The rest of me is far from perfect, but I am just vain enough to truly appreciate the fact that I do not have cankles.
It’s nice to have at least one thing on my person that I think is okay.
What’s your “go to” body part when the rest of you feels like crap?
That was a gourmet weekend in every sense of the word.
We arose ridiculously early on Saturday morning, fetched Josh and Shan (this was much easier when they lived 20 feet from us), and were off: it was time to go to Seattle. We made excellent time over the border thanks to Ed’s sneaky sneaking, and arrived at our destination within 3 minutes of my estimate (I am gooooood): River’s 4th birthday party.
A suburban house stuffed to the gills with well-to-do parents and excited children dressed like princesses: I was totally in my element. My sarcasm is in jest though; Doug and Ali threw an awesome party for River and as she is my favourite small human, I was honoured to be a fellow princess for her. We all donned the appropriate head wear and settled in for an afternoon of royalty:
Getting a flying hug from a random small child the instant I walked in the door probably helped a little, though. She was very cute, even if I have no idea who she was.
River’s birthday cake was amazing, and one of the best I’ve tasted:
Not to be outdone, we gave River some additional cakes for her birthday:
We hung out with the birthday girl and her family for the afternoon, then departed for our next adventure. We didn’t want to impose on Ali’s weekend what with the party and other family in town, so we opted to get a couple hotel rooms. I was perfectly willing to settle for near-squalor, but Ed instead found a great deal at a swanky-ass hotel in Bellevue: a king-sized deluxe room, free parking, and $100 gift certificate to the equally swanky-ass mall next door. Pretending to be far fancier than we really are, we checked into the hotel and enjoyed the things that rich people enjoy on a regular basis: valets, concierge service, confusing high-tech elevators and berry water:
We enjoyed our fancy rooms for a few minutes, and then we were off: we had gift certificates to spend! $100 doesn’t go very far in a mall where all the stores are named after people, but we managed to find a few things to buy. An iPad 2 wasn’t in the cards – I visited three Apple stores in one day, and struck out each time – but I did get a cover for my eventual iPad2 and a new case for my phone. We also visited an awesome store that had fancy oils and vinegars on TAP, and tasted almost everything in the store – Shan came away with a bottle of white truffle oil, whereas I fell in love with the strawberry balsamic. I couldn’t pass up a stop in the Sanrio store for some ridiculousness, and many Gold Toe Socks were purchased. Our favourite thing in the mall was a bit of a surprise, though:
A Microsoft store! What the hell? It seems as though Microsoft got tired of Apple being the darling in their back yard, so they set up a store front of their own. It was HUGE, and jam-packed with people. The similarities to an Apple Store were immediately apparent: big tables with products laid out for you to try, a counter offering technical assistance, hip people in colourful t-shirts working the floor. We laughed at the whole thing the entire time we were in the store, thinking that Microsoft was being pretty sad with their try-hard copycat store .. until we ended up in the Apple store, three doors down.
IT WAS SO DRAB! After being in the Microsoft store, the Apple store looked awful – it looked like a washed out relic from another era that no one had taken pity on and brought into the 21st century. There was nothing different or remarkable about the store; it was the typical Apple white and silver and equally busy with people mobbing the blue-shirted employees – but after the vibrant and fun atmosphere of Microsoft, Apple just didn’t measure up. Suddenly, the first store didn’t look so sad after all – it was downright warm and inviting when next to the sterile aloof coolness of Apple. It’s absolutely worth a look if you’re ever in Bellevue.
I still want an iPad 2, though.
By this time the birthday cake and fancy cheeses had worn off, and we were hungry. I wanted to take Josh and Shan to Lunchbox Laboratory, home of the ridiculously good burgers. We met Mike and Michelle (Doug’s brother and his incredibly awesome girlfriend) there for a late night dinner, which was delicious and enjoyed by all.
From there, it was off to the Ookla House, where Mike and Michelle were staying while their place underwent repairs. The house is in West Vancouver, and has an unbelievable view of downtown Seattle:
We got a tour of the beautiful house, including the secrets – it was built in the 30s, and retains all the old school awesomeness with the necessities upgraded for our futuristic times. Also, there was a lot of booze:
i drank them all coz i'm a baller
Mike is somewhat of a connoisseur, and showed us his collection of fancy alcohols that I cannot drink at all. The others could and did, so I once again wore the chauffeur hat to be the designated driver of the stars. I don’t mind; I love showing off my ability to navigate Seattle based on nothing but vague memories of places I might have been before and it was a really nice night out; perfect for a drive over floating bridges.
