So what else has been brewing on this side of the cosmic kitchen?
You mean, besides nursing my body back to its natural flesh tone (and away from its current black and blue hue)?
Well, look no further!
In the words of Bruce McCulloch – Check it out!
(Can you dig it?)
Trips to berry farms.
I did two out of three (the winery was not yet open for the year.)
Faffing around with fake doors.
Knock, knock.
I seriously love fake doors.
Acting like they are real doors? CRACKS ME RIGHT UP.
Also, this photo was taken on Sunday post-race and I am actually amazed that I managed to move my arms that far over my head.
TREATS TREATS TREATS.
On days that I am recovering from massive physical exertion, this is pretty much the only thing I want to eat, EVER:
Blueberry popcorn and chocolate covered pretzels.
Or perhaps this:
Confetti cake blizzard. Yes please.
If you live in the GVRD, love cake and ice cream, and haven’t tried this, I urge you to leave whatever you are currently doing, race to the closet DQ and give it a try.
It will not disappoint.
It will delight.
Adorable animals.
Baby goat!
Baby black and white goat!
It is hard to describe how cute this little guy was. He was also incredibly perturbed that his mother was on top of the bench, and that he was unable to join her.
No word of a lie,*I had him in my purse and was half way to the car when I realized my plan wasn’t the best thought out.
I don’t think Nymeria is quite ready for a roommate, especially one so vocal as Mr. Black Shoes.
(Yes. That is the name I gave him while he was briefly in my custody.**)
*This IS the biggest lie ever.
**Joke! – please don’t phone the SPCA on me.
And of course:
Patios.
I don’t know about you cats, but as soon as the warm weather actually sticks around, I plan on spending the rest of my summer sitting on one of these.
In the meantime, Mr. M and I are headed down the Oregon coast for six days of anniversary celebrating, camping, Shakespeare, hiking, eating, drinking, laughing (like loons), and just general revelry.
I cannot wait!
And what about you, dear ladies and gents?
What is coming down the pipe for you these days?
Grab a handful of blue popped corn and tell me all about it.
I was in grade nine, on exchange in Dijon. As a French immersion student, I was one of the lucky few who, because of my fluency, was picked to spend a month oversees studying at the lycée.
The trip was a pilot programme – the school wanted to “try it out” and see if it was something they would consider implementing on a permanent, yearly basis.
Believe me when I say that my time in the city as a student was a total trip.
First off, my home-stay parents didn’t seem to grasp the concept that I was a vegetarian. Every day for lunch they would make me these amazing baguettes filled with salami, or rotisserie chicken, or roast beef – seriously, you name the viande and it was packed up for me every morning, between two slices of bread.
I felt so horrible the one and only time I binned my lunch, that from that day onwards I would gift them to one of the other Canadian students whose parents didn’t think to send them off to class with anything at all.
It was a pretty sweet trade off in the end, because in return, whomever I had gifted the sammie would give me a couple of francs, which I would then use to purchase a crepe from the creperie down the street.
A replica of one of the many crepes I ate in France.
Come to think of it, I pretty much ate my body weight in Nutella during my stay.
(Whoever owned stocks in that brilliant, hazelnut-chocolate nectar of the gods that month must have done very, very well.)
My classes were great, though some (re: computer science) were a complete write off because not only did I understand nothing of which was said (alas, I learned much as an immersion student, but the inner workings of PCs was never a topic included in our weekly dictées) but the boys in that class were so darn funny, I was too busy concentrating on keeping all my urine inside my body to really focus on anything else.
Other notes of mention: French schools have super long hours, way crazy math, and the multi-storied, multi-buildinged campus made our school back home look like a pre-kindergarten.
Okay, back to kisses.
It was Friday night, the end of our second week of study.
All of the Canadian students were invited to attend the school’s senior dance.
Point: high-school dances are complete gong shows, and a completely ridiculous explosion of drama, hormones, angst, and hilarity the world over.
Teenagers – doing it like it’s the most important thing in life, since time immemorial.
Anywho, so myself and my home-stay gal Charlotte showed up ready to get our tip-top grooves on with the rest of the senior grades.
As we walked into the gymnasium I couldn’t help remarking to myself, for what was probably the (rougly) two thousandth time since touching down in France: HOLY CRAP FRENCH BOYS WEAR TIGHT PANTS.
My immediate follow-up thought was (of course): I wonder if any of them think I’m pretty?
And so it went on.
We danced to Will Smith and Ricky Martin, and a TON of crazy French rap and R&B. At one point the DJ played a rap song that had bagpipes in it and everyone went completely batshit crazy, dancing like complete madmen and singing like banshees, which both cracked me up but also made me really happy.
It was at this point, as I moved off to the side, just to watch the carnage unfold – a slightly loopy smile flickering across my mostly shocked visage – that a boy about my height (pretty good for 14 years old, because at this point I had already reached five foot ten) came and stood beside me.
