crush me, c'mon, baby

it's the end of november.

my older brother turns twenty seven today. the number floors me, because it inevitably means that i must be older as well. in my head, my siblings and i, we're all stuck at much younger ages. also, for some random reason, we've all got longer hair when i picture us.

in other news, despite it being the end of november, it's sixteen degrees and rainy out. it smells like mud and dirt, almost like spring. but there's a metallic edge, something harder to it, that ensures that everyone knows that snow and sleet and hail and frozen fingers and numb noses and crystal clear nights are just around the corner.

i can't stop listening to dave matthews.

i really effing need to do some work.

you know i mean to tell you all the things i've been thinking

oooooooooh dear.

i think i've gone and done it this time.

i'll be around- you were right about the stars

tuesday and i waste no time when the food arrives.

"have you ever found yourself making uncontrollable noises of enjoyment while eating?" i ask her as we both shovel biryani, curry, and spicy pickles onto our plates. she stops mid sentence, her mouth curling up and her head tipping to the side- sure signs of impending laughter.

"yes!" she giggles through a mouthful of rice.

we discover, much to our chagrin a few moments later, that we're both making uncontrollable noises of enjoyment.

we stay too long, letting the wine stain our teeth purple and the smell of curry work its way into our hair. the background noises of the restaurant- clinks, low murmurs, the classical sitar track that plays in a loop- are killed suddenly as my laughter races across the room, crashing through the calm atmosphere like a whirlwind. when we finally escape, the waiters bowing and smiling, their teeth stark and white against their dark skin, the evening has progressed to true night and the rain to a light mist.

my skull is full of words, ricochetting madly.

all you got to do is pick up the telephone and dial

item four thousand seven hundred and sixty three point eight that i love:

getting late night drunken phone calls that end up with me, sitting alone in my living room with bergamot flavoured decaf earl grey, actively participating in drunken revelries at some unkown distance from my house. even better is when said telephone converstaion eventually boils down to the statement "sci-fi is cool."

add on a good sleep, a breakfast to end all breakfasts, an invitation to the pow-wow [that i had to sadly decline], three mugs of coffee and some wilson pickett and, my friends, i think we have a winner.

now, onto that which must not be named which, for the hell of it, i am calling voldemort.

oh god my geek is showing again.

i'll give you five fingers for a one man show

so, i always take the exact same path to and from school when i walk.

i understand that this heightens the statistical chance of my being mugged/raped/attacked, but i've become accustomed to the streets that i follow, and it seems to be a fairly quick route. i make it even quicker when i turn ipodicus up to extreme levels and play the game of walking to the beat of the crappy tecno i almost always end up listening to.

problem is, i also like to sing.

and sometimes, when it's dark out and i'm tramping along a few lines escape me.

and there's ALWAYS someone right behind me. without me realizing of course. and, to further add to the horrificness of it all [because if you think me singing when you can hear the music is bad...well, let's just say you ain't heard nothing yet] said soemone is always totally dreamy.

curses!

it's been a long time been a long time

ok, ultra dork moment, but i just woke up and it's cold and i'm not quite done coffee, so i'm allowing myself to indulge.

in the x-files [you knew it had to be about the x-files. c'mon] mulder lives at hegel place. HEGEL place. all of a sudden, my brain is trying to make connections between fredrich's philosophy concerning cycles and all the shit that "happened" at said apartment building. i think there's a good case to be made about the subliminal influence of naming an apartment building after hegel.

i never said the show was good, but man, it does have its interesting points.

and no poet or song could put right what i got wrong

today, when i was walking home, the wind was cold enough to make my nose and my cheeks and even my forehead stiff with numbness. i've always liked the way it feels twitching my nose when it goes numb.

in other news- i have a new appreciation for slippers.

take my tears and that's not nearly all

two things:

i think we've established that i'm a dork. and not just a dork, but a definte doooooork. which is cool, i think. anyways, if i wasn't before, i most definately have to be now, because two days ago, i hopped on the illgal-dowoading bandwagon once more and downloaded the entire first season of the x-files.... for my ipod!

[yes, that noise you just heard was my face being eaten by the power of the dork].

secondly, i am supposed to be writing a paper on tom thomson right this very second. i'd probably do better if i wasn't so effing distracted by just soaking in the paintings. and i'd probably get a lot mroe done if i weren't headed out to a fair-trade craft fair somewhere in the glebe.

oooooooh dear. maybe i should have taken peter up on his offer of partaking in one and a half litres of cheap red wine last night- i think the level of my accomplishment after such an escapade would probably be on par with what i'm going to get done this morning.

i turn to her and say

i don't know whether to be flattered or flustered when people ask me for advice.

i fully comprehend that it really isn't possible to tell another person what exactly it is they must do in any given situation. rather, i view advice as a sharing of opinion- it's like a very specific direction manual that the giver of advice has followed and which may possibly help the asker in the presented situation.

hence my flattered/flustered approach- i find people continually coming to me, asking me what it is that is going on, what it is they should do. this means so much to me i can't even properly put it into words- that people value and trust my opinion is an indication [to me, at least] that they trust and value me.

the flustered part comes in when people ask me about boys. or girls. or relationships. because that's one area i don't have a manual for- it's more like i'm giving you the description you find on the back of a movie box in a specialty rental shop on some side street in berlin. i still value that people come to me, but i worry sometimes that what i say is going to be taken the wrong way.

