Category Archives: Words

66 weeks & 6 days after the last cut.
that is all.

last night, i finally managed to have a productive night at home. it’s taken at least a week, probably more, but i’m mostly caught up on housework & laundry AND i actually cooked a vat of chicken chili & rice for lunches. i can’t remember the last time i actually cooked food for lunches. thank goodness it’s not a ramen week. i think the only things which are left & need doing is cleaning & assembling my new table and washing the bedding. hopefully, i’ll get all that done sooner rather than later so i can start the week off right.
the weekend went by very fast, but also seemed to last a good while, which is a nice combination. after work friday, i went bag shopping with christopher (which was really hard to do knowing i’d bought a bag for him while in amerika) then had dinner at his place before he went to the opening of a show at the exposure gallery and i went home to a much-needed early bedtime.
saturday was the longest-feeling day. i got up around 9:30ish, watched some stuff i’d downloaded, had a bubble bath and then headed out for all you can eat sushi with colene, jen, mel, nelson, ritchie, jamie & josh. i ate far, far too much of the yummy sushi, so afterwards i went home and slept for almost two hours. chris called & woke me up in time for me to get ready and head out to fetch him to traverse the wilds of south surrey/white rock to go see my officemate’s band play at the crescent beach legion.
you know what’s great about legions? cheap beer. pints of big rock honey brown lager for $4.10! i was seriously upset i was the driver just because it meant i couldn’t have more than one. thankfully chris was there to drink both his and my quotas. well… i’m not so sure his stomach and head were so thankful the next morning. then again, his biggest nemesis that evening was probably the scary hamburger he made me buy him after his fifth pint.
sunday, started off wonderful and lazy. a sleep in, toast & tea and a really, really, really bad movie. i dropped chris off at home, then headed out to the airport to pick up my dad from his european river cruise adventure. he had a great time and is now talking about a mediterranean cruise for next year! after taking him home, i reluctantly handed over his car keys and went to pick up the hessmobile from the parking lot. to my honest surprise, it started and ran really well for having been parked for fourteen days. picked up groceries on the way home, then spent the evening doing all the aforementioned chores & cooking.
one year ago today, christopher & i laid eyes on each other for the first time. we were both at a vandigicam brainstorming session at the soma cafe. we didn’t talk, or even really acknowledge the other’s presences, though. i say he was a snob because he didn’t even say hello when we were standing right next to each other outside. he’ll say he was as sick as a dog, really grumpy and he barely talked to anyone that day. i only mention it because i think it’s interesting that it took another three months before we were in the same place together, given our mutual acquaintances.

didn’t get home from amerika until after midnight. the venture obtained a 35% success rate. this does not include the meal at denny’s. if it did, it would probably be closer to -10%.
woke with a very sore back. don’t know what the hell kind of contortions i got into in the middle of the night. it’s possible i was trying to twist away from the disturbing emotional dreams starring morgan, of all people.
feeling indiscriminately angry today. i want to fight or have a tantrum or something just to pop the vent and release some of the pressure. i’m looking at the weekend and it’s making me cranky that, again, i don’t have any extended time for myself which i won’t have to spend cleaning or shopping or doing things which HAVE to get done.
or maybe it’s just a combination of the back pain, lack of sleep and friday the thirteenth all coming together in a tempest of unfortunateness to rain grump upon my split end-covered head.
then again, i probably just need a nap and a hug and some green vegetables.

other than the requisite being at work, i’ve a lunch date with jamie and then jen & i are going to amerika for a strategic bellis fair mall strike (i don’t NEED a lot there, but i figured i better make proper use of daddy’s car while i still can).
seriously though, i’m too busy the next few days. i might take tomorrow off from people. i haven’t decided yet. my place is a sty (even moreso now that there are movie-night remnants all over my kitchen) and i’d really like to get my new table cleaned up and assembled before much longer. saturday is booked solid and sunday is annoyingly interrupted by the airport run i need to make to fetch my father in the middle of the day.
i don’t feel like i had a long weekend off because of the weirdness of the schedule i kept. i’m pretty sure i’m going to keep my november long weekend all to myself. no island trip. no big plans. just four days with no agenda. hah… like that’ll happen. what i really want is a six-month sabbatical. i wonder how i can arrange to get paid for that.
read ‘love monkey’ over the weekend. they turned this book into a short-lived tv series starring that awesome guy from ‘ed’, thomas cavanagh. i really liked the show, so when i saw the book on the cheap table at chapters, i picked it up. it was a fast, entertaining read, much like ‘bridget jones’ diary’ written from a new york man’s perspective. although the book and the tv show had very little in common past the names of four characters, i still enjoyed them both. it was just nice to find a book i could read with so little effort. lately, i seem to be finding myself slogging though, and getting stuck in the middle of, way too many books.
okay, i better get a move on. there’s piles which need to be dealt with before jamie shows up. happy thursday, peeps.

