How you know it's time to head home for the day (This one's from yesterday, actually)...
When the phones in two offices near you are ringing in such a way that one rings, then the other rings while the first phone is between rings, and the thought that "hey, wouldn't it be fun to get 'Dueling Banjos' ringtones for everyone's phones?" crosses your mind.
"Haven't seen the sun for weeks, too long, too far from home..."
So, there's been sunshine I think two out of the last thirteen days, or at least in the times I've been near a window or outside during the day. I'm going to start keeping track, because this is ridiculous. I thought the sun's contract with Ottawa was different than that of, oh, Vancouver, or London, England.
The rest of those days? Gray, gray, gray, most of the time with periods of rain mixed in, or it just rained the entire day. The weather forecast right now has rain for today, tomorrow and Wednesday, and just "cloudy" on Thursday; Friday, "chance of showers," maybe, maybe some sun between those.
What do we call that? We call that a desperate cry of realization that her fifteenth minute of fame is ticking its way to expiration fast, as she tries to claw frantically out of the pit known as "One-Hit Wonder," located in the valley of "Sophomore Jinx."
"How about you? How about you? How about you?" x about 75. Poor Jeff. Funny David.
David Usher show last night was fun! As for David Usher show rankings, this one, by far, qualifies as the funniest ever. I've got five words to sum this up:
Jeff poetry? Rocks like hell.
I think the most memorable show, for things not concerning the actual show, was the Ottawa show at Barrymore's in October 2001.
My favourite show, though, was in Thunder Bay at what was then Coyote's, in September 2001. The venue was good, the show was great, and I was there with Ray -- she had a great ol' rockin' time with me. It was just a really good night.
That's about as articulate as I can get about this before my first cup of coffee on a Saturday morning, people. :)
I had my first-ever massage therapy session late this afternoon. Yay for sweet shoulder/neck/upper back relief. Apparently there's a whack of trigger points in my right shoulder. Not that I will even attempt to pretend I know anything about back problems, cos I don't have any and if I did, they wouldn't even register on the scale of back problems in my family, thank God. Just getting some of the tension out of there that develops from sitting at a computer 8+ hours a day with my right arm extended out to move a mouse around, and the fact that a great deal of time has been spent in this position since age 15? Yayness.
Oh, and once the hour was over, I found myself in a very deep state of relaxation that I've yet to get out of. So, so nice.
Today was pay day, always a Very Good Thing. Except for the part where I realize that there's $500 in deductions from my paycheque, but welcome to the real world of death and taxes. (I'm pretty sure the original concept of that saying meant that you would die in shock from the sheer amount of taxes.) Blah blah ad finitum. Moving on...
Friday: David Usher at The Capital! I just picked up our tix. :) Bwah, this will be the fourth time since 2000 that I've seen one of his shows. (Third David Usher show, plus one Moist show.) Must seek help soon.
Someone remind me I need to get a humidifier! It's only October and already everything is dryness-and-static-land, and if I don't do something about this soon, it's also going to be perpetual-hair-put-up-land.
Better idea: let's just skip past this fall/winter thing. Are you with me? There is still the offer of cookies out there for anyone who can make this happen.
A big heylo out there to friends who have e-mailed me in the last couple of days, who I haven't talked to in awhile! I'll write you all back soon, I promise, but I need to get off of this computer now. (Enjoying the work of the massage therapist before I wreck it all tomorrow. :))
My new cell phone arrived today! Yay! It is the tiniest, cutest thing ever.
So yes, I've got a new number. I'll send it out tomorrow because I can't actually use the phone until then, I have to charge it for 24 hours first. My old number will be inactive as of Thursday.
(Shmisa, that means no more worries about accidentally dialling 852.)
I really do have to add here, that the customer service of Sprint Canada is amazing. I'm completely stunned, you have no idea. They are so helpful, so friendly, and so welcoming -- I've had two welcome messages, a welcome package, and apologies in advance that they may have mistakenly sent me a letter that they didn't actually send to me. Oh, and they sent a fridge magnet too.
With Bell? Never even received a package to tell me how to use my phone services.
