Holy Crap

It's been almost two years since I posted anything to this blog! I don't know what's been going on with me. Oh yeah...life. Anyway...I think it's kinda symbolic that I have decided to post something almost two years to the day of my last post. Lots has happened and I'm now living in another city in another time zone and am back on track. Things are looking up again. My career is going along well and my love life is...very nice.

I really have to thank a lot of super great friends that have seen me through all the rough patches...pals back home in Edmonton and friends here in Toronto. I have to say that having people close to you who care about you genuinely and not about your job or about how successful you are is an amazing thing. Please, give a friend a hug whenever you can.

I'm also linked to a new blog for Bake & Bake, a baking club that gets together every month or so to bake (and occasionally cook) our brains out. Well not literally. Mostly we make delicious treats and savoury delights. I'm the newest member and have made some sort of bread product for my first two endeavours. I'm determined to make something other than a bread product soon.

I'm home tonight for the first night in awhile. My washer in my apartment overflowed this week and leaked water into the suite below. My landlord had to replace the floor of the bathroom. I'm not sure what else could happen to me. It all started with dropping my laptop at the airport and smashing the corner, then I thought I had appendicitis but I actually had a hemorrhagic ovarian cyst and then my bathroom implodes. I've heard that bad things often happen in threes. Well I hope that's all for a good long time.

In other news, I got a Kitchen Aid immersion blender for Christmas. I love it. I now spend time thinking of things I can blend just so I can use it. I'm going to get all the attachments for it too. Thanks sis!

It's pretty late here and I still have to get ready for bed. Tomorrow is a long day (followed by another long day) of strategic planning for the Playwrights Guild of Canada so I should really get some rest.

I'll write more again soon.

This has been really hard...

I'm not sure if I should be posting this out there in the world for anyone to see. Usually I just put these personal thoughts and reflections on paper or on my laptop for me to peruse at a later date...or not at all. But I think it's okay to let this out a bit and express myself without turning this into a pity party.

I think I've made a big mistake in coming home. Not in the actual act of coming home but in the motivation. I feel like I've been recreating my life here and it's not a life that I want to recreate. I feel like I've compromised my ideals and my goals so much by coming home, not because I wanted to but because I was chasing something with someone that was a fiction. I was going after a relationship that I knew, deep down, was over. I just needed confirmation which I never (I still haven't in firm terms) received. I've believed for so long that if I worked on myself - worked on being a cultured, educated, creative, compassionate person -that things would turn out alright. That I would have a good life and find success on my own terms and feel...I don't know...fulfilled. I've worked very hard to live the life of an artist and, as I sit here to today writing this, I'm realizing that I've put that aside. I've been scared of being alone and not being intimate with someone. I've been distracted by wanting to feel attractive and desired by others. I realize that I've lost my way. This feeling of compromise has eroded my self-confidence and my feeling of worth and my ability to do what I want to do with my life. How can I be true to anyone, true to the world, if I can't be true to myself? How can I stand in front of a room full of students and tell them that they can achieve their dreams and goals if I'm not actively doing the same? How can I expect to be attractive to anyone who values what I think is important if I appear to be desperate to give up these values so I can feel affection? I can't.

I need to get back on track. I have to get out of my rut. I have to find value in me and trust in my abilities and resume the trajectory I was on before I came back home. I may be geographically in one place but that does not mean that my spirit and my work has to stay rooted in this one place. The life of an artist is hard. I don't want to let the world, societal pressure, self-doubt close in on me and prevent me from living my life; my full life. I'm sure there will be sacrifices that I may have to make along the way but I do not want to look back and say that I didn't put up a fight. I don't want to look back and know that I let things get the best of me. I want to look back on my accomplishments and feel proud and in the end, when it comes right down to it, I want to know that I was true to myself. I have to be true to myself. Whether I have a family or not, whether I have a primary intimate relationship or not, I have to do what keeps me alive and that is expressing myself with and through my art. Yes, getting paid for it is necessary to survival but being a creative person, an engaged person, is a state of being unto itself.

No more feeling sorry for myself. No more wishing that things were different and that I made different choices. I'm 32. It's time for me to grow up and take control again. I have to get off my ass, stop complaining and focus on what I can get done in the moment. No one else can live my life for me. If I want my life to feel full, I have to go out and fill it.

Oh my...

I hadn't realized that it had been so long since I updated this thing. My apologies to the three people who have skipped past and glanced at my blog. I certainly haven't been writing much in this format considering that I'm a writer and all. I suspect that I've been suffering from writerly constipation. It's debilitating. Really. It is.

So things to say...I've been listening to Ricky Gervais' podcasts available on the Guardian Unlimited website. Hilarious. I downloaded them onto my iPod and have been listening to the first four episodes as I walk to work in the morning, trying not to laugh out loud. So instead, I break out into various smirking expressions or wide grins, requiring me to cover my mouth (yes, like a little Asian girl). I've actually thought out starting my own podcast with a friend of mine. What would it be like? Perhaps you'll find out sooner than later!

