Last friday, I had a dr’s appt and she gave me a tetanus shot. This is so when my mom asks me, and she will ask me, “When was your last tetanus shot?” I can say “Friday Aug. 25, 2006.” Also, I guess they’ve seen an increase in tetanus in adults lately. So, it left me with a very sore lump in my left arm, that I still have. I still have a lump. Should I still have a lump? After five days? Seems excessive. It’s probably an arm tumor. A bicep tumor.

Random observation: what a brilliant idea it was to give me the tetanus shot before I planned to clean my home office. I think my dr. understands me more than I thought.

There was another question… I had another question… before lunch. I was going to blog about it. But then I went to Johnny Rockets with KK and stuffed myself with freshly fried french fries and now I can’t remember anything but how awesome I am at napping.

I feel bad. I can tell from my stats that people check the jodicam, only to be disappointed (I assume) by the lack of onlineness. The thing is, I have not been computing in the office lately, where the jodicam is set up. I’ve been laptop mobile. Additionally, Wil and I have recently discovered the genius that is Skype. I knew about it before, but lately we have been voice chatting over the internet instead of using the phone. And if you’ve ever made long distance calls to Canada from the states, you know that FREE is good. I’ve been using the iSight as a microphone, which keeps it from acting as the jodicam. But, Thursday afternoon I am working from home, so I might have it up and running then. And tomorrow evening I will probably be cleaning the office to make room for working from home, so maybe I’ll have it online while I clean. Won’t that be exciting for everyone involved.

Have ya’ll heard of Vox? It’s Six Apart’s new blog community. Six Apart being the makers of MovableType, which I use to write this blog. I believe it’s in some sort of beta right now. You can only sign up by receiving an invitation. Of course, all you have to do is ask for one, I believe. However, you can also get one from other vox members. I have some if any of you are interested. Check it out. It’s quite nice. Especially if you don’t want to mess with the design and layout aspects very much. They make it very easy to add books, music, videos, pictures, etc. Nicer, and prettier, than myspace, by a way lot.



Anyway, Wil’s latest blog is on Vox. And he is enjoying it quite a bit. He’s on a mission to collect more “neighbors.” Sort of the classier equivalent to myspace friends. I only have two neighbors. Him, and the Vox team. I don’t really know what to do with my vox page right now. I thought about making it some kind of theme blog. For example, if i were pregnant, it could be a pregnancy blog, Separate from my “regular” blog. But I don’t have any real themes to write about. I thought about making it a book blog, but I should be using Satan’s Bookclub for that. I don’t have it all figured out.

I was pointing out, during a skype chat, that all of Wi’s “friends” [Vox neighgors], for the most part, almost exclusively, are women. Not a jealous thing… just an observation. He said, “Yes, but I talked about you a lot today. I posted about you” And from elsewhere in the room I heard the voice of his daughter, aged 8 – or perhaps her sister, aged 7 – say “He talks about you ALL THE TIME!! ALL THE TIME!”

Thanks, kids…. good to know. Five American dollars for both of you.

Hello, and welcome to my lunch. I’m having a delicious made before my eyes cobb salad. What I like about cobb salad is, it lets you feel smug because you are eating salad. And salad is healthy. But in reality, it’s the biggest calorie bomb ever. They should just go ahead and sprinkle it with french fries. Oh well, it does posses a green leafy substances and there are those who would say that it’s all worth if if I eat a vegetable. Mmmmm…. bacon bits.

This last weekend was one of the weekends I stayed In Country. I obviously prefer the more exotic, International Weekends. But yesterday was the littlest Moon’s 1st birthday party, and I needed to give her many cute outfits from Gymboree. I really needed to. It’s like everything that came out in this new line was made for little angelic, redheaded babies. If you are unfamiliar with the Gymboree experience, everything they have goes together. Each season they have a new line. And it all follows a certain color scheme. Things mix and match and buying clothes there is like crack. Because there is always just one more adorable thing you need to add to the pile. it’s very difficult for me to spend little money there. And I still regret not buying Simone those stripey leggings. I love stripey things. It all started because of this sweater. I saw it across the store and I was a goner.

