There'll Be Swingin' Swayin' And Records Playin'

Day 13 of my month of photos:

The flash mob that dominated Robson Street this afternoon.

Turtle dancing her arse off in the flash mob that dominated Robson Street this afternoon.

Nailed it!

Just Beat It Beat It Beat It Beat It No One Wants To Be Defeated - Take 10

So I'm all caught up on the road trip shenanigans and I haven't faffed in a while. Let's faff, shall we? We'll call this one Friday Faff: The Catch Up Edition.

* * * * *

The puppies came home the day after we arrived home from the road trip. They had been separated for a week (our families can only handle one pup each. Amateurs!) We brought Stella home first and it was adorable / heartbreaking to watch her race around the condo looking for Wolfgang. I have never seen the puppies so happy as they were when we reunited them. They practically vibrated with joy.

Wolfgang has become a bit clingy since we've been home. We've started calling him the stage five clinger (which is only funny if you've seen Wedding Crashers and if you haven't seen Wedding Crashers you probably should because it is hilarious.) He follows me from room to room, not letting me out of his sight. He has started jumping into my lap if I'm sitting at the kitchen table (which is impressive because our table is bar-height so it's quite the leap for him.) I got out of the shower yesterday and saw tiny little Wolfgang paws reaching under the bathroom door. It's funny but on the brink of becoming very annoying.

* * * * *

Turtle made me a chocolate / beet cake for my birthday. I don't have any pictures to prove it but I totally ate a giant slice of it and it's counting for my October beets. Chocolate / beet cake is not awesome (sorry, lady) because once someone tells you that it's beet cake you can totally taste the beets, but it's not as gross as it sounds. You wouldn't know about the beets if you weren't told.

* * * * *

I went out last Friday for some birthday shenanigans. Cat's birthday is the date after mine so we gathered a group of friends and went out for a civilized dinner. Which quickly turned into a not-so-civilized dinner when the pub we wanted to go to was full (a pub where I would have been drinking pumpkin beer, which means that I would have had 2 drinks because I can only manage to drink 2 pints of pumpkin beer and then I'm over it) and we ended up at a restaurant we'd never been to before and they had pitchers of cocktails on special and they had a special Pimm's cocktail on the menu and I love Pimm's and then someone started buying tequila shots. My head was very hurty the next morning. It was big fun, though. If you can't act like a drunken ass on your birthday, when can you act like a drunken ass?

* * * * *

Last weekend was birthday shenanigans and two family dinners to make up for missing Thanksgiving while we were road tripping and a massive hangover and puppy love. This weekend will be vacuuming and homework and cleaning out my closet to donate old clothes. The old lady in me is really looking forward to it.

Have a great weekend, peeps! See you Monday.

Gimme Ice Cream On My Birthday

Happy Birthday, Turtle!


Thank you for being the calm to my storm.
Thank you for understanding my crazy.
Thank you for setting such a good example.
Thank you for teaching me about good chocolate.
Thank you for being such a good sister.
Thank you for turning 29 first.

All Roads Lead Toward The Same Blocked Intersection

My sister Turtle is the smartest person I know. Not only is she smart, she's incredibly motivated and dedicated to her education. Today she is in Ottawa, defending her thesis. She's been working on her Master's Degree for 3 years and it all comes down to today. I am so proud of her. Turtle, if you're reading this, stop slacking off and start preparing for your presentation. Ha, I kid. Good luck today, lady. You rock. Call me when you're finished. I promise I won't screen your call like I did last night (I thought it was Mom & Dad calling.)

In other Turtle-related happenings, I have finally decided that I like The Mountain Goats. Turtle kept telling me to pick up their album but I resisted. I tend to give her no credit when it comes to music choices due to her love for The Weakerthans. I know I might get kicked out of Canada for admitting this, but I do not love The Weakerthans. I've never been able to get into them. Anyway, I picked up The Mountain Goats' album 'Heretic Pride' and it's pretty good. I have no idea how to describe it. Folk-rock? The lyrics are clever and sweet and make me want to listen closely so I don't miss something. The only negative thing I have to say about it is that I haven't been able to listen to the whole cd straight through. It's an album best enjoyed on random, interspersed with songs of other genres (in my opinion.)

