the_goren_show: (purple)
So two of my good friends are without power with all the rest on the US Eastern Seaboard and I'm worrying about them being warm enough and having enough to eat. I know they're both okay and hope that the power is back on soon for them but the waiting to confirm what I know is difficult. I just have to have faith that they will be alright and will let me know when they are back.

I have all kinds of worry about this but I'm trying to not let it get to me. Trying and not really succeeding as you can tell. I never was much good at waiting.

MUCH LATER EDIT - Both of them came through it fine, though one was without power longer than the other. Still spent a lot of time worried on this end though and hope it doesn't happen again.
the_goren_show: (thinking)


... I think I'm still trying to figure this crap out ... )

And for my friend, this short message. )

Also, there will be no NaNoWriMo this year. )
----

"You're too much like me Frank - you can't stand labels. Someone tries to put me in a box, I just naturally want out." ~ Abby St. James to Frank Leo from the TV series The Bridge

Silence

Sep. 23rd, 2011 09:17 am
the_goren_show: (Default)
The loneliest thing there is is a smartphone that used to chirp regularly with messages having fallen silent.

I keep checking and there keeps being no messages.

I feel forlorn and forgotten, and though I probably deserve the silent treatment, I still hurt.

Nothing to do but carry on.
the_goren_show: (Default)
So to make a long story short... I went on vacation in Drumheller for a couple of days.  I drove out, booked a room with a Jacuzzi and hauled a troublemaker along with me.  I completed a friend's challenge, had a lot of fun, spent some money and recharged.  Life is good!  Below is the story of the proof of my insanity.

Read more... )
the_goren_show: (9-11)
Ten years already since I stood looking up fearfully at silent skies with the images of the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea seared into my brain.

Ten years since the world shifted irreparably for me and changed the person I was, for the better and for the worse.

Ten long years to heal.

I will never, can never, forget.

Success

Sep. 10th, 2011 09:39 pm
the_goren_show: (no)
To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded.
the_goren_show: (serious muse)
 


I'm trying to be strong and it's not easy.  This song is one of my favourites when I feel like this.

Lyrics under cut )
the_goren_show: (Default)
 So many troubles and none worth reporting about so I'm going to put this up here and leave it for my friend Sky.



Enjoy, because who really knows?

Snow Day

Apr. 2nd, 2011 08:19 pm
the_goren_show: (musing)
So, overnight a whole whack of heavy wet late season snow has fallen and crippled the city.  The irony of course is that the one weekend I felt like going out and doing things, I can't.  The car is snowed in the garage (10-15 cm fell with another 5 to 10 possible before the snow stops) and the buses can't make it up the hill so we are all alone with our low class neighbours in the rathole on the hill.  This sucks.

Luckily we are on the hilltop, because tomorrow it's all supposed to melt and people in low lying parts of the city will probably get flooded out.

Ah Calgary in springtime, you never fail to fuck us up!
the_goren_show: (Default)
 So, not out of any true conviction on our parts but out of a desire to support a family member who wholeheartedly believes in living green, our household participated in Earth Hour this year.

Yes, I sat in the dark with a cat who kept falling off the sofa and talked over nothing much with the others in the room.  It was strange because the streetlight outside the window was enough to light up the room.  It wasn't the worst way to spend a Saturday night except for the do or die hockey game my team was embroiled in that I was missing thanks to sitting in the dark.  As for the cat, I think her eyes are starting to go or she was seriously touch drunk with all the attention she got.  She isn't usually quite so demonstrative with her affection but with three people sitting around talking, she was in heaven.  She is a senior cat after all, so maybe there is something to the eyes thing, but it was unintentionally hilarious because we'd be talking about something then *THUD*.

*pause*  Cat?

*nod*  Cat.  Touch drunk cat.  
 
*pause*  Is she hurt?

*cat leaps up into my lap and meows*
 
Apparently not.

*resume conversation*
 
As an aside, my team won their game.  They still have to win the next five against good or better teams but there's still hope for the playoffs.
the_goren_show: (musing)
If it got any slower at work, I might have to kill someone to liven things up and that's bad since they drop like flies anyway around here.  I am bored out of my gourd with nothing going on here and no brain power to do anything with while I'm sitting here looking at the ceiling or the floor.

