September 2006 Archives

 1. How would you describe your current mood? low. flat. resigned. tired. sick. bored. anxious.
 2. What are you wearing? new brown shirt with the daringly low neckline, used-to-be-black jeans, merrells with brown & black socks.
 3. What one thing do you NEED to get done today? last night's dinner dishes.
 4. Do you do anything that consistently annoys the people around you? wow, were you eavesdropping last night? uh, yeah, saying i'm not hot enough for christopher.
 5. What did you have for breakfast? mini kit-kat bars & coffee.
 6. If someone told you that you could earn a million dollars this year as a spammer and NOT GET CAUGHT, would you do it? hell, yes.
 7. Are you good at arguing? not at all.
 8. Do you enjoy seafood? fishes, shrimps and crustaceans. not so much the shelled variety.
 9. Do you often say you “don’t like” certain foods, while really meaning that you’ve never tried them? not any more. i'm much more willing to try something new now than to immediately dismiss it.
10. What is your relationship with your television like? we're like ex-lovers who tried to be friends, but still end up sleeping together once in a while anyway and feeling like shit about it the next day.
11. Do you eat enough fruit? not at all.
12. Did you know I was going on a work boat cruise tonight? nope. don't fall overboard.
13. Do you believe the boat will sink? i seriously doubt that.
14. Do you have any weird health fears (Microwaving styrofoam gives you cancer, eating cherries and drinking water will make your stomach explode, etc.)? i used to think eating apple seeds would make an apple tree grow in my stomach and its branches would come out of my ears and nose and mouth. now... i'm resigned to the fact that everything we do will eventually kill us, so there's little point in worrying yourself do death about it. heh. irony. cool.

[thanks meg fowler]

i'm really glad i stopped to take the photo i posted yesterday. when i got home from work last night, both the chair (which had been there for weeks) and the green elf shoes were gone from the back of my apartment building. i would have been sad if i'd missed the opportunity to capture them.

the roasted tomato soup was FABULOUS! i may never ever have Campbell's brand again. that's huge for me to say, too. Campbell's tomato soup (with lots of pepper) is my ultimate comfort food.

i'm getting sick. i was up most of the night with a sore throat and my continuing ear-ache. i probably got the germs from julie, but it would be rude of me to blame her. don't shoot the messenger, yadda yadda.

i think i might go to Metrotown at lunch to try on the shoes i saw the other night. i need a new pair of black shoes to go with my superawesome new pants (shit! i should have brought them with me to drop off for hemming. damn.). while i'm there, i should probably go to Sears and get a new bra. the underwire in mine snapped last night. stupid underwire.

myself and a few friends are going to see darren's play 'bolloxed' at the Kay Meek Centre in West Vancouver tomorrow night. i'm very glad there is this encore performance outside of the fringe festival or i might have missed it entirely. i'm very excited. you should come, it'll be awesome.

my dad is going to europe tomorrow. i'm so envious i could spit. of course, i realize that if i were to be more frugal with my money and judicious with my alloted vacation time, i, too, could go to europe. i guess i should, at least, be glad that there's little chance that europe will be going anywhere in the next 30 years, so i will still have the opportunity to experience it. i hope.

as i sit here nursing my sore neck and sipping my first dose of caffeine for the day, there's a big ol' roast beef slowly cooking in the slow cooker at home. there's also a baking dish full of roasted tomatoes, onion & garlic in my fridge waiting to be turned into roasted tomato soup (the recipe for which i found on flickr of all places).

by the time four o'clock yesterday came around, i felt horrible. physically, mentally, everywhichwayily. i kind of snapped at christopher on the phone, which i felt bad about. so, because i really needed to both apologize to him and be hugged, i drove to his place unannounced and just kind of fell into him when he opened the door.

god, i hate it when i have moods.

going home and getting reacquainted with my space helped to settle me a lot. i did some shopping, watched some brain-rot, washed my new clothes, prepped the above-mentioned food, talked to jen on the phone, ate a halibut burger and generally had a quiet evening at home. alone. all by myself. after spending three days in very close quarters with my mom, it was much-needed. very much-needed.

i've promised myself that once i finish the four rolls of film which are currently loaded in cameras i will not shoot any more film until i've caught up on the innumerable sets of negatives which need scanning. i'm hoping that such a strict restriction will encourage me to just get it done already. seriously, there are rolls going back to mid-june, for pete's sake. plus, i owe my eastern-living family photos from the reunion in july, which i've not even attempted to sort and process. i'm such a horrible slacker.

i blame the fact that i hate my computer chair. it's uncomfortable to sit in for long periods of time. that's a good reason, right?

