Diary Days.. life the universe and everything

I saw these flowers, which are'st my favorite, at the market last week. Amber's mac-button layout reference comment had me thinking of them, and this banner I made on my original layouts era from an actual picture.


& seemed intent on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it




Oh Polaroids and the Rilo Kiley love!




So 2003. So October. So you're so damn hot. So the greatest escape that you ever did make. So Jenny You're Barely Alive.

I love dinosaurs and summer.  There is little else you need to know about me.

"there are days when a warm look from a strange face will make me forget my name"

(The Other Side / Dismemberment Plan)

Dear B'journal

This will be my 300th "official blogger" journal writing post.  300 days of deciding to get all fancy-ass and make my b'journaling life easier than literally updating in dreamweaver.  Although you must admit, my very original and crazy-go-nuts layouts were spectacular weren't they? (like the few months of just a homemade watermelon background and text.. oh those were some times we had).  The harder it was to see or read, the more I loved it.  If I may compare it to B'dazzling a regular journal, like a jean jacket, and making it ultra pretty, sparkle-blinding and unsafe to wear!

I guarantee you adorable nosy readers that NOBODY'S carefree archiving system was anything like mine (aka there wasn't any) which literally wiped so many moments in textual-history right off the face of the internets.  I mean really, really wiped it off; with such fervor that if the internet were a child (and, isn't it though?) it would have started complaining about the huge red mark it left.  Sad since I am really going to miss that whole Snakes on a Plane photo entry, where I retold the whole movie via stills.  I should have a photo memorial for it, it was a fave.

R.I.P. Snakes joke.

I had my fun, I did, and who knows why!  What I do know however is, by goodness, I think it's safe to say I have a habit after all now don't I?  SHARING.  Aww, look at me, I share.  Yep this is my one constant/consistent .. please don't make me say outlet please.. in this encyclopedia dramatica awesome 'snakes on a plane' kickA life of mine.  And it doesn't have one, not even ONE, point to make; if you try and find one you will not be successful, it just doesn't.  Isn't that great?

I just thought I'd recognize that.  That is all.



Yours Truly,
Princess OTW Ann-Marie

How yellow didn't get it's groove back

So lately we have taken up another painting project.  Better known as the "cover up that totally ugly mustard colour that we thought was fine at first and now makes me angry-sad" project.  I mean literally it covers the whole kitchen, diningroom and hallway in what could be the colour of babypoop after too many ripe banana pies.  Who in gods name thought that colour was a good idea?  The kind of person who would feed a baby pies: a moron.  Anyway so my cutest kitchen ever is being done some justice finally with this colour

Minus the nautical stuff and two pottery barn kids looking like they're co-operating while playing together instead of trying to kill the other one and claim his bed.  I mean other than those differences, it's basically the same room, but a kitchen.

It's funny how one minute something can be ok and the next you hate it with your whole being.  Yellows frequently do that to me. In fact there is a particularly hated yellow truck I see everyday, everywhere I go, which was OK at first because obviously I have seen stupid yellow cars before, but now I want to take up fake-smoking just so I can flick lit cigarettes at it.  I imagine one day the owner comes out and demands to know if those are MY cigarettes ruining his gosh-darn-lovely paint job, and I will say "why no.. I don't even smoke!  it's a disgusting habit.  my sister DIED of cigarettes, you bastard" and then I can light and flick another cigarette at it, which will movie-burst-into-flames just like in How Stella Got Her Groove Back.

How rightously fantastic would that be if the world would just make a few exceptions in what was technically considered 'arson' so I can live out my fantasy of being a crazy black lady.  God.  I am so tired of hearing The People vs. How Ann-Marie Got Her Groove Back, I can't even tell you.  The people need to stop drinking their H8terade and let me be ME!  You can't hold my Groove down.  Another thing I don't get?  I watched(a commercial for) Prison Break once, it looked like a bunch of attractive people, but y'all I totally went to prison once and I was SERIOUSLY the CUTEST one there!

I think we have this...

Lovely Suit

So Barak Obama was in Canadia-Land.. up near Ottawa of course (insert Beaver Tail joke) but apparently also visited back by my hometown of Hamilton and current town Burlington to visit family.  How fun!  I wish I knew, I would have introduced them to Pizza Depot, Whole Foods, and Russell Williams. 

And can I just say, I don't know who is in charge of dressing Mrs. Obama but putting a 6 foot tall woman in a thick pinstripe suit is just abuse of fashion authority.  I just had to say it!  She looks like part of Al Capone's crew; oh and her gang name would be Ma Legs, in case anyone was wondering.

I'd tell her that in person if I weren't so afriad she'd palm me in the face.  I mean that in the best way, really. I'm Canadian.. any attempt at making a rude comment would probably end up coming out of my mouth as "lovely suit".

