everyday is d. day

and now....

a little bit of coffee and going round with two simple crosswords pulled the cobwebs out of my head. it's like this every day. when i finally push myself out of bed it's a struggle to stay fully present even with work to do.  after i scurry about with the pressing business of feeding the cat, i wash my face, turn on the computer, throw open the balcony door, and make the bed.

then my world goes into slow motion again. what i am lacking is purpose, even with things to do. those are errands, the business of life and i've learned how to deal with them, manage them. i could perform this stuff with my eyes closed.

it's driving myself beyond what needs to be done. all my good intention disappears.  i'm halfheartedly poking away at my computer to complete this blog, because part of me says "why bother". i turn my face toward the new day with a mixture of dread and anticipation.  early on part of me hopes that there will be news of a job or an interview and when the day comes to a close the anticlimax of it all complete deflates me.

when the planets don't align

sometimes it all just goes for shit.

i forgot my travel mug and my shopping bags. it was not an auspicious start to an average day. glorious, but average. i had errands to run and all that.

the morning was to begin with coffee with a friend, but we got our wires crossed and he had meant another day (even though he had been clear as mud when we were communicating back and forth about it). first, a visit to the bell flagship store to hopefully get some answers to my blackberry's "illness". it had been recommended as my best option, that store supposedly being staffed with the bell braintrust. not so much. and it didn't pay off. actually, i left with a sour taste in my mouth. to get bell to do anything costs the customers who are already paying, and apparently the customer service will depend on which rep you talk to on any given day. my rep, although, very friendly (and attractive), was no more knowledgeable than the people at my local kiosk here in new westminster. next up was to kill two birds with one stone; return and pick up a library book. unfortunately, i had requested said book be sent to a different branch. denied again.

and so i made my way home, slightly defeated. but on the bright side, i did manage to do all of this inside of the 1 hour 30 minutes allowed on my bus pass so hooray for me and expediency.

extreme beauty

today while i was standing in 7-eleven i noticed that the girl in front of me was wearing the same $4.99 army and navy and t-shirt as myself. it could be said we both have the same great nose for a bargain or we are both shopping on an extreme budget. truth be told, technically i couldn't afford it at all, but retail therapy is retail therapy and it feels nice to buy something new even if it costs about the same as a starbucks latte. it's white and fresh, shouting of renewal and synergy. if it gets stained or something cataclysmic happens to it, or if my physiology simply conspires to destroy it's, not a problem. and acquiring it cost just pennies over 5 bucks. gotta like it.

a deal is a deal and the thing is, a girl can't thumb her nose at a deal however small. it's tough enough. i have forgone every luxury in personal grooming, big and small, from professional landscaping "down there" to having my eyebrows done on a regular basis. and a lovely pedicure....forget it. not happening. i did the whole home pedicure which really just consisted of a soak, a scrub, and painting my toenails with my shaky and unskilled hands.

photo op hopefully

a contest i entered through a legitimate company, one of those contests i have long given up on winning, finally paid off. not millions, but a hundred buck amazon card. good enough for me.  can't sneer at anything free. perhaps it means my fortunes are changing. with it i bought a book that has long been on my wishlist. scott kelby's digital photography. it arrived today. perhaps i'll glean the information i need to become more confident in my images.

here a net there a net everywhere a netnet

i spend a lot of time surfing the net. no scratch that. didn't mean it that way. what i meant was that i spend a lot of time fact finding and curiosity seeking using the world wide web. sometimes it is a fact i am looking to verify; a recipe or just idle curiosity. a lot of idle curiosity. i have an abiding interest/obsession in small home living, airstream trailers and going off the grid. i'm constantly gathering information. now if i just had the guts to do (something with) it. (having a significant other not quite so ga-ga about the prospect does take a little bit of the glow off these grand ideas.)

take today. i am looking for easy, yummy finger good; a martini recipe, local support groups and i am making an attempt at finding my teachers at a long defunct broadcasting school i once attended. what spurred the latter search  was a sift through old papers. i found i still have the transcripts and assignments. (i know, it's time for that crap to go. just a bad reminder of ill things.) the year i was in that program was the year the monster first reared its head with a startling ferocity. it was when my dentist performed several root canals on my big molars and my doctor was still treating it as stress.

