So I did a little thinking today, and I've concluded that my job is pretty damn alright.
I manage a building in downtown Toronto. We have a number of tenants: Nike, Winners, La Senza, Starbucks, and what I like to call the "frou-frou stores" – Plaza Escada, Guerlain Paris, and Bang & Olufsen. Downstairs, we've got Mega Wraps, Down Under Convenience, and Kaner's Shoe Repair. As a whole, they make up my commercial tenants, and we all seem to get along alright, with the exception of one or two managers here and there who just don't like property management companies for reasons unknown to me. Perhaps a property management firm once ate their babies, or perhaps fucked their moms. I'm really not sure, and I can't see myself asking anytime soon.
My job's simple: I'm to run the building. I don't have a title, thought I suppose Facilities Manager would probably be the closest. This means that my job is half maintenance related and half human resources. On the maintenance side, the actual work is carried out mostly by my small staff: Abdel, my right-hand man and cleaner, who will bend over backwards and do flips through a frickin' hoop if you tell him to, and Danny, who's the most consciencious security guard who ever lived. I tell these two guys (and the rest of their staffs) what to do, and they do it relatively well. On the other side of my job, I'm to keep the tenants happy as best as I can, try to carry out their wishes, and then do the opposite by following the orders of my company. Hey, I know who signs my paycheck. I do my best by everybody, but I only answer to head office when push comes to shove.
So the workload is light for the most part nine-tenths of the time (though I have to handle all the paperwork, contractor coordination, tenant letters and requests, and general office crap), and one-tenth of the time it's a madhouse, which is actually refreshing. It can get tedious and boring sometimes… but I have my own bathroom! That counts for something, right? Well… did I mention that it has a shower? No, I've never used it… uhh… I CAN FIRE PEOPLE! Actually, that's not fun…
Anyhow, I also have my own office. It's sort of Batcave-like, both because it's hidden in the bowels of the building where it's hard to find, and also because it's pretty nifty inside:
I have two desks. Sweet, huh? You'll note my Heat and Reservoir Dogs posters, because you're observant and you have good taste. It's a pretty big office, and while there's obviously no windows at least I get to decorate it as I see fit.
The posters? From left to right, it's The Usual Suspects, Snatch, Army of Darkness, The Boondock Saints, and Kill Bill Vol. 1. So the office is cool and I'm the only one in it, and the workload is easy. There's a good deal of responsibility in the job, because I'm running the show and if it doesn't go on it's my ass, but I can't say I dislike it. Most of the time there's something to do, and when there isn't I have the lesiure of reading or writing something for fun. I've been their six years.
It's bizarre, but if I were single I'd likely have quit by now because I'm not going anywhere from here. My boss Bernie likes me and the job I do enough to keep me around this long, and I've long since gotten the impression that me moving upwards is not something he's really for since it'll make his life harder. But I'm not single anymore, and there's three other people to consider, and I've got bills to pay.
Also, there's a television in my office. That's a plus! Right…?!
- BC
BIG, CLUMSY POSTSCRIPTS: I went to Medieval Times tonight with Tania and the kids, and took pictures. I might throw them up at some point, but here's my favourite: a look at the Rogers Centre from the Gardiner Expressway through my car window at 110 kilometers an hour.
Filed under: The Lawn
So this is my backyard.
It’s not big, but it’s mine, and you can’t have it. The fertilzer has caused it to grow very long (I’ve cut it twice, mind you), but it’s also burned the hell out of parts of it, as mentioned previously, and the remnants of those burn marks continue to mock me. I have watered it constantly, I have gotten down on my hands and knees and picked out bits of clumped fertilizer THAT SAID IT WOULDN’T BURN MY LAWN AND THEN BURNT MY LAWN (I hope you rot in that part of hell where they sodomize you with fertilizer, Mark Cullen, all the while promising it won’t burn your rectal cavity), and I have nursed it with Miracle-Gro every week. I have been shunned at every turn by the evil forces of the enemy lawn.
