Beer And Waffles

New Zealand

2010-09-28T08:45:00.011+01:00

Alright my peeps, here is the definitive New Zealand entry.

Definitive for two reasons.

1. Firstly because I'm actually typing this 48 hours before we get on a plane and return to Canada where the daily grind of my soul-sucking job in a windowless cubicle will drain away my will to live as well as my desire to blog, so I know that I must publish this before I get on that Air New Zealand flight.

2. There really aren't that many photos to show. We've, ah, had some camera troubles. Leaving aside our usual ineptitude -- poorly taken shots, pictures concentrating on the cuteness of our baby over actual scenery, the constant forgetting to bring/charge/take out the camera... New Zealand has also brought fresh challenges.

When we landed in Christchurch we took some lovely photos of the Botanical Gardens and the earthquake ravaged city. Then we got on a train and took day trip into the New Zealand's Southern Alps, home of some of the most jaw droppingly gorgeous mountain scenery you've ever seen. Seriously snow capped mountains, stunning lakes, gorgeous gorges. Violet was also extremely cute on the train doing all sorts of smiling and finger sucking. Also, it's possible that either Andrew or myself fell asleep for a short spell and the other person took embarrassing, slack jawed, drool-ridden photos of the other.

I am describing these photos,because, in true Amy and Andy fashion we lost our camera. This is, of course, reminiscent of the Normandy incident...

We then spent two days wondering what we should do... We were pretty sure we'd left it at the hotel, so we sent them an email. In the meantime, do we replace the camera at a cost of $100? What if the Ibis returns one of our emails and tells us that it's located our camera? Then we'd have two cameras, which seems ridiculous for a couple who spent 2.5 years in Europe, including a photo safari in Africa, and has a total of 10 photos that aren't blurry or just stupid shots of one another's dumb hair, inadvertent matching outfits or general tomfoolery.

During those two days we drove north from Christchurch in our campervan and stayed on the coast in Kaikoura. There we saw more insanely gorgeous scenery -- imagine giant mountains ending dramatically in the South Pacific (we have to imagine it, because we have no photos) and huge male fur seals so close you could club them (ha ha, little Canadian humour for the international readership -- you two know who you are... we'd never want to club adult seals... only the babies...). We also visited the Brancott Estate winery... more mental photos were taken there, though, frankly, after the tour, those mental shots are quite fuzzy.

From Bleinham and the wineries we moved on to the fabulous Abel Tasman National park. Golden sands overlooking turquoise water, lush rainforest, incredible hiking track. There, it was so effing pretty we caved and bought another camera... Of course, that afternoon we got an email from the Ibis in Christchurch telling us they'd found our camera...

What's important though, is that we now have photos of our trip:

Let's start with the campervan, because yes, yes New Zealand is the most beautiful place I've ever been to. Yes there are seals, and whales and sheep at every turn, and yes the people do have a certain Hobbit-esque quality to them that is one part magical and one part furry, but what has been consuming me about this entire journey was our plan to spend 7 nights in a campervan.

I am not a fan of camping... the bugs, the uncomfortable sleeping, the possibility of being eaten by a bear, mauled by a raccoon, or coming across some sort of bird. When I do camp in Canada it is car camping, which means that I can always crawl into the car and lock all of the doors if a bear attacks, it starts to rain or Andy snores.

Andrew used my slight partiality to car camping to sell me on the campervan... It would be like car camping except LUXURIOUS... We'd have an actual bed and a stove and a fridge too! The advantage of doing it was that it would save us a ton of money, which since the unfortunate unmasking of Dr Paul Ettlinger we were in need of to swing this vakay, and it would also allow us to do what the Kiwis do... apparently they are GAGA for camper-vanning and the whole country is set up to cater to them.

The long and the short of it is that I signed on to the campervan and we headed out of Christchurch to pick our bad boy up.

My first reaction was that it was very small. Many times in this blog I have mentioned my childhood spent in the beloved Econoline van, which was used to transport the horde of Tectors over the Townships hills. Well, our campervan, which I was expected to live in for 8 days, was SMALLER than the Econoline. Sure it had a roof that popped up, but even then, the pop immediately sloped, and couldn't really conceal the fact that we were going to be living in a van.

My man and my van.

Despite the smallness of the van I was quite excited. We had a teeny tiny stove and a teeny tiny fridge (unfortunately not stocked with those teeny tiny bottles of liquor that hotels give you) and three plates, three forks, three bowls and three mugs. We had a bed that somehow magically folded up into a back seat and a front seat that swivelled around and many secret little drawers and cupboards ingeniously hidden to maximize space. It was like I was living inside Barbie's Dream House (not that I was every allowed Barbie's Dream House, or any other Barbie "extra." With 4 girls my parents caved under the estrogen pressure and bought us Barbies but we were only allowed to have what the Barbies came with in their boxes -- no dream houses, no Kens, no cool cars, or ponies and no extra clothes -- my Barbies often wore Kleenex as dresses).

I digress.

Here's an interior shot of the van, in all its popped up glory:

Every little thing had its own little place and you had to stow everthing away in its proper little house before you could pack up and move on, otherwise your bag with the laptop in it might come crashing down on top of your tiny little baby.

A very bad and uninformative shot of the van's interior. I'm not Ansel Adams, people.

Of course, anyone who knows Andrew and I knows that storing every little thing in its proper little place is not our forte. In fact, such behaviour is our Achilles Heel. We are a messy, messy people and the campervan soon lost its magical, Barbie Dream House feel, and took on more of a Barbie's Dream Dump look.

Here is a shot proving that we have given up. (It's probably Day Two). Rather than feed Violet with a spoon, we are squirting food directly into her mouth. Also, please note that Violet is sitting on the campervan floor, on the turned over tabletop, which we could no longer be bothered to actually put together. Instead we lived like hobos in our van, which we parked down by the river...

You know what, though? I actually enjoyed the campervan (or so i claim, from the comfort of my heated, TV'd, walled, hotel room in Auckland). It allowed us to see a ton of the country and it was actually fun making do all together as a family.

We'd get Violet up in the morning from her little sleeping tent in the front an then hang out in bed with her:

The kid excels at bed head.

The family Hortec on a swing bridge.

This boat, which we took to go hiking in Abel Tasman was also the sight of a momentous discovery...

No, not that Violet's head might actually be the same size of mine, but that that big melon of hers is actually sprouting her first two teeth! Very exciting, and it also explained her grumpiness. Turns out that Violet WASN'T annoyed about being dragged halfway around the world and put to bed every night in the front seat of a van, but was just (finally) growing a few chompers. Hurray!

Stock crossing near Picton. Leaping cows!

Beautiful lagoon spotted on an Abel Tasman hike. Quite, quite sublime. All it needed was Brooke Shields' curly, golden haired dreamboat to make it all perfect.

Violet, uninterested in the majesty of Arthur's Pass, the stunning vistas of the Abel Tasman Park, the thrill of the ferry crossing the Cook Strait, the exhibits at Wellington's Te Paua Museum, the art deco buildings in Napier, the geothermals wonders of Rotarua, the Maori dancing or stunning ocean views... Her highlight will be her reflection in the campervan side mirror.

Andy has refused to shave or cut his hair over this vacation. At first I enjoyed his scruffyness, but it has started to wear on me. He has begun to look like Grizzly Adams or the kind of guy who kidnaps young Mormon girls for years at a time and likes to be referred to as "the Prophet." Or actually, he now bears a startling resemblance to Peter, the creepy koala guy from Raymond Island.

Haka Falls, a very impressive torrential river.

Violet less interested in the falls than in banging the information panel:

These falls are significant, because despite having another 5 days to our fabulous vacation wherein we saw truly stunning geothermal scenery in Rorutua, including bright yellow sulfur lakes and huge spouting geysers and amazing Maori dance and song performances, this is the last of our photos. Yup, while our left-behind-at-the Ibis camera was being mailed back to Canada, the emergency camera we'd bought on the South Island crapped out on us and died. Really, though, this time it wasn't our fault (although in retrospect, giving it to Violet to play with might not have been the best idea).

La la.

That's the blog until next time.

Thanks for reading, dudes!

Maggy

2010-09-26T11:12:00.000+01:00

Magnetic Island, "Maggy" to the locals, was our last stop in our Aussie adventure.

It's up along the north east coast of Oz, just off Townsville and just a skip away from the Great Barrier Reef. I think it's a bit like the Florida of Australia -- easy to get to, guaranteed good weather, and quite touristy. Anyway, thanks once again to Nan Nan (who rejoined us from Sydney for the week) we scored a sweet condo deal and ended up hanging out in an infinity pool overlooking the Coral Sea.

There was a better shot, where Violet's arm wasn't obscuring Andrew's face, but I didn't look good, so it obviously wasn't really an option. If Andy wants decent photos of himself on this damn blog, he should do the damn blogging.

Just so you don't think I'm totally vain, here's a picture that Andrew took of me. I like to think of myself as just looking wonderfully relaxed here:

the sad truth though, is that I actually kind of look like an Eric Stoltz character, and I'm not talking about his romantic and sensitive role as Keith in Some Kind Of Wonderful:
http://www.pauldavidson.net/wp-content/themes/wfme/images/entries/ericmask.jpg

This is where we stayed. Kind of a lousy picture:

It had a great view of the bay where the ferry came in, and we spent a lot of the week pointing out the ferry to Violet, who really could not have cared less about the boat, and just wanted to spend some quality time sucking on the remote control.

It was a huge relief to actually arrive at Magnetic Island because the schlepping around Victoria in the car, with the buckling and unbuckling the baby into the car seat, into her stroller, into the giant backpack, out of the backpack, into the car seat, out of the stroller, make up her bed, undo her bed, really got tired. Not to mention the Herculean lugging of the two full backpacks, two rolly suitcases, car seat, carrier back pack, stroller, and bed from the shuttle bus,through the airport, from the airport to the hotel, from the hotel to the ferry and then up to the condo, was also intensely annoying.

Or at least, that's what Andy tells me. All I had to do was carry Violet... Have I mentioned that I had hurt my shoulder?

All that was forgotten (by me, anyway) once we got there Andy and Vi chillaxing on Geoffrey Bay, which was our closest beach:

When we weren't poolside or beachside, we were hiking in the very hilly interior.

Andy looking intrepid:

Violet looking cute -- even the beads of sweat on her forehead are adorable!

This picture is for Amanda, who commented on how impressed she was with our photo taking this trip. This is a picture of Violet. She is in the shot... but it's kind of a where's Waldo...

We rented a car one day and drove to the other end of the island (15 km away) to see the sunset.

We also went one day to feed the rock wallabies who have grown quite tame and hop out of the rocks to eat carrots.

There was a weird local there, offering tourists bits of bread to give to the little wallabies. After our experience with Peter, the potential skin flayer from Raymond Island, I was wary, but Andy was all about getting up in the wallabies' business with Violet, so he let the disheveled, shoeless man give him food for the animals. It all worked out okay and there was no flay-age, so obviously I should be more trusting of these odd Aussies.

Swimming with the baby:

If you notice that this picture looks a little dusky, it's because it is (dusk that is). We did a lot of our activities after 3pm when the oppressive heat was less oppressing. We are a freckled, pasty skinned family and like Edward, Lestat and Spike we avoid the sun.

There are beautiful birds all over the place.

This photo is actually taken with as much telescoping as our crappy little camera could afford, because while Andrew and Violet might be willing to risk getting pecked,clawed or swooped at by a bird, I was staying as far away as the camera would allow.

One glorious day my mum babysat and Andrew and I took a boat out to the Barrier Reef for some snorkeling.

There we are en-snorkled.

The water was incredibly clear and blue. We swam after a sea turtle -- harder than it sounds, for reals, those turtles are fast little swimmers.

Andy all wet-suited.

Mrrrow, ladies. He's all mine!

That's it for Australia, suckers! Next stop, New Zealand. The blog posts will be abbreviated, because , ahem, we might have lost the camera... La la.

Marvellous Melbourne!

2010-09-23T07:37:00.000+01:00

... Or is it Magnificent Melbourne?

The city has a catchy catchphrase, but obviously not that catchy, because only a week after leaving it, I can't remember what it was.

Anyhoots, while I wouldn't qualify Melbourne as either Marvellous or Magnificent, it is still quite a fun city.

To wit:

This is a large fish sculpture for no reason at all.

Notice the street sign?

The Dame is a Melburnian -- or a Melburgian -- or a Melbon. I don't really know. What is important in this picture is that Andrew had a rare fit of vanity when he saw it, and claimed that I made him look like Frankenstein, because I cut off his arms. Ha ha.

He had no problem with this one, though:

This is, obvs, ABBA World.

I don't know what goes on in there, or what its connection is with Melbeegians, because it was TWENTY FIVE dollars to get in, and I was not willing to shell out that kind of coin, even to spend an hour in the company of my beloved ABBA, or a few display cases of their outfits. I mean, I've seen Mamma Mia, the musical three times and Bjorn Again twice, but at least in those venues there is the possibility, however faint, that Bjorn and Benny are actually secretly in the audience, waiting to find their greatest fan and ask her, despite her huge lack of musical or dancing abilities, to join them in a reformed ABBA that will tour the world and take the music world by a STORM.

Moving along to Andy being eaten by a large monster:

Australia has the most dangerous/venomous/poisonous/stinging/man-eating things of anywhere else on earth. I'm not actually sure if that last sentence is true, but if you're reading this blog for anything remotely factual, you're in the wrong place. What I do know is that there are lots of things --including jelly fish! -- that can kill you here. The Melberites seem to want to celebrate this fact by having pretend animals leap out of their buildings and try to eat passerbys.

I enjoy this sculpture:

... because it reminded me of Brussels' peeing dog sculpture (which goes with the peeing boy and the uber creepy peeing girl sculptures that they have there).

Andy obviously took this picture:

It is significant because he captured the moment where I tried to shift my purse from my bum shoulder to my left, but I got quite muddled about how to do it, and instead ended up putting the purse around my entire body where it slid down my body in the middle of a busy Melbatian intersection. Yes, I lasso'd myself like a calf at the Calgary Stampede. I acknowledge that this was not my most shining moment.

What was worse, though is that instead of choosing to help his injured and be-muddled wife, Andrew dug around in his pockets, located the camera, withdrew it, aimed and took this photo. Wanker.

This photo, is quite crappy and uninteresting until you know that this is literally the first time that Violet has every voluntarily put food in her mouth. That's right, the child was almost 10 months old before she realised that she could bring something to her mouth (such as food) in order to feed herself.

Revel in the moment, people... We certainly did. We probabably took 12 photos of Violet desperately trying to stuff Turkish flat bread into her mouth at this Melburtian restaurant... Mostly she missed.

The idea that a child of mine was not good at eating, has certainly been perplexing. When she had her 9 month check up with the doctor I told him about how she never, ever, ever put ANYTHING in her mouth. He looked at me quizzically, questioned me closely and then declared that it was "One of the weirdest things I'd ever heard." That sentence isn't exactly comforting for a first time mother to hear. Oh well, Violet is weird no longer, because in true Tector-form (sorry Horralls, eating a lot and yell-talking are two places where the Tector genes will triumph) the kid can eat now.

Caves, Koalas and Waterfalls too!

2010-09-19T01:12:00.007+01:00

So, after extending our stay by one more night on that magical island -- who wouldn't really? -- we hit the road again. We headed south, hugging the coastline and cruising down southern New South Wales to Victoria, Australia's smallest and most densely populated state. Although, having lived in Belgium, one of Europe's smallest and most densely populated countries, I can tell you that "densely populated" is relative. There was hardly any traffic, tiny little towns next to vast, empty beaches, more kangaroos than people on the golf courses and chatty, relaxed Aussies, as opposed to angry, uptight Belgians. Since we're in the depths of "winter" all of these holiday resorts were practically deserted and we didn't have any trouble finding accommodation.

We didn't actually stay here, of course:

This is in Buchan and is an insane series of gorgeous caves filled with stalagmites and stalagtites (I've forgotten which is which, now) and also, apparently, Horralls.

We stopped in at Raymond Island, which is a tiny little speck only 5 minutes via ferry from the coast. It is famous for its Koalas -- which are super easy to spot:

When we got off the little ferry that brought us to Raymond Island, a burly, bearded man who was walking his dogs approached us and asked if we were looking for the koalas -- with Violet in the giant MEC backpack and our cameras and maps, we were obviously not local.

We told the guy we were and he said he'd show us where they were. Both Andy and I assumed that he'd just sort of point out where to go, but it turns out that Peter had other ideas. First he brought us to his house. He had something in his shed that he wanted to show us. At this point I whispered nervously to Andrew that we might be about to die.

I looked around, though, and there were lots of neighbours looking at us as we went into Peter's shed, so I assumed that he wasn't going to lock us in a pit he'd dug especially for Canadian tourists and their adorable babies. Not unless the ENTIRE ISLAND was in it, a la that movie set off the coast of the UK that was made in the 70s and that they recently remade with someone, possibly Nicolas Cage? -- The Burning Man? Something like that. Anyway, the original was very scary, mostly for the bad British teeth on view, and I don't think I saw the Nicolas Cage remake because of my anti-hairpiece policy.

Off topic!

Anyhoots, Peter didn't kill us.

He showed us his model train set, and sent all of the engines zipping around the tiny little village. I made sure to stay near the door, ready to bolt and abandon both Andrew and Violet if the man turned psycho. Instead he just turned boring, and droned on and on about the trains. Finally, I made enough, "Well, we've got to be going" noises and edged close enough to the door to get out of the shed. I thought we'd be rid of Peter then, but apparently when he said he'd show us the koalas, he meant that he would show us the koalas, each and every one.

Turns out Peter, who doesn't like environmentalists, the government, stupid people, slow people, non-train-loving-people, Americans and vegetarians, does love travelers and enjoys showing them the koalas in his neighbourhood and regaling them with somewhat dubious "facts" about the animals... and also trains.

