Tue, 30 Mar 2004
Vacations need to be at least two weeks long, I think. It always takes too long to unwind before you can finally start enjoying yourself I think. At any rate, I've been here some number of days, and things are starting to calm down and spread out into a nice relaxing haze. A good example of this is that I have to really stop and think about what day it is now. My computer tells me it's Tuesday.
The ocean this morning was a tempest of strong and high waves. We went body surfing and made use of the boogie boards for most of the morning. At one point, I got a little farther out, and was mildly intimidated by the eight foot swell building above me. That was an experience.
Mon, 29 Mar 2004
Memories of Lake Huron abound. One of my gracious hosts, I have discovered, enjoys a gripping game of Nerts from time to time, and has indeed played it rather frequently in the past, but only as a two player game. The other gracious benefactor is not so entranced by card games, or we would have already played much three player Nerts. In a week or so, some others are going to show up, and hopefully we can entice one or both of them into a multi-player game. Time will tell.
The lovely and talented Mrs. Thingo sent me a wonderful, but brief e-mail letting me know my kitties were acclimatising themselves rather well at Casa de Thingo. I still miss them lots though. Martin showed me pictures of the litter that Carbon was a part of, shortly after he rescued them. Adorable little beasties they were.
Fri, 26 Mar 2004
So getting up ungodly early this morning was interesting. Everything was all taken care of and done last night for me. Casa de Thingo was wonderful and accommodating and made me dinner in addition to taking in the cats. They were both a little upset, understandably. But by the time I left Casa de Thingo, they were starting to make an adjustment. Griffith initially hid under the hot water heater in the basement, but after being fed, he was pretty much back to his usual lounging about. Carbon seemed to be taking it well enough, but she wasn't eating much. Maybe she was just excited.
I spent the night with the friends I'm leaving with, seeing as how we pretty much were planning on just getting up and going this morning at 4:30am. The getting up worked, mostly, but there was still some issues with the going. We didn't leave terribly late though, and made it out of the city by around dawn or so.
The trip on the whole was fairly uneventful. We didn't quite make it to the border before we felt the need to stop for breakfast (and more importantly, coffee). We found an unsupposing place in Burlington, called Something Williams. Okay, so I can't remember the first name. Ed: Russell Williams. I just had the jingle for the paint stores in my head. At any rate they had a good selection of very tasty omelettes.
Crossing the border was relatively painless. We were asked to turn off our engine and hand over the keys while they rummaged through the back of the truck, but they didn't open anything or ask us to pull over to the building for a more thorough looking over.
After that, a lot of the journey was much of a blur. There was a bit of napping here and there. Unfortunately, I couldn't help drive much, which was too bad, but we made it down okay. We stopped at a total of three Cracker Barrels. (Four, if you count the one that was closed on the first night.) And I think three Waffle Houses, though I was pretty out of it overnight. I was completely useless the next day, and starting to fade pretty badly. I think all the screwy non-sleeping really played havoc with my immune system. I got insanely sick by the morning after we arrived.
Wed, 24 Mar 2004
If you haven't had the chance to pick up Johnny Cash's "American IV: The Man Comes Around", I recommend this album highly, if only for his cover of Hurt. Cash covering a Nine Inch Nails song. How cool is that?
Mon, 22 Mar 2004
Fifty seven hours and counting.
Less than three days to go before I'm off to Florida. I'm sitting in the laundromat doing all my laundry. I haven't done this much in a long time, mostly because there's one washer and dryer in my building, so I tend to just do small amounts as the need arises, but seeing as how I'll be away for a while, I thought it would be nice to take a few changes of clothes with me.
Slight snag with the vacation. For a bit of it, there will be more than four adults, which exceeds the limit set by the building where I was to be staying. So for that bit, I'll be camping in John Prince Park nearby. All in all, it's not a bad fate.
Still lots of things left to do. Packing, of course. Also, I'm in the process of eating things that won't last the vacation in my fridge. At this point, there's mostly things like bread and cheese and a few vegetables here and there.
Dr. Thingo and family have graciously offered to take in Griffith and Carbon while I'm gone, bringing their pet count up to five for the duration. Young Zebula will probably be ecstatic for the increase in cat density.
Sun, 14 Mar 2004
Busy busy week. I'm so very tired today.
