I.A.M. Musing About…

So, this year seemed to have been bound and determined to close things off in the same way it carried things out the whole damned year, only in microcosm. Keep in mind the following all took place in the past 24 hours, and I’m not making anything up.

This afternoon I went to an office on Granville Island where a book awaits being picked up by me. It’s about new business marketing models taking into account the New Economy, yet is based on good, old-fashioned common sense. Sadly, they’re closed until January 5. Damn. Entirely my fault that I drove all the way across town without calling them first to make sure they were open, as was the lack of parking in the area (odd, considering this ought to be the ‘slack time’ for shopping there…), so there we are. I didn’t get a parking ticket for the expired parking meter, so that’s something.

On the way home, I stop in to check my lottery ticket, with unsuccessful results. Typical; the odds are against me, after all.

BANG! Right into the Mother Corp’s brand-new building!

Arrive home to discover that a parcel was delivered! But, it was while I’m out, so it’s not there and I’ll have to get it at the local post office depot tomorrow, after 13:00. Damn.

I try to match the bathroom tile – as part of the on-going project – at _____ Plumbing & Drainage, which seems a reasonable conclusion, given its name. The response therein was surprisingly blunt: “We’re a plumbing outfit!” Yes, well, this is bathroom tile, so… “First I’ve heard of that. We sell toilets!” The tiles are from a bathroom wall, which is the same room, so… “Bah!” Sorry to have wasted my your time.

Off to ____ Tile at the other end of my little town of Burnaby. The reaction from the girl behind the counter (and, trust me, this was a 20-year-old girl): “Wow this seems really old… did you buy that more than two years ago?” Attempting to control my hysterical laughter at the idea tile more than two-years-old could be considered “really old”, I merely reply “yes,” and don’t further explain to her that the socks and shorts I’m wearing are more than two years old. The chances are good that this tile is actually so old that her parents were not yet in puberty at the time it was purchased. Turns out that there will be a replacement available in plain, un-patterned, glossy, tile roughly matching the colour of the tiles we have now. Good, although not ideal. Fine, really, and certainly far easier than cleaning all the grout and mortar off the existing tiles without breaking them.

Driving around accomplishing all these tasks, however, was a bit of a task itself: the roads all a mess of directionless confusion. Why; especially as it’s the Tuesday between Christmas & New Year’s? Not a bloody clue! Getting to the second place about tile was a bit of a pain if you missed it initially, as you can only get into their parking lot from the one direction; once you’ve passed it, you enter the land of ‘you can’t get there from here’ road design. Mostly the roads were empty, except when attempting to go north through Willingdon and Canada Way, which was just as backed up past BCIT as it usually is. “Why am I doing this?” was a frequent refrain in the vehicle through most of this.

The radio is on, providing some tidbits of insanity:

• yesterday’s mystery metal box, found in a residential refrigerator by the home-owner was blown-up by the  Vancouver Police yesterday and they haven’t yet announced what was inside it;
  • ADDED LATER: apparently it was a box containing explosive material because it’s traditional to leave stuff that blows up in your mother’s fridge at Holiday Time, and police are seeking the house owner’s son;
• this morning a street guy stole a BMW following a verbal altercation with the driver, two people are dragged hanging on to the vehicle’s doors, as he reverses up one of Vancouver’s busiest streets and smashes it into the side of the CBC building which is so new it hasn’t even had that corner studio used yet (more details here, and also some photos here);
• the traffic report includes word of a police incident in Port Coquitlam where a plane had to make an emergency landing in the middle of Reeves Street near Gate’s Park
  • ADDED LATER: the emergency landing was in a soccer field, it was caused by fuel line problems; no-one was hurt but someone did have to move out of his way; and
• anyone deciding to travel to the USA aren’t allowed to bring anything with them into the aircraft cabin other than the clothes they’re standing-up in, because we’re all presumed to be guilty of consorting with terrorists (and yesterday the entire computer system at the airport was down for most of the day)

So… “2009: the year of WTF?!?!” in microcosm. What shall 2010 bring?

I’m terrified at the prospect, frankly.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 5:04 pm and is filed under BLOG-O-RAMA, NEWS, Personal, THINKINESS, Vancouver, rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.