Adventures of a Tofu Slut

I am encountering a weird craft fair phenomenon this year, whereby all the craft fairs are much smaller than they were last year. By which I mean that a craft fair that was in 2 rooms last year is in one this year. It's odd! Maybe after last year's giant craft explosion there are now more events than artisans? Or maybe the handmade holiday has gone out of vogue. I went to 5 different shows today, 4 of which I'd been to last year, and they were all awfully tiny. And only one was particularly interesting. If this trend continues I'm going to have to make other plans for my remaining gifts.

I only shampoo my hair twice a week or so, and I don't use very much shampoo, so I've had the same bottle of shampoo for years now. I guess it's not that surprising, then, that it has turned into a creepy gelatinous mass of no known origin (see title). Eep!

In other news, my grand plan to do all my Christmas shopping at craft fairs (because I have NO ideas for ANYONE. I fail.) is being thwarted by all the craft fairs I've gone to so far being truly unexciting. Although the one I went to yesterday was in someone's house, and I left desperately wanting the house. It was so cute! Presents, though, have not happened (and it's double for pretty much everyone, due to a mass of December/January birthdays). Where is my present-buying brain?

Number one on my list of things that I should not have jettisoned in an effort to only bring one suitcase this Christmas: a belt. My pants are very much with the falling down.

HI.

I'm at my parents'. I finally finished wrapping stocking stuffers, which I've been saying I need to do since I got here on Monday. We are just about to go to vestra's parents' for Christmas Eve lunch, and then I have to make soup.

This has been the most coughing, sneezing, snot-filled Christmas ever! Luckily I haven't felt all that sick, and I think it's possible I'm finally getting better, but I have gone through VAST quantities of kleenex. However, I had an awesome weekend (last weekend) in Vancouver, visiting with vestra, vestra's boyfriend, morag_gunn, dangerdean, blue_lotus, and a few of the goddesses, and I even managed to hold off the worst of the cold until I got to Victoria. And then sarcasma and sanity_clause were here, and now canirl and family are here, and the tree is ridiculously enormous, and much baking has been done, and it's almost Christmas! Whew.

Happy Christmas everyone. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, no matter what you're doing, what you're celebrating, or who you're with. And think of me this afternoon as we attempt to come to a final decision between 7 people on what movie to see tonight. :)

Christmas decorations are out in full force. There are lights on the streets in some places, I saw lit Christmas trees outside of the grocery store, plus wreaths everywhere. And of course the malls and department stores are all over it. Whatever happened to December 1st?

Later skaters - I'm off to Victoria for the holidays (with a stop in Vancouver to see some of my favourite west coast people). I should be in bed RIGHT NOW, since I have to get up at 4am (yes, you read that right) in order to get to the airport for my flight, but I just got home from my staff gathering, which turned out to be more fun than I anticipated. Fact: watching co-workers get drunk is very entertaining. I just hope that no-one was thinking that about me!

Oh, god, I'm going to be so dead tomorrow, between the staying up waaaay too late tonight,and the wine, and the super early flight, and the 3 hour time difference.

So, yes, bed. Bur first, since I don't think I'm going to be around much for the next little while, I want to wish a very happy advance birthday (completely removed from Christmas) to pipesdreams and zarahemla, and to my sweetie starfishchick, whose birthday I always miss because I'm on my way to see my parents.

Finally, presents! For everyone. Some entirely random songs.

Twelve Days of Christmas - Bob and Doug MacKenzie (wma)

Hang On Little Tomato - Pink Martini (mp3)

Everything Stops for Tea - Long John Baldry (mp3)

Anything But Love - The Real Tuesday Weld (wma)

Well That Was Easy - Franz Ferdinand (m4a)

*mwah*

I just went out...without a book.

People, it was a nightmare! I had to sit on the subway with nothing to read! Worse, I had to wait for the subway with nothing to read and irritating people having an irritating conversation right near me. *shiver*

Other things:

• My cards are flying across the world. Whee! I've gotten cards, too, from...erm, people. I can remember some, but I'm worried I'll leave someone out and they'll be sad, so let me just say thank you to everyone, and the lovely cards are happily decorating my bookcases.
  
  
• Regular, non-quick oats are a rare commodity, apparently.
  
  
• The Grammy Awards still have a category for polka.
  
  
• We are breaking out the BPAL this weekend. Excitement! (Confidential to you who are coming over: I have spreadsheets. Be very afraid.)
  
  
• I've been watching ER again occasionally (occasionally meaning whenever I don't turn the TV off after CSI, and it's right there, and I'm too lazy to get up). I'm actually kind of enjoying it. I used to love it, waaaaay back at the beginning. I liked the quick pace, the multiple storylines, the people running around frantically, the focus on the hospital rather than the person lives. And then it got dramatic and heavy with the Very Special Episodes, and I got bored. But it seems to have drifted back to the original idea, and there are some fantastic actors on it right now that I've loved in other things (Parminder Nagra and Linda Cardellini, for two. Also, John Leguizamo. There are no words). So, yeah, there you go.
  
  
• Torontonians, have you been outside lately? This is why I hate snow -- it's all slushy and wet, but still deep. Blech.

My work loses at being a Canadian stereotype. Someone sent us a CD that came with a $2 Tim Horton's coupon, and no-one wants it.

...which is not what I really intended to say.

My mom wants a vest for Christmas -- you know, the kind that everyone used to wear in the late 80s and that you don't see anywhere anymore, the kind that come with men's three piece suits. Has anyone seen these lately? I have no idea where to find one.