Anyway, we got away from Peter without being murdered for our supple, freckly skins and returned to the mainland. Andy was very upset that Violet slept through the entire koala-sightings, but really, we're doing this trip for ourselves, not her. I mean, she's not going to remember anything. What's more, if we were doing a trip for Violet, we would have stayed home and made sure she got to see (in decreasing order of importance):

４. Other Babies
３. Girls between the ages of 4-9
２. Dogs
and most importantly,
1. Her own reflection.

When she sees one of those things (but especially the little girl who follows her around all over the place) she shrieks with joy and quivers all over -- any other thing -- The Great Barrier Reef, cockatoos, the International Date Line, her beloved grandmother -- occasion nothing more than a bemused stare and her deciding to eat her fingers. So, really, despite us showing Violet some amazing things in her young life, her most treasured memory is probably that time in the Super Saver parking lot where she spotted a dog in a car and then got a glimpse of herself in the car's mirror.

Eventually we wound up on the beginning of the Great Ocean Road, which, even despite the rain is quite great:

Lighthouses --

-- I'd like to pretend the raindrops were on purpose, but who's kidding who?

Possibly the best picture ever:

A big rock thing. The 12 Apostles (now 10 due to erosion) are THE thing to see on the Great Ocean Road, but due to an ill-advised trip to the Mornington Peninsula and their confusing roundabouts (see last post) we didn't have time to do the whole road and see the 10 big rocks standing the surf. Anyway, this one, near Lorne, is sort of a mini-12 Apostles (now 10) so we settled for it:

I enjoy this picture for the very amy-esque face that Andy is making.

This was the fab placed we stayed in Lorne.It was actually just a couple of rooms attached to a family's home. It turned out that the very friendly owner was VERY friendly, and as well as giving us tips in what restaurants to eat at, left her to kids with us for long periods of time while she cooked dinner, had glasses of wine, etc. It was mostly okay, the boys loved playing with Violet, but babysitting two other little kids is not exactly how I had envisaged my last days of mat leave. Oh well, the lady put chocolates on our pillows and for that I can forgive a lot.

HorTecs in action:

Waterfall at the end of a hike:

The Coast Part 1

2010-09-17T13:44:00.002+01:00

After Canberra (let us speak no more of it) we headed over the Dividing Range and down to the NSW South Coast. Our plan was to slowly make our way to Melbourne, stopping in any little towns that appealed to us. Before we started that, however, we enjoyed one more insanely hospitable stay with one of my mum's friends. This was the guest "cottage" which we had all to ourselves:

On our first night there, Andy and I sat on the veranda with beers as the sun set and listened to the kookaburras go to bed.

The next morning we got up and spent two hours thoroughly exploring the grounds of the estate we were staying at:

Dairy cows, pelicans, kangaroos, cockatoos, kookaburras, parrots, horses. It's a very spectacular spot.

Oh, yes, and emus too...

And did I mention the runway they built so their PRIVATE PLANE could land?! Berserk!

Here's the runway:

And here comes the plane:

La, la...standing on the runway watching this thing land is as close as I'm ever going to come to the jet set...

That's okay, though, because my little girl has discovered peekaboo on this trip and she's pretty thrilled abut it:

Because of my dislocated shoulder, I have been unable to do any of the driving. This has put me into the navigator position, which apart from one particularly tense marital moment in the pounding rain when we got trapped in a roundabout on the Mornington Peninsula, has been very stress free. In fact, my wounded shoulder has meant that I haven't had to tie my own shoes, change poopy diapers or carry anything -- almost makes it worth it, really.

On the road!

2010-09-10T00:12:00.000+01:00

Eventually we left our fantastic digs on Sydney Harbour and hit the road. We didn't go very far, though. The advantage of travelling with Nan Nan is that we get to cash in on all of her friends' fabulous homes. Our first stop was therefore up the coast to Palm Beach. Mum's friend has a house with a seriously primo location. The view from the balcony, if you please:

Andy and I took advantage of the Nan Nan babysitting services and went for a hike up to the Barranjoey lighthouse, which you can spot from Anne's house. Here we are on the opposite headland from where we are staying. If I knew anything about the geography of the place, and had taken a decent picture, I could point out the house we were in, but I don't and I can't. I can tell you that I had quite a scrumptious chicken wrap after this hike on the way back to the house. Wraps are easy to eat one-handed.

I also enjoy how Andrew's got the Jennifer Aniston starlet one-leg-in-front-of-the- other pose going on here, not that my lanky man needs to try to look skinny.

Here is Anne's lovely interior. A very easy place to chill out. I will remember it fondly when I am freezing in a cramped and stinky campervan in some earthquake ravaged spot in New Zealand as my 10 month old decides to sprout her first tooth, or something equally as horrifying.

Not a travel picture, I know, but COME ON!

Eventually we tore ourselves away from the fantastic hospitality and babysitting provisions of my mum and all of her friends, and hit the road.

We picked up our rental car in King's Cross. I had requested the smallest and therefore cheapest car they had, but the Avis dude took one look at the insanely huge amount of crap we were carting around with us, and said, "I think you need a bigger car."

Fair enough.

First stop in our wrong-side-of-the-road, wombats-as-roadkill, roundabout-laden odyssey was Canberra, Australia's capital. I had been before when I was in my early 20s. I remembered a dirty hostel, going to see an old movie at a repertory house and being pretty unimpressed. This time we stayed in a clean hotel and I was carting around two Horralls, but I was still unimpressed.

Canberra is a planned city, which sprouted out of bush only in the 1950s. It's definitely got a "Car is King" vibe, because Andy, Violet and I nearly died from exhaustion, blisters (me), fatigue-induced crankiness (me again) and extreme hunger by the time we had walked to the Australian war museum, seen here in the distance:

and then walked the wrong way in an effort to cross the bridge to get to the Parliament buildings. Even though we could see them, and they were RIGHT there, they are inconveniently located on some sort of irritating man-made peninusula thing with only two bridges connecting them. One of the bridges (the one we picked, obvs) was under construction, and although we could see that the bridge itself had a sidewalk, there were no actual sidewalks, or crossing points over the 6 lane ring road thingee to get to it. All in all, by the time we showed up at the National Gallery and ordered emergency lamb pies and restorative side orders of french fries, we were fed up and cranky.

The other weird thing about Canberra is that there didn't seem to be any people around (probably because it's so pedestrian unfriendly, but possibly because it's a city of zombies, sort of the way Almont is a village of vampires --seriously, no one with a pulse lives in Almont).

We didn't even bother with the parliament buildings at that point, but gave up and slunk back to our hotel to collapse. We DROVE there the next day, but really, by that point I was fed up with Canberra and pretty profoundly uninterested in what the Parliament buildings had to offer -- lots of portraits of white men and some boring panels on Australia's constitution, which somehow manages to be MORE BORING than Canadian constitutional history. At least we have the linguistic divide to spice things up.

This was even though there is an actual drama going on in Aussie politics at the moment, like Britain, they've got themselves a hung parliament and the incumbant Labour leader who is a woman (aka a Sheila) has to woo these three crazy independent MPs who seem to be later day Crocodile Dundees into joining her party so she can form a government. One of them might be genuinely certifiable, but at least he provides funny radio clips railing against the evils of the media.

All in all, Canberra gave me a renewed appreciation for Ottawa as a capital city. Ottawa may be full of Ottaweenians and it may have a reputation for dullness, but it's actually quite vibrant and it not only has sidewalks, but actual walking paths.

Surfing Accidents

2010-09-05T09:35:00.000+01:00

The only definite plan I had about our time in Sydney was to take surfing lessons. My reasoning was simple:

My mum was around for this portion of the trip to babysit.

Both Andy and I had visited Sydney before and didn't have a ton of “must-sees” to fulfil, so a few mornings of surfing would be a great way to spend some time.

I love swimming, but it is wintery in Sydney (well,”wintery” is relative. It gets up to 20 degrees at mid-day, but there is a “cold” wind straight from Antarctica if you believe Sydneysiders. The weather men even give “wind chills” for the Aussies to take into account when they're getting dressed in the morning. As in, “it's 15 degrees, but with the windchill, it's really 12 degrees.” Andy and I both laughed out loud when we first heard these dire forecasts.

They all – from the dude driving the ferry to my 20-something cousin-- talk longingly of Spring being just around the corner. If I can digress even further within my own digression, and I don't see why I can't – the newspaper the other day actually had a whole article about how Australia is oppressed by European-style seasons and the author was advocating doing away with the traditional Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and introducing “Springter”, which would cover that inbetween Winter and Spring period that we're in right now.

If we're introducing new seasons, I think Ottawa could use some. What about “Sweatmer” when summer stops being a pleasantly warm interlude with an increase in bbq'ing, wasps and flowers and becomes a revoltingly humid perspiration-fest on par with the Equatorial rain forests of New Guinea. We could also have Seatsalinter, which is that week in February where we all desperately start scouring the internet for a seat sale anywhere warm – Pakistani Foothills, Guantanamo Bay, it doesn't matter as long as the sun is bloody well shining.)

Ahem, where was I?

Oh yes, my other reason for doing a surfing lesson was the (relatively) cold weather in Sydney and my love of the water. A lesson would give me the perfect excuse (and full wet suit) to play around in the water for two hours.

On our way to Manly Beach on the ferry Andy and I were giddy – partly with excitement, but partly with sleep deprivation. Jet leg and a nine month old had combined into an exciting new schedule that saw us go to sleep at 8 pm just in time to get up at 4 am.In this slightly silly mood we were discussing, and I don't know why, the many ailments that afflict me. In no particular order, I am prone to:

cold sores
canker sores
stys
allergies
rashes
chaffing
dry skin
loose gums
sun burns
split ends

This list doesn't include my absurdly bad eye sight or inability to lie without smirking...All traits, as Andrew pointed out, that make it a wonder I have survived this far.

Anyway, we were laughing away at what a genetic weakling I am when we got to Manly, and I figured that my innate clumsiness combined with my complete inability to balance on dry land, let alone a floating board in the middle of the ocean, were going to make this surfing lesson into a joke. I didn’t really care, though. Being in the water would be enough for me.

After a briefing on the beach about the basics (where btw we just happened to see a humpbacked whale leaping out of the sea) we hit the surf.

Imagine my surprise when I got the hang of it right away! Our instructor essentially launched us into the oncoming wave and shouted for us to stand up at the appropriate time. Magically I stood when he told me to and managed to stay upright all the way into the beach. What’s more, I did it again and again. It wasn’t a fluke! The instructor even claimed to be impressed by my quick uptake...now just to be clear, I have never impressed ANY gym teacher, ski instructor,yoga swaami or swim coach with my innate physical abilities... I am a myopic, slow moving, stomp-walking nerd, but also apparently, a surfing GODDESS.

It felt fantastic too. Actually catching the waves and then standing up on top of the freaking ocean? Was completely amazing. I could feel the power of it surging beneath my feet but I was on top and in (a tiny amount of) control.

Of course, you can all guess where this is going; one wrong move of my arm and the next thing I knew something was very wrong with my shoulder. It had popped right out of its socket, and yes, that is just as gross and horrifying as you think it would be.

I had dislocated it before - 8 years ago I'd slipped in an icy alley and landed the wrong way.

I couldn’t tell for sure because of the wetsuit, but my shoulder had that same squicky feeling of not-rightness as the last time.

The instructor was great (or fearful of a lawsuit) and followed me out of the water making sure I was okay. Now, everyone says that dislocating your shoulder is incredibly painful, but either I have a heroically high pain threshold, which anyone who has been around me when I'm developing a blister would dispute, or the ONE thing I am really genetically gifted with is the ability to dislocate, because the shoulder really didn't hurt too much.

We stumbled back to the surf shack and Andrew explained to the surfing dude – Large, Blonde, Well-Muscled – what had happened. He was going to call an ambulance, but I said that a taxi would be fine-- basically I didn't want the bill.

That's when this bronzed Aussie Surf God looked at me and with his sexy accent said "You're a tough little thing, aren't you?” Hee! Me, "tough" and better yet, "little"! I swear to God, that was almost worth getting dislocated for.

Tough though I might be, there was no way I was going to attempt to wriggle out of that wetsuit with a dislocated shoulder – it had been hard enough wedging myself int it when I was fully armed. This meant that I had no choice but to summon what dignity I could, and get into the taxi in my wetsuit. I was like a fur seal who had gotten lost on the Manly Promenade. Arf Arf.

While we explained the situation to the driver, that didn't stop him from yelling at me not to get his taxi wet and then making snarky comments when Andy didn't have anything smaller than a $50.

We arrived at Manly Hospital and went right to the triage desk. I have to say I felt self-conscious... I had crazy salt sprayed hair, and I was dripping wet. Surfing accidents were obviously fairly common at Manly, though, because the nurse didn't bat an eye and just trotted off to get me a heated towel. The warm towel was only the start of my lovely treatment because soon after the heated towels came the joking with the nurses, the removal of the wet suit (sharp scissors were needed), the handsome Aussie doctors, and most importantly, copious amounts of morphine. All in all, the experience was really quite pleasant.

This is the shredded suit, which the surf shop kindly didn't make
me pay for.The shoulder dislocation seems to have also mysteriously
made my upper lip disappear.

So Canadian health care system take note (especially you lazy Emergency Room doctors) I didn't have to wait for anything, they gave me a fancy sling, fed me sandwiches when it was all over and gave me some seriously good drugs to take home with me. Total cost? $85!

Really, if you've got 4 hours to kill at Manly Beach some time, I highly recommend a shoulder dislocation. Just a bit of advice, though -- Go for the turkey sandwiches rather than the ham -- the hospital puts cranberry sauce on them!

This is what our vacation pictures have now looked like since the accident:

Arrival!

2010-08-25T23:53:00.006+01:00

I know I promised the thrilling tale of the great dislocation in my last post, but it turns out that typing with one hand is very annoying and frustrating. Sort of the way tying shoes, cutting meat, folding clothes and putting your hair in a pony tail with one hand is annoying and frustrating, but less poop-covered than the way one-handed wriggling baby diaper change is.

So insted of the story of my adventures with the Aussie health care system, here are some photos of the trip so far.

This is Family Hortec at the zoo. Pretty boring pic, really.

This was our commute locale -- The Karaba Point Ferry Stop. Gorgeous.

Andy on the ferry -- best way to see Sydney

As regular readers of this blog no full-well, I am an avowed avowed anti-bird, but even I was impressed about the abundance of bird life smack dab in the middle of Sydney. Those are like 4 dozen cockatoos, yo. They are just flying around like crappy old seagulls, or worse, PIGEONS. They don't even realise they could be worth some serious coin in a pet store -- like the way someone with long,unprocessed hair doesn't realise they could sell it for big bucks for someone else's weaves.

Kookaburra outside the apartment window! I'm bird crazy!

Dudes, this was the view of the walking path just a skip from the apartment we stayed at in Sydney. I jogged it on Sunday and had glorious visions of how buff I would be by the end of our stay with my daily runs. Then I decided to go surfing and now I eat Violet Crumbles and TimTams with my good hand...

Won't Someone Think of the Infant?

2010-08-24T06:50:00.002+01:00

There are two things about our fabulous six week trip to Australia and New Zealand that have filled me with dread. Both involve being crammed into tiny spaces whilst being hurtled around at someone else's whim. Both involve dodgy toilets, undercooked food, cramped sleeping conditions and the possibility, however faint, of death.

One was the 24hr plus of travel time (20 hrs of which was in the air) it takes to get to the Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport, the other is the camper van we are planning to rent and live in for 12 days in New Zealand. At least on the flight there is TV.

Actually, the plane ride was surprisingly fine. We flew Ottawa-Vancouver with a three hour layover from midnight to 3 am Ottawa time and then climbed aboard for our little 16 hour skip directly to Sydney. I'd like to tell you what time it was in Ottawa when we landed at Kingsford Smith-- stinking, flaky skinned, gassy and baby food-covered -- but my ability to remember my name, let alone do the time conversion factoring in the International Date Line we crossed, was well beyond me. Suffice to say it was long.

Still, as I said, not unpleasant. Firstly, plane travel has improved immensely since they introduced those little seat back TV screens. I watched 5 episodes of some HBO comedy, three movies, including Hot Tub Time Machine – seriously, one of the all time greats-- and played some Tetris.

Since andrew and I don't have cable, accessing all of that free TV is always a huge treat. Hotel cable is half the reason we travel – I have very fond memories of the Season One The Surreal Life marathon we watched in Quebec City, the back to back episodes of the A-Team we caught in Rome -- surprisingly easy t o follow even when you don't speak Italian, which just goes to show that great acting transcends linguistic barriers -- and the last half of the Titanic that we watched when we were confined to our Nairobi hotel due to the escalating post-election violence in 2007.

Anyway, the only thing better than flaking out on a hotel bed watching crappy TV, is being confined to a plane watching crappy TV, because there you don't have the guilt twinges about how you should be experiencing the culture, meeting new people or you know, monitoring and reporting on Kenyanpost-election violence.

On a plane it's practically your duty to watch the TV and eat the tiny little meals they bring you. The flight attendants want you nice and sedate for the trip and they know the best way to do that is to keep you well-fed and brain dead. I didn't want to cause another Steven Slater freakout, so I dutifully chose chicken over beef,ate all the packets of nut-free snacks they threw at me and watched 12 hours of Two and a Half Men in the name of airspace harmony.

Anyway, all of that to say that the TV was an enormous help on the flight. The other advantage we had is that we have cleverly discouraged Violet from any desire to move on her own. Seriously, for the past 6 months, when it looked like she wanted to crawl, or even roll over, we shut that shit down.Our policy of hobbling our daughter has paid off, and she was as happy as a clam on the flight. Because she doesn't locomote, it makes no difference to her whether she's in a plane hurtling through the air or back on our dirty kitchen floor playing with fridge magnets.

The final thing that made our flight bearable was that we guilted/shamed the person sitting next to us into moving. Back in the day -- oh 9.5 months ago--I had zero sympathy for people traveling with kids. I would have put up a fight, or given my fear of conflict, inwardly seethed, if I was asked to give up my seat so that the family could sit together or a baby could get her own chair. I figured, ”You people have chosen to travel this way, so get yourselves organized before you board the plane. Pay for the extra seat if you want one so badly for your kid.”

I once scored a bulk head seat on a trans-Atlantic flight and the check-in lady asked if I'd switch so a family traveling with a baby could have access to the bassinet thingee. I said no. I wanted to stretch my legs out and those people should have reserved the bulk head before hand. The check-in lady implored me to “think of the infant”, but I ignored her guilt trip in favour of my own trip.

