Sphere of Archives

April 2, 2003

Aggravation Is My Middle Name

Everyone has this kind of day. It's the day one decides, after hours or days or weeks of planning, to do the job. The plans have been considered and re-considered. The materials are ready, and the time has been set aside. And the hardest part -- to start -- after which there can be no doubt and no going back, has just happened. That when things fall apart.

Such was the day for me when I began painting my basement. The tape I had put on the baseboard the day before was peeling off. The plastic protecting the carpet wouldn't stay put. I caught my finger in the step ladder hinge while carrying it around the room. I dropped the paint brush in the paint tray. I caught my finger in the step ladder again. I dropped the fully-loaded paint brush again. On and on like that, until I ran out of paint with only half the wall done.

The moral of the story is: don't, but if you do, then have some bandages and aspirin nearby.

April 4, 2003

A Fit of Existentialism

This is probably the first time ever that I've mentioned a dream I've had. I think I'm writing about it now because, firstly, it was so weird, and secondly, I have to fill up the space here or people start spamming me. And except for this episode, the rest of the day was a typical concatenation of petty troubles.

It was one of those dreams where the dream seems as substantial as reality. It has colours and textures, sounds in the foreground and background, hard and yielding surfaces. I was lucid enough to tell myself to wake up, but the problem was that I couldn't. It crossed my mind that I was already awake, and that what I really wanted to do was return to sleep. And when I got back to "sleep", I dreamt of myself lying in bed in my house. It was unsettling. More so because the dream world was equally as banal as the waking one.

April 6, 2003

Portraits of Barrhaven

Here's a little scene. I walked to Tim Horton's this brilliant sunny morning. Not the one on the next block from my house, but the one in the big box mall, about 30 minutes away. I went by my friend Steve's house. The house is a clone of its neighbours, on a street like the other streets, which is the distinguishing feature of the new Barrhaven. Steve was struggling to shovel his driveway of the melting snow while one of his pals from work watched from the shady edge of the open garage. I greeted them by saying, "I'm also fascinated by work." We spent some time in a monotone conversation, joined by another friend, while Steve's girlfriend occasionally popped her head through the side door to find out why the noise of shovelling had stopped. "I really want to take my bike out today," Steve said. He seemed agitated. I ended up finishing the drive while the others took turns revving the motorcycle engine. This summer will be the one where we spend more time in the garage to barbecue or play poker or just sit and drink beer. The intention was stated plainly, and without irony. It isn't as if this habit is enforced by the community association, either. It just happens that many people in the area make that decision freely, to recreate in the garage. I left them to sit in the coffee shop, after walking by my friend Ken's nearly finished house down the road. It's almost exactly the same as Steve's house, except it's got sand-coloured siding.

April 16, 2003

52-Week Low

This year, melancholy surrounds me on my birthday. It began on Sunday, I guess, and now it seems to have peaked last night as a churning feeling in my stomach.

That night, Ken comes by around nine. He wants me to see his new house. He signed the papers on Monday, but workmen are still making finishing touches to the plumbing. We go for coffee and walk through the empty rooms as he talks about the colour scheme and checks that each wall has the correct number of outlets. We end up standing silently in his kitchen. Then we move to the garage, where he plans to set up his tools. He lets me in on his plan to explain the illicit fish tank to his wife. It's a little complicated, involving a loose interpretation of an alleged verbal agreement that didn't take place until after he bought the tank anyway. So as long as his wife doesn't check for paperwork and receipts, he's probably in the clear. Ken's always good for a laugh. We go back to my place where he can inventory his boxes filling up my garage.

The caffeine keeps me up most of the night, which left plenty of time to reflect on my life so far. I stare at the ceiling in the dark while the rain patters loudly on the roof, and I consider how different things might have turned out, why I'm solitary. And there's always room for improvement. It's two a.m. My eyes are dry, and I have a headache. I start imagining the worst endings, frightening myself. On the good side, it never gets as bad as when I bought the time share; the bar is fairly high in that respect. And I've read stories about people who have had it much worse, but they managed to get through triumphantly. And I remember the part of "Married by America" that I watched. Hey, now I'm looking relatively normal. Maybe I need to see a Freudian therapist. Gather up the covers. Maybe I should start drinking a beer in a bar after work. Take deep breaths.

At work today, my eyes are still hurting. I get another coffee from the kiosk. The first thing I do is sign up for a drawing course. Drawing will be fun. It takes me a lot of time to draw anything but stick figures and boxes and lines. I had wanted to take ballroom dancing originally, but there were only eight spots, and all of them were taken in the last week. I keep my nose in my work, bury myself in a Perl program. I don't give myself much time for entertainment. I chat a bit with friends and family, and suddenly another day is passed, and everything is the same.

April 18, 2003

The Idle Machine is Most Useful

I offered to help my friends paint their new house before they move in next week. My rule was that I would only do solid colours, nothing fancy like the fresco they were putting in most rooms, so they gave me the hall, which includes a cavernous spiral staircase that normally would require scaffolding, but for which I only have a long ladder. It was unbelievable. Over the next six hours, I painted and painted until I finished most of the hall using only the first of two gallons. I was quietly proud of my work. Some special precautions had to be taken so that I could use an extended roller on a small part near the ceiling that I couldn't reach with the ladder.

