Too-short walk

Last night was the most beautiful night. It was warm(ish!) and windy and the moon was a big, silver, lopsided egg. I walked over to a nearby neighbourhood to meet k for coffee. It was a working coffee. (We actually worked! Normally, we gab.) When I got in the door, I was instantly brought back to grade 12 when I always went out for coffee at night. Now, that is strictly a daytime activity. Not for other people, though. It was hopping. k's husband came by later and had to sit outside because there were no seats. He didn't miss much. We were working.

The walk home was even better than the walk there. When I got to the bridge I had a full view of the moon and its reflection off the river. Are you ever on a walk where you hit a part that you wish would go on forever? I wished this part of the walk would go on forever.

I was listening to Nelly Furtado at the time. Does that ruin it? I don't know, I'm kind of into her last album...

Happy things

The piping plover is my new favourite bird. It is small. It is endangered. It is a shorebird. It runs madly around the beach on little toothpick legs, once in a while taking flight, staying really low to the ground. The tiny plover makes the not-so-huge sandpiper look pretty big.

I saw several of both these birds on the east beach near Halifax. Jill and Bob took me there for a walk on a windy, sunny Sunday. Their dog, Duke (World's Best Dog), isn't too hot at fetching things out of the water, but he is an expert enormous-stick-carrier. He struts around with a big branch between his teeth until he feels compelled to bury it in the dunes somewhere.

Jill and I went for a swim. The water was freezing, so I wasn't sure about it at first, but the opportunity to swim in the ocean is always hard to pass up. Once I jumped in, I didn't want to get out. Maybe it was the salt or the big waves or Jill's enthusiasm - she is one of the happiest people I know - but it felt great... until my hands went numb!

Bob and Jill are so genuinely friendly that you feel instantly at home with them. They never let you do the dishes or anything and they are always topping up your glass. They are both great story-tellers. And Bob has the most beautiful white hair. I love white hair.

What is up?

Here are a few of the many, many things happening in my very important life of late:

Last week, I went running for the first time since I hurt my ankle back in May. I was listening to music and it got me all wound up so I ran too fast and I got really tired so I had to stop for a bit and catch my breath. My throat gets really constricted when I exercise. A week later, I went running a second time. It wasn't my intention to wait so long between runs, even though I was stiff as a board, but I've been pretty disorganised with my time. I didn't have to stop but I felt really lethargic by the end of it. That's okay. It will take a while to get back into it. I'm just happy that my ankle could handle it. I bought a new pair of runners, but I didn't use them for either run. I feel like I'm saving them for something... I'm not sure what.

For the first time ever, B and I invited someone we'd never met over for dinner. He is a friend of a friend and he recently moved to town. Mutual friend suggested we meet up by creating a three-way (ha ha) conversation on the old "social utility". You never know how these things are going to go, so I guess you hope for the best and expect, well, nothing. Well, I could have expected a great deal and not been disappointed because this guy was just fantastic. We had a great time, but I drank enough wine to be a little too aware of how my mouth felt wrapped around the words as I forced them out. This is my way of ensuring nobody knows that I might be a little bit drunk.

Our visitor and the mutual friend met in Halifax. I'm going there today. My flight leaves in exactly 3 hours. I'm going to a conference and I have to make a presentation on a transportation project we're doing here. Public speaking makes me extremely nervous. One thing that helps is to imitate someone who has a great voice, like Judy Maddren.

My parents came to visit last weekend. They came at just the right time, weather-wise. It was sunny and 27 degrees every day. We went to the beach and Dad and I actually went in for a swim, it was so hot. We cooled off fast, though.

"The beach?" you ask, "I thought you lived in the middle of Canada?" Well, the beach in the middle of Canada is part of what makes this province such a little gem. Have a look at this photo:










The middle of Canada.

The finger

On Friday, I was cycling to work and I came to a busy intersection where the traffic moves fast. There is a huge right-hand turning lane and in this situation I just stay at the right side of the next lane over and pedal madly because the sooner I am out of the intersection, the sooner I can return to being exposed to being squashed from only one side instead of from all sides. As I'm riding along, someone honks their horn right behind me. It's really frightening when this happens. A horn is supposed to get through to another person encased in car blaring music, so when you're not surrounded by one, it scares the crap out of you. Since I had done nothing wrong I figured the car was just annoyed at having to slow down for a bike - not uncommon. So, I give the driver the finger. Then she drives up beside me, rolls down her window and my legs start to shake. Oh god. A confrontation! And at the point of maximum exposure! Well no, she was telling me that it was the guy behind her she was honking at, not me, so I flap my hand all over the place and apologise like crazy.

