I love the way she makes me feel

Oh...ow. The laughing, it hurts me.

Blogger informs me that this is post #201. Two hundred blatherings about nothing, hopefully in a fashion that puts no one in mind of Seinfeld. Because I hate Seinfeld.

To celebrate, this video about Alan Moore. It's a no-hoper if you're not a comic geek, but really, how many people do I even know who don't have at least a passing relationship with comics? Don't answer that.

the germs win again

Okay. I am armed with a playlist of happy music on my ipod, Advil Cold & Sinus tablets, grapefruit and enough pocket money to buy a coffee the size of my head. Despite the fact that I still feel like persons unknown have been amusing themselves with exploratory drilling in my skull, I am going to work tomorrow morning.

And it's not just the poverty of all those unpaid hours piling up, or my work ethic driving me back--it's boredom. I am ready to eat my fucking desk just for something to do, and there's only so many hours one can spend playing internet Boggle, especially when one is too sick to be any good at it.

I promise to wash my hands a lot, but y'all, don't hug me.

hot water and Kitty Jesus. never a dull moment.

Hot water update: spook came home and looked at it with me, and he managed to find--get this--a youtube video explaining where the pilot light was located and how to light it. Who says the internets can't teach you anything? So, several hours later, we had hot water again.

I was also supposed to tell you about the dream I had wherein Bird (one of our many cats) was playing the role of Jesus Christ in a pageant. To that end, he was towing a little wagon full of buckets of goulash. ("Was he feeding the poor with it?" E asked, incredulously. Yes. Yes he was. My subconscious is like that, okay?) This wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been worried he was going to wake up Adam and Miche and their many, many children...who were apparently already up to surprise their parents by installing the shelves that they had built with my grandfather...

house of plague

...hmm.

It is just possible that part of my mood over the last few days was the approaching stormclouds of a truly awful cold. By nine-thirty on Friday night, I knew I wasn't going to work on Saturday. By sometime mid-Saturday I started to feel like I was never going anywhere again. This wouldn't be such a problem if we hadn't run out of cold medication. Valiantly, spook has gone out to get some more in the lovely freezing rain (depicted, accurately, by the weather network as little triangles of doom falling from the heavens).

The hot water heater has stopped making the water hot. My theory is that the pilot light is out, but I can't for the life of me work out where I could look and see whether this theory is correct. I have followed the destructions on the side of the machine. It didn't sound quite right but I guess I'll see in the next hour or so when we either do or do not have hot water. It could be worse. It could be the furnace. :touches wood:

I forecast lots of sitting around wrapped in blankets with a moderate chance of whining.

'col loses her shit. news at eleven.

Waaaaaah!

For a day in which nothing terrible happened, this sure was a crappy day. It was my second day in a row of recognizing a series of thoughts that go something like: I am stupid, and clumsy, and ugly, and a bad friend, and--wait just a gosh-darn minute. I have PMS. I can tell because while I might feel like any one of those things on a given day, it is so unlikely that they are all true together at the same time that there just has to be some other factor in play.

I got to work and everything was chaos, and no one had responded to either of the questions I'd asked, and I went straight down the hole: Cookie's gone and now I'm not part of a team any more, I'm just supposed to do all of my job and all of his job and all of everything, plus nobody thinks I can do it, hell, even I don't think I can do it... never mind that no one has said any such thing.

I just needed to take two steps to the side and look at the girl having the meltdown and think, aww, poor dear. She just needs a bath and a cup of tea. Tragically I could only accomplish one and a half steps to the side, and so while I can see quite clearly that I'm being ridiculous, I can't stop feeling like everything's awful and bursting into tears.

I apologize for my worse-than-usual abuse of italics. Throw me a pity party?

HAY

"Oh--I hate it when this happens."
"What?"
"Every once in a while my blackberry decides that it's going to type everything backwards in all capitals, so I just tried to say 'yah' and instead..."

Fortunately, her mom can craft...

