grammardog

I did it. I have survived two 70+ hour work weeks! I could still work some overtime hours from home today, and I might yet, but right now I think I will curl up with some knitting and some stupid, undemanding television. It is awesome to see some daylight... there wasn't much at 5:45 this morning when I was trudging to work.

There's supposed to be a huge snowstorm coming today. Should work be closed tomorrow, it would most certainly be the happiest day of my life.

I have decided that I am an incredible person. I must be, because my friends are the absolute tops. Below are the contents of the most amazing care package anyone has ever sent to anyone, but in this case it was sent to ME, from brantastic:



There were many special surprises in there, including that mindblowing Golden Girls tote, and a special guy in very special Crizmas form:



its really he body! I laughed so hard at this ornament that I stopped making noise.

There was also a homemade Leoncie boxed set, which I cannot wait to really get down with.



Last night I got to hang with my favourite 60 day-old kid, Mr. Sully Joe. He's having a bit of a rough time - who knew babies could have acid reflux? I guess that's what they used to call colic. We had our first active two-sided communication last night! I wiggled my tongue out at him and he WIGGLED HIS BACK. I guess I knew that babies mimicked pretty early on, but it sort of blows my mind that he understands that he's like the rest of us, that he sees my tongue and knows he has one, too. Oh, babies! Why you gotta make me want you? Here he is with a smile that belies his acidic belly:

cynosur dropped in for a visit tonight. As a special entertainment for her, Bea Arthur decided to exit the litter box with a piece of poop still stuck to his butt. He hid under tables and behind the couch when I ran after him, swearing and angrily shaking a wad of toilet paper. We actually did that thing where I ran to one end of the couch to catch him, and he ran to the other, and repeat, several times.

In other news, I have determined that I need a car. I am not sure how this is going to work yet.

Oh, MAN. Some work friends and I collaborated tonight to make the most awesome costume. This is not a finished pic - imagine the torso painted a solid flesh colour, the pop bottle neck cut down to normal neck length, a necklace added, a dead corsage, and lots of blood at the neck:



It is going to look so great all bloodied up! She is a bit vertically challenged, so she can really pull this look off.

We used a hiking backpack and a mop handle, and a shitload of tape to frame the torso up. We made the torso by duct taping someone into an old shirt and then stuffing it full of newspapers. I am so pleased with it!

Sally, trying to be patient while waiting for her breakfast. She can get pretty crazy when she knows bacon's on the way.

One of my favourite things about my apartment is that the boiler room is right below me. This means that when I get up in the morning, the kitchen floor is warm. Also, when I take my shoes and jacket out of the closet, they are toasty warm. It's sort of like having a butler.

Sally and I were total tourists and went to the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum.



BELIEVE IT! Here are three things I enjoyed from there.

JFK made out of butterfly wings:



Pretty lady made out of postage stamps:



Royal wedding, if Charles and Di were ants:



( The Beatles in chewing gum, duck lady that scared the crap out of me, penny Liz, Mr. Bug Eyes, garbage duck, and lamb with a turnin' leg below the cut. )

Sally creating a diversion, natch:



Ha ha... I LOVE that picture so much.

Pretty glass beads for sale at Camden Lock Market:



Friends 4-Ever:

- I searched for my glasses for a full hour this morning before finding them behind some books in the bookcase. If there is anything more fury-inducing than looking for your glasses without your glasses on, I don't know it. Going blind is going to be really tough.

- Bea Arthur has started to make a habit of jumping off the windowsill and onto my snoring body at night. Do not want.

- My family is coming to dinner at my house tonight for the first time ever. I am making curried cider-braised pork chops, and a wilted spinach salad with warm apple cider and bacon dressing, and maybe a strawberry cake if I can find a recipe.

- God, I'm glad to have my glasses back.

- I forgot to mention that I got to meet abbeyrd this summer in the flesh and it was so great. She is sweet and funny and open and warm. We went to the Public Gardens and had some ice cream on the coldest day of the summer. I love it when meeting your internet friends in real life is just like you imagine it's going to be.

