plastic alligator

Same cheesy name, new domain!

2009-08-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

I needed a break, but I didn't really expect my hiatus to last this long!

I got kind of tired with this blog. My photography and writing was feeling stale, a lot of people I know in real life have been reading and I've had a lot of things to write down during the past couple months that have no place on the internet.

Thanks to all of you who have checked in and asked for me. Sorry for not keeping you all in the loop.

I've started a new blog. It doesn't quite look the way I want just yet but I needed a blank slate to play with.

I considered changing the name, but when it comes down to it, I'm kind of attached to this one. I like it, people know it. It's hard to get rid of. My mom found it and she said she knew exactly why I chose it and that it's very me.

The new blog is here. I hope you'll follow me over!

Birds!

2009-05-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

The dining room window in the house where I grew up was five and a half feet square and faced the ocean. Our dining table was a semi-circle that hugged the wall just below it. A huge cedar branch looped down in front of it from which we suspended a bird feeder that saw a lot of action.

We didn't have cable so it provided a lot of entertainment. Frequent diners had names. I'd get up late at night with a flashlight so that I could watch Harvey the nocturnal flying squirrel because he was the coolest one.

One of the first things I noticed when I moved out here was the lack of birds. I mean, there were probably birds around but I didn't see nearly as many. It didn't really help that the previous owners had covered the front garden with a huge slab of concrete and the back yard was a sea of oil and car parts. They had had an outdoor-only cat that they didn't feed called Fuzzers. Not to mention, the neighbour next door at the time used impressive amounts of RoundUp and Killex.

These things do not happy bird territory make.

You can probably imagine that I'm pretty happy that there are birds living in the back yard now. Manic would be a better way to describe my glee. It's almost ridiculous how much it amuses me that they're there. My joy however, has been tempered by the knowledge that the barrier I built on the fence beside the birdhouse has been knocked down by cats that want to harass them.

I've got my eye on you, Flinty.

This post brought to you by the tungsten setting on my camera

2009-05-21T23:34:00.000-07:00

I went hiking with my camera the other day and somehow or other managed to take all my pictures with the white balance all wrong so everything looks very blue and washed out. They kind of remind me of those really tacky paintings you can get in Chinatown or in dollar stores that show the Yangtze River and a waterfall that lights up with little lights. The fact that I have photographed such a thing makes me want to whack myself.

Anyways, out on the dikes the birds were singing. We didn't really see very many. What we did see were bugs. Not the bitey kind. More like the eating-the-bitey kind and the eaten-by-birds kind, which is probably why there were so many birds.

I'm not all that good at identifying these things. I'm good at the plants and animals but once we get into the lichens and bugs my knowledge fails me. I guess I have to go back to girl guides.

I chased some dragonflies around for a bit but I didn't manage to get any spectacular photos. Not that they'd be spectacular anyways because they're all very blue.

It's been nonstop yardwork here. My only reward for being so awesome at yardwork is more yardwork. Such is life.

Laminated bacon

2009-05-13T23:52:00.000-07:00

A party sat down behind us and the conversation began, spanning all sorts of things - silvaculture, raw log exports, windrow composting, Gordon Campbell, unions, mostly dominated by a single guy.

There's a set script that seems to be followed by these conversations regardless of the actual content. The guy who does most of the talking made a lot of money. Maybe he was in the oil sands or up north somewhere. It doesn't really matter. They try to establish their importance and explain away their current less-than-favourable position by claiming all sorts of past victories but mostly they just talk.

At one point in time the conversation drifted toward hunting. They discussed all sorts of lodges and the entertainment and game you could find there, bragging about what they'd caught themselves, who had been to the best one. Of course the one guy dominated finally by declaring the amount of bear ham and bear salami he'd eaten.

"You know, this one place is the best," he said, "You know how you go to hotels and they put the chocolates on your pillows? You go to this place and they leave dried meat on your pillow. Dried meat!"

That was enough listening in on that conversation. We left.

Outside and out of earshot there was a competition to imitate the line. Dried meat on your pillow! Ick! Can you believe it? It was good for a bit of a chuckle. "I bet that's meat hanging from the mirror of that truck," my mom said in an offhand way, without really looking at it.

"There is," I replied. It was three laminated strips of bacon.

She began to laugh hysterically. Good thing she wasn't driving.

Chocolates were meant to be surprises.

2009-05-12T23:34:00.000-07:00

When my parents took my sister to Seattle in the spring, she took on the task of making a reservation at a nice restaurant. She shopped around and read a lot of restaurant reviews and menus until she finally decided on what sounded like a decent seafood place with a view of the ocean.

But when she made the reservation, something was off. She was told that the restaurant had changed its name but didn't think a lot of it until they got there. They found that the restaurant in question was actually next door, the one my sister chose had closed. The two were in the same hotel.

The place they ended up at was still by the water, but the rotting hulk of an abandoned cargo ship was moored just outside, completely obscuring the view. The menu was different and the food wasn't particularly good. The service was very good because the restaurant was empty for the duration of their meal.

Abby was really upset because she had spent a lot of time and effort trying to find a good restaurant so she wanted to redeem herself. Not that she needed to because no one really blamed her for it.

She chose Sandbar this time. Everything was great and she received the victory she so badly deserved.

Onwards! (my blogging rut is apparently hard to get out of so I'm posting this too late and now making this post unnecessarily long)

We also got my mom a box of chocolates and the first thing my sister did was open the map to start the orientation. I hate that. I want to be surprised. I want to jump in with both feet and not look back. I want to put a chocolate in my mouth and be disappointed when it tastes chemically or weird and I can't figure out what the flavour is supposed to be.

That's the way it's supposed to be, but she insists on ruining it by telling me that it's a raspberry mocha just before I stick it in my mouth.

I was determined to have none of it so I tried to sneak them out of the box without her seeing it which turned into a wrestling match that I lost.

The creation of a fantastically large litterbox

2009-05-09T23:41:00.000-07:00

I've spent the past two days shoveling a small mountain of sand that appeared in front of our house into the back yard in order to turn the back yard into one of the most fantastic litterboxes that the neighbourhood has ever seen. Any cat who is anyone has already been around to use it.

You see, a couple of days ago the parental unit looked out into the back yard and they snapped. Up until this point, the lawn has been more weeds than grass, perpetually lumpy and in all but the driest of seasons it tends to be waterlogged, the soil a claylike muck that likes to form huge dirt clods on the bottom of your shoes that refuse to fall off until you're in the house.

No, the weeds definitely have to go and this calls for drastic measures. The back yard is to be covered with a layer of sand, and then a layer of topsoil and then completely reseeded. Since I am currently unemployed this is my new job.

Just over the fence, the neighbours have completely let their garden go.

We shall see how effective all this will be.

Cinco de Mayo

2009-05-06T23:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, the international celebration of my mother's birthday. We arrived at work and dragged her out for dinner. Dragged is an appropriate verb here because she can be pretty hard to get out of the office sometimes. I trailed her as she made a bunch of trips around the office and then somehow she lost me and I couldn't find her anywhere.

Just about the time we thought we'd succeeded, the office sucked her back up again because she'd forgotten her bag. Is her bag really that essential? Apparently yes. Dinner was nice when we finally got to it.

Other than continuing my job search my mission this week is to actually learn Adobe Illustrator. I'm no expert at InDesign or Photoshop but I can use them and have the finished product look alright. I've been taught a bit of it and I've learned a lot from playing and feeling my way around. For whatever reason, I've never been able to do that with Illustrator. It's one of the most frustrating programs I've ever tried to use so we'll see how I do with it.

Tomorrow if the weather's nice I'm going to go hiking and see if I can take some pictures.

Garden notes

2009-05-03T22:24:00.000-07:00

Secret weapon: Bees. Mason bees.

They're all black so they kind of look like long skinny flies. They're really docile and pretty much never sting. They're more efficient at pollination than regular bees.

Technically they exist in the wild but they can be kind of 'managed' if you put up housing that they find acceptable for nesting. Their larvae hibernate inside little cocoons that look like rabbit poop over the winter and wait for the weather to warm up to hatch. That means that if you keep them inside your fridge over the winter, they'll stay dormant until you decide to release them.

They lay their eggs inside the holes and then plug them up with mud. You have no idea how much they amuse me.

Other than that, not much is happening out in the garden right now. I guess that means that I have some space to answer some of the questions I was asked on my last post.

Soil: The City of Port Moody was generous enough to provide us with some topsoil in it's more benevolent days. When we moved from Port Moody we shoveled it all into garbage cans and took it with us. Every year we throw in a big load of compost, some steer manure and some beds get a bit of sea soil. Most things (tomatoes especially) get crunched up eggshells and bone meal and everything gets a dusting of coffee grounds.

Beds: Everything is in raised beds because the soil here is full of clay and rotten to grow anything in. We have ten plus two bathtubs. Bathtubs are really great for tomatoes, have built-in drainage and seating. The best kind of bathtub is dusty rose, avocado green or harvest gold and found for free by the side of the road or on cragislist or freecycle.

Maple trees have flowers. Who knew?

Let's be paranoid and take leave of our senses, shall we?

2009-04-30T21:44:00.000-07:00

To mitigate the risk of swine flu SFU suggests that students should sneeze on their shirt sleeves instead of their hands.

Seriously SFU? Seriously?

You mean to tell me that this is preferable to say, washing your hands after you sneeze?

Do you have any idea how gross my shirt would be even two hours into the day?

Are you aware of the fact that the weather is warming up and shirt sleeves are rising? Any idea how awkward it is to cough into your shoulder?

Really?

That's all I have to say about that.

Canstruction!

2009-04-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

I spent most of yesterday at Canstruction. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's an annual sculpture competition. Teams of people make sculptures out of cans and then the food is donated to the food bank.

I didn't take my camera because I had a lot of other things to carry around so the pictures in this post are from my sister. Corinna at Gusgreeper has a bunch of photos from this year's competition here. You can see other photos on flickr though it seems like it's mostly photos from last year right now.

Some people come up with some pretty cool stuff but I think the kids in the school programs came up with the most awesome, creative, insanely gravity-defying stuff:

Because so much more is possible when you aren't familiar with the laws of physics.

Smells like victory

2009-04-26T22:51:00.000-07:00

A victory garden that is!

I've resolved to start taking better notes about the garden this year, mostly because it ends up being such a big part of how I spend my time over the summer. Well, also because I care so much about the environment and food security and local eating and stuff. Okay, and also because I like to gloat about my spectacular victories at the fair last year (nine ribbons! seven firsts! best in show: fruits, vegetables and nuts!!!).

So indulge me - I'll probably only mention it once a week and probably on Saturdays when no one visits blogs anyways.

Today we got some new fruit trees, a cherry, plum and olive as well as some raspberry canes. We probably won't get very much fruit off them this year. I planted an entire stir-fry: pak choi, sui choi and green onions. I'm excited about the pear tree because it's covered in blossoms this year and it has only ever produced one pear before.

While I was turning over the beds I found the skeletons of two dead rats sheltered together beneath the newspaper. Aside from a bit of dried skin on their scaly tails, the bugs had picked them clean. They were contorted in positions that suggested an agonizing death. One day I hope they make a rat poison that just makes them go to sleep very peacefully.

I buried them in the lawn without taking a picture. For quite a while afterward my shovel would scrape up against things - rocks, dried leaves - and make a high-pitched squeal that really creeped me out.

Warning: sometimes I can be introspective and self-aware

2009-04-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

I had another job interview today. I think this one went better than the last. They asked good questions so it felt less like a multiple choice exam and more like a conversation, which was good for me. One of them described me as "introspective and sel-aware." We shall see.

After that I went to a lecture about the early history of Vancouver's architecture. A lot of it was information I've already heard, but it's neat to look at it all with a different lens. Good fodder for leading tours.

After a couple of nights of really good sleep I've hit another patch of insomnia, which is probably why I've been sitting here thinking that I probably have something worth saying, but that it's not coming out. My brain is moving like molasses.

I have to take my cat to the vet tomorrow. She's not well.

When all else fails, make up a new project

2009-04-22T22:33:00.000-07:00

As per tradition during this time of year, I become horribly dissatisfied with the state of my wardrobe and the options available through the usual channels. I'm not going to go into my standard rant about the crappy options available for petite sized women because my blog is already peppered with it.

The one thing that bothers me most is the fact that I can't find a decent fitting dress shirt or blouse. You can't really fake fit with a dress shirt. Either it does or it doesn't.

Because I'm petite sized, the bust darts are usually too low, which means shirts bunch up and pull in a really unflattering way. They also never seem to have enough room in the back or the bust because I'm so barrel chested. It's almost guaranteed that if I have enough bust and shoulder room in a shirt it will hang off me like a tent and obscure the fact that I have a waist.

I also seem to have larger-than-normal biceps for someone my gender and size which also doesn't help much. Damn rowing messes up everything.

