A Walk Down 7th

On Friday after work, and in spite of the heat wave, I wandered over to Main Street which is my new "cool place." After buying a yummy little black dress at Bodacious that looks like it was tailor-made for me, and a gelato at Bellagio's (Bad, I know, but it was so hoooot, and I'd already walked so faaaar), I hiked 7th Avenue (randomly chosen) from Main to Granville, just to get the lay of the land. I don't explore as much in Vancouver as I did when I lived in Montreal and London...maybe it's because I'm working and can't be bothered, I don't know, but it felt good to make the effort. Above: 7th and Manitoba.

A secret garden (okay, not that secret, it's a public allotment garden), also at 7th and Manitoba.


The view from 7th and Alder.
A room with a view at 7th and Oak.

Trashing Britney Is So Fun

OMG, check out this "Letter of Truth" from "Britney" to her "fans" posted on DListed:

Dear Frends and Fans,

Hi! How are y'all? Let's git down to it!

Y’all, pregnancy ain’t purty. I aint gonna lie. I’s feelin’ real fat these days. Already I cant wait to git myself down to a size 2. I hear Angelina Jo-lee is swallowing those Hoodia pills and that’s what Im gonna do! Im gunna git real hot. But with big boobs. You’ll see. Kev’s offered me $2 million if I can fit into that red leather catsuit I wore in mah video, you know the one. ‘Cept I cant figure out how this works, Kev don’t got that much money so Im supposin’ that he’s givin’ me $2 million of mah own money?

Lil’ P is so cute, y’all! I cant wait to have his little sister and dress her up real cute in sequins and pearls. And hotpants and tube tops, thats real sweet on little girls! Do they make four inch stilet-toes for young 'uns?

Kev calls me an “Emoshunal mess.” Right now ‘cause all them hermones goin’ thru my body or as Kev calls ‘em, Whore-moans! He’s so funny! Y’all, me and Jamie Lynne and my cousin Laura Lynne we all agree the baby should be named Brandi Lynne or Misti Lynne, I cannot decide!! Maybe even Taffi Lynne. I luv that name. Kevin says he don’t care. Something about signing checks? He is so simple! My mama calls him very simple minded. I think that means that he’s like, really smart.

Y’all I gots to go. Mah little Boo is climbing into the dogs food... again! Stay tuned for another season of Chaotic but wif me real preggers and look outs for mah new bubble gum scented perfume, Brit-Pop! And mah new line of Pork Rinds called Brit’s Piggy Chips! I’s comin out with foodstuffs now ‘cause I loves me some money! And cause...uh...I gots to support my husband..and that Shar Jackson.
Luv,
Brits

I love white-trash-false-eyelash-and- platform -flip-flops wearin'Britney way more than "I'm a Christian" Britney. Possibly even more than "I'm kissing Madonna" Britney, too.

Danger Cat

I bought Currie a little leash and a cat harness this weekend, so that she could roam around outside a little bit. Her harness, which goes around her head and her front legs and fastens on her tummy, is purple with little daisies on it and she loves it. In fact, she won't let me take it off her. Every time I try she cries and tries to bite me. So for the last two days she has been wandering around the house looking like a paratrooper cat or something. It's very cute.

Also found out that she loves Nip/Tuck. I had rented some DVDs this weekend and lolled around watching them a bit, and she was ALL OVER it. She really liked Dr. Troy and sat in front of the TV with her tail wagging the whole time...

Hooray Italia!

So Italy takes it, after a World Cup final that had me shaking by the end. I was closing my eyes on every penalty kick. It's sad that such an exciting game had to be marred by this whole Zidane field-rage incident where he headbutted Materazzi. Of course, the papers today are full of "Materazzi must have said something realllllly bad"-type commentaries, and FIFA implicitly acknowledged that Zidane was provoked, I think, by giving him the MVP. But you know what? I don't care if you're provoked. You're a professional athlete, you're playing in probably the most important game of your life, and you're paid gazillions of Euro to keep your temper. Whatever Materazzi said, he also said in the heat of the moment. But pros should know to let cooler heads prevail. So there's no excuse, as far as I'm concerned. OK, Materazzi said SOMETHING nasty, for sure, although he is denying he called Zidane a terrorist. Whatever. Zidane doesn't have the shinest record when it comes to being aggressive during games (he headstomped somebody in 1998). Just because he's retiring doesn't mean you give him the goddamn MVP when he's red-carded in the final and lets down his team. It was unprofessional. End of story. And it's detracting from what was a real victory for Italy.

Play the Zidane head-butting video game here.

Becoming Parents

As of next week Edy and I (well, me really, with Edy contributing via webcam and parental visitation) will become parents to a 10 week old baby kitten. Her name is Mercury Fiat Lemon-Piro. She is of course, Mercury, to go with the Ford and Lincoln Town-Cat I already have. The "Fiat" is because Edy said if she was going to be named after a car, it had better be an Italian car, plus Mercury is a boy's name in Italy and he says she's going to have gender issues (I'm sure the little "surgery" she is having this week won't help). We're just going to call her "Currie" though. I'll post pics as soon as she comes home from the shelter.

