super sleuthing

disclaimer: i'm not a stalker, but....

last night i decided to try and track down some long lost friends. i've tried in the past, to no success. but every now and again i give it another go, testing if their old email somehow works again, or if they've decided to join the rest of the world and get a facebook account. unfortunately for me, these still came up as dead ends. ok, regroup. so it wasn't going to be easy, but surely in this age of technology there was a way to find them. i've got the world wide web at my fingertips. WORLD WIDE!! i just need to dig...

so both of these people are friends i met in New Zealand, back in 1995-96. I did a fairly good job at keeping in touch, especially considering the lack of email in the beginning. that's right, we wrote letters. on paper. envelopes and licking and stamps and the whole old-fashioned rigmarole. sadly, i lost touch with one of them sometime while living in the UK in 2001, and the other a few years later, maybe 2003ish. but time to reconnect, i am on a mission!

my first endeavor was to find my old flatmate Cathrine. i knew her maiden name, her married name (although the marriage was a sham to get her a NZ visa so i had no idea if she still used it), and i knew she'd moved back to Norway at some point. with that, i began googling. eventually i stumbled on some Norwegian home buyers page that, after translating to English, listed her (with maiden/married names) as having bought a house in some little Norwegian place i'd never heard of. after a bit more googling i found her again - this time with a new last name but the same address i'd just seen! and with that new last name i found her on Facebook!! no photo available, but when i checked out her friends list i saw some other familiar names from all those years ago. it was her! on top of the facebook find, i also located her on a NZ "old friends" site, although not sure when she last used it. But, i learned she has a kid. wow, what a fruitful search! i sent her messages both through facebook and the other site, and now wait with bated breath for a response. i have no idea how often she logs in - if ever - so all this could still leave her out of reach.

next up: mike, another kiwi friend. after meeting him in '96, he came to visit me in '98 or '99 and we took a road trip to NY. i last saw him in 2002 when i stopped by Auckland on my way home from SE Asia. he doesn't exactly have a unique name, so googling him wasn't giving me any concrete leads. however, my search was not a complete bust. i found his name associated with a company in Auckland. no contact info. i googled the company. no website but it comes up in that "old friends" site because someone has listed it as a former employer. who? not mike, a girl. my stomach flips. now that i see the name, i remember that was his girlfriend's name. maybe they worked together. she has a photo up, and although i only met his girlfriend once, and that was almost a decade ago, i think it might be her. her blurb mentions living with her boyfriend of 12 years. the timing fits. and i see she worked in Australia for a bit and i remember they moved there briefly. it has to be her! so i send a rather awkward message asking if my friend mike is her boyfriend. again, i have no idea when she'll get that message, i just have to cross my fingers that it will reach her and she'll respond.

i went to bed much later than should have, but totally wired from all my exciting detective work. i'm closer than i have been in a decade, and i may actually reconnect with them! now i keep checking my email, hoping to see something from one of these long lost pals, trying not to get my hopes up, but really it's too late. oh, i'm so close, so close!! please still use those emails and websites, please don't let my messages get spammed out, please get them and read them and write back!

ok, must chill out. for now i should congratulate myself on my excellent sleuthing skills and just give it a bit of time. i mean really, that was way tougher than trying to find carmen sandiego. fingers crossed!

number 36...

first, let me express my outrage, disappointment, and - above all - hurt feelings, at the fact that i have lost a follower. did you think i wouldn't notice? i only had 23 followers, of course i noticed! i just lost almost 5% of my following! why? why did you leave me?? just because i don't blog regularly? just because my entries are boring? just because the pointless drivel i do post is presented in an aesthetically dry and bland fashion? that's it??? i never thought you'd abandon me like this, not you! ok, so i don't know exactly who the deserter is, but that doesn't make it any less devastating. oh well, their loss, now they miss out on my exciting news.

i'm going to Denmark! it was a very spontaneous decision after seeing a fantastic price on a flight to Copenhagen. $450 return after taxes and everything! woohoo!! i can't even get to vancouver for that cheap! unfortunately, it's a super short trip, but that was all that was available. we were thinking of booking july 3 - 17, but as i was online looking at it, it sold out! so we're going july 10 - 17, the only option. i had never considered a trip to Denmark, so i know nothing about it. Ok, not quite true. I've heard of Tivoli Gardens, and i know there's a statue of the Little Mermaid, the Carlsberg brewery, and of course Legoland. And if i believe the stereotype, everyone is blond. and a viking.

