if you'll recall, i have a coworker who didn't want to hire a temp to take minutes at a sunday condo agm. i didn't want to play secretary and most certainly not for a whopping $75. my refusal is what prompted her to call into question my mental faculties. heh.

somehow, word got around the office. and by "somehow" i mean, i blabbed. somewhat passive aggressive, but satisfying.

geh.

ooooo ... bean's back at work  :D  i'm glad to see she's doing so much better. (i'm also glad i'm not doing two jobs anymore.)

you know, i got to see karma in action today. a woman came into the office this afternoon. she pays her condo fees by pre-authorized cheque. the january withdrawal was $15 more than what her condo fees are supposed to be. after that payment went through, we saw the error and changed it. 

she was at the front desk absolutely freaking out. she's been credited the money, we apologized ... come on, is an aneurysm worth $15 that you haven't actually lost anyway? then she demands to know *why* this happened. how could we have broken the sacred trust between manager and condo owner? and, seriously, she wouldn't accept the fact that clerical errors happen. once satisfied that a thorough investigation would be completed, she left. we were left a little stunned and dehumanized.

so we set out to see what happened. it turns out that she wrote the wrong withdrawal amount on her sign-up form. no, we didn't catch her mistake right away, but we corrected it ...

for pity's sake. 

surely, she's experienced more tragic events in her (decidedly) long lifetime. she has children and grandchildren - and those little bundles of joy are often bundles of imperfection, just like real people. if a ridiculously small inconvenience inspires *that* kind of reaction, i'm, frankly, surprised that she's alive. 

but then, i did have a cat that i was certain was too mean to die. this was the meanest, touchiest cat i've ever known and also, the longest-lived. she was 22 or so by the time she left this plane. maybe this woman is the same way. 

in any case, i wonder how she'll react to our findings. 

you've quite possibly seen this picture before - i think it's from a 2003 pro-war, uhm, protest(?). an anti-protest protest? geh. whatever. this picture makes me laugh whenever i come across it.

where's my kat? i'm home alone :(   and bored (obviously)

*whine*

on friday (or perhaps saturday - it was close to midnight), my mom called to say that bean was in the hospital and that she wanted me to keep her company. my sister miscarried.

we joined her boyfriend there and waited through the night until her surgery in the morning. bean slept most of the time, hopped up on demerol and some other, stronger drug. 

thankfully, i brought my ipod and a book. the combination of the two allowed me to ignore Drunk-Guy-With-Head-Split-Open and Annoying-4-Yr-Old-Girl-Whose-Parents-Encouraged-Her-To-Charge- Around-The-Emergency-Ward-Because-They're-Either-Sadists-Or-Morons. 

my mom ended up parenting said child. my mom ended up on the receiving end of angry glares from said parents (who were eventually shamed into entertaining their child quietly). ahh, ruthie. 

that morning i went home to bed and bean had her operation. she was home that afternoon. poor girl  :\ 

later that day - saturday - the kat and i went to lupercalia... what fun! some of you may know that i was a tad concerned about the dress i chose to wear to the party. i've never worn anything quite so, uhm, revealing ... and latex. all went well though. i'm lucky enough to have decently proportioned legs and other such girl parts. (bleh.) so yes. if you'd like to see what i dared to wear in (limited) public, go here - it's number 5057, the red dress. it was ample motivation for losing a few pounds last week.  my boots are much like number 609, here, but they come up somewhat higher - just about to my knee. 

there was also a drag show done by the Imperial Sovereign Court of the Wild Rose and Mr. Gay Edmonton did a thing too. i think the night was, primarily, a fundraiser for Living Positive.

the next night, we were back at the delta for the play party. now, i've never been to such a thing before so it was all highly fascinating. i didn't really get into the swing of things though ... i was far more entertained with analyzing the goings on. maybe next time. 

wow. i just realized how much of my personal life i've shared. heh - i suppose i've got a freaky side to me. 

i feel very... clothed today in my turtleneck and pants. no one would ever guess what i did this weekend. 

*pats self on back*

i'm sick to death of being asked to do things for a certain coworker.

she's always in need of a secretary to attend condo meetings with her. *i'm not a secretary,* but she asks me every time and says, "oh, you'll be paid for your time." as if that's what i care about.

i don't care if the condo pays me $75 for an hour and a half of my time. i don't like them. they're tedious and grating people who have nothing better to do than pick apart their neighbours' choice of planter boxes for an hour. ...maybe if they paid something more like $300. maybe. 

well, the most recent request is to attend a meeting on the 26th. the 26th is a sunday. is she insane? does she think that i'm going to be willing to screw up an entire day of peace when i'm highly unlikely to donate a weekday evening? 

