When there’s an accident on the road, drivers will slow down just a little. Maybe it’s because they’re curious what happened. Maybe it’s because there’s police cars and other emergency response vehicles lining the side of the road. When there’s something, anything, to be seen, people will stop and stare and gawk and pull out their cameras and take photographs.

Like on Sunday, when I was in the car with the family and there was a crowd near the exit of the parking lot of the mall. We were confused, as they were a) getting in the way of exit and b) there was a firetruck by the entrance as well. Usually, in the event of a fire, people generally try to get away from the smoke. So as the light turns green (and there’s still people moving away from the moving cars…) we drove forward a little bit and saw what everyone was gawking at. There was a man standing on the railing of stairs that’s about two stories above the pavement. There’s yellow police tape blocking off the area. There’s police officers around. There’s one officer speaking to the man who was balancing along the railing.

And there’s a bunch of people just standing around staring at the scene with their cell phones and cameras out in order to snap photos. Because it’s not every day that you see someone threatening to jump two stories. Because it’s just going to make your scrapbook that much better. There were people with young children (12 and under) that were gawking at the poor man. And while everyone should know about life and death, it still seems inappropriate.

There was nothing in the news on Monday or today for the local or provincial news. Perhaps the officers were able to talk him off of the railing, perhaps he only injured himself.

I understand how people have issues pulling themselves away from watching the results of a car wreck. I understand that we’re drawn to the general dark and perverse thoughts and situations whenever they’re around. When there’s a scandal going on, we seek information in the form of blogs and newspapers and magazines. When someone dies, their dirty laundry gets aired. When someone divorces or cheats, everyone wants to know who with and what’s going to happen to their careers, to the money, to the children.

Two stories… Isn’t a particular serious attempt at suicide. It’s not even close. And there was a crowd taking photographs of a man who was standing on a railing feeling like he had no other choices in life besides to take his own. A cry for attention, or a cry for help…

To be fair, I don’t remember the last time that I saw someone threatening to commit suicide less than twenty metres from me. I don’t remember the last time that I didn’t look at a car accident or at someone making a scene. I don’t remember the last time that I didn’t look on with morbid curiosity. Maybe it’s something that we’re all hardwired with. Like a need to see the danger in the area, no matter how closed off or artificial it may be. Maybe it’s instinctual to want to see the danger, the hazards in our vicinity.

But maybe… We’re all just really morbidly curious and some of us are better at hiding it than others.

Cody – There are some stores in the States that sell the Takara Blythe dolls (… and ADG, if you wanted one of the ADG Blythe dolls). Are you a member of ThisIsBlythe? There’s a whole thread with a list of stores that carry them, but you have to be a member to view it. I’ll take a look later to see if there’s any listed for your state.

Day two with Sophie… I still can’t believe that I have a Blythe doll. Granted, I’m already looking at dress patterns and seeing what fabric I have in my little stash to see what I can come up with. But the first order of business is getting her long (it’s down to her ankles!) hair under control – which will be happening on Wednesday as I have the day off (Canada Day is on July 1st, for those who don’t know) so I’m going to work on that. And then make her something to wear so she can get out of her stock clothes. I wasn’t particularly partial to the clothes that she came with before, but I’m warming up the giraffe pattern. Maybe it’s because it’s the only clothes I have that fit her right now. She’s also going around barefoot as the shoes she came with are flimsy and I’m don’t like them. I believe a trip to a thrift store to get some Skipper shoes is needed. … After I get her hair under control. I’ve worked out a knot out of her long locks already and there’s frizzy around the bottom already… Box hair, I’m calling it. My dad asked if I was going to cut her hair. I nearly had a coronary.

I have to record Clay saying ‘Blythe’ one of these days… It’s supposed to be one syllable, but he pronounces it with two and sometimes I can’t tell if he’s doing it on purpose to make me laugh or if he just has issues with one syllable doll brand names. My dad says ‘Sophie’ differently too, since he says it the way that the name would be sort of translated into Chinese, so it sounds more like ‘So-fay’ instead of the ‘fee’ sound in her name.

