I graduated highschool for a reason, and it wasn't to go to college.
October 23, 2007
You know you're from Pembroke when...
A while back I did one of these entries about Ottawa, and… well, I left out that other place I lived. You know, the one I was all unemployed and lazy in. As… opposed to the employed and lazy I am now. But… meh. Corrected and such!
You know you're from Pembroke when:
1. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on hwy 17
2. "Vacation" means going to Ottawa for the weekend
3. You measure distance in hours
4. You know several people who have hit deer more than once
5. You often switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day
6. You use a down comforter in the summer
7. Your grandparents drive at 65 mph through 13 feet of snow during a raging blizzard, without flinching
8. You see people wearing hunting clothes at social events
9. You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked
10. You think of the major food groups as deer meat, fish, and berries
11. You carry jumper cables in your car and your girlfriend knows how to use them
12. There are 7 empty cars running in the parking lot at the Beer Store any given time
13. You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit
14. Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow
15. You think lingerie is tube socks and flannel pajamas
16. You know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and construction.
17. It takes you 3 hours to go to the store for one item even when you're in a rush because you have to stop and talk to everyone in town.
18. You actually understand these jokes…..
Edit: oops.
Apparently, I somehow managed to completely and totally fuck up the html for this entry. Woopsydoodles.
In a relative twist of my usually drama free life–thank God, as if there's one thing I really hate it's familial drama, the mother ended up calling this morning. Not entirely out of the ordinary… she usually picks a bad time to call. So we're doing our usual conversing and whatnot, and talk eventually gets around to a supposed fight I was apparently having with someone. Names were named, but to protect the innocent they won't be named here. It was pretty much asked point blank, though, if the reason said individual hadn't been over lately happened to be because we were fighting/not speaking/whatever. To which I, of course, promptly responded with my own point blank "What the hell?" I mean… it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that it could happen, or could have already happened and I'm just being clueless, but I don't think I'd not be aware of something like that. Which only leads me to one conclusion. The great Pembroke grapevine's working overtime again. Yes, mom. Me working nights plus person working days just happens to mean we're fighting. If anything… not talking might be more appropriate, but only in the sense that neither of us has picked up a phone/opened an IM window in a grand total of *gasps* a whole week. But that's not quite as gossip-worthy, I guess. Hm, if I sold my family on ebay would I get away with it? Someone already tried selling his mother-in-law…
No, this isn't going to be one of those regular occurances wherein I blog about things 2 or more days after they happen, or at quarter after 2 in the morning. Okay, scratch the second one. That one's already a regular occurance. The new years party was awesome. A little dancing, a little alcohol, a lot of good food… all that was missing was a very special person, but unfortunately you just can't drive from BC to here and expect to make any kind of short-term appointments. I did have plenty of fun, though, even if for all the alcohol that was consumed I still felt sober. I dunno what they were serving, but oh my god if it got any more watered down it wouldn't be alcoholic. Aside from that, though, the week I spent in Pembroke, some of which got blogged about already, was… eh… so-so. It was nice spending Christmas and new years with my parents, but I coulda done without the sister-in-law. And probably so could they, to be honest, but eh, 'tis life, no? Only having to work for a day last week and getting paid for the whole week was rockin. And I'll get some nifty little $$$ for not working yesterday either. You can tell I've never actually been employed before… the idea of getting paid to not work amuses me. And… hm. I'm a lot more all over the place with this entry than I'd thought I'd be this early. That's not good. I go wake myself up now.
Surprisingly, it doesn't really involve all too much drinking. I mean, yes there will be the not being sober. But this is me we're talking about. There's apparently some form of a party going on on Sunday, and I fully intend to be there this time. Unlike the last few years, wherein I ended up not going for lack of a date, this year I just don't particularly care. I'm going for the food, dammit. If I meet someone, I do. If not, then hopefully the food's good. And this keyboard is pissing me off, so I'm done. Stupid bloody parents' computer…
As we do every year, a good portion of my family–that being a couple of my aunts, a few cousins, my mom, me, and now my future sister-in-law–took in the traditional Pembroke parade tonight, the first time in a long time they actually held the parade in the evening. Not that it was anything too noteworthy, other than the change in time… there was the occasional interesting float, but for the most part, the parade was a little bit on the meh side. I might have been better off going to the one in Ottawa, but of course, that was last week. And there was only one band to start off the thing. Even when compared to last year's parade, this one was a bit disappointing. Also disappointing, though, was that it was the first or second time my sister-in-law had actually been to one of these, and she's lived here as long as or longer than me. Although, I think it's more disappointing that the first or second one she's ever been to sucked so bad as this one. On the bright side, though, at least the parade's suckage wasn't compounded by a loss of feeling in the extremeties, as most often is the case. I just wish that did something for the actual enjoyment factor.
Okay, so… I can understand older people wanting to at least look younger. But when your 30 years old, or thereabouts, it *probably* isn't a good idea to be trying to make yourself look good with your hair done up in pink elastics. At least, not to the extent where you're trying to rival some of my cousins. Sure, you can make yourself look younger… but… 6? Seriously? Even for Pembroke that's overdoing it me thinks.