S was really down this morning because it's his last day of being 29. He told me I have to "be extra nice to him today." I'm hoping that by "be extra nice" he means "go to Kristy's house to eat mac&cheese, drink vodka cocktails and watch the finale of America's Next Top Model."

It's A Jam For The Ladies And The Superstars

Remember last week when I was all "we are going to work Stella's ass off this week with the puppy school homework and next week she is going to be the puppy school star"? Well. Tonight we have puppy school. Have we worked on the puppy school homework yet? Not so much. (And by "not so much" I mean not at all.) Clearly tonight is not going to go as well as we'd hoped. Our plan of attack is to exhaust Stella at the dog park before class.

Also last week, I wrote about Westy's team being up 2-0 in their playoff series. I didn't want to make any predictions, lest I jinx it again. I'm happy to report that they pulled off a 4-0 sweep of Westside and have moved onto the finals. Games 1 & 2 will be played on Friday and Saturday in Penticton. I'm being a bad sister and not driving up to watch - the soul-sucking English course is kind of kicking my ass right now and I need to complete it. I write the exam in a month and then I can forget it ever existed.

We're coming up on the 4-month mark in the countdown to the wedding. I am less stressy this month than last month. Last month I was suffering from a touch of Crazy. We haven't accomplished much in the last month but I'm surprisingly okay with it. I'm not sure if it's me being zen or me being in denial. Either way I'm happy to not be hyperventilating about the wedding (anymore.)

I was having a lot of angst over our wedding favours. I like the idea of giving each guest a token of our appreciation. I don't like the idea of buying a bunch of crap in bulk and having 100 coasters (or keychains or candles, etc.) left over at the end of the night. I wanted the tokens to be something consumable but with more thought involved than chocolates (not that there's anything wrong with chocolates - I just wanted the favours to be homemade and there's no way I'd be able to make chocolates. Also, the wedding is in August and I'm pretty sure if we had chocolate favours they'd melt.) So after much deliberation with Turtle (who has been beyond patient with me through this wedding planning process - lady, you rock!) I decided on jam. We're going to make small pots of jam for each guest to take home. I love this idea for a couple of reasons. First of all, Turtle and Bow have both already volunteered their jam-making skills. Secondly, we can make the jam well in advance and keep it in my mom's pantry (this is assuming I can get myself organized.) Thirdly, we can make cheesy labels that say "Thanks for Jamming with us!" (S is a musician and a lot of his friends are musicians so a portion of the reception will be all the musicians jamming on stage.)

So does anyone have any fabulous jam recipes they'd like to share? I've been searching online but haven't found anything that really jumped out at me. Most of the recipes I've found have flavoured gelatin in them (I'm assuming they mean Jello.) I'd prefer recipes that are just fruit, sugar and pectin (and I think lemon juice is a key jam ingredient but I'm not sure.) I've only ever made freezer jam before; this is my first foray into the canning world. I really hope I don't give all the guests botulism.

Shame, Shame, Shame On You Babe

Not only have I become someone who talks about her puppy nonstop, I have also become someone who plays dress-up with her pet.

*sigh*

I'm not proud.

Please note the brow, furrowed in shame.


However, I am proud of Turtle and her mad crocheting skills. That's what crazy aunties are for - making us ugly sweaters that we don't want to wear.

I Got You Babe

All of our crap is now in the new place. I say crap because that's what it is. We have so. much. crap. I didn't realize how much crap we own until we had to move it all. Time constraints prevented us from sorting through the crap and getting rid of it, so we now have a nice shiny new condo full of crap. Crap that we don't need. Crap that we don't use. Want crap? We've got it.

Enough complaining - I am so happy to be out of our old apartment. I hated the transition of being in 2 places. It was too hard to keep track of the crap :)

My older sister and her boyfriend (partner? life-y? chosen one? Turtle, help me out here) are the lovely people who made our move successful. I did not realize how disorganized and behind we were until they swooped in with their magical moving powers and saved the day. It helps that they've moved about 50 times in the last 10 years. They are professionals. Usually I am the organized one (and by "organized" I mean "bossy") so it felt a bit strange to hand the reins over. I got over that quickly though, when I realized that someone else was doing all the work. It was fabulous. So T&T, thank you from the bottom of my disorganized, crap-collecting heart.