Now, of course the shoe is on the other foot, but I can't really say that I've changed my mind about things. I mean, we really should have bought Violet a seat, but mother trucker that is a lot of money.

I don't feel were entitled to get an extra seat or special treatment because we have a child, after all, we didn't have to go on this insanely long trip, but I do understand better that a happy baby makes for happy fellow passengers. Violet is a good little screamer when she gets going and avoiding the melt down is in the best interest of every one within our vicinity. If that means booting the person who had just got himself all cozily ensconced with his Globe and Mail, so be it. Trust me ,bub, between the extremely messy feeding of blended turkey with rice, the endless games of peek-a-boo and the explosive poops, you don't want to be anywhere near Row 18.

So, I'm happy to report that I didn't get my comeuppance on AC 033. Given my crusty attitude and refusal to “think of the infant” I should have been stuck in a broken seat next to a malfunctioning toilet with a screaming Violet yanking on my nose for 20 hours. Instead it was just me, Shrek 3, a glass of wine, a snoring Andy and a sleeping baby. Bliss.

Next time: dislocations!

Con Artistry

2010-08-09T15:44:00.005+01:00

On a quiet evening in mid-June, I was noodling around Craig's List looking for baby stuff to buy (sidebar -- it's amazing how quickly you become conversant with the pros and cons of various bits of plastic junk when you have a baby. Seriously, I thought that I would give my kid hand carved wooden blocks and educational dolls sewn from recycled Guatemalan potato sacks... Instead Violet gets what ever day-glo, Mickey-covered geegaw catches my eye -- I'm like a magpie).

Anyway, I was on Craig's List and it occurred to me that we were going to be out of the country for six weeks and we could actually subsidize our trip by renting our house. No sooner did I have the thought then I was outside, snapping pictures of the exterior for the ad. Andy wasn't home, and so I could happily ignore any nagging questions about the safety, wisdom or intelligence of my decisions, just like when he's not around I can hang pictures without a level.

When Andy did roll in at midnight (he'd been at a friend's birthday) he had beer on his breath and sleep on his brain so I held off our conversation until the morning.

Scene: Our bedroom, 6:45 am, Andy groggily rolling out of bed

Me: Oh, by the way, I put our house up for rent.
Andy (from the bathroom): Ha Ha.
Me: No, I did.
Andy (suddenly out of the bathroom and looming -- groggily-- over me) What?!
Me: Just while we're on vacation... Don't worry, no one will rent it.

Another note -- Andrew and I have very very different attitudes about personal privacy. He comes from a line of people who give false names to the dry cleaner... I, well, I blog about anything, and if you give me two drinks at a party I will tell you the funny story of my trip to the Belgian gynecologist.

We also have different attitudes to crime and safety. Andy likes to lock everything, and close windows -- even on the second floor. He is mistrustful of strangers. I grew up in the country where we only locked our house if we were leaving on a long vacation... and even then the key to the front door was hanging on a nail in the garage. My parents only stopped leaving the keys to the econoline van IN the van after it was stolen and taken on a "joy" ride to Bromont. I question how joyful the young idiots were who had chosen to steal that van, because that mother was more rust than car and with its two-tone paint job, was supremely uncool.

All that to say that these fundamental differences in attitude inflected our reaction to the idea of renting our house. All I saw were dollar signs -- if we could rent this puppy out, then suddenly our holiday was not a grotesque and willful denial of financial reality but actually somewhat feasible. All Andrew could see was some stranger pawing through his underwear and stealing his cufflinks.

Still, I prevailed, mostly by not listening to his concerns -- isn't that how most marital decisions actually get resolved? I then proceeded to screen responses, and surprisingly there were tons.

Initially there was confusion because despite the fact that I specified the rental period in my ad, I was inundated with people wanting to rent it for the year. Then there was a hot lead on a woman in our neighbourhood who was renovating her own place, but the dates didn't match up. For a while a middle eastern gentleman was a good prospect, but his interest dried up when he learned that we didn't have air conditioning.

At last, the only renter still standing was Dr Paul Ettlinger. Initially I was quite excited about Dr Paul Ettlinger, because if you google him, as I dutifully did, you find out that he is an EXTREMELY prominent Harley Street physician in London. Hurray! Some rich respectable guy wants to rent our house. He's coming from London so he'll pay the rent I'm asking without batting an eye. By page two of the google search it gets even better, because Dr Paul Ettlinger was drunkenly assaulted by David Hasselhof when he came to the actor's aid in a swanky London hotel. Anyone who dares to hassle the Hoff is obviously super cool, plus, he would have wicked stories to tell.

I revised my opinion shortly into my correspondence with Dr Paul Ettlinger, because if this dude was a prominent Harley Street doctor, he had cheated his way through medical school, bluffed his way through undergrad, bribed someone to get out of highschool and scammed his way through elementary. His letters were semi-literate, is what I'm saying.

Still, I gave Dr Paul Ettlinger the benefit of the doubt. Here was my thought process:

1. He might just be another Paul Ettlinger, and English, despite his extremely Anglo-Saxon name, might not be his first language.

2. What is the scam? He's going to send me a $500 security deposit and will give me the rest of the money before we leave. If his cheque doesn't clear, he doesn't get the keys. We really have very little to steal -- our electronics are Canadian Tire specials, and we are rich only in books and Le Creuset pots, which I'd be heartbroken if we lost, but don't strike me as hot commodities in the fencing market. I did worry he had bed bugs -- I have a mild phobia -- but that was going to be the risk with all renters

3. We had no one else interested

4. We could really use the coin.

So, finally, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing Dr Paul Ettlinger courrier'd me my deposit cheque. I was delighted when it arrived, and very unhappy when I opened it up and saw that instead of the $500 I was expecting, he had sent my nearly $8,000.

Seeing a cheque with all that money made out to me was unsettling and I emailed him to tell him that the whole rental was off.

But then he sucked me back in.

In my defense by this point Dr Paul Ettlinger called me on the phone from ¨London¨and he seemed perfectly nice and quite concerend about the fridge being empty when he rented the place and wanted to make sure there was a bedroom for his son. English was not his first language, but he was coming to Ottawa for two years to do a "program." Also, he explained that he was also looking at something for long term rental and that his business manager in Toronto, Mr Sammy, had muddled up the cheques.

What I should do, Dr Paul Ettlinger told me, was cash the cheque and then just send Mr Sammy the difference.

I was uneasy about this, I mean ¨Mr Sammy¨ is obviously not a name that inspires trust, but actually talking to Dr Paul Ettlinger had somewhat reassured me. I mean, he was worried about the fridge and his son´s room!

The next day I dutifully trotted off to the bank. The teller and I had a big chat about how potentially sketchy this whole scenario was, and what could she do to tell me that the cheque was legit. She said she could put a five day hold on it, which I thought was a good idea.

I returned home, but walking back my spidey senses were tingling (as they had been the whole time). The scenario struck me as increasingly shady. Was he just hoping that I would send him the difference without first making sure the cheque cleared? That would see me lose a butt load of money if the cheque was no good, which I was increasingly sure it was. (wasn´t? The grammar of that sentence has got me all muddled. You know what I mean).

Sure enough, when I got home and emailed Dr Paul Ettlinger, telling him that he'd have to wait until the bank cleared his cheque, he emailed back right away strongly suggesting that I use my own money to pay him what I "owed" him.

That's when I finally clued in and went to the Otttawa Police Department website, where I found this precise description of what Dr Paul Ettlinger and Mr Sammy were up to:

Overpayment Cheque Fraud

You place an advertisement (newspaper, internet or otherwise) to sell an item.

An interested perspective buyer contacts you and a price is negotiated OR they simply agree to buy the item for the full price you have already asked for.

A cheque arrives and it is written out for a substantially higher amount than the agreed price. Being the honest person that you are - You contact the buyer and let them know. They advise you that there was some sort of accounting error or mistake.

They ask you to just go ahead and cash the cheque. They ask that you take your correct price and send them the remaining funds. Sometimes they even tell you to accept some extra money "for your trouble". They trust you to do this because you were so honest about telling them about the overpayment.

You take the cheque to the bank, deposit it, and withdraw the overpayment amount. You send off the cash and it is agreed that someone will drop by later to pick up your item.

You later discover that the cheque is actually a forged document and absolutely worthless. The bank holds you accountable and you've sent your money to the fraudster possibly along with your sale item.

So, there you have it! I discontinued all contact with Dr Paul Ettlinger (who I am beginning to suspect might not be an actual doctor) and contacted the RCMP´s Fraud-busters to report the shenanigans. The bank eventually declined the cheque (though it took about 3 weeks) and I lost
nothing more than my faith in my fellow man, my ability to mock Andrew´s paranoia, and my chance to hear some great stories about Hasselhoff -- that´s the part that really hurts.

Also, just to let all you potential burglars and bed-bug carrying thieves out there know, we did find a renter for our place and he is very strong and also very Texan, so there are now many many guns guarding the place. Also, rottweillers and we´ve dug a moat, so leave our books and Le Creuset alone!

Headgear

2010-08-08T13:39:00.009+01:00

So, I stopped blogging in May 2009, but just like Heath couldn't leave Jake, I can't quit you, blogger.com

Lots has happened since I last typo-d my way through the blogosphere.

In the past 15 months we've

* Bought a House

*My extremely useful ability to write lots and lots of paragraphs about obscure, out of print books no one has ever heard of, let alone read since they were published in 1916, was celebrated when I gots me a PhD

Andy quit his job

We packed up our belongings, sold our plants and moved back to Canada

Andy's intellectual brilliance was acknowledged when his book was published

Check it out!

www.amazon.ca/Bringing-Art-Life-Biography-Jarvis/dp/0773535748

We both started new jobs

Oh, and then this happened:

She fits right in.

Now I've returned to do a bit of blogging during the dying days of my mat leave.

We're off on a 6 week family holiday to Australia and New Zealand and I figured that if I blogged about it, I might actually manage to take photos and remember some stuff about the trip, instead of it all blurring into one big koala-tinged haze. Although, given my pathetic history on the photo-taking front let's not hold our breaths... I think we can expect some fuzzy shots of hazy mountains, pictures of Andrew making stupid faces and endless shots of my baby, because, who's kidding who, she's frigging cute... All that to say that an intelligent and stimulating photo-journal of our trip is highly unlikely.

Anyhooters, I'm hoping that if I announce publicly (or to the six people reading this) that I'm committing to the blog, I might manage to do it... At the very least you can enjoy the thrill of my failure. Huzzah!

Here Comes the Sun

2009-05-10T08:03:00.002+01:00

When I was about 9 or 10, I was being driven home from somewhere and a song came on the radio. Now, given the ubiquity of the Beatles, I'm sure I'd heard this song before, but for whatever reason, I really HEARD it for the first time in our old Econoline van. It was "Here Comes the Sun." It was an almost mystical experience for me... I was a nerdy, introverted little kid, but hearing those words, "It's been a long, cold lonely winter" and then George Harrison's warm repetition, "It's all right, it's all right," just seemed like a reassuring hug (fromageuse, I know).

I immediatly ran out and bought my first tape with my very own money (kids, a cassette tape was like a box to hold itunes in, but it could only hold either 60 or 90 minutes of songs and it had to be flipped half way through. You could also record songs from the radio, which was sort of like illegal downloading, only you'd get DJ Terry Di Monti's introduction to the set, too). Anyway, so deeply did I love the song, that once I had bought Abbey Road, I would listen to all of the songs, and then fastforward through "Here Comes the Sun." That's right, I was such a nerdy little kid, that I already knew that if you played a song over and over again, you would get sick of it. My love for "Here Comes the Sun" was so pure that I never wanted to tire of it...

Anyway, all this to say that "Here Comes the Sun" has been running through my head these days. It's partly because, mother of pearl, we've had an amazing run of weather here in Belgica. It's been sunny almost everyday, trees are blooming with pretty flowers that I am incapable of identifying, gardens are bursting with other pretty flowers, everything is green. It truly is the best run of weather we've had since we came here.

This glorious weather has reminded me of how badly I'll miss Spring when we're back in Canada. Ottawa just doesn't spring. One minute you're shovelling out the driveway for the 8 billionth time, the next day you take your snow tires off, and then bam! it's 35 degrees with enough humidity to make your (well, mine) frizz up like the Bride of Frankenstein's.

The other reason that the song is running through my head, though, is because I am going home. While I've loved living in Belgium, and it definitely hasn't been a "long, cold, lonely winter" -- any place that serves hot chocolate this good can't be bad -- we knew we were only coming temporarily and so it never became "home." Now, we get to go home and as George would say, "it's all right."

What this means for my blog is that it's over, sweet dudes. While there are both beer and waffles in Canada, neither has quite the same meaning (although beer is pretty important). Maybe I'll start up another one, called "Black flies and Tuques" or ""Politeness and Sneakers with Business Attire," but I don't think so...

It's been a really fun experience sharing my Belgian bewilderment with you, and on this my 100th post -- coincidence! -- I want to thank everyone who ever left a comment. It's nice to know I've been read.

MoroccoPart TWO

2009-04-27T18:29:00.000+01:00

Marrakesh was a ton of fun and we spent four days wandering around enjoying all of the exotic sights. Such as these stops signs (which we had also noticed in Dubai) that I think look just like three people in a canoe, but I don't think the Arabic world is actually trying to evoke pine forests, portages and black flies...

There were also road signs to exotic locales:

We ate dinner often at this amazing outdoor market. They'd clear the city's main square (where the snake charmers, performing monkeys, fortune tellers, henna artists, street urchins and other colourful characters would gather) and then set up tables and dish up cheap, hot and delicious Moroccan food. Andy and I both loved it, although you can't actually tell that from my expression:

This is the view from above the market. We'd go here most afternoons for sweet Moroccan mint tea and primo people watching:

Gigantic storks roost in the walls of the old buildings:

And oranges grow from the trees JUST LIKE THAT:

We didn't stay in Marrakesh the whole time, and by Wednesday I was really glad to get away from the dirt and the noise. We were headed to the High Atlas Mountains for a little hiking, rest and relaxation... Or so I thought.

As it turned out, hiking in the High Atlas Mountains in January can get complicated when you arrive in the midst of the worst snow storm they've seen in years. The eco hotel we were staying at didn't have electricity, which hadn't worried me from the safety of my Brussels internet surfing, but as the car wended its way up narrow, windy roads, with avalanche-prone cliffs on one side, and a sheer drop on the other, while snow pelted down and the winds howled, I began to doubt the wisdom of our vacation plans.

I was right to be worried. We were the only guests at our adorable hotel, and even the hotel manager (and the only person in the tiny village who could speak a language other than Berber) hadn't made it. Her car had skidded off the narrow, wind road and got stuck in a gully.

The hike up to the hotel, which you can't drive to, shows how intense it was:

That's a raging river (fine, at least a very full stream) that we're walking in... Also, note, we're going down in this picture, because it's the day AFTER the big storm. On the day of the storm, we were hauling it up this thing, in blinding snow squalls.

This was the view out of the hotel window for the night we stayed there:

So, because we couldn't leave the hotel once we arrived, we hunkered in, played innumerable games of cards, read our books and kept our soaking wet feet literally IN the fireplace, because we were so cold (remember, the hotel had no electricity)

We wore our outerwear inside:

The hotel was sort of a rambling hobbit hole. This was the stairway to our room:

Another rickety stairway, which was lined with candles when the sun went down... Maybe a bit of a fire hazard...

This is the common room where we spent almost our entire stay:

It was a gorgeous living room, and it would have been amazing had we not been trapped on a peak in the high Atlas Mountains during a terrifying snowstorm.

At eight p.m. the fire died, and because we only had candles for light and no actual heat source, we retired, fully clothed -- long underwear, pants, toque, sweater to our icy dark bed. While Andrew was snoring almost immediately, I stayed up, listening to the wind howl around us as we sat in the deserted hotel... It was a bit like The Shining, but with couscous.

The next day the sun came out and we snapped a ton of gorgeous photos:

Andy looking intrepid

We couldn't stay at the hotel though, because the mountain passes where had planned to do all of our hiking we're completely blanketed by snow and would be impassable for days.

Instead, with our Berber guide, Mohammed, we spent an hour hiking out from the hotel, to the nearest serviceable road:

At one point, I think Mohammed asked me to dance (there was a pretty severe language barrier, so it's possible that I've actually pledged myself in marriage to him here).

This was the view out the windshield in our car during our terrifying ride back to Marrakesh. Our driver was unused to driving on snow covered roads, his 40 year old Mercedes had tires so bald it probably couldn't grip the road at the best of times, and there were these boulders littering the road, because the snowstorm had caused avalanches...

After our shortened trip to the mountains, we hung around Marrakesh. We made one day trip to Essouria, which is a seaside town famous for its seafood.

We'll end this entry with some of our (well, Andrew's) attempts at photographic artistry:

Andy won the staring contest. He is THAT intense.

The Inevitable Loss

2009-04-13T11:44:00.004+01:00

Over our two plus years of living in Brussels, Andrew and I have done lots of travelling. We have tried to take photos of the places we have visited, but due to our own stupidity, we've often failed.

As I've documented before we've forgotten the camera at home, remembered the camera, forgotten to charge the batteries, remembered to charge the batteries, but left them in the charger, and when we have actually remembered everything, we've taken some really bad photos:

Fuzzy, impenetrable photo of weird Christmas concert in Liege, December 2007:

Random one of Andrew staring into the oven:

Weird, out of focus one of my hair:

Unidentifiable African animals, taken from a distance -- the result of being the only people on our safari who didn't have a telescopic lens

Still able to inappropriately zoom, without the benefit of a telescopic lens:

So it should come as no surprise for the vast Beer and Waffles readership to learn that we have now achieved the inevitable pinnacle of photo ineptitude: We've lost our camera. Somewhere on the sand dunes of Normandy is our crappy little Nikon filled with poorly taken and out of focus shots of our trip to Mont St Michel, Juno Beach and all of the rest of it.

That means that our recent Easter trip to the Loire Valley was entirely photo-free. I have to say it was quite liberating. While everyone else was jostling to get the perfect shot of Chambord, Azzay le Rideau and Chinon, we just strolled along, enjoying the views and not worrying if our hair looked more insane than usual or if our shirt made us look fat (well, maybe only one of us was actively NOT worrying about those things...)

