It’s so funny to think about how little has really changed for me. Out of all 80 of us, or at least the ones who have been participating, I’m the only one who’s really still blogging the same way I did back in 2000. Every single day. I’m still on Camwhores (formerly portal 9), where I’ve been since mid-2001. I still post in the E/N style, I think. On both sites.

I dunno, I just never really thought about it before today, that things never really changed for me. Everyone else is off doing grown up things and talking about “the good ol’ days” and I feel like I’m still pretty much living them. It’s never really occurred to me until today that most of the people reading this post have no idea what the E/N scene was, let alone were they a part of it. People rarely believe me when I tell that that I started blogging, like for real, before the word “blog” even existed.

Back then, camgirls were smart as well as beautiful (not saying they aren’t now, necessarily, some are, but in a totally different way) and most of them were super geeks who coded their own websites by hand. I didn’t though, I used Dreamweaver which was notorious for writing sloppy code so even though I used it, I would have to often go into html mode and fix the code by hand, so I consider it a half & half thing for me.  This is an image of the main page of the last layout (I think) I coded and created by hand. I was so damn proud of it:

If you’ve never read my “About the Site” page and are curious about my site’s history, you should check it out. There’s a link in there to my first Angelfire site even. Remember kids, everything you do on the internet is PERMANENT! What’s so funny to me about my Angelfire site is that my version of a blog sometimes back then was to write on paper, then scan it in and post that. I should do that more often NOW haha We have a new scanner but I don’t know how to use it or I would totally do that. Also I was talking to Blake about this design just last week:

When I lived in Rob’s basement when I was in high school, on one wall I made this design, except in a circle, as a huge mural. I don’t think there are any pics of it but it was pretty cool and I was pretty proud of it. I was telling Blake about it last week but I can’t remember why, except I did say that I should draw it again in my sketchbook so it wouldn’t be lost forever and lo & behold, here it is!

I don’t like poetry. I don’t like reading it and I don’t like writing it, but after Rob and I broke up, I went through a brief poetry phase. Here’s one of them:

Piss Off

Go back to where you were.

Go back into her arms.

No one needs you here,

all you do is harm.

I hoped you were in a ditch somewhere.

I hoped for blood and gore.

I hoped that you had killed yourself and

your little whore.

I wished that you were starving,

And didn’t have a home.

I wanted you to know great pain,

I wanted you to roam.

I prayed that you had been beaten,

I prayed that you were dead.

I thought that you were staying there,

and you’d stop messing with my head.

But now you’re here and I hate you more,

Than I ever thought I would.

I thought that you had finally left,

finally gone for good.

I wished that you would disapear,

Or shrivel up and die.

But you’re still here living happily,

and I still wonder why.

Why couldn’t you have been a good boy,

And slit your fucking throat?

Nothing I would love better than to

watch your dead body bloat.

Can’t win them all I guess,

But I can always hope.

If you ever want to kill yourself,

I have lots of rope.

Hahahahaha!!! Isn’t that hilarious? I also think it’s funny that on my Angelfire site, I had a “PMS page“, which was basically the original version of my “Shit I Hate” page. I’m also still really proud of this troll story I wrote. If you knew the guy it was based on, you would find it hysterically funny too! :oD

More poetry; I wrote this one for Madison when she was first born:

Too funny!

But yeah, it amazes me how much and how little has really changed since then. Especially the latter for me since I feel like I’m still in the same place, doing the same thing as I was 11 or 12 years ago or however long it’s been (I started my first site in 1997, so how long ago was that?).  On the FB group, we were talking about “what if…” and wondering why none of us ever really made it “big” in the blog world and I still don’t have an answer. It kills me that people like Dooce get all this recognition for the same thing myself and several others have been doing better and longer. What makes her so special? What makes her more marketable than us? Why did she get a book deal? I don’t get it. She’s not the only one, I’ve written about the Mormon mommy bloggers before and that whole thing STILL baffles me.

Anyway, the trip down memory lane was a welcome change from the usual. Do you remember the E/N scene? What/who do you miss the most? Spill! I miss being pretty and having nice hair. Oh yeah, I still maintain a small webcam archive, which can be found here.

