island adventures, part tres

on saturday, we had a huge bday party for juanita and bryn which was really fun. bestest part was playing "run around the house" which involves... well, running around the (outside of the) house. soooo goooooood. i am trying to think of ways to convert this to an urban apartment setting to not much avail.

anyhoo - that day, we made some apple cake with liberated apples and then headed over to decorate. but i stupidly didn't take any pictures. i was too focussed on enjoying the company and rocking out to timbaland and one republic's ultimate slow jam.

here are some pretty fleurs growing in a tub and niki borrowing some apples for our apple cake to make up for it.



thanks to everyone for such a great weekend!
xs and os,
jess

p.s. and now that the adventure is over, i'm at home and have my period and am generally feeling a little bloated. nothing a few days and a solid dose of vitamin i won't cure.

island adventures, part deux

then on friday night we went to the bar and it was fun. it was jam-packed with people, including 8 of our own, and there was good people-watching.

really good people-watching. case in point, monsieur daffy duck. turns out that some of us at the table knew him from high school, so after waiting to strategically take his pic, kim just called him over. and here are the pics to prove it:



turns out that even though we had been berating his fashion choice most of the evening, that he was wearing it for a good reason. his girlfriend had been pissing him off earlier in the day, so he decided to piss her off by wearing this sweater. solid gold!

and here's the birthday boy, bryn, and his lady, tacy:

island adventures, part 1

alas, this posting is not about some fabulous trip to maui, but instead is about a very fun trip to vancouver island. hot hot temperate rainforest island.

i had a roundtable in ladysmith and then toodled down to duncan, where i drove onto niki's farm and surprised her with coffee and chocolate. then she showed me around the place and we went for a nice walk to see if the surveyors had cleaned up the gate properly. it was full moon night, see?

here's niki in the field:

good things (my version of american thanksgiving)

here is a list of good things before i go away:

* i joined the YWCA and pumped iron. my biceps were looking gooooooood.
* smoked tofu sandwich from capers. so yum.
* i get to travel and do my last roundtable before the spring. i am going to ladysmith, nanaimo and then duncan.
* my intuition is telling me that it will snow soon.
* my friends call me and chat with me. (really, this is more important than it initially seems - julia called me from bangladesh, and lisa chatted with me on gmail last night from slovenia). oh and my cousins / friends write me (jules sent me a very nice note earlier this week).
* egyptian licorice tea (finally, i bought some)
* helping friends who almost get schmucked by cars. luckily she is alive and well and able to share delicious smoked tofu sandwiches with me.
* seeing the sun. although this impacts how much snow is on the mountains, i was definitely craving some vitamin d.

there - off to lay-dee-smith.
xo jess

blue randomness

blue is not just my fave colour (okay, it's turquoise) but it's also how i'm feeling.

this weekend was good - busy - with lots of present buying and making and lots of bodywork which is probably contributing to my pleasant pleasant mood (detoxifying, anyone?). and i'm not sure why i always forget that the november blues always sneak up and bite me on the ass right about now, and then there they are and i'm scrambling for my lightbox in the hopes of any mood other than total sluggishness.

so here are some reasons for being blue:
*i think it's cuz it's birthday season and i want to go to my brother's and niece's birthday party and would have done anything to have been walking around the detroit zoo instead of being at a yoga workshop all day yesterday.
*there is no daylight. the sun gets up around 8 am and sets around 4 pm. it is 11:30 pm around 6 pm, if you get my drift, and i miss the sun.
*it's raining, but not cold enough to be snow on the mountains, or it's not raining and melting all of the snow that's on the mountains.
*i've had so much bodywork and have been working on myself (counselling, yoga) for the past 3 weeks and i am frankly a little tired of myself.
* lisa just left for slovenia and although i have many many close and wonderful friends, i will miss her. (although, i did make her the cutest mittens out of my old sweater. my craftiness reigns supreme.)

arrgh.

how to solve having the blues:
* eat cupcakes and by cupcakes i mean really good vegetarian food
* work out intensely and distract myself from depression by staring at my sweet sweet pipes
* turn up the old lightbox
* start dating someone fabulous and get distracted by their issues and / or dreamy eyes and / or scads of cash that they want to spend on me.
* stop watching bridget jones for the 300 billionth time.
* go shopping and make myself look and feel fabulous

there. i almost feel better already. almost. now where are those damn cupcakes?

cinnamon angst

so here's the deal - now that i'm older, i am beginning to feel older, and quite possibly look older.

sure, i've got my woman body and i'm very comfortable with that, and yes, i have earned every laugh line i have (i think i had laugh lines at age 10 but seriously, isn't it better to have them than not?), but i have an aging thing that is quite unique, i think, to the strawberry contingent on the planet.

i think my hair is getting lighter and a little bit less red which is TERRIFYING. here's the history - i once met a friend of my grandma's who had pink hair. as in "i used to have red hair and now i don't because i'm old and it's pink". no shit. and she was really lovely and i really liked her, but she also served as the totem of the horrors of crimson fire aging.

so, with that image burned in my mind - it didn't help that she was in florida and wore outrageous sweatsuits all the time - we come to this fall where i am posting all of my pics of my travels and i notice in the self-portrait of me in front of a mountain in the kootenays that my hair looks a little less red. maybe it's the light, i think.

but then i hang out with my friend adam who is also a redhead, who now is strawberry blond since he's just past the big 4- 0. this is a man who had deep red hair, who is now strawberry (he likes to call it cinnamon sugar instead of strawberry). and then i go back to the picture, and think, "those ain't my highlights talking".

and then to top it all off, nicole kidman has to go and get a lot of press and ends up looking like this. look at it closely - she is GREY. with strawberry at the bottom.

is THIS what's waiting for me (without the botox freeze face and an effed up marriage to xenu himself and then another weird marriage to a fellow aussie who always has his shirt open and has more highlights than me)????

anyhoo - take note. get pics of the red because it's going down soon.

overdue

so, i've been 29 for 10 days now, and i have to say that i like it. funny how a number increasing by one can make you suddenly get your mojo back, and make you feel like you have your shit somewhat more together.

here are some pics of my illustrious birthday gathering, which ROCKED by the way.




i have amazing friends and i am one lucky lucky 29 year old girl.

(oh, and when i blew out my candles, i had one boyfriend left. sweet. now whether that candle remained lit because i didn't blow on it purposefully is a secret i will never betray. i do like, though, how it's one boyfriend, and not a series of jerkass chumps, cuz that would be depressing.)

be more constructive with your feedback, please!

i have a day off today and i cannot stop watching this. and when i am watching this, i cannot stop laughing at it. i am OBSESSED. enjoy.

ooh! ooh! it's my birfday!

just a quick post since i need to get down to important birfday things like lying on my couch waiting for the phone to ring.
i went on dlisted and here's michael k's list of fellow "birthday sluts":

Dolph Lundgren (50)
Gemma Ward (20)
Jasmine Trias (21)
Dwight Yorke (36)
Hal Hartley (48)
Adam Ant (53)
Dennis Miller (54)
Kate Capshaw (54)
Roseanne (55)
Anna Wintour (58)
Lulu (59)

while most of them are crap, which i already knew, look (especially col) at birthday slut #6. ADAM ANT!!!!! "stand and deliver" was probably a song about him getting his birthday presies. but, holy crap, he's 53!!!

craziness amongst the scorpios. what else is new?