50th Post: A Lesson on Punctuation

This is my 50th post, and I decided that I would do something special for the occasion. This afternoon while waiting for my optometrist appointment (all's fine) I picked up the May edition of the magazine, Elle. In it I happened upon an article by Guy Saddy that just tickled my funny bone. I enjoyed it so much that I snuck it out with me. I thought I would copy it out for you all to enjoy, although by doing so I am probably violating all kinds of copywrite laws. I apologize profusely, but here it is regardless. I only hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
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Periods, colons and dashes
Call me picky, but I believe in the power of punctuation.

You could easily blink and miss it, but only if you were blind to irony. That said, taken by themselves, neither of the two headline were odd or jarring. "Dravacky To Lose Arm," said one, introducing a sad story about major league baseball pitcher Dave Dravecky having his cancerous left arm amputated. The other, competing headline was your run-of-the-mill exuberant sports talk banner. "The Bulls Pull It Off," it exclaimed, referring to a win by Chicago's NBA franchise.

Again, nothing too strange. One was a tragic story; the other, a celebratory gusher. Nothing to pique outrage or even interest, until you saw both headlines together as the readers of the San Jose Mercury News did: Dravecky To Lose Arm The Bulls Pull It Off.
Tastelessness aside, nothing is as funny as the badly worded headline that, in all its seriousness, amplifies the buffoonery tenfold. Oten, the gaffes fall into double entendre territory. Recently, an English newspaper offered their readers a chance to win a vacation in the land of kilts and bagpipes. Sounds nice. Or at least it did, until you read closer: "Win A Cultural Break in Scotland," proclaimed the headline, and to this day I'm not entirely sure if the writer was being stupid or sly. (The Scottish tourism brochures must be novel: "Aye, lads and lassies, when you've had your fill of book learnin' and eating with utensils, come to a country where deep-fried Mars bars are a food group, deeply profound ignorance is always in fashion and the moron is king--Scotland!")

Other headlines are just dumb. "Cold Wave Linked To Temperatures," blared on that, for my money, takes the tautological crown, coming just ahead of "War Dims Hope For Peace" and "If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile." Speaking of which, although we've had our share of labour difficulties in this country, even the most diehard union critic would probably draw the line at this point: "Miners Refuse to Work After Death." Lazy Miners! How many dead folks can claim to be gainfully employed? They should be grateful for the opportunity.

Sometimes, the trouble is simple punctuation, and the absence of even a mere comma can make the very serious sound seriously dumb. "Crowds Rush to See Pope Trample Man To Death"--well, I'd push my way to the front of the line too, if only to say I was there. Take another run at him, John Paul! I saw him move a finger! (That sounds like one tough pontiff. Better not get in his way on the same-sex marriage debate.)

Another minefield is the use of dash or colon, favourites of headline writers. It sounds final. It sounds authoritative. It also allows for "expert attribution," and that can get sticky. Here's an example: "Cause of AIDS Found -Scientists." So that's who caused AIDS! For a long time I've had it with those guys, what with their prissy white lab coats, compound molecules and smooth-talking, Bunsen-burning ways. And now we find that instead of curing cancer or the misery of psoriasis, they all got together and decided to invent some terrible new disease? Well, there oughtta be a law. Let's ban scientists, that's what I say. And while we're at it, let's get rid of science too.

I've got to admit that the missing or misplaced colon is a pet peeve. I mean, really, how difficult is it for paid professionals to follow a few basic grammatical rules? It's not brain surgery, or even science. Perhaps these "journalists" need it explained, in a language they can understand. Allow me.

How about "Column Missing Colon Makes For Real Stinker." There. Looks okay to me.

Trip Home

This is my last full day at home in Ottawa. Tomorrow we make the drive back to my university town. I have to say that I have had a pretty good visit. I reconnected with some high school friends, I helped renovate the basement apartment, and I spent a lovely morning with Mum, Adam, and Emma. I'm sure that Mum will have pictures up on her blog of our outing. We went down to Dows Lake and rented paddle boats. We splashed around on the water for a while before heading back to dry land and having lunch at Kettlemans, a homestyle bagel place.

Now I'm back home and taking a break before jumping back into painting. There has been so much painting in the last few days that the whole house stinks. We have all the windows open, but you can still smell the paint from the basement all the way up on the second floor. My thoughts are that it's seeping through the ventilation system, even though the air isn't on. Ha, air! We don't have air conditioning, I just mean the furnace isn't running & pushing the air around.

