I am very, very busy. Work is great, and absorbs a lot of my energy and time and processor cycles. I am spending a lot of my free time with my boyfriend, and we had a raft of out of town visitors for a while--first his friend Alex, then his other little brother, and then my bff. Three weeks of visitors! Which was great but also very exhausting. Last weekend we went to Denver to hang out with some friends of his that I hadn't met, and that was fun.

My new roommate Meg and I are pretty sure we've found an apartment. It's farther away from Eric than I wanted to be but a pretty great place and a decent price. So hopefully we'll get in. :)

Well, I'm really tired and need to do some serious napping, so I should sign off.

Got back from Europe last week, promptly got sick. Conference went well, London was great, Paris was amazing, Amboise was really lovely.

In Paris on Thursday, I scattered Ranj's ashes in a flowerbed on the Champs-Élyseés. It was good. It's the first flowerbed on the right side as you walk away from the Place de la Concorde, just off the Allée-Marcel-Proust, in case you're ever in Paris and want to visit him. I thought it was a nice spot because it's just at the turn when the Tour comes back into Paris.

1. You can ONLY answer 'Yes' or 'No'

2. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages or comments you and asks — and, believe me, the temptation to explain some of these will be overwhelming. Nothing is exactly as it seems.

Kissed any one of your LiveJournal friends? — Yes
Been arrested? — No
Kissed someone you didn't like? — Yes
Slept in until 5 PM? — Yes
Fallen asleep at work/school? — Yes
Held a snake? — Yes
Ran a red light? — Yes
Been suspended from school? — No
Experienced love at first sight? — No
Totalled your car in an accident? — No
Been fired from a job? — Yes
Fired somebody? — No
Sung karaoke? — No
Pointed a gun at someone? — No
Did something you told yourself you wouldn't? — Yes
Laughed until something you were drinking came out your eyes? — No
Caught a snowflake on your tongue? — Yes
Kissed in the rain? — Yes
Had a close brush with death (your own)? — Yes
Saw someone die? — No
Played Spin-the-Bottle? — No
Smoked a cigar? — No
Sat on a rooftop? — Yes
Smuggled something into another country? — Yes
Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on? — No
Broken a bone? — Yes
Skipped school? — Yes
Eaten a bug? — Yes
Sleepwalked? — Yes
Walked on a moonlit beach? — Yes
Ridden a motorcycle? — Yes
Dumped someone? — Yes
Forgotten your anniversary? — No
Lied to avoid a ticket? — Yes
Ridden in a helicopter? — Yes
Shaved your head? — No
Blacked out from drinking? — No
Played a prank on someone? — No
Hit a home run? — No
Felt like killing someone? — Yes
Cross-dressed? — No
Been falling-down drunk? — Yes
Made your girlfriend/boyfriend cry? — Yes
Eaten snake? — No
Marched/protested? — Yes
Had Mexican jumping beans for pets? — No
Puked on an amusement ride? — No
Seriously & intentionally boycotted something? — Yes
Been in a band? - No
Knitted? — Yes
Been on TV? — Yes
Shot a gun? — Yes
Skinny-dipped? — Yes
Given someone stitches? — No
Eaten a whole habanero pepper? — Yes
Ridden a surfboard? — No
Drunk straight from a liquor bottle? — Yes
Had surgery? — No
Streaked? — No
Been taken by ambulance to a hospital? — No
Tripped on mushrooms? — No
Passed out when NOT drinking? — Yes
Peed on a bush? — Yes
Donated blood? — Yes
Grabbed electric fence? - Yes
Eaten alligator meat? - No
Eaten cheesecake? — Yes
Eaten your kids' Halloween candy? — No
Killed an animal when NOT hunting? — Yes
Peed your pants in public? — Yes
Snuck into a movie without paying? — No
Written graffiti? — Yes
Still love someone you shouldn't? — No
Think about the future? — Yes
Been in handcuffs? — Yes
Believe in love? — Yes
Sleep on a certain side of the bed? — Yes

I panned an aggressively mediocre (to passively bad) Regency romance novel on Amazon and now the author and her mum are mad at me.

