Girl From Mars

This two jobs thing is not working out. It's so hard to accommodate everyone. One job only gives me ten hours a week, but wants me to work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and the other would love to give me hours, but can't work around the first job's schedule.

I love the first job, and I want it to become a full-time gig, but that's not going to happen until the fall, at least. I need to hold on to it, because that's the one that has the potential to take me further. I'm the assistant project coordinator for a literacy group, and I'm planning a big event in the fall. The other job is a minimum-wage retail job, but it's a lot of fun. It's a comic book store, which is perfect for a geek like me. I miss working there, but they haven't had enough work for me these last few weeks. My main job is to translate the website and inventory-- and since there are more people available at the end of the week, there aren't enough workstations. It would be better if I could work at the beginning of the week.

The problem is that the first job does need me to work those three days. I asked if I could do the ten hours on Monday and Tuesday, but it's really hard to plan an event two days a week.

So it looks like I am going to have to go find another job, because the comic store won't have anything available until at least August, and I can't go another month without full-time work. I am just so tired of my endless employment issues. Finding full-time work is hard for me here. Even at the comic store, my lack of fluent French is a barrier. And full-time jobs in the English community are rare. It's just so frustrating.

Watching about eleventy billion episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, that's what. It's interesting how the episodes that were kinda shit 20 years ago are still kinda shit, but that the ones that were good are still really, really good. The Inner Light still makes me cry, dammit.

Star Trek was my first fandom-- hell, watching Star Trek with my dad is my first memory! I was maybe two, and I can clearly remember Uhura's red uniform. Over the years, I've drifted away from Trek. I've never stopped loving it, but it's been a long time since I've really enjoyed it. I've been watching reruns of all the shows on SPACE, and it's bringing back memories of being 12 years old and waiting breathlessly for 7pm on Saturday to finally get here.

I'm thankful for the latest movie for rekindling my love of this show, and reminding me why I am a geek in the first place.

I am ganking this from a another forum I hang out on.

Stephen Fry wrote a letter to his 16-year old self, and one of the forum members asked what we would write to ourselves, if we had the chance. Here is my response. I've polished things up a bit, and added one or two things that I thought of later, because I originally wrote it at one in the morning.

( Dear 16-Year-Old Me )What would you write to yourself? What advice do you wish someone had given 16-year-old you?

...and I'm cheating and doing a meme, which I stole from calapine .

( But it's a meme about books! )

One of my reporter friends just called me. She has four tickets to the concert Friday night, and invited me to come along! The headliners are Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Samantha Fox and Rick Astley!

I am so totally going!

SQUEEE! Like, oh my GOD!

You are Sneakers!

You're an active girl, who's all about function You dress for the occasion - comfort comes first Your perfect guy? Someone who can keep up with you. You'll find him - but you might have to slow down to see him!

Is anyone surprised?

Who would win a snarkfest: Gregory House or Perry Cox?

Discuss.

Thanks to nonelvis and magicallaw for this:



Does this holo-whip make me look fat?

Link here

Happy Valentine's Day!

(Follow the fake cut for Valentiney goodness!)

That's a lot of love, you know.

Snagged from shaxophile : what does your username mean?

Well, it's not a type of cheese. The word bruyère is the literal French translation of my first name,  which is Heather. Since bruyere was already taken, I needed to add something to it, and I chose to add the year I was born.

For the first time in over a decade, I have Nintendo Thumb, a condition caused by too many hours playing with the Wii. The latest addiction is some pinball thing my mom got me for Christmas. I used to love pinball, and I had various video game versions. Mom apparently remembered this, and decided to renew my obsession. Thanks, Mom! I have sort of put Super Mario Galaxy on ice for a while, since that stupid little plumber has been pissing me off a lot lately. He just keeps dying! It's unbelievable. But John and I have been playing Wii Boxing the last few days, and my shoulders are nicely sore.

This has been a week of less-fun injuries. I cracked yet another toe into a wall the other day, and it is still black and blue, although not as bad as it was the other night:



The next day, as I was crossing the street, I slipped on some ice on the median and went down before I knew what was happening. I landed on my tailbone and my right hand. As if it was planned, two guys grabbed an arm each and hoisted me up, and then continued on across the street. I thought I was fine, but my ass still hurts. I also managed to close a drawer on all the fingers on my left hand. And I hurt myself sneezing.

You know, if Twilight wasn't so fucking God-awful, I could almost sympathize with Bella Swan. Her one Mary-Sue flaw* is that she's superhumanly** klutzy. I can totally relate to that. Thanksgiving weekend I managed to injure myself clockwise. (Smashed toes on left foot, cut left thumb on food-processor blade, burned back of right hand on oven, smashed right baby toe.) I have never been what you would call graceful, and have been known to trip over lines cracks in the sidewalk, and once I sprained an ankle falling off my own shoe. (Never run for the bus wearing Big Gay Shoes.)


*Mary-Sue flaws are almost always cute and endearing.

**Not as klutzy as John, though! Nobody is as klutzy as John.

Happy Birthday, chicklet73 !

And belated wishes to:



Happy Birthday, messycat !



And to you, nonelvis !

Sorry they're a bit late. I suck.

I'm sitting in my husband's workplace writing this, since he had to work. We all went down to the National Assembly to ring in the new year, put a cap on the 400th anniversary of Quebec City, and freeze our asses off. DAMN it's cold outside! You would not believe it.