back at home. back at work. back to real life.

this is the last day of my victoria mini-vacation. so far, i've eaten enough food for a family of five, spent all my paper money at the casino, discovered three thrift shops in a two-block radius i must go scour for cameras, had a long and superfabulous lunch with jim and julie (and got a parking ticket because time got away from us), won over the housecats and watched more television than i have in two months.

today, we're going shopping for clothes for mom, picking up noodle box for lunch, then going to the ferry via those three thrift shops in brentwood bay. if nothing goes amiss, i should be home no later than nine.

it's just too bad i have to go back to work tomorrow. at least it means i get to see christopher. i've missed him.

first off, and before i forget, i had the weirdest, most vivid dreams last night. the basic storyline was that heather 'dooce' armstrong was going out of town and she asked me to stay with her husband, jon, so that i could help out with her daughter, leta. cut to me in the armstrong home. leta is bigger than i thought, and so cute you really do want to lick her like a lollipop. jon isn't around much, but every time i want to use the internet -- which was dial-up? c'mon! -- he needed to phone someone, so i spent a lot of time apologizing and saying things like "it's almost finished uploading!" and "just one more photo!".

then, out of the blue, rick shows up for a visit with me. he's sitting there in an adirondack chair, decked out in his arkansas razorback trucker hat and tank top, being his normal dirty, perverted self. i'm standing there talking to him and he's wiggling his lower parts around like a puppy with too much energy. "see? you make me crazy!" he says. then, in that strange way dreams have, i knew what he was thinking: taking me into the back room and finally getting into my pants after 11 years, which got me thinking about how we couldn't do that because there'd be too much noise and jon & leta would hear us and i just couldn't do that to heather. that's about the time jon walked into the room and i had to explain to him who rick was and why he'd showed up.

then the dinner guests arrived. i turned around to get something or pick up leta and i was back in my own bed, rolling over to turn off the alarm.

dreams are SO WEIRD!

so, last night i went to a pair of photography exhibits in north shore galleries with some vandigicammers. first, it was to the edward burtynsky show at presentation house. next, we went to a horrible dinner at flavour of india (seriously, it's all palki for me from now on). finally, we stopped by gallery yoyo to see the group show nicole dextras was in with three other women artists.

i hadn't high hopes for the evening when we set out due to a massive, awful, excrutiating headache which started creeping up the back of my head mid-afternoon. by the time i'd picked up christopher and we'd gotten to my place, i was *this* close to taking to my bed to sleep it off. instead, i took a handful of ibuprofin, sucked it up and off we went. it took a while, but the drugs finally worked, so by the time we got to dinner i was feeling a lot better. so much so, even the awful service and mediocre food at dinner didn't bother me.

the shows were good, if a little bland. i'd heard the Edward Burtynsky exhibit called "the 'Where's Waldo?' show", which is such a perfect description. the large photos had massive amounts of tiny details contained within them. it was fascinating to get very close and look for small treasures within the larger, mostly overwhelming, scenes.

after the second show, my headache started to return, so chris and i made an early exit and went back to mine to hang out and smell the roses he gave me.

it feels like it's going to be a very busy next few days for me. i have tonight and tomorrow morning to prepare for my trip to victoria i undertake very early sunday morning. i still have to try to get ahold of jason and julie to see if they want to/are able to do something while i'm in their town. i hardly ever get over there, so i really hope they can fit me into their schedules somewhere. so, there's laundry, shopping, packing and present-wrapping to be done in the next day and a half. also, there might be some social stuff thrown in, too.

so busy! too bad i can't sleep on the ferry.

i know it's fall in vancouver when the harbour is filled with fog when i drive over the bridge on my way to work, just as it was this morning. ah... autumn. i'm so glad you're here.

just when i thought the day was going to suck, things got better.

had some good chats, got some work done, ate a yummy halibut burger, went digital camera shopping with my dad, bought booze & ordered pizza, received amazingly beautiful flowers from both jen and christopher (i heart flowers), watched the polish james dean on tv, slayed at scrabble, learned that i'd obviously read the abridged version of 'to kill a mockingbird' in highschool and went to bed way, way, way too late for a work night.

i'm hurting today, but it was so very worth it.

thanks, everyone!

i think it's a bad sign when the highlight of your day thusfar is getting an extra piece of cheese on your sub.

i don't care how much of a dork it makes me, i LOVELOVELOVE the satisfaction of having a clean & tidy apartment.

most everyone i know has been to europe. except me.

i have too many shoes. i will rectify that sometime this week.

