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ShinyHappy - Thoughts for April 1st - 15th
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04/15/04 Harvey and I ate noodles together.
Tonight was a pho night! Glory, glory. Since we're going to be separated for the weekend it was a nice idea for us to go on a little date the night before, and we had to go pick up the train tickets too.
On the streetcar Andrew informed me that he also had to go and pick up tickets for the Kraftwerk concert that he and Colin are supposed to go to next weekend. The plan was for me to go to Pho Hung and order our food while he did that, and he'd arrive at the restaurant at about the same time as the food was served. The theory was sound.
Pho Hung being Pho Hung, however, means that one must always expect the unexpected. So of course the food came really quickly, and all at once. When I arrived and asked for a table for two they only brought one teacup, napkins for one, and one menu, so I had to insist that someone else was coming. When the food arrived and I started in while Andrew's just sat there across the table from me, one waitress kept giving me the hairy eyeball as if my imaginary friend and I were having a romantic dinner. I did find that eating pho by one's self is not as much fun as eating it with someone you are fond of. Slurping noodles alone is a lonely thing to do.
Andrew did finally arrive, and not very happily. He'd had a crappy day anyhow, and when he arrived at the store to buy the tickets it was closed. So he had made a pointless trip and ended up not finishing his soup as it had gotten too cold by the time he reached the end. I think that having two bubble teas cheered him up a little, and then scandalizing a little old woman while we were waiting for the streetcar by pressing me up against the glass was also a bit of a pick-me-up. Not that I minded. I do what I can to cheer the poor boy up.
So we went to Union Station and got our train tickets. I'll be in Kingston until Monday evening, which will be really nice. I haven't seen enough of my family since Christmas. When we move to Ottawa we'll probably get to see more of each other, though. Trips to Kingston won't be so hard for Andrew and me, and coming to the Ottawa area is something my mom does on a semi-regular basis anyhow. Win-win.
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04/14/04 goonie pudding tubesocks
Andrew had a brilliant suggestion for me last night. He said that while he was in Ottawa this weekend doing train stuff for the majority of the time, I should visit my family in Kingston. Woo hoo! I haven't been since late February. So of course I agreed, and I'm now looking forward to a nice weekend in my old hometown seeing my mom and sisters and all the nieces and nephews. It kills me every time we go to Ottawa to pass through Kingston and not get off the train. I see the Cineplex, the Division street restaurant strip, the Collins Bay prison, all that stuff that I know so well, and I get a bit misty. It just feels wrong to pass so close to all the people I love and not actually see them.
Anyhow. Tonight while Andrew and I were sitting at our computers Halo came along and meowed at me to pay attention to him, so I picked him up and petted him while I read whatever I was reading on the computer. A few moments later I noticed that he had left my lap and transferred himself to Andrew's lap! Hello? He's supposed to love me more! Of course, their little love-in degenerated into Halo giving Andrew ferocious love bites and Andrew picking him up in a huff to throw him somewhere (I rescued the little ingrate), so my pride is slightly assuaged. And as always, I'm very thankful that Halo loves the man I love. It was a bit worrisome at the outset when Andrew said he was allergic to cats, which now appears to be untrue. In Halo's case, anyway.
I'm starting to think that there's some truth to the whole headache/changing weather theory. I recall that it was when the weather was changing last year that I had major headache issues that eventually led to a visit to the emergency room. They scanned my brain for me and nothing was bursting inside of it at that time, and they sent me off with a prescription for Tylenol 3, which I didn't fill because it makes my heart race. Whatever the reason, my headache flared up again yesterday and today as well. I should be buying shares in Advil.
As a public service, I'm providing a link to this site so that you can secretly profile the handwriting of your friends and family and decide for yourself if they're serial killer material. You'll thank me.
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04/13/04 "You can't have "a little grace." You either have grace, or you ... don't." Elaine's interviewer, Seinfeld episode no. 87 'The Chaperone'
So Rayna called me this afternoon and asked if I wanted to go out for coffee before Survivor Tuesday starts. I'm all like, "Sure." I arranged with Andrew that we'd pick him up from work, and Rayna came and got me in her little red car. We eventually settled on going to McDonalds, as we'd been talking about it since last week and I hadn't eaten there in a long, long time. Sometimes, you just want McDonalds.
