Chachi?

'Scott Baio is 45.... and Single' is a reality show staring, you guessed it, Scott Baio as he meets up with former girlfriends and asks why they broke up. He is joined in his journey by a life coach.

Seriously. I'm a writer, and even I can't make this stuff up. I got the pic above from his official website.

I know.

I must say, Scott Baio is part of an elite group in my brain. The 'I wouldn't touch you decked out in a full CDC Hazmat suit with radiation gloves and a dedicated oxygen suppy' group. This group is populated by: Colin Farrel, Richard Greico and Scott Baio. Group memebership is open, so I can add new/old celebreties as they become available/popular.

When I heard about this show, I thought, nah, can't be! When will I learn that in Hollywood, there is no bottom of the barrel, there is just another barrel beneath the one they are working on and when they get to it and start to scrape the bottom, they find a secret hatch with a whole other barrel underneath.

An Open Letter to Telus

Dear Telus,
You suck. No one likes you.

People have cell phone contracts with you because it's too hard to switch to someone else, and everyone else is just as crooked. But you... I hold a special place in the hatred corner of my heart for you. You charge $3.50 for a downloaded ringtone that is a PORTION of a song. I can get the WHOLE song from iTunes for $0.99. why are you ripping me off? You told me I needed a warrenty for my new cell phone because 70% of cell phones fail in the first year. You should be ASHAMED of yourself? WHO SELLS CRAP THAT FAILS ALL THE TIME? [Other than informercial people]. and if your phones DON'T fail 70% of the time in the first year [for which I have seen no proof as no one I have ever known has had a cell phone that failed] then you LIED to me to SCARE me into buying the warrenty. You try to entice people into savagely long 3 year contracts, saying that the phone they want will cost $300.00 on a one year contract but only $49.99 on a three year contract, yet you forget to point out that in a three year contract you are GOUGING them for OODLES more. When I have problems with my v-mail at work, I call the number. I speak to the disembodied voice. I spend 5 minutes telling her I am a business account and that I can't access my v-mail. I tell her this THREE Times. Then I finally get a REAL PERSON and the first thing they want to know is: WHY AM I CALLING? I just spent the last FIVE MINUTES pushing buttons and telling the computer why I am calling.

And apparently, the issue is NEVER your fault. It's always the people who put the phone lines in my building [newsflash - it was YOU] the people who installed my jacks [newsflash - also you] or the people who originally set up the v-mail [you guessed it - you].

You SUCK. No one likes you.

Squirrelly Girly.

Dear Santa,

I have been a very good dog this year. Except for when I ate my mum's laundry. And the times that I stuffed my face into the kibble bag when she opened the pantry. And the times I beat up my pack mate Rocky. And that time I jumped up on the counter and took the whole bag of bread. And that time I tried to take a sandwhich right out of my mummy's hands.

Other than that, I have been an exceptionally good dog. Except for that time I growled at my mum. And when I had explosive diarrhea on the carpet, the wall, and the baseboards. And when I peed in her bedroom because I was mad at her. And I ate that book she was reading. And... well, never mind all that now. The point is, I am really good looking and look like I should be a good dog, and so I am a good dog, and if you don't give me what I want, I will pee on your sleigh. Here is my list:

• Bones
• Kids
• Meat
• Yarn
• Another dog
• More Kibble
• My own queen sized bed with pillows and a blanket
• Did I already say meat? In case I didn't, meat.

As I said, I have been a very good dog. I snuggle with my mum on a daily basis and even though I squirm and whine when she cuts my nails, I don't bite her. I only make her put me outside 4 times an hour, and I only take up two thirds of her bed. I eat all the crumbs off the floor.

Most importantly, I make my mummy smile.

Love, Portiacakes.

PS. I was going to leave you cookies, but I ate them. I know you'll understand.

PPS. I drank the milk too. It was very good.

On the missing list
It's not like I'm the kind of person who takes her clothes off wherever she goes and then finds herself waking up naked not knowing what transpired the night before. So I can't really figure out where some of my clothing has gone. There are a few things I'm troubled by on a regular basis:


The white hooded knit sweater from the Gap - if you know me at all, I've bemoaned the loss of this sweater to you. It was fabulous. It was a spring/summer sweater. Loose fitting and slightly hole-y. It went over tank tops. I looked great in it. I felt great in it.

