Still here!

Yup, still here. Still a little bit sick. *coughcough*

Currently, I'm listening to Rufus Wainwright's new album 'All Days are Nights' which is the first CD I've bought for at least a year. I think the last one I bought was Martha Wainwright.

Lala is running all crazy through the house because that's what she does. Spike is running crazy too because even though he still has food in his dish he wants to eat Lala's food and I won't let him. Lala eats duck while Spike is on a reduced calorie diet. Can't say I blame him for trying. It's pretty funny~ he'll take flying leaps at her dish and gobble a bite before running away as I yell at him.

I had a daydream that I got my heart tattoo done and now cannot stop thinking about it.

I found my camera charger! Stupidly I left it in Vernon but thankfully found it on our surprise trip home. I'll have a photo happy blog soon. I just wanted to post this way to say hi.

Lost my knitting mojo though. And it's not cause I'm quilting like a mad woman. I'm just not knitting. I'm currently making a miniquilt for my grandparents. Just wait till you see the fabric.

While sick I got obsessed with a facebook game. People may need to stage an intervention. I'm hoping once I get my second unicorn I'll be able to get rid of the game. It's bad. And you know what gets me mad? I'm totally willing to pay 20$ for fun PC games you know? Like Plants vs. Zombies and the like. Fun games that I enjoy. So I was thinking that I would look into maybe putting 20$ into the game to 'take it to the next level' right? Wrong. These games are HORRIBLE! 20$ is nothing in these games, it's like gambling! You have to put in more and more and more and it is just so wrong. I thought 20$ would 'unlock' the full game but no~ 20$ gets you like... one animal in a zoo of hundreds. It's quite immoral if you ask me. They recommend the 100$ 'best deal' option. ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR A FACEBOOK GAME?!?!?!??!?!?! The Civilization pack I'm looking into which has all four civs is 50$ and is infinitely better on all levels.

Woah, the air is thin on that soapbox. Let me step down. Ahhhh...

I bought sheep's milk gouda and made the best freaking mac and cheese on the face of the earth tonight. Then I had a strawberry lime spinach salad. Mmmmmm.....

Currently, I'm going to bed. Sweet dreams!

Issues

I have some issues with French immersion. One of them being if you have *any* sort of LD you just don't do well, and I don't think any school should be a place where not all learners are welcome. That being said, when I pulled out my knitting after recess to share with them, I've never had so many engaged eyes on me. They were FASCINATED and we had a round room discussion about what they wanted to knit. It was fun.

I didn't work out today :( but I did do a lot of walking. Still, not a good thing if I'm going to beat the Jubbers. I'll deal with this feeling of blue by eating what's left of the ice cream.

In a week and a half there is a big knitting get together swap thingie and I haven't touched my swaps rather intricate knit project for quite a while. Hm. Issues.

I was at the clinic today and there was a young woman next to me who was pretty upset so I went and got her kleenex. She told me she was so embarrased to be crying in a public place and I was like 'oh honey, I've cried in public libraries, on buses, in the bus station, while going though security at the airport, in the middle of a university lecture, and while walking down a very busy street.' Then I felt kinda worse.

And that's that I guess.

Bad jokes about strokes and other things

I had my two root canals today. After the kabillion liters of freezing I was working on my root canal sock and I noticed my hands were shaking like crazy. The lovely hygenist walked in and I nearly said 'look I've got parkinson's!' which I thought was funny but then I realized not everyone, whether or not they have someone in their family with parkinson's, would think that was funny. Bet I just made Jenn chuckle though. Afterwards it felt like the left side of my mouth was stretched permantly and I remember looking in the mirror and thinking I had had a stroke. I also made a mental joke and kept it to myself in fear of not being understood for the comic genius I am. In other news root canals suck but meh, they weren't bad at all. It was more annoying when drool was pooling in my chin and I couldn't do anything about it.

