::alio!::

zombies again

I had another zombie dream last night.

In this one, my brother Chris had turned into a zombie, but he had retained a semblance of humanity. He was leading a small band of other zombies (just three, a girl and two boys) around. These zombies were a little smarter than the ones I dreamed of the night before. They also conversed entirely in Japanese. It was because of Chris' proficiency in this language that he was their leader.

Anyway, they broke into an abandoned and burnt out house in which I was sheltering. Chris told me that because I was his sister, he wasn't going to eat me, and had instructed his minions to wait outside, because he couldn't trust them to obey his orders all the time. But I had to give him all the vegetables I could find (apparently, vegetables, in this scenario, gave the zombies more energy than, say, BRAINS).

I scuttled through the refrigerator and handed Chris every scrap of wilted lettuce I could find, which he gratefully stuffed into a small garbage bag he was carrying. Admonishing me to stay out of sight, he left. I crept down into the basement, where there was a hole in the upper wall, to see if I could catch a glimpse of what the other zombies looked like. It was at this point that one of his minion boys spotted me and went on the attack. He broke through the hole in the wall and came after me, while Chris was issuing orders to the other zombies. I screamed for Chris to save me (but of course, nothing much came out, just like in a dream - I kept trying, however, and managed to force out a few words before the zombie was upon me), but he didn't get there in time, or decided not to help me after all.

You can't trust a zombie, I guess.

My last day of real work today. Going out for a celebratory lunch with Sheri. I'll be staying a bit late to witness a Will, which I'll finish up tomorrow, and then I'm gone gone gone. I'll let you know how it goes.

oh zombies

So I have two types of nightmare.

I have the one where I am being chased from abandoned building to abandoned building by some monster (usually a dinosaur) that I can only ever catch glimpses of. I'm always just one step ahead of it, i.e., I enter a building and a I have a few seconds to catch my breath and talk to whoever is there before it finds me and I'm on the move again. It's always when I run out of places to go that I wake up.

Then I have the zombie one. Zombie movies are the ones that really scare me. And the zombie nightmares are always those with the zombies from 28 Days Later. The zombie nightmares aren't really all that scary, though. Just stressful and long.

I had a zombie nightmare last night.

Andy and I were staying at Cait's cottage by ourselves, but it was close to a local elementary/high school. This school turned out to be the only safe haven when zombies took over the town. So we went to the school and tried to maintain order amongst the survivors, who were mostly teenagers, taking attendance, getting them to stay inside, beating up the zombies that got inside, or killing those who had turned into zombies on the inside . . . all that jazz. These zombies were sort of a combination of rage zombies and those really stupid ones in the mall in Dead Rising.

Strewn around outside were these weird black wrinkly tube things, filled with some kind of greenish goo the texture of fresh polenta. I wondered what they were.

In my travels around the school and surrounding area, avoiding zombies, I ran across this mad scientist with a bald head. It turns out that he was responsible for turning people into zombies. Those wrinkly black things, contained, according to him, a greenish substance called pillitin, and it was that which converted normal people into brain eating rage monsters. When I confronted him, he burst into tears, saying that he was only trying to help mankind, and had no idea that this pillitin would do such a thing. Our plan, therefore, was simple: release more pillitin (this time in bright pink tubes) into the area around the school, and then while the zombies were distracted, evacuate the school population to the roof, where a large helicopter was waiting.

I remember the pillitin squeezing out of the tubes through my fingers - a sticky substance. I'm not sure if extra pillitin would change the zombies back to normal people or simply act like catnip to them. All I know is that I had just finished squeezing out some more when they broke into the school. We headed the kids down the hallway to the roof, the mad scientist right in front of me, screaming "I didn't know! I didn't know!"

And then, of course, I woke up.

the new plan

Really it's just a continuation of the old plan. But it's all I've got.

So I'm going to email Ken back, and see if he can give me a contact person. Because really, that wasn't a very satisfactory answer.

I'd like to know why.

So I'm going to see if I can get this contact person, and see if I can't persuade this person to meet with me, because I'm not entirely convinced they know the full impact that my research could have on the sports community. So it would give me a chance to explain in person. It would give them an opportunity as well to expand on their reasons for not granting my request. It would also give me a further opportunity for a rebuttal of their reasons.

It's also harder to say no to someone's face.

So that's the plan so far.

oh shit

So apparently the Senators have said no:

"Unfortunately the team will not be able to grant her request. They prefer to not engage in such programs, although they do respect what it is many people are trying to achieve. In today's world of sports business this type of thing is getting harder and harder to do."

