 |
free hosting image hosting hosting reseller online album e-shop famous people |  |
  |
||
|
free hosting image hosting hosting reseller online album e-shop famous people | |
|
||
ShinyHappy - Thoughts for February 1st - 15th, 2004
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/15/04 I'll stop complaining soon, I swear!
The thing about beginning to feel better when you have a bad cold is that by that time, you actually sound far worse. Alannah and I have discussed this phenomenon and it is very true. I'm feeling much perkier than I was, having gotten over the feverish, lethargic phase I was suffering through, and now I am hungrier and more energetic, while sounding completely horrible.
We went out with our friends John and Ted tonight, but on the phone beforehand John kept telling me that I didn't sound so great. I left a message on Mark's phone and got an email from him later telling me that I sound awful. Despite all this I was very ready to go out and have some fun. The four of us went to The Rainforest Cafe, which I had heard of but never gone to before. It was O.K.. It was very themed, of course, and our waitress was our 'guide'. She told us this with some eye-rolling and mockery of the idea in general, which I appreciated.
Overall I liked the place well enough, except that randomly the lights would dim and flicker and the booming sounds of thunder would play through overhead speakers, all to simulate some sort of tropical storm, I'm assuming. This in itself would have been bearable, except that every time it happened, the highly disturbing animatronic apes and monkeys would go bananas (HAW HAW!) and shake the trees they were in, looking fearfully up at the ceiling. I can't stand primates, even fake ones.
In the end we closed the place out, sitting and chatting for over two and a half hours. We had a great time, or at least I did, and it was a really nice way to spend a Sunday night.
I did say that I was going to talk a little more about the actor that played Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen. His name is Jim Mezon and he was really amazing. Of the three actors, his performance was the one that seemed most genuine to me. His character had to portray an intense mixture of emotions and he did it perfectly. I really believed that he felt all of them, not just acted them well. This site has pictures of the actors and some talk about the play itself. There is no Internet Movie Database profile for him or I'd link to it here. Basically, I think he's great and I hope I get to see him act in some other roles as well in the near future.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/14/04 The Story of Pho
Finally, finally pho! I felt O.K. enough to go out, so there was no way I'd be missing out on my long-awaited soup night.
The day was special in more ways than just soup, however. Andrew made this a very, very meaningful Valentine's Day by getting his hair cut! Yay! He tends to procrastinate when it comes to this bit of maintenance and I routinely tease him (do not read 'nag') about it until he breaks down and gets a trim, but other people were starting to make comments as well, so you know the situation was getting out of hand. He's got incredibly thick hair with curl to it, and it was beginning to take on some aspects of the dreaded mullet. But, because of the nature of his hair he only trusts a couple of people with it, mainly one guy in Ottawa. He'd mentioned waiting until the Barenaked Ladies concert to get this done and I was against that notion, so he decided to try a barber here in Toronto that his friend recommended.
I thought that was great. So off Andrew went to the barber. Except he wasn't a barber, he was a snow boarder, and it wasn't a barbershop, it was a salon. Forty five dollars later Andrew came home with a ton of hair wax type product gunking up his locks and an admittedly hot haircut. Despite his new and improved sex appeal, I was blown away. I do not spend forty five dollars on my hair when I get it cut! Andrew and I both agreed that he looks very pretty now, however, so we can live with it. And I think he's seriously considering buying some hair wax.
Off we went then to Pho Hung. It was pretty busy, but not busy enough that we had any trouble getting a table. We ordered our usual fare and I was just so very, very happy to be there. Andrew's hot rolls came to the table and I watched jealously as he ate, waiting for my cold rolls to arrive. Now, the thing with Pho Hung is that food seems to arrive at the table in a haphazard manner, the soup sometimes coming before the rolls, or vice versa, the drinks surprising you with their appearance sometimes a quarter of the way through the meal. So I wasn't fazed when the soup arrived before my rolls. After a little while I started to worry, though, watching as cold rolls were delivered to various other tables in the establishment. The rolls are a major part of the experience for me, even though the soup is the hero of the piece. Andrew finally got tired of me muttering and asked a waitress about them. She disappeared and nothing happened for a long time. Finally I asked our original waitress and she looked thoroughly displeased, but plunked my rolls down in front of me a mere minute later.
I kept peeking inside the rolls to see if there was any spit in them.
