Name Change

The name I was given at birth was Mary. Middle name Olivia. Ever since I can remember I haven't liked my name. Not necessarily the name itself, but the name for me. Does that make sense? Likeknow other people named Mary and I like it for them, but I never liked it on me. 

Anyway. I just silently hated it forever without actually doing anything about it. I lived in a small town and it didn't seem like it would work if I just asked everyone to call me something different. The logical thing to do would be to change it the first year I moved 7 hours away to go to college in London. I can't remember why I didn't just do it then. Maybe it still seemed like too big a task. 

I went to college for Photography, where everyone called me Mary, but ended up not liking it and switching to Business. This meant a new class so I finally decided to start going by my middle name. It only took me 20 years... It was pretty easy. I was meeting new people so I could just introduce myself as Olivia and nobody would know any differently. The school wouldn't let me change my "preferred name" so on the attendance I was still Mary. The first day of classes I would tell everyone I went by Olivia, so the class knew my real name but everyone called my Olivia.

Everyone in London, with the exception of my grandparents who lived there, knew me as Olivia. Back home everyone still knew me as Mary and that's what they called me. Which I was fine with. I can't imagine calling someone something other than what I always called them. The only time it was weird is when there were London people and hometown people together. 

It probably would have been enough to spend the rest of my life going by my middle name but that wasn't enough for me. I wanted it to be legally changed. When I graduated college the gift my parents got me was paying for my name to be changed. My mom knew a layer who signed off on the form, and this past summer I got a new birth certificate in the mail.

I ended up just switching my first and middle names, so it went from Mary Olivia Irwin to Olivia Mary Irwin. My parents chose Mary and out of respect for them I wanted to keep it. I still have yet to change my ID's or bank cards but that's the next step. Am I happy with my seemingly pointless decision that cost me some dollas? Yes, I would do it all over again.

Life is short and happiness is the main goal here. If you don't like something, change it. 

Thursday Night

If you go to the gym, you have probably been approached by a male at some point. It happens. There are creeps everywhere, but for some reason the gym creeps feel that talking to girls is fine to do. And I'm not talking about every male in the place. There are plenty that are very decent guys and I've made lots of friends at the gym.

But there is always one individual who has to go and ruin it for the rest. Or in my case, multiple. Maybe I look approachable? I don't know what it is, but people always feel the need to come and talk to me.

Last week I was doing some dumbbell curls and standing in optimal lighting, (which made it look like i had a small amount of muscle- thank you overhead lighting!) and a guy started kind of mocking me, but in a nice way(?). Like wow you're so strong! And I was all "ha ha ha" and continued on with it. Older men like to tell me how strong I am. I am not strong in the slightest. It's fine. Whatever. I was over it.

Ten minutes later I was sitting down doing some rows and the same guy comes over and pulls out his phone. I'm not sure if maybe he couldn't speak english, or was deaf, but he started typing what he wanted to say on a notepad on his phone. It went a little something like this.

He started off by telling me that I should run for 30 minutes before I start with the weights. And then I should spend 30-50 minutes on the weights.

I'm like okay, maybe, thanks for the input.

I should mention that I've never seen this guy before so he has no idea what I usually do in the gym...

And then he goes on to tell (type) me that he used to have a gut, as he pats on his stomach, and that 3 months ago he started running before and now has no gut.

So this guy is telling me I have a gut? In some shirts maybe but not the one I was wearing that day!

He pulls up his camera roll on his phone and shows me a picture from 3 months ago when he had a gut. And then motions at his now non-existent gut.

The whole time I'm just sitting there smiling and nodding/ subtly sucking in whatever gut I had going on that made him come talk to me.

That was the end of the conversation and he left after that, and I avoided eye contact for the rest of my workout. But so weird! I mean I guess he was nice about it and everything but????

Some peoples kids...

Being Phoneless

Do you ever here of iPhone batteries dying? I don't mean dying like 'go charge it' dying, I mean fried. Dead forever. I think most people either loose/break/upgrade before their phones die, because I can't say I've heard about this happening a lot. 

It was the night before my birthday and I was anxiously awaiting for midnight to hit and the 'Happy Birthday!' texts to start rolling in. Midnight hit, a couple slid in, and I happened to realize that my phone was at 2%, despite being plugged in. I decided the cord was broken and ran to get another one. Nope. Nada. Zip. 

And then it died. And never turned back on. 

And so began my long, treacherous 4 days sans phone. You really don't realize how much you use those silly things until you don't have it. What time was it? Oh wait. What time was the bus coming? No clue. What was my moms phone number? Not having your phone on you for an extended period of time is a little bit like not having your hand, it affects everything. 

Plan 1 was to get a phone from a guy at work. It was old and cracked but it was better than what I was working with. I took it into Bell and set it up and off I went. But it was jailbroken and the wifi and home button were broken. I decided it would probably just be a better idea to fork over the money and buy a used one. 

I emailed a guy on kijiji about a 4s for $200 and decided to meet on Sunday. I went to the atm to get the money out, but of course there was a limit on how much I could get out. That limit was $100. Meaning I could not get $100 out due to the $1.50 service charge. So $80 it was. This wasn't going to cut it. Meeting postponed. 

Just by chance one of my friends happened to come over that day to hang out, and realized I did not have a phone. Turns out he had just gotten an iPhone 6 and had a nice pretty 5 just lying around! The next day I went to the bank, got out the rest of the money, and got myself a phone. He also gave me an otter box with it because he is a gem and this is why you should buy things off your friends and not strangers on the internet. #perks

By the time I was done work on Monday night the call centre was close and I couldn't activate my sim. The next morning I woke up ready to call in, forgetting I didn't have a phone and couldn't exactly do that. Facebook messaged my mom, who called in, and we got it done. Bless, it's true. You don't realize what you got till it's gone. 

What's the longest you've gone without a phone?