Author Archives: Heather

i’m really groggy today. i woke up not knowing what day it was. the combination of saturday’s hard labour washing all my beautiful hardwood floors and rushing around yesterday after a luxurious sleep-in to get stuff done before going to dinner with jason wiped me out. at least i’m back to my real job and i can ease into it a little this week.
hey! it’s a long weekend coming up! i keep forgetting that.
today’s photo is one i took of a bottle of jones soda with my photograph on the label. there’s another shot up here.

so, i need to talk about my seattle experience. more specifically, my rental car experience. for my $35.99/day i got a toyota echo sedan. it was some sort of shiny-brownish-greyish colour with four doors and a cd-player. it did not have air conditioning. it did have power steering and power brakes.
like my first rental car experience in manitoba two years ago, i realized that power brakes are scary. as i’m pulling out of the budget rent-a-car lot, i put my foot on the brakes as i would in my own 13 year old vehicle and came to a screeching, jerking halt. oops. power brakes! then, as i’m driving through downtown vancouver at 9am on a sunday i looked down at the spedometer (once i could find it: who the hell at toyota thought it was a good idea to put it over on the CENTRE of the dash instead of in front of the driver?) and noticed i was doing almost 80kph in a 50 zone. the whisper quiet car combined with sitting higher off the ground totally eliminated my ability to judge how fast i was driving. i spent most of my driving time breaking every speed limit i passed by a very healthy margin.
the combination of my not being able to feel how fast i was driving and the REALLY FUCKING TOUCHY power brakes nearly got me arrested and/or killed before i’d even left the city of vancouver. i was through downtown and exiting off the oak street bridge (which turns into the road which takes you all the way to america. handy!) when i saw cops in the meridian stopping people for speeding. shit! i knew i was speeding, so when mr. police officer stepped out into the left lane and pointed, i hit the breaks. the car jerked and squealed. the cop yelled “NOT YOU! KEEP MOVING!” as he flagged down the guy zooming up behind me in the other lane. thankfully, there was no one immediately behind me in my lane or i would have gotten creamed. but, for all that is good in the world, why, oh why, was there a speed trap at NINE O’CLOCK on a sunday morning? if you can explain that to me, i’ll give you a cookie.
it was a pretty great day out. the sun was shining, there was a nice breeze and i don’t think i remember a single cloud in the sky. so the hot sun got to beat down on me in the car with no air conditioning for three hours. yay! i kept thinking, especially as i sat in the lineup at the border for half an hour, “gee, i wish i’d stopped to pick up some beverages… and a towel.” poor kevin. i was pretty damp and frizzy by the time i picked him up at his hotel. the thing is, i thought all rental cars had a/c. c’mon! then again, my last rental was a free upgrade because they didn’t have any economy cars available, so i guess i got spoiled with the a/c and cruise control (oh, man, what i would have given for cruise control on this trip).
after a few frightening too-hard brakings on I-5, i finally started to get accustomed to the car. i was still speeding, but so was everyone else, so i didn’t worry too much about it. i did wonder what all those washingtonians thought of the brownish-greyish toyota echo with canadian plates and a big BUDGET sticker on the bumper thought as i zoomed past them, though. probably something along the lines of “fucking tourist”.
i really, really liked not being embarrassed to have passengers in the vehicle with me. i liked the cd player a LOT (i’d totally get one for my car, but it’s so not worth it now). i didn’t much like all the blinky nag lights on the dash cajoling me when i took my seatbelt off to reach for something at the stoplight. oh, you know that dumb commercial where the echo is parked in a “large vehicles only” parking spot (yeah, like they have those) and the tow-truck driver gets in, looks around and you hear the voice-over say something dorky like “it’s only small on the outside“? it’s totally true. the echo is freaking HUGE inside. and tall. i couldn’t get over how much headroom there was. if i had fifteen grand in the bank, i’d totally go buy one. but not the sedan. it totally weirded me out to know that there was a bit of car sticking out past the rear window that i could not see. no thanks. it’s all hatchbacks for me.
huh. when did this turn into a car review? ohwell. i’m going to go buy a burrito for lunch now.

