Category Archives: Photos

so, the haircut is garnering a lot of attention, mostly positive. i wish i could self-portrait it in a more flattering manner to show it off to you poor sods who won’t have the pleasure of beholding it in all its flippy, soft, healthy glory. but enough about my hair.
went to the pub yesterday to watch the (really disappointing) superbowl commercials. totally missed the boob-flashing due to too much chatting and beer-drinking. thank goodness for the internet. my two cents: $.01) football is boring unless it’s a close game in the last half of the fourth. $.02) if it was an accident, why were there only snaps holding on her costume’s boob-cup? otherwise, i know i shouldn’t be given her family history, but i’m slightly disturbed that little penny woods from good times has nipple piercings.
otherwise, i’ve gone and done it again. i didn’t even open my notebook and now i have two nights to get my assignment done for class. it’s all my fault. i could have started it friday night and worked on it a bit while waiting for laundry on saturday. but i was out all saturday afternoon/evening and most of the day yesterday. i’m not making excuses! well, not many. just documenting the events which have led up to this dread of monday night.
i also have to get started on the valentines! i promise they will all be sent out by saturday at the latest, which should give them enough time to travel all to where they need to travel before the big v-day. i’m actually really excited about getting them done. i love addressing envelopes! speaking of, i better go get some…

taking a pilates class at lunch. finished three out of four homework parts. love my shoes, not so fond of my socks. got viruses at work. think it’s wednesday. need more sleep. pretty good hair day. planning minnesota. waiting for more documents. want to file taxes now. need more coffee.

joe lieberman is spamming my referral logs.
i find that amusing after spending far too much time watching cnbc’s new hampshire primary ramp-up yesterday. i don’t understand a lot about the electoral process in the states, it all seems way too funky to me, but it does make for some interesting alternatives to soap opera watching.
my uninformed canadian guide to the u.s. democratic candidates:
howard dean – you know, i liked that he got all emotional and showed some passion in iowa. c’mon, aren’t you tired of all these boring, grey, one-dimensional politicians who are too afraid of alienating any potential votes to do anything even remotely real? good for you, howie. nice forearms, by the way.
wesley clark – okay, at first glance i really didn’t like him. he looked too pasty and wimpy to be a serious contender. after listening to him on meet the press yesterday, i’m glad to report i was wrong. although, he is one of those boring, grey, slick-talking politicians, he’s got some good plans. it’s too bad about that general thing, though.
john kerry – in all fairness, i haven’t heard much from the man himself, but, uh… jfk? are you sure you want to go by that? and what’s with everyone saying he looks french? i’ve always pictured the french as much more attractive than the honourable senator from massachusetts. sorry, john.
john edwards – haven’t heard a damn thing. are you sure he’s real?
joe lieberman – stop spamming my referral logs! grr.

so far, while cleaning out the closet & dresser i’ve found:
– 1993 reveal joystick (it even has suction cups on the bottom to keep it in place during really active game play)
– 2x reveal cd-rom
– the instructions for King’s Quest VI
– t-shirts from almost every place on this list
– trojan condoms, size large, with an expiry date of march 2004 (i better use ’em up. hah!)
– sony walkman, classic yellow
– plastic combat boots bought on ebay
– two bandanas circa 1987

on the mend, but the begging of the universe for two more hours of sleep is getting to be a habit in the morning. you’d think there would be some sort of allowance for tardiness the morning after school when you’re recovering from a flu-like illness. i think i’ll treat myself and only work a half day tomorrow.
i’m boring. move along, douglas.

my mother, of all people, sent me an email last night to tell me about a story she saw on the cbc yesterday about a type of photography based upon meditation and the relinquishing of one’s preconceptions about the world called miksang photography.
in the story, the photographer who is educating people in the art of miksang, which is the tibetan word for “good eye”, said that, as a classically trained, technical photographer, if he had seen his miksang photographs he would have thought they were interesting, but that they broke all the traditional rules of composition. he confessed that he probably wouldn’t have understood them on many levels.
the story struck a chord with me in two distinct aspects. the first made me realize that i do a lot of photographing and then thinking later. most of the photos i love best are the ones i just made, without judgement of whether they were technically perfect. i don’t often follow any the rule of thirds and i’ve been known to deliberately chop the heads of people. the second, was to realize that many times my photos are not understood by people. specifically when i do something unusual, like chop the heads off the bride and groom.
watching the clip, seeing his photographs, learning more about the exercises he teaches his students to let go and just see the world, compounded by my recent desire for a new camera and seeing the movie the photographer have made me realize, and remember, that one of the things i love to do, more than anything else, is make photographs. i’ve been taking pictures all my life. i may not remember everything i used to know about f-stops, apertures and depth of field, nor may i ever be famous or even considered adequate by anyone other than a small few, but i love taking pictures. it may actually be that one thing that i love to do, that i could learn to do very well.
just imagine!

