Pocketbook romance

We've been having an email argument (centered around finances, as usual) all day. I've come out of it with a bad feeling in my belly and the worst temptation to just stay in Vancouver after our reception.

This temptation, by the way, is currently being fanned by the sister, who insists upon sending me job ads. Not entirely selfless, this girl, though I puzzle over what place I would have in her life now that she's got herself a steady boyfriend. I digress.

I've spent the better part of the day on the verge of sobbing my eyes out. Nothing like going for a mani/pedi/brow wax and having to choke back the bawl as the esthetician rubs your cuticles away.* The architect is burned out and unable to bring in more money. I am still sans green card and pretty much in the same boat. What to do? My only money option seems to be to stay behind in Vancouver and get a job. Hopefully the parents can put up with me for six months or so and I can put some cash aside. The thought of this, though, leaves me completely in the weeds. I don't have anything anymore - no car, no room of my own, my friends have moved on with their lives. I share the architect's space surrounded by furniture he's paid for. I can lay claim to a few kitchen items and the quilt on my bed - other than that, I have nothing. Nothing.

They say that you are not defined by your material possessions, but you are surely defined by your lack of them, and I have nothing of my own, anymore.





* I have a barter deal going with my manicurist - I poke around at her website and she gives me monthly mani-pedis. No money transferred hands. God I sure did need that pedicure, though.

Fly me to the moon

So I'm heading up to Vancity on Thursday for the second of a billion wedding celebrations. I mean, shit - if you have a good time doing something once, why not keep doing it? Seriously.

Anyhoo, I'm downloading some books to put on my iPhone for the flight. Dude wtf didn't I think of this before? I can listen and only have to carry the phone. Oh fuck let's not kid - I will have to take a couple-twelve books with me anyway, but I mean this idea is the shit.

OMG I just realized it's free burrito day at chipotle.... God I'm going to be a frickin whale.

Into the Infinite

RIP David Foster Wallace, dead from an apparent suicide at his home this past Friday. He was, arguably, the premier essayist of the postmodern era - surpassing (in my opinion) even David Sedaris and Hunter Thompson. His distinctive style - rambling prose, lush facts, and deliciously tangential footnotes - made him both a pleasure and a challenge to read.

I would like to say that I practice the sincerest form of flattery when I make my meagre attempts to construct creative non fiction, and that I model my work after his, but I have neither the talent nor the innate intelligence to do so. The man was a walking encyclopedia of fact and somehow managed to be the Cliff Claven of our generation without being annoying or pedantic. Moreover, what he didn't know, he researched - exhaustively. For example, a footnote to this article on the Maine Lobster Festival includes an apology to the readers of Gourmet Magazine (the article's first publication point) for missing the opportunity to interview the sole member of PETA present at the fest, for the purposes of adding an alternative viewpoint to the narrative.

I respect that.

I respect and relate to the urge to learn *everything* about a topic; the urge to immerse yourself completely in the archane minutiae of a subject matter and burst forth from the other side perhaps not smarter, but infinitely richer than you were a short while previous.

I know nothing about DFW's personal life. I don't know if he suffered from depression, addiction, or societal malaise. I know only that I hope he's now sitting with Damiel and Cassiel, listening in on the words and thoughts and dreams of the world for, if ever there was a sentiment that personified DFW's work, it is "I want to know everything".

It's true

I am sitting on a step waiting for the library to open. Yes I am that cool.

You spin me

So last night I hosted my quasi-monthly geek group gathering. What's a geek group, you ask? Well it's a few people who get together approximately monthly to discuss a peer reviewed article selected by another member of the group*, do some eating, and have some drinks.**

Well, I guess I drank WAY more than I thought I had, because after everyone had left (around 9.30 I suppose), I was all of a sudden LOADED. Like I got the spins and went to the bathroom to force myself to yak. SO GROSS - red wine is kind of like acid coming back up. I'm sure you want to hear that. My point is, that when I came back to bed I still had the spins - I was doing the whole one foot on the ground thing and nothing was helping. Dude how did this happen? I was sure that I'd only had a couple of glasses of wine, though upon closer inspection I guess I did drink about 3/4 of a bottle. But that's not that strange for me. The drunky spinny thing? Not normal. Not approved, to say the least.

