and the livin’ is easy

Posted in everyday kimli by

If you did not have any fun on Saturday, it because we had it all. I am sorry.

I’ve always been deeply in love with the little Aquabus-style boats. I used to dream of getting married on one in the Victoria Inner Harbour, then sail off to sea in a tiny little boat for a lifetime of adventure. As this is impractical even for me, I’ve had to settle for the occasional day out on the water; pretending I’m a pirate in a small rainbow tug.

Yesterday I gathered up several of my closest chum-friends, and we bought all-day passes for the Aquabus. We met at Edgewater Casino (free parking in exchange for getting ID’d? SOLD), where we unsuccessfully casined before heading out on the water. It was a spectacular day to be enjoying False Creek, and I had a happy time playing tourist with a thousand cameras.

After we had sailed towards Granville Island and back again, things got a little less fun (as in it went from a 7 from a 9): we got a different boat driver; one who was obviously displeased that there were seven of us with the $15 day pass. He wanted us off his boat so he could fit other passengers on, and was so rude that we decided to hop off at Olympic Village and hopefully get a different boatman. We ultimately stopped for some food at Urban Fare, then walked along the False Creek path towards Spyglass Dock. It was a gorgeous day for walking times, and on our way we saw:

  • All the puppies in Vancouver
  • A baby duck desperately peeping for mama duck, who eventually figured out how to hop the board and join her baby in the creek
  • A RIVER OTTER! Never seen one before!
  • Justin while he was out walking the insanely adorable Monkey (who, incidentally, has me thinking about getting a French Bulldog over a Pug)
  • A polka dot piano, which Renée played while Shan sang

We hopped on another Aquabus for some water fun, but unfortunately ran into more grumpy employees: we were forced to get off the boat at Granville Island and wait in line to get back on again, even though our actual destination was where our original boat was going. Not at all cool, and put a second Aquabus-caused sour note on an otherwise amazing day. I was really disappointed, because my previous experiences with Aquabus had been awesome (and our first and last boat pilots were great) .. I had wanted to keep on sailing around, but we were all feeling pretty unwelcome at this point so we decided to call it a day. A glorious day, but still.

Today is very hot. I am sitting around in my underwear half-heartedly playing video games, but soon I will rinse yesterday off and brave the outdoors for a scooter ride. I want to take some evening photos and maybe wander the Chinatown Night Market when the sun goes down, and make the most of this long weekend and the long overdue return of the sunshine.

Also, plan more adventures. Enjoying myself in Vancouver is easing the overwhelming longing to be in London just a little bit, and I might get over the longing entirely if someone gives me enough money to live in Olympic Village. I’d even be a shill! Just sayin’.

this makes me happy.

ya know?

ya know?

mesh for fantasy

Posted in everyday kimli by

I’m rarely one to follow trends – if I had my way, I’d wear nothing but baby doll dresses and Doc Martens well into my 80s – but I’m seeing more and more people in meatspace wearing dresses trimmed in, of all things, mesh. At first I was startled because I am skittish and frighten easily, but then I was intrigued – mesh! It’s airy and transparent, but gives the illusion of total coverage! It isn’t frilly and itchy like lace, and doesn’t make you look like a church picnic! Mesh apparently isn’t just for gay nightclubs anymore; it can be for EVERYONE and it just might solve my ongoing problem of rampant indecency. There are other benefits, too:

  • Mesh could act as a barrier against the food that inevitably ends up in my cleavage
  • Always looking like I’m ready to start my figure skating routine
  • No more awkwardness when the bus is full and my mostly-bare breasts spend the commute in someone’s face
  • All the nasty sneer ladies will have to sneer nastily at someone else
  • When I look down, I still see too much boob and that pleases me

If done right, this mesh thing could be pretty neat. Just look at how much safer you all are, thanks to mesh:

SAFE.

SAFE.

If it wasn’t for mesh, Californian gays could get married and Texan women would have access to medical care and then what? Disaster, apparently. Wonderful, glorious disaster.

Now, let’s all kiss! It feels really nice!

 

contrast

Posted in everyday kimli by

It only took me 6 months, but I FINALLY found all the porn on Vine (hint: they use l33t sp34k in hashtags). Since I have a lot of catching up to do, I plan to look at dicks all night long.

I am sure this will in no way affect the meeting I have tomorrow morning in which I pitch children’s education ideas.

