Recently I began drinking water. Well, no, not for the first time ever, but I began to take it to school with me and drink it. I tell you, if something is there in front of me (I’m talking practical ingestible items here…), I will eat it, or I will drink it. I have very little self control (especially with candy). If I were standing in front of a buffet, I would either explode, or I would run out of food. So when I carry a liter of water with me, it poses certain problems. On Friday, the most immediate problem with this whole scenario was realized during : the physics exam. The problem with drinking a liter of water right before an exam is probably obvious to most, but since I hadn’t really been drinking anything on school mornings I became oblivious to the potential problem. Lets just say that about half way through the exam I was in considerable… distress. This wasn’t only because the exam sucked, but more to do with the fact that my body’s most immediate desire was to rid itself of the vast quantity of water I had consumed earlier. I had a great deal of regret during this exam, mostly due to the overzealous water consumption but also, as I have astutely determined, that physics exams suck.

Last week I was driving to school at about 8:00 in the morning. There is this side road that goes to the SFU parking lots that has a speed limit of 30 kph. Of course, as is the case with all speed limits, people take this as a suggestion and go 60. I tend to go 40 – 45, a transgression that has already managed to get me a terse letter from SFU Parking and Security telling me to slow down or they would revoke my parking permit. Of course, I still go about 40, but keep a lookout for the radar van. Last week I had this young woman following me. I think she wished I was going faster than 40 because she decided to weave in and out of the lane behind me. So, since I am not a morning person and can get a tad cantankerous (the reason I am sticking to at the moment) I decided to slow down. As one might assume, she then got ornery. She tailgated, she honked, she waved a certain finger at me. She was yelling. This is a stretch of road that is probably only 1 kilometer. So, rather than follow me for a minute or two, she would rather fly into a rage, instead of just bearing with me. Sure, I was being an ass, but the reaction was just too over the top for me to resist the temptation. She started to say something after she got out of her car (after parking next to me), but then she stopped (I will be forever curious what she would have said, but I can probably guess). When she got to the door of the building, she stopped, sat down, and lit cigarette. Gee, and I thought she must have been late for a meeting or something… Sorry to have kept you from your cancer.

Today (lacking anything much better to do) we were sharing stories of sickness. Those times when you would give almost anything to feel better. Someone recounted the story of how they went to Hong Kong for three weeks, returned, and ate the hamburger casserole that they made before they left! What was simply strange about this story was that he didn’t get sick at all (none of that “Power Yawning”, as the kids call it now). I think he just got lucky, rather than having a strong stomach for these things. Myself, on the other hand, came to the table with the story how I ate a four day old Kaiser bun in 1993 (the next day the others were found to be cultivating colonies of a hairy, mould-like substnace). The ensuing trip to the hospital (go home – you just have to “ride it out”) and the week of delerium spent in bed (too bad I was’t writing then – I could have come up with even weirder stuff) is a pretty good tale of woe. Suffice to say that the 25 pounds that I lost in one week (from 150 to 125 in a week) brought new meaning to the word skinny. 6 feet tall and 125 is not a pretty sight from anyones perspective. What was probably more aweful than having been sick was the interest from several girls who made annoyances of themselves trying to determine how I had lost so much weight in so little time (their only interest). Already what I would consider thin, they wanted to know how they could lose weight like that. “I was sick”, I’d say. Who were you around? “Food poisoning, likely”, I’d day. What did you eat? Where did you eat it? What else did you eat? Did you eat during your week away? I made the pointless attempt at pointing out that 1) Why do you want to lose weight anyway, looking the way you do already? and 2) There are MUCH better ways than the inadvertant manner in which I did it. I’d rather be “Power Yawning” than considering the socail ramifications of questions like these. Already skinny girls eager to get violently ill for a week in order to lose weight scare me, regardless of whatever pressures they may realize or imagine.

Why am I telling you this? – because I have been putting all of my efforts to do with the internet and this page into its redesign, rather than coming up with compelling new content for it. I don’t think that continuing tales of “Power Yawning” should probably satisfy anyones category of compelling, so I will spare you the details.

I have experimentally and scientifically discovered that it isn’t really possible to die of boredom, or it would have happened by now.

