ya can't argue with a cold can of sapporo and a couple ice packs...

it's the best thing really after basketball (playing not watching) and i'm really hurtin cuz i forgot that i'm 30+ and out of shape and ran like i'm not...seriously, for the first 30 minutes we were all run and gun, which means i was out leading the break at full speed and sprinting back on defence...just try running as fast as you can and then stopping, jumping, and turning around to sprint the other way...now that you've got the hang of that, add in some boxing out and fighting for rebounds and loose balls, maybe dive on a cement floor a couple times, and running sideways and around people who don't necessarily want to let you run around them...if you're still feeling ok, find someone younger, faster, and more athletic (but not as gritty and with less heart...) and try to chase them...for 30 minutes cuz even though you're pushing the ball and setting good screens and rebounding, you're maybe not hitting your shots so much...actually i was but my teammates were a little cold...except for gary (round mound of rebound...seriously he's 45 and totally unathletic but he's got a nose for the ball and a certain tenacity...i've gotten bruises fighting him for rebounds...i love that guy...)

i bought this sapporo especially for 'after basketball' actually. good call.

so how have you been?
me...i've been struggling...depression seems to be kinda under control...better living through medication... anxiety/stress...not so much. it seems like i might also be suffering from an anxiety disorder...or something... those silly little misunderstood/poorly diagnosed/funny little psych things.
i have numerous panic/anxiety attacks most days.
seemingly unconnected to where i am what i'm doing or what's going on around me.
if i've been talking to you in the past year, i've had one while talking to you. (you didn't notice cuz they last about 30 seconds and i "know what they are"...at least enough to recognize the nausea and shortness of breath and pounding heart and terror as "not real"...ie no one is running at me with a knife or a gun, i'm not about to give a speech to a hostile audience and you didn't say anything terribly upsetting...it just happened.) and i can fake my way through things until the part of myself that's whited out stops doing that.
(don't try the problem-solving thing ok - it happens at all times of the day, at work and at home and everywhere i've been in the past year and even when i'm playing basketball and sometimes i have them when i'm dreaming and wake myself up... so patterns aren't in it...although my new shrink is pretty sure we'll be able to sort it out. i'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. he's prescribed more meds specifically for this part of things...fair trade i say.)
for my part, i'm seeing a shrink. new guy, not the woman i saw the winter before last. he comes recommended. and so far so good. even if he is in the east end...sigh
i think other things have been happening since the last posting. but that's the biggest thing. especially lately.
i dunno.
i work a lot.
i haven't been reading as much lately. it's a timing thing kinda. the cycles of book releases means that things i could read for free in hardcover when i was last working in a bookstore are coming out in paperback. the new titles are still in hardcover and i can't afford that. i gotta wait a bit longer for stuff that came out after i was a bookstore employee to come out in paperback so i can afford it.
i've found a few things i really absolutely love.

Sherman Alexie - he writes brilliant short stories about basketball actually...some of the most beautiful writing i've come across, and only a beautiful few stories are about basketball, and the rest of the beautiful stories are not. thanx to brook and colleen for lending me "the toughest indian in the world" and thanx to adam and michelle for the gift certificate that i used to buy more sherman alexie.

Cormac McCarthy - he writes biblically, epicly...he knows more words than the dictionary...and he can write in such a huge enormous grand scale (bigger than moby dick) and i'm enthralled and amazed by his language.

other than those two i've been struggling a bit to find books that really get me excited...although i've enjoyed a bunch of books i've read that i can't think of right now...

i just picked up the new tom waits...well i love (love) 2 out of 3 discs...i'll take it. i love the two discs i love enough that i don't mind having paid for the set.

i love sarah too. every day. all day... she gives that grinch heart-growing-to-be-two-sizes-too-big-for-his-chest feeling all the time. (actually i often have that feeling...i have a big heart...i hope so anyway...)

work is ok i hope...even though i'm on my last warning for talking out of turn (my well-documented low bullshit tolerance in action with clients who don't have their shit together...) actually i was given my last warning about a month or 6 weeks ago, and things have been pretty ok lately...i've been keeping my head down...and adam held an intervention... (actually i'm feeling vengeful...anything the women folk want me to talk to him about?...like the infamous "the women folk are worried about your drinking" intervention at the turn of the century...?)

anyway, i guess that's all i got.
tired. and struggling.
let's play poker and eat good food and have good times more often ok kids, otherwise the next post is gonna end up being an essay entitled "depression is like loneliness, that's why i'm the social convener - you guys make me feel better cuz you're good and you can't feel lonely when you're actually with good people"...hmm...don't make me use that title ok.

what's everyone up to this weekend?
i'm gonna go to cambridge and visit my family and relatives.

i'm gonna try to get back to this blogging thing. i'm hereby commiting to one posting every week. hopefully more. we'll see how it goes.

take care of yourselves ok.
you're important.