~*PLEASE DONATE SO I CAN GO TO ART CAMP!*~

PS. Another thing I just remembered is that a few years ago on Facebook, someone referred to me as an “internet celebrity*” and Madison saw it and was like “wtf does that mean?” so I had to show her my site and some of my Camwhores archive and explain the whole shebang to her. She actually thought it was really cool but now that she’s aware of the fact that there’s a relatively big audience, she won’t let me post everything about her anymore, which sucks, but I respect that. Wes knows about everything but my activity on Camwhores and he thinks it’s the coolest thing ever and constantly tell me what I should tell you guys about. “Tell them I did this!” he says all the time, like when I’m filing him or taking his picture. A total ham.

Okay, nurse Cheryl (ugh) is going to be here in 2 hours. I’d better get a bit more sleep.

(* It’s easy to be an “internet celebrity” when there are only 50 people on the whole entire internet haha)

Edit: Apparently Steph formerly of Delightz.net made the FB group, not Artfag and Steph wrote a really nice post about it which you can find here.

Edit #2: Here’s Artfag’s post about the whole thing.

Not that it makes a lick of difference, but my site will “go dark” tomorrow in solidarity with the other sites that are protesting this bill. That means I won’t be updating. I also won’t be tweeting or doing anything considered as providing content because that’s exactly what’ll happen if this passes, sites you care about will go dark. The bottom line is that this will affect the internet as we all know it. Like I said, read the above link for a breakdown on it and see for yourself and do me a favour? Really click the link and read it. Because if this breakdown is all true, and I have every reason to believe it is, then we could all be in very deep shit if SOPA passes. I can’t do a damn thing from my little bunker in Canada but you? You reading this? I bet YOU can. So do it.

Edit: Dammit, the Reddit post is now gone but the comments aren’t. Someone posted this.

Edit #2: PA updated with this.

Edit #3: MOAR.

Edit #4: Oh snap.

Edit #5: Parody video.

This was shared by pretty much everyone on my Facebook friends list today and yesterday and when I finally got around to watching it, all I could think of was “Fuck yeah, Rick Mercer, fuck YEAH.”

I spent all of Friday night playing Sims Medieval, which is fucking AWESOME, then all day today (Saturday, since I haven’t slept yet) I sat on my fat, lazy ass and painted 3 FAIRIES who just need the whites of their eyes painted, their pupils painted and to be given dresses and they are FINISHED, which is also FUCKING AWESOME and tomorrow? I’m not sure what my plan is for tomorrow but Blake got me instant mocha latte mix at Wal*Mart today so I know that’s in the plan and I’ll probably just continue painting, watching the Oprah channel and playing more Sims.

Tonight we had a McDinner and it made me feel so wretched I had to take 2 Gravol afterward. I don’t know why I do this to myself, I only eat McDonald’s maybe twice a year now and every single time I have it I feel like barfing afterward and then I feel guilty about all the fat and salt I just consumed. :o( Oh well.

My fairies…oh man do they ever look awesome. I was going to take pics and post them here but I’ve decided to wait until I’m finished their entire painting before I show the world. One’s Asian, one’s East Indian and one’s Caucasian and they all have black hair and metallic espresso eyes and they look fucking wicked. I was SO SO SO nervous about painting the Asian one because I’ve never done it before and I was also using a new brand of paint which is apparently more highly pigmented than the paint I normally use because I thinned it down the way I normally would but the coverage was too thick and it wiped out all of my shading, unfortunately, so the Asian fairy doesn’t really have any shading to her face while the other 2 do. I was so upset that I ruined her this way that I cried but Blake gave me a pep talk about how it was my first try and no one ever does awesome on their first try so I don’t feel so bad about it now. Her eyes look amazing though, I’ve gotta say, and especially with the metallic black hair she really does look Asian so I’m kind of proud of how she turned out despite the lack of shading. The East Indian one’s eyes are also on a slant and she just looks great. The white one? Well, she looks like every other fairy I’ve done in the past 3 years. All 3 fairies are going to have those pressed leaves I bought as wings, the Asian girl is going to have green ones, the Indian girl is going to have bronze ones and the white girl is going to have gold ones. I’m not sure what the background of the painting is going to look like yet, but you KNOW it’s going to have a fuck tonne of glitter! Anyway, I’m happy with them so far and I plan on continuing with them tomorrow after their lips have dried, which I just painted.

