Wow. I haven’t updated since June 9th, and a whole bunch of stuff happened in between times. I’m going to have to sum up to pack it all in to one catch-up entry.

June 10 – Alyssa’s 30th birthday scavenger hunt across Toronto.

Too much to say here, but JVL and I enjoyed ourselves immensely, met some nice new people, and our team won (the prize was movie coupons, which we’ll probably use to see Superman Returns). Scavenger hunt item highlights: photocopying my butt, Alyssa finding a Barry Manilow album on vinyl; getting a spork; the photo of me and a little Filipino boy stalking a pigeon; a book in Hebrew; the photo of our team with the shirtless, hairy Scottish rollerblader; a paint-by-numbers painting; photos of team members in various Toronto pools, etc.

June 11 – EQG Sunday website meeting was frustrating as hell.

I thought it would be a one-woman job, with me doing a nice redesign, moving site info over, and eliminating the banner ads by shifting hosting to Doteasy. But nooooo. It was “website by committee”, which is fine if everyone knows what they are doing, but here there was total confusion. My “committee” couldn’t tell the difference between domain name hosting and webhosting, Frontpage or Dreamweaver, WYSIWYG editors or hand-coding. Brutal. The painful shittiness of this meeting and a lot of other factors have resulted in my desire to immediately resign from the Guild.

June 12 – Dentist appointment with unexpected twist. Thought it was just a cleaning; turned into two cavities being drilled. Crap.

June 13 – Class at Ryerson was cancelled and thank god because the week was looking wayyyy too busy. The downside is, our final exam has now been bumped back to August 8th… the Tuesday after the long weekend. I guess the plan to take extra time off around the Monday to potentially go visit Kari is right out (to be honest, the $1000 plane tickets were a bit of a deterrent as well).

June 14 – Took and new LJ user to the Nathan Phillips’ Wednesday Farmer’s Market at lunchhour. They loved it. Came home with a few new plants and had a delicious roasted veggie calzone. Also Canada’s Next Top Model night #3 with and Aaron, where we had beer and BBQ, including burgers with homegrown lettuce, and yummy honey-garlic Elk sausages. Deelish.

More Top Model Ranting

Scary Stacey McKenzie proves she has sexy legs in the tiniest pair of denim hotpants ever, then coaches the girls in their runway skills on a bowling alley catwalk. The mini-models then show off their newfound pseudo-competency in heels by parading before a bunch of randy rugby players.

Brandi pulls a Janet Jackson and flashes some titty, but recovers well. For the photo challenge, the finalists are given a scene to act out that is confusing as hell, involving them being bejewelled princesses waiting in a barn next to a big Caddy for their belated prince. He’s late, and I think they are given direction to be angry or sad or something. model hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry next to a big fancy Cadillac.

In the end, Natalie is eliminated – while they all love her, the judges think she is just a little too ‘big- boned’ to be a true top model. Natalie is kicked off for a number of reasons, but let’s face it, in the end she was axed because of how self-conscious she became about her body weight and the spiral of depression it threw her into.

Once again, the show covers its ass (as with the whole “Sisi not representing Asians, parallel with Dawn not representing Aboriginals” thing from week 2) by having a personal trainer smash a scale in the next episode, loudly declaring himself “clinically obese, despite having only 5% body fat” and saying weight means nothing to the loud applause of the remaining girls.

Guess they don’t want Ylenia to have a breakdown about her purportedly “massive” hips SUCH BULLSHIT SHE’S TINY and have to be kicked off the show for non-industry standard largeness.

June 15 – Dinner & drinks with and her husband Jeff at Futures, then Pauper’s Pub, then Korean BBQ, then Hodo Kwaja, then Insomnia. Started with beer, had kimchee and Soju in the middle, walnut cakes for dessert, and ended with $4 martinis. Quite an evening!

June 16 – I submitted my “Out of Gas” quilt with K-Jo’s tire tread on it to the OPS Conserves art show. We’ll see if I get in or not. Meh. That night JVL and I came to the awful realization that we had run out of TV DVDs to watch, so he ordered Aqua Teen Hunger Force seasons 3&4 and for me, ‘Run, Ronnie, Run!’ We walked up to the plaza to buy pinatas and candy, ate tosta mistas, and I gave JVL his Congratulations on Your New Job at Sunnybrook gift, a white Nintendo DS-Lite. He appears to be into it.