This, of course, means war.
“We have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. You know, by God, I actually pity those poor dandelions we’re going up against. By God, I do. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards. We’re going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the wheels of our lawn mowers. We’re going to murder those lousy lawn bastards by the bushel.
“Now, some of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you’ll chicken-out under fire. Don’t worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your duty. Those yellow spots on the lawn and their weed allies are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood. Shoot them in the stem. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do.
“There’s one thing that you men will be able to say when you get back home, and you may thank God for it. Thirty years from now when you’re sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your knee, and he asks you, “What did you do in the great Lawn War?” you won’t have to say, “Well, I lived in a condo.”
“That’s all”.
- BC
Filed under: From Bachelor To The 'Burbs
So one minute you're this single guy living in a really nice building in a really groovy area of the city, and then the next you're marrying this fabulous lady and moving into a new house outside the city with her two-point-three kids. And there's this annoying cat, and this lawn that kind of lurks somewhow, and you're standing there watering it with the hose and wondering if the new hanging flower baskets look good and thinking about how your friend Aggie would cringe if she saw you now. It makes one think, and apparently start up blogs on the subject.
While I don't suppose that as a single guy that I was the swingest swinger who ever swung a swing, it still stands that marriage and the suburbs alters the good lifestyle of the average man-about-town. For one, I was surrounded with some very city-oriented people in Toronto, and if you know Toronto that means that people go about their business quickly and don't spend a lot of time chatting with strangers. And for the record, I love that. I have enough friends, and I don't want any more of them, and thus Toronto is my kinda town, social-wise. But Pickering? Well, when you live in a house the neighbours soon make themselves known to you, and in Toronto nobody ever knocked on my apartment door to introduce themselves and tell me what an asshole the last renter was. This is an important distinction between suburbia and the city, and I find the whole thing very unsettling.
For starters, there's Ellie from down the block. Ellie hated the people who owned this house, apparently. Then there's Yvonne, who also hated them… but who also hates Ellie. And then there's… Elsa, I think her name is, who likes… Ellie, I think, but not Roseanne. Don't forget Peter, who doesn't like Phil or the guy who owned this house before me because he yelled at his kids, and I SHOULD HEAR ALL ABOUT IT, and what kind of man calls a twelve year-old a fatass, and isn't he a jerk, and OH MY GOD STOP TALKING TO ME.
Thankfully on the left side, we've got Marlon and Bonnie. I'm blessed to have them there, because they seem like good people, and Bonnie and Tania are hitting it off nicely and Tania likes that kind of thing. I've also got Mohammed on the right side, who seems like a nice, intelligent man that's just trying to get by. While I doubt I realize this conciously, the fact that they don't want to gab about Phil or Roseanne or Elsa or INSERT NEIGHBOUR THAT HAS WRONGED THEM HERE makes them wonderful neighbours to me in turn. Again, I'm from Toronto, and as a Torontonian my soul has been removed to make room for more insular and egocentric thoughts. I don't know you, and while you'll have all my respect and manners as a fellow denizen of the Big Smoke, I don't want to talk to you. But that's okay with you if you're also a Torontonian, because you think the same way, and even if you don't you understand that this is how we do things and that you should shut up now. The problem I have now is that none of these Pickering people are from Toronto. Besides, the interests are different out here, and I'm pretty sure that if I interrupt the deep hockey conversation the four guys down the street are having to ask them if they thought The Baroness from COBRA Command was hot that they won't know what the hell I'm on about.
I like my house, and I like my neighbourhood. I just wish both were in Toronto, where I could be an angry, brooding hermit just like everyone else is instead of the only one on my street.
- BC
Filed under: From Bachelor To The 'Burbs
One of the more immediate changes to moving to suburbia was the commute. I mean, I’m certainly going to be documenting things of great substance that changed when I became Instant Family Man, but I think this is somewhat significant and I want to get it out of the way.
