Meet Marla

As you know, I experience great difficulty in coming up with good names for things. But when I got this smoking hot new iPod for my birthday^1,2, I came up with a name rather quickly. In honour of my third annual 29th birthday, I watched Fight Club, one of my most favourite movies ever, and it became clear that my iPod could have only one name. Allow me to introduce you to Marla:

Since I now have about sixty trillion terabytes of space on my fancy new iPod, I added a whole bunch o'podcasts:

But I still have fifty-nine trillion, nine hundred and ninety-nine billion, nine hundred and nintey-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine terabytes (give or take), so if you have a favourite podcast that you think I should check out, let me know.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go print up a label with my name and phone number on it to stick onto Marla, in case she goes missing, so that whoever finds her can return her to me. And I will be printing said label on my fancy schmancy printer. Which I need to review here in blogland soon. I don't want to spoil this upcoming printer review, but suffice it to say, I'm disappointed that the printer doesn't attach to my vibrator.

¹Along with one of those adapter thingys³ that you plug into your iPod and then you can play your iPod over the car radio, which is wicked awesome for when I'm driving to hockey games.
²Thanks again, Giver of Birthday Gifts.
³Not one of these iPod adaptor thingys.

Clean Off Your Desk Day... Not So Much

In defiance of Clean Off Your Desk Day, and because it for some unknown reason seemed to alleviate my anger at not being able to find a very important set of papers on my desk, I took these pictures of my office just for you, gentle blog reader:

I'd like to say that there is a system to this mess. You know, like ordered chaos. A method to my madness. Like it's one of those messes where it looks like a mess from the outside by the creator of said mess knows exactly where everything is in this shitstorm. I'd like to say those things, but if I did, I'd be lying. Sometimes I have to call my cell phone in order to find it on my desk. Seriously.

on robson

on robson
Originally uploaded by random dude

Dave, I saw this photo and thought of you.

When are you and Sarah coming back to Vancuover to visit me?

Goodnight, Sweet Monkey

My sister's cat, Monkey, died yesterday. This is a picture of Monkey from better days. She never much liked anyone other than my sister and my niece, but one time I tricked her into thinking I was my sister and she let me pet her. She will be missed.

Rest in peace, little Monkey.

Either Ottawa hates¹ or loves me so much that it really, really wants me have a reason to return, because everything we tried to do today was a no go.

First, we couldn't go to the Diefenbunker as the tour was all booked up when we called to make a reservation. Then, The Green Door was inexplicably closed when we tried to go there for dinner. Bah!

It worked out in the end though. We hung out at Sarah's parents place, where we had lunch, chatted for a bit, and then Sarah's mom gave me three (3!) pairs of shoes²! Then we watched more Veronica Mars and we ended up going to another restaurant, a veggie Thai place, that made most delicious food, for dinner. And, honestly, Sarah & Dave are just fun to hang out with, no matter what you are doing. And now I have an excuse to come back to O-town - 'cuz I totally need to check out the Diefenbunker!

¹Since they put a giant spider in front of the National Gallery, I'm leaning towards the former.
²And you all know how desperately I need more shoes!

Choose My Own Adventure, Ottawa Style!

For my Christmas present, Sarah and Dave offered me a "choose my own Ottawaian adventure." In the interest me not having to carry a bunch o' stuff back on the plane, they gave me some options of fun things to do in Ottawa, including:

• Canada Science and Technology Museum
• Museums of Civilization and/or War
  
• The Green Door vegetarian restaurant
• watching the Senators game¹
• the Diefenbunker, Canada's Cold War Museum
• National Gallery²
• chainsmoking episodes of Veronica Mars

I chose: most of the above. I'm unable to go to the National Gallery due to the fact that they have sculpture of a giant spider outside. And you know how I feel about spiders. Museums of Civilization and/or War are out because, um, I'm neither civilized nor war mongering.