pheww...but we got another wedding invite for the end of october

so i'm sitting in front of the computer, typing away...kinda thought-full...and then some...but things are starting to sort themselves out i guess. (have we only been married for 2 1/2 weeks?) for those who couldn't be there with us, everything went amazingly well. all day long it didn't rain, which was pretty good luck actually, considering the gray skies. i spent a lot of time looking around at all the people we'd gathered together...i gotta say there was an impressive community gathered...and they all brought good spirits and it was really special for me just to be able to look out on it.
i gave a speech and people seemed to appreciate it and get it, to connect with me and what i felt and had to say about our gathering.
although i didn't get it all out cuz i ended up having to decipher my speech from the edited rough copy and not the cleaned up copy i wanted to rewrite.
one thing i didn't really get to say in my speech was that mark and kaarin's wedding was part of the inspiration for hoping for a wedding along the lines of a barn raising. they got married last summer out in the country and they had a county's worth of help to put something special together. i wish we could've stolen more of their ideas actually.
(i want to try to put my wedding speech up on the ol' blog, so if you don't know what i'm talking about bear with me.)
i had a really nice talk with sarah's grandma lorraine, who some of you got to talk to at the wedding. she's a really lovely lady.
she was telling me about some family history research she'd done. how some of her people had moved to the area around waterdown. how some of the communities were too small to have their own ministers. and how the young people would get married out in the field with their communities gathered around. just families, friends, and neighbours - no ministers or officials. i can picture that. it's kind of amazing to me to think that sarah and i echoed that. it wasn't something i'd intended, but it still means something to me, still resonates really nicely...it's a special connection that she made for me.

adam and i went to see some live music last night - just the two of us. also special. it's a bit depressing to realize that the last time that happened was in 1999... but it was kind of a nice night anyway. easy to fall back into that relationship. now we gotta drag nicole out for some drinking and reminiscing or something. somebody warn our husbands and wives to be ready for the aftermath...
going out to see live music has inspired me again to make a better effort to see more of it. especially if i can go to hugh's room...i can walk there...shows start earlier...and end earlier...and i can sit down and still see the show...and i don't have to go all the way to the bar cuz there's table service......oh god i'm old apparently...

sarah and i have started spending our wedding money. we've got a table picked out, and a loveseat, and we picked up a home theatre/stereo in a box. and a printer. there's a digital camera in our future too. some new bedding. new plates.
other stuff i can't think of right now.

we also got new silverware. a couple bottles of scotch (one of glenlivet and one of 10 year old macallan...). some nice glasses. coffee grinder. hand mixer.
other stuff i can't think of right now...but only cuz i can't sleep lately...

we're going to gord and shanna's wedding in peterborough on saturday. they asked me to be the emcee. i can't wait. gord's great. it should be really nice and a lot of fun...plus i'll be married for this one so i won't need to be taking notes, or making sure everyone's doing ok or that they got a drink in their hand. i can have a drink in my hand and dance and not feel bad if i don't get to say hi to everyone.
should be really good.

two weeks after that is my uncle's wedding. i'm also looking forward to that one. the relatives were really great at our wedding.

my uncle mont actually said the nicest things anyone's ever said about me. i'm still kinda shocked or amazed or something to think about what he said.

but now i gotta go to bed. seems like maybe i'll be able to get back into this blogging thing now i think. i'll try anyway.

good night.

the best short story ever written...

it's called "saint junior", by Sherman Alexie, from The Toughest Indian in the World.
"...Roman's entire political philosophy revolved around the basic tenet that a person, any person, had only enough energy at any given time to believe in three things...Roman himself believed in free expression, Grace Atwater, and basketball. Neither a Republican nor a Diplomat, Roman had always voted for the candidate who looked like he or she could hit a twenty foot jump shot with three seconds left on the clock and the home team down by one. "

ok ok ok it's not just cuz it's about a basketball player. sherman alexie writes stunningly beautifully. also Grace Atwater is the wife of the main character and she's totally hot and totally sexy.
the story is brilliant and whimsical and sexy and gorgeous. it makes me really happy. my favourite story ever. all my friends be warned that i will probably force it on you at some point soonish...

me, i just got home from playing some basketball myself. now i'm drinking my second beer and i have an ice pack on my lower back.
it was a pretty good night. maybe not "glorious" but still really good.
between the story and the basketball i played i got to thinking about our wedding vows on the way home. sarah doesn't seem too keen on me saying that she is "the only thing that gives me more joy than basketball"...personal isn't the same as meaningful...? or something... it made me feel pretty mushy... sigh

anyway tonight...
i made a bunch of jump shots
grabbed a bunch of rebounds
dropped some awesome dimes
ran a couple pick and rolls
completed a couple give and go's
got out on the fast break
led a couple fast breaks
drive and kick
drive and kick
stole one inbounds pass
and missed the layup
called out defensive assignments in transition
made a great help defense lock down move in the paint
threw a pass to jason under the net that somehow ended up as a basket...seemingly against the laws of physics...
floated a couple passes into the post for devastating hook shots
hustled
ran
cut
spun
jumped