When I lived at Yonge and Sheppard, I lived in a skyrise above a very busy neighbourhood – a skyrise directly above the subway. Since the building I manage downtown is also connected to the subway, I never had to leave the underground. In the middle of winter, I could take the elevator downstairs in my shorts, saunter into the mall, buy a coffee and a paper, and sit on the subway for a twenty-minute ride.
Now, I get this.
It looks like this every weekday morning, and it looks like this for an hour. I suppose that’s not incredibly bad, but it’s not what you’d call good, either. I knew this was going to be the case, of course, but you never really know how much it’s going to suck until you actually drive it for a week. I don’t mind being in the car for an hour, but I sure as hell don’t like being in the car for an hour going thirty clicks tops.
I find the commute more dreary than anything else. There’s nothing to do. Toronto radio sucks, for one; you have Q107 with the ‘mullet rock’ and The Edge with all the bands that sound the same, and everything else either falls into the category of ‘crap rock’ or ‘wuss rock’. I’d listen to country, but even the country station sucks here. It’s gotten bad enough that even though I’m the cheapest sonofabitch on the planet, I might actually go out and buy satellite radio. I play drums in the car with a pair of drumsticks I bought, but you can’t really do it when the car’s moving, and even if you can (cough), the more responsible motorists are going to glare at you.
I mean, I imagine they would. I’m sure I wouldn’t know.
- BC
Filed under: The Lawn
While I Fought The Lawn was created to document the lifestyle shock between being single in the big city and being part of an instant family in the 'burbs (New from RONCO! It's "THE INSTANT FAMILY"! Just add semen!), I wanted to mention that there is, in fact, an ongoing conflict between me and my lawn. It's not the first shock I've had here in Pickering, but it's certainly the most painful. My God, just look at it. I'm in agony here.
This is my first lawn. I've owned a condo, and I grew up in a house, but the condo was a yardless third-floor affair and the lawn in the house of my youth obviously belonged to my parents. As far as ownership of a patch of land myself goes, this is the first. As mentioned before, I burned the shit out of it with fertilzer it really didn't need, and despite the fact the bag promised me I couldn't burn it, that's exactly what happened. There's yellow patches all over the thing, and I divide my home time these days between watering it heavily, pouring Miracle Gro over the yellow patches, and grimacing in it's general direction. And through all of that, I can't quite understand why I care.
This is one of those distinctions between the single life and the married one. For some reason, I can't live with a lawn like this. It goes beyond just wanting nice things and wanting to keep them nice in turn, mind you: if it was simply that, I'd understand it. As a single guy in an apartment, I didn't give a damn about the presentation of my living space. Garbage bags piled up by the door, dishes went unwashed for long days at a time, and the vaccuum got pretty lonely in it's closet. But for some reason, this little patch of green here that's so exposed to my neighbours and their judging eyes has been damaged, and it's genuinely bothering me that it looks like this. Perhaps it's an ownership versus renting phenomenon, but I think it's the thing everyone sees when they look over here at this house. The lawn, in a way, is a reflection of me. If my lawn is sloppy, I'm thinking somewhere in the back of my brain, the neighbours will think I'm sloppy.
In the end, I don't care what they think. But it's nagging at me, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't, and I don't see any need to be untruthful here.
Hmmm.
- BC
Filed under: Honeymoon
Saturday April 1st, 2006
Saturday’s our last day before going home, and we’d decided we would fill the day by doing absolutely nothing. I took two of my favourite pictures on this day: a picture of my view from the beach lounger in the morning…
… and a picture of the pool from my beach lounger in the afternoon.
We read, we listened to the MP3 player, we drank fruity drinks with little tiny hats, and sometime around lunch yours truly went snorkeling. There’s a reef about thirty yards out that was full of fish: little black ones with yellow stripes that looked like lightning bolts on them, and big purple and blue ones darting all over the place. While I thought snorkeling would be hard, it wasn’t, and I floated out over the reef for half an hour and watched the watery world below. I must admit, it was truly impressive. Well, it was for me, anyhow. I doubt the fish thought much of the large white blobby thing peeping down at them.
