the job that I call home

This weekend was full of interesting moments in human behaviour. Fights, high-end call girls drawing masses of attention (they were hot for the record), customers taking me for drinks, and people getting drugged. Wow. If I had a lack of faith in the people who I call Customer before...

I did in fact get invited out for drinks by two customers. It was an invitation I would otherwise decline because mixing the role of Server with Friendly Guy You're Drinking With isn't my idea of a good time. I like clear definition. This time, however, I allowed myself to be muscled into it. The three of us had enjoyed some of the most spectacular conversation I've had at work in a very long time. We saw eye-to-eye on a great many things. So, what the hell? Just one drink and a 20 minute chat.

Not quite. As I wrapped up my shift and headed towards the door to meet my companions, they were ushered out by one of the restaurant's many regulars. Crap. I had decided that, because these two women weren't at all involved in the Yaletown scene, it would be reasonably safe to blur the lines for a short evening. Not so with a regular. He'd always been relatively pleasant with me, but really, not my type of person. As we strolled the few blocks to our destination, he forced the conversation into a round of "Guess how much money I've spent on a single item!" This man is easily into his 40's and is running this kind of ego boosting game? And these are the people I serve...

I took about 6 steps into the bar, looked around to see a quick half-dozen regulars from my workplace, and promptly excused myself from my two companions. I don't think the guy noticed, either that or he was good about hiding the gaping span across his heart that I had occupied. That was entirely too awkward, and a mistake I won't be making again soon.

happy un-birthday!

That's right, yesterday was my birthday. (insert confetti and cheap noisemakers)

As is fairly typical, for me at least, my birthday is a time of reflection and taking of personal inventory. Do I like who I am? Do I like my job? Long term goals? Short term? Relationship satisfying? You know the drill. There were no surprises, but I think it's healthy, nay, crucial, to periodically evaluate my life and the shape that it takes.

I have a few others things that I really want to tell this blog about, but my energy is low today. I think I'm getting sick. Again. *rumble*

I went to a poetry slam at Cafe Deux Soleils and had a great time. It was my first forray into the world of performance poetry which will not be my last.

And whadaya know, there goes my energy? More later.

what to say

Ya, I know I've ignored this space again. I hurt my foot earlier this month and had to call off 4 shifts because of that. Then this last week I was sick again, and my Doc said that it was either Strep or Mono. All the tests came back negative (weee!) but again, I had to call off 5 shifts at work because who wants a side order of Strep with their risotto?

Broke. That's a good word to describe me at the moment.

I'm excited about my crazy chess skillz. I know.. very little. And I'm dead excited by it, because, well, chess is a great game. Great I tell you! So great, in fact, that I've found someone in the US to have a snail mail game with. Hurray for games that last over a year.

last night

Last night was great for two reasons :

1) Through some miracle I had the night off work
2) I spent me night off laughing my ass off to Margaret Cho at the Queen E.

I won't get into the jokes because most of them would need a paragraph of introduction, but I will say that I was surprised by some of her material. She was decidedly more tasteless than the videos of her that I've rented, which wasn't a bad thing because I liked being caught off guard. She was dead funny and I'm glad I went.

I'm just starting to get sick with a bug though, which has also caught me off guard. I thought I'd snuck through the spring sickness season unscathed... I just hope that I'm better by Tuesday, because I have a patient who needs his ass handed to him on the fieldboard of battle!

Thus ends another e&n post. Carry on.

pre-work craziness

I'm going to see Margaret Cho in the flesh tomorrow, and my excitement knows no bounds. Provided one of the senior servers doesn't throw an all-too-common fit of hysterics I'll be there with bells on. And not much else *wink*.

Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld have been honoured by the entomology community recently. I have little else to say about those three. Concerning Canadian politics, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety about all the Liberal intrigue and the natural result - Liberal voters swinging to Conservative. I'm less concerned about the millions of dollars than I am about a bunch of right wing bible humpers seizing a majority in Parliament.

I found a chess partner on my unit at the hospital! So what do I do? Run out to buy three books on strategy/tactics, a second board (to play out alternative scenarios of course), and get my ass handed to me on yahoo games late last night. He did state a preference of playing against a stronger opponent - I swear I'm not out to beat down the sick people of the world.

Download Unassisted by Rasco if you feel like some phat hiphop tunes fo' dat ass. Peace.

A new stage of the game

I had my first volunteer shift this week, which was mostly spent in training under a rather strange elder volunteer. I was shown, in minute detail, how to brew a pot of coffee, to stack cups, and to be absolutely paranoid about TB - the last one for no reason other than this lady's preoccupation with the disease, or so it seems anyway.

I'm going to have fun with this volunteer work methinks, although I do have one major hurdle to overcome in the process. I don't see myself as an overly creative person when it comes to things like Arts & Crafts. It's just never been an area I've seen myself as being any good at, probably because I rarely take part in that unheard of phenomenon commonly known as "practice." In any case, I have to get to practice, and right quickly too.

The unit I've thrown myself into tends to have the same set of patients around for days or weeks on end, and as you can imagine it must be god awful boring after the first 10 minutes. Which is where I come in with something resembling entertainment and enriching activity. Unfortunately there are a few limitations: if I don't already own the required tools for said activity, the budget is severely limited. Also, it likely shouldn't be something that is incredibly time consuming because many of the patients are heavily medicated.

So here's where I cry to you, my readers, for input: what can an artistically challenged guy do to enrich the lives of anywhere from 4-20 patients? My thoughts so far have included board games, origami (paper gets costly quickly), and finger painting. I'm feeling distinctly unoriginal.
Help please.

no purpose

I forgot how much I loved reading the first half of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" until I took the book down from my shelving on a whim late last night. It's exactly my kind of book that bears a style which I tend to lump in with authors such as Benjamin Hoff and Robert Fulghum. Favourite quote from the first few pages:

The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away.

Wednesday saw me deep in the bowels of St. Paul's with a bunch of people wearing brand-spankin'-new red vests and plastic name tags. We even got to role-play all sorts of interactions between patient and volunteer, including what to do if the patient involves themself in a drug deal. Hey, I signed up to do flower arranging and play patty-cake, what's this nonesense about serious stuff?? In all seriousness, I'm looking forward to doing something positive with my time.

Why, you ask? Because my job, as easy as it is to (seldomly) post little snippets that I think might be worth a chortle, is completely lacking a soul. That's not to say that there's a ton of energy whizzing around most of the time, and with very specific purpose, but that purpose, at the end of the day, doesn't click with me. We're out to make oodles of money, which in itself is not a damnable offense, but this insatiable need for piles of loot tends to come at the expense of everything else. I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm just not a purebred Capitalist. I'd like to have a sense that what I do puts out something good into the world, for no other reason than because it's good.

I opened the bottle of '03 Burrowing Owl Pinot Noir that my sister gave me for Christmas this year. It was a replacement of the '02 she'd given me which was stolen during our last move. Along with a whole case of wine. Bah, that sucked, but I have better wine now! Unfortunately, this one just didn't float my boat as I was expecting it to. Their Cab. Franc is excellent and most people around town are familiar with their Pinot Gris which is always a crowd pleaser. The Pinot Noir I will give a miss on, and I'd post a more in-depth review about how there was good acidity but a lack of structure and an overabundance of stewed fruit on the palate, but really, I'm not in the mood today.

Eat snacky smores.