Monthly Archives: March 2009

it hurts when i do the chicken dance

Posted in everyday kimli by

Seriously, fuck this weather.

Every morning for the past week I’ve gotten out of bed determined to ride my scooter to work, and every morning I’ve been disappointed. I am sick of rain. I don’t care if it is pointless to be petulant over the normal pre-spring rainfall in Vancouver; I am pouting and stomping around and slamming doors.

I was going to ride in this morning, wetness be damned – but then I saw a car floating merrily down our street and had to hastily rethink the plan. I stole the car again, which made Ed’s pants even crankier than normal – he had plans for the day, and I foiled them. I am clearly a master criminal, even when I’m not trying to be. I should branch out into other crimes, like extortion and grand larcenies.

I had another reason for not scooting today; one that is a little less scientific than the last. It’s been almost two years since I dislocated my shoulder, but for the last two days it’s been acting up something fierce – Ol’ Dislocatey is trying to tell me something, and I am just superstitious enough to think that perhaps it’s trying to keep me off my scooter in the cold November rain. I’ll stay off Oscar until the roads dry or my shoulder stops hurting, whichever comes first, and I will feel somewhat silly for letting myself be ruled by irrational phantom pains because clearly my scientific mind scoffs at such beliefs.

Hey, today is Miranda’s birthday. We’re going out tonight to celebrate on Commercial Drive – there will be dinner and bowling and things that glow in the dark and if I am she is lucky, some full frontal nudity. Hooray! Good times ahead!

I wonder if my shoulder will keep me from sucking at bowling.

I broke my glasses again this morning – the ones I replaced in November because the frames broke? Yeah, the new ones broke in the same place. Now I get to go deal with the store and be upset that I’ve spent almost $600 on this one pair of glasses because I keep having to replace parts. I’ll have to get something new and different, and I will probably end up looking like a square and that makes me sad.

I am surprisingly jolly for a rainy gray day in March.

blast cast from the past (at last)

Posted in nerd by

My anal buddy Mike asked me if I could hunt down an old match I covered –  Luniz vs Daler, Q3 1v1 – and stick it online somewhere so Luniz could relive some past glory. I found the recording – I seem to have kept all all my casts on my backup drive – so I put the file on my web bucket for downloadings. If you want to take a listen and experience the good old days of online video game tournament coverage, have at it.

It’s always weird to listen to yourself, but it’s a triple trip to listen to yourself and not recognize your own voice. The file downloaded to my work computer and then I was called away – when I came back and put my headphones on, I was babbling away in my own ears and it wasn’t until I heard myself say “This is DeeAy with Radio iTG” that I realized what the hell I was listening to.

Holy shit, do I ever miss game casting. I miss the action, the excitement, the insane hours I spent behind a microphone. I miss knowing what’s going on in the community and watching the tournament ladders. I miss attending events. I miss having a legitimate excuse to talk that fast. I miss trillian and travelyan and WaCK and the rest of the capital-letter-abusing team.

I sound pretty damn good in this cast. Go me, back then.

Oh, and this is an awesome match to listen to – both Luniz and Daler were (are) incredible players, and I have a special guest caster in cl0ck who is a great player himself.

Fuck, this is making me want to run home and play some Q3 and yell out to the living room what I’m doing as I do it. Maybe I’ll get some more of those old casts online so I can relive my own glory days whenever I’d feeling particularly reminiscent.

fuck you, pancakes

Posted in angst by

This is a terrible time of year for me. I’m half mad from a combination of cabin fever, foolish anticipation and angst – I keep waiting for something to come along and rescue me from a life of ordinary mediocrity, but nothing appears. My moods flip back and forth between extreme melancholy to bat-shit insanity with a sprinkling of insincere optimism, and it’s making me very tired.

I know it’ll pass – it always does – but it’s getting very hard to hide my angst from the world around me. My temper is impractically short these days, so I’ve been hiding from almost everyone in a misguided attempt at keeping myself from blurting out horrible things in a fit of irritation. It doesn’t always work. I called Ed a pussy last night, and not in an affectionate way. I apologized, but he’s still mad at me and I guess I deserve it but it still sucks.

As always, my end-of-winter depressive state comes with a deep and meaningful self-realization to make me feel better about being so crazy because hey, what’s a little insanity without some kind of grand dawning comprehension on the side? As I trudged onto the sea turtle yesterday to go home, I suddenly grasped the reason behind my utter loathing of transit: it’s all so ORDINARY.

