Geez, I'm on a roll today...

And I'll probably not write again for the next 6 months and I dunno why I didn't post about this earlier, but....

She’s here!

The friend I wrote about earlier arrived on the last day of February. She and the love of her life came to dinner on Saturday with their new dog, who just happens to be the most adorable bitch (I’ve always wanted to say that about a dog) I have ever met. She’s white with a black head and butt. Absolutely the cutest thing on four legs…

OK, so you’ll be thinking that meeting the dog far outshone seeing her again. Well, the dog is a close second.

In the shower at the gym this morning, I was thinking of how I’d call her in here, because obviously she will be popping up now and again and I won’t be using real names – protecting privacy and all that. I figured famous lovers might be in order, so…

My first thought was for Tristan and Isolde. But their story is just too tragic; she ended up in a nunnery and he ended up castrated. I wouldn’t want to tempt fate, ya know. The nunnery might do, but the castration bit… not so much.


Of course you have the obvious Romeo and Juliet. This one is not so much tragedy as adolescent histrionics. She’s supposed to marry someone, when actually she’s already married to R so takes a potion to appear dead in order to get out of the marriage (um., how about just say I’m already married? Bigamy wasn’t an option back then either). He hears she’s dead and runs to her family’s crypt (how the hell did he get in? Did they leave crypt doors open back then?) He sees her “dead”, poisons himself over her. She wakes up (what, three minutes too late?) and kills herself because he’s dead. I mean, c’mon people, we’re supposed to believe that? Again, it just doesn’t work for me.

Batman and Robin… Even as a kid I could tell these guys were very strange, though of course they weren’t "like that". I wouldn't even have known what "like that" was to tell the truth. Robin runs around in tights, a red tunic and a yellow cape, for chrissake. Just the colour scheme… ewwww, it always offended my sensibilities. As for Batman – jeez, superheros just weren’t that buff when I was a kid, obviously. But of course, this has nothing to do with them, I was just into famous couples here....


Now, there's always Antony and Cleopatra. But then she stuck her hand in a basket of poisonous snakes. Another relationship with issues.

Bonnie and Clyde? Speaking of issues, both dead riddled with bullets….

Harold and Maud? Despite their age difference, the Harold and Maud age difference is just TOO big, plus it’s backwards.

How about S&M? (I know what you’re thinking, you nasty minded bunch of perverts but it stands for Seattle and Montreal.)

OK, well, that was quite a digression, so back to S&M, but mostly S.

So, S&M (oh yeah, I quite like that) came to dinner Saturday at the cottage. It was good. Much good food, much good wine, many good laughs.

I admire S’s chutzpah. To actually go through with it and do what she did. To leave family, friends, job, and come to a place where French is the dominant language and the culture is so different. To be completely dependent on M because she won’t be allowed to work for several months… That takes guts. And lots of them. She’s not just changing cities here. She crossed the whole fucking continent. I imagine she's feeling a little unsteady. Hell, I'd be running around tearing my hair out. I just hope the transition goes well.

I know you’ll eventually read this S, so really, girl, you rock! I wish I had half the guts you do.

#2 of the day

Whoa, I'm on a roll.

Well, I have found the book I’m gonna alter. I decided to go with something not too big for the first one, so I got a spiral bound book of flashcards. The only problem I foresee at this point is the format since it’s about 4x7 inches, which isn’t very wide and the spiral is quite big. But whatever, it’s an experiment.

Sunday night I went through it selecting words I’d like to highlight and that I think I can work with.

I find it ironic, though, that a confirmed atheist will be altering a book of flashcards whose theme is bible stories. It will be interesting to see how I manage to work my way out of that particular dilemma

Gym and International Women's Day

Dear Gym Managment:

Enough already with the music in the locker rooms. I know it's supposed to relax us, but please! The little birds tweeting with new age piano music in the foreground, the babbling brook with the violins, the crashing waves with the guitar. IT'S DRIVING ME INSANE! We don't need that sort of crap at 6:30 in the morning, we need something to wake us UP! Give me the the nature sounds alone and I'll be perfectly happy, otherwise, how about something peppy in the morning?

Sleepily,

Jazz



But, for the third time this week, I had an awesome work out this morning. I usually have lots of trouble getting to that point so early in the day (the Jazzer is so not a morning person), but for some reason it's going great this week. Je pète le feu*, as we say in Quebec. I have so much energy I'm not quite sure what to do with it.

