Spandex + 400 pounds overweight. People will try rolling you back into the ocean to save you.
Button-up shirt + sweatpants. You know how well oil and water mix? This is the equivalent in clothing form.
Plaid shorts. Crossing a street while wearing plaid shorts can cause road rage. Scientists have proven this.
Leg warmers when your legs are not cold. Or ever.
Shorts + knee high black socks. This was the fashion back in 1887. It is no longer 1887.
Pants with the waist so low 80% of your “hip” boxer shorts are visible. I suspect this will eventually lead to a trend of wearing boxer shorts on the outside of pants.
Wearing more than three shirts at once.
That sweatshirt you keep tucking into your pants? Desist!
I’m joking, of course. I don’t really give a flying fig what people wear but if I did and had a blog and could complain about their lack of taste in clothing, I’d write…this post.
Today as I was enjoying a beverage with a date at Melriches on Davie Street I had a guy come up and ask me if I liked hip hop. I asked him to repeat the question because my brain was pretty sure he had not just asked me if I liked hip hop. He repeated it and sure enough, he had asked me if I liked hip hop. I don’t really think of myself as the hip hop type but I was wearing a black baseball cap. Maybe that’s some code I was unaware of that says “big fan of hip hop here!” It turns out he was trying to sell or generate interest in his own CDs, several of which he held out for me to see. I truthfully told him that no, I was not into hip hop, so he moved on to the nice old ladies at the next table.
After having said beverage, we strolled down to Stanley Park because it was another gorgeously sunny and warm day. It’s weird because I normally expect June to be largely soggy (that may happen this coming week). We ventured as far as Third Beach then instead of reversing back along the seawall we cut across the park, following one of the main trails (mostly a service road, from the looks of it) to Lost Lagoon. Along the way we passed women pushing strollers, joggers, bikers, all the usual sorts you’d expect to see. And then off to the left I noticed some tin foil wrapped in sections around a tree. There was a large video camera resting on the ground nearby and someone with a shirt that read “Stunt Crew” on the back was holding a container of tin foil and was wrapping it around a person standing in front of him. By the time we arrived, this tin man was almost completely covered from head to toe. As we walked by and looked back, the wrapper looked to us and we all kind of chuckled and kept walking. The wrapper, well, kept wrapping.
I have no idea what they were doing. Were the strips on the tree just for practice? Did the guy getting wrapped up lose a bet? Was it the world’s lowest budget science fiction movie? The worst part is I had my camera in my man purse* but totally forgot about it. Then again, if I had taken pictures, they may have come after us with ray guns or something.
After leaving the park we found ourselves in the middle of the Denman Car-free day, featuring an assortment of festivities ranging from a band performing “Only the lonely” to kids playing chess on the street using pieces about half a meter tall to a Hedy Fry re-election booth. Since there is currently no election, perhaps she knows something and isn’t telling. Either that or it was just easier to haul out the election stuff rather than make new “Hedy Fry Denman Car-free Day” signs. Lord knows with all the elections the paint on those signs is probably still tacky.
It was a pretty good day, in all.
* I am told this is the correct nomenclature, although some will also accept “murse”. It’s really just a small shoulder pack. A manly shoulder pack.
I got several e-mails today with various shipping labels to print out for UPS, so that I may ship my defective monitor eastward to Samsung for repair or replacement.
They got my postal code slightly wrong. Oops.
They also got my city wrong — Richmond instead of Vancouver. Bigger oops. “We’ll have new labels sent to you in 24 to 48 hours.” Today is Friday so that effectively pushes everything back to next week. Oh well. As long as they don’t suddenly decide I live in Madagascar, I guess things will be on track…eventually.
Yesterday afternoon as I was reading interesting tales o’ the Internet, the monitor screen, with no warning or fanfare, suddenly went dark and the power light shut off. I tried the power switch but to no avail. A computer reboot did nothing. Switching cables and testing it on the server machine proved as successful as Nine Inch Nails at the Grand Old Opry. After eight months the monitor was dead. I was and am chagrined. Today I get to find out how good Samsung’s warranty service is.
In case you want to avoid it, the model that went kaput is the T240.
Back in April I was downtown for a date and arrived a bit early, so I roamed the West End, an area I had lived in when I first moved to Vancouver back in 1986. Much was unchanged but as with other areas of the city, there has been an effort here to provide a little local flavor to the neighborhood by using a specific color theme for the neighborhood’s light standards, bus shelters and garbage cans.
Some bus shelters are the regular gray, others are blue or black.
The ones on Davie Street are pink.
This is not an inappropriate color scheme for Davie. I have to admit to feeling a bit awkward with people belting out showtunes while waiting for the #8 to show up.
You know how often the sequel is worse than the original? Keep reading!
In my previous entry I noted the swift action of my credit union on spotting fraudulent charges on my credit card. At the time I had just assumed someone had absconded with my credit card info using digital trickery. It was not until the following day that I went to pay for some groceries that I discovered that my wallet was no longer comfortably nestled in my left rear pocket as it always was. Uh oh. I put the grocery order on hold then returned home, searching for my wallet but knowing it would be futile. It had probably been 24 hours since it went missing.
