Cool as a cucumber

While dining at our friends' house this evening, we began to talk about how school is going and what kind of internship I'm looking for. Despite being very intrigued by 3 months in India with a publisher who creates hand-made books, I just couldn't stomach 93 nights away from Luc. Until these creepy man-replacements make their way to Canada, I'll be looking at opportunities close to home.

This conversation lead into marriage talk, of course. Our friends aren't engaged but they're thinking of tying the knot in the next year or two. Our wedding still seems so far away - less than a year now, but still leaving us ages and ages to plan everything. I left their house feeling relaxed and laid-back about planning our wedding. Until I got home and opened my email...and realized that our family has started receiving the save-the-dates in the mail...which means that people are actually coming to our wedding....which means I actually do have to plan an entire wedding this year and complete my degree and keep doing the laundry all at the same time. For the love of god, who will teach Luc how to wash the delicates??? I have a project to do and fabric swatches to choose from!!!

Thoughts

You can't entirely trust spell checker in Word; I nearly handed in an assignment on boob publishing in Canada rather than book publishing.

Uhhhh

The concert last night was amazing, and I'll write more on that later. For now, just a few words on how my brain has turned to mush this week.

Last night when Ben Harper was on, he took a second between songs to wave and acknowledge all of the people who were sitting in the crap seats behind the stage....and they went WILD.
Me: "Wow...one little wave of the hand can elicit so much....excite?...uh...excition....uhhh...excitation...?"
Luc: "You're all out of words...you used them all this week! And I think you meant excitement."

Just another Saturday afternoon

Me: Sitting at the dining room table, hunched over my computer, surrounding by books, working on an assignment. I notice that Luc is dressed with his shoes on, like he's going somewhere. I give him that inquiring look....
Luc: "Oh yeah, Kate and Tom are coming over. They'll be here in a few minutes."
Me: "What?? A few minutes?? Shit...."
Luc: "You don't need to come out with us, we're just going to Best Buy."
Me: "Yeah I know, I just thought I should make myself look like less of a gargoyle before our friends walk in." I'm thinking along the lines of washing the sleep-drool off my face from last night and putting on a bra. Nothing much.
Luc: "Aww, you're going to take off your Sponge Bobs and put on pants?"
Me: "What? No! My sponge bob square pants pajamas are nothing to be ashamed of..."
Clearly Luc and I have a different idea of what is acceptable and what is embarrassing.

The winning combination

There are some combinations that really make the world a better place to live in. Peanut butter and chocolate. Popcorn and movies. Chocolate chip cookies and milk. Wicker baskets and bikes. Ice cream and chocolate sauce. Wine and cheese. But I think I found the combination that trumps any other combination known to mankind. Ben Harper and Pearl Jam. Tonight we're going to the Pearl Jam concert, with Ben Harper and the Relentless 7 as the opening act. I've been so intensely and insanely busy since the start of school that I actually forgot about this concert until yesterday. There's really no story to tell here, just that I'm excited to have a night off! However, there will surely be a great story to follow, because every time Luc and I attend any sort of seated event (concert, sports, etc), we are always surrounded by a dense population of completely bizarre people.

Speaking of bizarre, I promised a few more tidbits about my former job....please note, I was NOT a personal assistant. I did, however, spend an afternoon with the boss's wife shopping online for wedding and bridal shower gifts.

Really...

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows how I feel about vanity license plates. Not cool. Never OK. So you can imagine how I felt this evening as we were being cut off by a douche bag in a little mercedes with plates that read: STOCKS.

What is with these postal workers?

Despite finishing our save the dates weeks ago, I still haven't mailed them. Part is because I made the conscious decision to wait until after the one-year mark. Part is because someone is stealing all the GOOD STAMPS! Yes, I'm trying to find pretty stamps for the envelopes for my save the dates...I'm THAT crazy and anal. The trouble is, every time I go in (about 5 times now...to a different location each time), they don't have any nice looking stamps. Lots of Vancouver 2010 MukMuks and Sumis and so forth...but no flowers, no simple designs. What's the worst part, you ask? The worst part is trying to hide the look on my face every time I go in and the postal worker suggests that I use this:

Yeah...I'm serious. Every single time, at every single different post office I get the same response: "No, sorry, no flowers." And that's fine...it's not their fault. Obviously someone is just running around Vancouver to all of the post offices and buying up all the nice stamps in attempt to sabotage our wedding. No big deal. But why....why do they always suggest this hideous stamp? It must be like in a restaurant before the doors open, "OK everyone, we've still got a ton of this stuff and it's about to turn, so really push the meatloaf tonight." At the post office each morning the manager rounds up the crew, "OK guys, we still have boxes of those hideously ugly celebration stamps, people are actually starting to refuse to accept mail when it's delivered bearing one of these things...we need to find a way to get rid of a TON of them at once. Alice sold a box to some bride for her wedding invitations last week and we were so pleased with her that we gave her a 40% raise." So now, obviously, everyone's trying to push these things on me. But I will not cave.

