Dryad's Song

Help!

2008-03-24T13:23:56Z

Quick, internet: tell me what I did to my car! I guess I accidentally put it into "2" rather than "D" (I have an automatic and only ever use "D") and I didn't realize for 15 minutes that my car was doing 5500 RPM. Did I kill it? It's a 12 year old Nissan Maxima that was kind of a death trap to begin with, although I think it has the will to live...did I just cut its life short?

*panics*

FACTOR

2008-02-25T17:57:13Z

I don't think I mentioned that some months ago I applied to FACTOR.

Application No.	Status	Artist	Type
DAxxxx	ready_for_jury	Meagan	Demo Award

it's that "ready_for_jury" part that all of a sudden made me nervous. My music is going to be juried. :/

A rose, by any other name, would beat people senseless for not being able to spell "Rose"

2008-01-07T16:22:06Z

Today I am going to talk about names. Names are a tricky thing in this day and age, as they come from all over the globe and even your basic names can be spelled in new and terrifying ways. My name is Meagan. It's not the most common way to spell it, but it's not far off the mark.

And yet.

I have taken to, when I am asked for my name, answering exactly like this:

"Meagan. m, e, **A**, g, a, n."

Past precedent has dictated that unless I deliberately, slowly, empatically emphasize the first A in my name, people will blithely assume it's spelled one of half a dozen other ways. No one has ever gotten it right after I spell it out, and 26 years of that is a long time for no one to ever have gotten it right. So I answer in the above fashion.
And would you believe that 99% of the time, people still spell it 'Megan' after supposedly listening to me, typing the name one letter at a time as I speak them. Just yesterday, I answered at LensCrafters so that an associate could look up my file.
"Meagan. m, e, **A**, g, a, n."
"You're not in our system."
"I assure you I am. It's spelled Me **A** gan."
*checks again, shakes head* "no, you're not in here."
"You're missing the first A."
"Oh, sorry. Meag E n. I'm still not finding you."
"No, g A n" (which she got right back at the beginning!!)

And, by the way, that's what the other 1% do when I spell my name for them. They'll get the "MEA" part correctly, but they'll choose between "GHAN" or "GEN" after that. And it usually takes three rounds of corrections for them to get it right. I just don't understand this. Some people have honestly gone through six different incorrect spellings of my name, with me very carefully spelling it correctly each time, before they get it right. It's like they decide that despite the fact that they're getting it wrong, they'll cycle through every permutation that they can think of before actually listening to me spell my own name.

That automatic "h" bothers me. There's a cadence to the way I spell my name out loud. Three letters, the third one quite emphasized, then three more. m e A; g a n. And yet far too many people stick an H in there. It's like they think, "well, she's got a superfluous letter in there, so we might as well throw a few more in". Seriously, people, if a person is deliberately spelling out their name, listen to them. People with commonly spelled names rarely do that, so there's probably a reason.

(Once, at Chapters, I was trying to order a book and I was shuffled between about five different people altogether, back and forth, and between them they spelled my name (including my last name which adds even more confusion despite only being four letters and one syllable) eight different incorrect ways. I was impressed. One of them spelled it "Meegan Flue".)

I should wear a nametag around my neck. But then, when people inevitably still got it wrong, I'd have to bludgeon them, so unfortunately it's not a practical solution.

Addendum

2007-12-18T15:13:17Z

So. After having done my best to pull out of the Canadian Tire lot, make my way across the road and get stuck on Dundas trying to pull into a gas station, getting towed and paying far too much for it, losing 3 hours of that day, and generally not being pleased with the whole scenario, guess where we had to tow the car yesterday (flat spare, if you recall) to get the tires changed out?

No, go ahead, guess.

Yeah. The same fucking Canadian Tire where they went flat in the first place.

Just the right time for it

2007-12-17T17:14:50Z

So I don’t generally write in this journal. I tend to keep things in my head and talk them over with myself, so I don’t feel like writing, but I just feel like whining about this one. So here goes.