This evening I'm going out with a friend, and then tomorrow I have my optometrist appointment and then I'm off. This trip has flown by.

New Bathroom

Here's the new bathroom, all painted and blue. It's tiny, so it's hard to get a good shot, but you get the general idea. Now I have 3/4 gallons of leftover blue paint. What to do now?

Rumble Pictures at Last

This is me on my newly repaired laptop, using my brand new wireless internet card! I have so many things to do to it now that I have it back. Dad is still going to take apart the keyboard in attempts to fix the keys that don't work (the left shift button and the down arrow) and install the Microsoft office kit, but other than that, everything is good. He was able to retrieve all my files from my old hard drive and everything. I just have to reset all the computer sounds so that it once again screams unique things at me whenever something happens. No more "DING" to signify that someone has sends me an IM, now it will yell "I am Red Freaking Hot!" in the voice of Dick from Third Rock from the Sun, and when they sign on it will ask, "Is it wrong that I was totally aroused by that?" in the voice of Chandler from Friends. Oh my computer. How I have missed you.

And now I can post all the things I've been wanting to post! First up, pictures of my darling kitten.

This is my Rumble. Isn't he just adorable? Here he is sitting on my knee and staring at me while I take his picture. Seconds after I took this he attacked the wrist loop that was dangling off of the camera. So cute.



And this is Rumble after he had been playing with some string. He romped all over the living room madly with it and then just stopped and sat all nonchalant, regardless of the fact that it was draped over his face. What a cutie.


This is Rumble attempting to play with Parsnip. He sat beside her cage watching her for some time, and then decided to climb on top of the cage. She then decided to bite his feet, and he cried until I ran to the rescue. He hasn't climbed up there since... Learned his lesson I guess, poor little guy.





This is Rumble climbing my leg, and meowing at me. He does this whenever I prepare food at the kitchen counter. He doesn't like when he can't be sitting on me, or near me, so he complains. Sometimes he just sits on my foot, but much of the time he cries at me and then climbs my leg. This time there was the added incentive of chicken on the counter...




And to give you an idea of his tiny, tiny size, here is Rumble sitting on my Gamecube. What's that Rumble? You want to play Tony Hawk?

I love my kitten so much. I'm sure you'll all be bored to death of pictures of him eventually.

Red Tape

My university has a student health plan and a dental plan. While this makes sense for the many students who won't be covered by parents' plans, it does not make sense for the many more students like me who are covered until the age of 25, provided I remain in school full time. The plans are included in our tuition bill for the fall term, and total just about $300. As a starving student, $300 is quite a bit to pay for something I don't need. To opt out of the plan you must be able to provide proof of insurance from elsewhere.

No big deal, right? I called XYZ company that has me covered, and they mailed me a letter stating that I was covered for health insurance. Nowhere on the letter does it say I'm covered for dental. This is because the dental portion of the insurance company is covered by ABC company, presumably a subsidiary of XYZ. I talked to the people at my university's insurance policy headquarters, and that is clearly not enough. Now I have to phone ABC and get them to mail me a letter saying I'm covered for dental. Of all the stupid...

Inventing Ritual

In beginning my readings for the school year, I have been reading quite a bit from a book that talks about the absence of ritual, in the traditional sense of the word, in our North American society. The author is clearly advocating for the creation of ritual, and what he says makes a great degree of sense. Ritual aids in the creation of a society in which everyone knows his place, his rights and responsibilities, and his role. Is it not possible that adolescents in our society have a difficult transitional period between childhood and adulthood because there is no definitive divide? There is nothing to tell them when they have reached this much sought after pinnacle of maturity, or anything to say when it is appropriate to leave their childish immaturities behind.

In a society where the younger generation is dependent on their parents for longer and longer times, due to the increased number engaging in higher forms of education, the point at which these youth are forced into their true independence is coming later and later in their lives. Yet at the same time adolescence is starting younger as well. It is now becoming acceptable for preteens to take on some of the behaviors once attributed to teenagers alone. It is apparent in the ways that they dress, the hobbies they take on, and the social situations that they are seen in. With this "adolescence" starting earlier and ending later, how can the children of today know when they have stopped being children, and started being adults? What truly makes one adult?

