brace yourselves...don't panic...

mercury is going retrograde starting on monday (may 26th).

summer lovin'

i ♥ mia michaels.

i do. i want her to cradle me in her arms and tuck me into bed and sit with me until i fall asleep. i want her to look at me with those sparkly eyes and tell me inspirational, wonderful, creative things that make her tear up a little when she speaks the words.

and i want her to appear on every episode of SYTYCD, not just sporadically when shane sparks is busy or jean-marc genereux has the flu. yes, i know the perils of too much of a good thing – i remember my ill-fated infatuation with claire just a few embarrassing months ago. but i have nurtured my affection for mia michaels (whom i choose to address by her full name because i like alliteration) over the course of two seasons of SYTYCD, so this isn’t just a passing fancy.

mia michaels possesses a hypnotic, magically earth-mothery vibe that i adore. she’s emotional (she cries almost as easily as i do), and talented, and lovely (a friend of mine hung out with her one day last fall and verified this), and i bet she gives amazing hugs.

so tonight, with the season premiere of SYTYCD, my annual summer crush on mia michaels was once again ignited. i look forward to a good few months of dreamy dance choreography and raw, unadulterated warmth from the third chair at the judges’ table. *sigh*

minutiae waltz

as promised, i am sitting down on this rather blustery may afternoon (that actually feels more like a november afternoon...so i’m kind of happy, to be honest) to recap the events of late, important and not:

* on saturday, mom and young beatrix returned from their florida holiday. they bought me stuff, including candy (yay!), a purple-and-pink blanket, clothes and two 2.0G memory cards for my camera. as further proof of the price disparity between canada and the U.S., these memory cards were $25. total. rounded up. and YB pretty much came home with a whole new wardrobe (pants, shirts, dresses, shoes)...again, due to the kick-ass, ass-kicking sales she found in and around st. petersburg. to illustrate: she bought a summer wrap dress for $23. that exact same dress costs $125 here. and it’s not like she bought it out of the back of a van or something – she found it at macy’s! (the dress is for sale at the bay in canada. but why buy it here for five times the price?!) anyway, all this to say they had a wonderful time and walked through the front door with full suitcases.

* in related news, my mom’s blood pressure dropped about 30 blissful points during her dad-free stay in the south. she checked it yesterday and was dismayed to discover it’s jumped right back up now that she and dad are under the same roof again. coincidence? no.

* i saw the new Indiana Jones movie on sunday. i am professionally obliged to withhold my opinion until opening day, but i can tell you this: know what REALLY makes a movie-going experience amazing? having the idiots sitting beside you not only NOT turn off their cell phone, but having them actually TAKE CALLS – more than once! – during the film! and they even passed the phone back and forth between them! jerks.

* bra shopping is a challenge. you may recall the joys i experienced almost one year ago exactly when i bought bras at JC penney. thank the heavens i bought six at the time. but i needed one in a colour i don’t own, so it was off to the shops for a scavenger hunt only slightly less taxing than shopping for a bathing suit. now, i don’t have a whole lot up top, so you’d think that would make matters easier. oh no, my friends, it makes finding what you need exponentially more difficult because, as one saleswoman was kind enough to point out, “lots of companies don’t make the smaller sizes.” thanks. long story short – mission accomplished.

* so, yesterday this happened in toronto. why is this notable, you may ask? because i would be willing to bet my brand new bra that the assailant resides at Hell House. as soon as i heard the location of the incident, i immediately figured a HH tenant was responsible. HH is a couple of blocks north of the bus stop where the attack occurred and – oh, look at that! – police found the perpetrator a couple of blocks north of the bus stop where the attack occurred. ten bucks says he was hanging out in front of HH when he was apprehended. have i mentioned at all how thrilled i am that i no longer live in that building? or that i no longer have to deal with terrifying, knife-wielding neighbours? because i really, really, really am. especially after reading stories like that one.

* remember Chipgate? the string in my crisps? i heard back from the company, who apologized for the manufacturing glitch and then sent me a box full of free bags. nice! (so far, i have not found any foreign objects within any of the bags i’ve consumed.)

* i really don’t care about the American Idol finale.

* i really don’t care about the Sex and the City movie.