Also, since looking online at accommodation, i've learned that although the flight may have been cheap, the rest of our visit will most certainly NOT be. But who cares! I get to dust off my passport, see new things, and make Denmark the 36th country I'll have the privilege of traveling to. yahoo!!

if anyone has any recommendations or suggestions, please share!

joining the fancy future

almost a week ago something awful happened. i mean, we've had our issues and setbacks in the past, but we've always been able to get through it. i guess i naively hoped we could keep on doing that indefinitely. but the moment this happened i knew things were different. i gasped, my head reeled, i felt helpless and lost and didn't know where to turn. everything i'd done to salvage things before had just been temporary fixes. tape over a crack, reset and pretend nothing happened.

i'm not being figurative, i'm talking about my cell phone. my darling little Nokia flip phone that i had for 3 and a half years. so simple, so easy, so reliable. sure, i dropped it a few too many times and the battery was held in place by packing tape. and i called rogers every other week because my texts stopped sending or i didn't get notification of voicemail. but other than that things were great! i thought the tape added character and i always had very pleasant calls with the rogers staff. i scoffed at my friends who told me to ditch the archaic relic and get with the times. no, i loved my flip phone and it was all i needed or wanted.

but then, six days ago, the screen died. nothing but a tiny panel of blue. i hung my head and grieved, and finally acknowledged it was time for a new phone. i managed to get a last hurrah with my Nokia, as the screen still worked if i only opened the phone half way. i had the fleeting thought that maybe i could live like this and spare myself the painful separation, but realized that was ridiculous.

I begrudgingly went to the mall, scowling at all the ugly phones and snooty blackberries. i just want my simple flip phone. i don't need anything fancy schmancy, just something that makes and receives calls and text messages. basic. i repeat: BASIC.

Anyhoo.......... i ended up getting the new Sony Ericsson Xperia arc. yeah, it's fancy schmancy. i don't know what happened. it was just so pretty! it has a camera that's better than my actual camera was! and my sister kept saying that fancy phones are "the future". i have 13 days left to decide if i want to keep it. i tell myself i went this long without a fancy phone, i can most certainly continue with having a phone that is just a phone. but can i go back to having just a phone phone after this? and will i want to?

look, i'm being topical!

so, lots of stuff going on lately. big news stories and such. even for someone who generally only gets their limited news knowledge from yahoo headlines or jon stewart, even i couldn't be so oblivious as to not know what was obsessing the media. it was an event filled couple of weeks.

for weeks i couldn't watch tv without coming across some will & kate show on at least 2 channels at all times. their relationship, their engagement, their style, their families, the guest list, the plethora of royal wedding tchotchkes, etc etc etc. i didn't quite get the infatuation that some people had, whether it be in their hoards of tacky souvenirs or determination to travel halfway around the world to be in London on the wedding day. it seemed to me that the whole thing was getting much more attention that it deserved. really, i thought to myself, what's the big deal? who cares? then i heard that apparently two billion people cared. WHAT? two billion people are going to watch this wedding?? wow, that's a whole lotta people. that's almost a third of the whole world! and that was it, i got caught up in it and became royal wedding viewer 2,000,000,001. i didn't have enough enthusiasm to get up at 4am or anything, but that's what PVRs are for. and it was cool. i liked the ceremony and tradition of it all. but mostly i liked being a part of something with 2 billion other people.

almost eclipsed by the wedding was our federal election. in general i don't much care for politics. i don't keep up on all the nitty gritty or the who's who of what riding blah blah. i have an overall idea of what the parties stand for, the primary issues on the table, and that's about it. it may be basic, but i know who i like and who i side with. and i always vote. it makes me sad that voter turnout is only about 60%. i know that it often seems futile as one little ballot in a sea of millions, but we should not take our right to vote for granted. when the votes are all counted, i might not like the results. but what bothers me more are the people who complain about the government only to sit on their ass on election day.

and most recently, bin laden is dead. well that's good i guess. one less bad guy in the world. i'm not sure i have any more to say on this one. 9/11 still happened. all those people are still dead. the repercussions of that attack aren't going to dissolve just because he's dead now. i've never celebrated anyone's death before, and i'm not going to start. he's dead, that's that.

