Cherries and meat

I was reading a cookbook from the 70s, from the Toronto Islands, from one great-aunt to another. I saw a recipe for Cherry Chicken and I thought that was silly and then I thought of a joke you made and sadness settled thick around me like fog and everything felt far away and hard to see. I still can’t make out whether or not you were making excuses, or whether it’s really not my fault/me/your fault.

Back in the Saddle

I picked up my new bike yesterday, my first brand new bike since I was a kid. I rode to work today and it was glorious. I felt a little nervous, since it was the first time I’d been on a bike since the fall. But overall, it was great. It was sunny, there wasn’t too much traffic and no other bikes to share the road with. Riding home was not so good, because it was snowing. Riding when the roads are wet terrifies me, ever since the time I slipped and almost went under a streetcar. But even the snowy ride home wasn’t terrible, despite the droplets clouding my glasses. There’s something nice about knowing you’re not wasting time waiting around for the streetcar.

Also, there’s something nice about knowing you have a method of transportation, since you can’t afford a March metropass due to circumstances beyond your control, and through no fault of your budgeting skills. Blargghhh.

Neglect

Oops, I’ve been negelcting my blog. Things have just been so crazy busy that I haven’t had time. Tonight I finally have some time to sit down and write something. It will be a roundup of what’s happened lately, as usually happens when I get too busy to write for a while. Here goes:

My band picked a name! After much deliberation, Erin and I hashed it out over beers at the Henhouse and we are called … Royal Manor. We made a MySpace and put some recordings up. It would warm my heart if you check them out: myspace.com/royalmanor

I met the lovely Ben Kweller, who was incredibly sweet and funny and put on a killer live show. We picked him up for his in-store at Sonic Boom – no coat, no guitar case. Just strapped on his guitar in the car, and strummed his way across Bloor and into the store.

I got a new bike, a new roommate and too much new vinyl. I can’t wait to start riding my bike. I’m so sick of winter and the TTC.

I’m sure there’s more, but I am now too tired to think about it. I’m coming to Waterloo this weekend though, for what I’m sure will be an epic shitshow at the Brick Brewery. YESSSSS. It’s been a while.

Two turntables

I found my soldering iron today! I opened a drawer to get something else and there it was. I don’t know how I missed it the day that I was searching high and low for it. Oh well.

This means that I was finally able to fix my second turntable. Now I have two working turntables, like a real DJ. Woah woah woah.

Other things I have:
A painful burn on my finger from the soldering iron
A ground hum

Things I probably have:
Cancer, from the lead solder because I was too impatient to wait until I could go get non-lead solder

Lasting repercussions

A couple of years ago I went to a wedding show at the convention centre with Adrian and his family – his sister wanted to go. Everywhere we went people were jamming pamphlets in our faces and asking when our wedding date was. We got tired of trying to explain, “We’re not getting married… We’re just here because….” So we started making up wedding dates, telling each vendor something different. (I’m pretty sure the dates we gave included random weekdays. Yes, we’re getting married on a Monday.) We filled out lots of ballots because we wanted to win shit and it was easier than trying to avoid sales pitches.

What a goddamn mistake. I’m STILL getting emails from photographers and gown stores and cheesy DJs. It’s really annoying, when you’re about to be alone on Valentine’s Day for the first time in four years, to get emails with the subject, “Getting Married?” No. I am not getting married. Thanks for asking though!

Also, on a related note, I would just like internet/cable companies to know that it is not ok to send mail specifically addressed to someone long after they have cancelled your service. Because sometimes they cancelled because they were moving out, and you’re just sending mail to a place where they don’t live anymore, to the person who was left behind. It is a sad, intrusive reminder, and it’s not appreciated.

Decisions

I have been making a lot of decisions lately. They are realizations that I have come to recently – some are decisions made after a much consideration and a drawn-out thought process and some happened in a split second after the right synapses fired. Some are important decisions and some are not so important. In random order, they are:

-I’m going to take DJ lessons. I am a pretty half-assed DJ right now and I’m not going to get better if I don’t have someone to nudge me along. It’s the same as I did with guitar – I taught myself for a long while and then took lessons to help me get to the next level. I feel like I should be better at DJing after having had my turntables for almost two years, but I also feel like I’ve hit a plateau. So lessons it is!

-I’d also like to take some other kind of classes. Maybe Italian. But then after the course, I still wouldn’t have a chance to use it and I’d probably forget it all over again. Other possibilities are print-making, floral design and sewing. I see a theme – they’re all skills I’ve had and lost in varying degrees.

-I want to be skinny again. This may seem like a weird thing to decide upon suddenly. It’s not like I didn’t want to be before, but I didn’t care enough to make it happen. I talked myself into believing that I’m cool with my body the way it is, so that I didn’t have to do anything about it, but the honest truth is that I’m not. So what I actually decided was that I now have the desire to make it work now.

-I’m not going to put up with poor treatment anymore. I have realized that there are a lot of people who will take advantage, who will take what they want from you and split. Or they will keep mining you for their wants, and they’ll be around only as much as they need to be to make themselves happy. They’ll say something, and you’ll buy it, only to realize later that you’ve been had/naive/too trusting. I’m kicking these people out of my life. I’m going to work on spotting them more quickly in the future (read: I’m not going to pretend I don’t notice when I have a feeling I’m encountering one, as is my current habit).