let the procrastination begin! i really meant to start the homework last night, but i came home to all the dishes i didn’t do tuesday or wednesday and, well, you know how freaky i get if i let my apartment gets too out of control. so, i did the dishes, ate some soup (and i didn’t enjoy it one little bit), made burrito filling for lunch today, did those dishes, knitted while watching angel (can you believe my scarf is taller than i am now and i’m *still* not finished?), re-made a cd for hugo to replace the one i messed up, tried to make a cd for marie only to discover that nero can totally suck ass sometimes, started to feel really sleepy so i went to bed only to be kept awake for another forty-five minutes or so by the evil upstairs neighbour bitch’s goddamn awful music. so, i laid there, menstrual cramps keeping me in a fetal position, muttering under my breath: “fucking whore. fucking whore. fucking whore.” i can’t wait until i move. you really have no idea.
today is all about the cramps and the wanting to be somewhere else.
while driving to work, i was overwhelmed with morgan memories and a sinking feeling in my chest that i’d never find anyone who was so enamoured with me ever agan. then i realized that i don’t give myself much of a chance to meet anyone who might be that enamoured of me. they’re not going to just show up at my door and they’re not going to happily go along with my blowing off dates because of my apathy and fear.
it sounds like i’m obsessing, but i’m not. i’ve just been trying to work my way through the last couple of male-female encounters i’ve had in hopes of seeing where things didn’t work out how they might have. they did stuff which bugged me and i did stuff which bugged them. maybe if i can figure out what went wrong, i can hope to avoid repeating my mistakes in future, if i ever go outside and find someone to be enamoured of me ever again, that is.

there’s something wrong with my left breast. it feels like my nipple is about to pop off and the creature from alien is going to burst forth into the world. yes, boys and girls, hormones are more fun than a sackful of angry weasels!
my prediction: this semester is going to kick my ass. the instructor and teaching assistant both seem very knowledgable, personable and helpful, which is good. the amount of work there is to be done is overwhelming. again, 65% of the final grade is based on exams. we even had a pre-test for the instructor to get a “feeling” for each student’s knowledge/understanding. i think i did okay. considering i haven’t even thought about C in seven weeks, i don’t believe i broke my algorithm too badly.
the best part, and the bit which just might save my sanity this term, is that shane (not cute guy from class shane who came over and i kissed & stuff with — shane from php & xml who is really good at logical problem solving) is in this class with me! i was sitting there, looking at all the people i recognized from last term, futzing about on the computer and i heard this soft “hi heather” from my left. i looked up, saw shane and i just beamed.
that was one of the worst things about last term, not having anyone to talk to. shane made a point about the instructor (who he’d had last year) overwhelming the class with his big voice and lively manner. it made a lot of sense. already, i’ve talked to more people in this class than i did in last semester’s entirety. things are looking up! now if we could only do something about those exams.
by the way, in case you’re new to the program or haven’t quite gotten around to it, i’ll remind you all that my site (and pretty much everything else) looks so much better if you have your fonts set to cleartype. of course, this only applies if you’re using windows xp. if you’re on a mac, things already look great and if you’re using *nix, well, you’ll have to ask jeremy how to make that shit pretty.
because i’m such a helpful soul, i’ll even give you the directions again:

things might look a little fuzzy for the first couple of hours, but once you get used to it, you’ll wonder why you didn’t switch sooner! trust me.

