why does it have to be creepy?

Last week, while waiting at the airport for a domestic flight, I pulled out my laptop. I was in my own little world, getting my butt kicked even further at scrabulous, trying unsuccessfully to move up a level on FreeRice, and answering a few emails from a very long time ago (I've been so remiss lately).

Somebody asked if the seat next to me was available and I nodded, not even looking up.

After a few minutes, the same person said, "Wow, you type so fast - do your fingers ever smoke?" I enjoy brief conversations with random strangers, probably because I find people fascinating. I was mildly amused by this comment, so looked up to have a brief conversation. Buddy was an older guy in a pilot's uniform. After a few pleasantries, I turned back to what I was doing.

I wish the story ended there, because for once it would just be a nice story. But of course it doesn't end there. The next thing I knew unknown older guy--who was flying my plane, of course--was asking if I wanted to fly to Europe with him the next day. Say what?

Don't men ever just want to have a pleasant conversation with someone? Does it always have to turn creepy? I just don't get it.

houseguests

aaaaah. I love them. I always welcome them. But what's with the ones that come from a foreign country to visit for the first time, speak perfect English, and can't handle getting around and seeing stuff on their own? I live in a city full of great tourist attractions, many of which I can recommend and point out on a map. I don't get weeks and weeks of endless vacation, so I always tell people that they're welcome to stay and find stuff on their own, and that I'll join when I can. They always sound so excited, but then inevitably they get here, and they sit around and do nothing unless I take them places.

The evil part of me wants to invite myself over to their homes and do the same in return but I just can't bring myself to do it. Do I need to put up a rules board like all the hotels do?

Speaking of hotel rules boards, here's one I enjoyed immensely. Check out the red type. Thankfully, I at least don't have that problem.

trying not be hurt

Please tell me if I'm being unreasonable.

Most of my close friends are men. Not sure why, but there you go. One of my good friends is the guy who relieves constipation with his heated seats (sadly, a major source of search traffic for this blog), for whom I once drove to a restaurant to pay for a dinner date (he left his wallet at home).

Well, that dinner date was the beginning of something big. Friend called me last week, all excited, to tell me that he had proposed and she had said yes. I tried to be happy, but it was hard because I hadn't yet met his fiancee.

That's right, one of my good friends got engaged and didn't bother to introduce me to his significant other (who lives in the same city I do, I might add), whom he decided to marry.

I got upset, maybe more than I should have. After all, when someone calls to tell you that he or she is engaged, I think you're supposed to be all happy, or at least pretend to be all happy, or at least that's what I imagine my mother would tell me to do. I said, "You got engaged and I haven't even met her? When am I going to meet her?"

(To be very honest, I said this a la whiny voice, but it could have been a lot worse, right?)

His response: "Oh yeah, we're going to have an engagement party sometime this summer, so you can meet her there."

Well, today I got an evite to his engagement party and I have one word: crappy. The party's at a bar and a billion people are invited. Generally, that means we'll get about 5 minutes of innocuous conversation, yelled at each other over some ridiculous music. And I got invited 2 weeks in advance, to a party on a summer weekend. I treasure my summer weekends and maximize them by doing all kinds of outdoorsy stuff, and I hate hate hate getting stuck in the city for a stupid party. So wow, I can't wait to "meet" her.

OK, so I know you're hearing only my side of the story, but this all sucks, doesn't it? And it makes sense for me to be hurt, right? I'm trying not to be too hurt, since every indication is that my friend will be one of those people who gets married and doesn't have friends anymore. I find those people disturbing.

flying to meetings is ass

Today I flew to another city for a 1 1/2 hour meeting.

I wasn't even the presenter at the meeting; I was merely one of many attendees. After my long morning of fighting traffic to get to the airport, waiting for my flight, getting on and sitting through my flight, and finding a cab and fighting traffic to get to the meeting, I could only think of how ridiculous it all was. My carbon footprint had grown, my company's purse had shrunk, and my patience had been strained - all for a meeting that could easily have been held by netmeeting or video conference. And I wouldn't have been forced to look at the presenter's icky sweat stains (which, btw, were both large and numerous).