Surely if there was some ritual that we had to signal the onset of adulthood this would lessen the trauma that is often associated with adolescence, both for the youth and for their parents. If there was some discriminate marker of maturity would this not benefit all of society? With this perspective it certainly seems to our benefit to create such a rite of passage. Thus, Grimes, the author, suggests that parents form their own rituals.

While I can see his perspective, I must question the effectiveness of this course of action. If parents use some occasion or ceremony to mark their child's entry into adulthood, what effect is this going to have on society's perspective of them? This ritual would not be widespread enough to mark out the child as a new adult to broader society, so would it really lessen the angst of the adolescent? Additionally, when would the ritual occur? At a specific age? Upon graduation from high school? From university? When they became sexually active? First menstruation? When they moved out? When they got their first job? There are seemingly limitless options.

Then we are trapped. Youth are confused because there is no recognized rite of passage into adulthood, and there is no recognized rite of passage because it would be too difficult, if not impossible, to create one widespread enough to be effective.

Social Friday

Last night the restaurant closed early due to lack of patrons, so a bunch of us staff went over to the club side to dance. It was insanely fun. The club is divided into two sections. The main area that plays mostly hip hop, and this smaller room that isn't open all the time that plays techno and stuff like that. We spent a good half hour in that smaller room and it was amazing! Normally I'm not into techno, but it was a lot of fun.

After the club closed we went back to Cay's house and just hung out for a while. Got pizza and talked. I felt somewhat out of place being the only one not smoking cigarettes, but they're gross. Nobody cared or even noticed, but it was strange nonetheless. I've never really seen the appeal. They taste gross and they do terrible things to your body. Why?

I got home rather late and Rumble was all set to play. Even after I staggered into bed he was jumping all over me, pouncing, biting, and rolling all over. I had to hold him down until he calmed down. He woke me up again 5 hours later though, so I'm rather tired. I'll have to have a nap before work.

Cay asked if I'd like to go see mötley crüe, sum 41, the exies and silvertide in Toronto on Tuesday. She's driving down there to see them and wants someone to go with. I know I like sum 41, I think I like mötley crüe, and I might like the other two. I am so darn bad with names that I've probably heard them all but I just don't know it. It's only $33 so I might just go. It'd be fun, I think. I like Cay, she's great. But what would I wear? Cay has incredible fashion sense, and it's somewhat intimidating. It's not that I don't dress well, but I can't help but feel that I look like a slouch next to her. What does one wear to a rock concert? Hmmm...

Success

Being a bit of a keener (understatement of the century) I've begun my reading for the school term - I did finally manage to buy 4 books. I tell myself that this is just an organizational attempt to keep my reading workload under control. If I finish at least some of the books before classes start then I'll have less to read during the term and therefore more time to devote to essays, etc and will feel generally less bogged down.

Bull.

The truth is that I'm extraordinarily impatient for the start of classes. If I had it my way, summer would be half as long, and filled with optional reading lists. If I sit and read and take notes for future study, I feel a great sense of accomplishment. I simply cannot wait for that moment when the prof asks some question and I can answer using information that illustrates that I am ahead. Yes, I'm "one of those", but I don't do it in a show-offy way, I do it so that the prof doesn't feel he/she has to dumb it down or slow down the pace. It drives me insane when profs slow us down because some idiot in the third row hasn't finished chapter 3 yet and we're midway through chapter 6. I want to say, "It's not because the material is that challenging. It's not because the majority of us are confused and bewildered, sitting in stupified silence. It's because that idiot that you happened to call upon hasn't bothered to finish his/her readings or attend class for the last week."

That was a bit of a rant. Point is that I'm reading this absolutely fantastic book, and I will no doubt bring you all up to speed as soon as I have time. Now, however, I have to go to work.

Andrew

I work with a fellow named Andrew. He's tall, cute, and has curly blonde hair. He's also absolutely hysterical. He's one of the weirdest people I know, but in a completely harmless, fun-loving kind of way. In the time that I've been at the restaurant he and I have had some very amusing conversations. I thought I would give two examples. The first is from a while back, and the second is from tonight.

