It's Another Time

Didn't I say below that was a story for another time? Yes, I did.

On Friday at work - my phone was broken. Now, we need to pause here for a moment and recollect that what I DO is project mangle the installation, moving, changing etc of phone systems, phone sets and all of their associated stuff. In most cases, although I am a technician by training, we have to pay the phone company to do the actual installing. So, on Friday, I had a broken phone. And no one was around to fix it.

Just a little irony there.

Anyhoo, during the down time I received a delightful message in Australianized Canadian from Yeti indicating that he'd be bussing into Vancouver on Sunday and would like to come over to the Island.

He's been here the longest of the three (a couple of years at least) and he's finally on his way back home on the 10th. He was Matt's roommate in uni and has been Matt's best friend ever since. When I mentioned on the phone to Matt last week that I should just marry him so he could stay here since he seems to like Canada so much - I was quite quickly informed that Yeti is a US citizen, a Canadian citizen and an Australian citizen. Which I'm pretty sure is kind of frowned upon but regardless, Yeti is quite obviously All Aussie. It's also rare to come across such an apt nickname.

Last week, Matt still sounded more Canadian than Australian, even after being home for almost 6 months, but Yeti, still is thickly Aus and insistent that he is horrified at the thought of talking like a Canadian. Wanker.

He's just called again and will be on a ferry on Monday to spend some time with me - he's broke so I imagine it will be most of the rest of his trip. I've stocked up on Yeti Imperial Stout and actually cleaned pretty thoroughly but that's not much of a concern really. When Stef asked what Yeti was like, I replied.... "He's the guy in the back of the bus on a 15 hour Greyhound milk-run, oozing alcohol from every pore, snoring away in clothes he's been wearing for a week, not having had a shower in at least four days and sporting a festering leg wound."

Which after the week of Stampede last year, actually happened, and so I've just given you a perfect description.

Oh, but he's brilliant fun and I'm so excited he's coming.

Especially when I say, "Well, it's good you'll only be around a week, you'll get sick of me in this tiny space - why are you always in my face? get out of my face! go away!" and he replies "I could never get sick of you, Jen, and besides if Mattie managed to be so happy all that time with you - I reckon it'll be no trouble at'all."

All charm, my three little Aussie boys, all charm.

Oh, I Lurve The Cheesy Movies, I Do.

"Anacondas don't get that big - that was a freak of nature."

"They're very territorial, we just need to move on."

"Besides, after a meal that large (uh, the DOCTOR), it'll sleep for weeks and there isn't anything else out here like that."

Oh, let me count the ways. Please.

...there's 8 or so of you....
...only two women...
...you're in the middle of BORNEO...
(which I had to get the atlas out for and the Metchosin corner store people spelled BOARNEOO)...
...in monsoon season...
...you've lost your transportation...
...you're trying to rendevous with a SHITFACED DRUNK AUSTRALIAN....
...there's the fountain of youth at risk......
...(not the most obvious) ...the movie is called "ANACONDAS"...
...AND...
...no one is listening to the cute little scared monkey!!

Man, I heart these kinds of movies, I reallly do.

It's like the Bill Pullman / Oliver Platt / Bridget Fonda / Betty White and that huge fucking crocodile one. Lake Placid. Utterly priceless. Actually, particularly well done with a bit of a quirky sense of humor for being about a big croc. And filmed partly in Can-eh-da - I highly recommend it.

Just so you know, I promise to pay attention to Cabot if he starts to screech and cover his head. No matter what.

And, oh yeah, it's Lance from The OC - bit of a hottie is Johnny Messner.

That's just a personal opinion, of course.

And there is nothing wrong with drunken Australians. But that's a story for later.

It's Not the Cows That're Mad, I Keep Tellin' Ya

Cabot's just now holding down his wriggling dinner plate (too much catnip, methinks) and polishing off the lovely Basmati rice and soy dinner scraps. In the last 10 days he's eaten butter lettuce, macaroni salad, egg salad sandwich filling, perogies and sour cream, yoghurt, a portion of a blueberry cereal bar, tomatoes and a sesame bun I was going to use for my lunch (but no mouse and not one of the slugs he follows around at night and none of those great big carpenter ants with the flexing face pincers that keep dropping off the walls and into my *very* personal space).

Now, before you freak out, not all of these things were actually given to him. This is what you get when you 'rescue' a street cat. And yes, I feed my animals table scraps. And no, not one single one of them has died at a young age or from heart disease, obesity, high cholesterol etc etc etc - in fact, the large percentage of them have lived so long that they've needed to be put down because they were just too old. So, please, if you weren't around for the six months of putting my dog to sleep-ness last year, then *shush*, because you can trust that I'm nothing but fan-fucking-tastic to my pets, frankly, to the detriment of my own health, finances, comfort and the needs of every other single human being on the planet.

Ahem. Now, where was I? Oh yes....

