Insight into speed freaks

I've been a fan of Life brand cold medication for some time. When I was a student, and had even less money than I do now, colds were frequent so cheapo Life brand became a staple for me. Other cold medications are nowhere near as effective for my symptom relief, but there is a sad side effect. It makes me rather loopy (and lippy if you're asking M, but you were asking me, so Shhhhh!).

From the moment the pseudoephedrine kicks in I'm on a wild ride. As Lynne and I were leaving a breakfast at The National Club this morning I looked up at one of the Bay Street bank towers and commented "I'm pretty sure I could scale that thing right now, but I bet you the cold medication would wear off half way up and I'd be awfully tired." It's a bit of a rollercoaster. I get really cold, I get really warm, my arms tingle, I start feeling like my periheral vision is expanding and I'm amazingly productive. I don't start thinking I'm the lizard queen or anything, I just don't feel quite normal. It's not unpleasant, and pretty much everything is funny. Most importantly I don't feel my cold symptoms. Any situation where you can trade a runny nose and sinus-congestion for feeling like Spiderman is a good one.

Today's sing-a-long song: "The Fuel" by The Sneaker Pimps

HRH

Thank you hockey, honestly.

It's been hard finding an upside to the NHL lockout. Just as I was really getting into hockey and enjoying living in a city with an NHL team for the first time, the whole thing falls apart. Alas.

There has been an upside. Since there's no hockey on TV, M has been more amenable to watching other sports, as in sports that I like. This means that not only have I been able to watch a good chunk of March Madness, but I've finally gotten M interested in the wonderful game of basketball. Praise Lucifer.

It hasn't been without it's challenges. Once I had his attention fixed on the game and had explained some of the differences between college and NBA ball, there was the additional challenge of explaining some of the nuances of the game, like the "loose ball foul" without bursting into gales of laughter. A small obstacle to overcome for the great payoff of being able to enjoy this sport with my beloved.

Go Tar Heels!

HRH

Public service Announcement

The new 12-minute episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars volume 2 cartoon can only be described as this:

HOT!

They will be airing March 21 through the 25. If you have an opportunity to see them, I very much suggest that you do. See the first episode at least (Episode 21) as we finally see the end of Anakin's rat tail. The good hair starts in episode 22.*

*and the star destroyers, wookies, and all kinds of other very cool stuff.

HRH

Note: Alternative title for this post was going to be "They've gone to Flash!"

The Ass Effect

This is a public service announcement for impressionable males. Do not be swayed by the coy and oversexed ads for Axe body spray. Please don't think that by purchasing a bottle of axe you will have throngs of beautiful women willingly drawn to your flesh. Axe does not equal "ladies." In all honestly Axe should only be purchased if your aim is to cause stomach upset, dizzy spells and revulsion. And excellent product for a revenge plot.

I am the last female you will meet to discourage a man from taking the time to examine and potentially improve upon his personal smell. Smell is very important. Smell is very much tied to sex and sexuality. If you have the wherewithal to realize that without consistent bathing and grooming we as a species would all smell like wet dogs and try to do something about it a applaud you. However, before you go patting yourself on the back for a scent well done, if you think that bathing yourself in the radioactive, nausea inducing swill that is Axe is a step above wet dog, think again.

I LOVE it when boys smell good. It's just under regret-free cupcakes on my list of good things. It is such an amazing thing to get up close to someone and discover that they have found and employ a complementary scent to their natural body chemistry, a truly lethal combination to a girl's will. It's something that is individual to each person. Some boys smell great with soap, others with a well selected scent.

Note that I said up close. Perfumes and colonges should be something you smell if you embrace someone or if you're standing really, really close, not something that announces your arrival in a room. And besides their totally noxious concoction of scents the axe body sprays also encourage over use.

And they smell like ASS.

It's such a wasted opportunity. There are so many varieties of scent out there, enough types for everyone to find something that makes them smell yummy. Yet fool after fool turns to Axe. It may not be the tragedy of our time, but it is one of those little things that could tip the scales in your favour. Little things do add up.

If you find yourself in the drug store and you're thinking "Hey, I want to smell good. I want the ladies to find me delicious" go with that feeling and walk away from the Axe products. Go find a girl and get her to help you. Otherwise, should you encounter me in the street, or worse, in an enclosed space like a streetcar, I will confront you and yell at you until you go home and wash the Axe stench form your skin. Males, consider yourselves warned.

HRH

My only thought on The Ring 2

If you'd had an experience where a murderous, creepy video-making, ghost jumped out of your television to kill you and your loved ones, would you buy another TV?

Today's sing-a-long song: "When you gonna learn" by Jamiroquai

HRH

You Know What's Fun? (Cribbed from the Blair)

Matty had a great idea. Take a popular song and work your name into lyrics. I almost blew tea out my nose from laughing at his version of White Lines. I can safely say I am never going to hear that song quite the same way again.

