2010

I liked 2010 because I am bad at math.




2010 was easy, man.




What year were you born? Oh, you're 24... that's 1986, sucka! 30? 1980! 76? 1944! Wait... 1934!


Nice round numbers are so lovely for people like me. I work in increments of 5 and 10 pretty easily... decades rock, see. But come tomorrow... I'm screwed.


2011 minus 1984? Uuuugghghhhhh.... twenty.... um.... not six.....




On a somewhat related note, it's time to stop.


Tonight we ring in the year TWENTY-ELEVEN. Not, two-thousand-and-eleven. Shut your pie hole, you verbal diarrhea-ed society.


Proof: You don't say the year 1911 as nineteen-thousand-and-eleven.


Why are people sill marvelling at the fact that we have passed 2000 CE?! That is the only explanation I can come up with for the insistence on saying two-thousand-and-eleven, as opposed to the much more catchy and streamlined 2011 - do we as a society think we're fancy and space-age and living in the future and thus must reference such things as often as possible?


Cut it out. Tonight is the night.

Listening to Devendra, thinking about things.

"It's not a date if you don't make-out." -as texted by yours truly the other day.

Question: why does it take longer to decide that you want to be friends with someone than it does to decide you want to make-out with them on the regular?

I'd say it's a pretty reasonable thing that after meeting a fella that you think looks like he could chop down a good tree or has revealed to you that he reads Neil Gaiman, to decide that you should probably make-out with him. This decision happens quickly and naturally, and in another short period of time post-make-out, you'll probably be in a good place to judge if you would like to do such things again.  

It would be unreasonable however, to be introduced to a friend of a friend while out on the town, and decide within mere minutes that this new girl should come over to your house and bake cookies and play monopoly and have a goofy photoshoot and trade outfits. Even if that decision was made, it would be drunken and ill-advised, and you'd never actually follow through because oh god, how awkward! What would you talk about?! How would you kill the time?

I guess that's why making new sexy-time-friends is easier. 

You just fill the awkwardness with tongue parties. 

You can't do that with your real friends. 

On the flip side, you'd swap "electrolytes, mucus, antibacterial compounds and various enzymes" with a lumberjack, but probably wouldn't ask him to help you move the next day.

So too, if you are just hanging out with some new dude or lady or what have you, that you just met. And you don't make-out, then congratulations! You were just hanging with your new bud. If it wasn't awkward, hold onto that sucker tight.    

Good point...

Friend: You should delete him from facebook.

Me: Why?

Friend: You just called him a motherfucker to his face.

Me: Right. 

The best text message I have ever received.

4:06am:

"A middle aged man named Donald just told me his entire life story at the airport and has left his bags in my care and I think his dead wife might be in one."

-Mandy.

For Carolyn on her 24th Birthday.

Even though I am posting this beyond 12am my time, Carolyn is stuck in Ohio, which is probably six hours behind, or maybe time doesn't really move there, so it will still be her birthday. 

This is my Carolyn. 

 

Carolyn is hilarious and great.

To show my appriciation of her, here are some things she has amused me with via facebook over the years:

"i can tell you all about the amazing hooker who hangs outside our apartment all day every day (and nights, obviously). her name is sue. sometimes she doesn't wear shoes."

"show me your tits."

"we so should have gone to "sexy bitches" night at j.r.'s. next time..."

"Consider yourself warned: the red hat society is in the mall. If you're working tonight, might want to bring some garlic or a crucefix or something."

"tonight = glugglugglug "are you a boy or a girl" glugglugglug "just cause you can never be too sure" glugglug. maybe i'll even say the glugs."

"snklsnk#*%(#&%*(#hjisklnentgsklntgsklBIRTHDAYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you're old."

In my perusal of our Facebook Friendship page, I also found this poem I wrote her on August 30th, 2008:

Ode to Our Last Shift Together:

Where art thou Walmart?
Cans't thou activate this phone from...
Telus? Rogers? The Superstore?
...I found it on the ground.
Where art thou San Francisco?
Do you still exist? Sadly.
Cans't I get to Walmart whilst traveling in the wrongst direction?
Balls. 

 

Happy Birthday Carolyn! 

<3!

Panic at the Liquor Store

A phone conversation:

Mandy: Heeeey, what's going on?

Me: I'm freaking out. I have to go to a party in a furniture store and I don't have any idea what to drink.

Mandy: Wait, what?

Me: It's a staff party for the store next door. There might be some booze there, but like... I need to bring something to drink. I have a little wine left over from yesterday.

Mandy: You can't bring a half-drunk bottle of hobo-wine to a party with strangers. You can only do that with your friends because we won't judge you.

Me: What do I buy!?

Mandy: Buy a mid-priced bottle of wine. Something normal and not pretentious. You won't get shitfaced and make a fool of yourself, but you won't be stuck drinking some ridiculous drink like scotch all night.

Me: Okay, that makes sense. Thank-you.

Mandy: You're welcome. I know how you panic in situations like this.

EDIT: 2:53am: I didn't even drink the wine I brought. Still drunk. Now I have wine for when Mandy visits on Wednesday!! 

Flood.

Every time it crazy-rains like today, and the sidewalks flood over so there is no hope of me not getting my feet wet, and cars start hydroplaning, and someone probably should just get on building an ark already - every time it is like that, then I am reminded of the time a dozen years ago or more (um… 2008) when downtown Fredericton flooded like a real bastard. Lou Lou and I lived at the bottom of York street, and so the swollen river was just a few yards from our apartment. We took the Slovenian teen who was staying with us* there for sight seeing purposes. I don’t recall being overly concerned the first few days, but then Trinitea's Cup put up a sign on their door declaring that the End was Nye, and rumours of power-outtages ran amuck.

