Bloody hell, I am tired of being sick! Today was the first time in 2 weeks that I've felt like eating. Yesterday and today are also the only days I've taken off work. I thought I was in the clear, but all of a sudden I woke up without any energy whatsoever. After a day and a half spent lying on the sofa watching trash TV I am going stir-crazy.

Ironically, my place is suddenly coming along really well. Everyone else kept working and the place is getting exponentially closer to done. I'm starting to get really excited about it!

Apropos of nothing, I now hate Bobby Flay more than I did before. Yesterday, I found myself helplessly forced to watch his show because I couldn't reach the remote (pathetic, I know). I was actually starting to enjoy it until he showed us how to score the end of a lamb flank before braising it. "This makes for a great presentation because the meat will all sort of bunch up at one end like...um...a big meat lollipop." Goddamn, that's an image! At least he realized what he'd said, judging by the look on his face. The other guys on screen start trying to crack each other up..."Wow, Bobby...you were right, just look at this GIANT TASTY MEAT LOLLIPOP!" I am holding that man singlehandedly responsible for the psychologically-damaging fever dreams that followed that show.

Wow, look at me acutally updating my blog more than once a season!

First week back to work was survived. The highlight was the launch of our new LGBT employee resource group. We had a launch party at MoneyPennies and everything! For those of you who are straight, not from Calgary, or both: MoneyPennies is a dyke bar. And by that I mean the endearing but definitively 'trucker hats manditory' kind of dyke bar. Not really my scene (I don't like having the longest hair in the bar!) but a thoroughy enjoyable place to hang out. Needless to say, as corporate events go, it was one of the better ones.

Along the same lines, our company has a tent at the Calgary Pride Festival/Parade this weekend, and I plan to be there with bells on. For starters, I want to see if the damn thing exists! Calgary Pride is kind of like...well...fairies (if you'll excuse the metaphor): everyone wants to believe they exist, but no one has ever actually seen it.

I'm sure there are more things I could say, but I just got home and I'm a little cognitivelly-impaired right now, so I'll save the eloquence and deep thoughts (HEY! I heard that snicker!) for the harsh light of tomorrow morning. Sweet dreams, everyone. Even I can't be cynical when I'm asleep, and I'm thoroughly looking forward to that.

I just sent an e-mail to my grandfather, who is dying much faster than most of us. I thought he might like to see my vacation photos. This is probably the time in his life when he most needs to hear from the people who love him and I find myself without anything to say. It seems crass to chatter on about work, the weather and such, but neither do I want to eulogize him pre-emptively. The idea of summarizing his life and his value to other people, of saying plainly and efficiently everything that I have left to say to him...it's unfathomable. And so, I e-mail him photos and know it is not enough. What does he want to hear? What would I want?

If I knew how, I would tell him I am proud of him for going boldly into that void, fierce as ever and fearing no gods.

Three weeks in Thailand was the best idea I ever had! How have I let myself go this long without a vacation? After one week, I was contemplating moving there and only going home briefly to pack my things. After two weeks, I was ready to leave all my stuff at home and just never go back at all.

Lotus flowers at the grand temple...

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts

I think this is where good people go when they die

Wherever they go, there they are.

I only bother to go in to work so that I can have enough money to do THIS:

Last week, a good friend loaned me a huge stack of books from some university Clit Lit course she's taking and I've been completely consumed by them ever since. Top of the list is a book called 'Zami: A Different Spelling of My Name' (Audre Lourde) I know, I know. I cringed at the title too. I hate coming of age stories with a fiery and unmatched passion, but this one is unbelieveable. It's an autobiography (or a 'biomythography'...which also set off my literary bullshit alarm) of a gay black daughter of West Indian immigrants growing up in the 1940s-70s. The writing is stunning, but mostly I love it because it's illuminating a whole new era for me. So much of the books, music and literature I love came out of those decades, so my concept of that time has always been very patchy and hypothetical. That's the trouble with getting all of your history from artists: it's evocative but incomplete. This book is somehow managing to weave it all together in my head and it's like solving a puzzle I've been working on for years. I'm also getting a sense for the historical relevance of a lot of things and how iconoclastic a lot of my heros were. Oh, and as a bonus, it's a really gay book

What is there to say about today? Neal Stephenson has said it already in Zodiac, when the lead character weighs the pros/cons of living a double life:

'"Do those moments of satisfaction I get as Spiderman make up for all the crap I have to take as Peter Parker?" In my case, the answer is yes.'