fat lot of good that course did me. it was more a lesson in financial imprudence. i have to say if it weren't for those papers i wouldn't even have remembered the names of the instructors.  at the time, 1987, this being a dj was something i thought i wanted to do, but i think that the choice was made by reaching into the ether and pulling out something that appealed the most to me out of all the things that were presenting themselves. i didn't have any burning desire to hear my voice on the radio. quite the contrary.

so here i am trying to figure out what became of those teachers and where they have gone from there. just because. i've done some job searching and resume sending, and now i want to amuse myself.  the first one was easy enough to find. at least i think from the picture on the site that it's him.  he seemed the most knowledgeable of the lot and the most passionate about what he did. he nurtured dreams. i sort of aspired to do what he did, which was voice work. didn't pursue it though. he did.  then i went in search of the second. what of him. wonder if he got himself his porsche? for him i wish that he was struck by lightning and didn't survive, but that's just the really angry part of me. he was behaving like a man, lusting after me. this affected the outcome of my studies, because even though he claimed he could be professional about the situation. when i put the brakes on it, he was anything but professional--behaving like a spoiled child denied candy--sabotaging whatever chance i had of taking advantage of their "job placement". there's another. i haven't gone looking for the third....i think my curiosity is sated with the success of finding one. for the moment.

mmmm.....time to get back to the more important matter at hand. i've decided on hummus, which i already have a great recipe for. no need to be www'in' it. time to whip it together. i think i'm going to cool it for now. dinner to prepare. but i'll be back at it soon enough.

pensive pondering and wondering

sitting in the sun with my coffee. 9 am. two crosswords down. contemplating. doing a lot of that lately. it's not navel gazing. it's serious soul searching. again. round and round. i've dispensed with my pride in favour of the sliver of hope that i might get any job. iga, tim horton's and the like. this is what i am reduced to. forget about aspirations of the future. here and now dictates that money's got to start flowing in. and right now we are talking about desperate times, and you know how that refrain goes.

i believe in myself and my abilities. i believe that i deserve to have better, but those offering the jobs and apparently the agencies--supposedly working on my behalf--think differently.

there's a columnist in the metro that writes pithy little blase articles about all that the potential employee might be doing wrong and thus their reason for lack of gainful employment. does anyone ever think to shine the light the other way, on the employer? i know they possess the jobs and it is there perogative to hire whomever they please, but did any of these outfits stop to think that perhaps they aren't playing by the same rules anymore. the playing field is not level. the tools at their disposal can lend a duplicitous aspect to the whole proceedings. all the electronic hr; the monsters, workopolis's et all, community bulletin boards chock-a-block with bulls*** ads that offer a screen for the less scrupulous of employers to hide behind.

even at the local beer and wine store a girl there was bitching about her long hours because of personnel problems. well, in the personality contest or out of sheer laziness you gots what you got. i hand delivered my resume with a dazzling smile and they even know me, but....

i wonder if ageism is beginning to creep into the scenario, lumbering around and obliterating the fact that i could be a fantastic candidate for even the jobs i am not fully qualified for. and for the ones i am, a summarized list of my accomplishments and skills are there in black and white. a not unsubstantial list. so what gives?

a-riding we will go

today we decided to tackle the central valley greenway. we've heard the foofaraw about it. we live near one end of it and have seen bits of it from the aerial view of the skytrain. the steep descent on the narrow sidewalk to the entry was a bit too much for me first time out on my new bike. and after a good six years of not being on a bicycle at all a bit daunting.  so we walked down, which made getting on the bike and feeling some wind on the face a wondrous thing.

we cycle along the gravel trail that ends at a sort of cul-de-sac. there an 8x11 piece of paper with an even smaller arrow denotes the path switches to the dead end road, which then feeds onto cariboo. a busy bit of road filled with big trucks belching out exhaust and no clue as to where the "path" continues. we crossed at the crosswalk and entered into cariboo dam park, which posts signage that it is a pedestrian only system of trails. i'm not sure why it is pedestrian only, but s. insisted that we walk with our bikes and after 20 minutes of walking i discovered that the trails were the exclusive domain of the mere 3 runners. we passed. to continue this way to where the ped path met up with the mixed use central valley greenway path meant at least another 20 minutes of pushing my bike and that is not what i brought my bike out for. another day we could walk this whole thing. we'd gone the wrong way. obviously. we've ended up in a part of burnaby lake park at the base of a dead end street. the road intersects with the greenway path the direction we should have taken. the going is hilly and tough in spots, but exhilarating.

