What a Lovely Way to Start the Day

On Friday morning I was waiting for the bus on one of four corners on a west<->east street. On one corner is a postal station, on another a drug store and on the other is a Sunoco station. Bright yellow sign, can't miss it. Best Buy has a yellow sign but this is much too small to be a Best Buy and locals know there isn't one in the area.

I'm reading a book ("Dead Ex" by Harley Jane Kozak) and not paying attention to the traffic until I notice a sports car going south-north (i.e. he's driving from sidewalk to sidewalk). The car is making noise - I don't know much about cars but this noise doesn't sound good to me. All I can think is "Great, he'll stall and the bus won't be able to get by him".

The guy starts waving to me and telling me he needs gas. My response is "So get gas; what the fuck are you telling me for?" His response was "Shut up you fat cow" and he zooms off right past the gas station.

Now maybe I shouldn't have said "fuck" but he didn't need to insult me. I still have no idea why he felt it necessary to inform me he needed gas. If he couldn't see the gas station from less than 20 feet away, he shouldn't have a license.

I did think "well, he's got a sports car and a dick (a very small one)"; a co-worker thought it had something to do with the thunder and lightning the previous night (so I decided he got hit by lightning).

Thoughts? "Fun" experiences with drivers? Pedestrians?

I love a good bargain!

I was coming home from grocery shopping this morning and passed a yard sale. I had to check it out. There was a George Foreman Grill (bigger than the one I have - the smallest one). I thought the tag said $10.00 which is a good deal; then I realized it said $1.00! The seller assured me it worked fine so I bought it. Can't beat that. It doesn't have the scraper or the drip catcher but I already have those.

Anybody in the Ottawa area go to the Great Glebe Garage Sale yesterday? Did you get any good deals?

What's the best deal you ever got at a garage sale or flea market?

The flat panel monitor story comes to an end

For those of you who have been following the saga of my trying to buy a flat panel monitor only to have first my hard drive and then my vcr die on me, you'll be glad to know that I did buy a monitor on Saturday.

I went to look at a Viewsonic 19" widescreen ($243) but it wasn't in stock. The salesperson offered to order it for me and I was going to do that but then another salesperson told me that for $27 more I could get a Viewsonic 22" widescreen. I couldn't resist. It's a refurb but it works fine.
It's lovely. I can see more on the screen. And it's great for the tv shows I download (shh!). I can open them up full screen in RealPlayer with no loss of quality.

More radio station wins

I got a pass for the premiere of "Waitress". I enjoyed it.

Fox Searchlight gave out goody bags. Most of the contents didn't interest me so I offered it up on Ottawa Freecycle. I got a few requests for it and gave it to the guy who told me his wife had gone to the premiere but didn't get a bag and he'd like to surprise her with it. I thought that was sweet (and a sign that he's well trained :-). About a half hour after he picked it up, the wife called me to say she thinks she and her husband were sitting beside me in the theatre. They were. Small world!

I've entered a number of raffles on the stations' websites but never win. I really wanted to win front row seats to Faith Hill/Tim McGraw so bought 150 entries. So much for the more you buy, the better chance you have to win.

On one of the other station sites, I bought 5 or 10 entries for the new Steven Wright DVD...and won!

More Movies I'm Looking Forward to

I've seen several premieres lately but between not keeping up with the blog and my lousy short term memory, I've forgotten most of them.

But 2 movies I'm definately looking forward to:

The Bourne Ultimatum - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0440963/. I never saw the need for redoing The Bourne Identity but have enjoyed the movies. Must be that cute little Matt Damon. ;-)

Ocean's 13 - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0496806/. Can't believe I didn't mention this one before.

Evening - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765447/. I didn't see the preview for this one, just saw the posted in the theatre. Any movie with Claire Danes, Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep *and* Glenn Close - I have to see.

New contract

I started a new contract a few weeks ago. Very different from the last one. I started the blog because I didn't have email access at the last one. This one I do but not much time to read it because of the volume of work. We're trying to catch up on the backlog and while we're doing that the new arrivals get backlogged.

This contract's at Health Canada for the section that gets reports of faulty medical devices. Very interesting!

I'm supervising 2 people, of sorts (sort of supervising, not sort of people). One of them came with me from the last contract. It's nice to work with somebody I already know.

The contract goes until mid-Sept. but could go longer. The good thing about that is that they can only hire agency people for 20 weeks so we'll get gov't. contracts and a higher salary.

More radio station wins

In an auction on The Bear I won a pass to the premiere of "Next".

This morning at 5am on KISS, I won the dvd of "All That Jazz".