Lots going on, as ever, but little of it interesting enough to bother writing about. I'm still working away on the dissertation, obv. Need to switch my focus and mess with my conference paper soon, since only half of it is written and it will need some serious editing. I also have some annoying paperwork I need to do quite soon. So that's annoying.

I started using Wen a couple weeks ago. I'd been curious since catching a late-night infomercial, so I got a sample of the Fig flavour whilst I was in Vegas (they don't have Fig in Sephora in Canada) and gave it a try. Amusingly, when Boy met up with me in the Sephora where I was killing time and getting the sample, turns out he used to use Wen and loved it. On his mohawk. *grin*

But yeah, so I've been using it since it finally arrived (had to order it online) and I am insanely happy with it. I'll still have to use shampoo occasionally just because I'm blonde and sometimes you gotta strip, but occasionally so far is once in all the time I've been using it. So that's kind of nice.

I'm leaving for the UK in a month. Eek.

Best yoga class ever. There's a particular teacher that I really really like and this was her power yoga. It was hard work but I felt so good after it, and so strong during it. I was resistant to the yoga thing because it's a such a Vancouver trope (I mean, we are the home of Lululemon) but it is so great. I had reached the point where I was totally plateaued with my usual workouts, and yoga has really energized me and made me feel like I'm working again. I'd gotten to the point with cardio where making it hard enough work actually meant making it so hard on my joints that I was starting to worry about RSIs.

I need to reintroduce cardio, but yoga is being really good to me right now. And the emphasis on focus and presence is very much about what I want my exercise to be, so it falls in well with my own beliefs about movement and exercise.

lauzeta and I are going to wander around today and I may buy a yoga mat of my own. I feel like my practice would be greatly improved by being on a mat that's not primary school blue or sputum green.

I also really like that yoga teachers (the good ones at least) really understand that bodies aren't the same, and so instead of the message that my weird proportions and old injuries are either imaginary or can't possibly affect my practice (which is what my hooping teacher kept saying, and was one reason I became more and more resistant to hooping--because my arms are fucking short, goddammit, and telling me it's my imagination and to reach harder is NOT going to make them longer!), yoga teachers say "pay attention to your body and honour its wishes--if you can't do it this way, do it that way".

Today we did a weird set of IT band stretches that made my feet act up because of my birth defect in a way they haven't done in more than 20 years. So that was kind of interesting. It made me think about the nature of my feet, and the ways that my body has learnt to compensate for my birth defect as well as to compensate for the things that the correction of it did to my feet.

This may not continue; after all, it's been less than a month. But now, in this moment, yoga makes me happy in ways that I haven't been in a while. I call that a win.

Doc says that I'll know if the toe is bruised or broken by when it stops hurting: two weeks, bruised, six weeks, broken. She is, if nothing else, practical.

My students took their final yesterday and aside from 3 people not putting their NAMES ON THEM (I wound up with 5 extra points somewhere and I'm considering not giving them to the students who DIDN'T PUT THEIR NAMES ON THEM), it went pretty smoothly and seemed to be of an appropriate length and level of difficulty. I had two students (good ones) finish at the hour ten mark, a bad one finish at the hour fifteen mark, and then only 5 students working until the last 15 minutes, most people finishing up in between an hour forty-five and two hours, which seems pretty good to me.

Heading out to hang with G tonight and have some dinner. Possibly calamari. Mmm. I'm aiming to get there a bit early so I can do a little more marking. I'd like to be done by Friday. We'll see.

Allergies are killing me. Fucking birch trees.

How is everybody?

In honour of her natal festivities, elisem is having a shiny sale!

You should go check it out--she's got some really nice stuff up right now. Also, I own a pair of the cloisonné shell earrings and I LOVE them.

(And if anyone wanted to buy me a really expensive birthday present, the necklace-crown "Modern Enchantments" is pretty cool. ;)