Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow. Ow.

I gots CRRRRAAAMMMMMPSSSSSSSSSS!!!! MuthaFSCKER they hurt.

BIG GIANT EDIT

Hey. I had it brought to my attention (via a frantic phone call this morning) that I was unclear in the post two below this one. All of the self destructive "diet" stuff that I'd been doing was at least three years ago...probably closer to five. I can't completely remember, but it certainly was not within the last two years. Ok. Sorry about the confusion. :D

Changed my whine...I mean mind.

I was going to whine about money, but then I thought about it a little bit. Yes, I am tearing through my savings faster than Taz goes through a table, but I don't have any debt, I'll be getting a hella good cheque for March from tutoring, and I simply haven't had a party yet, even though I've got one booked and I've had several orders from some simply LOVELY people. You know who you are, lovely people. :)

This semi-whine brought to you by the fact that I want a digital camera and have decided to be sensible and not get one this month. Or next month. Maybe April.

Food.

This started out as a quick reference thing so that I wouldn't have to go look up my weight, then it became an introspective post. Who knew?

I started doing Fitday in December 2002. My starting weight was 174.

In December 2003, I was at my lowest weight since high school, 153. (In grade twelve I was about 145 or so, eating junk food like crazy and not exercising. I want that metabolism back plz kthx.)

In December 2004, I was back up to 167, and this week I was at 163 for a couple days. Grrr.

Now, I've put on some muscle in those last two years, so I can't take it completely depressingly, but I need to make some changes. I've started making some really positive ones already...recommitting myself to karate is the big one. Last year I made a really great mental leap which involved me deciding/realizing that I didn't want to lose weight to look good. Instead, I wanted to lose weight so that I could run faster, have more endurance and more strength. This was a huge step for me because for a few months I was crash dieting (then gorging), making myself feel physically ill if I ate junk food, trying to vomit said junk food up and eventually I even tried using laxatives a few times (that ended after I barely managed to avoid an embarrassing incident in class).

Just ask Dave, I've got probably some of the worst eating habits known to man. I won't say that I'm hungry until I'm starving, then I won't shut up about it, and I'll eat whatever stuff is around. I've been known to fill up on peanut M&Ms while waiting for food to be ready and then not being hungry until midnight. When I was about fourteen, I forgot to eat for three days. My stomach has been fragile ever since I was a baby, and one would think that I would be used to the fact that I shouldn't be eating greasy food because it makes me queasy, or various other issues.

Anyway, I feel a lot better about myself. While I'm still very bad at remembering to eat, I tend to pick food that's at least marginally healthier for me (orange juice instead of pop, granola bars instead of chocolate bars, fruit instead of ice cream) and I'm more concious of exercising.

Ok, I'm done now.

Child of the '80s

Fast-rewind.com has many blurbs on movies from the 1980s.

"Surreal, life altering experiences"

We're back from Vancouver Island! I love it over there...such a great atmosphere and three witchy shops (that I know of) within five minutes walking distance of each other. *GLEE* Also, Victoria has many, many flowers in bloom. Good stuff, I say.

On a whim, I grabbed a sketch pad and my pencil case, on the off chance that I would like to do some drawing. Turns out that I did, and the fruits of my labour are posted in flickr at the bottom of the sidebar. I'm really pleased with how they turned out, considering that I haven't done any serious drawing for a year or so.

I also bought the most beautiful piece of fluorine (also known as "purple and green rock) that I've ever seen. I'll post pictures of it as soon as I get some together.

Road trip!

Tomorrow Dave and I are heading off to Victoria for the day. We don't plan on spending the night, so you all probably won't even notice that I'm gone. Just thought I'd mention it. It's not meant to be a fun trip, but screw dat! I'm goin' shopping!

I'm still sick so I hope that I enjoy it. :P

In other news...Keegan, you're a big dope. :) When you put the fishtank together you turned the cover upside down so I couldn't get at the handle to feed Fineas. (I was just going to mock her privately on MSN, but she wasn't online, so she gets the public mocking. MOCK!) He was annoyed too. He knew he was going to get fed, but was wondering "What the hell is taking you so long, HOOOMAN?"

Musings

Chatting with Jason, I came up with some of my best work in weeks. (yes I'm conceited. Deal. It's better than I normally am.)

"Blogs all start bare, just like us humans do at birth."

So do journals, something which I'm currently enjoying. I keep a dead tree format journal, full of the stuff that's too private to stick up here...or else stuff that I don't think anyone would be interested in reading. Either way.

What the hell did I come on here to write about?

Um...I'm getting a fish. Keegan's adopting out her Siamese fighting fish and it's going to be by the computer. I have the most deep set eyes of anyone I know. I'm still coughing and probably contagious. eooowwowwwowooooooo...I am posting from the depths of NOTHINGNESS, if you believe what my webcam shows. I have no backgrounds...very bizarre.