In any case, I quite expected to feel like ass this morning, but it's not too bad. I'm STARVING though, and craving pizza, which isn't the best thing for my ever expanding waistline. I may have to buck up and go get some in any case because the rumbling coming from my belly region just startled the cat. Heh.







* Last night our selection was "The Pub and the Irish Nation" by Bradley Kadel. It was pretty good, but was an excerpt from his dissertation so it wasn't completely well flushed out - there was some basic information missing that would have made it much better as a stand-alone article.
** I made Dublin Coddle and soda bread. There was a lot of Guinness and Smithwicks consumed, though clearly not by me.

Ug

OK so there was a House marathon on yesterday afternoon / evening. I started watching somewhere around 4pm and finally tore my eyes away at around midnight when an episode I'd already seen slipped into rotation. Not an episode I'd seen anytime before, mind you, one I'd already seen THAT DAY. I've never really watched the show before, and yet all of a sudden I was fascinated and in deep lust with Hugh Laurie. Rawr. I also drank a bottle and a half of wine as I watched, so I'm not sure how much the one had to do with the other.

At any rate, rawr. I do feel mildly hungover, though - nothing too crazy, just that irritating ick feeling in my left temporal lobe (that's the technical term. Learned it on House yesterday) (Heh).

So I'm going back up to Vancity in a week or two for our wedding reception. We've been half-assed planning it for months and now here it is three weeks away and I'm starting to panic about the money and whether or not we can pull it off. I think it should be ok, but at the same time I dunno how we are going to make it happen, you know? I'm probably just getting nervous, but when I think about the whole thing I start to get a little sicky in my belly. Le sigh.

awesome

I'm sure that everyone has seen this by now, but in case you haven't - here's a fabulous report from the LA Times music blog featuring an A Capella performance by RATM steps away from the RNC.

my cat

Yeah so I was reading on Sabrina, See yesterday how one of her friends threatened to dismember her or anally penetrate her with a hot curling iron or something if her blog degenerated into love and cooking and puppies and crap. Since I'm fairly sure I've already jumped that shark here, I'm going to continue along my merry way.

My cat has pretty much decided in his mind he's a pinup girl or a porn star all of a sudden. I swear you can't turn a corner without being confronted by the no-nutted wonder, spread eagled and airing out his junk. I mean, I can't say for sure that's what he's thinking, but the photographic evidence as illustrated above would certainly go towards supporting that thesis, no?

They've been ripping up the street out front for approximately a billion years and right now it sounds like they are using a dental drill on chalkboard teeth. If I'm not here tomorrow it'll be because I took a kitchen knife outside and murdered the entire work crew. Wish me luck.

I got something to say

So I've been participating in this online talkboard social networking site thingy since we moved down here. I mean, it's pretty fun and it's how we've met pretty much everyone we know in SD, so that's cool, but it also serves to remind me how stupid people can be when you allow them the thin veil of anonymity that the innerweb provides.

For example - in one of the threads the other day, one (married) member of the group was indulging in a bit of online flirting. Someone took it upon themselves to send his wife (another member of the group) a message ratting him out. Now this couple has been together a LONG time. They clearly have boundaries within the relationship for harmless flirting and whatnot, and who knows whether he crossed that line with what he said. However, once a third party becomes involved (i.e. the rat) the wife is almost honour-bound to take action, don't you think? If she lets it slide, she kind of looks like a cuckold, a chump, or something along those lines.

I mean, why do people regress to junior high school the minute they get behind the keyboard? It's like getting to school on Monday and having that girl who pretends to be your friend (even though deep down inside you kinda know she's spreading rumours about you all over the school) come up to you and say she saw your boyfriend kissing someone else. Even if it's not true you a) feel like an asshole and b) kinda have to take action. Gawd I've never been very good at that game.

