Archives of Our Lives

Introducing Project: Proxy

by Camille Posted on February 10, 2010

So I was thinking…

…I’m an adventuresome soul. I like to do things—exciting things. I’ll do just about anything once, as long as it’s not illegal or immoral or seriously life-threatening.

Don’t believe me? I’ll prove it:

•I moved to Belgium to work as an au pair for a family that spoke primarily French.

•I’ve been skydiving (stupid, but I’m glad I did it).

•I’ve gone for weeks without shampooing my hair.

•I have walked the streets of New York City all by myself, and rather enjoyed it.

(This image is from different trip, but trust me, I’ve done it alone.)

•Ditto Paris, for an entire week. (By the way? AWESOME.)

•One time, in Amsterdam, I woke up at 5 a.m. to wander the streets all alone with only a map in Dutch (I don’t speak Dutch) just so I could be first in line at the Anne Frank Haus. I totally was. (Also? AWESOME.)

(Blurry, yes, but I promise it’s me: look at the red shoes for proof—they went with me everywhere in Europe.)

•I get waxed all over, and sometimes I even do it myself.

•I would very much like to try my hand at white water rafting sometime in my life.

So you see, I’m not afraid of much. (That last sentence is a complete and total lie. I am afraid of being stabbed, of bearing children, of killing my children, of car accidents, of kaleidoscopes {those things are crazy}, of being raped, of amnesia, of bugs and mice, of government corruption, and of global warming. And also Jack Bauer.) What I should have said was, “So you see, I’m not afraid to try new things.”

Enter Project: Proxy.

What is Project: Proxy? Your wildest dream come true.

No, but really. Project: Proxy is your chance to live your life through me as a proxy—as a surrogate, if you will, except without the smoking-hot robotic body and the drug addictions and dysfunctional marriage and crazy computer brains. In an attempt to make this year more interesting than any year I’ve lived to date {and also to give me something to blog about, and also because it sounds fun, and also to open my horizons to adventures I might not have ever considered}, I am volunteering myself to be your proxy for the year.

Have you ever seen something that you’d like to try, but have been worried it might not be worth the money/time/energy invested?

This is your chance to find out! I will do it for you—anything and everything you suggest—as long as it is not:

a) immoral

b) illegal

c) more than $50-100, or

d) seriously life-threatening.

I’ll take on your requests once or twice a month (more if they aren’t too expensive), and update all y’all on the Tuesday following the day of experimentation.

So if you’ve ever wanted to…

-Buy a pair of pointy-toed shoes and figure out what to wear them with.

-Try out a boyfriend blazer.

-Seek and identify the best french fries known to mankind.

-Review any book or movie.

-Learn how to skateboard.

-Try any recipe.

-Cut your hair super short.

-Learn Dutch.

-Purchase something off an infomercial that sounds cool (ShamWow™, anyone?).

-Go ice skating. And document it.

-Attempt the Gallon Challenge.

-Give up something for Lent.

…or anything else with the potential for extreme, hilarious, epic failure…

…This blog is giving you the opportunity.

I am opening up the lines for suggestions, starting now and ending never. Feel free to email me suggestions at:

camille{at}archiveslives{dot}com,

or leave a comment on any post at any time and I will file it away for future reference.

And…begin.

Posted in blogger finger, change, Project: Proxy | 15 Comments

Bust Out Your Old Flogging Molly CD ‘Cause You’re Gonna Need It

by Camille Posted on February 7, 2010

Because I was raised by education-promoting parents who, as it happened, were not overly wealthy when I was growing up, I have been ingrained with a sort of silent guilt every time I go to see a movie in a movie theatre.

Don’t get me wrong—my parents are all about having fun, and they want me to be happy, but they weren’t huge fans of movies or television in general. My sister and I had a very limited allotment of TV time, and if we ever tried to exceed our privileges, the consequences were not pretty. I distinctly remember the TV cord getting cut when I was eight or nine years old. (Come to think of it, we were kind of poor, so I can’t imagine that my dad literally cut the cord. He probably scrounged up some old phone cord and cut it for show, because, hello, why would they waste a perfectly good TV, but either way, the object lesson worked.)

So to say that my family did not place much value on television or movies…well, that would be putting it lightly.

We were allowed to watch movies, but going out to see them in the theatres was a rare treat, and buying food from the concession stands was not even a consideration. We brought in our own candy from the grocery store, and we were happy with that.

