How to win at pool

So the following conversation sent me into hysterics and made me lose at pool tonight.

Housemate: I was reading about this study, where they were trying to find out if a rubgy ball would move if everyone blew towards it at the same time. Because you know when you take a penalty in rugby, and the wind moves the ball, and it doesn't go over the posts. So the study got lots of people to blow at the ball when it was kicked and they looked at how far it would move.

Pause.

Housemate: Well actually, it didn't do anything.

Pause.

Housemate: But it was a really interesting study.

Hysterical laughter. Jenny promptly pots the black ball and loses.

Just for Jerome

Who will keep hassling me until I update my blog ;o) good naturedly of course.

And who spent a good couple of hours the other night telling me about Reunion (the island) as seen below, since he is from there. For those of you whose geography is as shite as mine, a map is attached. And now I really want to go and see the beaches there, because they are amazing, and I wouldn't mind seeing Madagascar and all its animals either. So thanks, Jerome, for making me extremely jealous that you're going home to 30 degree temperatures in a week's time!!

Just for good measure, I feel that I should steal some of Jerome's pictures from the island and post them later, especially all the ones where he seems to be eating or drinking beer ;o)

A PS

Just so I don't forget, I need to ask everyone in England when you're going to be around over the Christmas holidays, so I can try (probably fairly badly) to co-ordinate seeing you all. I shall be flying in on the 17th December and am staying until the 9th Jan, though the time before Christmas is mostly taken up with family stuff (including visits to the wonderful Cornwall and Birmingham). Depending on where people are, I need to work out some sort of running-around-the-UK-with-car schedule to see if I can meet you all. So e-mail me if you know where you're going to be, or even if you don't! Of course I would like to suck everyone into visiting me in Oxford instead, but failing that cunning plan, I will manoeuvre my way to as many of you as I can. I am almost definitely up north on the 27th, in Cornwall from the 21st-23rd, Oxford in the middle, Manchester in the New Year, lord knows where else...... Chip in with your two cents' worth. Gift bribes get first priority ;o)

Pompeii comes to Vancouver

So Vancouver seems to be degenerating into Armageddon. It's really very freaky. For the past four days we've been suffering under this weird non-shifting fog, which is kind of like the fog that usually surrounds UBC in the morning after it rolls off the ocean, only it's been here for days without a break and shows no sign of abating. You can barely see more than 25m in front of you, and it's damn cold, and driving in it is really not a pleasure. I borrowed someone else's pictures, but this is what it's like here currently.

But the scariest thing was that just now, when I drove downtown to meet Sunshine in a pub, I got off the Granville bridge and suddenly drove into Pompeii. I came around the corner and the entire downtown core around Seymour had no traffic or street lights on. It was completely dark, and extremely foggy, and everywhere there were eerie car lights in the silence, but no other lights. All the cars had to stop at the intersections and let each other through in a random order, because no-one had right of way. And at every intersection there were pedestrians running across the roads so they could cross before the cars came out of the fog and hit them, so there were all these shadows running in front of the car. It was so much like I imagine it being in the midst of Vesuvius erupting, with the ash blinding the air and people running for cover, and darkness. At the same time as it being really rather scary, it was also very surreal and interesting. Luckily I made it through the madness and didn't hit anything, but driving home was equally challenging. I am interested to see what the weather does now, but I'd rather there were no volcanos, or earthquakes, or other such disasters waiting round the corner for us after the fog. Watch this space.

