Starting Over

I don't think I could feel like a bigger idiot. But I guess I got upset over something that perhaps wasn't so devastating. I was sprucing up my little computer, rearranging things so that I would have more space on my C drive. Since there's always the possibility that Microsoft will ruin my life, I backed everything up, including all of my e-mail and calendar events (both past and future).

I went through the process and everything worked out great. So the next day I started going through the stuff I had backed up and stupidly deleted the mail archives, thinking that everything was still on my computer.

1st Lesson of the Day: "Archive" means "cut and paste", not "copy".

Of course, I already knew that, but somehow I didn't clue into it until hours later, when I realized that every single e-mail and event that I had saved over the past 3 years was wiped out. I completely lost it. I know it sounds ridiculous that I should get so worked up about electronic data, but it was in this moment that I realized exactly how much I relied on this technology.

I have the worst memory. Sure, I can quote Simpsons' episodes and recall that time that Mrs. Plevins yelled at me in front of my whole Grade 5 class, but otherwise, it's hard for me to remember what I was doing last week, or last year. So I use old e-mails and the calendar in Outlook to remember for me. So it was really important to me that 3 years worth of memories was erased because I was careless. And the saddest part of all this is that I don't remember what I lost. I know most of it was correspondence between me and my friends, and there were some newsletters that I get once in a while, and there might have been some important stuff, but I had placed all of my faith in this little machine to remember things for me, that I just pushed it out of my own head, thinking it was in a safe place.

I actually had trouble sleeping that night. By the next morning, I had come to my senses and realized that all was not lost. Half of my messages were still saved on the server. In my attempt to recopy all of the messages back onto my computer, I forgot to click one little box, and now all of the messages that were on the server are now downloaded onto my computer.

2nd Lesson of the Day: "Download" means "cut and paste", not "copy".

So, the server is empty, and I have most of my recent e-mails on my computer. The majority of the stuff that I permanently lost were really old Waterloo Engmail messages from my classmates about projects and from my profs about assignments. Technically, this was all stuff I should have ditched a while ago. As for the rest of it, I'm going to have to rely on friends to fill in the gaps. I suppose I should just make this a "silver lining" experience and move on.

But I still feel like an idiot.

"I don't feel the way I ever felt, I know, I'm gonna smile and not get worried, I try but it shows"

It Could Have Been Me...

I don't know if it's the weather, or if people just don't pay attention anymore, but lately I've been passing a lot of accidents on the way to work. Specifically, on the 404. Yesterday, traffic slowed as I passed Highway 7, which is unusal because when you get that far north in the morning there's less traffic. I crawled past a couple of cars that were mysteriously dented (mysterious because they were both dented on the right side...and I didn't see any other cars on the shoulder).

Today, traffic slowed again, this time near Major Mackenzie. A pretty bad rear-end accident had just happened in the middle lane. I got to work a little late but it was okay. A couple of hours later, I found out that one of the guys in my department, Robert, had gotten into an accident. What happened? He was slowing down due to the traffic caused by the accident I passed, and he got rear-ended. Can you believe that? His bumper was in pretty bad shape, and after a lot of convincing from the rest of us, he took the rest of the day off to go to the doctor in case he has whiplash.

So, my first thought was, what the hell is going on? I know accidents happen every day, but to have another accident caused by an accident? Luckily Robert was slowing down properly and wasn't following the guy in front of him too closely, otherwise he would have plowed into the front car. That means the guy behind him was going pretty fast despite the fact that everyone in front of him was obviously slowing down.

But the really sobering thought for me is...that could so easily have been me. I could have been the one that guy slammed into. I mean, Robert gets to work the same time I do, so he couldn't have been that far behind me on the road at the time.

Lately in the news, they've been talking about how commuters are more likely to die from a heart attack due to the stress of sitting in rush hour traffic.

Right...because what we should be worrying about when we're on the road.

"Crash...on the last splash"

Little Bugs

This has been bugging me for the past couple of weeks. Why does Bono say "Uno, dos, tres, catorce" at the beginning of Vertigo? It's...weird, and it throws me off for some reason. Is he trying to be different? Does it mean something? Because I refuse to believe that he can't count to four in Spanish. For that matter, I refuse to believe that ANYONE can't count to four in Spanish.

