... or How Some Things Never Change

Dark Age of Camelot
{insert new computer here}
City of Heros
Dark Age of Camelot
Star Wars Galaxies (revisited)
Saga of Ryzom (open beta)
World of Warcraft (stress test)
Desert Combat
Dark Age of Camelot (old habbits die hard)

Note:
Saga of Ryzom was THE WORST mmorpg I have played to date. The. Worst. Only those who insist on trying every new game should even consider wasting their money. Oh... and the French. It is a French game after all.

... or How I'm Learning to Live Life Differently, Part Two

Albums:
Reconstruction Site ~ The Weakerthans
More Betterness ~ No Use For A Name
Today ~ The Queers
Two Way Monologue ~ Sondre Lerche
Lost In Translation: the soundtrack ~ Various
The Mirror Conspiracy ~ Theivery Corporation
Tanto Tempo ~ Bebel Gilberto (replacement copy)
To the 5 Burroughs ~ Beastie Boys
Summer Hits No. One ~ The Queers
Left and Leaving ~ The Weakerthans
Acid Beaters ~ The Queers/Manges
We're a Happy Family: A Tribute to the Ramones ~ Various
Before You Were Punk 2 ~ Various
Bebel Gilberto ~ Bebel Gilberto
Social Distortion ~ Social Distortion

Shows:
The Queers (2nd last show before the tour was cancelled due to Joe's "health problems")

... or How I'm Learning to Live Life Differently, Part One

Dog-eared beside the bed:
Jennifer Government ~ Max Barry
Running With Scissors ~ Augusten Burroughs
Rule of the Bone ~ Russell Banks (2nd read)
100 Years of Solitude ~ Gariel Garcia Marquez
A Home at the End of the World ~ Micheal Cunningham
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom ~ Cory Doctorow
Eastern Standard Tribes ~ Cory Doctorow
Microserfs ~ Douglas Coupland
All Families are Psychotic ~ Douglas Coupland

In progress:
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books ~ Azar Nafisi
The Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks ~ Russell Banks

Still on the shelf:
A Canticle for Leibowitz ~ Walter M. Miller Jr. (2nd read)
Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources ~ David Mamet

On the shopping list:
Hey Nostradamus! ~ Douglas Coupland
Chinese Takeout ~ Arthur Nersesian
How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale ~ Jenna Jameson

Shamefully sampled:
Star ~ Pamela Anderson

Me: My dept is like a freakin' funeral home these days. Four of us sit in one big room together and no one says a word. It's like being in detention.

You: Put your head down on the desk and cry.

Me: That's so last week!

Thanks, Dr. Frank. now I have Syd Barrett stuck in my head. See the extended entry for Wouldn't You Miss Me? (Dark Globe) lyrics.

"Comment allez-vous ce soir? Je suis comme ci comme ça
Yes, a penguin taught me French back in Antarctica"
- The Weakerthans

Today is my big Adjustment of Status Interview. Seventeen months in the making.

Wish me luck.

Can you tell me where to find me?
Have you seen me hanging around?
I'm looking for myself each night till sunrise
The only thing I've found
Broken dreams and a heart that's stuck to the ground

Paul by The Smoking Popes

John decided to take off with some friends to hit a show last night, and then a party today. Despite the fact that I am home by myself during the weekdays, it feels like a different kind of time to myself.

That said, today I will be productive. I am making a list and come hell or highwater, by 5pm every damn item better be crossed off.

Items 1 - 5: general housecleaning stuff. dishes, tidy, washing floors, etc

Items 6- 10: 27things.com stuff. I've been seriously procrastinating the last few loose ends that need to be tied to make the most recent version of this site *really* finished.

Items 11-26: Emails. The last time I spoke with my dad, he asked me to email my stepsister. 2 of my oldest friends have been emailing me lately, one in particular, about 20 times wondering why the hell I don't reply. Deb has been totally neglected but still wants me to visit toronto and I'm starting to feel excrutiating guilt every time I refer to Rich as my friend as it's been a dog's age since i sent or replied to one of his emails.

Item 27: finish this coffee, grab the diskman and listen to my most recent purchase (the smoking pope's destination failure) while partaking in an extra, extra long walk with my doggie.

I had a very frightening realization while at the MTX show this week - Dr. Frank looks alot like my dad.

I mentioned it yesterday to John, while we were cruising to BestBuy. He laughed. "I thought the same thing!"

Needless to say, this puts a major damper on my hot, rawkstar crush.

Last night John, Krystl and I took off to see the Mister T Experience at Fitzgeralds on Whiteoak. But first, a couple of need-to-know factoids:

1. I love Dr. Frank. He is an amazing song writer, and an awesome musician who rarely gets enough credit for the things he's done for the modern day (pop)punk music scene.

2. Despite how much I love MTX, last night was the first time I've seen a live performance.

3. I have a tendancy to morph into a gushing ball of goop when put in front of someone I truly admire.

So, Krystl came over bearing gifts - a framed quote from, of all people, frankenstein (see post title) - and we set out to drink beers. Eventually, we jumped in a cab and hit Fitzgeralds for the show. Once there, we resumed alcohol consumption and joked about how old we were compared to most of the other patrons. Unlike the old days, when I would try and scam merch for free, I did my part to support the band by picking up the new CD (a steal at $10) and a t-shirt.

Eventually Dr. Frank and crew took the stage and rocked my socks off by opening with my favorite MTX song, Sack Cloth and Ashes (see extended entry for lyrics). I don't know what else to say about the performance except that it totally rocked. The band was tight and the crowd was small. Perfect. Frank even did a few solo acoustic numbers while the band took a break.

Afterwards, John and Krystl applied the peer pressure, forcing me to go up and say hi to Dr. Frank. I introduced myself and John, who Frank is familar with and we talked for a few. We bought him a beer and monopolized him for about 30 minutes, talking politics and immigration (his wife is from England). There was a little bit of "you're the greatest" gushing and I do believe i referred to Tony Blair as the anti-christ at one point, but I think I did a decent job of not repeating the whole Joe Queer incident.

In true 27 fashion, I started out today with a monster hangover. Once regaining some semblance humanity, I cleaned up and took some self portraits of me in my new MTX heart t-shirt. You can excuse the horrible lighting - being less than human, I had to keep the lights dimmed and adjust the pics with photoshop. Click to see larger views.

Too much gaming and housewifing. Not enough thinking and blogging.

It's not like I don't have stories to share... like the one about Bebe Buell or my trip to New Mexico. I'll try to muster some motivation one day soon.

27 + 4 Things about 31

(elaboration to come)

I had the best intentions when I switched over to the 2004 design. This was to be the year I really get back into my blog and did away with my neglectful habits.

But then the sickness came... creeping up on me since Xmas time and finally landing a swift blow to the kidneys last week. Suddenly, even something as simple as walking the dog has become a painful task.

I often forget what a go-goer I am. When walking, I move at a brisk pace. When cleaning, I charge non-stop through the mess until it's over. Quick and hopefully painless. I never imagined I would have to pace myself when walking to the mailbox or towel-drying my hair. Everything leaves me gasping for breath.

So this is it, my new look for 2004. There are still a few additional pages that need to be added (ie. my bio, colophone and links), but once everything is set up, I hope the new site will be a bit of a departure from past versions. It's my goal for 2004 to have a site that is different and not just in the way it looks.

Please let me know if you discover anything has gone a bit wonky. I don't have time nor patience to review every entry in my archive, so there may very well be instances where images are blowing up my tables or who know what else.

Anyway, hope every had a great holiday and good things to come in the new year.

Welcome, Go Fishers!

I'm sorry I don't have more recent reading for you, but with parental visits, a new year, EAD crap, work woes and a whole new 27 Things for 2004, I've been just a little more than very busy.

Thanks for stopping by.

Yesterday, we celebrated my parents' last night in the Big H by treating them to dinner at Fogo de Choa. Fogo is a Brazillian Churrascaria, which is basically an all you can eat meatfest. Although they have a traditional salad bar, the meat is served from giant skewers offered up by Gaucho chefs.

Each diner is presented with a disk. One side is red and the other green. When the green side is facing up, the numerous Gauchos appear offering everything from pork tenderloin to bottom sirloin. Your selection is sliced off a sword-like skewer directly onto your plate. Every bit of lamb, chicken, beef and pork is unbelievably delicious. To top everything off, the service is flawless.

At one point during the meal a staff member approached my mother and politely asked, "You're not finished already are you?"

Despite all the media hype about Mad Cow, the place was totally packed. While BSE was definitely the table topic of choice, it didn't seem to stop anyone from stuffing their face full of beef.

Mmm, meat.

My father's favorite xmas story has to be the one about the Mennonite Turkey from Snelgrove Fleamarket.

Every Sunday, we would buy homemade sausage, smoked pepperettes and other free-range meats from the Kitchener Mennonites. Dressed in their traditional garb, they sold poultry, eggs and other meats from their white trailer near the livestock auction.

Click the thumbail for a larger view of Maggie chillin' on the couch the day after her visit to Saddam's rat hole.

Yesterday we returned from an overnight trip to San Antonio and Austin with my parents. In a weak attempt at foresight, John and I had decided to drop Mags off at her usual groomers to be boarded from Sunday (the day my parents arrived) until the day we got home from our intended roadtrip.

Initially, everything went as planned. We managed to make it home just in time for my parents to check into our appartments guest suite and left them to settle in while we zoomed off to pick up my girl.

Like many families, mine has it's Xmas stories. Each of my parents have their favorite, which they never fail to tell during the holiday season.

My mom's story takes place the year after she left my dad, shortly before I turned 19. The house had been sold and ownership was to transfer on January 1st. Most of the furniture had been divided and sent to the respective abodes, the rest tossed or given away. Also tossed that year was our family "Charlie Brown Christmas Tree". It was the very same tree we had set up and decorated since my birth, and by that point it was certainly showing its age. It was my mom who had dubbed it "the Charlie Brown tree" and it was she, also, who decided it was time for it to go.

If you decide to take part in the 3 1/2 hour conclusion of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, do yourself one favor: don't go for the big drink.

'Twas the week before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a dish, spoon or cup was left unused by my spouse;
The laundry was strewn across the sofa without care,
In hopes that a cleaning lady soon would be there;

With only five more days until my parents arrive, it's finally time to get down and clean the hell up.

Animated Discourse, is a great article about social and political commentary in adult-oriented cartoons.

"... South Park, bane of religious moralists everywhere, is actually kind of right-wing.

"Not conservative. But not liberal, either. An intensely political show - really - South Park almost always comes down on the libertarian side of an argument. Its targets range from environmental crusaders to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to government-run sex education."

It's a shame the article doesn't mention Futurama - the retrospective mockery of all things 21st century.

Last week was a whirlwind of matchprints, panic-y phone calls from the press, curt exchanges with the INS, and horrible news from John's family. In short, the book is done, I still don't have an EAD and John's sister passed away in her sleep.

This is how next week is shaping up:
Monday: meeting with employers re: future of my position with the book; get TX drivers license
Tuesday: funeral
Wednesday: get up at 4 am and wait in "the line" at the Northpoint INS office
Thursday: clean house
Friday: clean more
Saturday: shop for food and gifts
Sunday: get parents from airport

Sounds like fun, non?

Hey! In all the worry about EADs and magazine proofs, I have neglected to mention that my mom and stepdad are coming to Houston for the week of Xmas.

The holidays are a pretty big event for my mom's side of the family. She has 3 sisters, each with a husband and 2 kids. Add in our family of 3 (now 4 with John) and my grandparents. How many is that? Too many. Infact, the extended family likes to refer to itself as "the gang". What else would you expect from a bunch of Newfies?

This time last year, I was wishing for my EAD. Wouldn't you know it... here I am again.

I should explain. The lapse in my work eligibility is my own fault. I foolishly took the word of some random INS Support Service worker, rather than investigating the fact for myself. The end result is that I did not apply for my renewal 90 days in advance of the current permit's expiration.

Today's Globe & Mail sports a rare instance of political commentary that doesn't make me want to gouge my own eyes out. I recommend that everyone read it, whether you be Left or Right, American, Canadian, British or otherwise. Mull it over and think about how it applies to you and your media habits.

"Eric, along with a growing number of North Americans, has left Earth and taken up permanent residence on Planet Left. I asked him about books he had read this year, and he unsurprisingly named the bestselling Stupid White Men, in which portly self-promoter Michael Moore suggests that George W. Bush was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden ... As you might guess, Eric's views on international relations were less than nuanced.

That's right folks. It's 9:07pm on Friday night and I'm still at work!

Weeee! *thunk*

Before I slip off into my nightly coma, I just have to say that I am a genius! Ok, maybe not pure genius, and perhaps not even an original genius, but I have to insist that I did this all by myself...

Somehow, tonight while thinking about my blog makeover, my mind tracked back to a project I was attempting to do for Brian. I had been trying to hack and slash a basic cgi mesage board script into something that he could use to easily update his fortune cookie style OOCQ (out of context quote) script. After many failed attempts, due mainly to my kindergarten level understanding of java and cgi scripting, I gave up.

Zoom forward to tonight, when it dawned on me that I might be able to rig an MT blog that would write the new quotes into a .js file... Guess what? I did it and it actually works! For a demo, look in the side bar (on the main index page only) under "testing my .js blog".

Helvetica vs Arial: Can you see a difference?

This is a great little test that will probably not interest anyone but me. If you're into the whole font scene, the test also has some other cool links and articles pertaining to Helvetica vs Arial. This would have been a great addition to Big Red Marker, had I not turned into a lazy sloth that never bothered to transition the site from GM to MT.

(the test came via Robot Johnny, a site I saw today on Blamb!.)

On a somewhat related note, it's looking like I won't be getting my EAD renewal until sometime in January. Maybe I'll use the free time to revive BRM and use some of my experiences from the past year in magazineville as a motivation.

In answer Krystl's comment from the post below - crazy time isn't over yet! Infact, our magazine office is currently a whirlwind of wayward paperclips and used fax cover sheets. Every pen in the place has been pulled from the office supply shelf and left in one of various clumps beside the fax machine, on the proofing table etc.

Yesterday, my red pen ran out of ink.

In my search for inspiration, I feel like I have now looked at every single blog on the internet. For every unique and interesting blog, there are at least 100 cookie cutter blogs.

If the medium is the message, can I get away with a style over substance situation, where in my actual design and coding takes precident over my content? That would make my life much easier. *wink*

In other site design related news, my new plan is to rework some of my older designs and add them as skins... for when we feel like reliving 27's glory days. For those who remember, Orange Peel was definately my all time favorite design.

Can you believe I had not one, not two, but three whole days off?

I've been diligently working away on a new design. At least 3 versions trashed already. I'm still torn over whether or not to go with more doodads or revert to a straight up blog with nothing else cluttering the page. At this point my traffic has slowed so much due to lack of posting and people reading via rss that I could probably do whatever the heck I wanted with little impact to my readership. I had some cool, unblog-like design ideas but John gave me the whole usability speech and got me back on track.

It's a struggle to be the same but different.

For once, I can actually say that I'm too busy to blog and it wouldn't be a word of a lie. I have to constantly remind myself that I'm not the first person in the history of the world to have to work for 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week. It's just too easy to feel sorry for myself.

At the moment, the book is a shambles, but my new found optimism tells me when all is said and done, it will be a beauty.

My right eye feels bruised, and I'm toying with the idea of bringing my Pond's wipes into the office. Was is it about sitting in that little room, reading everything over for the 30th time, that makes me feel like I haven't washed my face in a month?

In between (over)work and searching for a pea of inspiration in a million mediocre websites, I allow my eyes time to sleep.

Have you ever been so stressed that if felt like your brain was about to explode, send shards of ruptured skull shooting off in every direction? That was my afternoon. (Un)fortunately, my eyes ruptured instead. Tears of frustration kept me company until it was time to go home.

Tonight I showed John some of the concepts that are up for emulation in my new design. He seemed impressed but asked when the hell I was going to find the time. It will be an epic project.

I want to do something super fantabulous this time. Something perfectly validated. Something perfectly me.

Last seen headed West along I-10.

Now that my press cycle is coming to an end, I'm itching for a bit of a redesign. For the past couple days, I've been browsing all kinds of portals and blogrolls looking for some inspiration. The problem is, my press cycle has not yet ended and so, I'm still quite short on time.

Yes, I'm looking for a hand out... or maybe a leg up.

I'd like to know what sites you think look cool, neat-o or fantabulous. I'm not promising that I won't mock your horrible taste, but I'm interested in seeing what other people like. I'd also like to see any portals or design review sites you may know of. I need some eye candy to fee my muse.

6:28 and I'm still at work. If I'm lucky, I will get to FedEx before it closes at 7. Missing it will suck only because it means that I will have stayed this late for naught.

Dreaming of the time when this is over. That time may very well be December 9th - the day when my EAD expires. The wheels have been set in motion for a renewal, but my application went in much later than required. As much as I love having a paycheck, right this minute, a mandatory leave of absence wouldn't be so bad.

I'm so tired and distracted by the thought of driving home to Dr. Frank that I tried to eject the CD I'm trying to burn without burning it. I want to go out for Krystl's birthday, get home before 7, have my Saturdays back and stop feeling like I'm constantly dragging around my own lifeless corpse.

I picked up "... And the Women Who Love Them" this weekend. It's my biggest dose of MTX since I left TO and lost all of my coveted mp3s.

Being the retarded bitch that I am, I immediately tore open the cd (ok I struggled with it for about 20 mins) and planted a big kiss on Dr. Frank's picture. Soley for John's benefit, of course. What kind of wife would I be if I didn't have some kind of punkrock crush.

Speaking of punkrock crushes, my super-secret boyfriend, Joe King, is coming to town next Saturday! As planned, we will be meeting at the Engine Room. Don't tell John!

My pumpkin just turned into a charriot!

Don't let the price tag spook you... it's actually a 2003 so we got a really great deal. I can hardly wait until tomorrow - it's my turn to drive!

Congratulations, Paul, for getting 200 votes in the Toronto Mayoral Elections.

Today is Krystl's birthday!! Wee!

Insert moment of silence here

I suggested that we play God Save the Queen today at 11:11 and my co-workers looked at me like I'd grown a second head.

Making cheese and broccoli soup on what feels like my first day off in ages.

Last week Katie spent Saturday night with us. We sat down to watch PeeWee's Big Adventure and I was alseep on the floor long before PeeWee got anywhere near the Alamo. Sunday was allergies, Ninfa's and Toys R Us. Monday I was straight back to work.

Speaking of last week, on Friday Courtney told me that it takes a special kind of person, and I was it. The new girl said I'm so patient. You wouldn't have believed any of that if you'd seen me the other day. I finally reached the end of my rope and yelled at poor Cesar about the air conditioning blasting on my desk while it's 60 fucking degrees outside. In the end I stormed off to Target and picked up a $17 sweater.

It's busy time in Magazine land, so I will most likely post even less than normal. I picked up Civilizations III this weekend, so my free time is split between that, SWG and general life stuff.

Send positive publishing vibes my way and make lots of Expedient Approval prayers to the god of Corrections and Sign-Offs.

Electronics giant Sony Corp. yesterday bowed to intense pressure from Quebec politicians and decided to delete video-game scenes featuring separatist terrorists engaging in bloody gunfights in a Toronto shopping mall and subway.
- Globe and Mail :: October 24, 2003

The first four levels of Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain challenged players to destroy a fictitious terrorist group, the Quebec Liberation Front, thus stopping attacks on the city of Toronto. As you can see, it didn't take long for the powers that be to get offended and call on Sony to pull the scenarios.

The Globe article goes on to quote various sources from Sony, the Bloc, Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal (is "Quebeckers" even a word?) and former FLQ member, Jacques Lanctôt.

"I couldn't care less; they can do whatever they want at Sony," said Mr. Lanctôt, now a book publisher. "We certainly don't share the same opinions, but I'm not going to go to war against those who don't share my opinions."

*Cough* Okay, Jacques. I guess we're just going to have to take your word for it on that one. I mean, it's not like you have a history of, you know, acting out in the name of your beliefs.

Since happening upon Terra Nova I have been devouring all kinds of other MMOG sites and articles. My latest find is "The Mystery of SWG" by Timothy Burke.

Whatever the reasons ... the fact is that Star Wars: Galaxies is a major disappointment. Combined with the failure of The Sims: Online, it more than justifies Mythic head Mark Jacobs’ characterization of this moment as a gloomy one for MMOGs. Even with my faith in the potentialities of the genre, it’s hard to look ahead with any anticipation: all I see in other games are small tweaks and adjustments in a general formula whose possibilities are demonstrably exhausted.

Suddenly, I'm seeing MMORPG's from a whole new angle. The prospect of studying games seems a lot more interesting than actually playing them. Where is Dayna when I want to talking gaming, anyway?

I came across a great MMORPG blog via Boing Boing today. Cory linked to an interested piece about how the fires in California may impact gamers around the world.

"All Sony Online Entertainment customer service support is closed due to the wild fires raging throughout San Diego and the proximity of those fires to the SOE offices. Normal operations will resume once this local emergency is over..."

In other words, a firestorm has knocked out the government that rules over 750,000 accounts. There will be no police officers on the streets tonight. If you're in the mood to do some random looting and griefing, now's the time.

The quote comes from Edward Castronova, over at Tera Nova, a collaborative blog about MMORPGs and other virtual worlds. It seems to be a great read if you're into this kind of thing. Topics range from the one above to statistics about what percentage of men play female avatars to families that game together.

Of particular interest is the chart demonstrating the growth rate of synthetic worlds. I've added their RSS to my reader, if this is your cup of tea, I suggest you do the same. Even if you're not into gaming, it makes for interesting reading.

If you don't think this is funny, you're just not nerdy enough. Keep trying though, it will come eventually.

Also, I'd like to acknowledge Jason Pultz for being the first person to ever go to BC and get better as opposed to turning into some kind of smack junkie and/or meth head. Congratulations, Jason!

Read more to see a small preview of my pictures from the magazine photoshoot I worked at 2 weeks ago. The shoot took place at the Corinthian. Chances are, you can not even afford to breathe the air in the place, so don't bother planning an event there. Though, I must say, the place is stunning, as were the ladies.

Obviously, these are not the editorial photos that will be in the magazine, just my personal documentary of the shoot.

Friday Five: Things

1. Name five things in your refrigerator.
A styrofoam container of wonton soup that I made John order but didn't feel well enough to eat. An empty case of canned mineral water. Some pico de gallo that is ready for the trash. A family size package of pepperoni sticks. A lime.

2. Name five things in your freezer.
3 bags of precooked chicken breast that I purchased at John's request which then turned out to be not at all what he wanted. Lots of ice in our icemaker. A variety of frozen meat.

3. Name five things under your kitchen sink.
Liquid dishwasher detergent. A bucket full of cleaning supplies. Doggie bath wipes. Unopened package of paper towel. J-cloths.

4. Name five things around your computer.
A rubbermaid storage container full of assorted items brought with me from Toronto. An octupus-like powerbar. A subwoofer. Catfood crumbs. One dog looking for catfood crumbs.

5. Name five things in your medicine cabinet.
Vitamin C with bioflavinoids. Tampons. New and used inhalers. Qtips. Polysporin.

Before I moved to Houston, I kind of had the impression that Texans really didn't say "yall" all the time. I'm sure this was based on the fact that John rarely uses the expression.

In reality, it is used a lot. Infact, Krystl (an english major) has even defended the use of "yall's", claiming innovation on the part of Texans. You know, French and Spanish both have plurals for "your". *shudder* Nice try Krystl, but you won't be finding "yall's" the dictionary any time soon.

Yesterday my employers pulled me aside as I was on my way home for the day. Apparently, there were some things they had been meaning to discuss with me.

"Oh, here we go," I thought to myself.

As it turns out, they have been very impressed with my wonderful attitude (*boggle*) and I have been awarded a rather healthy raise. It's not that I don't feel like I deserve a raise. I DO. I just felt like the news totally came out of left field.

Good thing some Cubbies' fan didn't grab hold of it on the way down.

Lucky me! I spent my entire weekend sniffing, sneezing and blowing. And not the fun kind of blowing either. The omg-i-have-clown-nose-from-so-much-blowing kind. I took yesterday off from work. I'm back now. I am miserable. I am wondering just how many lungs I have left to cough up.

Dear People Who Have Been Attempting to Contact Me Via Telephone,

I am a neglectful bitch. I admit it.

love,
Dusty

Court, I sent you an email. Krys, I have your secret spy materials.

I feel like I have a killer hangover despite the fact that last night I only had one drink. Maybe it was the 14 hour photoshoot.

The shoot was amazing even if it did leave me feeling like a walking zombie. It's days like this that remind me of why I love my profession so much. Now if only I could spend more time art directing and less time answer questions about logging into the company website...

Anyway, I took a ton of photos. As soon as I recover my camera bag (and USB cable) I will post my little "Anatomy of a Fashion Shoot" photo essay for your viewing pleasure. In the meantime, I must hunter and gather up some advil.

1. I never thought I'd say this, but I think I may have eaten too much bacon.

2. Received a very unexpected call from the estranged paternal unit last night. See title.

3. I'm not working nearly as hard as I should be.

4. Press day looms.

5. I can't confront you, I never could do that which would hurt you, so try and be cool.

My old boss, Davis, once told me that if he could have any job, real or ficticious, he would want to be a Corporate Entertainer. As a company's CE, it would be his job to go about the offices telling jokes, acting goofy, singing songs, entertaining the employees and boosting company moral. The best comparison to this job would be clown at a children's hospital... only it would pay a hell of a lot more.

Since then I've often thought about what my ulitmate dream job would be. Honestly, I have no idea. On one hand, I'd like to be a magazine reviewer or maybe a design critic. Perhaps I'd live happily ever after as a dog petter or even a doggie playmate. (No! Not the THAT kind of playmate!)

I'm kind of amazed that Davis put so much thought into the idea. What about you? As I said, any job. Real, fictcious, totally made up on the spot... what would you be?

On my way into work today, I saw a guy trimming hedges. The weather is so sweet right now, I wished with all my heart that I could have his job for a day.

"He jumped about a foot in the air and started to run out when I appeared in front of him, but I had automatic initiative and rolled a 20 on my dexterity check."

Nothing like a little RPG-speak to color an interesting story.

In other news, I'm trying my damnedest to see the light at the end of the tunnel in regards to some career issues you may or may not know I've been dealing with. John offered me a "get out of jail free" card last night and it was a hugest weight off my shoulders. Despite the nagging urge, I'm not going to run out and throw it on the table just yet, but rather, keep it close to my chest and wait things out a little bit longer.

Sorry if that sounds cryptic, but google isn't always your friend when it comes to blogging about certain topics.

I finally got around to updating my bookmarks. There were some people I wanted to ad, such as Krystl's Wonderlust and Life and Times by Sean Graham. Krystl is my Htown girl and Sean is another Canadian trying to make sense of life in the USA. I'm too lazy and rushed to ad their links to this post, so don't be too lazy to clickie their names on the sidebar. (edit: apparently i'm also too lazy and rushed to throw the extra D on "add" *wink*)

I also removed a bunch of links, mainly because they were dead. If you know of a working URL for someone who once was and now is longer linked here, please fill me in. I may be a genius but I'm not a freaking mind reader. I'm about to purge the webring as well, so dead links will be forcefully removed and the cycle will actually be complete. If you're in and and not linking it, you have 1 week to get in touch with me. That means you, D.

