I've just eaten another bowl of homemade lentil soup, and I swear to you that the hour after you've eaten a bowl of homemade lentil soup feels like the hour after you've just had good sex. I feel relaxed, warm, and fulfilled, with memories of delicious tastes lingering in my mouth. Homemade lentil soup is particularly good when you have a shitty very phlegm-y cold and it's the first day of your period and you feel gross and tired. The same cannot be said for sex.

I don't think I've put up any pictures of my roommate's cat yet. The cat's name is a little up for debate. When we got him, his name was Charlie, which I liked and Andrew (my roommate) seemed to like at the time. For some reason when Charlie was about three or four months old (he's about six months now), Andrew decided that Charlie would now be Sylvester, because he's black with white feet and a white stomach with a little bit of white on his face. I tend to think that pet names that are more than two syllables are functionally not very good, and it makes me think of Sylvester Stallone. An unpleasant association. So I just call him Kitty. He comes when you say Kitty, so I guess I kinda won that battle. I wish he was just Charlie.

I don't know why I haven't told more Kitty-related stories. I guess my updates have been rather brief. He's always trying to bite me, and yesterday I was filling these spice jars I'd gotten at Ikea with spices I bought so I can make more lentil soup. I made a huge fucking mess (my sweatpants now have huge yellow stains on them from the turmeric) because the openings of the spice jars are so small, and the openings of the ziploc bags they were previously in are so big. So I was covered in chili powder when Kitty once again tried to eat my hand. He left me alone pretty much immediately after that. And Kitty has fleas right now (we have no idea how, since he's never set foot outside), so we're feeding him garlic because that's supposed to get rid of fleas. So he always has garlic breath. Which is not as gross as when he farts, and it smells like garlic.

Both Tynan and Larissa have taken some pictures of Kitty with their digital cameras:

I'd like to start saying "y'all" a lot. Southern accents have become more appealing to me lately. Okay, so y'all were promised some pictures of my New Year's exploits with Larissa, and I will not disappoint:

This is Larissa's friends Adam and Kim at main party we were at at Lyndsay's house, and then a picture of one of the records that was playing at the party: Bauhaus. (Rock!)

That's Dan from the band September (I'm not sure if they're together anymore), and Jack from Radio Berlin, who was one of the people deejaying that night.

That's Josh, the drummer from Radio Berlin and Jerk with a Bomb. He's a fucking rad, talented musician. And those are my sex bomb boots with my striped tights.

Two very good pictures of Larissa. She looks like Siouxsie in one of them, and like a TV newscaster in the other one. Radical.

Me in my 99-cent Value Village special 80's sunglasses (I own about six pairs of glasses that fit that description), and me and Lari's friend Jon-Rae dancing. Jon-Rae was extremely, extremely drunk and it was funny.

There was this guy at the party, and I can't even remember his name now (it was something Quebecois), who was kissing everyone, so that's him and me kissing, and then a picture of me and Lari.

The next morning, Larissa, Tynan, Jon-Rae, Kim and I had breakfast at Zesty Restaurant.

For those of you who have not heard "Fuck the Pain Away" by Peaches, I command you to download it at once. So damn good. They played it at this new fun night Lari discovered in the Georgia Straight. It's at a place called Unit 20 (an old legion hall, I think), it's on Saturday nights, and they have old-school punk, post-punk and goth, proto-rap, alternative and electroclash. It's a huge place with tons of seating and a small dance floor, there were more scene kids than I thought lived in Vancouver and I hardly recognized anyone. The place was packed. We would've stayed longer if it hadn't been so smoky. I was extra phlegm-y the next day. Bleah. Beforehand we went to the crepe place on Robson, and I had a crepe with spinach, cheese, and egg (my holy trilogy, or is that trinity). It made me yearn for France. I really really want to go to Paris. And then we sat in the car out in front of Unit 20 for about 15 minutes checking out who was going in and coming out. We were afraid it would be dead or there would just be creepy people there. When the situation checked out, we went in. For some reason the bouncer ID'd Larissa and not me. She's a month and a half older than me, so what was up with that?

I love my Structure of Modern English class. I decided today that I want a t-shirt that says "I <3 Linguistics." Or I <3 Phonetics, or Syntax, or Sausseur, or Morphology or Etymology... but Linguistics covers all of those things, so I'd probably stick with that. I wanna get one right now. Or one that says "Descriptive Grammar is Better Than Prescriptive Grammar." Or one that says "The Sign is Arbitrary."

That's because I'm a humungous nerd.