that envelope to where it was supposed to be. Besides, I had sent the cheque in a card, so he still got to enjoy that.

Mailmen, I salute you!

A wonderful wedding

Last weekend I went to my first wedding ever. Okay, not quite. I was a flower girl for my Uncle's wedding way back in the day, but the only thing I remember about that day is the purple satin dress I got to wear that my Grandma made for me. So I don't think that really counts.

The ceremony itself was wonderful. Aside from what I would consider to be very typical parts of a wedding ceremony, the couple did one thing that I really liked. They had a sand ceremony where they took turns pouring different colours of sand into a tear drop-shaped glass container. It was symbolic of their two separate lives coming together as one, and the resulting layered effect made a beautiful keepsake. I'll admit to tearing up a few times during the ceremony, there was so much love and happiness in the air it was hard not to get emotional.

The reception was also a success, with delicious food and fantastic dancing music. Plus, of course, the games. They had the bride and groom do the standard "hold up a shoe" game, and also did a game on the dance floor to determine who at the reception had been married the longest (one couple had been married 31 years!). However, one part made me laugh the hardest, and I'm not even sure it was intended to.

Partway through the night the DJ cleared the dance floor and told all the single ladies to come forward for the throwing of the bouquet. I figured I might as well, so I grabbed a few of my new-found friends to come up with me. We chose to hang out around the outskirts of the group, since none of us seemed to really care if we actually did catch it. The bouquet was passed to the bride, she turned around, and.....the DJ started blasting this song:

I was laughing so hard I completely missed the bouquet toss.

As per tradition, this was immediately followed by the groom removing the bride's garter and tossing it to the single men. The bride was set up in a chair, and the groom knelt down in front of her. Suddenly, the DJ asks, "Should we make this easy for him, or should we make this hard for him?" As rousing cries of "HARD" came out of the crowd, the groom was told he could not use his hands. Which may not have been a problem, except the bride was wearing a beautiful ballgown-style dress that must have had at least 7 or 8 layers of fabric for him to find his way through. Once again I was convulsing in fits of laughter on the side as the groom struggled to find his way inside this mountain of fabric, eventually emerging victorious with the garter in his mouth. Someone sitting at my table ended up catching it, which prompted me to ask him a somewhat mischevious question...

"Is it a problem that you're the next guy to get married, but your girlfriend is not the next girl?"

Thankfully he found it funny. My humour has a mean streak sometimes.

I've decided I would like more followers, so you can now find my blog on Bloglovin!

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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.