On Friday, my mom called me up (at work and while my boss was at my desk) to a) wish me a happy birthday and b) because it was my birthday, tell me to buy a lottery ticket for her. This is just proof positive that my mom doesn’t know anything about me, but that’s okay. She wants a lottery ticket for my birthday, so a lottery ticket she will have: I called Ed and asked him to get one, because I *hate* doing it. She called twice more over the course of the weekend to find out if we won anything (one of the smaller prizes, as she was already aware that the Big Prize hadn’t been won and none of the Small Major Prizes were won by anyone in the Lower Mainland – my mom is the Lottery Rain Man) but I ignored the call in the middle of my birthday party and didn’t talk to her until Sunday. As it turns out, we DID win something – $20, which she told me to spend on an additional bundle of tickets for THIS week’s draw.

I hate this stuff. Even the act of buying tickets is highly distasteful to me, which is why I normally get Ed to do it. If only my mom had put all this crazy brain power to GOOD instead of this .. but, no. On second thought, I don’t know how my life would change if I had a mother “with it” enough to know what it is I do when I am not at her house, only that the change would not be for the good. This is better, even if it’s an endless cycle of lottery tickets – spend $20, win $20, funnel that money back into more tickets. It’s all so pedestrian and tacky.

If she DOES win though, I will be glad that I am an only child. Pugs for everyone!

Since I am now Officially Old, I figured it was time I start acting like it. I still have enough time to pick and choose the parts of being old I will subscribe to before it’s all mandatory, so I have opted for the following: random skin pigment changes and hot flashes.

I find myself unbearably hot at night; so much so that last night I had to go into the living room so I could open all the windows and get some fresh air. Ed had mentioned earlier in the evening that he was “comfortable” while I was complaining of hot, so I didn’t want to disturb him with my inability to open the bedroom window without making all the noise in the universe. Besides, it was almost 2am at this point so I gathered up my blanket and 2 of my 5 pillows and set up a nest in the living room. It wasn’t a comfortable sleep – there were drunks at the bus stop having very loud conversations that bounced off the building and into my ear in addition to the epic traffic noise. Still, I can block all that out with pillows but I can’t make the hot go away. I cannot sleep in hot. Does this mean I’m menopausal? Can I have my goddamn tubal ligation now?

According to the internet, I am suffering from “night sweats”. That is a horrible name; I greatly prefer the team “hot flashes”. Apparently my symptoms (if I am in fact suffering from this and not just making grand leaps in logic) can be alleviated by “.. avoiding caffeine, hot drinks, chocolate, spicy or hot foods and alcohol”.  Yeeeeah, I’ll just try opening a window at night – I LIKE my hot spicy caffeinated chocolate alcohol, thank you very much.

The Great Electronic Purge of 2010 continues: I’m selling my Macbook, Beth. I love her dearly, but I’m hoping to purge some clutter and make money to upgrade the devices I DO use on a daily basis. I’m almost at my iPad goal thanks to the sale of my iPod Touch, my EEEPC, and birthday gifts from Ed, Gina and the Biehlers – but drinking the Apple Kool-Aid means I have my eye on the iPhone 4. I don’t want to go into debt for this stupid gadget lust of mine, so we’re trying to do the Responsible Thing and come up with the money in ways that won’t get me arrested for prostitution. Normally I’d try to sell my iPhone 3GS, but I promised it to Ed (mostly so he’d stop stealing my phone to play Radial 50) – this seems like a fair compromise.  So, yeah. Buy my Macbook. She is awesome. And no, I will not ship it to Nigeria.

I’m going to a carnival later this week, and next week has 3 work days and 4 lazy weekend days. Hooray!

That was the most incredible birthday party that anyone could have ever had. I admit that I was half worried that no one would come, but EVERYONE came and NO ONE WORE PANTS (except for Scott which is highly ironic given his Twitter name is “scottnopants“)! The pantslessness ranged from skirts and shorts to flat out underwear (both boxers and tighty whiteys) and towels. It was EPIC – Miranda dressed people up for her birthday, and I got them all naked. YAY!

If that wasn’t enough, I had not one but THREE cakes:

renee picked out this cake because it was pretty - turns out a "princess cake" is made of delicious princesses who taste like raspberry!

stephanie MADE ME A DOMO CAKE!!!! it was perfect and delicious and SQUEEEE DOMO CAKE!!!

