The house is SOLD! Finally. That's the good news. The bad news is that it sold for $100,000 less than we originally were hoping it would sell for. We entered the market at the beginning of a downturn, and the longer we waited the worse the offers got. But it's done now, and hopefully it'll be enough to stem off bankruptcy, and if not then at least it's done with.

These days I've had to choose cards for my dad very carefully. I don't want them to say something I don't mean, so cards that say things like "You've always been there for me" or "You take care of everything" or "I admire you" are out. The one I found this year says that "You mean a lot to me", which is true. It always feels kind of sneaky to find a card that sounds positive but that doesn't say so much. Blaaaaaagh father's day.

The WRAP program has been INTENSE. In the first week my symptoms (of PTSD and CSA) have gotten worse. I was stuck on the subway on tuesday and had a panic attack (which I've never had to that intensity before). The good thing is I've also been learning coping strategies--when I got the panic attack, I asked for help (HUGE for me!) and grounded myself using my senses. It's been a crazy week, but I think it'll get better.

My bookshelves are up, though they aren't as organized as I'd like them to be. I just wanted to get all those boxes out of my room before I tackled the huge job of organizing my books in more detail (right now they're organized by section, but not within those sections).

I've been watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, mostly because Summer Glau (who played River Tam in Firefly) is the new Terminator. I'm halfway through the first season, and I haven't decided whether or not I like it. It's interesting, and it's somewhat difficult to watch (what with the questions about the timeline, about humanity, about when murder is acceptable, and about heroism).

Kung Fu Panda was wicked, by the way. I loved it.

Hey there!

So things have been happening but since the biggest thing we're waiting for (our house being sold) hasn't happened yet, I haven't felt like they've deserved an update.

My birthday was wicked; jam-packed and spent with my family, and ended in late-night dancing. Totally wicked.

I discovered something on my birthday: apparently even though I haven't been drinking lately, I have gotten an even higher alcohol tolerance than previously, which is kind of insane. 3 bottles of wine between 2 (and a half? my dad had some) people plus a couple of mixed drinks and a couple of shots (admittedly over the span of 3 hours) and I was sober an hour later. How is that even possible?

Even though the house isn't sold, we've half-moved in to our new townhouse as of monday. We were tired of living in the house while it has to always be in the perfect condition for showing, but houses show much better with furniture in them, so we moved the bedrooms (and put the spare bedroom furniture in the master bedroom) and the kitchen stuff (but not the table) and left the furniture in the dining room, kitchen, living room, and basement (as well as the spare furniture in the master bedroom).

Since my brother has a waterbed, we had to empty it sunday night so it could be moved monday. So matt needed somewhere to spend the night. We decided to pack saturday, and then spend sunday at Second City's 24 Hours of Comedy fundraiser. It was the best thing ever, and I'm definitely going every year that I can manage it. It went from noon Sunday to noon Monday, cost $20, had wicked guests (Colin Mochrie, Sean Cullen, George Stroumboulopoulos, etc) and every hour was sponsored by different companies that gave us free samples--which meant we got free food and drinks all night (they had an extended liquor license that allowed alcohol to be served all 24 hours). In-and-out priveleges meant we went for a walk when our butts fell asleep. The comedy was amazing and hilarious and super-impressive, particularly when the core improvisers from Second City carried the last hour of improv on their own despite having been there the whole time. It was wicked!

The only problem is that staying up that long has messed with my sleep schedule hardcore and I've slept 11 hours of the past 65.

I have 21 bankers boxes of books just waiting for me to put back on my bookshelves. I love reorganizing my bookshelves, and I kind of take it very seriously, so it'll take some time to decide exactly what I want to do this time.

I looooove our new neighbourhood. We're literally a five minute walk from Empress Walk, which means basically we're 5 minutes on foot from anything you could ever want.