- My dad had an x-ray the other day and things are looking good... no sign of the cancer spreading or growing, and no more fluid on his lungs. The test is pretty basic so they're doing an MRI in a few weeks to have a better look, but we're very happy to hear this news. The other day my dad found an old lady on the sidewalk who was trying to find her way back to her nursing home but got lost, and he drove her back and checked in with the front desk to make sure she was in the right place and she called him such a nice young man. Aw, Dad.

- Yesterday I found my high school yearbook from my graduating year and realized that my entire write-up thingie next to my picture is a terrible Megadeth quote. I've never listened to Megadeth on purpose in my life, ever. Pretty sure that was someone else's doing.

- Feeling overwhelmed all the time and I don't know why.

ETA: Dinner prep is going pretty great so far:

I had a great weekend out of the Mad House of Boxes and into the wilderness with some of the great ladies I work with. I kind of forgot that camping is so awesome, for a while there.

Sally fought the late-night flash of my camera.



We ate like kings all weekend. Fat, fat kings.





It rained for a spell and raincoats had to be fashioned from garbage bags, but 2 out of 3 campers surveyed were satisfied with that.



There were some Leoncie-inspired dance parties.



It's not camping if you don't spill half the Cheezies out of the bag pretty much right away.



Overall assessment:

Yesterday after work I headed to an appointment with my doctor (note: SECOND consecutive positive interaction! Is the tide turning?) and ran into stoof. stoof took one look at my pallid face, knew right away that I've been eating Triscuits and ramen noodles all week, and offered to pick up some food and come home with me to cook me dinner! She made teriyaki salmon with peppers, shallots, mushrooms, and rice, and it was SO DELICIOUS and the company was so enjoyable and it was the best surprise Friday night hangout ever.

In other news, I poured a large bowl of Raisin Bran this morning and there wasn't one fucking raisin in it.

In more other news: I got tickets to see the cute Beatle! This was a stupid move, since I don't have a penny put aside for London and I had to buy a whole new spring/summer wardrobe because the old one was too small, and I'm way too broke for this. But: Paul McCartney!

robotropolis and Eddie, who will only allow himself to be cuddled while inside a protective barrier. <3 you, Eddie.



Last night I got to hang out with robotropolis, stoof, and keyframe. We ate delicious food prepared by Sarah, and watched the awesome Auntie Mame, which had us in stitches. I love hanging out with these ladies!

Maybe it's just because I have a raging yeast infection and I want to light my genitals on fire with gasoline, but I've had it up to HERE with Twitter. It's not that I don't care to read about the people on my friends list who are using it... I love you dudes. And I get that you're allowed to post whatever you want in your own journal, I really do. It's just that my eyes actually cannot absorb the Twitter. It's a completely unreadable format, a technology I don't use or give a crap about, and most of the blurbs issued from it appear to just be inside jokes I'm on the outside of. At first I hoped it would just go away, but now it looks like there are more Twitter updates on my friends list than actual posts using full English sentences.

Does anyone know how to filter Twitter off of my friends list? There must be some way of doing this.

In other news, I gave my friend larrylouise this quilt last night. I think she loved it. Here she is revisiting her earlier years:



Still just the same.

We had a great time... I always feel so comfortable with these friends. Here is a photo I took of my friends Barby and Matt laughing like crazy that I love so much:

When shopping for eggs, I generally look for the carton of freaks, as I enjoy checking out the textures and colours of the freak eggs, as well as, I must admit, feeling a bit sorry for the carton of eggs that probably won't get picked because they're not perfect and uniform. This carton made a lovely crustless quiche for stoof and robotropolis tonight.



Jesus-approved egg:



Feel free to make as many egg/Jesus related puns as you want.

Steph and Sarah surprised me with some lovely early birthday treats including a bowl for Bea, and the novel upon which Slumdog Millionaire was based. Their lovely company was not a surprise... I always have such good laughs when I spend time with them. Also, they brought wine, salad, and a delicious and hilarious ice cream cake featuring what they tried to sell as a drunken olive:



That is a manatee, and I won't accept anything less.