We're not going to buy another camera before we go home... Everything is cheaper in Canada and since we'll be home in little over a month, we don't see the point. You definitely discover your inner cheapo when you're about to leave a place. We ran out of salt two weeks ago, but I refuse to commit to another big box. That means that we've been living on slightly flavourless food since then, but it's probably better for our health. We also need more laundry detergent and I'm wavering on that... Surely we've got enough clothes that we can cycle through them all without having to wash new stuff. I'm also annoyed because I foolishly bulk bought an enormous amount of toilet paper. I'm trying to go through it as quickly as possible (I'll spare you the details) but it's hard going.

Dry Hair

2009-04-08T06:52:00.004+01:00

To my mother's annoyance, I have changed my Facebook profile picture. The new pic is a self-portrait I took while wearing a koala bear shower cap that some Aussie friends of my mother gave me as a joke.

There is a backstory behind the picture... As you may know I've been doing lots of swimming in my beloved NATO pool lately, which is glorious in all respects, except for the havoc it wreaks on my hair. My hair is thick, curly and dry dry dry at the best of times, add a 4 times weekly submersion into chlorine and it becomes something very akin to hay.

So, you can imagine my delight when I read about a home beauty remedy in the paper one weekend... All you have to do is heat a little bit of olive oil in a saucepan, rub it into your head, wait forty-five minutes and then wash it out. According to the article you're left with beautiful silken locks instead of staticky fuzz. Hurray!

One morning when I was feeling a little bored, I decided to give it a whirl. I heated the oil up, but then realised that it would drip down my neck if I didn't wrap it in something. Not wanting to ruin my towels, I dug around until I found the Koala Bear shower cap:

I then spent the next forty five minutes, sending emails, emptying the dishwasher and reading, all the while praying that the mailman didn't turn up with a package and that no one dropped in unexpectedly.

I also spent that time with warm olive oil slowly cooling and inching its way down my neck, and, having forgotten that olive oil actually has quite a strong smell, fighting an increasing urge to whip up some pasta or something.

I was delighted when it was finally time to shower it all out because it was kind of giving me the willys.... Except, it didn't wash out. Even when I shampooed my hair TWICE, i could still feel all of the oil clinging to my hair. I finally gave up, and got out of the shower. I then spent the entire day with limp, draggly, greasy hair, still smelling faintly of bruschetta.

Although, to be fair, the next day, after I had gone for my swim, and I'd then shampooed the chlorine out, my hair was wonderfully soft and manageable, as promised. Still it doesn't seem like a practical hair care formula: Apply oil, wait 45 minutes, shampoo twice, soak for an hour in chlorinated water, shampoo and voila! Perfect hair.

Anyway, since I'm an equal opportunity blogger and don't want to hog all of the embarrassing hair-related photos for myself, here are some pics of Andy, as he removed his Christmas beard in stages. Firstly, isn't he handsome with a beard?

Yes, yes he is.

STAGE 1

a bit of a goat, not too bad...

STAGE 2

Kind of nerd biker, here.

STAGE 3

I don't think he can pull of the moustache, the nose neighbour, the lip foliage, the soup strainer

STAGE 4

There was a final stage where he did a very short, sort of rectangular bristly one just under his nose but I decided not to take a picture of that one. We don't need photos of Andy cavorting with a Hitler moustache floating around on the internet... It might ruin his political career or his chances of international stardom.

Morocco Part 1

2009-03-25T19:12:00.000Z

So, throughout January and February I whined about my HOOOOORRRRRIBLLLLLEEEE thesis which was sucking the life out of me, destroying my will to live and making me seriously doubt my ability to string a sentence together or talk about anything other than the representation of disabled soldiers in Canadian fiction of the First World War. Blargh.

I wasn't entirely honest, however, because amid all of my drama and groaning, there was the tiny fact of our week-long vacation to Morocco in January. Yep, we went to Marrakesh and the Atlas Mountains for seven days and while I did BRING my Introduction to edit, I didn't actually look at it until we were on the Ryan Air flight home. All this to say, that I know I really shouldn't moan too much about writing my thesis. Anyway, the stupid thing is out of my hands so who cares.

The reason we went to Morocco was that we scored a sweet deal through a discount airline -- our tickets to Marrakesh cost 75 Euros total... Of course, travelling on a discount airline means that you have to pay for any extras and they're super strict about carry on. Andrew and I prefer to always carry on, rather than stowing luggage, since we've had so much luggage lost over the years. Anyway, I didn't think travelling to Morocco would be such a challenge, so I packed only one pair of pants, my hideous MEC hiking pants, and one thick fleece thing. I knew it wasn't stylish, but I figured it didn't matter that I would look like this for the next 7 days:

I mean, the woman couldn't be fashionable in Morocco. It's a Muslim country, so they'd be all veiled and covered up, right? Ah, I'm an idiot. The women were gorgeous, dressed to the nines, some wearing full veils, but many others wearing western dress. All of them we're stunning, and me? I was in hiking pants and shcleppy clothes. I felt like a complete bum the whole time I was there. To the point, where, when Andy and I were going out to our one nice dinner in a fancy restaurant (I had my birthday while there) I asked the guy at our hotel if what I was wearing (see above) was okay. He looked at me, kind of sighed and said it was fine, because "you are a tourist."

Aside from my poor wardrobe choices, we had a fun time. Morocco is hands down the most exotic place I've ever been to. I mean, we went to Dubai, but it's just basically Kanata (for those of you not privileged to know, Kanata is one of Ottawa's sprawling pre-fab suburbs) in the desert. Morocco was genuinely foreign... There were dudes selling spices and herbs and magical things:

There were beautiful ancient mosques:

Snake charmers:

Yes, SNAKE CHARMERS:

and mysterious robed men feeding the hundreds of stray cats (shudder).

Since we saved so much on our tickets, we splashed out on where we stayed (Well, splashed out for us). Our Riad was super cool.

They gave us slippers to wear:

And robes:

And breakfast on their rooftop patio:

This was our first room:

and this was our second when we came back from the mountains (more on that in the next post):

The hotel put fresh roses all over the place:

Still, even though the hotel was quite swish. I take no chances. I'm insanely paranoid about bedbugs and so no matter where we stay, I investigate:

Also, just so you don't think our life is one of unending glamour -- we ended up playing a lot of cards on our vakay, but though the hotel was cozy and intimate, it meant that the lighting sucked. Luckily Andy had packed head lamps for our stay in the Atlas Mountains so we used those in the room:

And, when you drink a bottle of Moroccan wine all on your own while gloating about how you're beating your puny husband at cribbage sometimes you get the hiccups:

Ah, Moroccan glamour -- if only the hotel clerk had seen me... He might not have been as confident that I could just say I was a tourist and get into the chichi restaurant...

Done Diddy Done Done

2009-02-25T08:06:00.004Z

So my precious dudes, I'm done.

I'm moving to Done-caster, I'm riding on a done-key, my favourite character on old school 90210 was Done-a, I'm a blood done-or.

I'm finished my effing thesis! (470 pages, 140,000 words, 11,000 lines and 1,380 paragraphs, the thickness of a McDonald's quarter pounder). Hurray!

Andrew took photographic proof as I was reviewing the thing for the last time :

It's quite glorious to be finished with it. While I have no confidence that it's actually any good, what matters is that I don't have to think about it anymore (or at least until the defense... oh God, the defense. Barf...)

My friend Monica (who defended her doctorate in November) came along to help me carry the necessary six copies to the secretariat where I submitted it and she brought along her camera, so even that is recorded for posterity (or blogerity, at any rate):

Just to be clear, what I am holding in my hand is only volume ONE -- it was too big to be bound in one volume, so it's in two. Have I ranted before about how insane the Belgian system is... It's all about providing bulk -- volume is what matters ... oh well, I didn't have to write comprehensive exams, so I should shut up. Also, it doesn't matter anymore, because I'm now eating done-cakes with a generous dollop of maple done-rup. Also, as a further aside, are you admiring my glorious yellow leather bag? I am.

So, that's it. Now I just have to wait to defend it, which will be in mid-May. Tra La La.

Your friend,
Done-y Brasco, Done Corleone, Done-y Osmond, Done-attella Versace

Home

2009-02-10T19:46:00.007Z

So, we're moving back to Canada in June, which is very exciting and thrilling and wonderful, but also sad and nerve wracking and terrible.

When we were back in Ottawa over Christmas we had lots of glorious moments of reconnecting with home. Obviously being near our family and friends is the best thing ever. Many of our friends have managed to produce teeny tiny little babies and it will be very terrific to be closer to those new people and watch them grow and strategically leave the room when it's time to change their diapers (babies', not friends').

Also, of course, Canada is very simple and easy... It's a cinch to drive around places, no one cuts you off, drives on sidewalks, tailgates (much), the roads are big and straight and parking lots are huge. Andrew and I actually had a moment where we pulled into some big parking lot (maybe out at Bayshore) and were stunned by all of the wide, free spots available (and this was Christmas, remember). We sat in the car and actually laughed with joy at how easy and non-crowded it was.

At one point while we were home I had to activate a credit card that we'd had for a couple of years, but never turned "on." I steeled myself for an ordeal of explanations, rudeness and horror. Especially because I couldn't remember the security information I had given them two years ago -- My old office phone number? Dudes, I forgot that the minute I walked out of the building... Miraculously, however it all went like buttah. The girl I was dealing with was pleasant and she activated my card just like that. I didn't have to get forms signed in triplicate, I didn't have to go to the Town Hall to prove that I was who I said I was, I didn't have to wait three weeks or pay 10 euros... it was just done over the phone... The best part? It actually worked.

Of course it wasn't all peach blossoms and lifesavers... Mother of mother of mother, it gets really really cold! Cripes. I had forgotten just how horrifying minus 20 can be. Also, all of that snow, even on wide lovely roads filled with non-crazy drivers, is still a pain in the arse when you're trying to go somewhere. You have to put boots on, coat on, hat on, scarf on, mittens on... You have to shovel off the driveway, scrape off the car, then you have to sit in the freezing car and negotiate slippery ice filled roads to get to your destination only to have to take you boots, hat, mitts, scarf, coat off for an hour or two only to do the whole process again. Exhausting.

Still, even with the cold, we managed to enjoy the snow. We were little winter wonderland troopers. We went skiing behind Andrew's dad's place:

Hee! Andy was amazed that I managed to take a photo of him skiing and completely cut off his actual skis... Being a bad photographer is a gift, I tell you.

We saw hockey games, hiked in the woods, hot tubbed under snowflakes and Andy even managed to squeeze in some ice skating (not on the canal, unfortunately which still wasn't open. I mean, it was minus 20, guys, how cold does it have to be before that sucker is opened up?) We went to Andy's niece and nephew's skating lesson and he got to skate with them as well as our sister-in-law Ellen).

We also went out and hunted for the Bertrand-Horrall Christmas tree. Here's a snap of two tall Horrall men, and one on his way to great heights:

Finding the tree was much less painful than the tree hunts that the Tector clan would embark on in our childhood. Back in the day we (well, my dad and the kids, my mum very wisely stayed home making hot chocolate) would troop out into a neighbours woodlot, which was not in any way designed to harvest Christmas trees, but was just a woods on the guy's property.

We would look everywhere for a suitable tree, falling into the snow, getting increasingly cold, whining, fighting and crying until out of desperation my dad would just grab the nearest Christmas-tree-like thing possible and stuff it into the van. Inevitably it would always be a scraggily monstrosity. We were the kings of Charlie Brown trees -- my father would actually cut branches off in some parts and glue/tape/staple/drill them into other "bare" patches elsewhere and then we were only allowed to put the lightest ornaments on those branches. Also, one year, we chopped down a tree that had grown into some barbed wire, so it was both a symbol of Christmas and a deadly implement.

Anyway.
Besides partake in many different winter sports, dance in cougar bars and eat an enormous amount of food, the other thing we did was buy a house. We take possession March 31. Tra la la.

Very exciting.

Pretty fireplace and lovely mantle:

Sink in the basement that Kathryn suggested we get re-finished and use as our kitchen sink, which would make our kitchen sort of industrial and cool -- like we're welders by day, exotic dancers by night with secret hopes of becoming ballerinas...

Staircase with fab green carpet, which we're really psyched about.

The back room off the kitchen where the current owners have chosen to hang their stuffed partridge, but where we'll probably hang our moose head.

So, yes. The place obviously needs lots and lots of work, but our friend Zip (http://mainrenovations.com/index.html) is on the job.

Hurray for HOME.

This is for my sisters

2009-02-08T09:00:00.000Z

Dear Tina, Susie and Emily. I had a fantastic time with you lovely ladies when we went out for dinner and dancing over Christmas. It was so nice to all get together without the distractions of children (tiner), starving refugees (snippy) and creepy redrum-writing students (noodle).

In honour of the occasion I've finally gathered together photos of our soiree. If you recall, it started out well. We went for a nice, civilized dinner at an Italian place on Elgin:

Yes, those wine glasses do look big, but that's fine, right? We're not going to overindulge and start living la vida loca...

We're not going to find ourselves drunk dialling our brother at midnight, flirting with beefy, unattractive men or being picked up in a minvan at 2... are we?

Remmeber how our dinner quickly devolved into a weird photo session? I was trying to teach you my patented "Orphan" look, which I'm convinced allows you to take a better picture. The trick is to look down and then sort of look up at the camera beseechingly. This has the effect of biggening your eyes and masking any double chin situations that might arise. Well, it does in theory. I think at some point in my life I must have taken a decent photo this way and that's why I have so stubbornly clung to the pose.

In reality, I tend to end up looking like this:

Yes, some sort of deranged, murderous psychopath... But at least I don't have a double chin!

Since that photo didn't really work, I tried to take a self-portrait to prove the power of the Orphan.

It (kind of) works here, although don't ask me why I am wearing a tuque in the middle of the fashionable Elgin Street eatery...

Especially when I then get into my time machine and went back to Madonna's voguing trend, circa 1995...

Maybe Susie and Emily should try a double Orphan pose... that will certainly up the cute ante...

Maybe not.

It's just a question of trying again...

Not quite.
Focus, Emily!

Now you've both lost it:

One more time:

Eeep, still not good. Emily looks like she's dying of consumption,
although Susie has got it.

Let's try one eliminating Emily and her giggling:

Better, although far more smirk-y than orphan-y.

One more time:

There it is -- wistful, pensive and double-chin-less.

This is the other way to eliminate the double c... also very handy if you're spying on Russians, or delivering coded messages to British agents...

Emily eventually managed the orphan on her own.

Good Lord, she looks suicidal! Maybe the Orphan is a bad idea...

Tina and Emily found their own ways to look good in pictures without resorting to asking for more gruel:

After dinner, we decided to go dancing. Since our 22 year old waitress didn't have any suggestions... As she said, the place she goes to makes HER feel old, implying that we (who are almost all in our 30s and some of us teetering into our 40s) would feel like ancient rags... we opted to go to some horrifying cougar bar...

Luckily the great thing about going to a place where everyone is kind of old, sad and unattractive is that it makes you feel fantastic.

At least until you start doing things like this:

That's me, getting into it... I presume they were playing ABBA...

Tina and Emily singing into their thumbs:

Snippy and I throwing our arms up in the air, like we just don't care.

And again with our arms... We're like epileptic spiders, or something...

Emily and Tiner after their marathon dance session:

Oh, the picture that ends the night:

Disheveled, sweaty and too tired to put our arms up any more.
Time to go home.

2009-01-26T07:16:00.002Z

Hello my darling lovely blog reader[s], it's been a while, non?

Oui.

I know it, and I feel guilt, which then makes me resentful, which then causes me to procrastinate writing a blog entry, which then exacerbates my feelings of guilt until the whole roiling mess gives me an ulcer and an eye twitch.

La la.

Cereal, this blog writing business has been getting to me and I contemplated just stopping the whole effing thing, for reals. I don't want to whine, but dudes, it's hard out there for a blog writer...On a regular basis my life is pretty durn dull and coming up with something even remotely interesting to write about is tricky.

To give you an example, today my day will go like this: Tea in bed thanks to Andyroo. Bowl of bran flakes in front of the computer. Check email; surf interwebs at jezebel.com, gofugyourself.com, zefrank.com, various blogs. Sigh hugely and open the Word document containing my thesis; wait 45 minutes while the stupid thing loads because it's now 420 pages and my advisor still thinks it's a bit on the THIN side [cukoo]. Decide I have to deep condition my hair and do an exfoliating mask IMEDIETLY as a means of avoiding looking at the thesis. Wonder why I can never spell "immediately" without looking it up in the dictionary. Talk myself out of the beauty treatments. Look at thesis. Change 10 sentences then realise it's nearly 10 o'clock and if the mailman arrives with a package (as he often does because I live with a man who is addicted to the online purchase of ties, waistcoats and mouldy books) I will have to either go down to get it in my fleece PJs and slippers or race around the apartment getting dressed in frantic frenzy while promising him via the intercom buzzer thing that "je descends tout suite." Shower. Change 10 more sentences. Sigh. Make lunch. Tuna sandwich. Change 15 more sentences. Wait for people in Canada to wake up. Go to the gym. Run on the treadmill. Go to the grocery store, pleased that my post-gym-red-face, sweat-stink and jogging pants (considered in Belgium to be no better than wearing a dung-encrusted potato sac in public) are terrifying the little old ladies who usually crash into me, thus allowing me to shop in peace. Come home. Shower (Oh wait, that can't be right... I have a firm policy of one shower-- or less -- a day... please ignore the earlier mention of showering). More thesis. MSN. Phone calls. Blah blah blah...

Sorry, even I was finding that recital boring and totally lost my momentum. Anyway, you can see that I generally don't lead a very interesting life or have very many interesting things to report, which can make blog writing awfully tricky.

Also, now that I've sort of got a handle on living in Belgium I can no longer write *fascinating* entries on going to the grocery store or watching men pee outside my window. The material is drying up is what I'm saying... Although apparently I can still churn up a few hundred words of self-indulgent, self-reflexive whining about how hard it is to write about anything, so that's good I guess...

Anyhoots, I'm not going to kill the blog yet because I do have some funny stories about 1. Our trip home to Canada and 2. Our recent trip to Morocco. I will post those, and photos at some point soon. Also, who knows, other interesting things, people, urinating men, may cross my path in which case I will definitely keep you updated.

