Alex's day

Smack alarm. Roll over. Go back to sleep. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Drag ass out of bed and to the Mount. Eat bagel. Make coffee. Read the Coast. Place a Scotsburn order. Pray taht they don't fuck it up again this week. Sell some coffee, pop, coffee, pop, Fudgee-os. Work on articles for Mount paper. Chat with Scott and that dude that I chat with every Monday and Friday (shit, what's his NAME??). Eat some curry that Angelah brought me (mmmm). Make plans for tonight. Discuss with Keith how bad we've both been about keeping in touch with people from Costa Rica. Email Alexandra and pretend that I've redeemed myself. Sympathise with people who come in and complain about being tired and/or hot. Notice that the freezer is no longer functioning (again). Call the manager. Consider drowning my sorrows in another (deeply satisfying) Simcity 3000 session. Realize anew what a dork I am (see the official taxonomy of misfits, below). And all before 2:30pm.

Bah.

The Misfit Taxonomy

Well, after much debate over our respective labelling systems, Mark and I have finally collaborated on the Taxonomy of Misfits (Official Draft).

Any comments or suggestions are always welcome; just post it here, or email me!

For future reference: I see myself as a dork (specifically keener) and an ecogeek. That is, of course, open to debate, but don't be mean.

In other news, I finally got my hands on a copy of HBP. have i emntioned this before? Anyway, work was slow yesterday, and as a result I am half-way through. For the record, Harry Potter's got the magic stick.

I went to yet another barbecue yesterday. Which gave Kenney a chance to see Adam for the first time in many moons, so maybe Kenney will no longer feel the need to come up with excuses to ask me about Adam. Oh my - what will he and I talk about now?

The important news learned from that experience is that Tofutti Coffee Break Treats are really good. They kind of taste butterscotch-y with a coffee aftertaste. And they're frozen, creamy, vegan-y goodness!

Then proceeded to Allan's for a small boozy gathering, where Allan's new girl inquired whether she had slept with me before. Just a typical Allan's-apartment shindig.

STIIIIICKEEEEE!!!!!

The Cornerstore has no air conditioning. Have I mentioned this before? Just a bunch of stupid fridges that produce extra heat. Good thing my job doesn't require me to expend energy.

So Marky declined to lend me his copy of HP & the Half Blood Prince...seems he wants to read it over again, taking longer than 24 hours this time, so that he can truly appreciate it. I think he's just being selfish. But my consolation prize was that since I was over at the apartment to beg for it anyway, Sean lent me Wolves of the Calla (Stephen King) and I'm happy. I have somewhat of an unhealthy fascination with those books...it bothers me to have to take more than one sitting to read them. Thus I am quite tired this morning. And still not even close to finished the book.

No "hard-hitting political commentary" today. Just a comment on the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Canada: about bloody time.

Hippie-hippie Shake

And what I mean by that, is that my brain feels like it's gone through a blender. It's currently 11:37 am and the Cornerstore is bloody hot. I usually like the heat but this is ridiculous. Add to that the fact that I'm still sleep-deprived and it makes me a very cranky girl. Plus I'm bored because I don't have any attention span to keep me occupied with one task for any appreciable amount of time. And the shelf under the counter that usually serves as a footrest is borken and all the little paper bags keep spilling all over the floor whenever I absentmindedly try to rest my foot.

Although I didn't get the editor job, I've decided that I'm going to be a superkeener in terms of contributing to it. It's gonna kick ass and some of the credit is going to me. The bonus is that I can let my contribution slack when the pressure's on...whereas if I had gotten the job, that option would not have been available to me. Whee! Plus, B has expressed disdain and skepticism about the prospects of the new Mount paper so I'm determined to prove him wrong.

Allergyism

Yeah, I'm allergic to dust in a big way. And we just had a yard sale.

There's nothing like a good yard sale to make one reflect on how ludicrously materialistic our culture is (what, do you expect ME to NOT comment on this?). Impulse purchases, useless gifts that nobody really likes or wants but that are given just because gifts are expected, and then kept around unused for years because figts are not supposed to be sold or re-gifted...stuff that we keep around "just in case" because we're terrified of someday not having enough. Then when we're tripping over all our junk because we've run out of places to put it, we stick a 25-cent price tag on it and somebody buys it so that it can collect dust in their basement. It's fascinating, really.

