It’s employee evaluation time here at the Lab, and I spent much of yesterday being frustrated by illogical formatting. After I had vented my spleen all over the place, I decided I should just remake the damn form so it wouldn’t be so broken. Then, of course, I had to test it:

the emperor's bonus is based on his key performance indicators

I really, really like making deeply nerdy references in my work. It’s a big part of the reason I like my job so much, and why I have so much fun doing documentation.

Women have had boobs for millions (or thousands, if you’re one of those) of years – can we REALLY do no better than hooks to keep these things closed? This is the future! To hell with jetpacks and flying cars; I want a bra that lifts, separates, and doesn’t get caught on doors or sweaters or the upholstery of the back seat of a 2010 Escalade. Don’t we, as women, deserve better? Don’t you, as boob-lovers, want to see spectacular cleavage at all times? There are few things more depressing than a ratty bra, and even fewer more infuriating than a good bra made useless because the hooks have been mangled beyond repair. It’s time to take a stand! It’s time we demand science to concentrate on our breasts instead of all that other stuff!

Scream if you’re with me! We must! We must! We must find a more reliable method of supporting our bust(s)!

I am very angry at my face.

I don’t know if I’m stressed out, exceptionally greasy, or lived as a volcano in a past life but my face is breaking out like having clear skin is the latest fad and I’m too cool to play along. I’m trying really hard to clear up my skin and not freak out too badly, which is against my nature because I freak out every time my face betrays me like this. I’m doing everything right – not touching my face, washing with a mild cleanser, drinking lots of water, not using bacon fat as moisturizer – but it’s not clearing up fast enough. I hate this! I’m pretty sure I didn’t have any acne-related temper tantrums as a teenager, so I’m going to make up for some lost time tonight and wail piteously about how my life is over and that no one will ever ask me to the Spring Formal.

i hear she steals change from desks

I don’t want for much, really. It makes me very hard to buy presents for, because if I want something I will just buy it. There are many reasons for this – impatience (but I want it noooooooow), because I can (watch me waste money, mom!), the remnants of a very old habit (no one else buys presents for me, so I’m gonna treat me right) – but at the end of the day, there are very few things on my Want List that I can’t just go out and make happen.

In fact, there are just three things on that list – and each of them has a back story and a somewhat valid reason for not being mine right now:

1. As much as I’d like to tool around in a Jeep, it would take both of us to pay for it and we kinda like the whole “no car payments” thing
2. A trip to New York for our 10th anniversary next year requires saving and planning in advance and would be significantly less fun to do alone
3. I don’t yet have a pug, because Ed sucks

However, just because I don’t already own these things does not mean that I am not scheming in the back of my head. As with all things, I have A Plan to ultimately convince/harass Ed into agreeing to my Wants because he loves me/wants me to shut up. The Jeep would be nice but isn’t any sort of necessity, so we can leave that alone for now. The idea of going to New York next September is barely two days old, but I really really want to do it. The pug .. well, that’s an ongoing battle and one that I WILL win, even if I have to force the issue – I can only play well with others for so long before I start to get all vindictive and evil.

Can you tell I was an only child?

Anyway, part of my Plan to get what I want involves playing some dirty pool. I haven’t had a chance to outfit our house in any 2011 calendars yet because I haven’t run into any fly by night Calendar Club stores lately (or at all, actually – weird), but while running an errand today I happened upon a clearance sale at the bookstore and bought these:

twelve months of puggy goodness

look how pretty new york is, dear - we should go there

Ed rolled his eyes at the unveiling of my master plan, and asked why I was torturing myself. I don’t see it as torture at all! It’s getting what I want through the Awesome Power of Osmosis!

Today is Day One. Let the Countdown to Pugs begin!

My weekend started out kind of wet:

I don’t really mind though; the moisture in the air helps my zombie skin. It’ll be spring soon enough, and things will be glorious once more. We may be used to the rain, but that didn’t prepare us for the EPIC DOWNPOUR on Saturday night – we watched rivers of water stream through the intersection, and were grateful to be inside.

Saturday was lazy, until 5pm when I went to get my hair did at East Vanity Parlour. I needed a haircut, but more importantly, I needed colour.

First I looked like this:

After letting the chemicals do their thing, I looked like this:

this is also what i looked like in 1998

I would love to show you the aftermath, but I can’t. We decided to put blue in my hair, and it looks awesome – but it’s still too dark, and doesn’t show up very well. I need the dye to fade a little before it’ll be obvious that I have stripes made of super fun, so you’ll just have to take my word for it : I am cool. Likely cooler than you.

