Hip Hop Sunday: 2Live Crew - Pop That Coochie
Usually I try to keep things relatively PG here on Hip Hop Sunday, but then I received this magnificent tweet from Colin Koop which reminded me that I have responsibilities to attend to.
This is the first time in over a month that I've been able to actually sit down in front of my iMac and hammer away at this 'ol blog like I so love to do.
It's been a whirlwind few weeks as I think I've articulated pretty well here and this weekend marks the last time that (for a while anyway) we had to run out and get new furniture or replace something or move something from one place to another.
Well, today marks the first time, honestly.
After running around and setting up the shared House Creative Space and hosting friends for drinks and games last night, this morning we actually slept in and woke up with nowhere to be.
I'd forgotten what that was like.
I spent the day lounging around, puttering around here and there. Mike, Alicia, baby Rose and their dog Ginger stopped by for a lovely afternoon visit and I ate too many pasta leftovers from yesterday.
Everything feels like it's the way that it's supposed to be.
Hope your Sunday has been half as good as mine.
xox
yr girl Shaner
I've died, here is the loot that I dropped:
Backpack
Equipable Item
+ 8 strength
Contains:
Lunchbox
- 5 hunger
Jury Duty Paperwork (quest item)
Pink circle scarf of infinite steez
Equippable Item
+ 2 charisma
+ 1 pumpkin spice latte
- 1 real world cred
Jean Jacket
Equippable Item
+ 5 charisma
+ 4 defense
Glasses
Equippable Item
+ 4.5 perception
iPhone 5S (quest item)
Must be charged for status to take effect
+ 8 morale
- 10 perception
Shoes:
Equippable Item
+ 3 speed
+ 3 agility
In other news, I've picked up my game of Final Fantasy IX again.
Hip Hop Sunday: The Lytics - Stay Calm
Last night we went out to Nuit Blanche with Adrian and Amber and it was a glorious time and after we dropped Adrian off at home we came back here
to the House At Bear Corner (Five Doors Down)
and stayed up until the wee hours of the morning listening to music and hanging out and spending some much-needed downtime together after a whirlwind couple of weeks.
We slept in till 2pm and rolled around in the down-filled duvet and talked about silly things and laughed.
Oh god, do we ever laugh together.
When we finally peeled ourselves out of bed it was to order some sushi via the ever-useful SkiptheDishes.com which we inhaled the moment it arrived.
John is at a meeting with some other campers at the moment and when he gets back we will make tea, play Xbox, and probably eat croissants later.
The sun is coming out a little and the house smells like the rain we had last night. I'm sitting on the couch with my feet up and a little snoring kitty next to me and everything is perfect.
Hope your day is perfect, too.
xox
yr girl Shaner
Goodbye Greysolon
it's been a slice.
I lived in that little two-bedroom apartment in that little three-storey walk-up on Spence Street in West Broadway for almost four years.
It's seen me through a lot of things
relationships
jobs
friendships
university
so many beginnings and so many ends that I've lost count.
I made it my own. I painted, I hung up my art, I whispered my secrets and mourned my tragedies within those plaster walls.
That apartment wasn't just a place that I lived. It was somewhere where I shared my life with someone else, and it marks the final "moving on" step in my life. It felt good -cathartic, even- but there was still a piece of my heart that felt like there was a lead weight pulling it down to my toes.
I walked through the rooms, soaking in their emptiness.
The living room, totally barren, with paint flecks on the floor from when my ex and I put together and painted our own furniture because we didn't have the money to buy anything new. The window where Ford and Toulouse used to sit when they lived together. All the good times shared with friends in that room.
The old bedroom that we once shared, now the new tenant's room, where I used to wake up and look at the sun through the vines that crept across the window. Where I woke up with a smile on my face so many times and where, towards the end, I woke up with dread in my heart. I cried myself to sleep in that room too many times to count.
The old office. So trendy and cool and well-organized. The hours I spent blogging, writing papers in university, or just nerding out over YouTube videos or some weird post on Reddit.
I've sold the desk where I used to sit.
The kitchen, with it's awful storage and cobbled-together shelving. The large, gaping space on the wall where my ex pulled the floating bar we'd installed off the wall in a fit of rage after I moved out. I didn't like being there in that kitchen, looking at the evidence of that side of him. I didn't stay in there long.
I cried a bit, and John held me. It helped.
When I stepped out and locked the door for the last time I felt light headed. Like when you're in an airplane and it's taking off and your heart is floating in your chest and your whole body feels like weightless. I floated down the hallway and left trails of tears behind me.
I'll still visit the Greysolon from time to time, as I know people who live there, but that was the last time that I'll walk up to suite 17 and turn my key in that lock. The last time that I'll be bombarded with feelings and emotions and that strange feeling of not-quite-right that it took on once I lost a lover and acquired a roommate.
