How do I add pics?

What the hell is this:

It’s going to be a helluva learning curve. Or not. I might just be too lazy to play much with this

Check it out:

Lovesong by The Cure

Sorry, I can’t embed it for some reason…

So, since I haven’t yet posted the new apartment, though I promised I would, I thought it would be perfect timing. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures from before I emptied it out. It’s come a long, long way from its quasi hoarded days…

Plus, you get to see The Couch in its new environment, oh how I love me The Couch….

The living room:

Did I mention I love my couch? (If you need a cool couch, head over to EQ3 – you were right Violet Sky, we have one in Montreal) And that vintage Danish table my sister gave me. Love it too. The lamps still need work too, but whatever.  And yeah, I know the painting is totally the wrong proportion, but that will be taken care of eventually. Amazing isn’t it all the things you notice when you’re looking critically at a picture? Cause really, when I’m there, I don’t notice it at all. Which is one of the many reasons I’m not a designer. It’s comfy, I’m happy.

And just to prove I’m useless at staging, yeah, that’s a charger on the floor… It’s all in the details and I just don’t have the details.

The other end of the living room.  Long skinny room. Really annoying to furnish. Hi Honey!

The hallway towards the kitchen with my sweetie cooking – or maybe making me a margarita. That’s a really grainy pic, probably taken with the phone.

And towards the entrance –  I love the transom window, wish it was stained glass:

Bedroom. I love colour, that duvet cover just makes me happy. Again, the painting needs to be changed out, as do the curtains which used to live in the living room upstairs.

These two walls also need something, but lets face it, I spend most of my time here sleeping, and if I’m staring at something, it tends to be the ceiling in the middle of the night so that’s not terribly high on my list of priorities. For now.

And I love that 30s light fixture which used to be in my mom’s bedroom. She gave it to me when she moved.

The bathroom (though you’ve seen that):

The toilet (another grainy flashless photo – phone again?)

The dining room. This room used to be piled high with old newspapers and magazines and stuffed to the gills with excess furniture. I love the built-in cabinet which became our bar and the vintage 50s mirror, which was on another wall. There are some extra chairs in the second picture left over from a party a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, I’m slow on the cleanup…

And last but not least, the kitchen. Not crazy about the cupboards, but changing out the handles did help a lot. Amazing how many handles are in a kitchen. You just never notice until you have to pay for them. Not crazy about the counter and backsplash tile either, but I’ll get to that eventually… Those black squares are chalkboard stickers. They’re pretty much always covered in quotes and stuff.

Oh, look there are two pineapples in the window beside Homer. It wasn’t winter when this pic was taken. Haven’t had pineapple lately.

There you go Geewits, I might not have posted my trip to Maine from two years ago yet, but you got to see my kitchen.

It’s not that I’m not commenting, it’s that Blogger refuses to let me.

Blogger and I divorced a long time ago, but obviously Blogger caught up to me and still hates me.

And I hate it right back.

Messy divorces are so annoying.

However, that is neither here nor there. This is the biggie. The nominees are going to be announced today (or have been already, who knows).

The hype will grow. And grow, and grow yet some more. The nominated movies will take on a new life, despite the fact that after all these months they were languishing at the box office.

Actresses will borrow fuck ugly dresses to wear to the ceremony. The outfits will be picked apart by those in the know for weeks afterwards.

The winning movies will be hyped for weeks afterwards too. Will that make them better movies? Nope, it’ll just make them the movies that got the award because of politics and schmoozing, not because they’re the best.

Can anyone tell me why I should give a shit?

Granted it’s two pairs of glasses, but still. That in and of itself takes major getting used to.

Because can I do with one pair? Nope. I have the old people progressive lenses (and you’ll get there too if you’re not there already, so you can stop smirking now – I said STOP you smartass, you know who you are).

And the even older people degressive lenses (i.e. occupational lenses). Those are the ones for sitting in front of a computer all day. Rather than having three zones they have only two: close up and intermediate.

And therein lies the problem, ’cause really, how weird is it to raise your eyes from your screen and be in a total fog? I feel like I’m living in a whole fecking (thank you Bibi) new dimension.

And since the lens only includes two zones, they’re much bigger, so where you’re used to having your intermediate zone, you’re still in your close up.

Annoying as all hell until I – hopefully – get used to it. But at least I can see my computer screen without twisting my neck in new an interesting ways anymore.

Lesson learned regarding getting old:   Don’t.

Really. Just skip that part of life. Of course, when you consider the alternative, maybe a grand isn’t all that much to pay…

PS: After a few hours of the degressives, all I can say is whoa! I don’t necessarily bother to change them when I get up from my desk so as I walk down the corridor thing slowly come into focus as I approach them. It’s damn creepy it is.

If you can’t eat it or play with it, then pee on it and walk away.

As Ian noted here, it’s Christmas party season.

More to the point, office Christmas party season. Or should that be Holiday party season, in order to avoid all those open-mouth-insert-foot moments that the PC brigade seem to think are inevitable if anything that could maybe, perhaps, conceivably, in any way possible be construed as offensive by some being from the ass end of the Ursa Major galaxy, is uttered in polite company (or impolite as the case may be).

I just had to re-read that because I sort of lost myself in my sarcasm there and wasn’t sure it made sense. Hell, I’m still can’t be sure.  Which begs the question – which has nothing to do with anything – if can not is abbreviated as can’t, can am not be abbreviated as amn’t?

What was my point? Was there even a point?

Ah yes, Christmas parties (non PC, I’m bloody minded that way).

I have my office Christmas party tonight. Luckily, unlike Ian before his retirement (and Mr. Jazz now) I don’t work in a big company, so there is no social committee to make my life miserable with parties and picnics and other such crap. I went to one of Mr. Jazz’s parties. A rented hall, a plastic chicken dinner, and door prizes. Tickets cost a bloody fortune, booze wasn’t free, and never ever again did we show up at one of those shindigs.

