How My Banner Came to Be – Part 2

Not a Penis!

This was back from my first year at Algonquin in the TV program. One day one of the guys in my class, who I always thought was a pretty funny and cool guy, showed up with a drawing and note for EVERYONE in our class. There were some clear messages of inside jokes, and others, like mine, were just something he was just writing for the sake of writing. This was the picture he drew. The message on it went something like this: “This is something that my friend made for me last Christmas. I drew it because it was on my desk and I needed something to draw. It’s not a penis. For Heather Love Casey.” I guess I included this in my banner because even though it wasn’t really anything personal to me, it still reminds me of some of the good times that I had in that class and I guess more specifically the crazy things this guy did, like shaved the left side of his face leaving the right side full beard and moustache, or writing an 11 minute song about the ‘girl in the green jacket.’

The New Roommate Review

Back in Toronto again.

Actually, back in the same house I was living in last semester. The difference is, the only person who is the same, is Jon. It was a little strange but it wasn’t too hard to adjust to living with new roommates. And here is why: they are awesome!

(L to R) Brittany, Max, Boogie, Mary (dog), Jon, Missy (dog), Me, King (best dog ever), Josh, and (other) John.

Brittany – 21 year old nursing student (in Katie’s room). She’s finished her program at the end of this semester so she will be replaced for the winter term. Unless unforeseen circumstances arise, she’ll be the only only leaving until summer. She’s pretty cool and we get along pretty well. She’s usually gone to Guelph on weekends to see her boyfriend, Dan, but sometimes he comes here. And when he does: total games weekend. And I LOVE board games!!

Max – 20 year old film student (in Arthur’s room). I get along with Max also pretty well. He’s a big Lost fan and loved the end of Lost, so that’s the majority of what we disagree on but otherwise he’s cool. He plays guitar so sometimes I can hear singing from his room. He tried learning Extreme’s More Than Words just because it was in my head but at some point in the song he gave up. Ah, well, at least he tried.

Boogie – 26 year old business student from India (in the basement). Also gets along with Jon very well. I was worried for a little that I was being replaced (since Boogie lived here all summer) but I think I’m okay where I stand.

Jon – It’s almost like Jon and I are married. We still get along very well.

Josh – 19 year old broadcasting student (in Lorraine’s room). There are two things Josh talks about: his phone, and girls. Such a boy!

John – 23 year old electronics student from China (in Sagen’s room). John also lived here in the summer. He’s mostly playing video games in his room but he does hang out with the bunch of us for a while.

For those wondering, yes we did purposely get a ‘family photo.’ Here are some other pictures of our family dinner before Arthur went back to Taiwan. (Miss him!)

Summer Review

Mainly, it sucked.

Okay, enough with the complaining. On to the good of this summer, which lasted collectively about one month out of four.

Some general things that were good was that I was able to hang out with friends that I don’t see while I’m in school. For the first month I was also able to spend time with my mom and sister before they left for BC to stay for the  whole summer. I also got to see my best friend Victoria, who just got engaged (I’m her maid of honour), and I spent a lot of time with Paula and a fair amount with Adam. And since I only worked two weeks out of four months, it was especially nice to not have to pay rent. It was also great to get back into boxing this summer. I lucked out on finding a new place that I was able to get more classes and pay less than the previous gym where I boxed. The classes were a bit different but just as good. Besides, no matter where you are, you really do get back what you put into it. If I return to Ottawa on a more permanent basis (which I am considering) I will return to Habada Fight Club. The coach likes the way I worked this summer and is encouraging me to work towards coaching. It’s an option.

I do have two highlighted events to touch on from this summer.

1. Europe … obviously!

It was amazing and quite challenging. I’m so happy I could finally go see a lot of the things I’ve always wanted to see. The challenge was, along with getting really lost at times, there were times that I couldn’t fully enjoy my time there due to various reasons: paranoid of pick-pocketers, knowing how much I’m actually spending on everything, felt lonely sometimes, forgot my awesome favourite hat in Brussels.