So we went. Rayna orderd a Coke and fries. I ordered a Coke and a plain cheeseburger. Mine took a minute or two longer (yeah, yeah, yeah, Alannah), and Rayna went ahead and sat down. When everything was on my tray I picked it up and started to turn away, fumbling my purse onto the tray as well. As I was turning and fumbling and trying not to bump into people, my Coke began a slow, arcing dive off my tray and down toward the floor. The form was perfect, but the landing was very, very splashy. As I tend to do in panic situations, I uttered a loud curse word, to the unamusement of the mothers of the kids clustered around the counter.
Silly me. I red-facedly accepted a new Coke from the cashier who routinely started pouring it as soon as the first splash was heard and hightailed it to the sitting area, blessedly around the corner from the counter. This is not my most embarassing McDonalds story, however. Long ago when I worked at the Peterborough Square McDonalds in Peterborough I was hurrying to get a burger during a mad rush of customers and slipped on some lettuce that had escaped from a Big Mac or McChicken sandwich. Burger and I flew up, burger and I fell down. I faked injury and escaped to the back until I thought perhaps whichever customers had been there were not at the counter any longer. That was embarassing, and I'm blushing a bit now as I write.
I ascended to even higher levels of fumble-foolery as the night progressed. May received the fabulous news today that she has been accepted into the Women's Studies PHD program at York University (Yay, May!). We of course wanted to salute the future Dr. May with wine, so out came the terrible sacramental wine of a few entries ago. We all received our plastic cups of wine (Passover ended tonight, they had not yet brought out the real stuff) and after a sip or two most of the cups got placed somewhere where the original holder hoped they'd be forgotten. Andrew and I professed that we would drink our wine, and the wine of others as well, and at some point I picked up my wine from the windowsill behind the sofa where I'd placed it. Somehow, the cup leapt and twisted in my hands and ended up all over my pants, shirt, and the sofa as well.
No, I was not drunk. I honestly have no idea how that happened. As far as I could tell, I had a firm grasp on that cup. But I didn't drink any more wine.
Anyhow, May was kind enough to loan me clothes to wear as mine dried, and the sofa cover came off so it could be sent away to the dry cleaners. I think I was more horribly embarassed by the wine incident, as it created a mess in the house of my friends. As Andrew pointed out when Rayna and I picked him up from work, at least it was someone's job to clean up the mess I made at McDonalds. Dan and May had to do it for free.
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04/12/04 Today was Monday.
The ongoing saga of whether or not I have employment is starting to really tick me off. (What doesn't these days, huh?) I called the temp agency yet again and talked to the woman there. She said she still had not heard from Queen's, but that I shouldn't worry. The study is definitely going to happen. Eventually. Then she said, "Oh, I do have something you might be interested in that would be for tomorrow and Wednesday. Let me gather the info and call you back." I said, "Sure," and she called back a minute later to tell me that she talked to the client and the job had been canceled. Weird, because the last time she had a two-day job for me the exact same thing happened. What is going on?
Andrew gave his notice at work today for the end of July, which is cool. We'll get to spend some of the summer in Toronto, which I really wanted to do, but this plan will make the end of August less crushed for us with business related to school and moving. Plus, Andrew has to deejay a wedding at the end of August, so the less going on at that time, the better. It would be nice to be settled in our new apartment somewhat by the time he starts his studies.
We're going to Ottawa this coming weekend. As it turns out, we should have gone to Ottawa this past weekend. Why? Well, Andrew's sister called tonight to talk to him. As they were chatting I was in the kitchen making dinner and had the water running when suddenly over the sound of the water I heard a strange, ululating sort of wail. I hurried to the living room and asked seriously, WTF? Andrew was in paroxysms of brotherly happiness, because he had just discovered that his sister is getting married. The fact of which she revealed to the family members that were present at Easter dinner. So of course we regret not being able to be there for the announcement, but it doesn't make us any less happy for her. I met her fiance over Christmas and really, really like him.
Alannah's kids all liked the South Park renditions of them that I did. I was worried that they might not like the hair. There are limited styles to choose from, and I find that kids are funny about stuff like that sometimes. I was especially worried about Kelton, as once when he was two his dad gave him a haircut, which was all cool with Kelton until he looked in the mirror, saw he had no hair, and cried, "Not like that!" Which reminds me, that took place directly after a visit I made out to British Columbia where they were living at the time, and I dredged up an old photo from that visit that was on my resurrected computer. You can see it here if you so desire. I'm actually standing on a very scary suspension bridge, and that expression on my face is really masking the sheer terror I was feeling. I'm kind of afraid of heights.