sometimes your hormones take over and make you do things you’d not normally do. like bake chocolate chip cookies in the middle of january. like dream that you have a new kitten and your hastily tossed from a moving vehicle cigarette starts a forest fire you’re too busy to put out. like decide that a certain blog boy is the best person for me to have an unrequited crush on for 2004. like seriously consider a two-thousand dollar investment in a new camera.
that being said, the cookies turned out wonderfully, i didn’t wake with a numb arm this morning, the blog boy is just a happy fantasy and i’m much better off spending that two grand on a new bed in the new apartment i’m bound and determined to move into this year. so much so that i’ve already started the thining of the possessions in preparation of packing. now if only i could fight the “moving panic” i feel every time i see an ad for a suitably-priced apartment in the paper.
tonight ends my seven-week educational sabbatical. yup, back to classes on the dreaded wednesday nights. tonight also marks the downslope of my certification requirements. this course is number six of ten and means i’m officially more done than undone. i feel smarter already!

my best friend found my weblog.
when i found out i scrambled through the last month or so of archives to see if i’d written anything incriminating. i might even have sworn. actually, i’m quite sure i swore. i told another best, albeit online, friend about this trauma. he asked me what the problem was. he also said that to have real relationships with people you have to be willing to be open about everything. i hate it when he’s right.
now my best friend reads my weblog.
she even comments (hi MLP!) here. she told me that she loves being able to read about my daily life and likes the pictures i post, especially the ones of her cats, i assume.
the other day, she asked me if i was upset about her knowing about my “other life” as she put it. i never quite got to answer her properly. i wanted to explain to her that yes, i’d had a little bit of a panic when it first happened, but that now i’m used to it and, yes, even like it.
i’m proud of a small majority of what i publish here. i’ve spent a lot of time over the years making this place and it’s been sometimes frustrating not being able to talk about a really clever post or showing her an awesome photo or talk about all the people who come and comment. now, i don’t have to withhold anything from her. it’s been kind of liberating.
of course, now she’ll know what a dirty, angry, mean, cranky, poly-syllabic, snobby, whiny, pedantic, boring, horrible person i really am… but i have faith. there’s a bunch of you out there that know all that already and, for some ungodly reason, still love me just the same.
just don’t tell my mother the URL, okay?

before anything else, the entire world needs to know that my friend heather turns THIRTY today. yippee! i can’t wait until all my friends are in their thirties with me. happiest birthday, eop. i love you!
in other-people-related news, the second half of the gift-sending from the too-generous-by-far mkh was waiting for me at the post office yesterday. inside the lovely amazon box was monty python and the holy grail AND and now for something completely different. bad, bad, naughty zoot! that man is single-handedly responsible for fleshing out both my book and video collections quite nicely over the years. thank you, kevin. you’re much too good to me.
now, about me. um. i’m having dinner with my daddy tonight. i’m making chili tomorrow. i’ve found a home for my old vacuum. i’m almost finished my current book. i’ve been really enjoying sleeping well the past few nights. i dreamt about kittens. at this moment, i’m happy i’m single. i’m out of photos and need to make some more. i’m not especially looking forward to the start of school on wednesday. i’m boring.

there’s very little to say, so you should just pet the kitty. he likes that.

my morning commute:
walk to bus stop, nearly falling on my ass several times.
miss bus by two minutes.
stand in rain waiting for next bus to arrive in thirty minutes.
realize waiting for next bus will make me forty-five minutes late.
look at almost-clear main roads.
walk back home, nearly falling on my ass several times and saying hello to dapper man with the nice umbrella.
get in car.
drive to work.
nearly die.
walk across slurpy, slushy parking lot, soaking sneakers and socks.
just because you all care, i’ll advise you that i had a much better sleep last night. i’m attributing it to all the fresh air (read: gasping for) i got yesterday. methinks i might get the same benefit from all my morning trudging. at least i hope so.
of course, in a sick and twisted turn of events, i find my legs all antsy to be moving. sitting here at my desk is just not cutting it. they want to walk. this isn’t a real problem other than the fact my brain absolutely hates walking without purpose. if i have a definitive destination, i can walk much longer than if i’m just walking for the sake of exercise. to this end, i need to find destinations to walk to. we’ll see how that goes. heh.

