Family and Cloris Leachman

What a lovely evening. Still making our way through it - watching this crazy roast, and the very funny schtick of Cloris Leachman. She is a funny, funny woman...She was the only really good thing about the movie Spanglish...

Ooooooh! Sarah Silverman is coming up. EXCELLENT! She is rude. Should be good!

I just want to say, though, how interesting and oftentimes lovely it is to suddenly have a whole new family when you get married. You marry into a whole new wealth of fantastical characters and lovely human beings, and it is really kinda fun, challenging and fascinating to get to know these strangers who are a large part of the history of the significant other that you love. Now, of course I have known my husband's aunt and uncle for a few years now, but it takes time to really spend all that much time with these people and you get to know them better each time you have an event together. Tonight was no exception, and we really enjoyed our dinner, and it was a night full of great stories, good laughs and of course....FOOD! Good bloody food, man. Love the fondue. Love that my husband is a great prodige of Jamie Oliver these days and made an incredible sage, cheddar and baked onion soup. And love the three (four?) bottles of wine we went through...

In any event, it was a great night of food, wine, family and yes... Cloris Leachman.

The Aristocrat

So even though we are hosting our aunt and uncle tonight for dinner, hubby and I are really hoping we get to see the Bob Saget Roast on Comedy Central tonight. Ever since we saw The Aristocrats, we know how twisted of a comedian he is, and frankly...we thought it was incredibly funny. The movie, and Bob himself. I was going to imbed the clip from YouTube, but after watching it again, I decided I just couldn't. It's that bad. It's that good. I have a dark sense of humour. Look for it, and hopefully we can watch the true Bob Saget revealed on television tonight. Should be interesting!

Ah....FRIDAY

And so the weekend begins. It's a busy one, but we've had quiet weekends of late, so this will be nice. A little bowl, then superbowl action on Sunday. Should be fun, and really bad for my diet habits, but WHATEVER! It's the WEEKEND, baby!

Here's hoping yours is great and feels long enough (they never do, do they?)

This deserves a trip to Timmy`s!

Can I just raise a massive `Cowboy Cheerleader`-level cheer for the fact that although I love them, I won`t have to be faced with a good morning kiss at 5:30 am from my husband as I scrape myself out of bed to inch along a highway in the dark and make my way into work, after paying for parking (over and over and over again) due to the crazed demands of already well-paid bus drivers?

Yeeeeehaaaaw, is all I have to say!

This calls for a celebration. I think we'll get up EVEN EARLIER to go to Tim Horton's tomorrow morning and get a little celebratory morning coffee for ourselves and for the carload of carpoolers who have met us at the park n' ride over the past 50 days.

What a celebration!

Taking the good with the bad

So...it was quite a day. Some good stuff, some bad news, some stress, some personal time, and some laughter and tears watching a GREAT video. Check this out: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=KZJhfP50bxE
The human spirit, eh? Crazy stuff.

I LOVE this video. It helps, too, that I totally get the whole 'people go psycho at sports event' feeling too...So much excitement that the world stops for just a small while.

Qualities of Communicators

Almost all of us possess the same character traits, I swear it. The best communicators are those that thrive in the hurry up and wait environment. The 'procrastinators rule' rule, so to speak. But the thing is...you can't go like heck forever, and so the ebb and flow works best. Where is this coming from? Well....the proverbial *hit has hit the fan at work and I am in 'rock it out' mode. I love and hate it all at the same time, but I am uniquely suited and perform at my best in this mode. So here I go - just watch me!

Hmmm, though..., maybe I need some proper sleep first... oooooo....or maybe a nice glass of wine...

Yippee - a call from a longtime friend!

It's so great to hear from a good, good friend. I miss her! I think when we all get really busy in life, we forget how much friends can alter your mood, highlight the fun and wonderful things in your life, and just simply enrich your day. What a great way to close my day, with a win at volleyball with a team full of good friends, and a call from a close, albeit remote, friend.

G'night, and hope tomorrow is filled with many encounters with people of the friendship ilk.

And we wonder why guys sometimes refer to women as psycho bitches?

So...another fun night of watching the world's worst reality show (or one of the bottom dwellers - there are worse, I guess)...the Bachelor! Our little dental hygenist is a little "restraining orderish" ain't she? The group date ladies are a little snotty from crying so much and our Jason seems bewildered. Could it be because they were all on the set of General Hospital as our Bachelor swapped spit with the ladies multiple times over and with multiple partners?

