Meet Marla

As you know, I experience great difficulty in coming up with good names for things. But when I got this smoking hot new iPod for my birthday^1,2, I came up with a name rather quickly. In honour of my third annual 29th birthday, I watched Fight Club, one of my most favourite movies ever, and it became clear that my iPod could have only one name. Allow me to introduce you to Marla:

Since I now have about sixty trillion terabytes of space on my fancy new iPod, I added a whole bunch o'podcasts:

But I still have fifty-nine trillion, nine hundred and ninety-nine billion, nine hundred and nintey-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine terabytes (give or take), so if you have a favourite podcast that you think I should check out, let me know.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go print up a label with my name and phone number on it to stick onto Marla, in case she goes missing, so that whoever finds her can return her to me. And I will be printing said label on my fancy schmancy printer. Which I need to review here in blogland soon. I don't want to spoil this upcoming printer review, but suffice it to say, I'm disappointed that the printer doesn't attach to my vibrator.

¹Along with one of those adapter thingys³ that you plug into your iPod and then you can play your iPod over the car radio, which is wicked awesome for when I'm driving to hockey games.
²Thanks again, Giver of Birthday Gifts.
³Not one of these iPod adaptor thingys.

This Makes Me Want Eggo Waffles

Hey Aunt Jemima, spoof of Hey There Delilah.

Oh Em Gee

OMG. I just saw this over on Kris's blog and I had to share it with you. HAD TO.

Weekend Update

Well, jaw is still a bit achy. The ache seems to travel - Friday it was in the right lower jaw, Saturday in the left lower jaw and today it seems to be where the top wisdom teeth were that ache the most. The swelling in my mouth has gone down enough that I can now reach the wounds with my tongue... I can feel the stitches in the bottom, but the top just feel like holes - I don't feel any stitches there. It's weird, and I'm really trying not to always tongue the holes in my gums, because that just seems like a great way to cause an infection. But, of course, it also seems impossible to keep myself from doing!

I'm still afraid to try anything more solid that scrambled eggs, because it does hurt to open my mouth wide enough and I'm sure it would hurt to chew. Which resulted in my paying $7.50 for a bowl of mashed potatoes at dinner last night (stupid Cactus Club, what a rip off). They charged me $7.50 for a bowl of mashed potatoes, but only $6 for a double Margarita. Go figure.

After dinner last night, I went to see Five Alarm Funk at the Commodore. According to their website:

Five Alarm Funk is a Vancouver-based, 12-piece rhythm machine that delivers a delirium-inducing live show fuelled by original funk and afro-beat grooves.

I have to say that they were pretty awesome. I'd never seen them before and knew absolutely nothing about them going into it (and neither did the people I was with), so it wasn't until a few songs in that we even found out that the band that was playing at first wasn't Five Alarm Funk. They were an opening band, whose name I never caught, and they were quite good. And then FAF came on and they were even more awesome! The show went on and on, some of the band members even came out in to the crowd and stuff... the crowd was full of all the Vancouver hippies that Dave couldn't find when he came here to visit, which explains why some guy who could barely speak English, but seemed to keep speaking to me in Spanish as if I was supposed to know what he was saying, at the bar I ended up in at the end of the night, kept saying to me "You're hair smell like weed. Marijuana. You have? Marijuana? I like smoke marijuana." Ya, 'cuz after the show I met up with my friend Rachel and she and I both wanted to go dancing, whereas the people we'd both been out with weren't up for dancing. So Rachel and I had a drink at the Granville Room with Lianna before she headed home to check on her dog, who'd just been neutered, then headed to Ceili's. Oddly, there was no line, no cover and no ID'ing at the GR or C's, which I don't think I've ever seen in Vancouver before. The music was good and Rachel and I had a great time dancing, which we haven't had a chance to do in far too long! In addition to the guy who kept telling me that I smelled like weed (and I think, but am not sure because his English was pretty choppy, asked me to be his girlfriend), I was also amused by the guy that hit on me that I think I may have insulted by saying "Are you old enough to be in here?" and the charming Brit, who was saying all the charming things that Brits say (and, to be quite honest, I didn't care if he actually meant a word of it, it was just nice to hear).

Long story short, I stayed up much too late and was totally exhausted today, so I figured that I could justifying doing pretty much nothing all day as "recovery from surgery." And now I'm going to go to sleep because I have a tonne of work to get done for September and isn't September like really, really soon?

