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

My dad died 6 years ago tonight, and at his bedside I swore. A lot. Not only did I not want to be there, someone had forgotten to remind him that he was invincible and therefore should not be there either. I urged him to get up and shake it off, and then we’d go to the lake and he could try to teach me how to skip stones again because I never could get the hang of it. I coaxed and I cried and I cajoled and I promised I’d eat all my veggies and clean my room, but in the end, my father died just after 10pm on a warm late summer evening.

In addition to swearing regular swear words, I swore that I would put avenge his death with brutal and exacting vengeance, Kill Bill style. I don’t really know where to start, which is why it’s been six years and I’ve yet to buy a yellow jumpsuit or adopt a really cool nickname. I suppose I should get on that, but at least Uma Thurman had an idea of how to find her enemies – what am I supposed to do against the cold uncaring face of time itself? There’s no shiny Japanese sword mystical and hand-crafted enough to beat up time in exchange for taking my dad. Stupid men over 90, why you gotta be so feeble? Not cool, man. Not to mention the mysterious cancer that just “happened” to show up out of nowhere, striking my dad down in his prime. How do I fight that? Maybe I should start with a soundtrack. Get a cool soundtrack, and the mysterious origins of my creation will make themselves known in a highly stylized flashback. Oh yeah. We’re really moving now!

Seriously though, I miss my dad. And crying gives me a headache. I should eat some chocolate. If it works for Dementor attacks, it should work against the ugly aftermath of .. this.

A few months back I found a wicked deal on one of the local e-coupon sites: 2 nights in Whistler, steaks and terrifying gondolas. It seemed like an excellent idea, so I purchased the voucher and went on my merry way.

This weekend Ed and I are using said voucher, and are currently holed up in a fancy suite in the middle of Whistler Village. We had dinner at a steakhouse last night, and today used the Peak to Peak passes to go way the hell up a mountain or two. It’s our anniversary on the 21st (ps: anniversary tacos will be had; join us if you don’t suck), and we are pre-celebrating in style.

Truthfully, we’re being kind of boring but it’s exactly what we need. I did go into the office on Friday to get some work done even though I was still Mighty Ill, and it wasn’t until we had left the city far behind us that I started to feel even somewhat human again. I’m still not 100%, but I no longer feel as though I’m on a different axis than the rest of you (and the alarming surprise vomiting is almost gone entirely). I think it was a combination of sick and stress – at any rate, spending a quiet weekend swanking it up in a hotel is kind of awesome.

The addition of the two Peak to Peak passes in our weekend deal was the thing that really caught my eye – it’s one of those things that I’d love to do but would be extremely hard pressed to pay the $50 per person to go up. With our Excellent Deal in hand though, we merrily made our way up the first of two gondolas to explore the mountain before it’s crawling with people who enjoy the cold wet stuff that falls from the sky. The day was overcast with the occasional spot of sun, and what we were able to see was breath-taking (I’ll post pictures when I’ve got a real computer at my disposal; I packed my iPad camera adapters in preparation for London) and I only almost fell out of the small gondola twice. The actual P2P gondola was amazing and terrifying – it’s the longest cable-suspended gondola in the world, and if I thought about all that empty air beneath me for too long I got dizzy and panic-stricken. Still, it was beautiful up there and I’m glad we got to do it even if I wasn’t really up to doing any of the trails – being sick and in super thin air equals hard times.

After the gondolas we wandered into the village for some food, then came back to hotel room to nap. Ed is currently reading, I am cursing my decision to not bring my bluetooth keyboard, and I may take a bath. We are not a wild Larry (auto-correct insists on Larry, so there he is), but I needed this. We both did.

What started as a stress headache brought on by yesterday’s doctorb appointment (more on that later) got worse and worse as the day went on, culminating in a headache-filled sleep made up of dreams about headaches and hurting from headaches and a party in which everyone had to wear a headache to attend. When I woke up, I very nearly pulled a Cheddar (sometimes she’ll wake up from a nap and puke on the bed) – my head had hit number two on Billboard Top 100 chart of worst headaches of all time. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to drag myself into the shower and remember how to get clean, wanting to die with every movement I made. By the time I finished and made it to the Moisturizing Station I knew I was in trouble, what with the fact my head hurt so bad I couldn’t see, the cold sweats, the shaking and the uncontrollable urge to purge. I stumbled back into bed, keeping it together long enough to bang out a 4-word email to the office informing of them of my impending death by migraine, then lay there in extreme danger of simultaneously vomiting, passing out, crying pitifully for my mother, spontaneously combustioning and more. I took the strongest drugs I could find and gave serious thought to taking eight more when things didn’t get better immediately. Eventually Ed woke up and closed the windows for me, allowing me to sink below the surface of consciousness until I swam up again almost 6 hours later – still hurting, but downgraded to a tropical storm. I can handle that. At least I can see again.

