So, famous Science Guy Bill Nye has had to file a restraining order against his former fiancee, who apparently tried to poison him. On hearing this news, my brain immediately went into flashback mode, remembering Bill's days on "Almost Live!". Along with every other male cast member, he had his turn playing a suffering boyfriend of... "The Worst Girlfriend in the World".

Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

Oooooh she's the worst girlfriend in the world!
A psycho bitch from hell, yeah, that's the girl!
She's the worst girlfriend in the world!
The worst girlfriend in the woooooorld!

Time for a little catch up. And, yes, I've been bad about keeping up this blog. It will almost certainly continue that way. But I think we'll live.

Much work relief. I now have a full-time permanent position with the library. Whew! It's at the Emily Carr branch, which is really my first choice. Not too far from home, not too crazy (although by no means dead slow).

We are still in the middle of job actions, however. We have shut down the public internet terminals, are closed between 12 and 1 everyday as we all take lunch simultaneously, and have stopped collecting overdue fines. We've also had a few strike days here and there, some involving picketing and one where we all went to a "study session" at strike HQ, where we spent four hours listening to talk about pay equity. I drifted off for about ten minutes during hour three. Nobody noticed.

Still, at least I do have that new position. If I play my cards right, I'll never have to go through another job interview again.

I will try to post something half-way interesting next time.

Heh. Hehheh. Hehhehheh. Ha! Ha ha ha! Hahahaha!!! Bwahahahahaha!!! ... Oh... Oh, my sides... Oh, God... Deep breaths... Deeeep breaths... Okay. Okay, I'm all right now. Okay... You really do have to be a fan of Homestar Runner to get it.

{glances up a picture} Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!! {falls out of chair} Ow... Hee...

I think our rally at City Hall last Friday went well. (I'm not really certain, as this was my first work-action rally.) Folks were pretty pumped, and loud and boisterous. Which, I guess, is what you want at one of these. Several speakers were there, including one of Victoria's MLAs. There's even footage of it on YouTube. I'm even visible! Just. For about two seconds beginning around 1:20 on the right hand side of the screen.



Oh, wait. Make that around 1:57, counting down. Forgot it did that. Anyway, no more job actions until after Thanksgiving. We're giving them time to "reconsider their position". Here's hoping...

Mutiny update. Arrr! Although we are already technically mutinying against the scurvy dogs, we are still choosing to swab decks and raisin' the mizzenmast, we have had two wee work stoppages. Three hours each, one last Thursday and the other the Friday afore that. But the land-lubbers still refuse to parley, so this comin' Friday, we will be havin' a full day's mutiny. We'll all be meetin' on the main deck at 11 bells, then marchin' to the captain's quarters and then hangin' the officers from the yardarm!

(Non-Pirate Day translation: Strike update. Although we are technically already on strike, we have chosen so far to remain open for the time being, with only a couple of three hour job actions. One last Thursday and another the Friday before. But the powers that be still refuse to return to the bargaining table so this coming Friday, we will be having a full work stoppage for the whole system. We will be meeting at the Central branch downtown, then marching to City Hall for a rally. Anybody in the area interested in helping out woefully underpayed library workers, please come join us on Friday. Arrr.)

I aten't dead. 'Nuff said; moving on.

My mini-golf birthday bash. Wow, that was a long day. In a good way. Nice picnic, a couple of rounds of mini-golf and... the bumper boats. When we'd decided we wanted to do the bumper boats, we though that that would be all there was involved. Boats. Smacking into each other's bumpers. Like bumper cars. When we got into the boats, though, we realized that they had water cannons on them. Oh, boy. The four of us (me, Lynn, Rob and Kama) and a few kids. Needless to say, the kids were merciless with their cannons. Mostly towards Rob, but we all got our share of spray. On the other hand, it was nice to have targets I felt no remorse about soaking back. So, we ended up just a tad wet at the end of it all...




Good news on the work front. I finally score a permanent position with the library, out at the Juan da Fuca branch. It's only half-time, but it's a big step forward. And a relief.

It was all rather whirlwind. Thursday afternoon, I get a phone call asking if I can come in for the interview the next morning at 9! I make it in, do the interview and am told the decision will be known later that day. I got a call right around lunch telling me I got the position! Less that 24 hours. Whew...

Bad news on the work front. A strike seems increasingly unavoidable. This might become my "strike blog" for a while. Heavy sigh.

Ahem. Yes, it's been a while since posting. And I have no good excuse. I have excuses; they're just not good ones.

One excuse is that Lynn and I have managed to get ourselves addicted to World of Warcraft. Really, though, it's a small miracle that we hadn't already gotten sucked into the world of WoW. (I guess that, unabbreviated, that would be the world of World of Warcraft. That's a messy phrase.)

So far, Lynn's got, um, four characters, I think? Maybe five. I'm just sticking to two. Which, in a bit of web weirdness, you can actually see, even if you don't play the game. There's Duglas (so called because Douglas was unavailable on our chose server), the human paladin. And there's Lumiaris (so called because I couldn't think of anything and just went with a randomly generated name), the night elf druid.

Moving on to other happenings... the strike vote I mentioned a couple of posts back? 90% in favour. No strike is imminent, but if negotiations don't improve sometime soon, it looks like we'll be hittin' the pavement.

I hope to have something actually interesting to post soonish. We're going up-island tomorrow with Rob and Kama to mini-golf. There may be photos. And it so happens to be my 39th birthday tomorrow, as well, although it wasn't planned to have the two together. Just turned out that way.