rejection

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On Thursday morning, I received word that I had been rejected by Skynet for the job I had applied for. While I told myself I didn’t really mind because it was always a super long shot, I am apparently not above lying to myself: I was actually pretty crushed (and by “pretty crushed” I mean “illogically inconsolable”). I shrugged it off for the entire workday, but later that evening I when I was unable to properly do a u-turn (long story), I burst into tears and was thoroughly convinced that I am an utter failure; a complete fraud who has no future doing anything at all and no one will ever want me ever again, even retroactively. I cried and wailed and was very glad no one but an extremely confused Ed was around to witness my pathetic display of the feels. 

In my defence, this rejection stung a lot more than others have in the past simply because I was given the “lol no” *after* I had submitted my work samples. I *like* my work (and most people think I’m really good at what I do), so being rejected after showing off was like a kick to my metaphorical balls. It made me sad – really, really sad. Pathetically sad. I was a wreck. 

Luckily, that afternoon in a huff I had decided to throw caution to the wind and demand adventure. Ed and I threw a change of underwear (and 15 device adapters) into backpacks and ran away to Seattle for the night. We hung out with our favourite Americans, saw all the things, and had some Good Times; life disappointments and endless worrying aside. We had so much fun that we’re gonna do it all over again in two weeks (we can’t get enough of our Americans), and I’m slightly more upbeat about the whole thing than I was 48 hours ago. I’m sure that will change one way or another as I either get over it/myself or be rejected for more out-of-my-league jobs, but we’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it. 

I’ll post more words on jobs later, including some words about why I’m looking for work (and being utterly rejected) in the US when I still have a job that I love in Vancouver (and also what Ed thinks of all this), but for now here are some of the neat places we went this weekend:

  • Rachel’s Ginger Beer – if you love ginger beer or simply buying things in growlers, this place is awesome. They’ve got many different flavours of craft-brewed ginger beer on tap, and it’s delicious as all hell: spicy and refreshing, with a big kick. I wish we had purchased some to bring home, but we’ll be back in a couple weeks so I’ll do it then.
  • Otherworlds – A shop in Edmonds that sells steampunky things with a heavy emphasis on unrepentant Firefly worship. Every inch of every surface has amazing things to look at (I am utterly in love with the light switch covers), and if you’re any kind of nerd it’s an awesome side trip to make. 
  • EMP Museum – I love this place, to the point of buying a membership for Ed and I so we can go again and again and again. The new Fantasy exhibit is worth making a trip for, and there’s always a million things to see.
  • Cactus – Forget the Cactus Club; this place is AMAZING. Doug and Ali took us here for brunch on Saturday, and it was probably the best breakfast I’ve ever had. I want to go back and try their regular menu, because if it’s anything like their brunch offering I may never leave. SO GOOD!

Need to plan more impromptu getaways. They go a long way in keeping me sane (especially when I HAVE NO FUTURE).

dark crystal map!

vintage umbrellas!

a surefire way to get me to put out!

here are some vegetables!

purely hypothetical

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I am researching US work visas, for purely hypothetical reasons. Hypothetically, if I were to work in the United States, I would need a hypothetical employer to sponsor my hypothetical application to work for their hypothetical American company. The sponsor isn’t enough though: you also need to be armed with an arsenal of hypothetical documents proving your hypothetical qualifications AND you must fall under the list of approved hypothetical professions such as:

  • Accountant
  • Architect
  • Computer

Yeah, I got this in the hypothetical BAG. Even if they do find me lacking as a hypothetical computer, I’m still okay – further down the list is “Technical Publications Writer”. That’s me!

I’d rather be a computer, though.

