Category Archives: Uncategorized

Music History

This week my brother had been visiting to go to soccer camp with Gryphon as they’re only 2.5 years apart. We took him home today and found ourselves stuck in traffic, so we rolled down the windows and cranked the radio. Big Sugar was the CD playing and Mike turned around and asked Rowan if he liked the blues. Gryphon responded before Rowan could:

“Yeah, but the blues were eliminated and the yellows won.”


Power Voting Should be a Mortal Sin

Ok, so I like the musical competition shows. I’d say it’s a guilty pleasure, but I really don’t feel guilty about it. I enjoy seeing the good and the bad, rooting for a favorite and finding out who ends up staying and going. I HATE power voting.

I understand getting behind someone from your community, even if they suck, but this isn’t a popularity contest, it’s a job interview. Winning these contests does not guarantee a successful career, it guarantees a shot at a career. Putting someone into the winner’s circle because they are from a particular province not only cheats more talented people out of the prize, it wastes the time and money invested by the sponsors and the record execs that have to put out an album that only 10, 000 people want, even though there were magically 2 million votes cast for said album.

People, please, just because you want your person to win really bad doesn’t mean you should vote 10, 000 times a night to try and make it happen. If you feel you have to vote all night to keep your person in the competition then you need to recognize that this is not the person that should win. Unless you are going to buy 10, 000 albums, t-shirts and concert tickets, DO NOT VOTE 10,000 times.

Vote for the number of albums you are willing to buy!

If you are going to go down to the record store and buy all their copies of your person’s album to inflate their album sales, by all means vote that many times. But if you’re just voting for the cute boy because nobody likes him, and you have no intention of buying his album, DON’T VOTE FOR HIM!

Contests like these are our opporunity to tell record companies what music we really want to hear, what artists we really want them spending their money on. For years we have complained that the music record companies put out suck and they only care about formulaic artists that follow the current fad. Surprisingly their response was to let us audition and choose someone we want to hear from, but they’re not going to keep doing it if we chose people and then don’t buy the damn albums.

Power voters: STOP FUCKING BLOWING IT!!

I will never forgive you for compelling me to power vote, myself. Fuck, can’t we all just vote ONCE instead of all of us having to sit on the phone for two hours to make sure our own votes carry the same weight?

I would be very happy if these shows went back to charging for votes. $5 is not an unreasonable down payment on an album. If $5 is not worth it to you to see your person through to the end, then you shouldn’t be voting. But it would be much nicer if we could all just vote once and go home.


Best Mozilla Meeting Ever

So today the Mikes had a Toronto meeting, the Mikes being mconnor, shaver and beltzner. I tagged along to do some shopping and drinking with the boys (although there was a lot less drinking going on than I was led to believe!) and sat in on some of it. At some point the discussion turned to embarrassing/funny pictures and I mentioned a great one of mconnor that we used to have on our old old old webspace. Mike didn’t believe me that our stuff was still up there so I gave him a url to something that I knew would work. Unfortunately I completely forgot which pictures were which. Suffice it to say everyone got to see an old pic I made with a best friend as an April Fool’s joke where we’re in pseudo S+M gear (think goth club wear) and I have her by a leash. Mconnor had just been thinking to himself “I wonder if either of the other guys typed in that url” when shaver let out a nice loud “whoa, what’s this?” and promptly turned his screen to beltzner.

Top THAT Mountain View 😉

P.S. If I know you I’ll show you the picture.


Comments fixed

I don’t know if anyone reads this, let alone has tried to comment, but it was recently discovered that the comment function was broken. I have no idea for how long, but it’s fixed now!


There’s nothing like a good bra…

…to put a smile on a woman’s face.

