Number of incense sticks burning (3) multiplied by tie-dyed items owned (7) divided by environment-unfriendly vehicles owned (1) to the power of granola transport (1.5) times the value of empty bottles ready to take to the recycling plant ($8.35) ..

My hippie quotient is 263.025. Excellent.

I WAS going to write a pathetic little update about how sick I am and perhaps even wax a little poetry about the possible reasoning behind the unpleasant odor lurking about my bed, but no! I have joyous news to share instead!

Josh heard from our landlord today, and he and Shan officially have a suite in our building. YAY! I’m so excited for them and for us too – FRIENDS! In the SAME BUILDING! The place is almost as big as ours, and the same level of hardwood floor funky niceness. Oh, this is excellent news. Hopefully it’ll lift a bit of the stress of moving, too – things seem a little less ulcer-inducing when you know you have a home to go to. A home with friends living upstairs. Friends who tend to cook too much food for dinner and enjoy sharing. Friends with excellent knowledge of the city and a whole list of fun things that will be experienced come hell or high water (both of which are actually coming, based on the amount of rain we’re getting). Hooray!

I was going to say something about the magazine I found while in San Francisco, but Hobble the Horse Cat has decided it is time for love and so I must stop typing. Besides, the e-restraint I show now gives me something to talk about tomorrow – we’re halfway through NaBloPoMo and still going strong!

You know those plastic packages that electronics come in that are impossible to open? Well, try opening one when you don’t have anything with you sharper than a barrette – not so easy even under the best of circumstances.

 Until now!

Behold the power of fire!

Heee. Fire is awesome.

Ikea used to sell letters; letters you could use to spell things. We bought whole bunches of them, but really only ever used enough to spell “deeay” and “rake” above our respective desks. I found the rest of the letters while cleaning, and decided it was time to let the world know who exactly owned this living room:

 My website, that’s who.

Also, just in case anyone was confused as to who more or less lived in the corner of our living room, I have helpfully put up a clue:

I would be dangerous with a label maker.

I have been diligently practicing my pants wearing skills in preparation for next week, when we will have a house guest who (to the best of my knowledge) does not appreciate my vagina quite as much (or as frequently) as I do.

Josh finally found out from his office when he’s supposed to be here, and it turns out that date is next Monday. The totally awesome Shan can’t move out here until January, but at that point I will have both Josh and Shan at my disposal for good times and I can’t wait. As it is, Josh will be staying with us until at least December. I know this move is hugely stressful and a big hassle for them both, but I am so excited to have them here! Having Josh stay with us will also be fun, even if I have to wear pants – I am prepared to make these sacrifices for my friends. I will clothe myself almost all the time if it means I get JoshShan lovin’. Yay! Friends!

This weekend will be a frenzy of preparation. Josh will be staying in our spare room, which currently holds all our books and a startling amount of homosexual pornography for a straight man and his crooked woman. Josh is fully aware of just what he’ll be sleeping under, but I find I have to restrain my creativity just a little after Ed had the totally awesome idea of creating a Tom of Finland mobile to go above Josh’s bed. It would be GREAT. I am without a doubt the only person in my household who would appreciate that kind of effort, but that doesn’t mean I am above trying to change people’s sexual orientation for my own gratification. This probably explains why I do not have very many friends, and the ones I DO have are somewhat accustomed to my strange, strange ways.

Giant floppy man dongs aside, I am totally excited that Josh will be here and Shan soon to follow.

I was a lot more enthusiastic about my dinner before I realized it looks like a giant dog dong.

Just sayin’.

Hey! Over here!

How do you like our new home? I know, I’ll miss the orange boxes too – but for the moment, it sure is nice to have something different. Like, no boxes. I also like the added functionality, and the new stuff I can do – like change designs at the drop of a hat. Seriously. Go on, drop a hat. I’ll change the design. Whee!

Still love me? :(

We may not have gone out last evening, but it was a delightfully spooky night all the same.

I wanted to go out and do Halloween related things last night, but my staying up until 4:30am and arising at 9 sort of put a damper on any energy I might have had. Ed went to bed relatively early, so I put my restfulness to use by staying up late and reading ghost stories. They were made all the more effective thanks to a fantastic wind storm last night – there were crazy spooky noises coming from outside, and I once even let out a scream after the wind both opened our bedroom window then slammed it shut again. Hee! It was fun and scary, and best of all the storm kept away any choreographed rumbles that might have been scheduled for last night.