My favourite city was Amsterdam. I don’t smoke and I certainly don’t partake the joys of legal prostitution, but the city was beautiful and everyone was so nice. In my last two days I had actually found someone to hang out with and that was really nice too. Even though I got SUPER lost there looking for the hostel, I have mostly nice memories there.

 

1. Fab Cafe, Manchester, UK – Exterminate! Exterminate!

2. Chester Town Centre, UK – Where Paula and I stayed with her mother.

3. The Cavern Club, Liverpool, UK – Wearing my favourite hat.

4. Buckingham Palace, London, UK

5. Manneken Pis, Brussles, Belgium – With my hat before I forgot it there.

6. Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

7. A canal, Amsterdam, Holland

8. Me and Pierre, who I hung out with for two days in Amsterdam. He’s from Quebec coincidentally enough. Small world.

2. One Year Reunion:

I’ve seen Kat a few times since she moved back to Brantford, and I’ve seen Adam a few more times since I moved away from Ottawa. Kat and Adam have seen each other at least once since she moved from Ottawa. For a few days in August, this was the first time in a year that, not only all three of us were together, but with her baby and my dog, ALL FIVE OF US REUNITED!! We had a really great time and created so many more inside jokes to add to our vault.

 

1. Adam living the dream with King and Isabelle. King doesn’t like Adam, but Isabelle really had taken to him. Good for her. Fearless!

2. Kat and I taking our babies down the slide.

3. The roller derby event that made Kat and I want to move back to Ottawa so that we can play on opposite teams and create drama. (The team I cheered for won, by the way.)

4. Frozen time! Frozen time! (Misheard lyrics from Leonard Cohen’s Closing Time.)

5. Probably the best thing I've ever done for Kat, was not support during her pregnancy, was not the baby shower, was not being a better roommate that previous roommates... No, it was introducing her to Yo Gabba Gabba featuring a Dancey Dance with Elijah Wood.
Lift the knee, lift the other knee. Lift the foot, lift the other foot. Walk in a circle. Do the Puppet... Master!

6. Somewhat sums up our visit. Party in My Tummy, Manboy and WWWWD (What Would Wil Wheaton Do?).

The only other thing I wish I could have done was spend more time with Victoria. I only really saw her about four times this summer, which isn’t enough. I hope to see here more this year however, when she and her fiancé comes to Toronto to see his family. I look forward to helping her with wedding plans as much as I can from a distance.

I didn’t get to finish the shelf I was painting but I did a fair amount. I will try to finish when I visit at Christmas.

Good New Folks!

There have been a few developments since I last wrote about joblessness and Europe and such.

First, I have landed myself a two week warehouse contract. Two weeks is short, yes, but it’s full time and it will be something I can at least be active in (rather than a boring data entry position or something soul sucking like market research or whatever). I am actually glad it is two weeks (well if it started earlier I would want it to be a bit longer I suppose – it starts this Monday). I am glad for this because I have figured out a way – and it is now official – I am going to Europe!

Paula seems to be fine with paying for my trip for the most part. This means that when I get my tax return (I filed it very late this year) and money from my grandmother (post-dated cheque for $1000 on August 14th) then I can pay her back fully. This two week contract will help me with making sure I will have $550 for rent in September and have some spending money while were there.

So, the flights are booked, the insurance bought, and all we have to do now is plan the in between. This is what we have so far:

Week One: Manchester to stay with Paula’s Mom. While there we will take a trip to Ireland (perhaps Dublin) and some other small trips, like maybe Liverpool. Week Two: London. We’re not quite sure where we’re staying yet. If we can’t find some friends of Paula’s to stay with we’ll have to book a hostel, and have to book it soon. We’ll also take a small trip to Paris while were in London. At the end of this week we’ll take a day in Amsterdam since all Paula wants to do is visit the sex museum. Her flight then takes off from Brussels so I will accompany her and see what’s happening there. Then for the last four days I’ll be on my own. I had figured I would stay with my family in Holland and see more of the country but I just found out that they’ll all be away on holiday. One is going to Germany and another is going to Italy. It’s kind of disappointing that I won’t see them but it also means one other thing, I’m free to do what I want, in another country, another part of the world.

