m o n k e y ' s . t y p e w r i t e r

The office, like most others, has a water cooler available for us drones to use. Beside this contraption is a paper cup dispenser, because someone found out it is difficult to carry this water without a container.

Being environmentally-minded, the folks at DuPont also provide plastic cups to save us, throwing out paper ones every time we get a drink. These cups also have a higher capacity, hence less trips to the water cooler. Ingenious.

One of the drawbacks is they need to be washed every now and then. I discovered this today as the chunks of mineral at the bottom of my cup started breaking off and flowing into my mouth as I took a swallow this afternoon. Yum.

Ugh. I received another bill from the friendly folks that take care of the 407 ETR billing. I only used it once, and my non-transponder charge along with the extra-fee-for-the-hassle-of them-having-to-bill-you charge doubled my bill. The total isn't that much, but it's the prinicple.

I can't wait until winter when the snow can cover my rear license plate. Of course with my luck instead of the 407 folks reaming me it'll be those boys in blue once they spot my car. I can't win.

Looks like in addition to the one coming up this weekend, I'll have another wedding to go to. One of my best friends came back from her trip to Poland to announce that she got engaged. I'm really happy for her.

Geez, Charlie was right. With all of these marriages happening around me I am starting to feel those years under my belt. All 23 of them.

Few things are better than stuffing your face full of chocolate chip ice cream at one o'clock in the morning. The funny thing is, as indulgent as I am sometimes I couldn't put on a pound on this perfect body if I tried. Life is good.

Now time for bed. Mmm... sleep. G'nite.

Addendum: I just noticed that I've managed to cover four out of seven deadly sins in the space of two posts: Lust, Gluttony, Pride and Sloth. Dante would be proud.

It's done. My flight for Trinidad is booked. For one week next month I'll be enjoying a tropical climate, probably a hammock and a favourable Canadian-dollar-to-Trinidadian-beer exchange rate. My grandmother's 75th birthday is during that week, and folks will be coming from all over (as far away as England) for her party. It's a big family.

With recent events in New York airlines have obviously been struggling to fill airplanes, and the fare went up $100 from what I expected to pay--kind of the reverse of what I was taught about supply and demand--but I happily paid it to get my arse outta here. It's too bad as a new hire I only get a week's vacation.

At least I managed to (mostly) miss our audits, both internal and external, though the girl on our audit team is kinda cute. Kinda married, but cute. It's surprising the number of nice-looking women you can find in the accounting profession. Eh, Trish?

What a boring weekend. I still hadn't been able to get in touch with anyone about what was going on with the bachelor weekend, so I stayed home and missed playing golf and watching wrestling pay-per-view.

Oh well, even a bad weekend is better than a good work day. At least I managed to catch up on some reading.

A friend of mine is getting married next weekend. This weekend is his bachelor party, and tonight the event is piantball at Sargeant Splatter's. Unfortunately I've been playing phone tag with the guys and don't know where anyone's meeting tonght. Crappy.

My nails have been in dire need of a trimming for days now, but lately I haven't been able to find my nail clipper. Afraid of accidently gouging myself if I went to scratch an itch, I pulled out the pair of scissors that came with the SwissCard I got from DuPont.

As far as scissors go they're fairly precise, but either they're not exactly precise enough for this job or I'm just plain clumsy. Just about every one of my fingernails I cut too deeply, and it hurt like a bitch. Any manicurist seeing the mess I made of my fingers would have a fit.

It's a good thing I don't do my own haircuts, too.

Want to watch other people having sex via thier webcam? Make a fortune on an online casino? Want a modchip for your Playstation?

Awhile ago I started getting these sorts of messages via my ICQ Pager. I didn't even know I had one until then, but so far every message has been spam. It's really irrirating having to sift through five or six of these messages every day. Does anyone know how to disable this "service"? (I'm looking to you, Joe.)

Nothing of interest to write about today, so a limerick instead:

On the Dark side there was a Darth Vader.
Who said, 'Luke, I am your father, your creator.
One more secret's this:
Princess Leia's your sis.'
Luke thought, 'Damn, and I wanted to lay her.'

(You're welcome, Lilly.)

