Don’t be angry with me… but I’ve been seriously considering yet another blog move. As you may have noticed, I’ve been changing the look of my blog what seems like hourly, and can’t seem to settle on a them that I like for more than nine minutes at a time. Annoying, I know. Its annoying for me too, because nothing quite has that Goldilocks feel to it. (Thats the second Goldilocks reference I’ve made today. Weird.) I know its INCREDIBLY tedious to update your bookmark list, I mean, if I may presume that you like reading about my boring life / mildly entertaining rants enough to actually BOOKMARK it for further reference. I’m honoured.
Anyhow, I’ve been playing around over at Squarespace, and while I’m not jazzed to join the real blogging world and actually PAY a monthly fee for the privelage, its actually a pretty fantastic blog host site. You can drag the width of the columns to WHATEVER YOU WANT, as well as play around with a zillion other incredibly cool features. And everything is ULTRA customizable, and you can make your blog look however you damn well want it to. Some of the more complicated stuff requires a basic knowledge of CSS or Java, neither of which are in my abilities, but lucky for me, I have geeky friends who love that crap. (PS Chad, have I mentioned my undying love for you lately? Its still there. Undying.) If you have time to spare, and don’t have anything to YouTube for a few minutes, you should check out Squarespace. Its a seriously cool blog host, and theres a FREE TRIAL in which you get to screw around with blog stuff FO FREEEEEs!
So this is my tenative new blog. I’m still messing around with it, so don’t delete me from your life because of annoying template changes. I’ll settle down soon, I promise.
I’ll keep a link to this blog somewhere in my Links tab, in case you get nostalgic and want to relive all the hilarity I’ve provided you with. Bo dom chhhh. Or for blackmail. You never know…
PS Did I mention that the monthly Squarespace fee is a whopping $7.30 per month? Like thats going to break the bank anytime soon… I could easilly spend that much on coffee in ONE SINGLE DAY.
So here are my NYE Resolutions. Let it be known that I have never made a resolution in my entire life, because I usually feel that it is a waste of time. For some reason that I can’t explain, I feel like 2009 is an appropriate time for my first New Years Eve Resolutions EVER. Whether or not I stick to them is yet to be decided.
1. Read and rock out outside my box
I might not have any specified genres of music or books that I read — I’d like to think of myself as being pretty open-minded — but this year, I’d really like to make an effort to listen to and/or read things that I normally wouldn’t. For example, I’d love to listen to more jazz and blues, and I’d ESPECIALLY love to go to more live shows. Depending on my mood, I listen to anything from mellow jams to loud, angry, guitar riff-filled rock, to metal to layered prog-rock.
Similarly, I will read anything and everything, but might not finish an entire book if I’m not in the mood to do so. The majority of the books I read are fiction based, sometimes dipping into Sci-Fi/Fantasy, but I rarely read non-fiction, despite constantly craving new information and knowledge. I have always had an insatiable appetite for learning, which makes my recent completion of college slightly strange. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t in school, and NOT buying new Gym shoes and pencil crayons and empty notebooks this fall was incredibly eerie and uncomfortable for me. SO I compensated by moving to a new city in an unfamiliar province, where I knew almost no one and would be learning and discovering new things/places/people every single day. So far so good. But, in an effort to read new things that I otherwise wouldn’t consider, I will soon be starting The White Tiger (as chosen by Nikki, my new most-favourite Chapters co-worker, for her Underground Bookclub, that I have recently joined — HOORAY FOR READING AND THEN TALKING ABOUT IT OVER DRINKS! Squee!), and the next book I’ll purchase will almost certainly be The Dirt On Clean, because I think it looks incredibly interesting. Oh and I’ll also be buying The History Of Love, because I’ve been reading it on my breaks and it is UNBELIEVABLY well written. Beautifully worded, so much as to make me feel like my meager, terribly lame blog posts are pathetic and poorly written. Its just..damn. Go read it. Really.
