Limes with Orange

For my erudite, guitar playing friend even though I haven't seen (or heard) him play guitar in a while... Okay, so this particular card doesn't REALLY work as an e-card (or blog post), but I still couldn't resist:


Happy Birthday, Brian!

Labels: special days

This post is for all of my well-meaning friends and family who made my holidays miserable. I have health problems. Most of my friends and family should know that fact by now. Not minor health problems, either, but stuff that affects me every single day in a significant way.

Driving, even in the best of weather, is tiring for me. I hate that fact because I love to drive, but I have had to accept that it drains me. And driving in bad weather obviously makes it worse. Since I only have chunks of energy that last for about two hours, if you (and I speak to the general "you", no one person in particular)... so if you want me to be present at an event that will be longer than one hour (which most holiday functions are) perhaps you could offer me a ride and not just be upset when I honestly say that I'm not up to it.

If you tell me that I can call you any time I need medication or other items picked up from the store, don't be surprised when I take you up on it. And please don't make it sound like I've inconvenienced you, because that's why I didn't want to call you in the first place. But you insisted that you wanted to help out and I foolishly believed you.

I'm sorry that I'm still grieving the loss of my cat. And I'm sorry that I'm having a hard time dealing with my first Christmas since my grandmother died and an even harder time watching my grandfather cope with this Christmas. I don't have much of a reserve to begin with and all of that grief leaves me with nothing left. I did tell everyone that I didn't want to do the holiday thing except for spending Christmas Day with my grandfather, so why are you so upset with me that I did what I said?

This is a marathon I'm running, people, not a sprint. I don't get a day off from it. So I'm sorry if I can't be all sweetness and light and accommodate everybody, but you all seem to think it's a sprint and we should have passed the finish line already. But I will never live to pass the finish line unless they find a cure for lupus, sjögrens and chronic migraines. So you guys go on home and pop your champagne, your sprint is done. I'll just keep limping along in my solitary marathon. I had a feeling I was out there all alone. Now I know for sure.

Labels: health, rant, special days

Although I'm not exactly in the holiday spirit, having just had to euthanize my cat Tobi (and I'm not ready to talk about that yet), people have been asking for my Christmas list. The only thing I really want is Tobi, but I realize that's not particularly helpful. I am, however, starting a fund for a memorial tattoo that I'm planning on getting to commemorate Tobi. Other than that--and since the gift of a new Prime Minister in time for Christmas is now out of the question--here's my Amazon wish list. (And if you're actually going to check it out, I recommend sorting it by priority. Oh, and don't mind the "Janie's list" or "Mother's list" comments; that's just because two or three years in a row, my aunt and my mother selected exactly the same item from my list... what are the odds?!?).

Labels: animals, politics, special days

Thank you America! For voting more wisely as a nation than we did here in Canada. President Obama... that's pretty much the best birthday present a grrl could wish for!

Labels: politics, special days

I was trying to find out if today is a civic holiday in Manitoba (because I'm trying to reach Winnipeg's Globe Theatre to find out whether they're screening "Walk All Over Me" on February 22nd or February 29th, so that I can update the WAOM MySpace site) and today is that weird little civic holiday in Alberta on the third Monday of February called Family Day. I discovered that Saskatchewan and even Ontario now have a Family Day, but in Manitoba they decided to name their new February civic holiday after Louis Riel. Personally, I think that's a way better reason to commemorate a day than simply having "Family Day" (I wonder how many people ACTUALLY spend it with their families?). So welcome to the inaugural Louis Riel Day!

Labels: special days

Once again, I am late in posting birthday wishes to my laconic, erudite, guitar playing friend Brian. (My sister gave me a perpetual calendar to keep track of birthdays; a great idea! But it only works if you remember to actually look at it... go figure.) But I finally figured out the problem in my slightly warped brain:

I'm bad with birthdays to start with and only really remember those of my immediate family. Even then, I tend to remember astrological signs before I remember the actual birthdates. (I blame my mother for that particular oddity.) So my sister's a Capricorn, my mother's Aquarius and my dad is Gemini.

For some reason, I can remember that Brian is an Aquarius but that equates to February in my mind because that's when my mother's birthday is. The result, unfortunately, is that I never remember Brian's birthday until I start thinking about my mother's birthday. So Brian, I'm going to try to embed into my brain that you are Aquarius on the cusp of Capricorn and maybe I'll remember in time next year!

But for now, I just hope you had as much fun on your birthday as these crazy sharks seem to be having!

Labels: special days

With the holidays coming up, I've been asked to update my Christmas list. Which mostly just means updating my Amazon.com wishlist. And I've just discovered that they now have a handy dandy widget (that should technically go in my sidebar but it's wider than my Music Box which is already wider than any widget that I'd like to have in my sidebar... so blog post it is) so that I can share my list with the world (or at least the fraction of it that visits my blog):


FYI, for anyone actually checking out this list, I recommend sorting it by priority because there is some stuff on there that's been there for a while but I still want more than more recent stuff that I've added.

