I had the prettiest Friday.

As far as Good Fridays go, this one has been a day to remember. A day off work, fantastic weather, and an afternoon spent with two beautiful people getting married – what more could I ask for?

The story isn’t mine to tell, but today Ed and I got to be witnesses at a top secret elopement for people we had just met. Everything was perfect, and it was so much fun to play photographer and witness all in one. I love the internet – it made something like this possible, and it was so cool to be a part of. Hooray!

The day is still young, so we’re off to ride. Ed is still getting used to his motorcycle and I’m not one to turn down a ride on a perfect sunny afternoon. I’m all warm and happy on the inside, there are 8L of Diet Coke in the fridge, and everything in my world is the way it should be and that is supremely satisfying.

LOVE ME

You know what is no good at all?

Realizing you have no hot water ..

.. AFTER you’ve already applied the hair dye.

I woke up early this morning to tackle the issue of my unruly 2″ long multi-coloured roots.  I meant to do it last night, but that just wasn’t going to happen – the couch was calling my name, and getting wet just seemed like such a hassle. I don’t particularly want to give up my Thursday night before a long weekend for grooming, but I have Top Secret Plans for Friday that requires me to look halfway decent – so dyeing my hair this morning seemed like a really good idea.

I’ve been dyeing my hair for so long that I can prep the goo in my sleep, which is basically what I did. Open the box, spread out the goods, undo the lid on the conditioner tube and stick it in the shower, twist off various tops, snap on the latex, and away we go. It’s a routine dye job; nothing special or fancy – I gooped myself up good and proper, removed the gloves, and went to wash my hands.

Gee, that water is pretty cold. Didn’t I turn on the hot water? I did, but that is not even slightly warm.

Uh oh.

I went into the kitchen and checked – same thing; the water coming out of the hot pipe was ice cold. SHIT. There was nothing I could do about it, so I just sat down and waited for the water to warm up. Maybe by the time my hair is done cooking the hot water will come back!

Or, you know, maybe not! 25 minutes later, the water was even COLDER. I needed to get my day started, so I did the only thing I could do – stick my head under the ice fucking cold stream and rinse all the dye out. I applied the conditioner to keep my locks silken and glossy, quickly washed the rest of me, then ran my head under again; swearing the whole time. COLD! SO COLD! It was utterly inhuman, and I’m still shivering. Never again will I attempt to do anything that requires a full body rinse without checking the temperature first. There was no reason to suspect we had no hot water, but now I don’t trust anyone. You’ve ruined me, hot water. I hope you’re happy.

I know it could have been worse – at least we had water at all. I can’t imagine what I’d have done if I was completely unable to rinse at all; I’d probably be bald by now. Scary. Okay, water. You’re forgiven – it could have been so much worse. Don’t cross me again, though – I am not beyond attempting to shower in Diet Coke.

I am somewhat self conscious today: because my allergies have been so bad, I opted to not wear eye makeup. I never leave the house without a full compliment of bright green shadows and powders, and I feel utterly naked without them. I think my eyes are too small for my face, so I attempt to hide them under layers of liner – backwards I know, but I think it helps even if I probably look like a clown. It makes me feel more put together, and without it I feel as though I look terrible and asleep. I wish I had the confidence to go outside without a full face of makeup, but I just don’t.

It doesn’t help that I’ve had people ask me today if I got new glasses, because I look different – oh god, they can tell! I look horrible with my beady little naked eyes! I should just wear sunglasses for the rest of the day. What? It’s sunny out!

i look wrong.

Yeah, I got nothing.

I am ripe with allergies and STDs (which are in actuality just additional allergies), and misery is streaming out of my eyes as a result. I miss being able to see. And breathe. And sleep.

The more I think about it, life in a bubble wouldn’t really be all that bad.

I will be interesting soon, I promise.

I didn’t realize just how stressed out I was about this, but I can finally breathe a sigh of relief and am feeling better than I have in a week.

I ordered some supplies for a fun new Got Graft project, but due to lousy communication on my part the items I need didn’t mail out with priority shipping like I (though I) requested. The stuff is coming from California which is normally not a big deal – but Canada Post and USPS have teamed up to turn my life a never-ending game of Waiting. Things shipped from the US are currently taking 28 days to reach me, meaning I was looking at a delivery date of May 9th for my pieces – and Got Craft is on May 8th.

