One way to erase bad ideas

It's cold in my room, as always. I took a risk yesterday and made homemade gnocchi. It took four hours, but was so unbelievably amazing. Ally hooked me up with a recipe for the sauce, it was so yummy. I should have been a chef, really. Although I would imagine even chefs don't get four hours to painstakingly make like a thousand little pillows of love by hand. I'm sure there's a streamlined way to make them though.

That's right, it looked so good I took a picture!

The Yukon is being good to me this week. I guess it feels bad for the last few before. Marek Poplawski, the Whitehorse Glacier Bears swim coach told me I was the best reporter ever yesterday. It made me happy. I've been covering them a lot lately. One of their swimmers, Alexandra Gabor has been doing amazing in the World Cup. She's going to be an Olympian someday. She is the sweetest girl ever. I interviewed her yesterday, which is where Marek told me I was awesome. Hooray! I got the front page out of that interview too.

I hope the positivity keeps going for me.

Love,
Annalee.

It keeps gettin' better

It was -20 about a half an hour ago. It's all well and good to plug in your car, but that means I actually have to go outside. I'm in my pjs, and have been since about 3 p.m. today. Whether my car will start tomorrow or not is a mystery. Hopefully if I do actually get up the courage to go outside, I'll remember to unplug the car in the morning.

Love,
Annalee.

New home

I finally found a house.

Mel and I are moving into a brand freakin new threeish bedroom condo in Porter Creek at the end of the month. We're the first ever tenants! Yayy! It's a certified green home, so we feel very good about ourselves, with our support of the environment and all.

There's a really odd tiny room not big enough for a bed that we're going to turn into a little sewing room. I'm excited. I want to make a rag quilt ASAP. Lara has one and its so warm. I'm going to need it in the new place because we are never turning the heat on ever!!! hahah.

I'm experiencing a stabbing pain in my chest. Must have been the chicken wings and potato wedges I had for dinner.

Anyways, that's all for news.

Annalee.

Squashed

My god, squash will be the death of me. I pulled a muscle in my bum and it hurts so bad. I am sore everywhere, I feel like I got beaten with a sack of oranges. I start my lessons next Tuesday. My god. How am I going to survive? I just quite literally waddled over to my basement nook to find a sweater, only to discover I don't know where they all are.

I had a really retarded day. I was covering a soccer game and afterwards I went up to one of the coaches, gave him my "I'm Annalee Grant from the Whitehorse Star," spiel, and then said, "Is this Whitehorse Minor Hockey?" And the coach said "no...it's not hockey." Fuck.

Then earlier I was trying to take a shot through this gay netting they have up to keep the ball from smashing people in the face in the horrible lighting the Canada Games Centre has when this guy comes up to me, lurking, and was like "hey, are you taking pictures for the paper?" and I said yes, did my spiel, and he's like "oh. okay." And he just sort of sauntered off again, but not before I awkwardly said Nice to meet you. But I hadn't met him. He never offered his name. He took my introduction as an invitation to stare at my chest. Asshole.

Those were really the only eventful bits of my day. It's election day on Friday. I can't vote in Whitehorse, I haven't lived here long enough; but maybe I can still get the free hour off to "vote". Apparently they close the bars down between voting hours so that people don't use their free hour to hit the pub. You can't even buy offsales or anything. What if I get the urge to buy a bottle of wine during the regular working hours? What do I do then? I guess I have to suck it up and save my alcoholism for later. Boo-urns.

Hopefully there's something to do this weekend. I need a bender and dancing quick.

Annalee.

Thanks

I have a new show, Rescue Me, and it is rejuvenating my love for Denis Leary. He really is an amazing actor. I'm about to rip into town to grab some pizza. I ate too much pasta for breakfast lunch and dinner, so it's time to change it up. Even though we're still quarreling I want to bring Vixen but I just don't want her in my car. Maybe in the trunk. But she's a crafty little dog, I'm sure she won't stay there. She's been outside since 8 this morning when she woke me up, so I'm sure she's nice and dirty by now. One of her favourite things to do is pace back and forth along the hardwood floors. Her paws make a clicking sound whether she's upstairs or downstairs. Then she stops in the living room and stares at me for awhile, and goes back to clicking along the house. She's quite the dog.

I want to go play squash but I don't think you can book a court by yourself. Also I think me playing squash by myself on Thanksgiving looks a little sad. I'll just wait for Marie to call about the group lessons. I really want to get started.

Anyways, I'm heading into town to grab the next season of rescue Me and pizza. Possibly some pepsi. I'm going to need some serious squash time after this weekend, but I guess considering the circumstances spending the weekend on the couch is acceptable.

Annalee.

Self checkout is the catalyst to madness

I hate grocery stores. Especially when I'm in a bad mood, which I very much was.

I was in one of those moods where I wanted to swear at people, and just wished everyone would leave the store so I could quickly pick up the things I needed for dinner and get the hell out of there.

My advice for parents, is to stop bringing your effing children to the grocery store. Find a babysitter. It'll probably cost you a buck to keep the kid elsewhere while you pick up the groceries, that's how much faster you can work when your kids aren't around mucking things up. also, when your kids are fucking around and my day gets effected by their actions, I get pissed off. And when I am in an intolerable mood already it seems your kid push my buttons further because you can't control their shit.