Today's one happy event occurred when I was killing time before getting back on a plane. Thanks to some idle time-killing shopping, my house key is now garnished with this fantastic loungefly key protector (yes, that's a little bit of Florence in the background).


I've been flashing it around like it's some sort of Olympic gold medal. So far nobody's given me much of a reaction, except maybe the small child who stopped crying to squint his eyes, then managed to focus on the loungefly, and then started crying even harder. But he was like 8 months old and wearing a raunchy velour one piece outfit, so I'm not sure anyone should be listening to his pronouncements on design.

uncle

More snow today. I tire of running on the treadmill, numbing the boredom with random music.

This morning I found myself listening to this. It HAS to stop.

Rainy

murphy's law of dating

I dated this guy for years in my 20s. He was smart and charismatic and everyone in my life loved him. As is usually the case, our relationship was six months of bliss, and then the crazies came out. This guy grew up in a family of millionaires and had no concept of the need for money. He ran his own "business," in quotation marks because it didn't actually have any customers. I put in many unpaid hours, trying to help get it off the ground. To get a break from all of this business he was doing, he would book us on "surprise vacations," again in quotation marks. When we got off the plane or train, he would never be able to either rent a car (because his driver's license had expired) or pay for a meal or a hotel (because his credit cards were all maxed out). Inevitably, the supposed surprise vacation would turn into an expensive vacation for me. And then we'd go home and I'd have to beg the utilities people not to disconnect the heat and hydro even though he hadn't paid the bill for months. I should mention that this was at a time in my life when I was a very junior political aide and I only ate because I was a reception whore, not because I had any money to actually buy myself food.

Eventually, despite the protestations of all of my family and friends (who didn't have to endure all of the crap), I got out.

And, since that day, apparently business has picked up considerably. In fact, buddy seems to be immensely successful now. He's won a bunch of awards, written a best-selling book and been interviewed on a million tv and radio shows. My parents and some of my friends always call when they see or hear of him and tell me how great he is. As you can probably guess, I love it when they do that.

So this evening he resurfaced again. I was driving home from work, drinking my kale-pineapple-banana-rice protein juice and listening to an audio book about open source software. Yes, we can stop there and acknowledge:
- that drink sounds grody (Sunny almost hurled when she saw me with my kale-raspberry-persimon-rice protein juice last week, but I'm a bit of a health nut and I swear you to that it's quite tasty)
- the fact that I'll listen to audio books is weird all in itself, but it's even weirder that I'll listen to an audio book about software.
But then, it's not like I'm going around speculating why I'm single.

At any rate, the book I was listening to cites the expert and collaborator otherwise known as MY EX. When I heard his name, I spit out my drink. Then I back-tracked a little to check if I was imagining it. No dice. Half an hour later, his name came up twice more.

Annoying. It's not like I'm still in love with him. In fact, I fully expect that life would have gone in a bad way if I'd stayed with him. Still, Murphy's Law is never fun, is it?

RainyBow

we've got you covered

I need to rant about insurance for a minute.

I am beginning to think it's the biggest scam going. Really, is playing the lottery any different? I pay both my car and house premium every single month and what does it get me? Nothing, that's what.

My first complaint is about my car insurance premium. I am accident free. I am ticket free. My car is 3 years old. I do not drive a sports car. My car has not been modified. I do not street race. I am not a 20 year old boy; in fact, I now qualify for an age discount because I am over 35 (sheesh). I would assume that given all of these factors, my premium would go down, or at least stay the same as it was last year. Nope. It went up by $120. Explain this to me please. Does this make sense to you?

Second complaint - house insurance. I spoke to the adjuster this morning about my roof problem. You remember, it's leaking like a sieve. It's so bad, I don't even want to go into the bathroom at all. This presents a problem because I don't have another bathroom; I'm sure I have kidney stones in my future.

