Here I am

That whole SPAM-Anxiety thing seemed cute when I wrote it, but no one ever really mentioned it, so I'm finally going to kick it down a space.

I guess the website has become like one of those time-jump episodes of Star Trek, where every few scenes it's suddenly a later time and everyone is older and with some vaguely different lifestyle. Of course, one time-jump always manages to bring the hero to a time frame where a loved one is dead, underscoring the need to get the space-time continuum sorted out good and proper right away, so that the hero can offer a heartful but otherwise confusing warm fuzzy to the loved one back in his own time, allowing the credits to roll and the whole nasty mess to be forgotten. Damn chroniton particles.

You, of course, are the time-jumping hero, and I am the bit character in latex make-up. My lifestyle is conspicuously different that when you last heard from me, but I regret to say that there's no make-up: I really look like I do.

I have a new job now. I've been working for Star Choice for about six months, first as a customer service representative of the general sort and most recently as a technician in specific. Star Choice is a satellite television service provider, one of two major players in Canada, and despite heavy propagandizing from both sides I've been unable to tell whether you might get better service from us or our competition. My job is to answer the phone when customers call and help them sort out whatever problem has their little brains so overwhelmed. I guess there are the thousand natural shocks that employees are heir to, but little in the way of entertaining details. Bluntly - and blandly, I suppose - I enjoy the job quite a lot and I'm rather good at it. I miss looking customers in the face like I could at Safeway, but it only takes one drunken indian on the line to remind me that if I can't see them, I can't smell them, and that's as good a thing as Martha Stewart ever pontificated about. I help all my customers as best as I can, and I rarely have to deal with any great belligerance or upset. I'm more thorough than my supervisors would prefer, I suppose, but knowing I'm better at my job than they are is relief enough for their meddlesome "input".

That said, Star Choice is getting better everyday. In six months I've seen a lot of little steps in the right direction; more staff, better technology and some pro-active cost-saving measures. And there are some fringe benefits as well, related to the next major lifestlye change to shock and delight you:

I'm dying of cancer.

I'm kidding, it's not cancer! It's Chelly! And I'm not really dying from it either, since Chelly is a person and not a disease, and not the sort of person who kills anyhow. Well, not recently. I'm sure Chelly needs no introduction to the crowd who reads this blog, and I'm sure the revelation that her and I are dating is similarly unnessecary. I didn't feel that I could update without mentioning it, but I'm now kinda strapped for related content. I'm really happy to be dating her, because she is my ideal woman and best friend. I have all sorts of very nice feelings about her, but I don't know that I need to splash them around her. This website is my personal water tower, but I'll save the spraypainted "Ian Y Chelly" for now.

If after reading this, you somehow do find yourself back in time before all the inactivity here last started, take this grim message of the future back with you: The Matrix Revolutions sucks really bad and the new Harry Potter book is pretty awesome, but needed more Lupin. The Britney/Madonna kiss was cool, but no big deal and everybody has a robot monkey butler. I mean, you'll have to play with people a little bit, right?