the dotytron cracks me up

he's joining my dodgeball team on monday nights. we're both only playing one night a week because i selfishly don't see the point in giving up TWO weeknights during the summer to get sticky and heat-rashy in an under-cooled school gymnasium despite my competitive, dodgeball-loving tendencies. i went to check the team's profile on the intramural sports site. as i scroll through the list of team names, i see that the only person who's posted a profile picture is the dotytron. i stop and take a closer look. then i double click to make it bigger. the dotytron has uploaded the following:

i started laughing. i call him at home and say, "hey, i like the photo you posted on tcsssccsc" he says, "what one was that again?" me: "the kitchen god" him: "oh. no one else had posted anything and i figured they give you the feature for a reason and i was going to take advantage of it." i find this really funny. mostly because the dotytron and i and the goosetang clan are steeped in the ins and outs of messageboard culture (that's how we all met, really) and if there's one thing that's an unforgivable sin in the messageboard playbook, it's not taking FULL advantage of avatar possibilities. more often than not, you're so overwhelmed with funny/in-joke-y avatars that you have a rotation going, based on whatever's happening in popular culture/the messageboard itself.

anyway, i truly believe that the dotytron is one of the funniest people i've ever met in my life. it's actually kind of tough living up to that. i feel like i'm funny, but not that funny. it's a lot of pressure.

tomorrow is canada day! excite abounds! predictably, we're hosting. i think 10 or so people. hosting 8-10 people for dinner is such a part of my routine that i always forget how weird it is for almost everyone else to entertain as frequently as we do and to the extent that we do, until i get "the look" from people. you just have to do a lot of planning (i excel!) and be organized (i also excel!) and love to have people over (i excel to the nth degree!) i love hosting, i really do. it makes me sad that lil' ugmo isn't as conducive to it or won't be for at least 2 years. i've been threatening the dotytron that i will not cook in that horrendous kitchen until we can gut it and reno it. we're eating paninis for 2 years. lol!

today is little ze's THIRD birthday! THREE! three years ago i was at canoe, frantically trying to sneak out during service to use the phone and call home to get word, any word at all, on the status of the baby s-dawg was referring to as shiloh. then the fat little chinaman was born and he's been near and dear to our hearts ever since. him and uncle dodo are especially best buds, but seriously, this kid's personality is the best. he's such a happy go lucky lug. but surprisingly sensitive at times. he can use his long-lashed cow eyes in the service of a hangdog expression to devastating effect when his puppy dog enthusiasm has been curtailed. i can't wait to see him this weekend. i'm baking him a VERYVERYVERY special cake for the occasion.

tonight i'm having dinner and a visit with my friend S. i get to see her new apartment and go for tacos el asador. pretty fun! i'm also going to check out this "fiesta farms" that everyone talks about (and by everyone i mean S and my ex-prof J). apparently it's some kind of organic grocery store?

fin.

al fresco fry party

was a resounding success, greatly helped along by the fact that the dotytron was on fire that night and was pumping out zingers, left, right, and centre.

some of the topics of conversation included:

- me being skeptical that skin bleaching actually works and bwong countering with this buju banton tune called "dem a bleach" as his chief evidence for the existence and efficacy of skin-bleaching products
- captain save a hoe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6PodtDfdb4 (aka the new name for our car)
- bringing up "cotton eyed joe" in reference to michael ignatieff
- how jack layton is an undignified rube who's dragging the ndp party down
- catherine di medici's secret recipe for jalepeno poppers
- and many, many others.

we were also visited by a crack obsessed (probably rabid) squirrel who was FIXATED on us and our food and was bold in the way that only crazy animals can be. he kept giving us the stare down from the fence that rings our property which would result in the dotytron hucking weeds at him while shouting random patois and then hopping up and down in one spot to see how far he had chased it. it was hilarious/terrifying. this is he:



it was a good thing the food was great! we had great cheeses, great cured meats, tasty olives and of course, the ever-popular roasted pepper-proscuitto-provolone things. and jalepeno poppers, which were the only un-slow food thing on the menu.

the festivities broke up almost 4 hours later at around 11pm and then me and the dotytron headed down to that party which ended up being a colossal bust. there were like, 10 people there. you know what the problem was? i can tell you: mistaking the toronto drum'n'bass community for your friends. classic. you can't count on skeevy party goers for anything, much less to turn up for your wedding jungle party when there's no headliner. it was disheartening but that's shiz you gotta learn, son. plus, i took all the good uns out of the jungle community: dr. rei, bwong, the dotytron, my doppelganger, A, etc. i separated the wheat from the skeevy chaff. we stayed for like, 10 minutes and then headed home. we were kind of cheesed that we paid $10 cover though. they had a trumpet player, a trombonist, and the bride is a mc who kind of sings over her groom's djing. i'm not gonna lie, i didn't really feel it. but that didn't stop the dotytron from threatening to charge up on the stage and start jamming on this lone stratocaster he spied up there. i had to literally pull him back. he said he was going to do it "funny" and under normal circumstances i wouldn't have had a problem - i just didn't want to be left sitting alone with the dregs of toronto electronic music society. can you blame me?


sunday dawned rainy and morose. we had bacon, egg, lettuce and tomato sammies on lightly toasted leftover fred's bread with mayo. i picked up my bike from the shop (i had the brakes tightened up and traded in my collapsible baskets for saddle bags). we did some light packing, i painted another coat on my chairs, and then we started cataloguing my records on discogs. it was super slow going. molasses slow. treacle slow. we had a good time though - mostly because we got to listen to my seldom-heard tunes and stuff ourselves with leftover meats, cheeses, paper-thin sliced mortadella, and zucchini pancakes.

we were supposed to go to the roomie's place for dinner but she bailed on us. the back up plan was to eat steak sammies, but were were kind of full from hoovering cured meats and cheeses so in the end i seared off the steak and we split that. and then we had A QUARTER EACH of the fresh strawberry pie i had made for the roomie as my contribution. this pie is amazing. i might even like it better than the strawberry cream tart we had at al fresco fry party. it's like the essence of strawberry goodness in each and every bite. it's intoxicatingly good. staggeringly good. you want to eat it all day every day kind of good.



