Foosball and Beyond

This is a story that is well over two years in the making. You may recall my posts about Foosball. If not, that’s okay. The gist of it is that my place of work has a foosball table and there have been a number of foosball related activities over the years (tournaments, olympics, fundraising etc). As a result, a couple years ago, I started learning how to play foosball with never having stepped foot in front of a table before.

Gorm is ridiculously good at foosball; he took me under his wing, showed me the ropes and kicked my ass in the process.

As my skill increased, so did my expectations of the game. As I began to be able to coordinate my men and learned to defend my net, I started expecting better results from myself than I had reason to expect.

This led to, what has been described as, devastating lows of foosball. Which basically means that when I lost, I made a scene.

Whenever I threw my typical temper tantrum, the same person would happen to be in the lunch room, I’ll call him The Ninja because he always seemed to appear out of nowhere. This is a person with whom I never really spoke. Nods of acknowledgment and a "Good Morning" here and there, but that's about it.

It was unfortunate, to say the least, that this is the person who had to witness me at my all-time foosball low. Every. Single. Day.

The only good thing out of that situation was the fact that The Ninja made reference to me in his farewell email when he left the company. A special feat considering we had exchanged less than a dozen words in the 8 years of “working together”.

Fast forward a few months. I made supervisor at work and, as a result, ended up sharing an office with the manager.

Fast forward a year. The company that The Ninja went to, basically went belly up and he was laid off. It just so happens that he’s skilled in mysterious ways. I guess you would expect nothing less from a ninja. It also just so happens that we still needed his expertise and managed to bring him back on. He is now working closely in my department and I have conversations with him daily.

Fast forward another 6 months. We finally filled the second supervisor position and in order for the new supervisor and I to be in close proximity, the manager kicked me out of the office and placed us in an office with The Ninja.

Not only is The Ninja sneaky, but he’s also extremely observant and has an excellent memory. He also is willing to share the information that he compiles. He’s made a point at telling me about my foibles.

For one, when I talk to him and/or my staff, he gets the distinct impression that he’s talking to a school teacher. An elementary school teacher. Not so much the words coming out of my mouth as it is my demeanor. I’m not sure what’s worse.

He also pointed out that I tend to mimic people. Not in a bad I’m-going-to-make-fun-of-you kind of way, but if someone says “Hi Heather!” all sunshine-y, I’ll say something back in the same way. If someone grunts my name, I do the same. I thought that I was mostly aware of this (it’s can be a bit of a fun little game for me), but today when the person I was talking with left the office, The Ninja turned to me and asked if I’d caught myself doing it.

I’m likely to become very self conscious of my actions, despite the fact that he claims they aren’t bad things. Mere observations. Sure…

Happy (actual) 200th Blog Post!!

Holy Milestone, Batman!!

This marks my 200th blog post. I know.

Believe you me, I never expected to get here. Honestly, I probably would have expected to get to 200 words and call it quits. I’m sure you find it hard to believe, since I’m normally so long winded, but it’s true.

My thought would be that I would have a really great post for such an event. But that’s just not the case. This will be a mish-mash of random crap. You’re welcome.

I recently purchased an electronic drum kit from my friend Dave, a.k.a. the worst friend ever. Shortly after, I had my friend, Brian, over and he spied it with his little eye sitting unassembled in the corner. He was horrified that such a thing could happen and demanded (read: hinted repeatedly) that it should be set up.

I allowed him the pleasure. Partially because he really wanted to, but also because I had no idea how to do it myself. Truth be told, I was planning on calling him or Dave to help with the process when I got the inkling to do so.

Now I just got to learn how to use all four limbs independently. Not going to be easy. But it will make music day much more interesting!! You know, when someone that can play drums comes over.

Throughout Brian’s visit, and his follow up visit to make sure I could use my set up properly, he brought a little friend of his. His name is Hank. And he’s a dog. During this visit, Brian also taught me something:

Yeah, that’s right. I gif now. When I was trying to determine if my EZ-post-it software could upload gifs to my blog, I discovered that it was going to be my 200th post. I promptly unpublished it and decided to make it the most epic, memorable post of all time.

And then I sorely disappointed my readers. I’m sorry.

In an attempt to make it up to you, and also practice my new found gif skills, I made something for you that shows exactly what I was thinking when I posted my “Hey Hank” trial.

And that monstrosity is my 200th post.

It’s bound to get better from here.

Thanks so much for your support, or at least for keeping your judgment to your inside voice.

