flyiiiiiiiingoverseaaaaaasssss

I think this is a pretty realistic design considering most things. It's completely realistic (except I'm wondering if the windows are real life or lacking?) Which I guess would work in a environment where... not alot happens weather wise. I'm talking about in a place where you can predict the rain and then work as predicted. I wonder how they close it all off though, like this?



A# being the flap that will flip down to protect the books from rain and snow? B# being me, enjoying the good life.

Anyways... I have to say, within this blog, there is a real lack of color. Mortimer you should be posting more pictures that contain something more then the shades. Lately, in my life, it's been random marimba. Some fighting with the parents, some arguing with cman and alot of eating of hummus. I soaked the beans myself and it made the smoothest homemade hummus of my life. Really nice. And seeing that the postal service is back up and running, I might be sending letters down yonder. (laura do you have an address??)

Begonia Skies

My friend's room-mate is a physicist. His co-op job is collecting data and making graphs that contribute in small ways to finding the cure for cancer. His friend is a long haired computer programmer in a band called Cheesifer who's job is making apps for fancy cell phones. My friend is assistant curator at the Maltwood collections and spends her days packaging and hanging expensive artwork.

Last night over hot dogs and couscous we discussed whether or not we would consider transplanting our big toes onto our thumbs if they were to be removed (would you??) and the physicist explained what it was like to be colour blind- I reciprocated by defining Dada, which the science kids thought was data. It's funny how we could get along so well. Half the people I know are passionate about biology and the environment, the other half are completely irrational artist types with flair for not getting it. And yet we can sit in a backyard at dusk with the view of a small mountain and talk easily.

Tonight I am going to mingle with others in the "hospitality" business. My boss is set on finding me a little summer romance- I seem to be the only person she has ever met who is single. She almost choked on her iced white wine when I told her. This is going to be awkward for everyone.

i think i'm making friends

At First, Thought It Was Infatuation

I have no clue what time I'm suppose to meeting up for this street dance gig tomorrow night. Tomorrow morning, cman kurosh is off on a airplane out east. Which is to say the least super depressing. Nothing else really, I feel funny and I have to start getting serious I guess? Start being impressive? I swear I have to settle for something. Good news though, the cabbage plants are starting to pop up.

Velvet Arms

Laura you sound happy. Don't worry about losing my friendship- I have this thing where I can't hate anyone.
I'm drinking milk thistle tea. Recommend it for liver detox and regulating yer bowel movements. Also apparently it makes your skin soft.
Someone is keeping bees outside the Empress Hotel

And all the real gangsters dance like this

The internet in this house is way too slow. I'm sure that all of the guys are in their room downloading amusing movies and negatively affecting my connectivity.

Today was a meadow-y, sparse brush, 49 samples, ribs for dinner sort of day. A good day. And coming back to find Internet set up was even better. This morning, the airport was so boxed in by low-lying fog that our helicopter pilot had to land at a different location beside the highway, and we took off from there.

Today, I have been having panicky feelings about coming back to Victoria and having lost contact with friends. It's weird, and hopefully unfounded, but I can't help it. Take care out yourselves, ok?

Bed time. 5:30 comes too early these days.

Drunk Ass Dad

Today a complete stranger complemented me on my egg poaching skills. Apparently "it's tough poaching eggs but you nailed that shit." At Arden's house after work we made eggs benedict with avocado, garlicky spinach and pastrami. Damn. I keep hearing the troubled youth stories of my co-workers and wondering how my childhood could be so rose coloured. Two out of three have had abortions (both under 21, both with sunny personality) one abusive boyfriend, one suicide attempt, two stoner parents, one 35 year old boyfriend, one father in jail.

And yesterday sitting on the beach a sort-of-friend went on about how those with the right diet will never get cancer, and I sat there thinking of my mother who was a certified dietician, who had a perfect diet, active lifestyle a loving husband and two kids. Who died of stomach cancer. And one of the reasons why she did not recover was that while she should have been eating high calorie foods to get back her strength she stuck to the "right" diet and got weaker. Anyway he was pretty impressed with the things that he was saying so I didn't get into it. People change the way they think of you when they know that you have lost your mother.

