Month: January 2004

This day started out ok, and ended nicely. Had a decent day at the office. Prior to leaving for boys' night out, I had an amusing chat with eniran. She's a very witty and open person, and I think I'm going to enjoy getting to know her. I promise I'll do my best to grow a pair of boobies, just for you.

I had to take a cab to Fat Benewa's place, as the metro was shut down to evacuate smoke somewhere on the line. Just as I'm back on the street, my cell phone rings. It's a friend calling from Australia! This is a chat buddy I recently met online, and she's calling to surprise me and say hello. We chatted all during my cab ride and I had to regretfully say goodbye when I got to the boys' place.

We then spent the night playing new board games that people had obtained for the holidays. The first one was Carcasonne – hunters and gatherers, the other one was Alhambra. They're going to be fun additions to the games we normally play, which are The Settlers of Catan, Vampire, the masquerade, or AD&D. Might sound geeky, but hey, we've been playing games together since CEGEP. That's close to 10 years now :)

According to various anagram generators found online, my full name produces the following anagrams:

– I need intelligent conversation, or silliness, as the situation requires it
– I need sleep
– I need emotional support
– I need love and attention
– I need praise
– I need a comfortable home
– I need good food
– I need pets
– I need safety
– I need something to look forward to in the future
– I need my freedom and independence
– I need to make others happy
– I need someone to snuggle up with
– I need a job I enjoy
– I need a creative outlet
– I need physical affection
– I need my friends
– I need music
– I need peace and quiet
– I need to remember how to be a kid
– I need chocolate
– I need to be healthy
– I need to write my thoughts and feelings down
– I need to be able to leave work at work
– I need laughter
– I need sushi
– I need to learn new things
– I need financial security
– I need time to relax
– I need passion
– I need my memories
– I need books
– I need to enjoy food without guilt and sex without shame

… meme mooched from strychnyn

I got home at noon yesterday, and I found out at 12:05 that I had a big client meeting this morning. I had to spend all day awake so I could get back into a normal sleeping patters ASAP. As a consequence, I'm a bit bleh today. Actually, I'm very bleh.

I also know that the frustrations I'm living right now are exacerbated by my lack of sleep and residual stress from the flight back. Still, the fact that they're there means that I have some issues to resolve, and the most pressing ones are elements of my private life. Some family stuff, some work stuff. But mostly, I'm tired of not being in a relationship. I miss having someone special in my life.

On a bright note though, the meeting went ok, and the project is going to be very interesting.

I'm glad to be home. A simple sentence, that understates a 28-hour day, the last half of which was hellish. Maybe an hour after writing the previous entry, all hell starts to break loose. I won't go into the details, as they're not relevant, but suffice it to say that my travelling buddy seriously felt under the weather. Things rapidly got from bad to worse. A snow storm in Chicago meant that they cancelled the flight prior to ours, which meant that ours was overbooked with people trying to get in on standby. There was only one guy at the United counter, so people were lining up all over the concourse.

We almost lost our seats to a standby pair, as I wasn't sure if my friend was up for the flight. We boarded the plane a few minutes before they were going to release our seats. We weren't next to each other, and we couldn't get someone to switch, so I ended up being in front of him, in the same row. I'd planned to sleep throughout the flight, my normal defense mechanism for any kind of travel. This was no longer an option though, as I was worried about Mg. I read throughout the entire flight. Things go ok.

At O'Hare, we walk a gajillion miles to get ready to wait for our connection to Montreal, when I ask Mg to use his palm to check for the availability of a wi-fi network to pass the time surfing online. He doesn't have it. In fact, it's in the plane. Since I know he's not up to the task of dealing with bureaucracy, I offer to go get it. Long story short, I had to go back and forth between terminal buildings a grand total of 5 times, and waste 50 minutes to get someone to tell me which gate we got in (the computer had the wrong info, turns out, and of course you know that computers are always right). Finally, a nice lady decides to go check it out for herself and walks to the gate I'd been telling her I thought I landed at. I was right. Whoopee. She went into the plane and, miracle of miracles, found it.

The rest of the trip was ok, I guess. At that point, we were both exhausted, mentally and physically. We got into Dorval without a problem, but of course we had to putz around to get off the plane and then wait for our luggage. Got in, unpacked, did some laundry, did some groceries. I've been up for more than 30 hours now. I can't really go to sleep as I'd love to. I just found out I'm giving a demonstration tomorrow morning. That's really pissing me off. My whole vacation buzz just went down in flames when I got that news by IM. So, if I want to have a semi-normal sleeping pattern, I need to go to bed at my normal time tonight, and hope I'm somewhat lucid tomorrow.

