Knitting

Today I bought myself a pair of Addi Turbos! They are the nicest knitting needles I've ever used. They are so smooth and easy to knit with; it's a real joy.

You can also see the progress I've made on my practice Tomten jacket. I'm about a quarter to a third of the way to the start of the arm pit region. I think that the jacket will fit a 24" waist when it's finished. I'm really not sure what I'll do with it when it's finished. If you know anyone with a child that size let me know and you are welcome to it. Otherwise I guess I'll have save it for my own baby or donate it to somewhere?

So far I'm really enjoying it. It feels good to be knitting again and somehow having my own pair of awesome needles makes it that much better. I love my Addi's!

Gears in motion

I've finally applied at some places in Vancouver. Today I went over my short list of places to try to get a job at. While I only emailed only 8 places they are some of the biggest studios and most of them were looking for positions. Stephane was nice enough to forward my resume to his boss so hopefully that name drop helps my chances along. He also said that he had a list of places around town that he has compiled along with the names of their HR people. It pays to have contacts.

Here's the list of where I have applied at so far:
Backbone
Blue Castle Games
Electronic Arts
Hothead Games
Rockstar
Next Level Games
Propaganda Games
Radical Entertainment

Hopefully I'll hear back from some of the people on this list in the next 2 weeks. I had hoped to maybe have a couple of offers, but realistically I just need one and that's as much as I should hope for. I don't have a contingency in place if I don't hear back from any of them. If that happens I really don't know what I'll do.

Caught a spider

Yesterday well I was picking up some clothes from my laundry pile a huge spider suddenly leaped off of the garment I was holding and on to my bed. I loathe spiders so naturally I was startled.

This was a huge spider I should add. I took a picture with the spider next to a pen on the bed to give a sense of scale. It was so big that I could clearly see it's giant mandibles.

So now that this spider had moved in I needed to either move out or evict it. I went to the kitchen and grabbed a tupperware container. I moved quickly in case the spider ran off well I was gone, because there would be no way I could stay in the room with it on the loose.

I took the tupperware dish and I moved it to try and capture the spider but it suddenly bolted from the bed and on to my clothes on the floor. I quickly dropped the container on him and held it down against my sweater so that it couldn't escape. Now what? I scooped the whole aparatus up and carried it to the kitchen floor where I would have room to maneuver. I lifted the tupperware off of the spider and it made a break for it. It was a fast one for it's size. I tossed the tupperware dish at it and it was trapped again.

Now I had this spider trapped on the floor but I still needed to get rid of it. It was too fast to try to scoop the lid under it so I had to be a little more tricky. I slid a small sheet of paper under the container and using it as a temporary lid I flipped the whole thing over and slammed the proper lid in place. The spider was caught.

I should have taken another picture at this point but I was too busy gloating. I even showed it to my dad was didn't really care much. Now what to do with it?

I opted for the toilet. It is a satisfying way to dispose of things. I dropped it in and sent it on it's way. I even flushed twice just to make sure it was really gone. If it wants to swim back up and into the toilet bowl after that then it's earned it's freedom.

You were a fine adversary spider but today victory belongs to me and mankind.

Went golfing

So yeah I went golfing yesterday. My cousin came to Kelowna at the start of the week for a visit and stayed at our place for a couple of days. I haven't had a chance to talk to him since his Dad's funeral this spring, and I didn't really get much of a chance then. Because of this I wasn't able to do any of my own activities for a few days so my resumes remain unsent and I'm pretty tired from being forced to stay up and visit.

The golf game was fun though. I hadn't been golfing in many years and I was only 2 strokes behind my grandpa and 6 behind my dad. I wasn't in very good condition to go out golfing as I was sore and tired from work before going out, but I still enjoyed myself.

I've made my list of places to apply at in Vancouver for work. I'm really worried about making this move for some reason. It sort of freaks me out to be on my own again. I want to be back on my feet, but getting there is really emotionally draining. I can't wait for the time 3 months from now when I'm settled in.

Not much to say

Well I don't really have anything good to say, I just feel that too much time has passed without me blogging anything.

