When my lovely and generous friend Ron Hudson told me he was sending me one of his signature lemon spice poundcakes of love in the mail, you can imagine my delight. Cake! IN THE MAIL!! Ron even made sure to send it so that it would arrive in time for Easter, so that we could celebrate the resurrection with style. The tomb is empty - He's eating my cake! I was very excited for cake and so was Katr.
Sadly, Canada Post had other plans for the poundcake. Plans that involved the cake not being delivered in a timely manner. Ron called me from North Carolina to see if it had arrived and I was chagrined to report it had not. Where was my cake?? Then, a couple of days ago, I got the delivery notice from the post office. My heart leapt! I dragged the dog up to Main and Hastings and triumphantly handed over my notice. The post office worker handed me an envelope from Indigo Books and nothing else. I stared at her. She stared at me. Impasse. "That's it?" I asked her, "Nothing ... ELSE?" She shook her head and indicated that my cornchip-smelling dog and I should beat feat.
Dejected, we returned home, only to find ANOTHER NOTICE from the post office in the mailbox! But the post office was closed for the day! Noooooooooooooooo!! CAKESPIRACY!!
And so finally, this morning, at the post office, I claimed my prize. I'm not going to lie to you - the weather was inclement:
but we were not downhearted! The cake box was the victim of heavy sleeting as we trudged home. Fortunately, Ron is a master of poundcake packing. Behold!
Not long now, little cake.
Wait a minute... how big is this cake??
This is several pounds of cake, Ron. SEVERAL POUNDS.
Obviously, we wasted no time slicing into this delicious, moist, lemony, spicy behemoth. I used Katr's grandmother's china, because I wanted the pictures to look like the beautiful pictures at yarnstorm.
I know - not quite. But the cake still looks gooooooood, Let's see it on its own...
Best. Cake. Ever. Oh delicious cake. Until you are finished, I will pretend you weren't made with 3 sticks of butter and 8 oz of cream cheese. Thanks so much, Ron! We are so honoured to be on the receiving end of your poundcake love!!
Because I am all about balance right now, I didn't want you all to feel jealous and deprived. So I thought I'd offer all of you a chance to get something lovely in the mail too!
My wife Katr is the queen of laptop bags. Did you know? It's true! Just go Google "laptop bags". The second or third result there? That's her. And she's having her very first laptop bag giveaway!
AND, because Katr is the queen of laptop bags and I am her court jester, she's offering a special giveaway just for you guys. If you blog about this Giddy Up giveaway on your own blogs and trackback here, Katr will enter your name to win another laptop bag. She gets many, many review copies of bags; if you win, you'll get to choose one from her magic bin of laptop bag love. There's some good stuff in there, people. Good stuff that I secretly covet.
I will keep my fingers crossed for all of you! Just as soon as I'm done savouring this latest slice of cake.
My lovely and talented friend, Toronto jazz diva Shannon Butcher, is about to release her new CD, Words We Both Could Say. You can preview four of the ten tracks on the album here and you can order your advance copy here. Do it! She is fabulous! We ordered our copies this evening and are gleefully tuning our phonograph in preparation for her fine, fine music. Can't wait to hear it, Shannon!
I was actually thinking about Shannon and her new CD (oh, and join her fan page on Facebook! Do it!) earlier this evening when I was out strolling with the hound. I'm a little worried that, with the release of her album on the horizon, she'll be too busy promoting her own brilliant work to help me out on my pet project; a CD of songs that I sing to the dog on our walks together. This could be a blessing, though - I can use the time to really hone my lyrics.
Here are some of the ones I'm working on:
Sometimes Pull-y Pups Don't Get To Go Where They Want
That'd Better Be Grass You're Eating
Your Kind Aren't Welcome at the Ivanhoe Pub
That Boy Dog Should Have Bought You Dinner First
Puddles
You'll Never Get Your Mouth On a Duck (So Give It Up)
It's Hard for a Girl Dog To Whiz on the Bushes (that's the country track)
That Frothy Gob Hanging from Your Schnozz is Deeply Fetching
Puddles (Vancouver remix)
These are just working titles, you understand. But I'm just getting started! And I'm not averse to turning this into a box set idea - perhaps paired with a CD of feline standards ("Your Face Got In The Way of My Claws Again") with a secret track about ferrets ("We're Not Weasels, We Just Look That Way")? What do you think, pet lovers? With Shannon so busy, I'm looking for collaborators!