So once again, I've decided that the best thing would be to do it myself. I'm going to draft a pattern to my measurements. It will be perfect because I made it myself. It will be so awesome that I will etch it in brass and keep it in a glass case enshrined for everyone to see. The heavens will open up and there will be perpetual sunlight in that very spot. It will be that awesome.

But first I have to figure out how to make a pattern. My search took me to the library where I found it very interesting that none of the new, trendy books I looked at really seemed to deal with a lot of technique. I think one of the saddest things about the DIY trend is that for every good craft book out there there seems to be a lot of them that really lack substance and don't really teach anything. The fact that it is trendy and cool and therefore sells seems to be good motivation to dumb down content.

I really don't need to spend $30 on a book that will teach me to thread a drawstring through some fabric to make a skirt that looks like a flour sack. I can accomplish that on my own. I also don't need a book that claims to teach me to customize my clothes and then contains such incredibly difficult and detailed instructions as to how to sew a patch of a contrasting colour onto something or how to tie a ribbon around your waist.

I finally found what I needed in an old, battered book from the 80s with horribly dated illustrations (seen above). The moment I opened it up and saw the diagrams inside I knew that it was going to be an excellent resource.

Speaking of old, battered and still awesome, I also found a copy of this on the shelf:

Non-knitters probably won't care about this at all, but this book has been out of print for some time and has acquired an almost mythical status as that book that is kind of hard to find, sells for buckets on ebay and like Mecca should be touched once in your lifetime. I didn't even know that the FVRL had a copy of it. It was just sitting there on the shelf, waiting for me.

Agates

2009-04-20T17:15:00.000-07:00

Took a trip out into the valley over the weekend. The weather was very patchy - lots of hail and fat raindrops but occasionally sunny. You could always see it raining somewhere else though. One moment a foggy cloud would descend into a valley and the next it would be clear.

We spent a bit of time out on the gravel bars on the Fraser River near Mission, looking for agates. Seemed like there weren't very many out there to be found. We need a good flood to shake some new stuff up to the surface.

I know part of that is that my attention span has changed because I use computers so much. It takes a lot of walking very slowly, concentration and scanning. It's like a kind of directed meditation, I guess. If you're doing it right, they just appear in front of you like magic. You know them when you see them. They glow.

When I was little, there were agates everywhere and I could fill my pockets easily. When my dad was little they were everywhere and they were big. Now it's a lot of work because the sandbars have been pretty picked over. I still like doing it though. It's nice to slow down and spend some time outside.

Obligatory follow-up post

2009-04-18T01:39:00.000-07:00

Re: job interview

I prepared well, dressed employably, showed up on time...

and completely failed to exude any personality whatsoever. I was pretty wooden throughout. I've always been a bit of a chameleon. When dumped into situations where I'm with people I don't know, I tend to mirror them. It's how I get along with so many different kinds of people.

I think one of the best things an interviewer can do is to start the interview with an innocuous comment as an icebreaker about the weather or something. Then the second best thing they can do is ask an open-ended question that's fairly easy to answer - something like "what were your main tasks at your last job and what did you like about it?" Everybody has an answer to that question but more importantly, it gives people an opportunity to talk.

The worst thing an interviewer can do after introducing themselves is read off a script in a very clinical voice and ask you to describe yourself with three adjectives.

They said they would be letting everyone know their decision by Friday or Monday. It is entirely possible that the other candidates didn't do as well as me, or that my awesome references will counteract my boringness. I'm definitely capable of doing the job. I'm even convinced that it would be pretty ideal for the summer.

I've already rehearsed my rejection speech.

Re: new computer

I love my new MacBook Pro. Love it. Last time when I bought a computer I went cheap and that was a mistake. It ran out of memory fairly quickly and didn't have enough RAM to run everything I needed open at once. I was determined not to do that again so I probably spent too much. No regrets so far.

This thing is fast, makes my photos look great, and I never thought I'd say this but I love the touchpad on it and use it a lot more than my mouse. It took a while to get used to, and when I turned on the computer for the first time, somehow clicking wasn't enabled and I had to plug in a mouse to get through the startup.

I have spent most of my evening customizing all the settings and it's fun. I love the way you plug stuff in and it all seems to work without being installed. I also love that it's integrated with flickr. Maybe I'll leave it at that. I could give you an entire boring list of the things I love, but that's what it would be - a long boring list.

I still need to get a bunch of software for it though.

What I have learned about case-bearing clothes moths during the past two weeks.

2009-04-17T00:08:00.000-07:00

Identification

They look like a little tube of paper with some fuzz on the outside. Do not be fooled! There is a nasty little black and white wormy thing that will come out and eat your clothes. The worm will drag the little paper tube around. The whole process looks kind of bizarre.

When you squeeze them between your fingers, the wormy thing's guts will squish out the end of the tube in a gross yet satisfying way, much like squeezing a pimple. This process is not necessary to identify them. I just did it to see what would happen because I'm like a little boy sometimes.

Habits

They really like to eat dust and old hair and hate light. This means that you will most likely find them underneath furniture, inside closets, in corners, in the back of shelves, underneath area rugs, in your drawers...

You may also find them in inexplicably weird places, like on the ceiling or inside your shoes so be vigilant. Because they can climb, they could be anywhere. Most likely you won't find lots of them in any given place either. Be prepared to find one or two pretty much everywhere. There is no mother lode.

They like dust, but they also like to eat wool, silk, leather, feathers and some kinds of food. Anywhere where these things gather they probably will gather too.

Before I knew what these things were, I put a bunch in a jar so that I could observe and identify them. Left for a few days like that, they began to exhibit cannibalistic tendencies.

Extermination

Your best defence is a good offence, which means vacuuming everything very thoroughly and inspecting stuff for damage and cocoons. If you can, throw anything that looks suspicious or infected into the freezer. 72 hours of sub-zero temperature will kill both the cocoons and their eggs. So will drycleaning.

Flushing a bunch of them down the toilet while laughing manically is fun but not nearly as effective as the above means of extermination.

Everything that I have read has said that moth balls, cedar, lavender... all those things you always associate with repelling moths are really not all that effective.

If your infestation is really bad you might need to call in professional help or use chemicals. I'm really not qualified to give you any kind of advice on that. I hope you don't end up in that situation.

Preview of my super important day

2009-04-14T23:47:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't tell you all about this but I'm going for a job interview tomorrow. I took the important step of buying a new pair of pantyhose today so as not to repeat last year. I later decided that I will wear pants instead. You can't go wrong with pants.

After the interview I'm going to see about getting a new computer. This has proven to be difficult so far because though I have saved the money to buy the thing outright with all the software that I want, I seem to lack the ability to spend that much at one time. My credit limit is too low, the ammount exceeds my daily withdrawal limit for my debit card.

I don't have a chequing account because they send me annoying patronizing advertisement of their free chequing for young people which has a tone like:

Yo YOUNG PERSON! We're like a totally rad financial institution that wants to give you a sexy free chequing account dawg!

when really all they had to say was:

Dear valued customer, we are writing to offer you a free chequing account because you are between the ages of 18 and 24. Please visit one of our branches to set it up.

Whereas my reaction to the first is to pick apart the advertising style and wonder who put together the campaign and what kind of research into youth attitudes they did to come up with a watered-down quasi DIY inspired die-cut heavy cardstock collagey+grunge typefaces... and wonder why they've decided that that is the best way to appeal to me. If they'd just saved their money and sent me a letter telling me that I could get something that I would usually have to pay for for free I'd totally go for it.

So cheques are out. Paying cash is dumb. I'd get mugged or something. My only other option is to get the store to fax my mom a bill and get her to pay for it. Then I will pay her back. So much for looking all cool and financially independent. Being young sucks.

But the upside is that I'll be inducting myself into the shiny halls of mac ownership soonish. I will not turn pretentiously techie. I promise.

Clothes-eating moths: not cooler than Mothra

2009-04-10T16:09:00.000-07:00

It's amazing. I don't post for so long and yet google analytics tells me that some of you lovely people still check fairly regularly for posts. I thought I'd let you know what I'm up to right now.

School's finally over. I have some sleep to catch up on but you have no idea how much I was looking forward to having some time off.

I have a bit of a moth infestation that demands my immediate attention. With any luck I'll have it under control soon and won't need any chemical sprays or to throw lots of stuff out, but the whole thing has had me kind of paranoid for a while now. Not easy to write papers when you're preoccupied with thinking about moths and all the cleaning that you need to do but don't have the time for.

I've also been experiencing some computer difficulties lately. My poor machine takes about 18 minutes to boot and sometimes when you turn it off, it hangs itself and stays on all night. It has about 85 MB of free space so I can't show you the pictures I've taken.

Most recently my wireless modem has died. The DSL port at the back seems also to be dead so accessing the internet is starting to get really difficult.

Next week I'll be getting a shiny new computer. Then I'll see about getting a shiny new blog.

But first I deal with the moths...

Would be so much cooler if they were Mothra instead.

Burial at sea.

2009-03-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

Today while I was in class a procession of people appeared in the courtyard outside with an inflatable raft that they placed in the pond. Shortly afterward a second group approached carrying a stiff girl on their shoulders like a coffin.

They placed her in the raft and pushed her out into the middle of the pond. It was all quite mysterious and funerary looking, and pretty distracting to boot.

I had to turn back to our class discussion about how the US and UK killed NWICO because they don't like communication rights and why most people have never heard of the CRIS campaign.

When I looked next the courtyard was empty. After class we speculated. Rehearsal? Performance art? Hazing ritual? Fire arrows?

I'm sure we overthought it.

My funk continues

2009-03-15T22:32:00.000-07:00

I took this picture a few weeks ago now, and I've been mulling it over ever since.

It's funny how a given medium will predispose you to think in certain ways or see from a particular point of view.

In a lot of ways I think some of my best pictures were taken in the first six months or so that I had my camera. Sure, some of them are really lacking in technical quality, but there was something fresh about them that the ones I take now lack. Maybe it's just me that thinks that, but getting a new camera was kind of like seeing with new eyes.

They say that if you have a hammer things start looking like nails, and for me, suddenly everything was a shot. I had pretty specific ideas about what "shots" looked like and in a way it kind of framed my existence. I was always looking for them. It annoyed me when people told me to take pictures of things where there were no shots.

Meaning, of course, not that there was nothing photo worthy to find there, but that I'd developed a way of seeing that was very hard to shake. Meaning also that gradually all my photos began to look the same.

I used to follow a lot of photoblogs but I found that more than the individual photos, I visited them because of their point of view. Once I'd figured out their style, they became kind of predictable and I'd get bored of them, regardless of what new content they had to offer.

I do this with blog posts too, or at least, I do when I'm on my game (which has not been for the last three months). There's a little monologue that happens in the back of my mind that's constantly concerned with structuring my existence into an interesting post. I see something and already I'm trying to put it into words, experimenting with different phrases more than living through the moment. Eventually that gets old.

My sister said I had taken the same picture before and she was right.

My mother, bringer of blizzards.

2009-03-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

My mom wishes to apologise for the snow and cold weather we have been having lately. She believes she brought it on by not putting away the Christmas themed tablecloth that is on the kitchen table.

Forget groundhogs, the real reason why we have six extra weeks of winter is because the table is covered with snowmen and gnomes on skis. Kitschy, kitschy gnomes on skis.

We must rectify this. Stat.

29 cents

2009-03-07T21:17:00.000-08:00

One of my friends limped into class the other day. She had fallen down the stairs at the skytrain station while running for the bus and her ankle was swollen to the point of looking gross and deformed. I decided I would go get some ice for her.

I had five minutes. I ran down two flights of stairs and then all the way to the other end of the building to get to the cafeteria where I filled up a cup with ice. I ran into problems at the checkout because apparently ice costs money. Twenty-nine cents worth of money. That's practically theft.

I didn't really have any time to argue and the cashier wasn't really the person to complain to anyways so I paid it. Good thing I had a loon in my pocket.

I ran the ice back upstairs and didn't tell her that it cost money, because that would be petty and stupid. But 29 cents? Bah!

Because who wouldn't want to write a paper about Eugene Hütz's mustache?

2009-03-05T22:59:00.000-08:00

For my one class all the readings for this week have been about old school rap and hip hop, its links to the Caribbean, reggae and civil rights movements, DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash.

For my other class we've been looking at diasporic identities, the Caribbean, Rastafarianism, voodoo and mythical narratives of Africa as a heartland.

I had a conversation with a colleague from another class today about music because it turns out that he's a huge reggae fan.

I have to come up with a paper topic to hand in in eight hours.

You know what this is all telling me?

I need to write a paper about Balkan Beat Box. Glad you made that leap with me.

I'm going to make it about Eugene Hütz too, because his mustache is awesome.

I have the best major ever.

Thinking green

2009-03-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

I'm joining Project Spectrum this time around. It's a self-guided, open-ended collective art project that revolves around four themes over the period of 8 months. The theme for March/April is north/green/stones/earth so I'm going to make something with the above because it wants to be made into something. I'm still working on making up a design so I'm not really sure what it will look like just yet. We'll see.