Anyway, when we sang Happy Birthday to Simone, I added a quick “and my blog” under my breath. And I dedicated half my rainbow confetti birthday cake, with purple frosting and chocolate ice cream on the side, to it. My little blog.

So many birthdays from the middle of August to the middle of September. Yesterday was Jack’s birthday as well, and now that I have made the connection between my blog’s anniversary and his birthday, I’ll probably never forget it. Happy Birthday Jack! I think that sometime this weekend, it was my cousin Craig’s birthday as well. So happy birthday to him. Today is my father’s birthday, and I always miss him on his birthday. He would have been … let me see…. math… 69? Yes, I believe so.

Saturday evening I taught my cousin, Kirsten, how to do page layout in Adobe InDesign, instead of in Photoshop. And we ate steak, baked potato and peach pie for dinner. So you know that was a good evening. And that was my weekend. You are all caught up, my salad is complete, and it’s back to work for me.

That was pretty dull, huh? I’m sorry. I’ll be more entertaining later, I promise. But all in all, the weekend was pretty normal, pleasant and uneventful in the way of blog fodder.

My hair is ginormous today. I washed it last night and did not put in any “Ok, why don’t you just calm the hell down” type stuff in it. It dried in a poof. This morning, I put some “Ok, why don’t you just calm the hell down” type stuff in, but it was too late. My hair had won the battle. It just soaked that stuff up like … something that soaks a great deal. A sponge, mayhap? It’s a nimbus cloud around my head now. [I just really wanted to use the phrase ‘nimbus cloud’]

Every afternoon this week I am in javascript training. For dummies. And I am lovin‘ it! We make little scripts all afternoon long, and I ask questions and she, the teacher, helps me and it’s like everything I liked about school. Yesterday, we made scripts to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius. [ok, it took me 16 tries to spell Fahrenheit properly.] This is very handy when you visit a metric place, like Canada. However, the script does not execute in my head, so I would have to have a computer handy. We also converted American dollars into Thai bahts. There are approximately 42 bahts for every dollar. So… if you ever go to Thailand and the hookers seem way overpriced, find out if that’s in bahts or dollars.

I went to Victoria this weekend, and returned, with no incidents. That is to say, my ID remained safe at all times. Later, when I have more energy, I will share my road rage with you, from the trip up on Friday evening. Tell me, how hard is it to understand this concept: Keep Right Except to Pass. Or this one: Slower Traffic Stay Right?

In the old days, before 9/11, crossing the border was laughably easy. Where are you from? Where are you going? How long are you staying? Have a nice time. And coming back was equally easy, with one additional question – do you have anything to declare?

Now, they are curious about all aspects of your visit. And your life. Both Canadian and US custom agents are very interested in how I ended up with a Canadian boyfriend. They ask me, just like that, too. How did you end up with a Canadian boyfriend? And while I am always tempted to say “Just lucky, I guess,” they don’t have much of a sense of humor. I try to avoid the wise crackery. It’s hard for me to just say that we met on the internet. I’m always tempted to start out with “Well, I have this blog, you see, and one day he found it, and then….. ” I mean, how much detail do they want? You wouldn’t think they’d want much, but last night, the US customs agent wanted to know how everything was working out. Between me and my Canadian boyfriend. He was a bit sassy, tho. He also asked me, in these exact words, “Soooo…. whadya got?”

“What do I got… what do I have? You mean, what did I buy?”

“Yeah.”

“Ummm… nothing.”

I guess it could get boring asking the same old questions day after day.

I realized I never told you guys what to do if you are a: American and b: in Canada with no ID. Well, that depends. If you have a passport, the consulate can help you, as passports are issued by the state department. However, if you are in the country with a missing birth certificate and dr’s license, don’t bother. The first day you try will end up being a Canadian holiday like BC day, and they will be closed. And the second day, you will spend hours waiting and waiting, only to find out that they can’t help you and you should return to Victoria, file a police report and just go to the border. But, you won’t go back to Victoria until the next day, because you’ve already paid for another night in that really nice, albeit expensive, hotel room and you are not leaving until one minute before check out time. Not without the use of excessive force. Oooo, and just for fun, get ready to take the first ferry to the states on a day when homeland security has raised the alert due to terrorist activities. Hint, they won’t let you on the boat if you don’t have a reservation. At this point, it’s time to laugh, because of course homeland security has raised the alert on the day when you are trying to cross the border with no id. However, don’t worry, you’ll actually drive across the border in Vancouver with very little trouble. Go figure.