Now there are pre-exisiting songs with my name in them, Elvis Costello's I don't wanna go back to Chelsea, Chelsea by MEST, Chelsea by The Counting Crows, Joni Mitchell's Chelsea Morning or the song everyone likes to torment me with, Jon Bon Jovi's Midnight in Chelsea. (Go ahead Jon, just laugh. Laugh away.)

I am going to try this one out with Lenny Kravitz.

I'm crazy for this little Chelsea
I'm freaking for my little baby
'Cause she makes me feel good
She's so fine

Don't need all my other ladies
I'm beggin' for this little Chelsea
'Cause I tell you she's cool
She's divine

I know she's a super Chelsea
I'm weak and I've gone hazy yeah

I'm crazy for that Chelsea
She's chic but she's not shady yeah
Sophisticated Chelsea
And she makes me feel good
She's so fine

Never knew there was such a Chelsea
That would make me want to straighten
Out my life at this time but I find
I'm thinkin' 'bout this pretty Chelsea
I would love her good as my own baby
'Cause you know she's no fool
She's refined

I know she's a super Chelsea
I'm weak and I've gone hazy yeah

I'm crazy for that Chelsea
She's chic but she's not shady yeah
Sophisticated Chelsea
And she makes me feel good
She's so fine

Yeah
Don't you know she blows my mind
All the time
'Cause she makes me feel good
Like a real woman should
Yeah, She's so mine, Yeah

HRH

Totally disappointing

I know this isn't the place where I blog about food, but I am so saddened by my lunch experience today that I feel it has to be spread to a wider audience. I've been on a diet for 5 or 6 weeks now. Things are going well, but one thing that has always been on my mind has been those delicious Quizno's tuna subs. I love them. Or more accurately I loved them.

You see today I decided that I would have a sub for lunch. It's a permitted lunch on the diet (as long as I forgo the cheese). I haven't had one in months. I made the decision to have it last night and at one point M said "you have to stop fantasizing about your lunch tomorrow, it's a little scary" and it was. But I've been wanting one of these, like, forever.

So, lunch arrives today and I trot over to the Q and I order my sub. I note that the sub sauce is different. It's a cream sauce and not the Italian one it once was. I also note that the bread is smaller (which is really fine by me). The staff were a little clued out, not like the old guard at this Q that would start making my order when I walked in the door. Once the bread was through the toaster, I also noted that the tuna was a little different too. Not as well mixed as it once was. I was concerned that some of the shine had come off this experience already.

And then I tasted it. It was truly a shadow of what the sub had once been. I know that companies are always tweaking their products to make them better, it just didn't teak in my direction this time.

Really, it's just as well. What better way to kill a craving for something then to have a sub par experience with it. I can't hunger for something that no longer exists. So I guess a thank you is in order for the Q. A backhanded thank you, but a thank you none the less.

Today's sing-a-long song: "The thrill is gone" by B.B. King

HRH

A song from back in the waitressing days

And if one day I should become
A singer with a Spanish bum
Who sings for women of great virtue
I'd sing to them with a guitar
I borrowed from a coffee bar
Well, what you don't know doesn't hurt you

My name would be Antonio
And all my bridges I would burn
And when I gave them some they'd know
I'd expect something in return
I'd have to get drunk every night
And talk about virility
With some old grandmama
That might be decked out like a Christmas tree

And no pink elephant I'd see
Though I'd be drunk as I could be
Still I would sing my song to me
About the time they called me "Jacky"

If I could be for only an hour
If I could be for an hour every day
If I could be for just one little hour
Cute in a stupid ass way

And if I joined the social world
Became procurer of young girls
Then I could have my own bordellos
My record would be number one
And I'd sell records by the ton
All sung by many other fellows

My name would then be handsome Jack
And I'd sell boats of opium
Whisky that came from Twickenham
Authentic queens, and phoney virgins
I'd have a bank on every finger
A finger in every country
And every country ruled by me
I'd still know where I'd want to be

Locked up inside my opium den
Surrounded by some China men
I'd sing the song that I sang then
About the time they called me "Jacky"

If I could be for only an hour
If I could be for an hour every day
If I could be for just one little hour
Cute in a stupid ass way

HRH

Are you threatening me Master Jedi?

Yesterday I had to watch the OC. Oh, how it hurt to watch the OC, but I had to do it, because I'd been getting all kinds of messages from fellow Star Wars nerds and from StarWars.com itself that the full length Episode III trailer would make it's debut during the March 10 episode of the OC.

