Apocalypse Now? Darn. I'm not quite prepared....

You know, I consider myself relatively prepared for an apocalypse. Mentally, that is. And by mentally, I mean entirely in the warped world that exists just in my mind.

In real life? Eh.... not so much. I once spent a blackout trying to find candles. Only to realize hours later—after the lights had come back on, of course—that they were in a box that I used to prop up my computer screen. Because, naturally, that's where they were the most useful. Candles and computer screens go together like two peas in a not-at-all-useful pod. That is, sadly, a true story.

So I could do with a bit more practical emergency preparation in the real world, but mentally—WOAH! I could not be more prepared. This is a topic I discuss with some of my penpals quite a bit. And with every letter, we keep upping the ante. First it was zombies, robots, and aliens, now we're constructing rock solid plans against mannequin takeovers, gnome attacks, unicorn rampages, and total war against deer wearing argyle sweaters (not to be confused with deer wearing checkered sweaters—totally different game plan).

Really, there's no shortage of things that could be viewed as threatening if you think about it hard enough (and are slightly unhinged enough). Are you having a cup of tea as you read this? Oh, did that mug just move a teensy weensy bit closer to you?!!!! Who knows anymore? But I'd prepare a plan against a mug uprising Just. In. Case......You just never know when you might fall into a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.

And if the apocalypse comes, beep me. I'll be there with candles...just as soon as I find them.

Incoming:

Mix CD musical goodness from Holly

A long overdue letter from my dearest Jinnee (yeah, I said "long overdue." DEAL WITH IT. Just kidding, please still love me....)

Postcard fun from my neurotic sidekick Julie (I'm her stationery sidekick. Friendship is about acknowledging each other's strengths)

Halloween in an envelope from Cheryl, the best Scottish lass I know

This was a letter from Elizabeth. Her first letter to me went missing, so I was quite excited when her second letter actually arrived. Except when I opened the envelope, this was inside:

Yup, that's nadda. Somewhere between Mexico and here, the letter slipped its envelope noose and ran for freedom. Has anyone else ever recieved an empty envelope? It amazes me how I can have such bad luck with the same penpal!

Uncustomary mail

A letter from Vanesa in Spain

A letter from Kendra

An awesome bat card from Katri

A letter from (in my opinion) the best 10-year-old girl in the world (AKA my niece). Though, should I be concerned that she's still drawing monsters eating things? If we were in a horror movie, this would be #13 on the list of "Common horror tropes that indicate the shit is about to hit the fan."

A letter from Angelica in Sweden

Outgoing:

A doozy of a long letter going to Julie. I *still* don't think my hand has recovered. I hope Julie appreciates that I lost at least 12.67 days of lifetime functionality from my wrist while writing her letter.

Then yet another doozy of a long letter. This time to Stupendous Kay.

And that's it from me. It just keeps snowing where I am and I think I'm slowly freezing to death in small increments. If one of my future posts abruptly ends, don't be alarmed. My fingers probably just froze and broke off.

I hope you all had a great mail week too. See you next week.

The blank and the blank!

I spent the majority of this week discovering new bands and getting new music. However, I kept running into the same problem after I uploaded the albums to my ipod:

It's impossible to differentiate between bands because their names are so freaking similar! They usually follow one of the following formats:

1) The ________
2) ______ and the ________
3) ______ (animal) or (animal) _______
4) The _____  _____  ______ [3 words that are usually totally unrelated, like The Thor Baking Box]
5) Some variation of 1, 2, 3 or/and 4

It’s like bands use the same algorithm when coming up with their name. How am I supposed to tell the difference between the Knee Kicking Hares and the Shin Hitting Rabbits?! Potato Helicopters vs the Starchy Planes?

So rather than spend too much time thinking about it, I’ll just be over here listening to Deerhunter. Or is it Deerhoof? Maybe it’s Deer Tick? No, I’m sure it’s The Dear Hunter. Perhaps it's the Dear & The Departed? I DON’T EVEN KNOW ANYMORE. Maybe, perhaps, possibly there's a woodland creature somewhere in the name....

