state of the union

And by "the union" I mean, "my ass."

I went mountain biking yesterday with some guys from work. They definately have a "take no prisoners" approach to biking. My club from years previous (now disbanded) was guys who were equivalent or better riders, but they had a much more lax attitude... wait for everyone to catch up, don't kill anyone, etc. I'll spare the details of the ride, but I had to haul ass to stay within spitting distance of them. I've nicknamed them the Third Floor Death Squad (they work on the third floor). Anyway, following the heavy rains and the sudden muggy weather, we are now living in an area of the country absolutely infested by mosquitos. I didn't know mosquitos swarm, but oh my, do they ever. We rode in about 5 minutes before returning to the cars to apply another layer of bug juice. There I made my fatal mistake. I sprayed my ears, my hair, my neck, my arms, my legs, my jersey. All twice. But I did not spray my shorts.
For those of you not in the know, mosquitos can bite right through spandex (yes, normally I wear baggies, but I forgot them).
So about twenty minutes into the ride, I looked down and there were no fewer than five mosquitos burrowing through my shorts. Repeat every time I looked down. By the end of the ride, every time I stopped I was two-handedly scratching my ass (brilliant behaviour in front of coworkers). Coupled with a nasty crash to the right where I twisted my ankle (didn't unclip) bruised the inside of my knee (top tube), hammered my hip (log), and bashed my wrist (tree)... man, it's definately a good thing I'm not a swimsuit model. So, to give you a mental image, I have a bruise that starts halfway across the side of my thigh and wraps around the back. It's about eight inches long and is starting to calcify. It's about the colour of a blackberry with spots of raspberry around the middle. Add that to the lunarscape of red and white mosquito bites (I lost count at around fifty, just to give you an idea) and my ass looks like a damn war zone.

Everyone's stupid, and victory by flatulance

Maybe you haven't detected it lately (ha!), but I've been really pretty fed up with work. I constantly feel about this big (squish thumb and index finger together, and squint), and I'm starting to wonder if I can do anything right. I got so paranoid that I finally went to my boss last week and said that I was a bit worried that I'm next on the chopping block (he fired someone about four weeks ago). He reassured me that I'm doing fine, and that I have nothing to worry about. But, a day later, I saw the HR woman walking into his office to have a closed-door conversation with him, and immediately I was paranoiaville all over again.
But, thankfully, I have a bitter and jaded coworker who has shown me the way.

Everyone's stupid.

That's it. It's brilliant. People say shit and do shit and are shit, and all you have to do is take a deep breath and think "everyone's stupid." Go ahead, try it. Breathe in, breathe out. Everyone's stupid. Don't you feel better? It works as a litmus for people's stupidity. We tell everyone our departmental motto, and the ones who are on the (very short) non-stupid list will say "ha, ha! That's funny! Everyone is stupid!" and the rest will say "hey, that's not fair! I'm not stupid!" Response #2 is an affirmation of stupidity. Anyway, honestly, muttering "everyone's stupid" to myself fifty times a day has reduced my work stress to just plain giggles, and I'm feeling much better. I reccomend to everyone you try it. Say it with me now, everyone's stupid!

In other news, in preparation for the May 31 ban on smoking in public places, I am organizing M's First But Not Last Annual Pub Crawl for Health. Blacken your liver while keeping your lungs fluffy and pink! I'm very excited by this prospect, as my prior technique was to take classes that would enable me to fart on command. If a table of smokers was ruining my evening, my plan was to go up to them and rip some serious ass. Then when they started yelling about how gross that is, I'd say "hey, you're making me breathe your air, so you're gonna breathe mine." I rather liked that idea, but of course, laws work much better than farting.

Smelly Dog Farts & the Like

I was down in Vermont for Victoria Day weekend. This weekend is generally known as "May 24" (24 being pronounced two-four, by loyal, beer drinking Canadians), and is a good weekend to launch the boat, hang with the family, barbecue, and all that good, beginning-of-summer type stuff.
Generally.
However, due to the whole raining tigers and bitches (upgraded from cats and dogs) thing, this May 2-4 was a pile of staying inside and watching TV.
When you stick a bunch of twenty-somethings in a house in the woods with nothing to do, you end up trying to stage a picture that looks like a stuffed dragon eating a dog. Then the dog yawns and you go into hysterics. Then, an hour or two later, the dog farts, and it's not nearly as funny. My friend's dog, Annie, who is a coon hound, apparantly got into the compost and ate some fermented potatos and asparagus. I have never smelled more rancid, putrid, unholy ass in my entire life. That dog farted and all four of us had to go outside. I gagged. My eyes watered. I cried. Honestly, never in my life.
So, that was my 2-4 weekend. Smelling dog pooter and taking stupid pictures.
God bless Canada.

victory is mine!

OH YES. OH HELL YES!

*happy dance*

injustice!

I took today to sit in coffee shops and catch up on the immense backlog of work I had to do, and drink expensive coffee, and be away from the ringing phone and the pesky coworkers and the stress of my job. It's been good. I don't think I want to go to work ever again.