then we watched half of the zizek documentary and i passed out at EIGHT THIRTY. eight thirty!!!!!!!!! and slept through until 6am this morning whereupon the dotytron joined me for my morning run.

tonight for dinner we had orecchiete w/ peas, lemon, mint and crème frâiche and some roasted asparagus on the side. with the leftover proscuitto roasted pepper things. followed by even MORE strawberry pie. oy.

fin.

consequence of waking up at 6 to go running...

you pass out at 11pm on friday night and miss having drinks with your friends. bogus.

so i came home to zoomzoom parked in our driveway. it's red! VERY red! this is after a series of phone calls to the dotytron where i gave him a list of groceries to pick up and threatened him upon pain of death by haranguing that just because we have a car now doesn't mean we're using it for non-necessary missions (ie. grocery shopping) and that we have to be careful of our ecological footprint and peak oil, blah blah blah. i'm not above checking the odometre if i have to.

see, that's the thing about downtown living. i don't really know why a lot of people who are car-obsessed want it so. i know people who talk about how they couldn't stand living in the suburbs but don't make ANY use of downtown amenities. they do all their grocery shopping at giant loblaws (and overpay for the privilege) and use a car to drive to the gym or go a block. it's ridiculous. i don't want to be those people.


the pizza last night turned out splendid, with some tense moments. my margherita kind of imploded - i overloaded it my too-wet tomato sauce and too much fresh sliced mozzarella and so it reached critical mass and the topping began a slow, volcanic slide off the pizza and into the belly of my bbq. not good. we managed to rescue it in the end and it was supremely tasty, as was the other pizza, which ended up consisting of lardo, some of T's chilies julienned, chili oil, and roasted garlic. it was heavenly! what made the pizzas taste so amazing was the use of the pizza stone on the bbq. the thing got ripping hot and the pizzas were done in under 10 minutes each. then we turned the grill off and finished the asparagus on the pizza stone with the residual heat. it makes a convincing argument for a wood-fired outdoor oven. someday.

today i've been busy. i dropped my bike off to sven and his band of norweigian misfits (that's cyclemania to you) i made a fresh strawberry pie, a strawberry cream tart, and prepped the dip for tonight's dinner. the menu is as follows:

- olives
- cheese
- cured meats (capicollo and mortadella)
- smoky red pepper and feta spread
- grilled pitas
- those zucchini pancakes with mint sour cream
- deep fried, breaded, roasted pepper, proscuitto and provolone antipasto things.
- deep fried jalepeno poppers (odd one out: i have a box in the freezer, STILL left over from super bowl party!)
- strawberry pie w/ whipped cream
- wines
- convivial fun

the deep fried roasted pepper things i made once last year. T from work heard about them from our other italian colleague, A (she says, as if she can be counted as one of the italians in the workplace). you take a roasted pepper (i just used the jarred ones - much easier!) and wrap it around a piece of provolone, which in turn is wrapped in a piece of proscuitto. then you secure the roasted pepper so that nothing will escape with a toothpick. then you bread it (flour, egg, panko/breadcrumbs) and deep fry them until golden brown. season with salt and it is a truly DELIGHTFUL snack. so delightful that i've basically guaranteed myself a week of getting up at 6 and running in exchange for my dionysian gluttony this evening.

i'm going to do a second coat on my pink telephone table and a single coat on the other one. i had some good advice from random strangers at home depot when it came time to pick the colours for the tables. my original plan was to pick out the red or teal from the fabric i used for the seats, but i couldn't find a good match and the home depot crew (staff and custies) rightly suggested that red and teal can be VERY hard on the eyes - almost vibrate-y. so i went with a cream and a pink. the pink is still VERY pink but i think it's less visually wearing than the red would have been. i also beamed with pride when i was told that i was a "good girl" for priming the pieces before hand. i love validation, i truly do.

okay...i'm off to bake a loaf of bread and read in the sun and do some painting.

after dinner we're going to this party. our friend frankie gunns got married and they're doing a jungle party type reception for the entire toronto jungle community. bonus: it's in the neighbourhood! walking distance! other bonus: RAVE!

i'll take pictures of our bacchanlian feast and post them tomorrow.

fin.

living a lifetime

i feel like i've lived super-long days lately. this would because i decided to take up the suggestion of a colleague and GET UP AT 6AM TO GO FOR MY RUN. it's been suspiciously easy getting up a full hour before my usual wakening time and exerting myself physically. the pros: it's cooler, i can run farther, get it done, show up at work earlier, shower. the cons: none, other than the easily rectifiable one where i've been eating loads of cookies and cake and sweets everyday and undermining my own determination.

i'm so ready for the weekend! even though we don't have much planned - probably going out for drinks tonight with B & G and crew. tomorrow i'm futzing around getting ready to host people for an alfresco fry party, then going to a jungle jam. on sunday we're free all day with some contingent plans to have dinner at the roomie's new pad. i also want to lay down the first coat of paint on my telephone tables.

yesterday we had grilled salmon with cucumber-mint yoghurt on curried couscous with yellow squash, red peppers, and grated carrot. i'll upload with photos tonight. then, after recovering from the shock of michael jackson's untimely death (wtf?) we went with the dotytron's sister to drop off something we sold on craigslist and pick up something she bought on craigslist at the same time.

the torrential mid-afternoon rains we got yesterday washed away all the heat and dust and created optimal bike-riding conditions, so we set off on a dusk ride with the eventual goal being an inaugural visit to jah cold stone creamery. riding your bike at dusk when the air smells clean and your heat-tired skin is rejuvenated with the benediction of a cool, peony-scented breeze and you have your partner by your side makes bike riding and by extension life, worth doing. we rode up to pottery road and paid a visit to the dairy queen at the corner of broadview and pottery, that has a teeny little patio area that overlooks the don valley, where you can watch the sun set with the majesty of the don spread out before you and feel emboldened like those first toronto city planners must have, when they stood on the banks and imagined a sinuous artery of the fordist age, part of a network that would cover the city in a concrete filigree. sorry, i got caught up in my own literary excesses. the point is: the patio on that particular DQ is lovely.

