Monthly Archives: May 2003

I was eating my cold eggplant parmigiana (the company microwave having been replaced by a BREADBOX, after all) today, and suddenly looked at it.

With the dark skin and the greenish flesh under the breadcrumbs and tomato sauce…suddenly I imagined that I was eating nice round Italian-cooked slices of giant slug.

I choked down the pasta underneath it, so I wouldn’t be totally hungry later (all the while thinking “slug slime, slug slime”) and tossed the eggplant. I likely won’t be able to eat THAT again.

Meh. Sometimes, foods with textures like that bug me…like grilled mushrooms. I love the taste, but sometimes, again, grilled slug, because it has no texture.

Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms…

Last day of the commute today. HOO-rah.

I can smell the cinnamon buns from downstairs today, because all my windows are open in the office because it’s hot out there (about 75…which is warm for this part of the world)

No wonder I’m always hungrier than I should be, with that smell wafting in all the time. Damn.

I took my tongue stud out last night in a sudden attack of symbolism. I’ve had that thing just under two years. I had it done in 2001 in Fresno, as part of a piercing pact with the jentwo. She got her bellybutton done, I got my tongue pierced.

I’ve had a 12 gauge barbell in it since. I got good at using it for effect, playing with the stud when I was bored or wanted to look more alternative. I liked shocking boys when I kissed them for the first time, and they suddenly realized the barbell was there.

But last night was, really and truly, the last night of UBC. I realized that, looking out from Norman MacKenzie House Gardens, at the sunset. I was at a reception last night to honour the honorary degree recipients, a fancy affair student speakers were invited to, along with a lot of very influential people from the province of BC. And I realized – this is my last event as part of the UBC community. This is the last time I’ll be part of a gathering of any kind because I’m a UBC undergrad.

And so, the symbolism inherent in the act – taking out the college kid piercing – was what finalized the decision to remove the tongue stud. I’d been thinking about it for awhile:

5 QUICK REASONS TO GET RID OF TONGUE STUD:
1) I can’t blow bubbles with bubble gum
2) I lisp slightly with the stud in, which makes me sound like a Valley girl
3) I can’t chew caramels
4) Boyfriend doesn’t like it as much as he could
5) Difficult to run tongue over teeth after eating anything

And now, it’s out, and I imagine the hole in my tongue will be gone by tonight. Although now, I may have to go get a tattoo done to make up for losing a piercing.

I got up at 5am today so I could take a 6am ferry, because I wanted to work an 8 hour day. Usually, I’d catch a 7am boat and leave on a 4…but the 4pm boat on Wednesdays, as I learned LAST week, doesn’t take passengers, only dangerous cargo. I learned THAT when I had to wait an hour for a boat, and then found that the ferries were late and had missed the bus connection, and that I’d lost about 90 minutes of my life to the whole fiasco, arriving in downtown Vancouver 90 minutes after I said I’d be there to have dinner with my family.

So today, I get in ferry lineup…and sit, and wait…and then realize…I’m in the Nanaimo lineup. The Bowen ferry left TWENTY MINUTES AGO and I have lost an hour I could have spent sleeping.

So now I’m going to be working a 9 hour day – because I can’t leave until 5pm – and by then there’s going to be traffic on the f–king Lion’s Gate…and AARGH.

I’m cursing myself for not paying attention, for being this tired. I want to scream and yell and throw things I’m so sick of this commute. No amount of Zen-like state can be reached this morning through scenery.

FUCK the scenery, I’m thinking, actually. I HATE being this tired all the time, and never having any time to myself, and having to leave social events early, and generally having my whole life dampened by this fucking commute, which is dragging on two weeks longer than it was supposed to.

Two hours this morning…I should have been sleeping one of those, and that’s what kills me most of all, is that I could have had enough sleep so that I might be able to FOCUS long enough to get my job done in the first place. I cannot work when I’m this tired…and I cannot fall asleep early enough to NOT be tired…and it’s rare I get this frustrated and angry, but it’s starting to take a toll.

My boyfriend and his friends are not amused by the cookbooks.

