age is just a number pt. 2

So I don't often write embarrassing dating stories about myself, mainly because it's been awhile since I went on an actual date, but more likely it's because my friends are usually available to offer up much more scandalous stories.  And everyone knows that it's way more fun to write about others than it is to write about one's self.  But I actually have to call myself out for bad behaviour.  A few weeks ago my neighbours had a little party.  I stopped by for a drink.  One drink turned into several.  Normally this wouldn't be a bad thing, but have I mentioned that my neighbours are young?  And as such they have young friends?  Remember when I gave AZ a hard time for shamelessly flirting with a certain young man named Tag? Well I need to let that go.  Because this guy was not born in 1984.  He was still born in the 80s, but that's as much information as I'm willing to give.  Plus he wore a toque inside.  Yep, my youngin' is a hipster.  Within the definition of hipster in the urban dictionary, the above picture is one of the images that comes up.  I'd like you to picture this when you think of this story.  Only because dude looked nothing like this, but the image still makes me very happy.

At any rate it was all very PG and harmless. Except of course if you count the harm inflicted on me by my friends and their jokes about my taste in men of a certain age.  That said, they should be appreciative as I've now broken new ground.  So much so that Christie now insists as a result of my actions her boy crush, Sidney Crosby, is back in play.

a toonie

A toonie is what one of my colleagues gave me yesterday as a contribution to a gift for another one of our colleagues who is having a baby.  A toonie.  That's 2 dollars.  One coin.  That doesn't even cover the gas it cost me to drive to the mall to get the damn gift.  I mean, really, it's insulting, no?  I went on this rant with my mother yesterday and she pointed out that I don't know everyone's situation, and so shouldn't judge.  The thing is, that I know how much this woman makes, and so I judge.  Her situation is obviously that she was raised by wolves or something.  I understand you might not want to contribute - so don't.  Don't sign the card, and don't waste my time with a toonie!  And then, to top it off, I had to miss the damn meal where we gave her the gift today because I got stuck in a meeting.   But all was not lost, because I did accomplish quite a few things on this fine Friday:

• Booked my ticket to New York, and on points to boot!  I leave in 6 weeks.  More details on this trip to come in a future post.
• Had lunch with Christie, who just came back from NYC and so had some great tips.  Including where to get the best pancakes.  Now if only I could remember what that place was called.
• Bought a new pair of glasses.  My old ones are very old and not at all cool.  So I got a new pair.  As pictured here. The pink on the inside is pretty awesome.  As a bonus, the store was having a promotion/sale/charity thing where if you bring in 10 items for the Food Bank, you get 100 bucks off the frames!  Such a great idea.  

They are called Holland Park.  They are rad.

• When I got home I went for a great run along the river.  It was a full moon and a chinook.  Pretty great. 
• After the run, I rewarded myself with a burger and fries from Boogie's Burgers.  I wish I had taken a picture of the burger.  It was damn good.  And the fries were also awesome.  I recognize that eating like a glutton after going for a run is somewhat counter-productive, but it's a Friday night and eating a salad just felt unfair.  Plus I have absolutely no veggies in my house right now.

word of the day

Did you learn anything today?  Because I did.  A new word: extirpated.

What does it mean, you ask, impatiently I'm sure.  Well it means a species no longer existing in the wild in Alberta (or whichever jurisdiction you are currently in), but occurring elsewhere in the wild.  Fascinating stuff.  I also read about the 30+ different names for liverwort.

What's liverwort you ask, on the edge of your seat. It's a plant - check out this link for a bunch of pictures of green things.

And why am I learning these things at my job, you ask, this time in an exacerbated manner.  The answer: no fucking clue.

Incidentally, I got 51% in grade 11 biology, so the fact that this type of reading is part of my job now, is beyond hilarious.

counting the things I've done

So look at that - I vowed to blog twice a week and now a month has gone by without an update. Shocker. I blame my dirty condo. Not because I've spent all my writing time actually cleaning mind you, but because I think to myself that if I have enough time to write a post, I could spend that time cleaning. So in order to avoid the dreaded vacuum cleaner and organizing the guest room, aka "the place where things go to die" I also avoid hitting up the old blogger website. Instead I do important things like bake banana chocolate chip muffins and watch Gossip Girl. So even though it's November, I think it's about time I went over all the fun things I did this summer. I feel it's appropriate because now that we've "fallen back" and there is snow on the ground, I'm pretty confident that summer is officially over and I can make a full and complete tally of all the things I did. Here it is, in no particular order and with no particular explanation as to why these were important things:

