random thoughts, condensed

I've just followed a sweetney link and created my own word cloud. How cool is this?

I'd order one but geez, the font choices are Helvetica, Courier, and Times? Don't you know that I'd be laughed out of the typographic profession wearing those fonts?












I hope that if I did another 'word cloud' in 12 months that it would sound much happier, or perhaps just less miserable, as most everybody seems to be in a funk at the moment.

a helpful hint

For future reference, just because we have two different kinds of juice in the refridgerator does not necessarily mean that they could or should be mixed together.

An example: if one is eating leftover Ethiopian Wat along with that sourbread/crepe thing that they make, then serving a mixture of guava and carrot juice won't be well received. Actually, even if one isn't eating leftover Ethiopian food, guava and carrot juice is still is a bad idea.

49 degrees at the 49th parallel

It seems that the windstorm from the other night brought with it colder weather, but when looking at the upcoming 7-day forecast, it's all the same: 7 days of a high of 49 degrees. At the market yesterday, people were exclaiming that it has been one of the warmest Januarys on record - I always find this amusing because it is inevitably followed by 'We'll pay for it later, I suppose'.

The one thing that will make a possible colder-than-usual February bearable is that we now have central heating again. We had run out of oil a full week before the truck could come, so we had been huddling around quartz heaters in the evening and we each had one in our office. I had used a similar trick like this while in Reading - I kept a heater under my desk so it became the warmest place in the flat (due to it's distance from the poor excuse of a radiator that was in my main room, the area was the coldest of the flat anyway) and therefore kept me chained to it if I was cold. I did get work done that way!

it's all about the horse

I now love this woman - she's southern and sassy and lives in Arkansas, and that's just pretty damned cool to me. She recently summed up one of my current funks:

One of my best friends was visiting the other day, and I hadn't seen her in a long time. We were catching up on horse-show stuff, since I've been largely out of that loop for a while. We've been Arabian and Half-Arabian enthusiasts for a long, long time. My friend, who, like myself, tends toward the zaftig, was telling me how a local trainer/judge had told her that she should lose a little weight because in the show ring, she 'looked too big for her horse.'

She said, 'And you know, I thought about that. I thought about all the times I'd lost weight, and wound up weighing about the same thing again, and how this seems to be where my body is comfortable, and that my husband likes me this way...and you know what? I said, 'All right, so I'm too big for my horse.' (pause) And so, I bought a bigger horse!' (showing me a picture of herself aboard a gorgeous Half-Arabian buckskin) 'I look pretty good on that one, don't I?'

I have not yet stopped laughing and appreciating this particular beautiful woman's response to just one more societal demand upon women to conform to a narrow definition of 'beauty'. Brava. You know who you are!

and a double brava from me!
I was super thin in the years when I was working as a book designer, the years before I moved to England. I even went below 100 pounds for a while. I was fit, I was total muscles (riding 4 times a week, yoga 3 times a week) and phenominally in shape. Oh yeah, and I was miserable. I was bored with my job, I resented my boyfriend, and was wondering 'Is this all there is?'. And now? I weigh much more, absolutely adore my boyfriend, and am still trying to find what's right for me. The thing that's different is that I've lived. I've had a lot of great things happen in the past few years (I've also had a lot of shitty ones, but that's beside the point because basically, that's life) and I know that if I died tomorrow, I'd die knowing that I'd truly lived - and that's a great feeling.

