18 May 2007
Life is busy. Life is crazy. Life is always changing. Opportunities have been coming at me from all directions lately. That’s my life. That’s the roller coaster.
This time the roller coaster is a two-seater though. It moves a little differently. There is a lot more at risk than in the past. It is both scarier and more exciting at the same time. There’s someone to share it all with :)
This weekend I’m heading out of town for some meetings. It worked out kind of well. I’m going away while Holly is away with her Girl Guide Troop on a camping trip.
The meetings could drastically change the near future of our lives. Nothing is ever final until it actually happens of course. Is that vague enough?
I am both looking forward to and dreading the trip. I’m not a big fan of flying. Planes aren’t quite spacious enough for my liking. I especially dislike it when I’m jammed in the middle of a couple of people.
Of interest is the fact that I arrive at my destination about five hours before I can check in to my hotel. This is too bad because I’d love to just hole-up in the room and study. You just can’t study too much. I could also use some sleep. I just can’t seem to get enough of it lately. Too much burning the candle at both ends.
Today I ended up sleeping in. Apparently Holly had come in a couple of times to try and wake me up and I just slept through it. I will say that it adds up fast. That, being the lack of sleep.
I still haven’t found a groove that fits since moving. Both of us have been pretty tired since moving in together. We get up on her schedule and we go to bed on mine. That’s a solid 7am-Midnight+ day every day. Those days don’t tend to have much downtime either.
We were remarking over dinner last night that we couldn’t remember the last time that we just had a weekend to ourselves when we didn’t have something that had to be done. This weekend is no different since we will both be going away.
Next weekend we were supposed to have a get together. Finally invite some friends over to see the place and how it has changed as we merge our things together. It looks like we are probably going to postpone it though. We need that weekend of rest.
Of course, the stress of everything going on hasn’t helped much with sleep. What would it mean to move again? I am a restless wanderer. Traditionally I have never stayed anywhere for very long. I do know that I want to someday though. I want to stop and settle. Plant some roots.
I know that in Holly I’ve found the woman that I want to spend my life with. I just don’t know if I’m at the location that I want to live my life. I guess you could say that, in itself, is the answer. Things rarely tend to be so simple as to have such simple answers though.
I am going to miss Holly this weekend. Tonight will be the first night since we moved in together that we won’t both be home. It will be my first bit of time alone at the apartment. I hope she has a great time this weekend.
02 May 2007
Today has been what the natives call “One of those days.”
I got to work today and went to pick up my bus pass, only to find that someone else had already come along and picked it up using my name. You see, now that’s just cheap. Why on earth would an employee try and steal someone else’s employee discounted pass? It is a redefinition of low down dirty scoundrel.
Initially they told me that they would have to investigate it and find out what happened; and that they would get int ouch with me soon. So at that point I was thinking very unhappy thoughts to myself. I splurged for the three zone pass which is a bit pricy. I figured since we get tax breaks on them now that it would all work out for the best.
So noon rolled around and I hadn’t heard anything back yet. I went back down to talk to them, as it is true that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself, oh, and you have to badger the bejesus out of people too. They couldn’t figure out what happened. In the end they are going to send someone out this afternoon to go pick another one up for me.
So thanks to the generosity of the company trying to help the employee’s with discounted transit passes, they are out the cost of a pass. If this kind of thing were to start happening often, what would there motivation be to continue offering it?
It really does only take one bad apple to spoil a basket.
Now some thoughts on the second round of the playoffs:
1) Will the Canucks ever play the full 60 minutes of a game?
2) Where did this Ottawa Senators team come from and what did they do with the pods?
3) Can this banged up Red Wings team take down the high flying… err, fast swimming… Sharks?
4) Holly damn! Look at those Rangers go!
At this point I would have to pick an Ottawa vs Anaheim Stanley Cup Final. Hockey doesn’t need that. They need some teams that people like, watch, and most importantly, have heard of.
I would have thought that most people have heard of Ottawa, but the other day I was watching “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” and they asked a woman what country is north of the United States, and she got it wrong. It’s a great show. It’s amazing to be reminded of how much I once knew that I have now forgotten or deliberately pushed aside to make room for more important information.
