I know I do have some marathon runners on my flist, but you don't need to be a runner to find this video absolutely hysterical: Marathon Thoughts. Aka, what goes through the mind whilst covering all those miles... *g*

Also: ( have a rainbow!Collapse )

Work is nuts, to be blunt. I'm trying to learn SO many different things all at the same time, whilst short-handed of course because what used to be my position is still an empty seat, and we had a great big wrench thrown in our plans to fill it today, so I don't know what the hell is going on there. I ended up spending big chunks of time on that instead of, y'know, *working*, so I checked all of like 3.5 items off the big-ass To Do list of things I need to accomplish before I leave the building on Friday. Oy. I cannot, however, say that I was bored at any point today.

Also, AM, who has the most bizarre sense of humour ever, made an odd crack about most of the people he knows spending time on their hands and knees, and I still don't know what to think about that - except that if he's kinky, I don't WANT to think about it, LOL. It was just *strange*, especially the look he gave me after. *hands*

But! The guy who owned the lovely big LCD telly moved out at the beginning of the month, which was a bit sad as he was the sci-fi geek and probably the person I clicked most with in the house. I don't really care about the TV, although the approximately 20" CRT unit sat there now looks well strange and wee. He had one of the biggest rooms in the house, though, and my hallmate moved up there, as of today. Whee!!! This am good. Especially because she really is a lovely girl, but I was extremely tired of sharing our bathroom with her, her boyfriend, and her best friend. Yeah. And listening to the fucking smooching in the hallway, because she never seemed to actually figure out that it was audible. But it doesn't matter now, because I get the bathroom all to myself again for a little while. *crosses fingers that next hallmate clicks better*

And then, because the TV is not as attractive a prospect to everyone now, and the guy who owned the big set was the most avid watcher to begin with, I actually ended up getting the kitchen/lounge all to myself by the time I was done chopping veg, so I got to cook and eat and clean up all in glorious solitude. *happysigh*

Both points above, btw, relate to the fact that I've been having trouble with my cave not being much of a solitary cave lately, b/c hallmate and Boy From Upstairs (yes, he's in a different room upstairs, why the fuck they never went there I do not know) were always. fucking there. It's been really stressing me out, because I *need* to get a certain amount of solitude, and with half-getting it the way I have been, I've been extremely withdrawn and anti-social in general as I was never actually *getting* a people break. So hopefully I get a couple of weeks at least, and I can re-set.

Lastly, I have not actually bought my plane tickets yet. I've been re-pricing and watching for weeks, and it's been dropping, and now it's finally gone back up £5 or so, which means time to do it. It's just as well I haven't, though, since with the situation at work, I may do a bit of date adjustment. And my mother just threw another wrench into things, asking if I had a layover in Toronto and could I if I didn't so that I could spend an hour with my grandmother. *headdesk* So I am now looking at £30+ more expensive flights, that will give me double the overall travel time (albeit in only one direction, the other is a nonstop), in order to incorporate a layover. I'm calculating if it might not be better to just try to get a bit more time and stay a bloody weekend.

Family. Gotta love 'em, but dear God. LOL.

Oh oh and my hair is long enough for a proper ponytail now. I bought elastics on the weekend. They may be nearly neon tie-dye. Pedestrian I know but it excites me! *g*

Aw, man. Had I had my choice of dates, I would have arranged for my trip home so that I'd be in Toronto at the end of May, because that's when my 10-year graduation reunion celebrations for U of T are. Unfortunately for me - yay for her, though! - my manager is getting married in June, so needless to say, anytime in May/June was simply not possible. I just got a reminder email about the session specific to my department, though (Linguistics), and it's entitled "The Grammar of Music": Professor Elan Dresher discusses how the structure of music parallels the structures found in languages. Talk and reception to follow. *whimper* Fuck me but I wanted to go to that.


Unrelatedly, the fact that Mari snuck onto Rob's Twitter to say hi to him and then he replied later with 'nite mari. i love you.' makes me a giant puddle of goo. I'm just saying. :D

Well, fuck me gently up the Jesus tree. Wanna know what's supposed to happen two hours after Tas's scheduled landing at Heathrow airport? If you guessed "Tas arrives in Southampton," you're obviously looking at the *old* schedule. The *new* schedule says "Tas leaves fucking Toronto." *headdesk* It figures. The first time I get stuck overnight in an airport in my entire life, and it's the same damn airport I've been in a bazillion times in the last 25 years. Bah. Air Canada has been just *ridiculous* about the whole thing. Limo home? Sure, when that's over an hour's drive away, so say two and a half travel time, and if the plane's supposed to take off at 8:15am then we're supposed to be here to start boarding at 7:15am and the queue for these limo vouchers only started after 2am... yeah, I don't bloody think so. Not even worth going to a hotel - you'd be there for all of three hours.