I have an oven that is so slow it takes it half an hour to get to 400 F. That sounds like a joke… I have an oven that is so slow….. Like, I have a sister who is so cross-eyed she can sit on the front porch and count the chickens in the backyard. Sorry, I digress. Having such a slow oven frequently sucks, especially if you want to eat your food in a reasonable time. So imagine my surprise and consternation when I realize that I had cracked one of my “oven safe” plates in said slow oven. It wasn’t even that hot? What is this? Doesn’t oven safe mean you can put it into the oven? This event prompted a great many “they don’t make them like they used to’s” and even a “kids these days”. I am not sure where the second one came from , but there it was. What’s next? I suppose that my neighbors canoe isn’t really “waterproof” and that pen of mine is only “permanent” in the eyes of a landfill. A glue stick that says “Glides smoother”. What is this? Do I care how “smooth” it feels to the paper?

Then I’ve got mushrooms that say “not to be taken internally” and shampoo that says “already cooked”. Wait, I’ve got those backwards. However, this doesn’t vindicate the whole name of the product. Its even got “sham” in the name. What if we want the real stuff? Will we someday be able to buy food that says “Already eaten” ? My olive oil says “extra virgin”. How does that work? I don’t’ even want to get into the fine print on my toaster (it is considerable). Some boxes say confusing things like “fragile”. Isn’t it the contents that could be fragile? What if I filled a “fragile” box with cotton balls? Would they all be broken and mangled if I dropped it all down the stairs? What if my box of expensive crystal doesn’t say “fragile” on it?

I’ve got this ointment that is supposed to make cuts heal faster and it also says “not to be taken internally”. How internal is “internally? If I get it too far into my cut will it do harm? Will it go into my bloodstream and form a clot in my brain – blocking the parts of it that do important things like allow me to scratch an itch or to enjoy the loyalty of a good dog? My unopened box of salt has a tag over the spout that says “safety seal”. Is this their mascot? There isn’t a picture of a seal on it anywhere! Did I get one without a seal on it? Does this mean that my salt is unsafe because there isn’t a seal on it? Would the seal be keeping me from hurting the salt or the salt from hurting me? Then it goes and says something confusing like “enriched with Potassium? Don’t seals get enough of this in their diet? It also calls itself “table salt”. Why? Why? Why? There was a sign on a restaurant that I was in the other day that said: “No shirt, no shoes, no service”. Then they objected to the fact that I wasn’t wearing pants. Is this really my fault? Why couldn’t they be more specific? Lets not even get started on how comfortable the “may explode and leak” message on my batteries makes me feel.

I have all kinds of questions like these. What is the square root of an orange? Why is blue such a depressing color? Why doesnt static cling bother me? Why dont kitchen sinks have overflow holes like bathroom ones and bathtubs too? Why haven’t Canadians reformed their senate? Its July, why does the weather suck? But lets not get silly now….

I was talking to a friend of mine today, and he told me about an event that occurred on the bus this morning. Quite often on his route to SFU, there is a woman who brings a pet parrot with her. This parrot isn’t in a cage, and gets free run of the bus when she allows it. Once, when there were a lot of people on the bus, this parrot began a “beak and claw climb” right up the shirt sleeve of the person next to the woman. I’ll bet the parrot was having just one hell of a good time. The person who was acting as the ladder, however, might not have been as amused.

Today the story got a little more interesting. The bus driver would have none of all this “parrot on the bus” routine. He told the parrot lady to leave and to take the avian desperado with her. He cited (besides the no pet policy) that someone might be allergic to it. She refused to leave. My friend couldn’t hear the gist of the conversation, but it wasn’t getting too heated. After the driver had returned to his seat at the front of the bus, the parrot lady remained. The driver then called out that if she wasn’t getting off the bus, he wasn’t going to take the bus anywhere. She crossed her arms. Seems we had the beginnings of a first rate stalemate. The driver then repeated that he wasn’t going to drive anywhere with the parrot still on board. This sort of reminds me of when parents say things like : if you don’t stop that I am driving this car off the first cliff I come to young man! Ah, the memories…

Eventually, after a few minutes of this, the driver realized he wasn’t going to get her off the bus by asking nicely. So he called transit security, which met them about five minutes towards SFU. Though I wasn’t filled in on the details, the parrot lady was taken off of the bus in what was not described as any sort of vastly unpleasant incident. She had been promised by the transit rent-a-cops that they would drive her to her destination. I was secretly hoping that the incident would become ugly because it might make a better update. Sadly, no.

