The A to Z of ... YOU!!!

Bet you weren't expecting that one! Surprise! That's right fellas and ladies, I took your precious meme and turned it upside down. This isn't about what my least favorite chore is or what I eat for breakfast...vaccuuming and oatmeal btw...nope. I'm feeling philanthropic at the moment, and thought I'd give back to this wonderful blogging community.

I follow eighty seven bajillion blogs, and here are 24 of my favorite moments or features from a few of the awesome blogs I love. 

Just to cover my ass here, I'm gonna tell you guys s-l-o-w-l-y and clearly and bigly that all these videos, photos and excerpts are coming from the blogs mentioned, so basically I did not create any of the content in this post. Please go visit each of these people, they are amazing. And if anyone's bummed that I'm using their stuff, please let me know! I don't want any hard feelings, I'm just trying to be nice here. Geez. Relax. 

ONWARD AND UPWARD! 

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THE A TO Z OF ... YOU!

Amalie's (still) Untitled Blog - when she dressed like an evil prima ballerina. So. Awesome.

Benjamin and Elise - That time it snowed in New Zealand, they were so excited about something that I'm generally very blase about, stereotypical Canadian girl that I am.
 
Conspiracy Inc. - Allan's black metal birthday party...I love when people aren't "too cool" to dress up and paint their faces. Really though, you should click through and see the other partygoers! LOL!

Delightfully Tacky: Elizabeth's posts on her adventures in the brave were what got me really interested in blogs in the first place. That was a few years ago, and she is still killing it with her cool gigantic hair. :)

Eep, I'm a Blogger! Other than the amazing blog title (haha) she also does some pretty good "stumble sunday" posts that rival the best TILT posts I've seen. I'm a big fan of huge lists of interesting links.

Freckled nest: LA's post on her dog Tom nearly killed me with cuteness. 

Gala Darling's recent animal encounter! I can't believe a lion licked her hand! So jealous!

Hue and Hum - the awesome custom shirts "lady hue" makes are so great! I would love one that looks like Sgt. Pepper would wear it. If he were a real person and not just a concept album, of course. Here are a couple of my favorites she's done so far:

I Go By Katie: all her photos. Everything in her life looks so clean-cut and well-lit. And she always has photos in her posts, which I love. Everything is illustrated so well. See?

Jess of The Doe or the Deer: has mastered the art of instagram+blogging. Normally I just skip over instagram naval-gazer posts, but hers have a certain je-ne-sais-quoi to them. (You can click through to see their original posts.)

Kris Atomic - "Kendal Calling Photo Diary" - pics of an outdoor concert in b+w.

Little Chief Honeybee: well, everybody on the whole internet is abuzz about this, but Kaelah's new mobile business is so cute!

Mary Rebecca's Blogging Worldwide series, in which she shares lists upon lists of amazing bloggers, separated geographically. You can find people in your hometown, or people across the world. Really cool idea.

No Ordinary Rollercoaster - when Ben went to Ethiopia. I loved his very honest North American perspective on everything that was happening.Especially when he talks about the traffic, LOL!

I’ve never been more certain of my own demise or disfiguration than I was in the cabs and bus-cabs on the way home from the market today. I had fourteen adrenaline rushes, I aged seven years, I had two hours of post-traumatic stress disorder, and I spent thirty minutes planning out my next cab requirements so that I could mentally prepare with a Gravol cocktail with a Xanax chaser.

Our City Lights: Diana's bed.

Pencil Box: Katie is painting a wall in her home using a gigantic paint by numbers pattern right now! 

Q ... come on, no blogs start with Q!

Rockstar Diaries: um...their dog reminds me of someone I know!

Suzy Krauze and the Skyscrapers: the first time she vlogged it was so cute my brain exploded.

Time won't wait for me - Kristin's most recent post on an adult patient in the Operation Smile recovery room in wherever she is now in India...it brought tears to my eyes. I love what she's doing, and I love her way with words...and there's a tie for the 't' section, because I also look forward to reading Caitlin's blog To Make Love Stay on Thursdays. Her TILT posts are some of my favorites!

Um...I don't follow any "U" blogs. so here's a cute picture of tank and I this morning. Yes, this is how I'm blogging: on the floor, 20 pound dog head in my lap. Not pictured: big ol' cup of coffee.

(hello)Vanny - all the 8-bits posts. Again, it's just tons of cool links to random stuff.