PEDOBEAR CAKE! OH MY GOD, IT'S A PEDOBEAR CAKE!!!!!

I have been moved to near-tears a half dozen times over my two-day birthday celebration because people have been so sweet, but the one person that completely blew me away was Ed. Never one for grand gestures, I’ve often pleaded with him to try surprising me just once, instead of our usual “I point, he buys” method of gift selection. This year, I asked him to surprise me because there wasn’t anything in particular that I wanted other than expensive gadgetry that I wouldn’t expect from anyone other than myself. Apparently my request stressed him out for weeks, but he stepped up to the plate and scored a hat trick to win the World Cup: he got me a crazy cool necklace that I LOVE because it is both awesome and something he picked out, a hefty chunk of my iPad-to-be, two tickets to that thing I like, AND he arranged the Pedobear Cake which was so awesome I almost fainted from over-squealing. I’m not allowed to ask him to surprise me again, but he did such a good job – best birthday ever.

Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who came out without pants on, the silly people who brought me awesome cards and presents even though it totally wasn’t necessary, Stephanie for making the incredible Domo Cake, Miranda and Reilly for the use of their awesome party place, and everyone who made me feel crazy loved on my birthday – you are all incredible people that I am SO LUCKY to know and have in my life.

If ever there was a day where it was completely appropriate to wear a dress with Doc Martens and silver glitter eyeshadow, that day is my birthday.

Which it is, so I am.

Hooray!

I am just vain enough that I couldn’t bear the thought of waking up another year older with really bad roots, so I dyed my hair last night. I love the week after a fresh dye job; right before it all goes to hell – I love my dad, but I really wish I didn’t inherit his bizarre hair patterns. One of these days I’ll stop dyeing altogether, and see if I end up with a full head of his bright white hair – and if I do, I’m dyeing it pink. I’ve always wanted to be Jem.

It’s the 169th day of the year!

Much like SMeyer’s writing style, Forks Washington is an exercise in redundancy and overkill.

I meant to post more about how the town made me feel, but I forgot. Last night I was feeling sore all over and also literary, so I posted many words about my trip on another website (that’s right; sometimes I cheat on you). Because I am cold and lazy, I thought I would import the words over here, slap an image or two in the post, and call it a day. What? I fell down yesterday; I’m not your trained monkey!

I found Forks extremely depressing for a multitude of reasons; only some of which have to do with the actual Twilight stuff. I’m not a fan of very small towns or of places that aren’t on an ocean, and I don’t trust any place without a chain stores because I don’t know where my next Diet Coke will come from. Outside of the Twilight series, Forks is just a small logging town whose biggest claim to fame is some actress who’s been on Days of Our Lives for 28 years. It’s unremarkable in every way, and there are a thousand towns like it all across North America.

Then there’s the Twilight thing. Every single business, no matter how unrelated, sells Twilight merchandise. The town does a fantastic job of trying to bring the Twihards in – but once they do, they completely destroy any magic or fantasy that the story might have had. *Everything* is labeled for Twilight .. the drug store isn’t just a drug store, it’s “Bella’s First Aid Station”. The grocery store isn’t where you buy food, it’s “where Bella shops for Charlie’s dinner”. It’s like they’ve taken a great big ugly foam bat with “OMG TWILIGHT!!!!!!” written on the side, and are trying to force it down everyone’s throats .. and most of the public don’t seem to mind.

I’m not really doing a good job of explaining how the town made me feel (other than incredulous and depressed). Here’s an example: you’re a huge Harry Potter fan, and you’re in London. You go visit King’s Cross station, hoping to catch a glimpse of Platform 9 3/4, where the wizards catch the train to Hogwarts. You find the station, and between platforms 9 and 10, you see little nods to the Potter universe – a small sign; a cheeky prop. It makes you happy, and you get to think for a small second that maybe it’s all real after all.