it’s snowing in the pacific northwest today and, true to form, it’s all we want to talk about. i was going to go in search of proper snowboots last night, but i realized that was a stupid thing to do unless i wanted to pay twice the price for half the selection. i can wear my sneakers and deal with wet feet for the rest of this season. then, come spring, i shall invest in a skookum pair of sorels or somesuch über-boot. something that will last me many unpredictable lower mainland winters.
the far-too-generous mkh of hidden city fame made a box du amazon appear on my doorstep yesterday in which was snuggled a copy of the elegant universe: superstrings, hidden dimensions and the search for the ultimate theory, which is probably the most beautifully jacketed book i have seen in years. it’s so beautiful, i’m almost afraid to start reading it for fear i may marr it. almost afraid. there’s too much in there i’m aching to learn to not. you know, for telling people not to get me gifts this holiday season, i sure have gotten a lot of presents. i wonder if this’ll work again next year…
okay, you know what? i’m going to start charging people who come over to my desk to look out the window a the snow. a dollar a view or five bucks for an all-day pass. it’s totally distracting! not that i’m doing all that much other than staring out the window myself, but they’re forcing me to make small talk my their presence. i hate making small talk. grr.

maybe i should have resolved to sleep better, too. so far, january has been the month of crappy sleep. i realize it’s only the fifth day of the month and it’s probably too early to condemn the entire month to this sentence, but four nights with a complete lack of proper slumber is four nights too many if you ask me. especially if you ask me. i love sleeping. sleeping is a haven, a refuge, from all the toils of reality. i love my pillows and my über-blankie. curling up with them is like being enveloped by a dear old friend/lover/protector. i feel warm and safe and content. but not lately.
lately, getting into bed has been frustrating and uncomfortable and just plain disappointing. wow, i just realized that’s not unlike sex with… but i’m digressing. i lay myself down and arrange the blanket just so and then i wait. i toss. i turn. eventually, i drift off into something that is technically sleep, but can you really call waking up every hour, excessive movement to get comfortable and vibrant dreams sleep? i think not.
sleep is supposed to be this dark, warm, soft, comforting place you slowly sink into as your mind quietly throttles down in the darkness of your room. sleep is not supposed to be exercise for either your body or your brain. sleep is not supposed to leave you pleading with the gods for the alarm to be wrong and there be two more hours until you have to get up. sleep is not supposed to leave you more tired when the sun rises in the morning than you were the night before.
maybe i just need a new bed.

ay carumba! not a very auspicious start to the blogging year, is it? let’s just chalk it up to being far too busy taking care of things in the physical world in preparation of a brand new year full of band new experiences. my new year started off the way i mean it to continue, including all the cleaning, tidying and purging i’ve been doing for the last two days.
i just wish it would stop being so fucking cold and snowy.
resolutions? year in review? seems they’re both in heavy rotation around the interweb this week. does anyone really care what i thought about 2003 or what i mean to change in 2004? too bad, i’m telling you regardless.
twenty-oh-three was a crazy year for this girl. found a boy, lost a boy, found a boy, lost a boy, found a boy, lost a boy, possibly found a boy. i suppose that means i can’t say i’m yucky and nobody will ever want me anymore. i spent a lot of time doing (or worrying about doing) homework, and officially registered for accreditation once i’m finished with all the homework in, um, eighteen months time. i took a plane ride for the first time in three or so years. saw family members i haven’t seen in as many as twenty-five years. broke a heart. had my heart broken. started a savings account. started buying dvds. started carrying a purse. finally succumbed to windows xp. broke my vow to never own a cell phone. discovered i look good in brown.
all in all, it was a pretty good year for me. i know it’s been really shitty for a lot of folks around, but, honestly, i think it’s been one of the better ones. historically, i tend to do better in odd-numbered years. here’s to hoping i break that trend for this twelve-month coming up.
for twenty-oh-four, i’m resolving to eat to live, not live to eat, walk more, take more photographs and be less shy about people seeing me take photographs, spend more time with people i like to spend time with, go outside more, stop goofing off at work, procrastinate less, stop worrying about what i did and care more about what i’m doing, talk to my parents every two weeks, get a haircut, get a one bedroom apartment, watch less tv, learn to increase/decrease stitches, floss every day and remember to say “thank you” more often.
i’ve also made a list of fifty-two movies i want to see this year, the goal being to see one of them every week and hopefully post a short review of each of them here. i’m not sure how that’ll work, but here’s to positive thinking!

