a list for a sunday

I have been known to post a variety of lists - lists of things I've done, things not to do, things to be thankful for, books to read, music to listen to, and top moments from various events.  This time I'm gonna post somebody else's list.  It comes from the Lists of Note blog. It's taken from a letter that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his 11 year old daughter in 1933.  Here's an excerpts - I gotta say, I think it's a pretty good list of things to consider when going through life.


Things to worry about:
Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about: 
Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions


I'm not sure why it struck me at this particular moment in time ... but it's a beautiful sunny Sunday morning in February, I'm packing to go away for a week of work and friend time, and I'm feeling somewhat reflective.  I don't know that I'll ever worry about horsemanship or not worry about boys, but I feel like this is a good list to remind me what's important in life.  

I'm a model, so ...

Everyone's pretty excited because the "ladies" are back.  And by "everyone" I mean the 6 of us who gather every week to watch The Bachelor.  So to start, there was obviously much debate about Ben's hair and whether or not we liked it.  Consensus was that we did not.  But we did not hate it as much as Christie hates sweetheart necklines ... direct quote on that one was "what's that neckline called?  I HATE it."  Note to self, never ask Christie to be a bridesmaid if the dresses have a sweetheart neckline.  I think we all got over his ridiculous hair with the non-stop shots of his winery.  If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's our love of wine.  So Ben wins us over with his occupation.  But his insistence on wearing a fluorescent pink tank and talking about seeing his father through hummingbirds brings him down more than a few notches.

As for the "ladies" we once again became focused on hair, wondering if we like the ombre look (we do) and whether or not yellow dress girl's hair should be longer (it should).  Then we moved on to the dresses.  Which, with very little exception, were horrible.  The green sateen and red plungey/strappy thingy were particularly awful - ABC obviously brought in some casting agents from Rock of Love this season.  We agreed that crazy blogger had one of the best outfits and the short sparkly one worn by someone else (an administrative assistant maybe?) was also good.  We figured that the (potentially) lesbian brunette wore such a demure dress to compensate for her "career" as a VIP cocktail waitress.  The model also looked good.  Her sense of superiority really complimented her black dress - the title of this post was her response when Ben asked her what she did for a living.

So that's about all we really had to say.  As you'll notice, we don't know any of their names yet.  That comes later as they go on dates, and swap traumatic stories about the journey they've been on to make it to this place when they feel they are finally ready to find love again.  If you don't understand that sentence, you obviously haven't been watching this show for long enough.

My final two predictions are horse lady and sparkly dress girl.

age is just a number pt. 2

So I don't often write embarrassing dating stories about myself, mainly because it's been awhile since I went on an actual date, but more likely it's because my friends are usually available to offer up much more scandalous stories.  And everyone knows that it's way more fun to write about others than it is to write about one's self.  But I actually have to call myself out for bad behaviour.  A few weeks ago my neighbours had a little party.  I stopped by for a drink.  One drink turned into several.  Normally this wouldn't be a bad thing, but have I mentioned that my neighbours are young?  And as such they have young friends?  Remember when I gave AZ a hard time for shamelessly flirting with a certain young man named Tag? Well I need to let that go.  Because this guy was not born in 1984.  He was still born in the 80s, but that's as much information as I'm willing to give.  Plus he wore a toque inside.  Yep, my youngin' is a hipster.  Within the definition of hipster in the urban dictionary, the above picture is one of the images that comes up.  I'd like you to picture this when you think of this story.  Only because dude looked nothing like this, but the image still makes me very happy.

At any rate it was all very PG and harmless. Except of course if you count the harm inflicted on me by my friends and their jokes about my taste in men of a certain age.  That said, they should be appreciative as I've now broken new ground.  So much so that Christie now insists as a result of my actions her boy crush, Sidney Crosby, is back in play.

a toonie

A toonie is what one of my colleagues gave me yesterday as a contribution to a gift for another one of our colleagues who is having a baby.  A toonie.  That's 2 dollars.  One coin.  That doesn't even cover the gas it cost me to drive to the mall to get the damn gift.  I mean, really, it's insulting, no?  I went on this rant with my mother yesterday and she pointed out that I don't know everyone's situation, and so shouldn't judge.  The thing is, that I know how much this woman makes, and so I judge.  Her situation is obviously that she was raised by wolves or something.  I understand you might not want to contribute - so don't.  Don't sign the card, and don't waste my time with a toonie!  And then, to top it off, I had to miss the damn meal where we gave her the gift today because I got stuck in a meeting.   But all was not lost, because I did accomplish quite a few things on this fine Friday:

