May 17-21, 2001 — Well aren't you lucky

I didn't post a journal on Thursday as an experiment. This was due to the fact that since I'd started posting journals again on Monday, visits to the site had actually decreased significantly. I took this to be a statement from my readership, and so I took a day off, thinking it would make for a good joke in Friday's journal.

Friday proved to be the most frustrating day I've had since I moved home. The ridiculousness of many of the components of my job along with the ongoing uselessness of my email servers was just about enough to drive me insane. Well, that and the complete exhaustion caused by my first week of 5:30 am alarms.

I went to sleep early on Friday night and felt much better twelve hours later. But this meant a missing journal for both Thursday and Friday.

And then, well, it was the weekend. Lethargy and the Hardcore Sports League awaited. But it's never too late to catch up...

Thursday and Friday

The water cooler is broken on my floor. I drink a lot of water under normal circumstances, so you would think that this would be a bad thing. And it would be, if not for the fact that I now have an excuse to waste even more time by going down one floor on the elevator whenever I run out of water. (Fortunately, the stairs are all blocked off for security purposes, so there's no chance of me getting any exercise thanks to this water filtration disaster.)

I'm actually quite concerned about the project I'm working on these days, especially since it has a (theoretical) launch date of Thursday. I don't think there's any chance of it being ready to go in three days, but I guess the universe could yet prove me wrong. There simply aren't enough people working on it right now for it to be ready in time, I don't think... (And perhaps I should cut down on my trips to the water cooler one floor below me.)

By Friday, the general tedium and frustration of my job had really begun to get to me, and I began to find myself extremely deep in drone-mode. There was a lot of "Highlight, ctrl-c, scroll, click, ctrl-v, highlight, ctrl-c, scroll . . ."

The increasingly brain-dead nature of my current assignment had my imagination taking over, and I had all sorts of elaborate dreams for the future going on in my mind. It was my best morning yet. Sort of.

The other highlight of my day on Friday requires a bit of a back story. On Monday, my first day of work, I went to lunch with my father. During our walk, we passed a teenager dressed in a yellow outfit that seemed to be made of a fleece- or felt-like material. I found myself wondering what would make a person go into a store and pay (at least?) $100 for a matching, bright-yellow outfit in an uncomfortable, extremely hot material. I got over this, though, and just figured it was a new fashion craze that all the cool kids were getting into and that I'd be a year or two behind in catching up with.

Then I saw the same kid on Wednesday. Dressed head to toe in yellow. I dubbed him Big Bird to myself, and made note of the bad bleach job he sports that renders his hair an ugly shade of yellow, too.

Thursday. Same kid. Bright yellow.

Friday. It is clear that this boy does not change his clothes, or that if he does, he does so only on Tuesdays. I also noticed that he tucks his fleece cargo pants into the backs of his (yellow) socks, and that the outfit (although not necessarily the socks) is made by Exhaust Clothing. Needless to say, I'll be heading to Thrifty's on Tuesday to pick up my very own matching fleece outfit. In bright pink.

Long weekend

I did not get much done this weekend.

On Saturday, I went shopping for a DVD-ROM drive (to replace the one in Johnston's laptop that was so painfully torn away from me) and for a grilled-cheese maker (to replace the one that Johnston brought to Toronto that he was rude enough to take back to Manotick with him).

I'm happy to say that I've replaced Johnston for $120 CDN.

I saw Dave working at the nearby Great Canadian Bagel location, and he invited me to Johnston's that night where I saw Dave, Jess, Johnston, Casey, and Nathan for the first time since returning home. Fun was had by all.

Sunday was dominated by Ottawa Hardcore Sports League, which is a relatively organized afternoon of sports for hardcore kids (many of whom generally don't seem to get a lot of sun -- myself proudly included). This week was dedicated to football, and being able to call defensive coverage with statements along this lines of, "I've got Saves The Day!" and "I've got The Movielife!" in reference to the t-shirts worn by the opposing team was a definite highlight. There were a lot of references to Ten Yard Fight that I wasn't hardcore enough to understand, too. I saw Paul Galipeau and Mel Bartlett and a lot of people I'd never spoken with before. Fun was had by all, although I have some regrets involving a girl I collided with midfield. I apologized profusely, not sure whose fault it was. My face was numb for at least fifteen or twenty minutes, and the girl sat down for awhile...

And today. For all you south-of-the-border types, we Canadians have Victoria day today. This means paying tribute (via fireworks and the option of staying home from work, apparently) to the monarch you Americans so rudely cast aside back in the day. Admittedly, some of our politicians are trying to finally catch up to you now, but for the time being I feel a vague sense of well-being knowing that I can still use Canada's connection to the UK monarchy when trying to form a six-degrees-of-separation-style connection on my way to Ian Curtis and to Joy Division.

I promise that that will be my final Joy Division reference for at least a week. This is what happens when I'm not able to play my Joy Division and New Order records all year and I'm forced to make up for lost time upon arriving home...

Not much of an ending, is it? I think I should still go to sleep anyway...