Another Reason 2009 Sucks

The curse that is 2009 continues: today I lost my wedding band. It was midafternoon at work that I realized the ring was missing from its finger. In the ensuing semi-panic I tried to think of when it disappeared - I couldn’t - and then tried to think of where it could have come off my hand during the day. The only place I figured it may have come off was when drying my hands in the washroom with paper towels, so I sequestered myself in the handicapped stall to root through the washroom trash can. No luck: the search turned up a lot of damp paper towels and some chewing gum. I ate the gum, but it wasn’t enough to console me.

The next thought was that perhaps I hadn’t put the ring back on last night, when I remember removing it briefly. But I couldn’t imagine not noticing its absence for almost an entire workday. How could I have gone six hours without realizing my finger was naked?

Once at home, the search came up empty again. The faint hope is that I took it off at my desk to slather my hands with disinfectant, something I do every day without ever taking my ring off. Even fainter hope is that it fell off at some point and someone turned it in to the receptionist. But I’m quite sure it’s lost like the Lindbergh baby, or Daryl Hannah’s career. It’s gone. I’ve spent the time since wondering how I could be so careless and oblivious to having a ring fall off my finger. My ladywife assures me she’s not upset, but I am, mostly because I have no idea what I did that could make my ring come off, or where I did it.

TWIG Notes XXI

The 21st Edition of This Week in Garrett goes like this:

- I signed a contract extension for another six months. While I would have liked to received a permanent fulltime offer, the fact is there’s still not much out there for someone like me to choose from. It also dawned on me that I’ve worked for four companies in the last four years. At this point stability would be a good thing. Plus I’m in the process of designing the logo for our software, which seems to be fast-tracked into acceptance. I’ve never worked on something that didn’t need consensus from half a dozen people and didn’t  come back to me with subjective opinions, so I’m not putting the cart before the horse on this one. Because you know what happens when the cart goes before the horse? Bad things.

- It was bound to happen: I’m sick with another common cold. All we hear about now is H1N1, which is tiresome, but I’m positive I don’t have it and I won’t get it. And even if I do, people forget that it’s just a strain of the flu. The only thing different about it compared to other flu strains is that it’s more contagious. So whatever; I’m not a baby, and I’m not elderly, so the more flus I contract now the better off I’ll be down the road. That’s my logic, anyway. Flawed, you say? You’re flawed! In the head! Ha!

- TV season is upon us again. What I’m watching this year: Mad Men, Gossip Girl, Heroes, 30 Rock, Parks & Recreation, The Office (sometimes), and Community. HBO seems to have entered its slow season, so it has little to offer right now other than Bill Maher. I have yet to check out a couple other shows recommended to me by friends, but as usual I’ll probably catch up on those via illegal download DVD.

- I have stopped believing in the stock market. When the world went to shit last fall, I took my RRSP money out of their mutual funds after I lost 30% of it. Yes, I could have kept it where it was, and would have recovered 10% of it by now, but a quick look at history shows that market collapses are happening with more frequency and greater amplitude than ever. Throw in the fact that there’s been exactly zero change in how corporations do business, and I have zero reason to believe that the markets are a good idea. I’m still searching for a good rate of return using some other method, and I’m seriously considering buying gold with part of my savings. Yes, buying actual gold. I’m probably crazy, but when has gold ever not been a safe investment? After all, people don’t get their teeth capped with mutual funds. I’m just sayin’.

- Side note: my 5000 Iraqi Dinars are still only worth about five bucks. Once that country is stable, I’m totally gonna cash in. You know, in the year 2050.

In Search Of…

I love sandwiches. At the top of the sandwich hierarchy, the gold standard, the Rolls Royce of lunches, is the turkey club sandwich. The combination of turkey, bacon, and mayonnaise is like the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, or the Captain and Tenille, or Bigfoot and inconclusive evidence.

Because of its simplicity, it should be easy for an eatery to create a satisfactory club sandwich. Over the past year, however, I’ve found that more and more sandwich joints have no idea how to make one. In general there’s three laws of the turkey club that seem to be broken, and the ‘chefs’ who put these abominations together should be ashamed.