Case in point today. This lady has her kid wandering around. He's barely old enough to walk and he's chosen to walk with his head completely behind him exorcist style in front of the cart, as I'm trying to dodge the thing so I can get into the pasta aisle. Rather than place him in her cart or leave him at home, the mother is screaming at him to pay attention from behind the cart laden with diapers and candy for said kid, rather than actually choosing to parent him. I managed to step over the wandering toddler, but I thought a little about him walking straight into me, and the yelling he would get when really had the mom just picked him up or left him with someone it all never would have happened.

I collected all my items, dodging slow people selecting turkeys and pie fixens. There was a shortage on butter. I needed some. It held me up as I had to battle it out with a woman also looking for one of the last sticks of butter left in the dairy aisle. I was wished a happy thanksgiving from the staff at Superstore.

I will not have a happy thanksgiving. I felt they were rubbing it in. I don't think I'll shop at Superstore for awhile.

Anyways, once I had all my ingredients, I headed to the till. It was packed and as per usual there were far more customers than cashiers. I chose to use the self-checkout because I don't like making small talk with people when I'm in a bad mood (or even really when I'm in a good mood). So some lady decided it would be cute to let her children do the checkout. They thought it was cool. I'll give them that, I thought the beep sound the cash register made when an item went over it was sweet too when I was little, but this is a place of business and it turns out a cashier isn't actually a job people should seek out if they can help it. They'll learn that when they grow up all cynical like me.

So while the woman is trying to get the two kids organized, her younger boy has run off dragging the cart through the lineup heading straight for a display drooling and screaming. She finally notices, drags the cart back, tells him to stop. And turns around. The kid grabs the cart and takes off again until she notices, drags him back and gets more pissed off. Then the kid tries to lift a sack of potatos from the back because he wants to get in on the action while the other two kids are struggling with a bag of dog food.

I bet she thought it was real cute. All the while I'm in line fuming with anger and thinking this is not the time or place to be adoring our children and letting them do heavy lifting. If you can't handle the self-checkout, go to a regular till.

Jesus, that was quite the rant. I'm still inscensed about it six hours later.

Annalee.

Thankful for nothing

My Thanksgiving pasta is making my tummy hurt, there's still no TV and I don't know how to turn the TV from the dish back to the PS3.

Happy fucking Thanksgiving.

Annalee.

Pasta, the thanksgiving dinner of our Italian forefathers

Well, here I am. In the great white north. It's not completely white yet but it is exceptionally cold in this basement. It's not all that great at the moment either.

I get to spend Thanksgiving alone. I'm making pasta. Not once in my 21 years have I spent a holiday alone. I guess I'm not completely by myself. Vixen is here but she's dirty and stinky and I have shunned her since she put two big muddy paw prints on the door of my brand new car. In dog land she did it out of love, because she was so excited that I was home. In people land if I had been able to catch her without dropping all the stuff in my arms I would have booted her right in the doggy-ass.

It's cold in the basement. I really should have gotten Eric to make a fire before he left. It's wet and dark out or I'd go figure it out myself. Having never chopped wood before I think that at night on fresh snow may not be the time to learn. Although what do I know. Maybe those are perfect conditions.

Eric got the TV hooked up today finally. Watching Gossip Girl on the CTV site was getting labour intensive. It loads about a minute and a half at a time and then I have to do something else while it loads again. It took literally two hours to watch a one hour program. Last time I checked the channels hadn't loaded yet on the dish. Maybe I should now. If Vixen weren't so dirty I'd like to laay on the couch and let her warm up my feet, but I'm still mad, and let's face it, she's pretty smelly.

Upon further investigation, there is still no TV and Vixen is still smelly. Even though I'm mad I can't bring myself to kick her outside to sleep. She kept standing out in the cold barking so I cleaned her off with a towel and made her sleep on it. She still loves me even though I'm bitter with her. She's curled up at my feet right now, she has no clue. Stupid dog.

I should go to sleep. It's 10:30 and I keep sleeping in. Tomorrow's going to be a busy morning. My page is on one of the first runs and I was too lazy to write my final story up tonight. I'll have to go in at 8:30ish to get my page done and then I have a press conference at 10:00. The story that comes out of that is going to run in the front pages of the paper. Blah. I hate press conferences. I hate working in front of the competition. I feel like I'm not doing stuff right and when they interview people I want to interview first I feel like I should get someone different to talk to me so I'm not getting the exact same interview as them. But then again, that's all a press conference is. Some official regurgitates some stuff after inviting us to come over, and we all end up with the same story anyways.

That all being said, my competition Tom is very nice. Perfectly friendly, except he thinks I'm on crack because whenever he tries to talk to me I'm accidentally rude and never hear him properly. Not on purpose of course. I'm also baffled by his constant use of a tape recorder. He never writes notes. Why would you want to listen to an interview twice? And what if your interview gets erased or recorded over? But I guess, what if I drop my notes in the Yukon River?

I'm rambling. To bed with me.

Annalee