What were you listening to this week? Using the above formats, what would you name your band? I’m a member of The Hulk Scone Rectangle, the musical rivals of The Thor Baking Box (TBB). Ooooohhh, game on TBB. Game on.

Incoming:

A rather slow mail week again. My mailbox is starving people! STARVING! Just kidding, that fatbox could use a diet. I'm thinking no carbs from now on—those sparkles from Kay's letter last week practically caused it to fall into a sugar coma. No, mailbox! A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. You'll regret it. And I am not holding your hand while you sob into a tub of ice cream again.

A postcard from Julie. I'm SO glad Julie knows what our friendship is about because if I have to put in effort, I just... zzzzzzzz. Bah.

A letter from Vanessa in Illinois

A letter from Natasha in New Mexico

A letter from Ginger in Washington

A letter from Michelle in South Carolina

Outgoing:

A letter to Holly in Texas

Just the one outgoing this week, but will you check that out?! That is a properly oriented moustache. Turns out you can teach a weirdo new tricks. YAY!

If you have any music recommendations, let me know! I'm happy to add more artists to my confusing-band-names-that-I'll-totally-mix-up list.

I hope you all have a great week!

The secret ingredient sure ain't love....!

It started snowing this week where I am. I’m usually a fan of cool fall weather because it’s perfect tea and hoodie weather (I refer to it as “Goldilocks” weather—not too cold and not too warm), but this is ridiculous. CURSE YOU CANADIAN WEATHER.

I decided to stay warm by keeping my oven practically permanently on (it doubles as a radiator, doesn’t it?) and baking up a storm. I’m trying to make the perfect scone, but I’m running into a number of problems. The main being that I suck at baking. I don’t know how to overcome this particular problem…

I know that baking is supposed to be this relaxing, therapeutic activity. But when I set off the smoke alarm with my 2nd try at scones, and the stupid alarm was emitting this “EEEEEEIIII” that I’m sure they could hear all the way in Florida, I was thinking: “I AM NOT FRAKKING RELAXED.” Unless, of course, “relaxed” means that you’re ready to attack your oven and/or smoke alarm with an axe; if so, then I was VERY relaxed. I was a mother flipping boatload of RELAXED. Frankie wouldn't even need to say anything, I would already be there.

It doesn’t help that I always seem to run into the same problem when mixing the wet and dry ingredients together. Either there is too much dry stuff and I can’t get it to mix with what’s left of the clumpy wet stuff (WOAH! Wet stuff and dry stuff? Tone down the descriptive terms there Laura), or it’s supposed to be the consistency of actual dough, but it looks like my dough is suffering from leprosy (ie: lumpy and falling apart). When this happens, I get even more “relaxed!” If I was any more “relaxed,” I’d probably die.

I should just stick to mail. I’m not bad at mail.

Incoming:

This was such a great mail week! I seriously have the best penpals.

First up is the totally kooky and much beloved Julie:

SQUIRREL!!! This postcard came with nuts and love. The love I can handle, but the nuts! WOAH! Warn a gal before you throw nuts at her (and this sentence took a weird turn so I'm just going to move on.... SQUIRREL!).

Then came Julie's rather large envelope that contained total awesomeness like Star Wars stickers, sushi (!!!) post-its, and a tea postcard.

And just when I thought that it had maxed out on its awesome quotient, I noticed the velociraptor-iffic stamps it came with.

So. Many. Superhero. Stamps. I. Can't. Function.

Is it considered certifiable if a person wants to roll around in a bed of superhero stamps? It is?! Oh.........

Then came a letter from Kay! I love letters from Kay. Especially when they come with CDs containing things that are both fun and educational, as well as cards decorated with glitter that I'll probably be wearing in my eyebrows all week long. Have you noticed that letters containing glitter are the gifts that keep giving? I'm constantly finding it everywhere for weeks. It's like a disco ball exploded in my kitchen.

