Canada Day

So this post has nothing to do with this picture....but that, good people, is the right way to give someone a high five. All you've got to do is look directly at their elbow and there is literally no chance you will miss. Try it with a friend today.

So I don't have anything really in mind to talk about in this blog, I'm just super excited because I get to see my grandparents this evening!! They have flown all the way from good old Blighty and the clock is going super slowly just to really frustrate me. I thought, to while away the time, and to celebrate being a canadian citizen I would talk about Canada Day.

Canada Day of course is tomorrow, it marks the anniversary of four of the main provinces coming together and making Canada which now has a bunch more in it's collection. The Canadians are amazing people, they are both very kind and sweet as well being very witty and dark. It's not an easy combo to pull off. Although when people think of Canada they tend to think Maple Syrup and Moose there is a lot more to the country than it's given credit for. Although the Maple Syrup here is amazing.  Canada is full of culture, full of diversity and if that's not enough for you its bloody ginormous. In fact little old England could fit quite happily in lake Ontario, 'mazing right?

Anyway, I have to dash, my lunch hour seems to have gone by far quicker than usual, its all the planning for the wedding...lots to do

hope you are all well...Happy Canada Day, enjoy the time off! See you at...PRIDE!!!! - more on this in tomorrow's blog xxxx

Future Blog

I've stopped worrying about the future. For a long time I was worried about direction, and purpose and everything else that comes along with the future, but now for the first time in a long time I have started to understand why people always tell you to live in the present.
I'm not trying to get all down and dirty with philosophy, which is a weird sentence, but seeing as nothing ever stays still it just seems to make a little more sense to enjoy what you have going on for you right now. I said in a post before that I would become 'the proverbial yes man' that I would say yes to as many opportunities this year as I could, and at the end of this first half it's the one new years resolution I feel I have managed to keep.

There is nothing wrong with planning, or thinking ahead I just think if you set yourself a goal to be happy you spend a lot of time waiting to get there and forget that being happy can change everyday too. I think my brother getting married got me thinking, if you do decide to get married you are committing to sharing the rest of your life with someone else. You are asking someone to witness your life because as humans we want to know we have a place in the world. Insignificance is a great thing, when you realize how very little your life means in the world it actually helps you to realize how little you should truly stress about it, but it also makes you realize that your big, huge life changing plans do exactly that, but only for you. The only thing that stops this being depressing is that in the small world you create for yourself you are the most important person. People joke about the sun revolving around them, but in a way it does.

Time is a perfect example of this, when it is morning where you are, it is night time where someone else is, you live time according to where you are, and you live life according to who you are. In my life all I can do is hope that being kind and good to people will make them happy, and being kind and good to myself will make me happy. Someone in India once said to me that every ounce of effort should go towards being happy, and whatever that ends up being is where you were meant to be. This sounds straighforward, but I think for years I spent so much of my time trying to create stability and trying to make money, believing that at some point this would make me happy, but as I said you end up doing a lot of waiting and not a huge amount of living.

Because of this Ferris Bueller is one of my absolute heros. My roommate hates the film but I really think he missed the point, yes he stood on a float and sang to an enormous crowd and bamboozled a restaurant chef into giving them a free meal, yes it was cheesy, but he was having fun and living life. Ferris had it right when he said ' Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it' and I absolutely plan not to.

Happy Tuesday one and all

Meryl xx

Football

So we got crushed. I'm a little angry with the entire England football team at the moment, but I have this sneaking suspicion I'm not the only one. I won't say much but I will say this. If they hadn't stolen our equalizing goal in the first half, the game would have been different. It was well over the line. So maybe by different I mean mostly the same, but 4-2 would have been a less embarrassing exit from the cup.

The Germans played really well, they had a lot of young whippersnappers on the pitch, so for a while I was starting to think they had more players than we did. Obviously they didn't unless you count the ref...no just kidding. They were everywhere, and they ran really really fast, we ran slightly slower which may be why the German goalie practically scored a goal. 4-1, hmm really depressing.