Now, I can’t say for certain, but I am fairly sure that my low/middle-middle class upbringing played a major role in the guilt I feel today when I go to movies. See, Poor Kyle, he is a concession stand kinda guy. He might cringe a bit at the prices, but overall, he’s fine with plunking down cash for the treats from the movie theatre—he maintains that it adds to the experience of the movies…the ambiance. Me? Well, I think it’s simply dastardly of the movie theatres to charge as much as they do (six bucks for a box of Junior Mints?! Those six dollars would deny my family this week’s gallon of skim milk!), so I generally try to shy away from getting snacks there, but I must confess, Poor Kyle has numbed my righteous indignation just a bit since we got married.

But he hasn’t numbed me enough to fully assuage the guilt I feel when I go. I really hate spending that much money on a couple of hours out, and moreover, I sort of have a really huge chip on my shoulder toward the movie theatre we usually use. (But that’s old news.)

Moreover, I kind of feel uncomfortable thinking about people who go see movies in theatres on a regular regular basis (i.e. once or more a week), because not only is it a colossal waste of money, but it also seems a bit…sad. Almost as if they don’t like their own lives enough to keep with reality, and instead they look for any sort of escapism they can find, and I know it’s a generalisation but it’s really how I feel, and I don’t want to escape my life like that no matter how bad things get, y’know? (No, of course you don’t know—I’m insane and completely incomprehensible.)

Needless to say, I try to make it a point not to go to the movies very often, except it seems like I haven’t been holding my ground very well lately. Once a week for the past month or so, I have gotten quirky little texts from Poor Kyle with links to trailers of movies he wants to see, and a request that I accompany him on a little post-work/school date. I have to confess, Poor Kyle is not usually the spontaneous type, so when he does stuff like that, I hate to turn him down. (I live in fear of breaking his spirit; I don’t think I could cope with the guilt of crushing his poor hopeful little movie-loving heart.) Plus, he doesn’t harbour such ill will toward movie theatres that I do, because he is not an English major and therefore he has not lost his faith in humanity like I have.

So we’ve been on a movie-going kick lately.

The point of all of this is to rationalise away the guilt I feel over the fact that I saw a movie recently that I liked. A lot.

Leap Year.

Have you seen it yet? I’m guessing you probably haven’t, because I have heard surprisingly little on the internets about this movie—I had no idea what it was even about before Poor Kyle sent me the trailer and suggested we see it.

Seriously, though?

BEST CHICK FLICK SINCE YOU’VE GOT MAIL. No lie. It has been a really long time since I’ve seen a chick flick that has fully satisfied my need for sappy impossible-in-reality romance that has not made me cringe, not even once, for crudeness, sexiness, or out-of-control improbability.

If you harbor even the slightest little bit of chick flick DNA in your genes, this movie is a must-see. Here’s why:

Image (and interesting Ireland article) from here.

1. It’s set in Ireland, of all places. It is beautiful beautiful beautiful, and the characters’ accents are fantastic, and hello, sigh. I’ve been wanting to go to Ireland for years now, and this past year I’ve really been talking about it a lot (there seem to be amazing travel deals there lately), but Poor Kyle was never sold on the idea UNTIL HE SAW THIS MOVIE. If you, too, are involved in a romantic relationship with an unadventurous travel dud like I am, take him to see Leap Year. It will save your marriage, and for way cheaper than couple’s therapy.

Image from here.

2. No uncomfortable sex scenes! If this isn’t a selling point, I don’t know what is. Apparently it’s all the rage in chick flicks to throw in completely unnecessary and over-the-top sex scenes which add very little value to the story line at all, and I am pretty fed up with it all. Sex sells, supposedly, but not to me. I hate sex. Leap Year subscribed to no such sludge, despite the fact that there were ample opportunities for it.

Image from here.

3. The romantic tension was a perfect blend of “Oh no!” and “Squee!” I can honestly say that no chick flicks have perfected this combination since the good old days of You’ve Got Mail, A Walk to Remember, and A&E’s Pride and Prejudice (read: the mid-to-late ’90s and early ’00s). Seriously, I haven’t squeed like that in a movie theatre since I don’t know when. (Lord of the Rings II, maybe, but that was a midnight showing and I cannot be held accountable for any Legolas lust at 1:00 a.m.)

Image from here.

