Lower than lowbrow.

It’s official: I’m a regular at Canadian Tire. I guess this is because I no longer have instant access to tools, 99% of which belonged to Yann. I’m surrounded by tools every day at work, so on my days off, my hands start shaking from withdrawal. I am slowly building my tool collection: pink, 75% smaller, and 200% more expensive, of course. Stainless steel and black rubber are so unladylike, ew.

My latest trip to obtain made-in-Asia goods from Canadian Tire was for L-brackets and screws to reinforce my fancy bedside table:

Ok, I lied: it isn’t fancy.

It’s a workaround for Ikea’s MALM bed frame, which has poorly thought-out full-length drawers on the sides. If I were to use a regular four-legged bedside table, I wouldn’t have access to my pants unless I move the table! And I can’t be Porky Pigging it. I also need a table to support my nightly hydration operation.

When I moved into my current place, this table had to be cut shorter because it blocked the bedroom door from swinging open. I can’t access the drawers on the other side of the bed either as that side is against the wall, which gives you an idea of how dinky my place is.

Now that I’d made this table functional and sturdy with the addition of L-brackets, I could concern myself with its presentation.

While I have a tool deficiency, I have a sizable collection of art supplies, including a bottle of pouring medium that I’d bought years ago for one project. If you know what you’re doing, the result can be something like this:

By u/MEKYAS23

I’d painted the wood black. My next plan was to turn the top into a psychedelic pool of colours!

Instead, I turned it into a puddle of despair. I’d tilted and rotated the surface to get even coverage. When this wasn’t happening, I poured more paint into the gaps. It got progressively uglier as I attempted to correct the mistakes.

Continue reading “Lower than lowbrow.”

We Need to Talk About Kevin.

So, Gator and I did.

I have highlighted the important part of that exchange.

Kevin was our boss at Auto Wizards. For more than a year, most of my blog posts revolved around this absolute madman. Having Kevin as a first boss gave me warped ideas about professional boundaries. For Gator to claim that he wasn’t so bad makes me concerned about her history of bosses.

Exhibit A:

Continue reading “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”

Chummy chump.

I’ve been informed that there has been an increase in yellow-haired people roaming in this city. But because I am currently the only yellow-haired friend my friends have, they’ve been telling me about their sightings to make sure I know I’m not special.

It’s true, though. My decision to go yellow was influenced by a drag queen anyway. Soon to be incorporated in my wardrobe: a vinyl beret.

My cyst mentor asked me yesterday how my lump was feeling and gave it a name: Calvin. It took three hours for that joke to hit me. I was in the middle of mashing my pizza dough when I went, “HOHOHO. CALVIN. I GET IT NOW. CALF-IN!” I promptly texted him to congratulate him on a pun well done.

The doctor’s office never got back to me with the results of my x-ray, so I called the office on Monday. I called through the video relay service, which I am not a fan of, because I feel the need to make myself look somewhat presentable. I know these interpreters are professionals, but they also people I potentially know in real life. More than that, to use this service, I need to be somewhere with a reliable internet connection, which rules out making calls at work during my break.

I had to wait until my day off to learn of Calvin’s origins.

Continue reading “Chummy chump.”

More venerable than even an award-winning trophy designer.

More things than just my hair are now yellow. I realized yesterday morning that my hair had stained my grey-blue pillowcase.

Hard to see, but clearly not pee.

I’ve included a picture in case you were imagining something resembling a piss stain.

So, this is a definite drawback to having bright-coloured hair. Randomly staining things isn’t supposed to be a part of the regular human experience.

The best thing about having yellow hair has been the attention. I’ve mainly been in a good mood lately, enabling me to receive attention well. People drop what they’re doing to stare, including children during recess. Two weeks ago, as I walked by an elementary school, a group of kids ran up to the fence and collectively gawked. A girl with her two front teeth missing jumped up and down, waved at me, and said, “I like your hair!”

Had she not said that, though, I’d have assumed they were star-struck; after all, I am the Local Legend for the Strava segment that ends in front of that school. That means I have the most efforts on the given segment over the past 90 days. Hardly an impressive feat when the segment happens to lie along your daily commute, but the kids definitely don’t know this.

“When were you going to tell us about your secret Strava?!” –Zack

Continue reading “More venerable than even an award-winning trophy designer.”