Heather and Marcel are what you would call a New York power couple. Hitting their mid-career stride they are both closely linked to high profile political players. It's a volatile life, but not without it's perks. They're about a tier away from a coke fueled, Tribeca melt-down that involves bitch-slapping the paparazzi after buying a black market baby and then being able to claim diplomatic immunity. Typically New York they don't own a thing and, as they like to state, not a single living thing relies on them for their existence.

Liz and Brian are Toronto expatriates. Brian is a bona fide opera singer, part-time parlor magician and full-on tech geek while Liz cut her teeth teaching music "in the hood." Of course only a small town hick like me would actually call it the hood but not a week would go by when the teachers weren't placing bets on the nature of the latest emergency meeting. Knifing, gunshot or smackdown? Caribbean gangs with their own set of rules and ethics. The attitude is infectious and she knew she had to leave when a 13 year old was expelled for knocking out a 60 year old at a nearby Burger King. The elderly woman had made the mistake of scolding them for their colorful language and rude behavior. What was telling was that for a split second she actually thought "that old bitch deserved it, what's she doing opening her mouth?"

Tough crowd. And me? Still no paycheque - who actually pays their employees once a month? Still no laptop. My MOU hasn't been signed and I just made up a title for myself. Just getting by on good looks and charm. My wife is suitably worried.

posted by Daejin on December 28, 2004 @ 11:33 AM CST [link] [No Comments]

I've got the week off until the New Year which means a boatload of visiting, reading and DVD watching. I'm also planning on transferring this domain to a new host so we'll just see how smooth that all goes. Hope your Christmas rocked, now it's the countdown to the New Year!

posted by Daejin on December 26, 2004 @ 10:48 AM CST [link] [1 Comment]

It barely registered. It was just a string of comprehensible words imparting information. I asked if we were still on for lunch before hanging up. I explained to the group the reason for the call and apologized for the interruption. The assembled group all but escorted me out the door in case I needed to collect my thoughts. Unnecessary, but I'd be happy to stretch my legs and so I trudged downstairs.

I didn't even really know Cindy but we did work closely together as part of a 4 person marcom team. We were all getting together for lunch that day. But I only knew "work" Cindy. For example, I'd only met her fiancee a handful of times at company events. They were to be married this coming summer. Cindy was the bridesmaid or maid-of-honor at more weddings last summer than I have ever been invited to in my life. She was looking forward to being the bride at last. I never met her parents. She was in the middle of moving back in with them. She had just rented a U-Haul for the coming weekend. I never met her twin sister either who was looking forward to visiting from New York. Apart from the 9-5 grind, I didn't exactly hang out with Cindy. We simply shared the same square of carpet for the past year and a half as part of a marcom team.

I walked downstairs into my work area. Thankfully it was vacant; everyone was already in attendance at the meeting. Before I even knew what was going on I found myself bawling at my desk. It just wouldn't fucking stop either. I've only been at the new job for two weeks and I'm sobbing like a two year old hunched over my chair. I bailed and found myself driving, bleary-eyed to the old office. It was like this grief was an immense, unwieldy burden I didn't want and didn't know what to do with. Shared with the larger group it became somewhat easier to manage. It seemed overdramatic to be shedding tears but you spend more waking hours with the motley assortment of people that make up your co-workers than you do your friends or family. We had all moved on after the acquisition but we hadn't quite finished saying goodbye.

Friday was the old company's Christmas party. Ostensibly it was to say goodbye to the company, the pre-acquisition entity. Old faces were coming back to say hi. It became a chance to remember a co-worker as well. I still don't know what to make of it all.

posted by Daejin on December 20, 2004 @ 01:24 PM CST [link]

In other news "The First Four Black Sabbath Albums" seriously fucked Wisconsin's shit up today and tore the state a new one.

I'm introducing myself to Black Sabbath formally now. I missed the heavy metal train when it blew into town. I never listened to Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden or Judas Priest growing up. I never bought myself a studded leather wristband and threw up "the horns" to the sounds of heavy metal thunder. I was Comfortably Numb, hanging with the Pinball Wizard and the Lizard King looking for "that confounded bridge."

Paranoid has been on heavy rotation on my commute into work. Its strange how familiar all the songs are. Through some sort of heavy metal osmosis the album has already been hardwired into my DNA waiting to be reawakened from dormancy.