I don't have any reasons why, though. Just a no. I'm wondering if I could take another tack and find out why the hell not.

Luckily my happy pills are making it such that I don't feel totally destroyed, so that's something.

***

p.s. Check out all the links I added to your left . . .

Serial Petty Larceny?

So about a year ago, the hoodlums in my neighbourhood (or someone) forced the window on my 1988 Mazda 626 (and vehicular love of my life). They ransacked the interior, ignoring the travel magazines and the liquor store cookbook, as well as the $15 or so stored in the cash compartment.

All they took was the cheapass tire gauge on the centre console next to the gear shift.

Last night, my father forgot to lock the CRV (his vehicular pride and joy). The SUV was likewise ransacked. It's obvious that they were cruising for vehicles, and that they test ours every night, because this was the first night EVER that my father didn't lock it and it gets broken into? Sheesh.

What did they take?

Interesting observation.

Two very terrible CDs containing a motley assortment of "The BEST Classical Music EVER."
The spare key to my mother's electric cart (but not the cart).
The key to the Thule roof rack compartment.

They ignored the $25 or so in the cash compartment, the larger collection of CDs stored just above the console, on the sunshade, and the handicapped parking pass, which can easily fetch $500 on the black market.

But they DID take the second cheapass tire gauge.

I sense a pattern in this.

Remember kids: leaving nothing valuable in your car will not necessarily guarantee your car's safety. Sometimes petty larcenists are crazy, and nothing but 99-cent pieces of Crappy Tire CRAP will satiate their ravenous appetites.

time does fly

My 97-year-old grandmother is talking about how the first radio her family had in Grand Valley Alberta was transported 90 miles through farmland by cart so that they could listen to it.

She is telling me this story as I sit next to her in the dining room, typing this on my wireless internet connection on my laptop.

Interesting.

The apple sure don't fall far.

A Joke from Sheri's daughter Jordahn:

Q: What do you call a bunny with no head?
A: MACARONI!

If ever I thought schizophrenia ran in a family it is now . . .

T-Minus

These final ten days are going to drag, I suspect.

I spent 2 1/2 hours cleaning out Wayner's office yesterday. It's spotless. I took a picture, because I knew I'd never see it like that again (save perhaps on my last day, when I may take advantage of his absence to do it again). He's such a messy man.

My estate files are dragging on - I have three that are taking forever, and unfortunately will not be fully released until October at the earliest, so I will miss that. I love closing estate files. I think it's because I open them, then I do all the work in probating and negotiating share liquidation, and then I write the releases and do it all. Wayner has very little do with estates - he mostly just signs what I tell him to sign. I always feel such a sense of accomplishment when I have the super complicated ones all organized. Estates are my baby, so it's sad that I won't get to see these to completion.

All my favourite family clients seem to be doing well, though. Most of the regulars have completed their affairs, and the abusive husband of my most recent client (the one I gave illegal legal advice to) has been arrested for his assault. But she seems just fine, fully recovered from her suicide attempt. So that looks good. My murder witness is still in jail, but he's reconciled to having only access to his kids when he gets out. My construction client who's spouse always gets him arrested is tickled pink because his spouse got arrested when he caught her in breach of probation. My child support client has finally located her Family Responsibility Office file number and an address for garnishment, which means we can move ahead on that. So things are working out in that department.

I really don't think that there's anything I'm going to miss when I go (coworker aside, of course) . . . save maybe my keyboard. I love this keyboard. It's super smooth and quiet.

And Blinky, my stapler. But I can always purchase one of those.

After cleaning Wayner's office yesterday, I went home and ransacked my room, which had been looking pretty disastrous these past few weeks when I was in and out and not home a lot. I then went through my desk, and organized it so it will actually be conducive to research in September. This is a good sign.

I'm so looking forward to being unemployed.

"heyyyy mike . . ."

Sheri: "You know what book I liked? Was it Nineteen Seventy-Nine?"
Me: "Nineteen Eighty-FOUR?"
Sheri: "Shaddup."

It's very strange how silly you get in an office. We can repeat shit for HOURS and it's still funny. Like me pretending to be Swedish. And Sheri calling me Office Wench.

That shit never gets old.

But you really had to be there.

I always knew I was a classical beauty . . .

Cottage was great. Celine and Cait and I took pictures. They'll be up at some point.

In other news, I got this from Cara and Will:

On one of Pie's I got Joe DiMaggio and Jamie Bell, but I couldn't get the right configuration again, and then it wouldn't load properly.