Pleasantly pickled and/or sober, we settled into the living room to check out Mike and Michelle’s 3D TV. We’d never seen one in action before, so we all donned the glasses (which sadly are not red and blue anymore) and watched IMAX Deep Sea 3D; getting eaten by sharks and watching coral reef jizz into the ocean. It was really cool, but I don’t think I could watch a lot of 3D TV – the film was 40 minutes long and my eyes were bugging out by the end of it, and while 3D porn sounds hilarious in theory, I’m likely the only one who would get anything out of it (pure hilarity). It was awesome hanging out with Mike and Michelle, as we don’t see them often enough – they’re both a lot of fun, so hopefully we can hang with them more this summer.
It was after midnight by the time we left, and we were exhausted from our incredibly full day. I drove us safely back to Bellevue, and we crashed out in the luxury of fancy hotel times with plans to reconvene in the lobby at 11 am. We had a wonderful sleep – I want a king sized bed; diagonal sleeping is the best – and were mostly refreshed for Day 2 of our Seattle Weekend. We loaded up the the car and made another quick trip to the mall (they get iPad2 stock daily, but I missed out again – they only had 32GB Verizon units available) before heading downtown: it was time to visit Built Burger!
Ed and I have been enamored with Built Burger since Doug and Ali introduced us last year, but this was our first time visiting the restaurant for brunch. We’d been talking them up to Josh and Shan for the better part of a year, so I was really excited to go. We had some pretty high expectations from the place, and they didn’t disappoint at all – our meal just reaffirmed our love for BB, and I was delighted that Josh and Shan enjoyed it as well. I was a little worried that my plan would be shot down when I suggested we visit two burger joints in 14 hours, but my insistence that they were very different proved to be the key – the meals we had at both places were amazing and very different, and we will definitely be back to get our meat on.
We spent some time walking off our meal around Pioneer Square, marveling at the beauty of Seattle’s old buildings and bemoaning the Vancouver style of “destroy the old, build something new” – I love, love, love old brick buildings and really appreciate the fact that a lot of cities know how spectacular they are:
pioneer square is awesome
Shan really wanted to see more of Seattle, so we headed to the University District to drive through the campus. We hadn’t intended to stop, until we spied a field lined with cherry blossoms in full bloom and really had no choice in the matter:
Josh, Shan and I all cursed our lack of real cameras; having decided to travel light and only use our iPhones. It’s probably for the best, as we’d likely still be there if we had our DSLRs on us. Our hearts full of spring and fanciful thoughts, we needed to pee pretty badly and went down to the University Village for smoothies and a bathroom break. From there, it was off to an REI for Josh (he bought things that went beep), and a “quick” stop at the Seattle Outlets. I didn’t really do much shopping; my feet were in a lot of pain at that point and I barely limped my way to pretzels, but we managed to find a few things and hit the road back to Canada at almost 7pm. Unfortunately, so did everyone else – when we arrived at the Pacific Crossing, the wait was over 2 hours to get back home. In the name of desperate urination, we skipped many cars to go to the Duty Free store where they had bathrooms, cheap alcohol, and dozens of people looking for a bargain. It was insane in there, but we stuck it out and got some booze to bring back to Canada. We made it through the border with no problems and drove home; dropping Josh and Shan off and arriving at SPARTA a hair before 11pm. We had been gone for only 39 hours in total, but we crammed a hell of a lot of fun into that time – excellent company, beautiful scenery, impossibly delicious food and new shoes – it was a good, good weekend.
work that hose, boys
The Vancouver Twestival was last night, and while I didn’t meet as many new people as last year, I went with quality over quantity – the people I DID get to talk to are some of my favourites, both new and old. I was an official volunteer this year (unlike last year where I just decided “I’m helping now, k?”), so I was pretty busy with various tasks (mostly involving the swag bags – I am the Master of Stuffing). I did get to mingle a bit though, and take many pictures of the spectacular view. This year’s venue was the Harbour Centre Vancouver Lookout, and it was friggin’ AWESOME. I love it up there – Vancouver is a phenomenally beautiful city, and it makes my heart all tingly that I get to live here.
