tinacris.ca

tinacris.ca

tinacris.ca

tinacris.ca

tinacris.ca

On a bit of a whim, I bought a 42″ LG Plasma TV last night from the Best Buy boxing day sale (boxing day is Canada’s Black Friday) for only $599. Not bad if I do say so myself.

I don’t want my parents to know that I just dropped all that money because they’ve been lecturing me for weeks about not spending any money because of the economic downturn and bla bla bla. I know, it’s silly that they still lecture me about this kind of stuff considering I’ll be twenty-seven on my next birthday. I think I deserve it. I haven’t taken any vacation time in the past year, I’ve been working my ass off and I’m feeling down in the dumps these days so it’s a Christmas present to myself.

I kidnapped my dog from my parents house and he’s keeping me company today while I cook and wait for my family to show up for dinner.

Bye, youfool.wordpress.com!

So Google has this creepy new service called Latitude that uses GPS/WIFI/The Powers That Be to locate users on a map, for extreme stalking purposes. Okay, my words, not Google’s. While I think this is an interesting use of technology, just from a geek standpoint, it’s also clearly a restraining order waiting to happen. I can imagine myself some girl slipping a cell phone into an unsuspecting hunk’s pocket. “Oh hi! Fancy meeting you here!”, “No way! You go to Dr. Latimer too?!”, “YOU AGAIN!!! What are the odds?! Oh… this is your backyard?”

Thing is, I’m a fan of flimsy excuses. If I tell someone that I can’t go see Bride Wars because I have to pick up my aunt at the airport, I don’t want them knowing that I’m actually at home playing Halo 3 in my underwear. Also, I don’t want so-and-so to know when I’m picking up red velvet cupcakes right around the corner from their apartment because I know they’ll call me up and say “what, you’re in the area and you don’t call, you lousy shitbag?”

So… I installed it on my phone. I added one friend – someone who doesn’t even live in the same city as me. You know – just to see how it works. I won’t be adding anyone else cause… you know… that’s just messed up. It’s pretty funny when I get text messages from him like “Peel and Ste. Catherine street, eh?”, although if this person wasn’t my friend, it would be absolutely terrifying. This morning, I located him in the middle of what looked like a giant field. I texted him to say “what gives?” and it turns out that he was at the Toronto airport. So fun. He didn’t tell me his destination so I’ll be stalking him later on today to find out where in the world is Carmen Sandiego.

Fun. Creepy. Fascinating. Terrifying. Delightful.

Right up my alley.

This is probably going to be the devastating culinary highlight of the 2009. My arteries are fearless, but I may have a heart attack. I may not come out alive.

Feast your eyes (or be repulsed… it really could go either way…) – 2008 McAuslan Brunch @ Au Pied de Cochon.

Edit: If you’re curious about the restaurant, read this review.

Life = over.

Wouldn’t it be nice to never have to explain yourself to anyone? Except that would likely mean that no one cares about you, and that would be the shittiest thing ever.

Not-so recent observation: I LOVE instant soups of all kinds.

Before I became office worker bee extraordinaire two years ago, I tucked away six years of waitressing and bar experience at several restaurants. I have a lot of fond memories that include many quirky customers and experiences that I met along the way. The restaurants were an extremely social experience. Sometimes I think that if I never forced myself out of my shell of shyness to do that job, I’d be a much different person today.

I received a series of text messages last night from an old regular customer, whom I assume still cavorts with some of my former coworkers.

I got fed up with this foolish exchange and didn’t bother responding. He implies that they were arguing that I was a bad worker… which may or may not be true – but to bring it up over two years after the fact is completely pointless. Other than an improved set of interpersonal skills and a great number of funny stories, I carried basically nothing over from all those years. Whether or not I was an ace performer is completely and totally irrelevent to anything that I do nowadays and there’s just no point wasting any effort in opposing that kind of implication. 

It’s strange when someone remembers you in a very specific context that’s no longer congruous with your current lifestyle. That regular customer knows me as a schmoozing, drinking night owl who likes to eat good food, stay up all night, drink bubbly and roll on chrome. That’s just not my style anymore. Nowadays, I spend the majority of the time being productive for the first time in my life. I go to bed around midnight every night. I have a routine. I like chilling in my PJ’s, playing video games, blogging. I knit scarves and socks. You know? I’m relaxed. I own property. I have a will. I have a car and adult things to worry about. The “new” me (whom is not actually new, but just a simpler, pared down version of my old self) is responsible and fucking “boring” compared to the old me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Lately I’ve been unintentionally emasculating a few guys that I know and it sort of grosses me out. I’ve been kicking male ass in video games, furniture assembly, computer knowledge… it’s proving to be difficult to stay patient with them. It’s not that I expect all guys to have “man” knowledge, but they always seem like hurt puppies afterwards and I just crave more of a challenge than that – from men and women alike.

I set up my TV and holy shit, I never realized just how many wires I had in such a concentrated area. TV, DVD player, Xbox360, cordless phone, speakers for my computer, modem and router, lamp, computer… the list goes on. The el cheapo Ikea TV stand that I bought Friday afternoon (which came in an awkward five foot, fifty pound box that I wrestled by myself into my car with much struggle) seems to hide all the wires just dandy, even without me having to devise some kind of wire-management plan.

Behold.

 
It just so happened that my friend Alicia was only able to meet up with me after midnight on new year’s, so I spent the actual countdown webcamming with my internet bff, Derrick. As depressing as this sounds, I felt pretty content. At midnight, we decided to see which one of us could get the most text messages, so we both started sending our friends celebratory “happy new year!” messages. I didn’t get a single response, which is pretty fucking sad, but not nearly as depressing as the sole response that Derrick received which was “who is this?”.
  

Afterwards, I ventured out into the real world with real people and welcomed 2009 in style.