I had originally planned to run away to Seattle to catch an Astronautalis show, but Saturday at 5pm was the only time I could get my hair did. Afterwards, we (Shan, Miranda and I) drove around to find some food and ended up on the North Shore. The others were feeling tired and not up for adventures, so I dropped them off and went home to Ed who had a headache and was ALSO not up for adventures. If it hadn’t been too late to make the show in Seattle, I would have just gone – next time, I do what I want. No adventures is no fun.

We slept in on Sunday, and I prepared to go boot shopping on Granville. I figured I’d be in for a solitary afternoon inside my own head, but Ed surprised me by asking if he could come along. Company was better than the alternative, so we set off in search of replacement boots and I struck gold almost immediately:

I had always shied away from the lace-ups Docs because I thought they’d be a pain, but these have a zipper too so I can get naked fast. I wore my dying favourite boots to compare anything I found, and was surprised to note that these awesome embroidered Docs clocked in at 1/4″ lower than my old ones and were fully made of cute. Ultimately there were two pairs I found that I liked – the ones I bought, and these which I kind of love but were too tall for what I was looking for. Ed didn’t like them because they’re “too industrial”, but I loooove them and they fit me awesomely and the instant they go on sale, they will be mine. It’s all fine and good to have fancy lady boots for delicate girl times, but sometimes you just need to have your legs look as threatening as possible .. and these would do the trick very nicely.

Yunn and Barry came out for pizza on Granville, and we wandered around for a bit while I put my stamps to use as I had intended all along:

waldorf: like!

I stamped “like” or “dislike” on the posters along Granville, just because. I am amusing to myself.

I’m hungry. I think I’ll eat a baby or two.

I’ve finally cast off the shackles of being irredeemably, unfathomably cold: I bought a space heater AND an electric blanket. I may be a walking fire hazard, but at least I’m toasty warm and if shit catches fire, that’ll just make me even warmer. It’s win-win! I can’t believe I waited this long to get things that warm up deliciously like this. My ongoing coldness is something of a running joke around here – when I get Kimli cold, there is no turning back and it takes nothing short of near-boiling water to bring my flesh up to room temperature – but now I am awesome and heated and I wonder if you can make clothing out of this stuff? I would so wear a heated dress.

One of my very few complaints about our home is that the fireplace is fake-ass fake. It’s electric, so the flames are just for show and do nothing in terms of making me any less cold. Yeah, there’s a heater, but the warm air comes out the top and not from the fire near the ground which is where my cold frozen body usually is. Even a gas fireplace throws out real heat from real fire – ours is dumb. So, I have a space heater and now an electric blanket that I might just marry, seeing as we’re in Canada and all. Oh how I love being warm!

Today I will be redeeming my Girlmas gift from Shan and Miranda, and will finish the day with blue hair. Pictures to come!

What’s on deck for your Saturday?

Oh, vagina. I hate to give up on you, I truly do – but you leave me no choice. I’m tired of the lies; tired of worrying myself sick – and to what end? I’m no closer to an answer now than I was when I was 5. I’ve been too confused for too long, and although it breaks my heart, I have to accept what is and simply walk away with the remainder of my dignity held high.

I can’t get a follow up appointment for the Mysterious Pains of ’10. I know this isn’t my vagina’s fault outside of hurting in the first place, but I’m frustrated and it’s easier to be frustrated at my own orchard than it is all of Vancouver’s health care. I’ve tried since LAST YEAR to schedule myself in to the Vagoplasty Unit (not to be confused with vaginoplasty; I don’t need a labia lift) at Vancouver General at the behest of UBC’s Urgent Care clinic, who were unable to solve the Mystery of the Aching Tubes. The doctors want my vagina to be thoroughly tested on account of my astronomical white cell count which could be a Secret Infection, so they asked me to go to the foremost expert on vaginal complications. Unfortunately, said experts are only available from 9:47am to 10:21am on alternate Wednesdays unless the date ends in a two or the moon is waxing and also they are stupid. Every time I call I’m told they either can’t find my paperwork, or the office is just plain closed and please try back during office hours. That’s all fine and good, except they don’t actually tell you what those office hours are – IT IS A MYSTERY. And one that I, frankly, no longer care to solve. I’m done. I wash my vagina of it all. The tests I did have showed that I am neither full of baby nor lumps, and it’s been fairly quiet in there lately. That will have to be good enough. I am tired of playing vagina tag.