He had sandy brown hair, in the style of Chris Klein from American Pie. Freckles dotted the bridge of his nose, and his front teeth were crooked, but only slightly so.
Same hair. TOTALLY.
He was a bona fide hottie.
Bonjour, he said.
Bonjour, I said.
My heart nearly exploded out my chest right then and there. A boy!? Talking to ME!?
It was almost a real Alien moment.
Voulez-vous sortir avec moi? Juste pour quelques instants? He asked.
He wanted to go outside!? With ME!?
HELL YES I WILL ACCOMPANY YOU OUTSIDE I wanted to yell.
Instead, I remembered to smile coquettishly and simply nod. Also, the less I spoke, the less likely I was to barf all over my shoes.
We walked outside and sat on top of a picnic table in the middle of a covered courtyard. We talked about school, and Canada, and France, and good grief, I’m pretty sure we talked about Will Smith’s latest CD, and then – WHAM.
Julian, of the freckles and the tight jeans, was kissing me.
Kissing ME!?
Yes.
And honestly, it wasn’t good.
Dude was a smoker and as much as half of my brain was screaming THIS IS THE MOST ROMANTIC THING EVER!!!!1!!1!!, the other have was screaming THIS IS LIKE LICKING A BLOODY ASHTRAY MAKE IT STOP.
Like kissing one of these it was.
Also, French kissing may look glamorous and sexy as hell to all those young, impressionable kidlets at the movie theatre, (aka me) but in real life, for the first time – EGADS.
Do not want.
Especially with Monsieur Marlboro.
Anyways, the long and short of it is, we made out for a good hour (you think just because the guy tasted like a tobacco leaf I didn’t want to keep kissing him? DREAM ON!) before returning to the dance for one final slow jam.
We met up the next day, ate at McDonalds and walked around the old town.
On Monday, after spending about half an hour looking for him after class, Julian’s friend Tony came up to me and let me know that he was really sorry, but Julian had just been using me to get back at his girlfriend who had cheated on him the week before.
This was the second time in a very short period that I felt as though I was going to have a real alien moment.
Or barf on my shoes.
But I didn’t. I sucked it up and moved on.
But only until of course I arrived home, opened a jar of Nutella, listened to Everybody Hurts on repeat six hundred times, and wept like the silly, angsty teenager that I was.
So there you have it.
I had my first French kiss, with a French boy, in France.
It has been a complete and utter madhouse around these parts of late. I cannot remember the last time I cooked something, let alone slept the entire night through.
After a fourteen and a half hour work day on Saturday (a huge shout-out must go to my partner-in-crime Ms. J who was there with me the entire time and without whom I would have lost my mind long, long ago), I am finally done one of the longest, most taxing projects I have ever undertaken in my entire life.
And in just six short months, we get to start working towards next year’s event!
EEP.
(We will cross that bridge when we come to it, and not a moment sooner!)
Today at work I scheduled in the rest of my deadlines that must be met before the end of the month.
I cannot wait to have everything finito, because in twenty-six short days, Mr. M and I will be basking in our sweet, sweet suite in Downtown Seattle before jetting off for five days of beach camping and Shakespeare acting in the wilds of Oregon.
Thank fresh hell it will all be over soon. I work bloody hard, (and I like it that way) but it is now time to play!
And play we will.
Other good things on the horizon include multiple family visits (and more time off) in July and August, Tough Mudder at the end of this month, Franz Ferdinand, Hot Chip, plans to run the Victoria half-marathon (I am still contemplating the marathon – we will see) over the Thanksgiving long weekend, dress-up parties, picnics, general merriment and awe.
What are all of your plans for the next couple of months? I’d love to hear all about your summer stories.
Do you remember that Madonna song – Ray of Light? You know, from the 90s?
It had the lyrics:
Faster than the speeding light she’s flying
Trying to remember where it all began –
Now, normally I’m not one to go around quoting the Big M, but this – this pretty much sums up my life at the moment.
(Except I’m pretty sure the girl she’s singing about is happy about her ride, whereas I am blinkin’ excited to get the heck get off mine.)
I’m feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and completely creatively zonked.
I am also pretty sure that I am now part human, part almond butter, because that stuff has become my life force extraordinaire over the past few weeks. I’ve been eating it like a eating thing.
(And yet somehow I’m still as white as I ever was. What a raw deal!)
Yeesh.
Add in the fact that M and I are still trying to complete our compulsory Tough Mudder training, and I’m basically a walking zombie that has been shot with insane amounts of adrenaline and caffeine to keep her momentum going.
Thank goodness for all my amazing co-workers – J, L, A and S – seriously, these ladies are pretty much the coolest dudettes a girl could ever ask for.
(If it wasn’t for them I would probably have taken off for the wilds of the BC forests long, long ago.)
And there are lights at the end of this bleak-sauce tunnel! Like I said, after this week I will be down one major project (and only have to deal with the tail end of another.)
