Onwards through the fog ... once more, into the breach!

And the beatings will continue until morale improves. Yarr.

So, what absurdities have crossed my transom of late?

Well.

At work, we had to shift up a floor due to our regular floor getting renovated. We are the 2nd last floor out of 5 in the company to have this done ... yet, it seems now all these 'renovations' entail are new carpets and a lick of paint on the walls. This doesn't seem to be much of a renovation, or even a good reason to cause an entire floor of many employees to need to temporarily move up a floor for a couple of months.

Oh, there is also talk of improved air conditioning and heating. And pigs will fly ... never have I witnessed a concept like air-con go so totally ungrasped by a city. I've been in many office buildings here, and not a single one has sensible or properly functioning aircon via the thermostats.

Is this some sort of Holy Grail technology, or quantum engineering that is impossible to attain? Well, since the population of Canada (or at least the percentage of same who work in offices) hasn't frozen to death since ever ... the answer is: "How about NO, you crazy Dutch bastard?"

Yet it seems undoable here. Twiddling with the thermostat in any office in Wellington has about the same effect as pushing the traffic light 'crosswalk' button does for pedestrians. It is an inert object that merely gives frustrated people something to do while waiting for the natural scheme of things to fall into place – whether it be a 'green crossing man' signal appearing, or the ungodly sweatshop/hothouse effect of an office heating system gone completely off the rails to correct itself.

And of course on a rare blue-moon day where a thermostat setting DOES work, the females in the office crack it up to 28 or even 30º C ... and your's truly with the manly Canadian circulatory system sweats bullets and passes out by noon of severe dehydration.

The crazed monkey-like shenanigans by my co-workers (leading up to our move) was quite amusing to observe. Our instructions were to stick labels on all the big things that wouldn't fit in boxes, and put anything smaller from our immediate workspace into boxes. Then, men with trolleys would come and move things. Pretty straightforward.

This is an activity I managed to do in about 25 minutes, and that included me stopping and getting a coffee and chatting to folks in the café for 15 minutes during that time frame.

The rest of the panic-mavens on the floor seemed to need DAYS to accomplish this. And in doing so, the collective hive-mind ran around laughing maniacally at things that weren't funny, and talking loudly about the apparent awesomeness of putting stuff in boxes entails. There are days when I wish I was that easily amused.

Of course there is an element in the office that needs to constantly find something to whinge about, no matter what. We were told (in no uncertain terms) that part of the re-furnishing of our original office space will include new desks ... but not the kind we like and have already ... the kind  that have an "L" shape curve to them, which facilitates the type of work we do nicely. No, we are all going to get brand new straight tables.

Inconvenient? Yes. Were we consulted about our needs? No. But this is working life ... management usually has some level of power-mad dickishness about its ways, no matter where you work. Sometimes they pass senseless edicts for twisted, psychotic reasons, and you have to suck it up and keep plodding along if you want your bag of sheckles on payday.

Amusingly, after much pleading and hand-wringing, we finally got someone in management to admit the only reason they were doing this to us was, they wanted a more streamlined look to the office floor, where everyone had these shiny new straight desks ...

Then the Moaning Myrtles obtained more fodder for the Whinge Mill. A diagram was emailed around to us all, demonstrating where we'd all be once we moved back to our original floor ...  and how they envisioned the desks to be placed ... and there were all our new straight desks drawn in.

And in each mid-level managers office was an "L" shaped desk.

The sudden barrage of emails from the afflicted, slighted, and perpetually grouchy was a sight to behold.

But enough about work. It's paying the bills, and I enjoy it.

There were a couple of booze fests of late that were no end of fun (and there was nothing really absurd about them, except at the beer fest, the percentage of alcohol in most of the samples on offer was REALLY high. Hence its name: "X Ale Fest".  But that's an absurd thing that's FUN).

And come to think of it, the Scotch fest also involved overproof samples (or "cask strength" as it's properly called). I learned something about that too! So the event wasn't all about erasing brain cells ...

The scotch that comes out of the barrels upon being distilled and aged is, in fact, considerably stronger than the 40% abv stuff that we get in retail stores. Sometimes even twice as strong. So the canny Scots need to water their fine nectar down a bit, so it meets the rules and regs.

But, at these tastings, they wheel in the full-meal-deal, the real McCoy, the 100% rocket fuel of the gods for us to sample. It was ... magnificent.

As with all things involving alcohol, new friends were met and ensuing fun times aprés fest were had in bars around the city. Here's a shout-out to Andrea from Austria, and Rachel from England. If it weren't for alarming amounts of booze encouraging us to wander around to a variety of pubs and bars late at night, I never would have met either of you. Cheers!

Now on to movie premiers – specifically, The Avengers. This long-awaited movie showed up here in New Zealand a couple of weeks ahead of the release in North America. I have no clue why. But, my friends in Canada are nearly apoplectic over having to wait to see it, AND to having to put up with my rave reviews about it.

This movie is nearly as magnificent as the cask-strength scotch – the perfect finale to the lead-up of several individual superhero movies from the recent past (Thor, Hulk, Iron Man and Captain America). Masterfully done, the dialogue and story is excellent. There are genuinely funny moments. There is Scarlett Johannson and Cobie Smulders in skin-tight black lycra.

I feel safe and secure ... 

And action a-plenty. I will see this again before it departs the theatres. Kudos to Joss Whedon for impeccable writing and directing, too. Well done!

Absurdity rears its fickle head in the NHL playoffs. The highest-ranked team of the 2012 regular season – the Vancouver Canucks – were unceremoniously beaten like a red-headed stepchild on a rented mule playing a gong, and were blown out in 5 games by the LA Kings. This re-defines the concept of choking, taking it to entirely new levels. Way to go guys. Now with the Ottawa Senators out, losing to the Rangers in 7 games (kind of expected there), once again no Canadian teams are in it. However, there are still lots of Canadian players on the US teams. So go ... Rangers, I guess? So long as the games are top notch, I have no real favourite.

Well in spite of a long and dedicated session of drinking yesterday, I am once again hangover-free. I have the rest of today and tomorrow to lounge about ... this has been a 5-day holiday thanks to a mid-week actual holiday last week (ANZAC Day). I added two of my own annual leave days, and voila, 5 straight days off!

Managed a few nights 'out on the turps', as the saying goes here. One of them involved seeing The Avengers, then eating at the spectacular Italian restaurant here, Vivo. Also a bottle of Spanish wine at the new Ancestral. Very swanky.

As to my ingestion of beer ... special thanks goes out to Andy at the Fork & Brewer pub for preventing me from leaving too soon, before most of the keg of Pot Kettle Black could be consumed ... possibly just by me. And the fine folks at the Little Beer Quarter have a fun spot for ravaging livers and brain cells, too. 

Yours in absurdity,

Stevil