raja-bean

raja at his regal best

i can't believe that only 6 months from the time we lost our dear cat nes, that we have now lost her big brother and living teddy bear, raja.

we were with him today as the vet helped him ease into the long catnap. may he be basking in eternal sunbeams tonight. with great piles of cat nip and the company of his other cat family - nes and boris.

beanie-baby, i miss you. thank you.

sporting one of his, 'i'm so much better than you' expressions

ready for your extreme close-up?

chillin on the sofa

no one is pround of this shot - but it just had to be included! raja in his rolly-polly prime

a day in death valley

as promised, i ended up dragging my dad to death valley. we both love, love, loved the trip - even though it took the entire day to get there and back. it ended up being a 14.5 hour trip in the car. i got up at 5:00am and we hit the road by 6:20am and got back in the house by 9:00pm. there were a couple of walks to sites within the park that i wanted to do - but realistically, we just did not have the time. as much as i am a city girl, i am a nature-lover at heart and i am always ever-so-happy to explore areas i've never been before. so, i took the chance to wring as much nature as i could out of this inhospitable desert.

a little primer on death valley : it is the lowest point in the western hemisphere (282 feet below sea level). it is also one of the hottest places on earth. in the summer, temperatures routinely hit 120F (no idea what it is in celsius, but damn, doesn't 120F sound hot????) with the ground temperature once being measured at 201F. urgh. basically - you can die here. that message was probably the most advertised in park information. you can die here and many have before you.

the park that holds death valley is also the largest park in america and it apparently got it's name from some gold prospectors in 1849. seems they tried to take a shortcut through the desert to make it to the gold rush that was happening on california's coast. needless to say, their shortcut didn't end up being a good bet. hence the name.

as always, pictures tell a better story than i.... so..... keep on looking down...

here we are with the devil's golf course (a rock salt field. you wouldn't belive how hard and sharp and hurty salt can be).

if you turn around at the devil's golf course you will see this flat field of salt, doing it's best snow imitation.

these are some incredible red hills. they look spray painted - but they're not.

this is the artist's palette. unfortunatley, the camera didn't capture the amazing colours - we have reds, yellows, greens, turquoise, violet, mauve, chocolate and gold all in this one group of stone.

these formations were seen at one of the many look-out points in the park. stunning in person and pretty cool here too!

just to prove that there are living things in the valley i thought i'd include a few things that aren't rock or mineral. i saw this little lizard during one of my mini-walks. he was pretty good at staying as still as the stone he stood on. these yellow flowers (they're called 'golden daisy', believe the name or not) are just starting to bloom throughout the park. and finally, no visit to death valley would be complete without seeing one of the major scavenger birds, the raven.

[music | the doors, "roadhouse blues"]

a canadian in california

it's true... i am a canadian through and through. things i miss are little, but meaningful...

i miss being able to buy tropicana juice in the charming faux milk carton that it comes in at home. here, it comes in a big ole jug. no charm what-so-ever.

i miss good cheddar. the brand-name stuff here is practically worse than the no-name stuff you can buy at price chopper.

i miss celsius temperatures. i never know what the bleeding temperature is here. 75F. what the fuck is 75F? argh. i am left with no other option than asking my parents to convert the temperature into something that makes sense to me. fyi, 75F is about 24C. not too freakin' bad... :)

i miss cp24. when i visit alberta during the holidays, it is somehow comforting to be able to turn on the 24-hour toronto news network and know that you can be up to date on all the shootings and random moronic goings-on that make toronto my quirky little home. i feel oddly out of touch with toronto right now.

i miss seeing bottles with mL measurements instead of a bizarre mixture of fluid oz and pints. (1 pint & 0.9 fluid oz = 0.5 litre). why the american's don't just join the rest of the world and go metric... i do not know. i actually have some theories, but i don't want to be kicked out of california before i come home on thursday...

i miss canadian accents! i can only guess it's a canadian accent because absolutely no one down here doesn't sound like they have a rampant american drawl. no one.

i miss the haughty cold manner of the folk at home. i miss being able to just scowl your way through the day without anyone acknowledging you. here everyone is just so damned friendly. don't they know that there's good scowling to be had?

there are good things here too....

you can buy starbucks beans in the grocery store.

they have salt and pepper flavoured chips (i thought you could only get those in the UK).

they have gorgeous palm trees, mountains, blue skies and wonderful swimming pools.

i am the youngest person in just about every place i go.

the l.a. times is a really great newspaper. the paper actually has journalisic articles and opinions - it really puts the toronto papers to shame.

the neighbours are so nice... when i mentioned i liked making fresh lemonade out of the lemons on the lemon trees, they began leaving bags of lemons on the patio table for me.

with that sort of treatment, who needs to scowl all of the time?