I'd also like to point out that I've officially bailed from Blogshares because they decided to delete my user account for no apparent reason and without warning.

...and incase you were wondering, the weather here is absolutely beautiful. Don't try to deny it, you wish you were here.

I think I was late for work. That would explain why I rushed past Zoe without our usual morning chat. As I rounded the protruding corner of the reception desk, she literally flew out from behind it, landing right in my path.

"Did you hear that a plane flew into the World Tradecenter?" she demanded. I thought she was telling me some joke. In my mind's eye, I saw Hot Wheel sized airplanes swooping around low budget scale models of the two towers.

I answered her, "No..." and waited for the punch line. There wasn't one.

It was a press day. While so many of my coworkers scurried about my desk, worrying about loved ones and updating each other on the latest breaking news, I worked. The day went by like a stop motion sequence where everyone buzzed around at double speed and I worked on at my usual pace, as if oblivious.

From my desk, the wall to wall windows that faced downtown offered the most pristine view of empty skyscrapers and an utterly vacant blue sky.

I'm sad to report that I will not be able to vote for my old friend, Paul Lewin, in the upcoming Toronto Mayoral Election.

That said, I'd like to pass the buck on to my enormous *cough* Toronto readership. Paul is a great guy and would surely do a stand up job as mayor.

Now go get voting!

It's a damn good thing that I'm working my ass off here, otherwise you might have missed out on this gem:

My profile would read something like:
Nuclear weapons laboratory government computer hacker, rides motorcycles (cruisers), writes poetry, shoots gun, paints landscapes, plays guitar, reads far east philosophy (sun tzu, lau tzu, Hakagure, etc) loves kinky big dick freidman, guiness and jameson, pool playin, children lovin viking.

Take it from me, he's a real keeper! Unfortunately for all you single ladies, he's not available.

This weekend was our first anniversay and wouldn't you know it, I got sick. More details about that another time... for now let's focus on why Jesus doesn't think I'm sunny enough.

Due to the aforementioned illness, I took Tuesday off work. Ofcourse, today I'm met with not only a giant pile in my IN box, but the news that the office manager has resigned. That's 3 office managers in less than 6 month, if you're keeping track. You're probably not, but I am.

I feel like my head is going to explode from all the things that are currently driving me insane. Rather than bore you with demented rants and raves about everything from my dog having worms to my job to Houston drivers, here is a survey that I cribbed from Jody.

I also cribbed the term "Cribbed" from Jen @ Circadian Shift.

27 Things I Have Been Up To Lately

1. Playing tennis afterwork. I might not suck in a few more weeks.
2. Going to the beach again.
3. Playing a new MMORPG. Guess which one.
4. Atkins ~ take 3.
5. Working too many bridal shows. Ok, maybe only 2, but that's 2 too many.
6. Driving past ridiculous billboards that bradcast silly ad slogans like the one in the title.
7. Wishing I had some pork right now because this day is dragging.

Just another thing for Toronto to add to their 2003 "I Survived" list.

Freakin' office phones have calling card calls blocked so I'm not even able to call my mom in Montreal to do a disaster check-in call. Does anyone remember the James Burke Connections episode about this type of event?

Zoe Whittall is definately one of those people that you meet and later regret that you didn't make more time to get to know better. You can't necessarily call these people friends but aquaintance is too removed. They end up falling somewhere in between in that vague collection of people you just know.

That doesn't mean I don't love her bunches. Now she has her own website where I can go catch up on her literary adventures and find links to all her articles and junk. Weee!

Buy her book. It rocks.

July 12 was Jason Pultz's 26th birthday. Seeing as how the party was in T.O. I was not able to grace him with my pointy-boobed, mitten-handed presence. Happy belated birthday, Jason.

Jason has stuff to buy also. Buy it.

Speaking of Jason, remember last month when I made up that crazy story about the origin of my name? Well, shortly after I noticed this installment of Comic Strip... coincidence or what?

Sometime on Friday afternoon I rubbed my eyes. Actually I had been rubbing my eyes all day, but this particular time I noticed my right eye felt as if it had recently been poked.

Generally, a poke in the eye isn't something that you don't notice. It's not like a bump on the shin or something that several days later, forces you to retrace your steps in order to figure out how the hell you got such a nasty bruise. Outside of my admitted staring problem, I am not always the queen of observation, but I highly doubt I would miss being poked in the eye.

1. Yes, I live.
2. To those that keep checking back, I'm sorry I haven't written anything for a while.
3. I guess it was an impromptu blog vacation.
4. I was sucked back into that which shall not be named, but now something even more unspeakable has emerged.
5. I still blog in my head, if that counts for anything. Too bad these blogs never make it to my site.
6. Certain things have me feeling really restricted. I can't say everything I want to say. This really bothers me alot.
7. Anyone interested can always email me.
8. That's all for now.

Happy Canada Day!

Incase you needed further proof of my retardedness, I'll tell you that I celebrated my national holiday by singing "O Canada" to myself on my commute to work. Tonight I'm making flapjacks, beaver tails and back bacon for dinner accompanied by a nice cold bottle of Molson Canadian.

OK, not really, but it sounds yummy.

One year ago today, I crossed the world's largest undefended border with no intention of returning in the standard 3 to 14 days. The "1" under the Number of Entries heading on my visa was X'ed out, and as they say, the rest is history.

What a long strange trip it's been.

Guess what? The samples of our latest issue arrived today. You may, as was John, be thinking, "Yeah, so?" Well, this isn't just any old issue, it's my first issue. The one with all my contributions. You just know that I lovingly checked on every ad I designed (despite how painful some of them were) as well as the few editorial pages I worked on.

When my editor called, I let her know they had arrived. "Did you see your name?" she asked, "I was hoping it would be a suprise for you!" My name? My name in the masthead! I hadn't even thought to look. It was all I could do to stop myself from throwing the phone gleefully into the air. I just wanted to run to her office where I'd laid out the books, so I could see for myself.

It's not my first masthead credit - I was also credited in the Gay Paper - but this is a beautiful, full color glossy! Go me! So I just had to share.

One more thing... If you love the smell of a new magazine as much as I do, you should know... it smells 27 million times better when it's your own magazine.

Yesterday I was archiving some photos from a recent photoshoot. They were all beautiful pictures but there was one thing that really bothered me. Many of the photos included pictures of a man dressed in formal attire and flipflops. Granted they were made of leather and probably very expensive, but flipflops none the less.

Here is my problem: flipflops are not shoes. Slapping a piece of leather, rubber or foam under your foot is not the same as putting on a pair of shoes.

One year ago today, I got my visa. Check back on Monday for a special Coming To America post, detailing my immigration story so far.

And on an unrelated note, K was the only person who bothered to call me on the story about how I got my name. Go back and reread it carefully to determine which details give away the fact that it's a complete sham.

I came across something recently where someone had said they would rather read something interesting every once in a while, than a bunch of irrelevant nonesense 10 times a day. I can't claim this will be interesting, but at least it's not 10 times a day.

Saturday I went out for a day on the town with my new Htown friend, K. Yay K! I may not go around broadcasting my friendlessness, but if the truth be told, I haven't had the easiest time meeting people since I've been here. The people in my building are mostly self obsesssed 30-somethings who enjoy things like the Saturday poolside meat market, parking their SUVs in the middle of the street to make out with thier boyfriends and driving through our complex like they own the place. Not exactly my kind of people.

It should come as no surprise that I am constantly being asked about my name. Dusty is my "real" name, my given name, my Christened name, the name that appears on all my ID. It's not short for anything, especially not Dustina. If I ever catch you spelling it with an I or IE instead of a Y, I will spurn you like you've never been spurned!

Like many of you, I too have wondered why my parents chose to name me Dusty. The number one question about the origin of my name has to be, "Were you named after Dusty Springfield" with "Were your parents cowboys or hippies" coming in a close second.

I was not named after Ms. Springfield.

One of the lessons I have learned about blogging over the past 2 years is that it's never a good idea to write about your job. Granted, there are exceptions to this rule, but I know at least 2 people who were fired specifically because of their web journals. This may or may not explain why I have so little to blog about when I'm busy at work. Today, there was another reason...

The past few days I have been losing the battle against the unorganization monster that likes to follow me where ever I go. As a result, things have been a little rocky - even if it's all in my head. I can deal with this.

What I can't deal with is spending 5+ hours on the phone with various tech support types because our office internet connection is down. This makes a Dusty very tired and low on patience. Especially when the ISP finally admits that there has been a network outage in our area.

Thanks for wasting my entire day.

This week has been the worst and each passing day shows no sign of improvement. When I am once again able to say something that isn't a bitch or a whine, you'll be the first to hear it.

I think the Exactitudes photo project is an incredible idea. Members of the same subculture sporting the same pose demonstrate just how similar we can be in our attempts to be different.

I thought that Andrea would be interested in this - she always has links to interesting projects.

(this link comes courtesy of boing boing)

Here for your viewing pleasure, some night time photos I took while driving along 59 with John a few weeks ago. Click the images for a larger view.

When I was in highschool there was a science teacher who kept what he referred to as the "weeping wall." Basically, he would assign all his students a random number and then post everyone's grades for thier annonymous viewing (dis)pleasure. I never had him as a teacher but my law classroom was across from his, so I'd often see his students huddled around trying to oggle their grades.

Until recently, there was a very tall stack of boxes full of media kits beside my chair. The stack effectively blocked most of the window next to my desk, leaving me with a cropped view of the tree out front of our building. On several occaisions I have made reference to the stack, calling it my weeping wall and telling co-workers that I etch little lines in "the wall" indicating my number of days in the media kit prison.

Two days ago I finally mustered enough energy and motivation to move the boxes into the storage closet. I am now the proud owner of a beautifully unobstructed view of the office parking lot!

Today I casually watched the maintenance man stick those evil parking violation stickers on all the cars without proper parking permits. If you've not experienced the cruelty of such stickers, I'll tell you that they are impossible to remove and almost always glued to the driver's side window.

Then came a massive rainstorm.

So I got my kicks by watching very annoyed parking lot patrons scurrying through the pouring rain to the refuge of the vehicle only to be greeted by a nasty neon green violation sticker. Pure entertainment!

Lucky for me, I don't have our truck today, even so... I have a permit.

You know what absolutely sucks about Thursday? It's not Friday.

Despite how much it bites to work for the weekend, I'm totally guilty of it. Less than three months into the new job and I'm already itching for a vacation.

*insert frowning face here*

On a more positive note, my boss lady told me recently that she was going through the motions that would eventually lead to me being hired on as a permanent employee. Both the agency and the company went above and beyond to get me here, and for that I'm grateful. The change will mean better money (hopefully) and less hassle come payday so I can guarantee there won't be any tears shed of over my departure.

At least not on my end.

I won't lie. I really, really need a haircut. I've been going to this one particular salon since I moved to Houston, but I'm continually dissatisfied. The last time I was actually irate.

This is what I want in a stylist:
1. someone who doesn't need me to tell them what looks good on me... that's their job.
2. someone who listens to me when I say, "I'm not a stylist, so I need something I can maintain at home," and then actually takes that into consideration
3. someone who has the slightest clue about what is currently fashionable and not fashionable. I actually had some girl give me a Monica Lewinsky cut. So not cool.

Back in Toronto, I had a really great stylist at Coupe Bizarre on Queen Street. I could sit in her chair and tell her what I wanted in a haircut without actually describing or picking one and she would always come up with something awesome. Years of bad haircuts have left me with a bit of a salon phobia, which I guess, is why I enjoyed having a buzz cut for so long. It's hard as hell to screw up and I could always do it myself.

I know not many Htown locals pass by here, but if anyone can offer up any suggestions I'd appreciate it. I'd really like to find someone I like - I'm so sick of bad hair.

A quick shout out to Box from ChipBox, for including me in his/her (?) MayDay favorites. (Scroll down a bit for the list)

While I'm on the subject of photo memes, Tracey has a new one planned for the month of July. 26 Things: an international photographic scavenger hunt. The assignment: seek out the twenty six themes/objects on the list and photograph them over the given period of time.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to participate in this one, but you know I signed up for the reminder anyway.

Dog Blog is like Picture Yourself for pups. Unfortunately, you have to submit the picture for them... or maybe you don't.

Keep your eyes peeled for my dog Mags, coming soon to Dog Blog.

edit: and here she is!

Now that the magazine is finally done (for another 4 months) and the car buying epic is over (for another 6 weeks), I hope to get back into the swing of blogging.

John and I have joint project planned that we think has the potential to be alot of fun. We had hoped to launch it this week, but we have yet to do a stitch of work on the new site. I'll keep you posted on that front.

Other than that, the only news I have to share is that I got a new pair of German Army pants in Galveston on Saturday. This may seem trivial to some, but from what I understand, the Germans have switched over to the standard UN fatigues and as such, these moleskin pants are becoming hard to find.

If you ever happen to see a pair, grab them. As far as I'm concerned they are the most comfortable pants ever made. The more you wash them, the softer the moleskin gets. Not to mention, the way they hug your butt kinda makes you wonder about those Germans.

Meanwhile, back at the car dealership...

John stood among the Elantras shaking his head. While the sales woman and I had been browsing, he had decided to jump into the driver's seat. Unfortunately, the Hyundai Elantra GT Hatchback is just a little shy on headroom. When I say "shy" I mean to say that his head was cocked at a 45 degree angle.

From the day I first arrived in the US, I have been anticipating the moment when I will finally have my own car. Unlike my home town of Toronto, Houston isn't exactly pedestrian friendly. Public transportation is a joke compared to the TTC, and if it isn't too damn hot to walk somewhere without fainting from heat exhaustion, your destination is not even remotely with in walking distance.

As it stands, John and I share the F150. Every morning we get up together, I drive him to work and then head off to my office on the other side of town. At 5:30 I head back over to pick him up and we drive home together. If you did the math, you'd see that I spend approximately 3.5 hours commuting every day. I know I'm not the only one out there enduring a lengthy commute but the truth is that my office is less than 40 minutes from home. Despite the fact that sharing a car saves us alot of money, we're not conserving any mileage, gas or even the environment by doing so.

This week a big old rainbow appeared in the sky and at the end we found a pot of gold.

While driving home from work on Friday, I compsed a nice long post all about putting the magazine to bed... finally. Unfortunately, once I got in I was immediately distracted.

While giving my doggie her daily afterwork pets I noticed something unusual. Every little scratch seemed to send her into fits of delirium. At first I thought perhaps the grocery store kibbles I picked up last week were causing some skin trouble. Normally, I buy lamb and rice food from the pet store but in a fit of busyness I was forced to grab something from the local Kroger.

So I scratched the poor girl a bit more and got up to get her leash. Then I noticed something even more unusual and equally disturbing. Fleas. The poor girl was covered in fleas. Mags is a house dog. She's not one of these mutts that lay around in the yard all day rolling in ant hills and dirt. In the seven years I've had her, she's never had fleas.

Needless to say, I forgot all about my blog entry. The rest of the weekend was spent de-flea-ing cat, dog and home, driving around on mini road trips and housecleaning. Not much time left over for blog posting or even reading.

Back to the magazine... Had I posted my little composition, I would have been jumping the gun. This morning there were 10 more signatures waiting for my approval. I even found an error - I guess she wasn't ready for bed afterall.

I am one of those people who have been graced with an unusually large brain forehead. In highschool I had a group of classmates that liked to shout "clear for landing on Dusty's forehead!" They said it was all in good fun, and I'm not bitter. Not bitter at all. *grumble*

In my mid twenties I had another friend trick me into shaving my head. How would one trick a person into shaving their head? She had been trying to convince me to do it for some time. When I asked her to cut my hair, she purposely gave me the worst haircut ever. I had no alternative but to shave my head to avoid looking like a total freak.

Luckily, the shaved head look worked for me. Compliments flew. But there was something else... after years of mocking and hiding behind bangs, the forehead grew on me. Maybe I just got used to seeing it there, reflecting light back at me every time I looked in the mirror. After a while, I stopped resenting its presence and learned to love it. I embraced my big ol' forehead.

Currently, though, I'm pitying the poor thing. Sunburn has left a scorched gradient that fades from bright red at the hair line to tan at the eyebrows. I ordered a gallon of lotion but it's already too late. My beautiful forehead is already starting to resemble a crocodile's ass. With any luck, it will pass quickly and the old gal will be restored to her former splendor.

For the next few days, you may refer to me as Pinky. Pink face, pink legs, pink collar bone etc. From now on, I swear I will always wear my sunscreen at the beach. I promise. No pictures from the fry up, but it was a stunning day. Big waves, blue sky and tons of birds dive bombing for their lunch.

It was a nice follow-up to our Saturday night at the Poor Dumb Bastards show where we got sufficiently hammered and both managed to avoid making drunken asses of ourselves. Once the opening band started, I realized that I had neglected to bring my camera! Lots of great band pictures went untaken, but it was a blast none the less.

Being there made me miss all the shows I used to go to, and especially my punk partner in crime, Tracy. Time to crack out the old email address book and drop her a line, I guess.

For some reason, my server has decided not to load my php include. Why? I have no freaking clue. This was perhaps one of the longest weeks of my life and I've never been so happy to see Friday.

Remember when I said 14 days until the magazine goes to press? Make that 5. Despite that fact that it feels like I've done 9 days work, I actually overestimated the time left until deadline. By a week. Yes, I'm a true mathmagician.

Wake me up on Monday.

12 days until our magazine gets put to bed. I wish I had more time to write but by the time I get home, my brain is literally mush. Fortunately, I was able to finish Pattern Recognition last night. Great read, as I had expected. more on that later, I'm sure.

In the meantime, here's an excerpt from a comment I recently made on Rich's site:

Here's a story that no one on my blog will ever get...
The other night I was attempting to set up my usb camera on my linux system. Ofcourse i was using a tutorial to walk me through it.

First step:
The command for creating this directory is:
[bash]$ mkdir -m 777 /mnt/camera
So I type "[bash]$ mkdir -m 777 /mnt/camera" and hit enter.

Needless I'm now one degree smarter in the realm of 'nix.

Finally, time to post my May Day pics.

Friday I went to my INS fingerprinting appointment as planned, Saturday was the beach and dinner at the inlaws (and May Day!) and today has been run around town and clean the house day.

Having been so busy, I haven't had time to upload my May Day pics yet. This is manily due to the fact that I installed Linux on Thursday night, and haven't yet figured out how to get my photos off the camera.

If all else fails, I'll boot up windows and do it all that way... Having just installed Mandrake, I'm trying to ween myself off windows together.

Anyway. Must. Move. Away. From. Computer.

So bigredmarker.com, my art, design, etc site, has been left in the lurch again. When I originally created it I really wanted it to be an MT site. Now that it's here and all set to be Movable Typified, I don't feel like digging my hands in that deep. Instead, I surf around, contemplate tweaks I can make here and add links to my "design site" favorites folder. Hell, I've even considered reviving my old set of skins as part of a skin set for this site.

I keep telling John (and myself) that I'm going to revive bigredmarker. I had high hopes for that site and still come up with content for it. Too bad none of it ever makes it to the site.

When it comes to web development, I love to tinker. From adding comments with php to designing my own GreyMatter site to skinning to building a webring from a cgi skeleton. I've pretty much done it all or helped someone else do it.

Every now and then I like to dip my hands in really deep, like when I helped John convert his site from blogger to MT. It was my first MT design and though it was excrutiating, I learned a ton. It also took hours. About 18 straight. As a result the 27things build is so clean you can practically eat off it. For me, certain projects require that kind of devoted attention. If I were to build something over the span of several weeks, I would probably lose interest before the project reached completion.

Short attention span? Yup.

I will not take links from Boing Boing and pass them off as content. I will not take links from Boing Boing and pass them off as content. I will not take links from Boing Boing and pass them off as content.

...oh, hello!

So Snoop has a blog now, eh? (May or may not be work safe, folks.) Well, that's all fine and dandy, but I'm still waiting on the D-R-E.

I will not take links from Boing Boing and pass them off as content. I will not take links from Boing Boing and pass them off as content.

Everyone say happy 8th birthday to my dog, Mags. In celebration, I started the day off by yelling at her, but made it up to her later by bringing home her favorite treat.

That's right. Donuts.

As you may know, the ladies room in my office building is always an adventure in nasty town. Recently though, things have reached a new plateau.

There is at least one woman who finds it perfectly acceptable to chat on her cellphone while sitting on the crapper. Several of my coworkers have reported "stall talking" experiences. Unfortunately, none of us have been able to determine what the hell she might be yapping about, as she is usually blabbing away in some other language. Apparently, she hails from some country where it is considered acceptable to yak to your pals while toilets flush in the background.

Now, if Stall Talker isn't strange enough, there was another, more disturbing incident. I guess it was a few weeks ago that I unsuspectingly sauntered into the ladies room. As I walked in, I heard a bit of noise. It didn't really register at first, but as I moved closer to the stalls, it became clear to me. The woman occupying the end stall was moaning.

As a break from our recent pattern of beach-bumming, John and I decided to blow some cash this weekend.

After getting our annual truck inspection (big yawn) we hit Microcenter where John picked up a copy of Mandrake and I drooled over Mac laptops. Then it was off to Super Target; there I spent at least 45 minutes perusing the selection of purses.

The whole purse business was a little bittersweet. My previous purse was easily to coolest purse ever known to man, coveted by all who laid eyes on it. Unfortunately, it had a recent run in with a Starbucks latte that had been agitated by one of Houston's many pot holes. Some would say that the damage was minimal, but with the advent of my new camera I was in the market for something a little roomier. I finally settled on something black with ample space for the usual purse items, camera and the assorted junk that John shoves in there when we go out.

Speaking of lattes, while at Target we acquired a Melita Espresso maker. Though not the most up scale of espresso machines, it has already paid for itself. I can't deny that our weekend latte habit is shameful.

I also had opportunity to feed my nagging cosmetics addiction. For those that may not know me very well, the whole makeup fixation is a fairly new happenstance in my realm of existance. After years and years of tomboyness, I just chalk it up to the big 3-0. As my friend Alana would say, "If you look good, why question it."

I capped off the weekend with a trip to Borders. I wandered back and forth between Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom and Pattern Recognition before finally walking out with the Gibson. After Mandrake, makeup, purses and espresso I couldn't really justify buying both. Next time.

In closing I would like to inform you that John successfully installed Linux on his system. 12 hours later and he is already referring to me as "windows user" and exhibiting the expected level of disdain.

Recently I happened upon the blog of someone I know from highschool. A lightbulb pinged over my head and my online search for old friends was re-ignited.

Am I the only one who does this? Googling the names of long lost buds in an attempt to catch a glimpse into their recent lives? An email, a company page, even an ezboard post... anything to satiate the curiousity. So far I've had little success, and I walk away wondering, "Do they even have internet access?" Silly, I know.

This recent discovery left me wondering, "Do they blog?" With so many people getting into the whole blogging phenomenon, could it be possible that some of these "long losts" could be swimming around the blogosphere?

Ofcourse, I searched. Blog + townname. Blog + highschoolname. Etc. No luck.

I don't understand what is with these people. Doesn't everyone have a blog these days?

I'm sure by now you've all heard about the mountain climber who amputated his own arm with a pocket knife. Apparently the arm was pinned under a boulder of sorts.

Anyway, have you heard the one about the girl who chewed her own leg off? Apparently it she was totally starving and still had another 15 minutes until she got off work.

Do you ever find yourself fondling your camera dreaming of the day when you finally get the professional recognition you feel you deserve? Well here's your chance.

Produced by Rick Smolan and David Elliot Cohen, creators of the most popular photography projects ever - including the New York Times #1 bestseller, A Day in the Life of America - America 24/7 is the largest collaborative photo project in history and the watershed event of the new digital photography age.

Until now, only top pros could participate in Smolan/Cohen projects - and 1,000 of the best willshoot for America 24/7. But America 24/7 also offers amateurs and pros across America the opportunity to take digital photos and easily submit them via this website.

What's in it for you? Well, prizes of course. And with your work appearing in the book alongside some of the world's best photographers', you're bound to get the recognition you feel you deserve... if not just the pure joy the comes with bragging rights.

~via boing boing~

... and the number one reason to not use a spam filter is:

From: "Dayna's real name" (dayna@her-email-addy.com)
Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 23:33:24 -0500
To: dusty@nospammies27things.com
Subject: Nigerian Penis Enlargements LIVE on an X10 Camera

Can I steal the little graphics you have for the different RSS feeds?
-Dayna

After I hit the send button on my reply, I was kicking myself for not changing the subject to "You could win a 42" plasma television."

Anyway, for those of you that may have noticed my RSS feed graphics, they came from gtmcknight.com, which I found via LinkMachineGo. Go ahead and steal some. You know you wanna.

Next week my bosses will be away on a business trip, leaving me here mostly on my own to run the show. If it wasn't for my stupid INS restrictions, I might consider taking one of these free tickets to Toronto.

Although my family would be beside themselves with glee, I think John might be a little SAR sore about the whole idea. He and my mother both suffer from severe asthma so the threat of contracting SARS is a serious matter. Despite my travel restrictions, I a) can't afford a ticket to NY at the moment and b) wouldn't want to take the minute chance of infecting my husband and mother with a virus that would most certainly kill them.

Then again ... No seriously, just kidding.

It's recently come to my attention that I completely missed the day that marks my 2nd year as a blogger. After missing last years special day, I vowed I wouldn't forget this year. Ofcourse I did.

To further my shame, I have inadvertantly deleted this post twice in the past 5 minutes. The first time I was attempting to credit Nicole for the term "blogaversary" and the second time I was opening the html file containing my very first blog entry of all time. Both times the page loaded in the same browser window I was blogging in. Two years later and I still haven't learned a thing.

Anyway, let's just skip the hoohaw and cut to the chase. Almost all of my blog entries from the past 2 years are now available on the latest version of 27things. But way back when, before my time with blogger, I manually updated using notepad. What follows is my very first blog entry. Monumental? Yes. Interesting? Not really.

Read for yourself.

I keep forgetting to mention that Thursday I received an invitation to join my local INS office for a good old fashioned finger printing.

For those of you US citizens that may be feeling like your rights and privacy are being threatened lately, take note. As an immigrant I am obligated to provide finger prints (and practically everything else) to the US government, even though I was able to prove that I have no previous criminal record in my native country. I am also prohibited from leaving the US without prior approval from the feds unless I plan on abandoning my petition for residency. And if I don't like it, I just have to lump it because I can't vote until/unless I become a citizen.

One of the new features I've added to the site since my move to MT is an RSS feed. The RSS0.91 is a full feed, RSS1.0 is excerpts and the post+com is a full feed including comments.

On one hand, I was quite reluctant to jump onto the RSS feed bandwagon, mainly because I'm not one of those people who just writes in their weblog. I also designed and coded this website, so it's important to me that people actually see it. I guess on some level, I fear that RSS readers will lead to less actual visits.

