Home

This letter (late though it may be) comes at a rather opportune time as I have just moved from one home to another, did the same almost two months ago, and intend on doing it again in the fall. Home is a tricky word; it means a whole lot of things to a whole lot of people. To some, it is the place they sleep most nights, to others it is the place they grew up, to still others it is places where their loved ones reside. To me it is all of the above.

My first home held that honour until I was 5. It was a little rancher that I shared with my parents, brother, a dog named Coco, a cat named Rocky and various daycare kids. Although I don't have many memories from those ages (I blame and incident from when I was two were I fell down a set of wooden stairs at a place my parents were thinking of buying as a summer home in Dad's hometown in the Kootneys), the two that stand out, perhaps not because they are actual memories but because I've heard them talked about a number of times, are being placed by my brother on our dogs back for a quick jaunt around the backyard, and being bundled up in a blanket in my mothers arms on the front step in an effort to quell a raging fever. I cannot, however, for the life of me remember what that house looked like on the inside.

My second home, where my parents still live and which I therefore still consider one of my homes, lies just around the corner from the first one. In fact, although we did use a moving van for many of our items, there were a few that we just paraded down the road. This house was a step up both in yard size and height. My brother and I were both increasingly grateful for the second floor as we grew older and wanted some place to get away from the daycare children who invaded our home on weekdays. This home has the most memories attached to it as I lived there until I was 19, and when I go back to visit (which is relatively often as it is only about 45 min away from where I currently live) it often feels as though I never left, until I go up to my room and none of my stuff is there.

My next home was the first time I had really had to pack up and move all my stuff, and therefore the first time I realized how much crap I possessed (a problem which has only been exacerbated by working at a thrift store).  I had taken a year off of schooling to work and make some money and try to figure out what I wanted to do with my life (still a work in progress), and one day I went in to a coffee shop where a friend worked. She asked me what my plans were for the next fall and I said something vague about maybe going to college for something or something and she suggested that I apply to Camosun College and move down to Victoria with her and her boyfriend; having nothing better planned, or anything planned really, I said sure, why not. Eventually the plan morphed into the three of us and another friend, Erin, finding a place together, but then the couple decided that they wanted to have a place of their own so Erin and I started looking for a two bedroom. We were extremely lucky in that we ended up getting the first, and only place that we inquired about. The feature of this place that probably anyone who visited us there remembers, are the stairs of doom. When our landlady's mother converted the house into an up/down duplex in the 70's  she got the stairs that led to the upper floor door from a boat wrecking yard. They are boat stairs. They steps are relatively short, with slightly longer than normal vertical space in between them, and there were a lot of them. It was really surprising that none of the mildly inebriated people going up and down those stairs ever fell and broke something. That was my home for just over one and a half years.

My next home was sort of an intrim home, but also one that I always sort of feel is home, as it is where my maternal grandparents live. Erin had decided to move to Calgary at the beginning of April, but wanted to move back to her parents' during March in order to save up a bit of money. I had a friend who had been trying to convince me to move in with her during the summer while her roommate went back to her parent's place, but that wasn't available until the end of exams, so I had to find some place to live for two months. My family has always been quite close; my mother's parents, siblings, and their families have lived within 45 min of us my whole life so we get together often for our mandatory bi-monthly Sunday family dinners at Granny and Grampa's as well as attendance at the kids' (my brother, my cousins, and myself) various games, performances, etc. My grandparents are also extremely sweet and kind people who when I broached the subject of possibly living in their spare room for a couple months said I'd be more than welcome. I had already stayed there a few times house sitting and the like, so it didn't feel like a new home, I was simply there far more often than I had been previously.

The newest home is not even 24 hours into being so and therefore I don't feel there is much to say about it besides how stoked I am that my new roomie is my roomie.

Alright, now for my wrap-up activities.

In the world of webcomics I read, H is for Happle Tea, a webcomic created by Scott Maynard. It is a comic "about mythology and other things" and new comics are always accompanied by an interesting blog post, usually explaining the myth that he has adapted for the lulz, or simply expanded on slightly because it is always hilarious.

As a special treat for the extreme lateness of this letter, you get two songs.

The first, along with covering a song that I rather like, this is one of the cutest things I have ever seen, and never fails to make me smile.

 The second is an awesome song, with a friggin amazing music video (which I enjoy all the more due to one of my favorite people from my favorite movie)

H is also partially for Holy Crap I'm Behind, but to those that know me this shouldn't be too unusual or unexpected. I shall try to get through all of the remaining letters before May shows up and ruins the party (replacing it with an absurd amount of birthday parties) but we'll see how that goes as I have 19 letters and 6 days.

G is for Geekery

Actually, first of G is for gomennasai, which means "I'm sorry" in Japanese. I only intended to miss one day and to make it up on the Sunday but it kinda got away from me.

Anyway, I thought I would take this post to address the "mildly geeky" tag I have given myself. Since we live in a largely capitalist society, I though I would do this by going on a tour through my geeky material goods, so it's picture time!

Here they are all together one big happy family (with the exception of three I forgot about, but we'll talk about those later.)