On a lighter note my family from Angelettere are all here for my brothers wedding. My cousins are on their way soon, and even though it is a little sappy, I'm actually getting excited. I cannot wait to see my grandparents as they will indubitably say lovely things to me and surrounding myself with people I've known all my life for the next few days is going to be great. 

I am of course trying to eat really healthy this week for the wedding, mostly because I can't breath in my bridesmaids dress but bakerella but this recipe up this morning, and now all I can think about are pillow cookies. Sometimes I think it is a good thing i'm so poor at domestics, not even a little bit of me imagines I could make these. Maybe if I leave the ingredients out on the counter tiny cookie fairies will come in the night  and make the cookies for me? It worked for the cobbler guy, and he was only making shoes... yeah I'll let you know how that goes lol

Hope you are all enjoying this fine Monday - Canada day is Thursday, yay!  So really today is like Tuesday with tomorrow being Wednesday and Wednesday being Thursday and having real thursday off...wow I kind of lost what I was saying, it's fine no one will notice.

love and sunshine

Meryl x

For My Sister

Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too

Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too,
Went for a ride in a flying shoe,
"Hooray!"
"What fun!"
"It's time we flew!"
Said Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.
Ickle was captain, Pickle was crew,
And Tickle served coffee and mulligan stew
As higher
And higher
And higher they flew,
Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.

Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too,
Over the sun and beyond the blue. "
Hold on!"
"Stay in!"
"I hope we do!"
Cried Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.

Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too
Never returned to the world they knew,
And nobody
knows what's
happened to
Dear Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.

Shel Silverstein

Please Santa

Do I want one?

 yes I do.

Colouring in

Colouring in is really only for kids, which is a real shame because they are not very good at it. Not that I'm much better, for some reason arts and crafts have remained outside of my realm of capabilities for years. My dad used to joke I was better at graphic design, which I guess was a nice way to tell me that the money box I made him shaped like a giraffe head wasn't very good.

Why shape a money box like a giraffe head you may be wondering, and rightly so, but the truth is it's the only thing I can draw, well that and stick people. Anyway, the reason I am talking about colouring in is because I got invited to a place called Clay Art. Now Clay Art is, and I may be over-simplifying here, colouring in for grown ups. You go to this lovely restaurant, have lovely wine and eat lovely food, but on top of that you do lovely colouring in of clay figurines.

Please don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea, I'm pro Clay Art I promise you, what I can't get my head around is what you would do with it once you are finished? Essentially you get to take home the thing you just made, but the nice thing about doing it when you are a kid is you get to go home and show your slightly crap piece of glued together art to someone who is guaranteed to pretend to like it.

Maybe this is coming from a place of shame, my arts and crafts skills are embarrassingly bad. Maybe I'm the only one imagining a multi-coloured, badly painted, clay squirrel sitting on my mantelpiece and all of you out there would make something deserving of display. I always remember being about five years old at folds school and being told to go outside and find a stone to turn into a paper weight for fathers day. I was walking along and I saw a rather large rock locking up to me shaped exactly (and I mean exactly) like snoopy's head. I painted it white, with a little black nose and eyes, and gave it a well defined red bowtie. I was so proud to give it to my dad on fathers day and he convincingly told me he loved it.

About two years ago I went to visit my dad at his office and there sitting on his desk was a stone paper weight. When I went to check it out, it was covered in all these different covered paint blobs, all white and red and black and squishy and it took me a moment to realize that this in fact was the paper weight I had given him all those years ago. I immediately asked what had happened to it, and he told me that it had always looked the same, assumedly meaning it had looked like that when I'd given it him.

Yeah, I wasn't happy, I had been sure I had created a perfect stone replica of the cartoon dog, apparently becoming the next Van Gogh just wasn't written in the stars.

