Selfish

I am trying not to be selfish.
You'd think that if you are aware it would be an easy thing to do. You'd be wrong. Such as simple thing as wanting to prove something to my husband--when he is not listening to me even thou my way is obviously the right way--and causing a huge argument only happens because I am selfish. Wanting to prove me right, him wrong, win the argument. It puts my wants and needs first--even if he is monumentally wrong. I was being selfish.
And what about when the dog needs to go out for a kaka, and we are both comfortable, and maybe tired on the couch. I quickly get into to bed and feign sleep. Selfish.
Sometimes when I serve dinner, I serve myself the better slice of meat!
I cater to myself and think I am entitled to the things I need. I am number one, right? Got to look after me. Hmm. Hard to have a good loving relationship with people if you think that way.
I wage a war against my own selfishness. Wish me luck:)!

Yeah, I write


Like many writers, I’ve been writing since I was a kid. It’s not my first passion: I prefer to draw. I use to have a sketchbook filled with loose pieces of paper I doodled my princesses on. Yes princesses, yes I was that girl. Fascinated by the puffy dresses--interestingly I never imagined myself in one as a bride—flowing hair and a sparkly bling bling crown. There always was a prince and a white stallion. Except I rode the stallion. The prince just gave me pie-eyed looks. That’s as far as that fantasy went. My mom thought it was funny as hell that I wanted to be a ‘pincess’ but couldn’t wipe my nose. Kirsten Dunst as ‘Marie Antoinette’ is my fave queen. Only because of her style and tendency to escape into daydreams, not because she couldn’t reign to save her life.
But writing is much harder then twirling my pencil on paper creating intricate underskirts. But I still tried. I had visions of a glamorous life as a writer, getting paid disgusting amounts of money, being famous. Ehm…ya I know, with the exception of King and Rowling, it ain’t like that. Most writers get paid peanuts for giving birth to exquisite tales that cost them several months’ maybe years of their life and who knows what size of their soul.
So, I wrote little tales about horses, teenage girl angst and what not, even squeezed out couple of poems. Later in life I wrote the first two chapters of the novel that was going to make me fat cake. I wrote a children’s tale about a boy and the moon, starring my darling three-year old. And that was it.
Years later I began to keep a journal. I know what you’re thinking. What?! You haven’t kept a diary all your life, you writer wanna-be?? No, I did not. I thought it the most boring exercise. Dear diary…am I actually talking to a notepad? Ya, no. But this was different. I got sick. It seems I buried some stuff and it was rattling around in my skull making a mess. It was suggested to me that I write it out. To get at the bottom of it. And I did. But it was horrid stuff. It had no beginning, no Dear Diary, just mental diarrhea of ugly emotions too bloody to share with a human being. I have many thick books of this stuff. I never go back and reread, I think I should probably burn it. You know just in case I get famous and my estate decides to publish it post-mortem. But it worked. And I began to emerge from this a little healthier and little bit more realistic. I went back to school so I could learn how to write. For real. And I began to write stuff and even got published. Some people even liked it.
And so yeah, I write.

LOCK, STOCK AND I LOVE YOU DEAR WATSON

Sherlock Holmes, a new movie by Guy Ritchie, director of such classics as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, RocknRolla and Snatch, finally sees this British-born talent foray into the elusive land of Hollywood blockbusters. Starring Robert Downey, Jr. (Iron man, Tropic Thunder) as Sherlock Holmes, Jude Law (Cold Mountain, The Talented Mr. Ripley) as Dr. Watson, and Canada’s own Rachel McAdams (The Time Travelers Wife, The Notebook) as the beautiful-but-wicked Irene Adler, the film delivers an entertaining and punchy variant of the Arthur Conan Doyle classic. The spectacular depictions of Doyle’s characters by the high-calibre cast earned the film several Golden Globe nominations and consequent awards.
Set in Victorian London, the movie opens as Holmes lays out a plan to neutralize a guard. He uses his deductive reasoning to foresee his adversary’s moves and disarm him accordingly in mere seconds. The effective and entertaining scene sets the tone for this version of the beloved sleuth’s adventures. Holmes and Watson rush to stop the sacrifice of a young woman and entangle themselves in the devious plans of the murderous Blackwood (Mark Strong). The game’s afoot dear Watson.
The delicious Downey (Golden Globe award for best actor) might as well be playing himself. Portraying a moody, wide-eyed, calculating genius, emotionally attached to his sidekick Watson, he seems to be lost and bored by the world he is forced to endure. When between stimulating cases, Holmes tends to fall into depressions accompanied by drug use, earning Watson’s disapproval. He is seemingly disorganized and concurrently brilliant, conducting experiments on the house dog and sabotaging Watson’s engagement to the gracious Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly). Watson is exasperated by Holmes’ behaviour, but despite himself enjoys their pursuits. Holmes’ love interest Irene Adler’s confident handling of the detective, and his ensuing dubious demeanour, is spectacular. She is ‘The woman’, only woman Conan Doyle’s’ Holmes refers to in this way, and his intellectual equal. But it seems that Holmes’ attention is on wooing Watson. At times Downey’s doleful eyes seem filled with forlorn adoration for the good doctor. The emotionally charged relationships between the three main characters offer meaty scenes.
However, Conan Doyle fans might be dismayed by the marketing of this particular adaptation. The hype surrounding the movie has the smell of a money-making Hollywood formula, and the film trailers accede, but they can be assured that Downey’s vision hits as close to Doyle’s character as possible. Where the movie’s flaws lay is in the plot and Ritchie’s flair for violence.
Sherlock Holmes is captivating, entertaining and as close to a Hollywood megahit as Ritchie has yet ventured. The film’s beautiful cinematography shows 19th century London in all its grit. There is a sense of seeing the real London, dirty and busy, yet the colours are beautiful and striking. The score is distinctive, at times evoking the Wild West, others Russian gypsy violins. Dialogue is smart and engaging, the characters interesting and well-developed, and the chemistry between Downey and Law is positively sparkling. Yet viewers will find themselves drifting at times, losing the thread to the plot. Ritchie’s style is predictable—he seems unable to leave his days of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and RocknRolla behind. Fight scenes drag on forever. One in particular takes the viewer from a laboratory all the way to London’s shipyard where a surprisingly polite giant—the stereotypes abound—is so set on eliminating Holmes, he destroys an entire ship. The sequence is so long, it bores. The whole plot suffers from this weakness. Although many elements in the movie are borrowed from Conan Doyle’s stories, this tale is feeble and humdrum. The age-old scenario where the bad guy tries to take over the world, leaving bodies and destruction in his wake and distracting the good guy by forcing him to save his damsel-in-distress, has been done. Viewers are treated to a far-too-long scene where Blackwood attempts to diabolically dispose of Adler, Watson and Holmes in a predictable location—a slaughterhouse. There is nothing captivating about this story; it only appears to be an excuse to demonstrate Ritchie’s Tarantino-esque bloodlust and his ambition to make Tinseltown’s A list.
With Sherlock Holmes 2 in the making and the great Brad Pitt set to portray Professor Moriarty, let’s hope this particular defect gets corrected.