[music | david usher, "going home"]

night divides the day

i really shouldn't get as excited as i did over breakfast at international house of pancakes.(signed pics of ice cube on the wall!!) sadly, it insists on being called "ihop" now. *sigh* for the uninitiated, it's a giant american chain of restaurants and it has yummy yummy pancakes and omelets. mmmm.... so far, it's been the best food i've had when i've been out to "dine" in palm springs. there has just got to be better food in america than the dry and abused and salty eggplant parmesana i had at tony's pasta mia (signed pics of sinatra on the wall!!), or the slimy veggie burger i had at coco's. (no signed pics on the wall, what's wrong with them, don't they understand where they are located??)

a few days ago my dad and i piled in the rental suv and drove our asses off to get to a place called the salton sea. the website, if you go to it, is far more impressive than the damned sea is itself. it took several hours of driving though the desert to come to a smelly stagnant body of water with an insane salt content (25% more salty than ocean water). apparently there are many many birds that come to this lake. i saw a bunch of gulls. what else can i tell you... uhm... the water is red.... seriously, it's red - i did not alter this picture.

the other thing i can tell you about the salton sea is that there were people camping there. why there? i do not know... it smelled, was hot and there was nothing much to see. and someone camping there once apparently does not care for president bush... this is a picture that i took in the loo. heehee. just so you know, i don't make it a habbit to pull out the old digital in the washrooms of the world.


the next day was spent in a more picturesque location.... the living desert in palm desert. it has a mini-zoo with giraffe's, cougars, zebra's and scary wild african dogs. there was something just so primal about them. i felt an uncomfortable thrill deep in my core when i looked at them. everything about them screamed predator. they moved very quickly and seemed to have an economy of motion that would lend itself well to a killing attack. *shiver* then last night as i was falling asleep i heard wild coyotes howling - which of course made me a little afraid of the african wild dogs! i just held my jim morrison book tighter!

i have also talked my dad into making the 5 hour drive up to death valley. i have no idea what we will see there, but ever since i was a little girl, i loved the name death valley. probably because it had the word death in it and i was always a touch morbid - still am. monday morning i'll be getting up at 5:00am and will be hauling my cookies several hours north. the thing i like about it the most is that my dad hasn't been there yet either. and when we go places he's been before he tends to want to re-create the last time he went (on the way to the salton sea, we stopped in a little dust-trap of a town called brawley, only because last time he went to the salton sea, he stopped in brawley. you get the picture.)

speaking of getting the picture - here's the latest installment of my photo-travel-log.

the very scary african wild dog. it was staring over at the gate. like it was trying to reason a way out.

the exhibit had 3 giraffe's and apparently we were lucky that these ones were so close to us. seems they like to hide behind some of the hills in their enclosure.

a huge part of the living desert was the cactus gardens... there were literally 100's of different types of cacti.

a simulated "oasis" of giant california fan palms. these trees had trunks about 3 feet wide and grew quite tall. the stuff you see that looks very much like shaggy mammoth fur is actually old palm fronds - which provides a lot of shade for those seeking refuge from the hot desert sun.

final picture tonight is of a female mountain cougar. between she and me was a glass barrier. she was really quite beautiful - i had no idea cougars' eyes bugged out quite so much.

[music | the doors, "love me two times"]

the west is the best

so here i sit in palm springs. on an unsecured, un-password-protected, unknown wireless connection. heehee. guess i won't be doing any banking from this connection, will i?

after yesterday's panic for leaving for the airport on time, it was nice to be able to just sit on a couple of planes and think of nothing for several hours. nothing but the amazing and fascinating stephen davis biography of jim morrison that i've been reading. holy, unholy fascination. since beginning the book a few days ago, i have begun to become a doors fan. yes, me. a fan of the doors. after spending most of my life trying to avoid their music, i'm now downloading tracks from itunes at a frightening clip.

what a fucked up individual (jim, not me). he is reminding me a lot of kurt cobain. growing up when i did, i was much more aware of cobain's music and his demon genius. i also have a copy of his published journals (sorry, kurt, i know how much you would of hated that) and i have to say that the absolute messed-up havoc that pushed cobain seems to have also pushed morrison. it's hard to know which one was pushed harder or further.

i will say that it does seem that if people like kurt and jim didn't actually end up creating enduring music and art that they'd some of the biggest losers ever. then again - maybe their torment and addictions and bad behaviour were necessary to birth their creations.

anyway - after the journey across north america, i was happy to end up in joshua tree national park today. it's pretty big, pretty hot and literally full of joshua trees. the best part of the day was the search for "skull rock". i found a trail with a big-ass arrow on it pointing in a direction. we began to walk down the trail, assuming that after 10 minutes or so, we'd come to the rock shaped like a skull. well, we walked and walked and then walked some more. it was some very beautiful desert terrain to be walking through, but there was still no damned skull rock. we actually got to a bit of a dead end and decided to turn around and go back the way we came. thinking we'd come across this goddamn rock on the way back. nope. we just missed it... or so we thought. instead, right beside the highway there was skull rock. literally 10 steps in from the road. plainly visible. actually, it was just to the left of the big-assed arrow i mentioned above. heehee. i think my dad was a little regretful of the long walk under the very hot sun. oh well... i loved it!

taken as the plane was coming in to palm springs. come to think of it - this could very well be joshua tree national park!

part of the formation imaginatively called "jumbo rocks"

the joshua tree forest - you literally could look to your left and see these strange and twisted trees for miles and miles and miles.

a classic image of a classic joshua tree. it's a lot larger than you think it might be.

doesn't this look like the hand of a giant who is trying to climb to the top of this hill? it wasn't, just in case you were wondering...

the infamous (and obvious) skull rock.

[music | the doors, "the end"]

can i tell you two things?

this is short but sweet as i'm tired as all-fuck.

1 - i got a full-time job. yey me. don't ask me what the job is... i really have no idea at the moment.

