WOW.

Friday night Dan and I went to help with the final setup for the party. Looking good, we left at 12:30 or so. Got home at 1AM. I was sick as a dog. Got up at 8AM, went grocery shopping, cooked until 2:30. With the still hot lasagna, we jumped into the car (borrowed - I haven't bought a new car and not shard, promise), threw in the bags and off we went. We arrived in Cloverdale just before 3pm. All the kids were already there for the magician who came at 3:30. Watched the magic show and changed into costumes.

I'll be the first to admit that my costume was pretty lame. I'm going to plan better for next year, promise. Because we went to help set up the house on Friday night, I never managed to get a decent costume. Instead, I ended up going as Arthur Dent from "The Hitckhikers Guide...". I put on my pjs, I had my slippers, a housecoat and my towel. Whatever, it did the trick. To be honest, I don't think anyone noticed....

Kids left at 5pm (the ones that weren't staying at the house at least) and by 6PM, the party was in full swing. We had a nice visit from police officers who were out busting some teens having a party in the culdesack accross the street (parents away for the weekend) but for the rest of the time, the music blared and the Crown and Vodka flowed like water.. K disappeared sometime about 12:30. We didn't see him again until the next morning. It was later discovered that he was quite sick and never managed to get out of bed after that. Dan fell over at 1am. I went until 2:30. The all night party crowd headed to bed at 6:00AM. Though I too could have stayed up (all they did was talk and drink from 3 to 6), I didn't feel comfortable hanging out. After all, they're all family and I just can't follow the stories (or the names).

24 hours later, we finally walked through the door at 3. We had a fabulous time but I regreted it this morning. I'm exhausted and need another day off to recoop. One thing is for sure, these guys know how to party. The next big one: New Years. Oh god. Just thinking about it is making me dizzy....

Party

I've just realized that although I've been very diligent about reading and responding to comments and blogs, I haven't made an entry in a few days. It's been rather uneventful. I've been fighting off a sore throat that has now turned into a combo with a runny nose and slightly droopy, tired eyes. Other than that, I'm feeling great (sort of).

I have to go shopping for a costume tonight for a Halloween party we're going to on Saturday night. To boot, tomorrow morning I'm cooking up 2 lasagna's (I can NEVER spell that right and I'm too lazy to look it up. Sorry.) for the party so I'll be a busy little cook. We're not planning to come home Saturday night. Instead, we're packing the sleeping bags and crashing in some corner of the house. It'll be fun! I just have to figure out when I'm going to prepare my presentation for English class on Tuesday night!

I've been assigned the "fall" of the USSR. The research is pretty much done and I have an idea for the presentation. He doesn't want us to use overheads but rather, wants us to be 'creative'. I've decided on doing a breaking news segment. It's going to be called "Time Travel News" because I'm going to have reporters at different locations and years 'reporting' happenings that lead to the fall. And because I'm doing this by myself, I finally figured out that the best thing to do is to record every segment on my laptop. It'll look much better than pressing play on a tape recorder! :)

I'll have to let you guys know how it goes! :)

So I think this is probably it until Monday so have a wonderful weekend, enjoy the festivities (if you happen to be heading out to any big parties) and we'll be back to regular programming on Monday! :)

Halloween

So this is what I feel I'm starting to sound like. I wish I could stop but the truth is, it just keeps getting worse. Please, someone explain to me what we're doing watching "Beyond Borders" (a semi decent but still mostly crappy Hollywood flick starring the ever beautiful Angelina Jolie and the ubber handsome Clive Owen) in an English class? It's NOT film studies! I figured we'd conduct a rhetorical analysis afterwards but nope, it didn't happen. This guy is driving me bananas! It was a waste of 2 hours of my life. Two hours I'm never getting back. I could have been working on my essay for god's sake!