* i do care about the season finale of LOST, though...because i love that show. and, speaking of TV, the best show of the summer -- So You Think You Can Dance -- gets underway tomorrow (thursday) night, starting at 8pm ET...or 7pm if you live in canada, where CTV will air the season opener an hour early to accommodate the finale of Grey’s Anatomy, a show i used to care about, then didn’t, and now do again because it seems they’ve made brooke smith’s character a lady gay who may or may not have a lady-gay romance with sara ramirez’s callie. i will watch a show for HoYay!, and i will certainly watch one for actual gaiety.

* as mentioned at the outset, the weather’s been a tad cool of late. unseasonably cool. which i lurrrrrrrrrrrve. any day that it stays below 20ºC is another day that it’s not 30ºC. and that’s fine by me.

sometimes, you forget that people read your blog...

...and that maybe it would be nice for them if there was something new to read when they drop in for a visit.

so, tonight i'd planned to write something new. but then i found myself distracted by TV, and email, and putting away purchases, and random nonsense. and now it's 12:12am and i should be in bed, not blogging about bra shopping.

but i will tomorrow.

sometimes, you forget that your parents were young once...

this is my dad, probably around age 11 or 12.

tonight, i discovered photos of my father as a boy. before tonight, i had only ever seen pictures of him in his 20s and older, and i just assumed that there didn't exist any of him at any younger ages. but then i found an album with photos of him as baby, as a little boy, as an adolescent and as a teenager. it was the most bizarre thing. in my mind, he was always frozen in his 20s, as though that's how old he was when he was born. i didn't have any mental picture of what he might have looked like as a child until today...when i saw it for myself.

the album itself wasn't lost or hidden. there it was -- leather-bound, heavy cardboard pages, tissue paper between each page -- just sitting alongside all the rest of my parents' photo albums. i don't know how or why i had never seen it before, never looked through it, never seen what my paternal grandparents looked like...or my paternal great-grandparents...but they're in there, too. i kind of feel like this discovery should have come after some arduous search or some hardcore digging and research, but nope. all it took was me looking for a *different* album of old photos to find this one and to realize that my father had a childhood with friends, and outings, and funny clothes, and hobbies. i don't know why, but it was very very strange.

cleanliness is next to...perfection

i love cleaning.

sometimes i think i missed my calling in life, and that i could make a fortune if i opened my own housekeeping business. when i clean, i clean. my parents joke that Vickie Clean™ is an ideal that no average human can attain. do you watch Friends? have you seen how maniacal monica is about cleanliness and order and organization...to the point where she’s fully embracing a touch of OCD?

yeah, that’s me.

my apartment is always tidy. not spotless – that only happens after a dedicated cleaning session – but certainly neat and orderly and clean. i am physically unable to leave dirty dishes in the sink, and i can’t truly enjoy a meal if i haven’t washed most (if not all) of the prepware and utensils before i sit down to eat. i’m not squicked out cleaning toilets or bathtubs, and i get a tiny thrill when i watch my vacuum cleaner suck up a crumb or a stray thread or a tiny piece of something hard that then whirls around, clinking, as it shoots into the bag. i try to sort incoming items as they come in – mail, groceries, whatever – rather than letting them pile up. when i was in Hell House, i had to be anal about any kind of garbage, lest random insects wander over from other units...and i’ve just kept that up. if it’s organic and possesses the ability to rot and smell, it’s immediately taken out to the dumpsters or bagged and put in the fridge until morning. all this to say, i like cleanliness.

yesterday, despite absolutely gorgeous weather, i decided to spend the day in my apartment, in my pyjamas, and give the entire place a spectacular 3+ hour master cleanse. and i was quite happy to be doing it. cleaning is a meditative activity for me. when i’m cleaning, i’m in the zone...the same zone that i’m in if i’m writing or drawing. everything was dusted, vacuumed, swept, mopped, wiped, washed or scrubbed. no cushion was left unturned. no piece of furniture was left unmoved. no dust bunny was left scrambling out of reach by the time i was finished.

and, when i was done, it was 600 square feet of heaven, as far as i’m concerned. is there anything as satisfying as reclining in pure, sparkling spotlessness after hours of cleaning? it’s that blissful exhaustion of a job well-done. at least that’s what it’s like for me. i realize this may be anomaly.

