Category Archives: Random Stuff

Getting Things Done

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In the past couple months, I’ve reached critical mass of “things” in my life. There are a lot of balls in the air (without sign of lessening that load any time soon – more likely increasing it), and I am at serious risk of dropping even more of them.

Since we came back from the wedding, I’d been driving myself absolutely batty, freaking out about uncharacteristically losing a few things.

I’d managed to misplace the secondary set of wedding rings we bought and wore on our honeymoon (and planned on wearing on vacations where we were apt to lose the real ones, or where they’d draw undue attention), along with a wedding card from a distant relative with a not-insignificant sum of cash inside. More recently I’d completely misplaced my Nexus card and, though I hadn’t looked for them, realized on my last trip I had no idea what I’d done with my noise-canceling headphones since the trip before that.

This is VERY unlike me. I do not lose things. Not even insignificant things, nevermind expensive ones.

I also knew I was getting to a dangerous point with bills. Not like I’d forget to pay anything, because most of it autopays out of my bank account – but there were months of statements I’d not gotten around to opening between trips. I really had no idea what the state of any of my accounts were.

I was feeling the same crunch at work. My normally manageable and well-filtered email inbox had hundreds of messages in it. I was firefighting to solve as many problems I’d created with my own scattered brain as had just arisen as problems are wont to do. I’m certainly not paid enough at this point to take on the kind of responsibility that would have me making decisions or missing actions that would sink ships – but I was certainly on my way to wholly preventable fuckups my boss and her bosses would notice.

It was beyond time to do something.

So I looked in to using David Allen’s Getting Things Done system.

I tackled it first at home: dealt with the stacks and scads of paper and crap that have been amassing in random piles all over the place, got an inbasket and made a bunch of files as I went. It’s not perfect yet, and it’s not done, but it feels SO GOOD to have started.

I plan on taking the day on July 1 to fully implement the system at work. The office should be mostly empty, so it’s a perfect opportunity to deal with things before I go away again, and be able to deal with the pileup once I return.

And considering with the little bit I’ve already done, I managed to find the rings, the greeting card, my Nexus card, my headphones, and a few other things I’d forgotten that I’d forgotten about – I have high hopes for a more organized, more productive future.

Have any of you implemented GTD or another productivity system in your lives? Want to? Tricks to share?

Get Whitey

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I started writing a general update-slash-stream of consciousness post, but I was boring myself (so can’t imagine what anyone who might read it would think). So I deleted it and decided random short paragraphs would be better.

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The title of this post has nothing to do with anything, except the fact that I have Aquafresh Whitening Trays in my mouth right now. Sure, they’re only once a day, but you spend 30 minutes choking on mint-flavoured peroxide and drooling on yourself, and that one period of time per day will feel like an eternity.

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There was a time, long long ago in an entry far, far away when I promised I’d reply to all my comments. I started doing it by email, until I realized I was giving essentially the same response (especially to comments that asked questions), or I was getting email bounce-backs, so I’ve started just replying to comments in the comments field. So, uh, sorry if you were waiting for a reply from me at any point – check the comments of the entry you commented on – your answer/acknowledgment is probably there.

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I am desperately sad that I have watched the last two episodes of jPod and MVP. I’ll admit that they started off pretty bad, and the MVP storyline was completely ridiculous, but the jPod actors were getting so much better, and MVP was supposed to be a footballer’s wives ripoff anyhow, so ridiculousness is sort of de rigueur. Considering the only reason I knew the shows were even going to exist is because of a very short commercial during a Hockey Night in Canada broadcast (the fact that I watched a commercial at all is remarkable in and of itself), I place the blame squarely on the CBC and its lack of promotion.

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I have a confession to make: I’m a bad citizen. I had the opportunity to vote in one of the recent federal by-elections (I live in Vancouver-Quadra) and didn’t. I didn’t actually know of the election until the day-of, and by then didn’t feel like being a totally uninformed voter and toeing a random party line (not having paid much attention to party policies in the past while either) would do anyone much good – so I just didn’t vote. I apologize, and will endeavor to do better in the future.

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I am reluctantly admitting to being a bit crafty. Not crafty as in clever, I’ve been like that since conception, but crafty as in one who crafts. I had a sneaking suspicion about myself after reluctantly going to a pottery-painting event and enjoying it, but wasn’t ready to go any further than that. Now I’m doing a few handmade craft-style touches and embellishments to a few elements of our wedding, and damned if I’m not actually enjoying it.

