Uneventful day

I'm positively speechless right now.

I had plans today but they fell through. I did a little bit of cleaning and baked some scones because it was cooler out today and I'm out of bread. I read a bit for school and took notes because I'm ueber cool like that.

Things my sister has said within the past 20 minutes:

"I wonder what shampoo Beck uses."

Me: "Oh Sally, are you being a sphinx cat?"

Du: "As long as she's not being a sphincter cat!"

I'm turning into my mother

I heard from someone once that one of the great tragedies of this day and age is that music has gone from being a collective thing to something that people do alone. Add this to the fact that I live on my own, I haven't listened to the radio in three years and have random taste at the best of times, and suddenly I get Nickelback tickets for my birthday.

Not that this is an entirely bad thing. At the risk of completely destroying whatever indie cred I have, I will actually admit to having their first four albums, even though I haven't listened to them in a long time. I've found their albums alternate. They'll put out one I don't mind listening to, and then I will think the next one sucks, and then the next one decent. Unfortunately for the most recent album, the pattern dictates that I will think it will suck if I listen to the whole thing through. Not to mention, I don't listen to the radio anymore so I really wasn't aware of when it was released.

But still, they do put on an exciting show, if you can get through the openers (none of which I liked). They throw beer at the audience and explode lots of stuff, which is good because I'm a pyro at heart.

It's like somehow or other someone flipped the male attention switch on about three months ago and now all of a sudden I get ogled in public and poked on facebook and such on a near daily basis so I wasn't overly surprised when the tool that sat down beside me wanted to start a conversation.

"So, you ladies aren't drinking anything?"

"No, I've got a stick up my ass."

Though you'd think that he would have known that without even talking to me. I mean I was wearing a non-cleavage showing merino wool sweater and a pair of conservative black slacks to a Nickelback concert. I guess I could have brought a change of clothes to work with me but I didn't feel like it. No matter. He soon found the kind of girls he was originally after - plastered and loose, which worked out well for all of us.

Christ, some days I sound just like my mother.

I happen to have the world's smallest bladder, and that if I have one glass of beer, it's pretty much guaranteed that I'm going to have to pee twice within the next fourty minutes, or else sit and look really uncomfortable until I've waited a period of time which I consider to be 'normal' before I relieve myself. I find I'm better off with shots, but they don't sell those at GM Place. I think I should find the perfect mathematical equation to describe whether or not I should drink a given alcoholic beverage, call it the "piss factor", write a book about it and make myself rich.

The Victoria trip of awesomeness

Kevin commented on a photo on my flickr which reminded me that I really haven't said much about going to Victoria two weeks ago.



Well, we can't seem to go to Victoria without going to Roger's chocolates. There's one in Vancouver now which is actually within walking distance of where I work but it's not quite the same because the original store has stained glass and fancy woodwork and such that is pretty hard and expensive to replicate elsewhere.





I've always loved this mural. I think it must be the orange stripe that does it for me.



There was a hot rod show the same weekend. It meant that we were stuck in a crappier motel than usual, and that the whole town was filled with things that had formerly been beautiful cars that had been souped up, painted ugly colours and completely bastardized. They were driven by old men who went up and down the same streets over and over and over. Can we say juvenile?

I'm happy to say that the above car was completely stock, and as such, it was the only one I took a picture of.





Stopped at Munro's books, just because it's a really cool bookstore. Just look at t and try to tell me that you too would probably succumb to the temptation of buying books at such a place. Walked out with arms full.



Went to a restaurant where they had this fishtank thing. If they'd left me there I would have been amused for hours because the fish just. keep. swimming. by.



Came home with the sunset.

In which I experience a temporary bout of paranoia

All I can say is that I've been really, really on edge since yesterday. I went to bed tired last night and woke up genuinely paranoid about practically everything.

Part of it's just where my head is at right now and part of it is that I'm taking a course overload at school next semester and the books aren't in at the bookstore yet. Part of it is that I've got a lot of social stuff happening in the next couple of weeks when I'm usually used to doing absolutely nothing that doesn't involve work or getting groceries.

So then all of a sudden I'm in a band because "you're in our band and you're coming to jam with us" and someone on Facebook is quite insistent that we absolutely have to have brunch and I'm wondering why the hell that is, especially since we've never met and are you just being friendly or do you like me or something? And why this week? Why not later? Why not never? Why not let me curl up under a rock and die?

And then there's the damn wedding coming up and if there's a possible way that I can get out of it I will. But it's looking like there won't be. As much as I don't really feel all that close to the bride I've known the maid of honour for almost 17 years and I can't really leave her can I? But as much as I try to be positive, everything about this whole thing makes me feel bitter and angry and I just want it to be over with.

Then I'm going to go see Wilco with Peter and his entourage which is cool because I wanted to go anyways, and I don't think it would be even possible for him to come across as anything but a really nice person. It's getting home afterward that's got me paranoid, because I could take the bus and if all else fails, I could walk home from wherever. And then I start going off on a tangent and think that I could just round a bunch of people up and take them home with me but do I have enough sleeping bags? And wouldn't I feel bad about possibly waking them up accidentally when I have to work in the morning (because as far as I'm concerned I can leave people with a spare key and they can let themselves out)? And what if someone falls down the ladder from the loft and cracks their head open (do I have insurance for that?) and what if I don't have enough cheerios and aren't you a dumbass for expecting people to have to bus an extra hour to get back to the ferry the next day.

But at the same time I think I've got a couch and lots and lots of room and foam and five sleeping bags and I could easily offer it to anyone but I'd rather they just ask nicely and I'd just say yeah, go ahead but be warned I'm out of food and toothpaste and I get dibs on the shower and let me know you're coming so I can clean a little.

