because i pray for rain…

Christmas in Retail. Three words that really should put the Fear Of God™ in to anybody who has ever worked a retail job. Ever. I know it’s almost over and sanity will once again be restored to this job that I generally love, but for the time being there’s a part of me that wants to run up the stairs, wish our mascot Benny good luck, and escape off…somewhere. Anywhere. Just not here. People are beginning to irritate me to no end, and not anybody in particular, not even just the especially annoying customers: Everybody who walks in the front door, even the person who is thankfully “just browsing”, is bugging me: the way he looks, the tone of her voice, the colour of that child’s jacket…it’s complete insanity, I know.
Positives: I guess the days go faster. I’m busy all the time. I’d like to say that I’m sleeping well at night because I’m tuckered out, but I’m actually lying awake at night for far too long envisioning the next day’s horrors in my mind.

And if I hear “Aye Aye Aye It’s Christmas” by Ricky Martin, or that absolutely horrendous “Shoes” song by NewSong (what kind of band name is that? What?), once more, I might go insane.

I am so very bad at updating. I promise, once I manage to get a new digital camera I’ll be better…

I have to admit something awful: we put up our Christmas tree at the end of November. But, see, this is what happened: Steve (roommate) and I were shopping at Sears, just for kicks (after picking up Steve’s present for Waylon), and went looking at the artificial trees to check out prices. I wasn’t much looking forward to shelling out $50 for a fake tree that I wasn’t even wholeheartedly in to (I wanted a real one! But it wasn’t worth the fight…), but there was no way I could go through Christmas without a tree. We wandered around the department, gazing lovingly at the $500 pre-decorated Martha Stewart Living trees, wondering what kind of psycho buys those, when I spotted a bashed up box underneath a table that said “CLEARANCE”. It was a tree! A six foot artificial Christmas tree! Marked at $10.97! We searched the store to find an associate we recognized (Waylon used to work there), and she assured us that it wasn’t broken, and even if it was, we could bring it back. For $11? How could we go wrong? So we grabbed the tree, went to the dollar store and bought $15 worth of ornaments, went to Safeway and bought eggnog…and immediately went home and put up our tree, ha.

  

It’s awesome, and really doesn’t look that bad for $11. We were very excited. I still am. Woo! Tree!

And a bonus photo, titled: “Evidence #426 that Erin is a dork”. (for the record the evidence # is ever-changing.)

Craig and I waiting for the C-Train two nights ago. His hat is wonderful (it should be, I knit it, ha :p), and mine is also wonderful, but I think more than slightly dorky. I love it to death. It was a Christmas present from Rob, and I think it’s my favourite hat ever. Woo dorky hats!

This past weekend was ridiculously busy: a friend’s Halloween party after a crazy day at work on Friday, working an event at ArtCentral until 1.45am after a full day of work on Saturday, and then school on Sunday. Last night when I got home, I was passed out completely by 11.30pm, and didn’t get up today until 11.15am. I needed that sleep.
Back to the photo: the two little dudes on the left are originals by a ceramic artist at ArtCentral called Keith Kost, and the little dude on the right is a fun little bobble-head ghosty a friend passed on to me in exchange for one of the extra Keith Kost skulls I had. The yarn behind is some hand-dyed/hand-spun I bought from the Calgary Farmer’s Market a few weeks back; it’s becoming this shrug from knitty.com. I have two big skeins, which will hopefully be about enough! Thankfully it’s done in two halfs, so if I run out of yarn on one half, I can kind of do something symmetrical to make up the difference. I have another blue yarn in the same gauge that’s similar in colour, however not variegated.

I suppose I should actually go have a shower now, because I have to go grocery shopping and buy a birthday gift for a friend. I’ve also decided to ressurect the Cthulhu socks for a friend’s upcoming birthday, but I’m going to go with my original idea of knee socks with Cthulhu’s head up by the top and tentacles swirling all the way down to the foot, so it’ll take a while - she’ll probably get them closer to Christmas, which means she’ll get a card promising socks for her actual birthday. And I’m eyeing up Jodi Green’s newly published pattern, Durrow, for maybe a Christmas present for a friend, as well. I know he likes sweaters, he just bought one…I’m just not sure how he’d feel about this one. Plus, I think he’s smaller than the smallest size given, so I’d have to tweak, although he does have broad shoulders. Ah well, easy enough.