2 - i am going to palm springs on tuesday, jan 24 and not coming back to toronto until feb 2nd. i am SO going to the joshua tree national park. and i will come home with a picture of me by a joshua tree... just as it's decreed that every good u2 fan should do.

who knew that by the end of this week that not only would i score a great apartment - but that i would also score a job that will help me to actually PAY for said apartment. i didn't know. that's for certain.

k - going to sleep now.

yey me.

page 118

i am reading alex garland's most recent work. the coma. it made me cry on the subway on my way home this afternoon. or maybe it was because the job that i was considered the "best candidate" for went to another person out of work place loyalty.

when will i not be "the outsider"? i thought all that gets sorted out after you leave highschool. guess not.

what's the passage that had me fighting back sobs?

"Long grass and black windows. A bit of rope hanging from a tree that once held the swing, whose wooden board had rotted away. A front path, where moss grew over broken concrete and dandelions pushed through the cracks."

i think i need to read cheerier material. and i probably need to be listening to cheerier music than depeche mode's mid-80's singles. it is a question of trust, indeed.

[music | depeche mode, "strangelove"]

living

still around... just really don't have anything new to add to this space. work situation is still unresolved, however it's getting stupider by the moment. i'm told i'm the best candidate but that they're offering the position to a person who's been at the company for eons to show loyalty. yey. i think 99.99% of companies out there don't have any sort of demonstrable loyalty to their slaves, er employees. i somehow have managed to find the 00.01% of companies that actually seems to have some sort of bizarre loyalty to their long-time suffering staff.

that's all fine and well - but still leaves me without. there is still a chance that the person won't accept the job. she's thinking about it. she's also been offered a carrot for later this summer and an even bigger carrot this autumn - but only if she stays in here current role.

i know. it's fucked.

and i still am ready to book that flight to palm springs. it will cost my parents more to shell out to see me - but they are telling me that they still want me to come if i don't get the job. i fear that they should be preparing for a sad little muffin appearing at their poolside.

the bit of good news is that today a landlord accepted me and my roomie's application. as of march 15th i have a nice place to move into. i just hope that i can pay for it. *gulp*

we're going to see it again on saturday (and to hand over some cheques) and i should have better pictures then. until saturday, here's a sneak preview of my new place.

it's in the 2nd & 3rd floor of this house. much better than a mainfloor.

the view of the dining room from the kitchen. the room in the distance is the living room

this is the lovely living room. or, rather, it's half of it. the room is very very large. yey.

ok. that's it. i'll try to muster more cheer next time. i'm hoping it won't need to be false cheer & that i will be able to write here about my wonderful new job.

[music | the arcade fire, "rebellion (lies)"]

this is ourselves....

the soundtrack of my days most recently has been queen and david bowie's track "under pressure". why? well, how about because it just fits.

" it's the terror of knowing what this world is about"

i had a chance to go on an all expenses-paid trip to palm springs, california sometime between january 23 and february 4. my parents have my aunt & uncle's time-share for two weeks and i have been invited down to lay by the pool. my parents said they would pay for the entire trip.

why wouldn't someone in my situation take this trip? well, how about because my potential new job, the one i don't even know the details of yet, the one that's been dangling in front of my nose since august, would probably be starting right around that time. and that's even IF i were to land that job.

i asked the big boss person if it would be a smart thing or a dumb thing for me to go away for a week at the end of january. she very diplomatically said it probably would be quite shit-timing and apologized that she couldn't tell me the details yet. so, i won't be booking a flight to sun-shiny california. *sigh* i so wanted to go. i could do with some palm trees and swimming pools right about now. i just hope i don't regret passing up a trip for the job i don't even have yet.

"watching some good friends screaming, 'let me out!'"

between the job search, the apartment search and the stapling of many many important pieces of paper with many many numbers on them - i just have been feeling the pressure. and today i cracked just a little bit. i thought i'd been holding up fine, but apparently i wasn't me normal cheery self at my hourly-wage place of employment. by the end of the day 3 separate people had asked me if i was ok. i guess my demeanor didn't fit with my words.

sample conversation :
random nice person popping up through the cubical wasteland : "hey jodi, how are you doing?"
me looking up from my calculator and great stacks of paper : "i'm good. how about you?"
random nice person : "oh, are you sure about that? you don't sound too good."
me : "oh, i'm just feeling the apartment blues. it's rough these days." (meanwhile, i'm thinking to myself, 'well, duh, i'm not doing good. i've soon to have no home and i'm doing some pretty menial tasks here.')

on the flip side of that, about an equal number of people told me they liked my shirt today. you got to look for the small positives!

"pray tomorrow takes me high high higher pressure on people people on streets"

and can i tell you about the apartment search. my roomie and i have been pretty adamant about what we will accept and what we won't. as soon as we realized we were being booted, we somewhat facetiously made a list of things that were "musts" for the new place. it included stuff like a fireplace, french doors, dishwasher, washer/dryer, gas stove, 2 large and equal sized bedrooms, a dining room, a living room a den (or more accurately, the cats' room), ttc accessible, access to the back-yard and the apartment should be on the 2nd and 3rd floor of a house with character. gosh, we're not asking for too much, are we? ;)

the fact is, we pretty nearly have all that stuff now (excluding the french doors, dishwasher and gas stove). it's hard to want to settle for less. then again, since 2006 seems to be a year of big change for me - maybe i should get used to living in a smaller, less luxurious place. i may have to settle for that - but why should my roomie. and she's the one with horseshoes up her ass. i told her the shoes needed to work a little bit harder these days!

