I can’t see my scooter, and it’s freaking me out.

I’m chopping off my mullet after work today, so I rode Lola downtown. While on the bus the last few days, I took note of places I saw motorcycles parked and which locations that still had spots available around 9am – so I left at 8 this morning to make sure I’d get one of the coveted spots closer to my office. It was a success; I parked next to a scooter (who unfortunately parked like a tool, he took up way more room than necessary) a block from my office in a shady, tree-free area in the uber rich district of the downtown core, for free. Free is delightful!

I am worried, though, mostly because I tend to worry about everything but also because I can’t SEE Lola and therefore strangers could be all up in her grill with the touching and sitting and stealing her rainbow legwarmers. I never had to worry when Lola was in the parkade, because she was covered and secure – but to take advantage of the free parking, she’s out in the open and exposed to all the dirty grubby elements of other people. On the plus side, there’s almost no danger of her being hit by a car thanks to the concrete barriers everywhere. We’ll see how this goes, but I know I’ll be spending the rest of the day in knots with needless worry times.

I desperately wish my eyes were not filled with gummy bears.

Also, yesterday’s post will be explained tomorrow. :)

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

(details, complete with consonants, coming soon!)

This entire post a) has nothing to do with the title, and b) is going to come off sounding pouty and smacks of “I’m taking my ball and going home”, but it really isn’t – you’re just going to have to take my word for it that my motives here are not ulterior, posterior, interior, exterior, anterior, or otherwise; they’re coming from a good place made of rainbows and puppies and logic (which can totally be cute if you dress it up right).

I’m not going to be bugging people to vote for me in the West Coast Social Media Awards any more. I appreciate all of you who nominated me, voted for me, and asked others to vote for me – you are awesome, and I thank you from the bottom of my mighty bosom. However ..

I have multiple issues with the way the nominations and voting have been set up, and it bugs me to the point of considering everything a lost cause. For starters, the nomination process: it was complicated, required information that shouldn’t have been necessary (I may be an open book, but most of my readers do not have my phone number handy), and was LONG – two pages of essay-style questions, asking why you were nominating someone. A couple of questions, fine. Even one page of them, sure. Two pages? A lot of people contacted me and said “I wanted to nominate you, but I didn’t have time to write a thesis on why you’re great” – I feel terrible asking people to take that much time out of their day to do me a favour, and if I had put more thought into it past “ooh, blog awards!” I’d never have asked.

Then there’s the voting. If you ask people to wax up some poetry as to why they’re nominating a site, don’t you think it would be helpful to actually share that information with the public? Without listing WHY each site has been nominated in the category they’re in, the entire thing becomes a contest to see who can spam the links the most. You’re not necessarily voting for me because you truly think I deserve to win an award for Best Personal Blog; you’re doing it because I shared the link here and on Twitter and Facebook. I can’t say that for certain – maybe you DO think I deserve to win – but by asking others to vote for me because you asked them to makes the whole thing a popularity contest; one I don’t want to win. If I were to get an award for blogging, I’d want it to be because I’ve been blogging daily for 11+ years, or because someone thought I’m funny, or because I inspired someone to never go A2M – not because I’m good at getting people to click on links.

Lastly, and I fully admit this one really IS a bug up my ass but I think it’s a bigger problem than that and deserves to be mentioned, is the categorization of the nominees. Out of the 8 sites nominated for “Best Personal Blog”, you have:

• one food review site
• three entertainment sites
• one academic/literary site that I can’t properly categorize
• three actual, factual, personal blogs

Maybe I’m putting too much weight in the dictionary definition of “personal”, but when I claim Delicious Juice Dot Com is a Personal Blog, I mean it. I don’t review things for others, or let you know what’s happening in the city, or tell you about upcoming events; I write about my personal life. I’m not selling things, or telling you how to make millions, or shilling for companies that give me things. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying those types of blogs are bad in any way – they’re just not personal blogs, and I don’t think they belong in the Best Personal Blog category. Entertainment Blogs, sure. Foodie Blogs, of course. Weird Academic Blogs that actually have more words than my own, why not. But personal? Not by a long shot.

