bluebacon

I did it!!! I managed to keep my patience as I grew my hair long enough to donate a whopping thirteen inches to the Angel Hair for Kids Program at A Child's Voice Foundation! This foundation based in Ontario is the only organization in Canada that makes wigs specifically for children suffering from hair loss due to an illness. One of the fun things of growing my hair this long and deciding to chop it all off, are the choices of hairstyles to choose from. I had to option to style my hair any way I want to, in consultation with my stylist of course, who had been very much part of this project to begin with. The voice of conscience every time I came in to get a healthy dose of trim who kept me from chopping everything off earlier on. In the end we settled for this hairstyle :) I will be sending in both my hair and cash donation in memory of my good friend Amelia Edward-Corbett, who passed away last year from lymphoma. Too bad she'll never know that I actually did this for her...

I can't believe it's been 11 years since Eduardo and I started dating! It's been 11 years since my first trip to Canada, 11 years since I graduated from graduate school, 11 years since I moved to Philly, 11 years since my first real full-time job. 11 years seems like a really long time! Last year when all of these were in their 10th year milestone, I didn't really make a big fuss over it. But now that it's a new countdown to another decade, well... it's a whole new level of... oldness. Happy to say that in our 11th year, there have been vast improvements in everything we do. Our relationship I have to say is stronger, we communicate better now (yeah it took this long...) and I don't know, we're just more in sync with each other. Maybe it's the iphone and the synchronized calendars that keep us informed about everything we do without really talking to each other, but somehow we just started talking to each other more. Ironically because this has bee...

Let me start by saying that the Victoria Choral Soiree couldn't have gone better! For a first time event, everything went smoothly. I feel like I had the most amazing beginner's luck for my first time chairing a gala fundraiser. I'm so proud of the work that my committee was able to pull off at such short amount of time. Our auction packages were very respectable, our musical program simple and entertaining, everyone looked like they were genuinely having fun, there was a definitely a buzz, and the best part -- we more than doubled our financial goal! Everything looked so great and seamless that my friend Yani and I looked like we had been planning this thing for months! I got business cards from people who wanted to pick my brains on how to put together a funderaiser, we even got an offer from another arts organization to do a joint fundraiser. Do they not know I'm trying to cut down on my extra-curricular activities? But it certainly is flattering to be perceived kn...

Why, why is the universe rocking my world and purposely freaking me out so randomly??? So guess what -- I got this phone call... this completely random phone call at work. Of course when I first got it, I didn't think it was that random since it was coming from a theatre company. Getting phone calls from fellow arts organizations, not a big deal and always welcome. However, this person who was calling me, wasn't calling to talk about opera stuff. He was actually purposely trying to reach ME! And you want to know why he was trying to reach me? Because he teaches a class at UVic and wanted to know if I would come and present to his class as a guest speaker to talk about my fundraising experience. My first reaction? I wanted to go hide under my desk or even better, bury myself in the ground! Me a guest speaker??? Okay yes it's flattering but seriously, did he even bother to check how I look like? Does he not know that it is quite possible that his undergrad students look w...

What do you do when you've been too busy that you totally forgot that your kid's homework was to bring 100 of anything to school, in celebration of 100 days of school? And it's not like he can just collect a hundred of something from home without any help so I can't really blame Raine for not doing it on his own. Besides t's our responsibility to remind him because we're the ones who get to read the bi-weekly calendar that gets distributed to parents. Oh well no sense pointing fingers. We, the parents, are definitely at fault and I just get to be the one to panic about it because I'm the one who drops off Raine to school in the morning. I was trying to be creative and see how I could come up with a hundred of something at very short notice. I practically shoved my ipod at him and told him "Here take it, it has more than 100 songs in it!" Raine just looked at me shaking his head and patiently tried to explain that it had to be 100 physical objec...

Just because I've been swamped since the beginning of the year, been multi-tasking from one event to another, hardly been home and been having 11 pm dinners for the past 10 days, dooesn't mean I didn't have any adrenaline left to plan my annual Emabarrass-Eduardo-at-Work-on-Valentine's-Day present! I have to say this is the best one I've come up with thus far and after this I'm not sure how else I'm going to top it up without resorting to a stripper or a lap dance at work. Oh well I have a year to come up with an awesome idea for next year!

I had so much fun tonight! No seriously, South Park's Valentine Dance was awesome! Okay yes, it is largely because of the magnificent playlist I put together. Everyone was dancing, everyone recognized the songs, and it was just such a joy to see everyone responding so well to the music -- and this was both kids and parents. Eduardo and I were on the sidelines beside the AV equipment but we watched as both Raine and Bell enjoy themselves. Raine was little bit more of a groupie in the sense that he wants to be part of a group of other kids when dancing. For the most part he wasn't really dancing but was just there enjoying himself. Bell on the other hand, couldn't care less if she danced alone or with a group. When she hears a song she likes she's out there on the dance floor doing her moves. We also observed how the bigger kids would squeal every time they hear a song they like. Eduardo and I were just shaking our heads and we realized that, back in the day this was ...

Currently stressing over Opening Night. I've gone over my to do list and everything's covered, I shouldn't have this much anxiety but for some reason just the fact that this is the first Opening Night reception that I organized and pulled together by myself, not to mention incorporating the raffle sales and working with a set of volunteers I'd never worked with before... I don't know -- I'm just worrying a lot. My anxiety disappeared when I got an email alert from my Victoria Choral Society email. We just got our very first online donation ever! When I stepped on the board, this was one of the first things I did -- set up an online capability for the choir to receive donations from. I couldn't believe they never set this up in the the first place. But anyway since we never had an actual fundraising program at that time and didn't have a compelling case for support until now, so not once did anyone donate online -- until a few minutes ago! I was so ex...