At a nudging from Josh Mitchell (I would link him but I appear to be livejournal retarded), I am writing once more! Kind of. For the moment.

It's 10:33 and I am sleepy and sitting at the computer without my pants on. That's how you know it's comfort. I am also looking up airfare to Thunder Bay! I would love to go back for a little longer in the summertime and hang with everyone. Hopefully I can then also make the trek up to Fort Frances to see Melissa and Max and Melissa's dog who sings along to Kings of Leon songs.

Mostly I am blogging over here these days : Sarah the Pirate!.

Ah, blogging.

This one time Melissa and I dressed up like Faeries and took weird pictures next to the ocean in Tlell. I still haven't played around with a lot of the results ... most of my pictures from last autumn were lost when Melissa's laptop decided to take a bath in some Coke, and the majority of my other pictures are kicking around somewhere on my old harddrive.

I am in the process of looking into getting a new camera! I may be able to score an updated Canon Digital Rebel, which is what I'm using now, but what I'd really like is a Canon 40d. Sometimes I go to Future Shop and gently caress the floor models, kind of like that one time when Jamie and I were broke and hungry, and went to Safeway to gaze longingly at their paninis. We are pretty classy daters.

So I am working now for a privately owned Landscaping Company and it's great. The other day I was able to plan and execute a 30 planter order for a wedding, which involved purchasing any kind of annual my heart desired and organizing it into 1 and 2 gallon pots. I chose, and please excuse some of my spelling here, marigolds, sunflowers, corelia, and, non stops, lobelia, alyssum, salvia, dragon wing begonias, little pink begonias, and impatiens aplenty. It's awesome because I'm kind of self teaching myself about plants and their names, and gardening is something I never really pictured myself doing, but I love it.

This summer is nuts. In two weeks, Laura will be coming down to visit! I will be housesitting at the time, so her and I will be staying at my friend Bob's giant house. Then comes FEIST in concert!! I adore that Feist. Radiohead is coming up not too soon after that, followed by my first day of School!!

I will be taking Visual Arts in University, which is really exciting, and sometime within that space of time AMY NIETO, aka my beloved NEETS, will be coming to visit!

In short, I am overcome with the awesome.

Last night I stayed up past midnight to place a watercoloured tree on my wall next to my bed. I went to Ikea a few days ago and bought a ton of furniture I admittedly can't afford -- a new couch that doesn't have a metal bar that nestles itself directly onto your spine, an art table and a cubed bookshelf. My Viking boyfriend assembled it all while I kind of stared half-assedly at the Instructions and dreamed about all the awesome stuff I was going to put on my new stuff. We then rearranged my entire room and I love it. There is now a ton of light in there, and room to move around.

The Watercoloured Tree is shades of red, blue and dark purple. I put it together with scraps of watercolour paper, and it branches out along one wall. Today I'm drawing an owl for the tree, hanging up some pictures, and ripping apart this hideous rubber bookcase I've had in my room for months. I also bought a glowing orb lamp at Ikea, and a little pot of Ivy, and some organizational jars and such ... putting all of that together today, too. I'm housesitting for three people in the upcoming month and honestly, I might not want to leave my room now.

Pictures coming ... eventually.

So life has been busy because I've had a lot of things to update in Facebook. God forbid a day goes by without people I knew back in 1988 getting an up-to-the-minute status on what I'm doing at any particular moment.

Here's what's been going on while I've been all lax in Sarah Land:

1) KITTEN UPDATE 2007: They are doing awesome. Matilda is currently curled up beside me on the couch feeding them all. Her little mouth is all open and she's passed right out. Kittens are exhausting. Their eyes are open. Pretty soon I'm going to teach them how to Shadow Box. For money. ... from the neighbourhood children. Hah.

