Honk if you love...whatever...

First of all, MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR'S!

Just before xmas, Claude and I went to Mental Beast, a super concert of I don't know how many bands over at the Biltmore. It was awesome. My friend Burnside and his band, Tight Solid, played a couple songs (on his 'lunch break'... his shows are always on his 'lunch break'! So crazy!) including "I Hate Christmas" which I've been driving Claude crazy with by playing over and over. :p

Here's the link where you can download the music... check it out!

The Eggnog Experience

That Wednesday (23rd?), we hung out with Ian (Dad's girlfriend's son) and his girlfriend Chrystal and her family. Went up to Grouse to see their Winter Wonderland set-up. It was a bit pricey but fun and definitely one of those experience things. It was really nice to have an activity with a family feel to it since I'm in Van for the holidays minus one family.

Favourite moment? Defintely the drive up to Grouse... haha.

Chrystal and Ian picked us up at my place (Kits/False Creek area) and we took Burrard through downtown to Georgia then up through Stanley Park. Ian got a little impatient and directed Chrystal to take the completely open right lane.

*Now, before we go any further, a little commentary on the dynamics of Chrystal and Ian's driving relationship. Ian's a bit of a side seat driver (aren't we all?), Chrystal is relishing the fact that it's her family that they're visiting out here so therefore their vehicle, therefore she gets to drive. Make sense?*

Okay, anyway, Ian's telling Chrystal to get into the right lane over and over, I don't know if it's quite a good idea because I think it's the lane that goes straight into the road around Stanley Park and has no access to the Lion's Gate Bridge (where we're supposed to be going) but can't seem to vocalize this, Claude's enjoying her cafe Americano, and Chrystal's trying to not get frazzled while trying to decide whether to take Ian's advice.

She ends up getting into the right lane, which turns out to be the on-ramp for Stanley Park. She's trying to get back into the left lane, which is of course jammed up. Flicks on her blinker and waits for someone to let her in.

Someone behind us honks. Of course. It's Vancouver... that's what they do here. Obviously this person's in a real rush to get to Stanley Park (the trees and the ocean might not be there by the time they round the first bend) because they're just laying on the horn - one long, sustained honk. It reminds me of either a movie car crash where the hero has smashed into a tree/other car/side of the building/boat/the Incredible Hulk/statue/whatever and their face is mashed up against the steering wheel.... or they've fallen asleep at the wheel and their face is mashed up against the steering wheel.

Either way, I don't get it. I don't like people honking like that - I think it just upsets the person that you're honking at more and creates frazzled people on the road, creating more accidents. I don't think that's was the intention when the horn was put into cars. I never use my horn unless someone's backing into me and just doesn't realize. In which case, I give it a nice little love tap...

Things I learned when I googled 'honking':

1. Worldwide honking is on the rise... (duh)

2. Cairo is the unofficial honking capital of the world...

3. In 1912, a Londoner wrote in to the Times arguing that honking shifts the burden of evasion and responsibility from the honker to the honkee... which makes sense as it reinforces the entitlement that cars have on the road... :s

4. People honk more when it's hot, on weekdays, if they're male (surprised? I think not...), at beater cars than Bentleys, and more likely if they believe they can do it anonymously.

5. BUT, people also kinda just suck at honking... a survey in the UK found that people take 2-3 times as long to honk as they do to steer or brake. I couldn't find Canadian stats because, well, we're too damn polite to honk, right? :p

Anyway, back to my story... Chrystal obviously abandons her plan to get back into the left lane and we're off on a scenic route through Stanley Park.

As an afterthought, Ian rolls down his window and sticks his middle finger high for our impatient friend. For some reason, I could not stop laughing about it. And every now and then, when I think of it, I burst into laughter, which gets me strange looks if I'm just walking down the street minding my own business...

Pic du Jour:

Is actually a video from our skating adventures at the newly reopened Robson Square... Starring Claude as our narrator (haha) and me as the one who nearly plows into a couple of people. Gimme a break, it was busy! And I get so nervous in front of the camera... :p

Music du Jour: Went over to Alistair's last night and he was recently introduced to Band of Horses' The Funeral. If you haven't heard it already, you should definitely check it out.

Quote du Jour:

"A kleptomaniac is a person who helps themselves because they can't help themselves."

