Tag: Humor

Down in London town, I’m dancing by myself

Hi Friends!

Well, it’s all come to pass.

We have a sparkling, new, beautiful shower, and I managed to successfully attend a concert for the first time whilst flying solo.

Kaiser Chiefs are top-notch groovemeisters, so I pretty much just showed up, danced like a mad woman for an hour and a half, and then hit the road.

Oh my god, I can't believe it.

(The four glasses of wine I consumed before heading downtown may have had something to do with how easy the whole thing seemed. I’m normally a two-glass max kind of gal, so take this as you will.)

The one thing I will say was that I was a little bummed out about the fact that they hardly played any of their new material (or really anything from their catalogue post-2008.)

I've never been this far away from home.

They have so many fab songs other that those featured on Yours Truly – Angry Mob and I had been eager for the chance to hear them live.

For instance, I was gutted that they didn’t play Man on Mars, a tune that I have been pretty much listening to on repeat for the last two weeks. Seriously, it’s the first thing that finally managed to knock The Decembrist’s Calamity Song off of my top jam list.

Ch-ch-check it:

Ricky Wilson told the audience that Vancouver was their last stop on their tour, so they were probably pretty exhausted and burnt out and didn’t want to take on anything too taxing.

But overall, I must say I had a great time period, and there is always something to be said about going to a concert where you (and every other person in attendance) knows every lyric to every song that is played.

I’d give it a solid 8 out of 10 cats.

Ju-on girl dancing her heart out!

On my way home, sitting on the metro, I was trying to concentrate on anything other than the dull ringing in my ears, when a very young man sat down next to me.

The fellow was just a little too eager to strike up a conversation, so my spidey senses immediately started tingling.

Because I am a crazy weirdo, I did what I am often do in awkward situations – make them even more awkward (this time by speaking in a really terrible accent.)

This is hilarious to me, but probably insanely disconcerting to the other parties involved.

If I could muster up the appropriate amount of compunction I would, but then I always ask myself, what’s life without a little flare? A little intrigue?

So, egging myself on, I sometimes try out mein deutsche, and other times moya ruski.

This time I was from jolly old England.

Bah.

[adjusts monocle.]

Unfortunately, the dude was totally undeterred.

Even after I told him I was seven years older than him, he still asked me out.

Youth these days, I tell ya.

Either deliver my paper on time or get off my lawn!

I will give him props for gumption and guts, but needless to say, I will not be seeing him again.

(Until my next late night train ride, goodness knows.)

The next morning, I was moving a little slower than usual, due to the after effects of my solo dance party, finishing the bathroom, and the eleven kilometre run Mr. M and I completed during the previous day’s afternoon.

I figured the best thing to cure my Sunday sluggishness, was homemade crepes with fresh fruit, nutella, walnuts, whipped cream, and tea, devoured on our porch, basking in the warmth of the (long lost, and now finally found) sun’s rays.

Yum.

Edit: for one bloody day at least! It just makes me want to yell out: Come on Biscuit you can do it!!!

Erm.

I mean spring!

Come on spring, you can do it!

But at the time, it was, for lack of a more poetic descriptor, absolute bliss.

Bliss!

Then, M and I tore about our place, vacuuming like a vacuuming things, dusting, washing, scrubbing – wiping away all the dust that had accumulated over the course of our reno, encrusted in our corners and nestled in all the often missed nooks and crannies.

Seriously, nothing is as good as clean feels.

A friend of mine remarked, after reading my post from last Friday, that I would probably pick up a ton more traffic to my blog if I posted photos of myself doing mad cleaning in my underwear.

I’m not going to lie – I briefly considered this as I tore about our place, but in the end I decided it just wasn’t worth it.

That, like my English accent, should not be encouraged.

Not without copious amounts of wine, anyway.

Isn’t that right, guvnah?

I predict a riot

Today I arrived home from work and M asked me to help him clean out the shower’s grout lines.

Now if that isn’t sexy talk than I don’t know what is.

No?

Not sexy?

Well then. Colour me surprised.

