Vanity

This just in: a guy fell off a boat and nearly drowned on a fishing trip because he was sleepwalking. Sounds like something I would do. I mean, I've woken up outdoors before, or with a completely different set of sheets on my bed. There have been times when I've woken up to find that I'd done a couple loads of laundry in the night.

You should try having a conversation with me while I'm asleep. I'm told that I don't always make sense. It scares me to think of what I might actually say in the middle of the night to whoever happens to be close enough to listen. I don't often say what's actually on my mind when I'm awake.

But what's more likely is that I'll be doing something absolutely pointless like taking poorly lit and framed pictures of myself with frizzy hair in front of the bathroom mirror. A malfunction in my camera will cause the flash to go off ten times as brightly as it usually does, startling me, causing me to trip over my own feet, falling backwards and smashing my head against the bathtub. While I'm lying unconscious on my back, I will aspirate on my own vomit and die.

Until then I'm just killing time.

My last assignment for school is due not this wednesday but the one after it. Then I can relax and regain my optimism.

Heritage

Today at lunch I noticed that my mother had left a back issue of The Beaver on the table, opened to a map of the area surrounding Kiev and Odessa. "It's our people," I said, pointing to the map, somewhere south of Chernobyl. Being thoroughbred Germans, it makes perfect sense that they lived in the breadbasket of Mother Russia, and not, say, in a place where people actually spoke German.

"Our people?" my father asked, "not my people."

"No, our people," mom said. "Vi vil have a German Christmas and explore our German roots."

"Ja," I always agree when she gets that way.

"And vi vil eat pickled beets!" she continues.

"Vi vil eat pickled everything!"

"Everything vi pickle!"

"And I vil bake a Stollen!" I shreik.

"Ja, because it's Christmas. Vi vil eat Stollen and YOU VIL LIKE IT!"

And that's about the time when my father backs out the door and starts mowing the lawn. This happens far more often than you might think.

Blank verse

Aurora carries with her morning sun
awakens birds from within the trees, calls
the alarm clock to sound its shrill complaint.

But Erin, go you to work this morning
to revel in the joys of Microsoft
Excel?

Tis so. It calls to me again.
For as long as I strut this pendant earth
these days of toil shall ne'er cease to pass.

Tomorrow we shall go to English Bay
where even now the sands swell, spectators
dig themselves trenches, birms against the tide
and lie in wait as armies against foes.
Come nightfall after Helios has gone
the length of Heaven to descend
behind the sea incendiary bombs
shall set the sky alight, now pregnant with
the glow of many thousand short lived stars
while thunder cracks swift reports o'erhead.

I've never been much good at this sort of stuff.

And now that I've put you to sleep

I have a paper due tomorrow, but I lack the motivation to finish it tonight. This weekend I will sequester myself and on Monday I'll fax it in, relatively unscathed with a 2% penalty. Yes, 2%. Apparently we're still in elementary school. Stickers for participation and a letter home to your mom saying how you're doing.

Maybe I'll get a button. I like buttons.

Speaking of buttons, Kathy's going to show me how to use the button machine at school so that I can make my own with Marshall McLuhan's face on them, because everyone wants a McLuhan button of course.

The button machine was created so that the buttons could have more buttons, of course. Or I was created, or whatever.

I've never been quite sure what to think of McLuhan, really. On one hand, he was visionary, I guess, but on the other, he came up with a lot of crazy shit. Nonetheless, he has a much more recognizeable face than, say Ong or Berners-Lee, which helps.

Insert something actually interesting here.

Hubert

And furthermore, it should be noted that yesterday I fell asleep on the bus on my way home early from work and didn't wake up until I was far beyond my stop and in Poco, no less. We all know what Matt Good says about Poco girls. They wear jackets with detatchable hoods, of course.

Sometimes I forget how public my life has become lately. I was watering the plants on my patio when all of a sudden someone yelled out at me "where did you get your watering can? It's cool!" I had to wait a moment for the synapses to fire and process the situation. ie:

I am standing outside on my balcony
&there4
people can see me
&there4
someone is talking to me
&there4
I'm expected to respond

It's going to take a while for me to get used to this stuff.

In rushes public relations aspirations Erin who kindly states that I got my absolutely awesome watering can from a store in Steveston called Prickly Pear, but that I know that you can get the same ones in white and pink from the gardening shop between the cement factory and Granville Island Market on Granville Island.