You know, I had all these great stories about my time in Victoria and Vancouver, but because I didn’t blog them right away, they’ve become a bit fuzzy. Like the drunk, probably domicile challenged, man we stopped to talk to that first night. He was telling us about an altercation he had with a man across the street. Apparently our guy had always been very generous when he found himself with weed, but the guy across the street was not so into sharing, and things got heated. The stingy man mentioned that he had a knife, and our guy explained that he was not at all worried about that knife, as he planned to punch him the throat and then step on his head. I wish I could remember more of the details, because it was vastly entertaining, but all i can remember was how enchanted I was with his threats. Every time he mentioned what he planned to do to his buddy, I would echo back in a yell “YEAH!!! PUNCH HIM THE NECK! AND THEN STEP ON HIS HEAD!!”

Then there was the night we had to have KFC. You know how that is. So we found the nearest one to our hotel, and had valet bring my car around, so we could go get a bucket o’ chicken. That’s class. But there were protesters outside of the KFC. Something about chicken cruelty. And they were actually wearing bathing suits, some of them. Wil, being a nice polite Canadian boy, gave pause to the idea of crossing their picket line. But I’m an American, and therefore I thirst blood. Causing a ruckus is what we do best. So I said, “Let me handle this.”

I appreciate everyone’s right to stand up for their cause. And I am really not all that into chicken cruelty. I don’t really like chickens. Live ones, that is. But I’m not sure I want them treated poorly. But I had a mission. And a craving. So I walked up to the protesters who gave me a flyer and told me I could eat for free at some restaurant, if I did not eat at KFC, I don’t know where, General Tsu’s House of Cardboard Teriyaki Tofu or something, and said, “Look, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but no thank you. My baby wants chicken, and I’m going to get him some.”

I swear to god they practically held the door for me. So cute!

I have a question. What’s with all the spiders in my bathtub. How do they get there? Do they come out of the spout? They must, because I really cannot picture them coming in the front door, scuttling their way to my bathroom, looking at the tub and thinking “This is IT! This is the perfect place for my spider home!”

But, if that is the case, how come I don’t have spiders coming out of the spout when I turn the water on? Never. Not even one.

I don’t know… I just wonder about stuff like this.

In other news, for those of you who are Frank Black fans, or Pixie fans, all the fans over at frankblack.net have contributed stories to an ebook, End of Miles. Wil’s got a story in it. He’s a big Frank Black fan. Actually, he’s a FAN. In all caps, bolded and colored red.

After all the fun it was fairly obvious that my car should remain downtown, and a taxi should be utilized to go home. The next morning we walked downtown to get my car and then some breakfast. That’s right, I said walked. We walked. Outside. In the sunshine. I don’t want to think about it too much. brrr…

Anyway, we walked back to the parking garage only to find my car missing. My first thought was that it had been towed, but we could not find any signage that stated cars left overnight would be towed. But we did find a couple of nice Victoria BC policemen who called the towing company who would have been the one to tow me, to see if they had my car. They did not. So we went up to the top of the parking garage to walk down and see if I was mistaken about parking on the 4th floor. I knew I wasn’t. I remembered specifically where I parked and the color of the wall. [Every floor was painted a different color.] We found it on the 5th floor. The right rear door was open and it had been, I guess you could say, tossed. Everything had been pulled out and thrown around. There was an extra key in the glove box, which is how they moved the car to another floor, I suppose.

Here is the best part, on the windshield there was a ticket, of sorts, issued by the parking garage, letting me know that they considered my car to be a crime risk, because my stereo face plate was still on, and my cd’s were out in the open. Nailed that They took all my cd’s, but left the stereo. They took a blanket out of my trunk and my favorite grey hoodie that I got from Lucy’s. Bit disappointed about that last one. I guess the most frustrating thing was, they ripped my rear view mirror down, and busted my I’m a Pepper and Mac OS X dog tags. Was that really necessary? We saw about 3 or 4 other cars with windows smashed out in the same garage. I’m glad there was no real damage done to my car. We put the rear view mirror back on and all is good.