Christmas has just past and New Years is on the horizon. Maybe it's just me but New Years planning is always so stressful. Where am I going to go? What am I going to do? What am I going to wear? And who am I going to be with? It's weird being back home after being away for a few years and having to realign myself. Most of my friends have serious significant others and/or children and...well...it's strange. It's not like I'm hankering to settle down right away but this town sure makes me feel like the odd one out being single. I had a lot more single friends in New York and it's not really a surprise that I find this city a little boring. Woohoo! Bars where they usually play crappy music! Where everyone drives alone in their cars and trucks and yell at pedestrians! Where most people are kinda dull and uninterested in anything but steak!

Oh god...am I getting bitter?

Naah...

And don't mind the use of exclamation marks...I will use them sparingly in the future. I once knew this guy who ended every single sentence in his emails with an exclamation mark. I felt like he was yelling at me all the time. I will endeavour to avoid this annoying trait.

And my two cents for the day...there's a new-ish radio station in the city that I enjoy listening to. They had a contest to find a new news announcer for the morning show. Anyway...I'm becoming more and more disappointed in this guy. By the pictures shown on their website, he looks the part (meaning he looks good announcing the news in the modern rock station booth, what with his wrist bands and spiky hair) but he mispronounces words, gets facts wrong, and seems a bit lazy in getting news stories. For example. he pronounced Sault Ste. Marie "Salt Saint Marie" and this morning his facts were vague as he reported about the Liberal party employee who had the offensive blog. The report just peetered out. He didn't mention many names and he obviously hadn't read the offensive material so he was going on what other media outlets had already reported. But then he couldn't even get those facts right. I get the sense that he really doesn't understand world events and what people really want from their news announcers. I guess he gave up his burgeoning career as a teacher to do this for a year. I'm like, 'shouldn't you know better? You're getting paid to provide the news, dude. Be responsible!' Sigh. But the most hilarious thing is that the host of the show doesn't trust him enough to let him do the weather. He also mentions at every introduction that this guy is the winner of "the contest". Will he last the rest of the year? Only time will tell...

Driving across the country

Well in the home stretch of my trek across the country as I move home to the Canadian Prairies from the bustling hubbub pf New York City. I've ridden in an air-conditioner-less van from New York to Montreal at which point I moved all my stuff into a rental van for the rest of my trip. For your information, National Car Rental is the only car rental company in Canada that allows one-way rentals of regular vehicles (not U-Haul cube vans and trucks). Isn't that nice of them? And they give you quality cars too. I got a Grand Caravan with 'stow-&-go' seats. The seats flip down into the floor of the van so there's, like, way more room in the back. Plus, since it's a mini-van, it's all about the comfort. A/C and power everything. Plus I purchased a Monster iCar play device that charges my iPod and plays by tuning to an empty radio station so I can hear all my songs as I drive. I leave it on shuffle so I have continuous play. Sweet!

Montreal was sweltering and covered in smog. Ottawa was sweltering and filled with conference attendees. Every city in Southern Ontario was sweltering until I got to Thunder Bay. And then it started to rain.

In Thunder Bay yesterday, it took me a while to realize that I was getting odd looks as I walked around the city. I couldn't put my finger on it until I realized that, besides the Native folks in the city, everyone else is white. Everyone! Weird. Now I'm probably making a generalization since I was only there for overnight but it was a bit startling, especially coming from New York. It probably didn't help that I ate my dinner at the restaurant closest to my hotel...Montana's. It's like an all western version of TGI Fridays. Their Value Village was well organized and spotless. Unfortunately, the clothes were pretty boring, scrubbed of any really interesting clothes...kind of like the city.

And what's with Winnipeg? They have a street called Broadway and West Broadway and Wall Street. Yet it's so tiny and quaint. The public art project they have on display is 'Polar Bears in the City'. Like cows in the city. Polar Bears on public lawns painted and decorated in all sorts of ways. There was one styled like a biker on a Harley. I took a picture of him with my stuffed duck, Albert. When I get home, I'll post his picture. I also have him posing with the giant goose in Wawa. Albert likes posing with strange and giant things. I wanted to have him pose with this strange Sasquatch-like thing in Minniwaki, ON but I passed by too quickly and couldn't turn around. Besides...it was freaky.

Winnipeg also has the unfortunate urban planning that results in Hwy #1 running through most of insides of the city before getting you outside the city to continue on your way. Why? There's a "bypass" route but if you miss that or want to go into the city to refill your tank, you end up weaving through the city. It took me an extra 45 mintues. Grrr...

Now I'm in Brandon, Manitoba. It's a small town but everyone is super friendly. I must look like an outsider or something but it doesn't seem to be as big a deal. Any town that has it's own alternative radio station (hear that Edmonton?) is alright by me.