2. Make a greater effort to overhaul my (lack of) style
One of the greatest things about moving to a city where I know no one is that it gives me a long-awaited chance to reinvent myself. I really REALLY want to totally change my style, and start being more fashionable. I’m so sick of the t-shirt-jeans-converse wardrobe that I’ve been rockin’ for most of my adult life. I am CRAZY for funky layers and bright colours and mixing interesting textures and textured tights and.. boots, ohmigod, I love boots so much. They can MAKE or break an outfit, people. The only trouble is finding ze monies to pay for my new dream wardrobe. Hopefully, I won’t have any more car thefts or major repairs, and will thusly be able to spend my extra cash on new fabulous clothes, but it’ll be slow going. Ideally, I’d love to be able to pack all of my existing clothes into boxes and go and buy an entire NEW wardrobe, but I just don’t have the fundage to be able to do that. Slow and steady wins the race… although quick and expensive would win too.
3. Get into better shape, damnit!
No but really. Chuck Norris and his sexy beard will roundhouse you right in the junk. Or, at the very least, help you improve your posture via the Wii Fit. One of Bryan’s Christmas presents to me this year was a Wii Fit, and it is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever had the honour of experiencing. It KNOWS so much about you, its actually horrifying. “Say, Emily, do you trip over your own feet like an enormous douchebag as you walk around during your day to day life? Yeah? I thought so, because you ARE TERRIBLY UNBALANCED AND PATHETICALLY WEAK. Please do 500 push ups, and YOU’D BETTER BELIEVE that I can tell if you’re doing them properly, because if you aren’t…” *shakes electronic yet menacing WiiFist* This afternoon, the WiiFit suggested that I throw Greg a surprise birthday party, because it KNOWS that his birthday is on Saturday — although it DOESN’T know that Greg will be out of town, and thereby cannot celebrate his birthday in my presence. Take THAT, you wonderful electronic bastard!
All hostility and suspicion aside, the WiiFit is amazing. I’ve been trying to use it for at least 30 minutes a day, and have noticed a huge difference in my posture and weight distribution already. At work, I’ll suddenly realize that my weight is heavily leaning backwards on my heels, and have been making a conscious effort to “be more center-weighted”. The yoga exercises, as well as the aerobic ones are my favourite, but I’ve been trying to do more strength training and balance games, to make up for being cripplingly weak and unbalanced. It really IS a damned good work out. Maybe not as strenuous as you’d get from weight training at a gym, but for someone like me who plays a LOT of video games, and is oftentimes too lazy to leave her house (especially to go WORK OUT with strangers. Leaving the house to drink beer is one thing, but to put on tight shorts and sweat my face off? And PAY for the privilege? No thanks.), the WiiFit is perfect.
4. Be better with ze monies.
I have nothing witty to say for this resolution. It’d just be nice to have money left over at the end of every pay period, instead of having to live check to check. Not that I’m starving to death, or living in an unheated apartment with no furniture or anything, I just… don’t usually have more than $15 to my name for the few days before my payday. It’d be nice to be able to buy groceries (or new clothes!) without having to do impromptu mental budgeting to ensure that a) i’ll have enough money in my account to buy said items and b) i’ll have enough money AFTER buying said items to pay bills or buy other things that are non-negotiable, such as gas for the car, or cat food, or Emily-food. Or beer.
I’m bored and sleepy and sick of thinking of things to resolve to do within the next 360-odd days. Four resolutions is enough. F you guys…
P.S. Bryan’s other Christmas present was this necklace. My parents bought us a slow cooker, a kazoo, an ocarina, and some bacon. Very merry Ho Hos this year…
Oftentimes, when a customer sees the huge line up at Chapters’ front cash, or get an urgent call to go perform emergency heart surgery, or just REALLY wants to ruin my fucking day, they drop whatever books they have collected in their wanderings around the store, and leave them for the dutiful (dutiful but not very cheerful) employees to deal with. I find piles of books abandoned on the floor, on display tables, behind gift products, in Starbucks… basically everywhere except for the sections they actually goddamned originated from. I came across this very interesting stack of books at work the other day, and I literally laughed out loud, abandoned a pile of books that I was shelving (on the floor, haaah), and ran into the back room to take a picture with my cell phone.
