YAY Weekends ;)

Number of mini-chocolate bars purchased: 100
Number of Trick-or-Treaters: 4
Oops. Additional oops: I just baked cookies, too. EEK! It's going to be a fattening weekend, I can already tell.

But the real reason I'm posting is because I just found out that Dido has a new album coming out on November 17th! Her first one in 5 years!!! Super excited! Wanna see the video for her new single? I thought you might :)



So I went to Mac's today by my brother's store to pick up some butter for said cookies, and the sweet lady at the till asked what I was making, so I told her, and she asked how you make cookies, so I told her that too. While I was in there, a man came in to the store wearing a gorilla mask. He kept letting other customers go before him, and refused, when asked, to take off his mask. Sweet lady and I were sort of freaked out, but there were a few other customers in the store, so I went back to my car and watched. He wasn't in a rush when he left the store, and no one appeared to be freaking out, so I left. I was driving home a few minutes later and a police car with lights flashing but no siren came tearing in the other direction and I was like "crap... sweet lady got robbed" and I felt SO AWFUL that I had to pull into a parking lot and call my brother to go check on her. I felt like I was going to throw up until he called me back and said it was just a friend of the owners playing a joke. Even now I feel horribly guilty that I should have DONE something, but what could I do in that situation anyway? I guess just hang around outside and call the police if things got sketchy? I feel terrible for abandoning her, so I'll have to bring her some cookies and a recipe next week or something. I'm sorry, sweet lady, and I'm glad the gorilla guy was just an idiot and didn't hurt you!

K, bed time!!!
Love,
Gillian

How's Your French?

I have a major crush on Coralie Clement. She makes me want to be French so badly. I've been walking around singing this song all day, because it's wonderful, but the problem is that I only understand parts of it, and the parts aren't adding up to a very convincing whole. Usually I can get the gist of songs en francais, but this one makes NO sense to me. I get the "la samba des jours avec toi, la samba de mon coeur qui bat" part, but the rest...? Mon dieu que c'est vache? Really, Coralie? My God that is a cow? What?!

Have any thoughts? If not, just enjoy the song :) If you feel extra romantic, go find someone and whisper "la samba de mon coeur qui bat" in their ear. It just sounds romantic when you whisper it, don't you think?



la samba, la samba des jours avec toi *heehee*
~g~

Another One Bites the Dust!

Well darlings, I'm going to put a positive spin on this. I've always wanted to be THE BEST at something and now I think I've found my niche!

If there was ever a competition for making men run at the terrifying prospect of commitment? I'd kick all your asses.

Yeah, that's right... another one bites the dust. (Sorry guys, I know you liked him. So did I.)

Seriously though, I'm sick of crying. Put on your PJs and come dance with me.

~g~

Song of the Month for October!

The thing about irrational fears is that you know they’re irrational and that somehow doesn’t stop you from being afraid. Maybe the fear stems from childhood and is urged along by an episode of the X-Files or your brother hanging a marionette in his room. But one thing I know for sure: Furnace rooms are creepy. Michael Jackson and the Thriller zombies are lurking in the dark corners of every one of them (and there are ALWAYS dark corners) and there are probably spiders involved too. You should run quickly when you leave them and glance over your shoulder despite your better judgment as you slam the door shut. It's just common sense.

The sad fact of my job is that it involves many a furnace room, although they try to make them sound corporate by calling them "mechanical rooms" or "boiler rooms." They're just extra-big, extra-scary furnace rooms, with extra-dark corners, hissing steam and the unmistakable WHOOSH of sudden ignition, which is, after all, the very noise that summons Michael Jackson to jump out and eat your brain. Even when I'm there with a co-worker, fighting to understand the jumble of forty-two BILLION pipes, I am on constant zombie/axe-murderer alert. Forty-two BILLION pipes plus six boilers, and six chillers combating the six boilers make a heck of a hissing, whooshing, zombie-summoning racket, and I wish I could be cool about this... I wish I could say that it was fine... but I’m always a little bit surprised when we make it out alive.

What with me spending so much time in and/or drawing furnace rooms lately, and the fact that furnace rooms are very spooky and that it’s almost Halloween? How could I resist? The song of the month HAS to be “Furnace Room Lullaby” by Neko Case.

I had a real struggle with myself about putting the video on this post, because the video is honestly terrible. I don’t want you to watch it because I think it’s SO terrible that it actually detracts from the song. What I would LIKE you to do is listen to the song while driving down a dark, lonely highway, or better yet, go sit among the patina-dribbled copper pipes and flickering blue boiler flames in the Calgary Tower Mechanical room and listen. Heck, please consider sitting beside YOUR furnace! But at the very least, turn off the lights, turn up the volume, close your eyes and give it a listen. You can watch the video later, if you really feel the need, but do it my way the first time, k? Thanks.



Happy Halloween! Don't let Jacko getcha!

Volcanic Sky!

Je ne suis pas content, darlings, so I'm not much for the posting right now.
However, tonight as I was burning my pizza I flung the back door open and the sky was all "I totally understand."

Moody!

xoxo,

Gillian

Tour de Web & Just a Friendly Reminder to...

VOTE!!!

Yeah, I know it's American, but the message is the same. C'mon, guys. If *I* have to rush home from work to make the polls, so do you. Do it. And not to tell you who to vote for, but you might want to read up on the Conservatives and their Digital Copyright Act before you head to the polls. Just saying!

I know a lot of you out there are as crazy about "Raising Sand" as I am, so here's a little interview with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss that boingboingtv did. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then just go buy the album. You won't be disappointed!

Also? This song has been going through my head for days :)

Oh Discovery Channel... I love you... and the whole world... boom de ya da!

I don't know if I've posted this before, but it's some marketing genius! Incidentally, I co-wrote a song about pipetting in high school chemistry, but it wasn't half as entertaining as this.

And finally, you know how I love to post songs about robots? Let's add this to the collection. "I've got a robot vacuum cleaning up my life." I know, hey? Sketchy!

The Yoga Response

When I'm in the car, I need music. So when I was in the car in Nova Scotia, I'd plug in my iPod and subject my parents to my eclectic music collection. One of my playlists is "Yoga Music", although it really is any kind of music that I do Yoga to, and is widely varied from Opera to Indian techno. While listening to some of my Yoga music, my dad asked if the music gave me a "Yoga response", which I thought was an interesting question, because in fact it does!

Since I have my "soundtrack" that I do Yoga to, I now associate the music with a focused feeling, so if I'm stressed at work I can just pop on the Yoga playlist and it will bring my focus back a little bit. Obviously it doesn't bliss me right out like a Yoga session, but it certainly helps shift me into a better headspace. However, more than the mental response, a few songs give me more of a physical response. I hear them and I am overcome with the urge to do sun salutations (suryanamaskara, for those who do yoga with me... sorry, I was programmed to teach in Sanskrit!)

Most of the songs are pretty obscure and we aren't going to find them on YouTube, but this is one of the songs that gives me that "suryanamaskara feeling":

Boheme - Deep Forest


This one even less mainstream, but is undeniably my favourite yoga song with the biggest "Yoga Response." It's also a favourite among my students! It's definitely not on YouTube, so I just slapped a photo up and added the song so you could hear it. I don't know how to just post songs without a lot of effort. The photo was taken at Lake Louise, and the song happens to be a very good mountain driving soundtrack too. Something about Opera and the Rocky Mountains... It's a wonderful match.

Ballo (After Verdi's Ballo en Mashera) - Paul Schwartz


Enjoy :) Breathe :) Namaste!

Gillian