Dorktastic Oddments

Urges

2009-08-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

With the approach of NaNo for yet another year and my impending unemployment I've been having urges, particularly the urge to write again. My inner perfectionist is huddled in a corner crying, "if you can't do it perfectly, don't waste the effort" but I think I just need to start posting again when I feel the urge to write something, rather than feeling too much guilt that I haven't posted anything in far too long and feeling the need to summarize all of the major things that have gone on in my life since I last wrote. Those who need to know the major things already know them and those who don't probably don't care so I'm just going to move on and write about what moves me, when I feel like it. While I'm at it I just might give my inner perfectionist a kick to keep her quiet for a while.

Ice cream truck

2008-06-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

There’s an ice cream truck that circulates in our neighbourhood on sunny summer days, which typically causes one of two reactions in the general adult public. Reaction 1: nostalgic tears spring to your eyes as you lean out onto your doorstep to watch the neighbourhood children toddle after the slow-moving musical freezer on wheels, a loonie clutched in their sweaty little hands. Reaction 2: you try to fling yourself off of the highest altitude location in your residence to stop the ear-piercing agony of the Piano Man Re-mix: fucked-up boogaloo.

In our house, the typical reaction is that Paul’s head snaps up and (I swear) his ears perk up like a hound on the hot scent of a criminal. The words ‘ice cream truck’ leap unbidden to his lips and he’s at least four steps towards the door before he comes to his senses. I typically start laughing, not at Paul, but at the fond memories of my post-university roommate’s ongoing battle with the ice-cream truck.

We lived together on the 9th floor of a University area high-rise apartment complex which the ice-cream trucks frequented regularly (the street out front, not our 9th floor apartment). Doug was a textbook reaction type 1: nostalgic joy and the burning desire for just one more Rocket Popsicle frozen to his lips to cap off his summer experience. I was more type 2: “Does that bloody thing have to drive so slowly? Surely it must be out of earshot by now!”

The first time we heard that haunting Piano-man remix, Doug checked his pocket for change and wandered to the elevator. I didn’t even look up from my book. He was back within minutes empty handed. “I couldn’t hear it anymore from the main doors.” The second time the truck went past, Doug dove for his change and sprinted for the stairs. I sauntered out onto the balcony to watch him chase the snail’s-pace treats down the street. Sure enough, the truck was out of sight by the time he reached the road. He returned to the apartment empty handed, strategizing for the next appearance. There was a third performance, later in the season, but as before he came no closer to attaining frozen treat nirvana. From then on, when the ice cream truck went past Doug would just go out onto the balcony to shake his fist and mutter obscenities in its general direction.

Most people mature a bit after University but with the help of the ice cream man Doug went straight from carefree youth to crotchety old curmudgeon. At least that’s my best explanation and I'm sticking to it.(Happy Birthday Doug!)

Inspired

2008-01-24T15:42:00.000-08:00

I was informed at work today that I have inspired my coworker to wear sweater-vests. I'm not really sure how to take this. It's not like I inspired her to write the great Canadian novel or to travel the world or help others. But then it's not like I inspired her to do coke or slit her wrists either. I guess inspiration just isn't my superpower.

WWF meets WWF

2008-01-21T21:36:00.000-08:00

It's been a hockey couple of days.

On Saturday night we went to watch a Panda's game at the U. It was a choir alumni event and we were booked into the "skybox". For 5 bucks, we got our game tickets, pizza, pop, munchies, door prizes and cheap booze. Not bad at all for a Saturday night. We were left wondering why on earth we didn't do this when we were students. It was a good game. We won 5-2 and scored an empty net goal in the last 8 seconds.

The game was against the Winnipeg Bison and we're the Pandas. Of course this match up had me speculating when on earth bison and pandas would come in contact without the intervention of man and what would happen if they did. It was a case of WWF meets WWF: World Wildlife Fund meets World Wrestling Federation. I was of the opinion that the bison would take the panda easily, while Paul said that the Panda could just take a bamboo shoot and stick it between the bison's legs, just like shoving it into the spokes on a bicycle. I maintain that even taking into account the use of tools the bison would prevail. Having worked with bison I have a more than healthy respect for their power (I saw an experienced worker get gored through the shoulder despite the chute and cattle prod.) We then debated a match up between a polar bear and a bison (polar bear wins), brown bear and bison (bison wins), a grizzly and a bison (tie). Really we should have been speculating about why our team is called the Pandas when Pandas are indiginous to China.

Tonight was my first hockey game in a year. I injured my wrist in January and so was out for that term, then I injured my foot and was out for fall term. I was pleasantly surprised with how well my foot held up; I was able to play the entire game. It took me a while to get used to playing again but after a few shifts it all started coming back to me. I missed both the physical activity and the team environment. It's good to be back.

Valiant Monkey

2008-01-14T15:45:00.000-08:00

Last week we went for lunch with Doug before his flight. After lunch, I noticed that our driver's side lock looked a bit funny. Sure enough someone had broken into our car. The contents of the console and glove box were strewn about; the change from the Monkey Pit* (about $10) and our pink card were missing. We got off incredibly easy since all of Doug's luggage was in the trunk, including his backpack and iPod.

The whole incident was filled with irony. Firstly, we lived roughly two blocks from there for 2.5 years without ever having a problem, even though I left my car unlocked on more than one occasion (unless you're a mechanic there is no way you can steal my car, nor would anyone want to) and yet the first time we returned to the area someone broke in. Secondly, everyone warned us about the perils of moving to Millwoods. We haven't had a single problem here but back by Southgate we got robbed. Thirdly, Paul has been searching for his cell phone headset since April. Somehow the thief managed to find it and leave it conveniently on the seat. We searched for 9 months and didn't find it, the thief randomly pulled things out for 5 minutes and did. He actually saved us 20 bucks.

Had it just been the small change we would likely have shrugged off the incident, but the missing pink card added a new dimension to the issue. What can be done with a pink card? Well, the police pointed out that it is usually taken for identity theft purposes, although I don't really know what you can get with just our insurance information and address. Secondly, it includes our full address and since we were out, the thief would know that we were out and could therefore feel free to burgle** our place. We rushed home to see if this was the case, but again we were lucky.

I had trouble sleeping that night, tossing and turning and starting awake. I was left with a vulnerability, a sense that security was lost; someone had pawed through part our lives and taken what they wanted with unknown motivation. The car felt dirty and tainted and so did I, by association. It surprised me that such a small loss, coupled with the potential for much greater violation, had such an emotional impact. It's taken a while for that security to return; some areas still feel stained and I'm uncomfortable when forced to touch them. They're like a bruise on the psyche, not a lasting damage but a real one nonetheless.

* Years ago, Kaley was in the car with one of her toys, a banana full of plush monkeys. One of the monkeys got left behind and Paul stuck it in his ashtray with the spare change, so when searching for change we would say, "check in the monkey". Loanly, our newer vehicle, has a little pit with a lidded bin where we keep both the change and the monkey***, hence: The Monkey Pit.

** "Burgle" is a funny word, don't you think?

**Fortunately the thief took the money and left behind the monkey, though his ear was torn in the struggle to defend his home. Valiant monkey.

Momentum

2008-01-01T19:29:00.000-08:00

Our New Year’s party included the traditional burning of regrets and tying wishes to the hope tree. This year, I had no regrets to burn. There are many things that I regretted, particularly work related, but I’m not in any way ready to let go of them yet. There were things that I should regret, particularly in the past couple of months, but I don’t and I refuse to feel bad about it because I’m already seeing how much good will come from them. I did have a list for the hope tree, starting with the fervent wish that my brother’s girlfriend will beat cancer, and while there are things that I hope for myself and the rest of my family and friends, everything pales in comparison to that.

Now, poised in this moment of stillness at the beginning of a fresh new year, I’m in a different mental space. I don’t in any way feel compelled to compile a traditional ‘New Year’s Resolution’ post. Instead, I give you a list of what I do not resolve:

- There will be no resolution of personal wellness as there is no point: I woke up sick this morning, having succumbed to whatever Ivy brought back from Porto Vallarta.

- There will be no resolution of weight loss: I have already been losing weight thanks to a change of attitude, a change of body chemistry, and a change of environment. (I can’t even measure this change since the battery in the scale died last night and the hell if I know where the batteries are packed.)

- There will be no financial resolution: we will just keep chipping away at the mountain that is our mortgage. Right now all of our debt is good debt and hopefully my car limps along for another year so that the situation stays that way.

If I were forced to make a resolution (Really, who would do that? Hands up! Give me all your resolutions!) it would be to do more things that make me happy. This is more of a change in attitude than a resolution. I do far too many things that make me miserable; why on earth would I do that? Possibly because I think they are expected of me and I don’t know how to say no, or more likely because I live my life on the basis of delayed gratification. My actions reveal that for some reason I believe if I work hard and suffer deeply things will be that much better for me in the future, that there’s some hidden scale that will balance out in the end. Since I don’t really believe in an afterlife, I’m not really sure what I’m waiting for. I’m living for the future, but I don’t really know why. Doing what makes me happy sounds like a selfish goal, but if you know me you will realize that it’s not. I donate, I volunteer, I organize events for large groups to donate and volunteer, I’m responsible, dedicated and I like to make people happy. The good of the world makes me feel good, so why not be guided by what makes everyone feel a little better year-round?

No resolution of change is required for this year because I am already in motion toward change. I am somehow altered on a fundamental and subconscious level, and I’m gaining momentum. I am more comfortable in my skin now, but less comfortable in my life. This inevitably leads to growth: keeping the core and shedding the restrictive exoskeleton.

Triple Threat

2008-01-01T04:33:00.000-08:00

The end of the year found us with over 50 people packed into our new house to celebrate the Triple Threat of New Year's Eve, our housewarming and Paul's 30th birthday (at midnight we rolled over to both the new year and Debbie's 30th birthday).

Gary, Steve, Tara and Debbie hanging out in the living room.

The kitchen was full all night (possibly due to the chocolate fountain).

Gary played high-stakes go fish with Julia.

We had the Wii set up in the living room and the Xbox 360 in the basement (unfortunately neither of them are ours).

Contrary to appearances, Paul and Keith are swimming.

Paul's parents rocking the Guitar Hero.

Baby Tara loved our water wall.

Kristy played with Julia and Elena for a very long time. (Please ignore the dead body in the background, she was trying to stay out of the picture).

Jacob hung out with Doug.

Steve, Tara, Paul, me and Ira.

We received some very cool housewarming gifts, most notably the 'devil duck' from Melly and the Housewarming Kit from Tara and Steve (gift cards to HBC, Home Depot, IKEA, Earls, and movie passes in a giant jar of jelly beans).

We decided that Devil Duck could hang out with Literary Ninja Duck.

Happy New Year!

Somehow we jammed about 50 people in our living room/kitchen area at midnight. The photo doesn't do it justice.

Paul's chocolate cheesecake birthday cake (with Elf Poop decoration).

Debbie's ice cream cake, which turned out to be the bane of my existence. I didn't take it out of the deep freeze early enough and it took an hour to hack off 7 slices. I honed my technique and bruised my palm on that bastard. More than 10 people told me to put it in the microwave but I couldn't get it off of the styrofoam.

You can tell it was a good party because we ended up with frosting in unusual locations (this is just one example). Also, someone left behind an octopus that says "brown" in a Marvin the Paranoid Android voice. I'd say that by the end of the night our house was thoroughly warmed.

PseudoChristmas

2007-12-31T01:21:00.000-08:00

PseudoChristmas - Turkey dinner potluck-style with your family of friends, (somewhere between 20 and 45 people). Often accomanied by power outage or flood.

I was looking today at the history of our PseudoChristmas. It was originally started in 2002 by Kristy, Beth and Cara. The 2002 event took place at the Party House on University Ave with 22 attendees and included a secret santa gift exchange. PseudoChristmas was declared a success.

2003 - 35 of us packed into the Party House. So many things were cooking at once that they fried a fuse which took out both ovens and the furnace. This was also the year of the Hamwrap Chorus.

2004 - at Rachel's church was much more subdued. There were some hard feelings over the event and many of us were sick (expected 33 but less attended). The traditional power outage in the turkey-cooking home was right on schedule. Doug made Ham Wraps. Never again.

2005 - at Kristy's church with an even more expanded guest list. In keeping with our disaster theme, there was a flood. We topped out in the neighbourhood of 43 guests that year.

2006 - out at Amanda's parent's place for both PseudoChristmas an New Year's with a packed house (about 37 for dinner and more later on).

2007 - we ramped it back and scaled it down; there were 22 at the first PseudoChristmas and 22 tonight, although 6 more swung by later on. For the first time in several years we all crammed in at one long straight table at Kristy's place.

Paul was on turkey carving duty.

Half of the table.

Little Tara was the primary entertainment for the evening.

She had all of the boys wrapped around her little finger.

We had Snoopy Snowcones for desert. This was a bad plan and will not become a tradition.