• Wakeboarding - and not only did I learn how to wakeboard, I got up my second try. My history as waterskiier might have helped, but I was pretty impressed with myself. I also had good instructors (thank you AH and TS). But I will say that the next day my forearms were so sore I could barely squeeze the shampoo out of the bottle.
• Biking - I biked to work almost every single day. You would too if you had the awesome red cruiser pictured above (yes that is my actual bike).
• Zumbaing - I Learned to zumba. Okay, "learn" might be a bit of a stretch. But I went to a zumba class, danced my ass off and had one of the best laughs I've ever had.
• Getting old - I turned 35. The less said about that the better.
• I only went to one wedding! This really is exciting. And it was a fun one too. Extra points for the fact that butter chicken was the main course.
• I went home to Ottawa for 10 days. SS and HC came with me. We played croquet. Bet you didn't know that official croquet has over 30 rules. Needless to say we didn't follow any of them.
• Vegas! Now, normally this type of trip would garner it's very own blog post, but it really did happen a long time ago (September long weekend) and I have no photographic evidence as I lost my camera (while totally sober I might add), so it's almost like it didn't happen. Luckily I have my credit card statement to remind me about the trip. One thing I do remember is that I stayed up past 5 am two nights in a row, which really is shocking when you consider my age (as noted above). It was an impromptu trip, celebrating, among other things, the fact that Christie quit her job and AH's son turned one. While he was at home celebrating with grandma, AH was wearing a tie on her head chatting up a former Saskatchewan Roughrider named Big Earl.
• Running - Like an idiot, I went ahead and signed up for this stupid run again. And this year they changed the route to make it even more hilly and more difficult. But I finished. And once again it was a beautiful day, with great friends, and post-run burgers and beer. No hat stealing this year though. Although it should be noted that this past Sunday, HC, SS and the acquaintance who threw that post-bar party last year all ran the NYC marathon. I cheered HC and SS on from my couch and then went and ran 4.2 kms in honour of the fact that they were running 42 kms. Pretty much the same thing, right?
• Superhero - I rescued an 8 month old from a locked car. With my own two hands. Oh, and my phone. It was quite funny - I went to Gabe for Thanksgiving (you know, with the usual suspects, KM & Lily) to visit BB and TT. On Saturday afternoon, TT and I were out touring the galleries on the island, and TT accidentally locked her adorable infant in the minivan. Yep, they have a minivan - don't worry, we mocked them endlessly. Luckily I had the foresight not to leave my phone in the car, we called BB and he arrived from the other side of the island with the other set of keys to let the poor child out. I could not stop laughing. TT was somewhat frantic. Needless to say, we teased the poor woman for the rest of the weekend. Mother of the year that one.
• Ryan Gosling - well I didn't actually "do" the Gos, but I did see 2 of the 3 movies he was in this summer. You know I have a love for Dirty Dancing, so was a total sucker for the scene in "Crazy Stupid Love" where he shows off his "move." And ever since seeing Drive I have been somewhat obsessed with '80s synthesizer euro-pop. My two current faves are "A Real Hero" which is on the soundtrack and M83's "Midnight City" which I'm super bummed is now in a Victoria's Secret ad. Boo. As I basically wrote this whole post to this type of music, let's end on the video shall we? Because while I'm sure I did other stuff this summer worth noting, I think this list about covers all you need to know.

it's the little things pt. 4

On Thursday I came home from work to a belated bday card from KM (for a full description of my actual birthday click here). This card was a welcome laugh on an otherwise boring day. And while the card might have made me smile, the little present inside made me positively giddy. It was a magnet with the words "shithead" on it. For those who know me well (i.e. KM), they know that shithead is my favourite insult. Mainly because I like the visual – someone with a normal body, but instead of a head on top, there is a big ball of shit. It’s juvenile, I know, but it makes me laugh. And so the fact that KM saw this fridge magnet and thought of me, well it just means so much. It really is the little things.

The magnet in question is pictured here. This is my actual fridge. To the right and slightly above said magnet is a Globe and Mail clipping - my one and only letter to the editor that made it into the actual paper. Unsurprisingly it was a letter commenting on the ridiculousness of a Harper policy. On top of that - two fortune cookies fortunes (you may recall this post). Then to the left is a picture of my old roomates from university (including KM, she of the awesome magnet) taken in an apple tree in the Annapolis Valley. It was taken at the beginning of May 1999 - so the blossoms were in full bloom, just in time for the world famous Apple Blossom Festival. Below the magnet is an autograph from Orland0 Bloom, written on the back of a coaster from the Four Seasons in the Bahamas. My parents were there for a conference and Orly was staying there whilst filming Pirates of the Caribbean (part II I think). My dad worked out with him for an hour having no idea who he was. My mom spotted him later and got the signature. I'm not a huge fan of his or anything, it's just kind of a nice memento and a good story.