Anyway, the guy was an ass. Of course he was, 'cause I have a problem that might require them to lay out some cash. This guy went on and on about how I probably wasn't covered for this reason and that reason - the roofing guy hasn't even come to look at the roof yet, so how would he know. During the course of this conversation, I started wondering what circumstance they would cover and I'm beginning to think there isn't one. I'm sure they are going to come up with every excuse they can not to cover my roof. We'll see what happens; they don't know who they're dealing with.

At the very least, I can afford to get my roof fixed without insurance money. Some people aren't so lucky. I'm sure there are plenty of Katrina victims who have something to say about the insurance premiums they paid regularly. Is it too much to ask the insurance companies to live up to their end of the bargain since they expect us to live up to our end?

Sunny

speaking of (non) long weekends....

I don't know how it works in the States, but here, every time there is a long weekend, the gas price jumps by about 5c/L. I have a big problem with this because of the BS reason they always give. 'The price of oil has increased and we have to raise prices so we don't lose money.' Oh yes, the price always increases to coincide with the start of a long weekend and then magically decreases afterward. Do they think we're stupid? Why can't they just come out and say: 'Hey, it's the long weekend and we know you're probably going to drive somewhere for the weekend so we're going to raise prices to take advantage of you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Enjoy your long weekend.'

Seems weird, but this would make me feel better. It would still suck for sure but at least I wouldn't feel like someone was trying to snow me. As we all know, an increase in the price of oil today wouldn't really affect gas prices for months; that gas is going into the reserves and will be used way down the road. Also, the oil companies aren't exactly hurting for cash. Here are some fourth quarter net earnings for you....

Imperial Oil - $886M
PetroCan - $522M
Royal Dutch Shell - $6.6B
Exxon - $11.6B

Here's Halliburton too in case you were wondering (you probably weren't but I feel you should know anyway) - $4.2B. Also, their press release is good reading. Who knew there were favourable tax impacts and foreign tax credits available to them? hmmm.

Here I go, totally off topic again. Anyway, back to the original subject.....

Point is, the gas companies are cleaning up. Yes, I know I choose to drive and have to pay for that luxury, but they could really own up to their price gouging.

Sunny

happy family day

Today is a brand-spanking new holiday in our region. It was announced a few months ago with much fanfare and excitement; who wouldn't want a day off in the middle of winter. hmmph. Well, turns out that the new holiday is not so popular. It seems that about 40% of people do not get the day off after all. There is some BS about the fact that companies who are federally regulated do not have to offer a provincial holiday to their employees. I'm sure you can guess whether I fall into the 40% or 60%. Bitter.

Sunny

ps. Rainy left for vacation tonight, so you're stuck with me for a while. Good luck with that.

misery loves company

The other day, both Rainy and I received a forwarded email with the event listing you see below. Why the person who sent it would think that either of us would be interested in something like this in the first place is a mystery for another day. What I'd really like to know is why people assume that you must be miserable if you are single. How offensive. Are people still under the impression that someone who is not coupled is sitting at home crying into a cup of tea and speaking to their 10 cats? Are you somehow impervious to misery if you are part of a twosome? Ridiculous.





SunnyShine
__________________

RainyBow note: The best thing about this fab invitation is the line that says "Take part in all that is favorable to being 'single.'"

OK, so first, what do these people, who actually used the line "misery loves company," think is "favorable" about being single?

And second, why the hell is "single" in quotation marks? Are the people who were going not really single, just kinda single? Or are they married and pretending to be single? And what kind of event do people who are "married" in quotation marks go to? These are things that will keep me up at night.

i'm good with the snow we've got, thanks

Last night I had to get home from work in a lovely blizzard. After this snowfall, we had three times more snow in the first 12 days of February here than we usually get in the entire month. It's been a long last couple of weeks. I am thankful I have neither a driveway nor a walk to shovel.

On the way home, I kept thinking things weren't so bad. I was moving slowly, but I was moving. I made a few phone calls, wrote some emails, and listened to a radio documentary and a couple of CDs. After almost 2 hours on the road, I could see my house up the street and I thought maybe--stupidly and optimistically--the end was in sight. Then, on the way up a major (and unplowed) downtown street, I got trapped between a guy stuck in front and another stuck behind me. They got out to shovel and I just turned off my engine. I would have gotten out to help, but neither one of them had snow tires, and really, if you aren't going to have the right equipment to drive in winter and you drive anyway, that's kind of not my problem.