The only negative I can definitively pinpoint is Amy Adams’s wardrobe—it was cute, but it seemed sadly unflattering for her body type. Amy Adams is very pretty, and the outfits in the movie were classy, but they just looked weird on her. Also, in the very most pivotal of pivotal scenes, someone made the unfortunate decision to style her hair with one of those 1998 zig-zag stretchy plastic dollar store headbands that we all thought were so cool until we realised they made our fiveheads and widow’s peaks stand out, and we (wisely) donated them all to Goodwill, where apparently the Leap Year costume designer (who has a secret vendetta against Amy Adams, no doubt) picked one up for a dime and viciously clawed it into her hairline for all the world to see. (A side note: I have spent at least thirty minutes over the last week searching for an image of these atrocious fashion crimes anywhere on the internet, and still haven’t found one. I don’t even know what they’re called. I’m amazed that someone went to so much trouble to locate one and incorporate it into a legitimate film like this, when there are so many adorable accessories in the world right now.) It was tragic, and it would have ruined the entire movie for me, but really, at that point…

…not even an alien invasion could have ruined the movie for me.

And alien invasions have ruined many a good movie for me (Hitchcock? I Am Legend? Any and all otherwise-incredible Will Smith movies?)

Posted in blogger finger, It's All Good, like-it-link-it, mondays suck, reviews, Travel | 14 Comments

Neither a supermodel nor a super model, but one does what one can.

by Camille Posted on February 4, 2010

A few months ago my friend Tisha (you might remember her amazing bags that I got to review last year) asked me if I would try on a skirt she had made and take pictures in it and give the pictures to her for a giveaway on her blog (the skirt was the item to give away, not the pictures {in case you had any doubts}).

I said I’d be happy to, and then I took the skirt and promptly ignored it for two months.

Well, it didn’t happen exactly that way… I wanted to take the photos outside because outside photos are the best, but it was effing cold here that week, and I just couldn’t muster the energy to stand outside in a skirt for any length of time.

And then the next week I went to Arizona and so I took the skirt with me there so I could do the pictures in some free time, but you all saw how much free time I actually got… So that was a bust.

And by the time I came back to Canada, surprise, surprise—it was still effing cold here.

Finally, I just decided to take the photos inside and make do that way. (Actually, Poor Kyle had to make do. He’s the photographer for stuff like this.)

We took the pictures and then realised that, between the time since I had agreed to the project, and the time we actually did the project, we had given away our computer with the copy of Photoshop on it. Smart. So that was a bust, too.

We had to gimp along with The Gimp (go figure), and I’m sorry to say that the photos were not our best work, but two months to take a couple of pictures seemed ridiculous as it was, so we just called it quits.

In the end, the photos turned out just okay-ish, (and I’m sorry about that, Tisha; I know I failed you) but the real moral of this story is that you should enter the giveaway, like, seriously.

I feel like I shouldn’t enter the giveaway on account of my involvement with the project, but because one of my goals for the year is to enter every contest I can, I still want to win it in some way. So instead of winning it myself, it has become my goal for one of my readers to win this skirt. But in order for that to happen, some of my readers have to enter the contest. At least then I’ll have a piece of the joy of success. Greedy little me.

If you click on this link it will take you right to the post, and, as a bonus, you’ll get to learn my dress size.

Lucky you. (Or not. But really, you should channel all your luck, because the skirt is very cute, totally original, and THIS MAY BE THE ONLY CHANCE YOU’LL EVER HAVE TO OWN SOMETHING MY BUTT HAS TOUCHED. {Unless I auction off my toilet seat on e-bay, but I kinda need that on a daily basis, and besides, who in their right mind?})

Posted in failures, fiascos, giveaways, It's All Good, reviews | 10 Comments

Look On It

by Camille Posted on February 4, 2010

January was a hard month for me. I was sick, I had to leave Arizona to come back to the cold, school started, and Poor Kyle was grouchy with me because I wouldn’t let him get a dog. That lasted pretty much all month, and I was thrilled when we finally turned the corner into February.

Except, February isn’t looking much better. Some things are going on that I probably shouldn’t blog about (isn’t that annoying when people do that? I’ve always hated that, and now I’ve gone and done it) which make me feel a little bummed about life, the future, everything. I know it’s just a phase; there are good times and bad times and that’s just life, but I always try to make the bad times go a little quicker by remembering good times past, or fantasizing about good times to come.

This post falls into the second category.

I am excited to announce that, true to my word, I will be attending BlogHer™ this summer.

