Gillianic Tendencies

So I got over that cold/flu/horrible thing eventually. It was bad. I didn’t leave my apartment for 6 days (Dad brought me groceries or I’d have starved). It’s okay now.

I decided while sick that being sick without cable tv is really fucking boring. Fine, I could download stuff, but when you’re really miserable it takes energy to decide what to download and type it in and then wait a while and then remember what you just downloaded. Cable is already there so you can sit there motionless except for your thumb on the remote and your runny nose and have your mind blanked out by senseless crap. I never realized the importance of senseless televised crap in my life until now.

Shaw gave me some crazy deal and I got an HDTV PVR and a whole lot of channels, so now my boob tube is high-res. Don’t see any point to it for most shows, but at least it’s guaranteed widescreen. I’ve had arguments with friends over whether the Canadian tv channels should just show everything in 16:9 (that’s new, anyways) even though there are still people around with old CRT televisions. I say yes, but then it’s easy to say yes when your tv is 42″ diagonally.

Randomly, here’s a list of indie bands with the word “whale” in their name:

• Freelance Whales
• Black Whales
• Noah and the Whale
• Or, the Whale
• Said the Whale
• Sleep Whale

And those are just the ones from my music collection. If I were a decent musician I’d have a band and name it

• LIKE “%Whale%”

But nobody would come to our concerts except a few bored database administrators.

Head colds tend to put all that depressing contemplation on hold, because it hurts to think and all you really care about is getting better.

On top of my body betraying me, my apartment seems to be collapsing before my eyes. Dad emailed me something about my having only so many appliances that could break, but that’s just tempting fate, isn’t it? Currently my fridge is borked. It made a loud noise last night and then stopped making any noise at all. Now where am I going to put my beer? It’s not cold enough outside for that.

Last week’s domestic torment was the intercom, which had never worked and was only an issue because I know a few people (/me points at Dad) who don’t have cell phones and it was annoying having to wait for them in the foyer, even though the decor is cool:

After a bunch of phone calls and arguing with the building manager an electrician arrived and wired up the telephone plug in my living room, which had no wires connected to it at all and that might’ve been the problem, eh. The building manager had originally told me it was something for Telus to fix, and ironically I used up all my daytime cell phone minutes for the month (on my Telus cell phone) talking to Telus tech support’s toll-free line. I’m now planning on getting a landline as it’s a requirement for work anyways, but I haven’t set that up because it would cost a lot to make the call. It would also cost a chunk to call Telus Mobility to change my iPhone plan to more daytime minutes.

Yes, I could just go to an office or store of a telecommunications company to get this dealt with except OH DEAR GOD I’M SICK.

And my medicine of choice is self-pity, since that doesn’t require refrigeration.

I can be miserable in two ways.

In the first way, it’s sort of a passive moroseness. Apathetic, even. Life sucks and I don’t really care, so I sit about and watch lots of TV and let myself eat all the french fries I want. That was most of my year in Kelowna.

The second way is much more acute. It’s a tense, almost anxious suffering. Life sucks and I’m not that interested in food and my coping mechanism is to go out and get some exercise. This is where I am now.

This latter method of melancholic rumination is much more productive, I find.

I gave up cable TV when I moved here because I watched way too much of it in Kelowna, an amount that my mother wouldn’t let me watch growing up, which is a sign right there. I cancelled my Tivo subscription, which was way more difficult than it should have been but it’s done. I am without television and it’s all rather odd. My apartment is very quiet and it feels lonely, even with my cat filling the space with the sound of her snoring.

I think I was using television like a security blanket, and now it’s gone and I have only myself to contend with. Unless I leave the apartment, so there’s the gym, and friends of course.

I have no idea where I was going with this blog post. My inner torment does not lead easily to concluding paragraphs.

1. Pizza and beer
2. Sleep
3. Dim sum
4. Pizza and beer
5. Sleep
6. Dim sum
7. Pizza

It’s a tedious life.