About Me
First of all, I feel pretentious introducing myself as "Shiz", but what with the whole "people getting fired for stuff they publish on the internet"-thing, I'll be keeping it that way. I have a real name, but whatever. I'm Shiz. I write at shiz.ca , where I recently introduced the first round of Bite Me Awards .
So I write stuff. And I'm annoyed with Pierre Berton for stating that no one can be a career-writer without the die-hard gumption to write for eight hours a day, even with another job on the go. And now all of Canada hates me for dissing Pierre.
Anyhow, I've had these GREAT excuses for not writing: I was sick for a long time, I had a variety of soul-sucking work, and Pierre broke my heart. But now I am well, I have work that makes me happy, and Pierre? Well, he died. So I will be writing more, maybe not for mounds of cash but for pogs or Pop Rocks or crack. And since I hated being sick so much and I'm naturally drawn to the genre, I tend to write comedy.
I'm 32, I live in Vancouver and am both American and Canadian. In 2003, I married a comedian (think family comic, variety performer, prop-comic; the guy you will never ever see at a club because he hates it; the guy who gets out of the straitjacket, who makes a bottle of ketchup disappear, and who makes thousands upon thousands of little children cry). The husband switched gears, retired from comedy, and became a full-time humanitarian photographer. So he travels, and I stay at home. But we have a wine shop nearby.
My husband and I are the proud owners of two cats and ten thousand pounds of hairball tumbleweeds. You may have some if you'd like. We're in love with Vancouver, where, from our home we can walk 1 blocks and come to the shoreline. I lived for 7 years in Kansas City, a place I still have a fondness for. I have family here in Vancouver and in the Minneapolis area.
I also have clinical depression, my most *favourite* thing ever, which I often write about at shiz.ca , though many other web writers have more eloquently recorded what an experience with that illness is like.
I regularly read Heather Armstrong on Dooce and Amy Corbett Storch on Amalah , two wickedly funny women. When I want to laugh I turn to Amy's The Company Cookbook: A Journey Through the Center of the Middle of the Shredded Cheddar Cheese Universe . It always cheers me up.
