Canadian girl out and aboot

I'm having a hard time concentrating this morning. I definitely don't feel like working, and have done very little. Normally I start actually working at about 8 or 9, and today I've only written a few paragraphs.

I didn't actually watch the Grammys but just youtubed a bunch of the performances. Pink's was crazy. I can't believe that she was actually singing while being in that sling. It's obvious that she is in really good physical shape, as those movements that she was doing take a lot of body strength.

I don't have much to say about the Oscar noms except that I really don't want Avatar, James Cameron or Quentin Tarantino to win. There's a lot of ridiculousness in the noms this year. I don't plan to go see "A Serious Man" and I think that "A single man" should have been nominated for cinematography. I'm pretty happy with the best actress noms, and the best actor noms and it's nice to see "The Cove" and "Food Inc" receive recognition. They were both great docs. I'm also happy for the recognition for "District 9" and "An Education", and think that I'll have to get to "Crazy Heart" in the next couple of weeks.

So I spent New Year's at my friend Mari's. We had grand plans to get to several parties but we never got there in time. Mari had received a creme brulee set from her bf's mom, so she ended up making us creme brulee. It was my first time having creme brulee. I'm not sure how that happened. The creme brulee set even came with a little blow torch so Mari's bf torched the creme brulee, while her roommate Stephanie stood by with the fire extinguisher. For those of you playing along at home, all these events actually went down at Todd Babiak's since Mari and Stephanie are housesitting for him while he is in France. In hopes of embarrassing him, I scoured Todd's bookcases looking for shameful items, but he doesn't seem to have any. He must hide them.

During this time, I tried bourbon, discovered that I don't like it and drank some Vampire wine instead. I'd seen the Vampire wine in the offsale here and was eager to try it. It's actually not bad. However, I don't think I could actually take it anywhere, as then I'd be the crazy goth girl who showed up with the vampire wine.

At midnight, I kissed Henry, Mari's Boston terrier. Then Mari and her bf went to the Artery to meet up with more peeps, and I went home to sleep.

The next day, I did a lot of nothing and watched a lot of Glee on DVD. Love! On Saturday, I did a bunch of errands then went down to the Black dog bar to see a free set done by a guy I know named Doug Hoyer . I met Doug at a bbq at my friend's and we always chat when we run into each other. His music is pretty cool; he's got great lyrics and wonderful melodies and some really catchy songs. I actually think his music could become quite popular if it fell into the right hands. Anyway, I met up with a few more people and then Doug and I chatted in between sets and at one point, he gave me a copy of a chapbook written by a few local poets/musicians.

On Jan 3rd, I went for my first ski this year, and skied around Hawrelak park. My goal is to ski all 9 of Edmonton's parks this year. I'm up to 3 so far. Then I had a slack afternoon and went for supper with [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com], who has just moved to Alberta.

My week is going to pick up in a big way by tomorrow. Today is just another working from home day, but tomorrow I head out to a meeting of the Wild Rose Agricultural Producers (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE Wild Rose Alliance political party of conservatives, shudder.). The Wild Rose Agricultural Producers are a group of Alberta farmers who get together to discuss provincial issues affecting farmers. It should be a good meeting, and it's at the Fantasyland hotel in the West Edmonton Mall. I've been to a few conferences there; they have a good conference rate and decent food.

Then I'm going to the opening of the Winterlight festival . I've got a few friends involved with the festival and Mari is the festival blogger and social media coordinator. So that should be cool.

I got a much needed haircut and drove up to Grande Prairie. When I got there, my family friends and another friend hopped in a car and drove to the new Prairie Art Gallery for an art opening. The event was massive! It was the opening of the second show in the new Prairie Art Gallery and there were hundreds of people there. They had a rock band, free food (roast pork sandwiches and chips) and a chocolate fountain. The art was pretty cool as well. It was a rather surreal event for me, because I saw a lot of people that I have interviewed one or two times. However, I also got a chance to catch up with some friends and hang out at the new art gallery in GP. After that, Jon and Laura and I went home where I cuddled with the Yorkshire terrier and we watched "Mad Men", which I don't really care for. (Confession- I don't really care for Flight of the Conchords either)

Bad- My friend is in town and I haven't managed to catch up with her. She's at a horse show and phoned once, when I was out :( I've called back, but I think she might have already left town. Or will we go for brunch tomorrow? I don't know. Ugh.

The good- I had a good weekend. On Friday, I attended "Titus",which I've already blogged about. I neglected to mention that Mari and I were accompanied by a playwright/actor friend of hers who turned out to have the same nerd-tastic taste as I do. He loves "Veronica Mars", "How I met your mother", "Mean Girls" and a wide variety of other nerdy things that I love too. We bonded immediately (and platonically) for those of you who are following along at home.