In what can now only be construed as a natural progression from this story, I raise again the question of people who wear too much perfume. Obviously having a parrot on a transit bus is cited as a transgression largely because of the fact that pets aren’t allowed, and that the parrot was not in a cage. However, the driver suggested that it was because people might be allergic to it. Would he have the gumption to try and throw off someone who was wearing too much perfume/cologne? I doubt it.

I used to have terrible allergies – everything was a potential allergen. Food especially, would cause all kinds of horrible repercussions. Thankfully, this isn’t the case anymore. As I have “matured” I have also lost the majority of my allergies. Thankfully. The point is, before this occurred, I would have all kinds of horrible reactions to someone who was wearing too much chemical scent. Its not necessarily that they have applied too much of it, its often just that the scent exists at all.

I should also point out that this does not preclude my potential interest in such scents. Recently I was around this young woman who had on a modicum of perfume. Despite the fact that one of the results of my close proximity was sneezing and a runny nose, I am not saying that it wasn’t worth it in some small way. Hmmmm…

So having examined all sides of the issue I have come to the conclusion that… Actually I haven’t made my mind up about it yet, but I aim to soon. Perhaps more research is needed.

Insomnia is a phenomenon that I have never liked. Lying in bed and thinking to myself is something I like to do, if I am not trying to get to sleep. When I am, thoughts only become a nuisance to my goal of unconsciousness. So image how pissed I was when last night, after finally getting to sleep, the main smoke alarm went off.

Well, I wasn’t really mad so much as I was very suddenly wide awake. The house that I live in has one of those built in smoke alarm systems, and it is very loud. I have often heard it when they are cooking dinner upstairs, and I have learned to not panic when it goes off, and to even ignore it if the time is appropriate. Of course, it has never gone off at 3:00 in the morning before. So after getting to sleep approximately 20 minutes before, my unconscious state was shattered by this shrieking banshee on the ceiling. Needless to say, this really got my attention. All kinds of images started to leap into my mind. The house being on fire being most prominent among those. I imagined rest of the basement (I only occupy half) on fire, and what I would do if I discovered it was. I have always wondered why, when things turn really spectacular in an undesirable way, why I don’t panic. Inappropriately, sometimes.

The first thing I thought of were birch trees. Back in grade whatever I remember them telling us to make a plan with our parents concerning where to meet in the case that the house was on fire. The birch trees were where we were going to meet. This wasn’t really applicable here. I had already turned on the light, and was beginning to think that maybe I should perhaps go outside and assess the situation from there when the alarm suddenly stopped. Then I heard the people upstairs talking, thumping on the floor with their feet. One said to another to go back to bed. And that was it. Silent.

Just lets try and get to sleep after that shall we?

Of course, there was no fire, and I have yet to gain an explanation for why the alarm went off. For all I know, someone tried to get a quick indoor smoke late last night, without thinking of exactly the consequences might be. I might have appreciated someone telling me what was going on.

I had a great amount of time in which to think at this point. I do have a plan on how to get out of here in the case of a fire or other emergency evacuation situation. I’ve given it thought, and I have also covered myself in case I begin to desire to take things with my on my departure. The briefcase.

Recently I have seen two instances where it was necessary to distribute someone’s belongings to other family members. This seldom goes well, as I have both observed and heard from others. I am not sure if the resultant fighting is because they are intimately attached to the objects in question, or if they simply desire stuff at the cost of others not being able to get it. As I child I used to be very attached to my possessions, maybe that is the way that most children are, I don’t know. Recently, however, I took stock of my numerous possessions and determined exactly what was irreplaceable. Not what was important, but what I couldn’t replace by just going to a store. So I took all of these things, and I managed to fit them into a briefcase. Granted, much of it consists of things that I have written myself. Irreplaceable because I could write them again, but never quite in just the same way. I also have a .ZIP disk of around 50 megabytes of text files, also things that I have written in the past number of years. A copy of this web site and the others I have built for other people too, of course. I have many books that I really enjoy reading, but the only one that has meaning outside of the fact that it is simply a book is also in the case. There are photos, and a few articles that have been given to me by various persons in the last few years.