And on that I will leave you. If I do end up going to Clay Art I will let you know what it is like, but to be honest I'm pretty sure I will skip it. There is a chance I will be heading to sewing lessons in the upcoming weeks, the girls have convinced me into it. All I have to do now is learn to play the lute and wear petticoats and I'll be ready for tea with Marie Antoinette.

Kisses for everyone

Meryl

PS: After looking for pictures of Snoopy I now realize he does not wear a bow-tie, my five year old self was such a fool.

Earthquake, England , Exciting

So England won today! They must have read my blog and thought 'lets do it for Meryl' boys or lets do it for England, either-or, I'm not bothered. I am all over excited because we just an earthquake, yes a teeny tiny one but it made everything in the office shake and has kept us talking about it for a few hours now. Aparantly they felt it all the way out in Quebec, maybe it wasn't so small?!

It's got my imagination going mental, I keep thinking that it was one of those warm up tremors you see in Sci Fi films and next time I am blogging it will be from under a shelter while the whole world collapses 2012 style. What I really need right about now is a plane, the people in planes always seem to survive. I wonder if celebrities who play characters in films about earthquakes would be any better off? I'm just saying if John Cusack was standing next to me in an earthquake I'd be looking at him for the next cause of action, I think we all would.

The timing is all a little weird you have to admit, the G20 is coming to town, there is a mini earthquake stretching to Quebec, I may be a Sci Fi nerd but I don't think it is a massive jump to feel a little twilight zone-ish this afternoon. World leaders and natural disasters are some sort golden duo for the box office, put 'em together and you've got a massive commerical market nipping at your feet.

On that note, I hope you are all ok, that our tiny earthquake didn't cause any apples to roll off of desks, hopefully the world isn't about to end and I'll be back here tomorrow for further blogging

Meryl

Zzzap

Hello Blogsters - which is a mix between blog and monsters. Today will not be a two part blog, so hopefully it will be a little less cumbersome to read. Today I wanted to talk to you about a show I used to watch called Zzzap.

Now me and my little sister used to watch the show because it was great. It was set up like a comic book page except each square was filled with a different character. The Camera would zoom in on these characters and cut to a short sketch about each. There was a bunch we liked, like 'The Handymen' which where two hands that would make something crafty (which we later realized belonged to the same person) and 'Daisy Dares', where Daisy would get kids off the street and dare them to do things. If they were good at it, the kids would win, if they were bad that round went to Daisy.

One amazing fact that I didn't realize about Zzzap was that the show was designed for deaf kids. Looking back it all makes sense, there used to be little signs that would pop up instead of actual dialogue and the show was based around visual comedy, or art. In fact Niel Buchanan who did Art Attack, played Smart Arty a french painter in the show. When I found this out it got me thinking.

One of my best friends Zina, her mum is actually deaf and she used to take Zina with her to the cinema to see the shows that were subtitled. Something I remember quite vividly is that they used to go very late at night. Now that wasn't all that unsual in their family, in fact it was not uncommon to be eating cake at midnight if you were staying round, but the one time I did ask Zina why they were going so late she explained that they have very few showings of newer movies with subtitles because they think it will distract regular viewers.

Yes, this means that if you are deaf it is especially difficult to go see a film, particularly if it is new. Now being deaf is hard enough, I can't imagine how difficult it must be, especially as a child. But to alienate a whole group of people simply because others might get irritated by seeing subtitles under their film, seems a little selfish.

Zzap managed to be a show that catered to both Deaf and non deaf kids, and I may be a little dim but I'm pretty sure there were others out there like me and my sister that just enjoyed it because it was a good show. The whole thing really got to me so I wrote an e-mail to the customer service at Cinemax venting my concerns, and immediately got told I would recieve a reply within one buisness day, which makes me realize I must be very important to them.