On the other hand, I downloaded a nice OSX RSS/XML reader at the office, which has led to less surfing and more reading. Unfortunately, I've haven't had as much luck with readers at home on my PC. So I thought I'd throw out the question: what RSS/XML reader are you using?

One more final thought... please update your RSS/XML templates. Excerpts suck.

Looking for a domain name for your blog or latest online obsession? How about www.procrastinationstation.net? It's available. Register it now.

1. we went to the beach at San Luis Pass again.
2. while waiting in the whataburger drivethru I noticed Mag's had a nasty tick on the inside of her ear.
3. john assured me that ticks are pretty common in these parts.
4. he then asked me to "point that thing" away from him, comparing the tick to the mole in Austin Powers.
5. we ate our whataburger in the parking lot. john threw food at the gulls while I snapped pictures. the damn things were practically flying right into the cab of our truck.
6. on the way to the beach we hit the air show.
7. we wandered around trying to find an unobstructed view (damn power lines) and managed to happen upon the Snowbirds, lined up on the tarmac.
8. the beach was sweet.
9. upon arriving back home, we tag-teamed the lone star tick in mag's ear.
10. after it was all over, she jumped around like we'd just pull a two-by-four out from between her toes.
11. i added the 15 most recent photos (from my newly created photoblog) to the right side of the page.

As I may have mentioned, drivers in Houston are, well, just a little aggressive. This morning on the radio I heard an ad for a news special airing on TV tonight about Htown drivers and the number of police issued traffic violations. There were a few audioclips about police and the number of redlight-runners and then a clip of a woman asking, "Is the problem really aggressive drivers or is it the lights?"

Yeah, lady, that's it... it's the lights. I have the same problem. For some reason, when I hit an intersection, the light doesn't always stay green long enough for me to make it to the other side. Damn those traffic lights; they're a problem alright.

Looks like the 27things domain is finally pointing at the new host and everything is almost back to normal. It occured to me on my way to work that I haven't uploaded all my back ups for the old server yet, so the archives may be showing some missing images until later tonight. D'oh.

Don't update your bookmarks just yet! 27things will be back on her regular domain just as soon as the medication takes effect.

I meant to post a link to this last night after reading about it on The Working Mom. Unfortunately I got sidetracked while trying to watch Futurama and my customer support ticket at the same time. In the end I forgot all about it.

The May Day Project
over one day in may, people all over the world will be taking a photograph an hour to illustrate a day in their life.

I probably would have skipped over this meme, but now that I finally have a decent digital camera, I'm always looking for an excuse to take pictures.

Woot! The transition from my old host to the new host is 90% done. I still have to go thru most of the archives and update some image links and maybe start the process of categorizing old entries. Other than that, it's just a matter of waiting for the DNS to resolve.

I've already had some fun organizing my archives, and I can hardly wait to jump head first into Movable Type... Good times here I come.

Guess what? I'm moving!

Well not me, exactly, but my site. All of my sites actually and some of John's too. After much discussion, we've finally worked out a plan to move everything from our current host over to Bloggerzone. What does this mean to you?

Well not much I guess, except that over the course of the next week, things might get a bit wonky around here. Domains will be propagating, databases will be exporting and then importing elsewhere etc.

The good and bad news is that I will finally migrate from Grey Matter to Movable Type. Under normal circumstances, I would have liked to stretch out the transition: change hosts, build the MT site, work out the kinks and then launch the new version. (Un)fortunately, Bloggerzone will not allow newly created accounts to host GM sites. So, I will have to do all the transitioning at once in order to avoid too much downtime.

Anyway, just a heads up. In the meantime, I will be coding mass MT templates.

My current job is located in a relatively nice office building where many of the occupants are lawyers, doctors, and financial services. Despite this, a visit to the facilities, while adequate and moderately well kept, is comparable to a trip to a truckstop potty on the Monday afternoon of a long weekend. We're talking T.P. everywhere, feminine hygiene wrappers tossed in the corners, unmentionables that have failed to flush, and stink. Oh, the stink! And this is the ladies room.

Ugh. The only thing worse than "one of those days" is when it turns into one of those weeks. It's only Wednesday and I'm already feeling tired, completely unmotivated. Right about now I think I'd rather be anywhere other than work.

Begin feeling sorry for me....

starting...

now.

So, as I said earlier today, this weekend John and I drove down to South Padre Island. Initially, we were just going to go to Corpus Christi, but once we were on the road, we decided to go right down to the Mexican border. Due to my current INS status, I'm not allowed to leave the US without prior consent, so we stared (not-so) longingly at the border crossing.

Click "more" to see the more photos.

The drop date for latest issue of the magazine is fast approaching so I've been working myself ragged. This is my reason for lack of updates. Reason or excuse... take it as you will. Even though i'm a bit compulsive about checking other people's blogs through out the day, I try to draw the line when it comes to posting on my own. When I do post from the office, I try to keep it short or write a draft on my lunch. Otherwise, I'd waste half my day composing blog entries.

As for the weekend... well this weekend we drove down to South Padre Island. I have a ton of pictures taken with our new camera to resize and sort though so look back later for more details about the trip.

Saturday we took the dog to the beach for her first ever visit to the ocean. After finding a suitably remote place to park, I opened the door and let Mags jump out. She immediately started doing laps around the truck... I swear she loves that F150 more than she loves us.

She was thrilled to have free run of the beach, fetch sticks from the waves and sniff shells in the sand. A couple times she tried to drink some sea water, but she learned quickly that salt water isn't the best refreshment. We only stayed a few hours, but it was worth every minute. Mags was elated.

Normally she's not a big fan of the water, and she never actually swims. Shortly after i got her, she had an incident where she was up to her eyeballs (literally) in a bog at Trout Lake in Vancouver. Ingrid, my housemate and fellow boxer mom, tossed Mags into the lake for a quick wash before we headed home. Needless the say, the dog swam but she didn't like it. Since then, she's enjoyed a good frolic in the water, but would always dart away if any people tried to get near her.

I guess those imprints have been erased from her memory... Saturday she chased us out into the waves, jumping back toward shore when the tide rolled in. The three of us were grinning ear to ear the entire time. Yes, even Mags. The only downside was that I forgot to bring my camera.

It was absolutely amazing to see my 8 year old doggie acting like a little puppy again. I can't wait to go back.

1. People who support wars are all right wing, homophobic, flag waving, bible thumping, overly patriotic, narrow minded hicks.

2. People who oppose wars are all unAmerican, radical, communist, patchouli-wearing, Bush hating, self centered, short-sighted flakes.

3. People really want to hear your political opinions all the time. If they act like they are tired of hearing it or they seem to disagree, that means they want to hear more.

4. When confronted with a possible solution to a problem, it is perfectly ok to voice your disapproval and all your reasons repeatedly. Don't bother to offer any alternative solutions because that's not the point.

5. Freedom of speech means that you can say whatever you like unless it's in opposition to someone else's expression of free speech. Don't forget, if you don't like what someone else has to say, you should keep your mouth shut and just deal with it. That's what freedom of speech is all about.

6. Although it is a common tactic to boycott companies, it is not acceptable to use these same methods on celebrities. After all, celebrities are not impersonal corporations, they are regular people just like you and me... only they have way more money and alot of personal assistants and lawyers and stuff.

7. People join the army because they are poor and stupid. These days, no one enlists because they want elite training or the opportunity to work with cutting edge technology. Also, when people join the army, they have no intention of ever engaging in combat or defending their country. Yeah, they're that stupid.

Seriously.

"What would you do?"

Let's pretend for a minute that you are PM of England or President of the US (take your pick). Members of your government and the UN come to you with the news that they believe Iraq does in fact have weapons of mass destruction, despite all the UN resolutions ordering disarmament. To make matters worse, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the Iraqi government is a cruel dictatorship that not only oppresses its population, but also engages heinous human rights violations.

As President of the US/ PM of England:

What would you do about the alleged weapons?

What would you do to help the people of Iraq?

What would you expect the rest of the world to do?

If war is not the answer, then what is?

Let me start by saying that the Katy Freeway is the gateway to hell. I will never understand how traffic can be backed up for miles for absolutely no reason. Now that I have that off my chest, allow me to move on to other complaints...

What is the deal with blogshares? I really want it to be a cool, fun thing but all it does is boggle and irritate me. First of all, none of my incoming links are listed, making my site worthless. As if that isn't annoying enough, last night my URL was listed a 2nd time with more updated outgoing links, but this 2nd listing isn't available for trade and none of my incoming links are registering. If anyone wants to fill me in on wtf the deal is, it would be appreciated.

Stupid Thursday, you're at it again.

I just wrote a post about being linked by a certain "celebrity" (in my mind at least), but when checking to make sure my link worked, I noticed he removed my URL from the post. The whole thing was mostly about John's site, so I assume my link was removed because we try to keep his thing and mine seperate for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. Anyway...

I'm tired - tired of having the topic of war constantly shoved in my face. Although I admit to being a political fence-sitter most of the time, when I want to feast on rhetoric, I know where to look. The problem is that lately, it's everywhere I look. On my tv, on my radio, in the breakroom at my office and my last refuge, the internet, has become supersaturated with war-related commentary.

Gone are the days where I could surf through blogs and be entertained. Now I am informed, misinformed, desensitized, debriefed and more often than not, I am insulted. I try to tell myself that art and intellectual discourse are meant to challenge one's beliefs, but the only thing being challenged these days is my patience. I mean, crap, I make an effort to find some fluff to distract me from the frustrations of my usual distractions only to discover that even dogs are talking about war these days.

Are you with me? Well here's the start of my list of war-free websites:

Dublog // topics and images relating to art and design stuff.

Jpeg the dog // cute dog, cute poem.

Dial-a-song // They Might Be Giants random song generator.

William Gibson's blog // not entirely war-free but close enough. Besides, he's effin' cool!

If you have or know of any other war-free blogs or sites that might interest me, send 'em over. I'm desperate.

Back before Xmas, John and I took a stab at the Atkins Diet. During the first 2 weeks of this high protien diet, your carb intake is restricted to about 24 g per day. This carb clampdown eliminates any breads, grains, most dairy and any starchy veggies like carrots, corn and potatos. A diet that perscribes a strict regiment of meat, eggs, lettuce and cheese seems hard to believe, but after several weeks there was a noticable difference.

Eventually, though, we got sick of it. There were moments when we would collectively dream about how wonderfull it would be to eat a piece of toast. On New Year's day we rewarded ouselves for our carnivorous diligence by binging on some Mexican food. As you can imagine, the whole diet went right out the window the minute that first nacho chip hit our lips.

This past week we decided to give the whole thing another go. Last time around we quickly tired of the sausage, bacon, hamburger rotation, so I've decided to expand my culinary horizons. I've already reinvented my mom's amazing Beouf Brasse and last night I made my very first roast.

Look out June Cleaver, here I come... I'll be the one wearing the "where's the beef" apron.

Blogshares would be alot more entertaining if my blog shares were actually worth something. Whatever you do, do not invest in my site. My shares might actually gain some value and we all know what a disaster that would be.

While you're at it, don't comment on my new design either.

Call me a simpleton, but I love my new layout. Even if John keeps referring to it as cute. At any rate, I 'm feeling alot more enthusiastic about blogging now that I have blue sky and puffy white clouds waiting for me.

John has got me into Blogshares, so I've done away with my links page and dropped everything into the sidebar (for now). Speaking of John... his site is insanely popular these days. Insanely. The good news is that I'm making lots of cash off those 400 shares he convinced me to buy. *wink*

After what seems like a million hours, I have finally created a new design for the site. Actually I've created about 10 new designs but I've finally finished one that I like. That said, the site should be slowly morphing over the course of the day.

Update

Tada! The metamorphosis is pretty much complete. This design falls short on all the bells and whistles seen in many of my past designs... I guess John was right when he said, "One day you'll realize you just don't need all that shit. It's a pain in the ass." I'm sure I'll find some things to tweek - I haven't even checked for browser compatability yet.

This morning I heard the best traffic report ever: I-10 Katy Freeway outbound slowed from 610 due to work. Now if only every station would be so to the point, I might never be late. It boggles me that traffic slow-downs only make reports if they are caused by accidents, stalls or some other kind of incident. Not to mention that some radio stations seem to think that outbound traffic isn't a major concern at all. Well, it concerns me, and the minute I get a cell phone, those radio stations are gonna know it... or not.

Anyway, it was the local 80's station that gave that traffic report and by the time I finished laughing, the Joan Jett had started the spirograph known as my thought process. It started with "when will they make a fictional retrospective of the 90's a la 1969 or that 70's show?" The thoughts some how spun to "Has my life turned out to be what I imagined it would be when I was a teenager?" Finally looping around to "1-2-3 Repeater" by Fugazi and how we used to think the words were "1-2-3 Rubena" until one day one of us actually looked at the album sleeve. At that point I realized my thoughts we spirographing in bumper to bumper traffic on I-10 and I would be smart to focus my attention on driving.

"I used to have a name, now I'm a number. 1-2-3 repeater!"

It amazes me that at 30, I'm still able to pull one out of left field and knock my mother's socks off.

As usual, Sunday brought the weekly call from Montreal...

"How's your mouth holding out?" She asked.

"Huh?"

"Your mouth," she said again, "With the US at war and all, we imagined you would have at least one black eye by now!"

Like many a Canadian, I have been guilty of anti-American sentiment. Leave it to a mother to call out her own loud-mouth offspring.

As I explained to her, even if I did still harbor resentment toward the US, I sure wouldn't go around shooting my mouth off. I mean, c'mon... I live in Texas. To be quite honest, when the topic comes up, I am quick to criticize the Canada. As a Canadian living in the US, not a week goes by where I'm not embarrased by the words and actions of my own government.

She laughed in utter amazement. What happened to the anti-American daughter of days gone by? Little did she know I still had a sucker punch waiting.

"Did I tell you about the Rally for America?" I asked her, quickly sharing my experiences at the pro-American demonstration.

"Hang on a sec... This is Dusty, right? Have I dialed the wrong number?"

Needless to say, she was stunned. Before she could accuse John of totally brainwashing me, we dipped into the politics of US-Canada relations. We went on to discuss everything from the future of the Liberal party to the difference between Socialism and Parlimentary Democracy.

At 30, I love having intellectual conversations with my mom. Sometimes she amazes me too. Especially when she gets that fake serious tone in her voice and says, "Well you know, every time a baby is born in America, they cut the umbilical cord and inject a patriotic serum."

Today was a day full of memories.

It started with the obvious recollection of January 1991. I recall sitting in the basement of my parents' house, staying up until wee hours studying for exams and watching CNN. I listened as they reported virtually uncensored until one reporter ran in on the other. "What are you doing? Get under the fuckin' bed!" as the bombs raining down sounded off in the background. Then they cut the feed. That year I wrote my term paper on US government and media relations in time of war.

Later at work, tearing up a misprinted mailing list conjured a different memory from my youth. It was the time I found a torn up note from my mother to my father in the kitchen trash. I fished out as many pieces as I could and tried to put it back together like a messy puzzle. It was during the on-again off-again time in their marriage before they decided on divorce. I don't remember what it said, but I felt ashamed for prying into my mom's personal feelings. In a fit of guilt I had attempted to shove it all back into the garbage, making it look as random as possible.

Spring must be in the air - all these memories surfacing, not to mention all the old friends popping up in my inbox this week...

The past 10 days have been nothing less than a whirlwind. I'm now officially working at my new job which means sooner or later I will be bringing home my first USD paycheck. In some ways I feel like this is my very first job... Considering it's been about a year since I was last employed, the 9-5 is taking some re-adjustment. In short, I'm freakin' exhausted. It's been at least 5 years since I've had to wake up before 8 am in order to arrive to work on time and I've never really had to commute up until now.

The new job is exciting, in that it's at a full color, glossy magazine. Even though it's ad driven rather than content, I still hope that it will allow me more insight into the editorial world of print, as well as give me a taste of the business end of things. I find my self feeling a little reserved and maybe even less enthusiastic than someone in my position should be. I am thrilled to be working again and the thought of a paycheck makes me jump for joy. I don't know... call it culture shock. Getting back into the swing of work mode is going to take a bit of time.

Speaking of time, the free variety is quickly becoming a hot commodity. Between husband, dog, chores and work, it seems like I am lucky to find a few minutes a day to veg out. Staring blankly at a screen (be it a tv or monitor) could become somewhat of a coveted activity. I'm begining to notice that my desired plans for freetime seem to grow as my amount of actual freetime dwindles. The less time I have, the more I want to do with it.

I am slowly gearing up for a redesign, though I wonder if I'll ever have an opportunity to acutally pull it off. I have also been toying with the notion of making an html email to update my various family members on my life in Htown. I'm finding I don't have time for DAoC anymore, and I'm honestly too tired to think about it. Infact, I'm too tired to think anymore about this list of things I do and do not have time for, so I'll end this with ETC.

(insert bosterious cheers of glee)

I finally got my social security number!!

... now if only I could get paid for it.

It's amazing how much more appealing it is to update when I'm working as opposed to sitting at home. it's not as if I have anything interesting to say just because I'm at this desk rather than my own.

Still no word on the SSN, just more waiting. Since they process everything in New Mexico, I was hoping val could go over there and give them a little nudge. *wink*

Yesterday I started a 7 day trial at a wedding magazine. If I get my SSN by next Friday, I will have landed myself a job, if not... So basically, I'm temporarily working for free in hopes that my number will come in time. All in all, it's not a bad job. Even the commute is tolerable. The uncertainty, on the other hand, is unbearable.

You're invisible now, you have no secrets to conceal.

I spent several hours tonight skimming blogs looking to spark some ideas for a new design. Is it just me or are all the coolest looking blogs Spanish? Actually the blog I liked best is from Brazil, but the point is the coolest looking sites are rarely the english language ones. If I had the opportunity to learn a new launguage, I'd love to learn Portuguese. After hearing Bebel Glberto sing, who wouldn't think it's an incredible language?

Well now I'm rambling and wishing I hadn't given my Tanto Tempo cd to my parents.

After over a month with no interviews and very little feedback, I've spent the past week running all over Houston going from one interview to the next. I spent my weekend doing spec work (yuck) and did a presentation as well as a phone interview yesterday. Today I'm going for a 2nd interview for the admin job I mentioned in my previous post. I should also get a yes or no on the local job I did the spec work for. Should both those positions fall flat, I have a tentative interview tomorrow at a creative contracting firm.

What can I say? I'm freaking tired of looking for a job!

Yesterday I actually had a job interview. Amazing, I know. Despite the fact that it's not a design job, it's still a promising opportunity - Admin Assistant at a small west side magazine office. They are looking specifically for a mac user, but all my industry experience doesn't hurt my chances. Second interview will probably happen Monday.

It's temp to hire through an agency, so the interview was one part form filling, one part interview and one part testing. Ack. So far it seems like I have a very good chance of landing the job. The downside is it's an hour commute from home and the hours are 8:30 - 5:30. This means I would have to drop John off at work everyday at 7:30 am and pick him up somewhere around 6:30 pm.

Afterwards, I was at home decompressing when I got a call to come in for another interview tomorrow. Not only is this a design position (graphic artist/art director) but it's also really close to home. Come home for lunch and walk the dog close. No details as of yet, but I'll know the score tomorrow.

One side note: I discovered that I was supposed to take my EAD and apply for a SSN. Somehow I got the impression that all I needed was the EAD. Oops. Needless to say, I was up early this morning, waiting for my name to be called at the Social Security office. Fun, fun.

That's what Val refered to it as today...

It goes on and on. I can't say I'm not discouraged. I've basically gone from focusing on every design and advertising firm in Houston to marketing myself as some kind of admin assistant. There is still the odd design and/or production job, but not having a car really limits me.

I guess the hardest part is trying not to take it personally. I worked my ass off to get from one foot on the street to building a great career that I love and now I feel like I'm practically unemployable. John gives me tons of great pep talks but for some reason the story about the aerospace engineer he worked with at McDonalds makes me want to burst into tears.

Would you like fries with that?

Read the whole strip at Diesel Sweeties.

Thanks for the laugh, Jeff.

Making people paranoid, I guess.

Had my weekly chat with the mom yesterday. We spoke briefly about the possible war and the government statements about stocking up incase of emergency and such. She talked a bit about what life was like during the icestorm, specifically about the stores running out of food. In the end, she blamed "George Sr." for this whole Iraqi mess, saying that he should have "taken Saddam out when he had the chance."

The last thing my mom said before the usual "love you!" *click* was "I just wish you weren't so far away." I know right now my family is really wishing that Texas was in Canada. As niave as it is, there is a feeling of safety that comes with being on the other side of that undefended border.

It's surprising to hear so much criticism coming out of Canada in regards to planned US military action. I think that perhaps they feel that standing beside the US in this fight will expose them as a target. Who can argue that they aren't vulnerable and pretty much defenseless against attacks of any kind? Right now, Canada feels safe. They want to keep thinking that way.

Funny how I had to change "Canadians" to "they" because people like my mother, who is by no means a politico nor a warmonger, feel that things have run their course and all we can do now is buckle down and ride it out.

Later in the evening, John came into the bedroom, where I was happily watching cartoons, to discuss a contingency plan to follow in the event that the city should blow up or something. I make light of it because the whole topic makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Yesterday while watching the Osama speech for John, I found myself thinking, "Ugh, I can't wait until this is all over and done with." Maybe a small part of me wishes I was still in Canada where it's "safe."

Anyway...

In non-war related news, a mysterious person searched my site for "shoes" and "soles" recently. No idea what that was about... said person can feel free to post a comment or email me if they're looking for something in particular.

After almost a month of posting, searching and emailing I finally got an inquiry (yes ONE) about possible a job. Should that offer fall through, I've begun compiling a list of alternate career paths. All these jobs we pulled from todays listings at monster.com:

1. Intelligence Agent - this job involves sales, cold calling and proactive probing for details *shudder* some how I imagined it to be a little more glamorous

2. HOT!! Firewall Engineer Needed Immediately - really... how many hot firewall engineers are there?

3. Dream Job - * Model Scout * - woooo dream job. yeah.

4. Genetic Analysis Sales Representative - who would you sell this to? hypochondriacs?

5. Pharmaceutical Sales Opportunities - this would be great. I'd make a fortune selling perscription drugs to my friends.

6. Named Account Representative - Lucky for me that I was named, otherwise it might hurt my chances of scoring this great position.

Enough nonesense... back to posting, searching and emailing.

I keep asking myself why I don't blog anymore; I don't have an answer. I could say it's because I'm too busy looking for a job or being married, but it wouldn't really be true.

Yesterday I discovered that the cafe that recently opened in our complex sells wonderfull hot tea. Earl Grey. Black, hot tea. I enjoy smelling it as much I as enjoy drinking. I'm tempted to ask my mother to mail me some Red Rose. Pity.

Thanks to all the people who dropped by or emailed to wish me a happy birthday! I will be posting my state of the birthday address tomorrow so stay tuned.

As the need for me to get a job increases, so does the pressure in my head.

I've sent out a bunch of resumes to prospective employers and recruiting agencies and as a result I now have to answer all those unknown numbers. Drag. The first call I answered was an overly softspoken collector from one of my Canadian credit card companies that left me feeling belittled and off-kilter.

Earlier today I posted my resume on Usenet. When I went back and performed a search on my name to see if it had posted, I was presented with 3 pages of old Usenet posts. It caught me off guard because I'd forgotten all about those days. In related news, my monster resume has already been viewed by employers 1 time.

Having finally finished tweaking my printed resume, my emailable PDF resume and my online resume and portfolio, I'm off! My job hunt got off to an overly involved start today, as I completed the ultra thorough application at Aquent.

If you live in the downtown Houston area and think I might make a great addition to your print and/or web design team, drop me a line via email and I will send you a link to my resume and portfolio.

"when we killed who we were to become who we are, what did we do with the bodies?"

Jody's diary to me is as the sunday comics are to a seven year old. If only i could read it on the floor, laying on my belly with my hands tucked under my chin...

I envy her.

A long time ago (or so it seems) I made the decision to forgo my bigtime dream of being a writer. It brought me suffering on so many levels; I refused to get a normal job which would afford me food and housing and I put myself through constant misery in the name of "the struggling artist's life." So I went out and did the things I needed to do in order to have a nice fat paycheck. It wasn't a concious sacrifice... I never acknowledged that I would have to give one up for the other. One day I just woke up and thought to myself, "I don't think I'm a writer anymore."

So maybe I'm crazy to be jealous of Jody, who writes about not having enough bus fare and dreaming about money woes. But she has a book, and another book on the way. She sends out query letters and grant applications and when she says, "I'm a writer," she's not totally full of shit. Jody is for real.

If nobody minds, I'll live my (wanna-be) life of a writer vicariously through her.

Thanks to Andrea for the crafty inspiration. The top pic shows my marble magnets made with origami paper, while the bottom pic is my attempt at a bracelet a la van Gogh (Branch of an Almond Tree in Blossom ~ 1890). The bracelet hasn't finished setting yet, so its final success is yet to be determined.

Yes, the rumors are true. I live. Holidays have been a busy time... getting in as much slacking as possible before my big job search. Fear not, "blog more" was on my list of new years resolutions.

I had a nice long update ready to post, but my computer crashed. I'll work on catching you all up soon, I swear. Here's hoping everyone had a happy holiday.

RIP Joe Strummer.

[sung to the tune of "Oh Tannenbaum"]

Looks like big red marker will finally get it's time in the sun. Origianlly, I wasn't going to link it here, mostly because I wanted it to be an outlet for my more critical (and sometimes meaner) side. Since then, I've decided to use it for more practical means. It's mostly a blog about different design and pop culture topics, as well as being the new host to my resume and portfolio.

Although I hope expect plan get back to my old updating scheduele, I will only be updating big red marker on a weekly basis. If you're interested, feel free to check it out here.

Before we entered the INS office, John and I made a little wager. $10 on whether or not my EAD interview would be an exhaustive nightmare or a breeze.

From the get-go, things look bad. Security stopped us because I had inadvertantly left my digital camera in my purse, forcing John to run it back to the truck. Once inside, I scoped out the Employment Authorization area and quickly surmised that it was going to be a quickie.

Of course I was right, and with the exception of John's incident with the cranky INS officer who chased him around yelling, "I told you to get out of the way!" All told, we were in and out in an hour. All that's left now is to find a job.

Welp... tomorrow is my big day at the INS. With any luck I will return home from my interview with permission to get off my ass and get a job. Work is only desirable when you don't have any, but I'm sure getting back into the swing of things will be good for me and keep me happy for some time.

Once working, I plan to do 3 things: pay large sums of money to creditors, plan a visit back to Canada, and get a new car. It's been years since I've had my own car, so the idea makes me giggle like a little girl. Originally I wanted a Rav4 but then got really excited about the Sante Fe, these days I'm leaning toward the Matrix. It's a bit more affordable, one of the options in a petscreen for the hatchback and the commercial is filmed in Toronto.

Anyway, all this talk of jobs and stuff means I must work on my resume and get it up on the web. Weee.

This Thanksgiving, I made a point of noting that this year I am thankful for my visa. Sure I now have a great husband, a wonderful home and everyone's still healthy, but the visa was a big accomplishment and with out it things would be alot different.