I love my job (and apparently looking at strange dicks).

pretty pretty pretty

adventure time adventure

Posted in everyday kimli by

After dinner last night (welcome back, Chronic Tacos on Broadway – you’ve been missed), Ed and I went for a walk and did some exploring. A couple of weeks ago I swore I saw a random picture of Finn somewhere near Cambie, and I wanted to go back to see if I could find it. And I did:

algebraic!

And then I found some more!

after we dance: bacon pancakes for everyone!

she’s ready for you, brad. isn’t it obvi?

who wants to play video games?

I don’t know who drew these, but they are AWESOME and I love them and I hope they stay up so they can be enjoyed by many! If you want to see them, they’re under the Cambie St. Bridge, next to the Olympic Village Skytrain Station.

All in all, it was a very picturesque Taco Night:

new murals under which to enjoy your tacos

i like taking upskirt pictures of bridges, okay? don’t judge me.

a romantic rowboat date on false creek after dark with no lights is dangerous and stupid, but makes for a pretty picture.

A+++. would Friday night again.

fiery death chicken

Posted in everyday kimli by

I can cook. While I’ll never open my own restaurant or be TV pretty (an apparent requirement of anyone who can cook these days), I can make a decent, filling meal that probably won’t kill you. I don’t cook fancy – I see no need to inject my meat with anything; I prefer it the other way around – but I do what I do well.

Most of the time, that is.

I’ve only very rarely had any major cooking disasters worth writing about, like that time I got salsa on the ceiling, or my devil-may-care attitude towards expiry dates, or my experimentation with foods that were best prepared before the Reagan era. Three questionable meals out of thousands isn’t that bad a record, actually. Maybe I should rethink that career in the culinary arts.

At least, I would have before last Monday night, when I inadvertently made a simple meal that turned out so toxic it gave me wicked, unrelenting heartburn for almost 36 hours.

We heartily groced last week and stocked up on many fresh items, but completely forgot to restock the staples. Since we were out of a lot of things, I opted to marinate some chicken filets in some random jerk sauce I found in the cupboard. We often eat jerked things (albeit a different flavour of jerk), so I didn’t think anything of it – it was either this unknown jerk, or plain baked chicken strips that taste like bird. No thank you.

My first sign that something was amiss should have been when I poured the sauce onto the chicken: it looked like baby poop, or at least what I imagine baby poop to look like since there is nothing I would rather stay far, far away from than babies, poop, and baby poop. I was mildly startled but forged bravely on, since I was hungry and had no other options. I prepped some potato cubes, slapped the whole thing in a baking pan, and made with the cooking for half an hour or so. When it was all done, I took it out of the oven (it looked even more like poop at this point), let it cool, and dug in.

That was my second mistake.

It’s a well known fact that I love black pepper more than any one person should love black pepper, but this .. this “sauce” – was comprised of nothing but the vilest, meanest, most morally corrupt black pepper to ever have been forged in the very hell fires of Satan’s colon; a fiery mixture of despair and suffering and that annoying little tickle you get at the back of your throat when you inhale cat hair. It peeled paint off the walls. It tasted like burning. It called forth an unholy army of the damned to tap dance on my flavour buds. Eyes? They watered. I’ve never been tear gassed, but I am imagining it feels quite the same as my insides did after one tiny swallow of this devil tar.

The sauce I used was SO INCREDIBLY SPICY that I put all the chicken in a colander and rinsed the fuck out of the cooked chicken to get rid of as much sauce as I could. Even then the sad watery chicken was almost too peppery to digest, but I am not one to waste food so I ate my dinner without (too much) complaint and was immediately rewarded with Epic Heartburn for my troubles. It lasted all night (making it difficult to sleep) and into the morning (making it difficult to properly enjoy my morning wood); continuing unabated until early today (and even then I awoke in discomfort that could not be attributed to my over-full bladder) when I could finally declare myself more or less over it.

I don’t fail at cooking often, but when I do, it’s almost ER-worthy.

Perhaps someday I will tell you about the Fruit Milk .. but the Fiery Pepper Chicken of Death is enough humiliation for today.

we could be heroes

Posted in everyday kimli by

There’s a bus shelter I pass on my way to work, advertising an upcoming season of Local Sports Ball. The text splashed across the poster reads “60 YEARS OF HEROES!”.