There was another fight on Friday evening, one that resulted in multiple police cars and people getting arrested. The frequency of these fights is a little alarming, but – and this makes me a horrible person – they’re more amusing than anything else. The fights are always started or caused by drunken idiots, and I have really no sympathy when they start wailing on each other. It would be an entirely different and really unfunny situation if the fights were domestic or random attacks, but they’re always the result of alcohol and are therefore incredibly stupid and fodder for my weekend amusement. There’s one major downside to all of this though – I’ve been trying to convince Shan and Josh to move into our building, and Josh is very unenthusiastic about the idea based on my many reports of the violence that happens on our street.

I’ve been trying to explain to him why the fights aren’t so much scary as they are funny, but I have a hard time explaining it to myself. I think it’s the alcohol factor that I mentioned above; people are stupid when they’re drunk and watching them scream about their love triangles and testosterone then get arrested is just .. funny. The last fight moved from one end of the block to the middle, where more people joined in – there were three drunken jocks standing on the sidewalk heckling the rumble. They were quickly dragged into the fight, and frankly, it served them right. There is absolutely no danger to Ed or myself during these altercations – we’re not so stupid as to go outside and get a close up view of the action. They’re not looking to jump strangers or destroy property; they only want to take out the guy what done look at his baby momma and all his friends, who are only too eager to fight back. It’s entertaining, not scary. That’s why Josh and Shan should move here! It’s like going to the movies, but it’s FREE! Okay, so maybe that’s not the best argument I’ve ever made about something, but it doesn’t change how I view the violence outside. Maybe I should be worried about it, or care more than people are getting punched outside my living room window .. but I really don’t. If someone drinks so very much that they lose control of common sense and start fights, whatever. Any sympathy I might have had for your 90210 situation goes right out the window, and you become fodder for yet another update about the people in my neighbourhood. You get to drink; I get something to write about. It’s win win!

Does anyone have a spare $450,000 CDN lying around I could have? I’ve fallen in love with a condo development going up in North Van, and would like to buy a suite. I’m only $449,975.50 short of my goal, so if everyone chips in a couple dozen thousand or so I could totally buy a suite.

Looking at property is kind of depressing.

I took a nap and woke up in 1995. There are girls outside passionately singing along to “You Oughta Know”, which quickly lead to a rousing chorus of the rest of the album. How good are they? Here’s a hint: I was playing Loco Roco at the time, and thought the sounds were coming from my PSP.

(for the non-nerd, Loco Roco has a sound track sung by children in an entirely made-up language)

Today was not one of my best days. I was utterly FOILED at the licensing centre, which made me pout and apparently made my veins disappear. I (luckily, it turned out) forgot about needing to fast before my blood test, so I ended up eating dinner last night around 11pm. I then slept in a lot today because of the huge migraine that festered throughout the night. I dragged myself out of bed – difficult, because I was covered in cats – and prepared myself for Errandpalooza 4th Quarter ’06. I made myself almost superhumanly cute, because my first stop was at the driver’s license centre. I needed to replace mine for two reasons: I moved, and they erroneously assumed I needed glasses without testing me when I got a BC license after moving. The back of it said I required corrective lenses to drive – not true; my glasses are for computer work and reading. I wear them all the time because if I didn’t, I’d forget – and also they’re cute as all hell. Anyway, I don’t always wear them while driving and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to get a ticket for it, so it was off to the Canadian equivalent of the DMV where I WAS UTTERLY FOILED.They wouldn’t let me get a new picture for my license. I’ve had a grand plan for some time now that was to have an official picture taken with flowers in my hair, and today was to be the unleashing. I made myself all cute and fancy and went to ICBC only to be DENIED a new picture for my new license that does not have restriction 21 and my old address on it. FOILED! Jerks. I will have to try once again in 2009, when my license expires. Until then, I’m thinking about putting a flower sticker on my picture.

After my crushing defeat at the hands of the nasty no-picture-taking goons, it was off to the lab to get blood drawn. I hate doing this. It’s not the needle that bothers me, or the fact that they’re going to discover my sordid past and many blood demons; it’s that I have no veins. It always, without fail, takes 3 or 4 attempts before blood comes out of me. Surprising, since I usually bleed at the drop of a hat. At this point I had been fasting for 14 hours and had an incredibly horrible migraine and had to be prodded a number of times before the nurse gave up and decided she would extract my fluids from my hand, using a baby needle. It HURT. Baby needles suck. She finally let me go, and I hastily drove to the nearest semi-edible food source before I passed out. It’s funny – I regularly go much longer than 14 hours without eating or drinking, but as soon as I HAVE to do it, it because this huge arduous task that seems both cruel and unusual. Food in hand, I dragged my carcass back to the apartment and quickly passed out.I didn’t intend to spend most of my day off hiding in a dark room with a cat on my ass, but the pain in my head laid flat my plans for outside. I’m feeling a little better now thanks to some hardcore drugs and the hilarious goings-on outside, so I might make Ed entertain me by going outside for Stuff.