tempt not yon hell-cat

i woke up on the weekend only to discover that i have a somehow caught the dreaded summer cold. it began with with razor blade swallowing, moved on to congestion and aching kidneys/gums and is now settling nicely into the ‘plugged ears’ portion of our game.

needless to say, work seems to be taking an eternity to get through. in honour of this – i thought i’d post a few little distractions.

a friend of mine sent this to me ages ago – but am just now getting around posting it. someone has taken clips from various george w. speaches and made him sing u2’s “sunday bloody sunday”. it’s nothing short of brilliant. watch and be amazed.

and of course – this is just too hideous for words. almost too hideous for the eyes too. the one (and thankfully only) huff.

bringing me to the end of my lunch hour – please be entertained by making fiends. it’s several short flash cartoons about a girl named charolotte and a girl named vendetta. vendetta makes fiends…. you have to watch them to understand. it’s made by the same person who did my beloved muffinfilms several years ago. long live creativity.

[music | keane, “is it any wonder?”]

cubical hell

i honestly swear that this was done by someone in my office. it is nearly a perfect description of my current employment situation.

[music | the killers, “andy you’re a star”]

one down, and not in a good way

yeah. so. i didn’t get the job. it’s still not official, coz the fuckers haven’t called me yet – but i’ve heard through some pretty reliable sources that someone who also used to work for them has just left his current gig. i’ll bet you all a million dollars that he got the job. of course he did. so now their a&r department is full of men. and entire department of guys. how lame is that? not that i have anything against men – but c’mon – a little gender diversity isn’t a bad thing….

le sigh. i’m now back to wondering what that hell went wrong in my life. why can i not get the things i want? this industry really blows. what a mistake it was to get into it. and then shame on me, get BACK into it. i had my chance to leave. but now i’m kind of stuck. with no prospects other than my current dead-boring one-task a day gig. and that’s worth a really big le sigh.

so. this leaves me with one big want now.

no more split focus. all energies are now on the oilers winning the stanley cup. game 6 in edmonton goes tonight at 8:00 est. i’m nervous and anxious for them. in articles they say they are calm – good for them – it’s because i’m taking up all the nervious energy for them!

thought i’d post a few pictures of my trip to edmonton for game 4. enjoy, or not.

this is currently my desktop image. pretty cool.

an essential part of any game-day expeience is getting there ontime for the pre-game skate. so so exciting!

a few hours before the puck dropped, cbc was getting some footage. my dad’s in this picture! and no – my dad is not don cherry.

an essay on wanting

my gods. i want two things very very badly right now.
1 – an a&r job
2 – the oilers to win the stanley cup

the whole sordid saga of my job interview is too tedious to put here. briefly… i had an interview. it went well. i have done the job before and i seem to be a natural no-brainer to hire. that being said, this industry is never one to go with brains. if you know what i mean. i was promised that i’d be ‘hearing from them very soon’. then i got a return message to my thank-you for the interview email telling me they would make a decision by the following week.

by mid-week i was wound tighter than a (i don’t know, insert metaphor of your liking here) and making myself ill over it. i sent another quick email asking them for a timeline on their decision and told them again how excited i was by the opportunity that they have to offer… blah blah blah. by the friday i still hadn’t heard from them and i was leaving toronto on the saturday not to be back until the following wednesday. not wanting to send them another note so soon, i decided to send my contact info to the vp of hr. she sent me back an email telling me she ‘believed’ that they had made a decision to hire from within but that she still hadn’t heard from them either.

i was bummed. what a way to go off to edmonton in an attempt to cheer on the oilers. so so bummed.

anyway – i’m back now, but my sources at the company say that an annoucement has not yet been made about the new hire. and i still haven’t heard anything at all from the guys i interviewed with. should i rekindle my dying spark of hope? (ok, let’s be serious – it wasn’t a dying spark. it was dead. as a door nail. done. over. finished. boo.) i am starting to have a little flicker of hope that the game is still afoot. maybe it’s still meant to be mine?

please?

and regarding my other want – the oilers play the hurricanes tonight at 8:00pm. if we can win this one, we go back to edmonton. the oilers have come too far to have their season end tonight. GO OILERS GO!

i’ll be the crazed person yelling at her tv at the top of her lungs tonight.

so much wanting. please give me a little satisfaction.

