While he still hasn’t been charged by the Vancouver Police Department even after turning himself in, confessing and publicly apologizing for being a colossal dumbass, Water Polo Canada has handed down an appropriate punishment to Nathan Kotylak:

“These are formidable punishments considering the age of the athlete [18 years old], but they are fully justified given the seriousness of the situation,” said Ahmed El-Awadi, executive director of Water Polo Canada, in a statement from Ottawa on Tuesday.

The water polo ban will prevent him from participating in the national team program until June, 2013.

He will also be ineligible to receive Sport Canada funding during the two-year period.

what an awesome guy this is - i hope his parents are proud

So, I kind of peed on the couch.

Just a little. Like, a drop. I had a really full bladder, and Ed was making fun of me for some reason, and .. I peed. I was laughing really hard because Ed is funny even when he is being mean to me, and you know how sometimes people say “I laughed so hard I peed a little” (other people say that, right? It’s not just me?) .. well, I laughed so hard I peed a little. On the couch. Like a bad puppy. It’s Ed’s fault, really – he shouldn’t have made me laugh so hard on a full bladder.

This is probably something I shouldn’t be confessing right before a bunch of people come over to my house, but I needed to get it off my chest. The couch is fine – I cleaned it, and it wasn’t a LOT of pee, and my pee is incredibly diluted anyway. Still, the facts are warm and wet: I peed on the couch.  Sorry about that.

Tonight I am holding a garage sale in the living room of Sparta. There will be meatballs! Bring a tarp.

As I’ve mentioned all over the internet, I’ve been spending the past several weeks elbow deep in PCI Compliance. I am far too familiar with the ins and outs of payment card security standards and what happens when things go wrong – it’s not at all an interesting topic, despite my efforts. And at the end of it all, my superior knowledge and lofty bosom are of no matter at all: my credit card was compromised last week, and has to be replaced.

I got a call yesterday morning from Visa, and after jumping through numerous hoops to verify they were legit and not the very thing they were claiming to protect me from, it came to light that my card data had been yoinked from an insecure place: someone had attempted to book a room at the Churchill Inn and buy things from Apple.com. Naughty naughty, and apparently out of character enough for my credit card company to raise an eyebrow and give me a call to make sure I hadn’t run away from home. I hadn’t (this time), so they blocked my card and stopped payments and now no one can traipse around the city pretending to be me.

Of course, this is proving to be an enormous pain in the ass. I’m grateful for the security and junk, but while I’m waiting for my new card to arrive, things are falling apart around me:

• I can’t park! My credit card is tied to my mobile parking account
• My last three app purchases bounced somehow – iTunes is kind of slow with the billing sometimes and by the time they tried to charge me my card had been shut off so they want money
• I’m going to have to memorize a WHOLE NEW NUMBER oh no

Okay, three things. Only three things are falling apart around me. And I look awesome today, so there’s that.

Bring it, Monday.

never be lost

This is an incredibly apt Sesame Street parody of Glee, about the versatile letter G:

THIS CALLS FOR MORE GLITTER!

i like you finn .. i’m looking at you longingly ..

I’m scared :(

donate now or babies will be eaten.

It’s not just the terrifying lead singer of the blackest Black Metal band in all of Norwegia who bathes in fetid stew of partially digested afterbirth and teeth stolen from beneath the pillows of sleeping children that scares me but also work: the air in here is stagnant with fear and obedience. I have a notepad beside my keyboard with marks on it, and I’m up to 6: one notch for each time I’ve been admonished this week for doing things that were okay last week and/or what I normally do daily.

It sucks. I overlook a lot of things because I’m so happy being able to be myself at work and inject a little bit of fun and personality into things that are normally dry and boring. If that gets taken away .. I’m bad at corporate. Really, really bad at it. I’ve worked for two of the largest companies in the world with no exaggeration, and I never really fit in. My work always good, but it wasn’t .. usual. I am not very usual.

I don’t want to be in the corner.

this was mark #5

I’m delighted to announce that Costco has finished their investigation into my warranty issue, and is sending me a cheque for the full amount of the repair. Hooray! That’s one small step for man, one giant step for me because I have tiny little legs!

Today is our anniversary; the Nine Slash Fourteen. Nine years ago today Ed and I were married in Edmonton (this was well before Edmonton became famous for mind-blowingly ridiculous errors in humanity), and it’s been a wild ride. I’m not so good at the mushy stuff – there’s very little room for sarcastic, hyperbolic pop culture references in mushy stuff – but hey Ed I love you and junk. Let’s have lots of adventures and inappropriate sexy times with a heaping side order of ridiculous happy, coz that’s what I like best.

