Luv that textin'

Be strong
Jus left th clinic
bstrong cheri
arm ok no panic
need u 2 promis me
2 keep kissin
me left breast
cos baby nxt week
me right'll b missin

The Guardian has this beauty and others from its best of Text Poetry 2002. I find texting an absolute riot and a great showcase for how dynamic language can be today. Guess I'm just weird that way.

Barbie's blog, cause every plastic woman has to have one!
(courtesy of Meg)

Well, I'm sorry if I alarmed anyone, but I'm beginning to think that those big freakin' quarters I referred to a couple of days ago are, indeed, a figment of my poor father's imagination.

Maybe he was drunk during our conversation. I never can tell. He usually takes his teeth out when he drinks, but not always, so how's a daughter to know?

Anyhoo...please disregard my paranoid ramblings about toonie-sized quarters. I probably should have done my research first!

Moved!
Well, I arrived at work and they had delivered my boxes and hooked up my computers. A few hours later, I am more or less organized and only hav eone computer and a laptop on the desk. Of course the first thing I did was turn on my big monitor. Guess what? The movers scratched it! It's a small scratch, but I can see it and it will drive me crazy. I had to fight to get this monitor, so I'm really mad. My boss is filing a report with the movers, we'll see what happens. I now have a phone on my desk so people can call me, I'm not sure whether that's good or bad.

Irene just sent me this, soy sauce super heros? I'm hoping one of my friends can translate this. What do you think?

Tales of the sensitive tech writer
I was in one of those coma-like sleeps this morning, didn't hear the cats, or Steve, or Steve throwing stuff at the cats. I didn't hear anything until my alarm started to chime. I love the chimes, so serene! Working on rewriting a developer's document this morning. He's worked really hard on it, so it may be difficult to show him the new version. When they're really proud of their writing, I usually tell them that I have to reformat and move it out of Word, just some minor changes to make it clearer to a non-technical audience, spell check, etc. You hate to hurt their feelings.
It's a great day for a Grey Cup parade! I wish I still worked downtown.

Packing up
I found out that I'm finally officially changing offices this Wednesday. This is a temporary-permanent move, which means that I'm moving, so my computer and phone will finally be where I am most of the time, but they're moving the entire department in a couple of weeks to another building, so I will probably be moving to the other building with everyone else. Also, the office that they give us will not be my permanent office, because that will eventually be where the rest of my writing team is as opposed to the department I'm working in. Also, when I am moved to a permanent spot, I have requested that I continue to share an office with my old office mate as opposed to where I am now most of the time - primarily because guys are just better to share offices with because they don't care if you move a chair or turn up the thermostat, and almost never complain about stupid things that don't matter and that make you crazy. Confused yet? Perhaps I should create a diagram.
So I got my two boxes yesterday and started packing stuff and putting stickers on everything. I only really need one of my computers and my phone, so I plan on leaving the boxes packed and sitting in the middle of the office until we move again in two weeks. For some reason, I don't think I'm going to feel like any less of a gypsy after Wednesday than I do now.

Here's to a calmer week
Last week was crazy busy, this week I'm hoping will be a bit more sedate. Saturday, Steve and I got up early so I could get my car rust-proofed, and then I took him out for breakfast. After, we went to Westmount and wandered through all the stores for gift ideas. Westmount has a whole bunch of nifty stores. Once you get the the last ones, you've seen many of the same things repeated, but there's always some novelties. Saturday night, we went to a friend's surprise 30th birthday party. It was a hoot! She was actually surprised!
Sunday was a slow day. Steve had an old friend over who I swear talked from the moment he got to our place until he left 6 hours later! I hid in the livingroom in front of the fire; I watched three movies and read.
Today started off with my pass card not working, but other than that, not so terrible. Just taking it one hour at a time, looking forward to lunch. I tried a new bread made with something called Red River cereal-it looks like bird seed.
By the way, way to go Alouettes!

A Quarter to Two

Hey, have any of you seen the new quarter?

My Dad made a point of calling me yesterday, because he knows I pay cash (which I guess means I'm too poor to charge everything). He wanted to warn me about the dastardly new quarter which looks a hell of a lot like a toonie (same size, same silvery pretty). "You check your change carefully every time, because you can bet there'll be a lot of people giving quarters instead of loonies now".