One thing I know though, is that planning it out has been a lot of fun and completely absorbing so far. I think it's more the time of the semester than anything. Procrastination drives me to jump wholeheartedly into a whole lot of creative things.

You should join me because it's fun and it's cool to see what everybody else comes up with.

There are skunks living underneath the back porch. We are torn between choosing to coexist and choosing to get rid of them because they will likely eat everything out of the garden.

Inopportune times

2009-02-28T22:32:00.000-08:00

I've been having computer difficulties lately. Half the time it doesn't turn off when I want it to.

I've also been pretty busy with school. I'm not sure why I don't post anything about what I'm working on there here. I'm still kind of riding a high from finishing a presentation this week. It's a weight off my shoulders and got rave reviews like "cerebral" and "you guys got the conceit of the week."

I would have done a good job by myself, but I think it was definitely improved by the fact that I had an intelligent, agreeable partner to work with. Good to have people to bounce ideas with, especially when they have well thought out ideas that are not the same as mine. I don't learn very much when I'm always the dominant person in the group, which is often.

People are going to be upset with me for saying this but I'm really glad it's raining. If you string too many dry days together, I get nosebleeds. They can last for hours and disrupt everything. The past few weeks I've also had really congested sinuses and it really sucks to need to blow your nose while you're paranoid that you're going to make it start again.

Increasingly these things have been happening at the most inopportune times. In class, while I've been talking to people, on the bus or at night.

The worst night was last week. I spend a lot of time at school on Thursdays - seven straight hours, if I'm not meeting with someone for a project. I usually get home around 11 pm and then I have to be up at 6 for school downtown the next day.

I had a paper due in the morning and it wasn't quite finished. I got home and started working on it and for whatever reason it was slow going. It really shouldn't take all night to come up with 800 words but in this case it did. I was having trouble with it so at 2am I decided to get a couple hours sleep.

I woke up an hour and a half later with my face in a pool of blood. I was groggy and disoriented and it had soaked into my pillow and sheets. Laundry time! I stripped everything off my bed and threw it into the wash.

This was the perfect opportunity to get some more work done on my paper. I wrote at a snail's pace until the sheets were out of the dryer while the cat squawked at me that there were no sheets on the bed.

I made my bed, put the cat to sleep and worked on the paper some more, which was still slow going. Half an hour later, the cat started fussing again. I checked the bed and it was wet. She'd had a seizure and peed all over it.

Why do I only have one set of sheets?

Help preserve an open internet.

2009-02-22T15:10:00.000-08:00

You there! In Canada! The CRTC is currently accepting submissions from the public about net neutrality.

Right now, internet access is not regulated in Canada. This allows your internet service provider (Shaw, Rogers, Bell, etc.) to speed up, slow down and block your access to websites and services as it sees fit.

A free and open internet is important for democracy, for communication, business and innovation. You pay for internet access and you should be able to visit anything you want without the interference of your internet service provider.

Please consider sending a submission to the CRTC. There is a form you can fill out to send them a letter so it is relatively painless to do. The deadline for making a submission is tomorrow, Monday February 23.

The petition, CRTC letter and lots of information can be found here.

If you are in the US, you can find out what's happening with the FCC here.

I forsee warm sweaters in my future.

2009-02-17T15:28:00.000-08:00

Somehow my father has the magical ability to know about yarn store sales before I do. He clips the ads out of newspapers and leaves them on the keyboard of my computer where I will see them. He does the same for computer sales or anything else he thinks I am interested in purchasing at any given time. It's his way of being helpful.

So we arrived at the rock and gem club show only to find that it wasn't open yet. I had prepared for this inevitability by having $45 in my pocket - more than enough to buy some yarn for a pair of socks. I suggested that we could kill the twenty minutes petting yarn a couple blocks away.

Once there he was thoroughly impressed by the selection and gained some attention for being the only male in the store. I heard the following from his mouth, among others:

"Yarn doesn't go bad. You may as well stock up because the prices are good."

"Look at this! Isn't it soft?"

"It's made out of lama. Lama!"

"Are you sure that's enough for a project?"

"No sense in wasting your time on crappy materials. Why use acrylic when you can use alpaca?"

"What about your next project? You should be thinking three projects ahead!"

These statements are not conducive to being frugal. The end result was the picture above. Two sweater's worth and a skein of Malabrigo Lace.

"You have a card," he said, but as I made it to the till, mom slipped me his.

No more squirrel!

2009-02-15T22:33:00.000-08:00

Nonstop excitement here.

We finally put an end to the squirrel problem. Yesterday dad covered the holes where it was getting in and out with chicken wire. The only problem was that in doing so he accidentally caged it in.

We left it in there overnight, figuring that if it was hungry it would be a lot more willing to leave. This morning it started climbing around at around 8am and later on when I looked out at it, I found it clinging to the chicken wire, its face pressed up against it to get some sun. I took pity on the thing and decided that I would let it out today.

In the early afternoon I began to pry out the staples holding the chicken wire when I suddenly realized that it was sitting two feet away from me, growling. Have you ever heard a squirrel growl? It's the scariest thing in the world when the squirrel is two feet away from your head and you're not wearing goggles, gloves or a bee suit.

I got my sister to whack the ceiling below it scare it to the other end of the roof, but that meant that when I finally got the chicken wire open so that the squirrel could get out, it would not move. She and I tag teamed for a while on squirrel watch to see if maybe it would come out on its own, but two plus hours later, it hadn't moved and we were freezing cold.

We had to burn an entire newspaper to smoke it out. It hopped hesitantly to the open hole and then out across the patio, never to be seen again. It hasn't returned, so it's a good sign that it didn't leave any babies in there. It has, however, eaten all of the electrical wires and filled the space with random junk and feces, so eventually we will have to tear out the ceiling and clean it up.

I've been working on the above sweater for a while now and I've finally made it through the yoke. The pattern is Wheat Ear Cable Yoke from Interweave Knits Summer 2007, modified to be knit in one piece from the top-down. It will be finished just in time for it to be too warm to wear it.

D-talks is for people not like me.

2009-02-09T11:11:00.000-08:00

Belzberg library has a brand new book on pedestrianism and the art of walking that I've been considering taking out because it looks interesting. Not that I don't have about nine other books going right now. I've held off because frankly I'm a little afraid to show my face in there for the next couple weeks because I was caught (horror of horrors!) and admonished for talking in the group study room where you are allowed to talk.

But I do love walking and I love the times when I suddenly have random free time with which I can explore. Today it was a random twenty minutes in which I walked down Great Northern Way from VCC-Clark to Main and back.

I saw all sorts of interesting things. For example, did you know that Sir Francis Xavier School was on that street? I sure didn't! I have no idea how many times I've driven past it and not seen it there. It's quite big and bricky.

I checked each tree for bird nests but I didn't find any. A jogger caught me in the act of doing this and I think he thought I was strange. There seem to be a lot of not particularly personable people that jog and bike through that area.

Down by one of the railyards there are two metal chairs bolted to the ground that face each other for no apparent reason other than to have them face each other in a place where public seating is not particularly needed and probably not used. The scene prompted me to shout out "Face off! At the railyard!" I will not lie; there were hand gestures and a dramatic pose involved. This may be hard to believe, but some people find me embarassing to be around in public.

I also walked past Detox. I knew where that was because my dad used to take some of his students down there. At the time I thought it was D-talks and assumed that drug users had special conversations there. There was something special about drug users that required them to talk a lot more than everyone else, deep conversations about drugs that I would never ever have because people like me don't try drugs.

This trip into my 6-year-old psyche brought to you by my walk down Great Northern Way.

Home alone

2009-02-07T23:12:00.000-08:00

I'm home alone. The sudden lack of diabetics in the house turned tonight into a carbfest. I told myself I wouldn't but the fudge cookies kind of just made themselves. You know how it is.

They have gone to Seattle for the weekend. I opted out because I have too much work to do.

I'm writing a paper about media reform, not a research paper, but more of an imagination paper. It doesn't require research, which makes it hard because I have to make it all up myself.

Still, having the house to myself makes this sort of thing easier, because I can regress into my old paperwriting ways - walking around in circles and talking to myself.

Somehow they managed to turn the furnace off when they left. It was off for more than 24 hours before I noticed. I mean, I noticed that it was off and that it was getting uncomfortably cold, but it never occured to me that there was a switch in the wall and that it was off.

Other than that, the only remotely interesting thing that happened today was that I went to pull a kleenex from the box and the whole thing leapt for freedom off of the ledge and into the toilet bowl. It kind of reminded me of a goldfish.

Squirrels!

2009-02-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

They should have Super Bowls more often because the gym was pretty empty save for a few women using the treadmills and a couple guys who by the sound of it, were in the process of giving birth or passing something large and undigestible, or otherwise expelling something horrible from their back ends.

I have finally gotten over my lamenting about my gibbled back and the loss of the super awesome muscles I had in high school and gotten back into the gym. This is going well so far. The most underused equipment at the gym happens to be the ergs, and coincidentally they are my favourite equipment, and as far as I can tell, I'm the only person around who seems to be able to use them properly.

This new gym routine fits well with the previous routine (the one that wasn't particularly well followed) entitled "walk the dad." I no longer have a dog to walk, but I do have a father who has been ordered by the doctor to lose forty pounds. It ended up that everyone would take turns walking the dad.

However, the previous routine fell apart because the dad doesn't walk far or fast enough for it to be exercise for anyone else. The gym is a good solution to this because you can all go there and do your own things.

Then you can all come home to find that the strings of Christmas lights on the house have all been severed by someone/thing. And while you're standing there with pieces of light strings in your hands, you hear a th-thunk th-thunk coming from the ceiling in the front porch.

Squirrels!

Mittens!

2009-01-31T22:50:00.000-08:00

Mittens finished!

You know it's bad when people have to tell you to update your blog.

Glasses, full, empty

2009-01-23T22:35:00.000-08:00

I have officially lost my blogging mojo.

I am deeply embroiled and simultaneously up-to-date with my reading for school.

Glass half full or half empty? You be the judge.

Or not. I always thought that was a stupid question anyways. Water is matter, and so is air, right? If that is the case then the glass is fully full. In fact, both water and air are made up of more or less the same kinds of elements, so I guess you could say that it's actually two thirds (ish) full of hydrogen and that most of the rest of it is filled with oxygen with a bit of other stuff mixed in. Either way, the glass is full.

But then if you consider that there is more space between atoms than the space that they take up, the glass (meaning both the space within the glass and the glass itself) is mostly empty space, as is the rest of the universe. Then the glass is empty.

I'm not even going to get into the question as to whether or not the glass is actually there at a given point in time, or whether or not it exists, or how we know or do not know that it is there or that it exists.

Either way, it's kind of a stupid question and a really poor test of optimism.

This isn't to say that I don't have other interesting things to say, or that I can't come up with a regular supply of them, but for the past month or so, they have been the sorts of things that really don't belong on the internet. They are things that I might only tell you if I fictionalized them and didn't bother to ever tell you which bits were true. Not necessarily bad things.

Good help is hard to find

2009-01-18T22:08:00.000-08:00

Sally helps me do my homework.

Today she disagrees with Miljan and Cooper's critique of Hackett and other critical theorists because she finds the idea that empirical studies of media bias and content could be carried out in a comprehensive manner to be very problematic. How on earth do you reduce words to numbers?

She also disagrees with the notion that using abstract, figurative and difficult to understand phrasing and concepts is a bad thing. Sally herself frequently uses complex and unintelligible words and it's never hurt anybody.

She took a brief interest in Edward Said's Orientalism earlier today, but then she got confused and went for a nap instead. She says she doesn't need to read theory about the racialized Other anyways because it is her everyday existence. Sometimes people even treat her like she's not human.

She suspects the problem is that she puts up with this because she has bought into the false-consciousness and hegemonic ideals and institutions that come with living in a westernized, capitalist state. She dislikes this society for its requiring her to take baths and for filling her ears with ear mite poison, as well as robbing her of the ability to go outdoors whenever she wants. Still, it provides easy access to beds and havarti cheese so she thinks she will postpone the revolution.

Eat something new every day.

2009-01-17T22:42:00.000-08:00

Maple Ridge has a surprisingly large number of sushi restaurants, some better than others. One of the better is Hamada, which seems to be owned and/or managed by a lady with a severe perm and has staff that run. They do everything so fast.

Everything on the menu is good there. Well, mostly. The cheese roll is kind of weird because Kraft Singles do not a good roll of sushi make, but I don't think that's on the menu anymore.

Sometimes there are just too many things to choose so when in doubt, order the boat. It's instant variety for minimal effort.

We ordered Love Boat B and the waiter ran away to the kitchen. Shortly afterward, he ran back to inform us that the boat came with something else - was that okay? He spoke very quickly so it was kind of hard to make out what he said. He made a triangular gesture around his head. Fish head? Sure, why not?