It turns out all my worrying was for naught – my parts arrived TODAY, with plenty of time for me to create awesome. HOORAY! I am so relieved it’s comical. Now I can craft my heart out and make really cool things for Got Craft and hopefully people will want to buy them. I’ll still have Smuttons for sale, but I like to have additional crafty things available on the side. I’ve never seen the item I’m making at a local craft show before, so I hope they’ll be popular. I’m really excited about it! Yay for crafting!

Come see Miranda and I at Got Craft on Sunday May 8th, from 10 til 5! We’ll be the first stall on your right as soon as you walk into the main room, so come say hello and check out our awesome warez and porn. I’ll post another reminder closer to the date, and might do a small giveaway – mention the secret word for a free Smutton, or something – but I hope to see some friendly faces and I really, really hope you like my Sekret Kraft Project (and maybe want to buy it so I can afford to drink in Cuba)!

lunch is a delicious spleen on rye

I spent the entire weekend steeped in estrogen, and I really feel like I need some manliness to bring my testosterone levels back up to par. I’m not picky; I’ll take any kind of manly action so long as it’s thoroughly macho and smells like dirt and engine oil. We could have a belching contest, or look at power tools and grunt. Fist bumping is mandatory of course, and it would be nice if we talked about sports and the various women we’d allow to touch our junk. I need this, okay. I am far too in touch with my womanly ways.

It’s election time in Canada – get out and vote, damnit – and I hate seeing the landscape covered with election propaganda. It’s ugly and it never goes away in a timely manner – it seems like half the people who are so proud of publicly announcing their allegiance to the NDP or Conservatives or Communist Party of Canada forget about the signs as soon as the votes have been counted and they’re left to rot on the streets.

That being said, I kind of wish I had a lawn of my own so I could put up this sign I just made:

he won't go away unless you vote

I wonder if I could get away with hanging it off my balcony.

This is the greatest thing ever.

It’s a tool that analyzes your Twitter stream and constructs a tweet for you as something you’d be likely to say. I don’t know if it’s because my own Twitter is really random to begin with or if everyone gets funny jumbles, but I could absolutely see myself saying this stuff. Some highlights include:

• Naked ones. Ooh, the iPad to go fetch. Berries no one can wait for crashing while I thought you’d be at?
• Personalizing! Tacos hurt my scooter from my temporary cake does it was thank goodness for the sugar?
• Rodimus Prime has no place to the CBC Red Chairs!
• Bukkake is available for cheap and bus home, though. Well, if they keep it so sexy.
• It was the Bootlegger Ball tonight I really hope there for $0.99 – will stick their dick in their manners.
• Fucking hell 4-hour meeting with dinosaurs! — Come work with the internet and pantless.
• I like losing virginity. Got it. Okay, Twitter – come make me anxious all week. FORTS! I made it down?

I am full of laughing.

I asked Twitter to give me a topic to blog about today, as my head is full of Sharepoint and therefore nothing worth sharing. I liked Donna’s suggestion the best, so here are some gender neutral names for an educational presentation about vagina:

• The Care and Feeding of Your Love Cave
• Vagina: It’s Not a Dirty Word
• Fantastic and Elastic: The Wondrous Flesh Sheath
• Tiptoeing Through the Garden
• We Came in Peace
• Fibromuscular! Tubular! Tract!
• It Cleans Itself: The Story of the Vagina
• What? New Pussycat?
• Pulling Back the Beef Curtains
• What’s Up Down There
• To Love Your Glove
• Have a Piece of Puffy Cake
• We’ve All Been There: The Vagina

.. I could do this for days, but I have an intranet to rebuild. Add your own suggestions below! Remember: it has to be gender neutral!

.. because I removed it from my sandwich and threw it out.

What kind of place serves up a clubhouse sandwich with bacon, ham and BOLOGNA? An evil place, that’s what. This is why I rarely eat sandwiches – they often come with HORRIBLE SURPRISES. I should have known something was terribly wrong when my request of “no middle piece of bread plz” was met with baffled shock and terror. My tummy hurts. I have a mouth sad. I wanted turkey!

