I’ve been suffering from some pretty wicked insomnia lately (so sayeth the two hours of sleep I managed to get on Friday night), so being startled awake at 1:30 Sunday morning after I had FINALLY managed to drop off was really fucking annoying. I made the best of a bad situation, though, by live-tweeting the break up going on outside my window:

sara is kind of a bitch; i'm on Team Nick

A couple of charming individuals had a very loud, very public fight directly under my bedroom window very early this morning. I could have gotten up to take a look, or asked them to shove off, or shut my bedroom window – but instead I grabbed my cell phone and shared the lengthy exchange with Twitter. I’m no stranger to this – the technology is different, but the end result is the same. When I was living on Wark St. in Victoria a lifetime ago, a couple used to fight on their balcony every single weekend. I was a night owl, so I would inevitably be awake and on the STS – and I would share their angst with the world, line by line. I don’t remember their names, but it was all so familiar. Public break ups are embarrassing (for the couple) and hilarious (for me).

I was totally on Team Nick last night – I heard the fight from the very beginning, and Sara was just being a bitch. She was beaking at Nick for some minor infraction, and he just lost it – he called her out on how badly she treats him, sobbed a couple times, and decided he was done. She did a great deal of backpeddling at that moment, because I don’t think she had intended the fight to go that far – I know “Sara”, and they pick fights for the grovelling and apologies that come after they yell. They NEVER get called on their shit – but when they do, it’s shock and horror and HOW CAN YOU BE SO MEEEEEAN all over the place. Anyway, the subject soon turned to Sara’s drinking problem to which she screamed “I’m an alcoholic! I deal with it, why can’t you!” .. colour me skeptical, but I don’t think merely acknowledging that you have a problem can be considered “dealing with it”; you then need to try to get better. The conversation quickly turned nasty at that point, with Nick not happy about Sara’s constant drunken state to which she came back with “and your fault I drink!”. Uh oh. That was the beginning of the end of coherency; both parties descended into high-pitched wailing and shrieking at that point which thankfully faded away as they flounced off dramatically down the street. Nick wasn’t taking it too well, as he kicked or punched things many times while yelling “BIIIIIIIIIITCH” out loud to the universe, who had more important things to worry about.

I fell asleep at that point.

They did come back later, with a third party. It sounded as though most things had been smoothed over – oh, young love – as they weren’t yelling any more and therefore didn’t have enough volume to fully drag me from my slumber. I may never know the fate of Nick and Sara, but I certainly don’t envy them. Young love is a (loud) pain in the ass.

i love gnomes. i wish i had an army of them.

I wore knee high boots yesterday – these ones, in fact – so can someone please tell me how I managed to get 15 or so teeny tiny bug bites on my ankle and foot that are itch as hell? I do not recall opening myself up as a buffet. I got away from Cuba with exactly one insect bite, only to be attacked by mystery while trussed into a giant boot. Not cool, bugs. Leave my delicious juices alone.

I don’t feel well. If I were a betting man, I’d wager it’s 75% mental (insomnia, nightmares, anxiety) and 25% physical (headache). I need to shake this off quickly; at least for long enough to coherently deliver some training in the next 7 minutes – but I have a sinking feeling it’s going to take a little longer than that. I know myself well enough to know when I am Out of Sorts, and I am there. I loathe to up my meds – I feel like I’m already taking too much as it is, even though I’m on a minimal dose – but June does bad things to my headspace, and I don’t feel like whining about it (which is alarming in its own right; I whine about everything everywhere).

Maybe I just need a nap. I hope I just need a nap.

What’s up by you?

Store bought cards are great and all, but I like to make my own cards for Ed whenever a card-giving occasion comes around. I never really got enough of arts and crafts as a kid, and let’s be honest – no store in the world is going to carry a card dirty enough for me to give.

Here’s the card I made for Ed yesterday:

all the book titles are real except for one - guess!

