puff and stuff

I like to get in about one episode of Criminal Minds per day. I have them PVR’ed and it’s my dinner time ritual. Half of the reason I’m obsessed with the “BAU” is because I have a thing for serial killers and serial killer tv drama’s and the other half is I’m just smitten with one of the characters – the nerdy one, that has like 7 PhD’s and is super cute. He’s just so dreamy in a really bookish but hot kind of way…. I could really use a super cute FBI agent right about now (ie: almost one full year since I’ve had a crush, let a lone a date… or a fingering.

Anyway, I have just been loving this whole home renno thing. I’ve been doing shit I never thought I had the stamina, know how or guts to do – Like spunging off mold from the ceiling. I’ve been putting in 12 hours days of hard labour and I’m just so dedicated it’s really great to see in myself. I honestly used to think that I really did need a guy for certain things. Like I can support myself financially, run a company and travel the world on my own – but putting up shelving or cementing the front walk or lifting a fridge down the stairs I really felt I needed a man for that kind of stuff. Well my friends, turns out I don’t. I can do it myself – or pay the 1-800-Got-Junk Guys $20 bucks to help me out!

Anyway, every muscle in my body hates me right now and so it’s tub time with a little Mad Men cued up on the laptop.

night nights.

you can do it, we can help… well, not really.

You know what, Home Depot, you’re a dick. You tell me that I can do it and you will help. Well where are you now that I’m knee deep in paint shards covered in what I can only imagine is asbestos. Not here helping are you. No, no your not.

So, day three, home renno project. T’was a good day so far. Not much real concrete head way, but I did rent a Home Depot rapist style white van sans windows and drove my new fridge home in it. Father is parking it out front and we have yet to see if this fridge will fit down the stairs. Had to send my Ikea fridge back today because it did not fit thru the hobbit sized door way of the basement entrance, or any other enters and exits to mine home.

So hopefully handy helper Frank can put up thr dry wall tonight and paint it, then tomorrow will be ikea kitchen set up day!

On another front – I’m creating a product line! Super excited about it!!! More on that later! Horrah horrah!

rennovation nation

Well, I’m finally getting to renovating my basement! I’ve been in my house for two years now and one of the things that attracted me to the house was the fact that there was a basement apartment. Well, with high hopes of finding a cute little renter to help with my mortgage were dashed when I found out it was more of a faux apartment. One that had many a thing wrong with it. Such as a rotted bathroom wall, so the shower didn’t work, a kitchen sink that didn’t turn on, zero insulation (ie: you can hear everything in every room), a rank smell, mushrooms growing on the ground (yes, indoors) and the unmistakable smell of cat pee.

So I left it and only ventured down below for the occasional laundry day, until while home, I sequestered my father into coming home with me to fix ‘er up. So it’s now day two of the DIY renno’s and things are a bit dogie at best. He leaves on Wednesday evening and there is a shit pile that still needs to be done. Actually everything still needs to be done, as all that’s gotten out of the way is the demolition of an entire wall – by this guy (no he’s not my dad. He’s Frank. My handy helper)…

At any rate, my hopes are high and my Ikea kitchen delivery comes tomorrow, as does my 8 sheets of dry wall from Home Depot. As my dad says, ‘it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets a whole lot better’. I pray he doesn’t abandon me. I’m as helpless as a little baby goat when it comes to manually laborious things like this. Although, I did chisel off the old paint and slap on the new to my front porch! yeah me!

J-Lo, George Clooney and Robert Downy J-R.

Who’s excited that J-Lo is back. Well I sure as fuck am!

I’m actually not kidding. I really do love J to tha L-O. I even brought back a few of her Ja Rule remixes the other week. Nothing like rocking it with the windows rolled down to a little Jennifer and LL Cool J. Although I am a closeted fan of her music, I am a big fan of her film career, well not her RomCom’s (I might cut my own eyes out if I were ever subjected to Maid in Manhattan) but I love her drama’s. Just re-watched The Cell the other night as it was on the tele and Out Of Sight has one of the hottest love scenes ever, plus it a sick ass movie. It’s chalk full of George Clooney and directed by Steven Soderbergh – like how can you go wrong! Please just take out your blackberry or iphone and make a note called ‘movies to rent’ and then put it at the top of the list. thank you.

