Category Archives: everyday kimli

smashy smashy

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Things appear to be getting interesting in our neighbourhood again. This is both good and bad: good because I was frankly getting bored with sleeping through the night, and bad because my levels of contempt for certain strains of humanity are reaching staggering new heights and also I like my car windows whole and unbroken.

There’s been a rash of smashing on our street over the last week or so. The curbs are littered with piles of sparkling glass chips, yet we’ve never seen the targeted vehicles. I’m pretty sure our car was “tested” – the other evening we heard a large thump, immediately followed by our car alarm. I looked out the window and saw a suspicious hooded character slinking away from the scene. He was far too tall to be a Jawa, so I’m thinking cars in the area are being scouted for future burglaring. I haven’t heard any glass being broken, though. You’d think that would make some noise, even without a car alarm. Maybe they’re just playing a prank to make everyone paranoid – get some glass chips, and sprinkle them everywhere. The first thing anyone is going to think is “OH NO CAR BREAK INS!” and scramble to buy clubs and large dogs and flaming pitchforks – perhaps these people are far more crafty than their meth teeth and fetal alcohol syndrome noses let on.

In addition to the upswing of crime, there’s been some wacky hijinks down at our local crack house. It’s a wretched hive of scum and villainy and our neighbourhood tweaker lives there, terrorizing us all with his yells of WOO! WOOOOOOO! at all hours of the night. The fights usually spill out into the alley, and I can hear their sordid tales of abuse and drugs and cheating and baby mama drama. It’s all very sad, but more importantly, it’s all very loud and never happens in the light of day. No, the crazy only comes out after midnight. What good is having a fight if a two-block radius can’t listen in?

To be safe, we’ve removed anything that might be construed as valuable from the Mazdabator. We don’t keep a lot in there as it is, but I had been keeping two routers and a DSL modem in the trunk for work purposes. Juniper SSG5 Routers are totally hot on the black market now, and the last thing I need is some meth head stealing my routers and trading them in for $1500 worth of asthma inhalers and fishnet stockings.

When all is said and done though, I would really prefer people to NOT break into my car or mess with my scooter. If you could be a total waste of skin somewhere else, that would be just super.

not made of tuesday

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If you’re fortunate to live near a Cobs Bread, go try their new scones. I’ve never had a tastier handheld breakfast, and the cinnamon one is particularly delightful. Don’t let the terrifying thumbs up man scare you away – they are fantastic.

I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating – I HATE it when online news stories are video only. I like to READ my news, not have it spoon-fed to me. I am mildly curious – in passing only, of course – at how a parrot managed to save a 2-year-old from choking (I imagine it has something to do with the parrot flying down the child’s throat and retrieving the obstruction), but I will never know because I can’t read the article. Is this great internet of ours creating a generation of idiots who have to have everything read out loud before comprehension sets in? Are we really headed for a future where libraries are an anachronism of the past? What if the parrot story was destined to change my life? Shit. Maybe I should watch the video despite my protests.

Today is a Big Day for my private parts – Validation Day! Not only do I get to show her that look, something is not right down there and let’s talk about fixing it already, but I get to introduce my shiny new theory: KELOID! Hooray! I have a sneaking suspicion that my last cyst did indeed rupture, but instead of going quietly into the night, decided to scar over and be all lumpy and itchy. Let’s see her try to say THIS is all in my imagination! Take that, doctor!

Stupid vagina.

honesty with a pork pie hat

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Oh if only we weren’t so damn honest.

I was paying some bills online when I noticed that we have quite a bit more money that we should – exactly one month of rent more. Our November rent cheque hasn’t been cashed yet. You would think that having almost a thousand extra dollars would be super, but in actuality it’s a total pain in the ass – it’s not our money; it just LOOKS like we can afford extra ale and whores and groceries.

It’s a little strange, because our landlord is usually anally prompt with the cheque cashing. We give him a year’s worth of cheques, and he’s at the bank at 6am on the 1st of each month, rubbing his hands in fingerless gloves together gleefully and collecting sacks of gold coins in bags with a $ on the side, his rumpled top hat dusty and askew. He’s never once been late with the cheque cashing.

I checked this morning, and we still had the money in our account. Ed called him up and asked if he had a November cheque from us – for some reason I think I only gave him up to October, which would explain why he hadn’t collected from us. We didn’t really think this was the case either, though – when our landlord is missing cheques from you, he calls you repeatedly until you hand them over. We hadn’t heard from him at all, so we thought we might be in the clear and my memory is being unusually faulty. It happens. Not often, though.

Surprisingly, the landlord said he cashed all the November cheques ages ago – ours included. The bank tells me a different story, so we asked him to check again because he might be out some money. We’re waiting for a call back, but damnit! If we had just kept our fool mouths shut, we could have totally gotten away with it! He thinks he cashed our cheque already, not realizing that he probably never had one from us at all. I could have bought .. uh .. shoes! And underwear! I need new underwear! Damn our honesty!

I am pretty choked that I spent all of the glorious yesterday with an enormous, unforgiving migraine coupled with various other maladies I won’t get into here – but today, on a holiday Tuesday, I am feeling better but it is yucky outside. I enjoyed the sleeping, though. That part was awesome.

where did my words go

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I’m not *trying* to fail NaBloPoMo ’08, but I’m definitely not as gung ho about it as I was in years past. There are several reasons – I’m really busy, I’m really lazy, and frankly there just isn’t a lot of excitement going on around here. For the last three days, I’ve really had to struggle to post at all – let alone in an attempt to keep going for an entire month. Am I out of things to say? I doubt it. I’m just a little preoccupied with nothing in particular, is all.

