Happy New Year's

Well, it's finally all official, it's the end of the year. Big flipping deal huh?? Mark is going to be heading to work at 4 a.m. so we're actually up past our bedtime as I type this. I was going to write some big piece and reflect upon 2003 but I'm feeling lazy, and sleepy so I'm not going to do it. So there!!

Anyway, for all you party harty folks who are putting on the goofy hats and shakin' what your mommas gave you tonight, enjoy!!

In the days immediately following Elliott's death last October, I read a lot of stuff on the NME chat forums about the actual circumstances of his death. There were a lot of rumours and speculation flying around that, quite frankly I didn't want to believe. Looks like maybe, just maybe, the rumours weren't too out-there. I read this, this morning:

Unclear if Elliott Smith committed suicide
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles coroner's officials say they can not determine whether the stab wounds that killed Oscar-nominated singer-songwriter Elliott Smith in October were self-inflicted.

An autopsy report on Wednesday appears to leave the nature of Smith's death, which was initially called a suicide by Los Angeles police, an open question.

The body of Smith -- who earned an Oscar nomination and widespread notice for his 1997 single "Miss Misery" from the film "Good Will Hunting" -- was found in October at his Los Angeles home by the musician's live-in girlfriend.

Coroner's spokesman David Campbell said Smith, 34, died from two "penetrating stab wounds" to the chest.

"The trauma that he sustained could have been inflicted by him or by another and the coroner has not been able to make a determination," Campbell said.

Campbell said toxicology tests found no illegal or controlled substances in Smith's system. The singer was apparently taking anti-depressants and medication for attention deficit disorder at the time of his death but was not abusing them, Campbell said.

He said the case would remain open and that coroner's officials would revisit their findings if additional information surfaced.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said homicide detectives also would "look again" at Smith's death following the autopsy report. He said the case was initially reported to the LAPD as a suicide.

On sitting around the house and not showering...

Not that I'm obsessed or anything...But today, I've sat around the house in my jammies all day without showering. It's gross, I know, but I did it anyway. I had a nicely lazy day, it felt pretty good after having to be out and around people yesterday.

I wasn't a total sloth though. What few Christmas decorations I had put up are now down. I'm amazed at how much bigger the place looks once you take down all that garland and holiday crap. I mean, the crap looked okay but it's nice to see it go for another year. I haven't packed it all away yet but at least it's all in a laundry basket upstairs, instead of sprawled all over the living room. I also hauled a tonne of books downstairs today too. Almost all the books are now in the living room, ready to be shelved in their new spots. The front bedroom is almost completely empty now. Yay me!

We went out to get the rest of our groceries after Mark finished work this afternoon. I'm glad we went today instead of tomorrow. Tomorrow it'll be drunken idiot time at the mall. I never understand why folks get all knotted up about New Years. As my brother says, it's amateur night. He also says that about St. Patty's day and he's right. Morons who never go out or have fun the rest of the year, fell pressured to do zany nutty "fun" things on New Year Eve. It's just another night to me. Why would I want to go out to a bar on December 31st? Everything is over priced, over crowed and underwhelming. I'd rather stay home and chill out, thank you very much.

If that makes me sound like a crabby bore, I don't really care. Maybe I am a crabby bore, but at least I won't be hung over and filled with regret about spending too much cash on a Wednesday night on Thursday morning. As I mentioned in last week's Friday Five, for me, new year's is in September, when the students return. I'll probably spend tomorrow doing the laundry that I didn't do today (cuz I was busy being a no-christmas decorations sloth) and trying to sort out our computer room some more. Talk about your rock'n'roll party person huh?? Jealous yet?

Boy I write more when I have more time

How's that for a grammatically incorrect statement? Not to bad huh?? It's true though, I've been spewing out tonnes of crap here over the past few days.

