Skating towards Silence

I went for a run yesterday. As I was trucking through the park, a girl skated across my path. Strange part was, she was on the sidewalk. Stranger, it wasn't really all that icy.
I find the weather these days a little disconcerting. Facebook tells me that everyone on the East Coast of the States is getting hammered by an epic snowstorm, yet in Montreal we can see the grass. Don't get me wrong, it hasn't gotten warm enough for the snow to melt, but it has been windy enough that it's all blown away.
Montrealers take a certain pride in the harshness of the weather here, but lately we've been stunned into silence by the dump which dropped South of the border.
It makes me wonder about city bragging rights. Coldest winter, hottest summer, most snowfall, most rainfall, most crime, highest, second biggest Mardi Gras, most wild monkeys, best hockey team, meanest bouncers... all that's fine and good until your town gets dethroned by another city. Then you have to hang your head and bow to the perceived betterness or worseness of another city. Strangely, you rarely hear people boast about how great their city is. Pride seems to come from the crappiest parts of living in a town. New Yorkers take pride in how dangerous it is. People from Phoenix boast about how hot. Australians can get killed by everything, everywhere they go. But you never hear people say "hey, we've got a really nice park, you should move here."
I'm not sure what Montrealers are going to be saying on business calls to the States this week. Usually we start off with a fifteen minute "well, let me tell you about the weather," but we really don't have a leg to stand on this week.

Things I'm Bad At

When I left for Australia, everyone was excited for me. The question I got most, though, was interesting.

"Ooh, are you going to go surfing?"

No. No! Why would I do that? Before leaving for Down Undah, I put in the effort to learn how to scuba dive. I bought a wet suit, snorkel, mask, and fins, and spent three days in the pool learning how to be neutrally buoyant. I figured this might be my one and only chance to see the Great Barrier Reef (coral bleaching and whatnot) and I wasn't going to miss it, come hell or high water (har).

Surfing is one of these activities I think you are just inevitably going to suck at when you start. You're going to fall. You're going to get tossed. You're going to get tumbled when you miss your wave (or whatever the slang is). There will be water up your nose. I'm sure that, with practice, you could get good at it, but the question is why? I live in Montreal. The closest ocean is six hours away. The closest surf is a plane ride. Surfing is about as useful a skill as knowing how to catch and fillet a penguin.

So, no, I didn't even attempt surfing. And I'm OK with that.

I loved Australia. Let me just say that. I loved the heat, loved the people, loved the accent. I loved the sand, I loved the dingoes, I loved the water. The month I spent in Australia was probably the best stand-alone month of my life.

It would be impossible to pick a single highlight of the trip, and my natural voice is sardonic, so I’m going to be sardonic.

I was strongly urged, nay, commanded to visit Fraser Island. Fray-zah, as I am told it’s pronounced, is the world’s biggest sand island. You need a 4 wheel drive to get around. There are no paved roads, very few toilets, and the ocean is so rough that they tell you of your impending and guaranteed death should you stupidly try to swim in it. There are signs warning parents to keep hold of their kids. For all the stuff in Australia that can kill you, Fraser seems to have amassed a particularly potent and concentrated collection. I arranged a tour, and jostled and bumped my way out of the Brisbane Central Bus Terminal towards Fraser, a good three hours away. There was a friendly Korean couple with limited English, an Austrian godmother/godson pair, a young Australian couple, and the three most horrible bitches I’ve ever met in my life. Now, I realize there are many candidates for the title out there, but I really think I’m not exaggerating here. These girls were awful. The queen bee of the three was a bony, translucently pale blond from London, flanked by two admittedly beautiful brunettes from Brisbane. The type of girls who can float through life on looks alone, and apparently don’t have to learn things like “common courtesy” or “not being an evil bitch from hell.”

I must stop and say, before I continue on my tirade, that I loved Fraser Island, and made some lovely friends of my fellow travelers. Evil bitches from hell would not have ruined it for me.

So back to said Evil Hellbitches.

As we went around the 4 wheeler introducing ourselves, Hellbitch Minion 1 mentioned that she was getting married on the weekend. Congratulations, I said, you must be excited. She looked at me and shrugged. I asked about the wedding. “It’s small,” she said “only four people.” When I asked about who the four would be, she, and I can’t even make this up, put in her headphones and pretended to fall asleep. I know she was pretending because the 4 wheeler was about as comfortable to sleep in as a dryer full of cantaloupes. That was the extent of my conversation with the Evil Hellbitches, which is pretty incredible, considering that I spent the next 72 hours crammed into a vehicle the size of a minivan with them, and shared a room with them at night. They, quite simply, did not want to interact with anyone that wasn’t them.

The first thing we did when we got to Fraser was go to Lake Wobby. Lake Wobby is a freshwater lake full of fish that will eat the dead skin off your feet. People, apparently, pay lots of money for this in fancy salons in Asia. I, personally, am skeeved out by this, but really enjoyed the swim and the sand. Our ubiquitously Australian tour guide suggested we stroll up to Lake Wobby barefoot. It turned out to be a 2.6km walk away, and the sandy path had the occasional uncomfortably pointy stick hiding in it. But it was worth the walk, even with the blisters on my feet ripping open and bleeding (don’t worry, I’ll save the graphic detail for another post… stay tuned!). The sky was blue, the trees were green, and the water was lovely. Queen Evil Hellbitch, however, could not agree less. She moaned all the way up and all the way down. And for the next two days, she complained about Lake Wobby. Every time we would set off to walk to something else, she would cross her bony arms, narrow her eyes accusingly, and ask if this was going to be like Lake Wobby. She suffered more than anyone else on the planet has ever suffered. The world was against her, and she made sure we all knew it. When she was perched in the passenger’s seat up front while the rest of us jostled around in the back, she was the one moaning from motion sickness. When we went to the beach, she was the only one who got sand in her suit, and that sand was specifically of a variety particularly irritating to her pale, squishy, English bum. The sun burnt her alone.