That being said, I really don’t want to become one of those “once a month” people. So, I won’t. I won’t even drop down to once a week. I just .. may be a little dull until things pick up around here.

In other news, it would be awesome if Cheddar would please stop throwing up on my coat.

did you know

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I have 10 STDs!

I should call my mom and tell her.

This is definitely not what you would call a “quality post”, but it’s Saturday and I was up until 4:30 this morning catching those STDs – give me a break. Besides, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t strike verbal gold with every update I make. Sometimes there is crap. Hopefully, though, my more meaty and interesting posts make up for my occasional lapse in poetic tallow – and if you’re good, this week I will tell you a secret.

Note to self: think of a secret you haven’t already written about.

I am still learning how to use my new camera. It’s definitely not as easy as my old one, but the variety of depths and lights and other artistic crap are fun to experiment with.

I think I’ll go outside.

bad dog

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Oh, Fido. Why did you have to piddle all over the country?

I was blissfully unaware of this, but apparently Fido has been experiencing “brand ambiguity” ever since being purchased by Rogers a few years ago. To combat this, they’ve undergone yet another image revamp. It’s all the rage these days; just recently Bell Canada went from anthropomorphic beavers to the classier (?) and wholly confusing “-er” campaign. Not helping matters is the Telus entry into the discount mobile provider party – they’re the bastards behind the disturbing 80’s fitness-branded Koodo, a company seemingly targeted towards people who like to get physical and wear legwarmers.

Fido is, of course, my current cell provider, and I’ve been trying to log into their website for the last three days to get my latest bill. I’ve been having trouble doing so, and today I found out why: they launched their new website to go along with their new image, and it is fucking horrible.

It doesn’t take a degree in Marketing to see what they’re going for here – in Canada, the bright yellow screams CHEAP! DISCOUNT! NO FRILLS! YOU CAN AFFORD THIS! It’s the same yellow used by No Name brand products available at bargain basement grocery stores and Best Buy. It’s also hideous. The old Fido brand featured a website with a black background and shades of teal, beige and brown – it was actually pretty classy. Their new website is an eyesore and actually made me wonder if it had been hacked. Smart move, guys.

Before today, if you had asked me if the company’s image played into my willingness to pay for their services, I would have scoffed and said no. My extreme distaste for the new cheap Fido, however, is proving me wrong. Frankly, I’m embarrassed that these guys are my phone provider. Just like I would never be a Koodo customer because of their awful ads and imagery, if this version of Fido had been the norm when I was looking for a new provider in July, I would have passed them by. I suppose this is really snooty of me, but it’s the same everywhere – you go with what you like. I liked Fido’s old image; that of warm colours, cute dogs and hip people who could totally be me. Their new image – one of obnoxious bright yellow, sloppy sketches and scruffy dogs/people – is highly distasteful to me.

I suppose the bottom line is really the cell service, and it remains to be seen whether this new cheaper Fido will cut back on the quality of service I receive from them. If it gets bad, I will bail and go elsewhere.

In the meantime though, if anyone asks, I’m with Sprint.

bus rage

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I’ve whined about this on almost every social media outlet I’ve got; might as well make it a grand slam: I fucking hate taking transit.

The forecast for the next week or so is torrential, never ending rain. I don’t mind riding Oscar to work if the rain is supposed to let up at some point during the day, but as it doesn’t look like we’ll see the sun or even dry pavement again until March, I’ve reluctantly started taking the bus/boat/train to work each day. It only took me an hour to get to the office this morning, and $4 – clearly that is much better than the 15 minutes on Oscar for free. Getting home will be another hour and more money. Hooray!

As an aside, it is awkward to have a strange man come running up to your cubicle and start groping around under your seat. I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it – charm school didn’t teach me what to do when strangers want under your ass – so I sat there and watched and felt a little dirty afterwards.

Okay, back to the bus. I hate you, bus. Today was a mere hint at what’s to come, as I left the house late and didn’t get into the office until 9:30. I don’t feel bad about it, since I was here until 8pm last night saving the world again – but when I have to start being here on time, I’ll be taking the bus/boat/train with steaming hordes of grumpy people. I do not look forward to that. Perhaps I will invest in a machete. Err, that was in bad taste – sorry. I really do hate transit, though.

I think I aced yesterday’s executive tour of the warehouse. It was a crazy busy day though, featuring my very first 12 hour day at the Lab. Poor Ed had to cab from the airport to my office, then wait around for me to be finished writing emergency reports which are much more complicated than regular, non-emergency reports. I’m hoping today won’t be quite as bad – I can only handle so much fussy nitpicking in a week – and tomorrow I get to spend the entire day in Richmond for awesome fun sneezy times. Yay!

At least I don’t have to take the bus there.

delicious fail

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I went into the kitchen at the Lab to get a fork so I could eat my delicious and healthy salad for lunch. Unfortunately, the kitchen table is literally COVERED in chocolate and cake and goodies – it’s someone’s birthday and they appear to have purchased an entire candy store for the office to eat. I don’t want to seem like I’m not a team player, so in addition to my delicious and healthy salad, I will have to eat the birthday girl’s weight in chocolate. After all, I don’t want to be rude.