There was nothing in the menu that mentioned fish heads anywhere so no one was quite sure. He ran out again to confirm.

The boat came out without anything really unusual on it, but once we had finished most of it off, someone else came out with a platter, announced it as the special and then quickly disappeared.

Fish head!

It had been cut in half and deep-fried so it was rather gruesome looking. We attacked with gusto, picking it apart with chopsticks trying to figure out which parts were edible. Deep-fried fish gills look kind of like black coiled springs. The outside was crispy and the inside was melt-in-your mouth delicious. My dad flicked the eye at me but I didn't eat it.

I found an egg-shaped piece of something kind of fatty that I ate. It was completely white and tasted really good. Salmon has white meat on it. Who knew?

The lady that came to take away the plate looked surprised. "You did really good!" she said. It was a pretty genuine compliment. I take it that the dish isn't always as well received.

How to locate scissors

2009-01-14T19:52:00.000-08:00

If you are unable to locate a pair of scissors, buy another pair of scissors. Eventually you will be able to find some scissors. This is wisdom I learned from my father.

And my klingon name is...

2009-01-12T23:11:00.000-08:00

Jen's post today reminds me of the undeniably unique gift-giving enigma that is my grandmother. She has never once forgotten my birthday or Christmas. I kind of like getting gifts from her because they are always weird, unexpected and demonstrate a true lack of thought and understanding as to everyone's personalities and tastes.

A good example of this is the period in my early teens when she bought me a bunch of girly sweaters sized 6x.

Then there was the "Sounds of October" CD, a compilation of different random sound effects arranged into quaint little titles like "My furry little friends" and "A lovely little stroll by the seaside." No one was sure why she gave a CD about October to my mother, who has no special attachment to that month in particular. I mean, my mom's birthday is on Cinco de Mayo, which would make a pinata far more appropriate. Grandma said that one of the nurses told her that it would make a very good gift.

By far the best gift I ever got from her was the Star Trek interactive video boardgame that she gave me for my birthday when I was twelveish. I thought it was weird but kind of cool at the time, being the closet trekkie I am. It had a board that looked kind of like Clue with different areas of the ship marked on it and a VHS tape with some klingons on it.

The story was that the klingons had taken over the ship and imprisoned the crew. The players had to somehow make it out of the room and accomplish a bunch of tasks in a set period of time in order to avert near-certain disaster. The rules and game play were complicated and I don't think we got them before we lost interest.

The problem with game play being tied to the video was that there was only one scenario that I remember, and that meant that every time you played it the Klingons said the same things, took over the same part of the ship and imprisoned you in the same room that you had to strategize your way out of.

It also required that you talked to the video, which required more than a little suspension of disbelief, and lent itself well to being mocked.

The commander-in-chief klingon would ask me what my name was, then pause as if listening while I said the silliest name I could think of, something along the line of Petunia Lipschitz-Garagehead. He would then groan predictably in disgust, tell me that it was a slave's name and give me a new name:

Well, I was about to tell you what I was renamed, in Klingon, but it seems I can't find the word on the internet. Whatever it was it meant worm.

I did however find the word for ponytail holder:

choljaH
I need some new ones, you know.

Soup!

2009-01-11T22:21:00.000-08:00

A friend was having a party last Saturday and my parents made me take my sister along. That in itself isn't a big deal, because she can drive and gets along well with everyone and half the time people don't know we're related. The only thing is that she's not legally allowed to drive after midnight, which meant the inevitable call at about 11:30 insisting that we come home now.

This was mentioned, but they would not budge. No, there might possibly be drunkenness, lewd jokes and wii playing. My sister must accompany me in order to witness these things first-hand.

So predictably we got the phonecall and had to speed home far too early, and I'm wondering why I suddenly have a curfew again.

On another note, we got faster internet today. It was pretty painless. The guy wasn't here for all that long, but my parents had to twitter around awkwardly embarassed about the state of the livingroom, as if they had to explain away the mess somehow. The guy was completely unphased by it but seemed a little amused by my parents. I wonder how many times during the day they have to go through the same awkward conversations.

As far as I'm concerned though, the only thing that faster internet means is that youtube videos load faster than they play. Of course that means that I've been watching lots of stupid yet entertaining videos.

And now I want some soup, but not ham and pea and panda nose and pony.

Any time now.

2009-01-07T22:37:00.000-08:00

Well, this is certainly an exciting beginning to the semester. Between the snow and my schedule I haven't actually been to school yet. Two of my classes don't have textbooks. The readings will probably be available online but I don't have access to them yet.

I went to school to go to a meeting only to find that it was cancelled when I got there. I'm not a fan of the practice of cancelling things two hours before they're scheduled because it takes me two and a half to get there from home. It doesn't bother me a lot because I'm used to it. Every once in a while my friends do this to remind me to get out of the house and go on more self-guided tours of random bars and restaurants.

I headed off on my second errand, to find books for one of my classes so I will have something to read instead of feeling like I should be reading something. I have been at university for five years now and this is the very first time I have visited the bookstore during the first week of class. I had a feeling that there was a good reason for that, and my feeling was confirmed.

The lineup snaked around the top floor, down a flight of stairs, around and around, and then down another flight of stairs, zig zagged, took a dog leg, then went around in a big circle before it finally reached the doors to the bookstore. I was totally unprepared for something of that rediculously long length. It was something that would require a chair, knitting, extra provisions and an ipod to be able to endure so I went home instead.

Some days SFU is a cloud. The air becomes thick and transparent and figures disolve within it. People stand outside the library with cigarettes, smoke halos around their heads.

I don't really have anything interesting to say.

Back to school

2009-01-04T23:12:00.000-08:00

I've been putting off shoveling because it's supposed to rain. Apparently it was supposed to rain a couple days ago and then again today but all it has done is rain harder.

I can't believe that school is starting again tomorrow. I don't really feel like I've had a holiday at all. My time off wasn't particularly relaxing, festive or memorable. I can't really remember what I did. I got my wisdom teeth out, barely took any drugs for that because I'm impervious to pain, slept a lot and obsessed about how much I'm tired of the snow.

Maybe it's a good thing I'm going back to school then.

My cats have proven once again that their favourite pasttime is to find novel locations and scenarios for vomiting hairballs. Today they worked in tandem, ensuring that I would be occupied with cleanup for the longest possible period of time. Sal chose a location that involved me wiggling along the floor on my elbows and stomach with a flashlight, running out of paper towel and wiggling back out to find some more.

Not ten seconds after I finished putting away the cleaning supplies I went to my room to find that Lou had found a place where three blankets conveniently converged in the same place and decided that that would be the perfect place to lay down a hairball. She managed to nail all three blankets and herself simultaneously, instantly providing me with a full load of laundry to do. I felt just as loved as that time that she projection vomited into the toe of my slipper. That one was a lot harder to clean.

I'm considering going back to keeping fish.

I do not have cheesecake but I have mittens.

2009-01-03T23:36:00.000-08:00

One day historians and sociologists will look back to this time period and point at the phenomenon where people use the internet to participate in some form of collective centred around individual activities for a month-long periods of time, giving these collectives unweildy acronym names that begin with "Na" for national, regardless of the nationalities of the participants.

Either that or I'll write a paper about it. Knowing me, I'll write a paper about that anyways. I have to put all my wasted internet time to good use.

Did I mention it was national mitten knitting month? This may astound you but I am knitting some mittens. If you are knitting mittens too, you can join us in our collective, month-long wooly hand covering production.

If not, then feel free to continue to exist and visit this blog.

In other news, a 9:30 hunt for a piece of cheesecake yielded no results. I went to all five restaurants in Maple Ridge that could be expected to carry such a thing only to find them all closed, an experience that was eerily similar to spending the night in Calgary, one of the most boring places on earth. But in spite of its boringness, Calgary has a leg up on Maple Ridge in the sense that I do not live there, so that makes it a little interesting. Maple Ridge is my everyday, which makes it worse.

2008, you sucked.

2009-01-01T21:02:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about 2008. I've even been considering writing something about it. I've been preoccupied with this for a few days now.

In short, 2008 was a rotten year. People's natural inclination when I say this is to ask what about 2008 made it bad. It is my natural inclination to indulge them by launching into chapter one of the tale of woe, after which point either they change the subject or their eyes glaze over because they weren't all that interested in the first place. Either way, they weren't interested, I wasted my time talking and I'll end up feeling bad about that.

Besides, Google Analytics tells me that most of the people that come here are just looking for the post with the fake plastic breasts anyways.

All I know is that if this year isn't better than last year I might have to do something drastic. No, not shooting myself. Maybe moving to Sierra Leone. We'll see.

Maybe there are good things in store for 2009.

Awl right now

2008-12-30T01:27:00.000-08:00

I'm glad the snow is finally going away. I'm tired of it.

I have the urge to carve some wood, a root or a burl, but I have neither right now and they're not really the sorts of things that hardware stores stock a lot of.

Another thing I've found is that hardware stores don't really stock awls either. We went to three before we found one. Maybe no one uses them anymore.

I hate asking for help in hardware stores. I prefer to find everything myself because I get treated by staff as if because I'm young and female I left my brain by the door on the way in.

They fall into two major categories. There are the incredulous guys who second guess your decisions because you are female and therefore you know nothing about tools, wood, mechanics or whatever you are looking for. They are the guys who ask you things like "Are you sure you need an awl?" Yes, I'm sure I need an awl. If I didn't need an awl, I wouldn't have asked for one, and if I wasn't sure what kind of tool I needed, I would have described what I was trying to do and asked for advice.

Then there are the somewhat nicer, but just as irritating paternal types, who feel they have to explain to you how to use the tool you just asked them to help you locate.

Inevitably the problem for them is that you have asked for something that they can not locate, so therefore you are asking for the wrong thing. The problem is never that they do not have a good enough knowledge of the stock in their department to be able to locate something specific.

I found an awl at Home Depot finally, after asking two staff members who couldn't find one themselves and questioned whether I needed it. The awls were hiding near the rubber hammers, nowhere near where the staff chose to look.

I want to go canoeing too, but mine's covered in snow.

I feel the need to qualify this post by stating that the staff in the local Rona are pretty awesome and good at cactus husbandry and that Abby at the front desk would most certainly know where the awls were if they stocked them.

My family crosses a snowbank

2008-12-28T23:32:00.000-08:00

"It's like the Kyber Pass. We need goats or elephants."

"I was thinking more like northern Afghanistan, with Kalashnikovs and pieces of dead bodies sticking out of the snowbanks."

"Okay, snow fantasy of your choice."

"Pretty slippery!"

"Watch your step!"

"Did you see me lose my footing? I almost didn't make it through there. I could have broken my leg and then you'd have to throw me off a cliff."

"No, we'd rescue you. We'd have a bottle of brandy and some St. Bernards."

"And I'd be laying there with my mangled leg telling you to just leave me to die. No, just throw me off a cliff so that the vultures won't get me while I'm still alive. It's not worth it."

"No, you'd be saying that because you'd had too much brandy and you had to vomit."

"Still, it was a close call."

How to celebrate Maxmas

2008-12-25T23:32:00.000-08:00

So this is how it goes. Santa comes, we wake up and open presents, stockings first and then after everything is open and has been presented to everyone else and photographed, there is a half hour of silence in which everyone sets to scratching lottery tickets.

When I was little I remember just having to scratch everything and see if the numbers matched. It was easy and it only took a couple minutes. Nowadays they make you work for your winnings or nonwinnings. No doubt they pay someone way too much to put together complicated puzzles that require excessive concentration and precision scratching in order to arrive at the realization that you are very close to winning something decent but not quite there.

Anyways, I win at lottery ticket scratching today. $32 on two tickets! I'm just chock full of awesome.

Then, because there's nothing to do on December 25, everyone runs out to watch a movie. Today someone decided that it would be a good idea to see Marley and Me a story about a dog that looked and acted almost exactly like our dead dog, in which THIS IS A SPOILER! the dog dies YOU PRETTY MUCH KNEW THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN NOT VERY LONG INTO THE MOVIE ANYWAYS! when we have unresolved issues related to euthanizing the cat earlier this year, and the fact that the other two could go at any minute. We all cried a lot. A lot of people in the theatre did.

Then home for dinner. My mom's holiday specialty is turkey that reminds me of the National Lampoon Christmas.

Then afterward the cribbage tournament continues, and my seven game winning streak is finally over. Meh.

This year was a little different with the addition of Christmas crackers. Everyone had three each and silliness ensued when people got their stupid little prizes. A pencil, yay! A cell phone charm, yay! A golf abacus... um... yay! A spring on a keychain ring? WTF?

I don't do fahrenheit.

2008-12-23T22:54:00.000-08:00

Today was new furnace day. The old furnace was thirty-five years old, in addition to being really noisy and polluting a lot. The new one is smaller, quieter, more efficient and sticks out in the room more so that I'll probably bang into it in the middle of the night.