(I try not to use exclamation points too frequently, so when I do, they are supposed to really mean something.)

I had decided that since they offer student pricing for an enormous discount, and I am a student, it only makes sense that I should go this year. Of course, it took me a while to bite the bullet and actually commit, and by that time, student pricing had sold out (something I had not thought possible). I was heartbroken, as showcased here by this tweet:

Yet another example of how bad January was.

But what I also didn’t know is that there was hope. I checked later that night by random chance, and to my delight, I saw that there was one available! Joy. Having felt the heartbreak that would ensue from missing out on BlogHer for the fourth straight year, I just…decided to do it.

So I did. I signed up, registered, the whole shebang.

Then I called Chelsie, one of the few good friends I have left in the world who is not a member of my family (because I consider my family my dear friends, but I do feel the need to make a distinction), and convinced her to come with me. After a bit of drama (more student pricing being sold out, gah!), she registered. And it became real.

I am going to BlogHer. I am going to New York with an amazing friend this summer, and it’s going to be expensive, yes, and I’m going to feel guilty because I get this even though Poor Kyle did not get his much-beloved dog, but I will make it up to him and everything’s going to be okay. I might even convince him to come, and maybe my sister too, because heaven knows she needs a break from that child of hers, and everything’s great.

And so, my friends, here’s a song to commemorate the news. I know it’s not new anymore, and everybody loves this song, and it’s so boring that I would use it on my blog, but I can think of no song that could better suit the situation. Sorry.

Here’s to New York. To 2010, such as it is. Life may be hard, but there is always a bright side…

…and sometimes (just sometimes) I’m smart enough to look on it.

Posted in blogger finger, good tunes, It's All Good, Married Life, Travel, United Blog Order | 13 Comments

Stork on Dizzy Drugs

by Camille Posted on February 2, 2010

I just attended my very first yoga class.

I have been thinking about learning yoga for the past year or so, but really it’s been quite a lot longer than that—I can recall checking out yoga videos from the library as far back as my junior year of high school, and I even bought a yoga mat during my first year of college. I tried my hand at it at home, but the thing was, I could never tell if I was doing it right.

I always knew I needed to participate in real, live, active yoga in order for me to get it right—or at least feel like I was getting it right.

Over the past six months I’ve been looking into various yoga options around my area, and I finally found one that seems to fit my life the best—wouldn’t you know that there would be a class available right here in Mayberry? I had no idea this town had such vast opportunities to offer its citizens, but wonders never cease, right? So I signed right up, paid my reasonable fee (it’s actually comparable, if not slightly cheaper, than the student rates at the yoga studios I researched in the nearby city).

I’ve read from lots of yoga-doing bloggers that yoga actually is a really good workout, and I wanted to believe these people, but deep down, I honestly didn’t. And I knew I never would if I didn’t try it myself. Come to find out, I was sweating the entire time, and I am a bit sore today (although the soreness is slightly overshadowed by Jillian’s soreness, so it’s hard to say for sure. It seemed to me more of a slow, controlled workout. As far as I can tell, yoga uses the body’s own weight as resistance for the various moves. I have no doubt that I was burning calories, but I’m certain it was nothing like heavy-breathing cardio. Which is great, because I hate heavy-breathing cardio.)

The only problem now is that I am fairly certain that when I do yoga I look like a frumpy stork on dizzy drugs. I thought I had good balance, y’know, because I can stand up without tipping over, but apparently that kind of balance has no place in the yoga room. Yoga balance is crazy—it’s all about channeling your inner tight-rope walker, only that tight rope is only a thread, and the walker is on her tippy toes.

So yeah. Yoga is kind of crazy.

But I like it.

Have you ever tried yoga? Have you ever wanted to?

Posted in health and vitality, Recreation, what I'm about | 16 Comments

A Formulaic Saga of iPod™ Drama

by Camille Posted on February 1, 2010

I’m in the mood for a good saga. Please join me.

So. I am very passionate about music. I like the music that I like, and I hate the music that I hate. It sounds tautological, yes, but that’s the truth, plain and simple.

For the past month, I have had a brand new iPhone™ all to myself, but I have only had three albums on it for my listening pleasure. To me, that is a crime worse than murder {well, maybe not murder, but certainly it is a crime worse than shoplifting or plagiarism}. See, here’s what happened…

Several years ago, before Poor Kyle was my husband (back when he was just Kyle and had no idea what the eff he was about to get himself into), he bought me an iPod™.

