Where Dustbunnies Go To Die

... but I had to call Eric as soon as I got home last night so that we could watch BSG, and this is the first chance I've had to post since. *grin*

I had an interesting (as in the Chinese curse) bus ride down to Toronto last night. I got on the bus and made my way to the back, and got out my newspaper. There were two guys who looked to be about 17 sitting in the back sharing a 40-ouncer of rye. Three people got on at the same stop as me - two guys sat directly across from me, and the girl sat down on my right. All three of them - who also looked to be about 17 - greeted the two who were already on the bus and then immediately pulled cans of Molson Canadian Cold Shots out of their coats and started chugging.

For the next hour, I was regaled by stories about the people whom these five wanted to beat up, the people they wanted to kill, the people they wanted to rob (or already had), a lengthy discussion about which liquor stores were easiest to rob, the home invasions they wanted to commit, and the bar brawls they were planning on starting last night.

Given that one of the two guys sharing the bottle of rye knocked it over and spilled about half of it, I suspect that they probably didn't manage to put their plans into action last night.

At one point, one of the rye drinkers said to the beer drinkers, "Is he with you?", meaning me. The latter were so drunk that they said yes (!!!) and then the first guy asked, "So why isn't he fuckin' conversating with us?" It was then that the person who answered realized what the question was and corrected his earlier response.

A little later, I looked up from my newspaper (having managed to read maybe two whole pages in 30 minutes) and looked out the window opposite, nowhere near making eye contact with these people. On top of that, I was wearing my sunglasses as it was clear last night and the sunset was rather bright. The girl said, "What the fuck are you lookin' at?" (I wanted to say, "Oh, I'm sorry, is that your window?" but who knows what would have happened...)

I couldn't even pull out my iPod and listen to music because they had spent part of their quality time together talking about how they had beaten up some kid for his iPod... and there was also mention of pulling knives on cops. The recent news story of the young man who was murdered for his iPod on an Ottawa bus was too fresh in my mind to allow myself to give them an opportunity to try to rob me... so I had to listen to all of this for an hour.

(Normally I think I'd have been able to handle them, considering how drunk they all were... barring the use of weapons. But when I'm sitting in a corner seat in the back of the bus, in the row with the tables, wearing my winter coat and boots, I probably would have been too slow to defend myself...)

Even as glad as I am every night to get to Finch station, I was doubly glad last night.

It's a good thing the VIVA buses have cameras at the back... all five of them should be easily identifiable if the cops need to find them.

So... my bowling scores from last night: 164, 147, 202. I was getting frustrated, putting the ball right into the pocket and leaving pins anyway. And then I developed a mental block about the 4-pin, missing it three times on the left while still managing to keep the ball on the lane. Let me tell you, that's not easy... and I only deliberately aimed to the left of the 4-pin once (when I had left the 4-7-10 and was actually trying to spare it). After the second game, I turned to Lindsey and said, "Lovely. I need 205 in the third game to make average for the night." She said, "You can do it. I've seen you." Well, 202 was close enough, I guess. *grin* Pity we lost two out of three games.

I came home and, as I said above, immediately called Eric. We caught each other up on our respective days and then watched BSG together...

( Wow. Don't click if you don't want spoilers. )

I had to meet gurudata at 1pm this afternoon to go to an Aurora Awards meeting at Liana K's house. I managed to get out the door by about 12:15, so I decided to go up to Future Shop first. I wanted to pick up the new Franz Ferdinand album that came out this week, and while I was in there, I thought I'd see if they got any new copies of Doctor Who S4. No joy. I asked a sales clerk, thinking that he would just look on the computer system to see if any other stores had copies, but when he found one that did, he insisted on calling them. I told him I wouldn't be able to get there until tomorrow at the earliest, and he said, "They don't usually hold things past the end of the day, but I can ask." I said, "That's okay - I have to go to a meeting. I can just pop by there tomorrow," but he just kept calling extension after extension at the other store (nobody was picking up). Finally I managed to get through to him that I didn't really have the time to wait for him to reach someone - at this point it was about 12:40, and I almost put the Franz Ferdinand album back because I didn't want to wait for the single open cashier to process the four customers who were already in line. I figured I'd get the album tomorrow too. But I couldn't remember where I'd gotten it from (they moved everything in that store around a few months ago, and I hadn't gotten it in the regular music section - it was in the New Releases), so I decided I'd just buy it and if I was five minutes late, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

I managed to get to York Mills by 12:57... but still haven't found the time to listen to the album.

After our meeting, gurudata asked if I would be interested in dinner as kanecool wasn't going to be home tonight and so he was at a loose end. So we went to a Pickle Barrel somewhere in the Leslie/Steeles area (I think), where I had butternut squash soup and hoisin chicken stir-fry. It was quite good, though there was one vegetable in the stir-fry that I said to gurudata tasted a little like bleach. I never was able to identify what it was (the only other piece was in the very last mouthful).

Not that I actually know what bleach tastes like...

So I got home, dealt with some emails I had to send, and called Eric around 9. We wrapped up our call around 2 - he has to work a night shift tomorrow, and he's working Monday and Tuesday as well, so we won't see each other until Tuesday night at the earliest (depending on how tired he is after work).

After our call, I continued dealing with emails - I've got my Inbox down to 170 messages now. considering that it was at 180 this afternoon, that doesn't sound very good - but there were about 10 more that came in while I was talking to Eric. I still have some Anticipation emails to deal with regarding the Masquerade and Hugo Awards (my department heads are probably wondering why I haven't answered too many of their emails over the past week), and I have to follow up on an email exchange I had with someone a couple of weeks ago (this time the delay is on his end), and I have some more Polaris stuff to deal with...

I had to email Julie Czerneda about stuff for both cons, and I jokingly said, "Why do I do this to myself?" Her response: "Because you're indispensible and we love you?"

I actually take exception to the use of "indispensible" (I may have several fairly important responsibilities at the moment, but nobody is "indispensible"), but I can live with the second part of her response. *grin*

Oh, and work? I'll have to post about that tomorrow... since I have to be up in about eight hours, and I'm usually quite capable of sleeping for nine or ten hours on weekends.

Things that made me happy today:

1. Our office email was back up today, so I found two emails today from our insurance company client which she actually sent yesterday. (When I called her, though, she said she'd been too busy to notice that I hadn't responded.) I managed to fix both issues she reported in fairly short order, as well as adding a new "forgot password?" function to the login page. Considering that this entailed using ASP.NET 2.0 functionality which I'd never used before (the education employment website used 1.0), I was pleased that it was so easy.


2. More progress on the project management tool - I got the function that allows a user to create an instance of a workflow template working, including copying file attachments from the template to the new instance.


3. My boss' partner was meeting with clients today, and they brought all kinds of food with them, so I didn't have to pay for lunch. *grin*


4. I spent the last four hours online with Eric, watching and talking about two BSG episodes. (Come on, you knew that would be in there. ;))


5. Eric got official notification today that he got the job with Georgia State University that he'd interviewed for after being laid off from his previous job a few months ago, and he'll be starting January 4. He really wanted this job badly, so I'm really happy for him! :)

Off to bed now... *yawn*