We decided that we should probably become refugees.

Lou Lou and our young Slovenian fled to a relative’s home outside of town. I was invited, but I had one giant orange tag-along that it seemed inappropriate to bring. Raleigh was a house guest that required moving a shit-box into your home, so I completely understand.

I called Cameron. I used my best damsel in distress voice. He didn’t seem that bothered. I used my best “I’ll never speak to you again if you let me and my cat down in a flood” voice. He rescinded, albeit disgruntled.

As we stuffed Raleigh’s cat-carrier into the idling cab, some friends of Cameron’s happened to be walking down York to spy on the waters and asked what we were doing. I commend him for answering that question with a straight face.  

“Uh… Marg wants me to save her from the flood.”

“And my cat!”, I squeaked from the cab.

“Oh.. I see.” said his friend.

“Yeah…”

“I didn’t think the flood was that bad…”

“Nope, me neither.” said Cameron.


And they were right, of course. Our power never went out, and living on the second floor, there never was any risk of us actually getting flooded out.

Raleigh did have an excellent time leaping through Cameron’s laundry piles though.




*Yup.

Pedestrian Comraderie.

One of my favorite social interactions is when you are about to jaywalk, and you see another pedestrian standing on the other side of the street, waiting to cross. You glance both ways and know that the odds are in your favor that if you go now, you won't get smoked by a transport truck. You make eye contact with the person on the other side. Their face, once wraught with trepidation changes as you cross toward them - ah fuck it, their new expression says. They jaywalk too. You both arrive on your respective desired sides of the street, safe and feeling all the braver for your boldness.

On the flip side, a behavior I distinctly dislike is this: You find yourself standing at a busy intersection with another person. The walk sign says "go forth lovely pedestrians", and you begin to walk at a normal pace across the street. The stranger beside you SCURRIES across, as though that previously mentioned transport truck is 99.9% surely going to smash right into them if they do not get to the other side before the little hand of the walk-sign begins to blink. Newsflash: if the lights facing the on-coming traffic are red, then that truck isn't allowed to come at you guns blazing. The little hand on the walk sign is an eager little bugger, this is true, but unless you are the slowest walker in the world*, then I'm sure you'll make it across just fine. When people run across like demented squirrels, it makes those among us who walk at a normal pace look like we're willingly getting in the way of the people idling in their cars (even though we all know they'd have to stay that way even if no one was crossing the street). 

*I'm looking at you young couple holding hands taking up the entirely of the sidewalk walking so slowing I am confident that you never actually lifted your feet off the ground once - rather choosing to demonstrate to the world how an extremely irritating zombie couple would shuffle down the street.  

I say whatever I want at work...

"I hope you crawl into a corner and piss yourself."

Whimsical.

I made a trip to the supermarket this evening. Usually I prefer to go to the smallest grocery stores available because I usually freak out at the sheer amount of choices available at the big ones, and end up leaving with just a bottle of strange sauce and a decorative spatula, when I need to actually buy my food for the week. Regardless, I went to the Super Store with the intent to buy a very specific type of cookies, which they didn’t even have! Luckily, I had no choice induced panic attacks. Instead, I loaded up my cart (fun fact: just typed “cake” there.) with all sorts of absurd things: make-your-own-mini-pizzas? Yes please! Salt & Pepper shakers for 94 cents? Well, I don’t actually own either salt or pepper, but that’s just too good a deal to pass up! Giant box of clementines? Bag o‘ Mixed nuts?! “Whimsical” holiday tree… EIGHT DOLLARS!?!?!?!!… it was meant to be.

I distinctly remember mentioning to my cashier, “I only brought the one reusable bag, so if it doesn’t all fit, no worries.” Which she took to mean: cram every item into the reusable bag until it is too heavy to carry, leaving the Whimsical tree out, and the clementines sideways in their own plastic bag.

I knew this was trouble.

By the time I was out of the sliding doors, my main bag was breaking my shoulder, and all the clementines had escaped from their box, and were dangling loose, aching for freedom, in the bottom of the plastic bag. I placed everything down on a bench to readjust. Clementines back in their box, mixed nuts out of the heavy bag and put atop the clementines. Heavy bag firmly placed back on my left shoulder, my purse swung over my right. Clementine box held in the proper position under my right arm, my left hand clutching the whimsical tree.

I made it across the street before both my purse and the heavy bag slid from my shoulders, saved only by the crooks in my boney arms. The bag of nuts threatened to slid out from their perch on the clementines.

I put the strap of my purse around my neck, and pulled the handles of the heavy bag back up over my shoulder as far as they could go. Set off again. Within seconds, the nuts were in the snow and the inside of my elbow was carrying the burden of the remainder of my ridiculous purchases. Somehow, the whimsical tree remained intact in its position in my right fingers.

Still, despite the whimsical tree’s perseverance, I knew that the only way to pick up the mixed nuts would be to sacrifice the whimsy.


Or, put it on my head.


Luckily, the whimsical tree is really more of a crazy-looking cone, the perfect size for a make-shift Gnome costume… or so I learned tonight.

I walked the rest of the way home with slightly greater ease in my lovely new holiday hat. Many, many people saw me.

Some clementines did manage to meet sweet, sweet freedom about 30 seconds away from my front door.