Chris arrived as a surprise with kids in tow.

Julia grinning at her goofy sister.

I don't think Elena held still for more than 4 seconds the entire time she was there.

Jacob the over-achiever is already finger walking.

The boys spent much of the night in the kitchen, for some reason.

Shinny

2007-12-30T08:36:00.001-08:00

This is the fourth year running that we've had a game of shinny hockey during the holidays. Each year there is progressively less of 'shinny' about it and more of organized hockey. This year we even had two goalies rather than knocked-over backwards nets.

(Ouch!)

We ended up in the unusual situation that all of our players (besides the goalies and Lisa, who had never played before), usually play defence. Sarah informed us that Jamie wasn't defence: he didn't know what he was, so I told him to play centre. Look at him go!

He shoots! He scores!

Paul and Doug go head to head.

Ira decided he was going to play laying down for a while.

Fight!

Doug's Dad brought out the Zamboni for a photo op.

The players (from left to right): Jamie, me, Bob, Paul, Ruthie, Ira (goal), Romy, Steve (goal), Doug, Gary, Debbie, Chantal, Lisa.

This was my first time back on the ice since last year's holiday game. (I wrecked my wrist two days before our first game in January and couldn't play this fall with my injured foot.) I was able to skate for almost half an hour without too much pain in my injured foot, which means that I should be able to play at least half of the first game of the season, perhaps even more if I recover more quickly. The only really painful part was squeezing my foot in and out of the skate (and watching Paul slide headfirst into the boards without a helmet. His head is pretty hard but his shoulder is going to be spectacularly bruised.) I was also pleased to find that I can still reliably raise the puck enough to hop it over sticks, a skill I'd been working on before the injuries took me out of the game. I'm definitely not skating as well as I'd like to, but at least some of the other skills are still there.

I'm not saying anything about how the rest of me feels, although I have to admit that the word 'ache' springs to mind.

How to pick up a girl

2007-12-29T03:11:00.000-08:00

I went out dancing with the girls tonight (Melly, Cara, Chantal, Kristy, and Sarah joined us later). It was a bit of a strange crowd: less busy than usual, and a higher guy-to-girl ratio. We’d been dancing for less than half an hour when we suddenly realized that we were pretty much surrounded. I rapidly began to have distinct sympathy for deer surrounded by a pack of ravenous wolves.

There were two guys (non-creepy good dancers) to one side looking like they were having a good time, but definitely interested. There were three guys in matching uniforms of striped golf shirts and ball caps dancing on another side (I use the term “dancing” loosely here. They get points for effort). To complete the circle, there were two creepy guys in open white button-up shirts over wife-beaters kind of swaying to the music, but mostly just staring at us.

One of the uniform guys, the really tall one, seemed distinctly interested but also fairly shy. The dance floor was pretty packed at that point so such a big guy had very little room to move. He danced just like one of my favorite friends, kind of goofy but with the beat, not really bad. He likely would have done okay on his own if his friend was either less drunk or less dumb. The friend came up and “warned us” about the two good dancing, non-creepy guys across the way. He said to “look out for them” and also that “they’re gay.” Okay buddy, push off. Eventually he got the picture and took the rest of his pack with him.

As for the wife-beater jackals, just imagine them there all night, only as a succession of yucky, creepy guys who would occasionally grind up against us or stare blankly at our chests while swaying to something completely other than the music. Seriously gross.

The two good-dancing non-creepy guys just kept on dancing and having a good time. Sometimes they wandered off for a bit, but they eventually danced back over. Sometimes one would go off and the other would stay and dance with us, never intruding on the group but staying nearby and obviously enjoying the music. We left the dance floor to grab drinks and found them pleased with our return.

Eventually, after about two solid hours of dancing, they began to integrate themselves into the group a bit. All along they’d been somewhat mirroring how one or another of us was dancing, maybe making a bit of eye contact, but still no body contact. Now there was more direct interaction: dancing with one of us, more eye contact, or some casual conversation. It soon became fairly obvious that the younger of the two was interested in one girl in particular and she seemed to return the interest.

I struck up a bit of a conversation with the older of the two. He was beginning to look a bit worn out and was sitting out a song every now and then. He sighed that we were hard to keep up with. Every so often he was kind of signaling his friend to see if he was ready to leave (which the friend definitely wasn’t). I teased him that he shouldn’t have worn a sweater for dancing at the bar and that he was giving up just as we were saying that we admired their persistence. He said that it wasn’t exactly a test of their friendship since the younger guy really just lived in his basement. I replied that it was funny because we’d been warned about the pair of them earlier. He laughed at that and replied that they were definitely not a threat, that they’d been in there once before dancing to Wham and Boy George. Not that they didn’t like girls, but if they were the kind of guys that we needed to be warned about, they would have been humping our legs by now. I pointed out that the other guys must have just felt threatened because they could dance and that we were perfectly happy to hang out with non-creepy boys that can dance. He said we didn’t need to worry about them, that they were willing to put in the time. I mentioned that we appreciated that they were helping us fend off the creepy guys. He followed it up with an uncanny imitation of one of the creepier jackals. “If only finding a girl were so easy”, he exclaimed, “I wouldn’t have to use my brain at all!”

Eventually the dancing started to wind down and he convinced his friend that it was time to go. The friend was too shy to ask for a phone number, so Sarah made sure that arrangements were made and everyone left happy.

It turns out that there are still nice guys out there, not just wolves and jackals. They’re just a rare breed (Noncreepius gooddancius).

(As for me, I enjoyed the dancing, but I am definitely too old for more than 3 hours non-stop. My knees are angry with me, my hips aren’t speaking to me, my back is giving alarming twinges, and my feet checked out hours ago. I’m going to die at hockey tomorrow.)

Unexpected Perspective

2007-12-27T22:09:00.000-08:00

This is the landing from two levels down. I'm laying on my back on the stairs with a view to the ceiling on the top level, like peering into the most shadowed layers of my mind through a secret back entrance. The lighting doesn't do quite what it's expected to and the straight lines lead to unanticipated places: revelation, excitement, complication and regret.

The red dress, the focus of the image, has a spectrum of mixed emotions woven into it. I wore it to the NaNo Thank God It’s Over party which I was wildly unprepepared for, so there was a baseline of panic with public speaking anxiety mixed in. I was relieved that the month was over, successfully completed, and that there was end to the enormous pressure it involved, but I was also heartbroken that it had ended, since I'd allowed a greater emotional investment on many levels than ever before. One of the great joys of NaNo is the chance to let my inner geek out to play, and I had far greater opportunity for that than ever before. I was exposed to ideas and concepts and events, even flavors, that opened up the dusty corners of my mind to new light. Some complex relationships developed this year, at once thrilling and painful, and I'm reminded of that interaction: how much I enjoyed the connection, and how much I miss these people the rest of the year. That night I gave small gifts, tokens really, to three individuals who had given me much greater but less tangible gifts this year, and their reactions are an integral part of my recollection of that night.

This image reminds me of how I felt, wearing that dress in that place: the anxiety and trepidation, the confidence and warmth, the pure enjoyment of shared humor and experience, and most of all the need to be understood and appreciated by those who I respect and admire. This gathering of articulate and intelligent people meant that thoughts were expressed more clearly, communication flowed more easily, and experiences were more deeply shared. At the end of the night, we sang and danced and relaxed, and the things that went wrong didn’t matter so much anymore.

Back at home, this confidence dissolved away, leaving complicated shadows and angles, and a red dress.

This is a view of the place I live; an unexpected perspective.

Who Needs Sleep?

2007-12-27T03:46:00.000-08:00

My sleep patterns have gone all to hell again, following a brief recovery after the chaos of November. Why is it that my brain will only function in the middle of the night when deprived of rest? I'm approaching the point where lines get fuzzy and life gets complicated. You'd think a well-rested mind would deal with these issues more effectively, but I'm not sure I'd let my guard down without sleep deprivation playing into the situation.

Lids down, I count sheep
I count heartbeats
The only thing that counts is
that I won't sleep
I count down, I look around
- Barenaked Ladies

Christmas Morning

2007-12-25T22:43:00.000-08:00

Christmas morning looked like this:

My stocking was stuffed (by Paul) with Santa's Emergency Anti-stress Kit.

(I am a psycho when my feet are wet and/or cold.)

The mini-aquarium plugs into a USB port.

This one is coming to work with me.

We made farm waffles with bacon cooked in

and ate them while we watched "A Christmas Story", which is the best Christmas movie of all time.

We went to my mom's place for dinner, which was a much smaller affair than usual. My cousin Amy

made me 'skullholders' for Christmas.

It was good to see my Grandpa. He had triple bypass surgery recently and was convinced he was going to die. He pulled through like a champion, although he is occasionally confused. He's also quite hard of hearing so this sometimes makes for interesting conversation.

Grandpa got tired of waiting for Mom to take the photo and just gave up and ate his brussel sprouts.

My sister and cousins Amy, Heather and Becky.

Robyn and I (Mom actually said that I was the "smart one" tonight. Granted this was right after I slammed my finger in a cupboard. Robyn is clearly the pretty one.)

Our attempt at a family photo. The chicken is standing in for Mom (of course). My fingers represent Jay and Ivy since they are far away and are therefore wee.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T14:20:00.000-08:00

'Twas The Night Before Christmas

2007-12-24T17:23:00.000-08:00

Every year at Christmas we’re always rushing around like crazy people to satisfy all of the family and friend obligations and responsibilities (not that we don’t necessarily enjoy this, it’s just often very stressful to fit things in). There’s my family and his family and gifts to get and my extended family (which is a stressor on a level all its own) and church and travel and general chaos.

The season starts off when the out-of-town folk start arriving: Doug, Melly, Amanda, Keith, Jo, G, Beth, Dave and now Cara. Doug always stays with us so our first goal is usually to clean up a place for him to stay. The 23rd is spent in a whirlwind of last minute gifts, wrapping and packing. After work on the 24th we rush out to the Park to church, generally arriving just in time to find parking and Paul’s family before the carols start. Afterward we head out to the farm to hang out with Mama, Papa, Trish and Kaley, playing board games, eating snacks and having a good time. We trundle off to bed and normally wake up at some late hour as Jo and G sneak in the door after their time with G’s family.

Morning arrives in the form of Kaley jumping on us yelling “Merry Christmas! It’s time to get up for Jesus’ Birthday!” We crawl out of bed and gather in the living room, in various stages of consciousness. Eventually the coffee is brewing, the candles are lit and everyone has gathered in a circle. Paul’s Dad reads from the bible and then we all join hands and go around the circle talking about what we are thankful for that year. We sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blow out our candles.

On to the frenzy: coffee is handed out, for those who drink it. Our secret stocking exchange comes next, with at least one or two prank gifts every year. Gifts are torn open, except by me and G: we open carefully and fold the wrapping for re-use, partly because we were raised that way and partly because it drives everyone else insane. It’s a hubbub of excitement, laughter and tears of joy. We’re goofy and silly and exchange long-distance finger wiggling hugs across the room. Soon all the packages are opened, thank yous are exchanged and we troop into the kitchen for waffles with bacon cooked into them (yummy!) After waffles, more games until Paul and I have to head out to my parent’s place.

Robyn, Jay and Ivy usually arrive about the same time we do and we rush through the family gift opening so that we can finish getting ready for the extended family to arrive. My mom’s family is enormous; she has 4 brothers and 5 sisters, they have kids and their kids have kids and their kids have started having kids. Since my grandparents are both still alive that makes for 5 living generations. Many of them are extroverts who tell it like it is, which makes for a lot of laughing and yelling and some fighting. (Last year my cousin, my mom and my grandma got in a fight before we had even arrived.) I’m not entirely sure how we survive Christmas every year.

We still have a “grown up” table and “kids” tables, except some of the ones at the “kids” table are now over 40. We have a great time laughing and joking at the little table. The adult table is more sedate and many of the comments are more barbed. As the night goes on more and more relatives arrive with kids and pets in tow, until you can barely move in the house.

Eventually people start to trickle away. Mom and Dad drive Auntie Buff home while Paul and Jay and I clean up and Robyn sleeps on the couch. We drive home well after midnight with a big bag of leftovers and snuggle in to sleep.

This year will look quite different; it's a year of transition. Jo and G decided not to come back at Christmas and Paul’s family all went out to spend Christmas with them. My brother and Ivy are off on a holiday in Mexico, and aren’t back until the 27th. Instead of going to Paul’s family Catholic Church for 5:00 mass, we’re going to Sarah and Jamie’s Anglican Church for an 11:00 service. Tomorrow morning we will wake up in our new house, just the two of us, and have our own candlelit ceremony. We don’t have gifts or stockings to open, but we’re still going to have waffles with maple bacon cooked in. We’ll watch “A Christmas Story” and relax before going to my parent’s place for 4. The nutters will arrive and it will be all crazy all the time as usual until they trickle away again.