1) Andrew congratulated me on getting Rumble, and then told me about his roommate's cat that is really whiny and clingy. He said that it follows him around and always rubs up on him. He said that while he's normally a cat person, this cat creeps him out. After much deliberation we decided that if this cat was a human, it would be an old pedophile man. The kind that goes to clubs catering to students in their young twenties and tries to dance with/rub up on the young girls.

2) Tonight, while creating the bread baskets for the party on the patio, Andrew announced, "This bread basket reminds me of Jesus."
I replied, "Jesus? How so?"
"Because he was found all wrapped up in a basket on that river."
Here I burst into laughter and said, "Andrew, that was Moses!!"
He looked puzzled for a minute, and then started to laugh too. "Oh yeah, Moses!"
I'm still laughing.

Resolution

I should also say thank you to all those who offered advice on the P and D situation. I recently had the ...er... pleasure(?) of meeting the boyfriend. According to him, he is afraid to break up with D because he knows that she'll be disappointed and hurt. His plan is to go to New Brunswick, ignore her while he's there so that she'll get lonely and cheat on him, and then, because she's such an honest person, she'll tell him about it, giving him the perfect excuse to break it off with her.

I told him that was the single-most self-centered and immature, not to mention completely ridiculous plan I had ever heard. I told him that he aught to just suck it up (excuse the vulgarity) and break it off with her like a man. Honestly. Have a little dignity man.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Sometimes I think there isn't such a thing as coincidence. Sometimes I think that God or somebody else up there is deliberately making things happen in a sequence that would otherwise be so preposterous that there is no way it could exist.

Today I decided to go and see if my textbooks were in stock. Booklists go up tomorrow, so there was a good chance they'd already be on the shelves. I had the foresight even to look up my course codes online, because some of them are cross-listed as other subjects and might not be in the anthropology section of the bookstore. I discovered that 1 will be in the communication studies section, 1 in the religion and culture section, and 1 in either the religion and culture or the global studies section. Good thing I checked!

I walk into the bookstore and the first section I come across is philosophy. There are two stacks of philosophy books and the rest of the shelf is bare. Obviously mine are not in yet, so I go on to the anthropology section. Here I scan the course codes looking for 456. 200...310...345...and 400. The anthropology section stops at 400. This is insanity. Where are my 456 books? Where are any of the books, for that matter, for the other 4th year classes? I give an exasperated sigh and decide to just move on. There appears to be no religion and culture section at all, a bafflement since there are approximately 1500 students enrolled in various religion and culture courses. I carefully inspect all the shelf ends for a R&C heading, but none appears.

Fine then, I'll just go on to global studies. I find the global studies section (up along the back wall) and am searching the tags projecting off the shelves for one labeled GS319. I deftly step around the person standing on a stepstool in the middle of the isle and right into a watering can that was hidden behind them. The watering can tips over spilling water all over the floor of the bookstore. I quickly grab a box of books and move it out of the way while I silently pray that the water doesn't ruin any books, all the while wondering why in heaven's name they have a watering can just sitting in the middle of the isle when there are no plants in the bookstore. The person on the step stool jumps down and turns to face me. Oh lord, it's someone from the maintenance staff. She mutters something about getting a mop, and as she turns to leave, the fire alarm goes off. I'm now standing in the back of the bookstore, surrounded by a pool of water, holding a box of textbooks above the tides, with the fire alarm going off all around me and people quickly vacating the building.

Surprisingly enough, I don't feel awkward or embarrassed in the slightest. The whole situation seems too surreal. I place the box on a shelf above the water and left, following the crowds out of the building but before I can reach the doors the alarm goes off. I turn around and am once again face to face with the woman who had run to get the mop, and she splits me a huge grin, makes the sign of a cross, and jokingly says something about how I'm the bringer of bad luck. I smile back, but do not return to the bookstore with her. I'll just finish my shopping another day...

Restaurant Work

Quite a bit has happened since my last post. I apologize for the absence of updates.

I have decided not to quit working at the restaurant. We've arranged that I will stop bussing and just do the servery/expo stuff come fall. This will amount to about 4 hours on Fridays and 4 hours on Saturdays. Since I have Fridays off from school I figured that this will work just fine. I can do my school work during the days, work for a few hours in the evening and be home by 10 or 11, which is early enough if I want to go out with people. I'm giving some thought to getting them to train me as a server since it would be better (and tax-free) money, but am concerned by two things:
1) Dropping things. I'm a clutz and my left wrist has a tendency to collapse.
2) Taking things to personally. I don't know that I could handle some of the cranky customers and rude comments some of the staff have gotten.
Any thoughts on that?

