Shinny with a Zamboni!

Every year during the Christmas holidays we have a giant shinny game. This year, since Doug's dad drives the Zamboni at the Evansburg rink, we had the giant shinny game out there.

Amanda hasn't skated in years, so Debbie is helping her out.

Paul, speed demon.

Keith showing off his moves.

I don't know what's happening here but this photo cracks me up.

Amanda was taped into her skates.

Our hosts.

I got to blow the horn on the zamboni! (The zamboni actually has a horn, which is pretty cool, but it doesn't have turn signals, which would have been even cooler.)

Doug's Dad driving the zamboni.

Group photo.

Graceland

When I was younger, say junior high/high school aged, my parent's music used to drive me crazy. They would play the same songs over and over until I thought my head would explode. The first few notes of U2's "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" were enough to cause my head to spin around while my eyes shot lasers and burned holes in through my parents’ heads. The rest of 'The Joshua Tree' would cause me to go on into a rage, slamming my door and covering my head with the pillow. Any hint of Paul Simon's 'Graceland' would cause me to fall unconscious to the floor, frothing at the mouth like a dog that needs to be put down. I had suffered a near-fatal overdose of ‘Graceland’, since my father loved it beyond all reason and played it at full volume pretty much constantly for several years. He had the CD, the tape, the record, the book and the video. I am not exaggerating. Even a little bit.

Meanwhile, I was listening to such musical wonders as MC Hammer and Milli Vanilli.

The rest of the world very sensibly agreed with my parents. The 1987 Billboard #1 song was U2’s “With or Without you”. The Grammy award for Album of the Year went to U2’s 'Joshua Tree' along with Best Rock Group. Record of the Year went to Paul Simon’s “Graceland” (which also won Album of the Year in 1986).

In 1988 we overlapped on Tracy Chapman, probably because I couldn't resist singing along with someone who sang in my own range and didn't have testicles. This was the sole exception to more than six years of musical war (the lesser known cousin of musical chairs).

In 1989 my parent were probably still listening to Paul Simon and U2 because the best songs at that time were, in all honesty, kind of crappy. I, however, was eating them up with a spoon. To name a few: NKOTB’s “Hangin’ Tough” (although unlike all of my friends, I wasn’t in love with any of the New Kids and that was the only song I liked), Bette Middler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings”, Martika’s “Toy Soldiers”, Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting”, and Debbie Gibson’s “Lost In Your Eyes”. I’m pretty sure that I know all of the lyrics to the above listed songs to this day. You don’t forget this stuff people, be careful what you listen to in your formative years.

When I think back on it, I grew up on Dire Straits, the Police, Simon & Garfunkel, the Beetles and Phil Collins; music that was good then and stayed good. My mom’s taste ran more to the ballads, Eric Clapton and such, while Dad tends a bit more to the blues side of things. When I got to buy my first tape, I carefully selected Phil Collins “No Jacket Required” and Dire Straits self-titled album remain one of my favorites to this day (I think I stole Dad's copy when I moved out. Shhh!)

It’s interesting to me how our musical tastes are now converging. Every year we go to Folk Fest, and while we aren’t always watching the same performances, we come home with a lot of the same CDs. We’re able to share what we find elsewhere too. I hooked Mom on Wide Mouth Mason, Dad gave me Eric Bibb’s “Friends” (we used “Dance me to the End of Love” as the second dance at our wedding.)

And tonight, I found myself in the car singing along to “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. I knew all of the words and the good harmony to sing, without ever having owned a copy of the song. When "Graceland" comes on the radio, I sing along and tap my foot with the beat (although with nothing really approaching my Dad’s arms akimbo chicken flapping enthusiasm).

I have finally come to appreciate the musical basis that I was given and it makes me wonder what sort of musical taste will pass on to our children. Will they end up with Paul’s love of CCR (which he got from his father), will they tend to Barenaked Ladies like me, or maybe they’ll learn from our areas of overlap, like Great Big Sea or the Waifs. Meanwhile our musical tastes continue to expand and refine over time so that we can come to love great music that our kids will hate when they’re in junior high. But maybe one day, when they're much older, they'll be going to Graceland, just like me.

Impromptu

Last night ended up being a bit of an impromptu games night. Paul got home from work and I got home from shopping with the girls and Doug and Dave were there, so we played Settlers of Catan for a bit. Dave had to leave for his dinner plans so Doug and Paul went and played Lego Star Wars II for a bit while I picked up Melly and Kristy. Then the four of them played "Chez Greek" (a fun little game that Devin introduced us to) while I made dinner.


We hung out for a bit after dinner (the highlight of the conversation was when we decided that I needed a job phoning applicants, yelling "Urine" at them, and then blasting an air horn in the phone. It's a long story.) then Dave came back with Beth and Rachel in tow. We then decided to play Category 5 (Hurricane) for a while. It was an appropriate choice of game since we had four visitor from Vancouver over and the game was a Christmas present from two more. It's a good thing that I did well playing Settlers earlier, because I got whooped at Hurricane.

Our evening included an array of fun T-shirts. Doug's said "I'm like a superhero with no powers or motivation", mine was "Heavily Medicated" and Paul treated us to a fashion show starting with "The Godfather" (he does a creepily accurate Godfather voice), "I Bent My Wookie", and this little beauty:

The funny part is that his Mom does tell him that he rides the little bus.

Yarrrr! 'Tis a Label Maker, Matey!

I know that everyone has been waiting with bated breath for an update on my new label maker. I finally was able to get a hold of the required 6 AAA batteries to make it run, I carefully read the manual (yes, I'm one of those) and took it for a test drive.

Paul awoke the next morning to find this:


I think this might be the best feature of my label maker. Look! It even has teeth. I can label everything pirate style. I'll have "Jolly Jars", "Buccaneer Bottles of Booze", "Pirate Photos" and "Yaarrrrr! ...um...Boxes...no wait, Treasure Chests!"

Paul has wisely started hiding his favorite unlabeled items.

Dislocated Funny Bone

I went out tonight with Mel and Kristy to see "Holiday" (coincidentally Tara and Steve were there too, hurray!). Watching the movie, and in particular one section, reminded me of something that I don't often remember: I have an odd sense of humour.

I don't mean that I don't have a sense of humour, that I don't get most jokes, or that people don't get most of mine, but that every so often something that no one else thinks is funny strikes me as deeply hilarious. I don't mean 'hee hee' or 'haa haa', I mean clutching your sides, tears rolling down your face, gasping for breath laughter.

When this happens in a small group it's not quite as noticeable, because often my friends will be laughing with me (or at me, whatever) and generally someone will be accused of "breaking Karen". When it happens in a movie theatre, however, that's an entirely different story. Generally the trigger is something that no one else seems to find funny at all, or maybe worth a smile, but I see something different in it and break out in uncontrollable laughter. The usual reaction to this is that the people closest to me look around the theatre to see if everyone else is laughing, to see if there was something they missed, then they look to see if anyone else is laughing, anyone at all. Once they have assured themselves that they are, in fact, normal, and that I am the one who is weird, they then either a) laugh at me or b) pass me some licorice in an attempt to shut me up.

I'll give you an example. In tonight's movie, there was a character who discovered that his significant other was not, as she said, out of town, but was in fact in town and by the way was banging some guy (come on, like you didn't see it coming!) His reaction included the following line, "I sent her Christmas present to Santa Fe! I waited in line at FedEx for half an hour to make sure it got to her on time!" (I can't even type it without laughing). Okay, did anyone else find this funny? Anything beyond a 'ho ho' or a 'hoooeee'? Is anyone out there shaking their head in confusion?