Personal blogs are a dying breed; replaced by micro-blogs or Twitter (if by anything at all). I like that my blog is so personal, though, and that I have a dumping ground for every half-baked thought that runs through my head. Does that mean I deserve some kind of award? No; that isn’t up to me. Sure, I’d love for my efforts to be acknowledged in some way – who doesn’t – but if that happens, I want it to be because someone truly thought I deserved it .. not because I was the best at spamming the link to the voting page.

I’m crazy melancholy today, and this post was likely caused by said melancholy. I’m just feeling really “what’s the point” about everything today, which is very much unlike me. I do know what’s behind these wicked blues though, so there’s a light at the end of the tunnel – but until I get there, I am cold and tired and sad all over.

hi.

It’s been over SIX MONTHS since I’ve ridden my scooter to work downtown (to be fair, I was unemployed for 4 of those months and working in Burnaby for the other), but not much has changed. The weather was finally nice enough for me to forego the hated bus and ride Lola in, so I got up nice and early this morning to a) rinse the henna out of my hair (I only destroyed two pillow cases this time!) and b) leave the house early in the hopes of securing a parking spot near my office.

I was successful at both of these, but I am confused and tempting fate: I did not pay for the meter where I parked Lola.

Because the “discounted motorcycle rate” for the designated spot I’m in is $18.50 for the DAY.

That can’t be right .. can it?

The City of Vancouver is trying to do right by those who prefer two wheels to four by creating additional parking spots for them downtown. This is great, and I approve of the initiative as well as the 50% discount on metered rates. However, the majority of the spots still seem to have either a 2-hour time limit (making them useless for people who work), or are apparently RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE. I could drive my car to work, and it would only cost me $16.50 for a day – what force on this earth could ever make it a good idea to pay $18.50 for 8 hours of motorcycle parking? Let’s do some Monday morning math:

• Parking on the street at a motorcycle-specific spot: $18.50/day = $370/month
• Parking in the lot down the street: $8/day = $160/month
• Renewing my motorcycle parking pass: $5.25/day = $105/month
• Bus: $5/day = $100/month
• Bus tickets: $4.20/day = $84/month
• Bus pass: $4.05/day = $81/month
• Employee Discount Bus Pass (requires a 12-month commitment): $3.53/day = $70.50/month

For the sake of the work I need to do, I’m not calculating gas or insurance or depreciation on my shoes. It would seem that taking the bus to work is the most logical route, but DAMN I hate that idea – having my scooter available to do stuff is just awesome, and riding to/from work on a gorgeous day simply can’t be beat. Want to go to the beach after work? Meet friends across town? Grab some groceries on the way home; stop at the post office to pick up packages? All of this AND MORE can be done when I ride Lola to work. Hell, it even opens up my lunchtime options considerably – when I get sick of the offerings nearby, I can go for a quick ride and fetch myself anything that tickles my fancy times. On the bus, I’m trapped. Strangers are standing up in my business. There are never any seats, and people smell bad/talk loud/are obnoxious. It’s desperately hot, and there’s never enough air. I HATE THE BUS.

At best, I could combine a couple of options (parking pass during the summer; bus tickets/pass the rest of the time), but that is a hassle: if I don’t remember to cancel my parking pass on time, it costs me an extra month and I inevitably double up on one pass or another.

All of this is VERY EXPENSIVE. I should just move downtown, or live under my desk.

You know what the worst part of this is? In San Francisco, they charge motorcyles $.25/h to park and there are hundreds upon hundreds of spots. $2 a day to park your ride; $2.50 if you decide to stay the entire 10-hour limit. Vancouver’s parking situation is so incredibly frustrating – they’re penalizing people who drive to cover the cost of the bike lanes, used by people who don’t pay gas or insurance. Yeah, that’s an awesome idea: cater to those who contribute the least to the city’s coffers, at the expense of those who pay out the ass for the absolutely everything. Love it.

get with it, vancouver.

Now I’m grumpy, and I’ll probably get a parking ticket. BOO! BOO ON MONDAY!

So, this happened:

blah blah aren’t the droids i’m looking for blah

It’s a Samsung Galaxy Player 5.0.