I have a fear, you see. Beyond my fear of tarantulas, children, and tarantula children, I am *terrified* of being ordinary. I have had dreams of the white picket fence and 2.3 children and soccer practice and tuna casseroles, and literally woken up in a sweat – nothing could be more horrible to me than a life of boring, normal, humdrum, vanilla routine. The reason I hate taking transit so much is because I imagine I can see the defeat in the faces of all those people – they’re going to a job they hate, putting in the 8 or 10 hours for a paycheque, then heading home to sit in front of the TV until it’s time to go to bed and do it all over again until they die. I’m afraid that this is as exciting as my life is going to get, and that I’ll end up a brittle shell of a person sleepwalking through my days with nothing to look forward to except the few moments of peace I get while taking a shower before I have to face family and the world. I’m terrified that this is all there is, and I will waste my life desperately hoping something magical will happen. Walking with the crowd as we file out of the sea bus doors and up to the streets makes me feel tiny and invisible and ordinary, and I *hate* it. I hate it so much. I am pathologically afraid of being just like everyone else, and while it is a pretty stupid fear, I feel absolutely no need to get over it.

I don’t necessarily think that I am a beautiful and unique snowflake (although I totally am), but losing myself in the morning crowd makes me feel as though I am truly losing myself – like I might emerge from the masses wearing white sneakers with black nylons and carrying a Lululemon bag holding my sensible work shoes and a baggie of celery. I can’t handle that feeling. It is a deep primal fear, like my fear of Cheez Whiz. My own cowardice of normalcy is making me short tempered and angry, which leads me to calling people names from the comfort of my bed while running over pedestrians in a stolen taxi. It is insane. It needs to stop.

My fear of the masses probably won’t go away, but I would like it to become a little more manageable so I am not paralyzed with dread over something I am normally okay with (like work and getting to work and not being able to run away to join the circus). Better weather would definitely help, as would my life getting back to its regularly scheduled program of adventure and fun and inappropriate behaviour. Some things are Up in the Air, and I will feel better once they’re squared away and back to whatever passes as routine for me.

You know, that’s pretty much the only thing keeping me going at the moment – knowledge that yes I am fucked in the head right now but it WILL get better one way or another, and even if the sea bus doesn’t break out into synchronized dance this afternoon, something hilarious and awesome is bound to come my way soon. One of the few things I like about myself is my ability to find humour in almost everything – this is a test, is all. Something about this is very, very funny and I just need to find out what.

building excitement (in my pants)

Posted in adventure by

At lunch today I bought a book called San Francisco Day by Day that lists “must see” things based on the length of your visit. We’re less than 2 months away from our road trip, and I can’t wait – I have to stop myself from packing. It’s too early, even for me.

The outlook for our trip looks good. Ed starts his new job on Monday with a full compliment of vacation days and benefits, and he has already told them about our planned trip for May. I don’t see any difficulties with his job, and my days off have already been approved. This could actually happen. We could *actually* go on a vacation that isn’t to Edmonton. I may have to pinch myself.

I love road trips. There’s something about hopping into a car and pointing it somewhere new that fills me with a very primal glee. If I were a single lass, I would never be around – every free moment I had would I be off exploring something new. Unfortunately, I live in the real world and I have a job and commitments and only 2 days’ worth of music stored on my iPhone so I have to plan my adventures out with a little more restraint. Still, our trip is looking to be fun. The plan is to hop in the car one early Saturday morning in May and not stop (except for socks) until we’re in the shadow of the Golden Gate. Ed’s never been to San Francisco, and I’ve never been on my own terms – I can’t wait. Have I mentioned that I can’t wait? I want to go NOW.

Back to my radio silence, then.

radio silence

Posted in everyday kimli by

I have nothing to say, and it’s kind of freaking me out.

So, give me something to talk about. Is there anything you want to know? Ask, and ye shall have some content to read.

I’m well aware that this is a huge cop-out, but what are you going to do about it, huh? That’s right, nothing. Take that, society. I am thumbing my nose at you.