Write In Color - basically this entire blog is amazing. It's kind of in the 'self help' category of blogs, but is so beautifully written that each time Melody posts, I feel giddy.

"The most tender thoughts, though carefully cultivated and privately adored, once exposed to the public, may become subject to our intrinsic capacity  for self-destruction. So I urge you, as did Emerson and Silverstein, to remember the independence of solitude. Listen to public opinion but don’t let it destroy you" 

X-actly where did you think I would find a blog that begins with an x? 

Yes and Yes: the true life series! Sarah Von interviews people with interesting jobs or life stories. Some of them will blow your mind! Some of my favorites are: I worked in a sex shop, my sister was dead for 18 minutes, I was a phone sex worker, I'm athiest, My family was in a cult, I was a lady cab driver, and I live with hill tribes in Thailand.

(Coffee and) Zombie Movies (haha I was reaching for a 'z' okay?): Chelle's illustrations KILL ME. She is so good at expressing hilarity in her drawings. Like, I'd put her up there with Hyperbole and a Half, guys. So it's serious. She actually drew my blog's header too, so we're like, practically best friends now.Click through to read the amazing stories these belong to:

Bonus Chelle post: the "I just made duct tape into a purse" song. It's very catchy.

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And that is it, my friends. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Blog Crashers!

I asked Hannah to talk about two things I've been meaning to write about for months: the blanket octopus or chinese foot binding in the 1800s. Both are disturbing topics in their own ways...find out which one she chose!

Definitely go here and see her blog, she vlogs like ... awesome. And she's a funny girl. I like.

And...if anybody wants to vlog about chinese foot binding in the 1800s, and then let me post it here on my blog, that would be great. Let me know. 

ridiculous country music songs

 ***I originally posted this on Desirous of Everything as a guest blogger - you should go there***

I am from a small town in Alberta Canada.

For those of you who don't know what that means, this is how I remember it: farmers, real cowboys, oil sands, "rig pigs", house parties and underage drinking, "family values", the best bush parties ever, Hutterites, jocks vs druggies, fighting, racism, money, drugs, freezing cold winters, knowing your neighbors, knowing everybody's business, community gatherings, people constantly having babies, a working steam train, drama, obesity...

People always say it's the Texas of Canada, but I've heard Austin is awesome so I don't know if that's fair to Texans.

There's some cool stuff about small towns too, for sure. My step-dad is the mayor, for example. That's pretty cool, right? And a lot of people I love and care about like living that way, which makes it indismissable for me. It just really wasn't my bag. I have always been obsessed with obtaining absolute anonymity on the streets, maybe because I'm so shy or a snob or something. I really think I'd thrive in a London or a New York City, where nobody knows my name. Kind of like a reverse-Cheers-type-scenario.


Anyway, one thing I regrettably gained over my five or six rather formative years in a particular small town, was an extensive knowledge base of country music. But wait, I'm not talking about the "cool" country music. No no no.

I'm talking about POP COUNTRY. 

Yeah. That's right, your ol' Nova "Rella" knows all the words to probably every Shania Twain song ever written. Terrible, isn't it? It's not my fault! The only radio station in the whole town played top 40 country, and it was the only thing the bars in town played unless one of the metal kids got to "guest dj".

When my friend Sam, who is from London, asked me if I'd ever heard country music before, and was it a "real thing", it blew me away that not everybody learned line dancing in gym class! (Electric Slide? Cadillac Ranch? Anybody?)  Not everybody knows the lyrics to Fishin' in the Dark...which I have on my iPod at the moment actually...full disclosure! Whatever, that song is kind of awesome.

Anyway, the point is, rather than hanging out in old barns listening to people blow on jugs with three x's painted on the sides and pluckin' banjo strings like I should have, I was repeatedly exposed to songs about achey breaky and/or cheatin' hearts, what guys do all the time, and um...sexy tractors 

What, you think I'm joking? Well, for those of you international readers who don't know the crazy ridiculous phenomenon that is "pop country" here are the three VERY popular pop country songs that are so ridiculous I can't even...I don't even...

Just listen!

shitty advice, $1

I did, I paid the man. He said so many people were taking his picture that he should start up a facebook group. He probably should. He told me to always do what others expect of me, and to amputate my feet, and never follow my dreams. And then my bus came so I had to cut him short.

diptych: wooden sunglasses and some prescription drugs

FINALLY the sunglasses I won through Kaylah's blog have arrived! I've been holding my breath for weeks! They're a rad pair of tumbleweed's custom made red and wood glasses. They fit like a dream and make me look pretty darn cool.

