Viva!

Less than a year ago, the Duke took his first trip to the U.S. in 13 years. As often happens for us Canadians when we haven't crossed that omnipresent line not too far South of us in a while, he expected it to be some sort of some fundamental je-ne-sais-quoi you can feel in your bones, telling him that he is somewhere different. Outside of the bottles of energy drink the size of our heads and slabs of beef jerky the side of our legs at convenience stores, the presence of Jack In the Box, much cheaper alcohol, the difficulties in finding playoff hockey on TV, the ten cents difference in the value of a dollar, and the annoyance of having to convert kilometers to miles... well, things weren't too different.

It was rather funny watching Glenn Beck ranting about the evil of compact fluorescent lightbulbs on television (we also don't get Fox News in Canada, making it a bit of a legend we needed to see for ourselves) right in the middle of laid-back Portland. The two didn't quite fit.

He remarked again, as 2009 passed, how the U.S. we visiting didn't quite seem like the U.S. we saw on TV, the one with the bling and the angry people shouting about public health care causing the downfall of the universe. While I agreed, I also reminded him that the three places we'd been that summer, Portland, Seattle and San Francisco, weren't exactly the epitome of the America that is supposed to be so diametrically opposed to Canada.

As such, I eagerly anticipated our first visit to Las Vegas this January. I figured that if any place could capture the cliched "I-saw-it-on-TV" version of America, Vegas would.

And, in many ways, it did.

There was no such thing as the dark. It was also never quiet.

Everything you can imagine is done up in lights. Even disturbingly eerie clowns...

... and Denny's.

The portion sizes are absurdly enormous. The Duke was only feeling slightly peckish, and thus ordered a fruit plate-- the smaller one on the menu. He instead received this, enough fruit to feed a family of four for a week. (Note: This picture does not include the accompanying loaf of banana bread.)

There are breasts the size and shape of genetically engineered watermelons, and skirts the size of a postage stamp.

There is more Ed Hardy than should ever exist. The designer even has his own nightclub-- entrance probably incurs a dangerous risk of a Jon Gosselin encounter.

You can get a $1 marguarita, but later on that night you will pay $10 for a vodka and soda. You can also pay $50,000 for someone to bring you some Dom to your table, or $450 for that very same bottle of vodka I have sitting in my freezer at home.

You will go crazy at the sound of people flicking call girl trading cards at you, and will start to wonder if your personal bubble ever really did exist.

Nothing is original-- every single concept, particularly in architecture, is just a plaster version of something that has been done before. Yet there is something insanely creative about all of it.

One of the first things that greats you off the plane is an ad offering you to try shooting a machine gun.

It is the middle of the desert, yet literally millions of gallons of water are used every fifteen minutes for a free fountain show.

Every washed up and/or random performer can have faith they will find a home in Vegas. Carrot Top, Andrew Dice Clay, Wayne Brady-- you name it.

Somehow topless showgirls are different than stripper. I don't know how.

Hot dogs are $1.99 but bottles of water are $5.

Tickets for the "Eiffel Tower" exclusively forbid unauthorized weddings, as apparently these are more rampant than the average person expects.

There are buffets with multiple different kind of mashed potatoes. And more mousse than any human could ever process.

And people really do gamble at 7am.

You can really sum Vegas up in one word: excess. Utterly and completely.

But it was still unexpectedly pleasant to be overwhelmed in the midst of all those lights, not quite knowing where to look next.

Partying like it's 1999

As mentioned, oh, about two posts below, this weekend involved the latest attempt to convince me I am an adult: my 10 year high school reunion.

Truth be told, it was really quite a low-key affair, nowhere near deserving the significance it has accrued in pop culture and people's nightmares. Only about a third of my small town grad class made it out to any of the events, due to a silly bout of high school drama about the lack of planning of a formal event, along with those "real life" responsibilities that keep us from venturing back home at a moment's notice. Sunday afternoon was the "formal" reunion, really just a picnic in the park with little ones running about in all their resplendent cuteness. Saturday night, however, I declared "pretend you are 18 again night", and hosted a party at my parents' house, much like I was known to do when I was actually 18.

Of course, one can't have a grad reunion party without at least a few random observations, highlights, and not-so-highlights, can they?

• Us late 20-ers can't drink nearly as prolifically as we used to. My mom actually made fun of the number of full cans of beer and half drunk bottle of vodka remaining. I personally had to call it quits post-Jager shots, despite the calls to bust out the tequila.
• The guy who used to be skinny and wear thick glasses who has now had laser eye surgery and has buffened up will find an excuse to take off his shirt after a few drinks, no matter how ridiculous.
• The guy who dumped me in Grade 11 and the next month made out with my friend while we were all sleeping on the same mattress felt the need to announce very loudly, on numerous occasions, that we had slept together. So much for my discretion over a decade ago. He also told me approximately six times that he was sooooo proud of me while tightly hugging me.
• When mentioning that my boyfriend could not make it out due to having to finish off his Masters thesis, several people declared him to be but a fiction, and referred to his name in air quotes for the rest of the night.
• In a perhaps less than sober attempt to prove his existence, I then called the Duke at 1am and passed around the phone to random people to talk to him.
• I will admit to being more flattered than I should after overheard a guy, in his rankings of the hotness of the girls of the party, declare me the winner. Even though I disagree with the idea of ranking hotness in principle. It just takes a little flattery to make a hypocrite out of me.
• It is a little funny to hear that the meanest of all the mean girls, who was known to threaten to beat up smaller girls at random, yours truly included (and very out of the blue, I may add), had declared that she would never come to our high school reunion, stating "Why would I want to see those assholes again?" Wait, we're the assholes?
• Someone actually pulled out my parents' copy of my Masters thesis at 4am, and started drunkenly reading it aloud, while inserting random words like "butterflies" and "sex" into it.
• Only one person asked me when I was getting married.
• Sublime makes me happy. However, a lot of the other music on the kitschy 90s hits station I put on to reminisce was a little weaker-- hello, C&C Music Factory.
• It is funny to realize you missed someone more than expected. It is also funny how seamlessly some interactions can flow, despite all the time and space in between.

The past month

Things I've learned over a month without blogging...

Not writing down every spare thought really does make for a lot more free time.

I'm most tempted to break my self-imposed no blogging rule when I've been drinking.

I get a lot fewer emails.

I worry about my first *real* post back, and that I will forget how to write.

I also worry that if I don't write a little update every now and then, I may disappear into a deep dark internet wasteland, along with chat rooms, my old MySpace account and other things that used to be semi-cool.

I miss random people at random times. Out of the blue, I will wonder what one of you is up to.