Yeah...true love will prevail - I am sure of it!

I feel so NORMAL when I watch these shows!

Oooooo....Here's a quotation for you..."You've met a man, you've married him and had his kid, and then he died. It's my turn!"....LOVE. IT.

New week, new digs

Ahhhh...to have a work environment that is set up in a way that makes one comfortable - it makes a HUGE difference. I moved from the 'default' cubicle, which no one wants on the main drag hallway near the bathrooms. It was isolating (believe it or not) and cramped, and set up backwards to how I would have liked to set it up, without the option of really changing it due to a big post on the inside right corner.

My new digs? I moved over to where the action happens, and where the cool girls laugh at the cool girl jokes, and where there are plants, and some filtered natural light, and just FABULOUS stuff happens, you know? So yeah...I'm gonna kick it in that cubicle, man! Just wait for it....

I also got back on the healthy living bangwagon today, and had a great workout at the pool and excellent eating (thus far) throughout the day. THAT feels good.

So...just all around good, you know? Mondays don't have to be ALL bad...

Wine and sunshine (or dreams thereof)

Well, the wine is going nicely down the hatch (a lovely Lucky Country Shiraz), but the sunshine and heat is still a few weeks away. But I cannot wait for the Arizona desert to heat my tender pale winterworn skin. I have to say that I really do enjoy the fact that my parents are living large (and happy) in Mesa, AZ just outside Phoenix. They are happy, and we are happy to join them once in a while! So we have a week plus two weekends booked to fly down, then enjoy the 4 pools, 10 tennis courts and 27 hole golf course right within their "trailor park" (I always have to qualify this term, as these complexes are far from what you'd imagine in, say, the Ozark mountains of Arkansas, for instance...) for the duration. A lovely little reprieve in the middle of February - yippee!

So as I sit here, sipping wine, the house smells like a wonderful hungarian goulash recipe that my husband has been making in the kitchen for the past hour, and he himself is busy doing dishes and cleaning up after himself. I am a lucky lucky woman.

I am IN lucky country.

Help - I'm being held hostage by jalapeno poppers!

Oh, man....another debauch weekend of over-indulging in foods that are brutally unhealthy. A bag of Oreos (hubby helped polish this off, so at least there is that....), 10 jalapeno poppers in one sitting, a combo appetizer platter at the pub last night....I could continue....

Then....I skipped my workout again today.

So. Getting back to the healthy grind is proving much more difficult than I really expected. I feel a strong resistance coming from somewhere deep in my subconscious, somewhere I don't understand, and logical self-encouragement isn't penetrating there. Not sure what will shift and when to make things change, but I am going to try, once again, tomorrow to launch "project Pam" once more and see if it takes. Let's hope it works this time. At the very least, I will get to the pool for another workout....

But for now, I will relax and enjoy this lazy Sunday.

Ah...Bromance....

So yeah...the guys are now camping and a life coach has been brought in to dig down into their consciousness and get to know their sensitive side. There's love in the group, apparently.

By the way, as background, I love the worst of the worst reality tv shows. They rock. So bad, they're good. MTV has become a regular channel on at our house, with suck (sic) gems as The City, Bromance, and of course, A Double Shot at Love with, as mentioned in a previous post, bisexual (not buying that) twins looking for luuuurve....

Ah... the boys have issues with their Mommies. Really. Scintillating stuff, my friends....truly.

So. Euchre tournament at our favourite local pub tonight - looking forward to it. The Blackburn Arms - where everyone knows your name. Let's hope I win some money (to cover the alcohol and food bill)!

Double Breast Strokes?

Yes, yes, yes! 76 laps of the pool in 45 minutes, with a mix of butterfly, egg-beater drills, sprints and breast stroke, front crawl and back stroke, followed by 10 minutes in a nice, hot sauna at my new "health club"...and I am happy. Add that to some good wine and conversation after work (oh...yeah, did I mention drinks?) with coworkers, and it was a good day. A great way to ease into the weekend, and a good way to remind myself that even amongst changes in our team, there are still some faaaabulous teammates around me.