This day was essentially a washout, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Knowing that I’d have to be stuffed back in that Air Transat jet again and returning to a busy airport in a cold country thrilled me about as much as the thought of returning to work the next day did. I really needed to soak up the doing nothing like it was going out of style, and that’s what I did. It paid off, because by the time the end of the day was over I was more relaxed than Perry Como on a bag of weed (wow, was that a dated reference or what?)
We got picked up early the next day following a fabulous sunrise, and Roger saw us off from the lobby. The bus took us to the airport, the airport put us on a sardine can with wings, the sardine can with wings took us to Toronto, and Tania’s dad was there to pick us up. We drove to his place, picked up my car, and then it was off to Pickering, where Tania’s mom had prepared us a surprise roast dinner at our house.
And that, as they say, was that. I’m married, I’m a stepfather of two, I own a house in the ‘burbs, I work forty hours a week, and I went to Mexico on my honeymoon. I guess that might sound very dull to a lot of people, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Already, being married has got it’s advantages.
- BC
Filed under: Honeymoon
Friday March 31st, 2006
We were up at 8am and eating at La Brisa. Early in the week, I admit I was sometimes bored: sitting on a lounger by the pool wasn’t really my thing. By now, I was totally into relaxation mode, and not wanting to go home at all. After breakfast with Ron and Chris, we walked to that marina I mentioned in Puerto Aventuras, just five minutes away. We’d bought a half-day pass to Xcaret and weren’t due to go until 3pm, so we had time to kill. The marina was really nice, and Tania bought a charm bracelet while I picked up a silver ring with the Mayan calendar in it. At the marina here, we watched as people swam with dolphins – I’d definitely save money for that next time – and snapped some pictures of seals and manatees that they had swimming in big, natural-looking tanks. We made it back to the hotel by 12, and spent the next hour or so swimming.
After lunch at the Bamboleo (it served burgers and fries that were somewhat acceptable, and thus was better than the buffets), we caught our cab to Xcaret and made it there by 3pm.
Xcaret is incredible. It’s part eco-park and part zoo, and the animals, while separated from you, are kept not in tanks and cages but big natural areas. Black panthers and leopards were close to us with only a big, deep gap separating us, and we’d often walk over giant turtles or nurse sharks below with only a wooden railing separating us – or nothing at all. Tania commented that Mexican’s must really trust their kids, because brother, one false slip at Xcaret and you’re in the crocodile pit. They’d carved this place out of the landscape, and one could swim the length of it in an underground river or lounge on their rocky beach if one wanted. We walked it all, seeing all the animals we don’t see at home, and came quickly to a real highlight: the butterfly preserve.
The Xcaret butterfly preserve is a huge jungle-like area that’s covered in a massive white sheet to keep the butterflies in. There’s a natural waterfall there, and once you start looking for the butterflies you see them everywhere. At one point I simply held out my arm for around five seconds, and a butterfly landed on it. Unfortunately, I was holding the camera, so the picture wasn’t happening, but lots of other folks took shots before it flew off. It was a wonderful place.
Later we watched a Mayan ritual dance take place in the ruins there before walking into a Catholic cemetery. The cemetery was built on a hill, and there were passages underneath lined with statues of … well, saints or something, I suppose. Directly underneath it was a massive cross with hundreds of candles in a well, and it was quite a sight to see. I almost stepped on a small, jet-black snake inside before it was over.
From there, we watched a Mayan game take place in a re-creation of the arena we saw in Coba. The players don’t seem to use their hands or feet, but rather their hips, as they try to get a ball through one of two hoops on either side of the arena. Later, they employed flaming balls and clubs like hockey sticks as part of the game. It was an interesting sight to see, and when it was over we went to Xcaret’s amphitheatre to watch the rest of the show: a musical and dancing event performed by people from all over Mexico, showing off the various dances of the different cultures. The whole thing was an experience and a half, and I was pretty baked when we took a cab back to the hotel at 8:45. Dinner at El Mercado was actually good, which was surprising, and then it was something of an early night.