I'm pretty sure my iPod is sentient. I usually play it on "shuffle songs" and, having an eclectic mix of artists, you never know what crazy song is going to come out next. But when I'm in an emotionally heightened state, it seems to play songs that are totally appropo to the situation. Like the day that Dani moved out, when I was really dreading going home to our apartment, which was suddenly my apartment, my iPod played a string of songs, most of which I can't remember, save one which epitomized the lot - Lonely Day by System of a Down

And now today, just now, waiting for the bus, my iPod spits out The Dresden Dolls' The Jeep Song and then Elvis Presley's Fools Rush In. The former with lyrics which are appropriate to the point of hilarity, the latter with a title that sums up my sentiments.

OK, so I'm typing this on my Palm Treo¹ and now I think my iPod is on to the fact that I'm onto it². Because it's starting to play songs that don't even remotely apply at all to the situation at hand. The Authority Song by Jimmy Eat World. Bonecracker by Shocore. OK, now it's really gone too far - Van Morrison's Brown-Eyed Girl?? To a girl so arrogant about her blue eyes that she wears eyelash bling? Very funny, iPod, very funny.

Yes, this is actually how my thought process works. My head is a fun place to live.

Update: I'm in the middle of writing tomorrow's blog posting and my iPod chooses to play Heart's What About Love. Which could only be more appropriate if it was my other favourite Heart song - Alone. Bastard³.

¹Very slowly, due to the tiny-ness of the keyboard.
²I think my Treo may have sent it a text message.
³That "bastard" was in reference to my iPod. Mostly.

'cuz this is Thriller, Thriller night

A friend of mine posted this the other day on Facebook, and then I heard a DJ talking about it on the radio. 1500+ inmates practicing their Thriller routine. You just *have* to watch it!

My First Ever Sangeet!

Last night I attended my first ever Sangeet (or Ladies Party, as it is also called). And I must say that you have not partied until you have danced to a mash up of "My Humps" + Hindi music.

OK, maybe I should back up a little. Since this is my first ever Indian wedding, when Shalu gave me my invitation (which, by the way, is the most gorgeous invitation I've ever seen!), I had to have her walk me through what the heck everything was, since my invitation had FOUR invitations in it!¹ The invitation to the Sangeet indicated that there would be Appetizers, followed by Chunni & Tilak, then dinner & dancing. Appies, dinner & dancing I am familiar with, but chunni & tilak, not so much. Around about the time that we were waiting for our ride to pick us up, Shalu's friend, Mina (who I met at the wedding shower last weekend and arranged to carpool with) and I decided to Wikipedia² those terms to see what we could expect. Chunni, as near as we could tell from Wikipedia, is a piece of red fabric the groom's family puts on the bride's head. Tilak is a mark on the forehead.

Here's a pic of the happy couple after the Chunni & Tilak part of the night. As you can see, Shalu bears both the chunni and the tilak. Wikipedia did not steer us wrong!

Don't they look amazing??

OK, a few highlights of the night:

• the food. omg, so delish! I *love* Indian food. Plus, it was all vegetarian!
  
• everyone's outfits - they were soooo beautiful! Shalu looked radiant in her beautiful green dress and Deepak was dashing in his blue outfit.
  
  
• 



• the music! As I mentioned at the start of the post, it was Hindi music mixed with pop. Billie Jean, plus Hindi. Sexy Back, plus Hindi. It went surprisingly well together and had a great beat, which made for great fun dancing.
• And speaking of dancing, I got a few compliments on my dancing abilities. Now, I've never danced to Indian music before, so I just sort of looked at what other people were doing and tried to imitate it... just feel the beat and go with it! I think people were surprised to see the only white girl there dancing to the Indian
  
• And speaking of dancing, the DJ told us that "this next song will be the last song of the night" about 6 times. At once point, they had turned the lights up for the "last song", but we kept on dancing, so they turned the lights back down and kept playing music! After the actual last song, we decided we still needed to dance some more, so a bunch of us headed to Ginger Sixty-Two. Deepak told us it was Indian Night there, which we didn't believe, as Deepak likes to make things up just to see if you will believe them. But he turned out to be telling the truth, because when we got there, they were, in fact, playing Indian music! Of course, Shalu & her "entourage" (as the DJ there called it) were the only ones wearing Indian outfits, which everyone there thought was very cool.
  