Things are going pretty piss poor right now. My Dad has been trying to control everything I do for the last 2 days and is belittling me at every turn. My cousin is staying with us tonight so my Dad is using that as leverage to get me to do what he wants. When he found out I have tomorrow off he told me what I'm going to be doing. Same with friday I have to come straight home after work because I get to go golfing. I don't even want to go into the details on things, suffice it to say he's just making me even more miserable.

I'm trying to look for a job in Vancouver right now, or at least I was until my Dad interupted me to do various things for him. I really want out of here as soon as possible. I know I'm not emotionally ready to face the city again but I have to or I'm never going to feel better. I haven't been feeling too good lately.

I'm still finding myself having a hard time coming to the terms of reality. I just can't accept things the way they are and I keep putting a false positive spin on things in my head. I think starting over in Burnaby might allow me to finally move on with things. I just find myself living in memories and longing to be back experiencing them again. The past is a really nice place to visit because you can skip over all the bad and only see the good times. It's hard to resist its allure. It makes this reality seem like an impossible nightmare.

I donated blood!

Yay! I finally did it. Today I donated blood. It was really awesome.

Everyone there was so nice and friendly and that made things really fun and easy because you're basically being waited on. I HIGHLY recommend that everyone donates blood. It's so stupid not to. It only takes an hour and you can only do it every 2 months and there is a blood shortage right now. Do you know what happens when they run out of blood? First the non-life threatening surgeries are cancelled and then people will start dying. As it is now they are shipping in blood from Quebec, which is a first for BC. So I'm totally going to keep doing this. It makes you feel really good.

The process is really easy too. You start off by being added to their database, your name and birthday and whatnot. You can even do this over the phone if you book an appointment, which by the way is a good idea, more people donate blood than I thought. Once you're there they start by pin pricking your finger to get a drop of blood to test your iron levels.

This is nothing, so all you whiners out there suck it up and don't be such a baby. Yeah it hurts for a split second, pretty much the same as if you poke yourself sewing. Diabetics do this several times a day and you don't see people choosing to die from diabetes rather than get a little startle of discomfort. I should also add that this is the most "painful" part of the whole procedure, unless of course you bump your knee on the desk or something, that would probably hurt more than anything Blood Services will do to you.

I thought the iron levels test was quite neat actually. They collect a drop of your blood in a pipette type thing and drop it into a liquid in a vial (it may have been water). In order to have good iron levels they simply see how long it takes the blood to fall to the bottom of the fluid. The more iron it has the heavier it is and faster it falls. I thought it was neat.

After that little test you fill out some health related questions and sit and watch Dr. Phil for 2 minutes. Then they take you into a private room and ask you some sex and drug related questions. They can be summed up to this: "Do you have AIDS? Are you a drug addict? Are you a whore?" After that they take your blood pressure and oral temperature (actually they did this first, my story is out of order :P) just to make sure you weren't lying on question number 1 "Are you feeling well today?" They even give you a chance to gracefully back out of telling the volunteer that you are in fact street trash. They leave the room and you place a bar code sticker onto the form saying either "Yes use my blood." or "No don't use my blood. Don't even touch it. I'm gross." Since it is a bar code no one can tell by looking at your form what you answered and you can still give blood with your friends without telling them you have AIDS.

Next comes the really fun part. Now it's time to actually give blood. You sit in a big comfy chair and they prep you for having blood taken. I'm not afraid of needles and was very curious as to everything going on around me and I never even saw it folks. At least not when they were getting it ready. They asked if I wanted to look away or not. I did. I figured I knew what they were doing and I didn't want to stress myself out because I was really excited and nervous. I wouldn't look away at someone else getting it done, I'm just not used to watching myself be injured and I didn't want to flinch or something.

After they put the needle in I looked at it. It is a wide needle but you don't feel much of anything. It hurts less than the finger prick because there are fewer nerves along your arm. The needle isn't very long though and they even covered it up with a little piece of gauze.