I had an interesting night at work on Saturday. The kitchen stuff was pretty normal, and then I went on to bussing. It was busy and I was on the patio. I like busing the patio. It's quieter, the people are mostly stationary and not knocking things over and smashing glass on the dance floor. Plus, I'm getting to know the guy that works security on the patio. Nice guy. Older, about in his 50s.

During one of my walks around the patio I smelled marijuana. I look quickly around and there's the culprit, turning away, looking guiltily at me, and trying to hide his smoke. I continue my round and when I got to the end I mentioned to the two security guys there what I'd seen (as per protocol) and they went off to pick him up, muttering something about how the guy was "probably American". Now this may be Canada, and we may be fairly relaxed about marijuana use and the legalization of, but it's still not okay to smoke dope on a restaurant patio. They nabbed him, brought him back downstairs and informed the police. I doubt that he got anything more than a slap on the wrist. It's more the principle of the thing.

About an hour later I'm still circling around and I notice the security guy leaning over the edge of the patio and looking down into the parking lot. Curious, I walk over and look too. There, before me, is a Code Three in progress. In the restaurant, a code 1 is someone who's drunk and needs to be watched by security, a code 2 is someone who is drunkenly badgering either the employees or other patrons and needs to be moved out, a code 3 is someone who is getting physical (fist fights, etc), and a code 4 is when there is weaponry involved. Generally the most it ever comes to at this restaurant is a code 2. Saturday was the exciting exception to the rule.

I looked over the edge and saw three drunk guys being herded out of the parking lot by 4 security guys and the Godfather (my nickname for the head security man). When I say herded, that's exactly what I mean. The security men were forming a wall and slowly walking towards the drunks, who were backing up from them and yelling and gesturing angrily. A police car pulled up behind the security team and just sat there, watching. At this point the R, the security guy I was watching with, said that all four security guys down there had their black belts in karate (haha). Then one of the drunks took a swing at a security guy and so it began. Within seconds two of the drunks were pinned on the concrete, swearing profusely, and the third was well away, holding his hands up and saying, "I didn't hit nobody. I didn't hit nobody!". It was pretty funny to watch.

Later on as I was cleaning up the patio I noticed that some guy had evidentially left the patio short of his underpants. Laid out on the railing for all to see was a pair of black briefs. I pointed this out to the other girl I was on patio with and we both just about died laughing. R kindly removed them for us. What a night though, first drugs, then fighting, and then souvenir briefs. Not all of my nights are so eventful.

Rumble has been to the vet. He's perfectly healthy, although a little underweight at his 1.6 lbs. He was furious with me over his shots and upon arriving home promptly ran to the carpeted area of the living/kitchen area and threw up. Since he did so while still running I got a lovely trailing path of barf on the carpet and he got it all over his front legs. He then grew even angrier with me since I had to partially bathe him. He spent the next 20 minutes under the couch preening himself and cursing at me. Poor little tyke. He has recovered in the days since and is back to his cheerful self.

Last night Luke came to visit and brought with him his cat, Zeus. Rumble spent the evening chasing after Zeus, pouncing on his tail, and making cute little "I want to be your friend" noises. Zeus was fairly forgiving and only hissed at him a couple of times. Meanwhile Luke and I played Smash Brothers on the 64 and watching Rain Man, a brilliant film about autism. An entertaining evening.

I bought a cell phone. With the amount that I'm out of the house now, and with that only going to increase come the fall (what with the two jobs and walk-safe and more social outings) I figured it was a good thing to have. There's something very reassuring about having a phone on hand. I like the security. Plus, the phone is just cute. It's a little red flip phone, and Telus was having a terrific sale. It's one of those models that can download musical ringtones from Much Music. I've discovered that for the low, low price of $3.50 I could have Candy Shop by 50 Cent or Drop It Like It's Hot by Snoop Dog playing from my phone whenever it rings. What a novelty.

Still no laptop. Dad says he'll find out where it is and when I'll be getting it.

