Team Gingerbread and The Boy Who Lived

As I read, and re-read the final words in Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, I felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment as I wondered exactly who convinced J.K. Rowling that a trite epilogue would be a fitting end to an otherwise great series.

I just didn't feel that this was her best showing, recalling the days past when the release of the latest Harry Potter book would have had me sequestered in my room until it was completed - only momentarily loosening it's vice-like grip on my attention so that I could go to the bathroom, or prepare more rations.

That being said, I did enjoy the book immensely partly because I needed closure, and she did manage to tie up quite a few loose ends cleverly and succinctly without having the reader feel as if conclusions were rushed or overly convenient. My unofficial summer book club is in session.

Oh, Like a Blended Fruit Drink?

Team Gingerbread: I'm not sure if I like the new chick...
AirQuote: Who? Why not?
Team Gingerbread: Well, for one, she's wearing smoothies
AirQuote: What are smoothies?
Team Gingerbread: Jeans with no ass pocket
AirQuote: Oh my. That's a definite fashion misstep
(cue maniacal laughter)

Unrelated: it's Harry Potter Day!

I think we all secretly read postsecret so we can silently judge others [raymi the minx]

That is all. Have a good weekend!

Geek to Live/Skate or Die

I like to spend my summers reading (old habits die hard), which is why I picked up this book
before my manager's meeting so that I will have something to busy myself with when the rain comes back.

But for now, I'm too busy tooling around on my longboard to even fathom looking at a book.

The Archaeologist

The reasoning behind the name: My friend got really drunk and told his cab driver that the reason he could afford to live in such a nice neighbourhood is because he's a world famous archaeologist, when, in fact, it's because he still lives at home and it's his parents' house. He then went on to describe the various dinosaur digs that he'd been on, and I interrupted him to tell him that archaeologists don't dig up dinosaurs, that's a paleontologists job (I'm an anthropology major, and a huge nerd, hence my extensive penguin knowledge).

We were talking about the penguin (West Ed is home to a tiny little penguin - I believe it to be either of the Magellanic or African variety) and a friend had apparently never seen a penguin before asked The Archaeologist if our penguin was a baby, and he responded that that's what size all penguins were.

When she told us this part of the story, we interrupted with "Um, no that's not quite right. There are tons of different kinds of penguins and they range in size from 15 or so inches to like 3 or 4 feet tall"

We laughed pretty hard that she had fallen for his story, especially after the factually inaccurate archaeologist story, but we were more surprised that she'd never seen a penguin, or learned about them in school.

She made me look up species of penguins when we got home, and we laughed when we saw that one of the sites google had directed us to was intended for students in grades K-5.

Nerdish leanings

One book that changed your life
A Handmaid's Tale

One book you've read more than once
To Kill A Mockingbird

One book you'd want on a desert island
Anna Karenina

One book that made you cry
A Million Little Pieces (fabrication or not, it was impressive)/PostSecret (I'm secretly a total sap)

One book that made you laugh
Naked

One book that was best read as a child
Anything in the Sweet Valley High series

One book you wish you had written
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

One book you are currently reading
Primal Branding

One book you have been meaning to read
Freakenomics

One book that rolls its eyes at you from your bookshelf
Art of Happiness

One book you are ashamed to admit to loving
Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities

One book that made you think
Getting Past No : Negotiating Your Way From Confrontation to Cooperation (one of many self-help books my dad has bought me over the years. Sure they're trite, but they're also strangely comforting.

One person whose list I'd like to read
Avatar

Get your drink on!

Me and my roommates are obsessed with that 'Hands in My Pocket' CapitalOne commercial, so it was funny that Scott sent me Rick Mercer's parody Knee in My Package


I finally got my last T4 slip today so I can actually file my taxes, woohoo! In a couple of weeks I'll have a few hundred dollars to my name...which will go towards paying off my $300 phone bill.


Originally, I had planned on staying in to do my taxes (I know, total badass right?), but at around 7:30 tonight, Waffle texted me the following message:


Classy lady party tonight?


Obviously I called her back and confirmed that, as per usual, I would be drinking my face off tonight. Let's see if this time it ends better. I've actually got stuff to do tomorrow and can't afford to waste the entire day checking sitemeter/watching tv and wallowing in my hungover state.


wednesday night socials are so pit roast! keep it popozao

The Professional

...duck photographer. There's this little Dawson's Creek-esque pond by Alina's house and it separates these two apartment complexes. Apparently a family of ducks lives there. She lives by the False Creek Marina so it makes sense, but I decided to go around on the other side by the marina to take more pictures, because 12 pictures of mallards isn't enough. Pictures of mallards are like sunglasses; you can never have too many.


I busied myself with taking pictures of the marina because the night time ones didn't turn out so hot. I was all set to take more pictures of the ducks when some geese spotted me. I'm terrified of birds, have been since I was a kid. It's pretty irrational (except in the case of geese, whose beaks could probably break you leg if they tried hard enough). I just froze and hoped they wouldn't advance any further because if that happened, I probably would have ended up falling into the marina, gross.


