a death in the family

ok, so I wrote this post yesterday morning but didn’t get a chance to post it. but here it is

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I wrote last night that I had just found out that my grandma had passed away. I must admit I am still somewhat overwhelmed by the feeling. Should make for an interesting day at work today, with any luck it will be rather busy and I won’t really have much time to think about it.

A few months ago my Grandma was diagnosed with stage 4 bone and lung cancer and was told to enjoy the summer. The wife and I booked a trip to montreal to visit as soon as we found out. I am now incredibly glad we did. We had a choice financially, go down for the funeral, or visit while she is still alive. The Choice was obvious.

We had a great time on our visit and it was incredibly hard to leave. Part of what made it hard was hoping desperately that her health would hold out long enough for my sister and her husband and daughter to go visit.

They got back from montreal on saturday.

At least it all happened quickly. There wasn’t a lot of suffering. When my time comes, I hope I am lucky like her and have all of my dearest friends and loved ones take the time to come visit before it is too late. It wasn’t expected, but I know it meant the world to her to have a chance to visit with the people she held dear.

Now my thoughts turn to my grandfather. I have to wonder what will happen now as he is no spring chicken so to speak. The house they live in is way too big for him, and there is a lot that needs to happen. Hopefully though, under that stoic german fascade, he will find a way to deal with this and carry on living.

I can only base what he is feeling on my observations of others that have lost partners. The overwhelming emptiness must be horrific. To not have your confidante, your sounding board, your biggest supporter, right there by your side. It is something I don’t know how well I could handle.

I guess that one does what they must. One tries to simply just keep going.

And now for a selfish moment, as I ride here on the bus on the way to work. I really didn’t want to go in today, but I am covering for someone for 3 weeks while they are on vacation and they are showing me the ropes for the next couple of days.

I guess I just hope that there won’t be any embarrassing shows of emotional weakness today… I guess we will have to wait and see

:-(

got bad news today, my grandma passed away…. more to come when I can think coherently…..

Round is sooooo totally a shape

Round is a shape, but it occurs to me it is totally not the proper one. Especially when your friends are somewhat active people and they rope you into going to the nature park for a hike. A 16.8 KM hike none the less. I don’t think I walk 16 km in a normal week, let alone in one big 4 hour stretch

So as I sit here, dreading the morning as there will be pain… oh yes… there will be pain. I have determined that I have but one choice. Get into better shape. I am not talking losing weight, but becoming more physically fit.

I think I will need to have some sort of goal based system though. I think right now, I just need to start somewhere. Get the momentum going as it were.

The nightly walks with the dog are a good help, but that is usually only a half hour or so. I guess increasing that would be a logical place to start.

We also have a home gym. I suppose I could start using that as well.

All I know is by the end of that walk, I think I died a little inside. Luckily it was the out of shape part.

Is it too much to ask?

OMG!!!

I have to wonder about some people. In this particular case it is my sister in law. She gives up possession of her house at noon today. This of course for most people isn’t a problem. For her it is a huge problem, and unfortunately for my wife… it is now her problem.

As I mentioned in the garage sale post a while ago, she is moving into a condo. The reason for this move is that she can’t handle the financial burden of the house on her own. She is so deep in debt that it would pretty much take a TLC style intervention to get her back on track.

This move has so far cost the wife and I over $100,000. Yup, you read that right. $100,000. It is a scary number to work with. But the results are not that bad for us.

Pretty much what happened was that because the sister in law had worked herself into such a deep hole financially, the bank decided that she would not be able to get the mortgage for the new place (despite the fact that she has the mortgage for the old place at the moment). So she asks the wife if she can cosign on her mortgage as that would be about the only way that she could get it.

Long story short, we ended up paying off our mortgage so that we could not only cosign, but be the primary on her mortgage. I still have an uneasy feeling in my stomach about that one.

So, everything is set, and through all of the drama her move date gets pushed back from last saturday. She is finally able to move on thursday. For the normal person, this wouldn’t make a huge difference, other than a lack of entertainment options and real food as it would all be in boxes in the corner.

Not for her.

In fact it wasn’t until wednesday that her entertainment centre got packed up, I know this because it was me that packed it. Seriously, even last night as the movers are moving stuff, she was still packing.

That has to be one of my greatest pet peeves… people who aren’t ready when they are supposed to be. Especially for moving. I am of the opinion that if you are moving, everything should be packed and ready to go before the movers (be it friends or hired movers) get there.

