Day Two Hundred and Twenty-Three - THIRTEEN!!!

Today is a bit of special day as I say goodbye a TV show that has helped to keep me sane these past few months [yes, TV really is that important to me when it's done well - you can make fun of me if you want] and it's also marking the first day that I'm posting a photo to my blog. I realise it's too late now - but many people who read this don't know what I look like - and I'm curious to see if they would be able to guess. Oh well. I will say that in the future I won't be posting many pictures of myself - more of the things that are my extraordinary things - but today's is inexplicably linked. Please know that I hate being photographed.

But yes, today was the series finale for Rome. I know, it really ended ages ago, but I'm both Canadian and poor so I had to wait for our History Network to pick up the series. As a big fan of Ancient Rome - I couldn't have been more pleased with the series - everything about it was amazing. To celebrate the finale and to give it praise [not bury it] I thought it would be fitting if I wore a toga.



As you can see - it is not the traditional white of a senator's toga. The only white sheet we had was a fitted one, so that was a no go. Joseph wrapped me in the toga - we tried a couple of different styles - both made me look heavier than what I am, but Roman women were most likely a lot more sturdy than I, so it's appropriate. Togas were worn in a number of different colours - largely determined by one's class and while I'm not entirely sure they had red and blue 70s flower print [my parents got these sheets as a wedding gift in 1970-something]...I'm more than sure that I would have been a dirty pleb. Also, please note how much hotter I would be if I were wearing some Roman gladiator sandals that are quite in fashion these days.

Day Two Hundred and Twenty-Two - Autism Walks

Normally I don't do too much with my Sundays - especially my Sunday mornings. This is a good time to sleep in, to eat nice Marmite on toast and to catch up on any episodes of DOOL or The Daily Show/Colbert Report that I have missed throughout the week. It's strictly a pajama time. Today was different as I set my alarm, got up, showered and put on a pretty summer skirt and went outside into the insane heat and humidity for some do-gooderism and exercise. Well, kinda exercise.

That's right, for keen and observant blog readers today I participated in the Walk Now For Autism. I managed to raise $300 for Autism Speaks - which is great for them...except I don't work for them [and I work to raise money for our organization, so...duh]. I wanted to volunteer myself for this so that I could get to know some of my co-workers a little bit better and to do something - many of our events are just too expensive for me @ this point in time, but I wanted to show my dedication. The walk involved everyone from Geneva Centre wearing black tshirts with snazzy new Geneva Centre branded red/black sling backpacks [which all the hip young kids have these days, even though they hold nothing...and like, negative nothing compared to my gigantic Invicta backpack] as well as red wristbands or headscarves. The walk was 3 kilometres long...which, yes - is highly pathetic. In my defence, it is criminally hot out [and I'm wearing black and a backpack - thus creating a nice amount of sexy backsweat]. And I'm criminally lazy.

One of our clients and mother saw us walking with our nifty banner and the young boy immediately ran up to the people he knew and he ended up carrying the banner and leading us on. That really speaks to the type of work done @ the centre and how much the people that work with our clients really mean to them. [yeah, I nearly cried - I'm a mushball]

Day Two Hundred and Twenty-One - Hippie Hippie Shake

As promised tonight I drank wheatgrass. Trust me, I did mention this before when I tried royal jelly. I have long been scared to try wheatgrass because I thought that it was like human Drano and might result in a potentially highly embarassing situation in a rather public space like a restaurant or the subway. As a result, I did some research and found out that while wheatgrass is great for your kidneys, blood and liver and boosting your immune system - it likely won't mess you up too badly. I tried the wheatgrass shake @ JFL as I was super excited with their updated menu.

