life, the universe, and donna

I do not have olympic fever.

And that’s okay. I have the occasional “jesus fucking christ on toast” fit of rage, but mostly I’m just apathetic toward the whole thing. My commute is a big bungled, especially since I like to ride into town with Nick, and hop the skytrain back. This usually adds 5-10 minutes to my commute, but these days is adding more like 10-20… but I think my regular commute would be a bit shitty anyway. The buses I would otherwise take to get to work are all coming from downtown, so they tend to be hyper-delayed by the time they get to me.

So last night, Nick & I were going to wander around a bit and see what horrible, horrible things they’ve done to my city. So, I popped on the skytrain after work and headed to Granville St. I was going to pop onto the Canada line and take it one stop over to Yaletown, where Nick works. Well, that was an utter fail. When I got into the station (which took 5 minutes just to battle crowds on the street) and saw how long the line was… yeah, no. I skedaddled out of there and walked.

And got annoyed. And more annoyed. And further annoyed.

I don’t like large crowds of people when I’m trying to get somewhere. Drives me crazy. I’m totally okay with being PART of a large crowd — like, say, a concert, or watching Stephen Colbert help Bob Costas ride a moose. That shit’s fine. But trying to get THROUGH large crowds makes me extremely cranky. So, given that I walked from Granville Skytrain to the heart of Yaletown… with EVERY SINGLE SIDEWALK full of people with no idea where they’re going…

By the time I got to Nick’s office, I was seethingly angry, frustrated, and wound up so tight I think you could hear me go “twang”.

Luckily, Nick had some last minute work stuff come up, so I got to hang out and watch him work and CALM. THE FUCK. DOWN. It was very nice to simply tell Nick “I’m angry and frustrated and I need you to fix this so that I don’t have a big hairy conniption right here” and have him take care of me and soothe the olympic beast. Which he did, wonderfully. My, I love that boy.

I think I signed some sort of NDA (does anyone actually read those things?), but the game he’s working on is past beta anyway, so I don’t think there’s anything I can share that isn’t already public knowledge. For example: It’s a wicked cool game. (Review snipped because… hmm, apparently I’m still not supposed to say anything, even though it’s all public knowledge already. Alas. Better not to step on toes, though.)

So anyway, olympic fever. As I mentioned, Nick’s office is right in the middle of Yaletown. I was unaware of how insane Yaletown was, with my general “head in the sand” method of dealing with this Olympic invasion. I work near Broadway Skytrain, where at most, we get large crowds of olympic-goers trying to get to a specific venue. Nobody comes to this neighbourhood to hang out, unless they’re trying to score some drugs, and honestly the Art Gallery’s better for that anyway. Yaletown, on the other hand, is fucking NUTS. The generators powering the music is occasionally louder than the music. All the restaurants have expanded their seating practically into the road, and the roads are full of vendor tents anyway. All the restaurants have increased their prices to the point of ridiculousness — although Nick’s employer is nice enough to bring in catered lunches. Bonus, no ridiculous lunch prices… and your “we’ve got a game to finish” staff don’t have any excuse to leave. Ever. Ah, video game industry, how I love you and am disturbed by you all at once.

Anyway, we wandered down around the Plaza of Nations, where … unknown crappy band was playing, and there were a ton of vendors setup selling shit. And wow, do I mean shit. I saw … a sock vendor that sold cool socks, and a hat vendor that sold animal-hats with ATTACHED MITTENS. Ok, those were freaking awesome, and if it wasn’t for the whole “Nick would never be seen in public with me wearing a crazy animal hat with attached mittens” thing, I would have bought them all. But everything else was utter crap. Like, stuff you’d be embarrassed to sell at the Night Market, and the Night Market has some amazing crap. Lots of bling, though. If you like things that are SUPER SHINY and can be seen from space, this is the place for you.

Instead, we bought hotdogs. For $5 each. Ouch.

At that point, my knee was starting to ache and Nick was starting to limp (we’re both a little beat up this week) so we decided to just head home. We are not very good olympic viewers. Maybe we’ll try again next week and hit up Robson St. Anyway, we cut through the DTES, where Pigeon Park was … totally deserted. How bizarre. I reminisced about how I saw my first crack pipe there. How nostalgic. Still, lots of other people wandering around screaming obscenities and for once, nobody offered me drugs, although someone did try to sell me a pack of cigarettes for $5. I continue to shake my head at how this city can change by going one block in the wrong direction. It continues to depress the hell out of me.

So that was my adventure. My knee still hurts, damnit. I suspect it had something to do with standing in a mud puddle for 4.5 hours on Wednesday with inadequate shoes watching Stephen Colbert be hilarious in person. My legs were numb to the hip by the time I left that one. Totally worth it, but I’m paying the price — I just about fell down the stairs last night, it seems that my knee doesn’t appreciate me putting weight on it when it’s bent. Oops. Knee brace it is.