Oh yes. I remember now. I switched students with someone, and I'm taking on a temporary student for a month (that's four students) and I might be taking on a permanent student. (that's five for the month) Much money, much confusion with my schedule, yeah. So expect me to post once or twice with "ARGH! I forgot I was tutoring tonight!!" every week for a month or so. *grumble*

However, there will be money.

Homer: "Awww, a twenty dollar bill? I wanted that peanut!"
Homer's Brain: "Money can buy MANY peanuts."
Homer: "Ooh! Tell me more!"
Homer's Brain: "Money can be exchanged for goods and services."

Yay! I have my fish now. And it's right next to my computer, so there will be occasional (frequent) pictures of it. :)

yummm...

I am sitting here eating what are probably the best mashed potatoes I've ever eaten in my life. They're like twice baked potatoes, with garlic butter, cheddar cheese and ham all mixed up in them. WOW. Thanks, Mom!

My brother would like to be famous, please.

In that regard, I would ask you to direct your attention to the flickr photos on the bottom of the sidebar. Please feel free to comment.

I love: that Rob lets me post pictures of him.

Whoa...two firsts.

First the First: I gave my mom the address to Random Synapses today. *waves* Hi Mom! Feel free to comment.

First the Second: Someone (Hi Jason!) contacted me via ICQ to tell me they liked the blog and found it exceedingly entertaining! (His words, not mine.) I am pleased. And starting to get arrogant. Heheh.

Now I just need some hate mail like dooce, or pretty much any other big name, and I'll definitely feel like I've arrived. Maybe I should start some inflammatory posts. Ummmmm...

...

...

Yeah, I got nothing. Damn me and my lack of controversial topics. I have no children, so I can't post about child rearing. Ooh. I know. I have Canadian spelling! Ok, neighbours? :)

ugh.

I'm miserable. I'm sick. :( Bleah.

I love: Bill's latest post

At least no strange men knocked on my window this time.

I got home from Dave's, turned on my dome light to do my mileage and somehow managed to drop my keys on the floor. The one time that I don't use the click-y remote control dealie, and I lock my keys in the car. No problem! I'm at home. We've got a spare key. Which decides not to work. Huh. Ok, well I'll call BCAA. At least I'm at home. I'm chillin' at the computer, pizza in the microwave, drinkin' a Bud...well, actually it's a Molson's, but who's keeping track, huh? So I've got 45-60 minutes to kill before the person arrives to break into my car.

*twiddles thumbs*

I love: that I locked my keys in my car outside my own house.

Another new feature

I'm placing an order this weekend, so if anyone wants to add anything to it, if you let me know what you want via IM, email or phone I'll pay the shipping on it for you. :) Go to the Passion Parties website to look at the merchandise. (We have a Sex Swing! Whee!) By the way, I don't have a shopping cart on my page, so you will be transferred to a consultant who isn't me if you shop from there, plus you won't get any of the deals.

I think I'm going to start putting deals in the sidebar every so often. Hmm... (noooo, I'm not a money grubber...nope, not me.)

Deep breath...

It could have been worse. I was driving to tutor this morning, since both my kids had pro-D days, and I'm at a stoplight when there's a knock on my window. Whoa. Uh, hi? Can I help you? It turns out that my rear driver's tire is almost flat. Grrr. So this amazingly nice guy pumps up my tire with a cigarette lighter pump that he has in his car, which gets me to the garage. I was worried that it would be something like "Ok, you've got a gash in your tire, which means that you'll need to get all of them replaced. $600 please." Fortunately, it was just a nail and they patched it for under $30. Whew. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, there's another knock on my window. One of the guys from the tire place was holding my wallet that I'd left on the counter. Whoops.

I've got to stop doing things that make strange men knock on my car window.

I love: that my tire isn't going to cost me a MEEEELION dollars.

Of brownies and aging poets

I was soooo good...not eating any of the baking that my mother has been doing post-Christmas. But then she made brownies. With huge chocolate chips in them. Oh dear. I ate just a nibble...and I think I may have a problem now. One involving potential 3 am brownie raids.

I bought my first Leonard Cohen CD today *pictures Justy rolling his eyes* "I'm Your Man" which contains one of my favourite songs of all time, "Everybody Knows". Good stuff. It is currently in my car CD player while the "Phantom of the Opera" CD is in the Leonard Cohen case. Maybe I'll get some new songs stuck in my head.

I've decided to add a new feature for a little while, at least. Every time I post, I must write something that I love about the day. Ta da!

I love: the fact that Dave lets me work on business related stuff for an two three hours in the first time that I've gotten to see him in a non-working capacity this week.

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

YAHOO!!

*does a happy dance* I booked a party! I booked a party! Boo-ya!