from there we zig-zagged our way until we arrived at our destination. jah cold stone creamery is in the tim horton's on the corner of logan and the danforth. i was a little skeptical, because said tim horton's also used to house the danforth and vicinity's only wendy's, before they closed it up and i was left smoky bacon mushroom melt bereft. as with most american franchises/ideas transplanted onto canadian soil (target! beware! be ye not so stupid! don't mess with a good thing!) - jah cold stone creamery was a bit of a bust. due to the limitations of physics, the marble slab ice cream phenomena is not conducive to speed or efficiency. the server takes a glob of ice cream and massages it on a chilled slab with two gelato paddles, folding in whatever monstrous and unholy combination of "mixin's" your heart desires. this takes time. especially when you're dealing with the soft, atrophied muscles of today's disaffected low-wage teenage ice cream parlour workforce. add to that that this particular jah cold stone creamery counter has been frankensteined onto the end of a tim horton's counter and you have a gothic nightmare waiting to happen. the employees are tim horton's employees temporarily drafted from their large double-double and french cruller duties to manipulate ice cream before your rapt gaze like some kind of north pole benihana. it's a mistake. tim horton's custies suffer and jah cold stone creamery custies suffer. i doubt we'll go back. plus, the dotytron had serious issues with their chocolate ice cream.

in the defense of marble slab ice cream everywhere, the stuff i had in the states from jah cold stone creamery was way better. and the belgian chocolate ice cream at the marble slab creamery in markham was bitter and dark and velveteen. the dotytron's base ice cream tasted like frozen chocolate milk. not good.

tonight for dinner i'm making grilled pizzas. either thrown directly on the grill or on the pizza stone temporarily residing on the grill. haven't made up my mind yet. one is going to be a margherita, the other is going to probably be a roasted garlic and lardo pizza with olive oil and sea salt. we're going to have this with grilled asparagus. hopefully eaten outside if the rain holds off and out.

i'm also going to do some patch-priming on some areas the dotytron missed on the second telephone table. he kind of did a poor job but you can't hire good free help these days.

in other news...by the time this day is done we're probably going to be the proud owners of a car. a 2002 mazda protegé 5, in fact. let's hope we didn't just blow money we didn't have on a lemon! can i just say that we are haemorraghing money right now? eeks.

i'm also going to do some yoga tonight because i haven't stretched at all lately and i can feel my hamstrings seizing up in protest at the new torture i'm inflicting upon them.

lastly, i would be remiss if i didn't give a big fat RIP to poor MJ. i'm sorry we did this to you. well, us and joe jackson. joe jackson started it and we finished it by turning the poor guy into the favorite object of our morbid and grotesque fascination and rabid excesses. the king of pop indeed - his musical legacy deserves better than what became of him. the dotytron and i played "favorite MJ song" last night while riding.

here are our picks:

finally, best week ever did it again with "the greatest MJ move of all time"

fin.

super cheap night!

lately i've been on a roll. last week when sarah dessen's newest, "along for the ride" came out officially in bookstores, i went out on my lunch break to grab it. as i sidled up to pay, i pulled out a indigo/chapters gift card of unknown provenance, thinking that at best, there was maybe a balance of $2.00 left, at worst, nothing and at least i would know and would be able to remove it from my wallet. there was $25.00 on it! i only had to pay $2 for a HARDCOVER BOOK! score!

then today, i was on my way to see "away we go" with K and J and H and that guy. i walked up to the theatre with K and was contemplating what i was going to eat - mcdonald's being an option, because today was my colleague's retirement party (29 years! holy cats!) and that meant that i had prepared for the bounty of potlucked goodies by designating it an "eat whatever i want" day. i had a mcdonald's gift card and ended up only spending $2 on my big mac combo! score! then i went to the theatre and pulled out a mouldering cineplex odeon card of equivalent unknown origins as my chapters/indigo one, again thinking that i had maybe a few bucks on it. nuh-uh. i had $25.00! enough to pay for my movie AND another one in the near future! score! so i only spent $2 tonight (notwithstanding the unforeseen tragedy whereupon i forgot my subway tokens at home and had to buy a set of five, because i find it ridiculous to pay full fare for the ttc when there are always [nominal] savings to be had by buying in groups of 5 or 10). at any rate, it was pretty good for my newfound thrifty self.

"away we go" was nice. i wasn't expecting to like it. i had kind of gotten the impression (hammered into me by the constant touting of its' literary pedigree and hushed, reverential "from the hands of david eggers and vendela vida" association that it was probably going to be smugly intellectual. it doesn't help that sam mendes' fingers were in this pie. have i mentioned that i loathe "american beauty"? well, i do. i probably haven't mentioned it because it's a dated thing to hate. but i remember and will trot out this old chestnut if needs be. anyway, reading a.o. scott's review didn't help. but it wasn't as horrid as i thought it was going to be. it was decent. not great, but decent.

maya rudolph gives an even, measured, against-type performance while john krasinski's burt is a little harder to swallow and i'm not one of the few women (or men) immune to his rumpled, crooked-smile charms. i just have less patience for the man-child, ambling, educated slacker thing. and by "less patience" i mean, "no patience" - you're talking to the girl who hates lloyd dobbler and "reality bites" (and by extension, ethan hawke's entire raison d'être). it's basically about a couple travelling around trying to find a model of family that they can subscribe to. i found some of the models with which they're presented really overplayed, especially the alison janney one and the maggie gyllenhaal one. i got the point, i just think the same point could have been made with a measure of subtlety and been all the more effective for it.

there were some things i questioned, but it would be spoiler alerting for me to expound on them, so i'll refrain. they weren't big enough to risk ruining it for you and you'll probably come to the same "huh?" moments as i did anyway. we did see the previews for both "paper hearts" AND "(500) days of summer" both of which seem very twee, indie, and painfully winsome - all things i teeter on the brink of loving/loathing depending on the proportion of heart, humour, and sincerity present. i'm excited to see both of them - i kind of find joseph gordon levitt cute and we all know how i feel about zooey, even as i fear her zooey-schtick is getting as well worn and uncomfortable for its familiarity as michael cera's (his cera-schtick, i don't think he does a zooey one).

this is monday night's dotytron-prepared dinner. pretty tasty looking, eh?

last night i came home after returning some stuff to lee valley that i didn't end up needing and made myself red cabbage coleslaw with a fried pork on a bun sammy that had lettuce, tomato, and plenty of mayo as dressing. it was TASTY.