so there we have it, my thoughts on some of the world's happenings, instead of my usual self-centred babbling. hey, i said it was topical, not insightful.

the dark ages

here's a joke for you, i made it up myself:
Q: how long does it take amanda and blair to change a lightbulb?
A: i don't know, but it's been 3 weeks and counting!


tsk tsk! i wag my finger at you!



ok, so it's not so much a joke as it is more a shameful factoid. but in our defense, it is a fancy lighbulb. it's in a floor lamp in our kitchen, and it's a weird shape that i've never seen before. quite honestly, i haven't even figured out how to get the dead bulb out yet, as it seems to be very awkward to get at. must be some special bulb created by the lamp-maker and they don't sell bulbs separately. we'll just have to buy a new lamp.

ok, to be really 100% honest, it's been a tad more than 3 weeks since we needed to replace the light. it's been a couple of years. once upon a time our kitchen had a ceiling light, like all other kitchens. there was a lovely fixture with a strip of halogen bulbs. very sleek. but the lights kept burning out really quickly and it seemed there must be some deeper problem with wiring or the like. i don't really know the story, it was a few years back. but for a long time we had a ceiling light that didn't ever work. and then a pipe broke on the 2nd floor, leaked through the kitchen and the light fixture (along with some cupboards) came down to get at the issue. that was some time in 2009. instead of the big job of repairing the ceiling, cupboards and light, i just stuck an old floor lamp in instead. let there be light! that lamp, given that it was 91874619 years old, eventually broke, and we replaced it with a better lamp. and all was well again (minus hole in the ceiling and missing cupboards).

then the damn bulb burnt out and now we ( = blair) race to get dinner ready while there is still daylight. but some days we just don't make it, and we maneuver around the kitchen with a flashlight. it's really terrible. "is the chicken done?" "can't tell.... shine the light over here".

we keep saying we'll get another bulb, but we only ever think of it at inconvenient times. like when we end up cooking in the dark.

what we really need are night-vision goggles!

quotationfingersipadwifistarbucksblahblahstuff

i'm bored, and have nothing really to talk about, so don't expect any kind of theme or common thread that holds this all together. i'm just going to do a stream of consciousness type entry. which will most likely be a mess since my thoughts are pretty lame and fragmented.

i like using quotation marks. actually, to be more accurate, i like misusing quotation marks. i don't care if it's in print or quotation fingers when talking; the more i do it, the funnier i think it is. it doesn't matter what the sentence is, just throw some quotations in there and suddenly people will wonder about your meaning. i'm thirsty, i'm going to have a glass of "juice". "juice"?? what does she mean? what is she drinking? you all wonder. yeah, i know i have you doubting the authenticity of my juice. and if you put a whole phrase in quotation marks, what out! after my "juice", i'm going to "brush my teeth". clearly this must be some cryptic euphamism! hahahahaha.  "ha".

*my mind wanders; eyes fall on a disc sitting on the desk*

so we can't figure out how to get our stupid wi-fi to work. blair's parents gave us their old one and it seemed to be set up right, but something is wrong. we turn on the ipad and our network comes up, we type in the password, it says we are connected.... but then when we try to bring up the internet, or any of the web based apps, it says we're not connected! wtf?! and the stupid ipad doesn't come with any instructions because it's just sooooooooooooo easy to use. grumble grumble. so now i have no choice but to walk across the street to starbucks to use the ipad. yeah, i'm one of those people. sipping my coffee, tapping on an ipad, showing people how cool i am. look at me, tap tap sip tap tap tap swoosh swoosh sip swoosh. maybe next time i'll also bring in some obscure text books to highlight, and wear my hair in a messy bun with a pencil in it to complete my image. yeah, i'm focused and studious, yet hip and artsy. but i'm edgy because i drink regular coffee, none of that fancy shmancy half caf extra foam soy milk chai-mocha-latte-cino crap.

