T-3 Days And Counting (Day 28)

You probably already know that I’m traveling this weekend. You probably also know that I’m hanging with friends and, of course, shopping. Let me just say that I went to a two-story — TWO-STORY — Target today and nearly cried. My heart began to race, I started to sweat palpably and actually had to pause for a moment to catch my breath.

Purchased were sock monkey Santa flannel PJ’s, affordable batteries (ahem), and a new release DVD for $3.99. Someone please remind me again why I live in Canada?!

This post doesn’t really count and is totally phoned in; however, considering I’ve been out all day and am about to go out to paint Chicago red, I consider it a valiant effort.

The best part of this post, though, is that there are only TWO posts left before I get to wrap up this daily blogging madness and reclaim some semblance of a life!

So, until tomorrow, lovely blog readers.

Can’t Blog. Shopping. (Day 27)

Ten bucks if you can spot me (hint, hint). If, however, you have vision troubles and are unable to find me , you’ll at least get an idea of where I am. Where I am is likely in front of Tarzhay¹ somewhere in the city of Chicago, freezing my bum off and likely having just been trampled trying to acquire that $49 50″ flat panel TV of which they likely had only two. Wish me luck.

¹ By which I mean the most *amazing* store on the planet, Target.

Happy Thanksgiving! (Day 26)

I had every intention of penning a verbose message this Thanksgiving, but the immobilization caused by the tryptophanic residue in my bloodstream has currently hurled me inexorably couchward.

I wanted to say a lot today. I am sure that some of you are more than tired of me and my vapid, but cheerful(!), blog posts, and while I’m sorry you’re bored, you must surely have a cold, shriveled little heart that cannot tolerate my gratitude! I feel like I have a lot to be grateful for, like my amazingly loving and supportive parents who, even though I packed up an moved 1,600 miles away, still love me just like I was sitting in their house being the demanding princess I can occasionally be. I am grateful for being able to live in Canada and, while I know I won’t be here forever, I have fallen in love with this beautiful country and its fantastic peeps — I wouldn’t trade a single, solitary moment of my time here and will always say only excellent things about the country, even when they continue making fun of my accent. But what I really wanted to do today was to show some love to YOU, my blog readers. You, the people who take the time to stop by here and read my drivel, to leave comments, to send emails, and reply to tweets. Those of you who stop by, lurk, and say nothing at all.

When I started blogging a few years ago, I loved it, but did it really just for myself. I never took it seriously. Then people actually started finding me and reading me, and I had no idea that my site would grow into a community of people I love and treasure—not just online, but offline, too.

My blog friends have sent me some of the nicest emails I’ve ever received. They have encouraged me in the midst of relationship issues, the ending of friendships and worries about my future. They have made me laugh and cry all at the same time. Some of them have crossed the line from “e-friends” to just plain friends. Friends I speak with regularly, friends I can’t wait to see again. Friends who fill my email box, my Facebook wall, and my snail mail box with love and care and friendship.

Blogging has reconnected me to old friends and to people I had no idea were reading or paying attention. It has opened my eyes to people and alternate points of view points and goals and books and careers and ideas and plans. And for that, I can never write an adequate post.

So, if you’re here, on this page, I just want to say Thank You. I am thankful for you. I am grateful for all of the little things, with seemingly insignificant moments that make my life so much sweeter.

I wanted to say all that, but all I can really manage at this moment is a giant Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I love, and am so thankful for, you all!

xo.

Apparent Signs Of Loneliness (Day 25)

I *should* be packing for my trip to Chicago, but instead, I’m blogging, damnit, because when I say I’m gonna do something, I do it! Anyway.

