I’ve gotten into some nasty sleeping habits. Not sleeping well during the night, but when I get home in the evening, man am I tired. I was so tired on Tuesday (see entry) that I actually walked part of the way up the street with my eyes closed.

And CPwr’s not helping things. You see, CPwr has these pheromones. Let’s call them ‘Zz’. So I’ll have dinner, sit next to him on the couch. We’ll start chatting. I’ll start saying less and less, with droopier and droopier eyelids. Still listening though…what’s that he just said?…man it’s warm in here…this blanket sure is cozy and the christmas tree is so pretty…uh-huh, yes honey, you sure have a soft shoulder…riiiight, and then what happened?….yeeuppp…

Slowly my body migrates from sitting up to lying down, the blanket somehow gets pulled over me, and I make one more incoherent response to CPwr before he says “it’s okay sweetie, just have a little nap”.

It’s the sleep of babies and angels I tell you…

From one of those ‘Trivia on the Way’ posters on the subway today:

“A barrel full of water weighs 100kg. What can you add to it to make it lighter?”

Fire?

Steep Stairs:
Why am I never ever fit enough for the Museum steps? I’m wheezing by the top.

Time Warps:
I love how every morning, when I check the time on the transfer machine at the subway, I think “that’s okay, add a few minutes to that, and I’ll still be on time when I get to my stop”. Then I get to my stop, and it is *exactly* the same time as when I got on. I mean, it works in my favour, and it’s a nice surprise, but it makes me feel like time stops when I’m underground. Maybe that’s why moles look so youthful…

Lucky Little Kids:
Near where I work, there is a semi-private school where the kids come out into a field and plays games every morning. It is both awesome and sad. Awesome because that is the way it should be. Sad, cuz I have to walk past the hula hoops, coloured cones, and beanbag games every morning to go sit in a cube… Our priorities are wrong.

After a three day hiatus I biked in today. And might I add – yuck. It’s rainy and bleeky out there. I almost got hit 3 times on my way in – cars not only drive worse on rainy days, they forget there are cyclists on the road. So on the way in 3 cars (2 cars and 1 ChairMan Mills truck) just waddled into my lane to make their right hand turns, forcing me to jam on my brakes. I ding-a-linged them with my bell. But frankly, ding-a-linging doesn’t scare anybody.

Pretty wet, tired and unhappy by the time I got to work. Realized that I may be close to calling biking season over. I’ll bike on the occasional rainy day, but it’s just not safe when the roads are slick. And if we’re heading into a wet tail end of fall, I think my self-preservation might beat out happy riding. I was very aware today that soppy late fall weather doesn’t just mean early stopping – the cold wind will skid you out of your lane, or skid your bike out from under you. Crisp fall wind – it’s not just about romance anymore.

And speaking of romance. I was sitting at my desk at noon today. Usual lunching companions are in meetings or sick. Boss is out of the office. Forgot my cross-stitching at home. Hmmm…thinking outside of the lunch box… What would I most like? Dim Sum! A lovely long dim sum with my bunny (CPwr, not the cat). Two phone calls, a little persuasive asking later, and CPwr is en route (an especially lovely gesture given that he’s feeling a little sick and it turns out to be absolutely pissing down with rain).

And then in the middle of my day and thanks to CPwr and a little serendipity, I got to have The Perfect Lunch:
-quiet day at work with the boss away
-seats for two up against a giant 2nd floor window overlooking a busy street
-a radiator right beside the window
-the company of the best person I know
-standards playing just in the background (“I’ve got the world on a string”…)
-excellent dim sum, all delivered fast and at the same time
-plenty of green tea
-a wet first snowfall, enjoyed from this warm and snuggly vantage point

 _[ ]_
  ( )
 ( : )
 (   )
  J L

The subject line is unrelated to today’s entry. I just said it over the weekend and I think it’s funny 🙂

I had one of those mornings at work where I had to do what a friend calls “work-osmosis”. It’s based on an ancient idea that every object has a memory. So when you arrive at work on a Monday morning and you can’t remember what your job is, you sort of touch the documents on your desk and hope somehow you’ll suck in an explanation of why you’re there and what in god’s name you’re supposed to be doing. I do this a lot. A LOT.

