August 10, 2000 — Get lyrics for all these or die

So today was the big day. Sort of. Well, to be sure, I'm now free of braces. But I still have a job. So things worked out neutral, I guess.

I'm still reading "A Prayer for Owen Meany" on the bus every morning, and I keep bumping into quotes that I remember Andrew using in his essay (which I proofread in English class). It kind of ruined the ending for me, but I'm enjoying the book nonetheless.

Speaking of Andrew, I was cleaning my room today and found two Andrew-related items: his lunch bag, which I must have stolen during the locker-emptying frenzy at the end of the school year, and an IRC log from back in the day in which Greg Lesage relates the story of Dave convincing him that Andrew was gay, and not to make fun of him. And Andrew was apparently winking at Greg to add to the effect.

Anyways, back to this morning. I had an editorial meeting at 9:00AM to discuss the hypothetical implementation of one of my projects, assuming IT doesn't drop the ball as per usual. Once it was over, I only had about half an hour to kill prior to my orthodonist appointment, so I just played with anti-greg for awhile and then headed off.

Before the took off my braces, they actually added more metal to my mouth in the form of retainers welded to the back of my teeth. The glue continues to be massively rough and is causing my tongue to bleed as I write this. After that rather uncomfortable procedure, the brackets were popped off and my braces were removed. The person removing my braces didn't seem very good at this and caused my significant amounts of pain. And there was blood all over my bib-like thingy afterwords, so I was a little bit disturbed. The worst part, though, was when she used this psychotic tool to take the glue off. It made a high-pitched squeal and gave off a large amount of smoke when in contact with my teeth. There was a strong stench very similar to burning hair filling the room.

Two hours later, it was over and I went to get lunch at the Pita Pit (it's only appropriate that my first meal I needn't worry about getting stuck in my braces also happens to be my favourite meal). While I was in line, Pat Adams paged me with the good news that we were definitely getting radio time next Tuesday morning from 9:30AM to 12:00PM. And with our traffic report reaching at least slight levels of infamy, we're busy trying to think up new antics for our next show.

I only stayed at work until 2:00PM (I told them I had a headache from my orthodontist appointment and couldn't concentrate), and then headed downtown to drop off Blake's tshirts, and to buy Bladerunner on DVD along with a toothbrush and a bottle of SpectroGram for my piercings. An exciting afternoon, to be sure.

Back at home, I've almost finished cleaning my room and will be able to put together my new desk tomorrow. While I was cleaning, I found a note in Dave's handwriting from grade 10 or 11 that reads, "Get lyrics for all these or die," and then goes on to list several Dead Kennedies records. The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure I did get him the lyrics, even though I was more than likely at least a little bit scared of him with memories of gym-bag beatings fresh in my mind.

I also found the lyrics to the "My Body" song that we sang in elementary school with a chorus of, "My body's nobody's body but mine / You run your own body, let me run mine!" My favourite verse is, "Sometime's it's hard to say 'No!' and be strong / When the 'No!' feelings come, then I know something's wrong! / 'Cause my body's mine, from my head to my toe / Please leave it alone when you hear me say 'No!'"

And in closing (as impossible as it is to beat the "My Body" song), I found a Lone Gunmen trading card from the X-Files trading card series. I'm still a little bit insulted by the number of times people used to tell me that I reminded them of the blonde-haired guy from the Lone Gunmen; not that that assessment was terribly far from the truth at the time, but y'know, bad memories and all.