And what about all the vending machines, washers and dryers and god knows what-all else? What is the world coming to? It's diabolical, that's what it is.

Of course I haven't seen these things, so maybe they only exist in my father's imagination, but still, damn those money-people!

Temporary wheels
I just dropped off my car at the dealership for maintenance. Normally, I stay with the car, but today I'm having some body work done which will take longer than an hour. I got a loaner, a 2003 Camry to be precise. It's new and plush and smooth driving. They give you really nice cars on purpose. It's too bad that I don't have a lot of errands to run today. Of course I left my passcard in my car, so I have to wander around with a "I'm an idiot and forgot my pass at home" card. We were suppose to go out to lunch for a colleague's birthday yesterday, but that was cancelled because he had a meeting. I ate a really crappy Tim Horton's sandwich and soup (blech!) We're supposed to go out today, but I just heard that there's a huge rush to get out a doc that doesn't exist by tonight. I hope there's something good in the cafeteria.......

I saw a funny headline on a tabloid this morning:

"Terrorists Plan to Blow up Internet on 1-11!"

I also thought this Onion article was rather amusing. I can't create a link on my work computer for some reason, so you can copy and paste if you want.

http://www.theonion.com/onion3843/modern-day_proust.html


Y'all have a good day!

Meeting revenge
Last Friday, I was talking to a colleague and asked that we meet on Monday. On Monday, I emailed to ask when he was going to stop by, and he said that he was very busy, and that I should book a meeting with him for Thursday. I booked a meeting, sent the request, and never heard back. This morning I waited for him to show up, which of course he didn't because he's far too important. He said that he hadn't read his email from yesterday afternoon; this of course has nothing to do with the request that I sent Tuesday morning. Then, he sent me a meeting request for tomorrow that would run over lunch. I declined. I wish that Outlook had a Ha! button....

Steve just sent me this.

Addictive word game
This is going to waste all my lunch hours.....
(stolen shamelessly from Jackie-O)

Volvo bullies?
Sounds a little odd, doesn't it? I pulled into a parking spot this morning, one of the ones in the middle of the lot where you park opposite another car, and a lady in a Volvo, who arrived from the other side, and seemed to be taking the spot opposite, actually wanted to drive through and park where I was so that she didn't have to reverse out of the space when she left. I was sitting where she wanted to be, and she honked at me until I finally gave her the spot. You'd think that a Volvo would have better manners, not to mention that she works somewhere in the building, so I will see her again.

Yet another wrinkle in my long goodbye from CDS...

As you all know I have been given 15 months working notice and if you didn't think that was long enough, yesterday our company made an announcement that puts the whole schedule into a complete schamozzle. Something called the Risk Model was a key agreement that everyone in the financial community had to agree to and accept for our new systems to be implemented. So, the predictable occurred (and we were warned it might happen), it wasn't approved and now the whole implementation is thrown up in the air and nobody knows when our new systems are going to go live. What this means is, those of us who were scheduled to leave in November and March will likely have our departure dates rescheduled into the future again. The company cannot let people go as long as we are running the old systems.

At this point I find it hard to take anything all that seriously and have decided to ride it out....The economy sucks anyway and the financial industry is in complete disarray not just here in Canada, but globally.

Anyone seen Harry Potter yet?

On the bright side: My boots are amazing and warm and dry.

Dang, another story that's already been told ...... better scratch that idea for my great Canadian novel.

Stupid snow
It started yesterday when I found out that I didn't have a garage spot. It continued this morning with the shovelling, scraping and sweeping, then the crappy drive to work, then getting stuck in the company parking lot where they had just started to plow and I got stuck-twice. This sucks. I am not happy today...

Short day
Yesterday afternoon, we got hauled into a last minute project. The boss said that it would take us an hour. I left the office at 11:30 last night and hadn't stopped for supper. In some ways, I think that it's the universes' way of levelling my economic karma - I probably made enough in overtime last night to pay for the winter boots and coats that I bought last week. Still, I'm leaving at noon today, my brain is quite dead :-)
Who wants to come for an Indian food lunch? I'm buying!