*groan*

Today was the last day of our trip. We woke up late, packed all the schwag we bought over the last few days and all the dirty laundry, gathered all the electronics and checked in our bags at the hotel after signing out. We went to breakfast at the little mom&pop place we went to a few times during the week and then took the bus to the Palace of Fine Arts. The parkland around it is very nice. I don't have any pictures, as we didn't bring the camera along, so you'll have to take my word for it. The duck pond around it is really nice. I'm impressed with the amount of green spaces in this city. The exploratorium inside the POFA was fun, but lost it's appeal after a few hours. It's somewhat akin to the museum of technology in Ottawa – with tons of hands-on demonstrations of physical phenomena.

I had a bit of a scare, in that I was carrying my laptop in my backpack and didn't realize that I was walking around rather powerful electromagnets. I think I got off lucky in that everything seems to work fine. We decided to walk back towards the wharf, as it was a beautiful sunny day and the scenery was pleasant. We passed through another park, where a bunch of people were playing with their dogs. That's another thing I noticed from SF, people have pets and the town seems quite pet-friendly. It was still early, so we had a beer at Jack's, a bit of dinner at the restaurant next door and headed to the hotel to pick up our bags.

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in the airport lounge, waiting for my flight. Passing through security is always an exercise in pain. The amount of electronics I carry, combined with keys, change, glasses, watch, pen, belt and friggin boots inevitably means that I beep through a metal detector. One of these days, I'll warrant a strip-search from a disgruntled customs nazi. So far, so good, but I'm still dreading the words: “sir, please come this way….SNAP!” We have a solid two hours to wait. It's always classic. You get there early, things go smoothly and you have too long to wait. Get there a bit late, and all hell breaks loose. Better to wait a bit, and we have free wireless internet, yay!

So, this is the inevitable retrospective on my vacation. I achieved two goals out of three. I had fun, I relaxed, but I didn't get kissed on new year's eve. I did not meet the girl of my dreams in the hotel bar. Hyde_grrl, I'm sorry to say, my trip was quite boring by your standards. I did however discover a new city, and found that I did leave part of my heart in San Francisco. It's a lovely town, with interesting people and cozy spots. I could see myself living here if prices weren't so exorbitant and it wasn't filled with FDAs. Truth be told though, I'm looking forward to going home. I'm tired, my back hurts, and I can't wait to eat healthier food. That's the aspect that I least enjoyed of my trip: my friggin dietary restrictions. This is a city that loves its food, and I would dearly have loved to participate. Can't do much about that though, and bitching is no use, but still, sometimes, you can't help but gripe a bit.

Finally, gentle readers, I'm signing off for the next little while. Between jet lag, air travel and forecasted lack of sleep, I'm going to be out of it for the next little while. Toodles to all of you. I'll be in back in town in less than 12 hours, barring any unforeseen events.

Bye now, can't wait to see you, my friends.

We went to Alcatraz today. It's a stark reminder of the badder sides of human nature. The place was made to hold the baddest of the bad in the barest of human standards. There's a sign that says: “you have the right to clothing, food, shelter and medical care. The rest is a privilege”. Imagine spending 18 hours in a cell not much bigger than your current bathroom. That's if you were lucky enough to have a work detail. Otherwise, you spent 23 hours in there. We saw the hole and the isolation ward. The birdman of Alcatraz spent 6 years in isolation. If you were unlucky enough to warrant the hole, you were confined to a small room completely devoid of light. The wind would come roaring in from the bay. The only amusement you could derive was to tear off a button from your shirt, throw it in the dark and look for it or escape into your mind. The inmates had the best view of the city possible, and would sometimes hear parties from the waterfront or from the yacht clubs, depending on the wind. What a hellish way to live.

The pictures we took are up on the website, as well as those from yesterday. We're both tired, so we're going to have a slow night tonight. We're just going to a bar for drinks and local scenery.

Finally, I'm going to end this entry with an apology to Sparrow, Hyde_grrl and Stychnyn. My wireless access has been acting up in the past few days, and I've often had to disappear in the middle of a chat for various reasons. Sorry about that :( I'll be back in town on monday, so I'll be able to make amends.

Today was another tour day. We left the city and headed towards Monterey and Carmel. The drive was mostly along the coast, and it's breathtaking. Seeing the waves break along the coast is impressive. The scenery was mind boggling, and I could have spent hours on end just stopping to snap pictures. Alas, that wasn't on the tour plan, but I'll get back to that later. We were lucky in that we were always one step ahead of the forecasted rain, and when it did fall, it was short and sweet.

We stopped in Monterey, a very beautiful town, for lunch. Eating was a pain in the ass, as I burned the roof of my mouth the night before on a hamburger so I have this huge, sensitive spot in my mouth. Fun, fun, fun. We would have wanted to see the Monterey Bay aquarium, but we only had a 1.5 hour stop.

