Less Than Incredible Tales from Next-door

We've moved in to our new house and become observers of unusual phenomena.  From the strange pipe sticking out of the one neighbour's house that at irregular intervals splashes out a tonne of water into their front yard from who-knows-where, to the older gal who orders a cab at least once a day only to sit in her driveway in it for 15-20 minutes, to the massive heaps of dog poo lying in the driveway of the same lady's driveway where they keep their 3 large canines in a cage when they have a perfectly nice back yard they could be using.

I'm amused by anything and I enjoy coming to my own conclusions, so this neighbourhood is a real fit for me. I think Miklos is okay with it too. He's been busying himself making this place look amazing and getting the rest of our stuff over here.  Last night he lay in a mess of the most static-y styrofoam we've ever seen, assembling my new laptop cart.  It came with a cable lock!  The cable lock probably cost as much as I paid for the cart total. I like it!

Oh good, my ganglion is hurting. This is atypical of it. Maybe it's emptying, after 7 years.  Ew, I just looked them up on Wikipedia and I can assure you I do not have it as bad as those weirdos.

Bloop-a-doop-doop

Christmas is raping my wallet. (And everyone else's.) What a time of good cheer.

Something really good that has happened recently is that Miklos asked me to marry him. Okay, so he always asks me, but this time it was well-planned and not while I was in the bathroom and he was walking by in the hallway/while we were watching tv/while washing the car or something. I turned into a monkey and jumped around like the House of Pain. So it's all very good.

I really can't wait for January. Christmas is a sweet time of year and all, it's nice to see family you barely ever see due to awkwardness and distance and occasional dismemberments, but Retail Hell is driving me off my wheels, sending my brain careening into an outer space of insanity. Plus, in January I'll get to make fun of how old Miklos is. Because he's OLD, come January. Bless.

You'll have to forgive me; I've never been anywhere.

Big news! Miklos and I are going to Hungary in April! This still really hasn't sunk in for me.

Except that tomorrow when I wake up, I'm positive I'll realize the reality of it.

I've never been on a big plane; I've never seen the ocean, let alone crossed it; I've never been in a total state of culture shock; I've never been in a country where I have so little a realistic idea of what to expect, except for what someone has told me. To summarize, it's ridiculously exciting, or it will be, once it hits me that (OMG) I'm actually going!

Actually I think that excitement is beginning to build, as I've just now begun to think of the endless new photo possibilities. (Speaking of those, go here.) And now, to prevent any further evidence of how much I look forward to spending part of spring in a totally new place, I'm going to go to bed. Enthusiastically!

**

New favourites:

• Lamebook
• The Oatmeal
• Yahoo Answer Fail

Puppies, dressed as cats.

Blaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's Christmas in March. Or September or something. The weather is seriously weird this year. No summer, no winter. Just boring.

The nice thing is I got a pretty ring from the boy I care about. What a nutcase. He rules.

It's so different out here

So we're back from up north. What a great place, where the only thing you're blowing a tonne of money on is gasoline. It's nice not to be surrounded by products and crazy people, but rather by trees and crazy people you enjoy spending time with. Adding pictures to Flickr periodically for the next day or two.

There is nothing like a nice hike to simultaneously clear your mind and fill it with wonder. What a good trip. Back to grumbling when I wake up. It's laundry day.

Baby's 1st Phobia

So here it is, my one unexplainable and recently-revealed fear: Going to the gym.

No idea where this stems from. Possibly because the last year of gym class I ever had in school was spent with a healing broken nose; possibly because my knees are shot at the tender age of 25 (they have been since ... say, the even tenderer age of 18); possibly because of nothing.

I can confirm that the reason is not:

• Self-esteem issues
• A desire to be enormous
  
• Freemason conspiracy

You know what? Screw it. I'm just going to go. I will probably break every limb on my body while changing into gym clothes before I even get to the machines, but I might as well do it. Why the hell not. You only live once, might as well scare yourself shitless while the getting's good.

PS... while sunrise was nice for sentimental purposes this morning, any given sunset on a clear night blows morning way out of the water. I celebrate and strongly encourage the nocturnal life.

Sans-Labour Day

We went to the Marshville Festival for our day off. It was fun. All the useless crap people sell there makes me want to open a booth at a trade show. A booth comprised of anything! One place made really good wood carvings, and wasn't even selling any of them. Amazing. Creating things simply for the enjoyment of it, not for business... who does that anymore?

Speaking of working for nothing, the frantic job search continues tomorrow. Going to change the name on my resume to Gary Busey and see if that gets me further...

Thanks for the fab painting of Yours Truly. I hung it on me wall.