I have also updated the Us page on the site with a couple of new pictures of me and a new picture of Andrew. Since we don't have good pictures of us together yet, I stuck two headshots side by side. Mine is a fairly wretched, blurry one of me laughing maniacally, but you'll get the idea. Andrew's looks remarkably like his South Park portrait, and frankly I look like mine too. See and compare!
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04/11/04 Andrew has magic hands.
It being Easter weekend I made sure to talk to my mom and both of my crazy sisters tonight. I called Alannah's place and Mimi answered, which pleasantly surprised me. I felt a little blue about the fact that they're all going to be having a big Easter dinner tomorrow without me, so I had to harass them as much as possible to make myself feel better. The problem with my sisters is that when one of us is on the phone and the other two are at the other end of the line there's a three-way sort of conversation going on that is even crazier than when we're all in one place. During the conversation I realized that I hadn't made South Park characters of any of the nieces and nephews, so when I got off the phone I did just that. Go here to see them, or look at July, Kelton, Skotia and Sehrin separately. And don't be surprised too terribly much by these renderings. I was as faithful to the true personality of each subject as I possibly could be!
Well, O.K., the only things I can say are really true to life about the ... uh ... embellishments are July's glowing red eyes and Sehrin's black eye. And he just got that from being your everyday six-year-old and falling on his head last week. Um ... actually ... on second thought, maybe not your everyday six-year-old. Which is why we love him so.
As for little three-year-old July, well, she may look angelic in her photos, but I certainly wouldn't trust her if I was lying on the floor watching T.V. and she came strolling by. For more details on that, just ask Sehrin. Oh, wait, I forgot that he can't talk since he had his throat kicked in! (That's a slight exaggeration. He can talk.)
Andrew goes back to work tomorrow after having three glorious days off. I'm not so sure that he would consider them all that glorious, but he got wonderful amounts of glorious sleep. He needed sleep. Plus, today he pulled the hard drive out of my old, broken-down computer that I was sure was just a ruinous lump and installed it into his Mac so that I could pull all the files I want out of it. He's going to burn the contents to disk for me, which is awesome. My old graphics site has been due for an update for a very, very long time now, and I finally have access to all the files I need for it. I was only able to rescue about half of them before it tanked on me in Kingston and was planning a half-assed update. Now I can do a full-assed update, to my great joy.
I have unshakable faith in Andrew's ability to fix things. When I lived in Kingston my television had stopped working on me. I'd push the 'on' switch, and nothing would happen. For a couple of weeks I tried the 'on' button every now and again in the desperate hope that it would come back to life, but no. It sat dead and silent. So I then depended on books and the internet for my amusement (which is most probably what led to us meeting in the first place, since I had all this spare time to spend online). Right after we started seeing each other Andrew was visiting and, possibly bored with my hostessing skills, asked if he could take a look at the T.V. and see if he could figure it out. I said sure. I left the room, and when I came back he was sitting watching T.V.! I was shocked and awed and asked how he'd done it. And damn if he hadn't just pushed the 'on' button! So after witnessing a bona fide miracle such as that, I will always and forever ask Andrew to lay hands on whatever broken electronics I have around before taking them to a repair shop.
As for me, I'm back to my usual job-hunting tomorrow while my family eats turkey dinner and some kind of yummy desserts. I can't really complain after the food-filled week we've had with our dear, dear friends, can I, with more to look forward to on Tuesday? That'll be the pizza party after sunset. Yay!
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04/10/04 Death to Fox!
I'm having a brief affair at this very moment with Ritter Sport Rum Raisins Hazelenut chocolate bar. Today I could have gotten my true chocolate love, a Cocoa Camino bar, as a treat but we ran out of time for shopping before Rayna picked us up in her car to go visit Dan and May, so we only had time to go to Shopper's Drug Mart for a couple of necessities. I thought it would be nice to grab Andrew a Ritter Sport Marzipan chocolate bar. While doing that, I saw the aforementioned Rum Raisins and Hazelnut bar and thought, why not? I used to love Rum and Butter bars when they could still be had, and I love Fruit and Nut bars, so this should be a winner.
I just opened it, and it smelled like I'd poured myself a big ol' glass of rum. And after taking a bite, I'm seriously pleased with how rummy the raisins are. Mmmm mmm. It's not Cocoa Camino, of course, but sometimes it's nice to play the field a little, right? And come on! Rum! There's no alcohol content listed on the package, though, so I'm probably not going to get tipsy from eating it.