Muse

Learn something new everyday...

Chocolate chip cookies: invented by Ruth Wakefield when she attempted to make chocolate drop cookies. She did not have the required chocolate so she broke up a candy bar and placed the chunks into the cookie mix. These chunks later morphed into what is now known as chocolate chip cookies.

The Slinky was invented by US Navy engineer Richard T. James after he accidentally knocked a torsion spring off his work table and observed its unique motion.

The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottles represents the number of varieties of pickles the company once had.

Karaoke means "empty orchestra" in Japanese.

The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude. They were named by then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

There are 10 human body parts that are only 3 letters long (eye hip arm leg ear toe jaw rib lip gum).

The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

Every year about 98% of the atoms in your body are replaced.

When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.

Police dogs are trained to react to commands in a foreign language; commonly German but more recently Hungarian

There are twice as many kangaroos in Australia as there are people. The kangaroo population is estimated at about 40 million.

Charlie Brown's father was a barber.

You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV

Canadian researchers have found that Einstein's brain was 15% wider than normal.

The citrus soda 7-UP was created in 1929; "7" was selected because the original containers were 7 ounces. "UP" indicated the direction of the bubbles.

The word "nerd" was first coined by Dr. Seuss in "If I Ran the Zoo."

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down -- hence the expression "to get fired"

Nobody knows who built the Taj Mahal. The names of the architects, masons, and designers that have come down to us have all proved to be latter-day inventions, and there is no evidence to indicate who the real creators were.

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up it's stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of it's mouth. Then the frog uses it's forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

That's all I've got so far... boredom has obviously set in. :p

Pic du Jour:

Quote du Jour: Two losts do not make a found...

Music du Jour: Extreme Music Library - Pure Roots (makes me laugh every time!)

Sin in the City

So, I started to write a couple weeks ago because I knew I hadn't updated in awhile but then my browser crashed (stupid Safari...) and I just got lazy then got distracted... haha

Anyway, lots of stuff went down...

Went to Vegas. Celina's 24th b-day on the 15th so I caught a cheap flight and headed down for four days to chill and party and experience the City of Sin...

It was everything and nothing like I thought it would be. Busy, dirty, loud, tons of obese Americans, fake sexy all around, went to clubs celebrities go to sometimes and wasn't impressed, paid 30 dollars for three drinks, wore silly shoes, was taken to dinner by a sugar daddy, watched pretty much naked Aussie men prance around shakin' it, got handed hooker cards (collect the whole set!), watched people wander the streets with alcohol, got hit on by men of all shapes and sizes, jumped some lines, hung out with a bunch of wax celebrities, had mimosas, walked around a lot, watched peoples' lives draining away with every push of the spin button. Scary and exhilarating. I don't think I'll ever go back.

My favourite part though? Flying back from Vegas. I'd finished my book so ended up picking up two at the magazine shop to keep me occupied in a two hour layover. I apparently still got it because I was able to pretty much finish McCormack's The Road before I stepped on the plane. Sat down on the plane. Girl that seems pretty chipper in a Cheerleader College Barbie type of way (but darker hair) sits down next to me. We chat for a bit but I open my book, wanting to see the end... Out of the corner of my eye I notice she's got a pretty nicely bound book - pretty old-school looking. Something a bit off about it but sure, fine, whatevs. Finish The Road and pull out book #2 Nicholas Sparks' Dear John (heard good things about it. Sparks is a good writer despite his proclivity for the extreme romance. I think it's as close as I'm going to get to Drugstore Harlequin romance novels... :p). Girl next to me, Melanie, strikes up a convo. She seems pretty normal - we talk about her degree (nutrition), my degrees (English, Psych, Education, Journalism... haha), her sister (eat disorder), futures, society. It starts to feel like she's steering me into a direction that I may not be equipped to handle myself in... and then...

WABAM!

Jesus.

Have I thought about Jesus? Do I believe in God? Do I go to church. Do I believe in Heaven? Do I think I'm going to Heaven? What do I think Heaven will look like?

I looked down at the book in her lap.

The Holy Bible.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...dge.

Essentially, she ended up telling me that I was going to burn hell because I had not let Jesus into my heart and did not have a relationship with Jesus. Apparently, being a good person and just trying to do the right thing is just not good enough these days. Gotta be proactive in your post-mortem future. Go figure.