And I know that I get lonely sitting at home alone sometimes, and that I think that I should meet some new people and get out more, but damn it, I'm not feeling good about some of this stuff at all.

I'm not usually like this. I am not usually like this at all. Sheisse.

David vs. Godzilla

Today, which is actually yesterday because I never bothered to post this post, I picked the blueberries in my parents' backyard, ate more cat shit cake and read all about Faust and Gretchen for school. Yay.

I watched this video called Process Enacted that I found on Wooster Collective, that I found to be pretty cool.



Then my sister showed me this next one, which is also pretty cool. It's a way of multiplying big numbers with each other, but it would be cooler if it was better lit and if the camera didn't shake as much.



Yesterday Mom, Abby and I discussed whether the Bible would have been more exciting if it had Godzilla vs. David and whether we thought that Godzilla could take King Kong or not.

After about twenty minutes and a variety of different possibilities, we decided that it came down to climate. Godzilla's a reptile, so in order for us to rig it so that King Kong wins, we'd have to have the match in the winter. Godzilla would be cold and sluggish and King Kong would have an easy time of it.

But Godzilla's Japanese, and the Japanese are good at making all sorts of cool technology and gadgets so if Godzilla made himself a heat lamp backpack he'd be pretty much invincible.

My mom begins to choke on her food and says "I have two university degrees, you know. I went to graduate school." I told her that the reason why we go to university is so that we can examine such questions far more thoroughly than uneducated people, because clearly, the outcome of a tv monster throwdown is really important.

I mean, why else would you bother with education anyways?

Happy birthday to me.

It's my birthday my sister baked me a cake. It was, well... Just look at it:

Fireworks

Enough fireworks for you? I posted some more to my flickr. There aren't very many because not a lot of them turned out very well. Once again I left my tripod at home so some were kind of blurry. On top of that, the wind wasn't going in the right direction so it was kind of smoky, and hard to get clear pictures of the fireworks anyways. Add that to the fact that half the show was kind of repetitive and not particularly memorable and the fact that my autofocus has been particularly temperamental lately. Oh well.

But still, if you take a couple hundred photos you're bound to get a couple that are half decent so I stuck them up on my flickr.

Don't you worry though. I've got tons of photos from Victoria to dump on you too.

Some people are barbecuing just underneath my window and the wind is bringing the smoke right through my apartment. I can either close my windows and bake to death or breathe smoke and asphyxiate myself. I'm having trouble breathing and the smell has already made me vomit once. I think I'm going to go for a walk.

My father has conscripted me into teaching afterschool sewing and craft classes to kids at inner-city schools. I'll get paid reasonably well to do it but all the same I'm scrambling to find stuff to do with the kids because by the time the program starts in September I'm going to be in over my head with student union stuff and my course overload at school.

I'm going to walk to the library. The air should be cleaner there.

I pry open elevator doors with my bare hands. You will bow to my awesome strength.

I used to work in a building that had really fast closing elevators. The moment you approached them, they'd slam closed and you'd be left in the lobby. Another one would open and then I'd run over only to have the doors slam on my face.

I didn't work there for very long but I think it rattled me because now every single time an elevator closes before I can get to it, I think that maybe I could have stopped it by sticking my arm in it or something and I vow that next time I will. I never do.

Until earlier this week. That was when I snapped. I saw the elevator doors closing and I ran up to shove my arm in. I must have hesitated at the last minute because I only managed to get my fingers in before the door closed on them.

It was at that moment that it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps I was doing something stupid. It was also the same moment that instead of working my trapped hand out, I shoved my other hand in and began to pry open the doors. After a tense moment, they opened.

This would have been perfectly fine, had there been no witnesses but it just so happened that a couple of my coworkers were standing right behind me. Lovely.

But now that I have a taste for blood I've been tempted to do the same thing over and over. It's kind of like having a touch with death and seeing what's on the other side. Only kind of.

Not really.

Today's not really my day.

I have tons and tons and tons of photos to upload. It's going to take me a while.

Today while I was standing at an intersection, a man started talking pleasantries while he unzipped his fly and began to pee all over the pavement. Few things shock me anymore.

I got off work early today because it's a long weekend and once home, quickly descended into a not-so-good mood. To cheer myself up, I popped the copy of Hospital Music I bought on Tuesday into my CD player. I don't really buy many CD's anymore, especially now that I've put some speakers on my computer that sound reasonably good.

It really didn't take it long to become my favourite album, so when I played it once through, it sounded excellent. Then I decided to play it a second time. I pressed the button and the machine started to shuffle.

All of a sudden a high-pitched squeal came from out of the middle of it. It's a sound I've heard before, the sound of my CD player eating another CD. Sonofabitch.

If I had a guarantee that I wouldn't be evicted, and if I didn't have two other CDs in there that are probably fine, I would throw it out the window.

Instead I'm going to have to pull the whole fucking thing apart with a screwdriver. Graaaargh!

Hotdog stands make crappy landmarks

My mission last night: find my friends at the fireworks.

Main obstacles: by the time I got down to the beach it was dark. I had been told to meet someone in front of the Sylvia Hotel, which isn't all that hard to find.

When I got there, there was no one waiting for me. Instead, they decided that they would give me directions to their spot, which they said was right in front of the hotel. Right in front of the porto potties in front of the Sylvia hotel.

"Okay, I'm right beside the porto potties now. Where are you?"

"Right beside the St. John Ambulance truck."

"I don't see you."

"See the guys with the light sabres?"

"No."

"Where the hell are you then?"

"I'm right beside the porto potties in front of the Sylvia Hotel, standing in front of the crowd of police."

"What police?"

Long story short, they were nowhere near the Sylvia and my friends really suck at directions.