...sherman alexie writes in lists too...although he seems to be a little better at it than i am.

in other news all we need to do is assemble and stamp and address our invites to the wedding. less than two months to go. no pressure.

damn. if i call in sick to work tomorrow, it'll really fuck up a few people who i really like.

did i mention the camping trip? last weekend a work camping trip. adam and i drank an ounce and a half every hour we were there if you average it out. kinda messy. i didn't pace myself so good the second night, but that was ok too. i made it through the "i never"...
and i got adam back to michelle safe and sound. which means i'm safe and sound cuz michelle won't kill me...
i love those kids.

work lately...worries...weddings...

we've been working on a few shows for the history channel lately, to do with ww1, and mostly about the major battles where canadians took part even if the show isn't specifically about canadian soldiers. the somme. ypres. passchendaele. it's been more interesting than normal actually.
the one about the somme was a bit surprising even. it turns out that the film footage of the somme - which is actually the only footage i can recall of ww1 - is mostly faked. the british generals expected a great swift victory. they got an ugly long slaughter. the filmmaker who was supposed to capture the victory got instead what actually happened. then some fake footage was combined with cuts from his footage to show a victory. one scene in particular stands out. i'm sure a lot of people would recognize it as the one they saw in history class, and in text books. allied troops are going over the top of a trench and one man is shot just as he sticks his head up and falls back down but everyone else makes it out of the trench anyway. i don't know if my description can call it up in memory, but it's such a familiar sequence that i'm sure it would be recognized.
turns out that was fake. propaghanda. it's not a trench. the men don't have any gas masks or any other equipment at all with them. the "officer" is actually only carrying a cane.
i can remember pictures of this sequence in history text books.
so...early propaghanda...
actually the show was/is pretty cool. they get all csi with the film, trying to figure out which parts of it are real. at the same time, 2 brothers from newfoundland, armed forces guys themselves, are retracing the footsteps of two uncles who fought at the somme. it works as a good counterpoint, with the forensics and specialists working on the film and the big picture history of ww1 and the brothers dealing with the personal and family histories, and even retracing routes and events in actual clothing and equipment of the period.
the specialists they call in are pretty awesome. they take stills of the footage to identify actual places where they were filmed, and the soldiers in them. they use facial analysts to compare images, and a lip reader to figure out what they might be saying.
the brothers are also pretty interesting. they're able to make this giant, unfathomable event real with their family histories, and heirlooms. one brother sews his uncle's hat badge onto the uniform he's wearing. they also have a story about the uncle who survived, despite getting shot in the leg and losing the leg.
"one time i was left alone wit' uncle linus, an' me ma tol' me never to ask him about his leg. so as soon as she left the room i says to him 'uncle linus, what happened to your leg?' an' he lets out this great cackle an' he squints at me an' he says [in a popeye kinda voice]'a tank run over it'..."
i dunno. it's a silly little story but so real and so human...
the more they talked about newfoundlanders in ww1 though, ...it made me pretty curious about how ww1 history might be really different in newfoundland than what i learned. there was one regiment that started the day with 750 men and only had 68 at role call the next morning. and overall newfoundland lost more men than any other country, in proportion to how many enlisted. (newfoundland wasn't part of canada then.) is there anymore resonance, or maybe presence in the classroom or maybe just greater weight to the teaching?
i dunno. just a thought.
interesting show anyway.

funny titles of the blogs i haven't gotten around to posting lately...or something

"between the legs, around the back, spinning, off the backboard, in traffic..."
about the best shot i've ever made while playing basketball. the off the backboard part was even on purpose. it was so ridiculous that i could only walk away from it, and i could barely meet anybody's eyes. mark was just shaking his head and laughing.

"ha ha ha - i've made it past 3 months...you can't fire me now..."
about how i've made it past the ol' 3 month probation period at work. not only that but my first day after probation was june 6, 2006...06/06/06...i listened to black sabbath all day that day.


ok that's all i can remember off the top of my head...while at work...so i'll post a part two of this when i remember more of the funny things i meant to blog about lately.

things are ok. but nutty. wedding drama abounds. the invitations are just about done and just about ready for assembly. we're scouting out registry stuff. sarah's dad wants to throw a bachelor party for me. i'm leaning towards softball in the earlier evening and then drinking later, maybe with cards...? i dunno. but i'm playing shortstop.

