Author Archives: Heather

i’ve been super cranky the last couple of days. holy moly, it’s been ugly. thankfully a surprise appearance of the illusive wade and a really great picnic in my office today have helped to diffuse it some. i’m still really annoyed with everything workwise, but thank god for friends. truly.
there’s a busy, social weekend ahead. dinner & movie with jamie and his wife tonight. tomorrow is a meal & another movie with karen. sunday is either the cibc run for the cure & bruch or a photo swap meet, depending on the weather (i’m really really really hoping for rain *rain dance*).
i don’t know why i’m going out so much. i’m absolutely flat broke. completely. i’m actually trying to figure out what i can sell to make some money. it’s my own fault, but it still sucks. ugh. money sucks. SUCKS. i really need a sugardaddy.

i had a party last night! i invited 18 of my nearest and dearest over to watch the amazing race premiere and to finally see my big, entertainable apartment. of course, only five showed up, which wasn’t all that bad, really. quality over quantity, right? it was interesting to have work friends meet internet friends. i was really hoping m&m could come just to make the whole universes colliding theme complete, but it was shopping night, so they were unable to attend.
now that i know i can entertain without calamity (and my blender is capable of making margaritas), i think i just might do it again.
today was my day off and i took full advantage. i slept in, had a bath, caught up on some tv watching and then I WENT FOR A MASSAGE. oh, yes. a massage. forty-five minutes of being rubbed with lotion. even the whole being naked on a table in front of a stranger didn’t bug me enough to stop enjoying it. i have a follow-up appointment in two weeks. this is definitely going to become a habit. mm, massage.
what are you waiting for? go get a massage!

it’s kind of freaky that three of you suggested burgundy curtains when that’s EXACTLY what i was already thinking of getting. good to know i’m not completely decorating incompetent.
the blinds are back and they are blindingly clean. that was the best $16 i’ve ever spent. now if i can get the super to put a new toilet in i’ll be a very happy camper.
it’s only a week into the new television season and i’m already behind. and i’m going to the island this weekend for my mom’s birthday so i won’t have a chance to catch up. this sucks! thank god i’m not trying to go to school, too, or i’d have to explode or something.
(see, this is why people hate north americans. they consider troubles like mine to be big and insurmountable, while they’re struggling for freedom from tyranny or digging grubs for lunch.)
it’s not even eight a.m. and i’ve already received two compliments.
today is stretch and relax class. tomorrow is a half-day. next tuesday is my party. next wednesday i have off and, AND, i’m getting a massage. then it’ll only be two weeks until my week off. things are looking up. now if only i could work on an earnings model to buy my burgundy curtains…

i got shy and couldn’t bring myself to sleep without window coverings, so i tacked up a blue bedsheet over the window. yes, i am totally white trash chic, thank you.
i’ve been thinking about getting curtains in my bedroom to both warm up the feel of the room and to help block more light (dark! bedrooms must be completely dark!). these past two nights with the big blue sheet up have confirmed that i need to get a move on in that direction. my biggest problem is that i can’t decide what colour curtains. i want something warm and rich and cozy, but i don’t want to totally match it to my bedsheets because then what will i do when i want a new duvet cover? get new curtains? i don’t think so. any help would be appreciated. i’m teh suck at home decorating.
last night i photowandered around a cool part of town with jamie after work. we ran into a vandigicamr, found another bottle of jones soda with my photo on the label and then ate too many fries at white spot while trying not to act suspicious next to a table full of cops (at least *i* was trying). then jamie was a good boy-friend (not to be confused with boyfriend or bf) and filled up my car’s tires with air. he mocked me for it being something i hate doing myself, but he still went ahead and did it. now THAT’S true friendship, i tell you.
unfortunately, with the combination of pilates class and all the walking in my steel-toed shoes, my body is tres sore today. plus, i woke up with a headache which just sucks regardless of the day. in ten minutes, i’m going to finally phone and make an appointment for a massage. cross your fingers i’ll get in tomorrow so i don’t have to spend the weekend all knotted up.