Whilst grocery shopping tonight I finally gave up buying beef. You might remember that back in Alberta all I ate was mad cow - it was cheap and fantastic. I've tried to carry that tradition on here (800 miles west) but even next to the outrageous price for the avian-fever-whatever-is-wrong-with-the-chickens-these-days-that-we-must-kill-most-of-them chicken, the beef here is not only relatively expensive, but seriously sub-standard.

I vaguely remember the US saying we could export again the day *before* someone found another mad cow so I'm pretty sure that whole thing fell through like a rehearsal for a commerical where the cantalope's dropped on a cheap wet paper towel - which leaves me a bit unsure where all the good cheap beef is if we can't actually SELL any of it outside Canada.

I'll tell you this though - our 'good' Canadian beef is just as dear as all that New Zealand and Australian beef that for some reason Canada is feeling the need to IMPORT these days and stack up right next to our own beef in the grocery store.

That's it then, I'm off to join the drunken brit in a drink or two (in absentia) on the porch (where it has been 28 / 76 degrees all day) and then inside again to stretch my intellectual capacity with a subtle and multi-layered piece of cinematography utterly startling in it's complexity.

Cheers.

Shit I Hate About the Internet

Last year I paid for a one year Sitemeter account. Lately, I've been looking at that bill from APRIL OF LAST YEAR and thinking, hey, I wonder where my statement / renewal / anything is for this year because I want to cancel it.

Today, my mail answered that question. Without a statement, without warning, without so much as a fucking 'thankyouverymuch' email my credit card was charged back on April 27 just over $75.

I emailed and asked for a refund of my remaining 11 months.

What are you thinking the chances I'm setting up my very own 'beware' website and submitting it obsessively to every search engine on the planet soon?

$75 is worth quite a bit of my time, I think. $20 bucks, maybe not, but there's a threshold where you just can't be fucking with people, yanno?

I guess we'll have to wait and see. But if you've done the same so you can get all those really good stats - I'd check your first bill date and email them well before so you don't get screwed as well, considering there was no mention in any of the information and documentation of an automatically recurring charge.

Not a Mouse Catcher, My Cabot

Add my wine-cork-bottle-air-sucker, a entire pound of blanched almonds, a couple of plastic kitchen thingmabobs and add in four kitchen drawers full of little mouse poopies and you might get the feeling that the little fella hasn't taken the 'bait'.

When you open the cupboard to get out that lovely blindingly lime-green feather duster to do something about the computer casing and it's suddenly gone from this...



to this....



...then it becomes quite obvious that while the poison is seemingly not working - neither is the cat.doing.his.job.

...and your unwanted house guest is sleeping quite comfortably, thank you SO much for asking, kind and gracious host.

the world was meant for you and me
to figure out our destiny
(a thousand beautiful things)

Now *that's* a Season Finale

(be warned: NCIS spoiler)

You know, normally, it's all like FIRE! EXPLOSION! ATTACK! CRASH! ... and then you never know who it was that bought it...

...until the tortuous passing of the interminable wait until the next season begins with, FINALLY, the answers!

IF, of course, the show gets picked up again instead of being replaced by "Compete against the world to have sex with a horse!", OR "The next in reality TV - I was sold into the sex trade when I was NINE! and we filmed it ALL, baby!" OR "BE the Queen of England!" or whatever complete and utter shite they'll come up with next.

Which character of the people you've come to love, people who you talk about at work like they live next door, people who's likes and dislikes and past and sex lives you know more about than your own, which of these beloved friends has shuffled off this mortal coil to be seen only again in syndication?...

...unless you were watching NCIS last night.

"DiNozzo was right? I thought I'd be dead before I heard...(insert bullet through the forehead here)"

Don't read the tabloids, don't look for spoilers (I didn't even know Third Watch was ending forever until I turned it on that night for god's sake and that is one of my all time favorite shows) but holy, that caught me completely off guard.

I liked her. Damn. But fucking BRILLIANT ending.

Interview Questions - The Last Two

Strangely, this is the shortest of them all.

If you could do this without repercussions, to whom in your life would you apologise, and why ?

There are only three people I would apologise to - this has always been true but Matt has made me realize exactly what I did, young and stupid and damaged, to two of them. One: a boy named Grant. Two: a boy named Scott. Three: a girl named Jen.

For not knowing how or being able to love them as much as they loved me. For not trusting them as much as they trusted me. For not taking the chance. For hurting them before they could ever possibly hurt me. And, finally, for taking so many years to learn how to look in the mirror and give her the credit, love and faith that she always deserved.


If you had the power to fix one problem or one issue that causes the human family sadness and/or death, ie, hunger or violence, what would you fix? Please explain your choice.

Fear - implies anxiety and usually loss of courage
Prejudice - an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual,
    a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics

Because fear drives prejudice and so they both become the source of most of the terrible things that we have done, and continue to do, to this planet and to each other.