First, turkey clubs need sourdough bread. Yes, you can serve it on whole wheat or in a bun, but it’s not the right way to do it. It would be like making cookies with carob chips, or wearing a coat made of felt. It’s just not acceptable, even though it’s functional.

Second, the turkey should never, ever be in cold cut form. Especially coming from a restaurant, no one should ever be brought a meat product that was cut from a loaf (exception, obviously, meatloaf. But no one orders meatloaf at a restaurant). Turkey in a club sandwich has to be actual pieces of turkey meat, ripped from its dead and cooked carcass. This year I’ve had three different club sandwiches that contained luncheon turkey meat, and one was so poorly conceived that it had one piece of turkey lunch meat in it. One! You can’t even taste luncheon meat if it’s not at least four pieces thick. It was like eating bread with a light dusting of turkey essential oil.

Finally - and perhaps the most bizarre - two of the club sandwiches I’ve had have featured cheese. Now I love cheese, and I will never, ever stop eating cheese for as long as I have a jaw, but cheese has no place in a turkey club sandwich. Do you put mushrooms in chocolate pudding? Or butter in a glass of wine? Of course not. Cheese is not a member of the club.

So where’s the best turkey club sandwich? I haven’t found anywhere that beats White Spot. They do it all right, and they have that combination of mayo and red relish secret Triple O sauce that, while sloppy, makes the club sandwich the hippest club in town.

Also, did you know White Spot now offers yam fries?

What I’m getting at is, establishments shouldn’t put things on their menu if the chef doesn’t even know how to make something correctly. Yeah yeah, experimentation is nice, but putting cheese in a club sandwich isn’t experimentation, it’s just stupid ignorance. It’s like what Gordon Ramsay always preaches to stupid moron chefs - get the simple stuff right first before you try something fancy. The fact that more and more chefs can’t get a club sandwich right ought to be embarassing.

The Worst Part of a Vacation…

… is the part where it ends. On Sunday the ladyfriend and I got back from The Last Vacation of The Year, a week-long visit to my favourite place, Vancouver Island. Three days visiting Dad and step-family in Qualicum, followed by four days in Ucluelet/Tofino, and ending with two days in Victoria. Here’s some of the highlights:

Posh Hotel! For our visit to the west coast of the Island, we stayed at the Black Rock Resort, a new and swank hotel that’s still trying to attract clientele. Rates were on par with everything else in the area, although in a few years I don’t doubt that a night in the hotel will cost $300+ a night. We got a free upgrade to a suite with a view of both forest and ocean, and the hotel itself is situated in a horseshoe shape around a small inlet facing the water. It’s unlikely we’ll stay in a place that nice again, and I’m sure glad we took advantage of it. And of course, Ucluelet is beautiful and once again made me want to live there. I seriously can’t think of a better part of the province: ocean, rainforest, wildlife, and sandy beaches all in the same area.

Arbutus Trees! My favourite species of tree, ever.

The Capital! I don’t really know why, but I like downtown Victoria. Despite the influx of condos and the weird combination of tourists, old people, attractive girls, and homeless punks, it has an odd charm and still feels safer and less pretentious then downtown Vancouver. I think overall Victoria has a more laid-back way of life than the GVRD, and that’s why I’m drawn to it. It’s probably time to think about how I can find a job there in the next few years. It will be a lot easier once the people of Victoria discover there’s an industry based on this amazing invention known as The Computer.

Overall we had a great time, and photos from the trip will follow soon.

Not to be Outdone

Following the lead of my now-famous father-in-law, I’m proud to announce that I too have starred in a commercial!

I must say it was a pleasure working with one of the greatest female tennis players in history, Steffi Graf, and while it wasn’t a speaking role like my father-in-law’s was, I learned a lot and I hope this is a springboard to more opportunities down the road. Also, be sure to buy a Longines watch, should you have a few hundred dollars lying around.