Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from an old WebCT friend, Edmund Yeung.  I remember receiving the e-mail on Sunday and I thought it was pretty cool to hear from him.  We had not communicated for a few weeks and I fired him a reply with my MSN info and my personal e-mail account.  I received a reply from him the next day and with typical Ed flare, he replied with great optimism and spunk.

Well, two days later, I sat at work and another WebCTer messaged me with some terrible rumour that he had heard.  He said that Ed had passed away.  My first reaction was of doubt and disbelief.  I couldn’t fathom this kind of information.  I had just communicated with him less than 48 hours ago.  Why the heck would anyone say something like that?  I sent Ed an e-mail and told him that there was a terrible rumour going around about him and I wished him well and that I had hoped he was OK.  By now, most of the WebCT Family had caught wind of the rumour and there was a sense of urgency to dispel the story and prove it false, or true.  Shortly after, we learned the truth.  We had lost a great friend….

I know that most of my friends don’t know Ed, although some might remember him from school.  He went to Churchill and he graduated the same year as me, 1995.  I remember the first time I met Ed.  It was July 10th, 2000.  We started the same day at WebCT and I distinctly remember spending a few minutes talking to him that day.  He was excited and happy to be working there.  I still remember that day, that moment.  Over the next few years, we really got to see how special Ed was.  He quickly transitioned out of Support and took on a new role, working on the website and communications for WebCT.  Integral doesn’t even begin to describe how important he was.  He fit the position to a tee.  He was hard working, exuberant, happy, professional, astute, capable, unselfish, thoughtful, relentless, inquisitive, honest, and reliable. The next 6.5 years blew by and we were faced with the dismantling of the Family.  I feel fortunate to have been around in late November when his days at the office were coming to an end.  I remember having several discussions with him and we had a few moments to reflect on things over the years.  I’ll sum it up with one word: bittersweet.  It was always pleasant talking to Ed.  He was genuine and he never pulled any punches. He always approached things with a grain of salt and that beaming smile of his.  It’s a sad week.  So young, so full of life, so full of promise.   Life’s just not fair.

We’ll all miss you Ed. 

I always knew that shopping in the States was somewhat cheaper, and up until this past week, I really tried to hold back on spending because there were so many unknown factors ahead of me.  Where would I live?  What would come with the place?  How much space would it have?  Etc, etc…  So now that I secured a place, I’ve been in shopping mode.  It’s been a lot of fun hunting deals down and for once I get to take advantage of some of the deals that I’ve had to pass on in the past.  Lately, there have been a lot of sweet ass deals at bestbuy.com, amazon.com, linensnthings.com.  I signed up for an amazon.com Visa card specifically to take advantage of the $30 credit they offered on the first purchase.  So I bought a toaster oven that was on sale, and received an additional $30 off.  I already cut up the credit card too, cause I am only gonna try to use one or two cards out here.  Linens-N-Things had an 11-piece set of Circulon pots and pans, regular price $300, on sale for $200.  Then I applied a 20% off coupon to it, plus it came with a bonus 10qt stock pot AND a $50 gift card.  Anyway, it’s been fun (and expensive), but stuff is pretty cheap out here and companies love giving incentives to entice you to buy from them.  It’s working though.  Good for them and good for me; everyone’s a winner!  Other than household deals, I’m looking forward to subscribing to some uber cheap magazines next.

So I still haven’t cut my hair and it’s really starting to get a lot of attention from me because if I don’t give it some TLC, then it just looks really really messy.  I need to wet it every morning in order to comb down the matted hairs.  It’s a whole new feeling lately cause my ears are almost covered now and my hair is starting to curl a little.  It’s actually bugging the crap out of me cause I’m simply not used to the hair touching new parts of my head and face.  I’m gonna give it a few more weeks and I think I’m gonna give it a trim at the very least.  And I discovered that I lose a lot of hair when I shower cause I clogged my tub last week too.  I found a $1 coupon for Drano on the web and I decided to give it a try.  That stuff is amazing!  It must be completely dangerous and toxic, because 15 min after I poured it down the drain, water was able to flow through it fine.  When I cut my hair, I’m gonna stick it in a bottle and pour a little Drano on it.  I wanna see what it actually does to it.  I’ll probably be horrified, but my curiosity will get the best of me.  I’ll take pictures of it so I can mesmerize everyone else.