"no, i'm sorry dear. i *do* have other things to do, namely, lazing around in bed until 2 pm with a book, while recovering from (hopefully) a fabulous saturday night/sunday morning. eventually, i'll have a bath and contemplate dinner. then, i think, west wing is on. i'll be watching that. my sunday me-time is infinitely more important than an hour-long planter box discussion because monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday and friday make me want to die. *die.*" 

i wonder if she'd buy that.

just because *she's* eager to escape her family whenever possible, does not mean i should feel obliged to do the same.  

i need to get over my need to find excuses that conceal how i really feel.

i don't have much else to report. everything is pretty much the same. *everything.* i won't bore you with my thoughts on that.

speaking of bill o'reilly (and his ilk), what's the reason for their silence regarding vice president cheney's license to kill ... or, at least, maim 78 year old men? i would have thought that this would be considered news-worthy material. perhaps more so than the story about al gore's terrorism speech in saudi arabia.

really: fox news will issue a BREAKING NEWS ALERT for a cold snap in des moines or the president taking a presidential stroll in the rose garden, but the veep shooting someone in the face...? "meh - the democrats will use this unfortunate (and exceptionally rare sort of) incident to try to take away our second amendment right to bear arms and kill shit." (i made that up. the quotation marks are decorative.) actually, o'reilly categorized the story as "The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day." (i'm not making that up.)

the white house press secretary was faced with this barrage of questions. (it's a pretty amusing read. scott mcclellan gets his behind handed to him.)

cheney has yet to say 'my bad.' the office of the vice president released this statement about his lack of a $7 "stamp for hunting upland game birds." that's all so far.

well of course, he didn't mean to do it. no one thinks he *meant* to do it. i think he'd come off as less of a weasel if he said, "yes, i shot the gun. no, i didn't pay attention to the location of the rest of my hunting party. yes, i'm sorry." the man he shot has, apparently, had a "minor heart attack" because of bird shot lodged in his heart. this is not quite as inconsequential as the office of the vice president makes it out to be.

i wonder what the white house's response would have been if cheney had been on the receiving end of the bird shot.

that mp who said, "Nelson Mandela is a terrorist," happens to be rob anders, who is now a cabinet member. his position? Minister of State - Multiculturalism. what a fantastic choice, harper!

but, not a surprising choice. alas. look at this:

  Minister of State - Youth Justice: myron thompson said, "Let's lower the age (at which one should be tried as an adult) to ten."

  Minister of Citizenship & Immigration: art hanger said, "Immigrants are choking welfare systems, contributing to high unemployment and many cannot read."

  Minister of Indian Affairs & Northern Development: brian fitzpatrick said, "You can't scalp me because I haven't got much hair on top of my head."  (i presume he was joking, but...)

  Women's Caucus Chair: cheryl gallant said, "We saw that young American having his head cut off. What's happening, what is happening down there no different." (at a pro-life pep rally)

  Minister of Foreign Affairs: stockwell day sent out a column by david frum (a former white house speechwriter, National Review columnist and general yahoo) who guessed that Yasser Arafat died of AIDS as his response to questions about the Conservative Party's reason for not offering their condolences to Palestinians upon Arafat's death. (nice. maybe he'd like to join these "people.") 

sad, sad, sad. 

i know i'm somewhat late in my critique of Fearless Leader the Lesser's choices for cabinet members. geh. i've been busy. 

did you see the music industry's evening of masturbatory self-congratulation? no? you're better for it. 

i watched about a half hour of it. i feel dirty. i'd be happier if i hadn't seen coldplay's *god* *awful* performance. was that typical of their live shows? is the singer normally so far out of tune? certainly, i'm no fan of coldplay (a.k.a. u2-redux) to begin with, but that was atrocious by anyone's standards.

the office is strangely quiet this morning. maybe i'll get some work done.

actually, there's a bunch of conservative mps' quoted on this site. who thought it was a good idea to vote for someone who thinks Nelson Mandela is a terrorist?  good god.

my antibiotics are supposed to taken with food. i realized that they require more than a piece of toast. *angry tummy*  bleh - i don't like eating breakfast.

work has been annoying to say the least. on monday, i locked myself in the bathroom for a while. 

i think i'm different in some way. maybe it's because of the week of isolation. maybe the fever fried my brain. maybe it's because i haven't slept for a while (because of my yucky lungs). i don't know.

i just feel different. i feel ready for the universe to do something (anything) to me. i'm fed up and annoyed.

do you know what else? i've lost my watcher. well, kind of. i think i was coping with the inanity of my job by psychologically disconnecting from my daily routine. now, i feel like i'm actually doing this and it's really ... unpleasant. 

hm. i don't know what's coming.

i've spent the past week in bed, ravaged by fever and lungs that hate me. obviously.

my doctor has me on some mighty powerful antibiotics. the bacteria in my lungs are on their way out. when the fever hit its height on wednesday, i was actually concerned for my corporeal being. i haven't been this sick in a very long time.

the awful thing about the past week is that i've been confined to my bed. television was the most annoying thing in the world, reading was impossible with my swimming vision. i watched (slept through) some movies and thought. my stupid brain was my entertainment.

i also realized something about my stupid brain: it seems to think that it's ok to let my subconscious poke its head into daily conscious thought. no, this isn't fever induced delerium.

does anyone else have instantaneous dreams? really instantaneous ... you blink your eyes and you've dreamed. well, this is something that happens to me on a regular basis. perhaps daily. sometimes they're nightmares, sometimes they're just fucked up.

i think one i had yesterday evening falls into both those categories.

there's this long mustard yellow room with no ceiling. the walls are dotted with squarish projections. there are three unfinished wooden tables in the room. at each table is an elderly asian woman. each is standing, facing the same direction - towards the door behind my point of perspective. each woman is holding a chicken upside down by the legs and is in the process of pulling it apart. all the chickens are made of straw, but they still feel.

what the hell? i don't want to remember things like this. eh. maybe i do. i should write this crap down. i'm not going to share the other cute, little vignettes that come to me, because, honestly, they don't mean anything. not to you, anyway.

i'm curious if this happens to anyone else. otherwise, i'm going to feel really, unfortunately special.

can you tell that i've gone through blogging withdrawal? jesus. you didn't need to know any of that.

i need to socialize myself.