She said she'd been 'saved' when she was five years old. FIVE years old. I don't even remember being five years old let alone making huge life-shaping religious choices.

And don't get me wrong - I respect the fact that she has belief. I respect, even envy, that she has so much passion and has something that she believes in so completely. I don't have that. I have never been that certain about anything in my life and it is such a powerful thing. You could see it in her face, in the way she talked. It was amazing. What I didn't appreciate was the fact that she was essentially force feeding me this idea that I was completely and totally fucked if I didn't do something about it soon. God/Jesus/Whoever is going to come back and take those that are 'saved' with him and God was going to judge the rest of us and it wasn't going to be pretty.

All I could think of was Dogma and Matt Damon.

"Organized religion destroys who we are by inhibiting our actions, by inhibiting our decisions out of fear and some intangible parent figure who shakes a finger at us from thousands of years ago and says, 'Do it... do it and I'll fuckin' spank you."

Sigh. Then I was wishing that Delta had TVs in the back of their seats and that Dogma were one of the choices.

And that made me feel a little better of my punch ticket at the end of it all...

I think in the end... I respect people who are religious, I am jealous of that passion... but the moment you try to convince me of it all, even if it's something that I'm a little okay (the notion of God, for example), I shut down. I don't want beliefs, ideas, anything forced on me - no one does - and so when you try to convince me of it, I will fight it tooth and claw. I am not down with the preachies... :p

Whew, that was long... oops.

Finished off the semester of school. Pretty death month of December. Lots of work got piled on, final projects, week of Dailies (which were fun because you only had to focus on the story(ies) of the day and nothing else). It was kinda not so great. Training suffered (dropped off to nil), social nights out became I-wanna-forget-school-time-of-death wind down sessions (thank you karaoke... :p), eating and sleeping habits took a nosedive (which, let's be honest, made things worse...). It was ridiculous. I need to get better at this stress thing.

Funniest thing about this cartoon? A court reporter came in to give a talk and the people who went to hear them thought IT was a total snooze-fest. Oops.

I met some Canucks... Andre managed to get him and myself into one of their practices and then into the dressing room afterwards. It was for one of our radio broadcast sessions. I took a silly approach and asked about Battle of the Blades and Movember. Fun times. Rome accused me of making up Movember (yeah, like I'd make up a month in which guys try to grow the most hideous patches of hair on their faces... ugh), Glass was the nicest - my first interview (They are freaking intimidating!) and also funny.

I got to go skiing twice. That was awesome. Once up at Cypress with Tom McCarthy and once with Kajsa and her fam at Callaghan. It was beautiful. They've closed up the Olympic trails for 'security' purposes (who's going to want to blow up the Olympic trails? Seriously!) but the rec trails are still just as beautiful.

Also, got an internship with one of my profs. I'm thinking it might be because of nepotism (I sold him a bike this summer... and he seems to have a soft spot for me because of it... :p) Some work over the holidays, actually getting paid well for it (sweeeeet), and it's not looking like it's going to be hardcore, which is nice. Though perhaps I'll be surprised and end up working my ass off. :p

I'm not going home for Christmas. Doing the postal service package exchange... though I'm not quite on the ball. All my stuff's going to get to Ontario post-Christmas. Ah well. I tried.

Trying to get back on the training wagon. Going to spin with Louise (yay!), hike with anyone who's willing (haha), try to haul around town at least once a day on the bike (errands with a roundabout route?), climb with some friends soon (bouldering, I have missed you), pre-breakfast runs, and two core sessions a day. That'll hopefully combat the idiocy of the past couple months... perhaps.

Anyway, I'm sure there's tons of other fun stuff that has gone down but I can't remember. Going to post this before it bonks again...

Pic du Jour:

Quote du Jour:

"I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against the want of you..."

Song du Jour:

Pete Yorn - Thinking of You

Emotions of the day:

Nostalgia and that achy feeling in the pit of your stomach when things remind you of people and things you'd rather Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind away forever. Like you've been punched in the stomach and can't quite catch your breath. Don't know why and kinda really wish it would go away.

Feeling Mopey, Dopey, and Five other Melancholy Dwarves today... Arg.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll write something a little more insightful. There are things running around in my head that I want to put down on paper and just can't settle myself down to do it. Fail.