So the point of all this is that all that we have to do, my dear ladies, is just go out and get a bigger horse.

last night

It's 4.43 am. There has been a particularly fierce windstorm raging outside for the past hour or so. (They always freak me out because North Carolina never had wind like this unless it was a hurricane and then I start thinking about when Fran hit Raleigh and all of that wind and rain and then I just work myself up to an anxiety level of no return when thinking how dessimated the house would be should any of our trees land on us. . . .)
(very loud crash and thump, Mr X stirs in his sleep and Squeak runs across the room to comfort herself by laying near our heads)
Wonderful me: Uhh, are you awake?
Mr X: Mrrrph.
- I think we just lost a few more shingles.
- You want me to fix them now?
- Of course not, I'm just worried.
- Don't worry, see? Squeak's not worried.
- Yes she is! She's always worried. (He knows I'm right - she's a very nervous and neurotic cat)
- Ok fine then. Worry.
(a few minutes past)
Wonderful me:I can't get to sleep!
Mr X: OK then, let's play 'I Spy'. I spy something that begins with 'E'.
- An ELEPHANT! An EGGPLANT! Euphoria!
- No, no, no.
- Oh, I get it. . . 'Eyelid'.
- Now go to sleep.

Smoking Lily

Oh and Emily knew about this cool store called 'Smoking Lily'. The square footage of the store was 40 sq feet. Yep, you read that right: forty. You looked at all the stuff by tilting your head back and looking up because it was a double-height space. It was awesome. There is a fab pea green velvet suit (oh my, it matches with them shoes!) with brown bi-planes silk screened on the back kick pleat. I don't think Mr X understands how I must have this suit. Seriously.

Victoria on Thursday

On Thursday, we went to Victoria to meet up with Emily and Rod so that Ross could discuss the native font stuff. We ate at the awesome Noodle Box where I actually encountered food too hot to eat - but it was still good. Emily gave me these awesome mittens which make me want to sing 'Oh Canada' all the time. OK, well, no they don't really, but they make me smile and I need all I can get.

When walking back to the car, we saw this sign. Did I ever tell you that I 'collect' capital 'i's with dots?



And this is the lovely Emily and Rod (I had to sneak this photo because I would have felt too stoopid to photograph them at The Noodle Box. Note that they don't really have poles and lights growing out of their head as this photo might lead one to believe.



As we were heading back to the cars from the noodle shop (have I ever told you how much I love noodles? I do, man oh man I do) we all found ourselves in a vintage store - Em and I noticed the totally cool handbags they had on the wall and Rod went straight for the boy coats. I found a pair of AWESOME pea-green tweed pointy-toed flats that fit perfectly. I totally wanted them but they were a bit too much for used shoes ($23 canadian). I put them back and Emily immediately switched them with another pair so that they'd be a bit more hidden. Mr X confidently proclaimed that she was trying to distance me from them but then I pointed out that he didn't know girl-stuff AT ALL. I tried to explain to him the method of 'hiding' one's dream object so that if one changed one's mind and wanted to go get it, knowing that it would of course change ones' life because - frankly - we know that new shoes has that ability, then nobody else would have seen it and therefore bought it. AND FURTHERMORE, because Emily is one of those cool women that doesn't have to be asked to do this type of thing, she did it instantly and that just rocks. Mr X: although I love you dearly and although you might know how to make Thai peanut sauce from scratch and hibiscus margaritas, but you don't know dick about THE GIRL WAY OF DOING THINGS.

Later that afternoon, they all discussed how to best structure (in a technical way, not 'design') the script for Rod's language and history/culture books. It's a vanishing language and the linguistic research he's done on it and the books that she's designed will certainly be important, actually it already is. I feel proud that these people are using typography to help the world - how excellent to finally see an example of it that doesn't just show making something 'prettier'.

my weekly wednesday voyage

This is my journey to and from the Art Institute of Vancouver/Burnaby. I love the kids but I hate the day. I leave the house at 8 am and return by 8.30 pm and my class is only 4 hours, less actually because it is a 4.5 hour commute EACH WAY. It is exhausting, but I'm desperate.

It's 8.15 am and I've left the house at 8 or so and just arrived at the ferry terminal at the south end of the island,'Sturdies Bay'.


As you walk down the platform out to the ferry, if you turn around to look back at the island, this is what you see and this morning was particularly sunny . . . .