"girl you must have the gracefulness of a donkey"...my favourite words this week...

aside from "last crossing" by guy vanderheaeaeagheaehge, which i'm really loving the feel of, come from the silver hearts new album "dear stranger".

last real poet
'she said i'm the last real poet in town
and i'm leaving
and i'm sure to become somebody
somewhere else'

all for you
'you know evey man must work
and the day is long and cruel
see the blisters on my hands
i've worked the whole day through
but i'm not feeling any pain
cuz my hands are holding you
and when the day is done
i'm coming home to you'

whiskey blind
'girl you must have the gracefulness of a donkey
one dance with you and whole world's upside down
that's ok i still got the honky-tonky
still got enough beer to go for one more round
so hand me down that bottle
i've got a lot of trouble on my mind
before i'm seeing double
please take the keys
i'm going whiskey blind
and i can't stand to have you see me crying'

last days of chez nous
'you know i still love the way you sing
but i do believe that is the only thing
nothing ever came from trying to seperate sand from glue
we used to pick at hymns together
now its scabs
let's pack it up and get a tattoo
oh i know
that love don't last forever
even if you make it walk around in sunday clothes
and folks don't stay together
so they can keep smelling like a rose
i can play with you forever
and i'd never tire of the oo-wah-oo's
any song we sing together is a tonic
for the battles and the blues'

(there was even a zeugma in that last one. who can find it?)

the light on the lake when i step off the streetcar...

one of the things i love about the king streetcar is stepping off of it, coming home from work. my stop is along that stretch of king west where the street runs right along the rail lines beside the gardiner. the houses stop on the south side of the street just before my stop and the view of the lake opens right up, and the light at the end of the day on the lake is gorgeous. some days i can convince myself that i can see the other side it seems so clear. or maybe i can just see farther along the north western shore...see more than etobicoke and hamilton...i'm not sure what's past hamilton along there, but i could make it out tonight.
tonight there was a big freighter out on the lake too. first one i've seen this season, although i'm sure there have been plenty. it's kinda something. i don't know why though cuz those freighters aren't exactly pretty... oh well. i don't really need to understand it. the light was so amazing tonight too. and the colour it brought out of the sky and the lake...
i kinda wish i was the kind of person who would stop to look longer at the water, maybe go down to the shore and stare meditatively or something, setting myself on a rock or a log or leaning on a railing or a tree...
we went down one night last summer with a blanket and a bottle of wine. that was real nice. it's a puzzle why we don't do it more...
this past week has been a study of different colours and states of water on the lake, something i've taken to noting to myself i guess. even on the rainy gray days it was pretty. just different. hmm...

jesus was a zombie...

so we were watching "bones" tonight...it's not brilliant i admit, but it's reasonable i guess. good dinner tv. and tonight it was a little bit special. bones and booth were driving through new orleans, discussing the merits of voodoo as religion - booth skeptical, bones anthropologically engaged:

bones - there's nothing more outrageous about voodoo than catholicism
booth - yeah except for the zombies
bones - well jesus rose from the dead...

as a recovering catholic...that was special.

home from basketball...beers...tired...hmmm...

tuesday night. 11:30pm. i am home from basketball. and i am drinking...oops...finishing my first beer. an export if you're wondering. i got a soft spot for the export really...or at least some sorta pseudo-anti-bourgeois...yeah it's bullshit. i just kinda like it. so there you fancy pants's. or something...
basketball was pretty awesome tonight actually. i wasn't looking for my shot so much cuz i was seeing the court really well and i threw some wicked steve nash passes - mark got a full court bullet that he dropped in behind all the defenders, gary got a sweet little drop off down low, same with saman, and i posted up long enough for boyd to cut hard to the hoop and fed him a perfect bounce pass right in stride and right into his hands on the way up to the basket... not that i didn't hit my share of hot shots...i was finishing around the basket with _my left_ all night, and dropped this great shot while getting hit. it was pretty cool. you'll just have to trust me.
we had a really nice weekend all round. friday night brook and mark and i went to the raptors game - first time just the 3 of us got to hang out for a long time. and it was a lot of fun. the game was kinda silly but also a lot of fun. the beers after the game were totally great too. saturday night was dinner with sarah's mom who cooks a mean turkey. it was just really great. and sunday we went to cambridge to visit my mom. first though we saw my grandparents and it was maybe the best visit we've had in about a year. my nan's got a new doctor who has completely straightened out her meds...by taking most of them away or drastically reducing them. and she's so much more alert and present now. we had such a good visit with them. they gave us our wedding present already. a whole lot of money. much more than i ever expected. it was very touching. made my heart kinda swell up...
and it was a good visit with my family too.
oh boy...i thought i had so much to say but i'm winding down real fast. i think i'll have to leave something to talk about some other time. good night.

more from "plowing the dark"

about william butler yeats
"...First of all you have to understand that the man was out of his fucking mind. Which is to say Irish. The country doesn't leave you much choice. He more or less had to look for another place to live.
--Mad Ireland hurt Yeats into poetry?
Yeah, actually... The man never found a place where he could put down and live in good conscience. A place where heart and head could sit at the same table. That was his Byzantium fantasy..."