Today was super windy and grey and gross and I felt bad for all of the vendors at the Maple Syrup Festival that our town had today. They close off the main street so craft/artisan vendors can sell their wares and it was just a shitty day for it over all. The wind was so bad that it blew out gate open twice and the dogs got out but they know where they get fed and they came back. Blake’s now secured the fence with garden twine and two plastic zippy things and the wind’s not supposed to be as bad tomorrow so hopefully that solves that problem.

I’m smoking again. I don’t know why. I don’t really want to talk about it and I don’t really want to hear any lectures, I just wanted to throw that out there in full disclosure. I had quit for 2 weeks but on Friday the freedom of the weekend and having things be perfect was too much and I broke down and bought a pack and then I was thinking that we’re going to see the Pixies on Wednesday with Ronny, Alex & Deanna and Deanna smokes so if I quit on Monday, there’s no way I’m going to make it through the Pixies with Deanna smoking so I might as well just keep smoking until we come home from the show (Thursday) and start quitting again. I think I may read Allen Carr’s book again.

Speaking of books, I’m still reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen and I’m finding it extremely dry. I don’t even know what the fucking story is and I’m about 1/6th of the way through. It reminds me of something but I don’t know what…

Water For Elephants opened this weekend I think, but I’m too broke to go see it because I’m in credit card debt up to my eyeballs. It’s just so goddamn easy to buy things on the internet and god help me, but I discovered eBay a few weeks ago and I cannot stop buying Japanese mulberry tissue paper because it’s impossible to find locally. I’ve bought 6 batches so far and I’ve received 2 of them, neither of which is pulpy enough for angel wings, which is what I use it for, so it was kind of a waste of money but it’s hard to tell what you’re buying in the pictures the sellers put up. I’m hoping to find one seller with the right type I need and keep buying from them, but for now it’s trial & error. Chali told me about “destashing” on Etsy where people sell art supplies on there, which is what I might do with the mulberry paper I can’t use. Someone’s gotta have a use for it and I mean it’s all pretty neat, I used a bit of it in “Black & White” on the skirt of the fairy in white, I’m not sure if you can really see the flecks of silver and gold in the paper, but like I said, it’s neat stuff, I’m just not totally sure what to do with it. And now that I’ve typed that, I’ve realized that it would probably make good skirt material for the fairies I’m working on at the moment, so hey, good for me.

Yesterday I literally tried to freeze my credit card in a glass of water in the freezer, but the glass cracked (it was plastic) and the ice just kinda, was repelled by the plastic of my card so I could literally just pull it out no problem. So much for that idea. Since that didn’t work then I guess it’s just up to me to have a little fucking impulse control which I really really suck at. On Friday I bought like, 11 lbs or something of cone incense off the internet – I’m out of control!

Tonight we finished watching Buffy, the entire series and I bawled at the part with Xander at the end of the last episode. Anya was my favourite character (Andrew is my 2nd) and I knew she was going to bite it and how she would and I knew it was coming but none of that knowing prepared me for it so I cried and cried.

I have no idea what’s going on with my period and it’s making me fucking mental. I was supposed to get it on the 6th but it was a no show, then last Sunday I had what I thought was the beginning of it (that brown goo you get right before you gush) but that tapered off after a day and now nothing except a LOT of discharge, enough that I’m wearing a pad anyway. It’s like I’m having a white period or something (and no, it’s not an infection, it’s like ovulation goo x a thousand). My new anti-psychotic that I’m taking for sleep can affect your period so I’m chalking it up to that but even that doesn’t make much sense because I had a normal period last month while I was on it so why would I have an abnormal period THIS month? I’ve also had the pain of a period, just no blood. I want blood dammit! I tried to go to sleep at around 11:30pm tonight and as I was laying in bed, I started worrying that Blake’s vasectomy had reversed itself and that I’m pregnant and what would I do if I was. (Were?) Blake and I have gone over that scenario a thousand times before and the answer is always “abort abort abort” but the question in my head tonight was, if I did have to have an abortion, would I blog about it and risk the threat of it being absolute troll bait and having the world judge me for that decision? And it’s a hard thing to answer, I thin, unless you’re in that situation, but I think I would blog about it. If I were pregnant right now, the amount of drugs I’m on would seriously fuck up a fetus and it would be all drug addicted and probably be deformed or mentally retarded or something so an abortion would be necessary for that reason, but there’s also the reason that we’re done having kids and we’ve taken every precaution NOT to have any more kids, so there’s that reason too. I think anyone who has an abortion has valid reasons, don’t get me wrong, I’m just listing what mine would be. Anyway, while laying in bed, I decided that I would blog about the whole thing because hey, that’s what I do. But I’m (probably) not pregnant so I don’t even know why I’m writing this…