This year we have the time and the space to create our own traditions. I am stressing less about gifts and thinking more about the value of the time spent with friends and family. It’s kind of hard to be so adrift at a time of year that's steeped in tradition. I find I’m singing carols every chance I get, we’ve got the Christmas radio station on and we’re watching all of the classic Christmas movies. Admidst the change, that continued tradition is important and ties us together. There’s a wreath on our door, icicle lights on the patio, and tinsel on the water wall. We’re at home for Christmas, a real home that’s our own for building tradition and memories.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Dancing Chemistry

2007-12-23T23:41:00.000-08:00

My birthday every year is typically a bit of a bust: December birthdays are a pain. My mom actually tried to pin the inconvenience on me this year, but I’d say that she’s far more to blame for it than I am. It’s hard to control anything when you’re a made up of two cells, with half of your DNA in one body and half in another. The separation makes it a bit hard to get your thoughts together.

As a kid, December birthdays sucked because you always got the cop out “Christmas/Birthday” gift. As a teenager it was awesome because you had much more buying power. In University the timing was bad because it always came right around the last day of classes and everyone was in the middle of lab exams, or the campus bars and restaurants were packed with students celebrating the end of classes, and then everyone went home for Christmas. I typically cancelled my birthday and rescheduled for the first weekend after classes restarted in January, so that all the out-of-towners were back in. I've actually done that so often that most of my University friends think my birthday is in January. Now we’re all so busy that it usually gets lost in the shuffle of work, family obligations and more complicated travel for even more out-of-towners. I’ve more or less reached the point where I couldn’t care less about my birthday and whether or not it gets celebrated. I wasn’t even going to plan anything but was receiving pressure from various people to at least do something small this year.

Last night I went out for Greek with Paul, Cara, Gary, Tara and Steve, which was nice and involved cheese set on fire, which is always good. We got a prelude to old-school bar dancing with the pounding music (which was very dance-club like for belly dancing), the dim lighting (we were in an incredibly dark corner), the flashing, squealing and penis-themed headgear (there was a stagette at the next table) and the smoke (many skewers of meat on the grill filled the place with a smoky haze).

Cara, Sarah, Chantal, Kristy and I went out dancing afterward at our usual location and I have to admit that I was feeling a bit old when we got there. While picking up guys at the bar was never ever my deal, it’s hard not to fall back into the usual habits of feeling like an unattractive wallflower. I didn’t end up feeling that way for long since a lot of the music was very familiar. In fact some of it came out when I was in Junior High, which is kind of hilarious. They played a song that came out when I first started going to bars and a herd of girls cheered, which cracked me up. We ended up doing our usual dance away from the overly friendly guy who was trying to touch one (or more) of us inappropriately. (What is with that, by the way? When is it okay to grind up against a girl when you don’t even know her name and likely haven’t seen her face? If you’ve had that much to drink, we’re really not interested.) I even got my butt grabbed on my way back to our table and that hasn’t happened since Whyte after the last Oilers Stanley Cup run (and that may have been someone just trying to pull their way back up to the surface of the crowd).

There’s something about moving to a beat in a crowded room, packed cheek to cheek (usually not the facial ones) with strangers. It’s like chemistry: increased heat + increased concentration = increased rate of reaction. Music and dancing, while they can be refined and cultured in some forums, are primitive and tribal at the bar and tap into some deep ancestral social imprint in the brain. All I know is that dancing makes me feel good and I will keep on doing it as long as there is music to dance to.

Grumpy Christmas!

2007-12-23T12:10:00.000-08:00

Today is tree decorating day. This year we’re much more on my timeline than on Paul’s. He’s a “decorate the tree on December first, but no sooner” type and I’m a “decorate the tree whenever I happen to have time prior to 11pm on December 24th”.

I was typing away at the computer this morning (and by morning I mean afternoon because I went out for my birthday last night, more on that later) when Paul brought up the Christmas decorations from the basement. He started unpacking items as I continued to type. You should know that as Paul putters around the house he is almost always talking/singing/laughing at himself, which is kind of endearing but also very annoying while you’re trying to concentrate. I kept telling him that yes we could decorate the tree today but first I need to write, then we need to figure out what gifts we still have to buy/make, and then we're going shopping. Sometimes being married is like having a 4-year-old.

I have a pair of Santa pants that my mom gave me for Christmas one year, for reasons unknown since I already have a stocking. Paul brought them out from the living room and asked where they should go. Since I don’t particularly find them a priority I told him that we could wait and decide later what area needed to look more festive. He thought about this for about two seconds and put them on my head and strapped them on with a pair of antlers. (One of the reason I married Paul is that he knows exactly how to deal with me when I'm grouchy.)

I looked so grumpy that he decided I needed another set of antlers to bring me up to festive par.

Grumpy Christmas. Bah humbug!

Old Man

2007-12-21T07:11:00.000-08:00

I applaud IKEA for their efforts at positive reinforcement. Drive a hybrid: less of a walk to the store for your purchases. Doesn't quite work, does it? I appreciate the thought none the less.

---------------------------

We're approaching Stanley's 28th Birthday. He went to see Dr. Volvo yesterday for an oil change, new front struts, fixing the left ball-joint, and replacing a torn boot. He also got a bath and is all shiny. Taking him in makes me sad; it always leads to debate over how financially feasable it is to keep fixing a 28 year-old car. I am just too emotionally invested in this vehicle to make that kind of decision, so we just keep fixing him and driving him less and less, extending his life span. If he makes it to 30, we're having a party for him.

Stanley is much like an old beloved family pet. He has a name and a personality (crotchety old man). We feed him, and take him out, and occasionally have a hefty vet bill to pay. People ask how he's doing. One year he even got a Christmas card.

I love him and will miss him when he's gone.

Pants on fire

2007-12-20T21:39:00.000-08:00

Right now I’m very much enjoying my new smoke-free home. Since we moved into the Hill our downstairs neighbours have all been heavy smokers. The first group were three roommates, and all of them smoked heavily and their friends would come over to smoke. Okay, maybe that isn’t exactly why they came over, but it seemed like that was all they really did. This meant that if we didn’t want our house to reek of cigarettes, we couldn’t have our windows or our door open, ever. They moved out (abandoned the place, actually) and new neighbours moved in. We had high hopes when we saw that they had an infant but those hopes were soon dashed. Not only were they smokers but they were also total pot heads. They smoked up on a regular basis, and even with the door and windows closed we smelled the sweet stench of Mary Jane at least once a night. For some unknown reason they always smoked pot in the furnace room. I’m still trying to get my head around that one.

I guess I’m sounding pretty unsympathetic towards people with an actual addiction. And I understand addiction; don’t get me wrong I do. I could easily be wearing a button that says, “I have a cheese habit.” What I don’t get is what makes people start in the first place. What makes a person say, “Hey, this thing smells really bad and is on fire. I think I’ll put it in my mouth and suck on it for a while”? That just doesn’t make any sense to me.

People always point to peer pressure, but I’ve only ever experienced the reverse. My friends have always been anti-smoking. Not that none of my friends have ever smoked, or that I would not be friends with someone who did (although I wouldn't date smokers), but it happened that the few who did were the kind that hated smoking, wished they could quit and were always very conscientious about it (asking before lighting up, holding cigarette away and blowing away, going outside, etc.). One of my friends in high school started smoking and eventually stopped hanging out with us because of the pressure to quit. From 1994 to 2003, I was in a large choir and most of my friends were from the choir. Singers as a group do not tend to smoke; I think we maybe had one or two smokers a year in a group of 180. This may have further skewed my views.

My co-worker told me today that when he smoked, which was years ago, he started because he didn’t like the smell of second hand smoke. First hand smoke, or smokes in his hand, didn’t smell nearly as bad. I kid you not. That might be the craziest and most strangely logical reason to start smoking that I have ever heard.

My massage therapist has thus far given me only explanation anyone has ever had that made sense at all. She said that both of her parents smoked her entire life so she just thought that was what you were supposed to do. Why don’t adults understand the impact of modeling on their child? More likely the issue here is that their parents smoked, probably going back to before there was any information on the health impacts and addictiveness of tobacco, back when the cigarette companies could say pretty much whatever they wanted to about smoking. Of course cigarettes will make you cool, liberated, skinny and sexy. Can you say 'pants on fire'?

Mary, Joseph, the cow, and maybe Jesus

2007-12-20T06:55:00.000-08:00

The other day Kaley (my niece-in-law) was telling us about her Chritmas concert at school. She was so excited! "And the play is about Mary! and Joseph! and the Cow!...and maybe Jesus." Guess which part she had?

Paul and I got lost on the way to her school, which is out in Cooking Lake. The google map directions said to turn on Cooking Lake Road South/TWP 513A. Where we actually needed to turn was RR222A. Not the same thing. Paul's Dad called us:

Him: "Where are you guys?"

Me: "I don't know. Lost. There is a field and a field and fog."

Him: "Oh. When you get here, don't park at the fire hall, okay?"

Me: "Okay." (Thinking: Fire hall? If we find a fire hall I will kiss it. Where the hell is this place?)

Him: "Go back to the highway and follow these directions instead...."

His directions involved going straight through a stop sign and passing a green airport sign. They led to aimless driving around the town in Cooking Lake. We never did find the airport sign.

Eventually, in spite our two sets of directions, we found the place. We came in the main doors and Paul stamped the snow off his boots and got shushed by a fourth grader. We snuck into the back of the gym and were able to instantly pick Kaley out of the crowd of Kindergarden singers. She was the one right in front of the microphone hopping up and down in excitement at the joy of doing actions. She was not a cow yet. The cow came later.

Our little cow is the one lit up on the lower right.

Here she sang a sweet little duet.

Below she is doing the actions for all she is worth. This is the part where they spin around and the only part of the song that the microphone picked up was a loud "OH!", which cracked me up. Later, Kaley got a bit behind in the song and we could hear her saying, "Wait. Wait. Wait!"

Everyone else is doing the actions. Kaley is rocking out because she likes this song.

The final note of the finale. She's singing for all she's worth.

And at the end while everyone else was milling about, Kaley took her bow.

Swiss Madness

2007-12-19T00:04:00.000-08:00

I had a long nap after work, yet again, and am now wide awake in the middle of the night. Right now I can't write about any of the things that I need to process; they're not ready to be shared, for one reason or another.
___________

Today I discovered the final piece of proof that producers have gone insane. I present to you as evidence: the 4.5 kg Toblerone bar. 4.5 kg! Do you have any idea how big that is? Almost 10 pounds of 'Swiss Milk Chocolate with Honey and Almond Nougat'. This pyramidal chocolate log is almost as long as my arm and costs $80 CDN. (The photo really does not do it justice.) What on earth are they compensating for? The Swiss have clearly lost their minds.

I love chocolate as much as the next person, but that's excessive!

Up until this point I have had a soft spot in my heart for the Toblerone. Ira and I buy each other Toblerones every year for Christmas (although never one that big). It's a running joke that we've forgottened the punch line for; now it's just what we do. (I think the original was something along the lines of the discrepancy in spending power between him and an ex-girlfriend. You had to be there.) At any rate, our annual Toblerone exchange says, "I still love you, my dear friend." but avoids the involvement of our complicated history in our gift purchasing practices.

For those of you who are new here, Ira and I dated for 5 years, had a messy breakup (primarily my fault), he was justifiably angry with me for about a year, we spent a couple of years rebuilding our friendship and he was a bridesmaid (bride's guy) in my wedding. He is still one of my most favorite people in the world. His new girlfriend is a little...unusual...so I mostly only hear from him when she's out of town and also at Folk Fest, which we both volunteer for.

The photo below is from one of the Volunteer Parties last year. Both of us are very sensitive to the flash and almost always have our eyes closed in photos (in fact this is the last of a series of five photos, four of which have eyes shut). My photo for my FAC (Firearms Aquisition Certificate) is very similar to this one, again from trying not to blink. Ira calls it my "Give Me Gun" face. I was surprised to actually receive my license after submitting a photo where I clearly look crazy.

See you from the bell tower!

12 Days of Christmas Songs

2007-12-17T20:23:00.000-08:00

Karen’s Tree-Topper Play-list for Christmas
- because every one needs at least one good Christmas song a day for the 12 days of Christmas (in no particular order)

1. Blue Christmas – Collective Soul
- because every Christmas playlist needs a little bit of rock

2. 12 Days of Christmas – Bob & Doug McKenzie
- because you can’t get any more Canadian than that

3. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Barenaked Ladies & Sarah MacLaughlan
- Barenaked Ladies are just amazing musicians, add in Sarah and it’s pure heaven

4. Christmas Is Coming - John Denver and the Muppets
- because it’s not Christmas without the Muppets

5. Snoopy’s Christmas – Royal Guardsmen
- It’s so weird that it’s a Christmas song that I have to include it

6. O Holy Night – UAMC (The massive version with the organ and split choir, which version is this?)
- This is the best carol we have ever and will ever do

7. Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Band Aid
- because I grew up in the 80’s

8. Mary’s boy child/Oh My Lord – Boney M
- don’t really listen to how they are mangling the English language and you’ll be fine

9. What Child Is This? – The Moody Blues (or any one else who does a decent version)
- my all-time favorite Christmas carol (love!)