This Post is Certified "Spoiler-Free"

Last night I finished reading the last book of Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series. Hffffuuuughawaaaaaaaaaaaaa! It was so good. The ending, while unexpected, seemed completely inevitable based on the rest of the series.

Is that obscure enough for you, Keegan? No spoilers here! :)

I fell asleep thinking of the ending and it was the first thing I thought of after I woke up. (ok, third actually, but "What the hell time is it" and "Wasn't my alarm supposed to go off?" are pretty standard for me so I don't count them.)

Ok, that's it. I have to go do stuff for the business now. Like...get all the stuff out of my car that is still in there from yesterday that I did not have the energy to move yesterday. And follow up on leads! Woo!!!

I'm soooo tired.

Woo. I wound up sleeping only around 2 hours last night. :p I was up at the university for about nine hours and got about 18 party leads, and a half dozen consultant leads. I'm pleased with this.

Now I tutor for an hour and a half and then go home and crash completely out.

Thank you Keegan and Dave for all your help today. Could NOT have done it without you. And thank you to the anonymous guy at the university who helped me get the rest of my stuff into my car when I was getting frustrated with my inability to move everything all at once.

*looks around warily and crosses fingers*

Ok, I think it's all done and put away in boxes. *shakes fist* I was JOKING about doing this until 4 am, dammit!

That's it then. I won't know if I'm missing anything until I get up there. Mental note...move the mannequin (yes, I have a mannequin. Doesn't everyone?) so that I'll trip over instead of forgetting it. Ideal world: I won't do either, but since I'm getting up in about three hours...well...we just don't know, do we?

Plus side of doing all this...I won't have to do NEARLY as much prep work next time.

*checks suspiciously for spy cameras*

Nope, no new ones...just the ones left here from earlier. How did the spammers know that I needed new ink for my printer?

Ok, weak...but I'm tired and it's late and I'm STILL PRINTING STUFF FOR TOMORROW.

Grrr... I'll update tomorrow night. Freaking out slightly...more worried about tutoring. I don't have books for tomorrow night, nor do I know what lesson I'm supposed to be teaching. Perhaps I will cancel tutoring and stay on the mountain for an extra hour or two to catch late afternoon students. Hmmm...that sounds like a plan to me. Then I don't have to leave at 3. Hmmm...hmmm...

Freaking completely out

Yikes! Less than twelve hours until I'm up at SFU to do my thang. (please, someone come visit me... it's going to be a long day) I've got Keegan and Dave who will be stopping by to let me get food and go to the bathroom, but other than that... *eep* I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, and I'm nervous... even though I probably don't need to be.

And I'm getting sick. Must remember to pack tissue and various cold medications.

I would just like to go on record that Dave is the AWESOME. He single handedly cut out over 500 business cards for me... 300 of them just tonight. He's also designed my business cards, information gathering cards and stickers. (also, he is hot. :D ) I'm so lucky!

Happy V-day to everyone...or anti-V-Day if that's what you're doing.

If you want to see me

My webcam is live again.

The post in which I talk about being a witch.

This post is basically a comment I left over at trollzor. He was talking about one of my personal pet peeves, the person who has seen one movie or read one novel and suddenly has become an expert on Wicca or a varient of the pagan religions. (I actually was one of these at one time, when I was about 12. Thank ALL the spirits that only my friends saw it. Yeesh. I'm still embarrassed about it.) Luckily the situation that he describes never came up.

As a (one might say “sane” [ie: not someone who thinks they can light crystals with their minds]) witch, I go to the hospital on a...well, I wouldn’t say REGULAR basis…fortunately I’m not that accident prone, but I definitely get my yearly pap smear done, I get flu shots and anti-biotics and if someone I know slipped and smoked his/her head on the floor, you can be damned sure I’d be standing back and letting the professionals take care of things. However, I also take preventative herbs, or herb derivatives, and I try to prevent unhealth by mind over matter. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but I feel mentally healthier a lot of the time. Now, when it comes to medicine, *I* believe that if the “Ancients” had known about antibiotics etc, you’d better believe they would have used them. And witches/healers/shamans weren’t just on the mental/spiritual side of things. They also set broken bones and bashed heads. They didn’t try to stop someone from bleeding by using their minds…they tried to stop infection by using their minds, but only because they didn’t know what it was.

Hoo… Long comment. I guess what I’m really trying to say is, I’m sorry about the fluffy bunnies. Please don’t burn us at the stake.


Something I forgot to add. Magic to me is seeing a baby grow up and learn, seeing crocuses come up every spring, looking at how a seed "knows" what it's supposed to turn into and really amazing sex. It's all a question of energy. I choose to see this stuff more spiritually than scientifically, and more artistically than analytically. I don't see anything wrong with seeing it either way.

Ok, I'm done. Wow. Did anyone actually read to the end of this? Hehe.

Yay! Shopping!

