The Smoking Post

The sun is out, the weather is warm and you know what goes really well with those two things? A pitcher of Margaritas and a smoke. It's true. Many years ago that's exactly what I would be embracing every Friday night (well, to be honest, it wasn't just Fridays). It's been 8 years since I had a cigarette and every time I walk past a terrace of people smoking and drinking I am filled with the immortal sin of envy. The truth is, I loved smoking. I loved the smell, I loved the feel of the cigarette in between my fingers, I loved the taste and truly, I loved the way it looked. Say what you want, but smoking is cool. I would like to tell you that I quit smoking for my health or my pregnancies or because my children asked me to do it as their Birthday presents, but the truth is, I was forced to quit by powers beyond my control. Simply put, my body physically rejected nicotine. Violently rejected it. All over the bathroom of a Thai restaurant in the Market. I will spare you the details, but will impart one piece of wisdom from that near-death experience. Don't leave the lid down on public toilets. Especially in Thai restaurants. For those of you hanger-on-ers...enjoy these days. Enjoy the taste of the cigarette paired with the wine after a good meal. Enjoy that perfume on your clothes and that non-existent ten pounds that the non-smokers are carrying around. Of course when winter rolls around and you are still gripped by Cigarette's evil talons, standing in the -35C weather shivering your asses off, I will rejoice in my superiority, but for now, I am jealous. Okay, off for a run!

To Run or Not to Run

I am kicking around the idea of running in the National Capital 1/2 marathon next month. I have run this particular one before so I know what I'm getting into and I can't quite decide if it's all worth it. The fact is, I'm not built for running, really. My bottom is disproportionately large (which is only good for running if you're black. Which I am not). My legs are short and my arches are somewhat low. All of these factors make me more of a Clydesdale than a Thoroughbred, so if I am going to run anything it needs to be for distance rather than speed. Proof in point; my current best 10km time is about 56mins; painfully slow by most standards. Another notch on the 'con' list is that in fact, I hate running. I do it, but I really do not like it. I like the endorphin rush and the time outdoors and ofcourse the joy of rubbing it in people's faces that before they even got out of bed this morning I put about 15kms behind me, but that's about it. Beyond that it's a lot of very sore knees (the last one of these had me so nearly debilitated I practically had to move to the livingroom because getting up the stairs was so painful), sprained ankles (have not recovered from the last type three sprain that left me on crutches for the two best weeks of July) and force feeding myself pasta and bread. (okay, that part is a lie; I love pasta and bread. I could live off of nothing but pasta and bread for the rest of eternity and be perfectly happy). The actual event is not that well put together either, really. For starters it's a loop. I absolutely loathe and despise a loop run. I mean as if running weren't tedious and painful enough without having to relive it. As well, the 1/2 starts at ten o'clock in the morning, meaning that the majority of people finish at noon. Noon. The absolute hottest part of the day. And you can be absolutely certain that up until race day the temperature will never have even broken 20 degrees, but on that Saturday the thermometer will soar to a record setting 31C meaning that during the second time around the loop you're leaping over corpses and vomit. It's very unpleasant.

Ofcourse running the race has it's upsides...there's um...some free bagels at the end (although they're not Montreal bagels, so I'll pass) and I think last year I got a T-shirt or a hat or something. There's that 'feeling of accomplishment' that people are always on about...although to be honest, coming in 2374th is not exactly my idea of a raving success. And since I have almost zero competitive instinct when it comes to these things, I take no pride in coming in ahead of 3627 other people...

Hmm..so to summarize, 1. am not fast. 2. don't actually like running. 3. am prone to injury. 4. don't enjoy the heat. 5. don't like bagels that aren't from Montreal.

Okay, so maybe I'll just go to the waterpark that day.

Star Wars Review

So I have finally seen Star Wars. Yes, the George Lucas film made before I was born. Up until today I had never seen it. This is what I can report. Princess hair-bun is up shit creek. The Nazis are about to blow up the universe. She needs Ben Cannoli to save her because he has the Reckoning or something. She sends the 1975 equivalent of a Facebook update pleading for his return. Luke Skywalker has some free time on his hands and wants to team up with Ben. (don't know why or how these two find each other...I think I was distracted by laundry or something at this part). They track down Harrison Ford who exploits the crap out of them for the use of his jet-thing. There is a golden gay robot and his fat little robot friend. There is a giant furry thing that I think is like a dog, but can walk upright. Together they form a posse and fly around in giant penis-jets until they finally hit the vagina of the giant white ship that the Nazi's have been floating around on. Harrison and Luke get a medal from hair-bun. Can't wait to see the sequel...I am predicting a love interest between Hair-bun and Luke.

The Embarassing Incident

A few of my closer friends have already heard this story...to them I apologize for the re-run.

I have to give directions to the widget store to two older gentlemen that I am working with.