. . . but by the time that the ferry arrived in Victoria, it had already begun to cloud over. This is the view from the car deck as we were docking.


Since the ferry was actually on time, I had a 30 minute wait for the hourly bus that goes to and from the ferry terminal. Isn't this view scintillating?.


I get on to the bus at around 10 am and travel for about 20 minutes to the most boring place in the entire world. . .


. . . the Ladner Exchange Bus Terminal.


I then board bus number 2 that crosses the rivers and goes right into the centre of Vancouver, but I don't get to go that far because. . .



I have to get off at 25th Street so that I can go due east towards Burnaby. So here is bus number 3.



I get off this bus about 10 minutes later at Main Street.


This is where I get a quick (early) lunch at a noodle shop and purchase any last minute 'buddha supplies' that I might need for the rest of my day.



I then get back on a bus (number 4), still the same route as before, but just 20 or 40 minutes later.



Then I get off the bus at an incredibly horrible (in an aesthetic sense, not in a life-threatening sense) area of Burnaby.



I walk about 10-15 minutes and end up here. Yes, this is the school - at an office park.



Then, at around 4.30, I leave the 'campus' and do it all over again and arrive home by 8.30. Is it worth it? I don't know yet.

public vs private

I find the difference in what I intend to post and what I actually do growing daily.

All day long, I think of posts in my head but I never end up posting them, especially recently, and I don't really know why this is happening. I want to tell you what is going on and I want to tell you about Mr X doing a killer rendition of a chicken singing 'Louie Louie', but I don't get around to it. I think my attitude must change and I really must deal with my stress level and my general malaise and life-dissatisfaction. I'm trying to say to myself 'Ahh Yes, OF COURSE I can do it' and keep in mind that whatever is going on now will be overwith in July and then again in October and then, perhaps, my life can change. I have to figure out how to apply what I know and do what I love. I have to.

wild parrots on tv

Did I ever tell you that our very own pirate cat likes to watch tv? Last night, while Mr X and I watched the surprisingly engaging Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill as a windstorm raged outside, Harry wanted to watch too.

This is him sniffing the TV at the start of the commercial break - just after the parrots had been squawking. I think it's a Nascar ad. This is also a good chance to witness our dog-food-coloured carpet before Mr X puts down our lovely new wood floor and to see the mysterious yard thing tied to the end of more yarn - something that Squeak covets.


And here he is trying to act like he-don't-care-nohow and couldn't be bothered.






Here's Harry looking a bit more interested. . .






And here is Harry actually watching the documentary with us.

a totally cosmic crappy year, again?

Good god - I am getting rained to death. This Pacific Northwest splendor is total crap and everyone who says that the summers here make the winters worth it can BITE ME. It is pouring, and I do mean pouring, rain and it has been all day. Except for the 36 hour reprieve we had this weekend, it has pretty much been like this non-stop for weeks and weeks. Famous author Linda (c'mon, you know you're famous!) who lives on the other side of the island is even mentioning it and frankly, when a local Vancouver chic complains about it, you know it's bad.

A while ago, I mentioned that everyone thought that everything totally sucked, and it was true then and seems almost true now. Some of my favorite bloggers have written as much - finslippy complaining about her kid refusing any food that is nutritional, fussy mentioning being cursed, ninja poodles mentioning getting doors slammed in her face but also inadvertently perfectly describing how a man apologizes, and then there's the feminist texan who puts it all into perspective by writing about the kind of chemo where you have to have your hands and feet in ice water. Yep. ICE WATER? Sadist bastards.

Everyone around me is gloomy - it could be because I am spreading my gloom so very well, or because 2005 and now 2006 are COSMIC YEARS OF GLOOM or doom or just crap.

Dr D has 2 kids that have been sick nearly every day since birth and are inching towards setting a world record for croup, a husband that travels too much and patients filled with genital warts. Girl, you are high up there on the sucky life however, as much as I feel for you, I almost wonder if it is the price that you must pay for having a child who actually wants to take naps and go to bed so much that one of his first communications to you was pointing to the crib and saying 'bed'.