Admittedly, I'm more anti-consumerist in theory than in practice. I just skip the plastic junk and electronics and consider myself better than other people. I'm working on that one. But today I resisted the temptation to visit the other yard-sale tables on my street and I'm proud of myself. No more junk! Well, Manda gave me a movie. But it's William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I swear, I'm over Leonardo DiCaprio (who, interestingly enough, looks exactly like Billy H on the movie cover). But I am eternally in love with the work of Baz Luhrman.

Anyway, I'm off to partake of some fresh air that will hopefully relieve the burning in my eyes.

"Paris Keen for Keenan"

In case you live under a rock and haven't heard, the French recently created a monument to my awesomeness. It kicks the Louvre Pyramid's pansy butt.




In other news:

Price-Gunning Cashier Discovers Mysterious Rise in Price of Nerds

Universit Brochure Arrives from Auckland

Bad Singers Rock Sidelines Tonight

Pod Life

Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a leading role in a cage?

Blah. Maybe it's due to being somewhat sleep-deprived for nearly a week now, but between that, and being confined to MSVU-home-Adam's place (just down the street from MSVU)-the bus between home and MSVU, I feel kind of cut off from the rest of the world at the moment. I'm used to doing Sierra Club stuff and just generally being all over the place and engaged in what's going on in the world, but lately I haven't been so I feel kind of trapped. Worst feeling ever. But tonight I'm going to bed early and Tuesday night I'm going (woot woot! camping so I should get over it soon enough.

And right now? I'm learning Greek!

Rant

As soon as I published my post yesterday I heard about the bombings in London. Since then I've heard plenty of comspiracy theories...whoever did it, and for whatever reason, it's absolutely disgusting that innocent people are killed, and that innocent families are destroyed as a result, to advance somebody's political agenda.

My condolences go out to everyone whose lives were affected by this latest event. But while everybody's watching out for news on this latest attack, attention is being diverted once again from poverty in Africa...and poverty in the rest of the world for that matter...and a whole bunch of things that also really matter and are on a much huger scale and can be HELPED if the world would only pay attention to them long enough to actually do something. How about Zimbabwe's situation? 70% unemployment, 4 million starving people, the government is knocking down the slums and driving the poorest citizens out of their homes in the middle of (their) winter and call it "urban renewal." It got an editorial in yesterday's Globe, but most people have forgotten about it already. It's like in Hotel Rwanda (If you haven't seen it yet, SEE IT), when an American journalist tells the African who's trying to save his family and friends from slaughter that people in the rest of the world will see coverage of the genocide on TV, think "Oh that's terrible" and then go back to eating their dinner.

I'm a poli-sci student...I hear lots of complaining about the media giving shallow coverage to things. But aren't we also to blame? The media gives shallow coverage because we have shallow interests. Maintaining an abstract idea of poverty and violence and AIDS rather than seeing them as issues affecting real pople with real lives protects us from feeling guilty when we do nothing about it, even go about our business in ways that perpetuate the problems. But I'll try to leave my cynicism at that for the day.

In fluffier news, I had a really good beer yesterday at the Tribeca. It's called Griffon, it's made in Montreal and it's BEAUTIFUL. Bruno has great taste in beer. Go Bruno!

It's purple!

That would be my new shirt. Sale rack at AE, first article I've ever bought from that store. $9.95 plus tax. Good thing I bought it, too, because after about 40% of a litre of wine I ended up crashing on Ange's bowl chair and I needed to come straight to work from there this morning. So at least I have something to wear.

I also found APLLE CINNAMON POP-TARTS!!!!! Which I have been looking for everywhere, they're unforsted so they don't have gelatin in them. Apple-cinnamon Pop-Tarts are one of my guilty pleasures, when I can find them.

Speaking of food, I told one of my SU friends about the Crisper thing, and then she wanted to know what was in everything that she bought. So I told her and then she was traumatized and then another SU friend came in and said, "Alex, are you ruining food for people?" Hey, don't balme me - if people ask, I tell them. Sometimes I tell them even if they don't ask, but quite often they do. And a seeker of truth has to be prepared to learn things they don't like. Aaaaand i'm also a bitch. And a vegan. Anyone who hasn't read the "Passive-Aggressive Vegan Grocery Clerk" (see sidebar) is strongly advised to do so. Although I'm sure some of the humour is lost on those who are not passive-aggressive vegans.