Yesterday it was snowy. Very much so. No one was out because we were all basically snowed in. Nonetheless, I had things to do, so I ventured out. I was happy going 10km per hour. It was leisurely, people were all driving just as slowly as I was, so it actually wasn’t that dangerous. I got a fair amount of shopping done, and at about 5pm I was over in the Oakville area, about 25 minutes (on a regular day) from where I live. I pull into Canadian Tire and all of a sudden the car seems to be making more noise.

I checked the tires and one was totally flat. That tire had had a slow leak up till now, so I thought, "maybe it’s just gone very flat and I can fill it back up again" as the refillings had done the trick up until now. So I pulled out of the Canadian Tire lot (with a lot of effort -- the flat tire was a front one) and made my way across the road the the gas station. Almost. I attempted to pull into the station, but the snow on the slight slope into it proved to be too much for the car without a tire. It was about 5:00 when this happened. I tried to reverse, I tried to move at all -- no good. And I was stuck on Dundas, which is a very major road. I put my hazards on and called CAA, which said that it was very busy, so it may be 2-3 hours (even with putting me on priority because I’m in a major road!) before anyone could show up. So I waited, hoping no one would hit me. At about 7:30 a policeman showed up, and sympathised with my plight, but said that unfortunately, we can’t wait indefinitely for CAA as I’m a big hazard. So he got a tow truck which pulled me 5 feet forward into the gas station, and put the spare tire on. They also charged me $100 for the priveledge. And they only accepted cash. No credit cards, nothing but cash. Now, I didn’t have cash on me, and since I’d been doing hardcore christmas shopping for three days, and I’d diligently paid a bunch of bills on the friday, there was no money left in the account that I could draw from at an ATM. I eventually convinced them to take a cheque (which they insisted I make out to CASH) and I’ve tranferred money into that account now, so everything’s fine there, but I still find that very suspect.

So end of story, right?
Of course not. The spare tire is flat! Didn’t discover *that* until I got home. (this is yet another point on the long list of proofs that I bought a car not worthy even being called a car. The thing’s a death trap, seriously). So I took Jon’s car to work today, and he's trying to get my tires changed; he could only find one place with the right tires in stock (yes, I have to change all four tires. The guy sold me the car with bald tires), and they’re going to charge him over $450 just for those, and now it seems we have to buy a new spare tire. Also, he has to get towed to the place, as the spare tire is quite flat. Last night it was just badly underfilled, this morning it was flat. I don't even know what to say.

Recording again!

2007-09-26T16:50:15Z

Okay, so now that the wedding madness is over and done with, I'm actually going back into the studio to resume recording. Hopefully I'll be a little more efficient with actually getting the songs done at a reasonable rate. :)

At the moment it's a bit tricky to schedule with my producer, but when I go in hopefully I can book quite a few sessions into november and december.

For those who want to know, the three days I've got at the moment are September 27, October 17, and October 29. The 27th, of course, being tomorrow. :)

I'll hopefully get the recording calendar up again so that I can give a bit of a run-down of what I did. As always, updates and the calendar link will be at http://www.dryadsong.com/music/.

Quick

2007-08-14T16:50:07Z

Without looking anything up, just off the top of your head, give me a couple of charicteristics of a koala. Just what comes to mind immediately. The basics.
(I’ll edit this to explain why the heck I’m asking in a little bit).

The Anticipated Edit With Information:
I came across a program online that was a 20 questions game someone wrote almost 20 years go. It learns based on peoples answers, and thus it has actually become uncannily smart with regards to figuring out what you're thinking about. It managed to guess everything I was thinking until I got to thinking about a koala.
If I recall, once we got past the very first question, "Animal, vegetable, mineral or other?", it asked me "Is it a mammal?" Of course, I answered "No", as koalas are not mammals, they're marsupials.