Called the Singing Grasshopper the shake contains mango, peppermint, banana and agave as well as the juiced wheatgrass [which you can also do shots of if you are feeling extra hardcore]. Despite my initial reservations this drink almost immediately rocketed to the top of my list. When our drinks arrived my sensitive sniffer was in high alert and I started freaking out a bit "what smells like lawn?" I asked. It was my drink. It smelled like lawn and looked like a regular mango shake garnished with perhaps a shot of that You Can't Do That On Television slime [or Nickelodian slime for my American friends]. I was a little alarmed. Fearlessly I drank on [as is the custom with my people - we've never seen a drink that we didn't try @ least once]. Mmmmm - amazing. It tasted like lawn. In a good way. Like when the Gap came out with their original GapScents way back in 1995 and they had the one that smelled like grass. Yeah, like drinking that.

Day Two Hundred and Twenty - Not Quite How I Remembered It

Yes, I was a fine arts student and yes, I still hold out the faintest of hopes that maybe someday someone might employ me in that field. And while I have travelled a bit in search of le art [that's French], there are some milestones I have not achieved. Up until this evening the only art exhibition opening that I had been to was for my friend Seth, when he was a visual arts student @ York University. It was pretty cool as I totally knew the artist [I'm an insider] and I'm pretty sure there was candy. Also, the art was good [and I don't wear friend or love goggles even if the artist is someone I know - like Seth or Joseph]. Part of me is pretty ashamed that I've never gotten it together enough to be invited to some fancy art opening...until now, that is. As tonight I attended an art exhibition opening. Truthfully, I was volunteering so I didn't exactly get myself invited so much as I was working...but it was free to the public anyway.

I could gush about the exhibition - it is really wonderful. And yes, I've been totally smitten with most everything @ The Power Plant. Perhaps the best news is that due to a grant [I think?] the gallery is open to the public - all free, all summer. Their admission prices are very low anyway, but now it's free...so Toronto you officially have no excuse not to get out there and absorb [ummm, not literally] some quality contemporary art. The exhibition features a number of different artists from all around the world examining events, narratives and cultural artifacts from our recent history through re-enactment and reconstruction. I feel I'm not doing the exhibition any justice with my crummy words [which might be why I can't get a job], so please visit the gallery's website for more information. Also, it's on the waterfront - so really, who doesn't love that? In addition to the art being fabulous, the opening also featured cheap-ish drinks and hot dogs. Mmmm - art.

Day Two Hundred and Eighteen - Ice Ice Baby

It's about to become unbearably hot in my fair city - very likely by tomorrow. This will bring about more headaches [migraine episode today] and a bitch-osity of me that is very rarely seen. With each passing year I become more and more angry with summer and more fond of winter. True, summer has lots of interesting things like baseball and maybe roller coasters or something. Therefore, I have to be proactive in developing strategies to deal with the oncoming onslaught of humidity and insane heat and the push/pull of summer social things.

Without shame, I dig Starbucks. I mean, I guess I'm still a little ashamed, but I really like Starbucks - just the regular coffee drinks and sometimes a Chai Soy Latte and lots of delicious treats, too. However, obviously right now is not the time for hot coffee. I was, however, spurned onwards to Starbucks on West Queen West today after being called a hipster on the bus. To prove that I'm no hipster [and perhaps signifying that I am a douchebag with a laptop] I drank an iced coffee from Starbucks. Just regular coffee, served ice cold...with ice. And apparently some gigantic and fat straw that made me feel terribly self-conscious and Freudian. Joseph recalls that one of his first experiences with coffee was when he stayed @ a friend's house when he was little and his parents had a big jug of coffee in the fridge and he thought it was fan-tastic [however until he met me, he did not drink coffee]. It really is beyond tasty. This particular cup of iced goodness was my reward for a job well done for The Power Plant [delivery girl again] and also caused my heart to race like cra-zay and prevent me from sleeping until around 3:30am - so, in conclusion - good times.

Day Two Hundred and Seventeen - Jackets Required

When I was growing up we had potatoes practically every single day. The only real alternative was when we would have spaghetti. Otherwise, it was mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, scalloped potatoes [mmmmm], baked potatoes, BBQ-ed potatoes...and yes, even riced potatoes [because we never had rice...okay, sometimes Minute Rice]. We were a family bound together by our love for carbs. Eventually though, I got extremely sick of potatoes in all forms. With the exception of the mashed potatoes in my university dining hall and insane amounts of french fries - I cut potatoes almost entirely out of my life. My mum still finds this quite shocking and she's always wondering what I eat for dinner [since I don't eat meat either].