This has not been the best week I’ve had in the history of weeks. We were supposed to ride up to Whistler tomorrow to celebrate our anniversary, but the weather isn’t playing along and we have to take the car. I’ve never ridden the Sea to Sky on Lola before, and I was looking forward more to the ride than the stay in the village, but it’s not going to happen. Part of our anniversary weekend was going to be a trip to the baths at Scandinave, but I’m so freaked out about work and expecting to be fired any second (being sick today did not help my paranoia) that I don’t want to spend any money at all (the trip to Whistler is already paid for), so we’re not going to the spa. I realized I was dangerously close to running out of crazy pills this week, so I made an appointment to see the doctor yesterday. It took 103 minutes for me to get in to see the doctor, and my appointment took 3 minutes and 20.1 seconds – this started my headache, because I wasn’t expecting the appointment to take three hours including travel and I had a crapload of work to do. It didn’t help things at all that the doctor’s office is in a lead-lined basement and I couldn’t get a 3G signal, OR that when I finally did get a connection 75 minutes into the waiting I discovered that the axe had started falling at work – a VP “decided” to leave, and his replacement somehow started last Monday – or that I still had so much work to do and my increasingly terrible headache was making it hard to think. When I finally got home, I worked and swore and worried and ached but not fast enough and had to skip Heather’s Wednesday Night Salad Party. I’m supposed to have tomorrow off for our anniversary weekend, but I’m feeling so guilty about being sick today that I might go in for at least half the day tomorrow, since we’re not riding up to Whistler anymore. And my head still hurts, and oh the embarrassing medical issue I’m dealing with is basically unavoidable so we’re tinkering with my dosage again.

I’d like a do-over on this week, please.

Sorry for whining. I’m just sore and sad and scared and sweaty and stressed and other terrible things that start with S. My coping skills aren’t at their best right now, and .. you know, I always feel out of sorts this time of year. This Sunday will be six years since my dad died, and while everything I’m dealing with can’t easily be chalked up to moping, I wonder if the deathiversary is weighing heavily on my subconscious. Hm. Doesn’t help by knowing, though.

to do: burn down your house (with the lemons)

I’m stressed out about work and there’s nothing I can do it about it.

I still love what I’m doing – each day is every so slightly more ridiculous than the one before it, and I am vastly pleased that no one questions the silly things I put in my documentation. My team is awesome, my boss is awesome, no one bats an eye when I stick things on my forehead and take pictures – all this is good. I am content, at least in that area.

Unfortunately, almost everything else sucks. The entire company is stressed out and under pressure because no one knows what’s going on behind closed doors: the new CEO has the whole executive team in meetings 24/7 and scary decisions are being made, and no one knows if there’ll be layoffs or reshuffling or what. New CEO is nowhere near as warm and fuzzy as our old one was, and has basically turned our fun, easy going atmosphere into one of secret meetings, barked orders and paranoia. I know he was brought in to fix things, but .. it’s scary in here. Everyone is worried, and no one has any answers. I’m trying to keep my head down and just work through my own projects, but the air in here is electric with fear and that blows. I’m worried for myself, my team, my boss, my coworkers, my desk: if I get escorted out in a round of layoffs, I’d need to collect all my STUFF and normally someone will box it up for you. That can’t happen – most of my STUFF is special and/or irreplaceable, and it’s everywhere. It’d take hours if not days to remove any physical trace of me from the office, and years to boring up the hundreds of documents I’ve written.

That’s all worst case scenario, but one I need to reluctantly admit is a possibility. I hate this passionately, but there is nothing I can do about anything and that sucks. My tummy hurts. I don’t like scary change.

Maybe our new CEO will come down with a terminal case of Boneitis.

he doesn't want any ass prints on his new door :(