things I will miss about living at home

• my brother no matter how annoying he can get - today I enjoyed listening to him sing along with some horrible song on the television
• hugging my mom after a long day
• the dyson ball - seriously, I love that thing
• the really deep bathtub in my mom's bathroom
• the Slovak accents - the awesome figurines of the complete old city on the bookshelf, the ceramic art, the corn husk dolls
• the butterfly collection
• the dogs, no matter how annoying they are too
• the proximity to the airport and the soothing effect that watching airplanes fly by really low has on me
• the trees on our street - the canopy of our neighbourhood
• living on the same street as Calvin and Eva and their kids
• the backyard

...and many other things I'm sure I'm forgetting at the moment

moving

So in a week it will be time to move, again. This has been somewhat thematic to my life. A lot of people really hate moving. I don't mind it, but this is really the first time I've been moving by myself, as in not with family accompanying me, or Niall. Moving after the breakup doesn't count, because I was moving back into my mother's house. So this is effectually the first time I'm moving as an adult, and for myself. When I think about it, I don't know how many times I've been hustled and bustled into a new household. Let me sit back and count. Well the first place I ever lived was my grandparent's house that my mom grew up in. Then my mom and I moved into our own apartment (a space from which some of my best memories come from, I'll tell the story of how this apartment was gouged away from me another time). My mom then decided to move to Canada to be with Darth Vader and I moved back in with my grandparents who ended up swapping apartments with some other couple. So that's three times, and I'm only 5 - 6 years old so far. Then my mom gets married and has my brother and finally my immigration papers are figured out, so I move to Canada in 1993. That's 4. In 2000 we move into a house (the one I'm currently in) so that's 5. I'm 18, I meet Niall, he has his own place - I spend all my time there and my clothing starts piling up when a few weeks in he makes space and buys me a toothbrush, 3 months in he gives me a key, 8 months later we're playing around with Rugbey on the bed and he laughs and tells me I live with him, 6. A year later our landlord Tabby decides she wants to reclaim the space in the house so we find a new apartment in Parkdale, 7. We live on Sorauren for 8 months and we miss the East End of Toronto, we find the perfect place on Hiltz, 8. A year later the house gets sold and the new tenants again want to repossess the space, we decide to move in with Skye since he can't live with his mom anymore, 9. Niall becomes a jerk, finds someone he wants to be with more than me after a horrible and violent year, I find a letter from him to the girl a week after we break up, I call my mom and tell her to bring boxes and bags, 10. It's been a year since I came home, I've recuperated, I need to be closer to school, the phone rings here all the time, I hate Darth Vader, I'm moving out, 11.

This will be the eleventh time I'm moving. I'm only 24. Crazy.

It's daunting as much as it is exciting. I know Bob will be a great roommate, and I love my individual space that I'm going to be occupying. The fact that it will be a 15-20 minute walk to school is gravy. So it's almost literally a week from the day and I have not started packing. I think I'm going to order boxes. I also have many shoeboxes to use. I have realized, that like a real female, I have a lot of shoes. However they happen to be sneakers. Heh. Most of them are Onitsuka Tigers from way back when that I just don't have the heart to throw out, with some Puma's mixed in, and the crazy purple/orange Nike's.

But this is not a post about sneakers, it's about moving, and my shoe boxes and what I shall end up putting in them. Tomorrow I will venture out to Curry's to get supplies for my packing. I'll read The Big Sleep on the bus/subway to get ready for the passage essay on Monday. Then I'll read the past two weeks readings for Galbraith's Poetry from the 15-1600's class so he can fill me in on what we discussed while I was gone and I can ask questions if I have any. At Curry's I'll pick up newsprint to wrap delicate objects in and get a Chinese Marker to mark the boxes. I think I'm going to be incredibly organized this time - unlike moving out of Niall and I's apartment which was, well... schizophrenic. So - I have all these shoe boxes full of old pay stubs from when I was a retail manager (how the hell did I do 40 hours a week at two jobs, go to school full time, have time for Niall, and still manage to play a decent amount of rock band with Skye?). There's also bank statements, and for some reason I happen to have Niall's old pay stubs and bank statements too. I think tomorrow when I get back from Curry's I'll just shove all those docs into the outside fireplace thing and burn them all - I mean, I could recycle them, but there's no shredder at this house, maybe this way I can make s'mores.

