You know...

It's a good thing I am so committed to Canadian Blood Services getting my cute lil' A- blood, or I would be hard pressed to go back in December. This is the second time they have managed to mutilate the crap out of my arm.

Here is a tip: if the vein isn't looking so promising, don't just close your eyes and hope for the best here, people - that's a needle you are waving around there. It is disturbing to have a clutch of people gathered around you staring at your arm, waiting to see if the needle stays put, or decides to pop it's way out of said arm, thanks all the same.

Although, it could be worse - the last time I donated blood she missed entirely in a spectacularly painful way, no less, and then was so shaken by the incident she had to get someone else to give it a go on the other arm. I ended up with a three inch diameter bruise that time. Way to build the public confidence there, guys.

Now With More Meme!

Go here and pick five quotes to post in your LJ:

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
~ Dorothy Parker

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
~ Hunter S. Thompson

I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
~ J.D. Salinger

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
~ Philip K. Dick

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
~ Mae West

Navigation by Cake and Other Adventures

So we managed to make it back from the Gift Show safe and relatively sound, although my right shoulder might never be the same again. Oh well, I am certain I don't really need to be able to lift my arm above shoulder level that often, right?

Now, I am sure there are people who arrive at the show with an itinerary and a neatly mapped out plan - which booths they will visit when, how long they will spend in each hall and so on and so forth. We like to start out that way, with our neatly highlighted guide and a clear plan of where to go and what to see. This, of course, is totally blown to hell in the first minute after walking into the show. Because in the first minute, we revert to our real navigation system - Navigation By Cake. Because, the first thing you see when you walk in the door of Hall 1 is the Scantrade booth. Scantrade knows it's stuff - they have free coffee, and warm chocolate chip cookies. Thus, it begins - the rest of the show is navigated based purely on who is giving out what free food when. Samaco and Seagull give out candy, good to stock up in the morning, for a mid-afternoon sugar rush to get you to 7pm. Anyone giving out cookies and pastries and coffee is the morning tour, Abbott's sandwiches and ice cream are lunch, Amscan's assorted snacks and juice is a good mid afternoon snack, since it usually involves something with protein. The day you spend at the Congress Center is based around the free samples all the gourmet food companies are giving out. Cheese fondue for lunch, cake for dessert. Truffles, well, anytime you can find them, really. This year Upper Canada upped the ante - they installed a chocolate fountain. Do you have any idea how many marshmallows covered in warm chocolate you can eat before getting sick?

I do.

Pet Peeve # 357

People who say they really don't want to make your life difficult, while in the midst of making your life really difficult.

Thanks for the sentiment, assholes.

If I Don't Make it Back...

Please go on Oprah and tell the world I loved kittens.

Mixing socializing and the full scale project of a four day buying trip might just kill me, but I'll have had a good time on the way to the grave.

My Fantasy For Tonight...

Involves a tall, handsome stranger arriving at my house with pizza and a bucket full of cleaning supplies. A mild sedative suitable for a two year old and a margarita would probably help, too.

I need to clean tonight, and try and get my apartment looking suitable for my mother and stepfather to inhabit for two days while I am in Toronto. If you haven't seen my apartment recently - think ravaged by wild dogs. I might as well say I really want to scale Mount Everest tonight, and then get in a quick trip to Paris. I really just want to take a nap.

Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Fug...

The folks over at You Knit What? have decided to call it a day. I will miss them, and all the fugliness.

http://youknitwhat.blogspot.com/

"what good is a poker face
when you've got an open hand
i was sposed to be cool about this
i remember cool was the plan
tried to keep it all under wraps
but the wraps kept going slack
i keep turning around
i keep coming back"
~ Worthy, Ani DiFranco


I was recently told that I was transparent- that you could see everything I thinking on my face. Oh, how chagrined I was! I spent so much time longing to be a Woman of Mystery(tm) (along with a Boogie Queen(tm) and Wanton Sex Goddess(tm)) and here I was, totally blowing it. I think somewhere along the way I took the phrase still waters run deep a little too seriously. You think I would have chucked it along the same time I realized broken doesn't equal interesting. Ah, but apparently not.