Anyway, John had to get tape for the national newscasts, so a couple of friends and I waited for him here at his office, drinking champers out of whatever random glasses we could find, and taking turns wearing the News Crown. That's a plastic dollar store tiara that mysteriously appeared on John's desk one day. John's about done filing, so we're going to head home soon. Later today, we're heading to another friend's house for Wii Year's Day. This involves us hooking our Wii up to our friend's 64-inch flat-screen TV * and playing videogames until our eyeballs fall out. 

Happy New Year, everyone!


*Seriously, it takes up AN ENTIRE WALL. It's going to be awesome. 

 

It's Boxing Day here in Canada, and John and I are spending the morning relaxing before we head off to Montreal for work and/or family visits. (Work for him-- I managed to score the next few days off, and am avoiding the Boxing-Day shoppers.)

This was a good Christmas. We opened our stockings on Christmas Eve, and then I made a roast beef beast with red wine and a rosemary mustard crust, Yorkshire puddings, roasted potatoes and carrots, and a red wine gravy. There was supposed to be a (store bought) plum pudding for dessert, but we were too stuffed. The thing is still in the fridge, because we didn't get to it last night, either.

Santa brought us a king-sized duvet (which he cleverly bought at Sears for $40 while on lunch break from the bookstore workshop). We opened it Christmas eve, so we could sleep under it that night. In our stockings, we had much chocolate (Santa also went to Laura Secord and bought out half the store). John got a Stephen Colbert desk calendar, a DVD of that heartwarming Christmas classic, Die Hard, and a gift card to HBC. I also got many gift cards, the I Can Has Cheezburger? book and a new Earthchef chef's knife. The cats got some toys and treats, and a plastic thingy with bristles that you attach to the wall so they can rub against it. So far, Mojo loves it, and Butterscotch is indifferent. She'd rather lie on flattened wrapping paper.

Yesterday, John went for a Yuletide run through the park, because he won't get much chance to do it in Montreal, but it was cold and wet and slippery, so that didn't last long. I made Monkey Bread.  (NOTE: Next year, I am totally using store-bought bread dough. The bread did not turn out the way I wanted it to, and it took forever. The dough was too wet, and I think that's why it didn't turn out the way it was supposed to. It was still good, but not as sticky-bun like as it should be.) We opened presents and drank egg nog lattes and listened to Barenaked for the Holidays in front of the Ambient Fire DVD firelpace. I gave John two sweaters, some books, and stuff for the Wii, and he got me Tin Man, a gift card to buy a new pair of Chucks, a Wii game, Doctor Who series 4 and a Donna Noble action figure.

Later, our friend Michele came over, and we had a nice relaxing afternoon of wine and chat and a Doctor Who Christmas Special Marathon. We opened it with The Unquiet Dead, since it's about Christmas and has Charles Dickens and also Nine being awesome, and closed with The Next Doctor. Michele brought Tourtière and homemade cookies and we had Christmas crackers and those little chocolates filled with booze. We gave her an Earthchef skillet and a copy of The Bro Code, and she gave us DVDs of The West Wing and Gilmore Girls.

All in all, it was the perfect way to spend Christmas. Friends, good food, booze, and Doctor Who. Really, what more do you need?

Here's hoping that everyone out there in Flistland had a Happy Holiday! 

Christmas may be a time of Peace on Earth and Goodwill Towards Man and all that bullshit, but if I have to stay at work until 10:30pm sorting out cash problems ONE MORE TIME, I am going to go all Scrooge on someone's ass, and I don't care who gets caught in the path of my eggnog latte-fueled rage.

Ten. Fucking. Thirty. Nothing balanced, and my co-worker and her boyfriend (who does not work at the store, and had come to give his girlfriend a lift home) and I went over every single transaction to find the mistakes. In the end, we managed to get the credit and debit transactions sorted, but we were still over more than $50.00 in the cash. I have no idea what the hell happened. I swear, I almost cried.

Fun Fact #1: I don't get paid for the time spent counting the cash, so that hour and a half? GONE. Fun Fact #2: I start work at 9am tomorrow. It's almost midnight, and I am way too keyed up to go to sleep just yet.

So I finally bought my membership to Anticipation 2009, next summer's Worldcon, in Montreal. It's my first con in about eight years-- I went to one in Boston in early 2001, just after moving back to Montreal from Edmonton.

I can't wait until August. Is anyone on my flist going?

One of my co-workers has dared me to read Twilight. She thinks I am such a book snob that I will not be able to finish it. I am on page 12, and I already want to punch Bella Swan. It would give her something real to whine about.

I get it: Bella has the emo. She's stuck in dreary, rainy old Forks, and it sucks. She lives with her dad in a little house, and they share a bathroom. She has to start at a new school. Her dad bought her a truck, that bastard. She has to wear a coat that feels like a hazmat suit. Wah, wah, WAH.

I still don't know why she's there, but you would think with all the pouting and crying herself to sleep that she was forced to go live with her dad. Except that she chose to be there. Her mom even told her that she didn't have to go. Is she determined to be miserable to punish her mother for not begging her to stay enough times?

I want her to be eaten by vampires, but I know that doesn't happen because this book has three sequels.

Someone please tell me why I should care about Bella? Or is this book all about Edward?

It's past midnight, and instead of sleeping, you're cleaning the bathroom. And thinking about starting on the living room.

I'm posting this from my Wii!

I probably won't do this very often, I'm just doing it now because I can.

(Whew, that took a long time with the remote! I wonder if there's a Wii-compatible keyboard available?)