2) I'm working as a Lab Aid at the hospital. It's all 100% awesome. Sadistically enough, I think taking blood is fun. I'm learning a whole lot about paperwork and filing and I get to use a bevy of super exciting stamps. When I was a kid I used to go to work sometimes with my dad, and he'd give me free reign over all the office supplies. I'd curl up under his desk and randomly stamp "EXUCON" onto all of my books and doodlings, then I'd staple it all together and gently caress the many highlighters available for my office-supply-loving jam hands. I'd finish the whole day by consuming my weight in Jolly Rancher's candies. Anyways. My point is, office supplies rock my world. Don't even get me started on how fun it is to shred paper.

3) I met this guy. I like him a whole lot more than stamps, which is saying a lot. I could go into a whole huge list of all the things I like him more than (more than kittens, even!) but I don't have enough room, Internet. I am all giddy and dreamy and giggly these days and it's possible half the town thinks I'm a massive needle-toting tard, but ... it's all awesome.

4) Spring is here! This morning the town was covered in thick, thick fog, but the sun is finally out and the sky is blue. Daffodils are sprouting everywhere and pink buds are starting to line the bushes across the way. I walk to work every morning and I walk home every afternoon and those meandering strolls, listening to music on my MP3 player, are quickly becoming my favourite parts of the day.

5) Some bands the world needs to have a listen to: Nouvelle Vague (Melissa introduced me to "Too Drunk to Fuck" which is amazing, as well as this spastic little number where she's all, "Jesus wouldn't like it!" ... I love it all. Kings of Leon - "Taper Jean Girl". I love this song. I once had tapered jeans and therefore feel like I can TOTALLY connect. Lisa Loeb's entire album "Tails" is great. "Sandalwood" is my favourite song of the moment. "Your hair falls soft like animals" ? It's like you took those lines from the pages of my heart, Lisa.

It's past midnight and Max is asleep and I'm drinking piles of root beer out of a fancy blue mug, listening to the Rowing Song and coming to the conclusion that Patty Griffin like, KNOWS ME, on the INSIDE, where it COUNTS. I haven't connected so much with a song since Foreigner's "I Wanna Know What Love Is".

It's also March! My birthday is in March! Many other less pleasant things occur in March, but there is one day of this month where everything is marvellous. I'm currently writing up my birthday wishlist and wondering whether or not it's appropriate to put sex toys on the list I'm writing up for my mom. Would it be awkward to receive the Jackrabbit from a parent? Likely. But I deal pretty well with acute social embarrassment. I did, after all, live through the early 90's, a time period in which I very vocally expressed my love for Dwight Yoakam. Especially when he wore the tight jeans.

But just joking. Even though I will be adding various sex toys to my birthday wishlist for the sole purpose of making my mom immensely uncomfortable I won't actually be expecting anal beads and warming gel for my birthday.

Last year on my birthday I was forcefed microwaved asparagus by crazy people, but I expect this year to be much better. Every year, no matter what's going on in my life, I wake up in the morning excited that it's my birthday. I like to pull out certain birthday related songs and sing them really loudly, like "Danke Scheon", which I enjoy singing with a faux microphone, pulling it back and forth towards my mouth while crooning like I'm doing a duet with GOULET himself. "Edge of Seventeen" which tops my list of most awesome songs ever also gets played with a little bit of Sovereign air guitar.

Granted, I'm away from some of the people I would love to be with. Mellers and I looked into meeting up, possibly with Etts when she journeys to Abbotsford in a few days, but getting off this island even one way is about 32423453 dollars over my current budget. But this is going to be my first birthday in a long time spent with my cousins Melissa and Max, so I'm excited for that. I'm going to wake them all up at 6 a.m., in my pajamas, by jumping up and down at the foot of their beds shouting about my birthday, and possibly, communists. That's right. When my birthday rolls around, it doesn't matter what number I'm turning because I AM ALWAYS SIX.

