Models for Jesus

Some of my student loan money materialized in my bank account this morning, and to celebrate, I paid my tuition!

Just kidding. Really, I went to Chapters between classes and got some Terry Pratchett's that were missing from my bookshelves. You can never have too much T.P. That pesky tuition will get paid later.

ANTM - I'm keeping an eye on Amber, super Christian girl, who cries and sings about Jesus at the drop of an imaginary hat. MODELS FOR JESUS! They help people...in poorly defined ways.

First french class today, and the obligatory "introduce yourselves in french" exercise. And the teacher did everything in french, which - after a summer off, and one measly french class under my belt, I am proud to say I understood the gist of it. Mostly. I'll tell you this, though. Working in a bilingual work place half the summer didn't help one bit. She never said anything about mayonaise.

Greek and Latin are fun, I like languages so much better when I'm not expected to speak them. And the course on Native Peoples of North America is going to keep me nicely enraged every Tuesday and Thursday. Seriously, if I had a time machine, I'd spend the rest of my life going back in time to kick pompous old white men in the nuts. I've seen the Butterfly Effect, I know you've got to be careful about changing the past - you end up with no arms, and Amy Smart is a drug addict/prostitute. No one wants that. But a little nut pain - I think I can inflict that without drastically changing the course of history.

Oh, apparently Amber and the Models for Jesus are going to save the world. Look out, 2012. She's gunning for you.

Snakes on a plane

Motherfuckin roaches in my motherfuckin bathroom, yo.

I'm not kidding, this roach last night was at least 3 inches long...ok, maybe only one inch long, but every time I think about it, he gets bigger. It had been a quiet three or four weeks at chez nous. Thank god, because Gord's mom was here and I know she has some roach trauma in her past, and I didn't want her to have PTS while she was visiting. Thanks roach-bitches, for that little detente. Much appreciated.

But they lulled us into thinking we'd won, and the very next day after Chris and Murray left, we saw one...then another...one more...finally culminating in the 3 foot long, giant ass roach that was crawling down the bathroom door last night when I was going to pee before bed.

And my man, with me squeeling and flailing ineffectually, my man kept his head, took control of the situation and with one hand killed that 8 foot tall motherfucking roach. I am so proud. I may one day breed with that man. Just so his mad roach killing skills get passed on.

But now, I can only step inside our bathroom if I fling the door open, scan the room for visible roaches before entering, then look behind or under everything in there. And even then, I'm still too freaked out to perform. Thank god school has started again. I need somewhere to pee.

What he said

Afterword
by Timothy Findley

Maybe it would be best not to read this until The Diviners has had a chance to sigh and to settle; until you, yourself, have had a chance to sigh and settle.

My friend and I have a rule when we go to plays and movies: neither of us is allowed to talk when the play or movie is over if we perceive the other has been upset or moved by what we've just seen. Surely there's nothing worse than somebody breaking in on your own reflections with: "Wow! What a piece of garbage!" Or even with: "Wasn't that terrific!" It doesn't really matter whether the voice breaking in agrees with you or disagrees. The point is, the only voice that matters when an experience is over is the voice of the experience itself.

A psychologist once remarked that what we experience in dreams can be just as affecting - whether for ill or for good - as what we experience in what we call "reality". Books can hit us hard - or leave us cold. We can set the book aside and say: "I forget." Or we can close the covers and know we will always remember what is between them. Books, like dreams, are essentially private realms. Nothing should be allowed to detract from each person's right to read a book privately and to interpret it freely in the light of what each person has experienced and knows of life. This is why what we receive from critics can be so dangerous. Not that critics are inevitably wrong; only that critics forget, too often, to remind us they speak only for themselves.

That's what I was trying to get at here, and managed to say so poorly. The fact that everything I have to say has already been said, been said more clearly and articulately....strangely liberating. And this right here is why I feel so sorry for those people who don't read, who deliberately chose not to dream, not to experience, not to seek out those rare moments when the words on a page reach out and give your soul the gentle fist bump of understanding. If more people would just pick up a good book - not "a book that lies: a book that clouds or obscures the truth with sentimental claptrap or mind-easing platitudes", maybe there would be less Dr Phil and Prozac, a little more sigh and settle.

Singularity

The winner of Julie & Julia is.....Trace! Woohoo! It's easy when you're the only one to enter. So, just email me at hourstimes@gmail.com or you can contact me through Etsy if you prefer, at HoursandTimes.Etsy.com, and I'll get that out to you asap. Enjoy the book, and prepare yourself for crazy food cravings while you read it. Maybe stock up on some cheese before you start.

