Pete Yorn/Aqualung

Short post only, gotta help Jay with dinner. Chicken tikka masala - I've introduced him to the delights of Indian food, as well as converted his housemates to the dark side of vegetable pakora.

Saw Pete Yorn and Aqualung on Thursday night, before my birthday. They were both very good. The Fray is next up, in March.

For all you music and event fans who occasionally feel screwed over by artists never coming to your area, check this out: Eventful. You can place "demand" requests for people you want to see come to your city, and if they get enough demands then they contact the performer and tell them about the demand. Some performers even have the Eventful link on their homepages so that they can see where they should be touring next. I think it's a damn good idea....

Laters chickadees!!

Go see Hinder

Cos they are really good!

Also, I have to share a conversation that I overheard on the bus back from UBC the other day.

Boy: "So what are you going to do when you finish this degree?
Girl: "I'm applying to dentistry."
Boy: "Are you seriously into being a dentist?"
Girl: "Well, I really like doing all the moulds and impressions and stuff."
Short pause.
Boy: "Why don't you just get into pottery then?"

I thought he had a point.

Apologies

To all who vainly check this blog for updates. There's probably only about three of you now (Dan! Where's my Xmas card?!!) but I can let you know that I am still alive and kicking. I am moving in with Jason here in Vancouver in February and we plan to go to Nova Scotia this summer to look at buying a house. Since I usually only blog when bored or depressed and I have been neither for a while, my silence has been resounding! So apologies to all you virtual people. I'll send you all e-mails soon with gossip - if I can find some.

J xxx

The good, the bad and the free

The good: I've finally found a one-bedroom place of my own, and it's huge. I move in around three weeks from now. And I plan to go all posh style and convert the ex-pantry room into a walk-in closet, heh heh. Maybe not, but it's a nice thought.

The bad: the RCMP rang up earlier and offered me a 6 month admin job in Homicide, which I had to turn down because of my contract with UBC. Work seems to come in spurts or not at all.....

The also bad: http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/ if you want to be depressed by the exhibits from the World Trade Centre trial against Moussaoui. I had to look - I'm in forensics.

The free: Have just made a foray out to grab free stuff from a back alley, posted on craigslist 15 blocks from me. I was too late for the bike, but I grabbed the free standing lamp and the table on wheels before the next car came around the corner :o)

Two months on

Thanks for the prodding, Dan. I hadn't realised that it had been two months since I last posted - although I did recognise that my updating had been less than stellar. Rest assured that I am still alive, although I have been crap at keeping in touch with people and I haven't read anyone else's blog since about March. Apologies to all - I know I'm terrible. You'll just have to allow me some time to wallow in my new-found stability and cut me some slack ;o)

So..... what has been happening over the past two months? Happily, little in the way of drama and lots in the way of settling down. Jason and I have booked flights to Nova Scotia in August to attend his family reunion so I can meet the parents - serious stuff! My parents are coming over here in September so I will get to return the favour. I'm not sure who is the more scared. I have been looking around at one-bedroom suites in a vain attempt to get my own place, but so far things are either too expensive or too grotty for my liking, so for now I'm still here. I seem to have developed an allergic reaction to mosquito bites in the past few weeks, so I am covered in huge red welts which turn into hard lumps and then bruises, looking like I have the plague or something. Jason and I bought a truck on Sunday for $600, which is going to get dismantled over the next few weeks and magically incorporated into another truck. I have now learned the differences between straight 6 and 8 cylinder engines, can explain how fuel is mixed with air to make the car run and know what the alternator does. In addition I have helped install speakers in the front doors of my car and have been junkyard hunting for a wing mirror and a back wiper. I am slowly becoming more mechanically-minded - wonders will never cease. I'm enjoying it all immensely, although Jason can't understand why the hell trailing round a wrecker's yard after him as he pulls vehicles apart is the least bit appealing. All I can say is that for an Oxford girl who went to a public school and grew up not knowing the simplest thing about cars, it's something new and interesting!

