The Pain! The Pain!

24 January - Another early morning wakeup which was not helped by the fact that every part of my body was aching from yesterday's return to exertions. It hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt. Still, made it hard to leave my bed in the morning. The days are already getting longer and I'm starting and finishing in daytime (although still dark on the way to and from work) - it's amazing how the length of the days can change in just over two weeks. A Blue Canada didn't seem too much different from the past 3 months of a Red one but the few couriers that I did speak to about last night's result certainly didn't seem too happy about it. Really busy today - not so much in morning, which was good because I had to get my brake pads and a part of my deraileur replaced (deraileur was probably broken in the accident and the brake pads just don't last in this job) and I also had to do some banking as I received my first ever pay cheque from worker's compensation, so obviously my claim was considered legitimate. Whilst at the bank igot some cash out and received my first ever Canadian fiddy, i've been here for about three months and have never owned a note that was higher than a twenty. There seems to be a lot of concern about forgery and nearly all places have machines to check that notes are real and most places have a policy that they don't even accept fifties or hundreds because of this concern. It was really horrible in the afternoon, a couple of the couriers dropped out during the day for various reasons and Lee, the new dispatcher got a bit frazzled. He sent me all over the place without any plan at all and at one time I went to three buildings in a row only to find that the packages that I was meant to pick up had already been scooped by someone else. First time I've lost my temper with the dispatcher since I started this job. Admittedly, he apologised later on and I was quite surprised at how quickly my ire cooled. Still, ii almost fell asleep on the ride back home because I was so tired. I find it quite strange that I get exhilirated when I know i'm doing a very efficient route - dropping and picking up in the same direction yet when i'm going from back forth without any real plan I get really worn out. I'm probably doing the same amount of riding but the knowledge that it's not efficient makes it that much physically harder.
Tonight, being tight-arse Tuesday at the video store, meant 'Enduring Love', which turns out to be based on a book by Ian McEwan, whose books seem to be falling into my lap of late. On one level it's pretty much a 'Fatal Attraction' style stalker movie but it also has Mr McEwan's signature rational vs spiritual arguments in it and it was definitely a good movie. One cliché which seems to pop up in every movie about a psychotically challenged individuals is the presence of what I call a 'psycho wall'. When the hero tracks down the location of the mentally unbalanced person (s)he always finds a wall meticulously covered with magazine clippings, crazy-arse poems, drawings, photographs etc all of which say immediately, the person who made this collage is crazy. John Malkovich did it in In The Line of Fire, Rhys Ifans did it in Enduring Love, Kevin Spacey had a whole apartment of it in Seven (or Se7en, if you'll abide by the 7334 5p33kin spelling), William McNamara did it in Copycat, and ... there are many others, i'm sure, but four is enough to be a cliché.