Today, Dave had to work today in order to keep us in the style to which we have become accustomed while Sarah & I picked up the cats from the cat spa³, then went to the Canada Science and Technology Museum. The C.S.T.M. kinda made us feel like Canada hasn't done a whole hell of a lot in science and technology that isn't related to snow and/or hockey. Although we did learn that Ernest Rutherford did the work which earned him his 1908 Nobel Prize while in Canada. Which, you know, you think they would have mentioned when we learned about the Rutherford model of the atom in high school and university chemistry classes, given that we went to high school and university in Canada. But whatevs.

After the C.S.T.M., we came home and Sarah made us some super delish veggie sushi. Just like The Eatery, but with much better service. We chain smoked the first four episodes of Veronica Mars, which Sarah has been telling me about forever, but which I had never watched before. Now I'm totally into the mystery and need - and I mean NEED - to find out whodunit. Then we watched the Sens game, followed by the Canucks game - both which had happy endings. And now I be tired. But before I head to bed, I give you me, in a stupid large snowbank. With a pink hat on:

¹although not live, since it's sold out. But with PVR-y goodness, we can watch it without pesky commercials
²I can't link to this site, because I am afraid that a picture of the giant spider will be on their site.
³Where they had been living a life of cat luxury while S & D were away for a few days of family Christmas visiting.

Reporting from the Nation's Capital

I'm now on the second leg of my Christmas tour - at Sarah & Dave's place in Ottawa. Tired and should go to bed soon, but first I thought I'd show y'all a few Christmas photos.

Like this one, a picture of my niece with the stuffed Quatchi¹ that I gave her:

And here, she's tucking Quatchi into the new bed she got for Xmas:

And this is my sister's boyfriend, my niece and I, looking out the window of her new playhouse. The house is about 3 feet tall², and was packed with all the toys she got for Christmas, which she carefully placed into this house before insisting we join her in said house. Translation: it was rather crowded.

OK, Beth sleep now. Beth will blog more coherently tomorrow.

Update: For the record, I'm in Ontario, but my blog timestamps using Pacific Time. So I'm really not going to bed at 9:40 p.m.

¹Aunt Beth, spreading the love of Quatchi eastward!
²Disclaimer: I am completely useless at estimating heights.

Happy Holiday

The Flying Spaghetti Monster wishes you all a Happy Holiday!

My sister's boyfriend, Jeff, made this for me. Apparently they came up with this idea a year ago and have been giddy with excitement about making it for me ever since. So. Friggin. Cool.

Out Out Damn Report

This is me and the report I've been working on for the last 87 months. It's a report about how great I am, and all the the wonderful things I do. In triplicate.

And writing it has prevented me from doing all the wonderful things that I do.

But now, mercifully, it's done and has been sent off to those who want to read about how wonderful I am. So I can get back to my real work. Well, for half a day anyway. Then I'm on vacation until next week.

12 Bars of Christmas - the Sequel

So, I was wondering all day why no one commented on my engaging tale of the 12 Bars of Christmas. I get the comments on my blog emailed to me, so I didn't look at the blog itself - just didn't get any emailed comments. And just now when I went to write a new posting, I discovered that, although I finished writing the posting yesterday, I didn't actually click "publish." D'oh! Guess that kind of absentmindedness is a sign that perhaps one shouldn't go to 12 bars in one night. Anyway, here's the posting:

So, I have a confession to make. I did not successfully complete the 12 Bars of Christmas this year! *hangs head in shame*. I made it to all the bars. I sang all the verses of the 12 Days of Christmas at the appropriate times and in the appropriate locations, as per the rules of the 12 Bars. But I was not able to drink a drink at every bar! Well, I suppose I would have been able to, so I probably should say I was unwilling to given that my body was telling me that I needed a break after 8 drinks¹.