I have always equated being a crafter to someone who makes those awful toilet-paper-holder dollies. You know the ones – someone’s grandma has bought a plastic faux-barbie doll from the craft store, and knit or crocheted it a dress with a gigantic skirt, made to fit over a roll of toilet paper, as if the paper was a huge crinoline. Often accompanied by a matching (in pattern, and hideousness) kleenex box cover. Either that, or someone who bedazzles rhinestones onto the eyeballs of all the cats on their Northern Reflections Sweatshirts.

And I am soooooo not that person.

But I am enjoying hand-making some things, and adding embellishments (rhinestones not included) to make them a little more appealing. So maybe I am crafty. Just a little.

As long as it is known that I do not knit. Or scrapbook. And I still consider “bedazzler” a four-letter word.

And with that, the timer just went off for these godforsaken mouth trays, so with that I say adieu!

About Face

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I was all set to write a ridiculously upbeat post about how excited I am about our upcoming wedding, rambling on about all the little details that are coming together and confessing my complete and utter surrender to being one of those overly giddy and completely wedding obsessed brides to be.

But I’m just not feelin’ it the last few days.

Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, I found out that mid-last-week someone I went to High School with passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly.

Before Facebook, I had kept in contact with absolutely zero people from High School.

While the sting has mostly subsided, High School wasn’t a particularly pleasant time for me. I fell somewhere in the middle of the social spectrum, being fairly relentlessly picked on by a certain group of people, and in turn doing my fair share of picking on another group of people. And of course there were people I was friendly with, and people I just didn’t really interact with at all.

Justin fell somewhere between the latter three groups.

We were in homeroom together for the entire 5 years of High School. We both worked at the local McDonald’s for about 3 years. As far as I recall we never had any type of deep or meaningful conversations, but were always pretty friendly. With one notable exception: he was a persistent, insufferable, unapologetic flirt. And I would continually shut him down mercilessly. There wasn’t any actual hostility in it – it just felt good (as any teenager can testify) to try evening out the social playing-field. Someone laid the social smackdown on me earlier, I took it out on someone else.

Anyhow. Facebook came along, and within the past 4 or 5 months I’ve friended or been friended by probably a good 30% of my graduating class. Justin was one of them. Looking back through my archives, we exchanged about 3 “how’s life” wall posts. I figured I’d see him at the 10-year reunion (coming up this summer), we’d chat briefly, all move on with our lives much the same as we all were before.

Then (and this is now from 3rd and 4th-hand accounts) sometime last week he stopped showing up for work. Nobody could get in touch with him. This wasn’t like him, so his parents eventually had the police go to his place and check on him. He’d had an anneurysm and died.

And, strange as it seems, I’m really bummed about it.

Bummed that he was a good person, a really nice guy, and I hadn’t been nicer to him. Bummed that sometimes shitty things happen, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

I feel really badly for his friends and family and the tough time they’re going through right now.

And I feel completely weirded out that had it not been for Facebook, I’d just have no idea at all that this had happened.

Clearing up Misconceptions

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I was pretty surprised the first time I was chewed out – no pun intended (you’ll get this eventually, I promise) – for expressing this long-held and apparently errant belief.

It doesn’t help much that the people “in the know” have been battling the stereotype for quite a while, so they tend to get a little testy and short-tempered about the spreading and proliferation of misinformation and misconceptions.

In fact, I find it hard to restrain myself (now that I am one of the “enlightened ones”) from correcting others when they trot out (oh, another pun!) the old, tired cliché. I even bit my tongue during a brainstorming session at work where it came up – because the first rule of brainstorming is that you don’t judge, correct, or otherwise trample on the ideas of others.

But then Alice mentioned it in her blog post a couple days ago, and I knew I could be silent no longer! I mean, she’s a pretty popular blogger, the potential for prolonging the proliferation of this particular piece of pop-trivia is just staggering.

So here goes – prepare to have your world turned upside-down:

GOATS DO NOT EAT EVERYTHING, AND IN FACT ARE REALLY QUITE PICKY!

There. Now you know.

What goats are is destructive. They will chew anything they can reach. The list of things they will swallow, however, is apparently pretty limited. A goat’s notorious pickiness is apparently the bane of many a goatkeeper.

Anyhow. I just needed to get that off my chest.

Also, this is what happens when you say “yes” to marrying a guy who grew up on a goat farm (and has the 4H Champion Herdsman awards to prove it). So really, you’ve been informed, and warned!

