The tub in my very nice hotel room is too shallow. Life is rough.

So here I am, sitting in the Fallowfield train station (just outside of Ottawa) waiting for my boss who is a) late and b) unsure of how to get here. Hooray!

On the bright side, free internet. I didn't have access on the train, because apparently they're having satellite issues, but because of that, their wifi is free in the stations.

I could catch up on some work, but I figured reading LJ would be more fun.

Anyway. I'm in Kanata tonight, then we're driving home tomorrow morning. This time I remembered to bring my bathing suit (well, my bikini - I couldn't find my one-piece) so that, if I wake up early enough tomorrow, I can have a swim before we leave.

I miss swimming.

I'm not entirely sure what's expected of me on this trip. I guess I'll find out, if my boss ever finds the station.

Dear Kris:

The next time you think you might still have a cat hair in your eye but don't want to get out of bed to check...

Please, just get up and check.

Waking up with a puffy eye that is glued shut with gunk is gross, and you won't like it, and it may make you get up far earlier than you had intended to.

Thanks,
Me.

_____


I'm a busy, busy girl this weekend. I've got more planned for the next two days, social-event-wise, than I've actually had planned in the last month combined, I think, and that's not including the baking I'm going to do at nana's later today.

I'm doing my baking there for three reasons;

First, because her oven is much nicer than mine.

Second, because this way I can spend more time with her today than I would if I had to race home to do it.

And third, because, between the leaky sink that I hope to fix tomorrow and the ongoing garbage strike (and neighbours who, I'm guessing, just don't give a damn), our kitchen is fucking OVERRUN* WITH ROACHES at the moment. I just don't want to cook ANYTHING in here right now.

I'm one of those people who doesn't really like to admit that we have roaches, because I feel it reflects badly on us. I realize that, living right on a main street in downtown Toronto in a building that was built a hundred years ago doesn't help. I realize that the fact this building is practically a slum, and that our neighbours are all college kids that leave garbage in the halls doesn't help, either. I'm pretty sure the little restaurant behind and below us and the food market beside and below us also can't possibly help. And I know that no amount of keeping the counter spotless will get rid of them when there's a giant gaping hole between our front door and the floor, which is just a few feet away from same. None of that makes me feel any better when I'm afraid to go into the kitchen once it gets dark.

We have a plan, though I'm dubious of how well it'll work...

Once the strike is over and the kitchen sink is repaired (so there will no longer be constant dripping water in the cupboard underneath it), we'll poison the fuck out of the little bastards, seal up all of the holes we can find, and hope for the best. And start looking for a new place to live, because between them and the neighbours, I don't know what I hate more about this apartment.

I am going to spread some diatomaceous earth under all of the appliances and in all of the cracks and crannies in the kitchen later today, though.

We're looking into some really awesome co-op townhouses a friend knows of (and some others that I found while looking online) - the waiting list is a year or more, but it would totally be worth it.


_____
*Overrun is really too strong a term; while there are many at night, I have yet to see any anywhere other than the kitchen or (very very occasionally) bathroom, and we almost never see them during the day. I once worked at the Dairy Queen/Orange Julius at Promenade Mall - now THAT was overrun - you couldn't lift a bunch of bananas without sending twenty or more roaches scurrying for cover, and no amount of money would have convinced me to eat an Oreo Blizzard from that place.

Hallelujah, I think the girls upstairs went out - I may get sleep tonight! Half an hour ago, I thought they were trying to use sound waves to shake the building apart.

Oklahoma: infamous for tornadoes. Ontario: not as much. You can imagine how their families must feel, finding out that two (probably three) men from the former died in a tornado in the latter last night.

You've probably heard that someone was gored to death by a bull during the annual Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. It's difficult for me to say anything that isn't scathing about this. So I won't.

Have you heard about this yet? When Teachers Attack!" - I know, it's the Daily Mail, and they're a little more tabloid-ey than other papers, but they also have more details. Whether or not those details are true, I don't know, but it's more satisfying to read than the half-report on the BBC website.