I got my first xmas card from my Nanny back in Toronto today. Despite the fact that I usually cringe at the thought of spending xmas with my extended family, I feel a touch sentimental mostly because I couldn't spend the holiday with them even if I wanted to.

On Friday I got my notice to appear for my EAD (emplyment authorization document) interview on December 17, 2002. At long last, I will be able to work again. Ofcourse this means I won't be able to sit around and play video games all day, but it also means that I won't have to sit around playing video games all day.

In short, all I want for xmas is my EAD.

No actually, I think it's guilt.

Maybe it's time for a redesign here at 27things... I haven't really felt like posting much lately, not for any reason other than ... well, like I said I haven't felt like it. The lack of blogging enthusiam is a bit inconvient, considering I recently bought a new URL and started a 2nd blog. I'm hoping a redesign might get me going again. Who knows.

Three days without internet = teh suck. In between being internetless and gimped with a gouged finger, I went back to playing DAoC and am happy to announce that Asny once the hunter, now the bard, is almost 50. For those not in the know, 50 is the highest level in the game - I can now switch from constantly killing monsters to gain experience and move on to killing other players fulltime. Weee!

Today I celebrate my first real American Thanksgiving. My mother-in-law asked me to help out by making some mashed 'taters and whipping up my mom's infamous strawberry & garden greens salad. For your information, I managed to make the best batch of mashed potatos I've ever tasted in my life, if I do say so myself. Yum.

I got an email from Alley today about the commenting system on 27things. She said the when she tried to post, the comment saved to her hard drive rather than posting. This leads me to wonder if anyone A) is having the same problem or B) knows why this is happening to Alley.

If you are having this same problem, please email me: dusty(at)27things(dot)com.

EDIT: Alley, I just noticed that your comments actually posted. Weird that your browser wants to save them to your HD, but they are posting.

I just wrapped up a 12 hour Moveable Type Conversion marathon. John's site has been doing sick amounts of traffic, and despite our recent hosting upgrade, we felt it was in our (wallet's) best interest to move it off our current host before we exceed our bandwidth. His new home is at BloggerZone.com, a host geared toward serving the specific needs of blogger types, supporting things like the long coveted MoveableType.

Ofcourse John took one look at the MT installation docs and gave up, leaving me to offer my set up and configuration services. Nice for me since, I'd never had a successful set up due to missing DB stuff on our old host.

I finally get it running and then have to convince him NOT to use the standard MT template. This is one of my pet peeves. In my opinion, if your blog has the need for a powerful backend like MT, it also has need for a unique design. 75% percent of the time I can identify a MoveableType site with out having to scroll down to the "powered by" link.

So he agrees to let me rebuild his old design in MT, which I foolishly estimate will be done in 2 hours or less. Let's just say the site is done, but I don't want to see it again for a long time.

Now I'm off to reward myself with a shower and hours of uninterrupted, mindless gaming.

The other day John told me of a news story about a man who died alone in his apartment and was then eaten by his dog. No big shocker for a Town girl like me.

Many years ago, during a summer heat wave, a dead man was found (and smelled) right across from the donut shop us kids hung out. As if that alone wasn't enough for our volunteer FD and ambulance team, the guys dog had chewed apart most of his leg. Ah, yes, there's a fine line between devotion and dinner.

Although I've never died, I do have my own related dog story. My dog, Mags, ate my wisdom teeth.

I had just returned from having the top teeth pulled out and was feeling pretty good despite the extraction. My mom had come to town in order to accompany me incase I died from the tooth pulling (as if). We dropped my little packets of gauze and the teeth off at my studio and made a midday dash for the train station to buy tickets for the an upcoming holiday visit. When we got back the teeth were gone. Since the teeth were fresh out of my mouth it is doubtful that the blood on them was even dry. I'm sure they made a delightful snack for Mag's and if asked, she'd probably tell you, "Oh, yeah, Mom is yum!"

Super tired today, as I attmpted to stay up and withness the Leonids. Despite the fact that I was in bed 2 hours before the announced peak of the performance, I'm still writing this off as a major disappointment.

Every August there are awesome meteorite showers viewable in areas north of Toronto, such as Alliston where my dad lives. They are never announced as once in a lifetime events, yet they easily kick the Leonids' fiery ass. Between midnight and 2 am I saw one stinky meteor. Booo!

Anyway, it was my intention to post a picture of my bread knife injury today, but in the course of tending to the wound, I went ahead and put on a new bandaid. It looks nice and frankenstien-sh, despite the lack of stitches.

Oh well, there's always tomorrow.

Yesterday, after I picked John up from work we stopped off at specs to grab some Friday night wine and cheese. I also grabbed a sourdough baguette because they're my favorite.

Once we got home, I immediately set to work on my little wine and cheese platter, starting with the baguette. The bottom crust was really thick so I decided it would be a brilliant idea to flip the loaf over and cut through the bottom first.

Wrong.

I took one slice at the crust and the serrated bread knife bounced off the loaf and right into my index finger. John heard me screaming "Ow ow ow ow!!" and came to my rescue with his impeccable first aid.

Needless to say, my finger freakin' hurts like hell and I am too gimped to properly style my new haircut.

I was off to the Galleria today for a long overdue haircut. You may not be able to tell from the pics, but I chopped off at least 8 inches. No more hair getting in my mouth when I eat and sleep and walk and talk and breathe...

I just wanted to post a short note thanking my friend Rich for allowing me to steal his photo of our old place on Ontario Street.

Who's your friend, Richard?

As I mention in my list of 27 random things about me, I am an only child. Growing up, I bugged my parents a lot, mainly because I was bored and sometimes because I wanted them to play one of my 27 trillion board games with me.

(Take note: Board games are the worst gifts to give an only child. Imagine the torture of a cool, new game that you can't enjoy because you have no one to play it with!!)

In order to alleviate the constant bugging my parents did 3 very important things: dropped me off at my grandparents a lot; taught me advanced math like how to multiply 1394857904858 by 43948873838 (ha! see ya in an hour kid!); encouraged me to read.

99% of the time my mother's response to "I'm bored," was "Read a book!" As a result, I had piles of books growing up, and have read so many in my lifetime that I'm lucky if I can remember reading even half of them.

Yesterday I was chatting with my buddy Jeff, and he asked if I had read much Shel Silverstein as a kid. I immediately rattled off a few verses of the first poem that ever really meant something to me. It's the first poem I can remember relating to, and after all these years, reminds me of what it was like to grow up as an only child.

Some of you may not realize that I wasn't always a graphic artist turned American immigrant house wife. Way back in the day (pre 1998), I was a struggling writer with heavy emphasis on the struggling. During that time, I lived in a studio (the Toronto term for industrial live-in warehouse) in Regent Park, one of the less beautiful areas of Toronto.

This particular warehouse, formerly a boot factory, had somewhat of a legacy among my circle of friends and studio no. 206 was a classic hand-me-down. Originally rented in my name by 2 of my highschool buds, it wasn't until the original lease had long ended that I actually came to live there.

The entire building was infested with roaches and our unit was certainly no exception. I distinctly remember sitting at my desk reading a book and having a giant cockroach fall from the ceiling 14 feet above me, hitting the desk beside my hand with a serious thud. What was even more problematic was that the entire building had, at some point, been sandblasted. As a result, if someone above you got to doing the hokey pokey, the ceiling would rain a light sprinkling of sand down on your head... not to mention the mystery liquids that often seeped in between floor boards and dripped down.

STUDIOS FOR RENT. CALL MERVIN.



My room was the only one that had a window, sporting a lovely view of a dirty alley way and a red brick wall. On one occasion I had a friend over and as she parted the Goodwill sheets I used as curtains she said, "Must be pretty grim to look out your window everyday and see 'Martial Law Is Coming' spray painted on that wall." Given the circumstances and the reality of my life at that time, it would have been more depressing to look out the window each day and read, "You will wake up tomorrow."

This was the most down and out time of my life, and I relied heavily on the kindness of my friends; wonderful people who gave me paints, food, hope and strength. One of those people happens to be Rich, who lived on the other side of my bedroom wall. In the end, good things happened. During this time I learned that I loved to draw, paint and make zines and comics... finally accepting that writing wasn't going to get me out of that place. After a year I moved out and with the assistance of the Canadian government I went back to college.

Douglas Coupland had "My Hotel Year"; I'll always have "My Ontario Street Year."

I hate our internet service provider... hate Hate HATE.

Yesterday John emailed them to point out our lack of service and the rep replied by saying that the problem could be caused by anything, and they don't have a clue what is disrupting signals in our area. He also informed John that they are getting more transmitters for our 'hood tomorrow, but won't get around to installing them for at least TWO WEEKS. Finally, he told John, "if you have more immediate needs... you can now get DSL service from SWBell."

Is that not the lamest attempt at customer service you've ever heard? What kind of business directs you to their competitor?

Let me just point out that our internet service is provided through our property management company, so despite the fact that we don't pay monthly for the service, it's more than likely incorporated into our rent. On top of that, we recently forked out a nice sum for an additional wireless modem. So this asswipe is basically suggesting that we pay for an additional (and more expensive) internet service where we will most likely have to buy 2 additional DSL modems.

How about this, customer service guy... why don't you try servicing your customers and give them the gdamn product you're supposed to be supplying??!?

I'm not much of a fan... I don't write fan letters or make web sites dripping with punk rock devotion, but my friends will tell you there are a few musicians that I really, really like. They'll also tell you that by saying that I "really, really like" something, they're refraining from revealing my true obsession. Being somewhat of a realist, I turn my fanatic tendencies into dumb outlets like the Dr. Frank desktop and declaring that I could never marry Joe (from the Queers) because my first name is an adjective and his last name (King) is a noun.

So anyway...

Last year I went to the crappiest club in Toronto to see one of my favorite bands, the Queers. I was accompanied by my partner in punk, Tracy, and we enjoyed ourselves in the traditional Canadian, beer-swilling, aging punk rock fashion.

After the show, we noticed Joe Queer chatting with the some people who were finishing their drinks and lingering about. Tracy grabbed me and announced that this was my chance to meet Joe. Despite my excessively extroverted personality, I recoiled with a poorly timed shyness. Tracy wasn't letting me get off that easy though... she ran up to Joe and broke the ice, knowing that once she'd instigated the conversation, I would follow. Of course, I did.

Let me remind you that we had been swilling sweet, Canadian lagers for several hours and were not exactly our usually charming selves. Tracy proceeded to tell Joe all about how she got into the show without paying, followed by me blurting out, "I'm not a groupie!" Well, as you can imagine, this act of pure idiocy caused Tracy to totally crack up, while Joe just stood there grinning. I went on to inquire as to whether or not the band was travelling in a bus which seemed to be quite contrary to my insistence that I was not a groupie.

After the whole thing was over, Tracy went right to work reminding me that not only had I finally met Joe Queer, but I had also made a complete fool of myself.

"You're such a groupie!"

OK, so I was thinking... maybe if I just come right out and admit that I have a little groupie in me, I won't feel so bad about pointing out that Dr. Frank included a one-line link to me on his weblog.

I may not be writing a paper on e-Learning, but I have been working on a short article about Winnipeg artist, Marcel Dzama, for my new project.

The pickings are pretty slim over there at the moment, but I hope to fill it up with lots of art and design related stuff.... just as soon as I think of some. I am already realizing how much harder it is to come up with content for a site that has some sort of theme/purpose to it.

Last night I had a dream that I was trying to do research for a paper about the future of e-Learning, but I couldn't figure out the card catalogs and the library didn't seem to have any books on learning or education.

I don't normally post my dreams, but I'm getting to something here...

So, tonight we're driving home and I suddenly remember this dream. Ofcourse I tell John all about it, mainly because he's working on a whole e-Learning project, which is probably what sparked the dream in the first place.

John started laughing, and said that women always seem to have the freakiest dreams and that men don't really dream about much outside of banging cheerleaders. I had to disagree with him; my dad has always had unusual dreams, my favorite being the one where he was chased by a turkey the size of Big Bird.

This made John laugh even harder and he proceded to inform me that when my dad said "turkey" he really meant "cheerleader."

Too bad I didn't have Kenny Rogers with me today. It was a nice day for a drive so we decided to head out to Lake Charles and try our luck on the slots at Isle of Capris in Louisiana.

On the way there we hit a construction related traffic jam and wound up stuck behind a bus that was driving down the middle of the highway, thus blocking both east bound lanes. Apparently, the right lane was ending, so he thought he'd play civilian traffic cop, blocking the right lane so no one would speed ahead and merge at the last minute. As noble as that may sound, this jackass rode the middle line (preventing anyone from passing his bus in either lane) for over 3 miles in advance of the merge.

John and I were both fuming because it was obvious that he wasn't letting anyone by and he repeatedly moved back into the left lane when the car behind him tried to pass. Finally, John went up behind the bus and passed him on the shoulder. End of traffic jam.

Anyway, once we finally got to the casino, we each took a $20 bill and hit the 25 cent slots. I started with a bad losing streak and John suggested I move to a different machine. He was playing one that had wild cards and he seemed to be doing ok, so I moved to the other side of him. Eventually I won $20 and John decided to try a different location. By the time he got back, I'd won another $40+; I've never been to a casino before, so you can imagine how excited I was.

When John discovered how much I'd been winning, he suggested I cash out ($37.50) and we moved to the $1 slots. To my surprise, I kept winning!! I cashed out a second time with $77.25 and we went on to blow all my profits. Even though we left with $10 less than we started with, I won almost $200 in the few hours we were there.

In honour of my good fortune, we took the remaining $30 of our gambling budget and treated ourselves to the casino buffet. $40 for several hours on the slots and dinner... not bad if you ask me. John will tell you the casino sucked, but he seemed to be happy enough taking money from my cup and trying to hog my slot machine. *wink*

On the way home we passed through Cameron, Louisiana, which just happens to be on Highway 27. I took some pictures of Cameron State Bank, but they didn't really turn out. Dayna will just have to settle for a picture of Genius Drugs.

Recently I was surfing through blogs when I encountered Blogs of War on Blogspot written by a "Dr Frank." Of course my first thought was, "Well there's no way that's the Dr. Frank of MTX," and so I went on my merry way.

Well today John has to go and burst my bubble with proof: not only is the Dr. Frank author of this political blog, but he's also been writing for FuxNews.com! No Dr. Frank! Not FuxNews... anything but FuxNews!!

An aging punker like me has to wonder what the world is coming to: Rollins hosting a show on TLC, Dr. Frank writing for FuxNews... Next thing you know Joe Queer will be on CNN while John Jughead and Ben Weasel are Trading Spaces. Jeebus... that almost sounds like the makings of a Vandals song.

PS. Dear Dr. Frank, I'm sorry that my husband registered the blogsofwar domain, but if you had married me like you were supposed to, this wouldn't be a problem. Love, Dusty.

When I saw this Nancy Drew calendar yesterday at Borders I actually exclaimed, "No way!" outloud to myself. The calendar features 12 book covers illustrated by Rudy Nappi (yes, I looked him up) and honestly... I almost bought it. I don't have any fond attachments to the stories or the character, but I have this weird attraction to the cover illustrations. I don't remember which books I've read, but I easily picked out which of the 12 featured books I owned based on their cover.

My aunt gave me all of her Drew books at some point in my life, and I remember using them in my later years as hiding spots. That's right... I cut out the guts of the hardcover books and used them to hide things like cigarettes. What would Nancy have thought of that? Maybe I can find the answer in Nancy Drew's Guide to Life.

"Living next to the United States is in someways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." - Pierre Elliot Trudeau

I saw this quote yesterday in Bruce Mau's Lifestyle and thought it to be humorous (and true) enough to share with the class.

It pains me to admit that I am still sick. What started as a sore throat turned into a fever, then a stuffy head and now my ear feels like someone shoved a calking gun in there and pulled the trigger. I haven't been this sick since sometime before I quit smoking 2 years ago. Normally I'm a trouper about stuff like this, and I refuse to be taken to the doctor and pumped full of antibiotics.

Unfortunately, there is the whole window removal thing going on. It was supposed to have taken place yesterday when I had the truck and the dog was off at the goomer. Ofcourse they moved it to today and I had no idea that "weatherizing" actually meant "removing and replacing." So, I was caught completely off guard when they explained the situation and asked me to get the hell out.

First I ran off to Starbucks and then hit the library before finally reaching John at work. I met him back at our building and we went off for lunch and bought a new coffee maker. At that point he had to get back to work so I sat around Borders for several hours reading Bruce Mau's Lifestyle, sniffling just often enough to annoy everyone within 25 feet of me.

Still having plenty of time to kill, I browsed around Target (fun fun) before heading back to John's office a full half hour ahead of our planned pickup. At this point it all sunk in. My head fell to the side, my sinuses exploded and I sat feeling less than human in our F150 and thinking about the Steven King book where everyone dies from that flu-like plague. By the time John came down to the truck, I felt so bad I could have cried. It feels like it's been a month since I last smiled and I just want to feel like myself again... if only for an hour.

The worst part? The workers are coming back first thing tomorrow because they weren't able to finish the work in the living room.

Dear John,

The maintenance crew kicked me out of the apartment because they are completely removing and reinstalling the windows and patio doors. I was told they won't be finished until at least 5 pm. I wanted to stay home but they covered everything with plastic sheets and I would have had to either stand around doing nothing in the kitchen or the bathroom with a very unhappy kitty. I've been trying to call you all morning and your voicemail box is full so I can't even leave a message.

This sucks. I'm incredibly cranky.

If anyone (Dayna, Brian, Nick) sees this before John does, please send him an IM for me. I'm at the library and I can't use the AIM java client.

I hope I never treat my kids the way I treat my websites. Apparently, I can only be enthusiastic about one web project at a time and when one has me fixiated, the others go neglected. Poor 27things, it's ok, mommy still loves you... sort of. Hopefully my new project will be off the ground soon, and I will be able to split my efforts a bit more evenly.

In the mean time, I must away to Club Pet to drop of the dog for a grooming, and then to Wmart to stock up on stockables. Maintance is coming to weatherproof our windows or some such nonesense and I don't feel like watching so I'm out of here.

As you can well imagine, moving from Toronto to Houston involved a certain amount of culture shock. I won't bore you with my list of differences and similarities, but there is one cultural disparity that is constantly shoved down my throat.

In Houston there are 2 very common styles of driving; the hurry up and tailgate and style, and the equally common hurry up slam on the brakes method.

Before I continue, let me clarify myself... tailgating isn't just a party at the rear end of your vehicle, it's also the act of driving your car up the ass end of the person in front of you. I really don't think I should have to explain why tailgating is not only wrong but totally stupid: most rear end collisions are caused by the vehicle in back following too closely. I can assure that this is not a known fact around these parts as one night last week I had an HPD car so far up my ass I could barely see his car, never mind his headlights.

Those who choose the hurry and slam on the brakes methodology are even more annoying because they also tend be the same impatient jackasses that are constantly laying on their gdamn horns. Example: you're stopped at a red light, the signal switches to green, you begin to move your foot from the brake to the gas peddle, right as your are about to start moving, the moron behind you lays on his horn. Sometimes I think these people drive in some state of perpetual horn-readiness.

Here's the thing about car horns: they aren't personal messages, they aren't phone calls or hand gestures. They are incredibly loud and annoying intrusions that direct everyone's attention on yourself, successfully demonstrating your utter lack of patience and courtesy. Sometimes I wish our F150 didn't have tinted windows so these people would have a better view of me flipping them off.

Horn abuse has been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time. I actually found it to be even more annoying in Toronto where there are so many pedestrians. The impact of a horn is multiplied when it bounces back off all the tall office buildings. Being a long time bipedal commuter is what led me to hate horns, but I certainly don't hate them any less now that I am a full time driver.

As a motorist, I rarely use my horn and honestly I usually don't see the need to. If it wasn't for the odd emergency situation like a child or animal running out into the street, or a quick toot if someone is about to back into you, I would say we should completely do away with horns all together.

Look at it this way... how often do you see people pulling the fire alarm when they guy in front of is walking down the hallway too slowly?

"We exercise occasionally the right to criticize (Canada) and what I hear from up in Canada is some juvenile whining."

- Pat Buchanan

Dear Pat,

Allow me introduce you to my cold, Canuckistan ass; I invite you to KISS IT.

Love always,

Dusty

Dayna: cameron got some halloween candy that says "made in canada" on it. should i throw it out?

john: are they HamasChewies?

Dayna: i mean, there may be terrorists hiding in it.

The Friday Five:

1. Were you raised in a particular religious faith?

My parents were both raised Anglican and were married in the same Anglican church where I was christened. I went to Sunday school with my youngest aunt until I moved away to a neighbouring city at the age of 5. At that point, I wanted to find a Sunday school at a new church, so my parents obliged by dropping me off one Sunday. I didn't like it, didn't want to go back and they never mentioned it again. Despite the fact that they were both raised as church-goers, I wouldn't consider either of my parents to be religious.

2. Do you still practice that faith? Why or why not?

No. I'm not a religious person. Although, if I were to become a Christian, I would go back to the Anglican Church.

3. What do you think happens after death?

I'm not sure, but I assume I'll find out.

4. What is your favorite religious ritual (participating in or just observing)?

I enjoy listening to choirs, I guess... and churches contain some of the best art and architecture.. but niether of those are rituals.

5. Do you believe people are basically good?

I wish to believe they are, but they usually prove they are not.

I woke up this morning feeling like crap... it's now 2 pm and my poor throat is on fire. I'd love nothing more than to curl up for a good long nap, but today is the day they are testing the fir alarm system in my building.

/cry

As a child, my parents would take me to Snelgrove Flea Market early every Sunday morning. We'd buy fresh meat, veggies, assorted flea market junk and on one occasion we even bought a puppy. We never skipped the chance to visit the poultry barn, the rabbits or the guy who sold the incredible antiques inside the livestock auction building .

This passed weekend, I convinced John to come with me to Trader's Village, a flea market way out in the middle of I don't know where. It was pretty overcast with scattered rain and despite the full parking lot, alot of the vendor booths were closed. Although there wasn't any livestock or even a poultry barn, there was no shortage of puppies for sale. Ofcourse I had to stop and say hello to each and every one, but I couldn't shake the puppy mill imagery from my mind.

There were also a couple of cool booths with the kind of stuff that you'd furnish your house with if you were going for the Ponderosa style of decor, and a few people selling bamboo shoots and the usual asian imports.

Due to the excessive amount of crap for sale, we didn't do the usual methodic examination of each vendor-filled alley, so it was by chance that we happened to find Worldly Possessions. This little booth run by a very chatty, new age, hippie couple was absolutely amazing. The two of them travel to various part of Asia and South America and bring home the most incredible handmade artifacts. Pillows, stools, sculptures, paintings etc etc etc. The real surprise was the price... everything was so cheap.

After a good hour of inspection and a return visit to their shop, we finally settled on 3 hand painted teak fence boards, complete with rusty nails. The boards were imported from Thailand and cost us a mere $14 each. If you live in the Houston area and you're into that kind of imported artisan/handicraft stuff, you have to check these guys out.

When we got home I sat down to sort through all the photos we took at the market. Upon examing a picture John snapped of me pretending to kiss a cow head, I was shocked to realize that I'm starting to look exactly like Elly from For Better or For Worse. I'm still undecided as to whether this is a good or bad thing, but I think I'm currently leaning quite strongly in the "bad" direction.

  

I spent much of today and several hours this past weekend organizing me pre-GM archives. This amassing of archives included twisting blogger's virtual arm until it agreed to republish all my archives and sorting thru many old ftp server accounts. I'm happy to say, I now have all my blogs, old and new, archived here at 27things.com.

It all started back in early 2001, though it seems like much longer ago... At the time, I was maintaining a personal site at freespeech.org, where I was posting stupid photos of myself and old journals from my highschool days. I had been following a few sites including evhead despite the fact that I had no idea wtf Blogger was. I remember asking my co-worker what "blog" and "e/n" meant; he had no idea, so off I went on an exploration that eventually turned into a journey.

The first thing I did was open up Notepad and began coding a site that was in the image of many of my favourites. This produced vitaminMe which originally lived on digitalrice.com. I still wasn't familiar with Blogger, and as a result, this site was updated manually each time i added an entry. vitaminMe was written for an audience of one: my friend Tracy was at home alone taking care of her daughter, so I would post links to weird internet things and bands we liked, with diary-like entries thrown in for variety.

At some point I realized that all the manual updating wasn't going to cut it for ever, so I signed up at ManilaSites. I didn't have the patience to make it look nice, so I quickly gave up (side note: i can't believe this still exists!). It was only a few weeks later that I found Blogger.

I was happy to plug their basic code into my pre-existing site and everything was wonderful. Sort of. The problem was DigitalRice... they were under going mass upgrades and went they weren't down completely, they were changing my URL. For every link I dropped, 50% of the time visitors were getting a 404. When my buddy Val offered to host me, free of charge, I jumped at the opportunity. I created a new template and 27things was born.

(I have a hard drive full of templates sitting on top of my pc, with hopes that one day I can add Templates I Have Loved and Hated to my history of this blog. Until I get around to actually installing it rather than just using it as a paperweight, you'll have to live with the text only version.)

While living on surrealmedium (Val's server) 27things evolved to include the incredible wonder we've come to know as comments. Val was also hosting a php powered community portal for me, which led me to investigate other online applications like GreyMatter. It only took a quick look around to compell me to kiss Blogger a happy farewell. Being on a server adminstrated by my friend brought opportunity to do all kinds of other fun stuff like using php to create skinnable sites.

Unfortunately, surreal fell victim to several denial of service attacks, and eventually the whole server was put into "the mail" and shipped from it's physical home in Texas to Val's physical home in New Mexico. At this point I was forced to switch back to Blogger and the on again off again DigitalRice, where I reluctantly stayed until moving to Htown.

If he'll excuse me for saying, John buys URLs like a woman buys shoes. One day while he was at work, I asked him to buy a URL for me so I could finally give my blog the longterm home it so desperately needed. He lovingly obliged.

That pretty much brings us back to today and my hours of archiving. If at any time, after this post falls of the page, you should feel like talking a trip in my Bloglife Way Back Machine, you'll find links on my regular archive page.

Imagine my shock this morning when I went to walk the dog... there was this big, glowy yellow thing in the sky. It hurt my eyes, made me feel kind of warm and cast these weird shadow thingies.

As soon as I'm convinced it's not going to suddenly switch back to torrential downpours, I might just take doggie an extended walking adventure. Here's hoping this weather keeps up for a few more days; a got a letter from the management telling me that this week they would be testing the fire alarm on and off for 3 days!

Serious lack of post-age today. I attempted (again) to set up Moveable Type on my server, finally surrendering to my lack of a proper db. Three things prompted my desire to switch from GreyMatter: the ability to create multiple blogs from one installation; the ability to easily import/streamline all my old bloggers/GM into one site; active development including upgrades, add-ons, mods and hacks.

I can live without multiple blogs, and I've decided to make a cool archive site for my old blogger... but I'm less than pleased about being stuck with the BETA blog in a VHS world. MT isn't the end all be all of blogs and plenty of people do great things with GM. It's just a shame to see it fall to the way side.

I could always get off my butt and learn perl so I could finally have my way with GM, but these days there are much more practical db languages. More advanced skills that I could not only use to build my own site, but also put to use at a future workplace.