In my case, it’s just dinner at a restaurant. Free food, free booze and good quality at that.  And no karaoke. So what do I have to bitch about? You obviously don’t know me if you think I can find nothing to bitch about in this scenario. HA!

I can bitch about anything under the sun,  or, in today’s case, snow.

I like my colleagues, really I do. They’re nice people.  We have fun, as much as an office environment can be fun. Hell, I spend more time conscious with them than I do with Mr. Jazz. And frankly, I’d much prefer to spend the time with Mr. Jazz.  At the cottage, drinking a Fidji Martini and chatting and catching up with Walking Dead or whatever I haven’t had time to see because I SPEND TOO MUCH TIME AT WORK!

• There’s the 70 year old guy, who stopped evolving when I was five years old.
• The one who loves his job. To the detriment of all else – including conversation about anything else than said job. Movies? Nope. Books? Nope. Sports? Nope. *sigh*
• The slow one. Conversation is slow, eating is slow, turning pages in a report is slow, everything about him is slow – a glacier moves more quickly.
• The shy one, who never, ever has anything to say. About anything. Ever. For any reason.

I’ve spent Christmas “parties” sitting with these people. Slowly losing my mine while desperately trying to calculate how much time I had to spend before finding an excuse to run the hell away.

This year I have to find a way to sit at the right end of the table, where the popular kids are. And that is a question of perfect timing, otherwise I am well and truly fucked.

I might just end up stabbing myself in the eye with a fork. You get your entertainment where you can.

You come here every day, sit behind a desk, doing whatever it is you do with the computer.

This isn’t a gym.
This isn’t a yoga studio.
This isn’t even your living room.

Lose the leggings.

I know you’re just 25, but you’re old enough to know better than to wear leggings to an office. Granted, you don’t look totally repulsive in them – and for that we thank you.

But.

This is an office. True, it’s quite a casual office, no need for business suits. But clients come here. Clients do not want to be in a meeting with you if you’re wearing leggings. Unless they’re disgusting old pervs, and then well, your problem sweetheart.

I repeat :  LOSE THE LEGGINGS!

Helpfully,

Jazz

  ********************************

Dear Kids on public transport,

Have your parents instilled in you no sense of “you and your overinflated sense of entitlement are not alone in the world you stupid git”? I guess not.

Yes, I know, a backpack is a wonderful invention for hauling all those school books around. Sure beats the hell out of those straps in what, even by my standards, was the dark ages.

But the whole problem with a backpack is that you, sweet annoyances, seem to not realize that you have 10 inches sticking out of your back in a crowded bus and I (among plenty of others, like that old lady you hit while turning around two days ago who almost lost her footing from the blow) am beyond tired of being rammed by your stupid fucking backpack.

Grow the fuck up and take the damn things off when you board.

Are we clear?

Hatefully,

Jazz

 ********************************

Dear World,

I’m tired, bone deep tired. I’m sick to death of the obligations, public transport, winter and the dreary grey sameness of every damn day. Just please, leave me the fuck alone for a while.

Exhaustedly,

Jazz

Already off topic – picture me rolling my eyes at my newt-like attention span. FOCUS!  Um, yeah, so minor obsessions 10 of them. Lets see how far I can get before zipping off on another tangent.

• Adele.  Yes, I know, by now the whole universe knows Adele. I should be over it. But no. I love Adele. I want to marry her.

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/rYEDA3JcQqw” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>

• Kim Churchill. The boy’s music is the love child of three of my favourites:  Mumford and Sons, Kelly Joe Phelps and Ray Lamontagne (can you have a three way love child?). How can I not love him, he’s absolutely brilliant. At 20. Damn there are some overachievers out there.  I suddenly feel positively ancient.

• Montreal’s street art (Check out this Facebook page). I love graffiti art. Not tags. Graffiti art. And I love finding new ones. And how very bizarre, WP won’t let me add a picture… WP, will I have to damn you like I damned Blogger?

• Clementines. It’s that season again. I could survive on clementines alone.  Oh my darling, oh my darling…. Fortunately, not lost and gone forever, back every year like clockwork. The Moroccan are best.

• Sofas. Yeah, cause I’m a sofa hunting fool.

• Painting furniture. I did the desk, a couple of ugly 70s hexagonal end tables (while waiting to find the perfect mid century end tables – another minor obsession. Which my sister did at a thrift store. For $20 each. SCORE!!!! They might need a bit of TLC, but nothing major), a chair or two,  a mirror; next up – a couple more chairs and a coffee table.

• Rocks. Still and always. They end up in my pockets, and I don’t know quite how. They just do. Really. They just jump in there without any knowledge on my part. It’s freakish.

• Winter. It’s coming. Actually it’s here. The nasty white crap hit us today. Damn. I can no longer pretend winter will pass us by…

• Walking Dead.  Great show if you’re into zombies getting shotgun blasts to the face. Though I think it’s not as good as it was last year.  It’s much more centered on  the characters rather than running from the zombies. I’m definitely going to have to download the comic books. There’s an immature teenage geek hiding inside my head. And he seems to be coming to the fore more and more often. I think his name is Barry. He wears glasses. His pants are too short. And if it was 30 years ago, he’d carry a slide rule.  I have no idea why he decided to live in my head.

• My Kobo. Uh huh, I caved. After my Kindle (in my defense it was a gift, so I didn’t spend a cent on it and thus it doesn’t count) I bought a Kobo. Love my Kindle, but the whole proprietary thing annoys me somewhat, especially since I can’t borrow library books or download from anywhere else than Amazon… Now, I have the best of both worlds. Yay me.

GAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH why won’t the Adele video embed! Why?