Got a full battery at least so I can poke around a little while I'm here. Pearson only *thinks* it's a decent airport - they don't even have any fucking outlets so I could plug the damn computer in.

Next location achieved, complete with Internet, food, drink, bed, TV and car keys. *g* No people, though, which is just damned strange, particularly in a new-to-me house. But, my cousin picked me up at the airport after a smooth flight and we just chattered all the way here. OMG it was sooooo good to see him. Once upon a time, he was the most important person in the world to me. It's almost inconceivable how much we've drifted, and yet how natural it feels still to talk to him. I heart my older brother. And I'll see my godparents on Sunday when they get home, which will also be nice. I was kind of amused - my aunt phoned while we were in the car with instructions for me to call her at the hotel. I'd already had instructions to call my mother when I got to the house, and DRC had just left and I was looking for the phone handset when it rang - 'twas my mom. And then I called mom # 2 at her hotel after hanging up from mom # 1. *shakes head*

Well, I have just spent about half again as much as my rent on my plane tickets; waiting and constantly re-pricing for the last two months saved me precisely seven quid. *eyeroll* So, I am officially going to Canada. Details later. Those of you directly involved, I'll email at some point to get your phone numbers, because when I get into Toronto, I'll be going to my godparents' but they are actually out of town for the first few days and I'm willing to bet that they won't have a blessed clue how to leave it set up so that I can get on the Internet. *g* I have a cousin collecting me from the airport who will have keys for me. I'm not sure he was given a choice about that, but the boy's been driving me all over creation since he got his licence anyway, so it'll be like old times, lol.

Failing at lifemail. I ended up going down to the wire when I shipped out my Christmas stuff, but it *was* before the deadline and I *did* send it so all's well, right? Yeaaaaah. I found a bag with a few small things in amongst the Christmas residue that I was supposed to have taken and mailed at the same time. So those didn't go until last week, and then I totally forgot to subsequently email the people involved and say hey, I didn't forget you, I just suck. Really bad. The stupidest part? Not all of it even had to leave the country! I had run out of regular UK stamps, too. Bah. Fail.

Longing For. This is the song that's been om nomming my brain the last few days (cheers to khemlab for the extract!). It's cut from a live radio interview, and it's just two acoustic guitars and two voices, one male, one female, in some fairly intricate harmonies, in a very pretty love song. Yes, some of why this is pwning me really hard has to do with M!Rob, but it is genuinely lovely, and I think the part that hits me the hardest about it is that it has such a hopeful tone. I'm tempted to say naively so, but... that's the cynic in me talking, and she's definitely in charge these days, so ignore her and download the song. Optional, of course, unless you're evaine, in which case, hop to it, lady. *g* If y'all want the lyrics, go here.

My posting steam has run out. Haven't been saying much lately because it all seems a bit pointless, really. Not just posting - life in general. See previous paragraph about the cynic being in charge atm.

Oh, yeah, and: Toronto area flisties! I'm coming in April instead of February. More money, less snow, essentially. I'll be there over Easter weekend so hopefully that'll work for y'all so far as actually having time off work already.

I finished my long-distance Christmas shopping today, bleurgh, and remembered in the process why I had kept putting it off: it hurts. Focusing on people that I am not going to be able to *see* at Christmas makes me miss them hardcore and thus I spent most of my shopping extravaganza time in some level of tearing up. I did not, however, actually cry. I'm saving that for tomorrow night, when I wrap all this shit and package it up without the amazingly unhelpful assistance from a small furry animal who likes shiny curling ribbon. And then on Saturday, I will haul ass up to the post office first thing in the morning (God help me!) and it will be done. My godfamily is just getting various British sweets and the like and a note that I'll need somewhere to stay for a week or so in February so who wants to volunteer? *g*

