Month: March 2024

Like many of you, I’m trying to be frugal at times as everything is so expensive these days. Food is something where I try to be smart about where I spend my money.

For me, one of the better deals at my local supermarket is four roasted chickens quarters, essentially a whole chicken for about $11. Now that’s not as cheap as your roasted Costco chicken but considering I don’t live anywhere near a Costco and I don’t have a membership, it’s still a pretty good deal for me. It was even a better deal when it was $9 but I digress.

Now in comparison, just a few feet away from the supermarket is a fast-food Mexican place, where I can get a burrito for essentially the same price. That’s a regular-sized burrito, which is good for just one meal. Depending on how hungry I am, those four chicken quarters can last me through dinner, lunch, and then another dinner the next day. That’s a lot of good protein for the money I paid and relatively healthy.

For another comparison, there’s an A&W downstairs where I can get a cheeseburger, fries, and a drink for about $12. Again, that will last me just one meal and I’d argue it’s probably less healthy for me.

Of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes, it gets boring eating chicken for lunch and dinner for almost two days straight. It’s great for saving money though!

I was woken up this morning to the sound of my hot water dispenser singing a melody to let me know it had finished boiling the water inside it. Normally, I have that featured turned off, so I instantly knew that sometime while I slept, the power had gone off and wiped the dispenser’s memory. Then sometime even later, the power returned and then caused the dispenser to boil the water and sing a tune.

My suspicions were further reinforced by the fact that all my lights were on all over my apartment. Most of the lights in my place are controlled by the Internet, so when they lose power and then get it back, they default to the “on” state. I had no idea why the power went out but I still had lots of time to sleep, so I grabbed my phone to turn off all the lights again.

When it was actually time for me to wake up, the power was still on, which was great because I had a Zoom meeting as my first thing to do after rising. Then around 12:30pm, the power went out again for about a minute and then came back on. It’s been stable since then.

I checked the Twitter account for my municipality and while they mentioned the outage, there wasn’t a cause listed. Power outages are very rare in my area of town. On my street there are no power lines on poles anymore as all power is now routed underground. Maybe a rat bit a line somewhere in an electrical vault.

I had the pleasure of starting my weekend off with a visit to the dentist at noon on Saturday. I was kinda dreading it all week and that must have affected my sleep as I awoke somewhat restless and too early on Saturday morning.

When I arrived at the dental office, the vibe was off almost immediately. I’ve been with this practice long enough that when I walk in, they know who I am, what time my appointment is, and why I’m there. About two years ago, I actually stopped going up to the front desk because they would always go, “yeah, we know who you are, just have a seat”. So now, I just make eye contact with whoever is at the front desk, say hi, and just proceed to the waiting area.

This time, there was only person at the front desk, and I’d never seen her before. Nevertheless, I looked at her, said hi and began to walk over to take a seat. She stopped me right away and asked me who I was. Weird. I had to backtrack and went up to the desk to identify myself. She confirmed my name and then also wanted to confirm I was there for some fillings, which I said yes. Only after that was I offered a seat to wait.

After sitting for about a minute, a dental hygienist emerged and said my name. I got up and said hi. I followed her to the back of the practice, which I’d never been to before. She led me to an actual room with a real door. This office is pretty much an open office plan and the treatment areas are not separated by walls, just like bookshelves instead. You can hear other people getting their teeth worked on, their conversations, and I’m pretty sure we’re all sharing the aerosols generated by all the tools. Anyways, this time, this was a real treatment room with walls and a door! What a treat!

They explained to me this was the kids treatment room. The walls were still pretty stark but there were some kids decorations stuck to the wall to give it a more playful appearance but that was it. I didn’t even see a TV on the ceiling which the other areas had.

After I sat down, a dentist I’d never seen before arrived. He was new to the practice and I don’t know where the other dentists I usually see were. He was very friendly though and made sure I knew exactly what was going on. He also made sure that if I had any questions, he’d answer them.