Somewhere around 1:30 we ended up losing power, for reasons I still don't exactly know. Well, other than that Pembroke/Pettawawa's hydro system sucks royally. So, needless to say, it was not fun when the temperature outside happens to be hovering at or just barely above freezing. I don't know exactly, but hey, if it was snowing, and it was (er, uh, still is), then… I guess freezing or just slightly above it is. Fortunately, much like our last attempt at a snow fall, it didn't stick around. Thank the gods… I'm still too damn lazy to be shoveling. By 4 we were getting pretty close to being fed up with it. And, of course, it was looking more and more like the ever so helpful hydro company estimate would yet again be just a little tiny bit off the mark. By this time now we're tossing around ideas for supper, taking into account the fact we can't cook, microwave, or otherwise put any effort into actually making something–thank you, hydro company. We ended up going out instead, since… well, you know, it beat spending the rest of the evening sitting around a powerless house and slowly freezing. And, as Murphy's law would have it, not even 10 minutes after we get back, we have power again. It almost never fails. Almost, of course, meaning except for, you know, that spell of 24 hours wherein we had no power. *That* was fun. In a… never again kinda way. At least we didn't freeze that time. And now… I suppose I should get back to what I couldn't be doing while we were in the dark. Namely, more house hunting.
Update:
We aren't in any of the named areas, but are right between a couple of them, so I suspect strongly we got hit by this mess.
Go shopping for a guitar and end up with clothes. Go figure.
The original plan was to drop my brother off at work, then get a bit of household shopping out of the way, before we went to at least price out a decent-sounding guitar so I can actually give my uncle's back to him. Well, we managed to get 2 of the 3 accomplished, getting the shopping and such done by about noon, so figured the music store which, actually, is the only real decent place around here to buy things like that (no duh, right?) would have to be open by now. You'd think they would. Unless, of course, they weren't open at all on Sundays, which just so happened to be the case. Irritating, but it's Pembroke. I should have expected that. The alternative was Wallmart and, well, of all the things I'm likely to buy from Wallmart, a guitar is most definitely not one of them. Specificly because they overcharge for crap like that, and then you end up paying $150 for a guitar that sounds like it's only worth about $75. No thanks. So, it's back to square 1, and waiting for the music store to actually be open late enough that we can get in after we get the rest of the week's bullshit out of the way. One of these days, I'll manage to get everything accomplished that I left the house to get accomplished. One of these days. Just not any time soon.
We went shopping this afternoon, just for a couple things we needed around the house… nothing all too major, really. It was still the biggest mistake I made today. First, my mother couldn't make up her mind where the hell she wanted to go, so we're doing the halfway up one isle, turn around, 3 quarters the way down another maneuver. And dodging people who should not be allowed to operate anything on wheels in the process. For once, I actually agree with something my brother said while at the store. If you don't have a driver's license, you shouldn't be allowed to push a cart. Although, there's people around here who shouldn't have a driver's license that do so I dunno how much less likely we'd be to end up watching out for other people's stupidity.
We finally got everything we were there for, and a few other things (I don't know why it is we always come home with more than we went for), and the drive home was just as… ahem… eventful. People have apparently not yet learned that no more than one object can occupy any given space at any given time without catastrophic results. So, we got to play the hit the breaks before the truck that isn't watching where he's going hits you game. Back to what I said about people who shouldn't have licenses. Obviously we made it through alright, since I'm here bitching about it, but… it was irritating as hell, to say the very, very least. Then, less on the common sense needed list and more on the screwing with us list, we had to stop for gas and the station we were planning to stop at was closed. At 3:00 in the afternoon they were closed. That can't be good for business. So we went somewhere else and saved a penny. Pretty sad when the price of gas is down to $1.1/liter. A month ago that price would had at least my mother cursing to no end. Ah well. Back to CSI, lasagna and lazyness. Pembroke's stupidity can only do so much to fill an entry, and I've got nothing else.
I know the stuff better than the moron acting like a security guard at the gate to what's left of the much advertised waterfront festivle this afternoon. Me, my mom, and my aunt decided to go see what all was going on, since today was the last day of it and well, it killed a couple hours. We didn't even have to go inside before the fun started–it was waiting for us at the gate. So, we show up, each of us with a coffee, and the ladies decide it might be more worth their while to carry their purses with them, rather than leave 'em locked in the car. Beats carrying loose change with them, and all. Well, turns out they were wrong… the nutjob we'll call a wanna-be security officer thought it'd be fun to try making them let him look in their purses, *supposedly* for drugs and/or alcohol. Okay, no big deal… i mean, they didn't have any on them anyway, but still. Never mind the fact he doesn't have the authority to do a search, but he doesn't have reason to either; we weren't doing anything incredibly out of the ordinary, or anything that would *give* him just cause for a search. But, that wasn't even the biggest part of the idiocy. This guy's not a cop, and we know for a fact he's not a cop. There was not a cop present. So, assuming he had just cause for it, he couldn't do a thing about it right then anyway. As mom said before we got home after all that, family gets told to politely fuck off when they try routing through purses… what the hell makes him think he's gonna be any different? The amusing part of it is he tried to argue his case with me–huge mistake. I won't provide a blow by blow account of the conversation here, because I'm too lazy, but near the end of it, I was about ready to straight out tell him he's more than welcome to search anything he pleases. *If* he finds us a real cop. Ah well, once we got past the one guy stupid enough to try and out-asshole me, it was kinda fun. The moral of the story: just because you took law does not mean you stayed awake through that class. If this guy had, I wouldn't have been able to walk all over him like I did. Ah well, it's Pembroke… stupidity is par for the course.