Have you ever had the feeling that something is missing? You can't quite put your finger on it, but there's a very tangible hole somewhere in your life, and you don't know what's supposed to fit in it. I've had the feeling for a while, and I'm starting to not like it. I know what you're thinking, and it's NOT IT. I'd like to think that I'm not that shallow. But I think I'm formulating a solution as to how to go about looking for my missing thing.

More to follow...

"Hello hello (hola!) I'm at a place called Vertigo"

Multitasking Technology

I was at yet another warehouse sale with my parents on Tuesday (Levi's this time). Same old, same old. As my dad was trying on a reasonably priced, decent-looking belt, all the lights went out. Talk about flashback. But a glance outside the door told us that the only place with no power was the room we were in. So...okay. But it's a fairly large room and somehow the dark seemed bigger because of it. So what do people do? They started turning on their cell phones and continued to shop by the light from the screens. And I have to say, some of those coloured screens are really bright. For pete's sake...it only lasted ten minutes. And naturally the first things to regain life were the cash registers. Naturally.

Now, for my real cell phone rant. In the middle of the standing posture sequence of my yoga class yesterday, there was a sudden and very unmistakable melody permeating through the new-age ocean wave music that the instructor always uses. Everyone sing along! "I see a red door and I want it painted black..." The instructor asked the guilty party to turn off her cell phone, and all the woman could say was that it was going to stop playing in a few seconds. Um...right...until the next minute when the person calls back? Even as the woman went to turn it off, someone else's cell started ringing. Honestly. It rang again just before the final meditation, prompting the instructor to firmly, and with no attempt to hide her irritation, say, "If anyone has a cell phone in the room and thinks that it will ring in the next ten minutes, I'd like to ask them to leave now." The second cell phone woman picked up her stuff and left the class.

Is it too much to ask people to leave their lives outside the door for one measly hour? Okay, I know better than anyone that it's easy to forget stuff like turning off the cell phone. But, seriously! It already rang once! And isn't the point of practicing yoga to relax and let go of the stress in our lives? Why bring the phone in with you?? That's like the source of all stress!! Holy crap, just thinking about it is stressing me out!!!!

Thank you, and good night.

"I have to turn my head until my darkness goes"

24 Hours

I just recovered from a 24-hour cold. It was absolutely fascinating...okay, it's absolutely fascinating in retrospect. At the time, it was pretty crappy. When I woke up, I felt fine, except for a very slight scratchiness in the throat. It didn't hurt as much as it usually does before the onset of a cold, so I decided to deal with it later (especially since I was already a little late for work). I started sniffling at around 2:00 pm, prompting me to make a mental note to take some medication before I went to bed that night. I didn't have a chance to do anything...by 4:00 pm, I was sneezing and congested. By the time I got home, it was a full-blown sinus attack. I lay on the couch in front of the TV like a slug until it was time to take some drugs.

Sidebar: The apple-cinnamon Neo Citron kicks ass. Not only does it actually taste like both cinnamon and apples, but it works like a charm. A little promo just in time for cold and flu season.

So I took the Neo and passed out for the night. By the time my alarm rang this morning, I was perfectly okay. Other than some residual sniffles during the day, you couldn't tell that I was sick as a dog the night before. It was like a week-long cold compressed into 24 hours. If only all of my colds were like that...

24 hours can do a lot to a person. For example, you think that you're going in to get your chemo treatment tomorrow, and then 24 hours later, you find out the chemo isn't working, and just for extra kicks, it turns out that the reason why you can't breathe properly is because fluid has been building up around your lungs and you have to go into the hospital to get it drained out of your body. It was the first time I personally saw my boss cry, which was pretty upsetting for me. You have to hand it to this woman, though. She finds out she's only got one working lung, but she comes into work anyway while she's waiting for a bed in the hospital to become available. I swear, she is my personal hero. Meanwhile the blood clot in her right arm hasn't cleared up yet, so she's in constant agony. It's astounding when you think about how life can be so unfair to really nice people. She's supposed to be in the hospital for a couple more days, so I'm going to try to visit her tomorrow. Just another 24 hours.

"I wanna hold you high and steal your pain away"

This Should Happen More Often

Another reason why I think Sarah McLachlan is cool. And an awesome person in general.

More Proof...

