Boxing Day Blahs

The new retro red illuminated keyboard

I hadn't moved out of bed since the phone call the day before Christmas. I was depressed and emotionally felt like crap. Having your heart put into a blender before Christmas did have it's advantages however. Being the gloomy gus I had cancelled all my Christmas plans. Cupcakes Christmas eve dinner, a lobster Christmas eve dinner with Juliet, and Christmas day dinner with Kyoko, Chris and family.

The good news... as it turned out, a lot of people that went and ate at Cupcakes dinner were sick on Christmas day. Upchucking into empty yogurt containers on Christmas day were the highlight activities for Cupcake thanks to a thing we call food poisoning. Sometimes it helps to stay in and not venture forth into the unknown and this was one of those times.

My deep dark pit of despair was tempered with a bunch of Christmas DVD watching. What's more depressing than watching movies that have sappy endings where everyone else is happy? It puts more emphasis on stuff you don't have. Perhaps that's why Christmas is among one of the highest suicide days of the year. (note: to friends and family... I was depressed but not enough to end my life. You can put that straight jacket away now.)

Up until this point the most depressing Christmas' were the ones where I was at work working away on a project when everyone else had taken a holiday. There were at least five times that I could think of where I sat alone in an office programming some such thing to be delivered the night before new years only to have it delivered in time to receive revisions and have to work new years as well. I eventually put a stop to that nonsense.

Although sad, I did get paid for working those days. Being at home because I felt gutted by the woman I was in love with was a whole other level of feeling sad. I would have to find some way of dealing with it. As today was boxing day I was called by William. William the enabler, as he's been nicknamed by some, as he encourages the spending of money even if I don't have any. This year he didn't have to goad me much as I tend to like to spend money on myself when in a depressed state. Stores just loooove me.

Picking up a new gadget, DVD, or food, seems to give me a sense of immediate gratification and a false sense of happiness. Even if it's for a short time it seems worth it. A lot of "falling off the wagon" had to happen today to help get me out of this low. Purchasing a Nintendo Wii would have been the ticket if the stores weren't sold out of them. Now I was really depressed. I was looking forward to having tennis elbow or finger fatigue while whacking some poor cutsie cartoon character into submission.

I started the day by gorging a few McMuffins at McDonalds. I ordered Will to a McDonalds before the shopping bonanza would begin. Stuffing your face with comfort food is the first convenient way of dealing with feeling blue. Not so good for your waist line, but who cares, it's not like you're dating anyone that'll notice. You're not dating anyone. Maybe you'll regret shoving food into you later, but right now is now and we have to get through now now to get to later later.

The second act of recklessness was to buy things to make me happy. That was taken care of by visiting the local camera store. The first main purchase were some barn doors and honeycomb attachments I had ordered back in May for my visatec studio flash. They initially arrived sometime in July but were sold by accident to another customer. They didn't show up again until today, which was great because I got a 15% discount off them for being boxing day. Woo hoo!

After that the only thing I really needed to buy was a new power cable for my computer. For some reason I've been having problems with my computer losing power. Through experimentation I found that the contacts on the plug, because it was made from cheap plastic, lost connection every now and then. The plug had to be replaced with one made of rubber.

I picked up the new cable and shortly after bought a new keyboard with illuminated red lit keys (seen in the above picture). Not that I need anything to encourage my being a shut in or working in the dark but convinced myself that it would be helpful when I'm too lazy to move to the other side of the room to hit the light switch. Being depressed I become more slug like, the bed becomes my friend and making my way, way across the room to my computer becomes a huge task.


The new big ass tree in the Eaton Centre

We spent a lot of time looking for a car adaptor and camera cable for Will's iPod. William is one of those guys (he blames his asian genes) that can spend hours searching for that perfect bargain just to save a few dollars or find those specific features that may or may not exist. Therefore when you go shopping with him make sure there's stuff that you want to look at.

During our camera shopping part of the expedition I was fine. I had all sorts of camera gear to drool over and decide whether or not that particular gadget was worthy of my impulse purchasing or not. It wasn't until we started looking for Williams iPod stuff that I started thinking of the girl and how she was thinking of getting a new iPod. It would be so cool to buy some iPod accessories for her, not just because they were on sale, but it would be something she would actually use and be happy with.

The thought of purchasing an item that she could use but wouldn't want from me made me sad, miserable and insignificant feeling. My eyes started to tear up. I walked out of the store with people staring at me, probably thinking I couldn't get some boxing day special. From an Apple store? Yeah sure (insert sarcasm here). I was a blithering idiot.

We ended up at the usual boxing day restaurant. Chung King, the one on Spadina just south of College located on the second floor, not to be confused with the restaurant by the same name located on College just west of Spadina. It was perfect timing for another stuff your face binge fest.


William the enabler

We ordered the trademarked crispy beef along with some other dishes, one of them being a tofu dish that I always seem to forget the name of, but we seem to be able to always pick it on every visit. I stuffed myself. It was the first real meal, other than the McMuffins, that I ate since the dreaded phone call.

The day was fairly short and we finished shopping in record time. I was dropped off at home in time to go meet up with the parents for the annual boxing day dinner but wasn't in the mood for any socializing of any kind, family or friends. An answering machine message told me that the family gathering had been cancelled. With a sigh of relief I crawled into bed with the new glowing keyboard attached to the laptop and began my continued watching of sappy Christmas fluff.