But this morning I found them participating in a whole new activity that breaches all boundaries of independence and normalcy.

There is something wrong with my cats.

That’s the sign I was staring at moments before slicing my knuckle open with a fillet knife.

I was quickly scrubbing gross, hardened flakes of fish off the blade of the knife when I miscalculated the distance from my hand.

My first instinct was to ignore it. But after a few seconds of turning my finger red, I decided I shouldn’t ignore it anymore. Mainly because my wash cloth was white and hiding the evidence of such a simple misjudgement seemed like far too high stakes.

I went to the exam room instead and spoke to one of the vet techs:

M: Do you have a bandaid I can have?
X: Of course! What happened?

I felt the shame creep in.

M: I cut myself doing dishes on a knife.

She handed me the box.

X: You can have any of these you want!

She handed me a form.

X: But I’m gonna need you to fill this out too.

So I filled out the form so that the wildlife rescue now has a permanent record of my stupid mistake. It was all quite dramatic for such a minor thing.

On my way home, I started thinking all about fish infections spreading through my body and how I’m going to become a mutant!

Speaking of disease being injected into my body, I got a flu shot today. I completely forgot to sign up but my colleagues tipped me off that they had some cancellations.

HR loves when they email you about something for weeks on end and you ignore them, then drop in half-way through the strictly scheduled day and ask to sign up. Haha, but like I said, they had extra jabs so they fit me in.

I’m pleased to know I won’t be catching H3N2 anytime soon, even as a fish. I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with my last few days as a human.

I am looking forward to having gills, but I hope I can still breathe out of water. Being a mermaid would be highly overrated. I don’t want to spend my days being touched by creepy seaweed and fighting with barracudas.

The most exciting part of my day was actually the surprise wedding at work that I was Maid of Honouring in, but that’s a story for another day.

Instead, I want to tell you about the torture I endured during my first official cardio workout in, oh, 2 years.

You see, last Sunday, I made some bold commitments. One of those was to work out 3 times a week (Tues, Thurs & Sat) with Ben at his building’s gym. I also made plans to run outside once a week with Jen (Sunday).

I (un)fortunately missed Tuesdays workout because by the time I got to the skytrain station and realized I forgot my debit card in my other purse and would have to walk another 40 mins round trip for fare, it was already getting late. I’m pathetic on work nights, ok?! I didn’t want to be awake all night.

Anyway.

I think it was at about minute 24 of 30 where, in the spirit of my friend Kieran who likes both working out and rating things on scales, I announced to Ben, “On a scale of 1 to 10, I hate working out about an 11.”

Dramatic, I know, but I’m a sissy.

To make matters worse, there was a seriously hot Australian dude pumping iron while Ben and I flailed around on the cardio machines.

Did I mention my horrible clothes? I don’t own workout clothes. I own sweatpants and oversized t-shirts and a nice pair of running shoes because feet sizes don’t actually change over the years. And I was in Yaletown. Yaletown.

On Saturday, we’re going hiking. I despise hiking. I know, I’ve completely lost my mind.

And sure, I’ll continue being active, but I will also hate every moment of it.

I always BBM, email and phone with my phone, and sometimes I kill time with games, but today I took it to a whole new level.

It started when I was looking for a parking spot today near a local restaurant. I found one, near a sign I’ve never been able to understand.

Then sheer brilliance struck: I would tweet @CityofVancouver and ask them what it means! Sure enough, they responded within 30 minutes with a precise answer.

After coordinating dinner plans with Jen, on my phone, we were killing time while waiting for Karine to show up. (Bus transit technology isn’t as cool.) She showed me this wicked video, which I was able to watch right then and there at the table.

A couple hours later, I’m on my couch and I send that same video to Keelan who would undoubtedly appreciate it. He also watched it on his phone and then we texted each other about how crazy it was.

Then Karine asks me for Jen’s number and it takes literal seconds to find it in my address book, copy and paste it.

This day-to-day mobile lifestyle we’ve created didn’t exist 10 years ago. We totally take it for granted.

…Yeah, my life is really boring right now. How’d you guess?

More importantly, it’s super cold. I don’t know what it is about Vancouver that makes the cold penetrate your very bones. It’s dramatic but that’s really the only way to describe it.

With winter so clearly on it’s way, it has become apparent that I need some more indoor hobbies. It’s hard enough to convince people to go geocaching in the best of times so I’m not holding high hopes for them now.

Here’s a list of some of my newfound activities:

Brushing Thomas. He likes it.

Painting my nails. I can do rainbows and alternating colours, pastels or glitter, dark or light. The possibilities are endless!

Re-arranging Justine’s DVD collection. Alphabetical is overrated. The fun part is waiting for her to notice.

Looking up inspirational quote photos on Google. You know, the ones with the black borders and white writing. There’s not enough of those.

Ignoring Keelan’s texts. He seems to think I never reply even though I’m pretty sure I do 95% of the time. Unless I’m at work. Or intoxicated.

Eating ice cream. Om nom nom nom. In cones, in bowls–it’s all good.

Brainstorming cliche phrases and then figuring out how to implement them in my daily vocab. Oh, and sports metaphors!

As you can see, I have some pretty big plans for the winter months. They will undoubtedly be productive.

If you want to join me in any of my hobbies, feel free to call me. I apologize in advance if I’m having too much fun to answer!

When I first got Netflix, I just watched a bunch of documentaries on drugs. When “gritty drug movies” came up as a category, that made sense.