Julie & Julia giveaway

So sometimes, just when you are whining and complaining about your stupid job cutting into your book buying time, you get lucky and win a book from Pickles on Pizza (she's having another giveaway, go enter!), and it makes the whole day better. Especially since it was Julie & Julia, which I've wanted to read since I saw the movie trailer - because the book is always better than the movie, and the movie looks pretty good.

The book arrived yesterday, and since I was working in the quiet, air conditioned peace of the bookstore, with hardly any customers, I read almost uninterrupted and I finished it this afternoon. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and desperately want to cook something - maybe those garlic mashed potatoes with garlic cream sauce. There is no such thing as too much garlic.


Now comes the hard part, because this is absolutely a book I'll read again, but I'm bound by the laws of the blog book giveaway to pass it on. Leave a comment below and I'll draw a winner on Monday, and send it on to the next lucky blogger.

Crap-urday

Last Saturday I got called in to work, because a coworker had water in his lungs, a legitimate medical emergency, or because said douchebag wanted to spend the weekend at 'the cottage'. If you've got a cottage to go to, why are you wasting your time - more importantly my time - pretending you want to work at a minimum wage job that you can never be bothered to show up for?

I wasn't supposed to be there, sweating in impossible heat, swatting flies off of food, and dealing with dickhead teenagers - I was supposed to be having a late brunch with Gord, going book shopping and sitting in the shade at Westmount park reading one of my new books all afternoon. Add to that the fact that it was the busiest day ever, non stop for 8 freaking hours, and I got nauseous from not eating all day, and I was pretty much Dante from Clerks, screaming "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" in my head for 10 hours.

The only thing that could have redeemed that day is if my ex had accidentally had sex with a dead guy in the bathroom. In fact, pretending that he had got me through the evening.

Yeah, yeah

Listen. I spend all day saying the exact same thing over and over and over again.

"Thank you. Have a nice day" Monday thru Thursday

"Merci. Bon journee" Friday thru Sunday

I am both bored and boring. I can't wait for school to start so I can quit talking to people and sit mutely in an anonymous class and doodle my brains out. Loan money well spent. Stick figures coming along nicely.

I will post pictures of the apartment just as soon as my cats die and I can remove the tinfoil from the couch. It's a hideous and effective way to keep them from mauling the furniture, and it means there's only about 8 years of this left. Until the next damn cat. The only room that is remotely decorated is the bathroom, because all it takes is a shower curtain and a bathmat. Everything else is done in 'abandoned unpacking effort chic'.

The kitchen still has a pervasive funk about it that we have decided is maybe the stench of bad paint - is that possible? That or our roaches need a bath. We've washed the cupboards down with bleach three frigging times already, and it won't go away. So I'm going to try repainting them, and worst case scenario is that our kitchen will then smell like funk and fresh paint. Yummy! Who's eating out?

We were thinking of going to the Heroes of Woodstock concert until we got some details - $70 tickets, $5 rented lawn chairs, no photography, kids arts and crafts, keep off the grass, oh yeah, and all the good acts are dead - so we're going camping that weekend instead. I'll make a Woodstock playlist and keep my ipod charged. Hopefully after 3 days of outside, no forced kindness to strangers and a lot of Janis Joplin, I'll feel more human and more like communicating with you all again.

Until then, I'm afraid the best I can do is:

Thank you. Have a nice day!

beep beep

Saturday I was lazy. I decided to drive to the metro and go to work from there. This was supposed to knock 40 minutes off my trip home, since I wouldn't have to wait for the bus. The best laid plans...

It rained almost all day Saturday. I was soaked right through by the time I got to work, and worked the whole 10 hours in wet shoes. It was the most fun ever. Until I got off the metro, and the fun really started.

I walked to my car and realized that the remote starter for my car had got wet and wasn't working. The beautiful thing about my car starter & alarm system is that you have to use the remote starter to open the car, or it sets off the batshit insane alarm for 10 minutes. Putting the key in the door doesn't shut it off, nor does putting the key in the ignition. You have to 'beep beep' the door unlock button, or you will not be moving the car. I know. Best system ever! I've encountered this before when the remote starter crapped out on me and it took 5 weeks to get a new one ordered because it's an old alarm system. At that time, the guy at Visions told me there was a magic 'kill switch' and I swear to god I tried that 15 times on Saturday night, and then, maybe got a bit aggressive and pissed off at standing in the rain with my car alarm blaring, and the kill switch cord got unplugged. I don't know how that happened. At that point, I said fuck it, caught the bus and went home.

