Monthly Archives: May 2007

several inconvenient truths

Posted in nerd, relationship drama by

Q: Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?
A: Ed

I have been more than patient, but if I don’t get my copy of Diner Dash for the DS today, heads are going to roll. The release date was the 22nd, but thanks to the holiday stores aren’t releasing the game until today. I can’t work under these conditions – I need mild entertainment, and I need it NOW.

Oh, if only that was the least of all my worries.

I really hate being at a loss for words. I could write pages upon pages about why I don’t like Ed very much right now – seriously, there’s about a half dozen reasons, each more shocking than the last – but even though I care not very much about saving his e-face, I still don’t feel like waxing some poetry about the (awful, terrible, juicy) specifics. If not wanting to spread delicious, satisfying humiliating details about him means I still love him, then I suppose I do. Just don’t ask me to say it out loud, though. I pretty much have two modes: love and hate, and I’m all out of bubble gum.

So, um. My mom bought me a cute denim vest/tank top that I think I’m going to have to return because it just doesn’t look good on me. I don’t have anything I’d wear with it, and I always feel as though I should be going out line dancing when I put it on. The store it came from had other things I like, so I should be able to find something else no problem. I hate returning things – especially without a receipt – but it’s either that or let it sit in my closet until the next time I go on a wardrobe purge.

The weather this week has been gorgeous, but the weekend’s forecast is wet and rainy. We’re supposed to go do various birthday things for the Shan and Ed Birthday Mashup, but those things were outdoors and technically still unplanned, since no one will tell me what they’d like to do. It’s okay, I can read minds. Really!

I *could* be more boring, but then I would slip into a coma.

now with extra drama

Posted in i'm an astronaut, relationship drama by

Last week in a fit of doldrums, I decided to dye my hair a normal colour. I am having some pretty serious second thoughts about my half-hearted attempt to conform, but there’s nothing I can do about it for at least a month. It amuses me to know that even though my hair isn’t blood red or dark purple, it’s still nothing ever found in nature except perhaps on dogs – the top layer is black, and everything underneath is varying shades of brown. I suck at fitting in.

Yesterday was a good day, until around 5pm or so. Work went well. I am cautiously and probably foolishly optimistic about the Space Station; there’s a potential project coming up that plays directly to all my strengths and I am jumping for a chance to do it. Good, too, was the word from the owners of our new location – I am officially allowed to park my scooter at the bike rack, which is situated far from the street and hidden from everyone except the people doing yoga downstairs. There is absolutely no danger of Sally being run over, unless someone chooses to drive a car up the concrete stairs and onto a patio. Hell, a car probably won’t fit up there at all. I am safe! No more parking tickets! No more mystery scratches! I’m right up against a wall in a cozy corner; no one can even try to sit on her! It is as glorious and protected! Hooray for Sally!

So yeah, the day started out good. I really, really wish that it had stayed that way – between dealing with my insane mother and my bafflingly inconsiderate husband, I am tired and sad and hurt all over from the inside. Right now I’m sitting at my desk hoping that Ali gets to her computer soon, because I need someone to divulge my woes to. I am a sad monkey – a sad, disappointed, disgusted, tired monkey.

helping you help me

Posted in everyday kimli by

Please wait while we find an agent to assist you…
You have been connected to Crystal Winter.

Crystal Winter: Welcome to TransGlobe Chat, how may I help you today?
Kimli: Hi Crystal
Kimli: I have a question about your no pet policy
Kimli: specifically, why is there a no pet policy?
Crystal Winter: What city are you in?
Kimli: Victoria BC
Crystal Winter: Because of the damages and noise our company policy
Kimli: Cats do not cause damage
Kimli: I am trying to find an apartment for my mother, a 63 year old widow
Crystal Winter: Its a provincial law for BC
Kimli: Her only companion is a cat
Crystal Winter: we don’t allow any pets
Kimli: Um .. there is no law in BC that says you are not allowed to have pets
Crystal Winter: its our company policy in the BC area
Kimli: Do you allow people to pay pet deposits?
Crystal Winter: No unfortunatley we don’t
Kimli: Transglobe has taken over the majority of the apartment buildings in Central Victoria, including ones I used to live in that did allow pets
Kimli: Your policies are really unreasonable in this day and age, especially given that 20% of the residents of Victoria are senior citizens
Kimli: My mother would be willing and able to pay a pet deposit, yet she can’t find anyone to rent to her because she has one spayed indoor silent cat
Crystal Winter: Unfortunatley we don’t allow pets and we don’t take deposits for pets in British Columbia however we do allow pets in other provinces we have to follow provincial guidlines for BC
Kimli: What provincial guideline are you following?
Crystal Winter: THese our the procedures we have to follow if you require further information on this matter please call 250-383-0039
Kimli:So you are unable to tell me which provincial guideline you follow that states you are not allowed to rent to tenants with pets?
Crystal Winter: We don’t have that information in our call center you will need to contact your regional office and they can provide you with further information
Kimli:I see .. thank you for your time

—

I need help. My mother, who is utterly insane, is threatening to buy a $300K+ condo because she can’t find an apartment to rent. Fine, that’s her prerogative – except she’s been looking for TWO DAYS. My mom, instead of being somewhat reasonable about this, would rather lock herself into a massive mortgage at untold amounts of money per month, all because she can’t find a suitable apartment in the TWO FRIGGIN’ DAYS she’s been looking.

