Rahen Z takes the best “street” cat photos I’ve ever seen, and this one made me all squishy inside.
October, 2009:
All podded out
I got my iPod. I’d take a picture of it to prove this, but I also got my work Blackberry this week and last night I was reintroduced to the joys of being on call, so I really can’t be bothered to put in extra effort. I’m only awake now because I’m waiting for my hair to dry (too tired to hold up a hairdryer).
In the end I never managed to intercept the package from UPS at all. The tracking webpage had said on Saturday that the thing was at the Richmond location and would be delivered on Monday. But when I called on Monday at 8 am the guy on the phone said that it wasn’t there yet and wouldn’t be delivered until Tuesday, so call back tomorrow. Then on Monday afternoon I refreshed the webpage just for kicks and it said it had been delivered and signed for by a neighbour. Luckily I recognized the last name and had the neighbour’s phone number from my previous life, so I called her and got it all sorted. The iPod then went from her to my old building manager to my dad, who was nice enough to mail it (via Canada Post) on Tuesday for me to receive on Wednesday. Phew.
Despite what a random troll on my last blog post thought, I was never blaming UPS for delivering the package to the destination for which it was told: good job on that, eh. It’s strange, though, that there’s such a disconnect of information between what the people at the 1-800 number said and what was on the tracking page: both times the operators gave me later delivery dates than what the page displayed at the same time. It seems to me, as well, that UPS should either have a policy against, or a proper ability to, intercept packages, rather than the “well maybe if you call just at the right time…” story I was given. Of course, the latter would require them to integrate their computer systems.
But I’m happy and relieved to get my new iPod so that I may listen to music all day at work and not have the battery die (the current problem with my old 30GB classic, which maybe lasts 3 hours of non-video usage before performing seppuku). The nano is also my first portable music player in over a decade that contains an FM radio (so retro!), which is quite useful as Kelowna has so many radio stations, you trip over them. No, seriously, I think I pass three on the walk to Safeway.
iPod/UPS Hell
So a week ago I’d decided that I’d had enough with my existing iPod’s troubles and was going to buy one of those new fangled Nanos with the camera and FM radio and pedometer and other silly stuff I will probably never use. I’d actually decided this earlier than a week ago, but when I marched into the local Future Shop they didn’t have any in the size I wanted (16GB), and so I let it wait for a while. And then last Sunday after Mad Men I made the purchase at the online Apple store so I could get free engraving (not of my name, but a song quote) on the thing, because I’m all about the unnecessarily frills.
Stupid stupid stupid.
What I remember doing is clicking through the various “Buy now” and “Check out” buttons, and seeing that my billing and shipping address were still to my old apartment in Vancouver. So I changed the billing address to my new place in Kelowna, and I’m sure I chose the “same as billing address” for the shipping address, but it didn’t stick. The thing is being shipped to Vancouver. I didn’t notice this until too late, because the address information in the confirmation email requires you to scroll down, and I didn’t bother looking until two days later.
So I called up the 1-800 UPS number and asked what I could do about this package that was going to the wrong place. And what they told me to do was to keep looking at the Tracking Information page until it lists an arrival to Richmond, BC, at which point I’m to call them and tell them to either deliver the package to a different Vancouver address (they can’t reroute to Kelowna) or to keep it at their warehouse for someone to pick up.
I couldn’t give them the new address information then. I couldn’t call Richmond ahead of time. “Because we don’t have the package yet in our system, it’s still in China, even though we have this these things called ‘computers’ connected via an ‘internet’”. Instead, I have to watch a webpage until it boils says Richmond on it and then call, but yet I must do this before they deliver the package to the current occupants of my old place.
What is this, sneakernet? If I manage to intercept the package in time, will my father have to bring in a floppy disk of the GIF of my tracking slip? Or maybe I could send it ahead of time via carrier pigeon. This just strikes me as a really bad setup and unnecessarily complicated. And, for me, stressful, because I may have just paid over $200 for a free gift to whoever moved into #104 after me.