You'd think after 5 years I'd be able to shop in Toronto. But every Christmas I think of things that I can't figure out where to buy them here. It's not that they're not available, but that I just don't know where or what the store would be. I have about three things that I'm struggling with right now, a vest being one of them.

Speaking of Christmas, there is an Amazon package waiting at the post office, and none of it is for me! Sad.

ps. Happy birthday angiv! Have a wonderful day.

Things I am thinking about today:

1. Sugar. Or rather, I'm thinking about not thinking about sugar. Once again, I'm attempting to not eat sugar (for some unspecified length of time that should probably be at least a week but will be unlikely to last that long, especially with the weekend coming up). And, of course, it's all I can think about. My boss brought back some candies from her trip to Italy, and there's one left, sitting on the counter beside me, and TAUNTING ME. With its voice inside my head and its mocking. I can see it out of the corner of my eye, and I swear it's doing a little dance. Augh!

2. My pants, which I only bought on Saturday, and which I think are just that tiny bit too short, so that they cross the line from "do not make me look like a 5-year-old dressing in her mother's clothes" to "complete and utter loser". Tragique!

3. My pants, again, because I just found a tag partway down the thigh that says "REMOVE BEFORE WEARING OR WASHING". There is no other information on that tag. There is no need for that tag. Why is the tag even there in the first place?

4. Why I could never get a TiVO. Because, judging by the scary crap that Launchcast is trying to pass off as matching my genre preferences, and the weirdass stuff that Amazon is throwing into my recommendations, my preferences cannot be predicted. My brain is impenetrable! This will be good if ever the brain-sucking aliens land on Earth.

5. What a big joke it will be on sci-fi writers everywhere if we really are the only populated planet in the only populated universe, and we never end up leaving this planet for any length of time.

6. Gilmore Girls, which is totally not keeping my interest this season. I'd stop watching it, but I've been watching from the very first episode, so I feel somewhat proprietary, and can't quite let it continue on when I've invested so much time in it. I am incapable of giving up shows once I've put that much time into them. I think I'm worried that they'll get better and then I'll want to start watching again, but I'll be out of the loop. The only show I've successfully given up after years of watching dedicatedly is The X-Files, which I think I stopped watching the year that Duchovney left. Oh, and I stopped watching Angel after the first two seasons, mostly because it was on at a bad time and none of my roommates were at all interested, but then I repented and went back to it in season 4 and eventually bought all the dvds. So that doesn't really count as successful.

7. But Lost just keeps getting better and better. My love of this episode, though, is, I'm sure, partially to do with the fact that ( spoilers for this most recent episode )

8. The difference between bad acting and lame characters. I think Evangeline Lilly is not a very good actress (although I'm willing to believe that she has the potential to get better, since she doesn't have much experience yet) -- she doesn't manage to portray the emotion that the character is given, and as a consequence always looks somewhat confused. On the other hand, I don't think the character of Charlie is very interesting, but I think Dominic Monaghan does a great job portraying him.

9. For that matter, the difference between characters I don't like in a personal sense (as in, I wouldn't want to be stuck in a room with them, or they're complete bastards), but they are very fun to watch and/or are excellent as part of the story and often I love them very much, and characters that I find irritating and useless. To wit, Locke, who I often find completely irritating and faux know-it-all, but he's such an awesome character because of that, and, well, sorry, Charlie again (or at least he's the closest anyone on this show comes to that position. A more accurate choice would be Marissa on The O.C. or Taylor on Gilmore Girls, but that would ruin my perfect symmetry. Unless I went with Paris vs. Taylor).

10. This very cool thing I found on the internet, except I'm not going to tell you what it is, because I think I'm going to attempt to buy it for people for Christmas, if I can figure out where the person who was talking about it found it in the first place.

11. Indeed, what the hell I'm going to buy people for Christmas, and why nearly everyone I know has birthdays right around Christmas, which means that I have to come up with two brilliant ideas at once, which hurts my brain.

12. Pirates.

HI!!!

OMG I love being on vacation. The benefit to being single and having parents who are still together and don't like their relatives is that Christmas tends to be very relaxing, once the flying across the country part is over. And even that went ridiculously smoothly this year, especially since I had company, in the form of sarcasma. Plus I hear I left Toronto just in time. Eeep!

We had a wonderful Christmas. canirl was here, which made me so happy (and now she's gone and it's very sad, boo), and vestra called on Christmas Day to talk to us. We had fun decorating the tree on the 23rd, and saw The Incredibles as our traditional Christmas Eve movie, which was cute if nothing special (sorry!), and once again, the stockings were completely obnoxious - each stocking (a leg of a nylon) was surrounded by even more presents that I couldn't quite fit in. I guess this is what happens when you have 5 adults filling the stockings. The rest of the day was wonderful, too, although I got cranky right at the end of the night when the last of the Christmas dinner guests just would not leave, and I didn't want to talk to them, but it felt rude to go to bed.

Actually, the whole week has been brilliant and full of good friends and piles of food. Today was the first day that hasn't been completely stuffed with activities, and I'm attempting to catch up with all of you, but it's a little scary. I think I've made it as far as G. :D

Then tomorrow we're playing games all day, and hopefully I can get ahold of a few people that I want to see while I'm here. Also I plan to read. And sleep. And then read some more, because that's what vacation is for. Plus I have a couple of restaurants that I need to visit while I'm here, even if it means taking myself out for lunch.

Have a wonderful day, you lovely people (what's left of it, at least)! I'm going to claim the cat and curl up in a chair with my book and a butter tart. Then maybe later I can get as far in my flist as M.

ps. I actually went running this morning! I know! What was I thinking?