My geeky shirts of which there are definitely two missing, my Know Your Mushrooms shirt (in white) and my Donkey Kong shirt (without the smiling male). I included my Rocky Horror shirt because some may argue that my love of musicals is a form of geekyness (although I'm not sure which term is more appropriate for musical theater afficionados: geek or nerd). There is also a modicum of geekiocity in my love of Jhonen Vasquez, or more specifically Invader Zim and even specificallier, Gir. More traditionally geeky are my Transformers, Wolvering, Mushrooms, and Donkey Kong shirts.

Now these aren't exactly geeky in themselves, but they are the tangible representatives of one of my main connections to geekdom, webcomics. There are 58 that I read that update on fixed schedules between 1 and 7 days a week, and 28 that update randomly (some in that folder haven't updated in over a year and I like them too much to delete them, but most update at least once every week or two). One of my favorites, and one which updates every weekday, is Questionable Content, a charming, character driven comic with an occasional extremely foulmouthed yelling bird interlude (the giant stuffy).

I'm not entirely sure how justified I am in my geekiness re: Star Trek, as I'm not sure I have ever actually watched an episode in its entirety, although I have seen the most recent movie, but there is something about Captain James Tiberius Kirk that just draws me to it, and I think I may need to add it to my growing list of ridiculously daunting series to watch this summer. The dancing Riker I picked up at work a while back. He's on a pedestal that lights up and makes the transporter noise, and the necklace I got for Christmas.

The book on the left is an amalgamation of the script, sheet music, and various extras from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which is an online musical that Joss Whedon et al dreampt up during the writers strike in 2008 and is pure geniosity. The other is the first of a series based on the Firefly/Serenity Series which one of my friends blogged about for her F post. I think she sums it up quite nicely, and yes, I am one of those that she converted. This super-mini-collection could also be labeled A Paperback Ode to Nathan Fillion/Joss Whedon. (Oh yeah, speaking of Joss, Buffy is another series I think I probably need to watch this summer.)

And of course,

My Doctor Who swag. All three of these were gifts that I recieved from my fantabulous friends this past Christmas. I would also like to note that the Dalek is motorized and motion sensing so when turned on it roams about until it comes upon something to yell "EXTERMINATE" at, and due to a special mechanism it rarely falls off of tables and the like, but is perfectly capable of pushing other things off, which is why I named it Richard (because it's a Dick).

To conclude this much belated post, I am going to try something out. I'm going to end by putting up a link to a G webcomic, and post a youtube for a G band/song both of which I may or may not write a little something about depending on my mood and which I choose (since as of writing this I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to link). I'm going to try and do this for each subsequent post as well (although obviously not with G) and I might edit my antecedent posts to include them as well.

Comic: Girls With Slingshots. The creator of this is good friends with Jeph Jacques, who writes Questionable Content, and I'm pretty sure that's how I found out about it, and it is similarly a character-driven comic.

I can't remember exactly when I got into Goldfinger, but I'm pretty sure it was because of their 99 Red Balloons cover. They have some pretty funny(some bad language) songs, and I quite like their sound.

I could also have used a Great Big Sea as I they were probably one of my first favorite bands, and I enjoy their music to this day.

So what do you think? Am I a Capitalist Swine for quantifying my geekiness by material possesions? Should I continue posting these links at the end of the post? Is David Tennant the best Doctor, or is he simply the most excellent? Do you like my posts better when they are formatted with a centered alignment or should I align it Chaotic Neutral?

Flatulence

          Don't even lie, you saw that title and laughed a little bit. Or maybe a lot a bit; I wouldn't want to assume. You did this because fart jokes are funny. Paul Rudd (1:09 and 4:22) and Jason Segal (0:47 and 2:04) know what I mean.

         However, I actually intended this entry to be a bit about film, so film ahoy! I have often noticed that when watching a movie seeing an actor that I really liked in another film ups my enjoyment of the current movie. I specifically noticed this last night while watching Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in which the main character's brothers are played by Jeff Murdoch from Coupling and Johnny Quid from RocknRolla. While one left me expecting him to say something horribly awkward, I was immediately able to see the other as a bit of a violent hothead. It never seems to go the other way, with a character from a film I didn't like bringing a movie down for me which is definitely a good thing. Sometimes, however, it doesn't do either such as in the case of Insidious where I just kept being pulled away from the already kinda bizarre plot by remembering the Dad character for his role as a douchebag FBI agent in The A Team.

          The final thing that F stands for today is Flickchart which is an excellent movie ranking site. If you decide to sign up at me as a friend (Monquiis) and we can compare movie lists.

          A bit all over the place today, but with that I say farewell for now.

Every Now and Then

          As many of you have probably experienced, I have what I think of as a highly associative brain. People will say something and it will remind me of a song lyric, movie line, comic strip, etc. This may be partially due to all the various media that is shoved into brain providing me with those associations, but that is beside the point. I have already mentioned one common one I fall prey to in this, the first post of my blag. Another quite common one is that whenever someone uses the phrase "you people", I almost always say out loud (and if I don't I say it in my head) "What do you mean you people?"