*my mind makes a few rapid connections to get to....*

in high school my friend Allie and i used to have fake arguments in ATM vestibules to make the other person/people in there feel awkward. wait... i've written about that once, years ago. man, i'm so out of material i'm posting reruns? short version: we'd have non-specifics fights that even we didn't know what they were about. example:
 'are we going to talk about this?'
 'i'm through talking.'
 'you act like you're the victim in all this.'
 'oh, and i suppose you think i'm to blame'
 'drop the indignant self-righteous bullshit, you know what part you played in this mess!'
 'i had no choice! YOU left me no choice!'
and so on. it was fun. but i told this story once before, so moving on.

i'm sleepy now. i just sneezed twice. the two things aren't connected... i don't think. are they? do i sneeze when i'm tired? i never really paid attention. now i'll have to pay attention to see if there's any correlation between them. i'll keep a sneeze journal. i can put together charts and graphs, mapping out the times and frequency of my sneezes, anayzling the results and determining if any patterns exist. i could do my "work" on the ipad at starbucks! see what i did there? i pulled the whole thing together.

damn, that's "good" writing.

back from la-la land

my mind is now clear enough to write about my little ordeal the other day. thursday started off as any other day. i went to work, had a couple of cups of coffee, and aside from feeling quite tired, there was nothing to set this day apart from any other. went to the blood donor clinic in the morning. they asked all the usual questions; no i haven't used intravenous drugs, had sex for money, or handled any monkeys. they pricked my finger, iron levels good, it's a go.

"nice juicy vein" i'm told by one of the staff, as my blood fills the bag. i stare at the white board working on the anagrams they put up to keep us entertained. beep! the machine lets them know they've got their pint. wow, 7 minutes on the button, that's got to be my record. i head over to get my juice and doughnut, and the lady asks how i'm feeling. fine, just fine. then i casually mention that i got a little head rush - just like when you stand up too fast - but no big deal. at least so i thought. she rushes out from behind the counter, tells me to sit down, put my head on the table. i'm saying no no, i'm fine, really, but she's shouting out for ice and before i know it two nurses have wheeled a gurney over and are insisting i lay down as they place cold clothes on my neck and forehead. of course everyone in the clinic is watching as the nurses wheel me into the corner and feed me my juicebox. so embarrassing.

back at work, i notice i'm feeling not quite with it. it seems hard to focus my thoughts, i feel somewhat distant, and when i type an email it is riddled with typos (pretty much every word gives me trouble). i tell myself that if i don't feel any better by lunchtime, i'll head home. but i have my lunch and feel fine. about 2 hours later, i suddenly feel dizzy again. and then a bit queasy. and then instantly nauseous. i run to the bathroom and throw up. the rest of the afternoon is a bit of a blur. i remember sitting in my supervisor's office as people brought me water and called the health line. it was like i was watching it all from afar. i could hear myself talking but wasn't quite in control. "i feel like i'm drunk.... only without the fun" i hear myself say. everything is somewhat dreamlike. i wouldn't have been surprised to see psychedelic colours spiralling about or cartoon birdies singing to me. i throw up a bunch more. a friend drives me home and i spend most of the night laying vapidly on the couch.

the next morning, after a long night's sleep, i feel ok and go to work. but after lunch, that same dopiness has taken hold and i can't concentrate. it's a freaky feeling, this disconnected, trippy, waking dream state i'm in. i feel i only have a tenuous hold on reality, i am more asleep than awake, and i am quickly slipping further away. i go home, crawl into bed, and fall into a deep, deep sleep. four hours go by and i'm only awoken by the phone ringing. with difficulty i pull myself into consciousness and force myself out of bed.

i had another early night and now i am feeling myself again. i don't think the blood giving was the cause though, it was probably just a bad combination of several factors. clearly exhaustion being one of them. thinking back to the events of those two days, it seems surreal. who needs drugs? just lose a bit of sleep and a bit of blood and off you go to la-la land. side effects may include disorientation, talking nonsense, and vomiting.

 it really wasn't fun, despite what my dorky photo implies, and i don't recommend it

this is not an update

oops, i've been slacking on my blogging. meh, hardly surprising. i go through phases of being all keen on writing and every little thing seems like something with anecdotal potential. and then there are the slumps when nothing seems worth mentioning. and as you can see i'm in one of these slumps.

i don't have the creative juices at the moment to jazz up my entries with charming witticisms or poignant imagery. but i do like making lists, so with the help of my trusty bullet points, here's the gist of... i dunno... stuff.

