A Scavenger Hunt...and more Party Pics

Two hours.
Five teams.
Competing for prizes unknown.
And knowing ahead of time that bribing the judge with peach snapple is perfectly acceptable...

It was Kim and Shawn's Amazing Tenth Anniversary Scavenger Hunt!

I met the people on my team ten minutes before we started the game. It was only fair to pair the locals with the incoming party guests. I mean, how are people from out of town going to know how and where to re-enact a scene from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off otherwise?

As my team members were from the next province, I had to be navigator. We leapt into their red sports car and were off!

We needed to find...a lot of stuff. There were four pages of things to find and do. And having a digital camera along was entirely necessary: how else are you going to prove that you made a K or an S with your body lying on the grass like in Sesame Street?Would the judge take our word for it? Heh, unlikely! :)

Unfortunately I had to give my own camera to Jeff as there were only so many cameras to go around. Blast it! Me giving up my camera is difficult. I'm snap-happy, you see. So hopefully Shawn's relatives will email me some photos of our quests as I'd really like to see how our recreation of spotting a sea monster turned out, or the picture of us on the borrowed motorcycle.

You know what I like about missions like these is that it gives you a sort of tacit permission to do things like run breathlessly up to total strangers and ask to sit on their motorcycles. If they raise their eyebrows, just show them your paper that tells them its worth five hundred points and they will hopefully break into a big grin.

If there's something goofy out there that you want to do (roll down a hill, eat fruit off a tree without using your hands), consider the freedom of saying its for a contest/scavenger hunt...

A Partial List: (and things were allowed a lot of creative interpretation fortunately)


*A banana with signature of person who sold it to you (150 points)

*Evidence of extraterrestrial life (200 points)

*Receipt for 25 cents worth of gasoline (300 points)

*Photo of a baby cuter than Zoe (anyone who does this loses 500 points)

*Paint a picture of Cumberland in the style of Emily Carr (500 points)

*Build and fly a kite (1500 points)

* Photo of group in a coal mine (400 points)

*Translate into Klingon: Where is the bathroom (500 points)

*Snow (2000 points)

*Photo of group with police officer (350 points)

*Recreate a famous movie scene with animals (450 points)

*Draw a chalk masterpiece on a sidewalk

*Wear sunscreen (100 points)

*Photo of group swim (500 points)

*Group photo with Comox Glacier in background (200 points)

*Penny from 1996, the year Kim and Shawn were married (150 points)

* Completed Sudoku puzzle (100 points)

*Photo of group member holding up a video of Hollywood movie filmed in the Comox Valley (200 points)

* List of ingredients for beschemal sauce (150 points)

* Build a fort out of driftwood (450 points)

Yes, we had to call upon all our inner resources to cheat a little, er, bend the truth as it were, and argue our cases in front of the judge when we arrived panting back at the finish line.

My team didn't win but we still accumulated over fifteen thousand points (including a bribe of a pig's ear for Loki the Dog) in the allotted time and won ourselves brilliantly kitschy and evilly-grinning tiki-lounge punch glasses which I used the whole evening afterwards with pride.

Kim's Party

A friend commented that these last two weeks have been like something out of "Four Weddings and a Funeral".

I can't say that I remember the film very well, but I think what she meant to say was that despite the sadness of Jamie's funeral, there has been a lot of fun and joy too. Life and love is sweet. Laugh with the people you love.

For instance, there was Kim and Shawn's party! My friends have been married for ten years and they threw a marvellous anniversary party this weekend.

Ah, amore!

Note to self: it just isn't a party without tiki torches in the garden and a bubble-machine shaped like a red hippopotamus on the roof of the house!


There were barbeques loaded down with roasting corn and salmon. Loads of other food and drink. Heaps of relatives and friends milling around in conversation or relaxing under the shade of the heavily-laden pear tree--it felt like there was about forty people there, but people were arriving and leaving all day, visiting while they could.

