Shut-up and bring me my food!

I hate creepy middle-aged men who obnoxiously flirt with young waitresses like they have a chance.

Today, this loud-mouthed jerk, who was sitting between the kitchen and my table, kept trying to chat up the waitress while she was en route with my water, then my food and later the bill.

The guy probably delayed my meal by 30 minutes by grabbing the waitress and asking her a stupid 20 questions while she was trying to bring out my food. Questions like if she'd ever been to Mexico before. He had been.

I was ready to get up and punch the guy out for her, so I could get my food and eat it in peace.

Thanks a lot. Really.

I checked next week's forecast online.

I have an old friend coming in from out of town next week, and I was curious to see if the weather was going to be nice to him during his visit.

Well, there's a high of -4 degrees Celsius and a low of -22 degrees Celsius. That's pretty much the forecast for the whole week.

Basically, it's going to be kind of warm out or kind of cold out. It's good to know the weather could go either way. Though I already knew that before I checked the weather.

That's why meteorologists get paid the big bucks, folks.

Friendship

"The only way to have a friend is to be one." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendships are a lot of work. It's very easy to get wrapped up in the here and now of your own life and lose touch with a friend.

And it's easy to assume that everyone already has their own life and isn't interested in hanging out with you, but you don't know until you ask.

According to Life's Little Instruction Calendar Volume XI: "The words, 'Would you like to join me for coffee?' can result in one of the greatest romances of all time." I would add to that friendships as well.

Premature

I am not a fan of toilets that flush automatically, mainly because of premature flushing.

If a toilet flushes while you are sitting down, instead of standing up, you end up getting a bidet experience.

Rest in Peace.

Why is it we get so attached to our favourite actors and the characters they play? It's not like we know them personally.

I've been watching the TV show Angel lately.

In typical Joss Whedon style, one of the main characters, Doyle, was killed off unexpectedly.

I was so upset, I almost cried. Whedon builds characters so well. I felt like I lost a friend.

Anyhow, Doyle was played by Glenn Quinn, probably better known for his role on Roseanne. He was Mark, Becky's husband.

Anyhow, like his character in Angel, Quinn killed himself. Except instead of a heroic act to save a group of immigrants, like in Angel, Quinn killed himself by overdosing on heroin at the age of 32.
When I found that out, I was even more depressed.

Whedon, by the way, got his start writing for Roseanne.

A new beginning...

Beginnings are always rough as you struggle to gain familiarity.

I've been doing karate for five or six years now. My intensity and skill have gone up significantly enough that last spring I was invited to train with the provincial team.

I was feeling pretty good about myself, because it was a long sought after dream of mine. Then I showed up at the first team practice and it was a nightmare. I couldn't keep up and I had my butt kicked by all the team veterans.

So finally I decided I was going to get into better shape, to at least keep up.

Cardio fitness and core muscle strength are important parts of karate. So this year, I signed up for aerobic classes and ball stability classes.

I've always said the more I train karate, the more I feel like a beginner. (There are only so many moves in karate, but there is always something new to learn about executing those moves.) But I forgot what it was like to be a real beginner.

On the first day of aerobics, which is basically an intense dance class, I was stumbling all over my feet. And the ball stability class . . . well, at one point, I fell off the ball, dropping my barbells.

When I started karate I was bad, a stumbling idiot. It took me a year and a half to really catch on.

And now, luckily, by the second aerobics class, the steps were a little easier.

Love/Hate

I hate food that has a smell that lingers on your clothes.

I just came back from having Indian Food. It tasted good, but, two hours later, the smell is starting to get to me.

I'll probably have to change my clothes.

Behind these walls...

Neighbouring apartment tenants are always interesting to listen to through the walls. It's not that you want to listen to them. It's just that apartment walls are so thin.

I used to live beside sadomasochists once. That was disturbing. I used to live beside a guy who talked to himself while playing video games, which was also disturbing.

Now I live beside someone who watches Friends around the clock. And my other neighbour has two-day long parties with all of his closest male friends.

What's my contribution to my apartment's noise pollution?

Well, lately, I like to sing James Blunt songs in falsetto, with or without the CD to accompany me. I'm sure my neighbours love me, especially since I can't sing.

On Sex and the City, they would call my singing "secret single behavior," an activity you engage in when no one else is around.

For me, I like to sing, but I'll never let anyone hear me do it. Well, hearing me through the walls is okay, as long as I don't know the people listening.

Living for the weekend...

Why do weeks with stat holidays in them drag?

You get a short work-week. It should go by quickly, but it never does.

Keeping it real.

Someone just e-mailed me these fine words of wisdom:

"People seem normal until you get to know them, so be brief with people."

Quiet Time.

After having to rescue a total stranger from a drug overdose last New Year's Eve, and having a party guest throw up in my washing machine two New Year's Eves ago, I decided it would be best to spend a quiet New Year's at home this year with my family.

I was in bed by 11:59 p.m. and enjoyed the moonlight pouring in from my bedroom window, as well as the sound of fireworks from some distant party down the street. That moment was probably the best New Year's Eve I've ever had.

