Busy Squirrell

Dudes. I’m, exhausted. I don’t like to be too busy. I prefer to have my weekends be sloth filled hours of sitting on the couch watching telly, and then maybe a nap. During the week, I don’t go out, other than to go to work. But I’ve been a busy squirrell lately. Since coming back from the writer’s conference in Vancouver, I’ve been dutifully working on my book, trying to get 500 words a day. I have been pretty successful. Then I had a few nights over at my mum’s. This weekend I’m off to the Bloomin inn to go scrapbooking so I spent last night pulling paper and packing. Next weekend I’m off to Lethbridge to visit Heidi, pick up my dress, and hopefully have a girls lunch with Heidi and Jenny. The weekend after that, Heidi is up here.

I know it doesn’t seem like much, but to me, this is a jam packed schedule! If I didn’t have to meet with the lawyers today for work, I would stay at home and nap!

The Evolution of Hand Gestures

And for all of you hoping this blog is about dirty, obscene hand gestures, keep surfing my friends. No, what I’m talking about is our outdated handsignals for stuff we never do anymore. Like phone.

I like the phone hand gesture. I’ll see if I can describe it, but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. One hand, up by your face. Your thumb is the ear piece, your pinky the talky part, and the rest of your hand is presumably, the phone. You can do this hand gesture across a great distance while mouthing “Call me.” Although the mouthing part is optional since everyone knows what the gesture means.

But what’s the getsure for “Text me?” “Email me?” “Check out my Blog?”

I got nothing that doesn’t involve holding both hands in front of yourself typing away on an imaginary keyboard. Not nearly as cool and sleek as the Call Me gesture.

And We’re Off!
It has finally arrived! Ashleigh and I are off to our first writer’s conference. I’m flying out to Vancouver to stay with Ashleigh and then it’s 3 fun filled days of conference stuff (how to write effective dialogue! How to create suspense! How to get published!) and 1 fun filled day of hanging out with Ash.

Even though Ashleigh and I were separated at birth, we’ve not actually met in person, so this should be super fun! We work together and email and msn nearly every day, but have never had face time.

And I haven’t been back to Vancouver since I was there in 2002 (I think – don’t you hate how when you get older you lose track of what year you did what?). I’m looking forward to seeing some stompin grounds! and the IHOP – sorry jenge, if I could bring it back for you, I would!

A Guy Named Jack

I was talking with Jenge the other day, and I asked her, what is it with the name Jack? It seems to be Hollywood’s de riguer response to a character that needs a solid name. A man of action, yet one who may be slightly emotionally tortured and probably carries some emotional baggage. A guys guy. Someone the men in your life wanna be him and wanna hang out with him – have a couple of beers with the guy. The women want to date him – possibly rescue him, depending on the situation. I’m so over JACK! I’ve decided I’m NEVER using the name in any of my books.

Think I’m nuts? Check out my list:

Jack Ryan – The Hunt for Red October
Jack Sparrow – Pirates of the Carribean
Jack Traven – Keanu Reeves in Speed
Jack Twist – Brokeback Mountain
Jack Bauer – 24
Jack Bristow – Sydney’s dad on Alias
Jack O’neill – Richard Dean Anderson on Stargate
Jack Shephard – Matthew Fox on Lost
Jack Tripper – Three’s Company
Jack Malone – Without a trace
Jack Dawson – Titanic

It only took me 5 minutes to make that list. imagine if I had really tried….

Who’s makin’ all the money?
The Canadian dollar is currently slightly above the US dollar. For weeks, months, it has been slowly on the rise, until finally, it surpassed it.

But I’ve yet to see any difference in my online shopping sites. Which is why I’ve jettisoned my .ca sites and am now shopping .com.

Who’s making all the money?

If my dollar is currently as good, nay better (!) than it’s US counterpart, why on earth would I pay 21.95 for a book at Amazon.ca that will cost me 14.95 at Amazon.com?

Jenge and I have wanted a Dyson vaccuum for a while, and while LnT is offering it for 500.00, online browsing has shown it to me for 350.00. Slap on 50 bux shipping and handling, I’m still coming out with 100 bux extra in my wallet if I buy from the US.

Holy Crap!

Over the last month, I have been a woman obsessed! My current obsession? The BBC series Jekyll.

Only 6 episodes long, I missed the first one, but caught the second one by accident. After 10 minutes, I was hooked. I started telling everyone to watch Jekyll. On Wednesday, I saw episode 5, and yesterday, the DVD of the show I ordered from Amazon showed up, so last night I watched episode 6.