Getting tipsy could have happened at Dan and May's place tonight. I had some sacramental wine that was apparently really not great, but good enough for me! Disparaging marks aplenty were made about this stuff, but I like my wine sweet and syrupy and it really fit the bill. Especially nice was how it coated the plastic cup I drank it out of. I only had one glass of it, though, so no drunkeness ensued. And amazing was the amount of food that Dan and May once again piled in front of us tonight! Matzo and potatos and yams and salami and lox and cole slaw and gefilte fish and salad and pickles and olives and horseradish and chips and chocolate and a few kinds of drinks ... whew. There'd been some discussion of a few of us going to McDonalds at some later point, but after eating I knew it wasn't going to happen for me, at the very least.
Enjoyably, we also watched two episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Hilary came over with her cousin (who was scarily older-seeming than her 15 years) and brought her Buffy DVDs. It made me remember how much I love that show, and what a genius Joss Whedon really is. It kills me that Firefly got canceled. Damn you, Fox! You cancel shows with real quality and actual intelligence, and present absolute utter horrific shit like The Swan to the viewing public. Die, die!
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04/09/04 My brain is all better now.
Today was a very, very quiet day for us. Andrew did not have to go to work as it was Good Friday, so he again took advantage of having a day off to catch himself up on all the sleep he missed throughout the week. It once again took some intervention on my part with the assistance of Halo to get him awake and out of bed. Well, awake, anyhow. I was feeling lazy and could have just stayed on the bed chatting for a long time, but it was not to be. After playing hair and fur games* with Halo we did get up and proceeded to do large amounts of wonderful nothing for the rest of the day.
Sound boring? It was great. We relaxed, ate food, puttered around, and watched the last episode of Firefly. Going out is reserved for days that were not today.
Hey, today was also mostly headache-free. Whaddaya know? I remember getting intense migraines at this time of year a couple of years back, and the ops manager at work kept telling me it was because of the changes in air pressure due to spring coming. True? I don't know. It's the kind of thing I would Google if I cared enough, but it's not like it has anything to do with hair**, so why bother? I went to my doctor about it at that time and she gave me a sample of some kind of migraine medication that didn't help them, so she said that they weren't the kind of migraines she could treat. Turns out it's more than likely she just didn't care that much, but that's another story altogether!
Since it's making the rounds of the internet right now and everyone is linking to it in their blog, I feel the need to link to it too: The Subservient Chicken. Ask him to do stuff. He'll probably do it.
That's all I got. Did I mention that today we did nothing?
*If you hold a strand of Halo's fur in front of him he'll try to bite it out of your hand. If you trail one of my hairs around (on my back works well) he'll pounce on it.
**Sarcasm intended mostly for Jerome and Alannah, but also for you if you silently condemn my recent hair obsession.
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04/08/04 Warning: Today I used the word 'masturbatory'.
I just admonished Andrew for staying up too late for the third night in a row and he reminded me that he has the next three days off! Wheeee! I forgot all about that. The terrible mood I've been in can lift slightly now, right?
The terrible mood is due mostly to this derned headache that keeps acting like it's going away, but not doing so. It's not bad enough to keep me from doing things, thankfully, but persistent and annoying enough to make me crusty. Crustier than usual, some might say!
Anyhow, on to bigger and more disturbing things! I discovered another site today that totally blows away any creep factor I might have still been hanging on to regarding The Long Hair Community. I hate to even link to it, but The Long Hair Site just seems wrong. Why, when the names are so similar? Well, the Long Hair Community is about long hair. It's not about long-haired women. Both sexes are welcome to post and discuss the beauty of hair itself, not the beauty of hair on a particular gender. This is not the case at The Long Hair Site, which openly focuses only on women with long hair. The author, Frank, who has his height and weight in his author bio for reasons which escape me, goes to some effort in his FAQ to say that it is not a fetish site. As to the question of why he focuses only on long-haired women on his site, well, he pretty much says that to devote a site to both sexes would mean twice the work, which I think is ludicrous. However, he does go on to admit that female hair pleases him much more than male hair.
No matter what, though, it makes me feel uncomfortable. Not because he likes long hair. Whatever. That's your thing. What really creeps me out is the hair-care section of his site where he gives actual hair advice. There it is the paternal yet creepy-old-man tone that sets my skin a-crawlin! He says things like, "It is important that you take time for hair care - men will certainly adore your look when your hair is in best shape, and you will enjoy the wonderful tresses yourself! The TLHS hair care section provides you with information on how to care for long hair. It will be helpful for you ladies out there (or for you gentlemen, if you have long haired partners) to obtain nice hair." (Cut and pasted so all typos belong to Frank.)