i don’t know where to begin. i think yesterday was probably one of the best days of 2003, even taking into consideration the getting up early and going to work portion of it.
really, how wrong can you go with a potluck at which you and thirty of your co-workers gather and stuff your faces for an hour (and you get paid many compliments on the quailty of your chili *preen*)? then, you come home to two xmas cards and a cheque for $285 in your mailbox after getting the primo parking spot in front of your building. next thing you know, you’re on your way to the neighbourhood pub with your two favourite people where you drink more beer than you normally do, eat good food, watch football (ick) and hockey (yay), gamble, enter draws, meet new people (and fall in love with a married man with a scottish accent), flirt with strange men with weird facial hair, take pictures of your favourite meghan in the whole world and win vancouver canucks hockey tickets!
it can’t possibly get better than that, can it? wait, there’s more!
then you come home and you find a fun and rambly phone message from your heather-friend (that’s a friend named heather not a friend of heather although, she is a a friend of heather named heather… oh, dear, my head)! when you wake up the next morning, you’re not suffering ill-beer-effects and you find a new message on your cell phone from another new gary with a voice that makes your ear hum, your mouth to gape and a quiet “oh, wow” to usher unbidden from your lips.
i can’t tell you how much i needed that.

three days i’ve had to cook and wash dishes by candlelight. oh, the joys of being a five-foot woman living in an apartment with nine-foot ceilings. even while tippy-toe on a chair, my fingertips are six inches from the fixture. there used to be a step-ladder in the basement for such occassions, but it seems the germans took it with them when they sold the place.
the last time a lightbulb burnt out, jason was still around, so i made him change it for me. i could call mark, or shane, and ask them to come fix it, as they’re the only tall boys i know, but it’s kind of a nice, gentle martyrdom to suffer a little bit every time i flip the switch and nothing happens.
have i mentioned the knitting? or that i’m *this* close to saying “fuck it” and finding a new place to live even though i can’t afford it, but who can ever afford it, and i’d just spend the money on other stuff anyway. eh.
my step-uncle and i are taking my daddy out for a birthday dinner tomorrow night. nothing fancy, just a meal, cards and conversation. then i’ll have to start getting ready for next week. i still have a batch of cookies to bake and a pot to chili to make and i’d really like to get eileen’s (aka dad’s old) computer done this weekend so i can get it the fuck out of my house. i’m sick of looking at it.
i’m so tired i want to cry.
update: meghan is my hero (even if she calls me a turd)! i now have light in my kitchen again.

guess who picked up her new glasses yesterday! they’re so über-swanky it’s almost hard to imagine they’re on my face. really, i mean, who said it was okay for me to look so damn hip AND smart all at the same time time? i feel like i need to start buying prada or something.
thankfully, i got to bed by nine-thirtyish and slept most of the night through. weird dreams with mail, spiders, underwear and a big party kept me flipping from side to side after four a.m., though. i’d feel a lot better if it weren’t for the headache i woke with (which is being aggravated by having to adjust to my new prescription). yay ibuprofin!
today is our department’s xmas lunch. i wish we could have gone to see return of the king or off to mess about at pladium or something. i think we’re the most boring, uninspired, non-geeky IT department in the history of the world. i mean, really, there’s not a single nerf ball rocket in the whole joint.

there’s nothing better than to spend an evening with two of your most favourite people on the planet, eating, talking, playing and laughing so hard your chest hurts and you’re gasping for air. thank god for m&m.
the rest of my weekend was spent in an apathetic stupor. i barely managed to get anything accomplished, or at least it felt that way at the time. maybe i should make a list of the things i got done so i don’t feel like such a useless tit.
– got up early saturday morning and went to ikea to fetch karen’s xmas present and drool over the desk i’m lusting after.
– did four loads of laundry.
– made a huge pot of turkey chili and a batch of rice so i shouldn’t have to cook much at all this week. yay.
– washed about a zillion plastic containers and utensils.
– made my art swap crafty items (i daren’t talk about in detail of in case they come peeking).
– started knitting a scarf with this lovely, soft grey wool i couldn’t say no to when i saw it at the craft store (don’t ever let me go to the craft store).
– burned a bunch of cds/installed a bunch of software/cleaned out my ftp directory.
– read a bunch.
okay, that’s a little better. not much, but at least i know i did something. tonight, i hope to have dinner with karen and tomorrow i need to either clean my bathroom or bake some cookies for our departmental xmas lunch wednesday. i also need to phone my papa and find out what night is good for my step-uncle and i to take him out for a birthday dinner.
this is going to be a very long day. i was utterly unsleepy last night and had to force myself to turn everything off and lie down at midnight else i would have been up all night long. of course, i’m now completely cranky and overtired because of it. be glad you don’t work with me today. it’s gonna be hessmonster madness hereabouts.