Other than the crazy move, I've been studiously avoiding my summer Sociology course (I hate sociology, and then add to that the fact it's a first year course taught by someone who thinks telling racist jokes for an hour is a good way of teaching students about cultural differences, and it's a miracle I go to any of the classes at all), and doing pretty awesomely in therapy. I'm feeling optimistic about the future despite all the crazy stuff with my dad and the house and everything. And of course it's the summer in Toronto, which means the immediate future is going to be filled with amazing and wonderful (and usually free) things. Life is pretty sweet!

Well, today was the first day of offers. We got one (there were going to be three, but one decided no because they didn't want a house with a pool and the other didn't want to compete, whatever that means), but it was a terrible offer, and I think it was from a certain politician from this riding (he put his wife's name on the offer, but he couldn't be at the open house because of the TTC thing, and I recognize his wife's last name), which explains why he was trying to buy our house for nothing. We kicked him to the curb though. Which means another week of showings (blegh; I just want to be able to make a curry people! why is that so wrong?). The market's on a downturn, and we're at the cusp of it. The new property tax is sending everyone out of the city to buy, particularly the larger houses. We just have to wait for people who fall in love with our house the way my parents did when they saw it to buy the place. Go serendipity, get to work!

Adventures in the Theatre of the Absurd that is my front lawn...

So today, as we prepared to leave the house again so that our real estate agent could show our property off to its best advantage (ie without us bumming around in it), we noticed some boxes on our front lawn. That's strange, we thought, we've already put all our boxes in storage. Where did these boxes come from?

So we look inside the boxes, and realize that they are 56 (the number was on the side of the box) little boxes of Honey Bunches of Oats with Cinnamon cereal. You know, the size for free samples, and for camping? So we figure someone's dropped off the boxes and are going to distribute the free samples to our neighbourhood. We leave, and go see Leatherheads (which by the way was pretty much made for me in every way-tomfoolery, sassy banter, jangly 20s music, jaunty 20s outfits, and a massive lovefest for the game of football. It was a seriously good time, though possibly only for me).

We come back later, in the late afternoon, and the boxes are still there. We wait until night, and the boxes are still there. Finally my dad cracks and goes with a neighbour to take a few free samples for their respective houses. As he comes in we look at the mini cereal boxes and realize...they're expired. They expired 3 days ago.

WHO IS DRIVING AROUND DROPPING OFF EXPIRED BOXES OF CEREAL ON MY FRONT LAWN?!?!?! It is exceedingly difficult to imagine a scenario in which this makes any sense. Did we scorn a free sample distributor at one time, and this is his bizarre retribution? Did someone from the open house yesterday look in our cupboards, and upon seeing that we didn't have Honey Bunches of Oats with Cinnamon in them, procure us expired free samples in order to show us the error of our Raisin-Bran-eating ways? I am so confused!

Anyway, one of the neighbourhood kids ate a box, and apparently didn't die, so my dad's declared the cereal safe to eat and has taken it upon himself to eat at least one of the boxes of boxes of cereal. Fantastic. There is nothing more disturbing to me than a man eating free expired cereal by the boxload just because said cereal was left on his front lawn mysteriously. If he gets that weird hallucinogenic thing from eating wheat mould and starts a new religion dedicated to cinnamon, I'm moving out.

In other news, went dancing on Friday and going dancing tonight. It's my screw-you-TTC-workers-I-don't-need-you-to-work-in-order-to-dance! weekend*. It's a seriously good thing Ashley's dad has a car, works the night shift, and likes driving around sketchy downtown areas late at night, or else my dancing would be restricted to me flailing to old Aqua songs in my bedroom, and my statement to the TTC workers would be severly reduced in effeciveness.

*Note for non-Torontonians: The TTC is our public transit system, and the workers are on strike (last I heard, they were being legislated back to work for monday?).