10. Carol of the Bells – by anyone decent who doesn’t do it too slow
- sung properly this song has a "depth of snow covered night" start with a drive to a "frenzied shopping panic"

11. Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah
- if you’ve ever sung this piece, you’ll know why (and yes, you should stand)

12. You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch! - Thurl Ravenscroft.
- Classic Christmas Grinch

Impending Doom

2007-12-16T15:07:00.000-08:00

This photo from last summer nicely summarizes my life right now: things were pretty shiny and bright, and then they got complicated, confusing, and worrisome, and now I am filled with panic and a sense of impending doom.

More parenthetical aside than not (with general punctuation abuse)

2007-12-15T07:28:00.000-08:00

It seems that I spend every December running to catch up, not only with house cleaning, gift shopping and holiday decorating (my family traditionally puts up the Christmas tree at 10 pm on the 24th of December. Procrastinate much? This drives Paul crazy.) but in the past four years, to catch up in Holidailies.

Every year in November, amidst the chaos of NaNoWriMo, I solemnly swear via the click of a button that I will update my blog every day from December 1 to January 1, without fail. Almost anyone who has ever done NaNoWriMo, and definitely anyone who has done it as an ML (the folks in charge of each region) will know that it’s extremely difficult to write anything coherent on the first day of December. Especially if they operate like I do (see chronic procrastinator, above) and finish their 50,000th word at 11 pm on the 30th of November. This is the first year that I finished earlier (6 pm on the 29th, thanks to my running dare with Wolfe) but since our TGIO party was scheduled for Dec 1st, there was no hope of any time to myself on the 30th or the 1st. (More on both the dare and the TGIO later, with photos! Actually, photos are to blame for some of the delay too.)

On Thursday night, the 13th, I finally caught up in Holidailies with my 13th entry. On Friday night, the 14th, my chronic sleep deficit caught up with me and I fell asleep at 5pm and slept for 14 hours. Now, for the first time in several months, I don’t feel like my eyeballs have been rolled in a sand trap and the rest of my head packed with cotton balls. In summary, I feel better. But now I have guilt. I will have to break the new “don’t post twice in one day” rule yet again (guilt!) to catch myself up to the standard. If I don’t catch up I will break my vow by not having 31 posts by January 1 (guilt!). I may even disappoint my readers (more guilt!) if I have any left after my year of near silence (which is an entry in and of itself: the year in which I ‘logic-ed’ myself into a depression. I have issues.)

Really, I have enough guilt for any ten Catholics (thanks, mom). I’d say I should be Catholic, but having married a Catholic man in a Catholic church believe me when I say that I explored the option thoroughly and determined that it is not, and will never be, a good fit for me. There are too many beliefs that I either fundamentally oppose, that make no sense to me, or that are just too gross for me to say I believe, and there’s no way I’m going to lie about any of it. (Don’t worry; I’m not wandering around denigrating his beliefs. There are points we agree on, points we disagree on, and an agreement to respect those areas of disagreement. Religion is all about interpretation and marriage is all about compromise.)

There you go: an entry for the 14th. I solemnly vow to return with an entry of greater substance, likely tomorrow morning as tonight will be spent drinking Butterscotch Sundae Martinis with Paul’s extended family. Hmmm, maybe it won’t have greater substance after all.

Spam, spam, spam, spam...

2007-12-13T09:36:00.000-08:00

I like that my gmail gives me suggested links based on the content of my email (I try not to think about what that means in terms of confidentiality). I must really enjoy it because it's the second post I've written on the subject. My current favorite feature is that my junk mail folder helpfully suggests recipes for the spam I have received, the most recent of which is "Spam Swiss Pie". I think my gmail is fundamentally an optimist of the "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade" variety.

It runs into a bit of a clash in definitions though; it's using SPAM (canned, precooked luncheon meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation (key ingredients: chopped pork shoulder meat and sodium nitrite to help "keep its color") as spam (the abuse of email systems to send unsolicited bulk messages).

If you put that into practice, you end up with some very odd recipes, for example:

- Penis Enhancement Pie
- Replica Rolex Ratatouille
- Casino Winner Casserole
- Viagra Vichyssoise
- Phish(ing) Fricassee
- Hot Naked Single Teenage Meatloaf

Isn't it funny how spam solicits you to enjoy things which are otherwise difficult to obtain: sex, drugs, money and time, but only in their basest forms. If only purchasing a Rolex bought me more hours in a day! The sleep would do me some good. Yay sleep! That's where I'm a viking! (Spam, spam, spam, spam. Spam, spam, spam, spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!)

(With apologies to both Monty Python and the Simpsons).

Virtual Still Life

2007-12-13T07:16:00.000-08:00

(Thank you to who ever nominated this for a "Best of Holidailies". I appreciate it.)

On the radio the other day there was an article on some kind of art work that had been destroyed, and my first thought was, “At least they have a photo catalogue of it, don’t they? It’s not like things that were lost 100 years ago, is it?” I was a bit surprised at my own reaction, which led me to the question, “Are historical/art objects now less precious because we have the technology to preserve them in another form?”

Does a photograph of the Mona Lisa have the same value as the painting? If so, how far does this rule apply? What about sculpture? Is the line then drawn at 3-dimensional? Is the actual entire piece of art integrated as a whole the most thorough experience, including the knowledge that it was pained by whom ever X numbers of years ago, and that this is the original texture and framework, and this is how it smelled? Would we feel the loss of the original less keenly if we had a perfect replica? What if we didn’t know that it was a replica? Does it retain its value as artwork when it is created by a lesser hand?

Does the replica of a dinosaur skeleton have the same meaning as a 150 million year old bone because it looks the same? What about a captive endangered species? Genetically it’s a dodo, but is it really a dodo if it's taken out of its original habitat and lies in a cage eating what it’s provided and has no other dodos to frolic with? In that case, is a dodo-shaped robot just as good? What about a video of a dodo? What about a photo? A drawing? Where do we draw the line on preservation, or is it a sliding scale?

What is our future going to look like in this preservation scenario? I’ve backed up my computer files, writing, photos, and music, now how do I store this information? Are we going to end up with towers upon towers of backups of DVDs of all the experiences that we've lost? Are the catalogues of our lives going to be retained on an external hard drive? What value does that have as “your life”? Is it just something you want to keep for your lifespan or is it an entity that lives on after your end in support of your practical goals? Or are we just generally retaining history because we can? And can that truly be considered "living on" if all of what you produced is altered by the image you want to present to the rest of the world? Is what I choose to post from the selection of my thoughts thrown out here onto the Internet really a reflection of who I am? Or is it some distorted copy of myself? If that is all that is left of me after my life, is that who I retroactively become? (Are we getting into Orwellian territory here?)

Does video replace life experience? What happens when everyone is plugged in to the same video lifelines? Are we all then living the same life? Will nature, art, music be divided into castes, based on scarcity, limits of what you are allowed to experience based on what level of authenticity you can pay for? Will only the rich get to experience life first hand, and the rest of us will just drink down a cheap photocopy, fuzzy at the edges? Is a recording the same as a concert? A movie the same as a play? When did the lines get so blurry between living and observing? Are we already starting to live a virtual life in a virtual world? Is that still life?

Farewell Sweet Cuba!

2007-12-11T22:32:00.000-08:00

Earlier on in the week we caught a few of the shows, which varied widely in the quality of entertainment. We were especially impressed with the acrobats, but the boys went back to the rooms to play a board game.

At the end of every show the performers would do the "Iberostar Dance", which was actually quite catchy. It's kind of fun to yell, "One, two, three, TOMA!" and kick your leg in the air, especially when, for all you know, you could be yelling, "Nosehair!" or "Pinch me!" or "Hot Sauce!" (Okay, I googled it. The free Spanish to English translator says it means "It takes", which makes no sense. I'd rather be yelling, "Hot sauce!")

We spent as much time as humanly possible playing in the ocean waves. The last couple of days it was very windy and the waves were enormous and incredibly fun.

I am having the time of my life here. I love the ocean!

Paul and I decided that we wanted a photo of the two of us jumping up into a huge wave. We waited carefully for a good one and jumped for it. It turned out to be a much bigger wave than we'd anticipated and it tumbled us both head over heels through the water for a pretty good distance. When I came to a stop my legs and arms were out of the water, my head was underwater and I was sitting on something solid. I was just starting to get my bearings when something poked me rather insistently in the right hip. It turns out that I had come to a stop on top of Paul's head! The resulting photo:

One day we decided to go into Varadero and visit the Art Market. We got instructions for the big red double-decker bus but a passing taxi driver convinced us to go with him for the same price and half the time. We didn't realize that half the time was double the speed! (I have made this mistake before. "Earl's size" does not mean double the glass size.) The limit was 60 mph and he turned off his spedometer (yes, turned off, along with all other accessories) at 120 mph while passing a bus in oncoming traffic. I just gave up and closed my eyes. We bought some paintings, Paul got a shirt, I got a bandana, and we all bought Che hats and many gifts for our families. Unfortunately, but as planned, our cabbie came back to retrieve us. There are no photos as I was busy staring in horror at the speedskater on the road roughly an inch ahead of our bumper.

I adore this carving of salsa dancers. Later that night Paul and I did some salsa dancing at the disco (I love that they call it "The Disco").

Kristy gets a little closer to Juan Alberto.

There were SWINGS at the disco! That would never happen in Canada.

I went up to get a drink and suddenly two people came dancing down the bar, followed by two more. The lead guy stopped in front of me and, still gyrating to the music, took off his shirt. The bartender handed me my drink between his legs. They danced up there for a while then partied back down the bar and hopped off.

Things got a little crazy at the disco.

We certainly had a good time.

Amanda and Paul smoked their cigars on the beach. (Bleh.)

Sunset on our last night in Cuba.

The message on our bed the night before we left Cuba.

One last photo, in the airport. So last minute that Leslie and Mark have boarded the plane already.

Adiós Cuba; le faltaré. Espero volverme otra vez para visitar un día.

Catamaran Tour

2007-12-11T20:09:00.000-08:00

Since we could only afford to go on two day-trips, Paul and I carefully selected the Havana tour and the Catamaran Tour.

In rained the morning of the Catamaran tour, and by rained I mean poured as if the ocean had been sucked up and was being forced at us from all directions. This was serious rain. Luckily, by the time we were ready to board all that remained were cloudy skies and turbulent waters.

I enjoyed riding facedown on the net at the front of the vessel with the wind whipping my face and the waves splashing on my shirt front.

Our first stop was for snorkelling in a small reef off the boat. To be honest I was unimpressed with the snorkelling, in part due to the ineffectiveness of my old snorkel and the turbidity of the waters.

A passing fishing boat, likely containing Cuban fisherman who were annoyed by the rowdy drunken Canadians.

The next, and best, stop was at a huge enclosure out in the ocean. This was where we got to swim with the dolphins! The dolphins can actually leave the enclosure at any time, but choose to stay where they are fed.

First the dolphins did some tricks, then swim past so we could rub their bellies. Then they circled back around to give us "kisses".

Finally we posed with the dolphins and a man took our photo. He later brought the photo to the hotel so we could buy a copy for 10 pesos. That's the best 12 bucks I have ever spent; what a great photo for our anniversary.

Soon we were off and arrived at Cayo Blanco for another traditional cuban meal. We weren't exactly sure how buns and hashbrowns constituted a 'traditional cuban meal' but we decided that this unidentified item was deep-fried sea horse.

We played in the ocean for a while and then it was time to board the Catamaran again. The way back to our resort was filled with excitement: we had a visitor!

(It's hard to get a good photo of a wild dolphin pacing the boat when everyone rushes the rail.)

In keeping with our "Cuban tradition", the catamaran had an open bar. The combination of Cuba Libre (rum and coke with lime) and hours in the sun meant that we were in for some good entertainment on the ride back.

Sue telling stories.

Dance party on the boat!

It may just look like I'm squinting in the sun and happy about dolphins, but actually Amanda had just done a pole dance for me and then tried to drive the boat. She was quite intoxicated and screaming at the top of her lungs, "Whoooo! I'm a doctor! Whooo!" while dancing with her pole. Among other things, this trip was to celebrate her graduation from medical school.

The only reason you're not seeing photos is she is very very embarrased about it.

Alright, fine. Just one photo.

This particular sexy move apparently involved kneeing Graeme in the head. (Gotta love her!)

Havana

2007-12-10T20:46:00.001-08:00

There was absolutely no way I was going all the way to Cuba without some kind of cultural experience. While staying at the resort was nice, it's just not the kind of traveller I am. Fortunately we were able to sign up for a walking tour of Old Havana, including a traditional Cuban meal, followed by some free time in the arts market and a quick drive-by tour of New Havana.