Oh yes, the essay for the OTHER English class. The topic: "Christine has been seen as a satire or parody of modern American middle-class mores and life. Admittedly, the novel does contain a good deal of irony, conveyed by Dennis. Do you feel Stephen King sares Dennis' contempt, or do you feel that he still shows value in the America he depicts?" Sounds easy enough (I think) I've done an outline (in my head) so tonight I get to "flush it out". Lucky me. I'll get to it right after my Philosophy inclass exam. It's going to be a very, very long day.

Beyond Borders
School

Actually, this isn't quite right but it's pretty close. And it wasn't exactly English class but the English teacher. I went to my final writers festival event on Thursday and had the great pleasure of having a converstaion with Spider Robinson (who I then emailed and have since received a response from. WOOHOO! Rubbing elbows with the stars. Do you even KNOW who Spider Robinson is? Maybe not such a great star but a great guy and author just the same. Go out and read him. Might surprise yourself!). As I was sitting in the audience, I saw a familiar face walk by. "Ms. MacPherson!" I yelled. Nothing. Then I tried "Linley". She turned around and that was it. We talked, and talked. Made arrangements for coffee afterwards. More talking. Three hours later I was on my way to school. Three hours of endless chatter. It was WONDERFUL.

Ms. Mac, as I referred to her in highschool, was my grade 9, 10 and 11 English teacher. She opened my eyes to a lot of things including great books, great movies, great television and great music. To this day, she is still one of the biggest influences in my life and I haven't even seen her for well over 6 years. She'll never know how important she was in me developing into, well, me. She sparked my love for reading and writing, encouraged me when I didn't think I could be encouraged anymore and pushed whe she shouldn't have but I was secretly glad she did. It was wonderful to see her. We've exchanged contact information. She's still as anti technology as I remember her ever being and a computer is way beyond her. I plan to follow up. Keep in touch and maybe, maybe one day I can tell her just how large of an impression she left on me.

Spider Robinson
Teachers

Well, the weekend has come and gone (and for that matter, so has Monday) and it was a good one.

Friday Nigh: Dan and I met at the theatres for a good dose of first person shooter action in "Doom". Not exactly a great film but endurable enough. Highlight of the evening:I needed milk and we went to the supermarket at the mall. They now have self check-outs. It was the coolest most advanced technology I experienced as of late. I wanted Dan to take a picture of me scanning my milk but he wouldn't do it. Bugger.

Saturday: Off birthday shopping for a friend. He ended up with a "Family Guy" mug which reads "Let's go drinking until we can't feel feelings anymore". He loves it. Go figure. We went to the party in the evening and had the best Indian food I've had in a while. YUM. Highlight of the day: Dan dancing. He was royally drunk. I've never seen him dance like that. He made a total fool of himself but we still had a great time.

Sunday: Brunch with the girls and then off to the movies for "Elizabethtown". We really wanted to see "North Country" but couldn't find a theatre that was playing it. Highlight of the day: Spending time with the girls and the stuffed french toast at IHOP. YUM.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my 'exciting' weekend.

Family Guy
Birthdays

I eluded to this in an earlier post but I have an English Prof FROM HELL. Though the guy is pretty interesting (I'll give him that much credit) and he IS a Dr. so he must know what he's talking about. However, just because you know it, doens't mean you're entitled to teach it. Seriously. I think this applies to every profession. Just because you have a piece of paper that says you can do it, doesn't necessarily equate to being able to do it. I've noticed it the most in teaching though. This guy is a prime example. The very first class he told us that most of his student drop out before the middle of the semester and that the average grade for those passing is a C. Honestly, if I hear that from a prof, the first thing I think of is "What the hell does that say about you as a teacher?" ARRRGHHHH

We're entering week 8 of the semester, I'm totally lost. Half of the time, I'm not sure if I read what I was supposed to because I go to class and he talks on a tangent, but I still managed to get 92% on my first inclass essay. Sure, it's great, but I'm not feeling confident that I'm learning anything new. I'm obviously just a great bullshitter.

