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2004
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Nov 28.05 Well, here I am. It's funny how I have all the free time in the world this semester and I spend it doing nothing. I don't even take the time out to log my quote unquote daily activities anymore. Anything written from the start of the school year up until now is merely a retrospective that has been elaborated from mostly insignificant entries in my little green book. So here is an example of how I squander my free time. It's disturbing and sad now that I look at it. Last night I was supposed to finish my biochemistry lab in a rush because I'd gone to the cottage over the weekend and didn't have access to a computer (nevermind the fact that I had the whole of Friday to do it). Realizing that I wouldn't be able to finish the entire lab without staying up extremely late and waking up really early in the morning to hand it in, I just decided to take that brutal 10% penalty and went to bed. Waking up super early this morning I got downtown by around 8:30am. I only had one class at 1pm and yet instead of doing my lab I went to sleep for three hours. Now, instead of using my four hour break to do the lab I'm sitting here, and what am I doing, really? I wish I knew. ... What am I doing? --------------- Sep 19.05 not done yet. --------------- Sep 18.05 not done yet. --------------- Sep 17.05 not done yet. --------------- Sep 16.05 not done yet. --------------- Sep 15.05 not done yet. --------------- Sep 14.05 not done yet. --------------- Sep 13.05 The first section of my pharmacodynamics class is being taught by Dr. Park, a funky Korean man. But not the Kim Jong-Il type. More like the tall skinny soft-spoken type. Had my first LMP363 pathobiology class. Our prof is the charming Dr. Sarma. Or do I like him just because he's Indian? Whatever, this course looks interesting and it actually has other non-program people in it, which is a good thing. I also had my first UNI255 Theories of Sexualities course today, which was really exciting. I thought it would be a class full of lebian feminist grrrls with a couple of token gays but it is so not! The class is almost evenly split and everyone is so hip and pretty. Dr. Rayter is casual and knowledgeable, but I can't seem to see the "bulge" that a former student friend of mine was talking about. I think it was just a joke to get me to look at my professor's crotch. The course looks really interesting so I'm really looking forward to my tuesday nights, even now that it means missing enrichment band for one semester. --------------- Sep 12.05 First day of third year at UT. Feeling older but a bit fresher. And now I'm looking at a whole summer's worth of backlog again for this journal writing thing that I do. But it feels good to have someone to talk to. Boy, that's sad. Sob. I've never thought of this as a diary, mostly because of my inability to communicate my feelings very well. EDI has feelings huh. Having not purchased any of my books yet or even bothered to jot down the room numbers of my classes, I was feeling slightly anxious about my first class. Especially since it was BCH370, the biochem lab course. But it turned out to be an intro day so that was lucky. On a side note, I'm only just realizing now that I will have no friends in any of my classes for first semester, since the usual gang only has BIO349 together in second semi. That and I haven't actually done the whole making new friends thing since, oh, 1997. I've just relied on "the network" (and look how far it takes you: eight socially crippling years). I was thrilled to find that I only have classes every other week, although it doesnt really help out my sparse timetable. I was less than thrilled to see that guy in my lab section. You know, the one that I asked out for drinks at the end of last year in a lapse of rational judgement. Too bad I didn't get into Michener because, as we're in the same program and all, I'm going to have to see him a lot. He looks good. Makes me wonder whether people who know me only by face are thinking "not bad, he cleaned up over the summer", or "wow he really fell apart in four months". After a nice nap at my room in the basement of my grandmother's house, I headed over to my next class, PCL302, in good old MacLeod Auditorium. They'd revamped the old seats and put in new ones with mini-desk surfaces. I miss the old seats, but mostly because they were softer. Meanwhile, I reminisce about blood-boiling physchem classes with kangaroo shit-for-brains Scholes and organichem classes with adorable Dr. Dicks. Sigh. Since my dad somehow thinks that staying the night at my grandmother's house after jazz band is detrimental to my marks, I'll be coming home every Monday by 11:30pm and Tuesday at 10:30 and waking up early to get to class the next morning, wasting transportation money and my time. What a jerk. Even though I actually stay up late in Robarts instead of using that extra time productively, the principle just doesn't fly. In response I'm going to schedule myself more fake hours of class despite having the most free time I've ever had