The most immediately noticeable thing about Havana was the buildings. Everything was full of color and life, incredibly vibrant, even the buildings that were falling down.

The streets were filled with beautiful oddities: a woman crocheting sweaters, a canopied bicycle, a man painting in the street, an enormous woman in a fluffy white dress selling fortunes and a wiener dog in a mesh shirt waiting for a ride.

This sweet little girl yelled "Ola!" cheerfully to all the pasty white folk who passed.

The people of Havana leave flowers for Mother Theresa on her book every morning.

According to our tour guide, Louis, Cuban citizens are given a very minimal amount of money for doing their job, barely enough to stay alive. Everyone gets the same amount, whether they are a doctor or street sweeper. In order to get by, everyone takes on second jobs or more. The best way to make money is to work where there are tips, like at the resorts (which is why sometimes the person bringing you wine could be a doctor).

The impression that I got was that the minimum standard of living is higher than in Canada, but the average is much, much lower. Knowing that there was need, we brought along toiletries to give to the maids in the resort, and we tipped plentifully where ever we went. I also brought a big bag of school supplies with me to Havana and asked Louis where a good place to donate them would be. Louis went above and beyond and took us to a nearby primary school. He gave the bag of nylons that I'd brought to the principal to distribute to the teachers. She then arranged for us to go into a classroom upstairs and they brought about a dozen students from each class through and we handed out the supplies to them.

The principal asked us to only give one item to each child, but what use is a pencil sharpener without a pencil, or pastels without paper? (You can see in the photo above, I'm sneaking this litle guy a sharpener.) Soon all of the goodies were gone and they led the disappointed stragglers away. My heart was just breaking that I hadn't brought more, that some children went without even these small inexpensive items. But as we walked back through the school to the street I saw that in the classrooms the children were all sharing the goodies with the rest of the class, without any sign of greed. This was the best part of the trip, for me. (If I ever go again I am bringing only the following: one giant bottle of sunscreen, camera, bathing suit, one shirt, one pair of shorts, chacos, and a giant suitcase full of the best school and medical supplies I can find. As a chronic over-packer, this is saying a lot.)

These women are paid by the government to wander the streets of Havana and kiss tourists for photos. They then demand "one cuban convertible" from the unsuspecting tourist. The male version of these women is in the background in the photo of the man painting on the side of the street above.

Louis then turned us loose in the arts market for 45 minutes, which wasn't nearly enough time. We wandered through a small city of stalls, examining the wares and fending off beggars who thought we should give them "souvenir for my baby" or money for having a Canada flag tattoo or 5 pesos to braid my hair (clearly they have not met my hair).

We picked up a little turtle carving, some carved Havana rum coasters and this painting, from perhaps the most laid-back man in the entire market, which we paid 10 pesos for and an arm and a leg to have framed in Canada.

All too soon we were running for the van and on our way to New Havana.

The view from the Capitol building.

Revolucion square.

Of course, you can't go to Cuba and miss out on having your photo taken with Che.

Cuban Holiday

2007-12-09T22:00:00.000-08:00

Last night I was looking at Melanie and Jim's photos from their trip to Cuba and I realized that Cuba was definitely missing from my blog. Here's the cure! For ease of digestion I have split our trip up into 4 parts with about a dozen photos each. We took over 1200 photos (just Paul and I, never mind the rest of the group) so this is only a select few from the scope of our trip.

Paul and I went to Cuba in May 2007 with 18 of our friends. We had contingents arriving from all across Canada to meet in the Toronto aiport in the middle of the night. The Edmonton group arrived first, then the Vancouver contingent, then the Hamilton contingent. This meant that those of us from E-town had a 7 hour layover in the middle of the night. Bleh!

From front to back, left to right (roughly): Jo, Sue, G, Me, Amanda, Mark, Chantal, Harry, Paul, Brandon, Doug, Keith, Leslie, Sarah, Kristy, Helen, Jason, Maja, Margaret and Tom.

The first thing we did upon our arrival at the resort was change into swimsuits, jump in the pool and order a mojito from the swim up bar. (This caused me to switch to Strawberry Daquiris for the remainder of the trip. I'm not a fan of mint.)

The second thing we did was go to see the ocean. When we got to the end of the boardwalk, we all just dropped our things and ran right in.

We spent a lot of time on our trip just hanging out at the pool and drinking. Everyone said that they knew we were Canadian by two identifying features. Number one, everyone else was bundling up because it was only 17 degrees out and we were in the pool in bikinis. Number two, we always had a drink in the pool. They were polite enough not to mention item number three which, depending on the day, was either the extreme blinding whiteness of our skin or the extreme tomato-lobsterness of our sunburns.

The Iberostar Varadero.

Before we went to Cuba, the only complaint we'd heard was about the quality of the food, that it was bland and boring. My only explanation is that these people must have only eaten from the buffet, which after a couple of weeks might seem so. The food at the à-la-carte restaurants was very good. Below is a shot of our friends at the Japanese restaurant (it kind of cracked me up that people would go for Japanese food in Cuba).

Paul and I elected to sample the Cuban restaurant. We dressed up a bit for the meal and on the way to dinner one of the gardeners gave me a flower and told me I was pretty. I wore the flower in my hair for the rest of the day.

This meal was one of the best I have ever had. I finished my steak before Paul ate his, which might be the first time ever (and possibly the first time I have ever finished a steak in one sitting.)

The weather was incredible the entire time we were there. Despite 30+ degree temperatures, I rarely found it to be too hot. (A minor miracle occured and my hair mostly behaved itself in the humidity, contrary to all expections. I guess it liked being on vacation.) It rained about once a day, a solid downpour lasting from half and hour to an hour and then subsiding. The rain was warm though, and we revelled in it. Things worked out far better than anticipated, considering we went right at the beginning of hurricane season.

It rained about 10 minutes after I took this photo.

Tomorrow: Havana!

The World is on Fire

2007-12-09T14:33:00.000-08:00

Environmental consciousness is something I feel fairly strongly about. I believe quite firmly that the impacts of our actions are both invisible and cumulative, that small changes can cause big ones. I also think that environmental consciousness and social justice are fundamentally entwined.

The belief in environmental consciousness started early for me. It’s the one good thing about myself that I can credit to my mother; this is the part she got right. A fundamental appreciation for all living things was a part of it, as was a wonder in the beauty of nature. (Except for spiders, she’s terrified of spiders; although she did have us put them outside rather than squashing them). I was taught a respect for life, in any form and learned to find the function of a creature before judging it. Finding the function invariably led me to a positive judgment. Usefulness is next to godliness in my books.

Whenever I need to recharge my spiritual batteries, I head out into the river valley, or find a nice tree to climb. My childhood was primarily spent in the Mill Creek Ravine or up the giant elm in our back yard, book in hand. One of the most wild and vivid memories of my childhood is from the time I snuck outside during a giant windstorm, climbed to the very top of the highest tree in our yard, well above the height of our house. I hooked a leg around a branch and let my arms fly free as the wind tossed me around, the tree was my only anchor to the world. When I was eleven we moved away and I was heartbroken that we couldn’t take that tree with us; it was my childhood home.

In junior high, my academic challenge class was lucky to have a teacher who was passionate about environmentalism. This was in the late 80’s, when environmentalism was just starting to be trendy. We filmed a short documentary on pollution in our school area, focusing not just on waste and littering but water quality, landfills and industrial dumping. Starting in 1987, when I was 11, we organized and ran a recycling program in our school, which continues to operate to this day. We set up a system of cardboard boxes lined with plastic bags and an attached list of recyclables in every classroom in the school. We collected and sorted the items once a week and arranged for pickup and transfer to a larger recycling facility in the city. (For perspective, our city’s “blue box” residential recycling program began in 1988.)

My high school was right next to the river valley and many hours were spent exploring all of its depths and winding turns, all of the secret hidey-holes it held. Many lunch hours and missed classes were spent running and climbing there. I joined the hiking club and traveled the province wandering through tamarack in fall and mountains in the spring.

After some career confusion and program jumping, I ended up in NAIT’s Biological Sciences Technology program, in the Renewable Resources stream. I broadened my knowledge base about the world around us and the incredible creatures it contains. Meanwhile, I was a member of the Canoe racing team for two years, the cross-country skiing team for one and took a winter survival course.

My studies led me to a job with the Alberta Research Council doing field research as a range and forest technician. While the physical work could be tedious and repetitive, I enjoyed both the outdoor labour and the view into scientific enquiry on such a broad scale. I liked pondering the potential impacts of our research and the ways in which the accuracy of the experiment could be improved. For the next three summers I worked on this project while completing my BSc in Environmental and Conservation Sciences, which took the knowledge base I had developed at NAIT and expanded it to include information on how to manage populations, human impact on our world and the wider issues now facing us.

My eventual goal was to complete at least a Master’s and possibly a PhD (although I never would have admitted it at the time). I loved the idea of exploring possibilities through research. I loved my job in the bush but spent most of my time trying to find a way to improve the quality of the data collection. I wanted to be in charge of the project, rather than the grunt just following instructions. I wanted to fix the project. The only way that I could see to do that would be to get the schooling to be allowed to be in charge.

Unfortunately at this point I stalled out. I had the grades to get into the Master’s program, but didn’t have the references required. I’m not a networker or a social butterfly. I kept to minimal participation in class discussions and likely few of my professors realized who I was. I prefer to communicate in written form and that was very much what I did. Also, because of my unusual route through the program, I actually had some holes in my background that needed to be filled before proceeding to the graduate level. I spent the next couple of years remedying these issues while working to pay off my student loans. I geared up for a 2005 application to the Master’s in Renewable Resources program, but life proceeded without a regard for my academic goals and I finally realized that field research was not necessarily the best match for what I wanted my life to look like. I’ve been at an academic standstill ever since.

And now I’m just not sure what I want my life to look like. I’m still supporting many of my environmental beliefs at a basic level. I recycle vigilantly, and now that we have a house I will likely start composting again. Three times a year I organize a “clothes exchange” with my friends, which means that everyone brings over clothes that they’re not using anymore, we go through and take what we want, and the rest are donated to charities. With a like-minded coworker, I have put together many procedures at work to reduce waste and improve efficiency in the office, all of which save time, money and environmental cost (and which my bosses seem to generally oppose, for some unknown reason). We are also investigating natural alternatives to chemical solutions in every level of our lives. I’m just not really sure that these measures are enough for me anymore. While a small change is much better than no change, and can have a cumulative impact, I’m not convinced that I’m satisfied with these small scale actions.

This mental outburst was inspired by last night’s conversation with my high school friends, many of whom are in some way qualified for the discussion. (Jim has a PhD in genetics, Tara did her degree in biological sciences, Melissa’s background is in forestry, and mine is in environmental science.) The discussion was ignited by a question about hybrid vehicles and whether they really reduce our environmental footprint. The heat spread to the justified paranoia that big business is suppressing accurate research in favor of monetary gain, and was in full blaze by the time we reached the idea that global environmentalism is being used to further suppress the advancement of developing countries. The debate stirred up those old fires for me, ones that had burned out their fuel until only smoldering embers remained.

While I sit here and ponder these issues, with my good intentions and my small actions, in my warm house and my comfortable life, I have to wonder if I’m just fooling myself. I have a sinking feeling that I’m a part of the problem and that all of my small measures only really serve to make me feel better about my selfish actions. The world is on fire and I'm standing on the sidelines with splinters in my fingers just spitting at the flames.

Initiation

2007-12-08T23:23:00.000-08:00

Paul and I are experiencing the Official New Home Owner's Initiation to the Home Owner's Guild of Pain (which sounds a bit S & M-ish, but I'm beginning to think that might be fairly accurate).

A week after we took possession, there was a huge windstorm here. It knocked down trees and power lines and while it was having so much fun, it thought it might tear off a few of our shingles, just for kicks, and fling them into our new neighbour's yard. Between being incredibly busy, not owning a ladder and being unwilling to admit that something might be wrong with our house before we were actually out of our apartment, we spent a blissful two weeks in denial of our situation. Finally, I assembled the following facts:
- Number one: the shingles in the neighbour's yard are brown.
- Number two: the shingles on his roof are grey.
- Number three: our shingles are brown.
- Number four: we have the only house with brown shingles on the entire block.
- Number five: there is a naked patch on our roof. Damnit! (It annoys me that "Damnit" looks wrong and "Dammit" looks right. "Damnit" makes me feel like I'm cursing baby lice.)

We investigated going through our home insurance but they basically said that it wasn't worth it to pay the deductable. Tara and Steve had left us a stack of shingles in the garage so we figured that with a little instruction we could fix it ourselves (we've both shingled roofs before, but have never been in charge). We asked Paul's Dad for some help and what that ended up looking like was: Paul's Dad fixed the roof, Paul helped, and I ran ground support, bought groceries and cooked dinner (mmm, spaghetti).

