M

Well, I'm back in England for two days until I go back to Montreal.  Sardinia was beautiful, but very Italian.  My Spanish carried me much less than I expected.  I uploaded a grand total of one picture; see it in the "Sardinia" album.

Grand poombah update to come when I get back...let's just hope those crazy Kanucks let me back in there, eh?

Cheerio, mate.  Jolly good show.

I haven't had much time to check email/blog/perform useless day-to-day wired tasks since I got to England, because I've been pretty busy... you know, doing English stuff.  Oh, I have plans for high tea.  Yesido.

But I will give you a brief overview in these few, fleeting moments I have before my flight to Sardinia.  The day before yesterday, I had meself a proper English experience.  Alex and I left in the morning and travelled to a small town in the idyllic English countryside, where we met up with my friend Simon.  Dear Simon, what a guy.  Bloke?  Anyway.  We arrived in the early afternoon, and got right to work on a bottle of Pimm's; a sweet, but not too-sweet alcohol, which I was informed is "an English summer institution."  People often get riproaring drunk on bottles of Pimm's when they go "punting."  Punting is this gong show of an event where people push a flat-bottomed wooden boat down the river with a pole.  Highly amusing to watch unskilled punters, as I learned yesterday at Caimbridge.  We were standing on a bridge overlooking what essentially was turning into bumper-punts below.  One group in particular was having a particularly rough time of it, and I pretty much went into hysterics as they managed to turn themselves around, bash into a wall, and run into another punt.  But the killer was when a older Caimbridgian-looking man with a very sophisticated puntful of people went gliding by the other boat and exclaimed "excuse me, madam, but you do realize you're going backwards?"

But I digress.

We had worked our way through an entire bottle of Pimm's by midafternoon, and then went on a wander.  Simon is, without a doubt, the only person who uses "wandering" as an active verb; as in "let's go for a wander," or "I'm going to fix the computer, clean up, go for a wander, then have dinner."  Because I'm a stupid yank and I think it's funny, I went wandering in wellies.  I don't know why this is so bloody amusing to me, but wellies... so amusing.  All I could think was when the three-man trio of a Welsh and two English teachers at my high school got up during the talent show and sang the Monty Python Wellies song.  I am, however, completely convinced I'm the only person who has ever heard said song.  So the entire time, as we walked through fields of winter wheat, cows, and sheep, was "If it wasn't for your wellies, where would you be?  You'd be in the hospital or infirmary.  Cuz you would have a dose of flu or even pleursy, if you didn't have your feet in your wellies..."  The kicker was, as two of us were wellie-wearin' and one was not, I decided to prove the superiority of the wellie-wearers by tromping in the mud by a stream.  So, beer in hand, I stomped down the bank, and managed to get thoroughly stuck in the mud.  Simon and Alex just stood on solid ground, laughing as my feet sunk deeper and deeper; and the mud crept up my boot towards the top.  I was eventually pulled free, but wellie-less, and managed to get a sock full of mud.  Anyway, we wandered back to three bottles of wine and a lot of whisky, and I woke up with a wretched hangover.

But at least I'm not in the hospital or infirmary...

Currently, I'm listening to Us3.

I'm freakin' exhausted.  But I'm in England!  I haven't really slept in about five days.  Last night was spent all in transit, but I took some sketchy "homeopathic" shit that's supposed to cure jetlag, so I seem to be on the right clock, getting hungry at about the right times, and stuff.  So that's good.  I might grow a third arm or something, but at least I won't be sleeping until 3pm.

Last night, the air mattress I was sleeping on deflated and I woke up on my elbow on the hard, cement floor.  It didn't feel overwhelmingly nice.  Kind of like princess and the pea, but more like princess and the bruised, contorted elbow.

As cliche as it is, I have been shocked repeatedly by the wrong side of the road thing.  I thought a bus was backing up today.  I thought there was a cyclist that was going to get rammed.  I look the wrong way before crossing.  It is very good that when I go on my mini-English countryside road trip this week, I will not be the one driving.  If I were, I might end up like my Welsh high school teacher, who, after eleven years living in Ohio, woke up distracted one morning, pulled onto the left, and hit someone head-on.  (No injuries, thankfully, but one big mother of a ticket.)

Hey, anyone want to come visit me in Montreal in early October?  Come on, it'll be fun.

Well, today is my last day as a Seattlelite.  I must admit, once I got accoustomed to going to bars by myself (hello, my name is M, and I am an alcoholic), I started to have a rather good time.  I'll post pictures when I'm not paying by the minute.