The burgandy striped top and matching cardigan that I wore when I went to Paris - how annoying that everytime I look at my pics of my first trip to Paris, my first thought is always "Where IS that sweater set?" followed by "I look really good in that sweater set" followed by "Oh look. Notre Dame."

My pink keds - technically, I am only missing one. But how did THAT happen?

My dance shorts - I used to be in dance in highschool and I had a pair of shorts that I bought for our big routine. I used to wear them all the time as they were super comfy. One day, they were gone. never saw them again.

Socks - Don't even get me started on socks. I should just learn to buy all the same socks so that when I lose one from a pair, I do'nt really notice. But no, I like to buy socks with patterns, with kitchy stuff on them. I used to keep the Lonely Sock Box - a place to put all lonely socks until I found the other. It got too full and I had to throw it out.



If there is someone out there that is stealing my stuff as a weird way of stalking me, and you are taking things and building some super creepy shrine with candles, pictures and my stuff, come talk to me. I'm sure we can work out a swap. I really want that white hooded sweater back.

Out of the Closet?

My mum and I chat a bit. About this, about that. It's always sorta been understood that my family are not "Glass half full" kinda people. Or if the glass was half-full, it would be of seafoam green soy wheat grass carrot juice that you didn't want anyway. My family makes sarcastic remarks about pretty much anything. In fact, sometimes, I think we've pushed the morbid envelope far past it limits (I reference Brandi's last days when her final vet visit was scheduled and the clock was ticking on her permanent vacation to the doggie farm. It is said at this time, my mum and my sister were known to call out "dead dog walking" as Brandi passed them by in her blissful - albeit very very sick - ignorance). Or at work, when Chantal mentioned that she had restless leg syndrome and I said, "My dad had that." Pause. "And then he DIED." I laughed darkly to myself while Chantal shook her head.

As mum and I chatted about some recent events in our lives, mum came to a sudden, stark revelation. We had been saying for the last couple of minutes, "well, it will all work out," or "you never know what tomorrow will bring" and "It could be worse." Mum paused at one point and said, "Are we closet optimists?"

Are we? Have we cloaked ourselves in pessimism all these years only to be unmasked as sunny, cheery, optimistic people? Those Silver Lining, Don't Lose Hope, Let a Smile be your Umbrella People?

Shudder.

Beauty Hurts

Whenever I complain that I've broken a nail, most people thing I'm being really wimpy. I'm here to tell you it's serious business. The photo here is of my right hand (and yes, I am right handed) with my two broken nails. I was getting an oil change at the minit lube and had to pop my hood. When I pulled on the handle, it was a little sticky and tough, so I really yanked. The hood popped and so did two of my nails, ripping off to the quick. I can't even get them fixed until they heal.

Waaaaaa!

And I was SO happy with the new color too! Blue Oyster. That's what I get for being so vain...

I should also mention that this has just happened as my middle finger has finally healed from a cut I had to get a teatnus shot for. This totally sux!

Busy Squirrell

Dudes. I'm, exhausted. I don't like to be too busy. I prefer to have my weekends be sloth filled hours of sitting on the couch watching telly, and then maybe a nap. During the week, I don't go out, other than to go to work. But I've been a busy squirrell lately. Since coming back from the writer's conference in Vancouver, I've been dutifully working on my book, trying to get 500 words a day. I have been pretty successful. Then I had a few nights over at my mum's. This weekend I'm off to the Bloomin inn to go scrapbooking so I spent last night pulling paper and packing. Next weekend I'm off to Lethbridge to visit Heidi, pick up my dress, and hopefully have a girls lunch with Heidi and Jenny. The weekend after that, Heidi is up here.

I know it doesn't seem like much, but to me, this is a jam packed schedule! If I didn't have to meet with the lawyers today for work, I would stay at home and nap!

The Evolution of Hand Gestures

And for all of you hoping this blog is about dirty, obscene hand gestures, keep surfing my friends. No, what I'm talking about is our outdated handsignals for stuff we never do anymore. Like phone.