...that I have a ridiculous capacity to retain all facts and trivia relating to pop culture and entertainment. Last week at work, we heard these words broadcast on the PA system: "Birdie num-nums". I was in Marianli's office at the time, and I just started cracking up while Marianli looked confused. Thankfully, Scott was passing by and started laughing too, since he knew who it was who had made the "announcement". I said to Scott, "It's from 'The Party'!" And he confirmed it, saying that Malcolm used to say "birdie num-nums" on the PA all the time. He figured that Malcolm decided to do it one last time before he left the company (makes sense). The next day, Scott mentioned to me that I was the only person he had talked to who knew that the line came from that movie. I was kind of shocked, for a few reasons: 1) the movie predates my existence by more than a decade, 2) it has become a classic Peter Sellers movie, and 3) given my relative youth compared to the majority of my fellow employees, I would have thought at least one other person would have seen that movie in their lifetime. In addition, I haven't seen that film since I was a preteen, but the line sticks with you long after you watch the scene. Now, in retrospect, I guess the only minor problem is that it makes fun of East Indians the way Mickey Rooney made fun of Asians in "Breakfast at Tiffany's". But it was the '60s, and I guess I can forgive them for being a little politically incorrect. So if you're bored sometime, and you've never seen Peter Sellers make a complete ass of himself, go rent it.

"There was a little Spanish flea, a record star he'd like to be, he heard of singers like Beatles and The Chipmunks he'd seen on TV, why not a little Spanish flea?"

Well, Aren't We Pretty...

So...what do you guys think? You have to admit that my blog needed some sprucing up, and I was really tired of trying to figure out how to fix the comment formatting.

Critical Eye

One and a half weeks, 8 films. I still laugh when people consider this an impressive statistic. Not to say that it isn't, I guess, but being someone who knows what the festival is like, I'm impressed when the woman who's standing in line behind me has seen 30+ films and it's not even the last day yet. That's an average of 4 films a day. I think I read somewhere that someone once saw 6 films in one day. That would probably mean that they didn't stick around for any Q&A's, or see the end of a lot of films for that matter.

But I digress. As promised, a little recap of the week's highlights and a sneak peek at some films about hit a theatre near you:

Les Revenants (They Came Back): Not your typical zombie movie. Everywhere in France, the recently deceased start walking into towns and villages. No blood and guts, no feasting on brains. The citizens of the town in the movie begin to reintegrate the dead back into society, reuniting them with their families, giving them jobs, etc. But the dead behave differently than the living, and they discover that they are resistent to disease and don't die quite as easily as they did the first time. Fear takes over, and then some really weird stuff starts happening. Not likely a movie you'll see at the Cineplex, but still interesting.

Haven: If you liked Traffic or Love Actually, you will like this film. Three groups of people converge in the Cayman Islands, with plenty of sex, drugs, violence and millions of dollars in offshore accounts to go around. Anyone who thinks that Orlando Bloom only gets pretty-boy roles will be happy to know that he becomes physically disfigured during the course of the movie. During the Q&A, there was a question to the cast asking them which aspect of the Caymanian culture made a lasting impression on them. Bill Paxton replied, "The jerk chicken is just excellent." (Watch the film to understand the joke)

Beyond the Sea: Hitting your local theatre on November 24th. A biopic that blends fantasy with reality with a bit of song and dance thrown in. Kevin Spacey was really impressive, singing all the songs himself. He's a really funny guy in person too. When the film fest dude was telling the audience that anti-piracy devices were going to be in use during the screening, Kevin added, "I'M the anti-piracy device...I'll chase your motherfuckin' ass down the street!" The film itself is set up so that it appeared as though Bobby Darin was actually directing the film about his life, so you get the "film within a film" idea. He talks to his 10-year-old self quite a bit, and the boy who plays the young Bobby, William Ullrich, is really talented. He's already done 4 Broadway musicals. My mom thought that the real Sandra Dee was way prettier than Kate Bosworth. All in all, a highly recommended film.