I don’t know if it actually fell out of my pocket (seems unlikely) or was stealthily plucked away but suddenly I had no wallet, no credit card, no ATM card, no birth certificate, so SIN card, no ID, nothing. I was persona non grata.
I phoned Sue and bless ‘er heart, she volunteered to drive me to the credit union to get a new ATM card. We arrived 15 minutes before they closed, the next day being a Sunday. I explain my situation but the teller says that to get a new ATM card, I will need ID. All of which has been stolen. Well. But not to worry, I could still withdraw a small daily stipend by standing in line and getting good old-fashioned cash, just like people did back in the 1890s. How quaint.
What followed over the next few days was a series of circular checks where each piece of ID I needed to recover required some other piece of ID I needed to recover. But all was not lost–literally! I still had my paper birth certificate (the plastic-coated wallet-size version was in my, uh, wallet), so I had a starting point in recovering my identity. Monday morning and I headed bright ‘n early to Service Canada and presented my certificate, waiting to hear how long it would take to get a new Social Insurance card. “This birth certificate is invalid,” the woman behind the counter said, her lips twitching mysteriously. She explained that there was no registration number on the certificate and thus it was not valid. Little did I know that 44 years ago someone was screwing me over. I wasn’t even a month old. No wonder I’m so cynical. The woman behind the counter told me I could get a replacement certificate at Vital Statistics. She looked up the location and assured me it would be “fun” to go there. Government services and fun together? Cats and dogs, I say.
But I go.
Vital Statistics is in an office on ultra-trendy Robson Street downtown, hence the “fun” or so I assume. But you know, it’s just a street downtown on a Monday morning. It’s not like there’s a Mardi Gras parade with people flashing their bits and showering everyone with candy. So I go in and I’m told I can get a legit birth certificate in five business days and for free! But only if I hand over the invalid one. I reluctantly do so, giving up the only piece of paper that states who I am.
It turned out to only take four days for the replacement to arrive by mail. The newly-redesigned birth certificate (made over in 2008) came with a sheet listing its many improvements, one of which was a size designed to be inconvenient to fit in wallets and purses, to reduce loss or theft. I expected to see “Looking at you, dumbass” after that bullet point.
The tale of ID recovery took an unexpected twist midweek when I got a lumpy envelope in the mail. It was encased in a plastic Canada Post bag with a boilerplate apology for the condition of the envelope therein, saying it was being delivered in the state in which I found. I opened it up and there was my wallet, with my BC ID card taped on the side of it. Apparently the thief took the Visa card and tossed the rest on the ground and some sympathetic person dropped it into a mailbox. Yay! Thank you, mystery person who did this.
I went to the credit union, got my ATM card re-activated and today received my new Visa card, one day earlier than their estimate. I checked to make sure everything looked kosher and discovered I have enough Visa points to buy an iron. Woo! I already have an iron. I can also buy a Cineplex gift certificate that includes a pair of movie tickets, two regular drinks and a regular popcorn. i think that combo normally costs $300. It’s like buying six irons.
But for now I rest content that I no longer have to meticulously replace all of my ID. My wallet is now kept in a front pocket and any non-vital ID is kept safely tucked away here at home. I also will amend my previous judgment that “people suck” to “some people don’t suck.”
#1: I get a call from my credit union. The woman speaks with an accent so it’s somewhat hard to follow at times but she asks me about these weird charges on the card to fashion stores and The Source. I am confused, as I’ve never made these. She verifies a few legit ones but it becomes apparent the card has, in her words “been compromised”. She nukes it, tells me I’ll get a new one in 7-10 business days and in the meantime no credit! Woo. People suck.
#2: I buy cat food at a local pet food store called Tisol. Being the environmentally-friendly guy I am, I bring my own bag. Last week I put the four large cans on the counter. There are two women behind the counter, one at the register and another beside her. Register woman rings up the order while the other asks me if I need a bag. I say no, I have my own here. I pay for the cat food (using my still-working debit card) and the other woman just stands there. She doesn’t bag the cat food, she just stands there and watches me until I do it. So the lesson is obviously screw the environment and make them cough up one of their own plastic bags, because they always bag it that way. Great service, there.
Today was Easter Sunday and as it was a wet and dank day outdoors, I spent my time inside doing exciting things like cleaning, laundry and the dishes. Woo and hoo, as they say.
I did another full workout and I believe I have figured out how to exercise without injuring myself, proof that I can still learn even when I should be having a mid-life crisis or something instead.
Regarding peeps, this Easter-related “confection” is one of those candies that just seems wrong no matter how you look at it. I’m sure it actively destroys cells in your body upon consumption. On the plus side, peeps can probably double as insulating foam on the shuttle if NASA runs out.
These things have a half-life that would make Strontium-90 jealous. Say no to peeps!
Yes, it’s been scientically proven — dating sucks! I have been gathering objective, empirical evidence to support this theory and will be presenting my findings here soon.
