You know it's going to be a different sort of night when your parents' house is full of drunken Hungarians, there's a pig roasting in the backyard in the middle of winter, and an older gentlemen that you've only just met comes over to your significant other and asks, "Have you ever had warts on your pecker?".

I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to.

I'm in love with a coat.

It started way back in October or so. FN and I wandered into Banana Republic one fine evening, and there I spied a coat. It was a wool coat, single-breasted . . . in ivory. I don't think the one I was looking at was a peacoat, but it was ivory and it was beautiful. I've had a long-time love affair with wool coats, and this one gazed at me in a way that obliterated all memory of any wool coats that came before it.

But at $300, the price tag stung a bit. I could have taken one in the groin and bought it anyway, but the frugal side of me said I should wait and see if it goes on sale.

Ha, goes on sale. Funny.

Flash forward to December. My mother offers to buy the coat for me for my birthday. I get to Banana Republic. What do I find? Nadda. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Wool coats? Sure. But single-breasted in ivory? Keep dreaming, sweetums.

I found a very similar coat in camel shade, which is on sale and really nice, to be sure. So I snag it. But the longer I look at it, the more I start to long for the ivory coat.

I visit the website. What do I find? The Banana Republic site is sold out of ivory peacoats. Sold. Out.

Everywhere I look I see women coveting their winter-white and ivory wool coats, calm in the knowledge that they secured the holy grail of coats.

It started to obsess me. I went to bed thinking about the coat. I woke up in the morning thinking about the coat. I was going out of my mind.

Finally, this morning I called a store in Calgary. First store I called . . . I asked if they had and single-breasted peacoats in ivory . . . .

One left. In my size.

I think I may have squealed into the phone, but the salesguy managed to take it all in stride. I think he's accustomed to this sort of clothing obsession. I mean, why else would there be three Banana Republics in Calgary?

So basically I can die happy now. Well, at least once I stop over-analyzing what I'm wearing to my friends wedding. But then I can die happy. Really.

The Worst Meal of the Year - NY Times

I almost attempted to make Christmas pudding one year, although I'm still not sure what streak of maliciousness could have possessed me to consider doing such a thing.

With the exception of turkey and all the fixings, Christmas food has to be some of the most vile and repulsive organic matter ever to appear on a dinner table. I enjoy fruitcake much the way one enjoys a swift blow to the head. I understand that mince meat pies and Christmas pudding are equally delightful.

Perhaps these foods were created by a particularly bitter individual, as the embodiment of their loathing for the holiday season. It wouldn't surprise me if that were true.

I had my birthday on December 8th. I guess I was too busy partying to blog about it. Anyhoo . . . happy birthday to me!

So . . . tired.

So many parties, get-togethers . . . weddings even. Christmas is hard work! And I'm not even done with Christmas shopping.

Please tell me tomorrow isn't Monday.

I'm sick and running low on energy, so I'll be brief.

The weekend was totally awesome! F-No and I drove down on Saturday for my friend's bridal shower and co-ed stag party. Not only did we enjoy the company of the swingingest people in Cowtown, but we also met several people who I swear we've known for years without realizing it. I've adopted them all.

The food was absolutely outstanding. I've decided I'm going to live at The Latin Corner. Great food, live Cuban music . . . what else could a person want?

We stayed overnight at a hotel and had breakfast with the bride and groom-to-be. Let it be known that waffles and scrambled eggs with dill and paprika were never so good as they are when shared with great friends. And watching our friends with the groom-to-be's brother was like taking a trip back in time to the glory days of F-No, Limegirl and GMAN. Trippy.

We're plotting to adopt the groom-to-be's brother, sort of a stop-gap measure in GMAN's absence. Dammit, I miss my bro.

Okay, back to bed with my infirm ass.

Nothing makes me feel more festive about the Christmas season than a little Southpark Christmas classic:

South Park - Merry Fucking Christmas

You Say You Want An Evolution - a Maclean's article about modern Iran.

I got tired of reading articles in a vacuum. I keep reading compelling articles that pique my interest, and I only ever have Forever North to chat with them about. I might post articles that are meaningless, I might post articles rich with meaning. Go, have a gander and share your thoughts, won't you?

In spite of the fact that it's an ungodly hour, my body is convinced that it's time to up and about.

I don't know if the insomnia I've been having is at all related to the time zone change since coming back from Japan, but it kind of sucks. Getting up early isn't so bad, but being painfully awake late at night ain't no party.

Seeing as how I've managed to burn a half an hour doing nothing more than eating and checking my email, it's not going to make me any more productive either.

Food's on. Get it while it's hot!

Things that annoy the hell out of me:

My eyebrows.

Through some twist of teenage fancy, I once decided that I wanted to be able to move my eyebrows like Jack Nicholson. It was probably related to the fact that I desperately longed to be a more facially expressive actor, as I had a tendency towards being rather blank-faced.

So I practised in front of a mirror until I could. Managed to get movement in both, but then found that it looked really stupid when I raised both at the same time. I couldn't seem to do one at a time, so I practiced doing only one side until that side became the only side I could move. Voila, I was a gifted thespian. Or something.

Years later, I discovered the joy of nicely done eyebrows. You know, pluck a little here, trim a little there, fill them in so I don't look surprised all the time. Well that was great, but then one day I discovered that something didn't look quite right. When I looked at myself in a webcam (which reverses the image you would see in the mirror), things looked wrong.

It started to really annoy me, and I started to obsess over why things looked wrong. Then it hit me. My eyebrows. No matter what I do, one always has a sharper arch than the other. Which means I look a brooding artist on one side and a drugged-out hippie on the other.

Today I realized that it's all thanks to my stupid teenage aspirations for more expressive eyebrows. Way to go. Now I either have to tape down the one eyebrow and try to get the other one to move on its own, or botox the Jack-Nicholson eyebrow.

F-No has dubbed my condition, Limegirl Palsy:

localized paralysis of an individual eyebrow muscle.... symptoms include the inability to move one eyebrow, but normal function remains in the other. Afflicted subject may also display anxiety, self-image distortion, depression, sexual dysfunction, predisposition to excessive self-medication, inability to focus on other aspects of daily life, excessive use of foul language, constipation and/or diarrhea may also be experienced.

Note: I do not display all these symptoms. Especially not the 4,5,8 or 9. And 1-3, 6 and 7. Really.

Best misheard phrase of the morning:

Cattle-induced squirrel monitoring.