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May 31, 2009

Finger, meet string

You know how sometimes, you get that nagging feeling that you’ve forgotten something important, but you can’t remember what it is?

For several weeks now, I’ve been getting that feeling—almost every single day. At first, I patiently went through my planner, email, voicemail and facebook events looking for something I was forgetting. There was nothing. Thinking my body had made a mistake in sending me this ‘feeling’, I ignored it, waiting for my body to correct itself. But it didn’t. It hasn’t.

I’ve raked my brain several times since… deadlines? important dates? birthdays? special events? unreplied phone calls or emails?

Nothing. It is most irritating.

At this point, I am starting to doubt there is even something I have unknowingly forgotten. But the feeling of unease hasn’t gone away, and I am left with two options: either my body has gone crazy, or I have. Neither look good.

Has this ever happened to you? And if it has—how did you figure out what you were missing, and was it really that important after all?

Day 103: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 30, 2009

Day 102: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 29, 2009

Day 101: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 28, 2009

Day 100: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 27, 2009

Day 99: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 26, 2009

About the redesign: v.10

So some of you have already noticed that CHNL has been looking a wee bit different these last couple days. I figured I would officially talk about the redesign here, especially for all of you who follow this website via the rss feed.

some notable changes:

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Day 98: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 25, 2009

Day 97: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 24, 2009

Day 96: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 23, 2009

Day 95: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 22, 2009

Day 94: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

Links for 2009-05-22

Is it possible to love two people at the same time?
Ev’Yan (Apricot of Apricot Tea) launches her new advice column: Ask Apricot.

“So, I’m wearing my 1985 New England Patriots t-shirt. And here is my Ralph Nader tattoo. Basically, my body is a shrine to epic losers.”
Time for some hipster bashing. (via look at this f**king hipster)

Puffin hoax revealed!
There’s nothing more obnoxious than a fake animal that tries to pass itself off as an authentic member of the animal world. Puffins are maybe the biggest offenders when it comes to this, even going so far as to pretend to take pictures with humans and hang out in places like Iceland where no normal person can confirm that they were really there. Like Iceland is a real place, anyway… (via f**k you, Penguin)

It was then she learned that “horror” was spelled “speedo.”
Two out of three rabbits disapprove of you. One isn’t looking. Move over, LOLcats! (via disapproving rabbits)

May 21, 2009

Day 93: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 20, 2009

Elimination day cupcakes

Yesterday I set time aside from my schedule to watch the finale of Dancing with the Stars—and to celebrate the final elimination of the season, I decided to make elimination day cupcakes.

Baked cupcakes

The concept was simple: I would decorate three cupcakes with the names of the three remaining contestants, and as each one got eliminated, so too would their cupcake.

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Day 92: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 19, 2009

Day 91: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 18, 2009

Chanel and a landed immigrant with an expired visa cross the US border, hilarity ensues

For someone who spends at least 2 months out of every year traveling on and off of American soil, crossing the border isn’t anything new—and although I have been known to create a purposeful ruckus with the TSA in airports just to “liven up” things (think “accidentally” leaving hand sanitizer and a nail file in your purse, or bringing a toaster oven as a carry on, and no I am not joking you), I haven’t yet dared to do anything quite as exciting with ground travel.

On Thursday of last week, we left Vancouver for a weekend in Auburn, WA. There were five of us. I had somehow assumed that since we’d all been in the country for many, many years we were all Canadian citizens, but that was not the case: one of us was a German landed immigrant. With an expired visa.

Internet, I would be hard pressed to find the right words to describe to you the expression on my face: supremely excited. Which is not usually the case with timid, reserved Canadians who know that one wrong look and three wrong words can land you a strip search and (possibly), a finger up your ass.

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Day 90: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 17, 2009

Day 89: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 16, 2009

Day 88: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 15, 2009

Day 87: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 14, 2009

Day 86: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 13, 2009

Day 85: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 12, 2009

Do you take risks?

Over the weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine about risk taking. It started out with a suggestion and ended up with a question I couldn’t answer. This is how it played out:

“Chanel, let’s go skydiving.”

“Hmm, let me think about this one .. [tick tock tick tock] .. Um, no?”

“What! C’mon! Why?”

“Oh I don’t know, I like living?”

“Psh, you’re so boring. You never take risks.”

“I do so take risks!”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

(Ten seconds go by)

“Damn.”

For days, I couldn’t get that conversation out of my head. It baffled me, because I couldn’t think of any legitimate examples of risk taking in my life. I have some theories which I will share on here when I can collect my thoughts and lay them out coherently, but in the meantime, I’m curious:

Do you think you take risks? If so, in what way?

Day 84: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 11, 2009

Day 83: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 10, 2009

Day 82: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 9, 2009

Day 81: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 8, 2009

Day 80: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

Like botox, only better

The other day, I made my dad sit through an episode of Hannah Montana with me. My brother is probably going to kill me, drag my body out of the ground and then nail my guns on a steel post just for writing this—ON THE INTERNETS, no less—but he usually watches Hannah Montana with me.

Unfortunately for him (and believe me, after the kids at his school find out he watches Hannah Montana, it will be unfortunate for him), he has been 500 kilometers away from home all week and otherwise incapable of watching a tween show with his adult sister. So naturally, to replace the deep-seated loss of my Hannah Montana watching companion, I found another: my dad.

He sat through the entire thing without making even so much as a comment. And when it was over, the first thing he said was, wow. Followed by, how old are the kids watching this supposed to be again?

“It’s called recapturing your youth,” I told him smartly. “It’s like botox, only better!”

And really, if you think about it, Hannah Montana and botox have a couple things in common…

Hannah Montana and botox! You heard it here first.

May 7, 2009

Day 79: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 6, 2009

Day 78: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

The Vegas wrap-up

things I did in vegas:

- sat by a gigantic fish tank in the forum shops at ceaser’s palace, almost had a heart attack and died when a gigantic (and really, I mean gigantic – like wider than I am gigantic) stingray came up behind me and started licking the glass. GEEZUS.

OH MY GOD STINGRAY

- ate at the cheesecake factory, said three words to the waiter and was immediately asked, “you’re from vancouver, aren’t you?” … i’m still not sure how he figured that out. there is no such thing as a vancouver accent? (a westcoast accent, maybe.)

- saw shows (cirque du solie, phantom of the opera)

- two words: valet parking. it makes you feel like royalty.

- ran through the venetian in 3.5 inch silver nine west heels, did not fall and spill my blood on the italian marble as one would assume would happen.

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May 5, 2009

Day 77: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 4, 2009

Day 76: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 3, 2009

Day 75: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 2, 2009

Day 74: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.

May 1, 2009

Day 73: Grace In Small Things

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace In Small Things.