as part of being sean this week, i get to injure myself on the job. yesterday, i forgot how heavy the big boxes on the pallet jack were and yanked them something fierce, causing myself a mild form of whiplash. today, i lifted some heavy things and i’m pretty sure i didn’t use just my legs to do it. we’ll see if my lower back is as tender tomorrow as my upper back is today. gee, it’s a good thing they’re paying me that extra $1.93/hour, huh?
i’m on the cusp of a serious hermit phase. i’m not answering emails, i’m avoidng the phone, i’m *this* close to cancelling any plans i have with people. i’m not really bloo, i just suddenly want to avoid the world. it started before the bad news i got yesterday morning, but that email certainly did nothing to encourage me to slap it down and keep on truckin’. before you go asking, it’s not tragic news. my plans for sunday fell through due to scheduling issues and i’m upset about it.
i was really looking forward to seeing rick again (which does not come anywhere near close to doing justice to the actual feeling involved). it was probably going to be the last time i would get to see him, what with him living in arkansas and all. if it wasn’t for all the 5-htp in my system, i probably would have cried a lot more than the few tears which rolled down my cheeks at 6:23 yesterday morning as i read the news. i suppose that’s a good thing, lest people harangue me for being overly-emotional about something so trivial in the larger scheme of things.
there are things i want to write about, but don’t know if i ever will. i’ve been thinking too hard about how to write well and when i do that it doesn’t come out at all. it’s a strange mix of writer’s block and stage fright. this post was an exercise in just letting it flow. how’d i do?

after a beer-laden friday night out and a completely wasted saturday, i had a twelve-and-a-half hour adventure tour of seattle (well, it was six hours of driving and six hours of touring) with kevin and his boss/friend greg. i don’t have time right now to do the visit justice, but suffice it to say that mkh is just as wonderful, sweet, funny and intelligent in person as he is on his website. oh, and he gives fantastic hugs!
in other, less pleasant news, i’m sean at work this week so posts will probably be of the evening variety. don’t let anyone say i don’t keep you updated! *cough*jeremy*cough*

well, i’m not sure if my headache is from fun. it’s probably more from the beer and the inappropriate nap which kept me up and talking to jeremy on skype until very late last night. now it’s friday, i’ve the worst hair ever, i have to wait two whole days until i go to seattle…
aw, fuck it. if you have nothing good to say, you should just shut up.

i totally wasted all my good material on wade, so you guys are stuck with photos instead of interesting stories about toilet seats and rice in a can. i’m sorry. it’s all wade’s fault.

i’m so EXCITED! this coming sunday, i’m driving a rental car down to seattle to meet mr. hall of hidden city. he’s there for some conferency thing and since it’s not like i’m ever going to florida, i decided to drive the couple of hours down to meet up and let him buy me a belated birthday meal.
but, that’s not all! the sunday after this, i’m driving another rental car back down to seattle to spend the afternoon with my very favourite rick who is also in town for a conferency thing (man, i never get to go to conferency things!).
luckily, my passport is good until the end of the month, so i don’t have to find my birth certificate. OHMYGOD! i’m so thrilled. travel! adventure! strange american men! yippee!

geez, people. it wasn’t THAT kind of weekend o’ love. it was three of my favourite people making me feel special and appreciated in honour of my birthday.
friday night, m&m and i went to the pub, sat at the bar, drank beer, played ntn texas hold’em, ate food, laughed, talked, and had a damn fine time. saturday, karen took me out for the biggest, most decadent lunch, a movie, megashopping and then we came back to my place to watch a dvd. sunday, colene took me to the tomahawk for a giant brunch and then we had a lovely walk’n’talk along the north van side of the harbour.
THAT’S the kind of love it was. dirty, dirty people. *tsk*

holy moly i’m popular lately! unfortunately, i’m so swamped i can’t even tell you about it. maybe tonight. yes, tonight. i’ll do my best to sit down and tell you some of the good stuff i have to tell from my weekend o’ love.

last night saw me out and about false creek with the vandigicam group for the first time last night. thankfully, i had jamie there to break me in softly. strangers are scary, you know. luckily, most of those strangers weren’t too scary. i might just even go out with them again. i took a bunch of pictures, seventy-five percent of which were crap. ohwell. one day i’ll learn to cull the crap to save disk space. really!

i think i like my hair now. although, it’s still not short enough (i can’t believe i just typed that). i guess that means i’m going back to bossy persian lady next week and say “don’t change it, just make it shorter! thank you.”
there’s a busy weekend ahead. last night out, tonight there’s tentative dinner with m&m, saturday i’m going to food and a movie with keb and sunday it’s brunch with colene. i’m totally milking this birthday thing for all it’s worth! go me.

while washing my hands earlier (which really has no bearing at all), i was thinking that i’d really like to have some sex this weekend.
then i was thinking that it’d be great if you could just call up that guy/girl you know who’s really hot and say “hey, let’s have some sex this weekend”. s/he’d come over, you’d have some great sex and then you’d get up on monday morning and go about your life just like you’d seen a great movie or gone to a great show, chatting at the water cooler about your weekend: how you did laundry, got nailed on the kitchen counter and then found your favourite shampoo on sale at london drugs.
yeah, that’d be great, wouldn’t it?

