In here life is beautiful… The girls are beautiful…

I actually stared at the first one for a long, long time and thought about a practical joke my parents played on wealthy friends of theirs a million years ago.

The next 2 aren’t as cool, but I can tell you that they are very soft. And tempting. And kind of gross. And not tempting at all.

I was extremely not tempted by this, the final item of today’s excursion. In fact. I stayed a minimum of 2 metres away at all times.

‘Cause ‘hope I find crotchless panties’ is the first thing that pops into your head when you’re browsing at V.V.

Other than these exciting items (which I did not buy), the trip was good because someone had donated an upright piano which was being played by a pre-teen boy. Played? Massacred is more like. Better than screaming babies, which is the usual sound track. Also, if you were wondering, all but the girl with chicks paintings are gone. My blog sold them, I’m guessing. I also found the outer box of Tramacet (a pain killer for moderate to moderately severe pain) being used as a book mark in a book titled “Pain Free Living for Drug Free People”. Makes sense to me.

(And if you were wondering, yes, I did buy something: a couple yards of toile type fabric, cream with a blue print.)

I got the ring I ordered from Midwest Alchemy in the mail today, it’s awesome. I’d always wanted a ring with emeralds-my birth stone-and now I have it.

And if anyone was wondering, my birthday is exactly 2 months from today. Get crackin’!

I woke up from a very strange dream yesterday: that Rush Limbaugh had come out of the closet to a not terribly positive reception. I was somehow friends with him or maybe an aide or assistant and he was a total mess, his shirt stained, his hair sticking up and dirty. He was a sad, broken man and I felt quite sorry for him.

It was such a vivid dream that I had to ask Shannon if it were true when I got up. He wasn’t sure, haha, but I realised it was because I had fallen asleep with Howard Stern in my ear.  He was talking about the republican senator that had come out of the closet recently. Brain, stop filling in the gaps!

This wing belonged to a seagull that met a terrible fate, I guess. The wing was all I could see. After being told that coyotes are on the rise and that they’re hungry, that was my first guess, but I doubt they’re taking over Dufferin Mall yet.

You may well be wondering why I go to Value Village so often, and that’s very reasonable. I’m on the hunt for vintage percale sheets. That is ALL. Well, ok, you never know when you really will find a treasure, I also look at hand knit sweaters and for yarn/crafting supplies. I’ve never found anything worth while, because the store is full of this type of win:

For real. It’s full length and yours for ONLY $12.99. It’s size 15 and I bet that it’s still there right now if you run quickly NOW.

But wait. There’s this:

Cute, eh? It’s short and made of poly-cotton knit. And it’s a mere $24.99. Srsly. A bally worn out dress that someone probably wore to bed or over their swimsuit for $24.99. Dresses at Winners-NEW DRESSES-average out at the same price. New, pretty dresses that are current styles. Or you could get this:

This dress not only has stains AND a pull in the fabric right on the front, not only has the seems literally coming apart with threads flapping in the wind, NOT only is 100% polyester, it’s also $24.99.

I actually flagged down an employee to ask her wtf is going on with these insane prices (and there were LOTS of dresses in this one size section with similar insane issues) and she waved me away, don’t bug me ask a manager. Which I did try to do but I was totally distracted by an incredible art collection. I was literally laughing my head off with a huge lineup of people right beside me, my phone out and taking pictures brazenly.

Sorry they’re blurry but I think you get the gist.

All by the same artist. But here’s my favourite:

Ho. Lee. Shit. Balls. Can you imagine that hanging in your house? Over your baby’s crib maybe? Oh. I love that painting so much. It belongs in the Museum of Bad Art.  Maybe they all do?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering-because you ARE-how much to bring to buy an original painting?

Don’t worry, they accept all major credit cards there.

I’ve been super lucky to have spent the last 2 weekends hanging out with old friends and their gorgeous (and well behaved!) children. No favourites here, they’re all lovely and somewhat jealous making.

Here’s Molly Jane, the grand finale to Ryan and Corrie’s family.  She’s got navy blue eyes, 2 teeth and no worries in the world. Her cheeks could win awards for extreme chubbiness.

