don’t be late

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*gasp*

yesterday turned out to be a pretty fine day. all the attention from my co-workers who missed me last week, a birthday lunch out, cake in the afternoon, a birthday card in my mailbox when i got home and then beer, pool and a lot of anti-subtle innuendo with shane.
actually, the evening with shane very nearly ended before it started. i’m sure i’ve mentioned it before, but i’m pretty much always early. unless we’re talking oversleeping issues on work days (such as today, actually) or uncontrollable traffic incidents, it is pretty much assured i will be early to any appointment or engagement. so, of course, i got to the pub about ten minutes early and grabbed a table and a drink out on the patio, thinking i’d not have very long to wait before i could stop feeling uncomfortable sitting in a bar alone. but, in typical boy fashion, he was late.
so i sat there, listening to almost-drunk guy try to talk the general manager into hiring his buddies and him to play on saturday nights, watching this half-naked girl and her scruffy boyfriend eat extra-crispy chicken wings (sauce on the side) and wrote imaginary lists with my sexxy new pen, all in hopes of not looking like a loser for sitting in a pub alone with a red beer.
eventually, and with ten minutes left in my “thirty minute maximum waiting period”, shane showed up looking all rock-star in his shades. god, how annoying is it trying to have a conversation when someone is wearing sunglasses? you have no idea where their eyes are behind that tinted glass! of course, i’m notorious for doing that. at least my new sunglasses are light enough that you can see my eyes pretty clearly through them. oops, i digressed.
yeah, i have a maximum waiting period. if i’m scheduled to meet with you and you are more than thirty minutes late, i will leave, regardless of any other consideration. i’ve made an effort to be on time and i expect the same respect from you. i don’t think it is too much to ask that someone be on time for a pre-arranged meeting. yeah, sometimes things get get fubared, hence the 30-minute window. after that? it’s probably not circumstance, more likely ill manners.
i almost forgot, but luckily lots of other people are talking about their particpation in 26 things this month. so, who wants to go work on their lists with me on sunday?

all good things…

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here there be (no) bears

have you ever noticed just how sickening flourescent lights are? i’ve spent so much time outside and away from them this last week it was almost painful coming back into the office this morning. i really need to marry rich so i don’t have to work for a living anymore.
the photos were my shorthand way of telling you about my wonderful vacation week. i saw a lot of the north shore and a little of vancouver proper. i ate several wonderful breakfasts out, cheered when vancouver got the 2010 olympic winter games, picked shells from the beach, ate berries from a bush, played darts, taunted wildlife, watched many movies, slept little and kissed lots. it was a very lovely four days.
my birthday was ultra low-key and i’m a little disappointed i didn’t let people make a bigger deal out of it. i got one birthday card in the mail (and one e-card from kaydee – thank you!) and zero cake. luckily, i get one more birthday lunch and i’m guaranteed cake today and this weekend when i go to the island to see mom. dad shocked me last night by giving me enough birthday money to pay for my flight back east. i’m amazingly grateful as i didn’t really know how i was going to be able to afford it once i found out he didn’t have enough airmiles for both our tickets.
tonight, i’m going to play pool with shane and i expect there to be beer and laughing. i need to keep myself a little distracted for the next while. i’m feeling somewhat sad and guilty for how last week ended. it’s all very dramatic and emotional and private. don’t ask, i probably won’t tell.

just one more thing

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there are three things i’d like to mention before i probably drop off the face of the earth for the next several days:
– i got 96% on my final exam which means i got 94% in the course. yippee!
– secretary is a very, very interesting film.
– i forget what the third one was going to be, so i’ll just say “rabbit, white rabbit” instead.
p.s. happy canada day!

presents rock!