We went over after I got off work yesterday to help her clean the house and it was a mess. Sure there were boxes and what not everywhere, that was to be expected. But before we could start any sort of cleaning we had to take emergency packing measures (read: throwing non breakable shit in garbage bags). We got there at about 7, and it wasn’t until 9 that any cleaning could actually happen.

The wife said she was going to talk to her sister and tell her that everyone that was there to help out that wasn’t paid to be there all said that this was the last time. I myself have helped the sister in law move 3 times. The story you read above has been the same for basically all 3 moves (minus the financial part of course… that is new)

I think the biggest demoralizer was that she said that she wasn’t even intending to clean. I mean seriously, when you have lived somewhere for almost 2 years (and some areas haven’t been cleaned since the day you moved in) you clean the fucking place before you go.

Sure it isn’t like an apartment where you lose the damage deposit if you don’t, but it is common courtesy to give the people moving in the luxury of a nice smooth move. If I was moving into her place as we left it yesterday, I would have to put all of my stuff in storage and clean the place before I would even start bringing it in.

Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t like out house is immaculate. But I also know that any mess in there is OUR mess. when you move in somewhere, it is somebody else’s mess. That makes me uncomfortable.

I think that is enough ranting on this, I guess I will have to look at the positives. at least the bank doesn’t own our house anymore.

A/S/L ? Are You F’n Kidding Me?

It has been an amazingly busy week. At work, we are down a couple of people which is really hard on the rest of the team as it is up to them to pick up the slack. When you are part of a small team, it is very noticeable when there are people missing. for instance, because of my regular work, I generally only help out with calls when it gets busy. The majority of my work is done off the phones. So in a typical day I will log between 10 and 15 calls max. Yesterday I did 35. Unfortunately with all of the calls my regular work is suffering a little bit.

There is still however some really funny stuff that happens once in a while.

This morning, I open up my laptop to check what the weather is supposed to be like, and I quickly realise that I have forgotten to turn off msn messenger.

There is a friend request from some random person, so I accept it and begin to talk with them… you know it is a bad sign when they start the conversation with “A/S/L?” or other decade old chat lingo.

I was not surprised to find out that it was a chat bot promoting an adult site. I was however somewhat surprised that we are half way through 2008 and they are still using that tactic.

I remember back in the 90’s there was a lot of that sort of activity. People were also a lot less net savvy then though. The people they are targeting with these chat bots are the type of people that grew up with computers. The 20-30 something crowd. I would like to think that most of us are smart enough to recognize a bot when we see one.

Though, if they are targeting someone who is online at 6AM (which would be in the range of like 5AM to 9AM for most of north america) you would think it is a fairly good bet that it is someone who is checking the news or weather before heading in to the office. After all, if there isn’t an acutal need to be up at 6am… who the hell else is awake?

I can’t say that they are better or worse than Telemarketers, but at least I know a pretty good defence against them. The block button works wonders.

It would be nice if these msn-marketers were required to be real people, actually having to type in the scripts and promote the site in the context of the conversations that are being had. Any of us that have been on the internet for any length of time could come up with hundreds of creative ways to make that fun.

On that note, time to go to work and pretend to be productive for a while. Or at least pretend to enjoy my job more than I do.

Freakin Early Short Post.

So last night was a good night, sat and watched a couple of movies with the wife, my brother, and his girlfriend. Miraculously I was not paged all night so I could actually almost enjoy my evening. Though I did keep having to check the pager to make sure it was even working. It is amazing how quickly you can get paranoid while you are on call. I even woke up at like 4:30 this morning to check the pager to make sure it was still on and getting a signal.

I feel much more rested today though. Not sure why. It isn’t like I slept particularly well again. I have been having that problem a lot lately. I am completely and totally tired, then I lay down in bed and BAM!! instantly awake.

Oh well.

I guess it is off to work now. I wonder if I will get paged before I get there? All I know for sure is that it will be a Timmy’s day today.

On call… joy oh joy

So I am going to be writing the next few posts on my work laptop. This of course is because that is the laptop I will be carrying on the bus with me as I travel to and from work until Monday.  The reasoning for this is that I am on call right now. Our account offers limited after hours support which entails carrying a pager 24/7 for one out of every 6 weeks.

This is my first week with said pager, and yesterday was the first day. It wasn’t so bad though, only 2 pages and they both came in at around 7:30pm. Unfortunately because of the pager sitting by my bed I didn’t sleep nearly as well as I normally do. I guess my subconscious mind knew that I could wake up at any time. This was not the case last night. but I still feel very tired.

