Spring needs to come now, please. I know a lot of people really enjoy the snow and find it enchanting, but I hate it. I did go outside yesterday and found it to be much warmer than I thought, but it was still wet and soggy and just plain disgusting. I really hate being cold. I’ve been using this “last week of freedom” as an excuse to be a serious bum instead of a half-hearted one (there’s so many more hours in a day when you’re not spending every waking hour wading through job sites), but mostly it’s because I do not want to go outside at all. I think I might be able to avoid the great outdoors today, but tomorrow I’ll be getting a much-needed haircut and doing .. stuff. Yes. Stuff.

I’m really nervous about starting my new job. Three things are weighing heavily on my mind: what am I going to wear; what will I refer to my job as; will they attempt to create an email address for me before I get there and make it “kwangzilla” instead of the much preferred “klwangzilla”. I have name issues, you see. Big ones. Giant. I must have my L!

There have been some really good suggestions for code names, but I’m leaning towards “Secret Agent”. I did like the suggestion of “Rodeo Clown”, but that’s what we use to refer to Ed’s job – it just doesn’t come up much because I never talk about his job and he doesn’t have a website. I also really like the idea of being a “Test Subject”; then I could work in all sorts of nerdy game references and also talk of shower curtains. I almost settled upon using Half Life – working at Black Mesa and having a job title of “Gordon Freeman”, but that would get old fast and also be all copyrighted and stuff. Oh, the luxury of choice! Maybe I should just wait and see what comes to me. After all, being an astronaut wasn’t planned – it just happened.

The sun’s coming out! Melt that snow, my pretty!

I am unable to be productive. I have a whole list of things I wanted to do before I start work next week, and as of yet I’ve done .. nothing. Yesterday I was supposed to drive Oscar down to the North Shore Yahama shop for a tune up, but it’s a little icy out there for that. Today was supposed to be haircut day, but my stylist is off until Friday. I also plan to do up a fresh henna job, but that’s a post-haircut thing – so it has to wait. What’s left? Nothing but housework, which I have zero interest in doing. BAH!

I don’t know what the dress code of my new job will be, but I have hopes it’ll dance on the side of casual. It actually came up in the interview, where I did my best to wax poetry about how much I truly love my jeans. I also brought up the fact that I work in .. uh .. whatever field it is I work in, and people like me aren’t known for dressing up in fancy, which was appreciated and acknowledged (I hope). Still, for the first day I must dress to impress. I have high and completely unreasonable hopes that spring will appear in the next two days or so, but I should probably plan an outfit that complies with the weather – which means pants of some sort, and something warm. I don’t own pants that aren’t jeans, short summer pants, or covered in zippers, so I should probably figure this out. Maybe I’ll go outside and see if I can’t find myself a nice pair of formal sweat pants, or something.

Ooh, I’m hungry too. Eating is productive, right?

My email is several shades of broken, so instead of stressing about it I will instead flesh out my paltry morning post.

I have a job! I received the call yesterday morning, and the offer letter that afternoon. It’s a real job with a real company, with a real probation period then real benefits and real vacation time and (I’m hoping) real co-workers. Whee!

They moved very fast – it was the position I interviewed for last Monday, and by that Thursday they had samples of my work, a list of references, and had called me to tell me I was their #1 candidate (this is the good news I never fully explained last week, by the way) and that they would let me know either way by the 28th. Well, my references apparently checked out (that was good money well spent on my part) and they offered me the job. I start next Monday, and I’ll be working in downtown Vancouver for the first time. I’ve already staked out the closest source of Diet Coke and ice, so I’m good to go.

Now I’m nervous. The HR lady told me they really liked me and that I was the youngest candidate but also had the most experience (what can I say; I get around). They were impressed and not scared off by my nerdy hobbies of video games and scooters, and – best of all – they took a document I wrote entitled “UAC Airlock Safety Procedures” as a sample of my work and STILL hired me after reading it. Clearly, this is a company that knows I am insane and yet they still want me. This can only be good.

I am excited!

Now, here’s the number one question: what secret code should I refer to my new job as? Astronaut is played out; I need something fresh and new and wacky. Ideas?

.. has a job!

Me!

Hooray!

Hey, internet: is this illegal?

Upstairs has a lot of parties – for the last two nights, our building has been the most popular dorm on campus. On Saturday night around 2:30am, a trickle of sluts came tramping (hah!) down the stairs like a herd of finely coifed elephants and waited outside for a taxi, shrieking the entire time. They are loud and obnoxious and clearly do not understand the meaning of the terms “inside voice” or “pants in winter”.