Filed under: Honeymoon
Thursday March 30th, 2006
We’re up at 7am and ready for our bus to Playa del Carmen at 9am, which we’d reserved seating on the day before. Arriving in the town at 9:30 on 5th Avenue, the shopping district, we proceeded to walk the length of it and stop in a ton of stores. All the stuff looked the same to me, as well as overpriced, but buying overpriced souvenirs is what we came here for, and so that’s what we did. The thing about Playa del Carmen is that you have to expect that it’s a rip-off like we did, or you won’t have any fun at all. We had a conversation with a shopkeeper that went like this:
TANIA: “How much are these ceramic iguanas?”
SHOPKEEPER: “$30, senora.”
TANIA: “But I saw these exact same iguanas at a store three blocks back, and they were $6 each.”
SHOPKEEPER: “Then just pay me $6 each.”
Yeah, right, buddy. I’ll get right on that. I figure that if they accept your offer, you’ve paid too much.
Anyways, Tania wanted to walk all the way down to the ocean, but I admit to being too tired from the day before and unfortunately put the kibosh on the idea. After spending a few hours being shaken down by the locals in exchange for our American dollars , we took a cab back to the hotel and a late lunch at La Brisa. I took a siesta and Tania went to the beach, and we thought we had Survivor on the TV until they switched satellites and we couldn’t watch it. So we made our Mexican restaurant dinner reservations at 8:30, where we both had another really good meal. It’s too bad the buffets couldn’t be this good. Because the Italian and Mexican restaurants are top-notch, you can only make reservations once at them.
Afterwards, we hit the Looky Bar and had some drinks while watching a beach show where a band covered a lot of U2 and INXS music. Even in Mexico, U2 sucks. Still, the band was good, and we crashed out around 11pm.
Filed under: Honeymoon
Wednesday March 29th, 2006
If the first day was a wash due to the traveling, and yesterday not much better thanks to excessive drinking, today’s activities more than made up for it. We’re up at 6am and eating breakfast at La Brisa, and we catch our tour bus to the Coba Mayan Village. Our guide is Armando, a Mayan tour guide on the bus who really knows his stuff. The bus itself? Well, Jose is a pretty good driver, and has to be, because the roads we’re going to are in the jungle and they like to say that the bus drivers “shake hands” as they pass one another. There’s no room for error on these roads, and it feels like maybe a foot between the buses going the other way and us as they blow by. In the end, we arrive alive at Coba, a Mayan ruins site, around 10:30 for our first stop.
This place is awesome. Before I die, there’s a bunch of things I want to see, and the Mayan ruins were on that list. We see pyramids built as shrines for the gods, a temple built to house the corpse of a dead priest, and an arena for a game that the Mayans played that resulted in either the losers or the victors being decapitated. We also learned about Mayan history and culture: it dates back to 3113 B.C., and peaked between 500-900 A.D.. It’s the culture, Armando points out, that disappeared, and not the people; the people are his people, and many still live in the older ways. At the end of this long walking tour (and man, is it hot!), we come to the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan peninsula, and while Tania takes a pass I climb it. It’s steep, and I have to rest twice on the way, but I make it to the top and really get a look of just how high it is. The camera shots don’t do it justice. There’s a rope down the center of the steps that you can hold going down, as one false move and you’re tumbling down a pretty steep slope here. I don’t know why the Mayan civilization died out any more than you do, but I’m personally betting that it’s because they never invented the railing.
