On some level I should probably be worried about this, but it’s hard to be afraid of cute mystery notes that say you’re awesome:

awwww!

Hee! I don’t know who my secret admirer is, but I have my suspicions – there are very few people I know who are within note-leaving distance with the gumption to hunt down Lola and leave me fun surprises. Of course, I’m only considering people I actually know – I don’t want to think about complete strangers being able to track me down that easily. My mother never did warn me about perverts on the internet, but if she knew what the internet was and just what I actually DO on my computer all the time, she’d be obligated to Have a Talk with me about it.

What DID scare the hell out of me was coming home last night to an empty house and finding the TV tuned into the Edmonton/Florida game. I’m sure it was just a cat on the remote, but it was still alarming – coming home to hockey on the TV is not at all out of the ordinary, but not when I’m the first one in the house. Maybe we’re being haunted! Ghosts I can handle; ghosts who double the amount of hockey watched here I cannot.

Today there will be outside times!

maybe not outside on a beach in california, but outside nonetheless

My 20th (oh god) high school reunion is this summer, and I’m debating whether or not I should go.

A lot of people are wildly divided on reunions, and I’m not really sure where I fall. I didn’t have a bad time in high school – but I didn’t have a great time, either. School was just something I did between work and band practice, and I really don’t have any strong feelings about it one way or another. I suppose I’m lucky; I wasn’t bullied in high school. I wasn’t super popular, either – I was .. well, I wasn’t invisible. I had friends. I knew people and people knew me. And that’s about it, really.

Yeah, I have a lot of bad memories from that time in my life – but honestly, school has very little to do with any of them. 90% of the badness came from my mother (this was during the apex of her abuse) and all teen angst bullshit (sadly without a body count) I was going through: I broke up with my first boyfriend in grade 11 and it was devastating; any bullying I DID receive came from my home room teacher; I briefly got involved with a Bad Crowd, and I worked at McDonalds. School was where I went to get away from all of that: no more, no less.

Also, until very recently, I was convinced I didn’t actually go to high school at all and my entire life had been created in an autistic boy’s snow globe.

If I lived in the same city as my high school, I likely wouldn’t think twice about it. However, it’s in Victoria – so in addition to the cost of the weekend (there are three events priced per couple at $25, $20 and $100) I’d have to take the ferry over there and stay in my mom’s sauna in the dead of summer. It’s also over a long weekend, so the ferry will be insanely busy. All told, the weekend will cost me a few hundred dollars, and that’s money I could be saving for London.

Truthfully, I can come up with a thousand reasons to NOT go to the reunion (my overall feeling is “meh”, I wasn’t popular or loathed enough to make a romcom-style triumphant return, I don’t particularly have anything exciting to share, I don’t care about your eighteen children or who’s bald/fat/now identifying as a woman, anyone I would be excited to see either won’t be there and/or I’ve already been in contact with online elsewhere, I’m shy and would likely puss out at the last second anyway, Ed won’t want to go and I don’t want to go alone, it’s a trap). The reasons TO go are pretty small: there’s a few people I would like to see, maybe between now and August I will become wildly successful and/or actually graduate high school, there’s a slim chance I’ve repressed some awful high school drama that will come to the surface just in time to turn the trip into an epic tale of redemption and revenge – but is that enough to lay out the money and time? I am uncertain.

I’ve only been to one reunion before, and it wasn’t my own. I remember feeling really awkward around all these strangers, and I can’t help but feel it’ll be exactly the same at my own reunion. Yes, technically I know a lot of people .. but from an entire lifetime ago. In my final years of high school, I was already forging my identity elsewhere – my social circle mostly consisted of McDonald’s coworkers, and later, creepy perverts I met online. I had outgrown the high school scene long before my “graduation”, and revisiting it all doesn’t really move me one way or another. It makes me yawn, and my eyes water (although everything makes my eyes water; allergies are my FAVOURITE THING EVER).

Did you go to your reunion/would you go if it came up? Would you go at the $300 price tag I’m looking at? Tell me what to do, internet! I am undecided!

dot dot dot

This is the only kind of yellow paper I want to see on my scooter after a day of somewhat illegal parking:

:D

I don’t know who left it, but I certainly appreciate the sentiment (and the relief once I realized it wasn’t a parking ticket)!

IT CONTINUES TO BEGIN:

i amuse myself regularly

I rode into work today! I can’t quite see Lola from my window, but I can see her from a couple cubes over. There’s street parking around here – $4 for 10 hours – but I shoved myself in behind a car for free. The parking meters here are weird and don’t appear to be controlled by the city, so we’ll see how long I can get away with scooter squeezing before we move down the street and the hunt begins again.

The office is less than 6km from Sparta, so it’s a very quick commute. My ride in was jolly, if a little frosty – I could have used another nine pairs of gloves. Still, it’s awesome to be riding again in sunshine times – I love my scooter. And if I continue to be afraid of the lunch I packed, I’ll love the freedom to hop on Lola in search of food that won’t kill me. Hooray!

It’s funny how quickly you can settle back into a routine after time off. Less funny was the dream I had last night, in which I went back to my old job after three months and had to do an office tour for new hires only to be horrified by the appearance of walls everywhere. I’m fairly certain there are some deep, meaningful messages within that dream, but I’ll leave the mystery for my stalkers to whisper about amongst themselves.