So it's International Women's Day today. Yippi. Is there a point really? I can't help but think we don't really need it here (ducks head in anticipation of rock throwing**) and it sure as hell isn't stopping little girls from being sexually mutilated in Africa; or women in Pakistan and India from having acid thrown in their faces if they don't live up to the in-laws expectations; or women all over the developing world from being faceless and basically non-existant although they do 90% of the work.

International Women's Day. Yippi! (insert heavy sarcasm here)

But still, je pète le feu!




* And yes, your automatic translator is right. It means I'm farting fire. Sounds so much better in French doesn't it?

** By the way I consider myself a feminist

OK, not funny

Big Brother just gave me a heads up that my comments were off. I've tried everything to get them back, but it's just not working. If I can't get this sorted out Big Bro, you might just have to do it for me.

And here I thought I had been abandoned in cyberspace, while all the time my comments aren't working.

Damn.


Edit: oops... apparently I had to make a new post for comments to appear, they'll not appear in the old ones. Why didn't I think of that? *hangs head in shame at cyber stupidity*

Re-edit: OK, slap me with a dead salmon. Hit me over the head with baseball bat. Of course you can comment in old posts, the pencil is there. What, did I think comments would appear by miracle. Jazz is a total spazz - well, at least it rhymes.

Re-re-edit: Obviously dead salmon and baseball bats aren't enough for me. I just now realized, after all this time, that the little pencil icon is there so I can edit a post. How about slapping me with dead whales and hitting me over the head with huge boulders? Just put me out of my misery already. Oy!

Re-re-re-edit: That pencil icon is really quite cool! Woot!

Ladies and Gentlemen, this morning's Jazz moments were brought to you by the number 6 and the letter X.

Whoa, it's been a while

Dear Gym Bunny,

News bulletin for your information

It is 7:00 a.m and it is a total waste of time for you to preen in front of the loocker room mirror, touching up makeup and fixing your t-shirt so it shows off your cleavage just so. I can guarantee you’re the best looking female in there now. I promise.

But at this hour, well, it's basically the equivalent of the "Early Bird Special" in restaurants. Nary a youngster to be seen. The only looks you’ll attract are those of forty and fifty something civil servants, several of whom probably need viagra to get it up. Believe me, that’s not the attention you want. And if you’re here for the trainers, all the eye candy trainers on on the late afternoon shift. At this hour the trainers are highly ordinary. They're the trainers who aren't around to pick up gym bunnies.

Do yourself a favour, come at 5:00.

Snarkily,

Jazz

*********

Obviously some people are sick of winter. Seen at the bus stop: a woman wearing leather clogs, black pantyhose and a flirty little white cotton skirt printed with flowers.

Um, Hello! It's March 6! IT’S 10 BELOW THIS MORNING!!! What were you thinking when you got up? You’re in Montreal. It won’t be spring until mid-April. And then probably only in your dreams.

And even if it were spring, black leather clogs, black stockings and a white cotton skirt? I’m no fashionista, not by a long shot, but even I can tell you that that’s wrong on just SO many levels….

*********

Seen at the magazine stand: The Family Circle cover for this week: A huger picture of amazing looking brownies and a headline: How Four Women lost 250 pounds. Is it me or is that just bizarre? A magazine with multiple personality disorder. It can't decide whether to promote the scrumptous dessert or the weight loss. Family Circle and Women's Day do this all the time. "The amazing walking diet" with a picture of pecan pie. The paradox of modern life in North America. Go figure.

*********

I called the taxman last week to get my code so my mum in law, who is doing my taxes god bless her, can phone them in. Now, generally, I would have had the code, it would have been included with the tax return I never got…

When I finally got through to a true and real human being (seriously, a live person!!!) I was asked for my social security number. Makes sense. Then my name, address birth date and who I was working fort three years ago (why three? good thing I'm not a job hopper). Am I married? His name? His birth date? I was just about to tell the lady that no, I had no idea whether he was wearing boxers or a g-string today (actually I did – nary a g-string has ever nestled between his cheeks, thank god. G-strings on men are wrong, just so wrong, I don’t care how perfect looking the guy is, but I digress), when the interrogation ended and my "numeric code" was duly handed out to me.

I know they have to do the security thing, but I can think of any number of people who know all those details, so what exactly is the point here? If identity thieves are so honest that they’re gonna pay my taxes for me, more power to them.

Tax time!