Picture Pages

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Bandit

Neil and I were planning on taking an impromptu vacation over the Christmas break, partly to try and avoid being home to see if we could postpone closing on our new place until after the GST goes down on January 1st, and partly because we’re sad we won’t be in our new home for Christmas – something we’d really been looking forward to – and wanted some sort of consolation prize.

Then we were told by our Lawyer that there will be a transitional period around the GST change, and while we may have to pay out the 6% tax initially, we can fill out some paperwork to be reimbursed for the additional 1%. Huzzah!

Wine

So we re-thought the vacation thing. I’ve been away a lot lately, and Neil is going off to Ohio next week, so another set of flights wasn’t really appealing. That, and with the upcoming moving, new furniture and wedding costs, we could afford a small getaway, but really couldn’t afford to chase the sun.

But dammit, we still wanted our consolation prize!

So we trundled off figuring we’d start looking at new digital cameras, since we were planning on buying one for the honeymoon anyway, and thought it would be nice to have something that wasn’t 2 megapixels and 4 years old to take holiday photos with.

Sasha

We walked into Lens & Shutter, intending to look at the latest in point & shoot technology. But for the kind of pictures we want to take (travel landscapes, low-light and night-sky shots) we admitted to ourselves what we knew all along – a pocket camera was going to be completely inadequate.

So we started looking at larger cameras – and by that point, in terms of price, one might as well start exploring the world of entry-level digital SLR’s. So we did. And walked out of the store with the Pentax K10D.

Neither of us has followed the world of digital SLR’s particularly carefully, so we weren’t even aware there were entry-level options other than the Canon Digital Rebel and Nikon D80. But Pentax, despite coming a bit late to the digital SLR game, has put out a camera that competes on price with the lower-end Canon and Nikon lines, but competes on features with the much more expensive Canon EOS 30D and Nikon D200. It’s a pretty incredible value for money.

The three pictures in this post represent the 3 best (read: only passable) pictures of the 200 or so we’ve taken so far (wine by Neil, dogs by me).

Next step: picking up a book on digital SLR photography to figure out what all the features mean (seriously, I don’t even know what an F-Stop actually is) and taking a short course on digital SLR photography. Any recommendations?

Pretty as a Picture

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Heather (aka fubsy, aka nuttymuffin, aka “the hotness”) has put together a 2008 calendar of her beautiful photographs.

This is the same woman who captured me licking my new TiVo at BestBuy waaaaay back in 2005. That’s right – I pioneered the technology licking movement that won Tod Maffin his Wii.

But I digress – Nuttymuffin calendar. I got one, you should too.

Jen-licking-TiVo photo not included.

Catch-all

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Do you (bloggers) ever get to that point where you realize you haven’t written for a while, and you want to, but because it’s been so long you have no idea where to start – you want to apologize for not writing because it has been so long, but you’re not actually sorry because you haven’t been up to anything very interesting – though a few things have happened and you feel you should mention them but you don’t because they seem far too insignificant to appear as the first thing on your blog after such a long absence and you end up so frustrated at the situation and your need to put something on the page that you end up just writing a huge run-on sentence instead of any actual content?

Me neither.

Anyhow, here’s a brief sampling of what’s been up with me lately:

Wedding stuff is still going on with a minimum of crazy-inducing antics. Note I said minimum, not zero, and while minimum is obviously better than medium or maximum, it is still far more irritating than zero. I am attempting not to drive myself nutty over it and/or throw things. So far I’ve been mostly successful at both.

Our new place looks closer and closer to completion every time we go by. The retail stores on the ground floor have opening dates that fall within the next couple weeks, and they’ve finally pulled the blue plastic off the windows. It’s so close we can almost smell it. Which obviously makes us hate everything about the place we’re in more with each passing day we don’t get our official notice of occupancy. Oh the list I could create of things that I am excited to leave behind – including our impending rent increase.

I’ve started running (stop laughing, Mom!). It’s not my favourite thing in the world, but surprisingly, it doesn’t suck as much as I thought it would. A good training program helps.

The countdown to travel is on. I leave for NYC in 10 days. I’m gone for a week, back for a week, then go to Vegas for a week. I am simultaneously excited and terrified, because I’m the lead for both these events and would rather not fuck them up. I actually think the likelihood of that happening is approaching zero, but I don’t want to jinx it.

Any requests for which of these to expand on first?

