JoyfulC

Fabric! Tons of it! Fabricland is having a sale, almost everything 50% off until tomorrow. I got enough for five new skirts, and we splurged on 10 meters of denim to reupholster all the furniture. The only thing we screwed up on was the upholstery for the base of the bed in the guest room. Only got half of what we needed! :(

This morning we took measurements, packed up all three dogs in the car, and made the dreaded trip into Ottawa for supplies. It was just as hellish as we expected it to be. Aaaaaand ... we arrived home to discovered that we'd measured wrong and only got half the material we needed for the main thing we went into town for! FML!!

Leftover spinach-seafood lasagna: first meal I made in our new home! On a lark, yesterday, I tossed together some cottage cheese, chopped spinach, crab and shrimp, along with a few eggs and some nutmeg, salt and pepper. Layered it with oven-ready lasagna noodles (cheating, yes, I know!) in a casserole dish and covered it with about 4 cups of bechemel sauce, topped it with cheese, and voila! Super tasty and too easy.

IKR! Oh, the irony. ;)

Moved at last! Moved at last! Great god almighty, I am moved at last! And I adore this new place! Great open concept floor plan. A shower built for playing in. And two big rooms to dedicate to entertaining!! Let the fun begin!!

Lumber. Message too short? But that's all I had to say!!

We have always rented. My parents were Fixer-Upper Nazi Homeowners From Hell, and I always swore I never had any desire to own a home. That said, over the years, we've only really had three bad landlords. I'm sorry to say that two of them were women. And both for the same reasons: 1) they had no clue what their responsibilities entailed (they thought it was all about getting paid rent); and 2) they were completely ignorant of how houses work. I'm well past the age of telling people off. What good does it do? Most people who need telling off are too ignorant to understand it. I haven't lost it on anyone in ages. But that woman!! I probably shouldn't have hit send.

Tonight I watched "Born To Win," (1971) in which Deniro played a supporting role. Starred George Segal as a feckless junkie (a common theme in the early 70s, when they were building justification for the War On Drugs. Not a great movie, but somewhat fascinating for someone who lived through those times. http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0066856/?ref_=m_tt_rec_tti

I must say that, even with the old established laws, I found most lawyers to be totally clueless. Let's see what shakes out, and then find and share the lawyers that actually know what they're doing.

Throbbing. But really, this moving is not going so badly. End of Day 1. I can't feel my toes. (This place does have two lovely new rooms which I can reserve exclusively for entertaining!)

Take-away pizza.

Getting ready to entertain my very last guest at The Love Shack. I so love this little old ramshackle farmhouse. But it's time to go.

Honestly, this whole matter makes me nauseous. I really felt that the laws that we had before were the best compromise, especially considering the ways they were enforced. The most screwed up markets in Canada always seemed to me to be the ones that tried to regulate it through bylaws and licensing. I also don't see how any of this is going to reduce street prostitution or make street prostitution any safer. But how lucky for the CPC to have this issue dropped in their laps just in time for the next elections. Great distraction. Sigh.

Specifically, I'm wondering how it figures into the American current obsession with "The Good Guy With A Gun." To me, Bickle was mentally unstable and become obsessed with guns and vigilante justice. But the movie's ending suggests that, at least from a popular standpoint, as long as someone like this targets the right person, he's acceptable. (Although he came close to carrying out the assassination of a political candidate, in which case he would have been viewed as "The Bad Guy With A Gun"?) Maybe the message of the movie is that there's not much difference between the two.

I guess what's considered a classic is a matter off personal opinion. But I've heard so much about Taxi Driver over the years. BTW, what made me decide to watch it was that I was checking out some Bowie on YouTube, and came across the video below. Not having seen the movie, I was taken aback at some of the photos used in this video. I was curious to know more. (Love this song.) It didn't cost me anything to see. I already subscribe to Netflix and it's available on there. Additional Comments: (PS. I was shocked as hell to hear, and it seemed really out of place, but Jackson Browne's "Late For The Sky" pops up out of nowhere in the middle of it!!)

Okay, I just watched this movie in its entirety last night for the first time. WTH???? I'll admit, I'm a little movie challenged. Must be ADHD. I have difficulty retaining interest throughout the length of a movie. I probably should have seen this movie back in the 70s when it first came out. But now, having seen it, I am wondering ????? I know this is an important movie because I've heard so many references to it over the years, but the whole thing seems entirely improbable. Why would Cybil Shepherd's character even get as far as a dirty movie theatre with Bickle? Why would she reinitiate contact with him at the end of the movie. And the end of the movie! I really did not expect that. I'd be interested to hear any thoughts or analysis on what happened, and why this film has resonated so heavily in our culture for 40 years.

Just now letting the sweet tendrils of a little moonshine creep into my brain. I might read a little, maybe listen to some Pink Floyd (Careful With That Ax, Eugene). It's been one of those days! My life is fairly drama free, but today was just a test, to make sure I was still in form. Ugh.