As much stuff as I have to move - most of which = books - there are also a lot of things I need. I need a bed. And bedding. And I really want to invest in a chef's knife. I think I'm going to need some pots and pans too. And I have to figure this out all in a week. I'm a master procrastinator. Well....maybe just the bed is something I should get on pronto. Somebody needs to take me to ikea.

the eyes of the child see no wrong

As Neil, Mika and I were walking away from the venue in the windy rain I happened to make a remark about how halved tonight's audience was in the VIP section. A lot of people sat out Mastodon to wait for Dethklok, I was musing as to why when a kid in front of me asked "oh can I answer your question? Can I answer your question please?" I thought he might actually have something interesting to say so I replied "go ahead". To which he spat out "they sat it out because Mastodon sucks". I made some a half-hearted attempt at an IQ/McJob insult in retort, I don't think the kid understood it. Neil later pointed out that he was wearing a Slipknot hoodie.

I think that explains it all.

feeling ranty

You know he'll never be to pope to me, he's just Ratzinger, and I wish they had had an elaborate ceremony to apologize to Galileo, seriously.....they should just sell the Vatican, just sell it, it's pointless.....and give the archives to Universities. Or just burn everything for all I care.

And what the hell is this pope business anyway? How is it relevant ?

does your temperature ache? is your glass about to break?

Alright let's start with the setlist:

1) Son Et Lumiere

2) Inertiatic ESP

3) Goliath

4) Cotopaxi

5) Roulette Dares

6) Viscera Eyes

7) Halo of Nembutals

8) Eunuch Provocateur

9) Ilyena

10) Teflon

11) Drunkship of Lanterns

12) Luciforms

13) The Widow

14) Wax Simulacra

I won't even try to expound on how great this concert was so I'll just talk about the impressions that I had overall. Lately I haven't really been excited by going to concerts (even Tool) so I was pleasantly surprised by the bubble I felt in the pit of my belly when I woke up this afternoon. My concert going partner and I were just barely on time and had a few minutes to grab some merch and drinks before heading over to the stage. We decided to stand on the right side (and now my right ear is abuzz) which turned out to be fortunate as that's where Cedric spent most of his time, and we still had a very clear view. There was an interesting mix of old and new songs that all complimented each other in the order above - the shock of the night was the performance of Eunuch Provocateur - off of the Tremulant EP which came out before De Loused in the Comatorium - I have never heard the Mars Volta play any of their songs written prior to their debut album - so this was a treat. The execution was incredibly energetic - Cedric's dancing was alluring, gorgeous, sexual, hypnotizing, and many other similar adjectives that I could throw out. The man is mesmerizing in his articulation of feeling and music through his body.

The one image that will be seared into my memory ever more is of Cedric jumping in the air, and flinging his head as such that all the beads of sweat flew off of his curly El Paso Afro in the green backlight of the stage during Eunuch Provocateur. It was completely in the moment and incredibly cinematic and gorgeous. I hope someone captured it. Other stray thoughts - Teflon was heartbreakingly and beautifully delivered - the guys were really on top of everything tonight, everything was really tight, despite the fact that Juan (the bassist) had a broken hand! I noticed that this time around (as opposed to the Spring 2008 concert at the Docks) the guys decided to concentrate on more straight forward rock songs instead of the meandering psychedelic rock operas of yore. I mean, not that it wasn't anything it should have been, or that any aspect of their expressive selves was negated, but I noticed that this time around there were no trumpets/saxophones, where as last year one of the biggest parts of the concert was Ikey and the shit he could do, it really stood out. This time around there was more of a focus on Omar's brother Marcel playing bongoes and congas and Ikey playing keyboard instead of the brass instruments. It was perfect, and I feel incredibly satisfied, largely in part due to the fact that the set list was so diverse in terms of where they pulled content from.

It was achingly perfect.