I have to say that explaining why something is funny kind of destroys the humour, but I will make an attempt. Firstly, when I have something really bad happen to me and I'm truly miserable about it, when I finally hit rock bottom I have a knee jerk reaction to say something funny and make myself laugh (I call it Karen's "automatic bounce-back mechanism") and I'll end up laughing and sobbing at the same time. Secondly, when I have been fooled and embarrassed and treated badly, I will focus on the little details of my idiocy, just like the above character did (He spent a half-hour waiting in line to send her gift to Santa Fe while she was down the street doing the mambo with Jimbo). Thirdly, the joke was on her because she was too busy getting busy to get her Christmas gift. Also, for some unknown reason I associate Santa Fe with chicken and so when I pictured the package travelling to Santa Fe away from the slutty girlfriend, the package had a tiny cartoon chicken inside it.

See? See the funny? Oh, never mind. Maybe I have a dislocated funny bone.

Pass the licorice.

My Family Christmas

In contrast to the last post, this is my family christmas. We had twenty-ish relatives over for dinner and upwards of forty assorted relatives over for dessert and socializing. The highlight of the night was my cousin Louise calling my mom "anal" over green potatoes and being banned from the kitchen. Good times!

From left to right: Ivy (my brother's girlfriend), Jay (my brother) and Robyn (my sister) crashed after dinner.

My cousin Heather on dish duty keeping her toque dry

(for those not in the know, this is not the standard way to wear a toque).

The highlight of the evening: my cousin Jenny brought her baby Cole (above, couldn't you just eat him alive, he's so adorable) and my cousin Kimmy brought baby Rianna (who was 5 days old, I'm still waiting for photos). As Kim left she apologized for bringing the baby over because she knows that I get hassled more about when I'm having kids whenever my mom sees a baby (especially a relative's baby). To add to the indignity my grandmother recently asked if Paul was "in working order" (he works fine, thanks). Why don't people understand that wanting to have a house to put the baby in is a perfectly good reason to not have one right this instant?

Christmas at the Farm

Excited Kaley opening her gifts (I have no idea what it is).

My gift to Paul.

From one geek to another.

Mamma was really excited about her "games".

Jo opening her gift from G.

Opening my very exciting new label maker (I'm a dork).

Finger soccer! With knuckle bums!

Mister Papa Gordon Mort Lastname, FIL

I am stuck in a long term dilemma that occasionally causes me severe social awkwardness: I don't know what to call my father-in-law. He has never given me any kind of indication of what to call him, in fact I think he's enjoying my distress as some kind of social experiment. He's funny that way.

The problem arises from the following facts:
- I have always called Paul's Mom "Momma"; all of our friends do and it feels perfectly natural
- within our group of friends we call Paul's Dad "Papa" but never directly to him, only when referring to "Momma and Papa Lastname"
- when they don't call him "Dad" the rest of the family calls him "Mort", which is some kind of inside joke that I was not a part of so I don't feel comfortable calling him that
- I will not call him "Dad" unless I am told that I can, likewise for using the first name (Gord) of anyone close to my parent's age (even if Paul's brother-in-law does)

I thought I would wait until he sent me an email to see what signature he used, but he didn't sign it. When Paul's parents give us gifts Momma always signs the cards "Mom and Dad". Last year after extreme awkwardness I obliquely asked him what I should call him (in fact I think I said, "I still don't know what to call you!" and flapped my arms in distress) and he laughed and completely avoided answering.

I'm getting really tired of saying things like, "Please pass this to your Dad." and "Where has ..he...gone." I'm toying with the idea of turning the tables on him and calling him Mr. LastName or FIL (short for father-in-law) until he gets tired of the game and just tells me what to call him, already, instead of Mister Papa Gordon Mort Lastname, FIL.

Puh-suede-oh!

The timing of events at Christmas means that we generally don't get to have Christmas dinner with Paul's family, so this year we decided to have them all over to our place for a Pseudo-Christmas dinner ("Pseudo" in that it is in place of our Christmas dinner, is not actually on Christmas, and was lasagne and garlic bread instead of turkey and stuffing. Really 'pseudo' is a stretch here. "Pseudo" identifies something as superficially resembling the original subject; I'm not sure how much resemblance there still was).

While waiting for the rest of the family to arrive for dinner, Jo, G, Paul and I had a discussion about how Trish calls is "Puh-suede-oh" Christmas (she was too tired to figure out how to pronounce it one day and so just said it and figured that people would know what she meant.)The four of us decided that it should always be called Puh-suede-oh instead of Pseudo, that it was way more fun and Spanish sounding to boot. (I am seriously considering making Trish a Puh-suede-oh! shirt.) We (and be "we" I mostly mean "me") spent the rest of the night randomly calling out "Puh-suede-oh!" and the others would answer in chorus "Puh-suede-oh!". Maybe you had to be there.

We devoured out late dinner and the yummy desserts that Mama brought. Kaley was bathed and set up on the couch with a video while G taught us a new game (something to do with a haunted house, I was a bit out of it. Mostly I remember that I wanted to be the "evil plant".) We ended the night early because Jo and G were tired from flying in early this morning, Paul's Dad had a headache and I had the swirly bits that precede a migraine (which I'm still fighting) but it was an enjoyable Puh-seude-oh Christmas dinner for all that.

Singing Impostor

This morning I sang in to the Christmas Bureau Sing-along at the Winspear. which was being broadcast on CBC. More specifically, I was in the choir side (or rather "the chorale" as the slightly weird MC kept calling us). I felt like a bit of an impostor, since I wasn't exactly sure how I came to be in the choir, only that it was somehow through Sarah and Jamie. I felt like even more of an impostor when I wasn't able to sight sing the crazy Alto part for "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", which was the finale, although I did pretty well at the Hallelujah Chorus (and it's harder than it sounds).

I got to sing "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree", which sounds curse-y but isn't, and it made me feel better because up until that point I though Sarah had been pulling my leg about that being her favorite carol. We also sang my favorite "What Child Is This?", which I love not only for the awesome alto harmony (in any version, they're all good) but also because I get a perverse kind of joy from the incongruousness of singing "Nails, spear shall pierce him through" so cheerily.

I particularly enjoyed the close up view of the organist (which sounds dirty, but isn't) playing the Davis concert organ http://www.winspearcentre.com/content.asp?catid=119&rootid=2. The man playing the organ (Jeremy Spurgeon?) was simply fantastic and we were treated to two pieces of organ music. For the first piece, since I am currently reading Terry Pratchett's 'Men At Arms', I couldn't get the image out of my head of the Librarian playing the organ at Captain Vimes wedding, complete with barnyard animal noises and hurdy-gurdy sound effects and triumphant cries of "Oook!" and "Eeeek!". Watching someone play the organ is really quite amazing. It has four keyboards layered one atop of the other and surrounded by shiny knobs and buttons. Below, it features a matching number (a plethora?) of knobs and buttons spread across from knee level to ankle height and below that basically twenty odd wooden levers that are played, piano like, but with the feet. It was like watching someone drive the world's most complicated and beautiful sounding car. There's a reason that most organists are slim; it's a full body workout playing that thing.

The low point of the concert was a "surprise visit" by I kind of creepy Santa. His laugh was less jolly than maniacal and I certainly would not want to leave my children alone with him.

At the end of the concert, I finally introduced myself to the woman that shared my music. She turned out to be a UAMC Alum from the Fuscia Era (I was Green Era to Black). I left the concert filled with holiday cheer, which was not deflated on my drive through downtown, despite the efforts of crabby people and their car horns. I travelled to my chiropractic appointment (to get the painfully subluxated bones in my left foot relocated) in a haze of holiday inspired joy. Awaiting my turn at the chiropractor, I was surprised to see a young man walk in with a CBC TV camera. Of course the receptionist asked why he had it. He quickly replied that he had just come from filming the Christmas Bureau Concert. I had to comment that I had just come from singing in the choir, and that we should have carpooled. Strange coincidences.

Smooth

For my birthday party last weekend I wore a brand new shirt that I thought looked quite nice. A few people even complimented me on it.

