Category: IRL

An open letter to snow

Dear snow,

Go away. I don’t like you and you obviously don’t like me. You make me leave for work early and make it difficult to see where I’m driving. You turn relaxing car rides into slow, dangerous chores. And that’s not the worst of it! I can deal with the slow driving, but I hate that you like to make my clothes all wet. There are few thngs that annoy me more than wet clothes. I despise walking around with the ankles of my pants all wet, in turn making my socks wet. And when I open my car door and you fly all over my seat in an attempt to make my butt wet and uncomfortable? What a horrible thing to do to a person. You constantly get all over everything and then into everything, creating wet/frozen messes. It’s like nature tried to come up with something more annyoing than sand. And it succeeded with you, snow!

In closing, nobody likes you, snow. You should just kill yourself.

 

Sincerely,

Funk Master R Valentine

Gained 23 JP! Job level up!

I think the title here sells the idea of this post pretty well. I’ve finally moved up a rung on the career ladder, and today I start my new job. It’s not really that far a stretch from what I was doing before, but there are a few differences and a lot of responsibility that separates what I’m doing now from what I’ve been doing the last two years.

I won’t lie, I’m more than a little worried that it’ll be too much for me. I know that it won’t, but I’ve got a persistent nagging in the back of my head telling me that I’m going. Low self esteem’s a bitch.

All anxieties aside, there are a few nice perks to this new position. Number one obviously being the small increase in pay. It’s not a huge amount, but there’s another, more substantial jump once I finish the training program that I’m working on. This should at least slightly assuage my fears of not making enough money to live.

The second, much more immediate benefit is that I’m moving to a new branch, and it’s about half the distance from my house as compared to the one I come from. I’m pretty pumped that I gat to sleep in an extra half hour every day and that I’ll be using about half the gas that I do now. Even better is that the swap managed to happen less than a week after our first real snowfall. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to driving back and forth across the city every day for another winter.

Third on my list of exciting things is that my new branch isn’t made out of windows. Yes, it looks nice, but I’m kind of over being blinded by the sun for several hours a day. I’m not completely sure this isn’t going to be a problem, because today will be my first time ever being in my new branch. I’ve driven by it a couple times though, and I doubt the sun will bother me there.

The last big thing I’m looking forward to is that my new branch seems to be quite a bit busier than the previous one. I’m sure I’ve spent enough time complaining about how slow the old branch is, so it’ll be a nice change of pace to be busy. That in addition to all the other work I’ll be doing will probably have me singing the opposite tune before long: that I don’t have enough time to get everything done. But I prefer it that way, so awesome.

If there’s any one negative aspect of this move, it’s that I don’t really want to have to get to know a new bunch of people (again). Not that I think the new branch crew won’t be a good set of co-workers, but I quite like the old set of staff. It may have been too far from home and poorly defended from sunlight, but that branch had some of the most fun people I’ve ever worked with. Oh well. We’ll still have company events.

Better than good

I took a few pictures that night. This is the only one that even sort of turned out well.

You might think I’d have a lot to say about the concert, and maybe you’re wondering why I haven’t. It’s as simple as this: I don’t want to analyze it. There were good parts and parts I wondered about, but overall, Matthew Good was fantastic. It was the best concert I’ve ever been to, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be topped (unless Freddie Mercury comes back to life). It was everything I was hoping for and more. It was one of the best nights of my life, and I wish I had a DVD of it.

Gentleman, yes. Scholar? Not as much.

I had a job interview today. It was for a position that seemed like it would fit me to a tee. And the interview went well! I’ve done a lot of them this year, so I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good at the art of talking myself up. Prolly not going to be getting it though.

For as good as I think the interview went, there was one big sour spot in the middle which I think really killed me. Like in many interviews before, I could feel the interviewers give up on me as soon as the subject of education came around. It’s not even that I need a degree or whatever. The education requirement is two self-study courses, and they would give me time to complete them if I got the job. You know that look in someone’s eyes when they know they’re not going to hire you? I’m getting to know it a bit too well, and I’m pretty sure I saw it this morning.

I made sure to note that I was more than willing to enroll in the courses though! So hopefully that will save me. And for the first time I’m not stressing out trying to figure out how I could honour that commitment. The basic courses are less than $1000 combined, with some rather expensive optional study tools available. I’d have six months to complete the harder one, and 18 for the easier of the two. The passing grade of both exams is 60%. This is something I could absolutely do. Even if I don’t get the job, I’m considering taking one (or maybe even both) of them just so that I can put something in the “education” portion of my resumé. It would be my best spent $1000 in quite some time.