Saturday I woke up very late and then went to the farmer's market where I went crazy because of the fresh produce. I got beans, fresh baby bok choy, white cherries, and a variety of other tasty things. Then I biked over to a friend's going away party. It was held in my neighbourhood and I clicked with the host of the going away party, who works at the independent folk radio station here in town. We ended up drinking mojitos and a tasty Brazilian drink called a caprinha, which was very strong and very boozy. The host of the party had a sheltie named Captain, who I adored and two of the guests brought their twin girls, who were seven months old. The parents were very into exposing the babies to new things, so I got to hold one of the girls for a very long time, which made me quite happy. I like babies.

From the party, I biked to meet Mari and two of her ladyfriends to go see a play called "Mother of the Year". This was an over the top black comedy penned by an Edmonton based playwright. It was created as an accompaniment to Titus, and touched on many of the themes in Titus. The play was set in the 80s, and so we got to laugh our asses off at the cast members who were wearing big sunglasses, dresses with uneven hems, shoulder pads, bad prints, lots of bling and horribly bad makeup. I remarked that I was glad that I didn't hit puberty until the 1990s, as the 1980s were a pretty shitty decade for fashion.

Unfortunately, I couldn't fall asleep when I got home since it was so fricking hot and for some reason, I had neglected to eat and woke up famished at 5:00 in the morning. It's been incredibly hot so I've been eating a lot less and have been subsisting on salads.

Today I did absolutely nothing. I watched several episodes of Weeds and then a great documentary about Ed Brown of Tassajara Zen Centre called "How to cook your life." Tomorrow it's back to work. I'll be on the road a lot this week.

On Saturday, I was in a Vietnamese restaurant in Red Deer at the same time as a group of local oil patch workers. I'm not sure what these guys did, but they were dressed in work clothes and spent a lot of time talking about "up north and Fort McMurray", which is pretty much slang for "the oil patch."

One of the guys was talking loudly and really liked to swear. However, instead of actually saying f*ck, he had adapted his speech to the Battlestar Galatica vernacular and made references to "Those frakkers. Motherfracker. A bunch of frackers" etc.

I was sitting across the room and had to concentrate really hard to keep myself from laughing.

Haven't updated because I've been having a relaxing holiday. Seriously, if I were any more relaxed, I'd be comatose. The good news is that I have also been sleeping a lot. Yesterday I slept for 9 or 10 hours.

We also had the mellowest Christmas ever. My brother and his fiancee came for dinner on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day dinner was even more mellow. My parents and I didn't even have a turkey; they ate steaks and I ate a piece of salmon and then we watched "Burn after reading."

Since being home, I've watched "Burn after reading" (liked), "Wall-E" (liked) and Happy-Go-Lucky. (HATED). I also started watching Battlestar Galatica and have watched the first disc of Season 1. I'm in the middle of disc 2 now. I've written about ten poems, skated for an hour on the skating rink near the river where I watched two bridal parties and talked to a newly reunited Filipino family. I have spent countless hours cuddling with my dog and taking him for walks. He sleeps downstairs, but snuggles up on my bed in the early morning, placing his small body next to my feet.

I re-read "The Secret History" and started reading a few other books, which I am devouring slowly.

I went for coffee with [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] and went to a boxing day party at the Celtic/treeplanter bar which was attended by half of my high school and dozens of treeplanters. I stayed out late, talked to people I hadn't seen in years and got tons of hugs. Then Prosad came over for tea and we talked until 3 am. It was wonderful.

So yes, so far it has been a lovely holiday.

Really, that's about it. That's why I have not been updating. This week, I am in charge of three newspapers and am packing more boxes.

This Saturday, I watched "Bladerunner", read Stephen King's "The Mist" and then got sucked into "Intervention" and watched about three episodes. If you have never watched this tv show, please stay far away from it. It's a reality tv show, and it's extremely disturbing. Family members intervene in order to stop their friends or loved ones from drinking, or abusing drugs and then the addict gets the opportunity to accept help and go to rehab or continue using. Never before have I watched a heroin addict shoot up in the ass with water he used from a toilet bowl.

I could not look away and basically needed an intervention to stop watching. In fact, I had a hard time falling asleep after all the horror (real-life and fictional) that I ingested Saturday. And last night, I woke myself up during a dream in which I was yelling, "You have a drinking problem!"

I should talk about the books I've been reading and the movies I've been watching. Both are more interesting than anything I've been doing lately.

I'm a guest poster at Pop Vultures , [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s tv website.

Thanks for having me!

If you are, you should be reading my friend's blog Pop Vultures

Okay, I'm only about eight episodes in, but I'm loving the show.

My favourite Hero- Hiro, for sure. He's so adorable, makes me laugh and adds a lot to the show.

Hottest hero- either Peter or Mohinder. Peter is SO my type. Dark, skinny, broody and angsty. Yep. But Mohinder has that fantastic accent.

I also like that no one on the show annoys me. Usually there's a character on a show (like Shannon on LOST, or Duncan on Veronica Mars) that I can't stand.

I've always liked Ali Larter, so I'm glad she's getting more work. And of course, I love that there are several biracial characters and think that Noah Gray-Cabey can actually act.

My one complaint so far? I love Clea Duvall, but I think she's miscast in this role.

Discuss.