Labels: books and literature, film, music, special days

"Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot."

I don't know why, but I've always loved the fact that my birthday lands on Guy Fawkes Day. Is that odd? Well, if it is I guess it's fitting.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for their birthday greetings. I had decided that I just wanted a low key birthday this year which is why nobody has heard back from me today. I guess that's my birthday present to myself this year... a little bit of solitude. But I will be back in the world tomorrow, so you'll all hear back from me then!

Labels: special days

I'm finally getting around to posting about those events that I alluded to during my crazy, hectic summer and autumn but never had the time to actually write about. So here's the first one: My cousin's beautiful wedding in Victoria on Labour Day weekend.

My sister and I stayed at our aunt's condo with the bride's sister (who I haven't seen in ages and miss like crazy) and her "children." I must put "children" in quotation marks because even though I swear that it hasn't been THAT long since I've seen them, somewhere along the way they became TEENAGERS! When did that happen? My dad was staying at a motel very close by, so he was at the condo lots as well. So that was the extent of my pre-wedding visiting (thank gawd!)... catching up with my cousins, my dad and my sister (and briefly with my aunt and her boyfriend... hmm, I wonder if she calls him her "boyfriend" or if she has a less sophomoric term... but I digress).

The wedding itself was so beautiful and elegant, set in a lush grove overlooking the ocean, yet it was also fun and relaxed! I didn't realize you could combine all of those and make it work. And maybe most people can't, but that's my cousin's personality to a T (mind you, I realize that her personality couldn't have been so well translated into a wedding without the very capable help of my aunt and others near and dear to her).

The groom, being Scottish, wore a kilt. As did his father who played the bagpipes for my cousin to walk down the aisle. I think I want to marry a Scotsman. There's something so regal (and sexy) about a man in a kilt and formal dress. Anyway, there are some fabulous photos that the bride's brother took of the groom and his groomsmen that makes me think of a Scottish rap band. When I get a hold of that pic, I'll post it. In the meantime, here are some photos that my dad took of the big day.

The first two are: My sister, my dad and me & My 16-year-old cousin Alexandria and me.

These next two are obviously the bride and groom!

Awwwwww!

Labels: special days

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

As I mentioned in a previous post, my best friend's wedding is coming up in September and I'm the maid of honour. So I've been thinking about bridal showers, since that is one of the usual maid of honour tasks. I had considered having it at my apartment, serving sangria and seven-layer dip and making it a lingerie theme (since another friend of mine has an awesome lingerie shop that the bride could register at). The drawbacks with that idea are (a) I live in a completely different part of town than everyone who would be attending and (b) being the kind of person that I am, I wouldn't just want the place clean but I would want to have certain projects finished… like painting the kitchen… and I'm not so sure that I would have time to get that done.

The bride suggested an alternative location at a communal area available in the housing complex that she lives in, but that seems so impersonal to me. So what to do? Well, I got an interesting idea when I was visiting this Wedding Planning site: have the bridal shower at a spa and have the guests chip in to pay for the bride's spa treatments. Now, I haven't run this by the bride yet, so it may be a no go… but I really like the idea. They also have some other interesting ideas in their article New Trends in Bridal Showers that I could run by her if she doesn't like the spa one.

The site also has an article with tips for Maid of Honour Speeches that I might need to take a look at as the day gets closer. While I haven't had time to peruse it thoroughly, this site has the potential to be a goldmine of information. And I could use a goldmine right about now!

Labels: cool sites, special days

In honour of today being Friday the 13th, I've included 13 links to sites that reference Friday the 13th in one form or another.

1. Friday the 13th, 2029
Exactly 22 years from today, Friday the 13th will be a lucky day... when asteroid 2004 MN4 does NOT hit the Earth.

2. Greenpeace: Friday the 13th is here
Watch your worst nightmare unfold.

3. Urban Legends at Snopes.com: Friday the 13th
Why do some people believe that Friday the 13th is a day fraught with peril?

4. Care2 eCards for Friday the Thirteenth
Celebrate the day... from the safety of your own home.

5. Friday the 13th Quiz
How much do you know about this superstition? I only got 3 out of 8 and was told I would have 7 years of bad luck.

6. Is the 13th of the month more likely to fall on a Friday than on any other day of the week?
Enquiring minds want to know.

7. Friday the 13th Horoscope: Scorpio
Just follow the links to find your own horoscope for this "unlucky" day.

8. PsyBlog: Is Friday the Thirteenth Unlucky?
A bit of scientific research leading to no solid conclusions whatsoever.

9. Friday the 13th History & Cartoon Fun
The lighter side of this day.

10. Friday the 13th Special: Debunking the Myths of Bad Luck
Black cats and broken mirrors... what do you believe?

11. Friday the 13th: Film Theory Essays
You knew I had to start heading in this direction, didn't you?

12. Friday the 13th - From Crystal Lake to Manhattan (8 Movies)
Sometimes you just gotta go with the obvious. I'm actually not much of a Jason fan, though, give me Freddy over Jason any day of the week (pun intended... in hindsight).