I decided to be all touristy and bring my camera with me when I went out shopping. There wasn't anything good to take pictures of downtown and my shins still kind of hurt from all the walking, so I ended up taking the bus back to Granville Island and getting some curry.


I went to M.A.C. to get some eyeshadow for Latte and when I asked the sales girl for 'Swish' she looks at me and makes this weird sound with her mouth as if to say 'uh no'. She then asks if she can show me something else M.A.C.-speak for 'bitch please, you know you can't pull off that colour'. I laughed and explained that it was for my roommate; this is only funny because I'm someone who appreciates brutal honesty.


Today is my last day in Vancouver, my flight leaves at 11:30 am tomorrow morning, but I'm really tempted to go out and get really drunk tonight. This is of course, not a good idea, but I'm the queen of bad decisions so one more won't hurt right. Last time I got bombed the night before my flight, I almost didn't make it to the airport in time. My flight was leaving at noon and I arrived at 11:45am, I was trapped in line behind this family with 4 suitcases each. Because my parents had payed for the flight, I had their Aeroplan Elite card, and got to go through the Elite (shorter) line and basically sprinted through airport security.


decisions, decisions

I also heart iTunes

...because of this (iTunes Music Store link). K-Fed's Popozao EP is now available on iTunes! I think this made my day. I had the ministore turned on and was browsing my 1 star smart playlist when I decided to play Popozao(K-Fed describes it as 'a real Brazilian ass-shaker') for kicks. Imagine my surprise when iTunes tells me that the Popozao EP is available for purchase. $3.96 CAN gets you 4 different versions of the title track. We get the main (explicit), a cappella, clean, and instrumental versions. Definitely the must-have album for 2006!


Even though yesterday I had vowed to not take out the garbage, I realised that the culprit had already left for her reading week trip to Banff and as such wouldn't be back for 4 days, so I caved and took out the trash. I'm so anal-retentive it hurts. I'm not a huge fan of messy, but i can tolerate it. This is not the case however, when it comes to the kitchen and bathroom. I should actually try to finish cleaning the bathroom, but I've gotten lazy since i'm one of two people home for the weekend.

Honours is a waste of time

...as is downloading mp3 ringtones, but that's what I've been doing for the last 3 hours. I have a pretty major gender exam tomorrow morning and I've barely started reading. I'm at page 35 and I have approximately 130 pages to go. I haven't started reviewing my notes yet either, but they are all nicely typed up. Most of my time was actually looking for some ringtones from Ashlee Simpson/Lindsay Lohan. I ended up getting DCFC - Soul Meets Body, NKOTB - Step by Step, Bloc Party - Banquet, ABBA - Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, and the Super Mario Bros. Theme.

Some might call me a music snob, but that doesn't mean I'm above the rest of you. I still have some of the most terrible music in cd form, on my iTunes, and now in ringtone form. Even the worst artists have one song that's mediocre. Take La Lohan, I'm loving Magnet and Who Love's You right now. Sure, they're not exactly musical genius, but they're on a couple of my playlists nonetheless.

In other news, Latte is going to be the newest member of The Razr's Edge, our sorority's unofficial MotoRazr club. She'll be taught the secret handshake and given a ringtone to commemorate her induction.


*in case anyone was wondering, Latte is still the reigning champ of the Gateway Purity Test in our house. She beat me by 4 points. The only thing that tipped her over the edge is her sheer volume of sexual partners.

Low Talkers and Glass Unicorns

So I work with this dude, LT who is the lowest talker I've ever met.

It wouldn't be so bad, except for that the environment I'm in at work is counstantly loud and bustling(it's a bar, what do you expect?)...And LT is my supervisor.

I feel really bad sometimes because he's always asking us to do stuff for him but we usually can't hear him, and just kind of nod while looking from his wordless mouth to each other with slightly amused grins on our faces. You can only ask someone to repeat themselves so many times before you start looking like an asshole.

I was chatting with one of the servers at work last night because it
was totally dead (I normally finish my shift at around 3am and yesterday I finished at 12am) about collections we had growing up and we discovered we had both had extensive unicorn collections. The weird part is that neither of us had expressed more than a passing interest in them, but that failed the stop the deluge of glass unicorns and unicorn-related paraphernalia.

My collection consisted primarily of glass unicorns, but I had all but forgotten about it until sometime last year when I had asked my mom to mail me some of my stuff, and when the box finally got here, I opened it up to find 3 glass unicorns. I'm not really sure what my mom thinks I need glass unicorns for (spicing up the boudoir? more like the ultimate game killer), but those three represent less than 5% of the unicorn population in my room at home.

I forgot to add that the half-naked drunk dude with no pants in the post below is a friend of mine. I hadn't really looked to closely, so I thought it was someone else, until last night. I use the term friend fairly loosely, as he's only really an acquaintance that I know from class, and he's a regular at our local watering hole.