Mondays on a Tuesday

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Sitting at my desk, drinking coffee, chatting with colleagues about the long weekend past, and getting my workflow in order.

I feel proud that I managed to shake off a poor night’s sleep and get in to work without incident.

I smile at myself, take another sip of coffee, and run my tongue over my teeth.

And it hits me.

I totally forgot to brush this morning.

ew.

Ow, my aching wallet!

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Camping Gear

Originally uploaded by peechie.

In anticipation of our upcoming canoe/camping trip, Neil and I went out this past weekend to stock up on supplies.

We’ve both done our fair-share of camping, though it’s all been car-camping – the backpacking thing is pretty new to us. Of course, that meant we have gotten away with owning bulky, heavy camping stuff and reappropriating household goods to see us through the trip.

Luckily, we’re going with a pretty large group (Neil’s family), so we didn’t have to equip ourselves with an entire backpacker’s arsenal of necessities. His parents are taking care of food, and have all the cooking tools, plates, utensils and dehydrated foodstuffs we’ll need for sustinence over the five days.

It also helps that we aren’t strictly backpacking, we’re canoeing, so things that would normally be a very bad idea (a regular-sized tent and sleeping bags) aren’t really that big a deal.

The big “areas” we’ve taken responsibility for, for the group, are clean water, first-aid, and ropes (this whole hanging food from trees thing should be interesting).

And between equipping ourselves with that, the necessary technical clothing (I may be okay with not showering, but I am NOT okay with not having dry socks or clean underwear) and a few other convenience accessories – holy crap it starts to add up.

And so, to lessen the burning feeling as funds leech away from our bank accounts, I figured I’d at least get some joy out of it by opening up a wee contest for my entertainment and yours!

Guess how much all the stuff in the picture cost!

If you click through to the flickr photo, there are notes on the details and quantity of each item.

All goods were purchased at either 3Vets or MEC. I can also tell you that the most we paid for any item on there was $75.

Leave your guess in the comments. All guesses must be in Canadian dollars. Winner goes Price is Right style – closest without going over.

The prize will be either a $10 MEC card (locals only, and you must give me your mailing address) or a $10 online gift certificate to Amazon (.ca or .com – depending on where you are).

I’ll post the winner when we return, on August 16th.

Happy guessing!

UPDATE: And the winner is Yvonne with a guess of $900, closest to our astronomical total of $987.50 (after tax). I couldn’t believe it either – everything we purchased fit into a single laundry hamper – but I think Neil’s $41-per-pair fancy-schmancy underwear might’ve had something to do with it…

Thanks for playing along – and it all did come in pretty handy on the trip, which I’ll get to in the next post.

How do you shave a Minotaur?

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A collection of random things, because I am seriously all out of drama for this week.

I’m typing up a fact sheet and for some reason, my brain thought “Monitoring” and my fingers output “Minotauring” – because it’s important you get all your half-man/half-bull needs taken care of.

We were supposed to be moving this month. Our condo is not finished yet (thus far the estimate is still December). This makes me very sad. Not because I want the penthouse views or better layout or hardwood floors. No – because I HATE the countertops here. They are all super porous laminate that stains like a mofo. The kitchen counters are splotched with red wine, coffee and other mystery stains. Know what the bathroom counter has absorbed? Smells. Including the smell of wet, nasty dog from the skunk incident last week. The new place has granite. And a damn dog-washing station in the parkade level, so she doesn’t have to shake all over our bathroom.

Three words that made my day: Man Eating Badgers.

I have taken to going outside and caressing our monster tomato plant, just because then my hands will smell like tomato plant – which is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the best smells in the world.

Remember the awesomeness that is the Bodygroom and the shaveeverywhere.com campaign? They’re back! This time with the Story of Sack! Now that the sun’s come out, are you beach ready?

Midday Confession

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After my Food Network rant the other day, I must make a confession.

I use a lot of disposable plastics in the kitchen.

I do use a lot of plastic and glass re-usable containers, but I’m also guilty of using a great deal of zip-top bags and cling-film.

Not to mention all the tinfoil, now that it’s BBQ Season again.

What on earth can you do with used tinfoil?

Solutions I’ve come up with so far are to use as many re-usable containers as possible instead of baggies, and to try and get a couple uses out of baggies when I do need to use them.

But I’m at a bit of a loss for ideas when it comes to reducing my use of clingfilm (primarily for covering big casserole dishes or re-wrapping cheese, etc.) and tinfoil.

Do you have any brilliant ideas?

