Sometimes I wake up and music is like oxygen. Here's what's making me bum dance in my chair at work.
Pay attention to around the 1:30 mark when the melody is re-alligned with the beat. Brilliant.
This song is so great! The video cuts through some of the song, but the video is great, too. I prefer the video in some ways because it only plays the first half of the song... the second half is long and boring on the album, I think. And I love JT.
I was tardy to the party (relatively) for Beyonce's self-titled album. My bestie W. chastised me mercilessly and I'm glad I didn't wait any longer than I did. The album is... ***flawless.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Friday, March 21, 2014
Waterloo Life OR My frenetic celebration of the place I currently call home
Toronto.
I love Toronto. I love Toronto especially because it's home. I'm from Toronto, I grew up in Toronto, I've lived in Toronto longer than I've lived anywhere else, my parents live in Toronto, and 3/4 of my sisters live in Toronto. I also love Toronto's vibe: the big city, something always going on, the best restaurants, arts & culture, creatives and business people working alongside one another... Neighbourhoods! Gentrification! "The hottest new cafe!" I live for that stuff. I pour over my monthly edition of Toronto Life magazine and drool over the latest trends and where to see and be seen. I really do love that stuff!
But I also struggle with that stuff. I mean, who cares?! Does eating at the "hot new place" make any difference? Does anyone care? Does my indulgence in that kind of nonsense result in stress to "keep up with the Joneses" and then constantly feeling like I can't keep up?
Trust me... I don't devote too much energy to any of this, but I do experience that swelling of the ego when I participate in that kind of culture while simultaneously poo-pooing people who get too wrapped up in it. I both want to be the yuppie and make fun of the yuppie. It's like "Portlandia"; you embrace the culture and mock the culture all at once, but you do love the culture.
Anyway, all of this is to say that there's something liberating about caring and then letting a lot of that go. How? By moving! Yes, I'm from Toronto and yes, I'll still be in Toronto a lot, but I don't live in Toronto right now and I want to embrace that. I want to pat myself on the back for not being so Toronto-centric to have to stay there forever and consider every other place lesser than. In fact, I am having the wonderful - yet not totally unexpected - experience of loving and having my life enhanced by a new city.
Waterloo.
I lived in Waterloo from 2005-2010 and I really enjoyed the city. However, living anywhere as a university student is a different experience, so when I made the decision to accept a new job and move as a young professional to Waterloo, I wondered what that would be like. What would it be like to have a car in Waterloo? Have some disposable income? Not be taking classes? What would it mean to live in Waterloo when I don't have classes to take and schoolwork to do, and therefore more of a life? Could I have the life I wanted in Waterloo? The answer, delightfully, is yes.
Waterloo is a change of pace. Truly. The pace is slower than Toronto's enough to feel it, but not so slow as to make it - for lack of a better word - lame. There is an ease of life in Waterloo! Nowhere takes as long to get to. I get to work in 5 minutes! I get from work to the gym in 5 minutes! There's parking everywhere! There's decent public transit, lots of taxis, and if you find the right place to live, it's totally walkable, too. You can find a restaurant with tapas, a microbrewery with craft beers, and a cute cafe with a crazy collection of scotches.
You can find friends! Some of my best friends were living in Waterloo still, and seeing them is so much easier than it is to see friends in Toronto. In Toronto you have to make plans with a friend and account for maybe an hour of total travel time. In Waterloo I can be having an alone night in my apartment and then realize at 8:00 that I want to hang out with someone, get to their place in 5 minutes, hang out for an hour, and be home in time for an early bedtime.
Toronto will always be where I'm from, and it'll always feel like home, and I will very likely settle down in Toronto one day for good. But right now, at the moment in time, Waterloo feels like exactly where I should be, and it feels so good.
I love Toronto. I love Toronto especially because it's home. I'm from Toronto, I grew up in Toronto, I've lived in Toronto longer than I've lived anywhere else, my parents live in Toronto, and 3/4 of my sisters live in Toronto. I also love Toronto's vibe: the big city, something always going on, the best restaurants, arts & culture, creatives and business people working alongside one another... Neighbourhoods! Gentrification! "The hottest new cafe!" I live for that stuff. I pour over my monthly edition of Toronto Life magazine and drool over the latest trends and where to see and be seen. I really do love that stuff!
