I walk through all the displays at Ikea. You know. Like how they present all the different rooms in a house. In one of the bathrooms, there is a young boy brushing his teeth and looking into the mirror. He flicks some tooth paste from his brush onto the mirror. In a living room display with all leather furniture, a group of young people are having a party. Music can be heard from the stereo and people are drinking. The next display stall has a man facing a woman in front of a bed. He rips off her clothes and pushes her down onto the bed where they begin to have wild passionate sex. In a kitchen a family is cooking food. A woman opens an oven and pulls out a giant roasted turkey. I can smell it from where I am as smiles appear on everyones faces. Some kids are helping their mother bake cookies in the next kitchen display. She wears a red and white criss-cross patterned apron and one of the children is partly covered in a thin layer of white flour. A man sits on a pristine white toilet in a blue and white tiled bathroom reading a copy of yesterdays papers. This is reality shopping.
I've been buying furniture from Ikea for the nursing home. Night tables and dressers. Each one takes time as you have to assembly everything. Then I have to modify each one so that they will be able to withstand the riggers of daily use by half drugged up people who can barely think straight. This is what I do after the regular day job is over.
The regular day job has also been extremely busy. Too busy in fact as I spend all day looking at architectural drawings for various projects. Everyone is so late or behind that all the requests that come in end with 'and we need this ASAP'. Yeah right. Many of these architects are individual entities that may or may not think of anyone else. They are not companies with lots of employees. The whole building industry seems to be so frantic. Despite being new to the business of structural engineering, I rejected two or three projects from some architects. Its as though they think that you are not doing anything else but their work. When I look at their designs, I find mistakes and ask them to revise their files which forces them to go back to their drawing boards. One project was for a townhouse development where the roof design was incomplete and the top floor design just didn't make any sense. On another town house project, the dimensions for various rooms were marked but when I measured the true displacements, they were all off. That architect has since gone back to the drawing board to check the size of everything in the whole development.
I threw the fish back into the water to set it free. (*dunk...sploosh*) It didn't go away. Instead it continues to swim in the water near me. Eventually it will go away. I think... I didn't want this one and in the process I broke her heart. I told her at the end of the date that it was probably going to be the last date. She cried in front of me quietly not wanting to go as I sat there wondering if I was making a mistake. I felt like such a goat for doing it. Telling her that we should just be friends. Over the past week I continue to receive messages and in each one she apologizes for crying in front of me. And that she no longer cries over me. This is the girl I met on the double date. Maybe this fish was perfectly good.
Beach volleyball is over yet the weather on the weekends has been good enough to keep going. I have no time to organize it anymore despite continued requests. Soccer has started off on a bad foot. I was very late for the first game combined with turning down invitations with these friends who have been friends for many years. As a result, the receptions has not been very warm. They feel offended when I tell them that I have other things to do or go to. Whether it is other friends or just work. I remember hearing some advice from someone. When you decide to change your life and move off in a different direction, leaving your regular group of friends behind, don't expect them to understand why because they just won't. They won't understand if you want to branch out and meet other people or move to another place, change your career or whatever. Life is always changing.
My hair is no longer just black. It has changed. The greys are for the middle of winter when the sky is filled with the same coloured clouds. My new copper red highlights will match the falling leaves. Summer clothes slowly disappear and new pieces are brought out. Seasons change and so do I.
On friday I dropped by cakemakers shop to help her fill a last minute order. For whatever reason, a client forgot to submit the payment to fill the order ahead of time. As a result, cakemaker basically only had one days notice to make everything that client wanted for her wedding. A regular two or three slab cake covered in fondont. Along with eighty mini cakes covered in fondont, wrapped with a two layer ribbon and topped with a flower. The thinking was that I would help her finish her work so we could meet up with some other people around midnight for drinks down at the Cambie. We finished the cakes around three or four in the morning. Neither of us went to the Cambie. This was supposed to be my night off from work, from working at the nursing home, from clubbing, from partying or whatever. It didn't happen.
The weekend is over and the war is about to start up again. Day in day out it will never end.
He looked at me with cold dark eyes over his shoulder. In his arms he tried to contain his smaller brother as he cried out for his mother. With the distance and the sound from the other people in the park, she could not hear his plea for help. There was another older brother standing beside the two who did nothing. I looked at the young boy as an evil grin began to form on his face and after some time had passed, the younger boy finally broke free from his older brothers arms running to his mother. It seemed like an eternity when the older brother just stood there staring at me as though I knew what bad deed he was doing. Some kind of taunting or mean trick on his little brother. I will never forget the evil look in his eyes. That boy will grow up to play worse tricks. He is the devil.
I received a project this week which I did nearly everything on for the first time. Creating the project title, setting up the letter of assurance, generating the structural drawings for every level of the building and selecting the project number. As I looked down the long list of project numbers I came to the end where no project names appeared anymore. The next number to use was 2006-666.
This project is for a new home in the Shaugnessy area. A somewhat complex design, there are three levels plus a giant three bay garage on the ground floor. Even still, I managed to get most of the project done in quick fashion. The last part was to get the beam sizes spec'd out by my coworker.
"Hey Lei." she quietly asked me through the parting in the cubicle walls.
"Nancy?"
"Come here, I have something to tell you" she said.
"Whats up?" I left my seat and walked over to her cubicle. Standing behind her and looking at her screen I recognized the files I had created which she had already started working on.
"Look at this file. You drew all the walls from the floor right on this file."
"Ohhhh, you're working on the devils house."
"Huh? Oh... hah haha" she laughs. "yeah, six-six-six... now I'm stuck working on the devils house."
"I'm glad I'm not working on it anymore. I wonder what the family living there will be like."
"That's like Michael Jackson across the hall!" she says to me. Across the hall from our office is a notary public. On their door are the names of two people, 'Michael #### and #### Jackson. She looks at the two names and only see's "Michael Jackson."
So Michael Jackson works across the hall and we are busy designing the devils house.