…how I feel… or something closely approximating feeling

listening to music while I work today, and there seem to be 2 songs that pretty much sum up how I feel right about now. both are by Veruca Salt.

1) Twinstar

 Flying, when all I want to do is die.
 Feels like you're flyin'
 Oh God, I wish that I could fly.

 You want to lift me up,
 But you don't know, and you don't see
 I'm stuck in my ways, stuck in my ways, oh.

 Breathing, when all I want to do is drown.
 You keep on breathing and I keep on sinking down, oh, oh.

 You want to lift me up,
 But you don't know, and you don't see
 I'm stuck in my ways, stuck in my ways.
 I'm stuck in my ways, oh.

 You want to lift me up,
 But you don't know, and you don't see
 I'm stuck in my ways, stuck in my ways.
 I'm stuck in my ways.
 I'm stuck in my ways, oh.

2) 25

 I'm afraid I will never change.
 It's ok, I am not ashamed.
 I can say that my bed is made.

 You can bend me,
 shape me, anyway...
 You can bend me,
 shape me anyway you want me.

 I maintain I am not in pain.
 How I try not to place the blame.
 I came late to an early game.
 You can bend me,
 shape me, anyway...
 You can bend me,
 shape me, anyway...
 You can bend me,
 shape me anyway you want me.

 When I was five,
 I took a dive.
 When I was ten,
 I walked again.
 When I was fifteen,
 I kept my motor clean.
 When I was twenty,
 I got plenty.
 When I was twenty-five...

the one where I rant about my job

<insert preferred moniker of your deity of choice here> DAMN IT!!!!!!!

Some days I really hate my life. today is one of those days.

you see, for the last little while, the wife and I have been trying to get things lined up to go to kelowna for a week or so for vacation.

every time we get close to booking, a wrench gets thrown in to the works

i can’t complain about the 4 days I took off to go to YK for the funeral… though it did shorten the amount of time I have available for holidays.

I can however complain about the fact that I am now scheduled to be on call for the weekend that we had planned to be leaving for holidays.

there is one person I may be able to switch with…. but it is a long shot.

GRRRRRRRARRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHH

Conflict of dis-interest

alright… before I really start, let me say that I have had some wine and may not be my usual witty (or coherent) self.

Today is my least favorite day of the year

luckily it is almost over.

the reason it is my least favorite day of the year is because this is the birthday of my biological father.

I always stop and think today…. should I reach out and wish a happy birthday? should I be the bigger man?

but then I realise…. int he last 365 days, I have not heard anything about him, or from him, and I am ok with that.

besides… why should I be the bigger man in this… he is my friggin father after all.

I am about to say something here that I am sure will be used against me at some point by my darling sister

It pains me that I don’t have contact with my father.

I mean, really it shouldn’t and after she praised me for being so “strong” in this, I should take that and run.

but I always thought I was better than him.

but really… I am avoiding him as much as he avoids me… so really… we are the same in that

I really hate this day.

hopefully tomorrow is better.

this post is a test of blogging via the cell phone

so it has been pointed out to me that i am really bad for updating my blog. since i have been reading on the bus instead of carrying the laptop, updating the blog has totally slipped my mind.

needless to say, if i decide that this works well, i may continue to use it

LARCYN SMASH!!!!!!

Ok, I know it has been a helluva long time since I posted anything….. I will blame it on the books I am reading during my commute instead of writing…. but something happened over the past couple of days that I have to write down….

Over the past year, the wife and I have started making wine. All and all it is a rather enjoyable hobby (with an awesome payout at the end). Normally we get our wine kits from the (appropriately named) WineKitz store, however there have been a couple of exceptions. the first was the Australian Shiraz that we bought from costco (which is very very yummy) and the second is the subject of this post.

We bought a double pack from costco containing 1 Pinot Grigio (blush) and 1 White zinfandel (blush). They come in the same box, and upon opening it, the problems began.Problems that required me to send an email to the company that made the kit for clarification.

the following is the email thread that ensued: (names have been changed)

Hi,My Wife and I recently purchased the White Zinfandel / Pinot Grigio kit from costco and have a small question.  Which is Which?

When we opened the box, we saw 2 identical looking bags of blush concentrate, but there were no lot ID stickers or other identifying features to show which was which. We are working on the assumption that because the Pinot Grigio is listed below the Zinfandel on the box, that is the order that they were packed. Is that correct? or are we in fact making the Pinot Grigio?Sincerely,
Larcyn

The next day, I get a response from the “Customer Service” folks

Dear Larcyn,

Thank you for your email.