Except that it was, because I was trapped.

Eventually--2 and a half hours after leaving work--I did get home. I think I lost a few brain cells on the way as I cancelled my somewhat intellectual plans and watched the pilot episode of Big Brother, 'til death do you part. Wow.

Last year, in a blizzard that was much, much worse, I sat in my car for 3 hours and 20 minutes, trying desperately to get home. Hungry at one point, I got out of my car, and found a bag of BBQ chips in the trunk. I ate the whole bag, more out of boredom than hunger. They were probably really old but man, did they taste good. This morning I told one of Sunny's team members that my drive home last night was long. She laughed and asked if I'd managed to find a bag of chips in my trunk. Good times.

RainyBow

_________________________

SunnyShine note: I'm all set with winter. I never need to see another snowflake again. I don't want to shovel any more. I don't want to climb any more snowbanks so Jethro and Princess can do their business. I don't want to trudge through the knee-deep snow in my backyard to get to my car.

Ummmm...did you really watch Big Brother? Really? Am horrified.

karma update #1

I woke up this morning to find water on my bathroom floor. I looked up to discover that my ceiling has sprung a leak. It's conveniently located 6 inches from the light fixture - here's hoping it doesn't travel any further. The contractor just left and will return on Friday to cut out the drywall to try to find the leak. Good times.

SunnyShine

my karma has packed up and moved out

In general, I have the kind of life where things just always seem to work out. My mother has always said that I was born under a lucky star. I don't much believe in that myself but I do have to admit that things just naturally go my way. Is it because I'm not much of a worrier or that I always believe that things will be fine? No idea.

Those days are over.

Don't know what it is, but things have most definitely not been going my way lately. I think this realization finally hit me when I went to the funeral at the end of November. Here's the recap: guy collapsed on me on the plane, fell down a flight of stairs, earthquake.

I then passed a fairly uneventful month (as far as I remember but I'm sure I have blocked things out) until I left for Africa on vacation.

• I had a series of delayed flights that caused me to spend about 12 hours in the airport in Algiers. That wouldn't have been so bad if the airport wasn't a smoke-all-you-want environment. I'm pretty sure a few years came off my life. I landed at my final destination at 4am. Joy.
  
• A few days into my vacation, I had the WORST bus ride ever. Yes, I said ever, and I mean ever. It was 7 hours long. I had chickens at my feet. The bus was being held together by rope. I was sitting on top of the engine; the engine cover was gone so it was about 45C with no windows or ventilation.
  
• I didn't get to do the two things that I specifically went there to do because......
• Malaria.

I was hoping that would be the end of it but it seems to be continuing.

Saturday, I had a sewing machine store incident - which I will write about another time.

Sunday, I had someone in to install a new wall-mounted sink and low-flow toilet in my bathroom. When he took the sink out of the box, there was no hardware to mount it with. Great. I now have to get a metal worker to make the brackets for me. The toilet couldn't be installed either because the valve in my wall is in the wrong place. It needs to be to the right or left but it is exactly in the middle so the toilet can't sit flush (haha) against the wall. Great. I now have to get someone in to move the plumbing. The guy also told me that my original toilet wasn't bolted down; it was just sitting on the ground with silicone around the base. Apparently, whoever did it originally failed plumbing 101. Hopefully, I will get this bathroom finished in my lifetime.

Tonight, more crap. My best gay needs new tires so he asked me to order them from Costco. He's has been complaining non-stop about how his car is vibrating all over the road and he needs new tires IMMEDIATELY. The tires came in today so, of course, he made an appointment to get them changed tonight. I need to mention that I had to go get the tires changed - not him - because they were on my membership. I went right after work and arrived early for the appointment - just as they asked. It was supposed to take about an hour and a half so I roamed around the warehouse and eyeballed all of the fun Costco things that I would never use or want. I texted Rainy to see if she wanted 3 pairs of swimming goggles for $19.99 but she declined. I had an ice cream. I did a second and third run to pick up a few things and then went back to see if the car was ready. Silly girl. Why would the car be ready? They hadn't even put it up yet. I sat down to wait and the guy promised he would have everyone working on it as it was getting close to closing.

