Problem Child

We may have chosen our example child... the one we are overly harsh on without feeling guilty so that we can make an example for the rest of kids...

Let me give you his repetoire thus far... I'll repeat any events that have occurred more than once... this is the order in which they occurred (please keep in mind this is a five day period):

Late for curfew
Missed orientation
Out past curfew
Missed study hours
Late calling in
late for study hours

Now, this may not seem like an exciting list to the untrained eyes...

But when you've only had 5 curfews and two study hours...

OooOoOo boy! I can;t wait for the fireworks!

Exciting!

Well, as it is, right now, we have about 16 hours before university students start moving in to dorm!

Woot woot..

Not to say that I havent enjoyed living up here by myself (for the most part), it hasnt been like owning my own apartment or anything...

I mean, I can't even walk naked from my room to the washroom...

Alas, I'm excited to see what sort of guys that are moving in... I will rule them with an iron fist...

I had my meeting with the Choir Director today... And although I am not directly in control (I am only the VP) the Prez has made it known that I am allowed to rule the choir with an iron fist as well...

Needless to say, there will be a lot of ruling, and iron fists...

I played a really long board game last night... How long it was is not really important... Just be known that it was by far the longest board game I have ever played... Actually, it was the longest i had ever played boardgames, ever... and thats just one game...

My ass hurt so much from sitting for so long...

Ended up being a pretty decent game though... Silly catholics... And for the record, the Lutherans won, without cheating...

I am tired opf meeting already... And I still have more today... Should be interesting...

Todays gripe: Starbucks employees...

I went to starbucks today, and I tried to give them that "what i am about to order is very complex, so get a pen and a cup" look... but they never seem to pick up... Even if I explicitly say "you're gonna wanna write this down"...

My drink: Venti frappaccino blended coffee 1/2 sweet vanilla, 1/2 sweet raspberry, afagatto style with the mocha drizzle...

No one gets it on their first try, ever...

"Umm... you wanted a grande"

"no, a venti"

"umm.. a venti cappacino"

"no... frappaccino"

"Um... let me grab a cup.......... Can you say that aain"

Tiresome... A little...

The Grind

So i'm back in Edmonton... but before I begin my stories, some people take themselves too seriously... everyone knows that right? K good... Back to the story telling!

I'm back in the Chuck, exciting eh?

I've moved all of my stuff into dorm (which was a feat and a half when you consider how much junk I have, but I digress)

The high school students have moved in, well... most of them... They have to be in dorm by 6pm tomorrow, so they will all be here tomorrow, but most of them are here already...

Us RA's are taking bets as to which student will be the 'example'... the person whom we catch doing something they shouldn't be doing, and is sunsequently removed from dorm for... It's easier to enforce rules when the rest of kids know that we're not joking... Mwahahaha... My bets are on the smoker (underage smoking is expressly forbidden)... Not necessarily because of his smoking, but I have a feeling he smokes a lot of pot too...

Rod seems to have bets on the french kid... but he likes boardgames... So I wil fight to keep him in...

The only other person I have heard talk on thus far has been the Brazillian... Those freaky Brazillians... ah ha ha... He seems to have an eau de sluttyness to him...

Being reunited with MattyK was worth the 4 months of agony...

Well... maybe not, but its good to have him around again... We've gone a few misadventures so far, and we seem to have him convinced that Emo is the place to be... He even went to value village to buy some emo clothing... Now if we could only get him to put on the black nail polish he purchased... I promise I'll show the pictures once I get them...

I'll end todays post with the following- Why you dont shop at walmart - reason number 456:

I urg you to go to walmart in the next few days, and take note of the class (or lack thereof) of the walmart patrons...

1/5 are pregnant teenagers and 23/30 people in walmart are redneck trailer trash to the max...

That means if you are in walmart, and you are not pregnant, you have a 1/30 chance of not being a redneck trailer trash whore...

Sorry if this is a little harsh, but unless you are with twenty-nine of your most trailer trashy biznitches...

well... you get the idea...