Those who know me would not think it amiss if I were to describe myself as an "ice cream connaisseur". When we lived in Toronto, our place was just around the corner from a Baskin & Robbins 31 Flavours, which I referred to as "my local". I was in there at least once a week. Rafael and Julio, who owned the franchise, always had a tiny pink spoon at the ready for me to taste whatever was "new". Because they knew that if it was new, I would buy it.
I like a lot of stuff in my ice cream. Walnuts, pecans, almonds, peanuts, pralines. Cherries, raisins, strawberries, bits of orange peel. Clusters, nuggets, crackle, flakes, crumble, chunks. Coconut. Tiny peanut butter cups. Pretzels. Churros. Birthday cake. Ribbons of all kinds (fudge, butterscotch, caramel, honey). Baklava. Anything but marshmallow (GAH - a scourge upon the 'mallow!) and bubblegum, or, as I call it, "Satan's Chewy Asshole".
When we moved to Vancouver, it was hard - really hard - to go back to Ben & Jerry's and, occasionally, Haagen Daz after the ever-changing splendour that was Baskin & Robbins. Oh sure, I enjoy my Chunky Monkey, my Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt, my New York SuperFudge Chunk (I love many other flavours, but selection here in Canada is somewhat limited). And HD's Caramel Cone Explosion and, more recently, Sticky Toffee Pudding, is always a treat. But I yearn for the new. I CRAVE the new. When I see the new, I snap it up!
Now, I don't want to be a jerk. I'm sure Ben & Jerry work very hard. But I have to say that I haven't been taken with any of the recent Ben & Jerry flavours. An unaccountably curmudgeonly list of disappointments follows:
The Gobfather - First of all - it's best not to put the word "gob" in the name of a foodstuff. No one wants to eat anyone's gob. Also, with the chocolate ice cream and syrupy "ribbon" and chocolate covered whatevers, it was too sweet (which, for me, is really saying something. Because I will eat sugar cubes.)
Fossil Fuel - What's the difference between "ice cream" and "sweet cream"? All I know is that "sweet cream" made me want to erp. And the "cookie crumble" tasted like sand.
Peanut Butter Tracks - I LOVE peanut butter, peanut butter ice cream and peanut butter cups. And yet, the extremely waxy chocolate of the peanut butter cups displeased me. Why pay $6.49 for that when I can drip a melted candle into a jar of cold Skippy for practically nothing?
Strawberry Cheesecake - again, all the makings of a winner and I might have to chalk this one up to retailer error. Every Strawberry Cheesecake pint I've consumed (4 or 5) has contained, at some point in the pint, an impenetrable, fist-sized chunk of graham cracker "crust". The crust is extremely salty and not at all pleasant to consume in large quantities. Did each pint leave the factory in this condition? Or is there an unfreezing/graham-cracker-coalescing/refreezing sequence occurring somewhere on the journey?
Tortoise Soup - einh. Also, on the package, the cashews look a little like fetuses. I...I don't like that.
Banana Split - I saw this one last night and my heart leapt! Bananas! Strawberries! Fudge! I beetled home to try it and was annoyed that Katr made me eat a healthy meal of chicken curry and spinach first. I opened it early, to let it breathe and waited until it was just the right consistency before I dug in. I am sad to report that I found it rather tasteless. The chocolate clashed with the strawberry and zeroed out the banana.
Sigh. I'm about ready to give up on Ben and his pal Jerry. Am I crazy? Are there other flavours waiting to come north that I've not heard about? Any tips, fellow ice-cream lovers?