It wasn’t until the other day when I went to do laundry that I discovered that I had walked around all night with an “XL” sticker on my right boob and no one told me.

I am the epitome of smooth.

Vacation?

I'm doing something I have never done before. It started at 4:30 today. For the first time ever, I am actually taking a vacation from work where I don't go anywhere, I don't volunteer for anything and, most of all, I don't go in to work (you'd think that part would be obvious, but I obviously have issues). I cannot remember the last time I have done this, maybe late elementary/early junior high. That means that I have not really had a break since I was 11 (I started working when I was 11). That's 20 years! No wonder I'm tired.

I really needed a break in mid-November, and I did take a couple of days off, but I'm actually glad that I didn't take my big break then because it would have been a shorter break (I'm actually only taking 7 vacation days to have 18 straight days work-free) and I would have spent the entire time stewing about work. Now I've calmed down and worked through a number of issues and one of the people that stirs up issues has quit. My desk is in good shape and I don't have an aggressive amount of work lurking gargoyle-like on it, awaiting my return.

My plans for my vacation (18 days!!!):
1) Don't get deathly ill like previous years (inner ear infection and mono).
2) Have some quality time with the out of towners (who start arriving tomorrow).
3) Clean out some boxes that have moved around with me from place to place for 7 years now.
4) Do some scrapbooking.
5) Have a "day in bed" with Paul (meaning we wake up, have waffles and bacon for breakfast in bed and watch TV and movies all day in our PJs)
6) Find my desk (at home, not at work)
7) Sleep up to 12 hours a day (this is a goal, not a limit).
8) Get some exercise of the non-impact variety (I love dance and hockey but they're only good for me in the cardio sense, they're both terrible for my joints). Do my physio excercises and stretches.
9) Alphebetize our CDs and rip many of them to Gromit. Put better music on Wallace.
10) Relax, have some fun and go back to work rested, healthy and happy.

As I said, I've never done this before so feel free to comment on my goals. Am I being too ambitious? What critical element am I missing? Or does my list look pretty good?

Catch-22

I am not a morning person (and more than a dozen people have told me that is the understatement of the century.) I hate mornings; I despise them, I loathe them. There are no words strong enough for how I feel about mornings.

Now that I think about it, it’s not mornings that I hate, it’s being awake to see them. If mornings happened off in some little area all their own and let me continue sleeping, I would be just fine with mornings. The problem is that the morning people got up early and made all of the rules and now the rest of us have to get out of bed at 6:30 in the freaking morning to make it to work on time. That’s just wrong. Is there any reason that we couldn’t have work start at a more civilized hour? Even “workin’ 9 to 5” like the song would be better, ten to six or eleven to seven would be ideal.

I used to work a job where I started at 4 pm and got off work at 4 am. It was awesome. I would get home from work, eat my dinner and read the paper (and feel like I was getting the jump on things) then go to bed and sleep until 2, get up, have breakfast and go to work. It was a nice rhythm even though it meant that I never saw the light of day and didn’t really do anything except work, sleep and eat. I got as many night shifts as I wanted though; everyone else wanted the day shift, including the shift that started at 5 am. They kept me on the 5 am shift for less than a week; I was utterly useless until 10 and they figured it out pretty quickly.

On a similar note, I hate the bus. Or rather, don’t hate the existence of busses, that would be ridiculous, but I hate having to take the bus. I have a genetic bus curse inherited from my mother’s side of the family. My dad walks down the alley to the bus stop, arrives there, waits 2.5 seconds and the bus arrives and stops directly in front of him. In my case (or my mom’s) we run frantically down the alley in the hopes of catching the bus and it either:
a) Tears past without slowing.
b) Stops, but only because it has hit us.
c) Doesn’t come. Ever.

You think I’m exaggerating but I’m not, really. I have fallen underneath a bus and been nearly run over and the bus driver still didn’t stop. I have waited for more than two hours in the snow for a bus that “runs every 15 minutes”. I have seen the backside of more busses than a proctologist sees rears in his career.

If I manage to actually catch a bus, the bus curse doesn’t stop there. If there is anyone on the bus who is drunk, high, deathly ill, crazy, or all of the above they will, without fail, sit with me and talk to me for the entire bus trip. I have multiple examples of all of the above. Sometimes the people are harmless, like the woman who wanted to talk about my bandana for the entire trip while I was trying to study for a parasitology exam. It went something like this, “Hey bandana girl. You’re wearing a bandana. That’s a bandana and it’s on your head. Hey bandana. Cool bandana. Black bandana. Bandana bandana bandana banana. No, wait….” I’ve had men tell me all about how they’re screwing over their ex-wives by drinking the child support money, and hey will you go out with me? I’m awesome, I promise! I’ve had people hack up a lung on the back of my head for the entire ride and then make the bus driver stop at the emergency entrance to the hospital. And to top it all off, I’ve had the bus driver close the door with my backpack inside the door and my body outside it and try to drive away. Nothing causes extreme panic quite like that.

This morning I had the dubious pleasure of choosing between getting up at 6 am and taking the bus to work (since Stanley is at the Doctor’s). Making me choose between getting up before the crack of dawn and taking the bus is like asking me whether I’d prefer to die by pineapple or by being stabbed repeatedly in the eye with a shrimp fork (I’m allergic to, and hate pineapple and eye touching of any kind freaks me out. Don’t ask.) The conversation with Paul, which was further enhanced by taking place at 6 am, went like this:

Paul: (shaking me gently) “You have to get up, Muffinpants; it’s 6 o’clock.”
Me: (squeaks)
Paul: (still shaking) “Time to wake up, we have to go soon.”
Me: (squeak, mutter)
Paul: (5 minutes later) “You have to get up. We leave in 15 minutes.”
Me: (Squeaky) “But I hate the morning.”
Paul: “I know you hate the morning.”
Me: (gentle snoring)
Paul: (shaking me again) “It’s time to get up.”
Me: (Squeaky) “But I hate the morning.”
Paul: “We covered this. I know you hate the morning.”
Me: (Squeaks) “I do.”
Paul: “If you don’t get up you have to take the bus.”
Me: (groans) “But I hate the bus.”
Paul: (stifling laugher) “I know you hate the bus.”

Eventually I decided that taking the bus in the cold was worse than getting out of bed when I was already 5% awake. I’m regretting it already.

Bender

Do you remember the neighbour's garish Christmas display that annoyed me so much? I think their snowman went on a bender!

Snowpile

When I came home from work today, I discovered that someone had finally cleared the enormous piles of snow in our cul-de-sac (or whatever you call it when there's a cul-de sac with an alley coming out one side of it. Cul-de-salley?). Rather than pushing all of the snow out to the sides and on to the grass, they decided to create a giant island in the middle, leaving a strip of road around the outside to park and/or drive in, somewhat like a roundabout.

This cracked me up for several reasons:
(1) The island was made of water, but could not in any way be called a lake.
(2) The snowpile was over 7 feet tall (see evidence below; Paul is 6').
(3) The top of it looked like boobs (and I am 7). Come on! Giant boobs in the middle of the street that are not part of a feminist parade float! That's comedy gold!
(4) I have an odd sense of humour.



I think the most amazing thing about this photo is that no neighbourhood kids (of which we have many) had yet climbed this monstrosity and slid down it into oncoming traffic. That's the first thing I would have done when I was a kid (and then probably caught hell for sliding into traffic.)

Right-brained Scrapper

For my birthday my friend Kristy gave me framed artwork and a written bit about "She Who Loves to Scrapbook". (I enjoyed that the lady in the artwork had crazy-ass hair like mine). This reminded me that I had been meaning to write a bit about scrapbooking for quite a while now and had never really gotten around to it.