this quote might be my favourite

"-Why is the math so hard?
--Which math?
-Perspective. Proportion. Depth
--Perspective? Perspective is easy. Just the visual cone turned inside out. Once the Italians got wind of Arab optics, the whole globe was up for grabs.
-Not that perspective, she said, harsh enough to surprise him. But he was alongside her in a flash. The most difficult man she knew was also among the smartest.
--Oh. Perspective. Knowing where you are?
She nodded. He scribbled with a number two pencil on a pad of blank canary legal paper. He drew her diagrams, space's irrefutable proof.
--If being alive were a single problem in long division - how to divide infinity by threescore and ten - we'd have a reasonable chance of solving existence. But the solution for seventy years misses catastrophically for thirty, because teh numerator is infinite. And those solutions, in turn, look nothing like the quotient for this year, this fiscal quarter, or today, let alone the next thirty minutes.
-We live between our next heartbeat and forever
--That's it. we are supposed to solve all the conflicting quotients at once. That is what makes...the math so hard."

that part about living between our next heartbeat and forever...i'd like to try to fit that into our wedding vows maybe...

so i've finished 'plowing the dark'... there's a lot going on in that book, and even though i wasn't thrilled with a couple parts it's still some heavy shit. definitely i recommend it, even if sarah didn't actually read it for class like she was supposed to...

small excerpt

"An architect, half German, at least by family tradition, a man for whom the whole human race was a perpetual source of stress, whose Moses complex led him through a lifelong quest for peace that started with biofeedback and wended its way through est, yoga, crystals, acupressure, acupuncture, shiatsu, Rolfing, Alexander technique, ... and finally Prozac, sat paralysed, reeling in the real-time feed issuing from his workstation screen. Now and then, condemned to to participate, teh architect cried out to no one in particular, 'Oh god. This can't be happening. I can't process this. What in the hell is all this supposed to mean? What do these people think they're doing?'
This man's disheveled cellmate, an American who'd made it through the last twenty years on force of habit alone, a man whose Cold War existence came down to little more than the private contrition of forward motion, at last had to answer: 'God only knows what they think they're doing. But they seem to hitting that concrete wall with sledgehammers.'"



-Simon I think you'd like this book. lots of programming humour. although i think adam and michelle and nicole and jeff and kendra and ....there are reasons why i think this book should appeal to lots of folks actually...

plowing the dark

yup that's what i'm reading...(by richard powers) it's part of one of sarah's courses and she didn't actually finish it.
actually i'm on my lunch break and i had to stop reading cuz tears streaming down your face at work is...well...no i don't really care about that so much...it's the broken (breaking?) heart that has me worried for my performance for the rest of the afternoon...phew...yes i really really do recommend it. the book i mean. with a (melo)dramatic/epic/courageous title like that? of course i'm interested. and it's kind of our story too even though it's not quite...the eighties and nineties as historical events ...made me realize how little of substance i knew/know about tiennamin (sp?) square and the fall of the berlin wall...and those are the events in the book i remember - unlike the escalation/deterioration of lebanon and the bombings... hmm...are there history books about the eighties and nineties yet?
whatever.
tomorrow is officially one month since i started this job. yesterday was one month since my last post... not connected.
the job and the people here are really amazing. i'm very lucky actually. i don't buy into that it'll all work out/it happened for a reason shit but it makes a good story...
could be i'm overly emotional lately (and today) cuz i'm overtired. that time change thing really sucks. and then i played basketball last night - 4 on 4 for 2 hours with no subs... fucking glorious. early on i posted up and got a pass right down the heart of the lane which i turned into a pretty little baby hook shot...boyd and i hooked up on some gorgeous give and go, pass and cut and pass and drain the wide open jumpers...i also totally crashed full speed into a wall...but at least i kept the ball in bounds...ok that's enough for one lunch time.
you're all in my thoughts as i read this book and write this post.

all the pretty horses

two things happened today
1 - started my new job...and i'm feeling pretty good about it so far. it feels do-able, despite my lack of existing qualifications (i have tons of potential though...)
i like the place too.
also i got to correct adam already...on my first day!!! just so y'all know - LTC refers to longitudinal time code, not linear time code...i don't think adam will soon forget...hmm...but after the public shaming my job might get harder...ok just laugh behind your hands...you too michelle

2- i finished "all the pretty horses". phew... kinda rough. i broke down a bunch of times reading this. beautiful in the way that shield rock can be. the main characters are cowboys from the first half of the 20th century. taciturn. delightfully archaicly polite. but words and gestures are made sherpas by the weight of everything they have to convey. it's heartbreaking kinda. and i actually really love the vernacular of old texas ranch hands. "good ol' boys" might be my favourite people...or maybe it means something more to me...maybe i'm loading meaning high and deep into a small phrase...do i project like all the time?

hmm...sighing now i guess...it was such a good book though. anybody wanna borrow it?
paul

blecchharrgghblecccchhhthgarrgghblecch...