After getting through a bunch of increasingly unrelated questions, the computer gave up and asked me what I was thinking about. I told it koala and it let me know why it hadn't gotten it right. Apparently humanity as a population had taught it that koalas were mammals. I always thought it was a well-known fact that they weren't -- hell, there are more than a few marsupials in Australia; that's the place to be for marsupials. But evidently the human race (or, at least, the computer using population over the last two decades) feels that koalas are mammals. Now, no one said "marsupial" in their comments, here, although no one actually said "mammal" either, so I'd like to believe that you all merely figured it was a given and chose not to mention it. What say you all to this apparent "cute + fuzzy = mammal" phenomenon?

Edit: okay. I guess I suck. I remember being taught in highschool that marsupials were different than mammals, and that's what stuck in my head. But as it turns out, I'm just wrong. This is why I'm in microbiology. Give me Escherichia vs. Shigella any day. Large organisms? Not so much, apparently.

A little common sense, please

2007-08-02T18:40:01Z

From The Canadian Press:

Even with vaccination, women would still need to have regular Pap smears. But Lippman and others worry that some women will misconceive HPV vaccination as a silver bullet that will give them carte blanche to have as many sexual partners as they want, with little thought for safe sex practices.

Right. So, to recap, people are thinking that giving girls a vaccination against genital warts will convince them that they’re free to go! Forget that whole pregnancy thing, or AIDS (really, I mean, that’s so last year). Even if a girl has never heard of gonorrhea, syphilis, or chlamydia, my thought is that HPV isn't going to be their biggest concern, protection-wise. What is wrong with people's brains?

Stupid, STUPID woman

2007-07-15T22:45:13Z

Today I did laundry. This, in itself is uneventful. A lot of people do laundry, especially on Sunday. But the problem itself wasn’t the laundry. I was heading to the laundry room in the apartment building to grab my now-dry laundry, and on the way there I saw a laundry card lying on the floor in the hallway. I said "oh dear", and picked it up. I looked around and saw someone at the elevator with some large garbage bags full of whatever, but not anyone frantically or even idly searching for anything. So I went to the office to turn it in, and they’d just closed about ten minutes previously. So I decided the best thing to do would be to drop it in the secure mailbox for the office. My instinct upon discovering that I’d lost my card and searching fruitlessly for it would be to ask if anyone had turned one in at the office, and so I figured other people would do the same.

The reason I did this is because the cards are essentially like cash. And they can have up to $50 on them, and they’re worth a $40 security deposit on top of that. I was reluctant to ask anyone if they had dropped the card. It would be awful to hand it over to someone who claimed it was theirs to later find out that the rightful owner was still missing their card, and that there was a lot of money on it.

Of course, having done this, Murphy’s Law kicks in and the woman I’d earlier seen at the elevator with garbage bags is now in the laundry room asking if anyone had seen a laundry card. I, being the sort that is reflexively, pathologically honest, immediately say that I’d found a card in the hallway and put it in the office mail slot. Evidently she stopped listening to me halfway through my sentence (I hate that) because her shoulders relaxed and she held out her hand to me in a partially distracted fashion. I didn’t have a card to give to her, of course, so I said once again that I’d put it in the office mail slot. She didn’t understand what this is (it's a secure slot for people to put their monthly rent cheques in -- they check it daily is my understanding) so I told her I would show her, and we walked down the hallway to the office. She was getting upset already and I knew in my heart that this would get very bad. We got to the slot, I actually tried to retrieve it from inside the slot, and I couldn’t. At this point, she began berating me and raising her voice at me and asking me why I didn’t just give it to her -- why I’d done what I’d done -- why didn’t it occur to me to ask around as to who it belonged -- what was I thinking -- why didn’t I think...