Regardless. Here's my beef and why I mentioned that I may have had a little something to do with this. Well, a big something really. Two weeks ago I "missed" class (I was at a very important bookcrossing meeting). He decides to give us a *pop* quiz on a film he showed in class. Of course, I missed it. My fault, I KNOW. Now I was a bit sick the week before so I just played the sick card. When I emailed my class "buddy" and she told me of the missed quiz, I freaked. I emailed him. He said he wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it up. I nearly died. I can't afford to drop the class and I don't really want to fail a class either. One week of pleading and back and forth emails and he's finally agreed to give me a makeup assignment. What a tyrant. I had to beg for the makeup. I know, I do deserve the pain but it got me thinking. What if I really had been away for a legit reason. What if I really WAS sick. It's not like I'm a bad student that constantly misses classes or is a slacker. It just really irked me the way he played me and pulled me along and, really, made me feel a bit shitty.

I do deserve it and I know I shouldn't be bithing about the guy but he really rubbed me the wrong way. You better believe I won't be recommending him to anyone.

School
Professors

and the boys who like boys....

These came in my email today. I couldn't help myself. Enjoy everyone! ;)

Men

Well, not really but I am back. Sorry for the last few days. It's been more than a little crazy around here trying to set up the new office. Still having some technical difficulties but I'm pleased to announce that we're pretty much up and running. YEY!

There's been a lot happening around town. The VIFF has just wrapped up. The Writers Festival is starting up and everyone and their mother appears to be on strike. Teachers walked off the job a week ago and this dispute has only gotten worse. Yesterday, there was a large rally in Victoria at the Parliament Buildings which included other non-striking unions showing support including the bus drivers. This put a bit of a glitch on the transit system on the Island. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't cross the waters. I can see where the teachers are coming from. The government recently passed a bill to extend the current contract (which is now expired) until next year and this is when the teachers went on strike. They want a pay increase and smaller class sizes. Not too much to ask right? I agree with them to an extent and the government isn't helping in swaying my thoughts. They're coming accross as a bunch of tyrants. Bloody bastards.

I'm also having issues with one of my profs. I'll have to elaborate on this once I find out for sure what's going on. It's a little convoluded and I sort of put myself in this "situation" but he's being really unreasonable. I should have more information later today. Will keep you posted.

On a much happier note, I'm very excited about the next two days. I'm going to a couple of Writers Festival events with one of my favourite authors, William Gibson. Tomorrow night it's a discussion about "alien life" and on Thursday afternoon it's a talk about where he gets his ideas. I'm sooooo excited! I'll try to take LOTS of pictures to share!

William Gibson
Writers Festival

What a nightmare. We moved the office over the long weekend. The two long weekends in a row and guess who had to work?

We managed to avoid disrruption to the telephone lines during the move (which was great) but the DSL connection has been a bitch to set up. I will give striking TELUS some credit. The guys over there who are working through this dispute huge kudos for handling things as well as they have. It could have been much, much worse. Because the connection at work has been unavailable, I have not really been updating regularly. It's a little sad but I just don't have time when I come home.

What's really ticking me off now is the fact that my webpage won't load. I've been in touch with the domain registration people but the issue is still not resolved. Bugger. I feel like I shelled out the cash for no reason.

I think I'm going to head off to bed in a bit. Just thought I'd pop in for a quick update.

It's one of my deep dark secrets. I *love* Barbies. Especially the collectable barbies. I got my newsletter the other day. These two are new ones that have caught my eye...They're from a new collection called "Legends of Ireland". Here are close ups of two of my favourites.

This one is called "The Bard".

This one is "Faerie Queen".

I think I have to check out Toys 'R Us....I may even have to order online. Are they not beautiful?

Barbie

It's holiday Monday. I've done nothing today. I got up late and putzed around for a few hours. Managed to upload pictures and update my website and that was about it.