13. The Gematriculator
And finally... How evil is your website? (Okay, not directly a Friday the 13th reference, but as far as I'm concerned it fits the general theme... and it's my blog so that's all that matters. )

Labels: film, fun, odds and ends, quizzes, special days, weird stuff

I know we've got a little bit of time before we need to start thinking about Mother's Day (and there's still Passover and Easter in between), but my mother started me thinking about it by talking about what she wanted me to get for her mother for Mother's Day. (Yep, I do pretty much all of my mother's gift shopping... don't quite know how I fell for that one, oh well...)

Anyway, as so many people do, my mother loves flowers. (So do I, but my cats always end up eating them... phooey!) I know flowers may not be the most original gift, but the reason they're not "original" is because so many people like them. Yes, I could probably find something else completely unique that I might love... but would my mother? Probably not.

And flowers can be unique, too. I was checking out this online florist, ProFlowers.com and they have a page with suggestions of Flowers for Mom. I might opt for the Carnival of Colour if I was picking for me. But I think my mother would prefer the Azalea Bonsai. Hey, I think I might just be prepared for Mother's Day ahead of time this year. What a concept!

Labels: special days

I just realized that I know a lot of Aquarians... it's been a busy birthday blog month. This one's for my bestest friend (bad grammar fully intended )... a classy and groovy celebration pic for a classy and groovy chick!



Your birthday horoscope:

"Now is not the time for self-editing. The more ideas you generate, the more you'll see possibilities blossom. A dream that's close to your heart wants to come true, so give it plenty of room to grow."

I hope you had a great birthday that lived up to that hopeful horoscope!

And I wish I'd had a chance to post this at the beginning of the day, but, well, if wishes were horses, yada, yada, yada...

Labels: special days

Time for another eCard. This time it's my mother's birthday!

I decided to check out a different site this time: Egreetings.com. Quite similar to the Yahoo Greetings site I mentioned in a previous post. (Also offering a free 30-day trial and a yearly subscription—where you can send as many cards as you like—for only $13.99.)

They had this weird, yet amusing birthday eCard by "The Chins" that I thought people might get a kick out of:



But for my mother I figured the Interactive Horoscope Reading eCard was perhaps more appropriate.

Being the self-proclaimed eCard queen, I probably shouldn't admit that I did actually send a physical card to my mother as well, but that was just because she doesn't have regular access to the internet. Otherwise, I definitely prefer the eCard route for the obvious reasons: they're cheaper, easier and faster than traditional cards, with the added bonus of saving trees!

Labels: special days

It's that time of year again. (So, Brian, do you feel old or is marriage making you young again?)

Being the self-proclaimed eCard queen (and not just because they're cheaper, easier and faster than traditional cards—though they are—but think of all the trees you can save), I have already sent an eCard to my erudite, laconic, guitar-playing friend Brian. But now I wish I'd discovered Yahoo! Greetings beforehand. If so, this would have been the card of choice:


(My brain may have already been warped before I met Brian, but I swear he fracked it up a bit more by introducing me to SpongeBob SquarePants.)

P.S. If you're checking out the new eCard site, you might be interested to know that they are currently offering a free 30-day trial and that a yearly subscription (where you can send as many cards as you like) is only $13.99. Pretty good deal for someone who sends a lot of cards.

Labels: special days

Today is my sister's birthday!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Darmody (aka Duckie or Doormouse)
Happy birthday to you!

Or the more traditional birthday song in my family:
Birthday by The Beatles!

Labels: special days

I've been offline while moving and just found the missing cable to connect to the internet... only to discover that Hallmark.com is temporarily unavailable... ack phooey! Much as I would like to shake my braindead mind into some creativity to make this post as merry as I did last year (see Happy Birthday, Brian!), I fear that I have yet to find the box in which I packed my imagination. So this will have to suffice for now:

Happy Birthday to my erudite, laconic, guitar-playing friend Brian. May all your birthday wishes come true.

Labels: special days

A little Simpsons-esque birthday celebration for my friend Brian aka the erudite, guitar-playing lothario...



>>> play sound file >>>

>>> The Ramones: I'd just like to say this gig sucks. Hey, up yours Springfield. One two three four... "Happy Birthday to YOU. Happy Birthday to YOU. Happy Birthday Burnsey, Happy Birthday, TO YOU!" Go to hell you old bastard. >>>
[transcript of sound file from Rosebud, Season 5 of The Simpsons]

I might have gone with "old fart" rather than "old bastard" but hey... potato, potahto... right?

P.S. Birthdays are all about embarrassment, right? So here's a little clip of Brian singing Special Fred... enjoy!

Labels: special days

How's that for flagrant solicitation of birthday greetings? Though I suppose it would have been more effective if I'd posted this at the beginning of the day. Oh well, I've still had six people phone with well wishes... four of whom sang happy birthday. Now where's my champagne, cake, prezzies and boys? Aren't I getting everything shown in the picture?!?!

Labels: special days