Which, yeah: Toronto-area people, I'm going to be *in* your area in February. I haven't finalised anything yet, but my tentative plans are to go to Halifax first for 1.5-2 weeks, then Ontario for 1-1.5 weeks, which should be over the long weekend that only schools and governments get - which is also Valentine's, so if anyone wants to say fuck tradition and, y'know, hang with me on V-day instead, that would be cool. :D I will most likely be staying at my godparents' and that is... wait for it... in Acton. I'M WORTH THE DRIVE, GUYS! *dies laughing* I may have access to a car, actually, and if I don't, I'm probably going to rent one, because I will go batshit if I have to depend on my family for drives (and take one of them with me everywhere, ack). Besides, I am DEFINITELY going to be heading downtown T.O. (oh God I hope I remember how to drive in there!). There are a few places I want to hit - the correct Paradise Hut had better still be there, man, on the east side of Yonge between College and Wellesley, or I shall be pissed - but most of those I can and likely will do myself on a weekday when y'all are working. I would, however, *love* to go to the Kool Haus, if anyone's up for that. It didn't exist when I last lived there! How strange. Anyway, I'll babble about all that more later but I'm putting y'all on notice right now. My only concrete date is that I have to be back in Southampton by March 1st, because March 2nd is the first Metallica concert, hee.

Weird little occurrence: I have three email accounts that I use regularly, and when I signed on tonight and the notifs popped up, all three had five emails waiting. O_o I am just glad that there were *five* and not six, lol.

Oh and something else that probably only the TV-watching Canucks will get, but when I got home all teary and tired and carrying bags and shit, I came up the stairs and sniffed the air, and said, "It smells like burnt toast." And promptly cracked up. Heritage ads FTW!

Toronto-area people: Anyone know if the Bagel Stop still has customer cards for "buy 6 bagel-and-cream-cheese sandwiches and get one free," and similarly if Second Cup still has the same kind of card for coffee? If so, anyone want one or the other or both that's all filled up and worth a free one?

As for eljay at large, anyone want a university grad photo of me? LOL. I have like twelve of them left, 2x3 wallets. Why the hell I had that many to begin with, I suspect was due to some kind of "get this many other size photos when you buy a frame-size one" thing. It was actually a good picture. Très blonde. :D

The mother made this delicious shrimp scampi recipe for dinner. Yummm. (She is a fangirl for Tyler Florence, hee.) I am pasting it in here, ( in case it disappears from the Food Network site.Collapse )

As it's been over a week now since the tattoo was done (where the hell did that go?!), despite the continuation of the itch'n'flake club, I am going to indulge in a bath. I have, of course, been craving a proper bubble bath since the day of. *eyeroll* Also, the dad has moved on to Steve Earle at a considerably higher volume, lol.

Oooookay... I'm familiar with Come As You Are; I mean, hi, Queen West in Toronto. :D I did not, however, have the slightest idea that they started such a thing as the Toronto Erotic Arts & Crafts Fair. Dude. WTF?! Oooo though I like the knit boa - unless it's wool, in which case, I'd still be allergic lol (can't wear feathers - or fur! - either). O_O There seems to be a LOT of knitting-related kink links there, too. Hee.

Totally unrelated WTF...the dollar is a dollar???!!! Or so close as to be virtually indistinguishable. For those of you not Canuck or US border-dwellers, our vernacular is to say, "The dollar is $XX.XX," with 'the dollar' meaning the Canadian dollar and the given amount being the US dollar, which until recently was some-odd cents. They are not supposed to be fucking equal. Ow the economy!

The Johnstones are a punk-ska band I'd never heard of until like fifteen minutes ago when their video Gone for a Long Time played on MuchLoud and I liked the song and turned to look at the vid and there's five guys running through the city in socks, chucks and tightywhities. *giggles* You gotta love it! Fun, fun sound. The absolute kick in the teeth is - and no one not from the Toronto area will get this - they're from Ajax. Motherfucking AJAX! WTF?! Ahahahahaha. I'd tell y'all that they remind me of King Konqueror, but that's going to mean very little to most people. *g*

*is still entertained by David's impression of dancing*

Amusing quote of the day: "Life sucks when you're horny!" As spoken by a single friend of mine, while we were all talking about the progress another friend has made with the guy she's been after for a while. It made me crack up, anyway. (Possibly you had to be there. :D )

michak reminded me that four years ago this weekend, she and I, De, angela_o, muffinkath7, and cookie2697 were all hanging out together in the Toronto area. I rented a mini-van and drove everyone to Niagara Falls, after dragging them to Tim Horton's heh. cookie2697 stayed a few extra days so we got to do the CN Tower, which I hadn't been up in years (I still avoid the hell out of the glass floor area, though!) on a gorgeous clear day. It was such an awesome weekend. ♥

Mreh. I wanted to go to Minneapolis this weekend SO badly. It's way past time that I met strippedpink, angelicus and truelovepooh, and time with muffinkath7 and mockingbird39 is always excellent. I would be sulking a lot more if I wasn't going to San Francisco in 3 weeks!

