Category: life

Topics concerning that thing known as ‘real life’ and not virtual worlds.

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Not bored… not at all

The funny thing about being sick, other than the hilarity of losing control of your bodily functions, is that it actually makes me want to go to work. After a week of watching daytime television, surfing the web endlessly, and staring out the window at passers-by like a crazy old man for a week, I think it would be really nice to be anywhere other than at home.

But I do have television. Television is my friend. It gives me those daily three-hour doses of Star Trek and a few doses of Stargate SG-1. And those hourly comedy shows on channel 37 are hilarious — they have this running plot about this guy who looks like a chimp winning a presidential election. What’s that show called? Oh, yeah… CNN. His dialog is just over the top. “Gonna hunt’m down. Bring’m t’justice.” Hoo, that kind of cheesy acting can have me giggling for hours.

Thankfully, I also have Zip DVDs arriving by mail. Like that Vin Diesl movie about the mass-murderer who becomes the movie’s hero. It warms the heart to see Hollywood promoting those kind of values. In the 35-minute animated sequel for children, however, the Riddick character only disembowels and otherwise dispatches people who are are clearly villains. I suppose that children’s stories have to be toned down appropriately.

So I’m not short of entertainment at all, while I’m spending time as a sickly shut-in. I have the TV, I have the computer, I have the Penguin Wordmaster Dictionary. That’s a great read. All the same… it might be nice to see what the real world looks like. Before I completely bloody insane.

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Expensive bacon

Right. So yesterday at lunch I went foraging for food, as is my habit, and found myself at Subway. Well, I guess I can’t really say that I “found myself” — I didn’t walk in and see myself already at the counter. What a strange expression.

Anyway, I ended up at Subway and ordered my usual chicken sub, but this time I splurged. I asked for bacon. Yummy, crispy, delicious bacon. Incidentally, it’s a bad idea to write about food right before lunchtime. Anyway, when I got to the cash register, I had a shock when they told me the price: the sub was just under $10. That’s about $2 more than the already expensive price of a chicken sub.

Why was it expensive? The bacon. Four strips of bacon, which my arithmetical skills tell me are roughly 50 cents each, raised the price to a criminal ten dollars. For a sandwich. What kind of rare and exotic pig does this stuff come from that it costs so much?

I was aghast, but paid it anyway. And the really annoying part of this is that I’m so hungry that I’ll probably buy another today.

End of rant.

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It’s Tuesday, like any other…

… except that today, I actually did something constructive. Yes, for the first time third time in my newfound career as a guy pretending to be a writer, I actually wrote something. Well, to be more specific, I wrote a thousand words of something, then wrote a few hundred more in notes that highlighted the fact that the first thousand words were completely wrong and that I should have written the notes first, then written the first thousand words. Well it’s a learning process, I suppose.

When I was done writing, I messed around in the metaverse game, Second Life, long enough to create an entirely new type of airplane that consistently crashes shortly after takeoff. It’s sure to be a big hit.

That done, I settled into watching a movie — Hercules, starring Steve Reeves. Yes, it’s another unfortunate movie where the men wear shorter skirts than the women and the main character’s voice is dubbed in a gravelly bass that never quite synchs with the picture. Actually, I found it hard to watch and fell to writing a rambling blog entry to fill the time.

Tomorrow, I plan to revisit my new story and then avoid entirely any movies set in ancient Greece. It’s a hard life, but thank goodness I don’t have to see the grey interior of a cubicle. Not until Thursday, anyway.

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Today’s rant: EasyPark took my lunch money

Before I begin today’s rant, here’s a glossary for non-Canucks:

  • Loonie – a one-dollar coin with a picture of a loon on one side.
  • Toonie – a two-dollar coin. (Why couldn’t it have a more imaginitive name, like “doubloon”? I’d love to go to the local tavern and pay for my grog in doubloons. Arr.)

And now, the rant:

Halfway to work, it struck me that I’d forgotten my wallet (again). I’d have to forgo buying my usual heaping plate of fried noodles and battered chicken balls, which is especially annoying because I missed dinner last night and breakfast this morning. Fortunately, I had five dollars in coin: three for the parking meter and an extra toonie that I could use to buy a small snack.

That’s how it would have worked out if the meter hadn’t eaten my coins. For some bizarre reason, the amount of parking time you get depends on the way you insert the coins. For example, if you put in a toonie, then a loonie, you get a full day of parking. However, if you put in a toonie, pause, then put in a loonie, you get only 90 minutes. It’s $3 either way, but one method will short you by several hours.

Naturally, in my morning brain-fog, I inserted my first toonie in the wrong way, saw a 60 minute parking stub in the tray, and realized that I’d have to now have to put in my snack money for an all-day stub that I should have gotten in the first place. I won’t get to eat until sometime this evening — probably around 7:00 or so. (Grumble grumble)

I now believe that parking meters are deliberately confusing. Poorly designed machines are both cheap and profitable.