I feel giddy.

How My Banner Came to Be – Part 1

Recently I have decide to customize my page a little to make it reflect a little more of me. Mainly that just meant changing my banner since my web page knowledge is very limited. With that, I have decided to give a little meaning to it since everything on it has a little story. Some longer than others.

Most of the images are from my bulletin board. I have a giant board usually hanging in front of my desk filled with pictures, drawings and other such memorable treasures that I have collected over the past few years. However, since I have been roaming from house to house, I don’t have it up right now in any of my homes (my Ottawa summer home – aka Mom’s, my Toronto home – aka Jon’s, or my Aurora home – aka my cousin’s – aka where all of my stuff that I don’t urgently need currently and maybe forever lives). But just to get an idea of what the bulletin board actually looks like, here are a few pictures:

So now that I have that covered, just keep in mind that all my stories are from memory.

Bananas!

This half cut picture of bananas is a cut out from a box of bananas that one would get from the grocery store. (The reason why it’s half cut is because it was covered with other things when I took the photos of my bulletin board. Normally it’s actually a full cut out of a bunch of bananas. Anyway…) This was a gift to me from one of my best friends, Adam, who also gave one to my other one of my best friends, Victoria. (I’m sure I’ll be writing about both of them quite a bit in these entries.) This was a response to Victoria and I pushing Adam - who we then used to call Ryan Reynolds, it’s not because he looked like him but I now can’t remember why - to give us a Valentine’s Day gift to us for a little while. Sure enough on Valentine’s Day the three of us met up at a double feature at the Bytowne Cinema of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Notebook (they both loved the first movie, which is the main reason why we went, and none of us had seen the Notebook, which all of us had a laugh making fun of). Adam showed up at the theatre with this cut out banana bunches. On the back he signed, “From Ryan,” because he didn’t know how to spell ‘Reynolds.’ With that he also gave us each a Lindt chocolate and for us both a jar of plum sauce. That’s just his style! Well my banana went on my bulletin board (which was a the time much smaller), the chocolate was eaten, and the plum sauce was named Adam’s Love Sauce and stayed unopened in the fridge for many years.

Passing the Time

In my month (plus) of not working I’ve been trying to think of things to pass the time other than boxing and watching TV. I love the idea of creating a project – something I can work on all summer towards some sort of end product. Now, I don’t see myself as the most creative person so I’ve actually done internet searches to try come up with something I can work on. Naturally my searches have given me nothing. I do have some project ideas I would like to work on that I have in my 43 Things, but they mostly require things I don’t have and can’t afford, or things I do have but are still in my apartment in Aurora.

My conclusion was that I should start painting again. I’m not much of an artist. The things I draw are pretty much copying (not tracing) things that have already been drawn. And I’m not much of a painter. My paintings come from an assignment I had to do in grade 8, which was basically paint an image from a children’s story book over a washed out background. I still have that painting. I don’t remember the name of the book but I do remember that it had something to do with the horses on the merry-go-round at a carnival coming off and flying in the sky.

Here’s a close up on my favourite horse.

  Other paintings I’ve done are in the same style.

“Solo” – May 2004”Standing Tall” - May 2004

I tend to like this style. It’s simple and if done right, can be elegant, and let’s face it, it’s pretty easy to do.

This one is my most recent. I’ve yet to decide if it’s done or not. I also have yet to title it.

I like this plan also because it’s a fairly cheap hobby. I buy all my materials from the dollar store. May not be the best quality paint or canvas but I’m not the best quality painter so no complaints here. I’ve been using acrylic paint because it’s cheap but I also found small tubes of oil paint that I plan to experiment with.