over the past week the places we've seen have ranged from :
spacious (but with dirty carpeting, a scary-side door access and most alarmingly - bugs, ewww!)
to tiny (we saw a 2 bedrooms + den that really should be re-advertised as 1 small bedroom + living room & dining room)
to smelly (the place tonight smelled of stinky fried meat. guess it's not a good thing to check out places during the dinner hour.)
to really quite acceptable and nothing quite wrong with it (but still something wasn't right about it. i didn't get the warm-fuzzies and i couldn't see myself living in it)
to non-existent. well, the last one we didn't actually see - but the pictures were just stunning - as was the description. i thought that as soon as we saw it in person, that we'd love it and that the landlord would love us and let us take it. but it turns out that the current tenants gave notice and then took it back a few days later. jerks. so the great place went off the market until later this spring or early this summer. jerks. don't they know that they're in our apartment!

oh well... something is out there. i can feel it coming around the corner. just hope it's not a giant squid.

also - i defy anyone out there to walk down the street listening to madonna's "hung up" and not feel really good about themselves. it's my sure-fire fool-proof way to bring a little spring to my step these days. that and listening to live recordings of david usher shows. thank you david for all the many kindnesses you've done me.

[music franz ferdinand, "do you want to"]

feelin' da love

after not being able to face the day yesterday - today had a much brighter sheen to it. my eternal dangling job lead came a little bit more solid today and i should know full details on monday or tuesday next week. i am the leading candidate, but will have to convince them that i would not be leaving the position any time soon. if that's the only stumbling block, i should be able to do a good job of convincing them that after the year of uncertainty i've had (laid off for a year and recently evicted from my apartment) that i will be looking to root somewhere so solidly that they'd have to set off plastique to get rid of me. i shall be like fleas on a dog. i shall evoke the power of the tree and just not move. even further than that, i will become like the moss and lichens which grow upon said trees. they will not shake me.

i just want a home! both to live in and to work in.

and since right now i'm doing hourly work for them, i did not expect to receive any money for the time when the office was closed for the christmas holidays. well guess again. they estimated how many hours i would of worked, had the office been open and paid me for them. i almost started crying. it was a totally unexpected and lovely surprise. yey. i'm getting teary just thinking about it again.

another lovely thing. i got a ride home from work with about 15 flattened boxes. time to start packing the non-essentials. my problem is that i have spent large portions of my life being a pack-rat. i loved to accumulate and hated to purge. i've gotten better in the past 5 years or so - but i think i may need to purge again. and i have so many books. so, so, so, so, so many books. and i can't bear to get rid of most of them. i will be day-tripping down to the local used bookshops to see if they will buy some, but i hate to sell something i may re-read. same goes for cd's. except i have A LOT i'd like to sell. been-there-and-will-never-do-that-again sort of stuff. *shudders*

and i also was forwarded a project manager job at a web development company. i hate web development and it's not my first choice - but it is a job and i have all the experience and qualifications they call for. not to mention that someone my roomie used to work with is currently a director at the company. that alone should give me an interview. but one can just never tell these days.

[music | franz ferdinand, "evil and a heathen"]

new beginnings

i'm almost ashamed to be writing this here today... it's more not-so-hap-hap-happy news. i really am not a person who dwells on all the not nice stuff, but lately it just seems i'm getting that in spades... soooo....

on january 1st my landlords slipped a note under the door telling me that they need the place for 'personal use' no later than march 1st. that's right i've been evicted.

this is so strange and surreal. no job and now no place to live. i'm beginning to think that i have somehow slipped into someone elses' skin. i'd like my own back please. from a casual glance, i must seem like the most monumental fuck-up out there. i really am not a hideous beast. most people actually describe me as a 'nice' person. bus drivers always say hello to me. people in stores generally want to help me. i don't think i make a bad first impression, or second or third. but who knows. perhaps i am in a massive hallucination. maybe i'm severely mentally damaged and none of my friends and family have bothered to tell me i'm a little bit off. maybe there are no friends and family - maybe they are all in my head.... hmmmm....... must look into this.

all i know is that my current situation doesn't reflect who i am. then again, what image am i holding up against my current state? maybe that image is wrong. holy existential tangent.

the universe seems poised to do any of the following :
push me into a deep crevice. to provide me with untold opportunity and riches here in toronto. to move me to a beach in thailand or portugal.

lovely low-tide beach in portugal. wish i was here.

new beginnings for 2006. my life has been about quite a bit of change lately. i don't mind a calculated risk or an educated gamble... and i think i'm better at those than most... but now the universe seems to be demanding a complete tight rope routine from me. and i don't have time to look to see if there's a net. wish me luck!

[music | nine inch nails, "only"]

top 10 albums

it's that time of year and i have fallen victim to the dreaded top 10 list as well. in no particular order....

1 - the beekeeper - tori amos
gorgeous tori, as usual. the album was built around the concept of female divinity and female archetypes. gorgeous.

2 - if god had curves - david usher
david's first album since his split from emi. a virtual songwriting clinic, his lyrics are becoming even more multi-layerd.

3 - pretty mess - bella
ordered this from the band after seeing a review of the disc on the sadly defunct music site - umbrella. it's been a disc i've listened to again and again.

