There's snow outside. Odd. (Even if it is the second-last day of November.)
When did that happen? It was pouring last night.
What a strange week.
I need to do some Christmas shopping pretty soon! Actually, horror of all horrors, I need to go to Rideau Centre pretty soon to visit the Aveda store, but I really, really, really don't want to go there. Too many people in that mall, especially now! I wonder if Third Avenue Spa sells my hair stuff?
So, I managed to not put body wash in my hair this morning, for those who were curious. Yay me.
Immensely frustrating day... oh well, at least they sent over a cute, young guy for our application training-that-wasn't. (So I guess there's a bright side to it all?)
Time to crank the tunes and decompress (heh what a word)!
EDIT: I had to add this... yesterday morning, listening to the news on the radio as I'm driving to work, and the last item talks about Donald Passman writing a book called "All You Need to Know About the Music Business." And that was all. But, um, he wrote that book years ago. I read it in 1999. So I think there was part of that story missing? Yeah.
And... how in the name of journalistic integrity or not wanting to be mistaken for a comic book could the Ottawa Sun have put the headline "ZAP!" with the P extending down as a lightning bolt on today's front page? I mean, they always have some pretty non-journalistic one-word headlines, but I'd have to say that one tops them all. I thought I was watching the opening montage of the old Batman & Robin show.
Brilliant move of the day: putting body wash in my hair this morning. (Hmm, how half-asleep do you think I was?) Luckily, I realized what I'd done before lathering it or anything, but that's still a lot of rinsing, because there was a heck of a lot of hair to get it out of.
This just proves that apparently coffee is necessary for me to function properly in the morning.
A little late on this one, but it looked like a good one! The Friday Five:
1. List five things you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.
Finish writing D. Goal numero uno right now. (Speaking of... should probably work on that today!)
Come up with a kick-ass query letter
Compile an extensive list of literary agents and publishers to sell D on in a big way
Organize kitchen closet
Know if I can start my MA in the winter! (This one is slightly out of my control, though.)
2. List five people you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.
Actually, a few people I'd lost contact with I've gotten back in contact with over this year... ooh but there are a few:
Dan Patterson (what ever happened to you, dude?)
Amy Kuenzli (hey, girlie!)
Maria Hague (my pen pal from my teenage years! I miss thee!)
Now, how come there's not a question about people we'd like to lose all contact with? Heh.
3. List five things you'd like to learn how to do.
surf (I'm with you on that one, Jen)
not suck at Playstation
refresh my knowledge of the French language
paint (because watching those painting shows is so freaking relaxing... this should really be added to #5 but I've already got five)
re-learn how to knit
4. List five things you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).
Move the 'rents here, to a nice big house with new cars.
Get a puppy!!!! (See, because if I won the lottery I could buy my own house, but the house is actually a means for the puppy...)
Take tons of people on a rockin' vacation, somewhere tropical.
Buy a beach house somewhere in SoCal
Found my own publishing company
(Okay, all of these sound pretty self-centred but the only give you five! I'd also like to create something like the humane society in Thunder Bay, with a no-kill policy and a big farm for animals who can't find homes to come live at, either permanently or while continuing to find them homes, and if there really is no limit on these lottery winnings, do something very significant for the homeless population, because it's definitely a big problem in this country.)
5. List five things you do that help you relax.
Yoga
Listen to relaxing tunes
Read in relaxing lighting (white Christmas lights, candles, lamps with soft light)
Too bad I'm too old for stuffed animals. There is the cutest stuffed polar bear with all the Christmas stuff at Wal-Mart! (Not that this wasn't contemplated. After all, I would like a pet... ;) And I've got a thing for polar bears!)
Frig, I think I'm always going to be insanely girly, deep down.
I can't remember if I've mentioned this here before, but sometimes when writing D, if I don't want my thought flow to be interrupted by the time it takes to type or write it down (and I don't want to analyze the words I'm writing, as I tend to do a lot of editing-as-I-go), I'll pull out one of the old j-skool tape recorders and just dictate it, as it comes. So, I've got some tapes with scenes I've written, just haven't yet transcribed. (I'll know they're there, so leave that spot in the book blank until I get to it.)
So, today there was a scene I knew was there, and I wanted to type it out and work on it. Best surprise ever when I came across another scene on the tape, that I knew I'd started, but had totally forgotten I'd written (spoken) all of. Like, pages worth. I love that.
I love it when I get to this stage of writing something -- where all the scenes are finally flowing into one another in proper form, filling in the gaps. I never, ever write anything in sequence, so this is the stage getting towards the end of things, where it is all brought together and finished. (This is also the part where I zone out of a lot of other things for awhile, because all I want to do is work on it. You know, rather than sleep. I remember this feeling.)
The goal of Christmas is still there, and quite do-able. Rock.
Eeeeee!!! Got home from work, checked my e-mail, and there was one from Kell... in early labour! She and her husband are going to be parents this weekend! SO exciting!
What the heck is it doing out there? Rearranging the neighbourhood? (Windy, windy, rainy day.)
This is the part where I procrastinate about changing out of warm, comfy PJs.
I've been in a weird Finger Eleven/No Doubt/Rymes With Orange/Mazzy Star phase since the weekend. Try and tell me that's not a strange combination!
All right. Hair needs drying. (Which? Is about the most out-of-control hair I've had since I was 17. Seriously, it's lo-o-ong now. Just in time for winter static!!!)
In other words, corporate greed is alive and well.
