Touch You Last

At four o'clock in the morning, Gunther generally starts to howl. He does this so I will feed him, and the path of least resistance is to give the fat, fat, oh-so-fat cat more food. On schedule, last night at four o'clock the howling starts. As I get out of bed. Sarah says, "What's wrong with him?" "He's probably losing his mind with hunger, like usual," I say. I get to the bedroom door and Sarah loudly says, "Find out what's wr ..." then trails off. I stop, waiting for her to continue. After a few seconds, she finishes "Find out what wrong from a Human Resources perspective." This is followed by a very long pause. Apparently she takes my silence as refusal, because she sighs angrily, says, "Fine!" and throws the covers over her head.

The building I work in may be on fire right now. I sort of hope that it is, but only for the sake of making this a more interesting story. About ten minutes ago there was a really strong smell of melted plastic, and shortly after that the alarm went off. I’ve been caught unprepared a few too many times, so I grabbed my coat, gloves, laptop, and secret money stash and ran down the street to the local Tim Horton’s. I can actually see the top half of my building from where I’m sitting and there are no giant fireballs shooting out of the place, no panicked folk screaming, “Help, help! My baby is trapped inside!” At least so far. I don’t wish ill of my building, or of anyone who works there. I think it just struck me that I didn’t leave anything of large value behind. In total, I would lose: three souvenir Vegas mugs, one pair of brown, suede shoes (I have two back ups at home), one pair of winter boots (which I sort of hate), one half-eaten box of Lindor chocolates ( won’t be missed), and...

I had a lot of fun interviewing Beth a while back, and I really like this idea. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t flatter myself, thinking I have crazy good interview skills. There's a reason I did the first exchange over e-mail—so I could take time to think of the next question, rearrange the content, and generally edit the bejezus out of whatever I said. I thought the result was great. Jorge volunteered to be my next subject, and because he had plans to visit, I decided to kick it up a notch. We did an audio interview. Just before midnight last Friday, we sat down with a few beers, a bottle of Sour Puss (don’t ask), and an amazingly simple-to-use bit of software called Audacity . We talked until four in the morning. I do not present the full version to you here. We hardly even like ourselves enough to listen to the full version. No, available through this link is the heavily pared down six-minute version. I love it. It was fun to record, and strangely fun to edit (even though it took...

Change Two: Drink More Water Such a simple thing, yet something I just can't seem to find the time to do. About the only water I drink in your average day is whatever sweat happens to trickle off my mustache. Hydration (so the smart people tell me) is a good thing. I'm less fatigued when I drink water. I'm less hungry when I drink water. I'm even less grumpy when I drink water. I promise you nothing especially impressive. Eight glass a day ain't gonna happen. I'm shooting for two on average; two trendy, metallic, not gonna bleed Bisphenol A into my system bottles of water. I know were off to a rip-roaring start, what with the list-making and the hydration, but I'll try to get crazier with future changes. Stuff like: go to work drunk more, and buy a pair of leather pants. For now, let me ease into it.

A few months ago, we started to buy Christie Thin Crisps—which are basically wafer-sized version of your favourite delicious cookies. We buy boxes with a mix of Oreo and Chips Ahoy! (That’s the product name. Don’t give me any shit for unnecessarily exclaiming.) Just now, over lunch, my attention was almost wholly on my computer screen, with maybe five percent of it given over to the task of opening and eating my package of Thin Crisps. I was expecting Oreos for some reason, but as I raised the first one to my mouth, out of the corner of my eye I could see that it was clearly not an Oreo. For that space of a second, I thought, “I’m not sure what this is?!?” But before I actually identified it (as just a Chips Ahoy!), I’d already stuffed it in my mouth and started to chew. Does that strike anyone else as totally messed up? You’d think my need to identify what I was about to eat would outweigh my need to indiscriminately eat whatever it was I was holding. You’d think.

I know you’re all asking, “What did Sarah and Dave do for New Year’s?” I’ve tried starting a rumour that we were out at a rave, decked out with glow sticks and cat-in-the-hat hats, huffing nitrous oxide until four in the morning, but that rumour won’t seem to take. The truth is: we stayed in. It gets better: we also sang a lot of karaoke—although we didn’t actually rent a karaoke machine (and would that have made it better or worse?) Our cable provider, Rogers, has a new Karaoke on Demand feature that we guiltily indulge in every so often. I would guess the catalogue has somewhere around two-hundred songs, so at this point we’ve tried out every song we were interested in, and a few that we never should have attempted. Sarah’s fond of slightly older stuff—Boston, Huey Lewis, Backstreet Boys, and The Cardigans. I’m too cool for school, so I try to go current—Hot, Hot Heat, Fall-Out Boy, OK Go, and All American Rejects. I love songs where a guy is singing at the very edge of his range—whe...

Because 101 in 1001 was such a "success,” and because I like to announce my goals and fail at achieving my goals publicly, I bring you a brand new meme: 52 changes. This little project stems from the fact that I like resolutions, but tend to overshoot with a long list of Herculean tasks that overwhelm me. Instead, I’ll be spreading the resolutions throughout the year, one per week. Some (most) will be small, some will be major—and I know I’m not going to keep all of them up, but I can’t help but think that at least some of these fifty-two changes will stick. Change One: Maintain a To-Do List From my early twenties on, I loved me my to-do lists. My typical list was broken down into subcategories (To Read, To Watch, To Write, To Call,) and I kept it handy whenever possible. Some of the items were things I definitely needed a reminder on, others were gimmies—things I had no doubt I’d accomplish within hours of writing them down. Gimmies aside, these stupid little paper lists...