Of our five senses, the one that can change my emotions more quickly than any other is my sense of smell (also, when I see hot guys, but I digress). To this day, certain smells bring back memories of specific times in my life and even particular moments in time or physical buildings, in some cases. I have an absolute love affair with candles. In fact, I have a candle closet in my house¹. I am *all* about changing my candles out either seasonally: lotus flower, peony, lily, gardenia, jasmine, lemon or grapefruit for Spring; green apple, orange blossom, berry, or cucumber for Summer; clary sage, pumpkin, ginger, or persimmon for Fall; and fig, star anise, balsam, frasier fir, or red currant for Winter. With the exception of a few days during the summer when it’s hot², I always have a candle burning. They just make me a very happy (and calm) girl.

Which is why I was so utterly disturbed by what I recently heard. I was at a party when I overheard someone say that “girls who burn candles are lonely. Candles are the new cat”. Ex-squeeze me? A-Baking powder? If that’s true, on both counts, I’m totally f****d, what with my candle closet, and near cat adoption and all. I wonder if there’s any truth to this? Could I be lonely and just not know it?! I certainly don’t ogle my candles like I would a guy, nor would I try to become, shall we say, intimate with my candles. Can we all say ”3rd degree burns”? I certainly don’t support this theory, but it’s out there, circulating around the world and unfairly labeling me all the single ladies! As if.

¹ Check the photo, yo.
² By which I mean 24C/78F

Thank You For The Mammaries (Day 24)

Admit it — you love breasts. We all love breasts, really. It’s possible that breasts could be called an American obsession and, in fact, I would venture to say that men everywhere take great lengths to recognize the hypnotic allure of a shapely breast. Big ones, small ones, fake ones, real ones, round ones, square er, semi-round ones — it’s all good stuff. For some women, breasts could easily qualify as their most enthusiastic component, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down.  

So what’s *not* to love about breasts? I’ll tell you what — that bitch known as breast cancer. Sure, we all love prostates and ovaries and skin and throats and brains and lungs and all those other body parts that contract cancer, too, but being a woman who doesn’t have, say, a prostate, I worry more about breast cancer than I do about any of the other varieties. Which means you get to hear about this subject today. You’re welcome! Not to mention, breast cancer statistics¹ are nothing short of grim. Consider these applicable to the U.S. in 2008 alone:

- 250,230 new cases
- a 1 in 8 incidence
- 40,480 women died from the disease. In one year. And people are pissed about the 4,365² troops who have died in six and a half years in Afghanistan??
- the highest rate of cancer only after lung cancer

Thanksbeto the Twitter, I found out about a little project going on in Toronto called ProjectPink!. The idea, started by Darryl Koster of BusterRhinos Southern BBQ³ in Whitby, Ontario, was this: talk about how every woman should have a dash of pink in their hair at some point in their life which then manifested into his agreement that he’d dye his hair pink if Torontonians purchased 1,500 BBQ sandwiches⁴ between now and December 18. Most importantly, though, 50 cents of every sandwich purchased would be donated to the Breast Cancert Society. Sweet! Some of the way cool Toronto bloggers and tweeters I follow — karmacake.ca and cakeordeath.ca⁵ — decided that if the number was met, they too would put pink in their hair, and so on and so forth, and, let’s just say that a little viral revolution was born. Of course, never one to be left out when it has to do with a mini-revolution, and because I have always, always, always wanted pink in my hair, I jumped on the bandwagon.

You may remember those research studies “they” do on kids where they put deliciously yummy candies on a table and tell the poor, drooling four year-old that if they can wait five minutes without eating the candy, they get them all, but if they can’t wait the allotted time, then they’re basically headed for a life of unhappiness and destruction? Well, I fall into the latter category. I have gotten much better as I’ve gotten older (ahem), but my OCD⁶ tends to kick in when I’m excited about something and I just simply cannot. wait. Yes, I have zero patience and yes, I have negative 500 willpower. Your point?