in other news, does anyone else find it stupidly cliché that all the actors and big stars in l.a. support the lakers and not the clippers? it's so annoying. wow. way to be the biggest jerks and not support the non-rich, non-winning team. so i think i want to rep the clippers. even though i know nothing of basketball. but still! they need love, too!

okay, i'm off to slang stuff on craigslist. i'm also going to try a new thing tomorrow of getting up at 6am and going for an early morning run. we'll see how that goes. the idea is it won't be as hot and i'll be motivated to run longer (possibly) and then i can have my lunches back to do what i want, instead of slogging through the worst of the sticky, still, oppressive heat of the day.

roll call of awesome:

cb2
this is my new favorite online store in the whole. wide. world. i want to buy the store - if you're ever complaining that i'm hard to shop for, get me a g/c here, please. i want all these things:







roll call of bunk:


also from cb2 (hey, not everything can be amazing) - do you really want to hang up your toothbrush and have the bristles in some guy's crotch? no thank you!

fin.

note to self: ridiculous looking golf stretches

are meant to prevent EXCRUCIATING post-bucket-of-balls-at-the-driving-range tendonitis. ow ow ow. it's a good thing my job consists of 99% sitting in a not-so-ergonomic chair and typing. *limp wrists*

we took poppa d out to the driving range yesterday morning to shoot a bucket of balls. i had fairly consistent luck hitting about 100-125 yards, straight, with my rented driver. this prowess on the greens is offset by more than a few ABYSMAL shots that would ricochet off the side of my little driving range cubicle OR land spectacularly and tantalizingly a few feet away from me. me: "can i go and grab the ball and re-hit it if it's so close?" the dotytron: "absolutely not." i also like to MILK my bucket of balls. i do a lot of thinking and psyching myself up before a shot. the dotytron thinks it's a mistake. he claims it's a mechanical thing so you should just keep cranking. i had decent luck with a 7iron but i was way more inconsistent. the point is: I LOVE THE DRIVING RANGE AND I KIND OF LOVE GOLF. i definitely did better when i wasn't focusing on cranking and hacking away at the ball but just let myself relax into the swing. in other news: the rubber tees at that driving range (beach fairway) are set unnaturally high. seriously, the ball is like, 2" above the ground, minimum. it really messes with your game.



we collected momma d and whisked them to our place for a father's day brunch of corned beef hash and over easy eggs (thrifty housewife alert! last of the leftover corned beef used up!) and oat scones with devonshire cream and jumbleberry jam. it was a super-fortifying breakfast for what would turn out to be a day of home-based busybodying and crafting.

home-based busybodying is KIND OF AMAZING. sure it sucked being inside all day when i could have been, i don't know...walking the syringe infested boardwalk at the beach; or...rubbing elbows with sweaty, greasy, bleary-eyed hipsters spending mad ducats on queen west; possibly...squatting and listening to reggae in kensington market and avoiding being hit by bedraggled, emaciated, young'uns on fixed gear bikes. the point is: that life is NOT for me. no no, i'd rather be re-gluing the joints on the telephone tables and reupholstering the seats (staple guns are THE BEST!) (wearing my ear plugs and safety goggles of course) or scrubbing the rust off of my dumpster-rescued chrome and naugahyde chair or cleaning off the school desk or packing up books and vhs and dvds and forcing the dotytron to get rid of same or making boxes with packing tape or labeling said boxes or taping up paint samples and considering them ad nauseum with the dotytron.

that's what we did. he also used our new drill bits to drill tidy little holes in the back of the rosewood buffet and set up our home entertainment system complete with bumpin' sound system. it was so much fun! this is our life now, folks. we basically spent the rest of the evening BEAMING at our rosewood buffet. lol! i kind of always knew in my heart of hearts that home ownership was going to be the busybody project of all puttering in the known world and that i would take to it and be as happy as an otter cavorting belly up in the water.

for dinner i made a beet salad with peeled, cold, sliced beets on top of some arugala, bedecked with crumbled goat's cheese and chopped pistachios. i dressed it with a sweet-lemon vinaigrette. i also made these zucchini pancakes. i got the idea from my old supervisor T. that's what she does with her zucchini blossoms. she chops them up (in my case i just used a regular old zucchini, grated on the coarse side of the box grater) and mixes it with egg and just enough flour to make a thin batter (it's mostly egg). i added salt and pepper and fried them up. they're delicious warm or cold or room temperature. i sided them with sour cream with fresh julienned mint mixed in. they were SCRUMPTIOUS.

we've started watching "mad men." it's not bad. i kind of like it. the episodes go down real easy and i love the set design and have the hots for joan's outfits and torpedo boobs.

the dotytron is making me dinner as we speak. we're having spaghetti with pancetta and caramelized onions and black pepper and grated parm (kind of like a carbonara minus the eggs) with that italian antipasto salad we're obsessed with. eaten al fresco. ah, summer. ah, backyard. i will miss thee. eating under the sky is one of life's greatest pleasures. i think we're going to try to do some frisbeeing in the park, post-foodstuffs.

fin.

school of bob villa, lesson 1:

if you apply ENOUGH of many different types of wood glue, one of them is bound to work and will make the joint stick. !!!!! success! i'm not gonna lie, things were looking pretty grim there for a bit, exacerbated by the fact that the home depot mission that i had been (wrongly) priding myself on (i should have known that it was eerily too well to be believed, what with me finding everything on my list with only a minimum of waiting and grade 9-style pantomiming to a bevy of pleasantly disengaged orange-aproned staff) yielded the wrong web clamping. BOO! i injected about four different kinds of wood glue into the joints of my practice telephone table and finally, in a fit of desperation, completely flummoxed by the workings of the web clamping (or what i *thought* was web clamping), i grabbed a crate of records and balanced it precariously on the upended table to put some weight on the setting joints. i'm supposed to let it dry for a good 12 hours, but when i went into the room (which i have hermetically sealed against all interlopers in a superstitious appeal to woodworking karma) and gingerly wiggled the joint, it didn't wiggle at all. it's too soon to tell, but i'm cautiously optimistic.