My champion-of-catholic-guilt friend (you know who you are!) is feeling unhealthy and crappy as well and she told me today that a friend of hers complained that her life JUST WASN'T WHAT SHE HAD THOUGHT IT WOULD BE and DAMN IF THAT DIDN'T PISS HER OFF. You tell it sister. I shouldn't be desperate for even the lamest of all teaching jobs - I deserve to have a school to WANT me and my brilliant mind and then PAY ME ACCORDINGLY.

I think I'm slowly wearing Mr X down with my hatred of that which has become my life and I'm sure the telescope incident didn't help. He has certainly earned my total respect because in my quest to become Canadian (well, not exactly, I don't WANT to BE Canadian, I just want to be with him), I have to fill out yet another form and submit it to yet another office - this is so that I can get paid for my (underpaid) teaching job. He made tortilla soup today - authentic, all from scratch, millions of ingredients and spices and all, good stuff. Mexican food when I feel most crappy - I love that boy.

free, but rubbish

Mr X and I have been on a 'let's do things' mood so yesterday we planted the leftover daffodil bulbs, Mr X cut down a very dead rhododendron bush, I continued to paint the laundry room ceiling (oh god, how my arms ache), and we did general house things. We also went to get him a telescope. The island has a 're-directory' also known as a 'free-cycle'. You take the stuff that you'd either toss or donate to charity and give it to them and then you can browse the shelves and take what you want - all free. It's wonderful. I've snagged so many cool things and likewise given them 4 boxes of general crap. Yesterday, I saw a sign for a telescope, that is, someone had one to give away, yep, free. FINALLY, I thought - I've always wanted to get Mr X one and now I've found one in my price range. When I came back from the store, he saw the info that I had written down - so much for the surprise, though Mr X was thrilled. The owner said that her ex-husband had put it together but he wasn't much of a handyman so she thought that it possibly could work, but might not. He spent much of the afternoon and evening tinkering with it and then this morning declared that actually, it had been put together correctly and was essentially a crap telescope. Oh well. My role in this ends because I can't even buy tampons for myself, much less a thousand buck instrument for him. Since he now had more of the day to do stuff than he had thought, he then helped me renovate a cupboard that I had found by the side of the road this summer. I was painting it and he suggested removing the 1950's-style hardware and removing the paint. It is going to look lovely - but then again anything is a step up from mouldy white paint. When it is done, I shall photograph it so that you all can admire our effort. I enjoyed painting the cabinet and doors and spackling the walls and such - it was a good time for me to just focus on something else other than my computer.

who to blame?

I've been grumpy all day. It started off sunny when I woke up this morning, but then turned cloudy by lunch and stayed that way. I could blame it on the cats, or the woodpeckers, or the raccoons or even Mr X, but I think that this time I shall blame it on Gurinder Chadha.

Last night, we watched Bride and Predjudice. It was like every other Gurinder Chadha movie - it had potential, but was then swallowed up by schmaltz. No wait, it had one thing that the others didn't - decent production qualities. What's Cooking? was so poorly shot that there were two, not one but TWO scenes where I saw the sound boom in the top of the frame and that is just plain lazy - or tacky, or both. It was poorly edited and just felt cheap - but the idea of it was strong. Same with Bend it like Beckham - a good premise, but not polished and way too gushy. Besides, it had the toothy Winona Ryder lookalike, Kiera in it - damn, that over-enunciating woman is annoying. So back to Bride - it was a mix between a bollywood production and a western drama and couldn't really decide what to be. Oh and this time the production didn't stink, the continuity did. Yeah yeah, so she updated Jane Austen - she did a semi-OK job but there were parts of the story where I asked - 'but wait, why would he be in London?' or 'why would they have attended that wedding'. What I did enjoy was the 'Indian-ness' of it - the cheesy songs, the dance scenes, the (watered-down) social commentary. But all of that together wasn't enough.

