day after summer

I know it's been three CCC posts in a row. I'm also not feeling those posts as much--I want to write them, but then they feel too long and all the same to me. I think I'm actually in the right mindframe for Nanowrimo to start in a little over a week.

Weird news from the mainland last week. Drug shooting leaves six dead in an apartment building, but two were innocent bystanders--one of whom was just a gas repair guy there to fix a fireplace. No signs that they've got any good leads on the killers, just that it's gang related.

Also, a small plane crashes into a 15 story condo building. Turns out the pilot, who was flying by himself, was 82 years old. I don't even think most amateur pilots of any age are wise to fly alone, and I wouldn't trust my father or my father in law--both 82--to drive a car in rush hour, never mind fly around one of the busiest airports in the country.

I guess people who didn't think to buy insurance weren't counting on this.

Yesterday set a temperature record for that date in October. It was around 20 degrees--or close to 70. No wind, beautiful day--I even went for a run.

I hesitate to write much these days here 'cause I've got local readers who I don't know--so maybe I'll put more on my other writing place; if you are from elsewhere and want the link, let me know. Suffice to say I feel like venting about the show a bit, plus I'm kind of down about having to say some goodbyes very shortly.

I need to sort out about 10 major things very soon. Should go start, I guess.

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Productivity Consultant

Hi there--right on time, come on in. I see you've already dropped off a resumé and a synopsis of what you want to discuss today. Do you even really need to hear anything I have to say? Data collection? I guess you could call it that. My car? Yeah, I know it's probably not the best on gas mileage, and it does seem to end up in the repair shop a lot but... Hey--this is about your future, not me, right?

"Productivity consultant"? Hmm--that sounds to me like what we used to call "efficiency experts". You're talking about one those people who businesses hire to show them how to improve the profit margin, right? Well, it's not a quick path to popularity, but I suspect that won't matter much to you if you're really into this.

You'll go to some college where you probably have family and can live cheap in their basement while you get your degree in economics or business. You'll take electives studying the works of Ayn Rand while your main courses teach you all about Keynes and Locke and all that philosophy of economics and stuff. You'll do your required work experience in the college credit counseling office, where you'll quickly become convinced that most of your peers are morons--or are you there already?

After you graduate you'll sniff around a few consulting firms, but nobody's interested in some kid just out of college, and you find yourself unimpressed by the fancy lobbies and high-end water coolers that some of these companies have sitting out for the public. It's simply not cost-effective, as far as you're concerned.

You finally decide to set up your own firm. You realize you won't find clients rushing to your crappy storefront location in the bad part of town--all you can afford--but you begin surreptitiously visiting your target businesses and jotting down a dozen ways each can shave costs, then mailing your thoughts to their owners and managers, along with your business card and an offer for a complementary consultation.

A few bite, and one meeting with you convinces them you're wise beyond your years. Soon you're dropping off 200-page reports with detailed cost-benefit analyses, but you are disappointed to discover that no more than a third of your suggestions are ever implemented. When you question the clients, they explain that some of your cuts seem simply too cruel--laying off the loyal 20-year secretary to replace her with a call center based in India, or slashing the employee health-benefits package by choosing a cheaper but disreputable HMO for medical services.

You begin writing letters and editorials for the most fiscally conservative of the financial publications, and after two years you collect your essays and letters into a book: "The Courage to Compete".

You also find your notariety isn't always positive in nature. Unions and anti-poverty groups begin quoting you--out of context, as far as you're concerned--as evidence of the soul-less nature of big business. Employers keep secret the fact that they've attended your 'slash and burn' business seminars.

You still keep consulting--it's your bread and butter--but you notice an annoying trend. Whenever word gets out that your company is doing an efficiency audit, or your vehicles show up at corporate offices, suddenly all the employees are on their best behavior. Video games vanish from break rooms, and lunches are suddenly 29 minutes, rather than 50. You find that most of the data your compile is tainted by this false work ethic that hampers your ability to ferret out the shirkers and the deadwood.

You hit upon a brilliant solution: You'll go undercover. You take a new approach; when you get a new client you send members of your team most comforable with that particular industry or business to work as new employees, who in truth are reporting daily back to you. Usually two weeks of research is all that's needed; employee theft, truancy and incompetence are all dealt with mercilessly.

You even enjoy the occasional foray into an undercover job yourself. You're still relatively young, and you delight in the pompous pronouncements of jaded, lazy corporate slugs who take you under their wing in hopes of keeping you unproductive and non-threatening. You even secretly tape some of their juicier cynical observations.

Just out of curiosity--you're not taping this interview, are you? Good.

Your ego will be your downfall. You'll make a lot of enemies along the way, but you drive a nondescript vehicle, live in a high-security residential complex, and have no kids to be targeted. In fact, you have relatively little social life because you find it a waste of valuable working hours.

You will, though, have employees who become friends of a sort. You'll come to rely on two of them--a guy you got to know in college and hired in the early days, and a ruthless girl you dated for a while and although that didn't work out, you respected her cutthroat approach to business.

Late in the fiscal year, as businesses realize there are some heads to roll when the financial report cards are shared with stockholders, is always your busiest time. This one particular time you're supervising the audit of a transcontinental trucking company, your male partner is overseeing a hospital analysis, while your female partner is running point on a major grocery chain's examination. You're up late working on your findings when your male partner gives you a call.

"I've found something pretty big," he whispers. I think I want you to come here and help me sneak some files out. At least bring the microcamera and we can get some proof before someone figures out they should've shredded all this.

You jump in your car and head to the hospital. It's almost midnight, and you part next to your partners car and flash your headlights. He opens a side door and lets you in. When you get up to the room the filing cabinets are empty. You look around, but nothing. You ask your partner what's up, but he smiles.

Seems your enemies have taken a page out of your book--work from within. Turns out he'd been working for the hospital union after they got wind of his audit and arranged a compromising blackmail situation. He soon saw their side of the argument, and he's being well paid to help arrange your tragic fall down an out of service elevator shaft.

Your funeral will be poorly attended, but it will be short, and very efficient.

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Microbiologist

Hello, have a seat. Oh, yeah, I didn't see that on the chair, let me... Oh, you brought your own sterile wipes? I guess maybe I should keep a case of them around this office.

So, what career strikes your fancy? Microbiologist? Interesting--I have some definite ideas about how this might go:

You'll need to have really good science marks here in high school--you do? Well, that's just a start. Then you'll have to go to university, and not just for four years. If you want to get into real microbiology and not just be some public health inspector, you'll need at least a masters degree and probably a doctorate.

You'll get some on the job experience during lab placements while you're doing your many years of study. Money will be tight, and you'll be tempted to walk on the dark side a few times--shady characters offering you money to help them infect a rival at work during competition for a promotion, or shadowy agents of oppressive regimes looking for biological weapons to poison their own populace, and willing to pay handsomely.

You'll be strong, though, since you have your eye on the prize. When you finish, your work ethic and your intelligence get you a placement in a laboratory studying some of the more difficult 'superbugs' which are spreading due to the rampant inappropriate use of antiobiotics--yeah, I'm talking about your handiwipes, there.

It's lucrative, and you're paid well not only for your regular work, but also for the many hours of overtime you spend in the lab, working late all alone when it's just you and the custodial staff. You get to know a few of them fairly well, so it pains you when you notice they aren't quite keeping certain areas of the lab as clean as they should, and you have to report them. Seems fastidiousness wins over friendship with you. They hold grudges, though, and that will come back to haunt you later.

It's not long before your hard work and long hours begin to pay off and you're being published in prestigious journals. This helps motivate you to work even longer hours, and you have even less of a social life than you had in college. You have another reason, though, for staying so late--you notice little signs that your work is being tampered with. There's not enough to make any definite accusations, but you're sure the custodial staff is exacting their retribution for your earlier ratting them out, and hitting you where it hurts the most--your work.

You mention your suspicions to your supervisor, and all it gets you is a visit with the employee 'wellness' coordinator, who suggests you might want to use some of the 12 weeks of vacation time you've built by not taking a day off in over four years. You explain that work relaxes you, but you also realize that you can't confide in anyone in the lab--they see your accusations against the janitors as the paranoia of a workaholic nearing a breakdown.

