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!

 



It's more like a beautiful and unique papermache craft made by preschoolers. But at least it was amde by ones who haven't made a habit of shoving crayons up their noses...well, not yet, at any rate.

As for life itself, I've found myself in a bit of a slump. With all the heat and risk of overheating my laptop, my already endangered writing has now had to be placed on hold. (At least until we figure out what's the best angle for the desk fans, but that might take a bit.) The sad side-effect is that I've slid into a sort of ennui. I'm atrophying as we speak. And soon the world will lapse into depression too, being deprived of my literary genius for so long.

...my, those crickets are really chirping outside.

Anyhoo, today I decided to seek some sort of guidance. I looked up, and plainly asked for a sign from on high. And my request was granted! Woot! Within the hour, one of the students from the universities (as far as I could tell she was Chinese, based on her facial features) strolled in to look at purses. And then I bore witness to the shirt she wore.

In the middle of the shirt was a picture of the Eiffel Tower. To the left were the words: CHAOS. CHISH. HAZARD. And to the right were the oddly-hyphenated words: DON-T-DO-IT.

The message couldn't be any more obvious. So, not to worry; I've taken this message to heart and won't invade the Eiffel Tower. Though I have yet to figure out what the hell a "chish" is. I think it has something to do with chickens. And I must admit I'm terrified to Google it, just in case in inadvertently commit an act of Google Seppuku. (I still haven't quite recovered from the "blueberry muffin" search.)


...and if you think that shirt was weird, you should see the one in the store next-door to us. There's a really weird photohop of a giant great white shark's head snapping after some set of shapely legs that appear to be leaping right out of the ocean. And underneath that is some totally unrelated caption about how the rule of etiquette #233 states that "a distinguished gentleman always enjoys three meals a day."

Maybe the distinguished gentleman is a shark, we just don't know. But it does give a great mental image of some aristocratic-sounding shark who has a monocle over one black, nightmarish-looking eye. "I say, terrible sorry to put you in a spot of bother, but I'm afraid I'm one meal short for the day's quota and you appear to be it. I do hope you won't mind the agonizingly painful death I'm about to put you through. By the way, do you have a mint?"

Labels: at least this blog makes more sense than the Tshirts I see these days

posted by Phillip at 4:45 AM

 


So. Here I am, writing in this little bit of nowhere after easily a full-blown month of nothing. And there you are, having already given up on checking it daily and no doubt being stunned that there is something here not dated way back from May. And here is this blog, still looking sexy beneath all that dust.

And to be honest, there hasn't exactly been one good reason for such a gap between entries, oh no. There's been more than a few good reasons. Going back to the end of May, post-Con Report-ish, we found ourselves sitting back and needing another few days off following AN10 just to ease back into that horrid thing called "working to pay off bills." Alas, Mel & I didn't have such days off. For both of us, it was "hey, you're both getting launched into full-day work shifts for the rest of the week." Yep, even Mel was up to her eyeballs in shifts.

Normally this wouldn't have been a bad thing...however, her family was coming up in mid-June. This meant numerous things. First and foremost, we needed to clean the apartment. Mel's mom is nastily allergic to cat hair, and Chance seems to enjoy making sure his fur covers most of the furniture...and the floor...and the air. So, in between tiring work shifts we got to do a total cleaning of the apartment. This included but was not limited to: hardcore dusting, mopping the floors, vacuuming and sweeping not only the floors but also in behind furniture we normally don't tackle.

In the midst of all this, our "cleaning" turned into "cleaning and Spring Cleaning." We ended up going through a lot of our amassed stuff (tm), consolidating what we could, tossing out old things we really had no idea why we'd kept them in the first place, and then rearranging it all so as to hide it better. Of course, now our kitchen, dining room and guest room look pretty darned good, but ow...that was not really a good time to start it.

On top of all this, we also needed to redo the bedroom. You see, redoing the master bedroom was something we've been meaning to get done for easily a year or so. In fact, when we visited Mel's family for our annual post-Christmas Christmas shindig, their presents to us primarily consisted of some very kick-ass accessories to go with the colour scheme we'd decided upon for the bedroom. You can imagine our hope to have at least the basics done for when they arrived; Mel especially would have hated for them to discover their gifts were still sitting carefully in their boxes.

In end, I focused on cleaning and Mel focused on getting the bedroom repainted. (What can I say? She got the hands-on technical genes in her family, and my sister got the ones in mine.) Bear in mind, we were only able to do these things during the late evenings after having contended with tiring work shifts. And usually we ended up finishing all our things by 1-2am, so we were feeling particularly exhausted by the end of all this.

But the good news: in the end, we got everything cleaned in time, the bedroom looks really great with its new colours & decor, and I only got sick on my last shift before taking time off to hang out with her family! Sadly...that last tongue-in-cheek statement was not a lie. I wish it had been. Worst of all, that was a shift I had to split between my store and another store that desperately needed an extra body to help out in the afternoon. I guess the 1-9 shifter called out, leaving just the manager stuck in the store alone for entire 9:30am - 9pm day.

I have no qualms abou helping out like that, but when an hour into helping out at the other store I start vomitting profusely, that's a bad thing. A very bad thing made even worse by the fact that the manager was on her break, getting some needed rest so she could prepare herself for a solo evening shift. Murphy's Law just perfected itself for me that day: stuck in a different store that has no bathroom in the back, and I couldn't stop throwing up for two straight hours. My only saving grace was that the customers came in infrequently, so I was at least able to exercise enough self control not to yarf in front of them. But two small bags filled with you-really-don't-want-to-think-about-it later, I dragged my sorry ass home, wishing I'd taken that day off too.

Anyhoo, Mel's family arrived. Shady sucked up as much attention as she could the entire time, whereas Chance hid from the strange newcomers and only started showing his face in the halls by the third or fourth day. The gang arrived on a Friday and stayed until the following Wednesday. During that time, I did have to work a couple of random shifts, which was just as well since their car could easily seat five and I was the sixth one out. They checked out African Lion Safari (and marvelled at how many idiots still insist on feeding the animals despite all the signs & employees screaming at them to do otherwise), Niagara, and the St. Jacob's Farmers Market. As far as I could tell, a fun time was had by all, and Mel's family quite enjoyed their time up here.

(If you want more blow-by-blow accounts/rants of these trips, you'll have to pester Mel on her LJ. I mean, if you though my blog was dusty....)

That more or less brings us to last week-ish. And I'll admit: I've just been plain exhausted from everything. Going from the Con to cleaning to guests, I've spent as much time lounging and atrophying as possible. Mel's been like that even more than me, and I can't say I blame her. The theory goes that July will be a lot quieter...well, at least until the last week or two hit. And then it's all Back To School, baby.

Excuse me while I curl up into a corner and cry now.

But rest assured, this does not mean you'll be left abandoned once more to roam the desolate wastelands of the Intarwebs. I shall be updating more often, though the frequency of such up-dates is up to de-bates.

See how I cleverly slipped that pun into there? Aren't I a mad genius?

Well...aren't I?


Me: "Mel, the general public refuses to acknowledge my genius! Fetch me the Freeze Ray!"

Mel: "Fetch it yourself! I'm playing Mario Galaxy 2."

Me: "...I'll go fetch the Freeze Ray myself. But be warned, unsuspecting peons! I shall return! MWAH HA HA HA HAH AH HAH HAH HAH!!!!"



Today's Lesson: apparently, you can only purchase DVD seasons of "Ace of Cakes" from the Food Network, and even then they can only be delivered to US addresses. This vexes me greatly and must be remedied.

Labels: I need a vacation after June of 2010, spring cleaning

posted by Phillip at 8:09 AM