But I also struggle with that stuff. I mean, who cares?! Does eating at the "hot new place" make any difference? Does anyone care? Does my indulgence in that kind of nonsense result in stress to "keep up with the Joneses" and then constantly feeling like I can't keep up?
Trust me... I don't devote too much energy to any of this, but I do experience that swelling of the ego when I participate in that kind of culture while simultaneously poo-pooing people who get too wrapped up in it. I both want to be the yuppie and make fun of the yuppie. It's like "Portlandia"; you embrace the culture and mock the culture all at once, but you do love the culture.
Anyway, all of this is to say that there's something liberating about caring and then letting a lot of that go. How? By moving! Yes, I'm from Toronto and yes, I'll still be in Toronto a lot, but I don't live in Toronto right now and I want to embrace that. I want to pat myself on the back for not being so Toronto-centric to have to stay there forever and consider every other place lesser than. In fact, I am having the wonderful - yet not totally unexpected - experience of loving and having my life enhanced by a new city.
Waterloo.
I lived in Waterloo from 2005-2010 and I really enjoyed the city. However, living anywhere as a university student is a different experience, so when I made the decision to accept a new job and move as a young professional to Waterloo, I wondered what that would be like. What would it be like to have a car in Waterloo? Have some disposable income? Not be taking classes? What would it mean to live in Waterloo when I don't have classes to take and schoolwork to do, and therefore more of a life? Could I have the life I wanted in Waterloo? The answer, delightfully, is yes.
Waterloo is a change of pace. Truly. The pace is slower than Toronto's enough to feel it, but not so slow as to make it - for lack of a better word - lame. There is an ease of life in Waterloo! Nowhere takes as long to get to. I get to work in 5 minutes! I get from work to the gym in 5 minutes! There's parking everywhere! There's decent public transit, lots of taxis, and if you find the right place to live, it's totally walkable, too. You can find a restaurant with tapas, a microbrewery with craft beers, and a cute cafe with a crazy collection of scotches.
You can find friends! Some of my best friends were living in Waterloo still, and seeing them is so much easier than it is to see friends in Toronto. In Toronto you have to make plans with a friend and account for maybe an hour of total travel time. In Waterloo I can be having an alone night in my apartment and then realize at 8:00 that I want to hang out with someone, get to their place in 5 minutes, hang out for an hour, and be home in time for an early bedtime.
Toronto will always be where I'm from, and it'll always feel like home, and I will very likely settle down in Toronto one day for good. But right now, at the moment in time, Waterloo feels like exactly where I should be, and it feels so good.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Some things I want to share
I'm fully moved out of my Toronto apartment.
The apartment my girlfriend K and I (plus Spoon the cat) called home from September 2012 is now empty... at least of our stuff. I haven't been living in the apartment since late January, but this past Friday we took out the last of it. It feels bittersweet, as it has when I've moved out of every place I've lived in, but perhaps this one especially. It was K's and my home; our first space together, and it really was special to get a cat together, too. The kitchen was almost unbearably small, and now that I'm living in a relatively huge place, it's sort of a wonder how we lived in that small apartment. But it was home, and it was ours, and I loved it.
The sweet part is twofold: a new, big apartment to call home, but also, there was something mentally difficult about straddling two places for a month. It was unsettling. Clearing it out of the last of the stuff felt really therapeutic.
K has not yet joined me in our new place in Waterloo. She will, but she has to wrap up some things of her own in Toronto for the next few months, so she'll likely join me in the summer. It's hard, of course, but our relationship is so strong, so we're getting by just fine. Plus, when she joins me, she'll be ready for a fresh start, too, and that's a better time to move anyway... when you don't have too much left behind.