Day 5 of Eight Days of Happy:

It was my mod day, and I didn't have to work! Hooray! I also vacuumed the crap out of my house and it feels so good to open doors without seeing tumbleweeds of B.Art hair go flying about. Also, tonight I am having Crafternight with stoof and robotropolis, both of whom I adore so much. ALSO, today I went to the grocery store and bought a lot of snacky, delicious food things that I don't normally allow myself for financial reasons, like kielbasa and spiced gouda and artichoke dip and kalamata olives. I can't wait for breakfast!

I cannot keep up with the internet anymore.

Okay, so brantastic showed up out of NOWHERE last week and surprised the crap out of me, with the help and scheming of Sally. Brandi dreamed aloud to Sally that she would like to visit me since I have been feeling pretty crap lately, and the two of them worked out a plan. I was hanging out with Sally and my friend Nicole, innocently watching some Flight of the Conchords episodes, when I was snatched up, blindfolded, and driven to the airport. I didn't know what the bejeezus was going on until Brandi emerged from the international arrivals door. Seriously, it was the best surprise of my life. I don't really know how to thank them both for cooking this up for me... it just made me feel so loved and special.

Basically Brandi and I spent three days just acting the fool. We downloaded Vanilla Ice's epic film Cool As Ice, and uh, it was WAY more entertaining than we had expected... we laughed SO hard all the way throughout, and there was even one GENUINELY funny thing in it. I don't have as much tolerance for awesome-because-it's-awful material as Brandi has, but I enjoyed every second of it, and a second viewing is definitely in my future. If any of you have seen it, can we please talk about the ice-dripping scene? Oh my heavens. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, gawk, or gag.

We drove up the Eastern Shore on a wet, chilly day. I took these two photos in Lawrencetown, still experimenting with my new lens:





We also picked up lobsters from a cute strawberry blond fellow in Jeddore, and boiled them for dinner. SLOWLY. An inch at a time. The lobsters we bought were pretty fucking huge, as we realized when we got home and looked at my pots. We ended up cooking them in separate pots, and they were still too big to fit in them comfortably. I'm now going to tell you about one of the worst moments of my life. The water was boiling, the lobster was wiggling, and when I attempted to drop it in the roiling drink headfirst, it FLEXED and the only part of its body I could submerge was the CLAWS. I was SLOWLY BOILING IT STARTING WITH THE EXTREMITIES. I can't tell you the horror I felt realizing that this creature was not going to die a quick and painless death. I shouted for a cramstick, and ended up using a slotted spoon to cram the rest of the flipping lobster's body into the pot. I then I had to force the cover closed for several agonizing minutes while the lobster flipped around and basically it was horrible and that story is over now because I can't go on. Oh, also, Bea Arthur bit one of the lobsters in the swimmerette. That is everything, now.

Here are some shots from the cutest photoshoot ever:







Below, Bea Arthur and Brandi re-enact The Great Lobster Boiling Fiasco of '08. Bea Arthur snaps his tail wildly as the lobsters did, and flattens his ears to express extreme discontent. Brandi's face perfectly captures my experience.



Sally and Brandi and I went to Thursday night bingo together, and I TOTALLY WON! It was pretty awesome yelling out my victory, and even though I only won $59, I couldn't follow bingo hall protocol and pretend like I wasn't excited. I felt sort of bad taking the money from all of those elderly people who go every single night and maybe never win. But not bad ENOUGH.

Anyway, those were the highlights/lowlights of my surprise visit from Bran. There were a million other tiny moments and huge laughs, stuff that I wish I could have just recorded so I could watch it all again (Bran, today "Lady" came on the telly and I sang the whole thing at a 45 degree angle, and laughed so hard and wished you were there so bad). I was terribly sorry to see her go home. I just love her so much, you guys.

So, NEIL YOUNG! It was so awesome. I admit, I partly expected to see Neil phoning it in to some extent at this late stage in the game, but he fucking ruled. As moxieholic put it in his review, his first tune sounded like what would be a finale for most other performers. Also, Wilco! So much fun... I really hope to see a full show at some point in my life.