Last but not least, a TARDIS letter from Sarah! Sarah made me a Robot/Sci-Fi mix CD that is pretty awesome. The first track goes "Doctor Who, Doctor Whooooo! Doctor Who-oh, The Tardis...." I've uploaded the CD under the title: Robot Tunes. Perfect for those times when I'm feeling especially mechanical (usually M, W, F between the hours of 1:27 pm and 3:52 pm).

Outgoing:

Shit. I just realized that I'm STILL putting my moustaches upside down. Why brain, WHY?!! Maybe I should stop using moustaches and just go with circles. There is a zero percent margin for error there.

A letter for the jovial Jona

A letter for kickass Katri

A letter for bright Beto

And that's it from me folks. I hope your adventures in weather and baking were much more fruitful than mine this week. Have a great week everyone.

Hannibal Le(c)t-ter!

I went from no thoughts last week—big thanks to Katri who was kind enough to lend me her thoughts free of charge (what a gem!)—to tons of random thoughts about mail. Here are a few of them:

1)    Why are there so many envelopes in letter sets? For example, in a 16-20 page letter set, I might get a dozen envelopes. But I usually write 6-12 page letters so that leaves me with ten or so envelopes that I can never use. And trust me, I’ve tried using envelopes are replacement items for lots of things. I've learned that envelopes are rubbish when used as: face cleanser, toilet paper (holy rash-aroni), flour substitute for baking (worst muffins ever), condiments, reinforcement for forts (Fort Knox, it was not), and sound insulation.

2)    I haven’t heard from a few penpals in a while so what's an appropriate time to wait before flying to their city and waving to them from their backyard sending a “Hello Penpal! How are you?” note. Four months? Five? Six? I understand that life gets busy and I don't mind at all when penpals take a while to respond. However, it's impossible to know the difference between a) busy penpal who can't write b) missing letter and c) penpal who doesn't want to write you anymore. So I always want to send a hello note that has an ulterior motive of trying to figure out "Hey, did you get my letter? Do you still want to write?" But I'm unsure of an appropriate time to wait because I don't want my penpal to feel obligated to write asap if the case is situation A. What do you guys think? Do you ever send follow-up notes if you haven't heard from a penpal for a while?

[For the record, I completely understand if and when penpals no longer want to write me. I just ask that they let me know, instead of not writing ever again. Send me an email! Subject header: You're too creepy for me. I won't be offended.]

3) Seriously, what happens to letters that go missing? Where do they go? Is there a black hole specifically designed for letters? I write to my 10-year-old niece and recently a letter from her went missing. [As an aside, we live in the same city. I understand, kind of, when mail goes missing across countries, but the same city? C'mon Canada Post.] As a result, we went a few months without correspondence. When we started writing again, I made a joke about how maybe there was a monster who ate the missing letter. My niece responded with this drawing:

Now tell me that isn't the cutest mail-related drawing you've ever seen. So there you have it. According to my niece, letters go missing because of cannibalistic envelopes. So next time you drop an envelope in the mailbox, ask yourself this: did I just drop a hannibal cannibal envelope into an all-you-can-eat buffet?

Incoming:

Check out the way cool holographic killer whale sticker from Holly!

Outgoing:

Screw being Letter Botz #43! I should be Letter Botz NUMERO UNO because, with the exception of the mail I got this week, I caught up on my outstanding mail pile. HUZZAH! I'll have to get a bionic wrist and hand, but that's a small price to pay to get out of my August/September incoming. HUZZAH! [though, I probably shouldn't get too uppity...I realized this week I've been using most of my moustaches upside down for months. Eh. *shrugs* You win some, you're a dumbass in some others.]

And that's it from me.

Q: What does a turkey like to eat on Thanksgiving? 
A: Nothing; they are already stuffed.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving anyone!