• my little niece said she loved me, without any prompts or bribery. i almost exploded it was so cute.
• i finally got my hair dyed so i don't look like a crazy old lady anymore. just crazy.
• i'm currently sitting with a towel on my head and it's been on for way too long, causing my hair to dry in a chaotic mess. this is why i end up looking like a crazy person.
• i bought a lotto ticket and didn't win. i was shocked.
• i've taken to watching way too much junky tv for no apparent reason. even the tacky fluff shows, the cookie cutter crime shows, and the i-don't-even-find-this-remotely-funny-so-why-the-hell-am-i-watching-it shows (millionaire matchmaker, criminal minds, and the big bang theory, respectively). my mind has clearly gone to mush.
• i bought a new book from the bargain section. hopefully this will drag me out of my reading lull.
• my work hours have been moved back to 8-4 so i get home in time for jeopardy once again. phew, another piece of my nerd puzzle back in its place.
• my boyfriend got an ipad2 for his birthday. so far it's just being used as a very expensive game of Angry Birds.





that's all i can think of really. and that was a stretch. but whatever, yay for pointless lists!

• i'm ending this entry now
• then i'm going to go get a sparkling grapefruit pop. yum yum yum.

i should've been a blond

no offense to any of my many blond friends out there, of course.

last night i had what people sometimes refer to as a "blond" moment. i was getting ready for a shower and i grabbed a new bottle of body wash. it was given to me as a gift, a part of a 3 bottle set of fancy shower/bath stuff. i opened it up and smelled its vanilla-y goodness. mmm, delicious, almost good enough to eat..... no, don't worry, i'm not totally stupid.

so i'm in the shower and i squeeze a big blob of creamy soap onto my poof (oh dear, this is sounding raunchier than intended). 'wow, that's pretty creamy', i think to myself, 'must be really moisturizing'. so i go to lather up. but something's wrong. where are all the suds? i grab the bottle. Supreme Body Mousse. i scan the blurb on the back. blah blah tropical scents, blah blah rich bath and shower froth, blah blah blah. what the hell? not a bubble in sight. i look again. "get a double dose and start with Supremely Rich Bath and Shower Froth". oh crap.

i drag my finger across my belly, but instead of that squeaky clean feel, my finger just slips along a slimy path. yup, i've just tried to soap up with a dollop of wet lotion. in my defense, what kind of descriptive term is body mousse?? how the hell am i supposed to know what that is? it's not a real thing! stupid fancy shmancy lotion parading as body wash and making me all slimy.

so anyway, i used common old bar soap. sure, it didn't smell like coconuts or a sun-drenched island paradise, but there was no confusion about what it was.

i must say though, my skin does feel very moisturized.

high five phobia

it's not a real phobia, like my phobia of moths, but more of an anxiety over high fiving.

when someone raises their hand into high five position, i feel a little rush of panic. first there's the panic that i might be misreading the move, maybe they don't want to high five me, maybe it's some other hand gesture. maybe it's just a "hey" wave... or... i don't know, it's probably a high five. but then there's determining the proper high five reaction. how much weight do i put behind it? is it a hard, solid slap with a dead stop on impact? is it a gentler sweeping five with carry through? does it finish with a half hand clasp or fancy handshake type move? of course i also have to watch my aim. there's nothing more pathetic than an off centre high five. and god forbid this is a moving high five, i can't walk and high five at the same time! you expect me to perform this highly complex and nuanced move all while maintaining a cool, natural demeanour? I don't have the skills for that!!

this probably all stems from some childhood trauma, most likely traceable back to junior high. attempted high fives that drew sneers and left me hanging, or the proffered high five that was then snatched away with the inevitable "psych!". yes, those were indeed dark days of high fivery.

yeesh, they make it look so easy!

yesterday at kickboxing i was accosted with high fives. to start with, one of the guys i often chat with gave me a single, low impact high five, presumably just for showing up. not terribly executed, but i was a little off the mark. then my partner high fived me after her rounds. i wasn't expecting it, so i fumbled that one. after the exceptionally exhausting class, the first guy gave me a much more emphatic double high five, now celebrating our completion of the class. it could have been a disaster, but i was on the ball and delivered a good, sound connection. but this was too much, i wanted out of there before any more hands required slapping. but i wasn't out of the woods yet. there was a final high five with my partner as we headed out. a moving high five that transitioned into a half clasp. i thought i might barf it was such an advanced maneuver, but i pulled it off with only a slight hint of awkwardness.

no more, please. i can't take the pressure. i'm no alanis, with one hand in my pocket and the other giving a high five. i just don't have the cool chick high fivey inclination. or the coordination.