I have trouble finding the time to document my life. The bigger the backlog gets, the more the task overwhelms.

I have one more week of stress-free unemployment before I begin a new job at Vancity. I'm excited. I was really hoping to find a job with a company that I care about and like. Every time I sent an application for yet another customer support position with yet another company with a reputation for terrible customer service, my soul felt another footprint on its back.

Unemployment had its perks, but I'm glad it only lasted two months this time. I went into it thinking I'd have more time to pursue my little side projects and hobbies, but it really didn't work out that way. Every moment that wasn't spent on the job search felt almost wasted. It's not that I was desperate to find one - I'm not lacking in food, shelter, love or Glorious HD - it's a deeper, though distant, feeling of guilt, and the feeling was stronger because there was no desperation.

Oh well. It's all over, and soon I'll get another commute and my travel mug will get some meaningful use again. And in some backwards logic kind of way, I think I'll be able to set aside more time to pursue my hobbies. My thinking tends toward the wishful.

Originally published at brandybernard.com.

I really like that on my cell phone bill under "Taxes" it also says: "Sorry but we have to".

So, we showed up super-late to the Canucks Tweetup. And because of that, we ended up stuck at a table by ourselves. But despite that, it was fun. I only saw one other dude wearing a jersey, and he was wearing a Hansen jersey! The odds of that are really low. And they had draws for various merch and signed stuff and tickets and whatnot. I won a hat, which is too big for my head, which is kind of my style for hats. Scott won a signed picture of Daniel Sedin, and we were given tickets to a game on Monday. SWEET!

I got to meet the other Hansen jersey guy, kind of. Next time we'll show up a little less late, so we don't get suck at the jerk table by ourselves. There are a few people I wanted to meet but didn't get a chance to.

Seriously, I'm pretty stoked that there is hockey again. HOCKEY YAY!

And getting to go to a game (even if it's pre-season, who cares it's hockey hockey hockey hockey) on Monday? WIN! And odds are they'll win because the game is against the Calgary Flames and ew the Flames really suck and I don't think anyone on my friends list will argue with that (if I missed any Calgary fans, Iginla is pretty awesome but everyone else SUCKS including Phanuef who SUCKS BIG TIME WHATTA JERK). Either way, don't argue with me, because that's not fun. Just go along.

I'm pretty stoked and excited and jazzed and what have you, but for now I think I'll just go to bed with my new hat (actually, I'll take the hat off in the living room, so I'll just go to bed with my non-Popeye boyfriend).

Godt nat! (that's Danish for good night, could you tell?)

I need to share Mr Cat with you in case you don't have the Twits or the 'cebook.

http://twitpic.com/grjy2

UPSIDEDOWN HEAD AND SQUISHEYES EEEEEEEE

I can't wait to get out to the airport and on my plane and YAY.

In the news today: there's a big rip in my jeans. It is new, since I just noticed it today. This is sad, because they are my favorite jeans. But not surprising, since being that they're my favorite jeans I wear them all all all the time. I need more jeans.

The boys are loading in here at the East End, and I'm stealing wifi from mysterious sources. The weather is awesome, the beer is cheap, and smoking and drinking can be done at the same time (fancy that!).

We checked out from the Hotel Modera this morning, ate at the Ram's Head, and checked in at the White Eagle. Holy diverse accommodations Batman. The Modera is a swank little boutique hotel with a safe and ridiculously comfortable microfibre robes and marble shower tiles. The White Eagle has rooms the size of postage stamps, with goofy names like Bad Boy, Griselda, and Mr. Spaceman (we're checked into the Hoodoo Bash) and song lyrics painted on the walls and a loud-ass pub downstairs. Both hotels are fucking fantastic and highly recommended, but I'm a wannabe spoiled brat, so I think I'll pick the Modera from now on.

Our newest electronic friend is Hellen Keller, our GPS unit. She likes to announce turns about half a block late. And yet, we love our Helen. We've figured out how to cooperate with each other. It's really useful for finding shit.