The weekend was pretty much all like this. I did go to work on Saturday from noon to 5pm and then headed to meet the Flans for dinner and a movie (yes, Serenity again). Went for drinks afterwards and didn't get home until very, very late. I cleaned on Sunday and then we had the family dinner and today, well, I've already told you about that.

That was it. That was my weekend. I did manage to catch up on sleep and that was shiny.

Oh yeah, here are the girls posing in their Jayne's hats after the movie!



Jayne's Hats
Thanksgiving

Ok. I'm not the best at these things but I figure since a few people have asked and I know how hard of a time I had trying to figure out where to go and what to do, I'd help other out by posting it here. So, metamap away!

1. Go to this website: http://www.multimap.com/
2. Put in your EXACT address. The map will bing up your location with your latitude and longitude underneath.
3. Open up your blogger template and right after the HEAD tag, put in this line of code: "meta name='ICBM' content="LAT, LON" /" REPLACE the first " and last " with <> to open and close the code. I can't do it here becuase if I do blogger thinks it's code and YOU CAN'T SEE IT! Now replace the words LAT and LON with the corresponding numbers from your map. (Make sure you use the numbers in the brackets!) NOTE: There is a SPACE between the coma and the LON #!
4. Now save the changes to your blog.
5. Now to go http://www.feedmap.net/BlogMap/submit.aspx
6. At the bottom of the page is a area for entering your blog feed. Put in your blog address.
7. This will give you a link that you can now place on your blog! You can choose either a full map or a little box like the one I have. To place the little box in your sidebar, just look for this code in your template: Now paste your code where you'd like your map to appear! Simply preview your page until you're happy with it! :)
8. Now save the changes, reload your blog and VOILA! A shiny new map/feed on your page!

Good luck everyone!

MetaMapping

WOW. When I moved over here from blogger hell, I figured I'd try this earth tagging thingy (or whatever it is you call it) to give me the cool little link on the right there that says how many other bloggers are near me. Well, I recently noticed a second link and this morning, I finally checked it out.

Low an behold, there's my upcoming bookcrossing meeting, and the firefly meetup and the german language meetup.....and VCON! How the heck??!?! Turns out that the great people over there are all tied into meetup and it automatically pulls upcoming meeting info. Cool eh? So what are you waiting for? Check it out! If you're in Vancouver, we may see you at one of the meetings otherwise, check out your local area!

See that! It was soooo cool I had to move it up from the bottom of my nav bar! :)

This says it all.

Here's a great story about a calendar to help support breast cancer and women's image....plus you get to see nipples too....

For more info on the calendar and ordering, check out the website.

I take public transit everywhere. Without a car, I have no other way of getting around town. I'm quite happy with my situation. Though it can, at times, be stinky, wet and a pain in the ass, it is for the most part a good, reliable way to get around.

Every morning I take my sorry but out bed and (after my morning ritual) take transit to work. I get on at a station which is nearly in the middle of the line. Every morning, I go all the way into the downtown core, a 20 minute ride that usualy comprises of standing, staying out of people's way and trying hard to not get hit by an umbrella. Burrard is a popular stop for business people. It's sort of central to the core of office buildings. For those who don't know this tidbit of information, Public Transit in Vancouver operates on an "Honour System", or at least the skytrain does (for buses, you have to choice but to pay when you get on). This information comes in handy in just a second. Every once in a while, a "Special Constable" or transit cop to the rest of us, gets on to check that everyone has fare. Now, during rush hour, this causes a bit of a problem because you can't move around to check the tickets. So the cops are getting smart.