Did someone lower the bar on what quantifies a “hero”? Are we so desperate for role models that “can throw a ball” is the baseline criteria? The entire idea that professional sporting men are heroes deserving your fanatic worship is everything that’s wrong with America today: yes, they’re good at what they do. Sure, they look great in tight pants and have Gatorade coursing through their veins in lieu of blood. Athletes won the genetic lottery and went on to train hard enough to be physically imposing and sweaty. Good for them! We throw millions of dollars their way, and sometimes they win cups or rings or green jackets and then people litter the streets in their honour. Money is funnelled into sports in staggering quantities, while arts and academia are left holding bake sales to raise money for textbooks that include all 118 elements instead of the just the four attributed to Jesus.

What part of any of this makes them heroes?

This isn’t just my natural tendency to lol sports speaking, but genuine confusion. You can absolutely look up to pro sports player, and admire them, and trade pieces of cardboard with their picture. But heroes? Really?

Back in my day, she said shaking her cane and peering through her bifocals, heroes did amazing things. They saved burning kittens from collapsing buildings, or donated kidneys so another could live. Heroes made astounding discoveries that enriched the world. They dedicated their lives to teaching, or healing, or stopping that guy who kept burning kittens in collapsing buildings. They didn’t throw balls real good, or jump very high, or have abs you could grate cheese on. Years from now millions of people will remember that time LeBron made Ohio cry, but only a few will remember the name of the guy who saved billions from starvation. A guy who can throw a ball makes more than $27 million dollars in a single season. The average teacher salary in 2012? $47,000.

That sucks.

I reject the notion that professional sports players are heroes. I reject the hero ideal I’ve had in mind since I was but wee, that heroes only come in spandex, giant robot, or fully-articulated-with-kung-fu-grip form. Heroes are not Disney princesses or movie stars. I wish this didn’t need saying, but reality TV stars? Also not heroes. If you listen to one thing I ever say about children, make it this: introduce your kid to some REAL heroes. You may never find a poster of  Alan Turing to replace all those pictures of David Cassidy or Menudo, but if just ONE kid delivers an essay about Ethel Collins Durham instead of El Santo or Wayne Gretzky*, I will consider my legacy slightly better off than when it was entirely dong-related.

Since I’m up here on this soapbox anyway, here are some people I would consider an actual hero:

  • Norman Borlaug started the Green Revolution and introduced ideas that would forever alter the world’s food supply for the better; saving billions from starvation
  • Henry Morgentaler campaigned tirelessly for women’s reproductive and health care rights in Canada. If not for his work, my life would be drastically different right now and I am forever grateful for the opportunities afforded me because of the choices I was presented with; options he fought relentlessly for. Also, he’s the Morgentaler in “Me Mom & Morgentaler”, one of my favourite bands.
  • Chris Hadfield showed the world that Canadians are awesome while reminding us that space is still this vast, amazing unknown waiting to be discovered, and that science is cool and all around us
  • Martha May Eliot and her life partner, Ethel Collins Dunham, did amazing work in public health and pediatrics at a time when women weren’t generally accepted as doctors, let alone experts. Martha was the only woman to sign the World Health Organization into being. These two women are largely the reason any of us lived past the age of two (which is when I did all my best work)

These are just a few of the people that came to mind when I was thinking about heroes and who would fit that bill if they weren’t a giant robot that turned into a truck.

Who are some of your heroes? Bonus points if there’s a Heritage Minute about them!

*: as a Canadian, I am legally obligated to acknowledge that Gretzky is the greatest hockey player of all time

superstition

Posted in everyday kimli by

By this time next week, Ed and I were supposed to be halfway through Oregon and marvelling at the wonders along Route 101. We had planned to drive through Washington, then take Route 101 south to California and spend a couple of days in San Francisco before heading north to do time in Portland and Seattle – basically, a repeat of our 2009 road trip, but in the Mini because it is super fun.

We’re not going, though.

I’m not a superstitious person, but something about this trip didn’t feel right. What started out as a weird gut feeling was quickly accompanied by all these SIGNS that I should listen to my insides:

  • Ed’s mysterious throat-based illness that has not yet been solved or cured
  • The check engine light appearing on the Minibator for no raisin
  • I have done zero planning, which is highly unusual – I love travel planning and start as soon as I possibly can
  • I haven’t been packed for a week
  • We weren’t super excited for the trip


Our general apathy and Ed’s malfunctioning nodes all came to a head last week, and we officially decided to 86 the trip. We may go later in the summer, or go somewhere else, or go not at all. It doesn’t matter. We can do anything (fun) or nothing (terrible).