Thursday

This week has whizzed by. Of course, I had Monday off, and it's not yet Friday, but I feel like I haven't had enough time to do anything I've meant to do this week. I haven't even really seen my family that much, and it was my parents' 31st wedding anniversary yesterday.

Mostly I've been catching up on my work backlog, although that only took me until yesterday. I helped Andy sort out his equipment on Monday and we're going to go through his files tonight. I played ultimate last night. I didn't enjoy it. Ultimate is not fun for me. It just seems like a pointless sport: why not just play touch football? There's more strategy involved and people don't complain as much. Or if you want to play frisbee, do some kind of keep-away thing. That's basically all it is.

Tonight I have been suckered into playing softball, because Andy's team is short players. I don't even know the rules, so we shall see how this goes. Hopefully I can hit/throw/catch a softball as well as I can a baseball. Otherwise, I'm screwed.

Tomorrow Andy and I head to Cait's cottage for the weekend. It's just outside of Smiths Falls, so I'm sure a visit to the Hershey factory will be in order. It's on the way, in any case. I shall be sure to take pictures, although I can't post them until September, because I've capped my bandwidth on Flickr.

Which reminds me: if any of you were trying to figure out a present for me, a Flickr Pro account wouldn't go down too badly . . .

Back to work with me. It doesn't look to be an exciting day.

Oh, and Nilo, I only just got your comment about the Bravia stuff. Neat! I didn't realize that some comments require my approval. Weird.

"we're tight."

We have this client.

He's Italian.

'Nuff said?

His favourite phrase is "Badda Boom, Badda Bing."

He has more energy than Daniel Alfredsson and the Energizer Bunny put together.

It comes across in his phone voice.

He tries to be buddy-buddy with us receptionists.

He's trying to be best friends with the bossman.

He calls a lot.

I avoid the calls because he's CRAZY.

But he always thinks it's me.

This is how this morning's conversation went:

Sheri: Good morning, [bossman's] office.
Mike: Heyyyyyyyy Alison!
Sheri: It's Sheri . . .
Mike: Heyyyyyyyy Sheri!
Sheri: Heyyyyyyy Mike.
Mike: Heyyyyyyy Mike!

Sheri passed him on to the bossman as fast as possible. Then she turned to me (after I'd stopped laughing at the conversation - trust me, if you knew this guy, you'd laugh too), and said: "we're tight."

Return of the Prodigal

TADA!

I have returned.

Aside from a myriad splotching of bug bites and a number of bruises from a slight misadventure down a river, I am unscathed and slightly more tanned.

You should check out some of the photos I took (in total it was about 168, but Flickr only let me put up 20MB of that). Some of them are pretty darned good. You can check them out here. Please comment on them and let me know what you think.

Other than that, I really got nothin'. I've been in the middle of nowhere for the past ten days. You'll have to fill me in.

Luckily I have tomorrow off work so I can sit back and RELAX . . .

OFF!

So I just got back from the bank. CIBC just gave me an education line of credit for $25k at prime plus 2%.

I'm going to tahiti.

On the way back, though, I was driving down Clare, and this group of tiny day-campers was crossing the street in single file. There must've been about thirty of them (maybe twenty) and they were all wearing oversized bright red t-shirts. They were walking across with their right arms extended in front of them, in the way that all small children are taught to cross the street.

It was probably the cutest thing I've seen all week.

That said, my baby cousin Saige is coming over shortly, and I get to meet her for the first time. So I may eat my words yet.

Now I gotta shower for the last time in a week and get ready to head out on the adventure that is camping.

I experimented with my cellphone and I can post things from there, so if something exciting happens while I'm gone, I'll let you know.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!

TMI and Puppies.

My boss just headed for the bathroom with a Time Magazine, so I figure
I have a few minutes.

Last night I dreamed of puppies. You could buy puppy seeds in a
package, kind of like those spongy things you grow in water. You
chucked 'em in a pot of hot water on the stove and your puppies grew.

In the first batch, I got nine: two shelties, who looked remarkably
like my current dogs, but with different markings; three small
terrier-like things, two very large dogs, and two cats (I guess they
got thrown into the puppy mix).

So I tried a second batch as the other puppies were running around
drying off and growing before my eyes.

