Blast From the Past

As I've mentioned, my computer crapped out on me and I lost all my files etc. This happened right after I finished scanning all my childhood negatives and (literally) when I put the CD in my computer to burn the files onto a disk my hard drive started giving me attitude. Since then I've got a new hard drive installed and re-scanned all my old family negs including everything from high-school and I'm starting on my art school negatives. I wanted to include this photo in today's post mostly because I love the little outfit that I'm wearing / my haircut is amazing. My Mum must have looked into the future before she dressed me up to feed the goats or something because I am a very trendy little lady as far as I'm concerned. I am actually looking to piece together this outfit for the summer time, I might have to bust out the sewing machine!

hi friends

It's Sunday, which is kind of like Friday to me seeing as my work week ends and I now have 2 days off in a row. Here is a quick rundown of my week/things I discovered that i think other people need to know about:

- I made a sugar pie on Thursday night (as pictured). It was tasty and served as my breakfast the next day. I'll have to write about my parent's concern over me developing diabetes in a later post.
- I just discovered the website playlist.com and I'm thinking of making a playlist for this site but I'm pretty sure that's an obnoxious move on my part.
- Check out www.aprilwinchell.com
- Just finished reading the book "Geek Love" by Katherine Dunn, as wikipedia puts it:

"The novel is the story of a traveling carnival run by Aloysius "Al" Binewski and his wife "Crystal" Lil. When the business begins to fail, the couple devise an idea to breed their own freak show, using various drugs and radioactive material to alter the genes of their children. Who emerges are Arturo ("Arty"), a boy with flippers for hands and feet; Electra ("Elly") and Iphigenia ("Iphy"), the Siamese Twins; Olympia ("Oly"), the hunchback albino dwarf; and Fortunato ("Chick"), the normal-looking telekinetic baby of the family, as well as a number of stillborns kept preserved in jars in a special wing of the freak show. Oly tells the story of her family in the form of a novel written for her daughter Miranda."

A friend of mine recommended the book to me a few years ago and I wasn't able to put it down since I found it at Value Village last week.
- David Mirvish books is closing at the end of February (or so I'm lead to believe). However, I don't think they will be having a big blowout sale which means I won't be able to buy Taryn Simon's book for anything less than $80. Her website has some of her work on it (Thanks for showing me that one Marshall) but the book is beautiful and super interesting. If you feel like buying the book for me I wouldn't object.

That's all I got right about now. Well, to be honest there is a ton of stuff I could make into a list right now but I'll restrain myself.

Have a good week!

sorry ass sandwich

i just ate a really bad sandwich, it always depresses me when this happens.

it's been awhile since i last posted but i promise to update this thing and my other blog (daysinayear.blogspot.com) tonight when i get home from work, cross my heart!

blog blog blog

Hi friends,

As you may have noticed I have deleted all my daily films. Never fear, I've just relocated them to my new blog that is specific to this project. You can find it at www.daysinayear.blogspot.com please continue to follow my daily films and I'll keep my stories and photos here on this blog.

"Life's a bitch then you marry one, then you die"
- Lorne Raymond, 2009

i think i love this woman...

...not because of what she does but because she's so straightforward about her subject matter. Google "Cynthia Plaster Caster" if you don't know who she is already, her website made me want to take a shower after checking it out but it's still funny/great.

the great outdoors

I got to work super early this morning so I have just enough time to share something from the Andrea memory vault with y'alls. I've been thinking a lot about an old friend of mine lately who I was very close to in middle school and high school. I owe my sense of humor mostly to this girl because she taught me to laugh at things deemed somewhat taboo...which are the best things to laugh at sometimes. Some thowbacks to C.J (which is what she goes by, not some acronym I came up with to conceal her identity) include:

- CAN IT BE DONE?.......maybe
- "How many fish are in that pond?"
"Exactly....(counting on fingers)....NONE!"
- Virgin pillows
- Bad disco (especially the song Funky Town)

When C.J and I were in the 7th or 8th grade we went to her Dad's trailer for a weekend. What 13 year old girl can resist sunbathing, eating junk food and searching for hot boys? We spent the day doing just that and after our dinner of hot "diggedy" dogs (hot dogs with doritos, gross I know) we decided that we wanted to camp for the night. We set up a tent outside and talked about boys until we fell asleep, for the record I actually remembered who we talked about that night.

I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that my whole backside was soaked. I was lying on my back and could feel that I was wet from my lower back to my knees and I started to panic. All I could think was that I was 13 years old and I had just peed the bed (or tent I guess) and what was I going to tell C.J? Was I supposed to wake her up and say "I just peed all over myself, can I borrow some pants?" As I let my mind race about what I should do I lay there as quietly as possible when all of a sudden I heard C.J say, in the tiniest voice, "Andrea? I think I wet myself". All I could say was "I think I wet myself too!"

After we sat up and got out of the wet sleeping bags we realized that we hadn't set up our tent properly and it had rained while we were sleeping and the tent had flooded. Of course we laughed it off but we decided to promise each other that if at any time one of us peed our pants or our bed the other was to do the same so the original pant/bed wetter didn't feel so ashamed.

