I hate it when I let LJ get away from me for a couple of days; the task of writing what’s been going on in the interim seems so impossibly daunting after even the smallest fraction of time has passed. Sometimes the best thing to do is just plunge in there and hope you catch most of it:

Last Thursday I got the Godzilla-sized TV antenna removed from the side of our home in Weston, which has reduced the clanking noises of the loose tower smacking the bedroom wall at night, relieved our fear of someone climbing up said tower and into the bedroom window and stealing or murdering us, and banished the terrifying thought that the loose tower might tumble into the park next to us and slaughter innocent children. I had it removed as a slightly unromantic birthday gift to , since it’s his 24th birthday this Thursday.

Truthfully, I think he would have preferred one of these:
But I’m just not that big a sugar mama, alas.

Friday night was quiet; JVL spent the day at home, playing StarWars:KOTOR (which I find soothing to have on the TV while I’m studying; apparently Robert Browning and RPGs go well together).

While walking to the convenience store, we saw a poster that made us aware of a disturbing proposal that’s been made regarding the train tracks going through Weston. GOTransit is planning on building a direct train line to the Airport, with raised rails, so that all three of the streets that cross from our neighborhood over to Weston road (where all the local shopping places are, including Shoppers Drug Mart and the TD bank) would be rendered unpassable by car or pedestrian traffic.

This would have the crap effect of making all through traffic have to detour south to Lawrence West Road or north to the road just south of the highway where the Crossroads Centre is, meaning we would have to walk about 40 minutes to get from our house to the main drag for food, money, medication or the GOTrain station – whereas now it takes about 10 minutes. This will cause commerce on Weston Road and property values up against the wall of the train tracks to suffer, and noise will become a big concern, since high-speed trains will be zooming through the neighborhood every 45 minutes on the hour. They had a town meeting on this last week, which was shut down by the Fire Marshalls because three times the capacity of the room they had booked showed up – almost 1500 people.

Saturday JVL slept in until my Mum showed up in her trusty and newly-repaired vehicle; she and I had planned a day of painting the upstairs bathroom, since I FINALLY picked some colours I liked (‘Silver Cloud’ for the ceiling, ‘Normandy’ for the accent nooks, and ‘Winter Lake’ for the walls), but we took a little detour to the Snail to drop Justin off and then meandered over to Benjamin Moore and Dominion for some shopping on our way home. While there we discovered “DrugTown”, which contrary to it’s sketchy name is a really bizarre little pharmacy-come-stationary shop-come-home decor place. They had everything from Advil to rolltop secretary desks, candles, these adorable little dishes with cherries on them that I COVETED, and other assorted oddities.

My awesome mother, bless her heart, not only bought my groceries, but she also bought me a new scale while we were at DrugTown; it’s all digital and glass and I ADORE it, except it keeps telling me NASTY things about myself. In a very subtle way, of course, mostly involving flashing three digits and a decimal in my direction. Given the astronomical numerical value of the digits, however, it might as well be screaming…

“Hey Lardass! How many burritos can YOU get busy with at the same time? ‘Cause it looks like 22 won’t be cutting it! You been hitting the cheese corn and soda pop again? What next, you gonna hold up the ice cream truck with a slingshot?!?”
Yes, my pretty new scale, if it could talk, would speak Ghetto.
(attacks on my personal weight gain, courtesy of ‘Pharcyde’)

After the Mom-and-daughter trooper all-day Saturday painting and cleaning the bathroom marathon, it looks pretty spiffy. Now all we need are the cupboards and a chair rail, and soon we’ll have Robin Leech touring around our second floor, talking about champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

Sunday was therefore my “studying day”, which actually got turned into a “cook French Toast for brunch, visit JVL’s Oma, help JVL fix the totally screwed-up electrical switch-plate in the bathroom and make pad thai for dinner day”.

I’m sure some other things happened in there: doubtless more SW:KOTOR, perhaps a few pages of reading, but really that’s all that jumps to mind. JVL had an uncomfortable evening of not feeling at all well, so we took it easy and flipped through channels on the TV. Thus, tonight I am staying downtown in the hopes of performing a miraculous all-night reading Tennyson’s ‘Idylls of the King’ marathon, as well as cobbling together the Wednesday thesis-presentation for my professor due Wednesday night and the email I said I would send my Waugh/Greene prof before Tuesday. Which is tomorrow.

And at last we reach Monday, aka today. My Manager is away all week and I’m acting Manager in her place. ‘The Powers That Be’ have “dissolved” my perpetually absent Admin. Assistant’s position, so now we only have a three-person unit instead of four. And next week, they’re making everyone in the branch move desks and offices, so I have to pack and move my entire cubicle and all of my files. And my work contract expires in four weeks.

*sigh*

This is going to be a long week.