during the school year; about thirteen hours a week average and Fridays off. For me, the school year represents the most time I have for squandered freedom as opposed to the summer, which in recent years I've spent whoring my ass to Wonderland. --------------- Sep 11.05 Splashies to the rescue at work. All the lifeguards are now rides operators until the end of the season since the waterpark is closed. I personally love the splashworks invasion because those guys are real characters and they make the post season a little bit more fun (after your whole crew quits). I got my first supervisor's PIN today for something that I did weeks ago, which was use a proxy sheet to certify some people from another area. We'd run out of certification sheets for the ride I was training them on so I just used a different sheet (they're all very similar). I wasn't going to hand it in; I was just going to get some new ones and get them to sign the papers later, but I never got around to it and since they were never going to come back to operate the ride I figured who cares. But I stupidly left the sheets in my clipboard so when the managers found it I got in shit. That and one of my leads followed my example and did the same thing, which is worse because it means I'm teaching them bad stuff. It wouldn't have been so bad if the manager giving me the PIN had been someone else (like a non-robotic human being). But what can you do. (Quit, maybe.) --------------- Sep 10.05 Went to the dentist today. The hygenist wouldn't give up trying to put the floss threader through my bottom teeth, which have the retainer fixed in, which was really painful. The worst part is that she eventually got it through, which means I have no excuse now to not floss with the threader. Ugh. --------------- Sep 09.05 Used my very first day off from classes (every friday this semester) to go shopping. I was at Decibel, one of my favourite stores on Queen St., and making small talk with the sales girl, and I mentioned how I was looking for cheap black pants for work. At Wonderland. And that's funny because she was thinking about going with friends soon. What a coincidence, since I have tickets for sale! So like the desparate solicitor that I am, I gave her my e-mail and my number so that she could contact me for the tickets as I didn't have them with me, sadly. Hopefully this leads to some good connections at the store, seeing as how I've never bought anything there yet. Adding to my good day, while I was buying some funky red shoes, I found out that some of my Shoe Company points had expired on my card, but the sales girl there transferred the remaining ones and put them on a new card, renewing their expiry date. She also thought I gave her eighty dollars when I really only gave her sixty, meaning that I got a twenty dollar discount. Since I lost the points I didn't say anything. That and I only noticed after I was well out of the store. What, don't look at me like that. Watched Bollywood Hollywood on TV. Weird how the lead actor looked and acted like Nicholas Cage. Oh well, ethnic fetishizing is rising. --------------- Sep 08.05 Hopped on the bus to go to the library today. Usually I don't notice bad driving because, who am I kidding, I couldn't drive to save my life, but today I just couldn't help but feel how incredibly slow the driver was going. I thought at first it was just because we were following a slow car or that we were coming up to a red light, but after the green light came the other car went far off into the distance. Then there was the uphill climb, and I swear the driver had his foot off the gas. At one point I was afraid the bus would just stop and roll down the hill. You know its bad when I'm commenting on it. Later, went back to Bayview for the first time in a long while, to attend the music department's grade 9 welcome and parents information night. I felt all special because I'm still a good old fixture at the department, and all my sister's wacky friends are still there, now in grade 12. They're all cooler than me now and doing their own things but I figure I should at least carry an honourary legend status. Later that night, some North York pals came over to watch Guess Who. We ate the last of the coffee crisp cheesecake that my mom won in a raffle (at her gym, incidentally) and made racial comments like the best of suburban wannabe trash. Of note was the picture-in-picture type rectangle that floated in the middle of the screen for the whole movie (on bootleg DVD). It really drew attention to the way the photographers block and place their cast in the frame. Interesting. --------------- Sep 07.05 Same thing as yesterday. I think this is going to be a preview of my days off this semester, as I have no classes on Fridays. I should be working on the Hart House Jazz Ensemble album design. The one we recorded way back in May. I think secretly I'm putting this off because I know I'm going to be the weakest link in the trombone section this year what with some Faculty of Music guy coming in. So the album is like my foot in the door. As long as I'm still working on it, my purpose is being served. After that I'm