I interrupted her once to say that I didn’t see her drop it and I didn’t know it was hers, and that was why. It seemed a simple, logical answer to me, but evidently she was of the mindset that I should have immediately wandered down to the elevators where she was and asked her if she’d dropped a laundry card.
Now, if I’d seen the card fall out of her pocket or whatever, my immediate instinct would be to call out, "you dropped your card!" But the thing is, the card is potentially worth almost $100. I couldn’t even tell that she’d done laundry as all her clothes were in opaque black garbage bags, and for God’s sake it’s Sunday afternoon. Half the building does laundry on Sunday. ANYONE could have dropped the card. So what I did was the right thing.

Regardless, she was obviously not going to see it this way. It’s hard to describe just how immature and unbelievable the woman was, but I honestly felt like I couldn’t possibly be dealing with an adult. My brain was kind of whirling around, thinking the equivalent of, "I’m a grown-up now. This is the grown-up world, isn’t it? Is this how grown-ups act?" and just generally being a bit dazed by the relentless harassment of this woman.
I lost patience with her quite early, though, and when she asked me what I could possibly have been thinking for the second time, I basically rolled my eyes as I walked past her and impatiently said, quietly, "just trying to be a good person". I dismissed her with that comment, so although my brain registered that she’d come up with some kind of response, I don’t remember what it was.

Oh, and also, I did apologize after offering my explanation. I said something like, "I felt it was safest, not knowing whose it was, to put it in the office box. I do apologize knowing now that it was yours," and she cut me off with something like "well you were stupid and I don’t care about your apology" and when I pointed out that they were open early the next morning she insisted that she didn’t want to get it tomorrow, she needed it NOW. I refrained from commenting, but she obviously had just carted her dry laundry upstairs, and it appeared to be her entire wardrobe’s worth, so she was done for the day (as another woman in the laundry room confirmed for me when I asked). She didn’t "need it right now". Hell, she won't need it for a week at least unless she goes through seventeen outfits a day. Yes, she’s inconvenienced as she’ll have to inquire at the office about it tomorrow, but that’s the extent of it.

The way that I read her, unfortunately, is that she’ll be the type to actively harass me whenever she sees me. I just got an overwhelming sense of immaturity, irrationality, and bullying from her. And it’s just overwhelming to me that there are people like that in the adult world. I mean, I knew in theory, but I suppose I've never been confronted with it before.

The thing is, I know I did the right thing, and if she were to ask me what I’ll do if it happens again, I’d have to honestly tell her that I’ll do the same thing. I’d want someone to turn in my card if they found it, even if they found it while I was walking right by it. If I was in the middle of laundry when it got lost, I’d find a kind person willing to lend me their card and hand them the money to cover it. There’s always a way to figure things out. Heck, if the lady whose card I found had been in the middle of laundry and needed it, I would have offered to let her use my card and just grab a couple of dollars from her to cover it.

You can bet that if I’d asked the people around, and someone had claimed it as theirs, and she’d found out, she’d be screaming bloody murder and asking why I hadn’t thought to turn it into the office. "What were you thinking?! Why would you just hand a card to someone who says it’s theirs? You have no way of knowing! You are so STUPID!"

I was hoping writing this would get it off of my shoulders but I still feel like shaking her.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

2007-07-11T15:55:29Z

http://toronto.kijiji.ca/c-housing-room-rental-roommates-FREE-RENT-FOR-A-FEMALE-W0QQAdIdZ17569515

Older and Far Away

2007-06-18T15:16:19Z

It’s interesting, how when you think about people that are older than you but you last knew when they were young, maybe about 16 or 17, it’s difficult to just accept that they’ve also grown up. I know a few people that I thought were, at the very least, more grown-up than me back in highschool, merely by virtue of their extra year or two. But of course, looking back, they were really quite immature and given to the habits and vices of young adults.
So it’s not as easy as just telling myself, "10 years have passed, and you yourself are a very different person now. They are too."
In fact, I find myself wondering about certain people, and taking in certain information (He got married?! She has a child? She’s almost an executive?! How the hell...) which seems entirely at odds with the person I knew back then, and attempting to reconcile it in my mind. It’s really damned difficult.

Wedding!

