Michael R. Barrick

Today was just another day.

I woke up a bit late and missed my call to Research In Motion. Oh, well. I'm not really "the grass is greener" type and this just may be my own subconscious telling me that right here is good enough. I fed the cats, drank my coffee, ironed some clothes for the day, showered, dressed and wandered away toward the shiny skyscrapers full of dull people.

My day at work was typically uneventful. Trish e-mailed me a couple times and she is going to come with me to Bellingham on Saturday. That was a highlight. With a deadline coming up and no concrete specs from the users involved I took it as an opportunity to impose my vision on the project. After all, I was hired because I am supposed to know what I am doing.

That made work kind of fun today. I've gotten into the swing of things now. I'm even starting to like it. Go figure.

After work I walked through the market as usual. I didn't need any groceries today so I just bought flowers. In lieu of having someone to buy them for I figured I'd just buy them for myself. I felt very urbane walking home with my flowers. The cats meowed hello to me and I put my flowers in a vase and it all felt very civilised.

Then I set about to fixing my garberator. It had jammed yesterday and I hate waiting for someone to come around to fix things that I can fix myself. My garberator garbs quite nicely now, thank you.

With the garberator fixed I set about to making dinner and eating it whilst watching "Edward Scissorhands". Trish phoned while I was eating to tell me that she has a job interview tomorrow. Hooray for Trish! She's escaping the fried grease factory.

Would you believe "Edward Scissorhands" makes me cry? Always has. Something about it strikes a chord.

After the movie I did some work on the painting of nice Nicole. She's out of the creepy blue phase now and into the "Oh, fuck. I can't paint. This isn't turning out like I planned. It doesn't even look like her anymore. Shit. I suck at this. How am I going to fix this?" phase. Every single painting goes through this phase. And no, I'm not posting a picture of it in this state.

And synchronistically enough, I was interrupted whilst painting by an e-mail from the subject herself. I asked to if she could help me locate a text on bonfire rituals in ancient European cultures. I'm looking to follow through on a hypothesis I never fleshed out concerning the role of nightclubs in modern society.

And now here I sit recounting my day.

This is all Sleepless Knight's fault. After introducing him to northern European food last night we got to talking about different cuisines. I now find myself craving Chinese food and very impatiently waiting for my favourite takeout place to open at 4:30 so I can feed my hangover. Normally I'd go for a "Greek Burger" at the Vine Yard or some really greasy bacon and eggs, but nooooo not today. Today I am dying for fried rice and sweet and sour pork balls....

Which brings me to an observation - has anyone else noticed that people talk about food at lot in their LJs? It'd be interesting to analyze the subject matter in a large sample of LJs. I wonder how closely it would mirror the proportions of subject matter in spoken conversation? It'd be a good anthropology thesis.