What I’m getting at is this: my very favourite colour is pink. You could say that I am somewhat of a pink fanatic; my Twitter page is pink, my NaBloPoMo page is pink, my iPhone case is pink, I only use pink file folders at work and now, thanks to ProjectPink! my hair is now pink. No, I am not channeling my inner Avril Lavigne rocker girrl, despite the fact that I live in Ontario from whence she came. I like to think that I’m just taking this opportunity to promote ProjectPink! in my own little way before December 18, as well as fulfilling yet another item on my lengthy Canadian bucket list. Of course, the pink hair also most certainly qualifies under ”Things that would never have happened in Houston, Texas”.  

I’ve gotten mixed reactions. I see people glancing at it like “does she have pink in her hair?” or, alternatively, probably thinking “talk about age-inappropriate!”. The cool, hip people I know are like “omg, I lurve it so much!”. The uncool, non-hip people I know⁷ are like “hmmm, okay”. When I tell them it’s for breast cancer, they get it, but really, they don’t. It washes out in six to eight weeks anyway, but I honestly don’t care one iota — I love it and every time someone asks me about it, I tell them it’s for ProjectPink!  If I can do a teeny, tiny part *and* have pink hair, then I’m one happy girl!

Now that this long post has come to an end, I can say in conclusion, fuck cancer and support ProjectPink!

P.S. You may have heard that the United States Preventive Services Task Force recently suggested that women begin to wait until they’re 50 to receive a mammogram. Well, my message to USPSTF is this: you should get out of my way because if you persist with these guidelines, you can assume that I’ll promptly be putting on my killer 4-inch heels and coming after you – so watch out! Also, you should know that I think about you when I touch myself. ;-)

¹ Source: breastcancer.org
² As of 11/22/09 at 1:25pm EST. Source: antiwar.com
³ OMG. Southern BBQ in Canada?! Cornbread, sweet tea and baked beans? Yes, please!
⁴ By which I do not mean Canadian BBQ or “hamburgers”. I mean real BBQ sandwiches. You know, like brisket.
⁵ Does anyone else see the pattern here?
⁶ I don’t really have OCD, but I like to blame my impatientness on OCD rather than the fact that I just simply have a lack of willpower.
⁷ You know who you are.

Four Times The Fun! (Day 23)

Summers in Toronto are filled with every kind of show, festival, art crawl, exhibit, and exhibition you can imagine. In fact, coming to Toronto in the summer is like hitting the motherlode of outdoor activity. Then, November comes — that dreary, wet, gray month – and everyone packs it in and goes a) home and b) inside.

This year, though, we had an unusually cool Summer and, naturally, an unusually warm Fall. I’m practically dying of heatstroke in my now-that-it’s-fall-the-A/C-is-off-and-sweltering  condo, although the warmth means fewer days I’m required to wear my down feather coat in which I look fiercely hot¹. But I digress. What does this have to do with Toronto’s activities? I don’t really know — my funny is out for a smoke break tonight, but my point is that I had an awesome weekend that can be summed up in four short words: photography, food, wine, and sex². What could be better than that, you ask? Well, for me, not much. Not much at all. 

The Royal Ontario Museum has an exhibit of Vanity Fair portraits and photographs from 1913-2008 which I could hardly wait to see. Relentless in my own personal quest for documentation, not to mention a 14-year subscriber to the mag, meant that a trip to brush up against photos taken by Annie Liebowitz, Edward Steichen, Helmut Newton, Nan Goldin, Cecil Beaton and Man Ray <swoon> was a requirement. And were there photographs! Indeed! Seeing the stars in photos doesn’t really do it for me — I find them infinitely uninteresting. The photo that sticks out in my mind turned out to be a small portrait of  Claus von Bülow, who infamously posed for the Vanity Fair photos mere days after he was accused of attempting to kill his wife, Sonny. Von Bülow was ultimately acquitted on all charges and Sonny lived in a permanent vegetative state for 28 years until her death. The film “Reversal of Fortune” eventually told the story of the von Bülow family and is one that has always fascinated me. Also, because, being a 14-year subscriber means that I’d already seen many of the photos they exhibited, so I was kinda b-o-r-e-d³. A trip to Hemingways for drinks and appys followed and a lovely evening was had by all.