Anyway it's early registration day so the store is sort of busy. Thus, today's entry will be short-ish and shallow...no hard-hitting (sarcasm intended) political commentaries this time. Ciao dudes.

"food" products

Somebody else got the editor job. Ah well, as long as she does a good job I'm happy...and as long as Angelah doesn't hire too many people for the store in the fall, I'll be making more money.

So I wrote off 52 bags of expired Crispers today. For a store this size that's a lot. Anyway I took a gander at the ingredients because that's what I do...you know, 5 years of vegan training and all. Those mothafuckas have a lot of weird shit in them. My mission this afternoon, should I choose to accept it (and I do), is to look up the ingredients of which I don't know the original source. And I'm taking you along for the ride. Here we go:

Sodium acid pyrophosphate: This would appear to be one of those mysterious chemicals that are spontaneously generated in test tubes, as I could find plenty of information on its usage but nothing on its source. Apparently it's considered safe for use in food. Good thing.

Sodium Stearoyl-2-Lactylate: Could be made from milk products but not always. I know it also has vegetable sources, I learned that in grade 12.

Sodium Bisulphite: Not sure where it comes from, but apparently it's also used as a bleaching agent in the pulp and paer industry.

Ascorbyl palmitate: It's made from ascorbic acid, sulfuric acid and palmitic acid. Which, of course, magically appear in the test tubes.

Sodium acetate: Used as a runway de-icer.

Monosodium glutamate: According to Wiktionary, it's "the mono sodium salt" of glutamic acid, an amino acid that comes from plant and animal tissues. Best known for bringing to mind images of lab rats with brain tumours.

Annatto: A seed, used to colour stuff.

Sodium metabisulphite: Apparently it's not allowed to be added to wine in Australia.

Until sodium acid pyrophosphate grows on trees, I think I'll stick to crackers. Even chips - at least Lays are now trans fat free, even if they do still give you cellulite.

Job conundrum

I've always wanted the word "editor" in my job title. Now I potentially could...if the Students' Union reopens the University's newspaper editor position (highly likely since the lone applicant didn't even show up for her interview the first time around) and if I get the job. The one problem is that they want to have an issue done in time for school to get back in session...and because of some stupid ass stupid union by-law, a person can't work at 2 SU services at once. So I'd have to quit the store in August. That would mean that Angie would have to hire someone new, which wouldn't be so hard because the Cornerstore is a really cushy place to work. But I'd be losing out on a LOT of money because full-time hours selling chips pay way better than the monthly salary of the newspaper editor. As in upwards of $500/month more, which is significant for a student. Plus it would be a more stressful job during school. But amazing experience and a fantastic resume-builder and I'd get an office. Emphasis on the office (cue porn music). And I'd get all this amazing creative input into the paper. Kenney says that the writers are going to get lots of input this year, too, so I could consider doing that. But the writers don't get paid. Or the job title. Or the office.

Anybody know somebody who's hiring for August?

heat exhaustion

Or maybe just regular old exhaustion. Summer has begun, kicked off with a triple-BBQ weekend.

Friday Chris and I headed to DeWolf park to do some Canada Day volunteeryness for Shinerama (University fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis). It was rainy and crappy and we waited around for 1 1/2 hours until we figured the other people who were supposed to meet us there were DEFINITELY not coming. they then proceeded to call us at 1pm (when we would have been DONE) to inform us that our event was cancelled. Hmm. So then we did the barbecue thing at his house.

Saturday I had my barbecue/tie-dye party/backyard shindig. It was really relaxing despite the constant digs at vegetarians made by certain individuals present, and there was tie-dying and Scattergories (oh God i'm such a DORK!!!) and a bunch of people sitting around shooting the shit and it was a good day.

Today I went to Clam Harbour with Yin and a bunch of his friends for a barbecue on the beach (I love the beach) and I played soccer with the boys. Eventually I accidentally fell asleep (we were there for about 6 hours, okay?) so I got back too late to go to Chris's sermon and I feel really shitty about that because I said I would go.

It is now 10:45 pm and I'm sitting in my bedroom with tan lines on my back and Dar Williams in my computer speakers and whole-wheat spaghetti in my belly, and I'm pretty content. Going to bed soon, because I was going to study for the LSATS but my brain can't handle it right now. Looking at law schools abroad, and I don't think the LSATS even count for anything outside of North America so I could be wasting my time. But I suppose I could surprise myself and end up happily studying on my own continent. End of tangent. Good night.