i also went to town with my brand-new upholstery staple remover on the existing seat covers, peeling off god-knows-how-ancient cheap filling and a tacky, "cream" (i think it must have once been cream) coloured naugahyde fabric. i did all this while wearing safety goggles and breathing through my mouth. i get that from my mom. my mom has a very strange habit of breathing through her mouth whenever she's put in situations like: being on public transportation, using a bathroom in the developing world, on the (rare) occasions that she does the dishes. it's kind of weird to me because as i have learned, smells are actually particulate matter, which means when you mouth breath around off-putting odors, you're actually EATING them. this didn't stop me from fulfilling my lagerfeld genetic destiny by mouth-breathing like a mofo as i lifted one staple after another. i procured some foam ($10! for 2 seats!) and now i just need a staple gun and i can go to town.

i'm documenting the whole process. i likes me a good crafty before-and-after like few other things.

so, yesterday's meeting with our lawyer was...um...interesting (if not exactly confidence-inspiring) to say the least. he works out of a barebones storefront across from a subway station on the danforth. it's like, one room, with no privacy, so when his next appointment walked in while he was dealing with us, he had to ask them to wait outside. on the street. when i had called to book the appointment i had tried to get something during the day but he had told me that he was "in court" all day and wouldn't be able to see us until after 7pm. so we get there and i noticed that on his right hand, he had a FRESH scrappy doo wonderland stamp. !!!!! i surreptitiously pointed this out to the dotytron who responded with raised eyebrows and suppressed LOLs. i can't BELIEVE how cheap this guy is. he looks like a cross between the dad on "american dad" and troy mcclure. the lowest rate i had been quoted from other lawyers was $695 for the house and $295 for the mortgage, plus disbursements. this guy charges a flat fee of $500 for both the mortgage and the house and that's INCLUDING some of the disbursements! i am SO GLAD my mom is a real estate lawyer right now (she can't represent us because it's a conflict of interest). she's going to be checking over everything that happens and she's totally in our corner so it's a nice insurance policy. lawyers nowadays (for real estate transactions) are hella lazy and don't do their due diligence and rely on title insurance to cover their butts. it's crazy.

"scene not herd" was a complete 180 from last year's selection. while last year was super indie, with like a billion new pornographers' videos and like a billion emily haines videos, this year was total hipster, with an almost all-electronic music card. it's disappointing what this series has become. it's really poorly curated. even three years ago i saw some AMAZING videos. the international selection is so lacking and it seems to be used as an excuse for the curator to show how much street cred he/she has. show me videos that ENHANCE the music video genre! show me videos that are doing something crazy! there's so much re-treading of ground that it's shocking the creative rut that people are in. my favorite of the night was this one:

it's pretty cute. it's also really hard to lose with stop-motion animation.

tonight we're having dinner at the roomie's new place. i'm not sure what we're getting to eat, as usually "cooking" for the roomie means ordering takeout. i made a banana cake with cream cheese frosting for dessert. after that, depending on how ambitious/motivated we're feeling, we might go to a party at one of my dodgeball teammates' house...but that's VERY far away (well, st. clair and oakwood) so we'll see.

fin.

in case i haven't made it abundantly clear...

I LOVE MY FRIDAYS OFF. i have a colleague who likes to grumble about them, but i swear they'll have to pry them from my cold, petrified, dead hands. i managed to sleep in for a whole glorious hour, waking up at 8, despite a 6:50am internal clock poke to the eyelids and consciousness that i managed to smother with a fitful, uneasy, forced rejuvenating slumber.


from there, i and i have been enormously productive. i made (and jarred!) a double batch of jumbleberry jam, we went and picked up a trunk (pictured above) from some dude on craigslist that will have pride of place at the foot of our bed and will store extra pillows and blankets and comforters that won't fit in the linen closet of lil' ugmo. the dude lived in a GORGEOUS house in the upper beaches...that's going to be in our "in 10 years" house...if we don't move a little closer to my beloved danny. moving closer to the danny has been made more compelling now that they're OPENING JAH COLD STONE CREAMERY on the strip!!!!!!!! yet another reason why my sis and outlaw bro should uproot their family and move to my neighbourhood. the reason why i call it jah cold stone creamery is linked below. ANYWAY, jah cold stone creamery is opening where the wendy's used to be, attached to the timmy ho's. my preference would still be to have the wendy's there, as wendy's is good year round, whereas jah cold stone creamery is only good for like, the three months of summer we have, but i'll take it as a welcome alternative to baskin robbins iron grip on my community ice cream dollars. ANYWAY, the trunk owner said he'd had good luck selling stuff on craigslist. as long as you have good stuff and you're asking a decent price, then he said stuff doesn't stay on there for more than a day. SWEET! all the more reason for us to start selling our wares.



after the trunk pick up i went to the dentist and got some scaling done and then the library and did some local errands. i also finished picking all my digital photos from 2005-2008 for printing and dropped them off (oy vey...it's 871 photos worth!!!) once i pay for them then i can put together all my albums and that will be a weight off my OCD back. now i'm eating my breakfast/lunch of leftover couscous salad and then i'm going to hop on my trusty steed and go on my lee valley hardware mission and pick up some 100% cotton jersey tops from american apparel (the ones picture below) to go with my other hot weather attire for the BLISTERING heat and humidity that is going to be disneyworld in august. say what you will about american apparel, but 100% cotton is totally the way to go in the heat. i'm also going to stop by mec and see if i can get a cheapie, light rain jacket or poncho. the key is that it's LIGHT and CHEAP and WATER RESISTANT for hawaii and general travel.

hopefully i get back in time to bake a loaf of bread and start playing around with my new wood glues and whatnot.

tonight we have a meeting with our lawyer and then we're going to eat a quickie dinner and meet up with dr. rei, hanbo, and my buddy N for the "scene not herd" series at the worldwide short film festival. this year looks MAD indie. i don't know why they've kind of backed off from pulling more international videos, as those tended to be the best ones, but it's a tradition so we'll suck it up.

i also have to make a million phone calls to hvac and performance purveyors in geneseo. and phone in my c/c number to disney so that they can charge the balance for the trip. this summer is the summer of consumer debt. OY.

tonight for dinner we're having mac'n'cheese and hotdogs. i'm kind of ridiculously excited for it, but i'm not going to bother taking a picture. after the short film festival we're going to get ice cream from greg's and then talk about how indie everything was (aka a near perfect evening).