Seriously, give me something to write about before I go nuts.

victory donut

Posted in everyday kimli by

I sometimes feel left out of things because I don’t drink coffee or alcohol. I’d probably make an excellent Mormon, if not for the whole “religion” thing (and my history of gratuitous swearing, near-constant blasphemy, inability to keep my clothes on, refusal to keep my whore mouth shut, etc).

I was tired of being on the sidelines, so this morning I got breakfast at Tim Hortons and rolled up my very first rim. I won a donut for my troubles. I didn’t particularly enjoy the drink; my hot chocolate was awesome for the first 5 sips, then pure sugary death to the end of the cup. Getting to Tim Hortons is somewhat of a hassle for me, and I don’t know that carrying around a crusty sticky cup to redeem for an $.80 donut is really worth my time, especially given that my last 4 or so donut fixes have been free thanks to a $10 gift card I got somewhere. I am somewhat satisfied, though. I am no longer a rimming virgin!

Wait, that’s not right at *all*.

Yesterday’s Olympic Volunteer Orientation was both interesting and a little insufferable. As people arrived, we were crossed off a master list and sent inside for the security check. RCMP volunteers were there, looking over everyone’s paperwork and checking their identification. They checked everything very carefully, especially the signatures and pictures. George (my very own personal RCMP officer) looked at the picture on my passport and at me, and said “Oh that’s definitely you” to which I am slightly offended, given the size of my head in my passport photo. I passed the security check with flying colours, but my name tripped them up a little because I spelled it “Kimli” on my application but all my ID says otherwise. I promised George that I had no deep dark secrets to hide with my funny spelling, and he let me move on to the next stage: the waiting.

We all sat on some folding chairs with two TV screens playing inspirational videos. It would be a recurring theme of the afternoon – I think by the time it was all said and done, we had seen 4 different inspirational videos full of slow motion celebrations, time-lapse photography and sweeping panoramic shots, all designed to pump us up for the tasks ahead. I personally didn’t get excited until video #2, where shots of people snowboarding were interspersed with action from SSX Tricky, which made me giggle out loud. Video number 3 threw me a little, because it was designed to make us feel excellent about Vancouver – it was very pretty, but 98% of the video featured the city in the summer. It’s awesome and all, but we’re talking about Winter Olympics here – the best we can hope for is varying degrees of soggy wetness.

The Welcoming session consisted of a bunch of introductions and a group exercise. We were given a torch from the Torino games and asked to stand up and introduce ourselves. Official looking people took notes at everything we said, and carefully noted our reactions when we were asked to play the group game. I took charge of my group – I was the only one who had a pen and a notebook handy – and we were then moved onto the individual interviews.

We had all been pre-sorted into the Transportation Volunteer group, meaning we were there to be interviewed for a role in moving people or equipment. The 1v1 interviews were pretty basic – we were asked the same questions we had answered online, with a little more information about the transportation aspect – and then we had a short break before the Orientation session started. I spoke too fast for my interviewer; she had to write all my answers out by hand and I like to use big words very quickly.

The Orientation lasted for 2 hours, and it was the hardest part of the day. The person leading the session was a volunteer who worked as an HR manager for what I am assuming is a company full of 4-year-olds – there was a great deal of talking down and rounds of applause for ourselves and boy aren’t we just super and keen. I was growing extremely antsy during the session – the fact that I had to pee like a warrior didn’t help – and was glad when it was video-watching time, because that meant Mr. Rogers didn’t have to talk down to us for a few minutes. Eventually he let us go, and I bolted for the safety of my car and adult conversation.

All snark aside, the inspirational videos were pretty inspirational. We won’t find out if we passed the interviews for at least a couple of months, but it was an interesting look at what might be to come. I don’t think they’ll make me drive people around, and I did ask if I could do something that actual fit into what I do for reals (training and documentation) so .. we’ll see. I got a pin out of it, and a big binder with a sticker and a CD full of information – and since no one asked me to sell any hot dogs, I will wait and see if I am asked back and will decide my fate at that time.

i yam who i say i yam

i yam who i say i yam

too much free time

Posted in nerd by

“You’re impossibly fast and strong, getting 20 city mpg (26 on the highway). You’re 80 feet tall; your skin is ice cold and Diamond-Koted against rust. Your lips don’t move – you don’t even HAVE lips – and sometimes you speak like .. you’re from another planet; one that’s been devastated by an endless war between good and evil. You never eat or drink anything, and you turn into a giant truck.

What year are you?”

