to bronte or not to bronte

this evening i went to nevermind to watch the canucks with mike b. and ate enough to feed a small african nation for a week. mmmm mahi tuna tacos and mmmm chocolate mousse and mmmm more caesars... found myself gazing at the cute boy across the room... which, of course, led to the discussion of me voting nick off the island. mike asked why i had done it. i tried to explain the sense that he was either a) not interested at all, or b) not interested enough. he asked if it maybe was just nick's nature. i think that he may be right.

however... my question is this:

how do you explain to a guy that you aren't ready for a relationship, but want to "hang out" kind of regularly, without coming off sounding like a slut? i'm basically monogamous by nature, but i do have a fairly overactive sex drive. so.. if i don't have something regular, i usually go looking for the irregular. but that's not really me. i'm ok with a booty call kind of situation, but would prefer a friend who i can sleep with now and again. that works the best for me.

mike figures that it's the 'regular' aspect to that which is dangerous. regular sex usually turns into relationship. however, i think i'm ok with that, as long as it was a slow gradual evolution. he's still skittish, but then it's only been a short while since alana.

so, in essence, i'm intrigued by nick. i'd like to shag him again.. he tasted sweet, and a little smoky. it was fun. so how do i tell him that i'd like to hang out with him once or twice a week to have drinks, maybe go out dancing, and shag? or should i just let it go and move on to the next one?

hmmm

i was driving along to pick up mike b for lovely early afternoon pay per view game at nevermind when it occurred to me to telephone nick. so i did.. caught him playing his guitar (as always)... and awaiting a friend who was picking him up to retrieve island girls from the ferry. i think that i'm fighting (well, not really fighting so much as vaguely keeping an eye on) a lost cause. so.. enough of him. ergo, we vote him off the island in much the same fashion as we voted nate. ta da!

my mama offered to fill my tank with gas if i chauffeured her around richmond today, which i did because i'll take free gas at any time. i was grumbling about student loan payments earlier, so she asked me to break them down for her -- when i did she looked sort of stunned. then looked even more stunned when i casually mentioned my weekly gas expenditures. it was at this point that she proposed the locomoted by me fueled by her shopping expedition.

dream

a sure sign that it is now time to get rid of my vw (i'm not sure why i've been reluctant so far. nostalgia? laziness? ennui?): i dreamed last night that i was driving through vancouver with calvin and we came to an intersection on flash (ah the joys of vancouver drivers and four way stops). some poor guy was out in the middle of the intersection attempting to direct traffic. my turn came, and i eased out into the intersection trying to make a left turn. some idiot in a bmw shot through and clipped my car. flash - as i get out of my little neon, it turns into my vw. calvin and i are remarkably unsurprised by this, though i did comment to him "that's funny - why did we bring this car? it's not even insured...".

toast

i think that this is one of those weekends when i shall just keep drinking coffee... perhaps then i shall manage to approach lucidity.

my mom is falling prey to the atkins low-carb phenomenon. as my sister vehemently pointed out every time she saw one of the (increasingly, disturbingly, numerous) atkins commercials "THE MAN DIED AT AN UNREASONABLY YOUNG AGE!". anyhoo... she has purchased this low-carb bread from the grocery store, at some expense. it is approximately the size, texture, and thickness of a rye crisp cracker. so, standing at the toaster this morning, we were comparing the nutritional value of our respective choices. i had selected a loaf of hazelnut poppyseed bread, full of oats, walnuts and brazil nuts. the slices are thick and chewy, and make wonderful toast. Mine: 130 calories and 18 grams of carbs per slice. Hers: 60 calories and 6 grams of carbs per slice. the truth though, is in the fact that mine was at least twice as thick and at least twice as large as hers... i felt myself strike a blow for those of us who refuse to eat well...

as a side note.. while spell checking this entry, i noticed that one of alternatives offered for "carb" was crap. i say - huzzah.

friday at last (again)

i can't believe how glad i am that this week has finally come to an end. i don't even think i am capable of writing much more this weekend.. two caesars and a week of not-enough-sleep/too-much-work/no-stress-breakers has left me incapable....

homesick

andrea, one of my very good friends, just rang my mobile with a really funny story. turns out that someone they've been chatting with fairly regularly is calvin's dad -- they've never made the connection. i'm trying to figure out how they didn't know. the two of them look so much alike it's crazy... but this whole thing totally speaks to mike b.'s thoughts on connections.

starts me feeling a little maudlin though. homesick, really. strange to think that you can be homesick for a place you hated so much. i miss hanging out with jp & andrea; having good dinners and watching tv; drinking tea or wine and talking and talking and talking... i miss monte and darren; i miss walking to value village, and shopping at the little italian market; i miss hanging out at the track talking with sandra and travis and yelling at calvin as he runs past; i miss sitting at the uni watching the world go by; i miss cooking dinners in my kitchen and looking out the window watching calvin run across the road, and drinking chai and eating fresh baking with him in the evenings while the snow falls outside; i miss lying in my bed on sunday mornings reading the paper and drinking coffee...

i guess it's what i've been talking about for a while now. i just miss feeling connected to people, you know? i don't have a home, here, i have a place where i sleep. i only have one or two people i can call friends, rather than acquaintances.

granted.. i'm fully 'getting my period' moody... but this is something i've been thinking about for a while.

flaming lips

Do you realize
That you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize
We're floating in space?
Do you realize
That happiness makes you cry?