When my 12-year-old sister had been visiting during the summer I noticed she’d only been wearing sports bras and that the ones she had didn’t fit very well at that. She mentioned not liking how any of the other types of bras felt. I know the owner of the local fine lingerie boutique, so I brought my sister in to get a proper fitting so she’d know what size to buy when she went shopping next, and so she’d know what a good bra felt like. Now Raffaella is a pro at this, it’s not just the take the measurements and tell you what size you should be – infact she doesn’t take measurements at all – she checks how it’s fitting, and sends you up or down a size accordingly until everything is where it should be. She is so good at this she can actually look at you with your clothes still on and tell you what size you are. This is important. Having the right size can make the difference between a bra being a torture device or your best friend.

Well, my mom’s been losing weight, she was bragging about it before Christmas. She also mentioned that the weightloss was causing all her favorite bras to not fit and that she was dreading going shopping for new ones. She didn’t like the idea of shopping for bras itself, let alone having someone mess with her during a fitting, and she inquired about my friend’s magical ability to size up a rack without any rackage being exposed. She agreed to come up for a fitting herself, but wavered on making plans. She’d actually set a date twice and backed out both times (although one time was unintentional). I decided to make her Christmas present a $100 gift certificate at the boutique so she’d have to come up. I mean, what woman can pass up spending $100 of someone else’s money on herself?

Today was the day.

She and my sister came up for a lunch date of bra shopping. She went into the store very reluctantly – as many women do. She had a very let’s get this over with attitude as Raffi recommended styles and sizes and entered the change room with the first candidates. After a few size adjustments (she’d started off with the same size she was wearing, 36 DD and ended up in a 40DD – Raffie’s guess was 38DD) we heard an “oh wow, that fits!” come from the change room. The first style being tried on was your everyday seamless t-shirt bra so Raffie grabbed a VERY tight t-shirt to demonstrate to my mom how smooth it would look. The woman that came out of that changeroom was not the same woman that had gone in. She had gone in resigned and in a bulky, shapeless, albeit comfy and would have been stylish had it fit properly, sweater and come out glowing, 20 lbs lighter, a hot shapely number in jeans and a baby-tee. Later she confided in me that her first thought at this point was “what are they doing up here?”

…And that was just the everyday bra.

With the practical, goes-under-anything side of things well in hand, Raffie asked if she wanted to look at more styles. She was met with a much more exuberant response. My mom actually seemed excited, nay, willing to shop further! The pinnacle was a sexy black lace bra that she was so happy about she actually let us see it on her. Her face in that moment… Raffie and I were both almost in tears. As my mom was changing Raffie explained that that look is why she does what she does. That difference between how my mom walked into the store and how proud of herself she looked in that bra. To be able to make someone feel that much better about themselves with something so simple is just incredible.

We all want to give something back to our parents.

Really, I’d just wanted her to come visit and go shopping like we used to do all the time. The gift certificate was just a means to that end. I had something to bribe her with. She needed a fitting, I knew a good place to get that. The money meant she’d have to come. Since I’ve had my kids I’ve come to understand more and more what she must have gone through, how she must feel about herself. There’s always that drive to take care of the ones you love the most, but it’s different when it comes to the people that take care of you, somehow it feels like no matter how much you want to you won’t be able to – the river flows one way. Today I manged to send a tributary back up. How simple, and how affective it was has me floored.

I’m a woman, too.

It really shouldn’t. It’s like that John Mayer song – “girls become lovers who turn into mothers,” except us mothers never really stop being those girls we were to begin with and I know deep down us girls want the same things. Underneath it all we just want to feel good, and to feel good about ourselves. So why not start with a really good bra?

tnt fine lingerie boutique


I live with a bunch of hackers…

Like father like daughter, I came in here after watching Crossing Jordan to find Gwen asleep at the keyboard. Just like Daddy! I have to give her credit though, she had quite a balancing act going on. I’m surprised she hadn’t fallen over as the chair has no arms. She had her chin on the desk, one hand still on the mouse, the other clutching a My Little Pony and Face from Nick Jr. repeating “that was fun, let’s play again!” every 3 seconds. This is like the time Gryphon passed out on the floor in his hawaiian shirt with chips by one hand and juice by the other.

Ahh those glimpses into the college years!