You throw yourself back into the research with more vigor, and the grant money and accolades you bring your employers silences any suggestions that you are working too hard. Then one day it happens--the event that changes your life.

There's a technician visiting the lab--apparently a genius who designs electronic scanning and montoring devices that assist in the early detection and identification off a wide variety of diseases and conditions. He's working with some incredibly delicate sensor equipment; your employers have purchased a unit he designed and he's there to set it up for them.

You come back from your lunch break and he calls you over and asks if there is a foreign radio station nearby. He's got some headphones in his hands and asks you to listen. Very faintly you hear the sounds of voices, speaking in some sort of language you don't recognize. There are, however, a few words you can pick out, and for some reason one strikes you as familiar. You tell the tech expert you can't help him, then ask him pointedly to remove his equipment from your table. He's not even supposed to be in this part of the lab, and he'd put his sensor pickup very close to your sample of c difficile baccillus which had just came in from Syria--a troubling and potentially deadly new strain that your were being asked to examine.

You put on your biohazard gear and take the sample into the appropriate area of the lab, and while you are reading the background on it, you recognize one of the words you just heard. It's Aramaic. The sample's abstract description includes some of the names for the condition it creates, and the word you heard means "danger".

You immediately go back to the technician, but he's leaving--says the sensor pickup is probably defective and he'll bring you a new one. You convince him to leave the problem sensor behind, and take it back to the sample and try to hear more. Sure enough, there are other words you notice, and you begin transcribing what you hear on the headphones that become your constant companion.

The next few months are tricky. You know that most of your colleagues feel you are mentally fragile, and without proof you dare not share your discovery--you'd be made a laughingstock. You build your vocabulary of Aramaic, and even take a university extension course on the language. You try to communicate with them, and eventually you are able to notice unusual patterns and even slight pigment shifts in your petri dish--signs, you are sure, of their attempts to respond to you. You even convince yourself that they are particularly fond of Mozart, and you play it in the lab nonstop.

Then disaster strikes. Another lab working on the same strain of bacillus from Syria has a hazmat breach, and two researchers die within 48 hours. Your lab receives instructions from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta that you are to destroy all samples of this dangerous material. You are horrified. Your little community is destined for the incinerator.

You offer to transport the samples to Atlanta yourself, but you are ordered to surrender your petri dishes for destruction.

You then break the rules for the first time in your life. Convinced you are the only hope for a world in miniature, you sneak your microscopic friends away and make a run for it. You are caught within two days, and the media paints you as some sort of double agent who was about to poison the water supply of a major city at the behest of some unspecified foreign regime.

When you are awaiting trial in a federal lockup, you are allowed few visitors, though the psych team from military intelligence meets with you every afternoon. Then, surprisingly, three of the custodians from the lab are allowed to see you. They bring a fourth man with them, and introduce him as Dagon. He's been working downstairs, as a custodian, a recent arrival from the middle east. You hadn't realized it, though, because his English was so good when you first met him as a "technician". He smiles, pulls a little lapel microphone out of his pocket, and tells you "good luck" in his native Aramaic. Then they all laugh and leave.

Your best bet is an insanity plea--you might get work in a sketchy animal testing lab after you serve five years in the pen. I see a painful death from an untreatable strain of rabies in your future.

What's that? No, I don't think you're an elephant--though you could probably lose a couple pounds... No, come back, I didn't mean...

Damn. He'll probably never forget that.

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Sanitation Engineer

Hi there--hey, aren't those coveralls supposed to stay in the auto shop? Oh, well yeah, I guess I can give you a career overview quickly enough to get you back by when that oil's finished draining. So, what'll it be--a mechanic?

Really? Garbage man? Right, a sanitation worker. Doesn't make any difference to the flies. I think I can figure this one out:

You'll need to get hired on by the city first. If you don't have a connection, now's a good time to get one. Find out who the local foreman is for the garbage pickup in your area, and maybe drop by to do a 'school project' about careers--make it clear you respect and value the contribution his crew makes, maybe even paint yourself as an environmentalist who sees them as heroes of the 21st century. Throw in some comments about the plague and stuff so he'll know you aren't just blowing smoke up his... well, you get the idea.

After you do the project, he'll likely suggest a 'ride along'--or if he doesn't, you come up with the idea. Take a video camera, and treat them like celebrities--use their nicknames, and if they don't have them, come up with some cool ones of your own, like "Ace" or "Lefty". Buy coffee at the break for all of them, and ask them to tell stories about the craziest things people have thrown out, or the worst weather they've worked in. Hang on their every word.

They'll remember you, and you'll stop by their depot every couple of months to say hi and maybe drop off some muffins. Once you're done high school, let them know you'd love a chance to even get on as a relief garbage ma..., er, sanitation worker. By this time you'll be a shoe-in.

Unfortunately, while they can help you get hired, it's the city who decides where you work. They won't put you in the nice residential area; as new guy you're stuck in the crappy neighborhoods where your main task is avoiding needle pricks and recognizing bags with body parts in them. The nice thing about working those mean streets is that at least people won't look down their nose at you--you've got steady employment with benefits; that will probably get you dates in that part of town.

After a few years you get a call--one of the guys you sucked up to back in your old neighborhood remembers your great attitude and he recommends you for a driving job. You'd already gone out and got your air brakes ticket just in case, and you are happy to sit in the warm cab while two underlings pitch trash in the back of your truck. You also get a nice pay hike in the new position.

Still, like all city employees, you have to deal with a labor dispute every five years or so, and sometime around your seventh year in your career there will be a nasty strike. You'll be there with your comrades, chanting slogans for the t.v. cameras and playing poker, sitting on lawn chairs, when nobody important is watching. Unlike the previous couple of strikes, this one gets ugly, and neither side seems close to backing down.

Meanwhile, the garbage begins piling up. A few private contractors cash in on the desperation of homeowners in the rich part of town, but for the most part, people try to look after their trash themselves--dropping it off at overpriced disposal centers, or simply tossing it onto the lawn at city hall late at night.

The taxpayers get angrier, and with their eyes on next year's municipal elections, the politicians decide to hire replacement workers--"scabs" to you and your friends.

This escalates the hostilities, and soon you and your union brothers and sisters are linking arms in front of the depot gates, while the city lawyers file for one injunction after another to move you aside.

Then it happens--your 15 minutes of fame.

In a particularly bitter confrontation early one Thursday morning, a frightened replacement driver accidentally hits the gas pedal instead of the brake, and you are struck by the very truck you'd been driving before the work stoppage. You're rushed to hospital, but the leg is crushed so badly they have to amputate it.

This tragedy helps win the public relations war for the striking workers, and soon the dispute is settled. You, for your 'heroism' receive the accolades and sympathy of your colleagues, and a sizable payout from the city.

You try to go back to your job; they even specially outfit a truck with a hand brake, but it's just not very comfortable for you, so they give you a desk job.

You fit in well with the guys in the coveralls; you're not so comfortable with the more refined member of the city's clerical staff. At age 33 you make your first suicide attempt, but fail.

The city realizes the potential scandal if the worker injured in the bitter strike two years earlier should subsequently off himself, so they send you and your girlfriend on a tropical vacation--everything first class. When you return, your girlfriend has had enough of your bitterness and dumps you. This leads to your second attempt.

The city sends you to a crack team of doctors and therapists, and after some counseling everyone decides you're not cut out for the office scene. Instead, they buy out the longtime dispatcher and give you his job in the depot. Soon your voice fills the airwaves--well, at least in the cabs of all the city maintenance vehicles.

Now you're back with your blue collar compadres, you begin to enjoy life a little more. They make sure you never have to buy a drink at the bar after work, and they introduce you to new employees the way new recruits might be introduced to a legendary military hero.

After a few years, though, the shine wears off. Your friends tire of buying your drinks, and your daytime consumption means you tend to ramble on the radio to the point where you become an embarassment. The city once again intervenes, but you refuse alcohol treatment, so they buy you out and give you a pension at the ripe old age of 41. You're lonely--after a series of unsatisfying relationships you seem destined to die single and alone--and your friends all seem busy when you call them or drop by the depot for a visit.

