One of my resolutions for 2011 is to write more and to that end I have declared January official Write At Least One Blog Entry Per Day month. This sometimes leads to what one might call filler posts.
Such as this one.
Oh, here’s something kind of weird. As of tonight the Vancouver Canucks are the top team in the NHL, with 55 points and a record of 28-8-5. They have the fewest losses of any team and are tied for the most wins with Pittsburgh and Detroit but have two games in hand on both teams. I’m not sure when the Canucks were last on top of the league in January but I’m thinking it was approximately never, so it’s nice to see now. Go Canucks and all that.
Maybe they just needed 40 years to warm up and become Stanley Cup champions!
I rang in the new year in a way I never have before.
On the bus.
As you might surmise, this was not by design, no matter how much I enjoy riding on public transit. Instead, I was working until 11:30 p.m. and as it happens my schedule and the bus schedule do not overlap conveniently, so as the hour struck midnight I found myself sitting on the #22 at the bus stop at the intersection of Broadway and Clark. The driver was kind enough to come onto the intercom and wish the six or so onboard a happy new year. It was nice.
The new neighbors at the corner of the street had a big and not-terribly-legal firepit raging in their backyard to help celebrate the passing of the old year, with a number of revelers in attendance, while the crisp night air was pierced by the occasional whistle and explosion of fireworks. I also watched as a guy walked directly down the middle of 19th Avenue while talking on his cellphone. Another on the other side of the street angrily shouted at…no one that I could see. But oh yes, he was angry.
All in all not a bad night and it was perhaps the first-ever New Year’s Eve on which I got snugglebunnies, so that was a bonus!
Last week I neglected to bring a lunch to work so I headed to a nearby food court and chose to consume some of the edible products offered at McDonald’s. Specifically I had a McChicken Meal, which consisted of:
McChicken sandwich. A couple of limp white bread buns filled with shredded lettuce, something like mayo in copious quantities and a deep-fried patty that was allegedly scraped together from some parts of a chicken. The most remarkable characteristic was the blandness of it all, like flavor was specifically worked out of it as an unnecessary part of the burger.
French fries. McDonald’s fries are often thought of favorably and I’m not sure why. Even if you move past the nerd debate over beef tallow/vegetable oil for the frying, the best thing I can offer is the fries are hot and crisp. They have the skins removed, so there’s no particular flavor (see a trend?) and enough salt to make a family of deer happy. I was going to use some ketchup on them but adding to the briny taters seemed like sprinkling gunpowder on your sticks of dynamite. Is it really necessary?
Coca Cola Zero. I tried to order water (even in a kill-the-earth plastic bottle) but they had none. I was given a cup to fill from the soda fountain. I figured they’d have soda water there but apparently not, so I chose the sugar-free option of CCZ. It has been several years since I’ve had a carbonated beverage so my sinus cavities were a bit frightened by the bubbles but it did indeed taste like the Coke I remember from days of yore. I can’t imagine how people drink this stuff regularly. I managed to finish the half-cup I filled and only as an attempt to wash away the salt coating my tongue, throat and everything else inside my body.
On a scale of 1 to 5 Twinkies, I rate the McChicken Meal 4.5 Twinkies. The Twinkie scale works in reverse, so more Twinkies is worse.
Somehow we’ve ended up with winter about a month and a half early.
After getting a decent dusting of snow — more than all of last winter, as previously mentioned — we are now in a cold snap where the temperature is expected to hit a low of -10C tonight. It’s also been rather breezy so there’s actual wind chill, like what they get on the Prairies when it drops to -80C and your nose freezes if you get too close to a window. Much like how we’ve had more snow already than last year, these few days of sub-freezing temperatures already beat what we had last winter.
Maybe the farmers’ almanac and the squirrels were right after all.
I promise my next update will not be weather or oat fudge-bar related.
There are all kinds of dire predictions going around about what Winter 2010/11 is going to be like in these parts, though I haven’t tracked down specifics. Something along the lines of ‘harsher’, so maybe more storms, colder or something. More colder storms, perhaps. This is according to the farmers’ almanac, squirrels gathering nuts and other proven scientific methods. In any case, my own observations have been that the snow on the mountains arrived earlier this year (in October) and we are getting a dusting of snow here even as I type, which is often not the case for November, so the possibility of More Snow (compared to the almost zero we had 2009/10) seems a distinct possibility.
I will endeavor to take some pictures tomorrow for my own cursing pleasure, but in the meantime:
When I changed my diet back in June 2008 I pretty much swore off sugar-filled snacks and since then have rarely indulged (the occasional strawberry cheesecake mini-Blizzard for example — mmm!) and when I do it’s usually with something unsexy like an apple or one of those Lindt 99% cocoa bars which, to the average person, tastes a lot like chalk with a vague notion of what they imagine to be chocolate added in somewhere.
My current workplace has a Starbucks on the ground floor of the tower. This is not surprising, as there will likely be a Starbucks in every building in every major city at some point. They have an oat fudge bar and from days of yore I remembered it as being quite yummy. When I espied several sitting on a plate in the glass display case, I felt a nostalgic yearning and ultimately caved in to the urge, buying one for the low price of $1.95 (HST not included).