Please note that on each plastic bag is marked Bag 1 or Bag 2

Bag 1 = White Zinfandel
Bag 2 = Pinot Grigio

If you need any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,
Customer Cervice Drone 215

well, that was helpful now wasn’t it?

Dear Customer Service Drone 215,

thanks for your prompt reply, however, that did not really answer my question.I had stated that there were NO identifying features on the bags at all. so I was questioning more the procedure in which they are packed and labeled.

In other words…. the box says:
White Zinfandel
Pinot Grigio

when it is going through the packing process, does the bottom labeled bag go in first?

Larcyn

to which I get the most well crafted answer I possibly could have hoped for…..

Can I have a phone number to contact you.

Thanks,
Customer Service Drone 215

I am sure there will be more to this story before it is done, but I have a feeling it won’t help in determining what kind of wine I am making…. hopefully both wines will fall into the category of….. TASTY

====EDIT====

After telling them I did not have a phone they could contact me at… they emailed this little tidbit of info

Unfortunately the bags are not labeled and they are just marked. You will find printed on each bag a lot number (ex: UXN-1234-MN) after that number you will see BAG 1 or BAG 2. The Bag 1 is White Zinfandel and the Bag 2 is Pinot Grigio. Please note that packing will not let you know which bag is which.

Customer Service Drone 215

sigh…. I guess all I have left to say about this experience and Customer Service Drone 215 is…..

The Earth Shattering Update

So, in my last post, I promised that the next update would be amazingly earth shattering. And for anyone that knows me, what I am about to say certainly falls into that category.

I am happy.

I don’t know when the last time I could honestly say that. Normally it is “I am fine” or “Everything is OK” but lately, I can honestly say that I am happy. Why am I happy, you ask? well there are a number of reasons, but pretty much everything can be summed up into 2 categories. Home, and work.

That is pretty much all I have, a job I love, a wife I love, a home I love. This is what makes me happy right now

I mean how many people my age can say that they have no debt at all (other than the couple hundred dollars on the credit card that needs to be paid off when I get paid on friday)?  We own our car, we own our house, we own everything in our house.

I mean how many people my age can say that they actually own their homes. most are still paying the bank for it. We are not. It actually couldn’t have happened at a better time, because now we can put money aside into investments while the market is low. This should provide a much larger gain in the future which is always good.

As for work, I love what I do. I took some time away from the call centre industry, and realized that it is basically where I was meant to be. Now I am not saying that work is all sunshine and roses, because we all know that if work was that great you couldn’t call it work now could you?

Sure I am essentially at an entry level position within the company, but I think I will be able to work my way up rather nicely. If not within my own department, then within one of the bazillion other areas within the organization.

For now though, I think I will just keep my head down and bust my ass off like usual. I am on a few special projects that keep me pretty busy, and one of them involves a weekly management meeting so that always helps in terms of getting my name out there.

On a somewhat related note, I am in 4th place in the office fantasy hockey league. I think that isn’t bad for someone who doesn’t really follow sports at all anymore.

But yeah, I am definitely happy. Not moderately content, or pensively dismissive (well, maybe a little).

I have been trying to think over the last few days and even while writing this, when the last time I really felt happy for any meaningful period of time was. I can’t come up with anything. There has always been a part of my life that was totally going down the shitter so to speak. Something that was missing. Something keeping me from being happy.

Whether it be trapped in a dead end job, being in a bad relationship (or not in one at all), or being compared to others that were doing better than me, there was always something holding me down.

I got the biggest compliment ever from my sister not too long ago. She said that she sometimes wished she was more like me. Of course it was for completely shutting my biological father out of my life, but to me it seemed like more than that. She wished she had the strength to be as emotionally disconnected as me.

Let’s face it, I look bored at an amusement park. I am one of those people that really never get excited, or overwrought with grief, or anything like that. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel like that on the inside, just for some reason I developed this rather stoic exterior that does not convey emotion very much.

On some deep level, I am in pain by the fact that my biological father is an asshat, because as we all know asshattery is a genetic trait. I used to divert much of my time into not being an asshat. turns out, I only needed to be myself. That deep level is all but sealed now. with nothing but a little slit in the barrier in case the need arise to pass a message through.