Finally, you begin gambling to relieve the boredom. The casino at first, then high stakes private poker games you hear about from an old work acquaintance. Unlike the other players, though, you don't stay sober enough to win much, and soon you owe more money than your pension pays out in three years. You go into hiding to avoid the mob types who come collect your gambling debts, and you move into a downtown street mission where you manage to get a minimum wage job in the kitchen, though spending all day on your artificial leg is agony.

There is one bright spot at the end, though--the down and outer who spots you and rats you out to the mob ends up using his reward money to start a hot dog stand that evolves into a chain of 30 in 8 cities and makes him a sought after member of the motivational speaking circuit. You, on the other hand, will likely be found by your old work mates as they empty the dumpsters in the sketchy part of town.

There, that was quick, wasn't it. Make sure you recycle that oil now.

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Cryptographer

Hi there--I saw your picture in the paper for winning that math contest last week. So, you want to be an engineer? Quantum physicist? What's that? Cryptographer? Hmm. You sure you don't want to turn that brain into something more... traditional? Okay, if that's what you want.

Yeah, of course I know the difference between codes and ciphers. Ciphers are how my ex-wife used to communicate with her therapist behind my back when they went off for their 'extra sessions' so he could violate his code of ethics. Sorry, I'm not a bitter man, usually, but sometimes... Anyway, I know that codes are word replacements and such while ciphers are about replacing individual letters or something like that.

You've got the sort of mathematical intelligence that will make you the most popular partner in the college recruiting dance. Still, the people you want to talk to won't come to your typical high school career fair. I mean sure, the military will be there, but that's not who you want to talk to. Army intelligence might work, but you're better off sending your SAT scores and a little resumé info to the CIA, since if you're as good as I suspect you'll be, they're going to come looking for you.

They'll do a full check of your background, from your internet surfing history to the papers you wrote in 10th grade. You'll be deemed safe, and taken for a series of psychological and intellectual assessments that indicate you are too valuable to ignore, but not as mentally strong as the Agency would like.

You're sent to a small college which has unusually prestigious mathematics and languages faculties, which you learn is solely because they are funded by various intelligence agencies to provide discrete high-level training for their recruits.

There you prove both your math skills and your aptitude for picking up new languages quickly. After your first year you find yourself in some deliberately misnamed statistics courses which really focus on honing your ability to decipher and decode all manner of cleverly-disguised communication. You are not surprised to find you have a knack for this sort of thing, and soon you've zipped through four years of college in less than three and you're off to start your secret work protecting freedom.

You are sworn to uphold the secrecy of what you learn, and since you're more about the puzzles than the rationale, you don't care much if you're discovering Al Queda strategy or stealing technology from "allies"--you just enjoy the challenge of testing your mind.

The problem is, you become so immersed in looking for hidden meanings, you can't shut it off. You meet a girl who works in the Agency's document classification office, and the two of you fall in love and marry after a brief courtship. At first things are fine; you both have sufficient security clearance to allow you to have real conversations at the dinner table, but soon everything she says seems to convey hidden subtext as your paranoia grows.

She leaves you, and you have to give up the condo near Langley the two of you shared. You need a change so you request a transfer to New York, where you'll analyze all sorts of communications between various U.S. diplomats. You decide to take a cheap apartment in a not so great part of Brooklyn, and your daily commute exposes you to a plethora of tag graffiti that immediately appeals to your cryptographic instincts.

Soon you're noticing all sorts of subtle characteristics of the public face of gang communications. You develop the ability to quickly 'read' the tags, and you notice that one particular latino gang is boasting of some of their more dramatic crimes before they are actually committed. The agency warns you not to get involved in such local crime enforcement, but you can't help yourself. You also discover the tattoo parlor down the street, and begin hanging out at the coffee shop next door so you can spy on the various tattoos to determine who's associated with what gang, who's been in prison, and who has actually committed murder.

Eventually some local gang members figure out you've been reporting their graffiti messages--let's face it, you aren't going to be taught much spycraft as the CIA wants you for office work--and you only escape death when a patrol car pulls up as you are being beaten by six men.

You recuperate and the agency decides to send you overseas to work in the London office. They make sure you're not in a neighborhood where you'll be distracted by gang tags, but you develop a new obssession--the conspiracy theorist's eclectic appreciation of all things 'templar'. Soon you're hanging out near the old Knights Templar compound and taking weekend trips to scout out old libraries for glimpses into the secrets of everyone from the Jesuits to the "Illuminati". You don't care much for the religious aspect of the conspiracy theories, but you develop a conviction that there is some sort of secret organization manipulating world events for their shadowy purposes.

You begin working overtime and take a second job at a university on weekends--saving all the money you can. Then, when you think you've got enough to survive on for a year or two, you get the Agency shrink to sign you a 'stress leave' note and you vanish.

You get some of the sketchy underworld types you've been learning about to provide you with some different i.d., and you travel as your paranoia leads you, first to Area 51, then to the Vatican, and later to Jerusalem. You visit every crop circle farm and check out ancient mountain art in Peru--the big pictures that can only be properly seen from the air. Your paranoia manufactures a new theory--it's not something from this world that you need to discover, but rather an intergalactic conspiracy whose communication you must find and decode to save the world from some unknown fate.

You read everything you can on Atlantis, then head to radiotelescope installations so you can listen to and record the crackles, pops and hisses that come from space.

You are completely frustrated--always feeling that the answer is so close, yet just beyond your reach. You check yourself into a psych ward for a rest, and when their people discover your real name and enter it in their computer files, it triggers a visit from your employers who have begun to wonder if you are too much of a liability in your mentally fragile state to allow you to keep your freedom.

They leave you there for a few more weeks, trying to figure out what to do, while making sure your 'keepers' know that you are not to be released under any circumstances. It's during that time that you finally make your great breakthrough.

The method by which the global controllers are communicating is through an incredibly subtle and sophisticated code hidden in the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. It's a combination of letter placement, shapes of the black squares, and words in the clues that all come together almost accidentally in your subconscious, as you complete the puzzle one Sunday, as has been your custom for years.

You realize there is a prediction of an explosion at an refinery that will suddenly drive up the price of oil. This will lead to speculation in the gold market, and the message is for all of the members of the global conspiracy to sell both their investments in oil and gold and wait for further instructions.

Sure enough, three days later the explosion transpires as predicted. You are suddenly very afraid, but decide to feign a return to 'sanity' for your employers, who cautiously take you back and send you to work in their offices in Switzerland. This is an ideal place for you to be, since as a center of world banking, Switzerland is awash in constant financial and economic news. You continue to follow the instructions encoded in the Sunday crossword, and cross-reference it with those individuals who seem to always 'luckily' sell or buy the affected commodities just in time. This gives you a list of the global conspirators, but you have no idea what to do with it.

You turn to the only person in the Agency you ever trusted--your ex-wife. By this time she has remarried, but she agrees to meet you, and you sneak away from work and fly to Philadelphia where she is running the small international consulting firm she started when she left the Agency a few years earlier.

You explain your discovery to her, trying to sound as rational as possible. You can't tell if she believes you or not, but when you try to explain the nuances of the crossword code, she excuses herself and promises to call you within the week.

You are disappointed and a little angry when she doesn't live up to her word, and you send her a scathing email. That is your fatal mistake. Her email is being closely watched. She had been discretely trying to verify your suspicions on her own, but she wasn't discrete enough, and the day before she was to contact you, she died in an accident that you recognize as typical of the Agency's tradecraft.

You 'go to ground' just before a hit team arrives--taking off in the middle of the night and heading to Italy, where you hope to throw yourself on the mercy of the Jesuits, the one group that your favorite conspiracy novelists characterize as aware of yet unsullied by the global conspiracy.

Unfortunately, your novelists were wrong. Actually, they are part of the conspiracy, and maintain the Jesuit fiction to drive desperate men like yourself into the heart of an organization which they have fully infiltrated. You will die from a tragic fall while touring an historic Byzantine bell tower.

