Listening to

"Treats" — Sleigh Bells

Learning to eat all over again

Tonight my obliging husband gave me my first technical hamburger-eating lesson. I was a vegetarian from age ten until I was twenty-three. And yes, if you speak with some of my closest friends, they will divulge stories about me eating hotdogs when I've been drinking too much...but I digress. The point is that I don't have the years of experience that others have. My hamburger eating skills didn't evolve with me as I grew old. The shameful results are that when I indulge in handheld food items, most of it ends up on the table and my lap, some of it ends up in my mouth, and the remainder is smeared on my face. Sometimes when a small child eats they mysteriously end up with food bits in their hair, on their forehead, and in many other unsuspecting places. I am that child. But I'm a twenty-six year-old woman.

After watching me struggle through the first quarter of a hamburger, Luc dispensed some bite-by-bite advice to help me navigate the terrain.

Luc: "OK, start with the left side there."
Me: "Here? OK..." (takes a bite)
Luc: "All right...where do you think you should bite next?"
Me: "Here?"
Luc: "No, that's a common mistake, you have to bite again from this side." (pointing)
Me: (takes an enormous bite) "Ohhhh...." (eyes wide, mouth full, face smeared with food, hamburger still falling to pieces in my hands)
Luc: "OK, take it slow, don't get too excited..."

I think learning to eat hamburgers cleanly in your adult years is like learning new languages. The longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes and the more ridiculous you look when you try.

A [watermarked] sneak peek

Hunter Welly Socks

I got some little cable knit sweaters for my rubber boots. Boot liners are, without a doubt, the kind of thing that once you have them, you can't fathom living without them.

Blu Studio Photography

While waiting to get our wedding photos back from Blu Studio, I repeatedly asked myself, How long is too long? Part of the excitement in seeing your wedding photos for the first time is the anticipation, but there comes a point when anticipation diminishes into frustration and eventually disappointment. Our friends and family stopped asking us if we had them yet, our work colleagues gave up on their inquiries after two months, and I quit checking my email after nine weeks. We didn't get so much as a one-photo preview. The email that promised the photos in six weeks certainly proved anticlimactic. All of the guests' thank-you cards have sat on my desk collecting dust, waiting for their 4x6 photo inserts. (And who knows how much longer it will take to get those prints for the thank-you cards?)

After ten weeks and one day, our photos finally arrived to sighs of relief.

My advice to wedding photographers: if you're running behind, at least give your clients a taste of what's to come. When the promise of wedding photos becomes so stale that their arrival begets only relief rather than excitement, the magic has been sucked out of the experience.

I sure do like birds

I think this set of panel bird prints from the Callaghan Art Gallery on Etsy would look so cute in our new living room.

Reading

Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

Ew, what's that?

.... It's the worst commercial on television these days, that's what it is...

What ever happened to aging naturally?

The November issue of Vanity Fair features a one-page excerpt from Lesley M. M. Blume's newly released book Let's Bring Back: An Encyclopedia of Forgotten-Yet-Delightful, Chic, Useful, Curious, and Otherwise Commendable Things from Times Gone By. Blume is a style contributor at the Huffington Post, and the book is the eponymous extension of her online series.

The first item that struck me as worthy of revival was the Stork Club in New York—or, an aspect of it, at least.

"Each little table sported a discreet telephone, on which you could dial the other tables: That is a charming feature."

Every item includes its own description and commentary, many with chic, old-timey illustrations. They had me nodding in agreement, especially the idea that umbrellas should be "[beautiful] with carved handles, instead of those silly guaranteed-to-break-immediately quasi-disposable ones that you always see jutting out of street-corner garbage cans."

I have yet to read the entire book, but surely will some time soon.

Other favourites...
Radio Plays
Aging Naturally
Headscarves
Wearing White Gloves to Lunch
Riddles
Skating Parties

Reading

On the recommendation of my friend Megan Lau:
The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion

Do you have this book?

Sometimes I play a fun game. I open to a random page, then buy that book. This round's pick was Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov. If any time is a good time for Russian literature, it's the winter. While we're at it, can I confess something? I've never read Lolita. Maybe that'll be next?

True story

At his bachelor party, Luc and his friends got drunk, stole a golf cart and drove around—Luc fell off the back of the cart and cut open his leg and arm, soaking his white shorts in blood and dirt. A lot of blood and dirt. He let the blood dry on the shorts, and three days later when he was home, got the stains out completely.

This morning I got a small dab of liquid concealer on a white dress shirt. I immediately applied stain remover, soaked it, scrubbed it, soaked it again...continued the process when I got home, washed it in detergent and oxyclean....and the stain is still there.

I realize I'm blogging about clothing stains, but a practically week-old mud and blood stain vs. a small, quickly attended-to makeup stain? Come on, Universe, you're killing me here!

Katherine Heigl?

Getting friendly with the animals

While in the Okanagan on my work trip, I fed some BC wildlife and wrote about it for BCLiving online magazine.

Shardik the grizzly bear

Dharma the moose

Big-ass camel

Big-ass bull elk

Before they were trendy

Princess Diana in Hunter wellies.

Monthly Photo - November 2010

Lumpy and bumpy gourds at the market.

November 2010 Banner