Being told by your older sister that she wishes she were more like you sometimes, definitely a compliment. that means that the person you looked up to all these years (yes… you read that right… I looked up to my big sister) looks up to you occasionally as well. That there is a mutual respect there that transcends all of the childhood trauma inflicted on each other.

Being told by your older sister that she wishes she were more like you validates that what you have been doing is ok. That the course of action needed to be taken.

On that note, I think I have rambled on long enough (judging by the fact that the bus stop is approaching)

Tune in next time when you hear me say “What the Fuck?!?!?!?!”

an update is coming

seriously…. it is…… and it will be big….. and impressive….. and massively earth shattering……

I like the weekends

I must say, this weekend was a good one, even though both the wife and I were not feeling well. Saturday was pretty much taken up with grocery shopping, but then it was off to a friend’s birthday party.

Our friends Ryan and Lorraine threw a birthday bash for Lorraine, and decided to go with a wine tasting theme. Everyone was asked to bring a bottle of their favourite wine, and we all shared. It was nice being able to try a lot of wines that we normally wouldn’t buy.  There were a lot of different red wines there so we were able to sample ones we hadn’t had before.

I am really starting to like red wine. I never did before, but out of all of the wines that we tried, there was really only 1 that I didn’t particularly like. It had an acidic bite that didn’t really sit well with me. I think in the future, that may be a party that we would hold though.

Sunday, we didn’t do near as much as we planned. With not feeling well, we didn’t get nearly as much of the outside work done as we thought we could. We still have to finish winterizing the yard. The water barrel is still like half full. With it about to start dropping below zero this week at nights, we will have to empty it pretty fast.

Now for the week at hand. It is only a 3 day week for me as I decided to take an extra long weekend next weekend. But it promises to be a busy one. If all goes according to plan, I should be getting my 9 month probationary review today. I can’t believe it was already 9 months since I was converted over from being a contractor to a regular employee. But I think a 9 month probation is a little on the extreme side. I suppose it does give them a greater amount of time to determine if the person s really the kind of person that they want in their organization.

So one of three things can happen in this meeting today, either I am told I am good, and am taken off probation, I am told I need to get better, and have 3 months more probation tacked on, or I am told I suck and get a pink slip. Of course, I am quite confident that it will be the first option. There have been no issues that would leave me to believe that the other two options are even a remote possibility.

I mean seriously, with the amount of extra work I have taken on, they couldn’t possibly say I haven’t been doing what is needed. I also thing that there is a good enough rapport with myself and my team lead/manager that they would tell me if there was something I needed to work on at any particular time.

I am of course writing this on the bus on the way into work, so when I actually get to posting it, I will know what the results of the evaluation are.

All I can hope for I guess is to no longer be on probation,,, and maybe a raise, that would be nice.

Other things to look forward to:

• This weekend is thanksgiving which of course means turkey dinner.
• Monday we are going to the corn maze with Ryan and Lorraine, should be fun
• this weekend is a 5 day weekend for me
• I get to wear jeans to work all week because I paid to support our charity event

Insert Post Title Here… because I am too lazy to think of one.

I am not quite sure what I want to write about today, so this post may be a little more random than most. Not that previous posts have exactly been structured or anything.

We picked up a new computer bit recently, the My Book World Edition II Network attached storage (NAS) device. Basically in a nutshell it is a File Server that will allow the Wife and I to put all of our important files on a 1 Terabyte drive that backs itself up onto a second 1 Terabyte Drive using a Raid 1 configuration. This of course will mean that all of our music and media will be centrally located and accessible from all of the computers on our home network.

I started the process of moving our files over yesterday and have made it as far as the media files and various installers I had on my desktop computer.  Pretty soon we will have everything in there. Nice thing about it is I have my own folder on there, and the Wife has hers, and we have a common folder.

When you look at the specs on it, it is pretty much a small linux box. I am wondering if it would be a good idea to hack into it and make it do other things it wasn’t originally designed to do. Stuff like using it for a print server as well, that way I can use my printer from the laptop easier.

When everything is said and done, I must say that we will have a pretty sweet little home network. The only thing that will be missing is a device (be it a computer or otherwise) that will allow us to watch downloaded movies on our projector. I am sure there are numerous options out there, I will have to do some research into which one I choose.

Meanwhile, we have a lot of TV to watch. Monday, we watched 1 show then played Lego Batman for the rest of the night. Yesterday, we watched 1 show and I spent the rest of the evening configuring our NAS. The PVR is sitting at about 30% full right now.