Oh! it was a good party! Be proud of those party-organizing skills you have, my friends!

The decorative flags we'd made two nights before waved in the breeze most satisfactorily on the proceedings from the edges of Kim's backyard.

There was a tented pavilion hung with tapestries and layered in cushions where friends could sprawl, a jamming session with drums, live accordion music, amorous cavorting dogs, children dancing in the clouds of bubbles drifting over the lawn, and presents of course.

We held a bocce ball tournament in the park down the street--the guests who stayed in the back yard could hear our competitive whooping yells from where they were.

(There was also a wild scavenger hunt mid-morning to break the ice between the locals and the out-of-towners who had never met but I've decided it deserves a whole post of its own. It certainly got the blood racing as we dashed about town raising eye-brows as we went.)

It was one of those parties that starts in the morning with good-natured craziness and drifts lazily into late evening conversation. Someone deciding to say goodbye at ten o'clock would still be drawing out the farewell an hour later, having moved perhaps from the front porch to the back.

Sadness

My good friend's little brother has died, and it is just so wrong.

He was young, just thirty-one, newly-married and had just found out a few days before that he was going to become a father. Nobody knows why he died. The tests after his death showed a young man in apparent perfect health.

The universe seems mean sometimes and frighteningly arbitrary.

I was on holiday last week and had all sorts of fun times, but coming home to this sad news, it seemed wrong to write about all that until I'd said something about this.

So here is the poem my friend read out to remember his brother at the funeral. It pretty much says it all.

W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Drunken Bards

Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada.

--Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire

There was at least one drunken bard roaming about in Tai's neighbourhood last night. Perhaps two or more.

I opened my eyes blearily at five minutes past three this morning and listened to the rich baritone voices echoing theatrically off the nearby eaves. The owners of the voices were quite obviously sodden with drink but nonetheless great long Shakespearean passages tumbled easily from their lips.

I reflected that if you had to have drunken people shouting in the streets below, it is better if they shout poetry rather than epithets, although of course the works of Shakespeare contain plenty of those too.

My friend had also woken up. "It's Hamlet", she said sleepily. "It's Hamlet talking to Ophelia...."

I didn't recognize the passage but continued to listen, hovering on the edge of sleep.

Then I heard in booming stage-tones something to the effect of : "Behold! A stone in my hand! shalt I throw it?"

I leapt out of bed and hurried to the window. I had no idea if that was a quote from Shakespeare but they better not be standing near my car if they were considering in verse whether or not to heave rocks at my car!

Alas, I couldn't see them. Whoever it was, they were invisibly projecting their voices mightily through the still summer air. I wondered briefly if they were stumbling about in doublet and hose, and then fell back to sleep.

Actually I'm off to the Shakespeare Festival this evening. But it started well and early for me today. Oh yeah, and Happy Birthday to me! :)

A Shrew..and Two Degrees of Separation from MacGyver

These first few weeks in August have felt to me like they're all about about going to the theatre.

First there was CATS, and then I attended both productions of this year's Showcase Festival and I'm looking forward to travelling to Vancouver this coming up weekend to visit this summer's Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Vanier Park. I am well on my way to being a culture vulture. :)

Tickets to A Midsummer Night's Dream make a fabulous birthday present!

So anyway, Jeff, my clever sweetie, volunteered his accounting skills and was this year's book-keeper/payroll guy for the Showcase Festival.

Consequently, we were able to score some free tickets to go and see both the Taming of the Shrew and its modern counterpart, Cole Porter's Broadway musical Kiss Me, Kate .

I enjoyed these performances sooo much.

I tell you, I'd probably make a lousy theater critic, because everything I attend just seems so well done.

Maybe you could ask fellow blogger Ian for a second opinion, as I said hello to him on both nights. One night he was sitting in the row in front of me, the next he was in the row behind me. Anyway, Ian's our local reporter and he planned on writing up a review in the local Echo newspaper.

