Due to bad timing, today ended up rather on the horrid side.

I'm feeling tired and lonely.

and finally I have a new best friend.

*Yawn*

But I've got a new monitor. Yippee.

And now I let mental and physical exhaustion catch up to me, and go pass out.

Which ArchAngel are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla

I left work sometime around quarter after five, and wandered in a general southwest fashion, in theory towards the Paramount (Downtown Toronto's answer to the megatheatres out in the boonies), in order to buy tickets for The Two Towers on Thursday night. But, being me (ie a person only dimly aware of the layout of downtown), I wandered WAY too far to the west, and ended up wandering through Chinatown. This part of my story really has nothing to do with anything else, but it adds colour.

So, after nearly losing whatever it was I had for lunch yesterday, after wandering past tubs and tubs of squid left out to rot (and just how is it remotely possible for squid to rot in -8C weather? My refridgerator seems to hover somewhere around 12C at the best of times, and it manages to keep things fresh for weeks. Then again, I don't generally keep much squid in there. Perhaps squid needs to be stored at absolute zero in order to remain 'fresh'. Or maybe it just wasn't meant to be food at all, and the Chinese and Italians are morally corrupt savages.) I finally got reorientated with my map, and found the Paramount.

Now, of course at this point, it was nearly 6 o'clock, and only 6 hours until the first showing of Two Towers, so there were slightly more people in line than there are in, say, all of the Greater Toronto Area. But, thanks to the miracle of modern technology, I got to walk past all of them, and get into a slightly longer line to use the Quick Lane ticket dispensers.

Now, I'm more computer literate than the next guy, and I certainly have no problem with new technologies, but I hate the Quick Lane ticket dispensers. Something about the menus/touch screens totally baffles and confuses me. I think it's because they've thoughtfully arranged everything so that important information is at roughly eye level. But since I have to stare straight down to even see the top of the screen, I never seem to actually notice any of the instructions the damned things give me. But this part of the story also has nothing to do with anything else, and was also just to add colour.

There is no proper queue to use the Quick Lane ticket dispensers (my word I'm sick of typing that name out over and over again. So from now on I'll be calling them Debbie), and there's simply general chaos as 800 people in a sort of mass try to be fair, and take available Debbies in the proper order (this is, after all Toronto, possibly the most genteel megalopolis on Earth) and of course, as dictated by the rules of probability, only 2 or 3 of which actually work.

So finally my turn rolls around, and I step up to a Debbie as the previous person walks away telling me "that one doesn't work. Something's wrong with the Visa thing". Hurrah! But I try it anyways, and it seems fine. Let's see here...English, Movies for another Day, Two Towers, 8:45, General Admission, General Admission, No, I don't want food, No, I'm not interested in the food even IF you put it exactly the same cup, but call it a Lord of the Rings Special...Fine, I'll pay the rediculously expensive ticket prices. And all seems well. Then it tells me to swipe my card. The part I've been dreading. I've been told it will all go horribly wrong. But I try anyways. And it works.

So I punch in my secret code (****) and draw the 1800 dollars from my chequing account, it says approved, and out comes my ticket. Not ticketS. Oh no, we couldn't have that now could we? Well, alright, it's been awhile since I used Debbies. Maybe they've started printing everything on one ticket, and it's good for 2 admissions? Maybe you just get a receipt now, and you pick up your tickets at the gate the night of the movie (which, of course would in all likelihood totally miss the point of me coming 2 days early to buy a ticket in the first place)?

Looking at the ticket, it readily becomes apparant that I'm very wrong on both theories. It's a single, general admission ticket. And there's nothing else there. Debbie is now telling the next person (who hopefully can't actually see the screen through me, which would cause them to realize I can't actually seem to work Debbie, and point and laugh at me) to choose if they'd like service in english or service en francais. Okay, I admit it, I don't remember how to say service in french. That was the best I could do with my limited highschool french, and babelfish (It amazes me just how much I'm running into Douglas Adams-related things lately).
Well, this state of affairs simply wouldn't do. I simply refuse to pay $30 for just the one of me to see a movie. Once, anyways. I'm pretty much resigned at this point to seeing The Two Towers at least 4 times in theatres, which means I'll certainly end up paying $40 to see it. Sulking seemed like a stupid idea. Beating Debbie to death, while a likely course of action for my brother, didn't suit my style. So, in my own...idiom sir--idiom, I took another approach.

I thrust my fingers into Debbie's orifices.

At this point, I should like to point out that when I started calling the Quick Lane ticket dispensers Debbie, I really wasn't planning it as a setup for a joke. The fact that eventually I wrote 'thrust my fingers into Debbie's orifices', is just one of those happy coincidences that makes life livable. Another of those happy coincidences is that I didn't decide to call them 'my Grandmother'.