Why? Well, two good reasons:

1. I hate the fact that there’s a widely-used OS out there that I know nothing about, so I wanted to try out Android for myself
2. Part of my job will involve diddling Androids, and I much prefer diddling my own instead of that which has been diddled by so many before me

And two terrible reasons:

1. NEW. TOY.
2. .. there are three Kairosoft games available for Android (Cafeteria Nipponica, Dungeon Village, and World Cruise Story) that aren’t available for iOS, and I want them

I had been thinking about getting a tablet for a while, but I know giving up my iPad was the right choice. I never used it, and anything I might want to do on an iPad I can do at work on any of the dozens of tablets there. In my (utterly awesome) new job, I could be asked to work some magic on Android at any time, and I really know nothing about it – and as a proud nerd with a boner for mobile technology, I hate being in the dark about something so common. With that in mind, I started to research Android tablets, but I still wasn’t ready to spend so much money on something that’s little more than a passing curiosity on my part. It would take far greater than a professional itch to make me give up my beloved iPhone, so getting some sort of fancy new telephonic device was out. Finally, after spending a day making terrible jokes about a dropped iPod Touch and football, I realized the answer was sitting in front of me: I was looking for the Android equivalent of an iPod Touch. Twitter came through with some good suggestions, and I settled on the Samsung Galaxy Player pictured above.

Of course, it’s never really that easy – for the most part, the 5.0 isn’t available in Canada. I planned on driving down to Bellingham to pick one up when I decided to Google a little bit harder, and lo – I found it on the Staples.ca website, for $20 less than Best Buy.usa. Hooray! I ordered it on Thursday, and it arrived at my office yesterday afternoon.

I’m still learning my way around Android, but the biggest difference so far is the size – the ‘droid is fucking HUGE. In fact, I named it The Behemoth. It has a 5″ screen, and it’s just enormous next to my iPhone. Still, the size makes me really glad I didn’t opt for a tablet after all – the Galaxy is basically a tiny tablet for tiny elf hands, like mine. I know I could have spent a little more and gotten a 7″ Galaxy Tab instead, but I’m pleased I went this route. It’s small enough to carry around in case I need to solve any iOS vs. Android arguments, I get to play exciting new games that I can’t get on my iPhone, and I didn’t spend a bajillion dollars on it. Also, I’m learning. Learning is good.

The Behemoth is so large, in fact, that it doesn’t fit in any of the cases or pouches I have, so I’m gonna sew one up. New toy AND I get to practice sewing? Buying it was such a good idea! I am so smart.

For size comparison, here is the Behemoth next to Tunnel Snakes Rule (my iPhone), Ed’s work Blackberry, my iPod Nano (shut up, I love my Apple products), and the new portable battery charger I had to get because the voltage changed from the 4 to the 4s and my old charger didn’t work anymore:

i’m connected to the internet SO MANY TIMES

FOR LEARNING!

I’ve been trying to take better care of my unmentionables – mithril ain’t cheap – but yesterday I must have been doing some sort of crazy ninja moves, because I somehow broke not one but TWO underwires in my bra. I spent much of the morning digging for treasure in my right chest before I gave up and went to inspect the damage (barely remembering to leave the room to do so) – a jagged underwire, a bloody gouge, and a lot of swearing.  I resigned myself to an afternoon of lopsided cleavage, but a loud metallic “TWANG!” sounded from my left chest shortly after: unable to bear the load meant to be shared across two, my left underwire went down for the count and snapped in half. Sure, it solved my worries about being lopsided, but now I was a danger to myself and others; much more so than usual. Between the limping and my lethally untethered lady melons, Thursday was just not a good day. I was glad when it was over.

My foot was on the fast track to getting better, but on Wednesday after work I forgot that I was broken all over and I .. jumped off the bus. No, I don’t know why I did it. Yes, it was a monumentally stupid thing to do. By the time I hobbled home, I was in so much pain that I was in tears – I couldn’t put ANY weight on the foot at all, and there was swelling where there ought not be any swelling. Ed dug my hated air cast out of the closet and I tried it on, but if anything it made things worse and I couldn’t get it off fast enough. I didn’t want to go back to the ER – among other reasons, it was Pork Night and dinner was in the oven – so I spent the evening alternately hopping around on one leg, crawling, and demanding Ed fetch things for me in a lofty manner (the demanding, not the fetching).

There just might be something to this whole “just keep off it” thing after all, because after a night of sleep my foot was a lot better. I was still limping, but I could actually put it down on the ground without crying out; a marked improvement from the night before. It still hurts, but maybe if I stop trying to DO lol sports instead of just writing about them, I might actually heal and stuff. That’d be super!