On the plus side, Ben & Jerry's failure to fulfill my ice cream needs spells economic prosperity for the one other purveyor of frozen desserts in my neighbourhood! The Amato Gelato at 2nd and Quebec can expect to see a lot more of me as the warmer weather approaches. What their gelato lacks in "stuff" it makes up for in variety. Blood orange sorbet - Italian wedding cake - their incomparable rum raisin - all will be enjoyed. And maybe, by the end of the summer, I'll have them trained to show me "what's new" when I come in. Because by then they will know that if it's new, I will buy it.
P.S. Ben & Jerry - I can't believe you gave Bovinity Divinity the axe but kept Phish Food around. Really? Marshmallow and fudge fish beat out sweet little white and milk chocolate cows? I don't get you guys.
I have decided that, so far, 33 is all about balance.
Personal
Earlier on the same day I bought the best jeans ever, it turns out that I also bought the worst jeans ever. I knew they weren't great when I tried them on, but at the time, I felt I wasn't in a position to be choosy and they fit - kinda. Why didn't I return them when I found my perfect jeans minutes later? Well, because I always need shlumpy jeans I don't care about to walk the dog in and these were on sale.
Once I started walking in them, it didn't take me long to figure out that there is nothing right about these jeans. They're just a little too short. They're strangely slim-fitting around the knees. They grip my stomach tightly, yet they simultaneously try to claw my ginch off my ass. They bunch weirdly around the thighs, a few inches below the crotchal area, which creates a lot of angry friction (not the sexy kind, you pervs) and now I have a big welt on the front of my leg. The final straw came yesterday, when I wore them to walk the dog up to the vet. After helping the vet hold the Emmy Lou down for her various check ups (Lovely vet over the sound of Emmy breathing hard like a warthog while she injects a vaccine: "She really doesn't like to be confined, does she?" Me, sweating and failing to grip my writhing, corn-chip smelling dog: "Nope.") I started to walk Emmy home and felt a breeze. Because my fucking fly was down.
These jeans make the Baby Jesus cry.
I can't wear them but I can't throw them out either. So I really hope that whoever ends up with them at the Goodwill finds them to be HER perfect jeans.
Professional
I submitted a short script for a festival here in Vancouver about a month ago and was supposed to hear about whether I got in this past Monday.
I was strangely excited about it - I thought my little script was a good fit and I haven't actually done any theatre in Vancouver yet and I thought this could be a fun way to start, yadda yadda. As the announcement date drew near, I found I was hanging around at home like a 10th grade girl waiting for her 12th grade possibly-maybe-quasi-boyfriend to call (mine always called - way too often, actually, but that's probably because he was gay too and didn't really know the protocol).
Yesterday, the phone finally rang - and it was one of my favourite Toronto theatre gals calling to tell me that an hilarious idea I emailed her about a couple of weeks ago looks like it's going to actually happen in the fall (I'll let you know what it is once we have an official title for it but trust me - you will ALL want to come.) We laughed our heads off talking about it and when I got off the phone, delighted, I noticed I'd gotten an email...rejection from the Vancouver folks. And I totally didn't care. HA ha!
Musical
I just noticed that the latest mix I made for my iPod includes both Choctaw Hayride by Allison Krauss & Union Station and Britney Spears' latest single Break the Ice. Maybe that's not balance, though - maybe that just means I'm a hick. Shut up.
I got Kate a Nabaztag for Christmas. Then she got ME one for my birthday! More on that later. The short version is: We're NERDS.
I've been yapping away to Katr about trying to find more balance lately, what with all the fun and frolic of wife life, work life, creative life, Dawn French, donuts, Gina Torres - and I've been having some success in these areas. So it's nice to feel that the universe is also supporting me in my efforts to achieve perfect balance.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go listen to Break the Ice while icing my welt.
I was at the Safeway yesterday afternoon, shopping for provisions after our return from Monterey. In the deli area, I spotted a rack of whole roasted chickens. Thrilled at the thought of not having to touch raw meat (and vaguely remembering Katr suggesting I "get a cooked chicken"), I moseyed over and selected a fowl. As I turned to walk away with my bird, I met the steely gaze of a lady in her middle years. She said:
"Excuse me. I had my eye on that chicken."
