In case you were wondering what to buy me for Canada Day...

... because it is a gift-giving holiday, no matter what anyone has told you:


What could be more patriotic than summing up the top 50 studies and theories in psychology in 30 seconds each, with drawings?  Even though it's apparently not yet available in Canada.  (Seriously?  COME ON!!!  Stupid country.)

PS: Yes, I do realize that this could make me Too Smart to Love.

good morning, kitty!

One of the may ways cat ownership is like parenthood*: sleep deprivation!

The key difference here is the vastly superior mobility of cats to babies, as well as their ability to instantly sense from wherever they are in your home that you are waking up.  The second my brain starts to drift out of dreamland and into reality, regardless of whether my alarm has gone off or it is the middle of the night and I'm just getting ready to do the wake-up-roll-over-fall-back-asleep thing, I feel little paws on the side of my bed and hear a sweet little "mrawr!?"  There she is.  She jumps up beside me and purrs like she's never purred before, giving all the loving a girl could want.

It's like she has a magical sense for my wakefulness and sleep patterns and if I didn't know any better I would think that she wants to take advantage of every waking moment and spend it with me.

Then I remember that she's a cat and stereotypically shouldn't be missing me per se, because she's supposed to be all aloof and unattached, the way cats are.

Then I remember again that I have a special bond with my cat that regular people (or other felines) could never understand, and that my dear kitty loves me like a baby loves her Mamma.

Then I realize that this whole youngish single woman owning a cat thing is some kind of societal trick to make me want to have babies as soon as possible.  I find myself being totally okay with sleep deprivation and dealing with the poo of another living thing, all because she is so cute and loveable.  If she falls asleep on my lap, I avoid moving even if I'm hungry or have something else to do, because I don't want to disrupt her.

So apparently my ovaries are taking a seriously roundabout route to get me into baby-land.  Thanks ovaries, and good morning.

commit a crime, update your status

So... last night my city went kinda nutso.  There's already a bajillion blog posts, news stories, and facebook/twitter status updates about it.  Luckily my friends aren't idiots and all the updates I'm seeing are some variation on the "I'm so disgusted" and "this is not my city" variety.

I'm glad I'm not friends with any of these hooligans (side note: has the word "hooligan" been used more times in the past 40 years?  Probably not.  Thanks for bringin' it back, Gregor!), but I would have enjoyed taking a screen shot of something like this from my newsfeed:

Haha!  Oh Billy, you should be ashamed!  Can you tell I'm flirting with you???  Because I am, 
I'm doing that thing where I kind of put you down but I giggle at the same time so you know I'm 
just pretending to give you a hard time!!!11!  If we were in the same room I would be touching 
your arm right now.



Brockkkkkk!  It is evidence!  And it's too late!!!!  One of your friends is a narc!!!!


Don't bother tagging me because I'm going to put up an incriminating status update myself!  Then one of my friends will 
incriminate himself as well!  We've got it covered, guys!


Guess this just proves what everyone has been saying for years: young people don't seem to understand the whole privacy + internet = fake thing.  Thank goodness.

Yoga Fun Times!

I'm starting summer yoga fun times with... yoga in the park!  The first summer yoga in the park party will be this Saturday (June 18th) at 11:30am.  Park TBA.  Weather permitting, etc. etc.

If you want updates on where/when things are happening, join my facebook group.

someone buy me these things!

It all started when I absent-mindedly thought "hey, I wonder if anyone's selling deathly hallows necklaces online?", which was, of course, a stupid question because why wouldn't EVERYONE be selling deathly hallows necklaces online?

First thing that came up in my Google search was an Etsy page full of HP stuff, and now I want ALL THESE THINGS:

Slytherine Horcruxes!

Harry's first snitch!


Of course, the Deathly Hallows


ALL THE HORCRUXES!

The last three words.

Owl post!

A question for the ages

Can anyone tell me how to eat an Oreo cookie without getting little bits of packed-in chocolate stuck all over my teeth?  

I'm always terrified to smile or even talk after I eat them, because even if there isn't caked-in chocolate in my front teeth, it gets all stuck up in my molars and I have to be super un-ladylike to get it out.

Other people seem to be able to eat Oreos, laugh, smile, and talk all at the same time without first digging around their teeth with a tongue or finger.  HOW DO YOU DO IT?

dress making fail

I was going to make my dress for The Jessies (Vancouver's professional theatre awards) this year.  I did it two years ago, and it was really cute despite the fact that everyone thought I was wearing a sheer dress with nothing underneath (it was a sheer yellow with BRIGHT PINK underneath.  Seriously people?  Do you think all the skin on my torso and the top half of my legs are such an insanely different colour than my incredibly pale face and limbs?  Are reverse-farmer tans really that common?)

Unfortunately, I failed.  Miserably.  With no one to blame but myself.

What I should have done was a test round with scrappy fabric.  I didn't.  I also didn't wait to check out my dear friend Shalyn McFaul's pattern books so I could follow an actual pattern for a real dress instead of making one up from a dress I saw on the internet over two years ago that has become a blurry image of general cuteness in my mind.  General cuteness in the form of a dress literally made out of strips of fabric tethered together in critical places.  This means that when I started chopping up the beautiful, sparkly, be-sequined fabric that I got for half price, I was cutting it into strips.  This, for the non-DIYers out there, is a more or less irreversible act of destruction that should only be undertaken with the greatest of thought and consideration.

So now I have a few strips of black sequined fabric that, when assembled, kind of remind me of one of my ballet costumes from childhood.  They were unattractive costumes.

Any ideas of what I can do with my sad little remnants?  Or shall I use this excuse to go SHOOOOOPPING* for a new Jessies dress?

*For some reason, the word SHOOOOOPPING just rolled through my brain Oprah-style: loud and drawn out, with arms flailing overhead in ecstasy.  Just go with it.

Well I guess this means I'm hot?

A few weeks ago I joined OKCupid.  To be perfectly honest, it was more for the psychological benefit of mentally "putting myself out there" than it was for actually meeting and dating people off the site.  I did the whole online dating thing in my last stint of singledome, and while it wasn't by any means disastrous, I didn't meet anyone who I had real chemistry with either.  This really was just an attempt to help me start to think of myself as a hot toddy on the market.  Plus, OKCupid has really fun bonus questionnaire things and such that you can use.

Needless to say, I haven't been a very active user.  I don't get many messages, which I like to think is because I don't show off my "goods" but instead my personality.  Still, I actually did go on one date with someone who messaged me, mainly because, well, why not?  Also, I was meeting up with "the ex" the next day for a chat and I selfishly decided to use this internet chap for some pre-meetup self esteem boosting.

Last week I got this email:


Presuming that they're telling the truth, this means that they only show the attractive people to the other attractive people on the site!  Isn't this some kind of terrible discrimination?  Don't less attractive people deserve a shot with the hotties?  What if I, a very attractive person (apparently) had a thing for people with a certain brand of less-attractiveness?  What if someone got mis-labeled and is actually stunning?  What if an uggo gets into the hottie pile?

Well I have to be honest, with the mild amount of browsing I had done on that site I was kind of taken aback with how unattractive the users were.  When I checked again after this (because of course I did), they were moderately better.  So... good?