When the cat's away, the mice will...be more productive than usual?

My supervisor has been on vacation since monday, and it seems like the entire night staff in hematology has been working double time to get stuff done. It's nicer, because now, when we're finished our nightly "quotas" for work, we have to pretend to do stuff in order to look busy, which is a chore on it's own. On Monday, when we finished our work for the night, we just sat there and chatted, and didn't feel bad about it at all. It's kinda nice.

Last night, however, it was clear the night wasn't going to go as easily as most others. Apparently, the computers in the Data Entry department were down for a few hours in the afternoon, which slows down pretty much all things at the lab. By the time I arrive, usually, about 6500-7000 samples have been processed, so I would only have about 2000-3000 samples personally to work with. Since the computers were down, only about 4500 samples were done by the time I got there, leaving me to deal with approximately 5000. What frustrates me even more, is that the afternoon shift, knowing full well that they were behind schedule, still left some work behind to leave for me when I got there. When I showed up, about 10:55pm, they were still sitting at their stations, just chatting away. You know that you haven't been productive in a long time when you're chatting so long, you forget it's about time to clock out and go home. Fuckin' lazy sons of bitches couldn't finish off their work so I'd have slightly less to worry about. The worst part is, the afternoon shift has two people to do what I do all by myself in the night shift. They are probably just lazy first year university students who actually think the work they're doing is difficult. Assholes.

Not feeling so great.

I dunno. Maybe it's just because I'm lactose intolerant and I decided to have real milk with my coffee this morning. But I just feel like absolute crap. Just an overall crappy feeling, along with some emotional crap I've been going over the last couple of days. I wish I had something funny to say, but I'm not in the mood.

tips for sleeping well.

I lied, it's not really quality sleep, but it feels kinda nice. I have a shot of whiskey before sleeping and I sleep like a frickin' little baby. You may drool. I know I do.

The Beginnings of Road Rage

Recently, I have been developing a lower and lower tolerance on the road. This is really just for one particular thing... entering the highway. The on-ramp to the highway gives you enough time to accelerate to the posted speed limit of 100km/hr. Why is it, then, that I see so many people entering the highway at 70km/hr?!?!?!?!? Seriously? I'm a courteous driver, so I slow down to let these people on. But f.f.s, step on it a little, would you? I'm running late for work sometimes.

Poor skills at All-You-Can-Eat Buffets can be hazardous to your health

So yesterday, Father's Day, my family decided it would be a great idea to go to a buffet (in Scarborough, Super Buffet, on Markham Road) for dinner. We did not have reservations, so once we stepped in the door, there appeared to be close to 30 people, mostly filipino, waiting to be seated.

Surprisingly, we were seated in 15 minutes from arriving, but were told that we had only 1.5 hours to eat. This isn't really a problem, because we usually eat pretty quickly.

The problem was, there were so many people in the buffet, that the traffic in the buffet area was ridiculous. The restaurant serves lobster and oysters at dinner time, so the majority of people wait in line for these delicious items, holding out their plates hoping to get randomly served ahead of other people in line. If you are Chinese, you'll get good pieces in the middle of the line. Any other race, however, and you'll get your lobster/oyster when you reach the front of the line, but you'll get a shitty piece, like, the head of the lobster, or the smallest oyster in the serving container. I didn't even bother to get in line, but my loving mother gave me some. Thanks, mama. =]

Another problem that arises, is bumping into people, rather, people bumping into you. When you're walking around the buffet tables, you're looking at all the food. You see something further away, so you start walking towards it, and then something else catches your eye! You keep walking towards your first choice, but your eyes stay on the random surprise you spotted. So you walk into someone that was standing in front of you, that person being one Warren De La Cruz. KEEP YOUR FUCKING EYES IN FRONT OF YOU. If I get sweet and sour sauce on my white t-shirt, I will gouge your eyes out with chopsticks, I swear to you. Thankfully for the human race, I have never been stained by other people's food. One day though, someone will make a mistake, and there will be absolute carnage. :]

blah. Sunday. what more is there to say?

My Friday night will always suck more than yours.

I hate having to leave a party early. My friend, Evan Webb had a little house party at his house in Mississauga last night, and I decided to attend for a couple of hours, since he's a pretty good friend of mine and all. I realize that my GPS navigator needs to be updated, because it made me go around in a circle looking for his place because a certain road that currently exists did not exist in my navigator's database. that wasted about 20 minutes of gasoline driving around at about 70km/hour. LOVELY. Anywho, I finally got there, and it was a good time, but then I had to leave to drive Michelle Liu (who you can see here) back to Brampton, then go to work, which was only a few kilometers from Evan's house. Sucks.

We finished our work even earlier than usual, finishing the last batch of test tubes at around 4:00am. For those who don't know, I work in the Hematology department at Canadian Medical Laboratories, located at Kennedy and Courtneypark in Mississauga.

On the lighter side of things, I purchased a new bottle of Burberry Touch, my favourite cologne, yesterday. My other bottle is almost empty. boo.

