weeelll we had the party... all of the grade 3 girls were invited to the bowling alley, one of the grade 3 boys was having a party at the same bowling alley so all of the grade 3 boys were also there

my daughter has received a high school musical dance pad, a high school musical karaoke machine, a high school musical book, and a high school musical box filled with high school musical popcorn

okay so there is nothing high school musical about the popcorn, it's just popcorn. good popcorn nonetheless

she also got a really cool drawing book and markers and a webkinz whale and a rainbow fairies book, from me she got a book bag that she can decorate herself

the kids didn't really like the cereal squares i made but otherwise everything went smoothly. it was cosmic bowling and they had the lights down low and these disco light thingies and they played recorded music, one of the songs was the dance remix of cotton eye joe, which was big when i was in high school

ah she is about to go to sleep so i must go say goodnight to her

ah so in the past few days i have managed to lose my key lose my wallet find my wallet get a new key cut lose the electric thing to get into my building find the electric thing to get into my building pay my rent get to my co-op placement late get to work on time and obtain a chair-bed thingy with a leopard skin pattern

my daughter will be home anytime now and we will decorate her birthday cake together, i'vebeen eating the smarties we got to decorate it but don't tell her that

well good news, my daughter's tooth came out on its own.

we were going to have back-to-back appointments and she would have her tooth pulled by a dentist while i would have something done to the place where i ruined the enamel by grinding my teeth. it sounds like fun...economical, too...i think an entire paycheque of mine will be devoted to paying off this dentist bill.

but my daughter doesn't have to go back, and we will have a party for her tonight, and another on thursday which is her birthday, and another on saturday for her friends.

i hafta admit that the Hanna Montanna TV show is beginning to grow on me....she plays herself, Miley Cyrus- she plays herself and her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, plays her father...they moved from Nashville to California...

I am better now and my appetite is back, you know when you are sick and then your appetite comes back with a mean vengeance....in my case I have to be really careful not to make myself sick again, craving tortilla chips and cheese...

my daughter's birthday is next thursday but i will be away for a few days leading up to it so i will bake her cake sometime soon, i hope i have the will-power to not eat it all myself right when i take it out of the oven

today my daughter and i were at home sick, i ended up making pizza bagels, biscuits, and i heated up a can of soup...i feel a bit better, hope all are well

these last few days I have been eating lots of those little candy bars...I went to pick up my new glasses, an entire arm fell right off my old glasses, it happened in a bar, in fact, and the arm was in the middle of the floor. fortunately it was early enough in the evening that there were not many people there to stomp on it and the arm was still intact

i tried taping it back on but it didn't work so now i am set back almost $300. i have a dentist appointment too, tomorrow morning, and my teeth look to be in sad shape, i can't wait to hear how much it will cost

so no more little candy bars for me. when i went to get my new glasses they gave me a complementary little candy bar and i took it home for someone else in my house to eat.

hey, look at this book

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Blame-Canada/Toni-Johnson-Woods/e/9780826417312

i was at the metro reference library and got totally sidetracked from my research

well, it's come to this. I have gone on the internet and googled adobe premiere tutorials that I have spent a good part of today glued to.

I am not tech-savy, I studied film for a bit in school but only the very very theoretical aspects, ie watching films and writing papers about them. my daughter actually really wants to make a film and I am supposed to be leading digital video workshops as a component of a placement for one of my classes at york, so i should learn how to use digital video software, you think?

well, wish me luck. this just isn't my forte...but hopefully someday soon there will be a digital video or two that i had some part in creating.

well i found myself in the thick of hallowe'en party planning....we will make slime, we will do something interesting with rubber gloves, a good time will be had by all

yah christine's 1978-ish audition tape is great also because it features a 2002-ish interview...

hope you all had a happy weekend

http://www.ycdtotv.com

y'all must've watched this show...i used to live for it

http://www.barthsburgery.com

http://www.christinemcglade.com

http://www.heymoose.christinemcglade.com

hope these work

i think i wrecked the computer yesterday, i also overslept this morning but things are slowly improving

my skin irritation is better for e.g.