In particular, I have two girlfriends, soon to be my immediate neighbours, who are single and looking for guys. What fun! I want to hear about their escapades and see what vicarious living I can do through them, but also, see if I can help somehow (???). And, I have to say, one of them said something that she may not have realized meant a hill of beans to me, but in fact gave me a major boost and made me feel wonderful. It is nice to get an insight into how others see you and realize that they see you in a really great light, when you doubt yourself. Why do we do that? Why not believe that others think we're great first, and only doubt it when we find out otherwise? ah....lack of confidence...the root of all evil.

In any event, it was a great way to lead off the weekend, and with a shout out to my great girlfriends at work, I bid you a great weekend!

Now...time to pour another glass of wine, and watch a little What Not to Wear (and maybe a little Miss America crap - I told you there would be some bad reality TV on this blog. BTW - anyone get a kick out of Double Shot at Love like we do? It is crappy, hideously bad reality TV with two sexy blond bisexual [yeah, whatever!] chicks looking for "love"....).

Things are going swimmingly

Tomorrow, in the middle of January, I am packing up my bathing suit and heading to work. Yes. Halfway through my day, I will leave my office, cross the street, and proceed to slip into cool waters and enjoy one of the sports I have loved all my life, and I am really pumped about it. You know, a lot of people hate the smell of chlorine, but I love the poolside and all that it evokes, and can't wait. It helps, too, that the Chateau Laurier has towel service and a steam bath in the changeroom! Wahoooo....!

So on this dreary January day, I beseech everyone to seek out the spa, or a sauna, or some environment that sooths and warms you, whether that be wrapped in a cozy blanket in front of a fire, or reading in bed with some favourite music playing, or weirdly, hitting the pool to sweat things out a bit, THEN hitting the sauna...Sploosh!

Shopping as a balm to sooth...

Okay. Stepping out to look for furniture, buy a new rug, make changes to the home. Love it. LOVE. IT.

I know a lot of people don't love shopping, but I do, and boy, can it ever make you forget a bad mood or something in your life you don't want to think about. So here's to the soothing medicine that is shopping, people! Yay for new stuff! (Thank god I have a bit of control over it, or else there'd be trouble!)

Life and roller coasters

Optimism is great - when everything works out the way you think it will. When it doesn't, you tumble from exciting heights way down and feel like, well...like crap, actually. Fun times, as a good friend of mine would say.

I really don't know about these people who like to say, "It's not the destination, it's the journey." They're full of it...

Sorry...bad night for me. I'll be fine. Really.

Then, I will be optimistic again, like old times.

Yay for melted marshmallow and rice krispies right from the pot...

Small, wonderful treats make for a great night, don't they? Ever try making rice krispie squares without any intention at all of forming them into squares? Be sure to put a lot less cereal in, so that when you eat it from the pot, it is warm and gooey. And although I ate this treat alone tonight while the husband was burning calories on the volleyball court, it is even better when more than one spoon is dipping in like a sword competing for the princess in the tower....!!!

And with that, here's to the night before the big day - the first black president ever for the United States. Scary, dangerous, fabulous and exciting. AND a star-studded affair, it seems! When did swearing in a new president become a movie premiere?

Shrinking weekends

So really. If I were to take care of my house, my errands and my DIY to do list each weekend, I wouldn't have time to eat, let alone relax. That could very well be why, embarrassingly, I haven't cleaned (you know, REALLY cleaned) my kitchen in likely a year or so. Yikes. It literally took me about 6 hours over two days to get it done, and even then, we have decided to use some of our hard earned money to get new burner thingies for the stove. I mean, really, that seems like a damn good investment to me, over spending another hour or so with cleaning gloves and those blue-gummy SOS pads. Do I not deserve a little downtime on weekends? I do, dammit.

But hey...now the kitchen is clean for another year, right??? My Mom is rolling over in Arizona...

But back to the shrinking weekend title here. Two days is never enough. I discussed this with coworkers and others last week - the discussion was this: Would we not get the same amount of work done with a shorter a) work week or b) work day - and by this I mean working 5 hours days over 7.5? I truly believe that if I was at work for a nice, tight 5 hours, I would work hard and focused for 5 hours, and be happy to be there, then be happy that I had more time in my day for balance.

I also come at this remembering a great story from my childhood, when my father won a commendation award at the Air Base in Edmonton because he spearheaded a fitness challenge base-wide, which allowed participants to take an extra 1/2 hour each lunch (so 1.5 hours for lunch) and play organized sports happening all over the base. They had to participate, otherwise they didn't get the extra time, but all told, productivity among those working less time in a day ROSE 40%.