anyway, what does all this have to do with mother’s day, you ask? why is vickie blathering on about scouring pads and windex and picking lint off the bathmat? admittedly, i may be reaching a smidge in order to tie this entry in thematically, but i think – in fact, i’m almost certain – that i inherited this trait from my maternal grandmother. (happy mother’s day! there. :-))

my “oma” (the german word for grandmother) lived with us my whole life, and she was a fastidious cleaner. she would get up before 6am to clean before any of us had stumbled out of bed. stuff that didn’t even need cleaning was cleaned. floors were washed regularly, laundry done several times a week, dishes were dried and put away every night without fail. for many years, she also worked as a cleaning lady for ballerina veronica tennant, among others. (i only found this out as an adult. i suspect the information would have meant little to me as a child, anyway.) and, though it certainly wasn’t a lucrative career, she worked hard at it...both professionally and personally. she was a cleaning machine. and i think watching her while i was growing up implanted that same fastidiousness in me. when i’m visiting my parents and get into the cleaning zone, my mother will frequently remark, “you must have got that from oma!”

as a kid, i never really understood how or why my grandmother devoted so much time and energy into keeping the house clean, but i do now. somewhere in the recesses of my brain, that coding stuck and kicked into high gear once i had a place of my own. there is a huge amount of personal satisfaction in cleanliness...especially when a place is Vickie Clean™.

or Oma Clean™.

K.

tonight, i found out that K. died.

K. was a fighter if ever there was one. i knew her through my meditation group, and tonight S., the woman who runs it, broke the sad news. since a number of participants in this particular group are dealing with serious illnesses, it’s not the first time someone we all know has died. (the most recent death prior to K. was in january.) since it’s a drop-in group where attendees differ every week, many people tonight had no idea who K. was. her presence there was before their time. but, as a veteran, i remembered her... very well... and, even though we were just meditation pals who only saw each other every so often, i was very sad to learn of her passing.

K. was only 39. i didn’t know too much about her life or her history – coming together sporadically at a weekly meditation session doesn’t really afford anyone a lot of in-depth “get to know me” conversation time – but what i did know i liked a great deal. she was whip-smart and very funny, and she (like me) detested those cheesy email forwards containing inspirational verses or famous quotations or chain letters promising the granting of all your wishes if you just send it along to ten more people. we bonded over that. she was scrappy and, though she was sometimes in pain, she always came to the group smiling and positive. she loved knitting and was incredibly well-read. she wore fabulous glasses. she laughed at my sometimes (okay, often) feeble attempts at humour and was always happy to join in if random silliness erupted in what should probably be a slightly more reverent environment. she was the kind of person you’d want as a big sister or a best friend. just... cool. and open. willing to share the darkness within her as well as put forth as much light as her spirit could muster and her body would allow. to be honest, i didn’t actually know whether she was still sick.

K. had battled cancer for many, many years and in assorted forms. she lost an eye to the disease, but wore a funky patch to cover the scars. she’d had at least one organ transplant (double-lung)... possibly more. from the stories she would occasionally tell, i know that she went to hell and back numerous times, and endured treatments that repeatedly ravaged her body from the inside out. but she never lost her pluck. never gave up. never became cynical or negative. she was dealt a spectacularly awful hand, but she didn’t let that stop her from going all in. when i googled her name tonight (which is how i found the accompanying photo that couldn’t be more fitting), i discovered she worked in hospice care, providing palliative assistance to the terminally ill. that totally figures.

the last time i saw K. was maybe a year ago. she hadn’t come to the group in a very long time, and i worried. i often wondered if she’d taken a turn for the worse, and hoped her absence was for good reasons not bad ones, but i knew that if anything had happened we would have been informed. unfortunately, tonight was that night.

when she told us of K., S. said that there wouldn’t be a memorial service but, instead, a party. a celebration of her life, which is exactly what K. would have wanted. it may very well, in fact, have been what she outright instructed. she was that kind of girl. so, tonight, i’m thinking about K., celebrating her life and, appropriately enough, meditating on how she lived it – with gusto in the face of illness, with cheer in the face of profound sadness, and with courage shining out from every beautiful pore.

may 22nd

yessssssssssssssssssss!

stuff i could tell you about...