Aaaaanyway.  I really like this city, and I found some really nifty neighbourhoods, but there are a few things I don't know if I can reconcile myself to; specifically, leaving my friends and family, my job (well, the theoretical job at least), and giving up being in Canada.  I like Canada.  I'm kind of done with Quebec, but Canada's prime, grade-A beef.

But damn, son, Seattle has a lot of good Thai restaurants.  And I like me some Thai food.  Not as vegetarian-friendly as Montreal, but I definately wouldn't be forraging for nuts and berries.

So, sorry if I sounded all gloom-and-doom in my last post.  I was feeling pretty gloom-and-doom.  But I guess learning how to handle being alone is important.  And I'm much better at it when I'm not somewhere where I feel pressed to be constantly doing stuff.

Wanna know something funny?  Seattle has a monorail.  It runs about 15 blocks and takes 90 seconds.  All I could think was "monorail... monorail... monorail..."

The Museum of Flight was stinkin' cool.  Really really sweet.  It was slightly skewed (probably should be billed as the Boeing Museum)... how could such a museum exist without even mentioning Bombardier and Airbus?  It's rather silly, really.

I'm off to England.  I'd love to say I'm off to "Manchester, England, England... Across the Atlantic Sea... and I'm a genius genius..." but I'm not going to Manchester, so my song and dance will have to wait.

Cheers all (and sorry to my new commenters... I shall read your blogs when I get home!)

Well, I'm in Seattle.  And I only have about 5 minutes left on this heah silly internet thing, so this is going to be dispondant and quick.

I am lonely.  Seattle is a great city, I think.  But because I haven't met any Seattlites, I haven't had anyone to drink with.  Nor do I have a particularly good impression of the day-to-day in Seattle.  All I've figured out is: 1) people on the bus are friendly and will talk to you for 20 minutes.  2) bus drivers and cops are friendly.  3) it's not that big of a city.  4) I really don't dig staying in hostels.  5) traffic is a fucking mess.  6) I don't have any. bloody. answers.

2:46 left.

So, I'm confused, I'm lonely, and although I'm having a good time, I feel more schmutzed than I did before.  Did I just make up a yiddish word?  Is a WASP allowed to do that?

I thought that getting perspective on my life from outside my life (ie Seattle) would answer questions for me, but now the job at Super-Duper New Company seems like a vague memory, and Seattle is coming to represent the land of opportunity (for biking, hiking, weekend trips to Vancouver, vacations to Cali), but at the cost of friends, family... the support circle I've been busy building for the past 24 years.

So the verdict is:  I don't have any answers.

Crap, 10 seconds.

Update....

I spent the day looking at planes.  Planes are cool.  They, like, fly and stuff.  That made me happy and giddy as a schoolgirl.  Or a university-educated mechanical engineer.  Whatever.  Anyway, I shall post many touristy pictures when I get back to C-eh-N-eh-D-eh.

- Your sweatshirt smells inexplicably like fish at the end of the day.

- A girl with blue hair, no eyebrows, a lip ring, and white eyeshadow stops you on the street to get you to support a child.

- You buy three lattes and two chai teas without even thinking about it.

- You turn around and stare at the ONE GUY who's walked by you today with no visible tatoos.

- You see a woman walk into a juice bar and order the usual, and is served a wheatgrass shot and a slice of orange.  She shoots the wheatgrass, grimaces like it's the cheapest vodka known to man, sucks on the orange, grabs her banana-ramma-protein-power-jumbo-mumbo "chaser" smoothie and walks out.

Well, it's 3am.  I need to be up at 5 to get my ass out the door for 6 and on the plane by 9.  Of course, instead of packing like any reasonable individual, I pissed away this evening imbibing over a $60 meal.  Yup, $60.  NEVER go to a non-bring your own wine restaurant.  It's a bad idea. 
As to the trip... Greece is out.  Sardinia is in.  I'm half packed, the ipod is half loaded, but someone's picking me up at the airport and I have a reservation in a hostel... so what could really go wrong?

So, I'll try to blog now and again.  But really, I'll probably be busy doin' stuff.

Hold down the fort for me while I'm gone.

M out.

Today was my last day at The Company From Hell.

The thing most commonly said to me as I left?

"Be good."

Now, whatever gave you people any indications to the contrary?

I bought an iPod.  Yup, trendy at its worst... and it was money that I don't have... but now I get to spend the next 45 minutes laughing to myself at No Cure for Cancer.