me. victoria. this sunday to tuesday. let's do stuff.

my fridge is chock full of food i will probably end up throwing away.

for years and years and years, i've been an ivory girl. now, i'm all about the dove soap. it's 1/4 moisturizing cream!

i'm seriously considering cooking thanksgiving dinner. christopher might be right about my being a crazy lady.

i'm getting really fucking tired of waking up with a headache.

that is all.

i'm a little cranky today. i think it was because i finally had a decent night's sleep and the whole process of getting up and out of my super comfy and warm bed at 6am was traumatizing to my psyche.

christopher went with me to my neurologist appointment yesterday, bless his heart. i feel bad for his spending so much time waiting for me in doctors' waiting rooms this summer. anyway, the brain doctor said, after listening to me ramble and then hitting me with a rubber mallet, that i'm perfectly normal and it was very likely a virus which caused all my symptoms back in june. i told him that i very nearly cancelled the appointment with him because i had been symptom-free for so long and i didn't want to waste his time, but he was quite adamant that it was a very good thing i didn't. just because i'm normal now doesn't mean i was normal then nor i will be normal in the future. at least there's currently a baseline and history if something like this should happen again.

after getting my bill of health cleaned, i dragged chris down to the mall to pick up my ring from the jewellers. you see, he gave me this old ring of his some months back. one of those spinner rings you get for cheap from people on granville street and -- because i'm sentimental like that -- i'd been wearing it ever since. last week, while driving around, i suddenly realized that the spinning part had split. i was very upset by this. i immediately thought of it as an ill omen and panicked.

chris kept saying he would just buy me a new ring since it was going to cost as much to repair as to replace, but, being the sappy fool i am, i refused the suggestion. i wanted THAT ring, the ring he GAVE me, the ring he WORE, not some second-string ring. sheesh. so, it went to the jewellers for repair.

well, they were supposed to phone me last week to let me know if it could be fixed without ruining the awesome spinning action. they didn't call. my hands felt so naked and exposed without that piece of silver on my finger. i was going to phone them yesterday, but decided a visit was in order, so down we went. the lady with far too much makeup on found my ring in the 'completed' pile and when she pulled it out of the little white envelope, both christopher and i were temporarily blinded. it shone with the light of a thousand stars, it was polished so smooth. i asked chris if it had ever been so shiny. he said no, not ever.

after giving the spackled lady my $15 (plus tax), i slipped the ring back on my finger with a small, inner sigh. i'm still bedazzled by just how brilliant it is, but it's back where i want it, and it spins just like it should, and i'm happy about it all.

by the way, if anyone catches me trying to buy anything on ebay for the next, say, YEAR you have my permission to beat the living crap out of me. by the time all my recent purchases come in, i'll have no room in my fridge for food because it will be filled with film. so much film i won't have to buy any for the rest of my life. the scary thing is i'm only exaggerating a little. seriously. it's a sickness. i'm surprised the neurologist didn't diagnose it.

my free will horoscope (found via rachael) for this week:

*sigh* i'm having a lot of trouble with all of that these days.

i don't know if i'm ever going to feel comfortable accepting love from others. it's very hard for me to consider myself worthy of it most of the time. that being said, i know i'm a good person with skills and abilities, but as soon as someone tries to say something nice/positive/complimentary about me i just can't seem to deal with it. all my negative self-talk gears up to counter every good thing i hear.

these days, i don't know how to nurture myself as advised. i've lost the ability to be alone without becoming bored. nothing holds much interest, especially if it has anything to do with the television or computer. i want to spend time just being with those people i like to send time with. we don't have to do anything or go anywhere, but i have become attached to the contact -- that's something i never thought i would say as recently as two years ago.

the list of things i feel i *have* to do is getting longer, while the list of things i *want* to do grows shorter.

i hope that my new committment to going to massage regularly and continuing to go to the doctor when things don't seem right is a positive step towards taking care of myself. i just don't want to get mired in the more superficial things which bring me a sense of calm (cleaning, being the big one) as a way to avoid the deeper, and more challenging, tasks i know i should tackle.

i thought that going to bed at a ridiculously early 9:30pm last night would help me feel more refreshed and rejuvinated today. i was wrong. very wrong. really wrong.

first off, every time i moved, the squeaking of the bed woke me up a little. how annoying. then, around 4:22 am i woke completely, but i made myself go back to sleep, which probably wasn't a good idea either. that extra hour or so of sleep is never really good. it just makes me groggy when it's time to really get up.

today, it feels like i have the hangover i should have had yesterday. is that even possible? can a hangover have a 24-hour delay? stupid hangover.