I think part of the problem as that I couldn't stick to the same game plan I had last year - which was to stick with a specific drink² for most bars, with the occasional shot when we got behind schedule and needed to get in and out of a bar really fast. Why couldn't I stick to that game plan, you ask? Because the 12 Bars got waaaaay too popular! Last year, we started out at Erika & Paul's place with something like 7 people and then ended up with about 30 by the last bar, as people joined us along the way. This year, we had somewhere around 30 people at the first bar!! By the end, we have no accurate count of participants as friends of friends had joined up and no one really knew who was with us and who were just randoms in the bar. But there had to be over 50 of us by the end. This resulted in two things: (a) we didn't get to meet as many new people, as you sort of had to stick with your little group in order to not get totally lost in the crowd, and (b) it's really hard to get a drink at a bar when 30-50 others are also all trying to get a drink in 30 mins³ - somehow always seemed to be the last people served and so had to take a few shots off the start because there wasn't enough time to drink an actual drink. I think this set a poor tone for the evening!

My night went something like this.

Bar #0 - Erika & Paul's place (UNOFFICIAL START) - Vodka & Sprite. I agreed to have a drink here. This was my first mistake!

Bar #1 - Las Margarita’s – OFFICIAL START - Jolly Rancher shot. I wanted a margarita here, but by the time we got to the bartender, it was pretty much time to leave, so we had to do a shot.

Bar #2 - Room 18 - Polar bear shot. Bar #2 was supposed to be Hell’s Kitchen⁵, makers of the best Amaretto sour at last year's 12 Bars. When Hell's Kitchen was called early in the day and asked if they would be open at 4 p.m., they replied "yes." Apparently "yes" means "no" at Hell's Kitchen, because when we go there, they weren't open. So we improvised and went to Room 18 instead. They didn't want to let us in at first, saying they couldn't handle 34 people with just one bartender. So we promised that we'd all get the exact same shot and be out in her hair in life 15 minutes, probably the fasted $300 that bar will ever make. So another unplanned shot for me, but a great photo opp!

Bartender at Room 18 makes 34 Polar bear shots.

Bar #3 - Brown’s - Amaretto sour. Finally! Although this one wasn't like any Amaretto sour I'd had before - it was brown rather than green. Weird.

Bar #4 - Kitsilano Restaurant – White wine. This is the place where we stop to eat. But it counts as a bar, so we have to drink their too. So I enjoyed a much too full glass of wine with my yam rolls, veggie tempura and teriyaki tofu. About halfway through the wine was when my brain took notice of the unnecessary amount of alcohol to which it was being subjected.

Bar #5 - Tatlow’s - Spiced rum & diet Coke⁶ - I don't think I have anything special to report about this bar.

Bar #6 - Darby’s - Amaretto sour! Yay! Darby's makes a tasty A.S. And it was green. Making for a very Christmasy photo of red and green drinks.

Casey shows off our Christmas coloured drinks -
Vodka cran + Amaretto sour.

Bar #7 - Nevermind - Spiced rum & diet Coke⁶ - Unlike it's sister restaurant, Hell's Kitchen, Nevermind was open. Unlike last year, where we convinced a #84 Express bus to pick us up and drive us to Nevermind despite the fact that Nevermind is not where the #84 bus is supposed to stop, this year we had to walk all the way to Nevermind. Which, by my calculations, is 872 blocks from Darby's.

Between bars #7 and #8 is where I officially decided to wuss out. My tummy was telling me that it was sufficiently stocked with alcoholic beverages at the moment and any further deliveries would be returned to sender. So, in the interest of not puking, I decided to skip the drinks at the next two bars.

Bar #8 - Gargoyles - No drink!

Bar #9 - The Fringe - No drink again!

Bar #10 & #11 - Coppertank - Spiced rum & diet Coke. We were supposed to go to Elwood’s for Bar #10, but they told us that brinigng 50ish people would put them over capacity, so they wouldn't let us in. So we decided that Coppertank could have more of our money and decided to stay there for an hour instead of the usual 30 mins, having two drinks (and sing two verses of the 12 Days of Christmas) instead of the usual 1. I felt better enough to have one drink, but decided that I didn't really need two.

Beth and Kalev tell us that we are at Bar #10.
Unfortunately, Coppertank counted as 2 bars, I forgot to take a "Bar #11" pic.

Bar #12 - Regal Beagle - Spiced rum and diet Coke. And thus ended the 12 Bars.