However, I got distracted with the puppies and with a conversation
that my mother and I were having about what exactly I was going to do
with all these puppies, and I left the second pot on the stove too
long. The water boiled. I managed to save one, a wrinkle dog
(although whether that was the species or a result of over-cooking I
don't know). Another had died from the heat, and the rest just hadn't
grown much before they aborted themselves. They looked like perogies
with eyes and noses. It was sad. The puppy who was still alive was
standing in the put of boiling water, lifting his poor feet one at a
time out of the water. I rescued him and cooled his feet in a saucer
of cool water (which wasn't as cool as I wanted it to be, but it was a
dream, and nothing's ever satisfactory in dreams), and then I woke up.

EDIT!

I KNEW there was a reason I posted today.

Here's the back story.

My father's younger brother lives in the Florida keys, where he runs a swanky five-star restaurant and bar. So he's got pulling power when it comes to women.

About twenty years ago, he married a beautiful Lebanese woman named Suzie. They divorced about 16 years ago, but still remain very good friends.

Suzie has remarried to a man named Kenny, and they have two kids. Kenny is a stage manager. Not some piffling dude, but the main one for Canada. Like when Elton John and the Rolling Stones come to town, whatever city they are in, they insist that he does their shows. When I first met him he was doing all of Madonna's Canadian shows. He's that good.

So he knows some people.

And my father was out with Suzie and the kids and my grandmother at a picnic this weekend and my dad mentioned my current plight with the Senators.

Suzie mentioned this to Kenny and Kenny emailed my dad.

He knows some people who owe him in the organization.

So he wants me to write a little letter to him detailing what I want to do, and then he'll stick an impressive covering letter on it and send it off to call in some favours.

So this could be my big break.

Stay tuned.

Ho-Hum.

Another day, another huge freaking pile of work to do.

Last summer, if y'all remember correctly, I had to attend a Trial at the Courthouse, and this trial lasted for a month, which is unusual. Because it was so long, about 65 exhibits were filed during that period of time. For the past two months, I've been trying to find all the ones filed at Court in our personal file on this client. Of these 65, I was able to locate perhaps 40. I then had to cross-reference them and put them in order in a book. Then I spent half a day down at the Courthouse trying to finangle the confidential exhibit file from the Court clerk, and then another two hours copying all the ones I missed.

Thankfully, I didn't have to make the seven copies required for the Court of Appeal judges. I got to send that to Mail Boxes Etc. But MBE doesn't do the same fancy stuff they used to when I was manager there. They don't do tabs, for one thing. So I've spent the past three days going through each set and inserting tabs where needed. Yesterday afternoon I got four of the twelve books bound and finished. Today I do the other eight.

My boss looked at me as I walked out the door yesterday and commented, in regard to these damned books, "that's a lotta work, isn't it?" That is an understatement.

So for now, I'm sitting on my ass at my desk, very slowly writing out Powers of Attorney for old people who are about to go crazy with age. Bossman is in Cornwall for the morning, so I believe I am safe for now.

Holy smokes it was hot yesterday! When I got home from dripping all the way back from work, I checked the Weathernetwork. It said it was 38 degrees celsius with a humidex of 51. That's RETARDED HOT. I had a shower and dinner in my gloriously air-conditioned house (except it's so damned huge that the A/C doesn't quite make it all the way to my room in the north wing), and then headed out in my gloriously air-conditioned hepa-filtered smog-protecting SUV to the Pie's, where we went swimming in his pool for the first time since he moved in on the first of April. It's a nice pool, although strongly chlorinated. I didn't have a shower when I got home so I smell a little bleachy. I just hope my hair doesn't turn green like Chel's. :D

Tonight I am taking my brother shopping at the mall (before you gasp in disbelief, understand that he actually ASKED me to take him!). It's a little sad when you have to dress someone who's nearly 30. Although I dress my father, too, and he's nearly 60. Must be a family trait. Anyway, it will be fun because we're going to go to Moxie's for dinner, and we're taking our houseguest, Claire, a young recruit with the Ottawa Fury soccer team, along for the ride. She was a baby living across the street from me in Dartmouth in the 80's. Those pictures on my Flickr of the inside of someone named Janet's house are of her house. She's going to be the next big female pro player. It's kind of exciting to hear her talk of scouts and whatnot. And she's only 17! Nice kid.

After that? Camping Camping Camping Camping Camping Camping Camping Camping . . .

Nine glorious nights in the middle of nowhere with no concerns other than when it is an appropriate time to start drinking. Andy's family will be joining us for the second weekend, and if any of the rest of you feel like making a day or two trip, you should come out and see us. I hear the swimming is amazing.

Oh wow, I basically verbal diarrhea-ed all over this and said nothing of great importance.

Ah well, that's one of the pleasures of the internet - no body cares.