They are, however, usually happy enough to eat the results, even if I do get teased incessantly for it.

(I maintain that the Looneyspoons and Crazy Plates books kick ass, as I eat my leftover eggplant parmigiana. Even when there’s NO MICROWAVE IN YOUR OFFICE and you have to eat the leftovers cold)

I just saw a deer cross the parking lot.

Yes, I’m a city girl

I’m sitting at my desk, trying to focus long enough to get work done. It’s not easy today. I’m dead tired exhausted – I think I got 5.5h sleep last night. I need 7, preferably 8.

This is mostly because I’m still on Bowen Island. I was originally told two weeks of commuting. Then it became 3. Then 4. I’m tired all the time during the week. Granted, I’ve worked shorter weeks as a result, but still…this is too far, too much of my time. I spend about 17-18 hours a week commuting. That’s more time than I spent at Arts County.

It may be time I’d spend reading (which is what I do on the bus/boat), it may be time I’d spend looking at scenery (ditto), but still…it would be time I could choose to use as I pleased.

It’s also that I have to be up at 5am in order to get here in time to harass the East Coast vendors. It’s an early day. That’s what really wears me down. If the office was in North Van, I’d be sleeping until 6:30 or so…and still get to work at the 7:45 I do now. And I’d be home by 5 at the latest. Wednesday, it took me three hours to get to downtown Vancouver.

Tomorrow, I can sleep in until 7:30 at least. I never thought I’d call 7:30 sleeping in…but it is. *sigh*

Now, if I can just stay awake long enough to get home & take a nap before the reception tonight…

In 2nd grade, when I was skipped in, I became friends with another girl named Gillian. It was kind of the thing that year…so many kids with the same names all became friends. Most of them were named Jennifer, because this was 1984.

Anyways, Gillian went off to private school in grade 5. She came back in grade 10. She and I resumed our friendship, and then she became friends with one of my other friends, and I got left out of the picture. It was fairly cruel. I was quite hurt at the time.

Amends were made sometime in the late 1990s, and I last saw her in 1999. She’d moved over to Vancouver with her parents after high school ended, and we’d occasionally seen each other, but overall…I didn’t really bother to get in touch after I moved back. Sorry.

But I just ran into her, with her family – her sister is graduating with a diploma in education today. They looked shocked as hell. It isn’t as if her parents haven’t seen me thin…but I think it’s still a shock. I’m slightly shaken by the whole thing right now – but overall, I’m actually smug.

After all, I’m prettier and I have a boyfriend, and when you’re still dealing in high school terms, isn’t that all that matters?

Why do we have such need to prove ourselves to people we knew from high school? Why is this the most insecure period of our lives, the one which so many of us spend so much time trying to correct?

I may have made my grad speech on how we should never, ever kill time…but I never said it wasn’t fun to waste it.

Slept in until 10:30 today before being woken up by boyfriend in middle of frantic clean-this-swamp-before-parents-show-up frenzy. It sounded like Animal playing the drums. Soon, I will be at all-you-can-eat-sushi with the gang. Later tonight, I will meet the boyfriend’s parents, and then go to an Animal House party…

…and the best part of all of this is that it’s COMPLETELY NON PRODUCTIVE STUFF because I DON’T HAVE ANY HOMEWORK!

Sorry. Out of school shock still kicks in sometimes. Despite the diploma which is zippered into my messenger bag.

Tomorrow, the lovely Lana and I will make dinner together for a Simpsons potluck. I love you Lana! I had a bad dream last night though, with you in it…you were driving a 70s model huge car that didn’t have brakes, and I was riding shotgun, and it crashed. You were really good at driving, if that means anything, it was all because of the brakes.

Still, I intend to spend tomorrow baking. I haven’t been able to cook for ages & ages. I kind of miss it. I think the boyfriend misses it more.

The joys of unproductivity, of this free time…it’s amazing. I’d forgotten what a weekend was. I worked weekend last summer, after all, and most school weekends, I’d have homework after the first month or so of term…but this…this is a summer of weekends, a whole season of weekends like this one…and I can feel myself destressing already.