i spent the day learning how to use a video editing program on a mac laptop. i am not computer savy and i've never owned a mac.

i just ate lots of food to regenerate and give my brain the energy to do the readings for a class tomorrow

the skin irritation may have started as an allergy to whisk that got infected but the antibiotics are working and i vow to not use whisk again...which means not drinking red wine when I wear a light- coloured shirt

guess what...the skin irritation is getting better...i know everyone has been sitting on the edge of their seats, oh the suspense of reading about a skin irritation

the lotion stuff made my fingernails blue so it looks like something heavy landed on my hands

last night I was up all night with a skin irritation that was driving me crazy...I bought this ice gel stuff at the convenience store around the corner from where I was staying but it made me dizzy....this isn't fun, it looks disgusting, too

this, also, is too cool

http://www.cartoonreviewsite.com/videos/disney/cc/v3st.html

i loved this when i was small

and you can buy it at amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Walt-Disney-Cartoon-Classics-Scary/dp/B0009AFF6U

see this

www.orientaltrading.com

and you can hand out eyeballs and witch warts when kids come by

i dunno, i thought it was entertaining, my daughter wants to have a hallowe'en party

eczema is not much fun...

nor is losing your wallet

otherwise it was a pretty good week

the lotion and antihistamines are working and someone brought my wallet to the lost and found at school

and i got my daughter's hockey equipment...she liked hockey, too...

today i took an unexpected ride to scarborough, I was at warden and eglinton before i realized i was not getting any closer to york university

so...i got off turned around and went back. i thought, though, what if i don't have the right change, there was not even a place nearby to make change

ah and so i just got back from work late last night

crazy transportation, i had to convince the bus driver to accept a receipt instead of a ticket...long story

I also left my bank card at the machine and had to race back to a different part of town in a taxi to find the card sitting right there on the machine's ledge...then race back to the bus terminal in a taxi, only to be told i may have to buy a new ticket since the bus driver in the morning had taken both of my tickets, the one for going and the return one, and then when i asked him about it he said that my receipt showed i had only bought one ticket and there was nothing he could do about it

in short, i had spent all the money i had racing around the city in cabs chasing after my stupid bank card so i couldn;t buy another ticket, thank god for the driver who let me on with the receipt

i've been seeing flashes of light and getting sick to my stomach after consuming nothing but green tea, i guess this is the beginning of another school year...yay

weeeelll i hafta run to pay $5 toward my visa bill and be back in time to be there when my daughter gets home from her first day of school (she no longer wants me to come to the school to pick her up, I guess I have become an embarrassment)

rock on everybody

yah they are tearing up the road in front of my house...again- i can't believe it. i am honestly worried about our fish, all this turbulence must be unnerving to her.

labour day weekend and I am going to work pretty insanely. i will probably be eating lots of energy balls

for the first time today i really felt as though i was over my psychosomatic listeriosis. pretty soon i will start training for duathlon again (hah)

did you know both Tom Waits and the Jonas Brothers have a song called "Hold On", probably you did, but it was news to me

be well

ah they are tearing up the road again, some of the construction did not pass inspection...

well, i ate something and was not ill so i think the psychosomatic listeriosis has run its course. but just as a warning, you may not want to read the news too often in this next little while.

so i've been able to work on my hamster blog a little

and read cookbooks to find out what to do with leftover organ meats

LEFTOVER BRAIN (some ideas)

brain souffle
brains with scrambled eggs (in blender)
brain salad
brain pancake

(from The Natural Foods Cookbook by Beatrice Trum Hunter, Simon and Schuster, 1961)

a deli i went to while i was away advertised that its special was something called "open-faced tongue"

I hope you are all well

i seem to have had a bit of a flu- i think it was psychosomatic listeriosis...but it is getting better, will be doing some more work on my other blog i think

be well all

weeelll another day at work a day shift almost back to back with a night shift so i am a bit incoherent...

my daughter made herself a mixture of kool-aid, fruit roll-ups, and sugar (of course) she has also gotten really into Hannah Montana et al, is her father Billy Ray Cyrus?

