Who doesn’t love a good revenge movie? And who doesn’t like Michael Caine?

This is the story of a former marine (integral to the story), Michael Caine -Harry Brown, whose wife has recently died. The neighbourhood where he and his long-time friend live has been overrun by dope-selling gangs. Harry’s friend has been frightened and taunted by the gang and decides to take it upon himself to take action against them, however, he gets killed in doing so.

Devastated Harry decides to do what the police haven’t done and get rid of this crime element. He’s quite successful in weeding out the chaff.

You probably know how it’s going to end, but we enjoyed the movie regardless.

Recently I’d been getting a lot of pop-up chat messages on my facebook. I guess the messages were from people on my friend list who are there because of the games, cuz I certainly didn’t know their names.

Anyway, the chats were something like, “get a free iPhone, click here”. And if I didn’t already have an iPhone, I just might have clicked on that, even though I usually ignore that crap cuz it’s usually just crap. My overall thoughts were that it was spamming.

So after a bunch of these came, I was getting the message from one woman over and over again. I got pissed off and I messaged her and said, “stop messaging me you fucking turd!”.

A little while later I heard back from her with another chat message that said something to the effect of… ‘that was a virus I had and I posted it. Don’t talk to me like that, I will take you off my friend list. You’d better watch out, you don’t know who I am’. Not the exact words cuz I can’t remember them, but that was the overall message.

So I chatted back to her and said, “oooh, you’ll take me off your friend list – I don’t even know who the fuck you are you stupid moron”, and left it at that. Then I blocked her so that I’ll never hear from her again.

I guess what bugs me about the whole thing is the fact that this idiot is sending a virus around to people (inadvertently) but has the nerve to get mad at someone who tells her to fuck off because of it. Like I read her wall and found out she had a virus? I don’t normally read anything from these “friends” who are there for the gaming, most of the time I hide them so I don’t see a whole bunch of posts from strangers.

Anyway, the message is – watch out for chat messages in Facebook that mention a free iPhone. Apparently it’s a virus.

I just finished a three-day course downtown and I’ll actually be happy to go back to work tomorrow – I’m just all coursed out. It was a lot of information packed into 3 short days. I’m sure I won’t remember half of it, but I did learn some neat little shortcuts I can use – love the keyboard shortcuts.

Anyway, since the course was at Yonge and Bloor, I decided to take the subway down since it’s only about half an hour that way. I parked at the subway for $5/day and bought $25 worth of tokens, and, voila! There I was downtown, early. Thankfully for me there were no hold-ups like I remember happening all the time when I used to take the subway.

Tonight was the only night I had a bad time on the subway and that was because some asswipe had his music on so loud I could hear it halfway across the car. I had decided not to use my iphone this evening, but after listening to his crap, I just put my own music on to drown it out.

There was some fat woman collapsed on the stairs (which caused me to miss my train). I don’t know what happened to her, but everybody had to walk up and down on the stopped escalator while they had the stairs blocked off with ambulance workers and her laying in the middle of the stairs. What was holding us up on the stairs was all the gawkers who were over on our side making sure they had a look at the woman while we were all trying to get down the stairs. Again – asswipes.

That was about the worst of my days downtown though. So that’s not too bad. Today was so cold I ended up going into H&M (across the street) and buying a sweater. I figured that wouldn’t kill me since I didn’t have a sweater that colour anyway.

I took a few pictures, but not that many since our lunch hour was only half an hour. So I didn’t really get any interesting shots. And I would have met up with some former coworkers for lunch, again if my lunch hadn’t been only half an hour.

Let’s just hope there’s some stuff I can remember to take back to work with me. My next two-day course is in mid-September and that’ll finish off all levels of this course. I’ll be the big expert which I suppose means that I’ll then be supplied with more work to do.

Well I told you I joined baseball once again after x amount of years. What I didn’t mention was what it was like after baseball. What it was like coming home *owwww*.

Yes I was a little stiff. After playing and then sitting for over an hour in the car on the way home, by the time we made it, I could hardly walk up the three flights of stairs to my house. I started thinking, “WTF am I doing playing baseball at 53?”.

However, with that said, the next morning when I got up, my snookey was saying, ‘take it easy’, but I had forgotten about baseball and I just got up like normal. And you know what? I could get up like normal. There was not a damned thing wrong with me, I wasn’t even still stiff. Ha ha, nothing wrong and I played baseball.

But, and here’s the big but, I thought it would be good to go work out that day. So my daughter and I headed off to Aquafit at the club. And I had no problem doing that, I actually thought it would be good for me.

Well it wasn’t good for me, cuz somehow, after doing the aquafit, I’d screwed up my back. So I was a little stiff getting up out of a chair and trying to walk, and then I worked from home on Monday so I wouldn’t look like the old, decrepit invalid that I am.

Now my back is better – although my thighs were a little sore throughout the week from the bending. I’m a little concerned that I’m off to play baseball again tomorrow night, but maybe I’ll just take it easy on Saturday and say ‘screw the aquafit’. Maybe I won’t push things since I’m so old that it takes a week to recuperate.

In the long run though, when I was asking myself ‘wtf is a 53-year-old doing playing baseball’, I had to remember that there’s another woman on my team who’s 78.

Yes, I signed up for a women’s baseball league. I signed up to be on the waiting list at the beginning of the summer, and, guess what? They called me.

So tonight I go and play baseball for the first time in, what? Five years? Seven? More? I hope I’m able to move. Also a bad thing is that I now have that fucked up arm that may prevent me from throwing – I’ll find that out as I try throwing. I’ll still be able to catch, and I’ve told them I play first base or catcher, so I hope they don’t put me at first base cuz I think I’m too scared to play first base any more. I hope to be catcher or nothing.

If I go dragging all the way out there (and it’s close to my work, but then it doesn’t start til 8:30 so I have to come home first and then back out there), and if they tell me they want me to play rover or something, I’m gonna tell them I’m not interested. I’ll play catcher for them. I also don’t know, since it’s called Slo-Pitch, whether it’s that really strange throwing – like slowly up into the air to lob down and then hit. I’ve never played that kind of baseball – don’t know if I can hit a ball like that.

And this league is pricey. They told me it would be $50 and I asked if that would be prorated since I wasn’t there for 13 games. They told me that was the prorated price, full year is $140. That’s more than I’ve ever paid for baseball… seems expensive to me.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. I’ve gotta get ready to go and find the park, maybe warm up a bit and then start playing. Wish me luck. Let’s hope my back doesn’t go out in the middle of the game or that I don’t get smacked in the head with a bat.

I bought this movie just because it said something like ‘best comedy, action since Kill Bill’. Or it was something similar to that, and since I love Kill Bill and most Quentin Tarantino movies, I figured I’d buy it – and not in Blu-Ray cuz I also wanted to be able to put it on my computer, and to use my Blu-Ray player on my computer means I have to unplug one of the monitors, so it’s just a big pain in the ass.

Anyway, the movie… I liked it. It’s about a young geeky guy who decides that he’s going to be a superhero. And at first, with the pace, you think that it’s gonna be some kind of family film, it runs that way. But as he realizes what he’s gotten into and finds that there are other superheroes around, the pace picks up and the movie becomes not only interesting, but a little campy as well. Even my snookey liked the movie and he doesn’t like Nicolas Cage.

I’d rent it if I were you. I’m glad we bought it because we’ll end up watching it again.

I’m working from home today, just because I know it won’t be a busy day close to the end of the month. Yesterday, I didn’t eat my sandwich at work because the cafeteria had some good looking food, and I decided to have that instead of my lunch, so I took it home to have for lunch today.

My snookey usually comes home for lunch since he only works 5 minutes away from home. He came home today and said, “what do you want for lunch?” and I said, “I’ve got that sandwich from yesterday”. He said, “why don’t we split the sandwich” and so I said, “ok, you’re not very hungry?” And he said he wasn’t. I was being polite, I had intended to eat my sandwich.

What I found strange about it was, what if I was hungry? What if I wanted to eat the whole sandwich? It seemed like a strange request to me that he was asking for half my lunch. Maybe he just didn’t feel like making anything and so he was being kind by letting me have half of my own sandwich instead of him eating it all, I dunno. I guess I found it a bit rude that, because he wasn’t that hungry, I wasn’t either.

Anyway, I had half my sandwich but now I’m feeling hungry and my stomach’s growling. I guess I’ll have a spoon of peanut butter (you know, my usual dinner). I’ve got a meeting tonight so I won’t be having dinner either. I guess I’d better glom down some peanut butter now.

You know that we’ve been working on the hallway. It’s all finished except for putting back a couple of doorknobs which my snookey is ‘supposed’ to finish today.

On Friday I took a vacation day to try to get some of this work completed. So we were hammering up the chair rails, and I think we’d hammered about ten nails in when our doorbell rang.

Coming up the stairs was the landlady. My snookey got to the door first and the landlady was angry. I think because she thinks she can steamroll my snookey, she demanded to know what we were doing. I found this a little annoying – maybe if she’d asked what all the noise was about (and hammering ten nails isn’t ‘all’ the noise), I might have told her. And it looked like my snookey was about to ‘answer to her’. Instead I told her that it was none of her business what we were doing in our own apartment.

She didn’t like that answer and started talking about all the noise and banging. I told her that we had hammered about 10 nails, and that it was before 11:00 at night (it was around 2:00 in the afternoon), and we weren’t breaking any noise ordinances if we made some noise in the middle of the day.

She didn’t like that answer either and she started going on and on about what we were doing. I said that we were paying over $1000 a month in rent and that it was ‘our’ apartment, she had no business coming over and demanding to know what we were doing in our own home.

She told me that if I wanted to play it that way, she would get her lawyer to draw up the papers and we would be out in 60 days. I told her I had a lawyer too and she could go ahead and get her lawyer involved.

She tried pulling out all the stops. She said that I am running a commercial business in my home and she would take that to court. I told her that there was nothing illegal about a home-based business. And since she had also been a client, I told her that I’d bring that up in court as well. She said I had removed the closet door (in the studio) and made a mess of it. I said that I had paid for custom closet doors for that room and when we left they would stay.

She talked about how we’d done things to the apartment that we weren’t allowed to do (I don’t know what cuz all we’d ever done so far was painted), and I said my snookey had made repairs and upgrades to the apartment, so she shouldn’t be complaining about anything we’d done. She mentioned that she’d just had someone come in to repair a crack in the wall, and I said, yes, once in 13 years you had someone else come in to fix something – every other year my snookey’s been repairing, she should have been having someone come in for 13 years, not one.

As she started walking away in her rage, she turned and said, “why are we arguing? I don’t like to argue. I thought we were on a friendly basis… remember when you wanted a new rug and I paid for half the new rug?” And I said, “yes, and I paid for half that rug which enhances your apartment when we leave and makes us happy while we’re here”.

She ended up telling us that she’d like us to stop the noise and I told her that we only had two more nails to hammer and then we’d be done.

My overall thoughts are this: Go ahead and try to get us evicted for hammering something one day. I’m sure that’ll hold up in court. If I lived in a high rise somewhere, the landlord would not be showing up at my door thinking he had the right to find out what I’m doing in the apartment I pay for. When I think back, there were times she mentioned something about our computer room light being on and how I must be working late at night – her nosy way of telling us that she knows our lights are on all night. But we pay for the effing hydro, so if we want to leave everything in the house on, we will. It’s our dime.

I just couldn’t get over the gall of her showing up here and thinking that we had to answer to her.

Well my new plates were here waiting for me when I got home from work last night. And luckily I had arranged for a vacation day today, because I had to go over to the Ministry with the old and new plates to do all the paper work involved in putting the new plates on and transferring what was left on my year’s sticker.

I thought, because it was a government office, that they all opened at 8:15 or 8:30, so I headed over for 8:30. Well they don’t open til 9:00, so I had to sit there for half an hour and wait.

As I was sitting in my car, a line-up started to form, which only pissed me off because I had already been waiting longer than those people. I think you should get a ticket or something to wait in your car and then they can call your number – like in all other government offices.

I did notice this woman in line who was so skinny, I think her girth was about the size of my thigh. I can’t even imagine being that skinny. I don’t even think my kids were ever that skinny when they were babies. I wonder where she gets her clothes. She must have to stop in a kid’s department somewhere. And it’s not like she was short, so she’d have to find adult length with kid sized waists. Is that a size zero? I’ve seen size zero before and they looked bigger than she did.

Anyway, my new personalized plates are on the car. New car, new plates. Everything’s looking good. Now I’ll have to take it for a car wash, inside and out.

We’re still working on finishing up the hallway, and we’re really not half finished. I’ve painted walls, I’ve painted trim, I’ve painted doors. And a couple of those things in certain areas need another coat – but I’m not doing that right now – I’m a little painted out.

At the moment we’re just trying to get all the doorknobs on. My snookey is just working at getting the deadbolt screws on the back door. At least if that’s on, I’ll feel a little more secure about that. Right now we’re trying to figure out which knob is for what door.

Since my son has been staying with us, we haven’t had the alarm on. I guess we don’t want to share the code with him because then we’d only have to change it again and it’s a pain in the ass trying to come up with a code that we’ll both remember, keeping in mind how many other codes and passwords I have to keep in my head.

Oh, speaking of codes, my facebook page was hacked the other night. I got a message that I changed my password at 3:01 a.m. in Canada. At 3:01 a.m. in Canada I was in my air conditioned bedroom, sleeping in Canada, so it wasn’t me. I had to go through a few hoops to change everything over on that.

Anyway, back to the hallway. Tonight we were supposed to put up the chair rail. We started with one wall and my snookey was levelling it. But when we went back to the marks we’d made, that thing might as well have been vertical, that’s how ‘not straight’ it was. These things also need staining, but he’s talking about taking them down to the garage to do it. Well, Mister, there’s no air conditioning in the garage and it’s damned muggy here. Needless to say I ended up saying that I wasn’t in the mood to do that stuff tonight – so he can just work on doorknobs as far as I’m concerned.

After the chair rails we’re going to have to wallpaper the half-wall to hide the flaws in the drywall, but, of course, that’ll take at least a few days (until we actually get around to doing the chair rails). This little job has turned into something that’s probably going to take us a month to do. It would help if my snookey didn’t have to go off every Saturday, cuz I don’t feel much like working every night after work.

That’s my update. I’ve got to go out into the hallway cuz my snookey just asked, “did this deadbolt ever work?” Yes it did. We always used it to lock that door.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a federal marshall sent to an ‘insane asylum’ because one of the patients has disappeared. He and his partner uncover a conspiracy – the institute is not just for housing the criminally insane, but the doctors are also performing testing with the patients in order to make them feel no pain – perfect soldiers.

Some of the testing includes drug ingestion which causes hallucinations, and our hero has been having quite a few hallucinations in his time there.

As they explore the island, searching for the missing patient, they uncover more and more proof that what they’ve been told about the experiments must be true. However, since there’s only an on-demand ferry to get on and off the island, will our hero ever get off or will he be captive because he’s learned the truth?

There’s a good twist to the movie, one that I had already guessed, and I was hoping for another twist to the twist but it didn’t happen. You’ll find out at the end.

It was a good movie, albeit a little slow moving. But well done. Go ahead and rent it. I’d watch it again.

This movie is about some strange goings-on in Nome, Alaska. Strange as in alien abductions/dream sightings/insomnia that get wiped from your memory except under hypnosis, and even then, the memories are so scary that the dreamers react violently.