(Blah) day today

Whee! for not enough sleep.

I haven't been talking to my stepdad yet, but Mom liked Adam. Except she said the weirdest thing: he reminds her of Moroney. I mean, that's not a bad thing, my parents liked Moroney, but Adam is NOTHING like him. I have this thing, every single guy I date is completely and utterly different from the others. If I meet a dude who's too much like one of my exes, I'm like "didn't I break upwith you already?" and then I run away. Far away. Not because I have any real animosity towards them, but just because I fear falling into a pattern. Patterns are icky and I refuse to have a "type."

So we went to see Madagascar, and what can I say...it really wasn't good. There were some funny parts, like the monkeys talking about flinging poo, but most of the jokes were replayed ad nauseum and when the credits started rolling I was still waiting for some kind of plot to come into play. Blah.

It was, however, interesting to watch the movie from a vegan perspective. There are quite a few movies (Ice Age being, in my opinion, the best) that address the carnivore conundrum, i.e. making friends with the person who's supposed to be your food. I know that Keith, for one, objects to my referring to non-human animals as "people" even though he's a tofu head too. But, preferred terminology aside, I couldn't help but think that this movie has probaby been used by McDonald's or BK to sell cheeseburgers. Which is kind of disturbing because it's about someone finding out that their food has a face and a personality.

But anyway, I always watch this kind of film with curiosity to see how they treat the subject and how they resolve it. Ice Age didn't really ever resolve it, but they left the topic hanging in kind of a melancholy way, quietly acknowledging the impenetrability of certain moral issues. But Madagascar completely copped out, becoming in the end an advertisement for pesco-vegetarianism (a misnomer, in my opinion: if you eat fish you can qualify for the "tofu head" title but you're not a vegetarian) by giving every animal in the film a personality EXCEPT the fish. Kind of like Dreamworks' badly-written response to Pixar's absolutely wonderful yet predictably over-merchandised Finding Nemo. It reminds me of a book I read a couple of years ago called "The Sexual Politics of Meat" and I wish I could remember the author's name, but she talks about something called the "Absent referrant," and how ignoring the individuality of a living thing is a psychological mechanism that allows human beings to justify both meat eating and rape. Really interesting book, I highly recommend it although it's not exactly light reading.

Long rambling post

Most excellent weekend. Not only was it finally SUNNY and BRUTALLY HOT, which is exactly the way I like it, but for Allan and Lisa's birthday a bunch of us went to the the Thirsty Duck and drank beer for something like 3 hours, before going to the Pogue and where the hot frontman for the band loved us because we shared his taste in cover songs. Then at Pacifico JennJenn was supposed to meet her loverboy but she ran into this Hottie McHotness from grad night and pawned him off on Lisa (who was more than happy to take him off her hands). Crazy antics all around.

Sunday night was an even wilder party, with the family throwing a surprise party for my grandmother (she was NOT surprised) where everybody ate KFC and I gagged and my grandmother ate lobster and I looked straight at my pasta salad so that I wouldn't hurl. Even when I wasn't a tofu head I thought lobster was icky.

Ok now I'm shuddering. Happy thoughts anyone? Still trying to figure out how to get to Rollo Bay for the festival.

And Adam's meeting my parents tonight. My parents have been nagging about it and I know that they'll feel much better about me shacking up with him while his roomates are away, if they actually know who he is. So Mom's first question was, "Does he eat meat?" I swear she actually grinned when I said yes. Silly Mom. So she's making him steak and I cut a deal with him...I won't make faces at him while he eats cow, and I get to pick the movie we watch tonight. This is very important because we have very different taste in movies. We can agree on stuff like Rain Man and Spirited Away...but then he'll make me watch crap like Titus which was HORRIBLE. Ok, let's watch people do awful things to other people and then people do bad things back and then everybody is dead. The end. So, I get to choose today. I pick Madagascar. Funny animals that talk. Aaaand, end of tangent.

My brother is also moving in for the summer because he has a job in the city. My baby brother is now 18 and is getting a tatoo. It's sick and wrong. He's too young to be a legal adult, and he will always be too young.