back to the grind. work will kick my ass this week, especially if i continue to wake up with headaches. why do i wake up with headaches? you’d think that getting almost a foot of hair chopped off would make my head feel lighter, freer, less achy.
yes, virginia, i finally got my hair cut. what? it’s only been 17 months since my last haircut. i had a horrendously horrendous hair weekend, and that put me over the edge. i headed straight for magicuts on my way home last night and sat there until the slightly overbearing persian woman told me to come sit in her chair. it’s not quite what i wanted (or asked for) but at least it’s healthier and, hey, it’ll always grow back. right?

oh dear god… i’m 33! i’m officially in my thirties now. there’s really no saying otherwise at this point. i could pull out the ol’ 29 with four year’s experience, but that kind of thing mostly annoys me.
the last year brought me lots of stuff: a new apartment, a new job, a new camera, a new bed, a new computer. i had a short affair which left me cold. i had a near-breakdown which left me philosophic. i dated! i made new friends and lost old ones. i discovered pho and salmon sashimi. i finally met my jeremy after knowing him for over eight years. i also met long-time blog friends jim, jodi, julie and andrea in person; spent time with my favourite aussie, Adrian; and, i can’t forget meeting the (in)famous dooce. i asked for help and didn’t die from shame. i discovered flickr. i became a part-time camwhore.
i’m on my third full-time job, my second apartment, my fifth computer, my first car (still), my third edmonton-boy crush, my second desk, and my first kickass officemate. i still don’t know what i want to be when i grow up, but i think i might be getting closer. i’m on the financial mend (even with that annoying mastercard hiccough). i’m still too hard on myself, but i’m getting better. i’ve learned that if i don’t open up i’ll never have anyone know the real me and if that doesn’t happen then i only have myself to blame for ending up lonely.
this year i’m dedicating to self-improvement: better nutrition, better physical condition, more me time, more creative expressions, more friends, more adventure, more honesty, more spontaneity, more love (even for myself), better hair, less tv, more music, more books, more outside, less futon, exfoliating, moisturizing, flossing, trying new foods, talking to strangers, taking more photos, using my words, thinking of others first, living in the now and not for the weekend, more “thank you”s.
it’s a tall order, but i’ve three hundred-some days to try it all on for size. i may not be perfect, but i’m a pretty good person with pretty good intentions most of the time. i could do a lot worse, but i could be doing a lot better, too.
happy thirty-three to me! i’m going to work on enjoying the process this year. i hope you’re all along for the ride, because it’s sure to be an adventure!

happy canada day!
yesterday, my new friend jamie took me out for a fabulous lunch and an entertaining photowalk around queen elizabeth park (where i stalked highschool grads and found the next scarlett o’hara). after my amazing afternoon, daddy came to my rescue and returned light to my kitchen. by ten o’clock, i was knackered and ready for bed.
today, i’ve been cleaning, baking cookies, playing with lucy and talking to wade. really, that’s pretty much all i’ve done. who knew i could do so little in twelve hours?
tomorrow i head over to the island to see my rellies and eat ice cream cake for my belly button day on sunday.
i hope everyone has a great weekend, long or not, and i’ll be back on tuesday. *smooch*

it’s my friday! it’s burger day! i just motored through a bunch of really crappily craptastic work and i, amazingly enough, have motivation to keep on motoring! must be the adrenaline of not being here for two days and having to get shit done before i leave. my cold has settled into that barely annoying drippy nose and slightly froggy voice phase which will probably drag on for another week. i’m meeting a slightly-annoyingly needy net.guy for coffee tonight, just to get him off my back already. tomorrow, i’m going to clean my house, do my laundry, ask my dad to come over and help me change my lightbulb in exchange for cookies and maybe go out with keb to a movie in the evening.
i know it’s not very exciting, but hey, it’s my life.

