Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Back dans le Saddle encore

Ah friends...

Sorry to have left you to your own battery powered devices at the end of the year.

For me it is a time of worry and fret... of stomach acid tides rising and lapping at the very back of my throat. Who amongst us likes waking up three or four times a night coughing because there's a brush fire just below their uvula? Not I, you say, not I.

But we made it through another holiday season. Here are some things I've seen and/or learned.

1) On one of my last nights of work at the lab I left a little later than my usual 10 pm knock off time and heard what sounded like the all-too-usual high voiced yelping of drunken idiots outside the Social Club in the SUB. When I noticed it was coming from behind instead of in front of me I turned in time to see two foxes dart out of the woods and up to the door of the building I'd just exited... not 25 feet away. Fun.

2) There are some questions you have to question... long before you can ever hope to even try to answer. Example: Young man with the skittish movements/expression of one either picked on too much or not enough comes in the store and has the following query: "I'm interested in listening to music on vinyl. Is there anything you'd recommend?" So, how do you approach this? Does he think music on vinyl is different from music on other formats? Does he just want me to stack up a bunch of records for him to buy? Before I could begin to help he follows with, "and this may be a silly question, but do you know where I could buy something to play the vinyl on?" Oh well.

3) The door locks freeze. Everywhere.

4) If you need to travel by bus it will snow hard. Even if the forecast 2 days earlier called for 4 degrees celsius and a 30% chance of rain. Snow.

5) Coupons will always be the best thing you receive.

6) If you have a choice between 3 things you can spend a Xmas bonus on always pick the least useful one (for me it was a PS2).

7) One thing you should find out when asked to take care of someone's cats while they're away for the holidays is what their names are. Although big gray kitty and little gray kitty worked out fine.

8) #1 album of 2005 Sufjan Stevens-Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty). For a list of my Top Fifty you can go over here.

I'll bring you more news of wonderment and discovery soon. For now I leave you with this:

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Eric:
She looks familiar:
http://theatredance.ucdavis.edu/pressroom.htm

Joe Merrick said...

re: 4). Whether the snow comes down hard or not, buses always leave late and arrive on time. I don't know how they do it.

I once met the Four Million Dollar Man. He was pretty cheap.

e. said...

Jon,

Wow. How did you come across that??


and Joe,

Do you have any inkling if there was a bionic baby? I remember $6M man, Bionic Woman, Bionic German Shepherd, $7M man (evil race car driver), Bionic Sasquatch and of course the popular Fembots... yum.

Anonymous said...

I refer to it as a little thing called boredom. Or perhaps procrastination. When combined with the internet it is a powerful narcotic.

Joe Merrick said...

Bionic baby? I can only say yes.

Ahhhh, the internet. Powerful narcotic indeed.

Joe Merrick said...

Incidentally. Is there a way to stay logged in to this damned blogger system? I have the hardest time remembering both my username and password, and it's stopping me from posting more irrelevant comments.