so much deadweight. --------------- Sep 06.05 My first day off from work and school and, surprise surprise, I didn't do anything but sit around at home in my underwear surfing ebay and porn, with the occasional getting up to eat, dance aroundwith all the radios in the house blasting the same station, or go to sleep. I did watch Bogeyman, for no real reason. The movie was stupid and not even worth commenting on. Also my good old green accounting/planner/diary was completely falling apart so I had to replace it. With another little green book of the same brand. This one is 1998-1999. We'll see how many precious years I can get out of it. --------------- Sep 05.05 (labour day) Went to the Golden Griddle for breakfast with some friends before school started, and then got to take a tour of one's new house. I could smell the excitement of moving into a newly built house (or was it just that "new house smell" of paint and carpentry). The 'best part' has to be sitting down on the toilet seat and knowing that no other ass has touched the seat before yours. Today was the last day of fulltime work at Wonderland, hallelujah. And oh, what a beautiful day it was. The weather was lovely and yet the park wasn't overwhelmingly busy, as I'd thought it would be. Our staffing was good and we even had a greeter out at the front of the Haunted Mansion queue line to warn the deluded guests that it would be a long wait. And I never knew how many people actually thought the line could ever be half an hour. It was fun bursting that bubble, for sure. I actually feel good with this end to the regular operating season. Peachy. --------------- Sep 04.05 A thoroughly crappy day at work, and for all the wrong reasons. It was an extremely busy day, being a cultural fest and the last weekend day before school starts. All of my crew showed up on time and eager to work. Except every other crew in the park was shortstaffed. And when I offered my human resources, I got zero appreciation. For the whole day, I lost 22 hours of man power to other crews, and all I got was this attitude like I was actually screwing them and not the other way around. I love how I've inherited this reputation from other supervisory staff of the same crew that we horde our staff to avoid doing work. Weird that I have a work "philosophy", but that will definitely be something that I change next year since I am not "that" supervisor. By the end of the day everyone was frustrated so we waited for all the guests to leave and then rode Haunted Mansion. On the bright side, I scored a nice 2670, one shot shy of my high score. Take that, ride. --------------- Sep 03.05 Finished my weeklong binge on Wonderland food. Also found a pair of cool glasses at the ol' Ghoster Coaster. I'm gonna see if I can get some non-prescription lenses put in so that I can look all academic sexy for school. Very excited about fulltime work coming to an end. Everyone is going back to school soon. I'm wondering how to make the best use my week of freedom after Labour Day. The usual, probably. And in the same vein, I watched The 40 Year Old Virgin today. Talk about your scary foreshadowing. The movie was actually really good so I recommend all the sad horny losers out there to hit that shit up. --------------- Nov 02.05 I'd like to say that I'm not counting the days, but who am I kidding? It's been a month since I met AJ and it's been a crazy one. To celebrate, I discussed, in explicit detail, my quote unquote blossoming sex life with a friend on the bus ride home. Sacre bleu! --------------- Nov 01.05 Our pharmacodynamics class finally met our absent (minded?) professor, Pennefather. What I liked about him right off the bat was the box of lecture note handout packages he brought while coming in late. The pages were still warm to the touch, so from a fellow procrastinator's perspective, one can only assume that he was printing them off last minute right before class. I guess it's the thought that counts. It was another film screening day in sex ed, this one a documentary about people living with AIDS. The shooting revolved mostly around a project to photograph PWA's for an exhibition called Living Positively. Naturally I couldn't help but take mental pointers about how the photographer operated and how her studio was set up. Aside from that distraction it was also painfully dated in the 80's (I guess that's the point), so that when you see the exhibition go up in the end, everyone is all ecstatic that their photos are hanging in the greatest building in the world: New York City's World Trade Centre. That's what I call bitter irony. I can see why some people think that viewing AIDS in a positive light is actually a bad thing, because there definitely is an element of romanticism that the people were displaying. Sure, every one of them makes a point of saying "I would give everything to not have AIDS", but not before gushing about how it's changed the their lives and opened their eyes to the beauty of the world. (that reminds me ... "a beautiful tragedy, life is...") I mean, impressionable young minds like me have got to be thinking "Gee, I want AIDS!" --------------- |