And I learned something today

Taking the bus home at the same time as the schools let out is not a good idea. Unless you want to hear Suzy and Sally and Sarah talk about how if they can't go to high school A they're totally going to drop out of school all together because high school B is totally gay. Totally. Can you blame them though? I would way rather be an uneducated drain on society than go a totally gay high school. Totally.

Ding dong the hornet's dead!

Which hornet? The fire-breathing, monster-sized hornet that was hiding in my makeup case this morning. Not be the confused with the quadruple-winged, ridge-backed, mutant hornet that was crawling up my dining room wall when I arrived home from school ten minutes ago. What the hell is with all the creatures migrating into our apartment? "Hello, landlord? This is Kristen....GIVE ME A FUCKING WINDOW SCREEN!!!" The lights in our apartment must emit some kind of frequency that's like the cocaine for giant insects. They see it in our living room, they know it's wrong...they see their friends fly to the dark side (the bright side in this case) and they have to try it for themselves...and they figure while they're here, they may as well go into the bathroom and try on some of my makeup.

Back to this morning where I nearly fell into a shock-coma after discovering a hornet bumbling around in the bottom of my makeup case. Now that I'm back in school, I don't get up until 7:30am, (Luc is already at work by then) so getting ready in the morning is a solitary activity. After putting in my contact lenses, my muffled morning senses detected some sort of irregular sound. I looked at the tap and there was no action there. I looked at the bottle of eye makeup remover that crackles when it's all shaken up and foamy, but I hadn't touched it yet. I lowered my ear to the counter and followed the noise to my makeup case. By the time I had my nose 1 millimeter away from the opening, I realized that it wasn't bubbling, it wasn't crackling...it was buzzing. Through the piles of mascara wands and powder cases I could see a giant insect bum waddling back and forth. Obviously I screamed. Obviously I jumped on top of the toilet....only to realize that the area had to be secured, and FAST. Every girl reading this knows what I did next.

Yes...I got a container to trap the bugger. This was no ordinary situation though - he wasn't stationary, he was already angry (after screaming I told him there was NO WAY he could use my mascara, even if it did bring out the multiple colours in his multiple insect eyeballs), and he was awkwardly lodged at the bottom of my makeup case. This called for an extra large yogurt container and a whole lot of courage.

I ran back to the bathroom with the container, and I went for the band aid method - no thinking, just fast and furious. I picked up the makeup case in my left hand, turned it upside down and threw/shook everything out onto the counter, yogurt container in my right hand (for maximum speed and dexterity), ready to pounce. Through a sustained scream, I pushed makeup off the counter and isolated the hornet underneath the yogurt container.

He was PISSED. He was super-sized hornet, psycho, I'm going to fly inside you and sting you in the heart, PISSED. I acted fast and put our Costco-sized bottle of mouthwash on top of the yogurt container. He kept buzzing and flying around ferociously. I honestly thought he was going to topple the heavy container over from his persistent and crazed ramming of the container wall. Honestly.

BUT....to my enormous relief, he was dead when I got home today. He may just be playing dead though, so I left him under the container for Luc to handle when he's home from work. As for the other hornet, he was a tricky case too. I had to trap him against the wall under a clear container, so that I could see his position inside as I slid the container down the wall and then maneuvered him from inside and against the wall to inside and on the floor. I can see him from where I'm sitting right now and he's clearly plotting my death through some sort of maniacal hornet scheme. Another one for Luc to deal with. And this has been the story of why I could never live alone.  

Is that thing real?

About a week ago, while picking up some shoes from a friend's new apartment, I was privy to a pretty big revelation in her life. She just moved into a two bedroom suite with another girl whom she met through a friend of a friend of a friend...or something like that. They both needed roommates, and BAM...just like that, they moved in together.