I proceeded to have the following thoughts:
"Really? This chicken? There are, like, eight other chickens here. Are we really going to throw down over this particular Safeway BBQ chicken?
Also . . . really? Lady - it's a chicken. There are far more dire things going on in the world than having some creampuff make off with the poultry you'd claimed IN YOUR MIND. Maybe if you visit my blog later this week, you can read about some of these things. Because this week, I have the very great honour of hosting my dear friend Ron Hudson's brilliant blog carnival, the International Carnival of Pozitivities. It will educate you and make you think. It will make you sad and it will give you hope. It will inspire you to get involved in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. Most importantly, it will give you some much needed perspective. In short, you'll so get over this chicken."
Sadly, I did not have the chance to deliver this speech to the lady who wanted my chicken, because while I was standing there thinking about it, she took the chicken and left. That's right. Removed it from me and departed. I fear my words would have been lost on her. Because clearly, she had her own problems. And possibly her own carnival. But the incident reminded me that having some perspective is pretty key and that I should work on that more. And also that total freaks shop at that Safeway.
Welcome!
Welcome to Edition 2.9 of the International Carnival of Pozitivities! The Carnival's mission is to provide a forum for those living with or
affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As Ron says, this pretty much
includes everyone living on Earth today. Edition 2.8 of the Carnival was hosted by Dragonette over at NotPerfectAtAll , so be sure and check it out - great job, Dragonette!
Jealous? Don't Be - You Too Can Host the Carnival!
This is my second time hosting the carnival and I want to thank my friend Ron Hudson for giving me this opportunity to get involved and for making it such a breeze to host. Ron is looking for more folks to host the carnival on their blog in the coming months. Ron makes it extremely easy for us hosts and it doesn't matter if you usually just blog about your cat - every blog is welcome! Contact Ron to volunteer!
NAPWA expects that more individuals will come forward to tell their
stories about HIV. Through the series, NAPWA hopes to reduce stigma,
increase testing, and improve the use of social networks for people
living with HIV. There are lots of statistics about HIV, but data only
becomes real when it strikes home.
Suffering happens, but it doesn’t last forever, and every pain endured
contains a lesson to be learned. A warrior’s perspective can help us to
understand and accept the natural cycle of good times and bad times,
and to appreciate the uses of both.
African-American Resource Center -- Profiles in Courage: David P. Lee, posted at The Body
is a great, in-depth interview with David P. Lee about living with HIV,
African-American identity and HIV, Disclosure and Relationships and
other really interesting topics. There are lots of other profiles on
the site as well - amazing stuff.
When people ask me how I got HIV, my usual response is that, "I got it
by being a human doing human things." The question implies that you did
something bad and therefore deserved to get HIV. People do not usually
ask, "How did you get your cancer?" The truth of the matter is that
everyone who acquires HIV got it by being human -- period.
Brian Finch from acidrefluxweb.com blogged about what a relief it was to change his medication (and how much more stylish his new ones are) in Feb 5/08 Off the needle!.
Fuzeon is so 2001 anyway, I needed to keep up with what was more fashionable, and Integrase Inhibitors are it baby!
"Oh yes, I do love the Internet, and I guess it is a tool that has made
us gay Ugandans and Africans get out of our villages and realize that
the parish priest's homophobia is not universal opinion. Surprise,
surprise!"
Art & Crafts
VisualAIDS is a New York based
organization that "strives to increase public awareness of AIDS through the
visual arts, creating programs of exhibitions, events and publications, and
working in partnership with artists, galleries, museums and AIDS organizations".
Over at the Visual AIDS
Blog, Nelson Santos posted about some hot stickers and even hotter postcards (I blushed) last month in his post Safer Sex Broadsides. There are buttocks on display, so depending where you work, this might be NSFW.
Check out UK performance poet Cereal Killer's offering this carnival - a story called Deadline!.
Author RM Guzman is the creator of Alzmek: The Fictional Memoir of a Tainted Life. He says:
Although it is showing the "darker" side of HIV, it tells a story of
how one person could alter the lives of so many people. I promise the
main character does not villianize HIV, but rather, shows it in a
light we (as long term survivors) can identify, seeing the face of AIDS
change every single day.