Sunday, thinking it may have dried out, Gord tried the key fob starter thingy and it played its little jingle bell song that implies it's working. So I went out before work to try to beep the car open. All lies. The little jingle is a ruse. It didn't work, and I ended up just setting the alarm off for no reason other than to piss off the neighborhood. Bus home, change clothes, bus to metro to work, etc.

Today, I resolved to find a car fixing place that would uninstall that piece of shit alarm system that doesn't shut off and won't let me drive my car, and to make good use of my CAA membership. I found a place 3.4 KM from where the car was parked that would lobotomize my car. I called CAA for a tow. I explained the 'car not moving' issue, and asked for a tow. I took the bus to the car and waited for one hour. A roadside assistance truck with no towing capacity showed up and a very helpful man got out. I tried to explain the situation, but my french and his english were incompatible, and I couldn't seem to mime 'tow' with any success. That, or he decided I was a complete idiot and just hadn't thought to try using the key to open the door. He turned the key in the lock, and the alarm went off. More button pushing, more alarm. He took the battery out and shook it. When the stupid little jingle went off, he smiled triumphantly and tried the buttons again. Tried the key in the lock again, lather rinse repeat.

5 alarms later, he tells me I need a tow.

The fuck, you say. Gosh, if I'd a known that I'd have FUCKING CALLED FOR A TOW.

90 minutes and a short burst of rain later, tow truck shows up, car alarm will be lobotomized tomorrow and I feel perfectly justified in getting that Quarter Pounder meal on the way home. I knew living this close to a MacDonalds would be helpful. And now, if you'll excuse me, I think a very long hot bubble bath is in order.

Cockroach count = none today or yesterday, dead or alive. Silver roachy linings. And if they're just getting better at hiding, I'm fine with that.

The War on Bugs

The consensus seems to be that the roaches will win this war, which is disheartening. But thanks to PK, I can at least be grateful that these buggers don't fly, and aren't big enough to 'thud'.

Thanks Kel. The posters will help keep up morale in the trenches.

Besides the bug problem, the apartment is...well, who cares. It could be the fucking Plaza, and I'd still only think about the bugs. The tasty but expensive news is that I really don't feel like cooking, lest some stray crumb tempt more damn bugs into the house, so we eat out a lot and there's a fabulous Greek place just down the road.

It's my first day off in 9 days, so I slept in til noon, watched some tv in bed and caught up on all the entertainment news. Really uninspiring day, and I'm relishing it. For anyone thinking of working in the food service industry - just don't. Low pay, crap hours that get doubled on a moments notice, dealing with that most hideous of beasts 'the public' - now I know why Gordon Ramsay is so foul mouthed and short tempered. Thank god for the bookstore job and greek take out, or I would be the most miserable girl in town.

Honorable mentions in the fight to save my sanity go to:

The Fripe-Prix and it's $2 books. I discovered James Herriot last week, and spent many blissful hours on Yorkshire farms instead of in a roach infested Montreal apartment.

The Wire - we're always late catching good tv, but that's ok, because we can download entire seasons and there are no inconvenient week or month long breaks between episodes.

Glee - I can't wait for this show to start. It's the Dorito's of TV, cheesy delicious.

Fat, purry cats snoozing in the sunlight.

Fuck karma

Wondering where I've been the last 2 weeks? Our new place has roaches. I've been cleaning and killing, cleaning and killing, cleaning and killing, every day after work. The problem is I don't know where they're coming from. We really only see them in the kitchen, but every damn thing in there has been moved, cleaned, bleached, scrubbed, roach sprayed, bleached and cleaned again, Gord caulked all the cracks around the kitchen on the weekend, and there are still one or two of those damn things every night.

Because of the cats, we're using pet friendly roach spray and chinese chalk and I'm about to go to the hardware store for some powder to put in corners and under appliances. I am losing my mind. I can hardly stand to eat in the apartment, even though we've put all our food in tupperware containers. Normally, Gord and I are pretty bug tolerant. Spiders and beetles are scooped up and set gently on the grass outside, moths are left to flutter themselves to death against lightbulbs, and none of these tiny creatures bother me. But there's something repulsive about roaches, and we have become ruthless killers. There's a sick sort of triumph when I spray one and watch it die. But killing them individually isn't fast enough. I need a roach genocide, and I need it now.