La Phalene

Canada day, I went out with friends in the evening and played a short game of scrabble, learning new rules (apparently you can spell multiple words in a turn) and then went to watch the fireworks at the old port. As usual there were massive crowds, and we pushed through to try to get a good spot to watch. However as luck would have it, instead of shooting them off from the same location that the annual international fireworks festival chooses, we got smack dab across the water from where they were letting them off. I was so close I could see the little flaming dots as the actual firework shot into the sky.

The show must have lasted ten minutes and specialized in being big and bright. My favourite was the spiraling sparklers that whizzed up several stories into the air in a serpentine of little points of light, but they had the usual multi-coloured firework pops, and some sort of red tinted firework that exploded twice, for a double blossoming effect.

After fireworks, there was a  general push to go to a Macdonald’s, and Mothboy horrified us with tales of the improperly cleaned milkshake machine. I had chicken nuggets, something I hadn’t tried for several years. Last time they were disappointing little dried out lumps, but either the health conscious rebranding phase has blown over or these ones were more fresh, and suitably moist and greasy, grey inside, rather than glaring white, and full of hot salt and oil.

I’m not sure how I feel about the hideous lime green new look that they decided to institute. Mothboy thinks it’s stylish, but the horrid lime and red colour scheme and tan-zebra patterned tables suggest cheap wood, and a sushi bar with issues, not wholesome unhealthy treat food. Perhaps it’s not helped that the biggest picture on their menu is now the enormous salad, which feels like the obvious pandering it is. Whatever, at least the mainstay of my childhood desire has been restored to its former glory. Mmmm, generic chicken parts!

So I’ve got a nice day to devote to my own comfort and enjoyment.  So far I managed to get wrapped up in an internet debate on the nature of hate, eat a pro-biotic yogurt shot and fail to write another chapter of the story I’m working on.  Also, poptarts.

If I’m being good, I’ll get up, get dressed and do a few of the chores I really should focus on, like the laundry and some light exercise. Maybe even some of my overdue paperwork and some extra studying. Hmmm… Betting odds?

I’m on a campaign for improved health again. Yesterday I went to the gym and used a machine for half an hour, and today I went swimming for a full hour. I got myself $10 goggles that work to keep most of the water out of my eyes, which means that the primary stumbling block to face-in-the-water swimming is gone. This has always been a big problem for me, meaning I never really learned to dive, I aspired to only ever do the side stroke, and I’d frustrate the hell out of my swim instructor be belly flopping when ordered to jump into the pool.

I’ve recognized that, after trying nose plugs and a lot of futzing about in the water for fun, what really bothers me is not water up the nose, but that horrid moment of blindness where the chlorine laden water completely removes my ability to see and I can’t rub my poor eyes. With goggles suction cup sealed on, I have no problem even experimenting with pushing my face under water in the direction of the bottom, and I imagine if I keep this up I’ll be diving, at least from the pool’s edge, by the end of the summer.

Right now, however, I’m sore all over and enjoying a cup of soup before bed. With luck my general ambition will carry on until tomorrow and I’ll get some exercise Sunday, too.

As much as most of my life seems to run like Hyperbole and a Half’’s daily life,  it’s actually not so bad. as I observed, my morale and productivity actually increases with the addition of a daily job. That being said, I’m really not getting much in the way of sales lately, as I seem to have found the hidden treasure trove of angry customers- or maybe New York state is grumpy to everyone. I also got my first profanity laced rejection on something that was -almost- a sale, but bounced at verification.

Meanwhile one of our staff quit, as part of the steady attrition rate. I’m still trying valiantly to get better at sales, but I’m either missing something or my listings suck. actually, that’s another problem I’ve noticed, that about a quarter of the listings were prior calls reinserted into the big stack of paper where we get our contacts from. I’m guessing it was the call list of someone who quit and didn’t tick on the sheet. I’m a bit anxious I’ll never get good at sales, as I’m seeing this is a chance to learn how to do it.

