Twenty-five things

1. I have seriously considered the following careers in the passed two years: environmental engineer, aerospace engineer, hippie, singer, actress, playwright, novelist, children’s book writer and illustrator, high-school teacher, businesswoman (store owner), daycare worker, cupcake maker, researcher, copywriter, bum, and philanthropist.

2. Those last two were heavily based on the stipulation that I win the lottery first.

3. I can’t pronounce my own name properly. It’s French, and I speak French, but I have a bit of a New Brunswick accent, and the R in my name gives me grief because I refuse to roll it. It’s easier to just tell people my name is Tuh-Rez than try to pronounce it coherently. This is probably the most embarassing thing about being me. I end up repeating my name almost every time I say it, and I say my name a lot.

4. I can type almost as fast as I think. I can’t decide if this means I type very fast or think very slow.

5. I have this unshakable belief that I can literally do anything I put my mind to. This includes becoming a world-famous singer, writing a truly marvellous novel and making out with George Clooney.

6. I coined the phrase “that’s bananas!” in the eighth grade. Within a year, the whole city was using it in context, with the same exclamation and tone. It annoyed me, mostly because no one ever gave me credit, the bastards.

7. When my sisters were little, I barely acknowledged them. I turned 20 before I developed an interesting friendship with either one of them.

8. My family is very close, and to outsiders it looks like we’ve always been, and that it’s easy. It took a lot of work to get to that point, it wasn’t always easy, and we weren’t always close.

9. My life has taken turns I did not expect, some for the better, some for the worse, but I wouldn’t change any of my decisions.

10. When I am finished with a meal, I unconsciously lick the fork clean and flip it face down to lie steady on the edge of the dinner plate. My sister pointed it out one day, and I kind of watched myself do it. It was weird.

11. I’ve never particularly enjoyed the taste of alcohol. I don’t drink often, and when it’s been a while, the first sip is always too strong. I realize how uncool this is.

12. One of the reasons I love high heels so much is that I have a long torso, but rather short legs. Heels make me look more balanced. Plus? Pretty.

13. I bite my nails when I’m anxious, nervous, or wound up. I don’t know whether a manicure will help me with that on my wedding day, which is next year. Aiiie! Wedding day!

14. I’m more nervous about buying my first car than I am about buying my first house. I’m 28 and have bought neither to date.

15. I’m not great at anything. I’m good at many, many things, I’m very good at some things, but I’m not great at anything. I think it’s more to do with the fact that I’m interested in so many different things than a lack of interest in any one particular thing.

16. The five o’clock shadow is the sexiest facial hair on a man. On a woman? Eyebrows.

17. I hate packing and loathe unpacking. Very much. The only exception? My books. I love packing and unpacking them, meeting each one with a familiar smile, mentally cataloguing them, keeping an eye out for favourites. I have only ever lost one book in a move, and I suspect that I actually lent it to someone and forgot about it.

18. For such a forgetful person, I remember numbers and decimal points with alarming accuracy. Did you know that atmospheric pressure at sea level is 101.325 kilopascals or 1 atmosphere, or 760 mm of mercury, or 14.696 pounds per square inch?
Shorthand of that last sentence: 101.325 kPa = 1 atm = 760 mm Hg = 14.696 psi.

19. I love green, but look awful in it. I have olive-toned skin. And olives are green. When I wear certain shades of green, it brings out the green undertones in my skin. So… I guess I’m saying that I’m green.

20. Sometimes I read my own blog archives to remember what I was doing years ago, and to see photographs. It’s a benefit of blogging that I didn’t realize I would enjoy so much, years later. It’s like having a diary that you make at least a little interesting.

21. Oatmeal is good, but I can only have a tiny tiny bit before my stomach rebels and goes, ewwww oaaaaaatmeal bleuuuurgh. I can’t explain this strange enjoyment and then non-tolerance.

22. I have somehow accumulated 206 email messages in my drafts folder. I’m pretty sure this is an all-time high. There is a very strong likelihood that one of those messages is for you. There is also a strong likelihood that one of those messages is for your mom.

23.  I have taken belly dancing classes and have a natural aptitude for it. I’ve decided that I was always going to be a spectacular dancer. I just never danced in any sort of structured way.

24. My hands are never clammy, never sweaty, and always lovely to hold. 

25. I wore shoes today instead of boots, because of yesterday’s gorgeous weather, and it has started snowing. I am an idiot.

Rejected

The trouble with resolving to take at least one photograph each day is that you inevitably have to make choices, because you will often take more than one photograph. For an indecisive person such as myself, this means that I go so far as to tweak several pictures in one day, and then reject many perfectly good photographs.

Reason for that being, of course, that I have resolved to take a photo each day and post that photo on that same day. It’s quite a commitment. I have several times thought, “ah, I can just use that picture I took a couple of days ago, it’ll do”, but then remembered that I want it to be daily, and fresh. Recent. In the moment.

And so, here I present to you, a smattering of photographs from just the last few days.

Today’s reject is a box:

Yesterday, I rejected myself. I don’t even know what I was doing, exactly, to generate this expression:

I also rejected my dinner:

I take a lot of photographs of food, actually. Here is my breakfast from a few days ago:

A chain fence on the way to the car, after work:

The door to the building where I work, on a particularly icy morning:

Here is a photograph of a gate between my work and the gym, taken on 22 Feb:

My path between the two, on that same day:

Another, pausing on that road:

On that same walk, during which I was so distracted that it took me fifteen minutes to meet Doug at the gym:

This was taken inside the first house we saw, when we went house hunting for the first time:

I knew from the first day I began this project that taking photographs can be a shallow, split-second decision that means nothing, taking empty photographs of empty things. Hopefully lovely, but empty. And often, that is what I do. I don’t mind.

However, I must admit that I am beginning to realize that even when you don’t put much thought in taking a photograph, it can nevertheless be a really intense thing, stirring memories and capturing a snapshot that makes you relive a whole experience.