woot! woot!

toronto - across the 'pond' the patriate aozora girl went to the theatre tonight as well! her friend discovered that the limited run musical 'wicked', despite being sold out for it's 7 week run, saves 20 seats a night to sell to people who get their name drawn if they enter the 'wicked' lottery. tonight there were at least 80 people lined up to enter up to two names. chances for tickets went down from 1 in 4 to 1 in 8. patriate aozora girl attempted not to get her hopes up and started to think about activities she could do when she got home after her name and her friend's name were not drawn. she didn't have to think very long - patriate aozora girl's name was the fourth name drawn! the seats were box seats, quite close to the stage.

"the musical was witty and extremely well written, carefully integrating details from the 'wizard of oz' into 'the story line," patriate aozora girl told reporters.

"i always love stories about strong-willed, non-conformist, underdogs."

"the set and costume designs were gorgeous," added patriate aozora girl's friend.

unfortunately neither of the friends would disclose any detail about the story. they were worried that their comments would spoil the show for others.

it is exactly 27 days until my 27th birthday, so to commemorate this day (aside from throwing myself a party, which will hopefully annoy our anal neighbour) i am going to endeavour to post something everyday for the next 27 days.

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so i guess i wasn't treading carefully enough. i broke my fed5b! the damn camera didn't come w/ an english manual, only a russian one. when i looked online for instructions, people wrote 'cock the shutter before adjusting the shutter speed'. i assumed that cocking the shutter meant pushing down on the shutter halfway. so i loaded up some film for some testing and for a while the shutter speed dial was moving around (somewhat). but now the shutter speed dial doesn't budge, although it still rotates as the film advances ... because as i found out last night, while desperately trying to find any information on the stubborn shutter speed dial,'cock the shutter before adjusting the shutter speed' means advancing the film. ... okay

i feel like a photography retard but i want to give this russian camera another chance (and also improve my manual photography skills) so i'll take it into a camera specialty store tomorrow and see if they can fix my newly immigrated camera - which was sadly abused by an ignorant native, north american.

i think i have to tread very carefully for the next while. a whole bunch of nice things have happened to me these past few days.

• my boo is back and along with him came my guitar (which i've permanently borrowed from my high school. i'm playing the songs from the alicia key's songbook b!!)
• i can reach the Bm7 chord
• i won a prize pack from makingroom
• i won a coffee from the 'rrrrroll up to win' contest - i don't drink coffee so i gave this prize to my co-worker
• my fed 5b, purchased with lomo-coupons, arrived! (i had to pay $38 in brokerage fees - i miss point roberts!)

i need to purchase a light meter though, there isn't one built-in in the fed 5b. unless anyone has some tips about shooting w/o one? follow the sunny f16 rule? psycho, does your D70 come w/ a built-in light meter?

i had a great weekend and i still don't want it to end, although i'm going to be paying for it at work tomorrow... to uplift my temporary singleton living (i don't think i could ever live alone) i decided to host a girl's night potluck last night, so before heading out to the spring fesitval at the JCCC i was madly running around the apartment putting things away (ie. hiding), sweeping the floors, dusting and recycling. although dinner was served 45 minutes later than scheduled (b/c i had chosen to contribute 2 entree dishes and was still cooking when the last guest arrived) we had a lot of fun. the food highlights were j's yummy fruit salad and the dufflet tarts the k brought. everybody liked my yakisoba!

today i went to see a movie all by myself! as silly as it sounds i couldn't help but feel a little self-conscious reading my book while waiting for the curtain to rise. i watched la mala educacion. b is right, gael garcia bernal must eat acting for breakfast! although i don't agree with the people that say that bernal makes a beautiful woman, his 'zahara' was ooozing with sexiness. as bernal said in a now magazine interview, "it was about finding that inner transvestite that we all have."

i wish i could speak spanish, though. it's hard to take in a movie with rich colours and visuals like 'bad education' when you are busy reading the subtitles.

'how many strong, kick-ass, pirate bitches are out there tonight?'

's' and i went to the esthero concert tonight and despite the unusually high number of short people (there were so many guys and gals who were shorter than me! i could see the tops of their heads, they weren't midgets but 4'10"-ish people. nouveau-punkies but mini!) i somehow frequently got stuck behind tall men.

all that doesn't really matter though! i finally got to see esthero in concert - live after all these years! she told us that tonight's concert was the first in five years.

she came out wearing a deep purple, poofy petticoat with striped stockings, faux pearls and a black t-shirt w/ a pirate skull on it. she is really hung up on this pirate theme. after introducing us to her 8 piece band and two backup singers, she said, 'and i am esthero lily (something, something) of the (something, something .. sorry i've forgotten!) pirate ship'

man! this girl can sing! she can go soft and girly to loud and diva-y all in one song. she danced and pranced around singing new songs and performed upbeat, latino variations on her old songs.

she ended her 2nd encore with her newest track: we R in need of a musical ReVoLuTion

another very cool canadian chick.

today i held gold medals from the atlanta and barcelona olympics in my hand! holy crap those things are heavy. at the last minute yesterday i was asked to join a table for one of our fundraising breakfast events. marnie mcbean was the keynote speaker (she is absolutely hilarious, she could do stand-up) and she brought 2 of her 3 medals. with tracy wilson and rod black as the MCs, she did a bit of back and forth witty banter poking fun mostly at tracy.

after the event my co-workers and i went up to marnie mcbean to meet her. when i thanked her for coming out and speaking at our event she told us that she used to be heavily involved with kids help phone and missed doing things for us!

i didn't realize that i was staring intently at the medals until marnie said, "you can always tell when someone wants to hold the medals." she quickly imitated me shifting my weight back and forth slightly tip-toed, trying to get a better look at the medals before handing them to me.

illustration friday topic: sorrow
please click on the thumbnails for a bigger view.

drown your sorrows

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my mac-ey mac is at the apple computer hospital. it had been overheating and the fan would constantly run even when doing simple tasks like 'net browsing. so i took it in and they are going to replace the logic board. i'm so lucky it's still under warranty.

which got me thinking that i probably should invest in the extended applecare protection. a friend's friend bought the applecare and right before the 3 year warranty wore off his g3 ibook fizzled and apple gave him a brand-spanking new g4 ibook! what a deal.