          My brain often does this all on it's own with no prompting from me, which can result in things like getting Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood stuck in my head when someone mentions/plays Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend because obviously they are the same thing (and since I can't find a clip of the Vicar of Dibley episode wherein Alice provided me with that wonderful connection, here she is rambling about  I Can't Believe It's Not Butter).


          I'm sure there are many other examples I could give you all that I just can't think of right now, but one that my mind never supplies me with was the inspiration for the post today. Every now and then I use the phrase "every now and then" and although I have no problem with it and can use it without any side effects, it always seems to cause my delightful friends to burst into a rousing rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart. Because they're dicks.

Doctor Who

    I have mentioned that I am mildly geeky, and one aspect of that geekiness is a fierce love for Doctor Who. While I have not seen any of the old-school seasons, I fully intend to and may make that a project for this summer in order to fill the non-schooling months. I started watching about halfway through the first season which featured the fantastic Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor. I pretty much fell in love and was crushed when he was replaced with David Tennant (whom some of you may know better as one Barty Crouch Jr. [also, mostly to the Blaseckies, how did I fail to notice that Barty Crouch Sr. is Owen]) This crushed feeling was quickly replaced by a massive crush, most definitely helped along by the knowledge that the good Doctor was now secretly Scottish. After three glorious Tennant-filled seasons, the sonic screwdriver was passed on to Matt Smith. While I firmly believe that David Tennant will always be my doctor, Matt and his bowtie seem to be growing on me and I am super excited for the return of Dr. Who on April 23rd with The Impossible Astronaut.
   The show has made me cry on numerous occasions, and there are a couple episodes I cannot watch with the lights off, and I cannot wait to see what they have in store for the upcoming season.

For those of you who have yet to encounter the wonderful world of Who,
here's a crash course:

   Well, that is all for today. I shall leave you with one of my favorite jokes.

Knock Knock

Who's there?

Doctor.

Doctor Who?

Correct.

PS: It also has the added bonus of John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness

Cheerful

     On this, the day of the C post, we remain in the realm of my work. In yesterday's post I mentioned my "work smile" this smile is rather similar to my dance smile in that it is not always genuine. A rule I generally hold myself to is that while I am at work I will remain if not genuinely cheerful, at least cheerful looking. I believe that it is good customer service, and studies have shown that smiling can actually make you happy. I generally try to keep a bit of a smile on my face at all time, but at the very least if I'm out on the floor and make eye contact I will give the customer a smile, and when I am at till I always greet customers with that smile firmly in place.
    
     I'm afraid that it is a very small post today as I am heading out the door for Riella's birthday celebrations. So I will leave you with one more thing.

Bags

     More specifically, "would you like a bag today?" Alternatively, "would you like a bag for that/those?" Or even just "would you like a bag?" Sometimes, if the person is hard of hearing, it is repeated simply as "bag?" However I say it, I say it over and over again during my 8 hour shift at the thrift store I work. What I am looking for in reply is either "yes (please)" or "no (thank you)", or even "no (thank you) I brought my own". The polite addenda are not necessary, but they are much appreciated and these replies answer my question in the best way possible. However some replies to this question are not so super. 
     - "If you have one/if that's alright" - Of course I do/it is! I would not have asked you if you wanted one unless I had one to offer and had made peace with giving it to you. I have not yet reached the point where I snap and offer people bags just to say "WELL TOO BAD BECAUSE YOU DON'T GET ONE HAHAHAHAHA". And yes, there was a "yet" in there; you never know what will happen on a last day of work.
    - "Just a small one."  I'm sure you don't intend it to sound like you are insulting my intelligence, but you are. I am not so inept at my job that I will decide to put a single piece of clothing not in one or our normal bag-sized bags, but one of our large bags. In fact, I will occasionally put probably a bit too much in a small bag because I am loathe to switch to a large bag once I have made a commitment to a smaller one. The only time this is acceptable is if you only have a very little object and are inquiring as to whether or not we have bags smaller than the regular bags, but in that case it should be phrased "do you have a small bag?"
    -"Yeah, sorry but I do. [Some explanation as to why you need a bag, since you usually bring your own]." The sorry I can forgive because we are Canadian [I AM CANADIAN], and have a National tendency towards apologies. However, I really, really, really don't care why you need a bag even though you are super environmentally conscious and hate to kill plastic trees. I'm not judging you for using a bag, and I. Don't. Care.
    -That brings me to one of my most hated: "No, I'll save a plastic tree." This was a bit witty the first time I heard it. However, that was a long time ago, and it has not gotten wittier by any stretch of the imagination. It just makes me have to work really hard to keep from rolling my eyes and to keep my work smile on my face.
     - One I run into only occasionally in response to the bag question is "I don't care." This is a bad response for the same reason that it was a bad response to questions such as "would you like light or medium roast?" or "would you like to sit inside or outside?" The flaw in the response is that I CARE SO MUCH LESS THAN YOU. I just care about getting an answer to my question so that I can get you through my till and ask it to the person behind you.

     Thank you for popping by. Hopefully you enjoyed my slightly ranty and belated post, and hopefully you will stop by tomorrow for C. It may or may not be for Cookie, I hope that is good enough for you.