i wish i could call in sick on my life today...just stay at home playing video games or reading or laying in a hot bath...sigh...actually i did call in to say i wouldn't be renovating tonight...but still...when even paul stanley and gene simmons can't move me from my funk...maybe i should go shopping...alas i cannot cuz i gotta go to my mindfulness based stress reduction workshop...stupid workshop... actually i'm trying to use it to sort out my actual feelings right now...hmm...tired...yes...angry?...hard to tell, maybe, but what about?...angry about being tired...damn...kinda makes sense in a that's really stupid kinda way...frustrated?...about?...being tired?...sad?...no - one good answer...worried?...well yeah i guess - in job interviews i refer to this as proactive problem-solving...emotionally roller-coastered out?...could be could be - it would make sense cuz i got fired then got interviews for a really good job that i'm not qualified for but they hired me anyway (in case i haven't mentioned it i'll be working alongside adam "uhura" bolduc at crunch...i'll explain the uhura thing in person...) and this is really good news and i'm excited (well not right at this moment i'm not) about it and worried about it (aha! also worried)...and i also got a side job doing renovations for an old school friend (marco mucci) which has been really great...even satisfying to work with the hands...so a bit of emotional rollercoaster...but that sounds more true than it feels...hmmm...can't really pin down the actual feelings of my state i guess...oh well...it made for mildly entertaining prose...
so just in case you missed it - i got that job i was hoping for but not necessarily expecting. i'll be working in post-production at crunch with good ol adam. he's bringing the red bull to go with the jager when i celebrate the end of my vacation.
(you know how you make a boilermaker with a shot glass of scotch in a pint of beer?...try substituting jagermeister for scotch and red bull for the beer...it'll fuck you up kinda...and it's surprisingly tasty...like tahiti treat on steroids...even sarah likes it and you know how she is...about booze i mean...)
in other news...actually i don't have any other news.
hope y'all are well

ice cream and interview prep...hayden...thought-full?

sunday night...sarah's watching cold case...i've been practising and writing notes for my job interview tomorrow....bailey's flavour hagen-das goes better with a couple two bite brownies in it if you're wondering...(i've got some experience in the area of ice cream eating)
been sitting in front of the computer listening to lotsa old music i used to like but somehow never owned...like hayden - i even remember most of the words
"go down to the grocery store, meet someone i adore...keep me warm under the sack, share with me my midnight snack"
apparently feeling some kinda...thought-full? nostalgiac? ...not really. nice to just be writing and singing along to all the stuff i love to sing along to though.
got back into the reno/subcontractor business lately too. put in a good day of work yesterday. kinda feeling it today a bit...sore hands, with little nicks and cuts, stiff back...could also be from basketball on friday night. i hit a couple big shots, got out and ran on the fast breaks...felt real good. if only my shooting was more consistent and i didn't make as many turnovers as i've been making lately. sigh.
did anybody else notice that february is pretty much over? wasn't january just last week? can anybody tell me what i've been doing for the last 2 months cuz i'm not sure how it could go by so fast and feel so busy if i haven't done much...
i think i'm over the firing. on with the not having a job.
actually between the renovation work i've got, the interview, and if all else fails the e.i. programs that maybe pay for training or edumacation or figuring out what to be when i grow up...maybe things is pretty good right now.
and i got beers in the fridge.
although i'm basically out of scotch.
but irish whiskey ain't so bad either.
now if only i could put some kiss on my ipod life would be grand...

ouch!!

"you've got a crush on me
and it's easy to see
that you write about me in your diary"

oh those wacky donnas

i wanna be a unabomber

i was listening to the donnas while i wrote that kiss post.
i love them too.

"tonight i'm gonna make him mine
i'm gonna get in his pants tonight
and i'm gonna make him mine"

very west side story.

turn up to ten

and another good thing about having all this time on my hands...a chance to rediscover kiss. i used to love them. my friend paul from grade four loved them so much that he actually got his hair permed to look just like paul stanley - in grade four! (i wonder if i'll be that cool as a parent to let my kid look like paul stanley...?) i used to think that gene simmons was actually cooler but i'm not sure anymore... actually one of my favourite memories of working at indigo at the eaton centre was one morning before we opened when kim came in and as soon as she got into the music section she put on kiss's greatest hits...i proposed to her on the spot. (i also remember that nobody else was old enough to really know anything about kiss...) oh yeah and she laughed off my offer of matrimonial bliss...in her defense she was either engaged or married at the time...also i think sarah might have laughed off my offer of matrimonial bliss too the first eight times...
ok but check out these kiss lyrics (i actually prepared for this blog post)

"turn it up
hungry for the medecine
2 fisted
til the very end
no more
treated like aliens
we're not gonna take it
no lies
no more alibis
turn it up
got me hypnotized
rock on
won't be tranquillized..."

and

"sometimes days are so hard to survive
a million ways to bury you alive
the sun goes down on that bad dream
you wound up so tight gotta let off steam
they say they can break you
again and again
if life is a radio
turn up to ten"

that's geniosity for sure. i kinda wish i'd gone to see paul stanley play the phantom now...
whoever knows the name of both songs gets to buy me a drink.