White Tower: Unfortunately, not at all what I was expecting, and mostly disappointing since it could have been much more interesting. It's a documentary about the deaf in China. Since we NEVER ever see or hear anything about the physically handicapped or how they're treated in that country, I thought it would be enlightening. It was a couple of hours of watching the camera move back and forth while deaf people talked to each other. The other problem was that there were technical difficulties with the projector, and everything was kind of blurry, which was really bad since subtitles were extremely essential. They stopped the movie after half an hour, spent about ten minutes fixing the problem, and then, at the request of the directors, started the movie again from the beginning. Oy. There was a story (a partially deaf man fell in love with a deaf girl who was already involved with a deaf Taiwanese man), but it was really hard to watch. However, it answered my question about how the Chinese sign a word that doesn't have a sign (since there's no alphabet). They just write the word in the air with their finger or on the palm of someone's hand. I doubt that anyone will see this film in a theatre in North America.

A Good Woman: Funniest film of the lot. Set in the '30s, a woman with questionable morals (Helen Hunt) leaves New York and heads to Italy to target a newlywed couple (one half of which is Scarlett Johansson). Based on the Oscar Wilde play, "Lady Windermere's Fan". Some of the best lines I've heard in a movie in recent years. A lot of social commentary about men and women and relationships between the two. And there's a twist in it. It will likely be in theatres eventually.

Siblings/Trouser Accidents: The latter is a five-minute short film about accidents caused by pants. It's like a mock-documentary, with what appears to be actual statistics of pants-related mishaps. It also compares them to accidents caused by other household items (brooms, newspapers, etc.). But it's important to keep in mind that the statistics are a little misleading, since there are some trouser accidents that are not reported, or reported under a different category. Siblings is a great film. Four kids who are not blood-related to each other or the people they call "Mom" and "Dad" accidentally-on-purpose kill the parents after their grandfather dies. A black comedy, to say the least. The parents are the worst people on the face of the earth. The little girl has the best lines in the movie, as she tries to come up with ways of killing the parents and making it look like an accident. Film fest veteran Sarah Polley has a supporting role. Go see this film. Support Canadian cinema.

Innocent Voices (Voces inocentes): This was by far the most serious of all the films I saw. It's based on a true story, and takes place in El Salvador in the 1980s during the civil war. The Salvadorean army "recruits" 12-year-old boys by force and trains them to become soldiers. The story centres around 11-year-old Chava, who, with his family, is caught in the crossfire almost every night. After being introduced to an underground radio station by his uncle, Chava begins to fight back in his own way. The kids in this movie were amazing.

L'Équipier (The Light): A predictable but still nice French film about a wounded veteran who takes over a position in a lighthouse on the Breton island of Ouessant. The residents are furious about the idea of an outsider taking the position over a local. But he slowly wins some of them over, and falls for the wife of a fellow lighthouse keeper. A lot of humour, and a tiny bit of action too.

So...that's it. Good thing I didn't see 30 films, huh?

Does This Count As A Degree?

Oh my...where to start? I was planning on writing up the whole festival experience after next Friday, so that I'd be able to share my reviews of the films I'd seen and make my recommendations. But I had to write about my close encounters now...while I'm still reeling from the excitement and absurdity of it all.

Last night I went to see the world premiere of "Haven" with Ada. Yes, there was an ulterior motive for my choosing of the film (Orlando), but the story was also interesting. So, the two of us were in line waiting to go in. There were some people in front of us who started screaming, but that was because they were listening to the radio and Canada had just scored to make it 3-2 (I think). Then, I kept hearing sporatic screaming from further off. As the line moved closer, we could hear the ridiculous chanting ("Or-lan-do! Or-lan-do!"). And then the screaming, and people running into the path of oncoming traffic, and flashbulbs lighting up the street. The guy behind us was asking his female companion why they were going nuts. I turned around and said that it was probably because Orlando Bloom had just arrived, and the guy looked at me with a mixture of complete incredulity and disappointment and said, "Aw, MAN! Is HE in this movie?!" Hmmm...looks like he wasn't the one who bought the tickets. As we passed the red carpet area on our way in, we tried to look at the commotion but it was really quite blinding and chaotic.

As we sat and waited in the theatre, we noticed that the people in the front had started standing up, looking towards the back and taking photos. We looked ourselves to see who they were looking at, but it took us several minutes to figure out that Kevin Bacon was about 20 feet away from us. He was wearing a leather jacket and glasses, and Ada kept saying "It doesn't look like Kevin Bacon!" until he stood up to greet someone and took off his glasses. He's not in the film, but he's here to promote his own movie ("The Woodsman") and I realized later that he was probably there to support his good buddy Bill Paxton.