No. No, no, no, nonononononono. The only good thing that I found on that site was a link to The Men's Long Hair Site, where I found the best quote ever by this month's Samson: "Be gentle, always handle your hair in the same manner you would a young, fragile, shivering little bunny."
I suspect that I'm harbouring a double-standard here, as a site devoted entirely to long-haired men doesn't seem to bother me in the same way. It was apparently created by a man for men, not as a self-justified masturbatory soft-porn outlet. That's something, I suppose. It's the condescending tone that I pick up from Frank's site that seems to get my back up, whereas the Men's Long Hair Site seems to be about a group of equals, not one individual and a gathering of followers.
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04/07/04 I think there should be a Children circus, with performing toddlers!
This was supposed to be an uneventful, quiet day. It basically was, but instead of spending it at home just the two of us, Andrew and I were invited to Dan and May's place tonight to help them eat some of the incredible quantities of Passover food that were left over from their Seder of the night before. So we went there and stuffed ourselves with bowls of May's incredible chicken soup. The matzo balls were so good, and very, very filling. We still had to nibble on almonds and olives and chocolate and whatnot, and then they sent me home with an entire bowl full of hard boiled eggs which May had forgotten to serve at the Seder. And they're mine, all mine! Ha ha ha! And I even get to keep the dollar-store bowl I took them away in!
Dan did helpfully warn me not to wash the bowl using nail polish remover, as it would destroy the plastic. To which I now respond: I think I can wash it using nail polish remover if I use the non-acetone kind, silly, if washing it with nail polish remover were the sort of thing I'd do. And yes, he knows this little tidbit through personal experience.
I did not receive any phone calls from Poor Lawn Care today, so it looks as if we may have been successfully removed from their list of people to repeatedly harass. I accuse Andrew of curmudgeonly behaviour on a regular basis, but when it comes to telemarketing, I'm just as intolerant as hell. I used to feel especially hateful when the Kingston Police Association called yearly to ask me to donate money to their charity of something-or-other circus fund so underprivileged kids could go to the circus when it came to town. My question was always, 'Well, is it an animal circus?" The quiet, knowing reply on the other end of the line would be, "Yes, it is." I'd have to say, "I'm sorry, but I can't give my money to anything that supports animal cruelty." Their startlingly unoriginal comeback was then, "But, think of the children!"
Think of the children? I'd feel badly thinking of the children as they watched animal cruelty in three rings, frankly. My attitude always pissed the cop off whose crappy job it was to call me, as if he weren't unhappy enough about having to pull that kind of duty. So we'd get off the phone, neither of us satisfied, and I'd be left with the uneasy knowledge that they know my name and where I live. And they can arrest me on any flimsy pretext.
Of course, now I'm on the lam in Toronto. Soon to be Ottawa. Which is fast approaching. I haven't fully absorbed that yet, actually. I think I may have started to tonight. Dan, May, Rayna, and Andrew were talking about Ottawa people they all know, and for some reason I suddenly got very sad about how soon I'd be moving away from Toronto. According to May, however, it will be for two years at most, so I have that to hold on to, at least. The huge bright spot in Ottawa, of course, is that Colin and Jen are there. Maybe they'll play bread-hiding games with us too. Sigh.
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04/06/04 I may hang myself with the phone cord soon.
Ring, ring!
"Hello?"
"Hello, this is Brett calling from Poor Lawn Care. Is this Mrs. Jeanes?"
"No, it is not."
"Is Mr. Jeanes home?"
"No, he is not"
"Is this his daughter?"
"Uh, no. Listen, Poor Lawn care has been calling here the last couple of days, actually, and we haven't been home to get the calls, but we live in an apartment and don't have a lawn. Please don't call any more."
"Oh, I see. We'll have your number taken off the list."
"Thanks. Bye." Click.
Ring, ring!
"Hello?"
"Hello, this is Finn calling from Poor Lawn Care. Is this Mrs. Jeanes?"
"Uh, no. Look, someone from your company called last night and I told them that we don't have a lawn and we want to be taken off your calling list."
"Oh, I'm sorry about that! Your number must not be off the list yet. I'll have that taken care of."
"I'd appreciate it. Thank you, bye." Click.
