In other news, to my great annoyance, I have continued to feel like crap, although a prescription has recently resulted in a great improvement. This is not conducive to packing or gardening, especially while continuing to haul my ass to work every day, so I have accomplished exactly zero on either task. A whole bunch of stuff is blooming out there anyway, to my delight, including peonies, honeysuckle, columbine, digitalis, and (almost) roses. The english rose I bought last year has not only survived the spring's drastic pruning, but now has at least 8 buds on it. AWESOME.

Today Lisa is coming over to keep me company and I am going to start packing books and sorting clothes. Yes I am. LESS THAN 1 MONTH TILL CLOSING BY GOD.

One more week till Art in the Park!!! Must...stop...dragging...feet and get ass in gear. Yes. RAHR. Am taking Friday off in order to get last minute preparations taken care of, at least.

There was a community garage sale day in the village on Sunday (rained out on Saturday) so I went for a walk around the neighbourhood and bought some plant pots, an Eric Carle book (The Very Quiet Cricket, to go with our copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar - I mean, really, how could I resist?) and a big potful of johnny-jump-ups, which for some reason I have had no luck starting from seed. I also spied a really cool cat condo, but its vendors wanted $110 for it...yeah, not likely, kthxbai.

Booked the afternoon off today to go to the doctor - have I mentioned that I fucking hate needles, btw? Because I really fucking hate them - and then squandered the extra hour or so of free time this netted me by watching The Coolest Cop Show Evarrr, aka The Wire. Went to check out the aforementioned used couch set, which was deliciously cushy and comfy for curling up in as well as looking good, and which the vendor is willing to hang onto until we can get it into the new house. SWEET.

Also in the SWEET category: my peonies are almost blooming! No sign of botrytis returning so far (knock on wood) - and each plant has a good 4 or 5 big buds on it. C'mooooonnnnnn peonies, you can do it!!!

Whyeeeeeeeeee is it so miserable out on a holiday Monday??? Stoopid universe.

I have wasted the whole morning in bed so far, but am unrepentant. I think the plants will have to wait either until this afternoon (if the wind dies down) or until some other time when it's more pleasant out. Poo. This is just as well, though, since I should finish cutting and grinding my fall tree panel before heading out for dinner with mom...if I was SUPER sneaky I would bring some foiling to said dinner, but I don't know if such ninjalike industriousness is in me today. We shall see.

So far today I slept in, read books with Corey at Timmy's, and stopped by the Sally Ann to hunt for beer tshirts.

I found NAC Orchestra tshirts, social justice tshirts ("A nation stands no higher than its women" and "Women's march against poverty" - in the menswear, no less), a Heritage Ottawa tshirt, a Dave Matthews Band tshirt, and a Goodlife Fitness tshirt...but no beer tshirts. Not a single one. Come on people, what are you doing with all these worthwhile activities when you could be drinking beer?!? Then again, maybe the Sally Ann has an injunction against such tasteless garb, or maybe everyone just likes their beer tshirts too much to give them away. I guess I'll have to try the Value Village on Merivale.

Ooh, also: google tells me that Manic Panic lasts about as long as whatever pink goo they put in my hair at the salon, that it is available at Rock Junction on Rideau Street, and that it produces approximately this colour on bleached hair:



I was googling in the hopes of tracking down a provider of Illumen, which I hear can produce this colour more permanently, but if I can get the semi-permanent version for ~$30 instead of ~$100? That'll do!

I'm hoarding this idea for sometime when I'm having a particularly lousy and/or impatient day. But when that day comes, I will be the pink-haired poster child for Public Service Renewal once more!!

Man, watching a season of BSG episode by episode instead of all in one shot is awful - the suspense is going to kill me, except it had better not, because then I'd never find out how this damn show is going to end. I wanna know what happens next, dammit!

It is really a shame that last night was the last performance of The Pirates of Penzance, because it was hilarious and I would totally have recommended that everyone go see it.

Finished the first painted nude today. It didn't turn out half bad. The paint didn't seem any the worse for wear for the flux and solder, at least. I don't know if it turned out quite as mind-blowing as it should have considering the amount of fucking work that went into it, but whatever. On to the next one. Need to test the purple glass to make sure that paint is actually going to show up on it...otherwise I'm going to have to find a substitute colour.

Didn't get any of my other grand glass schemes accomplished today, though. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time kicking my ass into gear. I think part of it is my work hours having switched since last year - I can't just drop by the glass store after work anymore, which means I either have to send Corey on an errand during the daytime or wait for the weekend to roll around so I can stock up on whatever miscellany I'm missing to continue my project. Opaque white glass and zinc came are on the list right now (and of course I forgot about both when I was there on Saturday to get neutra. Dammit.)