I think that's why it took me zero time to decide to go to SF when the idea came up, b/c I was already OMG!wanttogoooooo lol. Fortunately, I could get the time off in late October that I couldn't get around Thanksgiving. And I get to see cookie2697 this way yay, and meet revid and _somniac_ and I don't even know who else yet! *excited* Plus, visit a city that, well, I actually want to visit. *laughs* I know Minneapolis has the Mall of America and all, but it's never been high up on my "Must See" list like SF is. The draw was the people. :-)

It snowed last night. Just a couple of inches, enough to freshly coat everything in white. Perfect and beautiful.

I went out today. Didn't have to; didn't really need anything, although my mom wanted a bottle of wine so I braved the liquor store. It wasn't as crazy as I was expecting. michak, you know the one near you, in the back corner by the Baskin Robbins? I had to go there on Christmas Eve one year and it was bloody ridiculous. People lined up around the corner of the building and a rent-a-cop regulating how many were allowed inside at a time. O_o Alcohol is clearly part of the Canadian holiday tradition, lol.

But the mall was the same way: busy, not crazy. Christmas Eve in Nova Scotia lacks the frantic consumerism that characterises the day in Ontario, the few times that I've needed to go somewhere that day. And I eventually ended up in Chapters, curled up in an armchair by the fireplace with a magazine and a latté, for about an hour and a half of sheer loveliness. (Btw, the 2006 Writer's Digest Yearbook has a good list of websites, but most everything else is geared towards articles/freelancing; fairly useless for novelists.)

On my way out, I put in the mellower Warm Firelight, Wine & Friends holiday CD I made a couple of years ago, b/c I wanted to listen to a couple of the songs at full volume while in the car, as it's difficult to do so in the house. And I just kept driving, right past my exit and well beyond. I can't really afford long drives anymore (gas is too expensive), and taking a long drive on a badly-lit highway at twilight is generally a bad idea when you can't see that well because you can't stop fucking crying, but I just needed the time and space alone and in my car is really the only time I ever get that. Because I finally figured out what my problem's been with Christmas this year: I'm homesick. My cousin enclosed this photo of my niece in my card. She's so adorable and she looks so much like he and I both did as little kids, and I haven't seen her in person since she was six months old. Which is the last time I saw any of the rest of my family, on my way back from California at Easter in 2004. No one came up this summer and I miss everyone. I miss the city, too. I know I can breathe here and I'm happy and I'm making a life for myself, but sometimes I want to run back to Toronto where people don't make random conversation with strangers and I can shop any day of the week even if there's nothing I want to buy and I can get a perfect damn strawberry-banana-mango smoothie on Yonge Street.

Meh, I'm always emo at Christmas and it irritates me. Going to go eat dinner and try not to mope. *rolls eyes*

Watching the countdown to the MTV VMAs on Much Music.  It's kind of funny; the VJ is at the Exhibition in Toronto - the annual fair/amusement park thing right downtown TO.  We used to go every year when I was a kid, before I started going to Canada's Wonderland all the time, lol.

Anyway, my bizarro 'net connection issues were solved yesterday but oddly, I didn't feel like getting online last night!  Anne sent me a tape of Shiri's TV movie Everything You Want a while back and I hadn't watched it yet; I was finally in the mood for that kind of movie so I watched it last night.  It was lovely.  Not Oscar material or anything, but sweet and quirky and just enjoyable.  And I guess her character reminded me somewhat of early Liz, because afterwards I did something I haven't done in eons and pulled out my Roswell DVDs.  I watched the Pilot, Leaving Normal, White Room and Destiny.

It was strange.  On the one hand, it was nice to simply be a spectator and watch them with no specific expectations and no intrusion from the fandom, and remember why it was a show I loved in the first place.  (Much as Kath mentioned when she caught LN randomly on TV recently.)  OTOH, it was an extremely odd feeling to watch the show without the heavy emotional investment.  I was a spectator, not an obsessed fan, and I've never watched the show like that since End of the World first aired.  I don't know how I feel about that, actually; I guess I didn't expect that I would see the actual show differently now that I'm not so deeply involved in the fandom.  I don't know why as it seems logical that it would change too.

Er, do the VMAs normally start right off with a performance???  B/c Green Day opened the show before *anything* else was shown, and it threw me, lol.  I wasn't facing the TV yet!  And I'm just really amused that the first thing I thought was, where's Billie's tie?  LOL!  He's wearing something different, with a mandarin collar, but still black.  Of course.  They'd said they were going to blow stuff up, lol, and there was a pretty good fire show during the guitar section at the end of Boulevard.  Diddy's entrance was suitably impressive, too.

