How do I know that I'm a cooking geek? Let me count the ways:

1.) When the motor on my stand mixer noticeably started to go the other day, my first thought was not "damn. I don't want to have to replace this", but rather, "Woohoo! Now I have an excuse to upgrade!" My only problem is the size of my kitchen.

Really, I only need one proof.

Bork!

You know, sometimes, after a really crappy month it's incredibly relaxing to go to work, find out that everything's been delayed until tomorrow due to bad weather, and just go home and go back to sleep then get up and cook something fantastic. I really need to start doing that more.

Or else stop having crappy months.

It's 11:30 at night. I am sitting on my couch. Work laptop next to me. Watching clusterfark after clusterfark because (to use a bad analogy), one of our customers insists on shoving a size 12 foot into a size 8 boot with no shoehorn, no lubrication - absolutely nothing that would actually assist in accomplishing the goal.

Guess how well it's working out?

I was doing this until 2 am yesterday, and if I'm really lucky I'll get to bed by then tonight. Essentially, I'm watching this job so that I can offer advice, but ever piece of advice that I (and other people I work with) have offered was rejected by the customer.

Will somebody please remind me why I do this?

Update: Yay! I get off work at 7 am!

Goddammit

About a month ago I bought a new suit for my sister's wedding. Now, I don't have much fashion sense, and I don't pay a massive amount of attention to precisely how well it fits in all the important places, but Moores has done a great job of fitting me in the past, and we all agreed that it looked good and fit when I bought it.

I certainly do not recall being able to pull the pants down over my ass when it was buttoned up. I never thought that I would be pissed off about losing weight. Oh well, I guess I wear the old suit for the wedding.

Yeah, I know, cry some more.

Am I Back in Grade School?

6:20 a.m., it's snowing, And some asshole pulls the fire alarm in my building.

That is all.

Except that it happened again about 5 hours later.

Another Brick in the Wall

I am sore.

On the plus side, I was able to help my dad build two brick flow beds/retaining walls over the weekend. They definitely improve the look of the yard. Still, the nearly 400 bricks that were required for the project got very heavy by the end.

Still have have couple of more landscaping projects to do before my sisters wedding, but this was the biggest one. After this weekend, everything else is gravy.

It's been a slow couple of months at work. Spring breakup is keeping our equipment off of the road, and I've been trying to take the opportunity provided by the lack of extra work to regain my sanity.

Results are currently inconclusive.

Still, life goes merrily on. My car hasn't been broken into recently and I'm slowly getting my life in order. Hopefully I'll have my finances sorted out enough soon that I'll be able to take a serious look at buying a house in the near future. The weather's getting better and it's giving me a strange urge to plant a garden and do yard work - two things that are a mite bit difficult given my current accommodations.

Otherwise, there isn't a whole lot new in my life. My sister gets married next month, which should be a pretty good event - Finally getting someone else to take her into their family is a cause for celebration the likes of which has never been seen.* I'm very much looking forward to it.

That's about it. Honestly, I just felt bad because I haven't updated in so long.
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*I'm just kidding, sis. Please don't hurt me. Again.

So the bill came out to $700 this time. The thieves didn't damage the electronics this time, but Honda didn't give me the glass for free since they didn't scratch it this time.

At this rate I wonder how long it will take for me to qualify for some sort of "preferred customer" status with their service department?

I'm just shy of livid with my building manager. I went to talk to her the other day about the possibility of putting an alarm system on the doors to the garage, and see if she'd heard back from her superiors about putting security cameras down in the garage as well (something I'd suggested after both break ins). She went on some long, proud, rant about how the police came by to get the security tapes from the building and she told them off because they weren't able to arrest the guys, even though they knew who did it (because they didn't have proof since there were no cameras in the garage), and they weren't patrolling inside the building even though she'd given them security codes. So instead she didn't help them at all, and told them to talk to one of the other buildings broken in to. Apparently she thinks that the cops are supposed to wander through buildings like security guards, and deliver beatdowns to suspected criminals in lieu of actual evidence. Charming. I'd move out immediately, but I'm still planning on hopefully buying a house some time this year, I'm not ready to yet, and I don't fancy moving twice in one year.

Unbelieveable.

Guess what happened again last night?

Guys broke into the garage again and smashed all the windows again.

I'm too pissed off right now to say anything else coherent.

A classic conundrum

It never fails. The work schedule is so unstable that you don't know what's going to be happening on the weekend (or, at least Saturday) until Friday afternoon. Problem is, by that time everybody whom I need to talk to in order to sort out the details has left early, gone drinking, and is ignoring their cell phone.

Current mood: Stabby

$930 to replace the window in my car. Lovely.

On the happier note: Vacation! While not the tropical paradise that I was hoping for, it was still a damn sight better than Calgary. Amy was nearly able to convince me to move San Jose just by taking me to the market by her place. While the food there was excellent, she pointed out what passes for exotic food down there:


I'm sorely tempted to make an attempt at a new career as a rhubarb importer.

Anyhoo, Amy and R:tAG showed me where they work, and I have to say that I'm more than a little bit jealous of them. Not that they work for a video game company (although, I admit that it looks pretty fun), but the fact that they actually seem to like their coworkers. It's a completely foreign concept to me.

In addition to making sure that I never had to remain sober or hungry while I was down there, they also took me out to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Very nifty. I also got to see one of the stranger houses in the world:


While at a distance The Winchester House might not look particularly abnormal at a distance, but when you get a little closer you get to see things like this:


A rather interesting house, with an equally interesting story to go along with it.

Also went down to San Francisco for a day. Very fun, and it confirmed my opinion that Calgary has a very good China Town. I was also amused by the fact that the cells in D-Block at Alcatraz (solitary) were the same size as a single person room in my res at university. Just sayin.

So, yes. Wonderful trip. Got to hang with wonderful people and do wonderful things. Big thanks to them for putting up with me for a week.

I'm back

Just got back from a week in San Jose with the incredible Amy and R:tAG. Definitely the best vacation that I've had in a long time. There will be more of a description, along with photos, in the future. For now, though, I just want to send a big "Fuck You" to the dicks who broke into my car while I was away. Congratulations. You managed to break into a locked underground garage, smashed my window and got a crapped out iPod that doesn't work unless it's plugged in for all of your trouble. You're absolutely incredible.

Assholes.