It wasn’t until later I realized I had left my dr’s license and birth certificate in the car, tucked in the dash where I had left them, after I presented them to border patrol. Oh dopey me.

Oh, you guys… I just got a new mac at work. A 17″ MacBook Pro. It’s so pretty! Right now, I am copying everything over from squishy, onto my new mac. Which has no name yet. Any suggestions? Please keep in mind, all my macs are girls. KK suggested Vicky, but that’s my aunt’s name.

So, here is what happened. I decided to go up to Victoria last weekend, to see Wil. Who is now, officially, my Sexy Canadian Boyfriend. It’s out in the open. If my mom knows, the blog can know. Anyway, we head off to downtown Victoria, parking my car in a parking garage. After we eat, we decide to visit a veritable rainbow coalition of drinking establishments, a pop culture cross section of bars, if you will. We started off at Prism, a gay bar. Since it was fairly early in the evening, it was pretty empty. But I heard a drunk gay canadian guy [I’m assuming he was gay and Canadian, but who is to say. I am neither and I was there.] have a conversation about the shocking lack of vinegar usage in American cuisine that was an eerie mirror to a conversation shared earlier between Wil and myself. Canada is under the impression we don’t use vinegar. After a few drinks there, we headed off to Big Bad John’s.

BBJ’s is a cowboy-esque hillbilly type bar with peanut shells on the ground and all manner of things hanging from the ceiling. I loved it! It was great. It had things rigged up on wires that would swoop across the room. I’m fairly certain we saw a rubber chicken fly across the room. The details were fuzzy. There were a number of bras hanging from the ceiling as well. I did not leave mine. It was my favorite very light pink victoria secret bra. Practically sort of brand new!

Then we moved off to Monty’s, Victoria’s premiere strip club. I myself have never been to a girl strip club. Only a boy strip club for bachlorette parties. Again, it was pretty early, for a strip club, and so not too much was happening. I was excited to see these stripping girls. Stuff like that is good blog fodder, right? Besides, it’s good to experience things you’ve never experienced before. Makes for a fulfilling life and stuff. In the club, they had two versions of a punching game. You put a dollar in and punch it as hard as you can. It gives you some sort of number response, although, I am not sure how it is measured. And then a category rating. My Studly Canadian Boyfriend punched something in the 800 million range, although that could be metric I am not sure, and was categorized as a real Superman Studly Guy of some sort. We were watching the guys punch the game that was located in the front of the club, and it was obvious there were nowhere near the Superman Studly Guy group. One guy decided to high kick instead of punch, and my Moür Moür, god rest her soul, could have kicked harder than that.

What amused me about the whole thing is, all the guys in that place were far more interested in out punching each other than in the nekkid girl who finally came out to dance. I felt bad for her, so I tried to clap and give her some non-monitary encouragement. Which brings me to an interesting point. In Canada, they don’t have bills smaller than 5’s. Below that, it’s all coins. Additionally, they ladies strip down to nothing there. All the way full monty nekkid. So my concerns were, no g-string, no dollar bills smaller than 5’s…. where does one stick the money when they want to provide positive feedback for the artist, but don’t feel it’s worth more than a couple of dollars at a time? Turns out, you toss them on stage. Somehow, I find that more demeaning than having them tucked in your g-string, but that’s just me.

All the stuff is done copying from squishy to the new computer. We’ll talk more later. The important thing that you remember from that story is, if Wil punched you in the head, it would hurt. A lot. It feels like it’s my duty to say stuff like that. I’m not really well versed in the girlfriend schtick … I think I am supposed to buy him shirts and stuff too.

Despite heightened security today, I managed to get back into the country. I was not able to take the ferry from BC to Anacorties, however. I had to go over from Victoria to Vancouver and drive over.

More stories later. I am going back to work tomorrow. But right now, Pru needs attention. I need to make sure she didn’t go feral while I was gone.

I’ll be honest, looking back, the whole thing could have been handled more efficiently. But it could not have been handled more pleasantly. And, really, would you expect any less from me?