The book has a website - www.alzmek.com and the main character blogs at www.alzmek.com/blog. This video below - AIDS: The Best of Sebastian Alzmek - was made to be shown at a presentation the author gave on February 29, 2008 in Los Angeles to a HIV/AIDS activism group.
WARNING: The video contains some graphic and disturbing images and is definitely NSFW.
One year ago I arrived in San Francisco for the first time. Since
then, my attention has been called to all the services and all the many
people and institutions that are always willing to help LGBTQ people
and people with HIV who come from anywhere in the world to this city.
In honor of the wonderful attention that San Francisco has given me and
many others who have come to the Bay Area, I decided to make this
painting.
FINALLY, some knitting! Rachel Walden at Women's Health News posted Knit a Condom Amulet! about the work A Little Red Hen's
Naomi Dagen Bloom (NYC activist and knitter) is doing to reduce the
stigma around carrying condoms and showing them off. I HAD to post a
picture - look how cute! I don't have much call for condoms in MY day
to day, but I know a few folks who might see these in their Solstice
stockings...
Carnival founder Ron Hudson of 2sides2ron posted this lovely piece Being You from Slovo to share his thoughts on a new song from UK band Slovo. It's a gorgeous song - give it a listen.
We all have our heroes and our angels. We know, love or care for
someone who is a source of strength to help us get through the tough
times of living with HIV/AIDS. I consider this song a tribute to those
people who have touched my life and given me the strength to carry on.
Ellen Landauer of Health Freedom Coaching covers some ways to combat anxiety and depression in her post Nutritional Supplements for Depression and Anxiety. It's a great article with lots of interesting information - but make sure you consult with a doctor before
supplementing your anti-HIV regimen to ensure that there are no drug
interactions.
Life coach Rob Moshe blogs about the rewards of helping others realize their potential in his post Live Your Best Life By Serving Others. While this article is not directly related to HIV/AIDS, it certainly resonates with the ideal of the ICP.
I have a particular interest in Herrera's post Diet Tips for Preventing High Cholesterol Levels on his blog Life. Money. Development.
'cause the high cholesterol runs in my family, like a fat gazelle.
These all look like great tips, but again, it's good to consult
your doctor about managing your cholesterol.
Romeo Vitelli at Providentia posted a piece called Why Aren't Some AIDS Patients Getting Treatment? about how "in a recently released study by the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS,
an alarming forty per cent of the people who died of HIV-AIDS in
British Columbia never sought life-saving treatment even though it was
free." A really interesting article about how the costs of medications aren't the only barriers to treatment.
In the Caribbean, the most stigmatized groups that have HIV/AIDS are
homosexuals (particularly men) and sex workers. As a result of this
stigmatization, homosexuals and sex workers are denied health care and
are victims of harassment and hate crimes in many Caribbean islands.
Last year, MedMira obtained government approval, including in the MR, for selling it's Multiplo
combination HIV/HCV rapid test. No easy feat for any company. To make
any progress in Russia, you must have a highly and well connected
partner. Not simply one that pays bribes, it goes beyond that.
The End? The Beginning!
Thank you all for coming and reading and thinking and clicking. Hope
this edition of the ICP helped, inspired and interested you. If you liked what you read, please take the time to leave comments on the contributors' blogs and let them know. We all love feedback!
As of this post, Ron is still looking for someone to host April's carnival. If you're interested, step into his office! I bet he'll make you tea. Or at least a pound cake. Because he's lovely.
Note: This post is mainly about fat girl shopping. I'm not going to make assumptions about who among you will or will not be interested in fat girl shopping - you'll know who you are. Also, it's my birthday! Woooo!
It's my birthday! I'm 33 this year and since my birthday is 03/03, I feel that it's going to be an EXTRA awesome year. That's right - no pressure, but you'd better not SUCK, 33!
I've spent much of adult life looking forward to 32. I'm not sure why - 32 just seemed to resonate with me and I'm pleased to report that it was indeed a banner year. But because of my fixation on 32, I never gave much thought as to what would come AFTER 32. Turns out it's 33. So, you know - rad.