And finally, below and to the left is my newly purchased membership in the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta. Shocking I know, given my leftie leanings. I was actually a member once before, back in 2006, when I was part of the stop Ted Morton movement. People like me are known as "temporary tories." There's been some backlash, but this is the way the system works. And seeing as the PCs have been ruling this province for 40 years, if you want to have an actual say in who is running the government, taking part in the leadership election is the best way to do it. So I voted. And guess what? My vote made a difference and my choice won. It really was the best 5 bucks I spent this month! There have been a lot of surprising political victories this year - Nenshi, Layton, and now Redford. People talk about how uninteresting politics is and how apathetic the electorate has become. But then stuff like this happens and it gives us hope. Now I'm not about to get all "yes we can" on you - let's face it, the conservatives are still in power and I had no other plans on this particular saturday night - but the fact that I stayed up way past my bedtime last night to follow the #pclrd hashtag happenings on twitter and woke up actually interested in the results should mean something to someone. So now there will be a general election sometime in the next year and we'll see how Redford fares with those people unwilling to pay 5 dollars to have their say. And you can bet everyone of those 5 dollars that I will be calling more than one of the politicians running in that election a shithead. Good thing I have the magnet.

it's always the quiet ones

I've mentioned the struggles I sometimes have with my job. Well one day last week was one of them. Last Monday I unwittingly took part in a social experiment … at about 1PM I realized that beyond exchanging pleasantries with coworkers in the kitchen and bathroom (as in “hi, how are you, good, how are you, not bad, have a good day”) I did not have a substantive conversation with anyone in my office. There are 400 people that work in my organization. About 90 or so are on my floor, 60 of whom are in my business unit and 12 people who have offices along my hallway and not one of them went out of their way to engage me in conversation. I guess the question could be, well, why didn’t you make more of an effort? And I did – I said hi to the guy parking his bike beside mine this morning. I asked a colleague if she wanted to grab a coffee. She had a meeting so couldn’t. And then I ran into someone from another floor in the elevator and she said we should go for coffee later. I said sure, but she never did ask me for coffee.

So on this particular Monday, when I realized that I really hadn’t talked to anyone in depth, I wondered if I could make it through the rest of the day without doing so. No suspense really – it was easy. No one came by my office and no one said hello when I passed them in the halls. I even made sure to get up and move around more than usual. Seriously - I did laps around my floor. I hung out in the kitchen, pretending to read the paper, ready to discuss current events with people who came in to grab something from the fridge. Still nothing. They say silence is golden, but this was a bit ridiculous. It's not always this way of course, but I'm pretty sure I could become a mute and my co-workers might not notice. It's a good thing I have such interesting voices inside my head - otherwise I might never have a conversation with anyone ever again.

back to the lake, back to the books

So just like last year, I went home to the family cottage this summer and devoured a few books. Here is my reading list and my impressions of the books:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - You know sometimes you just want to read non-fiction? Well this one fit the bill - fascinating story, well written, a subject matter that is not too heavy yet makes you think, interesting characters, and so on. Plus it validated my choice never to become a doctor. Well choice might be a bit overblown ... I got 51% in grade 11 biology which pretty much prevented me from ever going into any type of scientific field. The story is about the HeLa cells - the first human cells to grow outside of humans. These cells were then used in various medical trials that ultimately led to the polio vaccine, treatment for cancer and parkinsons, etc etc. The real story though is about her family, with the ultimate question of the book being an ethical one - is it immoral to use human cells without permission, even if they have led to scientific breakthroughs. It also got me thinking about the commodification of our body. Really interesting stuff. But it wasn’t until page 130 or so that the author explained why it was that Henrietta’s cells grew were able to be successfully cultured in the lab while so many others had died. The answer? There is none. Really. This brings me back to my earlier statement about grade 11 biology - the problem I had with biology in high school still exists today - you just have to accept certain facts. There is no explanation for them, it just happens. I’m always searching the root cause of things, the series of steps that enables certain events - in biology events just happen. They are the root cause and that’s it. Case closed.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb - I really enjoyed this book. Love Camilla Gibb. This was an easier read than Sweetness in the Belly, not quite as heart-wrenching, but equally lyrical. Set in Vietnam, with the war, politics, art and food woven throughout. One of the main characters sells Pho on the street and the vivid description of how he makes his soup had my mouth watering on almost every page. Needless to say that while reading all I wanted was Pho and so as soon as I landed back in Calgary I hit up the closest Vietnamese restaurant to devour a bowl.

When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman - The first part of this book is quite funny - like laugh out loud funny. The description of the main character’s struggle with God and then her school play were very amusing. The sad story of her best friend’s mom and her brother’s struggle with love were also very touching. Then the characters grew up, they became quite serious and far less interesting. I definitely lost interest in the second half. Too bad - such promise! But apparently Kate Middleton was reading it this summer too! Such kindred spirits we are ...

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane - As previously mentioned I love a good mystery. Watched the Lincoln Lawyer on the plane and I highly recommend it. This one is a sequel of sorts to Gone Baby Gone, which I never read, but did see. It was a quick read, with good dialogue, but kind of a dodgy storyline, that I never really bought into. But whatevs, it kept my interest for the day.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer - I’m not sure why I had never read this book before. I really enjoyed his first book (Everything is Illuminated) and the History of Love, by his wife Nicola Kraus is one of my favourite books. I think I’ve picked it up a million times, skimmed through the pages and decided it was bit too precious, so never took the time to read it. Glad I finally gave it a go - was surprised at how engrossing it was. At times it feels a bit contrived and somewhat like he’s trying too hard, but all in all I enjoyed it. They’re making a movie of it right now - have no idea how that’s gonna work. It has really random characters, with fantastical backstories, and is not set out in a linear fashion at all.