The monolithic Gourmet Food and Wine Expo rolled into Toronto this week, which usually means two things: I’ll be tipsy the majority of the weekend and will inevitably spill red wine on,and ruin, a perfectly good silk blouse. Good news, though — neither of those things happened this year! Yay me! Rather than going three nights in a row this year, I refrained and attended only on Saturday night to help my friend Angela Aiello of iYellow Wine Group fame. Ange happened to be on a press trip to Chile (yes, she leads a tough life, doesn’t she?!) and therefore needed lots and lots of help to ensure that iYellow got the mad props it deserved during the show. Props, indeed! The show was packed — literally — and ended up selling out. I tasted quite a bit of good food (lobster! thai shrimp!), wine (madeira! riesling! icewine!), olive oils (can’t remember the names!), but my favourite food/drinkstuff was a “mini ice cream cone”: think ice cream cone lined with a hard chocolate shell, filled with a (very strong) french vanilla liqueur and topped with chocolate whipped cream. Zomg. It was sinful. The party itself was basically controlled chaos and you could hardly move without stepping on the 4″ heel of the whorishly dressed well-dressed girl in front of you. In fact, when I gracefully departed around 10pm, things were just getting into full swing. The Gourmet Food and Wine Expo was a definite “see and be seen” scene. And one that should *not* be missed.

That takes care of photography, food and wine. And now, the sex. (Warning: parental units, the squirmish, and/or the +60 set, you may want to skip this part altogether) Ahem. The Everything To Do With Sex show is apparently as Canadian an institution as maple syrup, roaming moose and igloo-living. There may be shows like this in the States, but shows like this in Houston, TX, there are not. Therefore, being the consummate Canadian tourist, I felt like it was something I could not miss during my time in Toronto. Also, because what else does a Texas girl do on a Sunday in November? 

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I arrived, but was surprised to see *every* kind of person there — young, old, gay, straight, preppy, goth, fat, thin, tall, short. There were the typical vendors you’d expect to see at a show about being intimate, like masseuses, photographers, hair straighteners, body painters, tattoo artists⁴,  and the ubiquitous firefighter’s calendar (!!!). Then, of course, there werer those unexpected vendors such as Cowboys of the Caribbean, Straptease, the Sexerciseme Ball, and Orgasmatron. I saw things that angelic Texas girls like me could only imagine (and then some) including, but not limited to, penis-shaped ice cube trays, chocolate-dipped penises⁵, things that vibrate in time with songs on your iPod (incidentally called “iBod”), and other varied and assorted accoutrements, at which time I decided that the motto of the show should be ”come one, come all⁶“!

Photography wasn’t allowed, although I can assure you that as soon as the fashion show began, cameras were whipped out at breakneck speed. Always playing by the rules, I, of course, took only one photo inside (and only after I asked permission), so I have nothing to show you other than the chocolate-dipped privates.

Needless to say, my weekend was filled with food, wine, friends, and debauchery. My prior method of operation has always been “fear and loathing” of November; after this weekend o’fun, however, it has officially changed to ”bring it on, baby”! 
 
 

 

 

¹ By which I mean the Stay-Puf Marshmellow Girl. Yes, I know it’s an image you can’t get out of your heads, but try to restrain yourselves, gentlemen.
² Not what you think!
³ But not from the company. Lisa, you rock as a ROM date!
⁴ Called the “Nude Buddha Tattoo Studio”, natch, and where people were actually getting tattoos. If I was planning to get a tattoo, I don’t think I’d wait for the portable booth set-up at the Everything To Do With Sex show to get it. But maybe that’s just me.
⁵ Made out of strawberries and bananas – clever, if you ask me.
⁶ But is actually “Admit it. You’re Curious”.