As for the actual procedure, it went as well as it could, considering I got poked with three needles, had that awful dental dam stretched across my mouth which restricted my breathing, was subjected to drilling, and I was in a full-body clench for almost an hour. Other than that, it was a great time.

Once they were done, they released back into the waiting room like I was a formally caged animal. I had to settle up because my insurance doesn’t cover all the filings.

I mentioned the vibe was off because I haven’t seen any of the normal front desk staff now for my last two visits. Like I mentioned, I’ve been going here for years and I can recognize multiple people from that office now. It seems like they only have one person working the desk now and that person has been new for the last two times. They also have this new dentist now, who I enjoyed having him work on me though, but I wonder if his arrival was part of some recent big changes to the practice. Do dental practices suffer from layoffs like the games industry? The economy is not in great shape, so I wonder if people are foregoing dental care to save money. If that’s true, dental offices aren’t gonna make that money.

Well, I’m not going back to that damn office for another few months, so I’ll check on them then.

I didn’t sleep very well on Tuesday night, so I expected Wednesday to be an ordeal. It turns out Wednesday was very normal. I didn’t feel any extra fatigue during the workday and I was mentally as dull as I normally am. I couldn’t even tell that I probably got less than four hours sleep the night before.

After work, I made dinner and expected a big crash after I ate but none came, even as I relaxed on my couch. The only thing that indicated I had a sleep debt was that around 12am, I got really tired quite fast. Usually around that time, I’m still quite wide awake. This time around, I was struggling to make it to bed before I fell asleep.

I woke up around 9:30am this morning and that’s when it started to hit me. I had a lingering amount of fatigue that hung around all day today. I had to have an extra coffee to ward off the tiredness. The human body is an interesting marvel. It has an amazing ability to adapt but you can never cheat it from things it needs like sleep and food. Eventually it’ll catch up to you.

I ordered something from an online retailer that I’d never used before and when the tracking information appeared, it was for a local courier company that I’d never heard of before. When I Googled them, I read a raft of terrible reviews. Most of these complained that the company would update the tracking with “delivery attempted” when no one called, knocked, or rang the buzzer. One person actually obtained security footage from their lobby and watched the delivery person get buzzed in, walk into the lobby, and then do a 180, taking the package with them. The package was then marked as “lost”.

In general, the whole “delivery attempted” BS happens with so many delivery companies. About a week ago, I had another item that I purchased be delivered by another local courier. I got the whole “delivery attempted” update but I was home all day and no one called me. The next thing I know, my package was on its way back to their shipping depot. Now I’m not sure if it helped but I sent a message to them immediately that they better try to attempt to delivery my package again and not give me that garbage ultimatum where they tell you you gotta go to them to get your package. Now, the next day, my package mysteriously wound up at my door. Oddly, no one called nor did anyone buzz me. How did they get access to my building then? Now for some of the bigger companies like UPS, FedEx, Canada Post, and Amazon, they get a dedicated fob to help expedite deliveries but this company was not one of them. If they somehow already had access to my building, why didn’t they just delivery it on the first day?

Anyways, with this latest package, who knows when I’ll get it.

At least in the Vancouver area, as soon as the time change happened, that coincided with several days of sunny weather. So not only did the sun set later, it was very much a sunny day that ended later.

The weather has been quite nice for several days. I went out around noon for a walk and I didn’t wear a jacket, I just had a thin t-shirt on and some pants. The official forecast said it only got up to 13 degrees but it sure felt warmer to me. It was warm enough that I wish I had worn shorts. In Vancouver, you gotta worry about being fooled by “fake spring” though. A few sunny days and warmer temperatures makes you bring out shorts and t-shirts but then what follows is weeks more rain and cooler air. Indeed, the sunny weather is supposed to go away by Wednesday, to be replaced by rain. The highs are supposed to remain the double-digits though, so maybe it’s not all that bad.