My first bad review

"Hey so you want a piece of chocolate cake?"
"No.  It's yucky."
"You think the cake I made is yucky?  you don't like the taste?"
"It's crap"
"....ok who told you that word? do you know what crap means?"
"Crap is a word when it's yuck"
"Ok well you used it right but it's still a naughty word.. stick with yucky"

*dejected*

A 3 year old who loves chocolate AND cake called my cake crap.  Haha...  geeze tell me what you really think!  I can't get over how funny that is.  FAIL. 

Crimson and Clover, Over And Over

I made some chocolate cake tonight, I don't know how good it was because it was very gooey and just out of the oven when we ate it... everything tastes great that way doesn't it? I think so. Even garbage.

Today was long and lazy, and I'm up late listening to the recommended radio station. Stuff like the stuff I already like! ultimately I don't really like the song that's playing (after 45 seconds) so I go back and listen to the station of the things it was supposed to sound like. Like Jimmy.


Bleed American


I washed many a dish with hot water in a hot summer kitchen with NO air-conditioning listening to this and yet still I haven't associated it with anything but fun and awesomeness! How??  Can't find a recent comparison other than my strange love for Estelle's American Boy feat. Kanye West. Anyone? No?  Just me then, ok.

Sean called me out to use Twitter and for whatever reason I'll find myself updating it with a totally sarcastic tone, which is a little funny. As if Twitter was a real character, uh say an annoying little bird always asking me what I'm doing, which should be really professional and important (instead of picking your nose) so I pound on my keyboard:

"OH geeze twit, I don't know.. I'm going through some papers right now! if you're satisfied can you get the f out of here before you poop on something expensive?!"
Because apparently in this scenario I think I'm the Princess of Monaco. I imagine it's before the time of computers and nobody needed to know what I was doing. I might as well be walking around my house in gowns, making cucumber sandwiches, or at the beauty parlor just smoking, like they do on Mad Men.

Sometimes you have to just take time out of your day and smoke, you know? Like me, I haven't smoked but 5 times already this morning, once while actually drinking my orange juice at the same time. It's a neat trick I should show you sometime. Nothing important happens to me unless I'm smoking, though. I should tweet about that.

I should mention that we have a long-standing running joke about the smoking on Mad Men. In fact if I were to keep up my sarcastic persona on twitter I would be the sort of smoker who just holds a cigarette while I think about stuff, through the haze of smoke to make it seem insightful, because the 1950s was a very sarcastic time according to me. Perhaps it was all the idiotic smoking, now that I really think about it! Makes about as much sense as writing sentences into the vast ocean of who the hell reads this? Waaaait a minute.... who the hell is reading this?





Hahaha.

Fun Times

13 year old Dad to take DNA test.. didn't know what DNA was.

Rachael Ray can suck it

So for the 'tines I thought it would be nice to save going out for dinner and cook it all myself, as my gift. There was no real theme other than stuff I know Sean likes.. though there were a suspiciously large amount of red ingredients. I thought maybe I'd post what I made + my ultra helpful photos and the recipes. You know, in case anyone who reads this also wants to spend 8 hours in the kitchen, burning themselves once.

Sorry.. I forget not everyone has to do things exactly like me.


Cranberry Feta Summer Salad

1 pkg. (10 oz.) spinach salad leaves
1 cup sweetened dried cranberries (I used Crasins actually)
1 pkg. (4 oz.) Crumbled Feta Cheese
2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp. honey
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

*the actual recipe calls for chopped Walnuts but I left them out because Sean doesn't like them

Directions:

Layer your salad, cranberries, cheese in shallow salad bowl or on large serving platter.

Whisk vinegar, honey, mustard and pepper in small bowl. Slowly add oil in a thin stream, whisking constantly until well blended. Pour over salad. Toss gently to coat. Serve immediately.

Roasted Smoked Paprika Chicken with Lemon and Garlic Potatoes

The funny story on this is this dish is titled literally as "man pleasing dinner" but when I called up the recipe to show my friend Brooke what I was making I typed into google "man pleasing" .. and let's just say that was NOT what I was looking for lol.

You need 4 Chicken breasts with the skin on, one fresh lemon, garlic, salt, olive oil, oregano, smoked paprika (the recipe called for spanish paprika but I can never find any), and mini potatoes.

Cut up several small white and red potatoes... about this many

Toss them with 1/2 a lemons juice, olive oil, salt, minced fresh garlic, and dried oregano and spreading them out in a wide shallow pan. Then you make a paste of the juice of the other half a lemon, about 2 T. of dried oregano, 2 T. smoked Spanish paprika, crushed fresh garlic, 2 T. kosher salt, 2 T. olive oil. Flatten the chicken halves out and placed them over the potatoes in the pan. Spread the paste all over the outside of the chicken and placed it in a preheated 450 degree oven. This took about 1 hour to cook and it was delicious, especially the garlicky, lemony drippings.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting


This is where I burned myself.. since we went shopping all day etc. cooking this all from scratch was a little tiring so coming across the finish line I ended up not paying too much attention to the hot oven. But.. red velvet cake is basically the Cadillac of desserts so I couldn't wimp out. And since I'm a winner in the kitchen I wore an apron and everything.

