Early today I overheard the news on the tv in the background mention that the Smurfs are turning fifty this year. Old buggers. On October 23 to be exact. The cartoon series which ran new episodes from 1981 to 1989 was my number one favourite as a child. I religiously watched the Smurfs every Saturday morning. I was also a big Muppets and Fraggle Rock fan but there was always something about those Smurfs. Although Wikipedia [The Smurfs] claims that the show still airs on many channels around the world I have not seen one in years.

photo courtesy bluebuddies

According to the creator’s family; [Peyo on CNN.com]

To mark 50 years of Smurfdom, organizers are planning everything from a 3-D animation feature film expected to be released next year to new comic book collections and a remastered release of the popular 1980s television animated series.

I had a decent sized Smurf collection as a kid from varying sizes of dolls including a Smurffette to a large assortment of figurines that I wish I still had because it also included 70’s style Mikey, Minnie, Pluto and Goofy figures that I got when I was three, various series of characters from shows such as Fraggle Rock the Muppets and Sesame Street plus lots of other rando ones like California Raisins. It was one of my better attempts at collecting something but yet another example of stuff I got rid of having no idea I’d love to have it as an adult.

It appears as if episodes of the Smurfs will only be re-released on DVD but I’m going to hold out hope that they will run some on a station near me and soon.

Having a family book club with the limited amount of time that Adam and I spend with my parents means that this was only our second meeting but the interest is heating up and talk of adding web cams or Skype like devices so we can meet anywhere anytime are thrilling until we all remember my parents are on dial up and so we have to wait and wait some more for that option.

The rules are not typical or they are a far cry from the rules of the book club I got myself thrown out of, for being myself too, which is the saddest thing about it. Really there is only one rule, do not talk about the book club book until book club. This is a lot harder than it was in the old book club because I didn’t live with any of the other members. And how can I be sure my parents aren’t pre-discussing the book? I don’t have any Big Brotheresque technology at my disposal to spy on them. And unless I find my Christmas and Birthday presents which I did every single year of my life until they caught on and wrapped them WELL before they brought them into the house with me in it, they are very good at keeping secrets.

Although it makes more sense to choose a book that no one has read, sticking with only one rule keeps it more fun and less ’so structured it feels like school’ and the first book picked was a book that none of us had read. On this trip home we had all decided on 1984, George Orwell, my dad and Adam had read the book my mother and I had not - Adam read it again as a refresher as did my dad - but I had recently bought it having decided it was literally unacceptable that I had never read it.

The end of the year was very busy, what with having to play Guitar Hero III every day and having a job outside the house, plus throwing my back out. I didn’t even make it through The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger, so I was forced to do something I almost never do and read two books at the same time, I started 1984 on Friday December 21, and we left on the Saturday. I was not able to read it nearly as fast as I would have liked, I found myself enjoying it so much that not only was it hard to remember the number one rule of book club but I was constantly re-reading over passages and paragraphs I liked but sometimes because a book that deep, for myself anyway, was a lot to digest in the normal speedy fashion I would finish a book I was late on finishing for a club meeting.

The only tradition I took from the previous book club was the one where we’d rate the book out of five stars at the beginning of the discussion and then again at the end of the discussion.

• Adam - 5 stars
• Corinna - 5 stars
• Mom - 3 stars
• Dad - 4 stars

We all kept with our original ratings at the end of our three plus hour discussion.

This meeting I think we all had epiphanies on just how great of an idea starting the family book club was. Being so far out in the bushes there really isn’t a lot we can do together as a family, not to mention I/we have completely different relationships with each parent. But we do play scattergories together, we hike and golf together and we all enjoy reading.

We printed some 1984 book club questions off the internet as a general guide but they were pretty weak and we didn’t end up needing them. The different views brought to the table from four people coming from two completly different generations, two of who had read 1984 at very different times in their lives made for brilliant topics and tangents in themselves. Listening to my parents describe their childhoods and then relate them to Orwell’s novel in the sense that looking back you can now take a glimpse into the beginnings of his fictional world forming, meant learning new things about my parents past as well as the time, bloody fascinating. It may now be the 21st first century but it is still almost creepy how bang on Orwell is with his descriptions of things such as Newspeak, inner and outer party members, proles, telescreens, Big Brother, the recording of history. The fact that for years people have been handing over personal information without even a second thought, OnStar being a perfect example. Sure you don’t have to slam a golf club through your window or walk ten kilometers holding six babies but when you think about it doesn’t the thought of a corporation, fuck the Government here, a CORPORATION knowing exactly where you are at ANY time creep you out in the least?