punkin pie is good. especially for breakfast.
it’s a $33 taxi fare from the ferry to my house.
i’m wearing my new bra today. guess its colour.
finally, the yellow formica & chrome dining table is mine. all mine!
anyone know how to replace a brownie hawkeye handle?
is chick-lit with a male main character dick-lit?
my house is a mess.
i never cook anymore.
laundry is my nemesis.
i need a maid.
time for another massage; my neck is killing me today.

i had cookies for breakfast. yum.
i bought a polaroid 450 camera with black & white film still in it for $2. i don’t know if it’ll work, but for a toonie, i’m willing to try to find out.
i have the next four days off work. yay!
i thought juggling major holidays with divorced parents was bad… now i’ve got to do it with a boyfriend, too. stress!
seriously, that orange couch is calling to me.
must be the full moon tomorrow, but i feel really cute and awesome today.
i love my bed. all my life i’ve wanted a bed like the one i have now. i appreciate it every night i get into it and regret its awesomeness every morning when i have to get out of it, but not so much i can’t wait to get back into it that night.
it’s scary, but i think i might be going off diet pepsi. i’ve been working on the same 710ml bottle at home for three days. in the past, i could finish one in hours. i find myself wanting tea, instead.
you can’t understand the amount of loathing i have for the mere idea of getting on a ferry this weekend.
know why i love thanksgiving? brussel sprouts.

you know i’m busy if it’s only point form…
– Memphis Blues opened up two blocks from my house.
– note to self: don’t take christopher to Memphis Blues ever again.
– the “memphis feast” will feed four for $33. seriously.
– i bought more film.
– christopher & jen think i’m mostly insane.
– new batteries make my Olympus XA happy.
– i might just actually get that haircut i’ve been avoiding some time this week.
– turkeyday is less than a week away. crazy!
– where did september go?
– i love my new shoes.
– i’m going to mr. ho’s for lunch and you’re not. nyah.
– driving daddy’s car is seriously spoiling me.
– anyone want to buy me a new car?
– seriously, i have the best boyfriend ever.
– except when he gets stubborn and refuses a request.
– but, i still think he’s awesome.
– i have a strange pain in my abdomen.
– it might be from all that meat last night.
– the piglet is trying to get out!
– i counted; there are 22 sets of negatives i need to scan.
– at one set per day, i’ll be lucky to be finished by xmas.
– i love fun and happy cashiers.
– anyone want a VHS copy of ‘Heathers‘, ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas‘, ‘Before Sunrise‘ or ‘The Princess Bride‘?
– i’ve replaced them with DVDs.
– okay, this is long enough.
– bye!

i’m really glad i stopped to take the photo i posted yesterday. when i got home from work last night, both the chair (which had been there for weeks) and the green elf shoes were gone from the back of my apartment building. i would have been sad if i’d missed the opportunity to capture them.
the roasted tomato soup was FABULOUS! i may never ever have Campbell’s brand again. that’s huge for me to say, too. Campbell’s tomato soup (with lots of pepper) is my ultimate comfort food.
i’m getting sick. i was up most of the night with a sore throat and my continuing ear-ache. i probably got the germs from julie, but it would be rude of me to blame her. don’t shoot the messenger, yadda yadda.
i think i might go to Metrotown at lunch to try on the shoes i saw the other night. i need a new pair of black shoes to go with my superawesome new pants (shit! i should have brought them with me to drop off for hemming. damn.). while i’m there, i should probably go to Sears and get a new bra. the underwire in mine snapped last night. stupid underwire.
myself and a few friends are going to see darren’s play ‘bolloxed’ at the Kay Meek Centre in West Vancouver tomorrow night. i’m very glad there is this encore performance outside of the fringe festival or i might have missed it entirely. i’m very excited. you should come, it’ll be awesome.
my dad is going to europe tomorrow. i’m so envious i could spit. of course, i realize that if i were to be more frugal with my money and judicious with my alloted vacation time, i, too, could go to europe. i guess i should, at least, be glad that there’s little chance that europe will be going anywhere in the next 30 years, so i will still have the opportunity to experience it. i hope.

this is the last day of my victoria mini-vacation. so far, i’ve eaten enough food for a family of five, spent all my paper money at the casino, discovered three thrift shops in a two-block radius i must go scour for cameras, had a long and superfabulous lunch with jim and julie (and got a parking ticket because time got away from us), won over the housecats and watched more television than i have in two months.
today, we’re going shopping for clothes for mom, picking up noodle box for lunch, then going to the ferry via those three thrift shops in brentwood bay. if nothing goes amiss, i should be home no later than nine.
it’s just too bad i have to go back to work tomorrow. at least it means i get to see christopher. i’ve missed him.