I do have some project ideas though that I feel can work out. One is to “save a perfectly good piece of furniture from someone's garbage, clean and sand it down if necessary and paint it in fun colours” from my 43 Things list. I grabbed this shelf, not technically from the garbage… but it would have been to the garbage if no one took it. I even started painting it a base white.

Again, it’s a cheap project because all I have to do is buy the paint and brushes. I will have to buy some paint tape as well to make sure I get crisp corners but that won’t be too expensive.

My second project is to do 10 assignments from Learning To Love You More, which is also on my 43 Things list. I haven’t started any of those yet but I’ve been thinking of the ones that I want to do.

From the way things have been going the past month, I hadn’t been to optimistic about how the rest of the summer will go, but hopefully this will help me through.

Downhill

I was going to do a post on painting. I will, but right now I want to pause and talk about how sucky my summer is shaping up to be.

If you haven’t guessed, I still don’t have a job. I think I am overqualified for retail, underqualified for fitness, and I feel (personally) that I am no longer qualified for anything in TV. I actually feel like I haven’t been qualified for anything in TV for a very long time. So, point one – forever unemployment.

Because of the major unemployment looming in the midst, two things happen. (Well three if you count the depression that comes from the two things.) One is that I get really bored. I lose motivation (we already know I had troubles with that in the first place) to do anything so all I do is watch TV. I’ve barely been wanting to even walk King. When I walk King, that gives me the opportunity to think about things and I get really sad. (I have very recently started painting, but I’ll get to that in another post.) The second is the worst consequence of all. I can’t go to Europe. I always have this attitude in the back of my mind that when I start make big plans such as these, that they never work out, because in the past, that’s exactly what’s happened. I told myself this time, no, it will happen. I even got a passport, which is the most I’ve ever done towards plans such as these. Now, reality is that if I can’t get a job - and soon, like this week - there’s nothing I can do about going. Most employers are also not going to like the fact that I’ll be there for about a month then take off for two weeks. I feel absolutely hopeless that this is going to happen, and it really depresses me.

Icing on the cake: I lost my wallet the other day. It contained two credit cards, one debit card, my student card, Y membership card, expired drivers licence that I use for ID, health card that I just got about a month ago, $20 cash and $5 worth of bus tickets. I had a bit of a meltdown when I realized it was missing. Very upsetting.

Okay, trying to be positive here. I’m trying to shift my attitude towards that if I end up staying in Ottawa unemployed all summer, that I will use that time to REALLY focus on training myself into shape. I should have enough money to get me groceries, bus tickets and boxing memberships for the rest of the summer, I already paid for my Y membership for the summer, and I’m challenging myself to run AT LEAST 3k every day. So, there’s my uplifting bit. Trying to feel it anyway.

Teetering on the Edge of Desperation

So after searching through many different outlets of job finding, I finally landed an interview… roughly a half hour I applied for the job… from something I found through Kijiji. Hmmm, not suspicious at all! The interview was with a company called Vector Marketing. Right away I knew it sounded kind of shady but as indicated in my title… it’s been three weeks and I’ll take almost anything. The thing that made me most concerned is that I wasn’t even sure what position I was being interviewed for. I felt like that if I was to be hired I would be  selling my soul for $16 an hour (and you know, the higher the advertised pay, the worse the job is).

I go to the interview. There’s a whole bunch of other people there. There’s a VERY quick interview with each of us individually, which pretty much consisted of a brief introduction of the interviewer and interviewee and to let us know that they sell kitchen cutlery, basically. After we’re all through with the quick interview we’re sent back out in the room to wait for, wait for it… a one hour presentation!

After the presentation we were all given another quick interview just to let us know that we got the job, because obviously we did. I went home thinking, “Well no one else is calling me back, what other choice do I have?” But by the time I left even the street I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do this. I decided to look further into the company. Hmmm. Strange. Enough to put me off. (By the way, I don’t actually believe it is a scam, but I don’t think it’s as simple as they made it out to be.)

