a non-student

i've been on top of an apartment building for the last eight days. today is the last day I'll be up here. today my family and friends and four hundred other people will come together to celebrate my sister and her engagement to a guy she loves.

i hope it goes well.

i also hope that yesterday was the last day i have to be on top of this apartment building. i hope that because I can't possibly know what day will be my last day up here because i have written this sunday night. while i was tired.

i am still tired.

in twenty (or nineteen) days i start school for the twenty-first time. this time might be the last time i start school as a student.

I hope it isn't.

I also hope that the following september it isn't all that hard to start school as a non-student because right now in ontario it seems to be difficult for people to start school in the position of non-students. although some people have told me that the age group i hope to be a non-student of is easier for a person of my talents.

it would be easier if i had more talents.

i also hope that this september is the last september i have to quit the job that has kept me up on this roof for the past eight (or seven) days.

see you at tonight's party, mom.

--b

@pmharper, 10-08-20 4:25 PM

Mom,

There's a link below to a news story. I haven't read it, but you might like to. That is to say, I haven't read it yet. But I will. After the buck and doe. The one I'm at. Right now. 

Your son,

--b

Stephen Harper (@pmharper) 10-08-20 4:25 PM Announced support for wind energy project in PEI. http://bit.ly/cltv8S

Sent with Twitter for iPhone

Sent with love, from Nowhere, Particular

my travel blog - www.salutmaman.ca

I'm tired

I'm pretty exhausted. we've started at six each morning and .. I am tired.

I'm drinking some orange juice out of a glass that i got because i got to keep the glass that the triple margarita I ordered at a chain restaurant came in it.

then one of the other guys gave me his because he couldn't finish his.

then i stuttered over the lyrics of a song we've heard thirty times everyday since we got here.

then i watched so much tv online that the internet told me to take a 57 min break.

which brings me here. posting #366.

the other day one of my co-w0rkers told me I should write children's books which i don't understand because at the time I certainly wasn't using language that children should listen to. in fact I distinctly remember telling him that very point after he told me to write for children.

he didn't agree with me. he told me that i would know better than to use the language of the job site in places that aren't job sites which is likely true because my I said hell at home the other day and it caught dad off guard.

that's not like you to say hell he said to me right after I said it.

he was right as well.

both of them right about my usage of language in places that should and shouldn't have certain uses of language.

perhaps there is something to this children's writing thing.

but it all sounds so cliche. a wandering dude in the autumn years of his twenties decides that he's going to write children's books simply because he knows the usages of language or thinks of the life of a writer as one filled with romance and wonder.

The truth is I am tired and I am glad I got to tell you that.

G'night mother,

--b

The Real "Strange Friend"

[Friends,

There was a post up a few days ago that discussed the difference between fb and cs and why i like the one more than the other.

It may or may not have made sense to you. It shouldn't have because it was a work in progress that was posted by accident. If it did make a little sense, it appears that I was on the right track.

This time I've posted the real one, the one I meant to publish a few days ago. It was saved on my desktop as blah blah blah, I'll stop blathering on and let you get to the story.

Perhaps on another occasion I'll share an edited version of why cs is different to fb. Until then, enjoy.

--b]

There was a woman, she pulled up next to us. Driving a Saab or something. Chatty, early forties and driving by herself. We had pulled in to the gas station only five minutes earlier and were topping off our tank. It was taking a long time because we had run the tank nearly to empty.

“Were you worried?” Kate asked, politely, knowing full well that I was.

“Not worried per say,” I replied “mostly I would rather have had take in scenery be more important than find fuel now.”

She smiled because she knew the truth, because the truth had be painted on my irritated face for the last 80 clicks. The truth was I really would have liked to have stopped at any of the beaches along the way, or even glanced out the windows and admired the quaint houses and picturesque horizons, not curse every small town for their lack of fossil fuel. Each time the car made a ding, sounding off another twenty km less in the tank, my face had turned a new shade of white.

I also would have liked to stop at the cute little beach we came across soon after the gas station, but that didn’t happen because I forgot to pack the sunscreen and there were no stores near us for thirty minutes in either direction. (One of those stores was the gas station we were currently at, though at this time we don’t know we were out of sunscreen.)

The woman who had pulled up next to us got out of her Saab and asked if we were nearly done.

“I’d rather not pay for the premium you see I don’t think it’s worth it.”

I hadn’t noticed there was a difference, I had just lucked upon the cheaper side of the pump.

She spoke quickly and smoothly and mostly to herself and it took me a good l o n g moment to realized that she hadn’t said diesel.

“But oh look at that I parked the car on the wrong side and my tank is on the other side I’ll just quick turn it around and be out of your hair.” She said in the same breath as the one she used to confidently climb into the driver’s side back seat of her Saab.

We looked at each other in a fashion that bewildered doesn’t quite cover because neither of us could quite piece together what had happened. Luckily the back window was down or I wouldn’t have heard her say “it must be one of those days.”

She smirked a smirk that said it must be one of those days, and Kate smirked a smirk that she knew we would share again later during the retelling of this moment.

Unabashed, the woman climbed out of the back and into the front and in between said “I think you might want to pull out of the way because I know you know that neither of us know were I’ll put this car if I start driving”.

Kate asked if there was anything I needed from inside the shop. I might have asked for sunscreen, but we didn’t know any better.

I pulled the car up, Kate paid for the fuel and we left our strange little friend to go about her adventures.