When they bury you back in your home town, they'll hide a dirty joke in code in the epitaph they order for your gravestone. It will become a favorite screensaver for global conspirators for years to come.

correction

Just went to the movie store on goldstream and noticed the brand new starbucks has just opened--that makes 24. They're poppin' up everywhere.

real demographics

Now the new Tuscan Village starbucks is open, we were wondering how many there are in town. A quick count in the phone book reveals that the latest is #23 in town.

I wonder if Seattle has the most per capita of anywhere?

Their next nearest competitor around here, I think is Serious--there are 11 of them, though there may be new ones that didn't make the book 'cause they seem to be springing up all over. At least they're "local" in that they started on the island.

For me the difference is simple. It's not about overroasted beans, price or employee benefits;, no it's much simpler than that: free internet. Serious has it, while starbucks wants 8 or 9 bucks for an hour online.

Decided to check a few other franchises as well. Subway is even more ubiquitous than Starbucks; there are 25 of them. We have 18 Mcdonalds, 14 Tim Hortons, 8 Seven Elevens and 7 Dairy Queens. I can't be bothered to look up KFC and the rest.

Nearly all of those franchises are having trouble finding enough employees. It's not a bad time to be a high schooler looking for mindless employment; if you don't like one job, there are plenty of others to go to.

A note to those who are on my facebook--they've finally fixed the little hole in the network that let me access it at work (thanks, Alix) so if you need to get a response from me quickly, an email is probably going to be read earlier in the day.

Have a good weekend.

Poetry by Dythandra

She found me on her hallway safari
Not hard--my plumage isn't subtle
More caution than camouflage.

Hi... her voice trails off.
I see the camera round her neck
The rest not hard to guess.

I was wondering, uhm, if you've ever modeled?
I let the question hang an awkward moment.
Depends what you call modeling
Then I turn and walk away.
She doesn't follow.

I think little of it, until later
A note folded, dropped inside my locker
A web address scrawled on a scrap of paper
and underneath, "A sample of my work".

My curiosity wins out;
I visit the library computers,
But such sites are deemed beyond the pale
By our educational censorati.

Once home I see her "work"
Something called "model mayhem"
--a trifle tame for my taste,
which runs more to tattoed, pierced and pale.

Her page is like the rest,
A couple dozen pics of classmates, friends
All mimicking the poses
Taped in the lockers of adolescent boys.

She spots me in a corner two days later,
Barricaded behind my sketchbook
Where she is an unwitting model

So... did you like my pics?
I shrug and keep on drawing
I, uhm, I'd really love to shoot you
I direct a withering glance her way
The feeling is quite mutual

After a few moments I realize she hasn't left
So against my better judgement, I ask:
Why would you want me to model for you?

She looks uncomfortable--do I detect a blush?
You're kind of... exotic.
I contemplate violence for a moment,
Then slowly shake my head and mutter
I don't do freak show, thanks.

No, I mean you're, uh, interesting
And Gerry said I needed to push the envelope...

In spite of myself, I find I want to know
Who's Gerry?

Just a photographer, she explains.
A real one.

I laugh out loud. I'd seen his 'profile'
Just like the rest of them.
Creepy 28 year old guys,
Living in their mother's basements
Playing on the dreams
of misguided children.

Have you met 'Gerry'? I ask her.
She admits she hasn't--no surprise.
Seems Gerry has suggested
They might work together sometime,
When she brings him a suitable muse.

He can't troll the playgrounds for prey,
But she can bait and lure them to his den.

I suggest I'd love to play the game,
And allow one test shot--my instructions then are clear
I tell her go ahead--arrange the shoot.

As expected, Gerry's more than willing
To do the shoot--for free!
His largesse knows no bounds.

It's not surprising when he then insists
We skip a day of school to visit him
No doubt his mother works a daytime job

I'd looked at more than just her photo site--
I found her Deviantart, and read her blog
Its seems my newfound friend has daddy issues,
An angry, large controlling kind of man.

I craft the letter on a school computer,
Filled with some innuendo, then sign the name
Of the one who plans to make us prey.

I hide across the street--make sure she's gone,
Then tape the note where daddy's sure to see
When coming home from work down at the precinct.

She didn't come to school again--too bad
I had some drawings I had thought to share,
But apparently her education's relocated,
To St. Teresa's Boarding School for Girls.

I checked out Gerry's web site the next week,
It now points to his latest Craiglist ad,
I see he wants to buy a blender cheap,
Seems he won't need solid food for quite some time.

A Call for Submissions

Yeah, that title's going to get a bunch of academic types wandering by.

I need help, folks, and here's your chance to impact young lives for years to come. At my school, like so many others, we use computer coded report card comments. You assign each student a letter grade, an effort mark, and then have the option of giving one or two coded comments. Examples of short comments include:
"NO SKETCHBOOK" (Did I mention they're all in capital letters? We like to yell our thoughts.)
"INCOMPLETE JOURNAL"
and, my personal favorite:
"TOP NOTCH MANAGER"

Examples of long ones include:
"SATISF. WORK-MUST CONTINUE TO WORK HARD" (yes, the abbreviation is on the report card)
"NEEDS TO DEVELOP A MORE SERIOUS ATTITUDE"
and
"PLAYS WITH INTENSITY AND EXPRESSION"

We're having a department meeting on Thursday, and each department has been asked to review their area's particular comments. For me, that means I need to look at the lame drama ones I inherited that were created probably 20 years ago and that I rarely use. Some examples of these are:
"IMPROVEMENT NOTED"
"DIFFICULTY WORKING IN GROUPS"
and
"CONTRIBUTES WELL TO GROUP IMPROVISATION"

What I need from you are suggestions--they can be drama-specific, or more general and applicable to a wide range of subjects. I welcome both serious suggestions and those which are a little more tongue in cheek. (and if the words "tongue" and "cheek" appear in your comment you get bonus points)

Fire away.

From peso to par

When I was a kid, the Canadian dollar was worth 1.03 U.S. We knew that because I grew up a few hundred yards from a marina where rich Americans often moored their yachts in the summer, and the stores nearby always posted the rate.

By the time I finished high school, ours dollar was worth less than the American one, and it got worse by the late 1990s. In 2002, our dollar hit an alltime low of around 62 cents. Fox media types snickered at the "Canadian peso" suggesting that our social programs and medicare system were bankrupting the country.

There were more factors involved. For a while it seemed like every time a politician in Quebec sneezed, the dollar dropped.

Not everyone was unhappy. The town where I grew up has come to rely on a lower Canadian dollar to help make its exported paper products more attractive to foreign buyers. Tourism, which is huge in this province, also benefits from an exchange rate that helps attract foreign visitors.

Still, it wasn't fun when you had to go out of the country, and it was easy to grow tired of buying things like paperback books with price labels that would say 7.95 U.S., 11.95 in Canada.

When we went to Disneyland in the summer of 2004, our dollar was worth about 75 cents U.S., when I took kids to New York in December of 2005, it was up to around 86 cents.

Today I called Houston to book tickets for a touring production of Spamalot in Seattle in a few weeks. It was a good day to be buying something from south of the border; our dollar closed the day at par with the U.S. buck--well, within one tenth of a cent, anyway.

Had a good chat with the guy booking the tickets--we took 32 seats--after he asked me why the change in rates. I figure it's a combination of the mortgage default crisis in the U.S., the cost of the war in Iraq, the price of oil and other resource commodities, which we have a lot of, and the recent federal byelections in Quebec showing folks there aren't all that keen on leaving the country anytime soon.

Or maybe it's just all the cash from those same sex couples coming here to get married...

And file under annoying... my battery was toast when I tried to start my car to go home today. Fortunately after a jump start I was off to my brother in laws shop and one of his mechanics stuck around after quitting time to help me out.

Oops

Try the link to the Cynical Career Counselor now and then try loading the actual entries--the index should work. I had made a mistake in the coding of the menu.

Thanks Rach for pointing it out.

All 86 of them are there now

I've put all 86 of the Cynical Career Counselor posts on that site--four pages. Go here to see it.

