Corner of Bourbon & Division

i'm averaging one post a month. That's... actually better than what I was managing before, but it's not quite the prolific journaling I had imagined myself doing.

Part of the problem, of course, is that I'm not doing much with my days. The only thing I'd be able to write about is my circular thought patterns, and how many hours of Borderlands 2 I've logged in a day. Not exactly the most exciting or uplifting stuff, you know? I'm still off work, and most of my days are spent puttering around the house, taking the dog for short walks, playing Pokémon (while on said short walks), and bopping from one doctor's appointment to the next.

I used to be a lot more confessional in this journal, but now I feel like I have a weird case of stage fright. It's most likely been brought about by the slew of new people I've added. You all seem really cool and interesting, but I don't know you, and I guess I'm past the point in my life where I feel comfortable sharing the more intimate parts of myself with people I don't know well. Those of you who aren't new to this LJ will doubtless already be well-acquainted with my failings at intimacy, and not be at all surprised. :P

I'm giving therapy another shot, after over 13 years since the last time I did it. The last time was group therapy, and it was an unmitigated disaster. I hated it intensely. I also had a brief few sessions with a student, who upon learning that I'd once dyed my hair green asked me if I'd done it to make myself ugly on purpose (o_O), and also seemed convinced that I couldn't possibly be gay. He had very rigid views about what was and wasn't appropriate, didn't understand much about gender or sexuality outside of cisgendered heteronormativity, and I felt like I was educating him most of the time. It was exhausting.

Anyway, I'm trying again. The new therapist seems nice. She's also a student (I'm going through a program at St. Paul's University), but she seems less horrified by LGBT stuff and geeky things than my previous therapist, by which I mean not at all. I saw her yesterday for the second time, and she asked me how I thought things were going, to which I didn't really have a response. I mean, am I supposed to see major changes after two sessions? I thought this was meant to be a longer process, to be honest. :P We'll see. I'm going to keep with it until the money runs out (some of this is covered by insurance, at least).

I'm off work until August 31st, at which point I'm seeing my doctor, and we'll proceed from there.

I had a really lovely weekend, at least. I went to visit fearsclave and his lovely wife, and spent two days going on Pokéwalks, having delicious food, learning how to play Go, and fishing. It was awesome, and I wish we could get together more often.

Happy Christmas to all my friends who celebrate it!

Happy Holiday Of Your Choice to those of you who don't celebrate Christmas!

To those of you who are faced with grief and hardship this season, or for whom the season has no good associations, I wish you strength and patience and as much happiness as possible.

You are all incredibly special to me, and I am with you in spirit even if I'm not there to tell you in person.

Had a great night with sultrysong yesterday, even though we both ended up going to bed much later than intended. By the time I turned out my lights it was nearly 1:00, and I didn't manage to sleep past 9:00 this morning. So, yeah, eight hours of sleep, but that's going to translate to 4 hours of sleep per day when spread out over the course of last night and tonight. *sigh*

Still, it was worth every minute. We ordered pizza, had a beer (only one, in spite of what my icon might imply!), and since she's on a business trip we got to claim it as an expense. The only thing better than beer is free beer, am I right? We spent the entire time chatting and catching up on our lives, and had a grand time.

I am not looking forward to the next few days, though. I have an appointment to get my tires changed on Friday, which means I'll only get about three hours of sleep then, and then I have to drive back to Ottawa on Saturday evening for an overtime shift on Sunday. Don't get me wrong, the extra money will be great, but there's going to be very little sleep for me in the foreseeable future.

I haven't heard back from Home Depot yet about getting an estimate for the new fence, so if there's nothing by tomorrow I'm going to call them and hassle them a bit. I really want to get that fence up ASAP. I'm hoping to get the yard completely cleared this weekend. I don't know how long the tire change will take on Friday (I'm guessing about an hour and a half to two hours), which will put me at home around 17:00. If I play my cards right I'll still have some daylight hours after dinner, and there should also be some time on Saturday for that sort of work. Of course, we're having a garage sale on Saturday if the weather permits, so I'm going to have to juggle that at the same time. At least this year Bean is unlikely to need to be brought to the ER during the garage sale. :P

I'm quite sure I had more to say than this, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. So I guess I'll leave this entry as it is. I can always come back and update again later, right?

I had dinner yesterday with guruwench and her "hunny N" as she calls him. I'd forgotten to post last week about my breakfast with her and le_maistre_e, and was subsequently thwarted for days by my lack of a functioning computer. Still, it was a lovely breakfast, and it served to remind me that I actually have friends who live in this city with whom I can socialise! It was very exciting.

