Category: Uncategorized

At approximately 10pm this evening the fire alarm went off in my building. Now in the almost nine years that I’ve been living in my apartment, there are so many false alarms that no one takes the alarms seriously anymore. The problem is that the fire alarm system for an entire long city block is all connected, including the retail space and all the condos. This means if there’s a fire alarm that goes off in a small store down the block, the fire alarm goes off everywhere else, even in buildings not connected to where the alarm is, possibly even 300m or so away. It’s a terrible system and has led to no one listening to the alarms anymore.

So, tonight another alarm goes off and I just ignore it. I hear sirens, which is normal, because the fire department has to attend, no matter what. I keep doing what I’m doing. An hour later, I have to go downstairs, so I get dressed, and take the elevator down. When I get to street level, I see both ends of my street are blocked off and the fire department engine is still there but packing up. This seems like a lot of activity for a false alarm.

I’m curious enough to walk closer to one of the police vehicles blocking the road. The officer is inside the vehicle but he’s looking at his computer or something. He actually looked sorta bored. I cautiously approach his window and he rolls it down. I tell him I live in the building nearby and ask what happened. He tells me that there was a fire earlier in the evening in the first building out of the three on my block. The fire blew out a window or multiple windows. He also says I should be careful because there’s glass all over the sidewalk and street. I hadn’t noticed this before because I exited the building from a different way. The officer says they’ll open the street once a street cleaner arrives to clean the area. I thank the officer for this time and decide to walk back towards my building. Now that I know what to look for, I see shards of tiny safety glass glistening in the road and sidewalk. Though the police are blocking entry into the street, they’re letting people leave. While I’m on the sidewalk, I see three cars just roll through the broken glass, making crunching noises as they go by. Yikes.

I walk back to my apartment, avoiding the glass. Weird. So there was an actual fire but two buildings down from me. I think it’s possible to classify this as a false alarm still. There was no fire in my building technically. The fire alarm system is supposed to be separated now but I guess that work hasn’t been completed yet?

I wonder what type of fire causes windows to be blown out? Meth lab? I’ll see if I can get more info.

This pesky sinus infection that I have appears to be getting better. It’s lingering though, which is annoying. It’s still a minor inconvenience compared to this massive sinus infection I had years ago where it lasted a month.

I never had a sinus infection until I was in my late 20s but now it seems like I get one every year or every other year. I wonder if this a product of getting older or is it my environment. Both?

I’ve had the exact same thing for lunch at work for seven consecutive work days now. The cafeteria at the studio is so bad now that it’s a miracle that I’ve found something that I think is tasty and is relatively healthy.

For seven straight lunches, I’ve had a turkey sandwich and a side salad. The sandwich consists of sourdough bread with some cranberries baked in. The cranberries gives the bread a bit of sweetness. I believe the turkey is smoked and is sliced thin. There’s a slice of cheese, not sure what it is but it’s like white. A bit of lettuce is added. The finishing touch is a bit of mayo. The sandwich tastes good which is such a rare thing to find at the cafeteria these days, a good tasting item of food.

The side salad is nothing to write home about but it is healthy and contains greens. I am not sure how long I can continue to eat the same damn thing but we’ll find out.

It’s been almost five years since I featured a Wendy’s training video in my blog, so it’s time for another one. Enjoy!

One of the things I dislike about winter is the lower relative humidity in the air. The dry air wrecks havoc with my skin and scalp. Cooler air can hold less moisture and winter is where we find lower temperatures. Strangely though, it seems this winter, the relative humidity has stayed higher than normal.

We’ve had some night where it was near or at the freezing point and it still didn’t feel all that dry. For example, tonight the low is supposed to be at -1 degrees Celsius but according to my hygrometer, the relative humidity in my bedroom is an acceptable 47%. This is with no humidifier or other artificial means of increasing the moisture in the air.

During most winters, the humidity drops to the 30s and stays there for while. At this point, I can really feel it on my skin and I have to break out my humidifier. So far, this year, it’s stayed in storage because it hasn’t really been all that dry.

I wonder if this is the first year in a long time that I’ll be able to go through an entire winter without having to use my humidifier.

My cold kinda got worse on the weekend. I started coughing more. I really wanted to see a movie this weekend but it would have been terrible to sit in the theatre and just cough every five minutes. I know I wouldn’t want to pay good money to see a movie and then hear someone start hacking away on the regular.

Fortunately, other than the cough, the only other ailment I have is some fatigue. It’s just a regular cold with a cough and that’s sapping some energy. Hopefully it will resolve itself before the next weekend as the company party is on Saturday evening.

It looks like I’ll have to pay just over $300 this year for my condo insurance. This is the first time that I’ve broken the $300 mark. I remember the first year I got insurance, it only cost $220. Everything gets more expensive and peace of mind is especially expensive.

Health-wise, I’ve had a great winter so far. I usually get sick in December, with a nasty cold and cough. It’s like clock-work. December came and went, and I was 100% illness free, even during the holidays. Many of my co-workers spent the holidays with a cold or a flu. I was fine. Did it have anything to do with the flu shot I got earlier? Possibly.

My blemish free run lasted until this week. I woke up this morning with a bit of a sore throat and lower than usual energy. I am definitely afflicted with something but at this point it seems really minor. My sinuses are fine and clear. I have no headaches or soreness anywhere. My throat just hurts a bit. Hopefully, that’s all there is.

Holy, I just won $2.50 doing an online scratch-off lottery ticket. It’s so easy to spend money on lottery tickets online now. I didn’t realize scratch-offs were on the Internet now. It’s a good thing that most of the people that are addicted to scratch-offs aren’t the type of people who know how to access the Internet.