If I ate spit, I don't care ... too much. It was a fantastic meal and I'm thoroughly pleased with our Valentine's date, and the day in general. Hair wax, noodle soup, and I'm feeling a little better. I can't complain.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/13/04 No soup for me!
It was not to be. I still felt like I'd been run over by a truck all day today. I optimistically showered and whatnot in the late afternoon, but by the time Andrew called me from work I knew I was still in no shape to go out and actually enjoy eating pho. So we rented a movie and had supper in.
We rented The Wedding Singer, which Andrew had not seen before. I knew he'd love it. Every song that played he said, "I have that on vinyl!" Who doesn't love that movie, actually?
Anyhow, I'm still sick and tired and lacking in energy to write anything beyond this bare bones little entry, but come hell or high water we're going out for pho tomorrow night!
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/12/04 I hope I'm not contagious
Copenhagen was great!
Well, the first act of Copenhagen was great! Unfortunately, I felt like so much incredible ick that I had to leave and go home during the intermission. Andrew stayed for the second act at my insistence. His Nana paid good money for us to go, after all.
I'd been fighting off nausea all day and had barely eaten anything except a few crackers, so when I got home I forced myself to eat and it did actually make me feel a bit better. It's a shame, because the play was very much focused on the relationship between these two men, the scientist Niels Bohr and his former protege, physicist Werner Heisenberg. The actor who played Heisenberg was fantastic! I don't have the playbill handy right now to recall the actor's name, but I'll find a link to him later. He really brought out all the emotions and conflict his character must have been feeling, but didn't go overboard or seem stiff at all. Andrew assures me that the second act was even better.
Otherwise, I'm really not well. I'm trying to get bed rest and lots of fluids, but sleep is difficult when one can't breathe very effectively. Neo Citran and Otrivin are barely touching this at all. Whine, whine, whine.
I am going back to bed now, praying that my appetite and strength will be in appearance for delicious pho tomorrow night.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/11/04 Send positive employment vibes, please!
Oh yes, I am sick. Suffice it to say that I miss breathing already.
My adventures in Myst are coming along pretty well so far. I've visited the three worlds that I have to figure out, just to get a feel for each before I settle down to serious problem solving. There are usually a few minor puzzles to solve involving locked doors and blocked paths and I've been concentrating on getting those out of the way as best I can, plus gathering the scattered pages of a journal that I have to read for clues. So far so good.
Today I applied for two jobs that sound perfect for me. I've been frustrated by the lack of good prospects out there, then comes a day like today where I find two that I would kill to be hired for. I have been applying for jobs like crazy since the new year, but getting no responses at all, so I'm locked in fear that I won't hear anything back on either of these. Before Christmas I had a bit of a flurry of job interviews and couple of offers, but for varied reasons we decided to wait until after the holidays for me to find work and now I'm stuck in a very dry spell.
Something will come along. Patience, patience.
Something that cheers me up no end is this great comic, Get Fuzzy. It's the funniest thing I've read since Bill Watterson and Gary Larson removed their comic genius from daily circulation. It's about this guy who owns a dog and a cat, but it's nothing like Garfield. Nothing. However, if you're a Garfield fan, don't let that turn you off. You'll love this too, I guarantee!
So tomorrow night is the big Copenhagen play and I'm planning to take a Neo Citran right before I leave to meet Andrew at the subway. There's no way I'm going to be sniffling and snorting my way through a live performance in a crowded theatre. There is the possibility that I'll pass out, of course, but that's a chance I'm going to have to take.
Oh, my friend Jen pleasantly surprised me by adding a link to my weblog in her own blog and I smacked my head in disbelief that I hadn't put in a link to hers! She's always doing these amazing searches on the most fascinating things and it's a shame that I haven't lauded her here yet. Sorry, Jen! What was I thinking? I go to her blog every day just to see what new and interesting thoughts and sites she has to share.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/10/04 Three more days to pho!
I'd been thinking that perhaps I could manage to escape catching any sort of illness from my man, but it is not to be. I seem to be developing something nasty in the sinus and throat area and it feels like it might be pretty bad. Sigh. Since mid-December it's seemed that at least one of the two of us is sick at any given time and in my opinion, it's just getting silly. I'll be happy if it turns out to be your basic grotty cold rather than something as debilitating as what Andrew suffered through for the last month.
