Tag Archives: nablopomo-2007

solitary confinement

Posted in everyday kimli by

Today I realized why I was unable to understand the hollering yesterday morning – they’re speaking FRENCH. It was really quite disconcerting to try that hard to listen in but still be unable to make out a single word. This morning I was awake enough to figure out why!

More chain letter spam from my brother this morning, this time containing the warning “THIS E-MAIL ORIGINATED FROM THE INTERNET”. Really? The internet? The electronic mail I just received on my computer came from the INTERNET? Well shit, if I don’t forward it to 10 people right away, the internet will surely think less of me! The junk emails bug me, since he never actually writes anything personal (to me at least; I’m the lesser family member in our dysfunctional little clan) and it just seems a waste to spend even the two seconds pressing Forward without adding anything to it. He’s also not up on his netiquette in any way – the first faux pas is forwarding the damn thing at all, but a close second is the non-removal of the email headers from a never-ending chain of forwards. I do not like having to scroll down 17 pages to see a picture of cartoon kitten Jesus surrounded by baby bluebirds with the warning that unless I send cartoon kitten Jesus surrounded by baby bluebirds to 10 of my closest friends it will mean the sender knows I have no love in my heart. It’s OBVIOUS I have no love in my heart, people. I don’t need a silly email (that originated from the internet) to prove that.

So, it is generally known that I Do Not Watch TV. It’s not one of those “TV rots the brain, I’m much better off than any of you slaves to the unblinking eye” sort of thing; it’s really because I am too lazy. I loathe having to keep a schedule, but I also hate sitting down and actively watching something recorded or downloaded or purchased. Yes, I know it’s weird. No, I didn’t get enough love as a child.

Normally this would be an issue when having conversations with people about the latest greatest thing on the tube, except this is me – I don’t have a job and therefore don’t talk to anyone, and even when I WAS employed it was all I could do not to audibly scoff and roll my eyes at the earnest water cooler conversations about last night’s Reality TV Shocker. I just don’t like watching TV, is all. I don’t watch any of the hip shows the kids are watching these days – Heroes, Grey’s Anatomy, any sort of dancing/singing/outsmarting/sweating show – at all. I used to watch CSI pretty religiously, but decided I’d rather have my Thursday nights to do nothing at all than tune in at 9pm (10pm central). I manage to get around the pop culture aspect by doing a lot of reading on anything that happens to catch my interest – I’ll read recaps until I’m caught up and can hold detailed conversations without letting it slip that I have no idea if the blonde one on the posters is good or bad.

So, Holier-Than-Thou soapbox aside, last night I grew bored of video games and flicked back to the TV to see what was on. What caught my attention was a beautifully narrated tale of this guy who makes pies, and I watched the entire thing just enthralled. It was so cute! It has that one guy from that thing, and that other guy from that other thing! It’s NARRATED! By that entirely different guy who reads those things! It makes perfect sense that it’s a Bryan Fuller show; I love his storytelling and I loved Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me. I may have to actually WATCH Pushing Daisies, because it was just a happy time. Anything billed as a “forensic fairy tale” is something I would totally be into.

I wonder how long I can go without human contact today?

man should do the hunting

Posted in relationship drama by

 “The laws of marriage  are based on the age-old  idea that the man should do the hunting. The woman must give herself up to him, acknowledge him as master and fulfill the other half of marriage – bearing the children and caring for the home.”

“Little bride, you must learn to be your husband’s nurse when he is ill, his companion when he’s well, his cook, his housekeeper, his valet, his comforter when he’s down and his sweetheart when he’s in good spirits.”

I am doing this marriage thing all wrong.

where have all the snails gone

Posted in everyday kimli by

Winter is making me sad. My snails have gone into hibernation, and I won’t see them again until spring. I miss you, snails! Come out again soon!

There are now Christmas lights up downstairs to go with the wreath and the carols. No tree yet, but I can’t imagine it’s very far behind.

I think I’m going to go cut my hair and see what happens.

(this entry is a perfect example of why I usually don’t post on Sundays)

taste the stink

Posted in everyday kimli by

They’re tarring the crack house down the street and it’s making the entire block smell bad. I can’t decide if this is worse than the time they dumped two truckloads of manure on the crack lawn in the middle of summer, where it sat roasting in the heat for more than two weeks before they did anything about it.

I do not like the crack house down the street.

once upon a time, i fell down

Posted in broken kimli by

I have a sneaking suspicion I may have partially dislocated my left shoulder.

For the last little while, my left shoulder has been acting all funny – aching when I sleep funny, twinging most painfully when I stretch, clicking when I swing my arms in a jaunty way, doing this terrifying thing where it feels like it’s going to pop out of the socket and say howdy do – basically, doing all the things I would expect from a previously dislocated shoulder. However, it was my right shoulder that met the ground in such a tragic way last April – while I know I’m sometimes flighty and can’t tell the difference between a cupboard and a closet, it seems pretty unlikely that my body would forget what side is the injured one and make things go hurty in the wrong place. My right shoulder has been doing the same thing, albeit less severely. In fact, it feels almost like I have TWO dislocated shoulders; one more recently displaced than the other – but that doesn’t make any sense, I haven’t fallen off anythin –

Oh, shit.