Interesting article in the Chronicle Herald today about tidal power. This used to be a really questionable form of energy production because it required putting dams in place that messed with marine ecology and all that jazz. Now apparently there has been success with a model that is basically like an upside-down wind turbine in the water. Water is more effective at pushing the blades so they can be smaller than air turbines but still produce the same amount of energy, and they're slow-moving enough to have a minimal impact on mobile marine wildlife. It's finally beginning to be recognized that the answer to the energy problem is probably NOT huge plants, but rather a diversity of smaller local, green options. Which is interesting, because I read last week or whenever that Candu reactors are being largely rejected by the international community in favour of higher-output reactors, even though Candus are meltdown-proof and apparently a really high-quality power plant. Nuclear power is sketchy, with the nuclear waste issue and all, but they're now being largely paraded as the only answer to the global warming issue...and global warming is pretty sketchy, too. I know there are questions being raised about it, and it's all very confusing. Selene says she has an edition of Mother Jones about how most of the climate-change dissentors in the scientific community are being subversively paid by Exxon Mobil or something? I don't like to blindly believe everything put out by the leftist/environmental movement, but Exxon Mobil is sketchy, too. So who the hell knows what to believe? Anyway, I'm a huge believer in energy conservation and green (non-nuclear) energy, but it seems very likely that those can only take us so far... and when weighing the evils between a dependence on fossil fuels and the nuclear sketchiness, then hey, small nuclear power plants as part of a diversified clean energy program just might come out on top. Comments?

Doggies!

As usual, I'm idle at work and killing time...I just came across this and it's so sweet...the stories of street dogs in Bangkok. It reminded me of Costa Rica, where there are stray dogs everywhere and it just breaks your heart. They wander in and out of sodas (small open-air restaurants) and nobody pays any attention to them. They're generally really sweet animals but they're just covered in fleas and ticks and mange. I imagined my dogs living that way and I just wanted to bring them all home and make them healthy again.

It also took me a while to figure out what was so unusual about the dogs in Costa Rica. Then one morning I was sitting in Soda Frank in Playa Jaco (incidentally, if you're ever in the area, Soda Frank makes THE BEST gallo pinto I tasted during the 6 weeks I was in the country, and I ate pinto every chance I got so I consider myself somnewhat of an authority on the subject, at least for a born-and-raised Canadian girl). A dog wandered in and then it hit me: stray dogs have testicles. It just looks really silly, especially having grown up surrounded by neutered animals. But that's my Costa Rica story for the day. I'm feeling so desperate to go back that I need to appease the urge by talking about it constantly. But without further ado, I give you the street dogs of Bangkok.

http://bkkstreetdogs.blogspot.com/2005/01/welcome-from-casanova.html

The Corner$tore: the ultimate tourist destination

There's an annual conference that is held on campus every summer. The participants do lots of leadership-y things, madiatiation, and, allegedly, have kinky group sex...although I don't buy that one for a second. Adam blames it on my inherent trust of hippies. I say boo-erns to him. I did housekeeping for them a couple years ago...no signs of group sex. But whatever. They're nice people and I've been giving directions on what's worth seeing in the city, which makes me feel quasi-important. Plus we're getting rid of a bunch of Metro Transit maps that would otherwise just sit in the store until they became obselete and we threw them away. So yay for that.

In other news, it's been remarked that my postings are always indicated as having been posted abnormally early in the morning. Let me state for the record that I am not in the habit of getting out of bed before 6:30 unless travel (preferably international) is involved, and under no circumstances am I fully functioning before 8am.

Anybody know of any good movies to watch? I'm waiting for War of the Worlds to come out on the 29th, not because I'm a huge fan of Tom Cruise or anything but because I used to watch the fantastically cheap, tacky tv show when i was a kid, and although the movie's unlikely to have any similarities to the show I'm still dying to see it. Same with Bewitched. I'm willing to sit through a Will Ferrell movie just because of the way that the name hearkens back to my childhood.
I watched Spirited Away last night which was fab because I've wanted to see it ever since it came out at Empire and I was working day shifts with Josh and we wanted to go sit in the theatre and watch it but the manager was constantly lurking around and we were 2 of the only 3 ushers on the floor so we couldn't. Ahh, good times.

Shoreline Festival

If anybody's free July 8 (after 4pm-ish), 9 and 10 you should come to the PEI Shoreline Festival! Bruno and I are trying to get a group together to hopefully rent a car. There will be acts like Joel Plakett, Buck 65, Kid Koala, Jimmy Swift Band, etc., camping and just general awesomeness. Do it do it do it! www.shorelinefestival.com

Don't eat chocolate frosting with a spoon

Somebody needs a change of scenery...the occupational hazards of working in a convenience store (especially a campus one during the summer) are mindblowing.