Curry in a hurry

I really enjoy cooking, but I’ve fallen out of the habit as of late. As a result, I’ve been sustaining myself on prepared foods as well as eating out and taking in. None of which are very good for my nutritional needs, pocket book or waist line.

I’ve decided I need to start getting back into it. The other day, I left work early enough that stores were open (what a concept!). I was able to purchase items for the meal I was planning on making. Partially because I didn’t have the forethought to defrost some meat, but also because I wanted an ingredient I don’t normally purchase.

I was feeling pretty good about myself as I was driving home and started envisioning myself in the kitchen for the first time in weeks. Then it hit me.

I don’t know how I’d forgotten. I also don’t know how I’ve gone grocery shopping about a dozen times since I ran out and never once purchased it.

I didn’t want to break stride, so I convinced myself that I didn’t need pepper in my life.

I was planning on making curry. Normally when I make curry, I make, what I like to call, the white person version of curry (surprise, surprise). Basically a curry-flavoured stew. All the meat and veg are tossed in a pot, sauce is made, simmered down and once the texture of everything is converted to mush, it’s served over rice.

In my experience, a brown person would never, ever, do this. They have a different curry for every dish. From goat to chicken, from chick peas to potatoes; every curry has a different blend of spices. I decided that I was going to be less white when I made curry that night. I was going to make beef vindaloo and aloo gobi (potato cauliflower). They were going to be separate, they were going to have different flavours and they were going to be delicious, dammit.

I didn’t anticipate the troubles I would have from being so out of practice.

I started the aloo gobi because I knew the potatoes would take awhile to cook. Once that was going, I started the beef vindaloo. But I was a bit short on time, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to let the curry reduce as much as normal. I decided to coat the beef in flour in order to thicken the sauce without having to reduce it. Good idea in theory, but in practice…

I may or may not have gone overboard.

I also didn’t take into consideration the sheer water content of cauliflower.

An hour after I started, I jacked up the temperature on the aloo gobi to try and evaporate off some of the excess water.

But it was taking too long. I already added broth to my vindaloo to try and thin it out and despite my best efforts my aloo gobi was soup. I was hungry and my rice was getting cold.

So I took the dishes that I painstakingly kept separate and mixed them together. Blending meat and veg together. Blending mango/madras curry with vindaloo.

The end product had the most perfect consistency. It was also delicious. Even if those of Indian descent would probably cringe.

Famn Damily

I love my mom. But she’s driving me crazy right now. For the most part, we have a very open relationship; she’s someone that I share the vast majority of my life with and she does the same. We talk once a week, for a couple hours each time, and discuss everything that has happened since the last time we talked.

And, for the most part, I love that. But every so often, she drives me absolutely bonkers and I want to start screening my calls Sunday morning. This has been happening consistently for the past couple of months.

Mom was going through a rough time with her business and she was quite stressed out about it. Naturally, she wanted to talk about it and vent. But I swear we had the exact same conversation, every week, for three months.

I didn’t mind that I felt as if we were just rehashing the same topic over and over; she needed to talk about it and I know I’ve kept her on the line for far too long because I was upset about something.

But after a few weeks, the topic of conversation no longer shifted anywhere else. We stopped talking about other aspects of her life and, short of “And how has your week been?”, the topic never seemed to shift to me. Sometimes the conversation would end immediately after her asking that question.

I found it a bit odd, but let it be, because, clearly, she needed to talk more than I did.

But things have changed for awhile for me. It was crazy busy at work and as a result I had been operating at an elevated stress level for quite some time. It started to wear on me.

Nothing bad – it’s not like I’ve stopped eating or sleeping or anything, I just felt a bit worn out and the time came where I need to vent to someone about it.

A couple weeks ago, my mom, after discussing her topic de jour, asked me how my week at work was. I said it had been crazy. She asked why. I took a deep, sighing breath and said “It’s just crazy. Like absolutely insane.” I took another deep, sighing breath.

I guess she thought I was done. She continued telling me about her week at work; how many hours she worked (not many), how many customers she had (even less) and when she was done:

Are you fucking kidding me?? I guess she thought I was done.

A couple weeks ago, she started asking me if I'd started on my school project. I told her I hadn’t had any time. She started questioning me on it, with judgment creeping into her voice. I told her it has been crazy busy at work and I just didn’t have time. She said “Really?!?!” as if it’s the first she’s heard about it.

I told her that I had been working 10-12 hour a day, going in for a “half day” (a mere 6 hours) on the weekend. That I’d been doing that for the past three weeks. That I barely eat dinner anymore because I don’t get home until 9pm and then I have to start thinking about going to bed so I can do it all over again. That I hoped it would slow down soon, because I don’t know how much more I can take. 