i’ve taken my blinds down for cleaning. this means that for the next two nights my neighbours will be able to watch me sleep. i’m not sure how i feel about that. mostly ’cause it means i should probably wear something to bed.
oh, the things i do to avoid getting on “how clean is your house?”
i miss the way tyler used to say my name over and over and over in that sleepy, breathless way of his. of all things, a website i found reminded me of that and made it almost hurt for missing him.

have a margarita while you wait for me to do something worth writing about.

great day. better night. ;)

i’m completely distracted by my hair today. there’s new goop in it and it smells like apples. ohmygod. if i were a boy and i caught a whiff of my locks i’d totally be all over me like… like… something on something. sorry, i just caught a whiff.
feels like it’s going to be a good day today. there’s a birthday lunch to attend. a time-wasting meeting after that. then only a couple of hours until jamie and colene show up at my place for our (semi-) fish’n’chip catch-up at the pub. i’m really looking forward to tonight.
have i mentioned that i have the next three weeks of television scheduled and actually written down in my daytimer? yes, virginia, the new television season is upon us! i don’t know why, but i get very excited by all the new shows and i try very hard to see the first episode of almost every one. this year is a little different because of the fact i have barely watched my tv since june. the whole process of turning it on and then just sitting there watching something seems somehow wasteful. i was actually thinking about starting a new knitting or crochet project, just to keep my hands busy while i sit there. oh wait, i have a laptop now, i can multi-task! sweet.

don’t i feel like an idiot? so, it was just the battery afterall. i got home, stuck it in the charger, prayed for two hours and then put it in the camera. voila, lights and action. i’m so relieved.
the thing i’ve found with the d70 is that the battery will last forEVER, but once that first little bar on the indicator goes away, you better be ready to say goodnight eileen because it won’t last long after that. i can only assume that it had done just that after putting it away thursday and the mere act of keeping the display going over the weekend fully drained it.
don’t get me wrong, i’m very glad it was just the battery, but i was kind of looking forward to sending it away just so i could get the sensor cleaned under warranty.
also, for those of you who don’t use rss and actually come to look a this site as it’s meant to be displayed (yes, i’m bitter), you might have noticed the appearing/disappearing “help me save the boobies” banner which was around for a couple of days. i’m particpating in the CIBC run for the cure this year and i was hoping to solicit those charitable readers to contribute to my fundraising efforts (which, heretofore have included nothing but baking things for team-related bake sales), but the website for the event sucks so much and didn’t even register the one donation i know someone tried to make, that i decided to take the link down and complain about it.
the cause is still great, the event is still great, the people involved are still great, but the website fucking blows this year. unless you land at their front page, there are no “login” links on any other page. i spent a good ten minutes looking for one the other day, just so i could get the “sponsor me” link to put on my site. now this nonsense with donations not getting processed. hell, i can’t even pay my registration fee online! grr.
this is not the way to make someone feel charitable, people!

my camera won’t turn on.
i really hope it’s just the battery.
i won’t cry until i know for sure.

watched movies, played WoW, finished cocoa puffs, played WoW, did dishes, cleaned clothes, played WoW, moved computers, scrubbed the tub, played WoW, ate too much, played WoW.

last night i found myself driving aimlessly around the north shore looking for… something. the overriding conscious desire was a location from which to photograph the oncoming stormy skies. the unconscious desire was to stay out of my apartment for as long as possible; until there was no choice but to return to sleep.
i found a new spot from which to watch the world.
i stood at the edge of the strait while the wind whipped the sea into a frenzy, crashing hugely against the rocks. i sat on a log in the dying twilight and laughed as i watched seagulls hover as they rode the big winds like true wind surfers. i smiled at the children hauling a six-foot long piece of driftwood to their makeshift shelter in the sand. i watched the middleaged man with buckets fishing, wondering what he catches there. i licked my lips and tasted the sea.
just when i thought it couldn’t get worse, i found a place which helped to heal my heart. there’s something magical about the ocean for me. the smell, the power, the ever-changing colours and shapes. sitting there alone, shivering yet not minding the cold, i found joy.

i need motivation.
motivation to take the recycling out. motivation to go for a walk. motivation to take my camera out of the bag. motivation to cook. movtivation to travel. motivation to stretch. motivation to talk. motivation to nap. motivation to give. motivation to do the dishes.
i need motivation to live life fully.
i’m in a rut with almost every part of my life and i can’t seem to get myself out of any of them. the enormity of it is paralyzing me. i can’t fathom where to start.