I have applied to UBC as an unclassified student so that I can use up some of my staff tuition waiver and do some courses - I'm kind of limited by what still has space left when it's my turn to register and also what takes place in the evening, but at the moment it seems to be a contest between Latin, random Forestry courses and perhaps some Asian architecture modules. Let it never be said that my life is not eclectic :o)

Aside from my personal life, it's nice and hot here and I have managed to lose some of my deathly pallor, although the self-tan may have to be broken out before the trip to Halifax. I need to do more exercise and stop being such a lazy bugger now I have a desk job, so everyone is at liberty to post their fitness tips for me ;o) but for now, I am going to have a Coke (diet), listen to some music (The Fray) and go to bed. Night all xxxx

Springtime in Vancouver

Since I am currently very slack at posting (I always am when I haven't got anything to moan about), I shall give a quick rundown of my movements over the past month, in the hope that this will somewhat make up for the lack of info that I have been giving out recently.

April heralded various events which I shall detail in chronological order: the acquiring of a bed for free, Christie's dad's birthday dinner, the spending of a weekend in Victoria with Sunshine , Gilles' birthday (a grand old 24!), some eventual cross-border shopping after being stuck in the border queue for three hours, the Easter weekend (bliss to have four days off), Easter dinner with my parents' friends, more dinners, the shower leaking into my wardrobe, a wedding lunch at work, the Stanley Cup playoffs starting, a fantastic day of skiing with Sunshine at Cypress on a boiling hot day, more dinners, final selection meetings at work to decide who gets into medicine, dinner with Mel, Sunshine's swap party, Franz Ferdinand and Death Cab for Cutie at the Pacific Colliseum, some work for SFU, Switchfoot at the Commodore Ballroom, enjoying the run of near 20 degree weather, and finally some spring cleaning.

And the madness isn't over yet. This weekend I have an all-day Emergency Social Services exercise on Saturday and am then looking at two one bedroom suites after finally getting pissed off with the state of our kitchen and the way it is kept. Jason is currently working 13 hour days to get some house foundations put in and we seem to spend most of our life being tired - but everything is good. I just booked two more lots of concert tickets for June (I drag Jason to Snow Patrol, he drags me to Eagles of Death Metal) and in two weeks I finally get to go and see Shaw in Boston (and Dan too, if you're around!!). Woohoo!!!

In an effort to be responsible and plan for the future I have opened a savings account and am sticking some money in every month in the hope that it will somehow procreate like bunnies and turn me into a millionaire overnight. Either this or it will slowly leech out my bank account without me realising. In any case, I get to pretend to be grown-up and think about mortages. Bleugh.

And that, as they say, is all, folks.

Roll on summer.....

Since spring seems to be the season for breakups (3 pairs of friends and counting.....) and I don't want the karma to hit me!! Gulp.

I can't believe it's April

And the weather isn't doing much to make it spring-like here. The first day of spring was lovely, and everyone at UBC got all excited and put on their shorts. Since then we've had one or two nice days, and the rest have been rainy. But it's a decent temperature, so I should really stop compaining.

In my past few lunch hours at work I have been watching Storm The Wall in front of the student union, which consists of team or individual challenges involving 9 lengths in the pool, a 445 yard dash, a 3km cycle, a 1km run and then getting over a 12 foot wall without ropes or any other equipment. The team trials are mildly amusing, but the individual 'Super Iron Man' men's heats were very good, with hundreds of students gathered on the hill watching blokes hurling themselves at the wall. Sadly the guys I saw couldn't quite make it over, despite being inches from the top at every try. Apparently someone did it on Sunday by stripping naked - this allegedly gave them "more grip." I hate to think about how that worked....

This week I have also been swimming, helping Sunshine move house, trying to get through an 813 page book on Excel, going for dinner with Christie and her dad, cleaning my room and trying to fit in seeing Jay as well. I seriously need some sleep - I keep waking up at 6am for no reason, even though I'm going to bed at decent hours. I can't wait for Easter in two weeks' time, so that I can have a four day weekend.....