Cabbage Soup Recipe

Cabbage Soup Recipe

BeautyMark: Canada’s Premier Beauty Boutique for Makeup, Skincare, Fashion and so much more.

BeautyMark: Canada’s Premier Beauty Boutique for Makeup, Skincare, Fashion and so much more.

Weather Forecast: Maple Ridge, British Columbia - The Weather Network#ltermfx#ltermfx

Weather Forecast: Maple Ridge, British Columbia - The Weather Network#ltermfx#ltermfx

What's It Like to Win a Freakin' Condo

A local radio station held the kind of contest that makes you listen to them 24/7. They were giving away 200 keys, one of which would (sort of) eventually open a door to a Vancouver condo decked out with a Mac station, a home entertainment system, a really expensive BBQ and a Harley, all worth a whopping $350,000. The biggest radio give away 'ever', they said. Might be right, I never checked.
To have a chance at winning a key you had to sign up for the radio's online club, fill out a form, checking of slots of time when you might be listening and then wait for them to say your name during one of those times. Then you phone the radio station within an allotted time ( 10 minutes and 10 seconds) to win one of the keys.
This was our way out of the economic slump (dump). My husband immediately signed up, made me do it as well, spread portable radios throughout the house and instructed us all to listen at all times. And now we all waited with bated breath for one of our names to be called. After all this was destiny. We would win this condo.
We dreamt of the bike, the good times we will have with the BBQ and what would we do with the condo, once it was ours. Obviously, we would rent it out for the Olympics and make unnatural amount of money. Then we would simply rent it out to tourist (after all it was fully furnished), and use it ourselves during visits to the city.
I daydreamed about the furniture:would I like it, could I use it? I daydreamed about the sophistication of owning a city apartment. Aah, it was meant to be.
First 100 keys was given away, but none to us.
Did we miss it? Did they say our name and we due to some bodily function missed it? Doubt began to nag me.
130 keys gone.
Oh well, I began to argued with myself, maybe it really was not destiny and I began to slack in my condo-winning efforts. But my husband kept listening. (Driving me crazy was more accurate).
150 keys gone.
OK, that's it I am not listening anymore, this is b&*($%%t! And I am really getting sick of this m$%^&&**^%#%^g music!
180 keys.
I stopped paying attention. What contest?
"Honey!" the sound seeped up from the kitchen, bit strangled, somewhat hard to hear. But I knew. They called his name. They will give him a 189th m$%^&#$%^&*g key. If he manages to dial the phone. On a fourth try my husband got through ( I got through).
It truly was a glorious day in our house. It was destiny! Now, we just had to wait for the rest of unlucky-won't-get-you-a-freakin'-condo keys to be given away. 11 more keys to go.
And then...
500 hundred of enthralled key holders and their loved ones gathered on a wet Friday to finally realize their dream. The radio station thought up a wicked plan to make sure the first contestant didn't open the condo door and ruin the show scheduled to air for the entire afternoon. All would pick a key off a wall and one by one they would attempt to unlock a door leading to the 'coffee room'. Only lucky 50 would get in. And I mean lucky, because it was freakin' cold outside. These victors would then repeat the entire production with the hopes that 15 of them would unlock the door to the 'VIP room'. Out of these lucky chumps, two would emerge as finalists with the chance to open one of the three last doors:the condo door, the one that wins it all.
But, wait it does not end there, don't go home yet. You have the chance to win until the last freakin' minute.
The lucky key holders that got weeded out and joined the unlucky key holders twittering under the sopping tarps. They all hoped until the last minute (all 3 hours worth of wet minutes) that their name would be the last name called to join the two finalist and possibly be the one to open the winning door. If they could hold the key in their water logged fingers, that is.
A wicked plan indeed.
We did not pick a lucky key that advanced us into the cozy 'coffee room'. We did not get the chance to pick the key for the 'VIP room' either. Nor did we get to be one of the two finalists.But, really, did I want to win a key to a lukewarm room or the winning key to the resplendent condo? I was willing to suffer for it. I believed. We tottered under the tarps, positive and smiley, socializing with the rest of the hopefuls. For 3 hours.
Then, the moment came for the third finalist to be called. I knew this was our moment.
"Julia something or other from White Rock, come on down!"
What?? That's not us! They didn't pick us, we didn't win, it wasn't destiny.
So, what do you wanna know, I am sopping wet, can't feel my toes and I don't know what its like to win a freakin condo!