Friday, August 18th

Listened to: Snow Patrol, A Mixed CD, Madly Off in all Directions, Freestyle, and I really wanted to listen to the Bloc Party Remix album in my car. I listened to it in a store, had my mind blown, decided to price shop at other stores (which I never do) and couldn't find the album again. Stupid town.

Delivered to: 27

Conversations had: 4

Moments of Awkwardness: 2

Judgments Passed: 4

Things Learnt: There's a guy that gets shot out of a cannon for his job and he feels lucky. Feel that his job is the best job ever. I lean towards thinking otherwise.

Walking through automatic sliding doors while putting on sunglasses makes me feel uber-cool.

Memorable Moments: I was walking down this long hallway to get back to my car after deliveries and at the other end were these two old ladies with carts coming at me. It was kind of creepy because they were taking up the whole hallway and I felt like they were some type of gang. But they were just sweet, old ladies.

I finished lunch early because the morning was slow so I figured the afternoon would be busy, so I wanted to get an early start. Problem with this is that I got to the apartment with the bathroom too early and I did not need to use it. It was a few minutes later that my body started to signal me of the dire need it was in. I couldn't use the bathroom back at delivery homebase, because everybody uses the same bathroom and it would not be a kind thing to do to the others, if you know what I mean. So, I went right away to my other workplace, which has multiple bathrooms and I used the one less travelled. And that made all the difference. In my bowels. I felt a lot better. Seriously.

New Books Purchased: Two. One called Winkie, about a Teddy Bear the wills itself a live and then gets arrested for being a terrorist and one called You Shall Know our Velocity. I'm not sure what it's about but I like it.

Monday, August 21st

I did no deliveries on this day. I took the day off as I was in Vancouver with my wife, dropping her off as she was on her way to Mexico for school. I will write some stats about this trip.

Listened to: Mostly David Gray, some Ben Lee as well. Oh, and Jack Johnson (Booorrrrringgg) and somebody that sounded like they really wanted to be Ben Harper. And a girl named...Betsy...Michelle...Tatum. I don't know.

Whales watched: 4

Overpriced Meals Eaten: 4 (2 each)

Outdoor Concerts Attended: 1, featuring Mr. David Gray. One of the best live performers out there. Believe it!

Sea Otters I wish I had Stolen: 3, for the purposes of playing with. The Vancouver Aquarium (where we were, if you hadn't figured that out) frowns on people jumping into the tank, I would imagine. I've never asked.

Time Spent on or waiting for Transit: 2 hours or so.

Walking done: Enough to make my lower back somewhat pinched.

Things Learnt: I can never live in Vancouver

Memorable Moments: The whole thing really. The aquarium, the concert, spending time with my wife's brother and sister-in-law. But I have to say that the weirdest thing was running into pretty much one of the only people that we know in Vancouver as we were getting off the Sky train and he was getting on, at a different door. Vancouver's big. That's not supposed to happen. But it was cool. We got coffee and chatted. He got an Iced Coffee (coffee that is cold but not sweetened for the lay person) even though he doesn't like coffee. There were too many choices and choked at the last second. It was gross. Even I didn't like it and I thoroughly enjoy coffee. It was a good time, though. I will miss my wife. I am currently missing my wife.

Amount of Pot Smoke Smelled: A Buttload.

Friday, August 11th

Listened to: Ani Difranco, Stereophonics, Madly off in all Directions, Delerious

Delivered to: 24

Conversations had: Only 1

Moments of Awkwardness: 3

Judgments Passed: 2

Things Learnt: Japan has a word, not a phrase, but one word for death from overwork. Itn happens enough in Japan that they have a word for it. I wrote it down but now I can't read it.

The body is an amazing thing. My Friday route is very much the same every week. On top of all of my deliveries being the same from week to week, I also have lunch at the same place, at the same time, usually with a friend of mine, when he shows up or can make it. I have now found that my body has been trained now. Right after lunch, which I finish at 2 (I have a lot of time to waste on Fridays), I go to an apartment building to deliver to two or three people. In the lobby, there is a washroom. My body now knows that I go to this washroom after I have done my deliveries and begins to signal to me that it is nearing time to, for lack of a better word, evacuate. This is just interesting to me. The body can be trained. I guess it's not much of a surprise considering meal times, amounts of exercise a person is used to, yada yada yada. Anyway, it was neat to me.

Memorable Moments: As I arrived at my work place, I thought I walked passed someone in the parking lot that I knew. They were backing out of their spot. So I waved at them, twice. The second time I waved, they smiled and waved back. It was then that I noticed it was not someone that I knew. It was nice of him to smile and wave though. I felt dumb.