As busy as I was last night, I certainly didn’t go without moments of sheer hilarity both inside my own head and also outside for others to play along. One of the sponsors of the event was I Love My Muff, makers of products that promote soft silky happy vaginas. I love vaginas, so I was more than delighted to inform everyone (even random people passing by that had nothing to do with Twestival – oops) that with their swag bag came a lovely treat for their vaginal areas, whether they had one or not. Poor Vincent was my table partner, and having only met me 40 minutes prior, he knew nothing about my extremely vocal love of the Almighty Flower of Creation. I hope my Happy Vagina Dance didn’t make him TOO uncomfortable; I was just .. excited. About vaginas. As usual.
I also showed an amazing act of restraint last night for the first time ever – I didn’t suggest to the Godfather of Vancouver Social Media that he purchase a Beauty Night raffle bracelet to use as a cock ring. I consider my tongue biting a personal win – look at me, being the very soul of discretion! I am a lady in all ways!
In other news, I am not sure if I should be dismayed or delighted: I decided I needed to wear sequins today, so I got dressed and put on a sequined vest. Then I realized my shirt was covered in cat hair and couldn’t be worn, so I put on a different shirt that and found that it really didn’t go with my sequins at all. No worries, though – I just pulled out an entirely different sequined vest, and went on my merry way. Sequins are for all reasons! I am going to be the most awesome old lady EVER!
Happy for Friday; fun weekend ahead. Stuff is good fantastic. My insides are smiling!
so high
the shadow is my penis
it's true; i so do
toys for a giant
dance, tiny puppets!
hairiest swag ever
I took off my pants between two parked cars – spring is officially here!
I’m wearing a dress to celebrate Wednesday (and because I’ve done too good a job at convincing myself dresses are awesome; I feel like a horrible slob in pants now), but I wanted to take advantage of the gorgeous day and ride Lola to work. It’s still too chilly (and generally foolish) to ride with bare legs, so I wore temporary pants and removed them when I arrived downtown. It’s a somewhat clumsy system, but it works for me and it’s better than the alternative – chapped thighs are never sexy.
This was all over Twitter yesterday. Enjoy, or something – it kind of defies explanation. Be sure to watch “Part 2” after you give up on the original; it’s hilarious. And I’m sorry.
My new business cards arrived. They are not as exciting as when my title was officially Internet Superstar, but since my job is several thousand times better, I will deal like the trooper I am.
training & communication & FUCKING SHIT UP DAWG
Well, that was unexpected.
Josh has been researching his family tree, and told me he found a great deal of information on a Canadian ancestry site. It’s a pay site, but you get a 2-week free trial and if you cancel before then, you won’t get charged. This sounded like an excellent deal to me, so I signed up and started looking around for information on my family.
I started with my dad, and entered his information. The site has a cool feature that allows you to search based on the information you provided, and it quickly let me know that a John Wangzilla with the same birth/death date was in the system; would I like to take a look and see if they were the same? I did indeed want to do this, so clicky clicky off I went.
Strangely, my dad was already in the system. That’s all fine and good – it gives me somewhere to start – but then I started reeling. I did not expect the reeling, or the deep ache that came afterward. I am now aching and reeling and frankly, it’s all giving me a headache – I have an intranet to build; I don’t need all these emotions.
Someone had already researched a family tree, and added my dad (albeit incorrectly; his middle name was spelled wrong). They added his wife, and kids, and grandkids, and their spouses, and their kids, and so on and so forth. Except .. they didn’t add ALL of it, did they?
They left out my mother, and they left out me. I’ve been effectively and once again cut out of the family by people who would rather pretend that we don’t exist, and that hurts. A lot. I wish it didn’t bother me, but it really does – my dad loved me, you assholes. I’m as much a part of his life as you are, and maybe you don’t agree with how he chose to LIVE that life, but it doesn’t give you the right to sanitize his past to erase what you consider a mistake.
Dad never liked you anyway, you know.
The topic of midlife crises came up over the weekend, and I started thinking about what my own inevitable crisis would look like. Apparently only 10% of the population truly experience one, so I’m of two minds on this: will I be affected because I’m missing the things people consider necessary to live a successful life, or will I escape the crisis because I generally think I’m awesome? According to the internet, the unlucky 10% have problems or regrets over:
It doesn’t sound like stability or lack thereof is necessarily the trigger for a midlife crisis, so my confidence in my awesomeness doesn’t really play a role. You have to imagine, though – what on earth would my crisis look like? Here are some common behaviours in a normal midlife crisis:
.. this sort of describes my normal life, actually. Most people don’t do the things I do on a regular basis, so does that mean my crisis will look like THEIR definition of normal? Will I wake up one morning in the distant future and:
All those things are horrific to me (but give me a great idea for an April Fool’s joke at work). I live my life with by rule (don’t be a dick) and one goal (be happy); things that people often wait for years to discover. What will be waiting for me when I come to my own realizations?