Tonight I finally got up the nerve to try sewing together the sweater that I knit for my niece. I think we can safely say that she will not be wearing this sweater any time in the forseeable future, unless she has some freaky incident with a bicycle pump.

It may, with a little tweaking, work as a shortie jacket for me.

"It fits me. It's my size."
"Yeah, but you're really small."
"Okay, but--let's say for the sake of argument that I'm the size of a six year old child..."

Ah, crafting failures: how would I know who I am without you? It's okay, I'm regrouping, principally by...burning dinner.

she's crafty and she's just my type

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Right about here is where I wanted to insert a picture of the fabulous hankies in question, up till the moment I realized they a) are NSFW and b) possibly violate blogger's terms of use, what with the porn and all. Also consider option c) that I realized my mom reads this blog and got a little self-conscious. What with the porn and all. So instead I present you with a link:

link!

clicky clicky.


If you do not live in Toronto, Canada you can check out the Boldax Industries etsy site at http://boldax.etsy.com which will be open for business on February 15th, 2008.

THE TRIUMPH OF GOOD OVER EVIL

Giants win! Giants win! Giants win!

Overheard in my living room:

"Now Peyton Manning can call Tom Brady up and be like 'My little brother kicked your ass! Do you want to play my mom now?'"

I am lightheaded with joy.

swear I way more than half-believe it
when I say
somewhere love and justice shine
cynicism falls asleep
tyranny talks to itself
sappy slogans all come true
we forget to feed our fear

The Weakerthans, Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist

Last night we went to Nathan Phillips Square to attend the Winter City festival. I love Toronto's sneaky paganism. It was wonderful to go to city hall and celebrate Imbolc in a manner which far outstrips my own little candles at home. I am having some technical issues with uploading my crappy pictures from my phone (oh, if only I'd known I would have brought a camera...) but when I can, I'll add them and you too can see. It was beautiful. There were giant sculptural spheres set up bestudded with pots of open flame. There were flame pots set at regular intervals all along the balustrade. There was even one sculpture which moved, giant flame-laden spokes which raised and lowered, surrounded by a circle of little fires in, you guessed it, more pots. At the apex of this movement the sculpture would spew some misty liquid--water? fuel?--and all the fires would ripple, causing mingled delight and alarm in the onlookers. There were skaters in the rink, and musicians, and tents set up as warming stations.

We went and ate dinner and came back to watch the Weakerthans play an hour-long set.

I've pretty much given up live music, because a thing I do not love about Toronto is that so many of our venues suck. Too big, floors too hard, bad sound. The nail in the coffin was going to see Le Tigre, nearly passing out, and getting variously ignored and/or stepped on by the other members of the audience, an experience which left me thinking "I love the band, but this scene is so dead." And those are the feminists. Yeah, count me out.

In all my cranking, though, I'd forgotten how much I love watching a band. Part way into their first song, I started to cry, big stupid grin on my face, tears streaming. This often happens with musicians I really love. The couple standing in front of us knew all the lyrics, danced the whole time. They helped to restore my faith in the music-loving public. They were also ferociously cute (spook pronounced them "adorable").

I had very odd dreams--I blame the fuel for that and for the fact that all of last night's clothes smell like lighter fluid. In one of them, I was one of the Spice Girls, and we were playing a benefit show. Everyone else was onstage already, and I realized I didn't know the words to the song we were performing. There was a computer by the stage door, and when I frantically googled the lyrics, the verse I came up with had distressing colonial overtones*.

"I have to sing about Indians?" I squeaked. Meredith, who was suddenly there, looked at me in disdain.
"No. Nobody sings that verse."



*For this bit, I blame Cassie Edwards.

just put your hands in the air and back away slowly

I am not the world's greatest cook. Despite this, I've had some minor successes recently, and plan to go on having them. Tonight, however, I have been completely defeated by pork souvlaki, which might not be embarrassing if it was not the kind that comes already set up.

How does one go about fucking up pre-marinated meat on sticks?

Everyone has a skill.