June Resolutions

#1 – Less junk. I know I said this when I started this blog, but school got insane and I fell off the wagon. Sometimes, getting home at 9pm after a 10 hour day, all I have the energy to do is eat chips for dinner.

#2 – NO MORE NON-TD ATMS. I just spent $16.50 in extra bank fees this month because of this. I need to learn to plan ahead and have cash on me all the time, instead of going to the bank machine every time I want to buy something where they don’t have debit.

#3 – I probably should swear less, but I don’t really want to.

Jumble!

I keep thinking of things I want to write on this blog and then there are too many so my head gets in a jumble and I can’t write anything. Silly me.

The last couple of weeks have been a pretty awful alternating current of emotions (it’s like a rollercoaster of emotions, but less cliche). I went home to visit my parents. My dad had been doing really well, going out and visiting people and even going shopping. I thought I could get him to come out for lunch of coffee with me for the first time in two years. But he got really sick the night before I got there and slept most of the time I was there. He was really weak and not eating or drinking or doing much of anything, really. This continued on until Sunday of this week when he was finally badgered into going to the hospital. There, they found out he has pneumonia.

Pneumonia on its own is crap, but when you already have an illness of the immune system, it’s even worse. Everyone has to wear masks and gowns when they visit. For the first few days he stayed pretty much the same, while I fretted and worried and cried about being so far away. But things are looking up over the last couple of days. His chest x-rays are much better. He’s sitting up and more alert. He’s trying to eat, even if it’s just a couple of bites (luckily, he’s on IVs so he’s getting fluids and nutrients). So I feel a little bit more sane. I’ll probably go home next weekend to visit.

In the meantime, I’ve been finding happiness in the small things. It’s what I have to do. So I am currently excited about a few things.

I got some plants for my balcony yesterday. I am going to attempt to grow mini eggplant, purple bell peppers, tomatoes, rosemary (aka hosemary), tarragon and two kinds of basil. I tend to have somewhat better luck with outdoor plants than indoor, so hopefully I won’t kill these and eventually I will be able to eat delicious veggies from my balcony.

We got a little hibachi for $2 at a yard sale. Everything tastes better when it’s BBQed. Plus, we solved the mystery of who my neighbour is! He’s a member of Blue Rodeo. We got to listen to him play lovely music as we ate our grilled food on the balcony.

I reclaimed 15 gigs of hard drive space on my iBook when I realized that all of my iTunes songs were duplicated – they were in an iTunes folder and then copied into a shared folder. Yes! Now hopefully I won’t get the beachball whenever I try to do anything (I only had 3 gigs left before). See, this is why the iMac is not hooked up to the internet and why I only run Logic on it.

I found out that the vintage $2 mic I got actually works. And well! It’s super quiet. It’s dead-sounding as hell, but sometimes you want that. I guess. I think it’ll be cool for recording speech and maybe some weird, dry backup vocals

Awesome music is coming your way. Not mine, but stuff I’ve had a hand in recording. I cannot WAIT for everyone to hear it. It will blow your minds and make you dance.

I’m graduating in about a month. This is kind of good and kind of bad. Good because I’m getting burnt out on school, bad because that means job hunting. Job hunting is both exciting and scary. And I don’t have much leeway this time because if I don’t find a job ASAP after school I won’t be eating.

My biggest Toronto fear

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/429141

A cyclist got the “door prize” and fell in front of a cube van. I’ve almost received this illustrious prize numerous times, but have so far managed to avoid it. The last time was the closest call – a man threw his door open without looking as I was riding by. I swerved to avoid it and then yelled “Look before you open your door.” My heart was pounding. I’m generally not afraid of biking in Toronto, but i feel on edge every time I have to bike past a row of parked cars.

It boggles my mind how little people pay attention in this city. Drivers, cyclists, pedestrians. I’ve almost had collisions with pedestrians who have stepped off the sidewalk without looking. I’ve always managed to stop pretty quickly or swerve, but what if I was a giant truck? Plus, I’m tired of swerving out of the way or slamming on my brakes because people assume that bicycles are not like cars, and they will just stop. And my habit of swerving scares me because it’s a gut reaction and I’m afraid that one of these days I’m going to swerve to avoid a pedestrian and end up in front of a car.

If everyone just used their GD common sense a little more, getting around this city would be so much better.

Still psyched for Bike Month though.

Update: Have almost been doored twice in the last 24 hours. This is getting ridiculous.

L’esprit de l’escalier

I have too much to talk about, but nothing I want to write down, really. Some things are just too important to put on a blog, next to rants about bad drivers and stupid signs.

I’m tired of school, tired of being away from my family when my dad is sick, tired of the people in Toronto. (Sorry fellow Torontonians. Lots of you are nice. But many are fucking self-centered assholes, like the dumbass who honked and screamed at me last night after I gave him the finger when he tried to steal my right of way and almost ran me over when I was biking in the rain. Dude looked like he was about to bust a vein, but I didn’t hear any of it because his window was up.)

I’m tired of waking up in the morning to do homework and then staying after classes are done to do more work. I’m tired of worrying about what I will do when school is over and how I will dig myself out of the massive pit of debt I’m in when everyone is telling me I have to work for free or next-to-free for a while. I’m tired of being sad. I’m tired of this bad luck of mine. It was funny when it was stupid things, like my role in the Vagina Monologues getting taken away. But now it’s not funny anymore. I’m trying not to throw a pity party. But I’m just asking for a little scrap and I can’t even have that.