About 20 minutes later, he came back out and told me he couldn't find the lock nut(?). Is that what it's called? Whatever it's called, you can't take the tires off the car without it. I called best gay and asked where it was. Glove compartment, he said. Nope, not there. Best gay lost his mind on the phone and hung up to call his car dealer. All the while, I had been taking apart his car to find this thing. He called back and said it was with the spare. Wrong again. At this point, the Costco guy said there was no way they could get the tires done even if we found it. The store had closed and they were locking up. As a last resort, I started to take everything out of the trunk (while fielding the screaming phone calls) and had the guy take out the spare tire. Among the assorted lego pieces (your guess is as good as mine), papers, umbrellas etc., I finally found the piece they needed. Too little, too late. I wasted my entire night. Best gay is livid that he has to drive on these tires again. How about some sympathy for my wasted evening??

Can't wait to see what's in store for me next. I need to appease whatever karma genie I have pissed off. I'm not sure how to do that. Any ideas? Must.Find.Out.Soon. Am afraid.

SunnyShine

i can see my food through the smoke... check.

Last night Sunny and I went out to a nice little bistro with another friend. I said bistro, so it wasn't a crappy $5 meal. Well, before any of us had arrived there was some sort of massive kitchen incident. I'm not sure if the restaurant lacked a ventilation system or whether nobody thought to deploy it, but by the time we arrived, the smoke was heavy. Part way through the meal my eyes were dry and itchy. By the end of the meal, I couldn't wait to get back to the cold outside. Sunny actually turned down some intensely yummy-sounding desserts in her haste to leave the premises. I told the waiter we had to go because we just couldn't take it anymore, and he said, "Yeah, I don't know what happened in the kitchen, I guess something."

Everything on my body reeked. It all went straight into the laundry basket when I got home. Our friend said her hair still smelled this morning.

This evening I had a lovely dinner out with other friends. After the smoke-filled experience last night though, the crappiest of food would probably have made cordon blue status with me tonight.

It left a bad taste in my mouth that nobody offered an apology.

RainyBow


_______________________________

SunnyShine note: Ugh. Was so disgusting. The dogs had their noses suctioned to me when I got home; I'm sure they thought I had leftovers in my pocket. Next day I had a gigantic smoky-restaurant headache too. So crappy.

powerpoint abuse

I just got home from an orientation night for a volunteer position that would be really cool. The night itself didn't exactly sell the opportunity though.

The first 35 minutes of the meeting (yes, I said 35 minutes) was spent listening to three different people read bullets from PowerPoint slides, word for word. The presentation was intended to bring to life what the organization does and what volunteers can do to make it better. So someone just barfed all the information on to some paper, and then three people read it all out to us. And thank goodness they read it to us, because it's not as if a room full of people could figure out how to read a bunch of information on their own.

Well, they had my attention for approximately 4 of the 35 minutes, and those 4 weren't happy moments. As you may know, I have a fetish for proper usage of the English language, and one of the speakers just couldn't get any of the bullets right. I would say she stumbled on about 1 out of every 3 words she spoke. For a few minutes, I read along with her, silently correcting every one of her mistakes, hoping that I could will her into a state of better reading. Then I tired of that too.

Why oh why?!

This is not how PowerPoint was meant to be used. And this is not how PowerPoint should ever be used. As marketing smartypants Seth Godin writes, bullets are for the NRA. Your slides, on the other hand, are your chance to reinforce what you're saying, through images or simple language. They certainly shouldn't be your big chance to alienate your audience. Most of us can do that easily, without props, all on our own.

After the 35 minutes of hell, there was some extemporaneous discussion. However, most people around me had descended into a brain activity level just above coma, so the discussion was not what I would describe as lively.