I just feel that Chadha rushes her movies when they should have been thought out a bit more. Will I see her next one? Probably not.

You mean it's not raining anymore?

It's the first day without rain in recent memory, and not only that, it's even sunny! The recycling center was filled with people chit-chatting about this and that, something one doesn't usually find in Canada, much less on an island such as Galiano, but I think that the combination of the blue sky and the thought of the environmental benefits of recycling was making people giddy.
This is how the kitties were celebrating the sunshine. Yes, they are stalking the birdbath, attempting to blend in with the satellite dish and the manzanita bushes. Squeak is a bit more eager, ignoring the need for camoflauge and Harry is just playing it cool. You can kinda see a path running between the two that is a totally cat-created path. The yard is criss-crossed with them, some in the woods are deer paths, but these around the house are definately feline stalking trails.

squeak / squeaky /squonk / squirt

it's 11.50am and i've already had 3 breakdowns

Gee-zuz. I am freaking out today. I just wrote about 3 paragraphs about how I'm totally loosing my shit and how I have no money and no hope of a steady job and I don't know what to do about it but then I thought about one of my resolutions (pretty important since I already broke the no-more-gummy-bears one) and I deleted them instantly. I must try to stay positive and focused - even though I'm desperate to pop a Lexapro (or something) to get me to stop wigging out. Mr X just bought more gin so perhaps I'll do a shot or something before my morning coffee. OH MY GOD! WHAT HAVE I BECOME? I'm so stressed out that I have to resort to alcohol in the a.m.? This is not good, people.

100% me

I had started writing this post last week - but had forgotten all about it because, frankly, that's me and my attention span. However, dooce's entry today reminded me. For the first time in nearly exactly thirteen years, I have absolutely no anxiety or depression medicine in my body. I don't know if it is good or bad, it just is.

I think I'm now Lexapro-free. I can tell that I have no more of the residue because I'm bouncing around the house finding it hard to sit and watch tv and I'm craving painting or jewelry-making or general hand-crafty-things that aren't typographic pixels and stuff. I have also been a bit emotional lately, but that is probably my period For example, I had tears in my eyes at the end of a West Wing rerun because I so wished he was real. FOR GOODNESS SAKE WOMAN! Not good. However, considering my bitchiness towards Mr X during the past 2 months, I think he'd much rather have me sobbing about tv shows than biting his bloody head off.

I must say that I am so proud to live in a society where people are talking about this, even if it is on blogs.Finslippy has been talking about being non-Effexored and it's been so good to see that others have experienced the hell of the withdrawal. I once mentioned my medicated-self to my then-boyfriend's parents in Henley-on-Thames. You should have seen their reactions - the minute it came out of my mouth, I knew that I shouldn't have said it. See, I find it an example of pride that I know myself that deeply and put myself on medication after 8 years (and an entire childhood) of dark clouds. However, England has a way to go with regards to talking about feelings - I often forget that not everyone can handle straightforward honesty. Oh well, I probably could have told them that their son was a self-centered twat, but that would have been a bit too much.

There are times when I am scared that I'm going to flip out or just explode and there are others when I am happy to be 'pure'. Mr X is glad that I'm off the Lexapro, and frankly, after my side-effects-mystery/nightmare, so am I. I guess I just want everyone to know that I'm not off them because I don't agree with them or am embarrassed, I'm off them because the Lexapro side effects were killing me and my non-health-insurance self can't afford an alternative medication, much less the doctor's visits to acquire them. I do know that I'm ready and aware - I know that if I get feeling all death-y and such, I'll go back on them without a worry because my life is worth so much more. And I never would have been able to say that 13 years ago, or even 5, or even 4 months ago.

Dooce wrote:
Besides, I don’t feel hopeless right now, and for anyone who hasn’t ever felt that deep, lonely ache of complete hopelessness, not feeling it feels like a present of chocolate orgasms under the Christmas tree with your name on it. That good.