No longer single

:o)

Been a while.....

So I guess I should post something, just to prove that I still exist. It's not really that nothing has been happening; more that when my life is going (relatively) smoothly I don't feel much inclination to blog, since it's all boring stuff which fills a day but which doesn't really make for good reading.

I've been carrying on working at UBC, which I'm enjoying, and I'm busy with trying to learn computer-type things and broaden my skills a bit. I saw Hot Hot Heat this week, and they were very good, although I got home at 2am and had to get up for work at 7am, so that kind of sucked. My parents booked a flight over here in September, which I am looking forward to, and I go to Boston for a week in May. My laptop died and was then resurrected. I got a bill for $1,425 from ICBC and had to pay it in one go, the day after my salary went into the bank. I replied to a post from a guy on craiglist and have been on four "dates" with him in the past two weeks - and here's to many more. I am not giving out further details on him, because I don't want to jinx anything. I shall just say that he is extremely nice, he drives a huge monster truck that I laugh at every time I see it, and strangely he seems to be very keen to see me again. Wonders will never cease.

Our hot tub is definitely being fixed in the next couple of weeks. In addition, Roger the Navy housemate and I have decided that we are going to attack the deck and the backyard this summer; sand the deck down and stain/varnish it, clear out the weeds and the crap in the garden and clean all the furniture. This is a large undertaking, since the garden is the size of a small country and the deck will need a good few days of work. But if I'm going to stay in this house, I need to spruce it up a bit.....

Just for Reen

Who makes me feel guilty by enthusiastically checking my blog to see whether I have updated, and I never have! But the thing is, my blogging is usually inversely proportional to how satisfied I am with life, so no blogging is usually good news. But I'd better write something, even if it's not that exciting.

So, what has happened over the past few weeks? Well, I've reluctantly turned 27, kicking and screaming, and for the entire week before and during my birthday, I had bronchitis or some random chest infection. This was a combination of being in Seattle to see my friends from England and sleeping in a youth hostel with a flu-ridden girl in the bunk above me, my housemate Reen getting bronchitis, and then someone at work also getting bronchitis. People at work went down like ninepins, and I had the day before my birthday off. However, I then resolved not to be in bed for my birthday, so I went to work and brought a big fat chocolate cake with me. Which helped with the pain slightly.

In Seattle I got to see some friends off my masters course and had dinner up the Space Needle, which was an interesting and slightly nauseating experience, as the damn restaurant revolves while you're eating. It was also very pricey, but having done it once at least I don't have to do it again. We crashed a Superbowl party and watched Seattle lose out, but it was a good weekend. Other than that, I've been working hard, have been cross-border shopping with Sunshine, have been to see a band and have been watching the Olympics whenever I have a free moment. From Monday I will be working 12 days straight, since we have the interview event coming up and I'm going to have to do some serious overtime. I'm therefore enjoying my weekends while I can! More details shall not be posted ;o)

Oh, and I'm also feeding Christie's guinea pig for her while she's away in Egypt. It's quite entertaining to watch it chomping on a load of salad before I go to work in the mornings.

Just some thoughts

That have been kicking around in my head.

1. There are a lot of people in this world who have the emotional maturity of a root vegetable, and many of them seem to cross my path at some point. I'm not sure if this reflects badly on them, or me.

2. Sometimes you realise in hindsight that you read a situation a certain way, but that things were actually completely different. I had one such epiphany the other day, but although I should have been dismayed by the realisation that someone just said a load of stuff because it was obviously what I wanted to hear, it actually didn't bother me that much. Maybe I've finally grown up, apparently before the other person did.

3. I am perpetually dissatisfied with life. Or maybe it is dissatisfied with me?

4. I actually downloaded an entire episode of Supernatural simply to find out how much air time I got on screen. How sad is that!

