Digital Masquerade

I know I’ve been quiet for a while now but that’s a good thing because it means life….is pretty damn awesome.

Gary and I just wrapped up the Festival of Fear (pictures will be coming this weekend I hope), my sister is moving in next door, my Mom is having a milestone birthday and I got a promotion at work.

Top that off with my always present amazing friends, living with the love of my life Gary, and having my sweet puppy Pandora, I could not be a happier girl.

I’m even wrapping up some projects at work so that mens I’ll be able to spend some time working on the various projects I’m supposed to be doing.   I’m about a month behind on my blog reading but I plan on catching up on that fairly soon so be expecting some random comments from me on old posts.

Instead of having my own cell phone, my company provides me with one.  It’s one of the many perks I get for working for “The Most Awesome Company Ever”.

For the last year and a half the phone that they gave us weighed about 5lbs and was as thick as my fat fingers.   Ok, maybe it wasn’t that thick but it was a clunker.  It was black and had a green display that was very reminiscent of The Matrix .  It did not have any colours and the screen was about the size of a piece of stick of Juicy Fruit Gum.

I called it my “Batman” phone because it had some cool little black ridges on it.  But it was free.  And well free is not just good, it’s awesome. I happily used that phone and still gave it love when it would only hold a charge for six hours in standby mode.

Then our Office Manager declared that it was time for a new plan and…new phones!  It was like Christmas.  Emails flying around debating the pros and cons for each phone available to us.  I ended up chosing the Razr V3 because I’m shallow and really liked the way the phone looked.  Besides it was a flip phone and I’m big on flip phones.

I’ve had my Razr for a few months now and still don’t know and don’t really care about all the little things it can do except for the fact that I can put my own ringtones on it.  With the help of a friend at work, I now have The Addams Family as my ringtone and it makes me grin like an idiot every time I hear it. 

It takes so little to make me happy.

I just left a bunch of wicked people, having drinks, chatting, overall good time to come home and work on a project.

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t responsible.

I never realized how many muscles I have in my body until this weekend because every single one of them is now sore. I guess I should have expected as much because I have never played paintball before and I’m really not that athletic. But damn, was it ever worth it!

A large group of us from work went up to Sgt Splatters on Sunday for three hours of paintball fun. All of the girls from work had gone shopping beforehand and bought some army pants and camouflage shirts. Unfortunately we didn’t really take into consideration that the camouflage shirts we bought were for the arctic (they were black and white) but who cares, we looked cute. None of us wanted to ruin our good clothes, and damn are those army pants ever comfortable!

I have to admit that it was quite the adrenaline rush shooting people, running for cover and getting dirty. It reminded me of when we used to play cops and robbers as kids. I miss that kind of playfulness that I had when I was young. I hardly remember watching any TV. We would be outside from 10:00 am until 6:00 pm climbing trees, building forts, and playing on the train tracks. Looking back it was pretty dangerous but fun.

I guess paintball allows grown ups to recreate that kind of playfulness of childhood, but with an added layer of pain for more of an adrenaline rush. Would I play again? I probably would but only if it was a closed game with other beginners. I realized the horror of what it would be like to get slaughtered when you go up against advanced paintball players.

They way they have it set up is that you don’t play the full three hours straight. They would rotate our group with another group. You play one game, come off, then they play etc. So we only played about 6-7 games for the three hours. The other group was comprised of hard core paint ball experts. They all had their own clothes, masks, guns and insane look in their eyes. Our group was about 98% beginners who were inappropriately dressed with borrowed guns and not enough padding. The final game of the day was essentially a free for anyone at Sgt Splatters who wanted to join. I ran out of paintballs so I never went into that last game and I still thank whatever deity smiled upon me that hour.

Within 5 minutes after the start of the game our group was staggering out, limping and moaning in pain. Apparently there was some paintball fanatic in there who had two automatic guns and was just slowly walking around firing hundreds of paint pellets every minute. He would not hit you once but about 8-10 times until you were huddled in the sand weeping for your life. I think I would have kicked him in the balls if he kept doing that to me. Well, only after I was able to catch my breath from screaming, “I’m out!!! Don’t hit me! I’m OOOUUUUTTTT!!!”

Overall it was a lot of fun. I have some bruises but the worst welt and massive bruise is on my stomach from getting hit at point blank range. I had hoped I would be able to take some pictures, but after the first game my hands were covered in vegetable oil based paint and I didn’t want to touch my camera and ruin it. They took some group shoots of us though, and if you can actually see me in them then I’ll be sure to post them so you can see just how butch I can look in army fatigues and pigtails.

Edit:Added a photo. I’m the middle girl with the black and white camo top. I’m realizing that three shirts was probably not a good idea for the added bulk

I’m only an hour and 15 minutes away before I start my vacation. Gary is meeting me downtown and after we enjoy some sushi at Hosu Bistro we plan on heading home and just relaxing. I seriously can’t wait. I’ll be busy visiting with my Dad, and sisters, Christmas shopping and a million other things but this is going to be good!! I desperately needed this break.

