Scratch that day

It's currently Saturday morning, 4:20am. What happened on my Friday? Nada. Excepting the few hours where I had some food, checked e-mail, and watched the last few minutes of an old House episode then saw the Family Guy Return of the Jedi thing, and that's it. The rest of my time was in bed.

Didn't hit the gym, didn't go fetch a new laptop, didn't work on comic reviews, didn't write anything here, didn't read any library materials, didn't even play any video games or nothing.

So yeah. I guess it's lucky life isn't precious-oh wait!

If you want to get technical and include what happened on my Thursday shift, then okay, there was some other stuff I did that Friday.

At 1:30am I got a call from home. Now, when I call home (usually no later than 12:30am, as though that were a big difference) it's because I'm asking for something to get looked up on the internet. A definition, or a song title or something. But if I get called, well, late night calls are generally scary. Has something gone horrible wrong? Did something happen with Simon's surgery? Is everyone okay?

Isaac, can you pick up some milk on your way home?

*Whew* yeah, okay, no problem.

Luckily they didn't take too long to get to that pertinent info.

As you know, it was snowing yesterday, and I got to be out in its infancy. During my last patrol that meant tiny daggers (more like shuriken I suppose) were bouncing off my face. Bundled up for the trip home; scarf, extra sweater, my cool new touque- only the tiniest of areas was now exposed to the elements. As far as it goes, I was pretty comfy.

But oh so tired! I have to keep yelling at myself during the final leg of my trip hom so that I don't fall asleep and miss my stop. I haven't had any problems yet- and by problems I mean missing the stop- but this time was another close call.

Coming up on Victoria Park, standing now to exit, and my balance is shot. Every stop and go of the bus is seen in my person, as I've lost the power to resist, and have to lean like there's no tomorrow on the... wall thing. I suppose it'd be referred to as a partition between the seats and the exit. Cue the street and my departure.

Before me is the expansive parking lot, maybe it should be called Victoria Parking Lot! (haha haha ha heh. But seriously, that'd be super dumb.) There's the 24hr Metro in front of me. I consider my options.

I could go to that McDonalds to my left, get a Mc...Egg McMuffin! That's what it's called! (another close one). Eat up, recover my strength. But I HAVE cereal at home... one should be responsible with money... ah, right, but I don't have MILK at home.

I could pick up a single bag of milk now at the Metro and head home, but I have a grocery bag already full of my stuff from work, and to me it'd be more than a little awkward to walk into a store with something that could easily be used to shoplift with. "What a nice bag of chips?" *stuffed under my work short, effectively invisible*

No, I don't like the appearance of that at all.

So here is what I do. I trudge home, braving the elements. Remove my bag and backpack from the equation. Replace my gross work pants with my jeans. Pick up the $25 gift card to Tim Hortons I got during Christmas at work. Consider wearing my easy to slip on shoes, but, you know, snow, and go for the work boots. Brave the elements.

I stop at the nearby Tim Hortons and have two, you know, breakfast sandwiches. With egg and everything! It feels pretty great, to be awake on an early hour (it's just past 7am at this point, though obviously I'd been awake much earlier than that...) on a dark blustery morning. The only other patron is wearing jeans and flannel. I've still got my touque on, and I can pretend I'm on my way to do something hard core with MY day. Like I'm in construction or something. Yessir, gotta hit the pavement, build something useful, that's me. It's like I'm participating in some kind of authentic Canadian experience.

True, you say, Tim Hortons doesn't equal REAL Canadian experience- they market themselves that way, and crushed any competition that says different... however, they've been so successful that an inordinate number of Canadians would in fact say I'm participating in a REAL Canadian experience. It almost makes it so. Reality is funny like that.

But then again, the other guy in the store has an earring and is reading the newspaper (far too metropolitan), and I'm nibbling on the sandwich wrapper for the tiny bits of melted cheese because I'm a goofy looking guy, and not very hardcore at all.

So much for authentic Canadian experience.

Rejuvenated, I trek on out for the milk. I grab two bags, one for each (gloved) hand of course. The guy with a bunch of items lets me go in front of him, which was very nice.

Trek back home. Brave the elements. Milk bags in each hand, arm starts to burn real good at the 3/4's mark. Suddenly I'm a little hardcore.

Milk mission accomplished, I crawl into bed. And now it's 5:03am Saturday 14th.