Yesterday Sally and I went out to put up some posters for our "White Christmas" fundraiser, which is a week from today. It was a trying experience. I experienced my first tumble of winter when I wiped out on the icy sidewalk on Robie Street where cars were driving out of the car wash and leaving the sidewalk wet. I banged up my knee on the widewalk and wrenched my back a little bit, too. Very shortly after I got up and brushed myself off (so shortly, in fact, that I think he MUST have seen me fall), a man came barrelling up to me with his finger poking at me and shouted, "Do you know you're breaking a city by-law?!? You're making a goddamn mess! I'm calling the police!" and then started storming away. I was stunned, but called after him, "It's a FUNDRAISER for the food bank, sir", and without even looking back at me, he gave me the finger! I was SO ANGRY about it and still am. I'm just amazed at the kind of person it would take to, first of all, GIVE A CRAP, and second of all, behave that way to a strange woman on the street. It made me feel really, really deflated. The part I'm MOST concerned about, though, is that he actually WILL call the police, who will then probably call the charity we're raising funds for about the complaint. If they are complained to, I actually will have to go and take all five hundred posters down, which makes me feel just sick to my stomach and totally dejected. It just makes me crazy that anyone would CARE about some fundraiser posters on a pole, sandwiched between Steve-o-Reno's coffee barn, a four-lane traffic-congested street, and an Esso station on Robie Street - not exactly Banff National Park, or even a residential area. Argh... I just feel so mad about it, and mostly I feel mad about the way he yelled at me, in such an intimidating and threatening way.

Afterwards,we went to Clay Cafe to paint our frustrations away, which might have worked if it hadn't been filled to the brim with babies. So many very noisy babies! I did finish a potentially-disastrous Christmas gift though (word to the wise: don't try to paint perfect circles on ceramic bisque), and we also ran into iamom there, which was a nice surprise.

I don't really dislike babies. Proof:



They're just noisy, is all.

It's becoming clearer that my future at work looks pretty grim, due to a major restructuring that will take place over the next couple of years. It makes me really disappointed... I never thought I would still be doing entry-level work after 2.5 years, but that's just the way things have panned out because of some really bad timing . I was hoping to get a chance to try some other jobs out there, but it's not looking good. I would love to have some stability, and some challenge in my work, besides the challenge of "try not to weep from boredom today".

Otherwise, I have been quite busy but with some fun things in there, too, and any free time has been spent trying to get some Christmas gifts together. My no-buy Christmas is really going pretty well, and any money I have spent toward it has still gone into a handmade gift. I even wrapped some tonight, and realized afterwards I didn't take any photos of everything piled together, which I really wanted to do for my own satisfaction.

THE END. I'm so tired.

I just went to the gym for the first time in months. YESSSSSS! I won't lie; it was rough. The Biggest Loser was on more than one television. I tried to just close my eyes and focus on my music, but then my mp3 player batteries conked out and I was left with screens full of people trying to run around a track while being tempted with giant platters of pancakes and french fries and I wanted to murder everyone. So I went over to the desk and asked the lady there to please switch the channel to anything that didn't bank on me hating my body. She was mystified.

I finished up three little baby quilts this morning that I made from scraps leftover from Sally's quilt. They used all the scraps up perfectly!





I went to an old camp friend's wedding on Saturday. We had a fantastic time. Here I am with four of my best gals, enjoying the king sized bed in the executive suite:



Also, somehow I ended up with a shovelful of popcorn between my breasts and flashed my bra for a nearby camera. Pretty standard fare.

All that's left is trimming the stray threads, ironing out the wrinkles, handsewing on the tag, and wrapping her up.



I love this quilt so much. It's really hard to give this one away.

While slutmuphin and I were bumming around the city, we went to this amazing, inspiring place called the Philadelphia Magic Gardens. An artist named Isaiah Zagar started transforming several lots in the 1960's and clearly never looked back. Every surface is covered with ceramic tile, mirror, dishes, bottles, sculpture, bicycle tire rims, and all is grouted into place. I've never seen anything like it! A million pictures, some of which are pretty great but none of which could possibly do it justice, are posted under the cut. I made them smallish since some of you have wee little monitors, but you can click on the photos for larger versions if you want to see the incredible detail.



( Pretty pretties... )