...i could tell you about my delightful new paint software. i bought it after deciding the only way to properly nourish my long-dormant inner artist was to actually nourish her. i’d been futzing around with an extremely rudimentary online drawing program for months, which served its purpose but which was ultimately not really satisfying. so i hemmed, hawed, researched and decided on a paint program from corel. it is now rocking my world, daunting though it is. it’s extremely sophisticated, and kind of makes me feel like a completely talentless moron, but i’m learning as i go. i drew this yesterday...with my mouse...in virtual charcoal...


...i could tell you about the back-to-school stories i’m writing. i’m not a parent, so (like the paint software) it’s a bit of learning as i go. pun intended.

....i could tell you how i’m supposed to be in florida right now, but airfares never dropped to what i consider an acceptable level on my given dates. i say "given" because last saturday to this coming saturday was/is my designated week at the condo with mom (dad got week one, and young beatrix gets the last week...mom stays for all three). but i’m here and she’s there. sorry, but i just refuse to pay $700 (or more!) on a flight to tampa. i think at one point the top price for a ticket was over $2000. um, no.

...i could tell you about the lovely walk i went on yesterday, where i strolled through the neighbourhood, looked at the expensive houses with their expensive landscaping, and took photos of the trees and bushes in bloom. it was beautiful out -- sunny and 14ºC -- so i went a'wandrin.

...i could tell you about Hallam Foe, but i still haven’t watched it yet, so i’d just be telling you what i heard, which is that it’s much darker than one would expect based on its trailer.

...i could tell you about how white trash-y neighbours seem to follow me wherever i go. back at hell house, there was a family whose house backed onto the rear of my building...and their backyard was almost right under my (3rd floor) bedroom window. they would spend many a summer night outside on their porch, SPEAKING VERY LOUDLY AND PLAYING GUITAR AND SHOUTING AT THEIR ANNOYING AND EQUALLY LOUD TWEEN DAUGHTER, CLAIRE, OR THEIR DOG, CHILI...BOTH OF WHOM I SUSPECT ARE DEAF GIVEN THE VOLUME AT WHICH THEY WERE ADDRESSED. ugh. each year i counted the days until winter when it would be too cold for them to sit outside bellowing at each other. when i moved in here, where i am now, the top-floor apartment in the house adjacent to the building (coincidentally, once again near my bedroom window) was empty. and blissfully quiet. but a new, young, LOUD girl moved in there in early fall and *began* making use of her deck with her young, loud friends...but the cold weather hit soon and they were all forced indoors. but now spring is here, and the weather’s nice, and she’s done up her deck with chairs and a big BBQ and frequently has company...like she does right now. unfortunately, the positioning of the deck vs. the building means sound is amplified and everyone with apartments facing north can hear every word of every sentence anyone says on that deck. it’s going to be a long summer.

...i could tell you about the giant sandwich i had for dinner. with carrots. very summery.

...i could tell you about the giant fruit salad i made just before the giant sandwich. maybe “fruit” salad is overstating it. it’s two enormous (and sweet and delicious) navel oranges and a huge fuji apple. cut up. simple but good.

...i could tell you that my massive mane of hair will finally be cut next week.

...i could tell you that i have my six-month check-up at the dentist on wednesday and that i am currently hoping and praying for a clean bill of dental health.

...i could tell you that i’m going to a screening of What Happens in Vegas first thing in the morning, and that i’m hoping it doesn’t blow.

...i could tell you that i haven’t had any dreamlife dreams since my last entry.

i could tell you all that stuff, but instead i’m gonna go paint another picture.

dreamlife

sometimes, i wish i lived in my dreamlife.

occasionally, my sleep is plagued with nightmares, but often i find myself living a dream life in my dreamlife. and, every now and again, i have the kind of dream i had in my final moments of sleep this morning...the kind of dream that simultaneously fills every cell in my body with a sense of boundless joy but leaves me strangely sad and melancholy the instant i wake.

this morning, i dreamt of love.

i don’t know how to describe these dreams, but i know that other people have had them; i’ve read about it, so i’m not making that up. it’s a dream wherein you feel as though you are being wholly, passionately, unconditionally and deeply loved by another person, sometimes like no love you’ve ever experienced that way in your actual life. to be clear, they may be romantic but these are not sex dreams...in fact, they may not involve any physical contact at all. yet they are unmistakably, undeniably sensory. your heart is so full it feels as though it may burst. you can feel that warmth radiating through you, and it’s combined with a profound sense of peace and completeness. at least, that’s what those dreams are like for me, and that’s what this morning’s dream was: wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time.