WOW! wow. It’s all I can say. After episode six ended, I actually muttered the words, “Holy crap.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that intelligent, well acted, well scripted, well lit (for crying out loud!) on tv!

I’m off to meet Chant for breakfast today, and as I got her hooked on Jekyll, I’m bringing the DVD and she simply MUST watch it before Monday so I have someone to talk to it about!!

Coffee!
I love coffee. I really do. I love it as much as I love Portia, and that’s alot (she’s so darn cute). Jenge and I brew a pot every morning. Chances are at least 1 (if not 3) pot gets brewed at the office, and most evenings I make a pot when I get home from work too. It’s how I relax, it’s how I get going, it’s how I escape. I use coffee as my shield – I cannot possibly roll out of bed and get dressed and go to work immediately, I must drink that cup of coffee first. And it cannot be rushed, or I might burn my tongue.

There are two kinds of coffee drinkers out there. The ones like me, who turn to coffee as a beverage just about any time of day. Thankfuly, I work with these kind of coffee drinkers. No one bats an eyelash if you start crying because the only coffee that’s left in the office is the Emergency-only-if-your-life-depends-on-it can of Maxwell House. The second kind of coffee drinkers are those who think they love coffee as much as the rest of us, but have been known to go days, nay weeks without a sip of the lovely brew. I’m not saying they don’t love it, I’m just saying they aren’t as… dedicated as the rest of us.

My all time record for coffees per day was back when I worked for the Mother Ship, Starbucks. On an average working day, I would have at least 3 cups of coffee and 8 shots of espresso. And sleep like a baby at night. Working your ass off all day will do that to you. Right now, it’s 10pm and I’m wishing I could have a cup of coffee. I’m not worried about caffeine keeping my up. My only concerns are
a) I don’t have time before bed to drink more than 1 cup from the pot (although my cup is 20oz) and that just seems like a waste of good coffee
b) I’ll be getting up all night to go to the bathroom.

I miss my carafe coffee pot. That machine brewed the coffee right into a stainless steel carafe that would keep the coffee warm all day. If I still had it, I could be drinking this morning’s coffee right now – and it would taste just as good. Instead I’m staring at our current glass coffee pot wondering how bad it would taste to microwave some life into that bad boy.

Mathology

I have a math degree. I am horrible with numbers.

These two statements, despite your first thought, are not mutually exclusive. When in the math faculty, I rarely had to use numbers. If I did, they were not bigger than 10. Or they were irrational numbers or numbers as words: pi, e, the sqauare root of 2, cos of 0, epsilon.

When people find out I have a math degree, they automatically assume I am good with numbers and some even bark out a question like, “What’s the square root of 5692?” – Got me. But if you have a calculator, I’m wicked awesome with a number pad due to my time as a safeway cashier.

Like any good grade school student, I memorized my multiplication tables up to 12*12, and because I like numbers, I know 13*13, 14*14, 15*15 – just cuz I think it’s fun. I factor in my head when I can’t sleep at night, bringing all numbers down to their prime factors. It’s very relaxing and distracting. You try getting upset about deadlines at work when you are trying to break down 120 in your head (120=2*3*4*5 – which actually fascinates me because other than it’s prime factorization, I see nothing else extraordinary about 120 but there you have it). But splitting the cheque, knowing how much to tip, or figuring out 3% of my paycheck for my health benefits, and I’m reaching for my trusty keyboard calculator.

I’m more interested in how math forumlas work, why they work, why they are true all the time, and how it is that anyone ever possibly figured out imaginary numbers (no joke! they exist!) than trying to figure out how much is left in my bank account.

I leave you with this thought:
It is not the job of mathematicians… to do correct arithmetical operations. It is the job of bank accountants. ~Samuil Shchatunovski

What a way to start a week…
Raise your hand if you suffer from Sunday night insomnia.

Are we so used to passing out exhausted after working all day that two days of doing nothing (aka: grocery shopping, laundry, vaccuuming, lawn work, socializing, hobbies, reading and watching telly) screws us over so much so that we can’t fall asleep? I was up until at least 2am last night (which was when I stopped checking the clock). Even Portia, tired of my tossing and turning, was like, ‘Do you mind? I’m trying to get some shut eye here!’ Is it because we don’t want the weekend to end? Some studies have even suggested that Catholics suffer the most from this Sunday night insomnia as they ponder with copious amounts of guilt all the things they didn’t get completed on the weekend.

All I know is, it’s a crummy way to start my week.