Jenn complains. Because it's Monday. And that's what you do on Monday.
Someone please tell me I am not seeing this.
Thursday: Flurries
Low: 1ºC
High: 7ºC
POP: 60% (Excerpted from my Weather Office e-mail weather forecast.)
Can I run screaming all the way to Mexico now?
Other Monday musings:
1. I am so not a morning person. So it's a good thing it's now afternoon. (Not that this is at all restricted to Mondays or anything new, I just thought I'd throw it in.)
2. Why is it so damn cold outside?
3. Why do I have songs from 1998-99 stuck in my head right now? ("Precocious UR / Headstrong UR / Terrified UR / Ahead of your time UR" and "What couldn't be, wouldn't be now / Swallow the pill / Drank to the fill / All these things I carry now / In this bittersweet, in this bittersweet now." And there are others.)
It might be better than Friday, when that White Town song Your Woman was stuck in my head. That was a horrifying few hours. Thanks muchly, Spinner.
Okay, someone hurry up and make it spring time again. :) Do this for me, and I'll make you cookies.
I know I left too much mess and destruction to come back again...
My everything song-of-the-moment is White Flag, by Dido. Just the music, melody, instrumentation, lyrics, voice of it... one of those ones that I just feel completely, and it opens me up creatively. Put it this way: I wrote about 500 words of the most pivotal scene in D, exactly how I needed to express them, in two listenings of the song. (That's 3:36 x 2, by the way. That's my equivalent of a creative miracle.)
I'd heard the song so many times on Spinner in recent weeks, but it wasn't until last week that it started having that effect. Let's hope it lasts awhile. :)
Seriously. I should start an editing/proofreading business on the side. (Yeah. On the side of writing a novel that's on the side of occasional freelance web work that's on the side of a full-time job, and I've applied to add a part-time M.A. to that.)
I could edit CD liner notes, because for some odd reason there are a lot of indie musicians out there who do not understand Rules Of The Apostrophe and thus make Incredibly Unprofessional Apostrophe Errors that probably make record label employees laugh unmercifully when they're seeking a deal. By the same token, I could also edit web site content, cos good grief, I've seen some doozies.
...Or I could not. But I could probably make a killing.
(This post brought to you by an evening of editing something for someone.)
Who built the ark? And can he come build another one?
Remember what I was saying yesterday, à la Jenn-mode-du-sarcasm, about the ridiculous amounts of rain we get here? It's not necessarily all year (cos in the winter, it seems, we just get a lot of snow... spring seems relatively safe though but I'm knocking on wood now that I've said that), but still. Still.
Environment Canada, in cooperation with the finer weather systems of North America, have taken it upon themselves to prove me right with this heavy rainfall warning for today.
The new airport in Ottawa opened today, and it's pretty damn cool. Nice, new and modern, and comes equipped with both a waterfall and a water wall. And a couple of giant jumbotron-like humongi TV screens by the baggage area. (All that, to be playing CBC??? Just kidding! No, just kidding about the little dig at CBC there. They really were playing CBC.)
It is absolutely pouring outside tonight. Do you think it rains enough here? I guess it's not enough until the neighbourhoods surrounding the Rideau River and Rideau Canal turn into a floodplain. At least the sky seems to feel that way.
Magic mint, blizzard blue, mulberry and teal are getting the meltdown to make room for new colour sensations. One favourite colour just barely escaped the wax axe:
"Burnt sienna was slated for elimination but protesters convinced the company to keep it in the pack."
That actually might have been sad if it was gone. I always loved that colour name. It's one of the only ones I still remember. And nobody but nobody better mess with my periwinkle blue.
Beau is really sick, and it makes me really sad. :( He was sick a couple of weeks ago, he went to the vet and his white blood cell count was high and he was really anemic, and then he got better for awhile. Last night he was really sick again.
I love you, puppy. I don't want you to be sick and I don't want you to go. I know it's one of those things that has been at the back of my mind for awhile, because you're almost 12 years old, but I wish you could be healthy and happy and live forever.
I'm crying right now and I haven't let myself cry in months. I cried too much this winter. But I can't stop myself right now.
