Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 

For some peculiar reason, our section of the mall smelled like burnt toast all morning. I can't exactly explain this, since we're nowhere near the foodcourt. In fact we're about as far from the foodcourt as one can possibly get without actually walking out the front doors. And I know it wasn't just me being paranoid; other people were commenting about the odd smell too. Maybe they were filming another one of those Canadian Heritage Moments commercials and forgot to tell us.

In other news, I am terrified of the month of May. Mind you, this isn't some random phobia, such as triskadelaphobia or a fear of words with the letter 'e' in them. Though if the latter one does scare you, I'd be rather curious to see how you carry on a conversation without using, or else deliberately misspelling, up to 2/3rds of English vocabulary. However if all you do is devolve into Netspeak, I'm afraid for the safety of the gene pool we'll have to put you down...you and your OMGWFTBBQ's.

Back to May for a moment: I fear it. I really do. More importantly, I fear how I'm going to look once the month reaches its conclusion, and whether I'll still have enough strength or intact body parts to stand up properly once it's over. May is shaping up to be a busy month, and it's already ranging from the "good" to the "close timing, but still good" to the "you seem like a nice guy working for Head Office, why are they wanting me to kill you?"

Broken down chronologically, May gets to offer me:

Inventory! Which to me is a 4-letter word involving vulgar, physically impossible things and one's mother/wife/insert some other cherished family member here. As of next Tuesday, I will have 2 weeks to get things prepped and ready. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but they've completely altered the way in which the inventory count will be done, and so far I have yet to see anything about it that I like. My plan is to get as much crap counted beforehand, Head Office be damned if they want to be nitpicky about it, so when the actual Inventory rolls in, we'll spend as little time on it as possible. Whether this is mere whimsical fantasy or an actual possibility, we'll see soon enough. But following closely on the heels of the Inventory is...

Anime North 2006! Which in a lot of ways is like being allowed to devour a large, chocolate sundae after having to eat a plate filled of liver that's been topped with steaming brussel sprouts dipped in raw egg yolk. (You think I'm being hyperbolic in my comparisons, don't you? I only wish I was...) I am so seriously looking forward to AN06, but before that can happen there's still all the last bits of the Confic to edit, reduce in size to accomodate an hour, alter to include more Hysteria, and then get printed up at the nearby Staples.

And this is to say nothing of any other prep work including raiding the grocery stores for food and an unexpectedly happy sale involving 3 boxes of Pocky for $5. There's also prop wrangling, some prep work for the few other panels I'm sitting on (or in the case of the SM panel that now finds Shance on it, suffering through), and the other random last-minute things that appear. But for right now, the Confic is the big priority.

After that, I think I'll take a bit of a break in writing and let things cool down. Which is just as well, considering how less than a week after the Con is over, there's...

Moving! Which is happy and aggravating all at once, mostly because we'll be packing before the Con and frantically trying to get the remainder of things ready to go in the few days following. I can't exactly knock the move, since it came as an unexpected thing and gives us almost twice as much square footage than our current apartment. And best of all, the move won't be as hectic as it could be, since we're only moving one floor down and one apartment over. (So we'll be wheeling the bookshelves out on the dolly with all the books still inside them. Huzzah!)

This all came about because Mel's been wanting a change, mostly of space and an expansion thereof. We'd been discussing the possibility of a move for a few months now and wanted to start looking later in the summer before all the university students return & flood the area. It occured to Mel that she'd never seen a 2-bedroom apartment in our complex before (and for that matter, neither had I). So upon asking our Super about it, Mel got not only a tour on one such apartment, but was also informed that a 2-bedroom was going to be available in June.

Not just a 2-bedroom, but apparently one of the best apartments in the entire place. (And after touring it, I can agree our Super wasn't kidding.) Now here's where the timing borders on the foreordained: the former/current couple occupying the 2-bedroom only just sent in their two months' notice. Mel just happened to ask the Super not a day or two after. This apartment hadn't been shown to anyone else. Hell, it hadn't even been officially listed as available yet.