So what's a wanna-be script kiddie like me to do? Since I can't have my way with GM, I decided to have my way with something off Brian's wishlist: a method by which he can easily update his random QooC* generator script. It's a far cry from weblogging software, but it makes me feel useful and sufficiently numbs the brain.

*QooC - quotes out of context.

I don't follow much mainstream media, with the exception of the daily dose of Fux News that John forces on me. Recently, Dayna pointed me to Weblog Central (an MSNBC site), which I've since been casually following ever since.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Andrea Tomkins of "A peek inside the fishbowl," mentioned in the first line of the most recent update. Adding to my pleasure was her recommendation of Exploding Dog, one of my most favourite websites. Anyone that has been following me for the past year and a half will know that not only has this site moved across the web and back, but I really, really love Sam Brown.

Scrolling down the page revealed Christine's "Big pink cookie" at the top of this week's Best Blogs. Christine is one of the h-town bloggers and she also contributes to scripty-goddess, among other things. You go, Christine!

"Why can't people understand? I've got a short attention span. Short. Attention. Span." -Fizzy Bangers

I'm already completely bored with my current layout. I am itching for a redesign but have been feeling utterly uninspired. This has led me to scour the internet in search of ideas which may or may not get my creative juices flowing. In the course of combing thru eatonweb, the bloggys, diarist and various webrings I've been inadvertantly forced to look at some bad, bad things.

If anyone can suggest any portals or places or anything that might lead me to get some spark of something, I would be so, so, so happy.

Last night John and I went to see The Transporter. It was a great movie, and especially fun because there were a few jokes in french that no one else in the theatre seemed to get.

On the way home we stopped to pick up some wine - John ran in while I sat in the F150 taking self portraits under the yellowish orange parking lot lights. Quite a few people give me weird looks as I tried balancing th camera in various places in my attempt to capture the moment. One couple gave me a dirty look when they caught me pointing the camera in their general direction... the truth is, I was taking pictures of myself reflected in the mirror of the sun visor. For a full size view of the pics, try here and here.

Is this really me or just a very convincing look-alike?

In related news, John's new site is leaving mine in the dust when it comes to traffic. I was reluctant to post about the rifle range escapade, but I'm starting to wonder if I too might benefit from posting pictures of that Canadian chick sporting the AK.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I was nominated at The Bloggys for best design and blog of the month. Ofcourse, I shamelessy voted for myself immediately only to discover that by voting, I was no longer able to view the other nominees.

So, I whipped out ye olde Netscape and headed on over to the Bloggy pages to size up the competition. Saddly (or not, depending on how you look at it), I wasn't able to accurately size up anything, because so many people don't bother to make their websites Netscape compliant. And when I say compliant, I don't mean "the same as it looks in IE," or even "nice to look at" ... but come on! There is absolutely nothing wrong with a site that's freakin' readable.

Now before you get worried about my high horse crapping on your shoe, let me add that I am not above and beyond exclaiming, "screw you, Netscape!" and doing whatever the hell I want, compliant or not. Infact, the blog I was using in between GreyMatter(s) was a big middle finger in the face of Navigator... but at least there was some kind of disclaimer; some indication that the site wasn't supposed to look like hell.

So I turn to John, who as usual, is beside me making up nonesense for your viewing pleasure,

"Doesn't anyone care about browser compatibility anymore?" He replies with some jargon about Netscape's share of the web browsing market or some such other. Well it's obvious that Navigator makes the internet look ugly, but it hasn't gone away yet.

This brings me to mention what happens to websites when you look at them on a mac; an obstacle that isn't vanishing as quickly as Netsacpe... But I think you get my point.

So what do you think? Do you care if your website looks like hell and/or is unreadable due to browser compatibility issues? Do you thumb your nose in the face of Netscape users? Do you even know wtf I'm talking about?

This morning while walking the Mags, I was reminded of the time my youngest aunt, Michelle, choked on a piece of spaghetti while attempting to recreate a scene from Lady and the Tramp. Her eyes got really wide and my dad had to hold down her flapping arms while my mom cranked open her sister's mouth. She proceeded to pull out the offending noodle in a fashion that was the visual reverse of the action that choked Michelle in the first place. I remember being totally mortified by the whole escapade and vowed to myself that I would never attempt to eat spaghetti in such a manner again.

Being a dog owner for almost 7 years now, I have since learned that there are far more disgusting things that often need pulling from much more disgusting places.

Not too long ago John took it upon himself to teach Mag's to speak on command. Once again the old adage, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks," was proven to be false. The truth is, you can teach an old dog new tricks but only if you use raisin bagels as a form of bribery.

Now, as my mom would say, "That's gonna come back and bite ya in the ass one day." As a result of said training, my dog now "speaks" at the sight of a bagel. Example: this weekend we brought home a big, brown bag of fresh bagels and at one point I had to go into the kitchen to see wtf all the whining was about. Wouldn't you know... There's the dog sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, staring at said bag of bagels, "speaking." If a translation was possible, I'm sure it would be something along the lines of, "Give me a damn dough-thingy already!"

You see, Mags loves baked goods, specifically donuts. This stems back to my less fortunate days, when I would start my morning by scrounging up enough change to get a small coffee and plain donut from the Coffee Time at Richmond and Parliment. Coffee for me, donut for Mags. It's amazing what kind of freaked out traditions you come up with when you're poor. Anyway...

Recently, I took Mags to my best friend's house to celebrate her doggie birthday; the kids were unable to find donuts on short notice, so instead they bought her an expensive Italian pastry. Of course, I was reluctant to let her eat the thing, but it was her birthday... what kind of doggie mom deprives their pup of a delicous baked good on her doggie birthday?

I guess it's safe to say that in pastry-scarce times, Mags is apparently more than happy to settle for a simple bagel.

Due to some unknown flaw in construction, the property management has opted to totally redo the exterior finish of all the buildings in our complex. Since our appartment faces the inner courtyard, the incovenience has been minimal; excluding the random baracade blocking our usual exits.

For the past several days, the workers have been assembling their scaffolding around our courtyard and have begun to demolish the existing exterior. Outside of some excessive noise, it hasn't been too much to deal with. Today, though, I was awoken at the ungodly hour of 8:30 (i know, i know) by an unignorable bashing against my bedroom wall. When John came in to say goodbye before he left for work, he had a smug grin on his face. He said it was because I looked cute, and he kindly omitted the "with you head shoved under the pillow," part. Of course I made as if the noise didn't bother me at all, then pretended to go back to sleep.

Obviously, I wasn't falling back asleep. The bashing was now doing a demolition duet with the sound of falling debris. A sound which, I have to add, is very unsettling. So, what can I do? I crawl out of bed noticing, thru closed blinds, how dark it seems outside. I get dressed, get the dog ready, and peek out thru the blinds in the living room to see just how foul the weather is today. Well, I'll tell you, it's pretty hard to tell what the weather is like when you have giant sheets of 2 inch plywood covering all your windows.

So here I am, stuck in a virtual night, listening to the sound of debris from the fourth floor landing outside my patio door. Barrels of fun. Oh yeah.

The lack of posts this weekend might imply that I was away and/or busy. The truth is that both activities we had planned for this weekend were put off due to grey, wet weather leaving me feeling listless and rather blah.

Allow me to illustrate: we set off yesterday to watch the air show, which had apparently been cancelled. Instead we are met by an ominous smoke cloud billowing up from the distance. After much detouring, stopping the truck at dead ends and climbing onto the roof for a better vantage, we were finally rewarded. Behold the Pasadena Tire Fire.

Although I found this collapsed road to be more visually interesting.

In other belated weekend news, I was nominated for a bloggy which has generated a ton of traffic. I'm all in favor of traffic, but it makes me feel even more guilty for slacking in the update department.

Nicole's story about the dirty poem she got busted with in grade 6 reminded me of my own grade 6 dirty poem story.

It was the summer of 1985 and I was packing up my neon socks and off-the-shoulder tshirts in preparation for my 3 week stint as a junior counsellor in training at community day camp near my Nanny's house. My friend Andrea was over, and we decided to give our buddy Allistair a call.

I don't remember how it all got started but we ended up spending hours reading dirty limericks back and forth over the phone. The poems were almost as ridiculous as the realization that my parents weren't the only ones who had a giant anthology of dirty limericks in their library.

The next day Allistair phoned me again. This time the conversation wasn't so humorous. This was 1985, a time before answering machines back when you had a service take your calls ... a service that had a real (cold hearted) lady on the other end. It seems that Allistair's parents had a service, and that that service had answered our dirty call to Allistair at the same time he had. What's more? The lady from the service recorded our entire conversation and later played it back to the poor kid's parents!

Well, Allistair was in a mountain of trouble, and even worse was that his parents had told him that they would be calling my parents to inform them of my wrong-doings. I still remember, clear as day, the feeling of my stomach dropping. Thunk. I was a good kid (back then in 1985, at least) and I never got into trouble. The theme song to my impending doom played in my head.

It was the day I was to leave for my 3 weeks at Nanny's. It was only a 20 minute trip, and I went there all the time, but I was really looking forward to being a counsellor in training. I waited for my mom to come home, kill me, cancel my trip and ground me for, like, ever. Instead, she took me to Nanny's with out incident.

I toyed with the idea of a full confession, I even wrote a tell -all letter to my mom that I kept stuffed in my suitcase at Nanny's. For the first week, I lived in fear. Would today be the day that my mom found out? Why hadn't she called and killed me via the phone yet? Was she waiting for me to get home? The three weeks passed and I went back to "town." My parents never once breathed a word about the whole dirty escapade.

Looking back, I can imagine my mom on the phone with Allistair's parents. First burning with embarrassment upon hearing the news... then peeing herself laughing as she tried to relay my antics to my dad. I can imagine, if they did know, that it was more entertaining for them to keep it to themselves.

If they don't know, it's probably the one secret I managed to keep from my mom, and I've often thought of bringing it up in passing just to see if she knew. I'm sure she would laugh, but that preteen dread seems to resurge over me the minute I open my mouth.

I finally got around to updating and rearranging my links page. Read all about my new additions.

go fish // I assume that Nicole found my site thru eatonweb... regardless, she posted a few comments here, thus luring me back to her weblog. Her stories never fail to crack me up. Most recently, her husband videotaped her late night neighbor-rage.

blast! blog // This was one of the blogs that got me started in the blog life. He's since redesigned, but I used to go stare at his page for minutes. Who can really stare at any site for hours?

robotskull // Another one of the blogs that provoked me to start my own. On my very first blog (vitaminMe) I had a buddy icon gallery just like samn does.

scripty goddess // If you're looking for cool GM/MT tips, hacks and scripts go here.

demented and sad // The chalk board says "Welcome to Blogger Detention."

brett lamb // I just found this mostly Toronto-specific blog via Richard, and my absolute favourite bit will probably be lost on, well basically everyone, except maybe Rich. On his about pages he listed "Dufferin Mall action," under likes and "Galleria action" under dislikes. You don't get it, but that's ok.

lbstone // This is Brandon's website. He likes to link things and work on code projects. He once tricked me with his chatbot, but only for a minute, then I said dirty and mean things to it. He also created the 27 conspiracy which is now defunct. I understand that he has moved on to other things but I wish he'd move the big disclaimer about the site being defunct from the top of the main page.

linkmachinego // Yet another one of the sites that got me started. Lots of fresh-daily links to internet, tech, and comic book related stuff, amoung other things.

jason pultz // Jason Pultz once drew a picture of me on my office white board. I looked very mean and my breasts were very pointed. I had a huge speech bubble coming out of my mouth that said, "Get back to work!" His comic makes me laugh.

picture yourself // I'm sure many of you are familiar with Picture Yourself. It's a photolog of self portraits taken mostly by bloggers and some other people too.

shift // A Canadian tech and culture magazine. I tried to get a subscribtion from Amazon but they don't have it. Losers.

texas handbook // Last but not least... I just moved to Texas, so I need all the help I can get.

Last night John and I went out for chinese food and then stopped by Barnes and Noble to grab some books and coffees. The late night caffeine left me tossing and turning. It's quite cool here now, and we've been sleeping with the bedroom windows open. As I laid there, sleepless, I wrapped myself in the blanket, feeling the tip of my nose gradually grow cold.

The cold nose and the smell of the crisp night time air brought back memories of my days on Vancouver Island. We'd gone there with the intention of staying with some friends, only to find them homeless in Calgary while enroute to the coast. We ended up sleeping on various couches and floors, including an unfinished room of a rustic cabin (read: squat) outside Courtney, BC.

The place had no heat outside of a wood burning stove in the main room, and no oil with which to heat the water; you had to devote at least an hour to boiling water prior to taking in a hot bath. I remember laying out all the blankets I could find to insulate my sleeping body from the cracks in the floor boards, which in the morning light allowed you to see right through to the dirt floor below the house.

In the morning, I'd awaken, my body curled into the fetal position for maximum preservation of body heat, and my nose would always be ice cold.

Cory Doctorow's sad mac tattoo. As featured on Wired. Take note that said tattoo is a perfect 27 pixels by 27 pixels.

Appologies to anyone that came by tonight and found my site all discombobulated. I was working on merging my old surrealmedium.com GM archives with the archives here and left the site showing entries from November 2001 on the front page while I took a break to play Monopoly. Anyway, everything is all better now... infact it's better than ever. My attempt to merge GMs was met with success! It may not have been immediate success and it may have taken hours of manual entry # recoding... but it worked, so I'm happy.

So what does all this mean? If you check out the archives index you will find things have expanded to include all my GM entries from the past year, exccept for the months that I was forced back to blogger. Weee!

Once upon a time in a Canadian city far, far away... I lived on Dovercourt Street in a big old house with Andre and Adam, 2 guys that I knew from highschool. Being in our early 20's, living on our own in a huge house that belonged to Andre's grandmother, we decided to have a hallowe'en party. The 3 of us sat down and devised a party plan that included clearing out the dungeon-like basement, renting a sound system and filling the front porch with pumpkins.

We started with the basement, and I swear, it hadn't been cleaned, tidied or even so much as visited for purposes other than laundry in at least 25 years. The whole cleaning process took over a week, and when we were done we made some fake dead bodies, set up a couch and hung up a bunch of fake cobwebs to replace all the real ones we'd cleared out.

In the meantime, Andre had reserved the sound system from (as Richard likes to call it) FuckOffNDie & McQuaid on Bloor Street, which was conviently located around the corner.

Suddenly, a problem arose... the cost of the sound system had eaten up our pumpkin budget. What were 3 smalltown, twenty-somethings living in the big city to do? I believe it was our friend, Dan, who probably to this day still lives with his parents, who pointed out that everyone "in town" had started putting their uncarved pumpkins out on their porches in their wanna-be-Martha-Stewart attempts at seasonal decoration. BINGO! We all jump into Andre's brown Impala and head up to "town." Town, in this instance, meant Nobleton, but could also have meant Bolton, the neigbouring towns where us roomies had all grown up.

Now, what follows may one day be used against me, but here goes... The four of us cruised around darkened streets with the trunk popped halfway open stealing the very pumpkins off the porches of unsuspecting strangers. Not one, not 10, but at least 25 fresh, uncarved pumpkins. Having satisfied ourselves numerically... we then sped off back to the anonymity of the big city. I spent the remaining days prior to the party carving pumpkin after pumpkin. Scary pumpkin, clown pumpkin, cat pumpkin... you name it, I carved it.

The night of the party arrived. The old house was unable to contain the insane volume of the sound system, leading our neighbours outside to party on their respective porches. An odd change from calling the cops. All in all, no one was arrested and the party was marked as a huge success with guests arriving from all over the city and several of the "towns."

The only hitch was after the party we were left with 25 carved up pumpkins to dispose of. In retrospect, although the former owners of said pumpkins were disappointed to discover their decorative gourds had been stolen, they were most likely pleased to not find them smashed on streets for miles around... which incidently, is what happened to our "hot" pumpkins several days later.

Last night I informed John's mom that I was making my Thanksgiving a new Little family tradition. Every woman should be so lucky as to have a mother-in-law that's happy to hear about the new traditions you plan to force on her unsuspecting family. ;)

So today, John and I celebrated our first Canadian Thanksgiving with a yum, yum, yummy Harris family dinner. I made an amazing roast chicken (there's no way I was making a turkey for the 2 of us), green beans, corn, mashed potatos, hot rolls, my Nanny's homemade stuffing (once again, I amazed myself with my ability to recreate family dishes on the fly) and gravy from scratch.

John seemed pretty skeptical at first, especially when he asked repeatedly if he could season the chicken and then made a point of setting out his favorite seasonings after I repeatedly refused. I love the man, but there was no way I was letting him season my Thanksgiving bird! Marriage is about compromise, so in the end I let him prepare the mashed potatos. At one point he told me that my future in Houston was dependant on the success of the dinner, and if i failed it was back to Canada for me. No pressure there, eh? Luckily, he enjoyed it so much that he decided that he wouldn't send me back after all! *wink*

Maybe next year I'll include the rest of the meal... boiled cabbage, salt beef, ham, beets and turnip. Oh, and don't forget 2 different deserts.

Yesterday, John and I jumped into the F-150 and headed out to places unknown. As we we're driving, we noticed a butt-load of people milling around the Chappell Hill area, so we decided to take a turn off the highway and check it out. Turns out, it was the annual Scarecrow Festival (read: artisan fair). The traffic was unbelievable, and we opted to take the town detour rather than attempt to park and check out the wares... which we saw plenty of people walking around with. Needless to say, it was a great idea. We saw tons of beautiful period homes, most of which we up for sale, and many beautiful country properties. We both agreed that we'd love to live there some day.

Eventually, we saw a sign pointing to Brenham and while enroute John slammed on the brakes, pulled a U-turn on the highway and took me to Monastary Miniature Horses, owned and operated by the Franciscan Poor Clare Nuns.



We bought postcards, blueberry jam and went out to the barn to pet the tiniest little horses. John insisted that after the gates were closed the nuns turned up the music and raced around in the little buggies. Wild times, I'm sure. We also had the pleasure of hanging with the most laid back goat we'd ever seen. I guess living with a bunch of nuns has it's benefits.

Next we were off to Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site, the birthplace of Texas. We got out of the truck to stretch our legs and read a few historic markers. We peaked into a replica of the building where all the "birthing" took place and were then off again... to Brenham also known as the birthplace of Texas. We got yummy Blue Bell icecream and browsed thru all the antique shops. All the old architecture gives Brenham a real old south feel. Being a true Torontonian, I wondered out loud if they filmed many movies there.

Later we cruised over to Sommerville Lake, and then drove around somewhat aimlessly for a few more hours before finally heading home.

Stay tuned for my post about the "Blue Norther" and "Canadian Thanksgiving comes to Texas."

"In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the second Monday in October. Unlike the American tradition of remembering Pilgrims and settling in the New World, Canadians give thanks for a successful harvest. The harvest season falls earlier in Canada compared to the United States due to the simple fact that Canada is further north."

Read more. about the origins of Canadian Thanksgiving.

I have to wonder if I'm the only person in Houston to get excited about the arrival of socks and sweater weather. Granted you can still get away with a tshirt and shorts, but it's just cool enough for something a little warmer. In a few minutes I'll get showered and put on something a little more seasonal, then off to take care of all my errands. I have Canadian bills to pay (they'll accept the payment in USD), more adit photos for my EAD application, a few photocopies, then to the post office to send everything off.

The one good thing about the return of my I-485 is that we are now including the EAD application. This means I'll have to wait less time before I can work. I have to wonder if I'm the only person in Houston who is excited about going back to work. ;) I hate to admit, but I like having that enforced scheduele that comes with a regular job. Sure, I wish I didn't have to get up every day, and there are times I wish I could just skip it, but left to my own devices I tend to drift. I'm sure that once I have some kiddies running around, it will be alot easier to adhere to an at-home work life... but until then...

So my I-485 application was returned because I foolishly submitted a personal check as payment. The most painful part came when I had to go pick up the parcel at the post office. The mailperson had failed to record some number and neglected to indicate who the package was addressed to, so it took the guy twice as long to find it. Once he did manage to locate it, he took my passport as ID, then returned to tell me my husband would have to sign for it as it was in his name. I asked to see the package, and ofcourse, it was addressed to me. Apparently, the guy failed to notice this despite the fact that he'd been walking around with my passport in his hand for a freakin' half hour. His excuse? "I just assumed Dusty was a guys name." Thanks, bud.

In Canada you can go into any bank and purchase a US money order. Do you think any US banks offer reciprocal service? Don't even bother answering that question with a "yes" and don't bother giving me any "reasons" for it either. I'm bitter, I admit it.

Onto B.R.O.F Business

1. Crickrock has apparently bit the dust, so I've created a new ring that is hosted here at 27things.com. Any former B.R.O.F members that haven't signed up should do so. When you enter you're URL please include the "http://" bit at the begining or the ring code will not work. Any new people who may want to join can apply, but be warned, I'm not making any promises as the ring was originally created to link a specific group of people.

2. Dayna your site ID is 3 not 2. If you could change your ringcode to reflect that, I'd love ya to bits.

3. I'm working towards making the ring pages a little nicer to look at, but I've been a touch distracted lately.



Onto "Where Have I Been Lately" Business

John brought home Earth and Beyond and I'm hooked. Yes, I realize it's made by EA... it hurts me more than it hurts you. And no, Neil had nothing to do with it. For some reason this makes me feel alot less dirty.

ps. Matt when are you gonna realize that LJ is a scary cult? Dayna has already dispatched the goons who will be kidnapping you and taking you to a safe location for deprogramming. It's for your own good. ;)

Got myself hung up on a new game this past week and then when I went to blog all about it, our internet was down AGAIN. Anyway, I'm back in action now, but John is waiting to go out for breakfast so the update will have to wait a little longer.

Oh, and when i get back I'm going to address problems with the new ring, and Matt's switch to LJ...

Usually in the morning before I walk the mutt, I take a few minutes to sit at my desk and skim blogs while I wake up. This morning was no different, with the exception of the cat... I have a large rubbermaid storage container pushed up against the wall under my desk that I use as a foot rest. The cat was repeatedly running from one side of the container to the other, via a route that went around the back of my chair. After a few minutes of cat claw traction on the carpet, it occured to me that something unusual was up.

I pushed my chair back from my desk, and was not surprised to see a tiny little mouse running from the storage container to the cover of my power bar with the cat in tow. This activity continued for several minutes, with me muttering, "Kill it already," and "Sheesh," throughout.

At this point, the dog had caught wind that something chase-worthy was under my desk, and poked her head in as well. The wee mouse made a break for it, scurrying under the sofa. The dog and cat had pressed themselves against the floor trying to find the little bugger, when i noticed a little tail poking out from the folds of Maggie's flannel blanket. I briefly toyed with the idea of grabbing it by the tail and tossing it out the door, then opted not to.

Carefully, I tried to unfold the blanket, hoping maybe I could fold it into a pouch and dispose of it. i unfolded and ruffled, but no mouse appeared. Finally, I stood up and gave the blanket a good shake. The mouse flew into the air and grabbed onto my pant leg on it's way back down.

I am embarrassed to tell you what happened next. I used to have several pet mice, and I had many friends with big, old rats when i was a teenager... I am certainly not afraid of rodents... but when that tiny mouse landed on my leg, I let out a chicken-shit whoop. Not only did i scare myself with my own startled holler, but the cat and dog both jumped a foot into the air.

The mouse scurried out of sight and I retreated, laughing, into the bedroom to phone John. He was insistant that I rescue the mouse from the pets and toss it outside. I joked that I was going to catch it, throw it down the drain and turn on the disposal. I also pointed out that the cat was thoroughly enjoying herself and NOT killing it ("maybe we should get her a pet gerbil"), but the dog looked hungry and would probably take a chomp at it.

Me killing it - cruel. Dog eating it - gross. Cat killing it - nature. Yet the cat was failing me. I let John go and proceded with what I like to call Plan Jack.

I went into the kitched and grabbed one of the giant Jack In The Box collectors cups I've been saving to use at the pool. I crawled under my desk, placed the cup, moved the power bar and the mouse ran right into my trap. On to part two... Mouse Be Gone. I opened the door and tossed it out.

At this point I called John to let him know I had prevailed. I recounted my story.

"You threw it out the door?"

"Yep."

"The patio door?"

"No, the front door."

"Into the hallway?"

"Yep. It will find it's way out eventually."

For those of you in less pleasant climates, our complex is basically open air. Though we have semi-enclosed hallways, the front door of our building is a gate and infact not a door at all. So to throw the mouse into the hallway, is to throw it outside, in my opinion. Besides, better out there than in here.

Now if only I could get the pets to understand that it's gone and they can stop looking for it...

On Saturday we took Katie the Niece and Mags the Dog to Brazos Bend State Park. We had told Katie to make sure she was up early because we wanted to get an early start. We arrived at 11 am. The niece was up at 6:30. The grandmother raised an eyebrow.

So off we went. Someone didn't check into exact location of the park, so we drove around pointing at shacks, trailers and dumpster saying "that's your house," until finally stopping to get directions. The dog insisted on laying on my lap so she could see out the window leaving me coverd in little white hairs and dog-breath face. As we hit the turn off to the park, John started with the warnings...

"Don't let the dog get too close to the water. Alligators lurk by the shore and they have been known to jump out and eat people's pets."

"Make sure you keep the dog on the leash."

"Stay out of the tall grass, there are alot of nasty, poisonous snakes here." Etc.

At first I thought he was exagerating, which I have learned is the Texas way, (Everything sounds alot bigger in Texas) but as we entered the park there were many signs confirming his warnings.

We drove up to the gatehouse and pay, at which point I repeatedly pointed out that I had spent 2 summers working at a conservation area where I was the one at the gatehouse collecting the entry fee. Upon finding a parking spot, we doused ourselves in mosquito repellant in an attempt to fend off the West Nile, and marched out into the woods. The first thing of interest is a giant sign that says "Please Beware of Alligators. Do not feed or molest." Molest an alligator? That sounds like one hell of a fetish. I told John that we really needed to get ourselves a digital camera so I could better blog these moments.

Unfortunately, our failure to get an early start left us hiking around in less than comfortable weather, so we headed back to the truck and drove over to the visitor's center to get water for humans and dog. We sipped while sitting on a bench in the shade, saying "Yup," and "Yup, yup yup," to each other like a bunch of old cronies. We watched Katie race around with the dog, and vowed we wouldn't come back until the cooler weather arrived.

We didn't managed to catch a glimpse of any poisonous snakes or alligators, but on our way out we did see a full family of deer.... they didn't didn't jump out of the bush and try to eat my dog either.

I just wanted to congratulate muh bestest friend on finally settling her big court case. It was a year and a half of total BS and she deserves everything she got and more. I wish I was there to celebrate with you too, girl!

Birthday wishes go out to Val who recently turned a very cool 27, and Adam who turned a luke-warm 20.

BD: You must wear flak when you go back next.