Root canal socks: Noro sock yarn on Hiya Hiya 2mm

Yesterday after coffee work I turned off my computer for four hours. As long as I don't mind spending a lot of time on the computer it's fine. It's when I start to get ooky about how much time I'm on my computer that I do an intervention. Does that make sense? Anyhoo, I worked on some knitting, read, talked on the phone a lot, and lined my faerie bag. I took the straps right off and put on wider shorter ones.
Do you see my bare legs there? Dangerously close.

The lining improved it ten-fold and I loves it even more.

Last Saturday I went to the Trout Lake Farmers Market with Alyeria and Lara. We had a great time. We ate crepes, bought organic veggie goodness, and then walked over to the 'lake' part and did our fibre thing. I worked on my skirt which I'm making good progress on despite my insane inability to count (83-50=23 AND 112-103=20)(I kid you not! Counting while placing markers makes me superdumb in a fantastic sort of way). I'm on my fourth panel now.

Stitch marker from See Jayne Knit
Lana taught Alyria how to crochet. Check out that fierce determination. Alyria, just like she has with knitting, has taken to crochet with the speed of someone who is using performance enhancing drugs.
I'm just a tad jealous.

And check out just a bit of my market goodness. This is the most insanely decandant brownie ever (took me three goes to finish it) from Veganmania with the raspberries that weren't eaten on the bus home.
Seriously. Like just. Yeah.

um... yeah

I had such plans for my blog today. I was going to blog about my knitting, my fridge, the run I'm doing tomorrow, how it's a good thing so many people I love were born in May or else I would have written off the entire month and refused to ever do it again, and so on and so forth. And I even have a new camera!!!! And such drama to share!!!!

But it is 11 oclock and I have officially resigned as being an adult so I'm going to go curl up in bed with my jesus night light on and listen to the classical CBC channel.

Good night says Spike.

I'm calling it.

That's right folks. As of 10:30am, January 5th, 2009- today is a Mental Health Day (aka- Leone-is-going-to-have-a-meltdown-of-epic-proportions-if-she-doesn't-calm-the-fuck-down).

On my list of things to do are:

• vacuum and sweep
• put away dishes and load dishwasher
• unpack
• play BrainAge and Guitar Hero on my DS
• brush Spike (should really do that before I vacuum)
• empty all garbage and take out recycling (couldn't do recycling- I don't think it's been picked up for ages)
• organize stash
• get groceries and do banking
• email my friends who probably think I am dead (hi ladies!)
• make an awesome dinner for my dear friend coming over tonight (okay- long story slightly shorter... we were the total of best friends growing up but grew apart in late high school and stopped after high school but she is so important to me I would still have fun dreams with her and be sad I couldn't phone her up and tell her about the rowboats and the swimming cows and then I saw her at UBC and contacted her on facebook and she's a total crafty uber-cool librarian so I mean, how could we not be bffs again? She rocks).
  
• make tiger butter
• maybe do a load of laundry
• be prepared to sub tomorrow- that means all the random stuff like making a lunch, setting my alarm for seven, prepping clothes, but mentally prepared as well. I like my job and I don't like being unhappy about it like I am right now.
  
• go get a soy london fog from the cafe so it's FREE!

Now you may be thinking- 'hey, isn't a list of things to do kinda silly on a mental health day' but I need to do these things right now in order to be sane. And the whole thing is waiting around to be called to work is weird and because of my negative headspace I'm not doing anything productive and my place is falling apart and I just need to do something good you know? Yeah, I let you know how it goes. Now I'm going to go crank some Blondie and I'll talk again real soon okay?

And just for you fangirls here's a picture of John and I.

Wait... what?

It's Christmas Eve!!!! OMZG! When did this happen? I'm posting just to post on the last day that I am 26. Crazy. Seriously, crazy amazing year 26 has been. I'm thinking 27 will also be interesting in that my life has changed so much this year 27 is all new territory.

