(4:23 PM) crunchy frog: how do you respond to any of that shit?
(4:23 PM) crunchy frog: like “umm…good for you?”
(4:24 PM) crunchy frog: “i didn’t realize you can generate that much stink since coming from home”
(4:25 PM) crunchy frog: “hoooooow unfortunate”
(4:26 PM) crunchy frog:
Monthly Archive: April 2008
Hoooooow unfortunate
Explosive dialogue
Apparently, not everyone finds humour in the phrase “explosive diarrhea” being bandied about wantonly in conversation.
Who knew?
Rails: month 4
I’m now ending my fourth month with braces. So far, the progress has been rather fast. I’d say, with my wholly uneducated guess that I’m really halfway there. Every time I go visit dentist to have my wires changed she always comments on how there are definite improvements. I’m quite pleased. At this rate, I’ll definitely be out of the brackets in less than a year’s time.
Today’s appointment was actually a little bit more interesting than usual. The dentist took it upon herself to wear down the mammelons I had on my incisors. I’ve had them for what seems like forever but never just got around to saying that I don’t want the bumps anymore–I want a nice straight edge. I always thought that they’d wear down themselves, but hey, now that I’m in my 20′s it was probably not going to get much better on their own. When she handed me a mirror after she’d worked on my teeth I was shocked. Without the bumps there, it almost felt like my teeth are so much more adult-like, and damn, they looked pretty great.
With a new wire, I’m feeling renewed pressure in places that need some adjusting. There’s just a slight bit of discomfort right now, but that’ll all pass. The pressure is a good sign anyway that there’s going to be some proper adjusting going on in the next month. Awesome.
A prankster’s conscience
I need to confess. I was feeling a little bit guilty about what I did, but the end results didn’t really amount to anything. Even so…I need to let go of this.
So, this is how the chain of events happened this past Friday. After lunch, in the air I smelled something a little familiar. It was a little bit medicinal. I couldn’t put my finger on just what the smell was, but then it clicked in one quick instant–muscle pain reliever. I cocked my head up and looked around and couldn’t find anyone trying to soothe their muscles. I asked my colleague across from me and it turns out what I was smelling was actually some lotion. So much for my acute sense of smell, eh?
Well, I started a conversation among my team about how the “no odour” pain rub is misleading. Another colleague commented that it might be funny to rub some of it on the desk space of our PM. His arms would suddenly get all tingly all at once. I thought that would be funny but didn’t think about actually doing it. That same colleague continued his train of thought and mentioned using an oral anesthetic on his water glass. When he mentioned it, again I had a moment where something clicked. Yes! I had a tube of Anbesol in my bag. I went to my bag and fished it out. I nonchalantly ventured over to the PM’s desk and looked around to see if he was approaching. With no sign of him, I globbed a bit of anesthetic onto my fingers and proceeded to smear it on the rim of his glass. I walked away trying to look as guilt-free as possible. My coworkers just sat in amusement over the whole situation. Now, I realized that the Anbesol had a distinct minty medicinal odour, so I took a tissue, went back and wiped the rim a little bit hoping that it would dissipate any trace.
So, that would have been that, right? Well, as time passed I felt more and more guilty. My PM did come back eventually with a cup of coffee in hand. I started hoping that he wouldn’t get thirsty for water for the rest of the day. Coffee would be enough, right? I was asked to come in early on Monday, so I had plans to rinse it out first thing when I came in. I had it all worked out. About an hour later though, I went to ask a question to a colleague and noticed that he had somehow found the time to fill his water glass without me noticing.
Oh, shit.
I asked out loud to no one in particular: “when the heck did he fill it up?” My coworkers could only chuckle. As far as I could tell the Anbesol didn’t actually have any effect. Maybe not enough? Or maybe he just didn’t think anything of the tingly sensation he was having.
Nothing lost, nothing gained. I feel better now.
An $18.5K mistake
Jesus. Someone’s head need to roll for this one.