Problem

I write today seeking advice. I find myself in an uncomfortable position. There is a girl that I work with, we'll call her D, who's not the brightest crayon in the box. She's kind of lazy, a little annoying, and her world obviously revolves around her boyfriend, but nonetheless she is well meaning. Then there is another guy that I work with, P, who happens to be best friends with D's boyfriend. P and I talk quite a bit and hang out outside of work. He very much dislikes D and enjoys telling me about how her boyfriend doesn't actually like her at all. Apparently the boyfriend is avoiding her and making up phony excuses. He talks cr*p about her to P all the time and P has told me about how the boyfriend is planning on cheating on her profusely when he goes to New Brunswick for school in the fall. I asked why the boyfriend wouldn't just break up with her, and P said it's because that way he wouldn't have anybody to "mess around with" back here. Alright, so the boyfriend is a bit of a sleaze.
Meanwhile I have D talking to me about how she's totally In Love with the boyfriend and how he's going to transfer back here so that they can be together. She talks about how wonderful he is and how he tells her he loves her and is never going to leave her.
You see my position? I'm more inclined to believe P's take on the boyfriend. I get really uncomfortable when either D or P talk about it because I just feel like the boyfriend is treating D terribly. What can I do? If I tell D she probably won't believe me and P will be furious with me. Do I go on like normal and just let it continue? I feel awful for D and don't really know what to do. I'm also slightly disturbed by how natural this all seems to P. He said that "if anyone deserves this, it's D", and I looked him square on and said that nobody deserves to be treated like that. An unappealing side of him I hadn't seen before.

Printing on Campus

Today, for the very first time, I printed something on campus. This is something that, for some reason, has always intimidated me. Probably because I had no idea how it worked and was afraid of looking like an idiot in front of all the people that happened to be in the lab at the time. Yes, I realize this is stupid, but I have never yet had to face the issue since I normally have both a computer and a printer at home. Today I bit the bullet. I walked into the lab and thought, "come on Haley, you're technologically with it. You can use a printer". With this self-inflicted vote of confidence I set about my task. (It most certainly helped that there were only two very disinterested-looking people in the lab, and that I had just run into my first year don in the hallway who told me that he works at the on campus photocopy station just around the corner if I needed help.)

It was the easiest technological thing associated with this school that I have ever had to do! I typed up my letter, hit print, walked to the printer, swiped my student card, and out came the page. The amazement! Nothing is ever this simple at my school. We are renown for having a terrible IT team and confounding computer systems. Yet here I sit, printed letter in hand. There must be some catch.

Pet Peeve

My pet peeve: when people say they will call, and then don't. This absolutely infuriates me. To me, this is no different that standing someone up; this is a matter of respect. If I was to run into someone on the street, and say, "I'm sorry, I can't talk now. How about coffee at 2?" and then I didn't show up, that would be very rude. What is different, then, if I was to say, "I'll give you a call this evening" and then didn't? When someone says that they'll call, I expect that they'll actually do so.

I understand that it's easier to forget to call someone than it is to forget to show up somewhere, but it still shows a basic lack of respect for that person. At the very least you can call and arrange to call them later. There will be times, I realize, where the call will be forgotten (I'm no less guilty of this than anyone else), but this should be a rare occurrence. I just think that people don't try very hard to remember to call when they say they do. It's not like I wait by the phone or anything, but I at least expect an answering machine message.

And no, it's not a coincidence that I'm posting this after being phone-stood up two days in a row by the same person...

End of Summer Approaches

I think I might actually miss my job when I leave. I plan to give notice on Wednesday. The job itself is pretty boring, but I'm starting to really like the people I work with. The servers are (mostly) awesome, and there are a few people on the bus crew that I quite like. Last night after work three other bussers and I went to the local diner for breakfast at 3:30 am. It was fun, and one of the guys drove me home afterwards since he lives on my street - convenient! I'm somewhat tempted to stay on just for the people, but I know that I wouldn't be able to handle the hours during the school year. I will miss them though!

This is the last week of summer walk-safe. Wednesday is our last night until the fall. Summer classes are over, and exams are ending, so there will be nobody around to walk. I'm on tomorrow night, and then not again until the fall. It'll all start off with a bang again though - frosh week!

That's about all today. Nothing all that exciting.

