Ghah, Internet! i cannot concentrate on ANYTHING today and i keep trying to do this incredibly mundane, repetitive task that I really need to finish for work and instead my brain is like IKEA! garden! SIMS! IKEA! chocolate-covered peanuts! Etsy! Emma! garden! nice weather outside! Harry Potter! like that, on and on and on and on. hey, jocelyn! forget about that spreadsheet! let's go ride bikes! says my brain, and i am powerless. so perhaps a blog will help me to get it out of my system. (side-lol: i love how old people call individual entries blogs, as in, I wrote a blog about that. or what have you. it's so adorably almost-correct.)

The great thing about working in a library is that all my co-workers are bright, passionate, interesting people who love books and ideas and tea and talking about books. never have i felt so consistently at ease among one group of people, as since i entered the library world. (That, and I get to order whatever strikes my fancy on interlibrary loan.) The bad thing about working in a library is that it is so quiet in here today, internet, that earlier i was spinning my chair in 360 degree circles just to feel the slight vibrations of noise in the air. i think we could all afford to listen to our radios at a reasonable volume, you know what i'm saying?

The other day i told james i was bored of being married, and he said, really? i think you're just bored of The Sims 3 and i had to admit that this type of incisive thinking is, indeed, why i am not bored of being married, at least not to him.

So far being married is almost exactly like being not-married, which is fine because i liked being not-married and got very good at in in 8 years. i do call James my "husband" now which i am trying to get more used to, although "man friend" has slipped out once or twice and I don't think anyone is judging me. And he gets an obscene amount of pleasure out of referring to me as his "wifey."

However, I am suddenly aware of the idea of a marriage, like a third entity that we've created and are responsible for. I never felt this way about relationship, not really, but marriage is much harsher. It stresses me out, a bit, having to care for something that seems so doomed to have words like "dysfunctional," "failed" or "unhappy" prefacing it. Somehow we obtained this marriage and now we have to keep it up. This has nothing to do with James, or I, as what exists between us feels as inalienable and comfortable and almost obnoxiously easy to care for as ever in application; it's this hypothetical marriage that seems so doomed, so fraught with pressure. We should just call it something else.

We could name it after a piece of IKEA furniture for example. We don't have a marriage, we have an ektorp. I feel more at ease already.

Because I don't care if you find me obnoxious

Here are all the things I made for my wedding.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

this will require all my librarian skills

On The Muppet Show, Kermit had a mug that had his name on it in a kind of gothic-looking script (similar to Old English, if memory serves). Since I started watching The Muppet Show on DVD I've always wanted one like it, but so far they prove impossible to find. An internet search for Kermit mug just brings up lots of mugs with pictures of Kermit on them--which is ridiculous since why would a frog have a mug with his own picture on it? Where would he get it? In the Muppet world, the Muppets are not famous enough to have their own merchandise I don't think. Plus Kermit is a pretty humble guy, I doubt he would own his own mug even if it was available.

ANYWAY.

The closest I've found is that the action figure comes with a tiny replica. Even that's a bit iffy since (a) you can't really see it and (b) who knows how accurate it is? I'm going to have to rent the DVDs again and watch more closely, then maybe make one on CafePress. Booh. Normally, whatever I require, the Internet will supply. I dislike this having to take initiative!

good stuff recently added to delicious. there are a bunch of these. i shall not categorize.

The Meeting Ticker - This is one of my obsessions. I do this all the time at meetings, calculate how much money is being wasted.

Texts from Last Night - Their slogan sums it up. Remember that text you shouldn't have sent last night? We do.

From the National post - 101 Muppets of Sesame Street. Amazing!

Green Edmonton - I am just happy that a blog like this exists. As the summer progresses I grow more and more obsessed with gardening and canning and other activities that 10-years-ago Jocelyn would have found repellent. I was recently thinking about keeping bees. And/or chickens.

The Internet Mapping Project

In the Wacky News category: Real People Fill In For Trafalgar Square Statue

From the New York Review of Books: Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood. I believe this is excerpted from his new book.

And finally: The Invisible Library, a list of books that don't exist.

wedding recap, pt I of IVXIVXZSJK

HI INTERNET!
It has been soooo long. Sorry.

I got married on Saturday! It was kind of fun. We had the ceremony on a beach volleyball court and I held a bouquet made of buttons. Our friend Colin nailed the "Mawwage!" speech from The Princess Bride. Our friends took photos with foam swords and mustaches. So far being married is a lot like being not-married, except for the following:

1. in the mornings James and I greet each other like CBC announcers. The first person has to say "Good morning, X!" and the other person says, "Good morning Y!" as if we have been apart for weeks and are thrilled to see each other.

2. Also our house is full of wedding presents and dirty dishes. I didn't anticipate how guilty I would feel about the presents issue. I tried to make the present obligation related to this wedding as minimal as possible, but people still gave us piles of cash and gift cards and thoughtful gifts. Since, as I mentioned above, being married is a lot like being not-married, and also since James and I both make a pretty good living and have no drug dependencies, it doesn't seem fair that our friends and families are spending all this money on us. Although I guess there WAS an open bar.