So I was going to whine about rushing through work on a house while I'm sick and just got free from school and all the awkwardness resulting from my dad and his family and the secrets he's keeping and blah blah but instead all I can think about is HOW TOTALLY AWESOME THE LATEST BONES WAS OMG. I missed it so so so so much and now it's back and it's so fantastic <3

Tonight I'm going to Evil Dead the Musical, which should rock. In the meantime I have to finish painting the basement and rake the leaves in the backyard while trying not to drown in my own flegm (okay so maybe I still want to whine a little bit).

Found more old school work while cleaning out the house. My dad found this book of my paintings from when I was in kindergarten (when I was 4-5 years old). And in the back, it has a little "about me" section (obviously written by my kindergarten teacher). The best part? What I want to be when I grow up.

Okay so most kids want to be, I don't know, prime minister, or maybe an astronaut, or wonder woman.

I? I wanted to be...

A secretary.

When I was 5.

Good lord, I haven't changed at ALL *lol*

Going through old stuff in the basement, mom found a few of my writings for school that she kept over the years. I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with my Grade 8 self. Check out one of the poems I wrote for a poetry assignment! Okay, it's totally cliche in pretty much every possible way, but for a 13-year-old, I think it's pretty good!


Advice to Young Lovers - didactic poem

Love is grand, as you can guess
And undefinable, more or less.
But unrequited love can huant
You like a sad voice in the dark
Corners of your mind, whisp'ring your pain,
Reminding of the love you have yet to gain.
It can hurt, and will, I vow
But you will make it through somehow.
Old sayings still carry truth through immortal hall,
It is better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all.
Does this leave you unsatisfied
And your mind feeling much denied?
Advice I promised, and this I will give
To carry with you as long as you live.
To woo the young lady whom you desire
Prove your love. Not by fiery
Brawls proving your manliness
Or extravagant gifts, showing the wealth you posess;
But by sonnets written by your hand
Expressing your love to be so grand,
And words of praise that sing her beauty
So that the lark's song will be pitied.
Unmask the side you dare not show
Your 'manly' friends, and let her know
That you have a gentle touch.
Believe me, for I know this much.
One more thought ere I depart
to leave you with the knowledge of the art
Of gaining your true love's favor,
And on this point I do not waver:
When you send the letter containing the love you posess,
Make sure it is sent to the right address!

All the others are equally or even more cliche (cherry lips, weeping roses, the whole lot). I'm so glad mom kept this stuff, if for nothing more than a laugh *lol*

Have a break in housing drama news, for this EXCITING UPDATE:

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK IS BACK!!!!.

I...this is ridonk. I think it's going to be awful, but that just makes it even more exciting.

You guys, I used to sleep on a New Kids On the Block pillowcase. Until I Bedazzled it into being useless. COME BACK TO ME EIGHTIES!!!! *grabbyhands*

Update re: the housing thing

Okay! So, my family is possibly crazy, but we've ALREADY (read: less than a week since we discovered we'd need to sell the house) bought a new place. It's a townhouse, by North York Civic Center, which is sweet since it's right on the subway. It's tiny compared to what we've got, but that was inevitable, and it's gorgeous.

So now comes the frantic cleaning-clearing-selling-tossing of stuff to make our house presentable to sell. I'm so glad we have a place. It's a huuuuuge burden lifted. And even though my parents had to borrow my OSAP savings to get it ($10,000 ;_;), at least it's gotten. Phew! One part of the crisis solved.

Update about the current situation:

So my parents saw the trustee on wednesday. He said that dad could avoid going bankrupt maybe, but that no matter what the house was going to have to be sold. Mom talked to a real estate agent already, but we're waiting to put the house up for sale until we buy our new one; they've already started looking. I left wednesday, after the news, and stayed at my friend's place for two days just to get away from it all, but now I'm back and I'm starting to help with finding a new place for us to live. There are some places that seem pretty nice; we'll have to see how it goes. We're looking at townhouses on Sunday. Mom definitely wants the house sold by the end of spring.