1. I was born on the cusp of Aquarius and Capricon, but my chart shows that I am an Aquarius with Capricorn tendancies.

2. I have moved 23 times in the past 11 years.

3. I have won awards for public speaking.

4. I was year book editor.

5. I have only been fired from a job once.

6. I am a university drop out.

7. My parents are divorced.

8. I am an only child.

9. I have travelled from Vancouver to Montreal to Toronto to Houston with my dog, Maggie.

10. Throughout my life when I've told people my name, many have said, "My [insert type of pet]'s name is Dusty too." This is why I gave my dog a "people" name.

11. Maggie was named after Maggie Simpson, because she never speaks.

12. I quit smoking cigarettes when I was 27.

13. I once spent a week sleeping on the floor of a run down shack on Vancouver Island.

14. I have also lived out of my car.

15. My past career aspirations in chronological order: teacher, dental assistant, lawyer, politican, aerospace engineer, journalist, novelist, employed, magazine editor.

16. I never aspired to be a graphic designer, it just sort of happened. I lucked into the post graduate program (i'm not even a graduate ...see item #6) and my first interview resulted in a job.

17. I failed OAC Finite Math - twice.

18. When I was younger, I used to talk to the grandmother that died before I was born, rather than pray to god.

19. At age 13, I ran for jr. vice president and gave a speech infront of my entire school while dressed as a cowboy.

20. Throughout most of my life, I have been a tomboy.

21. I am a media junkie. I am adicted to magazines and have been known to watch too much tv.

22. I have been an avid reader ever since I learned how to read.

23. I like to read while I eat.

24. I believe that each person has the power to change their own life.

25. My drink of choice is Rye and Ginger (that's whiskey and gingerale for you yanks).

26. I am proud to be Canadian, but i don't consider myself to be patriotic.

27. Yes, I have a staring problem.

Well, after the Not So Friday Five, I started up the Stay-Touch-Mobile and got the wheels in motion by sending an email to Rich, formerly of 90 Ontario, currently of somewhere in coastal BC. Well, not only did he respond right away, but he sent me a link to their (his and his partner Pia's) website. Nothing, I tell you nothing pleases me more than discovering my friends have websites with weblogs to boot.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some catching up to read. *grin*

Well, at long last, Friday afternoon we waved bye bye to my I-485. For those not knowledgable in the ways of US immigration, this means that I have applied for permanent residency here. It was a relatively painless procedure except for the butt ugly adit photos and the minor squimish at the photocopier.

Last week marked another, rather different milestone in our freshly married lives: we got our new personal cheques! I guess they're actually "checks" since I'm in America now, but the point is, they have both our names on them! Weee! Aside from being a typical newly-married event, this will be instrumental to my I-485 as we will have to present proof that we have living together as a married couple.

1. Would you say that you're good at keeping in touch with people?

Alas, I am awful about keeping in touch with people, and have been since I first left my hometown 11 years ago. Those that have maintained contact with me through out the years have done so with incredible persistance and sometimes intense searching.

2. Which communication method do you usually prefer/use: e-mail, telephone, snail mail, blog comments, or meeting in person? Why?

I guess i prefer blog form. But I'm open to any method, I guess. Maybe I prefer in person... oh I don't know. You pick.

3. Do you have an instant messenger program? How many? Why/why not? How often do you use it?

I have AIM, but i often use trillion when i feel like chatting in IRC. I use it pretty much every day. I used to use it 24/7 but I'm on the wagon these days.

4. Do most of your close friends live nearby or far away?

Far way. /cry

5. Are you an "out of sight, out of mind" person, or do you believe that "distance makes the heart grow fonder"?

Well, you don't know what you have 'till it's gone (-joni mitchell) but if I try not to think about you, I won't miss you as much. And for your information, punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks, mmkay.

Up late trying to induce sleep thru (not so) random websearches. Imagine my suprise! I had no idea I was such an accomplished activist.

My mom has always tried to be a good example and has never hesitated to draw big red circles around her mistakes so that I won't accidently repeat them, despite the fact that our lives have been so different and the parallels are far and few between. When there are parallels, I am more than grateful.

About 10 years ago, my mom left Toronto and moved to Montreal to live with her future husband. She didn't really know anyone there, she didn't speak more than a few words of french, and the language barrier kept her from getting a job. Those were times when our relationship was hot and cold and I was never struck by the gravity of her situation.

When I announced that I was moving to Houston, she had alot to say. It was clear to her that I was doing the right thing for me, but she had her own personal experiences to share, which I took with my usual 10 grains of salt. These days it's sinking in.

It's been hard for me to talk to anyone about how I'm feeling these days, mostly because I don't want to give the wrong impression or hurt anyone's feelings. I can't begin to express how happy I am to be here, married, with John and Maggie and Kitty. I have a great place, everything I need and pretty much whatever I want. I like Houston alot, despite missing the conveniences of Toronto like better transit and everything within reasonable walking distance. Even when it's raining, the sky has the costal quality that I loved so much about Vancouver.

Even still, I'm starting to feel like a rat in a cage and although I can leave whenever I like, there isn't much out there for me. I have no where to go outside of my usual errands, nothing is waiting for me, nobody near to hang with when I just need to get out. Despite the fact that I am settled in and feeling at home, my life here sometimes seems like a big house with lots of empty rooms that still need filling up in order to really be able to call it my own. Is it growing pains or adjustment? It's everything my mom had told me.

It's not been easy but I'm working on it. I'm just grateful that I have John here with me, my mom in Montreal to understand what I'm going through, Debbie in Toronto to miss me, and Maggie beside me nudging me to get up, go outside and explore our new home.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and actually redesign rather than reSamBrown the site. This was received with smiles by Brian who's only comment on my last design was "You really like Sam Brown, don't you?" There are still some bugs to be worked out, especially in regards to the fixed window vs the webring, but my eyes are bugged too far outta my head to even consider fixing it tonight.

The best part about this redesign was that I got to code it along side my 2 favorite html cohorts, Dayna and Brian. After all the Majestics, DAoCs, GreyMatters, Bloggers, aimless surfing and endless AIM chats, the thing I love most about the internet is sitting in a chat with my buds pasting html snips, links to code and cursing out css. Hours slipped by and Brian's bandwidth was eaten up by refreshes and rebuilds, hence today eyesore and doghouse are 404. Even still, it was a good day.

Leave a note to let me know what you think of the new "me" and I'll try to work out any quirks you may find.

"i think redesigning is like sex. i cant ever stop doing it, or thinking about it. but unlike sex, i am doing it right now"

- Dayna

Take a look at this little preview and let me know what you think.

"NOTE: This can also be made with baby meat instead of the fruit and peanut butter."

Frosty Paws Ice Cream For Dogs

This means I'm slightly left of center and far more libertarian that authoritarian. Strangely enough, John came out dead center.

If my weblog had a theme song, it would be "Maybe Tomorrow," from the Canadian show, The Littlest Hobo. During the past 2 years, the site's had at least 5 urls and transitioned from manual entry to a flip flop between various publishing tools, all due the the lack of a permanent home. Now that I finally have a real place to call 27things, I'm moving to make some more permanent-like steps. Or non-steps, I guess... ok, ok, foundation blocks.

With the exception of majestic, I have never been one to whore my site out for hits, or readers. But a few days ago, I watched a giant tumble weed blew across the screen as my last post echoed back at me from the empty corners of my site. So I decided to do something I never thought I'd do. I succumbed to the the craving for an audience and joined a weblog directory.

If you link it, they will come. People are already visiting. I attribute this traffic spike to the fact that "27" tends to come before A or Q or even 9 in an alphabetized list. You'd think I would be happy or excited by my linking success, but alas... It occurs to me that now I have to provide something of interest to those new readers who click my href hoping for something more than the usual "insert stuped teen joke here, my boyfriend dumped me, my parents don't get me, i hate school" crap that alot of weblogs turn out to be.

Now I'm faced with the one big question that has been lurking ominiously in the bgcolor for these past years:

What the hell is this weblog supposed to be about, anyway??

Thankfully, the folks at eatonweb provided me with a list of categories, from which I was able to decifer some overall picture of my ramblings. Gaming: oh yeah! General: good ol' genereal. Graphic Design: do you remember me? Internet: um yeah. Journal: sometimes. Life: am I still breathing? Literature: because sometimes I read more than MarieClaire. Personal: I guess. Pop Culture: mmm gimme that sweet, sweet mind candy. Uprooted: Toronto and Houston are almost on other sides of the globe. Web Design etc: right now I'm more about the "etc" than the web design part. Web Development: i need to get dayna back into stealing my code. Unfortunately, there was no option for "pointless crap" or "a lotta junk."

Anyway... having carved these definitions into the semi permanence of etonweb's php, I feel like I have to start coloring within the lines, so to speak, lest my new referals label me a fraud for daring to include "graphic design" as a meta for a site that posts mostly about cucumber recipes and what t-shirts I bought at Banana Republic last week. OK. Maybe that picture is a bit extreme, but it's definately time for me to start inserting some more content-like stuff in between the pointless chatter and maybe actually say something for a change.

Wish me luck and better spelling.

I'm sitting here wondering why John's coming home from work so late when I realize that the cordless phone is dead and the ringer is off on the other phone. Poor guy. I wonder how many times he's called trying to get me to buzz him in.

... when there's no one around.

*tumbleweed blows by*

This is mainly for Sabby, tho I'm not sure if she still passes by here.

Greek Style Cucumber Salad aka Tatziki

1 half of a large cucumber for tatziki or whole cucumber for a more salad like dish.

8 oz of plain yogurt

juice from one lemon or 1 tbs lemon juice

1 glove garlic, minced or 1/2 tsp garlic powder

freshly ground pepper to taste (i like lots!)

a dash of salt

optional: dash or 2 of greek seasoning if you have some

Peel the cucumber, slice it length-wise into quarters. Cut out all the seeds and clear, mushy center. For tatziki, dice the cucumber into smaller bits, for cucumber salad, cut into larger "chunks."

Before opening the yogurt, let it rest upside down so any liquid is released from the bottom. Open and drain out excess liquid.

Throw all the ingredients into a mixing bowl or serving dish, mix thoroughly. Refridgerate before serving to allow flavours to mix. Serve chilled as a topping for gyros, dip for pitas, or as a side dish.

I got my own domain. Please adjust your bookmarks. Weeeee.

when you cross kittens with the White Stripes?

This.

Starting feeling like crap last night and stayed up too late. Had to get up too early this morning to call the INS so I could avoid being on hold for hours. After that I pretty much layed around watching sorority life reruns until I had to do some housework. Just as I got to folding the last few things I got a hot flash and started feeling lousy all over again. Yuck.

On the weekend we went to look for tables for my mosiac at the antique shops on Montrose (with no luck) and then to Texas Art Supplies where we discovered what a rip off the tiles were. In the end I got a clock kit so I could get a feel for the craft before embarking on a huge project, and thus satisfy my urge to smash and glue bits of glass.

John keeps singing the Yow Ming song from clutchcity.net. He just declared the cat's new name to be Yow Ming. *boggle*

So, Fay passed with out much notice in our area. One minor power outage and a bit of rain. We did end up driving down to Galveston where we went out onto the Flagship pier to watch huge waves crashing all around. The waves in Gavleston are normally quite small, so a 5-10 foot wave is big action. The wind was blowing the rain horrizontally rather than down, and it was almost impossible to walk against. That didn't stop tons of people from flocking to the coast to check out the action, or the surfers either.

Slowly, slowly, it's coming along. Comment template is working much better than on the old site, but the archive pages aren't done, and there is still much tweeking left. Over all it's not so bad. Having my own domain is so exciting. *giggle*

On a completely unrelated note, tropical storm Fay has been lurking in the gulf of mexico for several days now, and is threatening to turn into a category 1 hurricane. I had expected to be in Houston for several years before experiencing anything even comparable to Alison, never mind a freakin' hurricane. Just my luck, that it would hit within my first 6 months. When John gets home from work we're going to go buy canned food, water and flashlights, just incase. We're also going to go to Texas Art Supply so I can look at mosiac supplies! I'm going to design and create a mosiac coffee table for our living room, since i've learned that my EAD (work permit) could take up to 90 days.

John just called and suggested we drive to Galveston so I can see the possible hurricane and the conditions on the coast. Sounds a little sketchy to me, but I guess we'll see how things are developing later today.

Anyway, welcome to my new site.

This is just a test post to see how my template is working. Hopefully I will be able to get everything set just right by the time my domain goes live.

I can't begin to tell you how much i missed my GM site... I can hardly wait to get this new site and domain worked in like a comfy chair!!

test

I'm feeling groggy and slightly outside myself today, having finally been able to capture some time to myself. I just turned the last page on "Shopgirl" by Steve Martin, which left me with a few tears, not so much because it was sad, but because it was so good. A good read always leaves me feeling displaced... making me think of that Blind Melon line: all i can do is read a book to stay awake and it rips my life away but it's a great escape.

So in between new 2nd-hand books and piles of laundry, i have put aside a few minutes to fill you in on my most recent major life events...

Last Saturday, my mom arrived from Toronto for a week-long visit as a prelude to the wedding. The next day we went to the Kemeh boardwalk, suffering thru the heat for mere moments before opting to down margaritas rather than bake outside. Oddly, it was the same day that matt and sabby were there. We didn't see them, but I think they really need to stop stalking us. ;) Monday my mom and I combed the Galleria looking for shoes to match my wedding dress and pretending we could afford the extravagances at places like Saks and Armani. My mother "went over the moon" (her latest fave expression) for a jean jacket with a mink collar and lining. Unfortunately, $500 USD is a bit much for a jean jacket, especially since with the exchange it works out to be about $800 CND plus your first born.

Having had no luck the previous day, Tuesday we went to Wallmart, the Kmart on Westheimer where HPD arrested half the city and finally DSW Shoewarehouse. I picked up a jean skirt for $12, which my mom forced me put on immediately with her incessant comments about the way my Paul Frank skirt made my ass look. In the end we found a nice pair of silver sandals with the correct heal height and a small silver purse to match. We hit Mamma's for lunch where we coincendently were seated under the Canada souvenier plate and had several incidents of misunderstanding with our waitress, mostly involving foriegn terms like "washroom" and "serviette." Then it was off to Victoria Secret, the only place in the universe where you can buy a decent size bra that doesn't look like a remnant of the cold war.

Wednesday we sat by the pool all day. My mom's tan darkened and I remained stark white.

Thurdsay was my favorite day... Having ignored John's insistance that it was a dump and would have nothing to offer, my mom and I braved I-10 and went to Katy Mills, the enormous outlet mall. For the most part, we beelined to the clearance rack in every store, but being the first day of laborday sales, my mom managed to score a jean jacket from the Gap for a mesely $18. It wasn't lined with mink or anything else for that matter, but she had already assembled a plan in her head where she would buy a fur collar and sew it in herself. Chic, thrifty and crafty... what more could you ask for in a mom?

As per our newly evolving shopping tradition, we bought matching items (this time belts) in different colors from Banana Republic, where I also got a great dress for $9.98. I also bought myself new dressy/casual sandals for $12.95 from Liz Claiborne, as well as pants and a shirt from Tommy, both for less than $10 each. Just call me Queen of the Designer Discounts.

Friday we prepared for the wedding. John and I took some time off from my mom to go drop off our marriage license at Judge Barrett, who turned out to be Judge Parrott and paid for his service in advance. Curiously, there were state prisoners walking around with large spiked sticks used to pick up trash. We laughed at the irony of it and steared clear of them.

Early Saturday morning, the mother and I got up and went over to the Galleria to have our hair done. Half-assed over-priced job, but we looked decent so we obliged them by paying and leaving a decent tip. Finally we were on our way to the Four Seasons. My mom and I squeezed me into the dress, as we had practiced the night before, and I did my makeup while we waited for the limo to pick us up. On the way to the restaurant, we got trapped in the insane traffice that they call the road to Clear Lake, but still managed to be the first to arrive, greeting all our guests and lingering for the judge, who got slightly lost. We got several lovely gifts, but my favorite was from John's niece, Katie. It was one of John's school assignments from grade 5 called All About Me, glued into a folded piece of construction paper with his silohette on the front. Highlights include "i love pets because you can go to them when you are lonely," "i get in trouble when i call my sister a fag," and "i wish i had a six pack o beer."

The ceremonly itself was short. We said the traditional vows and the judge slipped in his traditional joke. We smiled and posed for what seemed like a million photos before sitting down to discover that our servers had not bothered to review the pre-arranged plans for our private party. It started with the distrubtion of menus, at which point I pointed out that we had requested a 3 choice menu. A new waiter came in a recited our menu selections, then our previous waiter returned to take orders for dinner and desert, at which point I had to remind him that he should be serving appetizers, as we had arranged. He then informed me that he had merely glanced at our party instructions, neglecting to appologize.

So we ate and laughed and had a wonderful time inspite of all the unprofessional confusion. John's fraternity brothers told embarrasing stories and John's grandfather made a toast the included alot of jokes about how John swore he would never marry. I don't want to give the impression that it wasn't a wonderful afternoon, filled with happy family and friends, so I'll skip the part where they asked us to vacate the room at 6:30 because they had another party booked. We had arranged to have our limo pick us up again around that time, so it wasn't as offensive as it could have been.

From there we dropped my mom off at our place to dog sit, and we spent our honeymoon at the Four Seasons. I will spare you those details. *wink*

My mom has ordered me to spend more time by the pool, so we spent her last afternoon at Half Price Books, where I picked up the only Arthur Nersesian book I haven't read, a half assed novel about gen-x, and Steve Martin's Shopgirl. I'm already done 2 and it's been cloudy everyday since the day she left.

Welp... today is the day. From now on I'll be Mrs. Monkey to you. I'll be sure to post all the details and fill you in on the 10 day visit with my mom.

Note to self: relax!

1. Today I picked out my wedding dress. It's much fancier and more expensive than I had imagined, but I can't wait to wear it.
2. Tonight John and I deleted our level 40-something DAoC characters (on Midgard, Gawaine) to reroll in a different realm (Hibernia, Gawaine - the pansy realm) so we could play with some new friends. John gave all his stuff away - I deleted everything I had along with my beloved hunter. Who ever said you can't take it with you never played DAoC.
3. I'm thinking about rebuilding my greymatter site on johnlittle.org. Blogger is fine and all, but it's just not enough. John doesn't know this yet, but hopefully i remember to bring it up before he reads this. ;)
4. My new site would also include stuffs for my family so I don't have to suffer from excessive guilt due to lack of calls home.

Begin at the begining.

A few weeks ago, John's old fraternity brother came to town and we joined him for dinner at the original Ninfa's. Ninfa's, for all you Yankees, is the best mexican food on earth, and Ninfa has been credited for taking all that is mexican and making it uber yummy. We had several ninfaritas and Sean told us that he was going to the Flickerstick show. Well, we had been having fun with Sean and were feeling pretty buzzed, se we decided to join him. While lingering outside the club, we bumped into an old friend of John and Sean. It so happened that he worked at the club, so he let us all in for free. Weee. Anyway, not 10 minutes after entering, I scoped the place out, spotting Sabby in seconds. She seemed a little shocked to be accosted by none other than 27, but Matt skipped immediately from surprise to hugs. We tried to shout over music for a while and I gave them my impressions of Houston so far. Sabby seemed a little more shy than I had expected, but Matt was pure Matt.

One of the things Matt and I shouted about was Dayna. Well wouldn't you know it, a couple days later an email arrives in my inbox. She's been working (believe it Brian, it's true), and said that she is so busy with work and Chris on 10 hr shifts that sometimes she forgets she even has a computer. *boggle* Anyway, I was really happy to hear from her, as I'd sent out a random email to let her know that i'd arrived, at long last, in Houston.

I know I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff, but the last thing that comes to mind is planning our wedding. When we first talked about marriage, we had lofty expectations... eloping to the south of france, vegas, san fran... *bling* (that was the sound of our reality check) So, it looks like the wedding day will be Aug 31. The monkey and your number 27 will be married in a private ceremony (just like a couple of hollywood celebs) and the parents will join us for dinner. No fuss, no muss, not enormous dent in our wallets.

Waiting for John to finish his huge post on his new site, only to have the whole thing deleted. I'm starving and I have much to tell, including my meeting with Matt and Sabby, and an email from Dayna.

And now I'll leave you hanging.

It all went terribly wrong on Wednesday when John had to come home from work due to major tooth pain. By mid afternoon he was in such intense pain that I had to rush him to The Majestic Dental Clinic for an emergancy root canal. (And yes, I made plenty of tooth implant jokes). By Thursday, he was feeling much better, so we drove around town a bit before heading to the original Ninfa's (the best mexican food ever) and then downtown to watch fireworks. I think Sabby metioned that her and Matt went to watch as well, and I actually kept an eye open on the odd chance that we might run into them. Coincidentally, this was the same day our wireless internet crapped out. When we got home we watched Brother Where Art Thou. Amazing movie with a great sound track.

Friday, we went out for groceries and picked up dvds... Ocean's Eleven, Harry Potter (which we both enjoyed, despite ourselves) and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. We also went to Bakers Pig for what John told me is the best bbq in Houston. It was really good, but I prefer my meat to be a little more cooked and a tad less grease-laden. *wink*

Saturday, we went to Gavelston! Weee! We started the trip off at this crab beach where we walked around in really shallow water looking at hermit crabs. Much to John's surprise, we saw a sting ray swimming around. He swore he'd never seen one outside of captivity. We followed it around a bit before we took off for the real beach. I am ashamed to admit that it was my first swim in the ocean (ok, gulf, but same thing) in 10 years. It was perfect beach weather, even if we couldn't stay long on account of my uber whiteness and high risk of sunburn. We ended the trip with marguaritas and more mexican food. The food took a painfully long time and ended up forcing us to postpone our minigolf competition. Hopefully, we'll be going back next week and bringing Mags along too. We came home, ordered chinese and watched Harry Potter. /weeeee!

Sunday we lounged around playing computer games and attempted to watch Dude Where's My Car. Unfortunately, the movie sucks complete ass, so we only watched about a third before switching over to Ocean's Eleven. What's with the George Clooney "get out of jail, try to win my wife back" trend in movies? And does anyone else remember George when he was on Fact's Of Life?

That brings us to today. John called from the office to inform me that our internet had been restored for several days, but we still can't get it working on his machine. Luckily, it's working on mine! I just tried to repair my Windows ME installation so I can have sound again, but with no luck. Playing Neverwinter Nights without the sound is a bit sucky, but I'll live. *wink again*

Enough yammering. /my first independance day weekend.

Happy Canada Day!!

I am, you know I am.

Last night Mags woke us up every hour crying. It turned out she wanted to drink endless amounts of water, and was so thirsty that she felt fit to cry about it. I suspect the all-you-can-eat cat food buffet may be the cause. Then this morning when I stumbled out with John to let him into the parking garage, she took a horse-sized pee on the sidewalk outside the property management office. Lovely, I know.

On a lighter note, we got the cat back from John's mom, and she seems to be adjusting well to the dog. Phew. Also, I discovered today that our building has a doggie poop-bag dispenser on Gray. Hopefully, I won't go down in Post history as the only tennant to use it.

So, this weekend we went to Clear Lake to get the cat from John's poor bed-ridden mom. She's awaiting some sort of back surgery and has been in bed since the beginning of June. We picked up Katie, John's niece and went over to some mall where I bought a couple tank tops and a skirt from the Gap. I also got a really nice red dress from Express (it was my first time in half these stores, as we don't have 'em in Canada), so now I have something decent to wear if we decide to hit a fancy restaurant or dinner party. Katie is an even bigger goof than John... hard too imagine, but totally true.

So far, life is good.

nick: you've built a fort out of couch cushions and declared Mags the queen
agent27: how did you know??

Unfortunately, G is for Gray, which not only describes the weather, but is also the name of my new street. Today is my first day home alone. To my left is a cup of coffee (lacking in sugar), to the right a mountain of boxes waiting for me to unpack them.

Yesterday, Mag went to the groomer for the first time. She had the priviledge of riding in the cab of the 150 (she currently loathes her kennel - after 4 days trapped in there, who wouldn't?), and was thrilled to see all the other dogs there. We had to leave her for about 3 hours, but she smelled like really stinky flowers when we picked her up. The groomer clipped her nails down a bit too. It was definately worth the $25. It's been a traumatic week for her, but she seems to be calming down and settling in... now we just have to get John's cat back into the picture. [Insert ominous music here]

Stay tuned.

Well, we finally arrived in Houston late last night. I have to admit, it all seems a touch surreal, especially after waiting so many months.

All in all, it was a good trip, except for the day spent getting mixed up in the smoky mountains while torrential rains poured down on all my wordly belongings. That said, I have to appologise for not sending anyone postcards... except for Sabby, that is. I got Sabby's the morning of the Smoky Mtn incident, and honestly, after that, I wasn't really thinking about postcards. I'll get you all back for it some day soon, I swear.

Anyway, time for more settling in and enjoying life... for the first time in months, I actually have stuff to blog about... many stories to tell once I get settled.

Werd.

Despite everyone's assurances to the contrary, my landlady has opted to show my apartment before i get a chance to escape scott-free vacate the premises. Now I'm forced to rearrange my plans so that cleanup comes first, and packing second. Minor inconvenience, but a pain in my ass none the less.

John is currently enroute from Houston and has already had one minor truck failure... he had new brakes put on before he left and they failed to tighten one screw. Needless to say, he ended up stranded, briefly, in Deliverance, but all ended well when he found someone to help him for a measely $5. He stopped somewhere last night for a quick sleep and is expecting to be here some time tonight... a whole day ahead of scheduele!

Anyway, home at last, but just long enough to get ready to move on!

One more thing:
I just wanted to take a second to thank y'all for your support and encouragement... especially Dayna, who played a pivitol role in our initial getting together.

Next stop: Chapel of Love.

Four words for you:

I got my visa.

I showed up at the consulate an hour early and went for breakfast. After waiting in line to be searched, I took the elevator up the the 19 floor as instructed and went to desk 25. There the woman asked for my passport, so I slid it under the glass so she could not look at it and she gave me a number. B9. Then i waited for 90 minutes to be called. I went up to the window only to be told that i was given a US passport number not a visa number. At that point i thought i was going to bawl; weeks of pent up stress bubbling back up to the surface. The bearer of the bad news told me not to worry and instructed me to go back to desk 25 and get a new number. At this point I haad to wait for some cretien who doesn't know enough to call a government office before showing up to discover that she was in the wrong place. I then explained to clerk 25 that she had failed to ask me why I was there before giving me a number. She appologized about 80 times, as i was still on the verge of tears and told me not to worry... they had done all the k1interviews so I wouldn't have to wait long. She was right. Window 3 took 15 minutes, room 13 took 15 minutes and I had the visa in my hand an hour after getting my new number.

There it is. Yay us! And that's "us" not "US."
*wink*

I had to make some unpopular phone calls today and in the process I discovered that my ex has a new girlfriend. Oddly enough, she's also his 2nd cousin. Just when I thought his slacking had reached it's limits... "Why make an effort to meet someone new when I got a perfectly good chick right here?" As humorous as this seems to me, it's sad that he had to drag his much younger cousin into the proverbial closet to join him in his life of skeletonhood.

Today was the day I had planned for my yard sale... unfortunately, mother nature had other plans - mainly, thunderstorms. So as luck would have it, I get to spend the day cleaning and cleaning and doing some more sorting and packing.

