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the second step in pet ownership
Rescuing one's pet from near-death caused by one's own negligence. Obviously. Long story short: cracks appear in fishbowl, I don't notice. While changing fishwater, medium-sized chunk of glass suddenly pops off the bottom of the bowl and 15 litres of water go whooshing out onto my kitchen counter, and, subsequently, floor. Along with my fish. Then, I save fish's life by picking her up off the floor (gingerly, and with some difficulty), throwing her in a bucket, and pouring water on top of her. It was totally freaky to watch her flop around on the floor, essentially choking to death, then become completely still. How long does it take for a goldfish to die out of water? Anyway, then it was also freaky, but in a different way, to watch her start breathing again as the water got poured on top of her. I give life! I take it away! I am a fishgod! All of this happened at the most inopportune time possible, by the way, because I was already late to meet my mother and cousin (the one mentioned in previous post) at the Botanical Gardens to see the Butterflies Go Free exhibit. This turned out not to matter, since they eventually showed up an hour later than I did, (at which point I was just glad to see them because I was starting to go out of my mind) but at the time I was completely freaking out, because my kitchen was sort-of half-flooded, and I had a sort-of half-alive fish on my hands. Anyway, enough about me. The fish lived in mop bucket for a week, hardly moving at all, suffering from what I was convinced was post-traumatic-stress-syndrome. I feared the fish would never recover and I'd have to email Ali in Tokyo and tell her I have managed to kill her former fish within two weeks of taking over its care. Oh, the shame. Eventually, however, I got around to going to the petstore and purchasing a new bowl. With much trepidation, I place fish inside. Fish remains catatonic for several hours. Then, through some miracle, starts swimming around normally again, as though the entire ordeal never happened. I am so relieved, I immediately write about it on my blog. Oh internet, you spared someone from a very tedious phone conversation in which I related the near-death experience of my fish. Dude. Seriously, though, I never thought I could or would ever care so much about a fish. Especially after only like two weeks. When I went to get the fish at Ali's, her friend laughed at me because I was so excited over a fish. "It's the first step in pet ownership!" I told her. She looked very dubious. I think present circumstances relate, however, that it's clearly a good thing that I got a fish to practice on before I got, like, a dog, or a goat, or even a ferret. P.S. Beepster I totally love you and do not view you as a lesser animal in any way, even though you do not really show affection in the way that, say a dog would, if I had saved its life. You aren't just for practice! You rule the school! (Get it? Because you are a fish? I'm here all week. And then for the rest of your natural life. Which I hope is long. In other words, sorry I almost killed you.) Your BFF, Laura. P.P.S. The butterflies are totally worth going to see, and if you have free time I highly recommend that you go because it ends this weekend. It is good to be reminded, sometimes, in this case by butterflies, of just how totally amazing nature is, and yet also how fragile. My camera is still broken but if it hadn't been, I would have taken a lot of pictures that looked like these.
1 + 1 = whaaa?
I wish I could report to you the exact wording of the conversation that I overheard last night during the Passover meal between my cousin, who is a university math professor, and her daughter, Lou, who is in grade 1. But I can't, because I can't remember the math jargon, since it went completely over my head. Thus, I bring you a close approximation. Lou: Mom, does one plus one equal four in vector space? [!!??] Lou's Mother: Well, one plus one equals zero in [math jargon]. And one plus one equals ten in binary... Lou: But what about 4! Does it equal 4? Lou's Mother: Okay, yes, in Louie-World [math jargon] one plus one can equal four. Lou: Good. Oy, my supposed quirkiness all makes perfect sense once you have met my family. To be fair, like five minutes after the above conversation I was having an argument with my father and sister in which I shouted: "No, maple syrup is a compound noun and I will draw you the morphological tree if I have to!" so if I had kids my conversations with them would likely be as incomprehensible to everyone else.
ho-ho-homicide
Right, I know you don't care, but right now aetv.com is selling the DVD set for Season 3 of Homicide: Life on the Street (AKA BEST TV SHOW EVER) for 50% off! Plus an extra 20% off if you use coupon code ESAVE2. How could I pass up such a deal? I COULD NOT.
is your oregon trail still broken?
Dear Megan, You must buy this t-shirt immediately. You're welcome! Love, Laura
on my way to where the air is sweet
 Yours truly, watching the crazy disco pinball number count on Sesame Street, circa 1984. These 25 Memories of Sesame Street have me so nostalgic I can't even tell you. Since all I watched or even knew existed as a child was public television, (my mother likes to remember how I would ask her if there was anything on TV and she would say 'no' and I would be all, 'O.K.' and go off and do something else instead,) Sesame Street of course played a huge role in my formative years. I hadn't thought of it in years, but if I had access to some classic 80s SS right now, I would sit down and watch for, like, hours. And there isn't much else about the 80s I would like to relive. The only segment I can think of that is missing from this list is the peanut butter factory. I was utterly, utterly fascinated, watching the peanuts get ground up and squirted into jars. I also loved the Teeny Little Super Guy, any segment involving Grover, pretty much, and of course the Pinball Number Countdown (Twelve! Twelve! Twe-e-e-e-elve!) would make every edition of Sesame Street Top Hits. Ah, to be four years old again, and have sunny days sweepin' the clouds away. I had awesome fashion sense, too.  [This post has been brought to you by the letter L and the number 12.]