In other news, we finally managed to get to see the first two episodes of All-Star Survivor tonight at Dan and May's place which was great. I'm now very glad that I was a Survivor fan from the start, even though there are a few castaways that I have to think about for a while before I remember them. Richard Hatch is still vintage Richard Hatch and I don't think he's there totally believing he's actually going to be allowed to win this time around. I do think he knows it certainly can't hurt to try, and why not scrape up another fifteen minutes worth of fame?
Otherwise, not much is new around here, I must say. We have a busy remainder of the week what with going to see the play on Thursday and our Valentine's date on Friday so I'm not too broken up about having a few quiet days here and there.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/09/04 Cultivating bad luck
Tonight Andrew and I went to see The Station Agent. I enjoyed it thoroughly, although it was a little different than I'd expected in a very good way. It had a darker, more serious tone than the previews led me to believe, and the themes were more thought-provoking as well. Peter Dinklage plays the main character and his performance was really incredible. What struck me most about the movie was the ending. At first my reaction was, "What? You're ending it like that?" But over the course of the night I've been thinking about it and realizing that it was actually a very subtle and (if this doesn't sound too weird) respectful way to bring it to a close. I'm obviously not going to spoil it here, so if you're wondering what I mean, go see the movie. I think you should. You definitely do not have to be a train aficionado to appreciate it.
After the movie we had to think about supper as neither of us had eaten anything beforehand. I'd met Andrew at his work and we'd gone from there to catch the movie. What I really wanted to do was hit Pho Hung for some yummy yummy soup, but we'll be doing that on Friday. We're having our Valentine's date on Friday the 13th instead of Saturday the 14th, as Andrew works on Sunday and if we're going to get loaded and avoid the crowds, what better night?.
So what we ended up doing was visiting Loblaws again rather than spend too much at a restaurant. I swear it's a wonder they don't know us by name there. I'm sure it's becoming obvious over the course of this weblog that we do not buy a heck of a whole lot when we shop, usually just enough to last a few days or so. A grocery list never seems to happen with us. Anyhow, I wanted a beef stir fry and Andrew ended up buying discount sushi, which to me seems like a risky business. Oh, and the stir fry beef I picked up came to exactly $6.66 which aligns nicely with our pending bad luck date night!
In the end, however, I'm the one who now feels slightly nauseous and weird and Andrew with his bellyful of half-price raw fish is feeling fine. There is no justice.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/08/04 'Miss Manners' Guide to Eating Etiquette' or 'How to Annoy a Table Full of People'
While we were out eating vegetarian Chinese food last night I harassed Andrew for using his chopsticks improperly. Not his eating technique, but his etiquette. How do I know from chopstick etiquette? Why, because I've read this site detailing the Japanese rules for using chopsticks. In fact, re-reading it now I realize that even I didn't recall everything and committed some chopstick faux pas of my own. The Chinese rules are very similar, but there are guidelines here to Chinese eating etiquette in general, which is nice.
One of the Christmas gifts we got this year that I am incredibly pleased with, actually, is a set of very fancy chopsticks that Andrew's sister gave us. I've always wanted to buy myself a funky little chopstick rest, but had never owned a nice enough pair of chopsticks. Now that I do I want to scrounge around in Chinatown and see what I can find. Alternatively I can make a set of funky chopstick rests, I suppose, to perfectly match the design and all. I keep coming up with projects that I want to do, but never seem to manage my time efficiently enough to do them.
A wonderful waste of time, however, is the Kenya song flash animation. I have had this song stuck in my head since hearing it for the first time and it's so good I don't even mind! The site has some other flash stuff as well, most of it highly disturbing and not as endearing as the Kenya lions and tigers, but hey.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/07/04 Love me, love my taste buds
Something that was on my mind heavily today is the fact that I am such a picky eater. This, of course, comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me. When I say 'picky', I mean 'cripplingly limited in the variety of foods I like'. So going for dinner to a vegetarian restaurant tonight with a group of friends was a bit of a challenge and slightly embarassing in the way that these situations invariably are for me.
It isn't actually a major problem for me as far as eating itself goes. I eats what I likes and I likes what I eats. The downside is eating with people who have no understanding of what it is to literally dislike the taste of many kinds of food. If they're simply watching me eat, say, a sub with no sauce or dressing on the meat, cheese, and veggies they'll ask, "Isn't that dry and tasteless?" To which I must answer, "No, I can distinguish many flavours which I am enjoying at this very moment." They will deepen their expressions of incredulity, however, and usually shake their heads as if I'm a unique sort of culinary masochist.
