 blog from a broad*
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| blog from a broad*
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july 31
11.30 AM losing the buzz Well, so much for listening to one of my favourite radio stations online. Bah. At least I can still listen to my favourite Toronto station.
do some people wind up with the one that they adore? romantic Piscean seeks angel in disguise and it's you and me in the summertime do some people wind up with the one that they abhor? get up a voice inside says, there's no time for looking down and it's you and me in the summertime and it's you I need in the summertime (added to the "Listening" menu, left - plus a Bran Van 3000 song as an added bonus)
I've just looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and have discovered that I look a lot like a beer wench in this blouse today. If I was wearing a little frilly skirt, I could be working at Oktoberfest. Not really the look I was going for in my daily office wear.
Lisa likes margaritas. Mmmmmmmmmmm. I got tipsy on 2 glasses, and didn't get a hangover the next day. Now that's good value for money. They really are gorgeous, especially on a hot and humid Saturday night. When I left the house on Saturday morning, it was overcast - so sunscreen didn't really enter my mind. After 3 hours of sitting outside the Fort St. George pub at lunchtime in the blazing sun that appeared later on, I soon realised that I should carry sunscreen around with me at all times. YOWCH. On a related note, big huge congrats to Jack and Heather who made it back alive after cycling from London to Cambridge yesterday. Wooooo! Well done, kids. We went to see Austin Powers 3 yesterday; took my air conditioned car to an air conditioned cinema. Bliss. The film was incredibly silly, which is really what an Austin Powers film should be. Quite a lot of laughs, and would have been a better experience had we not been seated in the "Cambridgeshire Annoying Cinema Goers Society" section. The kid behind us decided it would be fun to kick the back of our chairs for 90 minutes, a row of girls behind us kept bursting into loud laughter after *every single joke* (funny or not), and the row of girls in front of us were chatting and giggling throughout the film. Still, it beats having your feet stick to the floors of the Warner Village cinema in town.
Haven't done the Friday Five in ages, so what the heck. 1. How long have you had a weblog?
I'm having margaritas made for me tonight. This ought to be a laugh as I haven't had anything containing tequila since I got ill on it back in my university days. Checked the bottle already, and it's not got a worm in it. I've seen "Videodrome" - the worm is baaaad. Off to see Jack and Heather for lunch today at the fabulous Fort St. George pub next to the river Cam. These two crazy kids are particpating in a Cambridge to London bike ride tomorrow (all for a good cause, of course: Breakthrough Breast Cancer). That's 54 miles! I'm sponsoring them, and for all you Cambridge people reading this (all...erm...four of you?), please let myself or Jack and Heather (via the email address on their site) know if you'd like to sponsor them too. I will be annoying you all about sponsoring mad people again next year when I do the Moonwalk in May. Yes, that's right - I'll be walking through London for 13 miles in my bra with a bunch of other women (and men too!). You have been warned. As for last night, the evening went almost exactly as planned. I didn't get around to varnishing/painting my nails and I was on the phone while Big Brother was on (almost like being together for the big moment, which was nice). Right, that's all I'm revealing about my weekend. You'll just have to ask me on Monday, or read this page on Monday evening. Hah!
On tonight's agenda:
Envy me.
My good friend Susan has just found out that she's been made redundant. She works for Discreet, which is where I used to work before I left Montreal. I mentioned before that they did the notorious 10% sacking thing a while ago, then they got rid of some people when I was there at Christmas, and now they've done it again. Guess what? Discreet is owned by a large American company, too. What utter pants. I think I'm gonna start selling crack from my desk, to have that secondary income just in case.
If my life was set to a soundtrack (and often times, I think it is), my theme song would change from day to day. Today's theme song would probably be "Sour Girl" by Stone Temple Pilots (no, this song's lyrics are not a reflection of my love life!!). Yes, that's right...I got up way too early again today and I'm still sneezing. What's your theme song today?
Just read this article on the BBC web site. Why don't we string up a huge banner across the country saying, "Hello terrorists! Please attack us! We're totally unprepared! Read all about it on our national news site!"? Good lord.
Sneezing. Coughing. Blowing my nose a lot. This better be allergies or else Jack and Heather are gonna be in a lot of trouble. Feh! Well, at least my Montreal friends will be amused to hear that the blogger's virus is spreading across the pond.
I feel like I'm running out of stuff to talk about with my mates - they all read this page so they already know what's going on in my life. I start to tell people about my weekends, and they recount the events back to me because they already read about it here. What's funnier is the fact that some of them are also getting to "know" each other by clicking on the links from this page and reading other's web pages. I think I'm going to start revealing less about my daily life here so that I can have conversations with people again. Erm. Hmmm. Great, now I have nothing to write about. Okay, how about this? You'll never guess what I'm up to this weekend. That's right, 'cos I'm not going to write about it! HAH! You'll have to speak to me on Monday!!
