let's make a blackout

Hi everyone,

I'm not usually political.. but this is a worthy message (and one I believe in) and it just arrived in my hotmail inbox from a dear friend of mine (who I happened to meet at Lush) I've pasted it word for word here becuase this seems like a good place to get the word out...

"Please pass this around. It's a French initiative that is just arriving in North America.

The 1st of February 2007: Participate in the biggest mobilization of Citizens Against Global Warming! The Alliance for the Planet [a group of environmental associations] is calling on all citizens to create 5 minutes of electrical rest for the planet.

http://www.lalliance.fr/

People all over the world should turn off their lights and electrical appliances on the first of February 2007, between 1.55 pm and 2.00 pm
in New York, 18.55 for London, and 19.55 for Paris, Bruxelles, and Italy. 1.55pm in Ottawa, 10.55am on the Pacific Coast of North America. This is not just about saving 5 minutes worth of electricity; this is about getting the attention of the media, politicians, and ourselves.

Five minutes of electrical down time for the planet: this does not take long, and costs nothing, and will show all political leaders that global warming is an issue that needs to come first and foremost in political debate.

Why February 1? This is the day when the new UN report on global climate change will come out in Paris. This event affects us all, involves us all, and provides an occasion to show how important an issue global warming is to us. If we all participate, this action can have real media and political weight.

***Please circulate this call to your utmost ability to your network."

Cheers,
Jill

fangs

fang, originally uploaded by smoooch.

a rose by any other name smells just as sweet

a rose by any other name smells just as sweet, originally uploaded by smoooch.

mighty travel notes

Mightygirl has mighty ideas and she also likes to shop. Big time. I heartily enjoy reading her blog and checkin out the Mightygoods. She was reading my mind on this one!



The Moleskine Small Info Book for Travel- This DIY travel guide is divided into five sections: bed, food, people, sights, and facilities. Tuck in some tickets to your destination city, and try your hand as travel writers.

I'm a little bit excited.

I'm leaving on a jetplane except I know when I'll be home again.

I'm leaving Vancouver International Airport on Friday, March 23 at 6:45 pm due to arrive in London, Heathrow the next day at 11:25am local time. Ever since I arrived in Paris at 11 o'clock at night and had a terrifying journey from the bus station to the only hostel I could find in a Portuguese area in North Paris, I vowed to never arrive in a strange city at night.

(I remember walking down a deserted street with my backpack (read bulls eye) on my back and realizing 3 guys walking slowly behind me. I started silently chanting 'don't show fear, don't show fear'. By the time I found the hostel, booked my room and dropped my backpack I was freaked out. I got into a shower and as soon as the water was on I started to bawl. Everything I have ever done since has been measured against that day. "If I can find my way to a hostel at midnight my first night in Paris, I can do anything.")

I'm leaving London, Heathrow on Sat April 14. I thought about flying home on Friday but its Friday the 13th. Umm. No thanks. I love this part.. even though its a 10 hr flight, I leave London at 12:30 pm and arrive in Vancouver at 2:30 pm on the same day. Funny how that works. Rest up for a day and back to the grind.

Did you count the days? I did. I'm coming home a week early. I'll be in Europe for 3 weeks instead of 4 due to the crazy Euro exchange rate. Thanks to the Canadian Dollar, one Euro will cost $1.57 Canadian and with the most basic hostel room running 25 Euro a night, I figured I could get in, get my shots, see the things I want, and get out without going broke. Plus I'll be missing wages and need to pay rent when I get home. How fun it is to be an adult.

One thing is for certain. In 1997, I travelled across Scotland, England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Morocco for 6 months on 6 grand and I'm glad I did because it's nearly impossible to go to Europe for 3 weeks for under 3 grand now. If only I took pictures back then or knew what the hell I was doing.

Oh, that squandered rail pass with three days left haunts a dark spot in my wandering soul...

a reason to go to Brussels

huntress interuptes

huntress interuptes, originally uploaded by smoooch.

evil scandanavian creations

We went there just to replace a bowl that broke. We planned it. Only 10 minutes. In and out. Ok? We braced ourselves against the splashy displays, cheap prices, utilitarian design and simplistic form. We steadied ourselves for the As-Is room. No amount of self talk can prepare you for Ikea. You get vacummed to the bins of rag rugs and shelves of glimmering glass containers with latch closers. Shiny pots and pans and bed sheets in a dizzing array of colors. Before you know it you are buying a garlic press and considering remodeling your kitchen and hall closets with matching storage containers. We went in for one bowl and came out with 4. Two bags of those itty bitty candles, a package of hooks, left over containers, a picture frame, 2 post with lids (to match the other one), and the best thing of all....