On Friday night, I went to check out a movie.  This was the first movie I’d seen in a long time and the first one in DC.  I went with some of my colleagues from Vancouver and we watched a movie called Breach.  It stars Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, and Laura Linney.  It had a bit of interest here because it was based on a true story of America’s biggest security Breach and the story took place in Washington, DC.  The theatres here are mostly kinda old and crappy.  It’s like going to the older theatres in Vancouver; such as Granville 7 or Richmond Centre.  The experience wasn’t too bad, and the movie was kinda interesting too, but I did notice one thing here.  When it says a movie starts at 10:20, it really starts at 10:20.  The theatre lights go down about 15 min before the listed start time, and then it plays the commercials and upcoming movie trailers.  This is such a novel idea and it’s pretty cool because it gets people there on time and the movie experience doesn’t turn into a 3 hour marathon.  It’s great and I don’t know why the theatres are not doing this in Vancouver.  I think it has something to do with the laid back culture back on the West Coast, where everyone is slow and late for everything.  It’s too bad cause it makes a big difference in the grand scheme of things.

I never noticed this until this past weekend, but there sure are a lot of Mexican eateries here.  I guess this isn’t too surprising because there are a lot of Mexican people here.  I don’t think I go more than 4 days without eating something Mexican.  Don’t get me wrong though, the food is good, and there are a lot of choices.  You can go to Baja Fresh, Chipotles, Burrito Brothers, Taco Bell, and the list goes on and on.  I’ve even tried (relatively) expensive Mexican here.  It’s all tasty, yummy and filling.  I even went to a friend’s place the other night and she made a great Mexican rice dish.  This stuff doesn’t even make you gassy, so I would deem it ‘Wes-Safe’ too.  So no fear of killing your friends after a big Mexi-meal and very little chance that you’ll accidentally poop your pants.  Although, I went to Taco Bell for the first time today and it kicked my ass; no pun intended.  I think it was actually the beer from the previous night guess but the Spicy Chicken Crunchwrap Surpreme was definitely a catalyst for me to stop shopping and head home.  Which reminds me, Charmin Ultra is awesome stuff!  Anyway, it’s like Chinese food in Vancouver.  It’s everywhere!  It’s a nice change because there aren’t any good Mexican restaurants in the GVR.  MMmmm tacos..!

I played poker on the weekend and it turns out I still got some game because I managed to win two of the three rounds.  I almost won the third round, but I started getting reckless.  I was playing a pretty disciplined game up until then.  I think part of it  was because I didn’t wanna win all three rounds and I just started making dumb bets.  Besides, I want to continue getting invited to future games, so it wasn’t that big of a deal not to score a poker hattrick.

That’s all for now, I need to get to bed since my stupid company isn’t recognizing President’s Day as a holiday.  For gosh sakes; Nations Capital, where all the presidents reside, where all the monuments are, and where all the political hoopla happens, and we don’t get the day off.  We don’t get a real vacation til May 28th.  Getting gyped I tell ya!!! F@%#!!

Anthony

I’m sitting here watching Corinne Bailey Rae performing on the Grammy’s and it’s a pretty good performance.  If you’ve never heard of her, you should give her stuff a few minutes.  Same goes for John Legend.  That guy is quite a talent too.

Anyway, I’m closing in on four weeks here and things have been going relatively well.  So far there haven’t been too many surprises, but it’s still early and there’s plenty of time for shit to go awry.

What’s new in my world?  Hmm. Let me re-cap the last few weeks by saying ‘Not much!’.  I managed to get my SSN assigned to me and before it was 30 min old in my possession, I went upstairs to HR to give them my number so I could start getting paid.  I don’t think I made it in time for the upcoming pay period, but I’ll probably start getting a pay cheque a the end of the month.  I guess I should be glad that this month is a short month.  I also found out that I had successfully secured a permanent apartment that same day.  Congratulations to me!  It actually works out perfectly because the day I need to move out of this temp housing place is the day I get to move into the new place.  I’ve already arranged with the movers to move my stuff from storage into my new home.  Everything’s going down on March 16th.  I hope to have internet and cable set up that same day.  That would be ideal cause I’m taking a day off and the more I get done that day, the better.  Who knows, maybe I’ll buy a new flat screen and have it shipped that day too.  :)  Probably

So where am I moving to?  I’m moving outta DC and into Maryland.  It’s a whole different State that surrounds the North and East side of DC.  The town is called Bethesda (pronounced Buh-Thez-Dah) and it resides in Montgomery County.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus was raised in Bethesda and Maury Povich apparently lives there with Connie Chung.  Maybe I’ll see them at the grocery store one day.  So why did I choose to live there?  There were a few reasons:

