I use my camera so rarely these days that when it slid out of my purse at Sunday’s event, I had to rack my brains to remember what it was. (I just feel too self-conscious to take photos any more – there seems to be some kind of inverse relationship, whereby the more I want to remember the day the less likely I am to record it for the future. True story.) (Morpheus , by the way, didn’t help the situation one bit. He was all, “Oh, oh, get some photos! Here, you can get up on my shoulders. What? Why are you staring at me? What do you mean, it’s not a Nickelback concert?”)

Anyway, I finally unloaded the camera and sat there laughing at how long it had been since I had done so. There were Christmas tree photos! Also:

There was a chopstick fight at my Chinese New Year Party! (To which, by the way, no actual Chinese people came.) Well… LR and I were fighting. KB seems to be doing the macarena or something. If this were a kung-fu movie she’d have been skewered by now.

It is my idiot brother (who is tall, though an idiot) doing my decorating before the party!

Do any of my fellow Edmontonians have the same obssession with that holey accretion they have at the provincial museum? I went there at the end of February and practically the first thing I did was race for the Natural History exhibit and touch the accretion. (Which immediately resulted in three fingers lodged immovably in the holes, and a five year-old laughing cruelly at me as he passed.) (Note to self: fingers are fatter than last visit. Avoid sticking in things.)

I am obssessed with all things geological, truth be told. My spirit animal may be a magpie, but my spirit mineral is pyrite. (Like me, it is sparkly but worthless, and is often mistaken for – and often accompanies – more valuable things. Pyrite has no illusions of its goldhood. It is society that perpetrates that illusion.)

During my second tour of duty in Calgary I also remember taking about fifty pictures of my second-favourite mineral in my own collection, a little chunk of galena. From close up, it looks like a satellite photo of a futuristic city. In the depths of my unemployment and depression I was capable of spending an hour just staring at it in desolate wonder. (Then, of course, I’d stop staring at it and watch Dr. Phil. “NOW AH DON’T WANT TO TELL Y’ALL THAT WAS THE DUMBEST THING AH EVER HEARD. AH’M JUST STATIN’ MAH OPINION.”)

I also spent so long in the insect exhibit that a little kid came up to ask me if I was OK. I love bugs. I would decorate my as-yet-unbought condo with giant photos of bugs I have known, if I wasn’t so sure that it would cause people to think I was licking my fingers after playing with the galena.

This is not a good photo, but let’s face it, weren’t Irish Elk practically the coolest thing in Neolithic North America? They were, weren’t they? I have a (better) photo of an Irish Elk skull on top of one of my bookshelves. I consider it part of the family.

And finally, since no one wants to see the pagodas and dinosaurs I spent the rest of the day photographing, here is a… thing… that I found at West Ed. (I have a soft spot for these things. I look at them and I remind myself that survival of the fittest isn’t about looks. Or personality. Or even mobility! So there may be hope for me yet.)

Regular readers will note that I rarely post Youtube videos because I infinitely prefer my own inane ramblings, but this video, I’ve watched it four times in the last 72 hours and I wish I could stop laughing. My stomach is starting to hurt.

Hello! My laptop is dead.

We should always remind ourselves that death, like birth, has a beginning, middle, and an end; thus, I am going to venture that my laptop had something like a severe heart attack last night (noticed but untreated), died while I was sleeping, and did not respond to repeated prodding this morning. Last night it seemed as simple as replacing the inverter in my laptop screen; this morning, since it refused to even power up, I’m guessing it was a bit more serious. To continue the analogy, I’m now actually diagnosing it as a heart attack rather than mere indigestion.

So, no Zune for me! That’s $250 that’s headed for the new laptop fund.

I am writing this entry not only to whine but also to notify my readers that outside of normal office hours (7:30 to 4:30) you will have to get ahold of me via phone.

But mainly to whine, because I will be buying a new laptop in a couple of days and will then resume normal (for me) communications via e-mail and Facecrack.

I have started drawing again! As part of a superspecialsecret project I hope to start this spring. The funny thing I find about all my drawing is similar to the funny thing I find with all my writing – I have no formal training in either. Like, none. My art instruction stopped in grade six, when I learned how to draw a boring desert scape using perspective lines (a skill I have since lost completely) and my writing instruction stopped in English 101, when my prof gave me an 8 in everything no matter what I did. Anyway, the upshot of all this science edumocation is that everything I draw, aside from cell diagrams, looks slightly stupid and amateurish (ditto with the writing). Bah.

I guess I could go take some classes or something.

A real instructor probably would have taught me that repeated passes across wax crayon might cause smudging of the darker parts, especially if you’re drawing whilst wearing a wool sweater, and especially if you have coloured in the darker parts before actually finishing the drawing. I was upset at first, but now I find it looks kind of cool. Like motion lines!

Also, do hot-air balloons actually have anchors?