1463 - The Freyed Ends of Sanity

This past week has been interesting, at least on a personal level. For perhaps the first time in my life, I was slightly unstable (mentally) early in the week. It hampered my productivity at work, and it prevented me from getting anything done at all during the evenings.

The problem is my changing lifestyle - I have a lot of free time these days. I remember, as recently as the fall, looking forward to Monday evenings. Monday evening was the one time of the week I had to myself. Then, the golf season ended, my friends got busier, and JW got ongoing work. Suddenly, not only were my Monday evenings free, but also Wednesday evenings, Saturdays during the day, chunks of Tuesday, Thursday and Friday evenings, and a small chunk of Sunday. I had too much time and nothing to do - amusing activities had ceased to be so, and my procrastinative (I think I just invented a new word) tendencies soared to new extremes.

Fortunately, I remained in this "funk" for only two days. On Tuesday afternoon, for whatever reason, there was a sudden and dramatic *snap* - a change in feeling, nearly audible, that marked the end of the funk. I've been fine ever since, and I'm still not certain what caused it to end so abruptly. I recall at the time that I was thinking of nothing in particular. Fortunately, such a simple remedy is easy to remember in the event I might need to re-apply it in the future. In fact, the remedy need not be remembered to be followed.

My work week was as chaotic, but for reasons far more tangible. Our company is on the verge of a major growth phase - perhaps we are already in it. The company partners are getting starry-eyed, and there are new opportunities knocking almost every day. One's job description one day might be entirely different the next. Projects are getting shuffled around - I was pulled off one project on Thursday and told I'd be working on some exciting work for X days (yes, they actually said X). Then, Friday morning, I found that X = 0, as I'd been reassigned back to my old project again. It's really too bad, because the exciting work is just that - and it involves little travel. My current project (as of Wednesday and Friday) is likely going to require a bit of travel within the next month. It will have to wait a little while though, as mentally I'm not over the last trip just yet - it was long, hard, stressful work - and long, hard, stressful travel. I wish Seattle was closer to Halifax. If I was going to Boston, it would be a snap - I could drive to Boston faster than I can fly to Seattle, most days.

Outside of work, the week was fairly average. Monday and Tuesday evenings are a bit of a haze - I was still in my funk. I worked on my "new" song a bit more, I did some half-hearted cleaning, and I did a bit of reading. Later on Tuesday, I went to JWs, but it was late when I got there, so we just relaxed for a while before going to sleep. By relax, I mean JW hurriedly finishing up work tasks with me keeping out of the way. It's a bit stressful for me seeing her so busy, but it's even more stressful for her. Still, there is good in all of this, as she seems to be in excellent mental health - it's like she's grabbed on to all of this work, decided to damn well do her very best, and not let anything get in her way. She doesn't have time to think negatively - certainly not as much as she used to.

On Wednesday, JW got some great news about her job. It was great to hear the excitement in her voice - I love to hear her happy like that. I was a bit disappointed when she decided that she'd like to celebrate by taking the evening to herself, but she certainly deserved it - ten times over. I just really wanted to share in the excitement - it sounded fun. Fortunately, TA called in the nick of time with alternative entertainment. I went over to his place, and we watched reality television (great for clearing the overcrowded mind of thought), Jeopardy (great for populating the empty mind with good thought), and finally, South Park (so keenly humourous, that other thought is forced out of the head). In particular, we watched the Mormon episode, which describes the origins of the Mormon religion. I'd heard about it before, but I couldn't have imagined anything even approaching the actual story. It was ludicrous. Give me five minutes, and I'll write up a more compelling religion right now. It will not involve only me, nor will it involve gold plates. Finally, I will not loosely translate the gold plates twice - differently - because I'm not able to remember what I said the first time, the second time. No, wait, actually I will do all of that, because God just told me to. You believe me, right? Of course you do.

I saw JW again on Thursday, after some more half-hearted cleaning. We sat around exchanging stories about the war - at least that's what we would've done had we been to war. Instead, we relaxed, there again being no time to really do anything else.