If none of my hypothetical musings entertain you, how about this instead: Marks and Spencer is offering FREE shipping to Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The site claims it’s for a limited time, but the promo has apparently been running since March 8th so do what you will with this news. And no, they generally won’t ship food. And yes, I am still desperate to be back in London. Homesickness for a place you’ve been twice is weird, yo. And I’m starting to run out of my favourite mascara and eyeliner, which can only be purchased in the UK. LIFE IS HYPOTHETICALLY HARD, even if you’re a computer.

pretty pretty pretty

#twittersilence

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Many people are talking about #twittersilence; one woman’s idea to prove a point and get her way by doing nothing at all. I personally think the idea is ludicrous – when in history has the silent treatment ever overcome anything – but contrary to what some people are saying, there ARE a few times when it is wholly appropriate to be silent/stay off Twitter. Here is a handy list for you to refer to at any time, or feel free to reach out to me at @kimli for some help:

Appropriate Times for Twitter Silence

  • During sex (apparently it’s rude to tweet during intercourse)
  • When you’re on the West Coast and you won’t see <hot TV show> for three hours and want to avoid spoilers
  • When you’re on the East Coast and have seen <hot TV show> before the rest of the country and can’t believe they did <plot twist>
  • While asleep (scheduled tweets are the first step in the terrible Rise of the Machines)
  • After you’ve died (Roger Ebert was brilliant and I loved his Twitter feed, but it is simultaneously startling and sad to see “him” continue to tweet after death)
  • During any sort of performance or viewing, be it a movie, the opera, a funeral, or a concert: believe me, the world can wait until the show is over before we see that duck-faced selfie

In all seriousness, being quiet about injustice is the worst possible way to deal with it, and exactly what “they” want. When you don’t call attention to awful behaviour, they win. Stand up. Speak out. You have a voice for a reason – never, ever simply sit back and take it.

And don’t fucking tweet during a movie, you jackass.

life skills

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At what point in a person’s life do they stop being senselessly pleased at accomplishing small, run-of-the-mill tasks? Last night I successfully navigated my way home from the bowels of South Vancouver at 2 in the morning, by alien bus and a cab – and I am pleased as punch at myself for doing so. It’s pretty stupid (not to mention fairly insulting), as people complete amazing journeys and overcome insurmountable odds every day, yet I am patting myself on the back for basically crossing the street without a grown-up. How I am able to navigate the world without a helmet and a chaperone, I’ll never know.

My ride home fell through last night when the beer bong (did you know that is a thing? I did not know that was an actual thing; I thought it was something invented by Hollywood for the frat bro movie genre) came out, so I caught the last bus out of Marpole and found myself wandering the fragrant streets of Main and Hastings at 1:30 in the morning. I fully intended to hop the 135 bus home from there, but my stop was overflowing with humanity in varying states of inebriation. I was more than a little tired of being the only sober face in the crowd by then, so I opted to hail a cab instead and made it home safely in 15 minutes or so. I’m a little gun shy when it comes to taking taxis – for starters, I really do hate to be an inconvenience to people (even if their job is to be inconvenienced by me), and also ever since I had a cab driver try to invite himself up to my hotel room the first time I was in Toronto (doing many things for the first time: travelling, business tripping, taking a cab by myself, etc). Still, I was inordinately pleased with myself for successfully hailing a cab and getting home in one piece. I’m such an adorable little broken and socially inept simpleton!

I don’t know if it was because this is Pride weekend or if it is the normal state of Hastings and Main at 1:30 in the morning, but there were so many cross-dressed prostitutes out! They all had better legs than me. In fact, that was the easiest way to spot them: see some excellent legs strutting about on a pair of terrifying shoes, realize it’s a man, still be jealous of the excellent legs.

Speaking of Pride, I am my annual depressed self that I am not downtown, revelling in the festivities. I desperately want to Pride it up with the rest of the city, but I am so bad in crowds (and triple that when I’m by myself). Most of the people I know either don’t do Pride, or they’ve got group plans that I don’t want to intrude upon .. so I stay home and alternate between feeling sorry for myself and angry at my inability to handle seething throngs of thongs. If only there was some kind of substance I could take that would ease my overwhelming anxiety – some sort of medicinal herb or distilled fermented liquid or even an assortment of chemicals designed to bind to specific sites on my gamma-amino-butyric acid receptor – but I can’t for the life of me think of anything like that, so here I am; alone and not covered in rainbows.