I got the recipe from Pinch My Salt, so you can find it there. Keep reading if you want to know how NOT to make it. Aka. how I fucked it up in the first minute. Exhibit A.

Dexter's Bloodspatter Pattern

If you're like me you'll want to totally not read the first sentence in the directions which tells you to mix the Cocoa and red food colour together and SET ASIDE. Instead I threw the Cocoa into the flour (I got the special self rising pastry kind where it has the baking powder and salt already in it, score) and then I was left having to blend the red colouring into the sugar and butter mixture. It's real great if you want to make sure it looks like you've been slaughtering deer all day. Then licking it off the spoon.

Exhibit B?
Try and find red food colouring on Valentines Day and get totally fucked out of it and the recipe has less than it should. I literally ran to the store, twice, because I also forgot the Baking Soda AND sugar too! Fuck you, primary colours.

Oh but did I mention they were heart-shaped cupcakes?

So cute, right? And pretty yummy, I have to say, I had a very full and happy valentine. We're also going to a Day Spa this week for a bunch of fun and relaxing stuff, I can't wait! Especially since I get to go there with my new perfect Guess purse lol. It's the red velvet cupcake of purses. So much for not getting spoiled this year.. darn.

Our first 'tines

Spoiler alert: had a great day :)  tons happy. 
  

Bad Case of Worms

Bad Case of Worms, originally uploaded by anna potatoes.

The other night Sean and I were talking about random 'cool' stuff we remembered having as kids. His was a whole Star Wars glassware collection, and I actually remembered some sort of Mickey Mouse glass collection I had. He found the Star Wars collection in question online, however I could not find mine, which just prompted me to search for other random stuff. Like the Bad Case of Worms: two sticky worms in a briefcase.

If the photo of my Dad and I wasn't cropped you'd see I had them tied to my feet for some reason. I'd only use them for that, not flinging. It's 99% possible I thought it would help me climb walls like Spiderman.

This website even has the original commercial! What an interesting use of resources... I swear the internet is like a 80s time machine. All networked, messaged boarded and cataloged. Talk about the real wayback machine right there.

But crazy money is a Canadian thing

My grandparents are planning a month-long trip to Australia so I thought I would lend a hand. Upon further inspection (they make you get fucking Visa or -ETA- just to visit apparently.. dick-move) I discovered that this is what their money looks like.

Just what the hell are they trying to pull here? WE have the coloured money thank you very much. Who approved the fucking canary yellow? I'd laugh at someone if they handed me that. On top of all this, like a slap in the face, I read that it's not even paper money but actually PLASTIC. Let me guess, you guys have only one jail, bright red hotels and your mayor looks like this?

Australia makes our proud Canadian heritage of brightly coloured currency seem SILLY!

A-Maze without cheese at the end

Susan Powter... reminds me of a very specific and familiar kind of crazy. Prime example, I think I literally took care of Susan Powter's 3yr old for 7 months. Seven loooong months.



Just think about that, and all the insane things you would imagine she'd say or request from you. Like cooking a single burrito in an oven for an hour because microwaves were forbidden, and individually peeling the 2mm of skin on already sliced cucumbers because her husband forgot to buy the organic ones. It scares me almost as much as Susan Powter is scared of being filmed in natural lighting.



I'm also pretty concerned at the number of people who have completely lost it upstairs who write disjointed haiku blogs. It should be right up there on the test for anyone whose mental sanity is in question.

1. Do you see or hear people that nobody else does?
1(a) do they fight with you?
2. Have you ever had a squirrel tell you where something is in the park?
3. Do you need to cut yourself to let feelings out?
4. If you had a blog, would you write it in normal sentences or haiku?
4(a) do you have a blog now that only exists on the other sides of napkins or somewhere on your body?
5. Have you recently developed an accent for seemingly no reason?
5(a) is it English, French, German or OTHER?
5(b) this wasn't really a test, we're just distracting you while 'they' go through your 'stuff'.

So far all I have are Susan Powter, Courtney Love and Rosie O'Donnell on that haiku list but who else even needs to be on there. I imagine them all going out to lunch together and ordering 3 crazy salads with a side of glitter and glue, making sock puppets and continuing the whole lunch talking to each other through them. At this point in life I've fully submitted to the idea that people are so nuts you cannot hilariously out-crazy them; any scenario where I even attempted that would end swarmed by cops after smashing unopened liquor bottles over my head and diving off the Empire State Building.

I do draw some lines when I'm trying to make a point.