What a tiring weekend. Good show (Kelsey was happy), not so great dinner (okay service but tiny portions). Her gift to me was a silk robe--I guess her flatmates took exception to me walking around nekkid on the weekends--and a romantic night involving candles, rose petals strewn about her room, and some kind of lavender-scented massage oil.

The next day we decided to try our luck going across the border into the States to get to her little brother's birthday party. The crossing was surprisingly quick given last week's events. Half an hour in, and coming back we went straight through. We took the Rainbow Bridge, though. I hear some others were backed up for hours, or closed altogether.

The highlight of the day was getting to jump with the kids in the big inflatable bouncy-house (for lack of a better name) that they rented. That earned me some looks from the grown-ups.

I didn't get home until late last night, so I was a zombie at work today. Time to catch up on some sleep.

<gush>

Hear ye, hear ye!

Exactly one year ago today, Kelsey of Grimbsy did commit the heinous act of catching the eye of one Sanjay of Oakville and unmercifully stealing his heart from under his nose.

She do plead guilty to these accusations, and shall sentenced as follows: The Accused shall be made to wear nice clothes and makeup, and at precisely 2pm shall be confined to a dark room in Stratford, Ontario, where she shall be forced to view a modern rendition of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

When she can take no more, The Accused shall be transported to a restaurant in said town to be fed and watered before she is transported back to her home and confined to her quarters for the night, along with one other cellmate (to be named later).

This I do proclaim, on this fifteenth day of September, year two thousand and one.

</gush>

Last night during a phone conversation Kelsey decided to try being funny and started doing an impersonation of one of those $2.99 a minute phone sex girls.

Kelsey: (sultry voice) Hey big boy, welcome to the Kelsey hotline. For service in English, press 1 now. Pour service en fran�ais, pressez--

Me: *beep*

Kelsey: Okay rockstar, to speak to a blonde, press 1. To speak to a--

Me: *beep*

Kelsey: I'M NOT BLONDE!!!!

Me: Oops...my bad. *snicker*

3pm on a Friday... productivity at its lowest.

TBS had what seems like their monthly showing of Rocky. I'll never get tired of it, though.

I've booked my vacation at work. Since I started partway in the year I only get five days, but I'm making them count. Next month I'll be spending that week in Trinidad, attending a 75th birthday shindig for my grandmother.

I had an interesting discussion with my boss, however. I needed an extra day as the charter flights--yes I'm a cheap bastard--only leave on Wednesdays, and I told her I'd take that day in lieu of overtime worked during our busier times. She went on about how I hadn't worked that much overtime, and reiterated that policy was that we didn't get a full hour off for each extra worked. The extra day was fine so long as I didn't take any time off in September.

Fair enough, though she happened to forget the 30 to 40 hours I spent of my own time developing the department web site, using my own computer and (some of) my own software. I brought this up in a later discussion, and asked her to define for me what "self-managed" actually meant. She confirmed that she had indeed forgotten about the time I spent on the web page (some recognition I got for my hard work) and consequently decided that nitpicking over hours wasn't such a good idea.

Somtimes it's worth it to stand up for yourself.

It turns my stomach to think about the Palestinians who are still celebrating the loss of human life in the United States. Countless people have lost husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and friends.

Condemn them as we may however, we as Westerners aren�t totally without fault. Looking only as far back as the Gulf War, thousands over here cheered as Iraq was waylaid by Allied missiles. Though the targets were primarily military in nature, many lives were sill lost on both sides.

Humanity sickens me sometimes.

"In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb"

"The third big war will begin when the big city is burning" -

Nostradamus, 1654

All of those people, dead because of the cowardly acts of a few. I still can't believe this has happened. Who could do such a thing? I wonder how the U.S. is going to retaliate?

A few of days ago the weather turned a little cooler and more fallish than we're used to in the summer. The nights were getting a little chilly for me (I like to have the windows open when possible), so I threw an extra blanket on the bed. A big, thick, red blanket, to go underneath my existing comforter.

My mom--who still insists on making my bed every morning--took one look at the blanket and made some comment about how I must swelter at nights. She also said that she gets warm thinking about me under all those covers.

Now had it been anyone else, my first reaction would be to mention that she wouldn't be the first woman to feel warm thinking about me in bed. But it was my mother I was talking to, and to say anything of the sort would just be wrong.

