Monthly Archives: March 2007

what does the green pill do again?

Posted in everyday kimli, i'm an astronaut, medical anomaly by

My weekend was spent doing a whole lot of nothing. The cold that had been plaguing me since early last week decided to turn into a sinus cold just for fun, so my head felt like it had gone several rounds with various angry monkeys. We did venture to the outside on Saturday afternoon for video games and cat food, but other than that I did not leave our apartment until this morning when it was time to drag my battered carcass into the Space Station.

Our brief outing on Saturday was a complete success, however snotty my head might have been. I went through our game shelf to find some things to trade in at EB Games, and came up with 5 titles I was either done or bored with: Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright: Justice For All, and the Sims 2 for the DS; Ultimate Block Party for the PSP and Elebits for the Wii. At EB we waited in line for what seemed like forever – all the rich people from West Vancouver were buying video games, including small girls in equestrian gear – but it was well worth it, because when it was our turn at the counter, we found our small pile of games had a trade-in value of $102. Holy crap! The EB Jockey was equally amazed; he showed us a trade-in pile from earlier that morning with about 20 games in it that had a value of about $30. Yay for us! We gleefully tore through the store looking for new games to get, and ended up with SSX Blur for the Wii and Kingdom Hearts II for the PS2. Video games are awesome. Even awesomer were my other finds of the day, which included two new bags (shut up, I like bags) and a huge pile of books from the discount tables at Indigo. Ed dragged me out of the mall before I could do more damage at the book store, and we were off to get cat food from the sketchiest pet store in the world before going home to fall into a heap of fluids and price tags.

I had originally planned to be productive on Sunday, but I instead learned an important lesson – while Tylenol cold medication is yellow for daytime and blue for nighttime; Tylenol Sinus medication is green for daytime and white for nighttime. I was feeling uncomfortable in my own head, so I took some sinus medication in the hopes of clearing things up – unfortunately for my grand plans, I took the nighttime pills instead of the daytime ones and ended up passing out for the entire afternoon. Seriously, I got up at 7:30 and decided to cook a turkey dinner. Sinus meds do not fuck around, I tell you what. Perhaps next time it would be an excellent idea for me to actually read the back of the pills I’m popping before I end up huddled in another heap drooling on a cat or two.

So far today I’ve already had to send a nasty “back the fuck off” email to my most hated client. I’m either in for a terrible or an excellent Monday.

random childhood memory #84

Posted in everyday kimli by

Last night at Costco, the conversation turned to communion wafers (as it so often does with us). This triggered an early memory for me, one that I think explains a lot about the person I grew up to become:

When I was young, my mom went through a holy phase. She would drag our family to church every Sunday in a rather futile attempt to save our souls from eternal damnation, a move I see now as being just adorable. Our particular church was Anglican flavoured. I had long-assumed that we were suddenly Anglican not because of any deep-seeded faith but because it was a handy church to go to, but it turns out I was apparently baptized (bet you didn’t know that) in an Anglican church my dad used to go to in Montreal. Huh! How about that.

Anyway, back to this church thing. We’d go every Sunday, and eventually I started attending Sunday School. I don’t really remember any of it other than thinking I could totally be at home watching cartoons instead of drawing pictures of Jesus, but I do remember that sometimes we had special Sunday services and instead of crayons and holy fire, the kids would stay in the church proper to receive communion with the rest of the grownups. Fancy!

This particular Sunday was a communion one, and it happened to be my first. I wasn’t really sure what was going on and for some reason my parents opted to not give me any pointers at all, so I took what few visual cues I could get from the people around me. I stood in line with everyone else and one by one we were blessed, given a Styrofoam wafer of Jesus flesh, and a sip from the Chalice of Blood. One, two, three. Easy, right?

Well, no. For some reason, our church didn’t have a separate kiddie chalice to commune the underage with – so when it came time to drink of his blood, we were given actual wine.

Remember, I was 6 or 7 at the time. I bowed my head appropriately, received my sip of Jesus blood, and .. was immediately horrified by the liquid in my mouth. Unable to swallow it yet much too couth to spit out the blood of the saviour in front of the congregation, I quickly made my way back to the pew, fished out a Kleenex, and .. spat the blood of Christ into a napkin.

I still don’t like wine to this day.

Next time on Random Childhood Memories: 10-year-old Kimli goes to church wearing black leather pants!

Mmm .. sacrilegious.

the trade deadline has passed

Posted in i'm an astronaut by

It’s March 1st, meaning my Astronaut Contract is officially up and I am an Unrestricted Free Agent (I’ve been listening to Ed’s random patter about hockey trades a little too closely, it seems). This isn’t anything serious – I’m not going anywhere; I know this – but I am totally stressed out about it and no one seems at all worried except me.

I want a raise. I really feel like I’m underpaid for what I do and what I’ve brought to the Space Station in the past year, and a raise would go a long way in showing they appreciate and have faith in my mad skillz. It would also be a nice perk, seeing as I make two chickens and that’s it – no benefits, no vacation, no sick days, no bonuses, no stock options, no nothing. There’ve been a lot of promises of things changing in the future – give them another 6 months, they say – but in the meantime, I think I deserve some sign that they’re aware of what I have done and can do and am looking forward to doing in the future. That’s not too much to ask, is it? I love my job, but I could be making 50% more elsewhere doing the same thing, not to mention benefits and vacation time and all those other things I literally haven’t had since 2002. I’m getting a little long in the tooth to be playing the office temp game. I want some stability for once, y’know? I want a sign that I’m worth hanging onto, and something more than a “oh, we’ll figure out that ‘real employee’ thing later”.

So, it looks like I need to Have a Talk with some people. Too bad I’m absolutely wretched at important conversations – how does one demand a raise, anyway? It’s causing knots of worry in my belly, and I don’t like it one bit.