you know what? there’s absolutely nothing to say. i mean, i still have a list of things i should write about, but i’m too busy making fake chicken parmesan, watching the west wing and stressing out over the state of anti-clean my apartment is in to do so.
i had a great long weekend though, did you?

i’m concerned about the recent purchase of my very lovely dvd-by-mail provider vhqonline by the not as lovely and somewhat maligned provider zip.ca.
the first change i’ve noticed and don’t much like is in the rental queue format. vhq used to have it in priority order from 1 to whatever number was last. you’d have the dvd you wanted sent next in the number one spot, and so on. it was really handy for getting what you wanted when you wanted it. the new zip-powered site doesn’t seem to have that option. my queue is now alphabetical. i don’t want to see movies alphabetically! that’s dorky!
anyway, i guess i don’t have much of a choice. they were the only two major players in canada. i just hope zip doesn’t fuck it all up, and charge me more for the pleasure.
does anyone have any experience with zip? are they less asstacular than they were a year ago?

so, i’m reading sex, drugs & cocoa puffs by chuck klosterman and i’m thinking that he sounds like he’s talking about my life experiences with media and whatnot. he makes mention of being thirty years old and being eight in 1980 and, because i’m such the math wiz, i deduce he was born in 1972, just like me. as i keep reading the book, and i’m totally getting a crush on this guy i’ve never heard of before sean gave me his book to read, i decide i need to know just how near in age we are. according to wikipedia, we were actually born two days apart, with me being the elder. it started to freak out a little when i read that ’cause it’s really like reading my life in some ways and to know that it’s coming from this person who was born before my parents even got to take me home from the hospital is kind of freaky, yet very cool.
it’s the same sensation i got while reading girlfriend in a coma by douglas coupland. it was set where i grew up, just a couple of years before i would have been doing all the things the characters were doing. reading how someone else lived what could have been (and sometimes was) your life is both disconcerting and very cool. it’s almost a glimpse down the path not taken. if i’d been cooler or more aware of things would i have been the one to put it all together and make a book which affected people this way?
in other bookish news, the last book i read was the worst book i’ve ever read. saying this shouldn’t be taken lightly, either. i read a lot of harlequin romances in the early nineties, so i know bad books. it’s called in search of an impotent man by gaby hauptmann. it’s about a beautiful, intelligent, sexy, well-adjusted, successful woman in her 30’s who’s oh-so tired of meeting men who are only after one thing (that’s sex, just in case you were wondering), so she puts an ad in the local paper looking for an intelligent man who can’t get his willie up. you’d think hilarity would ensue, but it was just a lot of “don’t hate me because i’m beautiful” schlock and THE WORLD’S STUPIDEST ENDING EVER. ohmygod. all this was on top of the glaring realization that it’s either a translation from german or ms. hauptmann skipped a few too many english classes during Gymnasium because the language is so horribly stilted and just plain uncomfortable to read. no one, not even germans, talk like her characters. ugh. i was so very upset with it i couldn’t put it down. don’t you hate it when that happens?

it feels so odd, yet so good, to be back in my own chair and at my own desk at work this morning. i have a lot of paper to plow through to catch up from the last two weeks, but i can’t complain too much. byron totally slayed a couple of my biggest, ugliest, grossest tasks which i never had time to do. it feels really good to have them off my back finally.
my weekend was really great, too, even though i was so busy on saturday it actually felt like i’d missed it entirely. i totally made up for it with thirteen hours of concentrated sloth yesterday, though. m&m showed up unexpectedly to show off mark’s brand new chevrolet cobalt they bought on wednesday.
the biggest accomplishment was the first-time creation of creme brulee (as pictured above). it was a huge hit and i don’t think anyone died from it, but i haven’t heard from any of them since, so i could totally be an inadvertent murderess. oops!
i still have lots of stuff to talk about and i should have some more time to actually do it this week, i hope. happy monday!

obviously busy. made nuttymuffin prettish tonight. go see. lots of stories to tell, i just need time to paste the words together. soon, i hope. maybe sunday. be good.