On the Fence/ Pardon My Stray Code

Yesterday was a day of firsts.

1. Two of my friends who I had plans with for the weekend are sick and I'm not. Normally I'm the one who has to cancel plans thanks to my abysmal immune system. Maybe these really are working:


2. The Gray Hair I have been cultivating since 25 (thanks again maternal female heritage)has recently been winning the war. Yesterday I tried out a new weapon:
a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CLp1508dNBk/TZSkMhBMIMI/AAAAAAAAAB0/hQQwIZwefdw/s1600/clairol_nice_easy_hair_color_gray_Solution_Medium_Blonde_008.jpg">3. I also had to buy my first anti-wrinkle cream ... but because my skin can't decide if it is 31 or 15 I finally managed to track down this:
a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fr-aTspGXIY/TZSkunqv3yI/AAAAAAAAAB8/hLF6jVyw6I8/s1600/anti_wrinkle.jpg"><

Despite the grays and the wrinkles my Peter Pan spirit remain in tact. I get to color butterflies today at work!

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

I begin today with a confession: I am easily addicted to Canadian Teen Dramas.

Over a handful of years ago I fell into such a show. Its name was Instant Star. It aired after Degrassi, and at first whenever I saw a promo for it I mocked the concept. Then one evening I caught a few minutes and proceeded to develop a monster sized crush on this gentleman. Meet Kristopher Turner:



Seriously, It's an epic sized crush. I actually broke my "no fan girl letters" back in 2007and sent him an e-mail because I was really impressed by his performance in a Season Three episode. He wrote back the next day, thus cementing my crush forever.

This blog isn't really about him though, so moving on ...

I may have started watching Instant Star because of Kristopher Turner, but it was there that I first heard this:



and then this:



With that last song I fell head over heels in love with Alexz Johnson's voice.

Alexz Johnson is an amazingly talented Canadian Singer/Songwriter, who until this past week, quite frankly enough of the world had never heard of. This is all starting to change because after an Instant Star song was used in the Season One finale of Pretty Little Liars, #AlexzJohnson began trending worldwide on Twitter. She has a VOICE, not to mention heart, a way with words, and amazing strength of character. After being signed by then lost in the corporate shuffle by not one, but two major record labels she released her first indie album, Voodoo last year. A remix release of that album, Voodoo: Reloaded, comes out at the end of April.

May the whole world finally sit up and take notice! I'll be one of the first to buy tickets if she ever comes to my area ... hell I'd even save up and go to Toronto ... I'm still bummed I couldn't get up there when she was performing last summer.

Running With the Devil from her shelved Epic album Weight



Look At Those Eyes from Voodoo



and a new song Thief

Ouch

My heart is playing tricks on me and I've got the "Sunday evening - sick of doing laundry" blues. Maybe this face will help to cheer me up ... If only I could get her to come out of the front window!

Where are my singing woodland creatures when I need them?

This

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My Weekend

Happy Spring Cleaning Everyone!

A Jumble of Thoughts

While taking a break from paper writing I am trying to sort through the jumble of thoughts I have in my head right now. Please keep in mind that I'm a little over-emotional right now before you choose to judge this free association list.

1. Woke up today and learned about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, sigh.

2. While online trying to find out more about the above I saw a former friend's post about something totally unrelated to earthquakes. I actually commented for once, even though I kept second guessing whether or not I should. This got me thinking of how we once planned to celebrate my graduation from grad school, but for reasons I am not quite sure about we are no longer friends. Realize that this is probably a result of bad friend karma. I was a bad friend to others in the past and now it is coming back to haunt me. I need to take hold of what I am considering my Christmas Carol moment and work to be a better friend from this day forward.

3. In order to distract myself from these thoughts I got to thinking about a project I started planning last night. On twitter a while back I read about how Megan McCafferty was creating a Top 40 Songs list and I remember thinking that would make a great challenge. In preparation for paperpalooza this weekend I was looking over my playlists. I began to ponder what would make my personal top 40.
This is def. one that would make it:



4. While showering I thought about the fact that I liked my two favorite Elvis songs exactly equally. They are Suspicious Minds and In the Ghetto





So imagine my surprise when I then go to watch this week's episode of Harry's Law and I find out that In the Ghetto features heavily into the episode. Each episode so far of Harry's Law has made me tear up, but this one made me outright bawl.

5. So now I am back at step one where I am left wondering why life has to be so hard for some innocent people and while I ponder this my mother is watching the 25th Anniversary concert of Les Miserables and I know I will be crying again because a. come on have you ever seen Les Miserables? and b. This girl has a whole lot o' Eponine in her!

If a Tree Falls in the Forest ....

I'm sure we have all heard that age old question before, well I have a a new question for the technological ages: In the land of a million blogs if you have a blog and nobody reads it, is it still considered a blog?

I vote yes. It is my own fault no one reads what I write here. I haven't told any of my friends about it and I don't post the address anywhere. I sort of enjoy the vague, veiled anonymity of it all. I've always been a paranoid diary writer because I have a younger brother, and I had a roommate who once confessed to reading my journal. I don't know about you, but paranoia stilts my candor! For once I can write about things that I do and do not like, or the things that bother me and not worry about what people are going to say. It is funny that this lesson has been learned in such an actually quite public forum, but hey that's life!

Make Believe or Denial? It's a Fine Line.

I have nine days left until my Capstone project is due and grad school is over, and yes I am nowhere near done. Once I get my diploma I will have two new letters to list on my resume, an additional S41,000 in student loan debt, and absolutely no job prospects. This alone is scary enough, but it joins the jumble of work stress, family stress, and money woes, and enough has finally been enough this week. Fortunately Netflix is trying to distract me. Flipped arrived yesterday.

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draannen is one of the best books I ever read while running the Children's and YA section of a bookstore. Sometimes when you work at a bookstore if you see a book on enough lists you decide you will never read it (see Eat, Pray, Love). Fortunately repeatedly looking at those fuzzy chicks didn't put me off like it did one of my friends. The story is sweet, simple yet complex, and timeless all wrapped into one. It never fails to make me cry and feel hopeful at the same time, because I choose to believe that the ambiguous future ends brightly for Bryce and Juli, probably because I want to believe that the magic of falling in love for the first time can sometimes end happily. Imagine my surprise when I found out last year that Rob Reiner had turned it into a movie! Imagine my dismay when I found out that Flipped wasn't being released anywhere near my area!!

Time got away from me and Flipped came out on video. I put it on my Netflix list, but it kept getting lost in the jumble of other releases that were added to the queue. Until yesterday ...

As I type this the movie is quickly coming to an end. I still do not know if Rob Reiner added a more definite ending to the story, but right now I can definitely say the story is still magical. I'm just left wondering how fine is the line between make believe and denial really?