Apartment Action

I'm redoing my apartment! Yesterday I bought new bathroom stuff. A bathmat and matching shower curtain, and then a towel that matched. Now our bathroom is an undersea adventure. The shower curtain (which, in our tiny bathroom, takes up all of the one, most dominant wall) is covered with giant, brightly coloured fish swimming over a sea of deep blue and green. The bathmat is a similar print, and the towel sports a giant seahorse that stares at you from it's hanging space. Of course, all of this clashes horribly with the tan painted walls, so now I'm thinking that Jessica and I might just have to repaint the bathroom (ooh fun!). I've been longing to do this for some time - I hate that tan.
Then I walked into my bedroom, which I have been avoiding for some time, and was infuriated. The bedrooms are so small that when you have a couple bookshelves, a twin bed, and two (small) desks in there there is no floor space to speak of. Then an idea hit me. What if I stacked the bookshelves? They're only about 2 & 1/2 feet high each. But how to make them sturdy? Of course! The air-conditioner came with brackets! Brackets that I never used! Within a few minutes I had unloaded the bookshelves and was fastening them together with brackets. Actually, the design is quite ingenious. I've got three brackets screwed into the bottom bookshelf such that the top bookshelf slides into place, but isn't attached. This way, while perfectly sturdy and in no way threatening to collapse upon me, it is easily enough detached for the next time I need to move the bookshelves. Having done that, I decided to get rid of a desk. I pulled everything out from it and pushed and man-handled it out of my room, out of the apartment, and into the hallway. Someone else will take it. And now, I have floor space! Of course, I have things still piled a mile high on top of the one desk, but that will be sorted out soon enough. I'm somewhat hesitant to reorganize too thoroughly until I get my new desk from Grampa - one with drawers (ooh the luxury)!
Soon I will have a new desk, a new chest of drawers, and a new bed! I am beyond excited.

Moral Outrage

People are disgusting! I was having a fantastic day: woke up late, ate cold pizza for breakfast, played with Rumble, got dressed, walked out my door and while I was mentally creating a list of the things I have to do today some idiot drove by in a van, leaned out the window, and spat on me! Spat on me! I was spattered from cheek to ankle all down one side. It was disgusting. I went directly into the washroom on campus and scrubbed myself. Ew! What on Earth would compel someone to do that? This brought to mind the other times I have had things hurled at me from cars. Once when Jessica and I were standing at a bus stop a car went buy and threw gummy worms at us, and worse, the gummy worms were wet so they stuck to us and got tangled in my hair. Another time when with a male friend someone in a car threw eggs at us, missing us, luckily enough, but splattering them all over the sidewalk around us.

So I started thinking about the mean, cruel, and stupid things that people do. You know what I came up with? I've decided that I can understand things like violence in the heat of the moment more than I can the senseless meanspirited things people do to complete strangers. I'm certainly not saying it's okay, but I can at least see how if you were in a confrontation with someone you know you could potentially lose it and deck them. Again, I'm not saying this is at all appropriate or acceptable, but at least I can see where that urge would come from. But people who do things like spit at people, or throw eggs or candy, or yell things like, "you're the ugliest b*tch I've ever seen" at complete and total strangers? I just don't get it.

And yes, I know what you're probably going to say: that they feel better about themselves by making other people look and feel worse, but do you actually expect me to believe that people plan these things in advance just to make themselves feel better? Plan them they must, because who just randomly drives around with eggs in a car? They bring them along to purposefully throw them at people. I find it hard to believe that these people think to themselves, "I am feeling low self-confidence, I think it is time to throw projectiles at strangers from a car." No, these people think, "hey, we're bored, lets chuck stuff at people." WHY? Why are people so incredibly mean-spirited and immature? Whenever stuff like this happens I react in two ways: one, I'm disgusted by being now covered in filth, and two, I'm morally outraged that people come up with these past times.

TGIF

In about 1/2 hour I'm going to do another psychology research study. I'll spend 25 minutes staring at a computer screen and making decisions about the auditory cues I'm receiving. Sounds thrilling, no? And for this honour of participating in psychological study I will receive a whole $8. It does add up, but mostly I signed up this summer because the psych grads are desperate for research subjects. I hate to think of them being unable to complete their research just because nobody wants to participate.
After that I'm going to go down to Zellers. Rumble decided to pee all over the bathmat, and clean it as I might, I just can't get the smell out. As this is not a smell I want associated with my otherwise sparkling clean bathroom, off I go to replace it. Lesson learned: keep him out of the bathroom until he's older and knows better. I'll probably get another shower curtain too because ours is getting pretty scummy and gross. I hope Jessica isn't too annoyed - she bought the stuff in the first place. Dumb kitten.
Then, off to work! We get paid today, yippee. There's $200 to put on the Visa. Almost in the green again, excluding the massive student loans.