  
  
  
  Here are Shalu & Deepak outside of Ginger Sixty-Two. Party like a rock star.
  

• We stayed 'til Ginger Sixty-Two closed (for those of you who are counting, that's right, we stayed right to the end of *two* parties last night... ya, we are that hardcore!) By then, I was pretty much unable to walk due to my feet deforming shoes. In my defence, the shoes are very pretty. Some peeps headed off for pizza, but me, Andrea & Mina decided that it was time, since it was after 2 am and Andrea had to work in a few hours, to head home.
  

OK, that's enough with the writing. But I'll give you a few more pictures, what with them being worth a thousand words and all.

Me, Radha (sister of the groom) and Mina (friend of Shalu's (and now my friend too!))

Mina, me & Ritu in the back row. Deepak & Shalu in the middle. Meenu up front.

At Ginger Sixty-Two.

Stay tuned for more exciting wedding events next week. Next up, the wedding tradition of Mehndi on Wednesday!

¹See here for a brief description of the different events.

²I also discovered through Wikipedia that Shalu's name is also the name of a "special type of sari."

Things I Didnt Know Before I Went to the Finger 11 Concert Last Night

• Finger 11 is from Burlington, Ontario. I grew up in the town next to Burlington. That means we are practically related.
• You can buy Smirnoff Ice in a can.
• The Croatian Cultural Centre has the worst acoustics in the history of the world.
  
• Winnipeg produces good bands. At least, one in particular - Inward Eye. They had the combination of hot boys, good music and an insane amount of energy on stage.
• Cute boys travel in packs at concerts.
  

Paralyzer

The other day, Dave lamented that he and Sarah had only been to six concerts since they'd moved to Ottawa, which was about 2.5 years ago. It got me to thinking, "hey, I think I've only been to like 6 concerts. Ever."* I think that means I'm not very well versed in the music scene

1. Billy Bragg - at Ontario Place, with my sister
2. Barenaked Ladies - at Canada's Wonderland, with Sarah and I believe Dave was there too, and some other randoms.
3. Depeche Mode - again, at C's W, with Sarah and I remember Carlene being there and possibly Jen W. and other assorteds.
4. Jesus & Mary Chain - at some warehouse-type place (wait, was it called "The Warehouse"? Goddamn, I have a terrible memory). With Sarah's then boyfriend and her ex-bf's brother. I know, Random with a captial R.**
5. Green Day - GM Place. Don't even get me started on the f'd up circumstances that led me to see this concert. Good show though.
6. Sloan - at the Commodore Ballroom, with Jason #2. That's right, I said it.
   

Well, I'm going to see Finger 11 at the Croatian Culture Centre on Monday, which will bring my lifetime total of concerts above Dave's 2.5 year total. So at least that's something.

*Sarah, my personal historian, please correct me if I've forgotten any. I discovered I don't need a memory of my own because I have a Sarah.
**Allow me to emphasize here that these first four were all when I was HIGH SCHOOL. And I graduated from high school over a decade* ago!!

Wear the Fox Hat

The same radio station that brought you Hump at the Pump has recently had a new contest: "Wear the Fox Hat"* 99 people won the opportunity to wear this silly looking fox hat 24/7... didn't matter what you were doing - when you slept, when you showered, when you had sex, you had to wear the fox hat... and the one who wore it the longest would win $10,000 and a new car. This gave the radio station plenty of fodder - they sent DJs out to ambush contestants at homes or their place of employment. Some guy was a welder and wore his hat under his welding mask. Some girl quit her job to stay at home and wear the hat.

A subcontest of this contest was that if you saw any of the contestants wearing one of these hats and you got a picture of yourself with them, you could send it in to the radio station and one name would be drawn from all those who submitted photos and that person would get tickets to every concert that CFOX hosts for the rest of 2007.

So, last month on the Aggies trip to Roosters, guess who saw a guy in a fox hat?



I asked him if he really wore his hat all the time, "You really haven't washed your hair since this contest started? Have you had sex wearing that hat??" He swore that he had never taken it off. And he had a girlfriend and that they had, in fact, had sex while he wore that hat.