Now let’s put that scenario in Forks. When you get to King’s Cross, instead of seeing a wizard robe in amongst the jackets hanging on the wall, you see a large neon sign that says “HARRY POTTER STOOD HERE”. You go to the bathroom, and another sign loudly tells you “HARRY POTTER PISSED HERE AND WASHED UP WITH IVORY SOAP (AVAILABLE AT THE GIFT SHOP)”. At the cafe, you stop for a coffee and the menu tells you “HERMIONE DRINKS THE HOT COCOA IN THE HARRY POTTER BOOKS”; “RON WEASLEY ATE A TUNA SANDWICH AND THOUGHT IT WAS JUST SMASHING”.

Forks lacks a certain subtlety, I guess. They could have easily been coy about the whole thing; entertaining curious fans with sly allusions to the Twilight books – but instead, they hit you over the head with it and ram it up your ass, and the whole thing just feels really sad. At King’s Cross, you could almost believe that Harry and Ron are just around the corner, on their way to Hogwarts for another year. In Forks, you’ll never see Bella walking down the street going to work, because the sports store has a huge sign outside reading “THIS IS WHERE BELLA WORKS IN THE TWILIGHT BOOKS”.

That’s a lot of words for something I am disdainful about, and I am aware of the delicious irony. I’ll stop talking about Twilight now, but I’ll offer up this confession: I read the new Twilight novella last night; the little one about the newbpire. It is terrible, and tries to get you to sympathize with the main character because she died going after THE ONE SHE LOVES .. that she met two days ago, and hung out with twice. It’s badly written and reeks of SMeyer’s assumption that people in love will happily die for the object of their affection; even if they just met and the relationship is based on somebody smelling good. The more I thought about the story, the angrier it made me – there were a bunch of inconsistencies that made it hard to follow; let alone swallow. At one point, she starts describing Edward as “the redhead”, after spending four books jamming his perfect incredible awesome sparkly sextastic bronze Adonis hair down our throats. Bronze =/= red. I had to go back and re-read three pages to figure out who the hell she was talking about, and I was already dizzy from all the eye rolling I did. Tiny book is fail. Do not like, but I knew that going in – I admit; I was curious to see if her writing skills had changed or improved at all.

They have not.

hey guys guess what twilight totally happened here

I don’t mean that I had a bad day and it was stupid – that would be the easy way out -but rather, much like people spend Hump Day Wednesdays dry-humping their way to friction burns, I spent Stupid Wednesday a good 64 IQ points below my usual cognitive abilities.

I did SO MANY dumb things yesterday! I made ridiculous mistakes at work, even going to the R&D team to whine about something not working when it was fine and I was using the wrong port. I had trouble thinking straight, and needed my boss’s help to come to the most obvious solution since zippers. I FELL DOWN; tripping over my own feet while crossing the street and took a header in the middle of rush hour traffic. Someone sent me an email and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how they knew who I was. I badly pinched a nerve in my neck  turning too far to my right to look at someone instead of just swiveling my chair and now I can’t move properly. Yesterday was not a shining example of being Kimli, and I consider myself lucky to have made it through the day with only one bloody knee and no Nigerian scams draining my bank accounts.

Hopefully today is smarter.

GASKETS!!!

fun fact: dr claw's voice is an unmodulated soundwave, both voiced by frank welker

Lola’s back in the shop. I picked her up last Friday, and learned that both her head and base gasket had failed which resulted in the alarming coolant leak. They both had to be replaced and her engine rebuilt, but it was all covered under warranty so hooray for me! I rode her home and everything was just super.

The next night, the six of us rode/drove out to Delta for a party. I noticed a wet spot under Lola in the parkade, and another one when we were leaving the suburbs. After the coolant fiasco two weeks ago, I’ve been very nervous about miscellaneous liquids oozing from places where no oozing should ever occur. I kept an eye on it over the weekend to make sure it wasn’t just my admittedly overactive imagination, and sadly came to the conclusion that yes – Lola was indeed leaking, and leaking something different this time. Fuck!

I was supposed to drop her off at the shop after work today, but was too nervous to wait any longer so I took Lola in this morning. The shop wasn’t open yet, but the head mechanic arrived shortly after I did and took a look – yep, that’s an oil leak and also what the fuck. He quickly determined that now a SIDE gasket had blown and would have to be replaced, but was unrelated to the previous problem or the service they did last week. I was assured that I’m still under warranty and that he was 99% certain he had the necessary part in meaning I’d get Lola back at the end of the day .. but damnit all, anyway. I’ve never had a problem with this scooter, and now an entire range of gaskets are exploding all over the place resulting in multiple service calls .. BOO! THIS IS NO GOOD AT ALL!