In a previous post, I wrote that management at my place of employment told us that some people on my team would be affected by layoffs and they would make those layoffs happen within the next thirty days. Today, we had a team meeting that was scheduled with twenty minutes notice. Now if you’ve been around as long as I have, you know that meetings that involve the whole team, scheduled with short notice, near the end of the day are not meetings that usually end up with good news.

I didn’t know it at the time, but if at the beginning of the meeting no one had already given you bad news, you were not affected. For me, it was very much a normal day, until I got the meeting invite, so I was luckily ok. I won’t divulge many details from the meeting but I will say management was very honest and forthcoming. They told us why the cuts had to be made. Also, we were told that they’d do their best to place people in other parts of the company, so for some people, they wouldn’t actually be laid off. Though, there’s no guarantee that would happen for everyone. Indeed, some people might just decide to leave no matter what.

When the meeting ended, I wasn’t sure who got affected but in the days to come, I’m guessing the news will start to filter out. It’s a total bummer that some of my co-workers will be out of a job. Our industry has been rocked with layoffs for more than a year now and we’re all wondering when the cuts are going to end.

Last week, I ordered pizza for dinner for probably the fifth, maybe the fourth time in the last ten years. I really don’t get pizza delivered very often. There’s enough pizza places within walking distance that delivery makes no sense.

This time, however, I ordered from Panago, which doesn’t have a location close to where I live. This was the first time I ordered from Panago in years, maybe more than a decade. If you’re not from this province, Panago started out as a local pizza place, which grew in popularity enough to have close to 200 locations.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Panago was pretty much the only place I ordered pizza from. At that time, I was still living with my parents at their detached house. There was a Panago location about a two minute drive away. To save on delivery fees, I’d pick up my pizza from the store. I went there often enough that the people working there started to recognize me. The owner of this franchise was there a lot and he often cooked many of the pizzas I ordered. He was very friendly and once in a while, he threw in a side order of something for free. When I was lazy and did order delivery, it was common for him to deliver the pizza himself. Those pizzas were always delicious and kept me satisfied, chubby, and well-fed.

Eventually, my parents moved slightly farther away to a smaller townhouse and I left for UBC to go to grad school, so the orders for pizza were much less frequent. When I ordered a pizza and a salad last week, it brought back a lot of memories. It also reminded me that I still like Panago pizza and their salads are fresh and actually well-made. Everyone jokes that salads from pizza joints are terrible, but this salad was better than any pre-packaged salad I’ve had from Safeway (and cheaper too).

I’m not sure if I’d order Panago every week (like I almost did way back when), but I sure am gonna consider it more now.

In about three weeks, my building will be doing their annual fire alarm and smoke detector testing. Some dude is gonna have to come into my apartment and take about sixty seconds to test everything. If they had to do the testing tomorrow, I’d be embarrassed because my apartment is a tad too messy for guests. Is it like an episode from a hoarding show in here? No, definitely not, but I probably have too much recycling piled up and a large pile of laundry on my couch that needs to be elsewhere. I probably need to vacuum as well. All told, nothing a few hours of cleaning can’t fix.

Of course, if I did the cleaning this week, I bet everything would be messy again in three weeks. The key to being lazy is to keep everything a mess until right before you need it clean, so you don’t have time to make it messy again.

Despite knowing the clocks were going forward on Saturday night, I stayed up way too late. That was a problem because I couldn’t sleep all day on Sunday as I had things to do and a schedule to keep. By the time 6pm rolled around, I was exhausted and wound up falling asleep on my couch. I napped for about 20 minutes, which is a good amount of time for a nap.

I think the combination of the time change and a lack of sleep was a double-whammy because I got so tired that I had to take another nap, this time around 9pm, which really isn’t a good time to nap. I really was quite tired though.

I also have a 9am meeting tomorrow morning and my body will still think it’s 8am, which will make that meeting suck even more. That said, this is the way the clocks need to stay permanently. When I finish work tomorrow, it will still be daylight, which is the way it should be.