Speaking of George Clooney I think he is totally my fav older gentleman that I would totally do. Although, first on the list of actor’s that I would risk catching an STD to be with is defiantly Robert Downey Jr. Like come on! He is the only actor I can think of that actually seems cool that he’s an actor. Usually, when I think of actor’s I fall in love with them on screen – they can be soooo dreamy, but then you remember they aren’t their character, they are just actors and that they practice voices in the mirror. The mainly essence of whatever hard core dream machine they played in the celluloid wears off and they fall from grace in my mind. But not the Downey J-R. I think it’s because his eccentricities on screen are the same off screen. He’s got this I don’t give a fuck, I’m just nutty and delicious on screen and off. Plus having a serious drug addiction past is a little appealing too. Who doesn’t love a reformed bad boy that has kept his edge.

At any rate. I am secretly jazzed to see ‘the back up plan’. Yes, yes, it’s a Romedy, but I can’t help it, I’m starved for the JMeister and plus, I feel like it’s a relevant film. Who knows, that might be me in a few years if I continue to not get asked out dates.

my new favorite snackables

I have a new obsession that I’ve added to my snack rotation. It used to just be old white cheddar cheese, pickles (homemade and spicy) and some organic taco chips. A delicghtful mid-morning, afternoon, late evening or 2am snack – but no more! Well, ok, yes I will still eat this most everyday, however, I’ve got a new snackable delight!

Raosted garlic and with goat cheese!

Recently, I was re-introduced to the deliciousness which is roasted garlic. I’ve reserved this little oven delight in my mind for something I’d get served in a restaurant with my before meal bread or for dinner party appetizers. Never did I think it could be a little snackable for one – nor was it that much of a pull for me to prepare for myself. It seemed just a whole lot of garlic and not much else – tasty, yes, but a bit intense.  However, I was at a little soiree, watching the UFC fights (or mostly commenting on them) and she served it with goat cheese. Well, shit! It was the greatest thing I’ve ever tasted! and I’ve had it 3 times since! Thank god I’m not making out with anyone (just my moms dog).

Yes, roasted garlic, with goat cheese on a cracker, french bread or bagel crips is just a taste of utter heaven I can’t even describe or give proper justice to!

I got these ones pre-made but I think you just cut off the top, dizzle on some olive oil (maybe some balsamic?!), pop in the oven and volia! Snack of a lifetime!

Pissy Pants McGee

So I was a full on pissy pants McGee today. Well, ok, for about 20 minutes of today.

It just sort of came out of nowhere around mid afternoon. I wasn’t feeling particularly irritable, in fact, my mood was quite pleasant, but then I checked my phone messages and got one from a woman at Rogers telling me that my new iPhone I ungraded too (I used to have one of the first generation ones, and then I ran it over. Not on purpose. Let’s just say it was the first and last times I will ever have “special brownies”). The message said that my new telefrancais (anyone else forced to endure that show?) got delivered out to some place in Vaughan (I know, I had to google map it too to find out what that even was…) and NOT to my office.

So, long stupid story short, I got bent out of shape about this. Like my irritability level peaked at a 9er and I actually wanted to have a fight with the UPS guy, even though he was being totally to the script apologetic (be it totally useless in being able to resolve anything). I wasn’t that bad. I’m still quite rational in these moments, understanding that he’s just a guy that answers phones and had absolutely nothing to do with my iPhone getting marooned, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to be cranky.