2007-05-25T20:02:57Z

Okay, so I’ve been married for almost a month now. It really doesn’t seem that long, but I was on honeymoon for a couple of weeks, so I suppose that explains it. I realized that if I waited until I had pictures to post in this journal, I’d mostly end up writing a “this happened, then this, then this, the end,” kind of post, rather than remembering how I felt, so I suppose it’s for the best that I don’t have them to post yet.

I managed to sleep the night before. I was told that I probably wouldn’t, but I was just so tired that I fell right asleep and stayed asleep. Granted, it was about 1:30 or 2 in the morning, because there was still lots of stuff to do, but I still fell asleep.

Sidenote: at 1:30 in the morning, my siblings were still awake making cookies. This was something they really wanted to do. Originally (like, 2 years before the wedding) I had mused that I thought I’d make a lot of mom’s cookies to put out with the cake table. But it had become rather clear to me that such a task would be, regrettably, pretty much impossible for me to get done. However, my brother and sister had seized on the idea and wanted to make those cookies come hell or high water, despite my protestations that there really wasn’t time and it really wasn’t a big thing. So they started the cookies after the rehearsal dinner at around 11pm, and they made something like 300 of them. The cookies went in a big basket and looked wonderful at the reception.

Anyway, I woke up with to my alarm in a quiet household, the only one awake. I went to the hairdresser, and doing my hair took quite awhile. The sequence of things one has to go through to turn naturally curly hair shiny and frizz-free, but still entirely soft, and stuck in position without hairspray is quite daunting. I wanted my hair down (you’ll understand when you see the pictures) so the curls had to look normal, as opposed to crunchy. I was tired and the heat of the hairdryer basically put me right to sleep. This was the first time on the wedding day that I was told I seemed awfully calm and relaxed for someone who was getting married (up until the wedding I was told that at least once a week by various people who found out I was getting married – really, the only time I lost my cool was when certain flowers showed up at the house the day before the wedding when they weren’t supposed to, and there didn’t seem to be enough anyway, compared to what was ordered. Steph says she could see something cracking in me as that happened. But I did regain my composure after that was all dealt with). I was told I seemed pretty calm a few times that day (but I was seriously crying a lot of the time. I suppose people were referring to the lack of jitters. But honestly, I’ve been waiting to get married for a long time. Jitters just wouldn’t make sense).

Um…I went home with my veil thoroughly attached to my head, and this was a tricky thing as it’s 3 metres long. So I also had it in a plastic bag, and the bag was clipped to my hair. It was very classy. The makeup artist was there before I was, but thankfully my little sister got home from her hair appointment and was able to have her face done, and then my various bridesmaids showed up as well – I was very nearly the last person there, actually. Everybody looked so pretty.
I got my face done (once again, simply to look basically like I do every day – I wasn’t keen on looking like a totally different person on my wedding day) with entirely waterproof makeup. A very important thing. The makeup was tested right off the bat with two notes that I was given that morning. One from my husband that he gave to Steph to give me, and one from my sister. They made me cry so much. I cry at the drop of a hat. I had a handkerchief stuck between my breasts for that reason. It was my something old. It served two purposes.

Anyway, mom had arranged for there to be a lot of food which showed up around the time that I got my dress on. So I had to be quick and careful.

Steph helped me with putting my dress on and it made her cry. And that made me cry. We were a wreck. This is such an interesting post, isn’t it? “I did X. It made me cry. I also did Y. It also made me cry. Then I cried because of Z.”

I think it started feeling a little surreal at about the point when I got my dress on. I think wearing a wedding dress will do that. It’s a dress you’ll wear once in your life, it’s a central focus of the day somehow, and it basically puts a big blinking sign over your head that says “Bride”. More than anything else. And at that point I had my hair and nails and makeup done, and my veil was in, and I really only had to put my shoes and jewelry on.