More advice for the single man, if you'll indulge me this once. Hell, it's my web page; I can talk about shaving my legs for 12 paragraphs if I wanted to - who am I kidding? Anyway, completely free of charge, here's a valuable tip for you. Chicks dig it when guys: smell good, can cook, don't laugh at your driving, and (my latest addition to this list) do the washing up/dishes. This last point may seem trivial but let me tell you, it's really nice to come home, wander into the kitchen, wonder what's different, then realise that the pile of dirty dishes that was there in the sink last night is now stacked nicely in the dish drainer. Who says women are demanding? Give me eggs on toast and clean dishes, and I'm all aflutter.
Sheesh...there was a post here that I wrote earlier today, but it seems to have been eaten. Can I remember what that post was about now? Noooooooo. Oh the perils of being old and sleep deprived. Oh, I remember what it was now - it was a post about 80s music. Right, let's see if I can put together something resembling that lost post. I was saying that we have a server at work filled with MP3s. I was going through the files today and came across a song I had completely forgotten about: "Haunted When the Minutes Drag" by Love and Rockets (added to the "listening" menu, left). Talk about a grade 10 flashback. I used to have that on a tape along with Echo and the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, The Jam, and Simple Minds. I was like SO cool. Tony F. is going to be the only person to understand this next bit, but anyway - driving in my Mom's Fiero, barreling down Guelph Line, on the way to my co-op work placement doing graphic design every afternoon, listening to this tape (recorded from Corey's 12" singles). Fantastic. In a similar vein, the security guy who works at our reception desk seems to have acquired some sort of Limahl style hairdo over the weekend. This isn't a good look a) for this decade and b) if you weigh 23 stone.
Gah - I just sneezed about 12 times. I think it's safe to say that something evil is pollenating today. Feckin hayfever...feels like my face is gonna fall off if I sneeze any more.
Fresh pasta with seafood, a big glass of red wine, and an orange Kit Kat - what more could I possibly want? Of course this would be perfect if a certain someone wasn't en route to Kent, but I'm not gonna complain. Sunday isn't very far away, after all.
Perhaps this idea should be reconsidered. No, really.
Fell asleep after Graham Norton at 11, didn't wake up until the alarm went off at 8. WOO! Lisa's helpful hint of the day: don't wear t-shirts with the names of art galleries on them if you work in the IT industry. It'll just confuse your workmates who a) don't know what the Tate is and b) keep asking you to justify why you're wearing a t-shirt that says "Tate" on it. People, it was a t-shirt with a name on it. I had to do laundry and was wearing what was left. Nobody quizzed the guy who was wearing the Symantec shirt. Sheesh. Then again, it's a vast improvement from two days ago when I had a circle of developers looking at my chest "reading" my blue screen of death t-shirt. Brrrrrrrrr.
I am gonna sleep tonight. Oh yes. After all this waking up early/getting to bed late nonsense this week, I am determined to get a full night's sleep tonight. I WILL NOT WAKE UP AT 6AM. Had a fun night last night out at the Hotpot (the best Chinese in Cambridge) then to the Fort St. George for drinks. They ran out of wine glasses, so when my mate returned with a white wine for me, it arrived in a half pint glass. WOOHOO! As you can probably tell from the tone of this post, yes, I do still have a job. For now. Sadly, 4 people were let go from our office - although I only knew one of them. He's a super nice guy who wasn't terribly gutted about being made redundant. I think he's too excited about his upcoming holiday in New Zealand to care that much about being out of work and he seems to have plans made already for when he returns. They've shut our office in Columbia (USA), so even more people were made redundant on top of the 10%. Now there are fears that they will close our smallish Cambridge office and send us to Chalfont (if we were to keep our jobs in this case). I really don't want to live in Chalfont, but I suppose I've not really got a choice. Don't tell me I can get another job, because it's not that simple due to the work permit. At any rate, I'm okay for now, the people I care about the most are also okay for now, and that's what's important.