Most of it actually is the final stages of dealing with people being let go from work. There were a lot of lunches and events at the end of the week in honour of so-and-so's last day at work. Thursday night there was a big gathering at Ethel's Lounge for the lot of them. I ducked out early to go see a play with my Ex who very thoughtfully offered to treat me by buying my ticket.
I went back to Ethel's afterwards to find things still going relatively strong. I stayed until closing and ended up still getting up and to work relatively early.
Friday evening found me in Cambridge watching the band of which a work mate was a member. They were good. They were playing at a small restaurant called Infusion right in the centre of Galt. I don't think they were really able to deal with the extra crowd that came for the band. There was one person working the front and one (I think) person cooking in back. Service was good considering, but I wasn't overly impressed with everything, though I'm willing to give them some slack because of the large number of people there.
Saturday again I was off on a whirlwind of activity. I ducked out of Tai Ji class early, and went with Casa de Thingo to Toronto to visit some old and close friends I don't see nearly as much as I'd like. Actually, that's true of most old friends that don't live in town.
Going climbing soon. I'm going to have to run home and get ready. Anyway, have some pie. Or some Pi. Either is good.
Thu, 11 Mar 2004
For the love of all that is good and decent, someone please make them stop!!!
So all week long, all anyone is talking about here is hockey, hockey, hockey! The drafts and the trades, and this thing about Bertolucci. Man, he's really gone downhill after Last Tango in Paris.
Things have been almost cheerful at work today. There's a bunch of get-togethers for lunch or drinks for folks that are leaving, and everybody's being pretty good about everything.
Well, except for the hockey.
Wed, 10 Mar 2004
Well, I didn't get fired. Go me. Ten people got laid off at the end of last week. Things have been kind of gloomy at work lately. Thursday and Friday were pretty much a write off, in terms of getting useful information done, but I'm starting to get back on track.
Well, mostly anyway. Part of Thursday's festivities included a meeting of our team (about twenty people in a company of just over one hundred), where we were told that while we lost one person in our team, we still needed to cut a few corners. Rather than let more people go, and possibly be caught short handed later on, should business actually pick up, would some of us be willing to consider taking a four day work week (for example) until the end of September?
Our team leader actually put a really good spin on the idea, and assuming that one can afford the reduced salary, having an extra day off every week for the summer is somewhat appealing. I made some calls to check on another idea, and things fell into place rather well, so it looks like I'm going to be taking four weeks off next month to go on vacation with friends down South.
In other news, I've slowly been cleaning up in my condo of late. I have a bunch of books and papers stacked up around the edge of my living room area, and I took a large chunk of the papers, and filed them away. It looks a lot more open now. Cleaning up was made easier by the fact that my meddlesome little kitten was spending the night at the vet's, recovering from getting spayed. I'm going to pick her up this afternoon.
Thu, 04 Mar 2004
Okay, so once again, my company is doing less well then it originally forecasted for the fiscal year. Currently, the outlook looks rather bleak. Without going too much into it, we're expecting a round of layoffs pretty much today.
For the whole week, things have been pretty tense here. There was a small, but non-zero chance that I was going to loose my job. It was almost certain that at least one person (we didn't have an idea who) from our team was going to, and possibly more.
Times are tough. These things happen. But times have been tough for a while. It's starting to get pretty frustrating to be doing everything one can, and yet still be under the gun like this.
On the other hand, my sister who has long been languishing under the yoke of complete assholes of a company found what looks like a really cool job back in London. Her last day at old job is tomorrow. Yay!
Mon, 01 Mar 2004
Lot of things been happening lately. Hopefully this entry won't run on too long. In the meantime, my cat, always with the oral fixation has taken to biting me by proxy. Carbon, no longer content to actually be present to bite me, has her adult teeth coming in. A side effect to this is that she's been leaving baby (kitten?) teeth in places where she tends to spend most of her time lazing about. ie. my chair, my bed, etc.
I don't particularly enjoy rolling over in the middle of the night to find a loose tooth embedded in the back of my hand.
Saturday was a most excellent day. I got invited to stay for the Chang class after Tai Chi in the morning. (The usual style that most people learn is the Yang style.) It was a bit overwhelming, and I felt a bit intimidated by everyone else who more or less knew what they were doing. I'll do better next week.
Our company's "Christmas" party was also on Saturday. It was a lot more fun than I expected. Five bands all of which were partly or wholly composed of co-workers played half hour sets, and they were all really good.