There were many more highlights but I'll save that for the final review later. After the showing and the Q&A, the stars fled out the back door while we went out the front. There were STILL people on the other side of the red carpet with their cameras and pens. Honestly. They're not going to come back out the front door. We continued towards Yonge, past the line of people waiting for the Midnight Madness movie to start, when we noticed the line of limos on the side of the road. Then there was a crowd of people being stopped by security, and suddenly we realized we had stumbled across the "back door". The security guys opened the car doors and there, not two feet in front of me, the whole cast was getting into the limos. Bill Paxton walked right by me and thanked the crowd for coming out to support the film. That was...moderately thrilling. Still doesn't top the Fran Drescher/Kim Cattrall moment from last year, but it's a very close second.

This morning, my mom (pinch hitting for my dad, who wasn't feeling well) and I went to see "Beyond the Sea". While we were in the theatre, people were whispering excitedly and craning their necks to look at the back corner. There was Kevin Spacey. To my mom, she was kind of amazed at how people can pick out and identify "just another white man" in a dark corner of the theatre. I laughed and said, "Yeah, they all look alike to us, don't they?" She asked me if I was going to go over there to ask for an autograph, and I said no way, I'm not weird like that. It wouldn't have worked out anyway, since a couple of girls were stopped by the large bodyguard before they could get near him. I was just impressed that he was there at 9 in the morning, since the movie had screened the night before at Roy Thomson. But he was there and he answered questions at the end and everything.

So, four brushes with celebrity in two days. Three films down, five to go.

"And someone's sneakin' 'round the corner, could that someone be Mack the Knife?"

Family Matters

Hallelujah...my brother got a job. For months he's been the laziest ass in the world. Each day started melding into the next to the point where every Friday he asked me, "Don't you have to go to work tomorrow?" And I reply, "No doofus, it's the weekend again." And he answers, "Oh yeah...what month is this again?" But lately he's been getting tired of the routine himself. He told me recently, "Karen, I've gotta get a job...even if it's at Canadian Tire." And lo and behold, he got the call today. I got home from work and found out that my brother got a job at a nearby CT on the spot. Well, he went in for the interview this morning around 11 and they called him at around 2 to report for work at 5. To me, that's on the spot. Right now he's doing all the gopher work but eventually he'll be in the service department. You gotta start somewhere.

Not two days after my youngest brother went back to Queen's, a letter arrived for him from the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. That's right folks, my 19-year-old brother is getting audited. I just started laughing when I found out. What, they're going to question him about those three days that he tried to sell natural gas? Or the four weeks that he did those heavy lifting jobs from the temp agency? Or whether or not he's actually a university student? Well, it turns out that it's a question about the amount of rent he paid last year. Do they have nothing better to do?

It's been about five days and my mother is still getting persistent headaches. Why? Because she spent last Sunday afternoon in Kingston inhaling chlorine bleach fumes in a closet of a bathroom that isn't even remotely ventilated. I am still incredibly pissed off at her. So my brother's bathroom is a disgusting mess. That doesn't mean you should clean it using EVEN MORE bleach than you usually use in our home bathroom that's ten times bigger (and I can usually tell that she cleaned the downstairs bathroom almost before I open the front door). On the plus side, her eyes have stopped watering and her throat has stopped hurting and her lungs have stopped burning.

Daddy...nothing to say about Daddy. Daddy's been REALLY busy lately. Daddy deserves a break.

"My mother, my mother she hold me, did she hold me when I was out there, my father, my father he liked me, oh he liked me, does anyone care"

Not Complete Without a Crazy Person

In a way, I guess I could have qualified as the crazy person. You know, going downtown at 6:30 in the morning on a holiday, sitting in a line for two hours, just to pick up some film tickets. But, I'd like to point out that I wasn't the first person in the line. Actually, there could easily have been 60-70 people in front of me. And the whole point of being down there so early was that in the event that I didn't get all the tickets I ordered, I could quickly get into the OTHER line for the replacement tickets, which moves much slower comparatively to the first line. But, lucky for me, I got every ticket I ordered this year, so woo hoo, etc.