I heard a song title on the radio called "Kitten vs. Pegasus" which is the coolest name I think I've ever heard. Except for one other title about a kitten but I think that was an album title my friend Ian told me about. The Pegasus would totally win that battle, by the way. No contest.

There is a house I deliver to every now and then that has been near impossible to get back to the door. The foliage and greenery was just growing like mad and taking over the whole place. Today, I had to go there and, to my surprise, I found that everything had been cut and trimmed. It looked great. When I got to the back though, there were squishy, moldy apricots all over the ground. While stepping on rotten fruit is not as bad as poo on your shoe, it's still undesirable. So, I had to tiptoe (literally) through this rotten apricot maze just to get this delivery to it's recipient. Then tiptoe back out. I wish I could recommend to people that they clean their yard. But, alas.

On-purpose Moments of Jerkiness: 3. I decided that I would attempt to be a jerk today. I don't know why. Probably because I'm usually not and thought that it might be fun. I wasn't going to be a jerk to co-workers or people that I delivered to. It was to be to others. It was hard. And completely against what I believe and against my nature. But I did three things, from my point of view. I probably didn't do any. I think I purposefully drove really slow for a bit, or turned out of somewhere a long while after I could have. I also opened window blinds that were closed and counted that. Savage. Anyway, I won't do this again but neat experiment.

Thursday, August 10th

Listened to: David Gray, Freestyle, Ani Difranco

Delivered to: 6

Conversations had: 0

Moments of Awkwardness: 0

Judgments Passed: 2

Things Learnt: Nada

Memorable Moments: For some reason, I decided that I wanted to get up to my delivery on the seventh floor of an apartment building quickly. So, I went to the stairwell, an enclosed gray slab of concrete that smelled funny. And I sprinted up the stairs. By the time I got to floor six, I nearly passed out and fell back down two flights. But I stopped running and walked up the last flight. Then I trotted back down, after the delivery.

Messages Received that I am out of Shape: 2 or 3

Wednesday, August 9th

Listened to: Freestyle, Snow Patrol

Delivered to: 2

Conversations had: 0 (surprise, surprise)

Moments of Awkwardness: 1 (involving care workers and bugging them on their break. I always feel bad about that.)

Things Learnt: Canadians favorite driving song (song that one listens to while driving) is "Summer of '69" by Canada's own Bryan (not Ryan) Adams.

I am ashamed of my country for their favorite driving song. "Life is a Highway" by a good Canadian boy didn't even make the list of top seven. Who even does a top seven list?

Memorable Moments: Sadly, what I just talked about.

Time spent thinking of other better driving songs: the rest of my route

Songs Discovered that are better for driving to: about a bazillion

Tuesday, August 8th

I have taken a break, a very long one. I hadn't been recording any of the details of this job for a long time but I decided to once again. So, once again, I will update my blog.

Listened to: Freestyle, Dashboard Confessional, Keane (the new one!), Snow Patrol

Delivered to: 10

Kilometres Driven: 96

Conversations had: 1

Moments of Awkwardness: 2

Judgments Passed on Others: 0 (a good start for this new phase of blogging)

Things Learnt: The band Arrested Development sued the TV station that put Arrested Development on the air for name rights or some garbage like that. This is a hard situation because "Mr. Wendall" and "Everyday People" and "Tennesee" were all good songs. But the TV show was pretty much the funniest show ever. The best cast. I'm unsure as to who I would side with. So, like all important decisions in life, I will choose whatever side Malcolm Jamal Warner chooses. Such is life.

Memorable Moments: This one was from last Friday but it was so cool, I had to post it for this day. I have mentioned that I have sighted quasi-celebrities from our local radio stations and whatnot. Today, there was a REAL celeb spotting. I didn't notice them though. It was my friend Ian. We were sitting in Subway with Brent and Ian says, "Hey, it's Shane Doan (or some other roughly equivocal expression)." So I turned and saw this huge guy with a kid and they were getting sandwiches. Apparently, he's some sort of hockey player. I would not want to skate against the man, that's all I can say.

There was this house I delivered to in the outskirts of town. It was a fairly dry climate and the lawn had not been watered for awhile. As I stepped beside the lawn, I swear the entire thing just seemed to jump in different directions and scatter. It was full of grasshoppers, more than I've ever seen. It was kind of cool. Then, on my way out, the lawn jumped again but there were some that were headed in the direction of my car. And Battlecat had his windows open. So, I spent the next little while driving down the highway with a few grasshoppers staring at me in my rear view mirror and hopping to different exotic locales within my car. I stopped at a gas station and shooed them all out. But now they're all seperated from their families. Sucks to be them.

Tears Shed: One single, dramatic tear down the right side of my face, which I wiped off and gave to the grasshopper as a symbol of my sorrow. He just jumped away, forsaking my gift. Monster.