Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Mardi Gras!



As it turns out, it's also Pancake Tuesday. Guess what I'm having for lunch!

Monday, February 27, 2006

PostSecret

If you haven't been reading PostSecret, you should.

Viva Las Vegas!

Bro #2 finally owned up to have not really married his current wife. We already knew this thanks to a certain loose-lipped niece, but it's funny he's finally owned up to it. Anyway, they're getting married at the Bellagio in May. Rumour has it that Mum, Bro #1, Eli and myself will drive down to Vegas for the wedding. Yay, road trip! It should be really nice in May - no snow and not too hot yet.

Mum still doesn't understand getting married in Vegas, but is glad it's going to be at the Bellagio. She's been inside and thought it was very well done. She really liked the Chihuly ceiling which I'm looking forward to seeing. Getting married in Vegas isn't my cup of tea either but I can see why some people want to do it. Maybe it's an age thing.

I don't know yet if it's going to be formal, semi-formal or nice casual. In any case I get to go shopping. I haven't shopped for nice clothes in a long, long time. It should be interesting.

I haven't been to Vegas since I was 18 or so (twenty years if anyone is counting). A large group of my co-workers rented a bus and made an overnight trip out of it. Yes, I gambled, and yes, I was nervous and no, I didn't get caught. Bro #3 was fresh out of the Navy and went with me. After we got bored with the casinos we went to a movie theater and saw Nightmare on Elm Street (the first one). It was a fun, odd trip.

Back to Bro #2 - he's an interesting guy. One of our cousins has the rest of us cousins (there are a total of ten cousins on my mum's side of the family - my four brothers, myself, two other gals and three more guys) half convinced that Bro #2 is or was a CIA agent. His *cough* cover story is that he was in the Army doing communications stuff. He's led an interesting life to say the least.

Wife #1 was German with a son and daughter (step-kids to my bro) and the family never met them (he met, married and divorced her when he was stationed in Texas).

Wife #2 was Korean whom he met when stationed in Korea. We met her a few times, but we never met her family. They lived in New York for most of their relationship. Apparently it turned out she married him so she could live in the U.S. and bring her parents here as well. She was a lounge singer (Korean lounges, apparently) and got caught up in drugs and who knows what else.

Between #2 and #3 he had a long-term relationship with a girl in Belize (he worked there for a couple years). She sent a letter to Mum at one point stating that the baby she had was my brother's son. Bro said it wasn't, that she had an affair with another American living there. The picture she sent was inconclusive.

The lady he's going to marry is wife #3. We've met her twice and she's a good match for Bro. She's from Russia (Odessa, to be exact), she's Jewish*, divorced and has two daughters. One daughter is almost done with college and the other is almost done with high school.

Mum is going to visit them for a week in April. They live on Long Island and they both work in NYC. I'm rather jealous of the visit but I don't have the money to join them.

*Thanks to my brothers I have two Jewish sisters-in-law and one born-again SIL. On Eli's side there is one Catholic SIL, one Anglican SIL, one ex-Jehovah's Witness SIL and one First Nations (Native American) SIL. We're nothing if not eclectic! I've only listed this out because I got to thinking about it and thought the mix was interesting. Me? I think they consider me the odd-one out: I'm pierced, tattooed, married to an older guy and living in a foreign country.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Ta Da!

It's done.

Complaint one: I can't get the gap between the banner and the Blogger navigator to go away (the gap is there in Firefox, IE doesn't have enough space between the navigator and the banner).

Complaint two: I'd rather have the sidebar on the right-hand side. Would a kind soul take a look at the css and give me the tweaks to move it over? Pretty please?

The beautiful graphics are from citrusmoon. Taz is a wonder with graphics. The original template is from noipo.org but you'd never recognize it.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Messy

Please don't mind the mess. I'm tweaking the template. I'll let you know when I'm done.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Johari Window

I'd never heard of a Johari Window before finding a post about it at MetaChat. You pick five or six words that you believe describe yourself. Then whomever you make the link available to picks five or six words that s/he thinks best describe you. It's interesting to see where they coincide and don't coincide. My Window is here. Let me know in the comments if you do a Window and I'll "do you" as well.

;^)

Whining

I forgot to mention the Jeep had to have more work done on it. Poor Eli was driving home last Wednesday when it died on him. He had it towed to the mechanic we use and caught the bus home. All told, it took him six hours to get home. Anyway, it turned out it was the radiator. For some reason the gauge wasn't showing it as hot. Long story short - and $500 later - it got a new radiator and the usual new oil, filter, etc.

And my mouth hurts - I'm having to take about six Tylenol 3 a day. Funny thing is that it's the inside of my cheek (it was rather roughed up with the extractions) rather than my gums where the teeth were extracted.

:^(

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Happy VD Day!

Yeah, I know the "D" or "Day" is redundant. Sue me.



The idea for this was stolen from here.