Holidays On Ice (Day 22)

The holidays have officially arrived! This Thursday is US Thanksgiving and, for this American girl, signals the kick-off to the official holiday season and the beginning of the countdown to Christmas. Which, of course, can also mean only one thing — it’s time, once again, to read my most favourite holiday book. What’s that, you ask? Is it “Twas the Night Before Christmas? No. A Christmas Carol, perhaps? Prognosis negative. The classic How The Grinch Stole Christmas? No, although I’m sure all the Who’s down in Who-ville would disagree. Nope — none of those come close, actually.

The book I look forward to reading every single year is David Sedaris‘ Holidays On Ice, his superlatively hilarious tales of working as an elf at Macy’s New York. The ”SantaLand Diaries” first debuted in 1992 as an essay on NPR’s Morning Edition and was so popular that it essentially launched him into stardom. The book contains other stories in addition to the SantaLand Diaries, including my personal favourite ”Dinah, The Christmas Whore”. Every page of this book is so positively hilarious that I usually end up with buckets of tears rolling down my face from laughing so hard. The best part? The book is dedicated to Ira Glass. I’m sure I would be able to think of one or two things that might be better than this pairing if I put my mind to it, but at this particular moment, I cannot. That’s pretty much as good as it gets — David Sedaris and Ira Glass. A Christmas classic, indeed.

While perusing YouTube today, I found an audio clip of Mr. Sedaris reading the audio verison of Holidays On Ice aloud. I’m embedding Part I here for your listening pleasure, so turn on your Christmas lights, grab a cuppa hot chocolate and your snuggie, and prepare your rib cage for some serious chest-shaking guffaws. You’re welcome.

¹ Shockingly, I found it on sale in hardback at Chapters for $5.99, so for those of you in Canada, fire up your snowmobiles and get over there — pronto!

A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words (Day 21)

Photographs have always, always, always been a gigantic part of my life. Since getting my first pink round Le Clic when I was about 13, I have been a serious photo-taking shutterbug. Thumbing through the stills in Life Magazine always fascinated me and to this day, I love photos way more than video. Photography exhibits are my absolute fave and I could easily stare at a photograph all day – taking in its single moment in time; the looks on faces, whether those of shock or happiness or discovery; and the natural and built environments. I’ve passed by the Toronto Archives on many an occasion. I’d heard it was lovely, but was not at all prepared for the bigosity of it! It’s an enormous space filled with huge range of documents and photographs documenting the city’s heritage. The best part is that you can either spend tons¹ of time in the building proper or you can plop down on your sofa in your comfy pajamas like I am right now and surf the archives in the privacy of your own home! There’s just nothing better than using all the tools in the nerd kingdom to make life easier. Le happy sigh.

I had an interest in seeing photos from the area of Toronto in which I’ve lived for the last two and a half years, and there were a plethora of them available. It’s so cool to see how cities change and grow, and Toronto is no different. While you may not know the area, I hope you appreciate the photos as much as I have.

As an aside, I checked to see if the city of Houston had a similar archive, but was unable to find anything. Rather, they have an archive of only modern day photos, but that is definitely worth a look.

¹ or “tonnes”, if you’re Canadian

 Spadina at Front Streets, ca 1960.

A TTC bus, ca 1935. Not much has changed.

Looking east from the Fairmont Royal York hotel, ca 1930

Lake Ontario in the Beach, frozen. 1924.

Queen Street West at Spadina, ca 1935

Front at Peter Streets, 1926

Defiance, Redefined (Day 20)

Someone recently told me  that I reminded them of “the stork and the frog” cartoon. I just stared at them blankly having zero idea to what they were referring. They explained it to me and, of course, I nearly burned out my keyboard looking up the reference. But you know what? I think they were right. 

Most of the time, of course, I’m the princess-by-day-always-minding-my-manners-girlie-girl kinda girl, but when it’s required, I can scrap with the best of them. That’s not to say that sometimes I don’t want to give up, because I do. On occasion (many, in fact), the thought of being a pool girl in Antigua doesn’t sound too shabby at all. Then I come hurtling back into reality and think ”oh, uh uh. Never — but never – give up, girlfriend”.