Recently though I have been allowing potatoes back in a little bit. I make something called Potato Surprise which is oven-roasted potatoes and other vegetables with balsamic and seasonings served on couscous. I also make awesome non-fried spicy fries in the oven. Tonight I decided to go all simple and I made baked potatoes. I actually had to look up on Wikihow to figure out how to make them. Heh. When they were cooked through I cut them open and fluffed them out - put in butter and sour cream and topped with [fake] bacon bits. It was a thing of beauty - like something out of a TGI Fridays advert. I've been successful in making far more exciting dishes, but these baked potatoes kinda thrilled me.

Oh yes, in England baked potatoes are called jacket potatoes [maybe only with filling - I'm not sure]. I find this insanely adorable. In my brain I have a whole episode going on with potatoes in jackets playing jazz in some smoke-filled underground bar.

Day Two Hundred and Sixteen - Spin Off

During my festive time of unemployment [and partial employment] I have been able to reconnect with one of my cheesefest-iest shows of love - Beverly Hills 90210. The 4pm airtime was perfect for an hour of unwinding after a hard day of looking for jobs and they were airing later seasons that I had not really seen, so it was all cake. These days I can only see about 2.5 episodes a week, instead of the daily regimen - but it's something I still try to do. Today I was out doing some paid work for The Power Plant and, vaguely concerned about the time - I got home just in time for a little 90210 - or so I thought.

I turn on the TV and instead of "da ne ne ne - chh chh" [with fist pump] it was...something brand new - Melrose Place. Now that I'm an adult [well, legally - this often has no bearing on my actions and thoughts] I feel that maybe I am capable of moving on from teenage drama to adult drama so I watched Melrose Place. After all, it's not really the red-headed stepchild of 90210 [there were far crappier versions of the theme] - it might be okay in the same way as BH. Well, it's only just okay. I admit that it takes more time to get into soap drama type things - an ensemble of characters with crazy backstories, lots of relationship things...and general craziness - it's a lot to absorb in one hour [daily soaps do the catch-up thing so much better]. Things I liked: a redhead named Sydney accused of murder and goes cra-zay, her crazy sister taking off her wig to reveal crazy brain surgery scars and then @ the same time getting it on with an amnesia guy [apparently this is some famous Melrose Place scene], lots of awful early 90s fashion, Heather Locklear! and Darren Star's unmistakably BH 90210-esque plaintive guitar wails of angst/lust/injustice/justice/anger/whatever other emotion.

So yeah, while it's not quite appointment TV - I feel like if I had more time to get into it, I could quickly become a superfan.

Day Two Hundred and Fifteen - Figgy Pudding

At my previous job, there was always free food floating around [ummm, not literally]. We ordered in food for clients and there was always leftovers [except one time my client group were wolverines]. I started to really take it for granted and I was bored silly with catering food - no matter how nice it was. However, I'm so lazy and I loved never having to make my own lunch and other assorted free treats. These days, in my current job the food is a little less plentiful. On occasion food does show up though - but it seems infinitely more mysterious to me as I'm not involved in ordering it and I'm not sure who is eating it first.

Today I went into the kitchen early this morning [the work kitchen] and there was a plate of assorted things - really, really tiny muffins [like, so so tiny] in assorted flavours, strawberries and dried...items. Normally, my food neophobia serves me well and I am very reluctant to try anything new - when I don't know what it is and where it came from [this strategy serves rats well and I figure they must be doing something right to have such a fantastic survival rate]. I took the items back to my desk for closer inspection and only after tasting them did I realize that I ate dried apricots and figs. So gross. Both of them. The flavour of the apricots is lovely, but the texture is so fleshy and wrong. Like biting into someone's arm. The figs? Well, I had no clue what it was. Actually, even after tasting it - I thought figs...but wasn't sure until I did a Google Images search. Yup - those are the culprits. So...seedy. Though, I do enjoy regular figs so I'm not sure what's happening.