The 158-Pound Marriage
I read my second book of 2014: John Irving's The 158-Pound Marriage. I believe this is one of Irving's first novels. I've owned it for quite a while and have taken at least two stabs at it before, never finishing it. This time I did. After I read my first novel of 2014, The Devil Wears Prada, Irving felt appropriate because he's always so substantial and TDWP was anything but. And it was substantial, but I was left unsatisfied... probably to a larger degree than usual because I expect so much of Irving's books... but maybe it being one of his earlier ones was the reason why. Maybe I just didn't "get" it like I usually do. Maybe I couldn't relate to it. I'm not sure. It wasn't bad, but it just didn't meet my expectations.
"Homeland"
Then there's something that exceeded my expectations. "Homeland", the television show starring Claire Danes, among others. Oh. My. God. SO GOOD!!! I started it last Monday when I took a day off and was in search of something new and wonderful to watch, and I finished first season yesterday when I was home sick. The season was incredible. I spent part of it wondering how there could be a second season, but the season finale made it clear that there is a lot more material to tap into. The other crazy thing (pun intended?) was how Claire Danes really started showing her stuff in the last two episodes of the season. She's such an amazing actress, and was throughout all of the episodes, but the stuff people really raved about was most apparent in the last episodes. It was the kind of high-quality acting that I saw so much of in her movie "Temple Grandin". She has a well of emotion, from one extreme to another, that makes her perfect for the character of Carrie Mathieson. I wish season 2 was on Netflix. I'll have to watch it by other means...
The Time Traveller's Wife
I've said it before: finding a new book to read is always a struggle. I woke up extra early this morning as I was off sick yesterday and went to bed really early, and also wanted to have lots of time this morning to ease my way back into good health and readiness for work. Before having coffee and breakfast, I scanned my bookshelf and settled on The Time Traveller's Wife. I saw this movie ages ago when it was in theatres, and my friend who I saw it with had read and loved the book. I really enjoyed the movie, but was a bit uncertain about how good the book could be. I sped through 20 pages this morning. It's fantastic! Much better written than I anticipated (I'm a snob) and the story is so interesting. I can't wait for more!
I spent part of my sick day organizing my office/guest room.
My first visitor - W! - is coming for the weekend and I'm so excited. I finally live in a place that has a dedicated guest room. A guest room is great for so many reasons, one of which is the fact that you have a place to hide stuff you don't feel like dealing with. It was the only place in my apartment with boxes that I hadn't emptied, partly because they weren't urgent, and partly because I knew they were full of miscellany that I didn't want to deal with. However, yesterday was pretty much my only chance to tackle the craziness, and I did with vigour! I dumped the boxes on the bed and slowly but surely - and with lots of breaks - put stuff where it belonged. It's not fully dealt with, but the bed and floor is clear, the desk isn't too cluttered with stuff, and it generally looks welcoming. I have to deal with the closet and figure out a long-term organizing strategy, but that can happen later. For now, it's clean and ready for W, and that's all I can ask for.
The apartment my girlfriend K and I (plus Spoon the cat) called home from September 2012 is now empty... at least of our stuff. I haven't been living in the apartment since late January, but this past Friday we took out the last of it. It feels bittersweet, as it has when I've moved out of every place I've lived in, but perhaps this one especially. It was K's and my home; our first space together, and it really was special to get a cat together, too. The kitchen was almost unbearably small, and now that I'm living in a relatively huge place, it's sort of a wonder how we lived in that small apartment. But it was home, and it was ours, and I loved it.
The sweet part is twofold: a new, big apartment to call home, but also, there was something mentally difficult about straddling two places for a month. It was unsettling. Clearing it out of the last of the stuff felt really therapeutic.
K has not yet joined me in our new place in Waterloo. She will, but she has to wrap up some things of her own in Toronto for the next few months, so she'll likely join me in the summer. It's hard, of course, but our relationship is so strong, so we're getting by just fine. Plus, when she joins me, she'll be ready for a fresh start, too, and that's a better time to move anyway... when you don't have too much left behind.
