In retrospect, I should have seen this coming. All the signs were there – little things at first, but slowly gaining momentum. My slippers, not at the door when I came home. Having to pointedly rattle the ice cubes in my empty scotch glass several times before he brought me a refill. Take-out for dinner – take-out! I don’t slave away at the office from 9 to 5 just to be served greasy slop from a cardboard box!

Last week I had to give him a stern talking to. Not only was there a layer of dust coating the living room – a clear indicator he hadn’t been doing the housework properly; probably watching his stories and eating bon bons all day instead – but the instant I walked in the door, he started complaining about some trivial matter – needing a new vacuum cleaner or mop or something. What happened to making me comfortable? Where’s my filled pipe and cool drink; my fluffed pillows and offer to remove my shoes? I’m pretty sure it’s a written rule that you don’t greet your wife with problems or complaints the instant she walks in the door. Does he have any idea what I’ve gone through that day? I’ve been with a lot of work-weary people! My boring day needs a lift! Isn’t he supposed to be a little more gay and interesting, with a ribbon in his hair and fresh makeup?

Two nights ago he tried to steer me into a conversation about the changes happening down in Washington. “Men’s Liberation”, they call it – some baloney about equal rights for men. I snorted at the idea and went back to my newspaper. Can you imagine it? Men thinking they’re as good as women! Everyone knows men are the weaker sex; they’re just not cut out for the workforce. Men belong in the home and in the kitchen, and no new-fangled “men’s lib” will see MY husband marching the streets like a common harlot.

Well, I thought that I had made myself clear on the matter. Just because his little friends are all in a tizzy at the thought of a life outside the home doesn’t mean I approve or give my consent! He did the unthinkable – he went out and got a job. My husband, working! He says it’s his right as a proud warrior man! I ordered him to forget about this nonsense and do the laundry, but he just took off his apron, grabbed his handbag, and marched out the door. I don’t know what’s come over him, but we’ll see how he likes it when I withhold his weekly allowance. He won’t get far without money for pretty ties and face powder, and he’ll be back in the kitchen preparing delicious meals planned in advance.

This whole thing is just ridiculous. What’s next? Men having babies? Driving cars? Nellie McClung was right – nice men don’t want the vote.

.. for the first time in our relationship, Ed makes more money than me. My fragile womanly ego is having a hard time dealing with this. It’s just .. wrong.

I think I’ll go bug HR about my overdue raise.

I don’t know how to use eye drops.

My eyes have been watering pretty much non-stop for the past month, and I’m getting really tired of a) going through Kleenex faster than a 13-year-old boy and b) always looking like I’m crying. I did some research into watery eyes, and have come to the conclusion that I am either a) a senior citizen or b) suffering from allergies and should use eye drops to fix it.

Wait, what.

I do not understand the logic behind applying MORE liquid to my already-dripping eyeballs. It’s stupid. It goes against science. I need some kind of eyeball-friendly mop, not eye drops. Adding water to water does not make things drier. It’s just plain common sense.

It also appears to be my only option.

With nothing to lose, I stopped by the drug store today and picked up a bottle of Visine Advance Plus for Allergies. Okay, it says “tearing” on here – maybe it’ll stop my watery eye problem. I took the bottle back to my desk, and opened it up.

Um.

I don’t know how to use eye drops.

I asked around on Twitter, receiving answers varying from the sort of helpful (“stick your tongue out when doing it!”) to the typical (“anally”) to the sarcastic (“you drop it into your eye”). I was still nervous, though – I don’t necessarily have an eye-phobia but I do not like things going into my eyes – so I asked Josh. He found me a walkthrough straight from the factory, so I decided to give it a go.

I missed my eye three or four times. I think I got SOME liquid in there, but I can’t be sure – my eyes feel just as wet as they were before, and also a little weird.

I do not like eye drops.

They are not natural.

Is the return of my beloved bright green eyeshadow really worth this discomfort?

I know this is all over the internet, but if you haven’t seen it, please watch it:

I’ve watched it twice now and each time it made me sniffly. Her voice is incredible. I don’t care about the show; I want all of her dreams to come true.

*sniffle*

People on the reserve have a fun new game: Dumpster Olympics.

At least twice over the weekend, a group of people have taken a dumpster from somewhere on the reserve and rolled it down the hill of their street to see it crash into parked cars that are NOT on the reserve. It is awesome. So far they’ve damaged four cars, shattering the back window of one of them. The last time was Sunday night – the dumpster hit a curb and tipped over. If it didn’t hit the curb, or hit it a couple inches further down, the huge bin would have fallen right on the Mazdabator. Hooray!

I am too weary to properly express my disgust over this. They’re destroying other people’s property for the sake of amusing themselves. Awesome. There’s nothing we can really do to protect ourselves – we can keep our assorted vehicles out of the line of dumpster fire, but that’s only good until their next bout of bored, drunken creativity. Perhaps it is time to look into vigilantism. I bet I could make myself a cape, and I have some masks I could use. I’m scary, right? I could totally intimidate drunk/high people twice my size!

