Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:
On the first watch, amazing. Edge of my seat. On the second, I fell asleep. That may or may not be because I am at the tail end of an exhausting 24-hour run.
So. sleepy.
I've been putting together a playlist for our HP party next week and thought I'd share some favorites.
( My dad’s always there to open all my doors / You have to call a Patronus just to catch a glimpse of yours )
I want to post photos from the Stampede eventually, but until then, this article gives a very good idea of how wet we were. Those girls were standing just a few people away from us at the stage. Simple Plan wasn't even due to perform for another five hours or so. Simple Plan fans: totally nuts.
My birthday was exhausting and amazing and my friends rock a heck of a lot. Drove up to the Calgary Stampede, did a billion things, saw Serena Ryder perform after waiting in the pouring rain, drove home, went out to dinner with everyone, came home to eat amazing cupcakes, and got beautiful gifts.
I am DEAD. DEAD, I TELL YOU.
Canada Day rocked. We were sitting around mumbling about when we should go see the festivities, when I read out that there would be food kiosks running until 4:00. Bronwen went "FOOD KIOSKS. LET'S GO." Cindy, understandably befuddled, said "What? We're going now?" Bronwen put on her stern voice and said "THE FOOD KIOSKS ARE ONLY OPEN UNTIL FOUR, CINDY." It was kind of scary.
We walked down to Henderson and mingled with the masses of red and white. Got our obligatory burgers. Wandered around and settled in to watch the performances on stage. Silently boo'd at the conservative MLA and boggled at the fact that we actually call our mayor "his worship."
Then the bellydance company I used to take lessons with came on to perform a circus-themed set. It was really cool in theory (we decided that the tribal dancers looked like Mana circus visual kei cosplayers, which was a pretty awesome combination--all black and blue with dreadfalls and pinstriped turkish vests over coin bras and blue tights and unf). But they spent so much time doing the circus act and jumping between performances that it was a lot of scrambling and not a whole lot of dancing. I was pretty disappointed, considering I know what they're capable of. I hope it was simply awkward this time because it's all new choreography. They did, however, do a very brief tribute to MJ in their set, which got the crowd super-excited.
Then Jordon randomly called and invited us over to his house. We got to see his room. I have never witnessed such an epic shrine to j-rock in my life. There was a stack of CDs on the floor that reached almost to my waist. "Are those all your CDs?" Cindy asked. "No," he said, "those are just the singles." He owns more j-rock CDs than my entire music collection. He owns limited editions of everything. He owns LPs. He owns CDs that come with weird gifts in them, like cross necklaces and t-shirts and perfumes. He owns DVDs of who the heck knows how many concerts and music videos. There are posters on all the walls.
I don't even like j-rock. It still all sounds the same to me, even when they're all talking about whether this guy sounds more like Gackt or more like some other guy. How can they tell? But there is a lot of amusing prettiness. If you just, like, mute the videos, they're pretty entertaining. I could watch Kaya forever.
Also the first time I've met someone else who has actually listened to Anna Tsuchiya before. She's basically the only Japanese artist I still turn on regularly along with my other music.
Also the first time meeting someone who has HEARD of Shazna. Shazna is the HAPPY visual band! Someone gave me their album in high school and I loved it for being utterly ridiculous. I'm pretty sure that this video ranks among the top ten gayest videos in the world. (Number of females in this video? Probably zero.) Anybody remember when Izam played the villain in PGSM Act 0? All the Sailor Moon fans saw the promo photos and were like "wow, that lady is pretty hot." I got to be the one saying "uh, actually..." Good times.
Then we came home and made pancakes, because we had blueberries and a crapton of raspberries. They were tasty. Bronwen had borrowed Dirge of Cerberus from Jordon, so she sat down to play it, and it's freaking awesome. I was reading the guide to help her, so there was much shouting of phrases like "MATERIA! YES!" Then Melissa and David came over, and silliness ensued. People kept picking me up and carrying me around. It's weird being little even among little people.
We went to see the fireworks, and found a spot on the rocks by the water where we had a great view. The wind was chilly, so we all huddled together, and I don't know, there's something weirdly comforting about just being out on a beautiful night, huddled together with your friends. I had made Cindy change out of her dress for the cooler weather, but sadly did not pester her to put on a jacket, so David and I spent most of the walk back snuggling up to her. Then she carried me most of the way home on her back. We decided she is a chocobo.