Worst case scenario, I just keep hoping that Great West Life will hire me (not that I’ve put in an application). I have no issue with Cambrian (lack of promotions aside) and fully intend to continue my career with them, but I’ve heard from multiple sources that GWL pays incredibly well for work that untrained chimps would be overqualified for.

In other news, the old posts that I’ve been uploading seem to be a little quirky where lines are concerned, and I’m pretty sure that’s due to the fact that I was writing them up in Angelfire’s page editor. At least, that’s my current best theory. If you’re looking at archived posts between July ’04 and January ’06 (I’ve only re-archived up to October ’04) and you see funny line breaks, help a brother out. It takes like five seconds to post a comment that says “there are funny line breaks here.”

Sacramental

Marriage Preparation Weekend was pretty fun, actually. Even though it ate up almost the entirety of said weekend, I don’t feel like it was a waste of time.

The majority of the weekend was listening to speakers about what we’d need to consider and how to handle the changes in our relationship once we’re married. Things like finances, communication, family planning, and (quite hilariously) sex were all discussed at length. There were a few worksheets that we filled out between presentations, but they were all just to stimulate conversation between the couples. It was kind of like taking a really, really short semester of university without any tests.

Being that it’s a church-mandated course, there was of course a way for God to fit into everything. And that’s cool with me. I actually feel kind of bad that I neglect my faith as much as I do. The really nice thing that they did though was to really demystify some Bible-related stuff. I learned a lot about what really goes on in there. Turns out it’s not nearly as restricting as the loonies want you to think. Most importantly of course, is that God intends for a husband and wife to really enjoy each other, if you know what I mean.  The Bible’s a lot easier to stand behind now that the Catholic church has mellowed out and uses it as a way to help people enrich their lives, and not as a tool to control them.

I feel that I probably shouldn’t be getting to into that kind of stuff here. I don’t feel like making myself an even bigger target for intolerance than usual. The end result of the weekend is that we’ve taken in a lot of information, and certainly have a few more things to consider within the next few months. Also, sevenish months is starting to seem like it might not really be that far off. We’re just working on little things at a time for the wedding, as the big stuff (dress, venues, photographers) is all taken care of, so it’s not really a concern whether or not we’re prepared for the celebration itself.

What I’m fretting about is our living situation. We’ve decided that we will not flush away money and live in apartment, so it’s condo or house for us. Condos seem to come and go very quickly though, and houses are in pretty high demand in the areas we’d like to live, driving bidding wars up by tens of thousands of dollars (or so I’ve heard). I’ve been poking around some real estate websites over the last few months, but we haven’t started looking for a place in earnest yet. Which is okay for now, because the stress of just thinking about it is almost more than I can bear.  Still not as sacry as babies though.

Oh well. I knew getting married was going to bring with it a few complications. It was just nice to have a weekend of people saying that despite those complications, it’s the best decision I’m ever going to make. Also they fed us like royalty. That was awesome. Best weekend course ever.

NB: Despite how this post may sound, I’m very excited for both marriage and moving out. I just wish they were a little easier.

Lights of Ecstatic Species

November is going to be the bestestist month ever. Super Mario 3D Land and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword come out a week apart from each other, and the latter comes bundled with a CD of the Zelda 25th anniversary symphony tour and a gold Wiimote. But besting even my insatiable lust for Nintendo games (and swag, and VGM), I’m going to see Matthew Good in concert.

If I had a bucket list, seeing Matthew Good live in concert would be damn near the top of my bucket list.

Van Halen might have been the first act I really liked, but Matthew Good was the first artist I ever truly got into. After getting Beautiful Midnight for a birthday or Christmas or something and listening to it every night for months, I was hooked. Napster hit the scene not long after, and I was able to listen to some of Matthew Good Band’s older tracks, but was constantly put out because I wasn’t able to find their previous album, Underdogs, no matter how hard I looked.

Back then I was still fairly green as far a music goes, and I was unsure about asking for the follow-up album, The Audio of Being, because I hadn’t heard any music from it (a trait I still have). I really wanted Underdogs, but I ended up getting The Audio of Being for Christmas in aught-one, and I may have listened to that one even more than Beautiful Midnight. I know that for several months, I not only put it on to listen to as I fell asleep, but also listened to it repeatedly as I whiled away my after-school hours on an emulated copy of Picross 2.

Over the years I’ve lost the vigor to keep up with new CD releases, so whenever I see a new Matthew Good album on store shelves, it’s like a tiny little Christmas for me. The two that really got my blood pumping though, were In A Coma and Live at Massey Hall. He actually did a tour to support In A Coma right after it’s release, but it was a bar show, and since I was afraid of bars at the time, I didn’t go.