first off, and before i forget, i had the weirdest, most vivid dreams last night. the basic storyline was that heather ‘dooce’ armstrong was going out of town and she asked me to stay with her husband, jon, so that i could help out with her daughter, leta. cut to me in the armstrong home. leta is bigger than i thought, and so cute you really do want to lick her like a lollipop. jon isn’t around much, but every time i want to use the internet — which was dial-up? c’mon! — he needed to phone someone, so i spent a lot of time apologizing and saying things like “it’s almost finished uploading!” and “just one more photo!”.
then, out of the blue, rick shows up for a visit with me. he’s sitting there in an adirondack chair, decked out in his arkansas razorback trucker hat and tank top, being his normal dirty, perverted self. i’m standing there talking to him and he’s wiggling his lower parts around like a puppy with too much energy. “see? you make me crazy!” he says. then, in that strange way dreams have, i knew what he was thinking: taking me into the back room and finally getting into my pants after 11 years, which got me thinking about how we couldn’t do that because there’d be too much noise and jon & leta would hear us and i just couldn’t do that to heather. that’s about the time jon walked into the room and i had to explain to him who rick was and why he’d showed up.
then the dinner guests arrived. i turned around to get something or pick up leta and i was back in my own bed, rolling over to turn off the alarm.
dreams are SO WEIRD!
so, last night i went to a pair of photography exhibits in north shore galleries with some vandigicammers. first, it was to the edward burtynsky show at presentation house. next, we went to a horrible dinner at flavour of india (seriously, it’s all palki for me from now on). finally, we stopped by gallery yoyo to see the group show nicole dextras was in with three other women artists.
i hadn’t high hopes for the evening when we set out due to a massive, awful, excrutiating headache which started creeping up the back of my head mid-afternoon. by the time i’d picked up christopher and we’d gotten to my place, i was *this* close to taking to my bed to sleep it off. instead, i took a handful of ibuprofin, sucked it up and off we went. it took a while, but the drugs finally worked, so by the time we got to dinner i was feeling a lot better. so much so, even the awful service and mediocre food at dinner didn’t bother me.
the shows were good, if a little bland. i’d heard the Edward Burtynsky exhibit called “the ‘Where’s Waldo?’ show”, which is such a perfect description. the large photos had massive amounts of tiny details contained within them. it was fascinating to get very close and look for small treasures within the larger, mostly overwhelming, scenes.
after the second show, my headache started to return, so chris and i made an early exit and went back to mine to hang out and smell the roses he gave me.
it feels like it’s going to be a very busy next few days for me. i have tonight and tomorrow morning to prepare for my trip to victoria i undertake very early sunday morning. i still have to try to get ahold of jason and julie to see if they want to/are able to do something while i’m in their town. i hardly ever get over there, so i really hope they can fit me into their schedules somewhere. so, there’s laundry, shopping, packing and present-wrapping to be done in the next day and a half. also, there might be some social stuff thrown in, too.
so busy! too bad i can’t sleep on the ferry.

i know it’s fall in vancouver when the harbour is filled with fog when i drive over the bridge on my way to work, just as it was this morning. ah… autumn. i’m so glad you’re here.

i think it’s a bad sign when the highlight of your day thusfar is getting an extra piece of cheese on your sub.

i don’t care how much of a dork it makes me, i LOVELOVELOVE the satisfaction of having a clean & tidy apartment.
most everyone i know has been to europe. except me.
i have too many shoes. i will rectify that sometime this week.
me. victoria. this sunday to tuesday. let’s do stuff.
my fridge is chock full of food i will probably end up throwing away.
for years and years and years, i’ve been an ivory girl. now, i’m all about the dove soap. it’s 1/4 moisturizing cream!
i’m seriously considering cooking thanksgiving dinner. christopher might be right about my being a crazy lady.

i’m getting really fucking tired of waking up with a headache.
that is all.

