Good Surprises, Not-So-Good Surprises:

I'm usually okay with surprises, good or bad. I know people who don't like them at all (my parents, for example). This week had a couple of surprises in store for me.

The first occurred when I got home from work on Wednesday and my dad seemed really anxious about me pulling into the garage. When I got into the house, he started out by saying, "Are you busy tonight?" To which I replied, "No...why?" A family friend had given us tickets to the Raptors game that was starting in a couple of hours. I took a quick look at the tickets. Section 112?? Row 17??? Uh....yeah, I'm going. The game was mediocre (we lost again) but the seats were awesome (behind and to the right of one of the nets). They had the usher guys coming around with their fancy computer pads, taking your orders right from your seat so that you don't have to get up and get in line. And I realized that you can't always hear the people in the Sprite zone from the floor, so that all the chanting and screaming doesn't really do anything. Which is potentially a good thing, because last week at the other game that I went to, the people around us in the Sprite zone started chanting "Bull-shit! Bull-shit!" when the refs made a bunch of lousy calls against the Raptors. All I could think about was how many kids were in the audience asking their parents what the people were saying.

Okay, so that was a good surprise. Another surprise happened yesterday. Kimmy (with whom we had recently reconnected during our Great Winter Getaway) was having a birthday get-together. We went downtown to a nice greek restaurant for dinner and reconnected with some people we hadn't seen since high school. Highlights included Maria and Silva imitating the now infamous William Hung and all of us having completely separate descriptions about our Grade 11 English teacher. Then we walked over to Indian Motorcycle, a club that doesn't look like a club but is actually a dance floor, a lounge, a restaurant, a clothing store, and a motorcycle showcase all in one. It took us a while to find a bunch of empty seats but we did eventually. Ada (whom some of those present thought was a figment of our imagination, since they had never seen her before but had heard us talk about her for years) joined us, and we just sat, listened to an interesting mix of music, avoided cougars and smarmy old guys, watched Jack drink a Hoegaarten (that looked deceptively huge), watched Howie imitate the guy in the washroom who would do a little dance while squirting the soap in your hands or handing you a towel, and caught up with each others lives (I'm convinced that Lauren will become the next Barbara Walters). That was the good part of the surprise.

Em, Jocelyn, Ada, Howie and I left together, while the others stayed (Jack had just bought himself another Hoegaarten). On our way to the subway station, we stopped at a street meat vendor (Howie had a craving), then I led us astray (I thought the entrance at Roy Thompson Hall would be open), and Jocelyn had reception problems while trying to call her brother for a ride from Kipling (he eventually called back). Then we discovered that we missed the last subway. I guess the TTC guy closing up the gate would have been our first clue. But he did say that it was possible that the last one was late, so we each paid our token and ran down to the platform, but alas, the guy came back and said that they told him there wouldn't be any more trains tonight. So we walked back out of the station, and narrowed our options down to the one - a cab. Ada took her own cab back to her place, and the four of us climbed into a cab and made our way back to the west end. On the way, we deliberated on our next course of action (Could we get out at Howie's and he could drive us home? Could we drop him off then go to my house and I could drive the girls home? Do we have enough cash for us to take the cab to each of our respective homes?). A terse phone call from my mother (who is never up at two in the morning, so that was already a bad sign) kind of sealed the deal, and we pooled the money and got the individual cab treatment.

A costly lesson, to be sure, but a new story to tell in the end. Happy Birthday Kimmy!

"You can get wit this, or you can get wit that..."

The Art of Communication:

As my brother and I were subwaying down to the Raptors game tonight (which, by the way, they predictably lost), I saw something that really intrigued me.

Two groups of three came into the subway car with us. They were all young people. In the first group, all three people appeared to be deaf. That, however, didn't stop them from signing up a storm, hands flying a mile a minute, and they were clearly joking around and enjoying each other's company. Just beside them was the second group, who were clearly able to hear properly since all three of them were wearing the exact same headphones, listening to whatever music they were listening to, sitting and staring directly ahead and not saying a word to each other.

Sometimes, the world just makes you wonder...