update from the land of unemployment

currently fighting a running battle between mild agoraphobia (that's the one where you don't really leave the house right? not a fear of giant squid?) and boredom and lack of beer. i think the lack of beer is gonna be motivational...although the raptors game starts in - yikes it starts now. gotta go.

for those of you who don't know

my employment at coles has terminated basically due to irreparable differences with my boss. yes there's a story there, but the interweb is probably not the best place to air it out. we'll have coffee or booze or ice cream and you'll get the goods.
in the meantime - does anybody know of any paul-shaped job opportunities?

good thing about being fired/unemployed #1

i can grow a beard.
2 - i can watch more olympics than anybody else...hmmm....please tell me figure skating is over already...
3 - videogames...good thing i just dropped $40 on age of empires 3....
4 - daytime sex ...only not on tuesdays cuz sarah's in class all day
5 - when the raptors go on west coast trip i don't care cuz i don't have to get up early

hmmm...i'd thought of a bunch of funnier ones last night...of course i was drinking...speaking of the olympics - canadian womens hockey team beat sweden 8-1 this morning.

6 - someday i'll be able to enjoy browsing in bookstores again...after the bitterness fades...hey did you guys know there's a new boondocks out? i saw it this morning at "another story" the bookstore on ronces where i plan to stage a sit in until they hire me...there's this whole huge segment on the kobe bryant trial that almost made me fall down right in the middle of the store...there's a strip where one kid says "man kobe got beef!" "yeah kobe got huge beef" "no no no kobe got expensive beef" (pause) "kobe beef?"....i totally saw it coming but i almost hurt myself when i laughed...actually "another story" looks really awesome - maybe i can recreate myself...ya know like maybe i can develop the social conscience/awareness that i always wished i had when grew up...michelle what do you know about this place anyway? gimme some goods to put in my cover letter...(this is me trying to land on my feet...get back out there...an opportunity for change...or not...)
7 - more time for wedding planning...cuz now it might be more necessary...
8 - more time to cook...and listen to meatloaf and sabbath...
9 - more time to clean...ummm...
10 - did i mention the video games?
11- more time to read...hmmm...that one hurts a little...
12- when i get on ei i can totally get into all kindsa programs that cost millions of dollars when you're employed - hah suckers...
13 - time to do my taxes and see if all the taxes i'm owed from the last couple years makes up for the money i owe for the couple years before that...
14 - more time for my friends...(this means YOU! play with me!)
15 - i can start jogging
16 - i can now play basketball on friday nights too with the guys
17 - i can use the raps tix that so far i haven't been able to use cuz of work conflicts...they're cheap seats
18 - i can read all the basketball blogs...
19 - i can work on my crossover in the living room

i hereby challenge all of you to come up with more good things about having time off.

actually i have a little funny story about my first employment opportunity phone call this morning. her name is lisa - "the last time we talked was almost a year ago...so what are you doing now?"
me - actually i have very recently undergone a change of direction. [good one huh?] i'm moving on from indigo/coles.
lisa - but what are you doing right now though?
me - i play basketball tuesday nights.

she had to put the phone down cuz she was laughing so hard i think she snorted...

don't be entirely fooled by my brave face though ok.

reflections or some such shit

sitting in front of the monitor on a sunday night, glass of scotch...dalwhinnie if you're wondering...oh so nice...sarah's watching desperate housewives. it's been more than a month since my last post...these are my sins...(any catholics besides bolducs read this?) we've already watched all of deadwood season one...again - brilliant. apparently season two has been delayed. maybe out in time to get onto our wedding registry? sigh. i got "suspended" for two weeks from pick-up basketball. hmmm....fair enough i guess. (i'm the guy who loves the game so much that i slam the ball off the ground after bad plays, or kick it, or get heated about calls....well actually there's more to it than that....isn't there always?...but nobody else really does and it's much too telling that there's never been an incident when i'm not there...) so anyway, i guess it was deserved, and i've tried really hard in the past to not be that guy only sometimes i slip so i guess it takes something like this to make me really pay attention.
shit i should've titled this post confessions.
or something.
if only life was as good as this scotch.
we've been trying to make progress on wedding plans lately. almost have an email contact list. we do have an email address for the wedding stuff. i've written an email save-the-date. just as soon as we complete that contact list i'll actually send it out. we also need to set a date for our jack and jill/meet and greet/casino night. thought we had it sorted, but we had some bad luck. hmmm...gotta finalize that...sigh.
i have also won the worst day of 2006 so far contest. got a really troublesome situation at work that i probably shouldn't discuss on the interweb. can any of our erstwhile readers give me a job? might come to that. probably i'm still being dramatic as usual. keep your ears open.
tired. in body mind and soul. that's me.
i've read ... lots ... of books since the last post. 'book of secrets' by vassanji broke my heart. finished it on the way to work. i don't recommend having a book break your heart on the way TO work... also read jarhead...maybe that was in teh last post...i dunno. i think i've fallen off of that whole keeping track of all the books i've read in the last year or so...too big of a job...
...desperate housewives is a little distracting. why would she go down into the scary dark basement? tv characters have no sense of self-preservation.
hmm...i guess i don't really have much to say without discussing work over the internet so i'll stop now. hope you're all well.