Gnight

Delivery? Who ordered the truckload of stupid?

okay, I must say, I think I'm done for the summer (okay, i know I still have one shift left... but after that I'm done for sure)...

Im going to try to make it brief as I have to sleep (wont be doing much of that in the next few days! yay!!!)

Anyways...

We'll start off with a little incident before work...

After spending the afternoon out with friends, it was time to come home for a nap before work... But wouldn't you know it, there was construction on the only access road to my house... and so we get parked behind some over paid idiot with a handheld stop sign, while other idiots walk around with radios and shovels trying to look like their worth their government salary...

It seems they were trying to move piping... to be more specific, they needed to move about 35 metres of welded together metal piping...

But it turns out they didn't take one thing into consideration...

You see, as the pulled the piping into position (I assume to begin the long process of burying the piping) by dragging it with a tractor thingy, the workers (ha! work!) had one small oversight... They had pulled the pipe across railroad tracks (but only about 1/2 way along the piping)...

did I mention that every friday there is a 410 train...

did I mention that it was 408...

did I mention the train was comming early...

I will admit, it was a little intense for a second, as they frantically tried to wave down the train with their hand held stop signs (apparently fully loaded freight trains are the kryptonite for the magical powers of the sign)... But when the train didnt derail, and noone was injured, you had better believe I laughed... I laughed a lot!!!

Moving on to tonights shift...

I arrived and started my shift as usual, only to find out that in a matter of minutes we had a huge infestation of bugs crawling under the back door...

It was like a scene from a bad 70's horror movie...

Took a full can of raid to get rid of them all... so the customers are going to get supider, cuz I dont think youre supposed to spray raid around food stuffs, unless of course you want to risk brain damage...

But my true story for the night comes from the mouth of a crackhead...

You see, she comes in, and shes got coke bug marks all over her face...

(for those that dont know, coke bugs are the sensation of bugs crawling under youre skin that you get after repeat usage of cocaine... some people, while on their coke bug trip will pick at their skin in an attempt to 'catch' the bugs, leaving scabs which are 'unique' to say the least)

She starts telling me her life story...

When she gets to the part where her son beat her up, she blacked out and woke up in her car in the back yard, along with all of her posessions... From thence she went on to 'kill every small animal she could catch' until her ex husband called the cops on her and they restrained and detained her...

So... I'm think 'holy fuck... get her out of the store now'...

And then she starts tweaking... for those of you whom have never seen a cokehead tweak, you're truely missing out on one of the finer points of nature... I managed to coax her out the door with the offer of a free cigarette and a reminder that you can;t smoke next to the pumps... adding that I think she should smoke on her way home...

I dont know if she made it home, but I am sure she didnt come back last night... and for that i am truely grateful...

Oh... and I just found out now, 6 weeks after I asked when I needed to be back, and 4 weeks after I booked my plane ticket, that I need to be back in edmonton hours before my plane arrives...

I attribute this to my lazy and annoying (sort of) boss for the year... So I guess that means I'm not going to be giving her a chance to start things over new this year, eh?

Winding Down

So as it stands now, there are two shifts over two days before my summer career comes to a screetching halt...

Well, hopefully not a screetching halt... I wouldn't want to screw things up too bad lest I wish not for employment over x-mas break...

But I digress...

As I look back upon my summer, and the things I've learned, I can't help but think I've had a good summer (dont worry everyone, this entire post wont be lovey-dovey so you can continue to read)

First and foremost, I learned that people are able to bring stupid by the bucketfull. I cannot help but think that if the percentage of outragously stupid people / customers in our store genuinely reflects that of the general population, then there is a very high possibility that i have some very VERY stupid friends... And what really scares me is that I don't see [m] any of my friends as being very stupid at all... Which means I am, in fact, desensitized to their stupidity...

Oh woe is me, I know the great evil of the world, but I lack the discernment to rid it from my personal life...

On a side note, if any of you would like to come forward as being keenly inept, I would be much obliged...