Up early! Again! Gah! This really must stop. I went to bed at around 1.00 this morning, and yet I still got up early. If we do end up going out drinking tonight, I'll probabaly fall asleep at around 9. Prop me up in a corner somewhere and carry me home at closing time, please. Dinner at Fi's was good fun, plus I didn't have to explain any smutty jokes to her 'cos the usual suspects weren't there. It was a lovely evening spent chatting and laughing in the garden - how civilised! I ate way too much chocolate, not that there really is any such thing as eating too much chocolate. Today has been dubbed "Judgement Day" by the lads at work. It's going to be horrible. :( I have way too many friends out of work both here and in Montreal; I don't want to add more to that list. The economy has got to get better soon, doesn't it? *sigh*
Up early again today. What's up with that?! I haaaaate mornings, so I dunno why I keep waking up at 6.30am lately. Bah. Tomorrow is the big day - everyone finds out who gets the axe. Don't worry about me, but I'd appreciate it if you all kept happy job thoughts for my workmates. I really don't want to see anyone go, but I know it's inevitable. :( On a nicer note, I'm off to the lovely Fiona's for dinner tonight. We love Fi to bits, and it's been fantastic having to explain all sorts of rude things to her over the past year and a bit. She's so incredibly innocent - which is really wonderful and unique in this world today. I was always the one who had to explain our rude pub lunch jokes to Fi as I was the only one who could do it using biological terms that wouldn't necessarily horrify her further. Jack tried once, got about two words into it, paused, and said that he couldn't explain it without being rude. See, I have my uses. Right, I've got to get started on a list of 56 things for work this morning. Better get to it!
Dinner went over well, no one got salmonella, and I discovered that I make really good bruschetta. Who knew? With this "cooking for a new person" hurdle out of the way, the whole dinner concept should be far easier to contend with. I've never been with anyone who could cook before. One of my ex-boyfriends had to ring a friend of his to ask how to hard boil an egg. I kid you not. So, this means that I'm truly impressed by any sort of semblance of cooking skills. Bring me scrambled eggs on toast, and I'm all yours. If you'd like to see a replay of my pasta dinner, come upstairs and watch me microwave the leftovers for lunch today.
Doing the dinner thing tonight. Picturing Bridget Jones style blue soup mishap. Regardless, am fairly confident that I can assemble a decent pasta dish. Will go over especially well if I ensure that the (bottle of) wine course comes first. May wear skimpy clothing to add further distraction. Actually, I'm looking forward to this. I love to cook, but cooking for one ain't no fun. If anyone's interested (i.e. Ed), I'm making a tomato, basil, and pine nut sauce over fresh pasta (probably fettucine) with shavings of parmesagn. I'll throw together some sort of salad and probably some garlic bread (or bruschetta if I get particularly enthusiastic) as well. If I had more time (and if we weren't trying to eat more healthy food sorta), I would have made my chocolate Amaretto cheesecake. I may just go for some fresh fruit and ice cream. Hmmm... Right, time to take Saffy to Tesco.
I can't park my car to save my life - I freely admit it. I can't see the bonnet/hood, so I have no sense of where I am when I'm trying to park and always end up leaving it looking like I've abandoned it due to a small fire. Plus there's parallel parking. I've done it once, and that was between two cones/pylons for my driving test in 1985. I need help. Can this page be considered bilingual? Bonnet/hood, cones/pylons - very international, no?
Why am I up so early again today? I'm dressed and ready to go, and I don't have to leave until 9. Bah. Thanks to a fluke shot from yesterday, we've got another submission to the Mirror Project. Which reminds me, I forgot to mention yesterday that my car has been christened "Saffy" ('cos it's sapphire blue - get it? Har har). We decided that the French guy at work isn't really French at all; he just puts the accent on to get chicks. He's really a guy called Brian from Leeds (or Bracknell or Milton Keynes, depending on who you ask). We don't find out about the job cuts until Wednesday now. How vile is that? Very. I like to cook and I love having friends over for dinner, but I get really nervous if I'm cooking for someone for the first time. I like what I cook, but how do I know that someone else isn't going to think it's godawful? This is why we're getting an Indian takeaway tonight. Too...much...pressure. I love how none of these points are related to each other. Talk about disjointed ramblings. Really must finish my tea before I start writing like James Joyce.
An email was sent round late last night (our time) from our head office in Florida - 10% of our employees are going to be made redundant. That's around 190 people worldwide. Same old story; business is slow, the economy is crap, blah blah blah... We find out on Thursday who gets the axe, so we all have to sit and wait for two days before we find out who goes. What utter rubbish. The same thing happened at Discreet in Montreal soon after we were bought by Autodesk, along with the same 10% figure. We all wore black to the all hands meeting to make our point. We all volunteered to take a cut in salary, give up our bonuses that year, and whatever else it would take to save those jobs. The 10% went. At Citrix, the same ideas are being expressed and I seriously doubt they will be considered. I don't want to see anyone go, and I don't think it's human to make people have to wait and find out if they've got a job or not. I've had enough friends lose their jobs in recent months. I really did believe that things were picking up. Gonna be a long wait for Thursday.