So I get my hand up inside Debbie, and the ticket chute actually reaches quite a ways up into the damned things, and eventually find some pieces of paper. "Ah ha!!!!*", I think. "My ticket!" And a quick tug releases them from Debbie's deathgrip, and I pull my hand out to reveal a mass of slips of paper. Lots of them. Far more than the 1 I was expecting. So I go through them. Old movie tickets, lots of bill slips, and then finally, my second Two Towers ticket, and my bill slip.

So, at this point I should be happily on my way, secure in the knowledge that I'll get to see The Two Towers on Thursday, and there won't be any niggling problems with that issue except for the fact that Allison has no idea what time she'll be ready, and at that point, neither of us really had the slightest clue where she'd be, or where I'd be, and well, to be honest, other than "We want to see Two Towers as soon as we can", we'd done our usual amount of planning for an evening, which is to say none.

I start wandering out of the Paramount, for the longish journey back to the Subway system, when I find another ticket in the pile that Debbie so thoughtfully gave me. For that very night. 7:10 PM, to be exact. And it's only 6:15, or 6:20 at this point. Debbie gave me a valid ticket. How thoughtful of her. And it's for Star Trek:Nemesis. A movie which not 2 days before, I'd said "The only way I'd ever consider watching it, is if it were magically free to do so, and I had nothing better to do."

So, to review:

• It was magically free.
• I had nothing better to do.

Now, I was suddenly very nervous. And I tried very hard to think. Had I, at any point, perhaps after watching Star Trek: Insurrection, ever said anything to the effect of "May God strike me down if I ever watch another Star Trek Movie." Because, after all, the much less-likely prediction had already come true. And it seemed like something I very well might have said, because Star Trek Insurrection was to good movies what Malcolm in the Middle is to good tv shows. Which is to say that some people might think it is a good movie, but those people are wrong.

Sufficiently convinced that the Paramount was mostly lightningproof, I decided to risk the wrath of God, and see Nemesis. Anyone that cares about such things already knows that the first half of the movie has nothing to do with Star Trek. First Contact now seems to mean 'blow the aliens up for no good reason'. The Argo jump-into-a-shuttle bit was so cheesy my head hurt. Since when are Remans an entirely different species from Romulans? Why was spacenerd Wil Wheaton sitting at the table? The last time we saw him, spacenerd Wil Wheaton was leaving the universe, slightly improving it for the rest of us. But I'm being nitpicky, and since I claim to have left Star Trek behind me, I should probably stop talking about it. Still, lots of plotholes in general. The second hour picked up though. And yes, the end was very very sad.

Then I set a new record by going west from the Paramount, which was incredibly stupid of me. But eventually I made it home. So, in a nutshell that's what I did last night.

*Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a warped mind.

And man does it feel early. Moreso when I got here an hour ago.

So...ummm..yeah, Sugar Plums are awesome.

Saturday. LAN Party. J's house. Hours and hours of Tekken (and now I want Tekken 4, Damn it) and Counter-strike. Which sucks, but is surprisingly fun when you can yell at teammates.

Sunday. Ummmm, I don't recall a whole lot of exciting stuff happening Sunday. Or at least none that I'm going to write about here.

Monday. Clark Nova concert. Good opening act (possibly) with the worst name ever. Electric Lettuce. We ignored them. Even when they walked right past us. Then, eventually Clark Nova took the stage. And we realized it no more than 3 minutes later. We ignored them too. So yeah, that was the Clark Nova concert. We rule.

Well, I can't claim to have not gotten anything done today, at least.

• 11:00 Wake up after a solid 7 hours of sleep. Computer Consulting
• 12:00 Haircut
• 12:30 Call a man about a job...I start Dec. 16^th. Almost definitely this time.
• 1:00 - 5:30 Christmas shopping. Seriously, folks. What the hell do you want?
• 5:30 - 8:00 Dinner with Grandma (Which didn't work out the way it was supposed to at all, because I lost track of time, and I'm just generally a moron
• 8:00 Relax briefly, get big announcement.

And from the time I got home til now or so, my house has been full of teachers. Actually, my house is always full of teachers, except when I'm alone. So it's more full of teachers than usual is what I meant.

So Jeff is now engaged. I'm surprised, and yet not :) Congratulations to you and Andrea. I'll even try to refrain from saying things like it's about time.

Okay, I don't care if it *does* supposedly mean anything. I am not going to dwell on being eaten by rabid monkies at Disneyworld (or something like that) as a result of government drug testing. Yep. Dreams make perfect sense.

In a probably vain attempt to be warm for what is hopefully my last 3 days at the Bellagio, I bought long underwear today. And if history has taught me anything, it's that I'm going to spend my last 3 days there scratching like crazy.

I think it was just a combination of being really tired, odd dreams (which had mostly faded from memory when I woke up), and life in general getting me down. I'm back to happy. And the first person to mention manic depression gets a beer bottle to the eye.

I need more sleep, but it doesn't seem in the cards. And I've got a terrible feeling I jumped the gun on being happy.