To be announced

Somebody just knocked on the door to my apartment (my ACTUAL apartment, the very door to my suite) and refused to respond when I asked them to identify themselves - their only response was to knock again. They did this three times, and I think they went away - it's been nearly an hour and no knock.

I was terrified. I had to take an ativan. I still feel shaky.

If you have a friend who lives in an apartment building with an intercom system and video monitoring set up so residents can visually verify your identity before buzzing you inside - Don't circumvent that. Use the intercom. Identify yourself. Let them see you on video.

Let them know who it is knocking on the door of their home before you get there.

I have suddenly become the most in-demand figure model in town, it seems. next week I have four seperate gigs in three days. i could die of exaustion.

maybe.

I have finished my second corset mockup - finished it a couple of days ago, actually - but I haven't been able to wear it long enough to get pictures. It was suggested to make it smaller, and I think i made it too small. I see some other adjustments I can do, as well.

I also have another design I'd like to try, just for the fun of practicing a mockup. This time, I'd like to do a long-line underbust and see how that looks. Though I don't have a busk of suitable length to really test this out... obviously I have to make another farthingale's purchase. three busks, this time. one for the underbust I'm planning, one for a longline overbust, and I think i'm ready to try a 17th cenutry/victorian hybrid. making corsets is fun!

does anyone know if the pictures you have loaded in scrapbook remain stored and re-appear after you pay up again? my journal is expiring and there's no way I can renew my paid status for a few weeks. if they will just stay there and re-appear once I cough up again, I shall not worry about retreiving those pictures to make sure I have them. well, maybe I should back them up anyway and stop being so lazy.

and Michael's is an evil, evil place. I went there for the first time a few days ago to buy hemp twine and crochet hooks. it's a great big store full of EVIL. if you craft, stay the hell out of there.

(lookit I got plastic easter eggs I can use for bath bomb molds wheeee!)

In thinking about the rewirte I'm doing on Kether station, i'm realizing that my scene with the butterflies might have to come out. This makes me sad, because I love my butterflies so...

I spent the last few days moving my belongings from one badroom that was far too small for my needs to a slightly larger one. because the amount of clutter and stuff piled up in that smaller room drove me mad, I moved in quite slowly, and started with the closet. It's still crammed full of stuff, but at least now it is crammed full of stuff *efficiently.*

But for christmas I got Steve's bead curtain. I had admired it, because the wooden beads were painted blue and greeen and it is lovely. He had to move, so happy christmas for me. Anyway, I had spent some time agonizing over how to arrange my wall art - i have a variety of small framed pieces, rather than two or three big items. ten of these objects are framed butterflies - those readers who know me have heard all about this for years and years - and I spent some time figuring out how to combine them with framed pictures. I put up some of them, but not the other ones, I'll take care of that tonight.

But I decided to quit tearing my hair out over it and put the bead curtain up over the door. I was standing there looking through a sea-colored screen of beads, and it struck me just HOW hippie bohemian my space is.

I'm a reader of books, and so I have bookshelves: A tall, wide BILLY from Ikea, and two shorter not Ikea shelves, but the same concept. Crammed full of spec fic, natch. The two shorter shelves are at the foot of my bed, shelf side out, and atop them are all the tealight holders I own - a total of 21 flames. one candle holder. a brown clay vase from Peru, filled with rice and studded with sticks of nag champa incense - one burning. a chinese three eyed toad, grinning at all the money that should be headed my way. my holder for my traditional joss sticks is actually a tall pringles can covered with paper with chinese writing - a smaller pringles can covered the same way holds pens. drifted around these objects are polished black river stones, and tumbled "crystals."

The lighting in bedrooms is often inadequate, and this room is no exception. I've put up those pendant lamps you suspend from cup hooks. The shades are rice paper and bamboo. next to the long wiggly one, I've got a vase filled with peacock feathers.

My bed is a futon. well, two futons piled atop another. I have a plain black cotton comforter, but stretched across it is a paisley brocade shawl with long silky tassels. I hate the closet door design in this room, so I want to take the doors off and put up a curtain instead - and my plan is to use sari fabric, so I can have some color. I hate blinds, too, and so the plan to replace it with a curtain is on - and somewhere around here I have these pendant beads you hang in front of a window, including the prismatic ones...

mad, I tell you. if it weren't for the computer i'd have to wonder if it was the 60's in here. Oh, and did I mention that I'm emboridering cotton so I can have fancy pillows?

It's GREEN! THe GREEN is starting! I saw it this morning when I waited for the bus - only two trees so far, and it's the faintest haze - barely a hint, but it's GREEN!

It's Spring! It's Spring! And I kicked ass at Salsa class and I've got a date this weekend and the Canucks Advanced with Round two and they STILL have Home Ice Advantage!

Went to my salsa dancing class tonight. took my high heels along so I could practice in them, and I did not bad.

Okay, okay, I did really well. I can't remember the names of any of the moves, there's a lot of spinning and stuff. anyway, I had a magic moment at class--I was dancing with whoo hoo hot babe Vince and at some point I went from, "I am learning this salsa dancing move" to "I am salsa dancing."

Going to go to the Skybar Thursday night to really try it, if anyone will dance with me, that is.

I went to the last VNV Nation/Icon of Coil date in Edmonton at New City Suburbs with my pal craig, The Minister of the Sinister. That crazy bastard. He screamed up highway 2 like letting the needle drop below 130 kmh was a mortal sin...