I’m starting to think it’s isn’t much fun to be as broken as I am, no matter how I try to convince myself and the internet otherwise.

Adventures in Babysitting aside, I did have fun last night. I met some very cool people I hope to see again for additional awesome conversations and spent some Quality Time with some of my favourite people. My 3pm nudity does belie the plans I have to get out of the house today for fresh air and picture taking, but this was all a part of my Sunday strategy: sleep, laundry, and too much time spent inside my head. Nothing is all bad by any stretch of the imagination; it’s just a little lonely sometimes (and subsequently gets Ace of Base stuck in my head for hours thanks to some amazing logic gymnastics and the 90s fused to my bones like a kitschy and less lethal form of Wolverine’s adamantium).

Happy Pride, everyone!

the red badge of failure

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I took my motorcycle skills test this morning, and I failed spectacularly.

Logically, I know this isn’t a big deal. It was my first time taking the test, I was nervous, a lot of people fail it the first time (including the two dudes who tested before me; they were there for their second and third attempts respectively), chin up lil’ lady you can try again in a week. I know all this, logically. I can choose to be calm and collected about this, practice what I messed up on, and just try again next week: no harm, no foul. Logic!

Naturally, I am beating myself up and freaking out and foreseeing a future in which I am forced to hitchhike my way around the city, inevitably ending up in the trunk of an axe murderer’s sedan and never heard from again. I am angry at myself for failing and for letting something as stupid as an extra traffic cone throw me so badly off my game (I failed to successfully navigate a tight u-turn – something I had practiced and repeatedly nailed for hours the night before). I am sad that I have to wait a week before trying again. I am annoyed that legally, I am facing the next week with no transportation (Ed is driving to Edmonton for a week tomorrow, leaving me with no car and a scooter I shouldn’t ride). I have all the feels: I AM NOT USED TO FAILING! I am Good At Things! I shouldn’t have failed! I am overly miserable about this, and feeling as though I’ve failed LIFE ITSELF instead of just a notoriously tricky skills test using skills you generally don’t use in real life. It’s like trigonometry: sure, maybe someday I will find myself in a life-or-death situation that can only be resolved by calculating the ratio of the adjacent leg to the hypotenuse and/or successfully navigating a slalom of small traffic cones on my scooter, but it’s somewhat unlikely. I’m onto you, skills test: you are the useless applied mathematics of motorcycle licensing, and you will not trip me up again.

I’m retaking the test next Friday, and I am going to kick it’s ass. In the meantime, I am going to feel sorry for myself and eat chocolate (I have a 5-day weekend in which to wallow). I WILL NOT FAIL AGAIN!

.. but if I do, I can just keep retaking the test. It doesn’t cost anything until I pass, so there’s that. I’m still mad at myself, though. I hate sucking.

so tired i forgot to title

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I am very, very bad at sleep.

oh, this isn't good at *all*

oh, this isn’t good at *all*

I bought myself a Fitbit several weeks ago because gadget, but I was also curious about my sleeping habits. I knew that I was a restless sleeper who occasionally suffered from insomnia, but I was probably still getting enough sleep because most of the time I feel okay in the morning. I’m just doing this for science (and because I like sleeping with technology strapped to my arm). Let’s learn!

.. and now I’ve learned that I’m REALLY FUCKING BAD at sleeping! In addition to going to sleep times WAY too late, I drink caffeine all day (and night) long and tend to do most of my deep thinking while I’m supposed to be counting sheep. It’s pretty clear now that what I just wrote off as my not being a morning person is really a severe inability to sleep and STAY asleep (unless it’s the middle of the afternoon and I’m taking a 3-hour nap). Something has to change: I don’t ever wanna feel like I did that day do right now on my minimal amount of rest (all my best sleep came after I was supposed to be at work, but I dragged my carcass into the office around 11am because I am a trooper). I’m struggling to keep my eyes open, I can’t complete sentences, I feel utterly useless, and everything is confusing. Where am I? Is it my turn to mayonnaise?