I will be really fucking choked if our car gets hit. We’ve already been boot-hatted twice, AND we just paid the stupid thing off – let us enjoy the whole “no car-related debt” thing for a couple months before we have to pay to fix other people’s “fun”.

People *suck*. I feel badly for the people who got hit. I’ve heard that one of the damaged cars was brand new; less than a week old. Seriously, what drives people to do this kind of stuff? Am I missing an entire chapter from my genetic makeup; the part that would make me want to hurt others for absolutely no reason? Ugh. So much uncool.

In other news, I’m thinking of scooting to Bellingham this weekend just to see if I can.

it is 906 and you are listening to los angeles

I had three days off, and I didn’t do a single errand I had planned to tackle. I almost feel as though I should pat myself on the back for my excellent display of procrastination, except that I’m pretty annoyed at myself for wasting my Sunday in such an epic fashion – I read until 5am Sunday morning, then slept until 2. I spent what was left of my day cleaning, and while I‘m glad I can see my bedroom floor again; I would still have preferred Doing Things. Of course, it wasn’t entirely my fault – I had forgotten that all stores and countries close for Easter. Nothing was open yesterday, so I couldn’t do a damn thing regardless of my sloth-like nature.

I wanted to ride Oscar all day on Friday, but that did not happen. I went outside to clean him up a little, removing some of the older stickers that were faded and peeling and replaced them with new ones. By the time I finished the restickering of my scooter, Ed and Josh were both outside and dressed and ready to go for a ride. I put on my helmet, walked around my scooter, and .. was that large empty spot *always* there on the back of my ride?

Someone had stolen my license plate at some point in the night. What the fuck! Who steals a license plate? I mean, I’m glad they didn’t do anything ELSE to Oscar, but what the fucking hell. Any plans we had to go riding were put on the back burner because we had to deal with this immediately. We rode up to London Drugs because there’s an Autoplan Center in there, and started to deal with my missing plate. After waiting in line for a million years (or about half an hour – it was surprisingly busy for a holiday Friday), I learned that the guy behind the counter wouldn’t help me until I filed a police report. He gave me the non-emergency number and I went to call the police – except before I did that, I needed to know my license plate number.

Naturally, I did not know my license plate number. I scoured the photos on my iPhone and went through my Flickr stream, while Josh did the same thing. I called Miranda, and she had Reilly go through HIS millions of photos, trying to find a picture of the rear end of my scooter. After about 15 minutes, Josh was successful – we had my plate. I called the police, spent what felt like 4 years on hold, and filed my report. I had a case number, so now I could get a replacement plate – right?

Oh, funny. First of all, the insurance guy had to get my VIN number. He ran my plates, and .. the number was wrong. So he had to call a guy, who called a guy, who looked in a database, and eventually we got my REAL plate number which we had misread from the Flickr photo Josh found. Insurance Guy wouldn’t help me until I called the police back to correct my stolen plate report, so it was back on the phone to wait for someone to get around to answering the non-emergency line. I had to call back twice because the phone was just ringing, but eventually I got through and updated my police report. Insurance Man was happy to (slowly) help me at this point, and $23 later, I had a new license plate and a copy of my insurance papers. Now we could go for a ride!

Except it was after 3 at this point, and Josh had left us to go home and prepare for his anniversary photo shoot with Shan. I hadn’t eaten anything yet, so Ed and I went out for some fish n’ chips before stopping at the hardware store for screws and a new bathtub stopper. It was very domesticated and horrible, made all the more unbearable because it was so stupid – who steals a LICENSE PLATE?!

Ed has been under the weather lately, so he spent the evening watching hockey. Everyone else ended up at the Frog in Gastown and I was feeling antsy, so I put on some clothes and headed out on Oscar to meet up with the gang. We hung out at the bar for a bit, then went to Robson Street to go to the Japanese grocery store. We bought strange candy, stood around on the street sharing said candy, then headed back to the North Shore to turn in for the evening.

Saturday was a little better. We all slept in, then went for a late breakfast at Burgoo on Lonsdale. We had been there for fondue before but never for brunch, so it was all shiny and new and fucking awesome. After a fantastic breakfast, we split up again – I was going to Do Things before we all had to get fancy and meet up again at 5:30 for dinner downtown with our new friends, Yunn and Barry.

I did not Do Things. For some reason, I felt it would be much more awesome to spend the four hours I had doing absolutely nothing. I napped, I read, I played video games. It was very productive, as far as nothing goes – but it didn’t do a damn thing on my list. Another failure! I didn’t have time to dwell on it, though – it was time to get fancy for dinner.