It took what felt like forever to install because they had to cut a hole through the wall to the outside and they hit a knot in the wood that their tools would not drill through.

More likely it felt like forever because the heat was off and the doors were open for several hours and the temperature was sub zero. During the crucial minutes while the house still had some heat in it I had been conscripted into doing yardwork outside, so by the time I re-entered the now freezing house I'd already caught a chill.

Eventually I retreated into the workshop where there's a wood stove and fell asleep on a chair. I was out there for quite a while because no one bothered to tell me that the furnace was installed and working.

In fact, it works great, except that the thermostat is in fahrenheit. How am I supposed to know what the temperature is?

Merry Maxmas

2008-12-21T23:25:00.000-08:00

They said that the snow would be really bad today and that people should refrain from going outside, but when you have brand new snow tires and 300 lbs of kitty litter in your trunk driving in the snow isn't all that bad. The only thing you have to do is keep a healthy distance from all the people on the road who are driving in all season radials or engaging in other stupidity.

At a gas station I watched a guy back into a curb before he got out to clean off a small patch of the rear window, which until that point had been completely covered in snow. Once he had cleared off the minimum amount to be able to back in beside the pump, about a tenth of the total area of the window, he stopped and got back in the car. Who knows how long he drove before and after that without the use of his rear view mirror.

As luck would have it, my cousins were just in front of us in a very short line to see Santa at the mall. Garrett wanted to know why Mary and Joseph named their baby a swear word. Her mom tried to explain that it's only swearing in certain contexts and that it didn't have that meaning back then but she would have none of it. "They should have named him Max," she said.

Maxmas has a special ring to it, doesn't it? Henceforth Christmas will be called Maxmas in our house. It's a better name for what we celebrate anyways, because there's no Christ in Maxmas.

The Santa at Coquitlam Centre is a real beard Santa and he's been there for several years now. I see him every year. I don't care how old I am, sitting on Santa's lap makes me beam from ear to ear. He recognizes us so he was pretty chatty today.

Other than Santa, malls are not my favourite place to be, especially around this time of year. It's not just the artificial lighting, crowds, noise and recycled air. They're full of unhappy people burdened with a sense of obligation to spend and I hate counting myself among them. I don't think malls are really particularly good places to shop for gifts either. They're filled with a lot of bland, uninspiring choices, and the majority of the stores are for things I don't like buying for people, like clothes and glasses. In my experience, when you buy these things, whether or not people will actually like your choices is a complete crapshoot.

I had a bit of last minute shopping to do, but afterward I was glad to be home. This hasn't been the best holiday so far, but it certainly hasn't been the worst either. Sometimes it's tough to cling to the middle ground.

Dark

2008-12-19T21:14:00.000-08:00

At 2 am this morning all of a sudden someone got into the shower. I thought that maybe it was my sister but she had gone to bed. Through my amazing deduction skills, I figured out that it was my father showering.

It defied all logic so I was confused. There was no reasonable explanation as to why my father was by then brushing his teeth and probably squinting at himself in the mirror.

I'm used to a certain amount of weirdness and clandestine behaviour around Christmas time each year because people are secretly coordinating and planning things, stashing, wrapping behind closed doors, coming home late after work, making mysterious trips and sneaking around when they think you don't notice them. That's probably why I didn't bother to ask dad why he was turning on the furnace, starting the car to warm it up, completely dressed and trying to get my mom out of bed.

He asked me if I'd emailed him something and I said I hadn't, but that I could do it right away before I forgot. I turned on my computer. Because it's such a dinosaur, I decided to go brush my teeth while it warmed up.

When I got out of the bathroom, all the lights in the house were out, which only served to confuse me more. "I misread my clock," he said in the darkness.

That's the problem with winter. 2am looks exactly the same as 7am. Dark.

Blubber

2008-12-16T23:29:00.000-08:00

Some days I don't really need to eat anything, but today was not one of those days. I've been cursed with a hollow leg today and have eaten my weight in food.

It must be the weather. It's too cold and it has been for a few days now. I decided I would walk to the bank and then run some other errands, but after depositing a cheque I hobbled home chilled to thaw out.

These days I seem to be completely incapable of keeping myself warm without swathing myself in a yurt.

It wasn't always this way. In elementary school my parents used to leave for work early so I would get to school at 7:15 am, long before most of the staff had arrived, and the only thing that was open with adult supervision was the Breakfast Program. Since we lived in a low-income neighbourhood, a good 20% or more of the school used to go there to eat because their parents couldn't or wouldn't feed them at home.

We weren't particularly hungry. We'd always arrive with stomachs full of breakfast from home, but we couldn't very well pass up the food that was there. It was offered, it was novel, and our consciences were clear because mom used to write a cheque to the program every month to be sure that we weren't taking food away from the welfare kids.

Besides, mom never let me have sugar sprinkled on my toast like Mrs. Garrison did. Or Nutella. These things were unheard of in our house. And she was generous with them too.

When she was down to the bottom of the Nutella jar, she used to offer it up to some students to scrape clean, and because I used to help clean up, I was always a star candidate. The jars never arrived empty. They usually had a good inch of Nutella stuck in the bottom, which meant more than enough to share.

All of this coupled with the fact that I was a pretty sedentary kid mean that I acquired a good layer of blubber that used to keep me warm. Used to. Now that it's cold, I kind of want that blubber back. Maybe that's why I'm so hungry.

The energy audit

2008-12-15T23:22:00.000-08:00

More cool ice!

We had an energy audit today in which surprisingly enough, our house scored higher than average for its age and type. That's mainly because we've done a lot to improve it already, like replacing all the basement windows and insulation and insulating the attic. When we first moved in it was terrible. Sections of walls didn't have any insulation at all and the draughts were so bad it was almost windy inside.

Apparently, if we do all the retrofits that were recommended, our carbon emissions will decrease by 3.1 tonnes per year. Yay us! Most of it was stuff that will be done to the house eventually so really all the inspector did today was put a number on it that will help with getting a government rebate for our new furnace.

Sally was pretty upset. She was hungry but when she went into the kitchen the inspector was sitting at the table with his laptop and he said "Hi kitty," in a very friendly and non-threatening way which is scary so she had to mope around, looking awkward, and took to howling in the back bedroom near the end of his visit.

Kanaka Creek

2008-12-14T23:24:00.000-08:00

While a huge part of the Lower Mainland got covered in snow, we got a powdered sugar dusting of the stuff. What we did get though was wind. The weather report tells me that they were expecting that with windchill the temperature out here would drop to -15 C though I have no way of knowing if it actually got that cold. In all likelihood it didn't drop below -3.

Still, that's pretty cold for here and usually when it's like that I'd just as soon not go outside. Of course that means that Abby and I went on a hike.

We'd had this date set for quite some time. Our plans to climb Alouette Mountain hit a bit of a snag when I realized that there probably isn't enough daylight in the day in the middle of December to finish the hike without freezing to death. Not to mention, there's probably snow there, and we know from experience that we just don't like snow on our trails.

There are many things about Maple Ridge that suck, but Kanaka Creek is not one of them. It's a pretty spot full of scenic, non-strenuous trails and picnic areas that's really popular with dog walkers. I'm always amazed at the number of birds and other interesting things I see when I'm there. I always end up seeing some thing new. Today it was a woodpecker and some cool looking white rosehip berries that I've never seen before. I don't have pictures of them because my fingers were frozen.

We also found some really cool looking ice on the ground. I'm not sure how it got that way. Physics!

Because it was cold, there weren't very many people around, which was great for geocaching because I didn't need to use my super ninja stealth skills. I found four today, which is pretty good for me because I suck at it.

Chicken number five

2008-12-13T23:15:00.000-08:00

This chicken was my carry-on baggage when I went through the Calgary airport a few years ago. I wanted to see if they would let me take it on, and it turns out that they do allow such things on planes, though only in the overhead compartments. I got a lot of odd looks while I was going through security and they made me run it through the metal detector three times to make sure it wasn't a bomb.

Its name is Chicken Number 5 in memory of the best grad prank ever in which five live chickens mysteriously appeared in the cafeteria. Each had a ribbon with a number. The staff caught chickens one, two, three, four and six, and then spent hours looking for the nonexistent chicken number five.

Its nickname is Chick Vennera because one time in school Abby had to read The Pearl and as an assignment she had to pick actors to play the characters in a movie. I decided to help her with it and we spent a lot of time cruising IMDb looking up Spanish and Latino actors and then googling the results. Quite accidentally we made a typo in Chick Vennera's name that resulted in unexpected pornography, and then screaming, closing the browser and hysterical laughter. Nothing to do with him at all, but the name reminds me of that assignment.

The cheapest item is the one you put back on the shelf.

2008-12-12T23:11:00.000-08:00

Grandma was in a reasonably good mood today, which made spending three hours in the mall with her relatively painless.

All the muscles in her back have atrophied so she has a lot of difficulty sitting up straight. Over time she begins to lean to her right and hang out of her chair at an odd, uncomfortable looking angle that causes random strangers to shoot you dirty looks because somehow it is your fault.

It is hard to say whether our efforts to shift her upright help or not. Though well-meaning, it seems to just make her more uncomfortable and sore. So she spent most of the time pitched over like she was drunk, and it just so happened that this and her driving style ran her head into collisions with the purses of innocent women who happened to be in the way.

As far as a shopping trip went though, it was reasonably successful. Grandma never approaches these things with any ideas as to what exactly she wants to get, so mostly you have to suggest things. There is a certain art to making the right suggestions that I think we did well today.

At one point in time she decided she wanted some perfume and glommed on to a box of Shania Twain fragrances. "Do you think this would be cheaper?" she asked, and I suggested that we go find out what it smelled like first. "But is it cheaper?" We found her a tester and decided that we didn't really like the smell. Regardless, it took a while before we could convince her that it would be cheaper still just to put it back on the shelf.

So sorry, Shania.

If I don't return...

2008-12-11T23:00:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow my aunt and I are taking my grandmother shopping. Against my better judgement I'm going to be optimistic about this, not because I have any reason to be but because because.

My grandmother is a chronically unpleasant woman who hates being confined to a hospital, but who hates being outside of it as well. Outside of it she is disoriented, miserable and uncomfortable and makes you feel horrible for torturing her by forcing her to go to the restaurant or store she begged you to take her to.

This is the woman who enjoys taunting the alzheimers patient next door to her, uses racial slurs in front of my non-Caucasian friends who volunteer at the hospital, hands you gifts with the words "I don't know what the hell this is!" and screws up her face in disgust when you bring her fresh fruit.

I don't know why I love her but I do.

My mom and sister took her for the annual shopping trip last year so it's my turn and besides, my aunt needs the moral support.

Today just wasn't very interesting, sorry.

2008-12-08T23:55:00.000-08:00

For anyone who is remotely interested I finally finished the thing I was knitting earlier and you can see it blocking above. Laminaria in Louet Riverstone Chunky. It was a nice, easy little project that filled up the inevitable couple braindead days I have right at the end of the semester when I've finally handed in everything, as well as the couple of groggy days after I got my wisdom teeth out.

I think I may have overblocked it because the poor thing is kind of stiff, like I sprayed it with starch or something. I'm a little tempted to throw it into the dryer to soften it up, even though that can't be a good idea at all. It's prettier than it is cuddly, but maybe that will change.

Alright, enough about the knitting, eh?

The stitches in the roof of my mouth are gradually falling out but they're taking their sweet time doing it and brushing up against my tongue, which irritates me.

But what doesn't irritate me is that tomorrow I will be downtown, and that means that maybe I will have something interesting to talk about.

Three power outages in three days.

2008-12-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

Screw power outages. I study old skool.

Christmas in the park

2008-12-06T23:32:00.000-08:00

Today I was witness to one of the least inspiring Christmas parades I think I've seen in real life. You see these things in movies all the time. A Santa sits in a sleigh and says "Ho ho," half-heartedly as if he's bored or has so many other better things to be doing rather than entertaining children. You're only really supposed to see that lack of enthusiasm in Christmas specials. It shouldn't actually happen. Though, to be fair, it was raining and the poor guy didn't have any shelter.

As he passed by the people began to leave in waves that turned the ground slick and mucky. I was heading out for gelato so of course I was going the opposite direction, through the crowd.

The gelato shop has one of those fibreglass boys that sits inside the ice cream cone eating the gelato. For some reason those things inspire the most morbid of thoughts in me. I think as I walk by them that maybe those greedy little ice-cream-eating children wouldn't look so smug and greedy if all the ice cream suddenly melted and they were drowning in it. Too much of a good thing.

Gelato happens to be the perfect cure for a sore mouth brought on by chewing on your dinner. It is also a good source of comic relief as it turns out people like to laugh at the fact that I shiver uncontrollably while eating it out in the rain.

