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