So I sat there and tried not to pay attention to crapulence on the screen in front of me while I patiently waited. I watched the whole damned show, to the very end, to the moment when CTV made it clear that each and everyone one at the station needed to be cut as they managed to be pre-empt and cut-off the trailer. That takes talent. To be so dumb that the don't realize that they're not showing the one thing everyone is watching for and then letting the feed through, only to cut it off with the beginning of another show 10 seconds later. I don't care about the complexities of simulcasts and who is at the mercy of whom. They fucked up and they were in danger of feeling the wrath until Beltzner fixed everything.

Obviously I went to the many online Star Wars communities I am part of and looked for a copy of it. There had been a couple of bootlegs running around the net for days (which I opted not to watch because I think this film deserves a better than shaky handheld bootlegs with the sound of someone eating popcorn in the background). I was being good and watching when they told to me watch and what did I get for it? Well the first thing I got was a Spanish version of the trailer that was audio only. I a fairly multi-lingual person, but SPANISH? Throw me a fricken bone here people. Mind you all was not lost. You have not experienced funny until you have heard Yoda in Spanish.

Fortunately for me, Mike was online and within an hour of me beginning my rant about Spanish audio trailers and the pending castration of who ever ruined the broadcast he had found me a glorious, clear version of the English Trailer. Audio AND video. Ooooh. It's so pretty and so dark and it could be so very, very good.

So thank you to Mike who came to my rescue. Several cool things came of it. I got to see the trailer, I got to share in some Star Wars nerdery with him (something we haven't done as much in recent years do to our conflicting opinions over Attack of the Clones) and I got to enjoy the pleasure of getting a phone call from him this morning where he just called to say "You are under arrest Chancellor."

Today's sing-a-long song: "Across the Stars" by John Williams

HRH

Riding the tidal wave of emotion

I learned a couple of lessons on my vacation. Like airlines are never to be trusted when they tell you about how long it will take to recover your lost luggage and that you should always travel with a change of clothes and a swimsuit when you're travelling down south (should the retarded airline lose your luggage). Most importantly I learned what every other person with an ounce of sense knows, that you never, ever, travel with your medication in your luggage. It's carry on... always.

Cause if you don't and you have meds that are meant to be taken daily to keep various types of horomones in your system at an appropriate level and you don't. Or worse you try to compensate for the drugs you don't have with bits and pieces of the meds of those around you and they kind of do the job, but not completely, you're in for some fun.

Because of my foray into do-it-yourslef pharmaceutials I am now paying the price by having to do back to back runs of The Pill. And let me tell you, it's not fun. No sir. Each month I have a day or two where I have (as Laura calls it) "anger in the blood." She describes it perfectly as a buzz you can feel running through your veins and you know by that buzz that you have to keep your mouth shut at all costs, otherwise, you will be tearing off heads and tearing new assholes left right and centre.

If the rise in hormones goes on for longer than a few days, we enter the relam of tears. Tears at long distance commericals, tears at puppies, tears at the bad news of someone you don't even know, tears at your mild existential crisis, tears just for the fun of it. Well I'm there now. I have officially donned my crazy pants, because I'm crying at everything and couldn't really tell you why. Well, I could give you a flimsy excuse as all the minor problems that people experience have now been hormonicized.



I can only hope that the next phase in this time of heightened hormones is the docile and pleasant one. Or maybe just the phase of naps.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Upside down" by Diana Ross

HRH

Cast out of paradise

We are back from our Netherlands Antilies adventure. Tanned, rested and well versed in the ways of flaminogs, iguanas, donkeys, mangrove forests and cacti (cactuses?), it was a great vacation. M determined that the parrot next door cries out "Affleck" all day (you hear it once and it's all you hear that thing sqwak) and got his snorkel on.

I have embraced my pre-teen self and embraced the myraid of freckles that have come with the time in the sun and learned that if I'm going to spend a week going in and out of the ocean, then in and out of the pool and then back in the ocean again, it would be wise for me to shave my head before hand. That said, the Phiosophy Lavender pound cake was a success (until it exploded in the luggage on the way home) when paired with the application of pantene conditioner as hair product. I managed to really relax and as M pointed out "Bree" only reared her anal-retentive head a couple of times.

It was a really nice time. The family got on very well, the weather was perfect and I went on some really excellent dives. If you can find your way to take a tropical vacation in the midst of a dark winter I earnestly suggest that you do. It does wonders for your health.

Today's sing-a-long song: "The Sea of Love" by The Honeydrippers

(Click on the photo to enlarge)


HRH

Self Portrait Day

I have submitted an image of myself for Self Portrait Day. On Thursday, March 3 there will be the following image and some minuate about moi. I signed up for this because I thought it was a great idea. Getting bloggers from all over to submit a self-portriat to share and hopefully meet some new people along the way.

So if you're new to TRW, welcome! Have a look around. I'm sorry I'm away until Saturday, but we can get to know eachother when I get back. Until then, grab a drink from the fridge, have a seat on the couch, give Zeus some rubs and make yourself at home.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Pictures of You" by The Cure

HRH