i seem to have a pretty busy week booked: tonight, i'm indulging in a spa utopia massage after work. tomorrow, i go to see the brain doctor. thursday, there's a big, long, loud and cranky union meeting to go to. friday, we're going to a show opening at exposure gallery. then, sometime over the weekend, i hope we're finally hosting the crapshoot christopher and i have been talking about since january.

it's a good thing i actually did my laundry last night instead of just being a lump like i wanted to.

ugh, my head.

i'd have to say it was a full and rewarding weekend. not so very frantic i feel worn out, but neither so laid back i feel nothing was really done.

friday night, josh & i had dinner and enjoyed free theatresports tickets at granville island. it was a very pleasant evening. i've not spent time alone with him before, so i was glad to discover that we don't need colene around to get along. i was home and in bed at a reasonable hour, which was good seeing as it was the end of my three-week stint as sean at work and i was pretty much worn out.

saturday, i had a lazy morning doing not much of anything before i went out to christopher's. he wasn't in the best shape after drinking too much red wine at a barbeque the night before, so i took charge and we headed out to a couple thrift stores and then to see hollywoodland at tinseltown. after that, we spent a quiet evening back at my place eating butter chicken and being all moody.

yesterday, again, began with a lazy morning -- i really don't enjoy hitting the ground running any morning, but especially not on weekends. while waiting to hear from jen about what we three were to do for the day, i watched the pilot episode of my so-called life i downloaded and re-experienced all my teen-angst in 45 minutes. i was glad to get out of the house after that.

i made chris make all the decisions since he'd forced it upon me the day before. next thing i knew, we were on our way to fetch jen in marpole, then at the regional assembly of text on main street, then in the main eating yummy greek food, then leah showed up all decked out in graduation photo finery. we all piled into my car and headed to chez hessie for a mini photoshoot of leah in her gorgeous purple dress and then a lot of drunken monopoly playing. i don't know how i managed it, but i'm actually hangover-free today. i think it might be a medical miracle.

i didn't get any kind of housework or laundry done which always bugs me a little, but i'd have to say it was a fairly good weekend overall. i took a lot of photos and i'm falling more in love with my polaroid sx-70 with every press of that little red button.

now, i'm back at work in my own job, and i'm feeling pretty good about that. i have a lot to do, but i actually feel inspired and capable of getting it done, which is a nice change from the last few months.

oh, one last thing, i'm not going to have an amazing race party this weekend. sorry, gill.

today, i'm going out for lunch with barb the temp and christopher. tonight, i'm going to theatresports with josh. it's going to be a very quiet work day for me, which isn't optimal, but it's better than PANIC! URGENT! GOTTAFIXTHISRIGHTNOWOHMYGOD! so, i'm not complaining. nope, not me. no complaining here.

i had last night to myself while christopher went to an opening with friends. i came home, got unworkified, cooked a hotdog, watched 'firefly' episodes, did some banking, updated toshiro (that's my mp3 player, you know) with the new music i've acquired, watched 'project runway', ate ice cream and went to bed at a reasonable hour. i had grand plans of scanning or scrubbing the bathtub or washing the floors, but, well, i just didn't.

ice cream sounded like a much better plan.

if i were to host an Amazing Race premiere party on Sunday, September 17th at 7:00pm would you attend?

i really don't like that my immediate reaction to embarrassment is an overwhelming urge to burst into tears. especially at work.

trying desperately to concentrate on the good things in my life...

- a roof over my head
- a job to go to each day
- friends to spend time with
- a boy to take naps with
- living without fear of war in my homeland
- parents who love me
- literacy
- intelligence
- humour
- time for hobbies, or not
- technology
- sunshine
- health
- income
- comfy pants
- a car to drive around in
- freaky eyes
- music
- freedom
- laughter
- sharing

i have a lot to be thankful and joyous about. i just wish i could stop wishing for _______ or _______ long enough to really savour them.

i'm the worst email replier in the world and i've decided i'm going to stop apologizing for it. instead, i'm going to alter my .sig to say:

"if you do not receive a timely reply to an email you have sent me, do not be offended -- i'm that rude to everyone. if you want more information, you should be prepared to hound me a little."

hm, that's a little wordy. any suggestions on a shorter, pithier version?

from my long weekend:

- severe drunkeness results in girls kissing girls
- 'of montreal' is awesome live
- christopher is a sore monopoly loser
- teenagers aren't so bad to hang out with
- drunken boyfriends babble at 2am
- laziness won out, the PNE will have to wait until next year
- i'm such a tease