There’s even an emoji for that: 💯

Prompted by my unemployment: I may begin operating on vampire time when gathering groceries from Jim Pattison’s Pantry. It’s not that I’m intimidated by my celery stalker: I find her insufferable to such an extent that I’m willing to go out in weather like this under the cover of night to avoid interacting with her:

I HAVE A PASSION FOR AVOIDING PEOPLE.

Should I be wrong about her level of commitment as Jim Pattison’s lackey and encounter her working at Save On Foods after dusk, I’ll challenge her to a celery rib duel. The goal is to unsettle her just enough that she starts avoiding me.

Not having a job means I’ve had a lot of time to daydream about revenge. It also means I’ll have more time to write blog posts. Get ready to be inundated by the chronicles of Squaremeat: marinated in feelings and peppered with thoughts.

As of today, my opa is officially a centenarian! This special event brought me to the mainland on Thursday evening.

With Zoée out with a cold, Marianne, notable Overcook chef and accomplished word tile setter, opened her home to me. I’d brought my Switch and the Joy-Con attachments in case Marianne wanted to play Overcooked again, but she was keen on an old-fashioned Scrabble battle.

Whoo. The world hasn’t seen a more one-sided battle since the War on Drugs. I got the 50-point bonus by emptying my rack on my third turn. My score for that round was 69. Nice. Then it happened again, a few turns later. Not so nice for Marianne. For about 7 rounds, though, she was on a commendable 18-point play streak. Unfortunately, this wasn’t what she needed to save herself from being trounced by the underdog!

372 vs 248

Typically, I’m just about as lethal as the adorable shiv I bought in my shopping spree at the Japanese dollar store, Daiso.

The last time I shopped at a Daiso was in Japan in 2013. I was blown away by how much better the selection was than that of the quintessential Canadian dollar store. I made it a side mission to visit Daiso before my hair appointment on Friday; however, it opened an hour and a half later than the shopping complex in which it was located, giving me a measly 45 minutes to decide on which size and style storage boxes I needed and how many sheets of sparkly stickers to buy. I wasted no time in deciding which flavour Pocky to buy: Matcha and Cookies n’ Cream.

With freshly done hair, I was looking more put-together than usual, ready for a classy evening at the Vancouver Art Gallery with this hooker:

This is Jamie. I’ve known him for 15 years (here’s what he looked like back then). He makes latch hook rugs: you can read about him and see his works here.

We were drawn to the art gallery by Otani Workshop’s sculptures as well as the various seating options throughout the gallery, on which we could chill and chat. The exhibition was called Monsters in My Head. Here’s a trio of monsters:

This guy was my pick when Jamie asked me which piece in the room was my favourite. Jamie was more partial to the shelves on which the sculptures were being displayed. I didn’t take pictures of the display setups because I wasn’t as enchanted by them. They were admittedly clever, combining unconventional ways of mounting boards of wood horizontally, such as putting one end through a stepladder while suspending the other by a rope attached to the top of said ladder.

The next exhibition was provided by, not a potter, but a guy who hoards it. Jamie was quick to declare that pottery “didn’t get him fired up.”

Not even this baby?

If I could have taken any piece from the room home, it would’ve been that baby.

That creepy baby has been through a firing temperature of at least 1200 degrees. It hasn’t been to hell: it’s been to pre-hell.

After this picture was taken, Jamie rode off into the sunset to the Architecture Foundation of British Columbia, where one of his rugs was being shown, while I did a lap around the gift shop before returning to Marianne’s.

That evening, Marianne was hosting a book club, and I was crashing it. The Pocky I’d bought earlier in the day was my peace offering. Like Jamie and Marianne, I’d met all but one person in this book club via MEC. Even then, the person I hadn’t met previously had also worked for MEC, just not concurrently.

I can’t think of many workplaces with as many employees with shared leisure activities. At our core, most of us are granola outdoor types and have connected to one another in a cult-like way. Mountain Equipment Cult. In attendance was published author, Taryn of happiestoudoors.ca.

When I asked the book club members for book recommendations, noting that I had a preference for Non-Fiction Adventure books, Taryn showed me that she’d written a blog post recommending 25 (!!!) books in that genre.

Four months of unemployment isn’t going to get me through a reading list that long: I’d have to give up sleep, too. Can anyone help me narrow down these options?

Visiting Opa to wish him a happy birthday may have been the purpose of my trip, but it was also the shortest. At his age, Opa finds interacting with people even more taxing than I do. Our visits are usually limited to 90 minutes, and about half of that time ends up being dedicated to family gossip. I am sure if Opa was just being cheeky when he referred to my brother as what’s-his-name. At any rate, there’s still some wisdom to take away from this remark: life is too short to wait for people to change and reach out.

Even when you’re 100.