The pictures here are from the first night's performance of Taming of the Shrew .

If you are not familiar with the story, it is the unpolitically- correct tale of the shrewish scolding Katerina and how she must be married off before her simpering but far more popular younger sister Bianca can be married.

Bianca's frustrated suitors join forces to plan how they can woo Bianca and find a husband for her brawling elder sister. The solution arrives in the form of Petruchio, an optimistic and money-grubbing man who seems unconcerned how shrewish his potential wife may be as long as she is wealthy. By the play's end, the fearsome Katerina has been married, bested and worn down by Petruchio's husbandly tactics which include depriving her of sleep and food. In the end, she seems okay with the whole thing.

Sounds rather depressing, doesn't it? But a little Shakespearean slapstick goes a long way to lighten the mood and the actors interpret their roles wonderfully.

I remind myself that the plot took place in the ethics of Shakespearean times, and laugh despite myself at the antics on stage.

However, I agreed fully with the woman behind me who muttered to her husband at play's end: "Don't be getting any ideas from this, Brett...."

Jeff and I were invited to attend the Meet the Cast party after the performance on Friday night and so we met all the main actors, including to my delight, Neil Minor, the fellow who played Puck in last year's Festival.

I also met Teryl Rothery (who played Kate the Shrew) who is apparently broadening her acting credits in our little town after playing in the show Stargate SG-1 in her role as Dr. Janet Fraiser. I almost didn't recognize her off-stage as the onstage Kate was larger-than-life with big red hair and this was a petite little blonde person. Plus, although I've watched Stargate a few times, I was usually noticing Richard Dean Andersen and not Ms. Rothery.

She seemed very nice. As I shook her hand and chatted politely, I reflected that I could now also claim two degrees of separation from Richard Dean Andersen (also starring in Stargate) who was the MacGyver of my childhood. Reason enough to attend the party, free drinks aside! :)

Neighbours

Isn't it funny how you can reconnect with people from your past? They can be closer than you know.

I talked with my brother on the phone this evening and in the course of our conversation he mentioned that a group of his friends and casual aquaintances from high school (seventeen years ago) had met for a casual reunion the other day.

It seems someone had run into someone else at the Filberg Festival, said "Man, I haven't seen you guys in ages" and suggested a get-together.

My brother commented how a lot of people at the reunion seemed to know me (or know of me) and the general concensus was that I was really nice. (Heh, though I can't imagine they'd say anything to the contrary if they really thought I was a vicious meanie).

One fellow at the party mentioned that he had married someone I knew long ago. And that someone was my friend Denise who lived down the street from me when I was about eight years old.

It seems we are once again living down the street from one another twenty-five years later.
I can look out my kitchen window and see her house, two doors down on the opposite of the street.

I couldn't help myself. I went and knocked on her door this evening. It was great. :)

Coffins as Interior Design... and More

Floating Bed Don't sleep on this one if you have a lot of piercings. Or if you have a lot of dust-bunnies. But really, if you have one of these in your bedroom, you're just trying to go that extra mile for weirdness's sake, right?


Playhouses for the Silver-Spooned Set In hindsight, it seems my childhood was much deprived. My playhouse was made of twigs.

Coffin Furniture Coffins. They're not just for lying around in anymore. Actually, I've long thought that for the amount of money you pay for a coffin, you should really try to get some use out of it beforehand.

I rather liked the carry-on luggage on this site. But alas, I fear it may be just a little pretentious and maybe it's not such a good idea to single yourself out in airports in these strange days.

Spirit of the West and a Grand Picnic

I think one of the definitions of a good morning is sitting in the dappled shade of a tree, closing your eyes and swaying slightly as you listen to Celtic folk-punk band Spirit of the West play If Venice is Sinking.

It's one of my favourite songs and there is nothing quite like the energy of an outdoor concert.