It still needs a bit of tweaking--I want to probably get away from the 'centred' headers in the index, for instance--but I can do that over the next little while.

What a lot of my time I've spent writing all those. Now I realize why the masters took so long...

As always, if you want to request another career, let me know and I may give it a shot.

quick update

Life is "normal" busy now.

Went to the kids' "meet the teacher" thing last night--had to wait for my son's music lesson to end first. I listened to the son's grade 9 teachers while my wife checked out grade 7 daughter's classes. I'm impressed with what I saw, which is nice.

The lack of posting here is because I'm working tirelessly on the CCC page--but I have to put in each paragraph break, etc. when I paste them into the html documents since the formatting doesn't copy. I hope to have it up with all the entries by the end of the week.

Feel like I've kind of lost touch with a few of you, so if you feel so inclined drop me an email or a comment to let me know how you are doing.

Questions nobody asked

Why do we have one week of spring break while the two neighboring districts have two?

It's all about substitute teachers. They run the union, sometimes, when the rest of us are too busy to go to after school meetings across town 'cause we're directing shows or coaching teams or dealing with report card deadlines. They have always had a disproportional political clout in our district, and have managed to use it to make sure they get the best shake for themselves, sometimes at the expense of others. Thus, adding three days off after the easter weekend to give us a two-week break is seen as costing subs three potential days work, so the students and other staff all have to go in while neighboring districts don't.

Why the calamine lotion this week?

Three days of hives. Don't know what I reacted to, but we think we've narrowed it down to some no-name cranberry juice. Not fun.

What's keeping you from blogging?

I know I promised more once the degree was finished, but a staff meeting 'til six on Tuesday, running my folks back and forth from doctor's appointments, and a "meet the teacher" evening on Thursday have made a liar out of me.

What/who is on your mind?

A friend I had a short visit with yesterday who is dealing with something difficult and I wish I could just wave a magic wand and help it not to hurt so much.

What is disturbing you right now?

I've been looking forward to hockey season in a couple weeks--I can actually watch some games on t.v. this year--but after seeing Bay's facebook, I think she may have soiled my team...

Anything good happening?

Lots. Last night a nice dinner out with my wife--we're in a rut, maybe, going to the same few restaurants, but why change when you always have a great time somewhere?

What else are you doing?

Besides catching up on yard work, etc--I guess I'm working a lot on fixing up the Cynical Career Counselor page. I'm going to put every single entry back on that site.

Back to work...

grr

Another day supposed to go up to around 26 or 27--about 80--and I'm lucky enough to be finished teaching bit before 2:00...

But wait. Staff Meeting @ 3:30.

Anyone want to call my cell with an "emergency"?

I hate staff meetings. Truly.

phase next

I guess the novelty of being finished will wear off soon, but it's just nice to be able to focus on some of the things I've been neglecting. I'm already working on the video of our last musical, I've been fixing up the neglected school web page, and I've just had more time for family stuff.

Of course the musical stuff this week, along with the New York trip issues, and of course 'meet the creature' on thursday night will all keep me busy.

Still, I'm looking forward to more times out with family and friends, more being able to watch mind-numbing t.v. at the end of a busy day, and of course, hockey season. (watching, not playing).

More writing: Dythandra, CCC, and Nanowrimo.

The weather this weekend has been perfect. Still, I drained the pool since while it's been getting warm enough during the day (it hit 26/79 today), the evenings are cool and the pool doesn't warm up quite enough.

We did enjoy our Sunday afternoon in the park and then out for ice cream. Here are a few pics:








There was a concert in the park...mostly fiddles.





A sundial is kind of cool--and it was exactly right, as long as you corrected for daylight savings.











Almost more like spring than about 10 days from fall.








Yes, those are palm trees.

Fin

I am no longer a university student. Handed in the Masters project and it's done.

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Nun

Hi there--Marie, right? It's okay, you can come in here if you want some career help. What you'd like to... What's that? Sorry, just speak up a bit if you can. Oh sure, there's no need to close the door. Probably after those cabbage rolls I just grabbed at the deli it's for the best.

So--what's that? Nun? Really? Hmm. I don't usually have much trouble figuring somethin' but... I guess I can give it a shot.

First of all, you'll need to finish high school. See if they can get you Latin by correspondence. Oh, plus take that civilization course where you learn the difference between Dorian and Ionic columns and stuff. In case you ever get to go see the pope, you might want to be able to make small talk.

You'll finish high school, and you'll eventually break the news to your parents. They won't take the hopes of grandchildren--wait, do you have any siblings? What? Thaaat Brandi? Oh, well I'm sure there will be a bunch of grandchildren then, though they may not all have the same... oh, sorry. That's your sister I'm talking about, I guess? What's that? I suppose she may go to hell, I don't think I'm the one to make that call. You seem kinda okay with it though.

You'll go to a convent and do whatever it takes to become an acolyte or something. I think maybe they take all your hormones out and put them in a jar or somewhere they won't bother you. Then they'll teach you nun stuff, I spose. Like the stations of the cross, and latin stuff, and the names of the saints. And maybe you'll be in one of those orders that don't talk, so you'll have to use sign language for "we're out of toilet paper" and stuff.

Eventually you'll be ready to take your vow or orders or whatever, but you'll make one last trip home first. While your grandmother--that's the old lady I in black I see you with downtown all the time, right? Oh, she's in mourning? When did he die? 1987? Ahh well, maybe she just liked the simplicity of the wardrobe. Anyway, while your grandmother might be happy, your parents won't be thrilled, and they'll have concocted a plot to change your mind.

You'll all go out to dinner, and your dad will slip a little something into your drink--nothing to make you pass out, just to help you loosen up a bit. Then skanky Brandi, er, your sister, will show up with an extra boy for you, and insist the two of you go dancing. You won't remember too much after that until you wake the next day and find a copy of a signed release for "Girls Gone Wild" stuffed in your back pocket.

You'll grab all the remaining possessions in your bedroom, throw them in garbage bags and drag them down to the local chapter of St. Vincent de Paul. Then you'll "forgive" your family by explaining that while you don't hate them, you'll probably never come home again.

Then, amid much weeping, you'll catch a ride back to the convent. You'll explain your tragic home visit to the Mother Superior, who will send you off to confession. You'll think the priest let you off easy saying a bunch of novenas, or whatever those are called, and so you'll secretly flog yourself with a skipping rope you grabbed from the nursery next to the convent.

A week later you get your first real nun outfit and they send you off to go work with the poor in Haiti. You succumb to seven different tropical diseases during the first six months of your stay, and finally once you're feeling better you're kidnapped by a band of anti-government guerillas who hold you and two other nuns captive.

The time with the kidnappers would be worse if they weren't catholics underneath all their revolutionary rhetoric. Or maybe it's just that I don't want to scare you away from the job, since I kind of think that might earn me some bad juju with the big guy upstairs.

Anyway, eventually the Vatican will part with some money quietly and get you and the other nuns back. You'll be shipped back to the states where you'll be assigned to a parish to work at a convent school. You'll enjoy teaching and helping out at the church, gardening and such.

Eventually, though, you'll develop some worrisome fears about one priest and the young boys who keep coming around for extra altar boy practice. You go to the mother superior of your convent, Sister Alberto (why do the important ones always have guy names?) and she'll scold you for having an evil and suspicious mind.

The next week you're shipped off to Italy where you get a desirable position as a Vatican tour guide. Seems that priest was connected and this is your quiet relocation in hopes that you'll keep your mouth shut. You like the new job, the prestige and the proximity to his Holiness.

Still, your conscience bothers you, and all the skipping ropes in the Vatican preschool won't fix that. You write a letter to the bishop who oversees your former parish, but he sends back a curt rejection of your allegations. Finally you send an anonymous letter to the newspaper back home.

An investigative reporter digs around a bit, and eventually reveals the truth. Before the police can arrive, the priest commits suicide. Because of a variety of past coverups, a shrewd lawyer for the family of one boy gets a subpoena for all the parish records, and finds evidence that you made some "wild accusations" before you were sent to the Vatican.