Adam warned me that once I read 1984 that I would see it everywhere. He wasn’t kidding. For a few days I felt surrounded by 1984. While stuck up North we popped in The Red Violin and even having seen it two previous times the whole Communist China section with the constant use of the name of ‘Comrade’, the speak, the banning of western music struck chord after chord with me. And when we returned home Adam felt like watching Notes on a Scandal, less than five minutes into the opening narrative by Judy Dench she uses the word Proles. I became so obsessed that my first read of 2008 was Animal Farm, it is not at all hard to draw parallels between the two books but I gave Animal Farm only four stars. I found the ending a tad bit rushed.

We don’t know when the next meeting will be but it is my mother’s pick.

And now I have finished two books whilst still reading The Time Traveler’s Wife, I may just start a new trend in my reading ways.

As expected today was slightly crazy.

• work 9-1
• doctor appointment re: back
• psychiatrist re: crazy
• last minute shopping re: Christmas

In between the doctor and the psychiatrist I met up with two seriously pissed me off awesome situations.

I needed to go to Canadian Tire because there is a product on the telly that I want to get for my parents.

Actually, wait, let me be more specific, there is a product advertised on the TELEVISION that people watch, it is a commercial and at the end of the commercial it says available at these stores and one of them is Canadian Tire. I have seen it oh perhaps twenty times in the last two months maybe more and I work now so I watch less t.v; let us not forget that.

I think if it hadn’t been for the information desk that was available to customers at the front of the store I may have let this one go but an information desk says to me that you have information. On products. That YOU sell.

There was no information at the information desk, even after my elaborate story with description of product, name, and the mentioning of the commercial at least six times.

I moved on to the next guy at the paint desk, I was just going to search the whole store because I had close to an hour but he made eye contact with me so I thought HEY why not, I’ll ask him. This guy at least tried to look it up in the computer but I couldn’t see what he was actually doing so for all I know he was watching midget porn.

I wander around and find nothing. I find many similar things, I find things I end up buying as gifts for my parents but no go on the televised product they sell that so far two staff plus the staff they yell out: “HEY HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF ______” can’t find, no one has even heard of it.

One more try, finally, someone wants to help me, and guess what folks, together we found the product but not in the store in the computer, they were sold out so I went with a gift card and I will print out a picture of it for my parents and if they don’t want it and buy something else FINE but I am never buying anything off of the t.v that looks cool from Canadian Tire ever again. I’m not kidding you in a store called Canadian Tire I questioned myself as to whether it was at all possible that I had seen the commercial on an American station.

Now for the psychiatrist’s office. I intentionally sat down in the chairs directly outside of the reception area so that I could read 1984, it is a bit quieter out there. I am trying to read this book super fast because we are having another family book club meeting and because my dad and Adam have read it and my mother and I haven’t [I can not believe I have never read 1984] we are discussing it. This happened last time too when we went up to visit, everyone was done the chosen book but me and we had to wait on the meeting until I was done. Bad me.

I was trucking along, just starting to get into it when a woman in the reception waiting area started to read out loud to her child. For about two seconds I was cool with it, I was all, I love reading and kids should read and parents who read to their kids are rad and BLAH I couldn’t bloody concentrate at all on my book so I started to make sounds and hand gestures and I slapped my book on my leg. I think she might have noticed because her voice lowered and I was able to digest the words in my book again.

The reception lady wanted to close the doors so I had to move inside. I sat down and began to read my book again but I was so close to the woman and her child that there was no possible way to block out her reading of the Berenstein Bears and because it involved reading and not say an obnoxiously loud cell phone call in a public closed in waiting area where I would have NO PROBLEM telling you to SHUT IT I was torn because it was a kid and it was reading so I myself decided that I would then read my book out loud to myself and so I did and I know she heard me because when she would stop reading out loud, I would stop reading out loud also.

I find it insane that this woman was so thick she didn’t get the point and SHUT IT or AT LEAST lower her voice.

I had all these thoughts running through my head whilst trying to read to myself and of course exploded the second the door was closed. Turns out the shrink was happy that I had the balls to read my own book out loud because he agreed that it IS a small waiting area and that there was no need for her to be reading the book out loud and the only thing I could have done better would have been to POLITELY tell her to shut it by reminding her that it is a public place you don’t own it and I’m trying to read in relative QUIET please.