And Rad--oh, Rad--he wants us to go to dinner, so we head over to Eastbound and start in on the sake. I recommend Yamaguchi Sky, btw. It's real lovely. and so are the People at eastbound. do check it.

Then we stumble over to Suburbs. Icon of Coil is already playing. it's 9:30! We get into the crowd and start moving - I demonstrate the Get Off My Boots, Fanboy dance for Rad, Who then exhorts me to do the My Little Pony Dance. Hell and Damnation! There isn't enough room--so I do the Peter Murphy Bendyman dance instead.

Icon of Coil are pretty good. Their lead singer is a hella good hottie. And for an encore they covered Headhunter and the crowd went mad.

I think that's when I started thinking about Eshva--how she would have loved this if I hadn't strangled her with her own hair. (writers.) Icon of Coil took a break. Rad bellied us up to the bar for some Shirley Temples (too much sake, we were dancing.) AmberAmber and her sister stopped by for a visit, and we all just talked about things. Then VNV nation got ready to start.

I'm glad this show was in Edmonton. Calgary people are too concerned with looking cool - this crowd wanted to dance and clap their hands and scream. And so we did. Part of my mind disengaged for a bit to think about my early goth scene years in the 80's spent in Edmonton and a bit in Vancouver for my genesis. But most of me was pogoing and doing the GOMBF dance and yelling the lyrics because Ronan said that he'd be honoured if we snag mith him.

"And if rain bring winds of change,
May it rain on us forever."

They did some crazy stuff - Deliverance. The Desert Peach and her riding crop (Someone EXPLAIN to me why people who don't know one end of a crop from the other are always dragging them along to places where they will be surrounded by people who are experts with them - and left their crops at home? Bah.) The girl who kept popping out of her cheap corset (At first, I was staggering under the inadequacy my clotheshorse self felt at not having a corset on. as the evening and several examples of workmanship went by, I was happy with the fact that I wasn't wearing one, didn't need one, would have been jawdrop if i had one but still.) and Ronan playing Joy for us because we were so goddamn cool.

And then it was over, and we're bellied ur to the bar again. I have a boddington's and it reinforces my drunkness--I announce that I want to talk to the lead man of Icon of Coil. I indicate this by saying, "I wanna touch a Norwegian." This is very funny to drunk folk. (I did touch him. and he touched me back. Oh Mr. Wolf, what soft hands you have. Now don't be thinking *that*, it was all very chaste, he only touched my hands, so there.)

Somewhere in there we had some absinthe.

IT's only recently legal in Alberta, but we leapt at the chance, of course. and as the licorice and menthol taste went down my throat, I heard a voice whisper, brushing my ear with the wings of ravens - "The third drink makes you see things as they really are."

Eshva.

Of Course.

...Though I can't say I'll ever be a fan. The Calgary Stampede is over for another year, and i went to "the chucks" as the locals say.. the final heat for $50,000. I've never seen chuckwagon races, but I figured it wouldn't be as bad as, say, rodeo.

I watched a horse die.

Okay, you, gentle reader, may know nothing about chuckwagon races. A chuckwagon race team is the chuckwagon and a team of four horses, but there's also a team of four men on horses known as outriders. Three outriders toss tent poles and a stove into the back of the chuckwagon, while one outrider holds the horse team and lets them go as the horn sounds. Then the chuckwagon and the outriders have to figure eight around two barrels and then race around the track going full tilt boogie, and the outriders have to be no more than a certain distance behind the wagon or else you get a one second penalty on your time for a.... late outrider. the run is done in about a minute and fifteen seconds. There are other penalties, but I won't bore you with the details.

Anyway, one outrider was going around the last curve when something bad happened and they fell. They both just lay there in the track, not moving, then there's a swarm of people galloping over on horses - a EMS team for the outrider and a veterinary team for the horse. The outrider was taken out on a stretcher, but he couldn't have been too bad because if it had been they would have got the helicopter out there pronto. (Pronto. Agh. All this cowboying is infecting my vocabulary.) But the horse... They got a big blue tarp and held it up. The horse got up, but fell down again immediately.

"That horse is dead," I said to Darcy. I knew they'd have to shoot him. I felt just terrible. Somebody in the row ahead of me said, "No, I saw the horse get up," but I think it might have been for the benefit of his kid or something....a little girl, probably as horse crazy as many girls are.

I don't know what to think. I mean, it's dangerous, of course. running full tilt, anything could happen. it's not like they're tying rpoes around their privates or yanking them down with ropes... they're running racing horses, and there are risks attached to that. But I felt just... my stomach flopped over when I saw them fall. I don't know if i want to go to the chucks again.

The Grandstand show after the races was lame, of course. Apparently they always are... the point is having good seats for fireworks. We didn't have good seats - we were too high up and the grandstand is roofed so they shot up over the roof. big fat hairy deal. They do a show with the fireworks, and that was pretty weird actually, because they started going on about the four elements and it was SO pagan and i'm thinking... uh... do the Christians know what they're watching?

So we got out of there and went to Nashville North. Fun! dancing! barbecue beef on a bun! BEER! Yay!

....and I haven't even really gone yet. I said I'd go tomorrow night, but I don't really feel like it. I think Sunday will be enough for me.

I haven't written. You have no idea how guilty that makes me feel. I've been spending all my time on IRC and reading this book by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro--mostly because it's something that i've never read before and the book I have by Ursula K. Le Guin is intimidating me at the moment. I'll probably pick it up on the weekend.