I did momentarily snap back into the real world when I heard the words "scent-free." I almost choked on my stale Oreo cookie (thanks for that crappy offering, btw, you boring PowerPoint offenders). Apparently this place too is a scent-free environment. Between this and the yoga joint, I think I'm meeting more than my fair share of scent-free crazies these days. Perhaps someone is trying to send me a sign? Hopefully it's not written in PowerPoint.

RainyBow

PS: yay, Sunny's back.

no bracelets, just pushed buttons

The Christ Church Unity people, otherwise known as the complaint-free people, have been pushing my buttons.

You see, I requested some complaint-free bracelets last spring. And I got all excited about them. Really, who wouldn't? It's not like any other charity sells plastic bracelets to raise awareness and funds.

Well, now it's 2008, and not only have no bracelets arrived, but now I get regular email updates from those people, rubbing it in. Seriously.

The emails are full of shiny, happy tales about people who have apparently been complaint-free for months. Can you imagine spending time with those people? I figure they're either seething with repressed anger and about to blow, or they're inexplicably accepting of mediocrity. Or maybe both. Either way, that's going to be one rousing round of drinks.

At any rate, the latest email update featured a super-happy person hawking the New Year/New You package. Seriously, why is she so happy? She's wearing a crapola tshirt (methinks someone over at Christ Church Unity thinks him or herself a pretty darn good graphic designer) and is holding the complaint-free book, which, although I haven't exactly sought out reviews, I'm willing to bet isn't exactly on the verge of a Nobel prize for literature. But better yet, check out the complaint-free world bumper sticker. Yup, she clearly thinks it's a good idea to put inflammatory statements on the bumper of your car, where nobody ever hits anybody.

I want my bracelets.

all that for this?

I live in a condo. I try to be environmentally conscious. A friend suggested we visit an an environmentally-friendly condo exhibit yesterday afternoon and I was excited.

Now, we should have known things weren't going to go well when we tried to find the exhibit's opening hours and couldn't find anything anywhere--on their website, on google, written in the sky. Nada. Still, it sounded great, and we figured it would probably be open at a minimum from noon to 3pm.

We also figured it would be wrong to drive to the environmentally-friendly condo exhibit. Well, it was too far to walk, it was too yucky outside to bike, so public transit was the winner. I don't manage to take transit very often, and it turned into a comedy of errors. First, my friend's subway was delayed and I waited for a good half hour. Then we took a subway, went to get on our streetcar and discovered a track diversion. So we took one bus, then transfered to another one, which had to go out of service, then transferred to another.

It's not so much that it took us forever to get to the exhibit; I would say it's more that we had all that time to build up our expectations. The website promised practical tips and experts who would lead us on "a comprehensive tour" (not my words). By the time we got there, we were pretty darn pumped.

The exhibit's opening hours were posted on the exterior doors. Woohoo, I thought, we actually arrived at the right time. All cocky now, I went to open the door. Locked. I swear my friend almost broke out into tears. I got belligerent and actually started yelling. Random stuff. I do that sometimes. Not often.

After a bit of that, the door swung toward us, propped open by some kid from the inside. "Are you here for the condo exhibit?" he asked, incredulously. When we told him that we were, he got all excited. "You're the first people to come all weekend!" he said. Uh oh.

The "comprehensive tour" was actually us walking through the exhibit, with our friend, who was about 14, following us closely. I'm not sure if he was worried we'd rip off an environmentally-friendly appliance, or whether he was just so happy to have human contact that he'd follow anyone or thing that radiated heat, but it was a bit disconcerting. And he didn't seem to actually know anything about the exhibit. I asked a question and he responded with, "Oh, I don't know, they didn't actually give me any information or anything." Twice I mentioned, rather pointedly, that there were some issues with the exhibit--first, all the plants in the "solarium" were two weeks past any signs of life, and second, the decorative bowl in the kitchen was full of rotten mandarin oranges--and neither time did he seem to think that this kind of basic maintenance was his responsibility.