A Busy Thursday

I woke up this morning at 8:00, which is surprisingly early for me these days. It's hard to get up when you work until 3 am! I picked up the apartment a bit since Fox, our cleaning guy, was coming in today. He does floors, counters, and bathrooms, but not if there's stuff on them. Then Rumble and I watched the morning news while I ate cream of wheat cereal and he pawed at the bowl trying to get me to give him some. He failed. His digestive system is messed up enough adjusting to the food I have from the stuff he was given at the shelter. He doesn't need any human food to bung things up further.
Then three things happened at once. The landlord came through to show some people the apartment, the phone rang, and Fox showed up. Ah! Opened the door, grabbed the phone, said hello, and opened the door again. The phone was Luke calling to say he was on his way to pick me up. He kindly offered to drive me to the dentist on his way to work (mostly, I think, to show off his brand new car).
The landlord left with touring people in tow, Fox chatted away with me about the addition to his septic system he put in last week, I scooped up Rumble out of his way, and there was a knock at the door. I open the door, Rumble still in hand, and Fox still chatting away in the background (he goes a mile a minute), and there's Luke. Luke exclaims, "Oh! Kitty!", and takes Rumble from me, and I return to the living room to politely end my conversation with Fox. I return to Luke who is now totally engrossed in playing with and cuddling Rumble. Luke is very much a cat person. He has one already and is probably getting a kitten in the fall. I gently wrested Rumble away from him and offered to shut Rumble in a room while Fox was cleaning so he wouldn't get in the way. Fox proclaimed that wasn't necessary, and that he'd be careful around him. Luke made a comment about watching where he vacuumed, and Fox laughingly said, "I didn't say I'd be that careful!", and I, making jokes about knowing where to look if I was missing a cat upon return, ushered Luke out the door, promising him that he could come play with Rumble another day.
I then had to ooh and ah over Luke's new car (don't ask me what kind, I don't remember), and make the appropriate appreciative noises over his masculine gear shifting and the like. I didn't mind; it is, after all a beautiful car - and brand new. He picked it up at the dealership this morning and it still had that new car smell. His first car, and he was positively child-like in his enthusiasm. Got me to the dentist early, promised to call me when he got back from this 2-3 day trip, and off he went in his shiny black car.
I did some shopping since I was early. Nothing exciting, just some socks (okay, and a Cosmo magazine - but I had to read something in the waiting room!). I'm running low for some reason. Then I went to the dentist. It was probably the best experience I have had at a dentist, except that they were almost 45 minutes behind. He was very calm and applied the freezing. Normally when I get frozen it takes a long time to kick in, and even then I still feel it. This time it was almost instantaneous, and I felt nothing afterwards, despite the fact that they did about 1 & 1/4 hours of work in there. It all went off without a hitch.
I took the bus home and Rumble was waiting for me at the door. He then spent the next 15 minutes scolding me and rubbing himself between my legs. No doubt he'll do the same thing when I return from this computer lab outing. I seem to live at the computer lab these days. News on the laptop: they had to ship some parts, so I won't have it until next week. Oh well. Another week of the lab won't kill me.
That's been my day. How thrilling, eh?

Plans for Tonight

Apparently Blogger ate my last couple updates. I wrote them, published them, viewed them, and now they are gone. Lost in the dark void of the internet. Oh well. They didn't say anything tremendously important.
Tonight I have plans to go to my favourite restaurant with a friend from walk-safe. The restaurant is this little cafe-type place a couple blocks from my place. They serve a lot of vegetarian food and exotics. Freshly squeezed mango juice, portobello mushroom stacks, pad thai, citrus-dressed salads, lemon-salmon rolls, etc. It's all really good, and very reasonably priced. After that we might go play some pool or something, then I'm on walk-safe patrol.
Some time this week I get my laptop back. Wednesday I work, Thursday I have to go to the dentist, and Friday I work again. Also some time this week I'm going to go grocery shopping. Yep. It's going to be an eventful week. August is just going to fly by, I can feel it.