[ Thursday, September 26, 2002 | 11:56 p.m. ] This was supposed to be the jubilant I-got-Diesel-back-and-all-is-right-with-the-world post. Emphasis on the supposed to be. I got Diesel back alright. I sent him off on Monday evening, and he was sent back to me by Wednesday afternoon. No one was home when the courier came, of course, so we picked him up tonight. And... The letter enclosed with him in the box said: "While your system was in for service, I found bad hard drive in the unit. I tested the unit using golden hard drive without any problem. Please contact Dell Computer regarding the hard drive." Um... no shit! I was under the impression that I'd sent the laptop out to have the hard drive replaced, not to confirm that it needed to be replaced. There were a couple of little semi-cylindrical pieces of foam that were lose in the box it came back in; two of them are now scotch-taped to my forehead to look like huge, angrily-slanted eyebrows. It makes me feel good. I hate being jerked around, and I hate it when I get all excited about things, but they just turn out crappily in the end. Dude, I'm not getting a Dell! *** I just called Dell Tech Support, and I am now on hold. I can feel the pressure in my brain building. I'm about to snap. "All support engineers are still assisting other callers. Please continue to hold for the next available engineer." Stupid Dell Canada. At least Dell USA has a phone system that lets you choose the genre of music you hear while on hold. That is, instead of muzak, you can elect to listen to say, alternative. The sound quality's not great, but it's still pretty neat. *** Well, I've just been talking with Ian, a pleasant guy with a nice British-type accent. He seemed completely baffled; he'd never heard of this sort of thing happening before. I'm now on hold again as he tries to figure out how to ensure that this gets resolved. Apparently, as I'd had a slight suspicion of, the guy I talked to on Saturday followed the wrong procedure. For a hard drive replacement, they're just supposed to send you the new drive, and once everything's up and running fine, you send back the faulty one. Ah, well. Apparently I can expect that to show up on Tuesday or Wednesday. Life as the Ter-Rat can be ever so trying.

[ Tuesday, September 24, 2002 | 12:27 a.m. ] As usual, it's been a while. I haven't updated in ages, though I always mean to. I make notes on the things that I'm going to mention. I have all these plans, but then I go out, or there's a movie on TV, or I fall asleep. But now it's 9:53 p.m., Monday night, there's nothing on TV, as far as I know, and I'm going to do this. (Not that I think you're sitting on the edges of your seats, waiting for me to post. It's more that if I don't record things, I soon forget them, and I want to hold on to these times.) So what's happening? Football. Things aren't looking so good for our Warriors. I went to the home game two Saturdays ago, where we were thrashed by Ottawa, 26–11. We were looking pretty good in the first half. Things fell apart after that, but I still had a great time. I read that Windsor beat us this weekend. Frickin' Windsor! That's just so sad. I'll still keep the faith, but that's disheartening. Dad and I are going up this Friday for the game against Western; he's not too optimistic. I think they can do it. Last Sunday, Sean and I went and saw City by the Sea. When I first suggested it, he shot it down, but later confessed that he hadn't remembered what it was about, so he just assumed that it was a "girly" movie. When have I ever suggested a girly movie? Really. He was just asking for a thrashing. Unfortunately, it turned out to be less violent than he'd hoped, like many of the movies we see. After the movie we swung by the used CD place in the plaza, where I picked up Rush's Vapor Trails and he bought My