If that’s not enough, I then got a call from someone from Rogers Communications for a job opportunity. Right away I jumped on that. It was only after the phone call that I realized, not only did I not remember applying for a job with Rogers, but they called me on my cell where I’ve been giving every potential employer the home number to my Mom’s (since it’s I am staying for the summer). Supposedly they contact current customers for some “customer service” job.

So I head all the way downtown for this information session where these two guys end up talking to a bunch of us outside (and it’s VERY hot) about how great this job is and you can make so much money, and all I could think of was, “and what exactly is the job?” At least at Vector they explained exactly what they wanted us to do and exactly how everything worked. The Rogers information session pretty much went like this:

“This is a great job! You’ll make so much money. This is the time to back out now if you’re not interested.”

Silence.

“You’ll make a lot of money. And you can travel. Leave now if you’re not interested.”

Silence.

“Everyone here believe they are comfortable working with customers?”

Chorus of yes’s.

“Because there will be angry customers, so back out now if you’re not interested.”

It wasn’t until they started giving out paper work and I started reading the contract where it said door-to-door, and something about energy, commodity or something confusing of the like. That’s it, I’m backing out now because I am not interested.

I have to find something though because the heat is stifling and I’m getting super bored. Also, I need to eat. I’m even considering applying to Opinion Search, where I worked as a “Market Research Interviewer” (aka I call people during dinner and ask them if they’d like to do a survey) many years ago and hated. But I have to keep telling myself, it’s only temporary, it’s only temporary, it’s ONLY temporary!!

This is going to be a long summer.

Getting Back on Track

I have been kind of depressed lately and I can’t really figure out why things are bothering me more now than they have before. I suppose it is something that goes up and down with me. Though I was happier (I think) living in Etobicoke with roommates for Semester 2 than I was lonely and going crazy in Aurora for Semester 1, I still found myself MUCH less motivated to get things (studying, assignments, etc) done. My grades for the second semester dropped quite a bit but at least I’m still in Honours status. Now that school is done for the summer, I’m still not feeling too motivated. It’s been a few weeks and to be honest, I haven’t done very much to find a job. It doesn’t help that I’m now living rent-free in my mother’s house for the summer (thanks Mom!!), so having to pay rent isn’t too much of a motivator. However I have really started to make changes. I joined the Y (good price, just around the corner) and I’m quite determined on improving my chin ups! Also (this is the more exciting bit) last weekend I start boxing again! I’ve missed boxing dearly, and I’ve come to realize that it is my main fitness motivator. I even started running again. It’s because I want to improve in my boxing that I do go to the gym and start running to improve my cardiorespiratory endurance. I don’t think I see myself competing and I have considered sparring in the future, but for some reason, I want to do really well in boxing specifically, just for me.

Not standing on anything I swear!

Paying for all this? Good question. I have dropped off a few resumes, yes, and I attended a job fair that ended up being useless, but no one is even calling for an interview, which makes me feel even more depressed and hopeless . Not only do I need to pay for all my fitness stuff, and prepping to go back to school (with probably much less OSAP money), but this summer, this is it…

I’m gonna do it finally. This summer I’m going to Europe! I better go damnit or my head will implode, and all the shards of my skull will sink into my brain and lobotomize me, and I shall be stuck in this metaphorical closet for life repeating reruns of Spaced in my head over and over and over….

Right so, my good (British) friend, Paula, has decided to visit home and I’m hitching a ride her (or rather, going with her for free accommodations) and we’ll also head to the Netherlands, where my family is from (for more free accommodations) and maybe some other country near by for fun. I am REALLY looking forward to this. I have never been outside the continent and get so greenly jealous whenever I see someone’s Facebook status update as, “some country other than Canada or the US in ## of days!!” Or worse, “I now live in this country other than Canada or the US, and this other country, and this other country….” and so on. I wish I knew their secret. Maybe someday I’ll get my chance as well, but for now I’ll have to live with a two week trip, which I am very very very excited about. Things have always managed to not work out in the past, mostly due to my laziness, but I’m working very hard on getting my passport which is now in my possession, and I have enough money (mostly) left over from OSAP (which I really don’t know how it happened) to pay for the flight, although it is not something I want to depend on. All I have to do is sit down with Paula and actually plan it!