Well, all the presents are wrapped. And despite waiting eight hours for a seven hour delayed flight I'm home and despite cancellations and a five hour delay Julia and Jason are home too! Apparently Julia traveled here from PNG just to continuously tease me about John but it's all good. :P

My stint at YVR was fine because I brought a tonne of knitting- I'll post pictures soon. I started to gap out at the five hour mark because all I had eaten was two bags of chips and M&Ms and NO coffee. I had a killer caffeine headache. And then when we got on the plane there was a delay waiting for people but thankfully they showed up because if they hadn't we would have had to wait for them to take off their luggage and then there was a technical problem that had to be dealt with and then it took us around 15 minutes to get to the one operating runway. I took some awesome photos of the mountains for you. I'll get those later.

Okay, I'm going to bed a 26 year old and I'll blog tomorrow as a 27 year old. Freaky. (well, not really all that freaky but I really feel like this has all crept up on me!)

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND/OR HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!

Kapow!

Maybe I shouldn't leave blogging till the end of the day. Then my blog entries may at least have the potential of being interesting. Bah- who are we kidding? I can guarantee that tomorrow entry will suck. Unless I get inspired at take and then download some knitting photos for you all. I cast on a new project tonight. Cause I didn't have enough on the go apparently. It's nothing exciting.

I did buy this yarn last week or so at BC Creative Expo. Which was not worth the ticket price FYI. They could take a page out of the IPE when it comes to setting up exhibitions. This yarn is Kauni and is gorgeous. I want to show you a finished sweater but I'm so paranoid about photo copyright I'm scared. The skeins are all the same colourway- it's just a very long and gradual colour change. I'm thinking a form fitting sweater with some sort of fun fair isle, like stars- I'm predictable like that.
Well, I'm going to get to bed. I had a very good dinner tonight so I have an awesome lunch for tomorrow. I hope when I wake up my hair is not doing the thing it's doing right now. *Poof*

Oh- and would you all find a post about my sims interesting? I can never tell if my interests will relate well onto a blog entry. I mean, knitting we know is always interesting, but computer games? I'm not sure. Opinions please!

eta- I reread this just now and found a kabillion grammatical errors but I'm keeping them. I feel it goes along with the whole 'I'm tired' theme of my blog for the month.

Tea helps

I now have three jobs. I teach, I knit, and I serve coffee. The coffee thing happened not even a week ago (and I've already worked a night shift alone) so that hasn't totally sunk in yet. It's a very, very sweet side job: a nice, relaxed atmosphere, nice coworkers, good tips, and um... FREE SOY LATTES! Sorry I yelled but I get excited sometimes. I seriously think the money I'm going to save in not having to buy soy lattes is going to be worth the job alone- tips and being paid are just gravy.

And knitting is still good- it has seriously put a crimp into *my* knitting and last night I had to bribe myself with ice cream (soy) to knit but it is alllllll good. I've knit over 30 scarves in just over two weeks.

And teaching is fine. I'm pretty sick so I couldn't work today or Monday- which is hard. It is so hard to turn down work. I wig out. I cry. I get irrational and start to think about how many scarves I would have to knit in order to make up the day. I start to think about picking up more shifts at the coffee shop (I'm working 20 hours there a week). I start thinking about the tutoring job someone emailed me about. I start thinking about my student debt. I think about how I ate out last week instead of saving money to pay off my debt. I start to lose my mind.

I realized what my problem is. I'm not use to making money. At all. Not even remotely. And the responsibility is causing me to become obsessed with it. Thankfully due to some self talks and a very tearful phone call to my Mom I've come to some enlightenments. Wanna hear them? Sure you do.

1. I'm going to be okay.

2. I'm freaking sick. And even if I do take a sick day it's okay because I have TWO other jobs. I'm sick. I was exposed to 120 kids last week- it was bound to happen.

3. I love all my jobs. How fortunate am I that I can say that?

4. I'm going to be okay.

So I'm okay now. I was uber-productive due to guilt today which was good thing because this apartment is stellar clean. Oh... I just realized I did laundry and should go get it. Whatever. But I did realize that money is stressful and I have to make sure it doesn't get the upper hand. Evil money. But nice money. Evilly nice money.

This blog post was brought to you by Buckleys, Extra Strength Tylenol, and Stash Premium Tea. Any incoherence on the bloggers part is most likely due to one or all of them.