Dude I'm a flirt - always have been, always will be. It's harmless, though, and the architect knows it. I encourage it in him, he is amused by it in me. However, if someone came up to him at a party and made comments, of course he'd feel like he had to say something to me about it - even if he knows I'm loyal, faithful, and would never betray him. All of a sudden we are in conflict for something that has been, to this point, not a problem. Ridiculous. People should mind their own business.

By the way

Maktaaq has written a fabulous post about the point of blogging. Check it out.

Scrabbling

While some folks (i.e. the sister) have adopted the new EA facebook scrabble as their own, I'm still holding out. The jingly jangly animations etc are too distracting for me. I mean, I'll play it b/c I don't seem to have another option with her, but I'd rather stick to emailing the old school scrabulous back and forth.

I've been reading like a madwoman, lately, and, to my credit, I've been mixing up my brainless mysteries and/or fantasy novels with a nice smattering of non fiction and biographies. I just received my first $5 Borders Bucks coupon (for every $100 spent) and promptly spent it. Also, I've been walking down to the library at least once a week, and perusing our two local used bookstores easily that often. AND the architect's aunt is clearing out her library and is letting me go through them before she donates. Yay!!!

In other boring housewifely type news, I baked bread for the first time in forever yesterday. The brother gave me an artisan bread cookbook for my bday last month and so I gave it a shot (as pictured). I think it's too salty, but the architect says it's still tasty. I'm going to buy more flour and yeast, though, and play around with it. Mmmmmdeliciouscarbsmmmmmmmmmmm

Hockey fans and Whatnot

So the other night when we were on our way into the amphitheater to see that band, what, the radioheads or something, my ticket was checked by a guy in a Maple Leafs tshirt. I made fanboy flappy gestures about the obviously well worn specimen and the guy asked if I happened to be Canadian. I said yes, and I was disregarding the fact that he was wearing a LEAFS shirt because of the overall coolness of seeing a Canadian hockey tshirt in pretty much the southernmost part of California. Really, seriously, I should be mocking him because, well, it's the Leafs, let's not kid.

He said actually I'm a Canucks fan I'm from Vancouver. I was being pushed along by the crowd so couldn't smack him for wearing that trash as a Vancouerite. If I'd known I would have taken him out.

The funny part though was the look on my friends' faces at the chances of running into another Canadian hockey fan while going to see a British Band in the US of A.

We're everywhere.....

Snatch my body any day, mr Yorke.

So yeah, I went to see Radiohead at Cricket Amphitheater last night. Wow is really the only possible response. I mean, besides contemplating the fact that my irritation with all of the drunken assholes perhaps shows a bit of my age, but we won't talk about that in this forum. We here at the Sundae Sanatorium are content to wallow in our own disillusions, thank you very much.

Anyhoo, yeah, so Radiohead is f'ing incredible. The amphitheater has a pit area, seated balconies, and then the top lawn, and we were in the second row of balconies, but more or less directly behind the sound booth at DEAD centre; basically, the sound and lightshow was all set up exactly for us. Can't really go wrong with that, huh? The only thing that could have made it better would have been if the architect had been able to go with me. Unfortunately he had a bit of a snafu with a project and wasn't able to get away in time. Fortunately, though, a friend was only to happy to warm his seat for him.

$12 beers are less than exciting, but what are you going to do? At least it was good beer, not piss-poor molson in a plastic cup.

setlist (for those who care):
15 Step
Airbag
There There
All I Need
Nude
Talk Show Host
Where I End and You Begin
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
The Gloaming
Faust Arp
How to Disappear Completely
Reckoner
Optimistic
Jigsaw
Pyramid Song
Climbing Up The Walls
Bodysnatchers

FIRST ENCORES
House of Cards
You and Whose Army?
Just
Paranoid Android
Street Spirit (Fade Out)

SECOND ENCORES
Videotape
Lucky
Everything In Its Right Place

A simultaneously awesome and terrible personal sidenote:

The kiddo turns 9teen today. Those of you who've been around for a while may recall some of the crappy stuff he's gone through, so I just thought I'd fill you in =)

It's interesting

...how reading stuff I love doesn't always inspire me to blog, but being irritated usually does. I'm sure that's extremely healthy. Heh.