France's La Tribune is going multi-lingual, but without the aid of human translators. The result? Ouch. (From the main page, check out the drop downs under "GREEN BUSINESS") - meow! (Kids - this is why you shouldn't use Google Translate to do your French homework!)

G'nite.

#&^@*&^#^%@ INDY!!!

*ducks*

I'm pretty sure that, when I was in high school, I would have been horribly offended by this ad, and would have hated it.

And if you'd told me then that one day I'd think it was funny, I probably wouldn't have believed you...



I've been meaning to post that for a while, and only just now got around to it.

Some thoughts on SYTYCD...

The music Ade danced to for his solo made howl with laughter. I was so confused for a second, because I was pretty sure that the media computer that's hooked up to the stereo is definitely not on. I was trying to figure out how I'd turned it on from the sofa.

I want Caitlin and Jason to get kicked off. I'd be ok with Caitlin and Phillip, though.

I think that, after this point, there's nobody left that I want them to kick off, which means the show gets that much more interesting to watch.

Also, this chick singing SUCKS. Whoever she is.

On a completely unrelated note. last night I had a really terrifying nightmare... it was about being stuck in a haunted building, but with one of those creepy fucking Japanese-style ghosts that try to kill you. I realized I'd been working too much when what I had to do to get rid of it was to find the bad code in a really big xml doc. Yes... Ghost in the XML.

...and?

Right with Caitlin... (Seriously - she's cute and all, but I swear every single one of her solos looked exactly the same).

...and Philip, who was my second choice.

My internet went out at 10 last night, and stayed out until about half an hour ago. Well... at least it came back on for the workday. Since I'm having my service cut off next week. I'm moving to DSL with Primus - I can get their best internet and home phone package for the same price as I pay for Rogers high speed with the bare minimum for home phone. I'll have voicemail again, and call waiting (not that I really ever need it), and call display, too, I think! Crazy.

Anyway. I wanted to post about this last night, but since I had NO FUCKING INTERNET, I couldn't.

morguecrawler (and anyone else who likes the same sorts of shows as me): "Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire" - may I suggest that you watch it at your earliest convenience, if you have not done so already?

I don't know what I was expecting - nothing terribly good, anyway - but wow, it actually is (terribly good - it is terribly good).

I'd never heard of it, but Shaun saw it advertised on CityTV.

It's a little bit Blackadder, a little bit Monty Python, and maybe a little bit Terry Pratchett, too. Seriously, I loved it.

Of course... it definitely isn't for everybody. If you don't have a background in high fantasy, role-playing games, polyamourous pagans, and/or British comedy, you may miss a lot of the humour.

Earn £50,000 a year - all you have to do is live in a cave and be witchy.

Bonus points because the location in question is called "Wookey Hole". :)

Because I'm curious to know...

Poll #1425526 Garbage...
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Toronto people: what are you doing with your garbage during the strike?

First this:

...and then the blooper reel:

If there is any justice in the world, the girls that live upstairs from me will one day have upstairs neighbours who are as horrible to live under as they themselves are.

Much to my absolute horror, I found myself awake and alert at 7:30 this morning.  On the bright side, I'd had two great dreams - in the first, I'd told the useless, leech of a guy that's dating someone I know exactly what I thought of him (he'd been made more of a villain in my dream by ALSO totalling my car - not that I'd EVER let him drive it!) and in the second, I'd gone to a most awesome antiques sale/flea market with prinsassy and d0llpartz.

And then...  there I was.  It was 7:30.  My alarm was turned off, but I was awake.  WIDE awake.  

Happily, Shaun had left me coffee (he's working today) so I made myself a cup and sat down to read the news.