Meanwhile, my friend was doing the master bedroom. As he worked, he sang an ancient painting shanty:

I'm having the time of my life
And I never felt this way before

To make it obvious, in the same time it took me to set up the ladder in various configurations around that spiral staircase, he had done a plain rectangular room with a couple of windows and doors in it. Mind you, it was fresco work, which sounds really difficult from his talk, although at times, he also defined "fresco" as a technical term for a bad paint job.

April 20, 2003

The Easter Bunny Egged My House

I didn't do much this weekend. I spent it painting my friend's house. This morning we did his basement floor, and coloured it slate gray. I also bought manure for my garden. We went to a luncheon for a friend who was having her birthday today. It was at Tucker's, an expensive buffet restaurant downtown. All of us live in Barrhaven, so it was a bit of a drive. I can only think she chose that place to accomodate some of her co-worker friends, who, it turns out, cancelled at the last minute. Good food, in any case. When I returned home, I spread manure and peat moss everywhere. I'm screwing up this garden, I know it.

What Easter message can we derive from these events? First, RONA is always open. Second, don't wear good clothes when visiting your friends, because they'll make you help around the house. Third, don't bring two kids hopped up on chocolate to a crowded downtown restaurant. And finally, When up to your elbows in sheep manure, avoid the temptation to scratch your nose.

April 25, 2003

It's Better to Be Talked About

At noon, while walking through one of the labs to a job, one of the testers said hello, then she asked if I was still going to the gym. I said no, and she said, "I know because you don't have...", and then she made block-like handsigns over her chest to represent pectorals. Somewhere, Hanz and Franz are laughing.

May 17, 2003

It's Another Board Game That Never Ends

Today was supposed to be a busy day, involving my dashing around to various places to do various things. I was going to be active. I was going to meet people. And it sort of still happened, just in a more pedestrian way.

I went to get my car's rear brakes fixed. I should have gotten them fixed last year, when the mechanic told me they were rusted and should be replaced that summer. I think my safe winter driving record proved I could get by a little longer. So I went in, and figured it would be a little job that would take an hour or two and then I could carry on with the rest of my day. Instead, I found out that not only were the brakes rusted solid, but the suspension and shock absorbers were cracked and leaking. Also, the "crunk crunk" sound that came from the passenger side wheel whenever I went over a bump, but that I didn't have checked for a year because I didn't think it was serious turned out to be a missing bolt that held the front wheel kit to the chassis. Oops. The bill shot up to $1700, and the repairs would take most of the day.

I went to Local Heroes across the street to have breakfast. I called my friend Ken, and asked him if he could pick me up at ten. He said that would be perfect because that he had to do some chores at 10:30 anyway. Yes, he'd be there at ten. Okay, who in the audience thinks Ken will show up on time? Anyone? He was in the army, supposedly known for punctuality? No? Yes, he's always late. After I hung up, I realized I should have said :45, so that his lateness wouldn't be so apparent. He finally showed up a little after 10:30, which meant he was already behind on his other chores.

Having no car meant I couldn't go to the sale of used Senator's gear at the Corel Centre in Kanata, and I couldn't go downtown to play Ultimate Frisbee, not unless I wanted to spend a lot of time on the bus there and back. Instead, I painted the trim on my windows and caulked the cracks. By then it was time to go to the Barley Mow for a beer and to watch the game. On a lark, I stopped by the house of my friend Steve and his fiancee, and asked if they wanted to join me. Yes, they said, but the fiancee had to have a shower and change her clothes first. Ninety minutes later, she finally came downstairs. The first two periods were already over. The restaurant was almost empty, which surprised me. I guess everyone had gone to their camps or were working on their yards.

The game itself was terrible for Ottawa fans. One set of scattered groans after another rippled through the restaurant. The torture ended at six. I remembered too late that I had promised to go to Ken's house for supper. I had already stuffed myself with chicken wings and garlic bread, but I sped over there anyway. That was a bad move, I think. This was the day of their house warming party, and guess tempers were flaring. Ken went to one part of the house, his wife went to another, and the kids went to their room, leaving me to my own devices, namely pacing and talking to myself for two hours. "So Eric, how are you? Oh, I'm pretty good today. And you? I'm fine. Got my car fixed. Oh really? Tell me more. Well, it's quite a story. Oh, would you like a beer? No thank you, I'm stuffed. You don't have to drink it, you know, just hold it out to keep your balance. Oh, good idea, thanks. Now let me tell you about my Midas adventure..." Eventually, the older daughter came downstairs because she was bored, and I ended up racing against her in her little go-cart around the basement. I think that, like the family's two cats, she is starved for attention from some adult figure, because when I arrive there she usually runs over immediately and starts talking really fast about all of the games she wants to play.