[entirely random, i know. and now i'm effing late for science. AND it's raining. oooooooh god]

mmmhmmm, perfect moments so impossible to refuse

i woke up this morning and allowed myself the joy of hitting the snooze button not once, but TWICE.

by following this rash act with a shower that was purely self-indulgant [god i love the way shower things smell in my house], an omlette that almost kept together, too much coffee and a mini-dance party to u2's new song, i have to say that today is more than likely going to be excellent.

hoo-YEAH masterchief.

in the middle of that riot, couldn't get you off my mind

sometimes when i walk home in the evening and everyone is coming home to their houses and dinner and wives and children and husbands i spy through windows draped in see-through curtains and lit softly by lamps on sideboards or candles or chandeliers and feel a kind of sadness without really knowing why.

in other, totally non-related news, i was sent a picture of my cousin mike with his father taken just the other day for an article in the toronto sun concerning remebrance day that literally floored me.

it's beautiful.

you know i love you, yeah.

leslie bought me the new justin timberlake cd.

and i'm horribly ashamed to admit it, but i genuinely like it. and it's not even just a meh like. it's the kind of like where you slip the cd into the player and then, when the album ends, you walk back over and press play again!

oh god. oooooooh god.

i promise i'll play some led zeppelin or somethign this afternoon, ok?

backwards and forwards with my heart hanging out

monday last was a magical day.

[as an aside- which, i've noticed, have occured quite a bit in my ramblings. and is it just me, or did i just aside an aside twice? anyways, i've been trying to tell the world why last monday was so magical since monday evening and for some reason have been unable. i'm not sure why....]

i woke up to blue sky that hurt my teeth, had double coffee and then made it to school listening to a u2 mix that may or may not be directly related to their new singles collection due out at the end of november. lecture was- despite being neitzsche- more than bearable. then, i spent the next hour outside with coffee in the quad visiting with laura hay, whom i haven't seen is a dog's age.

[i'm tempted to have an aside about what in hellfire a dog's age is. afterall, all these asides merely amount to the inner dialogue of the vox].

after discussion, which may have been the best one yet, i walked home in the setting sun wearing no coat and a woolen scarf that smelled of winter. three blocks from home, i ran into a bigger part of home in the form of owen.

it was unplanned, but i'd been wondering if maybe i'd run into him at the bus station walking home since i knew he was coming to ottawa. i did, and it added a bit of sparkle. then, after talking nonsense and making maybe plans for thursday night, i proceeded to my house, ate chili and had a five hour long visit with kate ramer [yessssssssssss!] which culminated in the celebration of kate s.'s birthday with the afore-mentioned kate r, kyle o'keeffe, anna, morgen and i. [and yes, of course kate s. it's impossible to have a birthday party without a birthday person]. the festivities were complimented with chocolate mousse angel food cake and homemade wine- supplemented upon morgen's arrival with brioche-type pastries.

today was just as magical- breakfast with tuesday, oatmeal cookies, amazing art and people cackling.

well, mostly me cackling, but maybe we can look past that.

oh no what's this? a spiderweb and i'm caught in the middle

a few weeks ago, i bought myself some antique sterling silver and moonstone earrings.

they're quite simple, teardrop shaped with five circles of moonstone across the bottom. the marking on them resembles the mark on a pair of elliptical earrings that i picked up at the wiarton sally-anne for five cents that also turned out to be semi-antique and one hundred percent sterling silver.

unfortunately, the moonstone earrings have a tendancy to catch on my scarf and slip from my ear. this happened the other day while i was out shopping for foodstuffs with anna.

needless to say, i was quite disappointed. i retraced my steps as much as i could, but ended up seeing nothing except a startling number of cigarette butts and spittle stains.

[as an aside from my oh-so-intriguing earring story- what the hell is with people and spitting? seriously. i can't go anywhere without seeing people hacking up lungs and strange green things from the back of their throats. and i honestly see saliva strewn across every surface i walk on. i think, though, maybe it's just me, because really, who notices spit on the sidewalk? anyways]

i tried to reconcile myself to the loss of my earring. i know, i know- it's just a piece of metal with stones that hang from my ear. but i reaaaaaly liked said earring. and then, after thinking about it some more, i decided it was ok to want it back. i don't buy pretty sparkly things for myself very often, and when it's an antique pretty sparkly thing that i'm willing to spend some money on, well, i think it's ok to be slightly petulant concerning such a loss.

so before i went to bed, i told the world that i'd like my damned earring back, if it could be managed.

this afternoon, in the middle of one of the worst attacks of procrastination i've had yet this year, kate came in from a brief shopping trip to herb and spice. the cold outside had turned her cheeks a merry colour of pink, and her glasses fogged up just a little as she stepped into our home.

eyes sparkling, she declares that she has a present for me. i'm told to hold out my hand, and close my eyes. in a few seconds an icy cold, rounded teardrop shaped object drops into the centre of my palm.

i don't have to look to know what it is.

thank you world.

stories for boys

last night, kate, lindsey, tuesday, robin, liz, kelly, kiersten and i demolished four bottles of wine, a bunch of quiche, lentil salad, chicken friend rice, lemon meringue pie and cookies.

it was one of those dinner parties that just kept going.

i ended up with cookies down my shirt.