New Year's Eve Party

I don't get the whole "drinking yourself stupid on New Year's Eve" thing.

Who wants to start the New Year off with a hangover?

Going to the movies.

When you go to a movie you are subjected to, literally, a half hour of commercials and previews. I know. I timed it. By the time the movie starts, you don't necessarily feel like watching a movie anymore. Either that or you've forgotten which movie it was you actually paid to see.

The Meaning of Life.

It's funny how a bad movie can turn out to be really good. You just need a few days to think about it.

I watched the movie Elizabethtown last week. I didn't think it was that great.

It was kind of boring. There was too much talking. I was expecting some light quick-paced romantic comedy. It wasn't.

Upon thinking about it, it was a lot more. It's about how we get so tunnel visioned in life.

In this case, up and coming shoe designer, Drew Baylor, spends eight years working on a shoe design that bombs once it hits the market.

"A shoe is not just a shoe. It connects us to the Earth." It's my favourite line in the movie, because we always find away to overrate what we do.

Of course, while Baylor was working on the perfect shoe, he missed spending time with his father, who dies right around the time his shoe design fails.

Baylor plans to kill himself, since his whole life, which was wrapped around a shoe, is over. Baylor is fired from his job and dropped by all his so-called-friends, who only cared about him when he was a success.

Baylor has to postpone his suicide plans to take care of his father's funeral arrangements. Along the way, he discovers there is a whole world out there that he's neglected because he was so focused on one goal.

I think the movie is true to life, although a little exaggerated. We do create our own little bubble of self-importance. We focus on one or two goals. And we can tend to shut others out while we work towards these goals.

So the question becomes, what are we missing in our lives? What should we let in to bring us more balance? You need to be balanced when the bubble pops. Otherwise, you'll fall, like Baylor almost did.

The Christmas Spirit

I've just been to hell and back, braving the big box stores during the Christmas rush.

I normally avoid the big box area. Not only is it always crowded, but it's poorly designed. Whoever laid out the streets likely took his cat with him. Wherever his cat walked, that's where he laid down some pavement. There is no rhyme or reason to the crisscross of streets.

Anyhow, I went because I was desperate. I knew exactly what I wanted to get my brother, the last person on my list. I just couldn't find it, so I risked near collisions with bad drivers and rude shoppers in store after store after store.

The Christmas shopping is done now. My hard-earned money went straight from my bank account into the pockets of Best Buy and Winners. I'm just doing my part to make sure the rich stay rich and the poor get poorer.

While most of us are in financial debt in one way or another, we had no problem handing over $36.8 billion to stores during the month of December in 2005, according to Statistics Canada. This year our spending is supposed to increase six to seven per cent.

I think the left-leaning magazine Adbusters has it right. We should have a "Buy Nothing Christmas" and stick it to The Man. Of course, the economy might then collapse . . .

Ghost of holidays past...

It's funny how some people can leave an imprint on your soul. Occasionally, the memory of them sneaks up on you, like an old ghost.

It doesn't matter that they hurt you years ago. And it's probably a good thing they live miles away. You haven't thought of them in a caring way in years, but suddenly you find yourself missing them deeply, even needing them.

You pick up the phone and put it down again. It's better to keep those feelings under lock and key.

It's a gamble.

You occasionaly hear of someone who steals hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years from their work to support a gambling habbit.

This doesn't make sense to me. I don't know what the maximum pot is at a casino, but if you are able to score $200,000 from your work without it going missing, I say, don't gamble it. Quit your job, take your newly claimed cash and move to another province, perhaps under a different name.

It will be like you won, but without all the hours in a casino.

Living Skies

I am reading a collection of short stories by Angie Abdou called Anything Boys Can Do.

In the story "Shady Valley," Abdou has a nice description of Saskatchewan, a very underrated Canadian province.

"The sky is huge, enveloping them whole in a turquoise blue more brilliant than any tropical ocean. You can see and see and see and see - no trees or mountains blocking the view. The land rolls in a lullaby covered with bright yellow canola . . ."

People can easily admire the ocean or the mountains, but it takes a special eye to appreciate the vastness of the sky or of a field.

Blink of an Eye

December and January aren't real months to me. They just whip by in the blink of an eye.

I'm still not in Christmas mode yet, even though I've been to one Christmas concert, and one of the local radio stations switched to playing all Christmas music, all the time, for the month of December.

Technically, according to Wal-Mart, it's been Christmas since the day after Halloween. It amazes me how quickly they can reshelf their seasonal aisle.

Yes, I'm certainly not in Christmas mode, even though the media is already propelling towards the New Year. I saw my first "top stories of 2006" story.

Christmas is already old news before it happens now.

Killers and Sins

A good friend of mine with a little too much time on his hands decided to anagram my name.

He came up with "seen any killers" and "really keen sins."

Yikes. Killers and sins? No fuzzy bunny rabbits for me. Perhaps it's appropriate because I covered the crime beat for two years as a journalist, which is why nothing phases me anymore.

Now I'm onto more uplifting subject matter - education and the arts, which is why nothing phases me.