Then they start the flow of blood. My first reaction was surprise and how dark it looked. I don't have a lot of experience with seeing blood so I didn't really know what to expect. The blood is obviously dark because it's on its way back to the heart to be re-oxygenated, but it was still a really deep crimson. Like zombie blood or something. Anyway it's neat to see stuff like this and know what things look like in real life. I found it all very facinating and I asked lots of questions. The blood collects in a little bag below you and it rocks back and forth on a machine to keep it fluid and prevent in from clotting. Once they get enough to fill the bag and it automatically stops and they remove the needle (you can't even feel it) and you hold a little piece of guaze on it for 5 minutes and relax.

When your time's up you report directly to cookies and juice! They had ice cream earlier in the day but I missed it :( They gave my stickers and a pin and served me different flavours of juice and had lots of different cookies to choose, it was SO worth it. Everyone there is so nice I'm excited to go again in October.

I had my reasons for putting this off as long as I did so here's a little Q & A session of things I wondered about:

Q) After giving blood will I be tired and useless?
A) You'll be just as useless as you always are, just with something to blame it on. They say no heavy exercise for 6 to 8 hours after giving blood. I rode my bike home with no issues and I still feel fine for day to day stuff. I just won't be over doing anything.

Q) How much blood do they take?
A) The take 1 unit of blood which is 610 mL. They also take a bit extra for your lab tests. This really doesn't amount to very much depending on your size.

Q) Why do people's arms look all bruised or discoloured around where the needle was?
A) This is actually just iodine that they use to help sterilize the area around the needle. You really aren't doing anything bad to your body by giving blood.

Q) Why should I care enough to go out of my way to give blood?
A) What if someone you know needs it one day? Ah ha, I answered a question with a question. Seriously don't be lazy just go do it, it's fun and not so far out of your way. Bring friends and make an event of it. If you don't give blood you better be contributing to society in another way, because someone who is making progress could die because you didn't give them blood.

Q) What if I change my mind and want them to put the blood back in me?
A) ....? I never really asked that but I should of ;)

I'm really happy I did this. I feel really happy with myself. It really is the very least I can do with my life. If I don't make an impact on science, art, literature, or human evolution at least I can say I gave blood.

If you read this and aren't booking an appointment right now you better tell me what your reasons are and they better be good. I'll come with you if you like, so you really have no good excuse.

Back from the weekend

Well I guess I better make a post of some sort. So much happened over the weekend, but I'll give a brief overview of things.

So Saturday after work I had to rush home and drive down to the coast with my sister and her boyfriend Brett. It's about a 5 hour drive followed by a 40 minute ferry and another hour drive. I drove the whole distance with the help of 3 sodas to wake me up as I felt my eye sight starting to blur. After getting off of the ferry Kristen drove the rest of the way because she was feeling ill and thought she would feel better if she drove. Maybe if she and Brett didn't both sit in the back seat on the way down she wouldn't have felt sick.

Once we got to the cabin it was fairly late and I was super tired after being up since before dawn. My cousins were there and I got to hang out and chat with family for maybe an hour before they left. The last time I was at the cabin was with Sydney last summer, so I felt very nostalgic in seeing it again and that made me sad.

I slept late the next day and after getting everyone ready to go we went to my Grandparents house before heading to the resturant for the dinner party. It was nice to see their place again, they have done a fair bit of yard work to it. One of my cousins is staying there well she is going through a difficult time in her life. Unfortunately I didn't get to even say hi to her as she had to leave for work just as we got there. I don't think she felt up to the dinner party anyhow.

I really had forgotten how much I like my mum's side of the family. I grew up seeing my grandparents and cousins a lot more often than my relations on my dad's side, with the except of my other grandparents who lived in Sechelt with us. My grandma was really excited to see me and barely recognized me. She was really supportive of my move to Ontario and I think her easy acceptance of it made my mum more comfortable with it. I wish I could have introduced her to my Ontario family so she could see why I moved.

At the dinner I hung out with my cousins primarily. My Uncle John's kids. Megan and Jen are twins and only slightly younger than me so we have always got along really well. It's nice to see that we still do. Michael is younger than they are but his maturaity makes up for it. I used to visit them over long weekends while I was going to school in Burnaby. Now they are living on their own and when I move back to Vancouver we can hang out! We snatched up the end of one of the long dinning tables and dubbed it the Kids table for old times sake. Jen and I got a little snackered by the end of the night. She stayed the night at my grandparents and drove home the next day, while the rest of her family went home that night.