Anywho, I wasn’t about to say no, seeing as how he’s done such a bang up job with the overall project, but I wasn’t exactly keen on the thought of grout retraction – I had a long day (and equally long week) and I was wearing one of my favourite “spring” work outfits and I didn’t want to muck it all up.

Although my overall tip top impression of my get-up took a bit of a hit when, after remarking that he liked my hair style, M told me that I was reminding him of “you know…that character from Kids in the Hall…you know the one. The one with the ponytail.”

Erm.

It’s unfortunate to say, dear readers, but I do know the one.

And it’s not good.

Not good at all.

For those of you who aren’t acquainted with Darill, please consult the below video:

Not exactly the apex of coolness.

Not exactly the look I was going for. But thanks for playing “man for whom I’ve pledged my troth for the rest of my life”!

Egads. Can’t a girl catch a break?

So after I told M that I don’t know where my self-esteem would be without such positive reinforcement on his part, I sucked up my pride, and stripped down to my unmentionables, and got down to business.

ON REMOVING THE GROUT! Get your minds out of the gutter!

Don’t think I don’t see you over there, you with your head circling that sewer drain!

Seriously though – I won’t go into much depth on the subject, but suffice to say, I absolutely love doing household chores in my undies.

Like, LOVE it.

(My neighbours I’m sure think I’m bloody bonkers, so I always close all the blinds before doing a really big clean. Then I proceed to skulk around my darkened home, brandishing cleaning supplies, vacuums, mops, and garbage bags.)

I worry that I just a couple steps away from becoming a Matthew Good music video here folks.

Anyway, I’m getting dreadfully off topic here.

What I found interesting about the process of working in the bathroom, was how  just the simple, repetitive motion of removing all that clay was actually a really good exercise in winding down, and of letting the events of the week go.

Clear out the grout – clear out your head.

(I won’t lie, knowing just how stellar the finished project is going to be was also a solid motivator for not only doing the work, but doing it well.)

Almost there. We just need to grout the tile, but it looks sooooo pretty!

So now that’s it’s done, I’m able to do what I was hoping to do as soon as I arrived home – put on some of M’s old clothes, chillax to the max, and eat all the junk I bought earlier on in the day.

That’s right folks: chocolate covered marshmallows. WITH SPRINKLES!!!

NOM.

Amen.

As a brief postscript to this post, can I just wax eloquent (briefly I assure you) on two things?

The first is how the television show NUMBERS is so uncomprehendingly awful. And Mr. M LOVES to watch it, despite the fact that he too cannot stand anything about the program.

It’s almost as if he’s developed some crazy perverse, car crash fascination with the whole show.

I, on the other hand, I cannot understand how anyone can watch it, perversity or not. The writing is so bad it drives me absolutely batty.

But then again, I’ve been known to watch some pretty polarizing programs myself, so who am I really to judge?

Hmmm.

Nah, I’ll still judge.

The second is that I am finally getting the chance to see one of my all-time favourite bands on Saturday night.

I’ve got a date with the Kaiser Chiefs, and I am getting my mad dance skills prepped for a night of top grooving.

The only cricket in my soup bowl is that I am going to be going solo.

Have any of you gone to a concert by yourself before? If yes, let me know, and send along any tips you may have.

I’m really not so fussed, but still a little nervous.

If it gets really bad, I’ll just show up in my underwear.

And start cleaning.

Strange things I have done, seen, and want to do this week

DID: Washed my hair in the kitchen sink.

Okay, some background.

This is what my dining room looked like last night:

Stuff.

And this is what was going on in my living room:

More stuff.

Mr. M is currently Mr. Fix-it, which means we have no bathroom in our bathroom, and most things that will end up going in our new bathroom are sitting, or strewn about, where we normally eat dinner.

Phew.

And because I am incapable of operating at a normal level without washing my hair every day (because, dear readers, it is so very thin and so very fine, and because of how much I exercise , I cannot live without a daily shampooing) and because we had no tub – I washed my hair in the sink, where thirty minutes prior I had scrubbed two frying pans, a colander, two soup bowls and a spatula.