I take out a piece of paper and my handy black Sharpie marker.

I draw two straight lines down the middle of the page to represent the street. I place an arrow at the top to show which direction they should be driving in.

At the bottom of the "street" I draw two circles to represent the cluster of hotels that they are familiar with.

I hand over the piece of paper and send them on their way.

This is what I give them:

By the time I realised what I had given them, it was too late.

I am sure Freud has some theories on this one...

The Eyebrow Post

So I had promised you a post about my eyebrow incident...Your agonizing wait is over. Yesterday I took a close up look at my face in the kids' bathroom. The kids' bathroom, in case this wasn't already made evident by the name, is not the same bathroom that the Zipper and I use. It has entirely different lighting, mirror positioning, wall color etc.... You wouldn't think this would make any difference, would you? Well, I am here to tell you, it does. If you, like I do, do most of your primping, pruning and applying in front of the same mirror all the time, the view in another mirror is alarmingly different. Take your rearview mirror for example. The next time you are in your car (not while driving), crank that mirror over and take a look. You will see hairs, pores, freckles that you didn't even know were there! It's a nightmare!! Anyhoo...I wasn't in the car, just the kids' bathroom. And what I saw was clearly my Scottish eyebrow heritage. (see Susan Boyle). I raced to my bathroom, got my trusted tweezers and went to work. Over the years I have tried many hair removing methods; I have had things waxed, shaved, tweezed, threaded, epilated and even electrocuted. Nothing works. It all grows back. In some cases with a vengeance unlike anything you have ever experienced. Sometimes less so. Either way, as a woman, this is a never ending daily maintenance program that I did NOT sign up for but am stuck with until I am in my eighties and hairy moles are overlooked and my appearance in a bikini will be (hopefully) less frequent. The thing is, I am not sure what all this hair is even for. I mean, I know that ear and nose hair is there to stop things from falling in {them} and I guess that the hair that is located, ahem, under a bathing suit, loosely serves the same purpose, but what is all the other hair for? It's not for cushioning against falls...I mean, have you ever fallen on your armpit? It's not for warmth...No one has ever claimed to have warmer feet because they have let their big-toe hair grow in...so why? Anyways, I did get my tweezers (which, you should know, are the one thing aside from my children that I will take with me when I have to evacuate my home in the middle of the night) and went to work on these stray hairs. For the time being, all is right with the world. But as any woman knows, these suckers grow back. In your sleep, on an overseas flight, underneath hats and bangs and scarves. If your eyesight is poor, you are one of the lucky ones. You can't see them, so it's like they're not there. But if you are like me and you have delectably perfect eyesight, then my only advice is to give in. Resign yourself to a lifetime of squinting, scrunching and tweezing. You'll feel better once you accept it. Oh, and keep a set of tweezers in the car.

No Password Required

There was an incident this morning involving my eyebrows. When it was happening, I was thinking, 'this is what my much starved readership needs to hear about...this is a perfect time to reactivate my blog'! And so I logged on...Logging on prompted the entry that you are about to read instead. I have about 412 opportunities in any given day to enter a password. I have passwords for banking, Facebook, email, wireless, MSN, my computer, my laptop, my cellphone, my Blockbuster account has one for God's sake! I can't even rent Pineapple Express without relaying my "top secret' codeword to the pimple-faced little weasel behind the desk at Blockbuster! On top of the myriad of passwords that either have to be numeric, letters (what is the opposite of numeric?), start or end with a capitol letter or some staggeringly annoying combination of the two, now there are these weird little puzzles that you have to decipher and retype in regular letters!! And quite frankly, they make me very nervous. I can't decipher them. The letters are all squished together...is that an L or an I or a 1?! ARGH!!! Now I have never, ever, boasted myself to be a computer-savvy person. My answer to every and all computer issues is to 'turn it off, wait ten seconds and turn it back on again' (which incidentally works more often than not), but I really, really, do not see the need for all these passwords and squishy-puzzle phrases. If some poor, pathetic sod had nothing better to do with their time but to crack the code to get into my laptop (I'll give you a clue, it's a four letter word embossed into the front and inside of my computer), maneuver the maze of prompts and icons to enable my wireless settings, crack that code (not a tricky one for anyone who knows me or has ten seconds to look around my kitchen which is where my LT lives most of the time) then find the Blogger page, repeat steps one through three again because by now Vista would have crashed and would have to start the whole bloody process over again) and so on and so on...would the task of having to retype that squishy letter/number sequence really stop them? If you are such a person and can be bothered to devote this much time to screwing with my life, please at least make it more interesting. Make me a size 4. Make my bra a size D. Make my postal code 90210 and give me a chalet in the Alps. Rack up my credit cards with cool stuff like Fleuvogs and iTunes downloads of cool music that I woudl never have heard of. After that, go nuts with the blog entries and the Facebooking... I'm pretty sure no on reads those anyways.