I kind of freaked out a little wednesday when it was made really, 100% clear that the house was going to have to go, and I ended up not going to class, and instead going to my friend's house for a couple of days. Which means I also missed class thursday and didn't hand in an essay. It was good though. I was artistically productive, and I've come to the point where I'm still really sad about losing the house, but thinking about it doesn't immediately give me a panic attack. After all, it's also an exciting opportunity for change (one of the places we're looking at is at Yonge and Shepphard, and another is at Yonge and Eglinton, the rest are Yonge and Finch; in any case, all in much busier areas than we're in now).

It feels a little silly to be so upset about a house. But we've lived here for pretty much as long as I can remember (we moved when I was 6-I put up a huge fight then too *lol*). And the selfish spoiled middle-class part of me is of course disappointed that we're moving to some place half the size/value of where we live now. And part of it is the circumstances-I know this is like crushing defeat to my parents, who've been trying for years to save the house from Dad's debts. Also, this has come at the worst possible time, since mom's had to step up going off the lithium because her kidneys are failing too fast (they went from 35% failure to 50% failure in something like 2 weeks), so she's having her medication messed with at the same time that her worst fear (losing the house) is happening.... I suppose it's not so ridiculous that I'm super-stressed about this whole thing.

So, my parents are downstairs talking about the logistics and timing, but as of right now...

My dad's going to declare bankruptcy.

My parents are going to have to sell the house, this spring, to give the money to the creditors. They'll be able to keep half the money from the house, our home of over 15 years, which they will use to buy a smaller house somewhere even more suburban.

Man, this sucks. I seriously hate moving.

Yesterday I went to the One of a Kind spring show. I don't remember the last time I was at the spring version; I missed it because I was in BC. In any case it was fun! At this point it's all about oggling the Things I Cannot And Will Never Have Because I Will Never Be That Rich, I'm Getting A Ba, Let's Be Reasonable. Still, it's fun to dream. And to be inspired! They had these beautiful handbound books (which I totally know how to do!), and I got a few great ideas from them. there was this new set-up too, where they took old books, chopped them up, and bound them with different kinds of paper to make really neat sketchbooks and diaries. It's like a cross between altered books and handmade books. I am totally stealing that idea!

I bought this adorable pin of a little ghost crying. It is the cutest thing ever. Right after I left the show I rushed back to my neighbourhood to give blood, and all the blood donor clinic ladies spent the time I was laying back and pumping out blood donations staring at my chest trying to figure out what the pin was of. It was hilarious.

My mom's trying to go vegan because her kidneys are failing, and I've secretly wanted to try being vegan for years. I even own (and have now leant my mom) a couple of awesome vegan cookbooks. Now that I have a partner in crime, my mom and I are trying it out (though we're both varying our degrees of vegan-ness. I am nowhere near calling myself vegan for reals; I'm just having the occasional vegan meal. Mom is trying to go 90% vegan; she'll have stuff like mayonnaise, butter, and gravy once in awhile--for example, we both had egg salad sandwiches for lunch *lol*). Tonight I made vegan curry. It was beyond delicious!

Tonight also I saw Wayne's World again for the first time in YEARS and oh man, I forgot just how hilarious and iconic a movie it is. And also how Canadian. Seriously ridiculously Canadian. Such a great movie.

On the subject of art and awesomeness, check out these amazing photograps by Yeondoo Jung; They're based on children's drawings. You get to see the drawing and the photograph side-by-side. So cool. I love how whimsical they look, even as photos, and how he incorporates the kids' lack of perspective in their drawings into the photos. Also, one features a gay wedding! Awesome.

This is a pretty amazing speech about racial politics in America, particularly considering its coming from an incumbent (Obama):




I'd recommend if you don't want to hear Obama defending himself and his minister (what started this whole thing), start watching around 15 minutes in. Particularly amazing is the bit 20 minutes in:

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

I've never felt quite so hopeful about race representation in America before.

Link from typefiend.