I should be:

• making sock monkeys
• AT LEAST mailing cards and writing letters to our Grandparents
• sending cards period
• light cleaning
• reading Nineteen Eighty-Four
• reading The Time Traveler’s Wife
• returning DVDs
• getting the Christmas box out of storage
• catching up on my iGoogle blog feed
• compiling a detailed list for packing
• contacting the Greeper sitters
• compiling a detailed list for the Greeper sitters

I can’t stop:

• eating seedless mandarin oranges and sweet and salty peanut butter bars
• playing Guitar Hero III. I FINISHED ONE, Metallica ON HARD TODAY
• watching Dr. Phil and Hot Topics on The View
• loading my pipe with Christmas cheer
• playing on TWITTER. I have asked C.J to pimp my Twitter, it will be awesome, I know it
• playing on Facebook, even though I am sucking at responding to Facebook mail lately
• being hyper
• being in a good mood
• being excited about going TO THE LAND OF COLD AND SNOW next weekend

I am:

• slowly catching up on my blog feed
• going to watch Blazing Saddles tonight

Today I am getting my hair cut. I always leave it too long and I was looking at some photos from when Rhonda was here and it looks pretty bad in sections. I haven’t colored it in at least a year and a half so getting rid of the fake blonde ends is not easy, my hair is dirty blonde now it likely won’t look like this again until I am 80 something, if I’m lucky.

For some reason ever since I got married I can’t stop watching Desperate Housewives, which Adam bloody hates and already outed me on via Facebook status, not to mention I have no idea what I even see in the show because I am not a fan of the actresses, Teri Hatcher looked WAY better back when she played Lois Lane on Lois & Clarke: The New Adventures of Superman, and I am SURE my father would agree with me on that one, he and I used to watch it together. I don’t feel like a desperate housewife, I really do not want to analyze it too deeply, but it bothers me slightly. I do like Felicity Huffman, she is good, the rest are mostly plastic, Nicollette Sheridan does not look much different than she did when I was addicted to Knots Landing, which quite frankly is scary.

Adam and I have been watching Dancing with the Stars since the first season, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF BEAUTIFUL CROTCHES EVERYWHERE, America, VOTE OFF MARIE OSMOND, if I have to see that woman’s crotch area one more time I will scream myself to death. Every time she ‘dances’ and she flashes the crotch Adam and I let out involuntary screams which likely have Mrs. E believing that there will be a baby coming soon, but no, it is shrieks of horror, it FEELS so wrong, it gives me the NO feeling ALL OVER MY BODY watching and being subjected to her area, but it is like a stereotypical train wreck of monumental proportions you can’t look away except to shield your eyes only to find you are peeking out from behind your fingers.

I am finally doing what I was supposed to do when I moved to Word Press which was fix my archives and match them to their original categories but I am lazy and things can sometimes take me a while and I get so wrapped up in it I haven’t had time to post and it is a huge yet very addictive job. I have amended it to just fixing the categories because I have added so many new ones and leaving most of the HTML until later, it is simply too much work to fix all of the dead links but important posts I am writing down to re-link later.

I am so close to finishing Guitar Hero III on Hard I can taste it, but it is still going to take me a wee bit of time, I’ve been going back and five staring the Hard level songs because finishing the songs in the final level and knowing that I gotta battle that devil dude without one or both of my arms falling off is crazy talk at this moment. I have one song in the final level in the box.

PS. I have picked my Top Model winner for this cycle but I won’t say it out loud yet, I won’t even tell Adam. If you want to read sweet reviews head over to Jennifer’s site she is a fashionista, there isn’t one up for this week’s show but the ones from past weeks are great.

• I have to have all the songs on Guitar Hero III open by tomorrow. People are coming over to play and I want all the songs open. I started on hard level because I play on expert now but I got stuck in level seven [hard] so I have had to go back to medium level so I can get everything open. The things I do for my friends, seriously.