Actually, speaking of my birthday wishlist, I'm supposed to be constructing one for my mom so she can haul a suitcase of exciting off island things over here when she comes to visit me! So I've been perusing pages and this is what I've come up with so far -- in regards to a somewhat unrealistic wishlist.

( Sarah Sovereign's Spectacular Wishlist! )

In other news, I redesigned Sarah, the Pirate today! 20 chocolate covered espresso beans and some delicious hospital coffee later and I'm ready to REDESIGN THE WORLD. IN PAISLEY.

Many moons ago Melissa and I would curl up on her living room couches, drinking cans of Pepsi like every can consumed brought us closer to enlightenment, or at least enlightenment in regards to energy needed to really stick it to Bowser in the last level of Super Mario World. There was nothing quite like screaming obscenities at graphic turtles while twisting around in our chairs like if we moved to the left fast enough, Mario would too, and totally miss that ill-timed bomb coming straight for him. JUMP MARIO. FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, JUMP.

When we were fifteen we weren't just awesome in regards to levels completed. We were also really good at spending summer afternoons lying out on her backyard trampoline, taking long walks around her property, writing our names with white out on big rocks linked with the words "Friends Forever!" ... only white out is a really tricky writing tool so it looked more like "Fnincl Fcr3ven!" Like, when we share our love, we share it in all the languages of the universe.

We also watched a lot of movies during those days, and one of our favourites was Father of the Bride. Watching Steve Martin plan his daughter's wedding would often spin into us planning our own eventual weddings which usually featured Leonard DiCaprio as our mutual groom. My wedding was usually set to occur in a big field, which is something I picked up once from a particularly insightful Archie comic, wherein Betty fantasizes about a field wedding. All of my bridesmaids would wear different shades of blue and purple and there would be about 8 of them. 8 bridesmaids. (These days, incidentally, I am hellbent on having a wedding in the forest. In my head, the whole affair resembles the big Ewok party at the end of Star Wars. )

Anyways, I have a point here. We've spent years and years talking about weddings and discussing what all our lives will be like, me and Mel and Sarah E, when we're married and we have families and we've found some awesome guy who we'd like to spend our lives with. I'm still searching because Nathan Fillion just won't return my calls, but Sarah E and Mellers have both found these awesome people, these nice, caring, smart guys who know how to dress like it's not 1998 and they're favourite pants come in snap on form for easy access.

Which is saying a lot for Northwestern Ontario boys. No offense, Northwestern Ontario, but y'all adore your snap on pants.

But it's crazy that both of my girls are getting married in the same year. 2007, you are going to be nuts.

Melissa and Duncan are getting married!*


*I could have just written that sentence from the get-go, but really. I had to tie in that Father of the Bride reference so you guys wouldn't be like, "They met in France? Huh?"

Wow. Two weddings. I better start polishing my interpretive dance skills if I'm going to properly express everyone's love through the gift of jazz. ... hands, squares, walks -- I like to take a little from every area in the pantheon of rhythm.

Give me two Latte's in the span of one afternoon and I will be ready and prepared to clean your house and possibly reorganize your spice rack at 5 in the morning while doing a jaunty two step to anything by Nelly Furtado.

Even if I don't know what that girl is saying, I will make up my own lyrics and sing them, possibly throwing a few obscene gutteral sounds in there for flavour. I did, after all, grow up in the early 90's, where "Unnnnhhhhhh" was a perfectly acceptable chorus. Honestly, I don't care what hour of the night it is, there is always time to get Nelly Furtarded.

As some of you may know, our wonderful kitchen came equipped with a dishwasher which we've recently started using.

I have no idea how to use that dishwasher. One night, after staring at the mountain of dishes that had somehow accumulated in the span of 10 seconds we decided to load it all up and kind of ... forget about them. God forbid we find a usable spoon in this house for two days, but at least we could almost ignore that plate encrusted with dried guacamole.

Only, there are a wealth of buttons and options on that dishwasher, and a host of places to put soap. The first attempt to buy actual dishwasher soap had me skipping home with a vat of Jet Dry, which, while making our dishes sparkle, is unlikely to make them actually CLEAN.