So after a bit of being smitten and a lot of "can we afford it?", we managed to tweak our finances to the point where we could afford it and signed up. And now, in the last week of May we get to move on out and up...and I will probably get very little if any sleep.

But I can live with that. Really, I can. And I can still live with having to deal with all that work coming hot off the heels of the Con, where I will again probably get very little if any sleep. It'll be busy, but for all the right reasons.

Inventory, on the other hand...couldn't God just strike Head Office down with a bolt of lightning and let me carry on with the more tedious and not-so-aggravating day to day tasks?

Today's Lesson: everything comes in threes. Even pairs.
posted by Phillip at 8:25 AM

 


(Hint: the answer is "yes." It will always be "yes.")

So I'm here at Kevin & Donna's place, marvelling at the massive Duplo creation I have made and wondering how long it will survive once Gabezilla discovers it tomorrow morning. I give my creation 10 seconds. Mel tells me I'm being optimistic amidst rolling along a katamari ball. And somewhere in all this, the "director's cut" Confic will be finished up, leaving Kevin & I to slice about twenty odd pages from the script.

Yep, as you've all no doubt guessed, we're in Brantford once more. It feels like only yesterday we were here. In fact...it was only yesterday we were here. Not at Kevin & Donna's, mind you, but with other family members. Carly & Jorret were house-sitting for his family. And by house-sitting, I mean: "it's a huge friggin' house out in the countryside with satellite, an outdoor jacuzzi tub and a kitchen that makes me cry with envy every time I gaze upon it."

I love that house.

And happily enough, Mel & I got to spend the whole weekend there. It's not often I get full weekends off. If I'm lucky, I manage to squeeze in the once-a-month alloted Saturday off I'm entitled to. Blind luck the one I booked off for myself happened to be the same weekend they were house-sitting.

The entire weekend was spent doing very little of anything...and I don't think I've ever truly appreciated that to its full potential until now. There was no running around, no major errands, no parties, and notably for me no writing despite the presence of my laptop. And yet, I was still very happy just to sit back and listen to the sound of the rain outside. And Shady & her brother Sinatra racing across the dining room, their little claws click-clacking away on the wooden floor moments before the little fuzzbutts tumbled into each other and resumed their wrestling match.

I also discovered that for some inexplicable reason, I seem to be genetically resistant to tequilla. I'm not sure why, but despite it being a very nice 80-proof, $60 bottle brought back from Mexico, after six shots I wasn't even feeling a buzz. (Which, to my amusement, boggled Jorrit to no end. "How the hell can you just slam it back and then walk away like nothing's wrong?" was the remark that amused me the most, which was followed up by, "You don't even do the salt or lime thing afterwards! Did you even swallow any of that, or just toss the contents over your shoulder?"

So I'm a hardass when it comes to tequilla.

Naturally this means I can get plastered pretty easily on other shooters, and mixed drinks will do notable damage to my psyche (and ability to wear pants) only after a few glasses. *Sigh* There is no justice in this world.

In other news, I have just discovered that our store's annual "check every bloody thing in the bloody store" inventory from hell will be in three weeks' time, on May 16th. All I have to say to Head Office is:







Today's Lesson: the world would be a much better place if everyone took 15 minutes each day to recline in a Jacuzzi, listen to their favourite music and momentarily forget about the rest of the world. Barring that, the world would be a much better place if I could take 15 minutes each day to recline in a Jacuzzi with my favourite music. In fact, the world would be fantastic if I could do that without pants either! (Though I'm sure I'd look silly wearing pants in a Jacuzzi to begin with.) And of course, the world would be perfect if Mel were in the Jacuzzi with me, and she was wearing absolutely nothing else to go with her own lack of pants.

Ah, bliss...

(Yeah, I know I'm going to be hurt mightily once she reads this. But shhhh...let me enjoy the moment while it lasts.)
posted by Phillip at 7:42 PM