It has begun.

I misspelled “colour” as “color”.
Even worse, I worried about homeland security.

Making your own gelcaps

By the way, I have an alarming situation to report with one of my friends. He’s been laid off for a few months, but he’s been limiting himself to a very specific kind of job in a very specific location. In other words, he’s not really casting a very wide net, which obviously limits the number of jobs he applies to.

I was talking to him today about it and suggesting he consider at least applying to jobs outside his optimal conditions. Like, he doesn’t have to take that kind of job should he receive an offer, but there’s no harm in applying and possibly getting interviews, right?

He seemed kind of uninterested in that strategy, but at the same time, he said he was starting to get a little depressed. He said that he’s been thinking he wants to start making things, like maybe he’s going to buy some wood and chop it up or something. Then he said he started researching gelcaps and had this idea to make his own gelcaps.

I asked him where he was going to get empty gelcaps to fill.

He replied: “Amazon.com!” (btw, here‘s the link)

lol.

He had apparently put a lot of thought into this scheme, because he spent the next 15 minutes talking about what he’s going to put in the gelcaps, and how there’s even a machine you can get that automatically fills and tamps the gelcaps for you.

Luckily I was eating pizza the whole time he was going on about this scheme. In the end, I told him I think he’s starting to go a little crazy, and maybe a job in Palo Alto isn’t so bad if the alternative is sitting at home, tamping your own custom made gelcaps.

San Francisco needs central heating

I’m huddled on my couch under a blanket until my apartment warms up. I caved and bought a space heater a couple weeks ago so the place should be back to a habitable temperature in a few minutes.

Yes, I bought a space heater. Yes, I live in California. This troubles me.

My conclusion is that the real problem here is that there’s no concept of central heating! So all you get is some small baseboard heater that only blows hot air to one part of one room of your house. In my old apartment, at least the heater was warming the space under my desk. In my new place here, it’s warming the entrance to the kitchen. That sucks!

San Francisco isn’t cold enough to actually be cold but it’s definitely cold enough that you need a bit of heating at night. I mean it’s usually in the low 10s at night. My place doesn’t have carpet and doesn’t have insulated windows. It gets cold!

So yes. I figure I have another 5 or 10 minutes of cowering left until I can get rid of this blanket and start washing dishes. Chores abound!

The Qtip situation in America

I know that normally we all feel like American things are bigger and better. Most of that is true.  I still get really shocked when I go to the restroom in a movie theater and find there are like 40 stalls in there.  Even the Scotiabank theater in downtown Toronto wasn’t that huge!

Anyway, you’ll be happy to know there’s definitely one thing that Canadians do bigger and better than Americans. Qtips! I thought there was something fishy about American Qtips the whole time I’ve been living here. Even though I buy Qtip brand, they feel hard and ghetto like the Life brand ones in Shoppers. I just assumed my ears had become high maintenance, but no! My ears are fine! When I was back home over Thanksgiving, I had to use my little brother’s Qtips and I immediately noticed they were more fluffy. In fact, when I was packing up my stuff to fly back here, I took all his Qtips! That really annoyed him and he thought I was going crazy, so I left him a few with him. Boy am I regretting that now! As you can see in the photo below, the American Qtip is obviously shorter and less fluffy than the Canadian one. I don’t even have to point out which is which.

Cross border Qtip comparison

(And yes, in case you’re wondering, I “posed” the Qtips on a scarf for this photo. That was the only way to get a photo of Qtips to look uncreepy!)

Thanks

Thanks for reading guys! It’s been almost two years since I started this and it still makes me smile to read your comments and check my visitor stats.

Marco Polo

Last weekend, I left my apartment in the afternoon to go around the corner and mail a letter. As I left, I said waved and said hello to a cute couple lingering in the alley. They were middle aged, grey curly haired, comfortably girthed, wide smiled.

When I walked back to my apartment a couple minutes later, I ran into the couple again. This time, they stopped me and the gentleman asked “Do you live in Number 10?”

That is how I met the NYC show biz former occupants of my apartment. (ok, technically, they lived in the unit below mine, but still!)

It turns out they lived in that house 20 years ago. They told me about the funny layout of the apartment at the time (I can now tell the original rooms from the remodel that my landlord did), the parties on the roof (which piqued my interest greatly – I think i’ve located the latch to get up there … all I need is a ladder!), and the Marco Polo they poked into the wet concrete when they patched up the sidewalks in the alley back in those days. Marco Polo was a show they did back in the day, and their best friends carved it into the concrete with them.

Anyway, they moved to NYC after that and have lived there ever since.

Great story, right?

Well obviously afterwards I started looking for the marco polo in the sidewalk. I found it yesterday afternoon. So cute :) I’ll take a picture for you.