It’s so wierd when that happens because to be honest, I didn’t really care that much. Like, I’m not even going to be available to pick up the phone yet anyway, as I’m still in Winnipeg, and so really it didn’t matter when the thing showed up, however, there was an unquenchable desire to be upset. It’s that irrational irritable feeling that can only come from a good bout of PMS (or from being on the birth control pill – of which I’m not, for that exact reason). I swear, there’s nothing else really like it. To want to pick a fight is just the dumbest thing ever, but that’s irritability for you!

What a freaky emotion, or state of mind I guess. What is that useful for anyway? Like you know in nature all responses are sort of useful – like fear is good for alerting you to bad situations, or jealousy can be used to pin point your desires, or anger helps to decipher if your needs aren’t being met or if your power is being given away/taken – but what does irritability do beside have people run away from you?! Not sure. Anyway, thank god irritability isn’t in my PMS rotation that often, mainly I just get to enjoy being a bit more rotund around the gunt region in my pre time, but today I sure got a little sampling of it. In fact, I just yelled at my mom to stop having fun and turn down her music. I’m a curmudgeon.

Well hopefully once I get my iPhone I’ll be able to have a little forwarning on these issues. I’ve already downloaded a “Period Tracker” App.  Yeah me.

FYI – the above is an iTunes screen grab of the application description – NOT from my personal App collection.

haha – how appropriate!

just saw this after posting the last post! ha!

facebook in moderation.

I’ve been thinking about giving up Facebook. Like closing my account and living off the FB grid and I’m wondering if I could really do it.

Like, really. Everyone knows the cliché jokes about facebook. It’s even a bit Ray Ramonoish (aka lame) to even be commenting on it. But seriously, Facebook is both uber pathetic but almost a nessessary evil at this point in the game.

At first I really did believe FaceBook was just the second or third or 90th coming of Friendster. That soon the fad would pass and there would be another site that I’d have to sign up for and then collect friends on, but I’m wondering now if it’s really more comparable to email rather then a MySpace or a LinkedIn. If it’s some slice of technology that is actually here to stay and as time goes is actually mandatory for living in year 2000′s.

I’m wondering if it’s something that can be lived without (ok, yeah I know I can live without most things, but I mean live without in the social context. ie: you can’t really live without a cell phone anymore, or email for that matter, or a web page if you are a business). But I wonder if Facebook is like that.

I mean, first off – I use facebook a lot and not just for checking it 20 times a day and reading people status updates (which feels so super lame when no new updates have been added the last 4-6 times I’ve been on…) but I use it to post new blog entries, to have a biz fan page for the 10 spot, to send invites for events, to stalk crushes, to find out dirt on Ex’s, to check out potential employee’s or business contacts, to make lewd public jokes with friends – like it really is useful in that modern Gen Y kind of way, but I’ve been wondering lately, as I’ve had more time on my hands being in the ‘peg, and checking my FB everytime few hours, if it’s just the most stupid waste of time on the planet and if I should be giving it up, or like I posed earlier, is it really here to stay… Twitter I can see going down, but FB, I’m not so certain…

There was this one time where I was stalking a guy crush, I think it was the fellow from Shark Water and at the time I didn’t want to friend add him, because – I don’t do adds, people have to add me – it’s a power thing – and so I had my friend add him so that we could have access to his page. Anyway, it took weeks for her request to go through, not because he was ignoring her or denying her request, but because he was never on. Like never, no updates, no posts, no links, nothing. Then finally after quite a long stint (or it was long to us because we were so eager) he did this giant friend accept batch – like swear to god he must have had about 50 friend requests and it seemed like he finally got around to checking his FB and then took care of all the accepts in one batch.

After seeing that (and waking up to the fact that I was checking my page (and my friends) like 600 times a day I felt like a loser ass bastard) I said to myself ‘I want to be so busy that I don’t have time to check my facebook’ soon after, I did become that busy, with opening up the new 10 spot, I was honestly going weeks without an arbitrary moment to spend being filled in on feeds from my online friends.