"If God is a DJ, life is a dance floor, love is the rhythm, you are the music"

Best...NoMan...Ever!!!:

Hey all! Happy belated NoMan to all the single girls out there (and I guess NoGirl to the guys). I had the best weekend ever! Too much detail to write down here, but stay tuned to my website for the stories and the photos.

Today was the official beginning of my adventures in the working world. It went as expected (paperwork and safety shoes), except for a glitch or two (like the ID camera not working, thus forcing me to go back to the Scarborough site sometime this week). It seemed like they weren't expecting me at Stouffville, since I was locked out of the building and I couldn't find my supervisor. But luckily one of the operators let me in and was able to find someone from QA to help me out. And who else could he have brought but my former classmate Shanthini! That was a nice coincidence. We hung out at her desk and she introduced me to people in the department while we waited for my supervisor to come back from lunch. Then I was given the standard cube and a whole stack of SOPs to read for the rest of the day. Coming home was killer though, as I had to also fight my way into a gas station to get relatively cheap gas. Hopefully things will get more interesting tomorrow. Like me getting my computer and voicemail passwords.

"I could use a little fuel myself and we could all use a little change"

Take me back to Constantinople...:

Who would have guessed that there's a Turkish restaurant smack in the middle of Etobicoke? Not I. But there is, and I went there for dinner tonight with Howie. And it was good. Quite good. We were the only customers, but that's to be expected on a Wednesday night. It turns out that they've been open for five years (!), and that the first Friday of each month, it's "Night of Istanbul", where they have live music, belly dancers, fortune-teller, and such.

The owner was so nice, she gave us Turkish coffee on the house. All I can say is holy crap, that's thick coffee.

"That's nobody's business but the Turks"

Do you have someone in your life who consistently throws cold water all over your happy moments? In my case, it will always be my father. No matter how well I've done, or what kind of good fortune comes my way, or almost any time I have a fun activity planned, he'll always come up with some crap that spoils the entire mood. "You should have done this"..."You shouldn't have done that"..."This could happen"..."That could kill you"..."Do you know what I would have done instead?" (that's a popular one, the one that irks me the most)

My mom can be a downer sometimes too, but more often than not her agitated rants come from some kind of misunderstanding on her part. She'll get all huffy about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand. But my dad is the one who is a pro at making me feel stupid. Just another one of those things on my list of things that I'm never going to do to my child.

At least phase 1 is complete (securing an income). On to phase 2 (getting the hell out of here).

"Only when I stop to think about it...I hate everything about you"

A New Me:

It's not literally a new me, but it sort of feels like a new me. I'm going to be a contributing member of society again. It's just a matter of paperwork now, which has yet to arrive at my door, but I'm confident that it will be here shortly.

It's like a weight has been lifted a little. It's not an entirely stable job, but it's a start. And I can continue to look for something more permanent while I'm working, and it can now include other positions within this company. So I'm already looking 12 months down the road before I've even started my first day. Am I counting my chickens? Are all my eggs in one basket? Can I possibly come up with one more poultry-related proverb? I doubt it. I'm in a weird state of mind right now...

"But I still haven't found what I'm looking for"

A Matrix Moment:

Don't you hate it when you can't tell when you're dreaming and when you're awake? Like this morning. I was semi-conscious at around 7am, so I was drifting in and out of dreaming. The next thing I knew, I was up, out of bed, and basically getting ready for the day. I was hanging something up in my closet, and then I noticed that my closet was half empty, which was slightly odd but I dealt with it by reasoning that my clothes must in the hamper or something. My mom came into my room, reminded me that we were having lunch with my aunt today (which is totally true), and I was arguing with her about something (not unusual) when I noticed that there were papers strewn about in a messy way on the table near my door, which may not have been unusual except that I've never seen that table before, let alone the papers. And then I woke up, and I had to take a few seconds to realize that everything I had just been doing never actually happened.

As most of you already know, I'm a weird dreamer. But what I want to know is, does anyone else experience this kind of thing? Where you dream about current events that could potentially happen in real life, but then wake up and realize that it was all in your head?

Whoa...

"But if you're ready to be my everything, if you're ready to see it through this time"