Yesterday evening, my mom in law asked me to bring her my tax stuff so she could do my taxes (the mom in law is truly the best mom in law in all the history of moms in law). When I gathered everything together I realized I never recieved a tax return from the Federal government.

I truly believe they have it in for me. Half the time I never get my tax return, I fall off the electoral lists... What have I DONE to these people? I pay my taxes, I vote at every election, I'm more or less the model citizen. Ok, I'm a Quebecer, but hell, I'm not a separatist. Why oh why do they hate me so?

*********

Last weekend at the cottage, we got onto the subject of the weather with a couple of friends. Now, this happens all the time and we got to wondering: Why are we so damned preoccupied with the weather in Quebec? The weather that was, the weather that is, the weather that will be. Radio stations (in the morning at any rate) have weather updates every five minutes (!!). We are fucking obsessed with the weather. I've never noticed this particular fetish anywhere else. Not in France or Belgium, not in Vietnam or Nepal, not in Tucson or California. Granted, the weather here is maybe somewhat more extreme, but still, it's not as if we weren't equipped to deal with it. Or maybe people elsewhere are just as obsessed, but are able to shut up about it.

So, did I tell you, it's beautiful out today, and it was 18 below (that's 0 for you non metric types) with a windchill of -30 this morning.

Just dropping in to say...

Penelope Dullaghan (the mind behind Illustration Friday) recently posted the results of The Best Advice I Ever Got project. If you like illustration at all, check it out.

Life is good

I did a collage last weekend that was, surprisingly enough, about 65% of what I had imagined. Which for me is pretty damn good, since only 35% got lost in translation from my head to the actual "making of". And I really quite like it.

And the weather is good, the birds seem to be back in force this week, there is much twittering and singing and all around good cheer it seems in the avian world. Can't wait to get up to the cottage this week and feed my birdies.

I feel like spring was actually in the air today. One of those fantastic February days that make you believe it'll all actually end - until, 24 hours later you're back in deep freeze. Today would be a wonderful day to go to a park and play with a dog, if I had one. Bluepoppy, can I borrow Henry and Ollie?

I'm so incredibly up today that even proofreading Excel tables can't get me down. I imagine I'll be crashing soon, but what the hell, right now life is good people.

Oh, the irony

This morning I arrived at work and went to the cafeteria to get a muffin. A double chocolate muffin fresh from the oven.

Did I take the stairs up the three stories to my office? Nope, 'course not. I took the elevator, went to my desk, got the book I'm reading out of my bag.

Oh, the irony of reading Morgan Spurlock's "Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America" while eating a huge double chocolate muffin (insert heavy sigh and rolling of eyes here).

The book is sobering though. When over 50% of a country's population is overweight - and for the record, Canada is just as bad as the States - there's a huge (pardon the pun) problem. We are literally eating ourselves to death. And all this started really happening in the 70s. Before that, obesity was nowhere near the epidemic it is now. Yes, I know, I should have the statistics on hand, but I don't just now, I'll try to be good and dig them up.

It's sobering, it's frightening and yet, I'm eating that chocolate muffin. I really need to get my shit together.

*********

Have you ever had a dream so real that you could swear it actually happened?

Last night I got up for a trip to the loo (which I'm sure happened, since I always get up to pee in the dead of night, what's up with that. I can go hours without peeing during the day, but I'll go a couple of times during the night. Freak). Then I went into the living room to check the time (why there?), I sat down, turned on the TV and started watching part of a movie. Then I figured I should get back to bed, so I set the video to record. This morning I woke up and went to the living room to see exactly what had been recorded during the night. Nothing. It was all a dream but it was so damn vivid, so real that was sure I had recorded that movie.

Is there a point to this story? Nope. Is there any reason you should be interested? Nope. Is there any reason I should put this here? Nope.

There are days when I can't help but wonder why I blog.

Sex in the City

Ladies and gentlemen, drumroll please....

Last night I watched the first three episodes of Sex in the City on DVD. Which means that I am no longer the only "Sex" virgin in the known universe. I've lost my cherry and am now in the know. Sweet.

*********

Another first last night. For the first time ever, really I flirted with insomnia. Not good. It major sucked, especially since I'm the type who goes to bed and is dead to the world for hours within about 20 minutes. Not last night. Last night I lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to my sweetie sleep (might I add, envious as all get out, I felt like waking him just because). Laying there, frustration building, which probably fed the insomnia, which simply made me all the more frustrated and, well, you get the picture.