i don’t have them very often, these spectacularly blissful reveries, but i treasure each one even though they always leave me wanting as soon as the clock alarm goes off. these dreams have become slightly more frequent in recent years, perhaps because my longing for that kind of connection has become stronger in me as time passes and my subconscious is trying to offer me comfort and satiate that yearning...even if it’s only in an imaginary scenario that exists but for a few perfect, fleeting moments.

i want to actually feel what i feel in those dreams when i wake up. i wonder what it must be like, but i have never experienced anything close to it. and, with each passing year, the fear in me grows deeper that it will never happen... that my dreamlife will have to be enough to fill the holes of reality.

the garden: a brief photo essay for lou

i'm cat-sitting at the moment. while it's a very relaxing activity, and kyle makes for a pleasant enough companion (when he's not sound asleep), it does lend itself to occasional periods of ennui.

this afternoon, i was a little bored, so i grabbed my camera and, in a fit of lou-inspired photography, decided to snap some shots of my parents' and sister's gardens as they begin to bloom for spring. right now, there's not too much to look at, but the few flowers that have sprung forth are like little explosions of colour in a sea of post-winter brown.

now, where was i?

done!

hotdocs has now ended and i went in peace. it was a very busy, very entertaining, occassionally emotionally draining but all-around lovely week. for all the details, check out the other blog. some random notes to get this blog running again:

* the TTC – toronto’s transit system – went on strike on friday night, crippling the city for...about a day and half.

* my parents are in florida, so i’m cat-sitting for the week. this means that kyle and i will have plenty of time to hang out and bond. it also means i’ll inevitably pass a whack of time chasing him with a camera and taking shots like this one:



* this year, no florida trip for me. airfares never dropped to an acceptable level (sorry, there’s no way i’m paying $800 to fly to tampa!), so i’m not going. alas.

* young beatrix bought some of that new Dove Energize soap. the one that, according to the packaging, is a combination of grapefruit and lemongrass. um...not so much. i tried it this morning and it smells nothing like grapefruit or lemongrass. it smells quite nice, but not at all like one would expect.

* i am, at present, without any writing assignments. i’m slightly worried, but hoping that it’s just a short break before the next onslaught of work. or maybe this is the universe telling me that i should work on a screenplay, or finish some other piece of fiction, or start a documentary.

* in related news, i’m thinking of buying a video camera. for now, though, it’s just a fleeting thought. of course, if i had one, shooting a documentary would be so much easier.

* i still haven’t watched Hallam Foe, but it’s on the to-do list for this week. perhaps kyle and i will sit down to watch it tomorrow...

i am docking hotly

HotDocs has begun. and i'm at it. you may follow my misadventures at the other blog, if you so choose. :-)

see? ask, and the universe will provide!

one week ago, i asked.

and today, i received.

a DVD screener of the film awaited me upon my arrival home tonight. :-D

she's a genius...just kidding, she's not...just kidding, she really is...

i ♥ kristen wiig.

what’s goin’ on...

bless me, readers, it’s been nearly a week since my last entry. here’s a quick recap of events since last we spoke...

i wrote an article on unusual pets and now know more about chinchillas and hedgehogs and the like than i ever thought possible. the piece will be out in september, but here’s an exciting preview: chinchillas eat a high-fibre diet and, as a result, poop constantly! degus’ tails will slough off (i.e., the skin comes right off) if you pick them up incorrectly! red-eared sliders (note to moob: NOT spiders, sliders) have salmonella in their stool! ferrets eat anything! and hedgehogs hate other hedgehogs! isn’t that fascinating? hey...wake up...i said ISN’T THAT FASCINATING?!

i’ve begun pondering a birthday vacation. initially, i’d thought about seattle...then a seattle/vancouver double bill...but both of those west-coast cities are VERY expensive in june. so i looked into chicago and discovered it’s even pricier there. yet, for some reason, san francisco is strangely affordable (comparatively speaking). i continue to research and mull.

young beatrix stayed over on friday night and a good time was had by all...until...

