I went to the beach yesterday. Actually, its not what you think, it was all in the name of research. I needed to get some seawater for an experiment that I am running at SFU. I am drying seaweed in order to determine if desiccation is a reason for the zonation of intertidal algae. You see, the ones that grow up higher are exposed to the air for longer than those that grow right near the water edge (at low tide). Expect a long and boring paper on the subject here in a week or so.

So I needed to get some seawater. I went to the village of Belcarra in order to do this, since this is a beach where there weren’t too many people, as I didn’t feel like explaining why I was going down to the waters edge and getting a big container full of water, and taking it away in my car. While there weren’t many people there, I had to explain it anyway.

Twice.

The first girl that came up to me suggested that I should get something from the pop machine if I was so thirsty. The sort of sense of humor that I like. I liked her since 1) she was genuinely interested in what I was doing (or at least acted like it) and 2) she was at the beach, and was wearing approximately 2 – 2.5 square feet of “beach attire”. This was distracting since I was attempting to explain intertidal zonation and distribution of seaweed. Actually it would have been distracting no matter what I was trying to explain. In short, I forgot my name. She had the audacity to think this was funny, and really, it was.

A second girl was hanging around the parking lot, and asked very much the same question about why I was toting a large container of water. However, her attitude left much to be desired, as the question was posed in very much a “you’re obviously a freak, and I am perfect so I can act like a bitch” sort of way. If you’re going to be nasty, pretentious, and condescending, why ask the question at all?

The real highlite of the day dealt mainly with me carrying this rather large container of sloshing, smelly, seawater back from my car to the lab at SFU. The closes parking spot that I could get was about 500 meters away, which turned out to be a lot larger that it looked from the car. Muscle fatigue while carrying heavy, wet objects in public is always interesting, every single time.

Back at the lab, Doug, the instructor of the course, says :”You didn’t have to go get that, I could have gotten you seawater at the lab downstairs”.

This basically sums up my whole week, and possibly next.

“You’ve won a million dollars in our sweepstakes, how do you feel?”

This is not how the day usually starts. It usually starts with an utterance of impending vengeance upon the nearby alarm clock. Then the vengeance begins. The other day, however, the usual morning routine was shattered by the ringing of my telephone. This is not a common occurrence. The telephone I mean (mornings happen quite a lot around here, much to my chagrin). I answer the telephone :

“You’ve won a million dollars in our sweepstakes, how do you feel?”

What do you say to something like this. There isn’t a rehearsed contingency for this up my sleeve.

“I’m just tingly all over.” And then I hung up.

Perhaps it was the young, female, monotone voice on the phone that didn’t exactly lend credence to the statement. Its not that I would turn down instant millions, its just that the message had better be sent in a professional, mature manner in order for me to believe it.

And then, later, the dreaded wheels in my mind started turning.

What if this wasn’t a young teenage girl with a telephone prank up her sleeve? What if the laughing in the background was in fact a television or something, or perhaps a coworker had just regaled a rapt audience with wild tales of the weekend? What if I had really won a million dollars, and my terse, sarcastic reply had rendered me amounst the poor (monetarily) for the rest of my life? What if the shattering of my morning routine had really been a good thing, and not the apocalypse from the telephone that I had envisioned?

I guess I’ll never know. Maybe she’ll call back.