[music | editors, “munich”]

past | present | future

a friend of mine scolded me for abandoning ye ole blog. i don’t know if it was more the fact that these pages are languishing away – or the fact i left off with an entry about paris hilton. regardless – i think those who aren’t even updating their own blog shouldn’t be too smug!

gainful employment has cut down on my blogging time. that and my seemingly ever-increasing obsession with myspace. regardless – much has happened. not the least of which involves me going on a job interview. a job interview for a job i really really really really really really want. how do i know this with such certainty? well, you see, it’s a job i had up until a year and a half ago. it was the best job in the world. seriously. i ended up getting laid off in a merger and now the person they decided to keep instead of me has taken a more senior job at another company. opening the door for me once more.

going into too many details may just jinx the damned thing – so i will leave it at a request for anyone still reading this poor neglected page to send some serious luck and positive energy my way. pretty please?

also – i’ve been pretty much a shut-in for the duration of the stanley cup playoffs. i grew up just west of edmonton and in edmonton you watch hockey. watch hockey and shop in a giant eyesore of a mall. when i wasn’t killing time in the mall or shutting myself away in the basement to listen to music, i was watching hockey. as a result – i am still a hardcore oiler fan. and my boys are 4 wins away from bringing home the stanely cup once more! the last time they won it was in 1990 – the year i moved to toronto. it’s been a while.

why am i telling you this? how about because i am going to GAME THREE OF THE STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS. yes, indeed. june 10th in edmonton. i fly out to edmonton in the morning and come back on the following tuesday. if luck is on my side the oilers will sweep the cup and i’ll be returning to toronto as a very giddy oiler-gurl.

i’m going to try updating this forsaken page a little more frequently. and i hope i can update it soon with news about my new job and that the stanley cup is in canada once more.

[music | snow patrol, “chasing cars”]

mother theresa = paris hilton

paris hilton is going to be asked to portray the late mother theresa in a film.

i don’t know… i have no words.

[music | editors, “munich”]

things i learned today

today i learned that my hero of the day is kardinal offishall. i’ve never bought one of his albums and am not a fan (he just doesn’t do the type of music i appreciate) but i read an interview with him where he said he’d never attend another juno awards again and gave the reasons why. read it. it’s good.

i decided to work from home today – it’s the best thing about working giving you a laptop. however, while working at home i’ve discovered that either the wireless router is beginning to cack out (which i don’t think is the case) or that the outlet i’ve plugged the thing into isn’t great. several times it turned itself off on it’s own. so annoying to have to get up, unplug it, wait a few moments, plug it back in, turn the modem off and wait for the whole works to reboot itself. *whine* technology will be the death of us. or at least of me. i’d hate to speak for you.

what else did i learn today? that when lightening hits right above your house – that also plays havoc with the router.

i learned that the downstairs neighbour has reddish-brownish hair. he knocked on the door and gave me an envelope with money in it. not randomly or anything – he’s paying for the use of the storage shed in the back. it’s a really cute brick building that was once a homing pigeon loft (coop? covey? dovecote?) and in more recent years, a car garage. the house my apartment is in was built in 1905. more than 100 years old… i don’t know enough about renovating older homes, but i think that through the years, the people renovating either kept original elements (fireplace mantle, wooden doors with skeleton key locks, mouldings and trim) or did a good job at restoring things.

i learned that 5 cups of coffee keep me in the bathroom most of the day. actually, i didn’t just learn that – i’ve known it for quite sometime now!

i learned that there are ignorant people out there. (knew this too, but still). some idiots with nothing better to do decided to knock over more than 200 hundred tombstones in a cemetery in toronto’s west end. the images on the news are really quite disturubing. why would someone do this?

and i also learned that the ttc monthly metropass is going up again. city council approved the hike last week and wasting no time, the ttc put it into play this past weekend. just in time for my april pass to be more money. lovely. it now costs 99.75 for a monthly pass. wow. still cheaper than a car – but i don’t see the service getting any better!

i hope that i learn less tomorrow. *wink*

[music | editors, “bullets”]

return of golb

yeah, i know, probably a million other fallen bloggers have used that subject line before i have…. do i look concerned? for the record, i don’t, i kind of look bored and disinterested. but it may only be the juno awards i just sat through.

why did i sit thought it, i’m not sure – other than it’s the industry i work in and that i haven’t missed watching (or being at) one since i was about 10 years old. it’s kinda a thing i do. however, the show and awards themselves seem to have become increasingly out of touch with music. it’s much more about the politics of the labels and now with CTV televising the damn thing – it’s much more about the 3 or 4 acts that CTV decides to shove down our throats (not the least of which are from camp canadian idol). whatever, i actually worked through the awards and left it as an annoying backdrop.

one last thing… did the black eyed peas become canadian citizens and i just didn’t notice it? why the hell else would they perform at evey canadian event over the last year? (mmva’s, the grey cup and now the junos). strange and somewhat annoying. it’s almost like how CTV likes to slut it up with the rolling stones and somehow managed to include a pre-recorded clip from them this year.

