Archive, November 2007

30 Nov 2007 Reflected glory One of my best-est friends, Leela Gilday, is going to have an exciting weekend. She's up for two awards at the Aboriginal Music Awards and one at the Canadian Folk Music Awards! She's already got a couple of Aboriginals and a Juno, but at this point in her career, I doubt that she's gotten blase about the whole thing. I really hope that she gets a whole selection of dust collectors, because she truly deserves them. She's been working her butt off and she's genuinely an amazing performer. As I mentioned in earlier posts, she has put together an outstanding band and she has pipes that require no amplification. Not to say that she's just loud though, she has a voice with incredible range. I've heard her do opera for her University degree, she can do smokey jazz, Native call songs, pop covers and her own writing - it all rocks. If you haven't heard any of her stuff, check out her myspace page; although I have to say that so far, her albums have failed to capture that full quality of her voice. It's kind of disappointing really. Hopefully more exposure will lead to more money and better producers... maybe I can hook her up with Danny Michel? Ciao! 3:02 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove 27 Nov 2007 If I disappear, it’s because I learned the truth I had an epiphany this morning. Calgarians don't actually drive like brain-damaged 3 year-olds; they just perpetuate the myth because it conveniently covers the more horrible truth. Calgarians hunt human beings for sport. It's the only explanation. Spread the knowledge, so that we can all take the proper precautions. Ciao. 10:10 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove 26 Nov 2007 Weekends are too short After work on Friday, Stuart and I packed the car and headed out to Canmore. We had tickets to see Colin James and Craig Northey do an acoustic set at the Eric Harvie theater at the Banff Center. If you don't know Colin James, well, I don't know what to say, but I will fill you in that Craig was in the Odds, a Canadian band that did pretty well in the 90's. He also wrote the opening credits song for "Corner Gas". The show was excellent - 2 guys, 6 guitars, a mandolin and lots of fun! They mostly did covers of Colin's songs, but they hit the high points of Odds stuff too. There was some amazing guitar playing and we enjoyed it greatly, despite the drunks behind us feeling the need to sing along with the chorus on songs they really liked. We spent the rest of the weekend at a condo that is owned by family friends. It's in Canmore and they rent it out like a sort of private time share. Three bedrooms, 2.5 baths, fireplace, satellite tv, garage, nicely decorated and stocked - all for about half the price of a basic hotel room! Stuart has been fighting a cold for a while, so we played Scrabble, watched Stargate and took lots of naps. Not exciting maybe, but relaxing and nice. We did go out for dinner before the show, to a restaurant in Canmore called Murrieta's. We had a spinach, goat cheese, beet and onion salad that was fantastic. Stuart had Saffron Seafood Risotto and I had Teriyaki Glazed Duck with Pineapple rice. Very, very yummy! The only disappointing thing was dessert - the only choice that didn't involve nuts or bananas was the Warm Chocolate Cake, which the waiter said was really good, but turned out to be pretty standard. Of course, I might have been a bit hard on it, because I really wanted the Vanilla Bean Creme Brulee, which unfortunately also involved hazelnuts. Bah. It was so amazing to wake up every morning and look out the window to see mountains. Neither of us wanted to leave and we made pretty good excuses to stay as late as we could. We only really got it together when it turned dark and the view disappeared, so I guess it's a good thing that the sun's going down earlier these days. It's strengthened my resolve that some day we will live in mountains somewhere. Not right now and maybe not in Alberta - but somehow, we'll manage it! In other news, it's bloody cold today (my computer is currently reporting -16 and there is windchill to add to that.) I was very pleased with my new down coat and I felt positively old standing at the bus stop. Some girl was there wearing a felted cotton coat, no hat, scarf or mitts, in skin tight jeans and leather flats with no socks and I found myself thinking "Young people today are insane." Of course, I thought that when I WAS a young person, but standing there in knee length down, wool toque, scarf, mitts and holding my tea mug just seemed to highlight it. I was pretty comfy though. Ciao! 4:09 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove 22 Nov 2007 My Celebrity Look-alikes MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Roots This is hilarious - it totally depends on the picture that you start with. I tried a different one and got 11 matches, only 2 of whom were women! Granted, the guys were pretty feminine, but a girl could get insulted if she wanted to. LOL 4:34 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove Sleep and cold I slept on the couch last night. No, Stuart and I did not have our first fight - he was snoring like an asthmatic lawnmower in my ear. Usually, when he snores, I can just poke him a bit, he'll roll over and that's that. Not so last night. For one thing, he was so out that poking him didn't work, I actually had to nudge him into consciousness and ask him to move. And secondly, after doing that four times in an hour and having him start up yet again, I gave up. Thank goodness we went for the sofa bed, that's plenty wide enough for one to sleep comfortably without any re-arrangement! I'm not sure if it has to do with having lost some weight, not having a fast enough metabolism, getting old or some synergy thereof - but damn! winter's getting colder every year. But just for me - according to the mercury, it's still not even really winter; overnight lows of -10 and daytime highs in the 0 area used to be brisk not cold. Although I don't think my office helps. I'm sure they've got the heating/cooling system balanced as if the building was full of people, which it is not. We're at maybe 15-20% capacity, so there just aren't all the bodies helping to raise the ambient temperature. As I result, I'm sitting here in cords and a fleece sweater but my hands and nose are cold. Yesterday, my fingernails were turning purple! Can anyone recommend gloves that you can type, file, etc. in? Oh well, soon it will be time for lunch and I can take a brisk walk over to the slightly warmer Foothills cafeteria to warm up a bit. Not to mention that the single shot drink maker downstairs is doing a brisk business in hot