There are two times when I will flip the bird at a driver: when they are clearly rude or when they are probably rude but maybe not, but since I'm irritable I will interpret it as rude. This was a case of the latter. I have been trying to tell myself lately that I like cycling and I don't need to spend the entire time on my bike feeling annoyed, but if you've ever cycled in One Great City! you'll know that it is a real challenge to treat the activity as a pleasure here. Still, I have accepted myself as really not much of a finger-flipper because the feeling I get from it when it is a case of the former (satisfaction? smugness? moral superiority?) is not enough to risk the feeling when it's the latter. And this city really doesn't need any more animosity between cyclists and drivers! Anyway, I don't feel that badly about Friday - horns are maddening and scary. Maybe, instead of a horn, cars needs to be equipped with a more direct system which identifies the recipient and sends a clear message to avoid any misinterpretation or entanglement... like a hologram of a finger that appears on the person's dashboard with "YOU cut me off" underneath. Or something.

Funny cat apron

First, I borrowed a camera again. Second, my parents are visiting and Mom brought the really hilarious apron. Therefore, I can now show you a picture of the apron:

Your dancin' feet are always on my couch

I got another job. It's going to keep me busier than usual: about 23 working hours per week. I wonder if I can handle this. I'm already starting to spoil after this "sixteen again" summer.

I have been trying to come up with something interesting to write all week but when nothing came to me, I opted for something uninteresting, and then I remembered something I had meant to write about last week but didn't (and you can decide if it's interesting or not). It's for no reason that I write about this only that the subject, Janet Jackson, came up in a conversation recently. When I heard her name, I thought of two things. The first was when Em bought Control. She came home from Sam the Record Man or wherever with the tape but decided she didn't want it - it was a purchase made in haste, which can be good but mostly is not. She went back to the record store to return it but they wouldn't take it back because she had torn off the cellophane. She was so disappointed. I think this was in her pleather-mini-dress and black-faux-chain-mail-Le-Château-earrings phase, which sounds bizarre but was actually sweet. She must have been in grade four and ten bucks was a lot in grade four! Ten bucks is a lot now, actually...

Anyway, the tape stayed and I think Em made the most of it, but I'm sure she doesn't rip stuff out of the package now until she's certain she wants to keep it.

The second thing that Janet makes me think of is visiting Alan in Toronto with Ando. Alan and Ando are old friends who get one another on a level that no one else can penetrate, as Ando would put it. Their friendship takes on a life of its own when they are together. Case in point (I promise I will not use that expression again), as we walked down the street to some place, out of nowhere, they acted out the opening sequence from the video of "What have you done for me lately?". It was HILARIOUS!

So, I present said video. Enjoy!

It shouldn't bother me... no!

I had a really weird dream last night about Mike Patton. (When are dreams not weird?) He barges in on this group of people and shoots someone in the face. There was a bus or something somewhere. Everyone is freaking out. Then people start to dissipate but for some reason, I'm not allowed to get away because he thinks I'm going to turn him in, so he threatens to shoot me too, but I promise to keep my mouth shut and I guess I do a good job of coming across as honest because he lets me go. Then, all of a sudden (as happens in dreams) the mood completely changes and we are talking candidly in a doorway. I realise that he is about to take off and that I can't let him get away without telling him how great I think he is, so I gush for a while about how I admire his amazing vocal range and his creativity, yadda yadda. He's genuinely flattered, then he's gone. A few minutes later, my "cell phone" (?me?) rings and it's him, and he is asking me out on a date. I say that I have a boyfriend and we would be going just as friends, and he is fine with that. I hate myself for saying this in the apologetic voice of a weenie. We make a plan to meet in a cafe and I am determined to be on time because all of a sudden (again, as happens in dreams) we are now back in Homicide Mood and this is not just a friendly meeting any more but my LIFE here because, as it turns out, if I don't meet him, and on time, it means he'll realise that I was a liar all along and I will turn him in, in which case he will hunt me down and kill me first. So I'm taking all these trains and buses everywhere, only it's this dark, dense, mechanical city I'm in which is totally unfamiliar and the roads are like roller-coaster tracks and I become totally lost. Time is ticking. I ask a shopkeeper for directions to the cafe. The routes suggested are not that complicated, but each will take enough time to result in my being late. I start to panic, looking down the roller-coaster road trying to figure out which route to take... and then I wake up.

I hate talking about dreams because:
a) no one ever wants to hear it, not really, and more importantly;
b) something happens between my brain and my mouth where, in that process of having to articulate this pleasantly vague series of loosely-connected images and events, the essence of the experience of the dream is well and truly lost.

Maybe that's why a) is so.

Anyway, I think I've pretty much captured the spirit of the dream above (which is, if have cell phone then use it, and tell partner of plans to meet other men) so the key for me is not to speak dreams but to write them, because:
a) I can go back and tweak things for clarity, and;
b) you, Dear Reader, can stop reading whenever you like and I'll never know that I bored you because I can't see your eyes glaze!

Horray!