Starting this weekend, I am going to try to cut off my caffeine consumption after 7pm, be in bed by 10:30, and turn off all my devices by 11. I NEED to get more sleep. I’m about to become very, very busy at work and I don’t have time to be stupid (I’ll leave that to others).

I am so fucking tired.

popsicles are my new jam

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If you know me in meatspace and are not afraid to eat food prepared in my kitchen, it would be in your best interest to develop a sudden overwhelming desire for frozen treats.

I’ve decided that I am All About making popsicles. Not the boring juice-in-freezer kind, but Upscale Fancy Pops that require power tools and ingredients found deep in Alps at dawn on Tuesday mornings when the temperature soars above 15C and sniffed out by a Argentinian donkey named after Neil Gaiman. Rare ingredients. I am all about them.

I got up early this morning (I may have OD’d on sleep yesterday) and made two batches of test pops: Vanilla Elderflower, and Toasted Coconut Cream. They won’t be ready for tasting for many hours, so in the meantime I’m gathering ingredients (by donkey) for the next two recipes to try: Lime Pie and Sugar Pumpkin. I will need people to eat these pops, because I want to try them all but I cannot possibly eat an entire batch to free up my molds. This is a serious problem, and one that can be solved by YOU.

The silence coming from this corner of the internet belies the activity swirling around me on a daily basis. Among the things I meant to write about but ran out of time/forgot/was too busy drinking Jägerbombs wrong are:

  • Ed and I went to a Footballs game last Saturday, courtesy of work. It was my first football game ever, I had no idea what was going on, and I want the orange vinyl boots the cheerleaders wear but Sam won’t let me get any. It was also my first time inside BC Place since the upgrades (I don’t sports often), and it is very nice inside. I like.
  • For the last two Fridays, I’ve been out drinking with coworkers to say goodbye as everybody leaves me for greener (literal and metaphorical) pastures. Last Friday was the worst, and I almost cried several times. I hate goodbyes, and two of my favourites just left: Monday is going to suck because they’re gone and because I think I left the tequila open on my desk, and next Friday is going to suck when we do it all over again to say goodbye to an additional 6 people. I’ve also heard some extremely disturbing rumours that management is planning on moving me away from my hard-earned new desk over to a terrible desk in the Sales area, and I am kind of pissed about that: do you have any idea how many people I had to kill to sit where I am now? MANY. Don’t move me, damnit.
  • I obeyed the law on Tuesday, and doing so RUINED MY LIFE.
  • I had to take the written test again to renew my learner’s license, but now I can ride Lola as long as I have an adult accompanying me and it is daylight out and I go slow like snails. Luckily, I don’t have to wait to take my parking lot test: I can do that right away, and my road test soon after. If nothing else, getting that enormous ticket (which I still haven’t paid – hey, anyone want to buy some Fancy Pops?) spurred me into action – with a little Energon and a lot of luck, I may be completely legal mid-August. That would be super.
  • We went swimming on Thursday night, for the first time in FOREVER (more specifically, since Cuba). It was so much fun, and I saw a tiny version of me. More swimming needs to happen; perhaps even some Night Swimming. 1992, I will relive you yet.

Today I need to .. do stuff. I had a game plan, but I appear to have forgotten it. Does anyone remember what I wanted to do today? Other than impatiently wait for popsicles to freeze? For some reason I think it had something to do with pants, which is strange as I do not wear pants. Maybe burning some pants? That must be it. To the fire pit!

hot and barely legal

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  • It’s really hot out
  • I got my Class 6 learner’s permit, and I can take my skills test at any time

I am at a bar to reluctantly bid two of my favourite co-workers a fond farewell. I am half drunk on boozy fruit. I have a hall pass.