4 - secrets of the lonely - chris koster
one of canada's most unsung talents. he is a true artist with epic songs, fantastical stage antics, the most interesting voice and the scruffiest hair.

5 - with teeth - nine inch nails
gotta give it to trent again.... thank you for continuing to make music that makes me feel.

6 - witching hour - ladytron
another one i just sorta stumbled across. dark electro pop... very evocative of joy division.

7 - set yourself on fire - stars
the montreal band that's actually a toronto band. once the dust settles on all the indie-hype surrounding montreal and toronto these days - i think this band will still be standing.

8 - surgery - the warlocks
it's just like surgery. admit me now.

9 -happenstance - rachael yamagata
this actually came out in mid-2004, but i only found it in december 2004... and listented to it A LOT in 2005. she's in the singer-songwriter vein and has the most deeply raspy voice.

10 - sadly, due to lack of money, there are quite a few things that i have not yet picked up, but plan to when i get some of that yuletide money rolling in... franz ferdinand, the libertines, neil young, stellastarr, imogen heap, controller.controller, and on and on.

[music | david usher, "white christmas"]

the lightening of the dark

ok.... it's been a while since i wrote here... but believe me - i have spared us all a boring, whinging litany of how strange my life has become. to make it less long and more short for the month of december i have been doing some hourly-wage work for a company that processes A LOT of paper. a lot. and i've been doing exciting things like alphabetizing giant stacks of paper by company name and then taking a calculator and adding up all the totals of all the same-named companies together. urgh. i know - it makes no sense.

and this brain-rot has the unattractive side effect of hurting me. seriously. i have some sort of strange nerve/muscle thing happening in the left side of my rib-cage. i think the constant sorting of papers with my left hand has done this to me. yech. guys, be warned, excessive repetitive hand motion can lead to a searing and rather painful ribcage. who knew? on the bright side - my doctor gave me a prescription for tylenol 3. she wanted to give me 40 (?!?) for one week. i said i wouldn't need that many. 40. for one week. that seems excessive. maybe i'm just too squeaky clean.

right now i'm putting off washing dishes (so that the cat sitters won't think i'm a total slob) and then calling a cab to come pick me up to take me to the airport tomorrow morning. yes, that's right - i'm headed to edmonton. where they actually don't have any snow on the ground. here in toronto we have absolute mountains of the stuff. it's a total reversal of wintery-fortune. of course the nice weather in edmonton has made me pack much less wool and heavy-duty winter clothes. normally when i'm back home, i freeze the entire time and end up wearing layers and layers. hopefully my choices don't leave me missing the warmth.

earlier today i caught ed the sock's annual festival of frommage and this year wasn't nearly as cruel or cutting as it could of been. i think the videos are all just so bad that ed has lost the will to massacre. regardless, there was a great line that actually made me laugh out loud. it was during the review of gwen stefani's horrid video, "rich girl". ed said something along the lines of, "it's funny that they're singing about not having money when the budget for this video could feed a third world nation for a year, or pay for all canadian videos for one year."

blessed yule, merry christmas, happy hanukkah, joyful commercialism, or whatever it is that you may celebrate this time of year.

[music | stellastarr, "love and longing"]

the week that was

having a bit of a sleep in on a sunday morning becomes nearly impossible when you have a kitten. behind my closed door i hear the most pathetic mewing and scratching at the door and digging at the crack under the door. and you'd almost think that after a bit she'd get the hint and wander away. oh, no. not our zelda. she literally just won't stop. she goes on and on and on. so i finally get up, cuddle with her, feed her, play with her and then two minutes later she's upstairs doing the same routine on my roomie's door. there's just no winning with zelda. it's almost like she's saying, 'there's a whole day of fun and playing and annoying to do. get outta bed!'

this past week i've been feeling almost like i've been in career purgatory (yes, i have escaped my early catholic upbringing, but obviously, not completely!) i've been at an old employer of mine. it's a music licensing agency and there is a lot of paper there with unit sales, percentages and total amounts payable. publishing and copyright is quite a tricky thing to understand. i think it's the most least understood aspect of the music industry, in fact, i've worked for at least 2 different publishers who, i'm sure, didn't understand all the moving pieces either!

basically, this past week i've been doing whatever they needed me to do. which, unfortunately for me, consists of clearing up old projects that they haven't had the bodies to do earlier. so, i've been sorting 8 quarters (2 years) worth of royalty statements from zomba music payable to a large number of publisher clients represented by the agency i'm now at. and by sorting, i mean taking a stack of papers about 5 inches high and alphabetizing them by publisher name. and also making sure that any statements that total $0.00 are out of the pile and placed in a separate pile. then i need to photo copy them. and repeat this 8 times until all the quarters are complete. and just to further illustrate the tedium i'm now dwelling in, then i have to merge all quarters together and total all the totals. urgh.

at least i'm not 2 of my friends who called me this week to let me know that that they'd just been fired. one on tuesday and one on wednesday. and no, they don't work at the same company as each other, in fact, they don't even know each other. one had just started as an associate manager at a large tier one company in their online marketing department. after 3.5 weeks she was let go. turns out one week after she started, the hiring manager went to hr and said she wanted my friend to go. the for the next 2.5 weeks hr and the hiring manger's manager tried to keep my friend, but alas... it was not to be. sucks.

