Its gonna be a tough day. I had a weird night of dreams. They were filled with some chaotic, ununderstandable imagery. I'm left feeling confused and jangled this morning at my desk, and I'm struggling to put aside thoughts that want to tumble over each other. My brain is muddled.

As an example. The last one I remember had me going to the mall with my sister. It was, for the most part, Lawson Heights Mall across the street from my house in Saskatoon. (for those of you with a weak stomach take care) We went to this one shop that a cheap jewelry store but in the dream it was part that, part beauty store. I forget the exact reason why we were there or the exact sequence of events but, what ended up happening was strange. Candace was talking to the woman who runs the store (in the dream). The person was supposed to be a woman I know from Saskatoon but, her appearance was more like a cross between that woman, and the wife of the couple I went to Tampa Bay with. (I know, this is weird. It gets worse) Candace is chatting with this woman about some kind of beauty thing. Oh yeah, I remember now, she was getting her hair done. The woman suggested Candace might like hair extensions like the litte girl in the Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, who just walked past the store (outside on the street somehow, even though we were in the mall) I start biting my nail and I break it. (this is the bizarre part) It breaks down the center and then half of it breaks again. (wait for the gruesome part) I hate a broken nail so I break it off, but I break the piece in the center, so i have have a nail on one side, a gap, then a quarter of a nail on the other. The junk I broke off is not a typical chunk of nail though. Its a little cube. This intrigues me and I examine it. Eventually I put it in my mouth a chew it. There is an outer shell of traditional nail material on one side and the rest is fat. I chew up and eat that. It tastes like beef.

Now that you are all retching, I'll finish the dream. Candace is disgusted by my nails and talks me into having a manicure from this woman who runs the store. I sit down on this contraption that moves and articulates like a giant battlemech and eventually it surrounds and contains me. I put my hand up on this little ledge and the woman starts doing my nails. We know each other, as I've had dealings with her before. We chat, talk back and forth, and she's coming on to me, in a sly, subtle way. . .

That's the end. I came out of the dream at that point. There was other stuff in there but I covered the highlights. I am messed up. 8-|

Toodles!

I think the girl working at the reception desk of the Brandon Days Inn tonight is cute.

Ever have a movie affect you, and the affect was really not intended? I'm having that condition with this damn Shallow Hal movie. I know its not really intended to be a message movie. It's the Farrelly brothers For Christ Sake!!! You're supposed to laugh at the fat jokes and leave remembering nothing.

So why do I keep thinking about this stupid movie? Its defninitely frustrating and bordering on infuriating. I'm not SUPPOSED to be thinking about it. But I keep thinking about it. The central theme, the search for inner beauty, as opposed to external beauty, just keeps hammering in my brain. Am I being shallow? Do I suffer from the same syndrome that afflicted Shallow Hal? Should I change my ways? Am I doing something wrong? This stupid, bloody movie is torturing my soul!

Saddam Hussein's son comes home from shopping with everything in a cardboard box......
His dad says: "Why have you brought the shopping home in a cardboard box, son?"
His son replies: "Because there's no Baghdad."

A word to the wise; be careful when having orange juice after brushing your teeth. It doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes when I do that, I get a horrible burning sensation from my throat, right down to the pit of my stomach. It is distinctly unpleasant.

I have the most intense headache this morning.

Nine Inch Nails is good music to listen to when you're depressed. I especially recommend the album "The Downward Spiral". Its not good music because it inspires you, and lifts you from your malaise. Its appropriate music for depression. Its all noisy, and chaotic, with dark, and foreboding lyrics underlying the frenetic, disturbed beats.

What a boring day this has been. I don't even have a decent occurrence to put in my blog entry. My doldrums that begun on the weekend have continued into this week. My complaint for the day? Allergies. I'm getting the ol' tickle in the nose, from the beginning of spring. How slow a news day is it when the biggest thing to write about is allergies.

Work is caught up, and all systems are up to date. My projects are all in a comfortable state of completion. Murray got some encouraging news on a couple of towns in Saskatchewan so things are looking bright for another good year. I finished my EIT report and have only to send it off to APEGS for the long, arduous review. I've had a couple computer questions come in about our network here, but nothing that required a lot of research. Everything is in a comfortable equilibrium. Its almost eerie.

Toodles!

How do you decide how much vanity you are entitled to?

The Vancouver Canucks won their hockey game tonight. They looked pretty good doing it. There is renewed hope in their chances for the playoffs. We'll see how things go tomorrow for our Canadians.