The perils of bad design

Yesterday I got a firsthand lesson in how detrimental bad graphic design can be. Not just to my eyeballs, but to the practical aspects of day-to-day living.

I got off the train in Ottawa and went over to the OC Transpo bus platform where the bus was supposed to come and pick me up and take me downtown. Instead, the bus drove right by me. I thought maybe he hadn’t seen me because I was waiting inside the bus shelter. So I waited for the next one. It drove right by without stopping. Frustrated, I tried to figure out if there was another bus I could take. Then another woman came along and waved at the bus she wanted when it came flying around the corner of the transitway. Ahhhh. So that’s what the hideous sign was trying to tell me. I couldn’t take a picture, but I will try and describe it to you.

Basically, the sign had all the bus routes that stopped at that stop in big block letters. Some of them had stripes through them, but no legend telling me what that meant. In the bottom left corner was the word “Peak” over a line with a French translation underneath. In the bottom right corner was the word “Westbound” over a line with the French translation underneath. Both were the same size and in the same font. In the middle at the bottom was a red “stop” hand that said “Request Stop.”

Apparently, from all of this, I was supposed to gather that if I wanted the bus to stop, I was supposed to wave frantically at it since it was during peak hours (although there was no explanation anywhere of what the peak hours are). What? Maybe I’m slow, but that sign did not tell me that at ALL. How was I to know that the stripey letters corresponded with the word “Peak”? Or what peak hours are? Or that I was supposed to wave at the bus during said peak hours?

Stupid.

Writing

The other day I started thinking about why I gave up on writing as a career. All through high school and university I thought that was what I was going to do. I spent four years at The Cord working towards that. I freelanced for various publications after I left. And then somewhere along the way I stopped trying.

Part of it had to do with going back to school for audio engineering. But when I stopped to think about it, I figured out I gave up on a career in journalism when I realized that I was never going to be the best at it. I had a visions of mediocre writing for random publications. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. I had followed the path I had always planned until that point: high school –> university –> career. And then all of a sudden, things fell apart. It wasn’t so easy for everything to work out perfectly.

I also realized that I never loved writing that much. I read an interview with someone once, and he said that writers don’t like writing while they’re doing it. They only like writing once it’s over. It’s so true. Writing was always a struggle for me. It was never that fun until the piece was finished. Then I’d sit back and like it for about a day. I can’t even read my old Cord stuff; it makes me so self-conscious.

I thought I was supposed to be a writer because I was alright at it and it seemed like it would be a fun career. The thing was, music was always my most favourite thing. I just never realized there were so many ways to make a career out of it. I thought it was rock star or nothing, and that didn’t seem very practical.

So now I know music is where I’m headed, and it’s where I’m supposed to be. Which is terrifying. Writing was already a dead end. What if I fail again this time around? Then what am I left with?

There’s never enough time

It’s true.

I’m tired.

Headphone Fail

Everywhere you go, people seem to have headphones on. Fine, fine. But there are some instances when headphone are just not appropriate.

1) At dinner at a restaurant on Mother’s Day, which we just witnessed. Dude had his iPod ear buds in through the entire meal. And he was eating with other people.

2) On children who are still in a stroller. The other day I saw a kid in a stroller with ear buds in. Come on, now. What is a kid that young even listening to? Way to set your kid on the path to early hearing loss, Mom and Dad.

——

Tonight I learned that I should not go to T&T if I want to get any sort of productive grocery shopping done. Because instead of buying sensible food, I will buy everything with cute packaging. I bought a milk soda tonight because I thought the can was rad. Does that sound delicious? No, it does not. Some sort of tiny cookie-type things? Yes please, since they have sheep jumping over a rainbow on the package. It’s funny how one person can be so pragmatic some of the time, and so absurd at other times.

Ladyfest Toronto 2008 – Call for Submissions

Here’s the callout for participants for Ladyfest Toronto 2008! Hurray!

Ladyfest Toronto is looking for musicians, artists, filmmakers, and workshop facilitators for our 2008 festival! This fall, we will be celebrating feminism in all its forms this and we need you!

Ladyfest Toronto 2008 is happening in and around Kensington Market from September 18th to the 21st. The aim of the festival is to incite dialogue about contemporary feminist issues and to create space for women to showcase their amazing creativity.

With concerts, workshops, a film program and more, there will be something that’s sure to tickle your fancy. To apply to be a part of this year’s festival, please go to www.ladyfesttoronto.ca/program.html

* Ladyfest Toronto welcomes applications from all folks who are women-identified. We especially encourage applications from aboriginal women, women of colour, sex professionals, and other historically marginalized and disadvantaged groups of women. *

The best of today

This video is amazing:

WTF?

Tonight I found my new favourite restaurant. It’s a middle eastern restaurant on at College and Gladstone called Arabesque. The food is insanely cheap and delicious. I had zattar stuffed with olives, mint and tomatoes. Mmmmmm. And baklava with cashews. The best part is the atmosphere. It has beautiful decor, window seats and jazz playing on the stereo. Nowhere else in the city can you get that for $4.