Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Just a moment

I had a moment recently. I had entered our office copy room to get my morning cup of coffee and all I could think of was the back room at Truckee River Bank when I was a kid. My brother and I would sit back there, supposedly doing our homework, after school until my mom was done for the day.

I remembered going behind the teller line to visit with my mom’s coworkers and wreaking havoc with long paperclip chains. I remembered those women coming in for a cup of coffee, stirring in white powder creamer. I remembered drawing on long reams of dot matrix paper and making more chains out of the tearaway sides.

I made my cup of coffee; poured in my milk and added my cube of sugar. And I thought: “Oh. Shit. I’m the adult.”

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Caffeinated with unlimited texting

In the course of my job, I manage the cell phone plans of several of my company’s employees. I’ve discovered that ensuring each plan is tailored to each person’s usage is a lot like being a fussy Starbuck’s customer. I’d like a half-caf, non-fat cappuccino with whole milk foam please. Oh, and a dusting of nutmeg – but it had better not be a sprinkling or else I’ll need a new coffee. Phone companies have a better business model however, as they will work out something that is almost what you want but then lock you into a three-year payment plan.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

short attention span...what?

When you’re strange no one remembers your name….

…but they do tend to remember the outfits. I wore lots of green today and yesterday, my shamrock headband and some green face paint. I really do enjoy the face painting part of the outfit – I really ought to get some brushes and better paints.

I’ve been making cupcakes for the soccer girls for the last three weeks which has left the running peeps feeling a bit neglected. On the other hand, it’s not as though I can dress up for soccer. What with the uniform rule and all.

I am 5.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

techno babble

A recent cover of “The Economist” was titled, “How to handle the data deluge” (or some close equivalent). It made me think of my online footprint and the myriad of ways that my information is represented.

For email, I have a (very old) Hotmail (MSN) account and a gmail (Google) account. I have a Livejournal (Independent) and a Blogger (Google) account; to make those blogs pretty I have a Photobucket (Fox) and a Picasa (Google) account to host my photos.

For those friends who don’t read my blogs I have a Myspace (Fox) and a Facebook (Independent) account. For my friends that are more mobile, and tech savvy, than myself I have a Twitter (Independent) account. Because my phone does not access the internet, I use Echofon (Independent) which helps me keep track of all my tweets.

My ICQ account is long gone but sharing its place are MSN, gchat (Google), Skype (Independent/Ebay) and a now largely defunct AOL account.

I’m a member of a Yahoo group and a Google group – not to mention membership in the Gateworld forum, the Stargate Solutions forum, a Xena Yuku forum and the Spacecast forum.

To keep myself entertained I have a youtube account which is linked to my gmail account. Also through my gmail account I use the Google reader to capture my RSS feeds of other blogs and websites that I regularly enjoy. Clearly Google and Facebook are neck and neck for who knows the most about me.

All of this and I haven’t even mentioned all the online retail and banking accounts! I’m probably taking this too lightly but in the meantime, I hope you’ll forgive because I want to draw a pretty pretty flowchart of all this information.

Speaking of techno babble, I don't care about the clock time -- Sam Carter would beat Rodney McKay any time!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

note to self

Fun fact! Realizing that if your fiscal year-end is the same as a calendar year-end, this means that your quarters will be a palindrome of months that end in 31 days for the first and fourth quarter and months that end in 30 days for the second and third quarter.

Important: no one else will think this is a fun fact.

*not a true palindrome obviously, as it would be structured 31/30/30/31 and reversed would be 13/03/03/13 but a neat bracketing coincidence in any event.

Mr. Postman

For instance, I posted the delivery scans of three parcels that were sent to me. Two were sent from Kuwait and one from the US; two were delivered to my apartment and one to my office. What I’ve always found perplexing is why a parcel can be delivered to Canada but then get sent back to the US for further handling before returning to Canada. Watching my parcels bounce around the mid-west for a few days is frustrating but not so infuriating as seeing something enter Canada only to leave again! I really wonder how our mail gets the runaround.

Routinely

Lately the trouble of not posting has had naught to do with a lack of ideas on what to write but the timing of said ideas. I’ve had this problem before – I used to get lots of ideas while I was driving and so I tried using a tape recorder. (I discovered that there is no faster disillusionment of your ideas than having to speak them aloud to an empty car.) So what I need is a routine, during the day I make a note of what topics I’ve thought up and I sit down for thirty minutes to write.

Monday, March 1, 2010

peep show

i got my christmas presents from my dad and his partner today and like any child, i began to play with them immediately. these photos ensued:

a new bath tub plug with glow in the dark rubber ducky!
Plunger!


i am a peep addict and that's okay.
Peep Peep!

morning rituals