My friend Jamie was with me, so we got a pic of her too and we both emailed them into try to win concert tix:


And guess who won??

Not me. And not Jamie. Some guy we never heard of won. Stupid guy we don't know.

But, I did just hear on the radio that the winner of the $10,000 and the car was none other than hat #84. Take a closer look at those photos. Yup, that guy is wearing hat #84.

*say it aloud. It's funny, trust me.

Why?

Why did my grocery store decide to rearrange their set up, right when just I got to know where everything was? And why don't they keep the tomato paste next to the canned tomatoes? And why have whole wheat English muffins been on sale* non-stop since I started going to this grocery store last May?

Why do all the non-organic croutons, of which there are several varieties, have to have trans fats in them? Do I look like I can afford 50 cents extra to buy the organic ones in order to avoid the artery clogging trans fats?**

Why can I not remember any phone numbers, save my parents which has been the same number since before I was born? Oh ya, and Sarah's phone number back in high school, which her parents no longer have, as they have moved, and thus the number is totally useless to me. I mean, I don't have a cell phone, so it's not like I have everyone on speed dial. I look up numbers when I call people, yet I never seem to remember what those numbers are the next time I call.

Why can a politician stand up in the House of Parliament and tell an out and out lie and get away with it? Why isn't there perjury for politicians on the House floor?

Why don't I have a sugar daddy?

Why does my Palm Pilot require that I fiddle with it for at least 15 minutes and hold it just so in its cradle before it will hot sync?

Why did Vanilla Ice drop out of the music scene?***

Why is my application status for a job that I would quite like, and for which I applied in October, still listed as "in process"? And why won't they answer my follow up email?

Why do I always have a burning desire to bake cookies at 9:30 p.m., every single night?

Why am I completely incapable of doing any real work before 11:30 pm, of sleeping before 2:47 am, or of rising before 12:21 p.m.?

Why do I forget to take my calcium supplement 4 out of 5 days? Is the fear of debilitating osteoporosis not pressing enough? Is the need to have street cred among the other bone biologists not sufficient to jog my memory?

*10 cents off the regular price

**For the record, I decided to make my own, homemade croutons instead. And they were delicious.

***More importantly, why the hell did I just read the entire Wikipedia entry on Vanilla Ice? And why the hell did he and his wife name their daughters Dusti Raine and Keelee Breeze? Why, why, why would someone do that??

Stoled

As you know, I like to steal ideas from pay homage to other fine writers of the blogosphere. I noticed that Rebecca over at Larocque and Roll made up her New Year's resolutions by hitting random play on her iTunes and devising resolutions based on the first ten songs that came up. Go here to read her list. Good resolutions, yes? So I decided to give it a whirl with the songs on my iPod... check out what I ended up with:

#1 - The Jeep Song by the Dresden Dolls - I should get an SUV this year? That doesn't seem very practical for someone who lives in a city.

#2 - Gravity by the Dresden Dolls - Yes, I really should start obeying the law of gravity. All this flying around I've been doing is arousing suspisions.

#3 - Fake Tales of San Francisco by the Arctic Monkeys - I should move to San Fran... no fair, I've totally been trying to do that! Hmmm... maybe it means I should be telling more lies?

#4 - Animal I Have Become by Three Days Grace - I guess I really should tame this animal I have become. Or, wait, animal... animal... perhaps it means I should get a kitten!

#5 - First Orgasm by the Dresden Dolls - Oh wow. What do I do with this one? I need to have more orgasms??

#6 -I Love Myself Today by Bif Naked - Good song, but is this really how I should be getting these more orgasms?

#7 -38 Years Old by The Tragically Hip - Ah, perhaps this is where the more orgasms should be coming from - a 38 year old. Not the one in the song, mind you, because he's never even kissed a girl.

#8 - Basket Case by Green Day - Clearly I am one, to still be writing this posting....

#9 - Underwhelmed by Sloan - Hmph. That doesn't sound promising at all.

#10 - Only Love by Groove Coverage - I give up!


OK, that didn't quite work out as well as Rebecca's. So, I think what I really need to do this year is stop saying "stoled"*... I have no idea where on earth I picked this up, but I've said it for as long as I can remember. And it sounds soooo trashy! So, if you hear me saying "stoled", unless I'm referring to someone who is wearing a stole, please berate me accordingly.