This movie is based on truth and throughout the movie they show actual film footage of Dr. Taylor (who documented the interviews) and was interviewed, along with some of the townspeople whom she hypnotized.

The movie kept my attention. As a matter of fact, half-way through the movie, I started believing that alien encounters actually existed – especially when I saw all this footage. At the same time, seeing the footage not only made it believable, but was a source of irritation to me when the real doctor was shown alongside the actor (Mila Jovovich) who played her.

By the end of the movie I started thinking that the Dr. was a nut case and that none of this was true. However, that doesn’t explain anything that happened.

Decide for yourself. Rent the movie.

We painted the hallway years ago. Sponging was all the rage and we raged. We painted it a dark grey with some lighter grey effects, and therefore, the hallway was like a cave.

I liked it. I didn’t care that it was dark, after all, we had a hall light. However, the other day when I was looking for something in the linen closet (in the hallway) and couldn’t find it, I had a little hissy fit inside my head and said to myself, “WyTF do we have this painted so dark!”. It was then I decided that we needed to paint the hallway a nice, light colour.

Yesterday I went to Home Depot and picked up some paint… Mission Sand is the colour. And while we have quite a few rooms that have a darker beige (almost taupey) colour to them, this colour is a lot lighter than those, while keeping with the main colour scheme of our place.

So today we were painting. I told my snookey I’d wake him at 8:00 so we could get started. But at 8:00 (even though I woke up at 6:00 when my alarm went off for some reason), I felt a little guilty about waking him so early, so I let him sleep til nine – then I woke his lazy ass outta bed.

As the morning progressed, and I let him have a wake up tea – which I made him… I’m so sweet – it was more like noon by the time we got around to doing anything.

This time I did NOT buy the paint that’s supposed to act like a primer and paint all in one. When we painted the studio with that crap it was almost worse than just using paint by itself. So I just bought regular old paint, CIL, and let me tell ya, this light beige colour has done a good job of covering almost black walls. We will have to do a second coat, but I’m really impressed with the job it did, and we’re gonna head off in about half an hour to do the second coat.

That will not be the end of it, however. Oh no, I decided that all the door frames needed to be painted a nice, bright white and so I bought some of that too. That’ll have to wait til tomorrow when I’m working at home, but I don’t expect too much work since everybody else took a vacation day, except me… whose back-up is on vacation.

And after all that, it still won’t be the end. Because when I look at those walls, all I see are drywall joins. I don’t know what they had for standards back in the early 1400s when this place was built, but every foot going up the wall, you see separate drywall pieces put together. Maybe that was why we painted it so dark and spongey in the first place – to hide those.

Anyway, I figure we can buy some chair rail and find some wallpaper and wallpaper the bottom half of the room, below the chair rail. Don’t know what that’s gonna cost me since I already spent over $100 on the stuff I bought for painting, so I’m not too thrilled about that aspect, but if we can find a nice striped wallpaper, it may be in keeping with the rest of our strange decor. I think we might also buy another ceiling light – maybe one that has a few bulbs in it that we can direct in different ways. If we can find something like that, we’ll be able to see well inside that linen closet, although it is better now already with the lighter paint.

So you see… there’s no rest for the wicked. Holiday, schmoliday, there’s work to be done.

Because I’m going on this cruise next year, I figured I’d have to get my legs waxed for it so they’d be nice and smooth for a longer period, with no stubble, and no having to pack up a razor and shaving gel to take with me.

And since I know from other waxes in other areas (Fu Manchu), the first times are the worst for waxing. Your skin isn’t used to having something VIOLENTLY RIPPING OFF your hair. It leaves your skin red for a time, and sometimes leaves little red bumps. I figured I’d better start acclimatizing my legs to this violence long before my trip.

So the other day I purposely went out for a leg wax. And, yes, I was doing all, top and bottom, unlike having just the bottom done like I’ve tried before.

My thoughts? Waxing your legs really hurts. Really, really, really fucking hurts. Owwwwwwww. After that third strip on my thighs I was beginning to wonder whether I could go through with it or not, the first time, never mind any other type after that. And although I didn’t ask for it, this woman was also waxing my ‘bikini line’. Did I say the thighs really hurt? I won’t mention how much more that hurt.

Then she turned me over (no, I wasn’t done) and did my backside. And when I say my backside, I also mean my backside as she pushed my underwear up a bit because she decided my bum must also have been too ‘hirsute’.

If I’ve got a furry little bum (little? who are we kidding?), I’m ok with it – and so is my snookey; no, really. At least she didn’t go all out with the behind – after all, I barely knew her… just met her that day.

And while I’m thinking about it, I don’t think those women get paid too much. To me, I’d want a whole bunch of money for having to look at strange old women’s big hairy thighs and asses. So I had a pedicure after all that pain, and gave her a really good tip for all her hard work.

I’m hoping I don’t have to do this too often to get ready for my cruise in April. Every couple of months at most would be good. I’m hoping it’s not every month, but then if I let it go too long then the hair will get longer and that will hurt more, so I guess I’ll find out.

Cruise, I’m gonna be ready for you.

I know I haven’t written in a bit, but I was busy buying my new car. Yes, boys and girls, no more 1997 rusted out Ford Taurus for me. I’m driving in style now; after all, I’m worth it.

I’m thrilled with this car, it’s a 2010 Hyundai Elantra (in carbon grey mist colour in case you’re interested). I bought new floor mats, a new steering wheel cover, and a new charger/holder for my iPhone – I figured that way I could take the old charger up to my office since it also has a regular electrical plug in on it, for when I forget to charge my iPhone.

I’ve gotta say that having a new car makes me feel like I’m rich. I’m far from it but it’s a nice feeling. It’s probably been over 20 years since I last bought a brand new car, I’ve only bought used cuz it makes more sense with the depreciation as soon as you drive one off the lot. The last new car I had was totalled when my ‘then-boyfriend’ was driving and as we rounded a curve, someone decided he’d try to whip into a driveway in front of us to avoid the lights. That car was a write-off, but I had financed the purchase, and so the insurance only covered the cost of the car – I still had to keep paying finance charges when I had nothing to drive… a little hindering in trying to get another car.

I love the look of the car, and it feels really roomy inside. The trunk is huge and it also has push down back seats for carrying stuff (just like my Taurus did). It’s probably more awkward with the pushdown seats because there’s a curve in the middle of the trunk that makes the space less; in that way the Taurus was roomier, but I think it should still be big enough for what I’d need. I’m very impressed with the way it handles and takes corners. Even the dual coffee cup holders (front and back) are perfect height so that your cup doesn’t go flying if you turn too quickly – sometimes you don’t realize how quickly you’re turning until your coffee cup goes flying out of your console (as with my Taurus – had a console I put in there for coffees that also went sliding when I turned).

All in all, I’m a happy camper. I’m loving my car.

I love having onion in my salad. It gives a whole new depth to the salad.

I can’t stand tomatoes in my salad. If they’re there, I usually don’t eat them, but every now and then I’ll have a salad with tomatoes and I try it just to see if I’ve been wrong all these years in hating it. But I’m not – I still usually hate it.

Oh, since I’m here, and my post is more like a tweet than a post, I’ll tell you about how I’m going on a cruise in April. Yes, boys and girls, I, who never take more than one or two days’ vacation at a time, have booked a cruise with Carnival. And my snookey will not be accompanying me; it’s just me and the girls – girls who also make jewellery that is – there are probably going to be a few hundred of them.

Anyway, I’ll be going to Nassau and Key West, and to Florida to pick up the flight. This thing is sponsored by Swarovski, so it will be a learning cruise for me – hopefully a learning cruise, since I don’t want to be paying a whole bunch of money to just sit around without learning something.

So that’s my good news – a cruise for me *woohoo!*. Also, I just had some salad with onion in it.

The other day I saw this guy close to the bus stop and he was trying to hand out a little booklet – Watch Tower or something, but nobody would take it from him. That made me think back to the Jehovah Witnesses who kept leaving stuff at my doorway because they came one day when my daughter was there and had a big long conversation with her.

Anyway, that got me to thinking about fanatacism and wondering just when somebody jumps from being religious to being a zealot or fanatic.

A woman I know, added me as a friend on Facebook. I don’t know her that well, but I knew her enough to say, “oh, ok, nice to see you here”, rather than me just adding all kinds of strangers who play the same games I play.

It was only a few days later that I saw she had posted something like “Thank Jesus for everything”, or “only through God do we… yada yada”, can’t remember. But it was stuff like that and my first though was, ‘holy shit, I didn’t know she was a jeezus freak’.

So I’m thinking I should ‘unfriend’ her, just because I’m not into that kinda stuff or the people espousing it, but I suppose I could also leave her there and just hide her posts or something. If I hide her posts though, maybe I won’t see it if she ever writes anything to me and she’ll wonder why. But if I unfriend her, and she doesn’t have a lot of friends, she’ll probably notice that I’m not showing up in her friend list.

Why is it that jeezus freaks have to become freaks? Why can’t they just be religious to themselves, and adoring God and thanking him for everything good in their lives (and everything bad cuz it gives them strength). I think in some religions (maybe it’s all, I dunno) you’re supposed to try to help people see the light – and get them to sign on the dotted line. I don’t know if that’s why these people become so verbal about their religion.

Whatever the reason, I just want them to leave me alone, and believe whatever they want quietly. I’ll do the same thing and not shove my beliefs down anyone’s throat.

I’m only gonna say this – don’t bother. I think it was shot in Canada (hate Canadian films), it’s old (2007), the acting and the storyline are drivel (don’t know anybody in it).

You’ve got better things to do with your time.

I like to get a pedicure about once a month or so, even though I know I could do that stuff myself (with less expertise) and have sometimes.

The only thing that bugs me about getting a pedicure though, is that the women who work there are always carrying on some conversation in another language. It bugs me because I don’t know what they’re saying. I don’t know if they’re talking about me (why they should be, I don’t know).

I find it really rude. Maybe some of them just came here and can’t speak English. I don’t know. However, I find it just as rude as someone taking a phone call when they’re having a conversation with me – they don’t find our conversation important enough to carry on without interruptions.

I’d be interested in learning another language just so I could find out what these really stimulating conversations are while I’m getting a pedicure.

Lots of big names in this movie made me rent it. I’d never heard of it before, but when I saw George Clooney and Ewan McGregor and Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, I thought, “hey, they must have put some money into this, so it will be good”.

It was good. I’ve read reviews that say it wasn’t, but I found it quite enjoyable. I’ll take it as a comedy, although from what I’ve read, people don’t know if it’s an action film with little action, or a military film with little military stuff, or a comedy, since it’s not an outright ‘jokey’ movie.

The story centres around Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a reporter who’s been dumped by his wife for his one-handed boss, and his attempt to find fame as a reporter by going to Iraq (also hoping that his wife will find him more valuable, someone to feel sorry for and somehow want to get back together for those reasons).

Bob finds Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who supposedly has paranormal powers that were put to use by the military way back when.

If you’re expecting a comedy like Momma’s House (or WvTF that Eddie Murphy stuff was), you won’t find it. Most of the amusement from this film comes from regular lines that regular people would say to someone professing to be psychic.

I’d rent it if I were you. Why not, you might have a few laughs.

I think it was last week as I was running around the house in my bra and underwear – probably getting ready for work – that my snookey said to me, “wow, you’ve lost a shitload of weight!”. Well that’s just what every woman wants to hear.

I said, “whaddayamean?” and he said, “you’ve lost a shitload of weight”.

Reality is, I haven’t lost any weight; not one bit of weight. I haven’t been exercising and converting it all to muscle either, and nothing’s changed – my tight clothes are still tight (thrown out most of them) and my loose clothes are no longer loose.

Over this past menopausal year I’ve gained weight and it doesn’t seem to matter if I eat less, my body doesn’t weigh less or look less.

I told him I hadn’t lost any weight. He was adamant that I’d lost a shitload of weight. He said that even my hips were smaller. And, you know, I’d love for my hips to be smaller. They’re not huge, but smaller anything or everything (except boobal area) would be nice.

So I have to wonder WrTF he’s seeing that I lost weight. And I also have to wonder how fucking big he thought I was before that I could have lost a whole bunch of weight and still look like this. He believed it. He wouldn’t stop arguing with me about it.

I suppose I should be happy that he thinks I’m thinner, however, I think I’ll save that happiness for when and if I actually do ever lose some weight.

Oh, no, don’t do that… your hair will catch on fire.

I’ve been thinking that there’s absolutely no reason for this website to stay up any more. I don’t write too often. I don’t have anything interesting to write about. I don’t have a lot of spare time. There’s all those applications on line to stay in touch with people (like Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

So do you want to know the only reason I’m keeping this website up? It’s the name. I like the idiotonastick domain and I don’t want to lose it. I don’t know what else I’d use it for, other than this, but still I don’t want to lose it for some reason.

I have other domains like that too. I just like the names – and a good domain name is hard to find since there are millions of people out there trying to register their domains daily.

So, boring or not, the name will still be here. Hopefully once in a while I can write about something.

I was thinking the other day about our portable air conditioner in the bedroom and how it’s not really portable. It’s portable in that it’s on wheels and you can take it down and put it up more easily than a regular air conditioner, but it’s not portable. You have to attach the hose to a window and duct tape it to the window and not move the air conditioner til the end of summer.

That’s not portable to me. I was thinking that what I want is a really portable air conditioner… one that you can turn on, move from room to room – whichever one you’re sitting in that’s hot, and then move it back to the other room – like the bedroom at bedtime to cool things down.

With the exponential growth of electronics over the past 10 years, you’d think that someone could have done some R&D on air conditioners and how to come up with this product. If I were an inventor, I’d try to come up with it, but I’m not.

So this is my plea to inventors. Please create a really portable air conditioner. And maybe make it so that it has apps – then you’ll get everybody buying in (as if really portable is not a big selling point). You’ll have developers creating new apps for you, and maybe even give it WiFi – that’s gotta be how it becomes portable.

I’ve been practicing my soldering. Yes, soldering. I had one of those cold soldering irons and I could never figure out how it worked – well, it didn’t. I couldn’t solder anything with it.

So I broke down and bought a regular soldering iron and, voila! The thing worked like magic. I actually was soldering. So tonight I’ve just been practicing to see if I could get it down to something half decent looking instead of trying to file off all the solder I’ve got on these little rings.

I’m watching youtube, I’m trying to get the knack of it. Cuz, who knows? If I get good at it, I may just start soldering everything.

I think I told you that I had let my daughter back into my house after kicking her out for stealing and that only led to her stealing some more from me and getting kicked out again.

Well recently I had a jewellery show. And there was a woman I’d done business with before who wanted to bring some of her stuff to sell at the show as well. My daughter showed up that day and wanted to spend the night. I let her. Wouldn’t you know that after that, before I had taken the woman’s stuff back to her, I noticed that a white purse was missing. And this was a white purse that my daughter had been looking at and talking about how much she liked it. Hmmm, who has to pay for that missing white purse?

Now, after seeing how hot it’s going to be this coming week, I decided to go get some light clothes ready for work. I figured I’d wear a skirt, after all, I just picked up a couple of new skirts when shopping a few weeks ago. Well, whaddayaknow? One of my new skirts is missing. A skirt I HAVEN’T EVEN WORN YET is gone, and I paid an arm and a leg for these clothes because of the store I bought them from.

I can’t fucking believe that every time I let that girl into this house, something else is missing. She’s not even my size for Christ’s sake. And when I ask her about it, she always denies it. “Oh no, it wasn’t me. Not this time. I know I’ve taken things before, but I didn’t take anything this time”.