Jeff and Kim and Zoe and me went back to the Filberg Festival for a second time two days after our first visit, this time bringing Shawn along.

Paying the ten dollar entrance fee twice is absolutely justified to hear live music like this. They are quite simply great.

And their musicians hail from Vancouver and Victoria, making them locals, which is even better!

I'd never heard them live before, although Kim has drunk apple-juice with the band before at some point in her life. Yes, apple-juice.

I love their version of Home for a Rest,that ultimate binge-beer-drinking ballad, and the crowd roared along to the chorus of that ex-pat favourite Old Sod , the old sod being Scotland,and not some elderly drunk as the lead singer pointed out:



There's none more Scots than the Scots abroad
There's a place in our hearts for the Old Sod!

"Och, that was magic!", one of the musicians declared as the audience led one chorus on our own.



Ah, and let's hear it for penny-whistle and accordion soloists!


After the concert, the four of us and baby Zoe wandered the Festival grounds for a while. We were mostly shopped out (ie. we are poor), so we didn't make the local artisans much richer today, but we did find a great spot for a picnic on a shady hill where we could eat our spanakopita and Greek salads and donairs while looking down on the white tents of the Festival and the water and mountains beyond.



Shawn and I wandered along the edge of the herb garden there, taking photos of bees and butterflies.

Oh, and there was gelato involved somewhere along the way.

Och, a grand day!

Trolls I Have Seen this Weekend

Here I embrace my inner geek and present this picture of myself as Zalli the Troll, my World of Warcraft character.

She has red eyes, big red hair, and blue-green skin. In Azeroth, it's quite a fetching combination. Don'tcha think?

I spent a good part of the weekend at the local Filberg Festival and happened to run into some other kinds of trolls there.

They had rather larger noses than the trolls I fancy and were lumpier in general. Also, the trolls in WoW tend to carry a honkin' big weapon of some description and these trolls tended more to carrying parasols and playing the bodhran drum.

Hmmm...actually much more up my alley in some respects! :)

When these trolls walked by some children crumpled their little faces in distress and bawled.

But not our Zoe!

Nope, Zoe the Baby got a good hold of one of their noses and didn't want to let go.

*Spider Girl experiences a little surge of vicarious pride through her friend Kim's brave daughter*

Other potentially frightening things for children at the Filberg this weekend: marionettes that look like the musicians from KISS and AC/DC .

I also saw some Yoda puppets and two little kids duking it out with Darth Vader marionettes. They were shrieking "Die! Die!"

I'm guessing the trolls woudn't faze those youngsters one little bit.

Spandex Bodysuits and T.S. Eliot

The poet T.S. Eliot once commented that the works of Irish dramatist and write Bernard Shaw were much improved once set to music.

I wonder if he'd share a similar opinion about the musical CATS , based on his own Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats . Whatever else he might think, one imagines that Mr. Eliot couldn't help but goggle at all the flying fur and psychedelic spandex bodysuits.

The local Rainbow Youth Theatre showed off their version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's CATS this week and I went Friday night. It was a sold-out show.

I have to say right up front that I'm a sucker for musicals. I'm not looking for sophistication necessarily. I just want to be merrily entertained . And I was.

CATS is light on plot, but big on energy, acrobatics, and well-crafted dance choreography. In a nutshell, an enormous number cats are gathering under the moonlight for the annual Jellicle Ball . The set resembles a sort of junkyard with culverts and ramps and ledges.

The Jellicle Cats await the arrival of their beloved leader Old Deuteronomy who will name one cat worthy of journey to the Heaviside Layer , there to begin a different Jellicle life. It's a little sketchy, but one is left to presume that this is a good thing, as the cats vie with one another to introduce themselves and their individual merits.

We meet Skimbleshanks, Gus the Theatre Cat,Mr. Mistoffelees, Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer, Grizzabella the elderly Glamour Cat and a host of other felines. At times there were fifty dancers cavorting on stage. There were magic tricks, a kidnapping, a pirate ship, and catburglars. Also, there were a few people I knew up there on stage and I think that always adds an element of fondness for a show.