That is certainly one of the nice things about having the PVR. There is no such thing as a missed show for us anymore. We set up the series we want to watch and it just records them when they are on. The only drawback to this is that we find that in general we watch a lot more TV. The upside of course is that it is TV that we want to watch.

Currently we are actively watching Chuck, Survivor, Terminator, House, Bones, CSI Miami, CSI, Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and Heros. I am sure there are more in there, but since I don’t have the PVR screen in front of me and I don’t feel like thinking about it much, that is pretty much the list.

I am currently contemplating whether or not to record the leaders debate tomorrow. I think I have already pretty much decided who I am going to vote for. There seems to be some rather strong thoughts in my head when I think about the big 3 parties.

Conservatives: I trust em as far as I can throw em.
Liberals: No Thank You.
NDP: they seem to have some pretty good ideas in terms of social programs, but they don’t seem so strong on the country’s economical growth

All in all, I like the NDP Platform though. There are some parts of course that don’t really apply to me as an individual, but they do apply to people I know and care about. For instance, I personally could care less about child care programs and incentives. I however have many friends and family members with the little people. and one must never forget the little people.

I do however feel very strongly about education. A big part of that has to do with my wife being a teacher and hearing about all of the utterly bullshit things that happen in Edmonton’s fine learning establishments. It really does make me worry about the future.

But that will have to wait for another time. I am almost at my stop.

A weekend over

So this weekend turned out to be rather busy. some good parts, some not so good. here is how it all happened

Saturday morning, went on the computer to check the email, disaster struck. I am typing along merrily and hit the Enter key…. nothing… uh oh. That’s right, the enter key on my keyboard is dead. this of course is rather unfortunate as I rather liked that keyboard. So while we are out shopping on Saturday I bought myself a new one. I will have to write a post from home one day or work from home this week to really test it out. While we are shopping we also hit Costco to see if they had any of the wine kits that they were selling left in stock.  Turns out they didn’t have the double pack ones that we were looking at earlier, but they did have unconcentrated ones in the primary fermenter pail for a pretty good price. So we picked up an australian Shiraz and started it as soon as we got home.

Of course we also have a Cranberry Shiraz to start right away, but I think that will have to wait until after we give the new Shiraz a good head start. Also on order, we have a chocolate port, which should be in Oct. 10. Of course that one will require more equipment to be purchased as it only makes half as much. I must say I am looking forward to having a nice variety of wine around. I think one of the things we are going to have to look at in a new house though is a proper laundry room or something of the like, one with a big sink in it and lots of room to work, because if we could have an area to actually make the wine that would be awesome. I could then take a wall somewhere and turn it into wine racks.

I think I may also start looking into the beer kits they have at the place we buy the wine. I have had an experience with homebrewed beer, and it wasn’t pleasant. I am thinking though that I am a lot more mature now and know more about the process that it may not be quite as disastrous. I mean, if I can make my own beer I am set. I am sure it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than buying even the budget beers from the store.

So anyway, Saturday was pretty much spent shopping, though we had originally planned to do much more that day. Sunday was a bit tougher.

Sunday was apple day. Our apple tree in the back yard produced an amazing number of apples this year. After 4 hours of picking, washing, coring, and slicing, we had enough apples for us to make 10 really good sized apple crumbles (of course they were bagged and frozen for later.

I was amazed with the taste of them this year though. they are sweeter and juicier than they normally are. It kinda gives me hope that the hard cider I plan on making eventually will be rather tasty. would have to be able to get approx 23 litres of juice though, so we would probably have to supplement with store bought apples.

now for the final part of this (again sorry about the epic-ness) post. Our darling dog is driving us crazy. All day he is fine, we leave him inside at home no problem. Then sometime in the middle of the night he piddles on the floor. I don’t get it. I mean obviously it isn’t that he just can’t hold it because he is stuck inside sometimes for over 12 hours on weekdays without a problem, and we are lucky if we are asleep before midnight on any day and up at like 6 on weekdays.

I am almost at my wits end. The wife made a comment yesterday that we have sorta become antisocial lately and not invited anyone over. But with the constant messes on the carpet, albeit they are left at night, it does cause a problem.

I just don’t know what we are going to d with that damn dog. The only reason we got it was because She wanted it. I didn’t really want the dog. Now don’t get me wrong, I love our dog. I just am going crazy with the piddling.

If you have any suggestions, please let me know.