I spent much of the last few weeks of 32 bitching about two things:
1. The sad state of my hair. It's true - every hairdresser I've seen for the last year wouldn't cut my hair as short as I wanted because they felt I should "grow it out" for the big gay wedding. The result? A layered near-mullet that I've been wearing in a ponytail since last May.
2. How I had "nothing to wear". Thirty Helens agree that I often don't take good enough care of my clothes. This is fine when I spend whole days working in my house and walking the dog, but can cause problems when I'm going out for dinner with a friend and my "good jeans" are nearly worn through from dog walking and my "good casual shirt" is pilled from being washed with my jeans and also too fucking short because I accidentally put in the dryer.
Thanks to my high school pal and local hero Kajo, I found a real hairdresser here in Vancouver with whom I immediately fell in love. Why? Because the first thing she said when she sat me in the chair was "Oh, Roro. TELL me you haven't been cutting your OWN BANGS. Please... please promise me you won't ever do it again."
She did an excellent job and I happily paid her more than $20 for my sassy new hair. Those who kindly responded to my hair poll will be pleased to note I'm sticking with the gray. I'm really against posting pictures of myself on my blog, but this cross-eyed one is already on Facebook. Descartes would be so turned on...
With regards to #2, I was very excited to visit the United States of America last week, where creampuffs have more fashion choices and where my favourite ginch reside. I didn't actually intend to get anything BUT ginch from Lane Bryant, because I am at the upper limit of size for that store. But I breathed in the general direction of a pair of jeans when I walked in and the sales girl was all over me to try their "Right Fit" jeans. I was skeptical, but allowed her to measure my waist, pick out a pair of Blue 7's and send me off to the dressing room.
That's when I put on the magic pants.
I am a pear-shaped creampuff and I effing love my effing Right Fit jeans from Lane Bryant. I love that they don't gap funny in the back. I love that they're way sturdier than my other jeans but cost the same. I love that the salesgirl said to me when I first put them on: "I'm not going to make you pull your shirt tight and show me if you have a muffin top - but if you don't have a muffin top, then these are your jeans." I love that I don't have a muffin top in these jeans. I love the term "muffin top".
The other thing I realized at the Lane Bryant is that empire-waisted babydoll tops are in. And you know whose pear-shaped figure is very flattered by empire-waisted babydoll tops? MINE. I basically bought four varying degrees of this:
Then Katr and I did some damage at Sephora, 'cause we found our favourite SugarLemon stuff from fresh and had to stock up. We didn't WANT to, gang - we HAD to.
And so, loaded down with cute duds, delicious smells and free of the mullet, we arrived in Monterey. Where I proceeded to spend the entire week PREENING.
Seriously - it was crazy. Every reflective surface was my friend. I spent hour after hour casting coy smiles at myself and anything or anyone who stood still long enough; baristas, Jamba Juice employees, bellmen, sea lions, some guy who tried me sell me a book on the street called Living with God. Guys - I was VAIN. I kept humming that Carly Simon song, pretending it was about me instead of Warren Beatty. Because last week, it WAS.
I'm a little stunned at how much a great haircut, a few nice shirts, good pants and SugarLemon perked me up. I didn't even know I needed to be perked up. I feel like I've been on What Not to Wear. Pros - I didn't have to be humiliated on TV. Cons - I had to pay for it all myself with the magical elf money I hope will appear in my bank account before my credit card bill arrives. But hey - with my kicky new look and a year of 33 before me, can ultimate riches be far behind? History will decide.
My wife Katr is the queen of laptop bags. Did you know? It's true! Just go Google "laptop bags". The second or third result there? That's her. And she's having her very first laptop bag giveaway!
Those who know me would not think it amiss if I were to describe myself as an "ice cream connaisseur". When we lived in Toronto, our place was just around the corner from a Baskin & Robbins 31 Flavours, which I referred to as "my local". I was in there at least once a week. Rafael and Julio, who owned the franchise, always had a tiny pink spoon at the ready for me to taste whatever was "new". Because they knew that if it was new, I would buy it.
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