Round-Up

Hi friends,

Here is my week in point form:

- I discovered that a new issue of my favorite quarterly magazine 'Cabinet' came out which I scooped up as soon as I could track it down. The topic of this issue is "Fire" and you check it out online at cabinetmagazine.org. The articles in this magazine usually discuss art, culture, science, philosophy, literature, you name it they got it and it's interesting!

- Since cable is not in my budget I tend to rent DVD's of TV shows from the video store and I've recently become addicted to '30 Rock'. After the busy week I've had it's great to flop on the couch with a blanket and watch a few episodes, Tina Fey is amazing.

- Check out this great blog at nordljus.co.uk, from what I gather she is a photographer who's blog features beautiful images of food and is just all around inspiring and great to look at!

- I also watched the movie "Changeling" with Angelina Jolie this week and found it to be an incredible movie, plus the clothing that she wears in the film will make you want to go back in time (if you're a girl that is).

That's kind of all I've got for this week, I've been working like crazy and haven't got out much but next week is looking promising...sort of.

Grumblings

I've worked a lot this week and I just made a pie that turned out horribly. I wanted to make a version of a lemon sabayon but instead of using lemons I tried blood oranges. I felt a little rushed in the kitchen and I ended up with a horribly runny mixture and a crust that was way too thick. Then I burnt it a bit. Right now I feel like a spoiled 11 year old girl and I just want to stomp my feet and tell everyone how unfair this is. I hate, hate, hate wasting sugar, butter, flour and
blood oranges!

Other than these feelings of sadness over losing my blood orange tart I'm starting to feel the winter blues. It was a crappy wet-snow filled Toronto day and my spirits are at an all time low. I would love to sit in a park right now and drink some red wine with some friends and ride my bike around town in a skirt (not in a slutty way of course!) How many more months of this stuff do I have to bear?

Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!

In keeping with my new tradition (new as of last week) I'm posting my weekly Sunday round up of all things amazing, to me anyway.

- I worked Valentine's dinner at the restaurant last night and ended the evening with drinks and apple pie with 2 lovely ladies. After a lot of inappropriate topics of discussion we disbanded and stumbled home. Since last Monday it seems that whenever I'm out in public with my friends our conversation eventually turns crude and offensive and by the end of the brunch/dinner/drink we are busting a gut over British accents and slightly tilted trucker hats. I am going to get beat up in public some day soon...I promise to post pictures.

- a website I check on a regular basis: poppytalk.blogspot.com, great stuff you should visit too

- The little brunch spot "Saving Grace" on Dundas has been around for awhile and I finally checked it out for the first time on Monday....and Thursday. It is such a sweet spot and the decor is lovely and the staff is friendly too! I was sold when I saw that they offer toast with nutella.

- Movie: Amal

"Autorickshaw driver Amal is content with the small but vital role he serves—driving customers around New Delhi as quickly and safely as possible. But his sense of duty is tested by an eccentric, aging billionaire, who, moved by Amal's humility, bequeaths him his entire estate before passing away. With only one month to discover and claim the inheritance, Amal's struggles with duty and wealth are threatened by all those around him—from a young injured beggar girl and a lovely store merchant, to the danger of the old man's upper-caste friends and siblings, all seeking to claim their share of the riches."

My week has been quite slow and I've been working a lot so there isn't much to report. I'm trying to figure out a trip to Ireland and Spain so if anyone has any suggestions as to what to do or where to go I'd love to hear what you've got for me. Also, I'm starting to work on a few new projects a collaboration with my pal Brooke, some new embroidery work and perhaps even some photography that's all I've got at present. Have a good week friends!

Jared Leto is a litterbug

I used to live on D'Arcy Street in Toronto. During school I lived on my own this a nice little attic where I had two rooms and I shared the kitchen and bathroom with two other nice people. One day my landlord decided to become a total jerk (well he was already an jerk to begin with but he began to show his true colours) and him and his crazy-ass wife, excuse me, "life partner" decided to raise my rent by over $100. They started leaving me horrible little notes around the house written in red pen, all in capitals and with double underlined words for emphasis and then they got upset when I responded to these notes by writing them back in red ink and all in capitals. One day I was getting dressed after taking a shower when the landlord knocked on my door. I told him to hold on a minute and before I knew it he had burst through the door and was stomping upstairs where I stood completely naked. I ran for my bed and wrapped myself up in my duvet just in time for him to come into my room and start calling me a "selfish asshole". I don't know how but I really pissed this guy off and I was one second away from calling the police (I had grabbed my phone just as I wrapped myself up in my blanket). So he flipped out on me and I told him I'd be leaving at the end of the month if he wanted to treat me like this and raise my rent illegally.

Desperate for a place to live I ended up moving in literally across the street and into my friend's old room temporarily. It was horrible. I had two rooms but they were separate and the big old house never really felt like home. One day I was getting ready for work when I looked outside and saw a big van pull up across the street. It was then that I remembered one of the guys in the house saying that the band 30 Seconds to Mars was doing a photoshoot on our front porch that day. I've never heard them and I'm sure they are horrible but I know that Jared Leto is a celebrity/babe so I busted out my digital camera to prove that he ate lunch in front of my house. Well he actually ate lunch in font of my old house but whatever. The best part about all of this was after they left their lunch/photoshoot they also left behind all their garbage (take out containers, water bottles and cigarette packages). How nice of them!

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.