• Booked my ticket to New York, and on points to boot!  I leave in 6 weeks.  More details on this trip to come in a future post.
• Had lunch with Christie, who just came back from NYC and so had some great tips.  Including where to get the best pancakes.  Now if only I could remember what that place was called.
• Bought a new pair of glasses.  My old ones are very old and not at all cool.  So I got a new pair.  As pictured here. The pink on the inside is pretty awesome.  As a bonus, the store was having a promotion/sale/charity thing where if you bring in 10 items for the Food Bank, you get 100 bucks off the frames!  Such a great idea.  

They are called Holland Park.  They are rad.

• When I got home I went for a great run along the river.  It was a full moon and a chinook.  Pretty great. 
• After the run, I rewarded myself with a burger and fries from Boogie's Burgers.  I wish I had taken a picture of the burger.  It was damn good.  And the fries were also awesome.  I recognize that eating like a glutton after going for a run is somewhat counter-productive, but it's a Friday night and eating a salad just felt unfair.  Plus I have absolutely no veggies in my house right now.

word of the day

Did you learn anything today?  Because I did.  A new word: extirpated.

What does it mean, you ask, impatiently I'm sure.  Well it means a species no longer existing in the wild in Alberta (or whichever jurisdiction you are currently in), but occurring elsewhere in the wild.  Fascinating stuff.  I also read about the 30+ different names for liverwort.

What's liverwort you ask, on the edge of your seat. It's a plant - check out this link for a bunch of pictures of green things.

And why am I learning these things at my job, you ask, this time in an exacerbated manner.  The answer: no fucking clue.

Incidentally, I got 51% in grade 11 biology, so the fact that this type of reading is part of my job now, is beyond hilarious.

counting the things I've done

So look at that - I vowed to blog twice a week and now a month has gone by without an update. Shocker. I blame my dirty condo. Not because I've spent all my writing time actually cleaning mind you, but because I think to myself that if I have enough time to write a post, I could spend that time cleaning. So in order to avoid the dreaded vacuum cleaner and organizing the guest room, aka "the place where things go to die" I also avoid hitting up the old blogger website. Instead I do important things like bake banana chocolate chip muffins and watch Gossip Girl. So even though it's November, I think it's about time I went over all the fun things I did this summer. I feel it's appropriate because now that we've "fallen back" and there is snow on the ground, I'm pretty confident that summer is officially over and I can make a full and complete tally of all the things I did. Here it is, in no particular order and with no particular explanation as to why these were important things:

• Wakeboarding - and not only did I learn how to wakeboard, I got up my second try. My history as waterskiier might have helped, but I was pretty impressed with myself. I also had good instructors (thank you AH and TS). But I will say that the next day my forearms were so sore I could barely squeeze the shampoo out of the bottle.
• Biking - I biked to work almost every single day. You would too if you had the awesome red cruiser pictured above (yes that is my actual bike).
• Zumbaing - I Learned to zumba. Okay, "learn" might be a bit of a stretch. But I went to a zumba class, danced my ass off and had one of the best laughs I've ever had.
• Getting old - I turned 35. The less said about that the better.
• I only went to one wedding! This really is exciting. And it was a fun one too. Extra points for the fact that butter chicken was the main course.
• I went home to Ottawa for 10 days. SS and HC came with me. We played croquet. Bet you didn't know that official croquet has over 30 rules. Needless to say we didn't follow any of them.
• Vegas! Now, normally this type of trip would garner it's very own blog post, but it really did happen a long time ago (September long weekend) and I have no photographic evidence as I lost my camera (while totally sober I might add), so it's almost like it didn't happen. Luckily I have my credit card statement to remind me about the trip. One thing I do remember is that I stayed up past 5 am two nights in a row, which really is shocking when you consider my age (as noted above). It was an impromptu trip, celebrating, among other things, the fact that Christie quit her job and AH's son turned one. While he was at home celebrating with grandma, AH was wearing a tie on her head chatting up a former Saskatchewan Roughrider named Big Earl.
• Running - Like an idiot, I went ahead and signed up for this stupid run again. And this year they changed the route to make it even more hilly and more difficult. But I finished. And once again it was a beautiful day, with great friends, and post-run burgers and beer. No hat stealing this year though. Although it should be noted that this past Sunday, HC, SS and the acquaintance who threw that post-bar party last year all ran the NYC marathon. I cheered HC and SS on from my couch and then went and ran 4.2 kms in honour of the fact that they were running 42 kms. Pretty much the same thing, right?
• Superhero - I rescued an 8 month old from a locked car. With my own two hands. Oh, and my phone. It was quite funny - I went to Gabe for Thanksgiving (you know, with the usual suspects, KM & Lily) to visit BB and TT. On Saturday afternoon, TT and I were out touring the galleries on the island, and TT accidentally locked her adorable infant in the minivan. Yep, they have a minivan - don't worry, we mocked them endlessly. Luckily I had the foresight not to leave my phone in the car, we called BB and he arrived from the other side of the island with the other set of keys to let the poor child out. I could not stop laughing. TT was somewhat frantic. Needless to say, we teased the poor woman for the rest of the weekend. Mother of the year that one.
• Ryan Gosling - well I didn't actually "do" the Gos, but I did see 2 of the 3 movies he was in this summer. You know I have a love for Dirty Dancing, so was a total sucker for the scene in "Crazy Stupid Love" where he shows off his "move." And ever since seeing Drive I have been somewhat obsessed with '80s synthesizer euro-pop. My two current faves are "A Real Hero" which is on the soundtrack and M83's "Midnight City" which I'm super bummed is now in a Victoria's Secret ad. Boo. As I basically wrote this whole post to this type of music, let's end on the video shall we? Because while I'm sure I did other stuff this summer worth noting, I think this list about covers all you need to know.

