dramedy of errors

This has been a good couple of days. And here’s why:

Yesterday at a bit before four, I went out to play Tennis with Brian, Ian, Matt and later Casey. My room here locks. So I leave to play tennis, without my keys, and I lock the door behind me without really even thinking about it. Why? I never locked it when leaving before, or maybe just once. But still. Illogical. So thankfully now that I have a cell phone, I call the landlord and leave a message asking him to come unlock it if he had a chance, then go and play tennis. We can’t really find any good courts in Hamilton at all nearby, the ones we thought were good are a bit overgrown and extremely netless. I hit a car windshield with a tennis ball and got it back, though, so in one way it’s all worthwhile. There could be a lot of better ways, however. Afterwards I hang out for what I deem will be an appropriate amount of time. Happen to get the landlord’s cell number, and so give him a call. He has unlocked my room. Oh Happy day.

On the walk home I pick up a beef shawerma with some rice salad for 5.95 at Cedar’s something or other (it used to be called, unpronounceably, Gjahzi’s, spelled in a fairly incomprehensible font). I go home, and realize that while my room is unlocked, (with the light on and looking oh so cozy) there is no one else home and the door is locked. You may recall that I am not in possession of my keys. They are sitting inside my room. I can see them through the window. So I sit on an unupholstered lawn chair on the gravel patch behind the old house and eat my dinner. The shawerma is pretty good, it has nothing on Barakat, but how could it be? The rice doesn’t come with a fork, and since I can’t get inside to find a utensil, I eat it using the lid for the sauce that I eventually find buried in the rice after eating the first chunk with my hands. I think the sauce is rancid, but I’m not sure. I don’t even know what it is supposed to be so it’s hard to judge. It tastes halfway between extremely delicious and sour milk. I don’t finish it.

I call Brian, who is at SWHAT, and discover that he will be back probably around 8:30. Well. I have no food of my own in the house yet, so I may as well take this opportunity to go shopping. So, I stash my tennis racquet and balls in the old shed behind our neighbour’s house to have more room in my backpack for edibles and head out shopping. 12 cobs of fresh corn for $1.99. Who could resist? I buy a lot of stuff, cause food is good, and I currently have none. At the checkout, Brian calls to tell me he’s home. Excellent. It turns out I have bought rather a lot.. considering especially that I have to carry it all home by myself. I have to rest periodically on the way home, and nearing the house a bag breaks and the jam-jar heads face down into the sidewalk. It’s ok, though. And I arrive home. I’m not super ok, though. The red, bloodshot hands from carrying heavy plastic bags is all well and good, but 26 hours later and my shoulders remain really fucking sore. It was pretty lucky I have a cell phone now, though that doesn’t quite go far enough to qualify as that cherished silver lining that can reportedly be found where it’s least expected.

So that brings us to today. I had 11:30 class, went home after because I’d forgot to bring a void cheque for the meeting of the theatre TAs at 14:30. So I go to that and afterwards i head home. More than halfway back and I remember that I needed to buy test strips at the pharmacy while on campus. I’d tried to do it on Wednesday, but they didn’t have the correct info for my mom’s drug plan on file, so I had to get that first. I think I have the info on me, so I rifle through my pockets and my backpack. No dice. So I go all the way home, look in my room, don’t find it. Look in my pockets. There it is.. it’s been there all along. I am an idiot. So I head back towards campus for the third time. I’ve just about had enough of walking. I arrive at the drugstore at 16:36, which should be all well and good. But wait. On Fridays they close at 16:30 and are buttoned up tight. That’s ok, test strips are only like 80 dollars for a box of 50 or something ridiculous like that. By this time I’m a tiny bit tired and agitated, so I have a fruit smoothie to cool off. The fruit smoothie does not have unwanted dead things or rancidness involved. It’s actually quite good. And I run into an old acquaintance at the smoothie stand which helps with the cooling off process. When I get home I see my keys on my desk, even though I thought I had them with me, even though I felt them in my pocket. But, you see, the doors were all unlocked this time, so there is a silver lining! Except that once again it didn’t really change anything.

Lessons learned? Pharmacy closes at 4:30 on Fridays. Remember your keys and Things in general. So now I am a better person, right?

But when I said this has been a good couple of days before, I actually wasn’t being sarcastic (shock, shock, horror). Yeah some kinda bad stuff happened, but it was humourously bad, and hopefully was entertaining in story form. As an aspiring writer that’s all I can hope for, right?
There are a few things that counterbalanced the clownly buffoonery that I described above:
My new digs, next door from my old digs but with four strange boys added into the mix to make things more interesting, are actually very good. My new bed is pretty sweet, my room set-up is spacious and neat. The four boys are very amiable, and no sign of Haye Jiggerty or similar personalities are in evidence.
Teaching Assistanceship is exciting. It will be a fair bit of work. I have fifty kids to mark the work of and answer questions from, but I think I will definitely enjoy doing so. It’s even very beneficial from a practical standpoint.
And the last of the big three (maybe the best) is that re-done fourth year theatre class. The one where instead of letting you direct whatever play you want, like in the past, they throw people into groups and force them to collaborate. As it turned out, Kristen and Marco are my collaborators and I couldn’t be happier about that. We are going to be creating some manner of dramatic performance about Hamilton, the industry, the steelworkers and steelmills and the environment. We have a lot of ideas, and a lot of excitement. So I think this will, if not awesome, at least be good. So at least in our case, the prof didn’t cock it up.

Great!

That’s all, folks.