Bar #13 - Lola's - Spiced rum and diet Coke - In celebration of not having died, we went next door to Lola's to dance, and make fun of the other patrons fashion choices behind their backs.

Hooray for Bar #13. Go team!

You can view all the photos here.


¹In my defence, I would like to remind everyone that I'm somewhat on the small size. I don't think 115 lb people are meant to drink 13 drinks!
²In my case, Amaretto sour.
³And the 30 minutes includes travel time between bars. And, given that we were having a blizzard⁴, travel time was somewhat slower going than one would like.
⁴To my readers out east: "blizzard" in Vancouver vernacular means "it was snowing out."
⁵You may recall Hell's Kitchen as the location of my brief but celebrated career as a coat check girl.
⁶I think. If memory serves me, they didn't have Amaretto here so I had to improvise. But I could be misremembering - memory started to fuzzy for some unidentifiable reason.

Beth in a Box

When someone has a giant box in their house, it's only natural that they will try to see if they fit in that box. The answer, my friends, is yes:

In fact, there's plenty of room inside that box - you could have a tea party in there!

So, I took this photo, but before I got a chance to post it I saw over on Darren's blog that Rebecca beat me to the punch. Not only did she have a picture of her inside her printer box, but she did it with comic strip complete with Dick in a Box reference. Clearly, I have much to learn in the ways of blogging.

In my own defence, I only just set up my printer last night, despite receiving it last week because, well, I was kind of intimidated by the fact that the "Quick Setup Guide" was 70 pages long¹. I was really busy last week and this past weekend² with work and it was much easier to leave it until a computer-y friend of mine came over and set it up for me. I chose the wifi printer because I didn't want to be hassled with such things as plugging the printer in and setting it up for wifi required knowing things like WLAN and WEP and WPA and other such acronyms. I'm sure I actually could have figured it out³ if I wanted to, but having someone else do it for me was much easier. I work smarter, not harder. Plus, it gave me more time to do things like play inside my new fort⁴.

On the plus side, it's all set up now and prints all nice and suchlike. At least, the few test pages that I've printed so far. I'm going to play around with it more this weekend/next week once my stupid big report at work is done. I'm very excited that it prints in colour and duplexes stuff. I heart duplexing.

¹Wait a sec, that's not really in my own defence. Unless my defence is that I'm a big baby.
²Ya, I was working on the weekend. Big report due. Boo to big reports!
³There are illustrated step-by-step directions. I'm sure I could have followed along if I actually tried.
⁴I have to keep the box to ship the printer back to them when my trial run is over. So I suppose I should keep my playing to a minimum to keep it intact.

Unending Jest

Someone who rides the bus and does most of her reading on said bus and thus must carry her book to and from said bus probably should not get herself into reading a book this size:

The apple is in the photo to give you a sense of the size of the book.

Granted, it's a smallish apple, but it's still a really big book!

Fortunately, my health benefits package includes $400 a year of massage therapy and another $400 a year of chiropractic, no doctor's note required, as lugging this book around for last 87¹ months has really done a number on my vertebral alignment.

¹ At least it feels like I've been reading it for 87 months.

My new printer!

I arrived home today to discover that my new printer had been delivered! Well, it's not actually *my* printer - it's only mine to test drive for a couple of months.

A little while ago, Darren emailed me an amusing comic strip, asking if I wanted to try out a colour laser printer for two months. And, well, you know how I feel about free stuff, even if it's only free for a little while!

As you can see from the photo, it's a Brother printer and comes in an exceptionally large box. I swear, that box is bigger than me! What you can't see from the photo, it's the HL-4070CDW (Wi-Fi certified wireless network-ready colour laser printer with built-in automatic two-sided printing). I'm a big fan of printing on both sides of any given paper and I'm eager to check out the Wi-Fi'edness. I should point out that my current printer was purchased in 1995 when I bought my first computer and requires that you hand feed each paper individually (and even then it sometimes has a hissy fit and requires repeated shutting off and restarting of my computers before it will stop printing in tongues, and so if this thing actually feeds paper on its own, I'll be stoked.