Mark this day!

Today... I did nothing!

Cause you know, I'm a professional now and have a tonne of things on my to-do list. But today? I knit. I ate. I watched the first four discs of Heros. Sweeeeet (please say that in an Eric Cartman voice). I didn't mean to have a do-nothing day. It just happened. It was partly having to take care of Spike because the roofers came back today and I had to drug (totally homeopathic airy-fairy stuff, no need to call PETA) him so he would even consider coming out of the hole in the wall (literally- there is a hole in the wall of my front closet) to do anything.

Anyhoo, the whole point of this post is not to necessarily glorify my amazing laziness, but it's because I did it without guilt. No papers to write, no articles to read, no lesson plans to prepare~ sure I have stuff to do but it's not the same as university where there is the consistent nag and dread. I mean, I still did some stuff. I unloaded the dishwasher. And then I rewarded myself with icing! But overall, this day needs to be marked because it was a guilt-free-do-nothing day. Ahhhhhhhhh.

Though tomorrow will be back to reality. I may work, may not. So far out of a six (five?) possible working days I've worked 1.5 which is pretty okay for the first weeks of school. The two schools I've subbed at have been awesome~ one school I want to put my kids one day. And I have been very productive without school too (if I ever talk about school in a negative sense~ it's university; in a positive sense~ teaching). I've been reading, going out, doing a lot of organizing around the house, paperwork (whee), and so one and so forth.

Man, doing nothing is tiring! I want to talk about the schools but I'm all gapey and 'huh'. Okay, some quick photos then I'm off to make popcorn and hot chocolate!

And sorry for the furry photos. I dunno.

The yarn stash/living room horror before:
And after...

Grrrr.

My Angst is your Angst

I'm so emotional when I'm premenstral. I cried last night worried that my friend who likes to mountain bike and cross raging rivers will hurt herself even though she's safely trapped in the city teaching right now; I became insanely emotional when I heard about the aid workers in Afghanistan (which is a very valid reason to be upset) and could not stop sobbing in front of my computer; I got rather upset with my messy kitchen and crashed pots into my sink like a spoiled child(possibly scaring my neighbour in the apartment next to me (our kitchen windows face each other)) and then kicked some cupboards and hurt my foot; and I keep on getting worked up over my knitting because I am paralyzed in wretched selfish doubt that I won't finish my shawl in time before the end of the olympics.

So I decided to start reading Angela's Ashes.

Yeah, so if my neighbours weren't worried about me before the heaving sobs coming from my apartment would make them so. I honestly don't know how people survive such grief. Once I got over that I went into the bathroom to wash my face and cried some more. So I decided to eat a peanut butter and jam sandwich. Despite the sadness, I am very engrossed in the book and will continue to read it only tonight I need to go work on my knitting some more if I am to finish before the end of the Olympics. It's not like anything I've read before.

And in a happy note? Drunken Monkey is putting out a clothing line! Woooo!

Still snowing here

I'm at home now. Had my first home cooked meal (I cook meals- but those don't fall under the category of 'home-cooked') (more like.... 'meh' category) and am drinking lots of lattes and watching TV (aahhhhh....). I also have all these people around me that I sure do like a whole darn lot. It's a good time.

What's fun is getting to talk to my sister's belly and pat the belly and kiss the belly and tell the belly secrets. There be a pirate beeb in that thar belly. Aaarrrggh.

I'm knitting- not as much as I could be- but nearly done all the presents. One will be wrapped with the needles and frankly, that person has already seen their present and consulted on it sooooo yeah. There will be an Xmas present blog no doubt.

Oh- we're doing a puzzle! And by 'we' I mean that I work on the puzzle and sometimes my family members come join me for a bit. I figure that life can't be that stressful if I can work on a puzzle with frogs (and the whole denial about schoolwork helps too).

School is fine. I finally got my video up (after it had been deleted twice- once my fault once UBC's fault). In January I do my two week practicum, which will be fun. I'm doing social studies, gym, and one art class blitz. I've got most of the 50 names down but I'm sure once I'm immersed I'll get them all down pat.