That girl is not coming into this house again. How many fucking chances did I give her? And every time I turn around, she steals something else from me. I’ve had it. Anything else and the police are being called and she’ll have a fucking criminal record because she chose to steal from her mother.

Yes, I’m just noticing that I haven’t really written anything about anything except movies for the past few weeks. And I can’t say I was doing overly well before that with the number of posts.

I don’t know what up with that other than the fact that I keep doing other stuff when I get home from work. And I seem to spend a lot of time on Facebook playing the stupid games. Yes, they’re stupid and, yet, I keep playing them.

Not a helluva lot has been happening with me except boredom at my job. That should end soon because I offered to help out in a different department half my time. I don’t know how that will work for their billing – maybe they’ll split up who’s paying my salary, as long as I still have a salary.

Other than that I’ve been making quite a bit of jewellery. Of course I haven’t had time to put any of it up on the website. Instead of taking pictures and uploading and describing, I’ve been making the stuff. I’ve taken tomorrow as a vacation day, so when I finish WvTF I’m planning to do tomorrow, maybe I’ll sit down and go through a pile of pictures to put up. Can’t expect people to be wanting to buy when they don’t know what there is to buy now can I?

So tonight is TV night for me with Community, Parks & Recreation, The Office, and 30 Rock. I think they’re all season finales which is good – good in that they won’t be reruns.

I’ve got to get ready for that… go get a beer and position myself in my ‘spot’. I’m looking forward to TV. Topped off with Jeopardy of course.

This movie was on TV last night – we didn’t rent it, we rented something called iMurder (or iMurders – forget which) and it was shit so we turned it off and looked for something on TV.

It was good. It’s a war movie (as you probably know) and the story starts with a small team of men whose team leader has just died. A new guy comes in to replace him but the new guy is a real cowboy, as in not sending the robot out to see if there are bombs but, instead, going to check it out himself. We don’t know in the movie (or at least I didn’t) whether or not this cowboy (played by Jeremy Renner… never heard of him) has a death wish, but he always manages to come out without getting blown up.

I know this movie won an award (over Avatar and I’m glad it did – too much hype about Avatar). It held our interest. Neither my snookey nor I were doing the one-eyed shuffle. I’d even see it again. So you might as well see it. Maybe it was on one of those movie channels we have, so you might still have to rent it.

Today, I’m off for my gastroscopy.

Gastroscopy (Esophagogastroduodenoscopy, or EGD) is a procedure where a doctor examines the upper part of your gastrointestinal tract (gut). The upper gut consists of the oesophagus (gullet), stomach and duodenum. The doctor uses an endoscope for this procedure, so it is sometimes called an endoscopy.

Info from Rudd Clinic

I’ve already had the colonoscopy and the other kinda colon thing where they check your smaller bowel. All of these ‘scopies’ are to find out WTF is causing me to get bloated (and have trouble breathing when bloated) all the time.

We’ve ruled out bowels, now he’s gonna run a camera down inside me. I don’t know what this will show, if anything, especially since it’s the ‘upper’ part of me, so I’m not expecting any bad news.

So I couldn’t eat after midnight (as if I usually eat after midnight) and I can’t drink anything for four hours before the procedure. Well that meant from 9:30 this morning I couldn’t drink anything. So I sucked back about 5 tea’s when I woke at 6:45 and snuck a Tim’s in there too. I’ve got another two hours until this thing starts and the first thing I’ll do afterwards is head off to Tim’s to get my fix.

Then it’s back to work tomorrow. I hope they’re not thinking I’m too expendable, having to go for all these procedures and not being busy at the same time. They might start thinking, ‘hmmm, she’s not here again and WTF is she doing when she is here?’ Nope – not gonna go there.

Remember a few days ago I gave my review on the movie, Anvil.

Funny thing happened. I was coming out of the grocery store and going to get into my snookey’s car, and there, parked in a van ahead and over from us, was a guy who looked just like Robb Reiner from Anvil. There was another guy standing outside the van talking to him.

Well I looked. I looked to see whether it looked like him or just someone similar looking. And I kept looking for I guess what seemed too long because both these guys were then looking at me. So I said something like…. “Anvil?” – and they said, “yes”.

So there we were, talking to the guys with them asking us what we thought of the movie and asking if we’d seen the trailer and read the testimonials. I told them we hadn’t and was told (after he asked me if I had internet – me…. internet… computers – didn’t bother telling him just what a geek I am), that we could see the trailer at http://www.anvilthestoryofanvil.com.

I went and checked it out, watched the trailer, read the reviews. You can buy the DVD or even a t-shirt. I almost did buy a t-shirt except that I hate those t-shirts that have the high necklines. The baby doll t-shirt was lower, but not low enough for me. High t-shirts make me look like crap. And I only almost bought it because we’d actually met Robb now and I thought that was neat.

Anyway, check it out. If you watch the trailer you’ll know whether or not you might be interested in seeing the documentary. I guess they must be making some money now; now that they’ve got a movie out.

I can’t remember if I told you that my daughter had been staying with me again. She was living at her dad’s place, he got abusive, and I told her to come over here. I’m sure you remember when I wrote last year about all the stuff she stole from me… thousands of dollars worth of my possessions, money from my jewellery shows, and I’m sure other things that aren’t covered under ‘my possessions’.

Anyway, I kicked her out after that and I really didn’t trust her to be in my home again, but things sounded very bad over at her dad’s place so I decided to trust her and let her into my home.

She was staying here for about two months until this weekend when I once again told her that she’d have to leave. She stole more stuff from me. And I’m not talking about my tanktops that I end up seeing her wearing, and I’m not talking about food. I don’t even think that she stole any money from me.

But what she did take was my wireless mouse for my laptop. It was pink (to match my laptop) and I’ll have to go through some effort to replace it – not to mention money.

She also stole my Telus internet stick. That thing cost me $36/month and I had to sign a one-year contract in order not to pay for the stick. Well my contract’s not over and my stick is gone. So I have to continue paying off that contract even though I don’t have the stick, and they told me if I wanted a new one it would cost me $200. So guess who won’t be having an internet stick any more?

The reality is that I can live without the stick – I hardly ever used it. I don’t like the thought that I’ll still be paying for something I don’t have, but it’s not life and death to me not to have it.

What the bad thing is to me is that I’m hurt. Hurt by her again. I trusted her and she let me down. I think she had it pretty good here. She had a nice place to live, food on the table, no abuse, some extras thrown in, and pretty much all the freedom she wanted. And she decided to throw that all away so that she could take my stuff. And I don’t understand why. As soon as I saw the internet stick missing, I called to cancel it. So no one could use it which means it was also not saleable. So why take it?

I don’t know if there’s some deep seated psychological meaning to all this, or if there’s some hatred going on for me that she decides she’ll hurt me by hurting my purse. I don’t know what it is. But it hurt me, disappointed me, and although we have a good relationship other than that, it makes me feel unloved.

Nicolas Cage plays a cop who gets hurt at work and ends up with a back problem. He’s put on prescription drugs and is functional still but turns to harder, illegal substances and becomes the ‘bad’ cop, who, of course, also has a gambling problem. So many people with gambling problems… I’d just like to get rid of that Farmville monkey on my back.

Things seem to be going really bad – but then all of a sudden everything turns out for the best. But the ending leaves you wondering. Has he straightened out? Did he just corrupt that guy who’s been clean for a year? I think it’s the latter but I’m not sure from that ending.

It was an ok movie but I found Nicolas Cage irritating.

I scanned the description of this movie (not really reading in depth) and for some reason saw the name Robb Reiner and figured this was a comedy akin to Spinal Tap, so I put it on my ziplist.

Imagine my surprise when this movie was not a comedy, rather a documentary on the real group, Anvil (heavy metal) and their start to where they are now. And the Robb Reiner thing? That’s a guy in the band, not Rob Reiner the actor/director, so this was not the least bit comedic.

After about 5 minutes, I said to my snookey, “I don’t think this is a comedy”. “This looks like a documentary… I’m gonna see what else is on”. He said, “give it 5 more minutes and we can put something else on if we don’t like it”.

So we gave it another five minutes and then started getting into it. We watched the whole thing, all about the lives of the band members and how they were trying not to get screwed by the people who’d booked them for gigs. It kinda reminded me of my son’s band and the shit gigs they’ve played while never really getting much recognition for their talent.

Anyway, the movie wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t watch it again but it was interesting to learn about the band that supposedly launched other types of heavy metal bands and yet never got their ‘just desserts’.

I took off today so that I could get stuff done – tax stuff. I always have to provide my accountant with an Excel sheet of my receipts. I feel like, ‘why am I doing this… why aren’t you doing this?’, but, WTF, I’m faster at it than he is so I might as well do it. It also makes tax preparation a bit speedier too since he wants me to sit there with him, which is happening tomorrow.

So as I was inputting all these receipts, I noticed my gas receipts. And on most of them, they always have that extra penny. So it’s not $20 it’s $20.01 or $50.01 or $40.01. I guess that speaks to my reflexes, doesn’t it? I certainly don’t purposely go for the $.01. You’d think they might have a better pump system where you could actually squeeze the thing and have it go a penny at a time when you’re getting up there at $49.96.

Anyway, what I’ve found so far is that I spent over $13,000 last year on supplies for my little jewellery ‘hobby’. I haven’t yet counted in the cost of that stupid Interac machine which I think was something like $87 a month, or bank fees, so I guess I’ll be around $15,000 total expenses. Luckily I make a couple of thousand back from that .

I don’t know what the rules are – as in, how long can I spend $13 to $24,000 (the previous year) and only make a few thousand. How many years can I have these write-offs or does that go on as long as I want to keep spending? I guess we’ll find out in time. And in the meantime, I’ll continue to put $50.01 worth of gas into my car.

I’ve been waiting and waiting for this movie to arrive. I ordered it from CH Canada on March 2nd or 6th, and I finally got it 3 days ago. I was beginning to think there was some fuck up and that I’d never get it.

Anyway, this is one I wanted to see at the theatre because the effects looked good, but agoraphobic me, never got around to it. So I was forced to watch on a 52″ screen which I thought was good enough.

The story line is roughly the same as War of the Worlds. In this one, the estranged father is John Cusack, not Tom Cruise. And, of course, the son has problems relating to the absentee dad and prefers the new husband/boyfriend; that is, until the old dad becomes a hero. And this movie is no different than that one in it’s “dad the hero” conclusion.

There are no aliens ready to attack the world in this one, instead, the earth’s crust is shifting and so the world is going to end – sooner than was predicted by the experts, so there’s the big rush to get on those ‘arks’ that were built to house the elite who paid $1 billion euros to have themselves saved.

Usual happy ending, or usual somewhat happy ending in some movies, and the arks withstand the tumultuous weather, tidal waves brought on by the shattering earth, yada yada yada.

The only reason you’d want to see this movie is for the effects. However, with that said, you get to see some of the same effects again and again and again. And again. I liked the effects, but *yawn* what can you do next?

I own the movie so I like it. I’d watch it again just for the effects, but it is overly long. Is every stinking movie 3 hours these days? Is that supposed to make us feel that we got our money’s worth?

I actually like this, even though I was “Journey-ed” out years ago and will turn the radio station if a Journey song comes on.

I don’t remember this guy from Glee (of the few times I’ve seen it). I like Glee for the blonde woman and her diabolical plans, but I don’t like it cuz there’s way too much singing. I know, I know, it’s about a glee club, but I don’t like all the singing. If I want singing, I’ll watch American Idol.

Stopped by my dentist’s office today because she’s been talking about all the work I’ll need done on my teeth, and I just had a few questions to ask her about it before I’d actually agree.

My teeth don’t look that bad; it’s not like they look rotten or something, but I’m actually missing a tooth on the back upper right and one on the back lower left from years and years ago when I didn’t have a dental plan and couldn’t afford a root canal. Yes, pull it, I said – each time.

That’s not the work I need done though. What I need done is to have my teeth made bigger. And why would I want bigger teeth? I don’t necessarily want bigger teeth. However, my dentist wants me to have bigger teeth because she says my teeth are too small to be able to put a bridge in where those missing teeth are.

My teeth are not only small because I’ve never had big teeth, but because over my 53 years, I’ve managed to grind my teeth every night in my sleep. I guess I’ve done a lot of grinding, because they are very small (too small to be able to create a bridge).

So after finding out all the details today, I guess I’m going to go ahead with it, if her facts are straight. If her facts are straight, my dental plan would cover about $6000 of the cost. That means that there would be $5000 left for me to pay out of pocket. And that whopping $11,000 for my teeth would create bigger teeth all over my mouth… wouldn’t just want a willy nilly big tooth here or there. She said we could pay for this over 3 years at approximately $150/month.

That’s a big expense for someone like me. Someone like me who runs into her overdraft every month because she doesn’t make enough money. However, I can’t help but think that I’ve got to do this now while I still have a dental plan, because when I’m old, with no plan and my teeth are falling off in pieces because they’re all cracked, WTF am I supposed to do then?

This would also make my teeth even whiter because you can choose whatever colour teeth you want. So I could go ridiculously white if I wanted and look like a TV star – an aging, ugly, decrepit TV star with a nice white smile.

I’d have to have ‘temporary’ teeth for a while – 3 years worth as she uses up what she can use of my plan each year. So the only thing I could hope for is that I continue to be employed for at least 3 years, and that she’s absolutely sure that my plan DOES cover this work. I want confirmation of that from somewhere – she said she checked my plan.

So boys and girls, that’s the next big thing that’s going to happen in the Jafer household… big, bold, beautiful (white) teeth. Wow, $11,000 for teeth when I need a new car.

I was thinking about the many variations we have for words in English, such as throwing up (I thought of this because I wasn’t feeling well yesterday – not that great today either). We have puke, vomit, hurl, throw up – those are the ones I can think of, feel free to give me more if you can think of them.

I just started wondering if they do this in other languages too… whether they have all kinds of slang words for one particular thing. Oh, that reminds me of the penis. Does it? Does it remind me of a penis? The word penis and all the euphemisms for that one; most of which I find quite amusing, although right now the only one I can think of is Johnson.

If you speak another language, please let me know whether you do the same stuff with your language as we do with ours. And if you just speak English, tell me some funny names for things that I may or may not know.

I wish I could say that I was feeling like I’m 17 again, but I’m not. I’m feeling like the 53-year-old woman that I am – which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just not 17, and I suppose I should be happy about that. 17-year-olds are pretty damned stupid but think they know everything… they’re so wordly.

I think this movie is somewhat old, but it was on my ziplist for a while and arrived on Friday. It’s about a guy (Chandler from Friends – what’s his real name anyway?) who is in the midst of getting a divorce. That marriage was fairly unhappy, in part because he’s always complaining that his life was nothing due to his wife (who got pregnant at 17 and he married her instead of becoming the big basketball star that he was going to be).

For some reason, when Chandler revisits his old high school to look at pictures of his glory days, the janitor has some magical powers that turn Chandler into the 17-year-old Zack Effron (teen sex symbol – little too pretty for that in my eyes if I were a teen).

So the movie’s about him going back to school, playing basketball again, hanging out with his estranged kids (who don’t know it’s him) to find out what they’re really like and becoming the dad and the loving husband he had never been.

