Limes with Orange

Well, my sleep restriction therapy went by the wayside on day three of my migraine (that Christmas day headache was, in fact, the migraine coming back and setting up camp for the rest of the week). I have an appointment with my sleep doc on Wednesday, so I'm just going to wait and talk to him before I try anything further.

As my last post of the year, I had been planning to post a 2007 "Hot vs. Not" List about my random opinions, such as:

Friends you can make films with... HOT
Friends who only know how to gossip... NOT

Intelligent and entertaining independent films (Walk All Over Me)... HOT
Yet another Hollywood sequel or remake (Spiderman 3, Pirates, etc.)... NOT

Evan Biddell, fashion designer who won Project Runway Canada... HOT
Elina Viola, local fashion designer... NOT

Bob Rae, politician with a brain and a heart... HOT
Stephen Harper/George W. Bush, politicians with neither brains nor hearts... NOT

And so on and so forth...

But I really can't be bothered with such trivialities right now. So let me sum up 2007 on a personal level: I overextended myself for people who weren't worth even extending myself for in the first place and my health has been declining all year as a result, but thankfully these people are out of my life and I'm working hard at getting my health back on track. My various and sundry opinions about pop culture, politics and pugilism will have to wait. (Okay, so I've got nothing on pugilism, but doesn't it make for an intriguing triple alliteration?)

I'm hopeful that if I can avoid toxic people and keep my health as a priority, 2008 will be a much better year. So I guess those are my two main New Years resolutions. And resolution number three is to finish the second draft of my feature-length screenplay (my film work being necessary fodder for my mental health). Now excuse me while I continue to hibernate in an attempt to recover from this sleep stuff and the mother of all migraines.

Labels: bush bashing, fashion, health, odds and ends, pop culture

Okay, it's October now and time to start thinking about Halloween (or All Hallows Eve, if you want to be olde worlde about it; or Samhain if you want to be Celtic about it; or Day of the Dead if you want to go the Mexican route). I'll most likely be attending the Dio De Los Muertos Halloween Extravaganza being hosted by Jadesong. It's going to have a crazy variety of musical acts along with fire spinning and sphere juggling and other cool stuff. So now I just need to give some thought to Halloween costumes.


Do I go as your basic witch? It's what I tend towards but maybe I've done it too many times. Or I could stick with the witch theme but just be a little more on the pretty side. Or the sexy side. Or I love this gothic fairy. I mean, she's a little on the skanky side, but if you can't be skanky on Halloween, then when? LOL. Or I could go another way altogether and celebrate the superhero theme of my screenplay and go as Supergirl. (Though it looks like I might need a little help filling out that particular top! But I have faith in modern bra technology to provide the necessary assistance.)


P.S. This costume website that I've been using has a haunted house backdoor that can get you a decent discount. To find it, go to the homepage halfway down and click on the comma in the line that reads "Our Store now has over 14,000 masquerade items for you to choose from!"

Labels: fashion, fun, special days

Future brides… be very careful when choosing a seamstress. Just because she seems nice when you first meet her and she does good work, does not mean that you will have a good experience working with her. It doesn't matter how good the work is if your seamstress refuses to tell you how much it will cost for the little extras you enquire about. And do NOT accept, "it'll just be a little bit more" as an answer. My friend's initial quote was $200 and her final invoice—that was supposed to "just be a little bit more"—was $530. (Can we say 165% higher than the initial estimate, boys and girls?) And then when my friend paid her $550 in cash, the seamstress didn't have any change and simply kept the extra $20 for herself.

And that's not the worst of it.

Beware of any seamstress who, when you call her from the mall unable to find what she sent you to look for, tells you to wait there so she can meet up with you and go shopping and that it's really no problem at all… without telling you that she charges $30/hour for shopping trips.

And if you ask your seamstress to work on your veil, make sure that you know for a fact that she is capable of working on veils. Otherwise, you might suffer the devastation of having your beautiful veil damaged when it only needed a tiny bead every six inches along the hem rather than an orgy of beads and sequins, with the work resulting in a dime-sized hole in the veil.

Then god forbid that you call your seamstress on any of that stuff. Because no matter how polite you are, no matter how much you preface it by saying that you think she's a very nice person and does good work but you just have some questions about the invoice… well, there are some people who apparently jump to the defensive so quickly that they perceive that as a personal attack.

