What Could Possibly Have Brought Me Back?

True story: I've been neglecting this place.  No, not just neglecting.  Actively neglecting.

I used to drink a lot of apple juice back in my university days.  And by a lot, I mean I had it at every meal.  Side note: I also had two glasses of milk (one 2% and one chocolate) and ice cream for dessert at every meal for two years before I made the shocking connection between how I felt after eating and lactose... those were a couple of loooong years.

One day, I reached for my glass of apple juice and realized that I didn't just not want it, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.  The very thought of all the apple juice that I had drank made me dizzy.  It was years before I could drink it again.

Such was the situation with my online presence. It's not just my blog that I've been neglecting.  I haven't looked at Facebook in months (though I did do one update weeks ago that said something like "Is this thing still on?" or something like that.  I haven't worked my way up to logging back into it yet).  I haven't looked at my email in that long either.  I'm sure it's probably mostly spam anyway, but if you've written to me and I haven't responded it's not because I don't like you.  Though it might be.  So you should maybe do some reflection on that.

But, just like apple juice, I couldn't stay away forever.  I drink the AJ in much saner quantities now, even if it's only because I have to pay for it now.  So I'm back.  I hope you missed me.  I'm sure you did.  I'm sure that when I open up my email, there will be so many messages there from people saying "hey, what happened to you?" and the like.  And if there aren't, it's probably because you thought I was going through something and didn't want to bother me.  Thanks for that.  I appreciate the space.

So what was it that brought me back?

What brings anyone to the internet?  Pictures of cats.

This is one of our cats, Mordecai.

He works hard for the money, so we don't complain too loudly when he takes the occasional nap on the couch.

You may be surprised to hear this, but My Lovely Wife and I are generally covered in cat hair.  We'd been talking about the state of cat hair in our home, trying to identify the source and how it came to be that we are wearing the equivalent of a third of a cat at any time.  After much sleuth work, we narrowed it down to one of two culprits.  Neither of them would buckle under interrogation, so we went with our guts and determined that it was probably this guy.

I took steps yesterday, and this happened.

It's a little fuzzy, but if you look closely you can see our horrible deaths reflected in his eyes.

As we suspected, there was a much smaller cat underneath it all.  I mean, he's still a large cat, but he's not nearly as big as he used to be.

That glint in his eyes is the light that we expect to see at the end of the tunnel.

In all honesty, he does seem to really love it.  Considering it was his first time getting groomed, he was super docile the whole time.  The groomer even put a good note and a smiley face on his card.  I was so proud of him.  He's adapting pretty well to it.  I thought that he was being super snuggly because he loved me so much for helping him out of his fur coat, but it turns out that it has more to do with the fact that it's been a little chilly and he's used to a certain level of warmth.  I'm a cat person, so I'm totally cool with being used as a heat source; it means I'm not just Thing That Puts Out the Food, and I like being useful.

It also catches him by surprise when he cleans himself.  I watched him lick his shoulder twice without making any contact at all.  By the third time he figured out that he needed to lean into it a little more and all was right in the world.

Well, almost all was right in the world.

Our other cat, Callaghan, has never been, how do you say it what's the word I'm looking for how can I say this gently... adaptable.  When I let Mordecai out of the carrier, Callaghan got one look at him and then fled the scene.  Lest you think that he was worried that he'd be next, let me assure you that it was because he didn't recognize the cat that he's lived with for his entire life.

I managed to get this picture just before he ran away and hid in the basement for the rest of the day.

There you have it. Further evidence that cats run the Internet.

Talk to you later.

Happy Birthday to My Lovely Mother

There are only two women on this planet that have been willing to put up with the shenanigans, temper tantrums, goofy faces, oddness, smell and overall weirdness that I have subjected them to on a daily basis and not leave:  My Lovely Wife and My Lovely Mother.