Oh! And I started spinning again with my lovely drop spindle. The fleece is some lovely stuff from New Zealand. Mmmmm..... purple.

And sorry if I'm pretty vacant this holiday bit- I go from spending hordes of time every day on the computer to barely any but I look forward to catching up afterwards and seeing how everyone's holidays were. I'm so paranoid about my apostrophes now. I may need to take Jenn's course.

Mmmm.... nutella.

giggity

Yeah, I know. This is it- my reward yarn for completing the semester. It's 100% wool, Fleece Artist, dreadlocks. Let's just take a moment shall we?
Mmmm...




Anyhoo, I'm off to bed. Just figured I should upload these while the internet and blogger both seem to be working and I'm also waiting for my nails to dry. I painted them three weeks ago but realized I have no nail polish remover so either I go to school with cracked nail polish or I just constantly repaint them (the same colour over and over again) until the day that I actually remember to buy nail polish remover. It's a fun colour- very harlot red (not the actual name) but it's time for a new colour. And you are starting to notice that some sections are now receiving their third coat of paint while others aren't. Sigh.

I got a brother in law from Westjet today! He was rather late due to the snow and Vancouver's inability to realize that every year it snows in Vancouver at least once so maybe they should do a better job and not SUCK when it does (that sentence is fun in all sorts of ackwardness). I introduced him to the good times of Cake Mania while I made hordes and hordes of paper chain garland. I hope to have enough to span the living room walls. Okay, good night all!

/love

Things you learn on halloween

1. if you press snooze on your alarm clock, and also bump the regular time up by three minutes (to shorten the snooze time), your alarm won't go off.
2. apparently, people will party on Halloween night, even if it's a Wednesday.
3. Spike hates fireworks and I think my neighbours spent their entire month's rent on them. It's been three hours.
   
4. I'm such a lucky person to be receiving the sweetest packages in the mail from all over (Canada, America, & Bangladesh). They make me happy like chocolates and bananas. I mean, I knew this one before today, but it bears repeating. Hi Bears!
   
5. if you live in a small apartment, don't go buy Halloween candy because you will get NO trick or treaters. But don't worry- you can manage to pawn a lot of it off on your friends.
6. if you drink those coolers your friends bring you, and knit... you will be frogging a lot of stitches. Grandpa's sweater will not get finished by Xmas at this rate.
   
7. 50% of students will get the Medusa thing, the other 50% will think you are Jack Sparrow (dreads).
   
8. Moms are just priceless. Priceless.
   
9. teaching a guy how to knit a scarf for his girlfriend is so much fun.
   
10. it's 11:20pm and I won't be sleeping for awhile yet (see points 2 and 3)
    

So there it is. I've learned a lot today. And by the by, thanks for all the sweet comments left here on the last post. You all rock.

Peace, yo.

*snuck*

so apparently I'm allergic to Calgary. Sheesh. I'm trying to do things like, oh, I don't know... schoolwork and maybe also... housework (since I have a friend coming to stay with me for four days and the place is trashed) but it's hard when you can't hear out of one ear, blow your nose every two minutes, and basically feel like crap. It's a sinus infection I think. I feel a little better today than yesterday but I don't want to miss school so I'm taking it very easy. I'm not leaving the house, nor am I getting out of my pjs. Frankly, I'm amazed I got out of bed.

So here's an interesting thing I noticed about Calgary. I could never live there because a) I'm allergic to it and b) sushi is VERY expensive there, but you know what? We went to the mall and compared to BC, women have more than one body shape there. Here, everyone is skinny, everywhere you go, skinny (and not the good skinny that some people are just naturally, the emancipated skinny). In Calgary, women came in all shapes, some skinny, some curvier, some bigger, but I mean, they were all good, and it just seemed like a greater range of body types. I loved it. We need to figure out how to get that over here. Rant over.