And the drugs are for my stupid feet because it turns out they're not broken but I have plantar fascitis, aka inflammation of the plantar fascia, this weird bit of tissue in the bottom of your feet. It takes months, and sometimes years, to heal. And yeah...it hurts enough for me to have thought I broke bones in my feet.

Lesson I learned the hard way:  TOMS shoes, Vans shoes, Converse, and other flat shoes with no support...they are great. I love them. They look cool and feel comfy. BUT you should never ever wear them for extended periods of walking. Never wear them for sports or dancing. Please, everybody, invest in good shoes or insoles for your "bad" shoes, even if you feel kind of dorky. Because there's nothing cool about having something wrong with you that's most common in 60 year old men and obese people, crying in the back room at work, and crawling from the couch to the bathroom because you can't walk. Take it from old lady Nova, it sucks ass.

PSA - a satellite is falling to earth!

So over brunch the other day (because we're fancy), Ryan told me about this satellite that's apparently going to fall down to earth. Things enter the earth's atmosphere all the time, but they just burn up and whatever, it's cool. This thing though? Is not going to burn. It's going to make it to land, and it's going to crash. It's about the size of a school bus!

NASA is unable to predict when and where, exactly you guys, but it's probably today sometime. They'll know where about two hours before it kills us all lands safely in the ocean, hopefully. Click here to read about it.

I love the bit at the end that tells you not to try and sell pieces of it on EBay, because what has our society come to?

But really guys, you shouldn't touch it. You all know what happens when you touch things that fall from outer space...you may turn into a horrible mossy plant man!

(Sorry it's in Spanish, all the English ones had been taken down due to copyright infringement.) This is an act from the 1982 awesome horror/comedy movie The Creepshow, starring Stephen King who touches a meteorite and turns to a plant man and eventually kills himself. Yeesh.

What? It could happen! 

Things I (would) Love (for my birthday on October 7th) Thursday

Yeah, it's...a lot of things. People always ask me what I want for my birthday, for Christmas, etc. and I never know what to say. Of course I don't expect gifts, but it's fun to dream, and if someone I knew was a billionaire these are some of the things I would ask for...click through for where to buy these amazing products. P.S. My t-shirt/hoodie size is usually medium unless they fit snug, then it's large. And my ear gauge is 00g. Shoe size, 7.5-ish. Just sayin'. Just in case!

 

 

I would also like a custom shirt that looks like Sgt. Pepper wore it from Lady Hue. I also love pretty much anything from this website. I'd like a round-trip visit to Copenhagen, maybe with a stop off in Switzerland too, to visit some awesome friends.

Ten things I love about you...

1. You're a demon in the sack, hahahahahaha sorry everybody, that's none of your business.

2. You are the most caring person I know, and would do anything for the people you love. I know a lot of people say that about a lot of other people, but I honestly mean ANYTHING: Get zero sleep after a graveyard shift to do something with his kids, spend hours cooking a special dinner for somebody...you take a lot of time out of your day for others, and you never complain about it.

3. You're super cute, especially when you're tired and your one leg of your pajama bottoms gets all rolled up somehow. And you get handsomer each day.

4. You give really good, level-headed advice and always seem to know what the right thing to do is. I always feel like I can just rattle off my emotional crazy feelings and you'll help me work it out.

5. You've always been supportive to me, even when I'm being a weiner or making weird decisions. You stand behind your woman, haha! But really, this means so much to me.

6. Your stupid jokes that make no sense...well, they're growing on me. You have a weird sense of humor but you keep life interesting! You're full of surprises.

7. You throw yourself into things full-force. Everybody on the internet, I warn you now, if you meet a "Darth Skater" in any hockey pool you WILL lose.

8. You are not afraid to try anything and you never seem to get embarrassed. I think you're super brave and I admire that.

9. You've been so awesome with me and my ridiculous foot injury these last few days, I feel like with your strength and patience that we can rule the world.

10. I have one hundred percent trust in you and one hundred percent faith that you love me and that's the best feeling I've ever had. We're gonna be together for a million years.




xoxo

Happy Birthday.

If you're not following me on tumblr, you're missing out on things like this:

You know what to do: novaisawesome.tumblr.com

bubbles!

I think this last one looks like a weird snowman bear walking across our driveway.