That’s it. It all fits into a briefcase. This is what I grab if I have the presence of mind to do so as I flee my suite for whatever cause. I believe that the pursuit of property and the worry of the loss of it is uppermost too often in peoples minds. I cannot know what is in someone’s mind, but I observe their actions and come to this conclusion through them. And I know that I don’t want to be like that again. And I also know that I shouldn’t be starting sentences with “and”, but who’s reading this anyway?

I have noticed how commercials tend to put a positive spin on their product. This is probably not a new strategy, as it likely has been a fixture in Advertising 101 classes since the beginning. I wonder how hard this is, sitting around the advertising table***, when you know your product is crap. I mean, come on, sometimes it must just be obvious. Obvious too, is the fact that people will buy your piece of crap and you could stand to make a lot of money depending upon just how many suckers reside within the geographic scope of your advertising campaign.

All of these thoughts occurred to me as I attempted to get to sleep while listening to the radio late last night (there are better ways). There was a commercial on about how you can learn to speed read. They seemed quite proud of the fact that their method didn’t involve such hassles as having to run your fingers down the page. Imagine! I don’t have to instantly “memorize” a page of text with that annoying finger getting in the way! Sure I may glance at a page and notice interesting words all over it, with sometimes one or two from separate parts of the page catching my eye, which I guess this “method” is based. I still think that it is bullshit.

Part of reading a book is the time spent reading. If I could read a book cover to cover in as much time as it took to turn all the pages, then I would read far fewer books. Even if I could remember exactly what every character did, said, etc., part of the experience of reading a book is the actual reading. I would be robbing myself of escaping reality for a while if I were to employ this quick read method. So sorry advertising campaign, your QuickRead^TM method won’t become mine, and aside from the fact that I think that your product is bullshit, I will continue reading books the old fashioned way. Besides, if I were turning the pages that quickly, I would probably bleed to death from the ensuing paper cuts.

“I took a speed waiting course, now I can wait and hour in only 20 minutes!” – Steven Wright

***Which reminds me, as soon as I said “advertising table”, I was reminded of this commercial for a rental car company. I kind of like this website actually (http://www.adcritic.com), there are lot of commercials that are good for a variety of reasons. Some are funny, some are just very clever, and where else can you watch the cat herders commercial as many times as you want?

A few weeks ago I noticed that much of my cars exhaust was coming out of the front. The exhaust manifold, I was told by a friend. “Only”, he said, “it’s strange that it isn’t making noise. If it were the exhaust manifold it should sound really loud”.

A few weeks later…

I hadn’t gone for a drive in my car for the sole purpose of perusing the scenery in the Fraser Valley for quite a while. I decided to check out an area in Fort Langley that I used to go to all the time years ago. Half way there, something happened that startled the people walking on the side of the road next to me. Then their kids stared at me when I drove by (and not for the usual reasons…).

[Enter the NOISE]

It turns out that my friends statement was rather prophetic. Damn. So now I am the proud owner of a Subaru which obnoxiously makes a sound something like a garbage truck on helium. When I coast, there is no sound at all, but every time I put my foot on the gas I am suddenly reminded of my obnoxious sounding vehicle.

Its not so much a noise as it is the loud, obnoxious sound of money soon to come cascading from my barren wallet to the greedy coffers of the dealership on the ground below. A runaway bobsled ride to hell.

[Enter the SERVICE DEPARTMENT]

So my next course of action was to call the dealership where I went through the AirCare fiasco (aren’t they all?). I set up an appointment and got a courtesy car because I will be damned if I am going to wander Richmond on foot aimlessly for 5 hours like I have before. Of course, this sets up the problem of parking the damn thing at SFU – with all the hoops I expect to jump through with the parking people. Unsuccessfully, perhaps.

I asked the service person that IF it WAS the exhaust manifold (either the gasket or the thing itself…), would I be negligent in driving my sonic pariah to and from school until Friday when its appointment time. Of course, this question was initially evaded, but once I pressed for an answer, I didn’t like the one that I got. “Actually”, Mr. Russell, “I am not sure exactly what an exhaust manifold is”. GREAT!! Ok, Ms. behind the front counter jockey, can you ask someone so that I could gain at least tentative assurance that my car would not suddenly go supernova during the week? I may have reworded the question slightly.