And then I don’t remember much except the photographer (who was awesome, in every way) taking various pictures until it was time to go to the church. We had been told to hide in the car until it became clear that basically everyone had arrived. So we hid. At the same time, Jon and his best man were hiding in Michael’s (the minister’s) office, and I don’t know exactly what he was thinking at the time. I was mostly thinking, “can we go in now?” and also, “oh, right. Gotta remember to return Candice’s book to her.” It seems as though I should have been thinking more salient things, but that’s what it was.

Anyway, we furtively made our way in, and I quickly hid myself behind the door (the whole place is kinda tricky to hide in, with big windows from the narthex into the main area) and waited. And then the music came on (the music for the bridesmaids to walk down the aisle came too soon – as the mothers were heading down the aisle – and apparently this gave the groom’s party a bit of a heart attack… “wait, isn’t that the music for the bridesmaids? Shit, we should be out there!”) and the whole thing started. I was already in tears by the time I stepped out into the aisle. It’s just what I do.

Jon mentioned that he couldn’t see me through a film of tears – well, I had the same problem, and I don’t have the better than 20-20 vision that he has. So mostly, I tried to make sure that I didn’t run into anything as I went down the aisle. When I got to the front I could see him. And I could see that he was also in tears. And I exulted. Just a little. Because I told him he’d probably cry.

I don’t remember it all now – yay for wedding videos; I imagine I’ll say “oh yeah! Now I remember that!” a lot when we get to watch it – but I do remember bits of things. I remember the readings, I remember Steph singing beautifully, I remember Jon being utterly confused as to the ring he was supposed to pick up, (“but that one’s my ring!”) I remember signing the register and thinking, “remember, she said to sign slowly and smile and pose,” so I signed my first name, smiled, looked up, then looked down, signed my last name, looked up again, then repeated this for the second signature. It’s pretty hard to do that, actually.

And then we were married.

I had a ring on my finger and a husband on my arm. We went outside into the light and were mobbed. It was awesome. I tried to start a formal receiving line, but pretty much all my efforts were thwarted, and it worked out anyway, as Jon and I basically stood in one place and everyone mobbed us, and my mom and dad were greeting everybody as they left the church anyway.

It was threatening to rain, so unfortunately we had to cut the receiving line short (it never rained), and once again the photographer was awesome. Seriously awesome. You’ll see.

Jon and I drove over to the reception hall to do a couple of reception hall photos before everyone got there, and because of this I discovered one little problem that could have been such a big thing. The seating plan that I’d worked out was nowhere to be found. Evidently there was a miscommunication, in that when I first went in to look at the site, I was shown easels and told that these were where the seating arrangements went. Then about three weeks before the event I was asked to email the table information. Now, taken together, these statements led me to believe that I was to send in the arrangements and they’d put the easels together. Apparently not. It would have been easy to create a pretty set of cards to put on the easels, but I didn’t know that I was supposed to, so there was a bit of a conflict while I tried to express where I was coming from in my confusion, but she quickly said that she’d take the email that I sent her and print out a sign. It only took about 10-15 minutes, and most people hadn’t shown up by then, so that was headed off at the pass. But it could have been worse, and I’m glad I was being observant.

There were plates of hors d’oeuvres being walked around, and a big punch bowl full of punch with fruit floating in it, and the tables all had tall delicate wide-bowl vases (like a martini glass with a flatter bowl) filled with hydrangea, and the bonbonnieres were so lovely (and filled with chocolates that had even people that hated chocolate trying to steal them from others).

There was an open bar, and a four-course meal. There was salad, then two pastas (and omg the tortellini with the cream pesto sauce was seriously the best thing I’ve ever eaten) and then a roast beef with a fresh peppercorn sauce and roasted potatoes (fresh peppercorns are like berries that are spicy. I’ve never had anything like it), and then dessert, which was a chocolate mousse and brownie thingy with whipped cream and raspberry sauce. Twas good. I was too full by then to eat most of it (curse you, awesome tortellini!) but I did my best to fully appreciate the three bites I was able to attempt.