I worked late tonight and then had to do some grocery shopping as I had no food in my place, so I was too exhausted to unpack my new printer and figure out where I'm actually going to put it, being that it's so huge and all. But Thursday is my Friday, so I will have the weekend to unpack it, hook it up and play with it! I'll keep ya posted

Money that goes to Vegas, stays in Vegas.

Yeah, so, Vegas. It's a place I went¹. And I heard that all y'all wanted to hear about it. So here goes - everything you've ever heard about Vegas is true. Overwhelming sights and sounds - check. Oxygen and delightful scents and free drinks pumped into casinos, where there are no clocks/windows/any way of telling how long you've been there, to keep you gambling as long as possible - check. People walking the streets with foot tall tubes of booze - check. Guy at the slot machine next to you getting "comped"² because he lost so much money that the casino is willing to give him a free hotel room so he'll stay and lose more - check. Giant pyramid with a light shooting off the top that can be seen from outer space - check. People standing on street corners flicking business cards of prostitutes - check.

The one thing that you hear about Vegas that isn't true - people carrying buckets of coins around. All the slot machines have been changed to run on paper money and when you cash out, they print a ticket that you have to redeem at a cashier's desk. No coins comes falling down when you win - it's just credits on the screen - and when the slot machine prints out your little ticket, it makes this lame noise that is supposed to sound like coins falling jdown into the little now-vestigial metal tray at the bottom of the machine. Lame city!! Maybe next time I go to Vegas, I'll bring my own bucket and put my little paper ticket into my bucket, just to screw with everyone's head.

Stuff seen in Vegas:

• Magician comedian who was filling in for Mac King at Harrah's and whose name escapes me at the moment. Had a pretty funny schtick where he made it look like he'd screwed up the trick and then it would turn out to be a fairly neat trick after all.³
  
• Dead bodies.
• Mamma Mia - the musical based on ABBA songs. I swear, you'd think ABBA wrote their songs for that plot - it's soooo well constructed.
• The Blue Man Group. This blew my fucking mind. Like nothing I've EVER seen before. OMG, you need to see this. NEED TO!
  

Blue Man & Me.
The fact that I wore a blue dress this day is merely coincidental.

Most nauseating thing seen in Vegas:

• Picture this: You are playing your little $1 chips at the roulette table, mumbling under your breath that the $15 minimum really is too rich for your blood. A man walks up and lays 10 $100 bills on the table and asks for one chip. The dealer carefully counts the money out and hands over a $1000 chip. He lays the chip on black and walks away, doesn't even watch the little ball spinning around the roulette wheel. The little ball lands on red. Bye-bye $1000! Then he does the same thing again - another 10 $100 bills, another $1000 chip on black and another loss. Then, just for good measure, he plays $100 on splitting the zeros and loses again. It seriously made me feel sick. If someone is willing to part with $2100 in like 45 seconds, why not just give it to charity??
  

Things learned in Vegas:

• Tony Danza, Barry Manilow, Toni Braxton, all the people you thought were dead are, in fact, performing in Vegas. I think this means (a) they are not dead after all, or (b) Vegas is the afterlife for third rate celebs.
• When playing roulette, you may be tempted to play Canucks jersey numbers... 22 - Daniel Sedin, 33 - Henrik Sedin, 16 - Linden, 9 - Pyatt, 7 - Morrison, etc. Don't. Just don't.
• Waitresses will only come by to bring you free drinks when either (a) your down to your last dollar on the slot machine or (b) you say, "I'm cashing out if I don't win on the next spin!" So that you'll have to stay around waiting that free drink and will put more money in the machine. They have it down to a freakin' science, I swear.
• Vegas waitresses are not as hot as I have been led to believe. I'm willing to bet, though, that they make more money than I do.
• If you walk around Vegas dressed as a bat, even on Halloween, you will get a lot of looks.
  
