Posts in category "Daily Life"

Bananas Vs. Bran

It’s good to get into a sched­ule again, even though I’m not quite used to wak­ing up at 7:00 am yet. I haven’t been on sched­ule for more than a year. I had such a light load for my two semes­ters of uni­ver­si­ty that I could basi­cal­ly wake up when­ev­er I want­ed to every day. And then there was the sum­mer, when I took four months off to relax and could stay up till 7:00 am talk­ing on the phone (good…good times). Next was four months of look­ing for a job and not find­ing one, which end­ed up being a good thing or I would­n’t have been able to spend a month in Hong Kong.

Not hav­ing a sched­ule is like hav­ing only one course a term. There’s not much motive to get work done, and every­thing is put off to the last sec­ond. Being on a sched­ule makes me more pro­duc­tive. I actu­al­ly don’t mind doing chores and errands, eat­ing reg­u­lar meals, even doing the dish­es. The order and reg­u­lar­i­ty is a nice change from the amor­phous life I’ve been liv­ing for the last lit­tle while.

The Perfect Job

I now run the IT depart­ment for a lab­o­ra­to­ry of about 45 peo­ple. I’m in charge of all instal­la­tions, upgrades, main­te­nance, back-ups, and secu­ri­ty for both hard­ware and soft­ware. I make the annu­al com­put­er bud­get, decide if/when any­thing needs to be pur­chased, and am involved with any devel­op­ment projects that come up. I can design my own projects if I feel like they’ll help the com­pa­ny. I’m involved in mar­ket­ing, design­ing ads for mag­a­zines, fly­ers, trade shows, and web­pages.

I have a huge desk that cov­ers three sides, and share an office (not a cubi­cle) with one oth­er per­son. I have a health plan, two weeks paid vaca­tion per year, and most of the time I make my own work instead of some­one telling me what to do. The indus­try is grow­ing, secure, and has lit­tle impact from gov­ern­ment cut­backs.

My boss is a good man with a great vision. The com­pa­ny pays for any train­ing or class­es that I take. I can spend as much time as I need doing tuto­ri­als or read­ing

I’ve signed the con­tract. I’ve been giv­en a time­card, a lock­er, and a set of keys to the office and stor­age room. The hours are flex­i­ble enough for me to fin­ish cours­es for this term, at which point I’ll switch only to work.

As with all my pre­vi­ous jobs, the first pay­cheque goes to my grand­moth­ers, the sec­ond pay­cheque I split with my friends, the third pay­cheque goes to my sav­ings.

I’ve start­ed the per­fect, per­fect, per­fect career.

Zen Litter

Went to Tom and Mel’s pot luck yes­ter­day, which end­ed up being a fun way to end an oth­er­wise very long day. I had the chance to use their minia­ture zen gar­den, and my god was it relax­ing. There must be some­thing in the sand or some­thing. I’d def­i­nite­ly con­sid­er get­ting one now if I ever found out what makes it so relax­ing, but I’d be scared of Dolores poo­ing in it.

Double Dipper

So here I am, stand­ing at a table in the meet­ing room with my two slices of meat lovers, one slice of assort­ed, a bot­tle of Coke, and my Pizza Pizza gar­lic dip­ping sauce. I’m talk­ing to some­one, and my dip­ping sauce is on the table, since I always save it for the crust. This ran­dom guy walks by the table, sees my sauce, and dips his slice in it. Not only that, but he DOUBLE DIPS IT.

I had to stop for a few moments to under­stand what had just hap­pened. I was com­plete­ly tak­en aback, about how some­one could just do some­thing like that. Did he think that there was some sort of com­mu­nal sauce or some­thing? WHO THE FUCK DOES SOMETHING LIKE THAT?

There are few­er things more inti­mate than the dip­ping sauce. Sharing dip­ping sauce is as inti­mate as shar­ing bod­i­ly flu­ids, and this man, this black-beard­ed, incon­sid­er­ate man, just stuck his slice in my sauce.

He might as well have slapped his dick on my fore­head.

The World, Chico

So today I woke up at around eight, checked my dai­ly blogroll, found out that I have $6 in my bank account, cooked some break­fast, went back to bed. I got a call let­ting me know that I’ve been hired for a new job, my high­est pay­ing one to date, end­ing to my four­teen month unem­ploy­ment stretch. Got dressed, bought a bus pass, went to school, ate lunch, skipped the last half of class. On the way home I bought a book, looked for a wrist­band, fin­ished read­ing a chap­ter from my eco­nom­ics text­book. Got anoth­er call, let­ting me know that my appli­ca­tion with Trolley and Wheaties into a beau­ti­ful 16th floor apart­ment has been accept­ed. And here I am, sit­ting in my fur­nished apart­ment next to my cat, watch­ing peo­ple improv char­ac­ters on a GO train.

I start work tomor­row. I’m sched­uled for a table ten­nis marathon with Pat this month. My pork chop defrost­ed in time for din­ner. Things are get­ting even bet­ter.

More than 170 peo­ple were killed today, in a war I know noth­ing about, con­cern­ing things I don’t under­stand, with peo­ple I’ve nev­er met, at a place half the world away.

This is the first time that I’ve ever felt guilty to be hap­py.