We all got back into the little tour bus, and had to wait for a family of FDAs that was holding us back by being late (turns out, they would be late for all the meeting points, but hey, what can you expect from Floridians). We headed towards Pebble Beach and the 17-mile drive. The scenery was, in a word, wow. Even more impressive. Pebble Beach is a gated community, so white trash like us shouldn't have been there, but it's also touristy, so they allow us to lower property value. And we are talking about significant property value. The railroad barons built their summer estates there; like the marble palace, with 32 types of marble and a bathtub with a black marble fountain in it. These mansions run in the tens of millions of dollars, and it shows.

We stopped at the Pebble Beach golf club, where I shot a picture of the 18th hole as seen from the observation deck of the lounge. We felt a little bit out of place, as the people who attend the golf course wait for months for a tee-off time, and pay 500$ green fees. Ah, the life of the idle rich.

Which brings me to the rant portion of this entry. My god, the US has a sick fascination with shopping. Every friggin tour we went on had at least one shopping portion in it. This one was no other. We stopped in Carmel for close to 2 hours. Don't get me wrong, it's probably a beautiful place to live in, and it looks really nice. But I would really have preferred to spend those 2 hours along the coast, looking at spectacular vistas, than looking at over-expensive, tacky crap for people with more money than taste. One little bit of serendipity. We stopped at a high-end candy store, and I was finally able to buy myself a coffee crisp. Turns out, it's imported from England. Nestle doesn't sell chocolate in the US. I wasn't able to find anything nut free, as even the KitKat, the mainstay of my chocolate habits, are licensed by Reeses and aren't made in nut-free plants. I was devastated when I found that out. So I jumped on the occasion and bought 4 coffee crisps, for a price that amounts to highway robbery. I was jonesing for chocolate, so what could I do?

The drive back wasn't all that notable. I fell asleep and dozed off for most of it. The rain had caught up to us, it was dark, and I was tired. A good plan. We got to the hotel 'round 9pm, and we went to the Moose for dinner, where I had the most decadent chocolate dessert I've ever had. It was also probably the most expensive meal I've ever had, but it was nice.

I have some pictures, and they're going to appear online soon, but not just yet.

Kat called bright and early this morning for our breakfast plans. We were still sleeping, and my brain was still a bit muddled from the booze of last night. We got things worked out, and they came to our hotel to pick us up. We wanted to go to a little breakfast place called Mama's, but the lineup was just silly. We ended up going to the little place on the wharf we'd tried a few days ago. The food was good, and we picked up the conversations where we left them last night. Those two are really fun to talk to, as they're rather anti-Bush and quite liberal in their views. The suicide camel story was the best one so far…

We drank too much coffee, at the breakfast place and then at Buena Vista cafe, the birthplace of the Irish Coffee. Dear lord, I'm wired right now. Today is our day to do sweet fuck all, so that's good. The weather is fairly bleh, and we're both tired, so we're staying in the hotel and doing nothing. Besides, most places will be closed today, so we're going to catch up on our R&R and watch a movie or something.

We just got back from the boat trip. I've spent many a new years eve night that wasn't as fun. We got on the boat, the Butchie B, with time to spare and just sat around, looking at the different people who were getting on. We left the pier at 10:30, and headed towards Alcatraz. The rain that had been forecasted was keeping away so far, and the night was quite comfortable. Once on the bay, I headed towards the front of the boat and started to mingle with the people there. I started talking to a couple of people, and we basically just spent the night together. Kat, a California valley girl, was an Arabic interpreter for the marine corps who now studies physics and women's studies and Aaron is a cartographer. We had a blast talking to them. They're thinking of becoming American political refugees in Canada. I gave them my coordinates and invited them to Montreal. The Bay cruise was really fun, the conversation was interesting, but the fireworks were a letdown. No biggie though, Mg, Kat and I shared the bottle of rose, and though I didn't get a New Year's kiss, I got a New Years hug, so that's something :) Just after midnight, the rain started coming down, but nothing too bad.

I found out that my new coat is nicely water-resistant, but a drainage hose from the boat's top got unhooked and poured down my back, which wasn't as fun. When we got back to port, I had to rescue my backpack from a drunken reveller (“It's my backpack. This is my flashlight, my checkbook and my passport. No, I don't know how your purse ended up in there.”) and we ended up going to Jack's for a beer with Kat, her parents and Aaron. We swapped a few stories and called it a night. We walked back to the hotel, called them a cab, and made plans for breakfast.

Good night all. Happy new year to all the people I care for, you all know who you are.