It was a cute movie. My daughter (16 years old) watched it too, even though she’d seen it a bunch of times. It wasn’t a complete waste of time and was a nice ‘family’ kinda film provided your kids aren’t 5 or 6.

I am a hairy beast, yes, but that’s another topic. I was growing my hair. Every now and then I get sick of short hair and decide I’m going to grow it.

Problem is, I can never let it grow for long.

If you look at the stranger’s picture below, you’ll see what two months of growing looks like. However, as of today, I couldn’t stand it any more, and decided to opt for the “Ellen” look of the stranger on the right below.

I don’t know why that stranger’s hair looks blonde-ish since I think it’s probably quite a dark brown, but that’s the wacky world of lighting now isn’t it?

So once again, my little cartoon figure has matching hair. I had the option of getting extensions so that I could leave that hair alone, but that would have run me about $600, whereas a haircut only $47 with tip. For someone who’s over half into her overdraft, $47 is the better option.

I keep putting it on… two days a week… a few hours of my time. But frankly I’m bored silly with American Idol. I’m bored with hearing ‘fairly good’ singers and really ‘off key’ singers and I wonder why I continue to watch this show year after year.

Is it because there’s nothing else that interests me? Nothing else does. This doesn’t either. I can’t watch scripted dramas because they’re way too predictable. I’ve told you before that I can always tell who the killer is – sometimes before I’ve even met all the characters on the show. And usually I can tell you what the next person is going to say next.

What’s a girl to do watch?

The biggest piss off of all of this is how much effing money I spend for cable. It’s over $150 a month for my cable and internet. We’ve got some specialty channels in there (like the game network that we haven’t watched in months either), but not too many other than movie channels.

And the movie selection? Not overly impressive. I could choose to watch a movie I’ve seen a dozen times, or a movie that doesn’t interest me in the least, or a movie that was made in the 40s. Those are some options. And I guess the breakdown is $50 for internet of which I spend 80% of my time, and $100 for TV for which I may at most spend 20% of my time if I’m not doing something else.

And when I speak of cable companies, I think of my Rogers Extreme internet connection. Sometimes I’m waiting and waiting and waiting for a page to load. I realize that I’m not on the ultimate of ultimate speeds now because they’ve got a new-fangled higher connection that I could be paying $100 a month for, but I refuse to pay more than the $50 I’m already paying for my internet… especially when I’m disappointed with the ‘extreme’ service that I already have and sometimes reminds me of dial-up, although I can’t remember dial-up that much since it’s probably 10 or 15 years since I had it.

So being American Idol’d out has turned into my rant about the cable companies and the big rip for me to have this $150-$200 service per month (it varies – depending on what I don’t know).

Enough talking. I’ve only got 10 minutes to go watch some crappy ass, pitchy, staring into the camera all the time singers.

I thought during the movie awards that this movie had actually been nominated for something. I may be wrong, but I thought I heard them mention it for something.

In my humble opinion, if this was nominated for anything it should have been for one of the lamest movies of the decade – perhaps century. I supposed I should have known better since Robert Downey Jr. was in it, but there wasn’t much to choose from, so we chose this.

The only good thing about the movie was when there was going to be a fight scene and Sherlock Holmes would picture the scene in slow motion, explaining how he was going to beat up the other guy, then it would be in regular motion and he’d take the guy down. Is that not pathetic? That was the only good stuff in the movie. Is that why it seemed so long? Cuz it was crap?

Don’t rent it, you’ll be kicking yourself in the ass if you do. That’s no small feat… kicking yourself in the ass.

I was over at Mommy Knows, reading her tutorial on how to make Silk Tye-Died Easter Eggs. The instructions were clear and easy (even I could follow) and the result was fabulous.

As far as parenting goes, I never had a lot of money when bringing up my kids but, based on her instructions, I could have easily gone to Value Village and picked up a bunch of second-hand ties for that project. And I don’t know where she finds or comes up with her ideas, but she’s so damned creative – and does so much fun stuff with her kids. My kids will remember me for telling them to clean up or to stop tapping; her kids will have all these wonderful memories to pass on to their own kids.

My mother never did stuff like this with me either, so I guess my idea of parenting turned out to be what my mother’s idea of parenting was – only with a little more loving my kids on my part.

Anyway, if you need a project for Easter, and something to do with your children, go visit her. And if you don’t need a project, go visit anyway, cuz it looks interesting and fun and easy – you might just want to do it for yourself.

Happy Bunny Day, everyone!

I’m doing absolutely nothing except updating my site. In case you haven’t noticed much change (and there isn’t much), I’ve switched over to the Thesis theme – not because I needed a new theme, but just because I get the emails, and read the hype, and, after all, I paid for it quite a while ago, so I figured I’d try it out again.

I’m not too good with the hooks and the things involved with editing this one, so I’ve tried to keep it relatively simple so I don’t spend hours and hours searching their site or forums looking for answers to everything I’ve got questions on.

Anyway, now I’m using widgets, which I’ve never used because I like control, but they seem to be working ok at the moment.

So enough about that. I’m happy to have the holiday just to laze around and wait for my son to show up and cook dinner. I have no idea what he’s making – we usually have a ham (because my daughter likes it, I’m not too fond of it) for Easter, but he is surprising us, I guess. I’m kind of hoping it’s not ham because we’re also invited to my family’s place on Sunday and I know they’ll be having ham.

Maybe I’ll clean up a bit before my son arrives – wouldn’t want him to think the place is messy (oh, like I care). Not much else to do on a stat holiday except stuff around the house or playing games in facebook. I could play my new Wolfenstein game, I haven’t done that much. I hate it when you have to keep the CD in to play a game. WTF is wrong with them?

Alright I’m rambling now – must be a sign that I should go do something. My stomach’s growling like crazy, I’ve been up since 6:00 this morning… I think it might be time for food.

Have I told you how much I’m in love with the Pad Thai at Thai Express? Believe it. My snookey and I went there (again) for dinner. The good news is that they’ve opened up one not far from us in one of those ‘big bunch of big stores’ areas. This is not just good news because it’s close, it’s good because every time we go to Thai Express, there’s a huge line up. This spot is fairly new and so there aren’t huge line-ups yet. Or maybe there aren’t huge line-ups because it’s not in a food court.

Anyway, I like the Pad Thai with vegetables. I’ve tried the chicken and beef, but I like the vegetable one the best; it also has egg and maybe tofu in it, with big chunks of broccoli, green pepper, onion and some little baby corn.

We did an experiment. For a while, after working out, I’d have this craving for pad thai, and so we tried different places that were close to us. There’s a thai restaurant up the street, there’s a noodle place a little farther. Both of those places sucked. There was one other place at a food court (I forget the name) that came close, but still was not quite as good.

What I also like about them is that the take-out boxes keep the food really, really hot; not like these places that put your food into a flat styrofoam container. The tall, cardboard, take-out boxes with the little silver handle are great. We always order in take-out boxes because we can only eat about half the meal – then we save the other half for the next day.

Anyway, I’m only telling you this because I got some yesterday. It’s not like they’re paying me or anything. The bad news is that they didn’t have any of the nutritional information on their website. So I have no idea how many calories or carbs I’m eating, or even whether there’s MSG in the food. I emailed and asked them for this info, but I received no response. I’m hoping it’s not too fattening… maybe I’m scared to know the nutritional values.

Holy crap that took long, but we’ve finally got the new fan light up and the new desk installed. He did the fan mostly, and I did the desk mostly. It’s hard to believe that I’ve got less space with this new huge desk, but I do.

Where there is now a hutch, I used to have two long shelves. They held a lot. And I used to have another high shelf running behind my monitors that held two of our printers and my ‘in-basket’. That’s now in a shelf.

I’m going to have to put one of the printers on my snookey’s desk; he’s got tons of room over there if he cleans it off. It does feel spacious over here but then I’m trying not to put too much stuff all over the place – because there’s less space it will look even more junked up if I even attempted to put everything over here.

However, I’ve got room for both monitors, my CPU underneath and my laptop on top, one printer, a lightbox and stuff in shelves. My snookey is now going to attach my magnifying light and my drill (he can wait for tomorrow for that).

As of tomorrow, I’ll only have to clean up the studio where I put everything I don’t yet have put in here. There’s always work. There’s never an overabundance of play time, just work.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new fan light because my snookey said the one in the computer room wasn’t working any more. And believe me, since we can’t put an air conditioner in there, the very least we can do is have a fan in there cuz it’s wickedly hot in the summer.

He has since been trying to install the new one but at the same time he broke the table I used to make jewellery on (a great cherrywood table from a dining room set my cousin gave me) by standing on it trying to install the fan. I told him I didn’t think it would hold over 200 pounds, but he thought it would, for a while he thought that until it crashed out from underneath him.

Because of that, he then had to replace my table but we certainly couldn’t find one of the same quality (not singly, only if we wanted to buy a $3000 dining room set) or the same size. So instead, he bought me a new desk… one of those u-shaped ones which would serve the same purpose – and my desk was in rough shape after 13 years.

So we started putting all the pieces of the desk together, but then when I asked him to turn over a piece, he grabbed it the wrong way and cracked off a piece – a piece with these custom screw things in it that broke and are not easy to get out. He also cracked off a piece of the veneer (was I feeling angry?) but luckily it was the part for inside the drawer.

Then I had to call the furniture manufacturer and get them to send us some of those replacement specialty screws (yes, we searched at Home Depot and Canadian Tire to no avail). We had a hard time getting those things out to put some other ones in, but of course we were then short two. We finally got those yesterday.

So the bottom line is that the fan light is still not finished and it’s hard to do because there is a u-shaped desk in the way. The desk is not finished, but only the hutch part that sits on top – the rest is done (and in the way). If the fan light had been done first, it would have been great… two of us could have been working on that at the same time. It’s not easy to put up blades on an angle with only daylight.

This hutch is going to be a pain in the ass because this furniture is very, very heavy and we’re going to have to lift it onto two of those specialty screws (which work like dowels), and the rest of the desk is kinda in the way.

I don’t know how long it’s going to take to finish everything. Needless to say that my snookey is very tired from staying up til 2:00 last night and going to pick up his son at 8:00 this morning.

In other news my daughter has been staying with us for a few days now since there was some abuse going on by her father – drunken asshole. I was actually on the phone with her when she asked if she could come over. I could hear him in the background threatening to ‘punch her fucking face in’ – this because she hadn’t cleaned her room.

So we’ve got a full house over here (and no extra bedroom since I converted the third one into my jewellery studio). The living room is not looking too neat with clothes strewn around it. And how come my daughter wasn’t born stronger… strong enough to lift a big hutch onto a desk?

At work we have an ‘intranet’ site where people can put up stuff to sell. So since I got the iPhone, I figured I might as well sell my Keybo since I wasn’t using it.

I put up my ad and picture and said that I’d sell my $300 phone for $50. For that $50 I’d also throw in the leather case, the car phone holder (to hold it on hands free), the charger and the car charger. I figured it was a pretty good deal considering the stupid car charger cost me $30 with tax. I even offered for people to take over my Telus account with its per-second billing if they got in fast enough since my iPhone had a new phone number that was good and I might keep.

Well another billing period for Telus came and I’d forgotten to take my credit card off there, so I figured that before I got billed for another month, the account was off. Then I was just selling the stuff above without the account for $50.

Someone at work contacted me and asked if I’d be willing to let the phone go for $40. I said no and then she contacted me and asked to meet up with me to buy the phone.

She showed up to meet me and gave me $34. She said she had spent too much money that day on something else and she’d make up the difference the next day. However, she told me she was giving me $35 and so when I saw it was $34, I emailed her back and said that it was only $34, and she should bring the other $16 the next day.

She emailed back and said she didn’t realize that I hadn’t agreed to the $40. And she didn’t realize it was a Telus phone and not a Koodo phone, so she’d meet me the next day to return it.

I met up with her the next day, she returned my bag and I said, “not a good reader, eh?” and she just looked at me.

All I could think was ‘WTF was that!’. First off this fucking moron wants to screw me for another $10 like it wasn’t a good enough price, but then saying she didn’t realize it was Telus when it was all over my ad. What an asshole. Maybe I won’t try to sell things with people I work with any more. Perhaps it’s better to keep it with strangers (and reiterate price and provider).

My snookey is now saying he might be interested because he thinks his own phone is too small.

I’m not giving you tips, that’s the movie I rented on Saturday.

This was the strangest movie. It’s a back-and-forth between a guy standing up (the serial killer) giving a presentation on how to be the serial killer, and back to scenes where he has taken a video store clerk as his protege, and is supposedly teaching him the tricks of the trade.

I think I would have just preferred a presentation. It seemed more amusing. And as I was watching this movie I kept thinking to myself, ‘are there people out there who might heed these tips?’ They were good tips. I’d follow them if I were going to be a serial killer.

The only actor I recognized in this movie was the psychiatrist, George Wyner. I’ve seen him in lots of stuff but I never knew his name.

For the money, I’d say save yours. There are lots of other movies out there, maybe worse, but maybe a whole lot better.

I forgot to tell you one of the reasons I had such a good sleep the other night at The Royal York Hotel.

Apparently, my snookey got up in the middle of the night to go to the washroom. While in the washroom he fell asleep. When he woke up, he made a wrong turn, and he walked out into the hotel (outside our room). The door shut, of course, as soon as he was out, and so he was out there by the elevators in his underwear, wandering half asleep.

When he finally got with it and realized he was out in the middle of a hotel floor, he found a phone and called to the security desk. They sent two big black burly guys up to the floor. He told them that his wife had arranged this for his birthday and they asked where his wife was – to which he responded, “asleep in the room”.

They opened the hotel room and I was in there sleeping alright. They let him back in the room… probably because he looked so cute in his little stripey underwear.

So it was quite the interesting night for him. I slept right through it. I’m glad we weren’t on the first floor somewhere where he’d be wandering around the lobby

Saturday night was my snookey’s birthday but he usually goes out to dinner with his kids, so I arranged for our birthday celebration on Friday night.

I made a reservation at Canyon Creek Chop House. Mmmm, mmm, mmm. I loved that place The food was spectacular. I finally had a caesar salad that tasted like a real caesar salad (they have their own home-made dressing). It was garlicky, flavourful and big (we split the salad between us cuz I didn’t want to get too full). They also give us some bread while we were waiting and you know I’m not a big bread fan, but they have this honey butter that I could hardly stop eating – even the bread was good, some kind of ‘multigrain’ type but the honey butter makes you want to keep eating the bread even when you don’t like bread that much.

I then ordered the Ultimate Cheeseburger which is described as an “all-beef patty layered with smoked mozzarella, asiago and cheddar, garnished with horseradish-dijon mayo”. I had mine medium well-done and it was probably the most flavourful burger I’ve had in a long, long time. I’m a fan of Harvey’s when I go for fast food burgers, but this was much nicer than that. My snookey ordered the Bacon Cheeseburger, “barbecue basted with applewood-smoked bacon and cheddar cheese”, and I’ll assume his was just as good because he ate it all up. I wanted to try a little of the applewood-smoked bacon, but it’s not like we were at home – I let it go in order to behave like a civilized human being in the middle of a restaurant. The burgers came with a pile of shoestring fries which were the good hand to mouth, non-stop snacking kind, but I had control of myself – didn’t want to fill up too much on fries when I had that great cheeseburger in front of me.