Do you realize
That everyone you know someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your good-byes
Let them know you realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do you realize?

Do you realize
That everyone you know someday will die?
And instead of saying all of your good-byes
Let them know you realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

Do you realize
That you have the most beautiful face?

Do you realize?

milkshake

i'm glad to see i'm not alone in wondering what the heck the milkshake song is all about. indeed, i believe it's a bit of a cultural phenomenon.

work

we had our not so regular monthly lunch today... the ceo gathers us all downstairs and shows us a powerpoint presentation (oh that powerpoint! will it haunt me forever?) talking about how the company's doing blah blah blah. i noticed something interesting in the quarterly projections for employee levels -- the second forecast 7 less bodies than the first. startled, i leaned over and asked our department head who was losing their jobs... he hadn't noticed the figure and complemented me on being observant. hopefully this was some sort of test and i just passed, thereby ensuring i'm not one of the seven...

Your nose hairs scare me.

Any person or persons who wish to deliver a surreal compliment must cease and desist from all practices of procreation and appeal to the county clerk for permission by filling out form #345/3.098/27 in triplicate, signed, the person who can and will repeat your subversive tendencies.


really, though, in the grand scheme of things, aren't all compliments sort of surreal? for example:
the guy that was talking to me and took my picture last saturday night sent me an email asking me to meet him for a drink. specifically a drink in yaletown. i'm not sure what the implications of that particular factoid are, but anyhoooo... when i relayed this sort of amusing tidbit to mike b., he stated "I knew he would.". i asked how he could know something like that -- wondering if there was some kind of 'between the guys' sort of discussion that had occurred while i was in the restroom or something. he replied that "of course he would - you are an attractive woman" but i'm sure he said it more poetically than that. a really nice compliment from a good friend.. but still it makes me sort of look over my shoulder, convinced he's referring to someone else. that, or that he's gonna open his eyes and go "hoo! what was i thinking!". just sort of surreal, that's all.

The goats you buy shed a perfume that makes Marxism so terribly clear to me.

surrealistic compliment generator

hump day

do most boys understand that when you ask them to "watch a video", you are pretty much just asking them if they want to make out? i've put the question to monster, as mike b is not around and so i have no boy advice on this burning question. his answer? "yes. it's the code word". glad to hear that, at least on this level, there is a common language between the genders.
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i'm beginning to think that this week will never end. i realize that it's wednesday, and we are now most of the way though the week, it's just that i'm fairly sure that i still have a full week's worth of work ahead of me. which blows a lot. ah well... soldier forth and all of those pithy platitudes from the days of empire...
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i was reading someone else's blog earlier (who, me? no!) and being amused by their anti-valentine's day rant. i understand it to a certain point - there is a great deal of pressure put on romantic relationships for that one day. but a the same time.. words have only as much power as you feed into them. yes, it's constructed by hallmark. yes, it's commercial. but it's kind of silly, too. i, for one, had the best valentine's day of my life last year, with the aforementioned montelicious. we drank a great deal, i cooked a great meal, and we ended up sitting on the couch listening to music and talketty talketty talking till i more or less passed out. unfortunatly, he is headlining a party this year, so is standing me up. any volunteers for replacements?

hmm

my face is starting to break out.. logic would blame the cheese slice on my veggie burger, along with the non-fat vanilla latte consumed in a fit of guilty decadence earlier today. but since we recently decided that all bad things that happen to me are to be blamed on rori... it's his fault. DAMN YOU RORI!

best part about other people's blogs

is finding links to cool other stuff.

the strange thing about reading other people's blogs is that when you go to them and they haven't updated them you feel strangely deprived.

oo hockey's on. canucks.com has a great shot of ohlund's *ahem* back end. not that i'm dwelling on a topic or anything tonite...

my ass

i was reading pamie's blog (i say this like we're buddies or something. she wrote a book. about her blog. i attach myself to her literary success vicariously. i'm a book leech. i admit it. feel better?) in which she discusses obsessing about her ass, because she was once overweight. she points out that it's not her best 'feminist' moment, but she sincerely worries about how her bum looks. the interesting thing is that i, too, am ass-obsessed. i waver between worrying that my posterior is too small (i refer to my ass as my lack thereof an ass, most of a time) to worrying that it is too big. this is because i, too, lost about 30lbs a couple of years ago.. a large portion of which previously resided, i'm sure, squarely on my behind. so i have these wierd moments when i look in the mirror and see a GIANT ASS. then i have these other wierd moments when i look in the mirror and see two twigs protruding directly from a torso. not that it's a theme i've been flirting with this past week or anything, but i think it's funny. here i am - a feminist. i mean, my family has fairly standard gender roles, but we were never raised to think we needed a man for anything - always taught to be self reliant etc.. and my minor was gender studies for god's sake. but i still get caught up in not loving my body; being caught up in body image.