I won't get into what it was that irritated me specifically (I don't want to open a big ol' can of shitstorm here) but suffice it to say that I read some blogger's posting, disagreed with it and with most of the comments, replied along that vein with backup facts and links, and, after moderation, the blog-owner failed to post it. While I agree that everyone has the right to control the comments on their space, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to refuse to encourage respectful dialogue within an internet forum. Well, unless you are afraid of being proven wrong, of course.

Whatever, though, I happened upon this blog quite randomly and cannot fathom going back, as there are so many good blogs out there.
----------------

Anyhoo...
Now that I'm down in Amurrika, I get to listen to Pandora again, which rules. It's such a cool way to discover new music, and there's even an application for my iPhone*. Last night while I was cooking dinner I felt like listening to some groovy cocktail type chill music, so created a station based on Thievery Corporation. It occurred to me at the time that this station would be equally fantastic for both dinner parties and sexytimes. Now these two activities don't appear to be that similar (orgiastic Romans aside), but when you think about it, they aren't that far apart, either. Both involve two (or more) (perverts) people coming together for sensual exploration. Both have begin with an appetizer, a main course, dessert, and cleanup. (I'm purposely leaving out the salad and cheese courses, because, well, ew.) For both events, you want a soundtrack which enhance the experience but doesn't distract from it - preferably something that has a bit of a groove and will fill in any quiet spaces. Something sexy - the musical equivalent of a seduction; a sultry look or an oyster** or strawberry dipped in champagne.

Or at least that is what I generally prefer when in le boudoir - nowadays, anyway. Back when I was younger my stereo was usually playing ministry or something equally aggressive. But then my definition of a really fancy dinner was fettuccine alfredo and a glass of chilean cabernet, so there's no accounting for the tastes and predilections of a 19 year old, I suppose.



* Yes I said iPhone! I am now the proud owner of a new 8gig 3G iPhone, thanks to the always handsome and charming Architect. Yay for husbands!
** I actually don't like oysters, and have recently discovered a bit of a nasty allergy to shellfish. However, I hear that they work well as an aphrodisiac, so there it is.

read this

I missed it a couple - 3 weeks ago but you should read it now.

r/r

I recall having a conversation, one day, fueled by wine and probably a little weed, a conversation between a first nations girl, a girl who's parents escaped from Czechoslovakia in the early 70s and me, a girl who's dad grew up Catholic in Belfast. The F/N girl was getting passionate about cultural genocide and racism and I couldn't knock her for it - she was making some valid points and speaking some very powerful truths. I did get a little upset, though, when she told me that I couldn't know what she'd been through; what her grandmothers had been through.

I tried to talk to her about the fact that my dad was always very quiet about the kind of crap he suffered as a boy, but I knew that my grandpa had a hard time getting a job because he married a catholic, and he had to work for less money and walk to work barefoot so he could save his shoes for on the job. And I knew that when I was visiting my cousin we came really close to getting shot because he said "H" the wrong way. And I know poor lucky the leprechaun is still chasing after his lucky charms and that every fat frat boy and his douchebag cousin wear 'blow me I'm irish' tshirts and puke green beer every March 17. I know about cultural appropriation and having your myths and stories turned into a pot full of jokes at the end of the rainbow, and about having your language banned and almost lost. I know I'm a generation removed from it but I didn't get to learn gaelic at home because the english said my dad wasn't allowed to learn it when he was a boy.

Maybe it's different. I don't know. But I think that maybe there are a lot of people out there who know what it feels like to be told they aren't good enough. I think that maybe it's not about the colour of your skin it's about being a good person and loving the people around you and remembering that we are all part of the same family, really.