June 17 – K-Jo’s absentee birthday party, which she teleconferenced in to from the Yukon.

We had a good turnout, even though the day was hot as hell. Folks were invited for 1pm but arrived at 3:30pm, so by the time our tardy partygoers showed up, all of JVL’s hard work inflating balloons was wasted since they popped in the sun. Our metallic birthday banner and lizard and Mexican hat pinatas(!) stood up to the test, and were a great deal of fun to hack down from the cherry tree with blindfolds and big sticks.

After eating the food which was as usual bought by the generous-hearted Aaron, the heat drove us all inside to the cool basement, where we traded gossip and information about the new developments in our lives and in K-Jo’s journey through the north. Then I played some Donkey Conga with Attila while JVL got Aaron hooked on Meteos for the DS, we ate my first attempt at making Uli’s carrot cake, and all tuned into Game 6, which was a complete triumph for the Oilers.

In the middle I got a haircut from Steph and traded her back a facial. Who knows what everyone else thought, but as parties go, I was totally into it. A good crowd, lots of laughter, some good photos taken. Those folks are welcome in my home any time.

June 18 – Ugh. Clean-up. JVL did the dishes, bless his heart, while I skipped off to Oakville to help clean out the last of the stuff from her old apartment and finish hooking up her new upconverting HDTV DVD player. We visited Dad for Father’s Day.

Our attempts to paint the old hallway were foiled by a lack of time, since cleaning and sorting took longer than we thought, but we got rid of a lot of junk and now her move is almost complete. Then back to Weston to pick up JVL and over to visit Paul, also for Father’s Day. We got him a card and a photo in a frame, and in return were gifted with some lovely hostas and alliums from Uli’s garden, and groceries from Paul. Hurrah for family!

June 19 – I skipped the final 2006 quilt guild meeting and spent the evening feeling weirdly guilty and out-of-sorts. Watched some season 1 CSI. Slept fitfully.

June 20 – Visited briefly with and his husband-to-be and relaxed by looking at their deck garden, playing with their lovely cats and sipping a virgin mojito. Used a handy wool-winding gadget. Showed off my recently-completed knit change purse for the nine billionth time with unwarranted pride. Ryerson class went really well, I followed the Flash lesson closely and learned some awesome techniques re: creating vectored images and uploading to Dreamweaver. It’s all coming together. Bus ride home was a little creepy, but Justin met me at the stop.

June 21 – Supremely busy day at work meant that I missed the weekly visit to the Nathan Phillips Farmer’s Market. Bummer. Canada’s Next Top Model #4 evening, complete with Justin, Aaron, red wine and Thai food — old school style.

OMG More Top Model, Really?

The ladies get an early morning wake-up call from a personal trainer. Sisi plays sickie and bows out. Not sure I agree with her methodology, but I sympathize. I’d rather be in bed than doing crunches, too, honey.

Annoying Brandi wins the challenge again, then the girls unwind with a night on the town. The next day’s shoot is done in underwears, and then again in less underwears (topless). Alanna goes in first and stays strong, with a very comfortable-about-my-body attitude. You go, girl! Sadly, her positive self-image is given a serious blow later in the show when the judges make a point of commenting on her bad skin. I would probably cry like hell too if someone highlighted my nasty acne on national television. Who wants the world to know about their zits? That is some cold shit right there.

Sisi and Andrea, despite being the weirdest of the team, are still blowing away the competition when it comes to photo shoot time. Apparently, the camera loves freaks. In the end, Heather –who was highlighted as having the most potential in the first episode– is booted from the show with another of our patented Canadian group hugs. I think Tenika may be thrown out next week. Her photos are just not happening.

June 22 – Elm Park meeting. Justin and I took our dinner with us –which included homegrown peas & nasturtium leaves– since the park is next to the house. I guess we’re getting new swings. Whee!

Today – Nothing yet. No plans for tonight. Hopefully a quiet evening at home. Tomorrow we may head downtown for a little Pride enjoyment *if* we can haul our lazy asses out of our hobbit-hole in Weston. Sunday is set for cherry pickin’.

Phew! That was one hella big post. I’ll try not to do that again anytime soon.