I need to use the thesaurus a lot more when I do write something. It's like my brain has already stopped remembering the more poetic synonyms.

***

I'm still away. I just felt the need to cheat and say hello.

Putting down the pen

One of the oddest things about blogging is that it lends itself to the belief that your thoughts are especially important and need to be communicated. Before, I was happy to let the random ideas or clever scenarios merely simmer in my head before vanishing (unlike the lyrics to old TV show theme songs, which seem to be wedged in some random brain crevasses for ever more-- I bet almost every single one of you can rap the Fresh Prince of Belair theme song in your sleep). Yet now, it feels like I am cheating myself to let them escape. They somehow need to be written down, to be witnessed.

This may explain why, on the bus today, I was struggling to find a theme to connect the dots between my opinions on the pigeons living the alley by my apartment, my implicit theories about the guy who sat across me on the bus in the beat up leather jacket (I decided he shopped at used book stores and vaguely wanted to marry him), and my annoyance at my co-worker who has suddenly become a fierce vacation doppelganger and is copying every step of the holiday the Duke and I are about to depart on.

Of course, none of these thoughts matter much at all. It isn't going to alter the course of my or your life whether I decide to tell you about how I nearly trip over pigeons in the morning.

This is likely why I have not joined the Twitter masses (or is it the Twitterati?). If there's one thing I have been told on multiple occasions (other than "Wow, you really are that clumsy" or "Maybe that's enough cheese for today"), it is that I think too much. I know that if I purposely enrolled myself in a program where people presumably wanted to hear the most random of my thoughts, like how it just feels better to know my socks have polka dots on them even though no one can see them, I would probably whip myself up into a frenzy. It certainly seems that the simple act of blogging has done enough to make me more aware of the minutia of my brain... Twittering really could only make it worse. I spend enough of my brain power reacting to "Oh God, I need to remember to blog this."

It kind of reminds me of those people who get so wrapped up in taking pictures of an event or a place that they are entirely separate from the experience. They have no real memories of it, only the plastic versions of memories in their photographs. I have the tendency to start narrating the story of my day in my head before the day is even finished, rather than just being in that day.

The other night, the Duke and I were having a profound late night conversation about of topics such as mental illness and astronomy. As I slid beneath the comforter, knowing the similarities between his memory and a piece of swiss cheese, I said to him "You are getting some pretty intense ideas there. You should try to write them down." He told me that he sometimes appreciates being able to have these thoughts without feeling they need to be preserved, that he can sit with the idea in the moment and be okay with the fact that it may never come to mind again.

Perhaps I can learn a little from him about living in the moment.

Sticky pages

Whenever I go to pick up a package or buy some stamps at the closest post office to my apartment, located in a magazine store, I am always awed by the sheer number of issues dedicated to the most obscure of topics. Belgian photography magazines, Spanish architecture, Chihuahuas Monthly...
However, what always entertains me the most is the sheer volume of pornographic magazines.

Am I the only one who is surprised that the porno mag is still thriving?

I guess growing up in a small town, with the bulk of our magazine selection taking up a half shelf at 7-Eleven (as a side note, my town's 7-Eleven was not open 24 hours, which is exceedingly lame. It is a sad day when one can't get a burrito at 3am). The only exception was the small selection of plastic covered magazines behind the clerk-- Playboy, Hustler, and perhaps one more specialty magazine-- allowing for very little discretion for the dirty magazine connoisseur.
This also allowed for very little underaged consumption of such magazines, meaning that my teenaged males friends would hang on to their acquired issues with utter fervour. I would then discover these very crinkled and bent magazines stuffed in the corners of my guy friend's rooms, that I might flip through when they weren't looking out of curiosity. Perhaps due to the lack of such readily available material-- and the overtness of the "back room" in the one video store in town with dirty movies-- I busted more than one guy friend staring with consummate focus at the blurry and jumbled screen of the Playboy channel we didn't subscribe to in my basement, hoping perhaps to see a boob somewhere amidst the gray haze.

Of course, then there was the internet, and everything changed. Boobs were no longer the mysterious creatures to be glimpsed on late night television, but were available in full force via the magic of Google. Not only that, but there was selection-- if you had a think for Portuguese women in bear costumes, they were only a click away! And I guess I just kind of imagined that, outside of the few cultural staples, like Playboy, the dirty magazine was soon to be obsolete.

But the magazine store has proven me wrong. There are, in fact, more dirty magazines than I ever dreamed existed. I don't know if this was always the case, and I just led a sheltered small town life, or if they have upped their variety to compete with the internet. There are quite literally more than a hundred of these glossy issues, with glaring slogans, like "Hot Housewives" and (my personal favourite) "A Bear's Life". I feel the need to peruse through the aisle out of morbid curiosity, just to discover what titles have been able to keep a market over the years.

Perhaps also because of the clandestine nature of purchasing these magazines in a small town, I also feel the urge to watch the people browsing the aisles as I wait in line for my parcel. Some walk in with a purpose, grab their glossy of choice, and stride out. Others browse like they are at a museum, slowly pacing, stopping occasionally to fish a magazine from the back, and then contemplate its cover. I giggled like a school girl when a man dressed like a sea captain, in a giant yellow rain slicker with matching hat, held up his potential purchase to the light, and I could see what must have been triple Gs proudly displayed on the back cover from metres away.

Like good Canadians do

As good Canadians do, the Duke and I decided to show our wholehearted dedication to all things hockey by hosting a Hockey Day in Canada party.

For those of you not familiar with said tradition, one Saturday a year, all six Canadian teams play each other at times staggered throughout the day. It is an epic opportunity to revive old rivalries, drink before 5pm and engage in some serious trash talk.

A few things observed on this occasion:

Even when you give people a six hour window to show up, and trying for an open house format, the hosts will be sitting around for the first three hours surrounded by untouched serving plates full of appetizers. Then, as if by magic, your apartment buzzer will nearly short circuit itself by everyone showing up at the exact same time (1st intermission of the second game).

Everyone will bring chips to such a party. Everyone. 

Now my fridge has been emptied of veggies, dip, pitas, and other such foods, but my cupboard is full of twist-tied bags of chips.

A lot of people do not come to a hockey party to watch hockey. It is a dangerous thing when the hockey and anti-hockey people collide during overtime.

Flavoured vodka makes me happy.

I look cute in my hockey jersey.

It is awesome when your team wins. It is more awesome when there are opposing team fans trash talking you when their team was winning. It is infinitely more awesome when, due to his team's defeat, your six foot tall guy friend squeezes into your 5 foot 3 self's hockey jersey for punishment and ridicule.

