While cleaning out the pockets of my winter jackets in preparation for upcoming snowy days and bitter winter winds, I found an old package of cigarettes with a few left inside. I absentmindedly tossed them on my computer desk and promptly forgot their existence. Until today, when, desperate for a morning smoke, I spied the pack and mistook it for a more recent purchase.

There is nothing quite like sucking back on year old funk. I've decided that should I choose to quit smoking again, this would obviously be the way to accomplish it.

I've emptied half a tube of toothpaste in my mouth since then, and still I'm chewing on that single filthy puff.

Yes, smoking sure is disgusting.

My boyfriend talks to me in his sleep. It's quite endearing, when it doesn't startle me awake from dead slumber. The other night he rolled over to me, pulled me close, snuggled into my shoulder and whispered "seaweed" to me. Later that night as he hugged me, he sighed happily and murmured "batteries" into my ear.

Now that's what I call sweet talking.

So then I wondered what would happen if I answered him.

Boy: (mumbling into my neck) Spaghetti...
Me: (responding candidly) Alphaghetti!
Boy: (whispering more matter of factly) Spaghetti...
Me: Rigatoni.
Boy: (in a more irked tone of voice)
SpaGHETTI...
Me: Lasagna?
Boy: (in an indignant and exasperated tone) Nooo! SPAGHETTI!
Me: ...
Boy: *snoARkzzt*

Serves me right for arguing about culinary details with a chef.

So lately I've been finding upside-down cups scattered in odd places all over the apartment.

Me: (Internal monologue upon glimpsing a pretty blue cup overturned on the living room rug) Hmm. What a strange place for a cup. Being the considerate and tidy roommate that I am, I'll pick it up and wash it. (Picks up the cup, and begins to head towards the kitchen when I suddenly feel the unmistakable tickle of 8 tiny legs fleeing up my arm towards freedom) AGGGH! (Continue to scream like a little boy, hurl the cup in the air, and claw at my skin madly) Well. THAT was weird...

*next day*
Me: (Observing a yellow cup under the kitchen table) Hmm. What is WITH these cups? (Picks it up, and a ginormous spider flies out in the direction of my jugular) EEK! (Stomps upon the unfortunate creature repeatedly)

*next day*
Me: (While exiting the shower, I spy a green cup overturned by the bathtub) Ok, I'm not touching that.

*later on*

Roommate: Hey, did you touch that cup in the bathroom?
Me: No, why?
Roommate: Cuz there's a spider underneath it.
Me: Dude, are you the one leaving spider cup traps all over the house?!
Roommate: Dude! Are you the one moving all my cups?!

And it drives me crazy that I honestly thought that it was some kind of nutty coincidence that everytime I moved a cup a hairy brown bit of calamity would come running out.

So the other day as my friend is running out the door on the way to the library, she shouts over her shoulder, "Want me to bring you back a book?"

Up to my armpits in textbooks and essay outlines, I desperately craved something absolutely moronic to read that required no thinking whatsoever. "Bring me back some Harlequin-esque smut!" I replied.

A few hours later, she returned triumphantly and tossed over a worn out paperback with a colourful picture of a rosy-cheeked, buxom girl with her dress being blown about by the wind until it was nearly flowing off of her, clinging to the chest of a half-naked, hairy man in a kilt. The fancy lettering of "Chieftain" was spread over the top of the page. Fantastic. Brainless reading material. Just what I needed.

Yesterday I needed a bit of stress relief, so I ran myself a hot bath and settled down in the suds with my new novel. I immediately became engrossed in the story of a young girl in Scotland in the year 1309, whose husband was imprisoned by the evil King. Everything was romantic, corny and completely implausible like all great romantic books should be, until I got to chapter 3. When the dashing husband returned to his lady's castle, riding victoriously upon his trusty steed, an elephant.

That's right folks. An elephant.

As soon as I read that line, my happy romantic novel bubble popped and I convulsed in giggles for ages. When I closed the book in Chapter 4, the elephant was lumbering out onto the rolling green hills towards the sunset while the wife and husband sat astride as he braided her hair and whispered sweet Scottish poems into her ear about his quivering loins.

I hope there are some flamingos and zebras in chapter 5, or I will be highly disappointed.