I don't know about any of you, but I'm the kind of girl who enjoys eating just the one meal, rather than sampling the remnants of last Saturdays' Chicken Soopreese on my fork.

However, I am determined to work that dishwasher into submission. We've been rewashing at the sink after each load, because apparently we can't waste enough water in one night, and one of these days we're going to find the right option and the perfect balance of EconoWash and PURE WILL and those dishes will come out sparkling and yet, also, clean.

I won't speak for you guys, but I dream of the day I can pull a spoon out of that rack and just eat my goddamn yogurt without noting that.. yeah. That's turkey there. Delicious.

This is not just any banana bread recipe. This is like, the banana bread that God would eat if he was all like, "Jesus, I am staaaarrrrvving." and Jesus was all, "HOLD ON. WAIT A MINUTE. HAVE I GOT A TREAT FOR YOU."

Anyways. My mom has been making Best Ever Banana Bread for years, so I took her recipe and just kind of added little extras to it. I totally suggest any and all of you make it for your nearest and dearest, or perhaps just for yourself, if you are a loaf-loving social reject, during this glorious holiday season. Better yet, cook some loaves or muffins, attach this recipe to it, and give it out as a present, or possibly as a donation for a church bake sale.

Those church ladies, they will fucken love the Best Fucken Ever Banana Bread.

Le Recipe:
(everything in italics is stuff I added on to the recipe. I am way too proud of my time spent on concocting this culinary marvel.)

1 cup butter or marjarine (you can substitute 1/4 cup marj + 3/4 applesauce)
2 cups sugar
3 cups mashed ripe bananas (roughly 6)
4 eggs, well beaten
2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp allspice or whatever feels right. Don't be the retard who dumps half the container in. WE ALL LEARNED A LITTLE SOMETHING THAT DAY.
1 dash of cinnamon
1 cup of frozen blueberries
1 half cup of chocolate chips
1 cup frozen raspberries

1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
2. Add the rest, mix it all in. Don't be shy.
3. Bake at 350 degrees for 55 minutes to an hour, may be slightly longer if you make loaves.

It makes two loaves, or one loaf and 12 muffins, or 24 muffins. You can also mix up the amounts of blueberries, raspberries and chocolate chips you put in.

We made it safe and sound to Masset, B.C. care of a giant 4x4 named Pearl!

I've been living here for about two weeks now and it's quite grand. I am currently waiting for my clothes to dry as Melissa and I are going to a Sagittarius Party tonight. No idea what that is, but I am excited.

Then again, I am excited by the concept of people gathering together to buy tupperware from catalogues.

I am on dialup right now, but for a full account of the month long journey to here check out Sarah, the Pirate ... I haven't been able to be in touch with everyone as much as I would like, due to phones, internet access, etc... we didn't have a phone here for the first week, and only just got dialup last week, but big thank you's to everyone who helped me get here and who've given me so much support over the past few months. You guys know who you are.

Yes, that was an example of what I'd sound like if I was accepting an award for Best Mover Ever. I could win, too, considering I gave up like, Adventures In Babysitting on VHS AND my old high school copy of MacBeth AND the Happy Chair. That is sacrifice right there.

It's been a really crazy month. I love travelling, I could do month long travels all the time. From the emotions to leaving everyone in Thunder Bay, to strange familial events to new cats(!!!) ... it's been one crazy journey.

Pictures, as always, to come as time goes on. Flickr will be updated pretty frequently, and anyone who wants to get in touch with me via mail:

Sarah Sovereign
General Delivery
Masset, B.C.
V0T 1M0

... I think. I'm still having issues with that damn postal code, but it's all on Sarah, the Pirate. I'd go there and double check but it takes ten minutes to load and I AM GOING TO NEED TO PUT MY PANTS ON SOON.