Miklos is now selling prints. He's really good, so I think you should check them out and show them to anyone you know who has a bare wall they'd like to spruce up with a couple photos. He's also good for naturally-lit portraits, baby photos, and monumental events like 80th birthdays and bar mitzvahs. Even though the word 'bar mitzvah' is a giggle-maker to the non-celebrators, I am entirely serious. Contact either him or me if interested. On the weekends and weeknights, he's even willing to travel!

District 9

Not to knock District 9, but both before and after District 9 were better than District 9. But District 9 was okay for a silly alien flick. I guess. Although I think I slept through most of District 9.

It's 4 months til Christmas, god help us.

You're the devil in me

We're going to see District 9 tonight, which I know nothing about, except that there's something about aliens (or Mary) involved in it. I'll do it because Miklos's sister is a peach and we have movie passes because of her.

Went for sushi with Heather today for the first time in a while. It was refreshing, although we didn't get to go to Sushi Jade because it's now something of a condemned building instead of a restaurant. Which I kind of expected, after the last time I went there and the whole half-frozen food thing happened. At any rate, they've moved to the Falls to try their sketchiness on for size with new scenery.

I found a second job, but I don't know if I'll keep it. If nothing else, it fills the holes in my day that my actual job doesn't.

(You had to be there) AKA (For my own memory's sake)

• Hidden and periodically updated notes; I did a similar "Note to Self" type memo when I was 8; I found it when I was around 15 and laughed at how ghey I was.
  
• "It smells like a pencil..."
• "What kind of tree is that?" "A weed maple."
• "Hey, Larry David! Can you sign my arm?" *Randy signs arm 'RANDY', shrugs and walks away*

Better get to bed. Work in the morning again. Ugh. Life.

A Cigarette in Bed; or a Cookie, for Non-Smokers

It was a very gloom-and-doom weekend at the island, at least as much as an island on the border of Ontario and Quebec can be gloom-doomy. Allow me for a moment to be more specific: The sky spent a lot of time pissing down rain.

One bad omen was a horrible accident that had happened on the 400S the morning we departed for the island; a tractor trailer and a small car collided, spilling 400 litres of diesel on the highway and killing at least one person. The cars on the highway crept along for four kilometres, which took approximately one hour and forty-five minutes to clear. People were getting out of their cars, walking up and down the highway. Cars took a half hour to catch up with some of the walking temporary non-passengers. It was a sad sight when we finally could see it. By that time, there was no longer a 'teetering' tractor trailer balanced on the center guardrail as the traffic reports had suggested. Just a kind of banged up looking transport truck, a severely messed up guardrail, and a burned-out shell of a Mazda which had been cut apart to pull someone out. Horrifying.

After what became a staggering nine-hour drive, we arrived at Tee Lake. By this point I had re-read about a quarter of Timequake and remembered for about the fiftieth time why I have this affinity for the late Kurt Vonnegut's twisted cynicism. And yes, the piss-rain. We braved the weather, though. The lot of us:

• Took a billion pictures of frogs (even at one point seeing one frog eat another... wtf)
• Saw the incredible mountains and lakes from a lookout point in Ville-Marie and on the drive to it
  
• Drove all the way to Algonquin and saw some beautiful scenery but no moose (good thing Miklos loves to drive so!)
• Light-painted to our hearts' content on the dock by night after the lake had further filled itself with almost a foot of the previous night's precipitation.
  

It was only on the last night that my body was eaten to bits by vicious Quebecois mosquitoes. Fine holiday fun, regardless of dreary weather. And after a giant drive home, we've got two more days before we head up to my family's cottage, which I've not seen in a year. I'm excited. Hopefully less rain, yes?

Take the bass out of your voice when you speak to me!

So I'm driving along, minding my own business, a little peeved that the radio and clock have ceased to work in my car. I was just in this thing two hours ago, I say to myself. What could've possibly happened in that time? I continue my journey to the grocery store with a turn onto Lincoln Avenue, where I come to realize that I am driving at a cool 0 km/hr. Not bad for a car that's clearly doing 50 or 60. Oh wait.

Next, I notice all my gauges are dead. Car's running great, but who could tell you any information about speed, temperature, RPMs or where my gas tank levels were at? Certainly not even the car at this point.

I start to imagine scenarios... Scenarios of crash-bang-boom because I might be driving 100 km/hr for all I know. Scenarios of "Do you know how fast you were driving?" "Well, no!" Scenarios where my car just blows up because that is really not too far-fetched.

So I get to the store, buy my damn dinner potato from Hell, get back in the car, turn it on, and the radio works. The speedometer, while seemingly a bit delayed in its accuracy, seems to function or at least move too. I drive home wondering what's about to fall off my car next. Perhaps the entire frame.

Miki's dad looks at it that night, tells me it's fine, although he did play around with some wires before he tested it. The next day, the radio dies again, the speedometer continues to work in a delayed fashion, the radio comes on eventually, and the keys lock themselves in the ignition. Then today, two days later, it works perfectly fine. All a week after I paid $117 for a new tire.