this bird's gotta fly!

fin.

a passel of book reviews

*insert ongoing lament borne of frustration from the finite amount of time we are granted by the vagaries of physics* aw, fug it...here goes:

i've been SO BUSY! there's so much to do! i'm calling contractors of all stripes and persuasions. the dotytron and i have split the work down the middle: i'm dealing with lawyer, bank, HVAC, realtor, general contractos and electrical; he's taking on plumbing, roof, home insurance.

it's exhausting. not only do we have to line people up to get quotes, we ALSO have to become fairly adept at figuring out the actual appliances in question and doing the pricing of them to make sure we're not getting taken for a ride. SO MUCH MATHS, PEOPLE. I'M NOT GOOD AT THE MATHS. i get confused when people count back the change to me to make up the denomination i gave them. i HATE that. just tell me how much change you're giving back to me! don't take me back on the journey to a whole number! so we're trying to decide whether to get a high efficiency furnace (more up front, savings down the line that we may or may not reap the benefits of) or a medium efficiency one, and learning about AFUEs and all sorts of dual/single/variable fan nonsense. then you have to add in the a/c, the hot water heater, ducts for the dryer, etc. etc.

add to that sorting out hawaii restaurants, figuring out disney stuff, whittling down our worldly possessions and attempting to scale the GREAT RE-ORG OF AUGHT 9, staying on top of craigslist for cheap things that we're going to need in the new place, keeping a mental tally of stuff we're going to need to buy/procure from ikea, etc., all my stupid woodworking projects, researching a used car (!!!!!), getting slowly packed up, still doing stuff with friends and family, the performance details, being active, dodgeball, cooking, eating outside, and the usual run-of-the-mill life stuff and before you know it you're going to sleep way past your bedtime because you can't let go of the fact that the DAY IS ALREADY DONE and you're due to get up and start all over again in SIX HOURS but g-d it, you're going to get some reading in because if you don't have time to read 'the time traveller's wife' then what the hell point is all this anyway?

it probably doesn't help that i've set impossible goals and i'm trying to cram in EVERY re-org thing that's been sitting on my back burner for who knows how long. like, selecting photos for printing and then organizing them into albums. like, re-labeling all our orphan (caseless) cds and burned dvds and putting them into a new container. like, putting all my dry goods into glass jars and labeling them. like, sifting through all our vinyl and selling the ones we don't want to keep. like, archiving all my tapes and putting them into mp3 format. OY. OY. OY.

last night was knit night. H and that guy and baby D hosted. they served us seitan (homemade!) slathered in bbq and smushed up with coleslaw bound with vegan mayonnaise in a bun. it was good! we also had sweet potato fries and regular potato fries with vegan mayonnaise for dipping and a big salad. my contribution was tofutti cuties ice cream sammies. they have a new "key lime" flavour that everyone hated but me (i thought they tasted like creamsicles). we watched "so you think you can dance" and talked about popular culture and knitted (me) and griped about how hard knitting is (everyone else). it was fun! a near perfect evening.

so the performance invites were sent on their merry way a couple of nights ago and by now have safely arrived in the bosom(s) of their intended recipients. they turned out pretty cutesy. i didn't mean to! i honestly didn't! but somehow, i'm always drawn towards the hopelessly twee and juvenile and other soft, round, adorable things that a girl nearing 30 should probably be keeping a safe distance from. this is the sticker that went on the envelopes (i bought lovely translucent vellum envelopes from my go-to card store):

and this is a version of what was contained therein (identifying information has been removed to protect the innocent from the int3rwebs):

the pictures of us will be a recurring theme on the printed matter, along with the hand drawn purple hearts (for valor, the dotytron's, for the courage to saddle himself with me for LIFE). even though they're kind of sickeningly cutesy...i do find them rather dear. i mean, it's not like i have a background in graphic design or like, letterpressing or anything like that. it's as me as i could make it.

tonight for dinner i made us reuben sammies with leftover st. paddy's day corned beef i had frozen and defrosted and sliced thin, sandwiched between sturdy sunflower rye bread along with sauerkraut and swiss cheese. we had barely any thousand island dressing left so i just tapped it all into a ramekin and we dipped into it. i also made a quickie coleslaw to go with. i was looking forward to this meal ALL DAY and it did not disappoint, no sir.

i guess it's about time i started plowing through some of my book reviews. okay...here goes:

i stumbled upon jason lutes' "berlin: city of smoke (book 2)" while browsing the comics section on a library run with the dotytron. i devoured it and then went back for "berlin: city of stones (book 1)" jason lutes is a startling talent with a clear, drawing style that pulls personalities and characters from a stark collection of black and white lines. the two part series traces the rise of the nazi party in berlin and follows a motley cast of characters that exemplify the pre-war, cosmopolitan, glittering excesses of the city, always undercut with the seething discontent that gave rise to fascist xenophobia. it's always fascinating to see how a city makes this kind of transition. how it goes from being home to josephine baker, old world architecture, and a cocaine-fueld libertine arts community; to a repressive, fearful, acquiescence to brute force and class-propelled stratification.

"city of stones" leads up to a may day workers riot that leads to the military opening fire on the civilians, and "city of smoke" picks up shortly thereafter, following the characters from book 1 as they stumble towards the grim reality of a country gripped by inflation, deprivation, and the looming spectre of war. i couldn't put it down.