And just like the frog in the cartoon, I never, ever will¹.

 
 

¹ As evidenced by this  blog post that is *totally* phoned in. I am about to pass out from having to work all day, play all night, and write NaBloPoMo posts, too. I want to quit so badly, but I just will. not. do. it! The bright side? Only ten. more. days.

The Digital Afterlife (Day 19)

We all have a digital footprint. If you have a Facebook page; an email address (or eight); photos on Flickr or Picasa; a blog (or three); are on LinkedIn or FriendFeed; or have signed up for any number of sites that you’ll visit only once, etc., etc., etc., then a digital footprint you have. Even 20 years ago, digital footprints were unknown. It didn’t matter what annoyed you at work that day or how your S.O.¹ pissed you off by not doing the dishes, primarily because you wouldn’t run home and post it on your Facebook page or blog about it. Rather, you probably wrote about it in your journal that, once you kissed and made up, was promptly burned.

Way back before the earth cooled, some serious geniuses at the University of Minnesota created a hierarchical system called the gopher protocol (and for whose university mascot the system is named). One of the first true ”indexing” systems, a gopher would organize and display files in a structural way, similar to a file folder as we know them today. Fast forward a few years, and, of course, thanksbe to Al Gore, the interweb was invented and rocked our world as we knew it. Today, once something is posted online, it’s there for eternity, or for as long as Google spiders are in existence². When I’m tipsy tired, but write a blog post anyway, I can change the wording the next day, but the spiders would have already picked up the original file where it could be retrieved at any point. This is what the smrt geeks of the world unite and discuss — how to index the multitudinous profusion of content on the web.

The point of that Web 101 intro was not to educate you on how synapse A attaches to synapse B, but to ask the rhetorical, and very relevant, question of what happens to online content when someone dies or becomes incapacitated? Where does it go and how is it managed? NPR’s All Things Considered did a story in May about disputes that can arise over online assets and, since hearing that show, I’ve given some serious thought to my digital afterlife. How exactly *will* my “online estate” be handled upon my expiration? No one knows my passwords but big brother and me. No one has a clue about the overabundance of profiles I’ve established, how to access my online bank accounts, or what to do with my 15 email addresses. But mostly, what happens to my blog? Does it just live in infamy as it exists on any given day or would my family want to take it down? What would *I* want to happen to it once I’ve gone? Who would you want to have as your digital executors? Basically, how do you protect your online assets?

It’s an interesting conversation and one that probably isn’t yet considered very often when estate planning. The legal community is not necessarily on the cutting edge of technology³ and probably therefore doesn’t yet include online assets when creating wills, trusts, etc. Maybe they are, but I just haven’t heard about it — I’ll have to get my people⁴ to look into this, post haste. After doing some some cursory research, I found a few .coms who provide online estate planning, not surprisingly. The largest of these looks to be Legacy Locker⁵, a repository for digital property who you pay to manage your online assets in your absence. Your family members show proof of death and your wishes are their command — Aunt Sarah receives the password to close down your Facebook page; Mom and Dad receive the passwords to your bank accounts; and friend Cindyloowho gets the big prize…rights to manage your blog!

Oddly, Legacy Locker will even go so far as to create an “online memorial” for you. Online tombstone, anyone?!

 

¹Significant Other
² So pretty much for eternity.
³ I have a good friend who’s an attorney with a very large Houston firm and I understand that they still use LotusNotes. LotusNotes! And I thought my company was out of touch for using Outlook 2003.
⁴ By which I mean me.
⁵ I’m in no way endorsing Legacy Locker, as I have no idea who they are other than the top return when I searched Google for “online estate planning”. I saw another one called “Private Matters” which just made me think of adult diapers. Right?!