Let the Games begin.

There has been a war to end all wars between me and the payroll department at work the last few weeks because they shorted me nearly four hundred dollars on my last paycheck. This is probably something you’re not supposed to blog about and I’m only bringing it up because it is essentially resolved now and I have money to spend on things like paying off my visa bill and my cell phone bill. The good news is that I have learned a few things about budgeting and having a money cushion and just saying no to that really cute purple purse throughout the whole ordeal. I’m telling you, working in the middle of the downtown shopping district is torture when you have no spending money. But I feel a little more like a grown up this week than I did last week because a) I had to fight my own battle against the system and I won and b) I have proved I can be fiscally responsible.

In related news, the New Years resolution to make my lunch every day has been going pretty well. I occasionally have had to buy soup for lunch because I didn’t make anything with leftovers for dinner. Also because the IGA across the street (at Burrard and Smithe) makes all its soups from scratch and they are delicious. But essentially I’ve stuck to my resolution for a whole month now.

My job for the Olympics is about to start next week. I’m getting the feeling that the two weeks of the games are going to be completely nutso and I may not have time to sleep or eat. Our schedule will most likely be day to day so it’s hard to really plan the next three weeks of my life out right now. This has been causing me a little bit of stress because I do best when there is some kind of organization, structure and planning in my life. Luckily, my real job is being super awesome and flexible with letting me work when I’m available and understanding I probably won’t be around full time for those two weeks.

For our first training day this Saturday, the broadcasting people asked us to come prepared with work gloves and of course I had no idea what they meant by that. Gardening gloves? Rubber gloves? Latex gloves? A friend of mine advised that mechanic’s gloves are perfect for stringing cables which is supposedly what I’ll be doing. When I went to Canadian Tire I could not find any small gloves anywhere and was forced to buy medium ones which are a little bit too big for my hands. The guys in the store thought it was hilarious that a) I needed to buy mechanic’s gloves because I’m a girl and b) I thought that you could actually buy small ones. Apparently they only make them if you order them specially. Because mechanics must be manly and have large hands or something? I don’t know.

Now that I have the gloves and the all white shoes for the opening ceremonies I’m mostly prepared for the Olympics, at least physically if not mentally. Can you really mentally prepare yourself to take the bus with 150,000 other people? Probably not.