Within six months a lurid court case is under way and although the Vatican's legal team tells you you don't have to go, you choose to return to the States and testify at the civil trial--six families are suing the church for a combined total of ninety million dollars.

The day before you are supposed to testify, you receive an anonymous phone call. A mysterious voice explains that while they wish you no harm, if you choose to go ahead, your credibility must be destroyed.

You testify, quietly, tears rolling down your cheeks. That night, a mysterious videotape is delivered to a variety of news agencies showing your "Girls Gone Wild" shenanigans from almost a decade before. Not only do you disgrace yourself in the traditional exhibitionist style of the program, but this is the unedited clip which includes you singing a song that could only be described as blasphemous and ends with performing a lewd dance routine with a statue of the blessed virgin that your sister had brought along in her purse for the occasion.

Suddenly the tide turns against you--"Crusading Nun, or Sacreligious Harlot?" proclaims the Knights of Columbus News Review. While it is a small paper that is little more than a mouthpiece of the church, its story is picked up by a bunch of lazy internet news servers and soon you're the topic of several late night television monologues.

A church spokesman later explains that your carnal behavior is the real reason you were sent to Europe. It is a blow to the case of the litigants, and they end up settling for a fraction of their original asking price--seems the public somehow has lumped the skanky nun and the shyster lawyers together as part of some shady plan to profit from tragedy.

Eventually you beg to join the mission in Calcutta started by the late Mother Teresa, but they reject you and you settle for a job as housekeeper for a small convent in the mountains of Switzerland. When you fall from a cliff while out walking one day, no one is really sure if your death is an accident or suicide.

Oh, yeah--peace be with you too, kid.

Replace "blogly goodness" below with "weeping and gnashing of teeth"

ARggh!

No, not pirate noises. More my brain exploding. Seems one member of the committee for my masters has a much different standard of what needs citing than another. I can understand both perspectives and I'm not arguing as much as frustrated that the first one said I should just send it all to him for editing and not let her see it until he had given me edits and then send it to her before the defence.

Now she's all "here's my 100s of things to change/fix/cite/substantiate/define" and I'm all "er, I have to have this all submitted by Friday and I start teaching this week, and I'm all thinking "I could've sent this to her a month ago but I was told not to and my other prof was on holiday for the first half of that month so she could've given me edits/feedback and I could've had this all done while I had time.

Oh, and the panel defence I pictured as I describe my study and then deal with questions is apparently needing more of a formal "presentation" at first, I discover. Powerpoint, anyone?

It's my own fault, I suppose, for letting life interfere with pure academia. Fortunately I always tend to scramble on assignments so this deadline while giving borderline anxiety attacks and stress is less likely to make my head explode than some.

I'm likely going to hold off on that "increased blog posting" for a little while longer.

Time for much blogly goodness

Yes--life will be busy with school and such. But Masters stuff is nearing completion.

Thus--back to the obssessive procrastination through blogging. Small trivial entries. Rants. CCC, Dythandra and maybe others visiting. Pictures. Video.

I have neglected my poor blog and self-indulgence will reign once more.

Visit. Comment. Insult me. It's all good.

I went to this site after finding an old recommendation from a friend. If you've seen it before, you know perhaps why I have been kind of obssessively reading it from the first one since late last night.

If you haven't read it, perhaps check it out. Either you'll think "meh" or you'll be like me and find that hours have passed and you haven't really left the computer. Don't judge it from the first one--try maybe a dozen to get a feel for it. (plus every so often he has guest artists write when he takes a week off, and there's one by the white ninja creator)

Not many hours until the grind of work, and my defence as well.

just in time for school to start

Now my profs are back, and I've had a chance to quickly edit and put the project together, it feels almost done. I turned in a complete copy of it--from title page to appendices and everything in between--to both my profs this afternoon.

Hopefully, aside from a few minor edits--like trying to make the stupid table of contents line up better (have I mentioned I hate Word sometimes?) it should not require much more of my life. Of course, I shouldn't count my chickens, I suppose.

My oral defence is Tuesday--2:30 our time. Send good thoughts or a prayer my way, would ya?

I think I'm treating myself to a new laptop tomorrow. It's my last official day as a fully registered student, technically, so I don't know if I qualify for student rates after that. (Plus they're throwing in a free ipod, and that's how I got my first one two years ago.)

Now I'm off to take my son off to do his last minute shopping for his sister's birthday tomorrow. It's also my parents' anniversary, but because of the two events on the same day I'm going to drop off their card and presents tonight. The way things are going, this is likely the last "real" anniversary for them--even if they're both still around by this time next year, the way things are going, I doubt mom will be mentally able to grasp what's going on by then.

I guess I'd always thought they'd make the 50th. Now it seems unlikely. This is #47.

After the festivities of the weekend are done--daughter's "friends" birthday is here on Saturday--then life will be about getting my classes organized, editing the musical from last spring, and sorting out what to do with the New York trip very quickly. (oh, that and the little matter of making the final decision on this year's musical and how we're going to build the set with no building trades class in the building any more)

Plus the school's a complete chaotic disaster because of earthquake-proofing renovations and it's likely the gym will be closed for at least 6+ weeks and well, guess whose room they'll come after when it starts to rain outside?

Welcome to the 2007-08 school year.

On the bright side--I have finally been able to start on my reading list--books for fun, not thesis stuff for a change. I recently finished "Snobs" (Yes, I know--bold full books; just put quotation marks for short story, article or poem titles--I'm lazy.) which Milly recommended, and now I'm reading Madame Bovary.

I have a fairly lengthy reading list given to me over the last couple of years by an internet friend that I'm going to start on as well. Sadly I'm not able to thank this person for that--same person who got me hooked on This American Life--but I am grateful nonetheless.

Good luck to those of you who've already started school, who are starting it next week, or who are simply going on with work/life/plans you've made. I think the blog will be getting more regular attention now.

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Personal Trainer

Hi there--congrats on being winning that homecoming king thing. Personal Trainer? Hmm--you have the wholesome, athletic look going on--that probably helped you win at homecoming, I guess.

It will mean working hard in college--taking a lot of courses that explain how the body works and where the muscles are, but you should be able to find smart girls to date who can help you out with the assignments.

Once you're done, you'll likely go to work for some fitness studio or recreation center as staff or as someone they hire out by the hour to people who want personalized attention as they try to fulfill their new year's resolutions. You'll learn to laugh at their jokes, share insipid ones of your own, and flash those perfect teeth when they need a little encouragement.

Still, it won't quite be what you hoped for, and you'll long for the day when you can set up your own business--a small studio where you can book higher-end clients and don't have to share the revenue with an employer. Eventually you'll save up enough that, coupled with your smile and charm, you can afford to set up a spot for yourself in a strip mall on the edge of the good part of town.

Your business starts slowly. Because you have to fit into the vagaries of your clients' schedules, you often have your first appointment as early as 6:00 a.m., and don't finish until 10 or 11 at night. Not that your days are busy, though--between the few sessions you are able to schedule are hours of downtime--your exercise equipment is the most polished in town.

Then one day it changes--a young man comes in and looks around, then "interviews" you as a potential fitness consultant for his boss, a Mr. Schickelgruber. The next day a large black car with tinted windows pulls up, and you meet Heinz Schickelgruber, accompanied by a young man and woman in their late 20s--both looking like they could give you a challenge on any fitness test.

You spend two hours with the man, and soon he's insisted you call him "Heinz" and is asking you about your family--paying particularly close attention to your ancestry, it seems. He returns a couple of days later, and soon you're into a routine--four days a week--and after a while only one of the silent escorts accompanies him.

Over the next few months you learn more about him--he grew up in Argentina, on a ranch, where it seems he lived a privileged but disciplined lifestyle. At 40, he has come into a sizeable inheritance, he confides, but with it comes a variety of responsibilities, about which he will say little more.

He was raised by his mother and "the staff" he reminisces to you one day, explaining that his father--"a weakling"--killed himself when Heinz was only 12. "I wish I could have known my grandfather", he confesses, with a faraway look in his eyes. You have learned to say little during these post-workout chats over a smoothie at a nearby juice bar. He's paying you double your normal rate, justifying it by explaining he needs you to be on call 24 hours a day.