In A Coma, by the way, is the gigantic 3-disc collection of not only his best work, but new material as well. The first disc is essentially the “greatest hits” disc, with a few new and unreleased songs thrown in for good measure. The second is part acoustic versions of old songs, part Loser Anthems (a limited edition EP), and half B-sides. The last disc is a DVD filled with music videos (with commentary), and some behind-the-scenes stuff. It’s essentially the physical manifestation of a wet dream for me.

Live at Massey Hall is exactly what it sounds like, and the reason I’m so excited to actually go to a show. I listened to both discs of that album every day that I got a chance for at least a month and still make time to listen to it on the long trips to and from work. So yeah, I’m pretty pumped. I thought new Zelda was going to be the event of the year for me, but I think it’s been topped. If the show is anywhere near as wonderful as the live album, I guarantee that I’ll be walking on air for weeks afterward.

So yeah, just wanted to share that. November 7th can’t come fast enough. </fanboy raving>

UPDATE – I just got an email from Chapters that’s going to make Novemeber even better. Way, way back in May or June or something I pre-ordered the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Ultimate Collection Volume 1 as a birthday present for myself (as it was due to release mid-September), which is a collection of the first seven original TMNT comics, plus a bonus Raphael issue. But then, less than a month before the shipping date,  I got an email saying it was delayed to January 2012. Sucktastic. Today’s email however, says it has been un-delayed to November 22! Hooray!

I’ve never been really into comics, but I’ve always wanted to read through the original TMNT series. Even if they never produce another one of these, I’ll be glad to have the first few. While searching for that image, I found out that Kevin Eastman headed up a new TMNT comic series in August (issue #1 promptly sold out), and that Nickelodeon is producing a new animated series next year. Oh, 2012 is going to be a good year. New Turtles cartoon, new Nintendo console, end of the world. I feel like I’ve forgotten something important though…

On photos and blogging about them

I guess I’ve been photoblogging more than usual lately. Kind of offsets that couple of weeks there where I just put up solid walls of text with nary an image to accompany them. Kind of.

Truth be told, I just have a buttload (a term I’ve been using way too often lately) of random images sitting on my desktop and phone that I needed to do something with. So there are more to come! I spent almost no time at my home last week, and I don’t know how much I’ll be there in the days to come, but there will be another onslaught of photobloggery sometime in the future.

I’m also trying to get Stephanie set up on here so that she can join in the fun. I sold her on the photoblogging idea, given that she just loves to take pictures. So that’s going to happen too. Get ready for the picturepocalypse.

That’s not a real bone!

I’ve spent a considerable chunk of my Sunday morning perusing the Commercial Download Center at X-Entertainment, and man it is hitting my nostalgia bone hard. And that’s actually really weird, because I would have been 3 years old at most when any of these commercial actually aired. I guess maybe it’s the fact that they really don’t make advertisements like they used to. Where have all the silly cartoon mascots and stupid jingles gone? Not to mention the terrible acting and special effects. Commercials just don’t catch my interest the way they used to; I watched the McDonald’s commercial and immediately craved McDonald’s. Nowadays I’m pretty sure McDonald’s ads aren’t even allowed to show food (though technically, in this specific commercial all the foodstuffs are puppets).

The other thing that struck me is just how retarded some of these marketing campaigns are. “Underoos are neat to wear!”? Really? “Neat” is the best word you could come up with the describe your product? Even “fun” would have been less stupid. Don’t even get me started on the Pringles ad.

Why didn’t they bring back the “You can smile, America, with Chuck E Cheese!” commercial after 9/11? Totally would have revived the franchise. (Still too soon?)

The fact of the matter here it that in retrospect, I love this cheesiness. It’s great, and gives me the warm fuzzies all over. I truly miss the days when Ronald hung out with McNugget puppets instead of “healthy lifestyle” kids. And I miss cereal box giveaways sooooooooo much. If I’m ever in charge of a cereal, there’s damn well gonna be toys in those boxes. Fuck anyone who tries to stop me.

I also miss the days when I would spend, well, entire days reading X-E. Matt’s completely done away with the front page (beat him to that years ago) and any sort of complete articles now, and made it so that the blog is the main event. Not that I don’t like the blog, it’s still totally X-E, but I like to dig up the old articles once in a while and reminisce about simpler times. Now there are no article links anywhere and I don’t remember the naming scheme he used for the files so I can’t find any! Augh! I’m sure I have links to many of them in my own backlog, but damned if I’ll be searching there. It’s almost nine years worth of nonsense now!