A small duck down travel pillow with its own removeable pillow case and matching storage bag. You know for those late night train rides to the next European destination or those cheapo hostel rooms with the lumpy mattress. Soothing comfort from home in a bag.

cry baby

Had she lived, Janis would have turned 64 today. Can you imagine that? What would she be doing now? What would she have done? She'd probably be running a tattoo parlor in Brooklyn. Ha. Here's a few things you might not have known before.

- oldest of 3 children, has a younger brother, Michael and a sister Laura.

-before she died, founded a corporation call Fantality, Inc, which is a combination of two words: fantasy & reality. Michael and Laura manage Fantality and her legacy to this day.

-She came from a comfortable middle class home. Her father was a cannery worker and her mother was a registrar for a local business college.

-She had 2 tattoos. One an ornate bracelet on her left wrist and a small red heart over her heart.

- She joined many high school clubs and was a member of the Glee Club and The Future Teachers of America club.

-She was a prolific reader throughout her life. She studied philosophy and sociology at Lamar State College and once aspired to be a key punch operator. She dropped out.

-Before she was a singer, she painted. Often staying up late throughout the night to finish her paintings. Many of them hand now in the Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur, Texas.

-She studied Art at the University of Texas in Austin. She played the auto harp and sang in the bars. While she was gaining some notoriety singing at Threadgill's, she was also voted "ugliest man on campus" by her fellow classmates. She once said, "They laughed me out of class, out of school and out of the state and I've been suffering ever since. It's enough to make you want to sing the blues."

Follow some links and see some photos..

nudie dolls from Dallas Texas

nudie dolls from Dallas Texas, originally uploaded by smoooch.

Strange yes. But for $3.50 a pair I couldn't resist. They hang in my bedroom as somesort of voodoo good luck thing.

tips on avoiding the monster

I'm not one of those people to heed warnings. I don't have 3 months worth of non-perishable food items waiting in case a natural disaster hits. I don't wear clean underwear in case I'm in an accident. Sometimes I forget to wear underwear at all. Like that time I was hit by a car crossing the street on that darkening winter day(tip: if you are going to get hit by a car, for thr love of god please make sure you are on the right side of the law. I travelled Europe on the settlement I received because I was in a pedestrian crosswalk. Driver's make note). My legs mangled, barely conscious and an ambulance attendant with a pair of scissors asking if they could cut my pants. I came to enough to say a definitive NO.

I should really be more prepared. Note to self: please equip yourself with a medical survival kit with enough bandages to handle a shark attack and enough rubbing alcohol to disinfect myself for days. Don't forget that claw hammer to make knocking sounds when your walls crumble from the Big One. Maybe I should publish a will on my blog??

And then there are those natural disasters that come with air raid sirens and loud and blatant warnings like the one in the press for months about the need for a passport to cross the border. Did I listen? No. Did I think it applied to me? No. Did I have any plans to travel to the US? Not exactly. I didn't think work would say yes to my plans. But they did. And then I had to tackle that monster known as the passport office. And just before the whole country decided to get one as well since you'll need one after Jan 23 if you are going to fly over the border into the US. (If you walk, crawl, drive, or dance over the border, don't worry, you don't need to be carrying a passport- yet.)

Well, I survived the process and it wasn't nearly the nightmare people have made it out to be. Here's some tips:

1.First thing you do is apply on line. This puts all your info straight into the system without them doing a thing. They like this. The program is finicky and seems to want to block you. Just hit continue and you're fine. It's like a juvenile obstactle course.

2. Print it off and get a good night's sleep. You're going to be up early.

3. Provided you have your proper ID and proper photos where you aren't smiling, showing teeth or refecting an human qualities at all, and everything has been signed by some sort of professional authority, get to your local passport office early. As in before it opens. Other people will already be there. Some as early as 5am. Bring a magazine, a book, a ball of yarn and a crochet hook, a laptop, anything to pass the time.