All this and more, when I return to the Internet tomorrow!

new contender

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.. for the WORST THING IN THE WORLD:

Last night I was working really hard on drifting off to sleep when I heard Cheddar making “about to puke” noises. Most of the time, we ignore them – she’s gonna throw up and we can’t do anything about it, so we’ll clean it up later. I was fully prepared to pretend I didn’t hear her, when .. *splash*.

What the fuck. That sounded .. wet. She was also gearing up to puke again, so I leapt out of bed and ran to my bathroom just as she was throwing up on my rug. Well, that’s better than the carpet, I guess. I made sure she was done, then looked for the source of the splash. She puked on my bathmat – annoying, but they can be washed. Oh, look – she must have been on the toilet lid when she started throwing up. Okay, let’s wet some paper towels to clean things up, and ..

.. was she on my counter?

OH GOD WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK

I found the splash: my lovely pain in the fucking ass cat had thrown up while standing on my bathroom counter; COVERING my makeup and brushes in a vile trifecta of gross liquid, food, and hairball. She actually filled an upturned lid with vomit. I was thoroughly disgusted, and fucking LIVID – Cheddar never goes up on my bathroom counter, so why the fuck was she there and also decided it was the best place in the world to throw up?

I spent the next hour swearing loudly and disinfecting my entire bathroom. I was glad (but still angry) to discover she hadn’t puked on any open containers; I was able to salvage everything (except the lid; I was too horrified to deal with it). Brushes were soaked in a disinfecting brush cleaner and rinsed within an inch of their lives. All containers and compacts were rinsed, wiped down, and cleaned again. Counter was scoured. Rugs and bathmats were thrown in the laundry; cat was glared at really hard. I’m still annoyed with her, and she’s banned from my bathroom (and should probably be banned from my office for good measure). Animals are disgusting. Why do I have them again?

It’s probably good that I am so broke at the moment, or I’d be tempted to throw out all my makeup and buy new stuff that wasn’t once covered in vomit. Sure, I’d need to go to the UK to fully do so, but I’m willing to make that sacrifice. I am a trooper.

Stupid cat.

robot house

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Bit by bit, I am turning my house into a fully-automated robot I can live inside. It’s sort of like how I planned to live inside Optimus Prime when I grew up, which didn’t happen for a variety of reasons (his insistence upon not being real chief among them). Still, as technology creeps ever closer to sentience, I find I am slowly able to outfit my place in gadgets I can control remotely for fun (mine) and profit (theirs). Sure, I can just turn the lights on manually, but this is the future: I have no time to do things analoggally. I demand an app to do everything; from turning on my fan at night to reminding me to wear a jacket when it’s balls-ass cold (hint: this is Vancouver; it never gets balls-ass cold). TECHNOLOGY! It’s making me lazier than ever!

Last week during my rage-spree I bought a Belkin WeMo switch and motion sensor. I have the switch attached to the fan in the bedroom, and with the IFTTT app it turns off at 1:30 am and back on again at 8 – just enough for me to fall asleep in breezy comfort, but not make it hard to get out of bed in the morning because I’m shivering under the covers/a layer of cats. This is fantastic, and I am very pleased with the setup.

I’m less certain about the motion sensor, though: I don’t know what to use it for. At the moment, I have it set up to send me an intruder alert if there is more than 30 seconds of activity by the kitchen counter between the hours of 10am and 5pm Monday to Friday, but it seems there should be way cooler things to do with it. When the days get stupid short, I’ll set up script to turn the lights on when I get home, but I don’t need that functionality right now on account of all the daylight ever. So, what should I do? I feel as though I should buy some sort of wacky machine that turns on when motion is detected. Maybe something with smoke and lasers. The cats/home invaders would probably enjoy a random light show.

More technology, please. I want my life to be needlessly (but awesomely) complicated!