NOT FAIR

NOT TRUE

The test is rigged x a million because of the PERIODIC TABLE QUESTIONS.

It didn’t even ask me if I was learning how to bellydance, or whether I regularly make brownies, or do up butter chicken in my crockpot, or whether I happen to have 900 colours of lipgloss, or whether I once helped paint a friend’s nursery with underwater scenes - all of which are true, and highly non-nerdy.

Slander!!

Everyone can relax, I have a primary date (Paul Newman from ‘The Hustler‘) as well as a backup date (Mr. Dave ‘Sherritt’ Gordon) for Kelly’s wedding! And there wasn’t even any passive-aggressive waffling of the ‘Well I hate weddings but I’ll go if you really want me to.’ What a relief. It’s hard to spend social events with someone pouting so hard you keep tripping over his bottom lip. The only problem now is that the primary date happens to have four sisters and ‘as such’ refuses to be my wingman. (Me: “As such? As such? What the hell? You won’t back me up and help me find the few single guys who took friends instead of significant others?” Him: “Nope. And if anybody asks you to dance, I have to cross-examine him first.”) Stupid twazzcock. Anyway, if I can’t change his mind about that, Dave may have to be promoted to primary and the Hustler will have to be backup.

So, this past weekend was what I considered to be a success, as it involved a barbecue, an interview, free lunch, Long Island Iced Tea, and ponies (not in that order). Friday was the Sherritt interview (at which the main interviewer fudged me off at the end by saying ‘Well, I thought your interview was fine, but keep in mind we do have many excellent candidates,’ grrr), followed by lunch with Sherritt Gordon, and then Saturday the Hustler called to see if I wanted to go to lunch, which I OK’d. When he came to pick me up, though, he said, “I thought we could go to the Rainmaker Rodeo, since you said you’d never gone,” which is embarrassingly true - I guess I’m not a true Stalbertan - so, buoyed by the thoughts of corndogs for lunch and midway rides afterwards, I put my stamp of approval on that plan too. Note the clouds which seem to predict success for the meteorological ambitions of the rodeo.

One of his roommates was working at the beer gardens, so there were actually a couple of people we knew at the rodeo. We skipped the monster truck show, because how much fun can two trucks possibly be, and went to get good seats on the rodeo grandstand instead. And oh my God, there’s an event where little kids get into teams of three and have to get one of the kids onto the back of a tiny, adorable, bucking pony with the sweetest miniature neighs! I was all “Squeeee!” and the Hustler was like, “Hey! It’s not meant to be cute, it’s meant to be an adrenaline rush!”

As if. Check this out:

Awwww! There were also events where grown men got stomped into red strings by humungous walking steaks, but those failed to hold my attention the way the kids did. Maybe my biological clock is going off? After that, we got corndogs and a bucket of mini-donuts for lunch and went on a couple of rides (good combination, eh?) and played some games. Good times all around, see how the rodeo makes people happy:

Then we ended up going back to the Hustler’s house for a birthday barbecue, of which I did not get many photos because, annoyingly, I wasn’t allowed to do my usual ’sit around and look pretty whilst watching satellite television’ routine. I got conscripted into shopping (aarghhh) and then doing an Iron-Chef style team event wherein we assembled potato packets, smokies, steaks, porkchops, salad, and snacks at a speed so reckless that I seriously thought one of us was going to get stabbed while we ran around the kitchen. Word to the wise, if you don’t get home with groceries till 6:30, for God’s sake don’t tell people to start showing up at 7:30.

And then there were the usual beverages and cake and everybody’s teeth got stained blue from the frosting and then almost everyone left and I sneakily called a cab so that when the Hustler announced “Come in and help me load the dishwasher!” I was able to say, “Shorry, my cab ish here!” Muahahahaha. So bad I am. Though I admit I was feeling a little green around the gills on the bus ride home yesterday - probably as much from the beverages as the excessive food I consumed, plus three pieces of birthday cake.

How was your weekend? Tell me some stories! :-)

I have a favour to ask all y’all!

Well, sort of a proposition… and a favour.

But hear me out first!

First, going to weddings alone sucks, doesn’t it? Especially when you don’t know anyone except the bride or the groom.
I’ve gone to the last bunch alone. It is a pissy, pissy thing to be sitting there at a table of seven or nine strangers, with three or four other couples all turned to each other and talking to each other and dancing with each other. It’s like when you’re single at a wedding, you’re invisible! People wouldn’t even strike up a conversation with me at Wing’s wedding. And it’s tedious and sad, and there’s no one to talk to, you end up watching people’s hats and coats while they go pee or dance, you end up leaving early because it’s just too boring, and just blechhh. A room of hundreds and you just feel like the loneliest person in the universe.

Grim, eh?

So I’ve got this wedding in Edmonton on July 26th and I just said “FOCK EEET” and threw the reply card in the mail this morning with ‘Premee Mohamed + Guest’ marked. Now, I don’t want the guest to be my left hand with a couple of dots drawn on for eyes, OK?

I want a wedding date.

Boy or girl, dudn’t matter to me; single preferable, though if any married folks whose spouses are cool with it want to volunteer, that would be good too; own transportation not necessary though there should be lots of parking; this is a one-time gig since I’m not actually going to the other two weddings this summer.

WHAT YOU GET
- You don’t have to attend the ceremony!
- Plentiful - in fact, unlimited - girl (or boy) meeting opportunities!
- Delicious, delicious wedding food! At the Union Bank Inn, so you know it’s fancy!
- I’ll buy you two drinks!
- Possibility of a goodnight kiss! (Or - let’s be more realistic here - a slightly drunken goodnight grope)
- A chance to dress up and smell nice!
- Everybody loves a drunken Premee! (Plus, having a date there virtually guarantees that I won’t be a drunken mess by the end of the night and end up making out with a low-hanging chandelier!)
- It’ll be so good for your karma!