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the wonderful jodi chromey sent me this birthday pen

sometimes i don’t think i deserve to have such generous people in my life. the most fabulous and wonderful jodi chromey sent me the sexxy racing car red fountain pen you see pictured above. i very nearly started to tear up when i opened my mailbox. and i even knew to expect it! i don’t know what i’d do if someone were to surprise me with a present. i might just break down completely.
it arrived today, just in time to bouy my spirits. you see, the boy missed his transport to see me. of course, all is not lost, but instead of his arriving tonight he will appear tomorrow morning. at least i’ll get one more full-bed night’s sleep.
the entire weekend, save two evenings spent with my most fabulous of friends, was used in “operation: company’s coming”. my entire apartment has gone through a freakishly thorough cleaning. i borrowed meghan’s über-vacuum and moved all the furniture to get into every corner and crevice. i scrubbed pretty much every bathroom/kitchen surface, i did window and mirrors, i even cleaned out my freezer and microwave.
i think i may have lost my mind.
now, i’m going to settle down to a nice, well-rounded lunch, read harry potter and plot all the annoying, rambling letters i’m going to write to people with my sexxy new birthday pen. whee!

the world today

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as you may have noticed, i don’t make a lot of commentary on current events or technology news. it’s mostly due to my having a pretty serious case of social apathy and a lack of ability to thoughtfully present my take on issues. if there’s something going which matters enough to me that i need to discuss it, i’m usually too upset about it to discuss it all rationally. i usually just flip it over inside my head a few times and then make a few overly simplistic comments on it while refusing to elaborate for fear of getting too worked up.
that being said, i really did want to mention that this scares me in a lot of ways. i thought biometrics (retina scanning and fingerprint recognition) were going to be the next big privacy risk. boy, was i wrong. the idea that everything i buy could be electronically tagged which, with a network of well-placed transceivers, would enable whomever to track every move i make… ugh.
yeah, okay, it’d be great to be able to find the car which was stolen or the cat which ran away during that big thunderstorm or the kid who was abducted from her bedroom; but, do you honestly think such uses would be the stopping point for this technology? do you trust your neighbours or governments to truly have your best interests at heart when they slowly increase the use of such monitoring?
if you do, you’re not very smart.
fine, call me paranoid if you want, but it’s bad enough i provide safeway with a detailed list of everything i buy each week when i use their savings card to obtain their special prices or let my bank keep records of every transaction i make with my debit card. i don’t want my shoes or the tires on my car telling whichever entity cares to track it about where i’m going or how i’m getting there. it’s none of their fucking business.
okay, i’m getting all worked up. read the articles, make up your own mind. just remember, that if you don’t agree you have every right, and even an obligation, to speak up about it. in situations such as these, silence is the same as consent.

poll it!

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how many of you would be interested in receiving an email notification when i post new entries to this site? if you would, please leave a comment (with an email address) and if/when i decide to implement it, i will use that address to send them to.

summer lovin’

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summer shade

i’ve been a day ahead all week. tuesday felt like wednesday, wednesday felt like thursday and today feels a lot like friday. of course, it’s only because i’m NOT WORKING NEXT WEEK and i’m anxious to start the not working. i think tomorrow will be a very long day, indeed. especially since i can’t seem to get any actual work done and it’s starting to pile up quite significantly.
the upstairs neighbour from hell has been a serious pain in my ass lately. actually, all my neighbours have been pissing me off lately. first it was annoying laughing lady from downstairs a couple weeks ago. last night it was “let’s play norah fucking jones at volume 10 for 150 minutes straight” night at upstairs neighbour’s place.
speaking of upstairs neighour, have i mentioned the dropping of things? well, she is always dropping things from her balcony down onto mine. usually it’s things like potting soil from her plants or water when she overwaters her plants. sometimes it’s been beer bottlecaps or other assorted bits of trash. lately though the items have been getting more interesting. about a month ago, i went out onto the balcony to find half a roasted red pepper sitting on the deck. then there was a cigarette and a pack of matches.
last night, while i was sitting inside watching for love or money and i heard a little *plunk* outside. i peeked out the door to see her addressbook sitting askew on the stairs. if i were nice and friendly and not in the least bit passive-aggressive or vindictive, i would have gone out there, picked it up and then taken it upstairs to her. that would have been the neighbourly thing to do. even later, when she had the norah fucking jones playing far too loudly for far too long, i could have then taken up her addressbook and, at the same time, politely asked her to turn her music down. again, that would have been if i weren’t evil and prone to seek revenge.
instead, her addressbook will sit out there until, say, saturday when i go out to clean the deck before the boy arrives. i will either “accidentally” sweep it over the side, “accidentally” get it wet when i start washing or, and this is a long shot, i will get an attack of conscience and pick it up and take it upstairs to her. then again, this is all barring her actually coming down to ask me for it, which i don’t expect to happen.
oh yes. i love apartment living.

coffee, tea or me?

