sunday, monday, tuesday

sunday:

picking up the keys to the apartment took a while but was quite exciting as the apartment is awesome, shopping for cleaning products was a drag because there are too many options, and after all that we were tired and hungry. we went downtown for a great thai lunch that would have burned me uncomfortably if my lips hadn't already been scalded the night before. we returned "home" (until we're sleeping in the new pad) for a short nap, then went back to our apartment to do some more shopping. then pg got to cleaning (the apartment might have been handed over in a clean state, but not clean enough for her) while i settled myself on the couch in the foyer with a cup of starbucks, my kindle and more traditional greek music than i really needed. it took three of the up to four hours we'd been warned about for the ikea delivery boys to arrive, during which i was passed by a number of friendly neighbours. i'm totally into tim powers - on stranger tides.

the delivery itself was quick and pleasant.

we were going to put the furniture together, but ikea didn't send us a screwdriver. at 9pm on a sunday evening there were a couple of weirdos on the metro, who made us uncomfortable. when we arrived home we sat down to chat with my uncle and in spite of our intentions being to be brief, he kept going for a long time and we were tired.

---monday:

there's something magical about a beautifully sunny morning when the temperature's hovering around freezing point. by the time i decided to stop to put on my "tuque" my kindle was like a brick of ice and holding it between my legs was a mistake.

most of monday was spent in meetings, i've been informed that the company will be providing me with a phone* and that hydro quebec doesn't want my money yet**, i'm apparently pretty good at performing jira and svn training, and in a super-awkward moment my laptop battery died in the middle of a presentation.

after performing for a promotional video, i skipped across to the metro to pick up pg and introduce her to the office. our secretary then took us to walmart where i developed a headache from excess shopping, palpitations from having my credit card rejected (i'm overdrawn, apparently) and frozen hands from taking too long to pack the mini cooper. we had to put the top down to fit everything in. i'm not sure how many degrees it wasn't. those heated seats? bloody BRILLIANT. i sat on my hands half the way to the apartment.

after dropping off the stuff we got a ride home, just in time to catch my uncle and cousin having a major fight. that would be repeated at the dinner table tonight.

* i'll take an android, please! also, the timing couldn't be better because my phone bill came and it turns out the fido lady was wrong, my phone is not open to all of canada and my airtime in toronto cost a small fortune :(

** you need an SIN for everything here. even though i'm able to rent an apartment, i can't get a phone call through to the electricity company without one so i can't inform them that they need to make me a customer. huh.

my aunt got back from australia and regaled us with tales (some weird, and some incredibly sad) when my uncle wasn't being a nuisance (mostly by shouting at the dog for being excited that she's back), and then we were treated to our fido account, which pg and i chased with itunes setup issues (in retrospect, we should have signed up over a secure connection) and a really silly argument about logging out of gmail on a cellphone.

my brain was buggered by the time i went to bed.

---tuesday:

i woke up to the alarm going off, so i automatically turned off the heating and jumped in the shower before there'd be nothing but cold water. then i remembered that nobody's been willing to fix it because the alarm hasn't gone off during the day, so i turned it back on and hoped that the problem would resume :P

we discovered later that someone had been in our room at some stage and opened our window, which explains the chilly morning quite well.

i had vega one again this morning - i've been very good about drinking it once a day. i don't know if i'm doing something wrong, but each day it gets more and more difficult to consume, and leaves me feeling a bit ill. i'm disappointed, and i can't tell if it's the vega itself or if there's some other element at play.

it was three below when i left the house, and this morning was just as fine as yesterday's. i caught the bus to the metro, and there was so much traffic that it took about twice as long as walking would have, but it was a good opportunity to read and i wasn't in much of a hurry.

*** TMI WARNING ***
i rushed into the restroom when i arrived at the office, and chose an available urinal. another man walked right behind me on his way to the next one, and that made me uncomfortable enough to not be able to pee. he must suffer from shy bladder syndrome too, because the two of us stood there for quite a long silence before i eventually gave up and left.
*** TMI WARNING ***

i learned about bulk editing jira cases, and accidentally flooded the bosses inbox with hundreds of alert mails :$
after training the shy console junkie to use the new system (i barely had to explain anything) i spent the day struggling to get a stored procedure running on mysql. it turned out (and was a heck of a mission to discover) that the problem wasn't my procedure and it wasn't mysql, it was the phpmyadmin interface and the php version the website is running, so i had to convert all the logic to php and run it directly. so much for a security layer :S

the good part of the day:

i enjoyed great success with the svn in the morning, and was totally satisfied with the final product of the day. hooray! the ceo called me up on skype, and i haven't spoken to him since he told me that i'm hired: it's nice to be appreciated.

then i left to meet pg at the apartment. there, not so much of a success. the screwdriver she bought was of, let's be kind, inferior quality and had stripped by the time she got most of the first chair on its legs. then we had a long Talk about the fact that she's not comfortable asking my family for things. for anything.

---*sigh*

and they think she doesn't want any help from them (or that she doesn't like them) because they don't realize that she's *that* shy, and she's uncomfortable with the fact that their ideas of helping and her ideas of helping are different enough that she'd rather go it alone than make them uncomfortable by being really specific.

and *i* know that if she'd just explain things, my aunt at least would be totally understanding. and *i* can't explain things because then pg gets upset, so we can't win.

gods, people can be complicated :S

---i finally got my pay from my now-previous employers, and received two months together so i'm up more than usual. but my credit status is still overdrawn, and i'm kinda stuck for sorting that out from over here so i can't even draw cash :(

we arrived home for a delicious dinner with family friends which would have been a fantastically fun evening if it hadn't been marred by a drunken uncle who argued with everyone about anything and invested himself so heavily into belittling his son that my cousin and aunt eventually both got up and left the table.

let's just say that there were some moments that made me feel like i was a kid dealing with my own father; i couldn't even bring myself to look at him and any response of mine would have been inappropriately offensive. it's not my house, but it's hard to ignore someone who's being a giant asshole.

pg and i double-teamed my shirt for tomorrow with the iron, and i would've done a whole bunch of other things if i didn't feel compelled to keep this journal. including going to bed early. i'm breaking.