He’s getting a Kindle for his birthday, which will be purchased when we visit America next weekend for pre-birthday (mine) Mexican food. I photoshop’d up an appropriately sized fake Kindle, printed it on cardstock, and gave it to him in a Kindle holder for effect. It turned out pretty convincing, actually:

tricksy!

I am frequently amused by my own antics.

You are my favourite!

ed is knee-deep in pussy, as usual

.. and this was my Sunday:

scandinave spa in whistler

the nordic pool is my favourite - i apparently like being cold ass cold

sploosh!

tall mountie is tall

Ed’s birthday is on Tuesday, and we spent the weekend doing birthday things. I was working with a theme, of sorts – “Do Stuff for Ed”. See, I get out a lot and go to neat places and have adventures and experiences and more fun times I can shake many sticks at. Ed is usually not there when I do these fun things, for a variety of reasons – so I end up with a great big list of places I want to share with him at some point. This past weekend was that point, so we Had Adventures just for him all weekend long.

On Saturday, we rented a boat at Horseshoe Bay and went out on the water for a couple hours. The weather managed to behave, and we even got some sun on the water for a bit. It was just the two of us, and it was SO MUCH FUN – I took several hundred pictures of seals. We’ve always talked about renting a boat and going out on the water someday, and I am tired of waiting for someone else to declare it was officially someday so we did it – and it was awesome. Boats are so fun! They could be the new scooters! It’s actually pretty reasonable to rent a boat, too, so I’m definitely going to be declaring someday again this summer. I uploaded some of the 500+ pictures I shot on my Flickrs; check them out why not.

We brought it down a little on Sunday, and drove up to Whistler early in the morning. I had booked an hour-long Swedish massage for Ed at Scandinave Spa; after which we would visit the baths and get our soak on. Ed is a big fan of massages (I am not), and he didn’t get a beach massage in Cuba – so I thought this might be the next best thing. Shan, Miranda and I had visited Scandinave in April and I’ve been wanting to share it with Ed, so that was the second part of his birthday weekend. The weather was glorious, and we were at the spa for 4 hours taking our sweet time with enjoying it all. We steamed and soaked and sunbathed and I spent far more time than is probably good for me in the very cold Nordic Pool. I burned my shins a little in the hot mountain sun, I showed Ed my boobs in one of the hot tubs, and it was a really, really nice time overall. Scandinave Spa is incredible.

Also, I can cross at least half of “buy Ed a rub n’ tug for his birthday” off my Bucket List.

We cleaned ourselves up and headed into Whistler to wander around for the afternoon. Whistler is so very close by, but I hadn’t been there since September of ’06. There was a lot going on in the village, and we spent a few good hours looking around. It was an enjoyable way to spend a delicious Sunday afternoon, but before long we started to get sleepy and we hit the road for home.

That was the plan, anyway – half an hour outside of town I got a text message directing us to the Pemby for Friend Time. I enjoy Friend Time, so we ate dinner with peoples before finally going home to unwind before Monday.

Ed’s birthday isn’t until tomorrow, but I hope he had a good weekend anyway. Happy Birthday and junk, donkey slut. We had good times.

ahoy matey do you want to swab my deck

This was my Saturday afternoon:

I love the West Coast.

I’ve been writing in some capacity for almost 25 years, and I STILL haven’t figured out the art of making an unpleasant task sound completely awesome.  My new project at work is to build a company wiki from scratch (I have an unsettling feeling that my boss has many conversations that go “hey, that job sounds overwhelming and impossible – I know, we’ll give the project to Kimli!”), but I’m just driving the boat – other people get the glory of copying and pasting hundreds of HTML articles to the Sharepoint Wiki; an unholy crotch spawn of traditional Wiki markup and vomitous MSO code with a ham-handed WYSIWYG editor with the temperament of a cranky 3-year old coming down from a sugar high thrown in for good measure. It’s an arduous, unforgiving task – and I have to convince the other 103 employees in my company that doing it is not only mandatory, but super fun and fulfilling and will make them better lovers with enormous genitals that will be the envy of friend and foe alike. It must be done, though, and I can’t do it myself for a number of reasons; the most pressing being that I have exactly 24 days to deliver a complete, brand new employee manual written in the style of my blog but also containing the legal necessities to cover the organization in case of personnel misconduct. And I’m not allowed to swear.