In other news, this is what I look like whilst smoking a tiny pipe:

i think i will take up smoking tiny pipes in tiny smoking jackets

I can’t tell if I don’t feel good because I’m coming down with something – a distinct possibility – or because I saw a dead body on my way to work this morning. I figured I would feel better with some caffeine and food, but my trusty and delicious Diet Coke and the flavourless muffin did little to settle my headspace and I’m actually feeling worse, which licks.

However, as lousy as I might feel right now, I’m still alive so I really have no right to complain. We passed the aftermath of an accident on the way to work, and witnessed a police officer arranging the sheet to cover up an inert form on the road – someone died. That sucks. I don’t know when the accident was, but apparently the body is still out there (almost three hours after we passed the scene). That doesn’t seem right, even though I know they need to document the scene to determine what happened. I like to think that I’m totally jaded about crime and violence because I immerse myself in it daily, but there’s an extreme difference between what I read, watch and play versus real life – and I hope to never live in a city big enough to become unaffected by death in my back yard.

My thoughts about mortality are at war with the saucy conversation about the possibility of a threesome (or moresome!) I’m having via MSN.

Fuck. News about the accident is starting to come out, and it sounds as though a 17-year-old boy was struck and killed by a dump truck. That’s really sad :(

I need a do-over for my Wednesday morning, please. Every single thing I’ve touched today has gone wrong and I’m frankly afraid to use the internet in case it breaks down entirely. I’ve been awake for barely an hour, and so far:

• I woke up over an hour late
• I had to get re-dressed four times due to clothing in need of repair or sheer inappropriateness
• The car had no gas in it
• It took almost an hour to get to work because of broken-down buses
• All three gas stations I passed on my way to work were packed
• I had to do everything at the gas station twice because I kept fucking up (removing gas cap, inserting debit card, actual purchase)
• I split the left zipper of my favourite black boots, which is a a $70 repair – I know this, because I broke the right zipper on my red pair last year. Now I have to decide if it’s worth fixing, or if I should just start the arduous process of finding another pair of Doc Martens I love as much as I love these (which I know have been discontinued; I looked for them last week)
• It’s been three years since the initial dislocation of my right shoulder, and it just started being extremely unhappy. Every time I move my arm it feels as though my shoulder is going to pop out and that will a) hurt and b) suck
• I am way too busy at work to be interesting
• I have to pee

Regularly scheduled somewhat amusing content will hopefully return shortly, but right now I’m late for a meeting.

To evil!

There are many reasons why it’s awesome to be me, most of which I’ve covered on this site in the past – but today I have an ALL NEW reason it’s awesome to be me; one that will make most of you sigh with envy:

I get mystery sausage in the mail.

Aren’t you jealous? Aren’t you just green with hunger and confusion? I once was wrinkled with disbelief, but I’ve long since accepted the Tao of Sausage and I embrace the secret hobo spices and sulfates contained therein.

I received a letter on the 31st, telling me that if I did not contact FedEx by the 27th, my package would be returned to sender. This was annoying for a multitude of reasons; the least of which was not that I hadn’t received any delivery attempt notices at ALL despite the ominous warning in the letter. Also, I wasn’t actually expecting anything that would come via FedEx, and the letter had been shipped on December 23rd and was expected to reach me in a timely fashion. This clearly did not happen, and I was full of swearing at my predicament.

Curiosity got the better of me though, and on January 1st I decided to call the 1-800 number to see what would happen. To my surprise, the call center was open and staffed and the lady on the phone was able to a) request that the package be held in Burnaby for pick up, and b) that it was from Hickory Farms. I was delighted that I would be reunited with my unexpected box, but even more confused as to what and why – I certainly hadn’t ordered anything from Hickory Farms, and had no idea who would send me meat just because.

After a great deal of  phone tag, I got the package last Monday evening. It was, in fact, from Hickory Farms, and it contained not just sausage but TWO sausages, cheese, crackers, some fancy mustard, and a lot of crinkly paper as packing material. Mystery sausage! But from whom? An inspection of the package revealed it was a gift from TsN|JeffT, an old casting colleague who is living in Taiwan. He had asked for my address some months before, under the guise of sending Christmas cards – but instead, I got random gift sausage, which was wholly unexpected and totally awesome. Yay for surprise meat! Yay for Jeff!

it's so meaty!