• Everything in the Venetian is made of gold... including the toilets⁴.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The red carpets you see celebrities photographed on showing them going into Vegas nightclubs.... they don't actually go anywhere! It's just a bit of red carpet and a backdrop set up in the hallway for photo ops. As is my habit when I see ropes blocking things off or signs telling you not to go somewhere, I hopped over the ropes to get this paparazzi shot:

And speaking of photos, I took these pics for Sarah & Dave:

Saw our favourite arcade game, which is found in every bar, pub, tavern and daycare⁵ in Calgary, in one of the hotels in Vegas and just had to take a pic for you!

Then I noticed this poor man's Big Buck Hunter, called "Deer Hunting USA" right next to it. Apparently it also has "Animated Violence: Mild."

So that, in a nutshell, was my trip to Vegas.

¹Tip o'the hat to David T. McLean, Esq.
²comped = getting free stuff (like a free buffet, a free hotel room) when you lose lots of cash at a casino.
³Wow. My description makes it sound really lame, but it wasn't - it was quite good!
⁴Yes, I took a picture of the toilet. See, there is nothing I won't do for you, gentle blog reader. Nothing!
⁵OK, so we didn't actually go to any daycares in Calgary, but I'm willing to put money on them all having Big Buck Hunter.

You Must Have At Least $2.50 To Attack This Skytrain Rider

My thoughts on this article: Free rides approach end of the line on SkyTrain

There may be no more free rides for fare-evaders on the Lower Mainland's SkyTrain system now that B.C.'s transportation minister is pushing to have gates or turnstiles installed at all stations.

There is still no official plan is place, but Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon said Thursday a system could be up and running sometime in 2008.

There's no official plan in place, but it will be up and running sometime in the next 13 months. Why do I find this hard to believe? Hmm.... perhaps because even when they do have an official plan, projects routinely take years longer to complete than they are supposed to. Translink and UBC were supposed to have an underground bus loop at UBC finished like two years ago and they've only just started it this fall. Or I think they've started it. They put up a fence around the area at least.

Turnstiles would make the system safer by keeping those who don't pay out, said Falcon.

"Young women in particular feel much safer when they're in what's called a controlled area, an area which has controlled access through gates or turnstiles," said Falcon.

Awesome. Now I can only be attacked by someone who has $2.50 to get passed the turnstile. Because you know if someone has $2.50, they are good people.

"Generally, thugs, punks, whatever they may be, [who] don't pay to go cause trouble for other people," he said.

Damn thugs and punks. And don't even get me started on ne'er do wells.

Falcon said the new plan is to have a company install the barriers for a share of the revenue.

Great. So now the overburdened, underfunded public transit system will be giving up some of the money to a private company to put in turnstiles. And/or they will jack up the cost of using public transit to make up the difference of what they have to give to the private company.

Oh yes, and speaking of Skytrain, go to Mayor Sam Sullivan's website to vote on if you think the Skytrain should be extended to UBC campus!

Wicked cool pic taken from the Skytrain by this guy, from here. Hooray for Creative Commons licenses!

Xmas Party's?

Went to Nevermind, my favourite place to see Canucks games, to watch my beloved Canucks kick some Calgarian ass^1,2 tonight. While the portabella mushroom burger at Nevermind is delish , their grammar leaves something to be desired:

Nevermind, perhaps you should go back to putting up signs about Chuck Norris.

¹See you in hell, Calgary.
²The cardiac Canucks pulled one of their patented let-the-opponents-score-2-goals-in-like-5-seconds-to-make-it-a-one-goal-game-and-give-Beth-a-coronary moves in the third period. But they managed to hang on for the win, so I still love them and would have all of their babies upon their request.

OK, so THIS is the least useful email I've ever received

So, I get into work this morning and the hallway is abuzz with the fact that our computers aren't working. No email. No Internet access. No access to the one drive where everyone in our Centre saves all of our files. Nothing.

Two and a half hours later, when they finally got around to fixing the problem, I find this email in my inbox:

From: IT Services
Subject:
IMPORTANT NOTIFICATION - NON-SCHEDULED INTERRUPTION TO

OUTLOOK EMAIL AND FILE/APPLICATION SERVERS

Who is affected? All XXXXX clients across all XXXXX agencies.

