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July, 2009:

Music for the move, Part 1

Jul 25th, 2009
by Gillian.
4 comments

When my father drove me up to Kelowna a few weeks ago he brought along some CDs in his car that he thought I’d like to listen to on the road. One just happened to be a greatest hits compilation of Simon & Garfunkel (well, just the second CD, because Dad is about as organized with his media as I am with my stuff) and from that he somehow made the latter hits of S&G the de facto soundtrack for my move. It helps, I guess, that you can easily sing along to Mrs. Robinson and Cecilia better than you can to Dad’s other greatest hits he brought along, those of Bob Dylan. It’s hard to sing along to someone who’s not technically singing himself.

We did discuss that The Byrds‘s Dylan covers (like Mr. Tambourine Man) would have been better for this; I prefer harmony to unison because the combined sound gives me more pleasure, and The Byrds were all about the complex harmonies (I think from David Crosby‘s influence, but I don’t know for sure).

Oh dear God, there’s even a William Shatner version.

A Youtube search has just informed me that we’re not the first people to document Simon & Garfunkel as Okanagan road trip music:

I wonder why it is. Maybe the summer desert climate matches their sound? Disregarding this song, of course.

I recently read an article in Scientific American Mind called Why Music Moves Us that I recommend; I’m fascinated by how music affects people, or specifically me. It seems that music “hijack[s] brain systems built for other purposes such as language, emotion and movement”. Now I have an explanation for my own stupidity!

I’ve been lax in my music recommendations lately, as friends have nagged, so I will get to that soon. There isn’t really anything else to talk about at the moment, as I’m still in the midst of organizing and cleaning and you deserve better than to listen to me talk about that. Thank God for good music to keep me from falling asleep at the mop!

Countdown

Jul 20th, 2009
by Gillian.
9 comments

It’s hard to talk about what’s on my mind these days. I’m not one to embrace change (I just know I should) and leaving my family and friends in Vancouver is an upsetting concept, though Kelowna is hardly Siberia and I plan on visiting when there are Westjet sales. But there is the worry that the life I know is over, and when I come back things will be different, even if it’s because I’ve changed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it makes me sad nonetheless. I’m nostalgic for right now.

I expect to lose some friends due to the distance but I hope the awesomest ones will keep in touch and maybe even visit. A good number of them are winos so surely there is reason to come see the wineries, unless they all are set alight by the current fires. You weren’t needing those grapes, were you? Or your house?

People have been contacting me making sure that my cat and I haven’t been turned to charcoal so I feel I should point out that I’m still in Vancouver. I was in K-town a week ago to find an apartment in a day, which I did, but I have been back here and won’t be heading up for good until August 1st. The fact you haven’t seen me is just because I’m antisocial, not that I’ve been set ablaze.

My apartment will be okay, as it’s across the highway from downtown and a good distance from forest. The great white wangsails will be the last thing to go, I’d think, possibly because the statue is made out of non-flammable material but also that the entire city is between it and the trees. I got the place I wanted, a ten minute walk to the beach or downtown, and work is 3 km of flat terrain away. As far as I can see the only thing that would’ve made it better would’ve been a Tim Hortons on my street, but alas, you can’t have everything.

This move also means living in a new ecosystem: desert. I definitely feel at home in Vancouver weather (I don’t get why people say it rains “too much”) so I’m going to miss the wet. I’ll be the one person in Kelowna standing outside in the rain and smiling. I may be institutionalized.

Today’s random thoughts

Jul 12th, 2009
by Gillian.
3 comments

Kelowna has lots of white people. It is also very hot and dry.

I was approached by three panhandlers, which otherwise made me feel quite at home.

From the south-west the sails statue looks like something completely different, except that it has no balls.

I’m hoping for an apartment that’s a 10-minute walk from the big white wang sails.

Friday Cat Blogging: Famous trollcats

Jul 11th, 2009
by Gillian.
4 comments

The internet must be smaller than I originally thought. A few minutes ago I saw a blog post about trollcats, a subgenre of lolcats where the caption is a troll blog comment. Supposedly the site’s been around since May yet nobody told me about it, possibly because they have lives or something.

But what’s really weird and worth mentioning here is that when I followed the link, the picture that showed up at the top of my screen looked awfully familiar:

My cat's a trollcat

She’s actually been lolcat’d before, but here’s this trollcat posting. Man, that’s so creepy. It’s like when you turn on the TV and there’s you on the screen (which has strangely happened to me a couple times): you click a link and there’s your cat. I tried showing the photo to Shebang but she doesn’t really pay attention to the internet like some pets do. Besides, she’s been famous before. Oh Shebang, get your paw out of your kitty zone!

Speaking of cats and zones, my new slave drivers are paying to move my cat to their zone. I’m sure Shebang approves.

Jul 8th, 2009
by Gillian.
5 comments

At Phoenix Perennials

Life is exciting in that there are big changes coming up, but I haven’t really experienced any changes yet. Except perhaps for a sudden nostalgia for my neighbourhood and friends, and the worry that I’m losing something in all of this. I’m even getting a little teary-eyed at times.

My new overlords have been slow in sending me information about my relocation package so I haven’t been to Kelowna yet to look at apartments or started packing or anything. Nor do I know my starting date and when I’m moving. Craigslist suggests I’m going to be paying tons more in rent for less space, which is a bit disconcerting; I know Marpole is uncool but it is still Vancouver and the west side at that, so the mind boggles at paying more to live 6 hours further from downtown than my current location. Someone once told me that the universe doesn’t revolve around Granville and Robson but I don’t believe that.

A carpenter came through my place yesterday to plan out a complete redo of the kitchen and bathroom, because the next person deserves decent plumbing while I obviously didn’t. At least it made me feel all ghetto in the meantime, with flakes of latex paint stuck to my ass after soaks in the tub. And I wonder what it’s like to have a dishwasher.

I’m hoping to get news tomorrow about my future so I can start making plans. I’ve been feeling kind of stagnant for the past week; I know that I’m moving but I don’t know when, and I haven’t seen my new office or any workmates as all the interviews were over the phone. I don’t know what Kelowna looks like (except for photos online) or what it’s like to live there, and it’s been a long time since I felt Okanagan heat. I do like fruit, though. Too bad wine gets me sloshed so quickly.

I still don’t know what my cat thinks about Kelowna

Jul 1st, 2009
by Gillian.
8 comments

But I will soon find out, as I’m moving house to the land of surprisingly expensive housing sometime in the next month. The thing is, I hate all of you and I want to get as far away from you as possible while still being close enough to taunt you with the idea of me. Oh, and I got a job there.

Last week was something else. I started it by quitting my two-week-old “recession job” and being told by that employer that he didn’t consider me a “real DBA” (DBA = database administrator, in case you’ve just joined us). I then ended the week with two job offers for DBA positions and it’s been hard for me not to send a “nya nya” themed email in a certain someone’s direction, but I will resist somehow. I was also crowned Queen of England and had a poodle breed named after me, but those events seemed less important.

Some of you might say I’m lucky to get the job offers, but you have to remember, I haven’t had a full-time DBA job in 10 months (!!!). Fate screwed me over multiple times by having companies promise to hire me only to back out due to policy or financial issues. The only times I haven’t been miserable this past year were when I was too busy doing contract work to notice how miserable I was. In other words, I was overdue for some awesomeness. I wouldn’t have minded a lesser amount of whee! at an earlier date, though.

I don’t have any details yet about when I’m moving and how I’m going to pretend to be a nice person in order to make new friends but I should have news on the former later this week. All this, and I haven’t been to Kelowna since I was a kid and I liked Penticton better.