Second... getting drunk and making out with friends is bad... very bad... on the plus side I'm in another province now... perhaps distance can restore... we'll see...

Third did I mention the stupid people... Oh my word!

Honestly, if I didnt have a mind like a sieve, you would all be long tired of my posts, and I would have most likely have one of the most actively posted blogs on the net...

But alas, I am probibly the worst person at remembering things, and it is only when I take notes at work that I can remember many of my stories (no seriously, I have taken notes on most occasions... so as to allow the stories to be as unindulged as possible... Although i think the time the old lady took a swim in the puddle of gasoline gets a little bit better every time I tell it...)

But, since I've bored you all with my long look back post, I'll get to what you're really here for... Stupid people...

Okay, so a peeve of mine is when people don;t tip the gas jockey... Now, I'm not saying that everytime we're out pumping gas, but if we spend 5 minutes in the blaring sun wearing a thick teflon coated petrocan standard shirt washing all the oddly shaped windows on your car (and going out of our way to wash the bird poop off of the roof of your car) followed by a few minutes of checking and topping off your oil, followed by 5 minutes of checking the pressure of your tires, ensuring they are in the desired range for the make of the tires, and then equilizing them... throw me a goddamn bone!

Especially if you are driving a newer model sports car, are purchasing super premium fuel, and appear to be a physically fit semi-middleaged adult.

Here's a note for all of you that don;t know. When a gas station charges an extra few cents for fuel, you are paying to offset the cost of having an additional person on staff to man the full serve station... And we do not see a single cent of it personally...

Our goal is to provide people who are unable to pump their own gas with the fuel they need to go about their daily lives (unable covers the physically unfit, the untrained, and those whom have other tasks to complete- such as making phone calls or completeing paperwork, etc)

We do the other tasks (changing oil, washing windows, checking tires, fetching items from the store) not because it is required, but because we have a spare time between the start and the finish of the gas pumping in which we aim to make for a better experience for you, in the hopes that the added effort will garnish us some addition income...

Sadly, it doesn't...

Well, rarely it does...

I get the same lady that comes in all the time, and she always tips... usually its a dollar or so, but some days, if her windows are shinning extra well, or her oil needs a little bit of topping, she'll find an extra loonie or two to add to the pot...

And trust me, when I see this lady, I drop everything I am doing to run and help her... A few dollars buys her some premo service...

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I was doing a really good job of getting the windows on a larger truck, when I overheard the conversation happening on the inside of the vehicle

"I bet you he expects a tip"

"screw him, he's already getting 0.04 a litre..."

Trust me, my well manicured squeegeeing (I get comments on how I handle the squeegee like a master) turned into complete shambles...

By the time I was finshed, three of the windows looked like japanese terrace farming arials, and I went out of my way to ensure that I couldn't quite get the big gob of bird shit off the back window (fancy that)...

The only thing that kept me from going the way of the peeved chef was that i think they had the advantage of watching me as I tried to pee in their gas tank.

Long story short, if a gas station attendant offers the services but you aren't willing to pay for them, politely refuse, otherwise, go to self serve and wash your own windows...

And as a side note... Even if I were packeting the 4 cents our station charges for full service... on a $10 purchase, that is 40 cents (on days where prices are low)... 40 cents for 10 minutes work = $2.40 an hour...

Look at my bank account go!!!

on the Boat

Well... since I've been gone for an entire week, I figured I would update you on what I have been up to (it's totally worth reading to the end, I might even through in a moral message at the end to surprise you... probibly not... it's a lot of work to think up a moral message... but I might, so youll have to keep reading to find out)...

I ended up going on my third mission trip of the year... This one was a little different though (not just because I had to spend $700 to go on it... the others were both free) but this one involved spending 7 days in a boat (sort of... I'll explain in a bit) with complete strangers...

Before I'll start my story, let me introduce you to the cast of characters:

Katty: Our faithful leader, recently seperated from her husband, but still seeingly perky as ever... tendancy to drop the f-bomb which is a refreshing change from the regular trip leader type...