I want to know what happened to the notion of personal responsibility. Sometimes, when you screw up, it just simply is your fault. Its not because government didn’t offer you the right programs, because the girl at the grocery laughed when you dripped your atm card down the gap between the checkout parts, or because today it was raining. It is because YOU screwed up. What I really don’t understand, is when people do something stupid, and then sue others in order to ease their “pain”. Take some idiot in North Vancouver for instance. He was mountain biking on some trail, bit off more than he could chew, and broke his leg. I should mention that this particular idiot was 15 years old. His parents sued the GVRD because of the accident. Now, I just cannot see why this is. The parents should have been somewhat responsible for their kids actions. Secondly, barring the first point of parental responsibility, the kid who broke his leg should be responsible for being partaking in such an activity. But the GVRD? What responsibility do they have to a 15 year old kid who decides to drive his bike down a mountain? This is the kind of behaviour (the litigation) that ruins the fun for everybody. I don’t get it. If I had done that, even at 15, my parents probably would have asked me why I was so stupid to have tried something like that. And so they should. When I walked backwards off of a ramp in elementary school and broke my jaw in 5 places, the school was very worried that my parents were going to sue them. VERY concerned. Why? They could have taken all the things off of the playground, and covered the entire thing in level grass, and I still would have found a way in order to hurt myself. This is not the schools responsibility, so far as they don’t provide play equipment that is overtly dangerous, such as an archery version of dodge ball, or swings that are over pavement, not sand. My point is that people seem to far too often blame others for the consequences of their own actions, frequently ending up suing others. This lack of personal responsibility is only one of the symptoms showing up in or society. More on this later.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. – Bertrand Russell

I saw this when I ventured out to check my email. I am currently frantically writing paper that is due tomorrow morning. Either Bertrand doesn’t know what he is talking about, or I am closer to the edge than I thought.

One of the many experiences that I have had that keeps me in University is the summer job I had moving furniture. While it payed better than any other job I have ever had (around 13 dollars an hour), the pay was one of the few good things about it. The people I worked with were not the easiest to get along with, bordering on abusive. As for the actual work, I didn’t mind it so much, until we dropped that oak dresser on my knee.

All of this isn’t really the point though. I helped a friend move from Burnaby to Harrison this weekend, and remembered many of the things that I have noticed about how people moving tend to act. This is not to say, however, that my friend acted this way. Actually, it went better than any move I have seen (infinitely better than my own, which were generally stressful, arduous affairs that stretched on for far longer than they should have).

In moving myself and watching others these are things that have happened:

1. We will always find things that were missed during packing. This has created interesting situations like moving freezers full of meat down narrow stairs. Lets not forget the time we packed the cat (which had fallen asleep inside a box) somewhere in the middle of the van and had to tear everything out to get at it. The cat was pretty pissed.
2. Sometimes not all members of the family are as happy with moving as the others. This has created interesting situations like handcuffing oneself to the mailbox, and others with much crying, screaming, and uncomfortableness. I even got threatened by a very large teenager that I was NOT going to take things out of his bedroom or else. With things ending as they did, the pay did not look so good that day.

3. People have way too many Christmas decorations that they don’t use. Especially those glass balls.

4. It is amazing what you can find behind furniture. Sometimes this can be articles that are embarrassing (ie. condoms) or exciting (ie. diamond earrings).

5. I only stumbled upon drugs once while moving furniture, in the form of a live pot plant.

6. Apparently, sweaty movers in their early twenties are not attractive to same-aged females who are moving. Not that I would know.

7. When you are unpacking, you will want one specific item, and have to go through all of the boxes at least twice in order to find it….. in your pocket.

8. People rarely reply with a : “thanks for finding that for me” when you stumble upon illicit drugs, sexual self help books, or pornography stashed under mattresses, under dressers, or behind the chest freezer in the garage.

9. People are not generally at their best when moving. Though they might apologize later, being yelled at or told where to go isn’t all that unexpected. The only reason this didn’t bother me is that I had moved myself recently, and felt their pain.

10. Once I moved a family out into Chilliwack. The two kids directed us beautifully on where to unload the stuff, put the furniture, and even got mad at me for tracking stuff onto the carpet (bad Mike!!). The parents were nowhere around (at work) and the Uncle next door, where the kids were staying, was either high or drunk out of his tree. I think he might have been both. While this was the best instruction I ever got on where to unload boxes and furniture, I am not used to being ordered around by children who are 8 and 13 years of age.

