29 October 2004

Some people at work today were quite suprised by my Hallowe'en costume. People who never watch Buffy didn't get it. People who did watch it liked it.

And yes, I will have to wait for my hair to grow back out.

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26 October 2004

It works. Quite well, in fact. For the first time in ages, I actually got some work done on a story, here at home.

This is not to say that I'm through with cafes. They still have their place. When I have the time. But two free hours really is two free hours now. Not one hour of potential writing after another hour of transit time two ways to an acceptable working environment.

No promises. But you might actually see new material out of me soon. I mean that. About the no promises.

And the new material.

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25 October 2004

As regards viable space...

Largely due to the ceaseless efforts of my wife, the basement is quickly becoming that space I've needed. All of the right conditions. Dimly lit. The right music, brought there now across a short-range FM signal from the computer upstairs and an iTunes library of just the right kind of stuff.

I just sat down there tonight, for a few minutes, in that incandescent orange glow that twenty year-old lamps seem to emit no matter how new the bulb, with my back to the cement wall, and listened. This was it. This was perfect.

And it works great for storage, too.

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24 October 2004

This photo was taken over six years ago. I took it as an experimental self-portrait, and eventually used it in an assignment.

It strikes me with particular relevance today. I could not have known at the time what it might come to mean. Like so many other things.


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Uncomfortable for no clear reason. Like sleeping on an unfamiliar bed but being completely unable to put your finger on what's so different about it.

Feeling sort of compressed. Every sound in this too-dense air seems to cuff me on the ear. And yet I can't say I'm angry. At anything. Anyone.

The ambiguity of it all just might be what kills me the most today.

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18 October 2004

Growing up in a biosphere
no respect for bad weather...


-The Tragically Hip, Titanic Terrarium



Tonight I drove halfway across town through this mess to purchase two items: peanut satay sauce, and rabbit food.

No respect indeed.

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Everything outside is a slightly orange glow this morning. The thick blanket of snow that arrived two days ago still looks miraculously untouched, as though the whole neighbourhood had been in stasis since then. It still sits on the branches of trees, stacked in straight vertical columns, precariously balanced with that beautiful implication of fragility.

It is the streetlights which add the orange tinge, but one gets the sense that it's all white, anyway. Contrasted against the black of the sky. The most beautiful 6am I've seen in a long time.

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13 October 2004

A NOTE TO MY CO-WORKERS, FROM THEIR QA GUY

So you think I'm a tightass. You think I'm ridiculously picky. Yes, you're right. I am. And there's a reason for that. Because our biggest customer, our bread and butter, is just as picky. They are going to notice. They are going to notice your little mistakes and mercilessly mar our record for them. And if they see our work slip back to the way it was under the last inspector that we fired, they'll drop us like the dead weight that we will have become.

They are going to notice. Which means I have to notice. I can't let your mistakes get past me. I can't let it go "just this once." Everything I send out the door has to be either approved by the customer, or perfect. Period.

And yes, I think I'm justified in feeling a little underappreciated. I didn't ask for this position; I was thrust into it in a battlefield promotion, probably underqualified, definitely uncertain, and given far more responsibility than I thought I was ready for with no tangible benefits to myself. Many of you heard me say it, when news of the head inspector's resignation reached us (the one who turned our reputation around for the better), that I couldn't handle it. But I gave it a go, and I'm still going.

And now, here I am, the Inspector General, making it up as I go along. I am the Gatekeeper. I decide what our customers think of us. I decide what is good enough and what isn't. In short, I make us look good. I make all of you look good. And in a sense, I am all that stands between all of you and the line at the employment office.

Don't get me wrong. I would never say your jobs are easy, and I sure as hell wouldn't say that I could do better. This is difficult stuff. But if it didn't have to be right, it would be easy. It is not easy. Because it really does have to be right. That is not some personal preference of mine, or some childish vindictive streak in me. It is simply the reality of the situation. I don't have it out for you. And I'm really just the messenger, sent to show you exactly where the bar is set.

I know as well as you do how unforgiving that standard is. But it isn't my standard. It isn't my choice. And don't think that I enjoy bringing your work back to you and telling you that it doesn't make the cut. I don't. Imagine how it makes me feel to go up to someone who's been doing this for twenty years or more, and telling them that they made a mistake, that I know better than they do. Just imagine that.

Imagine, too, what it feels like to be the last man back, to know that if I don't notice a problem, there's no one standing between me and the proverbial executioner, no one to tell me when I've slipped up. Knowing that I alone will answer for anything that gets past me. Just a few months ago I was the shipper. I didn't even know how to read a micrometer. Now I'm expected to see the details a journeyman machinist might miss.

Tell me you wouldn't be just a little intimidated.

And now you call me a nazi for doing my job well. I must say it's a little disheartening. To do the best I can, to actually do a good job, and be berated for it. Stop it. You're not helping. If I come to you and tell you your work needs a little touching up, I'm not insulting your ability; I'm saving your ass.

Put yourself in my shoes for a moment, and you'll find yourself running like hell. Believe me when I say I'm just barely holding it together. And if you and I both drop the ball, I answer for it, not you.

So back off.

We clear?

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12 October 2004

Why is it that water out of a bathroom faucet is always colder and tastes better than water out of the kitchen faucet?

Anyone know?

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8 October 2004

Today I got a phone call from an old friend named Heather. We, together with 36 other people, spent a summer in Russia in 1994, doing a work project through an interdenominational youth missions organization. That was ten years ago. I remember speaking with Heather a few years back, but I haven't seen anyone, with the exception of two people, from that team since the project happened. I was fifteen years old.

Sure makes me wonder how we all turned out. It's intriguing, and fascinating, and actually kind of scary. I flipped through my photo album from that trip after I got off the phone, and saw some of the faces, read some of the captions. The nicknames in particular struck me as funny. Cookie. Piglet. Half-the-man-Sam. I believe I was commonly called "Bacon", since I was the only Canadian on the team.

How interesting.

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6 October 2004

Finally, after nine days or so, one of the crabs decided to show himself. I found Stump on top of the sand tonight, at the back of the tank, though there's still no sign of Begbie. He's done this before, I know, and he was ok. But it worries me.

But they got a veritable feast. Fresh banana, some lettuce, commercial food, and a dab of peanut butter (which is one of their favourites). Perhaps the good food will bring Begbie out as well. I don't know.

Still worried. But good news nonetheless.

Tomorrow is my birthday. And I have to get up in five hours to go to work and inspect parts. It still amazes me that only three or four months ago I was merely the shipper in the shop. Now, I'm the 'Inspector General', to borrow a phrase from Gogol, and I get to go up to guys who have been machining parts for decades and tell them that they've done it wrong. I've never run a machine in my life. And yet, they give me suprisingly little grief.

I'm tired. I don't want to go to work tomorrow. Waah.

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