The Ikea Gong Show

For those of you who are unaware, Ikea is a store. A BIG store, check it out. It’s filled mainly with furniture, home décor, bedding, kitchen supplies and various other items that go along with. The premise of Ikea, and this is genius, is that most of their items do not come assembled and the packaging lacks any and all embellishments; therefore, they’re able to charge less for their items than say Leon’s, or Sears, or whatever… The Ikea style is very northern European, as in Sweden. Thus the store motto, “Ikea, Swedish for common sense” I like their stuff, the styles are simple, practical, and often colourful, where everywhere else the same items are fussy, and sporting horrible patterns and colours or lack there of. Beige, taupe, off white, and ecru are NOT colours. Only at Ikea can you get a florescent orange, or better yet, chartreuse dish brush with a suction cup on the end so you can stand it up in the sink to dry, or as I like to do, stick it to the side of the sink or the window so it’s floating horizontal. Although you do have to pick and choose, some things are just plain cheap. Shelves made with press wood and stuff.

Anyways, my point, I’m getting to it honest. I was at Ikea recently, and well, I couldn’t just not buy something. There isn’t one on the East Coast, so if one is to find one’s self in an Ikea, you gotta stock up. The only thing I bought was a small wooden box. It was cheap, useful, made of wood and ready for finishing any way I want. I also figured it would be an easy 20 minutes of assembly. SOOO……..NOT..…TRUE….. I have since discovered the complexities of assembling said small wooden box. The instructions…well, there are none, just some simple drawings labeled steps 1 through 6. Let me just start by saying that there are far more than 6 steps involved in putting this thing together. It required a Philips head screw driver, a hammer, and engineering degree, and if you were really keen, some carpenters glue.

I did discover while assembling, swearing, throwing a fit, and damning the box to the 6^th circle of hell, that I actually enjoyed putting it together. Anyone witnessing my wee spectacle might disagree, but there was a certain satisfaction to be had in hammering away at the impossibly tiny nails, attempting to screw the screws in straight with the wrong type of screwdriver, and watching the box take shape. It’s a satisfaction that I have been lacking at work and in my everyday life. There is nothing tangible in what I do behind my 3 cubical walls. Nothing with any substance comes out of it. The only thing close to being tangible is the memory stick the size of my pinky finger that has some files on it consisting of boring code and maybe a picture of two of the same boring army montages I see everywhere. Blech! Whoever invented the montage should be shot. They’re awful and everywhere at the same time. I have gone out of my way to create some super graphics that are both appropriate in nature as to what is requested and completely lacking in any layering, blurring, effects, and yet, the powers that be, always…ALWAYS just want a montage. But I digress…

I never did finish the box, I wanted to save it for a rainy day when I had nothing to do, such as today, so that I can savor once again, the enjoyment had by screaming, swearing and cursing a small wooden box, hoping to shame it into submission.

I forgot

Ya, I forgot to blog about the rest of my trip. Did I even mention that I went on a trip? I should re-read my blogs so I stay on top of what I'm doing. I have the memory of a speck of dust and the attention span of a gnat.

Last week, my friend, ex-sister-in-law, and daughter's Aunt, all the same person (S), and I went on a road trip to take my daughter to Ottawa. There my daughter spent a couple days with my mom before her dad drove from Toronto to come pick her up thus saving her from my overbearing mother before it all became horribly tragic.

S and I stayed one day in Ottawa and did some visiting. I think I mentioned that. I saw my friend E and her new babies and my old friend L whom I haven't seen in ages. THEN, the very next day, S and I, got up early, said our goodbyes to my daughter and mother, and headed south east towards Banger, ME to do a little shopping before heading back to NB.

According to Google maps, the trip from Ottawa to Bangor, should have taken roughly 8 hrs, 37 minutes. Maybe if you had a helicopter or other type of miraculous transporting devise able to move you through some sort of time-space continuum. Once we hit Quebec it was all construction and bad driving. By the time we reached the border just south of Sherbrook, Quebec to cross into Vermont at a place that could only be described as the corner of Butt-fuck and you got a purdy mouth, I was about ready to kill someone with my car. S took over driving. The trip through Vermont and NH backroads was beautiful. Truly! I got the short end of the stick driving through Quebec's endless farmland and construction and sheer lack of public washrooms, clearly accessable from the highway. Out of desperation, we peed in a ditch on the side of the highway. It was a stellar moment.

We stopped at a restaurant in the middle of Nowhere, NH and had lunch. It was good but the convenience store gave us the willies, and we hightailed it out of there, absolutely sure we'd seen that exact place in a horror movie, right before the two female travellers are abducted from the side of the road cuz the local gas attendant sabotaged their car when they stopped and they are then locked in a delapitaded hut in the middle of nowhere, where they're tortured and eventually chopped up and used for stewing meat to feed the townspeople.

