Posts in category "Random"

Obsessive-Compulsive

Some think I have a form of OCD. They notice that I have to do things in a cer­tain way. These things aren’t exact­ly debil­i­tat­ing to the point of being con­sid­ered dis­or­ders, but they’re big enough for peo­ple to give me a teas­ing now and then.

I have to sleep with the end of the blan­kets at my feet. My duvet and cov­er are sep­a­rate, so the open­ing is at one end. It bugs the craaaaaaaaap out of me if it’s not at the bot­tom.

I always car­ry a few things with me. Lip balm (Labello brand), cell phone, iPod, lens cloth (to clean glass­es or cam­era), in addi­tion to the nor­mal wal­let and keys. If I have a bag, this list expands to include a note­book with pen, and a cam­era. I’m very uneasy with­out them. I look for pants with appro­pri­ate­ly sec­tioned pock­ets for this rea­son.

I wash my hands about 10–12 times over the course of a day. As a result, my hands dry out (which I also can’t stand) so I use Glaxal Base a cou­ple times a day, which is a per­fume-free, water-based lotion. It’s so hypoal­ler­genic and absorbent that they use it as a base for top­i­cal med­ica­tion.

I hate hav­ing an odd num­ber of eggs in my fridge. This may be due to the fact that I nev­er devi­ate from eat­ing two eggs in one sit­ting. If I ever cook an odd num­ber of eggs (maybe when a guest wants one or three), then I’m left with an odd num­ber of eggs that I’ll for­ev­er be try­ing to even out again.

I always walk to the beat of the song I’m lis­ten­ing to. Most songs are in com­mon time (4/4), which can be divid­ed or mul­ti­plied by two, so adjust­ing the walk­ing pace (in essence, two beats) is easy. Something based in 3 (such as Lamb’s album Fear of Fours) is less flex­i­ble. The only time I walk at my own pace is dur­ing songs with irreg­u­lar or chang­ing time sig­na­tures, like any pro­gres­sive rock album where I can’t even fig­ure out where the down beat is.

I have to wear slip­pers on tile or ceram­ic floors. I don’t know why.

I can’t lis­ten to an album out of order. There may be songs I don’t like in the album, and I’ll have no prob­lem skip­ping them, but I lis­ten to the rest in order.

I can’t stand things that are unsym­met­ri­cal. I know, there’s rea­son for asym­me­try, it’s designed that way, it serves a pur­pose, but I can’t stand it. I’ll nev­er buy EQ3 Off Centre din­ner­ware. There were a few sea­sons when the whole side-zip­per was “in” and I could­n’t buy any­thing from Tristan and America or Banana Republic.

I have to eat por­tions of food in a cer­tain way. This is only true for big meals with side and main dish­es. There’s an order: side dish (mashed pota­toes, or toast), side dish (corn, or egg), main dish (turkey, or bacon), rotat­ing between all three, but always sav­ing the main dish for the last bite. I find there’s a bet­ter con­trast with the food when you switch between dish­es. Flavours get lost when too much of the same thing is eat­en. This is as opposed to Aaron, who eats his side dish­es first, and then saves almost the entire­ty of his main dish for last.

A Lighter Life, A Lighter Layout

I was talk­ing to Pat the oth­er day and the sub­ject of my siz­able debt came up. Debt used to trou­ble me. I did every­thing I could to stay debt-free, and was suc­cess­ful until this year. For some rea­son though, I stopped car­ing about mon­ey. “You must be real­ly hap­py”, he said, “if some­thing that big does­n’t both­er you any­more”.

It was true, but I nev­er real­ized it until then. All the good things in life have eas­i­ly out­weighed the bad. There isn’t a sin­gle thing that I can point to and explain why, but it’s hap­pened — grad­u­al­ly, pro­gres­sive­ly — over the course of the last year or so. I’ve become very com­fort­able with myself. I’m hap­py with who I am. The con­fi­dence I’ve gained, my luck in meet­ing Bronwen, the res­o­lu­tion of the sit­u­a­tion with my mom have all con­tributed I’m sure. The small things don’t both­er me any­more, and almost every­thing is a small thing. I still lose sight of the big pic­ture every now and then and get in one of my moods, but they don’t last as long as they used to.

Now a new design.

I’ve had my own site since 1996, and look­ing back on all the dif­fer­ent ver­sions (around two dozen in all) I real­ize that they’ve all been dark — less than 30% grey. I used to be a dark per­son, and the designs were a reflec­tion of this.

This new design serves two pur­pos­es. Metaphorically, the light grey (93%) rep­re­sents my feel­ing of mirth. Technically, through var­i­ous tweak­ing, I can take advan­tage of dif­fer­ent design ele­ments, such as strong (these were links in the last iter­a­tion) and empha­sis. I also want­ed to go back to the tra­di­tion­al under­lined links, with a slight hov­er flour­ish. Pixel icons have been updat­ed for extra play­ful­ness. Also added is a colophon in the About sec­tion.

Not a com­plete lay­out change — real­ly, it’s most­ly colour — but prob­a­bly the most dras­tic change I’ve ever made to the site.

And it fits per­fect­ly with how I feel.

Spring Is The Feeling

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Spring flowers 8 
Spring flowers 9 
Spring flowers 10 

Spring is when you wake up, and you’re sick and you’re grog­gy and your hair refus­es to co-oper­ate, and your iPod ran out of bat­ter­ies, and you’re late for work but you take your time walk­ing any­way because the sun’s in your face and the wind’s at your back and for some rea­son you know that every­thing’s going to be alright.