I went downtown yesterday with Warrick, a fabulously gay friend who'd never been to Davie Street before. It was awesome. We made some great purchases, including some stuff for the business for me and a pair of phenomenal pants by Priapus. They're a subtle green plaid. If plaid can ever be described as subtle. Now I own gay men's pants. I'm pleased. Warrick has dubbed them my bootie pants (I've almost said/typed boot panties like three times today). He got some PVC stuff from Love's Touch for Sin City and looks spectacular. His sister commented that he looks like a gay Darth Vader. :D

We also hit Chinatown where I scored some dried lychee (tastes like bland dried cranberries, good for the kidneys and the eyes) and Tiger Balm, plus a bamboo rake for my mini Zen Garden that I haven't built yet. I also got a nunchuck (google also recognizes nunchuk, nunchaku (plural, I think) and nanchuck)

BTW, I've got a table up at SFU in the Academic Quadrangle on Tuesday the 15th, near the Audio Visual room. Come by and say hello if you're going to be around. Can't miss me. I'll be the one in the corset, surrounded by sex toys. Kind of.

Ooh..

I want pasta. Specifically, I want some form of stuffed pasta, like tortellini, with garlic butter melted on it. I don't think we have stuffed pasta, but we've got loads of dry spaghetti and garlic butter. Hmmm...methinks a trip to the kitchen is in order.

I swam 400 m today. :D

No pain, no gain?

*ouch* My legs have almost stopped hurting from karate on Saturday, but last night I went swimming... 600 meters, go me!...and now my shoulders and arms hurt. I'm going to try and go swimming again tonight. I've started to clarify my goals and what I want in my life. I'm really excited. I want to be physically in awesome shape...as in "run a triathalon" awesome shape. So, now I need to start riding my bike, running and swimming as well as training in karate. In that news, I've rediscovered my ambition there. More as it develops.

Now, I must go and fax things to Calgary.

Wow.

This is from Bimkins, via Rini. An amazing woman wrote this for her son. Bimkins is right. The world needs more people like this.

Ta da!

Look up! No, not that far...eyes on the screen. Notice anything different... (like a huge pink banner that flashes)

Hmm...that one might be a little too flashy. Might go with the more subtle roses one.

Anyway, the important thing is that I've got my Passion Parties website up. :D It's currently very basic, but soon it will be more! Oh yes. It WILL be more. MUAHAHAHA. (sorry. I'm tired...been staring at a screen for the last several hours playing with Passion Parties stuff)

You scored as Twilight Mistress Fairy. Peering over the balcony ledge of your castle, you stare into the twilight, dreaming of love. Your love will come. Night is coming, and it\'s time to dream. Twilight Mistress Fairy 69% Raven Fairy 65% Ethereal Priestess Fairy 63% Autumn Fairy 56% Druid Fairy 56% Goddess of the Golden Dawn 38% Pixie 33% Rose Thorn Fairy 29% Snow Fairy 15% Which Firefly-Path Fairy are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Turning over a new leaf?

Maybe it's just me, but I find it so amazing when I decide on a course of action and then actually follow through on it. I tend to not do that, so I'm all excited about this. It's amazing. I think I'm probably busier than I was a couple of weeks ago, but I'm SCHEDULING! And even more importantly, KEEPING THE SCHEDULE!

I'm discovering the joys of lists...to do lists, shopping lists, budgets, schedules and all that. I'm learning how to budget my time, factoring in time spent getting from one place to another. I'm also learning how to find time where I was wasting it before (webcomics and blog reading takes me roughly half an hour each time I do it, putting stuff away while I'm holding it means I don't have to put it away later, after digging through it to find what I was looking for earlier, etc)

Conversely, I'm also learning that things I dread don't take nearly as long to do as I thought they would...and that music makes things go faster all the time. I don't put off cleaning out a box of stuff. Instead, I do it quickly so I don't have ten boxes to do in a week. Making my bed takes less than a minute. Putting away clothes from my basket (one load of laundry) takes less than five minutes. Gathering up dirty laundry (or better yet, not chucking it on the floor) takes less than a minute. Making up a jug of orange juice instead of drinking Coke takes about a minute, and that includes washing the jug from the last batch.

I'm feeling good about myself, and about my current space. It's slowly being reclaimed and I'm slowly becoming successful personally and professionally.

Grr. Stupid alarm clock

I like to blame my own failings on inanimate objects. It's a dirty little secret I've got. Late? The alarm clock didn't go off. Translation: I forgot to set it, I set it for pm instead of am, I didn't turn it on or I turned the volume off. Late? There was loads of traffic/I hit every light. Translation: My alarm clock probably didn't go off. Refer to #1. Didn't get your phone call? My cell phone is whacked. Translation: I forgot to charge my battery, I forgot to turn on the ringer or I left it at home by mistake.

So what brought on this blog? My alarm clock didn't go off this afternoon after my nap.