Happy Birthday Sis!

You rock. Finally we can celebrate your birthday as you.

And PS, I like you. Am so grateful that after all these years of knowing you, I finally get to know you as your true self.

Update: As my parents were in town, we all went out for Indian food last night. Apparently my parents had given her a card that was one of those tasteful but sweet, "To our beloved daughter" cards [and BIG props to my folks for reaching a point to do that] whereas the card I found said simply, "Happy Birthday C--t" [not typing out the word simply because I'm now at work - and must go now for same reason]

Shamed by technology

I have a Wii Fit. I love it because it is shaming me into losing weight. I love it because I step on the balance board and the little bar goes up, up, up the BMI scale until it settles on telling me that I am overweight. At the same time it makes the lovely little Mii icon that I crafted to look like me, get wider proportionately.

There is a lot of controversy about the validity of the BMI scale, but still, it's a pretty handy guide. I'm not incredibly muscular or have tiny bones or anything that would skew the results beyond recognition - the Wii is right - I am slightly overweight. AND it doesn't give me a lecture about how I should stop worrying about my weight and how I'm fine just as I am and how the average woman is 5'3" and 153 pounds (or something like that) because I don't give a crap about any of that. I want to lose 10 pounds and this is just the incentive I need.

I love the fact that it tells me I'm unbalanced - because I am. Mentally, yes, but the Wii is judging my balance physically. I am determined to improve. I am determined to stop that fucking irritating Wii Fit tips screen from telling me such obvious things like I need to eat less. It's so beautiful that I am inspired to workout by some electronic toy. The result is that I am faithfully doing my Wii balance and mild cardio stuff. I know that this does not count as a major workout but I also know that I will not haul my ass to a gym so at least I am moving around a bit.

I love my Wii.

What I'm crushing on right now...

HBO series The Wire. I'm late to the series (as in, it's over), and I'm only on Season 2, but man, what a great show. And I have blogger jkg to thank for the tip. He noted on his blog how good the show was, and I filed that away in my little mind. jkg has great taste - although I will never be converted to watch Lost.

I'm completely in love with the portrayal of the two lgbt characters on The Wire:the sexy as hell drug-dealing Omar, and the other equally hot Detective Greggs. Opposite sides of the law, but either one could make their way into my bed any freaking day.

Apart from my humping the table legs and licking the tv screen when either of these characters is on [not to mention Greggs' hot as hades girlfriend], The Wire is a fantastic drama. I'm glad I'm watching it on DVD as I have had to fast forward through two scenes so far: one made me cry, and the other made me almost vomit at the violence [but in general there isn't much graphic violence shown].

Please, if you haven't already seen it, get The Wire and join me in my newest love.

Happy New Year!

This year sucked for so many people and may the year ahead be much, much better. For me, I hope that positive aspects of 2009 continue. As the first year of my adult life when I haven't contemplated suicide, I think I have to hold 2009 in some sort of esteem.

Now, what does bring tears to my eyes [and by that I mean cry my eyes out in disbelief and happiness] about 2010 is that finally, FINALLY, the U.S has lifted the travel ban on HIV-positive individuals. This ban has been in place for 22 years. It was placed by Ronald Reagan (but in fairness, everyone was terrified of 'AIDS' then, and didn't know much about it), yet remained all these years, even when medical evidence showed that the ban did no use in preventing HIV, even during the reign of the supposedly progressive Clinton. Finally under Dubya the ban began to be lifted, and now under Obama, it will be a thing of the past (or lifted yesterday, I couldn't quite determine if it was the 4th or 11th that it would be removed).

Anyhoo... my friends can now travel to the States if they wish, or even pass through on connecting flights and not live in fear of their meds being discovered and going on a no-fly list. Or worse, of leaving their meds at home for week-end trips and risking becoming drug-resistant to life-saving meds. The travel ban was the reason that the biannual International AIDS Conference has not been held in all those years in the US. The next one after this year's one will be though.*

So despite many challenges still remaining for people living with HIV, this is one less.

And that my friends makes me pretty damn happy. I will be even happier when a cure is found and I won't have to ride my bike 600 damn painful kilometres to raise money for the cause.



*It kind of makes me vomit that the US gets to hold the conference the second it finally shows some humanity but whatever. There are all sorts of fantastic HIV docs, researchers, and organizations in the US who have pioneered so many advances in HIV treatment and policy so I'll take the 'woot! let's celebrate' side instead. Not to mention that two of the three times the prestigious conference has been held in Canada the Prime Minister of Canada couldn't be bothered to show up...