It is awkward when one of your good friend's and her boyfriend finally have that knock-down argument about his lack of a Valentine's Day gift for her two years in a row in your entrance. It is more awkward when it moves to the only apartment bathroom for 45 minutes. It is infinitely more awkward when, after he leaves the bathroom, you try to go comfort your friend who is still in there, and a guy yells across the entire party "Princess, why are you harassing the poor person trying to pee?"

It is also awkward when a drunk lesbian tells my boyfriend she is going to go kiss me, and then just ends up getting a mouthful of my hair as I unknowingly am chatting away with someone else. (I didn't have any idea what her intentions were until later... I was just like "Uh, why did you just bite my hair?") It wasn't exactly the girl-on-girl scene anyone was looking for.

Cleaning up after "adult" parties is infinitely better than cleaning up after teenage and college parties. You just collect the bottles, which most people have kindly gathered in one or two locations, rinse of the plates, put the leftovers away, and you are off to bed. The messiest thing was a pile of damp cloths from when people cleaned up their spill themselves. It is a far cry from the cleaning up of mysteriously sticky liquids and garbage of the parties of my youth.

Mismatched jigsaw pieces

There is a man in front of me on the bus with his fly undone. With his arms outstretched to reach the handles above my head, and the fact that my head is precariously level to his crotch, it feels a little obscene and deliberate. Though I can tell from his unknowing demeanour that it is in fact inadvertent, I still feel the need to shield my eyes a little and pretend to be exceedingly fixated on my left shoulder.

It surprises me what surprises me these days.

Off key reggae sung along to the clanking of tin cans seeping through my kitchen window from the alley below seems as natural as the hum of the washing machine. 

Yet, today I was shocked by the sight of teenagers. Living amongst low rise character apartment buildings and overpriced grocery stores, one almost disregards this demographic. I haven't even the slightest clue where the nearest high school is located. As such, as I stepped onto the train platform at the mall exit, I was nearly overwhelmed by the seas of giggle, sighs, pouts and skinny jeans. Is it possible that I actually forgot that they existed?

***

If I could sum up my life, and consequently my state of mind these days, the one most suitable word would be scattered. My thoughts are like jigsaw pieces all from different puzzles. Pulling together coherent stories feels like trying to force the pieces to fit, fraying the edges in the process, pretending to ignore the obvious gaps, professing that the bits of the schooner do indeed interlock with the snippets of the basket full of kittens.

The notion of focusing on twelve separate things at once (aka. the very essence of my PhD program) really defeats the entire notion of focus. As such, by the end of the day, I find myself utterly exhausted, yet restless-- my body doesn't want to move, but my mind can't stop moving, skipping from one topic to the other, yet not pausing long enough to focus or elaborate on any of them. 

It's like I'm operating in point form, rather than sentences-- let alone my usual paragraphs.

Random thoughts whilst grocery shopping

Sometimes, I quite enjoy grocery shopping. Not the "I just need to pick up a few things" type of grocery shopping, nor the "Sunday afternoon when everyone and their dog is waiting in the deli line-up" grocery shopping, or the "I'm going to try to haul all this crap on the bus so I have to ignore the giant pickled goods sale" type of grocery shopping. I'm talking the random weekday leisurely shopping, wandering down every aisle with buggy room to spare.

And whoever came up with the idea of cup holders in shopping carts? Bloody genius. My caffeine addiction thanks you.

This morning, as I was on my way out the door, I received a call from the person I was scheduled to assess, canceling due to sickness. Suddenly I had a free morning. For me, free time is generally a very exciting concept, and a slew of ideas rushed through my head, including an unscheduled fitness class, getting a head start on a new project (boo), or going to see a matinee of a Korean film about a rebel goat herder's daughter at the film festival. And then I realized there was nothing for breakfast but cereal crumbs or mustard on the heel of a loaf of bread, and decided that a massive shopping trip was likely the most effective use of my time.

I then decided, that in celebration of my three hours of spare time, I was going to go all out on this shopping trip. I would pay the extra five dollars in cab fare home to go to my dream grocery store, the one with guavas and twelve kinds of bulk trail mix and a salad bar, rather than the lame local store with only two kinds of turkey at the deli.

Livin' large, my friends.

Apparently no one goes shopping Wednesday morning, and thus I could saunter down the aisles with leisure, fingers tapping on the handle to non-offensive adult contemporary music, using a mental shopping list that grew each time I discovered a new condiment aisle.

A few thoughts that came to my mind under the blinding fluorescent lights...

• Have any of you ever heard of Grapples before? They look suspiciously like a standard Gala apple, but apparently are grape-flavoured. Despite my curiosity, I didn't purchase any- not because of their likely abundance of carcinogens, but rather because I was unwilling to pay $5 for a 4-pack of anything except pomegranate coolers.

• Swiffers have been primarily invented to convince us that we had been rolling around in our own filth up until their purchase. I can't figure out how they can still fish up so much dirt after I've swept the floor... but my neuroticism insists that I can't stop buying them now.

• Is shopping cart theft really such a universal problem that the wheels need to automatically lock a millimeter off store property? It makes it a real bitch for those of us who need to get our purchases to the cab on the corner.

• Why do some people seem to think that Canadian driving rules switch to European in a grocery store? Keep your cart to the right, people!

• I always want to find a viable excuse to buy frozen hors d'oeuvres. Mini-sausage rolls seem so much tastier than rice.

• Why does the produce spray always attack me specifically?

• This particular store has a super badass and frighteningly dangerous looking bread slicer. I find it strange that I can operate said slicer without much consideration, yet I cannot use the basic sloping tool to slide the bread into the bag. My loaves are always askew.

• The best thing about a massive shopping trip? The kick ass dinner you have that night. The worse thing? Separating and bagging bulk meat.... ewwww, slimy.

• Why, with the whole move towards eliminating paper bags, do cashiers always look so homicidal when I hand them my canvas bags? The environment frowns at you.

• Who buys headcheese??

Quotes and other such randomisity

"He's got the metabolism of a centaur!"

- Yours truly

(You've never seen a fat centaur, have you?  Or a real one. )

***

Upon me making small talk with a former classmate about his heavy course load over the upcoming semester...

"Yeah, it's really busy, but I have a lot more time on my hands now that I don't have a girlfriend anymore."

In and of itself, I know this isn't that odd of a statement. But considering I've never once mentioned relationships, my weekend plans, my lunch... hell, anything besides course related brain chemistry to him, and anything more than one minute in length, it was a painfully awkward moment.

My reply, after an obligatory awkward pause? "Well, school will be your girlfriend now."