3. Our dog is not illegitimate and the other dogs don't make fun of her anymore.

4. Our fridges* are both full of leftover cake, the the point where we will not really want to eat any more of it is rapidly approaching.

*We have two fridges. They are not his-and-hers fridges or anything, there are just two of them. I'm aware of the energy wastefulness this represents and I feel guilty about it.

Things my dog reminds me ofBy Jocelyn

A mobster
Zuul from Ghostbusters
A gargoyle (like this one for example)
Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars (and also a little bit Yoda)
an iPhone (in fact I recently changed her name to "Emma iPhone Ackbar")

Edited July 15 to add: Kim Jong Il. I forgot about this one. Check it out: 1 2 I think it's the big, domey head.

The dog from Men in Black (note: this dog is just a pug, and my dog is part pug, so really this is not that exciting a comparison)

saddest novelty news story of the day: the same-sex penguin couple at the San Francisco Zoo broke up, reportedly over a girl penguin.

Getting married on Saturday

And it's making me grumpy. Albeit sort of comically grumpy. And with hair like a superhero.

Hooray! Daria is finally coming to DVD in 2010. I've never even seen the show for the most part--just the two movies that were released on dvd. But after I watched those I was searching fruitlessly for the dvd sets all over the wide internets. Happy Jocelyn.

Give me Soma Love

I might just have overly heightened literary reflexes, but I think if I were marketing a muscle relaxant I would avoid naming it after the hallucinogenic drug used for mass sedation in Brave New World.

Before and after

Check it: My plants have grown. They did it so slowly I hardly noticed.

Well, I'm a filmmaker. You see, I've always been in opposition to so-called cinema verite who are postulating that the documentary filmmaker should be like a fly on the wall. I say, no, you shouldn't be a fly on the wall; be the hornet that moves in and that stings. Just charge and take charge of a situation, stylize it, create something, fantasize about it. So my documentaries are part of what I do as a storyteller. And because of that, feature films are not that far away from my documentaries and vice versa.
-Werner Herzog in an interview with Art Beat

May I suggest you buy this? Childhood nostalgia edition.

You can buy things from the Girl Scouts online store including this handsome INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP RECOGNITION pin.

Also there are SO MANY badges I would qualify for but in particular:

[L to R]:
Yarn & Fabric Arts
Trivial Pursuit! [OK, Visual Arts]
Nuclear Power [or something]

Holy moley, am I ordering a bunch of these right now? I sure am. But on the other hand, doesn't it seem like such a scam that you can just BUY these? Like, shouldn't I have to start a fire with my shoelaces or something to earn them?


Disappointed in myself,
Jocelyn

So I was pondering the rash of recent celebrity deaths and I thought, "There might even be more I don't know about!" so I decided to check Wikipedia and of course there is a list. So. That's good, and depressing.

As you might have noticed I am in a total blogging rut.
So, here are a few issues I am having.

1. I am so so so so flighty these days. I cannot concentrate on anything. The only two things I want to do are (a) work on my garden (b) make my sims work on their garden. I'm serious. I'm obsessed and I have no idea why. I AM GOING TO RUN OUT OF PLACES TO PLANT PLANTS. The only other thing I like to do is watch my dog do funny things, but even that gets tiresome after awhile.

Sub-list: things I cannot concentrate on

• blogging
• wedding planning, or all the craft projects I planned to do for the wedding that I have not yet started (and it is in less than 3 weeks)
  
• work
• unpacking (yes, I am not done unpacking)
  
• all the library books i keep checking out and never reading
• not spending money (in case this is unclear: I keep buying things simply out of boredom)

Yes, I am playing The Sims 3. I bought it about a week after it came out and I have been finding a few hours here and there to play it. Last week I was in a meeting where we were discussing games (PC/console) with a narrative component, and I said that the Sims or Sim City should be on the list.

Woman in meeting: Ugh, The Sims. What a horrid little game.
Jocelyn: I will fight you. I just met you, but I will fight you.

Yep, I actually said that. It was kind of funny.

Anyway, it's not like The Sims 3 is revolutionary--it's similar to the Sims 2 but with a few improvements. The main reason I wanted to buy it is that they keep improving the architectural engine and the stuff you can get for the game, and in the new version everything is way more customizable. I basically just want to build things for my Sims. And, apparently, make them garden. I will build my Sims very beautiful houses!

2. I CANNOT STOP DRINKING THIS COFFEE EVEN THOUGH IT IS NOT THAT GREAT

It occurred to me yesterday that so far in my unpacking, I have yet to come across my wedding dress. Hmmmm. Oh well!

the passage of time

i am uncomfortable with how few clicks it takes to get to September from today in 30 boxes.

I read about this in the Edmonton Journal, of all places, so you know it's not exactly on the trending list on twitter but still-- Three Wolf Moon Shirt on amazon. The shirt itself is unexceptional. It's the extraordinary, crowdsourced comments meme that makes the link. I feel sorry for people who lived in the past.

update

Today I spent a few minutes at work searching to see if I could find a ninja costume for my dog to wear. But I didn't find anything good.

garden addendum

I forgot to mention that, because it's my own particular brand of nerdy, I bought one of these garden tool journals from disconsolator on etsy. I like to keep notebooks for everything, and if the notebook is appropriate to the task, so much the better.