According to the webpage of slowly drying paint, my iPod is now in Richmond, but of course UPS is closed until Monday, both the Richmond location and their 1-800 number. So I have to remember to call right at 8 am on Monday morning and cross my fingers. I am not hopeful.
Unintentional Irony
At least I assume it’s unintentional. It’s either that or there are municipal employees with both a great sense of humour and the ability to express it in their work. I’m putting my money on the former.
The building on the right is where I live.
There’s a drug dealer in my building.
Though I’m sure the sidewalk is completely safe.
I hate having morals
Being a good and honest person is dumb. I’m not going to get anywhere if I keep this up.
There was a weird clerical error at work where they forgot to sign me up for health benefits. “Professionals” get health coverage from day 1, the rest after 3 months, but somehow my info got filed under “must be some customer support minion or something” and ignored*. When I asked about my health plan delay and they discovered the mistake the HR people were apologetic and said they’d get it sorted and would backdate the coverage to my first day of work.
I started on August 4th.
They backdated it to June 7th.
I thought that was odd and I reread the documents. I then looked in my personal calendar to find out the dates for the $4K I’d dropped in dental bills last summer. Ah, yes: June 9th.
I could’ve stayed quiet. I could’ve submitted those dental bills and gotten up to $3K of that money back. But nooooooooooooooooo. I’m a good person. GAWD.
Instead, I wrote an email to HR informing them of the date discrepancy. To which they responded with a thanks for bringing the problem to their attention, and that they’d get that corrected right away.
Damn.
I’m actually quite upset about this. I’m not entirely convinced that the shame I’d feel about submitting pre-job medical expenses would be worse than the feeling of just having said no to three thousand guilt-ridden dollars. I would’ve used the money for altruistic purposes (help support the economy through purchase of electronic goods) and probably would’ve felt okay about the whole thing in the end. But now I can’t.
I’m not sure I like me as a morally upright and decent human being. Maybe it’s this stupid niceness everyone exhibits around here that’s rubbing off on me. Perhaps I’ll go out and trip some old ladies on the sidewalk, just to even it up.
*Possibly because I’m too cute to be a database administrator.
Family
Maybe I gave this post such a general theme so I could stick this image in:
Dad’s been made famous and immortal by appearing in front of his house in Google Street View. He said he’s operating a flame thrower here, which sounds way cool. I’d like to think he was screaming “DIE YOU MOTHERFUCKING WEEDS DIE” but Dad doesn’t have my anger issues outside of traffic.
The big family news in my life is that after ten years of living far far away from me (Kitimat) my mother and stepfather are moving to the even tinier town of Enderby, which is at the north end of the Okanagan and therefore an hour or so away from Kelowna by car. It lies halfway between Armstrong, purveyor of cheese and Salmon Arm, uh, land of fishy appendages?
I’d like to say that they’re moving there to be closer to me but the plan was in place before my job materialized so I feel just as unloved as before. They’re coming here instead for the milder winters, to be closer to Vancouver and its doctors, and because friends of theirs already moved there and said it was nice (to be so close to the cheese, perhaps). Due to the, um, ringing of the death bells in Kitimat (the town is shrinking as the mills are becoming more automated and people are retiring elsewhere) they put their house on the market now in hopes of selling it and moving to Enderby within two years. But since Murphy’s Law is gonna screw with you no matter what their house sold in a day, and the new owners were like “you must be gone in 4 weeks”. So they’ve been kind of busy and I hope to see them at the end of the month when they’ve settled in.
Despite saying I’d be in Vancouver for the long weekend I decided against it for several reasons, mostly due to time constraints but also financial, since I didn’t know anyone driving into town and would’ve had to fly (despite assumptions some of my Vancouver friends and family had, not everyone here likes Vancouver and wants to go there all that often). But since I had three days off I could finally catch up on sleep and take the time to visit my stepcousin in town.