The "reason" for my absence from work today was that I had to get a Quebec driver's license, which entails gathering a pile of documentation and dragging myself out to the West Island. Stupid Quebec bureaucracy... sometimes I wonder if I live in North America or Mainland China. I am, as it says in my sidebar (which, yes, I am aware that I desperately need to update) 24 years old. Being from a small town in Ohio, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, as soon as I turned 16, I started driving. My parents were sick of hauling me around, and I was sick of being hauled. So that makes me a driver of eight, going on nine years. No accidents (except that stupidity in the parking lot last year), only one speeding ticket (I was 17). I'm a safe driver. So imagine my surprise and insult when Quebec issued me a probationary license until I turn 25, because, apparantly, they don't have proof that I've been driving for more than 24 months (this was not part of the pile of documentation they asked me to bring), so I'm on freakin' probation for the next two months, until my birthday. Every time I think Quebec's government can't get any stupider, they throw me for a loop.

In the meantime, I went for a ride yesterday. Perhaps I mentioned. Anyway, I've been having some trouble with my road bike headset making creaking noises. I've taken it apart, cleaned and greased everything, and put it back together, to no avail. I was supposed to go for a ride yesterday with one of my non-biker friends (he was going to come for the first bit and then I was going to take off on my own). But as I was getting ready to go, I realized that my headset was loose. So I called him to say I wasn't going to be able to go straightaway, because I needed to pass by the bike shop and get it checked out.

"Why don't you just ride one of your other bikes?"

What?

Now, do you think that I would have five bikes if they didn't all have a distinct purpose? NO! I can ride my mountain bike on the road as much as I can drive a tank through downtown LA, and I can ride my road bike on the mountain as much as a Cheshire cat can survive in the plains of Africa. This is simple, people, simple. I'm a minimalist... I have five bikes instead of nine because five bikes is what I need to meet my basic needs....

I can't even keep a straight face while writing that. Oh, I am so rediculous sometimes.

the latest and greatest

Today, I am "working from home." "Home" means a Starbucks in the Plateau, because, as is the theme lately, I still don't have internet at home. I think I need to just buck up and pay up, because living alone with no TV and no internet is, well, freakin' lonely. If my phone dies I'll probably be found six months from now, rocking back and forth in the corner, mumbling about 90210.
I never watched 90210. It really didn't hold my interest.

I guess I've been going through a bit of a rough spot lately. I'm really worn out from work, and there are some added stressors in my life that are leaving me a little bit worse for wear. I keep trying to solve my problems by going out and being social, but then I'll have these... I don't know, attacks or something, where I suddenly can't be around people. I feel like I'm a toxic presence in social situations, a ball of nerves and hypersensitivity, and I bring people down. I try to pretend that I'm happy and good and all that, but sometimes I just can't fight how I feel. I think I need to figure out what the hell is going on.

In other news, I went for a 4 1/2 hour ride yesterday. That was good stuff, because I didn't have to think. I'm very anti-thinking lately.
Got the Visa bill for the Blur the other day. Holy heart attack.

Today's solution to all my problems.

I'm sitting in a business airport, waiting for the itty bitty plane I'm taking back to Montreal to get ready to go. This is fucking surreal sometimes, I tell ya.

There's a lot of nice things about working for a company with the resources to allow me to hop on a plane at the last minute to go take care of something on the West Coast or in Europe, or wherever else things may need to be taken care of. I get to stay in some pimp-daddy mofo hotels, that's for sure. And I get to eat free food. I seriously can't tell you how much fun it is to go out to dinner, order an appetizer, soup, salad, main dish, dessert, and beer... and someone else pays for it. No guilt. Freakin' right.

But this morning, as my hair was getting stuck in the blow drier, and B (who drove in and crashed in my (free) hotel room... conveninently on her way to her sister's graduation) was laughing her ass off at the fact that I'm a "businesslady," I gotta wonder, what the HELL am I doing? I mean, I had a good long laugh last night because I had no pants on. Pants (and/or lack thereof) are funny. Poo is funny. Farts are funny. So what am I doing pretending to be this corporate drone? My solution to all this is to come into work with no pants on and fart.

Ha!

no smorking

I'm perched on a bench on the freezing cold 12th-story terrace of my building because this seems to be the only place I can pirate someone's wireless connection. So this is going to be short. Because I'm cold and tired (good tired, 7 hours of riding tired) and need to get crackin' on making those tacos that are just calling my name from downstairs.

For the record, I have never once ever in my life, even in the folly of youth, smoked a cigarette. I never will. Smoking is my #1 dealbreaker in a potential mate, and I've seen all the horrible ugliness smoking creates. Alls I'm saying is the one thing it has going for it (and this is one very small thing) is that smoking does give you these breaks in your day when you're not doing anything, probably not even talking, because the only activity is thinking and smoking, and that is kind of cool.

It's bloody mofo cold out here.

Today, I am a Pink Floyd song.

That whole thing about a ship of fools that's finally run aground is just rolling around in my head today.

Two posts in as many days? I'm so kicking this no-internet thing's ass. Sure, it means sitting on my ass in a coffee shop, but really, what else do I have to do?