Then a very polite, grandfatherly looking man asked me if I lived here alone. "Of course not," I lied, which put him instantly at ease. Young girls shouldn't live alone, you know. They need nice men to protect them. I guess it wasn't completely a lie, though. Gradually I'm beginning to fashion a sasquatch of a boyfriend out of the hair I pull out of the drain in my shower. I'll zap him to life once I find some batteries for my TV remote.

With the rate that I shed, I figure it will be another three months before he weighs as much as a regular boyfriend. We're going to have to work on conversation skills though.

His name is Hubert.

You know, most of the time when I'm writing or talking I stop far short of what I'm actually thinking. Far short. I just got an absolutely disgusting mental image of me screwing a matted clump of my own hair and it wasn't pretty. I'm absolutely disgusted. Tonight, at least, I sleep alone. Be joyful.

Sick

I don't have a garburator so stuff that eventually goes moldy in my fridge eventually goes down the toilet. My mother made the poorly timed suggestion that I should clean the rotten things out of my fridge today. I had to tell her that no, I'd already seen enough of the inside of the toilet for one day.

I wish ice cream tasted as good coming up as going down.

And someone tried to hack into my ebay account. They're clever, those hackers.

Beach!

Posting will be light and erratic until Friday. I've got a couple too many things on the go right now, and they happen to be essential things, like work, school and registering for more school, as well as some less essential but importaint things, like sleep and tracking down a certain Belgian who seems to have disappeared from my fair city, or at least that's what the automated lady tells me in French when I call his phone, . I promised Peter that I'd write a guestpost and I haven't forgotten about him. I'll get to it once I stop pulling out my hair. Honest.

In the meantime, let's go to the beach.

Today's a good day for sailing

Won first prize at the fair today. I get to take my ribbon home sometime next week.

Saw Measure for Measure at the Bard. It's a play that defies categorization. Not tragic enough to be a tragedy, but far too dark to be a comedy. I'd be more inclined to call it a tragedy though, because though no one dies in the end, truth and innocence falls victim to lust and corruption, and none of that is really made right by the end of the play. Shakespeare must have been feeling pretty cynical about the world when he wrote that one.

Ate a pleasant salad nicoise at Bridges where the tuna was delicious, though a tad overdone for my liking. I like it rare, really rare. Like flopping around on your plate rare. Once I find some decent grade fish nearby I'm going to cook stuff like that here too.

We met vikings on the high seas, but the water was so rough that they had to be towed back in to the dock. Crazy Norwegians. No trans-Atlantic trips today.

The water was so rough that it kept stealing the sticks away from the dogs on the beach. Poor guys.

I didn't mind though. The wind made the heat almost bearable.

To China with love

Devon was in poor form last night. Most days he's a constant stream of innuendo and wordplay But we had to look elsewhere for entertainment. It was like he was barely at his own party, like he's finally realized exactly how long he's going to be away and what he's been dragged into.

It was far too hot at his house and we got bored watching the 10th generation inbred mutant guppies so we ran down to the waterpark, where we all got thoroughly soaked in our clothes. It was so hot out that by the time we walked the one block back to the house I was almost completely dry.

I think Devon's in for a culture shock. There's a good chance that he might be one of the tallest people in China by this time tomorrow. Someone really should have tied a brick to his head when he was younger.

Right now I'm eating tortellini with raspberries on top. I have nothing interesting to say.

Solitary life

Cooking for one is such a bitch. You're continually asking yourself the question, do I really eat that little? and adding a little more, a little more to the pot, until you have enough food for a week.

Then that's all you eat, breakfast, lunch and dinner, except for breakfast you eat it with a kiwi.

It's economies of scale. When you have to go through the same time and effort to make a little, then why not make a lot instead? Then you don't waste any time the next day, or the next when you are stuck eating the same thing and the same thing.

Every day is exactly the same. No amount of beating my head against these four walls can change that.

Every day I get this strange feeling almost like the receptionist is trying to buy me off with imported chocolate bars and coffee and lunch and such. I think I'm just paranoid, but still. I've always had a hard time accepting gifts and anything that looks remotely like a handout, especially things for no reason so it puts me on edge all the time.

Anyways, today she decided that I needed a daytimer and some other cool, useful but completely unnecessary things, like a nifty government insignia clipboard that she picked out of a catalogue and charged to the government. Your tax dollars at work. Anyone else notice that their income tax went up recently? Mine did. Good job, Harper.

Oh well, these things will keep me organized and allow me to work on the train so they're good expenses, I guess. If I used government credit cards to, say, book a flight to Norway tomorrow, there'd be cause for concern.

But if you must know, I ordered a new stapler. Shoot me.

Something to add to my daytimer, when I get it:
I can't remember. That's why I have to write these things down.