Today is My Lovely Mother's birthday.  She turns 42.  You may ask how the mother of a 36 year old man can be turning 42 on her birthday.  The answer is "you're very rude, that's not the sort of question you should ask".  More truthfully, it was because I once asked my mother how old she was and she said 42, so that's where it stuck.  Over the years, I think it's gone as high as 46 and usually hovers around 44, but 42 is a nice number.

I remember her telling me that she has the same birthday as Abraham Lincoln. I asked her if she ever went to his birthday party.  Apparently, they just missed each other.

She also told me that the sheriff never came to her birthday party, which as a child was awfully disappointing news because the sheriff has a badge and a gun and rides a horse.  As a teenager/university student, not having the sheriff drop in on your birthday meant that you chose your neighbours well.  As an adult, it meant that you didn't get woken up by the sheriff because you went to bed around 9:30.

So, My Lovely Mother (who I know is reading this because she's my mom and reading this is one of her jobs) Happy 42nd Birthday and I love you!

I Am Amused

In light of the sadness of my previous post, I'd like to direct you to something that will hopefully bring a smile to your face.

Mike is just this guy that I've happened to be BFF's with since I was about three.  If you know me personally, then there's a 99% chance that you know or know of Mike.  We've been amusing each other for over thirty years (whoa, I got a little chest pain when I wrote that), and now he's entered the world of the Internet with his site vitruvianmanifesto.blogspot.ca.

Let's face it, none of us are getting any younger.  Thanks to a miracle that I call "him being born before me", Mike faces milestone birthdays sooner than I do.  To celebrate/anticipate/draw attention away from his 40th birthday, he has started a project dubbed The Vitruvian Manifesto (I added the emphasis so you know what an awe inspiring title that is in comparison to, say, the blognostifier).  His goal - to complete one hundred projects in one thousand days, which coincides nicely with his two-score birthday.

He promises to document his efforts on his site, and so far the entries have been amusing and insightful.  It's not a blog though.  It's a bjournal.  Which is a word that makes me laugh like we would laugh when we were kids staying up too late and saying all the words that we were pretty sure were the dirty ones that everyone was talking about.

I invite you to take a few moments of your day and check it out.  He's only just started, so there are only about twelve posts right now, so it won't take you long to start feeling an emotional attachment and general feelings of encouragement about this guy that you may or may not have met before.  He's a good guy, trust me on that one.

Also, his wife has a rather nifty site if you like books.

And their daughter is darned cute.  She once sang "Eye of the Tiger" to us.  The entire thing.  Not just the one part of the chorus that you know.  The. Whole.  Thing.

...

There's a guy that I know that isn't going to read this.

Back in my days as a Theatre Studies Major (by adding the capital letters, I also add credibility), I met a guy named Wes.  Now, you might be thinking a guy named Wes and a guy named Weh, we had to be best of friends.  We weren't.  We were friends, and I liked him a lot, but I was too busy enjoying my newfound status in my second year in the program to really get to know the next batch of recruits that well.

Over the next three years, our circles crossed paths in that way that only people who are in a department that has less than fifty people in it and forces them to work together constantly every day can.  We worked on a couple of crews together, we joked about the classes, we lived it up at the cast parties - but never really together.  He was kind of this really cool, really funny guy that was always just outside of the periphery of my group.  He was really good friends with people that I was really good friends with, but we never really got to be really good friends ourselves.

When I graduated, I went on to the wonderful world of corporate culture.  I chased money instead of sticking it out, and while I don’t have any regrets about where I am today, I’ve always wondered where I’d be if I’d stuck it out.

Wes stuck it out.  He continued to work in the theatre, travelled from coast to coast and overseas. He kept living the life that I ultimately decided wasn't the one that I wanted.  That may be one of the reasons why we didn't keep in touch, I don't know.  

Another thing about Wes was that he had Cystic Fibrosis.  It was something he lived with, and from what I've gathered, something that he had made peace with.  I don't have memories of him being sick, that may be a testament to how well he was doing when we were together.  I knew he wasn't well, but I don't think I ever saw it stop him.  