Whatever it is, I hope it involves jetpacks.
(this is for Tim, who wanted a naughty blog post – while it won’t be as epic as the last time I wrote a post for someone specific, the general theme is the same)
I think I need to amend my postnuptual agreement – I *do* want sword play. There’s no use denying it. Still, I would be willing to compromise – this is an agreement after all; I’m not a sex commie – I can live without the crossing of swords as long as we could try pegging.
An article on the how/what/why of pegging appeared on Jezebel this week, and while I’ve always known what it was, the post made me want to try it. Unfortunately, that’s even less likely to happen than my fanciful dreams of more wang – Ed does not have an adventuresome prostate. He’s missing out on a great deal of fun because of his squeamishness (which I will never understand – you HAVE these things, why are you so afraid of them?!), and I am sad and inundated with lusty daydreams that go far beyond naughty and into the realm of Caligula meets Catherine the Great (without the tyranny, murder, incest or [rumoured but untrue] horse cock [actual, not a size-related euphemism]).
I am not at all interested in figging, though. It seems a waste of perfectly good ginger (which is delicious), not to mention unsanitary.
pissing behind the
dumpster while your best friend looks
on – you’re my bro, bro
I came home to a frat boy incorrectly using the dumpster in the parking lot, his buddy parked next to it and .. well, staring. He was staring at his friend as he was peeing. Not my thing, but I’m not one to judge – go ahead and treat my back yard like a toilet; it’s not like there’s a McDonalds with that high-falutin’ indoor plumbing literally 60 feet to your left or anything. Go douche bag pride!
I think I’ve finally caught up on my sleep, and all it cost me was a night out. It figures that I wouldn’t be able to truly rest until the weekend, but I’ll take it. Plus, sausages! And two more nights of decadent sideways sleeping! Things are looking up. Not parking lot piss show up, but up all the same.
Some enterprising huh choo-shung tza-jiao duh tzang-huo stole the last can of Diet Coke from my stash at work, and I. Am. Pissed.
Take a can? Sure, go ahead. I don’t mind. Even if I’m not actually at my desk and you’re thirsty, that’s cool – I can share. But to take the LAST can without asking me or saying anything or, you know, not taking it at all is da-shiang bao-tza shr duh lah doo-tze. What the fuck, people. Now I’m cranky AND thirsty. Never get between me and my Diet Coke – that’s just BEGGING for an impolite nickname.
Still tired. Better than yesterday, but tired. Looking forward to tomorrow – there is absolutely nothing on my plate but laundry, and I intend to catch up on my sleep. I’m supposed to go out tonight, but I’m torn between the blissful silence of an empty home and the sure-to-be-fun of Board Game Night. I’m gonna leave the decision to my future self because I’m too busy looking up Chinese swears on the internet to think straight right now (seriously, who the fuck steals the last of someone’s stash) – throw in some imperious demands emailed to me and the fact that I didn’t get any packages in the mail again, and you’ve got a very grumbly Friday complete with a righteously indignant Kimli.
I’m either coming down with sleeping sickness, or caffeine and I need to have a long boring talk about our relationship.
I’m tired. Beyond tired, even – I’m exhausted and more than likely drooling. There’s no real reason for me to be so tired, and I’ve tried all week to catch up on my sleep but each time I do it’s a restless endeavor that leaves me cranky and worse off than before. What gives? I have no trouble falling asleep, but once I’m there I’m lucky if I stay under for 20 minutes at a time. There’s a great deal of tossing and turning, and I’m always too hot never too cold you take your best shot too hot to hold and it sucks. I need to figure this out, and soon – so I’m Doing Science for the next few days. Ed is out of town, so we will see if I get a better sleep tonight. If not, I will stop drinking Diet Coke past 8pm and see if that helps. I’ve narrowed my problem down to either Ed (he won’t let me sleep sideways) or the caffeine (I take Diet Coke to bed with me), and something’s gotta give before I explode in a fountain of blood and glitter.
Today is St. Patrick’s Day. I am wearing a green sweater, green eyeliner, and a green necklace – I look like a slutty 4-leaf clover, but I’m okay with that.
Here is a video by a nice young man who overdubbed the House of Pain’s Jump Around in Gaelic – it is pretty awesome:
Dún do chlab, dún do bhéal, éist le mo scéal
Má cheapann tú go dtuigeann tú tá tú cur i géill