It's the cashiers I'll feel bad for here, they'll have to deal with a lot of attitude for something that's entirely the fault of some money-hungry CEO.
Somehow a day off in the middle of the week feels entirely different from the weekend, even a long weekend. But today I'm in self-imposed exile. I stayed in PJs until 1:30, spent a couple hours in the morning writing, and a couple of hours this afternoon. It's been a good couple of days for that!
So relaxing. So productive. Awesome.
This week's yoga class, also awesome. The kriya was for the aura, or the "eighth chakra," and wow, LOTS of arm work! All good. :)
By the way? Indulgent, secret celebrity crush on Benjamin McKenzie. Dude. (No, that didn't sound silly girly at all... hee.)
TV character career changes and coconut follies. One has nothing to do with the other.
Hee. This is quite possibly the only time I've ever found spam e-mail amusing. Went into my hotmail account cos MSN Messenger told me there was 500-and-something messages in there (pretty much all spam, I never use that account for anything), and there was one from "Duane Barry." (Subject: Trouble-Free Debt Reduction from Duane Barry.)
If you were ever an X-Phile, you'll know why I laughed.
Okay, so the most important discovery of this week? I call it, "It was coconut, all along." That's right, folks. I am highly allergic to coconut. I never eat coconut, but I'd had it in something I'd made and eaten the other night. I am so allergic to it, in fact, that the size and number of hives I get from it is similar to when I had an allergic reaction to penicillin. Moral of the story? I really should not eat coconut, unless I like anaphylactic shock. (Which? I don't think I would.)
The reason this is such a big discovery, though, is it explains something big. For the last six or seven years, I'd thought I had a skin sensitivity to laundry detergent/fabric softener, and some body washes. Turns out this is not a dermatological thing at all, but that coconut derivatives are found in lots of detergents and body washes. Obviously more in some than in others. A lot of times it comes disguised under the name "Sodium Laureth (or Laurel) Sulfate" or "Disodium Laureth Sulfate" or, like in some Aveda Shampoo I have, there are a few ingredients that are noted as coming from coconut. When it's in body washes or lotions and things, it's more broken down and less of it, so the reaction to it is much, much milder than when I actually ingest pure coconut, but still annoying to say the least.
I have avoided soaps and lotions with coconut derivatives, and obviously not eaten coconut for the last 24 hours, and no hives or itchiness! (By the way? To me, this registers on the scale of a miracle.) I am so excited! All along, it's been one allergy and I never even knew it.
What this means? No piņa coladas for me, and I can never be a contestant on Survivor. (Damn it all anyway. Or, as Bubble said "Double damn, I knew you had your heart set on that... right up there with contracting the plague.")
On your most recent trip to Ottawa, I think you may have forgotten your weather here. Does Fed-Ex do overnight delivery to where you are?
Sincerely,
Jenn
In other events, I'm expecting a welcoming letter from the Department of Dumbass Moves and Blond Moments, Inc. any second now. Although they might have to deliver it by reindeer or skating postman.
The radio told me rain turning to freezing rain this morning when I woke up. When I went to bed last night, the Weather Network was on full red-screen alert about freezing rain. That didn't alarm me any, because I've learned that here in Ottawa, freezing rain can be considered a season unto itself. It goes spring, summer, rain, freezing rain and winter. (Note the absence of fall.)
And, for some reason that fails to follow any sort of logic whatsoever (but welcome to the nation's capital), people here have no problems driving in freezing rain. But snow? Give them traction of snow over the sheer skating rink of freezing rain, and they're screwed.
See, where I'm from, there isn't a lot of freezing rain. Well, there wasn't until all the weather patterns went nuts and gave Thunder Bay about five green Christmases in a row. I learned how to drive in the snow. In Northwestern Ontario, the seasons go something like spring, summer, forest fires and winter. (I'm pretty sure that fall doesn't actually occur in Ontario.)
Back to the point. There is one.
They told me rain and freezing rain on the radio. Imagine my surprise when I walked out the door into a blustery winter wonderland? When it's white people, it's called SNOW. Although I guess, technically, snow is frozen rain.
I hear we're going down from our current temperature of 0°C to -3°C by the afternoon, and more of that supposed "rain-turning-to-freezing-rain stuff."
Not that this is going to stop me from going to get the new Sarah McLachlan CD at lunch. Happy Sarah McLachlan Day!
This is your brain. This is your brain post-graduation. Any questions?
Paraphernalia.
Why does that word look so odd to me today? I think this is proving my theory that the more days I'm out of school, the more my mind becomes like Play-Doh. Some days it's scary!
On a friend's weblog, someone had made a comment about Bob and Doug McKenzie, which then got their "12 Days of Christmas" running through my head. Now I feel all Christmasy!
Yes, on November 2.
Yes, from a song that talks about backbacon and ends with "...and a BEER, in a tree!"
See comment above about my mind rapidly becoming Play-Doh.
A few of us went to see Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Mayfair last night. The coolest thing about that, I remember being little (like 8 or 9) and my parents telling me about that movie, about the rice, the toast, the Bics, and I think there could have been something about throwing cups of beer off the theatre balcony, but that may have been for any movie, I'm not sure. ;) Anyway, it was like living their experience... and probably then some. You'd all be proud of how well those traditions have been preserved in the passing down to this generation. (Although I'm pretty sure that the "The planet of Transvestite... in the galaxy of Transylvania..." "In the province of Quebec!!!" came from us.)
I had failed to remember about the newspapers, water pistols, toilet paper and deck of cards though. Last time I saw that movie I was 15.