We take a trike-cab back to the entrance rather than walk it, and it’s back on the bus. Next on the tour is lunch, and we travel to this side-of-the-road place with an aluminum roof that you’d never stop at if you were on your own. Driving in, there’s a woman showing off a crocodile sunning itself on a dock just a few feet away from her! I’m glad we came here, though, because the food they serve is really great and the pop is nice and cold (no, I’m still shying away from the alcohol at this point). This place is opposite a dirt road from a swampy body of water, and the kids there happily take pieces of chicken and turkey and put it on the end of a stick, slapping the water to attract…. crocodiles. No, I’m serious. What kind of parent lets their kids go down and taunt the crocodiles? “Mom, I’m going to play with the crocodiles!” “Okay, Jimmy, but be home for dinner!” Or even better… “Mom, a crocodile bit my leg off!!” “Well,walk it off, son! Walk it off!” At any rate, it’s not long before a crocodile pops his head out of the water, and we snap some pictures while maintaining a discreet distance.
At 2:30, we arrive at the Cabo Mayan village. Everyone is extremely poor here, and while the odd house has electricity most don’t. Not all the children have shoes, and we’re given candy to hand out to them as they follow us around the village. I made a special point of seeking out the children who didn’t get candy, and there are some really cute little kids here. It’s kind of hard taking pictures of people in abject poverty as part of your expensive vacation, and doubly so when the villagers are very kind to you and want nothing in return. It’s a real mix of the old ways and the new: we’d see stone houses with satellite systems and DVD players in them, and where nine people sleep in two rooms…. or we’d see a house with no electricity, but with a brand new car parked outside. We’re told that crime is nil here, but that drinking is a big problem because beer is cheaper than milk, and we’re also told that the government is working hard to help get the young girls into schools and trades as they grow older so that they aren’t just kept ignorant and married off as housewives and baby-making factories. After an hour here and a tour of a house, we try tortillas made the old way over the fire and head back to the bus.
If that were the tour, it’d still be worth it, but there’s more… because we get to swim in one of the cenotes – an underground river! After traveling to this spot nearby, we enter some steep, wet stairs into a cavern below, where we see stalagmites and stalactites everywhere and crisp, clean, cool water flowing around. Neither Tania or I swam (we’re riding on a bus here, and we didn’t want to sit in wet trunks), but we kicked off our shoes and refreshed our sore feet. Afterwards, we take the bus to a place by the highway that the Mayans sell their wares at, but it was all too expensive for our tastes. Finally we arrive back at the hotel, feeling very satisfied with the day-long tour. If you’re ever going to Mexico, you have got to go on this tour. Just don’t forget to bring little soaps and shampoo bottles from your hotel for the villagers.
We eat at 6pm at La Brisa, relaxed around the hotel, and finally hit La Creperie – a crepes house we hadn’t seen open until now – at 10:30. The crepes were fantastic, and so rich not even I could finish one. We crashed after that, preparing to go to Playa del Carmen the next day.
Filed under: Honeymoon
Tuesday March 28th, 2006
If yesterday was our "Drunk Day", today is our "Hangover Day". We'd planned to go to Playa del Carmen, the local town, but we cancelled it because we both felt like crap. We had breakfast at La Brisa around 8am and decided to slum it all day on the beach, which we did until 1pm. Doing a whole lot of nothin' has it's merits after being that drunk, and we recovered nicely. Around 1pm, we had our pictures taken on the beach with a pair of macaws, and we picked them up later at the gift shop. We also ate lunch with Ron and Chris at Bamboleo, and as suspected the food sucks here. My mother would later tell me that while Mexico's good for service and amenities, the food's not that great anywhere. Before laying around the pool for the remainder of our recovery period, I managed to get our sandals and sun block back from security's lost and found area, so that was something of a relief. Walking around in sneakers here would have sucked.
We had a siesta from 3pm until 5pm and killed some time with some picture-taking afterwards before going to the Italian restaurant, which we'd arranged our reservations for at 7:30. The food was fantastic, and it was nice to have a little bit more formal dining than the rest of the resort. After a great meal there, we bought snacks for our roomand hung around the place, exploring what we hadn't seen yet. There was a really great show in the ballroom that involved dancing at 9:30, and we went to El Abuelo first (known to us as the Bon Jovi Bar because every time we went in or by it, Bon Jovi was playing on the stereo system). After the show, we crapped out in our room until 11:30.