(for the record, i previewed my blog and realized that i said *ass* about a million times, so went back and pretty much exhausted my inner thesaurus looking for synonyms)

there are no boundaries to my love for chocolate

"YOU! only I'm allowed to work for 12 hours!" - or so said the department manager as he discovered me huddled in my hobbithole-esque corner. what a crappy crappy day at work. ben is out of hand - had a fit this morning when i commented on his seemingly incessant bad mood. he's pushing me to the limits, man... not to mention i spent from 2pm-7pm doing comparing two very large spreadsheets line by line... but at least now i know that they are right.

on happier notes.. nick called me as i was driving home.. just to say hello i think. which is nicer than i should like to admit. i tried to sneak away to the downstairs lunchroom for 10 minutes before production took their break at noon today, but am physically incapable of consuming thai pumpkin and tofu red curry that quickly, so there was some overlap. therefore... they got to watch me eat for a bit. also... today i headed off to work sporting my new cowgirl skirt overtop of rather long black pants... seemed to be a fashion success.

i really really need to go to the library.

wow what an uninspired blog. i do apologize to future me, reading this at some point days, months or even years from now. really, we aren't this boring.

rumi

…You’re in love with love,
And love is not in your control,
So I am not the whole you seek,
But only part right now.

-Rumi

and in other news...

i noticed (and briefly responded too) the comment in response to my last blog, but i think that i want to wander through with more depth...

philip slater wrote in the pursuit of loneliness that the ideal of romance limits significant relationships. that, by definition, the pursuit of your romantic match will lead you searching for tragic and, essentially, nonexistent relationships. i came across this author while reading a blog -- the blog writer agreed with slater and cited magazine and media representations of the "beautiful people" with their airbrushed skin and perfectly constructed bodies as proof positive of this. i would extend that to the representation of romantic love as perpetuated by popular media - especially media directed at women. i think that it is a sense of completion that these women seek -- their perfect romantic match. which posits an interesting question - how culpable is the media in rising divorce rates? that question may seem somewhat naive. but is it? the past 40 years have taught women that they should stand up for what they believe in -- freedom from opression, free expression of sexuality and creativity etc. why should the search for the perfect romantic partner be any different? truly this is a western conundrum. but then, aristophanes' myth of the perfect other is a western construction as well...

like imelda, but better looking

i'm not so sure what i want to write about today. perhaps about the perils of crushing on 24yr old boys (cause that's what they really are. i didn't dub nate "the puppy" for no reason -- though he's not 24). but i think that i have dwelled upon that particular theme long enough.

went with mike b. to the birthday party of his exgirlfriend last nite. spent the evening talking to people i don't know. which was good for me, for sure. i'm not so good at that -- i tend to stay within my protective shell most of the time and only associate with people i know fairly well. i think i did well. i'm not about to go out all on my own, by any means. but maybe someday.

i still have my fascination with pulp novels centred around the single woman ala bridget jones. i'm really interested in the difference between the way the british represent her and the americans. along that vein, i just finished reading a 'gossip girl' novel. this is a series, apparently, which casts various girls from upscale new york private schools... (probably more intended for the late teen reader but twigged my fascination with both my theme, and my previous obsession with the dissemination of gossip as a modern version of the oral tradition). anyhooo.. it wasn't a well written piece of literature, by any means. but one particular line twigged my fancy: "you can't let assholes turn you into an asshole". well said.

back to my theme, though. i'm of the mind that this genre is just a dressed up version of the serial romance novel. the characters don't fall neatly into the 'girl meets man, hates man, realizes she loves man, marries man' trope, but they are not far off. they masquerade as 'feminist', but are still buying into the stereotypes that women are not necessarily complete without a man. mind you, i've been caught in that pattern myself of late. but i don't think it's a "man" that i'm looking for specifically -- it's more of a sense of belonging. which, of course, you get when you have a steady partner.

i'm also feeling quite nesty. really want to clean up my closet, purge myself of unneeded clothes and baggage. it's time for calvin and i to get our own place for sure. spring...

ooo speaking of books, i have several selections waiting for me at the library. the first batch of my 'best of 2003' books, and some other 'just for fun' ones. i really like the library. what a great invention. i wonder, though, if i should renew my copy of "non-technical guide to project management" or if i should just admit that i'm not going to get through it?

just as i suspected

my friend todd's greatest quote is "McDonalds - it doesn't make you feel full, it just makes you feel.... different".

this is an interesting article about a man who ate only mcdonalds for 30 days. it's really quite scary.