One day he surprises you by saying he has more customers to bring you--his staff. He wants to begin a regime of individual and group workout sessions. While you can manage the individual training in your small studio, you rent space in a nearby office building for the group sessions, and Heinz pays to have the room outfitted with mirrors and a sound system.

You start them off with basic aerobics, pilates and some jazzercise, but then one day Horst, Heinz's young, efficient assistant, quietly brings you some cds and explains the group wants to try a new type of workout that's "all the rage in Europe". You've been through every trendy fitness craze from boxing to strippercize to "hot yoga" so nothing surprises you, even Horst's insistence on teaching you "fitness marching".

The music isn't your type, but you weren't all that attached to the mindless techno you had been using before, so the switch to the brass-dominated martial music that now echoes through the mirrored gym isn't difficult for you.

Over the next few months you get to know the class members--Heinz's "staff"--socially, and one time or another you have liaisons with most of the women, young, with perfect teeth like your own. When you suggest precautions before each encounter, the girls all laugh and say something cryptic about appreciating your concern, but things will work out for the greater good.

You are worried that Heinz might be offended that you are encroaching in his territory through these trysts with his employees, but he seems delighted that you are enjoying the company of these tall, blonde women, and you later suspect he may be gay--a suspicion which increases when you wake to find him bent over your bed one evening when you accept an invitation to a weekend at his villa, although he insists he was merely "measuring your skull" while you slept.

Over time, though, you realize that Heinz is simply more stoic than most; he feels such passionate commitment to his "work" (though you aren't quite clear what it is) that he feels he need not bother himself with the petty urges that others succumb to.

One day, while the martial music blares as you are working out the staff, the owner of the office building which houses your gym, Mr. Shapiro, walks by. Suddenly, he stops, and angrily gestures for you to come to talk to him in the hallway.

"I've never seen anything in such bad taste in all my life. You are evicted from this building!" You are shocked. You try to explain you don't normally wear bicycle shorts to teach but you were late that morning, but he has already turned his back on you and walked off. Horst comes up behind you to catch the confrontation and mutters something darkly under his breath.

The next day you are informed you will be conducting all of your fitness training at the villa, which the staff call Eagle's Nest. There seems to be a great deal of security, but you don't worry about it too much as you are treated as a V.I.P. by all of the guard detail. You give up your apartment and your original studio, and move into Eagle's nest, where you are set up in a luxury suite.

One day Heinz approaches you with an idea. "You should be a model," he says. "And we can help get you started." You are flattered and agree to a photo shoot. The photographer, Ilsa, is a rather intense young woman all in black. She shoots you in a variety of outfits--from swimsuits to military-like uniforms. You ask when you'll see the results, and receive a noncommital answer.

Over the next few weeks all Heinz will say is that your pictures are for his corporate website, but you're still not quite sure what the corporation is.

That's not the only thing that begins to trouble you. One of the staff girls you'd been seeing before turns out to be pregnant, and then a couple more are as well. You confess to Heinz a worry that you may responsible for the pregnancies, but he just laughs and assures you that if it's true, they will be "handsome, pure children". He also promises you will have no financial responsibility for the raising of the children--he is going to house and educate them at Eagle's Nest.

You're also bothered by the fact that on the rare occasions when you go back into the city, you feel like you're being watched. It's not Heinz's security staff--you know all of them--but rather some tanned men in sunglasses who look vaguely... foreign. On the few occasions you manage to see them without their sunglasses, you see looks of utter contempt directed your way.

One day you are awakened to the unexpected sound of sirens throughout Eagle's Nest. "We've been betrayed!" Horst shouts at you, and instructs you to pack a few of your most important belongings and be prepared to leave within the hour. Shortly afterward, Ilsa, the photographer, comes to your room and tells you curtly that you must drive her to a bank in the city.

She's not someone you'd think to refuse, and soon you're standing by as she berates a teller for taking too long to give her the money that has been wired from Switzerland. As the two of you exit the bank you spot more of the mysterious men who've been following you--three of them are looking at your car and talking. They spot you, and quickly vanish into an alley. You try to say something to Ilsa, but she silences you with a glare and the two of you speed off back towards the villa.

Halfway there a large SUV pulls up close behind you. You recognize the dark glasses through your rear view mirror and try to lose them. Suddenly, as you hit a sharp corner, the SUV pulls alongside and forces you towards the edge of the road--a sheer clifff below. You slam on the brakes, but at that moment they fail, and you and Ilsa plunge to your fiery death on the rocks below.

There will be no public notification of your death. The Mossad cleanup specialists do good work.

What holiday?

Yeah--it's pretty much over. Too much stress here.

First, we're back in town. It's nice to be home. While it was a good trip, and did wonders to fix some family dynamics among the other side of the family, it also was about four of us sharing a hotel room and me sitting on my laptop doing thesis edits (since I didn't get them back until after we got there--my prof had been away for a few weeks) after everyone went to bed. I'd have only the light of the computer to see by. Then I'd get up a couple hours earlier than everyone and take the computer down to the breakfast area and put in more time.

I've sent it off, but I have to add the abstract, acknowledgments, table of contents, and appendices, as well as sort out the bibliography. Then I have to make a hard copy of it all and submit it to a bunch of people. I have to get the properly formatted title page to the ed dept. by this thursday.

I've been told that when all the required people read it I should expect to be doing more edits. My oral defence is either Tuesday or Wednesday or next week--I have to find out which day I can get away from school in the afternoon.

Found out tonight that there was a crisis here while we were away. My dad had to deal wish something a bit traumatic and pretty stressful for him--my mom's alzheimers has gone to a new level and it isn't going to be easy to deal with.

I have to edit the musical video from last spring. When?

I have to make sure i know what show we're doing this year. Audition info will have to go out soon.

I have to make some tricky/tough decisions about New York. None of them will be great choices, but I have to figure out what to do.

Seems the summer holiday has just kind of faded away.

There's 83 of them now...

I am now in Winnipeg. First time since I was four years old, actually. Not my (or most people's) idea of a vacation spot, but we're here for a wedding this coming weekend, and so it means the four of us are sharing one hotel room for a week--first time we've tried that since Disneyland a couple years ago.

I'm a bit lazy, so rather than write something new, I was just counting and I think the total is now 83 Cynical Career Counselor posts. This leads to a question: Got any new careers for him to try? Maybe they're getting a tad repetitive, but if there's anything you'd like to suggest, feel free.

If you haven't seen them, they should all still be in the old posts on this blog. Here are some links to some of the old ones:

Medical lab technician (they were shorter at the beginning)
Real Estate Agent
Corporate Lawyer
Bartender
Archaeologist
Architect
Police Officer

Go have a look if you missed them.

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Personal Shopper

Oh hi there--sit down. I remember hearing your name somewhere recently--oh yeah, aren't you the girl who wrote excused herself from her history final because of Lululemon's preferred customer invitation only sale? What kind of job are you interested in? Shopping--for a living? One of those department store purchasers or... Oh, I see. A personal shopper, huh? Well, I think I can figure it out:

First of all, it's not really a job that's easy to train for. It's a small demographic that hires personal shoppers, so you have to kind of seduce someone into it, unless, of course, they've already got one, then you just have to frame that person for theft and steal their job--but either way, you have to cultivate a sort of friendship with the rich person who's in need of someone to do the terribly onerous task of shopping for them.

Fortunately--and I just pulled your grade transcript up on the computer--you will use instinct rather than skills or academic training to pull this off. You'll need to get into a store where the rich shop--rich females, preferably young and connected or married to someone wealthy.

Don't go for the first wife, either. She's likely the one who will actually bear the children and want to raise them herself--so she won't be hiring anyone to buy her playpens or potties. You want to go somewhere the trophy wives prowl--so probably a high end jewelry store or sports car dealership.

