There’s a Giant Rock in Alberta

Me in a field

The Glacial Erratic

 

 

 

I took my friend Mikaela out to breakfast in Okotoks and on the way back we found a giant rock. There were teenagers playing guitar on the top. Alberta…

 

Apparently the rock is called Big Rock and is just one of many giant glacial erratics in Alberta. Here is the Wikipedia page.

Vancouver Bound

Not a whole lot to report, sadly. The onset of winter turns me into a sloth-like creature who fantasizes about ways she could turn her bed into a person, and then legally marry that person she made out of her bed. My diet also turns into something resembling a dessert menu.

The only real thing of note I accomplished today was making a packing list for my looming trip to Vancouver (I also napped for three hours, so there’s that…). I’m heading to Vancouver for work, to attend the Issues of Substance Conference being out on by the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse. No, I did not actually pack, but the list has been made. While work related, I am excited to get out of the city for a short time and to catch up with two friends currently residing in the city. Also, I have a suite at the Hyatt the may prove to be quite, as the kids say, “pimp.”

The most exciting thing other than my 55 minute plane rides will be Homovember, when I can cross something off of my list for the first time in months.

New Tattoo

Much to the dismay of grandmothers everywhere, I decided to go ahead with my 5th and by far largest tattoo. I booked it months ago with Karrie Arthurs at local custom shop Blackbird Electric after my friend recommended her work.

I have little else to say other than god damn:

NaBloWriMo

On Sunday, my friend Kris, who is the all-star behind my favorite blog Popingay, suggested we embark together on the magical journey that is NaBloWriMo (I think he assumed it stood for National Blowing Writers Month).

This all began when our mutual friend Mikaela said Ian was coming over to work on a project. Kris and I pressed her for details. She refused, stating:

“You’ll make fun of us.”

She was right. After a hearty dose of laughter over the fact that she and Ian participated in NaNoWriMo annually, Kris and I mocked their nerd-dom for several minutes, loudly. At some point, Kris remarked that there was now a NaBloWriMo. I thought “that would be the perfect opportunity to get back on this blogging horse” and Kris thought “I’m a manwhore with a weird writer fetish.”

So we decided to embark on this beautiful writing/blow job journey together. I look forward to a month of fitting in a daily dose of terrible writing that no one reads but my mom. And that’s just because I make her proof read my work.

Coming up:

Nov 2: Tattoo
Nov 6-9: Issues of Substance Conference in Vancouver, BC
Nov 12: Homovember (the terrible holiday I concocted and plan to make my friends celebrate with me, as per item 204 on my list)

Then it’s 2012 the year we all die or whatever.

I played in the snow ‘n junk

Those of you lucky enough to have met me (or created me like my mom did) know I’m absolutely adorable (read: I act like I’m 5 and play it off in a positive light by describing it as adorable, because, let’s face it, I have no life skills). So it should come as no surprise to the few, the proud, the usually gay who befriend me, that yesterday I looked out my boyfriend’s kitchen window into the snowy unshovely wonderland that had taken over his backyard and proceeded to scream “I WANT TO BUILD A SNOWMAN” at the man lucky enough to be sleeping with the only five year old in North America that is legally able to consent to sex.

This was at around 9:45 in the morning. Phil, the aformentioned man (who is definitely probably not a pedophile), insisted breakfast come first because apparently filling me with protein and coffee would calm me down. He made me eggs. Cooked in bacon grease. It was awesome. Then he let me drink a 500mL chocolate milk and I spent the next hour whining about how my tummy hurt. It was not awesome.

Then it was time to go play outside! Now, I should mention that Phil is 25 and has his shit together. Like, ridiculously so. Like owns a house and wears matching socks to work together. Has a whisk specifically for making scrambled eggs. Yeah. Just for eggs. So you’d think given his togetherness at life and my desperation to go out and form snow into some kind of lumpy fat person with a weird carrot nose that we’d be able to get out of the house at play in the snow rather quickly. No. It took about two hours, from my falling over in an attempt to change leggings and Phil looking for his “awesome snow pants” which were never found (hint: I burned them because dating guys who own snowpants is social suicide [unless they are megarich Swedish ski instructors]).

Given enough time, two people can accomplish anything, so with 120 minutes under our belt (that’s right, I can add, suck on that), Phil and I were dressed to impress (or to stand outside in the snow for 20 minutes before I invariably decided I was bored). We trodded outside and proceeded to test the snow. Short answer: not packing snow. No snow man. Being the adults that we are, we did not decide to throw ice balls at the giant icicles on this roof until they cracked off and once that was over we certainly did not end up just throwing loose snow at each other for four straight minutes until Phil’s parents called from Phoenix.