along the way

my blue suede (giant) bike is made for the smooth of pavement. sitting up tall in the saddle, hands wide on the handlebars, i figure out how to make best use of its 7 speeds and proudly manage all the hills without getting up out of the saddle. along the way i have a few thoughts. to get the rack and panniers so i don't have to carry my possessions on my back; that a vendor selling water would make a killing and my big comfy seat makes me sweat in a way that causes me to make a mental note to self: wear dark shorts. the signage is a tad better once it integrates with the skytrain system  but could use some improvement. those 8x10 pieces of paper are laughable and poor stand-ins for large clearly indicative signs. there could be blurbs along the way just reinforcing where a person is in relation to the whole system, how the system came to be, some wildlife proof litter bins, benches. the portion of the greenway beyond the urban centre is still clearly in its infancy, and there are rough patches and detours. some of them annoying, but understandable. others that make you shake your head. like the work truck parked on the path/sidewalk. (i mean why do they do that? they have an area cordoned off with pilons around another work truck. park on the road behind it man!) even so, we managed to ride the distance of 15 k from new westminster to commercial drive without having to ride in traffic throughout the whole route. it took us somewhere between 30 to 45 minutes depending on whose sense of time was used as a measuring stick.

we were almost home when i caught some loose gravel at the edge of the trail and couldn't maneouvre out of it. i know from my experience that the best thing to do is just to relax as much as a person can and allow the fall to happen with as little injury to self as possible; try to control it. with a hunk of metal machine in my hands it was hard to do much but fall and let it smack me just after i smacked the ground. it could have been worse. i could have tumbled down the embankment and into the river. i've got a gravel bite to show for my adventure. 30k.

i'm ready to go again.

a few words

often phrases or strings of words come to me with no apparent link to any other and they are poetic, lyrical or i simply just like the way they sound rolling over in my head. often  i try to work the threads of them into some more and it becomes a rambling hodgepodge that dilutes the impact or the interest of the original thought. i think i'll just throw the snatches up as they are complete or not. it's the words.

the faces of friends and those i have met have been coming to me relentlessly in my dreams....

... rising like bubbles to the surface of my consciousness.....

driving cars, going nowhere; having strange conversations. inhabiting strange settings, everywhere. they dot my nocturnal landscape in bizarre and mundane situations both. am i being sent a message? i wonder what it means. or it could have no significance at all. just rabble and clutter my brain is dispensing with that otherwise would be taking up precious space.

i know i miss all of these people. it's difficult to connect. they in their busy lives and we....in ours.

when you're hot you're hot really really hot

i decided that nature's stifling hot would be better than toughing it out in the stifling, stuffy air of the foursquare. i put on my short shorts (bedamned!) my hat and head out. the brute force of the heat was almost enough to push me back in but i push back and down the street. i try 7eleven first but there they've had the unfortunate circumstance to lose their air conditioning during this spell, but the foresight to rent "portable cooling devices" and placed them throughout the store.  one near the back blasts forth a particularly comforting torrent of cool. so i linger awhile.  reluctantly i leave. the little grocery mart welcomes me with chilly fingers of cool, but i can't even feign shopping, i'm so limp.

i return home; arriving to our apt up to our street to the front door. our apartment management, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to fix a problematic lock by taking the lock out completely, and making the door "emergency exit" only. whatever. i'm not going on a pilgrimage to take out the garbage and recycling. it's only a matter of time before the other back door  and the front door locks go completely. wonder if they'll employ the same level of ingenuity to fix those problems as well. believe me, i wouldn't be surprised if they did.  i walk deliberately through the weak gurglings and spitting of the small waterpark. it works. til the flitting bugs get to me.

s. insists that no windows be open during the day. he says that it will confuse the air molecules, but i am not so sure. two days of sitting in the dark with fans pathetically batting around uncirculated old air hasn't netted desirable results.  i think a change in tack is in order.  when i open the door i step into air that is oppressive, dense and stale. i can predict this much.  i won't be catching up with sandman until very very late.