So when you ask me how I'm doing and I say 'good' - that means I'm not hopeless. And in my book, that's great.

harry the pirate cat making sure that it's actually Mr X banging on the roof and not, in fact, monsters

And yes, that is an eyesocket with no visible eyeball.

love times three

Today is a day of falling in love. First, it was Emily, for anyone with natural curls like her or typegirl must have a list of admirers, and second, I found a blog that had this for her list of things to do for 2006:

1. Convince The Person I Wish I Was and The Person I Truly Am to meet somewhere in the middle.
2. Come to grips with the fact that I sometimes completely lose my shit.
3. Either start answering e-mails in a timely manner or let go of the guilt that pokes me when I have an inbox filled with messages that should be answered.

These are from fluidpudding and I can't decide whether I want to become her or finslippy. Have you ever read anything as poetic as number one? My problem is certainly the first, but perhaps subsituting 'The Person I Wish I Was' with 'The Person I Thought I Was'. I swear my whole life has flipped over not once, not twice, but 3 times and I now have no eartly idea who I am, but then again, not many people do either.

The third time I fell in love today was when Mr X was fixing our leaky-ass roof. This is a photograph of his reaction to the super-freakin' strong wind/rainstorm last night that woke me up at around 3.30am.Apparently, he thought that he would stop the water before it reached the top of his head while sitting under the fan (photo taken from living room floor looking up to fan, with beach painting by the always excellent Seale).

This is him fixin' it today.
Sigh. I love my lumberjack.

another wonderful jobless design chic living on an island way out west

I am head over heels in love with Emily. Yep, that's right - move over Mr X because there's a chic pushin' you out. I met her through the St Bride conference (she got my interest by sending me the coolest 'sanitary bag' ever and kept it by giving me MAC false eyelashes that were from a drag queen's stash or something like that) and now that I'm watching her cross-country trip, I love her even more, and she's not even given me anything this time! This is Ms Lovely looking gleeful in an apparently gleeful place. I want to go there now, damn it all!
Not only do I want to go to Maine and Halifax so that I can see the east coast style of wooden houses again (will somebody please tell these Vancouver idiots that stucco looks STOOPID out here? Geez) and so that I can drink beer in funky little establishments that have 'onderful food', but I want to do it with someone who names their red Subaru 'Ruby' (I myself have wanted a Jack Russell so that I could name it 'Jack' - after my british neighbor cat 'Jack'). So I hope that Emily and I can find a way to get jobs out here because we've both come here to be with our Canadian lumberjack men and we've both been semi-dissed by Emily Carr, that is, the design school, not the dead artist. Perhaps we'll start up our own school with Ms Quatrifolio or maybe we'll just settle for teaching at the wonderfully average Art Institute. Or maybe we'll pimp ourselves for just generally being fabulous. Dunno.

grey rain or grey stormy rain or grey windy rain or grey wind or grey grey rain

These past few weeks are simply cycles of rain, stormy rain, windy rain, wind, and rain again. I will say that it is more interesting than British rain for atleast I'm not stumbling along depressing town centres and train stations - but it is still grey.

With the grey weather and the constant rain (yes, yes, I know that I live in a rain forest - summers are divine but winters are grim, but that only goes so far for a southern chic who is solar powered), Mr X and I have decided that we are atrophying - by watching his new Blackadder DVDs (awesome) and my new Thin Man movies (even better than I had remembered), we are slowly turning into slugs. After teaching on Wednesday, my legs ached - and it really was just from walking to and from bus stops - so the new year is going to bring new walks and excercise regimens.