Science Project on DVD, described by someone on the IMDb as the "Citizen Kane of cheesy, 1980s, teen sci-fi." Apparently it used to be one of his favourite movies. We watched it later that afternoon. It was... interesting. It's from the eighties... (By the way, Vapor Trails is f*cking awesome!) And speaking of movies: Travels With My Aunt (last Saturday night, at home, TVO) — A real disappointment. I was expecting great things. The book was wonderful, and had the kind of wacky, adventure filled plot that I thought would make a great movie. And Maggie Smith played the aunt. Unfortunately, it was dull, dull, dull. They left in some of the funny parts, but completely changed the ending. C-. Magnolia (last Saturday night/Sunday morning, at home, Showcase) — Wonderful, as always. I missed a couple of parts watching the crappy Travels, which I later regretted. Magnolia is a great movie. And the soundtrack kicks ass. I had it on all weekend. A+. Death to Smoochy (Tuesday night, at Sean's, DVD) — As good as I'd hoped it would be. A lot of people panned it when it came out, but I can't see why. I thought it was hilarious and wonderfully off-the-wall. A-. Scary Movie (this Sunday morning, at home, HDTMN) — Nasty and stupid, but quite funny. I watched it because it was in HD. I did love the Usual Suspects bit. B-. Wonder Boys (this Sunday morning, and about a million other times this month, at home, TMN) — I've decided to be more decisive. In the past, whenever people asked what my favourite movie was, I wasn't able to answer. Well, I've chosen. Wonder Boys is now officially my absolute favourite movie. A+. (Also, Rush is my favourite band, and C-Plus Tahiti Treat is my favourite soft drink.) I'm sure I've watched more, as The Movie Network is now my constant companion, but those are all I can think of off the top of my head. Oh, I also got Monsters, Inc. from Sean, but I haven't watched it yet. Oh, yeah, one more big thing happened last weekend: our marks from last term went up. While I was quite happy with my individual marks for each course, my average went down a depressing 1.4% from last term, dragging my cumulative average down 0.7%. I managed an eighty in the hated Business Ethics, despite the essay, and pulled my Calculus mark up six percent from last time, despite missing about a third of the lectures. I dropped in CS, but then I didn't have too many places to go but down. As for the present, I sent Diesel, my baby—my laptop—away on a little trip today. He's off to get his hard drive replaced, after I procrastinated for almost two months. I hope he's back soon; I forgot to ask how long this process would take, roughly. After leaving him in the hands of the Purolator guy, I waited for Mom, with whom I went to Yorkdale this evening. At the food court, I opted for KFC, where I got popcorn chicken and Pepsi Blue. Sweet. Later we walked around for a few minutes, realised we weren't actually looking for anything, and ended up in HMV. I picked up four CD's: Dave Matthews' Busted Stuff, King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King, and two from Rush, A Farewell to Kings and Permanent Waves. Did I mention that Rush are coming back to town? We picked up our tickets tonight at Jean Machine, which doubles as a Ticketmaster outlet. I was, and still am, very psyched. I can't wait. RUSH!!! *ahem* So this is my life. It's become very routine. I get up. I got to work. I go over to Sean's most days. Not Mondays, because that's his role-playing night, and not Thursdays, because that's Swiss Chalet night with Dad (and seemingly will be for at least the next decade), but otherwise, it's just assumed that we'll get together. Which is weird. I have a boyfriend. Isn't that weird? "These are incredible. Incredible!" "Finish the rest of that joint, James, you can start chewing on the box."