We checked out UHF last night, and it was a great show - I kind of wished that they would crack open the Who cover they did last year, because it was a moment in music amazingness and I would have liked Scott to see it. They've recorded it, but the live experience can't be re-created. Anyway, they played an awesome set and we hung out with them for the rest of the night, and they totally remembered me from last year and when they found out that I bought their CD at the merch table they fucking gave me my five bucks back (jerks), and did so in a manner logistically impossible to reject. Four of the five might be able to make it for the Orchid's set tonight (the fourth is driving to California today), and I really hope they do.

Either way, I'm really excited for the show tonight (in 1.5 hours!). Wish I was here!

Oh look, I am. Cha-ching.

This month is going by so quickly AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

I can't wait to leave for Portland on Saturday, but I'm also much later than I hoped to be on the comic. I've gnashed over the first panel ad nauseum, and now it's about 90% committed to the page. In red pencil, at least.

Red pencil is the part I take out in Photoshop after I scan it. I do all the basic construction lines, and then build it out from there. Then I trace out the parts I want to keep in regular not colored pencil because I'm too much of a pussy to even get to inking yet. You guys, I'm ascared of inking.

Anyway, my original aim was to get all the of the red pencils down, because once that's done all I have to do is trace the bits I like, scan, trace in Illustrator, clean up a bit, and post. And I'm aiming to post on Friday, because tomorrow is kung fu and Saturday is the day Scott picks me up from work to embark on our IPO adventure. I really don't want to leave this for Monday.

However, posting it on Monday isn't a huge deal. I haven't even put the word out to most people that I'm even doing this, so the only people I'm keeping waiting are my favorite people to whom I've already shown it, and you guys are used to me taking forever to do everything :D

This is kind of an exceptional month, what with the time in Quesnel with Scott's family, during which I obviously didn't get the chance to do anything at all, since I was busy drinking Bud Lite Lime and having an amazing time with all those super wonderful nice people who've accepted me into their family.

But anyway, once I get up to around 10 or so I'm hoping to stick to the one-a-week schedule, even thought I'm also planning to go to school part-time and double my kung fu attendance.

I like being busy.

It's also hard to concentrate because this trip is very significant. Last year, I had all the reservations made, the flight booked, the bag packed, and it wasn't until I was about two hours away from leaving for the airport when I found out that the band had been turned away at the border. Too late to cancel everything, I got on the plane and checked into the hotel. All I had to eat or drink all day was beer - at the airport, on the plane, at the venue.

IPO Portland is being held at the same venue, the East End, and Scott and I are staying at the same hotel I checked into a year ago (for one night at least - on Sunday night we check into the White Eagle, which is apparently this legendary rock n roll hotel), and this time the guys are going to make it. Scott and I are getting there before the rest of the band so we can check out the Saturday night lineup, which includes UHF and Throwback Suburbia, two bands that played the night I was at last year, and both were really nice to me and both were massively disappointed that the Orchid Highway weren't playing. Well, they're playing this year, fuckers.

Also, I've got such a hotel hardon for the place we're staying for the first night. They're just swanky enough for me.

Christ on a stick, I procrastinate. Back to the drawing board for a while. I'm not missing Conan tonight, because Gordon Ramsay's on, and I have a thing for bastards.

1. Bought a laptop.
This was such a good deal. It runs well for a G3, and I can add more RAM to make it chug along a bit better. It's going to be ridiculously useful for the trips to Seattle and Portland, and it's already been a big help. Best $120 I've spent in a while, and I've spent a lot of $120s.