Top five total BS reasons I didn’t insist on the cordless guitar being mine and have not even tried it:

1. I don’t want to get used to it
2. I LOVE starting almost every sentence with “since you have the cordless guitar on can you please get me…..”
3. I obviously have issues with ‘excessive’ use as I broke the whammy bar on our original red guitar
4. I won MAJOR points taking over Adam’s old black and brown guitar
5. Cordless or not I will still find something to trip and fall over

• The latest visit with Rhonda was awesome, as usual, but was also bittersweet. Not my place to talk about her life on my site. I haven’t even posted the photos to flickr yet but when I do I’ll do a photo post because we took some pretty interesting photos. Underwear on my head was involved and Adam got a stingray.
• I have therapy today and BOY do I need it.
• I haven’t touched The Time Traveler’s Wife since GH 3 came out and I remain on page 50.
• I bought the new Britney Spears, Blackout at the same time that I bought Puscifer, “V” is for vagina.
• I’m almost done the second quarter of 100 things about me.
• Adam and I got new cell phones for free. My phone is so kick ass I can’t even use it or I can but I may have to call in reinforcements to teach me, I got the MOTOKRZR K1(RED) made to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. I have this thing where I hate reading instructions, but I take direction well.
• I got a change sorter because we save every single piece of change and I love it so much I may dedicate a whole post to it. If you only knew how much money I/we have saved and the things we’ve ended up using it for you’d all start saving your change today.
• This season of Ellen Degeneres is so good I can hardly handle it.
• Project GOING GREEN is in full swing we’ve added reusable bags for groceries and drugstore shops and have found even more things to ‘flick off’ and unplug. Friend and fellow blogger Keira-Anne has also done some great posts on GOING GREEEEEEEEEN and even has a Roots, Flick Off t-shirt.
• Project get all the songs open on Guitar Hero III by tomorrow must recommence now.
• As of this minute I have 144 unread blog posts on my feed from blogs I actually read because I only have blogs I read on my feed because of you guessed it, GUITAR HERO. [anyone sick of hearing about GH refer to my about page]

I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini last Friday and then I read Douglas Coupland’s, Eleanor Rigby and now I have started The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger but when I really think about it this is not a lot of reading I have only completed eleven books so far this year and I blame this low number on Guitar Hero which will get its own post for all you gamers out there, I think what five maybe ten gamers read my blog and you don’t even all comment, correct me if I am wrong, but that is ok because I KNOW you wanna know how good I am at Guitar Hero I KNOW. But this post is about books.

I had been looking forward to reading A Thousand Splendid Suns being that Khaled Hosseini’s first book The Kite Runner was a superb read. I literally flew through it and I have never been a particularly fast reader. A Thousand Splendid Suns took me longer to read for various reasons but was so good I relayed almost the entire book to Adam as I went. I love that The Kite Runner set in Afghanistan and America is centered around men mainly father and son relationships but then A Thousand Splendid Suns is the complete opposite and concentrates on the woman of Afghanistan. The book made me cry, which almost never happens, I can’t even remember the last book that did so. Even though you get a happy ending when you read Hosseini’s books it doesn’t come without some pretty extreme sacrifices, and I get seriously tired of fictional happy endings. A Thousand Splendid Suns takes you right from the Soviet invasion in 1979 straight up to a few years shy of present day. Reading fictional books set in war torn countries are sometimes not very far off the actual, from what I gather, to be the realities that the persons in these novels face. I think because I read both non fiction and fiction war novels I can safely say it is much easier to separate from the horrors of the fictional novels than it is from the non fiction, although the violence, the lost innocence, the torture, the deaths and the setting are all but the same. I love the way this man weaves his heart-wrenching tales with characters who stay with you long after their stories have been told.

Eleanor Rigby was better than I thought it would be but not one of Coupland’s strongest efforts by a long shot. I found that I was able to bond with the main character over her struggles with loneliness but not on the same level just the word, loneliness. She is essentially a middle aged single woman who thinks that she leads and has lead an extraordinarily boring life and her family would agree until one day something astonishing happens and you guessed it she discovers she and her life are not so boring after all. The book contains many good one liners that had me laughing out loud and I regret not marking the pages. This is one of Coupland’s many books set in Vancouver, he is not the only local author whose books I have read but he is in my opinion likely the best in making me feel like I am really in Vancouver. Although in the book Stanley Park, Timothy Taylor gives an absolutely uncanny depiction of Vancouver’s West End [where I live] and of the our Province’s largely known Stanley Park.