As my reward for showing restraint in front of her however, I get to impress you all with my wit now.

Wow, good-looking and funny.

Reblogger changed servers and now I've lost my all of the comments left up till now. Not that there were that many to begin with, but I cherished the little feedback I got. Dammit.

Words of wisdom from University of Waterloo on the topic of sex:
It's not premarital if you don't you plan on getting married.

Ah, school starts again. And for once I'm not stuck listening to some long-winded bag of hot air drone one about things irrelavant too, well, anything.

You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older, though. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life.

Nothing will earn you stranger looks from people than doing the YMCA dance with crazed enthusiasm.

Alone.
When no one else can hear the music.
Because the car windows are rolled up.

Not that I'd know or anything.

Where I work, we set our own hours. Well, more or less. We can make our own schedule as long as we're fairly consistent, and we're physically there between the hours of oh... 9am and 4pm. Most people arrive between 8am and 8:30, or earlier. They probably don't live 20 minutes away like I do, either.

My first day at work I arrived around 8am. Then 8am became 8:10. Then 8:30. It's gotten to the point now where I'm lucky to stroll into the office before 9:15. No one has said anything yet, besides the occasional joke about it being lunch time before I actually log into Windows. I've even noticed my co-workers starting to arrive later in the morning, I guess because as long as there's someone else arriving later, they won't elicit any of the attention I get. I'm starting to wonder how far I can push this.

Well tomorrow I've got a meeting to be in at 8am. Sharp. You should have seen the outpouring of sympathy I was shown as I made my way out the door today. Sarcastic bastards.

Jish posted this video clip of a Conan O'Brien short on Bon Jovi.

Nikki, you might like this one (once you get internet access again). Warning, this is kinda big (around 10Mb), so it's not very dial-up friendly. It's worth the wait, though.

Grabbed this off Zannah's site. It's Nine Inch Nails! It's Mario! No, wait... it's both!

That same Monday I went to Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton with a bunch of friends to watch the Ti-Cats kick the Argos' asses all over the football field in the CFL Labour Day Classic. Besides being accosted by the strange old man beside me, it was a great day for heckling Toronto.

While driving down the QEW on Monday I spotted an old VW minivan painted in the colours of the Mystery Machine. Very slick.

Finallly replaced the dying blade on my razor. Damn those bloody things are expensive, but by next shave my face will be silky-smooth. Look out, ladies.

So Kelsey's all moved in now. For someone moving out of her parents' place for good, she had surprisingly little belongings. Everything fit into two cars and a small trailer. Her housemates seem nice enough. Three of them are girls she knows already and the other one is some random guy who was living there since last year.

I spend a good chunk of the day with her and the girls shopping. We only made two stops, Wal-Mart and No Frills, but it took most of the afternoon. Did I ever mention how much I hate Wal-Mart? It's trailer-trash central, multiplied ten-fold in Hamilton. Just trying to maneuvere the cart around the obese women in the ailes is enough to have anyone pulling their hair out. I learned, however, that pedestrians can move pretty fast when they think that their life is about to be ended by a crazed man and a buggy hurtling towards them.

Homer Simpson on defensive driving: "Sometimes the best defence is a good offence."

Driving across the Skyway bridge yesterday I saw one of the most beautiful sights. The early morning was completely overcast except for a small break in the clouds to my left that I'd say was about two miles long. Through that break the sun was shining brilliantly, the beams of light visible against the darkness of Lake Ontario. Where the light hit the water, it shimmered like spun gold.

After getting filling my eyes with the natural wonder, I glanced to my opposite side to the steel mills along the water angrily billowing smoke and fire, a scene that truly makes the "Welcome to Hamilton" signs along the highway redundant.

If there's a better metaphor representing heaven and hell, I have yet to see it.

Reading my last post I just noticed something: September already. Boy it creeps up fast.

I had an early night tonight. I was out shooting pool with one of my friends--I whooped his ass left right and center--and was back home by midnight. Very unlike me. The reason? Tomorrow morning I'm helping Kelsey move out of her parents house and into her new home just off campus. Early tomorrow morning. Time to catch some shuteye.