That is something I'm used to and I can handle it. However, it invariably leads to the question, "You're a picky eater, aren't you?" I am, but having had to discuss it over and over and over again in my life, I've experienced the strange intolerance some individuals have to those who have a limited range of foods they truly enjoy. Not that they call me names or visit physical violence on my person, but I have had people insist that I am wrong in my opinion on a given food. If they like it, it must be universally good, or at least that seems to be what they are telling me.
I want to like all food. I would love it if I could go to a buffet and have a little of everything instead of eating an overabundance of chicken balls. It would make me so happy if fish actually tasted as good as it looks instead of tasting so fishy. Alas, it is not to be, and so I sigh through the lectures about how the potato is the perfect food, or that not drinking milk will kill me in a few short years.
What I do notice is that slowly, very slowly, my tastes are broadening over the years and I am able to eat things today that I would not have touched five years ago. I ate tofu and seitan tonight because they were yummy, not because I was afraid that I'd be deemed an over-indulged little princess if I did not.
But I still think that anyone who eats mushrooms is harbouring some sort of pathological inability to understand what they really are.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/06/04 Learning is fun
I've been playing Myst and thoroughly enjoying myself, but I broke down and cheated a little bit on the first level. It's called the Lesson Age, and I know that this does not bode well for the rest of the Ages I will visit, as the name seems to indicate that it is merely practice for what is to come. However, I have promised myself I will not cheat on the three Ages I have to figure out, even if it takes me the next five years to do so.
Weak, I know. So weak. And cheating just makes me feel dumb and dirty, because when I find out the answers to the puzzles I think I'm stuck on I want to slap myself. I know I would have figured it out if I'd just been more patient and persistent. I was not as impatient with the two games prior and I don't want to feel like this game was a waste of money, which I do believe I'd feel if I cheated my way through the entire thing. Anyhow, updates will appear as I progress!
Andrew's Nana has generously offered to pay for tickets for us to go and see Copenhagen, a play that has come to Toronto. The article I've linked to says that "the plot turns on knowledge of advanced theoretical physics with dense dialog around difficult concepts such as "the Uncertainty Principle", "wave-particle duality" and the production of Uranium 235 in order to create a nuclear pile for energy." I'm hoping that lacking certain facets of that knowledge will not destroy the experience for me. I am not very familiar with quantum mechanics. Here is a rather interesting article on the Uncertainty Principle that I'm sure I'll find at least somewhat helpful.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/05/04 I'm living with a cesspool
Well, Andrew has had his doctor's appointment and we have a much better idea of what's wrong with him now. It turns out he's disgusting! He has a viral infection and a bacterial infection, unrelated to one another! I wouldn't be surprised if there was a fungus somewhere in there, too. Our doctor has prescribed a few different things to him to take care of it all, but she's mentioned that I should probably be catching some of it, myself. Fun.
In other news, I have been carefully avoiding reading anything to do with All-Star Survivor online. A group of us watch Survivor together every week. We used to watch it on Thursday nights when it's actually on, but due to reasons of convenience will be watching it taped on Tuesday nights together, so we didn't watch the premiere on Sunday night. I wanted to watch it with no knowledge of anything that had happened, but of course today I had it spoiled for me. I found out who the first person voted off the island was by reading a freaking headline! You can't avoid reading headlines!
So I'm mildly unhappy about that, but it's really no big deal. All told, things are good. Andrew is not dying of Halo-related complications, and we get to go visit our friends tonight.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/04/04 Really, I'm harmless
So last night was fantastic movie night. We went to Dan and May's place and watched Trembling Before G-d, an incredible documentary about homosexuals within the Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish community. I won't even attempt to describe it beyond saying how powerful it is. Wow. I'd recommend it to anyone.
Luckily today I did manage to shower and get out of the apartment, even if it was another trip to Loblaws for Andrew and I after he got home from work. I think we had a much better time tonight since we knew what we were buying ahead of time. I developed a craving for tortiere that needed satisfying.