I DID fall off Oscar a little while ago, and I landed rather spectacularly on my left side. I remember it hurting all over and my knee being a disgusting mess (again), but also that I was more worried that a) I hadn’t ripped my jeans while falling because they were new, and b) I hadn’t damaged my camera, as it was hanging around my neck and hit the ground when I fell. It’s entirely possible that I managed to injure my shoulder during this trip down – I was awfully stiff and sore afterwards, but I just attributed this to having been on a scooter all day and also falling off and landing hard. Could this be why I’m having left shoulder trouble? Does it explain away the extremely alarming incident of a few minutes ago wherein my shoulder started cramping for no reason and it felt like someone jammed a soldering gun into it? So wacky!

I’m really glad there were witnesses to that fall, because it’s really starting to trip me out. For starters, I fell on my LEFT side. I never, ever fall on my left! Perhaps even more alarming than that is this next eerie spine-tingling fact: I didn’t write about the incident at all.

I went through the last 5 months of posts, and I can’t find any reference to the fall. I know it happened – Ed, Josh and Shan were all there – but why on earth didn’t I update about it? I update about EVERYTHING! It’s unfathomable to me that I wouldn’t write about falling down yet again – unless that’s the very reason why I didn’t. Was I embarrassed to have fallen again? I probably should be by now, but it seems highly out of character for me not to have verbally chastised myself for the whole internet to see. Did other epic things happen that weekend that would have made the fall not newsworthy? It’s possible, except I don’t recall what else we did that weekend and if I can’t find it in my archives, then it obviously didn’t happen. I am so confused. Also, true to my nature, I am more worried about the fact that I can’t find any sort of record of my fall rather than be worried about these weird electric-shock type of shoulder jolts I’m experiencing.

Weeeeird.

Edit: AHA! I FOUND IT! I remembered that we scooted *everywhere* that day, including to Iona Beach and did some plane-watching. I looked up the dates on the pictures I posted to Flickr, then went to the corresponding entries for that time period and I found this:

We went for a marathon scoot yesterday; out for about ten hours so today is a good day to clean and recover (yes, I fell down yesterday – shut up).

So I DID write about it, in passing. I feel so much better now – you wouldn’t believe how much this was bothering me.

As you were, then.

so hard for it honey

Posted in everyday kimli, nerd by

I signed up to complete NaBloPoMo 2007, a challenge to write at least one entry for every day of the month of November. I did this last year, too. For some this is a huge deal as they tend to post sporadically at best; for me it is just another acronym to abuse because I post every damn day anyway. Last year I even completed it even though I was in San Francisco for part of the month without a computer. I just have that much to say. Hell, yesterday I made three updates alone. I really need to get outside more.

One of the things I picked up from my favourite US postal depot was a Katamari Damacy puppet I won off eBay way back in June. As you can see below, I’ve already put it to excellent use by dressing a cat up as a Katamari and staging puppet photos. The pictures are really an exposé in three distinct parts:

  1. My cat is very, very patient with me
  2. I have a lot of weird shit
  3. I have far too much time on my hands

Heeeee.

I am still spending much of my day looking for a new job. I’ve not yet given up hope that my dream job awaits me somewhere out there, but some days are harder to be upbeat than others. On those days, I start looking at the entry-level clerical positions and mentally calculate exactly how much of a pay-cut I could live with yet still pay my rent. I’m really trying every avenue I can think of, though – I’ve sent unsolicited resumes to every gaming outfit in the city, I’m emailing people I hardly know but once off-handedly mentioned to me they work in the industry, I’ve annoyed the hell out of my friends and acquaintances contacts by all but begging them to help me get my foot in the door, I’ve given my resume to the mailman. It’s actually really encouraging to note the responses I’ve gotten; while I don’t have a job yet there are lots of people who are being awesome with the advice and inside knowledge and the handing off of my resume to Important People. This is good. I am appreciative. Yay for awesome people!

I know this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me; to be able to look for work and not settle for the first thing that comes along out of desperation. We’re doing okay financially; there are some savings still and I am bringing in a bit of money that covers my share of the monthly expenses. It really does help that we have no debt other than the car (although I haven’t looked at the credit card balance since we came back from Seattle), so I am using this period of “not desperate” to go after what I really want. This is good, right? I’m overdue for a position with less angst, aren’t I? Somewhere out there someone will appreciate what I can do, won’t they? Oh, self-doubt. You are entirely awesome, except for the part where you fail at life.

i forget

Posted in broken kimli by

Help me out here:

Is dropping an open pot of makeup into a bowl of olive oil and balsamic vinegar a good thing or a bad thing? Not that I just did that, or anything. I’m asking out of pure scientific interest, that’s all. I’m curious, not clumsy.

mad hax0rzzZ

Posted in kitties, nerd by

Yesterday was all about the hackin’.

After two unsuccessful Jailbreak attempts, I managed to hack the planet my iPug and installed all the missing iPhone applications. It is now a thing of glorious, fingerprinty beauty – if I thought it was cool before, now it’s just beyond awesome. If only Vancouver’s wi-fi freedom was on par with that of Seattle’s .. still, it is very cool. I love it. Portable internet makes me stiff in the pants.

