What a Woman!

Alright, y'all need to watch this video with Mississauga (it's right next to Toronto) mayor Hazel McCallion. She's 88 years old and she's been mayor since 1978. 1978!! That's longer than my parents have been married! It's 7 years longer than I've been alive! The woman is incredible! I hope I'm still even half as active as she is when I'm her age. Check out the video:

What I've Been Up To

I've been MIA all week, it's been a busy week and I've been sick with a cold. Here's a bit of an update:

• Mom called on Monday to let me know that she just found out that her surgery (originally scheduled for Monday March 2nd) had been bumped back a week. I was disgruntled because I had booked time off of work to go home this weekend and spend the week with her to help out. Also, I think we were all a little bummed because we just want to get this over with. This surgery will take out her ostomy and hook her bowels back up properly, which means it's the end of our journey with cancer. I know, it hasn't even been a year yet and we're lucky it's gone as fast and as well as it has... but we're all just ready to get everything back to normal and move on with our lives. But we knew it would likely happen, and hopefully the fact that Mom's surgery was bumped means that someone else just starting their journey with cancer treatment can get theirs over with as fast as possible.
  
• My sister seems to be having a fantastic time in Australia, and I am super jealous. Since she left New Zealand and arrived in Australia, she's been snorkeling and scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef, in a rain forest, and surfing and kayaking on the ocean. In other news, I want to go on vacation SO badly.
• The Dave Matthews Band announced more tour dates - INCLUDING TORONTO! So on March 14th I will be buying tickets to go see them at the Molson Amphitheater on June 9th. SO exciting! Also, they announced the title of their new album: Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King - which is set to come out June 2nd!
• In other music news, I am going to see Craig Cardiff next weekend in Guelph! And tickets were only $10!! I've wanted to see this guy for years! Of course, going with the camp ladies should make it awesome!
• My friend signed up for a meat pie eating contest at a pub a few weeks ago, and the contest was last night. I went as her coach/cheering section and we were SO into it, complete with smack talking the other contestant we knew, pre-contest stretching, and, of course, costumes! There were 2 heats of 5 people, and the top two from each heat went into the finals, oh, yeah, and you couldn't use your hands (a nice bit of info we found out right before the contest). No one else had costumes. My friend actually got 3rd place, and most of her competetors were much larger guys! I was SO impressed! Here we are getting pumped up - check out the awesome shirts that she thought up and I made:

Alright, that's my update for now. I'll keep you posted! (haha I thought that was a funny pun!)

Oscar Night Faves

If you follow me on Twitter (it's @ewalker9), you know I spent my evening watching the Oscars. I missed the first bit because I was on Skype with my Mom, and I hear the opening was great, as were Tina Fey and Steve Martin. I loved the new format, where for the major awards, past winners announced the nominees. I found it so much more personal, and it definitely made me teary on a few occasions (Best Actress, anybody?). Having only seen a few of the movies in the awards this year (only Mamma Mia and Benjamin Button I do believe), I wasn't hardcore rooting for anyone. However, Kate Winslet winning Best Actress made me really happy because I really like her. And how adorable was her speech?? Getting her Dad to whistle made me so happy!! And acknowleding Meryl Streep's greatness in her speech was so good. Also, Heath Ledger's family accepting the award and celebrating him instead of mourning him was great!
Now, in pictoral form, here are the people and outfits that made me most happy tonight:

John Legend. I freaking love this guy. His voice is beautiful, I kind of wished his performance could have been by itself, he was really stunning with the Peter Gabriel song. And check out his suit! A little retro, a whole lot of hot.


Oh Brad. I'm not a fan of the facial hair, I must admit, but otherwise you are a good lookin' fella. I loved you in Benjamin Button (I meant to post about it, but forgot, maybe I'll do that soon). I think the fact that we can see you getting wrinkles only make you hotter - you've gone from pretty boy to distinguished man and I like it.


RPattz!! I was crazy happy to see you on the red carpet, and then you presented and I turned into a squealy fangirl. And when they did a close up on Mickey Rourke during Best Actor, I saw you over his shoulder, which made the Mickey close up more than bearable. Most importantly, you hair doesn't look like it could eat me or like it contains small forest animals, I like it.


Taraji P. Henson was amazing in Benjamin Button and is super cute in all of her interviews. She looked stunning in that beautiful dress. I would totally consider a dress like that for a wedding dress, I love that classic shape and the un-traditional material!


I have a giant girl crush on Natalie Portman. She is just so freaking cool. She was hilarious with Ben Stiller, and the dress is classically beautiful!


I know it's been on some worst dressed lists, and I know many people (myself included) are not Miley Cyrus' biggest fans, but I freaking love this dress! She looks so grown up in it, and it gives a beautiful silhouette. I just think the dress is gorgeous!


Kate Winslet... another of my girl crushes. I'm so glad she won! I wasn't certain about this dress at first, but the more I saw it, the more I liked it. It suits her perfectly! I usually don't like one-shoulder dresses because it makes your boobs look uneven, but this one works well. I like the a-symmetry and the combination of the gunmetal grey and lace. Way to go, Kate!