i’m a little cranky today. i think it was because i finally had a decent night’s sleep and the whole process of getting up and out of my super comfy and warm bed at 6am was traumatizing to my psyche.
christopher went with me to my neurologist appointment yesterday, bless his heart. i feel bad for his spending so much time waiting for me in doctors’ waiting rooms this summer. anyway, the brain doctor said, after listening to me ramble and then hitting me with a rubber mallet, that i’m perfectly normal and it was very likely a virus which caused all my symptoms back in june. i told him that i very nearly cancelled the appointment with him because i had been symptom-free for so long and i didn’t want to waste his time, but he was quite adamant that it was a very good thing i didn’t. just because i’m normal now doesn’t mean i was normal then nor i will be normal in the future. at least there’s currently a baseline and history if something like this should happen again.
after getting my bill of health cleaned, i dragged chris down to the mall to pick up my ring from the jewellers. you see, he gave me this old ring of his some months back. one of those spinner rings you get for cheap from people on granville street and — because i’m sentimental like that — i’d been wearing it ever since. last week, while driving around, i suddenly realized that the spinning part had split. i was very upset by this. i immediately thought of it as an ill omen and panicked.
chris kept saying he would just buy me a new ring since it was going to cost as much to repair as to replace, but, being the sappy fool i am, i refused the suggestion. i wanted THAT ring, the ring he GAVE me, the ring he WORE, not some second-string ring. sheesh. so, it went to the jewellers for repair.
well, they were supposed to phone me last week to let me know if it could be fixed without ruining the awesome spinning action. they didn’t call. my hands felt so naked and exposed without that piece of silver on my finger. i was going to phone them yesterday, but decided a visit was in order, so down we went. the lady with far too much makeup on found my ring in the ‘completed’ pile and when she pulled it out of the little white envelope, both christopher and i were temporarily blinded. it shone with the light of a thousand stars, it was polished so smooth. i asked chris if it had ever been so shiny. he said no, not ever.
after giving the spackled lady my $15 (plus tax), i slipped the ring back on my finger with a small, inner sigh. i’m still bedazzled by just how brilliant it is, but it’s back where i want it, and it spins just like it should, and i’m happy about it all.
by the way, if anyone catches me trying to buy anything on ebay for the next, say, YEAR you have my permission to beat the living crap out of me. by the time all my recent purchases come in, i’ll have no room in my fridge for food because it will be filled with film. so much film i won’t have to buy any for the rest of my life. the scary thing is i’m only exaggerating a little. seriously. it’s a sickness. i’m surprised the neurologist didn’t diagnose it.

my free will horoscope (found via rachael) for this week:

*sigh* i’m having a lot of trouble with all of that these days.
i don’t know if i’m ever going to feel comfortable accepting love from others. it’s very hard for me to consider myself worthy of it most of the time. that being said, i know i’m a good person with skills and abilities, but as soon as someone tries to say something nice/positive/complimentary about me i just can’t seem to deal with it. all my negative self-talk gears up to counter every good thing i hear.
these days, i don’t know how to nurture myself as advised. i’ve lost the ability to be alone without becoming bored. nothing holds much interest, especially if it has anything to do with the television or computer. i want to spend time just being with those people i like to send time with. we don’t have to do anything or go anywhere, but i have become attached to the contact — that’s something i never thought i would say as recently as two years ago.
the list of things i feel i *have* to do is getting longer, while the list of things i *want* to do grows shorter.
i hope that my new committment to going to massage regularly and continuing to go to the doctor when things don’t seem right is a positive step towards taking care of myself. i just don’t want to get mired in the more superficial things which bring me a sense of calm (cleaning, being the big one) as a way to avoid the deeper, and more challenging, tasks i know i should tackle.

i thought that going to bed at a ridiculously early 9:30pm last night would help me feel more refreshed and rejuvinated today. i was wrong. very wrong. really wrong.
first off, every time i moved, the squeaking of the bed woke me up a little. how annoying. then, around 4:22 am i woke completely, but i made myself go back to sleep, which probably wasn’t a good idea either. that extra hour or so of sleep is never really good. it just makes me groggy when it’s time to really get up.
today, it feels like i have the hangover i should have had yesterday. is that even possible? can a hangover have a 24-hour delay? stupid hangover.
i seem to have a pretty busy week booked: tonight, i’m indulging in a spa utopia massage after work. tomorrow, i go to see the brain doctor. thursday, there’s a big, long, loud and cranky union meeting to go to. friday, we’re going to a show opening at exposure gallery. then, sometime over the weekend, i hope we’re finally hosting the crapshoot christopher and i have been talking about since january.
it’s a good thing i actually did my laundry last night instead of just being a lump like i wanted to.
ugh, my head.

today, i’m going out for lunch with barb the temp and christopher. tonight, i’m going to theatresports with josh. it’s going to be a very quiet work day for me, which isn’t optimal, but it’s better than PANIC! URGENT! GOTTAFIXTHISRIGHTNOWOHMYGOD! so, i’m not complaining. nope, not me. no complaining here.
i had last night to myself while christopher went to an opening with friends. i came home, got unworkified, cooked a hotdog, watched ‘firefly’ episodes, did some banking, updated toshiro (that’s my mp3 player, you know) with the new music i’ve acquired, watched ‘project runway’, ate ice cream and went to bed at a reasonable hour. i had grand plans of scanning or scrubbing the bathtub or washing the floors, but, well, i just didn’t.
ice cream sounded like a much better plan.

if i were to host an Amazing Race premiere party on Sunday, September 17th at 7:00pm would you attend?

i really don’t like that my immediate reaction to embarrassment is an overwhelming urge to burst into tears. especially at work.