But anyway, yeah, listen to Ryan 'cause he's smarter than I am and says it way better.

ug

Man, so I've been trying to get into psychiatric intake stuff down here b/c I don't have any insurance so need the free crap. Of course, it's fucking impossible. There's one at UCSD that I've been calling and calling and calling. Finally someone called me back and told me I have to call in on Monday mornings only, and just let it ring until someone answers. Ok so I did that and no one answered till almost 8.30, at which point they told me that all the spaces for this week were filled and that I would have to call back next Monday morning and just let it ring until someone answered. I said 'Well that's what I did today" and they replied "Yes, but it's 8.30 now, and all of the spaces have been filled".

GOD.

scra(m)bbling

Fucking hell my sweet sweet facebook scrabble has been shut down! The powers that be at facebook have caved to Hasbro and taken the scrabulous app offline. I may cry. In fact, I died a little inside when I logged on and tried to play my turns.

I'm not sure what I'll do all day. The new EA/Hasbro app blows chunks. They've over engineered it to be a wanna be GTA6 or something and it isn't working at all.

I dunno what this world is coming to. The Sasquatch has left Kokanee country in search of Montreal, hoping for an indie music deal or at least a fashion shoot; scrabulous is dead; and an earthquake shook LA without delaying the release of the new Lost Boys movie. I can't see the forest for the trees, kids, and even Corey Haim can't help us now.

it's my party and

I will talk about my impending wedding reception if I want to.

Yes we are still having one (for those of you who've been privy to some of the scuttlebutt leading up to it) it's just taking us a while to get off the ground with the planning and the invitations. Part of it is because we've been broke as fuck, and part of it is because... well that's the whole reason, actually. Everything costs money, you see, and food / wine are just more important than spending money on an event that is months away.

Oh except that it's now only 2 months away, now, and all of a sudden everything urgently needs to be done - especially the invitations. Getting the architect to understand this, of course, is not the easiest thing on the planet to do. He's a last minute, arrive 15 minutes late kind of guy. HOWEVER that sort of lackadaisical attitude will simply not do, in this situation.

Le sigh.

I've been vaguely tracking the progress of the smelly-ciavarro nuptuals and am amazed at the stuff that they are doing that we didn't do. Engagement photos? What? Showers? Nope, none of those... Hmph. I can't decide if I'm relieved that I escaped the stress involved, or disappointed that we didn't go all out. Whatevs, I guess. I'm leaving my sister in charge of planning the 'deck the hall' girls only party for the night before the reception. I figure as my pseudo maid of honour it can be her job. If anyone out there, though, wants to help her out (you know who I'm talking to, Filthy, Van-nasty) I'm sure she'd love the assistance.

Oh and a big HOLLA and a cyber-shot of fireball to van-nasty, the nasty one herself. It's her birthday, after all.

all of them are talking, and they're comedians

So I'm lounging poolside yesterday (it's my Tuesday thing) (also usually my Thursday) (and sometimes my Friday, as well) and I hear this kind of buffoon loud mouth guy spouting off at the shallow end. Those of in the know hang out mid-pool, you see, because this pool is old school and the deep end is actually in the middle. Anyhoo.

This guy is spouting off at the shallow end of the pool. From what I can gather, he's there with some friends and his friends' kids. He seems to be the "Uncle Rick" kinda guy who all the wives hate and all the husbands keep around for drunken reminiscing about football and fishing and that time they lost their pants out in Surrey or what have you, until that one time where he pukes on the good carpet and the wives finally have had enough and say ENOUGH!

So this guy is in the shallow end of the pool telling his buddy's kids about how they'll have to get their mom to let them come out to his place to ride the dirt bikes the jet ski the atv whathaveyou clad in, of course, all the appropriate safety gear. His rational for this rationality is that he has a friend who has a glass eye. And why is he eye-less, you ask? Well because apparently he SHOT IT OUT WITH A BB GUN.

I don't know bout you, but the moment I heard that I went into spasms of laughter - a near apoplexy, it's true, because all I could think of was Ralphie from A Christmas Story and how he really wanted the BB Gun but his mom n teacher told him NO! for exactly that reason. And, sure enough, he nearly did but whatever.

I guess this kid's mom didn't love him enough, or maybe she'd never seen A Christmas Story.