Still no news about Ms B-D. No news is usually good news, but when you're waiting to see if someone will ever regain consciousness, it doesn't work that way. Perhaps this whole situation is responsible for the weird headspace I was in all weekend.

I met with Ms McD again yesterday, and we watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Even after repeated viewings, I still catch things that I'd missed previously.

My situation later this week is still up in the air. Today and tomorrow I'm working in the office, but later in the week I'm likely going to either Guelph or Markham; presumably I'll find out which today.

An eventful weekend

On Friday I canceled the Mosaik card, along with three other cards. I now just have a MasterCard and an American Express, which give me more than enough credit for now. Canceling the cards was easy enough (the folks on the other end of the phone didn't push too hard to get me to reconsider), although it hurt to cut up all those pretty pieces of plastic.

The aforementioned Ms B-D is not doing well. Apparently she suffered a massive stroke as a complication of the surgery, and has not yet regained consciousness. Her son and daughter-in-law have said they'll get back with additional information as soon as it's available, but this definitely does not look good at all.

Yesterday I spent the day with Ms McD, and the whole day had a surreal quality to it (perhaps because of massive substance abuse). She has suddenly decided to go out to New Brunswick for the wedding of a friend that she just reconnected with on Facebook. She's leaving on Tuesday and plans to stay there for most of August. As far as the day's activities, we hung out with a friend of hers (who we'll call Buddy); he's a former cab driver, about 50 years old, now living in a rooming house in downtown Kitchener. We played a wargame that he's developed; it's a lot of fun, though it takes a very long time to play. The whole scene, though, just felt weird for some reason.

Credit gone wild

I returned from the field this evening, ran out to an NDP meeting, and then hung out with Ms P afterwards. In my mail I found an official looking package which, when opened, turned out to contain my shiny new WestJet Mosaik MasterCard. And therein lies a tale.

You see, last month when I boarded my return flight from Winnipeg, it was around 7 AM and I was wretchedly overtired and hung over from being up late drinking with Half Muppet Half Mucus and some mutual friends of ours. On the way to the gate I was accosted by someone trying to get people to apply for one of these cards. I was in no mood to say no to anyone, so I did. After all, it has all kinds of cool shit. Extra Air Miles when you buy WestJet flights! Companion flights after you spend $3000 in flights! Deals on car rentals! Deals on hotels! Cash advances! Amazing!

Nothing, however, amazed me as much as the one piece of cool shit that I didn't learn about until I actually received the card. They have given me more than a third of my gross annual income in credit. And that's not including several grand in credit that I already have from my other cards.

Just think about that for a moment. For the simple act of turning up hung over in an airport early in the morning, I have been given the ability to piss away thousands of dollars on all manner of shite in very little time. Want a Wii? Step right up, mister. Plasma TV? No problem. And look at all the cool Air Miles I can collect! Hey, a few flights to Winnipeg or the Dominican Republic and I can afford a flight to Europe! There's an airline that flies to England right out of Hamilton. Or hey, I could just get thousands of dollars in cash advances and go to the casino. I could get lucky, right?

Of course, if I were to do this I would be saddled with enormous payments soon after. Many, many people do this. Naturally, if it got really bad one could declare bankruptcy, but that makes it awfully hard to get credit in the near future.

Or, I could simply store the cards away for emergencies. Not a bad idea, but I've been told (I can't confirm this, but the reasoning seems sound) that having lots of credit that you don't use is actually bad for your credit rating, because it becomes riskier for others to lend you money. After all, your existing credit is virtually a time bomb- given a whole bunch of available credit, sooner or later many people will suddenly go deeply into debt. Anything could stimulate this- losing your job, having a nervous breakdown, falling in love with the wrong person... the possibilities are endless.

So I'm not going to activate this new card, and I should probably cancel at least three of my existing five cards as well. I haven't had any real need for them for a long time anyway.

Technical difficulties... please stand by

I didn't get around to fiddling with my laptop this weekend, but I brought my Windows CD as well as a Linux live CD in the hope of getting it working properly. Unfortunately, when I tried to fix Windows it ended up getting worse, to the point where it no longer boots. The live CD works, but I can't get it to recognize the hotel's network. So I'm reduced to using the public terminal in the hotel lobby. Annoying, and I hope that the bosses don't pick this week as the one where I have to work on some important document, else I'm screwed.

Shocked but not that surprised

Well, after visiting Ms B-D (who, incidentally, is holding up reasonably well under the circumstances), I met up with Ms McD and Ms P. As we were coming back to the building, we ran into the caretaker. Since my neighbour across the hall hasn't been around for several days, and another neighbour had been asking after him, I asked the caretaker what he knew. It turns out he's in jail, charged with sexually assaulting a young woman from the back of the building. I'd always picked up a weird vibe off him, but until now I'd given him the benefit of the doubt. In retrospect, though, this doesn't seem out of character at all. In any case, I don't expect to see him again (no great loss).

Today Ms McD and I are going to the Ps' housewarming, then I have to leave for Bracebridge again at 6 PM.

A busy weekend

I hung out with Ms McD last night, and we watched a number of episodes of The Young Ones. Today I'm going to Toronto to visit a friend of my parents' (who we'll call Ms B-D here). She's in Toronto Western with an aneurysm, albeit a relatively mild one. She's slated to go in for surgery on Monday.Then on Sunday I have the Ps' housewarming, and after that I have to leave for Bracebridge. Not much time to simply relax, but that's the way it goes.

The week in review

As expected, our days were somewhat longer than usual for this project, owing to the absence of the van as well as the fact that a lot of cottagers who weren't around in the winter and spring are out now. However, it was still pretty light.

This week I had one of those periodic bursts of increased dream activity (or rather, dream recall). In one dream, I was at a social gathering in Winnipeg, and someone who I knew from the U of Winnipeg suddenly cornered me and said, "I heard you're working in a dump! Are you an idiot?" The only response I could come up with was "no, more of a loser." In real life, this person is quite nice and would never have said something like that, but it got me thinking about my job situation, and cost me a couple of hours' sleep brooding over it.

And my laptop is on the fritz. Damn. I hope I can get it working properly before we go back on the road on Sunday night.