And then I remembered the date, and ran back in the bedroom, threw some clothes on, found a pair of shoes, and ran outside to move the damned car to the other side of the street before the soulless parking enforcement officers hit my street and gave me a $40 ticket for being parked on the west side of the street (for those of you who either don't have cars, or don't live in a city with these sorts of rules, my neighbourhood's street parking rules dictate that, except in the winter, drivers must park on the east side of our one-way street from the 1st to 15th of each month, and on the west side from the 16th to the 31st - however, if you try parking on the wrong side the night BEFORE the change-over, you may get a ticket; same goes if you don't move your car before 9 in the morning.  Ideally, one would move their car at the stroke of midnight.  I'm generally asleep at midnight, and on the very rare occasions that I'm not, I'm probably either drunk or not home, or both).

Well, that's taken care of (as is my coffee - only slightly colder than I'd intended to drink it). 

Since I'm evidently not meant to sleep in today, I think I'll put the morning to good use (after I read my news, of course) and clean the apartment.  I want to empty ALL of the food out of our cupboards and, as messy as it's going to look, put it on the shelves that stand in the kitchen (where the cats can protect it from the damned MICE that we really shouldn't have, what with four cats in the house).  Then I can put everything that isn't food back into the cupboards, where the mice hopefully won't bother going anymore once there isn't anything in there that they can eat.  With any luck, they'll all move upstairs.

I need to read more. Tell me the last book you read that you really
enjoyed. I prefer fiction, but nonfiction is good, too. Bonus points
if you still have it and would be willing to lend it to me. :)

I want to start indoor composting with worms. Anyone else out there do this, and have either general recommendations about which method to use, or specific recommendations about where to get a pound of red wigglers in Toronto for a reasonable price?

First Farrah Fawcett...

And now there's news that Michael Jackson has suffered a serious heart attack and may have died (well, TMZ says he's dead... the family just says he's in "really bad shape").

So... I can't help but wonder if using props that make a mess of the stage is a strategy to ensure that you go on last, and thus are freshest in the minds of the voters.

Quite a few of you seem to have misunderstood my rant yesterday, thinking that I was picking on people who had forgotten their cloth/reusable bags at home and wouldn't buy a plastic bag because they don't want to buy plastic bags.

This was not my point at all, though I suppose I can see how some of you would jump to that conclusion based on the last paragraph.

My point was that there are a lot of people out there who used to use plastic bags either all the time (or at least frequently) who will not use them now simply because they cost five cents. The point of my post yesterday is that these people are cheapskates. They will inconvenience themselves unnecessarily because they don't want to spend five cents, not because they don't want to pollute, since polluting the environment with plastic bags didn't seem to bother them back when bags were free.

So. Those of you who got all offended by my comments can take a breath and relax, because I probably didn't mean you, or at least now you can make yourselves believe that I didn't mean you (really, I'm sure none of you ever took plastic bags when they were free and you'd forgotten to bring your own reusable bag), even though deep down you suspect that you might actually be one of those cheap people that just refuses to spend five cents on a plastic bag. ;)

I have the best boyfriend ever. EVER.

He bought me Star Trek Scrabble for my birthday!

*swoons*

Those are friggin' awesome.

Watch this video. :)

HOW THE HELL DID I MISS THIS YESTERDAY???!!

*happydance*

All the way through.

Y'know... the first time I heard her scream this season, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of... nostalgia? It felt like nostalgia. Or excitement maybe, because the show was back on, and I had weeks of dancing to look forward to.

I'm back to wishing she wouldn't do that.

I'm still excited about the show, though, because the dancers seem to be a LOT better than last year's crop.

:)

Many thanks to steelcaver (and, by extension, his friend cometdust) for pointing this out - it totally made my day. :)

(As awesome as the picture is, you have to read the text of the post to see why this made my day; otherwise it's just a cool picture).

No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

You should all watch this show.  It's awesome.

Pet Peeve:  Frank Ferragine on City TV's Breakfast Television consistently mispronounces  the word foliage.  Instead of saying "foh-lee-aj", he says "foh-laj".  Never fails to bug me.

In other news, my Franklin Mint Star Trek collector's plates are hanging on my wall again for the first time in at least 15 years, which makes me happy in a very geeky way. 

Also, we now have ceiling fans.  Hooray!