So we’re going to see the Pixies on Wednesday and it’s out of town and I’m getting really nervous about it. We’re getting a hotel room, which I love because I love staying in hotels, but I’m worried about the dogs who will be alone for the night. We’ll be leaving early on Thursday morning and it’ll take 2 hours to get home, so the dogs shouldn’t be in too much discomfort, but still, I worry. And I feel horrible because in planning this whole thing, I didn’t even consider them. My mom’s taking the kids for the night and that’s all that I had on my brain as we planned. It only occurred to me tonight that the dogs would be an issue.

I also think that tomorrow Wes and I are going to plant our vegetable seeds and get them started on the living room windowsill. I have the cups for it and have for a while, but I keep forgetting to do it or I’ve been too tired after work to do it (because it takes twice as long and it’s twice the mess when Wes helps, but he likes doing it) but it needs to be done and I have the time tomorrow so I might as well.

And I’m really just babbling at this point so I’ll tell you about the Sims Medieval and call it a night.

The Sims medieval is not like the regular Sims really, it’s kinda like a cross between the Sims and WoW on super easy mode. You control your Sims but they have specific jobs and you have to do quests. To be quite honest, the guidebook that came with the game is pretty worthless and I’m not even sure what the point of the game is yet. I made a kingdom and did every single quest and now I’m not sure what to do. There are “ambitions”, like the first one is called “New Beginnings” and the goal is to build up your kingdom so it has every building and every profession, which is what I completed tonight, but then there was nothing left to do so I went to the main menu screen and saw that 2 new ambitions had opened up so I clicked on one of them and it wanted me to make a new game, a new kingdom, rather than playing with the kindgom I’d just built. And that’s confusing because what is the point of building a whole kingdom if you just have to keep building like, alternate kingdoms for each new ambition. Is anyone playing this game? Am I doing it wrong? So I started a new kingdom for one of the new ambitions and that’s what I’m playing now. The first kingdom was called “Sunnyland”, naturally, and the new one is named “Sunnyland 2″ because I’m creative like that.

Anyway, here are some screencaps:

My first monarch, Sunny Moody.

Sunny Moody having a royal bath.

This one is Queen Sunnybananas of Sunnyland 2.

My wizard, Zennish Moody.

My physician treating a patient. I forget his name. :o/

Praying with Oprah, my Peteran priestess.

All in all it’s a fun game, but I wish I understood what the hell I was supposed to be doing better. I can’t imagine I’m doing it right with the whole starting another kingdom thing for each new ambition because that is a royal pain in the ass.

So that’s been my weekend so far. I think now I’m going to see what everyone’s up to on Facebook while I finish my Coke and then get to bed. Happy weekend!

This is my mom’s Facebook profile pic.

She says:

“Robins that didn’t leave for the winter, but stayed in the Toronto Ravines. I think this makes them Canadian Robins! I was checking on their migration, and learned that it is quite common for Robins to stick around in the Toronto ravines over winter. A Birder got this picture January 29th, 2011!!”

So Canadians, spring is HERE!
It may not look like it or feel like it, but it is!

Have a great day!

I’d been wanting a cone incense holder for a long time and was really surprised when I actually got one because it’s not something I’ve mentioned a whole lot, so it was kind of an obscure item. He came with vanilla and rose incense. I’ve been burning mostly the vanilla because traditionally I don’t like rose, but this stuff’s okay. I’m not burning it during the day though because it makes me sleepy. Wal*Mart doesn’t have cone incense so I’m not sure where I’ll replenish yet but at least I have it to enjoy now! I’m actually thinking of starting an incense burner collection because I’m told there’s a lot of really cool ones out there and that if I was impressed with this one then I ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Someone described to me Chinese dragon incense holders where the smoke comes out their nostrils and I’m very interested in seeing one of those.

So that’s what Madison got me for my birthday and as I said, I love it. And I guess he’s not exactly a “laughing” Buddha, he’s more like a smiling Buddha, but that’s okay. I’m not picky about my Buddhas.