And, when your power goes out 5 minutes before you plan to shower, that's not a wake-up call you want to have any part of… especially when you're not on municipal water, and so depend on electricity for your running water… kinda like us. So, there was lots of excitement to be had… and I didn't even have to leave the house. Our power *just* came back about 10 minutes ago, more or less, so now I'm kind of somewhere between doing the panic run around the house making sure nothing decides it wants to crap out on us, and contemplating whether or not to risk jumping in the shower to have the power go out yet again. Ah, what the hell. Hydro company made me wait this long… and unless they want another phone call from me, that's as long as they're gonna make me wait for the rest of the week. I got crap to do, and more things to rant about later.
Shortly after my last post to this here thing yesterday, we decided to lose power–thank you, thunder storms. Originally it started alternating between going out, and staying on… with the occasional blink/flicker thing in between. Then it just died for good, and stayed dead for over 24 hours. Not good in 30 degree weather. That's celsius, by the way. We only just got our power back about 8:00 or so, or so I figure anyway, about the same time we were sitting down at a restaurant for supper. This after my aunt and I both spent the day harassing our hydro company for something akin to an answer, or a rough estimate at least, as to when we'd get our power back. Of course, all we got back from them was "We don't know", or the famous "Sometime between tonight and tomorrow". Yeah, helpful. Really. But, I suppose on the up side it was an excuse to kill a couple hours this afternoon in an air conditioned coffee shop. Yay for Tim Horton's restaurants that actually have power! Now, if Pembroke hydro had actually been paying attention to their phone calls last night, this morning, this afternoon, and part of this evening, *all* of the Pembroke/Petawawa area would have probably had power by that time this afternoon. At least, I can always hope, anyway. It gives me something to bitch about if nothing else.
So, we decided to go to a party last night for some person's wedding that I've never even heard of, never mind actually met, and it turned out to be more of a rehearsal for the reception than anything else. The music sucked muchly, there were speeches of all sorts I thought would never end… yeah, it was kind of rediculous. I suppose it wasn't all bad, I mean they did serve alcohol so the speeches weren't quite as irritatingly dull. But yeah, the next time I manage to get talked into going to a wedding thingy thing for someone I don't even know exists, remind me to remind someone to shoot me. That was just… *bad*.
So this is what they do with closed down schools...
So apparently, a school that was closed down last year in town here is possibly being sold to the city, to be used as a kind of central building for city hall, the police department, fire department, and library. I guess budget cutbacks are starting to become less of an issue, because they're contemplating selling the school in question for $1. Yay for cheaply sold crappy construction. I wanna move to Ottawa…
So we ended up going to my grandma's today, doing that whole mother's day thing, and the conversation of the hour turns out to be anything from sugar free chocolate to whether or not my brother will still be working in a month or so. I mean, usually I could care less what's being talked about, but… eh. Small town life has its perks, I guess. Where else is other people's business the topic of discussion for the day? Okay, I'm done.
There is still calls for snow. It's April. IT's baseball season. And we're still calling for snow. Cruel and unusual, that. But then, this is the same person who'd of loved to have been done with snow after about, oh… December 26th. How'd that go? *scoff* It's all cool and everything at around Christmas time. So, from about the 23rd to the 26th of December. Any time before or after that, and all it does is irritate the hell out of me. Not an easy thing to do as certain individuals who probably read this are verry well aware of. Ah well. Sucky weather for baseball, but I haven't abandoned my hockey yet. *misses the playoffs already*
I still have yet to pin down exactly how it is going out for breakfast leads to this whole shopping thing. I mean, I have no problem with shopping… I needed to buy me some new clothes anyway, but it's breakfast. And it's shopping. One has nothing to do with the other. Yet we started with one and wound up doing the other. Just… no. I'd say cruel and unusual punnishment but then I'd have to remind myself about the possibility of spending an hour with my brother's girlfriend. I'll take the shopping.
Okay, I know the disability support program is supposed to be here for the sake of people who, for whatever reason, can't get hired so they can pay their bills and things still. But, one would think they'd have something in place to help these people find work so they can get *off* said disability support program. Apparently, no such luck. Not only do these people have absolutely nothing concrete they can bring up so far as that goes, but they just automatically assume organizations like the CNIB,
which is in fact an overpriced store disguised as a non-profit organization, actually give a damn. To these people, I only have one thing to say… government organizations hurt my frackin head!