Also, tacos.

d'awwwwww :3

Tuesday, this is how I feel about you:

I’m not having much luck with my Polite Email Campaign. At first, Costco was great about letting me know my warranty situation was being reviewed and that I would hear back within two business days, but that was two weeks ago – I haven’t heard from them in a week despite a friendly reminder and asking for an update. Current status: still out $670; request for resolution in limbo.

Yesterday I took my black Fluevogs and favourite Doc Martens boots into a shoe repair place to see about getting them fixed. The leather on both pairs of shoes has split along the inner seam of the right shoe, and given that the two pairs of shoes together cost more than I’m willing to admit online due to extreme shame, I’d really like to get more wear out of them. The Fluevogs are barely over a year old, and I’ve had untold problems with the soles on both pairs in the same style, and now this split has happened so I’ll be shelling out $50 to fix them (on top of the $60 or so I’ve spent on replacement soles).

The Docs are a different story. I bought the boots in Portland exactly two years ago, but I haven’t worn them in 6 months because of zipper issues. When I pulled them out to take them to the shoe man, I noticed there was a hole in the right boot by the big toe. Unfortunately, they can’t be fixed – the shoe man said they were basically garbage now, because he can’t get into the sole of the boot to repair the hole. These are my favourite boots that are barely two years old and haven’t been worn extensively, yet they’re garbage – and that sucks so, so hard. Naturally, they’re discontinued and I can’t replace them and nothing I’ve tried has come even close. My unyielding love for these boots aside, I’m pretty choked that something I bought and expected to last have fallen apart so soon. I did everything right – treated them with all the right chemicals before I wore them, cleaned them periodically, didn’t go clog dancing on a bed of nails in them – and they’re still wrecked beyond repair. I’ve tried tweeting at the Doc Martens account to speak with them AND send in an email via their website, but have had no response. I’m a huge fan of Doc Martens and I own a ridiculous number of boots and shoes, but if they aren’t going to get back to me I may have to find a new favourite. I am a sad, sad monkey with no black boots.

So yeah, some customer service would be nice. Costco, please respond to my warranty issue like you promised you would. Fluevogs, you’re breaking my heart – why am I having so many issues with my Hope Dreams? Doc Martens, please respond to my tweet or emails – there’s got to be something you can do; I shouldn’t have to throw away boots I barely wore because they’ve broken down too badly to be fixed in the two years I’ve had them.

Frustrated.

Tomorrow afternoon I get to give the first of five presentations on Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. The presentation is as exciting as you might expect, but with a few extras thrown in to amuse myself:

• 1 transformers reference
• a picture of Devastator with “PCI DSS” photoshopped across his robo-knuckles
• Two Star Trek references; one TOS and one TNG
• Pictures of Vault Boy on almost every slide
• Referring to our PCI team as dashingly handsome throughout the presentation
• A line about the Wheel of Time for some reason

..  the entire thing is about as irreverent as I could get it; it’s not nearly as serious as it probably should be.

Also, our scary new CEO will be sitting in on the presentation. And I spent money on Oreos to keep people awake.

This can only be COMPLETELY AWESOME and not at all a terrible career move.

me devastator, me certified by the payment card industry security standards council

The Whistler trip is done, and I promised myself I would wait until at least this long before I started packing for London. I know we don’t leave for 25 more sleeps, but I’m a worrier – what if I forget underwear? What if I accidentally pack pants? What if I get a dozen new most favourite ever articles of clothing that I want to take with me? These are all very real concerns of mine, which is why I pack ridiculously early and then repack seven more times before we actually leave. I like packing, okay. It comes in handy when you have a natural tendency to run away at the first sign of not-your-way but you also have a lot of awesome things that must come with you.

I am scheming. I want to do a serious hardcore purge of my closet, and I know I’ve got more than a few things that would be better off with friends – hell, I’ve even got half my wardrobe allotted out to other people because they’d look better in it than I ever would. I’m thinking about having a “by donation” night, where people come over and paw through my unmentionables and give me a few bucks for whatever they take. I’ve already given away so much to people, but I feel bad about charging for things .. so this would work well, actually. Hey, people I know: what are you doing next week, say .. Tuesday? Come to my place and take my dresses, bags and shoes. Not all of them, but some. More than some. Lots. I have too much goddamn stuff.

I am feeling so much better than I did last week. It is a treat to not feel like a pile of ass!

gondola: scary as hell