George and our friend Perry are always working on music together. Some of you who have been around for awhile have heard some of the songs George has done. To see if they could do it, they recently took a song they had worked on and made it a video. We’d love if you’d check it out – constructive criticism is always appreciated!

Even the song itself – “Sometimes” – is something pretty new because it’s a different style than the music they usually write together. This is more of a light rap in a similar style to that song that came out way back when, “Take a Walk on the Wild Side”.

I have to tell you, this camera is awesome. It’s so much fun to be able to take shots I couldn’t before. I always enjoyed just taking pictures of the kids but it’s been a blast experimenting with things, especially the macro feature. Above are two of my necklaces. I never could have gotten it that crisp and clear before.

I’ve also gotten to be a total dork and am now taking an obscene number of self-portraits because I joined the 365 Days group over on Flickr. The objective is to post a self-portrait a day for a year. I did miss a couple of days over the holidays but I’m up to 25 shots so far. I’m trying to avoid too many straight old “here’s my face tilted slightly and a half-smile” slef-portraits because that would get boring (though I do have a couple and haven’t written them off). The challenge, really, is to try to come up with new ideas. It helps that there are many mini-challenges on the discussion section of the group where you can get good inspiration for the self-portraits.

My own 365 Days set is right here if you have some sort of interest in seeing them. Right now a bunch of us are doing a week-long challenge to photograph an interpretation of each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Naturally I did Sloth first (hee) and today I did Greed. It’s entertaining me. And if you’re taking part in 365 Days too, let me know!

I actually started using Flickr just to share a few photos from time to time. Then I realized it was silly for me to overload my hosting account by continuing to upload images here and taking up all kinds of space when I could just post them on Flick and then put them on my blog. But now I’ve gotten really interested in a lot of the different groups over there, especially ones where you can get feedback from people.

If I had realized how much of a camera fanatic I would become, I would have taken Photography back in college!

The other day, I was doing my usual browsing for at-home writing jobs, particularly of the blog variety, when I found a really great one. It involves celebrity gossip in a major way. I don’t go too crazy here in my own blog since the focus is more on parenting/momblog stuff, but the truth of the matter is that I have an embarrassingly huge interest in celebrity lives. I read the online gossip. I watch eTalk Daily, a Canadian entertainment show and I watch pop culture stuff of MuchMoreMusic (similar to MTV). I am a bit of a junkie.

So I applied, and was ecstatic to get an email today stating that out of all the applicants, I’m one of five finalists. We get to post four times in the next week, showing off what we’ve got as far as celeb gossip is concerned, and then they’ll make a decision as to who they want to hire.

I’m really excited and hopeful. I think it would be a lot of fun and a good outlet for my Hollywood obsession. Also, it justifies the amount of otherwise useless celebrity information that I keep track of.

Please drop by Pop Crunch and check them out. My first post is already up and I’m a little giddy that it’s about everyone’s favorite trainwreck, Britney and K-Fed. Don’t be shy either, go ahead and comment if you’d like! And wish me luck!

Ordinarily, I’m not one to complain about a lack of cold or snow. I’m not a fan of winter in any way. However, the fact that Montreal currently looks the way it does is not even close to normal for the month of January. I could swear that it’s April. It’s currently 7C outside, and going up to 10C later today. Last night, George and I watched a movie and we actually opened the sliding doors because even though the heat has been off for days, it was too hot in our living room. I put Breanna in her lightest long-sleeved/footed pajamas because her fleece pajamas were making her sweat.

And when I took the kids for a walk the day before yesterday, it looked like this in our courtyard:

And I have never seen the streets of our neighborhood look this bare at this time of year:

It’s insane, really. And there are so many people who are all, “Oh wow, this weather is GREAT, yay!” I would be lying if I didn’t admit that it’s handy to be able to just put jackets on the kids instead of snowsuits; also, generally in January we turn into hermits because of wind chill factors that cause frostbite in ten minutes of exposure so yeah, hooray for getting out more often and more easily. Still, it’s hard to be excited about the weather when it’s completely unnatural and being caused by global warming. I’m sure Al Gore is freaking right the hell out, especially after the ice shelf BROKE OFF up north and went drifting merrily along. Ice shelves are not supposed to just snap off and float around like an ice cube in a fruity drink on a hot day.

At this point, as much as I dislike winter, I would be really relieved if temperatures dropped below freezing and nature dumped a few feet of snow on us.

I wonder when, if ever, I will stop freaking out every time I get pains in my right side. Seriously. Ever since one of my cousins had appendicitis when we were kids I’ve been incredibly paranoid about it. It’s weird because I’m not much of a hypochondriac about many things but with my appendix I am. I always said that if I ever needed surgery for something unrelated in that general area, I would bribe the surgeon to take my appendix out while in there anyway.

The worst part is that I can never actually remember where it is, so I always end up going, “Ow. Ow, oh my GOD, ow! Shit. Is that where my appendix is? I forget!” This is why the Internet is a wonderful thing, because I can now look it up thanks to Dr. Google and I can stop calling my mother and hysterically shrieking, “Is the appendix on the left or the right?!” Which is good because my mother’s response to my hysteria is usually, “Can you do jumping jacks? Yes? Then it’s not appendicitis.”

My right side hurts. A lot. I’ve looked at five different medical sites to memorize the symptoms. And yet I guarantee you that a week from now I’d still forget that it’s on the right.

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Breanna has seen me blow dry my hair enough that she knows exactly what to do with one. Hayley’s toy hair dryer for her vanity is battery operated with a very soft fan (even if you jam a finger in there, it doesn’t hurt, I tested) and Breanna loves when I turn it on and pretend to dry her hair. Then she grabbed it and started “drying” Hayley’s hair too. It’s like Beauty School in that room.

(And now I can’t for the life of me get “Beauty School Dropout” out of my head. What? You too? You’re welcome.)

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Today I remembered that I was supposed to have something published in December so I went to look. It’s there. And it was exciting to see my writing there with a byline and all. It would have been even more exciting if it hadn’t been edited so much, but eh. I used to be an editor once upon a lifetime in college, so I know how it goes. Still, phooey. The original one I wrote here was much better, in my really-not-so-humble opinion.

But published again! Yay!

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I’ve been having fun playing with the macro feature on my camera. Being able to do macro shots was something I always wanted to be able to do and never could. Aside from the fact that I clearly have no concept of what two inches means (I often end up being a little too close), I’m slowly getting better and learning.

The drawback is that when I see the pictures, I tend to have an overwhelming urge to lick my screen since food is great fun with the macro setting.

(Those are the strawberries on the cake we had at our friends’ house on New Year’s Eve. It was almost as good as the turkey.)

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Writing a post every single day in November AND December short circuited my brain. It took a lot of energy to think up this post. Good night.