Drug Pocket

There is something about riding the bus that is just so … weird. There are strange people, or strange smells, or strange smelly people.

Today while riding the bus home I witnessed a drug deal. It was very odd. The bus was pulling up to a stop and there was a sketchy looking guy at the stop. He was acting very weird, and as the bus got close he almost jumped into the street in front of it. When the bus did stop he started walking past it very quickly.

I was standing by the rear doors and while they were open he was making a beeline for them. I thought that he was going to jump on the bus that way, but instead he saw a bus passenger he knew, and said “here you go” as he pushed a folded ziplock bag into the passengers hand.

The passenger took the bag and stuffed it into his pocket as he got off the bus, and then the two talked on the sidewalk as the bus left.

Weird.

Starbucks Adventures

What a way to start the day.

Today was a sleeping morning for Sox. After getting Sprout his breakfast I thought it would be nice to get Sox and myself some drinks from Starbucks. I also needed to buy some more coffee beans, so a “two birds with one stone” siutation was in play. I got Sprout ready to go, got him in the car, and got Yoshi in the back of the car so Sox could have a nice quiet house to sleep in.

Once at the store I got Sprout out, ordered the drinks and beans, and signed the credit card slip. Is it just me, or is it difficult to hold a baby and sign a tiny piece of paper? I ended up just putting him on the counter.

The drinks were ready, so I stuffed the beans into my hoody pocket, got a tray for the drinks and made my way back to the car. I placed the drinks on top of the car, and got Sprout strapped back in to his seat.

I grabbed the drinks off the roof and got into the car myself. I left the drinks in the holder and put them on the console between the seats and then headed home. I was going to take them out of the holder and put the cups into the drink holders but it was such a short drive I just thought I would be careful.

A couple blocks from home there was a red light. When the light went green, all hell broke loose. I had placed the cups in the holder side by side to aid in carrying them with one hand. This makes the holder very tippy. When I hit the gas the holder tipped over backwards! Crap. I couldn’t stop since there was traffic behind me, so I gunned it, and pulled over to the right, but couldn’t stop due to a bus stop. When I reached a clear portion of sidewalk I went to hit the brakes and put in the clutch. I should remind you that our Honda CRV doesn’t have a clutch. My left foot hit the brake, and hit the brake HARD! ABS kicked in since the roads were wet, but we all came to a stop. I reached behind me to grab the drinks, but could only find one of them. I jumped out of the car and opened the back door. Chai and my Americano had spilled all over the contents of the floor, but I still couldn’t find my Americano. Figuring I should just get home, pass off Sprout, then clean up the mess I went to get in the driver’s door, and found the Americano in the front.

sigh

What a debacle. Both drinks were half empty and I was pretty unhappy. I drove home, took Sprout and Yoshi in, and Sox got up. I told her what happened, and she suggested that I go back and tell them what happened. Opening the car all I could smell was Chai.

At the Starbucks I took in the two half empty cups that were covered in Chai and Americano, and asked if they could remake them because they fell over in the car. I whipped out the credit card, but they said not to worry about it. They replaced the drinks for me! I was very grateful for that.

At home I gave Sox her drink and tidied up the car. All in all pretty lucky, an umbrella and a blanket took the brunt of the mess. Sprout’s pack and LugABug carrier got a little on them, and some recycling materials seemed to sop up the rest.

My morning was salvaged and the day got better. Throughout the whole thing I couldn’t help but think of some of Michelle’s (mis) adventures as of late and couldn’t help but laugh.

Scared Kick

Some proof of the tormented soul. Below is Yoshi being scared. He is laying on some clothes of mine beside the bed. At this time of night he is usually sound asleep (and snoring) on his bed downstairs next to our couch.

This is our cat Aphro. She likes this time of year because of the furnace. When she hears it kick in in the morning she jumps off the bed and sits on the vent. Evidently she likes it at night too.

Tormented Bangs

Hallowe’en is a fun time for many, but not for Yoshi. He is tormented by the sounds of firecrackers. It scares him a lot and in turn ddrives up batty. Last night he actually push down the baby gate at the top of the stairs (the one we use to make sure he stays downstairs and doesn’t bug us). Yep, pushed it over walked over it and burst into our bedroom.

Poor guy.

Last night I was still hearing bangs at 3:30 am. Meaning Yoshi was still antsy at 3:30 am. Up and down the stairs, prancing around outside our bedroom, coming into the bedroom and walking from one side of the bed to the other, heading downstairs and doing laps of the house. Yeesh.

I am very tired today.

Tuesday night will be bad, and then it should end pretty quickly after that. Tuesday can’t come soon enough.

Government Consession

The fam went out last night to see the Pumpkin Art at Government House. It was pretty cool like last time. It is the kind of thing that adults need to change quite a bit year to year for them to stay interested in it. Kids love it though, and I can see why.

The big change this year was they had a small consession to raise money for the gardens. Excellent, a chance to get some hot chocolate on a chilly night! Nope. They had coffee, apple cider, and cookies, but no hot chocolate. I was pretty disappointed in that.

Otherwise it was fun to keep Sprout up way past his bedtime, and take him out to see some pumkins. Next year will be really fun to take him there!

Addressing Mangled

One of the features my webhost just implemented was plus-style email addressing (like gMail has). For example if my email address was fred@muddylaces.ca, fred+spamtrap@muddylaces.ca would go to the same mailbox.

This allows me to sign up at any webpage with a different email address, to make filtering easier and to quickly learn if someone is selling my email address if I use a unique email address per signup. My webhost has done this to allow people a basic for of catch all address that isn’t really a catch all.

In theory this sounds great, but in 2 days I have some across 2 websites that don’t support this at all. Dell.com was the first one I found. The Dell site told me they wouldn’t accept the email address. Fine, I created something else to use.

thehip.com did something far worse. They accepted the email address, then mangled it when they put it in a database, and somehow replaced the + with a space. This has very bad consequences when the site sent me an email. So “fred+thehip@muddylaces.ca” got turned into “fred thehip@muddylaces.ca”. When the site sent the email, all of a sudden fred@thehip.com and thehip@muddylaces.ca received the email (that contained my password by the way). This kind of failure is very bad (IMO).

I hope more sites will support plus style addressing. I plan on using it a lot more.