I have been 'accused' of being a member of a scrapbooking club, which made me feel really weird. To my knowledge I am not in any kind of exclusive scrapbooking group. I actually scrapbook with several groups including, but not limited to, my high school friends (and their church friends), a few choir friends, some people who work at the University, one of my best friends and even by myself (if you've heard the voices in my head, you know that I qualify as a group). I find scrapbooking to be a very inclusive activity which you can be involved in to whatever degree you choose. Paul supports my hobby by 'Oohing' and 'Aaahing' appropriately when I show him a page that I'm particularly excited about and by not complaining too strenuously about the expense when I buy new scrapbooking toys (especially the "organizers", my absolute favorite).

I've been thinking about why people scrapbook, why it's become such a popular hobby lately, and I've come up with a few theories:
(1) Guilt - There are all those huge piles of photos sitting in that box in the closet. I can feel them staring at me.
(2) The increase in digital photography - No one can see my photos if they're all pent up on the computer, I want to show off those beauties
(3) Gifts - People like looking at themselves (especially when it's an old photo where they're all thin and young looking). That makes scrapbooks a fabulous personal gift. A lot of work goes into a scrapbook so it's a flattering gift to receive.
(4) Memory imprinting - To think about what they did/felt/though/saw at a particular event, especially for scrapbooks of travel, children and weddings.

I primarily scrapbook for reason number 4. When not scrapbooking, I am often thinking about scrapbooking or taking pictures for future use in scrapbooking (somewhat like a teenage boy's relationship with sex). When I was depressed last month, scrapbooking my wedding album was the only thing that I could muster the faintest bit of interest in. At a given event, I am generally thinking about how can I take photos that are representative of what happened and how I felt about what happened. While scrapbooking I am going over in my mind what happened and re-living all of the things that I enjoyed about the event. Too many people see scrapbooking as being about the final product where for me they are about the process and the changes caused within myself as I produce them (how touchy-feely of me).

One of my favorite aspects of the hobby is that I get to use my artistic side in a way that is structured enough for my science brain. If you have met me, or experienced one of my stick drawings, you will know that I am not in any way 'an artiste'. I do enjoy right brained activities though, like writing and photography, and scrapbooking allows me to use both of them in a more artsy way.

At first my scrapbooks were very linear and balanced and kind of boring. I was too structured and left-brained to take risks. Now I am starting to expand beyond my previous set borders. I have purchase papers in colors I would never have used before (including pink!). I have used buttons and ribbons and sewing to embellish my pages. I have cut crooked lines and even torn the edges of my photos for effect. No more linear science thinking here; I'm thinking in spirals and three-dimensions! Just try to stop me, you'll find out what a scrapper I am!

Karaokitage & Guitar Heroes

Last night I had a birthday party, which Sarah and I planned and held at her work. (It’s very handy having a friend that works at a nice library.) We ordered in pizza and played Karaoke Revolution, Guitar Heroes II and board games until the wee hours of the morning (I wonder if they’re called wee because the numbers are small.)

Kaley "helping" Liz with Karaoke Revolution.

We made an interesting discovery playing Karaoke Revolution. Devin, who is a fabulous singer, was scoring quite poorly on the “expert” setting while I, who am not a fabulous singer, was scoring very well. It occurred to me that he uses quite a bit of vibrato and other inflections in his singing, while I use only a minimal amount. I’ve played Karoke Revolution before and so I knew to eliminate as much deviation from the pure note as I could. As Devin put it “to win at Karaoke Revolution you have to sing badly”, ergo I am a bad singer (is that the correct use of ergo? I don’t care if I’m a bad singer if I used ergo correctly. I don’t actually think I’m a bad singer, but I am definitely not a soloist and never will be. I like to blend and sing harmonies. That’s what makes me happy.) It is interesting, though, that a singing game promotes the most boring way of singing. We have way more fun to listening to people play on the “Easy” setting (plus then you can make all the standard jokes about being easy.) We also invented Karaokitage.

Karaokitage: to sabotage a Karaoke Revolution performance by singing and yelling randomly in the singer’s ear so that they do not pass your high score.

In the other room, we played Guitar Heroes II, which I enjoy but am quite terrible at (although I did get 76% on the “Medium” setting). Jamie is my Guitar Hero; he scored 86% accurate on the expert setting. Hot damn!

Playing Pirate's Cove.

Possibly the best part of the night was hanging out with all of the kids.

Doesn't that look like fun?

Room at the Inn

I have a love/hate relationship with the Christmas season.

On the hate side:
- annoying Christmas music, including but not limited to Jingle Cats (and their Doggy counterparts), Dolly Parton (sounds like sheep), Ann Murray, Celine (shudder), "Go Tell it on the Mountain", "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Do You Hear What I Hear" especially when performed by any of the above listed "artists".
- "modern" Christmas carols including, but not limited to "Jingle Bell Rock" (with the exception of anything by Boney M, the Muppets, and Collective Soul's "Blue Christmas")
- shopping for anything in crowded Malls and especially in Walmart (I can feel my IQ dropping and my RQ (Rage Quotient) rising as soon as I cross that hellish threshhold.)
- feeling obligated to gift someone because you know that they will gift you
- finding time to put up the tree (why can't we put it up on the 26th when we finally have time?)
- feeling all out of place at church with Paul's family when everyone else goes up for communion

On the love side:
- Traditional Christmas Carols, with the exception of those listed above.
- the satisfaction of finding the perfect gift that you know will surprise and delight the recipient
- even better if you can make that gift
- finding a deal on a purchased gift
- Christmas dinner with the chaos of extended family (especially my Mom's stuffing)
- Paul's family's Christmas morning ceremony, including singing "Happy Birthday to Jesus" with his 4-year-old niece
- all (okay, most) of our far away friends coming to town for the holidays
- Roscoe staying with us
- having the week off between Christmas and New Year's (the love is intense here)
- putting presents all nicely wrapped up under the tree

If you ask me what my favorite holiday is, I will always answer Christmas (or sometimes 'Talk Like A Pirate Day' but really, talking like a pirate is fun!Yarrr!) It seems sometimes like a funny response for someone who is not Christian, but I don't really care. Peace, love and joy are for everyone, Christian or not, and I wish everyone a happy holiday season and room at the inn.

Everything's coming up Milhouse!

Today was Paul's official last day of work on his current contract. For the past five years, for as long as we've been together, Paul has been laid off some time in December or early in the new year (and twice on my birthday). Frankly, this sucks. It means that he's almost always depressed for Christmas and that money is short in the new year.

This year is different. This year, in the last week of his contract Paul was offered another position (basically, the exact same position) to work for eleven more months. He starts on monday. Hurray, no Christmas depression this year! Perhaps things are looking up for us.

We would very much like to purchase a home, which is quite difficult to do when only one of you has a permanent job and the other's job is so unpredictable. Now we have some consistency hopefully until the middle of next November.

This is also exciting because this contract will take him almost to the end of his schooling and he will have his Computer Systems Technology diploma, which will make him far more marketable. It looks like right now everything is coming up Milhouse! (The Simpsons reference is a symptom of marriage to Paul).

A Sequin of Elvii

I'm on the social committee at work. (Yes, I know you're all shocked and surprised.) I just seem to gravitate toward that kind of job. (I don't know what's wrong with me.)

For the third year in a row our Christmas party was booked at 'Chat Louie'. It wasn't too bad, but it seems though that every year the entertainment takes another sharp drop. The first year was apparently fantastic with several impersonators including a fabulous Billy Joel. Last year was the "Eva Divas" who did a long medley of upbeat hits from the 1950's, 60's and 70's. They were not too bad. This year was an Elvis impersonator. He wasn't terrible, but after a long day of work and knowing that we had to work the next morning, his mellow 50's Elvis croonings put us all to sleep. Our entire group went home before his second set. It's not that he was bad, but he certainly wasn't fabulous; he was hard to see from our seats with the fairly terrible MC standing in the way, and his tech was kind of awful. At one point Elvis danced over to our side of the stage and signalled fairly obviously for the tech to turn up his vocals. The tech instead turned the speaker toward the Elvis. What an idiot. At least I assumed that guy was a tech; he could have just been the MC's fat friend who chose to hand out on the stage. Gah!

