In the Land Past Boredom

With next to nothing to do at work yesterday, I was extremely bored. After looking up boredom on dictionary.com, it turns out that boredom only begins to describe my state. My state goes past boredom into the realm of ennui. What the heck is ennui, you may be asking. Well, I looked that word up too and it fits perfectly. This is what dictionary.com had to say about ennui:

Ennui [ahn-wee, ahn-wee; Fr. ahn-nwee] - noun - a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom.

A new work day has started but I don’t see any relief from my ennui. If this post about the different states of boredom doesn’t let you know how unbearable my place of work is right now, I don’t know what would. But since you are reading yet another post of mine basically about nothing, you also must be in a state of ennui, or at least boredom. I guess you could just be procrastinating too but before I beat this to death I shall end my ramblings. Hopefully, I will be inspired to write something of substance soon but since our “busy” time at work is coming to an end, I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything earth shattering coming from me anytime soon.

Graduation Day

I hesitate to say this but I finally bought myself a real iPod. Up until a few weeks ago, all I had to stifle the circus noises emanating through the GO trains on my daily commutes was an early generation shuffle. It is nothing like the newer versions that come in an array of vibrant colours, oh no, it is a plain white stick of engineering marvel. I can still remember thinking how cool I was walking to, from and through the halls of my high school sporting a Sony walkman that was just a fraction bigger than the cassette tape providing the heavy riffs of Metallica and Megadeth stuffed in my shirt pocket.

After the introduction of the new “Touch” version and the lowered prices due to the strong dollar, I watched the Future Shop flyers and website religiously. I knew I could rationalize buying an iPod now and I had my eyes on the classic. Even though the boxing week sales did not really affect the prices of the real iPod’s, I finally obtained the gold at the end of the rainbow. Aside: I reached the end of a rainbow once and there was no pot of gold – was I at the wrong end perhaps?
With my new 80GB iPod Classic copying songs from my computer, I was left to ponder what was to come of my shuffle. I couldn’t turn my back on her and allow her to be a show piece to collect dust by my computer. After all, she treated me well for two or three years. The sweet music contained inside the engineering marvel kept the stories of Sally’s haemorrhoids and Phil’s golf game since he bought new clubs from irritating me to no end. And for that great and noble service, I had to find a good use for my battered shuffle.

By the time my entire music collection was transferred to my classic, I had come up with a brilliant idea that I knew would fill my aging shuffle with a renewed sense of duty and self worth. My shuffle graduated from being a source of joy and entertainment to a guardian of secret script. It has now become my new flash drive. Instead of music it now holds files and documents and anything else that I may need to keep close to me…like the secret of the Caramilk bar. By being put to this new use, my shuffle is not only saved from becoming some forgotten piece of technology but has gained what can be seen as a more important role. I like to think that my shuffle graduated to a higher role.

Before certain people get the wrong idea, I really do not have the secret of the Caramilk bar so please call off the dogs and the Gestapo; I am no wiser than the next person as to how they get the caramel into the Caramilk bar. I am still waiting for the secret to be revealed on How It’s Made but I guess if there ever was a show on Caramilk, they would likely say the method for adding the smooth flowing caramel is a company secret.

Did Anyone ‘WOW’ You Today?

When one has a bad morning at the office, like getting trapped in an elevator, a good relief is to find a cheap restaurant to have lunch at. An executive lunch, as many refer to them as, can be very cleansing to the soul and giving back some much needed energy to finish the day. That is unless the interactions at the restaurant are anything but a reprieve from the cubicle imbeciles of office life.

Today was one of those days for a co-worker (click on the link above) so I thought we should get out of the office for lunch. The cheapest thing to us is a Swiss Chalet so off we went unaware of the disaster that awaited us. Everything was fine until we were seated. The following is part of a customer survey and should paint a picture of the adventure we had. Keep in mind that chicken is their business.

Please tell us how we could have improved the quality and taste of your meal:

Using fresh ingredients would be a good start; hiring people who know how to cook the food properly wouldn't hurt either but I guess some people like to eat shoe leather.

Please describe the problem with the speed of service in more detail and let us know how we can improve:

We waited five minutes from the time we were settled at our tables before a server even acknowledged us. Once we finally ordered, my 15 minute meal ended up taking 30 mins to make and I almost had to ask twice for a drink refill since the server was too busy cleaning tables to get refills. My companion ordered an item not on the 15 min meal list and she got her food a good two minutes before mine arrived. Ensure the staff realizes that the customers are the reason they are working and happy customers lead to bigger tips.