Toodles!

What is the deal with Wal-Mart!?!

I don't get it. Wal-Mart was just INSANE this afternoon. Candace needed a new fish tank for her fish, as the other one broke along the side. We checked Petland and they had none that were compatible with her existing tank hardware, so we go to Wal-Mart. It was retarded with people! It was like half the population of Saskatoon was in there. And the not so desirable half either. It was enough to make you feel uncomfortable. Actually, it made me a lot uncomfortable. I don't like people at the best of times and here were all these wooly people, crawling all over each other for the supposed deals available at Wal-Mart. You don't really wanna get me started on Wal-Mart's pricing policy but suffice it to say, there is no deal at Wal-Mart worthy of the type of insanity I saw in that place today.

And what was the deal with the girl with purple hair, a white face, and more metal in her face than a fisherman has tackle in his tacklebox!?!

Toodles.

Reflections on a Thursday:

I am the MASTER of hyperbole!

I don't like SGI adjusters.

Highway 55 past Carrot River sucks goat butt.

The Pas is a grubby place and I don't want to live there.

Prices for things really vary, depending on where you buy them.

Garmin Mapsource software is not always accurate.

That is all. Toodles!

Sometimes you just can't win. No matter how hard you try, or what you do, good fortune eludes you at every grasp.

My deep freeze died. It had to have happened since Monday morning because I remember putting stuff in there, when I re-organized my food to add the stuff my mom sent me this week. So it died after that. I'm wondering if it happened when I was monkeying around with it, when I was installing those table legs. I rolled it around, I remembe that much. I fussed with the plug this afternoon but it didn't seem to want to fire up or anything. I'm guessing the pump on it went kaplooey.

So my next question becomes, what do I do now? I can't get my mother on the phone because they've left one off the hook somewhere, and don't realize it. I have trouble believing she could have been talking on the phone for 90 minutes over the lunch hour, and into the afternoon. It always rings busy when I call. I would like to get a second opinion on what I should do now.

I'm not even pissed off. I'm mostly sad or disappointed. I didn't need another situation to work on. I'm trying to put things in order. I need a stretch of good luck, or at worst, luck without connotation. I didn't need bad. ...sigh... Maybe I'll just not replace the deep freeze. I suppose that's an option. I would like a $100 deep freeze to replace it, not the $400 I looked up in the Sears catalog.

Oh well. Life sucks, wear a rutabaga.

Toodles.

I committed the ultimate sin today, and paid the ultimate price. And its not like this hasn't happened to me before, for me to have not learned. I have done this before but I never learn. Its quite sad.

I didn't save my work. I did a drawing this morning, and just left it on the screen. I never did commit it to disk. I even went so far as to send the unsaved one to a consultant, in error. Then, when I went to do another drawing in the afternoon, I closed and said no to saving, thus losing all the work I'd done in the morning.

I never learn. I get lacksadaisical about it because AutoCAD is so annoying with save messages. i start ignoring them all the time and say no. Then I get burned like this. I was hopping mad this afternoon.

...sigh...

Toodles.

Why is it that the ugliest cars have the biggest, most powerful stereos?

I have a problem. Perhaps its symptomatic of my psychosis but, I keep hearing the 'you have mail' beep that Outlook Express makes when you get email, but I'm not actually recieving any email. Apparently the sound is a figament of my imagination. Should I be concerned?

Toodles!

Its been a wild day!

Lots happening, while nothing happened. Ever have one of those days? I didn't so much chase my tail but, after all my efforts, not much got done. I wrote two section in my bi-annual engineering experience report. I'm laying it on REAL THICK about how important I am at my job. A lot of it is hyperbole but this sodhumpuers that are in charge of deciding my fate seem to need to be impressed so, I'll impressed them. I''ll write a report the likes of which I've never managed before. Half will be hyperbole, the other an extension of the truth. The reality is, NO ONE is so integral to their job that things could not progress without them. Engineers seem to have a pumped up opinion of themselves so I'll play the game and make myself sound like the next best thing to god. Maybe it'll help.

One good thing to happen was, I finally got the wireless ethernet to the shop working. That was an impressive engineering feat, and proof positive that if you throw enough money at something, you can fix it. Two wireless antennas, some low loss cables, and probably $1000 and we have wireless ethernet halfway across time. Result? They can surf the internet but its virtually unusable for the accounting program, because the accounting program is a pig. A bad design decision, from our standpoint, makes our current program ineffective, especially through the wireless ethernet. On the up side, the connection itself is stable and strong so I think that particular nemesis has been vanquished.