The best part of the evening though (well, really a close second to the fabulous perrogies) was the conversation around Elvis. I'm sure this is not a typical example of conversation when watching an Elvis impersonator. Last week two of my coworkers ran a marathon; actually, one of them did a half-marathon instead because she's 16 weeks pregnant. (If she wasn't so sweet I'd hate her.) Her husband was injured and so couldn't run seriously but apparently there are a group of people who dress up as Elvis and run for fun, so he joined them and had an absolute blast. At our table this led, naturally, to a discussion of the plural of Elvis which we decided was Elvii, and to an extended discussion of what you would call a herd of Elvii. Our best suggestions included "a sequin of Elvii", "a jumpsuit of Elvii", "a hounddog of Elvii" and "a King of Elvii".

The conversation progressed naturally to Elvis themed team sports, focussing on which sports would naturally feature the Elvis outfit to the greatest effect. In no particular order:

- Baseball: running the bases with cape flying behind would make a particuarly stunning image, sliding would not be allowed due to risk of sequin damage, and when in the field a sequined ball glove with attached mini-cape would be featured
- Snowboarding: the required hip action would put "Elvis the Pelvis" to good use
- Hockey: could feature an "Elvis hair helmet", although a cape would be cumbersome
- Ski Jumping: particularly good use of the cape
- Basketball: a poor choice, the cape would lead to too many fouls, a new call would need to be invented for this
- Curling: Elvii were made to curl, although the tightness of the jumpsuit might be an issue
- Rugby: rugby players are a natural choice for jumpsuit wearing since they are used to running around in tight white shorts
- Bobsledding - excellent cape feature
- Nascar Racing - they already wear jumpsuits, they're halfway there!

We made a natural progression at this point to the idea of the Elvis Presley Olympics but decided that new Olympic sports would need to be added: Elvis Imitation, High Speed Hair Combing and Pelvis Thrusting, which would inevitably lead to great new pickup lines, "Hi, I'm Elvis. I'm an Olympic Pelvis Thruster."

The Grinch

Our new neighbours moved in at the beginning of the month. Neighbours don't really register with us unless they annoy us (which most of them do, although there is a nice lady that walks her dog in booties and says hi to me, but then we don't share any walls with her). Our newest neighbour shares a back wall with us and we knew that something had changed because now we could hear a yappy little dog barking all the time.

Yappy dog scared the crap out of me the other day as I was walking to my car first thing in the morning. He came careening out of the bushes barking at the top of his lungs. (As an aside, for some reason I always type lunch instead of lungs which makes for some amusing sentences.) I am not a fan of yappy dogs at the best of times. I do not like noisy things (I make an exception for my husband, but not in the morning. Cordless headphones saved our marriage). If you know me at all, you know that I am not in any way a morning person and I do not react well to being startled, or even spoken to, before 8 a.m. (My old roommate and I used to communicate in grunts in the morning. It was good.) I nearly had heart failure. Stupid dog.

They had been moved in for less than a week when this monstrosity appeared:



Does it not seem a bit excessive to you?

I also hate people that are all moved in and settled and decorated immediately in a new place. It took Paul and I a year and a half to put up photos here. Not only do these people have everything decorated outside, but inside their tree is up and decorated and they have piney garland strung about the entire place. Our Christmas tree is out of storage and still in the box in our living room. The only reason it's out of storage is that we had to move it so maintenance could access the furnace.

I'm just waiting for one of the gazillion neighborhood dogs that pee absolutely everywhere to lift a leg on that giant inflatable snowman. I am clearly going to hell. (Why yes, I do answer to 'The Grinch'. Why do you ask?)

Doctor Panago

I had a strange experience today when I stopped by Panago. I walked in and the owner came up to the counter. Instead of starting out with "Hi." or "How are you doing?" or "What can I get for you?" he started with "You look tired." I wasn't exactly sure how to react to that, but I was tired, so I said so. While getting my order and taking my payment, he proceeded to tell me that I should take honey, a teaspoon full every morning, and that would solve my problem; I would be full of energy.

Funny, I didn't think that I ordered diagnosis and herbal remedy with my pizza.

Awesome

I had a bad day today. How very Monday of me.

It started with oversleeping, which is not that unusual for me. I rushed around and was out of the house in ten minutes, which is actually fairly impressive. I usually park in our parking stall and Paul parks on the street but for some reason we were reversed this weekend. As I crossed the strand of snowy hill to my car I noticed that the frost on my windows looked a bit weird, not like the other cars I had passed. Around on the drivers side everything looked fairly normal so I didn't really think anything of it.

As I opened the door, my right foot skidded forward in the loose snow just as the door was swinging past. The corner of the door caught me in the shin and cut my leg open, which was followed by cursing. I retrieved some kleenex from my bag and applied pressure until the cut stopped bleeding. It wasn't bad enough to require medical attention, most of it was shallow except the part where the corner of the door bit into my shin, but it scraped uncomfortably on my pants every time I moved. My day was off to an awesome start.

I started the car (always a frustrating endeavor with a 26 year old vehicle in Canadian winter) and got out to scrape the frost off my windows. When I got around to the rear passenger side window, I realized that the reason it looked funny was that someone had poured something orange down my windows and the side of the car. Awesome. It was sticky and gooey and nearly impossible to scrape off (Orange pop perhaps?). I decided that washing it was not a good plan since the cloth would likely just freeze to the car (and that would just look ridiculous) so I just scraped it as well as I could and hoped that I wouldn't need to make any lane changes to the right on my way to work.

I put the car into gear and set off...for roughly 3 inches before getting stuck. Awesome. I'm already late for work. I set to rocking the car, optimistic that I would be able to get free since I was parked on a hill and no one was in front of me. After much rocking and tire spinning I shot free and was finally on my way...until I turned onto 106th street directly behind a snow plow (stay back 8 metres!) Le sigh. 106th street is the only stretch of my drive that there is no alternate route until 63rd ave so my only option was to plod along behind the plow at a snails pace. I used that opportunity to call in to work to tell them I was going to be late and would miss my first meeting of the day.

I finally arrived at work 35 minutes late. The working part of my day was not too bad since I was not on the schedule. Rather than spending my day on deskwork as planned, I ended up training the two new girls on diploma applications, which went alright. Part way through, one of them mentioned that the display on her phone was broken, so I thought we should exchange it with the empty desk's phone. I went to the empty desk, disconnected the phone cord and promptly dropped it behind the desk, into an extremely hard to access area. Excellent.

I gave the new girl the phone, found a metre stick and began fishing down between the desk and the cubicle wall for the lost phone cord. I was having trouble seeing so I pushed my head against the wall. That didn't do it so I thought maybe putting my eye down closer to the opening would help. I only had my left eye open as I slid my head down the cubicle wall until I was about 8 inches above the desk at which point I stabbed myself in my closed eye with a letter opener that had been, up until that point, been sitting unobtrusively pointy-end-up in a pencil cup on the desk. Un-f%$#ing-believable! (I was well beyond the bitter "Awesome." at this point. I have a huge eye phobia and am terrified of anything touching my eye, or anyone else's eye. I can't even watch anyone putting in contacts. Bleargh!)

At this point I was sure that my lower eyelid was bleeding and my eyeball hurt like a son of a biscuit so I went to check the damage in the mirror muttering, "Stabbed myself in the eye." at all of my co-workers who had heard me yell and were now staring at me, all popped out the top of their cubicles like gophers.

There is nothing that I'm quite so skilled at as embarrassing injuries. (Remind me to tell you about the time I knocked myself out with a cupboard facing. Seriously.) Luckily the damage to my eye was minimal and the pain soon subsided, although it still hurts to blink and my eye was nicely bloodshot.