PHEW.

Needless to say, before I got down to business, the side of the sink that I used to wash my locks was scrubbed to an inch of its life.

(And because I’m lazy, I left the other side the way it was, with a dirty knife and spoon lying next to the scrub brush.)

URG.

CLASSY!

No joke I nearly broke my back and cricked my neck for all of Canada as I limbo-ed my way to clean hair.

Also, it is dang hard trying to get all the conditioner rinsed away, when your giant five foot ten body is unable to manoeuvre itself to allow for your stupid head to rest directly under the water stream.

For CANADA!

Also, it’s at times like this that I realize just how long my hair actually is (when I dye my hair from a box is also another great reminder of this.)

I might not have a lot of it, but it’s getting to the length where I start to feel like a mermaid when I get out of the shower.

Speaking of which, today I did something shower related I’ve never done before – for the first time I brought a change of clothes with me to the gym and showered as soon as I’ve finished working out.

I was a little nervous to check out the state of its facilities, what with how dodgy the place is overall.

But despite the exposed pipes, and broken fan, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

It was very clean, with good water pressure, and honestly, quite a large stall.

I don’t know if I’m going to start pulling this stunt on a daily basis, but during the time that I’m living in a house without resources for bathing (kitchen sink not included) it’s a good reserve to fall back on.

The only fly in the ointment being that between my regular gym gear that I schlep with me to work, and the extra shower stuff I had to add to my kit, today I was (and tomorrow I will be) a bag lady and a half.

And a half!

Alas, t’is the price you pay for cleanliness.

SAW: These Air Canada Ads

Okay, a while back I wrote a post about the first generation of these Air Canada ads, focusing on (what I thought to be) a very white-washed advertising campaign.

No.

Here you are, marketing flights to large, Asian cities (each one, need I point out, very different from the other) and you have an all white cast, some of which are dressed in non-descript “Asian” dress, or holding chopsticks, or, what is that, practicing some kind of martial art?

No.

Jeeze Louise.

It’s painful just looking at them.

Seriously, has one person who worked on this campaign done any of the following?

  1. Gone to Hong Kong/Beijing/Seoul
  2. Looked at the majority of individuals flying back and forth between Vancouver and these cities, and then bothered to notice what they looked like.
  3. Gone out anywhere in the Lower Mainland and registered that its population is incredibly diverse, and not in fact racially homogenous.

It just boggles my mind (and also makes me laugh, because believe-you-me folks, I used to work at the airport and I’m very well versed will all of these Air Canada flights, and I know who is travelling on them, and it doesn’t matter if they are Canadian, Chinese, or Korean, but the average traveller does not look like this:

NO.

And I’m not saying that they cannot use white models in their campaign, but a little variety wouldn’t kill them either.

At the very least it wouldn’t make them look so casually racist, and overwhelmingly tone deaf.

Seriously.

WANT TO DO: Make out with Richard Hammond.

Because I am an ENFJ (extrovert, intuitive, feeling, and judging) on the Myers Briggs personality test, change to my regular routine is something I try to avoid at all costs. So as you can imagine, when I’m confronted by minor disturbances (such as having no working bathtub) my rabid need to control everything (and then not being able to do so) drives me a bit batty.

But just a bit.

In an attempt to help me calm down, I have been watching episodes of Top Gear on Netflix, drinking hot chocolate, and eating thousands of mini marshmallows.

I just started watching the show last week, and oh boy is it funny.

It hilarious and entertaining, and I enjoy Jeremy Clarkson’s acerbic wit, and it would be pretty fab to have the chance to play checkers against James May, sitting out on a lanai somewhere on Oahu’s North coast (in my imagination).

But mostly more than anything, I want to have a good old fashioned snog fest (in the parlance of his country) with Mr. Hammond (also in my imagination.)

Yes I did take this photo off of my tv. I have no shame.

