"A million monkeys banging on a million typewriters for a million years will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare."

The latter. With the holidays and the three-day work week the office has been pretty dead leading up to New Year's. Since no one's around, no one's asking me to do things, and I spend my mornings and afernoons wishing the hours away.

Log in. Check email. Read online newspaper. Check email. Read online comics. Do a Tim Horton's run. Check email. Have lunch. Shoot pool. Check email... etc, etc, etc.

Fortunately they let us out of our cages around 1pm, in time for me to go and brave the lineups at the liquor store. If you ask me, they have it backwards. Liquor first, then work. Then you'd see some creative accounting.

For Christmas I bought my cousins a shiny new DVD player. I went to hook it up for them and everything seemed to be working; the unit was getting power and the tv was getting a signal. The only thing it didn't seem to want to do was read a DVD disc. Not even a burned DVD, a just-out-of-the-wrapper Shrek 2 from Zellers. It worked fine in the Playstation so I knew it wasn't the disc. After conversing with Philps' irritating voice recognition software (for English, say "ING-glish") and 15 minutes on hold, I hung up and drove down to the mall to the Radio Shack to swap it for a working one.

After explaining my problem (and going through the usual questions normally reserved for the incompetent) they agreed to give me a new player. I patiently waited for the sales guy to come out with a replacement but unfortunately they didn't have any left. The one near the Wal-Mart did however, according to their system.

Repackaged DVD in hand, I drove up the street. I went in and gave the same schpiel and they agreed, again, to give me a replacement. They were completely sold out, however, and I drove there for nothing because the guy at the first store failed to rememeber that the system only gets updated every 24 hours and didn't call ahead to check.

So I'm on my way to a third Radio Shack which for sure has some in stock (I made sure they called to find out) but it's approaching closing time. I told them to hold the door and I'd be right over. Five minutes later I pulled up to the store to find everything locked down for the night. I had to pound on the door to get the attention of the guy who knew I was coming.

Finally I got a working DVD player and got it hooked up and running that night. Maybe having worked in retail I'm a bit oversensitive to this stuff, but has anyone else noticed that customer service has really gone to shit lately?

Next year I'm saving myself the aggrivation... gift cards for all.

Today I officially complete 27 orbits around the sun. That is, I would have if the universe didn't revolve around me.

In honour of this special occasion I got to get my three year-old neice ready for bed while her father was puking his brains out from drinking too much last night. I'm glad he wasn't in my car.

To all my reader ( <- no not a typo) have a very Merry Christmas!

To continue with the busy week, I headed over to Pickering after work to meet up with some of Lisa's friends for a night of carolling. Normally that stuff isn't really my thing (y'know, being a Hindu and all), but I went last year for the first time and it was a lot of fun.

The thing is, the majority of her friends are music students, so this isn't any simple singing. We were on people's doorsteps in Claremont singing four-part harmonies. Last year I got there early so I got a chance to go through the music a bit. This year with the weather and everything I didn't get there until they were already out.

I usually stuck beside a guy who was singing a bass part and tried to wing it. I think a couple stiff drinks beforehand would have made me sound a lot better (at least to myself).

Highlights of the night included all of us walking into one of the houses dripping water all over the floor to sing for a family having a party (this was planned), and warming up with hot apple cider, as well as Emily and Rebecca doing a rendition of "Santa Baby" with piano accompaniment. Damn those girls are talented.

This evening I made the trip through the blowing snow to meet my friend Erin for some dinner and catching up. If it wasn't for her I would have had a really lousy time in Kingston all by my lonesome.

Fortunately I didn't have to drive all the way out to Belwood as she met me halfway, in Milton. For venturing out there I came back with a really nice bottle of wine, while she got from me a humourous wall calendar called "Nuns Having Fun".

Ever had the Chocolate Lava Cake from Kelsey's? It's damn good. Right now it's better than sex actually, though that's not really saying much since I've been single since the summer. :o)

Today I was over to see Nikki to give her a souvenir spoon she had asked me to bring from Europe.

Apparently everyone else knows this, but I didn't realize she had eight cats. Eight! Some of them took a liking to me while others tried their best to encourage me to leave.

For instance, for anyone who ever thought that cat shit doesn't stink, it's a myth. It's very fragrant. Another one decided my skin didn't have enough pores and took it upon himself to create new ones in my chest with his claws.

Anyways, I did my duty and added to Nikki's collection of five million spoons. Feline tribulations aside, it was good to see her and Ed after a long time.

Looking for a last-minute Christmas gift and don't have a ton of money to spend? Vince Carter jerseys are 60% off at the Air Canada Centre.

I think mom would like it a lot more than the iron I was planning on getting her. What do you think?

It turns out that shopping wasn't so bad after all. It was busier than normal of course, but not as bad as I've seen it in some of the years when I've worked in a mall. My aunt's dryer broke, so our first stop was to the appliance section. The one she had is a hand-me-down from when we moved out of our own house years ago, and would have cost more to fix than getting a new one. Unfortunately this ate up the bulk of her Christmas budget, so I helped her out a bit with the presents.

Today was supposed to be my day to get stuff done, but for some reason I was feeling really lazy and so far accomplished nothing. I hate when that happens. As bad as this sounds, it's a good day every day isn't the weekend or else I wouldn't ever finish anything I started.

Okay, off to drop my neice off in Toronto. First though I have to warm up the car as she's only three and probably can't take the cold very well. Sigh... I miss my remote starter.

Yes, it's the last weekend before Christmas and I'm braving the mall today. My shopping is pretty much done, but my aunt hasn't started yet. She's a single mom who doesn't have the luxury of a car, so I'm taking her out.

I have a feeling I'll be making good use of my elbows today.

My brother's off to Las Vegas and he took the toothpaste with him. All I could find this morning was my neice's "Princess Pink Bubblegum" flavour. Last night's plaque tasted better.

They announced our variable compensation at work today. Our fiscal year ends in October, and between then and now they had been trying to figure out if our company met its targets, as well as how our individual performance measured up.

The Board decided that excluding some unual items, our company did what it was supposed to. Also, someone apparently likes me over there cuz they decided my performance exceeded expectations, so this Friday I'll be getting close to 10% in the bank. Woohoo!

The only downside is that as of October I had only been with the company for six months so it gets prorated. Oh well, it's still a nice addition right before Christmas. I'm going to Disneyland!

My parents are finally back from their vacation in Trinidad. It's a good thing, too, because until now you could actually go into my fridge and walk around. Until now I had been spending more time at my aunt's place down the street because she insisted I stay for dinner. Who am I to argue?

The best part is, sometimes she'd give me leftovers to take to work for lunch. Even bigger portions than my mom gives me. Pretty sweet deal, huh?

Well now the fridge is full and all is right in the world again. Now if you'll excuse me, dinner awaits.

What the hell? I'm gone for two weeks and this place freezes over? My half hour drive to work this morning took almost two hours. Welcome home.

My trip to Europe was great, but really really tiring, as between the touring and the bars I was averaging about four hours sleep per night. I'm completely exhausted... it feels like I've lived a month in the last 14 days.

I kept a written journal of what I did and hopefully I'll have that and some pictures up by the end of the week.

I was also volunteered to take everyone's digital photos and put them up on a website for everyone to see. It took me long enough to get through my own photos (I filled about 1 GB worth of memory cards), but I guess I can do it. I think I'm due for some proper web hosting now, as I don't think the 10MB provided by Cogeco is going to cut it anymore.

Hey Dave... a little help over here?