Got the car. Yay! Didn't crash it on the A14 on the way home. Yay! Filled it up at Tesco with no problems. Yay! Little red light on the dash with an exclamation mark on it lit up. Boo! Looked it up in my trusty owner's guide, and apparently my engine is out of coolant. Now maybe I'm just being demanding, but shouldn't the service guys at the dealer have checked for this sort of thing before giving me the feckin car? I'm so not amused. Now I've got to drive back to Tesco, buy coolant, wait for the engine to cool down again, and fill up the coolant resevoir. As if I know what I'm doing. Luckily, the owner's guide has pictures. Otherwise, the car is brilliant. Very easy to drive, smooth, quiet, and not too sluggish for an automatic. The only weird thing is the fact that I can't see the bonnet/hood when I'm driving, so I have to get used to judging how wide I am and where it ends. Stay tuned for pictures tomorrow. Try to contain yourselves.
CK One smells good, but it's the only CK scent I've ever liked. I maintain that it has a lot to do with who's wearing it at the time, and maybe it just simply "goes well" with certain people. Hmm now I sound like I'm describing wine. Ah, you know what I mean. "Minority Report" was good fun, regardless of the plot holes and typical Spielberg schmaltz. Plus the product placement blitz. Ugh. No really, run out and see it. Don't bother with the deluxe screen in Huntingdon, though - not worth the extra £2 if you ask us. Car pickup time: 4pm. WOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO! Hmm...hope I can stay awake until then. And for the drive home, of course. Good god, am I tired.
I am now the proud owner of a lovely 5 door, sapphire blue Ford Focus. For your own safety, you may want to avoid the B roads from Willingham to Cambourne (and back), Monday-Friday in the mornings and early evenings. There will undoubtedly be weekend road trips and short breaks too, of course. Might as well face it, no road in the UK is safe from me. A moment of silence for the dead scoot, please. Took it to the shop due to a noisy exhaust (understatement - part of it rusted away and it sounded like a Harley with bronchitis) and discovered not only did it need a new exhaust, the forks are gone as well. Grand total to fix it: £300+. No thanks. I'll have to break the news to that poor lad up the road. Maybe he'll want to invest in the repairs, but either way, I'm making no money on this deal. Well, the scoot was good fun while it lasted.
It's test drive day! My friends and loved ones are advised to steer clear of Milton Road and the A14, just to be safe.
It's Friday! :)
What should I wear tomorrow night? Answers on a postcard, please.
Hah! My cunning plan worked! I waited to buy "Amelie" on DVD because I knew there would be a better version released at a later date! HAH! The recent trend seems to be release a crap DVD with nothing extra on it right away, then put out a "deluxe" 2 DVD edition a few months later. That's exactly what they did with "Amelie", and I am very happy that I waited. Rock da howse.
I woke up 30 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off. I've now got 45 minutes to kill before I normally leave for work. I'm very much looking forward to going into work today. Help. Happy 4th. of July to all my fantabulous American friends! Hmm that would be...Wallace, Greg, and Karen (don't think any other Americans read this). Enjoy your holiday, you gits!
I need more female friends here. Jack and Chris are fabulous, but they are such rubbish at being girly. I was able to be girly with Heather yesterday - must do more of that in future. Tip for all you single men out there: chicks dig it when you smell good. Get a girl or your best gay male friend to go cologne shopping with you, and pick out a scent. If you don't want to get all fancy and invest in cologne, then spend a couple of quid at Boots and get a nice smelling deodorant. Wash your clothes once in a while, too. Honestly, it is such a treat to sit near someone and be struck by how gorgeous they smell. Or maybe that's just me and I've got a weird fetish. Is it Friday yet?
...two songs added to the "listening" list on the left. More to come if anyone's interested.
It was Pride Week in Toronto this past week. Trevor took some fabulous pictures of the parade. You know, it's really depressing to see a lot of men looking much nicer than me in lingerie. Hmph. The scooter kid knocked on my door again tonight. Or should I say pounded on my door until I answered. I'm feeling a bit crap tonight (allergies abound) and didn't really feel like answering the door when I heard the knocking. Besides, I wasn't expecting anyone. So I sat here and ignored it...but the knocking continued. Every 15 seconds THUD THUD THUD until the last bout which sounded like someone trying to tell me that my house was on fire and they could see a kitten trapped on my roof. I rushed to the door thinking that this must be serious, only to be greeted by the scoot kid saying "Sorry to bother you, but did you go for your test drive yet?" I said that I promised I would call him as soon as I know anything. "When will that be?", he asked. Yes, it took a lot to stop me from giving the kid a wedgie. "I *promise* I will call you *the second* I know anything - honest. I have no idea when I'll be able to buy a car, but I'll let you know. Really. I *am* selling the scooter." Judging by the way he backed away from my door, I think he understood that he had annoyed a premenstrual woman with no chocolate in the house. Ah, kids today.
Happy Canada Day! Go out and hug a Canadian today. Go on. You know you want to.
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