So last night after work I hied myself over there, and proceeded to snorgle all their cats (except for Kira, who was not overly pleased at the new invasive human in her home). N made a delicious jambalaya, guruwench made an equally delicious berry crumble for dessert, and we spent over four hours talking about cats and geeky things and work and cooking. N has promised me his recipe for jambalaya, and this is very exciting indeed.

After last night's dessert-y indulgence, I am back to the yummy salads I prepared for myself. I discovered this evening, much to my dismay, that my cunning plan of pre-chopping and pre-packing veggies for my snacks is not a great plan. My cucumbers went horrifically mushy. I think it's that I tried putting them all in sandwich bags ahead of time. Next week I'll pre-chop but keep them in Tupperware so they don't, um, disintegrate. :P So right now I'm uncomfortably hungry, because it's not quite dinnertime yet. If I eat my food too early, I'll be hungry later, and being hungry at 03:00 is way worse than being hungry at 21:00.

The plan is to look up some more creative salad recipes for next week. I'm not the type of person to get bored of eating the same thing over and over again, but I think a little variety will do me good, especially in the nutrition department. I want to try new and different and hopefully inexpensive things. Experiment a little. Or a lot. So that'll be on the menu for this weekend (both figuratively and literally!).

I didn't go walking either yesterday or today, partly to give my ankles a break. They have not been overly happy with me for the sudden burst in activity of late. Today's lack of a walk was also partly because of inertia and tiredness and procrastination. I did do those 10 minutes of yoga I've been threatening to do for days, though, so I feel pretty good about that. My conclusion so far is that I am in terrible shape. Even 10 minutes of very basic yoga poses made me work for it, though it was definitely doable. It was a little more difficult because I kept having to move out of position to see the video in order to figure out how I was supposed to be positioned. Practise should help with that, at least. I'm hoping to get to a proper 30-minute routine by the end of the month.

Unfortunately I had some errands to run today, so I wasn't able to do the sleep-until-I-can't-sleep-anymore thing that I try to do on the transition day between day shift and night shift. It's the only time I can really try to make up for the sleep deficit I constantly live with. On a good day when I'm working I can manage my full eight hours. Usually it's closer to six. When I work night shifts I average about five hours of sleep, but it tends to be very broken because my room is very bright and my landlords tend to be very loud when they're home. On my transition day I sleep about 10-11 hours, but that's because I don't sleep before my night shift, so it averages out to about 5 hours a night. I generally get 7-8 hours when I'm home in Montreal, but that's only because I don't get up at the same time as pdaughter and Bean, who are usually up at 06:00, or whenever Bean decides it's "sunny time." Last week I started getting myself up earlier, but the earliest I managed was 06:20, which was still long after pdaughter got up (though Bean slept until nearly 07:00 that morning!). So this week I am going to try harder to train myself to get up when it starts getting light out. Hopefully that won't backfire on me when I need to sleep during the day on my night shifts.

Honestly, these days I find myself almost wishing I suffered from insomnia, because at least then I'd get stuff done instead of sleeping. Almost. The thing is, I love sleep a lot. If I could get more of it, I would, but what I need to do is require less of it. All my life I've been the type of person who needs about 9 hours of sleep a night to feel properly rested and be a fully functional human being. These days, though, I need to be the type of person who not only gets by, but thrives on four hours of sleep per night. I've been resisting setting an alarm, because I'm paranoid that it'll go off and wake pdaughter on the one day that Bean decides to sleep in, but without an alarm I seem to be physically unable to get myself out of bed. I don't suppose anyone has a trick they use to wake themselves without an alarm?

So that's the daily report on me. Riveting, n'est-ce-pas? Now I have to get back to work. Maybe next time I'll tell you all about the new TV shows I've been watching, if you're lucky. ;)

Today was spent in the company of fearsclave who was in town in order to put his lovely wife on a plane. I am sad I didn't get to see her, but the timing for that was off.

We spent the better part of the morning and afternoon together, starting with a quick stop by Sail, which is a sporting goods store I'd never heard of until today. It was very reminiscent of the Mountain Equipment Coop, and I had to fight all my outdoorsy sporting goods urges that suddenly all sprang to life again. It might be the promise of spring around the corner, but suddenly all I wanted to do was go for a really long hike in the woods and pull out my fishing gear and declare what fearsclave likes to call "jihad against the fish."

We dropped by a tobacconist's shop, because fearsclave has become a pipe-smoking redneck hipster. It was a neat little shop, though the name escapes me currently. The woman running the shop was the founder's granddaughter, which was very cool. Definitely a family business, and right in the heart of downtown Ottawa. We had a nice chat, and then it was time for lunch.

fearsclave had earlier suggested a restaurant called Coconut Lagoon, which serves Southern Indian food. It was absolutely delicious, though lunch time means we didn't get the full menu but rather a buffet-style self-serve. Like I said, absolutely delicious, and I will definitely have to go back one of these days.