This one night, Laura and I stole political signs off the lawns of the elderly. See, we know this guy named Paul Wolfe, except he is completely seperate from the Paul Wolfe that is running for Red River Warden... so stealing Paul Wolfe political signs and leaving them on the lawn of the other Paul Wolfe... that is pure comedy gold right there.

... and as such, should be illustrated in pencil crayon and written into the pages of my journal, photographed, uploaded and shared with the Internet.



( who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? THE SHADOW KNOWS. )

Uhm... did I mention I'm moving to British Columbia to live in a remote fishing village and run the best barge this side of .. uhhm... Alaska?

Actually, my cousin Keri really is telling everyone she knows that I've moved to remote B.C. to run a fishing barge, and I think that is hilarious. I am soon going to be sending her a photoshopped picture of me on a barge. Or maybe me on an actual barge because I bet they have them there!

Because of my lax blogging much has been left out, but I am now in B.C. The road trip was great. I even got to experience some of Smitty's delicious yellow tinged food in Brandon, Manitoba. Nothing quite says delicious like broccoli dipped in what is possibly savoury fermaldehyde.

I head out to Masset sometime in the very near future (Masset, Queen Charlotte Islands, land of storms and the ocean and starfish! and WHALES!!) ... updates to come.. hopefully not months after they actually occur!

I haven't played the Game of Life since 1997 when Mellers and I used to gather in my Nan's nightmarish red-carpeted basement, but there was a time when it was my favourite game. (These days my favourite game involves an old school Nintendo and irritating overusage of the Power Glove line from The Wizard. Also, lest we forget, a whole wealth of MS-DOS games of which Hero's Quest is like pixellated gold.)

I used to always hope for the Victorian House, and my preferred career was as an Artist who was paid $100,000. I was constantly hoping to land on the twins square, so I could have twin girls who would have blonde hair and blue eyes. One twin, Elizabeth would like books. She'd be introverted and shy, but really smart, which is something that her boyfriend since middle school, Todd or Tom or something would really appreciate. The other twin, Jessica, would be more extroverted. She'd enjoy parties and help her sister solve the mystery of the magic pen at summer camp.

For those of you who live under a rock and don't know what the Game of Life is, your gamepiece is a little plastic car which you drive throughout the game pieces, collecting money for retirement and gathering life experiences as you go. Like... discovering a new planet, helping out at the Special Olympics or discovering that the black abysmal pit of your soul has been lying all this time. You really don't like AFI. Underneath it all, you secretly learn to scream Wouldn't It Be Nice in a car while driving down the highway, possibly on your way to see Step Up, paying really close attention so you can emulate all the dance moves in your living room later while wearing a sparkling gold leotard and copious amounts of face glitter.

Finding out what my eventual future might be was my favourite part. This time around I was a Salesperson with a $100,000 salary who lived in a mobile home. I like to think that this is because I was attempting to cover up for the fact that I was secretly embezzling funds from Walmart and using them to pay for mafia dealings in Western Europe, as I was the Top Secret Leader of an underground mafia family. ... Of ... of angry Canadians.

When we opened the box we also discovered that... I had made cards of my own way back in 1997. These homemade cards were entitled "Husband Cards", and you could have your choice of one of four super awesome spouses: Steve Urkel, Michael Jackson, Eric Von Detten (this was Mellers' request) or .... Leonardo DiCaprio... accompanied by a poem.

Even though this kills me a little inside, here is that poem:

"Leo, Leo you're so fine
No one can have you
'Cause honey, you're mine!"

Followed by a bunch of lines of "Mmmmm LEO.", like he was a delicious snack cake whose insides were made of Tigerbeat and J-14, with a smattering of fact sheets listing his favourite colour and how his favourite aquatic creatures were dolphins.

For no particular reason though. I just like the way it seems it could be.