We first need to work on our sleeping patterns for I feel that if it continues, we'll be in opposing time zones. I'm up anywhere between 8 and 10 am. In the summer it's more around 7am but let's face it, why get out of bed when it's dark and rainy? Mr X doesn't get up until 1pm. This summer, it was more around 10 am or noon. Now it's 1 and sometimes TWO O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON! Argh. So my morning coffee must wait for his sleepyheadness and frankly, it's getting on my nerves. So then, after he's been coffeed, he starts on lunch - by now it's about 3 or 3.30 pm and I'm fading in and out of hypoglyscemic comas because I've not eaten yet. (and for all of you that say 'just make yourself something', you don't live with a chef because our pantry is filled with 873 different kinds of dried beans and mystery spices and our fridge is filled with cheese cheese cheese cheese, so there). We then eat dinner at around 8 or 9 pm, and an hour later, I fall asleep on the couch by the end of the Daily Show. I toddle up to bed by 11 and then Mr X doesn't come to bed until 2 or 3am. We might live on a semi-isolated island together but that doesn't mean that we see eachother much.

Note to self: Just because that other soup that we had last week came from a can, doesn't mean that the next soup will have so don't ask if it's a new one in the range because you will then find out that he's been cooking fancy Indian chana lentils with a gazillion spices for the past 2 hours and then he'll get all huffy because he's selected as his life partner a person with 3 tastebuds.

waiting for the third version

It's positively pouring rain today. Rainy and very dark grey. Mr X and I have just returned from a trip to the other end of the island to go to the post office to pick up xmas box number 2 from my mom (they were closed today and thus pissed many people off), to purchase some udon noodles from the korean-owned gas station/grocery store (they had none), the white-guy owned market to get veggies for a stir fry tonight (everything fine there) and then settled on these udon noodles from the other korean-owned liquor store/grocery store. I love the fact that we have enough ethnicity on the island so that we can get semi-funky foods. We didn't really want these because the whole concept of 'fried taste' without an actual description of how it achieves it kind of frightens us, but we were desperate, or as desperate as one could get about worm-type noodles.

But the best thing about our foray out was that we learned about the New Years Day capsizing. The wind was nuts that day - 100km/hour gusts - and there were whitecaps IN the harbour, I've never seen it like that before. Mr X saw a boat pulling in a person that looked like a diver, however, within about 5 minutes, coast guard ships were all in the harbour searching and we kept hearing sirens going down to the marina but never leaving the marina to go off to the mini-clinic (it has a helicopter pad for emergencies). We thought there had been a drowning but couldn't quite tell.

So at the gas station, the woman said that a speed boat had flipped and it had 7 people and some were kids. She said they all died. Mr X and I were a bit surprised, but believed it. By the time we were at the other store and asked the liquor store guy, he said that it was 2 dighys of people that were going from Parker Island (the little island across the harbour from us) to the marina and both of them flipped but nobody died. I'm sure that once the post office opens again, we'll find a 3rd version.

although it sounds right

Look now, I'm not trying to get 'I got a doctorate and you dinnt' and all, but I do think that most people know that bought is not the past tense of bite.

I am but an amateur

One of my blogging idols, who is probably everyone's blogging idol, is dooce. I must say that sweetney and fussy (I simply must buy a red fussy shirt and go teach my design class in it) and miss domestic and (current fav supah bloggah babe) is finslippy are very very close, though. I think it's probably because she's southern and she's now way out here - but other than that, we have nothing in common.

What I like about this woman is that she not only makes me laugh but makes me laugh out loud with guffaws. What more could anyone want? So while I was considering writing about how incredibly drunk I got between 9pm and 4am on New Years Eve at Jet's house and about how I was so drunk that I was still drunk on New Years Day and thank goodness the power went out because I doubt I could have accomplished anything other than watching the tall stick insects on tv led by the biggest control freak who thinks it's all about her (see previous entry), I just read dooce's link to her own experience 2 years ago and frankly, it rocks more than mine would.