I am trying to encourage her to get interested in the Deal sisters, on some level, she likes the Pacer video, with racing cars

i am going to try to write on my other blog too, the hamster one

that is 'a trinity of hamsters' but i have not written anything yet, gotta go to sleep

So what is SOCAN...what does it do? i keep thinking- musicians should unionize, but then i forget that there is a musicians' union already

www.socan.ca

I was just browsing around the website and I will probably write more about this on my 3hamsters blog (it's listed on my profile...) in the next little while

just got back from a trip, needless to say not to the place listed below as the month is wrong but i saw it advertised in a restaurant,

http://memphisinmay.org/wbcc.htm

the poster i saw said it was "kind of like woodstock except we smoke pork"

enjoy the last little bit of summer

I wonder what this tastes like MAGIC BROWNIES
1 pound can unseasoned black beans, undrained 1 package brownie mix Puree black beans in a food processor and add to brownie mix. Blend well. Add no other ingredients. Bake at 350°F for 35 minutes or until firm. Brownies will be fudgy. Submitted by: L. Exley

so I got up early in the morning to go to a meeting , I am the new placement student, and when I got there one of the full-time workers asked if I would make coffee (which I am terrible at...) and I did not measure enough water so I went to get some more but when I got back there was a dead fly floating around in the machine...

I am coming to the realization that those energy balls are making me sick, a sad realization indeed. More later on trying to make coffee at a meeting first thing in the morning

the other night i was woken by a thunderstorm that seemed like earth tremors. i went into my daughter's room to see if she was alright and found her sleeping soundly.

the fish, on the other hand, was wide awake. every time the thunder clapped, the fish would swim to the surface, looking for food.

this puzzled me and i wondered why an animal would connect food with thunder. then i realized that the sound of a human's footsteps approaching its bowl, hence signifying an upcoming feeding, to it, probably sounded like thunder.

so, my daughter was sound asleep and the fish was awake but not afraid. she probably figured that the thunder, even if not food per se, was just the sound of us, doing whatever it is that we do.

an odd thing happened

i went to check on my daughter's fish, it was poking around the surface, looking for food, as it often does, but usually only when she or i are near its bowl,


then when it saw me, it quickly swam to the bottom and hid under a plant, as if i would be angry at it for looking for food

'due to higher than normal call volumes, wait times are longer than usual. you may wish to call back at another time.'

i am writing this while i am on hold with the bank

in other news, i finally got the police to listen to my taxi story...no it's not a 'story' in the sense of untrue...it's non-fiction, i suppose

but the police were not making it easy, they kept saying i did not have enough information, like that i could not remember the exact time of the occurence, or that i didn't remember the direction the cab was driving in

i just made kraft dinner and jell-o and put it in the fridge, my daughter can take the kraft dinner in her thermos and the jell-o in a container when she goes to daycamp

My daughter wants to sleep in a tent tonight, even though we are at home and the forecast is for rain.

We have listened to the soundtrack of High School Musical 2 until it is embedded in my brain.

Other than that not much is new.

my daughter was asking me what 'purple diarrhea' was and I said I had never heard of it but it sure sounded gross and I hoped it was only something she had made up.

she said that it wasn't, and that she had heard an adult talking about it

'are you sure?' I asked

'yes' she said, 'it has something to do with when you can't stop talking'

ooooh...VERBAL diarrhea...

well have a nice night everyone

have you ever made rice krispy snakes? or hats to go on your shoes?

i played my guitar and made up dog songs...doggie went a courtin...the dog went out on a chilly night, i can probably do better

ALSO, i discovered that I am no longer capable of monkey bars. I went on the swings, though, and climbed to the top of the climbing structure...i hope anyone who saw me just though I was an immature grade eight


i played t-ball and was totally beaten by my daughter

such is the life

they tore up one of the main streets in my town, which is also the street which i live on

today they broke our old water main and have not connected us to the new one yet so they took a hose and connected us to our neighbour's water supply, neighbours who are, presumeably, on a different main

and last year at this time they had taken down the bridge connecting my house to the commercial part of my town, even though you could see it, you couldn't get there

they built a new MURF, multi-use recreation facility. now, instead of walking to the arena you have to drive to a new, better arena

is this a rant? i don't know. most people in the world cannot turn on their tap and get water.

