I had fully intended on writing a real update today – which is actually in progress and will be coming later – but several weird things happened between the time I left my house and I arrived at work, and they deserve an update of their own:

There was a hobo in the Stanley Park Causeway looking very much like he was telling the trees that if they liked it, they should have put a ring on it – I swear to god he was doing the Beyonce dance at the trees and raccoons, and it was fucked up.

An electric scooter, going north, leading a congregation of pissed off cars and busses: GET OFF THE ROAD, YOU JACKASS

I found Mystery Apple Juice in the elevator this morning, hidden in the crusty folds of the padding. It was a full can, too – if I didn’t kind of hate apple juice, I would have stolen it.

(this didn’t happen this morning, but it doesn’t deserve its own update) I think I might hate Kingdom Hearts 358/2. I’m 11 hours into it and haven’t the foggiest idea why I’m doing the stupid things I’m doing. I was really hoping it was going to be like the original Kingdom Hearts, with the Disney characters and levels based on Disney worlds. Instead, I am having serious ‘Nam flashbacks to Final Fantasy X. I had JUST forgiven Square Enix for that, based on the strength of last year’s The World Ends With You – the last thing I need is to be reminded of how much I HATED Final Fantasy X and how angry it made me. Even playing the hilarious side game of “Who Has the Stupidest Hair” isn’t doing anything for me. I haven’t touched my DS in a few days, so I’ll give it another chance before I toss it the yuck pile – but it’s going to have to do something pretty amazing to pull me from the brink of dissatisfaction.

On the upside, it’s giving me a wicked urge to play Kingdom Hearts again.

At first I was worried about being pegged a sociopath, but the more I think about it, the better it sounds. Perhaps if more people knew I was technically (as described by some random online quiz, that is) a sociopath, they would steer clear of sending me bitchy emails calling me out over their own misunderstandings. Wouldn’t that be super?

You are the Sociopath! As a result of your cold, calculating rationality, your introversion (and ability to keep quiet), your brutality, and your arrogance, you would make a very cunning serial killer. You are confident and capable of social interaction, but you prefer the silence of dead bodies to the loud, twittering nitwits you normally encounter in your daily life. You care very little for the feelings of others, possibly because you are not a very emotional person. You are also very calculating and intelligent, making you a perfect criminal mastermind. Also, you are a very arrogant person, tending to see yourself as better than others, providing you with a strong ability to perceive others as weak little animals, so tiny and small. You take great pleasure in the misery of others, and there is nothing sweeter to you than the sweet glory of using someone else’s shattered failure to project yourself to success. Except sugar. That just may be sweeter. In short, your personality defect is the fact that you could easily be a sociopath, because you are calculating, unemotional, brutal, and arrogant.

I could live with this.

the stray cat and i are done professionally

Last time I was this bored on a Saturday night, I ended up joining MySpace. I’ve since deleted my MySpace account, and don’t have any real interesting in creating a new one – so I joined OK Cupid, instead.

Now, I’m not looking to bone strangers in the sweaty confines of the Mazdabator’s vinyl seats – I’m just looking for people I might like to hang out with. This doesn’t seem to be appeasing Ed, who immediately assumed that I want to grind on top of people I don’t know. I checked off “married” and “looking for friends” – what more does he want? I’m *bored*! With great boredom comes at least an hour wasted filling out a profile that might scare the creepy people away!

Actually, I could use some perverts – it would be highly entertaining to get some creepy email. I really hoped I’d get some interesting responses to my Craigslist Missed Connections post, but only two people wrote to me in broken English, asking if I wanted to show them around. No, I don’t. I want to tell the guy in the elevator that I enjoyed his package, that’s it. I don’t understand this site at all – someone apparently gave me 4 or 5 stars. Is this a good thing? Do I want this? If this was Mario Kart, I’d be invincible now. Does OK Cupid = Mario Kart?

Today Shan and I attended a rehearsal for Thrill the World. It’s coming up fast – next Saturday – and it should be great. There was a HUGE turnout for the rehearsal, so it’s looking very likely that we’ll smash last year’s record of 69 zombies and raise a ton of cash for the Vancouver Food Bank. Even if you can’t come dance, you should come by and watch – it’ll be awesome.

Lastly, before I forget: I think I hate the Kingdom Hearts DS game. More on that later.

zombies in training!

The future is here at last – I’m having a pissy conversation with someone at work, conducted solely by screenshots.

Papa would be so proud!

Gillian (whom I miss dearly) just pointed out something awesome to me: I am the most relaxed person in the universe.

I have no stress. None! While others think of chillaxin’ as something they like to do during downtime, I think of it on par with oxygen – I don’t have to think about breathing, I just do it. Likewise, I don’t have to set aside some quiet time for myself: my entire life is a warm ocean breeze along a pure white beach dotted with palm trees, Diet Coke machines, and no pants.

