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I had dinner with a friend this evening after work, so I didn’t leave the downtown core until much later than usual. Going home, I took the train as usual but the crowd was slightly different from the commuter crowd.

Seats were plentiful when I got on but at the next stop, more people arrived and the seat next to me was taken by this young man. He appeared to be barely out of his twenties. He was nicely dressed but I could immediately smell his cologne. I have no idea what possesses men to put on copious amounts of cologne. Do they really think smelling so pungent is attractive to women? These aren’t pheromones buddy, it’s cheap body spray from Axe. I really wanted to move but by this time, all the seats were taken and I was beat.

Two stops later, things got worse. The seats in front of me vacated but then two young ladies grabbed them. It was clear they had been out for most of the evening. Both of them seemed to suffering from the summer heat. One was fanning themselves. Then the stench of stale body odour hit me. These gals seemed to smell like a homeless dude than proper young women. What I didn’t understand was they smelled like old sweat, not the stench of someone who recently exercised. It was gross whatever it was.

I almost bailed out of that seat but luckily the Old Spice dude found another seat to himself later so he moved away. That left me with the stinky chicks and that just tolerable.

I got home and showered immediately.

Well, my garbage disposal has been jammed for about a month now. Everything I have tried to fix it has been met with failure. The most common way to fix my particular jam involve using a hex key to manually turn the motor to free up the jam. Of course, the model of garbage disposal I have doesn’t have such a feature because my building developer picked the cheapest model they could buy.

I am this close to calling a plumber to my home for the first time ever. I’m not sure what else to do. This may sound weird but it’s quite possible that a plumber will make a visit to my apartment before a pizza delivery guy. Yes, that’s right, a fat-ass like me has never had pizza (or any food actually) delivered to my home.

Oh, if any one is curious, the guy in the video has his fly down the entire time. He even calls that out in the description.

Last week, I returned home to find a massive, giant streak of bird poop on one of the glass panels that line the edge of my balcony. Based on the size of this streak, about ten inches long by two inches wide, I’m assuming a bald eagle or a condor had perched on the railing, was facing toward my apartment, and took a whopper of a dump. In the four years I’ve been living here, I’ve seen just one bird on my balcony, so it’s rare (at least when I’m around) for a bird visit. Maybe this was an emergency poop.

Anyways, I was thinking I’d probably have to deal with this myself as I wasn’t sure when the window cleaners were coming to clean our building. They do this about once a year during the summer. Rather than being proactive and just cleaning myself, I procrastinated. Being lazy paid off, because today I saw a notice that the window cleaners are here this week. I’m also super lucky that bird decided to poop onto the outside of that glass panel. The cleaners are only obligated to clean the outside of the panel because they deem the inside to be accessible by me, so I gotta clean that side. Thanks bird for pooping the right way.

A raw leg of lamb has been sitting in my fridge since the weekend. I didn’t want it there any longer so I decided to cook it tonight. I got back kinda late from work though, so by the time I ate dinner, and had my two fingers of Dr. Pepper, time was running out. The recipe I use calls for first broiling the lamb on each side for about 15 minutes. I didn’t have time for that. Waiting for the oven to get up to that high temperature and then broiling on each side would have taken about an hour just for that one step. I had to improvise.

Since this particular leg was on the smaller size, it barely fit into my cast iron skillet but fit it did. I put the skillet on the stove top, added some olive oil, and let it get real hot. I seared the lamb on the outside for about five minutes. The lamb was nice and brown all over. Done! Saved about an hour right there.

I followed the recipe straight through after that. It came out of the oven looking pretty good. I’m looking forward to dinner tomorrow.

So I went to work this morning expecting to see at least a few people who, like me, had decided to trade their Canada Day holiday for Monday off. The studio turned out to be a ghost town. I only saw two other people at work and only briefly throughout the day.

I also discovered Yaletown is a way less busy place on a holiday day. With office workers not having to be there, the streets were much emptier during lunch time. With the distractions down to a minimum I actually got a fair amount of work done. I’m not sure if I’d trade every holiday for another day but it was certainly an interesting experience today.

Well, the flip side of me having the day off on Monday is that I get to go to work tomorrow when everyone else has the day off. People are staying up late tonight but I get to go to bed like it’s a school night.

I hope everyone enjoys the day off!

Tuesday is a public holiday as it is Canada Day, where we celebrate the birth of our nation. It’s kinda awkward to return from the weekend, work one day, and then take one day off again. Some people have no choice, it’s just what they have to do. Others have chosen to just take a vacation day on Monday and make it a four-day weekend. My place of employment gave us the choice of either taking Monday or Tuesday off. I decided to take Monday off, so I can keep this weekend going. I didn’t work last Monday either, which makes this two long weekends in a row. That’s awesome.

The slightly sucky part is that on Tuesday, I’ll be heading to work when everyone else is celebrating Canada Day. Well, fair trade I guess.

Less than two years ago, I managed to snag a free computer from a local gaming company that was giving away older machines. I documented the event here. From that computer, I salvaged a CPU, a hard drive, and more RAM, all of which were considerable upgrades to my own home computer. That allowed my computer to get some fresh legs.

This afternoon, my current place of employment just happened to give away some free computer components. There were about five motherboards with i7-920 CPUs and 12 Gb of RAM. I managed to get one of these. All these components are again a considerable upgrade from what I currently have in my home computer.

Installing these pieces into my home computer is going take a lot more effort than the last upgrade where my friend helped stick on the CPU and I just plugged in the new hard drive. A new mobo installation means I have to disconnect everything my old mobo, take it out, put the new mobo in, reconnect everything, and then also prepare Windows to accept all the new hardware. The result should be a computer that is almost twice as fast as my current one but the risks are a bit higher.

The price is good, however, so I can’t complain about that!

So I was ravenous for lunch today. I didn’t have much of a breakfast so by the time noon rolled around, I was super hungry. I went down the street to SaladWorks that had just opened up, the first one apparently in Canada. I thought I’d be healthy and get the maple glazed salmon salad. It turned out to be ok but I was so hungry that this lunch-sized salad was pretty much just an appetizer to me. I knew I’d be hungry again well before the end of the work day.

Just like clockwork, I was hungry again around 3:30pm. I originally had my sight set on a cheeseburger of some sort but I settled on a bahn mi from DD Mau. I made a split second decision while ordering to get a full-sized sandwich instead of a half just because I sure as hell wasn’t going to feel hungry again before leaving work.

The sub was delicious and I was definitely was sated. I hope I don’t have to eat two lunches again tomorrow.

So I’m going to Alaska at the end of July! I have two friends who are traveling to Anchorage to take a motorcycle trip up through the state, all the way up to the Beaufort Sea. They’ll be spending a few days in Anchorage before embarking on the road and that’s when I’ll join them.

We’re still working out the details but I think we want to see some glaciers and wildlife. I’ve only been to Alaska once and that was to Ketchikan via cruise ship. I was there for just a few hours as I had to get back on the boat before it sailed without me.

This time should be more of the real deal. Anchorage is farther north than Ketchikan and I’m looking forward to the very long summer days. I’m excited!