Okay, I've gotta preface this with something. I go through these weird food phases -- actually, I think I've been in an all-encompassing weird food phase since I was born, but that's another story -- and right now, it's KD. Don't ask me why, I just like the stuff. And I wanted you to know.
Right, where was I? Oh yeah. So, I'm making KD, and I notice on the outside of the box there's this "every box is a winner" contest sponsored by Crayola. You go to the YTV website, and you enter this code from the box, play this racing game, and then they just send you something.
So why do I need help? Cos I actually played the damn game. Hee. :)
I won erasable Twistables, yo.
There's got to be somewhere you could donate this stuff to, right? Either a school without supplies, or somewhere that puts together baskets of things for children at Christmas? I'll have to look into that, because now I'll be getting all this Crayola stuff, and I've got 769809821982 children's books in my basement and on my bookshelves from some of the Lit courses I took during my undergrad.
In other weblog randomness, I started reading Pamela Ribon's (pamie.com) Why Girls Are Weird this weekend. I am completely in love with that book. All of it is so relatable.
Makes me stop and reflect a bit, too. Sometimes when I go take a look at my webstats, it's pretty cool to see that there are people from places like Norway, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom and Australia visiting, as well as people from all across North America. Some of these people are regular visitors and readers. I mean, I know some of the people who are reading, from here in Ottawa, or from Thunder Bay, or friends scattered in different places, but sometimes I'm curious about some of the others, especially when they're from outside of North America. I wonder how they found my site, but I do like that they visit. Even if it does astound me that they keep reading, seeing how I have this tendancy to blather on about absolutely nothing, quite frequently.
And all of you are going to go read my book once it's published, right? Right? (LOL) Nothing like being fifteen steps ahead of myself and all. It's got nothing at all to do with weblogs or the consequences thereof, but I like it so far. It's been a really fun thing, being able to disperse sarcasm throughout something with a target of 90,000-100,000 words or so, after four years of having to be all serious with j-skool articles and roughly seven bazillion essays. Not that I wasn't tempted to be sarcastic with those. It was just weighing pleasure vs. consequence, and the fact that I wanted to graduate won out.
All right, gotta go enjoy the rest of my Sunday. Tomorrow is Monday. ("Yes, Jenn, in the usual order of things since the beginning of time, that would be correct...") Last week I actually heard someone use the phrase "case of the Mondays" while I was at work. (I think everyone in the building has seen Office Space.) Yay pop culture, and again, I wanted you to know.
It's been a long time coming. And I am so, so happy about it.
Congratulations to the Liberal party. You've waited over 15 years for another chance to serve. It's never easy, because there will always be things that either the media or the public nitpicks about. Let's hope that this time, we can keep perspective with the positive versus the negative: are we nitpicking because we're spending money on essential services, like building hospitals or building schools in certain ridings, or are we in the throes of scandal because of the loss of lives or illness caused by cuts to funding and services?
I hope that we will all bear this in mind, coming out of eight years of the Tory regime.
We are now two days into the tenth month of 2003. When I reflect on the months that have passed so far, there is only one way to describe it: 2003 has been a year of change. Politically, personally, just so many ways. This election, achieving one very long-term goal that has guided me since childhood; setting my sights on others. There were many, many changes in my life, personal things, what I started seeing for myself, my outlook on life, and the way I began living it.
From where I stand now, all of it -- yes, absolutely all of it -- has been change that is good. Tonight, I am filled with hope and inspiration.
I will be getting a new cell phone number within the next couple of days. (And a new cell phone! :)) I will be sending out an e-mail with the new info whenever it is activated.
I just took advantage of the most amazing deal with Sprint ever that makes my local service way less expensive (with the same features), makes my cell phone costs way less, AND gives me free long distance within Canada for 6 months (after that, 5 cents/minute anywhere in North America, any time of day), along with a $15 Amazon.ca gift certificate.
Can we say "rock"? I knew we could. :) (Even though I did just sound like a commercial!)
And... it's The Bachelor, Episode 2 (Return of the Loony Bin) tonight!