He’s cute as hell, plus I get a kick out of the idea that in work shoes I’d be over half a foot taller than him. It would be just like every single high school dance I ever went to. Throw in some Mario Kart, late night McDonald’s runs, and a ton of laugh-fuelled bumbling and fumbling, and you pretty much have my grade eleven relationship down to a tee.

Plus – he’s from Brum, the city that owns a good chunk of my heart.

(And in terms of famous people who’ve come out of Birmingham, I’d definitely choose him over Frank Skinner and Ozzy Osborne.)

…

So there you have it folks.

DID. SAW. WANT TO DO.

And to finish off, if may ask, what are some weird things you’ve been up to this week? Seen anything barmy in the extreme? And who are you jonesing for a sweet, sweet lip-lock (if too, only in your imagination)?

Let me know, and I’ll think about it the next time I’m washing my hair (in or outside of my kitchen.)

An A for effort

Two years ago I was in writing hell.

I was in the process of finishing up my master’s thesis, and as such, was spending upwards of thirteen hours a day sitting in front my computer (and I use the term sitting pretty liberally, because for much of the time, I just contorted myself into the most back breaking positions imaginable to human kind – so much so that it’s really quite amazing I didn’t rework the entire curvature of my spine) writing a path dependent analysis of British and Canadian immigration policies and immigrant integration schemes, post-1945.

Nymeria was pretty much the best study partner I could have asked for.

Overall, I loved writing on the subject matter, loved my research (carried out both here in Canada and over in the UK), and very much loved the finished product.

Of course the million dollar question is, would have I said all this to you then?

Maybe.

Probably not.

What most likely would have happened instead, was that sometime during our conversation on the matter I would have either burst into tears, or begged you to go out and buy me a 7/11 apple fritter.

(Had you said either yes, or no, I probably still would have cried. From either disappointment or happiness – believe you me, those fat, salty sobs would have flowed.)

Sitting here, writing this today, with so much perspective on this event, it is pretty darn easy to talk about how great the whole experience was.

Nymeria is also here to remind me not to get completely delusional. She would like me to remember that at the time I was completely knackered. PLUS: Animal Print.

However at the time, I was a miserable wreck; as previously noted, my life was rife with high-drama crying fits, poor nutritional choices, and completely cringe-worthy, totally horrifying fashion statements.

If I only had one word to describe my dress sense for the first four months of 2010, it would be BRUTAL.

Just brutal.

I am disclosing this today, because I want to provide a different perspective (or palate cleanser if you will) from last Friday’s post.

I feel compelled point out that there have been times in my life where I have, on a daily basis, fashioned outfits that would have propelled me to the top of any worst dressed list out there.

Sometimes when I look at old photos, particularly of the early years Mr. M and I spent together as a couple, I often repeat to him, “Thank you so much for staying with me despite all the times I looked absolutely deranged.”

He normally just smiles, and dismisses my claims.

(Although, to be real here folks, if you take a second at the photos, he may be thinking along the same lines. We are a match made in (crazily dressed) heaven.)

But getting back to Thesisgate, 2010.

By the end of my scholarly run, things had gotten pretty darn bad.

Indeed, my closet had pretty much devolved into the following two outfits:

The first?

My pajamas.

The words on this sweater "who gives a hoot?" eventually became a short-lived life motto of mine.

Each morning I would wake up, and immediately begin writing. No shower. No bath. I would type away until about one o’clock, at which point I would eat a banana completely slathered in peanut butter, drink a pot of tea, and then have a massive, massive sweat-and-panic attack. To combat my massively rising anxiety, I would throw myself into different feats of strength, which sometimes meant push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups, but other times meant episodes of Gossip Girl.

After these exercises (in self-loathing), my garb would be sufficiently grodtastic, so I would take everything off, wash them, dry them, wash myself, dry myself, and then put the whole thing on again.

At the height of my efficiency, I probably had about three different sleeping ensembles on the go, none of which (I promise you) had a best before date that outlasted my defense date.

Blargh.

Outfit number two was my “Going Out Outfit.”

Now, at the beginning of January, this setup was at least a “semi-normal” ranking, on a scale from plain jane to absolutely barmy.