As far as I know, the only real difference between the old Rogers Video and the new Rogers Plus other than the rebranding is that the lineups are longer and the service is slower. While we waited in line, we braced ourselves for the upcoming encounter. They'd want our card, then they'd begin checking out the movie, removing the security thing from the box, then they'd remind us that previously viewed dvds are on sale, had we heard about the special they have on right now? you can get a free chocolate bar if you buy two bottles of Coke, or you can get a free bag of Clodhoppers, if you want, then they'd remind you that if you're in the market for a new phone or are planning on switching providers they're there and they can set you up, then they'll tell you the name of the movie you're taking out, tell you when it's due back, ask you for money, tell you how many points you have and how many more you need before you get your free rental or dvd, ask you if you want a bag and then send you out the door.

We were bang on.

Tonight's movie was Death at a Funeral which I thought was hilarious because it's morbid and British and Brits are funny.

You didn't want to see a picture of my breakfast anyways.

2008-12-05T23:13:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to a man's voice calling my name. I didn't recognize the voice at all and it turned out that there wasn't anyone calling for me. Either I was waking up from a dream that I don't really remember or it was the narcotics talking.

I spent most of today doing pretty much what I did last evening, only I was a little more groggy. Knitting, reading Charles Dickens and puttering about feeling groggy.

I kind of feel like a chipmunk right now. When I look in the mirror I don't look too terrible, but that doesn't stop me from thinking that my cheeks are puffed out halfway across the room. Definitely more swollen than yesterday.

The cat and I watched a documentary on Leni Riefenstahl, whose work I find pretty inspiring, fascist overtones and body fetishization aside. She had an incredible attention to detail and the ability to edit things together until they were just right, as well as the creativity to make up new techniques that are used in the film industry today.

When I started this post early this morning I had originally planned to write about what I ate for breakfast. I took pictures while I was cooking, specifically for this purpose. Then I remembered that I was making scrambled eggs and that that is not the least bit unusual or noteworthy.

Oh well.

Five teeth later.

2008-12-04T23:08:00.000-08:00

All in all it's been a good day.

I got my wisdom teeth out, plus another one for good measure. That was the little piece of corn thing that suddenly started showing up in my x-rays about 3 years ago. A little baby tooth that has since grown roots and become impacted up underneath my nose without breaking through the gums. I told them they could cut that out too, and that one required going in through the front of my gums and through the roof of my mouth simultaneously.

So needless to say I'm quite chipper. No, seriously. It's been 12 hours and the freezing has only worn off on the side where the teeth weren't impacted. My left side: cheek, jaw, gums, tongue, lips, nose, are all still pretty frozen. My left nostril was frozen shut for a while but I'm fine.

They sent me home with a care package of extra gauze, a syringe I'm supposed to use, ice packs and some organic ginger ale that is pretty awesome stuff. It's spicy because it actually tastes like ginger.

The only thing that bugs me at this point is that it all feels mildly itchy and swollen, I can't chew and I have developed an aptitude for slopping everything I try to eat down the front of me.

My mom's been fussy. She went out and got a bunch of jello and juice for me, and made soup for dinner. The crockpot is full of different soup for tomorrow.

Aside from that I've had a relatively unstrenuous time knitting this thing (almost done!), winding a ball of Schaefer Anne by hand and ploughing through some more Dickens.

I've also been cruising Etsy and getting lots of cool ideas, not because I see things I want to rip off, but because I can't find what I wanted to ogle and consider purchasing.

I decided that I was in the mood to do some woodwork, like carving something with a lathe or chisels or something, but mom vetoed the idea. I walked away giggling. She asked me how much codeine I had consumed and I hadn't had any by that point. I'm just naturally giggly.

The form that I got at the surgeon's told me that I'm not supposed to drive, operate aircraft or sign legal contracts right now. It most certainly did not forbid me to use pointy things that could possibly remove my fingers. But meh, I'm a sucker for a rational argument.

Your questions answered, once again.

2008-12-02T23:26:00.000-08:00

Google Analytics tells me that people arrive here all the time with questions, deep questions that need answering. Lucky for some of you random searchers who have landed on this site, I have some answers.

There was no alligator in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as far as I know, so I'm at a loss as to what to name this invisible alligator.

A filing cabinet is kind of big and clunky to be taking traveling with you, isn't it? I'd suggest getting a blackberry or a laptop instead, or if you're really into analog maybe a briefcase or a moleskine. They're easier to carry.

I don't personally know Leonard Cohen. I just think he's cool.

Unfortunately I can not supply you with free copies of Ukranian magazines.

Are you older than I think? How old did you think I thought you were?

The kitchen table in my apartment was a huge 50s arborite and chrome monster that was so kitschy and dated that I love it and refused to let it go when I moved. It's currently disassembled in the garage, and you can not have it.

No, I don't think Abby uses the vacuum cleaner much. Sometimes, but not much.

What is this alligator fungus you speak of? It sounds interesting!

Yes, I do have the recipe for the UBC Rise and Shine Muffins and they're nostalgically delicious. I may just share my version, but not today because I'm nasty and because their deliciousness deserves its own dedicated post. Maybe tomorrow?

If you ever find that picture of a beetle that looks like a stegosaurus you've got to show me. It sounds really cool.

My first job was as a janitor. I don't care what you say. Swilling out urinals will never be sexy, especially when a high proportion of guys seem to both miss the bowl and shed pubic hairs. Please take your "sexy cleaner" searches elsewhere. Thanks.

"Canadian forces polar fleece" must be more extreme and government-funded than regular polar fleece, eh?

Okay, here's how you get oxen to pull a cart:
1) Buy the oxen.
2) Press the button that says "Gruelling."
3) Ford the river.
4) Don't get dysentery.

I don't know how to stop a smoke alarm from tarping. Maybe you should try denying it access to a tarp.

Penicillin will kill me. It probably won't kill your cat if it's in a small, cat-appropriate dose, but you shouldn't be asking me about that. Talk to a vet.

I wasn't aware of a school policy against "holy jeans." But if your pants are too sacred, maybe you should try getting a priest to unbless them.

Yes, posse is an irregular verb.
Present: possum, potes, potest, possumus, potestis, possunt.
Imperfect: poteram, poteras, poterat, poteramus, poteratis, poterant
Future: potero, poteris, poterit, poterimus, poteritis, poterunt
Perfect: potui, potuisti, potuit, potuimus, potuistis, potuerunt
Pluperfect: potueram, potueras, potuerat, potueramus, potueratis, potuerant
Future Perfect: potuero, potueris, potuerit, potuerimus, potueritis, potuerint
Latin! I still have it!

109/365: Dr. C

2008-11-30T23:50:00.000-08:00

He did a nice job straightening out my teeth, and I liked him a lot better than my previous orthodontist. He had a huge cabinet of casts of people's teeth that fascinated me for the fact that they were white, clean and smooth while at the same time ugly and misshapen. The only thing I really didn't like about him was that he had very large hands. This wouldn't have been a problem except that I have a very small mouth, so I left every appointment with split lips. Not really his fault.

We can't speak.

2008-11-29T23:18:00.000-08:00

"There's an exhibit about early Russians at the Royal Ontario Museum. Maybe we should check it out, because it's old and Russian."

"I'm not surprised. There were early homonyms that have been found in Georgia."

"Did they find any cinnamons?"

"Evidently neither of us can speak."

End of semester blah

2008-11-28T23:54:00.000-08:00

Today I slept in until 2:00. I figure that means I'm part way toward recouping the sleep I lost earlier this week.

I started a brand new project last night, the one you can see above in the crappy picture. It's a shawl in chunky yarn that will hopefully not take very long to knit because suddenly it got very cold out and that cobweb-weight shetland stole thing that was supposed to replace my bedraggled old cream coloured pashmina that I wear with everything? Not going to happen. At least not this week.

I've also picked up A Tale of Two Cities again, or rather listened to it. I can't really hold books open while I'm knitting so it's either audiobooks or back issues of The Economist for me.

While I was cooking dinner I burned myself with some hot oil. To look at this in the most positive way possible, it added excitement to my life. Also, the burns look like little red ghosts. Spooky!

I also vacuumed today.

I needed a day like this.

The other reason why I don't take my computer to school

2008-11-27T23:15:00.000-08:00

I had to take my computer in to school today to work on a project in the lab, partially because they managed to enroll more people in the class than there were computers and partially because I was using a program that they didn't have in that lab.

I don't take my computer to school much anymore. I prefer to take my notes by hand because that way I'm far more likely to read them again. I find the people who play WoW and chat with friends during class really irritating and distracting. I also find professors' passive aggressive suggestions that people should put their laptops away because they're not paying attention irritating. On top of that, I find it irritating that people just go on using their computers in spite of being told to put them away are either not listening, don't have a good enough grasp of English to understand the sarcasm or are just stupid.

In a class that only has at max 12 people in attendance at a time, it's got to hurt your participation mark.

Anyways, I took my computer in today to work on because it was an open lab and having my computer at school tends to make me very self-conscious. Suddenly I become aware of the fact that my screen is dusty, like really dusty. The half-used kleenex from my pocket can't quite get all the dust off and it lingers in the corners to taunt me.

I also become aware of spatters on the screen, the origins of which are unclear to me. Was it something I ate? My grandmother possibly back from the dead? I suddenly find myself spitting into a new half-used kleenex from my other pocket so I can rub those off. You know like how your mom used to do with your face? Like that.

Then my messy desktop is suddenly at fault. There's nothing particularly embarassing on there. It's mostly photos with nondescript titles, some miscellaneous word and text documents and folders. I like to keep everything out there where I can see it, which is fine when it's only me who can see it. When others can see it it's like having people come over and sit on your couch only to realize that they've sat down on a pair of your underwear that just happens to be sitting there.

This results in a mad dash to clean up, one that is inevitably interrupted by a very helpful teaching assistant who is doing his rounds and wants to see how my design is coming along. This is when I fix him with my look of shock and horror because I've been caught shoveling files into my newly created "misc files" folder. He tells me to let him know if I need help with something and then moves on.

Usually I don't notice how slow my computer has become because I tend to start it up or open a bunch of programs and go make myself a snack while they load. No such option exists at school, so the time just seems to drag. It drags worse when someone's looking over my shoulder. I really hate how I feel like I have to make awkward small talk while I'm trying to show someone something.

"My computer's really slow!"

That's the other reason why I don't take my computer to school.

Fried fish

2008-11-26T21:39:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess there goes nablopomo for me. Last night I had bigger fish to fry, like writing a paper.

And then editing that paper. And pressing save frequently regardless of if I'd made any changes.

And then suddenly getting a weird error message that claimed that it couldn't save because the drive was "disconnected". Did I want to retry? Well, of course!

And noticing that somehow in all of this the file name at the top of the window had changed from what I had named it to ~wrd20495.tmp which couldn't possibly have been good.

And after getting tired of clicking "retry" to no effect, clicking "cancel" instead, having the whole computer shudder for a minute and then having word randomly disappear.

And looking for the file I was working on and finding that the whole thing (not just the most recent edits) was completely gone from the computer. And checking the temp save folder and not finding it there either. Restarting the computer to see if that would help but it doesn't.

And calling your computer a bitch, as if that would help but it doesn't.

Then brewing some coffee, sitting down and rewriting the whole thing so that I could go to school with no sleep and hand it in on time.

Bigger fish.

Late night paper writing

2008-11-24T23:42:00.000-08:00

For some reason today I thought it was next week. I was all ready to go downtown when I checked the date on my computer and then got back into my pyjamas to work on papers instead.

A couple of my friends decided that we should all exchange papers and that was probably a good idea except for the fact that it's meant that I've spent a lot of time going through theirs and not sending them mine because I have a chronic inability to write introductions or conclusions until about four hours before my papers are due.

I've been drawing pictures for one of my projects and I wanted to upload some but apparently my computer is blocking my ability to do so because it's dangerously low on virtual memory. What can I say? I like to live dangerously.

Or maybe it's just that my computer is four years old and only has a 40 gig hard drive, and that I'm running lots of big programs all at once.

I don't suppose it matters.

108/365: Anthony

2008-11-23T23:18:00.000-08:00

Anthony does lots of things people think he's not supposed to do. He wrestles, climbs mountains, rides bikes and drums in a band. When he wants to do something, he just tries it. Sometimes that works out well, and when it doesn't he just moves on to something else. In high school he was one of the few guys to take the time to be nice to me and treat me like I was pretty. He's blind.

I changed my mind.

2008-11-22T23:37:00.000-08:00

I am going go to school for another semester, not really because I need to but because I need some dental work and I don't want to pay for it. That's as good a reason as any.

Standard power outage procedure

2008-11-21T23:54:00.000-08:00

Remain calm.

Light hurricane lanterns.

Unplug major electronics.

Make tea on a propane stove.

Make pistachio pudding ghosties.

Play cribbage.

Sing made-up versions of Beatles songs.

You never know when you'll need a hammer.