The 158-Pound Marriage
I read my second book of 2014: John Irving's The 158-Pound Marriage. I believe this is one of Irving's first novels. I've owned it for quite a while and have taken at least two stabs at it before, never finishing it. This time I did. After I read my first novel of 2014, The Devil Wears Prada, Irving felt appropriate because he's always so substantial and TDWP was anything but. And it was substantial, but I was left unsatisfied... probably to a larger degree than usual because I expect so much of Irving's books... but maybe it being one of his earlier ones was the reason why. Maybe I just didn't "get" it like I usually do. Maybe I couldn't relate to it. I'm not sure. It wasn't bad, but it just didn't meet my expectations.
"Homeland"
Then there's something that exceeded my expectations. "Homeland", the television show starring Claire Danes, among others. Oh. My. God. SO GOOD!!! I started it last Monday when I took a day off and was in search of something new and wonderful to watch, and I finished first season yesterday when I was home sick. The season was incredible. I spent part of it wondering how there could be a second season, but the season finale made it clear that there is a lot more material to tap into. The other crazy thing (pun intended?) was how Claire Danes really started showing her stuff in the last two episodes of the season. She's such an amazing actress, and was throughout all of the episodes, but the stuff people really raved about was most apparent in the last episodes. It was the kind of high-quality acting that I saw so much of in her movie "Temple Grandin". She has a well of emotion, from one extreme to another, that makes her perfect for the character of Carrie Mathieson. I wish season 2 was on Netflix. I'll have to watch it by other means...
The Time Traveller's Wife
I've said it before: finding a new book to read is always a struggle. I woke up extra early this morning as I was off sick yesterday and went to bed really early, and also wanted to have lots of time this morning to ease my way back into good health and readiness for work. Before having coffee and breakfast, I scanned my bookshelf and settled on The Time Traveller's Wife. I saw this movie ages ago when it was in theatres, and my friend who I saw it with had read and loved the book. I really enjoyed the movie, but was a bit uncertain about how good the book could be. I sped through 20 pages this morning. It's fantastic! Much better written than I anticipated (I'm a snob) and the story is so interesting. I can't wait for more!
I spent part of my sick day organizing my office/guest room.
My first visitor - W! - is coming for the weekend and I'm so excited. I finally live in a place that has a dedicated guest room. A guest room is great for so many reasons, one of which is the fact that you have a place to hide stuff you don't feel like dealing with. It was the only place in my apartment with boxes that I hadn't emptied, partly because they weren't urgent, and partly because I knew they were full of miscellany that I didn't want to deal with. However, yesterday was pretty much my only chance to tackle the craziness, and I did with vigour! I dumped the boxes on the bed and slowly but surely - and with lots of breaks - put stuff where it belonged. It's not fully dealt with, but the bed and floor is clear, the desk isn't too cluttered with stuff, and it generally looks welcoming. I have to deal with the closet and figure out a long-term organizing strategy, but that can happen later. For now, it's clean and ready for W, and that's all I can ask for.
Monday, March 3, 2014
My Favourite Albums of All Time
A friend of mine nominated me to share my top 12 favourite (music) albums on Facebook. I did, but there were many more I wish I could've included. Then I remembered I have a blog, otherwise known as the perfect place for superfluous items.
Without further ado, in no particular order...
Without further ado, in no particular order...
- "Under Construction" - Missy Elliott
- "Justified" - Justin Timberlake
- "Icona Pop" - Icona Pop
- "4" - Beyonce
- "Beyonce" - Beyonce
- "21" - Adele
- "19" - Adele
- "Begin to Hope" - Regina Spektor
- "Eye to the Telescope" - KT Tunstall
- "The College Dropout" - Kanye West
- "Revolver" - The Beatles
- "Parachutes" - Coldplay
- "Survivor" - Destiny's Child
- "So Far Gone" - Drake
- "Fever Ray" - Fever Ray
- "XX" - The XX
- "The Black Album" - Jay-Z
- "Blue" - Joni Mitchell
- "Acoustic Soul" - India.Arie
- "Youth Novel" - Lykke Li
- "Oracular Spectacular" - MGMT
- "Thriller" - Michael Jackson
- "Return of Saturn" - No Doubt
- "Writer's Block" - Peter Bjorn & John
- "Neon Bible" - Arcade Fire
- "Eyes Open" - Snow Patrol
- "So Jealous" - Tegan & Sara
- "Garden State" Soundtrack
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)