The afternoon was reserved for the National Gallery, to which I had never been. Our goal was the Group of Seven, and we happily ogled the Tom Thomsons and the Arthur Lizmers for quite a while. It's a beautiful museum, and if my brain was more lyrically inclined right now I'd probably wax poetic about the architecture and the tranquil atrium with trees and flowers where you can sit and collect yourself if you're so inclined. I could feel the tension draining from me just by standing there for even a few minutes. I do love going to museums, greeting the paintings I know as old friends and discovering new ones as well. The last time I'd been to a museum was in 2011 when I visited Rome, which is pretty sad. I'm going to have to look up the free or at least half-price museum days so I can go a bit more often.

The temporary exhibit was super cool. It was an installation in the chapel by Janet Cardiff, called the Forty Part Motet. It's a musical piece--a reworking of Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis, a 16th-century English composer. She recorded each voice part as an individual track, then set up each with it's own speaker in the chapel. That way you can stand either dead centre or next to each speaker and hear each individual voice, or "climb in the music" as she puts it. It blew me away. If you have a chance to see it, I can't recommend it enough.

We continued on with our museum tour, though we didn't get to see all the exhibits. In the Canadian works section there was one painting in particular that caught our eye. It had been commissioned by a company that mined and produced refined nickel, and I'm pretty sure that the giant-ass painting done in the style of Soviet realism was not what they had in mind. (I don't remember the name of the artist. If someone knows it, please tell me!) It was huge and featured a rather aggressive looking worker holding the tools of his trade in a way that was more reminiscent of a machine gun than anything else. There was another man bent over a microscope next to a set of beakers and test tubes, while a WWII-style bomber flew over a high-speed train. On the left factory chimneys belched smoke into the sky, while on the far right molten nickel was poured into a container not featured in the painting. Above the molten nickel skyscrapers reached toward the indifferent sky. So, naturally, fearsclave and I had the following exchange:

Me: "Science!"

fearsclave: "Industry!"

In Unison: "PROGRESS!"

It was a good moment. I think we giggled over it for about 10 minutes after that.

Alas, the day came to an end far too quickly, since I'm working tonight (and here I am!). But it was a nice change of pace from work-sleep-work-home-chores-sleep-back to work. Tonight I just have to work through being tired and the headache I developed about half an hour before coming here, and everything should be fine.

My friends G and JF came over with their daughter Gabby for a few hours today, which was very nice. I hadn't seen them in well over a year, not since Gabby was a wee baby barely able to sit up on her own. She's 21 months now, walking on her own and chattering away in mostly incomprehensible toddler speak. She's cute as a button, and she and Bean played mostly nicely together. Bean is not yet at an age where he can truly understand the concept of "this child is much smaller and younger than you, so you have to be patient," so there were quite a few instances in which various parents had to intervene in order to ensure that harmony reigned. Or, you know, to ensure that there wasn't too much chaos. :P

Gabby was enamoured of the stroller Bean got for Christmas and spent a lot of the time pushing it around, as well as the bright pink Barbie Volkswagen Beetle that was also a Christmas present. There were a few scuffles over the MegaBloks, since Gabby was very enthusiastic about taking apart whatever it was Bean had just built, much to his dismay. The one time they played together very nicely was when Gabby got out her LeapFrog toy computer, and she and Bean had a good time pushing all the letter buttons and listening to the alphabet song.



Overall, it was a great visit, punctuated by the usual semi-chaos of having wee ones running around. Our stairs aren't especially childproof (read: not at all), so we had to do a fair bit of corralling to keep Gabby from launching herself down the stairs with gleeful abandon. I made coffee in the Tassimo, which I haven't done in ages. The machine and I continue to have a love-hate relationship. I successfully made one latte, and the next one took, like, three tries. The first time the machine wouldn't read the barcode. The second time, because I had a second appliance running, the power bar cut the electricity because it was convinced I would burn down the house. Luckily pdaughter stepped in and saved me from the coffee machine, and I was able to get everyone the coffee they wanted.

G and JF brought danishes. I have had two, and they were squidgy and delicious and now I feel much too full. I did it to myself, but I regret nothing. Bean had half of one after declaring that he didn't want any, and subsequently pronounced it delicious.

