Skip to main content

The Canary

If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you probably know that I have a couple of friends that I jokingly call the Litmus Tests. The joke goes that every time they have met one of my girlfriends or I have gone a trip with them, the relationship has come to a halt shortly thereafter. Neither one is to blame, but it's still pretty amusing to think about it in those terms. It's like they're the harbingers of break ups. Well, as it turns out, I have a different friend with similar powers.

You see, there is a different friend of mine who somehow seems to know about my relationship status without me telling her. There have already been a couple of instances where she has said to me, "hey a little birdy told me you're seeing someone new." Considering that I generally don't put my business out for the general public to see, that's fairly impressive. This goes doubly so for my love life, because I publicize that information even less so. Still, she's always in the know, and she has always managed to find out within days of the information leaking.

Some of you might just consider her a gossip, but let me assure you, there's more to this tale. If that was all that there was to it, I'd just write it off as her being well-connected (and I'd be more careful with what I said). No no, friends, this story has a few more twists than that. You see, she isn't always so quick to learn about my personal life. However, each time that she has pointed this out, the relationship has come to an end shortly thereafter. Like I've said about the other two Litmus Tests, she's got an eerie knack for this sort of thing.

The thought that she might qualify as a third Litmus Test struck me the other day, but then I remembered that she was coming across this information without me telling her. So, instead, I was reminded of the old canary in a coal mine trope (if you're lazy, canaries were once a sort of early detection system for dangerous gases in coal mines). Sure, she has some Litmus Test in her, but the real trick is that she is a good indicator of when the rumor mill has gotten a hold of my personal life. And, apparently, her probing questions are also a good indicator of when things are starting to go sour in  the current relationship. The analogy fit a little too well for me to pass this up as a nickname. And, thus, "The Canary" was born.

All in all, I've decided that my travails with women are amusing as all heck. Even the break ups are a good source of comedy, and I've managed to hand out a couple of interesting nicknames in the process. Good times, I tell you.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Copycat

So, my sister had a kid, so I have a new baby nephew these days. He's the first in my immediate family, so there's all sorts of excitement having to do with him. We are all very excited for his parents, and we're all very excited to meet him. My parents, understandably, were the most excited of the immediate family to meet him. They were the first to spend time with my sister and my nephew, and they were quite happy about the whole thing. The funniest part, to me, was that my mom insisted that my nephew looks like me. I didn't really think much of it, since there's almost always someone who insists that family member X looks like family member Y. Of course, my mom has years and years of experience with this whole baby thing. Also, she's MY mother, so she is one of the two foremost authorities on what I looked like as a baby. Not even I can say what I looked like as a baby, so I really should've listened when she threw out that particular tidbit. In fact,...

Waiting for the Suck

I've mentioned it before, but I like to watch some Netflix while I do the dishes . I don't remember when I started the practice, but it's become a routine at this point. It gives me something to focus on while I do chores, and it makes the whole experience more enjoyable. All in all, it seems like a good idea to me. Now, I know that my screen time is limited. I'm certainly not going to wash dishes for two hours, so I can't watch an entire movie in one go. Heck, half the time, I can't even watch half of a movie in a single session. Ultimately, that drives my viewing preferences, so that I tend to favor episodic shows. Basically, that's how I watch some show or another: one dishwashing session at a time. Recently, that's been the Star Trek: Enterprise show. I never watched it when it first came out on television, so this is my chance to see the whole series. As with many series, there are some good episodes and some not-so-good episodes. Still, it's a...

The Joys of Coding

I normally don't blog about what I do (I'm a software developer), because 1) I've already got a work blog that's more suited for that, and 2) I'm a software developer, so most of the time it's not amusing. Sure, I find it interesting, and I learn things every day. However, unless you already lean towards Computer Science, it's not going to be very amusing to you. So, for the sake of keeping my audience (all 4 of them) happy, I stay away. Today, I'm going to break that rule, because my work actually did cause mild amusement. So, without further ado ... I've got a deadline coming up fairly soon, so I've been coding away for the last few days. It's not busy enough where I'm stressing about it, but let's just say it's a little easier to concentrate on my work these days. In it of itself, that's not news-worthy, but because I've been more productive lately, I've also been generating more working code lately. That...