I haven’t gone out shopping for a few weeks now so I thought it’d be good to trawl through the mall and see what I could come up with. I picked up a pair of shorts at the GAP. At the cashier I pulled out my debit card, had it swiped and proceeded to punch my numbers in. Moments later I got a notice that the transaction was declined. Strange. So the cashier swiped it again and I punched in my PIN with a little extra care. Again, it came back declined. I thought, “Whatever…” and just pulled out my Visa. When it came time to sign, as I hovered the special pen above the electronic signing thing, the screen proceeded to write something in the box even though the pen made no contact with the screen. What the heck? I tried writing in the air, and it dutifully mimicked my movements. That doesn’t even make sense! Maybe I was transmitting some weird aura through the pen. Ha! Apparently I can channel my energy through a stick.
Well, eventually we got the transaction done. Due to the freakiness with the signing thing, I chalked the debit issue up to a faulty machine. I ventured over to a branch of my bank though to just make sure nothing kooky with my card was going on. I got there and swiped my card. When I entered my PIN everything turned out alright. So hey, I just left and went about my shopping duties.
Over at Old Navy I found some khakis and decided to try paying for it my debit once more. They had the same type of machine I saw at the GAP (no surprise since they share a parent company). I swiped and put in my PIN, but once again I was declined. Now I was worried. Willing to blame the machine type I went to HMV, picked up a few CDs and tried to use my debit card. Again, I was declined. The keypad indicated that I had insufficient funds. The keypad was different from the other two places so I knew that this was serious.
I hauled ass back over to the bank and had someone check my account. The teller told me that I currently had a negative balance. What the hell?!!!! She asked if I made a cheque for around $20K to someone. I responded with an emphatic “hell no!” My mind started going through various scenarios as to why something like this was happening. Was I being defrauded? Did someone hack into my account? I was in a panic.
Oh, then I realized that I had written cheques for $2067 or so for the condo upgrades. I wondered if it was related. The teller came back with (probably) a superior. They came with a print out of the cheque that was cashed in. There was nothing wrong with my cheque. Apparently though, someone made an egregious data entry mistake. Instead of inputting that $2067 should be taken out of my account, they input $20607.
Bloody HELL. That’s a mistake worth $18.5K. Obviously that’s money I simply don’t have. As a result, that mistake send me into overdraft. I was unbelievably frustrated at that point. Unfortunately for me, they said that the mistake was something that could only be rectified directly at my home branch. My home branch has horrible hours and is only next open at 10 am on Monday. So, I’m stuck waiting on this ridiculous issue for 2 days until I can go in person.
When I got home, I tried calling customer service, but they told me the exact same thing–I had to go to my branch. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Something like this should never have happened. Everyone agreed with me on that point. However, now that it’s done, it’s simply ridiculous that I have no other avenues to get the situation rectified. Instead, I have to inconvenience myself by missing a few hours work to get them to fix their mistake. Maaaaan. What the hell is with that?
Right now, I’m trying to stay relatively calm because really there’s no point in expending energy on it since there’s nothing I can do. It’s just hard to not worry about it. I’m the type of person that keeps a close watch over my balances. I try to keep things under control. So it’s really killing me that it’s out of my hands for now. Well, I guess when I come in on Monday I can see if they can provide some sort of compensation for such a stupid mistake (where are the damn checks and balances?). However, I certainly won’t hold my breath. Still: I want justice! 
Cursed building
Ugh. I’m not really a fan of the building our workplace is in. Sure, it’s in an interesting location–namely right above a busy night club in the entertainment district. However, the building is pretty old and things keep on breaking. The example that comes to mind is first and foremost when a pipe that carried sewage gas just broke down causing the whole office to smell like the inside of the devil’s anus.
Well, this morning I got wind from someone that there was something crazy going on in the kitchen. Apparently something happened in the upstairs bathroom that caused water(?) to come dripping down into the kitchen. That sounded pretty nasty, but I admit that I was pretty curious. So, I ventured over to have a look. Boy, were they understating things. It wasn’t a simple drip–it was a veritable torrent. I went back to my desk feeling a little bit grossed out. Shortly after I returned, we all got an email from the receptionist to not enter the kitchen. Apparently someone plugged up a toilet upstairs causing it to overflow. UGH. So the liquid falling down into the kitchen? Used toilet water, filtered through the rafters.