That pretty much sums it up for me too. There seems to be an inordinate amount of crap with my name on it lately, but I see it as charity work to balance out the universe. It is my karmic debt as one who has way more fun than I deserve in the off hours.

So, tomorrow, I head down to the passport office with my application. It'l be the first concrete thing I do to plan for Thailand (money saved not included). I still don't quite believe I'm going, but maybe this will make it sink in. In fact, I think it's almost time to start my official countdown.

Lots of new things in the works these days. I'm shopping around for an apartment and this is the first time I've been excited about it. My last apartment felt like home in a way that no other place ever had and I still desperately miss it sometimes. I have always believed that it takes an extraordinary amount of self-possession to create a home that reflects the way you want to live. I was incredibly proud that I could do that. When I moved out of that apartment, I was just starting to get a sense for what I wanted my life to look like. I'm looking forward to picking up where I left off. Not that that place was paradise, mind you. Actually, it was kind of a shitpile. Thanks to Char1es, it was a surprisingly well-decorated shitpile, but the fact remains that it was no Tribeca loft. If I can get a decent place, I can't even imagine how much I'll love it. I'm also having a lot more fun these days than I was the last time I moved out. It was a somewhat...transition-centric year, you might say. As one of my former roommate's friends once said, 'Oh, YOU'RE the chick who used to sit in the dark, smoking clove cigarrettes and listening to Tom Waits' Makes me sound all film-noir & shit.

I've been working my ass off for the Man lately, which is just plain weird. Hopefully, it'll drive me to crazy artistic pursuits in rebellion. In other news, not everyone else has been working hard: Youtube has videos of the State of the Union address that feature Dick Cheney checking his text messages and Sen. John McCain sleeping like a baby. Go check it out. The fact that both of them are featured on Youtube's 'Most Watched' list warms my little leftist heart.

Oh, and HAPPY ROBBIE BURNS DAY! For those of you of a non-Scottish or non-literary pursuasion, it's a day that's traditionally celebrated by drinking your face off and beating your wife. Iconoclastic punk that I am, I prefer to just wear a kilt and have a pint or three. This year, I'm forgoing the latter, committing a mortal sin against God and Scotland. Working a stodgy corporate job in what is essentially a schoolgirl skirt is a blast, though. Too bad it's only once a year. Some guy showed up in a plaid tie, which was pretty freakin' cool. Hopefully, a little Catholic schoolgirl left it on his bedroom floor...because that's the only dignified way to ever acquire a plaid tie.
Now I wish I had a plaid tie.

The current newest set on SG, from the lovely 'Prussia', is making me flash back to high school. Half way through one semester, our resident blonde cheerleader raised her hand in Social Studies class and said "Um, ex-CUUSE me, but it's, like, called RUSSIA!".

It's been years, and I'm still laughing my ass off.

Happy Christmas, all!

I think it may just have been the perfect Christmas.

This year was the year of two Christmases for me: the 24th was Christmas with my favorite people, and the 25th was Christmas with my immediate family. My embarassing secret is that I turn into a hyperactive five-year old at Christmas. I try not to, but there's just no stopping it. I can't begin to list the dumb excuses that were used to put off present-opening just to torture me. If you think I'm exaggerating, you won't when I tell you that the presents were placed in the centre of the room on a ten foot high platform (and then the ladder was put away)! There was also a fairly believable effort to convince me that presents could not be opened until noon, as per tradition. (noon? NOON?!) Of course, we didn't end up opening presents until noon anyway, but somehow I didn't mind the distraction. Plus, homemade biscuits fresh from the oven will buy you anything with me.