This weekend has given me a lot of time to mull things over (another favorite of mine: a life unexamined is a life unlived) what with the endless hours sitting on the sides of pools and pushing swings. I've decided to embrace the transparency, damnit! There are a lot worse things I could be than an open book.

Princess Leia is my Role Model and Other Musings...

I was recently asked if I had seen Star Wars. This question was quickly qualified, pointing out that the questioner meant the original. The first thing that ran through my head was, originals? You mean there is anything else? Oh yeah, there were those 2 1/2 pieces of crap the powers that be decided to torture us with. ( 1/2 of Revenge of the Sith is worthwhile, I will grant that, but no more.) I laughed when answering this question, because of course I had seen them. Hadn't everyone in this country? I often forget that the whole Star Wars deal isn't a universal experience, and that as a child of 1974, my perspective on their cultural impact might be a bit skewed.

So yeah, I've seen them. Several times. Probably several dozen, sadly enough. Okay, fine - I own them, actually. As a kid, we all lived and breathed Star Wars. We were the original brand loyalists - we had Star Wars sheets, trading cards, lunch boxes, t-shirts and action figures (with extra cool points for those with parents who would patiently cut out UPC codes for the limited edition 1979 Boba Fett.) I was so jealous of my friend Paul - while I had to be content with my dinky Landspeeder and TIE fighter, he had the Millenium Falcon with all it's eight million moveable parts!

The nice thing about being the lone girl in a circle of friends was that I always got to be Princess Leia. Which was fortunate, what with the dearth of female characters around. If you didn't fancy yourself spending an afternoon pretending to be tied to a rock or fainting a lot, the princesses were the way to go. Princess Leia and Princess from Battle of the Planets got to kick butt and be stylish. Other than that, you were pretty much out of luck. Wonder Woman seemed too far out of reach for a little girl, far too womanly with that sparkly bustier and bosom that could front the prow of a ship. The bionic woman was boring when you took away the sound effects. Charlie's Angels required more girls than we had around, and left the boys to be bad guys or a disembodied voice. Besides, unless they were blonde, they all dressed like Mom. We occasionally played Dukes of Hazzard, but that entire game just involved jumping in and out of the window of my Dad's car until he would catch us and tell us to knock it off.

Princess Leia had it all going on, though. She had attitude in spades and snappy dialogue to go with it, trading sassy banter with bad and good boys alike. She was handy with a blaster and tactical maps and could pilot a ship when the occasion called for it. All that, and pretty white dresses that didn't get dirty, like ever, and extremely complicated hairstyles. This is who I totally wanted to be when I grew up - I wanted to have adventures and face down unspeakable evil while moving through life with courage and grace, and an endless supply of smartass remarks. Of course, I also figured by the time I grew up, one could actually win an interstellar spacecraft in a card game and there would be plenty of evil aliens to do battle with behind the greater backdrop of intergalatic war - so take it for what it's worth.

OoOoOo physics...

"Turbulence was a problem with pedigree. The great physicists all thought about it, formally or informally. A smooth flow breaks up into whorls and eddies. Wild patterns disrupt the boundary between fluid and solid. Engery drains rapidly from large-scale motions to small. Why? The best ideas came from mathematicians; for most physicists, turbulence was too dangerous to waste time on. It seemed almost unknowable. There was a story about the quantum theorist Werner Heisenburg, on his deathbed, declaring that he will have two questions for God: why relativity and why turbulence. Heisenburg says, "I really think he may have an answer to the first question."
~Chaos, James Gleick

Stupid Things Make Me Laugh, Part 2

From today's horoscope:
Fortune favours the obtuse today.


That's good, since it seems to be a permanent state of being these days.