I like the phone hand gesture. I'll see if I can describe it, but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. One hand, up by your face. Your thumb is the ear piece, your pinky the talky part, and the rest of your hand is presumably, the phone. You can do this hand gesture across a great distance while mouthing "Call me." Although the mouthing part is optional since everyone knows what the gesture means.

But what's the getsure for "Text me?" "Email me?" "Check out my Blog?"

I got nothing that doesn't involve holding both hands in front of yourself typing away on an imaginary keyboard. Not nearly as cool and sleek as the Call Me gesture.

And We're Off!
It has finally arrived! Ashleigh and I are off to our first writer's conference. I'm flying out to Vancouver to stay with Ashleigh and then it's 3 fun filled days of conference stuff (how to write effective dialogue! How to create suspense! How to get published!) and 1 fun filled day of hanging out with Ash.

Even though Ashleigh and I were separated at birth, we've not actually met in person, so this should be super fun! We work together and email and msn nearly every day, but have never had face time.

And I haven't been back to Vancouver since I was there in 2002 (I think - don't you hate how when you get older you lose track of what year you did what?). I'm looking forward to seeing some stompin grounds! and the IHOP - sorry jenge, if I could bring it back for you, I would!

A Guy Named Jack

I was talking with Jenge the other day, and I asked her, what is it with the name Jack? It seems to be Hollywood's de riguer response to a character that needs a solid name. A man of action, yet one who may be slightly emotionally tortured and probably carries some emotional baggage. A guys guy. Someone the men in your life wanna be him and wanna hang out with him - have a couple of beers with the guy. The women want to date him - possibly rescue him, depending on the situation. I'm so over JACK! I've decided I'm NEVER using the name in any of my books.

Think I'm nuts? Check out my list:

Jack Ryan - The Hunt for Red October
Jack Sparrow - Pirates of the Carribean
Jack Traven - Keanu Reeves in Speed
Jack Twist - Brokeback Mountain
Jack Bauer - 24
Jack Bristow - Sydney's dad on Alias
Jack O'neill - Richard Dean Anderson on Stargate
Jack Shephard - Matthew Fox on Lost
Jack Tripper - Three's Company
Jack Malone - Without a trace
Jack Dawson - Titanic

It only took me 5 minutes to make that list. imagine if I had really tried....

Who's makin' all the money?
The Canadian dollar is currently slightly above the US dollar. For weeks, months, it has been slowly on the rise, until finally, it surpassed it.

But I've yet to see any difference in my online shopping sites. Which is why I've jettisoned my .ca sites and am now shopping .com.

Who's making all the money?

If my dollar is currently as good, nay better (!) than it's US counterpart, why on earth would I pay 21.95 for a book at Amazon.ca that will cost me 14.95 at Amazon.com?

Jenge and I have wanted a Dyson vaccuum for a while, and while LnT is offering it for 500.00, online browsing has shown it to me for 350.00. Slap on 50 bux shipping and handling, I'm still coming out with 100 bux extra in my wallet if I buy from the US.

Holy Crap!

Over the last month, I have been a woman obsessed! My current obsession? The BBC series Jekyll.

Only 6 episodes long, I missed the first one, but caught the second one by accident. After 10 minutes, I was hooked. I started telling everyone to watch Jekyll. On Wednesday, I saw episode 5, and yesterday, the DVD of the show I ordered from Amazon showed up, so last night I watched episode 6.

WOW! wow. It's all I can say. After episode six ended, I actually muttered the words, "Holy crap."

I don't think I've ever seen anything that intelligent, well acted, well scripted, well lit (for crying out loud!) on tv!

I'm off to meet Chant for breakfast today, and as I got her hooked on Jekyll, I'm bringing the DVD and she simply MUST watch it before Monday so I have someone to talk to it about!!