Exciting news in the world of nerd!

Joss Whedon is directing a short internet musical series called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Apparently, according to Joss: "It's the story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he's too shy to talk to."

Link found via The Park Bench, which is a link and discussion blog for nerdy ladies. I am super into it.

PS I don't know how many of you checked out the SXSW mp3s, but my favourite of the bunch by far is Little Jackie's The World Should Revolve Around Me (you can hear it online and also download the mp3 at this link too). It's such a gloriously sassy and self-affirmed pop song. I'm very into it.

After being a consumer of tuna sandwiches for pretty much my entire life, even throughout the years that I have tried to avoid eating seafood as my one major environmentalist concession (obviously I fail at concessions), I am proud to announce that I have FINALLY discovered the recipe for the perfect tuna sandwich. It's not complicated, or fancy, but it has eluded me for so long. BUT NO LONGER.

...Okay so basically the trick is to butter the bread rather than using mayo on the bread. Also, mix with the tuna and mayo very very finely chopped celery AND red onion. It is the red onion, mostly, that has eluded for so long. I can't believe I never thought of it before.

It's pretty good with very thin slices of cucumber too, but not necessary.


Other than Discovering Tuna Perfection, I've been recovering from St. Patrick's Day celebrations. A bunch of us went out last night. We started at Madison's (Spadina and Bloor), but it was....really really white, and really really yuppy and hetero, and was pretty much the least comfortable place I've been that didn't have an explicit dress code. After listening to one too many Hoobastank songs we decided enough was enough. So we left the white hetero yuppies of our group and trekked over to Church and Wellesley. After not finding anything open that had dancing on the main strip, we decided to just go to Fiddler's Green on Wellesley and started our own dance party by requesting Flo Rida's Low. The dance party lasted all night and we got drunk and danced to ridiculous music and then fled when these guys got into a huge barfight (broken glass, ripped shirts, bleeding, knocked over furniture, the whole nine yards). Yes, it was the perfect St. Paddy's Day.

I had a blast tonight. The Mod Club is a really weird venue; it's much nicer than the places I'm used to (the bar has stools! the floor is not horrifyingly sticky!), but it was badly run. The sound was poorly mixed, and as a result it was hard to hear the vocalists. The doors were opened late, and only after the opening band (Great Northern, who were actually really good) had already started playing, which sucks royally for them.

Turns out the oh-noes-are-they-religious band turned out to be the Gutter Twins, which is basically the new band formed by Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs and Twilight Singers and Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees. These guys are lapsed-catholics-turned-heroin-addicts-now-clean. So it was actually not uncomfortable at all, and their music was really good. The crowd, for the most part, sucked royally, and they skipped a couple of songs on their setlist because they were pissed that the crowd was hardly engaging at all. The most random bit was when a circle pit suddenly started up in the middle of the encore, for no apparent reason. It only lasted for about 30 seconds, and then stopped. I liked it; I'm more used to that kind of crowd, but everyone else there was so horrified/confused as to why these young men were crashing into them repeatedly. The looks on everyone else's faces were hilarious.

After the show, which ended CRAZY early by 10pm, Ashley and I cabbed up to bloor and bathurst and had poutine at Mel's. We tried out Labyrinth (that bar behind Future's) but it was really smelly in there, so we decided to risk it and take another cab down to the fun haus to see if it was open and if there was good music for dancing.

It turned out to be the best idea ever. Every friday the fun haus has 'Electricity', which is a mix of ebm/electric/house/synthpop/futurepop, and has free cover after 10pm. The crowd was amazing. Small, but really friendly and chill-nobody cared if you bumped into them, nobody was being forceful or gross, everyone was just having a good time. The dancing was horrifyingly bad, which meant Ashley and I ripped it up with no fear of being made fun of. It was fantastic. We stayed until it closed at 2:30.