What has happened? A power disruption occurred sometime this morning in one of the server rooms at XXXXX.

What is affected? Access to Outlook email servers may be intermittent.

However, the following applications are currently unavailable: X, Y and Z.

Other applications may be affected. XXXXX IT is currently in the process of identifying which applications are affected and will provide a further update as soon as more information is available.

You just emailed me to tell me that my email isn't working? Seriously??

So, without access to the Internet, email or any of my computer files, I did the only thing I could. File all the paper that's been piling up all over my office since the last time the computers weren't working.

This computer outage lasted so long, however, that not only did I file everything, I also wiped down all the coffee spills on my desk (of which there were many) and took apart my keyboard to get the crumbs out. Seriously, it was disgusting the amount of crumbs and dust and unidentifiable gunk that was in my keyboard.

While I had my computer apart, I took this photo for y'all:

Flu Shot Bribery

On my way to purchase a celebratory¹ extra-hot-soy-mocha-with-whip yesterday, I walked past a grizzly scene in the hallway. People rolling up their sleeves to voluntarily be stabbed in the arm with a needle. A NEEDLE!!

Ya, so, they are trying to get people at my workplace to get the flu shot. Getting the flu shot at this hallway-based "clinic" will serve as your entry into a draw for:

• Running Room gift certificates


• a digital camera


• an iPod


• fancy pants treatment at Spa Utopia


• a 3 hr charter sailboat trip²

This presents a conflict for me - a conflict between my desire for free stuff and my sheer terror of being stabbed with a needle. In this case, however, I'm coming down firmly on the side of "for the love of god, don't stab me in the arm!!!" But it's not just that I would like to avoid blubbering like a little baby, as I usually do when confronted with a needle, in front of co-workers. Generally speaking, I'm in favour of vaccines. I've had my MMR, tetanus and all those other delightful stabs in the arms that prevent much more painful conditions. But I'm not overly confident in the flu shot. The thing with the flu virus is, it mutates. A lot. And so every year when they design the flu vaccine, they try to predict what this year's flu will be. Sometimes they get it right (or at least close), but other times, not so much. As a healthy, immune competent adult, I don't feel it's worth getting a needle, possibly getting the "flu-like symptoms" as a side effect³, all for a vaccine that might be against a strain of flu that doesn't even exist.

What do you think? Do you get the flu shot? Would you if your workplace bribed you with fabulous prizes?

¹Celebrating (a) finally, at 2:30 in the afternoon, getting through the backlog of email/snail mail I had upon returning from my trip and (b) being awarded 3 assists in my Sunday night hockey game, two of which I remember actually getting⁴.
²A three hour tour. A three hour tour.^5
3They always make a point of saying that you can't get the actual flu from the flu vaccine, since it's not made from a live virus. But if you are getting "flu-like symptoms," isn't that pretty much just like having the flu?
⁴ In fairness, I got screwed out of an assist that I clearly made a few games ago that the ref didn't record, so this just evens things up .
⁵Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Photo attribution: That photo of a big scary needle was stolen from this guy, from here. But it had a Creative Commons license on it, so it's all good.

Did Ya Miss Me?

I'm back from my gallivanting. Too tired to write about it all now¹, but since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's 2K worth of words for ya...

This is me on Halloween night at, let's say, The Bellagio².

This is me and my beloved eBay shoes in, let's say, The Venetian³. This picture was taken especially for you, blog readers, because I know you *love* updates on the adventures of my ebay shoes.

¹Perhaps I'll pull a Dave and write about *my* trip to Vegas 472 days after said trip.
² I have to admit that I have trouble remembering which hotel/casino was which because (a) I saw one hell of a lot of hotels/casinos on this trip, (b) each hotel/casino was more ornate than anything I'd *ever* seen in my life, (c) the hotels/casinos were so friggin' big you could be walking for like half an hour and still be in the same friggin' hotel/casino, meaning that I often didn't know which hotel I was in at any given point in time. Also, (d) they give you free drinks.
³ibid

Gone Vacationing

Don't wait up.