4. Get to the back of the line fast and stay positive. I got to the local Vancouver office at 7am. the office opened at 7:30am. There were about 150 people in front of me. It took 2 hours to meet my first Passport Canada employee. I was given a service number and I was expediated through the system because I had applied online. I waited another 1/2 hr and my number was called, which brings me to #5.

5. Be very polite and friendly. You will catch more bees with honey than you will with vinegar and this person will help you in your last leg of the stretch. Do not piss them off.

6. Pay your fees and wait patiently for your passport. Mine is scheduled to mail out on Jan 30.

Good luck.

Kerouac- 21st century style

Time Lapse Video of Guy Driving Across the Country

forget about it popping up

Very cool. For the family who thought they had everything.

breaking the hinges

Let's get a few things straight, Aries. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Facts are in the eye of the beholder. Logic is the opiate of those who are afraid of their feelings. Sorry if that sounds anti-intellectual. I'm exaggerating slightly in hopes of encouraging the free flow of your naked intuition in 2007. I want to prod you into cultivating so much emotional intelligence that you'll be able to out-argue your cynically reasonable friends. I want to help you rip off the locks on your doors of perception so you can see the magic that's just below the surface everywhere you look.

You can read yer own if you want.

miliner majestic

miliner majestic, originally uploaded by smoooch.

I snapped this photo in a local cofee shop. She stood out in the room in a regal way. I couldn't resist. She looke dup at me right after I took it and I just put my camera down and turned away. Normally I ask people permission but sometimes, you just have to take the photo.

swirl

swirl, originally uploaded by smoooch.

cringe worthy?

Feb 26, 1999

I'm here. I'm in London, England. It's all strange and almost unreal. I still feel as if I should still be on that plane. The flight was good and I slept. I even saw an episode of Bewitched. I found the tube and made my way to the Palace Hotel exit at Nottinghill. I'm scared and confused. I have butterflies and nausea. I feel as though I'm gonna collapse. I'm sick and it's raining. Everybody else feels cooler and multitudes more aware than I. If only I didn't feel so vulnerable and unaware. Scared. What am I doing here? Why did I come here? Please Gawd don't let me fall apart. Please alow me to be brave and secure. What do I do next? Where do I go from here? Please let me be good enough-strong enough to make it for 6 months. The only solace I have now is myself. I have only me now. I must protect myself and survive. I must be adaptable to changes. I will cope. I will survive.

I make it sound as If I've been shipped off to a survival obstacle course in England where I am competing against the fashionista of the European jet set. Actually thinking back.. that's sort of how I felt. It's the first entry in the journal I kept while I backpacked through Europe for 6 months. I had never been alone in a foreign country. I had barely travelled alone before that and I was clueless. I was also incredibly boring. The rest of the journal is filled with grocery and bus receipts and play by play commentary of what I did. Or more of the above- trying to talk myself into not feeling so scared or lonley. If I remember correctly, I felt that way for about 4 months. What makes me cringe is that I was 25.

The best grafitti reason to live in Edmonton, Alberta

Best Ever! continued, originally uploaded by Sara The Knitter.

The Listen Bird grafitti is one of my favorite things in the whole world and I keep finding new versions that some one has photgraphed and gratefully put on the internet. I first discovered the Listen Bird when I went home to Edmonton last August. I snapped this set of photos. By the looks of things there are lots more. Apart from seeing my best friend Vince Gasparri, this is a pretty good reason to go home.

The coke side of life?

CELEBRATIONS

I asked for a month off from work this spring so that I could go and photograph the Art Nouveau architecture of Brussels, Paris, and a side trip to Prague.

THEY SAID YES!!!

my nostrils flare in the memory

A few years ago (1999) I took a little road trip with my then boyfriend, Alfred. Alfred was much older, German, and coincidentally a baker. Thus, I was able to greet him in the morning with a hearty "Gluten Morgan". One late August day, we loaded up his bakery van with implements of torture (a mattress, curtains to hide our presence, a cooler, and a stack of reading materials) and took off headed for the birth place of Janis Joplin in Port Arthur, Texas (see this and this for some sort of explanation.). Texas- in the dead heat of summer. Did I mention that part? Naturally, once we got there and having sweated out any common sense left, noticing our proximity to New Orleans, we made the dash. I kept a journal for the whole trip.