the second person to be fired (the wednesday gurl) was someone i worked with at a publishing company. she is from switzerland and about 1.5 years ago this company had gone to the trouble of completing all the paper work and going through all the legal fees of getting her to work for them. because she spoke 5 languages, she was doing all of their international licensing - and from what i could see, was quite good at her job. i haven't actually had the chance to talk to laura yet to get the details, but he message did say 'fired'. urgh. the place we worked was an absolute hell-hole. i left after 3 months and was very happy to do so. basically though, the owner was one of those folk who had worked in publishing for about 20 years (he was an entertainment lawyer first) and that i don't feel really understands the basic concepts of publishing.

a ray of shiney happy light happened on friday evening though. i had an interview at a record label earlier in the week and got a message back on friday. of course, i missed the call and now have to wait until monday to speak to them, but i'm hoping the news is that i'm on the short list and being called back for a second interview. the job would be incredible with new challenges every day and it would be very different than most things i'd done before. it would also include a car allowance. after living here in toronto for 15 years, it would be strange to finally have a car again. not to mention quite convenient for picking up groceries and such!

it would be scary working for a major label again (especially one that HASN'T merged yet), but at least you know that you are given a package if the wheels fall off! but then again, i am not trying to lend any negative energy to this... only positive thoughts. i know, sounds a bit like i'm cracked and some new-age believer-in-angels (for the record, i so am not!) but i do believe that if you make something your reality that it becomes your reality. so no more thinking that i have a black star following me and more thinking that i'm a force of nature that just can't be denied what she wants. ;->

[music | david usher, "white christmas"]

the good and the not good

interview confirmed for monday afternoon.
data entry/filing work confirmed for tuesday (i need money, it's money).
another interview confirmed for the following monday afternoon.
divination tonight.
brunch with my old project management team on sunday.
art show on sunday, where i may possibly be doing some tarot readings for money.

these things are all good... yey!

and then i came across this bad bit of news. tim burton is amazing and i love his work (well, except for planet of the apes, but that's another story) but please... do not work with jim carrey. i really wanted to see the lemony snicket movie, but didn't. my cherished childhood memories of the grinch were dashed when the movie version starring carrey came out. i know, he's canadian and i'm supposed to like him just because of that... but seriously... tim. don't do a movie with him.

[music | the lovely feathers, "fudgicle"]

hark! what's this?!

i'm generally not a wallower... it's a habit i outgrew long ago... like the habit i once had to never look anyone in they eye and the habit i once had to trim my nails with my teeth... i just don't like to wallow... it gets mucky and murky and cold and lonely. and who wants that for any extended amount of time? and if you do want that... my friend, perhaps you should begin wiggling out...

so after spending two days wallowing in fear and paralysis and 'why is this happening to me? what is wrong with me? who did i fuck over in a previous life in order to deserve this? *whinge, whine, whinge again*', i have found myself on the receiving end of a few (few meaning more than 2, but not quite more than 3) bits of yippie-type news.

piece, the first :
the interview i went on last week finally got back to me... they are planning to interview for the next few weeks and will be in touch in mid-december for next steps. ok.. that's not a kick in the teeth. now, is it?

second ray of sunshine :
while on an epic phone conversation with wee-kelly (thanks for your ear, luv) i got a phone message from the head of an a&r department here in toronto. a few weeks ago i heard about a potential opening from a couple of my music contacts and followed up on it. i had called him twice and hadn't heard anything and was just wondering whether or not to surrender to dorothy when i get the message with an apology (!?!) for not getting back to me sooner. turns out he was out of town. i may have an interview next monday.... just playing phone tag with him right now.

third thing not resembling a swift kick in the teeth :
even more weeks ago i had gotten a lead from an old boss of mine. the job is for an office manager for a company that works exclusively with music artist managers. i could do that job with my eyes closed... except for the "thrill" and "excitement" of dealing with artist managers... they are such a breed apart. a friend of mine who was once managing a band signed to a major label was once told by that label's president, "you aren't a big enough asshole to be a great manager". that's basically the personality-type. aggressive, pushy, mouthy and tough. gotta love 'em.

so little bits of growing greenery seem to be pushing their upward... off to go water the seeds....

also - it's time for an overhaul... good-bye current blogger look and hello to the new blogger look that's already on it's way....

[music | david usher, "souring"]

so much, so little, so what?

since i last wrote we've had snow, several days of shovelling, several days of rain which has taken away most of the snow, i still have no money for december, canada's minority government fell and we're having an election in january.

snow.
every time snow falls here in toronto, i begin to wonder about all the people who are new to this country. the ones who have lived their entire lives in a much warmer climate and then all of a sudden find themselves in the middle of ice and snow and slush and grey skies for months on end. and the worst bit of all... the bitter bitter winds. actually, i don't think i mind winter too much - except for the winds. i am no fan of the winter wind. this snow had me wondering about my poor little mexican friend i met a few weeks ago... it was a warmish autumn day and he was absolutely freezing... poor guy. he's probably was in shock when the snow came and stayed.

rain.
the several days of snow were followed by several days of rain, in fact, it's still raining. now, that's more of the toronto weather that is expected. normally november is the month of umbrella's and soaked pant cuffs. i think they are calling for more snow tomorrow... looks like we're in for a long winter.

job / money.
*sigh* don't think i want to write about this. energy follows thought and i'm right now in a pretty low-ebb of positive energy about this topic. anything i write will probably just damage further. though, i will say that when you have an interview with a company and you send them a thank you note asking for the timeline of their interview process, it's only proper that they write back to you. i'm sending them a little 'follow-up' request today.