25 things about Bees. I mean, Me.

I got all tagged up in some Facebook meme that I'm sure you have also been, I've read a few so here's my participaction!

1. I used to feel really sorry for old classic cars, that one day we'd stop using gas and nobody would drive them anymore. Since that day has not happened soon enough, I've handed in my anthropomorphic sympathies and am demanding an electric car!

2. Amongst jobs that I absolutely will never do, like the obvious cleaning up exploded dogs or crematorium curator, is Claymation animator. I just can't do highly detailed things and concentrate for long periods of time... even plucking eyebrows for too long makes me feel like puking and I have to breathe and take a break or stop.

3. Once I broke my arm looking at my great-grandparents 60th wedding anniversary cake and the only person who drew on it was my mom.

4. I absolutely hate eating after swimming. It feels gross.

6. I just learned what a composite coach is from watching Thomas the Tank Engine.. which I find amusing since I've traveled on trains and didn't know. *It's a coach that is half full of passengers, half full of luggage/cargo.

7. The first song I ever sang in front of an audience was for music class - it was mandatory. I practiced in bus stop shelters on my way to school which are acoustically, pretty great.

8. I don't think the TV should be the focal point of a "living" room.

9. When I am nervous, or full of a bunch of things I don't want to/am too upset to say - I get really cold all over. Sometimes I'll shiver as I'm speaking and if anyone knew was associated to how I felt I may have some embarrassment there. Luckily it's just too weird!

10. I'm not particularly good at anything, or have any talent but that doesn't mean I don't try it anyway.. and do sometimes think the result is pretty great even if it's only average.

11. I don't promote myself. I'm not sure how I ever became VP student council at school or VP marketing in Junior Achievers ..OR.. convinced my teacher to put on a Christmas play I wrote in place of real class time. People must be really dumb to have let me do that stuff.

12. The first concert I ever went to was $30 seats for Barenaked Ladies and I base every concert on how fun it was.

13. I have this vision every time I walk down the stairs that I will fall down them. I also have horrible nightmares that my teeth fall out.

14. I want to drive to Calgary in May, instead of fly, just to take the extra 6 days and see across Canada. I don't have 6 extra days and I think that's balls. Probably why some people live a double life, it's hard to schedule things around just one.

15. I've built a snowman on the top of a mountain in July. It was 30cm high.

16. I used to save movie stubs.

17. I find the idea of a "half floor" in a building to be absolutely amazing. I bet even the mice there are magic.

18. We're 98% sure someone who lives next door to us works at the strip club. I found her ridiculous high heel footprints in the snow going all the way there. It reminded me of a pornographic version of that shoemaker fable where tiny elves come out at night and make shoes. No idea why...

19. Back in the NYC bar days Sean and I would drink so many Vodka & Redbulls that combined our little straws made a bridge that went right over the table.

20. I am not sure when people feel like they've truly been successful. So, I look forward to being just a little successful everyday.

21. Hanging out with my twin cousins always manages to have the effect of brightening my mood right up from -5 to +800. Even since we were kids, and yes even when they fight. lol.

22. On my 22nd birthday I got an outline tattoo of 2 stars. Just seemed like an appropriate fact for number 22. I never planned on filling it in.

23. I've been afraid to write on the first page of anything, so much that one diary I had I ripped out at least 20 pages because it wasn't "right" or my handwriting wasn't nice enough. This is the sad reason why I can never own any beautiful soft Italian leather bound or moleskin journal, which I would LOVE to have.

24. Sometimes I sweat puddle-like amounts. Literally I drip sweat for seemingly no reason, like, I'm just talking on the phone. It's very curious and totally totally gross.

25. I'm usually the person who will end up being the head of the line, or does something first, if only to save someone else the apparent embarrassment of standing out.





Comments welcome, I'm in a reading mood. Unless you're a bunch of chickens who don't want to stand out... if so, wait for someone to do it first and then comment.

Awesome takes practice!

I love everything about this book cover, especially the Asian girl who looks like she practices being awesome all the time in the mirror at home.... and gives herself motivational speeches into her cereal each morning.

"Today is going to be GREAT!  Greg, the blonde guy at school, is totally going to notice me.  I will say something really funny, and he'll give me a 'hey, that's cool' hand gesture, then everyone will want to be my friend and read my poems....finally."

Also from the same amazing Author that brought you "If God loves me why can't I get my locker open?" and then later, when Asian girl gets popular from all the practicing of awesome she did.. she has more dilemmas like:

Update on lost 5 mins of Lost: I got to see it later and apparently John Locke explained the whole scene where Richard visits a 5 year old Locke back in time and shows him all those items, then Locke begged to be told how to get off the island but the flash of light came and they went back in time again.. then the annoying british red-head starts bleeding all over the place and collapses so.. she's probably dead.  You know.. NOT REALLY IMPORTANT.