Anyhow, she was lamenting over the petiteness of her new bedroom, but I didn't think it was that small. Not like the place she had about 4 summers ago where her bed left only a sliver of walking room...if you were inside that room, you were on the bed, because you literally had nowhere else to go. To make me see that she indeed had a small room, she let me peek into her roommate's rather large room. It was big. It was spacious. It was large enough to have a zebra-skin rug spread out on the floor....meaning, her roommate actually had a zebra-skin rug on the floor in her room. I laughed..."wow....niiiiice, that a real zebra carcass?..ha..." Um...yes. Yes it was.

It's revelation time. My friend dragged me out to the living room and pointed to a magazine on the table. Some hunting magazine....rifles and guns and wilderness and HOLY SHIT....on the cover was her roommate: a 3 page exclusive interview with her roommate was inside that magazine. She had inadvertently discovered that her new roomie is some kind of huge celebrity from a different universe. I glanced around the room - things started to pop out at me that I hadn't noticed upon my arrival, like the photos of her with guns....EVERYWHERE! It's funny the things you learn about people.

The definition of irony

Luc proclaiming that the dishwasher was the best thing to ever happen to us, only to be followed by a cycle that leaked an enormous pool of water all over the kitchen floor.

A few things we still need for the wedding

Bow chicka-wow-wowww

I was organizing my itunes by genre to isolate all of the instrumental music (for studying purposes) when I noticed a particularly intriguing genre. A genre that I have never seen before, a genre whose existence I haven't given much thought. Most people are familiar with Chris Isaak's sexy song "Wicked Game", but do they know that it can be categorized in the genre known as "Porn Groove"? Because that's the genre label it has in my itunes. Porn Groove. Not what I expected.

One of these things is not like the other

Our apartment reached unacceptable levels of "hot and sticky" today, and by 6:00pm I had to abandon my school work and get the hell out of there. We placed an order for Thai food and headed to Blockbuster to get Luc a video game. I helped him choose....."hey look sweetie, this one takes place in a destroyed city....OHHH and this one is a sporting event....oh hey look at this one, it's in a destroyed city....oh but THIS ONE is set in a destroyed city...or this one, it's a sporting event....oh no wait, this looks good, it takes place in a destroyed city..." So obviously what followed was Luc telling me that I'm an ass, then him renting a video game that takes place in a destroyed city.

It was all pretty normal until we got to the front to pay for the game. The girl working there was absolutely, unquestionably, one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen. She wasn't wearing any makeup, her skin was flawless porcelain, her hair was dark and silky, and she looked INCREDIBLY out of place. Yes, we were still at the video store....yes, she was the one working behind the counter, at the VIDEO STORE. I'm not saying that attractive people have no place working in a video store, I'm just saying that it's not normal to see a girl who looks like she fell out of a Clinique ad ringing in your video game purchase at the neighbourhood Blockbuster. We both agreed that it was an anomaly, but I maintain that there has to be some other explanation.

Book worms

My return to school has introduced a whole new swirling mass of thoughts into my already crowded stream of consciousness. Today, day 3, was amazing. I spent the bus ride home thinking about something other than the wedding. And speaking of taking the bus, this public transport thing is going to make for A LOT of weird and interesting blog posts....like the guy who went nuts trying to open the doors before the bus had stopped moving, or the girl who had a cut out "V" on the back of her pants to show off her tattoo...or the guy who was reading over my shoulder as I wrote those two things down in my notebook! Yes, the colourful people of Vancouver are at my fingertips, quite literally.

But back to school...we're already bogged down with a bunch of readings and assignments but it's so exciting- we actually get to create things. We get to create a company, a company name, a logo, books...and we get to learn SO FREAKING MUCH.....I think I'm on a natural high just from thinking about this! Also, it's been really great to meet all the people in the program, people I can relate to...other people that spend days trying to find the right day planner, people that look through book catalogs with the same enthusiasm that a child watches toy commercials, people that unpack their books before their furniture when moving...and people whom I will get to experience the highs and lows of the next year and a half with, commiserating, studying, and obviously getting drunk together every now and then. It's really nice to be around other people that will be going through the same thing and that understand what it is we're doing here. It's also really nice to not be someone's slave anymore.   