***

Asshat of the week award goes to people who talk on cell phones at the gym.

I can't decide who is worse-- the woman who seemingly just goes to the gym so she can call people to tell them she is at the gym, while she lazily does a rep or two while sitting on my coveted ab machine for 10 minutes....

(If you can hold down a conversation while working out, you're doing it wrong)

OR

The woman who was running at least 6 miles an hour, on an incline, with two books and papers spread out all over the screen of the treadmill, while talking on the phone. I had visions of a YouTube worthy series of injuries occurring with bad gym 90s techno serving as the soundtrack.

***

A pen spontaneously exploded in my hand today. The less comical part of this is that the white cardigan I am wearing to a wedding this weekend has been smeared blue (hey, at least it provided some variability from my typical coffee stains). 

The more comical part of this is that it somehow leaked into my bag, where I had stored my "professional" clippy-cloppy high heeled shoes for seeing clients, so that I could wear flip flops for most of the day. More specifically, it spilled right onto one heel, which I didn't notice until the entire hallway of the clinic was polka-dotted with navy splotches.

***

I am away this weekend to a fabulous little island getaway for a very close friend's wedding (and somehow fitting in ridiculous amounts of course reading between drinks). However, upon my return (Monday to be specific), I have some very big bloggie news--- so stay tuned!!

Anecdotin'

Baby birds have decided to set up residence in our bathroom vents. Initially, I was a little confused at the twittering noises that provided my showering soundtrack. Given that I live in an older building, I wrote these cheeps off as remarkably animalistic squeaks-- but after a few days, I consulted the all-mighty Google, who informed me that birds often have a special affinity for bathroom vents. I confirmed this by standing on my toilet, and tapping the slats, to which I was responded to by a flurry of tweets. Although friends have deemed them creepy, I've grown a little fond of these winged chirpers... and I'm exceedingly happy that my vent does not have a fan.

***

A new Asshat of the Week has been declared...

Beer Pilferers.

As we bagged our alcohol for Saturday's house party, the Duke suddenly reminded me of a category of asshat I had forgotten for a long while (due to the sad lack of house parties since the whole graduating from high school thing): the beer stealer. This individual lurks by the fridge, where s/he scams unsuspecting people's beers, drinking them furtively in a corner, before grabbing another brand. We laughingly plotted a sting operation if we noticed any of our alcohol mysteriously disappearing, with plans to upload our confrontation of the beer stealer on YouTube.

A few hours later, we watched as a woman reacted to her beer being pilfered. 

"You know what's funny, guys? How we were the only people drinking Pilsner tonight, and somehow, we are missing four cans, and you two are sitting beside the fridge with cans of Pilsner in your hands."

The two men in question simply stood there, mouths agape and faces blank, and mumbled something about the host offering them free rein of the fridge's contents.

Apparently shame didn't serve as too substantial of a motivating factor to them, however, as it was only an hour later that I heard another friend's eruption over a missing six-pack.

Beer pilferers... as the winners of this week's prestigious prize, you are sentenced to a lifetime of consumption of warm non-alcoholic beer. Enjoy! And don't worry... no one will steal it from the fridge on you.

***

File this one "That was TMI, Facebook"....

Perhaps you remember my rant on the internet phenomenon that is My Free Implants (aka. the world needs big breasted women more than it needs to cure AIDS and famine)?

An old high school friend is a proud member of this site, and uses her status updates to fill us all in on her monetary progress. A recent one celebrated a large donation by declaring "Yay for compassionate, generous people". 

It makes me a little sad, honestly, because she is a beautiful girl with a phenomenal body, especially for having had two children, and she is having to chat with and send photos to rich men in order to get herself the surgery to convince herself that she is beautiful.

***

I just went to Costco for the first time in years, and had forgotten how wonderful the notion is of getting everything in jumbo sizes. I was in awe of 20 litre buckets of margarine and bags of sugar I could use as a sleeping bag. I was giddy over my ridiculous purchases when I arrived home, shouting things like "Do you have dirty hands? That's okay because I have 3 litres of liquid soap!" and "You want a granola bar? Have two! We have forty of them!" 

My best purchase? A 4 litre jar of pickles. 

It literally takes over a half of a fridge shelf.

The oddest thing about this behemoth is the fact that it lists 3/4 of a pickles as a serving size.

Here comes the sun and other weekendly snippets

As predicted about a week ago, the disappearance of the clouds from the sky leads to the clearing of the clouds in my mind. 

It also doesn't hurt that Surfergrrl and I have backstage! passes! to! JACK! JOHNSON!

For reals!!!!

Us and Jack, in barefoot glory, eating banana pancakes. Just you wait. He's writing a song about it.

***

Does anyone remember, back in the days of The Sixth Sense, when M. Night Shyamalan was considered a creative new force in cinema?

Knowing that makes watching The Happening infinitely more painful.

I don't even have the words to express what a bad movie this was. The theatre starting laughing hysterically when a tear-stained John Leguizamo shouted "Don't take my daughter's hand unless you mean it!", and then just didn't stop... and it wasn't supposed to be funny. Even when Marky Mark shouted "We'll be okay if we outrun the wind!", it wasn't supposed to be funny. Seriously, it was some of the most lazy and cliched filmmaking I've ever seen. We actually were laughing hysterically for the next day about how horrific it was. It makes Snakes on a Plane look like an Oscar contender.

***

Saturday was wonderfully sunny, which excited the Duke and I to near manic levels. We decided that frolicking in the sunshine was the most important item on our agenda, and headed off to the lovely green seclusion of the botanical gardens.

I may eventually move under an umbrella tree.

***

My friend N. is the ultimate conversation starter. A few weeks ago, after gorging on BBQ left a group of people sprawled out and silent on a friend's massive deck, she decided to kick-start the chatting by asking everyone to tell the story behind their worst scars. Saturday night, as we sat on a rooftop patio, sipping wine and watching seagulls float overhead, she had another request-- everyone's worst drunken vomiting story. We heard of sleeping in ditches, passing out in toilet bowls, and, worst of all, of covering tell-tale stains the next morning with a towel during an open house. Each one had us breaking down into peals of laughter. 

My own? Involves my 19th birthday, a Monday night, a grasshopper martini, and my mother. More details available upon request...

(I'm not sure such details are really everyone's weekday morning cup of tea)

***

"Let's get our dumplings on!"

"It's like a meaty surprise!"

.

.

.

.

Sunday morning dim sum!

However, I'm afraid that getting one's dumplings on was nowhere near as fantastic as it may sound.