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you know, we’ve gone over this before. there are just certain things you do not do at the company coffee corner. this isn’t even about leaving the cream on the counter to spoil so that i get a nice batch of cottage cheese-like moo juice floating in my otherwise perfect cup of coffee. this is about those wretches, you know who they are, who don’t make another pot.
not one, but both, coffee pots were empty when i just went over to fetch my required second cup of joe. whoever left them that way wasn’t even repentant enough to put them back in place to pretent like there was something in them. no! they were sitting on the counter, lids perched atop the carafes, screaming “i just drank the last cup of coffed you have to make more you big LOSER!” grr.
i mean, really. is it really that very difficult to scoop some grounds, fill a resevoir and press an “on” button? no, i don’t think so. this obviously means i work with the lowest form of humans. i’m really quite disappointed in them. especially from that particular coffee centre. they’re known for being the most anal and precise bunch on this floor.
what really gets me is that, when i finally remember to go back and get some of that coffee i just made, i will probably miss my window of opportunity and only have the dregs after their gang swarms upon the fresh java during their regularly-scheduled ten a.m. coffee break. bastards.

no more pencils…

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yippee! it’s done! my school year is finally finished! no homework for almost three months! yahoo!
steve & i received a lovely 100% on our assignment. i cannot tell you what a relief that is to me. it’s huge. huge, i tell you! i’ll give colleen a couple of days to mark the exam before i bug her about what i got on that, but i feel pretty good about it (which is usually a bad sign). it was really hard and it seriously taxed my brain. we all walked out of class with fierce eyes and a slight shuffle to our steps. despite the difficulty, i think i caught most of her notorious tricks and even managed to do a half-decent job of the program we had to write. you can ask me next week if my impressions were correct.
then we went to the cactus club and had a round of shooters followed my many fancy drinks in conical glasses. our waiter congratulated us on a final exam well written. we laughed a lot, told some bad jokes, played the “how old are you?” game (yay! i still look 25!), confessed first impressions and then i raced shane home accross the bridge all the while convinced i was going to get pulled over and breathalyzed.
stop looking at me like that. i wasn’t drunk, but i may not have been legal. oops.
it’s one a.m. and i’m wired for sound. i don’t know if i just stay up now or go to bed and be a miserable cow all day tomorrow. “moooo.” yeah, that’s what i think too.
goodnight, everyone! happy dreams! *kisskiss*

i’m hunting wabbits

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so close now!
i was up until just after midnight formatting, commenting and bug-checking our code (and chatting with the still-yummy jim and prevailing upon my saviour, dor, for logic help). i’ve now handed it over to steve for him to document a couple of his procedures i didn’t want to get wrong, then it will come back to me for final proofreading and printing. shit. i should get working on the structure chart now and hope that steve doesn’t change too much.
my boy is in the possession of a ticket which will bring him to me in less than one week’s time. if i wasn’t so stressed about school, i’d be really excited. all emotion, save scholastic determination, is on hold until ten p.m. tonight. that’s when the margeritas start to flow and this heather gets to finally relax. of course, once that’s over i have to turn my work ethic on cleaning my apartment to “comany’s coming” standards. ugh. that just might kill me.
mom phoned last night and she’s sending me the money to buy myself the new harry potter book for my birthday. yay! i’m going to pick that up tomorrow on my way home from work. i also told her i want cake when i finally get over to the island. “cake. with my name on it. and candles.” i said. she laughed. i repeated my request. “okay,” she replied, “you’ll get your cake! with a candle for every year. just don’t blame me for the inferno.” har-har. thanks, mom.
speaking of birthdays, go wish scoot a great one.