Coffee!
I love coffee. I really do. I love it as much as I love Portia, and that's alot (she's so darn cute). Jenge and I brew a pot every morning. Chances are at least 1 (if not 3) pot gets brewed at the office, and most evenings I make a pot when I get home from work too. It's how I relax, it's how I get going, it's how I escape. I use coffee as my shield - I cannot possibly roll out of bed and get dressed and go to work immediately, I must drink that cup of coffee first. And it cannot be rushed, or I might burn my tongue.

There are two kinds of coffee drinkers out there. The ones like me, who turn to coffee as a beverage just about any time of day. Thankfuly, I work with these kind of coffee drinkers. No one bats an eyelash if you start crying because the only coffee that's left in the office is the Emergency-only-if-your-life-depends-on-it can of Maxwell House. The second kind of coffee drinkers are those who think they love coffee as much as the rest of us, but have been known to go days, nay weeks without a sip of the lovely brew. I'm not saying they don't love it, I'm just saying they aren't as... dedicated as the rest of us.

My all time record for coffees per day was back when I worked for the Mother Ship, Starbucks. On an average working day, I would have at least 3 cups of coffee and 8 shots of espresso. And sleep like a baby at night. Working your ass off all day will do that to you. Right now, it's 10pm and I'm wishing I could have a cup of coffee. I'm not worried about caffeine keeping my up. My only concerns are
a) I don't have time before bed to drink more than 1 cup from the pot (although my cup is 20oz) and that just seems like a waste of good coffee
b) I'll be getting up all night to go to the bathroom.

I miss my carafe coffee pot. That machine brewed the coffee right into a stainless steel carafe that would keep the coffee warm all day. If I still had it, I could be drinking this morning's coffee right now - and it would taste just as good. Instead I'm staring at our current glass coffee pot wondering how bad it would taste to microwave some life into that bad boy.

It's Love!

Last Sunday I was sitting at my computer updating my ipod Mini. I must have blacked out for a few minutes and Evil Margarita took over, because the next thing I knew, I was printing out the invoice for a new iPod classic in black (I would have taken his picture, but my camera batteries are kaput). He arrived on Friday and it's been love ever since. I named him Mr. Big, since he will hold 20000 songs! I don't even know 20000 songs. In fact, my computer currently only has 1411 songs, but whatever. Since I got Mr. Big, I have spent about 8 hrs this weekend trying to find album artwork for all the stuff in my iTunes library. The only snag seems to be some sort of an iTunes glitch in which some songs will not let me modify the artwork, but I think I'm about 90% there. I've also downloaded two books to listen to on my morning commute. And I put my Mexico pictures on him so that I have somethign to cheer me up when I am sad about the monotony of work. And you know what? Mr. Big is not even 10% full. AMAZING! He's so handsome and shiny. I will have to knit him a cozy so he doesn't get my grimy fingerprints all over his shiny black and silver casing. I think he's man enough to handle pink and chocolate brown.

Mathology

I have a math degree. I am horrible with numbers.

These two statements, despite your first thought, are not mutually exclusive. When in the math faculty, I rarely had to use numbers. If I did, they were not bigger than 10. Or they were irrational numbers or numbers as words: pi, e, the sqauare root of 2, cos of 0, epsilon.

When people find out I have a math degree, they automatically assume I am good with numbers and some even bark out a question like, "What's the square root of 5692?" - Got me. But if you have a calculator, I'm wicked awesome with a number pad due to my time as a safeway cashier.

Like any good grade school student, I memorized my multiplication tables up to 12*12, and because I like numbers, I know 13*13, 14*14, 15*15 - just cuz I think it's fun. I factor in my head when I can't sleep at night, bringing all numbers down to their prime factors. It's very relaxing and distracting. You try getting upset about deadlines at work when you are trying to break down 120 in your head (120=2*3*4*5 - which actually fascinates me because other than it's prime factorization, I see nothing else extraordinary about 120 but there you have it). But splitting the cheque, knowing how much to tip, or figuring out 3% of my paycheck for my health benefits, and I'm reaching for my trusty keyboard calculator.

I'm more interested in how math forumlas work, why they work, why they are true all the time, and how it is that anyone ever possibly figured out imaginary numbers (no joke! they exist!) than trying to figure out how much is left in my bank account.