You won't get in on selling the cars--high end lots don't hire kids like you right out of high school--but you can catch on as a receptionist or insurance counter girl or something. You see, you will be the one who does the paperwork for leases, rather than sales, because chances are the rich corporate types will be hiding their mistress's cars in a monthly expense account. It's too much money to blow on buying it outright when they're still shifting your assets to hide them from their current wife's future team of divorce attornies.

Of course, the "wives in the wings" will test their sugar daddies by insisting on a new car every few months, so you'll get to know them really well. Soon they're dropping by the lot to scope out their next convertible and taking you out for lunch where they appreciate that you listen without judging them.

The mistress's lot is often a lonely one--probably their family isn't fully aware of their less than savoury pursuit of some married executive twice their age, and it isn't something that they're all that proud of, if they stop shopping long enough to do a little self-examination. I guess that's why they rarely stop shopping.

Lunches turn to invitations to the spa or the tanning salon, and that's when you'll hone in on the one or two prospects who have the right qualities to help you realize your career dream. The woman you want to work for should be close to your size, and utterly selfish.

Then the field narrows down to one. She--your new "best friend"--even invites you to her wedding. You've wisely made it clear that you have no social life--even if you do--and she doesn't wonder why an attractive girl like you can't get dates. She's so self-absorbed, she just assumes everyone else's life is a pathetic shell compared to hers. She even arranges a date for you to bring to the wedding.

Don't argue that point. You see, the guy she assigns you for the wedding is her 'boy on the side', and you'll be the convenient cover for her to bring him to all manner of social gatherings. You'll pretend not to notice it, of course, until you're so immersed in it that it becomes an unspoken understanding.

Julie, your boss, won't find married life all that happy or fulfilling, so she'll try to silence the voice of her self-doubts in an orgy of spending. She suggests you go on her payroll full time, and the two of you settle on 'personal shopper' as a title--her wealthy husband is busy with the demands of his high powered career, and since he can't give her much time--or at least he doesn't seem to want to--he happily hires you as someone to keep her out of the house.

She begins sneaking off to meet Ricardo, her boyfriend, a couple of afternoons a week, and you provide an invaluable cover--she meets you just before she heads home to provide her with the bags of high-end clothing and the time-stamped receipts that seem to verify her alibis.

You know her tastes, and soon you're deliberately buying a few things she won't quite like, but you love, knowing she'll toss them your way--things you'd never be able to afford even though she's paying you twice what your job at the car dealership did.

After a year of this shallow but fast-paced career, you begin to suffer from stirrings of your long-dormant conscience. You arrive at her home one afternoon to drop off the latest purchases, and you find her husband unexpectedly at home, quietly weeping in the breakfast nook. You try to sneak out, but he's heard you and calls you over.

The next hour he pours out the sorrow that has overwhelmed him almost from the first moment of his loveless marriage. He has been aware of the affair for months, and has chosen to ignore it, but Julie's increasing brazenness in her illicit relationship with Ricardo has destroyed his self-esteem and driven him to the verge of suicide. He confesses to you that he feels he has made a mess of his life, and somehow your feeble words of support encourage him.

He invites you to meet for coffee the next day, and you worry at first that he's simply playing you into the the role of his next mistress, but to your almost disappointment, you discover he just needs an sympathetic ear, particularly one who understands the wife who is causing him so much pain. You, in turn, find yourself growing more protective of him and find it more and more difficult not to blast Julie for her callous behavior.

Julie is oblivious to the fact that her infidelity is known to her husband, but she senses that he is less enamoured of her company--you've begun to displace her as he shares all his intimate thoughts with you and begins to protectively distance himself from the wife he knows he must lose. Julie, though, can't understand the coolness in her husband, and rather than believe he might know of her affair, she assumes it is because she has gained six pounds since the wedding.

She notches up her already manic diet and exercise regime, and as her 'best friend' and lackey, forces you to join with her in five mile runs and brutal pilates sessions. When you lag behind, she laughs at you and when she drops a dress size, she gives you dozens of outfits which she rejects as her 'fat clothes'.

You lose it at the end of a particularly gruelling mountain run, and after throwing up your low-carb breakfast, essentially ask her how she can live with herself.

This first example of backbone in your relationship with her is not received well. She explodes at you--in reality shrieking a rebuttal to her own conscience--and fires you on the spot. Three hours after you get home, she calls you and begs you to come back to work for her--perhaps fearing that your knowledge of the details of her affair is more dangerous without her having you under control as an employee.

You mumble something about feeling hurt by what she says, and she immediately responds with a 20% raise, which you grudgingly accept.

Still, something has changed in your relationship, and this new dynamic includes her watching you more closely. She arranges one day to have you called to the phone over a complicated dress alteration problem just as you have logged into your email. While you're out of the room she finds a poignant message from her husband thanking you for being his 'rock', and concludes you are either having an affair with him, or very close to doing so.

You aren't so sure she is entirely wrong. She confronts you, but not in anger--there is some sense of evil delight in the discovery. Soon you've withered under her barrage of questions, confessing the truth of your friendship with her husband, and his knowledge of her affair. She begins to cry--perhaps for real, you can't tell--and asks you to leave. You know she's up to something.

The next day she shows up at your place with a creepy lawyer and a private detective. She wants to wire you with a microphone and have you throw yourself at her husband. She believes he'll confess his love back, and with some judicious editing, that will be all she needs to ensure freedom and financial security for her and Ricardo. She promises you a large lump some of money, and hopes that she won't need to use the photos she has. She shoves some still shots from your favorite coffee shop's security video--seems they keep the tapes for a month, after some problems with employee theft, and on a couple of very heartbreaking occasions you had held her husband's hand across the table of the coffee shop as he shared his pain with you.

You agree to go along, but then in the washroom use your blackberry to message the husband about the scheme. When you arrive at their home and go into his office, he asks you to sit down. You both know that Julie is listening to everything, so you have the surreal feeling that you are in some sort of a movie. You listen to Julie's husband explain how much he loved his wife and how sad he is that their marriage is a failure, but that he won't hold her back, and she can have anything she wants.

Then, without warning, he pulls a gun from his desk and puts a bullet into his temple. As you scream, covered in blood, Julie and the detective run in. She runs over to you and hugs you, and the two of you just hold each other for a moment, while the detective checks the husband and informs you of the obvious fact of his death.

When you finally step back, still shaking, from Julie's embrace, you see her staring at her husband's body. She looks over to you, a strange gleam in her eye.

"I thought I could trap him into 40% of the marital assets, tops. This is amazing--Ricardo and I won't even have to move." You gasp at her words. You always knew she was cold-hearted and calculating, but this even boggles your mind. Then she turns to you and tries to reassure:

"Don't worry--you'll always have a job with me." She looks at you blankly as you grab the gun from the desk and point it at her head.

"I quit." The sound of the gun seems even louder this time. Too late the detective turns round, and in an instant his firearm is in his hand and he squeezes the trigger.

The mortician will have a great selection of dresses for your funeral.

Pics from last week and a challenge

Well, it's actually pics from Wednesday last week, and then Sunday.

Wednesday we ended up just enjoying some time downtown and then people watching from the old sphagetti factory--great place to see the thousands of tourists wandering downtown. Here are a few pics:

















The provincial legislature building



















Nearby flowers



















My better half at lunch


















Yet another big hotel downtown--seems there are always new hotels and condos being built.


















One of many old school vehicles at the Forestry Museum in Duncan

The next few pics are also from there:

























































































I'll probably post the whole set of pics in my family photobucket. Email me if you want the password.


Now for the challenge. If you aren't familiar with Nanowrimo, it's the short name of "National Novel Writing Month". It's almost upon us once more--it's November--and while I failed to complete the 50,000 word minimum in 2005, I am going to take another shot at it. This time I shouldn't have any university stuff to compete for my time. (Just all my crazy school stuff)

I was directed towards it the first time by Camila, and she's planning to take up the gauntlet once more. I don't know if Bayley ever reads this still, but I will challenge her to try it again this year.

I'm tossing the challenge out to the rest of you if you feel up to it. I know you're all busy people, but still--think of it as a chance to be creative and competitive at the same time...

I think Milly would be great for this were she not leaving the continent and traveling then. But the rest of you--why not think about it?