inbox pontification

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1. If you’re too open-minded, your brains will fall out.
2. Don’t worry about what people think, they don’t do it very often.
3. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.
6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so good.
13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
14. Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it!
15. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.
19. Junk is something you’ve kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
23. Thou shall not weigh more than thy refrigerator.
24. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.
25. It ain’t the jeans that make your butt look fat.

so close…

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ahh, a good spot

steve’s working on the last procedure then it’s final debugging, commenting and producing the supplemental documentation. then i can concentrate a little on studying for the exam (which is freaking me out, so i’m trying not to think about it at all actually).
i can’t wait until i have other things besides schoolwork to talk about.
update: ugh. it breaks in a dozen annoying ways. grr. this is going to be painful.

beer is good food

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house in the trees

it was a lovely, busy, stressful, productive, headachy first day of summer. i didn’t get up in time to accomplish jim’s homework assignment, but i did go to school to meet up with steve, shane and sheila to work on the homework which took precidence. we got a lot accomplished, steve & i. it’s just a matter of cleaning up some loose ends between now and tuesday and we should be good to go. i’m really pleased with how this is coming together. of course, that means i still have to spend the rest of my day coding, but oh well.
after drinking three pints of beer in rapid succession before dinner, i was talking to dean about the course and stuff. at one point he asked, “so, you wrote a program? from scratch?” i started to blow it off like it was no big deal, but i kind of paused and thought “whoa. i wrote a computer program. from scratch! that’s a real accomplishment!” it dawned on me that i now have the skill to do something that other people can’t even comprehend. it felt very empowering. or maybe it was the beer.
then we ate turkey and i got very sleepy, but that didn’t stop me from winning three out of six hands of yahtzee!

yes, more homework news

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i accomplished two of three major tasks for our assignment last night. i was really quite pleased with myself. i’m also doing very well at taking a deep, calming breath when my inner control freak starts to worry about what what steve might do to fuck things up. i have to just let it happen and deal with what comes. *deep calming breath*
we’re also planning major drinkage after the exam tuesday night. i think i’ll forsake booking time off monday or tuesday for studying and come in at noon wednesday with my hangover instead. that will be much fun. the drinking part, not the coming to work overhung part.
i had a nice cup of Relaxing Tea before i went to bed last night. among other things, it contains: catnip, skullcap and valerian root. i can’t believe i drank catnip. although, if it produces as consistently sound and restful sleep as i experienced last night, walter may be fighting me for his nip when i go visit. i totally crashed. of course, i was brain-tired so it could just have been that which knocked me out as soon as my head hit the pillow. plus, i’ve been running a sleep deficit of approximately one hour per night. at this rate i’m going to have to spend my entire week off asleep just to catch up.
p.s. you big whiners. the plan was my plan of attack for this assignment. sheesh.

ThePlan.txt

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i wrote the plan last night.
the plan shall be implemented. the plan shall be followed without deviation. the plan is foolproof and ingenius. the plan shall be our salvation.
hm, i think i need to go pee.

without the ‘h’

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going straight to school after work yesterday was great for my mood but horrible for my system. i can’t express how glad i am to have made such great acquaintances during this term. steve and shane are awesome fun and they’ve been a life-saver for me during this course. i’m almost sad next week is the exam which marks the end of my association with pascal.
just a warning, i’m going to be pascal-girl for the next week. we still have our huge project due and now that half our group is gone, steve and i have a lot to get accomplished in the next six days. in addition, i’ve got to study my ass off for the final. regardless of your grades on assignments and quizzes, if you fail the exam you fail the course. gah. on top of that pressure, i only got 80% on assignment #4 and i’m totally stressed out that i acheive my baseline of 93% for the course. i’ll be so upset with myself if i fall below that.
welcome to my week of no life.
well, that starts after lunch today. because one of my birthday buddies is going away for two weeks starting friday and i’m going away the week of my birthday, we’re having a birthday lunch today for the two of us. so i dressed up a little (my shoes have a heel and my shirt needed to be ironed) and now everyone is all up on my appearance again. i just don’t get it. these people need more things to talk about, obviously.