it's the little things pt. 4

On Thursday I came home from work to a belated bday card from KM (for a full description of my actual birthday click here). This card was a welcome laugh on an otherwise boring day. And while the card might have made me smile, the little present inside made me positively giddy. It was a magnet with the words "shithead" on it. For those who know me well (i.e. KM), they know that shithead is my favourite insult. Mainly because I like the visual – someone with a normal body, but instead of a head on top, there is a big ball of shit. It’s juvenile, I know, but it makes me laugh. And so the fact that KM saw this fridge magnet and thought of me, well it just means so much. It really is the little things.

The magnet in question is pictured here. This is my actual fridge. To the right and slightly above said magnet is a Globe and Mail clipping - my one and only letter to the editor that made it into the actual paper. Unsurprisingly it was a letter commenting on the ridiculousness of a Harper policy. On top of that - two fortune cookies fortunes (you may recall this post). Then to the left is a picture of my old roomates from university (including KM, she of the awesome magnet) taken in an apple tree in the Annapolis Valley. It was taken at the beginning of May 1999 - so the blossoms were in full bloom, just in time for the world famous Apple Blossom Festival. Below the magnet is an autograph from Orland0 Bloom, written on the back of a coaster from the Four Seasons in the Bahamas. My parents were there for a conference and Orly was staying there whilst filming Pirates of the Caribbean (part II I think). My dad worked out with him for an hour having no idea who he was. My mom spotted him later and got the signature. I'm not a huge fan of his or anything, it's just kind of a nice memento and a good story.

And finally, below and to the left is my newly purchased membership in the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta. Shocking I know, given my leftie leanings. I was actually a member once before, back in 2006, when I was part of the stop Ted Morton movement. People like me are known as "temporary tories." There's been some backlash, but this is the way the system works. And seeing as the PCs have been ruling this province for 40 years, if you want to have an actual say in who is running the government, taking part in the leadership election is the best way to do it. So I voted. And guess what? My vote made a difference and my choice won. It really was the best 5 bucks I spent this month! There have been a lot of surprising political victories this year - Nenshi, Layton, and now Redford. People talk about how uninteresting politics is and how apathetic the electorate has become. But then stuff like this happens and it gives us hope. Now I'm not about to get all "yes we can" on you - let's face it, the conservatives are still in power and I had no other plans on this particular saturday night - but the fact that I stayed up way past my bedtime last night to follow the #pclrd hashtag happenings on twitter and woke up actually interested in the results should mean something to someone. So now there will be a general election sometime in the next year and we'll see how Redford fares with those people unwilling to pay 5 dollars to have their say. And you can bet everyone of those 5 dollars that I will be calling more than one of the politicians running in that election a shithead. Good thing I have the magnet.