By this point it was almost the end of the day. I finished up my work, blinking as seldom as possible, and grabbed a water bottle and paper towel to wash the orange pop residue from my car, which has been sitting in heated parking for the day. I was hoping that most of the pop would have melted off so that I could just rinse it down and be on my way. As I approached the car I realized that the windows were still the same smeary mess as when my car was all frozen in the morning. Closer inspection revealed that the reason my car was still so gooey was that it wasn't orange pop on my window. It was egg, which was now all baked on, shell and all. Awesome.

Car-pushing Season

Thanks to the excessive snowfall in this frigid Canadian city in the last while, I have spent a large portion of my time in the past few days pushing out stuck cars, including my own.

It started on Saturday night, when I left to go scrapbooking with my high school friends. Some jerk in a big truck parked a foot away from my front bumper on a hill. Who does that? Idiot. With the huge ruts and piles of loose snow in our area (the snow plows have trouble getting up the hill), it would have been bad enough to get out of that spot without the truck moron. (Incidentally, what is it about people who drive a truck/SUV in bad weather that causes them to drive like idiots? Seriously. Slow down a bit and maybe you won't skid out into that light standard. 'Four by' doesn't make you invincible.) At any rate, Paul came out and drove while I pushed (with assistance from a random jogger who stopped to help push then jogged off into the sunset) and I was soon on my way without hitting the truck (which he would have deserved but then I would have had Guilt. I know, I should be Catholic.)

After scrapbooking, Tara, Melissa and I all left at the same time, which was fortunate because they both needed pushing out. Melissa used to work in the bush with me and she's pretty good at getting unstuck. With just me pushing and her rocking the car we were able to get her on her way quite quickly.

Tara, however, is not a good driver. I think it maybe relates to her inability to navigate. Seriously, she can get lost while sitting still. We really should have had one of us drive her car out. Instead of rocking the car she just applied the gas and let the wheels spin and as soon as we got her moving she would crank the wheel to turn and immediately get stuck again. Every time we stopped we would have to keep getting her to straighten out her tires again. (I may sound frustrated but I actually wasn't. This is just the way Tara is. She knows she's not a good driver and takes instruction fairly well; we just didn't instruct her well enough.) It took almost 10 minutes and Jim had to come out and help us push before we could get her free. I stupidly did not wear my mittens to push and my hands were all frozen and disgusting. Luckily I was not stuck and all three of us were soon on our way. (I'm really sore today from pushing though.)

Despite how frustrating it can be to not be able to get around easily I quite like this time of year, which I call "Car-pushing season". I enjoy using my brain and my body together to solve problems (ie stuck car). I enjoy that random strangers will stop what they are doing to push me out, and that I'm able to return the favor (by pushing out other stuck cars, not by pushing over random strangers). It gives me a sense of community, of connectedness to all the other Canadians with stuck cars.

This is one of the common cultural threads that remains unacknowledged and underexamined. Stuck cars bring us closer together, either with the frustration it engenders or the satisfaction of prying a vehicle free from the ravening jaws of winter. It is a triumph over the cold and ultimately over evil. That makes us superheroes! I am Rocking Girl! This is Pushing Guy! There goes Kitty Litter Kid! He's Plow Man and she's Shovel Girl! Together we are The Car Extractors! (and fade to commercial).

Popovers, Hockey Pucks & Roast Beast

For most of my childhood, the main constant was the Sunday night "roast beast" dinner. We either had it at home with all the family there, Mom and Dad, Robyn and Jay and I, or we went to my Mom's parents' house, the English side of the family.

"Roast beast dinner" had variables and constants. There were always vegetables of some kind; if my mom was cooking it would be peas or corn or carrots or parsnips or sometimes brussel sprouts, all cooked to perfection and unadorned, but if Grandma was cooking it would be overdone peas in butter (bleh!). The constants were the roast beef itself, mashed potatoes, rich salty gravy and popovers

At this point, most people ask me what on earth a Popover is. They are more commonly known as Yorkshire Puddings, but in my family Yorkshire Pudding is made with the same recipe and poured into one big pan. The individual little cups of bready goodness are called "Popovers" if made properly, when they form a little cup and flip sideways in their muffin pan, or called "Hockey Pucks" if they are made incorrectly and come out slightly hard and quite flat (and occasionally very hard and very flat).

Popovers in the process of popping

It is quite a feeling of accomplishment the first time you get Popovers, avoiding the shame and ridicule of Hockey Puck. My Grandpa taught my Mom (his eldest daughter) the secrets to making perfect popovers and she taught me (her eldest daughter) in turn (I'm not going to spill all but the secrets include bacon grease, heated eggs, correct and ever changing temperatures, and impeccable timing). First you start out as a Popover Assistant, greasing the pans, pulling them in and out of the oven with precise timing to the imperious calls of the Popover Master, and tilting the bowl for the Master to scoop the precious last bits of batter into the piping hot pan. The Assistant is offered gradually increasing responsibility until one day the Master acts as the Assistant, which is the final test. If the result is Popovers, you graduate to the rank of Popover Master. If you get Hockey Pucks, you are benched for a while then sent back to training camp.

Pretty darn good Popovers coming out of the oven.

(Note the front left and rear right puddings that didn't pop. These were the last cups to have batter poured in and therefore were not warm enough to get the propper popover shape. )

I can't remember the first time I ever saw Popovers made, the first time I assisted, or how old I was when I graduated to Popover Master (maybe 14?). I do remember looking down at my first set of perfect popovers right before popping them out of the pan and the pride I felt when serving them to my family. I have made popovers for friends and boyfriends, my husband and my husband's family (which may be the only thing I have ever managed to do that impressed my father-in-law who is quite the cook. He said I made them "just like the little old English ladies do." A rare compliment indeed.) Since Paul and I were married I have begun training him as a Popover Assistant (although I'm not sure that we started young enough for him to ever graduate, that's okay though because he makes fabulous mashed potatoes) and you can bet our kids will receive the best in Popover training, watching my Mom and I in our intricate popover making dance that invariably leads to perfect popovers.

A pair of popovers with butter, gravy and a sprinkle of salt.

It's no wonder this is my favorite meal.

Waiting on Pins and Needles (Mostly Needles)

Almost a year ago Paul got blood clots in his arms (if you want to read about it I have moved the posts over. You can read them at http://dorktasticoddments.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_archive.html and http://dorktasticoddments.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_archive.html).

Here is a brief summary for those of you too lazy to go read: Paul’s arm randomly got hugely swollen and red (we called it the “Emergency Sausage Arm”). We went to the hospital. He had a large clot in his shoulder area and a bunch of smaller clots down his bicep. Since then he’s been on blood thinners and has had a gijillion blood test both to make sure that his blood thinners are at the right level and to determine what caused the clot.

One of the bajillion blood tests that Paul had when he first got the clot tested the Antiphospholipid Antigen levels in his blood. High Antiphospholipid Antigen levels can cause clots, but do not necessarily cause clots (so it could have been a random clot or it could have been because of the high levels.) The high levels in turn can be caused by a number of things including, but not limited to, the following:
1) An undetected cancer (this option has now more or less been eliminated through further testing)
2) Antiphospholipid Syndrome - APS (also called Phospholipid Antibody Syndrome or Hughes Syndrome)
3) A virus
4) Random fluctuation

In January, when Paul had his clots, his AP levels were 25 (positive result), at his next test they were 18 (indeterminate result) and at his last test they were 8 (negative result). For comparison, a normal person has no antiphospholipid antigens in their blood at all. The gradual decrease likely means that the original result was not a random fluctuation, however it is good that the levels are dropping because it means that it is less likely he has APS. The hematologist was not confident enough that Paul was fine to take him off the blood thinners without further testing though. If his next test comes back negative or with no score at all, she will be relatively sure that the clot was caused by increased Antiphospholipid Antigen levels in his blood which were caused by a virus. That would mean that once the levels were low enough he could go off the blood thinners and he would likely never have a clot again. If the levels increase then there will be further testing and likely longer relationship with the blood thinners along with all of the consequences that brings.

