Pre-Christmas gift

Mustang Zip Zap
Originally uploaded by iTripped.

On my way home for Christmas, I dropped by my buddy Kevin's house. His parents had already arrived for a holiday visit, and we were to exchange gifts. Pictured here is the gift he had for me - a micro RC toy car.

I'm always a sucker for kid's toys and so is Kevin - so it was a great gift. He later admitted that he got one for himself too, so that we can have races. I took it with me and assembled it here while my wife was otherwise occupied. I expected that the cats would really enjoy it - what I did NOT expect was for Louise to enjoy it so much. Heck, I have to restrain her if the car is to have a fighting chance.

Of course, if she gets the chance, Louise picks the car up in her mouth, and then carries it off to her bed for a proper chewing. While the cats are certainly interested, it's clearly dangerous to get too close when the dog is present. I figured I would take a picture BEFORE visible damage appears. It's only a matter of time.

Chance encounters

So this morning on my morning commute, I recognized one of the other Skytrain passengers as a guy I used to work with years ago at WebCT. We recognized each other instantly and spent the rest of our commute getting caught up. Just one of those little surprises that make the start of a day interesting. As it turns out, both of us have started new jobs, and are waist deep in the kind of work we want to be doing.

Then, on my way home, I run into ANOTHER person I used to work with at WebCT, and this one just happened to have heard from the first guy later that same day. Since he was at the mall to do some Christmas shopping, I was only too happy to help him procrastinate by taking time out to eat dinner. He started his new job a full week before I did.

All in all, it has been a pretty good day. I have been looking forward to getting in touch with people now that I'm back in town, so running into two of them unexpectedly was almost like an early Christmas present.

The building next door

The building next to our office is getting torn down. It's fun to watch, because they are paid to break stuff and make a mess. I really missed my calling, I think.

To be honest, I think I would want to be one of those crane operators. Hundreds of feet in the air, lifting and dropping heavy stuff. I'd at least like to try it out for a day.

I expect this is just one of many buildings that will be cleared off to make ready for nice shiny new buildings near to the Olympic Village site. Our neighborhood is due for a transformation, I guess. One thing that I will miss though is the graffiti. The second picture shows how busy the graffiti artists were - they went the entire length of the inside of this building. It went unnoticed until the construction crew took out the back wall.

Sometimes we get it right

Be patient with this link - it made it onto the digg front page and is suffering a bit. But it's calming down a bit now. I happened to get in and read this lady's article and agree with her. She basically rants for a while about how the phrase 'the customer is always right' is destroying common decency in north america these days. It's well written, kind of abusive (she's ranting, remember?) and articulates a valid point, at least in my mind.

Blues night

Last night, AMC was playing The Blues Brothers 2000. I just love that old movie. So much so, that I was having trouble staying focused on the chat conversation I had going on with my wife. She could tell and was laughing at me a bit whenever I lost place.

The hard part came when it was time to go to bed. Right after the movie finished, AMC decided to follow it up with the original The Blues Brothers movie. I watched about the first half hour or so, to see just how young Dan Ackroyd looked, etc.

Other than that, just working, commuting and sleeping. Oh yeah - and praying to God for some help selling our condo quickly.

Dreaming about being late for work

This morning I slept through my alarm. Not by a lot, but enough to put me a little behind schedule. The odd thing was that during that time, I was dreaming that I was late for work, and that I was rushing to finish whatever I was doing (there were a variety of activities) so that I might eventually get to the office.

But every activity I was doing seemed to take twice as long as usual to complete.

Needless to say, the theme of the dream remained constant until I eventually did wake up. And man, did I ever rush around at that point. So much so that I wasn't really late for work. On a side note, while at work I tend to use iTunes to listen to music. There are a bunch of others here who have shared their playlists, so I have taken to listening to what my co-workers have.

It has been an eye-opening experience, to say the least.

At the moment, I'm listening to Rick James, of all people. I can't help but think of Dave Chappelle as I listen. Well, specifically Charlie Murphy and his Rick James stories. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I suggest you rent Season Two of The Chappelle Show - it's on DVD. It will all make sense then.

UPDATE: BeeGees?? WTF? I can't believe I work with someone who still listens to disco. [skipping to next track]