Last bit for my teefers: I had my last two wisdom teeth extracted yesterday. They were gnarly to quote my dentist. He asked if I wanted to take them home. No, thanks. But I did want to see them. He cleaned them up and showed them to me. Yep, gnarly indeed! My roots are corkscrewed into my gums. And I look like a half-assed chipmunk today. And it's a good thing I had lots of Tylenol 3 left over. Blergh. I'm glad it's all done.

So, I have one root canal and four fillings. Is that about average for adults?

Sunday, February 12, 2006

I've Gone to the Darkside

I've made an account at MySpace and even spent a couple hours making it kinda/sorta tolerable to look at. You are safe clicking the link - no music shall invade your ears. The link to my profile is in the sidebar.

More serious news - Eli's brother called about the settling of their Dad's estate. The house (and other miscellaneous stuff) has sold and escrow closes at the end of February. Some of Eli's share will go to pay off the credit card we used to buy plane tickets, etc. to go back to Ontario for Dad's service. The RV will be paid off this summer. With the money from the (future) sale of the trailer and the inheritance we'll have a very nice down payment. As wonderful finally having a real place to live will be, we'd both rather have Dad still alive.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

A Story

Someone at a site I frequent came up with a suggestion: write a little story based on this photograph. Mine is below.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


The taxi driver let Marianne off at the curb. It took some time but eventually she persuaded the driver she’d be okay and he left. She could see the driver shaking his head as he drove away. With a small smile she turned and faced the cemetery.

As far as Marianne could tell she was alone. All she saw were a few crows fluttering about from tree to headstone. Something fluttered in the tree next to her and she turned to see what it was. A little sparrow was perched on an even smaller branch watching her. They stared at each other for a few moments before the sparrow fluffed his feathers and flew away. The crows called to each other and the wind moaned softly as it traveled through the tall pine trees. No other sound could be heard in this quiet place.

Marianne took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and set across the snow towards the centre of the cemetery. Pete’s headstone was about a quarter mile from the entrance and she was thankful there wasn’t much snow. Marianne stumbled once, rose and brushed the snow off her new red wool coat with her black gloves. She made sure that the contents of the paper bag she was carrying were intact and walked on.

Ah, there it was, Pete’s headstone. Trembling, she reached out and brushed the snow off the headstone with a gloved hand. Crouching down she removed the bottle of Wiser’s from the brown paper bag. Marianne carefully placed the bottle against the base of the headstone. She reached again into the bag and pulled something small from it. As she stood she folded the empty bag and placed it in her pocket. Her right hand clenched around the other item and Marianne brought her hand to her heart.

Marianne took a step back from the headstone, eyeing the composition. With a sigh she abruptly sat down in the snow, still facing Pete’s headstone. “Why, Pete, why?” came softly from her lips. “Why did you leave me? And in this place of all places.” There was no one to hear her quiet questions except the lone sparrow.

The sparrow twittered at Marianne from a tree a few feet away. She didn’t hear it through her tears. Using her left hand to wipe her face, Marianne reached out and placed the item in her right hand on the top of the headstone. It was a small pewter plane.

As it began to snow Marianne settled down onto the ground. She curved her body around the bottle of Wiser’s as if to protect it. The sparrow flew down to Pete’s headstone and pecked at the plane. Finding it wasn’t food, the sparrow turned to Marianne. It didn’t take long until the sparrow couldn’t see her; the snow gently covered every bit of Marianne’s new red coat. The sparrow fluffed his feathers once again and went to find sustenance elsewhere.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Oliver

The cat is insane. The proof is in the pudding:

I was sitting on the toilet flipping through a magazine. My sweats and undies were around my knees. The door was ajar as usual (cats go insane when there is a closed door between s/he and her/his human). Oliver meandered in to see what I was up to (I'm doing what I usually do in the washroom, silly cat). He decided that my sweats looked like a good hiding place and proceeded to climb in. Oliver got all the way in and gazed up at me as I looked down at him. He then settled in as if it were nap time.

Insane, I tell you.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Stormy Weather

We had an intense windstorm yesterday that started the night before. We lost power at about 9:45 a.m. Saturday morning and it wasn't restored until 3:30 p.m. Sleeping and reading wasn't exactly how I expected to spend my Saturday but there were people much worse off than I. Delta (about 15 miles from where Eli and I live) had severe flooding and a woman in Washington died when a tree fell on her.

I'm glad it's all over and the fall-out wasn't worse.

But you know what? My sense of time is all fucked up. It feels like it should be afternoon or evening. I think part of that is because Eli had to get up at 3:00 a.m. this morning to work a bit from home. Everything just feels off.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Whereas We Talk About My Mouth, Again

The root canal completion and the filling I needed were done yesterday. The filling is in a fairly forward tooth. I've never had one that close to the front of my mouth before. The numbing was quite intense. I could feel it up into the bottom of my right eyelid and my right nostril. Later in the afternoon I was munching on something soft (cookie!) and bit down wrong. Holy Mary, Mother of God - the pain was exquisite. I'll get my nose re-pierced a dozen times and a full body tattoo before I want to feel that kind of pain again. It's a bit sensitive today, but no pain.

Anyway. My wisdom teeth extractions are scheduled for February 13. I'll be so very glad when this is all over.