It mostly consisted of a pair of thick, comfortable leggings, a cute (albeit short) summer dress (it pretty much covered my bum and that was it) and a rotating duo of cardigans.

Unfortunately, before I really knew what was happening, I started adding soccer socks (on top of the leggings), big doc marten boots, chunky mens sweaters, and really outrageous scarves to the whole shebang.

I looked a bit like a cross between Daria, Blossom, and Claudia from the Babysitter’s Club.

The only thing missing was a giant hat with a bunch of fake flowers stuck to it. I mostly just wore old-school Canuck’s toques and a pink beret.

In my opinion, (and to the many, wide-eyed, confused individuals, who saw me wearing this in public places)- this is not a very good look.

For anyone.

(Or at least not anyone over the age of fourteen. In 1992.)

The day after I defended, Mr. M (ever the gentleman) very politely asked if I could never , ever, wear any one version of the getup ever again for the rest of my life.

I very respectfully (not to mention eagerly) agreed to do so.

I’ve also stopped eating 7/11 baked goods.

( But you can pry my penny candy from my cold dead hands.)

So there you have it my darlings. A (very bleak) fashion confession from yours truly.

Okay, so I have scoured my archives for a digital copy of my "going out outfit" and couldn't find one (good thinking on my part it would seem.) So please accept this as evidence of some of the silly things I do like take photos of my hairdo before going to work so I know what it looks like.

And I would like to make it very clear that when I do offer critiques on this here blog spot, they are never done with any malicious intent, or mean spiritedness. It is a way for me to deconstruct my relationship with the fashion industry, and how both my choices as a consumer, and my (evolving) taste aesthetic inform not only my perspective of the industry, but also of myself.

I spent a lovely afternoon with my sister in-law V on Sunday, and she remarked that she thinks there are lots of people out in the world who probably wish they could try on some of the more, well, unique outfits available for purchase at different stores, but never have the nerve or gall to follow through.

(To which I say (of course) is: GO FOR IT DUDES! It’s a TON of fun!

She also remarked that the salespeople probably spend quite a while speculating on who will even purchase the store’s crazier merchandise when its shows up at the store.

And just like them, I so desperately want to know who, if anyone, is out there is purchasing the strange apparel I’ve come across in downtown Vancouver.

And if I find out, I won’t have the heart to pass judgment.

After all, they’re probably just in the midst of finishing their PhD.

And their pajamas are still in the wash.

A sister act

Yesterday was rad for a number of reasons.

1.)    I got to have cheesecake for lunch.

2.)    I met up with one of my best buds, whom I haven’t seen in quite some time. PLUS she invited me to join her to:

3.)    Go hear Clara Hughes speak.

For those of you who aren’t acquainted with Ms. Hughes, she is an incredibly bad-ass Canadian athlete – multiple Olympic medal winner, and one of the few people in the world who can say that they competed at both the Winter and Summer Olympics. She is both a road biker and speed skater, and medalled in both sports, at multiple games.

This woman has pretty much the biggest smile in the world!

Talk about inspiration. I’ll be running extra hard during my sprint training tomorrow night and then I will force myself to make it to five pull-ups in a row even if it bloody well kills me.

(If my Friday post hasn’t arrived by  11:59pm on the day, please call either M or my mom and let them know something very serious has happened. A missed blog post is not to be trifled with.)

I kid, I kid.

…

Seriously though folks, I cannot tell you how excited I was about activity number two on yesterday’s  dial-up.

The brilliant, beautiful K has been on secondment in Ohio since September of last year, and working ridiculously long hours at that, so it was great to have a chance to see her and catch up.

K is a long-time (and often long-lost) friend of mine, who, for all intents and purposes, should be given the title of “honorary sister”, what with how much time the two of us spent together growing up.

The next time I see her, I may just have to print up a certificate labelled PhD – S. I’ll give it to her along with a tape of Kids in the Hall, during a late night car ride – two things that are synonymous with sisterhood for me.

She and I spent our formative years training every day together (sometimes twice a day), and if I had a nickel for how many sit-ups the two of us performed side-by-side, I would be Scrooge McDucking it up in my giant warehouse of nickels.