I have been on the road since 9:50 a.m. this morning. Me?! Lay around the house and not shower until 2 p.m. cuz on my holidays dammit. Last week, I was supposed to get together with my lovely friend Kristin. Unfortunately, my head was full of snot and I felt like crap that day so I didn't get to see her. When I realized that I may not get to see her at all while she was home (her folks live here but she's at school in Alberta these days) I was pretty bummed. It was okay though because she was going to be in town until New Years Eve and I had a second chance to see her. We went for coffee this morning and had a great visit. While we were in mid-coffee (well, I was in mid-coffee, she was in mid-chai-latte with a big ass piece of wonderful smelling cinnamon), a mutual friend of ours, Leslie, arrived. Leslie's here in town but, for many reasons, I'd actually seen Kristin more recently than I'd seen Leslie (I saw Kristin last when she was home last Christmas -- sad but true!). It was great to see her. She had her two small children with her. I'd not seen them in a good long time and couldn't believe how much they had grown. I mean, I know that kids grow and stuff but when you don't see them very often it's a big deal. They're really nice, well behaved kids. We had a really nice visit, it was good to get caught up on stuff.

By the time I left I figured that I'd have a ticket on my car. I'd parked on a side street and had actually put money into the meter but I was an hour past when I should have been gone...When I walked toward the car I could see a ticket under the wiper blade. It wasn't a ticket though, it was a 10 minute "grace period" card from the parking Nazi girls. I couldn't believe that they didn't give me a ticket. They must have been filled with holiday spirit (yeah right) or something. Whatever it was, I was just so happy that a) I hadn't run out to feed the meter and b) I didn't get a ticket. That's totally a first in downtown Kingston. The meter people are just total pigs about downtown parking (and they wonder why the downtown core is dying and folks prefer to shop at box stores in the township --- it's the free parking baby!).

Happily ticket-free, I sped out to the west end, land of box stores and free parking (although you do have to pay a deposit on your grocery cart there...What's up with that?). I had to pick up some stuff for us and for Joe. I had already loaded the car with Christmas gifts for some west-end friends and decided to call them to see if they were home. I'm sitting in my car, in the parking lot of the grocery store. I can see across Highway 33 from where I sit and am looking at their house (it backs onto Highway 33 -- you can see the grocery store from their back yard) and my phone will not work. It starts to connect and then drops. So very weird. I head into the store, get my shopping and, whilst walking back to my car, try to call them again. Again, I can see their house...This time it connects but I get that weird, fast busy signal thing. The groceries get thrown in the car, I start the car, try to call again...again, no connection. Too weird. As I'm going by their house anyway, I pop in and fortunately, my friend was home. Everyone else in the family was out so she and I had a great visit over a couple of cups of tea. It was actually kind of nice to be just her and I for a while. We don't usually get to visit without a lot of other people around. She told me that her phone never works when she tries to call home from the store either. I figure it must be something to do with the railroad tracks that run between her house and the highway...Or they live in some kind of Bermuda triangle of cell phones zone.

After that, I had some more errands to do and traffic was crap...I was so glad to get home. Being sociable and friendly is way more difficult than sitting around the house and not showering.

the road to Ottawa

I love road trips. I particularly love them when the roads aren't too bad. On Christmas day, my brother mentioned to Mark that he had obtained some extra computer parts through a work contact. Pat didn't have a use for them but thought that Mark might be able to. Pat dropped us a line on Saturday to say that he would pop them into the post for us. Given that the weather has been positively balmy lately, I called and told him that we'd just pop up and get them on Sunday.

The drive up was so nice. Almost no transports of Quebecois on the road. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those big anti-Quebec type of Ontarians. I have friends and family who live in Quebec, mostly in Montreal. We have actually enjoyed some of the visits we have made to Quebec but I tell ya, the majority of Quebecois who drive on Ontario highways are a hazard to themselves and everyone around them. I mean, it's just down-right scary watching them weave in and out of traffic on the 401.