Unfortunately, I now have to deal with the sole reason the trip was scheduled for when it was: my birthday. In order to escape the yearly angst I have mid-June because no one wants to play with me, I purposefully decided to be on Alcatraz on June 18th to celebrate my birthday with prison walls and a boat ride. Now that we’re not going, I have to figure out what I want to do on my birthday. I could do nothing, but then I would be super sad. I could do something, but what and when? I hate planning my own fun, but I want cake.

At first I was relieved that we cancelled our vacation, but as is my fickle nature, I’m suddenly sad about it: I finally got excited about the thought of cruising down the 101, taking a million pictures, being in San Francisco, eating the bowl .. and now we’re not going. Is it too late for take-backsies? Probably: even without my gut feelings, all the other reasons we canceled are still valid.

Maybe I should just abscond with the vacation fund and go to London.

I am in desperate need of some kind of adventure.

looking at pictures from our last trip is NOT HELPING

backfired

Posted in everyday kimli by

People don’t take me seriously very often, with good reason: I am rarely serious. Nearly everything I say is tongue-in-cheek. Even things that have basis in reality and/or are Serious Times are usually made for the funny: I use exaggeration for comedic effect and turn normal situations into a Big Deal for fun. 

I think everything is hilarious, which sometimes has repercussions – not everyone gets my sense of humour. It doesn’t help that I often forget that the entire world neither lives inside my head nor knows me intimately enough to discern joke from reality. People who haven’t been reading my blog since day one (so, everyone) don’t always know all the silly little in-jokes or running gags I use repeatedly in my posts, which is fine – but sometimes, like yesterday, it backfires and bites me in the ass and then I am sad (and have a sore ass).

In retrospect, I completely understand how yesterday’s post could have been taken seriously, and how someone who doesn’t know me as well as they obviously should could think I was being completely truthful. I AM annoyed at all the Father’s Day reminders, and I DO wish I could turn them all off so I don’t have to be constantly reminded that my dad is gone. That part was true. 

The rest .. well, that was pretty much boilerplate me.

My dad died of stomach cancer, at age 91. I’ve been claiming my dad died of “mysterious causes” for years now, because it makes me laugh. As well, my dad was cremated and his ashes spread in various places across Canada (in his cemetery cubby hole, at Thetis Lake, in Montreal) so when the zombie apocalypse does occur, it’s unlikely my dad will rise to walk the earth again.

I am very sorry if I made you think my “coming to terms” with my dad’s death was anything other than my usual attempt at humour, and I’m very sorry if you are actually experiencing a situation (be it a mystery or an undead invasion) that I applied to my own life for funny. 

Seriously, I felt like a complete ass when I realized that not everyone got the joke. I suck.

As penance, here is a ridiculous picture I just took at work:

i am really very sorry!

i am really very sorry!

opt out

Posted in everyday kimli by

There needs to be a universal “opt out” clause for things you don’t want to be reminded about. I say this for every person who’s ever lost a parent, or has a dysfunctional relationship with them, or hell even has horrible children who never call or write: we are tired of being reminded to buy mom or dad the perfect gift on their day. For two months out of every year, we are inundated with tv commercials, site ads, email from every site we’ve ever visited, and more – all reminding us not to forget mom on Mother’s Day, or dad on Father’s Day. We don’t forget. We remember every single day, even without you shoving it in our faces. Cut it out.

Every year, I think I’ve finally come to terms with my father’s mysterious death. I get to a point where I feel I can live without knowing what TRULY happened, but all my hard work is undone in June when every form of media seems to exist simply to tell me that dad really would have wanted the complete Stargate franchise on DVD or 43% off a set of self-correcting golf balls or perhaps this keychain with a tentacle on it. I’m sure he would much rather have those things that being dead – who wouldn’t; that tentacle is pretty cool – but since we took extreme precautions to ensure dad would not rise when the dead walk the earth, it’ll never happen. And that sucks. And I don’t appreciate the reminder every fucking year.

un

un