I thought about all sorts of things, among them altering a book (wonderful examples here, wondering whether I had the gumption to actually do it, what type of book I'd use, themes, and all that. I've developed a fascination lately with collaging and altered books, illustrated journals, people like Lynne Perrella, Sarah Fishburn, Teesha Moore, Beth Cote, and so many others.

It seems though, that every time I try, I have tons of ideas, it's all mapped out in my head, and somehow everything gets lost between my brain and my hands. I seem incapable of keeping the flow, of translating what's in my brain to reality. Somehow it all disappears before hitting the paper...

Confessions of a blog addict

I am obviously a blogophile as can be deduced from the list of blog links to the left.

To prove just how insane I can actually be, today I finished reading Les Cadeaux from the beginning. All. Three. Years. Of. It.

More to the point, I have done that with all the blogs in the link list. It just dawned on me that that is sick. I mean, who the hell does that? Who reads three or four years of a blog? It strikes me as being somewhat strange and creepy.

Stranger and creepier? I check them daily and feel disappointed if there's nothing new. How fucked is that? I feel like some slimy cyber stalker or something. Hello Jazz, those people actually have lives. *shudders*

But I'm not a stalker, really I'm not. I'm actually quite a nice person, ya know? I just like to keep up with "the people who live in my computer" to quote the immortal Wee . Now if only I can get people to believe me.

*******

Off to the cottage tonight for a WHOLE weekend. Because of circumstances, in the past few weeks this hasn't happened much. Besides having the clean up the place really well because it's rented for next weekend, I will be doing nothing. Sitting beside stove tonight, watching the fire, drinking margaritas, maybe watching a movie or King of the Hill, and basically the whole weekend will follow that pattern. The last thing I want is to be productive in any way shape or form. This week has been a killer and next week is gonna be just more of the same. Bleh.

I have come to the conclusion over the past 20 or so years of working that the concept of earning a living is highly overrated. And my job is actually pretty good. I remember once in Cegep (basically last year of high school and first of University elsewhere than in Quebec where we do things differently because, hey, we must! But I digress....) So, in Cegep in some class we had set up a business, based on a real one.

We went to visit a soap company. Or maybe my sister was doing that and I tagged along - digressiona gain. This company made MIR dish soap (cheap crap it was, still is for all I know). Anyway, to this day the image of the assembly line sticks in my head. The woman who was the last in line. Her job was to check that the labels were stuck on right. That's right folks. She checked each bottle off the assembly line to see that the label was stuck. Eight hours a day, five days a week. Year in, year out - though I don't suppose you can do that job for very many years without going quietly, or not so quietly, insane.

So yeah, I've got it good. But I still think working for a living is highly overrated. And I should be allowed not to. So there!

*********

And how is this for bizarre? I have got my big brother blogging, who'd've ever thunk it? Wanna take bets on how long he'll last?

Existential Crises or Navel Gazing?

Do you ever sit there and wonder what the hell happened to your life? How the hell you came to be where you are?

I seem to have strayed so far from the master plan of my 20s. Well, no, not from the master plan, there never really was any. It's more that I'm often floored at how different my life is from what I had envisaged it becoming.

On certain levels it's wonderful, more than I ever dreamed.

On others, I have to wonder what the hell happened.

Meh, get over yourself Jazz. This is all probably just because you're doing the most boring stuff possible at work and are feeling put upon.

Shaddap.

A few Superbowl Statistics

Maybe this is why they call it the "SUPERBOWL"

There are amazing statistics, and then there are Super Bowl statistics-and those are just as amazing. (…)

· Pounds of potato chips consumed on Super Bowl Sunday = 11 million
· Pounds of tortilla chips = 8.2 million
· Pounds of popcorn = 3.8 million
· Average number of people attending a Super Bowl party = 18
· Percentage increase in sales of frozen breaded mushrooms prior to the Super Bowl = 36%
· Percentage increase in sales of frozen shrimp = 29 percent
· Amount of $$ spent on soft drinks at grocery stores during Super Bowl week = $237.2 million
· Calories consumed by the average Super Bowl watcher = 1,200
· Amount of time needed to burn off those 1,200 calories = walking: 4 hrs, running 1 hr 45 min · % increase in sales of proceed-cheese loaves the week before last year's Super Bowl = 30%
· Increase in sales of flavored snack crackers = 68 percent
· Number of pizzas Pizza Hut expects to prepare on Super Bowl Sunday = 2 million
· Top Super Bowl seller at grocery stores = what else? Frozen pizza
· Additional sales of beer = $11.8 million
· Pounds of snack food Americans scarf down on Super Bowl Sunday = 30.4 million, twice the average daily amount