I think I might see if I can do something about this, of course it will take that whole buisness day for me to figure out how exactly I'm going to convince a huge corporation to add subtitles to their premiere events, but hey Michael Moore got Walmart to stop selling ammo so I should at least give it a go.

Big Hugs to everyone

Meryl

PS: to Gustav, sorry I missed you out in the birthday shout outs - but see you get whole individual one to yourself in this blog, please try and be good this year, or don't, your call xx

PPS: If you want to watch Zzzap it's up on you tube click here

Supersize Blog Part 2

So I split these up because this Blog is more of a shout out type one and I thought it would make the other one look a little rambly, not that it has stopped me before.

Item One: Birthdays

Two of the most important people to me in my whole life had birthdays these last couple of weeks. First was my little sister who turned 18! I can't believe she is so grown up now, well I can, she has become this incredible person all on her own. She will however remain my little sister forever. We have this special bond and although I tell her all the time that I will be here for her, I know she will always be there for me too, because she always has. Plus she's an even bigger nerd than me, a good measuring stick to make me feel better when I'm watching Doctor Who. She also cried when I gave her a card, haha.

Secondly is my best friend Sian. Sian is one of the most incredible people I have ever met, she is truly the most giving, supportive amazing friend I could ask for. She has supported me in everything I have done and everything I have been through since I was thirteen years old and without her I wouldn't be half the person I am. She is strong and smart and funny, and I think her mum said it best when she described her as a person that takes everything she can from an experience and really lives life. I've mentioned her numerous times in this blog mostly because she has been out there traveling the globe and making me jealous but even from a distant land she has managed to log into my blog and tell me how wonderful I am. People gravitate towards her because she is magical and like Mary Poppins crazy things tend to happen when she's near by. I want to say thank you to her for always being there, and always loving me and wish her a Happy Birthday and tell her I hope that amazing things happen for her this year and forever. Although this would be easier to do if I won the lottery and got to go visit her in England. I love you Siany

Item Two: Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there. My dad took us all out for lunch (yes for his father's day) which just goes to show how very lucky we are to have him! I bought him this cool aerator/wine decantor  and a big bottle of wine so I essentially bought him the gift of delicious booze. This is one of my favorite gifts to receive so I'm glad he felt the same!

Item Three: The Wedding

So my brother and his fiance are getting married so soon! They of course are very excited and so are we, everyone will be flying from England so to say July will be a family month is rather an acurate sentiment. Not only do I get a brand new sister I get to MC the wedding which means loads of attention and talking a lot, my two favorite past times.

I also want to give shout outs to Mike A who also had a birthday these last couple of weeks, as did his sister Summer! I had so much fun celebrating with both of you, Dance Cave was crazy fun....love and cuddles to each of you.  They also go out to Brandy and my new friend Gill, absolute comedy was absolute fun, all we needed was some absolute vodka and the night would have been absolutely complete. Although those long island ice teas certainly did the trick.

And so ends Super size blog the sequal. Maybe I will end up splitting the third installment up into two so I can eak as much money out of a slightly shit series as I can...twilight anyone

Peace and Love

Meryl xx

Supersized Blog

So a lot of you out there are giving me 'mum guilt' about not writing in my blog and I would like to apologize for being gone so long! I have had a crazy couple of weeks, these allergies really bested me and the drugs they put me on make me sleep a lot. They also make me dream about huge screaming flowers that are trying to turn me purple so you know they've got to be full of something hallucinogenic. On the plus side I am feeling much better, my face has de-puffed and my eyes arn't as red as they were. I was more worried about how red the outsides of my eyes had gone, I looked like the start of one of those films where the devil tries to posses a human child, but now I am fully angelic again and itching to write about a billion different things. That is why today's blog has been super sized, I may even split it into two, oh you lucky devils never had it so good.

