DESATURATED SANTA

As you all probably know by now (because I've been telling you for ten freakin' days), I'm off jet-setting around North America (wait, is the Caribbean in North America? DAMN YOU GEOGRAPHY!), all willy-nilly. I'm going to try and respond to comments and visit your blogs as much as possible while I'm away but will be focusing on checking out my surroundings, hanging out with family, taking photos and loving life. 

If everything goes according to schedule I should be just waking up to the sound of my 
four youngest brothers and sisters freaking out about Christmas presents right about now, 
somewhere in the middle of the frozen prairies of central Canada.

Anyway, on to the scheduled post of the day!

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Have you seen this costume? 

It's so fantastic I don't even know what to say except WOW!. 

Apparently she's a regular at the San Francisco SantaCon. 

And no, it's really really NOT photoshopped!

Here are some more views from around the internet. 

Photos taken by:   

Russel Daniels, The Burning Man Blog, Call Me E,  

Willivolt, Jeandiva, Jean Bauer, Tom Hilton, 

HlScotland Flickr page and are of BrodyQAT. 

Check out their flickr pages, they're all fantastic photographers

and I think they're not getting enough credit for these pics. 

For those of you who celebrate it, Merry Christmas! 

And get off the computer, it's time to hang out with your family.

worst day ever.

Yesterday was a bust. 

It was cold out when I left the house. Not like, "I'm gonna die" cold. More like "gosh my fingers hurt after thirty seconds outside of my sleeves" cold. 

I always compare the weather here with the weather in central Alberta, where I grew up. The temperature is never as extreme. But here's the thing I have to remember: when I lived in Alberta things were different. I had a completely different lifestyle. I never ever walked 2.3km to get anywhere. And here I do it twice a day between the bus stop and my house.I never waited outside for the bus either. I had a car. They plow the roads in Alberta. They don't here. People know how to do winter in Alberta. They don't here. 

-9 degrees Celsius is really tough here.

I should have just stayed home; called in 'snow day'. Instead, I psyched myself up (literally telling myself "You can do this."), put on layers upon layers of clothing, and went about my day as usual. I waited at the bus stop for 25 minutes out in the blustery cold, but hey, it's winter right? Suck it up, buttercup. It was fine.

I got to work...which was totally dead so I left after a few hours. Victoria is like a ghost town when it snows and yesterday was no exception. And it was really starting to come down out there.

The 12:00 bus was super late, and when it arrived at 12:35 around thirty people got on with me. The bus was completely full by the next stop. I'm talking double decker full, which hardly ever happens. It holds over a hundred and twenty people. 

And, long story short, my twenty minute bus ride took four hours. 

The traffic was so bad. 

SO BAD

I'm looking at various news reports right now, and they're saying stuff like "literally countless traffic accidents occurred" because "police stopped taking calls for minor fender benders", they barricaded a bunch of main streets for "snow related closures" throughout the city, and along my bus route "a dozen or more vehicles were involved in a chain reaction pile up".

It was such a mess. 

After a couple hours on the bus with a hundred people, you start to make friends. I was lucky, I got a seat upstairs. There were probably forty people packed like sardines in the stand-only area downstairs. ("Standees", the bus driver called them.) Some people had to pee. I was really hungry though. Some people had packed whole lunches and stuff. My seat neighbor was eating a roast beef sandwich so I didn't ask to share. But if it were veggie...maybe I would have.

I read about a hundred pages in my book, stared out the window, laughed along with others' jokes about a hundred car pile-up that wasn't even funny, texted people about where I was now, and played an entire game of Tetris on my phone. And we still weren't there! 

It really doesn't sound that bad on the outside but...have you ever taken a city bus for so long you've wondered what happens if it runs out of gas? Have you ever been in traffic that literally took half an hour to go two blocks? It was mentally exhausting. It's really hard to explain...I felt so trapped and there was nothing I could do because that was my only way home. And I really wanted to be at home.

Finally, after almost four hours we made it past...nothing. Just all of a sudden the traffic was normal. It was so weird. Ryan told me he read that it was the traffic lights in the city themselves, and the ultra slippery roads that was causing people to slide, not be able to get going for an entire traffic light's length of time, and then have to stop again right away. That, plus the mass exodus of people trying to get home early and all the little fender benders...ugh.

When we made it to my stop, I phoned Ryan right away and shouted into the phone "I'M FREE!" but then had to hang up in a hurry because it was FREEZING out and my hand was too cold to hold the phone. I walked home. The wind was so strong my hood wouldn't stay on my head and I had to hold my hat down too. I thought my chin was going to get frostbite, and for the first time in years I wished I had worn a scarf. 

When I burst into the door twenty minutes later I was so exhausted and hungry, and my hands were so cold that I couldn't unzip my boots. I literally sat on the floor and just started crying. 

Terrible stupid day. 

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Hey, my coffee's ready. And it's my day off. And all I have to do today is lay under blankets and watch movies with my cat. 

Things are lookin' up.

thoughts on G20 from an ignoramus

Sitting here in my house on Vancouver Island...I had no idea what was going on during the G20 protests.

I still don't.

