Sharkboy

When I came home after working for Club Med in 1987, I moved in with my parents for a few months while looking for a new job. After awhile, I had managed to have saved enough and was ready to move on my own again. That’s when I reconnected with a college friend of mine and we decided to share an apartment together… We had been on vacation together and it had gone very well, we had some other friends in common, so it made sense…

At first, all was well, I was working evenings and he was working days, so we weren’t in each other’s grills too much and on the weekends, we went out to bars and clubs and always had a good time. We hosted some pretty fun parties too…

After a couple of years of living together, he started dating a co-worker of mine and things were ok at first, then it changed… almost like I had suddenly become a third wheel… I didn’t care one way or another that they were dating, so I can’t really explain why he started acting so weird around me…

One day he told me that someone called for me but he couldn’t take a message because he couldn’t find a pen to write it down, he describe the call as a man that sounded like a woman, and the phone number was probably 514-something something 7- something 8 9 something… he couldn’t be sure… Little things like this. I also had a Nintendo game system with Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. The 3 of us played quite often at first and then one day, the gun for the duck game disappeared… he had no idea where it had gone…

One day I got a letter in the mail with just a cut out picture of me in it… someone had taken a picture I was a part of, cut out my head and mailed it to me, no return address…

One day, my YMCA gym bag had disappeared. Just vanished… I looked everywhere for it… just gone. I had to buy new running shoes and toiletries.

One day, after hanging up the telephone, I mentioned this friend of mine from UK was sending me a fun mixed tape with cool music from the clubs he hung out at in London… I never received it… A few weeks later, I asked if there had been any post for me as I had not received anything AT all for awhile, it was unusual in those days before emails. I decided to test Canada Post and sent me an envelope from work with some documentation at first and a few days later I sent one with a book inside… those envelopes never arrived…

One day, after rushing out the door as I was running late for a movie with a friend, I left my dishes by the sink thinking I’d be able to take care of it when I came back home later on that day… I returned home finding them on my bed… According to my roommate, he had no idea how they got there…

It was time to get the fuck out of there… I decided to talk to the one I used to work with, “the boyfriend”, about all these shitty things that had happened in the last few months and he tried to pretend he didn’t know what I was talking about and then, probably out of embarrassment he confessed that it was my roommate, he had been hiding my mail for awhile… not only my mail, but every little thing that had disappeared… He went into their bedrooms and brought out a couple of bags full of my stuff…

I wasn’t sure what to do… I saw red… completely red… I didn’t know if I should punch his lights out, and even though he was much bigger and taller than me I think I would’ve knocked him out I was so enraged. I just took the bags, brought them to my bedroom, head spinning like I just came out of Alice’s Tea Party at Disney World, and then I left. I went outside, jumped on my bicycle and went for a long ride… I drank a bit too much for my own good that night and came back totally drunk. It was Saturday morning, the timing was perfect, I spent the next 24 hours in bed… and then on Sunday, I started looking for an apartment of my own…

I was dating a guy at the time, it had just been a few months but it was fairly serious… After telling him what had happened, he insisted I came and spent time at his place… I ended up moving with him shortly after… just so happy to leave these other two guys behind, I moved out without really telling them while they were both at work. I took 4 bottles of wine from their cupboard. I felt they owed me a drink or two. I went on full ignore as far as both were concerned.

I saw one of them about 10 years later, after I had moved to Toronto and was visiting Montreal on a long weekend. We were at a bar and the ex-co-worker/boyfriend showed up. He came to say hello and apologized one more time. I told him it was ok, I had enjoyed the wine they had given me. I left without saying goodbye that night too.

Ah, the 80′s.. Thank god the music was so good.

I discovered Ridley Pearson while listening to a Disney podcast a couple of years ago, he was promoting a book being published through Disney Editions: The Kingdom Keepers. The storyline intrigued me right away, teenagers protecting Magic Kingdom at night when all the villlains came to life to try and takeover the park’s control… It was somewhat adolescent in style but still a quick and action-packed read. I was hooked and bought the second part as soon as it came out later on that same year… The third one was published last month but still isn’t available in Canada just yet… We suck so much for stuff like this.

Anyway, while looking to see when the 3rd part would be available, I took notice of his other teenagers series, the first one was Peter and the Starcatcher about Peter Pan (co-written with Dave Barry) and the second called Steel Trapp. This particular one drew my attention because it talked about a recurring character from one of his “adult” books… Being curious enough to find out more about this, I went to on a search. It turned out that Ridley had written quite a few of these adult type books, so I picked up the one mentioned in the Steel Trapp series, CUT AND RUN, and decided to give it a try.

I finally started it this week…. LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE. I feel like I’ve been missing out now and want to go buy all his other stuff. It’s reminiscent of the Dan Brown style, short chapters, action packed, chases after chases, but what is surprising me the most I guess is that I’m reading an author I’ve been associating with clean cut Disney and certainly wasn’t expecting all the descriptive sex scenes and gruesome murders…

So while I wait until they finally ship Kingdom Keepers 3 to Canada, I’m going to get his “Killer” series, not only because the reviews have been good, but also because he’s named the main character Walt.

Saw it last night…

It was fun, it had heart and we couldn’t help but fall in love with Toothless, the Night Fury dragon that Hiccup captures and helps find his wings again. You might even find yourself shed a tear or two.

And, as far as a movie with people traveling on mythical animals, I MUCH preferred Dragon to Avatar. Much.

I still get tons of emails from the Travel Industry from my years selling cruises, but this one I just got floored me. I mean, I love cruising but not this much:

I doubted very much that there would be tons of people wanting to go on and “celebrate” this event by cruising the same path… eeesh… but I’ll be damned, half of the categories are already sold out… eeeesh + eeeesh

(Picture from the Tim Horton’s website. No, I didn’t buy an assortment of donuts just to take an artsy picture for the blog. I’m really craving some right now though).