361 days until our wedding

After watching about 8 consecutive episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" and NOT going to the gym tonight, we finally achieved something....we booked a wedding photographer! This thing is really going to happen and we're going to have PROOF! Professional, photoshopped, artsy proof! Everything is coming together and if I can find a hair stylist and book the DJ in the next couple of weeks, I might have a semi-clear mind for all the school work coming my way.

With this photographer comes an engagement session. We've been thinking of locations and we want to do something unique. And now I'm going to completely contradict that last statement by saying I want to do photos like the ones I saw on another site. All you need to know is this: big field, giant red balloon. I've been thinking of emailing the pictures to the photographer with the subject: Make it happen......but that will obviously come off as completely Bridezilla. So I know what I have to do....add a sideways smiley face.

Make it happen :)

7 - What a ride

#7: Ride a cable car in San Francisco

While I understand that riding a cable car for the first time can be an exhilarating experience, I don't think it calls for constant screeching, giggling, hollering and uncontrollable flapping of the arms. On a ride from Nob Hill to Union Square (which is downhill the whole way), I was one of the standees on the inside track - meaning, when another cable car passed by, you sucked it in and hoped that the oncoming standees were doing the same.

On this particular ride I was second from the front, and beside me was an extremely over zealous, screechy arm flapper. This girl was white knuckling the handrail with one arm and waving at people, animals, trees, and storefronts with the other arm....all the white emitting a constant stream of high-pitched giggles, squeals and of course, "ohhh...ohhhh...OHHHHH, WOOOOOOOO!! Heee hee heeeee....WOOOOO...heee heee hee." It was hard to enjoy the breeze ruffling my shirtsleeves and whipping through my hair when this girl (and when I say girl I mean roughly 25 years old) was 5 seconds away from a self-induced hyper-excitement seizure. I kept thinking to myself, "how do I tell her kindly to shut her pie hole? Would people think I was rude if I held her flapping arm down and tied it to the handrail? Doesn't she know the whole Kate & Leo Titanic thing is only funny at the front of a boat? Did she just wave at a mailbox?" When all of a sudden, like the universe was doing me (and everyone else on that cable car) a favour.....SLAP!!!! Someone in an oncoming cable car reached their arm out and slapped little miss screechy across the face. It happened so fast but it my mind I could almost see it coming in slow motion. Screechy was hanging her body out and flapping her arms in the wind, she was doing one of her crescendo oooh's when someone in the oncoming cable car outstretched their arm, cocked their wrist, and intentionally or not, slapped screechy right in the middle of her cheek. SMACK! The cracking noise of palm to soft cheek silenced her only momentarily, and then it was a whole new kind of screeching, but a quiet, indignant screeching. She wasn't really hurt, so I didn't feel bad laughing. I still turned my face away so that she couldn't see that I was having a pretty good giggle over this, and I noticed that all of the people sitting down were doing the same thing. We laaaaaughed and we laaaaaughed!

It was certainly the most eventful of all my cable car rides while in San Francisco. Although we walked most places, I managed to get a few good rides in. Below is a picture of a cable car down at Fisherman's Wharf.

I've been busy!

We're back from San Francisco and I was just looking through my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days and realized something...there are a handful of things that I've done (embarrass myself at a karaoke bar) that I have yet to write blog posts for. So although this week will be hectic with my first days at school - I will slowly start pumping out some stories that are sure to give you a few laughs.

Some snippets

Earning my munchies

San Francisco is just great - this afternoon I power walked up a hill and ate a Krispy Kreme donut at the same time. Sure, I'm stuffing my face with a pastry smothered in icing and sprinkles, but by the time I reach the top of the hill, it's like it never happened! We've been getting a fair bit of exercise but we've been matching those calories burned with some serious gorging on cheese, creamy sauces, drinks and ice cream. We biked from Fisherman's Wharf across the Golden Gate Bridge and into Sausalito for an indulgent lunch this afternoon. (Have you ever put pine nuts on pizza before? Because I highly recommend it.) The path on the bridge is pretty wide, but not when you stuff a hundred million tourists in there, half of them on bikes, half of them lacking the sense to NOT WALK IN FRONT OF THE BIKERS! Our bikes had bells and at one point Luc had to say to me, "OK...that's enough, no more bell, you don't have to ring your bell at EVERY SINGLE PEDESTRIAN!" But I did...and besides, I was bored with ringing my bell at the seagulls.