At work the other day we marveled at the crazy photos of the burning police cars. The Toronto natives sighed and wished they had been there to witness the (un?)civil disobedience.

I thought "hey, those guys in black sure look cool, smashing that window"

But then I started reading stuff. And watching little home-video clips on the internet. And you know what? It feels a little scary.

I still don't get it. I have read the protester's side of things. I have read the media's side of things. I've mostly read the uninformed sides of things. I'm confused.

Why did those people get detained for twenty six hours? Why were they fed cheese sandwiches and why were the gays segregated from everyone else?

What's with all the violence?

Why did this happen? (watch from around 50-ish seconds, the first bit is just the national anthem)

Why were the guys in black allowed to burn the police car? And who left police cars unattended with the windows rolled down?

How come I get tears in my eyes when I watch this?


I'm sorry but I just can't grasp it.

What's being sensationalized?
What's real?

How did it get so out of hand?

I thought I could trust you, Canada. Police. You seemed so safe. I don't ... I kind of feel betrayed, I guess. I'm so ignorant because I thought it was safe to be ignorant.
*sigh* guess it's time to quit being so naïve about things.

Really I have nothing to say about it and no way to say it, except I guess I know what it feels like now to be disappointed in my country.

img from here

Ayer: tacones, graffiti, nudity and airshows.

It all started when I got to work and found graffiti drawn on the wall beside the door.

Cute eh? It was in chalk and totally harmless so I left it there. Somebody loves us. Probably a Colin groupie. (all the ladies love Colin)

The snowbirds did an airshow around noon, and my best boss let me go watch for a few minutes. I mean...airplanes. Doing dangerous things. Awesome.

THEN, since the world cup was on in every single pub down the street, there were all these crazy football fans with face paint and 'woo'-ing and wanting tattoos of their team's logo and running into things...totally drunk but funny. The atmosphere was kind of charged with excitement.

And THEN came the naked bicyclers.

I was going to take a bunch of pictures for the blog but I took one and instantly felt like a creep and put away my camera. Even though everybody else on the street was taking videos and stuff.
Here's my picture.

See more here...if you dare.
As you can see, some people wore underwear or pasties or bathing suits, but for the most part they were totally nude. And apparently bicycle seats set the perfect stage for twigs and berries, because they were totally...out there. I saw more penis than I have ever in my entire life. Not cool.

"When the pubes are as long as the wang, that's a problem." - Gerry Kramer

And to top off a wonderful day, after workMister Ryan and I walked down to Red Fish Blue Fish, this totally weird little outdoor restauranty kinda place in the inner harbour. Like, literally they're on a little dock on the ocean.


They serve mostly fish and fish and more fish. And oysters. But I heard through the grapevine that they also had something vegetarian called "edamame tacones" ... which, in Spanish translates to "edamame high-heels" (as in the heel on a woman's shoe)

Sounds appetizing? YES BECAUSE EDAMAME IS THE BEST EVER.

So Ryan and I went down there when I was finished work. He also got a tip that they sell battered deep-fried pickles, so um...yeah. Obviously we tried that too.

Oh and then we saw that they had curry fries. So yeah. Tried those too. Just a small order. To split.


Which turned out to be a lot of food.


Even today I feel greasy on the inside. BUT OMIGOD IT WAS SO DELICIOUS.

Also? Ran into my friend Marie right on the dock. She had circusy makeup on and was carrying a hundred hoola hoops...the kind you light on fire.

So yeah. Yay for yesterday. Life is awesome.

Images stolen from here and here. And Ryan and I took the rest ourselves.

in yesterday's news...

on the bus yesterday from the university to downtown I noticed a lot of yellow police tape and police vans near the Royal Jubilee hospital.
I made a mental note to find out what happened and continued on with my business.

Well today I finally got that far down on my mental list and got Ryan to look up what happened.

What? He was already on a computer. Mine was like 3 rooms away!

Anyway I kind of wish I didn't look because it turns out some guy set himself on fire outside the hospital.

here's a news story about it

Yeah so if you're too lazy to go there, basically what happened was a man went to the hospital, poured gasoline all over himself and lit himself on fire.
It was right near the bus stop so all these people saw him do it. The investigators said it was not an accident and it was not any kind of attack.
The witnesses said he apologized to them while he was totally on fire, and said he wouldn't do it again.

Then a guy from a nearby construction site ran over with a fire extinguisher put him out, and hey, he was right outside of the hospital so, you know, they took care of him.

I am left with so many questions.

I mean...did he want to die?
He did that directly outside of the best place to take care of an injured man, right?

So why?

I really feel bad for the people who had just been waiting for the bus.
And I can't stop thinking about it.

Well...yeah I can, I was just using a little thing called HYPERBOLE.
It's a literary device.
Ever heard of it?

But suddenly, out of nowhere, it'll hit me again; dude totally lit himself on fire. Beside the hospital. Then apologized to people while he was on fire! WHYYYYY?

It's not even any of my business.

The last line of the news story says "Some of the witnesses would be treated for psychological trauma, police said."

Uh, yeah. Just reading that story kind of traumatized me.

I don't really have anything else to say about it except WHYYYYYY?