Day Two Hundred and Fourteen - The Braidy Bunch

Another thing that me and my mum have in common [aside from our love for the TV program Dallas] is that we have no interest in my hair. My mum might be interested enough in her hair, but thankfully she's never cared much for mine. Sure, she prefers my hair to be long and she did cry when I got my first real haircut @ age fourteen. But, she never gave me too hard of a time when I subjected myself to about a zillion failed spiral perms or when I dyed my hair every colour under the sun. She also didn't make me endure hairstyles that I didn't like - including braids. I only liked braids if they were used as a means to achieve Princess Leia style hair danishes [which was a look I did indeed rock for much of the 80s]. One of my good friends while I was growing up, Jennifer - she could do her own French braids and she was a figure skater and I thought that these two things combined were very cool [because I couldn't do either]. So one time me and my mum signed up for a braiding night course thing...about 5 minutes into it I became very annoyed @ being touched and my mum lost her patience with the whole braiding thing. We forfeited the course fee, walked on out of there [yes, 5 minutes in] and got huge ice cream cones. I won't lie - I never regretted this decision and the ice cream was obviously so awesome that I still remember it almost 20 years later.

Now that I'm older I still don't do much with my hair. I wash it every now and again, I brush it once a day...and that's about it. I have a couple of signature hairstyles that I call "ears" - there are a few variations on this. It was a style I invented while trying to write a paper super late one night my first year in university and my wet hair was bugging me. All variations are supercute. But other than that and a ponytail, I don't do anything with my hair and I never use any hair products [other than shampoo/conditioner]. The other day I saw some older girl [because I'm still not yet a woman] wearing her hair in braids, kinda Anne of Green Gables style. I think this is an acceptable look for slightly crunchy type chicks [which I'm not]...but I decided maybe it was time to revisit braids. So today I wore my hair in braids all day. I had never braided my own hair, so just getting my hair into this style was a bit of a struggle and almost required a third hand. The results were mixed - I liked having my hair out of my way and not brushing against anything and Joseph thought it was supercute...but honestly I think it more resembled Snoop Dogg [remember when rappers started wearing their hair in real braids - not cornrows?] than anything girlie and did not do any favours to my face shape. Joseph clearly sees through love goggles.

Day Two Hundred and Fourteen - Hockey Night In Canada

Everyone knows that I'm the worst Canadian ever right? I think that's been pretty well-established. Well, the previously unmentioned NUMBER ONE reason why I'm a terrible Canadian is...I've never watched a hockey game. Ever. Sure, when I was a kid and too young to get into any real trouble growing up we would go to the Barons hockey games because there was nothing else to do and also there would be public school boys there. However, we would make a point of sitting in this little obstructed view area and paying more attention to our french fries and the boys and being secretly jealous [okay, not so secretly] of the public school girls who always seemed more fashionable and older [in a good way]. I can honestly say that I didn't absorb any of the game.

And so it goes. I developed an interest in many other spectator sports [not just baseball, but these days I do like to focus] - NFL, college basketball, college football, NBA, tennis [yes, tennis], soccer/football...yup, yup. Then it kinda became a "thing" - that I hate hockey. That I've never seen a hockey game. And I embraced that. But, no more. For tonight I watched a hockey game. On a Saturday night, even [as an aside when I was growing up I thought that Saturday *was* Hockey Night in Canada - like, that was the name of Saturday and the only time hockey existed on TV]. While eating dinner. What I found was - I have no clue where the puck is. And - I know that statement is oft repeated for people unitiated to hockey. It doesn't make it less true. I couldn't even eat my dinner - not because I was so engrossed - but because I just couldn't follow. The commentators are spectactularly unhelpful [should have watched on NBC I guess - I feel they would have dumbed it down]. It was okay, though. I don't think I will be watching again though. It's like...the anti-baseball.