Harry: Our captain, and a lover of seafood, very reserved (with a few exceptions)

Kirbster: Friend from university, and only member of the crew whom I was previously aquianted, currently a summer leader, but is participating as a crew member rather than leader (remember, Katty is the leader)

Keebler: DCO for the church that heads the mission to the west coast that I was a part of... he's a patriotic american... and he laughs like a keebler elf...

Gramma-D: The oldest member of our group, we called her Gramma-Death due to her innane ability to sneak up from behind during card games and slaughter every other player (usually she finished with at least double the score of second place)...

Woodchuck: Husband of Maid-Marion... most interesting fact... he grows trees in his spare time... yes folks, trees...

Maid-Marion: Wife of Woodchuck... Was the "praise God for this wonderful stuff" member of the group... You know the type... thats so lovey dovey christian that you just want to puke!!! Otherwise quite pleasant...

Chatty: Words cannot express how painful it was travelling with her stories... I'll explain more later, but I'll just say otherwise okay when she wasnt punishing us with a rendition of "on my last mission trip I"

There we have it... on with the sotries...

I went out to P'ville (on Van. Isl., and is the location of the mssion HQ) Three of my friends and one aquantance (regan, kirb, noelle and linden) were staying at the church... Linden kirb and rea were there, so we had a few nights of almost drunken debauchery... except linden...

We ended up putting mattresses on the roof of the church and sleeping outside... it was interesting...

Anyways...

Satuday morning we started our trek out to Port hardy (the place where our boat would meet us...) we picked our team up on the way (they all arrived through different airports or at different times and were at different hotels and such... you know how it is)...

The first thing I noticed was that we had a few chatty members... but it didnt matter to me too much, as some people talk when they are nervous... I cant say im not guilty every once in a while....

We arrived at the boat... a ~50 foot yaught converted to sleep 9 people... We unpacked made up sleeping arrangements (I got to snugle with Keebler for the duration of the trip... much to his dismay)...

Itw as when we set out that I realised that Chatty really like to tell stories... long stories... stories with no point... and she was a bad story teller... and she repeated the same stories over and over... and she repeated them almost exactly the same... did I mention that they had no point whatsoever?

an example, if I may...

Say me and kirby are talking about a restaurant that we like and Chatty overhears... she wil cut us off midsentance and add the following:

"I remember when I went to kazahkstan with.... umm... some people from my church in Boulder, which is 45 minutes away from denver, or at least i used to be back before they... um... both started growing at sucha... umm... large rate, now they take about an hour and a half because of all the traffic, well anyways we were um... in croatia for a layover, and I had checked into my hotel early so we spent most of the day walking around exploring the city and we had... umm... gotten hungry and we were looking for a place to eat... we felt really bad because we knew that we could probibly afford any restaurant there, but there were obviously a lot of nationals who were going to be going hungry that night... all the people were so skinny it was kinda sad but we knew we couldn't help them all, we ended up finding this really fancy restaurant on the main drag and I was thinking about getting the lobster, but the service was so good and they recomended the cheese steak... it was so good, it was just a large slice of cheese breaded and pan fried and served like a piece of steak... it reminded me of........"

And she would go on and on and on and on...

In fact one time, I was asked a specific question about my experience with Air France, and she cut me off mid sentance to tell us about Air Transat and about how the service used to be so much better... and after talking non stop for several minutes, she turned to me and asked "so what were you going to say about Air France"

I honestly didnt remember... neither did the person who asked the question... I made up some story about how much I loved the swordfish they served when we flew from yaounde to paris (well... I didnt make it up.... but I know its not what we were going to talk about)...

Anyways... We ended up getting into the village we were staying at for the majourity of the week... I had a lot of lovely experiences, but I'll just share a few as I am getting tired of typing already...

Because the village is not on the ocean (its up a river) we have to travel by water taxi up the river, leaving our yaught behind and billeting in the home of one of the members of the community...