We arrived at the stated place at the stated time, supposedly to meet up with about 10 other friends for assorted tasty, ingredients unknown goods. Instead, we were met with utter chaos. A restaurant that literally seated hundreds, with families squeezed into every which corner of the lobby, and people surging towards the host. I managed to make it to the front of the line, attempting to inform the host about our reservation. I was blocked by arms and shouts from every which direction, and eventually just slammed my feet down, elbows out, with my torso literally pressed up against the host's podium, in an attempt to be noticed. 

The first woman asked me for how many. I told her I had a reservation under my friend's name. She just walked away. The next man, after another several people shouting names and numbers at him, actually started getting information from the woman directly behind me, who pointed out that I was clearly in front of him. I again told him about the reservation. He crossed it off the list, nodded, and then went on to the next person... with no effort to get me a table. Two minutes later, I ask him again. He asks me how many again. I tell him 12. He nods, and ignores me for another five minutes. I don't know if he's telling me that I need all the twelve people here this very moment, or the table is still occupied, or what. My friends are all now 20 minutes late. I hear yelling erupt in the crowd about the poor service and people butting in line. We decide to just leave, as it isn't worth this drama for a brunch we didn't even organize for people who couldn't show up on time. Of course, it is then they all arrive en masse, and it turns out that someone had already gotten a table 20 minutes ago... something the host never even bothered telling me.

Several deep breaths were had.

Several more were had when we experienced possibly the worst service on the planet. We were put in a side room where the carts didn't apparently venture, and where the waiter barked at us to hurry up and order despite having no menus. This was the same waiter who had the balls to tell us our hour late sticky pork buns were still being cooked. 

At this point, the Duke summed it up aptly in saying "I think we already know that the possibility of a tip has been completely eliminated. Now it's just a matter of how much we have to steal from them to make this entire experience worth it."

***

Post dim-sum, with some lovely new china in hand (kidding!), we moseyed over to the Car-Free Festival in one of the more eclectic areas of town. It was there that we were greeted by bongo drums, lemonade stands, people parading down the street declaring "You can't buy our rivers!", and the following interaction...

L: Wow, that guy dancing over there has some seriously short shorts. I mean, I pretty much can see his balls.

*Pause*

L: Oh God... I did just see his balls.

Me: Me too!

L: Well, he puts a new meaning to the phrase "rock out with your cock out!"

***

PS. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!

The one in which I discover my low kidnappability score

Me: Hey, could you help me get unplug my phone charger from behind the dresser?

Him: Why do you need it for such a short time?

Me: I don't want my phone to die when I'm gone.

Him: *rolls eyes*

Me: What happens if you try to call me and it's dead?

Him: Then I know your phone died.

Me: How do you know I wasn't kidnapped by gypsies?

Him: That wouldn't happen.

Me: Why not?

Him: Gypsies are very selective, honey.

When bloggers collide-- Part 2

The DS/PP extravaganza has drawn to a close, and while she is off to the sunny beaches of Southeast Asia, I am alternating between an office with no windows and a lab with no windows-- even though I can just feel that sunshine waiting for me just beyond these walls.

While I slowly pine for the breeze outdoors and collapse under rickets, here are some smatterings of lessons learned and images from our bloggie collision:

There is an art to fish throwing, though I know it is not something I should ever try my hand at.



Americans apparently don't use the term "kitty corner"-- they just say diagonal to, which is nowhere near as cute.

No matter how frequently I may catch a glimpse of the ocean through a train window, it always brings me peace to be on the seashore.

You can make guitar trees! And apparently even play them... from afar! (courtesy of the Experimental Music Project)

My long standing notion that I have no rhythm was confirmed by my attempts at playing the guitar, keyboard and drums at the EMP. DS, however, has hella drum skillz.

The idea of skunks running about downtown Manhattan is ridiculous, despite the fact that they are a nightly summer hazard on my side of the world.

The Space Needle can bite me. Zzzzzz

The Seattle-ites of yore didn't have tremendous success in the human waste realm. Initially, the unlucky folks residing at the bottom of the steep hill that used to make up Seattle were the lucky recipients of the sewage of those above them. However, when the newfangled Crappers were all the rage (that is actually the technical term for them, from the creator, Thomas Crapper. I swear), the city dwellers rushed to the harbour to purchase some for their home. However, Seattle-ites were again the victims of poor planning, because the sewer pipes ran directly into the ocean, with no concern for the flow of the tides. As such, at a particular time of day, if someone was lucky enough to flush their crapper, the pressure of the waste coming down the tubes from the hills above and the tide coming in from below led to a veritable explosion of sewage the exact opposite direction as expected-- up!!

Another brilliant Seattle plan... after the entire downtown core burnt down because of a paste fire (yep, from someone who left their paste on the stove for too long), the city decided to try to flatten the giant slope on which the downtown core was situated (the whole human waste fiasco seemed reason enough). The merchants did not want to wait for this construction, and thus rebuilt their businesses at ground level immediately, while the city went about raising the roads, sometimes as much as 30 feet, meaning that customers would have to climb down tremendous ladders to access the front door of the general store or the saloon. The city tried to cover up the high tumbling-induced death rates by labeling them accidental suicides!
Eventually, the merchants caved in, and filled in the sidewalks in front of their buildings, and raised their front entrances up a level.

All this info was gathered from the Underground Tour.
That's one of the skylights below.




DS and I apparently both turn into squealing children when in the presence of nerdy science fun. A sample of our conversations: "Oh my God! That dinosaur moves! So awesome! I'm gonna pose with it and pretend that I'm a dinosaur!"
Even the 7-year olds were rolling their eyes at us.

Giant praying mantises are scary, especially when their pincers moved. DS actually ran away from this one.



Butterflies, on the other hand, are always spectacular. Even when they are divebombing you.











Yeah, so I went a little overboard. Whatever. They're pretty.

You know what else are pretty?? Naked mole rats!!!


I hope these look familiar. They are prestigious winners of my Ugly Animal Pageant.
They are also exceedingly entertaining. We spent around 10 minutes watching this wee little mole rats clamor his way up a slope, only to have another, big (mean!) one literally climb right over him and push him back down the slope. They also have the tendency to get stuck on their backs in the middle of tubes, which is sheer comedy.

DS does genuinely have the worst travel luck on the planet. Outside of Mr. Dirty Customs Worker, my bus trip down was relatively smooth. However, the moment we got through the doors of the Seattle bus depot for our return trip, chaos erupted. People were scattered about in every which direction, with the clusters showing more resemblance to dodecahedrons than straight lines. Apparently the computers and the printers were broken down, with only two workers to stem the disarray, and DS without her confirmation number for the ticket she was supposed to pick up. The line was literally moving at about 1 person every 5-10 minutes for sometime, leading me to wonder if, despite arriving 45 minutes early, we would be able to get on the bus. DS and I frantically mouthed things to each other across the room... or, rather, she read my lips, and I tried to read hers, and ended up mostly just shrugging my shoulders.

