I am having one of those irritating days where I'm busy, except I can't get anything done because I'm waiting on feedback from everyone around me. I feel stabby. Even my super-professional cardigan isn't making me feel better.

ALTHOUGH, I love cardigans quite a lot. I have only started wearing them recently. I like how they can be for men or women. I also like how they are part of the incredibly puzzling "twin set". I think when I was a kid I read books with twin sets in them and just never had any idea what they were. The fact that you can still buy them seems ludicrous, like being able to buy giant cars with fins. I still don't really get it. Why would you want to wear a shirt with a sweater that is EXACTLY THE SAME COLOUR over top? That defeats the whole point of layers, in my opinion.

ALTHOUGH, ALSO, we did have leftover event-coffee and soggy catering garlic bread at work. Yum. I feel kind of sick now.

Important announcement

My favourite thing today is v-neck sweaters with button-up shirts underneath.
That is all.

Unsolicited blog entry

Today, via how about orange, I discovered the bureau of communication. This website lets you generate fun unsolicited communications, like invitations, acknowledgements of holidays, or this "unsolicited feedback" form I filled out about my pants:

I really do love these pants. Because I'm pretty tall, I have trouble finding pants that are long enough. But the ones I am wearing today are very long, so they dust the toes of my (high-heeled) boots; they're plaid; and they make me feel hot, and powerful, like I might fire someone. If I had anyone that I was in charge of who I could fire, which I don't, except my stupid office plant, and I can't even fire good old TBA because he is mostly dead. (Seriously. My whole office keeps enquiring after my plant, and I have to keep re-stating the sad truth: this plant is NEVER. GOING. TO. RECOVER.)

So go ahead and send me some unsolicited feedback, if you want, but it better be about how hot I am. I don't deal well with criticism. This would also be a fun thing to use for VD--you could produce some unsolicited feedback for your honey. But there, again, tread carefully. People can get kind of sensitive about VD.

That series of jokes is getting funnier and funnier.

Hot love on the hot love highway

James and I watched The Office Special (the Christmas episodes) tonight. I have now watched the whole British Office and I am ready to start on the American version--fortunately, since my ignorance about this show is alienating me from my peers. As such, I am humming "Freelove Freeway" until further notice. (This is the song David Brent plays on his guitar in one of the most excrutiatingly embarrassing episodes of The Office. It goes, "Free love on the freelove freeway, where the love is free and the freeway's long." And then it gets better.)

It's Canadian Finals Rodeo week (weeks?) here in Edmonton. This is such a weird time of year because there are people in cowboy hats EVERYWHERE, and as James pointed out, "not in an ironic way." I kind of like this, however. It reminds me that where I live is only one of several Albertas. I don't really like visiting the others, let alone living there, but I like being reminded of their existence. It's refreshing to remember that others construct reality differently from us. Also, I think if I pay $5 to the United Way, I get to wear jeans to work for the whole week.

Just around the corner from me is a beautiful old school building that was built back when Edmonton was a wee city in arms. It's one of those utterly charming, traditional red brick schools that looks like somewhere you would go to learn about The War, or get caned. People book weddings and/or wedding photos there all the time, and yesterday as I was walking home from lunch on the South side, a whole bridal party was standing outside the side door, smoking, even the bride in her white dress and a scarlet cape. I loved the juxtaposition of formal attire and informal standing-around-smoking and had to remind myself to keep moving so as not to appear weird.

Unemployment day 2: Projects

It's important for me not to lose sight of my goals. As such, I have devised this list for today:

1. Get my dwarf to Artisan-level cooking. (This involves much collecting of Zesty Clam Meat, Giant Eggs, and Soothing Spices.)
2. Solve computer spyware problems
3. Clean out closet, Eminem-style:

left: Before. Right: After. The left-hand picture is completely unposed, that is genuinely what it looked like on a long-term basis. The sad thing is, that the right-hand picture is AFTER the removal of three garbage bags of clothes from my closet. And it actually looks like MORE. But that is because everything has been laundered and hung up. I didn't even know I knew how to fold sweaters.

It seems like such a waste to get rid of clothes, but I decided that since I am giving them to Goodwill, it's actually a waste NOT to get rid of them since I never wear them. And this way I can probably buy them again when I find them at the thrift store (where many of them came from in the first place), exclaiming, "Oooh! A mechanic's jacket that says 'Dave' on the pocket! And a 'Traction King' shirt with a picture of a tractor on it!" (Yep, I decided it was time to get rid of those two. I can't really see myself having occasion to wear either of them again, as awesome as they are.)

Tomorrow I shall give my kitchen the Closet Treatment, get passport photos taken, and get said dwarf to Artisan-level LEATHERWORKING. And then on Friday I will kill myself, having run out of projects to distract myself with, and being confronted with the reality of my own uselessness. But at least when whoever comes to clean out my apartment after I kill myself, it won't be that hard.