Oh my, what a stunner.  All their children are beauties, all carbon copies of each other.

This most recent weekend I headed up to Kincardine to see Ashley and Scott and their kids and their vast and varied  animal collection. Bob. Well. Bob’s too hilarious for words. He’s a busy boy who’s in love with the world and wants to know everything about everything. These are his glorious green feet.

We also stuck stickers all over them, because green feet need further fancying.

Proud of his efforts.

Could you die?

Then there’s the infamous Meeps.  I didn’t get any really great pictures of her because she always seemed to be so close when I had my camera out. My…phone, sorry. She’s a snuggly little noodle that likes to show off her muscles. Oh, sigh.

It was a girl’s night in. Ashley and I drank 2 tetra packs of wine and Meeps had boob. Delicious, wine-filled boob.

And the animals. Again, constant movement, no really usable pictures, but this one of GooGooEyes (and Ashley, correct me if I’m wrong on that name) made me die.

Playing the cello.

I’m slowly but surely getting used to using Ubuntu. It’s been rather frustrating at times but at this point I have no desire to return to windows, and specifically Vista, at all. I just need to figure out how to get my Sirius to work.

Anyway, here are the 2 more interesting fabrics I got at Fabricland. The first is the deer print I found on the table of Xmas prints. It doesn’t look that festive to me, but what do I know?

I’m planning on using it (and other green prints) to make a souped up version of Denyse Schmidt’s Hills ‘n’ Hollers quilt. I want it to look more like trees. At least, that’s the plan for now.

This stuff, I don’t know. It just appealed to me and I don’t have any black based fabric and now I do.

It’s pretty silly looking, I know, but once it’s chopped into squares or strips, it will look totally different.

I got rid of Windows from my computer. This laptop came with Vista installed, and while I had no real personal problems with it, my computer got seriously, virally infected on Saturday so we dumped Windows and installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It’s nice. It’s clean and free and (in theory) easy to use. Well. Easy if you know HOW to use it, I guess, but as a total n00b, I’m feeling pretty frustrated by a lot of it, including the fact that it doesn’t support Photoshop, the program I use to manipulate my photos. That I post here. Ugh.

So I’ve installed GIMP and that seems to be pretty close to pshop but different enough to cause a certain amount of frustration too.

I was going to blog about my exciting trip to Fabricland yesterday, the one that’s shutting it’s doors by the end of March in Lindsey and has all it’s fabric and notions on sale for at least 66% off (I spent $26 and came out with an enormous bag of stuff) but in order to go  through my pictures I need more time than I have right now. I’ll take care of them later. Good practice anyway.

Here’s the ONE that I managed to whine my way through, it’s thread, obvi. But it’s pretty, shiny rayon variegated thread for quilting with and denim thread for…denim.

I hope it doesn’t gum up my machine.

As I already told Laura, I am having an all-choked-up sort of day and these 2 fellows patiently waiting their master inside the grocery store really captured my mood.

The lighter coloured dog has a funny sort of lumpy head that at first I thought was snow piling up. It’s -6C here, pretty chilly. They were gone by the time I was done inside.

My new hat kept my head warm, so that’s something.

In an effort to be healthier, I’ve switched up my normal diet. Of course, I’ve become addicted to this meal and eat it daily. Well, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing bad in it.

It’s a baked sweet potato with a mixed green salad dumped on top, with a lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper dressing and nothing else. Well, today-as in this picture-I included some leftover asparagus from last night and sprinkled it with nutritional yeast.  The yeast scares Shannon a little, but I find it to be largely tasteless.

I think I want a spritz bottle for the olive oil.

I also got a jar of brown rice syrup to put in coffee instead of refined sugar. Again, Shannon declined but I thought it tasted fine. Plus it gives me the excuse to make granola bars again. I take back what I earlier blogged about brown rice syrup!

Vagoo. It just sounds funny.

And it’s a pretty darn funny thing to spray paint on a building. This is the building formerly known as The Big Bop, corner of Queen St W and Bathurst.