The crazy person was a guy that I encountered after I picked up the tickets. It was about 9:30, so it was still relatively early, and as I was walking along Yonge, I heard a commotion somewhere behind me. I stopped to look, but couldn't see anything. Then I heard the voice again, only it was louder and closer. Then I saw him walking down the street in my direction. I couldn't think of anything to do except to walk away from the crazy man. Of course, I didn't want to look like I was running away from him, so I just casually walked down the street. He got closer and closer and finally I could sort of hear what he was saying. I say "sort of" because he was screaming at the top of his lungs in a semi-maniacal manner. I heard him say something about starving children, and "fucking this" and "fucking that", and then as he passed me he said something like "for the glory of the British Empire" and then mentioned something about George the VI. I guess that officially qualified him as a crazy person for me.

Not that he looked crazy, he wasn't noticeably dirty or carrying plastic bags. He had normal clothes, a hat, and he was even wearing headphones. Wasn't sure if they were plugged into anything, but I haven't seen very many homeless crazy people with headphones. I lost sight of him after a while, but as I was about to go into the Eaton Centre, there he was in front of me, heading into the mall. At that point I became convinced that I should walk outside, since it was such a nice day.

"Welcome to a new kind of tension, all across the alien nation, everything isn't meant to be okay"

Somewhere...Beyond the Sea...

Son of a...!!

Sorry, it's just that I've managed to get a song stuck in my head. "Beyond the Sea", as you may have deduced. No no, not the Robbie Williams/"Finding Nemo" version or the Will Young version and certainly not the Wet Wet Wet version. The original Bobby Darin version. It's a nice mellow song, don't you think? I guess it got stuck in there because I'm doing my pre-film fest research, and I want to go see "Beyond the Sea", the biopic about Bobby Darin starring Kevin Spacey. Who looks like a reincarnated Bobby Darin when you put the two photos next to each other. CREEPY. But I like the music. He was actually more famous for "Mack the Knife" and "Splish Splash", among others. Of course, his life story is full of controversy, otherwise they wouldn't have made it into a movie. Kate Bosworth is going to play his wife Sandra Dee. It looks like it's going to be a good movie. And hey, Kevin Spacey is (possibly) going to be there, so how cool is that?

"My lover stands on golden sands and watches the ships that go sailin'"

Which Came First, The Bad Idea Or Me Befallen By It?

I don't know why I kept thinking of this Matthew Good song these past few months. It's not like the song has anything to do with surprise parties. Or maybe it does. I'll have to go back and listen to it again. But what am I talking about? OH YES...the REAL surprise party, the one that we'd been planning for the past 3 months, the one that finally happened yesterday, the one that we had to cover up with a "fake" surprise party last week.

BSF: Bring Several Friends. At least that's what Jocelyn thought was going to happen when we found out that Em's parents were going to be decidedly out of the country and we were going to recapture some lost youth. In reality, it became BSJF: Bring Several of Jocelyn's Friends. People we had not seen in ages, and people we had never seen at all. It took some major sleuthing and lucky coincidences to put this thing together. I was told at the party that I should have been a party planner. To be honest, I just have a knack for organizing almost anything. Okay, my room might be evidence to the contrary, but when it comes to big groups of people and a single event, then yeah, I'm not too shabby.

Alert Status Red, But The Sun Comes Up Instead:

The problems...and boy did we have some doozies. I have decided that the worst possible words to hear when planning a surprise party are these: "Hey, why don't we use Evite?" Thanks Jocelyn, good idea. How were we supposed to secretly invite people when she could see everyone we invited? Solution: fake Evite. Create an invitation solely for the benefit of Jocelyn. Turn the privacy mode on full blast so that nobody could see anybody else's info, ESPECIALLY their e-mail addresses. Create 15 fake e-mail addresses for 15 fake invitees. Have a minor aneurysm when, just before the ball gets rolling, ownership of the fake invitation gets transferred to a fake guest. Every day, manipulate the guest responses so that it looks like Rehmat is a "maybe" and Tess is bringing the Shrinky Dinks (for the record, I did not make up that response). Meanwhile, send the real invitation out to a bunch of people who have little idea who I am, ask them to invite others, watch as the guest list balloons fantastically out of control, then even itself out when half of the invitees back out or don't respond.