The thing I could not understand was why exactly, if sand and sun were so irritating to her, she would come to the world’s largest sand island. They don’t really hide the fact that it’s an island made entirely of sand in the promotional material.

I will post soon about how fantastic Fraser Island is next, I promise.

wine (without the "h" for once)

I just got back from a month in Australia. It was fantastic, sandy, hot, sunny, salty, and all in all probably the best trip of my life. It'd be difficult to pick out a highlight of the trip, but wine tasting in the Hunter is definitely one of them.

Know what I learned? "Wine tasting" is really "getting drunk for free."

I had my days, in university, of Notre Vin Maison. Notre Vin Maison was my introduction to red wine. At $6 a bottle, this "table wine" is drastically overpriced. I've had balsamic vinegar that was less acrid. But it was cheap, I was young, and so Notre Vin Maison it was. It was a step into the real wine territory I left behind after my Wild Vines days (otherwise known as "booze for two-year-olds"). Over the years, I evolved to Taja, a Spanish red of some sort or another, and probably the first decent bottle of wine I ever bought. I discovered Masi and pinot noir, cabernet and Jacob's Creek. I wouldn't say my palate became refined, but Notre Vin Maison slunk its way out of my collection.

But, as my acceptable per-bottle price crept into the double digits, I never really got interested in white wines. I had a glass here and there, but just couldn't get past the dry papery feeling in my mouth. But in the Hunter, since it was free, I drank white wine. After 5 or 10 glasses, it starts to get really good! I did honestly discover a few new types of wine that I enjoy... I tend towards the sweeter whites; reislings, traminers, and gewürztraminers (I really just like saying "gewürztraminer"). Not to yammer on about my wine tastes, really, but I was surprised at how much fun you can have toodling around on a bike and getting lit.

Wait, really? That surprised me? Nah, it didn't.

quack

I am back. Sort of. Maybe? Let's giv 'er a whirl, shall we?

I have become a fan of Mondays. Don't get me wrong, dragging my sorry self out of bed at some pre-dawn hour to shuffle off to work is not, you know, my preferred activity, but I have discovered a remedy.

Beer.

My routine is set in stone. It's fossilized at this point. If I drag myself through Monday, I leave work and go to yoga. My yoga community has become like my family here. Sometimes I love them, sometimes I hate them, but I know they'll always be there. When I first started doing yoga, I was pretty sure that the Sunday morning teacher could smell the hangover on me (probably could) and I was the only one in the room emitting it. Wrong with a capital "rong." I was, mistakenly, under the impression that yoga people ate vegan, drank no caffeine, pondered the Yoga Sutras, and meditated fifteen hours a day (those people exist, more on that later). My yoga people are not like that. We are a loud, beer-soaked, foul-mouthed group of people. Granted, predominantly women, but I get a kick and a half out of sitting around and cracking up with them. I'm not the kind of woman who feels overly comfortable in large groups of women, and if you told me five years ago I'd make the decision that I get along better with 8 yogis than my rugby team, I would have laughed in your face. But I do.

So Monday is now not my least favorite day of the week. But, as a result, Tuesday morning isn't the height of awesome, either...

So Mondays I get to go to the pub and shoot the shit with my people.

M is...

I've noticed, since I joined facebook, that I've started to think of myself in the third person. I also seem to constantly be telling myself what I'm doing.
I remember reading a blog post about a girl who had started thinking to herself in "lolspeak" during the lolcats craze. "I'm in ur bafroom, uzin ur floz." "I'm in ur kichen, nawt replacin de milks." I think I'm doing the same thing with my facebook status.
In the morning;
"M is... really not feeling like going to work today."
"M is... considering calling in dead."
"M is... getting in her car."

It continues all day.

"M is... thinking a coffee break would be nice."
"M is... wishing she were outside!"
"M is... considering stabbing herself in the eye with a fork."

Any song lyrics I hear seem to be the perfect fodder for facebook status updates.
"M is... stopping the hearse on George Street, outside some damn saloon."
"M is... even better than the real thing."
"M is... wondering how many thousands of dollars of titanium she could steal from this place before they caught her." Wait. Disregard that. Definitely not a song lyric.
"M is... back in black."

After work.
"M is... f*cking tired."
"M is... going running."
"M is... giving up on the run and wandering around aimlessly."
"M is... scooping tomatoes into her dinner."

But, I do make it a firm rule not to update my status too often. One of my friends is perpetually updating his status, as often as every five minutes. My news feed tells me everything he does, from arriving at brunch, to the topic of conversation over brunch, to paying for brunch, to leaving brunch, to the gas he passed after brunch.
I don't want to tell you people that much about me. I have to maintain the mystery.

(Yes, it's been a while. I'm trying to get back on the horse.)

They don't make 'em like they used to

I am currently 280 some odd pages into East of Eden. What a fabulous book.

Steinbeck spins the plot lazily and carefully, developing the characters individually and in the context of each other. It's refreshing to read a book that I feel like if I put it down now, I would still walk away with something... depth and emotion of the characters, understanding of a time... of course, I can't put it down. It is a book written from another time, just on the brink of the modern era, where time didn't matter so much. Nobody watches the clock in East of Eden, and life just flows lazily past.


And, I'm totally hopped up on cold meds, which makes me kinda loopy.