Did one of our employees "WOW" you during your experience? If so, please provide us with additional details and the employee's name or description (not a required field):

I have visited this restaurant several times in the past few years and I have never been 'WOW'ed by the service.

Please share any final comments or suggestions that you would like to make to Swiss Chalet:

This was one of my worst dining experiences I have ever had. The service was slow and not very eager to please us and the food was greatly over cooked. The chicken in the ceaser salad was charred on one side and cooked to the perfection of shoe leather while the bun that accompanied the quarter chicken meal was hard enough that I used pieces as toothpicks at the end of the meal. I have been displeased with Swiss Chalet in the past and have blacklisted it for years (at least 3 years from 2000 to 2003) and some shorter periods since 2003. I cannot say when my next visit to Swiss Chalet will be but I doubt it will be anytime soon.

Another Sad Realization

I started this blog for several reasons, one: to quiet co-workers that were nagging me to create one, two: to give the world (or at least a select few who actually read this from time to time) a purview of my mind and my horrific thought patterns, and three: to help with my writing skills because I had the delusion of actually writing something that was worthy of being published.

While creating this blog alleviated the nagging and provided an outlet for the first two reasons, the third and most important of my reasons for posting my thoughts seems to remain unfulfilled and sadder still, appears to be nothing more than a pipe dream. Instead of cutting my losses with this blog alone, I decided to delve deeper into the abyss of mindless writings on the World Wide Web and I created a second blog that I strictly devoted to sports. I thought I could do a better job of reporting on sports I never see than those who sit amongst the cheese heads on the frozen tundra of Lambeau field or those who file into cramped press boxes among the birds to witness the drug enhanced sport of baseball. To be honest, that thought never crossed my mind let alone influenced my decision to start a sports blog; I just wanted a place to comment on sports related topics without boring my non-sport loving devotees.

Unfortunately, both blogs seem to be nothing more than a vice to waste time when I am bored at work. My writing has not improved at all and it seems I continue to use the same limited vocabulary and mind numbing phrases that I did before subjecting the masses (okay fine, the six-pack of friends and co-workers) to my idiocy. Despite my disappointing realization, I will continue to help you waste your time by continuing to post my dumbest and craziest experiences and thoughts. That is, once something exciting happens in my life. I leave you with this thought from Aerosmith’s Get a Grip song:

Same old same old every day
if things don't change you're just gonna rot
Cause if you do what you've always done
you'll always get what you always got
Uh could that be nothin'

December 2007 Quotes

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young - J.K. Rowling (The Order of the Phoenix)

Still it's hard
So very hard to admit
Just how pointless it all is
- Blue Rodeo (What a Surprise)

There’s a time for giving up
A time for letting go
To learn from our mistakes.
- Kenny Rogers (The Kind of Fool Love Makes)

What little mind you have is ugly and misdirected. - Stephen King (The Green Mile)

Sometimes you can’t help people. Sometimes it’s better not to try. - Stephen King (The Green Mile)

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now - always. - Albert Schweitzer

It is not love, but lack of love, that is blind. - Glenway Trescott

Tact is the art of making guests feel at home when that's really where you wish they were. - George E. Bergman

And there's one more thing that I have discovered
And I would now like you to know
The reason for Christmas I now realize
Is an excuse to tolerate snow
-The Trans-Siberian Orchestra (What is Christmas?)

If we make it through December
Everything's gonna be all right I know
It's the coldest time of winter
And I shiver when I see the fallen snow
- Merle Haggard (If We Make It Through December)

...times change, and anybody who adheres to a posture earlier enunciated when times change is a fool. - Howard Cosell

you could have it all
my empire of dirt
i will let you down
i will make you hurt
- Nine Inch Nails (Hurt)

It's every gift that someone gives
Expecting nothing back
It's every kindness that we do
Each simple little act
- The Trans-Siberian Orchestra (Old City Bar)

I should've had enough sense to
Get up and leave this town
- Lit (A Place In The Sun)

I weigh myself every morning and that alone is sufficient to cost me my appetite - Isaac Asimov (Nemesis)