And this is going to sound like a complete cliche...but seeing Tim Hortons every so often really does make me feel like it's a familiar place to get a decent cruller and get some much needed caffeine thanks to the iced cappucino. I don't drink coffee usually so the iced drink is a nice compromise although I don't think I'll make it a habit. It's not really good for you, it's pretty sugary and, while the caffeine is definitely a strong stimulant while I drive alone for days, I'd like to keep it an occassional stimulant...not one I want to have all the time. And the crullers...Dunkin Donuts have nothing on Tim Hortons.

Not that I'm going to make a habit of eating crullers either.

Roommates, pt. 2

Oh god! I have the unfortunate duty of reporting that I think I caught my roommate masturbating in the living room. I was in my room pretty much all day due to a cold while my roommate was in and out of the apartment. I was on my computer and so there was little noise coming from my room. When I decided that a workout would be a good thing to attempt since I had been inside all day, I ventured out of my room. Now I need to explain that my bedroom door is halfway down the hall. At one end of the hall is the bathroom, on the other is the living room and the rest of the apartment. My roommate's room is at the end of the hall, right outside the bathroom door.

When I opened my door to go the bathroom, I heard a "shit" and a thud. When I turned to see what had made the noise, I saw that my roommate had made a dive for the floor from the easy chair that is in view from the hallway. The lights were out in the living room and I really didn't want to investigate. I went straight to the bathroom, put in my contacts and headed back to my room. I think I saw him hunched by the front door. When I went into my room and closed the door, I heard him scurrying to his room.

Ew! Why wouldn't he do that sort of thing in his bedroom? Why wouldn't he think to make sure that I wasn't home? And people wonder why I don't hang out in any other part of my apartment besides my bedroom.

A little background...my roommate creeps me out. While I don't think he's dangerous, I don't offer any information about myself to him or "hang out" with him on any occassion. Perhaps it's because I've found the Village Voice in our apartment open to the phone sex ads in the back of the paper with certain ads torn out of it not once, but on several occassions. Or perhaps it's when I found a low class, amateur porn mag called "Naughty Neighbors" in a stack of papers on the kitchen table. In that particular issue, they had a feature on reader's submissions of "naughty" cell phone pictures. Mostly pictures of cameraphones up skirts. Or maybe it's when the Playboy catalog comes every quarter. Now I understand that porn is a healthy outlet for sexual expression but he's so weird about it and sloppy (he hides his porn like he hides the fact he wears a tupee...meaning badly) that it weirds me out more than if he was just upfront about it. I mean really...does he really think he's fooling me?

I can't believe he dove for the floor...the rug burn...

Roommates

Why do some roommates have to be so strange? Is it some prerequisite or something? My first roommate and I got along so well that I gave the toast at his wedding. At the time, we both joked that, when we moved on from the arrangement, we wouldn't be able to find another roommate as fantastic as we both were to each other. Little did I know that it would beso true. My current roommate wears a toupee and he doesn't want me to find out. The weird thing is that I've been living here for, like, the last eight months. He also doesn't so much wash the dishes as rinse them. So gross. He also seems to have a catalogue shopping habit but not for cool things. For crappy, cheap, kitchy catalogue items. Like ceramic kittens and birds or weird squeegee things for the shower. He also likes to buy things at flea markets but all of it is junk! I see a new portable radio in the apartment every other week. And books like "My Dark Shadows Scrapbook" or "The NEW Student Bible". The other day I saw that a bird bath had been delivered to our apartment. That would be fine but WE LIVE ON THE 12TH FLOOR! But what happened today really, really took the cake. I was in my room when I heard the unmistakeable strains of soprano saxophone floating in under my door. The soprano saxophone belonging to none other than Kenny G. When I moved in my roommate told me he like to listen to Classical Music. I think I found out today what he considers classical. Kenny G. I shudder.

Ginger Snap Cookies

So I looked at my lonely blog and noticed that I really only have one post. I know I just started this thing but, really, I ought to have more content. Unfortunately, I'm supposed to be completing my thesis and two other assignments before the end of next week rather than surfing the internet and adding posts to my blog. I have 5 days in which to complete all my writing assignments. Realizing this, I bought 5 ginger snap cookies from an organic bakery that sells its wares at the Union Square Greenmarket on Saturdays. Their ginger snaps are very good. I had thought that I could have a cookie a say as a way to encourage myself to get my work done...you know...a little sweet motivation in the form of a cookie. Alas, I've already eaten two of them. And I haven't gone to the gym for a complete week. For a girl that had cut out junk food last semester and was going to the gym at least every other day I've fallen far. Sigh. Perhaps this downward spiral towards pudginess will end when I'm forced to graduate. Until then, I must muster up all my willpower to not consume a third cookie...

mmmm....cookies....