to me

You know you don’t clean your desk often enough when you go to clean it, and find your business cards from two jobs ago.

Answers coming soon…

My uncle’s beloved weiner dog Merlin ended up with a ruptured disc in his back.

Thankfully it looks like he’ll be ok, so I don’t feel bad about giggling at how he looks like frankendog with all the metal staples.

For a better look, open it up in flickr and check out the full-size version.

June Haircut

Originally uploaded by peechie.

I did it. I cheated on Olga. With Lisa.

It’s not my fault! Olga wasn’t available. I was tired of her technique. Things just weren’t fresh ane exciting anymore. I could hardly see her, and when I did, I didn’t feel loved anymore. We were in a rut.

And along came Lisa. With her perky personality and edgy style – how could I say no?

I’m gonna have to dump Olga. I don’t know how to tell her… There’s no way I can keep it from her. Maybe if I don’t call she’ll think I moved?

I feel so dirty inside.

If loving this hair is wrong – I DON’T WANNA BE RIGHT!

Why is it socially “okay” for guys to be into Jack Johnson, but they’re pussies for admitting to liking John Mayer?

Is it only okay for a guy to be a sappy singer/songwriter if he’s also a surfer?

That’s it – I’m firing bloglines as my feed reader. I hope the rest of my readers will follow suit, at least until the bloglines people fix whatever is buggering up their service. Of course, by the time any bloglines subscribers actually get this post of mine, it’ll likely be 2012 and blogs will be so 2005 and it won’t matter anymore. Bloglines hasn’t grabbed my feed since 10:51 last night. I posted at around 11:30 this morning. I think nearly 5 hours is MORE than enough time to acknowledge an updated feed.

And it’s not just my feed. Most of the sites I read take the better part of an hour (and it’s only been getting worse!) before they show as updated on bloglines. There are also feeds it refuses to acknowledge, even though they’re perfectly valid in other readers (my.yahoo.com for example).

So I’m currently taking recommendations for other free, web-based feed readers. Does anyone have any suggestions? Because bloglines isn’t cutting it for me anymore. I may as well just go back to gasp plain old Blogrolling!

(edit: just FYI this was posted at 4:26pm. about 2.25 hours before it registered as being updated on bloglines, and another hour+ before any readers found it and bothered to comment)

Just thought I’d put it out there – lest the Universe smite me for failing to acknowledge this tidbit – I registered for my HR class after work tonight, and aside from the long lineups, everything went just fine.

Four days down, 361 to go.

Have you ever had an experience where you walk into a public bathroom stall – and you wonder what the bathroom architect was smoking?

I’m assuming here, that public bathrooms are designed all at once – not that they put toilets in, then the walls (or vice versa).

There is one stall in the bathroom nearest me, where the toilet is not centered in the stall at all. You’ve practically got to scoot sideways under the toilet paper dispenser to sit squarely on the thing. It’s a very awkward situation, the scooting, when you’ve got your pants around your ankles and are trying not to knock the seat protector off kilter, and trying not to fall down.

So can anyone explain why?

Holy crap. I just talked to him.

I’ve really been avoiding him since it all went down last Thursday night, I figure if I pretend like he doesn’t exist (or went on a really long vacation), I won’t have to deal with “closure” and won’t get all weepy again.

But you know, it wasn’t that bad. On my part, the intense romantic love has been gone for a long time. And I don’t have to give up that love you have for close friends.

Honestly, it was just nice to hear his voice. There was no anger, no hatred. Just a bit of longing for what was. But hope – for a future where we can still get along and share eachother’s company a little bit – as friends.

I guess it’s a sign. The one day all month I’ve been home to watch Oprah, she’s got a show on extreme breakups. Compared to these women, I’ve got it good. As hard as it is to leave anyone, at least it was somewhat mutual – I didn’t get left or cheated on or anything.

But the gem of the show was one woman’s engagement cards. She sent out engagement announcements – then about 6 weeks later, her fiancee confessed he would likely cheat on her, and they shouldn’t get married.

What was she to do? Well she sent out follow-up cards to her engagement card recipient list. They read: “Picked the wrong man, gave him the wrong finger. Thanks for your love and support!”

Maybe it will be ok after all.

So, for anyone who was waiting for the full version of what I alluded to before the weekend, here’s the low down:

I broke up with my boyfriend.

Although we love eachother a whole lot – that love doesn’t seem to mesh with the rest of the world. Some might say “well that’s not real love,” but it really is love. Just not the forever kind. Others would say “try harder,” and believe me when I said we did. Unfortunately, as we grew up (the early 20′s are fairly significant transitional years as far as I’m concerned) we developed as very different people. This made the relationship pretty great in the vacuum of just the two of us – and less than great when family and friends came into the picture.

And after yet another argument, and after a little over four years, we’ve called it quits – no idea if it’s a temporary or permanent situation, but for the forseeable future we’re no longer an “us.”

After that period of time, it’s really hard to adjust being a “me” instead of part of an “us.” Externally, it’s not that hard a switch. He never was all that interested in spending any amount of time with my friends – I always made my own friends and pursued my own interests, with or without his presence. It’s those internal things that are tearing me up.

For instance: Who am I going to call (that will actually get it) when someone in my family says something silly? Who am I going to call for no reason at all – just to say “hi” or check in? Who am I going to have “Kinn Wars” with? Who’s going to call me Chicken (pronounced “Chee-kin” in a very high voice)? I do know that I will find new love and new inside jokes and new phone calls for no reason other than to say “hi” all in good time.

But in the meantime – a list of things that still threaten to make me cry at their very presence, or a mention of their name: sports (all of them – this guy is the ultimate fan of everything), vodka screw-ups, sportchek, metrotown, honda civics, anything to do with Montreal, every song on the radio, movies, the telephone (especially when it doesn’t ring), food, airplanes, my favourite picture of my family (because he took it), bbq, anything I’ve done of any significance in the past 4 years, everything.

There was a quote I heard once by a woman who lost her husband: “I don’t know how to grieve without you.” And that’s exactly what this is – mourning the loss of a very significant relationship. And I don’t know how to do that without him. But I’m learning.

Also, scary thought of the week: My parents were about my age (mom a little younger, dad a little older) when they got out of 4+ year relationships. They met each other within about 3 months of this time, were engaged 6 weeks later, and married inside a year. Anyone wanna start a pool?

Well, the big change has happened. I’m not being cryptic – I just don’t feel like talking about it right now. I’m sure that if you’ve been following along you can figure it out for yourself.

So I’ve got some thinking to do – some getting used to the situation as it is now.

I’m running off to visit with the parental units this weekend – I’ll write more when I get back sometime Monday.

Until then, I’m thinking it’s about damned time for a girls movie night at my place. How does Friday the 3rd work out for everyone? Or are you all skipping town for the long weekend?