"jar of fools" is a sad little story about a failed magician, haunted by the suicide of his brother, who casts his lot in with a barely-scraping-by grifter and his young daughter. this book too is suffused with an almost unbearable, quiet sadness. it's filled with hopelessness as you watch these invisible denizens, so detached from the ordinary world, find connectivity amongst each other. the dotytron kept catching me reading it before bed and would chastise me for reading sad-sack comics. i didn't like "jar of fools" as much as the berlin series. there was no historical hook to maintain my interest in the sad stories.

i followed that up with g.b. trudeau's "the long road home: one step at a time" which is a doonsebury comic collection. i don't generally read doonsebury comics - i grabbed this one in the same run that yielded the jason lutes discovery above. it's follows the doonsebury character b.d. and his recovery from a debilitating injury suffered in the iraq war. he spends his time at a recovery centre and the comic draws attention to fisher house, which from what i understand is a facility near hospitals where the families of recovering war vets are stationed, while they recover from their injuries. the comedy is biting and dark - revealing the hidden cost of the war and the psyches that come out of it as damaged as the bodies that house them. the book deftly sidesteps parsimonious, liberal hand-wringing and is all the more powerful for its refusal to take cheap, bi-partisan shots.

that's enough typing out of me for one day. i'm going to give myself tonight off (well, after i wax my 'stache, measure furniture to upload into our online floor planner, and select pictures for printing) and bury my nose in "the time traveler's wife" which my sister got me hooked on.

fin.

shooting hoops with my boo after work

my life is basically a nelly video. we're trying to get out and do some kind of outdoor activity every day pre or post dinner - spend some time in the sun, burning some calories, catching up on the day's events, getting the heart rate up, you know. yesterday was frisbee and then no-rules tennis, tonight was basketball skills training. i suck. my shots are all arm, no lower body. i can semi-dribble without looking at the ball, but it's dicey and inconsistent at best. oh and i'm also playing against someone who IS A FOOT TALLER THAN ME. it's like total mutt and jeff (i know the reference, but not the referent - i think it was way before my time) out there.

for dinner i made grilled salmon brushed with a maple lime butter on top of a couscous salad with raisins, sunflower seeds, diced tomatoes, cucumbers, and scallions and dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. it was very fresh and we ate it alfresco and it was lovely. i love eating outside. natural lighting is food photography's best friend.

now we're going to sift through the detritus from our life while watching "mad men" season 1. we're on a big cleansing kick. taking advantage of the fact that the dotytron hasn't found gainful employment and is a kept man, and the fact that we have a giant spare room and we can start packing up the little used things and storing stuff in there that's already passed the cleanse test. we're getting rid of A LOT. it feels good to take stock. moving is nice like that. i'm pretty adamant about not wanting to carry useless stuff with me from house to house and i'm trying to break the dotytron of his lamentable sentimentality. it was working fine until he tried to get me to part with my collection of rave tapes. "but i had sex with kolin!" "this goldie set is recorded live from a DAT!" [that means nothing] "who knows what's on this brockie tape!" now i don't have a leg to stand on. i've whittled them down but i'm hanging onto more than i should. the dotytron is going to turn them into mp3s so i can continue chugging along nostalgia lane - the annexes of my storied past.

fin.

stephen hawking comes up in conversation entirely too often

when the goosetang clan are hanging out. i don't know why. i DO know that when the goosetang gets together, as we did last night, hungover dotytron in two day old underwear, c-hova's shirt, and unbrushed teeth and all, it tends to yield nuggets like this one:

me: "didn't babe ruth have lou gehrig's disease?"
*self reflective pause*
me: "no wait, LOU GEHRIG had lou gehrig's disease"

ahahahahaha! what's WRONG with me? that's almost as bad as my gyno-fail two weeks ago. dr. rei and hanbo hosted us for a lovely dinner of burgers, sweet potato fries, tomato and mozzarella salad, and lemonade from a silver tureen. it was trés soignée. even though we had wanted to make it an early night, we ended up staying for hours and hours talking and talking and talking and basically drawing parallels between wackadoo people in the world and their "he's just not that into you" (movie version) counterparts. ha!

oh wait, i guess i should back it up. why was the dotytron so hungover? because my adorable brothers, s-dawg, c-hova, and the outlaw bro kidnapped him and took him to niagara falls for a night of strippers, too much alcohol, gambling, and a lovely hotel room to not sleep in. the best part of the night (from the stories that i was allowed to hear) was how the outlaw bro was super-excited that across from the hotel there was a brazilian all-you-can-eat restaurant where apparently the women servers dressed in skimpy carnival attire. only when they got there they found out that the servers were actually all men, wearing like, suits, and there was a 3 hour wait. lol! it's funny if you know just HOW excited the outlaw bro would be to be waited on by women in skimpy carnival attire.

so my sister came up with the kids to hang out at my parents' crumbling estate up in markham and i kiboshed my bob villa aspirations to hang out with her. we got pedicures and gossiped and went to hit a marble slab creamery, which just so happens to be beside the pedicure place - pedis were an excuse for ice cream smushed up with your choice of toppings - my sister loves nothing more than ja cold stone creamery and its' offshoots. she's an ice cream hound. i love my family.

then we went to big mouth kee and big d spoiled us with a GIANT lobster and some weird clam thing that was awesome. finally, we got down to the real business: "he's just not that into you"

this movie is EXACTLY what you want in a mindless movie but it's also SIMULTANEOUSLY everything you hate as a man OR woman in this workaday world. it's so SEXIST! offensively so! and it trades on so many horrible stereotypical gender constructions! and the women (and the guys) are SO STUPID! such victims! it's completely implausible that in this day and age people can be such dummies. but then the sad thing is that people can TOTALLY be such dummies. and the sad thing is i totally know people who are so "he's just not that into you" and see relationships that are so "he's just not that into you" play out all the time...i'm just lucky to have avoided that crap. i don't understand how people get themselves into such clichéd situations. it's like, how do you let your life become an outtake from "keys to the vip"?!??! anyway, the dotytron wants to watch it again tonight...so i'm going to do yoga and go through my files while he experiences the joy/hate first hand.

in other news...i HATE justin long and his stupid monkey face. i also hate and have hated those pc vs. mac commercials since their inception. it's insulting! the mac guy is a smug, self-satisified jerk! how do people not see that? and the pc guys is just a normal, kind of nerdy, schlubby dude. what's wrong with that?!?? if you are ACTUALLY won over by that commercial, i feel like you represent what's wrong with marketing, advertising, youth, and by extension capitalism, today. like, if you actually self-identify with the "cool" that macs are supposed to represent as personified by justin long, then you should reevaluate your life.


tonight for dinner i made a deconstructed version of my pork stuffed deep fried eggplant pockets with sweet chili dipping sauce. basically, i peeled and chunked up eggplant and stir fried it with pork, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, and shanghai choi and served it on top of steamed brown rice with sweet chili dipping sauce.