government.
a year-and-a-half ago we had an election and the ruling liberal party was voted back in, though as a minority government. minority government's are tricky things... so tricky that last night a vote of non-confidence was introduced and was passed. the liberals could not defeat it. this is a very simplistic view, by-the-way. i also have very little positive energy for our politics.

so on january 23rd, we're off to go vote to put a party in power again. my guess is that it will be a liberal minority government again. though, it could easily become a conservative-minority. it will NOT be a safe and comfy majority government, that is for certain. it also appears to be shaping up to be a rather negative campaign.. the liberals must fight for their lives and will come out slinging mud and arrows any which way they can. the conservatives already have the reputation of being negative... so my guess is that they will try to position themselves as the moral high-ground (they will do their best to ape the success that bush's right-wing christian moral majority republican's won in the last american election. urgh.)

somewhat happy things.
i am planning on seeing an amazing artist tonight. the unique chris koster is having a free show at the horseshoe tonight. i want to go... but mentally and emotionally i may not just be up to it.

my dear friend kelly is having her annual winter artshow in her house this weekend. she comes across the most 'interesting' people... last year i had a long and painful and protracted conversation with a creepy-strange man from her neighbourhood that drums in his basement and likes to invite the 16-year-olds to come hang out and learn to drum. ahem. he also then tried to tell me what a serious buddhist he is and how healing mediation can be. there are always characters at her events. she's been working on her smithing lately... yes, my wee friend kelly is a blacksmith. these are a few of her creations and this summer she sold the piece on the far right-side of the photo. yey!

this thursday another friend of mine is holding an event called, "dine, wine and divine" at mitzie's sister on queen west. it's a fund raiser for a pagan conference she is putting on next february and she has tarot readers for 10.00 a pop. as you may or may not know, i do read tarot for other folk, but i have the most difficult time getting a decent reading for myself. and not that i rule my life by divinations... but i think in this time of such wild uncertainty... a little tarot is a good thing. tarot tells you nothing you don't already know... it just brings things up and puts them in a context for you to move forward from. hard to explain... you're either a tarot gurl/boy or you're not.

finally.... don't you all just want to be this baby giraffe?


[music | chris koster, "if you see me"]

tombigbee = jodi's fucked

i am so fucked. it's not even funny. long tedious upsetting story made short... i was laid off of my job last december. i got a package and quailified for E.I. from the feds. i got a letter from hrdc saying my claim was for xx amount of weeks and was available to me until february 2006. i misinterpreted the government-speak and took it to mean that the amount of weeks i was eligible for took me until february.

well. i was wrong. o-so-wrong.

i got a notice in the mail today that told me my benefits were ending soon. i thought to myself, 'yes, in february, thanks for the long warning, twits.' i called and got the bad news that i have only 2 more weeks of benefits left. that means when i file my claim next friday i am without money.

i am also currently without a job.

so you see

/////// i . am . fucked ///////

luckily, i was able to get on the phone and arrange some potential data entry work with a former employer. see, i'm not unemployable. THEY love me. even if no one else in the hiring market does. so i could be drastically under-employed, but at least i would be employed. somewhat. and there is a potential GREAT piece of news out of this too.... my former employer is on the verge of signing an agreement with another organization to start and run a new venture. and if that is the case, my old employer would hire me on full-time as a supervisor to hire and train new staff and set the procedures up. i want this to happen. please....

also, i was on a job interview yesterday afternoon and it went well. it was for a project manager for a canadian company that sells downloadable tracks and provides e-commerce stores to other companies that are looking to sell music online as well. it's not my dream job, but it is in music and it is project management - which i am quite good at (if i do say so myself). cross your fingers and toes and boobs / balls (if you got 'em) for me.

to sum up... the lyrics to tori amos' song 'tombigbee' really fit my frame of mind right now. so, without further ado :

To you it's another day
to me it's a grim reaping
just another shooting star
strung out on your wire

prick my finger
on his virgin silver
he took me raw, Ginger -
it carmelized me

Tombigbee, Tombigbee
help me hang these bones
gotta hang these bones out to dry
he loved me, he loved me, ravishingly, low
gonna hang these bones out to dry
dry, dry, dry

oh, you do it, man

Got a blackberry stain
and they're not even in season
if you're not yet a woman
you got no business playing at this

Tombigbee, Tombigbee
help me hang these bones
gotta hang these bones out to dry
he loved me, he loved me, ravishingly, low
gonna hang these bones out to dry
dry, dry, dry

oh, you do it, man

so you get done
then you get some
sure enough, it won't hold you for long
then you say "right.
this is all mine"
but hasn't your donor card expired
from Blueridge to Cattail
on the prairie
from fly over country
back through Mississippi

I said go, man you go
well you raise me twenty
I'm raising you five
hundred treaties signed by your father's lies

just go man, you go
cause I'm trailing her tears
the ones you won't hold
you roll me a carpet
roll me a carpet, boy
roll me a carpet from here to Oklahoma

Tombigbee, Tombigbee
help me hang this bone
gotta hang these bones out to dry
he loved me, he loved me, ravishingly, low
gonna hang these bones out to dry
to dry, dry, dry