Of course, what I kept thinking was that in exactly one week, I'll be getting crushed in a mass of people seeing that song played live... :D  Speaking of which, Mom and I were talking Friday night and she was like, I have a bazillion Air Miles, why don't you see what it would be to fly to Montreal?  She swears she said that to me when I first talked about going, but I forgot I guess, probably because I had decided not to go and then changed my mind.  So she called them yesterday and I have to pay the tax, but for the tax and full insurance it's $145.  Waaaaay less than it was going to cost me in gas even!  I'd originally checked out flying, but with that tax on top of even seat sales, it was going to be too expensive.  But this works out perfectly!!!  I fly in Saturday morning and fly back Monday morning.  A bit earlier on Monday than I'd like, but I was going to need to leave by noon anyway, and this way I'll have most of the day at home to recover from any injuries I sustain at the concert, lol.

Oh!  Hair!  I got light blonde and medium-light copper highlights yesterday and it looks good.  She did a couple of concentrated blonde strands at the front where I part it, and I love it.  Yay!  I'm going to get my dad to take a pic of me tomorrow and then put my disposable camera in for developing.  I figure that I should send something recent to FL so she knows who's showing up at her door hee!

Oooooo, they just won Best Rock Video, yay!  *Now* Billie's wearing a tie, but it's a bad tie, man.  There are polka-dots.  He should know better, lol.  Oh, well, I can think of several people who will go nuts over the white jacket.  I half-expected Tré to run through the sprinkler things, not just underneath the water arches. ;-)

I watched the movie Detroit Rock City last night; needed something brainless with which to relax before going to bed, lol.  It's basically very American Pie-esque, only the 4 male friends are highschoolers in the 70s who are hellbent on getting to the KISS concert in Detroit.

I've been meaning to see the movie since it came out in 1999, actually, because it was filmed in Toronto and my ex and a couple of his friends went down and did some overnight extra work for the streaming-to-concert scene.  (No, I couldn't see anyone I knew onscreen, lol.)  They did that scene at the last vestiges of CNS Stadium, which was kind of sad because that's where I saw KISS play without the makeup or special effects, which remains the best concert I've ever seen.  They tore down that last little bit of stadium shortly after the filming ended, leaving us with the Skydome that's now the freaking Rogers Centre.  Blech. *spits at Rogers*  Anyway, it was a cute enough movie, very formulaic but the characters were pretty likeable and there were some laughs.

On a semi-related note, in that it involves music LOL, I scribbled this piece of ridiculousness a while back, after I'd purchased the QotSA CD to find that the liner notes were a complete joke.  Since linzeems was complaining (quite rightly) about the RIAA and all, I thought I'd post it. :-)

( Ode to Liner NotesCollapse )


In other news, I've decided that bright as it is, I like the green and I will be sticking with it. :D  I also am annoyed that I got mildly bashed somewhere.  Okay, so I really did post something stupid, but it's still annoying to get bashed, lol.  And Green Day's concert in Dayton, OH was postponed tonight for a band member's illness.  The rumours abound of course but nothing's been said officially yet, not even which band member.  I *was* going to complain that the concert in Barrie that was on Friday was apparently really awesome, despite the heat and the copious amount of weed that hung over the pit area in a thick haze, lol, but that news sort of took the fun out of bitching about that.  I'm still going to bitch about the raging sinus headache, though.  I want to get this painting done and over with already!!

An international e-friend of mine - actually, the one person I do fic editing for - is in Toronto and just emailed me, wondering if I were anywhere near and able to meet her.  Alas she's about 2 years too late to catch me. :-(  Which just sucks, because when people come randomly visiting Canada, they go to Toronto.  Or Vancouver, or Montreal.  All of which are valid choices and lovely cities but I don't live there anymore!  I'm way at the freaking end of the country where no one ever wants to visit.  *sigh*

I'm in a pissy mood now, because T'act and I are still getting to know each other and I would so have loved to spend some real time with her; she has the BEST sense of humour.  It's days like this that I really, really miss the cosmopolitanism of Toronto.  I do love Halifax, and even on days like this I don't wish I hadn't moved here, but sometimes the stubborn backwaterness irks me to no end.

And dammit, I want a Strawberry-Banana-Mango Juice smoothie from the Papaya Hut at Yonge and College.  Never mind that it's almost midnight in Toronto on a week night and that little hole in the wall will be closed.  I WANT ONE.