Toodle pip my lovely (ies)

Michael Phelps doesn't have it as good

2008-12-04T15:16:00.003Z

We're off to Canada for a month so this will probably be my last post for a while -- unless I get inspired by all of the tuques, snow and starbucks -- oh and the impending consititutional meltdown -- who knew Canadian politics could be so interesting?!

Anyhoots, I wanted to end my 2008 run of Belgian posts on a high note and talk about one of my very favourite things about living here -- swimming.

It is good that I love swimming here so much, because one of my other very favourite things about the Belgians is how they make hot chocolate, and so the two (almost) cancel each other out.

At any rate, I love swimming here, mostly because I go to the NATO pool. A few times a week I drive Andrew to work (through insane Brussellois traffic, which includes the dreaded rond point Meiser, which has 7 major roads feeding into it, four lanes, two different sets of tram tracks, a whole passel of aggressive Belgian drivers and a traffic light system that was constructed on a "live and let die" philosophy).

It is all worth it, however, to get to the NATO pool. By 8:30 when we pull up to the Staff Centre all of the NATO-ites are getting out of the pool, which means that very often I have the entire place to myself. This is a deep and abiding joy that only a fellow swimmer can understand. I imagine that it's akin to a holding your new born baby for the first time or winning BOTH show case prizes on The Price is Right.

So yes, swimming at NATO is gloriously glorious. I even loved swimming for that three week period when legionnaire's disease was detected in the showers and they were closed. At that point I had to shuffle out of the pool, with chlorine-filled hair, red racoon eyes from my goggles and a towel wrapped around me and walk through the staff centre (where Condoleeza Rice can pop up at any second) to go to the showers in the gym area. Even that humiliation (and let's face it, potential international incident) did not quell my love of the pool.

Swimming as often as I do has allowed me to detect some particularly Belgian elements to the whole experience. For instance, the life guards do not seem at all concerned about, you know, guarding my life. Generally, and this is not an exageration, they sit in their glass booth reading the newspaper or looking at their laptop. This would probably be fine (although such behaviour was definitely not condoned in my Bronze Cross training, which I took at age 13) except for the fact that they've recently built a sauna almost directly in front of the lifeguard booth. So the lifegaurds, when they are in their little office, cannot actually see the pool. Now, call me rule-bound or old fashioned, but I had thought that one of the essential duties -- one might even say the ONLY duty-- of life guarding is to watch the water.

In theory the sauna should be a very exciting and wonderful addition to the whole pool experience, but I only ventured in once. I found myself in very close quarters with a large-tummied, small-speedo'd Croat whose excessive body hair seemed to make him sweat inhumanly. I didn't stay long, because the whole experience reminded me of the Ritz Gym incident, which I can't figure out how to link to, but is way back in a December 2006 post.

Anyway, the other reason I love the NATO pool is that towards the end of my swim, it gets invaded by local Belgian school children who do their gym class in the water. I love seeing all of these 7 year olds pour in, because it reminds me of when I used to swim on the Cowansville Swim Team (one of our team chants was C. O. W. Mooooooo! Cowansville!, when you're a 12 year old girl, mooing like a cow while in swimsuit isn't that great for the self-esteem). Anyway, seeing all of the little kids chattering and lauging as they leap into the pool warms my heart.

What makes me laugh, however, is once again how totally indifferent Belgians seem to be to basic rules of safety. Growing up we had a big old inground pool and given that we there was five Tector children and we were kind of maniacs, there were a few "incidents." For instance, my little sister cracked her head open while attempting a back dive and my older sister Susie fell into the deep well that housed the pool pump. To be fair, my parents had placed (rotten) boards over the hole and Susie didn't actually fall to the bottom of the well because she was able to grip onto the splinters of unbroken wood until help arrived. La la.

Anyway, my point is that though we had our share of unsupervised mayhem, there was one rule that could not be broken: No running around the pool. Now, you figure if my preoccupied and overwhelmed parents chose to enforce that rule above all of the other ones we ignored or dismissed, you had to figure that running around the pool was a bad idea.

That's why I got a giggle today when the school children were late arriving . Their teachers were in a hurray, so they yelled at them to "Run, run and jump into the pool!" Which the kids promptly did, racing around the pool deck, leaping onto each other in a frenzy of near-drowning and potential-leg-breaking.

The lifeguards didn't even peer up from their newspapers.

The unavoidable Obama post

2008-11-25T10:17:00.000Z

I think it's safe to say that most Western democracies are more left-leaning than the United States, and so the election of Barack Obama as a Democrat president seems to have basically pleased Europe.

I'm no pundit and I don't know much about politics but it does seem like Obama has reinvigorated people here. Andrew reports overhearing excited and friendly (!) conversations on the bus home from work about the new president and certainly I've had several conversations with storekeepers and market vendors about the change in government and how happy they are about it.

Anyway, I am kind of surprised at the level of expectations that have now been placed on the Obama. I mean, I'm happy he won, but firstly he's just one person, secondly, he's a politician, so no matter how upstanding and integrity-filled he might seem, I'm sure he's done some weasly things in his day, and I'm sure he'll do more weasly things at some point or other. I mean, they all do, right? Thirdly, no matter how great he is, I don't think he can fix everything.

One thing he has fixed, though, is my vision. That's right, I'm here to report that Obama has healed my eyes. I went to the eye doctor the day after the U.S. election and for the first time since I was 9 years old and started wearing glasses, my eyesight actually IMPROVED slightly. This is amazing, because for the past two (ahem, plus) decades my eyesight has been stedily and depressingly getting worse... It's got to the point where I get more stressed out going to the eye doctor than the dentists. Fine, the dentist will cause you pain and discomfort, but the eye doctor will nonchalantly consign you to near legal-blindness. Not cool.

It was indeed a miraculous moment when the doctor told me that my vision had improved, and my immediate thought was that Obama had had a hand in it. Indeed, in support of my theory, an enormous light shone down from above and Obama came floating into the office on clouds of buttercups and Mars bars to bless me with his holy goodness.
Or something like that.

I can't say for sure, I wasn't wearing my glasses.

2008-11-23T14:37:00.000Z

Ugh, November is a gross month and I have to say that I have been profoundly unmotivated to do much.

The days are short, dark and cold.

Today there was a snow storm, which freaked out the entire country... Andrew and I have stayed in practically the whole day, which might explain the weird cabin fever that has gripped me...
Here is an adorable picture of Andrew after he let me apply some mascara:

Doesn't he have pretty lashes? I also enjoy the stubble.

Where does the time go?

2008-11-21T10:01:00.002Z

Wow, I've been a very deadbeat blogger. I know, I know. The most important thing you're meant to do as a blogger is update it regularly. It's the only way to maintain a loyal readership and eventually land that multimillion dollar book deal.

I don't know what happened, there. In my defense, October and November have been sort of mayhem-ic... We went to Italy, Paris, Vienna and Berlin; had three different sets of visitors; I finished the rough draft of my thesis (402 pages, and when I handed the brick to my supervisor the FIRST thing he said was, "looks a little short" -- He's kukoo krazy -- like does he REALLY want me to start padding the thing, because I can. I can start putting in long digressive sentences that go on and on and say very little of substance; I can throw semi-colons around and just keep babbling about nothing important; I can do all of that; I really really really can); I also wrote a chapter for a book and found time to work on the old backhand and take some French classes -- mais oui, I did a presentation on how much I like Hercule Poirot -- my favourite Belgian!

Huh, when I put all of that down on paper (so to speak) it looks pretty substantial and I feel less defensive about my failure to blog. Anyway, I'm back in the blogging saddle... So check back in the next few days, because I really will put something new up. Really, really.

Beer Run

2008-10-06T07:32:00.000+01:00

We have some friends here who are big beer fans. Belgium is a good place to be if you appreciate a beer because there are something like 400 different varieties to choose from.

I'm not such a connoiseur. I like Maes, which is basically Labatt's Blue. The best thing about Maes is that it comes in tiny little cans so you can have a small glass worth, which is exactly the portion size I want when I crave a beer.

Anyway, according to all sorts of different beer experts, Belgian beer is some of the best in the world, and many of those experts agree that one beer in particular, West Vleteren, is the be all and end all, hands down best brewski that money can buy.

West Vlet is a trappist beer which means that it's brewed by genuine monks in a honest to God (hee) monastery. Unlike some of the other trappist beers that are out there, like Orval and ... oh, I don't know any of the others, and I only remember Orval because it's name has something to do with a lady throwing a ring into a pond and a big fish -- a very Lord of the Rings-ish story but without that chubby guy from Rudy bleating "Mr Frodo" in a thinly disguised homoerotic way...

Where was I?

Unlike the other trappist beers, the monks who make West Vlet are hardcore, and don't want to profit from their beer making -- they make enough money to cover their expenses and pay out to a few charities and that's it. So, while those Orval monks are rolling around in gold plated cadillacs, dripping bling and texting Diddy about his latest fashion line, the brothers at West Vleteren are leading quiet, contemplative lives ... I imagine that it's quite similar to Maria's experiences, except these brothers are making beer instead of singing songs, creating clothing out of curtains and falling in love with standoffish but secretely loving thin-lipped navy captains who should just express how they feel and dump that horrible Baroness already, although she is very glamorous with her cigarette holder and her weirdly white hair...

Where was I?

Right. So, the long and the short of it is that the monks don't brew a lot of beer, but everyone agrees that it's the very best there is, so that creates this huge cachet around the stuff, which I'm sure then makes even more people say it's the best. Those monks are certainly wiley marketing geniuses (something that couldn't be said about Maria). What all this boils down to is that it's very hard to actually buy West Vleteren beer. A few stores sell a small amount for a lot of money in Brussels, and you can order it at some very special restaurants, again for a lot of cash. The only way to actually get a case of the beer is to go to the monastery itself and buy it from the monks.

But, the monks are busy being contemplative (and maybe secretely twirling around mountainsides as they sing about the hills being alive) and they don't want to be pestered by people all of the time. So, they've set up a time where you can call and make an appointment to come and fetch the beer. Now, the time where you're allowed to call is very limited-- I don't know the exact logistics of it all, so I'm sort of inventing but it's something like, you're allowed to call in a two week period once a year, or something crazy. Anyway, as you can imagine the phone lines to this monastery burn up when it's the time to call and the line is always busy. If you do manage to get through during this window, you are given a specific time when you are meant to show up and get your beer. You have to give your license number so that you don't then sell your slot to someone else.

This is all just background to tell you about our own experinece with the West Vlet beer, because our beer loving friends (remember them from the beginning of this epic post?), well they managed to get a slot (after calling for literally three years) and they were given an appointment to pick up their beer, but it so happened that they would be in Canada at that time. You can't pick your date with these monks or argue about anything. You have to take the time they give you because the brothers don't screw around.

So, this is where I came in. They asked me if I could drive their car out into the countryside to find this monastery and pick up their two cases (all you're allowed to order at one shot). Since I'm a non-working student I said sure... Also, as coincidence would have it, Andrew wasn't feeling well that day, so despite his flu-like symptoms, he accompanied me.

Road Trip!

We had a great day, tooling around in someone else's car (which I magically didn't dent, scratch, or otherwise hurt). They have a couple of little kids, so we sang along to the chidlren's cds they'd left in the car, although the tunes kind of got old fast.

We multitasked as well, because Andrew was doing a presentation in London later that month (this all happened in July) about a Second World War battle that the Canadians were involved in that happened right on the Belgian-Dutch border. We toodled up there to get some pics of the place for Andy's presentation.

This is not the picture he used in his presentation.

This is:
Hurray Canada! They remember us!

The monastery was in West Flanders, which was the heart of the First World War battleground, so we also stopped at a couple of cemeteries. We've seen a number of these since we've moved here, and they are always very touching and also peaceful.

This farmhouse was a dressing station during the First World War. It looked so pretty and untouched now, it was hard to imagine what must have gone on there ninety years ago...

Anyway, after merrily burning through much of our friends' gas, we finally arrived at the monastery. It was very tucked away and hidden. We drove down narrow little lanes that were one step removed from tracks and it was quite fun and exciting. When we finally got there there wasn't much signage, but we figured out what to do by the cars in front of us.

The monks have everything all figured out, so that the noisy annoying public doesn't have to actually enter their home. Instead, you line up and it's a drive through situation. The guy who's loading the beer up isn't even a monk (total gyp).

Anyway, at the end of it all, we got the beer and then hit the little café they've got set up across the street where (if they haven't run out or pissed the monks off) you can buy and drink a glass of West Vleteran:

It's actually super strong beer, like 10 percent or something. Since I was driving, I only had a few sips of mine, so Andyroo had to drink two of those glasses. Needless to say he was a leetle tipsy when we got back in the car. As Andrew pointed out, no one else seemed to share my North American concern about drinking and driving, because people were throwing the beer back and there certainly was not public transit to the monastery.

Maria never went on record about her attitude to drinking and driving, but I'm pretty confident in saying that she would not have approved. She might even have had a little song to sing on the subject, maybe gently chastising Friedrich for swilling back too much Jagermeister and getting frisky with Frau Schmidt before leaping into the Captain's car with Uncle Max for a Boys Gone Wild night on the town, which culminated in the two of them singing Do Re Me in all of the locations they visited before, but this time naked and leading a donkey.

Where was I?

Right, well not much more to say on the trip, except that the cafe was surprisingly popular, and just as we left a whole gaggle of nuns had arrived. I had to laugh, because the space was pretty narrow, and the ladies had to leave their wheelchairs behind:

I guess, no drinking and driving for them!

The Dentist

2008-09-26T13:48:00.003+01:00

I went to the dentist today for the first time since moving here.

I know, I know... it's very poor dental hygiene on my part.

In my defense, it wasn't just pure laziness that kept me from making the appointment. I was also a little nervous. The Belgian medical system is different from the Canadian one -- things seem to be much less sterile and scientific. Doctors often have their clinics in their own homes, so you'll sometimes walk through a living room to get to their office.

My dermatologist, for instance, conducts his exams in his apartment. While on one hand it's very natural and welcoming and lovely to be part of his home, on the other it's kind of creepy to have the smell of the roast dinner that his wife is whipping up in the kitchen intermingle with the scent of your burning skin as he cauterizes the incision he made after removing a funny-looking mole.

The eye doctor was also a strange experience. Once again, I went to her house. She had created a sort of waiting room/sitting room on the landing of the stairs and I sat there until she was ready for me. When it was time to go into her office, I was relieved to see the modern, fancy ophthamologist chair -- maybe her methods wouldn't seem as "home made" as the dermatologist.

Ha.

In Canada you sit in the sleek dentist-like chair and the doctor pulls a super fancy set of goggly-things in front of your eyes and she clicks through until you find your perfect perscription. That's not how it worked for me. Instead, once I was sitting down the doctor pulled out a wooden box. Seriously, it was like my heel-wearing, funky-hairct-having forty-year old doctor had suddenly been transported back to Dust Bowl Era Oklohoma and she wanted to sell me snake oil for my lumbago.

Inside the case, rather than bottles of Marvelous Marvin's Cure For Ails You were rows of funny looking wooden glasses. The doctor put a pair on my face and told me to read the letter chart. She increased or decreased the lens strength in each eye by taking out a lens and putting a new one. Everything was wooden. It was like something out of Little House on The Prairie, only I'm pretty sure Doc Baker never charged Pa 60 euros for an examination.

Anyway, after those experiences, I feel that my hesitation about the dentist was well-founded. What if hefound a cavity, but didn't believe in pain killers?What if he just wrapped my head in a big white cloth and stuck an icepack to my cheek? What if he tied a string around my tooth and attached it to a door knob and then slammed the door? I've seen cartoons, I know how these things work...

It turns out I was right to be nervous, but not for the reasons I had feared. My problem was that my dentist was young. He was a child, no scratch that, he was a fetus, no, he was a zygote.

Have I now become one of those people who complains about how young everyone is?

Apparently.

I could have babysat the kid -- in fact maybe I should have because he needed help. Firstly, he had a nervous laugh. Everytime he giggled I flinched and had to stifle the urge to run screaming from the room. Seriously, dentists and pilots should be screened out if they have nervous laughs -- you want confidence from these people, not weird tittering after every declarative statement.

Secondly, when I told him that it had been two years since my last cleaning he said, "Oh, then this is going to be bad." I asked him to repeat what he said, because I assumed I had misunderstood. I hadn't. He said, "Well, it's been so long that this is really going to hurt you." Ah, perfectly clear, just not exactly COMFORTING.

Anyway, twenty white-knuckled minutes later, I was pronounced tartar and cavity free. I left Baby Dentist's office with smooth, clean teeth and the happy thought in my heart that I never had to see him again.

Now I just have to make Andy an appointment...

Summer of Elsewhere

2008-09-16T16:15:00.006+01:00

We were at a party last week and everyone was complaining about what lousy summer weather we had, and I was contradicting people, saying it wasn't that bad. Everyone thought I was delusional, and I was defending myself like crazy when it occrred to me that I thought the weather was decent because we were only rarely in Brussels.

The Hor-Tecs had a busy summer, no doot aboot it. In May we went to Bermuda and Canada. In June we came back from Canada and went to Ireland. Then we hit London and Iceland in July and went to Wales in August. We capped the whole glorious time off with a few days in Croatia in September. I have to say, my life is pretty darn sweet!

Here are some pretty random pics from the summer of elsewhere.

Here's a pic of Andyroo in Regent's Park in London, which we had to walk through every day from our hotel to get to the British Library. It was very pretty. We saw Spamalot in the West End one night. I was quite sneery at all of the Monty Python nerds eagerly singining along to the songs and reciting the "unladen swallow" bit word for word, right along with the actors. That is - cough - until the next day when Andy and I went and saw the Mamma Mia movie, and I nearly leapt out of my seat with joy when Meryl Streep led those large Greek ladies in a rousing chorus of Dancing Queen. Obviously Abba (not to mention Sound of Music, Anne of Green Gables, Dirty Dancing, North of Sixty, early Degrassi and Judging Amy -- last three are not musicals, I know, but trust me, they are embarrassing) lovers should not throw stones -- or "la vache" in this case.