Multitasking Emotions

Left screen, I’m going over the bach­e­lor par­ty footage. We’re recov­er­ing from a night of drink­ing over bacon and eggs in a high-cor­ner wide-angle shot. Right screen, I’m talk­ing to Aaron on Messenger.

Aaron: bro, you know I love you
Aaron: like for real
Aaron: no shit
Jeff: thanks man, i love you too
Aaron: no ‘you’re my bro’ shit
Aaron: the real deal

“No ‘You’re my bro’ shit”, he says. Bro. The word we some­times use to remind each oth­er that we’re fam­i­ly. Nothing emas­cu­lates some like the “l” word, but we’re passed that.

“you know I love you”. He was first to say it this time, and it cat­alyzes the tears down my face.

The video’s still play­ing. In it we’re ebul­lient, frat­er­niz­ing, and I can’t help but laugh along too.

I remem­ber anoth­er time, about three years ago, when I broke down after deal­ing with my mom and her incor­ri­gi­ble ways. I rolled a joint and smoked it as soon as I got off the phone. As the weed went to my brain, my mood evened out. I was numb to the pain but the tears did­n’t stop, like a phys­i­cal reflex.

What a strange feel­ing it was to be cry­ing and laugh­ing or stoned at the same time.

Life is the same way. It’s nev­er black and white, and there’s no absolute right or wrong. There are grey areas, points of pas­sion between plea­sure and pain.

Even cry­ing from joy is an enig­mat­ic micro­cosm of such an idea. I remem­ber doing so only one oth­er time, at the end of grade 7, dur­ing the final audi­tions for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Out of 10 schools, we were com­pet­ing to spend the sum­mer singing on stage with Donny Osmond. When they announced the name of our school we jumped out of our seats in cheer, but I could feel my face gri­mace from the emo­tion, tears fill­ing up my eyes. It’s as if you’re over­tak­en by sad­ness that you’ll nev­er feel as hap­py again.

Like yin and yang, one does­n’t exist with­out the oth­er, and often they exist at once.

Styles of Spring/Summer 2007

Tristan & America Get Their Groove Back

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It appears that the heav­en­ly bod­ies have aligned against me in a cos­mic joke.

Let me explain. The trends at Tristan & America this sea­son are actu­al­ly sen­si­ble, and this is coin­cid­ing with the first time in my life that I’m in debt.

I used to shop at T&A years ago. With ribbed sweaters and sharp silk ties, they always had a clas­sic sense of fash­ion. Around 2002 the style turned into what I can only describe as urban cow­boy. Dress shirts were adorned with tas­seled fringes and pre-worn edges. Mannequins even had the Texan string tie. For the next four years they exper­i­ment­ed, what I’d con­sid­er a strong euphemism, with dif­fer­ent styles, until this sea­son.

The spring/summer col­lec­tion has gone back to it’s clas­sic roots, with a love­ly blend of earthy tones. I like to stay with neu­tral colours — though noth­ing pas­tel — because I don’t like my clothes to make bold state­ments. I pre­fer to hide my per­son­al­i­ty, what I’m think­ing, and let my actions speak for them­selves.

New clothes are def­i­nite­ly more of a want than a need, so it’s hard for me to jus­ti­fy going fur­ther into debt to add more to an already full clos­et.

Maybe I’ll wait until it goes on sale at the end of sum­mer. The prob­lem, espe­cial­ly at T&A, is that the small sizes dis­ap­pear with­in days.

The cos­mic gods, they’re laugh­ing at me.

Khaki Ressurection

The zip­per on my khakis jammed and prompt­ly died at a rather inop­por­tune time (well, I guess there’s nev­er real­ly an oppor­tune time for such a thing). When I brought them in to get fixed, I real­ized that I did­n’t have a back­up pair.

I only buy khakis at Randy River, the store with the wii­i­ide-legs that near­ly cov­er my foot with shoes off. Even the Dickies relaxed-fit work-wear series aren’t wide enough, and they’re too stiff for my taste. They also lack a dou­ble-rein­forced back leg cuff, which I like cause all my pants touch the ground.

The only prob­lem with R2 is that the small­est size they have for pants is 30. As I found out when get­ting mea­sured for the wed­ding, I’m actu­al­ly a 26 waist, but I pre­fer 28–29 max so I can wear them low on the hips. When they’re 30, I have to cinch up my belt because oth­er­wise they’re real­ly low.

This sea­son, the R2 khakis are all very dark with slight orange tones, and car­go pock­ets or frayed edges. Really not my style. At least I got my cur­rent pair back with­in a week. Hopefully they’ll sur­vive me until next sea­son.

Fall of the Ben cut

They dis­con­tin­ued the Ben wide-leg cut from Bluenotes. Instead, they’ve come out with a new Walker boot-cut. Off the shelf, the Walker cut real­ly reminds me of the flare they put on girls jeans back when I was in high-school, but I only say this cause I like to give Aaron a hard time about it. They look good on him, but he can pull off any­thing.

Bluenotes is the only place I buy jeans, and jeans are the only thing I buy at Bluenotes. It’s because of the Ben cut that I go there (and cer­tain­ly not their pop-cul­ture silk-screened shirts). When I found out they aren’t being made any­more, I had to buy the last three pairs on the rack — two 29s and a pair of 28s.

Oh Ben. You define me.

What will I do for jeans now when they all wear out? For the last cou­ple years I’ve done prep­py tops with skater bot­toms, but maybe my style will change by then.