This iPod™.

It was a time when iPods™ were more expensive than they are now, and we weren’t even engaged yet—the gift was extremely generous, and I thought about turning it down, but that only lasted about a half a second. Who was I to refuse an iPod™ that someone wanted to give me? Plus, I was way poor, and could have never bought one on my own accord. {Come to think of it, that iPod™ is probably the sole reason I married Poor Kyle—I owed him bigtime. Sugar daddy anyone? [I jest, I jest. Poor Kyle’s not rich enough to be a sugar daddy. I also married him for his diesel Jetta, which has since been sold. I so should have moved to Beverly Hills.]}

Anyway…

I was the last of my friends to get one, but I finally had an iPod™. I was delighted. I spent hours transferring my CDs to iTunes, and even more hours just stroking the smooth smooth smoothness that was my new iPod™. It was a really great gift.

A year or so later, when I got a laptop (another extremely generous gift, this time from my parents {hollah, Mom and Dad!}), I transferred my entire iTunes™ library to the laptop, which immediately slowed…down…every…single…action I needed it to perform. Having so many songs on my poor lappy was really a struggle for it.

I didn’t know what to do: I wanted my laptop to do its best, but I also wanted all my music on it in case anything happened to my iPod™. Years of collecting amazing albums…it would have been a shame to lose all that hard work.

A few months later, Poor Kyle, having seen my predicament, bought me a portable hard drive.

This portable hard drive.

(This really is starting to sound like a whore/pimp situation, isn’t it? Oy.)

He encouraged me to put the hard drive to use, transfer my music over to it, and set my laptop free from its electronic burdens. I didn’t want to; I didn’t trust this newfangled hard drive; I just knew it was going to be bad.

But Kyle (again, before he was Poor Kyle) held my hand, wiped my tears, and clicked “Transfer All.” And then he clicked “Delete.” The deed was done. My computer ran so much better. All was well…

…until the hard drive mysteriously erased all my music. (Poor Kyle maintains, to this day, that I was too rough with the hard drive, and that it was all my fault. I maintain that a $200 piece of plastic ought to hold up against a few *minor* falls and drops. But I digress.)

I was devastated, but at least I still had all my music on my iPod™.

All was still well.

Fast forward three years.

December 2009: Poor Kyle (yes, my husband now, and therefore officially deserving of the title “Poor Kyle”) surprised me with an iPhone™ a week before Christmas. SQUEE!

This iPhone™.

(By the way, the term “Sugar Daddy” no longer applies because we’re married now. Totally legit. Any favours he may or may not receive in return for gifts he does or does not purchase are totally sanctioned by the law. Or something.) (And besides, the very day after giving me an iPhone™, he went out and bought one for himself, so really, it wasn’t a gift so much as a way to get himself an iPhone™ without argument from me. [Which, really, is pretty much the cleverest thing ever. Props to PK.])

But remember if you can (and I doubt you can—who could? Anyone still with me is probably only here because his or her brain has atrophied from the boredom of this story, and therefore cannot physically tell his or her body to get up and walk away from the computer. So sorry, everyone.), that I had no music in my iTunes™ library. It was all gone, and the only way I could access it would be by illegally ripping it off my iPod™.

This iPod™.

Which I tried to do with Ollie’s iPod™ extractor, but that was all buggered up and didn’t work, and anyway, my laptop seriously did not have the space for 16+ gigs of music.

So Poor Kyle (my brilliant brilliant non-sugar-daddy husband) rigged up a solution, and it took over an hour, but it totally worked, and now this:

equals this:

and this:

equals this:

which equals this:

and you all equal=DEAD OF BOREDOM.

But seriously, as I sat and watched all my albums transfer over to my iPhone™, it was like welcoming old friends back from the dead. I was all, “Oh my gosh, Wicked Soundtrack, so nice to see you again!” and “Hey, Relient K, I missed you guys,” and “WTF, Enya! You’re still HERE?”

It was like a ten year high school reunion, but without the cheap hors d’oeuvres and beeyotch-slapping episodes.

And I owe it all to the love of my life…

Apple™.

Oh. And Poor Kyle, too. Naturally.

Thank you for joining me on this formulaic journey of the Saga of a Blogga with iPod™ Drama.

Please come back tomorrow for a real post.

If you can ever forgive me for this one, that is.