First I would like to talk about Where the Wild Things are. Yes I'm about six months behind, but I've tried to watch it twice on an airplane and not managed to fight the jet lag to get through it and only just got round to renting it this week. It is brilliant, it is clever and sweet and funny and heartbreaking. It makes me want to sleep in a big pile of monsters and build a nest made of twigs. It helps that the soundtrack is kick arse, I can't imagine there was more than ten minutes of film that didn't have something composed for it. It manages to deliver quite a complex storyline in a very simple way and doesn't feel the need to over explain it to you. This tiny kid goes on a huge adventure and while ruling his kingdom of monsters gains quite an adult perspective, it wasn't sickly sweet, and it wasn't overdone, it many ways it was perfect. All I really know is that I want a furry monster suit complete with ear hat as soon as possible and I shan't rest until that happens.


Second item of business, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. When you are sick you watch a lot of movies, and I was lucky that a bunch of really good ones had just come out. The Imgainarium of Doctor Parnassus is so good I don't think I'm going to return it Blockbusters. It is visually spectacular. It's like a firework display inside your brain only longer and less dangerous. The imaginarium of doctor parnassus is about climbing inside people's imaginations and the film mimics that by being a created from opening up ones mind and spilling the contents onto the page. I feel I could say a hundred more things but I am so afraid I'm going to ruin it for someone so I will just tell you to go rent it. I want to tell you to go watch it at the cinema but it's too late for the both of us - sad face

I also need to apologize to anyone I told on Saturday that I work for Chum Fm. I don't, but me and my friend Nina wanted to go see the NXNE (North By NorthEast) show that was playing at Lees Palace, and it is your fault for not correcting me when I told you to tune into 94.6. I still have to check if there are photos of us plastered all over the NXNE website, because the camera man seemed more interested in us once we told him we were media. Sometimes a girl has got to do what a girl has got to do, but I think telling people we would give them a shout-out Sunday morning may have been going a little too far. I wish I worked for Chum Fm believe me.

I also have a sad story to tell you, the Noel Fielding stand up show is sold out. That's right for three nights Noel Fielding will be performing here in Toronto, and like an idiot I tried to book too late. It certainly doesn't help that the venue is about three feet from my house, but I am going to stand outside looking sad in the rain in the hopes that someone pulls a slumdog millionaire and lets me come in for the show.

No Meryl Blog would be complete if I didn't talk about Doctor Who and this weekend was the finale episode of the series. It was both sad and deeply unsettling. Doctor Who is known for scaring people all over the Globe but Saturday nights episode was scary in a whole different way. It took me a long time to re-settle and now I am desperate for the new series to begin. If any of you fools are still unaware of Doctor Who I would suggest now is a good time to go get caught up. Find someone who has the box set, or see if you can find it online, hell, steal it from somebody if you have to, you are missing out.

Finally, probably, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Theme Park just opened in Orlando, Lainey Gossip covered the whole event and her review is envy making. Check it out here. If you didn't want to be a wizard before then you will now.

Ok proper finally. The world cup. I am, of course, supporting England but they are making this a very difficult task. Two draws, one at 0-0 and one to the US?!!? I'm not going to have a go at Greene because the poor guy is probably still having a little cry, but I will share with you a joke I heard on Mock the week. One comedian said that Greene was so distraught about letting in the ball that he put his head in his hands, and then he dropped it. Yeah harsh, but not as bad as it will probably be if England don't pick it up in the next couple games. I attached a picture of my puppy wearing his England shirt during the game, unfortunatly this didn't seem to help out the players. Come on boys, three lions and all that.

So I hope this slightly longer blog makes up for my absence these last couple weeks, I will try and go back to blogging everyday but these allergies are certainly keeping me down, my eyes keep swelling up so looking at the screen isn't so easy. If it makes you feel any better I'm going to have to go for allergy testing where they will stick needles all over my back, I will take each needle for a day I didn't blog...oh being a martyr is hard job, I need some lemonade asap.

