March 1–6, 2002 — Maybe just a minute

I wish the snow would just give up and acknowledge that it has been an off year and that there’s nothing it can do to make up for that now. But still it tries.

I think I’d be outside right now if there weren’t snow on the ground. Unfortunately, because of the snow, going outside would mean changing my pants (because these ones are too long and will drag and get very wet) and finding a warm enough sweater and putting on shoes and zipping up my jacket... It just goes on and on.

So I think I’ll stay inside.

Next, I guess, is the matter of where I’ve been lately, and of where all this orange came from and where all the parts of antigreg that you actually kind of liked a little bit went, leaving only the boredom of journal entries and things to buy. And while I do feel your collective shudder, I’m almost sort of happy with things this way and I feel a lot more focused than I have in awhile. Like I have some idea of what this site is supposed to be. Maybe.

But more on that later.

Kerry was taking the bus from Kitchener on Friday night, and I was to meet her at the bus station. I arrived early, and I stood in the arrivals terminal eating a late lunch (or a package of Combos, more specifically) while staring at a screen listing off buses traveling from places I’ve never been.

I still get a little bit nervous while waiting to meet up with Kerry, as though I still expect to learn that I’ve taken things the wrong way and that we’re just friends after all. A remnant from the eight hours of nervousness and of not knowing for sure from a few weeks ago, maybe...

Her bus arrived one minute late, and she didn’t see me at first because one of her contact lenses had torn a few days earlier, so she couldn’t wear either of them. I eventually chased her down, and we started walking. The Cuff The Duke’s show at the Reverb was our ultimate destination, but we’d plenty of time to kill before then.

We went to music stores and bookstores, and we ate pizza for dinner. It was cold out, but not too cold, and we had a lot less luggage to carry than the last time we’d wandered around Queen Street together. The time leading up to the show didn’t drag at all.

The show itself was great. (And the reviews that have been published since seem to agree with me.) More people than ever were standing up and clapping along, and the applause at the end went on for quite awhile.

The night as a whole made me smile a lot.

Kerry was staying until Sunday, so we started on our way to my home (of sorts). We were both a bit tired, so we got ready for bed right away and then watched The Virgin Suicides. Elaine and Andrew had said they would be by to harass us at some point on Friday night, but they never arrived, and we went to bed after the movie.

Saturday was a fairly lazy day. We eventually dragged ourselves out of bed and went downtown, but we ended up deciding against going to the Constantines show that night since we didn’t have tickets and didn’t really have the energy to worry about paying at the door (or to stand around for several hours waiting for them to play).

So we returned to my room and watched another movie: Princess Mononoke this time. Kerry wasn’t all that keen on watching a cartoon, but she seemed mostly alright with it by the end. I’ve seen it so many times I’ve lost count, and I think it’s probably still my favourite movie.

And then sleep.

On Sunday, we managed to be ready to leave the house with just enough time for me to drop Kerry off at the bus station and then to scurry off to work.

Two days later, I’m fairly convinced that I’m not going to see nearly enough of this girl over the next couple of months.

Before Kerry was even on a bus out of Toronto, I was back at work being winked at by older men. Work has never been so depressing.

On my Tuesday night shift with Nathan, he and my boss commented on the fact that I hadn’t managed to shave in a few days, teasing me a bit. With no plans to visit Waterloo for a couple of weeks (at least), I said I had no one to impress and that I probably wouldn’t shave at all if not for the fact that proper grooming seems an important part of my new life as a smoothie bar employee.

But my boss said that it would be fine if I didn’t shave for awhile yet, and, to make a long story short, I’m probably going to have a beard in a few days. I’ll shave a day or two before visiting Kerry or when it starts to look completely and utterly ridiculous, whichever comes first.

Hopefully I’ll start scaring small children within a few days. This should be fairly amusing.

And now for Web site news.

A lot of things still don’t work or haven’t made it back online with the new design. But the journals are back online, and antigregtv is still going strong.

The message board, on the other hand, is not coming back. Neither is the slogan submission system. “Down with interactivity” is the new site motto, and as much as I’m sure you’d like to voice your complaints, it’s no longer an option.

There are a number of reasons for which things ended up this way. The message board wasn’t switched over mostly because it would’ve been a huge amount of work and because almost no one uses it anymore. So I decided not to bother.

The slogan submission system is gone because it has been boring me to death lately. As amusing as the slogans comparing me to Hitler and talking about scrotums were the first time, it became tiresome after the third or fourth week. And, while you may not have noticed, there were some kids flooding the script every now and then, once taking a fair amount of pride in causing it to stop working after submitting forty or so slogans per minute until it corrupted the archive.

Anyway, it’s really not worth the effort anymore. So I’m scaling things back a bit and trying to return to writing and to not worry what anyone thinks — something that will be a lot easier when I don’t have to worry about people’s slogans and replies to journal entries making me feel self-conscious.

Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself to justify my laziness.

So yes. More changes are coming as I try to make this something that I’m happy with again. We’ll see how it goes...