According to these people, suggesting that they be up front about their business charges seems to be considered offensive and apparently amounts to telling them how to run their business. And speaking firmly and not backing down is apparently tantamount to yelling at them. And I guess that correcting them when they put words in your mouth is considered a disrespectful interruption (regardless of how much more disrespectful the words being put into your mouth are). And it would appear that some people are under the delusion that being called a freelancer is as scathing an insult as some four or five letter words that I can think of… all I can say to that is try looking it up in the dictionary. I am at a total loss as to how any self-employed individual could consider "freelancer" an insult unless they simply don't understand what the word means. In which case, it's their own ignorance so why the heck are they getting so ridiculously mad at me? So mad in fact that the seamstress in our case decided not to drop the dress and veil off when she promised (mere days before the wedding) because she claimed to be afraid that I would be present. (Really? Really??? I wasn't rude. I didn't yell. I was perfectly civil, logical and professional. Enough with the bullshit, thank you very much.)

So make sure that you're dealing with someone who knows how to run the business side of their business. Design talent is NOT enough. Otherwise, you might become one of those wedding horror stories. (Or if you happen to have a Maid of Honour to deal with these people for you, be very appreciative of her for sparing you this grief… otherwise her efforts to save the wedding experience for you will pretty much have ruined it for her.)

Labels: fashion, rant, special days

I've been toying with signing up for another dance class this fall. I've danced on and off for most of my life… some tap and ballet as a kid, and a bit of contemporary when I was in university, but my big love has always been jazz. I've taken several different classes at Decidedly Jazz Danceworks here in Calgary, including a hip hop class that was lots of fun but ended up with me having to resign from it after injuring my ankle. And, unfortunately for me, joint injuries are particularly difficult to heal from with my health problems… so no more intense dance styles, I guess. Which sucks because I've been watching "So You Think You Can Dance" which inspires me to try my hand at all sorts of cool styles.

I'm thinking of maybe taking DJD's Funk/Stretch class which combines 45 minutes of grooving and 15 minutes of stretching to improve joint mobility and reduce stress. Hopefully my body can handle Funk under those circumstances. Or, of course, I never get tired of Jazz, so I might just stick with that old standby.

The question now is what to wear. Don't laugh, that's only partially as vain as it sounds . I find that I dance better if I like what I see in the mirror. And I like what I see in the mirror better if I'm wearing something that I like. I tend to like funky dance leotards and some jazz or yoga pants (yep, even when I'm doing Funk or Hip Hop… I just wear different shoes then). So my ideal outfit would be this lovely little Mirella Halter leotard and this Body Wrapper low rise V front pant… yeah, I think I'd like what I see in the mirror then and it would inspire me to dance just that little bit better.

Labels: cool sites, dancing, fashion

While browsing online to try and get ideas for what to wear to these weddings I mentioned previously, I came across this very cool clothing site called Electric Ladyland (makes me think of song by Jimi the Piper called "Electric Lassieland"... but I digress). Love the clothes but they're not exactly wedding appropriate... unless I was going to a rock & roll wedding!

Maybe I'll just stick to looking at their jeans and accessories for now. Because this site has loads of very cool accessories to help funk up an outfit. Unfortunately the product page for their Rock & Republic jeans is empty at the moment, so I guess I'll have to check back later for those. But there's more than enough to look at for now. So, excuse me while I go shopping!

Labels: cool stuff, fashion

Here's the thing. I've got two weddings to go to this year, one in June and one in September. They're both for cousins of mine, but on different sides of the family, so my sister will be the only person at both weddings... which is why I'm planning on wearing the same outfit to both. But what outfit?

My stumbling block: my pasty white legs. This is not just lack-of-sun white, this is scary-white-no-matter-how-much-sun-they're-exposed-to kind of white. And I bruise really easily, so those scary white legs are always covered in bruises. This is why I usually wear knee-high boots when I wear a skirt. But I don't think I want to wear boots in June. But I'm also not a pantyhose kind of grrl. So do I just give up and wear pants?

That's kind of where I'd landed until I found these Self Tan Kits. Now I've tried self tanners before and not had huge amounts of luck, but I like the look of the Salon Bronze Tanning System. I realize there are no guarantees that this will be any better than other products I've tried, even if the application method is different, so I would definitely give it a test run before the wedding just to make sure. If I do, I'll be sure to let you know whether I end up with orange legs!

Labels: cool stuff, fashion, odds and ends

Get a load of some of the latest Japanese footwear trends. Um, so... the Chinese have footbinding and now this is how Japanese women torture their feet?



Not to say that I've never worn shoes (or clothing or hairstyles) that others have considered crazy, but they didn't even come close to comparing to these boots. How do you even walk in them?

And now I am reminded of a Buffy quote, from "Earshot" the episode where she can hear people's thoughts. And she hears Giles think: "Look at her shoes. If a fashion magazine told her to, she'd wear cats strapped to her feet."

Yep, I think that pretty much sums up the shoes shown here.

Labels: buffy, fashion, pop culture, weird stuff