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We just got home from our “non-wedding” and it’s very strange and wonderful to be Mrs. RRBF. I had the most fun of my entire life with everyone (*except my Hannah) there to celebrate the marriage of me and my now-RRHB (rock and roll husband). And I’m still so plastered, I can’t believe I’m typing).

Paul Quarrington’s Galveston comes out of nowhere to knock you on your ass just like the storm hitting Dampier Clay. I had put the book down and picked up Tipping the Velvet it its place—what a mistake that was! The beginning of Galveston didn’t really grab me. I sort of read happily along, feeling out the characters and half-enjoying the tragic mess of each of their lives. But then, as soon as the wind picked up and the rain started, a hurricane of words on the page sped along, and I couldn’t put it down. All in all it’s a supreme read and one I truly enjoyed.

In the spirit of the season, I’m going to forgive the following people today:

1. To the person who honked at me while I tried to get on the Gardiner this morning to go to work, I’m sorry if you thought I cut you off, but I’d rather not die on the day before the day before Christmas, and I had to either get in the lane or hit the concrete wall. I chose the latter.

2. To the crazy lady who butted in front of me not once, but twice (once at the bank, the next time at the drug store); it’s okay, we forgive you for being rude, at least you smiled when you were jumping ahead of me, each time.

3. To the idiot tellers at the bank who gave me a hard time about cashing my cheque from a US bank, I know you’re only doing your job, but I’m just looking to get paid.

4. To the wacky drivers of Toronto, I know you’re all just trying to get home for the holidays, so I’ll forgive you for blocking the intersection, for honking at a traffic jam to get into the beer store parking lot that was holding up traffic, for just about every wrong turn and foul temper that made my afternoon that much longer.

I forgive you, all of you, in the true spirit of the holiday.

God bless us, every one.

Happy Christmas!

My Zip.ca membership has been working overtime these past few weeks. I ordered a bunch of older movies, ones that I’d never seen, but read a fair amount about, including The Graduate and Deliverance.

My favourite lines from each:

“Mrs. Robinson – you are trying to seduce me.”

(See organic, organic I say!)

“You push a little more power into Atlanta…a little more air conditioners for your smug little suburb…and you know what’s gonna happen? They’re gonna rape this whole landscape.”

You said it Burt and ain’t it still the truth.

So, here’s what karma does to you: if you complain wholeheartedly about not wanting to eat what you’ve brought for lunch, said lunch will end up on the floor, totally ruining any chance of eating it in the first place.

Oh, and then add insult to injury — you will have no money to buy a new lunch and because your job is stuck in the middle of suburbia with no close bank machines to remedy the situation — you have nothing else to eat.

Damn karma.

I think Chris Parnell would kick Tom Green‘s ass. I’m just sayin’. And that’s not to say that I don’t heart the pants off of Tom Green, because y’all know that I do. I bought and actually read his book last year—in hardcover. Yeah, you know it.

Awesome celebrity sightings yesterday while Christmas shopping. We saw Christopher Walken wearing plastic leisure pants and a down jacket in Yorkville, not once, but twice. The second time it looked like he was with Art Bergman, but there could be more than one craggy looking aging rock stars in Toronto with small dogs—you never know. The RRBF half-considered saying something to him but didn’t. I wondered if he’d mind if I asked him to dance with me right there on Bloor Street.

Then we saw Bruce Greenwood as we were driving out of Yorkville. He was standing on the street looking like he wanted to cross, but when we stopped to let him, he waved us off. He looked kind of pissed off too, and he was wearing this awful sweater; it was white with blue dogs. Dude!

And we saw Christie Blatchford too. She was in Aveda on Bloor Street. I didn’t have the courage to tell her she writes some of the worst run on sentences in the history of Canadian media. But I thought it. Does that count?

I am hungover. First off, I’m not even supposed to be drinking with the meds, but last night I made an exception. Next, I’m not really in any shape to be out all hours of the night, but again I made an exception. My lovely friends were kind enough to take me out last night to celebrate the impending non-wedding. I had such a good time I can’t thank them enough.

We ate a fab meal at Kalendar, then went to the Supermarket, which for Kensington is way, way too hip. It kind of scared me actually. Then we went to see the drag show at El Convento Rico, yay dancing! Yay cool looking drag queens I couldn’t see. Boo slimy fellows trying to dance with you. Boo spinny room because you’ve had too much beer.

Then, we topped off the evening with a College Street staple: nachos at Sneaky Dee’s.

It’s hard to sum up the evening in one or two funny, witty comments, but in the end I felt very special, which is a nice feeling. Although I’m damn glad Scarbie didn’t dare bring the veil she threatened me with. Also, it was nice to be out in the world after spending so much time at home by myself, I had almost forgotten how nice it is just to be a girl and hang out with your friends.

And it’s pretty damn fun to shake your ass too.

The OED has picked “podcast” as it’s word of the year according to The Book Standard, which is kind of cool. It’s wonderful how technology has infiltrated everyday life and how everyone now is either blogging, listening to podcasts or downloading some hot tune from iTunes.

I think the best present anyone could get me is the Oxford English Dictionary. My daily email from them sort of pales in comparison to what it might be like to own the entire glorious set of bajillion volumes. Oh, the things I would learn.

Like today for example, the Word of the Day was “girl power,” and are you as shocked as I was to learn that it was not, in fact, a product of the Spice Girls marketing team, but the Catholic church who coined it, well the church according to a British writer anyway. In 1952, Malcolm Lowry’s book Let contained this sentence: “Nearby is a Catholic church within which it says: ‘We want girl-power for our convent’.”

Words are awesome.

Where to begin? I’m a cold-hearted scrooge this year with the whole wonder and magic of Christmas lost years ago to season after season of disappointments. Oh. So. Cheerful.

But there’s one thing I do love, and that’s shopping for presents. But because I’ve been so under the weather lately, I haven’t even really started my holiday shopping and am at a loss as to whether or not I’ll get finished by, ahem, the 25th. See, the main problem is that I generally buy people books, but now that I work for a publisher, I can’t really do that anymore. Or at least can’t give people books without them knowing where they came from — the cat’s kind of out of the bag on that one.

What does a girl who only ever buys books as presents do when that option is no longer available to her?

I’ll be sitting in the corner sucking on my candy cane trying to figure it out.