my daughter was worried that the dog next door would get too thirsty. i was actually worried that her fish would not be able to have its water changed....but we have water again, clear, drinkable water

apparently, in prague, water is more expensive than beer

the reason the last post was so lame was because i had this other post i was working on with a poem about my daughter's pet fish but i was afraid it would offend people who followed any of the world's major religions so i will have to work on it a bit

mmm ice cream indeed

it is interesting that they often have jell-o at salad bars...it doesn;t really go so well with french dressing

remember marshmallow salads? you never see those anymore. marshmallows, mayonnaise, whipped cream, how i miss it

i want to open an ice cream stand. i don't eat ice cream because of my lactose intolerance but i like reading the different flavours and thinking of inventing my own. and ice cream would seem to make people happy.

well 5 glasses of wine and these stilleto things and i managed not to fall down once this evening

because i am now a sister in law

well i got somewhat hammered last night at a family dinner in honour of my brother (it's flagging 'honour'...American bastards...of which I am one...)

and there was another gathering today, a rather interfaith religious service, ending with people from all religions singing a rousing rendition of "barretts privateers" that made me wish i was in sherbrooke, too

i'm putting the logistical crap of the last few weeks behind me temporarily, it's funny, the taxi incident was not that big of a deal but it met with a licensing person who wanted to see it come to a certain end

oh well, it is better than being a broken man on a halifax pier

but everything is going well, i think my brother and the woman who will be my sister-in-law in less than 24 hours are happy with the way things are going...

i spent the afternoon munching on cut-up melon and chasing little ones through the courtyard...now i am thinking of opening a bottle of wine when my brother gets here

i make him breakfast tomorrow,

does anyone know how to make German pancakes?

well i just got back from the bachelorette party for my sister-in-law to be, my brother gets married this weekend, then tomorrow is the family dinner and saturday is the rehearsal and so forth so i am trying to work my alcohol tolerance to something a little less embarrassing than it is right now

i spent the day on tuesday chasing the police around the city, always preferable to the police chasing me around the city, i was trying to report that taxi driver from a few weeks back, the licensing agency thought that the only way i could be done justice was to speak to the police since all the city of toronto can do is take away the guy's drivers' license

and then today i found out that my interest relief application got rejected, in fact i should not even need interest relief since i have not been out of school long enough but somehow the national student loan people don't have documentation of this. the application got rejected because they were saying they had not received documentation that i had, in fact, sent in- by the time i called though they had received the documentation but were saying they could not begin to process the application until i payed more money because, get this- the bank had put me back into student status in january (although i had been a student since this september and also the previous year) however the national student loan centre had not. this is relevant because you cannot be on interest relief if you are a student, which the bank was saying i was, because i would rightfully have been in non-repayment status while a student and hence my (retroactive) interest relief application would be unnecessary.

aaahh and now this is taking up another paragraph, if you are kind enough to read my blog know that i surely will understand if you skip over this entire part,

SOOOO...

the national student loan centre was saying that i could not be on interest relief if the bank said i was a student. however, the national student loan centre was not saying that i was a student and was saying that the only way they could process my current interest relief application would be for me to pay this money that the national student loan centre said i owed but the bank said i didn't.

so i am looking forward to a weekend of working my alcohol tolerance back. my brother and sister-in-law-to-be will wear mickey mouse ears to their wedding rehearsal and i think i will wear a lime-green fake-lace dress that i bought for some weird dress party a few years back.

on an entirely different note, someone mentioned to me in passing that the cartoon character caillou was based on a child with cancer. i looked it up on the 'net and there is no mention of this except some random bloggers wondering the same thing. the company says that caillou is bald so that he is not tied down to having one particular hair colour, in order to make him seem more universal, kind of like 'brother' and 'sister' bear i suppose.