CNN Money just released a list of the 10 Least Stressful Jobs, and I’m on the list not once but twice:

1. Education/Training Consultant
2. Physical Therapist
3. College Professor
4. Software Developer
5. Technical Writer
6. Telecommunications Network Engineer
7. Speech-Language Pathologist
8. Software Architect
9. Occupational Therapist
10. Civil Engineer

I have the 5th and 1st least stressful jobs available. YEAH! I am relaxed and fancy free! I’m so chill I take uppers just to get to baseline. I mainline hardcore drugs just to get above status quo. I cut myself just to feel. I bleed just to know I’m alive. I .. quote Goo Goo Dolls lyrics when no one’s looking. Sorry.

Seriously though, I laughed long and hard at that list – but then I thought about it. The majority of the stress I feel doesn’t actually come from the act of writing things technically, or training people to do things like tutu-wearing grizzly bears – my stress comes from the other things I do, like, like wrangling routers and creating highly detailed video game organizations in CRM for my own amusement during testing and dealing with irrational managers with god complexes. If I did nothing but my job description, I’d be stress free (and bored out of my mind). Where’s the fun in that? A little stress does a body good. It also makes me swear like an incontinent sailor, much to the amusement of those around me.

Now, last night? Last night I was stressed. I had to call my mother and ask if she’s thought about the huge favour I asked of her. She has, and the thoughts came in the form of screaming: it’s my fault that our car got broken into and that we don’t have thousands of dollars lying around all willy-nilly and that we’re not over the age of 55 and/or terminally ill. There was a lot of screaming and while she wasn’t exactly coherent, it is likely that I am also to blame for her car needing new tires, cataract surgery, the fact that she needs a new crown on her tooth, and property tax. All these things are my fault. Sorry.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that my mother just plain sucks.

I may be a terrible daughter, but she is fucking insane.

(post title is a line from “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, which was Zoolander’s trigger to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia, which is my mother’s nationality: I love it when things go full circle)

howl at the moon

false creek, bein' all false

As much as I love sleeping in my own bed, I kind of miss not having a cat in my crotch for 7 hours straight. I miss you, leg room.

You’ve been a victim of Crime, and during the cleanup, someone finds a mysterious tiny plastic baggie filled with white powder. Do you:

• Leave it alone and call the police
• Pick it up and shake it
• Smell it
• Lick it
• Realize that licking it would be pretty silly, but be really really tempted because how the hell else are you supposed to know what it is
• Poke your finger into the bag and push the powder around, realizing a little too late that your hands are covered in cuts from the glass you just cleaned up
• Immediately assume you’ve been dosed, not quite realizing that you wouldn’t know dosed one way or another because you are as street as a newborn lamb

.. guess how many of the above I did?

As a fine how do you do, Ed and I started our morning with a hearty dose of Crime: someone smashed the Mazdabator’s front passenger window and made off with several broken pieces of equipment. There was nothing of value in there except for perhaps my (barely working) iPhone charger/FM transmitter, but the thief went through the whole car looking for valuables. Finding nothing, they opted to make one holy hell of a mess that Ed and I had to clean up before we could go to work this morning, making my attempt at being ON TIME for the 8:30 meeting a noble yet meaningless gesture.

All things considered, this could be a lot worse. Our car had been broken into twice in our “secure” underground parking in East Van, and even though we’re in the Ghetto of North Vancouver with the evil specter of Aquaman hanging over our heads, this is the first case of Smashy Smashy we’ve had. Other cars have been hit all around us, but we were relatively unscathed – until last night. I think it’s probably just a coincidence that they hit us literally 4 hours after we got home from vacation – in fact, the excess violence of the Smashy Smashy was probably due to our fucking up Aquaman’s schedule. I imagine it looked something like this:

fuck that guy

As you can see, he had scheduled Monday to break into our car but we were not home and that fucked up the entire week. Really, it’s our fault for being so inconsiderate. We really ought to take Aquaman’s busy schedule into mind before we go gallivanting off to exotic lands. We deserved the Smashy Smashy, and are lucky it wasn’t worse.

All brevity aside, this has been the worst fake Monday ever. There was mystery jizz in my hair, the car window was smashed, I’m probably addicted to smack now and as a result I’ll never be able to go into politics. Also, my pants are wet (don’t tell my coworkers) because I spent 45 minutes in the rain cleaning up broken glass (but my hair is delightfully curly) and my feet are cold. Still, there’s no sense in bitching about it – and maybe this extra shot of Crime is what it takes to get Operation: Help Us Out to the next level.

Poor Mazdabator, though!

Our car wasn’t the only one hit – Josh and Shan’s Delica had also been broken into, but for some reason their door was either unlocked or easily jimmied open so their windows were spared. The stereo was stolen and possibly some tools, and the aforementioned baggie of mystery powder left behind. We honestly have no idea what it is – I’ve never even seen coke let alone be able to ID it at a glance – and yeah, I probably shouldn’t have stuck my fingers in there. I was really looking forward to that life in politics, too.  The more I try to be good, the more scandals I find myself in – what’s next, an accidental homosexual encounter in a rest stop bathroom? AWESOME.