*As in "I stoled this idea from Rebecca."

Snippets

For some reason, I heard a number of interesting lines that really stuck in my head this past weekend. I would have got this up earlier, but I was actually doing work yesterday. Work! Here are some snippets of conversation, and their context:

---

Yelled from a block away: "Stop dancing on that pole... Sophie!!"

Picture it. You are walking down Commercial Drive after having watched a play (Life After God) at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, discussing how Douglas Coupland is a self-referential asshole. You see, about a block away, a women with two male companions stumble up the street and start pole dancing on a street sign. You turn to your companion and say, "Is that woman pole dancing?" And your companion yells, "Get off that pole!! Stop dancing on that pole... Sophie!" Yes, my friends know some interesting characters*!

---

"It's OK to bathe or shower in the water, as long as you don't swallow any of it."

This statement was actually made by a news anchor, during a story about the Vancouver water advisory**. I freaking love that they have to people not to drink their bath water!!

---

"Those cheerleaders are wearing parkas!" "I have a good idea - let's have an outdoor event in Winnipeg... in November!"

Grey Cup***. In Winnipeg. In November. What genius thought of that one?

---

"I'm going to go ingest some shigella."

A statement like this could come from an agricultural sciences student who decides he needs some hydration before our ball hockey game and so heads for the water fountain, despite the fact that the city is under a boil water advisory. To date, I believe the friend of mine who made this declaration is shigella-free.

---

"JESUS, THERE'S A SPIDER CRAWLING ON THE BED!!!!!"

This was screamed by me so that my roommate would come and rescue me (which she did). Sometimes I hate living in a basement.

---

"I'm just wondering how long sex lasts... you have A LOT of songs in this Sex playlist!"

OK, this one requires a bit of backstory. I'm at a birthday party on Saturday night and the birthday boy's iPod runs out of power. Another person at the party starts making a playlist on their iPod and I offer my iPod in the meantime, with the caveat of "Don't make fun of my music. I have eclectic musical tastes!" As the one who has appointed themself in charge of the music at the time starts flipping through my music, he discovers that I have three playlists entitled "Sex", "Drugs" and "Rock & Roll."**** He starts playing the "Drugs" music, but a little later on he makes the aforementioned statement of "I'm just wondering how long sex lasts... you have A LOT of songs in this Sex playlist!" The point of the playlist was supposed to be that it was songs *about* sex, not necessarily songs that you have sex to. But now that he mentioned it...

---

*And, for the record, the two male companions were a gay couple that Sophie was *teaching* to pole dance!

**Day 6 and counting! I <3 href="http://www.bclions.com/">BC Lions!

***Props to the Grey Cup Champion BC Lions! w00t! w00t!

****"Sex" includes songs that have something to do with sex (think "Crazy Bitch" by Buck Cherry or NIN's "Closer."); "Drugs" includes songs about, well, drugs (think "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground, "Cocaine Blues" by Johnny Cash, or "My Alcoholic Friends" by the Dresden Dolls) and "Rock & Roll" includes songs about music (think "Jailhouse Rock" by Elvis)... I thought it was witty.

Longest. Post. Ever.

This past week has been hellava busy. So this is going to be a hellava long blog posting. But I promise that it will be full of pics and debachery, so I think that's a fair deal, yes?

On Tuesday I saw Sloan at the Commodore. Sloan was wicked good live... and I enjoyed the opening band, the Yoko Casionos, especially this one song that I believe was called "Loose Cannon." I'd never been to the Commodore before, so it was pretty cool to finally go there. Wednesday was Aggie BBQ, as well as Ladies Night with some friends. Every Wednesday the Aggies make a big dinner, but this past week's was the best - Indian food! Plus a wine tasting, where we learned about, and then got to taste, a Quail's Gate Botrytis^* affected late harvest riesling. Then it was off to Cafe Crepe, where the drinks are cheap, for some pre-drinking before we headed out to the Caprice.

The premises of Ladies Night were as follows: (a) no boys, (b) everyone wears a little black dress... as evidenced by this photo, taken in Cafe Crepe just before we took our tequila shots. And no, everyone in Cafe Crepe wasn't staring at us^**, why do you ask?

And here is a photo of all of our shoes^***. Mine are the boots & the fishnet stockings. Yes, fishnet stockings.