Hope you are all well. Unless you are a flower in which case you can wither and die....

kisses Meryl

Allergies

So normally when I don't post an entry I come up with a really exciting story as to why I was unable to get to the computer but today I have a real life, bonafied, air-tight, can't be argued with excuse. My face blew up. So not in a don't shake the bag full of C4 kind of way but in the oh my god I'm allergic to flowers kind of way.

I got out of bed and thought I must be really sleepy because my eyes were all small, but when I went and looked in the bathroom mirror I got a bit of shock because it looked like a giant had got hold of my head and was using his really big thumbs to squish my face into itself. I actually looked a little like a puffer fish, my cheeks went all large and my eyes went small and my lips were all sticking out like Angelina Jolies.

I feel a lot better today, but my eyes are still puffy and swollen. I'm so full of anti-histamine that I've gone a little do-lally demonstrated perfectly when I got angry at the women in shoppers for charging me for a plastic bag when I had put all my medicine straight into my purse. My friend Grace informed me that I had asked for a bag, but I was insistant that I hadn't. Anyway I felt really stupid when I looked in my purse and saw all my medicine sitting inside a plastic bag, meaning I had both asked and received the bag in quesiton.

Being sick sucks, and being sick at work is even worse. I don't have enough money to keep taking time off work, plus yesterday I sat around in my pajamas feeling sorry for myself.  If i'd had a banana leaf I would have fanned myself sighing. So it is probably best I get out of there before I turn melancholy.

On the plus side someone put new episodes of the supersizers up on youtube, so yesterday was a bit of marathon day for that! Silver lining moment :) Hope thursday is going well for you all!

Meryl xx

CD Sad Face

So I recently watched a film called Zeitgeist which is really worth a watch, but I'm not going to say much about it in this blog today. Basically the film got me thinking about inaccuracies in religion and how in essence when massive periods of time elapse these inaccuracies are as hard to disprove as proving something that is true.  Zeitgeist devotes most of the first half of the movie suggesting that we have formed literal religions based of figurative myths. For example instead of Jesus being the sun of god he is actually representative of the Sun, a vital source of energy for the earth, and instead of him being executed on a cross and being resurrected three days later this is a description of a change between the summer solstice and the winter solstice whereby the sun seems to stay very close to the horizon or 'dies' for three days before it moves back up into the sky.

What boggled my mind was this idea that time is a very dangerous thing, the erosion of correct information leaves us with false information becoming fact and standing hard even if we are shown evidence to the contrary. The small relief that allowed me to maintain calm was that we as a society have managed to find a way to store information both efficiently and for thousands of years. Well so I thought.

This is where the title CD sad face came from, I recently read a study that strongly suggested that CDs are not going to store data for the thousands of years promised, in fact the average life span of a reasonably well protected CD was five to ten years and un-protected CD's were averaging a year. Now of course manufacturers everywhere got a little hot and bothered about the whole thing and said that this was only the cheaper brands, but further reasearch has suggested the brand-name writable CDs have just the same problem.

The Solution: The only one they seemed happy to support was that one should continually copy data onto new CDs every couple of years. Sound familiar? Somehow I can't seem to see how we are supposed to keep a well documented commentary of what's going on in today's world if we can't find a sufficient way of ensuring that information reaches the future untouched or unchanged. Maybe I've gone a little conspiracy theory on this one and I should just relax, but it would be interesting to see what the future is like if everyone in it has a detailed understand of the past, they do say one must learn from their mistakes right?

I have a fail safe, which I'm sure you are highly relieved to hear. I'm going to start carving things into gold. Apparently it is highly insulating, it lasts a long time and it will always remain valuable. Of course I have to worry that it will melt once global warming kicks in, and that it will be very expensive to procure, oh and it is really heavy and hard to inscribe. Ok so maybe not gold, I'll keep working on it.

Until then, watch the movie, it's all eye opening and what not. Plus it's free click here - yes I just embedded a link, I feel like a butterfly that just got out of its chrysalis.

xxx m xxx