I'm annoyed

Because my agency phoned me today to ask me to be a forensic lab assistant on a crime show called 'Evidence' for Friday, Monday and regularly until the end of the season in March, and I can't do it because I'm working at UBC! I contemplated phoning in sick tomorrow, but in the end my better judgement prevailed. How annoying is that. Not only a regular appearance, but in a forensics series! I told the agent to snag me any further parts on the show, but I guess I just have to live with not being involved for now..... :o(

Too busy to blog

Apologies for the lack of decent blogging recently, but life is getting rather hectic. I've just started temping at UBC, where I'll be for the next two and a half weeks (in the Admissions dept at the Dean of Medicine's office) and each of my Saturdays for the next three weeks are also booked up. It's all getting rather hard to fit in. Last Saturday I was invigilating/marking an exam for SFU, this Saturday I am an election official at the Civic Elections for 14 hours straight, and next week I'm back invigilating and marking an exam for SFU again. In the midst of all this I somehow need to get my car aircared (centres not open on Sundays) and insured (not until it's aircared), buy copious numbers of birthday and Xmas cards, go to the doctors, try and book Coldplay tickets, do some washing (becoming increasingly important) and actually sleep. Oh, and I have 7 hours of computer work to do for my company in England as well. And a meeting about the elections tomorrow, line dance, and a trip to the cinema. Oh Saturday night I want to stay with my friend and take him to the airport on Sunday morning to go back to Montreal, but will I be alive after 14 hours of dealing with voters? Who bloody knows.

On Monday Christie, Emily and I went to see Jason Mraz at the Commodore Ballroom. Despite the disappointment of finding out that James Blunt was not playing in support (rude e-mail sent to Ticketmaster) and that some random girl with a guitar was playing instead (hard to sit through without strangling myself), Jason Mraz was extremely good. He was funny without trying too hard, interactive with the crowd, seemed able to improvise at a moment's notice, gave credit to his band when it was due, and had lots of energy when performing. His songs were all good and the show went on for a long enough time that we had thankfully forgotten about the opening act. I recommend going to see him. Even if he does look like a geeky frat boy. His voice is very pure, rather like the lead singer out of Keane. He took the piss on one occasion and did an opera 30 seconds or so of one of his songs, hitting notes that no man should ever be able to get to. It was kind of scary, but very impressive at the same time.

Tomorrow is free ski night at Cypress, but I am probably going to be too busy to go there, which sucks. However, it was trying to snow here on Saturday, so the ski runs are going to be ace soon. Whistler has been open for a couple of weeks already. Let's hope I don't fall over as much as last year, eh Denise?

Au sujet des hommes

First of all, my cute and angsty housemate has created a blog, so I'm now going to plug it. It's less of a blog and more of a gallery of all his photos (he is a photographer in his spare time) with a comment about why he took each one and what he was thinking about when he took it. He does some good work, so check it occasionally to find out what pics he's posted. He's going to do it gradually, so there should be a couple more posted each day. And he's cunningly written in both French and English, which is impressive in my opinion. I've linked him under the bloggers on my sidebar, but here he is again below.

So check out Gilles....I think he's worth it.

Secondly, I just went on a date with someone - or at least we went to Starbucks for coffee. I think it went well and I hope we can meet up again soon. I hate feeling like that, because then if he doesn't contact me I'll be disappointed! But I'm not going to jinx it by supplying any more details. So cross your fingers for me, dear readers. God knows I have nothing else to fill my social time with..... ;o)

Curiosity made the cat edgy

I've been quite busy over the past few days, what with my computer work, filming Supernatural (being a religious nut in a revival tent in a field), going to a sex party (ooer), finally managing to start getting some temping work at UBC and doing a Marker certification course at SFU which now allows me to get a $2/hr pay raise and mark the exams once we've invigilated them. I've also been out to dinner twice in two days (with female friends, before anyone gets mildly excited) and have seen Jarhead at the cinema. Despite some mixed reviews, I thought it was a really good film, with the right mixture of funny and upsetting. I've ranted about the lack of available men in Vancouver on a forum and so far received nearly 70 e-mails from guys, although the ones I am contacting will be in single figures. I need to clean my room up and it's shitty weather today. And I've got Jimmy Eat World songs on repeat, though luckily on my headphones so I'm not pissing any of my housemates off.