Source: Nubella.com


And from The Guardian.com :

So who ate all the snacks? Even by their gargantuan standards of over-indulgence, couch potato Americans are preparing to outdo themselves during today's Super Bowl, the sporting highlight of the country's year. They will guzzle their way through truckloads of crisps, peanuts, pretzels, popcorn, nachos, pizza, olives, biscuits, cheese and anything else they can find in the fridge. Britons may drink themselves silly during big games - Americans stuff themselves stupid.
According to research by the US Calorie Control Council, gridiron fans will today eat 11 million pounds of crisps, 8m lbs of tortilla chips, 4m lbs of pretzels and 2.5m lbs of nuts. The average armchair quarterback will consume 1,200 calories, and 50 grams of fat, in a three-hour scoffing binge. The average Eritrean struggles to eat that in a day.

For the whole nation, the consumption is staggering. A total of 156 billion calories will be absorbed by the 130 million people watching the Pittburgh Steelers take on the Seattle Seahawks at Ford Field in Detroit. You could satisfy east Africa's 11 million hungry for about a week with that.

Needless to say, such intakes have a devastating effect on the health of Americans. This is a people born with silver shovels in their mouths, claim the cynics, who argue that authorities will soon have to install speed bumps at all-you-eat-buffets, hand out estimates rather than menus in restaurants, and grease door frames so that people can squeeze through.

Hence the Calorie Control Council has issued special Super Bowl advice for this first time. Try low-fat crisps, it has recommended. Axe the fatty dips with pretzels and have salsa instead. The council is even urging fans to try a pre-tournament workout: running round a stadium track for an hour and a quarter would nicely balance that 1,200 calorie intake. Right.


I can't help but wonder what is WRONG with North America.

Books, repairmen and caricatures...

Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it’s an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce every day.

From: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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We were at the cottage over the weekend, waiting for the phone repair guy to come by on Saturday. Sometime between 8:00 am and 7:00 pm we were told. He came noonish, so that was cool. Still this is the earliest a repairman or delivery person has ever showed up. I’m always hearing stories of people who wait all day for the guy to show up. My question is: since they never ever arrive before noon, who the hell is the person they visit at 8:00 am? Do these elusive clients exist? Is it all a conspiracy to make us believe they actually begin work before noon? Is this maybe the job I’ve been looking for all my life?

*********

I don’t know what to think about the “caricature riots” in the Middle East and Asia. Now, I understand it’s blasphemy to depict the prophet, but isn’t the reaction just a tad overdone? It is blasphemy for Muslims, but does that make it is it blasphemy for non-Muslims too? I hardly see how it can apply if you don’t believe in Islam. Insensitive, sure, but blasphemy? I understand voicing your concern over these drawings, but to burn embassies over it… well, I try to see their point of view, but I’m not quite managing. I suppose some more fanatical elements are using this to inflame public opinion, but are people (and I’m not talking Muslims per se, but rather just people generally) so stupid as to just burn places down because they are told they should? OK, how dumb a question is that. Obviously people are dumb enough. There are examples galore all through human history.

There is no intelligent life on this planet, beam me up Scottie.

A friend of mine is turning 50 this weekend. It got me thinking. I have friends in their 50s and friends in their mid- to late 20s.

I span generations. Because I pretty much refuse to grow up perhaps?

*********

These last couple of weeks have been the total pits. First my cats, then Mr. Jazz's aunt (we spent the weekend at the funeral) and when I got back to work Monday, I found out that my colleague, who was thought to have cancer in a lung, actually has it in both, as well as her liver and bones. It's all getting to be a bit much. Well, one good thing, I got an appointment for my yearly physical - which I haven't bothered with in a few years.

*********

In other news (I've always wanted to patch in that anchor man/woman/person phrase), I have family checking out this blog regularly. My brother, sister, sister-in-law and at least one niece. Feels quite strange. So now, seeing as they're peeking into my life I will feel totally vindicated posting torture stories and such of the things they made me endure as a child. Ha! that'll show them - or more likely humiliate me. But then, I'm used to public humiliation. It's part of being the youngest. Actually, it's part of being the total spaz that I am. Nothing like public humiliation to keep one humble. So for every story of how I was tortured, I will post one of how I humiliated myself. Besides, I can always blame it on them. I am what I am because of the things I endured as a child.