I’m cross-posting this to Facebook to increase the pool of candidates, but I’m really serious here. I put in my reply card already. Do you know what a reply card is? It’s like SIGNING OVER YOUR FIRSTBORN. It is CARVED IN STONE, man. I said I’d be bringing someone.

So, who’ll step up to the plate? Come on. If you were really my friend you’d volunteer. ;-)

Victoria! Canada’s great Mazatlan peninsula, home of the touristiest tourist traps in the country. At any rate, that was the mindset I got off the plane with, so the trip went just fine.

Practically the first thing I did was to drag my mother into the Victoria Bug Zoo, using the fairly simple logic that if she didn’t come with me she’d have to be (gasp!) alone for all of half an hour. Turned out I was glad that she’d come, because guess what? You can hold the bugs!! I had thought it was cool enough just going around photographing them in their little exhibits, but then the guide came by and said, “God, it’s so dead today. You want to hold any of the bugs?” (I responded to this with a girlish squeal that could probably be heard on the moon.)

Mom gamely photographed me holding some of the bugs, though a lot of the photos were blurred because she does kind of a weird thing when she presses down the shutter button and the camera usually follows a ‘U’ path before she gets the button all the way down.

Giant Stabbing Spike Insect From Australia: Hello I am bug.
Me: Hello!
Face-Munching Japanese Ninja Insect: Hello I am bug.
Me: Hello!
Thirteen-Inch Millipede: Hello I am bug.
Me: Hello!
Ridiculously Large Fuzzy Spider: Hello I am bug.
Me: Hello!
Enormous Prickly Thing With Face Like Alien from Men In Black: Hello I am bug.
Me: Hello!

(Two seconds after this photo was taken, the bug quite cheerfully took a junket up to my head and hung out there until the guide came back to pry him off. Mom was too busy going “Wow, look at that!” to either take a photo or get him off herself.)

Then, Mom much more willingly went to the Empress Hotel for afternoon tea. Apparently, the governor general was there having tea at the same time, but she had a private room (with a private band!) and we didn’t see her. I was too busy stuffing myself with tiny sandwiches and gourmet tea anyway.

The Royal BC Museum was pretty good, though I’m disappointed I didn’t get to see an IMAX film while I was there. (I think it was “Horrible Things From the Deep” or something like that.) Though, I did get to see my best friend’s mom in the gift shop. She caught me up on five years of gossip in something like ninety seconds, so I left her chatting with my mom while I canvassed the gift shop for souvenirs.

Humboldt Squid!!

We also went to the Butchart Gardens, though I couldn’t persuade Mom to go to the Butterfly Gardens nearby. No description of their shimmering loveliness and rare beauty could sway her steadfast determination to skip that particular tourist trap. “Oh, you’re from the tropics,” I said, fed up, “you probably saw all these butterflies every day.” “No,” she says, “I just don’t want to spend the twelve bucks.”

The Butchart Gardens were my favourite part of the trip and were almost as pretty as I remember them being as a kid, which is very impressive. (We were too early in the year for roses, though.) I took about a hundred photos between snatches of familiar dialogue:

Bee: Hello I am -
Me: AAAAAAAAAAA!!

(Naturally, the microsecond we left the gardens the sun came out. Grrr.)

We also did a harbour cruise on one of those little put-put ferries that goes about ten kph (Mom refused to even consider a whalewatching excursion). It wasn’t a bad way to spend an hour but I think we would have been better served by the butterfly gardens or the art gallery. Thank God I talked her out of the wax museum and Miniature World, anyway.

That thing is the Johnson Street Bridge, the raising and lowering of which is powered by a mere two 70-hp motors!

And that thing is the Gorge, where a lot of ocean has to fit through a very small space and the tidal action and the algae produces so much foam that sometimes the entire area is covered a couple of feet deep, apparently.

So yeah, fun trip; we did some shopping and went through Trounce Alley and Fan Tan Alley and bought tea at Silk Road and hung around in Market Square and Munro Books and ate approximately a metric ton of gelato. (Oh, and Mark, we also ate at Cafe Vieux Montreal twice. The herbed turkey sandwich is awesome. Why didn’t anyone tell me pea shoots were so delicious? I would now eat them on anything, up to and including lemon meringue pie.)

Anyway, the old lady is going in for major surgery on June 2nd, so if this happens to be my last trip with her I guess it’s a pretty good one; and I already know where I’m going to scatter her! We passed a sacred burial ground on the harbour cruise.

Me: If you die on the operating table, I’ll wrap your body in birchbark and put it out on that island.
Mom: What, and have those seagulls eating me? Absolutely not!
Me: What if I cremated you and scattered the ashes?
Mom: Well, that’s fine then. But isn’t it a sacred site?
Me: Yeah. Sacred for Indians.
Mom: But we’re not -
Me: Yes we are. Indians are Indians, don’t you worry.
Mom: Well if it doesn’t work out I’ll just come back and haunt you anyway.

Speaking of caterpillar shit, I’m headed to Victoria this Wednesday with my mother. Our last conversation didn’t bode at all well and went like this:

Me: “I marked up the AMA map with stuff we can do within walking distance of our hotel. The musem and art gallery are - ”

Mom: “Oh, I thought we could just sort of sleep in every day and do spa treatments for the rest of the day.”

Me: “For three days?!”

Mom: “Yes. Why, what did you have in mind?”

Me: “The Victoria Bug Zoo - ”

Mom: “Ugh. No. What do you think a vacation is for anyway?”

Apparently, it is for doing the exact same thing you’d do if you happened to have three days off at home. It appears I have been labouring under a misapprehension all my life.

Wish me luck.