Today, I passed a fine afternoon on campus with Meaghan Beattie, during which I singularly failed to repair relations between her Windows 2000 computer and the UBC wireless network, though not for lack of hours of half-determined effort. The trip to campus - first in quite a long while - included meanderings to the law school for purposes of returning borrowed materials to Ian and to Staples, for purposes of trying to get wireless networking hardware that didn't induce massive system instability. Seeing Meaghan was certainly pleasant, in the new surroundings of new abode - the most peripheral of all Fairview units. Amusingly, one of her roommates - Micheal Lions - was a classmate of Nick Sayeg's in Queensland. We can all now consider his greetings to have been passed along.For all the drama and sadness that has sometimes pervaded my relationship with Meaghan, she is certainly a fun person with whom to spend time. Her generally upbeat character offset any worries I had about returning to Fairview: a place I now primarily associate with unwanted encounters with my thuggish former roommates and their troglodytic friends.
As if to prove that things can move backwards as well as forwards, I have work at Staples tomorrow. Being back in the mindless business of selling warranties as of 9:45am tomorrow is a less than thrilling prospect. Particularly, since I've learned how a few more of the things I've been telling customers about products are blatant lies. For instance, the contrast ratio and response time ratings on LCD monitors, are about as dodgy as page-per-minute speeds for inkjet printers. The only product I can sell with confidence is the Canon A510 camera, which I have been enjoying immensely. That despite the near-impossibility of getting sharp photos in low light without submitting your subject to the indignity of a flash.
I left too late from Meaghan's place in Fairview, hurrying to try to meet my family for dinner at the Foundation Lounge. My tardy traverse of Broadway was slowed appreciably when the 99 B-Line bus I was on hit a car that was pulling out, relieving it of the driver's side mirror. A few minutes of anxiousness and paperwork followed, before we resumed out eastward motion. In the end, dinner was had at a mediocre Greek/Italian pizza place, prior to driving over to Granville Island to see our Fringe Festival Show.
While extremely popular (I am sure more people saw this one performance of The TJ Dawe Set than saw all performances of Portia, My Love put together), the show was neither exceedingly commendable nor worthy of extensive criticism. A one-man act founded on observational humour, hyperbole, and self-deprecation, it certainly got a good response from the audience. Personally, I tend to find performances based on the awkward and somewhat uncomprehending narrator to be tiresome at times, though this was a well accomplished example of that genre.
Two days into the MSN ban, I've been doing a fairly good job of channeling the reflex that would normally have sent me online elsewhere. I think it's a good trend to perpetuate. I'd rather be an MSN Astrid, whose infrequent and brief appearances in instant messaging fora are accompanied by pleased surprise, than just another endless lurker, kept wedded to a keyboard by a constant low-level chatter.
There are now six more days before my departure party and ten more days before I actually depart. It saddens me to realize that I will probably not see Kate during that time.
1 Comments
You should probably be careful not to insult people who you talk to on MSN. While I understand what you mean about refocusing life away from such forms of communication, there is a fine distinction between swearing off a technology and swearing off a group of friends.
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