I also go home during rush hour and the situation is the same as when I go to work in the morning, standing room only. At the station where I get on and off, there are escalators leading downstairs where the trains are and then there's a bit of a blind corner which leads to the train or further downstairs to the train going in the opposite direction. I call this a blind corner because when you're on the escalator, you can't see if there's someone standing around that corner. So guess where the transit cops have been turning up? You got it, at the corner. This is a great place to catch free riders because if they don't have a ticket, the only way to get out of there is to hop on the escalator going back up and that makes you kind of easy to track down. For the past few weeks, they have been turning up there a couple of days and it's amazing to see the reaction of people getting caught cathing a free ride. "But officer, I'm only going one stop!" "But officer, my transit expired 10 minutes ago and I'm only going one stop!" "But officer, don't you love my big blue eyes?" (the last one isn't true of course but I'm curious to find out if it's ever worked for anyone - other than in the movies). What bothers me the most is that last week, most of the people being caught looked like people with money. Gucci bags, Fendi sunglasses, Versachi suits. Go figure. The rich guys rip the system on a regular basis and the poor guy pays for fear of getting caught.

Note to the transit police: you should do this more often. I love to see a good bust.

Underwear. According to dictionary.com, they are "Clothes worn next to the skin, beneath one's outer clothing."

We can guess at the reasons for wearing underwear: protect our "intimates", hold things "in place" (for the men) and perhaps even to keep clothes "clean" (no additional comment on this one). This brings up the interesting question of: Why then thongs?

I really don't care what people wear. Seriously. This would never even come up except for the fact that the pants are now coming up lower and lower and tighter and tighter and people have forgotten what belts are good for. So, the poor civilian on his/her way to work/school/church is exposed other people's underwear.

I know why I wear underwear but I can't figure out why someone wold chose to wear this. Seriously, what's the point? Doesn't that string get uncomfortable after a few hours? What does this do to protect one's bum from the sometimes unpleasant feeling of pants? What is the point? Why wear anything at all? Would it not be more comfortable to go comando? This brings me to another rant that is related but unrelated at the same time. I wached a clip once (in between episodes of Star Trek: TNG) on Spike TV where they had 3 women at a pub and they asked men to guess who was wearing "old lady" underwear, a g-string or going comando. Please, how does something like this get on prime time tv?

Seriously, I really don't care what you wear. After all, I wear what I want to. However, don't expect me to keep my mouth shut if you go around wearing this then flashing it to the world when you sit down. BTW, I don't really want to sit where your asscrack was hanging out! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

I've been tagged (and I can now actually follow through on it!)!!! Thanks to jennjr for this great little meme.

1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same.

As with jenn, I had to go back to blogging hell to get to my 23rd post.

A little history behind the line....

I had recently started a new job (the place I'm at now) and the boss lady always managed to scare the gorram crap out of me. And hence, her presence became a constant thorn in my side. The 23rd post, 5th line happened to read:

"The boss lady came in for a bit this afternoon and she left shortly there after."

Nothing too ground breaking. I'm tagging (not sure if anyone will actually do it but I'm trying it regardless): Misha, Steve and Nullfactor. Sorry, just pretend that there are a few more names at the end *lol*

Before my little rant...thanks to wiccachicky for this cool little quiz.

How the hell did I get to be the really, really bad guy? :(

This was the first of many memorable lines from an amazing new flick. I joined the local Browncoats for an evening of BDM watching and food on Friday night. I cried at a few choice parts (so sue me, I was a little over emotional...) and laughed and laughed and laughed. The movie theatre folks took pictures of us in our matching t's and Jayne's hats and all in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable event. We're getting together again for a re-watch on Saturday which will be faboo, especially since my honey had to leave to help his friends move. To boot, I have yet to read one bad review which, wouldn't really matter to me but will, hopefully, encourage others who would not necessarily think of watching Serenity to go out and watch it. Seriously, it's a great movie.

Saturday was spent cleaning house and then helping friends unpack. We finished so late we ended up spending the night on the futon. Sunday we had a big breakfast and headed out to do some shopping.

I did have a bit of a disastrous Saturday afternoon when, on my way to meet Dan the bankmachine ate my card. To boot, I went to get a new card at lunch today and the local branch near work was having troubles with their computers which means, I still have no bank card and all of $20 until I can get a new card which, will hopefully be tomorrow.