When we left Kingston, it was quite mild and you could tell by the way that everything was sort of moist, that there had been a very heavy fog through the night. It was sunny and clear though so we took off shortly after 8 a.m. The closer we got to Ottawa, the foggier it got. You could tell by the way that the trees and buildings were covered in frost that the fog had just burned off in some areas. Ottawa being in a valley though, it was totally foggy overcast. While we were traveling North on the 416 (from the 401, into Ottawa), we saw a deer. Well, I noticed but didn't shout out to Mark, he saw it too. It was jumping into our lane of traffic and (thankfully), we didn't hit it. Hitting a deer on the highway is one of my worst fears. I have heard so many stories about folks hitting deer, the deer coming through the windshield, hooves flailing. Getting decapitated by a deer is not the way I'd like to die. Thank you very much. All that aside, we got into to Ottawa in record time.

Pat lives in a super cool apartment right downtown. From the outside, it looks like a pretty shitty old house. It is located next a parking lot and across the street from one of those big ass apartment buildings. You'd never think that it's actually really nice inside and that's advantageous in terms of folks not bothering to break in and stuff. He had done a really nice job on the apartment. He's picked up a lot of very cool music posters and had a lot of photos up on the walls. Since we were last there he's obtained a new sofa and a really funky arm chair. It's super cozy and as I said before, super cool. On the way to his place, you have to drive right by the IKEA store in Nepean. The Nepean IKEA is the closest one to us so we usually go whenever we're in Ottawa. I noticed that the parking lot was not insanely crazy full when we drove by (at 10 a.m.) so we decided to go. Pat came with us too, which was fun.

The only things I actually intended to pick up were candles (they have crazy-cheap, unscented candles in all shapes and sizes at IKEA so I like to stock up when we're there) but, of course, we got more than just candles. Mark and I found really funky lamps for the bedroom. I've been wanting to get matching lamps for our bedside tables. We painted our room in June and are still in the process of putting it back together. The lamps we got are called Grono and I really like them. They are cool and simple and they throw a lot of light. Mark also got 2 lamps for his computer work bench, a blue Morker and a small clip on lamp that was really cheap. As it usually happens, the light bulbs for the lamps cost almost as much as the lamps themselves but we stocked up anyway. We're such suckers!!

We also started looking at coffee tables and bedside tables. At the moment, we're using an old trunk for a coffee table in our living room. We bought some really nice living room furniture in June (a sofa and chair) but still haven't gotten around to getting a coffee table for it. As we hadn't measured, we didn't bother getting anything...Same deal with the bedroom. We bought 2 dressers from IKEA about 18 months ago. I really wanted to get the bedside units to match them but they don't seem to be carrying that line anymore. Typical...and not entirely surprising. The hardware for the drawers sucks ass and we're in the midst of having to repair the dressers as they didn't' survive being moved across the room when we painted. We have these old crappy (but functional) bedside tables that have been handed down from one of Mark's relatives but we really want to replace them. We did find something that was close to what we wanted but we weren't sure about the size. They looked way taller than what we needed and I didn't really feel like getting bruises on my hands and arms in the middle of the night from them when I'm reaching for my glasses or a drink of water.

Pat got lucky though, he got a pair of really cool end tables for his apartment for $30.....not each but for the pair, score huh? After we shopped, we ran him home and tried to take him out for lunch. He wouldn't come with us though, try as I might to bully him into it. We ended up having excellent dim sum at a place that came highly recommended by Pat's fabulous girlfriend Rebecca. She has excellent taste in men, and in restaurants...it was a lovely meal. While Kingston, as a city, has a lot of things to offer, good dim sum is not one of them.

After lunch, we headed for home and were lucky to be traveling the whole trip in daylight. I'm glad to be home actually, all that running around is tiring. It was great to see Pat though and now, Mark may have enough parts between what Pat gave him, and what we have around here, to put together a new machine for my parents. They have my old 486 and they aren't online. My mum is taking a computer course right now though and learning about internet stuff and XP so we'd like them to have a better machine and to get online. We'll drag them into the 20th, errr...21st century eventually, come hell or high water!!