I guess I shouldn't really leave on this note. I'm just sitting here alone in the house with the breeze and the open window thinking sad lonely thoughts of someone who has been in public along time and suddenly finds them self in private.

your hair is long, but not long enough to reach (but your beard someday might be)

Well. What can I say. I told myself at the end of the semester that this summer I was going to do as many free things as possible. So here I am, day after my first "tourism Victoria mixer." All of us tourist-oriented business folk get together and have drinks and make contacts etc. We rolled into the Sooke zip-line place in this limo-bus, equipped with ice, champagne glasses and a tv/sound system. We rolled out with a few extra (free) beers stuffed into our pockets, lurid smiles and a hijacked zip-line guide named Adam. (26, avalanche technician at Big White in the winter, professional zipper in the summer) I feel like this page is turning more into "Mortimer's Wild Times in the Big City" but really, maybe that's what my life is turning into. Anyway by the end of the night Adam was yelling "M! If I buy you a drink will you go kayaking with me on my next day off?!" and I agreed because when someone offers you free kayaking, you do not shake your head friend. We will see where this goes. I told him I would call him on my next day off...

Anyway tonight I am going to a free ska music thing in one of the squares (apparently the names are interchangeable?)

Also thought I would mention that when I saw the pictures from the riots in Vancouver my stomach dropped about 8 feet. Maybe I'm a big pussy but that kind of random violence scares me more than anything else in the world. Seeing pictures of the police just standing there watching this shit go down makes me wonder too. Was it really so bad that they thought that there was nothing they could do?

This picture also scares me- but in an awkward sideways grinning kind of way. Taken in the Met.

Have a nice day

Don't Be Ashamed Or Disgusted With Yourselves

laura dear, I am impressed by your instinct to blog while drunk. My instinct is usually to collapse face down unceremoniously.
Last night I biked with no hands down the galloping goose at dusk. I swallowed about 8 small insects but the euphoria made up for all that. I didn't take this picture but this is what it looked like. Please manually insert a couple in a turquoise rowboat and a little more sunshine.

So. Drunk.

Life will hate me tomorrow. I wandered around in the woods with a guy who stole his boss's cowboy hat, and I scored a pair of sweet sunglasses and a hat. Argh. Where is my maturity?

Born to Ramble (is this the Bay St. Bridge?)

Shark I'm expecting my autographed copy of the new album in the mail. Face to face is good too.
Went to an "art crawl" on friday. Can safely say that it was the best time. We all climbed onto this school bus that took us from gallery to gallery. Starting at the Cornerstone Cafe which featured a UVic grad who specialized in paintings of gnomes in vomity colour scheme and the infamous Fernwood Bubble Man, ending in Open Space gallery downtown which featured miracles of agricultural engineering (mainly this giant potato sack man with plants growing out of him). Stopping at this weirdly located collective with impressive live artists, another studio with black and white paintings of a cartoony version of the artist doing really disgusting things like vomiting and chewing on someone else who also looked like himself, and this print shop above China Town that was packed with sweaty hipsters and mediocre posters. In the corner there was a video of a rolling eyeball and flashing lightbulbs and a drunk boy with a chin hook that explained that this was HIS eyeball and also his face on page 4 of the guidebook, look. His buddy had called him up and said "Hey man, you're on page 4", and he had replied with the witty but accurate "page 4 of what?"
Anyway the night was capped off with drunken dancing to this band that featured the older brother of one of my own brother's childhood friends, who also happened to have been at my parents' wedding. I was able to get several pleasant mental images of dancing art boys that I will cherish until the school year starts again and I can continue to stare at them in person.
Yesterday Ryan Jamieson showed up randomly and he and I wandered around town together for a couple hours. Strange because I have never had more than a "Hi How Are You" conversation with him. And also because we started philosophizing about the limitations of human beings inflicted upon themselves. And then we witnessed the annual naked bike ride through town.
Kat is going to Prague for 2 weeks tomorrow. Sabo stepped on a nail a couple days ago and won't let us forget it.

cold toes and swanky hotels.