Seriously, that’d be awesome. Any takers?

Our time in Edmonton is drawing to a close, and in just over 3 hours we’ll be heading to the airport to turn in our rental car and sit in the futuristic wonder that is Edmonton International Airport until our 6pm flight back home. I am looking forward to Vancouver – I plan to go home, take off my pants, cover myself in cats, and play video games until the wee hours of Wednesday morning, when I have to go back to work.

If someone asks me what I did on our vacation, I wouldn’t have very much of an answer. My ultimate goal in Edmonton was to relax, and I am just about all full up of relaxing – we did little else but sleep and eat the entire time we were here. I don’t know what it is about being away from home, but we slept for many, many, many hours. I am sick of sleep and also of snow. Ed’s mom asked if we normally sleep this long at home, and we honestly don’t – there’s something about the air here that makes me not want to get out of bed. It’s the no cats + no neighbours + no schedule + bitterly cold air + sinfully warm bed equation that all adds up to 12+ hours of sleep a night. I would normally feel bad for wasting that much time in bed, but honestly – there’s nothing else to do. I finished Bowser’s Inside Story and I’m 6 hours into Kingdom Hearts 3.14 – I’ve caught up on all my websites – I even checked in at work and did some remote testing because I am such a Team Player – and I’m out of ideas.

We’ve had a really good visit, though. There’s been Quality Time with the parents and assorted other relatives, and last night we had dinner with Christian and his shiny new fiancee, and his sister. It was our first time meeting the fiancee, and she was cool so that was good. We had dinner at Red Lobster – shut up, there aren’t any in Vancouver and I love those damn biscuits – and it was fun.

Thanksgiving was spent at Wizard Lake (which had NO WIZARDS), which is somewhere in the middle of nowhere:

the wizard is a lie; he was not there

So as you can see, we were very far away from everything except a lot of food and some cousins. It was nice – Ed and I went for a walk by the lake and found ourselves four puppies. The puppies upset me actually; they were adorable and friendly and SO VERY COLD. No one came out looking for them – who loses four puppies and doesn’t notice?! We walked around looking for their home and eventually had to give them to another woman who would take them to her house and feed them (they were hungry and freezing) until someone decided to step up as a pet owner and claim them. I wish I could say I knew what happened to the puppies after we said goodbye, but I have to trust that they were fine and a very distraught person came to claim them and love them and keep them safe or I won’t be able to sleep at night.

I had my camera with me the entire time we were here, and I tried very hard to take pictures of interesting things – but Edmonton in the dead of fall when it’s grey and gloomy out is not an attractive place. It’s beautiful in the spring and summer and even the h0rrible winter when the sun is out, but we saw very little sunshine during our time here. Naturally, the day we leave it’s going to shoot up 15 degrees or so and be gorgeous while we go home to a nine days of rain, but them’s the breaks.

I had a nice lazy visit, but now I am ready to go home.

Here is a puppy:

lost puppy

It’s snowing outside! What do I do when it’s snowing? It’s been so long, but I’m pretty sure my standard MO is to go back to bed and wait until spring. It’s wicked cold here in Edmonton; even the people who live here are disgusted with the weather. The day before we arrived it was 14C and sunny. Could it be us? Is this punishment? I brought every warm sweater I own, and it’s still not enough (and is also itchy – damn wool). Oh, my poor sad and frozen toes!

I was momentarily sad to be missing our annual Hipster Potluck Thanksgiving (hashtag #hipstermeat), until I learned it was actually canceled – Miranda and Reilly are ALSO in Edmonton, doing the visiting thing. I should find out where they are and track them down – it would be amusing to hang out in another city. I’m trying to mentally schedule in a post-holiday potluck party, but I honestly don’t know if it’ll happen before December – October is booked solid, and November is moving month for everyone except Ed and I (who are likely doomed to live in the Ghetto of North Vancouver for ever) so I don’t think anyone will be up for large messy parties. December will be a merry month of festivities and housewarming parties (and sad jealous Kimli sitting in the corner), so we can do #hipstermeat at that time – I just hate waiting, and sorely love a Good Time.

Yesterday Ed and I slept for a million years (seriously, we got up at 1:30) and spent a quiet day hanging out with the parents. They made us an awesome steak dinner (with special guest star Shan’s spinach salad), and the evening was the very definition of “low-key”: Ed tinkered on the internets doing boring sports things, and I had a wild crazy solo party doing iPhone crossword puzzles. I do not mind because this is a rare occurrence, but if this was our life all the time I would probably go insane.

Also, there was Journey.

Today I am going to wear three pairs of jeans and four sweaters and we are going to go Outside. I’d like to see Edmonton in the daylight to see what’s changed since I was here last, and yes – make the inevitable trip to the Big Mall (there’s no PST here, and I need some new dainties). I brought my camera with me in the hopes that something would speak to me that I could take pictures of, but everything is kind of gray and cold – maybe I’ll just shoot in black and white and call it art.

I am going to teach Ed’s mom how to shop online now.