Wes passed away on Saturday, February 2, 2013.  There's a memorial service being held for him tomorrow, one that I wish I could be there for.  This is as close as I'll be able to get.  

So Wes, Geoff and Pete: I'm thinking of you guys.  And though some might say it's a little weird that my fondest memory is the three of you kicking a corpse's head at a wall all night, we all know it needed doing.

Waaaait, How Long?

Hey everybody,

It has come to my attention that my site is pretty darn basic.  This is for two reasons.

First, I am using a template from Blogger.  It's easy to use and means I don't have to learn anything (because I fear learning).

Second, I find it very inoffensive.  I like basic colours, I like easy to read fonts, and it's not full of animated gifs and garbage.  Yes, there are ads (and eventually those will pay off, so you have to live with them), but it really shouldn't matter how you view the site, it should look pretty much the same.

Next month marks the fifth anniversary of when I started this little endeavour and I feel that there should be something to mark the occasion.  I feel that a milestone like that deserves a bit of attention, or something to commemorate the event at least.  As I've only just realized how long ago that was, I haven't given this a great deal of thought yet so I don't know what it will be.  But expect it to be huge! And by huge, I mean that I'll probably write something.  Maybe take a picture.  Of me.  At our kitchen table.  Like most of my pictures seem to be.

"Hey," you might say, "five years ago?  Where are all those posts?  I only see going back to 2009!  You're a liar and a fibber and I shan't stand for it!  You wait till the Senate hears about this!"

The problem is that when I started this blog in 2008, it wasn't exactly like it was today.  It was an experiment that grew into something of a mouthpiece for me.

The grand experiment (for those of you that don't remember) was sports predictions.  Since I only had about five regular readers back then, I wouldn't be surprised that you don't recall it.

Where did those posts go?  I took them down a long time ago.  Don't remember when exactly... but it was a while ago.  Here's what it came down to - writing sports predictions was funny (it was) and it paid the bills (that's a lie) but I got bored with writing the same stuff over and over again.  Plus, I started getting email and spam about sports related things.  I barely have enough time for all the local lesbians that want to meet me, let alone try to figure out what the heck point spreads are (I think it's dirty too, but not in a way that made me want to continue research).

But I digress.

February 17, 2008 was the first post here (even though it's not here right now). I'm thinking a contest would be interesting... Thoughts?

PS - for those of you that were paying attention, I did change the colour scheme on the site.  It used to be a light blue background and title text.  Now it's a slightly darker blue!  Good on you for noticing.

This Week in Highs and Lows

HIGH
I went to work on my day off this week and got cake again! Yay!

LOW
I did not get paid for this time I spent at work.  But it was only an hour and I still got cake, so it balances.

HIGH
I had some very definitive plans this weekend that involved going to Halifax for two days of fun with Kevin Smith.

I am not a huge fan of Kevin Smith - by no means am I foaming at the mouth for every movie that he has ever brought out, nor do I believe that everything that he touches turns to gold.  But I do find him funny, and I respect what he's done, and I think he's a great story teller.  He's also done a great job of surrounding himself with interesting and funny people.

I was super excited with the news that he was going to bring many of his podcast shows (and there are many) to Halifax for the sixth anniversary of his podcast network.  Sure it was a little pricey at a hundred bucks a day, but the chance to see all of this crazy cast at work was too much to pass up.  Note that at least half of his crazy cast is in the form of Ralph Garmain (cause he does impressions you see).

LOW
The shows have been cancelled.

Weekend plans are in near ruin, but stuff happens and I will ease my disappointment somehow.  Probably by spending the refunded ticket money on something else super fun.  Like candy.