And here's a photo of me & my roommate, Danielle. We are bringing sexy back.


Thursday marked the beginning of Halloween week with pumpkin carving at Ag Sci^****. In preparation for the big Aggie Halloween bzzr garden^*****, a bunch of people got together to carve pumpkins to decorate Ag Sci. And this is a photo of me, playing in a big pile of pumpkin goo. Mmmm, pumpkin goo.


Now, I can't even remember the last time I carved a pumpkin, but I have such fond memories of doing so during my childhood. Every year my dad would take my sister, Nancy, and I to the pumpkin patch and we'd each get to choose a pumpkin. Nancy would always search through the pumpkins for the smallest, roundest, most perfect little pumpkin she could find, whereas I would always choose the biggest one I could find. And then, as now, I was a tiny little kid, so the pumpkin usually ended up being close to the same size as me. This year, I decided to buck tradition and chose the smallest, roundest, most perfect little pumpkin that they had. And this is what I carved:

I think this Aggie bull is my favourite of the pumpkins that were carved that night:


And the next day (Friday) was the big Aggie Halloween bzzr garden:

And it was morphinomenal, thanks to appearances by the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers:


Other examples of those present at the party were: various women in uniform:




... a hobbit, V for Vendetta, and some bloody ax murderer character...


... a dude in a plastic fro and Bob Ross^******...


... and even Che Guevara^*******



And me? I was Lara Croft.























One of the coolest things about Halloween parties is that you always have an opening line to walk up to complete strangers and start talking. Like, "hey there, Indiana Jones, we are both archaeologists!" and "Hey there, why are there two popes? Is this some sort of schism?"

Oh yes, and did I mention that Aggie Halloween bzzr gardens feature a mechanical bull?


Before you ride the mechanical bull, they make you sign a waiver, so that if you get injured or die, you or your heirs can't sue them. The thing is, pretty much everyone at a bzzr garden has been, well, drinking bzzr. I distinctly remember having a conversation about this with the person in front of me in the line up to ride the bull - I mean, how can you possibly sign away your right to sue when you are under the influence, right? So, in my wisdom that the waiver probably wouldn't hold up anyway, I decided to sign my waiver "Lara Croft." And they didn't even notice.

Now you may have heard rumors that, later on in the night, when I was drunk enough to knock over a giant speaker, I answered the challenge of "Matt says he will ride the bull naked if someone will ride it topless." I can assure you that such rumors are completely baseless.

Oh ya, and the police showed up and confiscated our hard alcohol, just because we didn't have a license for it. When they first got there, people were going up to the cops and slurring, "hey man, cool costumes!" That probably didn't set a very good tone. The cops didn't look too happy at any rate.

In the end, I managed to find my way home on the bus and fall into a completely unrefreshing drunk sleep, wherein I wake up every half hour or so, certain that I am about to die of dehydration, manage to gulp down large quantities of water that I can actually feel enter each and every one of the trillion or so shrivelled little dehydrated cells in my body. And then, since I had promised I would, I actually got up in the morning and went all the way downtown to the Pan-Canadian National Day of Action march & rally against war, despite my ridiculous hangover! My hangover was so ridiculous, in fact, that I was still hung over by the time I got to the next Halloween party, at around 8 pm Saturday night. This party was a house party, featuring such noble traditions as the keg stand^********:


I should have known that this would be a crazy party when the first thing I saw after I walked in the door was this:


Now, seeing as I was still hungover, I decided to take it easy (translation: no keg stands for me). And so I merely entertained myself with shooting people. Since I had lost one of my guns the previously night, I had to use a backup gun, the silver one shown here:


Also shown in the above picture above is Deanna, who is going to be my assistant coach when I become the coach of the Canucks. We have a foolproof coaching strategy to motivate the players.

A highlight of the night for me was when my friend Laura (the candy corn witch) and her friend, Little Andrew (Disco Stu), treated us to a performance of Jack Johnson and Radiohead songs. The two of them have amazing voices and it was just beautiful to listen to.


Here's a picture of Laura's friend, Geoff, listening to the music. Geoff has sponges stapled to his shirt - his costume was "self absorbed."


So, that, my friends, is how I spent Halloween weekend. And I will leave you with one last photo: it's me as kick-ass Lara Croft, standing on a table, with a sponge in my utility belt.