2008-11-20T22:53:00.000-08:00

For some reason I'm reminded today of one time when we went camping with Girl Guides out at a campsite I can't remember the name of. It was next to a ravine and the trees there were full of tree forts and rope swings that due to official Girl Guide policy we probably weren't supposed to be playing in or even looking at without supervision and a first-aid attendant within arms-length.

But eventually we got bored and started wandering around the campsite. It was pretty large, if I remember correctly, and it didn't have a huge amount of people in it, which probably means that it wasn't in the Lower Mainland.

Anyways, eventually we ran into a couple with a baby who were having trouble putting up their tent. Being friendly Guides we decided that we would help them out.

They were from Quebec. They had flown out to BC, rented a car and purchased a tent and this was its first time out of the box. They had broken English and we had Broken French and we set about putting up this tent.

We didn't have much luck with it either, because we didn't realize at first that it was an odd kind of construction that required you to stake the whole thing down before you put it up, not like those spiffy dome tents we used all the time. Once we figured that out, we asked them if they had a hammer.

All of a sudden, the guy had the most ironic grin on his face and he said "I am a carpenter. I have nine hammer and I leave them all at home."

We lent them ours.

The 80s hurts my eyes

2008-11-19T22:16:00.000-08:00

Is it just me or is this video really unintentionally hilarious?

No, I don't spend all day trawling the internet for this stuff. I found it through Ben's twitter.

Nose to the books

2008-11-18T23:13:00.000-08:00

I've spent all night reading Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto. When I grow up I want to write like her.

By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. Thus cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the traditions of 'Western' science and politics--the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other - the relation between organism and machine has been a border war. The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. This chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction. It is also an effort to contribute to socialist-feminist culture and theory in a postmodernist, non-naturalist mode and in the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe also a world without end. The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history. Nor does it mark time on an oedipal calendar, attempting to heal the terrible cleavages of gender in an oral symbiotic utopia or post-oedipal apocalypse.

Seriously.

Mysteriously appearing architectural pop-up book

2008-11-17T23:55:00.000-08:00

These pictures are pretty horrible but I found this cool pop-up book on the kitchen table the other day and I think it's pretty awesome. Eventually I'm going to have to take some more pictures so that you can fully appreciate its awesomeness.

It's got all sorts of things you can assemble and pull apart and tug on which amused me for quite a long time, first because I had to see what everything did and try it all, and then second because I had to look at the whole thing again and think wait... someone designed that!

It also required the use of 3D glasses. Pretty awesome if you ask me.

Busy today

2008-11-16T23:06:00.000-08:00

Today I was at the last concert for the CBC Radio Orchestra which saw its funding axed earlier this year, ostensibly due to a change in funding priorities, but more likely because the Conservative Party doesn't particularly like the CBC and is trying to bleed it dry.

I have more thoughts to share about this but they'll have to wait because tonight I don't really have the time. If you're the least bit interested in the loss of North America's last radio orchestra or the recent downhill slide in the programming on CBC Radio 2, or even if you just think it's wrong that Stephen Harper thinks that the only people who care about art are rich, bitchy artists who live off government grants, please consider signing the petition, getting involved or joining some facebook groups: Save Classical Music at the CBC and Save the CBC Radio Orchestra.

I also went to some craft fairs today and have thoughts about that too. Better put that on my list of things to post about.

I don't like this not having any time thing.

Leonard Cohen can have coffee with me any time.

2008-11-15T13:34:00.000-08:00

Just think, wouldn't it be cool if you could climb onto Leonard Cohen's balcony and have coffee?

I think so.

There's always 2012

2008-11-14T23:12:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is municipal election day and I'm at a loss as to who to vote for. The news covers the Vancouver election, but pretty much ignores the suburbs, so as a new voter in this community and a relatively new resident it's confusing as hell.

It seems like everybody and their dog is running. That means 30+ candidates, none of which seem to be affiliated with any sort of party or eachother in any sort of way. I'm all for democracy, but that's too many candidates. I just can't process it.

Because of the lack of media coverage, I decided I would try and read up on who's running so that I could make an informed decision. I checked the local newspaper's website and this is what I found. Scroll through that for a bit. Can you read it? Me neither. I suspect that it's deliberately unformatted so as to make it as difficult as possible to read.

That's just the school trustees. The document for the council candidates was obviously too huge and unwieldy for them to even bother posting.

It also bugs me that the most important issue to all of these potential politicians is shopping. Each and every one seems to think we need more shopping. Big box shopping. The debate between them seems to be a matter of what kind of big box shopping the community most needs. Some say Wal*Mart. Others say Future Shop. A couple fringe candidates say Rietmans or Home Depot.

It's clear, though. Everyone seems to think that more soul-sucking big box stores would be an asset to Maple Ridge, and everyone seems to think that this is the issue that will make or break their campaigns. Not, you know, the fact that Maple Ridge just isn't a very good place to live in pretty much every single way I can think of.

All of that being said, I'm starting to kick myself that I'm not running. Not because I think I could do anything better or anything. Just these reasons:

They pay money and I need money. That seems like a good fit.

Statistically, people with names at the beginning of the alphabet do better in municipal elections. My name is at the beginning of the alphabet.

People with easy to remember, unusual names do better too. Mine stands out.

I would have a union endorsement. Union endorsements are gold.

I would actually know who to vote for.

I'm very tired.

2008-11-13T23:09:00.000-08:00

There was sun today! I'm really glad I carved out some time to go walking in it before I returned to the darkness of the lab to somehow regibble my wrist from using the mouse too much.

Some mysterious someone has posted a whole lot of signs all over campus. An artistic intervention of some sort. Each has two pictures on one side and a short poem about them on the other. They're intriguing, if nothing else.

Thursdays really aren't good blogging days for me. They're the end of my week, and the longest day of classes for me. Not to mention I got three hours of sleep last night.

The bus driver had to help me off the bus at the station, I was so out of it. He was very kind. By the time I hit the cold air, I was awake enough to thank him.

I think I'm done.

2008-11-12T23:01:00.000-08:00

I was talking to a friend this morning and I decided mid-conversation that I don't want to go back to school next semester. I don't really have a reason to.

I went to register for classes last night and I couldn't bring myself to do it. Technically I finished my degree two semesters ago. Another semester would just cost more money, that's all.

Right now I don't have much more to say. I'm working on a school project of ultimate coolness. Maybe I'll post a picture of it later after it gets ripped to shreds in design assessment in class tomorrow.

My family's contribution to the War

2008-11-11T22:43:00.000-08:00

When the War started, Canada got pulled in, just like that.

For some, it was an opportunity to act out fantasies of glory on the battlefield, to travel and see the world, to kill the nasty, evil Hun. For Vic, it was a free trip home to Wales. One day he announced to his family that he was leaving and within a week he was gone, dragging his underaged brother, Harry along with him.

And with that, the family who was already living semi-regularly on handouts lost its only source of occasional income. At the time, Winnifred had five children and another on the way. They lived in a house in the forest of North Burnaby that lacked running water and electricity and having only arrived in Canada two years earlier, had no other family to fall back upon. Unable to find a job and unable to feed the kids she had, she drove to Seattle where she had an abortion.

Meanwhile, Vic had been deployed to France with the Sappers and wasn't enjoying himself very much. Coincidentally, he just happened to suffer from an ear ache, which might possibly have been an infection. Then afterward, his teeth started bothering him and his eyes, because he needed glasses, and once he had glasses he was completely unsuitable for trench warfare and had to drive a truck in the back instead. Then he got the flu. Then he got gonnorhea. Then he suffered from some sort of stomach ailment. And another ear infection. Then he went AWOL. Then he spent some more time in hospital, and then was disciplined for theft of public property and then he got a mysterious concussion while he wasn't even fighting...

From what I can tell from his records it's likely he didn't spend more than about 28 days at the front during the duration of the War, after which the War ended and he was honourably discharged by King George. Harry returned a drug addict with permanent psychological and emotional damage.

The government only loves the working class when it needs to and dropped the patriotic slogans shortly after the Armistice. A lot of veterans came home to little or no support from the government for their lack of employment, disabilities and mental issues. Harry and Vic were both unemployed, Harry, because he was too shellshocked, and Vic... well, I don't know about Vic.

He used to find temporary employment strikebreaking in construction and in the dockyards. Life's dangerous for scabs, and eventually it got him killed. The details on this are fuzzy. You could blame the cold weather or the lack of safety regulations for the fact that he fell to his death into a ship's hold, but it's entirely possible that he was pushed.

Faced with the prospect of raising seven kids and a drug addict on a widow's pension of one dollar per child per month, Winnifred gathered everyone into the back of a 1912 McLaughlan-Buick and took them for a "holiday" in the interior where she abandoned three children by the side of the road.

It's the most powerful part of my grandfather's autobiography. Something that comes across in the written version, more so than when he used to tell it, was how terrified he was that he would be the next to be left behind, loathing and hatred for both his parents and the trauma of events that have left permanent rifts in my family. That chapter is the only one in the entire book that brings me to tears.

107/365: Stephen

2008-11-10T23:19:00.000-08:00

I could tell you that Stephen is a friendly, nice looking guy who plays hockey, gets good grades and raises money for social causes, but no, I want to tell you about his laugh. He has a deep, booming belly laugh that carries really far. You can hear him from the other end of the building. When people ask me to describe him to them this is always something that I mention. Then I get odd looks.

Stories from the 701

2008-11-09T23:57:00.000-08:00

I don't like this living two plus hours away from things. I miss things. I lose a lot of time on my way to missing things.

It's on days like this that the bus gets caught on the wrong side of the train tracks and you sit. Sit. Now, go.

One guy says he's waiting to join the army but he's fifteen. His friend nods, older, wiser? This guy had a girlfriend but she cheated on him, which was apparently expected. He turns toward voicing his fantasy of getting a MILF and her daughter hammered and pounding her in the ass...

"Ma'am?" he's turned to me. "Excuse me, ma'am, but do you know how long they've been doing construction on this bridge?"

I am all of three years older than him and he calls me ma'am. His sudden old skool politeness catches me offguard and I fumble my way through an answer. In a strange way, I feel old.

It is not just me. The bus ride has taken forever: an hour and twenty-five minutes. Long enough for me to miss my connection and make it pointless to continue any further.

I catch the next bus back the way I came. No matter how far you go, there's always the ride home.

Boy-girl party

2008-11-08T23:24:00.000-08:00

Some time around 11:30 at night I get caught in a time warp that magically transports me to 2am and I don't know where the time went or if I got something accomplished at all. It just disappears.

I was out leading a tour in the rain today. Ironically enough, this was for a group of single people sent out by a dating/matchmaking service, which has made me the butt of jokes by everyone I've told this too. Pfft. They were a decent group full of some pretty astute people who were engaged and listening to what I had to say.

I'm not sure why I feel I have to say they were a good group. All the groups I've ever taken out have been good, yet completely different from each other.

I found it funny that while once in a while people would cross the floor, the genders kind of clustered together. It reminded me a little of a middle school dance. Everyone's so shy.

Rain

2008-11-07T22:11:00.000-08:00

I had been waiting for the rain to come. Not wishing for it or willing it, but wondering when it was about to start. Up until now it seemed like we'd had a very unusually dry fall and something odd had been tugging at me, waiting for the rain to come back. This is not because I wanted it, but more because it just feels wrong this time of year to not have it around.

I don't know if I can really describe it to people who don't know it. If you're from Seattle, you've probably experienced it. I've heard on good authority that they have the same in Prince Rupert and Halifax too. It falls in teaspoon-sized drops that come down so fast, in such close proximity and with such regularity that there is no way to escape them. It cuts through your clothing and leaves you soaked. It cuts through umbrellas too. I don't think anyone's immune.

The world becomes grey and perpetually damp for weeks and it seems rarely, if ever to let up. It leaves me cold, with itchy, damp toes and wrists and a constant craving for home because home is warm and dry and nothing else is.

Yesterday on my way to school the bus driver changed the name of the bus from "SFU" to "SUNSHINE HILLS", which had a lot of people confused. "Hop on!" he said, "The sun is shining, the birds are singing on Burnaby Mountain!"

He got my hopes up, which made me that much more disappointed to find that school was the same old award-winning architectural grey dungeon, only flooded. How it can win awards and international acclaim and be so profoundly unsuited to the climate it is located in is beyond me.

I waded through the courtyards and pathways to class.

Less talk, more puppies

2008-11-06T08:16:00.000-08:00

These little guys remind me of rowers between races, only cuter and less prone to sunburn.

Because I have to have thoughts about the election too

2008-11-05T23:24:00.000-08:00

I was pretty reluctant to jump on the Obama train, but I'm glad he was elected, not so much because of him as a person or because it's a Democrat in power, but because I like the positive energy around his campaign.

I like the feeling of hope and desire for change and I like the way that spirit is infectious and has gotten a lot of people active and involved in their communities.

For all my cynical America bashing I don't dislike America or Americans. I dislike the fact that a country that was founded on such beautiful ideals continually falls short of them. I think this is an opportunity for people to realize some of the ideals that they pay lip service to.