11. Lets just say that if you have allergies to cats, the place you least enjoyed moving was the crazy old lady who had TWENTY of the damn things. It wasn’t the cats, it was the inch of dander and cat cells that was covering everything. AAACHOO!
Two words: cat piss.

12. Apparently I was overlooked when the tips were being handed out, as I only found out at near the end of the summer that this was a common practice, and that I had in fact, missed out on a few. Aholes.

13. My boss got really mad at me for telling the customer that her television cabinet had been broken when a box spring had fallen off of the truck onto it. Apparently, I can go to hell.

14. Also, people blame the messenger.

15. You never have enough boxes.

16. You always are amazed at exactly how much you own.

17. You are also amazed at how much of this stuff is crap, but you will probably still have it next time you move.

18. Working with a sore back is the best way to get a behind the scenes cash bonus from elderly rich people (which made up for the tips I had missed before).

19. Sometimes the family will leave before the movers have completely moved all of the boxes and furniture out of the place. This is when the neighbours converge to tell you all the nasty stories they have about them, and how they don’t light a barbecue the right way.

There are many other experiences that I have had. I will probably remember the best ones immediately after I go to bed.

I moved three times during one summer. This was the same summer that I moved furniture for money. I haven’t moved since, even though this place kind of sucks. I know that I have too much stuff, much of it crap, and I swore that I wouldn’t move all of it next time. I can’t be just another No. 17 can I?

Lets take the following quotation, shamelessly pilfered from a friend’s web page :

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly
themselves, and not to twist them with our own image –
otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find
in them.” – Anon.

The first thing that this brought to mind was not something in the spirit with which this statement was intended. Remember Liberace? The piano playing gay man who had about 20 rings on this fingeres, and jewels and other gaudy/tacky crap all over his piano.This guy was so whacked that he acutally paid for his lovers face to be surgically altered to look more like this own. Think about that. Now read the above statement again. Takes on different dimensions doesn’t it?

My apologies. It is late and I have eaten too many pickles.

I am not renowned as a wonderful cook. My reputation however, is not gained by any sort of actual experiences from those reporting it. My culinary indiscretions have never been witnessed by others. Always, the undertaking of a new recipe has been done in private, there being no witnesses present. This has not always been the case, however, and the luck of having never screwed up with an audience is just that. Luck. Unfortunately, I always find it necessary to share scenarios that have occurred where things just completely got all screwed up.

So I do it again. This time, with probably the most innocuous example in my history. Lets not forget the time I inadvertently set the oven mitts on fire.

This time, the objective was spaghetti sauce. Not really all that difficult I would say, just get the herbs and spice stuff in it balanced right. Not wanting to throw caution to the wind, I decided to follow an actual recipe. Recipes are not usually where I want to go with cooking, as I tend to just throw things together that seem like a good idea and make my own messes. This time, I really wanted spaghetti sauce, so the recipes were withdrawn from the self, dusted off, and read through.

Now, I don’t’ mind screwing up when I cook. I shouldn’t say I don’t mind, but I can’t really blame anybody or be really surprised when I do it myself. This time, I followed the recipe!!!! Things still got all screwed up. I did not burn anything, everything went fine. The T-A-S-T-E was the real problem. The real problem was the onion soup mix that the damn thing suggested. All I could taste was this strong onion flavour in my spaghetti sauce. I actually had to pick the stuff off of my pasta in order to eat it (the pasta). So now I have a pot of this stuff (about 9 dollars in ingredients therein). What do I do with it?

My ultimate solution was to add water. Lots of it, in order to cancel out the high concentrations of onion soup mix. Worked pretty well. So now I have five containers of soup in my freezer, but I still have to eat the tortellini naked. That means without sauce (not what you were thinking).

Tomorrow I make more spaghetti sauce. This time with no recipe. Cross your fingers.

Said about a graduation ball:- “If all the girls in this room were laid end to end, it really wouldn’t surprise me” – Dorothy Parker

I heard that a considerably large cash reward has been posted in response to the vicious and brutal attack on OJ that occurred while he was in a golf course parking lot. The attacker will be receiving the reward money as soon as they can be found.

