life at my fingertips

Why do I always end up shafted? And over the most asinine things too?

All I did was do a favor by designing something for work, and then bam! I get phone calls from a colleague demanding to know why suddenly I was “in charge” of the project when she was supposed to be?!

Whoa, whoa, I just designed the template, you have full control of the project.

But no, apparently because I designed it, I’m “in charge” of it.

I don’t want to be in charge! I just made it pretty!

Goddamnit, and it’s the most asinine and irrelevant project too.

• Friday was stunning in Toronto, and I surprised Dave with dinner in Little Italy. We ate at Vivoli, had delicious Italian and enjoyed the heat and sunshine in the patio. 
• Further surprises continued when we attempted to go to the Royal Ontario Museum at 8:30 at night. For a few weeks, they’ll be doing this special event on Fridays where you can booze up, eat, and enjoy live music while all the exhibits are open. Crazy! The line was uber long, so we’ll try again soon. 
• Saturday I was at work, followed by a quickie shopping trip with the British Sensation that is Krysia. Afterwards, Dave and I headed downtown for my awesome friend, Jeremy’s birthday extravaganza! It was so nice seeing Jeremy and his girlfriend, Veronica. They’ll be our dates for the baseball game tomorrow — remember the tickets I won from my charity function at work? Yeah, that game. 
• My sister Katherine came to visit — she is not to be confused with my friend and future roommate, Katheryne. Anyway, Sister Katherine came home, so today we went to visit my Uncle Johnny at the hospital where he lives. He’s in long-term care. I visited him solo last week, and gave him a ton of gifts, so today we came empty handed. Kinda lame, I need to get him more things, he must get so bored and lonely in there. 
• Sister Katherine has been retail-deprived in Ottawa, so we hit up the malls and then we went home where I relaxed, watched movies, and did my usual nerdy stuff. 

Guys, I just had an ingenious idea.

Fo realz!

I obviously not going to share my wondrous master plan, but suffice to say, it rocks my socks. It pertains to my birthday + awesomeness which would = awesome birthday.

I’m not one to go all out for my birthday. When I was a kid, being a summer baby sucked. In elementary school, when students would get a special shout out on the morning announcements on their birthday, I never got one because, Durr, August baby. As I got a bit older, around middle school and high school, I never had a birthday extravaganza because most people were on vacation or working.

And by the time my university years rolled around, I was over it. I prefer an evening with my closest friends, that sort of things. Oh, I’ve had some spectacular birthdays — many of you participated in a memorable one — but last year’s sucked ass. I can say this because that was during my whole Minneapolis Nightmare when the morons at Delta Airlines left me stranded in Minnesota for 2 days.

TWO DAYS!

TWO DAYS!

Seriously! What was SUPPOSED to be a layover from John Wayne  to Toronto Pearson Airport turned into a complete NIGHTMARE because of poor weather, maintenance problems, PILOTS NOT SHOWING UP, and resulted in me being trapped in MINNESOTA all by myself!

I am still enraged.

On the morning of my 22nd birthday, I woke up in an airport hotel, staring a the ceiling of the Ramada hotel. I had crashed there last night with my fellow ordeal victim, Chuck*, and we had consoled ourselves by downing a bottle of wine, watching HBO and complaining about Delta.

Anyways, that was my birthday. And when I finally returned home to Toronto on the night of my birthday, I was gross, tired, but managed to have drinks with my lovely girl Jessie. But the next few weeks went downhill from there, because of exams, my tooth extraction and other things.

This birthday? No more! Hopefully Katheryne and I are planning to move out at the end of August, and I want to have a birthday party! I never plan my own birthday, I try to ignore it. I have an idea guys, and should you be invited (this shit’s gonna be exclusive), prepare for AWESOMENESS.

Stay tuned.

Two of my colleagues just accused me of being intimidating during the interviews I conduct.

Seriously.

Perhaps the glint of my dental implant resembles the ominous gold glint of grillz, but let’s be real people — I don’t even scare Rosie, and she’s 2 years old.

Apparently I’m a “mean” recruiter.

Whaaaa?!

On the flipside, buried beneath my indignation is a small seed of satisfaction. That’s right biotches, I’m intimidating.

But really — no I’m not. They just said that to watch my reactions.

Natalie’s back!

My lovely friend Natalie returned with her best friend Colleen from their backpacking adventure across Europe. They were gone for 2.5 months and while she was gone, I won’t deny that my street cred dropped without Natalie by my side.

We caught up last night, basking on patio in Scarborough. Here’s basically the point-breakdown of our conversation, based on who had better adventures:

Natalie: 673 points

Me: 12 points

Natalie went to England, Poland, Germany, France, and a whole slew of other places that I don’t know. Geography was never my strong suit. Me? Uh, nowhere. We exchanged stories and gossip, and she even got me a pair of LEGITIMATE Harry Potter glasses from her tour of the Harry Potter movie set!

Bananas!

I squealed and jumped up and down like an 11 year old who just spotted One Direction. Don’t know who that is? Don’t look it up, you’ll instantly revert into a squealing 11 year old girl.

Downside to Natalie going to Europe? She listens to Dutch rap. And she knows who One Direction is — and even likes two of their songs.

But excluding the Dutch rap, I am so happy to have her back! Welcome home, home gurl!

And now I have to help her find a “real grown up” job. Ahhh, adulthood… . you really suck sometimes.

Okay, well known fact: I am a grandpa.

I get cold easily, I sometimes have tissues stuffed up my sleeves, I wear men’s clothing, I often rock cable knit sweaters, I wear tweed, I own oxfords — the whole shebang. To really cap off my grandpa-identity at work, I also brought a giant, fluffy blue blanket to the office in my first week with DP.

What can I say? This playah gets COLD.

Now that it’s May in Toronto, the humidity levels are rising, the sun is shining, and — you know — it’s still sunny at 9 pm. Hallelujah, summer is upon us!

Except this morning, the second day back to the office after the glorious long weekend, I find that the air conditioning is jacked up to the max, rendering my (super cute) cobalt blue slim cropped pants, buckskin brown (old man) loafers, and mustard cable-knit three-quarter sleeve sweater useless against the man-made biting chill of the air conditioner.

That is probably the longest run-on sentence I’ve written since undergrad.

So now even as I type this post, I have my blanket (that resembled a Snuggie but isn’t) wrapped around my legs like an old person in a wheelchair.

And to think I was going to bring this sucker home because it was warming up. What a foolish error that would have been.