Well, recently I moved. I relocated from my previous place in Coquitlam because of the vermin situation there, even though the last thing I really wanted to do was move. This is still the case, and I’ve been in my new place for a week. Perhaps that is why I haven’t unpacked anything yet (except the computer, TV, VCR…. you can see where my priorities lie). So there is the box mountain, full of stuff that I know I have but I cannot find. I just don’t feel like unpacking it. This was all on my mind when I was packing it… knowing that I would have to unpack it. Maybe I’m just lazy, but lately I’ve been showing less motivation than a professor with tenure.
I might just be still reeling from the stresses of moving day. The following is an email that I send a friend the day after I moved. He thought I should put it up here. I admit that it has a certain “quality”, but this suggestion also came from someone who rewrote the manual on fire safety. He crosses out “keep calm”, suggests panic, and then says that you have to remember to 1) scream, 2) run, and 3) pretend to fly. Is this the demographic that I am pandering to here?
Subject: Re: so how was the first night?
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 14:43:02 -0800 (PST)
> I trust there were no wild goats or rabid cougars running through your
> place in the dead of night?
I won’t get into this for long, but you can sketch out a story through the following points:
– 4 car loads of boxes
– 1 truck load of furniture, with 2 leaky tarps
– 1 monsoon for the whole afternoon when it was only 1 degree
– Snow on Burnaby mountain
– Leaky tarps = soaked mattress, box spring, couch, bookshelves, bedding
– 1 makeshift nest next to the gas fireplace on the FLOOR!
– 1 phone line that is “hooked up” according to Telus, but doesn’t have a dial tone
– 1 appointment for next week with Telus
– 1 appointment costing 100$ (starting…)
– 1 bank card snafu so I didn’t have any money after bank closed
– 1 day without food because of above snafu
– I still haven’t eaten, and its the next day!
– Lack of internet access!
– If you set your fridge too high, it freezes everything!
– Once a frozen cucumber thaws, all hell breaks loose!
– Hardwood floors above me. This creates certain acoustic problems (for me)
– I dog that either barks constantly, or is apparently learning to simulate an entire wolf pack single handedly
– The dog is doing a good job
– Unsympathetic landlords concerning the “included” cable that isn’t
actually included. They claim they will look into it next week, sometime.
– 1 broken VCR (apparently)
– A paper due Tuesday. Oh, did I mention that I can’t get my printer to accept paper?
– I’m going golfing tomorrow, hopefully I’ll be struck by lightning.
– There is no light in my bathroom so I showered in the dark. Thats not something i recommend.
– Wild goats and cougars would have actually made something interesting. I could have eaten them.
– I would kill to have traded all of the above for another presentation, even though the first one wasn’t fun
The presentation in question was for my BISC 445 class, Environmental Physiology of Animals. I did a presentation on the “SELECTION FOR HEMATOCRIT PERCENT IN THE HOUSE MOUSE”. This, despite what you must be thinking, was actually interesting. However, it was not what I desired to be doing and preparing for on the day before I moved. It started off interesting, as the TA asked me to “take my hat off”. I thought he was kidding, and then he asked again. This was shaping up to be a major disaster. So I said something like: ” I don’t want to inflict what is under here on these ‘good people’ “. He persisted, so I lifted my hat slightly, and he suggested that I put it back on! Ha! This was not the way that I was hoping to start out, but the rest of it went OK. I didn’t lose consciousness, knock the overhead to the floor, or have any manner of zipper accident (this time).
One of the things that is a major pain in the rear when you are moving is the fact that you have to change your phone number. Well, a pain for other people since I couldn’t remember my old one anyway…! So now I am no longer in the phone book. Anybody who is anybody is in the phonebook. Not me. Damn! It could be worse, I could miss out on an exciting experience that everyone is talking about.
Last week we had an earthquake. Rather, Seattle had an earthquake, but we just kind of got a subtle feel of it. This made me mad, not because earthquakes suck, not because it damaged Seattle, but because I didn’t feel it. So here were all the questions: “Did you feel the earthquake? Where were you during the earthquake?” etc. So this is what pissed me off, I missed the whole thing. With all these questions on that, and the next day, I had little to share. Oh yeah! Well, I saw it on TV! It just doesn’t have the same impact. Nobody wants to talk to someone who missed the whole big earth moving experience! I have felt an earthquake before. I was sitting on the ground floor of my parent’s house, and felt this rolling up and down. The drapes were moving, as was the lamp shade. I really knew what it was, yet it wasn’t of that sort of magnitude to really get the adrenaline (aren’t we supposed to call it epinephrine now?) flowing. So I was sitting there kind of grinning to myself that, hey – that was an earthquake! I was watching TV, and this one (in 1995 or 1996 or something…) was also centered down in Washington state. It even disrupted a Mariners game. Naturally, the media down there was all over it, and I was watching this chaos unfold on TV when the phone rang. So I got to act like an expert with this friend who called for confirmation that this was indeed an earthquake. Fun stuff.
So, I missed the earthquake, but I have an old earthquake story to tell you. It kind of like when you start to talk about something that makes you feel bad, and everyone else jumps up with similar story. I know exactly how you feel! I had this happen to me a few years ago… blah blah…. Yeah, I do it too, but its REALLY annoying!
I have been hearing a lot in the media for the last few years about “rage”. Air-rage, road-rage, shopping cart rage… I have also noticed my own behaviour change as I drove 2 hours a day to get to school, as I relocated at night to avoid the “vermin situation” at my old place. My driving became a lot less courteous, I occasionally yelled at other drivers. While I do not condone such behaviour, I can now see why it occurs. However, road rage makes me really mad. I get cut off by some guy trying to merge onto the freeway going 50, while everyone else is going 100, and he gets really pissed at me for honking? Really? So, while I don’t think I have road rage myself, I think I might have something else…. While I hate the media and it ample tossing about of the term “rage”, I think its time I name what it is what I have with like terminology. So, I think I have Rage-RageTM. Nothing makes me madder than other people getting mad, especially if it is for no reason.
Have I gone completely bonkers?