Finally, around 8:30 the other party guests started to arrive. Ken's plan was for everyone to watch television quietly. He'd already picked out a couple of movies. There was a general revolt and a demand for human interaction. We ended up playing Taboo, which is just like Password except certain words can't be used for clues. There's something about party games that brings out the vicious animal in people. At one point I stood up and urged everyone to realize that it's just a game, and that we shouldn't be getting into fights over semantics, and maybe some people need a fresh bottle of beer. The game went on for hours and hours, finally shutting down just before two in the morning.

And now, the epilogue. This may sound like psycho-babble. For the last two months or so, I've been anxious and tense. Maybe it's a mid-life crisis, maybe not. The day before I think I finally managed to get around it and figure out why things just were not turning out for me like they do on television or in the movies. I guess some influential people keep telling me to be more, to do more, and I'm just too eager to please. They ask why sit here in the comfort of my own home by myself when I ought to be out there meeting people, entertaining my future wife, scaling a mountain by my finger tips, advising powerful businessmen, running to stop the bank robbers, going to luxurious dinner parties, getting involved in people's lives and solving their personal problems, being talked about, having the time of my life, helping other people have the times of their lives, etc, etc. "Why aren't you doing these things now?" they ask? "You should be doing these things now!"

All of these expectations that were being forced on me were starting to make me crazy, because when I look around at my friends and other people, they don't appear to be under any pressure to be anything other than who they are. In fact, it seems the bar is set pretty low for them, so why does it look like it's set high for me? Why should I be rushed just to please some others? I'm going to try to relax and "do my thing" and hope for the best. It's worked pretty well so far.

May 18, 2003

The Birds

There seem to be a lot of wildlife hanging around my yard. Mostly birds -- some doves or pigeons, a couple of robins, finches. There's also a chipmunk running around crazy like. It never goes on the grass, but bounds around the flower beds and under the patio. All of my neighbours are gone for the weekend, so its very quiet. I spent an hour drawing some of the tulips. I hope to have a big page of images taken from different angles, because that's what an artist would do, and I'm an ahhhh-tist.

May 19, 2003

Hang on Sens! The Superfans are on the way!

I was lucky enough to score a ticket to Game 5, Ottawa's first of three "do or die" games against New Jersey. A friend and I got to the arena about quarter to six, and the place was already packed. I managed to win a CD of "Dock Rock 2" at a charity water dunk. With the addition of such 80s hits as "Smokin' in the Boys Room," my music collection is now that much cooler. Ottawa looked really good in the first period, although they only got two shots on goal. During the intermission, I noticed it was really warm, and I started to feel a little ill and tense. Sometime during the second period that feeling went away as I joined in booing the Devils/referrees and cheered for the Sens. People were throwing towels and other stuff at the refs, and when they came on for the third period, the refs were booed again. The third period was most excellent, and the cheering was deafening. According to my friend, I started giggling, but I don't recall that. I must have been transported to the Superfan Zone.

May 17, 2003

It's Another Board Game That Never Ends

May 18, 2003

The Birds

May 19, 2003

Hang on Sens! The Superfans are on the way!

May 22, 2003

The Object of the Game

The Broadway Bar & Grill slo-pitch team won its fourth game in row on Friday night. It's a non-competitive league, but the veterans are nevertheless pleased. After the game, we went to the bar for drinks and appetizers. Several other teams were already there from earlier games. As the hours passed, most of our team left for home, leaving me sitting with the team captain, who also is the league organizer. He's a big man, but seems to get drunk easily, and as his eyes drooped and his speech slurred, he searched for some ordinary and general interest topic of conversation that would fill the silence. "So, Eric," he asked, "are you looking for a girlfriend? Because I could hook you up." He proceeded to point out single women in the bar, told me their ages, and how many children they have. He didn't mention price -- no doubt $100 for one, $150 for two. Then he outlined his notions of turning the league into a meet-market, where he would play matchmaker for the unattached people in Barrhaven by assigning them to certain teams, switching the rosters around until everyone had met their respective soulmates.

Today I helped my friend Ken around his house. There were just simple jobs that would take most people an hour or two, but his tendency is to stretch these out over several weekends. I saw my role as task master, keeping him focused with reminders and deadlines. And it wasn't much of a coincidence that he also wanted to talk about my personal life, specifically what exactly I wanted in a girlfriend. Did I, for instance, have any racial preferences? What about body type? Do I prefer physical beauty over intellectualism? Ken had to know, not because he had someone in mind, but just because it was an ordinary and general topic of conversation.

Sure, I was offended. You'd think I have a flashing "single loser" sign tacked somewhere on my body, evoking pity from passersby who can't help but toss me advice as if they were throwing money into a sidewalk hobo's upturned hat. I held my tongue, though, because I know these people aren't interested in me as an individual, but as an unsettling anomaly in the social fabric that needs to be addressed. I recently finished People Smarts, a managerial book that describes personality types in terms of the Myers-Briggs personality grid, with the aim of helping the reader understand and manipulate the people around him. Ken and the slo-pitch league organizer are good examples of the "Relater" type -- procedure-oriented, risk-averse, conformist, slow-talking, not interested in divergent views. So, yeah, we get along great. If I remember to just ask them for details about the task, they can entertain themselves for a long time, like hitting the auto-pilot button on a plane. At that point, I can leave the room and go about my business, and they don't have any hard feelings about it.