I was stuffed, but since it was his birthday, I had also ordered their birthday champagne with a sparkler (two glasses) or I had the option of a birthday brownie, but I was clever enough to know we’d be full so I had asked for the champagne. We almost ordered a dessert to split, but based on how full I already felt and knowing that we had a night of sucking back beer scheduled, we had to forego dessert. I had plans for us to go play some pool (just like we used to in the ‘olden’ days).

I had bought a $50 gift card for Canyon Creek, and it cost me an additional $20 but we’d both had a couple of beers with our meal, so let’s say you can eat there for under $100 if you’re just having a burger and fries. The steaks cost at least double that, and maybe next time I’ll try one of those – when it’s closer to a pay day.

I had also booked a room for the night at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. I told my snookey to meet me there at 4:30; I arrived around 4:00 and went up to scope out the room. I ordered a king-sized bed and I’ve got to say that I don’t know what kind of beds they’ve got there, but that was the most comfortable bed ever. The pillows were great too, but the bed… I didn’t want to get out of the bed. When Saturday morning arrived (and our check-out time was noon), you could find me still in bed at 11:00 in the morning – me! Me who never sleeps in! If only I could find a bed like that for home. I didn’t even hear any snoring – I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed if it wasn’t for my honey waking me.

Now I’ve got to say that the staff at the reception desk were a helluva lot more friendly on my checking in than my checking out, but I guess that’s just a matter of personalities. I like friendly staff who smile and sound like they mean it when they say ‘enjoy your stay’, not miserable staff who don’t even say thank you when you’ve paid your bill – listen up Royal York.

Anyway, the whole experience was a good one. I got the hotel room for roughly $160 inclusive and that was using the service we have at work where you get deals on things like this, and shows, and other stuff I can’t even think of. So let’s say the night cost me $300 but that’s only because my snookey paid for our night of pool playing and drinking – that probably ran him about $100 too.

I came home and slept some more since I’m not used to drinking so much; my body wasn’t handling that too well. Would I do it again? Yes I would. I’d stay at the Royal York with their fabulous beds. I for sure will go back to Canyon Creek and the next time will hog that caesar salad all to myself and have an extra $30 in my pocket to order the filet mignon.

Ok, this is the strangest movie that you’ll ever see.

Our hero (Christian Slater) is a recently famous self-help book writer, who’s fallen in love with a gorgeous blonde he doesn’t really know too well – although he doesn’t know that. After announcing his engagement at a public event, the pair are mugged outside and the girlfriend is kidnapped/killed, we don’t know what’s going on.

Christian is told by her lawyer that after a year has passed, he will inherit the dead girlfriend’s stuff, so we then see him after a year. After the year, he finally takes his friend’s advice and starts dating again.

This movie is way too obvious. We know that the new girlfriend is a bad guy who is probably just after the diamond’s the dead girlfriend has stolen from Cuba Gooding Jr. – we found that out in the lawyer’s office once our hero left and the bad guys came in to cut off the lawyer’s finger in a paper shredder.

It’s also not totally unexpected that SPOILER ALERT: the girlfriend is not really dead and comes back to save Christian from the bad guys and collect and share the diamonds with him.

The ending was really dippy. I wouldn’t bother even renting this if I were you. You hope that it’s going to turn into something and it doesn’t.

I think my cold has completely gone away, I don’t feel sick in any way, however, I still do have this cough and I’m thinking that it’s as a result of quitting smoking – not the cold. So I think that my lungs are trying to break up WvTF is in there and get rid of it, so I’ll say that’s the reason I’ve still got a cough now.

I’m just waiting – hanging around until it’s time to go to Aquafit. I don’t normally do it on Mondays cuz the woman sucks – she gets down into the water with you where you can’t see an effing thing she’s doing. How are you supposed to figure it out that way? Anyway, I’m just going to that cuz I figured I’ve got to work out when I’m doing the weights and machines so that I’ll have a day off in between doing those to rest the muscles, and since there are no good classes on Tuesdays or Thursdays, I’m going to use those days as the weight days, which meant I had to do a class tonight.

In the 8-9 weeks I’ve been working out again, I haven’t seen any results in my body. I still feel like a big fat pig (and look like one) and I’m a little disappointed in that. I’ve got to get using the weights and machines in order to make a difference and I obviously haven’t been doing that enough.

And I’m also going to be tracking my eating since I know we started snacking at night since we quit smoking (anything for that constant hand to mouth habit). I think I’m going to have to chew more gum and forget about having some popcorn when we’re watching TV, especially since we don’t even pay attention to how much we put into the bowl.

Of course I could have given up beer and that might make all the difference in the world. But on my way home from work tonight, I decided that we should have some beer in the house – what’s a house without beer (my beer… my honey’s got some). If I can get it through my thick skull that I’m going to lay off beer for a while, then maybe I could knock some serious calories out of my weekly diet and actually see some results from all the working out.

Anyway, enough ranting. I should try to do something productive before I go to the club. Like maybe playing farmville or something.

Well the cold is not quite all gone – I have a cough now, just like when I smoked, but at least it’s a helluva lot better. I even went to work out again last night for the first time in a week. I took it a bit easy and just did a little warm up and then the machines – gotta build those muscles if I ever want my body to turn into a fat burning machine. I hope the cough hurries up and goes away – its kinda disappointing to have a cough again. I’d gotten used to it being gone.

Anyway, I’ve got a meeting tonight at 7:00. The good thing is that I don’t have to go all the way downtown for it, they booked a spot up here close to me. According to google, the fastest route for me to get to the meeting will take 8 minutes, and the longest route will take me 12 minutes. So I’m taking my sweet time, having a tea and dinner (I had a turkey breast sandwich on whole wheat) and then I’ll probably head out around 6:30. These are those meetings with the yappy people. But I think they’ve given the boot to one (or at least that’s what we all agreed to at last meeting) and one is away on vacation, so perhaps things will go quickly.

The problem when I get home around 9 or 10:00 at night is that I start my 8 or 9:00 routine of sitting and relaxing in front of the TV. So all of a sudden it’s 11:00 and I haven’t had enough time to relax in order to go to sleep, so I have to stay up til at least 12:00. It screws my timing right up.

Oh, and BTW, I’ve never liked whole wheat bread. I’ve never liked the taste of it although I’ve eaten it before they came out with multigrain, just because it was supposed to be ‘good for you’.

The last couple of days for lunch I’ve had a tuna sandwich on whole wheat bread and, you know what? It was delicious. I’ve been liking this whole wheat bread. It’s Wonder bread! Wonder Plus, 100% Whole Wheat Bread! And it’s got 190 calories for 2 slices with 4 grams of fibre there and only 4 grams of sugar. That’s not bad. There’s another kind of bread that I’ve been eating mostly – I think it’s called Body Wise – which has fewer calories and more fibre, but as far as a whole wheat taste goes, I think I’d stick with this one for a change every now and then.

Ok, I guess somebody better start paying me sponsor money or something for those kind of plugs

Don’t ask me why, but the other night when my daughter stayed over here, my snookey and I were sucking back beer like it was going out of style.

I guess since I drink lite beer, it didn’t have as much an effect on me as it had on him – or perhaps because he switched to vodka after he was out of beer, it had a more profound effect on him.

Needless to say, that he was quite the sight in the morning. I think he was still quite drunk.

He was going out to the store (to buy my daughter cigarettes since she was all out) but he was getting dressed the wrong way. He had his sweatshirt on backwards and he was trying to pull on another sweatshirt as a pair of pants. I watched him for a while and then I told him that the sweatshirt wasn’t pants.

He was out and he called us to ask how she takes her coffee, to which I told him that he wasn’t getting coffee, he was supposed to be getting cigarettes, but he couldn’t find any place to get them.

He got back home and I decided that I would go to the store instead – helluva lot safer and faster. As a matter of fact I probably shouldn’t have let him near the car (especially since it was my car first), but at the time I just thought he was still half asleep and would wake out of it, I wasn’t thinking that he was drunk. Now I think I know the difference.

Anyway, he went to couch and stayed there until 11:30. I started cooking up a weekend brunch and he got up to eat that. Then he laid out on the couch and slept til about 3:30, whereupon I asked him if he planned to spend any of the day awake. He told me he hadn’t been sleeping, but I also told him that I heard him snoring from the computer room, so that foiled that little white lie.

All this just says that I guess old people can’t drink. I know he used to be able to pack ‘em away, but not now.

As you know, not feeling good over here, but I guess I’m better today than I have been. I’ve stopped taking all the medication, just because I’d like the stone out of my system before I show up for work on Monday.

Anyway, last night, while I was sitting here minding my own business, there was a knock on the door. It was my daughter and she was in tears, and there was my ex-husband behind, chasing her up the stairs.

There was screaming and yelling – I told them to come in, I’m sure the neighbours didn’t need to be part of this. As I gleaned what the story was through all the yelling, it turns out that the drunken ex-husband (who not only drove here drunk with my daughter in the car, but also had an accident earlier on in the evening), was accusing my daughter of stealing all his roaches. Supposedly he had about 10 roaches in his car and they were gone, so he was accusing her of taking them.

She told him he could search her, she didn’t take them, but he was having none of any normal conversation. As a matter of fact he once grabbed her and made like he was going to punch her – while half falling over my furniture, and I pulled him off. I also asked him if he wanted me to call the police.

There was another altercation when he came back screaming for her to give him his house keys, he wanted her out of there, she could go live on the streets. I told him that she wouldn’t be giving the keys back, that all her stuff was there and that she’d need to go get it.

So, needless to say, my daughter stayed here overnight, we got calmed down, watched some TV and all went to bed.

As I think back on it, it’s not that I was surprised by this outburst, nor even him showing up here – I seem to be the go-to person in bad situations.

I was just thinking though, what a big fucking nerve he has to show up at my house, drunk, putting me in the middle of his problems – not even thinking about me being sick, although he knew I was sick. It’s all about him. What a pathetic loser he is. While he wasn’t this bad when we were married, the potential was there and is there in full force now that he doesn’t have a wife to tell him what’s right and wrong. And how sad is that for a 47-year-old man?

I got a phone call from him this morning, which I didn’t answer. I was trying to sleep in some more for my cold. Then another call later which I answered and he proceeded to tell me that “I guess I overreacted a bit last night”. Over reacted? A bit? WTF is wrong with you is what I wanted to say. WTF is wrong with you?! However, he probably doesn’t even remember half of it, but he wanted me to tell my daughter to give him a call later on because he’d left some money for her at home since he was going away for the weekend.

It’s very hard for me to believe I was ever married to that guy. I tried for 8 years, and I’m very thankful that I got out.

I’ve been off work now for two days with this stinking cold. Now my throat doesn’t hurt any more, something deeper in my throat hurts, so when I cough, it’s not a surface pain, it’s a pain deep into my chest – only not quite at my chest (yet).

I tried to stay in bed all morning and succeeded, however, it’s not like I was sleeping. I was just laying there. I think these drugs I’m taking are keeping me awake. I don’t have a good reaction to dextramethorphan – gets me stoned – and apparently keeps me awake. Just what you want when you’re sick, to stay awake and revel in your illness.

Anyway, I’m drinking my neo citran – is that more lemony than it used to be? I tell ya, that tastes just like a lemon to me now, I thought it used to be a sickeningly sweet kinda lemony taste – not now, it’s puckering me up.

Needless to say I haven’t worked out since Tuesday. I haven’t had a shower since Tuesday (ewww). Wow, I didn’t realize that. However, that explains why my hair looks so good.

Ok, maybe I’ll have a shower in a little while. I’ll wait til these chills stop happening and then go run a really hot shower, come out and put my nightgown, and robe, and slippers, and maybe a blanket on me. Now that you bring it up, the computer room seems a little chilly.

I think I mentioned that I’ve had the sore scratchy throat ever since I quit smoking. Well the other night I got about an hour’s sleep because somebody kept snoring the whole fucking night through, and I kept yelling, “somebody, stop snoring!” but that would only work for a couple of minutes and then he’d be right back at it.

So I went out into the living room, thinking that I’d sleep there. However, my body was not in the mood for more sleeping after I’d already had an hour’s sleep. On top of that, I kept feeling itchy. So I’d relax, trying to talk myself into sleep (or hypnotize myself) and then I’d be itchy – this stupid dry winter weather has done that.

After realizing I wouldn’t sleep, I got on the computer and played some of those facebook games. After exhausting that option I went back to the living room and turned the TV on. So at around 5:00 in the morning, I did get back to sleep – so I could wake up at 5:45 to get ready for work.

Anyway, it was downhill from there. I felt like crap at work. My scratchy throat was really, really sore and I had given my throat spray to my daughter who showed up with a cold one day looking for medicine. I was drifting off to sleep at times during the day and I felt like going home.

So I went off to the doctor last night to see if he could give me something for the throat. He said there was no infection (I was expecting him to say I had tonsilitis since I used to get that so often in my life). He didn’t even prescribe anything…. ummm, hello, my throat is really, really sore, that’s why I’m here. He did tell me to go and get an ultrasound done and gave me a paper to take with me. I called them but that’s not scheduled now for another week.

So I stopped to get some chloraseptic spray – numbs your throat – and picked up some chloraseptic lozenges which also seem to work somewhat that way. I put the humidifier on in the bedroom last night and forced my snookey to sleep on the couch instead of me to see if I could get some sleep.

The good thing was that I went to bed at 11:00, slept the whole night through and was up and at em at 6:00 this morning. The bad thing was that the humidifier didn’t do anything for my throat, and now it seems like I have a cold with a stuffy nose and a cough to go along with that sore throat, and I felt like crap again.

So I emailed work and told them I wouldn’t be in. I went back to bed and slept til about 9-ish. I intend to go back to bed at some point after I go to the store and buy some more kinds of cold medicine (the kinds that will put you out). It’s really boring to stay home from work when you’re sick, unless, of course, you can spend your time in bed all day. Hopefully I can do that.

I had to go get some of that pad thai at Thai Express after my workout this morning. Let’s say it was lunch time cuz it was just after 12:00. Since I had to stop at Costco cuz there’s a screw missing on the side of my Serengeti’s, I figured I’d head over to Yorkdale (even though I hate Yorkdale).

Well we each bought a separate box of vegetable pad thai, usually we just split one cuz there’s so much, but this time we had our own and we just brought the rest home with us for dinner tomorrow night. While we were there we also stopped to see a movie for no apparent reason except that it was there and it was close to 2:00 and there was a matinee playing.

Even though it was a ‘puppet-like’ movie, since this movie was supposed to be so good and won awards and had everybody loving it, we decided to see it.

We donned our 3D glasses and watched. It was a good movie. Graphics were well done. The storyline seemed a little predictable but we’re used to predictability. We had an enjoyable experience and this was our first time seeing a movie without smoking – usually at some point I sneak out for one, so it was unusual not to even have a craving for one.

I did have to sneak out to get another Tim’s and I also had to sneak out to go pee. This movie is about 3 hours long! After a couple of Tim’s, you can’t just sit there for 3 hours.

Anyway, I’d recommend it. Go see it now at the theatres, you’ll be much more impressed than on your home TV.

I have no idea what I was dreaming about the night before last. The dream could have been about anything but there is one part I remember about the dream. I wouldn’t smoke.

Whatever the hell was going on there, at some point the situation came up where I could have smoked. I could have cheated in my dream and smoked to my heart’s content, or lungs’ discontent, whatever, but I didn’t.