for the past while, my cat raja graced this page… he still does, but you have to scroll down further. lots has happened since he left us. another kitten has been adopted. we adopted a female kitten, but as she’s growing, she developing quite a bit of gear in the back. i think our she is a he. and she’s named after a goddess – artemis. if she really is a boy, we’ll be calling him neptune. either way – the kitten is cute.

zelda and neptune/artemis in the new apartment

zelda in the old apartment… the new place has NO carpeting – rejoice!

artemis/neptune in box-world (aka my new place)

hat else is new… i’ve moved to a new apartment in a cooler location that i’ve lived for a few years (or ever, actually). it’s a big place and now there are still boxes galore kicking about. boxes and not enough furniture. you know how it goes. best bit… it has a dishwasher. how slothy is it to be able to just rinse dishes and throw them in a box under the counter and not have to see/deal with the dishes until they’re clean. quite slothy.

a little side-story about the whole needing to move because i was evicted from the old place. we were told that “tom will be using the apartment”. logically, the assumption was made that the landlording-overlords were splitting up and the male portion was moving out. well, guess again. the scummy liars that they are – they evicted us (not quite legally, truth be told) to move tom’s business into my old apartment. you see, tom runs a little record label and it all appearances seem to indicate that he can’t pay rent at his business location anymore. so they evicted me and my roomie for their stupid little record label. not that i’m bitter or anything – but if anyone out there was thinking of supporting holly cole or kim mitchell – don’t. you’ll just be supporting the enemy. jerks.

i still have a job… it’s quite nice to have that security. i’m bored to tears most days there – but it’s a start. for the first month i was actually very entertained. i was able to come up with a project plan, content sketch and site map for the re-vamping of the company’s website. the site hasn’t had a new design for more than 8 years (i’m certain) and badly needs it. other than that – my job has been pretty dull. it’s ok. they pay me. and i have a work laptop. could be worse.

lots and lots of other things have happened – some of them even interesting – but this is what happens when you don’t blog every day – you forget the stuff!

here’s hoping i’m back sooner than the autumn!

[music | stellastarr*, “my coco”]

raja-bean

raja at his regal best

i can’t believe that only 6 months from the time we lost our dear cat nes, that we have now lost her big brother and living teddy bear, raja.

we were with him today as the vet helped him ease into the long catnap. may he be basking in eternal sunbeams tonight. with great piles of cat nip and the company of his other cat family – nes and boris.

beanie-baby, i miss you. thank you.

sporting one of his, ‘i’m so much better than you’ expressions

ready for your extreme close-up?

chillin on the sofa

no one is pround of this shot – but it just had to be included! raja in his rolly-polly prime

a day in death valley

as promised, i ended up dragging my dad to death valley. we both love, love, loved the trip – even though it took the entire day to get there and back. it ended up being a 14.5 hour trip in the car. i got up at 5:00am and we hit the road by 6:20am and got back in the house by 9:00pm. there were a couple of walks to sites within the park that i wanted to do – but realistically, we just did not have the time. as much as i am a city girl, i am a nature-lover at heart and i am always ever-so-happy to explore areas i’ve never been before. so, i took the chance to wring as much nature as i could out of this inhospitable desert.

a little primer on death valley : it is the lowest point in the western hemisphere (282 feet below sea level). it is also one of the hottest places on earth. in the summer, temperatures routinely hit 120F (no idea what it is in celsius, but damn, doesn’t 120F sound hot????) with the ground temperature once being measured at 201F. urgh. basically – you can die here. that message was probably the most advertised in park information. you can die here and many have before you.

the park that holds death valley is also the largest park in america and it apparently got it’s name from some gold prospectors in 1849. seems they tried to take a shortcut through the desert to make it to the gold rush that was happening on california’s coast. needless to say, their shortcut didn’t end up being a good bet. hence the name.

as always, pictures tell a better story than i…. so….. keep on looking down…

here we are with the devil’s golf course (a rock salt field. you wouldn’t belive how hard and sharp and hurty salt can be).

if you turn around at the devil’s golf course you will see this flat field of salt, doing it’s best snow imitation.

these are some incredible red hills. they look spray painted – but they’re not.

this is the artist’s palette. unfortunatley, the camera didn’t capture the amazing colours – we have reds, yellows, greens, turquoise, violet, mauve, chocolate and gold all in this one group of stone.

these formations were seen at one of the many look-out points in the park. stunning in person and pretty cool here too!

just to prove that there are living things in the valley i thought i’d include a few things that aren’t rock or mineral. i saw this little lizard during one of my mini-walks. he was pretty good at staying as still as the stone he stood on. these yellow flowers (they’re called ‘golden daisy’, believe the name or not) are just starting to bloom throughout the park. and finally, no visit to death valley would be complete without seeing one of the major scavenger birds, the raven.

[music | the doors, “roadhouse blues”]