today i had someone from library school job shadowing me. i should have thought this through some more. my job does NOT lend itself to job shadowing. what am i supposed to do? "this is me placing a phone call to a contact to get the information" "this is me typing in my search string into one of our databases" lol! by the end of it i was SO PARCHED from mindlessly jabbering on for 2+ hours i chugged a million litres of water. i did go for a signature 15 minute run today and when i got home we suited up for some no rules tennis. i LOVE SUMMER! LOVE IT!

in the spirit of LOVING SUMMER! these are my summer jams:


i first heard this tune when we were driving down to visit my sister. i didn't know it was t.i. i cranked the volume on the tune and told the dotytron offhandedly, "i like this song" and he shoots back: *dripping with sarcasm* "OH REALLY? you like this song, huh, RICK RUBIN?" i was all taken aback and he goes, "you know, i used to be so confused...i used to kill myself trying to figure out your taste in music, but when it comes right down to it, it's as simple as having the bass turned up higher than ANY OTHER ELEMENT in the mix" lol! that or an 808. it's so true. i love my sine waves. ahahahaha. anyway, i love t.i's sophisticated ratface, roller skating stylings.

the dotytron just felt the need to tell me that the line "brain so good swore you went to college" is "a bit of a double entendre" i was like, "i know what getting brained means you idiot" lol!

i don't know where madcon came from, or how they managed to weasel their way onto ryan seacrest's AT40, but this shiz is pretty tight. it's cheap, but i'll take it! ha! the rest of their stuff is pretty good...i'm feeling it. it's decent top 40, which is the most you can ask for when you're being bludgeoned to death with lady horseface gaga.

this is my new simile: jason mraz is like bedouin soundclash without the soundclash.

fin.

what a day! what a week!

so...I WON THE WORK COOKIE BAKE-OFF! it was surprisingly nerve-wracking for a throwaway kind of thing (and by "throwaway" i mean "agonized over my [multiple!] entries for a couple of weeks beforehand") what can i say? i'm a competitive, go-for-the-gusto kind of a gal. i have a despicable habit of really, really enjoying winning stuff. my two entries were: chocolate cornmeal cookies with orange cream, and a classic chocolate chip cookie with sea salt. i really thought the sandwich cookies with the orange cream were the clincher, but i actually won for the chocolate chip. at the end of the day, people really always come back to comfort food classics. T and i held hands as they were announcing the winners. lol! to be honest, the funnest part was trash talking T leading up to it. to balance out my olympian dreams, my teams lost at bocce AND the relay race. my lunchtime bocce team also suffered a humiliating defeat on thursday. WE LOST 11-0. that's right, we didn't score a SINGLE point. fastest bocce game EVER. that was pretty humbling, considering T all but announced it on the p.a. so that by the time i trucked back into work after eating a post-game hot dog, i was confronted with snickering, good-natured ribbing from my colleagues.

yesterday was kind of hectic. i hauled my butt home straight from the picnic, did a quick change, and then was picked up by my friend's D's friends to head to the ancaster old mill for D's wedding. it's a pretty spot. D and her new hubby N had already had the religious ceremony with the imam a few weeks prior, so this was just a chance for her to wear her pretty dress and sit down to dinner with her friends. it was very intimate...maybe 40 people in all? quite cozy and everyone was super friendly. there was no alcohol (D and N are both muslim) which cut down on the rambling, crass speeches and no dancing. the food was excellent and even though i went on my own (the dotytron couldn't make it because he had to oversee the final recital for his after school program thing) it was easy to talk to everyone and chat and mix and mingle.

look at how pretty she looks! and how handsome he is! he looks like a hockey player (kind of sergei federov-ish) this was my first time meeting him - it had been a bit of a whirlwind courtship but he's very sweet and gentle and shy and you can tell they're good together. her dress was awesome. i recommended the same place that dr. rei got her dress and D said they were so amazing there. that jacket she's wearing? it's made from the part of the train and dress they chopped off (she had it shortened to mid-calf length)! and that little ruffled pleating above the sweetheart neckline? also added (she needed the dress to have more coverage)! pretty awesome, eh?

so now i'm about to eat my breakkie and start my day. my day is kind of a wonky one. i'm going to head out to the hardware store and this place called lee valley to pick up supplies like: teak oil, strap clamps, wood glue, medium grit sandpaper and chrome polish to fix up my various chairs and whatnot. and then i'm going to put on a pair of gloves and get to work and see how i do. i'm cautiously optimistic. the plan today is to do the gluing and the clamping and to go at the chrome chair and see if i can get any of the rust off.

the plan for this evening is hopefully to somehow watch "he's just not that into you" lol! pretty ambitious, eh?

the worldwide short film festival is starting this week! it totally crept up on me without warning. usually i'm totally on top of it. it's a bit of a tradition for me and the dotytron spanning the entire length of our relationship so we'll have to try to squeeze in a couple of viewings. i really associate this festival with summer, with the dotytron, and with the nascent stages of our journey together. i'd feel a little odd if i missed it for no good reason (ie. i was in town, but just didn't go)

okay...time to start my day of impersonating bob villa! wish me luck!

my fair lil' ugmo: bathroom edition

so i'm kind of keen to get going on the bathroom. with some basic fixes (paint, a new door way, punching open a wall and installing closets) the upstairs would be COMPLETELY done and gorgeous. the bathroom is another thing standing in the way to one floor of the house being in tip top shape. as i've already mentioned, i'm feeling the hex tiles on the floor. and then i thought...what about GIANT hex tile? and then i googled up my vision today and found exactly what i was looking for! isn't it cute? i kind of like the look of the chubby hex tile with the subway tile backsplash. if tile floor and tile halfway up the walls gets to be too pricey, i'd settle for wainscoting, but my first preference is tile for such a damp space. just for the peace of mind and cleanability factor. i'm not a super-fan of the sink pictured above...i think i'm going to go for a wide pedestal style.


i'm also a fan of the deco style sink fixtures.

with a mirrored medicine cabinet above

and the ikea asker containers suspended on the grundtal rail and S hooks for toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc.

above the toilet, to make up for the under counter space you lose with a pedestal sink, i would either want open shelving (with a piece of fabric stretched over top so it's still hidden) or maybe three of these shelves spaced out vertically, if i have enough width above the toilet:

fin.