And! After reading through the advice given on how to smack my router into behaving, I gave up and handed the whole mess to Josh who was able to force a firmware upgrade onto it. MacBeth the MacBook and the iPug are now both attached to our home network with nary a manually entered IP address in sight. Thanks, everyone! Your wisdom has allowed me to get my nerd freak on to even higher levels than ever before!

My cats, though I love them madly, are being giant pains in my giant ass. Each cat is now on a separate type of food, just to make my life incredibly complicated. Sasha is still enjoying the vet-recommended Medicine Food for Very Old Cats, and it’s doing wonders – she’s gained weight and is throwing up so much less than before. Cheddar the Middle Cat is stubborn as all hell and will only eat one brand of crappy horrible food that I have to stock just for her. We’ve tried everything we can think of to get her to eat anything else, but she actively starves herself if we don’t cough up what she wants. She is, however, starting to eat Sasha’s VOC food – this is both good and fine, since a) it’s not the other stuff she likes which is very much like the gas station fried chicken of cat foods and b) she is also getting on in years (we think she’s around 10) so it is not a bad thing to have her eating the VOC food.

Naturally, there is a “BUT ..” to all of this. Cheddar was historically the smallest of our three cats. As Sasha has been losing weight, Cheddar has been gaining it rapidly. She seems to really enjoy the VOC food, but it’s intended to put some meat on Sasha’s bones and is therefore putting MORE meat on Cheddar’s pointy, dumb frame. She’s getting to be a fatty! I’m so happy that she’s finally eating something else that I don’t really care; there’s just more of her to love now. When she starts getting Hobble-sized, then I’ll worry and also get a hernia from picking her up.

Then there’s Hobble. Huge, cuddly, squeaky Hobble. We weighed him last week; he’s 19 pounds of testicle-crushing feline love. He’s been happy eating his own brand of food, but today I caught him sneaking bites of Sasha’s wet + “kitty malt” food. He needs to be on a weight management diet, but I am dreading the though of trying to get him to eat some low-fat cat food when the other two get to eat delicious mashed prunes and puréed peas or whatever else it is they feed old animals. This is complicated. I liked it much better when they all ate whatever the hell I put down; I don’t know who taught them that some things are much tastier than others and almost as easily accessible .

Still, I love my cats. I’ll forgive them their pain in the ass tendencies if they’d do me the honour of living forever, and I don’t even mind the huge scratch Cheddar put on my chest this morning with her cruel and pointy back claws. That’s what the expired ointments are for!

seattle was a riot

Posted in adventure by

No, really. I’m not just trying to be coyly punk rock; we really did have a good time.

Our border crossing was made of happy mistakes and miracles – the entire thing took less than an hour, as opposed to the 3+ hours it should have been. Someone made a mistake when allowing the duty-free line skippers through, and our lane went second instead of last. Also helping: as we approached the Booths of Full Disclosure, they opened up two more and cars were sailing through. The border man was more interested in the state of garbage pickup in North Vancouver, but we were allowed through with minimal questioning and we were on our way. Yay!

We landed at Doug and Ali’s place around 3pm, and finally got to meet the small human named River. She is, as expected, adorable and we all had a great time watching her be a baby. I was pleased to note that not only was I not afraid of the infant, but she also did not spark the dreaded maternal instinct in me – I came away from Seattle without a Lust for Babies. I didn’t think it was really an issue, but you can never be certain until you’re on the front lines and now I know.

We ate some lunch, hung out, then split into two groups. The boys went to drink beer, and the girls went to go do girlie things. It was at this point I truly decided (instead of the minor resolve that came after fondling Ali’s iPhone) that I want an iPod Touch for Christmas, and Christmas was right now so I grabbed one. I named it iPug. It isn’t nearly close enough, but I enjoy self-flagellation and irony in equal doses. I’ve so far spent the morning hacking it unsuccessfully; I am not a natural hacker so I am thinking this may take me some time before I have it doing the things I want it to.

On Sunday we all trekked out for some breakfast with Bobbie and her small child, then said our goodbyes. We spent the afternoon in downtown Seattle doing the touristy things – watching fish being thrown at the Pike Place Market, getting free hugs, drinking coffee, walking all over the damn place. It was good fun. I love Seattle, almost more than I do Vancouver – if I was able to, I’d live there in a second. Since I can’t, Vancouver is still most excellent and we’re close enough so I can pretend to be as hip as I tell myself I often am.

We arrived home last night around 10pm exhausted and laden with the aftermaths of our strong dollar consumer orgy. I am officially resolving to NOT let 8 months go by before my next visit; now that my fear of this one particular baby is out of the way I am confident that I will not be so hesitant to make the very easy trip down south to see some of my favourite people in my favourite city.

It is gorgeous outside, so obviously that means I need to scoot to the Italian supermarket for some fresh pasta and sauces for tonight’s dinner.

I like my life. I wish I had a job and a pug and harboured a little less resentment at my husband, but I can only hope that this too will pass and eventually I can be really really happy instead of just sort of mostly happy.