Then Bronwen put on her new corset for everyone. She looks absolutely amazing in it. I want a corset more than ever now.
So our little cedar waxwing (who my cousin and I have named Clyde) survived the night. He had obviously moved around the basket a bit, and he'd picked one of the strawberry pieces up, although he didn't seem to eat it at all. The nature centre said they couldn't take him, so I tried the Birds of Prey Centre out in Coaldale. The guy was really helpful, and said that either the bird was just very young, or had a back injury. If the former, they could fatten him up, but if the latter, the best they could do for him would be to put him down humanely. From my description, he was pretty sure of the latter. I told my cousin when she arrived, and she agreed that she would rather drive out to Coaldale just to give him a humane end than wait for him to die on his own. So off to Coaldale we went!
The lady at the desk was really excited when I told her we had a waxwing. She picked him right up with her bare hand and turned him over to inspect his tail, while he nipped angrily at her finger. "It's gentler than a kitten," she said. He seemed to move his tail just fine. She figured that he's definitely a juvenile who just hasn't learned how to fly properly yet. But she also worried that the drooping tail indicated a brain injury.
Regardless, she was pretty confident that Clyde will be alright. She gave us each a free pass to the centre for taking the time to bring him, and then told us to email them in a week to check up on the bird's status.
Moral of the story: the Birds of Prey Centre ROCKS.
There is an injured bird in a laundry basket downstairs.
I'm pet-sitting at my mom's for the weekend, and I was walking the dog past my aunt's house, when I was surprised to see my cousin standing outside on the phone. She called me over frantically, in tears, explaining there was a bird, and it wasn't moving, and she didn't know what to do. The poor little bird looked up at me inquisitively when I knelt down, but when it turned to the side a bit, I could see its tail feathers dragging on the ground at an awkward angle. They looked like they were barely still attached.
If there's anything I've learned from the UVic bunnies, it's that nature is usually best off staying where it is, no matter how cute it may be. But I had a crying cousin beside me, and chances were, the bird was going to die within hours if we didn't get it indoors, so there was just no question about leaving it there.
My cousin was house-sitting too, and definitely couldn't take the bird home with her. She got a laundry basket and some towels, and I wrapped one of the towels around my hands to pick it up. The bird freaked just as I grasped it, and managed to fly to the side of the house, hiding behind a pipe. I caught it just as it dropped from behind the pipe and quickly covered it with the towel, so I wouldn't have to actually grasp it and risk hurting it, and got it into the basket, where we kept the towel loosely over it.
I didn't know what the bird was, so after settling it in the basket with a towel acting as a lid, with a dish of water and a few chopped up bits of strawberries and banana, I sat down to research birds in the region. I'm now 90% sure that this little guy is a Cedar Waxwing. Aww, look at this part:
During courtship the male and female will sit together and pass small objects back and forth, such as flower petals or an insect.
He still hasn't touched the food, or moved from his corner of the basket, although he still looks alertly at me whenever I peer at him through the holes. I hope he lives through the night. I think the nature center takes injured wild animals, so I'm going to give them a call in the morning.
IwonIwonIwon!
I never win ANYTHING, least of all popularity contests. Thanks so much guys!
I can't personally hug each and every one of you (though I would like to right now), so I hope a cheesy graphic will suffice for now.
Running into someone I used to go to church youth group with is incredibly weird.
"Wow, you're a gothic lolita?"
"Wow, you're gay?"
We're all in our twenties and we still like to play on the playground. Difference being that we do it at 11:30 at night, and I'm wearing my platform sandals. And there are a lot more dirty jokes.
So Jordon and I really wanted to meet each other, because my roomies are always talking about each of us to the other. So we spontaneously decided to meet him at the park by his house, and Cindy made me get on her back, carried me over, and said, "here, I brought her to you." It was pitch dark, middle of a playground, I was on someone else's back, and he just looked at me and went "you were in youth group with me." We were both incredibly shy, awkward people back then. If we don't remember saying a word to each other, it's probably because we were both too terrified to ever open our mouths. Who knew that we'd end up on a swing set at midnight, talking about jrock and porn stars? And... throwing pine cones at Cindy?
A girl who was with me on the Japanese exchange I went on in 2003 also randomly messaged me on Facebook this week. It's apparently the week for running into people who I was not-quite-friends with, but sort of liked, at one point in my life.