Anyways… Work went well today. It was really quiet in the area that I work. There’s three other people and two of them were not there today so it was just me and one other person. And it was just so quiet. The only sounds I heard were:

• the receptionist on the intercom
• people walking in the hallway
• me sneezing
• the hum of the air conditioner
• the occasional beeps and humming of the company servers

Which means… there wasn’t a whole lot of sound. And it was very easy to hear a pin (or a pen) drop. Hopefully there will be more people around tomorrow, or else I may go insane from the silence/lack of noise… Someone came by to talk and I almost literally jumped out of my skin (I did jump a little bit, but it was more from the loud clapping sound that they made rather than their presence… Or at least that’s what I’m maintaining!). I spent a lot of time doing data entry… Since that’s what all 4 of my current projects revolve around. So it’s nice. When I’m tired of doing data entry for Project #1, I move onto data entry for Project #2. But my projects have their priorities, and I know which ones are more important, so I generally stick to #1 unless I’m really stuck and waiting for a response from someone.

Anyways… Besides my new doll (I’m such a little kid sometimes!) and work, nothing else has been new…

How was your Monday?

So… No entry yesterday. And I have a very good reason for it. I woke up fairly early and I went shopping with my sisters. I ended up buying 3 glass focal beads (dichroic glass, for any that care) for my jewellery work at half-price – something I was incredibly happy about. I wasn’t in a particularly good mood yesterday because I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep because I may have stayed up because I may had provoked an argument with my boyfriend.

But you can swap out the ‘may have’s with just ‘had’.

I’m not even quite sure why I did it. But… I did. And he was really, really upset with me, to say the least. And I felt horrible about it. However, I still ended up taking the bus-train-bus transit combination out to see him. It was a bit iffy at first, we stopped by McDonalds to get dinner – first time in many years getting food from a McDonalds. Then ended up going to his house where I said hi to his parents and we ate while watching tv for a bit. He offered his fries/I kinda stole half of his fries and… we made up. We played some video games, he tickled me many, many, many, many times, watched some stand-up comedy. I choked on Skittles (!!!), which caused him to stop paying attention to the video game and lose (whoopsies), but obviously, I survived that. We spent a lot of time talking and it was really nice, since we also haven’t really had a chance to talk at all lately at work. There’s just always been something coming up – like work… or meetings… or my computer decides to hate me and I have to redo more work… Or just something. But it was really nice because I got to spend a lot of alone time with him and it’s just one of the things that I don’t get out of a regular work day. I can have eye contact and maybe a hug or two and a little bit of conversation. But I don’t get things like kisses, or getting to play with his hair, or get picked up for hugs or anything like that. So it was nice.

Today was… Crap. Well, it started off as crap. I was playing on going shopping and buying a Blythe doll prior to volunteering…. But my father has poor time management skills, planning skills and restaurant-picking skills. Or he lacks those skills.

I volunteer at 1pm. I always do. It’s kind of… set into stone by now, for Sundays. So when he told me that we’d be back in the local area by 12. So I said, okay, I’d go out with the family. Back in the local area by 12, my foot! There was an hour plus wait at the restaurant for the table alone! By then it was noon, so I called volunteering and left a message for G letting her know that I wasn’t going to be showing up. So I was upset, because a) my parents were saying that we weren’t going to go out to the store where they had the Blythe dolls (which was my goal for the weekend!) and b) I wasn’t going to be able to make it back in time for volunteering. So… I pouted. Which wasn’t particularly mature, but meh. My sister D shopped for shoes (and failed) while J went and bought long skipping ropes (for double dutch). I was bitter and sarcastic. Then we went to the other mall and within five minutes, I was walking out of the store with a Blythe doll in a bag.

This is Sophie, she’s a Cappuccino Chat Blythe. There’s more photos over at my flickr photostream.