...saturday afternoon, shortly after she left, when some sort of alien creature invaded my intestines and caused no end of upset. seems i ate something that did not agree with me and my body wanted it expelled ASAP. this was super-fun.

YB and i also went to the National Home Show. she’d been given free tickets, and hopes to be a homeowner before the year is out, so we decided to check it out. it was underwhelming...but packed to the rafters. and, much to our surprise, there were countless vendors whose wares had little or nothing to do with homes. i mean, a T-shirt booth? toronto animal services? a sausage salesman? a candy store specializing in british imports? the best, though, was a cosmetic dentist who’d set up a giant space and was offering – no joke – on-site TEETH WHITENING. he had four or five dentist chairs in a semi-circle, various “technicians” in white lab coats, and a quartet of those Zoom™ laser machines. AND PEOPLE WERE HAVING IT DONE! at the home show. whaaaaaa...? is that *really* where you want to have any kind of dental procedure done? at a HOUSING EXPO???? apparently, some did. weird. nevermind that you’re on full display for all the passersby (like me) who look and point and wonder what kind of lengthy release form you had to sign before sitting down in that chair. yikes.

HotDocs starts on thursday! :-D

and, finally, give this a look for a little warming of the heart on a monday (i dare you not to get a little misty):

whennnnnnnnn is this coming out?!

sophia myles.

claire forlani.

jamie bell.

ciarán hinds.

ewen bremner.

all together in mister foe...a movie clearly cast with me in mind. (this is going straight to DVD in canada, i'm sure of it.)

golly, look how much has changed! NOTHING...

once again, rogers’ online billing system has proven to be a completely useless piece of technology.

almost one year to the day since my last rant about their craptacular website and online-billing process, i once again experienced the profound frustration of trying to use their easy, user-friendly portal.

let me just say that it was not easy, nor user-friendly. it was a big, fat pain in my ass.

and all i wanted to do was reset my user password. simple, right? WRONG.

first off, because i’m a terribly responsible consumer and keep track of such things, i knew that my annual cable bill should be coming in any day now. but, since i’d signed up for online billing and knew that rogers’ site bllllllows hard, i wasn’t sure if i’d get an email notifying me that my bill was ready...or whether the bill would just magically arrive in my account and then sit there, unmentioned and unannounced, until it went past due. i was determined not to miss it and to stay on top of its arrival.

but – once again because of my previous frustrations with the site – i hadn’t logged on to rogers.com since last spring...and, as such, i’d forgotten my password. so i hit the handy “forgot your password?” button, answered the security question and was told that a temporary password would be emailed to me within seconds. after that, i was to use it to sign in and reset my password to something new and fabulous. (i added that last part. rogers doesn’t care what i do and certainly has no interest in my password’s fabulousness.)

so.

i checked my email. lo and behold, there was a message from rogers with my temporary password. i followed the email’s instructions, returned to the login page of rogers.com, entered my username and temporary password and was welcomed to the “reset password” page, where the very first thing it asked me to do was...

“enter old password.”

um.

what?

dear morons on the rogers.com web team: if i knew my old password, i wouldn’t have clicked on the “forgot your password?” button in the first place. you are idiots. xoxo, vickie.

so, i thought i’d try entering the temporary password. “maybe that’s what it wants?” i thought. tap, tap, tap...no. that didn’t work. after i hit “submit,” it logged me out and told me my session had timed out.

okay. :::: gritting teeth :::::

i tried again.

this time, i guessed at what i thought my old password might have been...i hit enter...and was immediately told that i had entered the wrong password, and that i had two more tries before my account would be frozen.

WTF?

i repeated this process twice more using the temporary password in two different browsers (because i remembered that rogers.com doesn’t take kindly to safari), but the exact same thing happened.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY do they even bother having a website?!?!?!

frustrated, i clicked on their “contact us” button to get their customer-service number. before the site would give me that info, it asked me to choose what kind of issue i was having. a drop-down menu appeared and i selected “questions about rogers.com” since it was the only one close to what i needed.

a screen appeared with a long list of FAQ about the site...the fourth or fifth of which was “how do i reset my password?” i clicked on that. a message appeared onscreen, telling me to dial a 1-877 number so that a customer-service rep could reset it for me. ah, human assistance! perhaps that’s what this whole endeavour needed all along!

so i dialed the number. the number that the website specifically GAVE ME in response to the resetting-of-a-password question. i then had to go through a series of touch-tone options to get to someone who would assist me with my “rogers online billing account.” again, despite the website giving me this specific 1-877 number in direct response to “how do i reset my password?”, there was no “reset password” option in any of the touch-tone option menus.

this was getting beyond ridiculous.

after wading through the options, an operator picked up and asked how she could help me.