What can I say...? Recording this last weekend was intense. I swear I played at least 25 hours of marimba, but the sun was shinning and I can proudly say I have my first marimba callus. The guy recording us is named "ted" and he brought with him, thousand dollar mics and a apple computer. Overall good weekend. We played a gig saturday night, that serve potluck and really bitter-would-taste-better with alcohol lime slurpees. Our encore song? Our best yet, we recently added violin to one of the songs, and it just takes it to another level. I was also impressed with this simple salad I ate of tomatoes, mangos and cilantro. Gotta try making that one day.

A couple days later, I found out I'm official on the get go for ukraine september 6th. Feel like donating to the sarah chezick cause? http://forms.canadaworldyouth.org/en/content.aspx?pageid=201&volunteer=7379b66d37139 click the link! also, ladies, if you guys have any fundraising ideals, I'm all ears. I'm actually freaked out about this all.

Anyways, take care! and I'll leave you guys with this hilarious video of solid music playing:

And Maybe It Will All Come Back To Me

Well here it is darlings. Twenty years and I just feel tired. I don't feel like doors are opening at this point either, rather now I am too old to do certain things. For example I can no longer justify getting an abortion. I can't blame "adults" for anything anymore, I have to be civil and get along. I can't really blame my parents for not teaching me to drive anymore either. Yesterday at work Marketa held me off with conversation about Mr. T's bowel movements and by flipping madly through The Book while the others whisked out a chocolate cake and a bottle of bubbly. That woman loves her champagne, dear me.
I am feeling lethargic after the biggest bowl of soup you have ever seen but I have to go downtown to deposit my paycheque. Gawd.
sorry for the sobriety. That Time of Month is arriving rapidly on a red velvet steed.

I follow my heart

just found this artist named Marcy Starz on the interweb. See the above, please.
So weird shit happening on the home front. I got Sarah a job at my work, 'cept when she showed up for the "interview" yesterday Marketa came down from a bath in one of the rooms in a towel and nothing else and Sarah was standing laughing in the kitchen while Cliff the non-stop talking boyfriend was telling her about the music biz.
Also last night while drinking raspberry ale and blues dancing at Swans I discovered that they have some of my mum's ex-husbands art hanging on the wall. And of course it happens to be really good too.
And Laura! By god! that is the coolest picture I have seen in a long time. The dinosaur party was a minor failure, except that this girl I work with came and brought her hilarious boyfriend and polenta with jerk sauce, by golly. And then all these actor types showed up, ate our pizza, then left for drunken pastures.
Anyway. Got my registration date! The super-nerd inside me is rearing her greasy string hair. Also Madeleine Dwyer (daughter of Phil, doncha know) is asleeping it off on the flour in the living room. Might go in there and casually bang some pots together. I badly need a cup of tea.

Photo of the day? I think so!

This is my soil sampling buddy Craig with the caribou antlers we found today. Intense, huh?

First full day of work, and it was a good one. The helicopter dropped us off in what was was honestly the middle of nowhere, and we stumbled off to mark 50m lengths along a predetermined grid line. It was the first time I had seriously done sampling, and Craig's third, so we marked off the wrong co-ordinates and blundered along until the end of the day. Tomorrow we'll be on our own, so that will be a blast. I would not be surprised to find myself on some unnamed ridge kilometers from the designated chopper pad because I cannot read a map and am generally stupid when it comes to numbers and directions. Somewhere, God is laughing Himself silly at my complete lack of suitability for this job.

But life, right now, is amazing. Everyone is outdoorsy and intense and have fantastic stories. Our supervisor (for a couple more days) has a wild beard and hair and smokes a lot of pot and is constantly working and spends time in the field before flying off to high-powered executive meetings in New York and San Diego.