the first step in pet ownership
I got a fish! [This is where I would put a picture of her, but my digital camera appears to be broken. I tried shaking it, but that didn't fix it, so now I'm out of ideas.] I'm pretty sure she's mentally unbalanced, which is awesome. Her previous owner named her Beep Beep, after her tendency to swim backwards when she was obviously trying to swim forwards, towards food. I have never owned a goldfish before, so I'm not entirely sure what constitutes normal behaviour, and Ali assures me Beep's directionality has improved, but her behaviour since I got her home and in the bowl (no small feat, as it involved the bag of water leaking on my lap on the metro and making it look EXACTLY like I had peed my pants. Which was sort of funny for a second, but then stopped being so.) has been erratic to say the least. First she hid behind a shell at the bottom of the bowl and did not move for like an hour, exept to breathe once and a while, until I was basically convinced that the trip had been too much for her to handle and she was about to die of nervous shock. Then, when my back was turned, she started zipping madly around the bowl, coming to a dead stop each time I turned towards her. Now she has settled into a pattern of swimming slowly around backwards, staring at me confusedly. I tell you, this fish is batshit crazy. On the other hand, maybe I am projecting.
consumed by a fire
Today at work I listened only to songs beginning with the letter R, which you would already know if you check my Audioscrobbler profile continually throughout the day like I do, for no reason other than I am obviously not only obsessive compulsive but also narcissistic. I mean, there is no real reason to do so, since the recommendations don't change that often. I just like lists, see? And it makes the lists for you! If any of my friends used Audioscrobbler I would likely check their profiles obsessively instead of my own, and then I would be creepy and stalker-ish instead of narcissistic. Although, since I have a blog, I guess I am narcissistic by definition.
a patent on peanut butter and jelly
Smucker's wants to patent its sealed crustless PB&J sandwiches, including getting exclusive rights on its "method of sandwiching the jelly between peanut butter and bread." This sounds hilarious, but it's actually appalling. Sticking the jam between the peanut butter stops the sandwiches from getting soggy. Everyone should be allowed to make non-soggy PB&J! I mean, come on! At the center of the patent debate is the sandwich's sealed edge. The attorneys' brief says that "this smashed edge is the antithesis of the surface-to-surface seal" formed in its own process. The brief uses sandwich diagrams in an attempt to demonstrate that, unlike pie crusts or ravioli, the sandwiches are made without "commingling the two bread slices into an amorphous homogenous mass." Instead, the slices remain "separately visible about the periphery of the sandwich." Amorphous homogenous mass?! Sandwich diagrams?! Are we losing sight of the very important fact that this is only a sandwich we're talking about? I think this is the most insane example of capitalism and bureaucracy intruding on matters of everyday life that I have ever heard of. I mean, patenting genetically modified potatoes is weird enough. I don't know if I can live in a society that allows for the patenting of something as basic as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
good thing i got that raise
My landlord, the Greek incarnation of Carmela Soprano, came by today to ask me if I had received her registered letter advising me of a rent increase. How do registered letters work? I thought that the entire point was that you have proof that the person had received your letter. She should have known that I had not, but I guess she wanted to check, so I told her. Then there was this really awkward moment wherein she was like, "Oh, well, you should have," and I said nothing because I was processing the fact that she had just told me in a very roundabout way that my rent was going to go up but not by how much. I desperately wanted to know by how much, but I could not figure out how to ask in an equally roundabout way. I mean, I guess a normal person would just straight out ask what the increase would be, but I was worried that maybe we were not supposed to discuss it until I had received the registered letter. I don't have a very good grasp of how these things work, and it stresses me out. I guess I should not fret about the legal aspects of it, though, since she is always asking me to write postdated cheques, which I know is illegal here, and I do it anyway. Who says no to Carmela Soprano, though, really? She wears floor-length fur coats and drives a Mercedes and has a key to my apartment and I'm sure her husband could have me killed. My rent is pretty low in the grand scheme of things, but when you consider that I live in a rather crappy building in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Canada (which I did not realize until I read it in the newspaper last week, although I should have guessed,) it seems kind of high enough already. Various bones keep appearing on my front balcony and I don't know where they come from. And today there was a used, capless toothpaste tube on the space heater in the lobby. And the washing machine in the basement makes my clothes dirtier than they were before I washed them. I'm just saying. I might have grounds to contest the increase. But I probably won't. Because, see above.
ukranian easter eggs & hamentashen
 Not pictured: chocolate sauerkraut birthday cake. Last weekend at my parents' house was pretty holiday-intensive. In addition to making Hamentashen (very easy with a food processor) and Ukranian Easter Eggs (extremely difficult but ultimately gratifying -- mine is the one on the right; the other two are my mom's), we did a shortened reading of the Megillah (version for children) complete with rattles and hissing, and a hilarious Easter Egg hunt through 3 feet of snow in the backyard. Also it was my mother's 55th birthday (she is super psyched because now she is old enough to do Elderhostel) but the only This weekend my plan is to do "Oh, you know" by which I mean as little as possible. *The best special features on the DVD are the explanations of the plot holes, drawn as comics and narrated by the characters, as in "My name is Diane and this is what happened to me when I left the pub brandishing my boyfriend's leg as a cudgel..." I'm pretty sure that all special features for every DVD ever should include these. I was supposed to get my fish yesterday, which would have been totally perfect, since it was Fish Day, but then... the Great Fish Exchange of 2005 got postponed again. So, maybe this weekend sometime. Or, you know, next week. I'm not picky. It's a free fish. In other fish-related news, we might be getting these for our office. Finally, April + Daylight Savings Time = Me In A Much Better Mood, Thank You.
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