2. Made a packing list.
Self-explanatory.

3. After about a week of not being able to work on the comic at all, I've been sketching the same panel over and over again.
Practice makes better, and I can use the leftovers for inking practice. Eventually, I'll be inking on vellum to keep the pencils and inks apart, but I'm still getting over my fears of permanence. Ink. It's scary stuff. Also, the panel I'm working on is really big, and I won't say I want it to be just right but actually I really really do want it to be just right. Honestly, my drawing skills are nowhere near what I want them to be, but I'm just going to keep at 'er.

4. Found my prepaid phone from the Austin trip.
Virgin Mobile USA kicks ass if you're from Canada but visit the states, because you can top up your account with PayPal and you can change your local number once every 24 hours. Fuck you, roaming charges.

5. Set up my drawing board in the spare room.
Fuck you, living room distractions. The TV is big enough, but it seems a lot bigger when you're trying not to look at it.

I'm sure there's more, but 5 satisfies me.

Okay, your turn. If I've done 5 smart things this week, I'm sure you've done at least eleventybillion.

Ever had a good night kiss interrupted because the guy you were kissing showed up on the TV behind you?

I can cross that one off my list.

The Orchid Highway - Sofa Surfer Girl

That guy in the shiny jacket took my sunglasses.

I did not expect the Scandinavian Centre to have free wifi, I did not. We've been in the beer garden watching some wicked mariachi (the guest country is Mexico) ( the did La Llorona!!!) and Scott ran into an old co-worker, and I think we might stick around for the bonfire. They ran out of frikadeller by the time we got around to dinner, but we might try again tomorrow.

My grandma made frikadeller for me all the time.

I wasn't expecting to talk to a bird today. I should know better.

Scott and I were passing time on the patio, talking about something stupid and possibly Sailor Moon-related. Cleo,
one of the attention-loving neighbourhood cats, was lounging nearby. And then, BOOM. He's got a bird in his mouth.

Cleo hangs around outside our patio a lot. He has a little perch to sit on, well in view of passersby, all of whom know him by name. He's a big orange fluffy mantlepiece of a cat. He cleans himself a lot. I've seen him swat at a bee, and I've seen him do that weird cat-chitterchatter that cats do whenever birds are around, but I've never seen it actually work. All I've ever seen him catch is a big fat nap.

He dropped the poor thing a few times, and kept catching it again. The little victim's chickadee buddies flocked around. The cruelty of nature was playing out in front of me. But I've seen cartoons, so I know that cats chase birds, and sometimes they even eat them. We meant to go back inside and look the other way.

Then Cleo carried the bird a few feet down the street and ditched it. Just left it by the sidewalk. What? Cleo isn't my cat. None of the cats in my life have been successful hunters. I don't known the game. I don't know if Scott does either. So we walked down the street to take a look at the bird.

I'm not sure if we made the right judgement call, but he looked very much alive and free of injury, though a bit dazed, so we picked him up. This neighbourhood is loaded with cats, and leaving it there would be declaring it dinner, and I guess we're sentimental squishy-hearts when it comes down to it.

He stood on Scott's finger easily, and had no visible injuries.
He just sat there for a long time with his eyes closed, which is exactly what I would do if I was just in a cat's mouth. My limited knowledge of wildlife rescue tells me that birds that just got out of a cat's mouth tend to go into shock.

Despite that, he seemed okay. He didn't move around much, but he would puff himself up a bit, and didn't seem to have lost any mobility. He didn't lose his ability to poop. That's always good news. Adorable as he was, we didn't want to stand around holding a bird all day, so as soon as he started flapping his wings we tried to shove him off onto a branch too high or complicated for the average cat to get to. He seemed hesitant to leave, but we finally ditched him on some tree.

Since then, I've found some advice on what to do if you find a baby chickadee, or an injured chickadee, or an orphaned chickadee, but I haven't found much in relation to a dazed/gummed-by-a-lazy-cat chickadee. From what I can tell, we didn't do anything wrong - we discerned that the the little guy was reasonably unharmed and re-dispatched him to the relative wild as soon as we could. Most of the wildlife rescue advice I could find stressed that you should probably just leave the animals alone.