I am just glad that the pager didn’t go off during dinner. The wife and I went out for dinner with my folks, my brother, and his girlfriend. It would have been a shame to have to leave mid meal to go home and work. They of course knew ahead of time that I would be on call and it could happen, otherwise we would have went to the Keg instead of Kelsey’s.

*sigh* we are just leaving downtown. I have 5 minutes before calls get routed to the pager, and I still have over a half hour until I get home and on to the net where I can actually help anyone that calls in.

On another note, this bus driver must have lead bricks for feet. he is jamming on the break and gas like nobody’s business. I guess the amp that is his driving ability only goes to 11.

Tonight for dinner, we will be having homemade pizza. I think if you were able to pull stats off of the bread maker, you would find that we make more pizza dough than actual bread in it. I think if you looked at the pizzas we make, you could almost make a case that it would be cheaper to order out some days. We do tend to go a little overboard sometimes. 3 kinds of meat, pineapple, mushrooms, peppers, black olives, occasionally some jalapeno if I am feeling like some spiciness. It is totally worth it though. The smell of fresh baked pizza, it is like the scent of heaven.

And back to the random bus thoughts… there is a weird smell in the bus today… I can’t quite put my finger on it though…. smells almost like hospitals…. you know, that over sanitized smell… I think it is striking me because usually on a day as rainy today, I am used to smelling wet people. Not a pleasant smell at all.

hmmm…. we are now 3 minutes into my on call shift… not even at capilano mall. this does not bode well. especially as I know that in 5 more minutes, they will be rebooting a major server. I guess the bright side is that every call that comes in counts as 1 hour of OT. and even if none come in I am getting $25 per day do carry the pager.

I am starting to get the feeling that we are going to hit every red light from work to home. The way it has been going so far it certainly looks like that is the case. I guess I can take solace in the fact that there will be warm pizza waiting for me at home.

Are we getting the feeling yet that this post is quickly becoming one of those train of thought exercises? I realize I am rambling, but that is what I do best. sometimes there has to be a post with no particular structure. Or point for that matter.

the smell is continuing, doesn’t really smell like hospitals now that I think about it.

I wonder what I will be like by the end of the week. if there are a lot of pages, that may mean that I will be sleep deprived by monday. I guess fair warning (though it would be more fair if I had put it at the top of this post) is in order that upcoming posts may be a little odd.

almost at the edge of Sherwood Park… that means 15 minutes until I get home. I wonder what will happen first… pager goes off, I get home, or my cell phone goes off when heather calls to find out how far away I am.

I guess I can stop writing now, have to change busses shortly. so I have to pack it all up.

more randomness later

who knows, maybe I will be able to do a crazy 3am post this week while I am online dealing with some crisis.

Garage Sales – Our crap can be yours

All I have to say about garage sales is “wow”. Of course if that were truly all I had to say, this would be a very short post. I suppose that means I will have to go into a little more detail about that.

Yesterday, we opened up our garage sale. It is a combination sale for us, the sister in law, and the mother in law. I have never really been big on garage sales, something about buying the crap that people don’t want anymore. I never really understood the days that people held garage sales around here.

In Sherwood Park, people tend to hold garage sales on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I thought this was kind of strange as most garage sales I have seen were held Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I now know why the dates are the way they are now… that is when the people come.

After work yesterday, I went over to the sister in law’s house to help with the garage sale. I of course took a route that had a possibility of me walking a fair distance if my timing wasn’t just right. My timing of course was not right, so it was a 20 minute walk to her house from where I got off the bus. I was a little warm as it was like 30 degrees yesterday, and I was wearing work clothes, but it was a nice walk nonetheless.

From the point I got there at 6:00 until we finally closed at 8:30, there wasn’t a point where there weren’t people looking around. What really surprised me is that most people bought stuff. Between the 3 families, we pulled in over $1000. The sister in law pulled most of that as she is doing more of a moving sale than a standard garage sale, and pretty much just wants to get rid of stuff. She had quite a few pieces of furniture and whatnot as well.

I can’t help but wonder how much she could have made if she wasn’t charging a ridiculously small amount for most things.

So tonight will be day 2 of the sale, let’s hope it is just as lucrative.

Wednesday Suckage

I have a terrible headache today. I think it may have something to do with how screwed up my day was yesterday. I mean, at first glance it seemed like any other day. You know, wake up, make a sandwich for lunch, go to work, come home, etc. However things were not that simple at all.

At least not once I got to the go to work part. Once I got there things got quite a bit more difficult. In point of fact, yesterday was probably one of the worst days I have had at work since I started there. Not for any specific reason, more a culmination of things going wrong all day.