On a far more serious note, lets talk about something that I dont understand (we will add it to the long list).

– Why is it that when a woman does something that a man doesn’t understand, he thinks that she is mysterious, fascinating, and interesting. However, when a man does something a woman doesnt understand, all men are stupid and/or dumb. I wish to understand.

After years of sending me the right tax form, Revenue Canada (in its infinite wisdom…) sent me the wrong one this year. I ordered the correct one (T1 special) on their website. What did they send me? A form entitled : “Calculating the Amount of RRSP Excess Contributions Made Before 1991 That Are Subject to Tax”. For starters, can’t they come up with a shorter name for this form. Oooops. Adding to my level of happiness/despair was the packing slip that proclaimed that I had ordered (1) T1 Special tax form. Revenue Canada is mocking me, I just know it. Within what they did send me, was something saying that I could pick up any tax form that I wanted by going to a post office. Great, I said, there is a post office just up the street. I went there and asked if I could get the proper form. She hadn’t a clue, and even asked someone else who worked there. Their response was that I probably should have received the correct form in the mail.

In Ottawa, miles and miles away, a bureaucrat barks.

— Are girl guide cookies made with real girl guides?

Well, I haven’t updated recently, but I have worked on some additional content for this page. Its not all there yet, but I have all kinds of fancy blinking menu things, and have built a new section, missing links. Most of it is there, except for the details and my own reviews. Deal with it for now.

The only reason I am mentioning the following is because they escaped their problem in one piece, and alive. Apparently, there were three guys who went for a walk in Lynn Canyon Park, or something like that. They were drunk, and wandered off into the wilderness just before dark. They were reported lost by those left behind, and search and rescue went out to find them. They were found hypothermic, and rather scantily clad. Now, before you jump to the conclusion about the preceding shenanagins, don’t. All that these young men did was, when they got cold, was to build a fire. Using their clothes. Yes, thats right, they burnt their shoes, hats, and jackets. Just how crazy do you have to be do to this? What would you need to stay warm when the fire inevitably goes out? Your clothes? Surely not, lets BURN THEM!

However, they were found, hypothermic but alive. Natural selection is once again interrupted.

Why is it that I never say anything like (and I quote, indirectly) : “You know,I feel really comfortable in Dunkin Donuts”. I just don’t know.

All my finals are over. I studied like crazy, and my hands and fingers still are sore from writing so much. On the upside, I’ve gotten A’s on all of my papers. Unfortunately, there are courses where I have gotten A’s on the papers, and will still probably fail the course.

However, what I wanted to relate to you is what happened to me during my wild trip to Disneyland. In 1987, my dad and I went to Disneyland. For a day (and only one..). Take into account that we live in Canada. However, we left our house on a Saturday morning, and came back on Sunday afternoon. Factor in a flight to and from Los Angeles. My mother didn’t go, somehow she didn’t want to go to the “Happiest Place on earth”. I’ve never gotten an explanation.

I have many memories of Disneyland. One of my favourites is the time I was approached by a stranger. I should first point out that I had eaten some ice cream at the time (the first for a long time). Actually, a vast amount of ice cream, a substance which at that point would readily invoke a rather nasty response. So I was outside afterwards, in the 30 degree (Celsius) heat wearing a jacket. Some tourist guy (not like I was a tourist) comes up to me an says : Aren’t you hot in that there Jacket? Well, my response was to lean over the fence and get rather sick.

Now, I should point out that this is not really the good part of the story. Nor is it the part of Disneyland that I really with to take away with me in my memories. The beautiful part of this was the look on the guys face. He sort of looked like I’d pulled a live lizard out of my ear or something. He just got all bug eyed, put his hands up the air like I was holding him hostage, backed up slowly and fled the scene of the crime. I’ll never forget the look on his face.

Oh, and I went on some rides too.