I leave you with this thought:
It is not the job of mathematicians... to do correct arithmetical operations. It is the job of bank accountants. ~Samuil Shchatunovski

What a way to start a week...
Raise your hand if you suffer from Sunday night insomnia.

Are we so used to passing out exhausted after working all day that two days of doing nothing (aka: grocery shopping, laundry, vaccuuming, lawn work, socializing, hobbies, reading and watching telly) screws us over so much so that we can't fall asleep? I was up until at least 2am last night (which was when I stopped checking the clock). Even Portia, tired of my tossing and turning, was like, 'Do you mind? I'm trying to get some shut eye here!' Is it because we don't want the weekend to end? Some studies have even suggested that Catholics suffer the most from this Sunday night insomnia as they ponder with copious amounts of guilt all the things they didn't get completed on the weekend.

All I know is, it's a crummy way to start my week.

Affairs, Exile, Poison...Another day at Meerkat Manor!

I've seen the ads for this show over the past couple of months, and I have to say, I was dying to watch it. I tuned in tonight for 2 episodes on Access - and boy was it fun! The show follows a family of Meerkats, The Whiskers, as they try to survive. Narrated by Bill Nighy, tonight's two episodes were jam packed!
Flower, the Whisker matriarch, exiled her daughter, Mozart for having pups. As the matriarch of the pack, only Flower is allowed to have kids. Mozart got beaten up and then exiled for having a litter. Alone, with no one to groom her, and no one to watch over her while she forages, can she survive??
Mitch, big bully pup of Flower, got greedy and stole food from another pup. But after eating too much scorpion, he go sick. Will he make it through the night?
Tosca, another of Flower's daughters, also made the terrible mistake of having her own pups. She was beaten up and exiled as well. Luckily, she had Mozart to keep her company.
But then! Flower has a new litter of pups, and Mozart uses that small weakness to get back in the pack! Mitch survives the night! Tosca is still exiled. And in a terribly naughty move, Mozart hooks up with Carlos from a rival pack. Flower, too busy foraging after giving birth doesn't appear to know - but the rest of the pack does. Will Mozart repeat her terrible mistake and give birth again?
Tune in to Meerkat Manor to find out!

Points to Ponder

Why DO the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles need to wear eye masks? Are there really THAT many Ninja turtles that by wearing masks, we won't know who they are? Or is it so we can tell them apart? Or they can tell each other apart? Because if that's the case, they could put their names on their shells, kinda like the FBI puts 'FBI' on all their jackets. So it must be some sort of a disguise, but can you really disguise a teenage mutant ninja turtle? They're gonna stick out no matter what kind of mask they wear. And I'm pretty sure this conversation isn't going to happen:

Cop: Can you describe who it was that stopped the Evil Overlord Ninja from taking power?

Bystander: Omg, it was like a mutant ninja turtle, a teenage mutant ninja turtle! But I couldn't see his face because he wore a mask!

Cop: (sigh) Chalk another one up to anonymous good samaritan. Nuts.

Maybe I don't have a black thumb after all!
Those are roses from my front yard. They bloom first in yellow, then deepen to orange and finally to red. This year, the sun was so hot, it bleached the red to white. IT's like 4 rose bushes in one!

Big Dog, Little Dog

I don't think Portia knows she's a big dog. She tries to cram herself into Rocky's doggy bed (having destroyed her own). Paws, tail and head all hang off the side, but to look at her, that's her bed now. And she's afraid of cats. Cries and whines when she sees one (although this may have to do with the fact that our neighbors gave their cat a poodle haircut - you know, with the fluffy tail and feet, but shaved everywhere else). And we have a tough time sharing a queen sized bed. She tries to curl herself into the back of my knees, but you can see, paws are hanging off the side. She also tries to make friends with all the little dogs at puppy daycare, but as soon as she comes in, they all lie down and roll over on their backs to show submissiveness because she's big! But she just looks at them like, "What are you doing? I'm a little dog like you!" She also tries to crawl under the fence to see the neighbors, but gets stuck. and she seems really surprised that she got stuck.
Maybe Portia knows what we all wish we could learn - It's not your size on the outside, it's how you see yourself mentally and in her mind, she's a little dog.