We didn't spend all of our time travelling, though, and we were in Brussels for a lot of summer weekends. One day we went downtownish to celebrate the reopening of Place Flagey, which is a key traffic square in central Brussels, which has been under construction, I am not making this up, for over five years. How do Bruxellois celebrate finally having unimpeded access to a square that has made traffic a giant snarly mess for half a decade? Why they close the square to vehicles of course and have a party!

This is the square in question. Not a car to be seen. I love that modernist (Art Deco?) building behind Andy... It's designed to look like a ship and it does.

One of the bands celebrating the square's reopening. I took this picture because I was very impressed with how cool the accordionist was. Not an easy thing to look funky and interesting while wailing away on one of those puppies, but she manages. Also, the tuba dude has a definite Lenny Kravitz vibe.

We also entertained occasionally... Although, really, I'm such a poor housewife that the dinner party this night was catered exclusively by the chicken truck (chicken, ribs, potatos, green beans) and grocery store booze. I did make a salad -- a bag of lettuce, some halved cherry tomatos, a cucumber (which I PEELED, thank you very much) and some oil and vinegar.

We also went to Wales to see our friends Bruce and Sue. They were having renovations done to their house, so we went to Bruce's parents place. They live in a teeny little village, down adorable hedgerow lanes on a little farm filled with sheep. It's all too perfect and wonderful for words.

see?

Sheep!

The best part was that Bruce's parents INSISTED on doing all of the cooking, so we were presented with delicious feast after delicious feast. That fruit is from their garden , yo.

We also went and saw historical things, like this house.

...Where for once I made Andrew pose in the stupid fashion:

Bruce and Sue have two highly adorable kids, but I have manfully (womanfully) refrained from posting any pics of them up here, because I figured you'd much prefer seeing middle-agedish people instead... Ha ha.

Almost Famous

2008-09-09T13:30:00.002+01:00

A couple of nights ago Andrew and I spent the evening being filmed for Flemish Belgian national TV! It was quite exciting, let me tell you. I'm an ex-member of the Canadian Club (social group, not whiskey) and I'm still on their mailing list. A couple of weeks ago a notice went around that the popular Flemish national TV show Maan Bijt Hond (Man Bites Dog) was looking for a Canadian couple to include in their survey of different nationalities living in Belgium. We thought it would be fun so we put our names forward and were picked!

We didn't get paid or anything, but it was quite an experience. A three person crew came to our house on Monday night and spent an hour or so setting up lights and things. They actually made us move an Inuit painting we have in the office out into the living room, so there would be something "Canadian" in the background.

See? It's the green one to the right:

After they had set up our apartment we had to go outside so that they could film the opening scene, which features us with our building in the background. Andrew and I were a little late getting down there because the producer (Ann) asked us to change into long sleeve shirts so it would look more "wintry" -- see all the deception that goes into TV-making? Shocking!

Anyway, by the time we got down there the local kids who congregate in our square had swarmed the camera and sound guy and were begging to be filmed. It was kind of awesome because the kids treated us like rock stars when we came out. I have to say, I ate up the attention from those kids (or my "fans" as I like to call them). Filming an English-language 15 minute "bit" for a Flemish TV show aired only in Belgium is as close as I'm ever going to get to international celebrity... Kind of sad.

Another awesome thing happened after we had filmed the outdoor scene. There was one particular kid who was super obnoxious and kept begging to get filmed. The camera dude was nice about it, but the kid was quite persistent. As we were headed back inside, the kid kept circling us on his bike, screaming, "Filmer moi! Filmer moi!" and doing wheelies. Then, as he was in mid scream, he biked too close to the curb and completely wiped out. It was quite hilarious and the swarm of kids laughed hysterically, as did all of the adults. The kid was fine (I'm sure).

Anyhoots, we headed back inside for the actual show.
Here's the light and the big camera (sorry for the blurriness):

Then we sat down and answered one hundred questions about ourselves. The format of the whole show, Maan Bijt Hond, is a bunch of little segments about different aspects of life in Flanders and Belgium. One of the segments for the new season are these intereviews with expats living in Belgium. So over each hour long show, they'll air a segment with interviews from various different couples featuring snippets of their answers.

That's the camera dude.
He kept a half-smoked cigarette tucked behind his ear.
Cool, or kind of gross?

That's the sound guy.
He was bald on top with a long mullet of hair in the back.
Cool or kind of gross?

Ann asked all kinds of questions ranging from "What was your first car." To "When was was the last time you cried?" It was kind of fun answering them, especially hearing Andrew's responses. I learned a few things about my husband that I didn't know. Like the first girl he kissed was when he was 8 years old and they were in a box in her basement. How did that tidbit of information escape me?!

It did get kind of tiring by the end, which is the only way I can explain why I went along with Ann's suggestion that I sing a few lines from Canadian Shania Twain's classic, "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under." I pray to God that bit doesn't get aired!

All in all it was a pretty fun time, though. Even when she asked us how much we weighed (I declined to respond to that one -- If I lie to my doctor, why in the world would I tell all of Flanders? -- Apparently there are limits that even I won't stoop to).

Deadbeat blogging

2008-09-06T06:38:00.009+01:00

I haven't blogged in forever.

In my defense things got very busy there for a while -- we went to Wales, I'm in a panic about my thesis, we had our house taken over by a throng of 3,5, 13, 32 and 35 year olds... blah blah blah. I am now repentant and ready to rise from the ashes and blog anew.

So. Iceland.

Common Icelandic traffic problem

At the fishing museum ... What is it about me that can't resist the stupid photo op? It gives me an insane amount of pleasure to put my head in a mouth of shark's teeth, throw on a pair of viking horns, pretend to be a lion, cross my eyes, flex non-existent biceps...
I suspect it's because I'm the fourth of five children and have spent my life in a quest to get as much attention as humanly possible at all times.
Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!

What the vikings ride when they are not pillaging villages or worshipping Thor.

This is a dish of rancid shark meat. Icelanders used to catch the sharks in tiny little boats on rough Arctic seas, then, because the meat was so inedible, they would bury it for months, allowing it to ferment and rot. Then they would dig it out and chow down. We tried some. The guidebooks describe it as a cross between horseradish and roadkill, and that's about right.
Those Vikings are tough mo fos.

They no longer bury the meat but hang it in sheds -- take that Jaws.

This is some sort of important, point I think... I'm going to make something up and say it's the most easterly point in Iceland... I don't remember anymore. The perils of waiting a month and a half to blog after visiting somewhere, I guess.

Whale Skull

This is the sign for a common ye olde Icelandic pastime -- lifting heavy stuff.
In this case it was rocks:

My big strong man.

Cait's big strong man.

Notice how the rest of us are wearing tuques and multiple layers? Harry is in shorts and has taken his shoes OFF. Far be it from me to judge someone, but Harry is super cukoo.

Trying to hide from the wind. We look like marmots. Is that an animal?

So, the coolest part of our trip was our stay on the Snaefellsness Peninsula. At the tip of this peninsula is an extinct volcano, and just to liven things up, there is a glacier in the volcano. Madness. The landscape is all harsh North Atlantic sea views and vast rubbly lava fields. Is very amazing and kind of otherworldly.

The woman at the hotel told us that we could find the glacier by driving up a track. It was rainy, and she told us we could walk on the glacier, but we shouldn't stray from the caterpillar tracks on the glacier itself, or we might fall into a crevasse. She was very casual about it.

Well, the further we drove up, the more insanely windy and wet and foggy it became. We thought we had come to the end of the road, but that was mostly because we couldn't see the it anymore. We got out and took a couple of photos:

We are standing like that because we are actually braced against the wind, which was that strong. Even Harry is wearing pants, so you know it's cold. I kept reminding myself that we were there in July, which is the warmest month of the year. Andrew talked of returning to Iceland in a few years and camping, but given what the weather is like, there is no way I'm trusting myself to a sleeping bag and some scaps of canvas.

Anyway, we never did actually see the glacier, because we couldn't drive the car anymore, and we couldn't see more than a few feet in front of us. We figured it wasn't a good idea to go wandering around the volcano top in zero visibility.

I have to say, I mocked Andrew for bringing rain pants, but when my legs were ice cold to the touch and bright pink, I was no longer so mean. Even if they were kind of MC Hammer pants. This might be my all time favourite photo -- Andy's hat is blown right up and our glasses are completely filled with fog and rain. Not really intrepid explorers
-- more like bumbling nerd moles.

This was the hike we did the next day.
The weather was about a hundred times better than the day before

As you can see though, still not very good.

My Icelandic au revoir. Fake kissing a cheesy Viking decal.

We will definitely be going back.

Just not to camp.

NICEland (tee hee)

2008-08-12T09:00:00.001+01:00

Iceland is a place of outstanding natural beauty -- really really incredibly gorgeous and unpopulated. We weren't there for very long, so after Reykjavik, we beelined it to the Snaelfesness Peninsula, which Cait, aka Vanna, is helpfully pointing out on the map below:

As soon as we hit the penninsula, beautiful things started popping out at us. When we saw this waterfall, we screeched the car to a halt and took about a billion photos because we were awed at how pretty it was.What we didn't realise, of course, is that gorgeous insanely cool glacier-fed waterfalls are a dime a dozen and stopping to take photos of every one of them is impractical. It would be like stopping to take a photo every time you saw a Tim Horton's in Canada, or taking a picture of every stretch of flat field you see in the Belgian countryside.

On our first day in the Penninsula we stopped in one of the biggest towns to have lunch. We bought everything from the grocery store, including Skyr which is this sort of thicker version of youghurt, whcih is also magically low fat. Those vikings can do ANYTHING.

Nice job on taking a photo of me with my mouth full, Andy.

This was a waterfall that came down right in the town where we stopped for lunch.
It was very very pretty.

Because we are fearless explorers, we decided to climb up it:

We had to ford streams, just like Maria Van Trapp! We were totally brave pioneer-types.

Harry is a professional phtographer, so he took lots of pictures:

I'm pretty sure his will be a lot better than mine:

We made it!

The view from the top was spectacular:

This is me, leaning over the precipice, taking a photo downwardly of the falls... Kind of didn't turn out, but it was quite frightening taking the photo, so I'm damn well including it.

Post-climb relaxing

My shins are GIGANTIC... fear them, tiny people of Iceland... Fear them.

Andy, indulging his inner-duck and wading in the stream.

This shot is interesting, because that white thing in the far distance is a GLACIER.

The town of Olafssun, where we had lunch. Only now we tower above it. Mwah ha ha!

Next post: Rotten shark! Feats of strength! Bone chilling cold!

A few stolen moments...

2008-08-10T07:23:00.002+01:00

I am capitalizing on the fact that Andrew is still in bed to grab the computer for a few minutes. He's trying to finish up his book to send to the publishers for the fall, and so has been a total computer hog lately. This means that on the evenings and weekends I can never access it, which in turn means that I haven't been blogging much. (I try to keep the weeks free to work on the thesis, oh and to have lunch with friends and take tennis lessons, la la).

Anyway, I don't have enough time to upload all of the Iceland pics, but I DO have enough time to tell you about our exciting, glamorous Saturday night in the "heart of Europe."

Last night we went to the park and played Ping Pong. It was us and a group of Spanish tweens on the two tables. Then we bought half a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream (New York Super Fudge Chunk, thank you very much). We went home and played Scrabble. Then we watched some episodes of The Office Season Two that we had rented. Then at midnight we went to bed.

I know I should be sort of ashamed at the geeky nerdiness of the whole thing -- both Ping Pong and Scrabble are kind of shorthand for social maladjustment-- but I'm not. In fact I'm defiant and proud. It was fun, damn it!

(My feelings might also have something to do with the fact that I beat Andrew in BOTH Ping Pong and Scrabble -- suck on that, Horrall -- and that Jim and Pam kissed at the end of the final episode of The Office).

2008-07-31T15:43:00.003+01:00

We went to Iceland two weeks ago and it was fabu. Truly, one of the best trips we've been on. There was something wonderfully relaxed and easy about the whole thing. This was partly because we had great travel companions in the form of Andrew's sister and her new hubby. Yup, we were crashing their honeymoon and it was awesome. I highly recommend it.

Seriously, next time a couple you know is getting married, secretly book yourself into their honeymoon resort. I promise, they will LOVE to have their cousin/co-worker/friend from high school pop up in the Dominican Republic while they are canoodling at the resort's swim-up bar. Then you can join them as they line up for the All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet, follow them as they enjoy a moonlit walk on the beach and call their hotel room at 2 a.m to tell them about the back to back episodes of Knightrider on Channel 4. They will love you.

Anyhoots. We spent the first couple of days in Reykjavik, which has a great, laid-back vibe... It's not very big -- only about 100, 000 people, but it has some fun shops and a good downtownish area for eating. I think what I liked most about it was the absence of people. After spending so much time on tiny, narrow, cobblestoned Euro-streets it was really really nice to be somewhere big and wide and people-less. Everyone isn't all crammed together in Iceland.

That's the metropolis of Reykjavik. Doesn't it look enjoyably small and not all crowded together with angry people intent on cutting you off in traffic, mowing you down at crosswalks, stepping in front of you at the market and ramming you with grocery carts at the Delhaize?

Also, how can you not love a country that features this lady on their currency:I LOVE her. Look at her large, unwieldy hat and her double chin. She is awesome and wonderful.

I wish I could tell you how much that bill is worth, but after spending five nights in Iceland, I still didn't have a hang of the currency. 5,000 Kroners could be a dollar or it could be 1000 bucks. I have no idea.

You know what else I love about Iceland? Vikings! They are just great... Iceland was populated by men who were exiled from Norway for terrible crimes. Think about that -- Icelanders are descendents of people too violent for the Vikings to handle. That's hardcore, yo.
Do you get that I'm being a Viking here? That the beers are my horns? I wasn't sure I was clear. Also, check out my scary and mean Viking face. Tremble before my might, suckers.

I think the Icelandic Vking thing appeals to me because I am half Australian, you know so the criminal blood courses through my veins (also explains my enjoyment of crocodile wrestling and my love of Violet Crumble bars).
That's Leif Ericsson -- first European to discover North America (despite what those cukoo Americans think about Columbus and 1492). Still, I'm not entirely sure that Newfoundland can be considered North American -- after all, they kind of talk funny there, they're not even attached to the continent PLUS there's the whole hot-dog-eating, overly-close-relationship-with their mothers thing (ha ha... I joke. Love the Newfoundland and the Newfoundlanders... Rick Mercer is my pint-sized dream boat, also I am pro cod and anti-seal).

Ooo, speaking of hotdogs:

We got some of Reykjavik's world famous dogs and they really were delicious. Somehow they magically deep fry the onions or somehting, so they are extra crunchy. Truly fabulous.

Huh, I've got tons of pictures of scenic waterfalls, magnificent hiking trails and even a glacier, but somehow this blog has gotten sidetracked by chubby currency ladies and street meat. Oh well, it just means I'll have to post more some other time...

What's with the huh, now?

2008-07-25T07:06:00.003+01:00

I watched "Away From Her" last night. I say I watched because although Andrew was in the room, he was working on his book. He claims not to like "slow" movies... When I told him there were no car chases in this award-winning film about Alzheimer's disease, he lost interest. (This is not to say that Andrew only likes "boy" movies -- he's a huge fan of any kind of love story, any sort of movie with spontaneous outbreakings of song, and anything involving high school... as long as they all have happy endings. We saw the Britney Spears movie in the THEATRE is what I am saying).

Anyway, I watched this movie, which I've been wanting to see for a few years. It's very good, the performances are wonderful, Julie Christie is stunningly gorgeous and illustrates that you don't need a ton of makeup or botox to look hot. Gordon Pinsent is really incredible. The scenery is pristine and between it, Pinsent's faint Newfie accent and the ocassional "a-boot" the movie has succeeded in making me quite homesick for Canada.

The thing is, I didn't understand the ending. Does Fiona remember Grant? Does Fiona remember the other dude? Was Grant moving? Was he moving in with Olympia Dukakis? Was the other dude moving back into Shady Pines, or whatever that place was called? So confused.

I am hoping that one of my smart friends or family members can tell me what was happening there at the end. I've actually got the Alice Munro short story kicking around here somewhere, but I kind of hate short stories, so if you could save me from reading it and just tell me what was going on, I'd really appreciate it. If you're not sure yourself, take a stab at it, because I was out to sea. Consider it your good deed for the day.

In other news, Andyroo have had many adventures of late -- we went on the most elaborate beer run of all time, we were in London at a conference and we've been to Iceland. At some point in my life I will blog about all of it...

In the meantime, here is a picture of Iceland to whet your appetite. Iceland is a country of jaw-dropping natural beauty... Really, there are volcanos, glaciers, waterfalls, geysers, ice-pack fed rivers, puffins, seals, ponies, sheep, vikings and hot springs. It's obvious, then why I have chosen this picture to represent our whole trip:

Hee! I'm in novelty viking horns making a really stupid face! How perfect!

The Fat Lady Sang

2008-07-08T07:45:00.001+01:00

For the past two weekends in a row Andrew and I have actually been in Brussels. This has been a welcome change from the massive amount of traveling we've done so far in 2008. I figured it out the other day, and at least once a month since December we've made an international flight (Impressive, but not mind-boggling, when you consider that you literally cannot take a domestic flight in Belgium -- the country is too small... You can drive across it in under three hours).

In addition to alleviating my guilt at our carbon footprint, letting our bank account climb (sort of) out of the red, and giving us a well-needed rest, sticking around Brussels has allowed us to explore our city a little more. Contrary to what some people might think, I don't do a lot of swanning around Brussels during the week. Mostly I'm glued to my computer, staring out at my square, procrastinating, and occasionally writing something down. Anyway, the weekends are a nice break from all of that.

So, last weekend we experienced a frenzy of culture. .. We went to a play on Saturday afternoon, then hit the Couleur Café, which was a huge outdoor weekend-long festival of world music on Saturday night and went to the opera on Sunday. Madness.

I was quite excited about the opera -- Years ago when I was in Australia I'd seen a performance at the Sydney Opera House. While the venue was very cool and I had felt very sophisticated, my enjoyment had been hampered by a number of factors. Firstly, I was backpacking across Australia at the time and had nothing nice to wear. I ended up improvising a skirt out of a sarong and tugging it down all night so that it concealed my bright green flip flops.