With the advent of Christmas, and my flight home nearing, I am wondering about people I haven't seen for a long time. Fate has thankfully thrown my vacation in at the same time as Shaw's, so we can meet up in England and see each other, and I've contacted a couple of other people to ask when they're around. The trouble is that I am too soft-hearted and I want to make sure that everyone I know is ok, even when I really shouldn't contact some of them to preserve my sanity. I've been very good this year - after coming back from England in March I vowed not to contact two guys any more in order to save myself more heartache, and since then I haven't e-mailed them, asked for news of them or read their blogs. Not bad for 9 months. But of course now that I'm going to be in the same country as them (I assume, since I don't know where they are) I want to know that they are alive, well, happyish and gainfully occupied. Well actually I'd like one of them to turn up at my door with Christmas presents for me, but whatever ;o)

The point is that I know I should still not contact them, since it probably can't do any good, but I hate not knowing how they are. It's getting harder to resist the urge to contact them..... but then I guess if I manage not to do it even when I'm in England, there must be some sort of completed therapy bonus, right?

An appeal to Jimmy Eat World

Current listening:

Give Me Everything You Got Now
I don’t feel a single thing
Drag me out into the cold rain
Let it hover over me
Kiss me with your cherry lipstick
Never wash you off my face
Hit me, I can take your cheap shots
Leave you with the love we made

Come back on tour to Vancouver!!

New shoes for Fab

So Fab now has new brake shoes and boots, plus new rotor drums as well. And I am bereft of $315......

Halloween Masquerade

I have just returned from downtown, having sorted out some problems with my new cell phone, and have discovered a distressing fact. Despite my trying on size 2 trousers in Old Navy, they are still too big. The next size down? A size zero. Yes, I am officially able to fit into trousers that don't exist, and I am a person worth nothing. Waaahhh!! I'm not sure how this happened, since I have an arse and some hips, which generally size 0 trousers don't cater for, but I think it's just Old Navy being weird. I bought trousers elsewhere and they were a size 4, so I can feel better about that.

However, to cheer me up on the way home, I drove past a doctored sign that used to tell residents about the risk of fires starting here. There are so many wooded and built up areas that when the weather is hot, the risk of fires starting is communicated to people via these boards; there are four options (low risk, moderate, high, extreme) and an arrow is moved along to point to the relevant risk level. However, some cunning person has made their own and stuck it at the side of the road. It now reads "Risk of Alien Invasion" and when I drove past the arrow was pointing to "Extreme........"

So now I will move onto the Halloween Masquerade which I went to on Monday. The first prize for the best costume was an obscene $10,000 - so as you can no doubt infer, people went all out to win this. For my part I merely donned some left-over police stuff from Saturday night when we had our house party, and spent the rest of the night being amazed at what people had come up with. Here are a selection of the best ones, though sadly Z95 (radio station sponsoring the night) didn't take pictures of the most funky ones. Although they did get me in one, so that is below.

First prize winner of $10,000: Family Guy serial killer pile of bodies.

Me in police uniform, Sunshine's friends Bill and Audrey in Viking garb, Sunshine as Superwoman (of course).

The guy who looked and acted SO much like Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Carribbean that I really wouldn't have been suprised if it had turned out to be him. Seriously.

May I introduce Death?
Britney Spears and Ashlee Simpson dolls, in original packaging.

The Incredible Hulk, of course.
Sadly, those are the only pictures of the main players on the website at the moment, although I am hoping that Sunshine's pictures turn out to be good. The costumes that didn't get captured and which I thought were worth a mention are as follows: the devil, a transformer who could actually transform into a car (my vote for the winner), a Decepticon, an I-Pod, a mermaid on a rock and the fisherman who caught her, a girl dressed as a blow-up doll, the Pilsbury dough boy, a monkey climbing a palm, a 7 foot rooster, the Mountain Dew spies, Beaker from Sesame Street, a guy carrying himself around in a cardboard box (you had to see it to understand it), a hammer, Elijah Wood's character from Sin City, a Jaigermeister bottle, a gumball machine, a plug and socket combo, a man made up entirely of glow sticks, and the cookie monster off Sesame Street. I love this country........