I spent Monday this week helping my good friend Annelise do a "While you were out" redecoration of her bedroom while her husband Chris was kept out all day by his buddies. It was 12 hours of intense home renovation labour - we painted the walls, installed dimmer switches, sanded and repainted bookshelves and a dresser, installed an upholstered head board then reassembled everything. It turned out really well, and he was completely surprised so I consider it a job well done. Plus, she owes me big time for the next time I need an extra pair of hands around here.

During one of our runs to Home Despot for handles (noneof which were the correct size) I ran into an old friend from massage therapy school. Of course that happened on a day when I was wearing my painting sweat pants, a ratty men's undershirt, a baboushka and more paint on me than I got on the walls. Alas, it was nice to chat for a moment, but during the rest of our shopping trip I kept on my lookout to run away if I spotted any ex-boyfriends while in all my sexy renovation glory.

Yesterday we drove to Surrey to an electronics recycling place to dump old, broken printers, CPUs, a fax machine, VCR, DVD etc. but of course they weren't open on the weekend. Curses! They have a website but no posted hours - I really hate websites that have no useful content - and no-one was answering their phone when I called but I just really wanted all that crap out of my house. Well, it's out of my house now but taking up all the room in the trunk of my car. There was a part of me that wanted to just go throw it all in a dumpster but I decided that that wasn't the socially responsible answer so I will try again tomorrow now that I know how to get there.

I went to see the Delicate Art of Parking today at Tinseltown (our favourite theatre). It's a Canadian film that has been garnering good reviews and stars several people from the hysterical TV show Corner Gas (Wednesdays on CTV). The story, script and writing were good but it was shot in that handheld mocumentary style with shaky camera work and much spinning and blurring of the image. I spent the last 30 minutes of the film trying not to puke up my burrito. Not fun! The whole thing was shot in Vancouver and there was a bit of a meta moment when the people onscreen were driving by the theatre we were in watching the film and I'm like, "There we are right now." Well, not outloud because I try not to be a theatre talker. We had intended to go downtown after watching the movie but my poor tummy wasn't up for that at all so we came home and I had a nap. That was a good way to finish the weekend.

---

Another busy week finished. Plus a long weekend. Plus sunny, warm days. Plus a holiday that involves copious amounts of chocolate. Yipee!

I picked up Mum at the airport on Wednesday morning before heading off to work. It was good to see her and I felt a large load lift off my shoulders when I got to hand the care of Izzy back over to her. I worked a long day on Thursday then managed to have dinner with my friend Christoph whom I haven't seen for several years. It is totally shocking that he's one of my favourite people, a close friend since University, he lives in the same city as me but we haven't hooked up in years. I just don't quite understand what happens in friendships except that you have different interests and lifestyles and just gradually drift away.

I came to the realization the other day that Theovis and I have been together for 10 years now. That seems like a really long time, but it doesn't feel like it could be nearly that long. It also means that I have known all the people I met around the same time, who I think of as newer friends, for 10 years as well. It's weird. WEIRD!

On Thursday night, after my reunion dinner with Christoph - at a great Greek place on West Broadway called Kalamata - I hooked up with Jessica and some of her work friends for sangria and dancing. Much drinking - eventually involving vodka shots - and dancing ensued. We started off at an all-girl dance at the Wise Hall (near Commercial). A very lovely - and very confident - gal wearing nothing but pasties and a thong bikini was offering body shots of goldschlager in the centre of the room. Paradoxically, I have not seen that many mullets since my high school yearbook (I grew up in small town BC in the 80's - what ya gonna do?). We eventually left so that the straightest girl among us could have some guys to ogle but since the line up at the Odyssey was so long we decided to head back to our host's place where we could dance to her vast mp3 collection. Everything started winding down fairly quickly so I hopped into yet another cab and went home to my sweetie, who was still up playing video games despite it being a work night for him. I drank some water but not nearly enough and woke the next morning feeling pretty foggy and slow.

Yesterday I poked around with not much energy before heading off to acupuncture. It still isn't doing too much to help me so we're taking a more aggressive approach with more frequent and intense treatments to effect some change before my next bout of evil cramps. She also put in a couple points for my hangover and gave me some homeopathic remedy to help flush the alcohol out of my system. I don't know if it was the treatment or the time I spent sitting in the sun reading beforehand but I headed home feeling more crappy than ever and eventually ended up with a raging migraine headache that I was thankfully able to sleep off. I definitely understand why I don't do the partying very often anymore.

---

I threw a birthday party for my Theovis on Saturday night, which was a big hit. I had been super busy in the preceeding weeks so I didn't have much time for planning. Luckily I managed to pull it all together fairly last minute with much fun and lots of friends to help celebrate. After the success of the HeroClix birthday cake from last year, I didn't know what I was going to be able to do to even come close to that level of creativity. I ended up making cupcakes with various comic book interjections - Bam! Pow! Snikt! Kretch! - written on them in chocolate mousse. To make the cupcakes even more exciting I hollowed them out a bit and filled them with chocolate mousse before re-assembling them, icing them and decorating them. They were a big hit. I also took the same comic book expressions and wrote them on cut out pieces of posterboard and stuck them all over the walls as decorations. I'll post the photos once I don't have a happy kitty on my lap who would object to my finding the camera to download the photos.

Mum is coming back from her trip to Australia on Wednesday morning. As nice as it has been to have the privacy of the house all to ourselves, I am so looking forward to her coming home to take over looking after her cat Izzy. He is a whole lot of work. And as much as I love the little guy, I am looking forward to having more free time that doesn't involve insulin needles and multiple cat-box cleanings a day. And I really look forward to not having to listen to the unholy cry that he makes because he's lonely - anyone who has been over in the past 6 weeks knows what I'm talking about - which he will do even if I'm in the same room and he turns his back to me.

Speaking of free time, I'd better stop enjoying mine and get outside to mow the lawn.

---