After returning our bikes, we walked back to our hotel...which, I might say, is more of a hike. Since we're staying at the top of Nob Hill, everywhere we want to go is significantly downhill, and of course, returning is more than a chore...it's a butt-burning, sweat-inducing, thigh-wobbling work out. I hadn't even thought to pack my running shoes for everyday use - I packed them like I do for all my trips because I always delude myself with ideas of working out in the hotel gym each morning. No matter the reason, I'm glad I've got them! Now if you'll excuse me, we just walked a few blocks to the store and back so I've got a bag of chips to eat.

Thoughts

The illegal shower heads from that episode of Seinfeld (the ones used to hose down circus elephants)...those are the same ones in the hotel rooms here.

An evening at the theatre!

Luc and I made a deal a while back: if we ever won the lottery, the first thing I would get to do is fly to New York to see the musical "Wicked"...and now I'll have to think of a new "first thing to do with our millions" because we're going to see "Wicked" tomorrow evening here in San Francisco!!!

After San Francisco I’ll be going straight to hell

I’m writing this on a flight from YVR to SFO, but I’ll surely be headed straight to HELL some time soon. While walking through the airport this morning I was watching an elderly gentleman glide along the moving sidewalk. It was almost like he didn’t realize that he had gotten on the moving sidewalk, because all the while he was glancing around with a very distressed look on his face. Glancing to his right, glancing to his left, glancing behind him…..turning around completely looking as though he was lost. Getting closer to the end of the moving sidewalk, still standing backwards, getting closer still, and still standing backwards…I wanted to yell out to him, “DUUUUUDE!!! TURN AROUND!!!!!" but I stood there, watching this awkward ballet unfold at the end of the moving sidewalk. You can guess what happened next.

The old guy is riding the moving sidewalk backwards, he’s about 1 second from the end, a slightly staggered stance so that one heel catches first and one leg shoots out in front of him, the other heel didn’t even have a chance to hit the end of the moving sidewalk, as soon as the first one hit, the second one was up in the air. Arms flailing, bags falling, one big old man stumbling to get back on his feet as the sidewalk keeps rolling along. With each attempt is another failure to regain his balance. The best method would have been to army roll right off and stand up on solid ground, but he was half on the sidewalk, half on solid ground and struggling like a champ. He made it to his feet (eventually) and as I walked on, I realized that I had a smile on my face...and I was laughing. I feel bad, but it was something you would have seen on America's Funniest Home Videos...and if America laughs at old men falling off the moving sidewalk, then so can I!

When I really felt bad though, is when an old lady fell at the end, much like the old man had done. Her old lady friend tried to help her up but fell (only partially) in the process, and then another old lady fell on top of that one....it was a pile up of grannies, and you bet your ass I was giggling. Hence, my impending trip to hell. 

Monthly Photo - September 2009

Wedding hands - my newly married girlfriend and her husband.

Crisis averted

One sleepless night, several stressed out tears and $157 later, I have my passport and I'm packing my bags for San Francisco. Thank you for the comments and the e-mails...I am SO happy that this was resolved in time for the trip. The woman at the passport office this morning was very reassuring, saying that as long as they could speak with my two references, everything would be fine and ready to pick up at 3:00pm. She even said "noooo, don't be silly," when I told her how dumb I felt. I resisted crawling over the counter to give her a bear hug, as I thought it might make me seem crazy, and they don't give passports to crazy.

I called my friends after leaving the passport office to inform them that they should be expecting a call soon to verify my identity. I even sent an email the night before to two of them, politely requesting that they do not mention that streaking incident...turns out they don't ask those kinds of questions. One of my friends really got grilled though - she called me afterward to tell me all the details and their million in-depth questions, and my response: "You bitch, you told them I weigh 10 lbs more than I really do??!!" In all seriousness though, I am very grateful to have friends that didn't mind me calling them in a panic at 8:00am due to my own lack of preparedness.

I am also grateful to the London Drugs photo counter lady who made me take a second passport photo due to the shiny grease spot on my forehead in the first one. Not only would the photo have been denied by the passport office, it was also one of the most unattractive pictures I've ever seen of myself. However, the second one looked exactly like the first but with a big powder spot in place of the grease spot...as long as it's not shiny, I guess they don't care? Speaking of which, why does it matter if you're shiny? "Nope....shiny face, clearly a robot in disguise trying to enter the USA and bring down the government from the inside with their super robot powers." Well, look out San Fran because here we come - my greasy robot forehead and I are on our way!

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