Why me?

Oh, right – because I love this stuff, and I’m not happy unless I have huge challenges to tackle.

Better get started, then.

Ever since the dawn of Esther, I’ve hidden her disguise in plain sight – taped to the side of my desk. No one can predict emergencies, and I like to be prepared for anything. My coworkers find this absolutely hilarious – what do you mean, you have an emergency mustache? What situation could possibly arise that you would need such a thing? Kimli is so weird! and so on and so forth, with ODB (my old boss) taking particular delight in the hilarity of it all.

This has been going on for months – just shy of a year, actually.

And then today, this happened:

ODB: Do we have any coloured paper?

Me: I think we have some bright orange around here somewhere; leftover from the donut project.

ODB: No, I need some black paper. Any ideas?

Me: Nope, we have none .. what do you need black paper for, anyway?

ODB: For the Mexican Kaboozle* this afternoon! I think we should all MYOM – Make Your Own Mustache! We need black paper for mustaches!

Me: … mustaches, like THIS? *pulls out Esther’s mustache from the side of my desk* I KNEW having an Emergency Mustache would come in handy! You laughed at me, remember? But I am prepared – I already HAVE a mustache here, JUST IN CASE!

ODB: ………..……………………….

YEAH. SUCK IT. I WIN. EVERY WEIRD THING I DO AT THE OFFICE IS NOW JUSTIFIED FOREVER.

i am the one who is laughing now

I am so deliciously smug!

*: We have parties on the last Friday of every month – this month’s theme is Cinco de Mayo, hosted by one of the Ops teams. Last month was my team’s party, and we did the Office Space one. My work is awesome.

I am a simple creature; a creature of habit. When I find something I like – be it a colour or routine – I adopt it fully and make it mine. I rarely, if ever, variate from this path – why should I? I know what I like.

For instance, I like Diet Coke. I also like the fact that McDonald’s is running their annual summer drink promotion – all fountain drinks and iced coffees, any size, for only $1. I like that I live in a McDonald’s parking lot, because it means I can indulge my habit several times a day – which I DO. In fact, I go to “my” McDonald’s 5 or 6 times a week – not because I am trying to become the world’s fattiest Kimli, but because I really, really like $1 Diet Coke. I go there a lot, okay. I know all the drive through employees by sight, if not by name – and they know me too, because I guarantee I am the only funny-looking Asian on a black scooter dressed all in red who comes through every damn morning just for a large Diet Coke and nothing else. I am the Diet Coke girl. It’s what I do. I KNOW you know me; you chastise me when I don’t come around for a few days and ask where I’ve been.

So WHY would you think that I wanted a large COKE this morning? I have never, ever, EVER ordered Coke. Like polka-dotted clockwork, I am there every morning at 8:45am to get my large Diet Coke for $1.12. I have never deviated from this routine, and I never will. I need you to figure this out – see the pattern; grasp the modus operandi – and realize that I am there for Diet Coke, NEVER regular Coke. I need you to step it up. I need you to realize what I am there for, and give me the correct thing. PLEASE. I BEG you.

Get with it, McDonald’s Monica who works weekday morning shifts in drive thru. You make me shake my head in sadness and disbelief.

This is me yesterday afternoon at 4:

hairbrushes are for the weak

I’m not normally that pink, but you get the idea.

This is me at 10am this morning:

hair: i haz less of it

I cut off most of my hair yesterday because I was bored. Well, *I* didn’t cut it – Michelle at East Vanity Parlour did. But I told her to! So that counts, right?

Everything is better with USB:

USB 2.0 and 0 calories

This is just awkward, though:

it's so clunky now

I admit it – my boobs are cybernetic:

i charge them nightly otherwise i have no cleavage

Gotta go – lunch time.

this explains why my muffin was $24.99