Anti-Social

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Someone was asking me yesterday about social networks. And what with the constant stream of emails and posts about facebook, twitter, et al, I figured I may as well chime in on my stance.

No.

Just no.

My feelings on social networks and web 2.0 in general strongly mirror Derek’s, who said it so well, I’ll just give you his words:

I have this thing about trying to keep my online existence stable, so if you link to something of mine, it will still be around in a few years. If I gave you my email address or ICQ account number in 1996, or my blog URL in 2000, it still works…. I like to have an archive that persists.

I have this blog. I have my photos on flickr. I have a profile on LinkedIn. I really think that’s enough. I’ve had the same email address and cell phone number for at least 8 years, with no intentions of changing them.

But when you get down to the nitty gritty of my reasons, it’s honestly mostly out of sheer laziness. It’s a universal truth that any product with staying power will do one of two things: Increase Pleasure or Reduce Pain. I enjoy blogging, I find WordPress easy to use. Pleasure Increased. I very rarely included pictures in my blog posts, because I found it a huge hassle to upload them to my webspace and remember the code to insert an image (doing it so rarely meant I never bothered memorizing it). Enter flickr, and whaddya know – an easy way to store my photos, and include them on my blog. Pain reduced.

As for LinkedIn – It’s an easy way for me to remain connected with past colleagues, especially now that I’m job hunting, and maintain a network in a fairly unobtrusive way. It also keeps professional networking easy for the socially uncomfortable (myself included) by setting the tone for a conversation. Asking my old boss for a recommendation on my LinkedIn profile is easy for both of us, rather than dropping him a line out of the blue and asking for referrals or references when we haven’t even spoken in 3 years. LinkedIn for me is reducing pain and increasing pleasure because I’ve gotten some great introductions through the service as well.

Don’t even get me started on Second Life. Dealing with Real Life is more than enough most days.

So while I’m not writing on walls, or tweeting, or soaring through virtual worlds, or whatever else people do on the myriad of social networks available – I AM on the internet. I’m googleable by about 12 different variations of my name, and not at all hard to find or get in touch with.

Also, curmudgeon that I am, I’m really trying to spend my energies on valuable and authentic social relationships. Someone who only finds me because I happen to be on facebook, and starts a conversation with “So, what’ve you been up to in the past… 10 years…” is, nine times out of ten, just curious about where people in their past are now. If there was actually a solid basis for friendship, we’d have probably kept in touch a little more regularly.

However, the person who takes the time to google, find my blog, photos or profile, and actually makes an effort to keep in touch a little longer than the lifecycle of the average social networking site (Friendster who?) – well that’s what I want online social networking to deliver.

My So-Called Life

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Our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives.
~Paulo Coelho

It’s no secret to those who know me and care to ask that the whole job-hunt has me pretty miserable these days. I could say that I’m trying to harness the power of positive thinking and all that jazz, but in reality there are as many days that end with tears as those that end with smiles or just exhausted ambivalence.

Yet I still don’t feel compelled to blog about it.

About a year ago, you could hardly stop me from pouring out my misery online at being single and the horrible injustices I was suffering while attempting to find someone suitable to date. Or, if not suitable, at least not wanting to make me scoop my brains out with a spork to forget the encounter.

Then I found someone – and things were really steadily going up in my life. Great man, great job, great dog, great home. That lasted about a year – you’d think that wouldn’t be long enough to erase the cynicism, vitriol and spite in my wee, black heart when one of those ceased to exist in my world.

You’d be right. And still, I felt no compulsion to blog about it.

And I didn’t really understand why. Until now.

I attempted to throw a party last weekend. For all intents and purposes, most things about my social circle and the invite were the same. Early reports indicated it would be an even bigger success, since the location was far more desirable to potential party-goers. Last year, 90% of the people who RSVP’d “Yes” attended, plus a motley assortment of extras. This year, barely half the confirmed attendees bothered showing up.

What’s different?

This year I’m not nearly as interesting.

A year ago I was a dating blogging sensation, who had just entered into a relationship with a man who had his own fair share of scandal.

This year? We’re just another set of yuppies. For the most part, fortunate and exceedingly happy ones.

I could fill pages and pages with cutting testimony of my job-hunt frustrations and foibles.

But underneath it all lies a desire to keep these personal feelings for myself and those who have more than an idle curiosity about them.

I’d rather live quieter, knowing who my true friends are.

I’d rather be happy, than interesting.