Thankfully, the transport curse let up, and, tickets in hand, we maneuvered our way through the pseudo-line, where we managed to get the last two seats together on the bus, and bothered the kilted man in front of us with our chatter before he eventually decided that conversating with us was infinitely more interesting than eavesdropping.

Back on my side of the border, my lesson was apparently that life always gets in the way, visitors or not, so I had to squeeze meetings and errands in with my hostess duties.

We did, however, manage to go traipsing about through the tree tops!


It turns out that I apparently have better balance when dangling 230 feet off the ground than I do when my feet are firmly on solid earth.





I miss my tree house.



Apparently you don't see leaping trout every day in the Big Apple.


It was all rounded off by a display of chopstick and table barbecuing skills.

~fin~

(Because I can think of no wittier way to end than that)

PS. The mysterious Indie Bloggers post will indeed be appearing tomorrow!

Pseudo-post

#1- Back soon with exciting (and photo-filled) posts about PP/DS adventures. Also back soon to your sides of the Internets soon.

#2- I should be published tomorrow on Indie Bloggers. It is actually probably the most cathartic post I've ever written, so I am pretty excited.

And that's all, folks!

EDIT: Blogger is being an asshat, and randomly not loading tonight, so I couldn't finish my post.
Also, I swear, my post was supposed to be on IB today-- stay tuned...

The Wal-Mart Diaries

By popular demand...

When asked about life in my hometown, I usually reply with a series of praise about the scenery, the atmosphere, the people. However, I generally qualify this with a statement of "But you have to leave at some point, unless you want to continue working the same job you did when you were a teenager."

Because, when I was a teenager, I worked at Wal-Mart.

It is a little odd that there was even a Wal-Mart in my home town. This was the town that managed to keep out the mighty McDonald's by virtue of grassroots petitions and local paper headlines declaring the evils of corporations (it should be noted that other paper headlines included "Main Street Oak Tree to Be Cut Down: Locals Enraged"). Ever since its arrival in its 1990s take-over of North America, Wal-Mart has been pretty much a constant source of controversy in our town, from its underselling of local businesses to its desire to sprawl across the underdeveloped portions of the waterfront.

However, another quality of small town life is its lack of employment; as such, Wal-Mart became popular for the minimum wage crowd. Thus, despite my hippie sensibilities, I ended joining the ranks of the big-box employees for one summer.

What did I learn in my 4-months wearing a blue vest?

• Wal-Mart can't decide if they want to seem prestigious or all-accepting. This is the only way I can explain the fact that I had to go through three interview portions (including a questionnaire about my responses to employment related moral dilemmas-- "A co-worker confides in you that he has been smoking marijuana on his work break. What do you do?") to get the job, yet they still seemed to hire absolutely anyone (from the purple-haired to the retired many years prior) with few standards. Seriously, some of the people I worked with were the least socially skilled individuals on the planet, making me wonder how they even managed a 15-minute interview.

• Another sign they took themselves too seriously? Managers were forbidden from socializing with employees. I remember a poor 20-something assistant manager who moved from a major city to take over an open position. He worked really long hours, but was disallowed from even going for coffee with anyone from work. I remember actually having an honest conversation with the guy the day I quit about how ridiculously lonely such rules left him. It's Wal-Mart, people, not a law firm.
• 
  
• Working in the toy department had its pros and cons. Pro? Being able to wear a crown and boa while working with no one blinking an eye. Con? The second you turn a corner, your three hours of work cleaning the action figures aisle will be destroyed.

• Despite my prior glamourizing of the infamous Wal-Mart greeter position as the easiest job of the planet, it is also the most boring and the most humiliating. People will humour a 70-year old woman accosting them with stickers and salutations, but their responses to a teenager tend to be more characterized by pity and disdain.

• Some people took their job way too seriously. They would only speak about the company and Sam Walton in the most glowing of terms. They would frantically call out any break of protocol. They would lead the morning exercises (which included finger stretches) and the Wal-Mart cheer with utter gusto.
• 
  
• Ah, yes, the Wal-Mart cheer. Contrary to what you may have hoped, it is not an urban legend. Those of us lucky enough to open the store got to shout and gesture along to "Give me a W!"
•  The second best part? "Who's number one? Our customer, always!" 
• The best part? "Give me a squiggly!" (for your information, squiggly represented the dash-mark, and was accompanied by this odd wiggle-dip.)

• The day I wore a skirt to work was inevitably the day they sprung on me that I would unexpectedly be left to cover the garden department, and thus would have to haul 20 bags of manure into the back of someone's truck.

• On the same note, they seemingly never had enough people working on one day, meaning I would be covering literally up to eight departments at once while getting paged to run a till. Also, you were only trained for the department you *officially* worked at, meaning the customers looking at barbecues probably knew more than I did when I was called to help them.

• The customer's-always-right mantra gets rather tiresome in a hurry, especially when people would literally try to start bargaining with me or would return nasty, stained apparel without a receipt-- and the management would appease them. It was then that the customer would shoot me a nasty glare, as though I was purposely trying to screw them over by being willing to haggle with them over the price of an electric scooter.

• Kids getting excited about new shipments of Lego or Hot Wheels is cute. Grown men? Not so much. In fact, we had one man who would be waiting outside the doors before opening every weekend to raid the Hot Wheels section. Whenever someone new was hired in the department, he would scam them by telling them that the department manager promised him he could look through the new shipment box that morning-- which was a complete lie and would leave you with an utter mess of itty-bitty trucks strewn about the aisle.

Not to mention Wal-Mart radio is sheer torture-- a medley of non-offensive soft rock favourites and irritating repetitive jingles-- including one set to the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" that chanted "Roll back, roll back, roll back some prices for me, for me!"

Oh, the memories....

Put me in a packed apartment...

... and I go a little crazy.

I just can't sit around and watch TV when surrounded by boxes. The neurotic inside me cries out "What if you really need a hand blender and a pair of mittens?" As such, I am a compulsive unpacker unless literally dragged to the couch (which is now, amusingly, completely box-free due to my efforts). 

It probably doesn't help that I may be a little high off paint fumes. 

On the bright side, the actual move went phenomenally smooth. We had a whopping nine people shuttling our stuff up the horrendous purple carpeted stairs, meaning we were able to move both the Duke and I out of our respective apartments and into the new one by 3pm. Which included some serious maneuvering skills with the moving truck after the asshats doing construction a few doors down from me decided to park their enormous truck on one side of the narrow residential street, and their dumpster directly across from it. It was seriously a matter of inches.