Today Paul took his last blood test. It will take roughly five more weeks to get the results at which point he will have been on blood thinners for a full year; a year of increased risk of hemorrhaging and easy bruising, without carrying heavy things or playing hockey, but also without blood clots, stroke, blindness or heart attack. It seems a fair trade to me.

One of my greatest fears when we got married was that I would be widowed within the first year of marriage. (I know, I am a crazy person). We’ve successfully passed that threshold but we're not out of the woods yet. Until we get the results of his last tests, we will be waiting on pins and needles (mostly needles, he has to have blood tests on average twice a month) to find out if he is safe. Until then I will just hold him a little closer, hug him a little tighter and cherish the time we have together.

Songs of Jesus and Underpants

Every year my holiday season starts off officially with The Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols. Holiday music before this point causes me to hunch my shoulders protectively up around my ears and mutter in curmudgeonly tones, “It’s not even December yet! Why can’t they wait until after Halloween?”

Singing in, or attending, this concert has been my tradition since December of 1994, which was my first year in choir. At that time “Nine lessons” was held in the Old Arts Building of our university, more commonly known as Convocation Hall, or Con Hall. It’s a beautiful old building and the main hall features a pipe organ and balconies for we “choirs of angels” to sit on high in and sing to the audience below. In short, it is an awesome place to sing, although challenging, due to the distance between the tenor and bass sections and the conductor up on stage.

Unfortunately Con Hall does not feature much in the way of seating space for the audience. We spent years of jamming too many people into too small a hall (often breaking fire codes) and there was that one dreadful year when we sang three concerts in one night after a long day of school and, for some of us poor science students, lab exams (which, incidentally, left us pretty much unable to function for the next couple of days.) (As yet another of my endless aside (aside what, you may ask, since many of my entries are just a long series of asides) my husband and I met in this choir and had our wedding photos taken in the entrance to Con Hall.)

In 1999 we (meaning the concert and all involved) moved to the Winspear centre downtown, a stunning new facility with both an amazing pipe organ that is purely a wonder to behold and acoustics that were to die for. Since leaving the choir, I have made sure to continue my tradition from the audience’s side. Attending the Nine Lessons concert without fail, I start off my Christmas season by singing pretty alto harmonies for ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’, belting out ‘Joy to the World’ with as much enthusiasm as I can muster, mouthing the words to the gentle ‘God be with you’ and listing with rapt attention to the Toccata played masterfully on the pipe organ.

You would think that not being particularly religious would detract from my enjoyment of the concert, and from my enjoyment of Christmas carols in general, but this is not the case at all. I love the old traditional Christmas carols, particularly ones with good alto parts. My favorite is What Child Is This?” which I enjoy for many reasons including, but not limited to:
1) the gorgeous alto part tha t never fails to give me goose bumps and
2) the line “Nail! Spear! Shall pierce him through…” being sung in such a cheery manner cracks me up. I know, I’m a terrible heathen and will burn in hell, but at least I’ll be warm.

My least favorite is the ever repetitive “I Saw Three Ships” because the alto line sucks; you sing the same note over and over for half the song and then the rest is an annoyingly difficult harmony. By the above I mean my least favorite traditional carol. I have reserved special levels of hate for "Jingle Bell Rock" and anything performed by the Jingle Cats (which I just this moment realized was probably a play on Jungle Cats). I won't move on to other hated performers and recorders of bad carols for fear of a brawl breaking out in my blog.

There are also three relatively obscure carols that I not only know the lyrics for, but can sing Soprano, Alto and Tenor lines for are:
- ‘Coventry Carol’ (which contains the line ‘By By Lully, Lullay” and I have no clue what that means.),
- ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ (oddest line: “in the bleak midwinter, a stable place sufficed, the Lord God incarnate, Jesus Christ” with the reference to the manger rhymed with the son of God), and finally
- the 'Huron Carol', which confused our Kenyan assistant conductor to no end with its reference to the “mighty Gitchi Manitou” (On first read he thought it had something to do with underpants. It is officially the first Canadian Christmas carol, written in the mid-1600’s and most people take it as further proof that Canadians are weird. )

It’s Christmas time. Go celebrate or something, eh?

Wallace (& Brita Guilt)

Warning: I'm tired and this entry is about as ADD as it gets.

Today is my birthday; as my brother’s girlfriend put it, “my third annual 29th birthday”. Whatever. I’m not so hung up on my age that I care whether people know it or not, although Paul teases me about my age fairly constantly. That is the problem with marrying a younger man; they can be pests about your age.

The day was a bit humdrum and ho-hum (hum). I woke up with a headache, probably still recovering from the drunken Wild Thing the night before (get out of the gutter, it’s filthy in there! Go read my last entry.) Paul made me French toast, which was yummy even though he forgot to put the cheese on. Yes, cheese. My family is weird and we melt a cheese slice on our french toast then eat it with syrup. Yum! We went to Costco, came home and had pizza for dinner (again yum).

Devin and Jenna came over and we played Puerto Rico and Chez Greek, which were both new games to me and a lot of fun (I won Puerto Rico but I suspect that they may let me win because it was both my first time playing and my birthday). Jenna brought delightful healthy snacks and they gave me a bottle of ‘Ryan’s Cream’ (like Bailey’s) which we had in hot chocolate with marshmallows. The only bad part of the night, which also continues to be bad, is that I developed Brita guilt because I can apparently still talk with my mouth full of foot.

Paul always overfills our Brita pitcher and then when I come along after and try to pour a glass of water it pours out the top and invariably onto my sock, soaking it. (If you’ve ever seem me with wet socks, you really never want to see it again. I loathe wet feet. When I worked in the bush my partner would do anything to keep my feet dry. My extremities are temperamental (you’ll meet my hair later)). So Paul was pouring water and it was slopping all over the place so of course I went on and on about what happens when you over fill the pitcher and ‘see isn’t it a pain’ and all that and after a couple of minutes I finally realized that he hadn’t filled the pitcher, one of our guests had, which was actually quite nice and not required and they were probably not familiar with both the peculiarities of the Brita pitcher and my anal retentive properties in that particular area (which Paul is now quite well versed in). So now, every time I pour myself a glass of water from the Brita pitcher, I have Brita guilt. I would have made a very good Catholic.

The best part of my birthday was Wallace. I actually got Wallace more than a week before my birthday because I NEVER get early birthday presents. They’re almost always late either because my birthday was forgotten or everyone was too busy in the pre-Christmas foofera (yes, I typed fooferah but I have no idea how to spell it.Neither does word though, so tough luck.). (Note: for the record, Paul never forgets my birthday. He just occasionally forgets when we got married despite the fact that it is on not one but two cross-stitches in our kitchen.) Anyway, I was going out of town the weekend before my birthday and when I got home from dance class on the Thursday night before my departure, Paul handed me a gift (actually a gift bag stuffed with socks. He is weird). After extracting the many socks, the bag held…a 30G iPod. I promptly named him Wallace to match our new laptop Gromit, on which (on whom looks wrong) I am composing this entry while (I really wanted to put whilst) reclining comfortably on my bed.

I have wanted an iPod for a very, very long time and have been holding out until the ones that are big enough to hold photos come down in price. Apparently I’d been annoying Paul all year because every time I saw one I would tell him that I wanted an iPod. My sister and brother and my brother’s girlfriend all went in together to get it for me. Paul let me buy it an iSkin to protect Wallace on my trip. When I arrived at the meeting place for our trip, Sarah gave me an FM transmitter for Wallace!

