The Cheeseblog

Sweet pumpkin pie, it’s November!

Things that are not Perfect In Every Way (r) about the new apartment:

a) There’s bird poop on my window and how will I get it off when the window opens at the top and the bird poop is in the middle?

b) I can’t get my computer monitor far enough away from me so I will soon be blind. But the nearly blind girl on America’s Next Top Model has not yet been eliminated, so maybe I will move on to a rewarding career as a top model, once I am blind.

c) Hooks can be deceiving: they appear so useful and one gets excited about a plethora of them, however what can you really do with hooks but put things on them that hang? And how many things that hang do YOU have? Because I only have a few and now they’re all hanging and I have other things that don’t hang but rather stack, pile, stick and rest and I cannot properly place any of these items because all I have is hooks.

d) The toilet runs. This is not necessarily a bad thing because it means I know I’m in the west end, which will be helpful when I am blind. All the toilets in the west end run. Don’t argue or tell me about your toilet. I have my theories.

e) Holy crap would you people stop driving like there’s free chocolate cake at the south end of Thurlow street? I went there. There’s no cake but there are a lot of crumpled Honda Civics and SUVs.

Things that are P.I.E.W (r) about the new apartment:

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I think the Globe and Mail is trying to kill me.

I want these shoes!!

First, I think I just ate one of my own hairs. Goddamn almond butter.
Second, today is Day 29 of no cheese! OK so on the weekend I had pizza and it had cheese on it but other than that, I have been cheese-free for one month! And boy do I feel fantastic.

Actually, I feel about the same, but I have probably saved about One Million Dollars by not buying cheese and that makes me feel somewhat fantastic. Fantasticesque.

Third, Paul Martin is such a brown-noser. And this picture is so totally fake!

Prime Minister Paul Martin calls U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday to congratulate him on his election victory.

I wonder if PM Martin ever hits himself on the head with his little hammer. I should get one for my desk at work. Some days, it would help to be unconscious and/or concussed.

Hey, you know how when you call a company and they put you through the paces – press 1 for happy, 2 for ass, 3 for I don’t know, 7 to hear a duck quack

(true! I forget the number but years ago on a company’s phone tree you could press 7 to hear a duck quack AND IT REALLY WORKED!)

– and then eventually you get a real, live person and that person helps you?

Today, for the first time, I encountered the “say your choice out loud” school of tele-service. I called telus to find out why my voicemail says “this number doesn’t exist” even though the number works just fine. The phone rang at their end and this automated woman answered and said, in a tone that suggested I was a big bee in her too-tight bonnet,

“OK. Let’s narrow things down a little.”

She told me my options but offered no numbers to press so I sat there for a while, feeling dumb, until she said, with the sweet smell of a burning martyr,

“I didn’t hear your selection.”

We did that for a while until I finally got it. I said, “repairs!” to the telephone (and most of the office, to my cubicle neighbour’s delight) and she replied,

“OK. So you need a repair to your phone. Is is your phone service or another service, like voicemail?” and when I said, “voicemail!” she said, “OK. Is it that you’re an idiot or that we screwed up?” and on we went.

By the time I got to the Real Live Repair Dude and his trusty folder of trouble tickets, I wouldn’t have noticed if he was 2 bullets short of a killing spree; he sounded as smooth and pleasant as a slice of St. Andre triple cream brie. Who knew an automated voice could be so confrontational? She was totally goading me into beating her senseless with my bare fists and I won’t be held responsible for what happens to her.

So yeah, our voicemail is broken. It could be fixed in 2 or 72 hours. The Real Live Repair Dude said, “would you like us to call you at home and give you a status update? If you’re not there, we could leave you a message.”
I said, “…”
He agreed (albeit silently) that it was a stupid thing to say and we called it a done deal.

The combination of watching “Pimp My Ride” on Friday night, then cleaning for two days non-stop and staying up way too late considering and then moving into a new place with so many hooks it’s a wonder there are no fishermen beating down the door has got me saying, about everything that’s good, “It’s off the hook!” You have been warned.