There was ballet, tap-dancing, cat-suited people leaping down from dreadfully high stage-props and all sorts of back-flips across the stage. And I'm still catching myself humming that one about MagicalMarvellous Mister Mistoffelees two days later.

My mom leaned over during the performance and whispered that this was sure to be a musical my friend Tai, a girl notoriously skeptical of the merits of musicals, would enjoy. Well, I might not go so far as to recommend it to Tai, but it did have pirates, well, er, cat-pirates....so you never know.

Linda on Stage (and Going Into Battle)

I had a conversation with my friend Linda this evening and realized I hadn't seen or talked to her since the beginning of July when she belly-danced on stage at the local Canada Day celebrations.

How does this happen? How does the summer fly by like that?

Anyway, since it's much easier to give my friend the photos I took of her via my blog rather than clogging up her mailbox with vast photo attachments, I'm just going to post them so everybody can enjoy them too.

Keep in mind, Linda ,that I was sitting halfway to the back of the theatre and I couldn't use a flash, but I hope you enjoy them. You looked smashing!

Linda has both an amazing book collection and a vast wardrobe of bellydance and medieval-reenactment costumes that I am very happy to borrow upon occasion, as well as yards and yards of gorgeous fabrics, scarves, and veils... so my thoughts and best wishes are with her tonight as she goes into battle against an invasion of silverfish in her new home. I don't want to sound bloodthirsty and unkind to small creatures, but in this case: Kill 'em all!

Those little pests are a book-lover's nightmare. They like to eat the starch from book-bindings (yum!) and wreak all sorts of havoc with fabrics too. They are a nightmare to eradicate.

I know. I suffered an invasion myself once in the old house on England Ave.

I was trying to remember how we got rid of them and wondered aloud to Jeff. "I think we just moved, didn't we?" was the reply. Oh dear.

I remember they were so quick that you could seldom get a good look at them--just a squiggling flash of movement. And they left sort of a nasty dusty, flaky residue wherever they had been lurking.

Ugh. I'm not squeamish about insects, but these little guys have all the charm of fleas and tsetse flies in my book.

Anyway, Linda, you are perfectly correct: you can get rid of them by micro-waving your books! Who knew?! (Not that I doubted you, dearie....) :)

Sounds of Summer

The adult Ten-Lined June Beetle (Polyphylla decimlineata) emerges from its shallow pupal chamber around the roots of its host plants sometime in the month of July.

Before it has much chance to enjoy the next stage in its life-cycle, it flies dangerously close to the front patio of Spider Girl's home where it is batted out of the air with phenomenal accuracy by a fat cat called Colby, brought inside, and crunched between feline jaws with gusto.

These insects sometimes put up a fight and can hiss quite loudly I've discovered. I rescued one of the more survival-oriented from Colby and the wee bug waved its feelers ungratefully at me and produced a sound I've come to associate with Fear Factor and its mascot bug, the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach.

I released the fortunate insect out the front door, but my cat merely ran upstairs again, out onto the deck and swatted down another june beetle.

This last week I've found close to ten dessicated little striped bug corpses around the house. As I fall asleep I hear:

WHACK! Bzzzzzzz! Some scrabbling around. Then Hiss! Hiss! Crunching sounds. Then silence. For a while.

To see her lying in the sun, you wouldn't think she'd have the speed and reflexes to take a bug down out of the air with such stunning accuracy in the dark. I'm impressed.

Spider at the Spa Party

I went to a Spa Party last night.

Mel invited us (Nell and her sisters, Brandi, Lisa, Kim and baby Zoe and me) out to the beautiful countryside home where she's house-sitting for a promised evening of smearing luxurious goos and lotions upon ourselves.

We were not to be disappointed.