Yesterday I was at my Nanny's for most of the day, sorting thru boxes and boxes of junk I've been accumulating for the past 10 years. By the time I got home I was high on memories and bouncing off the walls from too much coffee and the $500 my Nan slipped into my hand. I can't wait to go thru all my photos with John, his mom and Katie. I had no idea that i had mamged to save so much.

Sweet Jebus!! I just looked out the window and it's sunny. SUNNY! *pause while I contemplate sparking up an impromptu yard sale* Crap.

Anyway, tomorrow I head out to Montreal to see my mom and attend my K1 interview on Tuesday. Next week we drive away. I can hardly wait.

Guess I should go do stuff.

Once again, if you would like an official "27 & Monkey Cross the Continent" postcard, then email me you address agent27(at)sympatico(dot)ca. mmkay.

The mad dash is now on. Saturday I'm having a yard sale, where I plan to sell the 50% of my personal possessions that either didn't survive the rigorous sorting process or go straight into the trash. Combine 4 years of transient living, one year living in a studio that was barely better than a squat and 4 years of not moving at all... what do you get? An apartment full of junk.

Feel free to stop by and give me money for my crap. Last week I took my dog for her vaccinations and harrassed my freelance client so he would remember to pay me before I left. I also talked to several old friends and went for dinner and drinks with my dad.

On Sunday I go to Montreal to attend my K1 interview and visit my mom and step father. Thursday I come back to Toronto, trash anything that didn't sell at my sale and spend the next 2 days cancelling my phone, closing bank accounts and cleaning my old place. Saturday the 22, John will arrive from Houston (this is also the rain date for my sale), and on Sunday we drive off into the sunset. We're both pretty excited about the pilgramige (sp?) to HTown and we plan to stop a few places on the way.

If anyone wants a postcard from the journey, please email me you addy ASAP. Also note that once I cancel my phone, my sympatico email addy will be defunct. I'll keep you posted on that one.

This time next week I will be walking up to the US Consulate in Montreal...

test

Welp... i finally got my K1 interview!! If all goes well, on June 18 you will be crossing your fingers, toes and any other crossable parts, and I will get my visa. One week later, the monkey will drive to Canada to pick me and my worldly possesions up and wisk me off to my new home in Houston.

Finally.
/exhale

I am one of the most blendable flavours; I go with sweet, I go with sour, I go with bland, I go with anything. I am practical and good company, but have something of a tendency to hang around when I'm not wanted, unaware that my presence is not welcome. What Flavour Are You? (If I was not Peanut Butter I would be Sugar.)

Today I looked into finding a way to get Maggie, myself and my stuff down to Houston. When I went to Air Canada today, they were selling tickets for the end of June for over a thousand bucks... and that doesn't include maggie's fair or the cost of shipping my stuff. U-haul, on the other hand, will rent me a 14ft truck for 7 days for about 1200. It's only 26 hrs, which works out to 2 1/2 days, but John and my mom think it's a bad idea for me to drive all that way alone. *sigh*

Yesterday, I called the US Consulate and they haven't booked my interview yet, but they say it will be booked within 2 weeks.

It's a beautiful day here today, so I took Mag's for a walk to Bellwoods where I drank coffee and pondered E's impending death while the dog sniffed tree trunks. I saw him on tuesday and took a long hard look for the first time in over a year. He is skin and bones, nodding off at the subway - and sick for at least a month now. Db told me it's called wasting syndrome and that the mild symptoms that come and go when one is healthy, tend to be the ailments that cause the most suffering in the end.

What bothers me most is that I'm no longer his friend, and his terminal illness won't change things. That and the fact that we're not even sure he's sick as opposed to strung out. I'm turning into one of those people who wants him to hurry up and die so we can get on with our lives... and I wanted to be here for the people that will be affected the most by his death. It's one of those things you have to try not to think about.

And people wonder why I don't blog much these days.

The most wonderful spring breeze is blowing in my window and it must be break time because the bash and grind sounds of construction have quieted.

Last night John moved into our new apartment! It's smaller than either of our one bedrooms, but it's on the ground floor and it looks out onto the pool and tropical garden. Here's pics, if you haven't seen them yet:

John is really happy about the new place, so I'm even more excited to get down there and make it our home. How domestic of me.

The other day I wrote a big long post about the medical exam I had to do for my visa... but I decided to spare you all the details and tease Sabby and Matt instead. I can't wait to be there so I can tease them in person while I kick their asses playing mech warrior at Dave and Busters. ;)

Matt took Sabby to the waterfall!! Ok maybe that has no meaning for y'all... but how about this... he's got her listening to Flickerstick and she *hearts* them!!

Matt, please step away from the girl...

I miss my GM site alot. As much as I appreciate blogger, it's not the same. Maybe it's just me. Dunno. I do know that I don't feel even remotely as enthusiastic about this site. Even if I do love the whole design/layout part of it.

On an unrelated note, I sent my checklist into the Consulate in Montreal. Now I just have to get 5 more headshots and attend my med exam next week. Then I wait for my interview. Oh, and today I pick up my passport.

On another unrelated note: I find all this talk of Matt being "dead sexy" to be quite disturbing. Furthermore, if those in question are not going to fully expand on such comments in an uncensored, blog/livejournal/pitas medium, then STFU. *wink* Matt, himself, can't deny that no one likes a tease.

I had a big discussion with some people last night about what qualifies someone as a friend. Strange, how some people wouldn't dream of considering an online bud a "real friend." Or strange to me at least. The conversation was kind of heated at times, mostly because I include myself in that group known as "those internet people," which seems to be a target for generalizations. So we talked about the levels of trust and the different kinds of friends and when does an online friend become a real friend and blah blah blah. There were many differences of opinion.

I stand by the things I said in my earlier post, but I'll be dropping the issue. Call me selfish or whatever the hell you like. I'm just going to do what's easiest for me, because... well, that's what is easiest for me.

On the lighter side of things....
agent27: gotta try not to act like a nutbar and keep it together
BD: But you are a nutbar. ;-)
BD: And besides, if I recall, nutbars are designed to keep together. That's what makes it a bar.

I didn't chase Dayna and I'm sure as hell not going to chase you. If you're never going to talk to me, you can expect the same in return. You can give whatever excuses reasons you want, but it's a 2-way street, bud. You never say shet to me these days, nm an email to give me a heads up, and then you have the nerve to whine about no-shows. And might I add, still whining about no-shows, even tho (to my knowledge) it's done. Pfft.

Funny, how you get so turned off by other people changing, but you seem to be allowed to do whatever the hell you like with out explanation.

I can't shake the feeling that I'm paying the price for someone else's mistakes.

/drama
/effort

The nice weather has finally arrived and I'm so happy to be able to spend my last days in T.O. basking in the wonderfulness that is spring.

This morning I took Maggie over to Sam's to pick up a coffee before heading off on our extended walk. We crossed over the Bathurst Bridge and went past the abandoned Daily Bread Food Bank, the abandoned Molson Brewery and the abandoned TipTop building which now sports an enormous banner that screams "Coming Soon!! TipTop Lofts!!" Kind of sad to think that when I finally return to Toronto, all the architectural icons of my childhood will be lofts and all the beautiful old houses will be torn down to make way for Victorian Townes.

Anyway, Maggie was pretty worn out from walking around in the sun with Deb and kids yesterday (it was her 7th doggie birthday), so I let her tag along behind me sans leash, as we strolled past the Fort York Armory and across the little bridge into the Fort York park. We stopped for a minute to stare at sleeping homeless people, curled up under the Stachan Street Bridge. Normally, we walk across that bridge, over the old RR tracks, but today I wanted to walk through the park and play sticks with Mags. After that we skipped over to Helmutt's to pick up dog food before strolling along trendy Queen West on our way back home.

Visa stuff is coming along, and I'm trying not to miss people I haven't yet left behind.

I took the "Whats Your Type" survey as seen on Sab's site, and I wasn't surprised to find out that my type is "goofball." I also took the P*rn Starlet Survey a while back and I was Briana Banks: You're the p*rn fan's ultimate dream; gorgeous face, incredible body, unbelievable tits & as nasty as hell! Guess you'd have to ask the goofball to verify the accuracy of that one.

Stayed up until 2:30 am last night, crying on the phone to John about my state of mind right now. As much as I want this visa thing to go fast so I can get out of here and move on, I'm still really, really sad about leaving.

I used to have a big gang of friends and go out all the time blah blah blah. Now I have one really close friend and we spend most of our time together at her house or out on the town with her 2 kids. She has always been so there for me and she knows exactly when to sit there nodding as I gush about whatever is getting me down or up at the time. Of all the friends I've had, she is definately the very best. I can hardly stand the thought of leaving them. John tried really hard to console me - reminding me of all the people waiting for me in Houston. Obviously, all those thoughts make me happy, but it still breaks my heart when i think about leaving behind the best friend I've ever had, and those 2 sweet kids that love me as if I was part of their own family.

And getting ready to move when you don't know when you're moving... ugh. I have so much junk that I suppose I will just throw in the trash because I can't be bothered to deal with it. Besides, when you're starting a new life you're not suposed to bring your old junk along.

So John listened and tried to console while I jumped back and forth from anxious to sentimental to stressed out to depressed and then excited again. In the end he figured out that this was my way of telling him that it's a confusing time for me. And all of this has been on the tip of my tongue for a month - floating in the air like a really heavy humidity - wrapping itself around you and making it impossible to breathe normally.

Today I made my appointment for my US med exam. May 14, 2002. It's my plan to mail my checklist to the Consulate shortly before I have the exam, so with any luck (/me crosses fingers and toes) I will have my interview schedueled for sometime before the end of May. So all that is left to do now (the list grows longer as it grows shorter):

1. get immunization records
2. pick up police certificate tomorrow
3. get signed declaration from mom in lieu of birth certificate
4. affidavit of support from john
5. mail check list
6. attend interview
7. high tail my ass out of here

I'm sure it must be boring for you to be forced to read about my visa process all the time, but I don't think I need to explain how desperately I want to get into the US to be with the monkey. After turning my whole life around, building a career and losing 2 jobs, I'm ready to move on into the next stage of my life. Call it the "settled down stage" or the "no more flying by the seat of your pants stage" ... whatever it is, I'm on my way.

As much as I've shared with friends online and thru my weblogs, there is alot I've left out about my life before, and maybe one day I'll find the words to tell the story about the time my car caught fire on the Trans Canada or the night I was hung up on a chain link fence around the corner from Lee's Palace, or one of the hundreds of other semi-believable tales of "27 before the Internet."

What I'm I getting at? I have no idea. I guess it's just a time of looking forward, looking back and mostly drifting in the present.

First off, K1 update.
On Thursday, I applied for my passport (pick up is May 9) and I also applied for my police certificate, which I can pick up this week. On the downside, the Office of the Registrar General is closed, due to this idiotic strike. This means that I won't be able to get the long version of my birth certificate unless the strike ends some time in the next 2 weeks. Fortunately, I discovered that I can submit a notarized letter from my mother that includes most of the info contained on the certificate. This may seem trivial to you, but I almost cried with joy when i found out. All that is left to do is get the support documents from John and have my medical exam done. Then I scheduele my interview and it's visa time.

Why do Americans keep booing our national anthem? For all those that resent the Anti-American sentiment that some Canadians preach, let me tell you, this ain't helping. Infact, it's bringing that sentiment to the forefront, especially in wake of the friendly-fire deaths. Can you tell I'm reading the news today?

On to other things (as if there are any).
Matt better start talking to me again, cuz it's gonna be pretty awkward when we go to get our nails done if he's still giving me the htown cold shoulder.

I finally found some sort of informative info on the RCMP police certificate. (yay) And I'm packing my bag for the passport office. With luck, I will be able to get the police certificate on the same trip.

One of these days, I'll post about something other than my visa.

I refuse to accept my fate. Look to the left to view my protest against this unfathomable wrong-doing.

Another wonderful day in the world of filling out forms.
Today I filled out several practice application forms and tracked down the location of various government offices. I'm still a little unsure about the RCMP certificate, but i'm sure I'll figure it out. Based on what I've read at some of the K1 FAQs, it's possible that I could have my visa within 6 weeks, if everything goes smoothly. I also prepped a resume for a part time job at Mailboxes Plus. I'm just one cover letter away from my date with destiny. My action plan for tomorrow includes dropping off my resume, hitting the passport office and then off to the registrar general's office to beg for the long version of my birth certificate.

Freelance and K1. I haven't been playing DAoC for a while, and maybe that's how I found time to throw together a new template, and actually post something.

I watched Winning England while babysitting Kaine and Noami on Monday. Through out the whole film "countdown to legality" kept running through my head. The next day, I discovered the whole evil empire including a line of cosmetics, clothes and a magazine. Obviously, Matt's just after their money.

1. My passport application is all ready, so I need to go to the passport office and get it in the works.
2. My part of the K1 application is sitting infront of me. It's several pages, some in duplicate.
3. Obtain my RCMP police certificate. (note to self: bring bribery donuts)
4. I need to go to some stinkin' US certified Dr. for a med exam.
5. Convince striking provincial employees to give me the long version of my birth certificate.
6. Prepare items 2-5 and send them to Montreal.
7. Get my dog's vacincations up to date.
8. Take cat over to Deb's for a test run.
9. Go to Kinko's to use the G4. This wouldn't be so bad except for the cost and the fact that each time I visit, they ask, "Are you sure you need the G4? Do you really need a mac?" Now that I know the employees don't know anything about anything, I will refrain from asking any mind numbing questions.
10. Take a few minutes to enjoy the people and places that I will miss after I'm gone.
11. Inadvertantly turn this site into a weblog all about my upcoming move.
12. Continue skimming the surface.
13. Update the ring and add this site.

I got a really fat envelope from the US Consulate General in Montreal today. My pile grows bigger.

This morning on my way back from TPH and Helmuts, where I got catfood, I thought about leaving Toronto. Aside from the fear of (proscratinating) all the things I have to do to get my ass dawn there, I am really eager to go.

1. Getting terminated without cause. [gawd no! not back to freelance!]
2. The INS approving John's petition for the K1 visa. [now it all comes to the US embassy in Montreal]
3. John is moving into our new appartment mid month in March. [it's part of the same residential complex, from swank town-style bachelor pad to one bedroom love nest with tropical poolside view]
4. I took my dog for a nice long walk today.
5. My computer has the PE_SPACES.1445 virus. [yay me!]
6. Believe it or not, surreal is "in the mail." [for some reason i find that funny]
7. I am on my way to Kinko's to do my freelance. [i'm that lame]

I was looking at my resume website today, and clicked the link that used to be vitaminMe, my very first weblog. To my utter shock, the link actually delivered me to the site!

Here's the site before I gave up on digitalrice and moved to surreal to start 27things. If you scroll down and look at the pages before blogger, you'll find my very first weblog. Seems like 10 years ago, not one. Anyway, if you're interested, before I discovered blogger, I used to manually update the page every time i added an entry.

So take a walk down my virtual memory lane and perhaps I'll get back to using it again.

Sucks:

Toronto transit workers are threatening to strike if they don't get a raise. More union BS. The current fare is $2.25, and may increase to $3.00. That increase was announced before the strike.

Doesn't Suck:

At least spring has finally arrived - if I have to walk to work, I won't get snowed on.

Doesn't Suck:

Tomorrow is a holiday (yay!) and Kaine's 6th birthday party (also yay!).

I ran into an old client on the subway; he gave me his card and offered me the possibility of some freelance. I can't decide if that sucks or not.

I WILL ALWAYS DO

The time is now to tell you that I'm glad

the time is now to say you always shine

in the sunny side of me

I took off all past pictures from the wall

now you're by my side and I know

what I was looking for

Don't you scream and don't you cry

don't you ever say good bye

wait for me, I'll wait for you

yeah, I will always do

Don't you scream and don't you cry

pretty soon we'll be allright

wait for me, I'll wait for you

yeah, I will always do

I'm gonna be sad no more

as long as you'll be my girl

The last love song that I'm gonna sing

if I'd lose you I'd lose evrything

the last love song, there'll be no more

I won't love another girl

Don't you scream and don't you cry

pretty soon we'll be allright

wait for me, I'll wait for you

yeah, I will always do

I'm gonna be sad no more

as long as you'll be my girl...

Suicide Machines

Sometimes I Don't Mind

There's something with the way you walk

There's something there that lights a spark inside of me

And it makes me want to sing

Makes me forget everything

There's something there inside your eyes

Lets me know you'd never lie

You fill me up and I know what you need

Do you know what you mean to me?

Well I watch you sleep sometimes

And it feels like the first time

And you're always on my mind

Everyday is like the first day

And I talk to you sometimes

Even though you never talk back

And I buy you things sometimes

'Cause I don'tmind

There's something strange, I can't get mad

Even when you're being bad - just look at me, and

I forget everything

I try but I can't be mean

You sit by me and I scratch your back

You lick my hands then I get a rash, but that's okay

Because we, we are a team

You make a mess and then I clean

Well I watch you sleep sometimes

And it feels like the first time

And you're always on my mind

Everyday is like the first day

And I talk to you sometimes

Even though you never talk back

And I buy you things sometimes

'Cause I don'tmind

There's something with the way you act

Makes me laugh when you chase the cats

You chase 'em around

And when it's close to feeding time, you stare at me and whine

You won't lay down, you'll hardly sit

I give you a bath when you smell like shit

But you don't mind

And we go out every now and then

And when you're done then we come back in

Well I watch you sleep sometimes

And it feels like the first time

And you're always on my mind

Everyday is like the first day

And I talk to you sometimes

Even though you never talk back

And I buy you things sometimes

'Cause I don'tmind

Yeah I don't mind

Yeah I don't mind

"I'm afraid of so many things lately. But it's a strange kind of fear, sort of detatched from me, like my fear is this backpack I'm carrying but I can take it off every so often and not feel it at all, and then when I have it, I only feel it sort of on the outside of myself."

Jody always makes jokes about being sent to debtors prison... well, I'll be sending morse code messages with my mirror from across the river in procrastinator's prison soon enough. I've just been neglecting alot of things, including people. I've been so damn tired in the morning. I'm starting to think that I'm a bit depressed.

The thing about me and depression is that unless it's really severe, I ignore it. I push it to the back of my head and let it manifest in other ways; neglect, procrastination, phobia of checking phone messages. Yes, phone messages.

This is my newest thing. When I came back from Houston, I finally broke down and dialed the old 2100-367. 29 unheard messages. Freelance clients looking for work to be done, long lost friends, my mom, urgent calls to the wrong number. So then I find myself thinking, how stupid am I? Why the hell can't I check my messages? In the midst of beating myself up I realize: something's getting me down.

Limbo. Those who know me well, know that my life is sinking further into limbo. I'm not going to go into details, except to say that I really want to do something. Unfortunately, it could all be in vain, or a big waste... all because of limbo. The stupid waiting game. Why change things when things are going to change at any moment?

People are searching for me online. By my name, my nick, my city and even by the name of my employer. I got an IM from Brian yesterday, and a comment from Jody today.

*boggle*

If you find me, you won't see anything about work... with the exception of my union rant. I don't flame my coworkers or my boss and especially not my company. So if you want to read my rather boring weblog, I guess you should go right ahead.

For future reference, it's been discovered that the best way to find the site is to search my first and last name. Who woulda thunk?

Today I got into a debate with a coworker about (of all things) unions. As Smyth can tell you, there is currently an OPSU strike happening in Ontario. OPSU represents most of our provincial gov't workers, from snowplowers to nurses.

As it happens, the coworker (one of the few that i actually like and respect) is the daughter of 2 union members and is partnered with a labour lawyer. Hmm, good luck on this one, 27. The debate ended due to fundamental differences of opinion. As peaved as I was that the conversation was cut short (which is for the best - I try my damnedest not to engage in such discussions at work), I still felt like I lost due to my lack of knowledge on the topic. Perhaps the co-worker will go home and tell her labour law partner what an idiot I was being, but hopefully she won't dislike me for my view. Hopefully you won't either.

I'm having a blast in Houston, as you can imagine. Here's a list of things we've done so far:

1. went for to eat at an Indian buffet

2. drank yummy red wine and watched a Sabbath concert video

3. layed around reading The Hiram Key outloud to John

4. drove out to the George Bush presidential library at Collage Station

5. watched Planet of the Apes

6. made each other delicious dinners and breakfasts every day

7. watched Godzilla vs Mothra: Fight for the Earth on satellite

So, yes, much fun. On the plane, I got to watch The Man Who Wasn't There, starring Billy Bob Thornton. It was pretty good... expecially for an inflight film.

Dayna: give Big Daddy a hug from me

Only 2 days until I go to Htown. (/me counts minutes).

Yesterday, in an attempt to clean up, I threw a load of dishes in my dishwasher. One plate had a bunch of lettuce stuck all over it, but I put it on anyway... BIG MISTAKE. 20 minutes later, my kitchen had a river flowing threw it. To make matters worse, the floor in my appartment is angled about 7 degrees so the fiver flowed right into my carpet. Luckily I glanced over and noticed before it got out of hand.

The only thing worse than cleaning up is when it results in more cleaning up.

I still have a giant list of things to do before I go away. Wash Maggie. Buy food for cat and dog. Arrange a car to pick me up and take me to the airport. Finish tidying up. Arrange pick up for Maggie. Etc. I need a vacation from the list making.

What else? Played D&D lat night. I think I aggrivated Nick to no end with my role playing. Once again I misread the start time, so it was sheer luck that i logged in as the game was starting. I had intended to send Matt my level 2 stuff (which I will do at some point) but i missed the time window, so I was reluctant to head off into any huge battles.

Perfect

blonde hair and blue eyes

she really turns me on

first time that i saw her

she was fucking ron

i don't know how she does

what she does to me

but Taylor Wayne's the only girl

that i will ever need



i really think i love her

i'm probably insane

but i often wonder

why can't all girls

be like Taylor Wayne?

nice lips and big tits

she's perfect in every way

girls like here make me wish

that i was gay

i don't know where she's from

and i don't really care

cuz what she did was really cool

she shaved off all her pubic hair

when it comes to women

theres alot i can't explain

i only have one question

why can't all girls be like Taylor Wayne?

What a pain in my arse. Fix already!!

Sometime over the past few days GreyMatter went all wonky on me, eating my entry about sexually harrassing Jody. Seems my comments became CHMODed incorrectly (/me raises and eyebrow at val) but everything seems ok now. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Can you say bi-polar? Alternating mild and sub-zero temps... driving me insane.

On Sunday I got up at 9 and went to do a pile of laundry before heading into work. I was surprised to see how many people were in the office (my whole department, minus the manager - even the girl I was covering for, which i found to be mildly irritating, but whatever). The moral of the story is, working on sunday sucks, but gives me an excuse to get up early and got to the 'mat.

Jody sent out an email asking for people to send her their lists. Shopping, to do, goals... whatever lists you might have. Here's my list of questions currently running through my head:

1. why am i so tired?

2. will it be warm when i visit houston?

3. what is with the little lump i noticed on my dog's belly this morning?

4. how the hell am i going to pay for it if the lump turns out to be something serious?

5. when am i going to find the time to take her to the vet?

6. why am i so tired all the time?

7. why am i such a procratinator?

8. why does bonte have his pants tucked into his socks?

9. does he think it's still 1987?

Dayna discovered Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Where the hell was she when I was raving about the covers? Further to that...

Dayna: Brian, I want you and Nick to go to Kryptos and take a picture of the two of you.

All in favour say aye.

"Aye."

nick: you know- I'm sure that the people that are making the new game would love to have you guys, if you wanted to help out

Dayna: i think ill pass

nick: its not the same without you guys, thats why I'm just proofreading

nick: I'm a one clubhouse kind of goon

Dayna: i don't think i could make my brain work like that again

Dayna: of my own free will

Mildest winter in 150 years. If only today was an example.

I've been up since 7am working on changes to that freelance web job, and now I have to rush into work to do more freelance (print) stuff. I also have to get dressed up because today is the day my best friend goes to court. She was assualted by her husband in the summer, and after months of family court, she now has to testify against him on charges of assault and threatening death. What really blew my mind (as if having your best friend beaten up by the guy that introduced you to her 7 years ago isn't mindblowing enough), was that this guy's mom actually phoned my best friend and told her to drop the charges and reconcile with the guy. cough*patternofabuse*cough Sure, they have 2 kids - all the more reason to hang the guy.

So inbetween freelance and work, I have to make an attempt to get down to the courthouse in time to see the trial. Keep your fingers crossed on all counts.

Thanks to D. for scoring that perfectly legal software item I needed, oh so badly. Now incase you're wondering, I plan on fixing the themes bugs. Soon. As in this week (I hope). This means the comments page will fiinally look right (I hope). If you experience any other theme related problems, please post and let me know. I'm also planning at least one new theme, so as the persian network admin at my office likes to say, "Keep tuned."

Onward and upward...

Am I the only person that thinks the new EvHead design is awful? How long until Samn publicly flames me for my half hazards themes?

DAoC + Scouts + suck

/laugh

I'm making a cd for Cameron... it's called "Songs That Make You Do Tricks." It will have all the best of punk part 2, or buble gum punk, as we called it back in the day. Also, I was thinking that it's about time that Cameron got his own blog.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to network my computers. All I really want is to transfer my mp3s and a few setup files... is that too much to ask? Well, to make a long painfull story short, I ran the Microsoft Home Network Wizard and it completely farked my dsl internet set up. Ofcourse my new computer doesn't use the NIC they support, so ... well... 45 minutes on the phone for nothing. At any rate... I uninstalled/reinstalled my onboard NIC and it's all better now. Guess this means I'll have to yank out the drive after all.

I guess when you make a weblog or an online diary (as some like to call it), you expect people to read it. You try to be explicit and honest despite the fact that it is, essentially open for public scrutiny. But, I am going to assume that I'm not alone in my surprise in discovering just who is reading it.

*wave*

Hi co-workers! Hi boss! Hi mom! Hi dad! Hi stranger I haven't met yet! Oh yeah... Hi Paul, you little sneak. You know that this means now you have to make an online "diary" too, right?

I just spent my lunch break typing up a slightly dirty story that I wrote back in '96... then it occured to me that I might get some people in trouble at work. Will I?

Let me know (especially Monkey). I don't like to self-censor, but I don't want anyone getting in trouble.

Even radio morning show hosts are saying, "It's a Vancouver-style winter day." An that little part of me that is still in love with Van does that thing where it tries to convince me that I am back there again.

<-- I had a really interesting and poetic post about my love/hate affair with the city of Vancouver, but while breaking to discuss breakfast with a co-worker, I just experienced one of those really uncomfortable, self-concious, "are they mocking me" moments. Now I can't think straight and I feel sick to my stomach. Why do I have to have paranoid episodes? (I've actually had ALOT less since I cut down on the special smoke) And why do I care if they mock my work, it's not like they have any taste. Oh well, maybe I'll feel eloquent again later. -->

Please, people... don't even try to lay this kentucky fried garbage on me... I maybe a sweet, gentle Canadian, but I ain't no idiot.

I've been so freaking tired lately. Last night I even went to bed at a decent time.

"Today I had a long day. 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. of back to back classes, appointments, and study groups."