Here's a gem that broke up my day - little old stubborn (as in almost deaf but refuses to wear his old hearing aids to hear because they aren't good and won't pay to buy good hearing aids so he can hear) man comes up to me and wants me to do something for him.  I, having tired some months ago of the long and complicated (and loud, I have to YELL to be heard) conversations with this man that usually require me to repeat things three times at the top of my lungs, ask him what I can do for him in as few words as possible.

He eyes me a second and asks if I've ever been in the army.  "Very efficient," he says as he wanders off after we do our business.  I had to bite my tongue.  I can't have a pleasant conversation with you, you deaf old fart, because you're too cheap to buy good hearing aids!

Toddlers would be less trouble, I swear.

Snow Day

Feb. 7th, 2011 08:02 am
the_goren_show: (sigh)
As in I was out in the snow when I should have been staying home and off the roads.  Nothing like creeping along snow covered roads churned up by the massive tires on a bus into ruts that send you randomly bouncing off across them like a steel ball in a pinball game while praying you don't actually have to come to a full stop at anytime before you reach your destination.

I almost didn't make it out of the back alleyway and only sheer luck managed to be on my side so that I could get out.  The alleyway runs north/south and the whole of it beyond where I turn into my garage has been reduced to sheer ice - that's almost a whole block of ice covered with at least six to seven inches of light fluffy unpackable snow.  If you think of icing sugar or cornstarch, you just about have the consistency of the crap I drove to work in, with roughly the same properties.  It's not wet enough to pack down under the wheels and almost acts like a liquid as you make your best effort to get the hell out of a thick drift of it.  I could not go north, I had to reverse and go south and back out of the alley, which was cleared of ice only by the unseasonably warm days we had leading up to this latest snow dump, onto the usually busy street that wasn't so busy.

Some people apparently do get snow days.

With around six inches of snow out there on top of icy roads and the dreaded white crap still drifting down from the sky to the tune of another six inches, getting the car home should be interesting.  I may just be leaving it here and stuffing myself onto public transit with the rest of the masses just for safety's sake.
the_goren_show: (facepalm)
 Dear Self,

Next time you decide to put something small like a gift card away for safe keeping, could you possibly choose a spot where you might fucking well find it in the same decade in which you put it away?

Especially if  it is a gift card sort of thing because this two fucking days of looking for it gets tedious.

No love, me.


Dear LJ,  

Hurry up and make your site Blackberry/mobile compatible because typing this entry four times over gets really tedious as did having to fire up the desktop computer and come online to correct the formatting.

No love, me.

Adding insult to injury, there is a Blackberry ad at the top of the screen as I correct this long after I should have been in bed.
the_goren_show: (purple)
I've only been at work about twenty minutes now and my day is totally ruined and not (solely) because it was -30 C when I left for work.

The first bit of bad news is that my immediate superior in the madhouse that is the company I work for is no longer with the company.  I'm adrift now in dangerous waters without a Deakins to guide or protect me and that means I am very likely to get screwed over in the interim until a new leader can be assigned and dropped in on my head.  The night guy is worried about what is likely to happen here if the company owners (not the brightest stars in the sky) start screwing things up with scheduling and unqualified fill-in people.  I'm not.  I know what will happen.  They will mess things up badly, the condo board will go ballistic and I will end up switching companies again if I decide to stick with this job.  I've seen it happen before, not just here but in the big towers.  For now, I have to hunker down and wait and play the company man - a role I positively suck at by the way.

The second one worries me more... )
One way or another, there will be wank to be had over this crap, there always is.  I'm going to need a drink when I get home.  Maybe two drinks... large drinks.
the_goren_show: (do not want)

I've been thinking in this vein for a couple of weeks now and it disturbs me.  Yes, my thinking can be a little twisty but I tend to do things like obey the law.  Partly, this is because to keep my job I can't be convicted of a criminal offense but it's mostly a fear of failing.  Failure to follow the rules leaves me feeling guilty and I have guilt issues aplenty without piling fresh ones on top.