I gardened in the rain yesterday, as part of the Ecology Action Centre's Urban Garden Mentors program, which I think is amazing because it gives senior citizens the chance to share their gardening skills with the younger genreations, and they've set up all these urban gardens around the city (www.ecologyaction.ca). Besides, there is nothing in the world as fun as getting dirty. Afterwards I sat in the tub with a book for hours until my toes got all wrinkly. whee!

Now let's see some fgbhqing sunshine!

It's a mad, mad world folks

If I'm not mistaken, a few months ago Tommy Douglas was voted The Greatest Canadian by an oh-so-scientific phone-in poll of CBC viewers. What a bizarre bit of irony, then, that the Supreme Court should rule aginst one of the principles of Tommy's baby, Medicare, Canada's #2 sacred cow (#1 being Tim Horton's cofee, of course...never mind that it's not Canadian it's Central American or whatever and absolute crap besides). private clinics are now allowed to operate in Quebec, and the Supreme Court has set a precedent that will basically force them to bring down the same ruling when similar cases inevitably crop up from other provinces.

Pessimists see this as the beginning of US-style two-tier health care, while optimists point to mixed systems like in the UK that have both private and public health care provisions. I'm not a big expert on the UK's system but I have heard it touted as a model that our own should follow. However, a commentator in Saturday's Globe and Mail pointed out that this is not the UK, this is Canada, and Canada has a little thing called NAFTA biting us in the ass. Apparently health care is only exempt from NAFTA regulations as long as Canada maintains its publicly-funded system, and once we allow private providers then we have absolutely no power to stop American private providers from coming in and taking advantage of our government's subsidies etc. Again, I'm no expert, but the possibility of our health-care system turning into the American model scares the shit out of me. Yes, the waiting lines and funding shortages are bad. Very bad. In-desperate-need-of-a-better-strategy-and-more-money bad. But skyrocketing costs and inefficiency, an insurance system that often leaves people in the dust just when they need it the most, and slews of people (and not just the poorest members of society, either) being forced to declare bankruptcy due to sudden serious illness...that's worse.

It all left me feeling very confused and sad so I went out and got a clothes-drying rack (we still don't have a clothesline, grrrrrrrrrrr) and a low-flow showerhead. Reducing fuel consumption and having nice-smelling clothes make sense to me.

Welcome to eternity, Baby

Another slow day at Yea Olde Cornerstore...the kind of day that makes you look around and wonder what you're going to snack on next, until suddenly you have a stomachache and you're 8 feet wide. Or at least I would be if I ate normal food like mormal people do.

At any rate, it's better than what I did yesterday...I took care of my neighbour's elderly mother while he went to court to try and win some respect for the disabled. So I was glad to help him out, and his mother's a nice lady with a great sense of humour, but the poor thing can't remember what you told her 5 minutes earlier so she asked me 387 times where her son was...I soon resorted to "I don't know, he'll be back at suppertime" and left it at that. So 10 hours of this. Then during the last hour she convinced herself that her son was gone for good and that everybody was going to leave her alone in the house so she kept repeating "I'm scared. Are you scared? I'm scared."

You know what scares me? The idea of getting old and not being in control of, or even aware of, what's going on in my own life. And the fact that I'm likely to get like that, because the women in my family tend to live for a long time and get senile. Which means I'm fucked.

Know what else scares me? Creepy stalker guys. And apparently I have one. A few weeks ago I was on the bus home from the farmer's market and I ran into somebody that I know so I talked to hime for a while. Anyway, the next week some random dude started talking to me...apparently he had listened to my previous conversation and remembered everything that I had said. He seemed starved for friendship so I had some polite (but guarded) conversation with him...and now he seems to be on the same bus as me every Saturday, no matter what time I head home. And then last night he was at the bus terminal when I was on my way into the city. So he decided to ask me out for coffee (Dude! you're like 35 and not in a good way!) but fortunately he kind of left me alone when I declined. But then when I got off the bus he yelled "Oh, tell your mother theat she's lovely!" *Shudder* how the fuck foes he know my mother? He must be a patient at her office or something...Mom has my picture posted up by her desk at work so that she can brag about me when people comment on it. But now I might beg her to take it down...dude that's just CREEPY.