Please read the titles from top to bottom. I swear I in no way altered this picture nor the arrangement of the books for the sake of entertainment. Really.
I feel that it is important for everyone in the intrawebs to know that I have overcome my irrational fear of raisins. It was a sudden realization. In fact, I actually recall eating actual raisins in a cinnamon bun a while back with little to no complaining. Which is almost as shocking as the fact that the lead raisin seems to be wearing the same kind of fake front shirt panel as the father from Peter Pan, except his was turned into a map to Neverland instead of a creepy raisin outfit. Also, it would seem he needs to poop.
It might also be important to mention that thanks to some serious raisin Google-ing, I have suddenly developed a new irrational fear of James Brown, mostly because he looks strikingly like a California Raisin. Occasionally, James Brown also looks like he needs to poop.
Sometimes, despite my best efforts, I find myself totally and completely unable to fall asleep. Despite how long my day has been, or how exhausted I may be, I end up lying in bed, compiling lists in my head to the tune of Bryan’s (and Lucy’s) snores. One might blame the mattress, or seasonal Ho Ho Ho stress levels, or even my overblown caffeine addiction (pffft), but I think, in my case, it’s much simpler than that. I just can’t turn off my brain. I’ve tried all the usual solutions; Sleepytime (TM) tea, warm baths just before bed, smoking half a joint, the arm-twisting of The Man-Type for a much appreciated back massage, etc. The only thing that works for me, without fail, is reading in bed. But even this comes with a catch: once I start reading, I might not be able to stop. If I’m especially tired, my eyes start to get tired and droopy after a chapter or two, but if the book is magnificent (like oh so many are), I’ll read and read and read and suddenly realize that its 3AM. By that time, of course, its too late; I’m far too enthralled by the trials and tribulations of the book’s characters that I FORCE myself to stay awake longer, to find out what happens next.
Reading is my anti-sleep.
When I was in highschool, I went through a mild bout with insomnia, and I was lucky enough to have a computer and fellow insomniac friends to talk to late at night. Maybe my mild insomnia had something to do with me going to film school… when I couldn’t sleep and didn’t feel like reading, I’d watch a movie until I crashed, or it ended, whichever happened first. I must have watched hundreds of movies, spanning all genres, which must have triggered something in my overtired brain, something along the lines of “Hey, I think I could do that… I could totally make movies. I like watching them, so, damn, why not?” Most of my graduating class had different, more ambitious reasons for going to film school. Some scrimped and saved for years, and were put on waiting lists, and moved across the country to live in Thunder Bay of all places, just so they could enroll in Confederation College’s renowned Film Production program. And me? I just couldn’t sleep.
I’ve always been a night person more than a morning person. I can do the early morning thing if its absolutely necessary, but only if I have a significant amount of coffee buzzing through my veins. But without coffee? Fugetabbboutit. With the exception of my first week in Winnipeg, when Bryan and I went to bed before 10 every night out of sheer exhaustion, I’ve always stayed up late. I just don’t need much sleep to function, I guess. As well as being a night owl, I’ve always been a night writer. I blog or make lists of things to do/buy/remember, or write emails or letters, even the occasional journal entry (yes in a REAL notebook. How retro.) Something about putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, empties my head and makes it possible for me to manufacture the Z’s.
And now that we have a Christmas Wireless Router (thanks Greg), I can do my nighttime listmaking anywhere I damned well please. Sitting on the kitchen counter with my feet in the sink, for example. Why? Because I can, and because its just weird enough to be comfortable.