We noticed half a duplex go up for sale in the village this weekend, so I poked my nose into MLS out of curiosity. The same place was asking $275K within the last couple years. Now it's up to $315K. Sweet merciful crap. The listing says they've done a lot of upgrading, but even so. I guess it's a good job we bought where and when we did. I think I'd be surprised to see anything listed in the village for less than $300K unless it was a knock-it-down/gut-it-and-start-over special. And there aren't even a lot of those left...I think my studio is located in one of the last few.

Played squash with Corey both yesterday and today. My hips are a little sore from my constant lunging after the ball, but otherwise I'm not too badly beat up. I am a very bad sport when I feel outmatched, so I'm lucky Corey is such a good one; he actually managed to teach me enough this afternoon that I scored a few points against him before being abjectly defeated.

Sigh. Bed, followed by Monday. Bleah.

Menus for this week:

Lemon vermouth chicken + beets + garlic mashed potatoes
Chicken with cranberries + rice + green beans
Indian-sauce chicken (chicken, butter chicken/tandoori/korma goo, sour cream, wine...yummmmmm) + rice + salad
Tandoori salmon + lemon-dill rice pilaf + salad

Tandoori salmon will be tomorrow night, because it will be easy (marinate salmon in jarred tandoori goo and sour cream, then bake) and because fish is highly perishable.

Also tomorrow, I will deliver my Art in the Park application, add spider and polish the lamp, and then spend the rest of the evening designing.

Tonight I will reread delightful Bujold awesomeness, drink wine, and eat cookies. Occasionally, being an adult kind of rocks.

Which gets me to thinking about something I was talking to amazon_syren about today. We were talking about five-year plans. And I discovered that mine was, well, keep on keeping on with work and projects, and that's a prospect I'm pretty happy with. The only major deviation I foresee from the status quo is having a baby (or two). And y'know, about this time three years ago, the prospect of the status quo continuing was making me so miserable I could barely see straight. Having a family, of course, means no minor upheaval in my life, so it's possible that's providing me with the shake-up I like to look forward to. But maybe...just maybe...is it possible I've managed to figure this out?

Today I:

* played squash with my mom, and am finding that it's not kicking my ass so hard afterwards. I'm toying with the idea of getting myself a membership at this gym, which is a short drive from our place. The RA Centre is a little cheaper due to gov't discount, but not by much, and it's all the way across town. I hesitate, though, due to my history of gym flakiness. It's a lot of money. But it's also rare that I find a physical activity that I enjoy enough to actually return to it, and as it is I'm paying $10 in guest fees for every time I go. I guess what it boils down to is that I have to go at least 3 times in every two weeks for it to be worth it, and I could probably manage that. I think.

* went shopping with amazon_syren, which made for a lovely afternoon. Found some matte colours to match several items that need framing, but discovered that Michael's is not the place to order them. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I will heckle Wallack's and my former instructor's framing shop and see if these places are more useful in getting me my supplies. Also snapped up some seeds at Home Depot - it does me good to see seed displays this time of year, it really does - and a Taunton book about shade gardening, which may actually be very useful if I can track down some of the gorgeous plants it's talking about. Ph33r me, Ottawa-area nurseries!!

* made dinner: chicken skewers and zucchini-chickpea couscous. This makes almost 2 weeks of eating decently. So far it's making absolutely no difference except to make me feel virtuous, but I guess that's something anyway.

I skied (skiied? skid?) with my mom today down to the lookout over the rapids - y'know, the one with all the ducks and geese in the summertime - and then back through mud lake. All told it took about 2h. Perfect weather, barely any wind, and warm enough that once in the groove I could motor along without gloves or jacket.

However: now I can REALLY barely move. (And for this I am kind of proud of myself.)

Other than that, though, I have been grumpy and fight-picky all day, due to a stupid combination of impatience and anxiety and restlessness. I fucking HATE waiting, in all its multitudinous forms, and especially at this fucking time of year. I should have gone to the studio and gotten stuff done, which always helps, but mostly I bummed around with various media, which didn't. What I WANT to do is...is...I dunno, something I've been looking forward to, except it's after christmas and before spring and I can't think of anything. And I should stop eating out so much, which is my usual indulgence in this situation. Fucking January.

Happy 2008 everybody!

This year, unlike last, I am not miserably hung over - although a little tired and headachey - so the new year is off to a good start. Also promising (...knock on wood...) is the fact that since we've had snow, the only footprints in our yard appear to have been made by rabbits. Rabbits would tend to explain the fate of my tulips last spring, but: HA.