Then we cut the cake. It was a heck of a thing by itself. Cutting the cake is an event, and as such, you ask yourself, “am I supposed to do this a certain way?” but there’s no one to help you. And it takes all of about a second to cut it. If you do it slowly. Then you look up and smile, because you know it’s a photo op. By then you’ve killed about three seconds, and you’re thinking, “um..so what now?” I actually asked Jon, “do we just kind of stand here like this?” but he didn’t know. So we waited until people had taken several more pictures and we kind of awkwardly extracted the knife and shuffled away from the cake.

Then we shuffled over to the dance floor and had our first dance. We danced to Marry Me by Amanda Marshall. When I was first learning to play the guitar, I set about learning that song. (Jon hadn’t yet proposed to me at that point.) I played it and sang it for him, and I made him cry. So that’s why we danced to that song.

Then I danced with my father, and then everyone else was allowed to dance, and my bridesmaids came tearing onto the dance floor dancing to Build me up Buttercup, and then all kinds of other people came up with Basket Case, and then Jon and Candice did, like, the coolest thing ever imitating the music video for Here it Goes Again when that song came on. I don’t know how they managed it without treadmills, but they did.

Anyway, there was dancing, and talking, and throwing of bouquets (Candice caught it after apparently lunging in front of the other, more demure bridesmaids) and really, it felt like so much later than it was. By about 10:30 I felt like it must surely be almost 1. We called it a night early, as most people were just as tired, and I think they appreciated that. So around 11 we had the last couple of songs and quite a few teary goodbyes, as I had officially moved out of the house that day, the first of all my brothers and sisters to leave.

Anyway, as a side note, there were more than a few people going around grabbing unattended bonbonnieres. That’s the danger of having such addictive chocolate as a favour, I suppose. :)

:)

2007-05-14T20:22:40Z

Today, for the first time ever, I get to go home to my husband.

15 days

2007-04-12T19:08:16Z

OMG there are 15 days left until the wedding. OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

MUHAHAHA

2007-03-30T15:51:17Z

I'm going to see Phantom tonight!!

Third row from the front, near the centre of the dress circle (that's the first balcony -- my ideal place for watching a musical. I've never been fond of having to crane my neck up for long periods of time)! MUHAHAHAHA!

...1 2 3 4 5 6 switch...

2007-03-19T16:08:10Z

So, there are just about six weeks until I get married, and I'm kind of intermittently swapping between overwhelming joy and panic.
So many things to get done, so little time -- so many, many days to get through before I can live with my husband; you know the dichotomy.

Anyway, that's where I stand.

Wow.

2007-03-09T14:12:42Z

From The Ecomonist, 'Beyond the Egg':

The future may also be needleless. PowderMed caught Pfizer's eye because of its nifty helium-powered, hand-held device that delivers vaccines by firing DNA-laced gold particles into the skin.

Pfizer's developing a hypospray!

OMG stupid "inappropriate" quotations

2007-01-24T02:49:46Z

So.

A good many people that I know have, collectively, a handful of gramatical errors that, when they come across them, send them over the brink (sanity-wise). While I'd like to somehow put together a sentence that misuses 'then' and 'than', 'affects' and 'effects', and uses the term 'irregardless', the mis-spelled 'rediculous', and sticks 'it's' where 'its' belongs and puts commas EVERYWHERE, regardless of whether they're needed, that's not the point of this post. Also, I'd be dead by dawn.

The point is that here's the thing that does it for me: inappropriate quotation marks.
It used to be that they'd just amuse me. There seems to be an epidemic going around where people use quotation marks in place of underlines.

Back at the University of Guelph, they were particularly good at this: "Store Hours", Cookie..."$1.00", "Post Office", Ingredients: "meat", etc. I've also seen it used where it really makes the meaning exactly what the originator doesn't want: Come to our "great" open house! Made with "fresh" ingredients!
I mean, honestly. It's "everywhere".