We played junior national badminton together, and she was my doubles partner. When we weren’t kicking butt as a team, we were squaring off against each other in the singles and mixed doubles finales (of whatever tournament we happened to be playing in that weekend.)

And believe you me. When I say “that weekend”, I mean every weekend. EVER.

We had a pretty good gold-silver monopoly going on (albeit competitive to the max – but I mean, who could possibly play sports at a competitive level and not be IN IT TO WIN IT? Definitely. Not. I – that is FO SHO).

But more importantly than our winning – scratch that, nothing is ever as important as winning – (KIDDING! But kind of not really) was the incredibly strong, nuanced, and hilariously fabulous friendship the two of us formed over the years.

I am very serious when I write that sometimes I think I couldn’t have survived my most cringe-worthy awkward (re: teenage) years had it not been for this girl.

K was a rock.

I was pretty much in awe of her at all times; she just exuded the most natural self-confidence, and self-awareness (which at the time, from my perspective, was completely mind-boggling). On court she was a bloody zen master. Calm, cool – the most collected cucumber in a patch filled with absolute zucchinis.

Full disclosure: as I teenager, I was the queen zucchini.

I promise you there probably isn’t a topic in the world that the two of us haven’t covered at some point during our years spent together.

Our friendship is such that I never get anxious when we don’t talk or see each other for prolonged periods of time. Because I know that when we finally do have an opportunity to spend a day with each other, it will be as though nothing has changed, and we are still sixteen, and laughing ourselves silly in some random Calgarian coffee shop, or, Saskatoonian Chinese restaurant, or Torontonian movie theatre, or Haligonian Dairy Queen.

Due to the number of crazy memories we share, we actually started writing a book, chronicalling our many adventures and insides jokes entitled “Apple and Banana’s Fruit Bowl of Jokes.”

(Don’t ask, inside joke.)

Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas is one of our most enduring inside jokes. HI HO!

Anywho, the book is currently packed away with most of my high school memorabilia, but every so often it’s worth the hassle to dig it out, and re-read all of our insane hijinks and crazy escapades.

They slay me, truly.

For instance:

At nationals one year in Calgary, we were warming up before our match, down one of the club’s deserted basement hallways. K was stretching and I was skipping rope.

My rope get hitting the ceiling duct – with each rotation, a dull clang would ring out down the length of the corridor.

K looked up at me and said (in all earnest): You should probably stop that.

Because I was nervous as crap (and over-confident in my understanding of the solidity of ceiling make-ups and apparatuses) I didn’t take her advice to heart, and just kept skipping.

And the rope kept hitting the duct.

After probably another minute, K repeated her earlier warning.

 Look, she said, just move over a little bit.

Pretty much as soon as these words left her mouth, my rope snagged completely on one of the duct’s inner ridges, and as I finished the rotation I ripped the ENTIRE duct, tube and all, out of the ceiling.

Ceiling duct. Pretty self-explanatory.

K’s (and my!) jaws pretty much hit the floor with shock.

Oh my god, I exclaimed.

Oh my god, K exclaimed.

And then, my lovely readers, what followed is pretty much one of the worse case of “the laughs” I have ever experienced in my entire life.

I laughed like a loon for hours about that incident (after, you know, recovering from my disbelief-induced paralysis, and running away from the major destruction for which I was responsible.)

It’s amazing I managed to get myself on the court, let alone make a serve or two.

Even just now thinking about the incident is an ab workout and a half! When I start to feel a little bad about what I did that day (we snuck down the next day to see if the carnage was still fresh, but it had been fixed already) I can’t really be bothered, because the overwhelming hilarity of the memory is still so strong, and fresh, and awesome.

This is why I adore K.

This, for me, is how I define our friendship.

Because even when she is not physically in my life, I have the memories of our time past, spent together, laughing, training, shopping, traveling –

And if I ever want to remind myself of time past, I’ll just go stand under my ceiling fan.

And think about the damage I could do, if I tried.