This morning I got an automated call from Visa saying that they needed to go over some charges with me because they thought they might be fraud. I pulled up our Visa statement online and double checked everything, I even called Blake because one I didn’t recognize but it was for his parking so it was okay. We both assumed they were checking up on all of the charges we made when we were in the US since we put pretty much everything on Visa since our bank cards wouldn’t work down there. So I call Visa up and it’s this automated thing that starts telling me someone tried to put a $1500 charge on my card for Google Adwords. Wtf? So I made it give me a real person and he explained that it was a charge from the UK and that this is a pretty common scam where they set up a website that will say something like “you have a virus on your computer and if you don’t give us money right now to fix it, your computer is going to blow up” so people pay them money because of this when in fact, the site does nothing and they use Adwords so the fraudulent site will come up when people search certain keywords pertaining to whatever the site’s about.

They canceled the transaction and are sending me new cards in the mail, which will take about 10 days, but good on them for catching it and alerting me. I have no idea how they would have gotten my credit card number because I don’t even use that card, Blake does, and he doesn’t generally buy things online. He DID buy something from a seller on Amazon last month though, which is a possible suspect but I think Amazon’s pretty good about vetting those people, right? I mean, they’re legit businesses, right?

*I* buy a lot of stuff online, obviously a lot on Etsy and Lush but I use a different Visa from a different bank than the one Blake uses so it’s weird that the one Blake uses had this happen to it.

Speaking of Etsy, I bought THIS last week and I cannot wait until it arrives because I’m absolutely in love with it:

She uses the same paper I use for my girls’ dresses except I use the flat version and she uses the textured versions. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this or not but I’ve been buying a lot of art from Etsy in preparation for my new office if and when we ever move. There’s nowhere to put art in the office I have now because the biggest wall is covered in vinyl siding, but one day I’ll have an office with nice, flat walls and I’ll be able to hang all kinds of stuff. I’ll have a whole house with walls I can hang stuff on! I fully intend to have pictures of my family all over the place, as I told my step-mom on Facebook yesterday. The best part of their birthday gift to me was the card with a photo of my step-mom, Phil and my little sisters which I fully intend to frame, but in this house, there’s nowhere to put framed photos. Our house is so dark that putting things on walls is pointless and we have a distinct lack of non-functional surfaces. But when we have our new house, I plan on having tables and stuff like, in my living room or wherever, that are just for pictures. Pictures of my Muskoka family, my mom and John and Chris, my cousin Haylie, Brooke and Charlie, the Albanians, my kids of course, Ronny and Alex and maybe even my brother if he stops being such a shithead.

Ever since Michigan, family has become a lot more important to me than it was before and I’ve found myself getting kinda bummed out that my brother is such a turd. I downloaded the song “Pretty Fly For a White Guy” by the Offspring, which reminds me of my brother because that’s him to a “T”, the kid in the video even looks like him and I put it on the playlist I’ve been listening to since Monday and I’ve been thinking about him a lot. Here’s the video for my mom, who’s probably never seen it:

You would think that as he got older (he’ll be 26 in July) he’d smarten up and quit being a shit, but he’s still living with his father (who got fired from the job he’d had for like, 15 years) and is more or less unemployed most of the time for no real reason other than, I can only assume, he has a problem dealing with authority (runs in the family) and he doesn’t like waking up with an alarm (runs in the family?). Also, last I checked, he was smoking a fucking ounce of weed every few days. Honestly, I don’t even know, I haven’t talked to the guy since 2005, I only hear snippets from my mom once in a blue moon. When he left my house that day in December, he promised he’d be back and he went on and on about how much Wes and Madison meant to him, but that must have been all horse shit because where is he then? Not even an e-mail? Not even an add on Facebook? I never did a damn thing to him so I don’t know what his deal is.

I mean, it’s not as if we’ve ever been close to begin with, there’s a pretty big age gap between us and we were raised in completely different ways by two completely different people in two different houses. I’m an only child with 3 siblings. But it’s just the fact that he PROMISED that he’d be back and he went on and on and on about how much my kids meant to him that eats at me. Why would he say that shit if he didn’t mean it? And how can he mean it if he’s not here?

I dunno. Most of the time I barely even think about him, it’s just that song that has him on my mind lately. I’m sure it’ll pass and like I said, we’re not close so it doesn’t even really matter. It’s sad that it doesn’t, I suppose, but that’s the hard truth of it. Honestly, we barely even know each other. Not as kids, not as adults.

So that’s where my head’s been the last little while. I need to get back to work.