friday … it will be so much better soon …

I find it amazing that I can love and loathe Fridays at the exact same time. I love them because it means 2 days off coming up, hate it because it goes by so painfully slow.  You would think that the knowledge of 2 days off would outweigh the slowness of the days, but alas it does not.

Of course this weekend will be spend decking the halls and putting the house in a general state of fa-la-la, so I guess you can’t really call it 2 days off as there is still a fair amount of work that needs to be done.

What I am curious about right now though is how the dog and cat will do with the christmas trees…. I know the cat is ok around the trees, but introducing the dog into the mix could make things a little more messy… I have visions of coming home to a toppled tree.

but then again, what pet owner doesn’t have those visions?

family… love em or hate em, they are what they are

OK… so one of my cousins comes up with the plan… let’s have the eldest 6 cousins get together for a camping weekend like old times. I should have laid a bet down right then and there because I knew that wasn’t going to work.

the problem with this theory is that my sister and one other cousin make gas and open flame seem like a cool glass of water. truth be told they are more like a thermonuclear device and a biological weapon. set one of them off and it ain’t gunna be pretty.

so, as predicted this whole thing spiraled into a facebook grudge match with yours truely being somewhat disappointed. for 2 reasons.

1) one of the two parties involved being unable to grasp that it isn’t all about them
2) not placing the above noted bet.

of course in the exchange I voiced my opinions on the politics involved… though in retrospect that was rather silly. as a result i have now been called two faced. I am not quite sure how. It isn’t like I was waffling between 2 sides… I picked my side.

the sheer childishness of the argument does amuse me though… what better way to reminisce about our youth than by hashing out 25 year old arguments like they were totally new.

alas, we are a predictable bunch. that is the way it is I am afraid.

perhaps one day certain persons will realize that they truly are delusional and the world is not all about them… but i seriously doubt it. I have a feeling that kind of revelation could only occur after a tragedy that can not be wished on another person without being a soulless asshole.

until then the status quo will be what it always was, and it will be their loss.

It’s beginning to look alot like….. a season not entirely unlike winter

well, it appears that winter has finally found us. I can’t say I am upset by this though. the thought of a brown christmas (not to be confused with a charlie brown christmas) really was bumming me out. now that there is a decent amount of snow on the ground, it looks like we are set for the coming fa la la.

In related news, the snowblower we got doesn’t work. this angers me greatly. I will check out a few more things, see if I can find any documentation for it online as it was free. otherwise… to the dump it goes.

Costco …. especially evil when you bring in a cart

Whoever came up with the idea of Costco is a friggin genius. I mean first they make you pay $50 a year to shop there, and when you are in there you have to wonder exactly who needs a 50 gallon vat of ketchup anyway…. and of course as you are going through, things just magically appear in your cart.

Today we were at costco, and made the crucial mistake of bringing in a cart.  Ended up with $220 worth of stuff.  looking at it though, it made sense, but when we were looking at it all in the cart we estimated about $160-$170…. guess we were off a little.

Then we go to stupidstore and end up  blowing another $200 (though 50 of that was at the liquor store)

so $420 in one day on mostly groceries… but then again, when you buy $40 worth of mozza and cheddar (they were a good deal, honest) it kinda makes sense.

alright… bus musings….take 2

so my first post from the bus was going to be about them keeping busses infernally warm. I have decided not to do that. I will instead talk about something else entirely… work.

I know what you are thinking, like we want to know about what he hates about his job. truth of the matter is… i don’t really care. my blog, my rules…deal

I think one of the biggest problems I have always had at a job is workload balance. while i find it flattering that i keep getting work handed to me because the boss knows it will get done, i also find it frustrating to look around and see others slacking while i bust my ass off.

In my mind, which apparently lives in some fictional Utopian world, workload should be shared evenly amongst a team. that way nobody gets burned out and nobody gets bored.

We all know however that this is not the way it is.

usually the PHB (pointy haired boss for the non Dilbert readers) singles out a couple of people that he knows will do the work and gives it to them, leaving the Wally’s of the office with more time to drink coffee and surf the net.

this creates an imbalance that ends up resulting in the Dilberts searching for alternative employers. needless to say that this is bad news for the team.

i guess what i am saying is that i am somewhat unhappy at work because of this and am tempted to start looking around for another job. after Christmas of course. but who knows… maybe i should just get back in my box, put my head down, and not think about the rest of the team

darn cell phone….darn it all to heck

so, I craft this wonderful post on the bus yesterday via my cell phone – hit the post button and then poof… it is gone… man that sucks.

I guess I will have to try again tonight.

I AM BEOWULF….. really… I am….

So, my wife and I just watched Beowulf… in IMAX 3D. I see why they call it the “IMAX Experience” now. with the polarized 3d glasses, your peripheral vision is blocked, so you end up only seeing the screen. While at times it merely looked like a moving popup book, I thought overall the movie was well worth the extra few dollars to get in.

I really think that a regular live action movie will be nice to see in IMAX 3D. Maybe the next Harry Potter movie will be a good one to go see. If they do it in 3D that is.

Winter… what a cruel word it is

I find myself thinking about winter right now.

I know, it is November so thinking about winter makes perfect sense. Unless of course you look outside. There is no snow yet (more on that later), and it isn’t really cold out. I don’t know why, but it just feels wrong. I suppose all of those years living in the north has conditioned me to believing that winter should go from October to April with snow and -30 the whole time.

I am quite confident however that the lack of snow can be explained by 2 things.

1. We have a snowblower sitting in the garage that we got for free from a garage sale. they said it works… but it was free, so I am not so confident. Given my luck, the lack of snow means it works just fine. It will just sit there, silently taunting me.
2. My wife and I decided we would take up cross country skiing this winter. obviously this requires a certain amount of the white stuff. Skiing on dirt just isn’t the same I imagine.

As for the lack of cold, don’t for one minute think I am complaining. Let’s face it, when it comes to global warming I have 2 words… “Hurry Up” … But, let’s put it this way, I can deal with the cold… I can deal with the heat… it is this damn wind that will be the death of me. Today was the first day in over a week that it wasn’t windy. Earlier this week it was insane. We are talking like 70kph gusts. I don’t like that at all.

well, I am starting to babble now, so I will stop. more on this, or something completely different later.

Life… or something that vaguely resembles one….

Ok, let’s face it. my life is pretty dull.

As a result, I think the only person that will ever be on this blog for a while is me. But in the off chance that there is someone other than myself reading this, I should probably start with the standard info about who I am.

Of course this first means that I need to be able to talk about myself without feeling like a complete and total tool… or seem like I am blowing my own horn.

so here we go…

I am an almost 30 white male living in Alberta and working in a call centre. A technical call centre, but a call centre none the less. The funny thing is, I realized that I don’t hate the call centre world. I actually have grown to enjoy it. Does that make me strange?

I think it does