Ah, Halloween. A topic that this photo really has nothing to do with, I suppose, to which I say, “Bah!” Oh, I think maybe I’m operating on too little sleep, that might be the problem causing that pesky incoherency…

I don’t feel well.

The spider plant Rebekah brought over for the house. Isn’t he beautiful?

Huge Thanksgiving dinner tonight: nine people total at our house (including me). It was a lot of fun, I think, and went remarkably well.

Lots more photos are here.

At the grocery store today I was overtaken by an intense urge to make chocolate chip cookies. This always happens when I walk through the baking aisle…And the result is a plate of 44 chocolate chip cookies. There would have been more, but I can assure you that a lot of that batter was eaten…had to make sure it was good, you know, you can never be too careful.

And this picture’s been amusing me the past few days. I took it ages ago (yes, with my phone) one night picking Waylon up from work (and by “picking up” I mean I met him there and he drove us home. I have no car.) My mum said we both looked like wanted felons. Ha. Waylon, maybe, but I look goofy with that weird smile…

10 day hiatus, eh? Whoops. No excuse.

Part 2:
I have the greatest job ever…(see above photo. Caveat: not drinking, tasting!)

(click the picture to see it bigger and un-distorted)
I’m sure posting that’s a perfectly good way to mess up spacing on my blog, but c’est la vie. En outre, um…yah, my French falls apart there. I was going to say (and I guess I still am going to say) that too much should not be read in to that comic strip, I’m not feeling especially maudlin or anything, I simply came across it while going through one of my folders…and I love it. It’s up there with this one as one of my all-time favourite comic strips.

Peter Howland (of the Peter Howland Winery, funny that) is currently next door in the wine store pouring wines and generally causing a good time to be had, and I am covering the accessories store trying to decide what else there is to clean (you can only clean a glass so many times), and trying to figure out why somebody did a hair-rock cover of Viva Las Vegas. And I probably won’t get a chance to get over there and have a bottle of Pine Lodge Shiraz signed by him before he leaves. Ah well, he appears to come back once a year.

My copy of The World Atlas of Wine (5th Edition) came in the mail yesterday, and the wine geek in me got a little too excited. I have my own copy! I love that book! I cannot wait until Sunday and the start of Level 2. Yes, I’m a geek, I’m at ease with that. Today I’m going to go to Grand & Toy and buy loose leaf paper and a new binder, and maybe some pens. Tee hee hee. ^_^

Yes, an 8 day hiatus due to lack of inspiration and, well, time. What do we learn from this picture? It’s almost Thanksgiving once more. And here’s the thing, it’s now tradition, being the third year in a row, that I bake many many pumpkin pies and then deliver them around Calgary on Thanksgiving, which is rapidly approaching (October 10). My total tally so far is twelve, and I’m pretty sure that will expand to a couple more people before the end of the month. What’s the story with the pie? Well, Thanksgiving 2003 I decided to bake pumpkin pies, but being as my baking skills are pretty close to null I didn’t read the can of pumpkin quite right (yes, please be aware these pies come from canned pumpkin, not canned pumpkin pie filling, but pumpkin. I do not butcher fresh pumpkins for this, ha ha) and ended up making enough filling for 6 pies, clearly far too many for one household. So I e-mailed a bunch of friends asking if they wanted the extras, and they responded in full “YES” force. I had so much fun driving around town on Thanksgiving Day delivering pies to appreciative people that when Thanksgiving 2004 came around I took orders. And now it is once more time, and as my circle of friends has grown, so has the number of pies being made. This year I’ll have one of two delivery options, either Rob (and if he helps he’ll be getting a lot of gas money thrown his way), or my parents (who’ll be in town, as well)…and I think I might have to formulate an action plan as to how to most effectively get these pies out. I’m such a dork, but well aware of it.

If you’re curious, the other things on that bulletin board: a pride flag sticker from I don’t know where, two old photos of my grandmother, a little card telling me I was given a gift subscription to Interweave Knits (thanks, mum), a little slip of paper with Craig’s phone number on it from that night we met at the bar (yes, the gay bar), an old photo of Paul Robeson, and a UBC decal. All pretty random stuff that felt like it needed to be up there.