In other news, I am not as insightful as I once thought. I thought I had a good radar for people’s reactions to me. But apparently I am mistaken. Recently a couple of now-friend office colleagues told me that they felt a tremendous amount of pressure to make me like them when we first met. One of them told me that when I came by her cube to chat with her about something for the first time, when I left, she did a little “YEEESSS!”. That’s sick. Apparently, I’m a bit of an ice queen – but the kind of ice queen that people want to get to know.

Now, I think of myself as pretty personable. But in a work context, I’ll admit that instead of making sure everyone likes me all the time, I’d rather just get to know people individually as it comes up. If we get along, that’s great. But I’m not busting my hump over it. Because that’s when you become “the office friend” and wind up having lunch with people 5 months in that you really didn’t like from the first moment you met them. And my lunches are precious dangnabbit. Precious… Mine. My own. *cough* Right.

So, anywho, massive disjoint between how I think I’m perceived and how I am perceived. There’s a woman at work who I’ve always thought didn’t like me, and it turns out she’s been trying to strike up a conversation with me for 3 months. Good lord. I must be sneezing hail…

It’s raining in Toronto today. The CBC weather guy said that there might even be some flurries overnight. I love the first flurries 🙂

But I’m trying to keep a nasty head cold at bay. I can feel it lurking at the back of my throat, and I have that weird hot scratchy feeling up the roof of my mouth. Buh.

I’ve also had two consecutively unpleasant work days. A bit of pressure, some testy coworkers, and more frustrating re-writes to the team workplan (MS Project can bite my ass).

So you’d think that coming home with a serious rain going on, would really be the icing on my cake of sadness.

It turned out to be quite the opposite. Getting out there in a crisp weather rainfall felt… well, fantastic. I felt refreshed. It’s drilled into you from kindergarten flashcards onwards that rain equals sad. Making it feel so very counter-intuitive to be delighted to be rained on. And while biking no less. But my chilly arms, soaking legs and working muscles got me home feeling rejuvenated and pleasantly quiet. Maybe it’s the cosmic connectivity of having your inner self manifested in the weather… maybe I needed a bath? Whatever it was, it was just what tired little me needed.

In other news, I finally got on mapquest today to see how far I ride to work: 3.77 miles (6.07 km), each way. Feels pretty darn good. Much better than what I thought might happen…
(Me: Plug in the start and stop point. Mapquest: “You bike 2 kilometres.” Me: “DOH!”)

Current food: Cocoa Camino Hot Chocolate and a butter cookie (Thanks Mudsy!!)

I was talking to our buddy Slicktastic last night. His friend recently bought a condo and got it featured on one of those ‘Have A Designer Decorate Your Condo’ shows. He was telling us how amazing her bathroom fixtures were, and how they still had the little rented touches around (like plastic flowers).

Which led to a bit of a brain dump by me (which he was on board with btw – so I wasn’t *just* ranting), about how while I like capital D Design in theory, it doesn’t work for me in practice. I can walk into a space and admire lines and style and form. But it almost never looks *comfy* to me. As in, yes, that is a beautiful bar stool and it really goes with your granite counter, but I wouldn’t want to eat my french toast there. Or, yes, that recliner is a nice modern urban take on a traditional recliner, but I don’t think it would work for sprawling out with the paper on a Saturday.

Often “well-designed” furniture just plain looks too small. I need to look at a chair and be able to say to myself “yes, that could generously accomodate my ass”. My home furnishings and “style” are built around bad posture and lying down. If I can’t lie down in it – or slouch really badly, I’ll probably never want to sit in it. Pretty much if I don’t want to be on my feet, I want to reeeallly not be on my feet. I don’t want to be perched on the edge of a beautiful plastic doohickey of a chair. Other than the once a month I’m dressed up and headed out the door and need to perch on something pristine while CPwr grabs his wallet, I don’t need that Piece Of Style in my home.

Home is a big part of this idea. I don’t identify these immaculate spaces as Home. They are where you live, your condo, your flat even, but not a Home. Home is mismashed – it has knickknacks and mementos that don’t “go” with anything, it has blankets that don’t all match and tables that are worn from putting your feet up on them. I feel sad for people who feel they have to hide away all the bits and pieces of their lives because they don’t fit a theme. And that’s the first thing they do on these design shows – “remove the clutter”. I say if your granny’s teapot has to be put in a cupboard to make room for a decorative bowl filled with wicker balls from Ikea, it may be time to take a step back.