So...what do you think? Let's propose to get our same salary for 12 hours less of work a week. Think it'll fly?

Sucking my energy

Methinks a little something is draining my energy stores today. I am woozy with tiredness. But I think it will all be for a very good cause. Won't know for another few days, but let's just say that I am impatient. Very impatient!

Tina Fey - Finally a replacement for Will Ferrell

So I am watching Mean Girls on the W network on a Saturday morning, sipping green tea, and my husband says "Tina Fey wrote this, did you know?". No...I didn't, but it doesn't surprise me, and of course I haven't seen this for years, and didn't recall that she and other SNL faves had cameos on it. Sad to see Lindsay when she was still innocent and fresh-faced. Hollywood is all a bit twisted, and I will tell you right now that you honestly couldn't pay me enough to have to deal with a life like hers or our other hollywood tartlets. But I digress. What a great way to spend a Saturday morning...

By way of explanation

So as I get into this blogging habit, I want to beef up, customize and make more personal my page and the information on it. I also want to be sure that it contains a good amount of interesting content on one of the more personal pet topics you will likely see much discourse on as I share my thoughts.

Thus, you will note that there are new blog addresses posted to my blog list containing personal accounts of the mental illness, schizophrenia. This is because this illness is in my family now, although not in my immediate family, blessedly. And...it is a subject matter now that I intend to follow closely and gather more knowledge on. I am actually excited to be volunteering soon for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Ottawa chapter to help them resurrect their defunct newsletter. Given the pervasiveness of mental illnesses and the misunderstanding and stigma attached to these diseases, I want to contribute to this meaningful dialogue.

So...I hope the links are interesting to you, and if you have any first-hand account, or even opinions on the topic, I welcome your thoughts!

Swooning with embarassment

Confessions of a readaholic...it all started with...um...well, I guess Disney books, but quickly graduated to The Bobbsey Twins and the Three Investigator series (did anyone read these? They were MUCH better than Nancy Drew and the B Twins), but then the rails fell off. I fell in love with romance novels. First it was the teen novels (I confess to keeping one or two of my personal faves, which I will still read every few years and laugh at how much I dreamt of the guys and the situations in them), and then it was the trashiest of the trash - all at the ages of 14-17 or so. Hell....I still love a good romance, but it is usually couched in the more 'acceptable' genre of Chick Lit. I love it. I also love bad romance reality shows like The Bachelor, which is what inspired this flip backwards through the pages. Such crap (and given that I worked in the film and television industry for about 5 or so years, I am WELL aware of the staging and often picture the crews and sound boom guys and equipment all around these people...mmmmmmm...romantic!) but y'know, after a long day at work, and a tough, tough workout, relaxing on the couch to mindless drivel is a great pastime, I think. What about you? What is your embarassing obsession? What mindless drivel do you most love watching on television to relax?

A long and healthy life

I gotta do it, right? To look hot, tighten up and keep healthy, I have to drag my ass to the gym. I know it. I do.... but do I have to?????

Why is it so damn hard for our minds to conjure up the good feelings you have AFTER workouts to motivate you before you go? Why can't we do this? Why? There must be a scientific explanation for all the selective memory.

All I know is that the program I subscribe to is NASTY hard, so sometimes you just don't have that go git 'em kinda feeling, you know? Especially on a damn Monday.

But I will go...you know I will.

I want to win the bet I have with my friend Kerry AND I love the idea of living longer and feeling healthy throughout my life. I guess it's worth it...sigh.

Varied lives

Do you ever think about what life is truly like for others? We all know our lives intimately, but we rarely, if ever, truly know the lives of others. We know parts of them, and maybe we participate in a great amount of certain individuals' lives, but as a course on 'emotional intelligence' pointed out to me, we generally see and know about 10% of an individual while 90% of that person remains hidden. Something to think about. It certainly helps when you focus on this as you try to sort out differences and work through differing points of view in a confrontation or negotiation. BUT...I find I am relatively incapable thus far and thinking about these things as I argue my own point!

Anyways. What brought on these thoughts? Why...the Golden Globe awards of course! What must life be like for some of these people? And just how many stars can get away with making cocaine references on television during prime time? Just wondering...