But first we got a tour of the place--we petted the horses, said hello to the chickens, and cuddled the three-week-old puppies. Kim and Nell got to reunite after not seeing one another since high school. Baby Zoe was introduced to all.

Lisa and I also couldn't help trying out the enormous old wooden swing-set in the garden. The chains creaked ominously as we went higher and higher, but it was scary good fun.

Later, as dusk fell, we went inside where a dewy-skinned Scottish lass named Agnes laid out her potion bottles and price lists. It was basically a Tupperware party but instead of oohing and aahing over plastic containers (and I just never can muster the enthusiasm for that) we were layered in lotions containing sea salt and sugar-scrubs and lavender essence. There were so many things to try that I ran out of limbs to try them on.

By the end of the evening we'd used up a mountain of warm, damp towels and were all sitting around glowing in the aftermath of heated cream masks. We were smooth-skinned and radiant. The appearance of fine lines around our eyes was visibly reduced. I smelled like the blackberry-vanilla smoothie I bought at an ice-cream stand the other day.

We made kissy faces at one another wearing our age-combating warpaint. The white lip mask gave me a flashback to the eighties when, ever so briefly, it was trendy to wear white lipstick.

Okay, now personally I won't drop forty dollars on a hand-cream or moisturizer (even when it feels that good), but my skin does feel rather nice the day after.

My Little Brother's Wedding

Yesterday my brother got married to his long-time sweetheart, Kira.

The wedding took place in a serene corner of their backyard in Port Alberni, underneath the branches of a tree hung with paper lanterns and colourful prayer flags and beside a little Zen garden and pond.

(The Chinese stone lantern in the garden was a wedding present from me and Jeff, arriving shortly before the ceremony.)

There is something so sweet and natural about backyard weddings, especially when you're rather fond of the people getting married.

Kira looked beautiful and relaxed in a turquoise silk Tibetan wedding dress, while my brother wore a bemused grin for most of his wedding.

Sasha the dog, acting as a sort of furry flower-girl, rested between them on the grass with one paw on the bride's foot and one paw on the groom's until the marriage commissioner told them it was time to take each other's hands for their vows. Sasha, on her best behaviour, moved a foot or two away while her people exchanged silver rings carved with native frogs and moons.



They picked probably the hottest weekend of the summer to get married, but fortunately it was not one of those wedding where crowds of people sweat in uncomfortable formal wear through a long sermon in the summer heat: we were a small casually dressed lot of close family who could easily fit under the shade of one tree. It was lovely.

I have to say I became unexpectedly misty-eyed as they were pronounced married, and was still sniffling a little as I signed the registry as a witness. My brother later told me that he cried at my wedding too, fourteen years ago.

"No, you did not!" I said in disbelief.

"I did!", he replied.

Adam was eighteen at my wedding. I have to say I'm rather touched. :)

I've been to many weddings over the years, and more and more I prefer these non-formal affairs. There is simply less streess involved. Years ago, I remember a friend from high school getting married. Her guest list was near three hundred, her gown rivalled Princess Di's...and she became so anxious about the things that might go wrong, required a tranquillizer before she could enter the church. Fun, huh?

At Adam's wedding, there was thankfully no stress wasted on worrying about wedding etiquette. For instance, filling in for the bride's traditional removal of her garter, Adam did remove the bottoms of his zippered pants to turn them back into shorts. It was freakin' hot today.


Later in the evening friends of the bride and groom arrived with their children and dogs. More food was added to the tables already groaning with the weight of a seafood and salad and BBQ buffet. Apple pie and cheese-cake were devoured. Much beer and lemonade was quaffed.

People chatted and picnicked in the garden. Babies toddled around. The dogs played. A haphazard game of bocce ball broke out as the sun went down.

I got to know Kira's family a bit--they all seemed really nice. And I discovered that Kira's mom reads our blogs. "You're Spider Girl, right?", she said. Why, yes...yes, I am. :)

Heh, how about that?