The good news is that my mom doesn’t read my blog. The really good news is the chaos at work has reduced itself to a much more manageable level and I feel a lot more balanced. I might even have time to start working on my project!

Inadvertently Racist - part 2

You might recall I have a tendency to be inadvertently racist. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go here.

Anyway, I’ve had a couple more of these moments lately and I thought I’d share them with you.

A few months ago, I was out with some friends and we met a couple Italian lads. As we struck up conversation, the topic of “what are you and where are you from” came up. Going around the table, everyone had their own little story, consisting of growing up in another province or country that was filled with culture and all the things that I lack in my upbringing.

Everyone laughed more than they should have, considering most of them didn’t even know my last name.

Most recently, I met a friend of a friend. Somehow, his last name came up. He told me what it was (I couldn’t even attempt to spell it out or repeat it) and then said “My last name is like 20 letters long and most people can’t pronounce it because it’s Finnish”. I said “My last name is five letters long and everyone can pronounce it.  It’s White”.

He gave me a strange look and asked, incredulously, becoming obviously offended, if I realized that Finnish people (himself included) are also white. I was confused; I had no idea why he was so upset. I started saying “Of course I know that…” but didn’t even finish my sentence before he cut me off, burst out laughing and said “OH!!! White is your last name!!”. I laughed and said yes.

Having a rough go

I’m having a bit of a rough go right now. First off, it’s been super, super busy at work and it’s consuming my life way more than it normally does. It’s basically like the perfect storm as far as reasons why work gets busy. They’re all happening at once, causing an utter shit-show.

Top it off with the fact that I’ve come down with this brutal cold. It’s the kind of cold where you feel so crappy that you can’t sleep, even though what you need most in the world is a good night’s sleep.

Friday was the first day of that; I had a really sore throat and I couldn’t sleep. And when I finally managed to fall asleep I woke up within a couple hours and had problems falling back asleep.

Saturday I woke up for work (because of the chaos that is happening) and my sore throat had morphed into the worst throat pain ever. Okay, not the worst… Strep is worse. I started sucking on cepacols, which are essentially lozenges that numb your throat. Within a couple hours of being at work, I had already had a couple; by the end of my 6 hour shift, I’d had a few more. I stopped at a grocery store on my way to my dad’s to buy more because I was running low. Naturally, I had another.

Then my stomach started feeling bad. At first I assumed it was because I consumed a bunch of lozenges and not much else. But when I started trying to put other things in my body (water, tea, food), my stomach was not happy.

Immediately after eating dinner (and part of the way through it) I knew it was going to get way worse before it got any better. I thanked my folks for dinner and said I had to go, because of my cold, of course. I spent the 40 minute drive home focusing all my energy into paying attention to the road and not the fact that I was going to throw up and/or shit myself.

I made it home without incident, but spent the remainder of the night willing myself not to get sick. I was feeling pretty shitty about the whole situation, but I felt even worse when I read the package and the dosage was clearly outlined as “one drop every two hours”. I’d had 5 or 6 in just as many hours.

No wonder I wrecked my stomach. The next day, after too few hours of sleep, I woke up sick from the cold. My body was aching, my head was pounding; I felt like I’d been hit by a train. I drank fluids and stayed away from cough drops. I felt like I was on the mend.

Monday, I called into work sick because it turned out I wasn’t on the mend. But I had a massage therapy appointment booked that day, so I went to that. I’ve regretted it ever since. Let’s just say getting a deep tissue massage on all your injured parts isn’t a good idea when you’re having a hard time moving around because of body pain from illness. I feel like my back is bruised to the bone.

But… there’s always a silver-lining, right? So. I’ve been at home, on the couch, in bed for days. I’ve watched movies, read blogs/books, watched YouTube, and played video games. I was still bored. So I did what any “normal” person would do. I re-activated my POF account. And started talking to people.

Just a matter of time now before you get more crazy dating stories. You’re welcome.

And as if that’s not enough, I think the universe just gave me a sign that said “You have no idea just how bad it’s going to get”…  my (ex??) stalker just texted me. Seriously. It’s been a year and a half. I guess he missed Valentine’s Day, so he’s just checking in to see how I’m doing. FML.

Blooper Reel

This just goes to show that perfection takes practice. And by “perfection” I mean better than the first go round. And by “practice” I mean a lot of unwarranted laughing.

Good job, Gorm at assembling the (too many) attempts into a very humourous outtake video.

You’ve seen how it ended… here’s how it started.