The dinner was really good, but after dinner was even better. Not only did we have two different cakes served 30 minutes apart, but we also had entertainment. My grandfather and some of his friends of various european origins were singing in German. They had an accordian and a book of songs and it was so cute and to see. It really made me excited to be related to them and a part of my family. I really loved it.

I was the only one that needed to get home at a resonable time because I worked early the next day. This was quite apparent when I was the only one trying to get ready to go. Eventually we got going and I drove the whole way home. This time Kristen sat in the front seat but as with the trip down the only sounds made were from the iPod or me saying something. They did whisper / giggle a bit once in a while but generally were dead quiet. Oh well I had tunes so I didn't feel awkward.

Gong Show

My work has been a Gong Show this week.

First off I'm working 8 days in a row. In a row! What the hell who thought that was a good idea? Secondly it has been an interesting week where I'm constantly wondering if I'll be going home soon.

At the start of the week we ran out of yeast. That's right yeast, the stuff that makes bread go. That's almost as bad as a bakery out of flour... oh wait that happened later that day. So at the very start of the day as I mixed the second dough of over a dozen I realised there was no more yeast in the cooler. So there I was at 3:30 in the morning, out of yeast, and with one other person working who is constantly offended by the lack of management.

No seriously, she gets upset when someone says something that contridicts something she was already told, or when screw ups like running out of yeast happen. The last few days I've arrived at the store and knocked to be let in she seemed miffed at me for not being giving a key yet.

Anyway I made the wise executive decision to stretch what little yeast I had to make all of the smaller doughs that use very little of it and are normally made later in the day. Of course that ment we didn't have any white, whole wheat, or sweet dough but what can you do?

Later in the morning the assistant manager came in an hour late after we had spent the better part of the day cleaning and wondering what to do next. He took off right away to try and track down some live yeast, which he did in under an hour and we were able to get a few of the important doughs made. In doing so we used every last kilogram of flour we had left. However at the end of the production day the long overdue order arrived and replenished our supplies.

Oh that reminds me of a few days before, where again right off the bat in the morning Arden and I realised that there was a huge order of buns being picked up before noon and it wasn't a part of our first or second run productions. Good times. Naturally Arden was pissed. I on the other hand was glad we caught the mistake when we did because I could still update the spreadsheet and reweigh out the dough ingredients. So we saved the day and nobody seemed to care or notice.

Now today was another fun day. I was in the middle of mixing a dough when the mixer broke. Apparently this had happened before on a day I wasn't there and they had to call a repair guy. Same thing today. It had blown an internal fuse (which I now know how to change if it happens again) and so it wouldn't do much of anything expect trip the building fuse it's hooked into. So while we waited for this guy to come fix it I got to "hand mix" the 15 kilogram blob of dough still in the mixing bowl. Wow is that alot of work.

So I'm already ridiculously tired from my long work week and now I have to knead a piece of half mixed dough for 15 minutes. If you want sore hands and wrists that's the way to do it. After I was finished and I could un-hunch from leaning over the bowl I was really light headed and sweaty. I sort of stumbled around as I cut up the dough without any help from my manager. I was pretty surprised nobody considered my well being after doing that. There was even a guy from the coast there doing a hands on inspection and he didn't seem to notice that I was swaying a touch. *sigh*

I really feel that my judgement is far superior to my manager's I just doing have any baking experience to rely on.

Night Terrors

So today I sort of came to realize something. My body is physically very still, sore, and sluggish. My eye sight is blurry and I'm constantly seeing things out of the corner of my eye that aren't there. Plus I'm feeling really groggy and tired all the time and just generally out of it. Well today on TV was the Star Trek: TNG episode titled "Night Terrors". In it the Enterprise in stranded in space and all of the crew start to have paranoid delusions and hallucinations because they aren't getting any REM sleep. Well I think that's starting to happen to me.

As you can tell from my last post I am seeing things from time to time, and in some cases not seeing things. I often see movement out of the corner of my eyes and I look over to see nothing there. I'll usually test it several more times to make sure nothing is in fact there by waiting to see if it happens again. It usually does and I've often tested to make sure nothing is there over a dozen times because I keep seeing something move.