No, of course I couldn’t get this kind of advice, since they don’t give it until you are actually within their grasp. I didn’t really expect them to give me an answer, I just wanted to get some kind of assurance if I could, before I make the decision whether or not to ride the bus for the rest of the week. At 6 dollars a day, when I could have driven my car anyway, I would have liked the advice.

Not looking forward to Friday.

You lucky bastards – two updates in one day! Smile!

Since today was a beautiful day weather wise, I decided to blow off my classes. Actually, it wasn’t at all like that, its just the way that it happened. It seems that if you set your alarm clock for 7’oclock, you had better make sure that is AM, not PM, which I did not. Subsequently, I woke up at 9:00 (AM) – which is about half way through my calculus class. So I went to school anyway, and managed to get some good news, and some bad new. I had midterms last week, and one this week. The physics II and calculus II classes – I had assumed that I did really bad on them, or even failed. This is the way these things go. I was pretty sure that I did ok, yet not wonderfully, in my law and psychology class. Naturally, as Murphy’s law dictates, these assertions were hogwash. I got the lowest mark in the class in psychology (which I don’t really care about in a midterm that isn’t worth much – but it is an indication that I had better wake up), and I completely passed the average in physics, which I was dead sure I failed. In calculus, which history says my previous high mark on a calculus midterm ever was 60%, I completely blew the class average of 54% out of the water and got 80%. How this happened I am not sure, but all the studying I did might have had something to do with it, maybe. Wow.

As I started off on before, I missed my calculus class today. I decided to spend my time outside today because of the rare glimpse of sun that we had today. It was 27 degrees and completely clear – startlingly different than Wednesday which was very foggy (esp. at SFU) and about 12 degrees. Consequently, I studied outside today and fell asleep in the sun, which is why I missed my physics class. As punishment I am sure, I woke up with a devastatingly good sunburn. I generally decided long ago that, since I seem to be allergic to most sunscreens, that I just wouldn’t use it at all. I made the decision that the resulting rash/scratchy phenomenon was worth the risk of dying of cancer, a strategy which now that I am old(er) and wise(r) I should probably reevaluate or abandon completely.

I went hiking this afternoon for about 5 hours. This was fun, considering the weather, and wasn’t something I had done recently enough. All of my injuries (back, knee and ankle) completely ignored my activity, so everything was very pleasant. To top it off, I went somewhere I had never been before, so I got to explore a little of the mountains around Port Coquitlam a little more that I had before.

To continue off on the earlier assertion I had made a week or so ago about the people who obviously think they are more important than everyone else : I went to Safeway today. The two elderly people were proud of this cake they were buying, because it was on sale. Only , it wasn’t on sale, it was just on the wrong shelf (others were on sale). An argument ensued, which, I must admit, was quite entertaining. Apparently they thought that since the cake was on the wrong shelf, they should still be charged the price of the other cakes on that shelf. More arguing. Finally, the clerk asked if they wanted the cake because of what kind it was, or because it was on sale. On sale, they said. So the bright idea came forth that they get the kind of cake that was ON sale, and abandoned their current one. Everyone went home happy and I was entertained.

Go to the kitchen now and slop bubbling hot spaghetti sauce on your sunburn. I guarantee it will get your attention!

For the second time in my life I ate a the small WhiteSpot at SFU. Normally I like WhiteSpot food, but this place gives it a bad name. After the pickle incident a few years ago I vowed never to return. Today I did, and what I found in my burger was not something that I would normally want to consume. Let the title say the rest… Someone actually found their way to my site via AltaVista searching for : “the beatings will continue until morale improves”. Hmmm… I don’t remember writing that…..

Speaking of which, I am glad that a lot of my emails are not a matter of public record. I am aware that backups of my emails are stored on many different servers all over the place, but someone would have to want to read them in order to determine their contents. Jason and I write emails that are frequently uhmmm…. different. If I ever got into trouble with the law (again…) I hate to think if those emails were read. I frequently tell jokes of a sarcastic/weird nature that a lot of people don’t get. I can only imagine what sorts of fines/prison terms could be targeted against me if my emails were read, and accepted as truth.

Sorry, its a dot dot dot sort of day (…).