There was a funeral in the village, and I ended up being on of the pallbearers... It was kind of interesting... The funeral was done (well music anyways) in Kwak'wala... which just so happens to be the language of my of my forefathers (yes... Im half native btw)...

This got me entirely interested in my heritage, and im thinking hardcore about getting a related tattoo... I'll tell you more as I make more decisions...

Anyways... We ran a small kids camp (small for two reasons 1: the community is only 90 people and 2: the family of the deceased asked us to do the kids programm at the last moment (to provide distraction for the kids and allow time for the parents to grieve) which didn't allow us to advertise it very much...)

regardless, ended up having huge amounts of fun running around with kids... Yes, I have come to terms with the fact I enjoy playing with kids now... its been a long slow process...

Not too keen on the baby thing though, yet...

Anyways... A few days went by and we did a bunch of stuff (includeing potlucks, dinners and worship services)... I ended up meeting a lady named Flora who worked with my great great grandma back in the 30's...

Anyways... now comes the fun part!

On our last day, we got to chillax out on the open ocean in our yaught...

We started off by shallow water fishing... I proved my heritage by pulling vast amounts of fish... much more vast than anyone else... This was followed by treks through the sea fog into channels that were barely wider than the boat (it was 4m deep and 15 wide at one point)...

We finally headed out into the straight of the Queen Charlottes... as soon as we hit open water, the fog cleared... It was a solid wall blocking the view of the mountains completely... We found a nice little area, and took turns with the fishing poles trying our hand at some dee water fishing...

To our surprise, sopme whales started surfacing in our fogless area (about 500m-1km away) with the sound of the spout contained within the fog bank... allowing it to ring out with crystal clarity...

After an hour or so of basking in the sun enjoyin gthe sound of the whales, we decided to head in... So we head to Sointula, but in transit we come upon a pod of dolphins... I kid you not we had 10 dolphins playing in the wake of our boat... jumping and splashing and turning and spouting...

Im so tired of typing now... so if I feel like it, Ill add more later... There are a lot more and a lot of details I can still add...

Enter the Sandman

So my second shift of training ended up being not near as bad...

She finished in just under 3 hours, which is leaps and bounds beyond her performance the night before...

I actually ended up getting quite a few magazines... Including the new Adbusters, blender, and cosmo (I finally found out what 4 gyno emergencies I should know about... so if I ever have a tampon or a condom lodged in my vagina, I'll know what to do...)

But asides from that, I had a very despicable person come through...

Well... I think this particular sort of person is terrible... but others may disagree...

Anyways...

They come up to the counter with a loaf of bread, a 1L jug of milk, and ask for a pack of cigarettes...

I announce the total... He starts counting nickels and dimes...

not enough...

"how much is it, just the milk and the cigarettes?"

I take off the bread, announce the new total... he recounts the money (I have no idea why he had to recount it... its not like there were gonna be a bunch more coin to pay with...

the he asks "how much for jsut the cigarettes"

I take off the milk, announce the price...

He pays for the pack of smoke...

And then he buys a lighter... (we have matches for free but he wanted a lighter)...

This man was wearing a weding ring... And most likely had kids who would be eating dry imitation frosted flakes the next morning (and probibly again for lunch as they would have no bread for sandwhiches)...

I wanted to scold him...

"FOR SHAME, SIR!!!"

But I didn't... im beginning to be quite apathetic... Emphesize the word pathetic...

I swear this job is not good for learning to care about people...

Now it seems whenever a lady comes in and talks to me for 20 minutes about how her husband beats her, I'm thinking for most of the conversation "he's obviously not hitting you hard enough if you keep going back to him"...

Seriously... They have helplines and shelters and restraining orders for people like this...

I mean, my job is stressful enough as it is... I don't need to be thinking "what if she goes and hangs herself tonight, and i could have prevented it"

Thats it, I resolve to never ask a person how their day is from now on...

I also refuse to answer if people ask how my day is, lest they feel obligated to tell me about their day without my request for such information...

Done and done