The visit was a short one, as Gabby had to go home for her nap and pdaughter had to start prepping for her cake decorating class tomorrow. As I type this she is busily making a cake in the kitchen. Bean very excitedly declared he was going to help, but he's been coughing horribly since last night, and after he coughed all over the counter pdaughter decided that this was way too unsanitary. Bean proceeded to scream, howl and then sulk, because he wanted to HEEEEEEEELP!!!! and why couldn't we see that? No amount of explaining that we understood he wanted to help but that he was coughing too much seemed to have any effect. For a while it felt like we were in a Buster Keaton movie with extra sound effects. pdaughter would take Bean off the chair he'd climbed on, he'd scream NO! and climb back up. Lather, rinse, repeat, until finally he gave up and went back to playing with his toys. Right now he has a pretty elaborate set-up involving his train tracks, his MegaBloks, and his Playmobil. I'm not entirely sure what's happening in his imaginary world, but it seems like it's pretty complex.

I have just been granted a sneak peek of the "zebra cake" that pdaughter is baking. This is a trial run for Bean's birthday cake. It looks super cool, but we'll only be able to tell if it worked when the cake is cut open after baking, which means it will have to wait until after it's decorated. Pictures will likely be forthcoming on Facebook if you follow her there.

In other news, I just got the following very plaintive email from my mother, which I will share for your amusement.

Angel, it's been ages since we saw you for dins. Any chance for this Sunday - or such ? Must discuss our latest catastrophies with you - coffee machine exploded, telly roared shut, toaster jammed, computer crashed & daddy's toothbrush went bald. Help!

Love, Mim

It sounds like they've had quite the week. I'll have to call back and confirm dinner, so that I can get the details of all these disasters.

I am declaring tonight a complete success.

Contrary to all past experience, we had our play finished Thursday night, and by the time Friday night rolled around everything was printed and highlighted and we were ready to go. It only took ten years for us to get this far, but we are now a well-oiled machine!

There were technical difficulties, of course, and the usual last-minute flurry of trying to assign all the parts. This year we modelled our play a little after This is Spinal Tap and the "Behind the Music" stuff from MTV. We tried to set up a multimedia thing, but we only succeeded halfway, because the projector only half-worked and the speaker wouldn't play our music/sound effects. Alas.

It was still really awesome. We even had le_maistre_e make a surprise guest appearance via Skype, playing herself, our resident expert Capricornucologist. It was a big hit with everyone.

This year we held the event in the afternoon so that people with kids could attend, and it was a whirlwind of teensies running all over the place. I had drawing/colouring supplies on hand which met with unanimous approval, but it certainly added a whole new level of energy to the event! One cannot expect teensies to be quiet and perfectly still the whole time, and they weren't, but on the whole we had relatively few incidents. Bean was mostly well-behaved, though he (and a few of the others) did a fair bit of rolling around on the floor and on the benches. Right at the very end he pulled a bit of an Exorcist because he didn't want to put on his boots, so it took both pdaughter and me to hold him down and get him dressed and he flailed and shrieked and generally carried on like he was possessed, but that was the worst of it. For the most part he played very nicely with the other kids and had a good time (I hope!). Certainly he was happy to see all his friends again, adults included.

And, of course, pdaughter finally got to see one of our events! So yay!

There was about a half hour's worth of dismay when I couldn't find my cell phone, which would have been a major hassle for me. I have a lot of important information on there, and I'm going back to Ottawa tomorrow, which would have added multiple levels of inconvenience to my situation. Luckily it turned out that it had fallen in the car at some point (I don't remember bringing it with me, but I clearly must have, since that's where it was. Then again, I don't care if it teleported itself, so long as I got it back.), and I was very happy to recover it.

As usual I was too busy running around in circles to truly get to socialise with any of the guests, but it was great to see everyone again, and it served to reinforce my conviction that I have to figure out a way to see my friends more.

In parting, here is a picture of me and the Capricornucopia boys. Can you believe that in 10 years we have never managed a group photo? Shameful.

I have a long(isn) post that I want to write about willpower (and about how it's a finite resource) and the notion of extended willpower that I discovered thanks to the iProcrastinate podcast.

This is not that post. Today there is no post because the morning was spent running errands and doing chores, the afternoon was spent catching up with friends I literally hadn't seen in years, and the evening was spent with my parents, whom I hadn't seen in nearly a month.

And now it's 22:00 and I have to go to bed.

The post will have to wait.

I wish you all the joy of the season. To those of you who are celebrating, much contentment and affection in the presence of your loved ones. For those of you who don't celebrate this day, all the happiness that you could wish for on any day of the year. For those of you who can't celebrate for reasons outside of your control, I hope that all the abundance of love and joy and hope in the world spills over and fills all the spaces in your lives—because luckily there isn't a finite amount of the stuff, and the more people engage in it the more there is to go around.

I love all of you. Thinking of all of you today, and always, even if I'm not always around to type it out on my screen. :)