So yesterday, on the fourth, I took some portraits of Harriet, who is crazy photogenic and has the coolest stuff. Vests! Masks! Old Bicycle! STATION WAGON! I am most pleased with how they turned out.

These are a few of my favourites:

(( Cut! )

And then I adopted a house! I know I am moving but it was lonely and slightly underfed.

Luckily, "Thunder Bayians" are friendly and taste vaguely like gingerbread. Unfortunately, they are also the type of people to think snowmobiling makes them an athlete of Olympic calibre.

It's insides are decorated in pink, baby blue and mint green with a smattering of nested mouse and ... dead squirrel.

Honestly, there was a dead squirrel on the kitchen floor. I took a picture of it, but it's privated until people tell me they want to see animal corpses in rundown country shacks.

My favourite part of the house was the colours. Pink and blue and green. Somebody once cared an awful lot for that little house, and the light filtering in against the colours on the walls was ... awesome.

Pictures of the house!



( More!! )

UPDATE: Nevermind, due to life, the universe and everything the Great Internet Sleepover is on Friday SEPTEMBER 15th!! SO KEEP YOUR PANTS ON, IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN!!

Tonight, starting at midnight, Laura and I will be participating in Sleepover: Ultimate Dork Edition wherein we will be updating our blogs (and sometimes each others) once an hour until morning. This blogging extravaganza of extreme awesomeness starts at midnight.

And by "awesomeness" I mean, "FINALLY. We get to blog about how yesterday we rocked the north shore in COSTUME."

This will be a sleepover without hair braiding, pillow fights, or uncomfortable truth or dare sessions where you finally have to admit to all the girls in your Grade Four class that you kind of like the pudgy boy who cries during thunder storms and wet himself in phys ed during a particularly intense game of dodgeball, so thank God.

But it will involve tons of pictures, rambling thoughts, stories, audio clips, up to the minute inner commentary and possibly more on those vinyl pants I wore back in Grade 11. To the nursing home. Where I baked cookies with Alzheimer's patients who constantly thought I was trying to poison them via deliciousness.

It all starts at midnight so ... please be here or be square. And pretend that rhymes.

Hmmmm....

I'm finally starting to hang my posters in my new room. I think I'm sufficiently acclimatized to finally put up the print of "The Kiss" by Klimt that I've been saving since last autumn.

( Uber dorky ramblings about my big apartment plans that you might not want to read. )

Last night was Movie Night Part Deux. Lindsay brought nachoes and pop and salsa, and I made the grossest spring roll sauce ever. (I swear to God the package said "add peanut butter".) We watched "The Wrong Guy" with young master Dave Foley, followed by a handful of episodes of Invader Zim, and then half of Return of the Living Dead before we were all too exhausted with super awesome movie watching to continue.

And also, I plan on blogging more frequently very soon. I've got some big plans for a massive redesign at sarahthepirate, along with plans to redesign Laura's blog for her. But first... ADVENTURES IN AMERICA!!

Banangela had the greatest idea for a Halloween costume today.

.... JILTED PROM DATE.

I am so going as that this year. I will dig out my old prom dress (I attended prom with Tanya because I really don't care how others view my sexuality. Also, Tanya is hot.)* and put runny mascara on my face, and possibly top my messy, hairsprayed coif with a tiara of broken dreams.

*I was going to write Tanya gives out there, but I remembered that I'm trying to remind people I'm heterosexual these days.

Lindsay showed me this video, and I am ... floored. We watched it last night and I laughed so hard I cried. CRIED.

Anything can happen on Halloween. Even really terrible video effects.

Please note the random backgrounds. Whales? Why are there whales in the background?

I'm pretty sure me and Melissa made this exact video back in 1998 in a video booth in Minnesota, except in it we sang "Always Be My Baby" and I did a dance move that involved getting low to the ground and then had trouble getting back up.

Incidentally, I love the end best of all. Who is he looking back at? His dignity?

NONETHELESS YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU, TIM CURRY!