I just found out that the concert I'm about to go to with Ashley is a Christian rock band. Like, where every-song-is-about-Jesus Christian. This makes me vaguely uncomfortable, but mostly because I know Ashley and I cannot imagine her not saying anything insulting in a 3-hour-period. Oh well, getting kicked out will be an adventure.

On Wednesday I had an "assessment" session with a therapist at the Women's College Hospital, to see if I would fit in with the WRAP program. They've pushed me through, which means that I'll be doing intensive therapy this summer. Kind of intimidating, but we'll see how that goes.

My mom's kidneys are failing, so she's going off the Lithium earlier than scheduled. This means...actually I have no idea what this means. Mom's not been off her meds since I was little. Hopefully it doesn't mean another breakdown for her. She'll be going on new meds, but who knows how she'll react to them. Nothing to do but wait and see. And not stress her out as much as possible.

UofT is...school. I find myself annoyed as hell at the institution, though the individual classes are fine. But because I'm in such dislike of the school itself, I don't work as hard. So my grades are dropping. Not significantly, but they are dropping a little. I just don't really care what grades UofT gives me *kicks it*.

Meanwhile, I'm super-excited for all the insane events I've already booked for this spring/summer. The two upcoming ones (besides the christian concert I'm going to in an hour) are the One of a Kind Spring Craft Show, which is always exciting and inspiring, and Yuri's Night, which I've never heard of until this year but is the awesomest thing ever: basically it's a huge all-night party in the SCIENCE CENTER. Freaking awesome. I'm so excited!

And, nicked from music_slut, Paul Ford listened to all 763 crappy SXSW MP3s so you don't have to. Exactly what it says. Worth checking out just for his hilarious snark, though there is some good stuff in there too. The reveiws are all six words long, so easy to scroll through to find the funny, but in addition he has little chunks of hilarious commentary on the music scene in general, like this: "Many people don’t write songs for an audience. They write songs for Gray’s Anatomy, for Zach Braff, and for Apple advertisements (Volkswagen if they’re not ambitious). If I was in a band I would write a slow song with an 808, reverb, and a female vocalist, and call that song “Zach Braff’s Eyes Reflected in My Nano.”"

This week is insane.

Today I have to do a midterm makeup and a presentation.
Tomorrow I have another midterm.
Wednesday I have a major paper due.

GOOD TIMES.

So in the spirit of not-doing-any-of-that, have a meme:

How many songs total: 8,658

How many hours or days of music: 22 days, 23 hours

Most recently played/ playing: "World Spins Madly On" by The Weepies

Most played: "When I'm Gone" by Ani Difranco (45 plays)

Most recently added: "Self-Preservation" by The Lucksmiths

Sort by song title:
First Song: "The 'A' Train" by Ella Fitzgerald
Last Song: "Zissou Society Blue Star Cadets/Ned's Theme Take 1" by Mark Mothersbaugh (from The Life Aquatic Soundtrack). That's in English. I also have a few song titles past that, but they're in Japanese characters so I have no idea what they say, but just for the record: The real last song on my playlist is by Bump of Chicken.

Sort by time:
Shortest Song: "By Mennen (D Major)" by The Blanks (that barbershop quartet from Scrubs). 0:00:04
Longest Song: "NPR's Live Concert Series: Neko Case" by (obviously) Neko Case. 1:32:20

Sort by album:
First album: "07/31/04" by Dispatch (live album)
Last album: "Zopilote Machine" by The Mountain Goats

First song that comes up on Shuffle: "Exhale" by Whitney Houston (what?)

Search the following and state how many songs come up:

Death - 164
Life - 151
Love - 465
Hate - 23
You - 941
Sex - 40
Fuck - 22

Good times!

STILL sick.

I'm going to the doctor today... I think I may have a sinus infection. Joy! Hurray! My body strikes on midterm week once again!!

...Seriously though. If I have to go to the hospital again, someone's going to get a hurting. Someone omnipotoent.

What does the supreme being have against me writing midterms, anyway?