In other thank-goodness-this-alone-is-keeping-me-semi-sane news, M and I are putting the finishing touches on our travel plans for the end of June. We will be heading down the Oregon Coast for some sweet, sweet anniversary camping times, and going to see Henry V at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland.
This will be my state of mind once I am on vacation.
We are more than a little excited.
We are the most excited.
(It seems as though I cannot write too much more on the subject because when I get this excited I waste much of my precious energy resources on being excited, and not, you know, on other more pressing – but nowhere nearly as brilliant – ventures.)
So what’s shaking in your neck of the woods friends? And how do you deal with insane work commitments? Your tips and tricks are always appreciated around these parts.
p.s. I’m sorry I’ve been such a crap blogger-gal, not visiting your rad spaces and responding to comments. I’ll be much better in the next couple of weeks once I am human again.
To round out a week full of travel-centric blog posts, I would like to share with you all a brief snap shot of Mr. M’s and my first few days in the magical city of Brum.
We lived in Birmingham for four months in 2009. I was on research leave for my MA, and M, being a Swiss citizen, was working as a language teacher at a community school, teaching ESL to young Afghani asylum seekers.
Here is a journal entry I wrote at 12:55 am because I couldn’t sleep due to my excitement yes, but also because I had an irrational fear that my landlady’s estranged husband (who also lived in the house) would murder us in our sleep:
I cannot even begin to communicate the hilarity that is M’s and my life here in Birmingham. We are enamoured with the city and its many eccentric but loveable inhabitants, impressed with its Balti and other culinary delights, frustrated with our “washing machine”, flabbergasted at the extremely cheap grocery prices, and proud of the fact that we turned an absolute dive into something that vaguely resembles a home.
Home sweet Brummy home!
Our travel to the city was a gong show and a half, what with the airline deciding to add stops in both Calgary and Dublin at the last minute, and then charging most passengers between four and nine hundred dollars at check-in because their luggage was overweight.
There was more than a little anger brewing at the Fly Globe Span counters (worst airline in the world – copyright 2009) let me tell you. Luckily, I am a neurotic and anxiety-ridden individual and had already checked the allowances online, so we were in the clear.
Once we arrived in London we decided to take the bus to B town (or Brum, or Birmingham if you’re not into the whole Brevity thing) and not the train, which was a HUGE mistake, albeit much cheaper than the alternative.
The ride ended up taking about four and a half bloody hours.
I spent the time dozing under a pile of jackets because the air conditioning was set to arctic chill MAX, and I apparently have ZERO ability to cope with the cold, while M befriended a six hundred year old man who somehow didn’t succumb to the drop in temperature and die in his seat.
(I should have asked what his secret was.)
Anywho, we managed to finally get to our hotel (the glorious Etap Hotel, that may or may not moonlight as an elderly homosexual pick up joint) and fall into bed.
The next day we set out in search of a place to live and a cell phone plan. Once this (the plan) was procured, we needed to get our Canadian phone unlocked, which led to our first introduction to the Birmingham market, which we LOVE. We’re sure it’s the place where we’ll get most of our fruit and veg and any odd bits that we need.
Market! Well, just down the hill at least.
We then set off for the library in hopes of getting internet access to only learn that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY ZERO FREE WIRELESS IN ENGLAND SERIOUSLY THE INTERNET IS NO WHERE TO BE FOUND.
Why no internet UK?
Eventually we managed to find a connection and slowly began to contact potential landlords.
M was a bit flabbergasted when it came to actually talking to people on the phone and he kept telling me (while the person was still on the line, yammering away), “I can’t understand anything these people are saying!”
The Brummy accent folks, is truly something to behold.
When one woman asked him if he was a student he responded with “okay” to which she just said “okay?”
Believe me when I say the laugh attack that I had been suppressing since our arrival in the city was unleashed with full force.
The first guy we met was a complete jerk. He showed up twenty-five minutes late, did not say hello, and then mumbled that it was “six months minimum” before just walking back up to his car!
What an arsehole.
After this encounter, we were lucky enough to meet Sue – our now landlord. (Though we did have to walk over 10km in order to get to her place.)
No word of a lie though, the place was a total crap box when we arrived. However, we’ve cleaned like maniacs, and M has put up a ton of paintings that Sue gave us, a coat and towel rack, the bed has new bedding ,and we’ve been given a small tv with tons of vhs tapes.
After a day committed to making our home, well, livable, we bussed to Moseley – a very radtastic area of the city – for dinner and drinks. Once again I was reminded about how much I still hate beer, but seriously the chips here are MAGNIFICENT.
Curry and chips!
Also, this is completely off topic, but if one more person calls me “love” I am seriously going to have to have a sit down, because it DESTROYS me.
Further, I have also now come to realize that “You okay?” doesn’t mean “Are you damaged?” but is more of an expression of helpfulness. This is very good to know because people say this to me A LOT.
Rant and Roll 