when smokey sings.... i hear violins....*

holy heck the royal canadian mounted police have just the best mascots. not to mention the hottest uniforms ever. reow.

my conference starts tonight and so i've spent the day desperately trying to DO regina. which is to say, i've tried to find gift stores. i really REALLY wanted a canadian flag umbrella, but it is so bitterly cold and wet i settled for the first umbrella i found: a navy blue number from sears. i am going to use it every day while i'm away - even in miami - because you know once i get back to wellington i will never be able to use it again.

as is my travellers tradition, i went to the drug store earlier this morning. i adored it. so much to look at. it was almost like a physical blow that i could only justify buying some ibuprofen. and even that was only to relieve my headache from overstimulation.

the other highlight so far has been the maple syrup. but that was to be expected. afterall - i am in canada!

*ps i know that this isn't smokey. smokey lives in the USofA. obviously.

oh my god i have had the lamest weekend. i've made about a million (or really 13) crochet squares, watched eight episodes of gilmore girls and have loaded the dishwasher. oh, and taken a million and a half self portraits.

it hasn't been all dire (i've been out of the house etc...) but really, am i twenty seven or seventy two? objectively, based on my activities so far, it would be hard to tell.

today i am going in to work, which would at least suggest i'm under retirement age. so that is something.

also, on friday i got given flowers by some friends as a thank you (remember when i helped people after they'd taken recreational drugs? it was from them). and when i was walking back to work someone saw me and said: i hope you bought those for yourself and not someone else. and i just smiled. but really i was thinking of my favourite saying: i'm in the business of receiving flowers, not giving them. anyway, here are the flowers.

happy and friendly. personally i prefer thorny and dramatic. but then i'm the one who has watched eight episodes of gilmore girls this weekend so who am i to say what is right and what is wrong.

today i realised my life is like beverly hills 90210. which is not a bad thing. but the bad thing is that i realised if my life were in fact beverly hills 90210 i'd be brandon. shameola.

i realised this as i was helping friends come down off some recreational 'drugs'. like the time brandon gave dylan a lecture about his brain (an egg) his brain on drugs (scrambled eggs). although better because i don't give lectures, i give hugs.

i also realised that i'm hilarious. i saw the poster for roger hall's new play - a pantomine version of aladdin - and i said "that sounds god awful". it is funny cos it is true. i don't need to go anyway because i can imagine the ongoing double entendre (sp) and wink wink nudge nudging [to the audience] about rubbing lamps and whatnot. vomit.

FYI this is the result of an image search of roger hall's aladdin. it confirms my hilarious fears. oh dear.

i also realised i'm obsessed with my cousins because i talk about them all the time because i spent my summer holidays with them and if i spend a week with you then you become my life and i can't remember what i did without you. anyway i saw happy feet with my seventeen year old cousin. i consider this an achievement - on the part of both of us - to have enough to talk about etc... to spend an entire afternoon together and then to go to a child's movie. he also flirted with some girls. i felt jealous because there were literally no straight men for me to flirt with. i would have flirted with the girls too, you know, for fun, but they were 14.

oh and i realised that updating my blog's look will take longer than anticipated because the blogger server wont let me customise right now. anyway, by way of a taster let me give you this one clue: POW.