Ring, ring!
"Hello?"
"Hello, this is Bianca calling from Poor Lawn Care. Is this Mrs. Jeanes?"
"Are you kidding me? You people called a couple of hours ago! I've told you twice to take our number off your calling list! We don't have a lawn!"
"Oh, my, I'm terribly sorry, ma'am! Your number must not be off the list yet. I'll have it looked into right away!"
"Please do! Bye." Click.
Ring, ring!
"Hello, you've reached Poor Lawn Care. How can I help you?"
"Hello, I was wondering if I could speak with the manager, please?"
"Well, you can talk to me! I'm Cherise. What can I do for you?"
"Listen, I've told three different people from your company that I don't have a lawn but your company just keeps calling and calling and calling. Every time we come home your number is on the call display! Someone from your company just tried to call two minutes ago and I didn't bother to answer it, because I don't want to talk to your salespeople any more!"
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, ma'am. I'll look into it right away and have your number taken off the list as a priority."
"I'd appreciate it! Bye." Click.
Ring, ring!
"Hello?"
"Hello, this is Bidet calling from Poor Lawn Care. Is this Mrs. Jeanes?"
Obviously, I'm getting nowhere with these people. Even if I had a lawn, I would not want their services. They can take their lawn care and cram it.
Anyhow, that was a pretty exasperating part of my day. Andrew came home from work and unexasperated me by making dinner, which was his second attempt at perfecting his mother's macaroni and cheese recipe. It turned out so delicious this time that Andrew said (and I quote): "It's so full of cheesy goodness that I don't even have to add ketchup!"
You know it's good if you don't even have to add ketchup.
My headache was improving as the day wore on, but I still had it when we went to see the Squarepusher concert, which turned out to be a really, really bad idea for someone with a lingering headache, yes. I was near tears by the time we left, and seriously concerned that I'd vomit on the way to the subway station. Being out in the fresh air did help, as the combination of extreme loudness, strobe effects, and damnable cigarette smoke were its major aggravations. Arriving home to take my Advil and enjoy some comforting from Andrew made all the difference. I will attempt a similar concert again, of course. I assured Andrew that I'm not always a killjoy.
However, my hair absolutely reeks of smoke. Barf. I really miss the smoke-free laws in Kingston. Sigh.
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04/05/04 Ow, my cranium!
Man, I don't know if I should bug the lady at the temp agency about the job. I haven't heard anything from her for a long while now, and she said she'd call me when she knew about the training dates. I'm sure that it can't hurt to show enthusiasm, so I'll call tomorrow when I get up. I'd love to have a cool job, and this one is cool. There's a severe shortage of cool jobs out there.
Tonight I do not feel good and my head hurts. I think I do not feel good because my head hurts, but whatever. Head hurty too much to think about it. Andrew and I are going to a concert tomorrow night so my head had better be better by then. It's been mostly just low-grade, more-annoying-than-anything type pain for a couple of days now, but an evening of throbbing electric dance music might just push me over the edge into migraine country if it doesn't ease up. Argh.
So this is it. I'm going to bed, with visions of henna parties dancing in my head.
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04/04/04 Andrew got waxed (dot dot dot!)
Another unexpected get-together at Dan and May's place tonight! What fun. I had just walked over to the desk to get a pen and paper to make a grocery list so Andrew could brave the dumb cold to go get us some groceries so we could eat food, and the phone rang! It was Dan calling to invite us over for chicken soup, as May had made a batch in a pot large enough for a small child to swim in.
Of course, they called back later to inform us that we'd be ordering sushi instead as May felt that the soup was too schmaltzy for us to eat. She showed it to us, and it did indeed have a high schmaltz factor. But it looked fantastic. I've had May's soup before and it's incredible.
So anyhow, the grocery list was abandoned, I was showered, and off we went to Dan and May's. I thought I'd been told that Hilary and Marcus were also coming. Marcus did not show up at any point, but Hilary did arrive before the food did. As they were preparing to put Noah to bed, Dan and May requested that we three do them a favour. Passover begins tomorrow at sundown, and Dan and May are hosting the second Seder, which is the second Passover dinner, on Tuesday. The house has to be kosher for Passover, so anything that is chametz, or leavened, has to be gone from the house. So on the night before Passover, a ritualistic search is made that is called 'Bedikath Chametz', or 'search for leaven'. They gave us some bread to break up in ten pieces and we had to hide the pieces in various rooms of their home, which they then to had to find using candlelight and sweep onto a wooden ladle using a feather. Here's a link to a page that tells about it in real detail, as I know I'm not doing it justice here.