And finally, Anne Hathaway. I wasn't sure about this dress at first either, mostly due to the giant gap in the top of it, but it also grew on me. I love how sparkly it is and I love the colour, a daring one for someone so pale (like myself). She looks beautiful, and her expressions during the speeches were adorable, she was so excited and invested, made me happy!

So there we go, those aspects of the Oscars made me the most happy this evening. If you want my other thoughts as it happened, go follow me (@ewalker9) on Twitter. Happy Oscar Night, everyone!

The Letter N

Lindsay over at Adventures of a Book Thief made a list of 10 things she liked that start with the letter m, and gave me the letter n for mine.
Leave a comment if you want me to give you a random letter for a meme of your own!


1- Night - I am almost entirely nocturnal if given the option, I would much rather sleep all day and stay up all night.
2- Neverland - Not the Michael Jackson place. Peter Pan is one of my favourite books ever, and the newer live version of it is one of my favourite movies. I would love to live in Neverland with the pirates and mermaids and Indians, and never have to grow up.
3- Nosferatu - Basically synonymous with "vampire". I have had a healthy obsession with vampires for years now, much before the Twilight Saga came out, I read Companions in the Night and Dracula and dreamed of running with the vampires.
4- North - I live in the Great White North, and I really do like it here, though I am not technically all that nothern, as I was born about an hour away from Canada's Southernmost Point (Point Pelee and Pelee Island, in case you were wondering), so technically I have spent most of my life more south than most of Canada and some of the US.
5- Narwhal - What a freaking cool animal. It's got a freaking unicorn horn, do I need to say more?
6- Ned from Pushing Daisies - He's completely adorable! Ned could bring me back from the dead and solve mysteries with me any day.
7- North by Northwest - A Hitchcock classic with Cary Grant. Action packed and full of lines such as: "You're a big girl in all the right places", you can't go wrong.
8- Nano - As in, my iPod 3G Nano. I rarely go anywhere without it. It gets me through my hour commutes to and from work.
9- Nerds - The candies! I especially love the green and yellow ones, in sour and normal.
10- Number 36 - The Dave Matthews Band song. Here, Wikipedia tells us a bit about it's history:

Four days after his assassination, the rock group Dave Matthews Band (whose lead singer and guitarist, >Dave Matthews, is from South Africa) began playing a song, #36, to honour Hani. A live favorite for years, the music evolved into the basic foundation of the 2001 single, Everyday. The Introduction to the popular hit "Everyday" starts with the crowd singing "Honey, Honey, come and dance with me", and the crowd and band occasionally use the reprise as an outro to the song as well. (It was originally written as "Hani, Hani, come and dance with me," but Matthews believed the song to be too cheery with those lyrics, so he changed it.)

Here you can watch it:

2010 Mascots, For Your Viewing Pleasure

Being a Canadian, I got excited for the 2010 Olympics pretty quickly. It's hard not to be, every other commercial on Canadian TV seems to be about them. It's happening on the other side of the country, so I certainly won't see any of it live, but I still love that it's happening here.
And have you seen the mascots? They are freaking adorable!


There is Miga the sea bear, which is apparently part bear and part killer whale.
Quatchi is a Sasquatch. And it looks like he has an inukshuk tattoo - my cousin has one of those.
And finally, Sumi, an animal spirit, and apparently he wears the hat of the orca whale, flies with the wings of the mighty thunderbird and runs on the strong furry legs of the black bear.
Intense, I know.
And, in case you saw this and wondered "What mascot am I most like?", you can find out the answer here. I am most like Sumi, which I am pleased with.

My Secret Identity

You can go make your own over at The Hero Factory! Thanks to Gretchen for pointing this out!

All this breathing in, never breathing out...

Hey! Remember when I told y'all I was going to see Ben Folds?
Well, I did! Last night!!


That guy! Yeah! I think he's a hottie. I had a big plan that involved getting close enough to pet him... heavily. But it was packed up close to the stage and I figured that heavily petting Ben Folds might get me kicked out and/or arrested, so I decided I would be better off enjoying the show.

Here we are, waiting in anticipation... there were two openers, a band called Miniature Tigers and an acapella choir from York University that did amazing versions of Ben Folds' "Underground", a Sarah Slean song, and "Don't Stop Believing." Beforehand he played some "bad spa music" due to his interview on CBC radio earlier in the day and the controversy that has follwed it.
And after what seemed like FOREVER, Ben came! These are MY pictures, which explains why they are kind of crappy, and you can see the head of the stupidly tall guy who was RIGHT in my way, but still, it's Ben Folds.



He sang sooooo many songs that I love. I mean, it's hard not to love any Ben Folds song, but he sang a lot of the oldies - Landed (my fave Ben Folds song EVER), Army, Philosophy, Zak and Sara, Kate, Annie Waits, Fair, etc. He also did quite a few of the songs from his new album, which are awesome, like You Don't Know Me, Bitch Went Nuts, Dr. Yang, Kylie from Connecticut, Hiroshima, Effington... I could go on.
He's an incredible live performer! He does amazing things with that piano, he takes audience requests, he interacts with the audience, he got us involved in singing parts... I don't even know what else to say, it was just plain awesome.
If you're even a little bit of a Ben Folds fan, I'd recommend you go see him live ASAP