Strange holiday memory

I'm at the Eaton Centre today getting another step closer to having all the Christmas shopping done (booya!) and every store is just oozing Christmas music. I don't deny it's holiday spirit raising power. Ever since I left music retail, I have been able to enjoy holiday music again, since I wasn't forced to listen to it to the point where I had hysterical deafness.

Anyway, I'm in Sears and the song All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth comes on, no doubt sung by a performer who is humorously adept at sounding toothless. For a moment I was amused by it and then suddenly I was overcome by a memory.

I was five, maybe six or seven years old and it was Christmastime. As was usual then in my life, I was in a choir and we were preparing a holiday revue of some kind. It was definitely the primary grades. I know this because it was that time when everyone was loosing their baby teeth. Everyone but me, who is dentally retarded.

When I was younger I had a pretty nice singing voice. I was always in the choir, always just shy of the solos (sigh), always in music. I had some talent and my parents and school provided me with a good amount of training. By the age of nine, I could belt out New York, New York like it was nobody's business, but I digress.

There was but one opportunity for a solo in that particular year's all-singing, all-adorable, all-dressed-in-festive-sweaters holiday review. There would be but one child that would have the chance to get up and sing and that song was going to be All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.

I wanted that solo and I wanted it bad. But it would not go to me. Instead it would be the defining moment in my vocal career, where I would passed over again and again for solos. Sometimes for kids who were better, sometimes for kids who were cuter or simply for kids who were blonder. This time I was for a dirty blond boy, who was the ONE kid in the class who had managed to actually lose his front teeth in time for Christmas. I don't even remember his name. I remember his hair, I remember he really couldn't sing and I remember staring at him with all the hate in my little heart as he bumbled his way through the song.

Here I am, 30 years old; an adult and I'm overcome with a hot flash of injustice. Sure the kid got the holiday solo for having the prop to go with the song, but I SO would have rocked that song. Sure I had pretty much all my teeth but isn't that usually a GOOD thing?

Oh I so need to let go. I bet he was more embarrassed than happy about having to get up and sing with his teeth like that. And I suppose I've learned over the years that when people don't give you an opportunity to make an ass of yourself in public you just have to get creative and find your own way to do it.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Christmas Is" by Lou Rawls

HRH

Kicking it old school

It seems that the sun has abandoned Ontario. I'm used to my sunny fall weekends to draw me out of my bed and pyjamas on the weekends, but when it's grey, it's so hard to not stay in, cook warm winter foods and wear copious amounts of flannel.

Indeed, this weekend I left the house only once to pick up the supplies I would need to make a hearty beef stew with butter biscuits baked on top, as well as the odds and sods required for a proper Sunday roast beef. Both first time cooking choices that came out splendidly I might add.

When we were packing for Prague and M's half-brother texted me asking if I could bring over some of my PlayStation games (he is ten after all) and I decided that it would just be easier to take the whole PlayStation over and give it to him (since I never play it anymore), I made a fantastic discovery in the back of our TV cabinet. I found my very old, first generation NES. Back then I didn't have the time to plug it in and give the old games a whirl, but yesterday provided me with an unprecedented amount of free time in which I could reminisce.

We plugged in the nofriendo at around noon and I don't think it was actually turned off until just before midnight. Now this is nothing compared to the marathon sessions I would play when I was a kid, but I was none the less pleased. The only games I still have are Super Mario Brothers 1,2 & 3, Rad Racer, Bubble Bobble, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, the Legend of Zelda and Link.

The Nintendo had been turned on for mere seconds and we had resorted back to the "remember to play fair" rotations from our youth. I was particularly blown away by how I really hadn't forgotten many of the moves. It's like there is a section of my brain that has all the moves from the Super Mario Brothers series, the Legend of Zelda and Bubble Bobble indelibly stamped on it's grey mushy matter. It was insane. So insane that just like when I was 11-years-old, I couldn't find the second labyrinth in Zelda. I could always find all the other ones, but the second was like a black void of "I totally can't find it." M eventually had to look it up for me online. I still got to the end of the sixth labyrinth at the end of the day yesterday.