30 Apr 2007
One more big weekend in the new place behind us. We slept in pretty late on Saturday, but once we got up it was go, go, go all day.
We spent a few hours at IKEA browsing things. We found a desk, some chairs and a bunch of odds and ends. I got to show Holly what I had in mind for shelving. We looked for the old dining room table that we had liked and were thoroughly underwhelmed when we saw it. It wasn’t anything like either of us had remembered. I believe we have found a new table though.
There was some talk before picking out a table. Last week I read a really great article, The Craftsmanship of Code, that changed how I view quite a few things. It made me think more about the furniture that I normally buy. As a whole it made me think about almost everything that people buy in today’s world.
I am a geek. I won’t deny it. I know my way around computers and most electronics backward and forward. When it comes to picking a TV, DVD player or new computer I don’t really cut corners. I certainly don’t go buy the cheapest mass produced thing available that looks nice. I look for quality products that will last. I spend a great deal of time doing research on items. I get pieces that will work together. I don’t buy from companies like AKAI.
Yet, when it comes to furniture, quite often I do head to a place like IKEA or some other large store that sells cheap crap. Now, just to be clear, not everything that IKEA makes is crap. A lot of it, the more expensive stuff, tends to be quite good. I am also not trying to say that all mass produced things are crap.
Anyway, this boils down to the fact that I had started to think that I wanted a “real” dining room table. Not something mass produced by machines. By no means did it have to be a singularly unique piece, but I wanted to know that there was a human, a heart and a soul, behind it’s construction.
It made me think back to a lot of the large pieces of furniture that we had growing up that my Father had made. They may not have won any awards, but they are solid examples of good craftsmanship. Everything was built to last. They have stood the test of time. The test of moving over and over again. The test of hyper children and claw wielding cats.
If that furniture had been put together out of some cheap press board and a few nuts and bolts out of a box, there is no way it would have ever lasted so long. It has a presence of stability about it. Something which I consider to be important in today’s world.
I would like to craft that same sense of stability in the home for my own little family. That calming sense of safeness because everything is the same. No matter how many times you move, how many places you live, how many things happen in the outside world, I believe that home should always be the same. This isn’t to say that change is bad, or that things should never change, but I do think that core stability is important.
That’s the way it is with my family now. I might only get to see them once a year, but when I do, it always feels like I never left. It’s a wonderful feeling.
Ultimately we decided that we will get something from IKEA for now, but when we have a house we will decorate with furniture that exhibits craftsmanship.
27 Apr 2007
Today I turned in the keys for my old place. I have some great memories of that place. Memories that I never would have had without meeting Holly. Lots of laughs, some great times and a few fights.
In one of those wierd twists of life the only thing I really miss about the place is the time I spent there with Holly. Now of course, I get to spend every night with her. It is strange to have the near-present become a memory.
We have survived our first week of living together. The two of us are doing great except for an ever present state of exhaustion and some kitten bites and scratches. Leo is quite a ferocious little guy when he wants to be. Even Max joined in on the fun last night and swiped me across the back of the leg. This is what I get for wearing shorts instead of pants.
There is still quite a bit of settling in and unpacking to be done yet. Something like eight more boxes of books, movies and games to unpack. I’m not really happy with the current performance of the home network either. It seems to be taking about an hour to download 40MB over my Xbox 360. That just isn’t acceptable. The connection is supposed to be 10MB/s down. I’ll be doing performance tests on it after I get a desk; and setup probably the only computer that will be bound by a wire connection.
Sleep is a precious memory.
25 Apr 2007
= A short interlude =
If you haven’t seen Hot Fuzz yet, then you must go now! Now! Now I said!
It is quite possibly the funniest movie that I have ever seen. People in the theater were clapping, yelling, hollering and I even believe there may have been some hooting. Don’t read reviews or previews of it. Don’t watch trailers. Just go see it! Now!
For the gamers out there if you haven’t tried the PC demo of Puzzle Quest, or one of the other various flavours of Puzzle Quest, this is also something else that you must go do now. It has possessed everyone at work.