And now that THAT is recorded, there’s no backing out!

On a last note, please check out As A Curiousity, Wear A Chameleon On Your Lapel, which is a blog from my wicked artist friend, Adam.

On a last last note, King is still awesome.

A Slice of Life of Two Eat-a-holic Roommates

Jon came home at about 2am. I was still up -- a bit later than usual but not surprising all the same. He walked into my room with a large pizza in his hands.

"Oh no you didn't!" I said, half disappointed in myself that I knew I was going to have a slice or two, and half really glad to see that pizza.

"Oh come on," he said with a smile, "You knew I was going to." He was right though. Somewhere deep inside my brain I knew that when he called an hour earlier asking if I wanted pizza and I said no after some hesitation, that he was going to get a pizza anyway. He took my uncertainty as a yes. He was right about that too.

=======================================================

Wow. I have not updated in a very long time! Possible reasons for this are as follows:

1. I have been busy.

2. I have been lazy.

3. I have collected up so many things to write about that I no longer knew what to write about.

Answer: All of the above.

So here's a brief update:

Going to school in Etobicoke and living sans car in Aurora kinda sucked. It kinda sucked a lot. The commute was horrible, I left King alone for so long, and I got terrible periods of utter loneliness. I did, however, make some friends there. I met them while I was walking King and they were out with their dogs. Gradually our friendship developed to seeing them almost every night and when the weather was nice we would take the dogs on outings to the pond near by or a field to walk them through. It, along with going up to see my cousin, Sarah, her husband, Steve and their boys, made evenings and weekends bearable -- but it still wasn't quite enough.

Bella, one of our dog friends. She loves playing with King!

Kobe, one of our dog friends. He kind of ignores King.

Came exam time, I was dying to find out the new semester's schedule. I had decided after much deliberation, to stay another semester in Aurora because I would save so much money. After my last exam I finally got my schedule. All days (with exception of one day and one iffy day) ended past the time I would have to leave to meet Steve for a ride. We're talking two hours past. Half of me wanted to cry, the other half said, "Thank God!"

Colin and Evan, while I was babysitting during the Christmas break.

That very day I called up a guy who had shown me his house two months back from when I was considering moving out early. His name was Jon. He told me he had a room open for January. Long story short, I took the room. Fast forward through an awesome and busy Christmas break, I'm now living in Etobicoke, roughly a 30 minute walk to the school, King is never alone (and and is accompanied by two other dogs), and I have roommates again.

Dogs of the house: King, Missy and Mary.

The first night I was here, all three slept on my bed.

Arthur - a culinary student from Taiwan. He's funny and teddy bear cute. He laughs a lot, and is totally gay!

Katie & Carlos - an 18 year old funeral services student and boyfriend, who technically doesn't live here, but really, he lives here.

Katie and Lorraine for Lorraine's birthday.

This was our second house party two weekends in a row.

I don't think it's always going to be like this.

Lorraine - a nursing student who just turned 26, ten days before my birthday. I'm so glad there is someone else my age.

Sagen - a funeral services student who just moved in a few days ago. He's a friend of Katie's and had to move in in a pinch.

And then there is Jon - also a funeral services student. In some ways he is exact opposite me, in other ways he is exact me. He sleeps all the time (opposite me), and he eats all the time (exact me). He's a man (opposite me), and he prefers men (exact me). On the pizza night, after eating he decided to go out and meet a friend (he's a night owl) and he changed his pants right in front of me. I'm not sure, but I think that means we're friends.

PS. I want to mention two things: 1. I hate formatting in this program, and 2. the only reason why I mention Jon and Arthur being gay is because for some reason I always end up living with gay people.