Budgeting Sucks

This morning, I was sitting in the car waiting for my mother to finish work, when I pulled out my pay stub from my pocket. I then got to thinking, I could easily blow 833.60 in about 2 days time, but clearly, I shouldn't, because I need to save money for school. So I decided to bust out my phone's calculator application, and plug numbers in to determine my summer budget, excluding tuition which is being loaned to me by the government.

My net earnings this summer would be about: $5337 CAD

I already killed 345 of that from my first paycheck : $4992

I pay my parents 20 dollars a week for food and stuff over 16 weeks: $4672

I am paying my cell phone bill this summer, about 40/month : $4552

I am paying 50/month for using the internet : $4402

I am buying my father an iPod touch for Father's day (allotting 300 dollars): $4102

I am paying for 6 out of 8 months rent for this year (450/month) : $1402

I owe ~300 on my visa: $1102

With about 10 weeks remaining of summer, that leaves $1102/10: 110.20/week

~$100 per week isn't as bad as I thought, but blowing ~$5000 on roulette would be so much more exciting than budgeting, wouldn't it?

Killing Time At Work

EDIT: 3 days in a row this week, I made small bows and arrows at work out of sheer boredom. I am proud to say that ability to construct this device is great. It worked as expected. I only wish I had the nards to shoot it at the clock (the tip of the arrow is a paper clip, so I might break the clock). =]

Some days at work for me, generally wednesday and friday nights, I finish my primary and secondary duties relatively early, usually at 5:00am (2 hours before clocking out). They do not send you home when you have nothing to do, so when this happens, I get to dick around for 120 minutes. You could easily just stare at ceiling tiles or hum things to yourself, but I think it's much more enjoyable to abuse laboratory supplies. And when I say lab supplies, I'm not really talking about test tubes and pipettes. Really, I'm just playing with standard office supplies

- pens

- rubber bands

- tape

- paper clips

- latex gloves (okay, I guess this is a lab supply)

Usually, I fling rubber bands at the clock, which is located about 8 feet above the ground, about 12 feet from where I was sitting. You'd think it was easy, but I'm pretty shitty at it. I did manage to hit it last friday though, which was surprising. I have yet to hit it a second time.

Last night, I got a little creative and tried to develop new forms of firing rubber bands or other small items at people or objects. I even managed to create a small bow and arrow using multiple rubber bands, bent paper clips and tape. It was pretty shitty, so I threw it out.

I also stage sword fights between my two hands, using pens or wooden sticks, and use latex gloves as balloons.

2 hours later, I clock out, having been paid for wasting resources. I kinda rule.

Saturday

The weather sucked today, so I clearly had no intention of leaving the house. Sadly, I had to drive to Ocean's, the chinese supermarket, so my mom could buy some food. Parking in that plaza sucks, because half of the drivers are oriental asians, who have a fairly accurate stereotype of being bad drivers. Luckily, I made it home alive. After arriving home, I sat on the couch all day and watched the comedy network, which I realized today plays the same things more than once in a day, so I watched the Comedy Now:Russell Peters set for a while, which was funny even after seeing it many times before. I'm currently still on the couch, watching an episode of Corner Gas for the second time today. That show is only subtly amusing. Canadian comedy lacks something, and by something, I mean a lot.

My life is uneventful

I'm currently in the middle of my 3rd week of working at Canadian Medical Labs. The first week, I spent my breaks smoking at least one, at most three cigarettes, drinking coffee and listening to Z103.5 on the radio in my car. In the second week, I started napping on at least one of the breaks, if not both, smoking only one cigarette, drinking only a little coffee. If I decide to not nap, I might just recline my seat and sit in silence, or even worse than silence, I listen to 680 News Radio. Since when did I care what's new in the world? I'm so behind in times, I only play videogames from the 90s, and the occasional game from 2001, but really, that's because my laptop is 7 years old. I do not intend on purchasing a new one anytime soon.

Having money for the first time in a long time

When you have money on a regular basis, you don't really buy a lot of things when you make the trip to the mall. You buy what you need at the time. When you go without money for a long time, you make do with whatever you've got, which kinda sucks, but it's not like you have a choice. Then, when you finally have money, you go and get everything you need.

I received my first paycheck from my current job, 345 dollars of pure joy. I decided to go to the mall and buy things I felt I needed.

- deodorant (3)
- lotion
- foot powder
- mints
- chapstick (2)
- underwear (8 pairs)
- shirts (9)

When you buy all of these things at the same time, I wonder if the cashier actually thinks about what you're buying. I know I would. I would then think, wow, this guy needs all this stuff right away? How's he been getting by until now? Must've been one smelly, chapped-lip, commando, shirtless son of a bitch. I feel almost obligated to explain myself to the cashier. "It's payday, I finally have some money." But then again, that's egocentric, thinking that the cashier actually gave a shit about me in the slightest, dealing with upwards of 50 customers per day. How silly of me.