The other problem was that the opera was Romeo and Juliet and I HATE that story. I hate it because I know how it ends, and from the story's first words I am just waiting for Romeo to drink the damn poison and Juliet to stab herself. It's funny, but I don't feel that way about other books/movies/plays that I've read/watched many times. I mean, I've read Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre easily ten times, I've watched Dirty Dancing more than once and I have seen the Anne of Green Gables musical so many times I can sing every single song, from the chirpy "Where is Matthew Going" number when he rides off in his buggy to pick up his "boy" orphan to the heart-wrenching "I Can't Find the Words" that Marilla sings to Matthew's empty (sob) chair. Anyhoots, I can stand repeats, is what I'm saying, but for some reason Romeo and Juliet just drives me bonkers... The whole time I sit there watching the play-movie-opera version, I am thinking "Die already, die!!!!."

The other reason I'm not a fan of Romeo and Juliet is because of my traumatic experience as the First Night Watchman in Massey Vanier High School's production of the play. That experience can be saved for another blog entry, therapy, or any time I've had one too many glasses of wine.

So, first opera experience, wasn't the best, but then Andrew and I went to see a couple of popular ones in Ottawa -- La Bohème and Carmen and I really enjoyed them. You know, lots of catchy tunes, fun costumes. Good times.

Ever since moving here I've been sporadically trying to get us tickets to the opera. Brussels Opera House is called La Monnaie and it's what you imagine an opera house should look like -- lots of red velvet, gilt, brocade and crystal chandeliers every time you turn around. It's got an interesting history of its own, because the Belgian Revolution (and yes, there was one) began amongst the audience of a play there in August, 1830. The Belgians got riled up by the performance, took to the streets and eventually kicked their Dutch overlords out. Anyway, I managed to secure us tickets to the very last performance of the season.

It was a matinee, so Andrew and I were a little uncertain how to dress. We didn't want to go too glitzy, because we didn't think sequins and tails were called for, but we didn't want to look like bums (i.e. wearing improvised beachwear) so I settled on a red-checked summery skirt and top, and Andrew went for a shirt and pants that were nice without being over-dressed... I didn't notice until we were actually half way to the Opera and could not turn back that we had ended up looking like one of those weirdly synchronized couples.

I made Andrew pose for this when we got back:

We're such dorks

(And no, before anyone --mum, Cait's friend Brenda-- gets excited, I'm not pregnant in this photo. My hand is like that because I'm trying to keep my wrap-around shirt thing wrapped.)

Also, for the record, I put my on red-checked skirt BEFORE Andrew put his red-checked shirt on, so despite what everyone might think, I am obviously the style-leader in our relationship.

Now, back to the opera itself. We saw the La Forza Del Destina, by Verdi. It was good, but didn't have any of the crowd pleasing numbers that Opera idiots (i.e. me) need in order to really engage with it. I have to say that my mind wandered and I spent a fair amount of time reading the Dutch sub-titles projected on the screen and trying to figure out what they meant before turning to the French. This lack of attention did lead to some issues... Turns out the whole plot hinges on the first scene, in which the very large, middle-aged "girl" tries to elope with her very large, middle aged lover, but gets stopped by her very large, middle-aged-but wearing-a-bad-white-wig father, who is waving a gun. The lover pulls out a gun and the two face off until the lover dramatically throws his down, saying he can't kill the girl's father, only to have his gun misfire and, well, kill the girl's father.

Unfortunately, I was conducting a self-imposed eye exam at that point, because I had noticed, whilst reading the subtitles, that my left eye seemed weaker than the right. So, while the all-important action was taking place before me, I was covering up alternative eyes and squinting at the sub-titles, trying to decide if I needed to change my glasses prescription. Anyway to make a long story short, thanks to my important opthamalogical research I missed the crucial accident-scene and had to lean over and loudly ask Andrew above the bellowing singing, who had killed the father. Needless to say, the extremely keen opera buff sitting next to me did not appreciate my question (or my eye exam) and shot me a murderous look.

The fact that Andrew and I appeared to be wearing matching red gingham uniforms probably did nothing to bolster my credibility as a serious opera fan... The guy probably thought we were employees from the nearby Hector Chicken franchise, who had snuck over on a (3 hour long) smoke break.

Jolene, Jolene, Joleen, Joooleeeene.

2008-06-27T07:46:00.007+01:00

So my fan base (ie mum) has been hounding me to know about the Dolly concert. (For those not in the loop, Andrew bought me birthday tickets to see Miss Parton in Kilkenny Ireland, and the concert was last weekend).

There was some concern that Dolly's giant zoomers were going to end the concert before it had even started because she cancelled her U.S. tour due to back pain. Dolly is quoted as saying, "Hey, you try wagging these puppies around a while and see if you don't have back problems" ). Luckily, Dolly was a true trooper and didn't cancel her Euro-Tour.

So, despite fears of drenching downpours (which we'd experienced all weekend) and bitter cold (it was so nasty the day before I'd had to make an emergency toque purchase), the evening of the concert was clear and warmish.

It was almost as much fun people watching before the music started as it was hearing her sing. There was a lot of extremely bad clothes -- some intentionally so, most not. There were cowboy hats and boots aplenty. We also saw a lot of high blonde wigs and an enormous (tee hee) number of bras stuffed with socks.

We started the night sitting in some bleachers in the expensive seats, but as soon as Miss Dolly came out belting out my favourite song, "Two Doors Down," I realised that sitting down for the concert was not an option, so we went down to the grounds so we could mingle with the rowdier (and much drunker) common people. I don't want to perpetuate any ethnic stereotypes here, but I do have to say that the Irish crowd was certainly enjoying a beverage (or ten). We saw people tipping over, strangers making out and more than one person getting dragged away by security. Who knew Dolly could inspire such boozy behaviour?

Dolly sang "Jolene", which she says she's been singing for over forty years and is about a real woman who was after her husband. No doubt Dolly kept him, because no one is going to steal Dolly's man. She also did a bunch of songs from her new album, which really isn't bad. I like the song "Better Get to Living." The video is very enjoyable because in it Dolly wears a tiny, bespangled top hat and gives advice to a midget. Fun! Here's the video on Youtube:

The concert really picked up speed when she did back-to-back oldies -- "Here You Come Again"-- which the crowd went NUTSO for and everyone was singing along... "Nine to Five," "Islands in the Stream," "Just a Country Girl," and ended with "I Will Always Love You" (Dolly, apparently will always love her Irish fans). Her encore was some surprisingly catchy tune about how Jesus is always there for her. She performed for an hour and a half straight. She told many stories about growing up the Smoky Mountains -- it sounded like she'd told them a billion times before, but it was still somehow good. Plus, she did a weird, high pitched giggle, which I enjoyed.

All in all it was a very fun concert. We've got no pictures because, of course, we forgot the camera. We did take these random pics of Ireland, though.

Andy, doing what he does best, consulting a map and leading me along...

Drinking a Kilkenny IN Kilkenny... freaky.

I tried to find a photo where my hair DIDN'T look crazy and odd, this is the best I could do.

This was the little lane in front of our hotel. It was called "Pudding Lane" and I cleverly took a picture of the sign... Yup, very clever indeed. Sigh.

This shot worked out better, although the sign is blurry because I am standing in the middle of street, getting honked at by irate (and let's face it, probably drunk) Irishmen. Also, I don't know why Andy keeps adopting that pose. Odd.

I had been to Ireland 17 years ago with my dad, so it was interesting to revisit it. The Celtic Tiger business has really changed the place -- I remember a lot of dilapidated buildings and dad and I unwittingly stayed in a rough part of town. We were walking downtown one day and some little boys threw rocks at me from the top of one crumbling buiding. Crazy. I remember my dad actually yelled at them, which was freaky because my dad didn't lose his temper very often.

Anyway, nothing like that happened this time. Instead, there was lots of H & Ms, Starbucks and well, more drunken Irish people. (I swear to God, I'm not stereotyping, but we did seem to constantly be stumbling across random alcohol-fueled merriment).

The other great thing about Ireland was that I was asked for directions four times! Yup... I looked like a native. It was fun to actually blend in somewhere, that is, until I opened my mouth...

Lazy Blogging

2008-06-19T11:08:00.003+01:00

I haven't felt much like blogging, lately. I don't know why, although maybe the stupid thesis is the reason. Stupid thesis.

Lots of stuff has happened since we got back to

Belgium

two weeks ago.We reunited with our beloved chicken truck.We went to a Belgian wedding where they served us SEVEN courses and I was so full that I couldn't EVEN EAT the second dessert... I ran over a pigeon in the car (sort of horrifying, but mostly secretly satisfying). There were threats of angry disgruntled farmers taking over the city and policemen in riot gear and giant water cannon trucks all over our neighbourhood. We saw the Indiana Jones movie and I saw the Sex and the City movie... Out of any of those events I could cobble together a blog post, but, meh...

Here's lazy blogging at its finest, pictures from our recent travels...

Here's Bermuda...

Andy and Roddy sober

Andy and Roddy less so...

Artistic shot of the vacationing Zip on his scooter via my OWN scooter's rearview mirror. Très fancy, I know...

Funny shot of our bobble heads in our scooter hemets. I was impressed that Bermudians even HAD a helmet big enough for Andrew's enormous melon. The man has a large, large head.

Beach shot, but far enough away that pasty white flab is strategically hidden.

After Bermuda I went to CANADA where I toured around visiting peeps.

First there was MONTREAL

(I don't know why these shots are little, and I don't know how to biggify them, but it's probably just as well, because I haven't asked any of these people permission to put their photos up on my blog. That's just how lazy I am being.)

Then CHELSEA

Where we did it up "Tector Style" (ie peer pressured Susie into drinking, talked loudly and shriekily and were in bed by 10 pm).

Then HALIFAX

When the small boy's parents saw this shot they got grumpy with me because the small child is, according to them, too close to the water's edge. I'd like to point out that I have never claimed to be the "good" babysitter, or even the "fun" one. I am the one you call when you've got no one else, or when NanNan is incapacitaed by a violent stomach illness that she got from your OTHER child, so maybe you shouldn't get so judgy about my techniques. The boy didn't get wet, did he?!?!

Then TORONTO

Downtown Toronto. Holding the shoes that are too painful to actually wear.

And of course, OTTAWA

The reason we were in Canada in the first place,
Cait and Harry's weddding
(No actual shots of the bride because I am pretty sure she wouldn't like it if I posted them here, even in little-afied form).

Women are From Venus and Men are From Somewhere Gross and Skeevy

2008-05-08T07:22:00.005+01:00

So the other day I was dutifully preparing my husband's dinner, so that it would be ready the instant he walked through the door after a hard day at the office. I had changed into a new outfit, applied fresh lipstick, put on my heels, and reminded myself to ask about HIS day, and not bother him with the petty little details of my life (you know, the usual).

Anyhoots, I was peeling potatos and I came across this:

I was immedietly enthralled. This was obviously a Potato of Love, symbolizing the Hor-Tec's deep and abiding adoration for one another. The Potato of Love represented all that was good and true about our relationship.

I put the Potato Of Love aside, and eagerly awaited the sound of his key in the doorway. When he arrived, I rushed forward, handing him a gin and tonic, taking his coat and umbrella, kneeling down to help him get his shoes off and giving him a quick shoulder massage (you know, the usual).

Then, with hands trembling in excitement and eyes glowing with my deep and abiding love for him, I brought him forward to see the Potato of Love.

"What do you think?" I asked tremulously (I have written an unpublishable Harlequin Romance -- can you tell?). My heart thudded with excitement and I awaited his response with bated breath.

"It looks like a set of hairy balls," he replied.

And you know? He's not wrong:

I leave you now for a month of travel -- Bermuda, Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax and Toronto, but I hope that Andrew's beautiful characterization of the Potato of Love as "A Set of Hairy Balls" will ring in your ears until I can return to blog once again.

Dutch Part II

2008-05-06T20:26:00.003+01:00

While I had many many exciting adventures in my Nederlands 1.1 class, Nederlands 1.2 has been less eventful.

In fact, even though my teacher is really great, I'm just not that into it. I'm kinda bored and I have to force myself to go most days.

That being said, today was a very fun day. The teacher brought in cards with pictures of various products you can buy at the market. There was fish, fruit, chicken, desserts, bread, pastries etc. She divided the class into two groups. One group was the market vendors the other half were the clients. Our job was to pretend to be in a market and then have conversations with one another about buying things -- You know,

"Good morning ma'am."
"Good morning. How much are your grapes?"
"They are 5 euros a kilo."
"I will have 1 kilo, please."
'That will be 50 cents" (or whatever, I can't do the math)
"Here is 10 euros."
"Do you have smaller change?"
"Yes. Here is 5 euros."
"Thank you, have a good day."
"Good bye."

Anyway, we took turns being the seller and the customer and occasionally someone would liven things up by "stealing" something, or by butting ahead in line. We did this for an ENTIRE hour. For some reason it was incredibly fun. There was a lot of laughing and joking and I found myself quite anxious to either get a good deal, or to get the most money possible from my "customers."

It was only when I was telling Andrew about the game tonight that I realised why I had enjoyed myself so much.

I used to play that EXACT game in Kindergarten at Ecole St. Léon. I'd like to think that this indicates a youthful exuberance for life, rather than the fact that I have a five-year old's mentality.

La la.

Kukoo Krazy

2008-04-30T14:13:00.004+01:00

Up to now, my posts about driving in Belgium have mostly involved stupid things I have done with the car, but I would like to take this opportunity to point out that the driving in Brussels is also kukoo krazy.

The other day I was toodling down a narrow one-way street near our house. The driver two cars up from me suddenly stopped his car in the middle of the street, got out and approached the guy in front of me, who was in a little black golf (Tito!). I don't know what the first guy said to Black Golf, but he was gesturing to his car, so I think he was claiming that BG had hit him. I was not on the ball and foolishly didn't unroll my window fast enough to get a good eavesdrop in. Anyhoots. There was much gesticulating and shouting, but not a lot of forward motion.

Meanwhile, cars had started to back up behind me. Crazy First Driver then proceeded to open all of the doors of his car, effectively blocking the entire road, preventing even innocent bystanders like me from getting around him. Crazy First Driver rummaged around in his back seat. Meanwhile, more and more cars were piling up, blocking the extremely busy Diamant intersection behind us (Belgians have no notion of anything as silly as actually keeping intersections clear).

There was a lot of honking and I was trying to figure out if I could somehow ease my way onto the shoulder to get around these people, when BG began reversing. Since there were about 15 cars behind us at this point, I knew he was going to get too far with that plan, but I was obviously not thinking like a Brusselois driver, because dude didn't want to reverse, he wanted to get some SPEED going. He revved the hell up, leaped the curb and hit the sidewalk so he could go around Crazy First Driver. Then he zoomed half a block down the sidewalk, swerved around a tree, and then jumped the curb to hit the street again.

It was something you would expect Crockett or Tubs to do as they chased down scummy drug dealers on the mean streets of Miami. It was not what I expected on a sleepy Tuesday afternoon in Brussels. Crazy First Driver suddenly didn't seem so crazy. He also didn't seem at all phased by Black Golf's actions. He looked back at me, shrugged, got in his car and drove away.

I came home pleased to have something to blog about and glad to be off the roads for a little while.

Wonderful things about Belgium in the Spring

2008-04-19T10:02:00.006+01:00

Our Friday market is usually the highlight of our week as anyone who has visited us will know. (To the rest of you haters, who prefer going to "Cuba," or taking care of your "children" to eating greasy chicken with us, I say pffft).

Anyhoots, the market is particularly pretty this time of year because the square (or zkware as it is pronounced here) that it sits in is abloom with some sort of gorgeous pink-flowered tree. It's probs some kind of cherry tree. I dunno, it's just pretty:

The other exciting development in my life is my discovery of "Gü." We had a dinner party a couple of weeks ago, and one of the guest, Cindy Lane (who writes a funny blog, which I don't know how to link to in this actual entry, but whose address is listed at the left) mentioned this wonderful stuff.

Gü is not the name of some prehistoric iceman they've discovered in the Swiss Alps, a complex shelving unit from IKEA, nor is it what you fish out of a clogged shower drain. Gü is an incredibly delicious dense chocolate pudding thing that you can buy in the grocery store , next to the ever-so-slightly-better-for-you youghurt. You only get a tiny amount (three spoonfuls worth, really) but that's a good thing, because I doubt the thick, rich, chocolate-y goodness is a diet-friendly food.

Finally, in more flower-y news, we escaped the city for a lovely afternoon last Sunday when we toodled out to the Hallerbos to see the famous carpet of wild bluebells that sprout up in the woods. This was also very pretty:

Extreme closeup

And the long view -- see a veritable carpet of bluebells...

And there's my own adorable little bluebell. I'm standing on a stump to even out the height differential. I'm also wearing my AWESOME Mr. T t-shirt that Tina and Susie gave me -- it says "I pity the fool" because I do. I pity fools.

Susie's Weird Hotel

2008-04-14T10:20:00.004+01:00

We've been travelling a lot these days and have stayed in some strange hotels,but I think the place that MSF put Susie up in Paris might have been one of the weirder spots.

From the outside, it looked like a typical, tiny, possibly-roach-infested Parisian two-star, but things got odd once inside. For one thing, as you hauled it upstairs, there was this scene, carefully arranged outside the window:

Yes, that's a gnome band on astroturf. Creepy....

Terrifying close-up, and what is that gnome doing to the gnome-goat (or is it a cat?)

And another shot, because it was so strange, and that duck is totally freaky and is somehow staring at me with its bill.

The other weird thing was the bathroom. I get that European hotels are often very very cramped for space, and I'm okay with that. When you're in a fabulous European capital, you don't need an amazing hotel room, because you're supposed to be outside, absorbing culture, learning about art and history and, in my case, stuffing your face with whatever greasy crap the Rough Guide assures you is "local."

There are limits, however, to space constraints, and I think that Snippy's hotel was pushing those limits.

To wit:

After I left, Susie actually bonked her head on the shelf and sustained a head welt... She could have sued the annoying French-correcting owners, but I think she was embarrassed by her wound... Come to think of it, she might be embarrassed that I've posted a story about her going to the bathroom on my blog.

Oh well, it's revenge for all those mean nicknames she gave me as a child...