So please, people, for your own sakes, learn that quotation marks do not mean the same thing as underlining. PLEASE.

Gypsy Pics!!

2006-12-29T06:19:08Z

To stem the tide of "why didn't you tell me sooner??" emails, I figured I'd mention it here: I put the gypsy photos up! A major thanks to bbusterr for running all over hell's half-acre in the bitter cold to take absolutely beautiful pictures.

Other than that, I do have a bunch of things to write about, but I really should leave them till when it's not 1:30 in the morning.

dryad_song @ 2006-12-14T09:54:00

2006-12-14T15:04:32Z

IAWTC

"Speaking of respect, another idea that has ruined American culture is the one that states, ‘I don’t give respect freely. You have to earn my respect.’ This one is most often uttered by punk kids with bad attitudes and black fingernail polish.

Fucking gag me.

I mean, how egotistical does one have to be to automatically assume that their respect is so fucking important that one must jump through multiple hoops in order to earn it? How about we give people respect because they are humans with lives and feelings just as important as our own? Why not give people a default level of respect and more or less can either be won or lost based on the behavior of the individual? The loss of respect is something that should be based on actions. The idea that that one must win basic respect in the first place is incredibly belittling. How narcissistic can you be to embrace that ideology?"

I am SO GLAD someone wrote this. THANK YOU.

OMG

2006-12-13T19:39:30Z

I nearly just spat my drink on the screen trying not to laugh.

Best question (through the online question form) ever:

"i want to be a mold can you help me"

The rising cost of luxury

2006-11-12T01:01:52Z

You know, my student loan was $26000. It took 2 years to pay it off (yes, I realise that's nuts, but I was very, very good about saving and paying it back), which made the total paid back about $28000.

$28000 is just about the average that people spend on their wedding in Canada.

Think about that. For a debt of $28k, I got a science degree over four years.

Now contrast that with the people who accrue a debt of $28k over the span of one day to pay for a party. Perhaps I'm odd, but I personally feel that that is retarded. I never use that word. But I use it now.
(I truly hope I haven't offended anyone here, but being frugal is in my blood. Seriously, deeply in my blood.)

I think the reason it gets so out of hand is that it's very easy to justify one little extra expense here, another tiny thing there, and before you know it, you've added hundreds (perhaps thousands) more to your cost. Now, I'm not entirely innocent of this, but I'm aware of what I'm doing and how often I've done it (not often).

Also, the bridal industry makes the bridezillas. They tell the girls who are whirling from the excitement of being engaged and the confusion of where to go from here that it's all about them, they have a right to want whatever they want, and the people around them are expected to become little minions for however long. THIS IS NOT RIGHT.

My wedding is about me wanting to share a day with my friends and family. I want everyone to be happy and enjoy themselves. I neither want nor need it to be the absolute picture perfect day. It's my wedding day. No matter how many things go horribly wrong, it will still be the best day of my life. THAT is what brides should be told right off.

I don't know what prompted this, I just needed to say it publicly for some reason.

We Remember

2006-11-11T17:26:03Z

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

OMG WHITE SOFTSHOES

2006-11-07T05:25:54Z

I've basically posted nothing about the various wedding finds that I've been acquiring over the months, but unfortunately that's going to come to an end. Right now.

I FOUND WHITE IRISH SOFTSHOES!!! OMG I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO HAVE TO SETTLE FOR WHITE BALLET SLIPPERS! THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER!!

Of course I won't be wearing the popcorn socks, just pantihose, but you get the idea.

So I figure it's okay for Jon to see a picture of the shoes I'll wear at the reception. He knew I was going to wear dance slippers anyway. This isn't bad luck.

And now back to the spazzing.

OMG LOOK AT THEM! LOOK! SO PERFECT!!

While we're on the subject of memes...

2006-11-06T06:28:25Z

okay, so this is neat:

Create your own! Originally Written By ga_woo, Hosted and ReWritten by darkman424