So hey, have you voted for me yet? That would also be super.

I have a headache, spring has passed Vancouver over, and May 4th is rapidly shaping up to be a day where cool people leave the planet far too soon. Celebrate your life, people. Live it like it’s the most amazing thing you’ll ever do.

i’d like to thank the academy

If the voting ends RIGHT NOW, I might have a chance of winning. I already know I won’t – personal blogs were tossed in with not-all-that-personal – but hey, it was an honour to nominate myself.

You can vote once every 24 hours per IP address. So if you like me (and want to see my boobs at some point), vote for me! If you want to, that is. I’ll likely show you my boobs whether you vote for me or not.

The polls are open until May 13th, so .. have at it, and what not.

If my blog were much more personal, you’d all be in the examination room with me and the 19 medical interns with flashlights.

I AM GOOD AT SPORTS

My job is officially now “lol sports”. Being an astronaut was great while it lasted and I had fun as a mad scientist .. but right now, lol sports is where it’s at.

Did you know that a score box and a box score are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS?!

I am learning!

worst. round. ever.

Mom did add a few new things that made me laugh out loud, though:

• “What a queer!” (my mom apparently watches Glee)
• “Don’t be a rebel” (clearly she does not know me AT ALL)
• “Keep quiet” (hahahah)

I also forgot to add her hockey analysis, too. If this keeps up, I’ll have enough for a whole series of Crazy Mom Bingo Cards!

I am a terrible daughter.

I did drag Ed to the ER last night for my foot, for all the good it did me (hint: none). It didn’t take nearly as long as my last hospital trip did for a dislocated shoulder, but I didn’t get any fun laughing gas this time. They took several x-rays, I got poked at, and eventually they sent me home with “well, if it still hurts in two weeks, come back”. That isn’t really helpful – if my foot still hurts like this in two weeks, I’m going to be a very angry basket case. Also, the x-rays didn’t show a break at all – shit hurts so bad I figured I’d be broken in nine places – so the stereotypically handsome doctor man opined that it could be a ligament problem, or a break that will show up after many days of painful limping. That sucks. However, he did give me a very interesting diagnosis: my foot ligaments are weak like kittens, and I should spend as much time as possible in bare feet to strengthen them up. OKAY! I CAN DO THAT! I hate wearing shoes; they’re like pants for your feet.

I told the doctor my history with the League of Disastrous Foot Men, and he said there was no way I should have been prescribed orthotic robot feet because they’d make things much, much worse. This was exactly my line of thinking the entire time I had the robot feet, because it was while wearing them that I had the worst foot pain of my life. I stopped wearing them when I couldn’t take the feeling of my knees rotting from the inside out for a second longer, and eventually things got a lot better. I’m often guilty of ignoring medical advice, but in this instance it turned out to be the best course of action. I love being validated and also able to walk!

So, here I am. My foot hurts like crazy, walking is a terrible adventure in loud swearing and wincing, and as I expected, there’s Shit Fuck All I can do about it. Whee!

Also, being at the hospital without a) taking off my pants and b) having a series of strangers all looking up in my lady business like it’s an interesting new species of sea life is really weird.

All that said, things are great. I love my job to a ridiculous degree, our house didn’t burn down last night, I am exceptionally cute today, and it’s the first of May – summer is almost here, which means barefoot good times and BBQ’d meat. Then? LONDON!

Oh right, the house: last night around 9, Ed called me into the living room to help Find the Smell. For over an hour last night, there was an impossibly strong stench of burning electricals all up in the air – it was bad enough that we started to feel all weird from the chemical smelliness of it all. We unplugged things, turn off power  bars, and sniffed at anything that had wires in case they were the source of the burning – and nothing. The smell only started to dissipate after we opened all the windows and after several hours, but it was still around this morning. Ed is stressed out, convinced the house is going to explode while we’re at work. I’m annoyed, because we JUST got rid of the Hobo Poop Pot Smoke and now there’s a new horrible smell. WHY MUST THINGS BE SO DIFFICULT AND/OR SMELLY? IT IS SAD TIMES FOR MY FOOT AND NOSE.

So, there’s a mystery. Hopefully we solve it soon. Like, before all our electronics burn up in the atmosphere.

I am pleased for May!