Paul taking shingles up the ladder.

Paul helping.

Paul's Dad, hard at work.

A good view of our very cool new ladder (housewarming gift from Paul's parents). It's incredibly adjustable, which is very helpful in a split-level house.

The roof is patched for now and we'll be fixing it properly once we are out of the sub-zero temperature range. We hadn't even finished recovering from our Induction into the Home Owner's Guild of Pain when the lower half of our power outlets in one half of the living room stopped working. We know that the wiring in our house was done quite creatively (we have more than one switch that we have no idea what it controls) so finding out what went wrong is likely to be a challenge. Only six of the thirty-odd breakers are labeled and I know that Tara and Steve are both highly intelligent and made an attempt to sort them out. This will have to be a project for another day.

Since bad things come in threes, I'll be holding my breath until the other shoe drops (does that make it the third shoe? And if so, where does one wear that third shoe? Wait, don't answer that!) It doesn't really matter that things keep breaking and things will keep on breaking; I'm loving this house more everyday! If that makes me an all-too-willing member of the Home Owner's Guild of Pain, so be it.

Wonder

2007-12-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

We had a baby lunch today which, despite how it sounds, is not a little wee snack nor is it a feast of infants. My former co-worker Carl and his wife Natalie brought in their new baby daughter in for a visit. The little one was a bit worn out and hungry by the time they arrived, having visited his current office first. I’m not going to bore you with tales of how irresistible her little concerned frowny face was, how it made you want to immediately drop everything and fix whatever it was that was worrying her. I’m not going to mention her eensy fingers or her tiny nibbleable toes. Nope, I’m barely going to talk about the baby at all..

Being around Carl and Natalie during this whole “baby growing” process has been both entertaining and enlightening. They are unabashedly honest about what is happening and how it makes them feel and they are articulate and free with sharing.

When Natalie was still pregnant, she would answer any question, without restriction, honestly and intelligently, but carefully. Most of her answers were filled with wonder at this miracle of biology, even those that were slightly scary. Many of the girls at work have never had children and the responses were interesting and prompted more questions, which Natalie answered with comfortable grace.

Carl noted today that since his little girl was born he feels a stronger attachment to all babies, even complete stranger’s children. He said that that his reactions to all infants were far more emotional than ever before. When asked what the most surprising thing about the birth was, what he wished he’d been prepared for, Carl answered that it was the impact that labour had on Natalie’s face. Her labour was relatively short; 5 hours with 2 hours of pushing, but complicated by the baby being somewhat sideways and spine on spine. By the time the little girl was born, Natalie had burst blood vessel in her eyes and all over her face. Her cheeks were swollen, her eyes bloody red and the rest of her face was brown like a bad bruise. Carl said that he knew labour would be hard on her, but he just wasn’t expecting the extent of the damage to her face.

Natalie, both as a mother-to-be and a mother, has a glowing calm about her. She didn’t seem worried or stressed about what was to come and she talked about the labour almost as if it happened to another person. This isn’t to say that she wasn’t tired or it wasn’t painful, just that getting worked up about it wasn’t going to help anything. This is a philosophy so alien to my way of thinking that I found it intriguing. It wasn’t that she was saying, “Don’t worry.” (People tell me not to worry all the time and that generally just makes me worry more because it usually means that either they’re hiding something or don’t really know what’s going on.) It was just that she was living it, despite the fact that this was her first time having an entire other miniature person helpless and dependent on her for everything. It was amazing to watch someone who is so settled in their own beliefs, so comfortable with their existence that they could live the example for the rest of us, even with the stress of a newborn child in their life.

The two of them have such an easy relationship, loving and comfortable, that it’s impossible not to admire how well matched they are. Both are relaxed, humorous, athletic, and caring people and you can see how well they match. They’ve been together for more that ten years and it’s plain to see why.

Carl and Natatlie, thank you for giving all of us examples of the way things can be. Thank you for your openness, your insights and for introducing us to the wonder of your beautiful baby girl.

New House

2007-12-06T20:47:00.000-08:00

Alright, already! Enough pestering about the new house photos. Here you are! Are you happy now? (We certainly are. Whoo!)

Our new place (with Stanley standing guard).

Toward the door.

Side step.

Backyard.

Backyard (raspberry bushes!)

Backyard and patio doors from living room.

Front (side) door.

Dining area.

Kitchen.

Kitchen from above.

One side of living room.

The water wall.

Other side of living room (with bonus TV).

Going upstairs.

Master bedroom.

Inside the master bedroom (unfortunately the carpet color was unavoidable).

What's up in the back of the closet?

Perfect for a fort!

Little bedroom upstairs.

We do love the animals.

Tara and Steve's fancy new bathroom (they spent forever renovating it).

Isn't it fancy?

Nice new huuuuuge bathtub.

Downstairs.

The cave of DOOOOM!

Shower stall.

Little bedroom downstairs.

The office area.

More office.

Downstairs (again!)

Paul painted the basement.

He's excited about the paint (or high on paint fumes, I'm not sure which).

Of course our hockey gear is already moved in!

Home Sweet Home

2007-12-05T00:08:00.000-08:00

Paul and I recently became homeowners. In the current market this may seem a little crazy, but it just seems to be the way we work. Nothing is ever easy or straightforward for us and we ended up buying at the market peak. Fortunately my friends Tara and Steve were building a new home and were trying to sell their house. Based on what was on the market for that price at that time (money pits) they gave us a deal. Based on what they paid less than four years ago, we gave them a deal (more than double). It was win:win. Initially I was hesitant about buying from friends; normally the easiest way to ruin a friendship is to get money involved. As time went on and we looked at more and more houses that were falling down or had "what to do when your sewer line is blocked" pamphlets or clearly had a pot farm in the garage, we came to realize that their home might be the home for us.

It helps that I trust Tara and Steve completely. I've known Steve since he was 12 and I was 13. We both used to arrive at school really early in the mornings in Junior High (which will shock those of you who have seem me in the morning). Our lockers happened to be across from each other, and we would sometimes chat while we waited. I found him to be nice, intelligent and funny, which are not exactly common qualities in a seventh grader. We had similar taste in books and exchanged suggestions. I apparenlty raised his social status significantly by dancing with him at a school dance (ooo! Steve is dancing with an eigth-grade girl), but all I really remember is he didn't step on my feet. Steve is one of my all-time favorite people. He is still nice, intelligent and funny, but his practical joking side is much more apparent now (be careful to fully examine anything he tells you before acting).

I've known Tara since she was 14, and I was 15, but we didn't become friends until two years later. In our Bio 30 class we bonded while mocking the birthing video we were forced to watch. We were lab partners for that half of the year, we shared a drama class and we were involved in several out of class Drama projects. Our last term in high school we shared the torture of Math 31 and we knew we were going on to University together, in the Bachelor of Science program. We planned our schedules so that we had many of the same classes, and we survived first year Calculus together, if barely.

Tara and Steve started dating in Grade 12 and got married 10 years later. I was on the ski trip where they started dating and I was a bridesmaid in their wedding. I took the first photo of them as a couple, which is still a favorite. When my first university boyfriend broke my heart, they didn't hesitate: they took me out, on their anniversary no less, and bought me drinks and dinner and made sure I wasn't wallowing. Steve even paid for me. These are true friends.

And now I've moved in to their home, which feels a bit weird. I haven't quite made the mental transition from "their home" to "our home". It's kind of like my furniture is just visiting. In my mind, when I'm driving home I'm really driving over to their place.

I'm not sure how long the transition will take or what will cause the change. Maybe the first time we have our friends over, or once the boxes are unpacked and everything has a place. Maybe when I stop having to fiddle with the light switches to find the right one, or when I start remembering that the fridge door doesn't stop but swings wide and crashes against its side. Maybe when I can park in the garage instead of on the driveway. Maybe one day soon it will feel like home.

Tobogganing is Dangerous

2007-12-03T23:20:00.000-08:00

Something has gone terribly wrong with the Christmas season. I’m not just referring to the crass commercialization and over-consumption, while that is an issue, but something that has gone more deeply awry. I present to you the following as evidence, some of which you may have heard before, but not all, I promise you:

1) Costco started selling Christmas items in August this year. August! Four full months before Christmas.

2) The sheer excess of Christmas decorations which is displayed on lawns. I’m not a scrooge to begrudge every penny spent and I like a nice tasteful light display as much as the next person, but when your lawn is covered in obscenely over-priced decorations including, but not limited to an inflatable Homer Simpson dressed as Santa, a polar bear fabricated of woven fiber-optics, two hardened plastic elves, a 12-foot high stocking, a giant snow-globe, complete with swirling snow and a full set of wooden reindeer complete with sleigh there is just something wrong. (Besides, don’t you think the polar bear would eat the elves and the reindeer?) Don’t even get me started on the inflatable snowmen! What’s wrong with the ones made of snow and assembled with mittens? We have plenty of real snow and it’s free, just falling from the sky. What especially irks me is the people that follow up all that crass window dressing with a “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” sign. Really? Really, you bought all that for Jesus? You must really love him and also be extremely hard of hearing. How many food bank meals could that inflatable Homer have paid for? How many rooms at the inn for the homeless?

3) Jingle Cats. Enough said.

4) On the bakery counter at Save-on today, there was a Christmas-themed knickknack on display. Picture this, if you will: there is a toboggan. On the toboggan is Santa. Santa is lying facedown on the sled, with his head facing downhill, as if he were riding it down a snowy slope. Santa is turned towards you with a big grin plastered on his face. This all sounds very idyllic, doesn’t it? But wait, there is more. There is a snowman also riding the toboggan and the snowman, just like Santa, has his head turned toward you with a giant smile. Be forewarned, this is where it goes off the rails. The snowman is astride Santa. Santa’s pants are around his ankles. I will give you a moment to absorb this. Santa is on a toboggan and appears to be just thrilled about being sodomized by a snowman. Even if you enjoy things going in the out door, that’s just got to be far too chilly to be pleasant!

I leave you to draw your own conclusions from the above evidence, members of the jury, but I, for one, am convinced that something, somewhere, has gone horribly wrong with Christmas.

Bittersweet

2007-12-02T21:14:00.000-08:00

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) – an event where writers all around the world compose a minimum 50,000 word novel between 12:01 a.m. on November 1st and 11:59 pm on November 30th, just to prove that they can.

Wrimo – a participant in NaNoWriMo. The ‘Wrimo’ is often characterized by ink stains on their hands, frazzled expressions, wrist pain, chronic sleep deprivation and a tendency to stop suddenly in mid-conversation to jot notes on whatever is handy. In November, their distinctive call can be heard: “What’syourwordcount? What’syourwordcount?”

NaNoWriMo is over for another year and I’m deep in the throes of withdrawal. Each year I get a little more involved and each year it’s harder to let go when the month is over. For example, today I spent 8 hours in and out of chat, half an hour each on the forums, reviewing surveys, updating finances, planning for next year and writing this entry. I’m a junkie with a bad habit.

I’ve been participating in NaNo for five years now, and have been a Municipal Liaison for two. As a second year ML, I have started to take more initiative in the direction of our region. I came up with some new ideas for the year (I’m to blame for the NaNoPass) and I picked up some of the duties that SarahJanet had shouldered the previous year. Writing pep talks to send to the Wrimos for encouragement was definitely the most interesting new experience. I’m not sure if everyone enjoyed them as much as I did, but it was a pleasant surprise to go into chat and see that the topic was a quote from my first pep. It was also neat to have a new Wrimo quote my pep at me before he knew who I was.

In all, the experience of being an ML has been very fulfilling. I’m getting better at talking to strangers, which is never something that I’ve been comfortable with. I’ve spent more time in chat getting to know people, more time posting on the forums and making sure everything is okay. I managed to speak at length into a microphone to a crowd of 90 last night, and I hate both public speaking and microphones. (I think my only big error was saying that Denton traveled 320,000 km rather than 3,200 km. Oops, nerves. No, he did not travel from Mars.)

It’s unfortunate that the large group setting isn’t at all where I’m comfortable. I’d much rather meet and write with a small group of fun people who share similar goals than to travel with this enormous and unwieldy group assembled around me. To this end I organized a few “stealth write-ins” to just hang out and write with a few close friends. I found those events to be far more productive for me, both in terms of word count and the level of social interaction. I am in awe of the intelligence and creativity of everyone that I had the pleasure of sharing these clandestine meetings with.

The end of NaNo has a very “end of Summer Camp” kind of feel to it. By the end of the night you’re hugging people and promising to keep in touch but you know that you won’t see most of them until next year’s Kick Off party. And while that’s kind of sad, it’s also okay; it makes every November that much more magical, reuniting you after not having seen each other for a year and seeing what has changed.