I went to my cousin's wedding this weekend and it was just wonderful. The service was good, the bride was *beautiful*, the reception was awesome- overlooked one of Calgary's 'lakes', good food, yummy yummy cupcake-cake, excellent tunes, and mostly free and then very cheap drinks! Woo! Go Lisa and Nick! Seriously though, it was just wonderful and I'm so happy for my cousin and her husband, they are perfect for each other. It was also great to see a lot of the family, my Mom, my aunt and uncle, my cousins, my grandparents. It was a very good way to spend thanksgiving. The turkey dinner comes next week when my friend and I get together to celebrate a belated thanksgiving (basically we want to eat turkey).

Okay, I'm going to go lie down now.

Beds, Books, and Blisters

First of all, look what I bought! Except mine is white, and it looks a lot better when it's covered in pillows, which I will do as it's mostly going to be a couch. Isn't it stellar? I wanted a sofa bed but I was finding that the couches were so much nicer to sit on, but more expensive, and then I saw this and I loved it oh so much! I get it on Sunday. Wheeeeeheeheehehehee!
I can't wait to cover it in pillows and knit away on it! I had so much fun at Ikea, it was nearly sinful. I could spend soooo much money there! And it was an uber good thing I had a good friend with me (Hi Sheena) who knew how to operate the store or else I would have been so lost.

So books, yes, books as in books and books as in reading. I had four presentations in two days, but at least all my presentations are over now for the rest of the semester. I've gotten really good feedback from my presentations so I'm pretty happy. For one I spent way too long making 16 paper cubes (who knew it took so long to make those?) to play a word game, another one was based on a chapter from my favorite book Matilda by Roald Dahl and I got my peers to read out loud (hilarious- one student so did the Mrs. Trunchbull voice), another one was funny in that it turned out another person in my group did homophobia in schools but we had two really different presentations, and the last one was group project but for my part I did it on self-efficacy and I did a drawing activity which was soooo much fun. Basically you get people into partners, ask them to draw a portrait of their buddy (so funny), then give them a lesson on basic face drawing skills, and then get them to redraw the portraits. It was totally fun. And it meant nobody could go on their laptop while I was giving the lesson either :P School is so good. No like honestly, I totally mean that. My living room is covered in paper, books, and construction paper scraps, but I'm so happy. Whee for me!

And blisters. Apparently, I'm developing a thing for shoes. Yeah. For Thursday presentation I wore my most darling twilight blue satin kitten heel pointy toe shoes. I got so many compliments about those, from both sexes, but oh, my poor baby toes. And I also have blisters from a new pair of sandals from Sketchers that are covered in miniature charms like starfish and seahorses, so cute! But yeah, no more painful shoes till my feet heal.

I'm going to metrotown tomorrow to buy some household stuff and pillows for my daybed, so hopefully photos on Monday! Possibly of my bedroom! I've a busy weekend, I really hope I get my bed early on Sunday so I can still make it to the Pride parade or at least some fun activities, and I'm going to the fireworks finale tomorrow night (I'm going to brave English bay!). So yeah, busy weekend so thank goodness for long weekends!

Now let there be light....

and the internet was connected. A thousand huzzahs! Though I've been so busy that I've hardly the time to do anything interesting! There are many pictures to come, and blogs to comment on still, but don't worry, I'll get there. The new place is awesome, the move in process has been spread out over the past two weeks but the only thing I lack now is a loveseat and that will get here whenever those come around to being dirt cheap (any day now). I've got a table, chairs, two bookshelves (three because we made one into two), a toaster, utensils, Spike's kitty tent, lamps (it sucked being chased out of my living room by the fading daylight), so much yarn, books, a bed (oh sweet bed), clothing, my blender, and of course, curtains made from random material (pink star covered curtains for the living room) and recycled blankets (green ruffled edge blanket covered in little flowers that I slept with as a child) to finish the place off. It's become so much more live-able in the space of today it's wonderful. I have led lights around my bookshelf, photos on the mantle (faux fireplace), and Spike is peering outside from his scratching post. I live on the second (and a half) floor and my view isn't awful, it's kinda the rooftops of houses which is kinda nice, it's a quaint little neighbourhood. Pictures to follow, no worries. My mom is in town, which is way half (um... three quarters?) of this stuff is here. Moms are kinda crucial eh? It's a bummer that Vancouver has to be so rotten hot while she's here (my Mom comes to Vancouver for the rain) but it's been an excellent visit.