The good thing about step-relatives, in my experience anyways, is that you’re not really related so you can make a decision to be family, or not, depending on how you like one another. It sort of takes the pressure off, but if you do get along then you get the warm fuzzies of having bonus family who actively chose to take you in. It’s an especially good thing when your real cousins are in other countries.
I’d avoided meeting my cousin until now partially because I’ve been exhausted from my new job, but also because 1. she may not care to meet me, and 2. we’re supposedly twins separated at birth and I was afraid that if we touched it would create a singularity resulting in a black hole that would swallow the earth. My parents didn’t know about her until maybe 2006, and when Mom met her she was shocked that R. and I looked so alike that she formed a hypothesis that my father and stepfather are related, which is kind of gross honestly. But my stepcousin lived outside of Vancouver so there was no easy way for me to meet her and the world was still safe. Until now.
It’s true, we do have some creepily similar features, enough that her father-in-law mistook me for her at a distance, and her husband was confused that we weren’t biologically related. I look more like her than I do any of my real cousins, in fact, so cue the Twilight Zone theme music, please. She’s really sweet, though, and we have a love of cats (she has 3) and tea (I win there) in common so I hope we get to spend more time together soon.
Lastly, my real-but-who-doesn’t-look-much-like-me cousin Hannah recently gave birth to Jacob, via C-section so that he and I could already have something in common. While I normally think babies are gross, I hope to see Jacob (of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne) before he is no longer one. In the meantime I have been enjoying the photos I am seeing on Flickr, of which this picture may be one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen.
This Thanksgiving I am therefore thankful for my family, both by birth and by marriage, and I look forward to seeing them all again soon.
Concert-going in Kelowna
Living in a new town much different than and far away from my friends, and working for a company that is a complete 180 from what I’m used to, is continuing to be difficult. Now that it’s not summer anymore, the near-constant sun isn’t enough to keep up my spirits; and I’ve come to realize just how ridiculous it is to not have a car here, even if the commute is 3 km and I live right next door to downtown.
This week, however, I discovered one of the best things to happen from me moving here, and to have picked this apartment building (as if I had a choice, nowhere else would allow cats): I’m 3 blocks from the local indie venue. I’ve been laughing at how I now have little excuse not to see a show, what with it being right there, tickets being $10-15 and the place serves food until about 11. There were 4 concerts this week I would’ve liked to have seen, but what with my having a job and needing to sleep I only made it to half of them.
Last night’s was the Vancouver singer-songwriter Dan Mangan, of whom I’ve been a fan for a couple years after I first heard “Journal of a Narcoleptic”, which according to iTunes is my 3rd most played song since I got my Macbook 2 years ago:
I’d never seen him live, so it was a real treat to catch him at a small, intimate venue like The Habitat and I recommend you check him out should he play in your town. He ended last night’s set (or tried to, before he got heckled into doing an encore) with “Robots”, which is off his new album. He got a few audience members to play percussion and the rest of us to sing along to the chorus at the end, which was a sweet way to end the night. He hasn’t made a video for the song yet, but here’s a fan version:
On Tuesday I was there to check out Grand Archives opening for The Most Serene Republic. I really went for the former band, though I have albums from both groups because I have albums from everyone you’ve never heard of. I felt obliged to buy merchandise because it seemed like stealing to see them both for $13 or whatever I paid for the ticket online. Luckily you can’t have too many band t-shirts (it’s true).
Grand Archives captured my attention instantly with their unison mandolin playing to the first song off their new album (song: “Topsy’s Revenge”; album: “Keep In Mind Frankenstein”), which sadly I can’t link to online but you should check them out if you like quieter stuff a la Iron & Wine. Here’s “Sleepdriving” off of their earlier album:
I’d lazily describe The Most Serene Republic as “chamber pop” because I’m too tired to come up with anything better for this Ontario band with a penchant for lush instrumentation:
I’ve been nagged into doing a music recommendations post so this is what you get for now.