While I am relieved to be free of the insane level of sleep deprivation, the pressure of writing at least 1667 words a day and the burden of constant social interaction, it leaves a hollow in my chest like I’ve lost something precious, which in some ways I have. There are people who won’t be back next year: they are moving away or they will have real life get in the way. Since NaNo is primarily an online community, there is no way of knowing who is missing and how to get in touch with them again, in most cases. Even the ones who come back will be changed by the intervening year; nothing will really be quite the same when we get back together next October.

November was also very much a time of personal development for me. I suspect that it’s going to take a lot of thinking and writing to process through all of what I’ve discovered about myself and the way I relate to the world, and even more time to fully understand all of the ways that the experiences of this month have changed me.

The end of NaNo is bittersweet, a welcome return to the normalcy of every day life while losing the thrill and excitement of this challenge, the joy and warmth of interaction, and the opportunity to actually use my vocabulary.

I’m so glad it’s over and I can’t wait for next year.

Quirky

2007-10-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

Hello readers, or absence of readers, I think you’ve gotten to know me pretty well (although I’ve been bad about updating lately, I know) but here are a few slightly unusual things that you may not know about me. I didn’t realize that these things were unusual, but I’m coming to see that not everyone works quite the same way as me.

I balance my chequebook.
Every month without fail, more often if I happen to go into my account more often. I also read through my Mastercard bill and confirm the cost of items purchased. Why wouldn’t I want to know if I was being ripped off or my card was being used without my knowledge or even for early detection of identity theft? This just seems like common sense to me.

I declare my bank interest on my taxes.
No one else I know does this. It’s interest earned, even if it is only two bucks a year. I know it doesn’t affect the overall totals, but it’s just being accurate.

I declare everything.
Yes, everything. I went to Cuba a few months ago (which was fantastic, by the way) and every night I carefully added to my list of items purchased and their individual costs. On the plane, when filling out my declaration, I carefully tallied them up, did the conversion from Cuban convertible pesos to Canadian dollars and filled in my total as my friends looked on incredulously. I also indicated that I was bringing in items containing dairy (chocolates) and wood products (a carving) and that my two bottles of Cuban rum were technically a larger volume than is allowed (1.4 L is allowed, two 750 mL bottles is 1.5L. Whoever made that rule is just dumb). This resulted in ridicule from my friends and having our carving inspected by Canadian customs (it was fine). Never mind the fact that I accidentally smuggled cheese back into the country (which I promptly ate upon realizing that I had). Mmm…cheese…

I read the fine print.
I can’t believe that not everyone does! Why would you sign something without knowing what you are agreeing to and where your information goes? This practice also led to me finding the following gem in the Quicken License Agreement: “You agree and certify that you are not a citizen or permanent resident of the following countries: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Sudan or Syria.” Isn’t that odd? Is it in all software licensing agreements or just those where portions of the company are in the US?

---

I guess the writing juices are finally flowing again as November and NaNoWriMo approaches. I was incredibly burned out last year after NaNo and Holidailies and finally feel like I'm recovering a bit. Hopefully this year will not lead to my annual blog name and location change, yet again.

August’s exciting news was that Paul was finally done school. This was extra exciting because we both thought he had 4 months left.

In that time, I’ve gotten used to Paul being home. Tonight he is out at a friend’s house and I have gone into the bedroom twice looking to cuddle up with him (he often goes to bed before me and I visit him sometimes when I get lonely). I was playing with my new Quicken Cash Flow earlier and I was just so excited about it (yes, I’m a dork) that I wanted to tell him how pleased I was with our decision to shell out 40 clams for it (are those two expressions related? I wonder…) and both times I suddenly realized with a sense of deflation that he was…not here.

This is like having a honeymoon a few years too late. Being able to just hang out together on the couch without him having a splitting headache or the computer on his lap, although more often it was just me in the apartment doing the housework after work while he was at school until 11 pm. Every so often I just want to yell out to the world “Look! I have a husband! He’s real and he lives with me! See, I told you so!” Not that I need a husband for my self-identity or whatever, I’m just proud of him and the fun and quirky relationship that we have built together.

It’s nice to come home after work (or more often, after my many medical appointments) to find him cooking dinner, or watching TV, or doing dishes, or playing a video game rather than to yell, “Honey, I’m home!” to an empty apartment (and our doped up neighbours).

Gee, aren't you all glad that you waited this long for an entry? Don't worry, I plan on doing Holidailies again this year.

Evil Truck

2007-05-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

This truck parks down the street from our place all the time. It freaks me right out that someone not only believes these things but felt the need to post them on their vehicle for all the world to see. I am frankly terrified to see who drives this thing and hope to never meet them in a dark alley. They must be seriously unbalanced.

Is that not disturbing?

The Princess and The Muffin

2007-04-22T21:54:00.000-07:00

I have dropped off the face of the planet lately due to my increasing insomnia (and the time consumed by creating a slideshow for my father's 60th birthday party). After picking up my Vitamin B Complex pills, sedatives and sleeping pills, I got asked a very strange question.

I had apparently, without realizing what I was getting into, walked into a heated argument between the girl at customer service and the girl at the till. Obviously very worked up about it, the girl at the till demanded, "Which is a more insulting nickname: Princess or Muffin?" Surprisingly, I had strong opinions on the matter. In fact, she could not have picked two nicknames about which I have stronger feelings than these two.

Princess is what the evil ex used to call me (which I hated and he never realized it). It's also what my mother calls me when she really wants to piss me off. It's basically the one thing that you can call me that will send me into a rage instantly. You'd be better off calling me Poo-for-brains (but don't, okay?), although calling me a liar will get a similar reaction. (The exception to this is calling me The Princess of Weird, which is acceptable because it is from "Dead Like Me" and is also true.)

Muffin (and more commonly Muffinpants or Muffin de Pants or Muffiny Muffin) is what Paul calls me, and has for years. It fills me with a little sunny glow every time I hear it. It started out from the sarcastic sympathetic, "Awww...muffin!" whenever one of us had an insignificant complaint. One of Paul's coworker's overheard us and thought it was funny. It took on a life of it's own after that. I have even warned my co-workers that if they feel the need to answer my phone, they might get called Muffinpants by my husband. (Strangely all of them have elected to not answer my phone, which is fine by me.) When greeting me, if Paul just yells "Muffin!", I will often just yell "Pants!" in reply.

When I informed the girl at the till that Princess was the most insulting of insulting nicknames, and that Muffin was the most fabulous of fabulous nicknames when used in the right tone, she was pretty darn put out. The customer service girl did a victory dance and I checked my bill to make sure that there were no financial consequences to siding against the person who was holding my mastercard hostage.

Flipping the bird

2007-02-16T18:14:00.000-08:00

It seems as though my injured right hand has some suppressed rage, possibly about the injury. My physio put a machine on it, basically two sponges with wires tensor-bandaged to my wrist, that is supposed to reduce inflammation and pain. It gives me little tingly electric shocks in my hand but will also sometimes (often) cause my middle finger to cramp and extend. I cannot stop it, nor can I retract it once it's out. Basically, my hand is flipping the world the bird of it's own volition.

I just hope that it doesn't need psychotherapy after the physio therapy.

Roller coaster

2007-02-12T18:19:00.000-08:00

Last week was a long series of violent ups and downs, not unlike a 168 hour roller coaster ride.

It started with a phone call to my mother on Friday night. My grandfather was supposed to be going for angioplasty and I wanted to see how it went. It turns out that he actually had an angiogram (small uphill). IThe results were not good. His right coronary artery is 100% blocked (sharp drop), his left coronary artery is 70% blocked with 80% blockage of the offshoots (gradual downhill). Basically, he needs bypass surgery right freaking now (small lift) and even if they decide that he is a good candidate he is probably going to refuse surgery (severe drop). My aunt asked him if he wanted to be buried or to make an ash of himself. He answered that he would make an ash of himself just like he always had (small lift driven by slightly hysterical laughter).

On Saturday I got my cast off (small up), found out my wrist wasn't fractured (bigger up), but started to realize the extent of soft tissue damage (gradual drop).

Tuesday night Paul and I (and his parents) went to see The Arrogant Worms (comedic songwriters extraordinaire). We had fabulous seats: Winspeare Centre, floor, centre, row 4 (gradual up) and I laughed until I cried (nearing a peak).

Wednesday brought Paul's long awaited appointment with the hematologist to find out about his blood clot. We went in quite hopeful that the results would be good, he would be able to go off the blood thinners and never have a clot again. The results were not good (sudden plunging drop of doom). His antiphospholipid antigen levels had risen again, putting him at high risk for further clotting so he would have to stay on blood thinners for another year. At a single stroke the possibility that all of this trouble was caused by a pesky virus was eliminated. Now we know it's something else, likely something serious, but we have no idea what. They have ordered further tests over the next year, mostly in the area of auto-immune diseases, but we won't know anything at all until next February, if at all (bottom of the screaming drop-of-doom pit-of-despair).

That evening I went to the BareNaked Ladies concert at Rexall Place. It was fantastic, as expected. This is about the sixth time that I have seen them in concert and they are consistently the best I have ever seen. They are all just such amazing musicians and entertainers. They're geeky and fun and the music is fantastic and it doesn't hurt that Ed is so dreamy (triple loop-de-loop of joy). I cheered until I was hoarse and didn't care that I had no voice left and froze my butt off walking back to the car (and luckily survived the car ride, Ashley is a scary driver).

The next morning I was still on cloud nine over the fabulousness of the concert but it was (unfortunately) a thursday which is meeting day at work. By the end of the meeting I was so angry I was shaking. I'm tired of backhanded insults and power trips, micro-managing and iron-handed control. Work politics make me ill (sudden jerking stop at the end of the ride). Before I knew it I was back to the usual grind (coast to loading area).

Ride over. Please come again. (No, thank you. I think I'll be too short to ride next week.)

Cast off!

2007-02-11T22:48:00.000-08:00

Much as I enjoy the title, this is not going to be a nautical post. Sorry.

To update: after almost 3 weeks in a cast, and much shuffling from doctor to doctor, there seems to be a concensus that there is, in fact, no fracture (whoo!). There are, however, some pulled ligaments, some partially torn ligaments (nothing bad enough to require surgery), and some deep bruising. There are 8 little bones in the wrist and I have some sort of damage to the ligaments around all of them, and the ligaments between the base of my radius and ulna, plus some in the thumb (if I understood correctly what was going on). Basically, a full month after my injury my arm does not feel any better.

I started physio this week and am making some good progress on increasing the range of motion in my injured hand. I just need to stop doing things like falling in the parking lot. Yes, I fell again. I landed mostly on my knees trying to avoid hurting my wrist but it was either that or eat gravel. I opted for further injuring the wrist. I absolutely cannot wait for this winter to be over. Stop snowing already! (It doesn't help that we came home the other night to find that two and a half feet of snow had blown off the roof onto our balcony (which is how we enter our place). Stupid snow!)

I'm slowly discovering all of the things that I can't do without the cast: grating cheese is near to impossible, pants have suddenly become more problematic, as has scraping the car and carrying groceries. There are things that I just still can't do without a lot of pain: turning keys, using doorknobs, my stupid hair, hooking a bra, writing, and getting out of the bath, to name a few. But I'm delighting in things that I can do now that I couldn't in the cast: showering without assistance, buttons, wearing my winter coat, putting on deodorant. I'm becoming more skilled with Lefty too; on Tuesday I ate with chopsticks left-handed without dropping anything on my shirt (go me!)

It's been a frustrating experience but it makes me appreciate all the more that I have a hand including a thumb, even though it's injured. There are just so many things that are impossible with only one. Get better soon Righty, I miss you.

Unicycle

2007-02-03T23:15:00.000-08:00

The other day I was lined up in traffic on my way to work when I saw something very strange coming down the sidewalk towards me. He was peddling like man and windmilling his arms wildly. I couldn't help snapping a couple of photos. (For the record, I have also seen him walking his unicycle in the grocery store.)

Random Photo Day

2007-02-02T22:05:00.000-08:00

Driving home on January 22nd, I found perhaps the coolest Snowman ever!

Beaker is sad. (Paul bought him for me.)
Happy monkey!
Evidence of my curly hair.

Me in the morning (poor Paul).

Debbie got this monstrosity for Christmas from her aunt. It might be the most hideous piece of garbage I have ever seen. It does, however, give us some food for thought. What is wrong with someone that they would make and sell such a thing? Who would buy it? Why would they inflict it on someone they theoretically care for? (She received the two-ton glass purse in the background from another aunt. I think her family hates her.)

Google-diculous

2007-02-01T20:38:00.000-08:00

Gmail has this funny advertising sidebar that must use the content of your emails to tailor the links featured. I normally just ignore it but lately it has had a few useful and/or interesting suggestions.

Email from Sarah about backing her car into a guy in a BMW:
- How to Get your Guy - MakeHimFallinLove.com/GetaGuy (because clearly wrecking his car is the ideal way to woo him)
- Decorative concrete (um...what?)