Brousing through it, I did find this choice quote I recorded:

"You're a nutcase, and I'm your Savior."- Alfred, 08/31/99, 4:19pm

This is 5 pages in. Clearly, the trip was off to a good start. I hope I wrote some embarassing and ludicrous entry the time I was marching off down a side road after Alfred and I got into a heated argument. I must have been red in the face from either my seething fury or the heat and was approached by an Oklahoma State Trooper who asked me in a thick southern drawl if I was getting hit. Yikes. And do remind me to tell you about the time we went to Mexico for lunch. That trip was a barrel of monkeys, I tell you.

Here's one of the only photos I have from the trip.



Do you have those memorable moments recorded somewhere? Do you remember those times when you scribbled down something in a journal thinking it was poignant and worthy, almost surpasing your own current intelligence? So eloquent on print that you amazed yourself at your stellar intellectual abilities? Did you grab a beret, snap your fingers, go to a coffee shop and gaze at your belly button?

No- me either.

But did you write something that now makes you wince in reflection. Does it make your stomach tighten at the thought that it could land in the wrong hands? Like your enemy in high school who might still have a mysterious power to destroy your life in one fall swoop? Good. You should submit it to this chick.

I'm looking for my cringe worthy written down musings now.

Mom- If you're reading this..open that box I keep in your basement and feel free to read the pages of the half filled journals looking for some juicy tidbits written during those painful adolescent months where I obsessed about one bad apple or another or some other equally embarassing entry and feel free to enter it on my behalf. Email it to me and I'll post it here.

time goes by fast

striation's, originally uploaded by smoooch.

my how she's grown

Wow! How the time flies by! It's been one year today since myfirst post !! celebrations are in order!

WTF

The dome of BC Place Stadium collapsed at noon today after a heavy storm or wind, rain and snow. Seriously? We just had some of the feircest wind storms on the coast in recent history that brough down 1000 old growth trees in Stanley Park but did nothing to the dome. I guess today was the tipping point.

Weird weather people. It snowing in Vancouver and people are golfing in Toronto. Serioulsy, we need to lessen out ecological footprint on the planet. More on this topic latter.

I always knew Hepburn and I shared a bond, and George was always my favorite Beatle.

cleaning the gutters

A year's worth of wheat, dairy and sugar clogging my vital organs and arteries is about to get vacummed out. Vacummed out? Maybe rinsed out? Dispersed in some manner, yes. It's that time of year again when I decide to change the oil. This time I won't be chronicalling each day like a dietary diary though. But I do need to rave that today I was able to successfully maneover my way around a box of Krispy Kreme donuts that arrived in the office*. Nice front page on the donut site...Really? who do they think they are kidding?

*just so no one gets any bizarre visual of me sitting in a cubicle or "traditional" office setting, it's far from that. I sit at a desk, with a computer, near other people but everything else is probably a bit unusual, unconventional and I am unlikely to find it in any other work environment ever again.

flight

flight, originally uploaded by listen1.

This took me back. The winter grey trees with no leaves against the blue skies of an Albertan winter day. And the ever present cawing of a magpie nearby. We have crows instead of magpie's in Vancouver and this was snapped by someone in my hometown of Edmonton. They're probably also for enriching the grafitti in Edmonton. I talk about it here. Also very beautiful.

happy happy joy joy

Happy New Year!!!

Make sure to click on the link. It's a lot of fun.

I hope everyone had a excellent New Year. I'm excited about twenty 07. It's Year of the Pig which is the sign I was born into. Doesn't that mean something? And I'm also excited because for some reason at exactly 12 o'clock I decided to hurl my dinner and then dry heave in to the new year. Obviously I take this symbolically to mean that I have purged myself of all evil doinings and have released myself into the new year with an empty slate to be filled up with much healthier things.

My resolutions:

- to eat healthier with less sugar, dairy and wheat
- to exercise a little bit everyday
- to be kinder, gentler, and more patient
- to take great photos
- to learn new things and challenge myself more often
- to make more things and sell them for huge amounts of money at local craft fairs. Ha. maybe just make more things.

What are your resolutions?