I need to find my mother an apartment in Victoria BC for July 1st. She’s looking for a 2-bedroom place – one, if it’s large enough – that is within the city limits, and allows her to keep her cat. Her limit for rent is about $900/m, and she’s willing to pay a pet deposit if she has to. She doesn’t smoke, throw loud parties, or annoy other people as much as she does me, but that’s because she’s my mom and not yours.

If you know of anything that might be suitable or any place I can look online that isn’t Craigslist, since I have that covered, please please please let me know.

Also, to all the large building management companies – TransGlobe, Devon Properties, Boardwalk, all the rest – that have outdated, rigid, and utterly unfair policies against pets in rental buildings – wake the fuck up.

lowering the pole

Posted in fuuuuuuuu, i'm an astronaut by

I hate limbo. It is the least excellent place-that-is-also-a-dance to be.

We don’t know anything about the Real Boy Status Change except that we probably want to wear pants to hide our shame on June 1st. I am rocking the boat as hard as ever; naively and unreliably demanding to know things that directly affect my personal well-being before I sign anything that might be coming my way. I hate being taken advantage of; almost as much as I hate it when things disappear from my desk.

As some of you might have gleaned from our trip to the island, my mother has sold the house. She got a pretty good price for it, given that the house is a piece of crap. She has to be out by July 31st, so we’re looking for an apartment for her for July 1st to give a month to move things back and forth. She’s leaving the majority of the (old and hideous) furniture behind; a trip to the Brick introduced her to the joys of a new bed and furniture that was created after WWII. Once she finds a place I’ll probably be taking a week off (with pay? who knows!) to help her pack, move, unpack and get settled. As long as I can keep up the dutiful daughter act, perhaps she’ll be more inclined to give me some of the house money – that would be just lovely, given my soul-crushing debt and continual need for both ale and whores.

I hope everything changes for the better, but right now I simply do not know. The unknown is making my life very stressful and cranky, and you would not believe the size of the ass marbles.

turnicus real boyicus

Posted in angst, i'm an astronaut by

Long weekends are my favourite kind of weekends ever.

Actually, wait – long weekends that I get PAID for are my favourite kind of weekends ever. Oh, the downside of not being a real boy – sure it’s nice to have an extra day off, but when it comes at the expense of say a full cart of groceries or perhaps a ticket for excessive speeding, it’s kind of hard to sit back and truly relax. As much as I enjoy sitting at my desk all naked and glistening, I’d much rather be getting paid.

This will soon be changing, apparently.

That’s right – wheels are in motion at my Space Station to finally – one year and three months after they should have – turn us into real boys. The Blue Fairy has a wand at the ready, and the paperwork is starting to flow our way. I should be happy about this, shouldn’t I? Except it tastes an AWFUL lot like “too little too late”, not to mention the excessive lack of details we’ve been given. All we have are provincial and federal tax forms to fill out, and a looming date of June 1st.

I am uneasy about this. This is just par for the course with me, given my boat-rocking skills – I pretty much refuse to sign diddly squat until I find out such petty details as:

  • Is our pay rate going to change?
  • Will we be paid salary or hourly?
  • Will we be paid overtime?
  • What are you offering in terms of vacation time?
  • How retroactive is the vacation time?
  • Benefits – are we getting them? How much? Are you flexible?
  • How much are you planning on deducting for taxes?
  • What of the previous 15 months in which you declared us non-employees even though we so obviously were?
  • Discretionary days? Personal days? Sick days?

I know – I am so terribly uncooperative. It feels like I should be jumping with unbridled joy at our impending Real Boy status, but it doesn’t feel right. The “30 day probation” I was supposedly under came and went with nary a word, but the eternal fatalist in me still thinks that every whisper, every glance, every less than delighted hello means the Board is plotting against me. I’d love to be able to say that it’s all in my head, except the shit I went through in April plainly told me that it is not. So what next? Do I sign my life away and be delighted in whatever crumbs they throw my way until the next time someone has a cranky day and decides I am unfit for consumption? Do I try to find any kind of government agency to listen to my tale of woe and mismanagement and find out my options, if any? Do I wait, knowing there’s only a fine line between biding one’s time and wasting one’s time do you know what I mean?

When I explained the situation to the various people in my croo, their expressions mirrored exactly how I feel about this all – a furrowed brow and a “hmmmm”. I don’t know what to do, y’all. I don’t have the slightest clue where to begin. In fact, this whole thing is a lot like the sewing machine – it both confuses and scares me.

back in the present

Posted in everyday kimli by

I don’t *like* not having internet access.