In my dreams, boys and girls, I can’t even cheat! Do you know what a piss off that is? I can’t even cheat in my dreams! All the times I’ve felt like I wanted a smoke, said to myself, ‘fuck this non-smoking crap, I should go buy a pack’ – and didn’t, you’d think that at least I’d let myself enjoy a cigarette while sleeping, while in ‘unreality’, but no. Not me. I’m devoted. I’m dedicated. I’m committed.

It just pissed me off to wake up and realize that I couldn’t fulfill my dream in my dreams, since that’s all I’ve got right now. That’s the only place I could have a smoke. I make me puke.

Surrogates

These surrogates will look the way we want them to look (maybe even like younger versions of ourselves) and their identities will be connected with ours.

Thus the plot of this movie. Bruce Willis is a cop who, of course, has had a son who has died and a wife who has never quite gotten over it and therefore the relationship has become torn apart. That’s the personal aspect.

On a professional aspect, some one has created a special type of gun that will kill the surrogates and while doing so, also kills the person who controls the robots. Bruce had better find out who so he can save the surrogates from those fanatical groups who think robots are bad and should be gotten rid of.

Predictabzzzzzzzzle. Depressing. Lighting was yellowy.

See it if you want. There are worse.

Yes, it feels like all I do these days is try to fit in things I need to do in between when I’m supposed to go and work out. So tonight I’m taking a break. I’m going to sit at home, listen to some music, drink copious amounts of beer (probably 6-8 and then I’ll start to fall asleep), and perhaps order some fattening chicken wings cuz it’s too damned cold to go out and get anything.

I think I may just play some Wolfenstein soon. I want to go download a non-CD version cuz I can’t stand playing games where you always have to put the CD in. WTF are they thinking with that crap?

And I’ve got lots of work to get done on the computer – let’s not even think about how much I still haven’t installed.

I did put on the Adobe Design Premium CS4 package but I get some crashing using Photoshop, then I get a message that it’s my video card and I should check that I have 128 mgs on the card, yada yada. The stupid card has 512 mgs so I don’t understand what the issue is here, and I don’t want to buy a new video card since that one was just replaced for free after my last one conked out. Who knows about that. I may contact Adobe and see if they’ve got anything else to say about this issue.

Anyway, for now I’m going to finish my tea, and if I’m lucky, by then it’ll be beer time. No it probably won’t be, it’s really early still. I may just make it beer time. WTF do I care? It’s Friday night. I can have a beer at 3:00 in the afternoon if I damned well feel like it – I don’t have to report to anybody. Ok, 6:00 pm it is then. Official beer time tonight (if I don’t feel like having one more tea). There we go.

Tonight I decided not to work out. I had a craving for a meal. And when I say meal, I mean some meat and potatoes and vegetables. Since my dinners are usually so ridiculous, consisting of peanuts or a spoon of peanut butter, or some salad or other stupid thing, I had the craving for the real meal.

So my snookey and I went out to Wimpy’s (not exactly elegance but we knew we could get something similar to a home-cooked dinner there) and I ordered a hot hamburger open-faced sandwich, with gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans (I hate green beans).

I ate about half of that which was probably more than I should have eaten because I could barely breathe, and took the other half home with me. I don’t know about that fullness thing though, I think I need to see a doctor because by the end of the day – meal or no meal – my stomach is bloated out like I’m 9 months pregnant. Doesn’t quite seem normal to me. Plus it feels hard, like some pressure is pushing it out like that. I gotta go get a referral one of these days when I have some time.

Anyway, after that, we came home for a nice relaxing evening, even though I have a shitload of things to do that I haven’t gotten around to doing. So I decided that tonight I would finally replace that hard drive in my laptop. I got all prepared to do that, took a look at the back of my laptop and where the Dell guy had told me the hard drive was, and proceeded to pull out my battery. Hmmm, not it.

So I called them to ask which of the parts of the laptop held my hard drive. They told me to take out the screws at the bottom right and my hard drive was right inside there. No problem. Wait. Problem. I couldn’t get the fucking screws unscrewed – they’re in there so tight they must have been screwed hydraulically.

I tried with my little precision screwdrivers… no good, I’d end up stripping the screws. I tried with a little mini phillips screwdriver and still couldn’t get the screws out.

Once again I had to call Dell to tell them I can’t get the screws out. I was passed around to three different departments until the final hardware department let me know that I shouldn’t be talking to them cuz I’m in Canada. They confirmed a number for me to call. I called the number and it was voicemail. Great technical support there… leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you some day.

So, I’ll be waiting to hear from them about how to get my new hard drive installed. So much for my relaxing, and yet trying to be productive too, night.

I can’t believe we’ve headed into the fourth week of not smoking, but we have. In some ways it seems like we stopped just yesterday, and in other ways (like wanting a cigarette every stinking day) it seems like its been a long time without.

We’re doing well, neither of us has cheated (no matter how much we wanted to sometimes) and it’s looking to me like we can do it. I’m proud of us – especially my snookey with no patch. Today I started on the step 2 patches and I’m gonna keep that up for 3 weeks til I go to step 1. I figure the more I ween myself from the nicotine, the better chances I stand of just being in the habit of not having a smoke, while still not craving it as much cuz I’ve got the patch on – get out of the psychological wanting because the patch leaves the physical wanting out.

Anyway, other than focusing on that, I haven’t been doing much of anything else except working out. And I wasn’t even doing that last week for 3 days because I went to a class and pulled a leg muscle, then something in my groin, then something around my elbow area. So I gave my body a rest for 3 days and then headed back into it.

I was gonna go do an aquafit class tonight but the Monday woman sucks. She does the class from within the water. How does she think that a class full of people also in the water area going to be able to see what she’s doing? *duh* So instead I’m gonna do some bodyattack thing – let’s hope that it doesn’t attack my muscles in a bad way like last week’s bodypump class.

I’m hoping after the class to get onto the machines since I still haven’t figured out when to work those in with all these classes. Tonight my daughter’s coming with my snookey and me. She got a one-week free pass to try out the club. If she liked it I’d be willing to pay for her membership, but only if she was gonna show up 3 to 4 times a week. Otherwise, I’d be stuck paying for her membership for a year and be pretty pissed off that she wasn’t going. So I don’t know how that is gonna work out.

Other than that I’ve just been playing Mafia Wars, Yoville and I bought the new Wolfenstein game. I used to play that years ago, and then Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I didn’t even know they’d come out with a new version til I happened into a game store (why oh why do I go in there?) and saw it. Anyway, so far that seems ok except that I’ve got to play it with the disc in – whose brilliant idea is that? Now I’ve got to reinstall and download a non-cd version of the game. Idiots.

I’ve yet to reinstall the hard drive onto my laptop. And you can believe that Dell is getting anxious. I get a phone call from them once or twice a week to say… “what about that hard drive you’re supposed to return?”. I’d better get around to that soon or they’re going to charge me for the new one.

So I’m off. I have time to finish my tea before I pick up my daughter for the big work out. Be easy on me, workout, while giving me a fantastic body at the same time, thank you

Well this is a chick flick for sure, I don’t think anyone would doubt that from the commercials.

What can I say? I like Alec Baldwin (especially in 30 Rock) and I like Meryl Streep (my snookey doesn’t like her).

Divorced couple (he’s remarried to young stuff and she’s still single) get together at an occasion and happen to get a little too drunk. Things get looser than usual and they end up in the sack. Then things turn into an affair with the ex’s.

It probably doesn’t have the ending that you’d expect from the typical chick flicks but the ending wasn’t too far out of speculation either.

I liked it – probably because I like those actors, but the movie wasn’t bad – it had me smiling at quite a few parts.

See it if you’d like some fluff – or if you’ve been divorced before (as I have a few times). Those affairs with the ex’s are not too unusual.

I’m texting from my Cell phone so there may be a bunch of typos

We’re sitting here in the middle of a power outage

so I can’t do a fucking thing but wait for the power to come back on

we’ve got a little battery radio – waiting for updates

what a pain in the ass – I think I’m dependent on technology

might as well go to bed (at 9:15 at night for christ’s sake

Ricky Gervais plays a big loser in a city/town where everyone always tells the unabashed truth. Ricky ends up being the first person ever to tell a lie since he wanted to ease his dying mother’s fear about death by telling her how great things were going to be. Because everyone always tells the truth, everyone assumes that he is also telling the truth and, he, therefore, becomes a famous, sought-after person for his knowledge of what happens after death.

The film was mildly amusing at the start, I guess because you’re not too used to hearing people going on a date talking about how the guy won’t be getting any because he’s fat with a snub nose, and yet the guy is not the least bit insulted and goes on the date anyway.

I think they could have done a helluva lot more with this – I was hoping for more just because I know Ricky Gervais is quite the talented man. I wanted funny but there weren’t too many ‘laughing’ moments.

Go ahead and rent it; it’s not bad, it’s just not real good.

Just a quick note to say happy birthday, Minna. I can’t seem to comment at all on your site – tried using IE and Firefox – just not working. So here’s a birthday wish from my site – where I can write WvTF I want

No I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, I’ve just been really, really, really (really?) busy.

I didn’t mention that my snookey and I quit smoking again (again!?!) for our New Year’s resolution. We started stopping on January 4th and have held tight ever since. Although I should mention that the very first night after I got home from work, as we were both yapping about how we’d like a cigarette, my snookey was the first to cave and tell me that he’d run to the store… did I want a large pack or a small? That’s our usual modus operandi – that’s why every time we’ve quit, we end up just quitting for a day and then smoking at night.

But I was strong, boys and girls, I said, “I don’t want either… I don’t smoke”. Well that wiped the hopeful look off his face, but the good thing is that from that one little decision, it’s now been a week without smoking. It’s at this point that my sense of smell is really coming back strong.

As a matter of fact, yesterday, when I went to heat up my lunch in the microwave at work, one of the smokers who I used to see outside, started talking to me about something. At first I was affronted by this big smell. And I couldn’t place it. It was almost like a hit in the face. Then I figured out what the smell was and it was the smoking smell. Never have I smelled that so strongly, even when I’ve quit smoking before. Anyway, after smelling that I started to realize that I was never fooling anybody with my hiding my smoking – with smells that strong, every non-smoker probably smelled me from 5 yards away.

So, aside from not smoking, we also joined a gym. We spent numerous nights going and checking out different places and finally decided on one. So every stinking night (or day as on the weekend), we’ve been off to the gym doing various things. Tonight is supposed to be some training orientation on how to properly use the machines, but that doesn’t start til 7:00, so I had some time to myself and figured I’d better write something before you thought I was dead.

After that we’ll race home and watch our new season of recorded American Idol. Gotta watch this year for sure since it’s Simon’s last season and Ellen DeGeneres has joined the show. I know it’ll be more same old, same old, but, WTF, it’s not like anything else is worth watching either.

So that’s it ladies and gentlemen. I imagine in a few months I will not look like the pig I am, and I’ll be a healthier little ham that’s not smoked (oh, I’m good). I look forward to seeing and feeling some benefits. Cuz otherwise…. I coulda had a V8 smoke.

A couple with two kids of their own decide to adopt an older child after losing another child of their own in childbirth.

The new adopted Russian child, of course seems very nice at the start, but, whaddayaknow? She’s a psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est.

Now the husband doesn’t really believe the child is guilty of doing the things that the wife is accusing her of. That causes a little rift between them… especially when we find out in the past, the wife had a little problem with drinking after the death of their baby.

Anyway, this was a good little nailbiter, albeit predictable until close to the end. I was almost sickened by some of the stuff the kid was doing.

Rent this if you have a strong constitution and no kids with behavioural problems where you might start examining everything they’re doing.

Liam Neeson finds out that his dead wife was having an affair with Antonio Banderas. He found out by going through her computer after she’d died and seeing somewhat explicit emails from this mystery man and finding a folder full of pictures in which they weren’t fully clothed.

He tracks Antonio (talking about killing him although you’re not sure whether this is just what he wants to do or whether he will do it) and gets to know him.

We rented the movie because it said ‘suspense’ and that there was a surprise ending. However, the ending was no surprise to me. I won’t tell you the ending in case you want to rent it.

I think I fixed a javascript file – and I don’t even know javascript!

If I visited my site, down on the bottom left I was seeing this error message – you know the one, done but with errors on the page. The errors were with the hover.js file and if I opened up the details it told me ‘line something, character something, expecting a ;’. This is a file that comes with my theme, Deep Blue.

So I played around with that and then it would give me another error message, line something, yada yada.

I tried a bunch of different configurations and finally got one that didn’t give me an error message. So I’m assuming I fixed it, but who knows whether or not something will stop working properly now.

Here’s what the new code is:
sfHover = function() { var sfEls = document.getElementById("menu").getElementsByTagName("li");
for (var i=0; i {
sfEls[i].onmouseover=function()
{
this.className+=" hover" };
sfEls[i].onmouseout=function()
{
this.className=this.className.replace(new RegExp(" hover\\b"), ""); }
}
}; if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload", sfHover);

And here's what the old code had:
sfHover = function()
{
var sfEls = document.getElementById("menu").getElementsByTagName("LI"); for (var i=0; i {
sfEls[i].onmouseover=function()
{ this.className+=" hover"; }
sfEls[i].onmouseout=function()
{
this.className=this.className.replace(new RegExp(" hover\\b"), ""); }
}}if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload", sfHover);

If anybody out there knows javascript and can see any errors that might impact me, please feel free to let me know and we can put a real fix in there. Oh, and if something doesn't work properly... let me know that too - not that I know how to fix it, but it would just be interesting to find out what could get screwed up by my little changes.

I got two calls yesterday from the guy who’s backing me up at work while I’m on vacation. The first call was directed to my cell phone while I was out working on things with a bunch of people. Whether it seemed rude or not, I had to take the call since I told the guy he could call me if he had any problems. It was a simple fix, although not a simple phone call since the guy tends to yammer on and on so that it’s hard to understand what the question really is.

The second call was a little more difficult but the answer could have come more swiftly if I had been able to connect to my work computer and just send him a file. I could not. I tried to connect remotely, and all I could see was a black screen. Although if I used the Alt-Tab keys, I could see the screen I wanted right there, I just couldn’t click on it at all because going to that screen gave me the big black screen.

So I tried a bunch of different things to fix it. Changed my resolution – didn’t work. Accessed the remote connection settings and changed the configuration there – nothing.

I’ve now got a call in to the help desk at work to see if they can come up with anything. I will be devastated if I can no longer work from home – to me, that’s one of the perks of this job, having that ability, especially considering that I hate my job, at least working from home now and then seems exciting.

I’ll find out if they can get something going. And I told them to call me back right away since I’m supposed to go out somewhere. Come on… get to it.

Remember my video card conked out? I’ve been waiting for that replacement, and I got it yesterday, so now I have both my monitors working again. I can’t tell you how weird it was to work with just one monitor again since I have the two at home and two at work. Now I’m back to normal *woohoo* [yes, yes, what I call normal, shut up].

Anyway, when he called me to say my card was in and to bring over my computer, he asked if I wanted Windows 7 put on at the same time. Since I had asked for this before but it was too expensive, when I asked this time and he said the price would be ‘installation fee’ only, how could I say no?

So, boys and girls, I now have Windows 7 on my computer. And I recently had my computer reformatted, so I had just started reinstalling things. Now I’ve gotta start reinstalling things all over again.

However, I will say that my computer is just zipping along – for programs and for the internet. I don’t know if it’s gonna get real slow once I’ve got everything reinstalled here, but I’ll find out and let you know.