We had lots of fun hiding the bread, and Hilary hid a piece on the top of a painting that Dan had been in the process of hanging as we arrived tonight, which was by far the cleverest spot. The last one to be found, however, was one that I'd hidden and I swear Dan looked right at it, twice, before it was finally discovered. Once all the pieces were found Dan made the ritual declaration that all chametz to be found had been. During this final portion, however, the candle that Dan was holding (he'd taken it from May as the wax was running off of the poorly-made cardboard wax-catcher that Dan had rigged up and was burning her hands) began to drip wax onto the floor. Andrew leaned forward to catch the wax in his (apparently heat-resistant) hands. However, when Dan moved, the wax then dripped onto my helpful boyfriend's head, hardening there in clumpy wax chunks. He took it with great good grace, of course, joking about enjoying any activities involving feathers and hot wax.
And no, that is not a come-on to all you kinksters, either.
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04/03/04 bawk bawk bawk!
Entirely untrue search string that led someone to my site today: hair washing fetish.
I feel like I have nothing to say about today, which is stupid because stuff happened, and it was stuff that was more interesting than stuff that happens a lot of the time.
Let's see ... Well, it was a good day because it was Andrew's day off. We stayed up ridiculously late last night and I slept in a little this morning, but Andrew took advantage of having a day full of possibilities to sleep as long as humanly possible. Something I heartily approve of. So anyhow, the phone rang a lot today for some reason, and finally one call woke him up for good. I went into the bedroom and got on the bed to talk to him as he was continuing the process of waking up without having to jump out of bed right away, and Halo came and joined us. So we all three just spent a nice long while on the bed, Andrew and I cuddled up and me playing a game with Halo involving the drawstring of my pajama bottoms (the string is very long, so at no point was I worried about my personal safety) and me trying to drop it in his ears while he tried to kill it. It was just a great way to start our day together. Both my favourite guys paying attention to me. Woo hoo!
Now, at one point my day became slightly disturbing. I do encourage feedback from visitors to my site, which means I'm cool with email from anyone. However, it seems that visitors to my site might make some assumptions about me that aren't entirely accurate. I think that it is not a logical leap to assume that because I own a novelty Hello Kitty vibrator it necessarily follows that I'm up for a kinky threesome with you and your husband. I'm not exactly freaked out by it, and really, I'm kind of flattered, but nowhere on my site have I indicated interest in offers of a sexual nature. I don't think.
So, yeah. Then tonight Andrew and I went to a Wibi show at York. Wibi is an amazing a cappella group that Dan and May were both a part of at one point. We'd gone to the Christmas show which was great fun, and a particular favourite of mine at that time was their rendition of a song from the Nutcracker Suite (Dance De La Fee Dragee) made very clever by Wibi pretending to be a bell chorus. They all wore white gloves and sang their assigned notes as "bong!" while pretending to ring a bell. So I was pleased tonight to see it on the program again. They came out, wearing gloves, and started in. Suddenly at a certain point in the song they all pulled off one glove which turned out to be rubber and blew it up, then held it on top of their heads and proceeded to sing the rest of the song as chickens saying, "bawk, bawk!" and pecking each other. I nearly peed myself.
See, stuff did happen today. And I had a really good hair day because my hair seems to enjoy the new conditioner I bought for C/O washing. When I was wetting my hair over the side of the tub before I gooped on all the conditioner I have to use I noticed how much red colour was rinsing out as well. My hair wasn't any less red today, however, so it just shows how much of the henna mix actually stays in your hair even though you think you've rinsed it all out. It's weird because I rinse like crazy after hennaing my hair, but this happens every time. It takes like three days for the water to run clear again. I probably could have hennaed Andrew's hair this afternoon, too, if I'd pushed him, but I really don't want it to be like that. See, if we henna his hair and he hates it, I have to be able to say, "Well, you can't be mad at me. You wanted me to do it."
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04/02/04 Try to refrain from licking my scalp.
I had a surprisingly good day today. I was happy this afternoon because I finally got to talk to Rayna after I don't even know how long ... I think at least two weeks. So it was nice to chat, then we wondered if perhaps Dan and May were up for a bit of a get-together, so she called them and it was all arranged for everyone to meet there at around eight-thirty. I was pretty stoked about that, as Andrew and I haven't been getting out much lately, and I basically love getting together with our friends.