[ Wednesday, September 18, 2002 | 8:58 a.m. ] I slipped in the shower this morning and landed on my elbow. It was quite painful. I mean, not that painful, I guess; I didn't start crying or anything. The thing is, it's still sore. *whine*

[ Saturday, September 14, 2002 | 10:43 a.m. ] I'm an idiot. I'm a stupid fucking dumbass idiot! Goddammit!! So, I was at Ticketmaster.ca, I searched for tickets, and I got two on the floor. The floor! But did I snap them up? No, no. I wasn't sure. I gave them up. I gave them up because I'm a stupid fucking moron. When I searched again a few seconds later all I could get were seats in the stands, off to the side and slightly farther back. I could've had FLOOR SEATS if I wasn't such a DICKHEAD!!! Well, I suppose I've learned something from this.

[ Saturday, September 14, 2002 | 9:57 a.m. ] How do you like the tweaks I made to the layout and the colours? It's much more gentle on the eyes, I think. I'll tell you this, it feels good to be using my baby, Diesel, again. Not that I've replaced his hard drive yet. I'm running off a floppy right now. Of course, I really shouldn't bore people with this crap. I'm always making a big deal about what text editor I'm using, and that kind of thing. Really, who gives two shits? Anyhow, there's much fun to catch up on. Last Saturday, a week ago today, I went up to Waterloo with my mom to see the football game. We were playing McMaster and both schools' frosh came, which meant that it was pretty full and crazy. El came with us, which was cool, though she did sleep through the first half. While talking to El I learned all sorts of odd things, including that a whole boatload of Havergal people ended up at UW this year. (I was only aware of two people even considering it. One of those was El, who went. The other was Karen, who didn't.) The game itself was a little painful. Mac killed us, 34–3. Too bad—we gave them a run for their money last year. Still, I had a good time, and it was great to see El. We wore our pink ties! On Sunday I again did something interesting. Sean took me to Sibbald Point Provincial Park, on Lake Simcoe. The weather was perfect. We went swimming off the rock beach, had lunch at the little fast food place/supply store, and walked around for a while. I got a couple of little cuts on my feet from the rocks, but Sean's was worse, and he was wearing those water shoe things. He did do slightly more walking in the water than me, though, since he kept grabbing me and carrying me around. He also swam in sunglasses. He swam underwater in ordinary, land-use sunglasses; that's odd. It was great. Afterwards we did the usual: back to his place for TV and DVD's. The other co-op showed up at work on Monday. She'd been at school the week before, doing frosh week stuff. She's in regular math, since it is a math job, after all, and she seems nice enough. We haven't really talked yet, though I've already said as much to her as I did in the whole term to the guy I worked with the last time around. (Note: I know she's in math not from talking to her, but from looking her up in UWdir.) Overall, work's pretty good. I don't mind being there at all. I got paid yesterday, and it felt like winning the lottery after last term's government job. Nice people, great location--I'm happy there, for now. As for my evenings this week, the unifying activity was movie-watching. Monday night I came home and watched The Sum of Us on DVD. My mom bought it months ago, but I just took the plastic off that night. On Tuesday I went over to Sean's. We stopped by Blockbuster on the way to pick up movies, and ordered a pizza back at his place. We watched Changing Lanes first, since it was a rental. I liked it a fair bit, he didn't, really; he wanted more bloodshed. He was glad he didn't buy it. Afterwards, we watched The Count of Monte Cristo, which he did buy. It was okay. Not great, but not bad. By the end of the night we'd finished off the extra-large Pizza-Pizza pizza. That disturbed me a little. And don't picture the guy eating ten slices to my two or anything. I ate at least half of the damn thing. This relationship is not doing much for my health. Wednesday, I went over to Sean's again. He bought a P4 laptop on the way home. Eh. We picked up Swiss Chalet take-out and ate it in front of the TV, watching Friends. The other night, while he was driving me home, he'd asked me what I wanted to do the next night. I was really tired (I might've even fallen asleep after the last movie), so I answered, "Sleep." As it turned out, that's what we did. He was out before the end of the second episode of Friends. I switched to Next Gen at eight, but I didn't make it through the first half. The alarm he'd set on his cell phone woke us both around eleven. So much for getting home early to placate my mother. (And thank goodness for the alarm—imagine what would've happened if we hadn't woken up.) On Thursday, I had my traditional dinner with dad at Swiss Chalet. Some things will never change. *cough* Back at home, I watched C.S.I., a show I don't like. However, it was shot in HD, so I watched it anyway. It would seem that most of CBS's prime time shows are in HD now, which is great, except that they pretty much all suck. Last night brought two more movies on TMN. I watched Dracula 2000 solely because it was in HD, and I was fairly entertained. It wasn't horrible or anything. I thought they left things a little oddly resolved at the end, however. Later, mom ordered pizza and we watched Almost Famous. She didn't like it. She doesn't understand rock and roll, or the rock lifestyle. As a feminist, she finds it quite repulsive. I thought it was a decent movie, but a little too much of a fantasy. I saw a little Wesley Crusher in the kid: young, brilliant, sweet and innocent, and treated in a very unrealistic manner by the adults around him. Fifteen year-old kids with no proper training do not get to pilot Federation starships, and the flagship, no less. (That being said, I know that the story is based on Crowe's real experiences. Unforunately, that didn't make it seem any more real to me.) I fell asleep on the floor of the computer room listening to Rush's Fly By Night. Now I'm sitting here, thinking about the thing that's been popping into my head every few hours this week. Marks, baby, marks. They go up on Quest tomorrow. I base my self-worth on my marks, so this is important. Ooh. Ten o'clock. They're on sale! Ta-ta for now, I must buy concert tickets. Got an itching to rock A hate for small talk I'm funny that way Got my sights on the stars Won't get that far But I'll try anyway

[ Thursday, September 12, 2002 | 3:48 p.m. ] I'm writing at work again. Not that I'm actually going to open up my blog here. I'm far too paranoid for that. I'm writing this in a telnet session to fitch, in pico. But now that I think about it, why should I even go to all this trouble? I just had a much better idea. Lynx. *** Well, I fiddled, but I'd like to try things out at home before I commit to anything. *** Well, lynx is a possibility, but I'm going to rule it out for day-to-day use since it's got issues with the date and time fields. Still, it is fun. (Note: This is not the post that I promised yesterday. That's still to come.)