^*Botrytis is a fungus that they put on the grapes, which apparently puts holes in the grapes, causing water to evaporate from them, concentrating the sugar and making the wine sweet. Mmmm, fungus.

^**this was to be expected, as Cafe Crepe is on campus, so everyone else in the restaurant was wearing jeans and hoodies.

<sup>*** You may recall that I have a slight obsession with footwear.

****For the uninitiated, "Ag Sci" refers the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, of which my program (Nutrition) is a part. More correctly, it is the Faculty formerly known as the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, as they changed their name recently to the Faculty of Land & Food Systems (*cough* stupid *cough*). But old habits die hard, so we usually refer to the Faculty, the building in which the Faculty (other than the Nutrition & Food Science programs) is housed and the people within the Faculty as "Ag Sci."

*****There is this strange rule at UBC that you aren't allowed to advertise the availability of alcohol at events on campus, so Beer Gardens at UBC are called "Bzzr Gardens" instead (except the Pride beer gardens, which are usually called "Bqqr Gardens").

******Bob Ross is my friend Dave B. He told me that I had nice guns. When Sharon started laughing at this, he innocently said, "That's not what I meant.. I was trying to say something not dirty</sup>!"

^*******My friend Jamie informed Che that it was highly unlikely that Che would wear a T-shirt with a picture of Che on it

********I friggin' love that the picture of the keg stand on Urban Dictionary is a BRIDE doing a keg stand. That rocks.

Being Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving Day up here in Canada. 2006 has not been a very kind year to me*, but, as previously discussed, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger and I'm feeling stronger, better and happier than I have in a long, long time**. And I know that I have many things to be thankful for. Some of these things, in no particular order, include:

• peanut butter: the kind with no salt, no sugar, no icky trans fats... just squished up peanuts. On an English muffin, this is my go-to breakfast.
• the mountains, the ocean: I <3 living in Vancouver!
  
• the Canucks: we have a goalie. We have the twins. 'nuff said.
• running: I admit it - I've become addicted to running. Listening to my iPod, getting into my groove and just pounding out all the stress with each step. And each week, seeing how much I've progressed - I can run that little bit further, that little bit faster. It rocks.
• Groove Coverage: I discoved this band pretty much by accident, but I can't get enough of them.
  
• my niece: I love this kid so much. She's like a ray of sunshine in my life. She has her mom's fiery attitude and stubborness*** and her dad's showmanship and sense of comedy. And her aunt's shoe obssesion. Anytime I am feeling blue, I can think of her and it makes me smile.
  
• my friends: I can't even begin to express how grateful I am to all my friends, who have been so very wonderful to me always, but especially in helping me through the last year. Patiently listening to me when I needed to vent, challenging me when I needed someone to keep me from caving and entertaining me when I needed a distraction from all the stress and worry. Please know that I love you all.
• my roommate: of course, she is also included in the above "my friends" category, but I have to say that my roommate is wicked cool. She let me sublet her place for the summer at a moment's notice and not only has let me continue to stay here after she got back, but is actually *happy* to have me stay here. And she lets me know it all the time.
• Canada: it has its faults, to be sure. But I'm proud to live in a country where any two people who are in love can marry each other, regardless of their gender, and where, if I get sick, I know I can go to the hospital. A country that is generally known for being peaceful and tolerant. And we have Timmy Ho's***. And poutine. And ketchup-flavoured potato chips.
• cats that act like dogs: I used to be exclusively a dog person, but I have come to appreciate those cats that act like dogs. Like these cats. And my sister's cat, Rhino. And even, though she doesn't act like a dog, my sister's other cat, Monkey... she acts like a bitch, but deep down, it's just because she's insecure.
• dogs: I do miss Inti, the dog that used to live upstairs from me at my old place, but fortunatley there are dogs everywhere in this city and they are, for the most part, more than happy to let you pet them.
• Jäger bombs: Jäg and Red Bull, together at last.
  

There are, no doubt, many more things for which I am thankful, but right now I think I should head to bed. I'm making a vegetarian Thanksgiving feast tomorrow, so I need my rest!



*and to be honest, 2005 wasn't much of a peach either.

**and this despite having no job and thus, having to live quite frugally!

***and I mean that in a good way!

****although Timmy's is owned by an American corporation. But let's just not talk about that, OK?