My one pet peeve, however, is pack rat accusations. Inevitably, these always come from men who own three plates and one pan. Don't hate on me because I have the fixings to cook you up a casseroles and an angel food cake! 

I am happy to report that the apartment is even more fabulous than I recalled. The two of us keep on looking around in awe, saying "I can't believe this is ours!" We're used to being able to hear each others every move in my old place-- now we have to shout to hear each other when in different rooms. The only thing I find a little disturbing is the excess amount of mirrors. You know, the unfortunate "didn't-you-want-to-watch-yourself-pee" mirror, and the "hey-look-there's-me-first-thing-in-the-morning" mirrored closet right across from our bed. 

Now that the boxes are close to unpacked, I'm putting on my decorator hat-- which, by proxy, also includes my handywoman hat. Although I'm no superstar in this regards, I can hang a shelf if need be, and my toolbox actually kicks the Duke's toolbox's ass. However, after unsuccessfully negotiating a hammer, nails, tape measure, and leveler while standing on my kitchen table in an attempt to hang a set of in-wall candleholder in perfect diagonal fashion, and failing miserably (they looked level from 8 feet off the ground!), I feel like tucking my tail behind my legs a little. Especially after I tried to do the much easier act of hanging one of my paintings, only to find that the set of picture hangers I'd purchased yesterday bent in a matter of seconds. 

The 12-year old in me (who is consequently also high on paint fumes) tells me that I should play scientist with my new garburator instead, and see what I can plausibly shove down my sink. An entire block of styrofoam? A mango? Excitement!!

What I would have written about

Writer's block is a pesky little bastard.

It's one thing to not be in the mood to write. 

It's another to crave words, but instead stare fixedly at a blinking cursor.

I know there's no need to problematize it. It is in all likelihood a simple side effect of nothing more than a boring life.

I know I have already broken my yearly quota of posting on the subject of boxes. I have no witty anecdotes other than how ridiculous it was that I was almost happy when I broke a plate and a bowl because it meant two less dishes to wrap in newspaper. Oh yeah, and I posted an ad for my answering machine for free on Craigslist-- who knew so many people still used answering machine, underestimate the value of a comma, and think it's appropriate to demand my contact information in their initial response. Or how one of my bosses, aka. the slick psychologist, made yet another inappropriate joke. At least it wasn't about 2 Girls, 1 cup this time.

Yeah. That's all I got.

(Besides the fact that I am going to get double the DS I expected almost 2 weeks! But that warrants a post in and of itself.)

Things I considered writing about:

How my version of re-potting a plant involves dumping dirt everywhere but the pot.

Why working at Wal-Mart sucked (hint- it includes the Wal-Mart cheer, which is in fact not an urban myth)

How I keep getting scared I'm going to see psycho bus man again

How the world seems to be reminding me that, despite an incurable case of imposter syndrome, I am getting close to being a professional. Which is exceedingly scary and exciting at once.

Why I miss my cat.

How Starbucks reproduce via asexual reproduction on a very rapid, bunny romping-like schedule.

How I'm going to see Radiohead in August!!

The quirks of growing up in a small town.

My fourth (or third and a half, since my third was in a game of truth or dare) kiss, which was given up to a very undeserving boy in a tent.

Why I miss my sister.

How moving means eating those back-up cans of soup, rather than buying new food.

The funny thing is that I could have plausibly constructed a reasonable post out of any of these, rife with some random tongue-in-check references (in brackets). However, it wouldn't have been genuine-- sort of like writing a term paper.

So, instead, you get an ode to the things I didn't write about.

Which I'm crossing my fingers is better than nothing.

Quote of the day and a shower of bullets

"If I won the lottery, I would hire David Attenborough to narrate my life for a day."

-The Duke

(Please, some of my fellow geeks, tell me you know who that is. Planet Earth is like the coolest documentary series EVER.)

***

My mind seems to be working in point form these days. My tendencies towards rumination aren't exactly my best hidden trait-- most of what is running through my mind these days is "How am I moving in a week? And how many boxes can this pedestrian wonder and transit queen reasonably carry from a store at once?" Unfortunately, while there are numerous sources of boxes to be scavenged in the city, my wee little arms can only haul so many at once, so I am still woefully under-boxed. 

For those inquiring minds, the Duke and I are moving in together (or taking the cohabitation plunge, as I dubbed it previously). We've found a lovely apartment in one of those three story walk-up buildings that looks like a box on the outside, and has horrendous purple carpeting in the hallways and stairwell, but is surprisingly fantastic in the suite. He is now seeing me in my full neurotic glory, as I query about how many bowls he has, and what we should name our future fish (we decided to go with classic theorists in our disciplines, meaning one will be named Sigmund).

Anyways, if you haven't figured out already, a moving Princess = very bad blogging Princess (it's science, dammit!). However, I am trying to pull out at least a few random thoughts, in an exceedingly stilted manner...

• Best drinking game ever? Drinking every time a hockey announcer uses a double entendre to describe the ongoing game. For instance, today "squirting" was the descriptive term of choice whenever the puck was deflected, and the puck apparently "rimmed" the boards.
• A friend of mine has a bit of a camping phobia. As such, in a move an exposure therapist would be proud of, she decided to prepare herself for an upcoming summer festival by setting up a tent in the middle of her living room. I arrived to find her and another friend drinking in the tent, with all her furniture piled in a corner, with the window open to simulate the cold, a lamp overhanging the tent to simulate the moon, and fake palm fronds on top to simulate cedar trees.
• It's intriguing how archived text messages provide such an interesting snapshot of a person's life. As I was packing, I found my old cell phone, which had around 150 text messages stored from a year and a half ago. It was like a weird one-sided time capsule.
• Frosty floats from Wendy's are nowhere near as delicious as you'd expect.
• Am I one of the only women on the planet who is comfortable with my boyfriend having female friends? I'm beginning to get suspicious, as whenever I make coffee plans with a male friend (who I've known on very platonic terms for 6 years now), it seems like something comes up with his new wife that prevents our meeting. I still haven't determined if this is coincidence or deliberate-- but we have another scheduled meeting on Tuesday night, so I guess time will tell....
• 
  
• And disturbing pop culture news of the week? A new book entitled My Beautiful Mommy. Not beautiful on her own, mind you-- this book is intended to help children come to terms with their mother having plastic surgery. In some ways, I guess I can understand the need, as it has to be scary for a child to see their mother covered in bandages, yet not explicitly harmed. However, even more aversive than the simple fact that there is a sufficient need for such a book is the fact that it has a happy ending in which everyone celebrates because "Mommy is even more beautiful!" 
• An excerpt: "You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better." (Ironically, Mommy appears to be wearing a crop top in even her hideous pre-surgery state.)
• What they forgot to say: "Because there really is no other way to make me feel better about myself than Dr. Michael's solution. And you know mommy is too busy to exercise. At least it isn't like back in grandma's day, when you were stuck as ugly forever and ever!"