Now, looking back and being soooo much wiser, I realize that wasn’t quite the answer. I shouldn’t have to have an onslaught of work to keep me from obsessively checking my FaceBook and I guess I shouldn’t have to banish myself from my account either, because, hell, it is a useful tool when used with caution. Who knows, there might be a crush in my future that I have to see if he is in any douchy pics of him holding a bottle of vodka at Brant House…

At any rate and as with everything in life: Moderation is the key. A glass or two of wine is ok when out for dinner with some friends, but waking up to a two-four and a mickey of vodka for breakfast is certainly not, and so, I’m going to be skimming back on my intake of FB to more moderate levels…

so um, off to post this on Facebook…

Help! My man has snaggle feet.

Ok, so actually when I wrote the teaser about snaggle feet at the end of The Ten Spot’s last months newsletter, it was actually just a little inside joke with myself, but turns out a lot of people wanted to hear about it. So here we go.

I have a lot of experience with snaggle feet. My father has some of the worst snaggle feet the lord has most likely ever created, followed closely by my ex-boyfriend’s – who’s snaggle toes were almost unbearable to look at, nevermind to have touching my legs under the sheets at bedtime. So I had to take matters into my own hands since he had no concept of what a ‘normal’ foot should look and feel like.

When I asked him why he’d never had a pedicure (when his girlfriend owned a spa) he gave me some pretty good insight into why guys don’t opt for this service so much. Turns out it’s a few things, and sadly those reasons just aren’t justification enough for not getting it done. Our men might need a little coaxing, a little reassurance and perhaps even a little forcing (or withholding). But trust me, it’s worth it and once they have one done, they will be hooked!

Excuse #1: Shame

The main issue I’ve found with men is that they don’t want other women to see what bad shape their feet are in. I’ve been told by several guys that they’d like to have a pre-pedicure before getting  pedicure and since that doesn’t exist, they end up having nothing done. My answer to this, and what ever single esthetician out there will say is that no matter how bad somebody thinks their feet are in – they’ve most likely seen worse. It’s what they do. They see hundreds of feet, muff and blackheads in a month – not too much grosses theses gals out. In order to get into esthetics you sort of have to have a passion for picking, plucking and popping things. So, it’s sort of like – the greater the challenge the better! To turn the grossest of male feet into something soft and touchable is like a gift. A gift that you give to your esthetican and a gift that she gives you back. Pay it forward.

Excuse #2: ticklishness

ok, so some guys are really ticklish and they just hate having their feet touched. My ex was like this. In fact if he was in the bath and you went to touch his feet he might just kick you in the face. It was funny at first to try and bug him by grabbing a toe or two but I soon realized I really could get my face punched in. At any rate, this one is a toughy and all I can say is that sometimes you gotta just grit your teeth and bare it guys. It’s for the greater good and once again, our girls are trained professionals and they can be a bit more aggressive with the rubbing and the scrubbing to lessen the ‘tickle’ factor. Big boy it up and get ‘er done.

Excuse #3: ‘It’s not manly’

This one is perhaps the big one. It’s just not manly. That guys don’t go to lady spa’s and get their feet done. Ok, so no one would really ever say that out loud anymore, everyone is so perfectly PC nowadays, but it’s there in the back of their minds for sure. This I understand, I do. Guys don’t want to enter a place decked out in pinks and pastels to have fluffy services done while wearing a robe. I’m sorry but guys just do not loo bad ass in a robe. It’s like a man drinking a vodka soda out of a straw, something are best not done. So this is perhaps the best bit of news… The Ten Spot is launching a GENT GROOMING BAR! Yep, we’ve rented the space next door to the Leslieville location and it’s in the works of being turned into a ‘just for Gent’s’ Grooming Bar.

Booya, no more embarassment. Just getting cleaned up, man styles!

Spread the word good ladies, spread the word!!!

In the meantime, we’ve still got our menu just for the Gents and of course, both locations are anti fluff and stuff anyway, so feel free to bring in the fella’s to The Ten Spot and we’ll keep you posted on the Gent Grooming Bar.