I had a dream last night. It was about Melissa. We were back in the Dominican Republic, and I convinced her to come stay out in the slum area. We didn't have a room though, and were staying in one of those barn shaped garden sheds. The beds were two rickety cot like contraptions with a mattress thrown over top. It was a weird dream.

Toodles!

What a turn around!

My day started very slowly. I didn't want to get up. When I did I came to work and I didn't want to do anything. I eventually did, and cobbled together a specifications sheet for a new project. Interrupting that was what I thought was going to be a trip to Lanigan for another meeting (i.e. get screamed at again) but that was cancelled. Murray, as he is very prone to do, forgot to tell me it was cancelled. I think my boss does WAY too much. He needs to delegate more and just sit in his office and do boss stuff. He's taking meetings, making calls, answering requests, doing quotes. There's so much he does that he doesn't actually do a good job of all of it, and ends up forgetting stuff. Like, for instance, noting to me that a meeting has been cancelled. A trifling thing, I know, but its indicative of a larger problem.

Now its the afternoon and I'm filled with vim and vigor. I could take on anything right now. I am actually enthused about the rest of the day. Its like night and day in the cavernous interior of my mind. I'm just in love with everything. Maybe this is a good sign of things to come. I can only hope.

Toodles!

What a boring day its been today!

No one is doing anything interesting. Sean is researching water guns, after it came up in an email this morning. Melissa is playing solitaire on her computer. Kevin is making spreadsheets, and Greg and I are (were?) emailing back and forth about a Supercom order, and the price of monitors. Oh, and Candace is sick. Everyone seems to be killing time this afternoon. Its what I like to refer to as 'a slow news day'.

Melissa has suggested I write about Rainbow Brite in today's blog entry. She was even kind enough to send me a picture of Rainbow Brite, to refresh my memory and thus be able to write something about it. Alas, her efforts are in vain. I do remember Rainbow Brite. I have a sister, and I was thus exposed to Rainbow Brite in my childhood. However, I am a male, and Rainbow Brite did not impact upon my consiousness sufficiently that even with Melissa's heroic efforts, I am unable to muster any thoughts about Rainbow Brite. I'm sure the pre-teen girls of the 80's enjoyed Rainbow Brite, and all that she brought to the word but, I was more into fire trucks and Superman or Batman. I could probably even find my capes at my parents house somewhere. However, I would not find any Rainbow Brite stuff of my own.

Toodles!

I had the most peculiar dream last night. Unfortunately I don't remember much of the details. It has something to do with searching for, and protecting a God creature that was disguised as a child, and not aware of his full powers. There was a lot of it set in a basement apartment, much like the one I lived in when I went to university. There was also elements from my childhood, and the yard of a friend of mine who lived in the trailer court in Coronach. I wish I could write out the details of it for you but they slip my mind. The first coherent part of the dream had me on a mountain top with a flat plateau. This mountain top morphed into a city, as we travelled across to the right. Then we came across this half buried shrine that, after an interminable trip down steps in the dark, opened up into the apartment vista I mentioned earlier. Jerry O'Connell was guarding the God child as we (I don't remember who was in the group). Then some evil person attached the apartment and we fought it off. Water was involved in some way. The rest of the dream evolved as a mystery to figure out who was chasing the God child and what we could do to make it blossom into its full power.

That was my weird dream. Then I drove into work and had a really productive morning. I got some shop drawings and a full set of O&M manuals ready for shipment out. Except I need some electrical drawings for the manuals, then they are done. I plugged away very industriously all day. I just now too a breather to write this blog entry.

I also should mention that I attempted to revive my French skills. I was chatting for a brief time with our Winnipeg friends, en francaise. I had moderate success. I needed the help of the online translator a lot. I hope I'll get better the more I try it.

Toodles!

MSN sucks. Its really getting on my nerves. I wouldn't care so much if it would just tell me its signed me out. If you know, you can just sign back in, and all is well. The pain in the ass part is, sitting there thinking you're signed in and actually not be signed in. First you think everyone's being rude for not replying to you, then you find out you're the rude one for having gone offline without mentioning anything.

Maybe I worry about inherent rudeness too much. Everyone knows how MSN is, so its not really much of a shock when it screws you in the left ear and you get logged out like that. Everyone understands. I just hate being like that. If I'm leaving I say I'm leaving. Maybe its over-politeness but I think its appropriated.

Toodles!