On Friday, I went over to TA's. AN and AD arrived after the local hockey game. We sat around sipping Scotch and slurping beer. We watched Jeopardy and reality TV, then some miscellaneous garbage, and finally we just listened to music skip on TA's cheap sound system. At the end of the evening, we called two cabs, but only one showed up, so again, I was left to walk home, just as I'd done with JW the last time I'd called a cab from TA's. This time, the walk was much longer, and it was much colder. My legs were nearly frozen when I finally got inside. And what do you do at one-thirty in the morning, tired as sweet fuck, having hardly slept the night before? Why spend an hour on Facebook of course! I'm not sure why I did it, but I did. I finally got to bed at two-thirty.

I didn't get up until noon on Saturday. I really was tired. It felt good to sleep that much, but I was a bit angry that I'd pissed away the entire morning. I showered, shaved and worked on my song a bit, before heading over to JW's.

JW really needed to cook for her lunches for next week, so we went to the grocery store to buy the necessary ingredients. We cooked two different stir-fries, one with chicken and a Thai theme, the other with beef and a Chinese theme. Early on, it became apparent that the cook-off was going to be interesting. JW was stressed about work, and it really manifested itself in her cooking. I felt like I was in the way the entire time - she was rushing around trying to do everything, as she likes to do her cooking a specific way. Even the slightest change to her stressed her out - she even burnt her hands on hot water. It really wasn't safe for her to be cooking that night - she should've been at a massage parlour relaxing. But we made it through, and quite honestly, if it was the stress that made the stir-fry, I might even volunteer to go through the entire ordeal again. The Chinese dish was EXCELLENT - it may have been BETTER than some dishes I've had at restaurants. Supper was delicious and healthy, and I loved it. And what do you do after a healthy supper? You go out to drink and eat nachos.

It was JW's friend's (AC) birthday, and we were invited to Niche, a swanky joint in downtown Halifax. After the stir-fry madness, and a precious few minutes spent relaxing, we bused it down to Niche. Effectively, the place had Jazz music, brain damage, and jell-o pudding pops (don't even try to get that reference - it's taken from two sources, one of which is popular, but the other of which is a reference to a VHS-only golf comedy spoof video from the 80s). It really did have Jazz music. It really did have brain damage, in the form of a girl at the bar. And it really did have jell-o pudding pops, in the form of a solitary tea light that cheapened the birthday cake down to the likes of jell-o pudding.

(Editor's note: text censored) Don't buy a computer at Staples. Don't buy a computer at Staples. Don't put salt in your eyes. Don't put salt in your eyes. Don't put - put salt in your eyes. Put salt in your eyes.

The party was a good time. I had some good laughs, I interacted fairly well, despite being at a table with JW and a tight clique of four friends. The guy sitting next to me works for RIM, but he got drunk before I could ask him how he liked it. In fact, the more liquor he didn't drink, the more he got drunk. AC himself seemed absorbed in something, but occasionally he would burst into laughter. I was surprised to find that his sense of humour was quite low-brow, or at least in the presence of a drunken friend. If my existence had been a bit more pronounced, I think I might've really had some fun with them. Perhaps another time.

On Sunday morning, JW and I got up and had an omlette. We then went to Chapters to look for - you guessed it - frappacinos. Once found and ignored, we proceeded to the books. We spent over an hour breathing in dry air and getting very, very hot. Then, we went as we came, through the main door, bounty in hand. I got a massive book about Mythology for TA, that I'm now considering keeping for myself. I think I might actually find it interesting, as I'd had before the life was sucked out of it by a terrible professor my first year in university. I do like the discount section at Chapters.

After Chapters, I dropped JW off at home and went to my parents' for supper. It was the worst supper ever - dry, tasteless lasagna (we had quite a talk about how Dad says everything is "dry"), tastless garlic bread, and a very poor, Stuperstore-made trifle for dessert. Then, after my parents took turns attacking my hairstyle, we went downstairs to watch golf. I practically slept half of the time - but I stayed awake enough to follow most of what was going on. Phil Mickelson won the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am by five shots.

Well, that's my week. I'm hoping it will warm up this week - maybe I'll get to go outside for a walk with JW - I've been craving the outdoors like her cat craves EVERY BLOODY MEAL.

I'm currently listening to: nothing, because I forgot to put some music on :(

Movies watched this week: most of Shanghai Nights, but I'm not finished yet.