This is not something that the president can do for people. He is one man who is inheriting a whole host of problems and fuckups from previous administrations. It is also a country where corporate lobby groups and concentrated media seek to undermine a lot of positive change, and where the ugly spectres of racism and religious fundamentalism are still issues. Obama has a tough road ahead if he wants to accomplish anything good.

But I think change comes from people. If you want anything good to happen you have to make it happen yourself. That's the American way, isn't it? Don't let the optimism die. Harness it and channel it into doing something good for your community, for your country, for other people. I'm talking to you, too, McCain/Palin supporters.

It's going to take a lot of effort to turn your loud-mouthed, jingoistic freighter of a country around. This is a chance to promote the peace, prosperity, democracy, freedom and opportunity you keep telling us you do.

I wish you the best of luck.

106/365: Peter

2008-11-04T12:21:00.000-08:00

He's got a Chinese name which can cause some confusion until you realize that he's such a hardcore feminist that he took his wife's name when he got married. He's a great prof to take classes with. He often starts his lectures by asking how everyone's weekends were and a discussion about the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica, and then the next thing you know you're all talking about database logic, data mining and protection of privacy. I'm not sure how that happens but it's great.

Klutzy in the kitchen today

2008-11-03T22:40:00.000-08:00

I hate how the packaging on spatulas always says that they're good up until a certain very high temperature but that never applies to their handles. So while the flipping part won't get melted into your food, you rest the thing on the side of the frying pan and then the handle begins to melt onto the edge and you just know that you'll never ever be able to get it off.

I also hate how while you're cutting onions sometimes the layers split off and they all fall apart into a big mess rather than staying together and being easy to cut. I don't like how sometimes this causes me to accidentally chop into my finger.

I do however like having fingernails, because they're harder to cut through, and sharp knives get stuck in them so that they don't slice right through the end of my finger. Yep, I love my fingernails.

Happy November!

2008-11-02T19:52:00.000-08:00

It's time for all the crazy things that people do in November - writing novels, blogging every day, knitting an entire sweater start to finish.

Since it's November you can count on me posting at least once a day here. I will most definitely not be writing the next great Canadian novel. I cast on for a sweater today but I'm not holding myself to finishing it any time soon because this is week 10 of a 13 week semester and my papers and projects are vortices that suck time.

I don't actually have the right circular needles for this sweater yet, but I swatched anyways. I had meant to drop by Dressew to pick some up last week but the place was swamped with Halloween shoppers and had a line out the door and down the block. Actually, now that my swatch is all dry, I think I'm going to go down a needle size anyways, so it's just as well I didn't buy any before.

Today we went to Hope to visit a plaque that was installed in memory of my grandparents. On our way out we stopped at Farm House Cheeses, where we picked up some cheese curds and some other stuff. I can not emphasize enough how much I love some of their cheeses. I love sticking Alpine Gold in my sandwiches. I think the smell of it is what does it for me. I also like their Castle Blue. It's kind of like a cambozola. Think blue cheese that's creamy, mild and has a rind.

We also stopped and bought hazelnuts and had pie at the Chilliwack Airport. This is now debated in the blogosphere but I still think they have really good pie.

We did not end up getting dinosaur cookies in Hope though. The bakery was closed. I'm not entirely sure if they're actually good cookies or not, or if I have been blinded by nostalgia into thinking that they are incredibly good, but either way a trip to Hope seems kind of lacking without them.

This year's pumpkin masterpiece

2008-11-01T23:23:00.000-07:00

Before we get too far into November I'd better post a picture of this year's pumpkin masterpieces. Pictured above is "Duck in the style of explodingdog" by Abby and "Horse from Picasso's Guernica" by myself. I was going to do the entire mural but I ran out of time. Mine got a lot of horrified looks from Maple Ridgians because modern art is scary.

My pumpkin ended up being about two and a half inches thick, so I'm kind of sad that I can't cook it. It would have made a lovely addition to the jars of last year's pumpkin that are sitting in the freezer in anticipation of acute vitamin A deficiency or the apocalypse. Whichever comes first.

I clap bilingually

2008-10-31T23:57:00.000-07:00

I had a dream the other night that I met a hobbit that looked like O'Brian from Star Trek. He had a face tattoo that I didn't like so I scrubbed it off with rubbing alcohol. I'm not sure why but it set the tone for the rest of the day in a really indescribable way.

I was at a concert that evening. It was not the Madonna concert that tied up traffic and filled all the restaurants and parking in the immediate vicinity, though I could certainly hear it while I was walking on the street outside.

No, it was a bilingual taping of a concert for the CBC, which is pretty much the same as a regular taping for the CBC, except that there's a lot more explaining and cheering to be done.

The hosts will stand on stage and explain in English and in French that this show is being taped for the CBC and will be broadcast whenever it will be broadcast. Then they will explain in both languages that they'll announce the band in French, and that we'll all have to cheer for a while. Then they'll announce the band again in English and we'll all have to cheer again before the band can come out. Some time afterward the CBC editing staff will be able to magically transform us all into a Francophone audience for Radio-Canada, because that's what TV is: magic.

I like going to these CBC things because they're free, which works well with my student budget and I never know what exactly I've signed up to see before I go so it's a surprise and surprises are fun.

This time the band was Pacifika, a Latin band that is apparently making some waves. I liked their music. It seemed like it took a while for them to hit that good groove where the audience gets into the performance, but it can be hard playing for a bunch of people who haven't really heard of you before and may not be familiar with your genre at all. The talking between songs was a little on the odd side though. My favourite line of the performance was "The next song has glockenspiel in it. It's a word I can say many times. Glockenspiel."

I saw Ian Hanomansing in the lobby while I was there. If Abby had sent her toyvoyagers with me like she'd suggested earlier I might have been the weirdo who asked him to pose with a bunch of stuffed animals for some pictures. Somehow I'm not horribly upset about that.

Finally some photos!

2008-10-29T23:25:00.000-07:00

I'm speechless, so here are some photos from the weekend.

Just what was this all about? Net neutrality andmedia reform.

The go go don't stop

2008-10-27T23:57:00.000-07:00

I printed out a project for school and it turns out that I made a huge mistake...

that turned out awesome! Yep, I totally meant for it to come out on tabloid sized sheets instead of 8 1/2x11, of course I did. I'm now busy ammending my thumbnails so that when I hand it in it will look very planned.

I had a meeting to go to near Dunbar this evening and I missed the bus that I should have taken to get to it. I didn't rememember which number that bus was or when it was supposed to come but I was certain that I had definitely missed it so I hopped on another one.

The thing about transit downtown is that I don't really know where all the routes go, but I get around just fine because there's enough transit coverage frequently enough that I just pick something that goes the direction that I want to go and transfer as needed if the bus starts going in the wrong direction for too long. If I have any problems with transit, I get out and navigate on foot.

Unfortunately, my choice of bus routes was sub-optimal today, and I ended up getting off on Quenesl near 27th, which really isn't anywhere close to Dunbar and it took me half an hour to walk to where I was actually supposed to go.

That's okay, though, because I like walking. I don't play sports anymore so it keeps me skinny.

I have also had slices of cake from three separate birthday cakes today. I think that was probably too much sugar.

School work trumps all, it seems

2008-10-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

I know I said I would have lots of cool photos to show today but school takes priority over everything and that's how I've spent most of my evening. Yay for school projects!

In all this, one thing has become clear to me: I hate stock photography. I hate how it looks like stock photography. I hate how they are always so deliberately posed. I hate how all the people are always white, and where they're not white, they're a specific minority group that was placed there to achieve a very calculated "diverse" look. I hate how they're always beaming from ear to ear, happily using their computers, happily demonstrating a point, happily having meetings, happily doing everything with perfect lighting and bland, nondescript surroundings.

But mostly I hate that the image I have in mind never seems to exist.

Bah!

Pictures tomorrow

2008-10-25T23:01:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to sleep well tonight.

I've been out running around all day, getting help with a project for one of my classes, helping with Media Democracy Day and taking pictures. I haven't put the pictures on my computer yet because I doubt I have the space for all of them right now. Bah, technology.

But I enjoyed myself. Met a lot of interesting people, heard a lot of interesting speeches, picked up a whack of pamphlets and things that hopefully I'll read.

I now have that sort of achey, vaguely sore feeling in my legs that comes from spending too much time on my feet on concrete floors. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say tomorrow once I'm more awake, and that it will probably be more interesting that way.

I mean, I could throw in a lot of things that are only moderately related to the above, like how the Westjet commercials on tv are reminding me that I love ginger ale and that I haven't had any for a very long time, or that the cat is staring at me right now or that I'm searching for the perfect pattern to make fingerless mitts for my sister to wear at work.

But I won't.

It's time to go to bed.

Fatigue

2008-10-23T23:35:00.000-07:00

Sitting and staring blankly at the computer seems to be my Thursday ritual these days. Something about the structure of my week this semester makes me progressively more tired until Friday comes and I can relax.

It's worse if I have errands to run on Monday, if I have to stay late to get some help with a project on Wednesday, and have something due on Thursday. All of these were the case this week.

It's even worse when little unexpected things happen, like a stall on the bridge that adds an hour to your commute home.

The night before last the cat woke me up at about 3:30 am because she was having a seizure on my bed. She wet herself and I spent the next half hour cleaning and doing laundry so that I could go back to sleep.

I'm really tired, which is probably the reason why I can't sleep.

105/365: M.S.

2008-10-21T23:16:00.000-07:00

She was so excited that she'd made a friend and little did I know at the time that she would become indellibly stuck to me for the rest of the semester. After our course together she had nothing for the rest of the day and I had a huge break, but on the first day after three hours with this person I had only just met I wanted a bit of alone time to study or sleep. I had been trying to explain this in a polite and inoffensive way for about an hour already and finally as an act of desperation I declared that I had to go to a class and stepped into a lecture hall.

It was a third year kineseology class and it was just starting. I sat down and ended up staying there for an hour. A guy asked me if I didn't understand the assignment either and I said no, I didn't. The class was super interesting though. Something about metabolizing proteins or something. Fascinating stuff.

She was waiting for me when I left the lecture hall. I never bothered to go to that fake class again, and she seemed to think that was really cool and typically caucasian and rebellious.

We ended up spending a lot of time together that semester, and I warmed up to her.

104/365: S.S.

2008-10-20T23:37:00.000-07:00

I did her filing because her work space looked like it was out of A Beautiful Mind. One minute she'd be proudly showing you pictures of her grandkids, the next she'd be muttering that she wanted to throw herself off a bridge and the next she'd be asking if your shirt was new. As much as this sounds like a chaotic and completely unworkable arrangement, I actually quite liked working with her because she was really a nice person. "Erin, you're like valium," she said to me one day "I see you and then I calm down."

Apples!

2008-10-19T22:22:00.000-07:00

At the Apple Festival three things prevented me from taking lots of pictures:

The blechy cloudy light.
The coldness of the air and my subsequent mitten wearage. They're awesome mittens but they really don't lend themselves well to easy camera operation.
The realization after the Apple Festival last year that all my photos were like carbon copies of all the photos I'd taken the year before.

So no pictures of the sixty kinds of apples I tried today and no more pictures of the minotaur. One thing that I did take a picture of though was my sister and her favourite hobby. I also got some advice about how to take care of my bees over the winter.

We had dinner at The Naam, which is a vegetarian restaurant in Kits. The food was delicious, especially their salad dressings and carrot cake and I should add that they make a decent cup of tea there too. Good restaurant tea is nearly impossible to find.

This is a post about food

2008-10-18T23:34:00.000-07:00

I found out today that the bucket of dates I had have been recalled and that I should return them to the store for full refund. Half of them have been eaten already to no noticeable ill effect.

Part of me is kicking myself for knowing better than to buy food from California because it's not local and local is best. Got to keep my food miles down, especially since I wrote an article for the newspaper about it that will be published within the next couple weeks.

The other part of me is thinking I should just finish off the bucket before I go in and get the refund. Am I weird?

It's been getting really cold overnight lately so today was a mad rush to harvest stuff from the garden. We have a heap of carrots, green tomatoes, some beets and I made emergency pesto. Surprisingly enough it tastes like pesto, and not, you know, like something else.

103/365: Abby

2008-10-17T23:01:00.000-07:00

Abby is my sister. I've known her since she was born. Well, maybe not quite because I wasn't there, so technically I've known her since I climbed into Mom's hospital bed and ate her hospital dinner. Abby was born in the middle of the Three Stooges Film Festival on TV. Then she was almost born on the porch, in the car and in emerg. She was purple for about three weeks after that, but I'm happy to say her complexion has improved since then. I also thought she smelled kind of funny at the time but that has also improved. One thing that I've noticed though is that she seems to have gained a lot of weight - a hundred pounds or so! Mom set a new record for post-natal hospital discharge because she needed to go home and finish my Halloween costume. The hospital staff thought she was insane but clearly my mother has her priorities in order.