Tash and Chris came over for dinner and were soon enthralled with the old games as well. Watching eachother play and cheering on almost became as fun as playing the games ourselves. I don't usually save things, I'm the "holy crap, throw it out already" yin to M's "everything is sentimental" yang, so I'm not sure what made me hold onto my NES for so long, but I'm truly happy that it did. I guess I'm mostly a huge creature of habit, so for me, the NES is what video games are. Sure it's amazing to play things on an Xbox or a PSwhatver, but I don't have the same attachment as I do to the NES that I spent more hours than I would like to admit playing. At the very least my parents can say they got their money's worth.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Play my game" by The Donnas

Cult members are simply overtired

It's a shame that by the time I actually have a moment to blog, it's the end of the day and I'm mentally drained. The really unfortunate part is that there are at least five moments in each day where I say to myself "I really should blog about this" and by the time I am peace or even stationary enough to write I can't even remember one of them.

Right now I'm waiting the eternal wait that is waiting for the laundry to die, listening to totally random Chinese music looped from a Web site I was visiting whist trying to determine just what kind of dragon I am. Turns out I am a fire dragon dog. Another mystery of my being solved.

This music is seriously hypnotic. I've opened itunes in the hope that I will actually be able to break away from the seamless melody. I keep telling myself "put on some Yo Yo Ma. It will sound kind of like this and you'll be okay." I swear this melody is a narcotic. All I need to do is just close the tab and it will stop, but I can't do it. Every time I think I have enough will, I loose my train of thought, imagining I'm walking through a bamboo forest by myself, hearing nothing but falling rain and the enchanting melody. Get me a masseuse and some aromatic oils and I'm 80 per cent on the way to zen.

I dare you to resist it. I dare you. Visit the site. You start of reading innocently enough, but then you're sucked in. I've even left my desk for prolonged periods of time, but I cannot seem to close my browser because I know it would bring the cycling melody to an end and that would be wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

It's been playing for more than an hour and it has to be bending my will in some way now. There's no way something like this doesn't have nefarious purposes. If I can't stop listening to this soon, I worry that I'll wake up in the morning with all my worldly goods given over to some mystic in Shenyang.

HRH

Shocked they even let me play

Because the collective lives of my very close friends (and bridal party: imagine that) seem to be coming more jet set by the year it was going to be challenging to get us all in one place to do the annual secret Santa draw, so Mike geniusly found an online Secret Santa manager, meaning that holiday shopping would not be hampered by the current physical distances between us.

So today we got our e-mails that it was on, and like some kind of primordial on/off switch I went from fairly sane person, to totally obsessed with trying to find out who has who in the draw. I'm not good with mysteries, secrets or surprises. I just HAVE to know. Last year I got, maybe a tad, obsessed with trying to find it all out. And I know that it doesn't matter in any way. It doesn't affect the time and thought we put into the gifts we get each other or the joy we share in opening them together. No bearing whatsoever, yet here I am. All twitchy and curious.

And I told myself I wasn't going to be all insane about it this year and it's been, like, 10 minutes and I'm already pestering people:

herhighnessness: Is that who you have???
feelafel: not telling
herhighnessness: I just thought since you brought it up...
feelafel: just stop
herhighnessness: But that would be a rookie mistake.
feelafel: :)
feelafel: unless, of course, I knew you'd think it was a rookie mistake
feelafel: and thus double blinded on purpose!

I should really just chill out and start shopping already.

HRH

Evidence

After a crazy week back I have finally found time to get the honeymoon photos up and organized on flickr. The stream is a bit of a mess now, so I would suggest looking at the photos in sets. Please enjoy!

Venice
Florence
Rome
Prague

Next step, honeymoon summary post. Forthcoming I promise!

HRH

The cat comes back

I promise that when I find time to sit down at my home computer for more than 30 minutes, I will get the vacation photos renamed and captioned then switched to public viewing on flickr. It's been a crazier week than I had anticipated, and while the jet-lag was mostly a non-factor I think it was like that because I simply have not had the time to be tired. Yay for adrenaline.

Today is a very exciting day for me because I will be driving to Port Hope to meet my parents who will be returning my beloved grey kitty back to me. I haven't seen him since October 9 when I left him in Kingston in cat paradise. Something tells me what while I'm sure he'll be happy to be back with M and I, he will very much miss the menagerie of animals that my mother feeds on our deck, the house full of every kitty toy you can imagine, lots of good wood to scratch, two walks outside a day, a play-pal named Aristotle and my parents doting on him with many, many rubs.

I'm sure I'm going to have to double the amount of attention I give him just to get the chance to win back his affection.

HRH