“.. I’m a current model ..”

“And how long have you been a current model?”

“A while.”

“I know what you are.”

“Say it. Out loud.”

“.. Transformer ..”

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”

Contrary to popular belief, not every girl wanted to be romanced by a vampire while growing up.

i luv optimus prime

i luv optimus prime

do you believe (you can sell hot dogs)?

Posted in adventure by

Last week in a violent fit of patriotism, I applied to be a volunteer for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

I’m still slightly bemused with myself for doing it – I am not a fan of Teh Sports. I think too much money is spent on sports instead of on arts and sciences. There’s also the uproar over the cost of the Games – enormous bills being footed by the taxpayers that will eventually affect me, and the questionable purification of East Hastings. There’s a lot to furrow my brow at, for sure.

Then there’s the other side. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of something worldwide and epic. I like my city, and I want us to dazzle the universe when we’re in the spotlight. It might be fun. I’m big on Experiencing Things, and this would definitely be an Experience. I’ll try anything once – it gives me things to write about, which I enjoy. Behind the scenes is so much more fun than my living room.

I’m off to some sort of volunteer interview this afternoon. I have to submit myself to a background check, which I find hilarious. It’s a three-hour process; interviews are done in groups or individually if they think you have Secret Skills they might want to exploit. We’ll see how it goes. I said I wanted to be a performer in the opening ceremonies, but I am realistic to a fault – just because I make an excellent dancing zombie does not mean they are going to put short fat Asian girls on the world stage. I highly doubt that’s what I’ll be doing – assuming I pass the background check – but I DO have other talents.

I may be in this to help the city, but I also have my limits. If it’s determined that my role in the Games will be to sell hot dogs, I’m out. I can (and do) sell hot dogs at home; I don’t need to use up all my vacation time next year to be proud of my meat-slinging contribution. I’m hoping there will be an interesting place for me. I’ll donate my time, but only if there’s something – namely, an Interesting Experience – in it for me.

What do you wear to a background check, anyway?

aww, bucket

Posted in relationship drama by

Ed came to bed last night looking all sad and cold. I distractedly asked him what was wrong – I had a wagon full of people I was trying to get to Oregon and didn’t have time to deal with his problems (I am a terrible wife).

“Everything is dead”, he moaned.

I was startled out of my squirrel hunting and looked up at him.

“What was that?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I heard him correctly – maybe he said that everything was cold (which it was, because our building heat is off).

“Dead! They’re all DEAD!”

Confusion. What was he talking about? Who died? And most importantly, who was this thoroughly morose motherfucker shivering beside me?

“My phone and my DS are DEAD! All my batteries died!”

Aww, bucket! I had a creamy frozen swirl of annoyance and sympathy. I am absolutely unable to understand the concept of a dead cell phone battery, even though I own an iPhone of the 2-hour shelf life variety – I am *always* charging my phone when I am not out fighting crime, so knowing that Ed is at home all damn day and not keeping his phone plugged in at all times is just insubordinate insanity to me.

The other issue – a dead DS battery – I felt much more keenly. We’re down to one DS charger, and my habitual battery abuse is in effect here too – when I’m not using my DS, it’s charging. Ed’s been more or less unable to get a jolt in edgewise, so he’s been running on Nintendo fumes for the last week or so. He got the red battery warning light last night while in the middle of collecting space contraband, and he had to stop playing Puzzle Quest to go give his DS some juice.

Logically, we should just suck up the $15 and buy another adapter. I don’t want to, though – the new Nintendo DSi is coming out in 3 short weeks, and I want one. It’ll come with its own adapter, so Ed can inherit the one I’m currently hogging. See, it all makes sense – why should I spend $15 on another DS charger when in two weeks I’ll get to spend $200 on a shiny new toy I absolutely don’t need? Duh. I have this all worked out, and in my head everything is just super.

I wasn’t going to say anything until the offer letter is in his sticky hands, but since Ed spilled the beans on Facebook last night I shall do the same: he got a job. We don’t know all the details yet, but so far it’s the best possible scenario: same industry, same clients, same co-workers, same part of downtown, additional money. Things are falling into place like the world’s most perfect Tetris run, and I couldn’t be happier for him. Hooray for Ed! You are highly employable and apparently in demand! We will not have to live on ramen and government cheese just yet!

Today is a good day to dance!