the spell-check is flagging 'colour', american, i guess.

i ate a whole east-side mario salad, complete with jalapenos, eaten whole, so i would not get too hammered from the one glass of wine in front of my sister-in-law's friends less my behaviour give her any kind of apprehensions about becoming related to me at this stage in the game

now i have to soak some stained clothing (no connection to tonight, just clothing that has become tarnished over the last several months that i have been ignoring) and fold laundry and go to sleep as all my relatives will be at my house for dinner tomorrow night

i forgot to say happy solstice last weekend but i won't forget to say happy pride this weekend

yay

documents, fucking documents

it seems like everything in my life that needed documenting happened now...work, school, money

i've been feeding the goddamned fax machine like it's a starving animal

oh and i stayed awake for like 60-something hours-from when i woke up at 7:30 saturday morning until 10 tuesday night, i may have dozed off for an hour or two in there but not more, due to working the night shift and having things to do during the day...i went to sleep last night which was important although i would've liked to stay out

i know, i know, the world's tiniest violin...

will sleep before this blog shows the results of my head hitting the keyboard

oh and don't trust the fucking drivers in my town, i took my daughter out on her bike, and someone waved so we started to cross and then three drivers zipped by in the opposite direction, she had to very quickly walk her bike backwards to avoid getting run over

once when she was even littler we were crossing the same intersection, i had her in a wagon, and we stepped into the street. after we had begun to cross some car just sped into the intersection and i had to push her backwards in the wagon back onto the sidewalk or else we would have both been toast

BUT ON the plus side, it was raining and it stopped raining (I always try to end on a positive note)

nothing serious, just a cab driver who drove a few miles in the opposite direction of where I was going to a nightclub on lansdowne and tried to get me to come inside and drink with him

it was very much against my better judgement to have gotten in that cab as i recognized the driver from another similar seedy entanglement a few weeks ago...somehow he seemed to convince me this time that he would not do that again

that and also the student loan centre said I still owed them for a time that I was actually in school and should not have been paying anything and that it is now too late to document that I was in school

BUT, like I said, I found my shoes

i have come out of the past week thinking never trust student loan people, cab drivers, or people over 30 (such as me in 23 1/2 months)

on the plus side, i found my shoes. i got them in highschool and then very recently they disappeared. i showed up at work last night and they were just sitting there in the office. apparently they had been there for some time, i just had not noticed.

aaargh, rumbly bears

if you go to sobeys look for teddy grahams, right beside the teddy grahams there will be the sobey's version, called our compliments, and they make something called rumbly bears

the chocolate chip rumbly bears are really good. trust me on this one

not much new

went to a festival in my town where there was lots of fried food

apparently my daughter got some more food for the fish while i was away

i went to starbucks this morning and i ordered some tea which i got right away, i also asked for a glass of water and they said "we'll put it on the bar" so it was in a line-up with every latte and frappucino ordered...

i had to wait forever, for fucking water...

i guess i don't understand the way places like that work

i fed the fish, it was a hungry fish, it likes to eat.

i was assured that this kind of fish does not eat itself to death but i still have to make sure it does not eat too much.

pretty soon i will go to sleep.

today everything took three times as long

was up at 6 and barely got to work for 8, even with my cab driver drag-racing another cab driver

it was that kinda day...

i think i will go for a walk, to buy carrots, the baby kind that is already washed and peeled

is it true that carrots are good for your eyes? i eat lots of them but i still wear glasses

somebody once said that carrots must be good for your eyes for the reason that you never see rabbits wearing glasses

that's not true, i had a rabbit once, it would hop around and when we tried to get it to hop into its cage it would cling to the rug and not move. then i would put my glasses on it, just for effect

also, i had a hamster who got depressed. it crawled into an empty juice can i put in its cage and would only come out to eat. we tried playing the radio for it and putting a mirror next to its cage so it would think it had a friend. none of these tactics worked. finally the vet told us to get rid of the juice can. we did, and it was fine from then on.