But it was social hour in the frozen foods department. I witnessed a young woman holding up a microwave dinner and asking a total stranger whether he thought it was supposed to be cooked in the microwave. He thought it was. I thought so, too, but nobody asked me. She kept reading the box over and over with a very puzzled expression, but as far as I know, microwave dinners go in the microwave. I think I had my own 'crazy stranger' moment, however, because a guy asked me if I knew where the cookie dough ice cream was. I shrugged and said, "Haagen Daaz," because if all else fails, they probably make that flavour. He looked and lo, they did, but it was in one of those teeny little tubs. That worried me because frankly, I could eat one of those in one sitting and I said so. He kept saying, "It's enough for two, really," while I kept insisting that some other more generous company might make cookie dough flavour and finally he just walked away.
Today I'm including this link: The Boohbah Zone. It's just plain weird, which is why I didn't initially include it anywhere on the site, but I've found that when I introduce people to it, they seem to get drawn in. Try it and see.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/03/04 I feel so unpretty
Yesterday was a day of good news as my mother informed me she'd pay for my sisters and I to go to the Barenaked Ladies concert in Ottawa on the 24th. This unexpected largess came as a great surprise, but I'm thrilled as I don't get the opportunity to see my sisters much since moving to Toronto. I miss those crazy bitches.
Andrew has been awfully sick recently and he's finally making a visit to the doctor on Thursday. A concern of ours is that he's having a bad allergic reaction to Halo. He's always been allergic to cats and we've been pleasantly surprised by the fact that he hasn't been as bothered by him as we'd feared he'd be, but now we're thinking it might have caught up to him in a bad way. Andrew insists that there's no way we'd get rid of Halo, thinking that allergy shots will help. I'm trying not to think the worst until we find out what's really going on with his health. I'm thrilled that he's actually that fond of my cat, as I am openly irrational about him and anthropomorphize him shamelessly.
Speaking of feeling like crap, and apparently looking that way, Andrew and I had a fun experience at Loblaws last night. We needed groceries so off we went to buy them, Andrew feeling sick and me feeling plain old blah. We wandered around and eventually got our food. It was a bit of a tense situation as neither of us was in a strong decision-making sort of place, mentally, except that I knew, unequivocally, that I did not want soup. Finally, blessedly, we arrived in the checkout line and waited. And waited. And waited. I couldn't help but observe as she haphazardly bagged groceries that our cashier seemed extraordinarily dippy. At last it was our turn, and as the cashier bagged our purchases she looked up at us and exclaimed loudly, "Wow, do you two ever look tired!" This, without fail, translates (at least in my mind) to, "Wow, do you ever look like crap!"
So on second thought, yesterday was a day of good and bad news.
Oh, and by the way, Andrew fixed the computer settings that kept me from playing Myst, so now I may never find a job. Or leave the apartment. Or bathe.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/02/04 I need brane candy!
Early this morning I finished reading Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry for the umpteenth time. Since Christmas I've been going through a fantasy phase. With some of my Christmas money I bought Meredith Ann Pierce's Firebringer Trilogy. I'd owned a copy of the first in the series, Birth of the Firebringer, since grade seven but that copy finally had to be retired a couple of years ago, so last summer I was thrilled to find out that the whole trilogy was being re-released.
At the moment I need some new books to read. Andrew has a few books that I've been meaning to open up, but I think I'm still in this high fantasy sort of place. I'm contemplating cracking open my copy of Ingathering, Zenna Henderson's collection of People stories, but that's more of a science fiction thing. I may have to break down and read The Princess Bride again. It's going to be a long wait until GGK's newest book comes out in March or April.
Archives / Search The Site / Friend Blogs
02/01/04 Work is work is work
I've been not-so-happy about the fact that my other website, Skorch Art, was all messed up by the addition of advertising banners on the part of Fateback. Basically, framed sites don't appear to work when it's added. I don't mind banners when the service is free and reliable, as Fateback has been, but I put an awful lot of time and effort into that site over the last five years and I've been sort of dreading having to rework it so that it will live again.
The site was in rough shape. Inconsistent coding, stale design, and I've had hundreds of images awaiting upload while I've been procrastinating for over a year or so. It requires a complete overhaul and while this is likely the kick in the butt I need to make all the improvements I want to make, I'm dreading the hours upon hours of actual work this is going to require.
Anyhow, that's something I can work on until I get a real job, I suppose.
On a related note I downloaded this image browser to help out with managing all those thousands of images that make up my other site. It's a very useful little tool that I'm having all kinds of fun with.
Home