“i’m trying to reset my online-billing password and the website keeps logging me off, so i’m wondering if someone there can help with that.”

she paused. “ohhhh, i’m sorry. i’m actually not the right department for that, and my computer is down...”

she’s joking, right?

YOUR COMPUTER IS DOWN????? at a call centre for a WEBSITE???? this is not inspiring confidence, lady.

“i’ll transfer you to the department you need. please hold!”

and off i went into the telecommunications abyss. another operator answered.

“hi, this is whateverhernamewas, thank you for calling rogers, how may i assist you today?”

i explained my problem again.

“oh, i’m actually not the right person to talk to about that. let me transfer you to our online billing department and they can...”

i cut her off (nicely) and explained that the online billing department had JUST transferred me to her. she was very apologetic and very nice, and said that she was going to put me on hold and then find me an actual person who would help me with my problem. “i’m going to stay on the line with you until i make sure you’re connected with someone in the right department!”

very good. so i waited on hold. after a few minutes, she popped back on the line. “hi, i just wanted you to know that i haven’t forgotten about you. there’s a bit of a wait at the department, so i’m not going to transfer you until someone is ready to take your call.”

no problem, thanks.

after a couple more minutes, she returned, said the department was ready and conference-called me with a rather unfriendly fellow in whatever magical corner of the rogers call centre handled passwords.

very brusquely, in a tone that implied “okay, moron, you’re clearly too dumb to navigate the complexities of our amazing web portal so now i have to waste my time talking you through it,” he said:

“you need to go to www.new.rogers.com.” then there was silence on the line.

“do you want me to do that NOW?” i asked.

“yeah.”

would it have killed him to maybe ask me if i was actually online at the time? because i wasn’t. i was on the PHONE. so i got up, went to the computer, waited for it to connect, typed in the URL and saw a page that looked remarkably similar to the one from which i’d already been booted four times.

“okay, i’m there.”

“enter your temporary password, then just follow the instructions.”

“i did that last time, and it didn’t work. plus, why does it ask me for my old password when i obviously don’t remember what it is?”

“just enter the temporary password where it says `old password.’”

skeptical, i did it. and this time it actually worked. WHAAAAAAAAAAAT????

“wow! it worked this time!” i said, grateful that this mess was finally over.

as though he were reading (very unenthusiastically) from a script, and with the same tone of disdain mentioned above, he said, “has your issue been resolved?”

“yes, it has. thanks very much!”

“have a good day,” he said flatly and then hung up. somehow, i don’t feel he was being sincere. but whatever. i finally had a password and could view my account and could see that there was no invoice sitting within it, waiting to be paid. but i will be checking that account daily (now that i have that password tattooed on the inside of both eyelids) until it arrives.

then i will pay it.

then i will IMMEDIATELY opt out of this stupid-ass, endlessly frustrating and totally lame online billing system to go back to paper invoices sent through the mail like God intended.

it's sprung!

lou's stunning shot of an iris. (thanks, lou!)

today feels like the first real day of spring.

it's absolutely gorgeous outside -- cloudless blue sky, bright sunshine, a super-gentle breeze, temperatures expected to inch into the 50s. most of the snow has melted, and the grey, mucky clumps that remain should diminish in size considerably by the time the sun goes down later today. after weeks of on-again/off-again snow and rain and cold temperatures and warmer temperatures, today it feels like spring for real.

and with spring comes clear, ice-free sidewalks, amazing walking weather, the start of film-festival season (cinéfranco now, sprockets next week, hotdocs the week after, inside/out in may, and so on), maybe a trip back to the condo in florida, season finales...all good things.

so, on this lovely spring day, i'll turn the floor over to you to ask: what's your favourite thing about spring? and, to keep it balanced, your least favourite thing?

why?

this post-elimination interview does not make me like claire more. i've lost that loving feeling, apparently.