October 16, 2005

catalytic

it's been a weird-ass couple of days.

but first, a small recap of earlier this week:
- Claudia revealed that she'd been playing Six Degrees of Gerald, which is awesome but mostly horrifying (in an ego-boost-tastic way).
- Had a phone conversation with Siraz in which he nudged me towards saying yes to Control.
- Joblink Dave had a dream with me in it.
- I talked with someone who wasn't really a friend in highschool, but is becoming more of one, and she somehow managed to take my disparate interests and skills and fuse them into a career (socially sustainable HR consulting) which sounds doable and exciting.
- I spoke to Naf on the phone.
- The 7 statements meme exploded on my LJ friends page, which led to some interesting insight on how I'm seen and how I see other people.
- Along those lines, Butterscotch Superman is an awesome descriptor.

Now, for some Braun-Fu:
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
______
Thursday was marked by the Money Order Fiasco, in which I managed to lose and then find $1300 in money orders, with the help of one of the pastors at the Lutheran Centre and an anonymous person who saw me drop them from the 3rd floor of GSAB, and returned them to the bank. It was a scary fucking hour, retracing my steps and trying desperately to catch a glimpse of the envelope on the background of leaves, until I gave up and trudged back to the bank.
Devoid of any feeling, wondering what the hell I was going to do about my now-missing $1300, I trudged back to the CIBC in the village, only to find that some anonymous benefactor had returned them. I went weak in the knees. I almost jumped the counter and hugged the teller.

It was relief on a seismic scale.

Two absolute strangers, one of whom ended her conversation and put off whatever she was doing to help me find the envelope, and another who returned the envelope and refused to provide any contact information to the bank tellers. I'm still sort of surprised, in a good way.

Friday wasn't at all what I was expecting - I had planned on going to class, then Exec Committee, and then working on EA stuff and my distance ed course before making an appearance chez Hicks and then going home.
Started off the day with buying large Toblerones with which to thank the Rescuers of Thursday. Ended up missing them both entirely, and leaving notes with respective secretaries. Exec Meeting was blissfully uneventful. Ended up wandering around the SUB with Jackie post AMS-birthday-cupcakepalooza, buying a leather cuff, and then taking the bus downtown together, conversing the entire time, parting at Granville Station, as I got off to catch a Skytrain.
After returning a shirt and recieving a phone call, I went home, prepared to gird my loins and do battle with Canada Customs about some sort of $352 charge levied on my free iPod. It turned out that it was assessed at $352, so I had to cough up roughly $60 (GST, PST, and an $8 Express Postage Handling Fee, which is nine kinds of BS),which is still stupid, but since I had to sell the thing the next day, I figured "what the hell" and paid it. Went home, downloaded comics and didn't do much. Apparently missed an epic desk crawl.

Saturday's plan: sell iPod, go swimming, hole up in office and work, go drinking.
Most of it went well, I sold the iPod (yes, Brie, I sold it for far more than I should have, but if people can't be arsed to look up that there's a new one out and that my resale should've been about $70 lower, then it's not my fault... right?) then beelined to the bank (for obvious reasons).

I didn't go swimming, and I didn't get nearly as much work done as I would've liked (see also: 64-person list meme on the LJ), and I missed the closing of the campus LDB by twenty minutes, so I had to make a detour to the one on 4th and Alma. Ran into Britt and Hurley, with whom I ended up buying SoCo, Coke, Colts, and limes before walking with them back to Hurley's place upon which I kept going to Drew's party.

I didn't hang out with Hurley in high school; we sat next to each other in Info Tech 11, and he dated someone in the mini in the year ahead of me, so we'd garner a nod in passing, or a micro-conversation at parties, but it was good to catch up with him and have the same conversation that people who've left somewhere (high school, college, working at an office, etc) have: where you talk about who's doing what now, and how weird it is to be "Dave, who plays poker."

It's not like it matters, but: Britt, I approve. ;)

Drew (and his party) were delightful. Got horribly drunk and a little high, argued that eight pairs of shoes doesn't merit a collection, was confused by girls, probably confused some girls, offended Nate, and ended up walking back to Rob's at about 3am. Apparently, me and Rob walk too damn fast, because Eurassia and Jordie showed up a bunch later and were... less than pleased with us.

On the walk back, though, I had a good, long talk with Rob about a lot of things that I don't entirely remember, but by the end of the whole thing, I felt a lot more sure of stuff than I had for a good long while.

_______
The upshot of it all?

I walked home from the bus stop in the rain, headphones on, listening to the New Pornographers, being pleased.
It's been too long.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

So which number am I?

Matt

PhotoDiarist said...

I wish I was 1/100th as productive as you. My entire week can often be summed up in a 250 word essay, and that word count includes articles such as 'the'

Well done on the iPod sale, and cool new gadgets - that tiny amp looks nifty. Make sure you update on whether it stands up to your expectations and $$$.

Anonymous said...

OMG was it a kinky dream? Would Dave be cheating on his BF?

Gina

Anonymous said...

hah, it totally matters. i'm glad you approve.
it was fun running into you. spiced up the liquor store experience. especially since we were play bickering and then poof, you were standing right behind me. scared the crap out of me.

Anonymous said...

Gerald why aren't you on MSN when I want to talk to you? Haha.

Are you coming to Buck a beaker on Friday?

PhotoDiarist said...

Your new ipod - did you buy it on Apple.ca with the student discount? The 60GB ipod was $519 regular, $495 student rate on apple.ca, then they REDUCED the price when they introduced this new model of 60GB... so the student rate is now $474... crazy.

Gerald said...

indeed I did, Chris.

It came to $540.36 altogether.