LOW
Bed, Bath & Beyond opened in Moncton.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the store, the "Bed" and "Bath" portions of the store are things that you would find in those rooms in your home.  Towels, sheets, things that do things that I didn't realize needed doing but could be done at least once for $39.99 until you put it away in the basement until the yard sale you're going to be forced to have five years hence.

The "Beyond" of the store are the rest of your rooms, though mostly just the kitchen.  I think a better name for the store would be "More Stuff For Your Rooms", but it doesn't flow off the tongue as nicely and also might cause shoppers to think a little bit about whether they really need another garlic press (nobody uses these - they only exist to make you feel bad about using garlic powder or pre-minced garlic from a jar).

I had to go.

HIGH
Five minutes into our walkabout, My Lovely Wife asked me if I saw anything I liked.  I know that she does this out of a sense of politeness and in an effort to make a shopping trip with me a little more enjoyable (Hint: I am not a browser, and this store is built for people who like to create a little story about what it would be like to own everything in that store).  Since we were standing in one of the aisles with kitchen gadgets I said "no, but if we find that thing that lets you make your own pop I'm buying it."

Moments later, we turned the corner and there it was.  I want that thing so bad.

LOW
I did not buy it.

HIGH
My Lovely Wife said "Well, you could buy it now, but it will ruin your birthday present."

So cheers to me!  I may know what I'm going to be getting for my birthday, but it turns out it's something I really really want - more than I expected.

SodaStream, you will be mine.  Oh yes, you will be mine.

LOW
It is darn cold out there.  Today is going to be -38 with the wind chill.  That is too cold.  I know living where I do and complaining about the cold is a little like living in a place that's really cold and complaining about it (yes, I realize how lazy that was, but I'm getting hungry and I want to finish this before I have lunch).

HIGH
We're going on a trip!  In a random, spur of the moment kind of thing, we're going to be taking a trip this year.  Tickets have been purchased, vacation days are scheduled, it's all falling into place.  More details on that to come, but it should be a good time.

And that's all I got for now.  Time for leftover lasagne!

The Things That I Will Do...

I was lucky enough to have a long weekend this week.

For those of you that aren't in the know, I work a 4 days on / 4 days off shift.  They are fairly long days, but it's not so bad, and the 4 day weekends are boss.  I ended up with a 5-day weekend (well, Monday-Friday weekend) this week because of a change to the schedule.  What would you do with five days off?

I'll tell you what I did.  I went to work.

I mean, honestly, what am I going to do with a 5-day weekend?  I waste the four days off I get now anyway.  It turns out that they needed a little extra help so I went in for the day yesterday just to help balance the load.

Best. Decision. Ever.

First:  There were some people I work with that I've never met before (cause my company is way huge man, you just don't even know), and they were in town for meetings.  Now, I could have come in on my day off just to meet them face to face and say hello.  I could have done that, but I wasn't going to.  Because even though they had travelled a long distance and they are very lovely people, I am doing my best to not be that guy that goes into work on his days off because he has nothing else to do.

I have lots to do.  Or at least that is the impression that I want everyone to have.  Truth is that I'm still sitting here in my bathrobe and its 2 in the afternoon.

I swear to you, I was stone cold sober when I took this picture.  I did get totally wasted enough to post it.
Nah, just kidding, I have no self respect.

Upshot of the first thing, I got to meet some folks that I've been working with and only knew as a voice and an email address.  It was nice.  Though I did miss out on the meet and greet that they did earlier in the week, but that's okay because...

Second:  When my company has big meetings like the ones that were going on that everyone had travelled here for, there is usually catering involved.  And when there is catering involved there are usually leftovers.  And this was no exception.