Know what's a little strange, though? Everyone I've met so far, be they 19 or 29, seem to be in seriously committed relationships. It's weird. And a little lonely. That excludes my roommate Laura, but she took off a few nights ago and came back at 4 in the morning severely hungover and wearing a firefighter's pants. This morning "We have your pants" was written in the mud on the back of our truck. She just shrugged and laughed.

All this, and I have so many more stories. My fingers will just not stop moving, but it's bedtime in the land of the midnight sun. Take care. How was the dinosaur party?

"salsa dancing to french swing? " quote of the day

"i dont think my girlfriend is a puppy though
i think she is just very affectionate
and I like that" -Go

Hahahahhahahahah

Link of the day? let's learn Luo!

http://economics.ozier.com/language/dholuo.html

" and legend told us that the north america was once supported by a giant turtle- but scientists later proved that wrong"

Mortimer, you might just be a sponge and soaked up the name dropping skills. Which is cool, some names sound alright. That Chezick girl sounds a-ma-zing.

Yesterday I went to Vancouver, and ate mediocre poutine on the way back. We played at an overcrowded venue of children running around, and acting crazy, and the fact that granville only had a one way road, made the day even more of a difficult time. We got lost (like any good group of 5 girls from the island would be in the big city) and decided against busking by the art gallery because of potential rains. Instead three voted against one, to stay witness the hustle and bustle of the canucks first game of the stanley cup final. We saw green men, we saw announcers dressed to impressed and posters of Don Cherry and how we could get pictures with him for a small fee at some hotel. I finally went to and tasted the best cheese cake in vancouver (self voted: alright) and then ended the day with 2 hours in traffic.

Tonight, I'm resting back and taking a breather and wondering the important things in life. Like if India's indians use the bulb of the fennel plant? I've never really seen it in their dishes, but the seed, used as a spice and a sweet treat (i'm currently eating sugar coated fennel seeds) are as common as the air we breath. I need an expert on this.

p.s! the picture above is of a grave in transylvania, nuts huh?

hot water bleeding our colours

Just got back from a more awkward day at work than i could ever expect. I thought last summer- balancing the inventory while my boss in the next room loudly discussed my good friend's mental health over the telephone- was bad. Well today folks, I found my boss' (different one) panties between the sheets of a bed I was changing, as well as a used condom in the garbage. Little bit too intimate, don't you think? No kidding. Her man is in town (actually it seems like he is only in town to take advantage of his girlfriends b and b, made himself right at home, didn't he?) to talk business with fellow music pros who happen to look like street people but speak like Simon Cowell. Today while planted in the dining room he started name dropping like the fucking blitzkrieg. Michael Jackson's estate this and Bruno Mars' cousin that. And then my co-worker retaliated: apparently her mum's boyfriend invented paypal (whaaaaaaaa?) This is the same girl who's boyfriend is 17 years older than her, who smokes like a fish and swears like Sarah Chezick.
Anyway hate to talk about my job so much. If I ever did anything else I might talk about that. We're having a dinosaur themed art party on Saturday. I'll keep yis posted

It`s the new way to see

Hey. M here.
I keep up this internal dialogue all day of things to write up and down this page, `cept now it`s crunch time and my sane thoughts have slipped out the back door for a ciggie.
This couple is at the bedandbreakfast for a week- their honeymoon- right now and they are the most awkward. I feel like they are secretly Amish or something. They are terrified of relaxation. And they do not even speak to each other. I took their breakfast orders this morning and they looked like I was mugging them. I put her pancakes down in front of her and she literally cringed. Anyway. Maybe I am bitter because I need excessive amounts of appreciation at all times.
And Timber Timbre was great thanks. except I sat right behind some big headed guy and couldn`t really see anything except the violinist. And the opener was playing their first show since they graduated the garage (I`m sorry that was rude...)