So, other than the odd turn through the growing up phase where I smoked pot, drank too much, sometimes drove while inebriated, and did other things I'm not very proud of, I'm just about as straight an arrow as they come.  I don't speed through residential areas or playground zones.  I don't text or answer my phone while driving.  I always try to just go along and get along.  But this new development makes me ramble and froth at the mouth so click the cut at your own peril.

Which is why all this pisses me off so much.... )



I think I get why criminals are criminals now.  They are because they can be, because they've never had to or don't care about the people they hurt or the consequences of their actions.  By defending my untraditional family, I will be at risk of becoming a criminal, but you know what, it don't fucking pay to be an honest citizen so why the fuck not.


the_goren_show: (serious muse)
I don't know why I keep this journal some days.  I mean I have things I want to talk about and in the end, by the time I log in and get here, I can't be arsed to write about them.

This morning I girded my loins and took my newest fear of being in a car accident in both hands and drove through the craptacular weather (10 cm of snow in less than 24 hours) to fulfill a promise.  It took three times as long as usual to get there.  I drove in second gear most of the way and muttered "It's a sedan not a SUV" to the assholes riding my bumper.  I watched a lot of SUV's and minivans slip sliding all over the place but other than when we hit thick clumps of snow, Max behaved admirably for being a sedan.

He's still not a 4X4 and I won't be going out again until work Monday morning.  It's odd how anxieties develop out of the tiniest of incidents.  One little thump on the bumper and I'm suddenly a white knuckle driver.

That pretty much pisses me off, but I'm pissed off a lot lately.  I may journal about it later, I may not.  No idea.  Going to go find something else to do for a while now.
the_goren_show: (facepalm)
Screw that, a very bad week because of winter blasts constantly below -20 C and oftentimes with the windchill reaching -30 C.  The snow that falls gets packed to the roads thanks to the snowmelt stuff they use to try and keep it clear.  The snowmelt cakes to the cars and gets everywhere - on pants, coats, shoes.  Worst of all is that when it is constantly that cold, the snowmelt mixture can't keep up and the roads get black ice on them as the blowing snow polishes the packed down and melted snow and slush to a perfect sheen.

I drive carefully in these conditions, erring on the slow side of cautious when going down hills because you never know when the bottom of the slope will be black ice.  After a hard mushy brained week where I was distracted constantly by a lot of shit, I was looking forward to driving carefully to a millionaires neighbourhood, doing my house check and then going home to settle in to stay warm for two days until I go back to work and it's supposed to be a little warmer.  Mr. Max and I set out for the slow inexorable drive to the big house and then home through a clear but bitterly cold day.

I never got out of sight of work before the big fuck with me hammer fell. )
Needless to say, I ache and I'm not sure how I'm going to face getting back in the car tomorrow.  It's supposed to be a little warmer and the city should have had time to go out and sand and grade the roads but I'm going to have to take an Ativan to turn the key and I hate that.  I don't like having to be drugged to do anything, much less drive on hazardous roads.  Monday, I will have to take a different and notoriously accident prone road to work and I'm not happy about that at all because everyone else will be in the same boat as I.  The street I usually take and am comfortable with is closed for three weeks for utility work, so I'm stuck with the deadly route.

I hate winter.
the_goren_show: (uh...no)
Let's see... what happened.

Max had another tantrum.  Unfortunately for him, I now know what buttons to push to cut him off at the pass.  I may stand a chance of taming the wild Nissan Maxima after all.

Christmas was had and gone.  Good and bad in equal measure as I spent it with not my family of accident but of choice.

I was happy for a day.  I thought I promised myself I wouldn't make that mistake again.  I had hope but it slipped away before I could cherish it properly.

Offered to send my novel beginning draft to a friend for feed back.  Got my first rejection.  Hurt more than I expected it to but I didn't let it show to them.  No use making them feel guilty.

Yep, another banner weekend.

Humbug

Dec. 12th, 2010 08:52 pm
the_goren_show: (uh...no)
Six hours in one of the larger malls in Calgary today to finish up the Christmas shopping.  Six hours of being shoved this way and that while dodging the entitled with strollers the approximate size of SUVs.

It's no wonder the Christmas spirit dies off a little more each year.

On the plus side, short of one or two things, the shopping is done.  What's left can be picked up near where I work so I can drive home and just put my feet up while the shopping mad make themselves insane hunting for that one last thing.

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