Gross gross gross.
How the hell do you live something like that down if you were the culprit? Bloody nasty. I hate that building!
Running log: 2008/04/17
I just feel like dropping a quick note.
Wow, what happened? Seriously. Today’s run felt insane. This was the first run where we ran continuously for the whole distance. Having to do the distance (6K) without a good break was mentally a little bit daunting, but I was up for it just as long as I took it easy. At the beginning I started feeling a little bit of discomfort from the shoes, but I pushed through it knowing that it’d die down as I went. For whatever reason, the two of us that usually run a good distance behind the main group somehow kept pace. We were still behind, but the distance wasn’t really becoming ridiculously large. At about 15 minutes or so, I thought out loud that I could really use a break. Even though I was tired, I still had the push to keep going. I checked my HRM and I was in the low 170′s, which kind of surprised me. It was low enough for me to feel good about continuing onwards. My friend was feeling the same way.
Somewhere before the last kilometre a stoplight bunched the majority of us back together. When that happened, I felt a bit of a sudden surge. I pushed a little bit harder to keep up with everyone, and man it felt great. In the last few hundred metres I could feel my cadence picking up. With the end in sight, I just wanted to get there as soon as possible.
Hahah. Yes, my sense of fast is still slower than most of the group, but hey, in my terms I’m making progress. That alone feels awesome.
A bit of randomness in Kensington
Over the lunch hour a couple of my colleagues and I headed over to Kensington for a nice walk. When you enter the area, it’s pretty surreal because you’re hit by this eclectic mix of stores and people, with this reggae music being pumped into the streets from all of the pot paraphernalia stores. It’s really interesting.
Just as we were heading in crossing from Chinatown into the market we passed by this parked truck. I was minding my own business when suddenly this guy comes out the back and around the corner with two whole dead pigs on his shoulders. He almost ran into us with those darn things. The pigs looked fresh and were nicely cleaned and disembowelled. How could I tell? Well the back ends of the pigs had these huge holes–way too big to be a pig anus. The run in was just so freaking random. All I could do was let out a good “Whaaaaat the fuck?!” I laughed so hard. A guy who smelled looked like hippie was passing by and laughed as well “yeah, that’s like, totally surreal!” Indeed.
The guy holding the pigs just carried on with his business, probably taking them into one of the Chinese restaurants in the area for roasting or whatever other preparations you’d normally do with a whole pig. As a Filipino, one word immediately came to mind: lechon! The guy was just hauling the pigs right on his shoulders without an apron or a cover. Wouldn’t the pigs be a bit moist? Wouldn’t he be a big mess? I guess being in that business he’d be used to being all covered in pig juices. I checked the back of his truck and there were still numerous pigs hanging by hooks. He had a long way to go, so I guess he had no choice but to man up.
So, later on as we wandered around we passed by this bohemian-type woman who couldn’t have been older than me busking on the sidewalk. Oh man. She was dressed in some unconventional garb that could probably have been mistaken for being hip. She was atonally trying to sing Over the Rainbow, talking about troubles melting like lemon drops or something like that. She had an ivory-coloured rattle/shaker thing and was shaking it on the beat, which was going at a good clip. She even danced a little bit, stepping side to side with much vigour. It was completely eccentric, but oddly entertaining. I mean, she was really giving it a lot of oomph despite looking and sounding ridiculous. I kind of admired her spirit. The four of us rushed past her without making much eye contact, but really, when I reached the end of the street I felt like I just had to show some appreciation. I took out my wallet, fished out a couple of quarters and headed back to her. As I bent down to drop the coins in her hat, I tried to flash the best smile I could muster at her. *clink clink* She let out a huge “Thank you!” That made my day. As I walked away, she stopped singing.
(Secretly, that also made my day.)
And that was my lunch hour walk. There was enough randomness in it to allow me to carry on with the rest of my day in the rigid regimented structure of work. All is well with the world.
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