mardi, juin 28, 2005

and happy hangover...

... to the most beloved petit frere.

on this, your western hemisphere birthday, when you are restoring yourself from the eastern hemisphere birthday, I hope that you managed to drink a pint of water before you passed out and took a tylenol or paracetemol or advil or SOMETHING so that you didn't wake up this morning feeling like death.

And if you did. My sympathies, it will pass... and you are 20!!!!!!!

My little gravel eating, civilization drinking dragon... I love you so much and am missing you like hell.

party hard. I love you.

this house

is where I learned to shell peas and that 3 raspberries in my stomach to one in the bucket is a fine ratio. More of a home than much else right now.


We took the ferry to Vancouver yesterday to change some flights and to see some friends from Wales. The friends are engaged and have a lovely flat and garden and barbeque and tiki torches... scary and lovely at the same time.

Now in Duncan, chilling w/ le grand pere, who is at the moment listening to the police radio on the scanner. Nothing like good old small town almost-crime!

A dispatch on Gabriola will follow. Suffice to say that I am sunburned and had to be talked out of buying a pair of tie-dyed yoga pants (I have never done sun salutations in my life), but the eagles and the seals and the swinging from trees made up for the mud and chick pea fiasco.

lundi, juin 20, 2005

island time

heading w/ aforementioned falkland islander to the island today.

no bears there.

dimanche, juin 19, 2005

re-evaluating

my prioraties.

It's funny being back chez parents and having to adjust to the different pace of life. Dinner has a specific time. Plant watering is apparently part of my job description. Phone calls are overheard-at least, one side of them anyways. And my perspective shifts to accomodate the other side of me that was often back-burnered in the whirl of Montreal.

Particularly helpful for perspective was sitting atop Mount Edith, half way between Banff and Lake Louise, in the driving snow and wind, contemplating exactly what kind of crazy one would have to be to decide to head down the back of the mountain to find an unmarked trail that may or may not get back to the bottom. Apparently, that is the kind of crazy that I have become: because a few mouthfulls of trail mix later I was blissfully tramping down a snowbank behind an overzealous Falkland Islander whose definition of fun is shooting fat american tourists for sport.

Perspective is also watching the interaction between my mother and my grandfather, both being careful and protective of the other in completely different ways. Family lunches, besides convincing me that I am something of a sociological and political sport*, are good for reminding me of my place in the affection/dependence/inheritance chain.

And yes. I did see a bear. It was a small black bear cub and it meandered through our campsite on Thursday night just checking the place out. Perspective...was achieved again as I quickly realized that my postition in the universe could be little more than bear kibbles. Take that-over educated, eastern canada inflated ego!

*sport: a plant (or part of a plant), animal, etc. which exhibits abnormal variation from the parent stock or type in some respect.

mardi, juin 14, 2005

if you go down to the woods today...

Heading to banff to find bears. Big bears.

And to hike a bit.

vendredi, juin 10, 2005

one week

it always is a bit of an adjustment to return here. My mind takes longer to wrap around stuff that used to be second nature to me.

Like the fact that the drycleaning place went out of business, so the pet store beside where the drycleaners used to be is now taking drycleaning. My drycleaning is getting done at a pet store!!!

(I'm scared to pick it up incase of feathers...)

dimanche, juin 05, 2005

the movement

was accomplished in a daze of sleep deprivation and hangover. Packing drunk is an experience I would rather not like to repeat.

other highlights included:

Apparently Air Canada now thinks it is necessary to charge its passengers for the privilege of eating their shitty airplane food. Which means that in order to have sustenance of any kind on the 7 hour flight to BC, I was given the options of roast beef sandwich ($6) prepared no less than 2 weeks ago, or a styrofoam cup of instant noodles ($4) which I could have picked up myself from the supermarket for about 75 cents. There were other possibilities too, but really, who spends $2 on packaged cookies? Somebody somewhere in the bureaucracy thinks that because we, the passengers, are a captive audience we must also have lost our fucking minds as well as our price parity index.

I, however, outsmarted them by pre-eating a shawarma that I bought at around noon and then gaining nourishment from gingerale for the remainder of my time on the stale air and screaming baby filled flights. Consequently, upon landing and seeing the darling man that was picking me up, I promptly ripped off his arm and, with minimal mastication, devoured it.

jeudi, juin 02, 2005

the killers

the advantage of going to a concert where most of the audience is still in high school is that I can see over their heads and, for once, actually see the people on stage.

t minus 48 hours. not enough time. not quite real.

mercredi, juin 01, 2005

end of days

the last days in montreal and I am running my ass off.

this is all.