Runaway Future

For the past four days, there have been five little rectangles of notepaper on the stairs in my apartment building. One on every second stair and then an extra one sitting on the radiator.

On each piece of paper, in pink and blue, purple and orange, red and rose, there was the drawing of a heart. A little late for Valentine’s Day, but when viewed together, the little rectangles formed a bit of a Hansel and Gretel path up the stairs.

I don’t know who they were put there for or if the intended recipient ever saw them, but each day, taking the stairs down to leave my apartment, it was a neat little surprise to stumble across.

Today the elevator is acting up and the hearts are gone.

About a week and a half ago, I cracked one of my fingernails in half. Not enough to go all the way down to the nailbed, but definitely enough to cause some considerable discomfort. After reading up online, I found out that I could bond the two sides together with nail polish, at least until they grow out a bit, so that they don’t rub against each other and so that the tissue underneath has the chance to heal.

**cue me buying nail polish** - for reference sake, I feel obligated at this time to point out that it was clear nail polish.

Anyway, turns out I’m not really good at painting my nails, so I glob it on a bit too thick and it bubbles up and kinda makes a sparkly effect. Which makes the nail that much more conspicuous, which sucks. But I do take a bit of quiet joy that this nail painting thing doesn’t seem to be for me.

**Fast forward to today**

The nail polish was coming off and so the two sides of the crack were beginning to come apart from one another.

So I went across the hall to the girl that just moved in to see if she had any nail polish remover. She just borrowed my vacuum cleaner the other day, so I figured fair was fair, plus I could get my vacuum back.

Anyway, I knock on the door and she answers it wearing this lululemon shorts and bra top combo.

I explain my predicament and I get the nail polish remover and head back to my place. The stuff works like a dream and then I go to return it.

I knock on the door and she yells to come in. She’s laying on the floor doing situps or stretches or yoga or something in the same, rather revealing, attire.

So I put the nail polish remover by the sink in the bathroom and then head back across the hall to paint my nails.

Probably safe to say that she thinks I’m gay…

…but I am getting pretty good at painting my nails…

Cubicle to the Cage from Hemmings House Pictures on Vimeo.

. . .

It surprises even me how much I seriously (honestly) considered this.

I’m exactly in the perfect demographic for it. I’m exactly what they’d be looking for.

But it’s not for me. Not right now.

This guy won the Powerball.

He won $258 million bucks

He’s got $28.96 in his bank account, three kids split between two women (not counting his girlfriend and her two sons), a shit ton of unpaid bills, owes his buddy money for a truck, just got a job working at a convenience store… oh and he doesn’t have his two front teeth.

He actually said he was going to talk to “people who know about money” to decide if he takes the scheduled payments or the lump sum.

I’m sorry and this is going to come out really negative… but this guy is screwed.

More screwed than he was before with less than 30 bucks in his account.

If his notable quote is about talking to “people who know about money”, someone is going to take advantage of this guy. It’s a shame, because he seems like a nice guy and hopefully that will help him out later on. But I’d be extremely interested to see what this guy is up to in five years and what his quality of life is.

To go from nothing to having everything in his wildest dreams (worth noting that one of those dreams is taking all the kids to Disney World)… that’s going to be a huge shift.

Back at the end of October, coyotes killed a girl walking in the woods in Cape Breton.

Ever since, it seems that the province has been looking for revenge. So, a couple of weeks ago they brought out the coyote bounty program.

First off, this is hilariously self-serving:

MacDonell confirmed he is planning to offer a bounty worth about $20 to members of Trappers’ Association of Nova Scotia, whose members caught 1,900 coyotes last year without a bounty.

…

Ross White, vice-president of the Trappers Association of Nova Scotia, said he opposes a bounty, unless it is offered only to trappers.

“We’re generally the best qualified to handle harvesting coyotes,” he said from Truro.

Of course they are. Even if they don’t kill any more than the previous year, he just earned his members almost $40,000. Solid work. That’s right, the trappers are already killing coyotes like nobody’s business. The only difference is they’re getting some cash for it now (and maybe will kill some more).

Oh and then the kicker is that practically every scientist everywhere is saying this won’t do a lick of work. Hell, Nova Scotia had a coyote bounty program once upon a time and they discontinued it because it didn’t change a thing!

When faced with this proven science, the response from the government was that they had to be ‘pro-active’ and try something.

There’s a great quote by George Santayana that applies to this: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Actually there’s another good one from Albert Einstein: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”