baby, it's you.

Didn't your mother tell you that if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all? 

Especially not on Valentine's Day to a (really drunk) girl in a pretty dress.

Hmph.

that's right (all you need is love).

Happy Valentine's Day, lovelies.

luck let a gentleman see (just how nice a dame you can be).

Luck Be a Lady Tonight

Although I've been a little down on my luck the past few weeks, be it with my job or the gentlemen in my life, I was a very lucky lady to be treated to dinner at Oddfellow's the other night. I'd been looking forward to dinner there for months, read review after review (and eschewed the bad ones from my memory), and looked in with jealousy every time I passed the corner of Queen & Shaw on my way to some other Toronto institution.

As Now & Eye Weekly have both reported, the food wasn't perfect. My photog friend & I had been looking forward to the lamb-stew-for-two all week and it didn't exactly live up to my expectations. The ambience, however, was a perfect 10. The bring-your-own-bottle policy allowed me to pick up a nice Chianti Ruffino at the local liquor shoppe, and lucky for me, he picked up the check for everything else. 

Although our quasi-pseudo-non-relationship-friendship status to me is sometimes more controversial than Frank Sinatra's switch from the Democratic to the Republican party, I had the most fun I'd had in, well, days, but the company was just lovely. And, having dinner out instead of in my apartment as usual gave me an excuse to wear my new (amazing! life-changing! head-turning!) black vintage dress, and make whiskey sours (my new specialty) for my old friend. 

One day, we may reunite as lovers-or-whatever; a revival more epic than that of Sinatra, Davis & Martin's in '87 (You know, the 'Together Again' tour?), but for now I am oh-so-happy that I have such a good friend in the city. A man who doesn't mind when I eye-ball other men down Oddfellows' famed communal table, or drool over my dream woman, Pamelia Kurstin, on YouTube because, to be honest, most of the time he's right there droolin' over her next to me. 

It's his MacBook Pro we're watching all those YouTube videos on.

public service announcement.

Waiting for a Different Kind of Ceiling to Fall

There was nothing I was looking more forward to tonight than my nice, big, warm, disheveled bed. I washed my sheets the other night so my bedroom smells like lilacs with a hint of Nag Champa that has seeped over from my living room to cover up the I-got-drunk-and-smoked-a-cigarette-indoors smell (more like got-drunk-and-let-my-visitors-smoke.. Turns out I'm a non-smoker). I cleaned up the piles of leopard print, purses, lingerie, and band t-shirts I'll never wear more than once off the floor so you could actually see the hardwood. 

No classes, technically, on Thursdays usually means I can get up early (depending on the goings-on the night before), get coffee, and do schoolwork for a couple hours, and waste a bunch of money thrift shopping or grocery shopping; depending on what kind of hunger pains I've got that day. 

Up at six, out of the house by six forty-five, in the doors of George Brown by 7:20 and in class soon after... It was an especially long day. A four hour butchery class, an all-afternoon-long demo in egg cookery (like I couldn't already make a perfect bechamel...) and a short break followed by a unexpectedly long lecture on canadian artisanal, farmstead & fine cheese ending at 10:00pm really sucked the life out of me. But, when push comes to chevre, I loved every minute of it. 

I loved every minute of today until I crawled into bed just now, at 2:15am... to find that it was soaking wet. And full of drywall. Or whatever ceilings are made of. And looked up. And understood why.

Now there's nothing I'm looking forward to more than reaming out my flaky landlord, the one that's been "meaning to patch up the plumbing and the ceiling" since... November? I have a feeling it's got something to do with the horrific rainstorm I walked home from school in, but that doesn't make me feel any better than the fact that I have to sleep on my couch tonight.

this modern love.

Staying Healthy in a Sick Economy

I'm sick. Really, really not feeling well. I've found that whenever I get the slightest bit depressed these days, my immune system totally & completely shuts down. 

I like to do really nice things for my friends when I'm sick. I always make 'care packages' for boyfriends/lovers/gentleman friends when they're sick, and I usually buy (or pick, depending on the season) flowers for ladyfriends. You know, make homemade soup. Buy magazines or the newspaper, depending on the person. 

Today I was feeling just awful, physically and mentally. I'd sort of lost some of my faith in humanity recently, or, you know.. most of my faith. I ran out of episodes of Law & Order on my PVR. I was too exhausted and sickly to make my own chicken stock to make soup, and even if I wasn't, the idea of food really disgusted me. All I wanted was someone to care, or pretend to care, and that didn't seem to be happening anytime soon. I actually changed out of my pretty lacy nightgown this afternoon into sweatpants and anyone that really knows me knows that's a sign that I truly couldn't give a shit/am actually ill. With one of my best friends in Victoria, BC and the other in good ol' Winnipeg, MB I surely was not (..could not be) expecting any VIP treatment. No one to bring make me tea, feed me soup and orange juice, or watch bad TV with me.

...Until a good friend of mine showed up at my door around six pm. With coffee. And flowers. He may not have stuck around (thank god, I'd like to forget that anyone saw me in sweatpants... let alone someone I've slept with), but I don't remember the time someone bought me flowers. I don't even own a vase (see photo above for my alternative). My faith was renewed. I had a smile on my face. I changed out of my sweatpants. I drank my (free) coffee.

Life is okay after all.

baby, take off your cool.

To go out... Not to go out.. To go out... Not to go out...

That is the question.

...The other question is "Where on Earth did that girl on the left get that fabulous fur?"

what a wonderful surprise.

O immune system, where art thou?

I was feeling fine this morning. Perfect actually, considering the sea of cheap beer & whiskey sours I drowned in last night deeper than the Mississippi itself. Starting at one of the neighborhood's more endearing establishments (followed by the "New Sweaty Betty's" with a mostly-platonic pal and ending with an ironic moustache at one of the neighborhood's most god-awful cheap late night eateries, I thought a hangover would be inevitable. That was until a late-night car/person accident jolted me right back to sobriety before I even crawled into bed. A coulda' been near death experience always wakes you up too, right?

Between a select few of us in the area, one (or more) of us always seems to be sick. As common as the common cold could be, I don't think that's what I'm feelin' now. I'm slightly feverish and plenty delirious and in no shape whatsoever to charm my new friends I was supposed to go dancing with tonight. As Laura-Louise can attest to, antihistamines & wine never seem to mix... well. The magnum of riesling chilling in my freezer will just have to wait for next week. Or, you know, tomorrow.



Even George Clooney, the silver fox himself, could not get me out tonight. Don't get me wrong, I may sound like a (wo)man of constant sorrow these days, but I'm really, really okay! I really just think I could use (another) night in. Instead of standing in line at the self-described hot bed for culture, I'm crafting things for my coffee table. Another overpriced, and over-enjoyed, brunch is coming to me around noon tomorrow and I gotta be ready for it. I can't afford another bottle of Coldfx, but can apparently afford the grilled fruit breakfast at Musa once a week. Again, my priorities are obviously in order. And again, that's okay by me.