In standard office hierarchy, leftover food from catering goes like this:

1. The people involved with the meeting. The brave ones get a second helping (they know they're going to be in this meeting for the rest of the day, but free food is free food and they're willing to risk it).  Then there are the people that will grab a second dessert or another beverage to have on the side, just to snack on during the meeting, but they've taken a suspicious number of napkins and five will get you ten that it's getting wrapped up and taken home.
2. The people who weren't involved with the meeting, but are on the same team as the meeting attendees.  This is basically the way that the people having the meeting apologize to the rest of the group for picking up their slack while they're off getting catered meals and wishing on rainbows and drawing butterflies on the mist of their imaginations.  The invitation usually comes in the form of an email or an instant message: "There's still some left if you're hungry." or "We're about to start again, do you want to grab a plate before they clean it up?"  That sort of thing.  It's always written as though the person writing it doesn't know that everybody has foregone eating lunch in the expectation that there will be leftovers.
   I have levels of hunger that I'm willing to deal with.  Waiting for over-priced appetizers in a really slow restaurant that I don't like that is at the bottom.  Christmas dinner is at the top.  Waiting for that message to come and get it is up there with starving myself before going to a buffet.  It doesn't matter what the food is, I'm taking it and I'm laughing to myself that I didn't have to sit in a mind numbing meeting to get it. Suckers!
3. People that sit in the vicinity of where the food is being served.  Once the attendees and the team-mates have gotten their invites, the group of people that are lucky enough to have been sitting in the cubicles or office space immediately surrounding the catering area get their "Oh, hey, did you want to grab some of this too?" invitation.  They are truly the least lucky of them all, because when there's not enough leftovers they end up with nothing after having watched wave after wave of people stuffing themselves.
   This group is sort of like the servants in a medieval castle - they can eat all the scraps they want, after the hunting dogs have had their fill.  Also, they are usually covered in sores and are afraid to make eye-contact with you.  I don't know why this is so, but it is.
4. Random people that happened to come across the meal just before it's about to be tossed out.  Sometimes, there's more than any of the first three groups can eat.  It's rare, but it happens, usually after some mix up in when the catering was supposed to arrive so people in groups 2 and 3 got tired of waiting and just gave in and ate something (it's sad when people lose their faith like that), so they're too full to eat anything else.
   This is the luckiest of all groups because they don't have an expectations whatsoever.  It's like the food fairy came down from his pasta mountain and wants to bless you with a plate of lasagne and maybe a bit of caesar salad.

Just to make sure you're keeping up, the reasons why it was a good day to go into work so far are: 1) meet co-workers from the Land of Far, Far Away and 2) Got fed lunch.

Third: every month, the department that I am in gets a cake and a fruit tray to celebrate all the birthdays on the team that month.  Sometimes, you're even lucky enough that you're at work on the day that it happens they are celebrating your birthday.  Most of the time you're not.  But it's nice to know that people celebrated, yes?

This month, it just happened that it was cake day at work.  The invitation hit my inbox and a small cheer rose  from me to the heavens above: "Cake @ 3:00 by pod 105"  Such magical words.

I met new people, I got fed lunch, and then a couple of hours later I got cake. Could going into work on my day off have gotten any better?

Yes.  It was about to get a lot better.

Fourth:  It wasn't such a bad day.  It was partly because I was able to pick up a little bit of the slack, but it was mostly because it wasn't as busy as we had expected it to be. Normally, Wednesdays are heavy, but for some reason it wasn't this time.  I was able to get some special project work done that had been eluding me for a few weeks, and I learned a few things that will make my first day back on a little bit easier.

Which of course leads to the best reason why it was a good day.

Fifth: I got paid overtime to do it all. 

And the reason why the overtime is awesome is because I want to the movies last night with a friend.  We saw "Django Unchained".  It was very good, and I don't begrudge a single moment of the 8 hours I spent at work to pay for it. Seriously, tickets and concession were crazy expensive.  I almost felt guilty not going to the movie with My Lovely Wife.

For those of you that might be interested, this is my impression of what it would be like watching "Django Unchained" with My Lovely Wife.

Opening credits play:  "Pass me the M&M's."

Approximately 8 minutes into the movie: "We have to leave."