now i only have a fish, it's my daughter's really. sometimes i feed it, when she forgets. when it sees me come into the room it looks at me tentatively, and then swims up to the surface, just to see if i left anything. i did not know fish could tell people apart, but this one seems to be able to.

and then today i got off my usual greyhound bus from toronto to kitchener and then got on a kitchener city bus and realized i had forgotten my UNusual large amount of luggage so i got off that bus and took a bus all the way back to the terminal, got the bag, and then turned around and continued where i was going

i would rather not look at the inside of another bus, for a few days at least

weeelll, i just returned from my first ever bus trip from the Port Authority in Manhattan all the way to the terminal in downtown Toronto

now, don't get me wrong, i live on buses, but generally only for relatively short periods of time such as from Kitchener to Toronto


about an hour and a half into the ride a woman got stuck in the bathroom and the driver had to pull over and use a special key to help her out. after that the door was locked shut and no one from the outside could open it at all, which was sort of okay since fortunately no one was locked in there anymore.

however, the driver did not seem to believe that it was locked, and kept saying, "just give it a big push," which people did but to no avail.

i thought they would look at it at the next stop and maybe even fix it but they didn't. when the new people got on the bus driver made an announcement,"welcome aboard the coach. we are restroom equipped for your convenience BUT some people have said that there is a problem with the latch on the bathroom door so i would recommend not using the bathroom if at all possible"

for a twelve-hour ride

...oh did i mention that the bus was running behind schedule so all our stops were made really really short. occasionally, like every 3 hours, the driver would say
"well if you really have to get off at this stop to use the restroom then i GUESS it is alright but make it quick"

i got through the border alright which was the thing i was most concerned about though

this blog is the colour of fake-strawberry flavouring

aaaahh sleep well all

gotta run, gotta find my running shoes

happy birthday to Queen Victoria, indeed, let's celebrate imperialism the right way, with intoxication

this morning i ate those energy balls you know the kind that look like jawbreakers but taste like energy bars mixed with red bull

i am thinking of eating some more, i almost bought a bottle of super-jolt, or whatever it is called, wild grape flavour, the bottle is tiny but potent, supposedly keeps you awake

sleep is for the faint of heart

now i am on to calming green tea

yay

i ate some peanut butter today about to go have a rest and then eat some more,

seriously somedays that is most of what i eat, i can't begin to fathom what i would do if i were allergic

i'm not, nonetheless, i am still afraid sometimes that i won't wash my hands properly and will shake hands with someone who will suddenly fall unconscious

so i wash my hands, sanitize them, and wash them again...

on another note i am discovering that i really like white wine, and it doesn;t stain, either

so i was just walking down Bloor St. between Bathurst and Spadina when I noticed a small dog, a little terrier, i think running down the street with no leash or collar.

at this point i should say that my daughter is a devoted follower of lady and the tramp and her dream is that we should find a stray dog somewhere and take it home and make it a house dog. not everyone in the house i am living in now loves dogs so this was not a feasible option.

i am also aware that between the time lady and the tramp was set and now there have been some changes in how we treat stray dogs. out with the pound, in with the humane society.

i decided in a wwmdd, what would my daughter do, type of moment, to call this humane society so that they would take care of the stray dog in as humane a manner as possible. i called the number listed in the phonebook and was transferred to an emergency line. i felt like an idiot 'i don't know if this is really an emergency but there would appear to be a stray little dog running around in the annex'

they told me to call animal control, apparently different from the humane society, which i did, but since the animal was not sick or injured and surely not a public safety concern, they told me to call back during regular business hours.

so that was the ordeal of the last few moments of my life, all started by a little dog and a disney movie

i played more webkinz this morning...and won thankfully

will make crazy brownies later...that refers only to the decorations i will put on the top as my 7 year old will be eating them too

well, i just finished the webkinz thing. i managed to complete the 'babysitting' job and i also succeeded in kinzville academy, well not me, in fact, the raccoon...

i guess it was a happy beltane after all

goodnight

today i played a webkinz game, was trying to earn extra webkinz money, but i lost

happy beltane btw