Though, Phil, being the giant man-child that he is, did proceed to give me a “snow bath” after returning from his phone call which then caused me to frantically shove snow down the back of his shirt while my butt got all wet because I was still sitting in the snowbank he had pushed me into. I’m not sure if Phil was just cold and miserable or if he realized I probably would sit in the snow bank digging a snow cave until I froze to death, but he decided to call of the Snow Man Attempt of 2010. We spent the rest of the afternoon with him attempting to teach me how to play poker “like a shark” and me insisting I could go to the casino, blink a lot and act lost and someone would just give me money.

And thus, I still have yet to cross “Make a Snowman” off of my list.

Lame.

After 5 Weeks

I’ve decided to take a slightly new direction with this blog, wherein the focus is still my life list, but I’m more apt to just write about my day to day life and other interesting things. After taking a rather long hiatus from writing, I’ve realized I need to expand my focus in order to write both more and with more meaning.

That being said, I’ve just wrapped up a 5 week French program in Montreal, Quebec. I’m currently sitting in the airport waiting for my 8:30pm flight. It was a good trip but I can’t get over how absolutely burned out I am. I was burned out almost in the first week. I’m not cut out for the party life, and living in a University residence was party not stop. Going home is going to be a wonderful experience.

For the rest of the summer, it seems I’ll be going around Canada with some more abandon, hitting up Vancouver and Kingston. Looking into school programs and my future as well. Looking forward to blogging once again. ❤

So I did something I thought was on my list

…but it isn’t.

While wandering around downtown today with my gay-sian friend (yes, you CAN contract gay and Asian into one word!) and he says
“have you peed in that toilet yet”

And I say
“in what toilet?”

because Keith thinks that everyone can hear his thoughts.

Anyways, it turns out he was referring to the robot potty on 17th Ave SW, which is part of a “City of Calgary Sanitation” project. There is seriously no website about this thing or information. Useless city.

It’s basically this weird roundish box plopped on a street corner. It looks kind of like something they would protect a major electrical center in or something. I decided, as I needed to pee anyways, to make use of it! Plus, I thought it was on my list, even though it is totally not actually on it. The toilet itself is fantastic. It tells you how to use it in a robot voice and cleans itself. You press a BUTTON and a CLEAN TOILET SEAT APPEARS OUT OF THE WALL!!! It also plays calming music for you as you make your business. Rad and a great idea for public bathrooms. Clean and calming!

I’m sad it’s not on my list, but whatever. I peed in a robot today and that in itself is fantastic.

Bonjour, mon petit chat!

The title of this post is pretty much the only sentence I can say in French. It’s probably wrong, but I say it all the time just to prove that all my time in French classes was not for nothing. I took French until grade three, on and off between grades 4 and 9, and all through high school. I came out of high school with an alright understanding and the desire to take it further, but I hit a roadblock in my first year of university. Sitting in my first day of class, the professor spoke nothing but French and everyone in the class seemed to be already fluent. I dropped it after the first day because I literally had no idea what was going on or what the expectations would be (beyond already speaking French…).

Being the giant lazy sloth that I am, I just stopped. Well, that’s a lie, I attempted, poorly, to take an independent class through Athabasca University, but that was a complete wash and a waste of money. Now, I have decided to finally get back on tackling #6 on my life list to become fluent in French. I have been fairly dedicated so far, listening to podcasts everyday, reviewing old French textbooks, listening to French news stories to get an ear for the spoken rhythm of the language. I’m hopeful. I also will be enrolling in J’explore a French learning program offered at various locations across Canada, care of the Canadian government. The program is 5 weeks long and I hope to be able to do it in either Montreal or New Brunswick. The goal is conversational French fluency, but of course they have varying levels of classes. My personal goal is to not end up in the beginner’s class!

So far, my absolute favourite tool has been Coffee Break French, produced by the Radio Lingua Network. Radio Lingua has several different French podcasts, including One Minute French and the video-based Walk, Talk and Learn French, but so far, Mark and Anna at Coffee Break French have been the absolute best at helping me get a new lease on the French language. I highly recommend you check them out if you are also trying to learn or relearn Francais, either at their website or on Itunes!

Eli Roth is in Italy and I’m learning about Cod

I think the worst part about having a passion for travel is jealousy. I’ve padded my twitter, facebook, bloglines – every social networking site at my disposal – with jet-setting travellers who are taking on the world. Even those I add for other reasons seem to mock me with thei lavish travels to far away places. The other day I was sitting in class listening to my professor ramble on about cod fish (seriously…fucking cod fish) and I, of course, was wasting time on twitter. Eli Roth is updating about being in Italy. I’m learning about cod and all these people are experiencing the world! I’m full of envy, full of it.

Sometimes life does laugh at you. Not with you. Just at you.

In other news, I updated my list a bit. I saw Marilyn Manson live, which was just terrible, but I did it. It would be been better categorized under “Thanks, But No Thanks” in hindsight. I have to decide what to do next on my list.

Necessary Update

1. I’m going to Kingston on Thursday.

2. I got tickets to Marilyn Manson (seeing him live is on my life list).

I’m trying to figure out something fun to do so I’ll have something interesting to blog about.