Today was also a henna day for me. I've been trying to keep it on my head for longer stretches every time I do it, and I lasted about five hours or so this time. Since I've 'perfected' my henna mix, I totally expect to have a scalp that temporarily looks like someone melted an orange popsicle over it, but I wonder how noticeable it really is when I'm out in public. Since Andrew was working late tonight I took the bus to Dan and May's on my own and felt like the people sitting behind me and standing near me as we rode could see this day-glo orange line on the top of my head where my hair was parted. I know that I would wonder about something like that if I wasn't familiar with the effects of henna. Luckily, it comes off the scalp after just a couple of washings.
Arriving at their place was nice, however, because as soon as I got in the door Dan announced that I looked good. Well, if that doesn't start a visit off nicely, what does? I'd put my hair in a bun to give the roots some lift and it came out curlier than I'd thought it would, and his comment was that it was shaped differently than usual. Which it certainly was. I'd been in slight despair over it before I left because to be honest, I don't quite know what to do with actual body in my hair, so stuck a headband in to keep the front part from going berserk and just hoped for the best, thinking that a combination of cluelessness and the rainy weather would result in a frizzed-out, wooly mess by the time I arrived. However, my hair seems to like the new conditioner I used on it and behaved itself nicely. Yay!
So we had a really fun evening. We watched this week's Survivor tonight instead of waiting until Tuesday, as next week is Passover and they'll be otherwise occupied. Plus, they've been plying us with booze recently when we visit. Woo hoo! We sat around after the show and drank tea and scotch and Kahlua and bourbon and chatted for a nice long time. Really good conversation, too. We have good, good friends.
Dan and May also took the OK Cupid love test and were horrified with their results. I have to admit, it makes me feel slightly better about my own results, as they'd troubled me. I do not feel better in the sense that I'm glad that they're so much more unhappy with their results than I was with mine, but in the sense that the test is obviously flawed, as neither of them seems to personify what the test said about them in the end. Not that I really thought that it was some sort of definitive result that I'd have to base all future romantic interactions on, but it's still a little unnerving. The price of loving to take online tests, I suppose.
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04/01/04 I miss out on all the fun stuff.
Well, it was a quiet April Fool's day on the home front. Neither Andrew nor I tried to pull one over on each other, likely due to the fact that I was still asleep when he left for work. I considered putting Saran Wrap over the toilet before I went to bed last night, but then I realized if I'd done so, I'd also more than likely be the one who had to to clean up whatever happened as a result. And it would probably have fooled Halo before Andrew, as he'd likely try to drink out of the toilet while we were sleeping. So nothing foolish happened here.
However, in Kingston foolish things were happening on a grand scale! I was talking to Mimi tonight, as we hadn't talked in a while, and she told me a tale that made me extraordinarily happy. I've been going on and on and on about washing my hair using the 'conditioner only' method. Well, the phrase, "... and a child shall lead them," comes into play here in a big way. July, who will be four this year, took it upon herself today to close herself in the bathroom with their cat and give her a C/O treatment. Using almost an entire bottle of Garnier Fructis Greasy Roots, Dry Ends formula. When asked why, she very sensibly said that she wanted to clean the cat.
Apparently Reese (the long-suffering cat in question) wasn't thrilled. Luke had to hold her down in the bathtub while Mimi ran the water on her using the shower attachment. There was blood involved. I talked to Mom and Alannah both tonight too, and they thought the same thing I did. "She must have been nice and soft afterward."
I've bathed cats before. It's never fun. One time many years back we had a flea problem and bought some flea foam from the pet store to put on the cats. We had two at the time. We put foam on Feather, a pretty little cream-coloured kitty with a lovely, poofy tail. She didn't like it much, and it made her tail go all stringy and skinny, but it was pretty easy. So when it came time to put it on Halo, we figured there'd be no problem. Not so. As we rubbed the foam in, he started drooling and foaming at the mouth like crazy. This terrified him and he got loose and starting shooting around the room like a rocket, trailing foam from the mouth and foam from his body. We finally managed to catch him and rinsed him off as best we could. We read the bottle again, and there was a little note that said, "May cause excess salivation." Yeah.
I don't know why, but I'm kind of excited about this. Google is going to be offering an email service that's supposed to be wonderfully shiny and cool. Google is something that fascinates me anyhow, and they're always coming up with new little toys and ways to occupy your time. Fun!
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