This, my avid readers, is my summer entertainment.

This, and I chopped off all my hair, cuz I can. And because I think what's left of the Amazon has relocated to Miklos's apartment. Let me tell you, what a difference no hair hanging over the back of my neck makes! And now... to dye it darker? Or leave it this weird naturally highlightedness the sun has made it. Oh, decisions in life!

You know, Jose Feliciano, you got no complaints.

Despite it reportedly being 'hot & humid' outside this beautiful sunny day, I'm almost as cool as a cucumber in my apartment. We don't have air conditioning, but it's still pretty fresh in here. It's good weather, and it's finally summer. The only disadvantage is the days are getting shorter. Until it's dark at 5pm, who cares!

Going to take a walk to the grocery store in the apparently sweltering heat, make a nice dinner, I think, and then go check on Mixie with Miklos tonight. Should be good.

And then there were 3... cats, I mean.

Miklos found a kitten in the woods (or rather, some old men found her but couldn't keep her). After suggesting what seemed like a dictionary of names for a tortoiseshell kitten with an exceptionally friendly and energetic personality for a cat who'd been left in the woods for at least a couple of days, we settled on Mix, or Mixie (for now).

We took her in for an examination Saturday morning after the market, where the veterinarian let us look through the microscope at the earmites she had accumulated. Cool! ...We then had him eradicate them.

So after some expensive treatment and a vaccination, this cat looks like she will be our new money pit pet. D'awwww! She's so wiry and friendly.

PS, we watched stuff blow up tonight, which should make up for how cute this post is. Except that the things blowing up were awesome fireworks over the canal. And I bought some thinning shears because your hair's getting too fluffy these days.

I don't play baby games.

An empty Tim Hortons cup sits on my desk, to the left of my computer and to the Southeast of my phone. This is a cue for me to make a tea. I enjoy a good Earl Grey tea these days. I also enjoy 'paying back' my sleep debt.

One day Miklos is going to pay back his sleep debt too, but his case will be much more Van Winkle than mine (minus all the tragedy). When he awakes, there will be mugs and mugs of coffee all around him because I was prepared for him to wake up one day. The room will also be fully renovated to adapt to the era we then find ourselves in. I'd wake up to that! Sleep for 20 years, then new decor and a shitload of old undrinkable coffee to greet him as he rubs the sleep-grit out of his eyes. Hell, I'll even make some muffins, if the eggs in the fridge aren't then as expired as the ones that currently sit in it.

Burning bridges and it feels so good...

Miklos agrees with me that there's something definitely askew with that part of the highway in the rain where I almost went out of control today. Which is good because it means that I can still know him.

Also good: Cranberry juice. And those square wafer cookies that are covered in a layer of chocolate. Man, that's good. Apparently we had them at the island all weekend and I was none the wiser. Next time, Island. Fool me once, shame on you.

What's with summer this year? Is it going to come sometime? I suffered a long and shitty winter for this. PAYBACK PLZ.

Played.

Quebec, at least the part of it I've been to as of this weekend, is beautifully scenic. Not horribly scenic by any means.

I officially have a 'Hang in There' kitty on my wall in calendar form this month. This can only mean good things. Or at least that I'll try to maintain some sanity.

Rare is the day that I'm not out in the evening, and as such, I barely get to watch Jeopardy anymore. Miklos is hard, hard, hard at work, so I think tonight's my night. Trebek, you and me. Let's get it on... the TV, that is.

Had a nice healthy rant about life just now. Which is the reason I think I didn't actually die in my car encounter earlier today during the rain. I nearly hydroplaned out of control and my steering wheel started shaking like a bastard. No impact, thankfully, and probably, as I say, because I hadn't yet had a final wah-wah today.

PS, go see UP! It's amazing.

Real Estate... Agent Maaaan

Tonight:

• Investigated area of fire I noticed happening last night between Towpath Rd. and Highway 406
• While investigating, observing the hollow area that seemed to lie beyond the otherwise apparent forest and noting the overpowering smell of something burned, we almost took a nosedive off the side of the road and into a creek lying a good distance below the level of the road
• 30 minutes later, avoided near-collision with both a raccoon and a guardrail (kudos to Miklos's fancy footwork there; AAPEX Driving Academy served at least one of us well)
• Saw about a billion more kamikaze raccoons while driving (one, dead with its back freshly ripped out... ew, man; leave that shit alone, turkey buzzards), as well as some (live) kitties

So, an eventful night in all, but you might be able to see why we opted to drive around no longer.

Heartfelt Moment #214

After a long and serious discussion:

Miklos: "Well, this has been a very inspiring conversation... thank you."
Nikki: "It wasn't inspiring; shut the fuck up."