I'll do again
dry, dry, dry

[music | tori amos, "tombigbee"] (if you don't know this song, find it and listen to it)

my top 10

after seeing a particularity disturbing search query that someone used to find me, i thought i'd post the 10 most recent searches that brought web seekers to my site. by the way... the really distrubing search that prompted this post is the first one :

raine maida shirtless
o. mi. gods. how disgusting is this!?! eeewwww. (and how immature am i for this response?) i was probably bitching about raine acting like he thinks he's lord of the universe or something... and who knows what i was rambling about with the whole shirtless thing

jodi yoga (this came up 3 times)
i am addicted to yoga. yes, it is true. but i think these searchers were looking for a jodi in new york who is a yoga instructor of some renown. actually, when you search that, you come up with a lot of yoga instructors named jodi. maybe it's the new prerequisite... damn, another missed calling

spontaneous human combustion
*shudders* i have long held a bizarre fascination with this phenomenon. may it never happen to me or to you or to anyone we know.

abba
this needs no explanation. abba ruled when i was 8 and abba still rules. i love it when people seach music and find my page.

chris koster
more music searches! yey for chris that ppl are searching him. then again, this visitor was from kingston... so it may have actually been chris himself.... *wink*

debbie harry
*sigh* who doesn't love blondie?

drugs and sport
interesting. lord knows that i have never ranted about drugs in sport... i almost want to dig through my archives to see what this post was about... almost.

toronto new terminal
this is funny actually. this seems like quite a sincere and serious search query. someone was probably looking for info about the airport and they end up coming to my strange little self-serving site... heehee....

miss universe voyeur
this visitor from serbia is a dirrty dirrty person... just so dirrrty. *flirt*

sex and drugs
oh, if only they'd been searching sex and drugs and rock'n'roll!

[music | the warlocks, "just like surgery"]

what's for supper?

when is a coincidence just a result of random choices and situations and when is a coincidence something else...? if you google 'coincidence' you end up getting many many sites with many many explanations on why true coincidence does not exist and is rather just a mathematical equasion. and let me tell you that these mathematicians LOOOOOVE to go into incredible and excruciatingly boring detail about the how's, why's and wherefore's.

i am not a scientist. i am not a mathematician. i am an instinctive and intuitive creature... so my bias, when presented with a coincidental occurrence is to look at it and either get shivers or not. lately, i've been getting shivers.

my mom's side of the family has always seemed to just be a little more linked and in touch with each other than my dad's side. there's no hard evidence other than how supportive that side of my family has been, how close they were (and still are) and how much my grandmother just 'knew' stuff about you. :) my grandma k was very much a devoted catholic, but she was somehow wired into the magick of her scots and irish blood. perhaps it was through her great faith (in her deity and in her family) that she seemed to know events in your life before they happened - or perhaps she just willed the events into destiny... i don't know... i'm also not a theologist!

but back to coincidence and my life. when i was a university student here in toronto, i had to survive on very little money. from time to time my mom would send me 'care-packages' from my alberta home. often times there would be something in that box of goodies that i had thought i needed only the week or days before. for example, i remember thinking i needed to head to honest ed's to pick up some new cheap facecloths and low and behold.. when i opened the next box - there was a stack of 4 new plushy white facecloths for me. another time i was thinking i needed a hardcover book for a new journal that i wanted to keep for story ideas. the next thing you know, i had a care package that included 2 hardcover journals.

a skeptic could say that facecloths and notebooks are standard things that a mom would send to a child in university - but the fact remains that she sent those items just when i needed them.

i believe.

and more recently (since my university days are LOOOONG behind me) the coincidences have spread to cooking and baking and now also include my sister. i'm still in toronto and my mom is still in stony plain and my sister now lives in edmonton. this weekend while i was on the phone with my mom she was telling me about a dish she was making for supper (a yucky dish i can't stand, but that she and my dad love... sauerkraut with potatos and pork hocks). i told her that the last time we talked she was making sauerkraut. she laughed and said she hardly ever made it, and was only making it this last time because of some big edmonton eskimo football game that was going to be on tv that afternoon.

i agree that is just a coincidence. i tend to talk to my mom on weekends and on weekends she would be more likely to make a big dish like sauerkraut because she and my dad would be more likely to have guests over. you know, to watch things like important football games. i see that. i'm not that touched!

but where the coincidence factor kicks in is when my mom told me that she and my sister had begun starting to make the same dish for dinner several times over the last while. dishes that they hadn't talked about in advance. they would be talking on the phone and discover that they're making the same soup or casserole or other things that meat-eaters in alberta might make.

my sister and i both love to cook and we both grew up in a house where our mom made dinner ever single night... and made full dinners with a main course, a veggie, bread and a salad. every single night. so my sister may have picked up some recipes from my mom's repertoire... that is true... but to make the same thing on the same day... that's just beyond random. there's some sort of connection there beyond just looking in the 'fridge and pulling out the same ingredients.

and to further prove that... as my mom was telling me about her sister and their double hamburger soup incident i said, "since we're talking recipes, i need to ask you for your banana bread recipe." she asked why, in a somewhat strange voice. i had made banana bread the day before and i was not happy with it. it was good, yes, but it wasn't as good as my mom's is. as it turns out, my mom had made 3 loaves of banana bread on the same day i did. weird, huh? she made a loaf for herself and a loaf for both my sister and brother's families.

now i think that's just too bizzarre for words.

[music | sigur ros, "glosoli"]