i was having a pretty good day yesterday, even with all the sneezing and snotty snorting. i got myself into a righteous groove with some work and made a huge dent in some really yucky stuff i’ve been avoiding. on the way home i stopped at futureshop to return a bag i bought, save-on where i found some china lily soy sauce (my absolute favourite which seems to have totally disappeared from every store shelf but that one), and the library where i registered and picked up a book i’m really excited to start reading.
then i opened the mailbox.
inside were three fake bills from “Domain Registry of Canada” telling me that three of my domains are set to expire and that i should send them $40 for each of them. luckily i’m not an idiot, so i didn’t get suckered, but they looked awfully official. fuckers. the really amusing thing, to me at least, was that the three notices were for every domain BUT fubsy.net. losers.
then, the pièce de résistance, a letter from capital one mastercard telling me that “due to a charge posted to your account after it closed” they’ve reopened my account. they didn’t give me any details. instead, they said “in a few days, customer service will be sending the details”. uh, yeah, that’s not helpful. there was no way i’m about to wait for a letter when you’re telling me that there’s a charge to an account i closed in FEBRUARY. so, i phone the 1-800 number where a creaky computer voice tells me that i owe them $1000. uh, what?
to make a long story as short as possible, i finally navigate through the menus (which REALLY are constructed to deter you from talking to a real person: it took THREE levels of menu before pressing 0 to talk to a human worked. that pissed me off) to talk to a very nice girl who put me on hold for fifteen minutes while she looked into the situation. anyway, while i’m on hold i start thinking back and it comes to me that, yeah, i think they might be right. fuckers.
i made a payment to them, which i cancelled two hours later, because i was planning to go to the bank to refinance. when the bank paid off the card, and capital one sent me a statement, that statement showed both the payment i cancelled (wtf?) and the payment from the bank. of course, that meant it showed a credit of $1000. i TOTALLY forgot that i’d cancelled the payment, or made any payment at all, so i called capital one and told them to mail me a cheque for the overpayment so they could close the account, which they did and everyone was happy.
until now. FOUR MONTHS LATER. why the HELL did they show that payment on the statment? why didn’t they catch this in the MONTH it took for them to send me the “overpayment”? now i’m on the fucking hook for a grand i don’t have, two weeks after i spend all my money on an ibook. ugh. i’m really not happy about the situation. obviously.
i spent a lot of time last night wrangling some numbers trying to figure out how to pay it off. which i can’t. there’s just no way. after paying for lucy and cleaning out all my other cashable accounts i’ll still be $500 short with absolutely no cash reserves in the bank. i have to call them back tonight, tell them i figured it out, get them to reopen the account and then start paying it off monthly.
it just makes me so MAD. i was really, really, really proud of myself for not owing any credit card companies a penny. now, thanks to their stupid practices and MY inattention, i’m in the hole.
i wonder if i have anything i can sell. anyone want to order some photocards? or rent a housegirl? i make a mean omelette!

i’m sick and miserable. my best and oldest friend gave me her cold. i think it’s revenge for not seeing her for so long. that bitch. ;)
my kitchen lightbulb blew this morning. any bets how long i go without light in the galley because I’M TOO FUCKING SHORT to reach to change it? (hint: last time it was almost a month)
on a whim, i stopped in a used pc shop i’ve never been in and never thought about entering and found the best little bag for lucy. it’s not pretty, but it’s small and practical and only cost $30. that’ll do for now.
it’s a three-day work week for me and then a five-day birthday weekend. i hope you sent packages last week. friday is a holiday here in the great white north, so there will be no mail delivery.
all right, that’s enough. i’m exhausted already and it’s not even 8:30. ugh. i think it’s going to be a long three days.

if i don’t post this now, at 5:55am, i probably won’t get a chance to post at all. sean was away and yesterday was my first day actually having to do his job without him there to actually do it. did that make sense? probably not, it is before six. anyway, i was so busy running around trying to get even the most basic parts of his job done, i barely had any time to sit, let alone compose.
anyhoo, it’s the same again today, but i thought i’d take a second while still damp and towel-clad from my shower to make a quick “no, i’m not dead” post.
oh, and this is my first official post from lucy. whee!

so, yeah. i’m totally obsessed with lucy. i stroke her, i sit with her on my lap, i take her to bed with me. i left her alone at home today. i feel like a part of me is missing. it’s just so *hard*.
okay. i’ll stop. for now.
last night i met col at tinseltown for some food court food and the seven o’clock showing of the sisterhood of the traveling pants. i don’t think there was a single male person in the theatre. all women. total estrogen-fest. holy moly. i still cried. i think we all cried. all the father-daughter stuff really got to me. oy. anyway, it’s a good coming of age film. if you’re a girl, you should probably see it.
now i just want to know where to find those pants.
i know you haven’t forgotten, but it can’t hurt to remind you that my birthday is a mere 11 days away. you might want to send parcels having to cross the border earlier rather than later. ;)
i’m stupid tired today. i’d much rather go back to bed than be here today. at least i get to leave early, even if it is for a dentist appointment.
have a good day.