chocolate and coffee! Ciao! 5:05 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove 21 Nov 2007 Gift giving mania I'm not Christian in any sense of the word, but even I agree that Christmas is ridiculously over-commercialized. Unfortunately, I think I'm a contributing factor to that. I love getting presents and I love giving them. I love the whole process - thinking of what to get someone, all the comparative shopping to find the best one, the best price, buying it, wrapping it, watching whomever it is open it. From beginning to end, it's just so much darn fun! As much as I have to reign in my spending on myself, I have to work that much harder not to go nuts buying stuff for other people. And it's not just at Christmas - I could buy stuff at every conceivable excuse: birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, Mother's/Father's Day, you name it. I really do need to win a lottery! Pleeeeeeease...... Ciao! 8:36 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove 20 Nov 2007 Pain So I had another migraine yesterday. I try to forget the details, but this was the first one in several years. Thankfully, I don't get them at all regularly - just often enough to hate 'em (which is once, I think.) Anyway, in traditional migraine style, I always get auras first - in my case, the center of my vision blacks out and I can only see stuff in the periphery. Yesterday morning, I was asleep and I was getting this phenomenon in my dream! Very weird. However, since I was unconscious, I didn't clue in until someone drove a large knife into my head. That woke me up and sent me digging blindly for the Zomig. It was a bit late in the process for it to work to it's max, so I called into work and then collapsed on my bed moaning. After a couple of hours, the pain abated enough for me to slip gratefully into unconsciousness again. I woke up sometime around noon, when the migraine itself had passed and I was into what I called the "migraine hangover". I think I may have picked the term up from Thing 1. Anyway, during the hangover, nothing really bothers me anymore, not light or noise or anything; there's just a sort of bruised feeling where the pain was worst and I'm generally tired and sore. When I brushed my teeth last night with the electric toothbrush, I discovered a new phenomena - it felt like there was a small rock just inside my skull where the knife went in and it was vibrating along. Not painful exactly, just disconcerting. Thank god I don't get nauseated with my migraines. I don't even want to think how much that would hurt. And I really don't understand people who say they are having a migraine but they come to/stay at work. I can barely open my eyes and breathing hurts - rational thought is completely impossible. Today, I am drinking lots of water, taking the odd pain killer for the head "bruise" and taking it slow. Once again though, it seems that I will survive - yeah!!!! Ciao! 7:33 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove 14 Nov 2007 Ooops! So Stuart tells me the other day that I'm not allowed to read "Looking for Group" without his supervision or I'll figure out my Christmas present. (Tactical error right there, but we'll overlook it.) So I said, "What? You're getting me a Richard doll for Christmas?" He said, "Aw, you guessed, now I can't get it for you!" They MAKE a Richard doll????? Cooooool..... I hope it comes with his familiar and imp! Ciao! 8:10 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove Sleep that knits the ’raveled sleeve of care It's weird, but ever since we moved, Stuart and I have both noticed that the bed just wasn't as comfy. We tossed and turned and woke up stiff and sore. Stuart flipped the matress twice, but with no noticeable improvement. When we got back from our recent Edmonton trip, we checked to see if the box spring had been put on wrong somehow. Nope - but we flipped the mattress one more time, just for kicks. Lo and behold - it's much more comfortable. I haven't asked Stuart yet, but the last few nights I've slept much better. (He's so banged up from work that I'm not sure he'd notice a difference!) My theory - the bed was experiencing jet lag; the corporeal bit moves across a space and it takes time for the soul to catch up! Either that or it was just feeling unloved in all the upheaval. Ciao! 07 Nov 2007 New horizons So, at the urgings of several people, I've applied for a new position. It hasn't actually been posted yet, but the old job description was Communications Manager for SACRI. It would involve doing a lot of stuff that I've never done before - or at least not been paid for or done a whole lot of. I'll have to learn HTML, organize press conferences, etc. Not that I think it involves anything I can't learn - in fact, that's why I applied... the potential for a job that's interesting and new and challenging. It would also involve a lot of stuff that I've often thought, "If I was doing that, I could do it so much better!" Like internal communications, website design and database design. I've spent the last several years sickened by the grammatical idiocies of people who write for public consumption, griping about the horrible user interfaces of software I've been forced to use and generally becoming resigned to the hopelessness of beaurocracies. I certainly can't change that across the board, and maybe I'll run aground on all the same roadblocks as my predecessors... but on the other hand, maybe I can create a bastion, however small, for sanity! Assuming, of course, that they give me the job... Ciao! Ed. comment: Stuart pointed out that if I'm going to bitch about grammatical and typographical errors, I should probably spell "bureaucracy" properly. Some people are so picky! 8:34 - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

06 Nov 2007 Sunshine confuses me So, Sunday was the day to set the clocks back an hour and sleep in. Stuart and I had a lovely day in and realized that what we really need is about 3 weeks of those. Time to buy another lottery ticket! I was very confused though, on Monday morning when I left for the bus at my regular time and the sun was up again. What the hell? The longest day of the year hasn't happened yet, what's going on? It took me about half an hour to put all the pieces together... Daylight SAVINGS Time - riiiIIIiiight! It's the first time I can actually remember noticing a difference. Silly me. Monday was also the day that I resigned myself to winter and pulled out the insulated jacket. (Not the heavy duty, knee length, down coziness I treated myself to this year, just the synthetic hip length number, but still.) The latest batch of snow isn't really melting and the high yesterday was 0 degrees C. Bah. Ciao!