It's the 101 of my heavy metal education. The necessary prerequisite before I delve any further. Speaking with a coworker about music the other day we found ourselves sharing our mutual admiration of Mike Patton and Mr. Bungle (now disbanded) and from there we went on to discuss all things heavy. KT's a huge fan of Kyuss and Brant Bjork - (I'm also listening to Jalamanta and finding it very sun drenched and funky.) So we've opted to exchange CDs at the Christmas party. I'm bringing him some Dillinger Escape Plan - some math rock I just can't wrap my head around - and the Charlie Clouser remixes of Heresy and Ruiner. I'm hoping he can hook me up with something nice and crunchy.

posted by Daejin on December 15, 2004 @ 02:06 PM CST [link] [7 comments]

In the meantime the Christmas spirit is slowly making it's presence known and is manifesting itself in the guise of old friends. Just last week I ran into an old high school friend I haven't seen in over 10 years. Audra looks exactly the same, just older - funny that. She puts me on the trail of another friend I haven't seen since I got married 7 years ago. In a weird, recursive temporal loop sort of way it turns out Liz teaches music at our old middle school. It's been almost 20 years since I stepped foot inside Stanley Park Senior Public and it was disconcerting wandering the halls of my shy and timid youth. More so when the secretary asked if I was a parent here for my parent-teacher interview. I had dinner with Dana a couple weeks back while I was down in Toronto for classes and I just got off the phone with Peter - down from Whistler for a visit.

You do lose touch with these old faces. In high school your friends complain they don't see you anymore when you hook up with your new girlfriend. When you get older you find you're too busy trying to get your shit together and generally worrying about your career, marriage, home and kids. Frankly thinking about making a call to see what "Mark's been up to lately" just isn't a high priority. With things settling nicely into a "routine" though it's nice to make those brief connections, even if it's only for a lunch, to catch up and say Hi.

posted by Daejin on December 12, 2004 @ 03:11 PM CST [link] [5 comments]

It sounds so rose-colored glasses and I'd hate to jinx things only 2 days in, but I can be forgiven some naiveté while I settle into the "honeymoon" phase. We've tied the knot and I'm still sunning myself in Jamaica, weeks away from the messy home and mounting bills. I do feel the old man though, a good number of my co-workers are over a full decade younger than me and I have no doubt their unique skills far exceeds my meager abilities. We're talking some accomplished individuals with impressive CVs. But they all seem a fun bunch. The collegial atmosphere is aided by the fact that I am one of about seven full time employees. The remaining employees are made up of co-ops and contract workers. We are truly a "start-up" and many of the day to day processes are still being made up on the fly.

I don't have email yet, our space is only temporary till next week and my desktop is a flaky relic that periodically restarts for no reason. Of course my laptop arrives in January (I can't believe they went for it when I made the request - I keep expecting them to reconsider) and apparently I'm getting a Crackberry despite it making absolutely no sense whatsoever. (Who am I to argue - I am so unworthy)

I almost feel apologetic about my good fortune but I'm going to enjoy the ride while it lasts. To be honest I think it's only going to get better over time. In the meantime I'm looking forward to going into work. Sick isn't it? Give me a month and we'll see if I'm singing a different tune as I whine about how "she's changed" while eyeing new "opportunities."

posted by Daejin on December 7, 2004 @ 08:34 PM CST [link] [7 comments]

It was a great time. Everyone seemed to click without being clique-ish. We pulled the plug around 1:30, motivated more my by next day's schedule than anything else. In fact it felt like it couldn't have been later than 10 - though for Grindy I'm sure that was partly due to a sugar high thanks to Liz's insane bowl of goodies. They had just fired up the karaoke and we hit the streets to the strains of Joey belting out Super Freak.

Damn if everyone wasn't downright sociable and friendly to a fault. Of course as far as they were concerned we could've been "that nice interracial gay couple from out of town." Either way I couldn't help but think "I want to invite everyone over for martinis!"

The highlights of the evening were finally meeting Joan and Paco. (Paco deserves high praise for overcoming a boatload of reservations and gritting his teeth and bearing it, though to be fair he did get a Green Lantern suit out of the deal and hopefully managed to corner Graig and discuss all things Oa'n while simultaneously trying to pull the chute on the evening.) I wish we could've chatted longer but the whole evening was really a series of conversational snippets, the shotgun school of socializing. Marketing in China, Gemini awards, bamboo knitting needles, getting spanked, the usual.

I also enjoyed everyone politely referring to Grindy as Grin-dee instead of Grind-ee, thinking the latter too lascivious. All in all, Kick ass! Sign me up for the next event.

Grindy Call me the diffuser, I'm the guy that comes along when you're going some place new and don't want to feel 100% awkward. Weird thing is once we got to the Christmas party there were many times Daejin and I split up in favour of having our own mini-group conversations. I even noticed the strong showing of the livejournal subculture as the leper outcasts of the 'real' bloggers, we had a certain camaraderie.

It could've been the fistfuls of candy I downed in place of alcoholic beverages but I had a blast. I chatted about the seedy underbelly of rural life with Joan, discussed the potential for hilarious transformer themed tattoos with (I haven't a clue) and even got a brief synopsis of the life of a homosexual penguin living in downtown Toronto.

All-in-all, kick ass! Accordion guy lays down an amazing Nine Inch Nails on his squeeze box and bloggers definitely know how to have a good time. For anyone who was thinking pocket protectors and Dungeons and Dragons you're a little off the mark, it was awesome. I'm confirmed for next year!

posted by Daejin on December 5, 2004 @ 07:59 AM CST [link] [9 comments]