I think the problem might be my new sleep schedule where I have 8 hours of sleep broken up into two chunks throughout the day. I have a nap from 2 to 5 hours when I get home and then I make up the remaining 8 hours that night. I've noticed that when I wake up I jolt awake suddenly and always in the middle of a dream. I don't usually remember my dreams so that fact that I'm waking up in the middle of them seems a bit unusual. I suspect that I'm waking up right in the middle of my deep REM sleep. So naturally my body is hating me.

Anyway I think all my paranoia with regards to seeing things and feeling dopey is related to this drastic change in my sleeping patterns. I thought I was doing okay with this type of work shift but I think I might be in for a rough ride this week.

Eyes in the dark. One moon circles.

Things that happen in the night...

Well I've managed to collect a few little stories of events that have happened to me as I ride to work at 2:30 in the morning. I thought I'd share a few of them.

This one happened to me over a week ago. I was riding down the street next to the sidewalk and I saw this cat sitting at the end of a driveway a little ways ahead of me. It was staring across the street and hadn't noticed me. I got about 6 feet away from this cat before it finally heard me and quickly looked up at me as I passed by. As I continued on riding I thought to myself "Wow that cat really wasn't paying much attention". After I got to work I started thinking that maybe I was the one not paying any attention. For all I know there could have been a bear on the other side of the street.

This one took place last week. I was almost at work and starting to get a little bit sweaty. I also found that things umm... down there were a little uncomfortable because I was getting sweaty. So I waited for the traffic to pass by and readjusted myself. When I looked back up there were two people walking towards me just within the distance where you could make out the detail of someone putting their hand down their pants *blushes*. Yeah, oops. It was the level of dark where to see a person in the shadows you need to focus for a second, and I didn't do that before making my move. I can only imagine what they saw or were thinking.

This last story happened to me just this morning. I had just got my bike out from behind the house. It is so dark when I go back there that if there was something on the lawn I would definately not see it and trip over it. Just as I had my bike and was walking to the driveway I spotted something. Something metalic and shiny. It looked to be about as tall as a person and for probably two to three seconds I thought I was looking at a Cylon. I totally panicked. Not just any Cylon either, but a 1978 Cylon from the original Battlestar Galactica. I thought I was going to die. My heart raced as I knew I wasn't seeing this correctly and I bravely continued moving forward in shock. Turns out it was light reflecting off of my dad's truck bumper and mirror and whatever else was chrome on that side.

Yes this is what I thought I saw and thought was going to kill me.

My day off...

Well today was the first of two whole days off from work that I get before having 8 days on (who did the scheduling there?). Then to break up my 8 days of work I get to spend the 2 days off on the coast at my Grandfather's 80th birthday / family reunion at my parent's cabin at Garden Bay Lake. It sounds awesome, but I'm pretty worried about it.

This was supposed to be the chance for me to introduce Sydney to my mum's side of the family. I was planning on flying as both out to the coast for this because it's been in the works for a while. Things are obviously different now so that won't be happening and it makes me sad. Plus I'm staying at the cabin and the last time I was there it was on vacation with Syd. It also involves a 6 hour drive with my sister and her boyfriend that I'm not looking forward to making in both directions. So it's going to be a busy weekend.

Today I had big plans. For the longest time I've wanted to donate blood. Since the weekend I had it in my head to work up the courage to do it today. Today came and I was all ready to go through with it. I made a phone call and set myself up with Canadian Blood Services, but I didn't realise that the Kelowna clinic is only open on Tuesday and Wednessday. So after getting ready to go with the exception of putting my shoes on I found out I couldn't do it today. So yeah. I don't know when I'll get the chance, perhaps in 2 weeks, I don't really want to do it in the middle of an 8 day work week with a 2 day family chaser leading into another work week.

I've wanted to donate blood when I lived alone in Burnaby, but I was always worried that I would be really sluggish and lazy for a while afterwards. So I figured that now since I'm living at home and I have people to take care of me if need be I could do it. However it seems it isn't to be just yet.

So instead of doing that I watched every inch of the Hot Fuzz DVD. It was a good use of half of a day :) It's an incredible film and I absolutely love it.