Despite the obvious things that are bringing me down, I’m really sad that I can’t bring my computer with me when we spend 4 days with Gary’s parents in London. I have so many things I want to do on my site and just organizing my online life in general that those 4 days with no access is making me itch. I can’t wait to spend a full day at my home computer, music blaring, grubby clothes on, lots of coffee and a dog curled up in my lap to do some seriously online overhauling. How nerdy am I that that seems like SO MUCH FUN! I think the strangest/interesting part will be going through all of my past entries and categorizing/tagging them. It’s weird trying to understand the buckets that your life should fit into.

I really wish I could start this tomorrow but I promised my dad I would go down and see him. That is if he is still in the hospital. I have to wait to hear from my sister about that first. The only good thing about going to Hamilton on Saturday is that I can stop by this funky little store in Hamilton that Gary and I really like. Maybe I’ll even take some pictures while we wander the city…if I my stomach can take it. The city makes me feel nauseous just thinking about it.

Ok now I have less then an hour to go. It’s amazing how unfocused I am when a vacation is looming over my head. I just spent the last 20 minutes switching between work and this entry. Multitasking is sometimes my worst enemy.

This morning was not a good morning for me.

I woke up on time but when I went to put on the outfit I had ironed and laid out the night before, I decided that I didn’t want to wear it. I thought it looked a bit too dressed up for the office I’m working in today so I changed the top to a lightweight sweater but kept the black skirt. Unfortunately I couldn’t wear the heels I was going to wear because they didn’t go with the sweater. I switched to a pair of heeled boots, put my lunch in my purse grabbed my keys and off I went. I got to the street before my heel, the one that I just had fixed, broke. So I had to run/hop back upstairs and change my heeled boots to my clunkier ones.

I left the house thinking how lucky I was that I was close enough to home to change my shoes. Sure it’s a pain that my heel broke, but it could have been so much worst, I thought to myself.

I finally ended up at work, and while waiting for the elevator I stepped back to let someone pass and I was attacked by the bow of a Christmas wreath. Seriously, the thing just sort of clomped on to my hair and wouldn’t let go. I stood there and tried to extract my knotted tendrils from the deadly bow while people walked by and laughed! No one offered to hold my coffee or my bag, not a single person offered to help. I ended up sloshing coffee in my hair and down my back as I yanked the offending bow and attached wreath off of the wall. At this point the security guard comes around and tells me that I can’t take the wreath down.

Are you kidding me?!

All I could do was stare at him while I tried not to spill even more of my coffee as I juggled my cup, my purse and this wreath. What pissed me off even more was that I could not give him the “death glare” right to his face, instead I could only manage as far as his upper chest. Why? Because that wreath was so damn heavy that my head was tilted way off to left. Surrounded by laughter and a pissed off guard I finally managed to rip the bow out of my hair and handed the wreath back to the security guard. I pushed the elevator button (thank god one was already on the ground floor), walked into the mirrored elevator and got a wonderful 360 degree look at my now frizzed and teased hair.

And people wonder why I refuse to decorate my home for Christmas.

Things have been busy as always but I’m hoping that they calm down a bit before Christmas. Actually, who the hell am I kidding? That’s not going to happen. Once I finish one personal web project, another one starts. I work all day and then all night to the point where I’m utterly exhausted. My norm is going to bed at 1:30 and then I stagger into work the next to start the cycle again. But what really gets me is that even though I complain, even though I haven’t seen friends in months I absolutely love what I’m doing. I love that I get to create websites. I am in heaven when I’m problem solving, trying to figure out ways to give the client what they want. I love learning, I love..well I love my job.

It’s making me sad, however, that I haven’t seen the people I really care about. I haven’t seen Kirstin’s new baby, Autumn, I haven’t seen Celeste since her fabulous art show, I can’t even remember the last time I saw Kim, who sent me a letter that Gary accidentally took with him to work, my parents and sisters likely won’t see me until Christmas. I’m so lucky that I have friends that know I love them even though I’ve become a bit of a recluse. I’m feeling isolated but I actually feel good about it in some bizarre way. It’s hard to explain but there are times in my life when I need to be cut off. I need my time alone to rejuvenate. I can’t handle having plans every weekend. I’ve always been a bit of a loner and this is one of the major differences between Gary and I. He’s a social butterfly and while I love our friends there are times when I don’t want to be “on”. There are some Saturday’s or Sunday’s where I don’t want to get out of my grubby pants or put on make up or even take a shower. Gary is OK with that, and often he’ll go out with friends while I stay at home surrounded by my own filth.

It’s a good compromise.

I only hope that come the end of November the one project I’m working on will be completed, and I’ll even have Gary’s store up and running with his first T-shirt design which is going to be pretty damn sweet. My plan is to have a whole weekend where I don’t work and Gary doesn’t have plans so that we can just stay in bed and watch bad horror movies. We will order in, sneak out the back to take the dog for a walk and then crawl back into bed. The phone will be turned off and no one else will exist for those two days.

I didn’t bring my lunch to work today so I decided to get a sandwich and salad. Now I’m on a mission to eat healthier so I dutifully got my sandwich on some brown bread with no mayo and no cheese. So really it was just a tomato and spinach sandwich. I don’t know if you know this but I hate brown bread. Hate. It. I think it tastes like sandpaper in my mouth (more…)