Before my family left, Adam gave me some batchelor button plants from his garden for mine.... By the way, brother, your garden looked fantastic for the wedding.

New Car

Scenario A:
"...And show our contestant what's behind Door Number Three, Vanna...Yes! She's won a new car!

* the crowd goes wild.....Spider Girl jumps jumps up and down *

Scenario B:

Spider Girl and Jeff spend a week roaming used car lots under a baking sun, calling upon all their haggling skills to finally purchase a shiny 2002 Toyota Camry for what they hope is a reasonable deal. They both feel like they've been run over by a train, but the ugly and newly-unreliable Dodge Shadow is history.

You guessed it: Scenario B.

Car Trouble Mystery

Have you ever heard those reports of people who are driving along a lonely road at night when all of a sudden their engine loses power and they coast to a stop? Then they see a bright light and a great big saucer-shaped ship above them and it totally wrecks their evening plans?

Well, that's what my afternoon was like, only without the lonely road and the saucer people thing.

I was leaving my driveway to go pick up Jeff from work when my car mysteriously goes silent. I drift a couple of feet and then I stop. I'm still in my driveway.

Sigh.I turn off the car completely and then restart it. Everything starts up again normally. Hmm, I say to myself, that was odd.

So off I go downtown and for a few minutes everything is ducky. Then, just when I'm heading for a major intersection with four lanes of traffic, my car decides to have an encounter with its own personal UFO again. Damn you, Saucer People! This is not funny!

The radio is playing, but that's all I have.

No power, no brakes. Uh oh.

I discover I have lucky personal horse-shoes because I'm able to safely drift over two lanes and coast down an inclined little road I'm about to pass...right into the parking lot of the place where my brother-in-law works as a mechanic. I couldn't have picked a better spot to break down if I'd tried!

I didn't actually have enough control over the vehicle to stop in an actual parking spot, but I come to a safe stop. Good enough. I turn off the car. Whew. I've never been so glad to be at Canadian Tire.

Alas, after Jeff arrives and our family mechanic inspects the car, it is pronounced that our car seemingly is just fine. We get in it and drive home. Well, Jeff drives us home. I am deeply suspicious.

Jeff joked that maybe its just my own personal electrical field that is causing trouble. After all, I can't wear watches for any length of time without breaking them. Hmmm...that is actually a troubling thought. But it's more likely it's just our old car getting an attitude--another troubling thought.

In my opinion it is much preferable for a car a) to have a problem, which is then b) fixed. And c) then you drive home.

But here we are two days later, and the old Dodge is running smugly. It feels like it may be teasing me.

I had a conversation with Kim last night where we discussed car trouble inconveniences past and present.

"Cars are supposed to be inanimate objects", she mused, "but sometimes I doubt that. "

Grilled Cheese, Johnny Depp, and Superman

In honour of the scene in Benny & Joon where Johnny Depp grills cheese sandwiches using an iron, that's what I'm making for lunch today. Yes, I watched that old movie yesterday afternoon (for the first time) and the craving for grilled cheese has not abated.

I don't really see any good reason why one couldn't actually make these sandwiches in this fashion (as long as you go easy on the steam button, as the movie character wisely informs us), but I'm nevertheless going to refrain from the experiment.

It's the first day of a week's vacation for me and I'm wondering how I'm going to spend my days off. I haven't made any plans. I chose a random week on the calendar back in May. It's alarmingly refreshing to have nothing on my to-do list.

I think I may kick back during the heat of the afternoon with the stack of videocassettes Kim gave me. She was getting rid of stuff before her move, and I'm her good friend who lives back in the prehistoric era where folks still own VCR's. Between her and Deb (whose VHS collection I also inherited) I will not have to venture to a video store for many moons. :)

On the subject of movies, I went to to the theatre with friends to see Superman Returns . I have powerful little interest in the whole complex Superman comic-book mythology, and so I went with low expectations. I ended up really enjoying it. Watch for a scene involving the space shuttle and a baseball game. Now that's good movie entertainment.