And this version is a big change – even from Vista. I had hardly gotten to know the Vista, and it was a change from XP. But this one is a really big change that I’m going to have to study. I can’t even find out how to put a screensaver on my desktop right now, so you’ll understand when I say ‘big’ changes.

Anyway, I’ve got another 4 days to play with it (not today, I have a job to go help with). So far I’m liking it. So far I’d recommend it. Stay tuned for more.

Hmmm, I've been watching you

I felt like I was being watched *uh oh*.

Have a great Christmas, everyone. I got up at 6:00 this morning so that I could sit all by myself for a few hours and play games on the computer (isn’t that what Christmas is all about?)

I’ve already finished a pot of tea and it’s only 8:40. I should wake up my snookey soon so he can run to Tim’s and get us our day’s supply of coffee (and perhaps a breakfast sammich). He’ll appreciate getting up nice and early on Christmas morn.

I hope that you all get whatever it is you wanted for Christmas, or at least something that makes you happy. I’m hoping for anything since I don’t usually get too much except from my snookey. Maybe one of these decades my kids will finally buy me a nice present – or any present even.

As usual, my Christmas poem is below. Click on MORE if you feel like reading it again this year.

T’was the day before Christmas, and all through the house
Empty beer bottles clattered, from Jafer – the souse

She sat drinking good cheer, toasting holiday season
Not like other times drinking, when she didn’t have reason

When all of a sudden she heard a big clatter
and staggered out of her chair to see what was the matter

She walked into the wall on her way to observe
what the fuss was about, someone sure had their nerve!

When right down the chimney, a big crash as he landed
was Rudolph the reindeer, dejected and stranded

He said, “I’m afraid that I’m lost, and I can’t find St. Nick
I don’t know this neighbourhood but I have to learn quick

’cause this is just dress rehearsal, what will I do tonight
if I can’t find my way even when outside’s light?”

“I have to guide Santa – my bright nose gave direction
but this flu screwed me up in my direction selection”

So, Jafer, to alleviate Rudolph’s deep fear
handed Rudolph a glass and served beer after beer

When time came for departure, Rudolph left in a hurry
Self-assured, calm and confident, not left with a worry

He left with a flaming, and veined, bright red nose
He’d guide all the reindeer – thanks to Jafer, I suppose

And isn’t that just what Christmas season’s about?
Loving and helping your fellow reindeer out

And though she couldn’t remember anything the next day
Down her chimney a present had found its own way

There sat 5 – 24’s, Jafer’d surely get tight
And yell “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good [hiccup]“

You’ll remember I talked about my dealings with Dell here. Since then, I’ve had the hard drive sitting on my desk, and I’ve been waiting for the supposed ‘technician appointment’ for the guy to show up – to no avail. Not even a phone call where they told me someone would come and install it.

In the meantime I’ve received a phone call that the warranty was going to expire on the laptop I bought for my daughter (and would I like to renew it). I never got that phone call for my laptop, so expiry date came and went.

Anyway, for three days now I’ve been talking to Dell every night. They told me I could renew my warranty. They listed off a bunch of different warranties with a bunch of different prices. And depending on whom I was talking to and which night it was, I got different prices, different warranties, and different explanations of which warranty it is that I still have existing on my laptop til 2012.

I kept phoning back, being put on hold for who knows how long, but last night was the real kicker. After saying to the guy, “yes, I will take this warranty for $113, in order to have the technician also install all the software for me”, I was on hold while he processed it, and all of a sudden, the phone went dead.

I phoned back and what did I find? Office hours were now ended. The guy hung up on me cuz his shift was over… forget about that sale, time to go.

I called back again tonight and was told that there is no $113 warranty renewal – that was for the different laptop – the one I bought for my daughter. For my laptop the renewal would cost $900 for the highly trained technician to come and install software on my computer.

I asked “why would there be an $800 difference to install software on one laptop over another” and the answer was because the technicians who worked on my type of laptop were more highly trained. While I pointed out that installing software on any computer didn’t take any highly trained technician, he told me that I could install the hard drive myself and that phone support was included in my existing warranty… did I want him to transfer me so they could walk me through it.

Ok, reality is, boys and girls, that I can install a hard drive myself. I can certainly install software myself. I can do everything I wanted these guys to do…. myself. However, that was not my understanding of my warranty, and I was even willing to pay another $113 to have someone do it because I can’t be bothered with installing all this shit myself. But that’s not going to happen.

Obviously, I was totally wrong about my understanding of what those warranties were. Somehow I cannot understand english and so when they told me what they were at purchase time, I had english as a second language and thought they were completely different than they actually are.

I pointed out to my 6th or 7th Dell customer service rep that I would not be buying anything more from Dell. I could have bought these things from Yow up the street, but somehow thought that any potential troubles would be taken care of with these Dell warranties.

In future I will stick with my own computer people in my own neighbourhood. Fuck Dell. Not only have I had it with their different versions every time you call, but frankly, I’ve wasted a helluva lot of time on hold and being transferred from one department to another.

Unfuckingbelievable. If word had gotten out about this service level before people bought Dell, they certainly wouldn’t have been able to get as big as they’ve gotten now.

Yes boys and girls, just one more day of work, and *woohoo!*, off for 10 days (if I count the weekends). I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this break… 10 days in a row, I’ve been counting the minutes.

My only plans, other than a commitment on the 30th and a guest on the 26th, are to try to sleep in, perhaps finish a necklace I’ve been working on for weeks and will take at least days more (one of those really involved, piddly little stitching things), and drink copious amounts of beer, and Panama Jack, and wine with dinners.

I’m sure we’ll rent many movies and stay up until 3:00 in the morning. I may even get laid a time or two in there *ha ha in advance*… which reminds me, I never got my birthday boink – we pencilled that in for Saturday because we were so busy.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll write something else within this time, even though I’ve been fairly lackadaisical about writing lately. So we’ll talk soon.

Download audio file (HappyBirthdayJafer.mp3)

Ok, you were expecting something new maybe? I’m getting old, I can’t be putting up new and fresh stuff here all the time.

So go ahead and listen to my fabulous birthday song (year after year after year).

It has amazed me how so many people can unite for what they believe in. People in different parts of the world have united for one cause – perfect strangers have stepped up to the plate. What is the cause, you ask? Why that would be growing your mafia in Mafia Wars.

I can’t believe how many people, virtual strangers, are now my ‘friends’ on facebook (and myspace) all in order for me to grow my mafia and for them to grow theirs. (I’ve got over 500 ‘friends’ now on facebook and my new myspace account is growing too.)

All I could think about as this goes on and on was, ‘imagine if there was some worthwhile cause that people would join in to as easily as this’… a political issue; world peace.

It’s amazed me.

I don’t remember having seen the original of this movie (or reading the book), so this one was new to me.

It’s about a bad guy (John Travolta) who is holding a subway train and passengers hostage for $10,000,000. That’s not really it though, he’s not interested in the ten million, he’s really interested in affecting the stock market because he’s invested put two million into something (can’t remember if it showed) that rises up to $307 million by the end of the movie.

Denzel Washington plays a demoted transit big guy who ends up taking the hostage call and going above and beyond the duty in order to see that Travolta doesn’t get away with it.

The movie was ok. I don’t know if I really like John Travolta as a bad guy, even though I liked him as a hitman in Pulp Fiction. I think I find it too same old, same old.

Denzel plays his most usual part – the good guy, caring, concerned, and the only one that Travolta wants to speak to.

I guess it wasn’t a bad time waster. I’ve seen worse.

You’ll remember back in June 2008, I bought my laptop from Dell.ca.
Links here and
here.

Since cleaning up my place, buying more furniture and getting everything in order with the studio, I now keep my laptop on my desk, beside my desktop. Since I only ever use it if I’m going somewhere (which means it’s probably been used under 20 times), I turn it on every now and then to update the anti-virus and any microsoft updates.

So the other day I turned it on, did my usual stuff and all of a sudden got a pop-up message to do some diagnostics. I followed the instructions, ran the diagnostics and it gave me this error message which was a hard drive error message. The message also told me to write down the error number to tell the Dell technician.

I called Dell, talked to them a bit after being on hold and being transferred, and being on hold, and being transferred. Turns out they were going to send me a new hard drive – even though I have yet to see any trouble with the laptop. Ok, I’ll live with a new hard drive, maybe it works preventatively… they send you a new hard drive ‘before’ your whole computer crashes.

Anyway, while I’m talking to the guy he’s explaining how I’ll have to install the hard drive and send back the old hard drive. Whoa! He wanted me to install the hard drive in a laptop?

He said he was going to send out a technician but it’s only a hard drive replacement and his supervisor told him to cancel that. I asked about my service plan that I’d paid extra money for when I bought the laptop and he told me that I was no longer covered. The only coverage I had was for the extra, “if I spill a coffee on my computer they’ll fix it” type. And I wondered how come I got no notification of my warranty expiring. How come they, like so many other companies, didn’t email me to say, “HEY, wanna renew this for x amount of dollars?”

I told the guy I was no computer technician and wanted someone to come out and do it. He said he would do that even though it would only take a minute to install it, but the hard drive arrived and there was no promised phone call from the technician to arrange the date of installation. He also told me that after installing it I could call phone support for them to ‘walk me through’ installing the programs.

I know how to install programs. What I don’t know is which of their CDs go in first, where I start and where I finish. For that I guess I’m supposed to sit on hold for half an hour while they then transfer me to another department where I sit on hold and then talk to someone.

All of this is a pain in the ass to me, even though he told me that all I have to do is pull out the hard drive at the back and plug in the other one. That sounds really simple but I can’t help feeling WTF is going to go wrong.

All this says is that I’m not too impressed with Dell. While their service package sounded good when I bought (and I bought a shitload of things from them), I’m no longer impressed. I was feeling like a true believer and a probable future purchaser, but no longer.

I may attempt this tomorrow; I may not. I have to be in a mood for doing stuff like this and in the meantime I lost all the records for the society I sit on due to a computer crash and reformat of my desktop, so I’ve spent all day reinputting that information and I’m not done.

I’m beginning to feel that computers are no longer my friends. Maybe if the weather’s as nice as it was today, I’ll just go out wandering and take some pictures instead. Fuck I wish the holidays would hurry up and get here.

I went for a dye job tonight. I’ve been letting my hair go ‘undyed’ for quite some time now and you could see spots of grey in it.

So tonight I had my hair dyed Walnut (it’s a good, natural looking colour on me) and I had him add some streaks to the front.

The streaks are… *drum roll*, *applause*, *raucous audience noise*; I know, the suspense is killing you, wait for it…. they’re grey.

Yes, boys and girls, I had some grey highlights put into the front of my hair only. All dark walnut with a few strands of grey hair on my face.

I’m loving it. There’s something very appealing about grey hair on purpose. I didn’t mind the grey at the sides either, but then I’m weird that way.

My snookey’s hair is all grey/silver. He said once that maybe he should dye it when he was thinking about applying for jobs and all the agism around. I told him he’d have to find another place to live if he dyed his hair – only because he suits that white hair so well.

I’m not looking to match him – after all he’s way older than young me. But I am loving these few grey strands.

For my upcoming birthday I told my snookey that I wanted my winter tires put on. And for Christmas I said I’d like my regular tires put back on after winter.

That sounded like a pretty cheap present to me, so I thought it was good that he’d give me something I needed and yet it wouldn’t cost him too much.

So yesterday he took my car in to put on my winter tires since we’re expecting a big snowfall tomorrow.

What they found while he was there was that my rear brakes were totally shot – no pad left even, and that the front stabilizer bar had rusted apart and could possibly have hit into my tire – wouldn’t that make for a nice little car accident as I’m driving along Hwy #7 on my way to work.

I heard no squealing from those brakes, although I did know that my car wasn’t driving too smoothly (I guess that stabilizer bar thing).

So instead of $60 for my tires, my snookey ended up coughing up over $400 to have my car fixed. He told me about it when I got home.

He also said, “Merry Christmas”. Poor guy. Literally.

Tom Hanks returns in his role from The Da Vinci Code in this, I guess sequel. I never read this book, although I read the first. The good thing about that is that I couldn’t compare the movie to the book. The movie’s about the Catholic Church and the Illuminati plotting against it.

Anyway, I thought the action started happening a little too fast for me. Maybe we should have watched The Da Vinci Code first since it had been so long. It didn’t seem to me that there was enough prelude into things that were going on and then, all of a sudden, you hear the evil choir music.

Overall it wasn’t too bad but with the usual predictability – we knew who the bad guy was. I’d probably watch it again if it was on TV and nothing I like was on.

I took my computer in to Yow today. For some reason the CD player wasn’t working (which is actually a BluRay DVD player). Wouldn’t read or autostart any disks I put in there; I figured somehow the connection had come loose. Upon inspection, he told me he thought that the driver was missing… don’t know how that would happen.

Anyway, he did not have it ready for me to pick up tonight, so I’ve gotta use my laptop for my usual computer addiction. WoTF can sit at home without a computer all night?!?

Yesterday I had to take my little Fuji point and click back. For some reason it wasn’t turning on at all. I thought that the battery was dead, so I charged it but still nothing – that is until I got to the store to return it, there it turned on just fine. However, I wasn’t trusting the camera after that, so I traded it for another one.

I got the Canon SD100 IS (in pink to match my laptop and laptop mouse). Nothing looks better on your desk than a laptop and mouse that match, while your matching little camera is charging there.

This is the camera that has Avril Lavigne doing the commercials. I only got it cuz it was on sale for about $179 (instead of $220). It’s only 10mpx, but I figure I won’t see too much difference between a 10 and a 12 since I’m not printing out any gigantic posters. My DSLR is 14.2 megapixels. I’ll have to compare the quality now, won’t I?

So far I’m liking the little camera. It has a viewfinder, which I like for sunny days when you can’t really see the LCD screen on them too well. Also has live view, and not only live view for focusing, but the thing starts focusing itself when you point it towards something. Makes for a noisy camera, but so far I’m liking it.

If the weather would stay nice, I just might go out on the weekend and take some shots. God knows I’m sick of taking pictures around the house.

Still testing out my new wide angle lens… thought I’d show you the difference between the two exact same shots.

Taken with a regular lens

Taken with a wide-angle lens

Isn’t it amazing how much more you see? I keep taking pictures around the house (cuz I’ve got nothing else to take pictures of) just to see the difference.

Jack Black and Michael Cera play what looks like cavemen at the beginning of the movie but somehow becomes Roman times later in the movie. Maybe that’s the way it worked – caveman over here, but roman gladiators in a different part of the world.

Regardless, that’s pointless, because it’s just a comedy movie and I don’t think it has to be historically correct.

I found it amusing. I especially like the deadpan lines that Michael Cera brought to the film. I think a lot could be missed if not listening carefully, although predictable and sometimes stupid but not stupid enough to be considered ‘Naked Gun’ stupid.

My favourite part had to do with Cain and Abel, seen in the clip below, but that was a very short part of the movie. I’d recommend it as a grin inducing litte time-waster.

I can’t believe it’s 6 days since I last wrote, but it is. That’s what happens when you’ve had a website for years and years, you forget about it sometimes.

I was doing stuff every night – mostly working on jewellery, cuz my jewellery website is also suffering from my lack of work there.

I can’t be everything to every one. I’ve only got so many arms, legs, eyes, noses.

This weekend I’m having my jewellery open house, so there’s some cleaning to be done. I’m hoping my snookey will take care of that tomorrow while I’m off at work. He’d better. I don’t have time to do it.