[ Wednesday, September 11, 2002 | 2:40 p.m. ] I know, I know. I thought I was getting off to a better start this month, but it doesn't seem to be turning out that way. It's like Jenny described this summer: I'm not in school, and therefore have no homework, and hence nothing to procrastinate from doing, yet I work, and so am not idle. Right now I'm at work, kind of in between tasks. I'm waiting for something else to do. Not that I mean to give you the impression that my day is filled with short bursts of work with long periods of waiting in between; it's really the opposite. Anyhow, I've got to go, but I just wanted to write something, and to make a promise to myself that I'd write something proper tomorrow. I hope school's going well for all you normal people. Later. :-)

[ Wednesday, September 4, 2002 | 01:46 a.m. ] And apparently El already did the whole Cirque V.I.P. thing, but I've be neglecting my blog reading as well as posting, so just ignore the last paragraph of the post below and read her blog instead. She probably got to drink more than I did anyway. (I was exaggerating a bit. I had about a glass and a half. I looked rather under-age, and they seemed reluctant to give me anything other than cranberry juice at first.)

Back in the saddle again [ Wednesday, September 4, 2002 | 12:24 a.m. ] As I predicted, it's been a while since I last posted. Rather than dwell on past happenings, though, I'm going to spring straight to the present. (I may revisit Lake Placid sometime, though there's really not much to tell. It was the same as every other year.) I've got three interesting things that happened in the last twenty-four hours alone. Last night (Monday) my dad drove me down to Waterloo. As well as stopping by to see Ellie, my main purpose in going there was to see the Battle of Waterloo, i.e. Waterloo & Laurier's season opening football match-up. Like the commercial says, it was worth the drive to Waterloo. The game was close all along, but going into the final minutes, Laurier was up 16–12. We blew what looked like our last good opportunity to score, and a number of people left, sure that the game was in the bag. Then with about 27 seconds to go, we got the ball again. The first play did nothing. The second down saw a nice pass into the end zone, but the receiver couldn't hold onto it. Finally, on the third down, with 6 seconds on the clock, we did it. It was so intense. Everyone was screaming, jumping up and down, and that sort of thing. Dad and I couldn't believe the guy made the catch; there were three people on him, but he still managed. We didn't get the convert, but the touchdown still brought the score up to 18–16 for us, so Waterloo took the game. It was an awesome ending, one that had me on a high for the next several hours. Unfortunately, that meant that I stayed up a little later than I'd intended. I'd hoped to get some sleep last night, since today was to be a big day. It was my first day at my new job, working for the publishing company, and it was fairly uneventful. I was shown around a bit, and given plenty of stuff to read and familiarise myself with. About the only thing I've got to report is that I've got my very own cubicle. Isn't that exciting? A cubicle. Cool. And in that cubicle is an iMac, with internet access and games, unlike at my last co-op job. Unfortunately, I'll probably have real work to do this time around, unlike at my last co-op job. Overall, it seems okay. The location's wonderful. The door of the building's about two metres from the entrance to the subway, and the trip home takes about as long as it did last term. I'm also close to my honey—I'm sorry, did I just say "my honey"—so we might be able to hook up from time to time. Anyhow, today I went in a little before nine, skipped lunch, and took off at four. I had to get home for tonight's big plans. So sometime last week, my mother decided that we had to see Cirque du Soleil. The only tickets she could get were some ridiculously expensive ones for tonight that turned out to be so-called V.I.P. tickets. This turned out to be much cooler than I expected. Instead of having to struggle with parking (it was at Ontario Place, and there was a concert at the Amphitheatre tonight, too) we got to park in a special lot right across from the entrance. After we picked up our tickets at the box office, we confusedly wandered over to the V.I.P. tent and got our cool passes. Before long I was happy that I hadn't eaten a morsel of food all day; we were soon overwhelmed with as many hors d'oeuvres as we could eat and as much champagne as we could drink. Similarly, at intermission, we got as many desserts as we could eat, and as much champagne as we could drink. The food and drink were both good, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. As for the performance itself, it was great, but not incredibly, astoundingly amazing. The overall experience was one I won't soon forget, though. Now I need to go downstairs and see if my mom's fallen asleep in front of the TV. I can't believe that I have to go to work tomorrow. I can't believe I've got four more months of this. Not that I really want to be doing assignments or anything, but I'd really just like to be able to wear jeans every day, you know?