Quotes of the day (or introducing Americans to poutine)

It feels as though the last post sucked me dry. It had been following me along for so long, initially as a series of scattered ideas, then as a handful of metaphors and memories in my draft folder. It was almost as though the catharsis was too effective, leaving my brain a little barren. It's scary to think that my typing fingers may be getting a little rusty...

However, there's nothing like a bachelorette party for a few random anecdotes...

***

"My bum is jealous."

After some pre-drinking, I had my first stripper experience.

While I'm not the type of person to be uptight about nudity, I always found the notion of women going to see female strippers a bit too cliche. It seemed sort of like making out with a girlfriend on a table at a night club-- more about the attention than the actual experience. However, celebrating a friend's last big hurrah before her May wedding seemed as good of an excuse for nudity as any.

And so I found myself sitting in pervert's row, watching a woman dressed as a mermaid dance to "Kiss the Girl". My childhood memories wishing I was Ariel seemed a little corrupt at that moment-- Disney gone wild indeed.

The specific quote came out of my mouth after Officer Kyla shook her assets in my face. Seriously, there's nothing like high class exotic dancers to motivate you to get to the gym-- and to learn to use the monkey bars in a whole new way.

***

"I can feel the drool running down the cheese curds."

After the strippers, we made our way to a night club, where the bride-to-be was subject to a list of tasks in order to generate points. For instance, building a man's sexual anatomy was worth 2 points, getting a piggy back from a stranger was worth 15 points, and getting a man to put money in your bra was worth 50 points. Although technically she just had to obtain 60 points to be declared a "groovy chick", and 121 to be a party girl, as the bride to be put it "I'm a grad student, therefore I'm a perfectionist. I'm not stopping 'til I get total vixen status!"

Unfortunately, if there's anything consistent about bachelorette parties, it's the power of a goofy veil to bring out the sleezy men. My technique? Trying to convince would be suitors that I was actually 37 years old with 3 kids at home. 

After several hours of drinking, it was decided that the night wouldn't be complete without some late night poutine.

This actually was an initiation of sort for a number of the party-goers, who were from the States-- including the bride-to-be. You can distinguish between the Americans and the Canadians simply by virtue of whether they think fries smothered in gravy and cheese are a craveworthy midnight snack. The lady of the night looked rather appalled as we dove in. However, most humourous was when a friend (also a poutine virgin) made the declaration above, as he desperately tried to suck in dangling melted cheese curds. 

***

"If I had a day like in Groundhog's Day, where you know you get to relive it over again with no one remembering, I would make it my mission to unpop as many collars as possible."

Just a random observation on my part while enjoying crepes on a sunny patio this morning.

When even rainbow socks don't work

I wore rainbow socks yesterday.

They didn't help.

The morning kicked off with a bang with another assessment in prison to cover for my continually absent coworker, who, by my count, has missed 3 of her 4 weekly shifts in a row. This time, I had the luck of spending three hours of my morning with a sexist inmate, who, amongst other things, dissed my shoes.

Yes--my shoes.

A man in an orange jumpsuit dissed my black suede boots.

How does one even respond to that?

Once I returned to the clinic, I received a series of frantic phone calls on my cell from my soon-to-be landlady.

A little background... 

The Duke and I are taking the cohabitation plunge. After wasting much time looking at darkness infused suites or slowly backing away from crazy racist landladies trying to convince us to move in, we found a seemingly great place this weekend-- bright, large, big balcony, in-suite laundry, fireplace. The landlady seemed to really connect with us, and called us that evening to offer us the apartment. 

That was when the problems started. We tried no less than three days in a row to meet to sign the lease, with her pulling tricks like canceling our meeting midday, then frantically calling our cells repeatedly an hour later saying she could make it after all.

Cue Wednesday... I ignore her first few calls, since, you know, I'm working, as it is 2:30pm on a weekday. I finally answer. She now tells me that her realtor has called, and she is thinking of selling the place.

Yes, selling-- three days after she offered a year lease to us.

The kicker was that she hadn't made up her mind yet, so didn't want us to back out of the deal. She asked if we could wait another month to move in, and would sign a contract with us saying that she would give us $40 if she decided to sell instead.

Forty goddamn dollars.

And she had the nerve to act offended and tell me how many other people had wanted to move in when I told her that she had inconvenience us.

Needless to say, we are back at square one, without an apartment.

Oh, and did I mention it is end of class week madness?

And that I paid an excruciatingly exorbitant price for hockey tickets for the last game of the year, for my team vs. the Duke's team for his birthday? And now, two days before the game, my team is officially out of the playoffs (which was seemingly out of the question when I bought them), so people are now selling the tickets I paid 3-4 times the value of for below cost?

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

And so I provide you with a list of ridiculous things that make me smile.

(Seriously, writing the list was one of the only things to make me smile today-- so at least it worked!)

Platypuses. Because you know evolution was laughing when it created these suckers.

Driving through car washes. But only if they have the giant rollers and lots of suds.

Stepping on frozen puddles.

The foam on root beer floats.

Waking up, looking blurry-eyed at the alarm clock, and realizing you still have two more hours of delicious sleep left.

Pickled asparagus or green beans in my caesar.

Chia pets.

When people smell better than expected-- like the scruffy looking guy who squeezed past me in a bus line and smelled like Tang.

How, when eating almonds or edamame, they split in half so perfectly and smoothly in your mouth.

Swing sets. Particularly hopping on them despite completely inappropriate footwear, and pumping your legs so wholeheartedly that you get the giddy nervous stomach rush.

Ferris wheels.

Sidewalk chalk drawings.

Old character homes with unnecessary light switches and random nooks.

Umbrella trees. This is what I call any tree you can hide beneath.

Tidal pools.

Digging through the fresh dirt to find earthworms.

Tree houses.

My mom singing the opening riff to "Smoke on the Water" by going "Do do do, do do DO do"

Wiener dogs.

Playing peek-a-boo on the bus with the child sitting in front of you.

Rediscovering an amazing song you'd forgotten by putting iTunes on random.

Neighbourhood cats who follow me home.