Message about trip to Cuba and Passports
- Pirate Murder Mystery (Fancy Dress Pirates in Cuba)
- Repair Any Outlook Error (Is Cuba the Solution?)

Salsa @ On the Rocks
- Chat about Pole Dancing (!!!)

Extended discussion with Sarah about logistics for our trip last weekend
- Shaw PVR (this was the most useful link, as well as one on scaphoid fractures)
- Buffy Scythe (???)
- Colorful Alpaca Yarn (That's fair, but I blame Sarah.)

Dinner plans with Kristy and Cory
- Lose 20 lbs in 3 weeks (I think this might be a commentary on our menu. Mmmm...Fondue...)
- Fat Belly? Lose Stomach! (Augh! I lost my stomach! Have you seen it?)

Invitation to a games night
- Tanzania Honeymoon (No. Ed. Mon. Ton. Much colder than Tanzania.)
- Wedding Favors - Golf Balls (Just no.)
- தமிழ கல்யாணம் (That's not a typo.)

Ultrasound photos
- used ultrasound equipment (Ooo! Now look at my armpit on the ultrasound machine!)

Invitation to an adult's birthday party at Chuck-e-cheese, fancy dress required
- www.e-kilts.com (e-kilts! hah!)
- Pirate Murder Mystery (Again!)

Girls night (with two boys) and snacks
$300 Nestle Survey (Clearly they are hitting their target market)
$75 Taco Bell Survey (Only 75 bucks? Pfah! I'm hitting the Nestle one again!)
Could they be scams? Hmm...Let's put the meat of the url into google...hey! The suggested search is for scams! It must be legit.

I'll bet that the creator of GoogleAds (or whatever) wasn't expecting me to get this kind of entertainment value out of them.

Le sigh. I need to get out more.

Old Man Gout and the Cast Cozy

2007-01-28T20:05:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a plague on our house, or rather, a curse on our coachhome. As you know, I'm in a cast for my Schrodinger's Scaphoid (one doctor says it's fractured, one doctor says it's not, a third says that we won't know if it's fractured until we take it out of the cast and have a look: Schrodinger's Scaphoid). Last wednesday, Paul started complaining that his toe hurt. As we know from previous history (http://dorktasticoddments.blogspot.com/2006/01/clot.html), whenever Paul actually complains about something hurting, we end up in Emergency in the middle of the night in January (Yes, twice is more than coincidence.) It turns out that he has gout. The problem is that it's really hard to find a medication for gout that he can take because he's still on the blood thinners from the clots in his arm last January.

I've decided that I don't understand emergency triage. When I went in vomiting blood a week after surgery, I waited for more than four hours to see a doctor. When Paul went in with gout we waited less that 5 minutes. He was taken in over a girl who had been run over by a taxi and had been waiting for over two hours already. We were out before she got in! I just don't get it.

We've decided that the two of us couldn't have any more "old" sounding diseases; Paul with the blood clot and gout and me with bursitis in my left hip. I've taken to calling Paul 'Old Man Gout' (and 'my gouty friend', because 'gouty' is fun to say!)

On to more exciting news, that same day the marvelous Sarah (http://sarahjanet.blogspot.com/index.html) delivered my 'Cast Cozy' just in the nick of time since the weather was really cooling off. My fingers had been pretty cold the first few days in my cast so I had asked Sarah if she would be able to knit me a mitten that fit my cast. I had the idea, Sarah covered design and manufacturing and Paul came up with the perfect name (the three of us should go into business!). I love my Cast Cozy!

Me and my cast cozy!

Cast Cozy in action!

Unfortunately it is quite phallic.

Trip to Camp

2007-01-21T20:38:00.000-08:00

Sarah and I decided at the last minute to zip down to Canmore for a whirl-wind tour. The trip featured Amanda, Jana, Ben, and Juno (their new puppy). It was kind of neat to hang out with people who were at such similar places in life; recently married (to partners with different religious beliefs), starting careers, thinking about kids (but not there yet). We spent the night out at the camp where Jana works and lives, went for a walk to the corral in the morning, had breakfast at a cafe in Canmore (at 2 p.m.) with a view of the mountains, went shopping, had dinner at 8:30 and drove home for 2 a.m. A relaxing awesome full day.

This sign greeted our arrival at camp.

The lovely Juno.

Juno liked me (or rather, she liked to lick the peanut butter on my cast).

Mmmm...Margaritas with Amanda!

Virgin margaritas for the drivers....

...although you can't really tell!

Broken

2007-01-17T22:55:00.000-08:00

On Friday morning I had an encounter with some ice; a speedy and gravity-driven encounter. Initially I thought I was fine, and was impressed that I didn't hit my head, but before I'd gone too far I realized that my wrist really hurt. What did I do? I ignored it of course! (Okay, I iced it because it really freaking hurt, but did I go to a doctor? No. Did I go to the hospital? Of course not. I worked the entire day, insisting that I had just sprained my wrist and possibly my thumb, and then went home.)

The next day I went to the chiropractor to get all of the things that were de-aligned by my fall re-alligned. He did his best to convince me to get my wrist checked that day, but I was sure that it was just sprained. As far as he got was sending me for xrays down the hall on Monday which I could then bring back to him so that he could tell me it wasn't broken. (Honestly, only my fingers were swollen and my bruise was smaller than a dime.)

My arm was still unusable on Monday (I couldn't move my hand back, not because it hurt too much, but because it just wouldn't go) so I went for the xrays and took them down the hall. Dr. K was swamped so he told me he'd get back to me by Wednesday, which was fine with me because I knew it wasn't broken, it just hurt (at this point I had niggling doubts because of the inability to move my hand).

I walked in the door at home and Paul said, "You broke your hand."

"I know. The stupid thing hurts."

He tried again, "No. You broke your hand. The doctor called."

Sure enough there was a message on the machine saying that I had fractured my scaphoid (teeny bone in the wrist below the thumb) and the end of my radius (bone on the inside of the arm) and should go for casting.

Shit. I broke my freaking arm.

My cast.

How I feel about my cast.

It didn't take long for me to realize that doing anything with my hair was going to be nearly impossible. It was getting pretty long (as shown in photo below).

So I hacked it off (or rather, paid Andrea to hack it off and then make it pretty).

( My hair is crazy-ass at the back. Who knew?)

This haircut is fairly terrifying when it's curly; I haven't been able to figure out how to control the curl yet so curly photos may be a while. In the meantime, my sweet husband is straightening my hair for me (isn't he awesome? Really, he did it once and I'm going to try to sweet talk him into doing it again.)

UPDATE: The radiologist examined my xrays and said that my radius was not actually fractured. Hurray! The scaphoid may still be fractured so I'm in the cast for two weeks, go back for xrays and then if it still appears to be fractured at that point, I will be casted for 8 more weeks. (Boo!)

Blizzard

2007-01-10T08:49:00.000-08:00

Today was Blizzard day, as you can see from the forecast I stole from the Environment Canada website.
I enjoyed the pretty blizzard symbol, which I had never seen before.

When I got home, between the 20ish centimetres of snow and gusting winds (especially in our area) some of the drifts were up to mid-thigh and the peak of this beauty (below) was actually waist high on me.

In other places the ground was swept bare and the snow curled up the sides of the banks in gentle ripples.

I really enjoyed this little ledge in the snow; it was like a little cave designed for me to crawl right in. I managed to restrain myself though.

Happy Holidailies

2007-01-01T21:38:00.000-08:00

I've officially made it through my third year of holidailies; one as Canoegirl's Reflections (20 Entries), one as Schaapsher Chronicles/Some People Juggle Geese (22 Entries) and this year as Dorktastic Oddments (32 Entries). I'm excited to have finally made it to the top of the list this year. While I didn't exactly write an entry every day, I did write the required 31 entries in 31 days. Go me!

The first year I was pleased to have my entry "Matthew Broderick had it easy" http://canoegirl.diaryland.com/041211_74.html nominated for best of holidailies and I followed it up last year with "The Art of Love" http://somepeoplejugglegeese.blogspot.com/2005/12/art-of-love.html. This year, I had two entries that I was quite pleased about (although they went without external affirmation) but I'm glad that I did holidailies because it inspired me to write them (http://dorktasticoddments.blogspot.com/2006/12/graceland.html and http://dorktasticoddments.blogspot.com/2006/12/catch-22.html).

At any rate, I am somewhat settled into my new home here and I'm wondering if anyone has found me. Christine has left me a couple of comments and Amanda left one too but I don't actually know if anyone else is reading. If you are, drop by and say hi! Let me know what you like and you don't like (although I'm not sure how swayed I am by feedback). Do you want more pictures? Less pictures? Or is the mix good like this? What do you think; inquiring mind wants to know.

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

As usual, we had a sit down dinner for 30+ of our closest friends and stayed up talking until the wee hours of the morning. (At one point in the evening, with extreme lack of sleep kicking in, we decided that I should get a job designing novelty birth control items: Pope Hat shaped condoms and Piratey eye patch condoms and diaphragms with a bulls eye pattern and Nuvaring toss.)

Doug's temporary handlebar mustache.

Our traditional hope tree.

The Memory Wall (which I forget to fill out every year).

Our gift to Amanda (who finishes med school in May).

G's "Not Paul Safe" purple shirt.

Pretty friends.

Me and Trish.

Paul and Debbie playing with Deb's new toy.

Melly and Doug (aww!)

Ringing in the New Year.

Shinny with a Zamboni!

2006-12-31T13:26:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-30T21:48:00.001-08:00

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

2006-12-30T10:36:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-12-29T18:36:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-29T00:11:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-26T16:35:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-26T16:30:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-24T03:51:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-12-23T03:31:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-21T17:01:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-12-20T21:28:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-19T21:23:00.000-08:00

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

Snowpile

2006-12-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-17T21:23:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-17T11:48:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-16T12:05:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-12-15T19:07:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-14T21:55:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-13T23:04:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-12T22:03:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-11T23:06:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-10T23:27:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

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)

2006-12-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-05T01:28:00.000-08:00

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)

2006-12-03T23:16:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-12-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-01T23:45:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-03T11:25:00.000-08:00

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.

Clot

2006-01-17T11:21:00.000-08:00

In the first week of January, Paul started complaining off and on that his arm hurt. He mentioned it kind of casually, that it was sore as if he'd worked out but he hadn't really done anything with it. He didn't sound like he was in a lot of pain or that he was particularly upset about it so I didn't think much of it.

On friday night he called me before he came home from school and said that he thought there was something wrong with his arm. Again, he didn't sound alarmed or in pain so I told him I would have a look at it when he got home.

He walked in the door, took off his coat and sat down on the couch. I glanced over at him and actually did a double take. I'm not sure that my butt touched the couch between my side of the couch and his, all I know is that I was examining his arm in under three seconds. His entire right arm was swollen and red, from his fingers right up to his shoulder and his chest and back around that shoulder. It was hard to the touch, like touching the fake plastic flesh of a mannequin. He said it only hurt in his shoulder but the arm ached like after a hard workout.

I couldn't convince him to go straight to the hospital, but I managed to convince him to go to the medicentre. Roughly an hour later we were on our way to Emergency with a referral letter from the medicentre doctor.

On a Friday night Emergency at the University Hospital is always a zoo, but because of the potential severity of Paul's case, we moved quickly through triage and into a "room" (curtained stall). After being examined by five doctors (one of them just poked his arm a bunch and acted like Paul was lying when he said he didn't work out), they sent him for chest x-rays and gave him a shot of blood thinners in his belly. They said that the biggest possibility was a blood clot and that we would have to come back the next day for an ultrasound.

Morning found us back in emergency, waiting for the results of the ultrasound. The technician found clots all the way up Paul's arm and a large clot in his shoulder, where the worst of the pain was. Apparently since there was no injury, no family history of clotting, and the clot was in an uncommon area, the doctors were quite worried. They gave him another shot of blood thinners and a prescription to continue them, a prescription for blood thinner pills, requisitions for a ton of tests, and a referral to a hematologist. We left for home, tired and shaken up.

It required a significant adjustment of our lives, a complete role reversal. Paul had always been the strong healthy one while I was generally weaker and sicker. Now I was doing the lifting and carrying while he had to rest and remember to take his pills and get his tests. We had to be careful of anything that might cause him to bruise or bleed, and he had to avoid all kinds of foods that would interact with his meds. While I was happy to cover where he needed help, Paul is just not good at being sick and remembering all of the important restrictions. He didn't want to have to slow down and not play hockey and watch what he ate. I was frustrated at what I saw as his lack of attention to his health and he was frustrated by all of the restrictions.

We've adjusted some now and found a better balance, but it's going to be a long haul until Paul is healthy enough again for things to get back to normal. I don't think they will ever get back to the way they were because I think that now he knows I am stronger than he thought I was (and I am less confident in his health than I was - paranoid, he says). The next hurdle is flying out to Vancouver for a wedding without me freaking out about him randomly hemoraging while fulfilling his duties as a groomsman.