Even the day with my family was more fun than usual. I didn't think I could watch Mickey's Christmas Carol again, so I borrowed The Lion in Winter. Definitely one of my better ideas. We made a huge pot of mulled cider and added waaaay too much rum, which made for a really entertaining Christmas Eve. This year marked the first time that it's been just us for Christmas (my immediate family and my grandfather); usually we have a whole hoard of people over. I like the big, crazy dinners with old hippies that my parents organize, but the small group meant that we could be more experimental in the kitchen. We tried cooking a goose, which will not be repeated but was fun to try. Still, the gravy was pretty freakin' awesome and it was lovely to get a chance to play around with spicing & such. My parents can never figure out why things taste different when they let me season the food. Someday, I'll tell them that everything just gets boozified.

I got some fantastically cool stuff
(clothing I'd tried on months ago, loved and then walked away from because I couldn't afford it-my friends went back and got it for me. , a rockin' ski bag; a photo album full of pictures from the roadtrip I took with Janet)
some sweet and lovely stuff
(a handmade stocking from my mother that was an exact replica of the original one that she made 21 years ago that somehow got lost when Rob and I split up. I remember where it was, so I'm pretty sure he either still has it or has tossed it)
and some just plain funny stuff
(rainbow striped 80's leg warmers that I had to be shown how to wear, mood rings, argyle tights with skulls)

and I gave some pretty cool stuff too:
-a pewter rockabilly iPod case/belt buckle
-pin-up style art done in stencil-graffiti style on pages of vintage mystery novels (not done by me-I can only wish I could do that!)
-a self-adhesive commie beard (this was just the cheap, funny little thing to go with the money I gave my brother, but it was a WAAAAY bigger hit than the cash)

Now's the time to start making New Years' resolutions, I suppose, but I have a tendancy to drive myself and everyone I know crazy with my efforts for self-improvement, so I think I might just skip that this year. Alternately, I'll just come up with some fun resolutions to give me ideas.

Gimpy for Christmas, that's me.

First thing this morning, knee-deep in powder, I discovered rather loudly and indignatly that falling down hurts. As a devout bookworm and daughter of delicate academics, I've only recently learned how to go outside and play with the other children, you see, so it actually was kind of a rude surprise. Poor Char1es had to see my complete and total lack of survival skills in action, which will probably haunt his dreams. I'm fine, of course. One ligament strained and possibly a litte torn, but no more. Nonetheless, it is apparently the culmination of a bunch of little injuries to the ligament, so I have crutches, tensor bandages, a prescription for physio and all that fun stuff. I DID get to be the envy of the entire emergency room, however, which made it all worthwhile. Char1es and Janet brought me chicken soup, pizza from Crazyweed (my favorite restaurant) and all manner of fancy Starbucks drinks while I waited. No girl has ever been thus spoiled, I tell you. Frankly, when you consider that I wiped out on the first third of the first run of the day, I'm lucky they didn't just leave me there as a sacrifice to the ski gods. Do ski gods only accept virgin sacrifices or something? I can't imagine that they do. Frankly, I don't think anyone would be able to find a virgin within a 100-mile radius of the ski hills.

Cori, would you care to bounce around on my skis next weekend? You can show them how it's really done. If memory serves me correctly, your feet are the same kind of tiny as mine.

Otherwise, I am far more excited about Christmas than befits a well-adjusted adult. It's almost embarassing, really. Also, given my social circle and penchant for unconventional situations, it's tricky to find people who will watch A Child's Christmas in Wales or bake fancy cookies with me. The results are sometimes a bit odd; one of my favorite hooligans helped me bake cookies with my mother this year. I don't know who was the most scarred. Perhaps it's the Norman Rockwell Christmas for a my generation.

Eight more sleeps, kids!