Anyway, right now I’m just working on another necklace cuz I’ve got a really difficult one in the works and I’m sick of working on it. Tonight is TV night, but I betcha the shows won’t be on because it’s American thanksgiving and they’ll probably have football all over the place or reruns of my shows. With that I guess I should say Happy Thanksgiving Americans! Did I even remember to say that for our own thanksgiving? I don’t think so.

Ok, so I’ve got things to do, places to go, people to see. Or else it’s just my usual hibernating in the computer room with my Mafia Wars or jewellery. Same thing.

Here’s some pictures of the new carpet. I’m just so thrilled with it, compared to the old carpet. The room feels new.

See the beige and taupe?

This picture’s more like an overview of the colour.

I’m happy – especially since I told the landlord that I’d rather have the floorboards than the carpet that was there. Maybe she was just worried I’d rip out the old and go with the floorboards – that’s why she agreed to this.

Last night I was in a mood. I’ve been bothered by the carpeting in our living/dining room because we’ve steam-cleaned it so many times that it started getting all loose and wrinkly, so I asked my snookey to phone the landlord and tell them we wanted something done about it.

He phoned, they had the ‘carpet expert’ who had installed it come in and say that they could stretch it and pull it tight again. However, that was not good enough for me when I was out there looking at it and thinking that it looked moldy around the edges – which may well be since we’ve steam-cleaned it so many times in 12 years of living here… maybe the edges never got dry.

Anyway, I called the landlord last night and had a little hissy fit. She, of course, was going on about how cheap our rent is (implying I guess that for rent this cheap, we don’t get new carpeting), and I, of course, going on about the improvements we’ve made, how well we’ve kept up the place and done repairs and been good tenants.

She finally seemed to be the calmer of us both and said something to the effect of us being the tenants if we were to get new carpeting we should at least be paying half. To which I said, “sure”.

So tonight the owners, my snookey and I hiked off to the carpet place to choose a carpet. And – big AND – the carpet is going to be installed tomorrow. I guess that carpet place is not too busy, but I don’t care about that – it’ll be done tomorrow! It’ll be done in time for the two dinners we’re having this weekend – one Saturday, one Sunday, and for the show I’m having in-house next weekend. And the carpet will only cost me $735 for my half (fuck, carpet is expensive).

So I’m a happy camper. Maybe sometimes a hissy fit is a good thing in helping get what you want. My snookey and I had talked about buying new carpet before but I said that I wanted the landlord to at least pay half. That’s exactly what we’re getting – only it’s now ‘her idea’.

The carpet is a nice beige and taupe texture that the guy says is very stain resistant (except not that good with coffee). So I’ll try to spill only my beer on it – not coffee.

I can hardly wait to get home from work tomorrow night. Oh, that’s right, I’ve got a meeting tomorrow night. That’s a good thing too, I guess. Maybe by the time I get home, my snookey will have all the furniture put back. The scariest thing will be him trying to rehook up the TV, Blu-Ray, PVR and Receiver. We may not be watching any TV tomorrow night.

My site may be down for a few days while I’m transferring providers.

Be patient, I hope I can get everything working properly at the new spot (including importing the database, otherwise it will be a brand new and shiny site).

See you soon – hopefully.

UPDATE: The site wasn’t really down at all – everything’s at the new spot and I’ve yet to find stuff that’s not working – tell me if you find anything. Also, let me know if it seems faster… it’s faster at my end.

Instead of putting up more pictures, I figured I’d tape a little video since I haven’t done one in a long time. Ooooo, you’re in for a treat *yawn*. So click on it already.

Ok, I told you about how hard it was to find a rug that I liked to fit the studio, so I figured I’d show you what we finally chose and how the room ended up. What you can’t really see in these pictures are the ‘real’ colours on the walls. You can see the yellow ceiling, but then it’s not as deep a yellow either as it looks in these pictures, so everything’s not quite ‘actual’, but it shows you how much time, money and work I spent doing this. Pretend you like it. Here goes:

Walking into the room, this is what you see.

Turn to your left.

Close up of the rug that looks like it doesn’t match, but it does – there’s a tie in with those blue-ish curtains and blue in the rug.

Over in the corner, let’s not forget that there has to be a computer in there too.

I got this fat, old, ugly broad to come in and take a picture of the mirrored doors where those who want to see how the jewellery looks on them, can look.

So that’s it. Over $1000 in the hole now just so I don’t have to go out and do shows. Then I got an email today that I’m accepted for a show November 21st. I was hoping that I had been missed on that one, but no. So now I’ve got a whole bunch of plans to change cuz I can’t cancel it (they’ve already cashed the cheque).

I don’t know about you, but I’m not one of those ‘before we go to bed’ kind of having sex people. As a matter of fact, it’s more likely to be in the early evening that I have sex. That’s before any beer can be consumed, before I’m trying to get myself tired for conking right out.

I don’t want to revive myself before I go to sleep. When I go to bed at night, that’s all I want – sleep. And I feel damned lucky if I go to bed and get right to sleep.

While I realize that having sex can make you more relaxed, and it seems to work for guys – puts them right out. I’m still not into it. Then I’d have to go to bed at 10:00 or something just so we’d be able to get to sleep at our normal bedtime.

I don’t see the benefits. When’s your favourite time to have sex? You can tell me… I won’t tell anyone.

These days – when I’m not playing my Mafia Wars addiction on Facebook – I’m finding all sorts of things to clean or replace in my home.

Today we replaced those little separator things that separate the carpet in one room from another. I happened to notice that one room had a gold one while there were two silver ones on the others, and one room had none, so I needed to have them all there, and all silver.

I’ve spent so much time washing walls, washing furniture – yes furniture. Oh, let me tell you. I had a chair that I’ve had the carpet cleaners clean for me before, but the other day I noticed it had zippers on it. So I figured, ‘hey, I can take those off and wash them in the washing machine’. So I did.

That worked out fine, they were washable, and I didn’t put them into the dryer because I didn’t want them to shrink.

But guess what? I had four cushions on that chair, so four coverings, they all came out clean, but the zipper broke on two of them.

So while I have clean coverings, I can’t use two of them because the zippers broke. Of course that meant that I had to take them to the dry cleaner to replace the zippers. It’s only $24 to replace those zippers. So my big home clean up is now costing an additional $48 to replace zippers.

Maybe a home is better when it’s not so clean. What do you think?

I didn’t want a new camera (other than the good one I had that my daughter stole). I didn’t want a new little point and click camera. However, for some reason, lately my little camera wasn’t holding a charge, so whenever I’d turn it on to take a picture, it would tell me that the battery was almost empty.

So I headed off to Staples where I bought it, expecting to buy a new battery. The guy there told me that they didn’t carry those batteries, and he didn’t know who did, maybe I could try Future Shop.

That seemed like a pain in the ass, so I told him I’d buy the new camera that was on sale. He asked me if I had an extended warranty on the old camera but I said no, and figured I’d have to cough up the money I don’t really have, just to have a working camera again.

He told me that even the battery would have been covered if I’d had the extended warranty. I told him that sometimes I do buy the extended warranty, but I couldn’t remember if I’d bought it on this, I’d have to look through my papers when I got home.

He told me they could check online to see if I had the warranty, so I said go for it. He called somebody, they were asking questions about the make, the model, etc. It occurred to me that it would be just my luck that I’d bought one on one of the camera models I’ve owned, but watch it wouldn’t be this one.

Well, you know what? I did buy the extended warranty on that camera and they told me that. That meant that my new camera was free! Free, free, free! I like that in a camera.

He asked me if I’d like to purchase the extended warranty. I guess you know what I said. I said yes. Worked for me once, it might work for me again in the future.

So I bought the extended warranty and they told me I owed them one cent. I can live with that.

One penny. Ha, ha. One penny. New camera (with wide angle, unlike my last one), in a nice plum colour. I figured not too many people would buy the plum colour, and I’d never had a plum coloured one, so I went for it.

I’m just happy. Good things have been happening lately. Maybe it’s karma. Gotta go take pictures of inane things right now to test it.

You’ll remember I wrote about Sears and how screwed up their website was. How could you not remember… it was only two days ago. Have you got Alzheimer’s or something? That post is here for those who missed it: http://www.idiotonastick.com/talk/2009/10/what-up-sears/

Anyway, you may have seen the comment from the woman who worked for Sears telling me to contact her directly, so I did.

I gave her the link to the product I was having trouble buying so that she could see the problem for herself and, hopefully, let her IT people know so they could get it fixed. Since I work in IT myself, I know what a big deal it is to find the problem, make sure the fix works with everything else that’s already working, and get things the way they’re supposed to be.

Well they did get it fixed and first thing this morning, I ordered my rug. I actually ordered two rugs because I couldn’t quite make up my mind and I figured if I didn’t like the first one, by the time I’d order the other one and wait for it to arrive, it might be too late for my little soiree. So I know I’ll be returning one of them, at the moment, I’m just hoping that the cheaper one is the best looking for that room.

Anyway, Paige (the Sears woman) emailed me today to let me know that the website was working properly and offer me a promotional $10 off my purchase. Unfortunately, I had already ordered, so I couldn’t use that. But, in following up with me, because I’d missed the offer, she offered to send me a gift card instead as a thank you for my feedback.

Who could resist that? I’m all for gift cards. And I’m assuming she’s not sending me a gift card for The Bay, but for Sears – where I seem to spend most of my time lately – I saw a little back room there where I may just set up a mattress with a little hot plate so I don’t have to travel quite so far to shop.

To finish, I’m happy. I’m happy they were listening to their customers and did everything in their power to get things working to satisfy their customers.

I guess that they’re walking the walk and providing a point of difference that you can’t find at some of the places you’ll shop… that is, listening to their customers.

You know me and how I can never sleep in… although I thought I might have slept a little longer since we went to bed around 2:00 last night.

Perhaps I would have slept a bit longer if The Brick hadn’t called me at 7:45 this morning to tell me that my delivery was going to arrive between 12:00 and 3:00.

“Oh, thank you. I’m glad to know that. Is there some reason you had to call me before 8:00 to tell me?” is what I said. What he said was, “that’s the time I’m supposed to make all my calls”.

Perhaps if I was one of the people whose furniture was arriving first, like at 9:00, I wouldn’t mind that call so much. But seeing as I’m the ‘between 12:00 and 3:00′ person, I think I would have preferred a little more sleep.

• It's almost time to watch a movie… I forget what we got #
• Sears updated their website so you couldn't access it last night. Now you can't shop from it – good work! #
• Maybe when you've been blogging for 12 years, it becomes a bit ho-hum #
• I've hardly been tweeting lately either – never mind the blogging #
• I think I'm the optimist http://rep.ly/1l3lU #
• finally got my iPod working again after 3 days of restoring #

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After my accolades the other day about the great service I got from Sears, let me tell you what’s going on now with them.

I’ll start with the fact that I’ve ordered two rugs from them recently. They arrived in good enough time, but when I put them down, the colours weren’t good with the room, no fault of Sears other than I guess having better pictures, but I’ve returned them both.

As of last night, the Sears website was down for their “brand new and improved” website which would be open this morning.

Ok, so I had to wait. I couldn’t order yet another rug last night, so I went to the site this morning. I found a rug that I thought might be the last one, I figured the colours ‘should’ be perfect for what I want and tried to order it. That’s after I got a little used to the changes and tried to figure out how to find what I was looking for.

What it looks like they’ve done is tried to implement some Ajax for ordering – I guess so that customers are not taken from page to page in ordering and that the little ajax pop up will do the work on the same page.

Guess what? Their Ajax was not working… just kept doing the spinny loading circle and when you’d finally try to click on a link to order the damned rug, it took you to a page where you input the catalogue number. How the fuck would I know a catalogue number?

Since this wasn’t working (and I want it ordered fast so it will get here in time), I called them. Well, waddayaknow… their staff also use the website to fulfill the orders when it’s not a catalogue order. So their staff could not help me either; but they did tell me that they were aware of the problem and to try back in half an hour.

I tried back in half an hour, and an hour, and a few hours later. It’s now after 6:00 pm and their website is still screwed, still takes you to a catalogue ordering page.

But, you know what? I stopped at the Sears store today as well. The rug I wanted was not available in any of the catalogues. The only way to order this one is online. Maybe. Who knows if it’s even in stock – I’ll only find that out when their website is working.

Which brings me to another thing. I had ordered blinds from Sears. A new set for the living room, and a new set for our bedroom. Wouldn’t you know that the living room ones were out of stock. But I didn’t find out til yesterday when I went to pick up the bad rug #2 and got the blinds for the bedroom only.

So I called up Sears and said that since these blinds were on back order, if I switched colours, were the other ones in stock? They were, so I told them to send me those ones instead, whereupon the woman taking the order and cancelling the other order, told me the price. These new coloured blinds were going to cost me $40 more.

Oh no they were not. I told her that I had used this ‘Sears coupon thing’ when I’d ordered and I wanted the same discount applied. She asked me to hold, then came back to tell me that the discount was finished and I’d have to pay this full price.

I then told her to cancel both orders. I said I wasn’t paying more for the blinds when it was their fault I had to order a different colour just to get my blinds in time. I was no longer interested and would take my business elsewhere. She asked me to hold and then came back with a discount where I’d be paying the same price as I was supposed to for the other colour.

So, this has been the long tale of my recent interaction with Sears. Not only that, but when I was at the store today, I noticed they had a sign up that said they will no longer call you when your order has arrived. All I could think of was that, in this day and age of stores not having a price differential, they’re usually trying to flog their great customer service that will keep you coming back. Sears newest approach is to tell you that you’re now going to get less customer service.

Big mistakes going on here Sears. I can’t even imagine how much money they’ve lost today with the website down and their customer service reps not being able to ring through a sale either unless someone’s got a catalogue number.

UPDATE: It’s 7:25 on Sunday and the site is still fucked up.

I finally dropped off all those necklaces I created for that wedding party and got the final payment on those.

I was feeling a little rich for about half an hour, that is until I decided that I needed a new chair. I had been searching for a new chair because we rearranged the living room and that made the one chair that we had, too big for the only place it would fit.

So after seeing lots of furniture online (for $699 and up), I decided to go over to The Brick.

The good thing was that they had a nice brown leather chair on sale, and it was a small enough size to fit in the area where the old chair is. I’m just a little concerned that replacing the beige chair with a brown chair is going to make the living room look really dark, especially considering that most of the furniture in there is black leather (except for the pull-out couch that’s a browny colour too).

Anyway, while I was there I found this beautiful leather coffee table. Brown with brown cushions on top of it where you can put your feet up if you want, but the cushions turn over into trays for when you’re serving something to your guests (ya, guests, we have a lot of guests).

But best of all, there’s a whole bunch of storage space in there. So I’m replacing the antique trunk off the Aquatania, that we had built up to store our DVDs, with this new storage leather coffee table. I’m still going to keep the trunk, but over by the wall in the dining room.

I also bought a smaller end table for one the chairs, but the end table there used to house all the picture albums, so I’m now going to keep them in the trunk.

I guess the bottom line here is that I’m not too rich any more. I just spent $1000 on a coffee table, end table and a small chair.

Oh, and today I decided that I needed a stainless steel slow cooker, so I bought that too. The good news is that my son will score the old slow cooker and chair. Bad news is I have no money left again, as usual. I’ll put up pictures when they arrive and we finally get stuff put away once more.

However, my big job is done. Now I’ll just wait for wedding pictures from the bride to put up on the jewellery site. I need another wedding to do.