All practicality aside, I'm pretty chuffed that I got to hold a wee little birdy in my hands.

We gave Cleo a little hug (you can't blame a cat for being a cat, however lazy), and had dinner. Chicken.

Full set of photos here.

Originally published at brandybernard.com.

I wish I could stay home sick and do nothing.

The last time I visited my family, I finally got to say thank you to my mother. This particular thank you was for her leaving my father shortly after I was born. Not so much for me as for her. She lived with his abuse until it became a threat to me, and without a moment's notice she packed everything she could into a car, drove away with me, and spent the next few years struggling to remove him from our lives.

We're not a family that devotes any time to mucking around in our past. We don't revisit bad times and analyze them. We survive what we have to survive and then we bask in the fact that we're still here and ready for more. We're a family full of joy. That's why it's really hard to say thanks.

I don't remember how it came up; we were joking about something. And I just said it: "Thanks Mom!". And she said "You're welcome Brandy!". And that's it.

I love my family so much. When I call, half the conversation is laughter. We're not hiding anything or holding anything back. We're just so glad to be here.

FOR REALS REALLY?!?!??!


http://www.lush.ca/shop/products/bath-shower/bath-bombs/black-pearl


*DIES*

I got a random myspace message today. Considering myspace, I thought it would be another middle-aged guy from Minnesota fishing for chicks. But apparently it's a kid from Arizona whining about his mom? Check it out.


Hey its matt please I need a girls input your advice on this look I want to report my mother to social services for child abuse for saying untrue things about me. my step mom me is from canada dont know if shes just mean and nasty because shes from there or all girls are like that or she is just messed up. look me and my brother threw ketchup around in McDonalds and it got on some people’s clothes and this ladies coach purse my mom had to pay 300 bucks for the clothes i ruined. My mom wouldnt give us 90 bucks for a game she said my sister needed stuff for school i was mad at her for being cheap.The manager came to the table yelled at us. when my mom came out of the bathroom. she saw what we did she wigged out on us and diss us in there called us a babies real loud told me and him we need go back to wearing diapers again and sit in a high chair. can I bring her up on charges for saying that to me? even just to scare her In the car ride home shes being sarcastic with me telling me how she should put in diapers again and get a crib for me and stuff when she goes shopping at the store. Its just no fair why is mothers so mean It has to be a girl thing with her. she took away my x box and i pod i cant go out on the weekends now because of her. look I know im 16 years my bro is 13 years old but i have more legal rights then my mother on this im sure of it. Even the charges dont stick it would make her treat me better in the future by not calling me a baby right?


What do I say what do I say?

I'm finishing up my Red Stripe at the Spider House, and the band is on in about an hour. This place is fantastic with it's kooky décor. I wish home had one of these.

This will be the first show I've taken in. Stupid, huh? I've done a lot of walking up and down 6th, taking in the crowd. It's like being at the PNE, except... musicy. The enthusiasm here is something I don't think Vancouver could ever reach for, much less have, as evidenced by pretty much everyone I know at home (outside of band friends) having no idea what SXSW even is.

Anyway, I'm thankful that I know what it is, and I'm ticking thrilled to be here with some of my favorite people in the world, and I don't regret skipping the barbecue for lunch (who's hungry for that much non-bacon meat at noon in the morning?).

If anyone knows a) where to buy a swimsuit in Austin and b) how to fix the goddamned hot tub, don't be shy (y'all).

Scott's been making random little decorating touches around the place. He's responsible for the evenly-spaced Astroboy/Bijou/Hamtaro couch toppers, Hamtaro's Crab helmet, and I just found mini-Gumby and mini-Pokey (Brandymas co-stars) perched on top of my monitor. I have no idea how long they've been there. 

OH NO! I was wrong. Bijou has the Crab helmet, Hamtaro has the monster bear sitting on his head. Astroboy has nothing sitting on his head because he is just a head.