Hate to break it to you, Sabs, but that's what's known as a "normal day." A long day is when you wake up a 5:30 and don't get home until 9 or 10pm. *wink* And while I have your attention, I read an article about the pill and depression: Can the pill make you crazy? I mention this only because you've commented on it in the past, not because I think you're crazy.

Happy Birthday to my favouritest lezzie! I hope that this year brings you more good things and lots and lots of success. Also a side *wootwoot* on that girlie you told me about. She's almost as lovely as you.

I will do my best to attend your birthday celebrations, but being boderline anti-social of late, I can't not gaurentee my arrival, despite my true intentions. Besides, I know you'll have a blast and a half, even if it is sans 27.

Before I rant on about the unimportant things I had planned for this post I want to take a second to tell you why this is the best v-day ever.

One word. Monkey.

I was getting to a point in my life where I though I was never going to meet someone good enough, kind enough, funny enough, enough (but not too much!) like me. I never imagined I would be so lucky. Everyday I wake up and remind myself that I'm not alone - that no matter what happens today, or tomorrow or next year, I will always have John to stand by my side to love and support me. And I live to do the same for him. I don't need a lame commercial holiday - I love him every day.

Last night as I was laying in bed, I thought of a bunch of eloquent things to write about... oh well.

I got my package in the mail from Dayna. Even though I haven't watched any of the movies yet, it really made my day. Really. It's all cool and now I love Dayna more than ever!! I just hope one day we can have a sleep over and watch Corey Haim on tv while we do hair and make up. (ACK! I can't breathe! Stop strangling me already! I take it back! I take it back!) I'm pretty sure customs opened the package though... by the time I got it, it was being held shut with an elasctic band. She also sent me a colouring by Cameron, with his name written at the bottom.

/me loves colourings.

The Kiss Off Quiz

You should definitely quit your job. You're using your job as an excuse not to do what you are really meant to. Obviously, who you are and what you do are solidly connected in your mind. Chances are your very spirit is entrepreneurial, or you have a deep- seeded disrespect for all authority, or you have to do something that is eating at you for your neglect it. Quit already. Go, start your own company, write the novel, paint the picture. People like you, at your stage of life really shouldn't be working for anyone else.

Take the Color Quiz

My results... terrifyingly (is that a word) accurate.

Your Existing Situation

Willing and adaptable. Only at peace when closely attached to a person, group, or organization on a which reliance can be placed.

Your Stress Sources

Has an unsatisfied need to ally herself with others whose standards are as high as her own, and to stand out from the herd. This desire for preeminence isolates her and inhibits her readiness to give herself freely. While she wants to surrender and let herself go, she regards this as a weakness which must be resisted. This self-restraint, she feels, will lift her above the rank and file and ensure recognition as a unique and distinctive personality.

Your Restrained Characteristics

Circumstances are such that she feels forced to compromise for the time being if she is to avoid being cut off from affection or from full participation.

Feels that she is receiving less than her share and that there is no one on who she can rely for sympathy and understanding. Pent-up emotions make her quick to take offense, but she realizes that she has to make the best of things as they are.

Your Desired Objective

Intense, vital, and animated, taking a delight in action. Activity is directed towards success or conquest and there is a desire to live life to the fullest.

Your Actual Problem

Takes a delight in action and wants to be respected and esteemed for her personal accomplishments.

Well what do you know!! The London Underground did the subway study as well. I tmust be an epidemic because the results were excatly the same!!

Rich sent me the most mortifying email last night, about germs and urine and vomit etc on the TTC, Toronto's public transit system. It was about a study done, where they removed a row of seats from a subway car and examined what was found underneath. Urine, vomit, rat hairs, dead rats, unidentifiable molds. They even went so far as to say that you would be better off to rub your hand along the inside of a public toilet bowl.

/me runs off to by latex gloves and some face masks from the medical supply shop.

Thanks Rich. And if that wasn't gross enough, this morning I saw a pidgeon picking at a pile of vomit on Wellesley Street. FAAN-TASTIC!

Nice long weekend. Yum.

Friday I went to Little Poland (Roncesvalles Street) and had yummy homemade cream of mushroom soup, breaded fillet of sole, fresh mixed veggies, boiled potatos, coleslaw and beets (which Deb ate). It was the best meal I've had in a while. As if my Nanny made it herself. Played DAoC with Adam and Dayna for a while too. Much fun. Too bad Adam wasn't there to see the entire tomte camp aggro on Dayna. I wish I had taken a screen shot - it was hillarious.

Spent Saturday playing DAoC... Midgard's strength relic was taken by Albion, so I went on the first raid to get it back. Waiting to start the raid took forever, and then as soon as we were off, I lost my stick immediately. Suck. So I logged off, got myself a map of Alb, and ran almost all the way back by myself to have my guildmates tell me, "Just suicide. This is a joke and we're not coming back."

On the lighter side, Homi and Asny were promoted to officers in our guild, so now we can invite and promote new members.

Crap. I forget to include sleeping in late in my plans for the day off. Waking up at the crack of 8am on the day off sucks. More time for DAoC.

Speaking of DAoC, I killed my first invader last night in Yggdra. He was orange, and foolishly ran toward me as I sliced him up with my spear. I had him down to 1/10 health (I'd only lost 1/10) when some wanna-be hero shot an arrow into him from the distance, finishing him off for me. I wish I could have delivered that fatal blow myself, but at least I didn't die, which would have been in keeping with the rest of my night.

Today was a beautiful day, too bad I had to go to work right as the new DAoC patch went live.

My plan for tomorrow - Mental Health Day.

- wake up

- walk dog to cafe for xtra large coffee

- do not shower

- eat chips for breakfast while playing DAoC with smyth and dayna

- put on dirty, wrinkled clothes and got to lunch with Deb in little Poland

- return home, drink lots of coffee and attempt to get Asny to 30

- shower, put on less dirty, less wrinkled clothes

- go to work related house party

- run to office to watch sex in the city premier on satellite with off duty CSRs

- return home for more DAoC

- commence weekend

RING OF FIRE

love is a burning thing and it makes a fiery ring

bound by wild desire, i fell into a ring of fire

i fell into a burning ring of fire

i went down, down, down and the flames went higher

and it burns, burns, burns

the ring of fire, the ring of fire

the taste of love is sweet when hearts like ours meet

i fell for you like a child, oh, but the fire went wild

i fell into a burning ring of fire

i went down, down, down and the flames went higher

and it burns, burns, burns

the ring of fire, the ring of fire

-Johnny Cash

Turmoil. I'm at work. I suspect things are happening but I can't say for sure. I almost choked my boss today. I want to crawl under my desk and cry.

Dear you,

All I ever wanted was to be friends. Everyone has their issues and mine boil down to trust and abandonment, being too sensitive and beating myself up for it. I was hurt to see you leave with out a trace, and hurt because I thought you could talk to me. Then I was mad at myself for letting you get to me. Mad for letting my guard down for a bunch of strangers. Mad when I found out that you had returned and I couldn't muster the nerve to kick your ass around the block. Then hurt because I just acted like nothing ever happened (it's a learned behaviour), because that's easiest thing for me to do.

<-- coworker looks over at my screen and I'm gonna punch her because I just can't take it anymore -->

It's the time of the season and I have no idea wtf is happening. I'm grateful for those who see me and my duplicity - reaching out to protect me when I switch over from hard shell to soft shell. But it's all me. I will decide who I should forgive and I will learn my own lessons, in my own hard way. It's just as it's always been, but we haven't always been there to see it for ourselves.

Over the past week I've repeatedly resisted the urge to flee. Pack up. Goodbye. I try to understand what keeps me coming back. I try to understand you, and I try to understand me. I just wish I could understand change.

Anyone who says they love/miss winter can kiss my ass. OK, maybe winter is good for a couple hours of snowfort building or skiing or a picturesque view from your window... but try trudging to work in 2 feet of the shit while winds blow more in your face at 50 mph. Not fun. Even less fun is the day after... hopping over slush traps that are 7 feet across. Slush trap? It's the winter equiv of quick sand. It's a pile of plowed snow on the side of the road that appears safe to walk on/over. But a couple steps in and your foot sinks right down into 4 inches of hidden water. Can you say soaker?

It's been brought to my attention that there has been some questions asked about Pirate. So I thought I'd clear things up.

1. When I speak of Pirate, I am refering to my friend, Jeff (aka Pir8slife), a stinky punker living in CA.

2. When JodyCoyote speaks of Pirate, she is refering to her roommate.

3. Neither of the Pirates work with Jody and I.

4. As far as I know, the Pirates do not know each other, but you never know... pirates can be very tricky.

I stayed up way too late last night talking to Matt on AIM and John on the phone. When i woke up this morning, winter had finally arrived. Damn. And I have no hot water at the moment.

I think I may be coming down with a bad case of AIMsickness. *purge* This ain't no cry for attention. I'm just feeling very much like a giant pile of doggy turds right now and perhaps I need to run away and hide for a bit. You can always email if you need something <agent27(at)sympatico.ca> or wanna touch base or whatever. Maybe I'm just full of shit, and will come slinking back at lunch today. But it's just a word of warning.

My boss has been nagging me to go to another movie with him. I dunno what wacked-out film he wanted to see, but he agreed to go to LoTR again with me. On one hand, I'd rather just come home and play vids and stuff, but I think I'll go because I really need to. Maybe Friday.

Yesterday Val was so excited to talk to me. We don't "see" each other much these days. *wave* Email me, jackass. He showed me a bunch of photos from t'anksgivn... I liked this one so much that I stole it.

COMING TOO CLOSE

there was a time when you would come and go now

there's no time left to react

just as it starts to heal in comes a bitter end

well you were already to leave my side and then...

you're coming too close and i can't pretend

that i'll pick you up or let you come in again

we've been through this before, so please understand

that nothing in this heart can save you from the pain you seek

if you pick up the phone please don't call on me

no one can save you from the undertow

nobody can blame you for the past

just as i started thinking "everything's alright"

you showed us surely that your tenth time was your last

you're coming too close and i can't pretend

that i'll pick you up or let you come in again

we've been through this before, so please understand

that nothing in this heart can save you from the pain you seek

if you pick up the phone please don't call on me

yesterday i saw you falling to the ground

seems like things get worse when no one is around

it's not ok

you're coming too close and i can't pretend

that i'll pick you up or let you come in again

we've been through this before, so please understand

that nothing in this heart can save you from the pain you seek

if you pick up the phone please don't call on me

Greg: all pets are just like their owners.

27: well, i guess that explains why my cat is such an irritable asshole.

<-- ## A 27th Production ## -->

[camera fade-in on digital alarm clock in foreground; background is out of focus but seems to be a woman (Girl) sleeping in bed with a dog draped over her. Time on clock hits 7:27 and radio alarm turns on with radio announcer in mid sentence.]

announcer: ...tropical storm, Holy Crap, is still in the region. That means no chance of snow any time soon. Might as well pack up the board now, Chip. (laughs) This is CPNK, public access radio, and you're listening to Wake Up Punk with Dirty Doug. Kick it.

[music blasts from the clock radio. the figure in the background flinches and the dog slowly gets up, stretches and starts licking Girl's face.]

[roll intro credits]

Do I even need to say who came to mind when i read this post on the IGN message board.

Brian, you slay me. You caught me completely off-guard with this one... that's for sure! Kudos x27.

Another list of things attempting to pass as a real post.

1. I have some burst capillaries in my right eye. Looks like hell. Doesn't really hurt, but damn are my eyes tired. (note to self) try and increase font size in openRPG.

2. I got my mp3 player on saturday. It's a 32 mb Mini Yepp. The headphones are built into a string that you wear around your neck with a clip that holds the player. It looks like a hearing device. Me likes. I firmly believe that you could give the monkey a $5 budget and he'd still come up with the coolest gift ever. *kisses*

3. All the blog updates look fab! Sorry if I didn't seem too enthused about Brian's spoof - it sort of reminded me of someone who dresses up as a dead friend for hallowe'en - only not quite as tasteless. I did notice your attention to detail, tho. Fine, fine work.

<--break while I go buy some visine -->

4. I wish more of you would suck it up and play DAoC... lately John and I have been encountering muchos hestupids and I miss you guys. And what's with Smyth? He gets invited to some guilds and won't even talk to us.

5. I've narrowed the birthday money down to a new chic hairstyle or mini shopping spree... place your votes now.

Obsessing. I dunno who is worse, me or Brian. You know how/where/when to find me. I'm still here too.

  

 Lookie how tough I am!

Big thanks and lots of nubbins' to everyone that pitched in for my birthday gift. It was a bit uncomortable for me to accept it, but once I got over that, it made me feel pretty damn special. *gush*

You guys are truly the bestest! I've been doing lots of e-window shopping and I will kep you updated on my bday purchase. Thanks again.

/me feels the love

Yesterday I designed the cover for the paper. As usual, the chosen photograph didn't exactly fit our format, so I flipped it. Made it a mirror image, basically. I then proceded to make a stylish little type treatment that made reference to the cover story about 2 DJs.

I have things to say about Dayna. Good things, bad things, things I probably should keep to myself because they are just petty and hurtful. I have a conflicting feelings. I want to call her a fucking bitch and elaborate on why I feel I am justified in doing so, but I have been known to disappear for extended periods of time myself, and maybe I'm kind of doing it now. I also feel really sorry for her. She's a super intelligent woman who has little more than a callous exterior to cover up her lack of self-confidence. Despite all that, I was actually looking forward to lonely weekdays in Houston with no one to talk to but Dayna on AIM. I feel stupid because I really thought she was my friend.

Overheard at my office:

editor #1 to editor #2: Did she really say that, or did you just make that up?

Jeff.

Jeff came from LA to visit me in the year 28. He was my first "internet friend" to cross the thresh-hold into real life. He's a crazy punk-ass mofo.

Congrats re: clone-on-the-way, Val. Bon chance and all that stuff. Now take this box of condoms, will ya! Just kidding, ofcourse. I hope it's a girl too. You can call her Jennifer and she would be named after me without suffering thru a life of being an adjective.

"Will I still stand in line when I turn 29?"

Today I am 29. Not exactly sure how I feel about it... guess I'll just keep going and decide when it's done. 28 certainly had it's ups and downs.

Still waiting to hear what Adam thinks of DA*C.

Incase you didn't know, tomorrow is Dayna's birthday. Happy birthday beotch.

I'm still reading "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk." It was a gift from the Monkey, and I don't think I've told him how much I am enjoying it. Normally, non-fiction doesn't hold my interest, but so far I've been hard-pressed to put it down. My life = DAoC, Please Kill Me, DAoC, Please Kill Me. Sounds about right.

I go to great pains to write a post the hardly contains a reference to DA*C, and still not even one measely comment. I guess I've officially scared off all my regular readers. So much for making an effort. Guess I'll focus on my google seach readership and write more about things like "the current temperature" and "chinese porn."

*shrug*

Well, I'm desperate for the ratings and I don't know if I can still compete with my ring-mates. Sabby has a fab new haircut, Matt is going for his belt test and still doing my mom, Smytty is transcribing D&D while he waits for his copy of DAoC, Bryan is keeping on top of all the sites, as is his duty, Jin has the Maj party pics, Nick is filling our heads with lies... er, telling quaint stories, while Sandra keeps us informed of her stint of unemployment. Even Val's infrequent "technesque poetry" (and yes i just made that term up), and John's once-in-a-blue-moon insanity far out do any of my efforts.

Blarg. Stupid work-week... is it over yet?

Believe it or not, I've actually managed to save a wee bit of money. And I do mean "wee." Add to that, the freelance job that I'm working. January isn't so bad after all.

I've been getting alot of odd search referals from google:

"what's the current temperature"

"the silicone chip inside my head"

"interesting things to do when you're 55"

"chinese erotica"

"Just don't go on thinking that the whole world tells the truth"

"wouldn't you like to know"

In DAoC news, Asny is up to level 18 now... just another 10 (ack) levels until she'll be even remotely dangerous in RvR. Adam has ordered the game, and Jin is waiting for a computer upgrade.

things I thought about on my way to work:

1. I can't seem to shake this tired feeling.

2. I keep making you mad at me and I don't know why.

3. It's Tuesday and none of my local friends have called to make plans regarding Sunday.

4. I'm going to get my hair cut this week.

5. I'm going to pay my bills on time this month.

6. Today is "look at me, I'm nice day," because I brought B. 5 pairs of pants that don't fit me and vitamin C with rosehip and bioflavonoids for G. because he's been stressed lately.

7. I'm going to buy batteries for my pda so I can write my blog entries "on the road."

8. Why do I keep making you mad?

9. I am so tired of waking up tired.

10 Am I old now?

If you've ever been a smoker, then you're familiar with the Light-Up Theory. Basically, you can wait for an hour for the bus or the waitress to bring your dinner, but as soon as you light up, it's there and you're butting out a less than half smoked cig.

There was some talk about a freelance job that someone needed me to do for about a month now. It started before Xmas and by this week I was thinking it was going to fall through. Ofcourse, just as i'm making plans for a full weekend, the Light-Up Theory kicks in.

Needless to say, I ended up cancelling my appearance to the d&d game as well as my plans to attend Naomi's 7th bday party because I had to finish this project by Monday. There's still one page missing, but that's what happens when you get cocky and waste a few dozen hours playing DAoC on Friday night.

She goes, "Wow, Penny, man, wow man, you look exactly the same, man, you look the same."

I said, "Yeah, so do you."

But I didn't feel any connection. I felt like there was a plexiglas screen up. And she goes, "Man, I gotta get a cigarette, I'll be right back."

So she goes back to talking to Tom Verlaine, and she doesn't come back. I'm standing there thinking, What the fuck am I doing here? I don't wanna be here.

Dear gentle readers (as Miss Manners would say), would you like to see more or less DAoC screen shots?

Sorry about being absent for the past few days. Tuesday was press day and yesterday and today we are working on a last minute grant application. Other than that... well, do you even need to ask?

Our friend Frostt from Gawaine Midguard invited us over to Hibernia Galahad last night. He kept telling me that Midguard is so dark all the time, but I found that the brightness of Hibernia made my under-par graphics abilities glaringly obvious. Not to mention all the elves and the freaky bard with the wussy guitar rocking it in the Hibernian dungeon. Over all it was ok, but I think I'll stick to Asny in Midguard Gawaine.

Speaking of Asny... if you look to the left, you'll see just how kickass she's getting. That's an ornate studded vest that we scored while killing Mora Riders in Mirkwood, plus some studded pants from deep in Nisse, Vendo sleave that Homi got from killing Vendos and archers gloves that I got in a quest. Asny is also back to wearing a cape, much to my shagrin. I like the way she looks without the cape, but it's the Cape of Motherwolf that I got from a quest and it has magical mods, so I might as well wear it while I can.

Tonight, Asny will hit level 15 at which point I'm taking her on the "Evening's Empty Blessing Quest" to kill Vendos and get a kick ass pair of studded armor pants with an armor factor of 34. Her current pants have and AF of 24.

My latest theory is that Dayna's husband divorced because she wouldn't stop playing DAoC.

Pretty uneventful weekend, unless you count lvling from 10 to 13. Quite a big deal for me, as now Asny is not a complete loser, and people actually want to fight with her. And by "people," I mean, people who don't suck ass 99% of the time. Item: the healer who doesn't like to heal because it's boring, or the thane who picks fights while everyone else is low on HP and endurance. I went into the Nisse dungeon last night and the tomtes were actually conning blue and green. For those of you not knowledgable in the ways of DAoC, when a monster cons green, it is below you and therefor quite easy to kill. When it cons blue, it is considered to be the same level as you. If it cons yellow, you better know what you're doing or you'll most likely die.

Changing topics ("Finally," you say.) last night was my first night back to our Brokensoul D&D game. I won't lie and tell you that it's as exciting as DAoC, but still alot of fun. Things are moving faster now as the rest of us get the hang of gameplay... I even managed to kill something. Ofcourse, in the spirit of our group, Phae was denied credit, after all, the Bugbear was practically dead already.

I'm still looking forward to NWN, but that's another story.

Lately, I have been repeatedly faced with this weird reverse descrimination. Maybe somebody might read this and think I'm insane or self centered, but whatever...

Top 10 search results for "screeching+weasel+meaning+27". I can finally die a happy death. *wink*

Last night I got to play DAoC with John for the first time. We went down into the Nisse dungeon and kicked some serious butt - unfortunately Nisse only has two capacities - jam packed or dead empty, so we didn't really stay too long before we got frustrated and went over to Huggenfel. There we fought snakes and wolves until Homi was brutally slaughtered by a witch, leaving me to fight a large seawolf on my own. Yikes.

Yay! My site is back. Boo! The monkey goes home today and I'm at work again.

We've been working so hard at work ( <-- sarcasm ) for the past 2 weeks, that the paper is almost done already and it's not schedueled to go to press until 6:30 tonight (translation: all the other departments actually managed to submit their materials on time). So that means, today will be a pretty relaxed trip.

Management is serving brunch for the staff at noon, and after that I get to leave early so I can meet the monkey at the airport. Yay! I don't think I'll be updating much for the next 2 weeks, so I want to wish all my aether friends a Merry Xmas (you heard me, Matt) and a Happy New Year. Love to y'all and y'alls family... especially Matt, Val, Dayna and all the others who have the wee ones that really make it a wonderful time of year

Peace. Dust.

I just wanted to point out that I've already decided what kind of character I will be playing when I first start DAoC. Interested? Too bad, I'm telling you regardless:

Initially, I will play in Midgard, so I've chosen Norseman as my race and Hunter as my class. Hunters start out as rogues and then move on to join the House of Skadi where they learn to be hunters. I chose hunter because "they can also shapeshift into animal form at higher levels." COOL.

Am I excited? You betcha! I've been cleaning like mad and yesterday I went out and bought some fresh cut flowers so my place doesn't look so drab. Everything is almost ready... and tonight after work, I pick up my ring! With it sized to fit the right finger, maybe people will stop looking at me like it's a cheap piece of costume jewellry.

I only 2 albums on vinyl. The first is Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, the other is 668 Neighbour of the Beast by My Dog Popper. They're a Canadian 80's punk band from Montreal. Check it. This song is call Suck My Cock.

I had a very unnerving subway experience today on my way to work. I'm riding along minding my own business, the train stops at Dundas station and this very creepy person gets on, so creepy that I almost jumped off.

I just finished reading Smyth's post about how he loves Christmas, and I thought I might post my own thoughts about this special time of year...

Unlike Smyth, I am not reminded of happy times gone by; perhaps the year that my parents seperated and I spent 4 hours in at my bedroom window, willing each car that passed by to turn into my driveway, or the first family Christmas with out my Dad, when all my aunts clawed each others eyes out over turkey. And being the black sheep of my family, Christmas was the one time of year that I couldn't escape the scrutiny of my extended family: "So I hear you dropped out again," "Don't you see how this is just killing your mom?" "When are you going to get your shit together?"

Another bad streetcar experience today. I take the King car to work in the morning, and if you lived in Toronto, you'd know that it is known far and wide as being the most despised route. If you mention the King car in my neighbourhood, you're in for an earfull of bitching: "Sometimes I wait 40 minutes." "I usually have to let at least 2 cars go by before there's room to get on." "People never move to the back."

"I lost my job today, which used to be the way

I could afford to live to hate another day

and now I can't afford to even be bored anymore.

It's kind of good to feel bad again,

mad again, sad again. I'll be doing that again.

I don't have to tell you I do it really well."

YOU TODAY - Mr T Experience

"what's wrong with everyone?

there's a panic in their eyes

like others getting close are aliens, in disguise

they smell conspiracy on the lips of dearest friends

reminds me of a time long ago,

they think it's the end

of what we all created,

used to love but now we hate it."

SADDEST SONG - No Use For A Name

I had a dream that I drove out to Dayna's place in Indianna. When I arrived she seemed pretty distracted and talked mostly to Cameron, who had beautiful, long, curly, blond hair and looked mostly like a girl.

Doing all the things I do when I'm trying not to do all the things i need to do. I bought the monkey's christmas gift today, but I can't say what it is, because he reads this. Bought groceries, called out invites for next Sunday's brunch, visited old message boards. Listening to mp3s and wishing the weekend was one day longer.

The one thing I love about winter is when the snow cakes over the tree branches and telephone wires. White, scraggly arms stretching out infront of a blue grey sky. And maybe the way a winter storm sprays snow onto the sides of the old brick buildings, sort of like the canned snow my aunt and I would spray all over my nanny's front windows.

It's so mild again today, I can't help but be reminded of another place and another time. My throat is so scratchy. No doubt, the aftermath of walking home from work in a wet, winter storm with no hat and holes in the soles of my Vans. Bleh. I have way to much to do. No time for sick.

i'm gonna tell you what i really think i like about monday

cause they fell like saturdays

when you don't have to go to work, every day is a holiday

i wake up when i want to, i do anything i wanna do

can't wait for tuesday

thank god it's monday - NOFX

It started around 2pm... all the coworkers shrieking and running to the huge windows near our department. it was still dumping down when i left at 5:30 but didn't start sticking until I got off the streetcar and heading over to chapters.

"So I pickup the food and get home. I am wearing 8 layers of clothes because its freezing out and my arms are full of McDonalds. My feet are covered in vietnam jugle boot snow hating black slippering things of doom. So I fall, and fall, and fall again."

Had a dream last night that my poor dog's leg was cut off. Luckily my parents (who've been divorced for 10 yrs) were there to help me out. I picked up the severed dog leg, which was remarkably small, and my mom safety pinned it to my arm while insisting that we go to the best vet in town. Half way thru the dream, I awoke, sitting upright in my bed. I crawled down to the end to make sure Mag's was ok, before falling back into sleep. When my alarm finally went off, I made her climb into bed with me for some mom-dog snuggle time, because she's my one and only home-girl.

Look what Smytty made!

Unfortunately, that is in reference to the unseasonable temperatures, not my mental state.

Text Forecast  from Environment Canada

Toronto: Issued 11.00 AM est Thursday 13 December 2001

Today..Cloudy. 40 percent chance of showers ending early this afternoon.

Wind becoming southwest 30 km/h with gusts to 50 km/h this afternoon.

Very mild. High 12°C(54°F).

Current temperture 11°C(53°F). Norms for this time of year are: Max Temp. 2.2°C (36°F), Min Temp. -6.4°C(20°F). Global warming, anyone?

there's something you ought to know, before you explode

all i want to do is make sure you stop chasing rainbows

trusting those around you is an easy thing to do

i'm not saying don't believe in someone that you don't know

just don't go on thinking that the whole world tells the truth

CHASING RAINBOWS - No Use For A Name

1. Greg and I took off from work early and went to The Eatons Centre to have my ring resized. When I went in to get a price last month, they said they'd do it while I waited, but I didn't have the money (it's platinum, baby, and that shit ain't cheap). Now, it's "the Christmas season," so I have to go back and get it in 8 days! The good news is, that's the day before John arrives.

I'm sure we all have "better" and "more important" things to do - ok, most of us do - but you know what? Fuck it. I'm done with this. From now on, I won't be wondering about you or what the fuck your deal is. I officially give up.

Oh, sad, sad day! I woke up this morning to discover that Matt's site is down... how will I live without my regulated dose of that private pain? Let's just hope it's temporary.