Not all that much new to report really.. unless you want to hear all about work and the issues there! It's been 19 days since i found that money, and i'm slowly letting it slide from my memory, except... i was out for drinks last night with my manager, and we started talking about it again. more so just torturing ourselves with it. how we would get rid of it, what we would do with it, all that fun shit that would not happen. it's amazing how easy it would have been to keep it, yet i am still (slightly) glad i did give it back. Alas, let it go, eh?

Today i stayed in the whole day. it was such a nice looking day, but there was a bitter cold wind, and i still wasn't feeling very well. so i stayed in, cleaned out the closet (literally), tidied up the place, did the dishes and managed to finish the book i was reading. this is a big deal for me, i am not a fast reader, so to get through a 900 page book - i feel it to be an accomplishment! i can't remember where i was (as in what page) this morning, but i think it was early 700's. so about 200 pages today. it seemed easy, the book was just beginning the climax and i couldn't put it down. but now i don't know what to do.. i suppose start another book, but so soon after? i think i want to let this one soak in a bit.. during the reading process, i actually had one or two dreams about the book. not so much just dreaming that i was reading it, but the dreams were of the story itself! crazy. not many, if any, books have that affect on me. odd.

fyi, the book was Rainbow Six, by Tom Clancy. there are still about 6 or 7 books on my shelf that i can (and want to) dig into, so it's just a matter of time... it's not like i have anything or anyone else to do now is there...?

BT

So what do you do, eh? you read about it, you hear about it, you see it on TV and in movies.... 'They' say (and i say 'fuck them' because they never have any good news or good advice, but that is a different rant...) that your life can change in the blink of an eye, and today mine should have (or could have) but my eyes were firmly welded shut...

we (flatmate and i) were returning to work after lunch and as we pulled into the parking spot, i saw on the ground an envelope, and asked flatmate to pick it up for me (it was on his side of the car). It was beside my managers car, so naturally assumed it was his.. little did i know... to make a short story long, the envelope had 40,000 CHF (Swiss Francs) in it. yes, 40,000. 40 crisp new 1000 Franc notes.. 40,000 in cash, that i returned without even thinking of the other option. without even second guessing my decision to turn it over. 40,000. it took about 7 seconds to walk from the car to the door, and turn the envelope over. and not once (until later) did i think there was a second option. 40,000... that is double what i have saved in 3 years - 3 fucking years! 40,000 - that is a down payment on a house (a fucking huge one)... 40,000 - that would have done me well.. cleared all debts (not that i have heaps, but it would be nice to be free of them).. 40,000 - wouldn't have batted an eyelash about taking some trips this year...

40,000 - 40,000 - 40,000... doesn't even sound like anything real anymore.. my manager was right though. if YOU had 40,000 CASH on you; would you not look after it??? if i had that much (fuck, if i had 5,000 on me) i would have it firmly buried in my ass for safe keeping.. so his rational (and one that later made sense to me) was 'fuck 'em, if they can't look after that much money, they deserve to loose it.'

40,000

fucking hard question, isn't it? gotta think of the 'what if's?' what if i was in the other position? what if we kept it and it got later traced back to me? actually not a lot of what if's right now!

ya know what fucks me off though... i didn't personally hand it over to the owner, but even when he came back to reclaim it (the boss called him to tell him... the owner didn't even know he lost it!!)) there was not even a thank you. fuck that. i remember years ago, i found a change purse on the TTC subway of all places, and managed to track down the owner. the change purse had $220 Canadian dollars in it and some TTC tokens. (as well as enough info to track the owner). anyway, the owner was a hard worker, and the $220 was (apparently) the weekly take home pay from her job - and she gave me $20 of that!! sounds trivial, but consider 40,000... and nothing.. boggling..

there better be some karma, or some fate, or some higher power, or something out there :) because really truly, that 40,000 would have altered my life.. i am on a two year plan to save nearly that much more money before moving on to the next phase in my life, and that money would have shortened the plan by 2 years...

hindsight, eh? the boggling question is: 'would i have kept it if i had time to think about it??' as opposed to just turing it over as a first instinct...

going to try and sleep now, see how i feel tmrw...

BT

Ya know what's fucking depressing? (besides many other things, but that's a different story)... it's all this rain. I shit you not, it has been raining since Fri night, and now it is Thurs night. Non stop.. no exaggeration. well, ok a little bit i suppose. it has stopped here and there during the day, but i am indoors at work at that point. I have spent $400 on Nike + shoes, sensor, iPod Nano, arm band and can't use them... i spent $2000 on a bike and can't ride it. I rode to work last sat (in the fucking rain) and every day since then, morning and night (when i *could* ride to work) it's raining. Might as well go live in England.. at least the beer is better...

BT