Then one day, “Movies With A Strong Female Lead”. Ok. I can get behind that.

But recently… “Talking-Animal Movies.”

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s pretty sweet that I now have access to 10 different Land Before Time movies. (But not the first one! What the heck, Netflix?! I’m not gonna start on number 3!)

But we haven’t watched any animal movies. Ever, as far as Netflix is concerned. Especially talking animal movies.

Our Recently Watched list looks like this:

The L Word
90210 (that was Jenna, I swear!)
The Mothman Prophecies
Dead Like Me
Madmen

Unless the Mothman has become an animal, I really don’t understand. None of those are even remotely related.

I can’t wait to see what our current movie brings up: Never Say Never.
I’m hoping for an entire category dedicated to only Justin Bieber.

Step 1: Call Passport Canada and report passport missing. I called at 7:30 am so at least I skipped any hold queues.

Step 2: Visit the Police Station and file a report about my missing passport. This took about an hour.

Step 3: Get my passport taken at a photo studio. There was a place with a good reputation down the street from my place, so yay!

Step 4: Visit a notary to get a statutory declaration signed for the lost passport. I found one who charged $10! Win.

Step 5: Ask boss for permission to work a late shift to visit the Passport Office as soon as they open at 7:30. Coordinate said late shift with team needs.

Step 6: Fill out the forms.

Step 7: Wait for roommate to print and bring home new copies of the form because you messed up your signature in the one box that matters. Crap.

Step 8: Micro-manage roommate/guarantor’s signing off the forms and photo.

Step 9: Go to Passport Canada and submit application.

Step 9 was easier said than done. In my case, because I was going to work after, I had devised a perfect plan: park at Olympic Village skytrain station, take the train downtown, do my thing, train back to the car and head straight to work.

However, the morning went more like this: arrive at parking lot in the dark, couldn’t find the meter, had to be that creepy girl walking up to strangers in their car for assistance, finally locate meter on other side of massive lot and some JERK JAMMED THE COIN SLOT. Also, it was pouring rain and my socks were now soaked because the soles of my boots are ruined.

I frantically changed my plans and decided to drive downtown instead, but was now stressing out. The GPS was on the fritz (it told me to board the seabus for crying out loud!) and I’m not great downtown. But I found my bearings and parked about 6 blocks down Hastings.

I spent most of my time at Passport Canada stressing that the metered parking would go into effect (I was there at 7:20 and the meters start at 9) but I was actually out of there before 8.

And then I went to work. Which was peacefully uneventful after the morning I had.

I just suggest not losing your passport. Doing the passport thing would have been significantly less of a hassle without the extra 3 time-consuming steps.

So, I’ve lost my passport. Well, it’s probably in a box somewhere from when I moved to Vancouver. But I’ve looked in all of them and can’t find it. I really don’t want to deal with this because it seems like a hassle. A big, expensive hassle. Police reports and notary publics and oh my gosh, why is this so difficult? But my parents booked flights to Hawaii in January and I guess that pay off will be worth it. First world problems, eh?

This family trip is pretty exciting. I think we’ve gotten to the point where we can go a couple days and still get along. Plus my priorities seem to be in line with my parents: volcanoes, snorkelling and stars. Ok, I don’t know if they’re into stars, but I have to assume they are.

My sister will be the wildcard because she likes things like beaches, and because we tend to be the ones who go psycho on each other after 24 hours in close proximity. I don’t know what it is about siblings but they seem to have an uncanny ability to piss each other off.

I’m heading to my parents’ place this weekend for Thanksgiving, so I reckon we’ll all chat about it further. The plans are still vague. For both Hawaii and this weekend. I will keep you all posted.

People can act with good intention and completely make a mess of things. And I think that’s okay.

My co-worker showed my client something she shouldn’t have seen and it created a huge mess of complications. The client was pissed because she thought a draft result was a final product, and it inconvenienced a lot of people. Including me. Especially me.

But at the end of the day, my co-worker was just trying to help. He overlooked a detail in trying to provide exemplary customer service. He did what he thought was right. I can’t be mad at that. Annoyed, sure, briefly, but I’m not about to hold a grudge over it.

I can think of the flip-side too–a fight that occurred a couple months ago where the words weren’t that bad but they were meant to wound. Petty thoughts spewed with bitter vigour, because my friend was having a bad day. That friendship still hasn’t recovered and, honestly, I see little motivation to resuscitate it. I’m over the fight but I’m over the friend too.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I realize this to be true: intentions are all that matter.

They reflect our hearts. They broadcast who we want to be, even if it isn’t who we are just yet.

It’s weird to say. I haven’t told people because we’re still in the early phases and I feel like mentioning it out loud is going to jinx it and make the whole project fall apart.

Most of my spare time has been going into research and brainstorming. My dad is the business guru and I’m the online marketing expert. That in itself is terrifying.

Right now my dad’s actively working on getting the business license sorted out, while I look more into our marketing strategy.

I have an idea of where I think we should go, but I’m researching the possibilities and trying to ensure that we have the right plan going forward. That means a lot of reading and note-taking.

While I won’t be quitting my day job any time soon, it’s exciting to see my career starting to branch out into a new direction. Especially one with so much learning and growth potential.

I’m still terrified to talk about this, so I don’t want to reveal all the details. But I’ll surely keep you posted as things progress. Soon enough, you probably won’t be able to shut me up about it.