Ed and I spent the weekend in Victoria, helping my mom do stuff. We both took Friday off, and headed over on an 11am ferry to spend the weekend running errands and building boxes for my mom. We are crazy party animals! I did bring my Mac Book with me, but contrary to what my mom thinks, the internet does not simply work because you have a computer. No one else in that neighbourhood seems to use the internet at all, or at the very least isn’t up on wireless technology because I wasn’t even able to steal a signal – NOTHING. Did you miss me? Yeah, I’m sure.

So, um. I have more to say – since when do I not – but it is going to have to wait because I would like to be elsewhere. I guess I didn’t miss the internet that much after all!

Okay, that’s a lie.

baby gooses

Posted in everyday kimli, vroom vroom by

Is it bad to hope your job drastically improves to retain your sense of the happy solely because there’s a really, really good organic grocery store right behind the office? I’m eating a low-fat lemon ginger scone from Capers, and it is the best thing I’ve eaten in forever. It is so good that I have MSN’d one person and emailed another, solely to tell them about my awesome scone. I have one bite left and I am sad that it is almost gone. I may go back and buy 17 more.

I usually don’t take lunch breaks because I’m too busy and/or everyone else leaves for lunch and I wackily feel that leaving the office and phones completely deserted is a bad idea. Lately though, I’ve been taking Sally out and going for a ride when everyone else has returned – part fresh air, part food run, part sanity-returner. Yesterday I ended up in Stanley Park, and stopped to walk along a path because I saw a swan. By the time I parked and made my way down to the water, the swan was gone – but I saw geese! I love geese. I took some pictures, then walked a little further. I saw two more geese, and what looked like a rock in between them. The rock was fuzzy, so I looked closer – and it was a baby goose! A little tiny fuzzy gosling! I stopped in awe and took some pictures, and then looked to the right – there were two ducks napping, and between them – an entire puddle of baby ducks! Check out my Flickr page, but oh my god the cute was overwhelming. I took a bunch of pictures, then harassed some old people because I was so excited to see the baby animals that I had to share it with someone so I stopped an old lady and then an old tourist couple with binoculars. This, my friends, is why I’ll never leave Vancouver – there’s just something magical about being able to get lost in the forest in the middle of the city, or climb a mountain and swim in the ocean in the same day, or harass old people because there are baby ducks and not have them think you’re mugging them.

I’m doing the Scooter Dance again; that special time in a woman’s life where she has to park her scooter in ever-increasingly bizarre places in a somewhat futile attempt to avoid having to pay $10 a day for parking something that doesn’t take up more room than a bicycle. I tried street parking on Monday, and promptly got a parking ticket. Ed drove me on Tuesday, but yesterday I tried parking behind our building. The maintenance people kicked me out, saying that they back large trucks up in the parking lot and Sally will get crushed. That will never do – so today, I drove into the parking lot and through the human walkway to get to the bike racks, and locked Sally up there. I’m completely out of the way and I’ve never seen a bicycle parked there – but we’ll see. People are ridiculously hateful to scooters, it seems. Frankly, they’re just jealous.

Today is my Friday!

incoherent with joy

Posted in nerd by

AHHHH!

QUICK! I NEED AN XBOX 360!!!!!

They’re reviving the Katamari Damacy series and releasing a new game – Beautiful Katamari – sometime this year! HOLY SHIT! HOORAY!

Katamari Damacy is exactly the game that would push me to buy an Xbox 360. I can’t get rid of my Xbox 180 – Jet Set Radio Future is not forward-compatible – but the Katamari series makes me incontinent with glee and the happy. YAY!

Hmm – according to the Wiki, JSRF is now 360 compatible. YIPPEE! SO EXCITED!

How sad is it that the majority of my “SO EXCITED!” status comes from the future release of various video games? No matter; I am quite content with my status of Supreme Nerd.

YAY!

stuff my mother didn’t teach me

Posted in everyday kimli, nerd by

I bought a sewing machine.

It’s the most basic of all models I could find that wasn’t a child’s machine; a Brother LS1520 – refurbished, for extra savings. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money given that I am not entirely sure what I am doing, so I did some research and ended up with this one.

Now what?

I don’t know how to sew. I was given an exception from Home Ec in high school so I could take extra woodworking – all fine and good, except I am not trying to lathe myself up a stick. I want to sew a skirt together. I don’t envision that one day I’ll be able to whip up ball gowns and pant suits with ease; all I want to do is .. sew a skirt together, and maybe make some incredibly basic items and hem some pants. I cut up my favourite pair of jeans last week with the idea to make a skirt of them, because they’re a little too holey to be decent. I could just keep it all together with some safety pins and the iron-on cheater hem I put in there, but .. well, I’d like to learn how to sew. So I bought a sewing machine. This will either be really funny, or really traumatic.

So, internet – how do you sew?

This is either the funniest or the saddest product mash-up I’ve ever seen. Luckily, he looks just smashing on my Prime Shelf.

All puns are totally intended.