The Chair…

I’ve tried a lot of office chairs. I’ve tried gaming chairs, kneeling chairs. I had an ill-fated stint with an exercise ball chair. I’ve tried ergonomic ones, cheap ones, expensive ones, tall ones, short ones, narrow ones, wide ones. I’ve tried foot stools, foot rests, the ones with the leg rests that fold out (that was a much better idea in theory than it ever worked in practice).

They all suck.

The next foray is to maybe consider one of those three-tiered chairs for fidgety sitters (hello!) but given I don’t particularly want to drop five hundred dollars on yet another chair I’m not sure will work for me. For now, I’ll just suffer with my rapidly degrading office chair and see if I can get another year out of it.

Pretty sure my next step is just to somehow design my own by frankensteining several chair models together.

Cardboard…

Timmies has introduced paper (pressed cardboard, whatever, semantics) lids to replace their plastic ones. I’m all for the environmental impact reduction but the feel…

Egads, it’s an unpleasant experience. The mouth feel on these little buggers is… yick.

I’m going to assume these were probably cheaper than bioplastics, and given that they also degrade when they come into contact with heat, probably made them less than ideal for hot beverages but still…

They’re gross, and I’m still debating if I love my mouth more than I love the planet.

Skipped…

Was there a reason there was no post last Friday? Nope.

I just forgot to schedule one.

Normally I schedule a few weeks in advance, if I have enough ideas in the queue to have them all drafted beforehand. Other times, you get what I come up with spur of the moment. I will sometimes shuffle things around as the mood takes me and reschedule certain ones for timing, relevancy and occasionally deleting one or two I found asinine or not really nearly as funny, pertinent or interesting as it seemed to be at the time.

And then, I sometimes forget to go back and add something else to that timeslot.

So I shuffled around stuff for the next two weeks while I make my excuses here. I don’t like to be inconsistent, but there you have it.

I’m, tragically, still only human.

So suck it, AI generated bullshit. Also the flower in the thumbnail is a forget me not, as a joke to myself.

Strategic Planning…

I’ve been through a ton of strategic planning exercises in my career. 9+ reorgs, too many planning exercises to count, budget exercises, etc.

Sometimes I feel like I’m included in them because it’s nearly impossible for me to be surprised by anything. Nothing in these shocks me, nothing is off the table, and if something is, it probably isn’t going to be a particularly successful endeavor anyway. I don’t get ruffled, I don’t get invested, and I have the uncanny knack of being brutally pragmatic while still highlighting all the human elements and variables.

In short, I’m a blunt asshole who will blatantly point out the elephant in the room specifically to talk about it and I don’t really give a shit if it makes someone uncomfortable.

No one likes it, which is why I think they rely on me to do it. It’s easier to make me the bad guy than actually do it properly themselves.

We’ll just file this somewhere in the middle of my villain origin story.

Exercise Tracker…

My watch is helpful, some of the time. It reminds me to get up from my desk, it reminds me I haven’t gotten enough exercise for the day, which is fine and well, assuming of course I don’t just ignore it completely and let it keep harassing me.

I need something stronger than a mute though. I need a ‘fuck off I’m sick’ mode or something like that.

Because nothing says ‘I want to work out’ like a god damn sinus cold.

No…

The Spawnlet has recently entered the inevitable ‘no’ phase. While he thinks it’s hilarious, it’s often confusing because it sounds the same as when he’s saying nose (though that one is easier to figure out by the imperious little finger stabbing you in the nose during that one). He’s not super consistent about it, but he does clearly say ‘no’ in the correct context.

Unfortunately that context is either when trying to wipe his nose, or when he yells it and then proceeds to laugh like a little maniac.

We’d probably be far more effective getting our message across if he wasn’t freaking adorable wagging his finger around telling himself no (before proceeding to do whatever he was going to do anyway).

Scam calls…

I can understand how some of these links look legit, but I really don’t understand the prevalence that people fall for these scams.

Do you really think the police are going to give you a heads up before they show up to arrest you? CRA is not texting you. Are you expecting a package? If not, why would you click that link? If you are, check your email for updates, not your text messages.

And then there are the ones that don’t even look like they’re trying. “Hey, I deposited your money.” Ok, so fuck off. No part of this would ever require me clicking on a link from a random text message.

Block it, and move on.

Limitations…

We took the kids to the gymnastics gym for a drop in the other day, and of course, they loved it. The Elder Spawn tried to copy her friends who had taken lessons, she ran all over and played and the Spawnlet climbed on absolutely everything until he found a giant exercise ball and claimed it, running all over and chasing it.

At one point, while following a parently distance behind the Elder Spawn, we got to the top of a tumbling mat, where instinctively I rocked back and forth on my heels, ready to do a cartwheel, round off back handspr.. until my brain came to a screeching halt and said to me ‘YOU’RE ALMOST FORTY, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ARE YOU THINKING?”.

Apparently my muscle memory forgets that we are not in our late teens/ early twenties anymore, and things don’t bend, move and whatever the way they used to.

Thankfully I think fast enough to avoid a crisis. And possibly traction.

If you relate to this, it’s probably time for you to get your cholesterol checked. Also, how are those progressives making you feel? So much better than actually needing bifocals, like an *old* person, right?

Watercolours…

I’ve always really liked the idea of being able to paint with watercolours.

Difficultly level; I have no idea what I’m doing, I have no particular aptitude for painting and I’m not a particularly patient person.

Will that stop me? Not in the slightest. I’ve got some cheap paints, some water colour paper, youtube and a can-do attitude.

Time to make some mediocre bookmarks!

Occult Objects…

My local library had a gem of a fun find; a book full of historical objects and artefacts which are all, allegedly, cursed, bewitched, ensorcelled, ill omened, bespelled or otherwise up to no good.

As you can imagine, I was as giddy as a kid in a candy store.

I may need to actually pick up my own copy given that while I’m never one to write in a book (and if you do annotate your books this way, just know that we cannot be friends and you are banned from my library), I am quite free with my use of post-it notes to mark pages and keep notes of things I’d like to reference later.

And the library staff look at you funny if you return a book that looks like a neon hedgehog.