Oh and this rocks too. Although I'm sure I'd hate it if my father produced a 'bag of hats' to wear during dinner, but it sure as hell is funny to me from afar.

books. . . so tempting. . . . must resist

I have been on a 'jesus girl, don't you buy any more cds' kick all last year and kinda the year before that. I was also on a book hiatus as well (the result of owning every possible typography book) - but damn it all if Galiano doesn't have a great little bookshop. It's got loads of books in all genres, a great kid section, a room just for used books (though overpriced), and cool gifty things. Before the holidays, I went over to it there to get a present for Mr X - but not for New Years, 'cause I'm saving it for his birthday - and I proceeded to spend a boatload of money that I don't have. I bought a fighterpilot calendar for Les, my 86 year old quasi-grandfather from Reading, some Anne Taintor stuff for Shannon + Mitchell (yeah, you'll get it soon, that is, if I don't keep it for myself) and 2 books for me. This is why I'm no good in book stores. I buy stuff for other people AND for me - I think it is supposed to be either or, isn't it?

So I got me this 'un.
I was thinking that it would be good to use for teaching but now that I have realised just how little they'll be paying me, I don't think so. I LOVE this book - I love the concept and the fact that it is a collection that exists some where. It was a good buy.

I also bought this by the man who wrote the wonderful How to be a Canadian. I'm on my second copy because a clump of pages fell out of the first one. It's starting to happen on this one as well and you can bet I'll take my money back again. I'm so dissapointed in it that I really want to just write them and tell them that they should hire me to 'consult' so that they'll have someone making sure that there's enough glue on the binding for goodness sake.

The problem is that I'm now back into book mode. Since I escaped, oops, I mean 'finished' graduate school, I'm now reading again. I used to be a voracious reader and even today, my way of relaxing is actually reading and occasionally watching the teeth-grindingly fabulous (in an ironic demise-of-our-culture way) show about semi-attractive idiots. I've finally finished the stack of books by my bed - books that were packed away unread for the time I was in England. Books like White People or Plays well with others both by Alan Gurganus.

Plays well with others absolutely floored me. It was one of those phenominal books that you can't put down but don't want to finish. It was as engrossing as One hundred years of solitude, one of my all time favourites and for me, that says a lot. God, how I love that book. I got it signed by him (that is, Gurganus, not Marquez) in Raleigh one time - it makes it even better.

Another book that has totally surprised me was this one.
Linda lent it to me on New Year's Eve and I'm nearly done with it but delaying finishing it because I don't want to give it up. (I want to write Vintage Canada about this one too - and tell them to add an extra cm for the gutter margin) How this woman could have so expertly pulled me into a novel and NOT have it be about a southern topic, surprises me. It was Lee Smith but maybe, dare I say it, even better, overlooking the fact that snow featured in the story - snow and praries. Any book where a child is named 'Summer Feelin' and isn't southern has got to be good. You can bet I'm after A complicated kindness now. I think I'll check with our island library first since I have no money for it unless I sell a kidney.

And when I was looking around on Linda's other site, I found this: I have to have this book. I own every original Nancy Drew, I adored them. Or maybe I just want it because the cover rocks.

The problem is that Mr X gave me the Thin Man series (yippee!) and while reading the packaging, I saw that it was first a book series. Great, I'll just add them to the list. Why can't someone create an internet library like NetFlix where you have a list of books and then they just keep sending you the next one after you finish the previous one?

i wanna hippopotamus

hippopotamus.mp3

and you can go here for the words, I mean, how could you not love a song that includes:
. . . Only a hippopotamus will do / No crocodiles, no rhinoceroses / I only like hippopotamuses / And hippopotamuses like me too . . . .

Everyone, BE CAREFUL with this mp3 file. Every Vancouver-area resident now knows this song because it's been used on the phone company's holiday ad campaign. Mr X and I have been humming it for weeks and it's still entertaining even though it walks the fence on a windy day* between obnoxious and cute.

(*This is actually Beatrice's expression for learning Dutch - that it is walking a fence on a windy day between German and English.)