Photographs – Rant and Roll

Sunday Night Confessions

1. It’s completely ridiculous how much I love this music video.

Which has me a little worried.

Because it seems as though the older I get, the more my musical tastes regress.

Now, I’m no scientist, but I feel like I used to have some pretty some solid street cred when it came to my everyday jams, and then I turned twenty-five and everything started to go to pot, and now I use terms like “my everyday jams.”

And now, with every passing year, I find myself more and more, drawn to manufactured, heavily-produced sugary schlock.

And by schlock I mean SOLID GOLD.

God I love this stuff so much it feels criminal.

(I probably listened to this song thirty times on loop this morning. Half the time lip-synching like a fiend, and the other half dancing about like a madwoman.)

At least when it comes to Tom Hanks, my love for him will never die, nor shall I ever be ashamed to proclaim this affection.

It doesn’t matter how many terrible movies he makes, or how many times he doesn’t get the hilarious jokes in a Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Golden Globes opening monologue – the power of A League of Their Own, The Burbs, That Thing you Do, and Forrest Gump will live on, ad infinitum.

At least, scientifically speaking.

2. One of my first major celebrity crushes was on Jeremy Taggart, the drummer from Our Lady Peace.

This probably means little to most of you reading this blog, but those Canadians who remember our country’s late nineties music scene, or at the very least spent some portion of their lives watching Much Music, are all probably thinking, “Really!? Him?”

Yes, yes, we all know that Mr. Rain Maida was the sulky, skulking sexy frontman (of what had to be one of the best representations of what we now think of as a “90s band”) but even as a fourteen year-old I was always one to buck aesthetic trends, and go for the outliers.

I mean what can I say? The guy had one set of rocking nerd glasses!

My teenage hormones never stood a fighting chance.

3. I always weirdly hoped that Britney Spears and Kevin Federline would make it.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

4. I was quite sick last weekend and couldn’t run for about a week. The first time out after being laid-up by illness, I always concoct insane survival scenarios, and pretend that I’m in an Armageddon action movie, wherein I have to run as fast as I can to the secret CIA bunker because I am the last remaining top-secret operative trained in nuclear bomb disarmament.

The survival of the entire western seaboard is contingent on my success!

Normally this leads to me running so hard I feel as though my lungs are on fire and the only way I can put out the flames is by ralphing them right up.

(My lungs that is.)

But goodness knows I always make it to that bomb.

Just in the nick of time.

5. Spring is in the air.

I can feel it in my heart.

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See more snaps of my madcap adventures on my new Instagram! Follow me @Vanessaisrunning.

We are family

Happiness.

Plain and simple.

Straight to the point

Some snaps from around the block:

Tulips.

Smelling the flowers.

Morrocan eats.

Business cat.

Saturday morning.

I think I forgot to mention it earlier, but last Thursday I was a presenter at Rain City Chronicles. I told the story of my bonkers journey down the wedding aisle. It was a fabulous night of story and song, and I feel super honoured to have had the chance to contribute to this great Vancouver arts event.

In family news, this past weekend my sister came to town for an (all too brief) visit. I was so excited because on Friday she finally got to come see one of my gigs. It was the first time that she and her betrothed got to see me on stage, doing my joke thing.

I also got to interview her last night on Vancouver Co-op Radio. If you want to listen to the show, you can do so here.

This week it is much of the same – stand-up tomorrow and Wednesday, some volunteer work, and hopefully many opportunities to run about in the sunshine.

What about you all?

For my part, I hope all of you are awash in beauty and light.

Let’s have a chat

This past Sunday night I had the immense pleasure of interviewing Dr. Valerie Raoul on the Storytelling Show, the radio programme I host on Vancouver Cooperative Radio.

Short of interviewing Penny from Inspector Gadget, this is pretty much the closest I am going to get to being on air with my feminist hero of life.

Spending an hour chatting with her on the radio?

AWESOME.

If you are interested in listening to the interview, it can be found here.

(Just be sure to click March 31, 2013.)

This weekend has been an absolute whirlwind – last long training runs (for the Sunshine Coast half-marathon next Sunday); Easter feasts; tennis games; park workouts; awful movies; stand-up shows; and theme (house) parties.

And looking forward to this week, we’re just going to do it all again!

A few snaps from around the block:

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Happy Spring my friends!

Pa-pa-pa Papageno

Happy father’s day to all the beauty cat fathers out there!

Unfortunately, we seem to have re-descended into the bowels of winter out here, but never-the-less, our hearts are light, and today we are off to eat some scrumptious brunch with M’s father – D. Gruyere.

My own vatter lives in Guelph Ontario, so I will be on the blower with him, just in case my carrier pigeons never reached him on time.

In honour of this day, I’ll eat some super duper healthy food, play some scrabble, and read some John Irving.

(It’s party all the time in that small Ontario town, let me tell ya! P.S. check out those hiking socks!)

Here are a few snaps of what has been coming down the pipe around these parts:

Graduation caps.

Rain soaked runs.

Scrumptious pasta.

Garden gate.

Epic treats.

In recognition of all the cool cat dad’s out there, let’s grab – if only in our imaginations – our baseball gloves, tie up our running shoes, and head down to the park to practice catching those pop flies.

But only after we’ve finished our homework.

I’ll make sure to save us a spot.