The Time Traveler’s Wife was supposed to be a family book club pick but that meeting got canceled although we are having a meeting at Christmas! Adam started reading it and couldn’t stop laughing and because the first rule of family book club is NO TALKING ABOUT THE BOOK UNTIL THE MEETING I viewed this laugher as obvious and vulgar RULE BREAKAGE. When the meeting was canceled Adam practically rejoiced and the book has been collecting dust on the shelf ever since. The thing is, the bloody book is EVERY WHERE right now I have had A LOT of people telling me to read it and *basically* everyone I know who has read it EXCEPT for Adam has loved it. So out of pure curiosity I am reading it now. I would have read it eventually but I am reading it much sooner than expected but I need to know what all this bloody fuss is about and if it sucks I can’t wait to smash the crap out of it via review.

This is the first time I have gone this long without posting and one of my parents hasn’t asked if I’m ok. Maybe that is because I’m 30 now? I’ll have to ask them. BASICALLY, I’m still sick. BUT not sick sick, just annoying and stupid mostly dry COUGH sick. It means I can’t work though and I keep having to turn down calls including today I was supposed to work but didn’t because if my cough gets any worse it’ll be hospital bad. I have gotten coughs since I was a kid so I know how to handle them and if I worked in an office I’d go because I feel pretty much fine other than, *normal* to suddenly migraine headaches, sore ribs and a sore back my stomach muscles only start to hurt if I have a full on cough attack and tears are running down my face and I can hardly breath and Adam is all ARE YOU OK? But I can’t answer him I can only flip my head all over the place rolling around like a fish waving my hands like they are flippers. When I worked in offices I’d go in cough a bit and get sent home but at least I went. I knew getting that cold so early in the season was BAD NEWS!

Some of you will remember Mrs. E. my horrid German landlord. I fixed some of the July 2005 archives and there are some stories of her antics under the assholes category and OF COURSE you long term readers will remember this, CLICK HERE NOW. And really that is all you need. And this. Anyway, she was being herself again the other day and cornered Adam about my cough because she says that I cough too much, she doesn’t like it, Adam just walked away from her. I’ve yet to run into her. I can’t wait until I do!

Last night a migraine sent me to bed and I said MY HEAD HAS HAD ENOUGH OF THIS COUGH IT IS REBELLING. I did not yell it though I said it very quietly. Yelling would be silly. SO I was not able to read before bed last night and I am coming down the home stretch of A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini which is taking a lot longer than normal for me to read because how I feel is dictating when I can read. My friend I lent The Kite Runner to is done it which rules because it means I get my book back. AWESOME.

I didn’t post because I didn’t want to complain and really I am not doing much except not doing things I am asked to which is unlike me and I’m sorry. I have also been coughing all over the key board which is probably what got Adam sick but he is almost better, me not so much BUT I can’t go any longer without posting, blogging is somewhat of a screwy addiction at times.

Well, well, well, what a fantastic season opener, the desert sure dries up fast.

So, as we all know Sara lives and it was edge of your seat and that crazy girl Natalie Davis [played by Jessica Collins] is CRAZY as crazy can be. Her performance was pretty good she was extremely believable and she scared me and I loved all the whispering to herself and basically she was just freaky. I don’t watch Heroes so I have no idea if she is good on that show but now I actually have a reason to watch it other than being told to.

I decided that Sara was going to live pretty early on in the episode because I figured even though she has been a part of every season in some way that they wouldn’t spend a whole episode on her just to kill her, but that was just my thinking who knows maybe she is going to get a full hour when she does leave in NOVEMBER! Spockette and I have been talking about this over MSN for a couple days now and I woke up to text messages on last night’s episode because I watched it on Eastern time and she watched it on our time. I was in bed sick and trying to sleep by 7:30pm.

When the episode ended I didn’t cry or anything, I had to turn to Adam and advise him of this as I was sniffling because of my stupid nose but I did throw my arms up in the air in triumph because Adam, Spockette and various other friends I’ve talked to were pro Sara leaving/dying and I have always liked her, I relate to her, NOT in a my mom shot my father kind of way just in a she suffers from depression and isn’t afraid to flip out at work even at the risk of being fired. That being said when Spockette sent me this article over MSN this morning I became pissed off and now I’m sad but it sounds like they are going to do it up right and I seriously can’t wait for the her and Gil back story line.

I know a lot of people are not going to miss her but I think Gil and I will, but for different reasons, I think Gil is going to be really sad without her, and if they are a couple they are doing it and stuff, he’ll miss that, I’ll just miss her because she’s gone.