untitled

i ain't got answers
but i got ears
might have tissues
to touch your tears
don't know what i don't know
but i know it's a lot
still i sometimes see
the difference between
to have and to have not

like living and dying
or hope and crying

i [heart]deadwood..."you liver-spotted cock sucker"

yup it's my new favourite show for sure. it's filthy...dirty...foul...! the swearing is so constant that you kinda forget it's swearing...only you also feel a little in awe of it...like the big kids who weren't afraid to swear when you'd only learned your first swear word...
and there's naked girls sometimes and hard bitten men living on the edge of the law in times past...an age when ... epic shit happened. kinda...
oh yeah and one of the main characters is from etobicoke...plus there's good bad guys.

"heaven isn't too far away/closer to it everyday/no matter what your friends mi-ght say...we'll find our wa-a-y...whoa yeah"

recipe for heaven
-one or more beers...to taste
-bag of sour cream and bacon chips...the bigger the better
-one raptors game recorded while you were at work...and you don't know anything about it yet...
OR
-one really good book...in this case "wildfire season" by andrew pyper...yes that andrew pyper...after reading most of his book i have to really respect him so i hope he's left the anti-christ (leah mclaren) to sink into her own lonely pit of inanity, banality, and asininity...and vapidity...ya know i just don't like her and he's apparently a really really good writer and what if she's contagious?...

only i can't really decide what to do...read the book or watch basketball...cuz i got a feeling the book will make me need to lie on the floor for awhile, kinda stunned and try to drink beer while flat on my back...and sarah's already gone to sleep so i won't even be able to wake her for stunned-boyfriend-needs-a-cuddle cuddles...hmmm...better watch the raptors

ps. i think i might try to document what i read this year...so far "high lonesome" by louis l'amour, and "devil's picnic" by taras grescoe, and now "wildfire season" by andrew pyper...but i think i'm forgetting one or two more...maybe they'll let me look at my book loan history at the old store if they still have it...

doppelganger...soft in my old age...?

so at basketball tonight there was this new guy...his name was paul...good looking...like me...but then he made me kinda look bad...maybe...at least to me...
admittedly he was taller...more athletic...better vertical...better handle...
and i didn't play my best game at least from a shooting perspective...maybe one for 82...(but that one was a dagger...a coffin nail...top of the key jump shot that rattled home for the win...or at least the lead...in a game we lost actually...anyway...)
i made good passes though...
stifling defense too...mark couldn't do nothin against me...even though he was 9 inches taller...i built the fence in defence...
ran the floor well too...got out on the break...rebounded...
but this paul guy had to go one better...made me feel soft...see he hit the dirt for more loose balls than anybody else all night...guy had like 14 blocks and 79 steals...1003 deflections...
that's my role!...the heart...the grit...the determination...that's me!
who does he think he is coming on my floor and playing my game?
actually i think he must be younger...probably only 28...
hmmm...

domestic...bliss...(?)...uh oh...

so it seemed like domestic bliss for a few minutes there...me and sarah in the kitchen...each of us baking...well actually i was just making choco chip cookie dough to eat...listening to neko case "tigers have spoken"...actually after her version of "train from kansas city" i ran out to get my shangri-las cd and play their (the original i think) version of it. only then i pulled a fast one on sarah and put twisted sister in the stereo and "the price" (the ultimate power ballad evER!!) came on...then a couple seconds later (i was busy reaching up and pulling down...clutching...trying to sing like i had heavy duty reverb...) sarah says "that's not the same song!"... don't be so hard on her. she got woken up from her early evening nap by a telemarketer, and told the telemarketer off for calling us at 530 "am"..."don't you know what time it is?" "my boyfriend is sleeping!" "i gotta go!" click!... it's been a hard day for my girl.
and the reason it's not so domestically blissful right now is cuz i ate too much of my cookie dough. i better stop now. beer oughta make me feel better right?

(my) broke[heart] mountain

oh my god.
ow.
just saw brokeback mountain...and it really hurt me. feeling a little emotionally exhausted actually. i am not gonna say much though. i think this is ang lee's best film. i think ang lee is the best living director. this film is film as very very high art. the cast works beautifully. i will go see heath ledger's next film based on this performance. the script is astonishing. the whole movie is astonishing. those guys...those characters...i like those guys a lot. they could totally be my friends...
i think that's all i'll say cuz of how many people i know who haven't seen it yet...

happy new year.