Party planning: Uh...no Jocelyn, we haven't started the planning yet. Uh...no Jocelyn, I think we should wait for Emily to return from the cottage. Uh...no Jocelyn, you don't have to bring anything. After all, you're going to be at a bridal shower in the afternoon. Uh...don't worry about it Jocelyn, we'll take care of the food and we'll just split the bill later.

Oh wait...the fake surprise party. Some of the people at the fake surprise party are supposedly coming to the BSF. What if someone brings up the topic? Solution: get to the restaurant early, provide everyone with their alibis. For the third time, Chris, you said YES.

And now, for the party: Jocelyn arrived before most of the surprise guests, so crisis control kicked in and people had to hide around the side of the house for 15-20 minutes, partially sprayed by the lawn sprinkler, until we regrouped, kicked Jocelyn out of the kitchen, and finally got the festivities started with "Jocelyn, This Is Your Life!", a plan that got cooked up about 5 seconds before it was executed. Why can't I think on my feet like this in other situations??

The Only Place To Find Freedom Is In The Dictionary Under "F":

So in the end, Jocelyn was completely and utterly surprised to the point of helpless confusion. It was a success. And now I can breathe. For a couple of weeks, anyway...

"Beneath the ancient sand lies crushed and tanned those sapphire girls"

Talk About Sweet!

I keep my eyes open for any kind of contest/promotion that features prizes that interest me, like all expense paid trips to South Africa and the like. But it's not just the biggie prizes, it's small things too, like music.

This summer, Fruitopia has been offering promotion in conjunction with Puretracks. Now, I say to myself, fruit juice AND an ethical music download? Sweet! The bonus was that I got the Fruitopia for free. Double sweet! There's an access code inside the bottle cap, and you just go to the Puretracks website and follow the arrows. The contest itself is a little devious. Once you enter your info and the access code, they play a random song and show ten random cartoon DJs, and they ask you to pick which one you think is spinning the track. Now, there is NO way to tell just by looking which one is doing it. It's not like they head-bob in time to the music or anything, they're all pre-programmed to move in the same continuous looping pattern. It' s more like the rubber duck game at the CNE: try your luck, pick a duck, win a prize. You're allowed to play up to three access codes a day. I only have two, but I've been trying almost daily. So far, in the past four weeks, I've won four times, and each time, it was always the first DJ I looked at. If I waffled and tried to guess logically, then I always picked the wrong one. It's kind of weird how it works better when I don't think.

Lesson of the day: Don't think. Trust your instincts.

"Just do it, just start the commotion"

Conspiracy Is My Middle Name

I can breathe a relative sigh of relief today. I've been harbouring the hugest secret for some time now. Once again, I found myself in the middle of a double surprise birthday event. Jocelyn and Em's birthdays are less than a month apart. And it would seem that we have now created a level of surprising that requires the bar to be raised every time. Which, as you can imagine, is kind of difficult after we've known each other for so long and have been doing this for many years.

Due to scheduling difficulties, we finally were able to settle on a date a couple of days after Jocelyn's birthday. But that still made it a couple of weeks too early for Em's, but as our motto for Summer 2004 states, "We gotta take what we can get". Boni and I took our places as the co-conspirators. But how to make sure the both of them are where we want them? Simple: make them part of the planning. Jocelyn was told to "reserve" the day for us, and Em was told "strategic" information about the day, but not all of the details. All Jocelyn knew was that the day would be filled with events, culminating into a dinner. That left the door open for us to spring a dinner surprise on poor hapless Em, who had no idea that we invited several of her friends and relatives to dinner. I had to miss the day portion because of work, but I was able to get to the restaurant on time (sort of). A surprise guest, a late brother and a few no-shows made the event what it always seems to turn out to be: a success. I still don't know how these things always manage to work out. I guess you could say I have a really organizational mind. And a flair for espionage. Maybe I should change professions. Or give lessons.

Sounds Like "Yours To Discover" or "Live Free or Die":

There were some surprise gifts for our birthday girls, which included our "slogan t-shirts". Now, for those of you who don't know, I have been inspired in the past several months to come up with slogans for each of us (Ada, Em, Jocelyn, Laboni, and me). After a while, it sounded a lot like a marketing campaign. In any case, some of them are ridiculously funny (and have some long stories attached), and some sound like slogans you'd see on a license plate. So here, for your enjoyment and ridicule, are our slogans (in the order they were created):

"More attractive than a 12-year-old"
"Dense...not lighter than air"
"Has to beat them away with a stick"
"Always an adventure"
"It's all about balance"

I'll let you guys figure out which one belongs to each of us.

"Shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time"

I Am A Hot Commodity

Okay, how many people did not see this coming? I would have to say...zero. And yet here we are. It's just ridiculous. It kind of brings new meaning to my perception of "roaming Asian posses". Hide the women and children! Man, I hope Ada is okay in Beijing...

Larry, Curly and Moe, Eat Your Heart Out:

Yesterday I witnessed the fine art of slapstick in all its glory. I was at a BBQ, and a bunch of us were hanging out in the kitchen. Jack was standing near the dining room door, holding his drink ("girly punch", as he called it) and talking to a few people. From the other door, Tim came bounding into the kitchen, straight towards Jack. Jack, startled, moved backwards quickly but bumped into someone (we believe it was Jeff), and spilled some of his drink onto the floor. Tim slipped on the drink, wobbled in the most ungraceful manner I have ever seen, and hit the floor. He also bumped into the wine rack, which teetered in the most frightening way. Then Jack, as he leaned forward to help Tim onto his feet, forgot that he was still holding the remnants of his drink and promptly spilled the rest of it onto Tim. The wine rack (which held a large number of bottles as well as several glasses) settled back to its original state with all contents intact. While this was unfolding, there was a collective gasp, silence for a few seconds, and then the room burst into a mix of laughter and 'are you okay?' and 'what just happened?'.

Lesson of the day: Don't forget that you're holding the girly punch.

"Oops, I did it again..."

Suicide Rates Skyrocket in Stouffville

Something is going on in the hinterland. Driving along Stouffville Road today, I encountered something like 10 dead animals (or at least bits and pieces of them) all over the road, and spread out between the highway exit and the plant. These were not the usual squirrels and skunks. They were somewhat larger. But, unfortunately, they were a little too disassembled for me to tell what they were.

Poor things...was there no other way?

"I don't know what's worth fighting for, or why I have to scream, I don't know why I instigate and say what I don't mean"

He Ate All The Shrimp, And Two Plastic Lobsters:

Taste of the Danforth...what a wonderful concept. On a lazy summer weekend, stroll down the middle of one of the major streets in Toronto, sample all kinds of food (mostly Greek, but there's still an interesting international mix) for low low prices, dodge the rain, give in and buy a $5 umbrella, be a walking advertisement for one of the lemonade stands, watch where you step (stupid corn cobs), learn how to stand in line without letting people pass in front of you, keep the ice cream guy at Demetre's honest (we saw you drop that scoop of vanilla and consider putting it back on the crepe), and check out the street entertainment (maybe that was flamenco dancing after all).

It wasn't until I was on my way home that I realized that Matt's eating pattern reminded me of that Simpsons' episode where Homer takes the Sea Captain to court over the false advertising of his "all-you-can-eat" seafood restaurant. "'Tis no man, 'tis a remorseless eating machine."

"In the heat of summer sunshine, I miss you like nobody else"

Mazel Tov!:

My first Jewish wedding. MUCH more entertaining than most. I mean, the ceremony is brief, there's all kinds of singing/chanting, you're constantly wondering if the teetering chuppah is going to fall down, and the bride and groom don't just stand there, they get to move about in circles and break things. Just to recap, this was my cousin Kimberly's wedding to the Moldovian dermatologist (Ben). It was a nice ceremony and a really nice reception. So many great creative ideas for this one: the ceremony and the reception were held in the same place and one after the other, they gave mixed CDs in three different languages (English, Chinese, and Russian) as parting gifts, they had gigantic glass vases of white calla lilies as centrepieces (which we got to take home), they had a list of the members of each table framed on the tables (which we also got to take home), and, here's the part I liked best, they had live music instead of a DJ. It was almost exactly like "The Wedding Singer", except it was a four-piece, with one guy on guitar, one guy on keyboards, one guy on sax/flute, and one female vocalist. She did an amazing rendition of "Time to Say Goodbye", which blew everyone away. If I ever get married, I would go with the live music for sure.

"The way you hold your knife, the way we danced 'til three, the way you changed my life, no no, they can't take that away from me"