We got to Bangor about 11 hours later. Sigh! We got a hotel room, and hunkered down for the night. We were done in. Shopped all next day, had the best dinner at Texas Road House, WOW, that place is good, but jeez, the sheer amount of food they stuff in you is insane, then danced our butts off at the club that was part of the hotel (how cool is that?). We headed home Sunday, Fat, hung-over, and completely broke. It was a great trip. :-)

Good Friends and Babies

This is going to be short. I just got back from a road trip to Ottawa. I dropped my daughter off for the summer with her dad and did some visiting. I had to see E, whom I've known my entire life. She just recently had a baby. A second one actually, since the last time I saw her. (I am a terrible friend) Her new daughter is adorable. 6 weeks old. Her son is 2 and very very cute.

Here they are

I am unsure why I can't seem to make one of my own, but someday soon, hopefully! I remain hopeful, but all the hope in the world doesn't make a baby. It sucks! Doesn't help that B is dividing his time between NS and PEI. That also sucks!

All of this house shopping and job leaving and moving stuff is stressing me out. I thought I would be at work feeling all "la te da, I'm almost out of here, nothing's gonna faze me" I was SOOO wrong. I can't wait to get the Fack out of here, and it can't happen soon enough. I'm almost ready to cut the strings early and to hell with my paycheck, they can keep it. I am sitting at work, wasting valuable government resources, time, and money while I blog and I realized what could possibly be the worst moment of my entire week. Are you ready? It's a biggy.....It's only Monday. WHAT? Can you believe it? It feels like I've been here for 20 years at my desk doing nothing at all while my life gets away from me and it hasn't even been 7.5 hours yet. The worst of it is, I have to work the WHOLE week, right through to Friday afternoon at 4:30. I'll keep you posted on the progress, but if the progress stops, it's because I've lost my mind completely.

I think my eye twitch is coming back. I was shopping on the weekend with my friend S and buying stuff I can't afford when it came back. I guess I know my trigger point. LOL

Gotta go, it's 15:00 and I can go for a break. I'm going to get a coffee, it'll make the afternoon go by much faster.

Toodles

Temperary Insantiy

Have you ever followed your gut on a whim, tossed caution to the wind, jumped in head first without testing the waters first, when every other part of you says, "maybe this isn't the best way to go about it".

Guess what? B and I just bought a house in Charlottetown, and we are quitting our jobs and moving to the island. I am going to attempt a business of my own in our new home, and B is going to try and set up his own business providing alternative energy to home owners. Lets outline just how insane this is.

1: We bought a house that is affordable at our current combined salary, of which, we are giving up.
2: Said house is sprawling and over 120 years old, and needs a lot of work and heat...expensive oil heat.
3: I am moving to an island notorious for it's clicky social networks and very unfriendly to "mainlanders" who move there. I know no one there, I will be an outsider.
4: I have NO job, NO money, NO friends, just a big gigantic house in the center of town with a giant mortgage, and a teenager relying on me to provide her with a comfortable and safe life style.

No matter, I'm super exited to go. It's an adventure and something new. When I look around myself at work in my little cubical and see all the other far too familiar cubicles with same walls, same photos of our kids, spouses, cups of pens, post it notes stuck to everything and the same tired bored faces staring blankly at giant computer monitors, or when I walk through the familiar front doors to the building with the same squeaky hinge, or go use the same old bathroom stall for what's probably the millionth time (without the joy of balloons and streamers for being the one millionth customer), I can't help but think how awful it would be, and how depressed I'd be, if I was still here 20 years from now.

I'm giving up Federal Government salary, pension, job security. I could retire from here and live a fairly comfortable existence until that time, but dammit, I don't think I'd survive it emotionally. I'd find myself a hollow empty shell, living day to day like a robot with no ability to think, feel, imagine anything other than what I'm told to. I have nightmares about the mustard coloured, padded walls of my cubical coming in on me.

Well no more, I'm bustin' outta here baby and I'm not looking back!!! Is it worth the risk? Hells ya! And those stuffy islanders that don't like us folks "from away" coming in to their communities and taking their jobs, they can all stuff it, and I'm going to get in everyone's face until they like me and accept me as one of their own. I'll make pies for my neighbours if I have to.

Front of the house

The studio space in our house. NOTE: that's not my furniture. That belongs to the current owner. We don't take possession until Aug 20.

Other side of my studio space.

There's so many more pictures, but I'd be here all day at it. I'll post more once I'm moved in and I have it set up as I want it.

On another note, I just read over my post looking for grammatical and spelling errors, of which I'm sure there are many but I'm not going to correct them, and noticed that the circles on the background start to feel like they are moving around in my peripheral vision, making it difficult to read the post, much in the same way as it is to watch the hockey Night in Canada commentary while trying shield your eyes from the likes of Don Cherry. Bless his Canadian heart but holy jeez he's hard to look at.

Cheers all, I hope you're having a fantastic summer.
McB