I’m pretty sure the bar contained enough sugar to keep me on a sugar-filled bender for the rest of my shift, the evening and part of my shift the following day. To say the bar was sweet would be akin to noting that Jupiter is a big planet in comparison to Mercury. It was so sweet that it went from yummy straight over into gross. My nostalgic craving was cured, forever.
As I write this I am eating fat-free cottage cheese. Times — and taste buds — change.
Ah, public washrooms, the places you go when you can’t avoid not going.
My pet peeves, from the male perspective:
People who do not wad up paper towels before throwing them in the waste bin. This means the bin fills to overflowing much sooner than it otherwise might. Wadding up a damp paper towel is not a difficult task. It is not something that is likely to result in a pulled muscle or other injury or to cause mental anguish. And yet people don’t do this and the waste bin fills to overflowing and there’s a bunch of unwadded paper towels being trampled on all over the floor. Wad your paper towels, people!
Speaking of the floor, people who pee all around the urinal. The urinal is a trough designed specifically to pee in. Strangely this is insufficient for many people who, instead of peeing into the urinal, water the floor all around it. We’re talking real puddles here. I am not sure how one’s aim can be so very not true.
And speaking of puddles, the sink counter is likely to resemble a flood plain, with every bit of its surface covered in water because people cannot wash their hands without getting copious amounts of water splashed all about the counter. Some of it may even manages to get into the sink itself.
People who leave toilet seats unclean. I will say no more.
People who hog the hand dryers. If your hands are cold, stick them in your pockets. Or your pants. I don’t care, just get away from the hand dryer before you short it out from over-usage.
People who talk on their cell phones while engaged in #1 or #2. These may be the same people featured in points #2 and #4.
The smell. A clean washroom is okay, any other has a smell that is just wrong.
As always, there is probably more but that seems like a good starter list. I wonder if public washrooms would be nicer if people treated them as they would their own.
Or maybe I don’t want to see what the average person’s washroom looks like.
I said I was going to post more this month and then the opposite happens. Ain’t that always the way?
Actually, no, it’s not. But in this case it is!
After the last post on the 7th I ended up getting a job, so my schedule has been a bit nuttier than it had been previously. I do plan on posting more for the last week of the month, though. Really!
A little over a week ago I went to open a can of beans to enjoy with my dinner. Beans are full of protein and yummy and strangely do not give me gas. Opening a can for dinner is about as mundane an event as you can get.
But not this time.
My can opener, which is a fairly good one, seems to have been getting a bit dull lately, talking about soap operas and going on about the weather. Worst, though, it was also not as sharp as it once was. This meant that sometimes after a full rotation around the lid it would not have pierced through the metal, requiring me to go ’round a second time. Not a big deal, it’s not like I’m going to blow a muscle doing it twice.
However, one of the side effects of the repeat at opening is the lid will sometimes have strands peel off. Since these are very thin and metal, they are most comparable to piano wire.
You may see where this is going.
After cutting the lid a second time, I lifted the can opener slightly while it was still gripping the lid. The lid pulled up, indicating all was well. I then released the opener and put it aside on the counter. I carefully pulled the lid off as always but this time I failed to notice the metal strand. This was a very generous strand, kind of like a King Strand or something, but still so thin as to be almost invisible. I rammed my thumb into it.
As the pain registered, I jerked the thumb back, momentarily puzzled because I still could not see what I had cut myself on. The thumb did not care, as it bled in copious amounts from a small but deep wound on the tip. I jammed it into my mouth to suck away the excess blood. Not wishing to sparkle and become otherwise vampiric, I took the thumb out of my mouth, at which point it continued to bleed with great vigor. I tried staunching it with a paper towel. My plan was to get the bleeding to settle down then apply a bandage. The paper towel quickly soaked and was generally not effective. The cut had formed a line that went around in a 3/4 circle. Had it completed the circle that fleshy little bit of my thumb would have been on the counter, in the can of beans or somewhere other than on my thumb where it belonged.
As I dabbed with the paper towel I noticed the would formed a kind of flap that could be opened (gushing blood) or closed (gushing blood, but less so). I felt a bit queasy. I decided to put a bandage over the thumb and then wrap another around that one, sealing off the top of the digit like one might cover up a cursed tomb. A cursed tomb that would not stop bleeding.
The thumb was tingling but after a few minutes there was no blood seeping through, so I vowed to leave it for 24 hours before having a peek.
When I did look it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. I kept bandages on it for about a week and a half before finally removing them and I’m pretty sure there will be a small scar when the healing bit is done. I have my ‘wrestled a mako shark’ story ready to go.
And the can opener? The next time I used it it created another impossible-to-see strand that I jabbed my index finger on. This time it wasn’t enough to draw blood. I calmly walked the can opener over to the garbage can, its new and permanent home. I have a new one now. It’s called the Little Beaver. As long as it doesn’t bite me, I think we’ll get along.