I am a sad monkey with bright yellow shoes.

Beware the Ides of June!

To protect me against any Roman insurgents, I am dressed like a military dictator. This way when someone comes to assassinate me, they’ll be scared off by my intimidating yet stylish nature and run the other way. Would you fuck with Castro? How about Castro in a dress? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

I have a somewhat hilarious habit of dressing like a revolutionary out for the blood of the people whenever I’ve got a Big Meeting at work and today is no exception. While Ed was able to stop me from pairing my (awesome) dress with combat boots and a rifle, he left before I put on the dog tags. Does it surprise you that I own dog tags? I do; several kinds. One even has lip gloss in it.

As with all things, my dress is complicated. It’s basically a shirt dress with a band at the bottom and is held together with buttons. Since the bottom is more or less cinched, I am having to keep my legs together – except I am many things, and ladylike is not one of them. I’ve popped two buttons on the bottom of the dress already, so I need to secure myself somehow lest the general public be privy to my underpants. Naturally, I don’t have any safety pins and I don’t really want to use a stapler .. so I did the next best thing: I closed my dress up with Smuttons.

I am a classy dame.

My birthday is in three days and the party in four, and I am Stressing Out about it. Last night I was all but ready to cancel the party, but Shan talked me off the ledge this morning and it will go on as scheduled. I’m starting to realize that as much as I love birthdays, I kind of hate MY birthday – it comes at the end of a long string of events, and most people are plain partied out. The angst and resentment I held all throughout school (my birthday fell during exams and people were always too stressed to celebrate) did not go away after graduation (partially because I did not graduate) as I had hoped – sure, no one is cramming for finals, but Real Life kicks into overdrive in June and people are Very Busy. Too busy, it feels, to pay stupid little me any attention just because it’s my birthday.

I know this is dumb and wrong and likely a little pathetic, according to the 30+ people who RSVP’d for my party on Saturday. As Shan pointed out, all the little freakouts I’m having can be resolved with one quick email (note to party goers: email coming soon), and I will have a good time. Yes, people are busy this time of year – but I should be used to this, and it doesn’t mean they hate me. Things are fine. Stop worrying and feeling unloved. You are stupid and taste like soot and poo.

I am awesome at pep talks.

the ellyfants said to chill out and take your pants off

My standard vacation MO is pleasing to me – return from some time off; immediately book additional time off. The hours I spent gazing into my crystal ball has foretold that Canada Day falls on a Thursday this year, so it would be beneficial to everyone involved (me) to take Friday July 2nd off. So I did! Four-day weekend? Yes please!

As much as I’d rather still be on vacation or at least sleeping, I am pleased that my return to the office is not traumatic. I’ve had jobs where I couldn’t trust the status of my belongings when I got back, or came in to find that people had rooted through my desk and helped themselves to what they wanted. The mountain of highly professional toys surrounding my workspace appears to be untouched, and there were no unpleasant surprises when I came in this morning. In fact, my desk would have been covered in downright excellence, had I not come in on Friday afternoon to pick up the 4 packages waiting for me. Hooray for mail! Hooray for presents for others!

I am, however, disappointed to learn that I am not a notable person worthy of an entry in the Who’s Who of Technical Writing. I mean, I am – but only according to the spam email I got congratulating me on my acceptance in the 2010 Cambridge Who’s Who Journal at NO COST TO ME. Hooray! Finally I am A Somebody with the aptitude to fall for an incredibly old scam! I was surprised to see that people are still doing this con; I thought it died out around about the time we stopped using dinosaurs for transportation. Learn something new every day!

I need to go renew Lola’s insurance and find out why I cannot slap a sticker on my ridiculous enhanced license to change my address. I have a sneaking suspicion they’re going to tell me I need an ALL NEW license for the low low multi-time cost of $35; something that will FILL ME WITH RAGE because for non enhance licenses, you get a stupid little sticker and that’s it. I’ll report back – it is very possible that there is a downside to allowing the government to track my every move.

My birthday is in four days. Everyone should buy me an iPad.