• it’s a nice, quiet place with a relatively low crime rate; everyone there is supposed to be smart with 80% of them having some kinda post high-school degree, the highest rate in America (kinda impressive eh?)
• convenient; the town has everything that I need and it’s got a uber convenient trolley bus that goes through the town every 8 minutes.  It’s awesome cause it goes past Safeway, Giant (another grocery store), the mall, and all the restaurants.  It even goes past my future apartment and right to the metro train.  This trolley was actually the thing that really won me over.  I’ll explain more later.
• big apartment; the apartment is 850 sq ft and it has a lot of closet space which is a huge win and something I was taking for granted until I went to IKEA and saw how expensive wardrobe pieces were.  The whole place has hardwood floors and a lot of light and windows.  It’s on the fourth floor of a four story high brick building.  It’s got a lot of potential and character, which really my way of saying that it’s old, and that the bathroom needs some work.  The kitchen is sufficient.  It doesn’t have a dishwasher and I guess I can live with out that.  Laundry is on the first floor and that’s not a big deal.  I’m kinda used to it already as my temp housing place doesn’t have in-unit laundry either.  When I went to look at the place, it was still occupied by people, and  the Management company that maintains the apartment told me that I wouldn’t be getting it in ‘that’ condition and they assured me that it would all get cleaned up, painted, waxed, scrubbed down, and I might possibly even receive an upgrade on the oven/stove.  I hope to get into the place again before they clean it up cause I wanna take pictures and show you before and after pics.  Plus that oven is a freaking antique.  I’ve never seen something like that ever.  It’s probably as old as the building (50 years old maybe?).  Cross your fingers for me.
• the price was right; I was looking for suitable places for a long time and the prices for the places that I wanted were astronomical.  Blackboard simply doesn’t pay me enough to afford a nice place closer to work.  So I opted for an older joint.  The monthly rent also includes all of the utilities which is great because that means I get even more value for what I’m paying.  Now I only need to pay for cable TV, internet, and telephone.
• *sidetracked here* WOW!  Mary J Blige’s performace is amazing!
• timing; the availability of the place fit in perfectly with the expiration of the corporate housing place.  The new apartment allows me to maximize my corporate housing to the last day.  I don’t think it gets more perfect than that, albeit, I only have a one day window to move.  But I shouldn’t have too much to transfer over, so it shouldn’t really be a problem.

I think I covered most of the reasons.  It’s just a seemingly perfect place that gives me almost everything that I want.  Since it is an older place, I may even paint the walls just to give it a little more pizazz.  We’ll see.  I might be too lazy or too cheap to do it.

What’s life in DC like you might ask?  Well, there’s one thing that I noticed that happens a hell of a lot here.  There are a tonne of emergency vehicles that goes through downtown.  During work, I hear at least 5 fire trucks that go through downtown within a day.  I’m not kidding.  In fact, I just witnessed a brigade of cop cars and bikes wailing past my apartment.  I think the president or someone important must have been in one of the unmarked cars because there were at least 30 vehicles that went by, all with their lights and sirens on.  Quite a sight actually.  Disruptive, but cool too!

I took it easy this weekend (like I take it every weekend now that I think about it).  I actually made it out to Safeway yesterday cause I needed to replenish my fridge.  It had been over a week since I had boughten any food.  So somehow I managed to spend over 2 hours at Safeway and when I left, my bill was $70 and I had 8 heavy bags to carry home.  Things like, milk, eggs, juice, cans of soup, 6 lbs of chicken, etc.. Anyway, I don’t know if I ever expressed this before, but without a car, going to Safeway sucks because it’s not that convenient from here and it’s cold out and it’s a chore to haul shit back home.  Anyway, 8 bags during a 15 minute walk is a lot of work and my fingers were about to fall off from the weight and cold weather.  To put it lightly, it fucking sucked monkey balls!!  I was tired and I actually stopped 3 blocks away from the apartment cause I needed to give my fingers a rest.  My fingers were sweating and aching, and I was sweating up a storm too.  My forearms were dying and I couldn’t type properly for 20 minutes when I got back.  Today, my shoulders are killing me.  It feels like I was in a 3 hour boxing match.  Ugh!  So, this is another reason why the place in Bethesda was so attractive.  The trolley stops right in front of the local Safeway.  Score.  I’ll never have to experience the pain and agony of carrying too much at once now.  Plus, since it’s so much more convenient, I’ll be more inclined to make multiple trips to the store rather than leave it all for one trip every 10 days.  Smart thinking eh?  Well, smart in a stupid way cause I know all of you are thinking that I just need to buy less or make more trips.  It’s cold here though; it was -7 last week and -15 with the wind.

Alright, that does it for me today.  I’ll save some of my thoughts and experiences for another time.  Take care everyone!

Anthony