Meanwhile Mothboy is trying to convince me to take an interview at a bookstore, for a pay cut and less regular hours. And everyone is responding to my choice in employment with ‘poor sweetie!’ like I took a job somewhere truly horrid. Odd, i like my job. It’s nice and steady work, for good pay.

On the way home from work I splurged and replaced my cake tins and loaf pans. Both had originally been dollar store, paper thin quality, and survived only a few different cooking attempts. The replacement, bought from a home goods and restaurant supply store around Jean Talon, are heavy dark non-stick, with that new ceramic coating that seems to be slowly edging out Teflon, now that everyone thinks Teflon causes cancer. I probably shouldn’t have spent the $50, but having tested the loaf pans they’re very good.

I wasn’t intending to actually buy that much, but with a 10% discount from the nice lady in the headscarf on further purchases and my general lust for home goods, I figured a day’s work was worth the enjoyment this stuff will bring. That’s something I find with working- every purchase becomes measured in labour hours. Liesure time suddenly becomes much more precious… and also more productive.

I also like how employment gives my a better handle on my money. Once upon a time I even had a GIC, but these days, since I’ve been mooching, money feels like a theoretical substance I don’t have to worry about and having a job adjusts this back to something reasonable. 

I’m planning cupcake baking for tomorrow, since I promised I’d try to bring baked good to reward the meeting of quotas so I could go home early on Friday. That means getting up early tomorrow without argument so I can throw together something.  I think it will involve strawberries…

Right now my current finacial priority is to stabilize cashflow so I can adjust things comfortably to get a clear picture of how much I need to ask for from the government/my father to complete my final year of university.

Meanwhile mothboy is looking into getting European citizenship while either of his first generation European grandparents are still alive. I think he’s going through a ‘return to my roots’ phase, fed by a month in Russia, but as well as that he is starting to drool over the Western European idea of bike paths. Me, I think being a trailing spouse in Europe could be fun, though I’m not holding my breath, since the British and Polish grandmothers are old and decrepit.

This blog is oft neglected and has become loaded with spam to the extent that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to properly empty the comments section. As such, I’m working to redesign and restore this to something easier to work with.

Of course it’s just my luck that the password for my database has gone poof. If this blog completely vanishes, I decided to destroy everything and start over. ^_^

I’m in the library and it’s full of ways to get myself in trouble.

1) Fill out this semi-discarded, probably lost, half used french work book in imitation to the owner’s hand writing, so it’s all done in gramatically correct French. And then turn it into the lost and found.

2) Go to the reserved stacks for the honour students, where they keep their neatly piled research material and find new and interesting ways to combine the books they have stacked up to improve their theses. Political messages in Robinson Crueso meet Nazi battle tactics! Alexander the Great , be recombined with a survy of Education during the Great Depression.

3) Taunt the resident schitzophrenic that I’m going to steal his time-cube esque idea and publish it in my name before he can finish labouriously trying to write the perfect introductory paragraph to his “major” breakthrough.

4) Ask the librarian with a “Worker for Jesus” pin if that’s why she’s here over the Easter weekend. Imply I expect to see her on all holy days.

5) Find the terminals where students have forgotten to log out of the free public computers and look up obscure fetish porn and perverse, advanced sexual techniques. Or failing that, find a live streaming version of “Baise-Moi”

6) Find one of the lonely, socially mal-adjusted men who ask to be my slave, book one of the library’s semi-private, glass walled conference rooms and do a scene with him in full dominatrix regalia. Tell library staff we’re rehersing for a production of Caligula.

7) Go around trying to get people to sign a petition to ban all cars, or school tuition, or pure bred dogs. Perhaps all three. Use it as a study of how many people with bangs will sign and use their contact information to tell them how they stack up.

Drop paper planes down the unblocked shaft that runs from the ground floor to the sixth next to the stair case. Army men with parachutes are also an option.

9)Get lots of snack food wrappers and empty drink cans and plant them randomly in people’s desks, so they run afoul of security.