Yunn suggested we check out The Refinery on Granville, so a large group of us dressed up and went for eating. It was pretty interesting – not a traditional dinner-type place, it was more a selection of tapas and meats and cheeses. It was really good, even if not totally my thing (I am not big on cheeses or thinly sliced meats). We ended up hanging out in Gastown until the wee hours of the morning, then went home sleepy.

Not sleepy enough, though, as I then read until 5am.

I wish I had taken today off. I could have done all those things I didn’t do!

Next up: How Dumpster Olympics are ruining everything.

The Easter Bunny delivered us a gift at the lab – on each desk this morning there was a gold chocolate bunny and a fancy company pen. Neat! I like presents. I can’t help but wonder how the bunny delivered them, though – it seems to me that it would be extremely uncomfortable to lay a bunch of pens as you would eggs. That’s how it works, right?

One of Wikipedia’s “Did You Know” articles for the day is on Traumatic Insemination, which includes a section on dolphin gang rape. While I normally embrace all knowledge with open arms, I both did not need to know this OR need the mental images I now have in my head of a roving gang of Flippers surrounding a girl dolphin and cat-calling (dolphin-calling?) her into group sex. Strangely enough, in my head the whole thing goes down much like a scene from West Side Story – dolphins dressed like greasers from the 50’s singing and dancing in the sea-streets as they heckle their poodle- skirted prey to a snappy Bernstein beat.

It’s shaping up to be one of THOSE Thursdays, I think.

It’s also impossible to find an image of a dolphin dressed like a greaser online. In fact, I daresay it’s harder than the hardest image search I’ve ever attempted to do.

It can’t be all bad – spring is finally here.

burrard station, helga'd by my iphone

The antibiotics have been working SO well that I decided to leave them at work last night to see if perhaps they could fight my infection remotely.

Strangely enough, it still seemed to work – I could breathe last night for the first time in over a week. I’ve glued the rest of the pills to my body so I can’t forget them again, and I’m starting to actually feel a little bit of hope that this plague may some day release me from the snotty, inflamed grip  of death.

Thanks to an impromptu and chilly beach BBQ last night (that’s right, everywhere else: we’re BBQing at the beach already), Oscar has successfully made it to 8500km going 60km or less. I cheated once or twice, getting up to 65 – but since my break-in period was supposed to be 200km and I actually did 243, I was secure in my need and justification for speed. He’s still performing beautifully, and with every kilometer I ride I am less scared of exploding the cylinder betwixt my legs. Now that I’m starting to feel better, I want to ride all the time and to places that are exciting and exotic (but I will settle for Richmond, because I want to go to Daiso). If nothing thrilling presents itself for the weekend of the 18th, I may have to scoot to Victoria or Bellingham.

I woke up before my alarm clock went off this morning. I tried to ignore my bladder, but my pee would not be silenced and since it was already 6:20, I just went ahead and showered. As a result, I had time to stop at Capers and pick up deliciousness on my way to work, and still get in several minutes early. I know this is not really newsworthy, but you have to understand that my anal retentive tendencies to arrive early for fun works in the exact opposite when it comes to work. I’ll show up an hour early for a good time, but hell has to practically freeze over for me to make it to work on time, let alone early.

And now I’m listening to Christmas music. I’m still asleep and dreaming, aren’t I? I KNEW being able to breathe through my nose and taste salt (not at the same time; that would be weird) was too good to be true.

I have the strongest urge to stick plastic Hello Kitty figures all over Oscar with double-sided tape. I may have to do this, especially for Sunday’s Lo-Fi Scooter Workshop (which you’re coming to, right?).

Vermont gave me goosebumps of awesome. Good on you, people.

Warning: for the unforeseeable future, I will look like crap.

Spring is hitting me HARD, and I am leaking out of every orifice in ways that are both astounding and horrible. It’s *bad* this year – I know each year around this time I inevitably bitch about my allergies, but this is the first time I’ve ever needed to walk around with a bucket under my nose to catch the drips. When I lean my head forward, a river flows from my nose. It is awesome. Last night I slept with a box of Kleenex and woke up with a soggy pillow.

To save my own sanity and to avoid Picasso-esq facial art, I have to stop wearing makeup until the pollen in the air settles down a little. My eyes are actually leaking worse than my nose, and it’s making things .. crusty. It is not attractive. I hate going au natural – frankly, I *like* looking like a street walking clown – but having makeup drip into my eyes just makes everything worse. I’m swearing off the stuff until I can breathe again. I will look like hell, but the alternative is extremely uncomfortable.

I put 50km on Oscar last night, and by the end of today I’ll be just 80km away from speed. Tomorrow is supposed to be gorgeous – we’re talking double digits – and I’m confident I can get those last restricted km out of the way with a solid day of riding. The only question is where to go. I want to do some exploring and take some pictures, but I’m tired of my usual haunts. Maybe I’ll head east and see what I can find around Port Moody.

Time for caffeine and more Kleenex. I love spring, but this can stop now.