How’s by your Wednesday?

One thing I had forgotten about working in this area of Burnaby is the omnipresent laundry smell – if the wind is blowing in the right direction, all oxygen is replaced with the cloying scent of really, really clean laundry. There’s a commercial launderer(erererer) directly across the street, and it smells. It doesn’t smell BAD, really – just chemically fresh. It’s like how dryer sheets smell nice in small doses, but opening a new box makes you choke as the vanilla lilac death blossoms of freshness reach down your throat and bungee jump off your uvula. I’ll take the carcinogenic chemicals any day over burnt coffee, but this morning it was startlingly bad.

I am pleased with my right now.

IT BEGINS

First day at my new job! I’m settling in nicely – driving into a friggin’ blizzard this morning did little to deter my plans for world domination. I have a desk with a massive computer, access to Diet Coke and ice cubes, and everyone is super nice. I’ve already started nesting; having brought in a bag full of “office essentials” (garden gnomes and pictures of Transformers) to make my space more my own. I have a chair with no arms, power for my iPhone, and I know where the bathroom is. Things are going along swimmingly!

I really need to deal with the horrible fluorescent lights overhead, though. I am a creature of tech – I work better in the dark (and fluorescents give me a headache).

My first three hours back in space have been excellent!

I can try and change my title all I want, but I’ll always be an astronaut – it’s time to stop fighting fate and simply give in to my spaceward destiny.

When we first moved to Vancouver, we lived in East Van just shy of Burnaby. The location worked out well for us, because it was next to a train station so Ed could get downtown for work and pretty close to my space job on Canada Way. Years passed, jobs changed, and we moved to North Vancouver and back again. I desperately miss North Vancouver, but we’re close enough to it for now .. and I like our place, so that’s a good thing.

Also, it’s pretty close to my new job on Canada Way.

I’m working two buildings from the place I worked at when we first moved to Vancouver. That’s a pretty big coincidence in itself, but in three months our office is moving. Down the street. To the building I used to work in. On the same floor I used to work on.

I am actively gunning to NOT get my old desk back; that would be too weird to comprehend.

Who said you can’t go home again? After 6 years of non-space adventures, I’m returning to orbit a little bit older (truth), a whole lot wiser (questionable), and with a great deal more stuff.

Things are funny!

bound'ry rooooooad take me hoooome to the plaaaaaace i belooooong

I usually like to have a few months of weird behaviour (aka being myself) under my belt before I have to have the awkward “I don’t drink” conversation with new co-workers, but we’re doing things a little differently today.

I has job. I start on Monday, but the company is having a pre-St. Patrick’s Day beer meeting at 3pm today and have invited me along for introductions/high fives. I’m nervous, but aware that I’d be more nervous going in blind on Monday morning so this is a good thing. It does mean that I’m going to have to explain my alcohol allergy much earlier than I normally would, though. I’m never quite sure if people believe me; that they secretly think I’m an off-the-wall drunk who commits unspeakable acts of public nudity while under the influence – but there’s not a lot I can do about it. It’s not just the allergy, either – I just plain don’t like the taste of alcohol of any kind. Yes, I know that’s weird. If you weren’t tipped off by everything else about me that is unusual, welcome to the party.

Nervous. Can’t decide what to wear. And, as always, thinking about tacos.

Will report back shortly with the important info: office proximity to Diet Coke, availability of scooter parking, whether I can turn my cubicle into a toy store, what my new title will be (I’m leaning towards “Judge Dredd”).

I am a Terrible Asian because I have no fucking clue how any of this is used:

what the shit is all this

i tried to play scrabble. it did not end well.

WHY IS THERE A KEY

When we were cleaning out the house of my mom’s stuff, I stumbled upon this mahjong set. She was going to toss it out, but I rescued it because it came in a shiny case and I have the attention span of a – ooh, a dime! It’s so pretty! I’m gonna take a picture and post it to Instagram!

Where was I? Oh, right – mahjong. I think my mom brought it with her when she moved to Canada from Malaysia. It’s old – the tiles are yellowed, and the (extremely confusing) manual is typewritten and smells like old, old paper. It’s a complete set; all the tiles are there and five tile holding thingies with spikes on the end that I am assuming are to be used as a weapon when the match ends. There’s a pile of coloured chips with holes in the center that are held in place by a rod with a pivoting end, a couple of dice, and this weird number dial labeled “Pass-The-Buck”. Oh, and a loose pile of orange chips. And I have NO IDEA what any of it is for.

My only exposure to mahjong is on electronic devices, where’s it’s a solitary game of matching tiles. There are no dice, chips, buck passing or weaponized death-sticks anywhere in sight. I’m really just hanging on to the thing because it’s old and kind of neat, but I have zero idea how it’s used. If I were a better Asian, I would totally rock this shit. Instead, I like to build towers of tiles then walk into them, pretending I’m Godzilla. Although .. that’s pretty Asian too, now that I think about it. Maybe I’m not a complete sham after all!

I wonder if I should donate the set to one of the Chinese senior centers downtown. Thoughts?

i could make crafts with them, too. the world needs more jewellery made out of tiles.