To rescue your own cat: http://www.forgottenfelines.ca

VIP Night at Playland

Thank God I can get VIP status SOMEWHERE in this provincial little town. Actually, me and about 5,000 other people got VIP status at Playland that night. But it made for a fun girls' night out. I managed to get Annie on her first ever roller coaster. The best was when she apologized to the children on the coaster for "having a bit of a potty mouth."


Rebecca at the Gladiator.
Hit-and-run.

I'm on the PHONE, people!


Lindsay and Annie, pre-carousel.

Old Friends

After a few late nights out and a very rain-soaked day dragonboating at the Alcan Festival today, I came home tonight in the dark looking for my bed and a good book. After staring at my shelves for a few minutes and making a goodie bag of books for my friend Annie, I came across a thin paperback wedged in between a few trashy smut novels that I reserve for my "stupid days" when my brain can't handle anything better. It was my much coveted copy of the selected poems of H.D. I remember sitting in an English class several years ago and being fascinated by an electric letter Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) had written to Ezra Pound, flamboyantly signed "H.D., Imagiste." Her words were the first in all of the Modernist works we were spoonfed that I was captivated by; I had to make do with photocopies as most of her work is out of print. Later that spring, on a road trip to San Francisco with my then-boyfriend and his friends, I made a pilgrimage to City Lights bookstore. I remember crowing when I found one last leftover copy of H.D.'s selected works a dark corner in the basement. I spent the entire trip back north sprawled in the back of the VW van we were (slowly) travelling in, reading lines out loud because I just couldn't help myself (you can imagine how well that went over).

So, funny. Tonight I am reminded alot of old friends, like H.D., and like that boyfriend, and other friends, who are no longer part of the life I live now. It's nice to be able to haul out that book for an evening, and remember where it (and I) have come from. Sometimes it helps to know where you've been; and sometimes it's better not to look back but to continue looking forward. The trick to life may be achieving some balance between the two. Goodnight.

"Moonrise"

Wiill you glimmer on the sea?
will you fling your spear-head
on the shore?
what note shall we pitch?
we have a song,
on the bank we share our arrows;
the loosed string tells our note:

O flight,
bring her swiftly to our song.
She is great,
we measure her by the pine trees.

-H.D.

Seen in Passing...

...walking home from work today, down Davie Street towards English Bay. A guy stopped as he passed the newspaper boxes near the corner of Thurlow and Davie. He looked at them, frowned in concentration as if he was examining the headlines, and then pulled a large red marker out of his pocket. I moved closer to see what he was doing. He was putting a red circle and a line (the universal symbol for "no") over a swastika someone had grafitti-ed in black marker on the glass window of one of the newspaper boxes. When he was finished, he stood back, had a look at his handiwork, capped his pen, put it in his backpack, and moved down the street. I guess he kept it handy for just that kind of occasion...

O Blogger Where Art Thou?

I'm here, I'm here! I've been so busy with work that this blog has gone woefully neglected; it's not that nothing's been happening, it's just that a) it either happened at work and I don't want to get fired by writing about it, or b) I got home from work too late to write about it and barely had time to make dinner before collapsing into bed. Yes, it's a little life, the life of an articling student. I'll be spending this weekend in and out of the office, too. But I'm going to endeavour to keep this blog alive, even if I've lost everyone who bothered to look at it, since it's been so long since I've posted.

First off, though, a big HOLLA to my cousin Kathleen, who kicked some academic ass this semester in university. Way to go Kath, we're all so proud of you. Next stop, September graduation.

In my world:
- Went home for Easter; my family and I made the front page of the local paper for heckling at the local Easter parade. We were heckling in fuzzy bunny ears, which is possibly the most ridiculous (and therefore hilarious) part of the whole thing.
- Ran the Sun Run 10K in 76:22. Two years ago I walked my first 10K in approximately 90 minutes, and ran maybe a kilometre out of the whole thing before I was gasping for air. While I didn't improve greatly on my time this year, I ran the whole. darn. thing. I was a pretty smiley kid when I hobbled across the finish line. If I didn't have what I suspect is a sprain or bone injury to my ankle as a result of aforementioned Sun Run, I could have run the Times Colonist 10K this weekend in Victoria, just on the leftover adrenaline from completing the Sun Run. It was a great feeling.
- I've been training for this years' dragonboat season with the OARDeal team. Last week was the first Saturday we weren't out in False Creek paddling in the rain. Hooray for Spring in Vancouver.
- My dad won a sweet-ass 60GB IPod Video. Despite not having a computer on which he can USE the damn thing, he still refuses to give it up to me to replace my now obsolete Mini, which we affectionately refer to as DinoPod.

I'm now reading There is a Season by Patrick Lane, and trying as I read to remember all the horror stories friends of mine in the writing program at UVIC used to tell about him back in the day. I'm reading it because it was the winner of this year's "One Book, One Vancouver" contest. This is significant because it's the first time I've admitted that, yes, I'm a Vancouverite...although I doubt that if the book wasn't set at home, in Victoria, that I'd be reading it. Oh well, baby steps. I may have left the nest physically but it's taking more time to let go emotionally...