School. Ah, what to say about school. When I get back into blogging more than this won't be so hard. How do I write about the past two weeks? I don't even know where to begin. I had a three and a half day intensive art class that was uber fantastico and I learned so much. And it was the first week of our five classes we have for the next four weeks which are all really good. I'll talk about them more in depth another night. I'm debating about whether or not to put my bathroom set together tonight or leave it for tomorrow. Right, back to school. Well, it's awesome, everyone in my cohort is great, I've met a lot of fascinating people, our profs rock the cazbah, and yeah, it's completely awesome. I'm running out of adjectives so I'm going to call it a night. I need to do some more organizing of the living room before I'll be happy and can go to bed. Least to say, waking at up 6am has been a shock to the system but I'm sure soon it will be a second nature.

Thanks to everyone for the kisses and for being so patient! And to Chuck and Bears, Spike is doing fine. He misses you the most at 4 in the morning and lets everyone know. The Bears in Vancouver are adjusting quite well (even in the heat) and are very helpful in decorating. Overall, I stressed more about the move than anyone else in this house did, and thanks for the blogging updates, I'm glad to know you are all settled.

Bonne nuit!

lordy

so anyhoo- very tired. very very tired. my feet hurt. I'm actively not thinking about the next seven days (school starts in ONE week people!) and am just trying to breathe (stupid cottonwoods).

I decided to let Spike blog about the madness.

I finished one sock and have started the cuff of the second. At this rate I'll be down sometime in November.

Updates will be sporadic until I get internet access in Vancouver.

Send me kisses.


Yarn is soothing, yes? Yes.

Rejoice in Sushi!

For an apartment have I! With a freaking dishwasher baby yeah! Woo! Seriously though, it's pretty big, with a full bath and a dining room area and a big kitchen and a living room and a big bedroom., nobody lives above me, and one of my best friends is a stone's throw away and I'm a mere express bus ride to the downtown core where my sushi lives. I rejoiced by eating sushi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Mmmm...... But this apartment finding has been such a exhaustive week I'm a little broken as of now. My legs are killing me from the walking and I haven't been sleeping much, well, I kinda haven't been sleeping at all really. I was bad with remembering to eat which causes my blood pressure to crash so that was a chore. I saw one place that was tiny and the landlady was really rude and weird, one place was way out there and had stained counters and freaky old appliances, I was stood up twice, I was shut down upon arrival once, and I called endless numbers to hear 'no pets', 'no pets', 'no pets'... least to say by Wednesday night I was crying on Davie street while on my friend's cellphone to my mom.

Family got me through it. Family as in my Mom, Jennifer, Melly, Sheena, Adrienne, & Kayla- they let me crash at their places, use their phones, drove me around, found me places to call, gave me directions, and the emotional support- let me tell you- if you think I can get emotional on this blog? In real life I'm like a KABILLION times worse. Wheee for my family!

Knitting? Nothing to tell ya. Reading? Nope. Oh- though I did go see the third pirates movie. Better than the second (I mean- they could have filmed snot and it would have been better than the second one) but not as good as the first. Johnny saved the movie- as usual.

In other news- I bought shoes! Eeeeheheeheheeeeheheheheeee! Ohmigod i forgot to tell you- and I got a cellphone! It takes pictures and can hold MP3s and has caller display where I can program a picture and a specific ring to individuals, and it has voice recognition, and so much more! I lurve it so.

Blog Meme

I was tagged by Eileen and have puzzled about this for some time now-not that it's a bad meme, far from it, it's just more difficult than the 'five books you last read' ones, but since Spike just posted I guess I should too.

I blog because....