This morning, against better judgment AND only because the Epicure shop downstairs doesn’t open before 9am on Sundays, I went to Tim Horton’s to get 2 bagels toasted with cream cheese to go with our deliciously hot Starbucks drinks. While waiting to be “inassaulted” (a mixture of assaulted and insulted), I was looking at their featured donuts and couldn’t help but notice that the size of them had pretty much reduced by half. I really don’t go there too often but have gone enough in the past to know that their Boston Creams were twice as big as what they sell now… that their amazing Blueberry Fritters was much more than a 2-bites-donut… that their French Crueller were big enough to at least put a finger through the whole. The whole counter looked like they had converted all their sweet delectable fried goods into TimBits only.

After ordering, which surprisingly only took one try today, I waited for my food to be prepared and listened to the guy that was behind me ordering an “egg mcmuffin thingy” and a donut with candies on top, you know the supreme bar thingy… I couldn’t help but giggle. Maybe that’s why they make you repeat your order so often if people keep ordering items from other restaurant or by a vague description.

In my office, we have 2 distinct divisions, and in each of them we have many different positions to cover. There’s also 2 different shifts, the early one from 8:15 to 4:15 and the late one from 9:30 to 5:30… Last year, I was promoted to the division that deals directly with the public from the one that deals with all the paperwork. As far as work goes, I love working at the counter with the public directly. If I can’t be stationed there, then shoot me in the info booth where people have to go when they first arrive to be directed to the right area, I’m still very happy there… Can’t put me in either, just thrust me on the phones or on emails, both still dealing with the public… I can still find somewhat joy in those two areas… I’m not a masochist, I know people complain very much on all these mediums, it’s just that it feels “alive”, and for all my own complaining, I still feel good at the end of the day when I have helped all these people with their questions and endeavor…

This last past 6 weeks, with the abolition of one of the 4 counter location we service, I’ve been relegated to the back office. I’m still working the early shift which I love, but doing a very boring paperwork type job and listening to a whole bunch of miserable people complaining all day long, I call it NegativeLand. So this morning after listening to two of them fight about how to do a procedure, I finally exclaimed loudly: “Mom. Dad. Please. Can’t we just get along?” Got some laughs from the peanut gallery but the message was heard and they took it down a couple of notches… Then, less than an hour after that, I had to listen to the most inane exchange between two humans about sneezing… Should one sneeze and spread one’s germs all over the place OR should one suppress the sneeze and therefore hurting one’s lower back every time one did one of these inside sneezes. The other seriously telling him to go in the hallway instead of suppressing as it was obviously not good to keep it all in and the first one going on about how one couldn’t predict the arrival of a sneeze in time to walk out the office… After 10 minutes of this, I was boiling, I came very close to remind them both of the magnificent invention of the disposable tissues so that they could be done with the fucking sneeze talk…. But no, instead, I got up, locked my computer and marched directly in my supervisor’s office, closed the door behind me and sat down…

I was there for 30 minutes…

I came out feeling fairly good about our talk, I do really like my new supervisor and not afraid to say that I respect her very much. And I know very well she has nothing to do with the scheduling…

At 3:30 this afternoon, I get an email with the month of May’ schedule… NOT ONE CHANGE… EVERYONE HAS BEEN RELEGATED TO THE EXACT SAME DUTIES FOR ONE MORE MONTH… Oh no… wait, that’s not entirely true… I was put on the late shift this time… how headache inducing has the last month been already… blargh.

Is the weekend ever going to come???

Another project I managed to finish this weekend is my quilt… and I’m very happy with the finish product… I was having my doubts halfway through, but then this weekend, I got the fabric for the front border and the quilty one for the back and I must say it looks great…

I should have kept a count of how many hours I spent on it… but the front was definitely the easy part. As the piece came together, it was heavier and harder to manoeuvre… so there was a lot of swearing in the last few hours involved.

It couldn’t come at a better time either, my hubby has come down with a cold and now he can have this nice warm comfortable unique blanket to stay in bed and get better with…

I used denim fabric for the border, I find it really frames it well
From an hawaiian shirt I wore on the cruise after our wedding
From one of DR t-shirt, too cool to give away to Goodwill
Wall-E is DR’s favourite little animated robot
Just cause…
Club Med was the first time I left home for so long to work
A monkey that was supposed to hand up on a t-shirt
My favourite Disney hotel ever
From one of my favourite baseball cap… wasn’t even washable anymore
Comfy shark fabric for the middle piece
A coaster DR’s father made
From the t-shirt I was wearing during the 6 weeks strike… blargh
We went to Belize twice and both times did some zipline excursions
We both twirled with ROTC, was really fun time
Because there’s never enough Mickeys… that was a bitch to sew on the patch.
I ran out of fabric when doing the back… had to sew up some and of course, in my annoyance, I sewed it on the wrong side… blargh… no one but us will see that… if anyone asks, I’ll just say it’s my signature

Watching the super sentimentally charged last episode of Glee, I couldn’t help but feel so sad for Kurt for not only did he sing one of the best Bacharach song ever written, but he displayed so much emotion in his voice and his acting… He’s ruined this song for anyone ever wanting to sing this again. What a freaking voice this guy has.

Plus, it’s the first time in a LONG LONG time I’ve felt like buying a single on iTunes…

If you’ve missed it, or want to see it again, I’ve found this version from Michael Ronan’s vimeo collection:

Gleeks!! from Michael Roman on Vimeo.

Tissue anyone?