Most of you don’t really comprehend what an exciting combination of gifts this is. My car is a 1980 Volvo station wagon named Stanley. He has a push button am/fm radio and that’s it. The reception on the radio is quite poor, which is particularly painful on long trips (I once drove him to the south end of Utah in July, which is both not recommended and a story for another day.) At any rate, for the first time in my 14 years of driving, I could have music of my own selection in my vehicle. This was a red letter day, let me tell you. (Now I have to look up what that really means and where it came from. I am a crazy person, I tell you. Look at all the crazy! Apparently it’s from old calendars on which the holidays were marked in red. Alright then, let’s have a holiday; Karen finally has music in the car! This is cause for celebration!)

It’s amazing the impact Wallace has had on my life, in particular on my mornings. I detest talk radio (which is why the best gift I have ever bought Paul is a pair of wireless headphones so that he can listen to talk radio in the morning without causing me to become homicidal. Really it was a gift for me. Don’t you worry, I bought him several.) This means that I normally drive in to work in silence and haven’t actually spoken yet by the time I have arrived at work. More than once I have discovered upon my arrival that I was suffering from complete laryngitis. Now I drive to work singing along with Wallace’s tunes. I arrive (somewhat) cheerful and generally with full voice. I am perfectly capable yelling “Asshole!” after an idiot driver and continuing cheerfully with my sing-along where before I would have stewed about idiot drivers all the way to work and arrived grouchy with an acid stomach. I’m sure that my co-workers are appreciating Wallace just as much as I do.

I’m a Wiener!

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo - http://www.nanowrimo.org/) runs every year in November. The basic idea is that many people say “one day I’m going to write a novel” but they never quite manage to even start. If a person is given set parameters, an arbitrary goal, and license to throw quality out the window and replace it with quantity, they will be able to say “Last year I wrote a novel” (even if they can’t say “Last year I wrote a good novel”). The parameters are to write a 50,000 word novel between 12:00 a.m. November 1st and 11:59 pm November 30th. If you personally write a 50,000 word novel from scratch in that time span, you win (or as Paul would say, "You’re a weiner").

This year, somewhere near 80,000 people worldwide signed up to take the challenge. Roughly 30% of those who started their novel finished it in the allotted time. Some people are insane and wrote double, triple or quadruple the goal. Like last year, I crossed the finish line with roughly an hour to spare (Procrastinators of the world unite...maybe tomorrow!)

This year, writers around the world logged upwards of 982 million words in the month of November. That's almost a billion bits of creative beauty (or garbage) worldwide. My little piece of the world made a hefty contribution of upwards of five and a half million words and 74 of our 173 participant "won", a 43% win rate. (Stats compiled from official NaNo website data.) This gives me a nice little warm glow as I had the pleasure and pain of being in charge of our area (along with my good friend SarahJanet). Since this was her fourth year of being in charge, I'm not sure how much I contributed, but I'm pretty sure it was....some.

Our TGIO party (Thank God It's Over) was on Saturday, and I actually had quite a good time. For the first time ever, I read an excerpt from my novel. Since I am completely incapable of speaking in any sort of accent (I speak French quite fluently and I can't even do a French accent) I got Paul to read the part of my British main character. I also sang Karaoke, which I normally don't do because of my microphone phobia (I just hate being amplified.) I sang "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" with SarahJanet, "Tainted Love" all by myself (after crashing and burning at Steppenwolfe's "Magic Carpet Ride"), and then finished off the night with the worlds worst drunken rendition of "Wild Thing" which I thought was the Tone Loc version but was actually the more traditional version by The Troggs. It was drunkenly dreadful. That song should not be on a karaoke playlist anywhere.

I leave you with TGIO photos.

SarahJanet and I two fisting it. She appears to be ahead of me, as usual.

Kiyoshi rocking the air guitar.

Crazy Train air guitar solo.

Wolfy Jeebus the headbanging hair-gnome.

Sarah and Patrick "Had the time of [their] life."

The Lift! (She is killing herself laughing in this photo but didn't drop him.)

We flailed our arms about in the back row to indicate the time was up for each excerpt

(and my time is up for this excerpt. Flail!)

Dorktastic Oddments

Dork: a person who is deemed 'quirky', 'different', or 'eccentric' by others.

Fantastic: exceptionally good.


Dorktastic: exceptionally quirky and eccentric in a good way.

Oddments: a motley assortment of things, an oddity.


Dorktastic Oddments: a motley assortment of exceptionally quirky and eccentric things. In a good way.

It seems that every year around this time I have an Internet Identity Crisis (IIC). Three years ago I was Canoegirl. Last year I settled on "The Schaapsher Chronicles" for all of three days before deciding that I was both too easy to find and that the title was a bit too pretentious. Then, after a brief internet poll, I decided to change myself to "Some People Juggle Geese" (Funny but true) in honor of Firefly's Hoban Washburn. Well, the shine quickly wore off and I never really felt quite at home there. When you google "Some People Juggle Geese" you get a bajillion Firefly sites, and while I didn't really want to be singled out, I didn't like feeling quite so lost in the shuffle.

Yet again, a new year rolled around, a new Holidailies came along to inspire me, and yet again the identity crisis set in. It's so hard to encapsulate your identity into a few short words. Captain Cheese? Too specific. Back to Canoegirl? Not really me so much any more (although I am the half-owner of a beautiful new canoe now). "The Anti-Pineapple"? Again, too specific. The Volvo Pimp? Been there, done that. Woodenshoes? That only reflects my paternal heritage. I apparently need to be Captain Dutch Canoe Cheese Volvo Pimp hold the Pineapple. No, thank you.

I toyed briefly with just Dorktastic, because I felt that really defined me in a lot of ways but again, if you google Dorktastic you get a quintillion pages. Dorktastic Oddments is where I have settled and it might just manage to be broad enough for it to feel like home without being too restrictive and excluding other elements of my personality.

A motley assortment of exceptionally quirky and eccentric things. In a good way. Yup, that's me.

C is for

Today we finally had Paul's appointment with the hematologist, 6 weeks after discovering the blood clots.

She went through Paul's medical history, examined him, and laid out the information as she saw it.

There are three possibilites for a cause of the clot:

Most likely - Carrying in 70 pounds worth of IKEA boxes a week before our hospital visit caused an injury to the blood vessels in his shoulder, resulting in the clot (I brought this up the last thing before we left - since Paul didn't mention it - and the doctor seemed extremely relieved by this and hopeful that it was the cause rather than the other two or some unknown factor).

Possible - He had high Antiphospholipid Antibodies in his blood. The levels were higher than normal but not so high as to indicate anything certain. This could potentially indicate a blood disorder that led to the clot or it could be normal fluctuations. He is having the levels re-tested in April and September to see if his levels are consistently high, usually higher, or if that was an anomaly caused by the blood thinner injection at the hospital.

Least likely - Possible cancer in the pelvis or abdomen - he has an appointment for a pelvic/abdominal ultrasound in April.

He will be on blood thinners until at least October, which is when we go back to see her. He is allowed to start being more active, but still no lifting and no contact sports - nothing that is hard on his arms.

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It always amazes me the impact of the C word. Cancer. It chills us to our marrows, flushes us with panic, and makes us cling tighter to our loved ones. Cancer is larger than life and even though it was the least likely option, it was the one that both of us fixated on.

Everyone has a cancer story: a lump, a mole, a lost friend or family member. Someone who fought to the end, someone who lingered too long, someone lost too suddenly, or someone who fought it and won. There is nothing good about cancer, no hidden benefit or positive side effect. You wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy, even on your worst day.

The scariest thing about it is that it's an overgrowth of the very cells that make up your body. It's not an outside invader, it's your own body turning against you, out of control with growth. To defeat it, you have to kill or remove a part of yourself, surgical sectional suicide. Cancer is synonymous with terror, which seems irrational but sometimes isn't.

I guess you know you're grown up when C is not for cookie anymore.