It's good, but also different, and strange. Life is like that, I suppose.
So goodbye, Greysolon, and my dumpy old apartment that, for a while, was something truly beautiful.
xox
yr girl Shaner
The Poutine Cup rocked my world
In case you missed it The Poutine Cup was a badass event held at Fort Gibraltar where a bunch of the best restos in town made fancy poutine and competed for the title of Best Poutine.
This gentleman took me and we had a blast drinking beer and eating poutine and otherwise making the French proud.
We had the good fortune to spend the evening with the charming and hilarious Adrian and LJT which honestly made the evening so much better.
Everything's better when you share it with friends.
Especially when "everything" means poutine with the fanciest toppings and seasonal craft beer from yr favourite local brewery.
The place was packed to the tits
(sold out, I believe?)
and there was so much all you can eat fancy poutine that yr girl had to drag herself up the stairs to the top of the fort wall to take this photo.
By the end of the evening we were all standing around and loudly exclaiming how full we were
while still sipping full glasses of PunkNFest, of course.
Later in the eve there was live music to serenade us while we munched away and then later while we bemoaned how much we ate
which was completely worth it, but you know.
At the end of the night they announced the winners:
Marion Street Eatery for their amazing creation with apple chutney and other goodies, and then the Judges Choice which was MAW's Eatery and Bar.
Yr girl voted for Marion, as did the boys, because we know our shit.
Looking back it was an incredible night:
I got to hang out in an old fort, eat all the poutine I could eat, drink amazing beer from my favourite brewery, and do it all in the company of some of my favourite people.
What else could a girl ask for?
How has a week gone by?
Recently the days slip by like sand through my fingers and I realize that I haven’t even blogged
scratched out notes
written a letter
in nearly a week and that it feels like a part of me is missing.
Last week I spoke at Red River to first-year Creative Communication students with my internet buddy Liz Hover and one student asked
Do you make money directly off your blog? If not, why do you do it?
And I wasn’t sure if my response was the one he was looking for but after Liz replied I sat there and I paused and I said
Because I’m a writer. I have to write.
Which is true. Just typing out these words feels so cathartic and I feel a part of my stress over moving and work and everything slipping away.
It’s like getting lost in the words except I’m not, you know? Maybe you don’t.
Maybe I’m crazy, but aren’t we all, just a little?
Anyway as I was saying I had the good fortune to be invited back to Red River where I got to talk to students about social media and blogging and a bunch of them stayed after to ask questions because
wouldn’t you know it?
we ran out of time.
I’ve been speaking to Creative Communications students for a few years running now and I’m consistently impressed with the quality and thoughtfulness of their questions.
Blog, I told them. Blog till yr sick of blogging and then blog some more.
Which is really great advice that I should really follow sometime.
Prom hair
is a song by Jaguar Knight that plays on CBC Radio 3 approximately every hour and a half
which I love despite how often I hear it and the weird video that reminds me of the visuals my ex used to make.
Because how could you not love an artist that describes themselves thusly:
For ten years, I was known as "A\V" and toured around Canada with a shopping cart full of synthesizers.
Then I got abducted by a horse flying a UFO and the horse made me change my name to "Jaguar Knight"
and posts YouTube videos of their tracks with artwork like this:
Enjoy!
Hip Hop Sunday: Joey Stylez Feat. Big Sav - Sugar Cane
from rearranging furniture and sorting and throwing things out
making room for my things
I'm exhausted but elated.
Hope you're one of those things, too
(ideally the latter)
Happy Hip Hop Sunday!
xox
yr girl Shaner
Dear J.Lo
We already loved yr booty
you didn't need to write a song about it
or make a tacky softcore porn-esque video (plus teaser) about it.
But, look, I get it.
We live in a time of Miley Cyruses and Taylor Swifts trying to cash in on a T&A obsessed culture
and you've got the OG booty, girl.
But you didn't have to sink this low, I promise.
Besides which
I've always been a fan of your killer sideboob, anyway.
Dear university students
enjoy yr first week back at school.
May your days be full of decent wifi connections, manageable schedules, and coffee that doesn't taste like it was brewed in a shoe.
May your early mornings and late nights be few and far between (and hopefully not within the same 24hr period).
Live-tweet all of your classes; I hear that's the best way to take notes and also keep us all entertained.
Create clever hashtags like #TrimbleLearns for your school year.
For the love of god if you have to do #JokeJournal please make sure the jokes are actually funny.
Don't let the winter, your midterms, your exams, or the fact that you're the only one actually doing work in your group for your group project that's worth a terrifyingly large portion of your mark get you down.
It's normal. You'll get through it.
And most of all, you'll miss the hell of it once you've graduated.
xox
yr girl Shaner
(University of Winnipeg alumna, class of 2013, already missing the shit out of being a student)