As far as todays go, I’ve had better. The pop machine was out of Diet Coke (it has since been restocked, but I am offended on behalf of myself at 9am), one of our two new employees walked off the job today (it wasn’t my fault this time; he got a better offer), and I’m just now starting to deal with the rebuild of our internal Sharepoint site and the sheer amount of work I have to do is making me want to cry. No, today is no good at all – so instead of listening to me whine, here are some pictures of small Hello Kitty things:

hello elephant

hello umbrella-ella-ella-ey-ey-ey

hello mother russia

Yesterday afternoon I was at the Vancouver CBC Studio to watch the taping of that evening’s George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. I went last year with Shan, Miranda and Renee, but this time around I brought Heather, Gillian and Ed because I like to share the love and Ed was sad he didn’t get to go last time. We met up in the plaza outside, and waited in many lines before we made it into the studio. To pass the time while waiting, we ate food (I apparently do not like Gorgonzola cheese ONE BIT), said hello to various people like Courtney, Mikala, John, Sam and Carol. Some people I did not say hello to but instead took creepy pictures of using my iPhone telephoto lens, like Rick:

I was not smart enough to wear a jacket, so I bought Ed a Hockey Night in Canada hoodie for me to wear. This did not work, because he immediately took possession of the hoodie and proudly wore it for the rest of the day so I continued to freeze.

and is cold.

I didn’t have too long to be cold though, as we were ushered inside to wait in the basement while the studio itself was set up. It was here that there was DRAMA:

The three women pictured above quite deliberately and callously cut in front of 100 or so people and parked themselves approximately 6 spots back from the very front of the line. Those of us who had been waiting for over two hours at that point were not impressed with their imperious line cutting, and Jennifer actually went up to them to a) point out the fact that they cut in line, and b) ask them to be good, polite Canadians and move back to their rightful spot in the line. They rudely ignored her, and then it was on: I took their picture and tweeted it with the hashtag #cbclinejumpers. Other people retweeted the image, and a lively discussion – both electronic and pointedly out loud – about how some people could be so rude/whatever happened to having manners/what kind of heinous bitches would be so heinous and bitchy like what/my goodness those are shiny pants and ridiculous shoes took place. The couple directly in front of us (and directly behind the line cutters) went to find a CBC Red Jacket and ask for assistance, and the rest of us talked about cougars in the wild. We repeatedly plead for help from CBC Vancouver’s Twitter account to deal with the jumpers, and finally someone came by to talk to them! Hooray!

Everyone in the immediate area pointed out the jumpers, and the lead cougar had the balls to say that we were all mistaken and that they had been there all along. I fucking HATE people like that, so I and others stridently disagreed with their bullshit and wouldn’t let it drop. They whined and complained and said that we were all mean and wrong and probably jealous of their high, high heels and shiny pants, but the CBC Red Jacket wasn’t having any of it. Still, she had to be somewhat polite to the public (which is why I don’t work in public; I loathe having to be polite to people who don’t deserve it) so she allowed them to stay in line as long as they agreed to stand aside while people were being seated, and let the people they cut off sit down first. This was good enough for those of us inconvenienced by their unbelievably rude ways (although I wanted to see them marched out of the studio and thrown onto the street as everyone pointed and booed and hissed, but I am a vengeful person who wishes for bloody and instant karmic retribution), and the horrible cougars were put in their place. When it was time to be seated, they fully intended on waltzing into the studio without waiting, but the CBC Red Jacket was true to her word and was watching for them at the door – she pulled them aside, and the rest of us (or maybe just me; see above re: vengeful) smirked at them as we walked in and found awesome seats.

I only sat in the awesome seats for a few minutes, though – as luck would have it, John had VIP seating on the floor and an extra chair. He was there as Miss 604’s guest, but she was unable to make it. I got to move up to the floor and was sitting super close – second row – to everything:

Yay! The show itself was awesome – George chatted with the crowd a lot and is totally fun. We got to see three live interviews – Elizabeth May, Ice Cube and Ian Hanomansing – as well as a taped performance by Hannah Georgas. After the filming was done, George answered a whole bunch of audience questions and told some stories – he’s an engaging speaker with some hilarious stories, and the whole thing was a lot of fun. Afterward, there was a brief meet n’ greet with George – we hung out for a while to say some hellos while John took pictures. Heather even got George to record her voicemail message, which I totally need to call to hear. Many fun times! I love hanging out at the CBC Building, and it’s always great to watch Canada’s boyfriend do his thing. So swoony!

It was a good day – leaving work early, enjoying the beautiful day, publicly humiliating nasty people, seeing George, and hanging with friends. The $40 parking ticket from Easy Park was a little less enjoyable, but whatever – it was still worth it.

There’s a special tweet up tonight with George – it’s an early viewing of Scream 4, and it’s a first-come-first-serve entry sort of affair (so don’t fucking jump the line). As much as I love George tweet ups, I don’t have a need to see Scream 4 so I’ll leave my head count for someone else to enjoy – but if you want in, look up #scream4strombo on Twitter for the details.

obstructing: just as bad as line jumping