And some days, it just IS. (You can tell who didn't have an appointment today, right? ;) )

Hobbyists with big fucking mouths and no fucking brains! Not long ago, someone I know from my personal life responded to one of my ads. I simply wrote him back and suggested we pass due to proximity. God only knows what goes through some of these pea brains! I found out today that this brain trust apparently told his girlfriend (who works with law enforcement), AND managed to convince her that he just happened to notice my ad whilst standing in line in a store. Uh huh. I've been in this business over 40 years. In all that time, surprise surprise!! Not a single person I knew personally who answered one of my ads was actually looking for an SP. Heavens no! They just happened to be browsing SP ads and just happened to respond to mine. Whoopsie!! But use the services of an SP?? Never! So tonight, my husband gets a call from this pinheaded couple to let him (us) know that they're "not judging" me. Oh whew! I was worried about that!! And apparently the girlfriend is eating his story of just happening to accidentally respond to my ad with a spoon. Yeesh!!!! You know, I AM an SP. And I have no idea what or who is in the SP section. My husband is married to an SP, and he probably wouldn't even know how to find the places I advertise. Where do these people come up with these half-baked stories???? In any event, I figure he panicked and blabbed to his gf, thinking up this story in case I would tell on him. ???? Seriously? What in the hell would I do that for? What a classic LOSER! So disgusted! I think I'll bad date the mofo.

I make my living on repeat business. So if, for whatever reason, I'm not comfortable going through with a session, I will refund 100% cheerfully with my full apologies. My attitude is that neither of us wasted anything more than our time. But too, he's not welcome back in this case. Ever. But there are times when someone bites off more than he can chew. I try to prolong pleasure whenever I can, but sometimes they're just not receptive to such efforts. If someone books an hour and he's done and over with in 25 minutes, I'll rebate him down to half an hour. And in this case, he is welcome back. Just next time, we'll either book a shorter session or agree on what we need to do to make it last longer.

Yes, I was one of the idiots who converted a bunch of her video files to flash some years back, having been assured that was the future. Now I'm trying to rebuild my members area, and I seem to have lost the original avi files for some of my favourite videos. Which area of course in swf format. I've found apps that will do a conversion, but they seem to mostly be recording off the screen. (The controls remain, but only as an inert image. Which is confusing!) If they do sound at all, it's the same sort of capture, and it's really, really awful. Given more time (I'm now in the middle of a move), I could probably play around and come up with something decent. But in the meantime, am I doing this the hard way? Does anyone know of a tool that will actually convert my swfs back to avi or even mp4? TIA! If for no other reason, I'd love to be able to have these videos as keepsakes. Throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, I lost so many good pics and videos because, before digital, there was usually just one copy, and the client got that. If they were smart, they destroyed them before they fell into the wrong hands. If not, surviving spouses and kids probably threw them out, and I'll never see them again!

Sorry! Screwed up and put this in the wrong place. (But I use Google Analytics, I must say.)

Funny how staring down an impending move will incentivize you to get stuff done--ANY stuff done--that you were procrastinating on before.

I used Voxox for the longest time because it gave me a local number, and I could phone and be phoned from phones as well as by other Voxox users. And I still use Voxox for a lot of things. They've got some great global long distance rates. But still, I really don't get the problem with SMS. My understanding is that it runs on the same bands or channels or whatever that mobile phone calls run on. So why is it so much more unlikely that you won't get a text message, or that you will get it hours later, when that doesn't happen with phone calls? I'm really trying hard to wrap my mind around this. Why would SMS be so much more unreliable than phone calls? Additional Comments: FURTHER: I wonder if having "Cellular Data" turned off makes any difference. In my settings, it says: "Turn of cellular data to restrict all data to Wi-Fi, including email, web browsing, and push notifications." I have this set to off because the rare time I am out of the house, I don't want it burning through data with push notifications for games and email and such. But too, while this might help any messages that come through iMessage, I don't see how it would affect true SMS messages that are supposed to travel on the same bands our cell phones do.

That's the other thing: when we first had two phones and got our first bill, it was showing long distance charges when we phoned each other. Even though, Fred was just at the bar on the other side of the river, and I can literally see it from my window! We're on the same account. We're within walkie-talkie range. WTF?? We called and they gave us some elaborate excuse about which tower picked up our calls. But again, we noted that it somehow always seemed to $crew up in their favour. They gave us a plan where it's always free to call one another, but we still get some very odd long distance charges. I think the game is rigged to maximize their money. And if that sounds paranoid, well, don't be naive! Remember a couple years back when some major banks were caught reordering ATM transactions out of chronological date to maximize the number of overdraft charges they could rack up? They're all a lot of crooks, and our governments apparently are more interested in working to protect their interests, than to protect us from them.