It took us about 15 minutes, maximum, to get through the exhibit. And, you know, it actually wasn't so bad. There were some pretty cool things inside. But we left with nothing in hand, because despite all the sponsors and suppliers involved in this thing, there wasn't a single brochure or piece of paper or even a board with tips or ways to get more information or take action. After visiting such a poorly organized exhibit I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that it offered no tools for visitors.

Bitter, we started our ridiculously long transit ride home. The whole afternoon was such a disappointment I actually wanted to do something incredibly environmentally unfriendly, just out of spite.

two things i learned on new year's eve

1. when you buy wine because it's from a region of the world that made you think, "wow, I didn't know they made wine, this should be funny," you should expect to feel like Santa's elves are tearing apart all of last year's unwanted Christmas gifts in your head the next morning. Let's hope the elves are not as industrious as all the kids' tales claim.

2. when the guy who has told you for the last eight years that he just wants to be your friend drunk dials you for five years straight at 12:03am on New Year's Eve, he won't be erasing your number before 12:03am this year. Call display is your friend. Stop answering the phone.

Happy New Year!

RainyBow update: Omg, the elves were busy buggers yesterday. Ouch.

stupid hardwiring

Last night my cousin from out-of-town was DJing, so I packed up my best gay male friend and made a night of it. I forgot how fun it is to go out at 11pm and dance until your face hits the pillow at 4am.

I also forgot how decidedly not fun it is when (like me) you must have been that person in prehistoric times who held the responsibility of stoking the fire first thing in the morning. I'm hardwired to wake up like clockwork every morning at 6am--and I never learned how to fall back asleep. It doesn't matter what time I've gone to bed, it doesn't matter if I'm sick, and it certainly doesn't matter what I've had to drink. Now, I'm not much of a sleeper, but I do like to get my five or six hours a night. I can manage on four. I learned what it was like to live on less when I dated a 10-years-younger-rock-climber-who-loved-to-party a couple of years back. Fun, but miserable, all at once.

When my body bounded out of bed this morning after two oh-so-restful hours of sleep, my brain cursed it in every language it's ever heard. Because my body's conditioned to run most mornings, especially weekend mornings, by 6:30 I was all suited up and on the road, brain still cursing.

Post-run, I remembered that I had agreed to go out snowshoeing and snowmobiling with friends north of the city. Brain stopped cursing body and began to curse brain for making said plans.

I quickly ingested anything I could with caffeine, sugar and potassium. Gatorade. Candy. Coffee (ick, I never drink it). Bananas. Then I was kind of awake but I just wanted to hurl.

I had visions of being a mafia hit, as my feet in snowshoes felt as heavy as concrete blocks. And I think I actually fell asleep on the back of a snowmobile for more than a few minutes, which was probably pretty unsafe. No enjoyment was to be had, but I did manage to function on a minimal level. I think I even pretended to have some sort of fun, although I may be a teensy bit optimistic in writing that.

I just got home. 6am is already looming. Dread.

scale hell

Well, I've had a long weekend babysitting. (Brace yourself for that complaint later, once I've had a chance to process.) I was really looking forward to a rare evening at home tonight, alone. After the last few disappointing books, I had a more promising one and some yummy snacks in hand.

I had just settled into my chaise longue (by the window, under a blankie) when the madness began. Piano scales. Now, I probably enjoy the piano more than the average human being. I played for over an hour virtually every day of my life from the age of around 5 until around 18. I studied piano theory, I passed the teaching exam, yadda yadda. So at the beginning the scales were somewhat enjoyable, as they brought back some fond memories. They also proved to be a bit of a quiz; for a while it was fun to name the key of each scale.

Well, now it's been a few hours and I'm ready to lose my mind. Who brings a piano into a condo building? And who practises scales for hours? Do these people not understand that they share every wall with someone else? There are plenty of keyboards you can get with headphones for these types of living arrangements... or you could buy a house.

I'm going to admit that I'm a bit of a crazy person. I've already complained to the concierge downstairs, left a voicemail for building management, spoken to one of my neighbours, and re-read the condo regulations to determine if this is indeed a recognized noise violation.

I'm giving up now and going out for a drink before I hurt someone.

RainyBow