My devious solution is as follows: when the gaggle of drunken ninnies start their shit outside our building at incredible volumes, I would like to snipe them with a water gun. I wouldn’t fill it with ketchup or cat urine or vinegar; just water. Then I’d shoot at them from the darkness of my own apartment (not that their addled brains would be able to triangulate my location anyway). Think about it. They’d be drunk, stupid, barely dressed, loud, waiting outside at 2am, and wet. HILARITY! There are few things I can think of right now that would be funnier!

Would this be illegal? I’m not technically causing them harm, just making them cold. I’m pretty sure it would make them even louder, but I’d be awake anyway so what’s the difference. You can’t tell them to shut up – they giggle and say OOPS SORRY then 10 seconds later they’re screaming again. It would do me a great deal of good to see the little whores shivering and pathetic on my doorstep in the wee hours of the morning – after all, they’re disturbing my peace. Why shouldn’t I be able to disturb theirs?

I think I’ll buy a water gun tomorrow.

It sucks that my mom moved into the penthouse apartment upstairs.

Okay, she didn’t do that – but somebody up there walks around with an extremely heavy foot, and it sounds exactly like a large part of my childhood. My bedroom was in the basement of a very poorly built house, and my mom stomped around like that on a daily basis. The more stomping, the madder she was. The madder she was, the meaner she got. The meaner she got .. well, let’s just say that most of my self-image problems are older than some of my friends. Having Stompy Sam prance around upstairs is making me slightly paranoid that at any second my mom is going to appear in my doorway and start yelling incoherent yet devastating things.

To combat this fear, I will leave town. We’re going to Abbotsford to go to the “Vancouver” Motorcycle Show – Josh wants to downgrade from a scooter to a motorcycle, and I’m just excited at the thought of so many fat, bearded men in tight leather chaps in one place. It should be an interesting time, even if I let my snide hipster sensibilities get the better of me.

Giddyup!

Fear my tiger pants!

So I’m thinking about going on a raw food diet. Not because I’m in any way worried about my health or making the leap from part-time hippie to full-blown flower wearing moon maiden, but because I am PISSED OFF AT APPLIANCES.

Last night the oven decided it was time to get really, really dirty. I was making one of those rising crust pizzas (which taste nothing like delivery, no matter what the commercials say) when the damn thing broke apart in the oven, coating the elements with steamy hot pizza goo. It burnt the crust, too. As it stands, I can’t use the oven for anything until I get good and intimate with an oven cleaner and some scrubby brush things. I’ve never cleaned an oven before in my life, and honestly don’t know how to go about it – my first instinct is to somehow damage the oven in a secretive way then call the landlord and asking for a replacement. That’s what people do with things they can’t fix, right? They get a new one? Just because I don’t want to clean the oven is a perfectly good reason to commit appliance fraud, wouldn’t you say?

Unfortunately, my raw food diet idea is going to have to be pretty limited to things that don’t require refrigeration at all, which means a lot of preservatives, which goes against the whole raw food thing. See, the oven is the least of my worries right now. Our fridge, for the last 4 months or so, has been stuck on the top-secret “deep freeze” setting. Every single thing you put in the fridge freezes solid. Vegetables freeze, split open, then freeze some more. All liquids freeze in their bottles – sometimes you’ll get a nice juice slushie, but most of the time my precious Diet Coke is a block of solid ambrosia that I have to vigorously manhandle before it’ll come trickling out in a stream of glory. I hate it. I can’t keep fresh foods in there; meat won’t defrost; frozen mayonnaise is a truly horrible thing, and I’ve had to clean up countless sticky messes made by beverages freezing, expanding, leaking, then freezing again.

We’ve called our landlord about it, but he just tells us we need to defrost the whole thing. Apparently when there’s too much stuff in a fridge the engine has to work overtime to keep it all cool – and then the thermometer freezes and thinks that this new frozen low is what it should be doing. The only way to fix things is to empty the fridge and freezer, unplug it, and let it sit there for a couple days. Sounds good, easy enough to do – but what about all the food in there? We’d need several large coolers, ice packs, and a standby freezer for all the mystery packages that I’m too scared to unwrap. While I certainly have the time to do all this (I still won’t willingly scrub out the oven though), I don’t have the necessary supplies or the money to go buying coolers all willy-nilly. So we’re stuck. I can’t have fresh veggies, my carrots split down the middle, frozen lemons do not juice, and I could probably seriously injure someone (or myself) with a solidly frozen tomato. This sucks.

Potato chips and microwave popcorn are considered raw foods, right?