5. I'm not quite sure how I am going to get over my laziness genes in order to train for this damn half marathon that I have in May. Answers below please.

6. As you can see, I am a list-maker.

In the blogging wilderness

Yes, I am still here. It's just been a busy two weeks. That's all I've been back in Vancouver for, but it seems like ages - I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.....

I've been back at UBC, temping in the job I was doing before Christmas. It's been quite interesting, since the application process is onto a new phase now and applicants keep ringing up or e-mailing me. I've also worked at SFU, been ten-pin bowling, helped pack up an entire house, had two interviews, applied for jobs that I'm possibly qualified for and those that I'm not, and been to a Bryan Adams concert. Which was fantastic. There were the usual suspects in terms of songs - he hit the jackpot with 'Summer of '69', then ruined the good work by playing 'Everything I Do' immediately after it. And is it just me, or did everyone else think the damn song was about a year? Call me innocent, but I didn't ever think about the alternative. And yet Bryan Adams prefaced the playing of the song by saying, "I'm often asked whether this next song is about a year..... or a sexual position.... and let me tell you, it isn't about a year...." Thanks for ruining it for me, Bryan.

Anyway, he did his set, and then there was the usual encore, and then he came back and did a couple more songs, and then he went off again. But the crowd refused to leave, since this is his home town and they wanted more, so there was a full five minutes of clapping and cheering, and eventually he appeared again with a guitar and proceeded to play six more songs acoustically. It was a good night.

Tomorrow Sunshine has roped three of us into some sort of consumer panel type night, which seems to involve us going to a hotel, watching a short film and then some commercials, and then rating them. The promise of free food is the basic draw, but it should be fairly interesting as well. Then on Weds I am giving in and getting my eyes tested, since I suspect that I might need reading glasses sometime in the near future. Sob.

And the brief news: my mp3 player won't show me the pictures that I've loaded onto it, and the Conservatives seem to have won the f***ing election. Except here in Vancouver Quadra, where the Liberals kicked their arses.

Still alive

I suppose I should qualify the last post by reassuring everyone that I am still alive, etc etc. I just got back to Vancouver to find a $1500 bill for car repairs on my desk, sent by my insurance company, after some stupid bint managed to run into me before Christmas. My car has but a scratch on it, and she was playing silly buggers in the road, but since she was on a main road and I only on a side road, and since nobody bothered to stop and be my witness, I have to pay the bill. Or have my insurance go up from -10% to +40%, which will cripple me over the next three years rather than crippling me all at once. Marvellous.

Anyway, I have just about recovered from the stress, after a good old fashioned cry, 12 hours of sleep, and the cancellation of my fitness classes to get some much-needed money back, so let us move on. Thanks to everyone who accommodated me in England, especially Greg for his mattress-lending and Sarah for her cooking. I had a fab time and really wasn't that impressed about coming back here, but at least it gets less heart-wrenching every time I do it. And the parents didn't cry at the airport this time, so it was good. I saw my marvellous ex-boyfriend Oli, who scared me somewhat by initially appearing all grown up and lawyery, but thankfully remaining the same fab person he always was underneath. And of course I have acquired a new reader, so that's always good. I like to inflict my crap on as many people as possible.

I also went through wedding photos from Jeannine and Oli's big day (the friends that I managed to kick up the arse and get together a couple of years ago), met some of my forensic coursemates and had typically ghoulish conversations, and mended bridges with Neil after apologising for being a bitch last year. Christmas is always good for burying hatchets, as long as they're not in anyone's heads. I attempted Trof chocolate cake and the Oriental buffet - failing miserably at both - and bought far too many sale items to bring back in my suitcases without worrying that they were going to explode. But it all worked out fairly well, I think. There were some good times. Now I just need to pay my car bill, earn some money, get over to Boston to see Shaw and Dan, and convince everyone else to come over here and see me. My evil machinations roll on. Or something.