My loathing for the upstairs neighbours has grown. The one that tries to play guitar was trying to play last night, until about 4:30 in the morning. The guitar wasn't the problem - mercifully, she either had the amp off or was using headphones - the problem was the accompanying foot-tapping. RIGHT ABOVE MY HEAD. I thought I was going to kill her. (How did I know what she was doing, you ask? I could still hear the guitar - our floors are THAT THIN (or my hearing is that good)).

I ended up sleeping on the sofa in the living room for a few hours, and then toughing it out. For all I know, she kept going until dawn - I took a couple of Benadryls at about 4 to knock myself out, and slept like a baby until my alarm went off.

I had this crazy dream, though...

Quite a lot of it involved trying to sleep through the noises made by the upstairs neighbours, but then there was this other part...

olletho was, for some reason, my roommate. It was her birthday, and I hadn't got her anything, and she was going out, so I looked in my wallet and found a 17 mark note. (Yes, 17 German marks. Yes, I know they use Euros now. And I know that 17 is a strange denomination for a bill). She eyed me suspiciously but thanked me.

Then, it seemed, we were having a house party of some sort. Hanging out in the living room were members of the band Franz Ferdinand. (I should note here that, while I find some of their music to be catchy, and I love their name for its historical significance, (and, well, who doesn't love a Scot?) I am not what you might call an avid fan. I don't even have an mp3 of any of their songs, let alone an album. I didn't even really know who they were until they showed up in an iPod commercial (isn't that so often the way?)

Anyway, there they were in my living room. Naturally, I was an excellent hostess, and gave them booze and food and kept them entertained. And then, just like they had appeared, they were suddenly gone, leaving only a plastic bag with a tag that had my name on it.

I opened the bag and found inside a note thanking me for my hospitality, and wishing me a happy birthday (from Shaun - apparently their presence was my present from him) and - OH MY GOSH! THE GOLDEN CONCERT T-SHIRT AND BACKSTAGE PASS*!!! The shirt which would grant me round-trip air-fare and front row seats to any of their concerts, EVER! I remained somewhat confused by this (why this band? And how on earth had he been able to afford this???) but thanked him, and went back to trying to sleep through the neighbours' banging and crashing above me.

Awesome.

Side note: I'm probably not going to be around much this week, so I apologize in advance for the lack of news, should there be one. I'll try to post some tomorrow before my boss gets in, though. :)

I still have the flu. Bleh.

More importantly, there was a very interesting article in today's Toronto Star that I wish I'd seen earlier today, because I know a bunch of people who don't check LJ over the weekend won't see this post and may not see the article, and I think everyone should read it...

Was Bush on a mission from God? No, he wasn't (though he thought he was) - but read the article anyway (and the comments - some of them are great). Too bad this information didn't come to light sooner.

The article also mentions a GQ article about Donald Rumsfeld: And He Shall Be Judged (make sure you take a look at the slide show).

I'm gonna take some Tylenol Cold and Flu and get some more sleep - hopefully without any nightmares brought about by anything I've read today. Hmph.

It's that time again.

Ok, so - seriously - what possesses some people? Really! What makes them think they need to audition? Some of them are so obviously, painfully bad and they ought to KNOW that they're bad. I mean, here's a clue for you - if you've never had ANY training AT ALL, EVER? You're probably not very good. If you are kind of out-of-shape? You probably aren't good enough for the show. If you've never EVER tried to learn choreography before, now is not the right time to start. If you consider dancing to be a "hobby", you don't belong here.

Dancers have strength, rhythm, and grace. If you lack any one of these things, you won't make it on the show. And since this is television, you may as well throw "beauty" in there, too, because honey, if you've got a face only a mother could love, no matter how good a dancer you are, they probably won't want you on the show. Unless you have character practically oozing from your pores - maybe then.

I mean - WHAT THE HELL. There can't be this many masochists/truly deluded individuals out there, can there be?

I've actually left the room several times tonight because watching was just too painful.

[edited]
Oh! OH! One more thing. If you have "your own" style that you made up yourself? AND have no training in any recognized style? No. Just no.