It's grey and cold and raining today. Normally, this would be weather that I would not appreciate. But it's matching my mood and my demeanor perfectly. I match. At least I've accomplished something today.

Work is wearing me thin (yet surprisingly, my ass just grows and grows...). In short (as short as it can be), one of my coworkers was fired a week or so ago for what was relayed to us as being "performance-related issues." The guy was a tool, but not that much of a tool. So, naturally, being that I put inordinate amounts of pressure on myself (and for once, it's not just me, it's everyone I work with), I feel like I am next on the chopping block. I've tried having the "you're being unreasonable" conversation with myself, but really, I'm not so sure that I am. Add this to my list of failures. I'm taking my toys and going home, kids.
I really want to succeed at this; if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I can, but the pressure... wow. I'm not sleeping, I'm down all the time... and I got hung out to dry today in front of senior management by some holier-than-thou, no-life-outside-of-engineering goon. Then, the guy realized he was wrong (which I not only told him, but presented him with documentation, and he still hung me out to dry), and sent a "this issue is now in the hands of another department" email, to which my supervisor responded "no worries." No fucking worries? Seriously? I have worries! I have many many worries, and I don't appreciate the first mention of my name being in front of senior management as the bad seed who didn't do her job!

OK, OK, I'm done now. I am.

Let's see. In other news, I walked home last night and cut accross the park... a little bit of an interesting experience. So serene, but so not. Guy digging through trash cans pulling out dozens of beer bottles, guys on benches drinking beer out of bottles and throwing them away... strange, lurky-type characters peeking out from behind trees, one guy looking for a light. Four guys outside my apartment building doing sweet nothing (at 1:00am on a Monday night), and the occasional girl in flowy skirt and uncomfortable looking shoes riding a shitty old bike. Although it's the preferred time for the wierdos to come out to play, I love night. I miss night. This whole "working" thing takes night away, and I miss staying up til the sky turns that just-before-dawn blue-black. When it's silent. Before the early-morning runners hit the ground at the break of dawn, before the bakeries start to open, before the delivery trucks roar to life. I want my night back. I think I should take up smoking, so that I am forced, by my addiction, to spend an hour or so of every evening lazily hanging over my balcony railing, staring out at nothing, and contemplating whatever crosses my line of sight. I don't have any calm in my life right now, and none of the chaos is the kind I treasure. I need something to bring me back, and although I love riding, I don't do it often enough and it's like building a sand wall on the beach to stop a tidal wave.

Enough of this. Go read Pearls Before Swine. That shit is worth your time.

&?

Blur, World.

World, Blur.

Make nice. You're going to be seeing a lot of each other.

So, I picked up my new bike on Friday. Credit card recieved from bank, promptly maxed out. I can make this work, but it means sacrificing many creature comforts such as expensive alcohol, cable/internet at home, and driving to work (most days). I am okay with this. It is a small sacrifice to make for the complete and utter sweetness of my new ride. It is a wholly unnecessary addition to my ten-wheel stable, and I love it already. I may be guarded with my heart... brick walls ten feet high with broken glass around it and whatnot, but the Blur, the Blur I love like a newborn child. Wholly and unconditionally.

So long as the bitch doesn't break down.

Other than my new bike, and the few precious hours of peace it will provide me every week, life continues to be out of control. I will NOT let the purchase of said bike stress me out, but there are a few unforseen "complications" in my financial situation which arose over the weekend (ie, back taxes on all my income from Old Crappy Job... New Sweet Job bumped me up a few tax brackets and now I owe the Canadian government four figures in back taxes. This is what you get in Quebec for being a relatively successful twenty-something with no kids. You get to pay for your ex-roommates mid-life crisis and everyone else's drinking money. But that is another rant for another day. ) which are contributing a massive pile of suck, which I seem to be the uncontested queen of these days.

Speaking of my ex-roommate, we had our first run-in the other day. By "run-in," I mean, I went to go pick up my mail. She asked for the check for the $450 I owe her. I told her that I don't have it (which I really, really don't). She got bitchy. I don't care. That's pretty much it. Everyone I've spoken to about this has said "screw her. She screwed you, right?" But we all know that I'm going to pay her because I did agree to. And if I were in her situation (which I hope I never would be because I hope I'd never kick my roommate out on her ass with no warning), I'd hope that the other person would have the decency to pay me back. I will be the better person, but I'll be the better person in my own sweet time. I'm not going to make myself uncomfortable or sacrifice any of the plans I've made to pay her off. If she hadn't kicked me out, I wouldn't have had to spend the money to move and re-furnish an entire apartment, my rent would be a whole hell of a lot lower, and I'd be way more than $450 richer. So, I'll pay her when I'm good and ready. And if it puts her in a tough financial situation, so fucking what. That is not my problem.

I have a long vomiting of work stress that I need to do, but it's a beautiful evening and I just woke up from a nap, and I just clicked through the pictures from this weekend, so I'm feeling zen again. So the work rant will wait. And you, probably, are happy. Because work ranting is boring and nobody likes to hear it. However, when the work rant does come, I promise that I will charactarize the pertinant characters in a way that will be humourous to us all. Maybe one will explode! Wouldn't that be fun?

Ah well. This is that.