Not everybody in the theatre was as easily pleased as me though. A few rows back, a couple of fifteen-year-old comic-book geeks (er, aficionados )were openly weeping with frustration at all the touchie-feelie Lois Lane-and-her-little-boy family moments. "This is not happening!", moaned one.

They were the same lads I'd overheard outside the theatre before the show having an intense discussion about whether Superman could really get a haircut.

"Well, it's just not realistic if he can", insisted one of them. "He's supposed to be bullet-proof! So scissors wouldn't cut him!"

"As if!", snorted the other boy. "What are they supposed to do about their hair on his home planet then?"

Well, if Superman can't cut his hair, at the very least he can put gel in it. I don't think that guy ever has that forehead curl out of place when he's wearing his cape. That bottle of hair gel and the glasses are the only thing keeping him from being recognized by Lois Lane.

Iguanas I Have Known

I'll add some iguana pics as soon as Blogger cooperates...

Meanwhile...

Here's me and a few feathered friends.

Why do they like me so much? Well, my earrings are apparently really tasty.

There's a new pet store in town and I thought I'd go have a look at what's there, ostensibly to buy a nicer condominium for my beloved stick-bugs, but really I was wondering if this store carried baby iguanas.

You see, I once inherited an iguana. An elderly one.

Sophie had had a rather sad life with three or four previous owners and had somehow survived a decade or so of neglect. I really wanted to rescue her and was determined to give her a good home until she passed away. But, as I suspected from the beginning, she was not a pet for the half-hearted nor the faint of heart.

Despite having regrown her tail at some point (you could see how it had grown back deformed), she stretched a healthy three and a half feet from snout tip to tail. My cats gave her a wide berth. When she started lumbering towards their food dish, you better believe they made way. She moved in a prehistoric gait that reminded me of a crocodile. Or possibly a dinosaur.

She required heat lamps and finely-chopped fresh fruits and vegetables. She needed daily swims in the bathtub (she was potty-trained to the tub but would often only perform if you massaged her tummy). Her mighty toenails required clipping. She need special vitamins. And she really would have preferred trees to climb in, but leaping from sofa to chair was the next best thing.

Also, although she never bit anyone, she would turn her head to one side to give you a glare, and let you glimpse the tiny but razor-sharp teeth in her open mouth to let you know she wasn't trying out for Most Cuddlesome Lizard in the world. I loved her, but she was a handful. I would never, ever walk into a pet shop and buy a baby iguana.

Once, a few years after Sophie's death at the venerable age of fourteen, I spied some tiny and adorable baby iguanas in a pet shop down-island. I approached a clerk and pretended I was interested in purchasing one. I wanted to see what would be said to a potential owner...

It boiled down to "Cute l'il fellas, aren't they!"

There was no mention of all the special needs this kind of pet needs.There was especially no mention of the strong possibility that a male iguana might grow up to be as long as your love-seat. It seemed really irresponsible to me. This is probably why so many iguanas either die young from health problems, or are abandoned when they attain the size of furniture.

I was glad to find no iguanas at this new pet store. Apparently my town now has some sort of bylaw concerning them. I'll have to find out the details about that. But I do know that if you really want such a pet there are many older ones that can be adopted from reptile rescue societies.

Now that I travel regularly there is no question of myself adopting another one though. It's one thing to ask your mother to make sure the cat's dish is full of kibble while I'm away for a month; quite another to give my giant lizard a bath with massage.

Happy Canada Day!

I love our flag! Yep, and it's even perfect for a preschool art project. :)

I'm off to go for a BBQ and then a Canada Day variety show with lots of dancing and such...we're dragging some friends from Australia along.

Hope everybody's having fun --today it's like a blast furnace out there in my neck of the woods...