I think that's a pretty good deal.

things i've learned the hard way

- When the sign says "pool deck slippery when wet" believe it
- Never put "love" over your own interests
- Don't eat a whole bag of dried apricots (unless you really need to)
- Try not to show too much interest when someone talks about tai chi (unless you really are interested) people don't know when to stop talking about tai chi!
- Don't regret anything that you say unless it was WAY out of line, if it was sort of out of line then hold your ground!
- Don't wear short shorts to a hot yoga class and set up shop right beside the creepy guy who's balding and even though he's shirtless he looks like he's wearing a sweater
- Make sure your jacket isn't flammable before you sit too close to that bonfire
- When bartending, always use a fake name for the creeps that hit on you, my pseudonym is Gabrielle which a short scary man once mistook for Gabriel...whatever
- If you're not doing anything wrong and a cop car pulls up to you, don't run
- Lightbulbs, sparklers and lighters all get really, really hot
- Don't dye your hair turquoise, even if you think it looks great, it doesn't and everyone will make fun of you including your mum
- If you think of a really good idea for a tattoo sit on it for at least a few months before getting that "lil' devil" on your lower, lower back
- When something truly shitty happens, laugh and then cry
- Try not to hold a grudge against someone if they were a total jerk to you in a dream
- Always talk to weirdos (in appropriate settings) they have the best stories
- Don't eat at a shady Mexican joint in Brooklyn the night before you get on a plane to go home, especially if you're a nervous flyer

you're the boss applesauce!

After living in Toronto for as long as I have I've developed the standard amount of disdain for the TTC. Everyone who lives in this city has at least one horror story in regards to "the kinder way" of travel on the city streets. One of my top ten incidents happend a couple summers ago when Kyle and I were standing on the subway platform waiting for a train around 10 or 11 at night. A raggedy looking woman approached us and proceeded to spit on the back of Kyle's head, it was gross and we were not impressed.

But alas, these things happen when you're confined to a subway platform with any assortment of people so we got on the train and went on our way. As it turns out, raggedy lady got on the same train as us and went from one end of the train to the other asking passengers for change. I believe I said something like this to Kyle when I recognized the woman "When she comes to us and asks us for change I'm going to tell her where to go! People can't be running around spitting on each other!" This woman was way ahead of me on this one and i must give her some credit. When she came near us it looked as if she was just going to ignore us and walk on past but at the last second she turned sharply (almost like a ninja) and whipped a quarter AT MY HEAD! With my cat-like reflexes I dodged out of the way and the quarter hit the window behind me and all I could do was gape at this woman. K yle sprang to his feet and had the woman out of the train by the next stop.

what i wanted to talk about orginally in this post was my feelings toward being a casual TTC pass holder but i think this quarter-whipping incident takes the case. let's save the boring story for another time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Ky7dQLuNg

new things

This is my New Year's Resolution, well one of them anyway. Since I recorded my New Year's countdown I've decided that I'm going to make a little video clip for everyday of 2009. Although I may not post them everyday you can count on me to produce at least one clip a day! I was going to post my first couple days of footage but it seems that the internet and my computer have teamed up to hate me and my files are too big to post here. I'll figure something out though and I will be posting a daily video in no time. Hold on to your hats.

"Bad luck came to me without warning"

So I deleted my last post because I'm pretty sure I wrote it while I was drunk, there's been a lot of that this month.

Anyway, I had a good Christmas and the last few weeks have been nice. There's been a lot of socializing and parties and the like and I'm kind of eager for things to start slowing down (and maybe I can start to save some of my money!) I'm also convinced that I'm bad luck these days, maybe someone put a curse on me or my karma is all out of whack but here is a short account of what has happened to me in the last little while:

- I slipped and fell on a sheet of ice right in front of my house, not pretty
- I dropped my digital camera and broke it (this happened in August but I think this is where the streak of bad luck started)
- As I was waiting for the streetcar the other day a man walked by me with a big hockey bag. As he walked past me the strap on his back snapped and he fell over (it was pretty funny actually)
- When I was home for Christmas my Mum's car broke down along with their dishwasher and the roof started leaking from what's referred to as my bathroom in the house
- I dropped my laptop charger on my computer and broke the hard drive losing everything because i never backed up my shit
- I slipped and fell (on snow!) in my parents drive way almost taking down my mum and hurting myself in the process
- After deciding to move my microwave from the counter to a high cupboard over my fridge I slid my hand along the bottom of the microwave where there is a sharp sheet of stainless steel. I cut one of my fingers up pretty bad and spent a good hour calling friends and family trying to decide if I should go to the hospital and get stitches. I didn't and now I'm looking forward to a gnarly scar
- I stubbed my toe really hard on my stairs and thought I might have broken it (it really hurt!)
- After cleaning out my cat's litter box I ran upstairs to the sound of my toaster, famished I ate my tasty toasty pita and realized afterward that I had forgot to wash my hands.

That's all I got for now but my advice until this thing passes is stay away from me, unless you're buying me lunch, dinner or drinks!

dear weirdos,

I love the internet

it's a blizzard, baby

It's really scary outside right about now, it's like a snowy apocalypse. Right now I'm sitting in a housecoat and slippers and praying that I don't have to go across town to work at 5, I'm sure no one will come in for dinner tonight. That's all I got right about now, it's been a slow, snowy day.

domestic dispute

I live underneath my landlord who lives with her boyfriend and they fight all the time. He is a smoking contractor and she is a meditating, mantra chanting lady. They just woke me up with their yelling and eventually her crying and he must have stomped around in his work boots for about an hour which is why I'm up before my alarm clock. This is not the worst living situation I've been in by far but i can feel the negativity seeping through the floorboards and into where we live. I'm really starting to hate living in this house because of all this fighting which happens on a weekly basis and usually wakes me up in the morning or interrupts my evening. Good thing I signed a year lease, how do you tell your landlord that you want to move out because you've heard her sobbing one too many times?

dear dishes...

I haven't posted in a long time and I promise there is more to come...I've realized today that I love anchor hocking jadite dishes. That is all for now.