Of course it didn’t help one bit that while I was working away at figuring out where several issues got fucked up, and which team dropped the ball,  get accused by a team member of being a slacker. I pretty much wanted to throttle him right there. He is one of those holier than thou little shits that I despise. I mean I can understand that based on the number of calls I take vs what he takes, and the fact that my job means that I have to take fairly long stints where I can’t take calls, it may not look like I am working hard (what with us being in a call centre and all). Fact of the matter is that looking back on my work day, I am already wondering how I can squeeze in another 2 hours worth of work so I won’t have to start taking work home.

So I leave work, and as I am walking towards the bus stop with a buddy from work, we are both venting about our respective areas. Determining that we need more time to vent we hit the local BPs for a beer or 2.

After a couple of beers and a really good conversation, I leave to head to the sister in law’s place to help out setting up her garage sale. We are helping because we have stuff to sell as well, so it is only fair, but OH MY GOD!!! When I got there at 8:00 the garage was still being laid out with stuff. I find out from the wife that about 90% of what was done was done by her and not the sister in law.

Of course that pretty much figures, after all the sister in law makes me look like an ultra motivated person.

So once I get there, I help out by shoring up some line to hold clothes, and pricing some of our stuff, and putting the address on the signs that they had bought at dollarama. They bought these signs like last week, so I am not exactly sure why the address never made it on to them yet.

Finally at about 10:30 we decide to head home. We get about 3/4 of the way and suddenly I realise I forgot my phone at the sister in law’s house. I had taken it off my belt when I was working with the line for the clothes, and had forgotten to put it back on. so we drive back there, luckily it is only like a 10 minute drive from one place to the other. collecting my phone, we head home… again

Once we get home, I nuked a couple of frozen burritos and had some cheese and crackers while watching a downloaded episode of buffy, then went to bed. between when I had lunch, and when I had supper 11 hours had passed.

After work today it is more garage sale goodness.

hopefully the headache is gone by then.

The greyhound attack… my thoughts

I am so glad this week is finally over. It has been incredibly stressful trying to both do my own work and my team lead’s work. I find myself mentally exhausted at the end of the days right now, which unfortunately is affecting my desire to write here. As it was it took me about 10 minutes of sitting here, looking at the blank screen, before I finally came up with a way to start this entry.

And now, as the bus works its way down the streets, I can’t help but think about the tragic incident on the Greyhound in Manitoba yesterday. Of course all that I know about the incident is what I have seen on TV or read about on various news sites, but seeing it as a leading story on a news promo for an American news station certainly cements in my brain that it is some seriously fucked up shit.

I mean, really, how often do you hear about someone going totally berserk on someone with a knife and then decapitating him. It is a very graphic thought, and I can only imagine how deeply that will scar the other passengers of the bus. The two people they interviewed on the news still looked like their brains hadn’t quite processed the events.

I had thought the guys that beat a man to death in south common on the bus was crazy, that bar has just been raised in my mind. I can’t help but wonder what triggered him though. Did the victim say something wrong? Do something wrong? Did he happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

I also can’t help but look around this bus and wonder. Is the guy in the suit across the aisle about to snap? Is the lady with the big white purse hiding a gun in there? I know it is an irrational thing to think, but when you hear about something so incredibly random and gruesome, you just can’t help it.

I also can’t help thinking about the comments on the CBC websites post about the story. So many people automatically assumed mental illness for the attacker. It raises an interesting question in my mind about the nature of people. While it may be comforting to think that if only this crazed individual had gotten treatment for his obvious mental illness, what if he was in fact totally sane? There seems to be this notion amongst society that people are inherently good, and anyone that deviates from that must be mentally unbalanced in some way.

What if it is the other way around.

What if those of us that believe in the goodness of our fellow man are in fact the mentally imbalanced ones. After all, we are the ones that seem to think that acting on primal urges is a sign of instability. The attacker may have been a pure and animalistic response to a stimuli that did not agree with him. an extreme of the fight or flight response as it were.

When a lion attacks another lion for no apparent reason, do we assume that the lion is imbalanced? Of course not, we assume that the other lion in some way threatened the attacker, and the attack was a retaliation to that threat, even if it was something we could not see.

I am of course in no way shape or form condoning the actions of the attacker in the Greyhound attack, I am merely playing devil’s advocate on this one. I am merely pointing out that we are all flawed. I am merely pointing out that we are all crazy in some way.

On that note, I await the flaming of anyone that happens upon this post in an unlikely Google search. Something tells me that what I have written here today is not exactly going to be a popular opinion.