1. of family. Now I am using raspberries to represent family because a) I love raspberries & I love my family and b) because they remind me of my grandparent's farm which is an integral childhood memory and c)because I don't know how my family feels about me putting pictures of them up here. I find the blog is a really good, and different, way of communicating with my family. I like that my Mom will comment on photos I've put up or about something I blogged about that I didn't mention over the phone, or when she tells me that my blog made her laugh. And by family, I mean immediate family of course, but as well my extended family too, like all my friends and the Bears. 2. because I'm ridiciously self-indulgent, spoiled, and I like to bitch and moan, and the blog is a perfect ground for that sort of behaviour. Seriously- I am so hard done by! Here I am trying to take a photo of my hair for my Katima-buddies but I didn't send any of these photos because I looked so.... boring. But it's a good photo for the drama and angst I like to part upon my blog. 3. pirates and satan tell me to blog. 4. knitting. Knitting wasn't really a part of my lifestyle when I started blogging. That was back in the days when all I knew was the knit stitch and would turn out usually too wide and too short scarfs in some sort of yarn from zellers. However since then this has become somewhat of a knitting blog where I like to whore out my FOs but people aren't complaing so. 5. it's a neato visual medium. I love posting photos and detailing how many photos I take of my cat alone- it's going to get pretty sorry when I have kids to take photos of. No need to worry readers -that is years away! Gotta finish and then pay off this education of mine first. So you know- YEARS UPON YEARS from now really. And I'm not going to tag anyone because I think everyone has been tagged. Unless you're reading this and you haven't been tagged, than I tag you.

Facebook: the latest drug on the street

Oh Facebook, I avoided you for a long time. You just seemed like another MSN wannabe that would invade my personal privacy and waste my precious internet time. Email after email let me know that friends had named me as a friend (woohoo) and tagged me in photos, which was kinda unnerving but fine- and I ignored them all. The break came when a friend, over the phone (key difference), told me to join because I had to read her profile- and this is a very funny, very wrong friend so I caved.

First came the confusion: what does this do? How do I get there? How do I find people? And of course, indignation- no Facebook can not have the password to my email so it can send an email to everyone in my contact list. But that was it. I found out that my profile is hidden to all those who aren't in my network or who I invite- but that you can see how many friends a person has and anyone can see how many friends you have.

Then the trouble started- very quickly Facebook became a popularity contest and with anything that is stupid, I fell into the stupid well. I started analyzing my profile like a freak- second guessing everything I had written. I grew paranoid that my answers were stupid and revealed me for the vapid nerd I am and that people would mock me endlessly. I was checking it religiously and comparing how many friends I had compared to ex-friends from high school and the such. I also wanted my wall to grow.... I needed the wall posts.

Then during a commerical break in Iron Chef, when I got up to check to facebook- I realized I had a problem. I had to step back, pause, reflect. I realized that who I had become on Facebook was not an accurate protrait of me, and really, I like me quite a bit. There was silence, and then acceptance. I was obsessed and getting freaky. I added all the dorky components back to my profile and left wall posts that weren't edited five times for grammer and coolness. I embrace that I am as dorky on Facebook as I am in life and that if people think I am mad... well they are probably quite boring so who cares.

All this in 24 hours. It was a crazy day.

Now, I'm not saying I'm not a little OCD about Facebook- I still go on quite often and post a lot but I've found that it's an awesome way to contact friends that you otherwise would have never ever seen again. All my katimafriends have posted wonderful photos of our travels and I've contacted a lot of friends from home that I haven't seen since high school. But now I have a new thing- how many friends is too much? I have 61 which may yet get larger cause I have some friends who should be on Facebook but arent (cough-sheenaadriennekayla) but I've seen people with 100 to 250 friends and that's just rather silly. I mean, I can't keep up with all my friends right now.

Yeah. My pink and blue sock still isn't done. I ran out of yarn and they aren't high enough so I'm doing the last five inches in black ribbing. I hope they'll look all right. If I can steal someone's digital camera I'll let you know.

Okay- my tangent for the day is done. And if blogger doesn't crash when I go to post this all will be right in the world.