April 21–May 9, 2002 — Oh, priorities!

I know a juice person when I see one. They always come in two minutes before closing time, spend five minutes examining the menu, and order a small juice. I’m convinced that they know that all the machines are clean; they just don’t care. And no amount of arguing is going to force them over to the smoothie side of the menu. I can see the spite in their eyes as their three-dollar drink forces me to stay twenty or thirty minutes later than usual.

It was a long night. I didn’t make it home until almost 11:30 pm, and I think I need some time off.

It was quite a day before I left for work, though: I went to the bank to cash my latest tax refund cheque from the government and picked up some paper coin rolling thingies to put all my coins in.

I spent the next hour or two sorting through my coin bowl.

Then I walked back to the bank, rolls of coins in all my pockets, pulling up my pants at regular intervals. I didn’t look back, but I picture an amused group of people in line behind me watching as I dumped roll after roll of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters onto the counter.

One- and two-dollar coins included, I had almost $75 in change, not counting the $5 in quarters that I kept to do laundry with and the assorted remains that wouldn’t quite fill a roll.

Lately, this has been my life.

Or something like that, anyway. It has been an odd few weeks, and I don’t feel all that guilty about not posting any journals for the longest time in quite awhile. I’ve a new scheme that might trick me into posting journals more often, but I’m not sure if it will work yet, so I’m not promising anything.

But yes. Life. Priorities. Things like that.

I’ve decided that I’m going to start working a lot less at the smoothie bar. Two or three days a week at the most. I’ve been working far, far too much lately, and April was the worst month I’ve had since I was sleeping under my desk in an office last summer.

This is going to require significantly more budgeting, but I’m convinced that I can pull it off.

Matters of fiscal responsibility aside, there’s the matter of how I’ve been spending my days when I’m not working. Not that there have been many days fitting that description lately, but we’re looking ahead.

I’ve mostly decided that I want to take another go at doing freelance web design. Andrew and I are doing our best to more actively promote Doublenaut, and hopefully something will have come of it by the end of May. The site we’re currently working on (punkottawa.com, still not launched as a Doublenaut design) should be finished by Friday, so we’re going to dedicate ourselves to fixing up the Doublenaut site itself and to getting brochures and business cards and the like together. My parents even offered to chip in some startup capital, but I think we’ll be able to handle it on our own.

And I guess there’s antigreg, too. As neglected as it’s been lately, I don’t want to stop doing it. For a day or two in the middle of my absence from writing journals, I had mostly decided that it wouldn’t be back, but my mood has since changed, and there’s still a lot that I’d like to do with the site.

So hopefully this is just a deviation from the norm and not a new (and much reduced) publishing schedule.

Meanwhile, in news mostly removed from all things computer-related, Kerry was finally able to visit during the last days of April and again at the beginning of May. I’m visiting her in Guelph this coming weekend, too. And things are going quite well, all in all.

She’s living in Guelph for the summer, working on her co-op term for school. Cultural management and the like. She’s a tiny bit closer now — there’s no public transportation to take after the 90–minute bus ride — and it costs a bit less to travel to Guelph, but we’re still far enough apart that we’ll only see each other two or three times a month, probably.

Her visits to Toronto were a lot of fun, though: We went shopping at HMV using her discount (much to Johnston’s delight — he provided me with a wishlist before we left), and she took me along on a search for work clothes. That night we went to the Pedro the Lion and Damian Jurado show. Other days were filled with movies and stopping by my work for smoothies and plenty of trips downtown.

I had missed her a lot.

A lot of other little things have happened: I went to my first focus group (Chewing gum that whitens your teeth as you chew! Getting paid thirty-five dollars to watch commericals!); I went to the Spider-Man movie (Oh, to be Spider-Man...); and I went for a few bike rides.

I’m still not entirely comfortable on my bike in Toronto. I’m trying to get a feel for the side streets and to decide which ones are safe to travel on; one day I’ll make it all the way downtown. I might manage to avoid being hit by cars, too. Maybe and hopefully.

(It seems like there’s too much to be on the lookout for while riding my bike, though — back home, I just had to do my best not to block too much of the road. Now I don’t even feel safe looking over my shoulder for fear of running into a car door that wasn’t open before I looked back.

(And I don’t have a helmet. I’m an accident waiting to happen, mostly...)

It’s very intimidating trying to write a journal entry for so many days all at once. I think I’m mostly going to give up for now. As I remember other things that happened, they’ll probably make it into other journal entries. I’ll get caught up.

It just might take some time.