The perils of bringing a camera

2008-03-26T07:46:00.002Z

The Hor-Tecs inability to bring a camera at key travel moments has been well-documented. We were in Malta over Easter and we did remember to bring the camera, even remembering to bring the charger AND the plug adapter. We were very impressed with ourselves, until I realized that the problem with bringing a camera is that some very bad pictures get taken. To whit:

In my defense: We had gone scuba diving that morning, and my hair was full of salt and we had just been at one of Malta's windiest points. That explains the crazy hair, although not my non-existent upper lip and double chin.

We toured the underground bunkers that the Maltese sheltered in during bombing raids in the Second World War. The hairnets went under the construction hats, but the hair nets are funnier than the hats.

I don't think this one is bad, as much as it is cute. Mum looks like a Smurf (how Belgian!). She was protecting her coif from the wind on the ferry crossing to Valetta. I should have learned her lesson.

This one isn't even actually in Malta, but it is horrible and deserves to be blogged about.

It's good luck...

2008-03-13T17:24:00.002Z

My mum is visiting at the moment. This is very fun. It means that I am drinking more tea than I ever thought possible, paying an enormous amount of attention to Clinton-Obama 2008 and getting gently chided about my missing buttons, messy hair and unpolished silverware. All of this is wonderful. It's been a year since anyone actually paid attention to all of that stuff, and it was quite overdue.
What this also means is that I have finally had a bunch of coats dry-cleaned.

I was wearing my newly spic-and-spanned coat today when a pigeon pooped all over me. My lovely clean coat is covered in crap. The effing bird also got my head. In the pinnacle of my nerd-existence, I had to stand in the middle of a busy square, cleaning the bird shit off my glasses. Ugh. There is nothing more geekily pitiful.

People wonder why I hate birds...

Oh, and if one more person chirps that it's "Good luck" to have a bird drop a load all over them, I will kick them in the head.

Further Adventures with the Car, or The True Meaning of Love

2008-03-04T07:29:00.004Z

So, since I have proven completely unable to manage the spatial adjustments necessary to get our car into our teeny little car elevator without scraping the crap out, we have been parking in the teeny little streets around our apartment. This is generally fine, and we usually find a spot. Last night, however, I came home around 10 pm, parked the car and went to bed. We were awakened at midnight by the police. Not a sentence that usually brings good tidings.

It turns out that I had parked in front of another building's garage door. In Brussels they don't just tow your car away when you do something mind-numbingly stupid, but they give you a chance to correct it. While I didn't understand this at first, the enlightened wisdom of such a policy dawned on me last night. Check out an early post, "The Move" for more info on this practice: http://beerandwaffles.blogspot.com/2006/11/move_14.html

So, I went down in my pajamas in the pouring rain. My sweet husband, who knows better than to park in front of people's garage doors, realized that sending his half-asleep, pajama-clad wife into the downpour at midnight wasn't the best idea, and he came with me.

First we received a stern lecture from the police about how stupid we were. Next, a very large German diplomat, who had been waiting in a very large German car to get into his apartment, balled us out. He told us that he works 16 hour days and the last thing he needs is to have to wait around to get into his own house. I sympathized with him, and could understand his anger. If I was in his position, I would be ready to rip people's heads off...

I remember the one time someone blocked our driveway in Canada. I didn't even have to GO anywhere, but I was so annoyed at the other person (I think because his car was a gleaming Jaguar, and I could just picture the owner -- some top hat and monocle wearing Mr Burns-esque plutocrat who felt that he had the right to park anywhere he wanted, damn what the little people thought) that I called the police and watched from my upstairs window in gleeful satisfaction when they towed it away. I then dragged Andrew to see a movie, just to prove that we DID need to get out. Before we left the car's owner arrived -- a very frail and bewildered looking Chinese man. Oh dear.

Anyway. I had sympathy with the large German, although he did go on for quite a long time. After he had had left, Andrew pointed out that if he was so anxious to get home, working 16 hour days was silly, and that perhaps he should reexamine his life-priorities (Andrew hadn't thought it was wise to actually convey those thoughts to the German's face).

Anyhoots, we then drove around the neighbourhood for five minutes looking for a spot. Finally, we found one, two blocks from home. We had to walk back through bucketing rain. At midnight. On a work night.

I have to say the night was a revelation to me of the saintliness of Andrew. If the situation had been reversed I would have been extremely grumpy with him. Both "extremely" and "grumpy" being giant understatements. But Andrew didn't say a word of reproach about being woken up and dragged out into the cold as a result of my own idiocy.

That's either true love or a man repressing some deep homicidal urges. Either way, it makes him a pretty great husband.

If you're not a winner, does that make you a loser?

2008-02-20T07:31:00.002Z

Well, I didn't make the cut in the amazon.com novel contest. I have to admit I was a bit disapointed, but at the same time it was a good experience. The best part was all of the support I received from my friends and family... I didn't realize you all cared so much!

Another good thing about the contest was the encouragement it gave me. I've actually almost completed revising the sucker, which means I'll probably be ready to look for an agent in March. Hurray!

Also, I got a positive review from the Publishers Weekly Reviewer, which I can then use when I am looking for the aforementioned agent. Hurrah!

So, all in all, the experience was entirely positive (except for the losing horribly).

Thanks again for caring, dudes.

Wine Tasting/Guzzling

2008-02-14T09:25:00.002Z

We went to a very fun wine-tasting last night. We were fed tapas and an extremely adorable little Australian man (who has a house in Balmain!) led us through five glasses of Australian wines... Well, in theory it's five glasses, and in theory he leads you through them. What actually happens is that the extremely adorable little Australian man talks about the first wine and you intelligently sniff the nose and nod knowledgeably when he mentions "lime notes" and palates. Then he goes around and FILLS your glass with that wine until there is none left.

Needless to say, by the third wine being tasted, I was shouting out stories of my glory days as Mr Cricket in the Heroes Elementary Production of "Pinocchio" and giving dating advice to overly-cologned Londoners. By the end of the night, I had demanded all of my fellow-wine-tasters email addresses, believing that we had formed an irreplaceable bond that would last a lifetime. Also, I was feeling a bit queasy.
Then I took my shoes off and ran down the streets of Brussels in my socks. In my defense, my heels were very high and pointy.

Now it is the next day and I am feeling triumphant because I have managed to drink a cup of tea without getting sick.
Things are looking up.

I have to meet my advisor in four hours.
Things are looking down.

In honour of the night, and shamelessly ripping off this blog: dooce.com
I will now post a link to an extremely funny video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=i9UA-JSBm90

I know it's wrong, and maybe she really did hurt herself, but every time I think about it, I giggle. Those two anchors at the end are TOTALLY trying not to laugh. Enjoyable. See, I'm giggling again just thinking about it.

Black Tie and Dry Chicken

2008-01-26T08:37:00.000Z

So, apparently when you blog about your shoes, people with messed up priorities want to see what you're WEARING with those shoes. I got a couple of emails from my vast fan base asking for pics of Andy and I in our black tie finery, so here goes.

The soiree was at the Royal Artillery Toodly-Pop... Some kind of military-ish club, or something, and if you haven't guessed, I have made its name up, because I can't find it anywhere.

Anyway, it was quite nice. We arrived and were immediately handed glasses of champagne, and I was swilling that all night. Glorious.

The building was definitely kind of weird, for instance there were random stuffed animals. To wit:

I especially enjoyed this bear, because it kind of looks like he's doing my signature dance move, "The Happy Crab."

There were also busts of evil, slave-labour employing, 16-year old mistress-having Belgian kings

Btw: If you're at ALL interested in Belgium's history in the Congo (and who isn't?) read King Leopold's Ghost -- awesome book, where you get all the dirt on the big guy.

Speaking of the big guy, here's Andyroo, looking very debonair and suave in the tuxedo he bought at a vintage place in Massachusetts:

My dress, I am pleased to say, is from the clearance racks at the Fanshawe Park Road Winners in London Ontario. My fabulous purse, gift of my fabulous sister, is from a fabulous bag store in Paris, on St. Honoré, and the wrap is from a very cute Parisian boutique just off Place des Vosges, also in Gay Paree.

The dinner itself was beyond weird. There were a lot of tiny, little old British men who seemed to have stepped out of 1948. One bustled up to us, assumed Andrew was the Cambridge attendee (which is the truth, but I don't like that kind of assumption) and talked about how they tried to bar spouses (or I should say, wives) from Society events, but found that attendance plummeted. What's more, according to this guy, what they were now seeing were more and more WOMEN graduates of Cambridge. Women! Apparently they're going to university these days! Some are even getting jobs and wearing trousers.

When we sat down, but before we could begin eating, we had to do various toasts. We toasted the King and Queen of the Belgians, the University, and then, very emotionally, Queen Elizabeth herself. That was odd.

This is us at the table. I assume that that's the Cambridge flag (?) behind us, I don't know. I tried to conceal my lack of enthusiasm about the glories of a Cambridge education, but the evening kind of wore me down, you know? It was very very self-congratulatory... There was a speech, by another, tiny, little old Brit. The topic of his speech was, and I am not joking, "Cambridge: A Future As Golden As Its Past." We had another one of these little British men at our table (I tell you, they were everywhere, like well-read, white-haired rats) who kept muttering "hear hear" whenever the guy making the speech said something particularly complimentary about the school. He was like a caricature of a befuddled but pompous Oxbridge grad.

This is the friend we made. He's Belgian and gave us all the dirt about the crazy Belgian political system. Then we gossiped about Scientologists and Tom Cruise. See, the whole evening wasn't erudition and intellectualism... I am proud to say that I was able to lower the tone considerably. If I'd had another glass of champagne, I probably would have started "Happy Crabbing."

Andrew didn't have as much luck with his seating partner... She was a lobbyist to the EU (snoozzze) who lobbied on behalf of ACCOUNTANTS. Yikes.

This is my artistic shot of us in our elevator on the way home. Andrew is very tall.

Oh, look at how adorably cutely wonderful he is:

Kind of a nerdy James Bond.

One more shot of the shoes, the beloved, beloved shoes.

And we end with Andy's weird, male model pose. I don't know what was going on there, but it was the end of the night, and I was pretty wobbly from wine, and frankly, the beloved, beloved shoes.

New Shoes!

2008-01-22T17:42:00.000Z

So Andyroo has joined the Cambridge Society of Belgium, which means that we went to their annual black tie dinner last night.

I was quite excited about it because it meant getting all gussied up. Initially I had plans of buying a new dress, getting my hair cut, having a facial, getting a pedicure and wearing blusher. I was going to go ALL OUT.

In the end, I settled for buying a new pair of shoes... But what a pair they were. Yes, yes, I know I am undoubtedly crazy, but I have taken several pictures of these lovely ladies.

Prepare to feast your eyes on beauty, sassiness and fantasmia. Prepare to see my shoes...

BEHOLD!

Oh, look at how adorable they are.... The flowers behind are beautiful birthday bouquets given to me by my loving husband and a very nice friend. Not to belittle the kindness of their gestures, but don't the flowers look kind of drab and sad next to my beautiful, beautiful shoes.

Another view. Look at their sweet little bow, which is just slightly off-kilter, so you don't take the shoes TOO seriously. They're shoes with a sense of humour, people
It's possible that my shoe-purchase was influence by this blog post by "Things I've Bought that I Love":
http://mindyephron.blogspot.com/2007/11/shoes-with-bows.html
(Truth be told, this whole post is a rip-off of her website, but la la, I don't care).

That's my foot IN the shoe.
(yes, yes, my toes were completely numb by the end of the night, but if I had wanted comfort I would have worn Ugg boots)

Oh, look who's visiting again: My shoes! This time they're "roughing it" on my dining room table. Oh girls, you're too much.

Oh, and here I am, actually walking. Hurray shoes. Beautiful and useful!

Help a sister out?

2008-01-16T15:39:00.000Z

So, I wrote a novel. (well actually I wrote two, but the first one is so horrible that only a few friends and family have ever seen it... It was a Harlequin romance called Love's Bouquet featuring a "plucky" florist, 'nuf said).

Anyway. I finished the second one in June. It's a murder mystery set in Canada's national archives. I hope it's kind of funny and kind of suspenseful, but who knows?

On a whim in November I submitted it to the amazon.com breakthrough novel contest and I found out today that I had made the semi-finals! They received 5000 entries, and picked 836 semi-finalists... so that's pretty good, right? Finalists get flown to New York and wined and dined and the winner gets his (or hopefully her) novel published. Very exciting.

This is now where you come in. Amazon wants to generate public interest in the contest, so they've posted excerpts from all of the semi-finalists on their site. A key part of the whole contest is customer reviews of the excerpts. Basically, Amazon is going to be picking finalists based on people's posted reviews. Here's what Amazon has to say about it:

From now until March 2, we're inviting Amazon.com customers to download, read, and review excerpts from our semifinalists and help decide who will make it to the Top Ten. Penguin will select manuscripts to read from the semifinal round based on customers' feedback and Publishers Weekly reviews. The 10 finalists selected from this round will be announced on March 3. Customers will then vote to select the winner, to be announced April 7, 2008.

So, you guys would be doing me a huge favour by checking out the excerpt from my novel (17 pages) and if you're inspired to write a review, posting it at their site. I just looked at it (but didn't post a review of my own work, that would be lame, right?) and it looks pretty easy and straightforward.

Checking out my entry will, at the very least, offer you insight into how I waste my time when I should be writing my dissertation.

La la la.

As an added incentive to the oodles of love I would throw at you, Amazon is offering prizes for the best reviews. Here's the info:

When you read excerpts from the semifinalists and post reviews, you’ll be in the running to win a prize package (including an Amazon Kindle, a $2,000 Amazon.com gift certificate, and an HP photo printer) for providing the most--and the most high-quality--reviews.

Also, if you like what you read, or just like me, and feel like spreading the word about the contest and my entry, I would appreciate it.

For the full info on the contest including a short section on "how to write a good review" check out:

http://www.amazon.com/b?node=332264011

To get to my entry, go here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00124COWA

Thanks, dudes!

PS The deadline for helping a sister out is March 2.

The Masai Mara

2008-01-13T19:20:00.000Z

This is my last Kenyan post and I will soon go back to scintillating entries about life in Belgium (for instance, last night while jogging through a park I saw two tiny little old Belgian ladies in enormous fur coats being sternly reprimanded by a police officer because they had failed to clean up their little frou frou dogs' "caca". So glorious to hear! I cackled as I jogged past them, even though I know it is wrong to laugh at the elderly.)

So, back to Kenya. The last park we visited is right next to Tanzania, and is known as the more famous Serengeti on the other side of the border. While we saw no rhinos in this park, we saw all of the other animals plus lions aplenty. Fun!

This was a giant bull elephant who is known to be very territorial. (Elephants are the most dangerous animals in the wild -- true fact, because they are so territorial. Nothing kills an elephant, not even a lion. Lions don't even kill baby elephants!). Anway, this elephant didn't like our truck being on HIS road, and he did this head cocking thing at us, which meant he would charge. He didn't, because we drove out of there lickedy split, but then the elephant actually did chase the truck behind us! Very exciting.

Hippos! They never came out of the water enough for us to get a good snap. I don't blame them though, it was HOT.

The only time we picnicked in a park (usually getting out of the trucks is forbidden). All of us whities are dutifully wearing our sun hats. There was a couple of hyenas not far from us, waiting for us to leave so they could scavenge any leftovers.

Warthogs might have been my favourite because they are so cute. Also, speedy little runners.

Lions!

Sleeping lion

Jackal and vultures feeding on a dead wildebeest. It was quite exciting to watch, because the jackal was totally outnumbered by the birds, but he kept them at bay by occasionally lunging and biting at one.

This is a serval cat, which is a "small cat." It kind of hopped as it hunted for mice in the grass. Quite cute.

This is a big cat.

This is Andrew being frightened at how very close we are to this large lion.

Lioness

Gazelle with her baby. Those suckers run fast. 20 minutes after being born, a gazelle runs too fast for a lion to catch. Not a cheetah, though. A cheetah can totally catch a gazelle.

Buffalo with a bird on his nose.

Andrew and Sbig, the Polish dad who was on our camping trip with his 15 year old daughter. Sbig loved cold beer and his little sun hat.

This is a crowned crane, which is the national bird of Uganda.

Giraffes in the beautiful Masai Mara.

A zebra. I cheated with this one because it's from Lake Nakuru National Park, but what evs, I forgot to put it up the other day.

Me, acting out all of the lions we saw that day. This was our deluxe camp at Masai Mara. It had fancy tents we didn't have to put up ourselves and toilets with running water. Very very swanky.

Andrew with our driver, Richard, after our trip. He is from the Kikuru tribe, which has been facing many reprisals as a result of the election. I hope he is okay.

Another cheating one. This is from Samburu National park. These cheetahs were sleeping under a bush and we couldn't get very good photos of them. Then the elephants started moving towards them, heading for the river for a drink, and the cheetahs got up and ran away. Like I said, all of the animals get out of the way for elephants. They are meanies.

The road to Lake Nakuru

2008-01-08T17:11:00.001Z

One less than great thing about the trip was that it required a lot of travel along bumpy African roads. Still, we'd stop fairly often, and they kept us well-fed, so I didn't get cranky.

Here we are at a pretty waterfall.

Andy at a viewpoint overlooking the Rift Valley, which stretches from Syria to Mozambique.

Me pointing to the Rift Valley, in case you had missed it.

We didn't do much hiking on this trip, but one walk we did do was to the Mau Mau caves, which is where the Mau Mau rebels holed up for years as they were fighting to kick the Brits out of Kenya and gain their independence.

That's part of our group at the Equator. We had a demonstration of the movement of water through a drain here. Bart Simpson was right, it really does go counter-clockwise South of the Equator.

Lake Nakuru is famous for its flamingos.

This is me, keeping a safe distance from the giant, heaving mass of BIRDS that fill this enormous lake. I tried not to think of them rising in formation to attack me. I think you can still kind of get how nervous I am from my posture, though...

Pretty animal, whose name I have already forgotten.

Buffalo

Man.

Woman

This hyena is hunting flamingos.

See?

Storks are super creepy. I wouldn't want one going anywhere near a baby. It would totally eat it.

Rhino-palooza!

Rhine-tastic!

Baby Rhino! (Woodgy woo).

Samburu National Park

2008-01-04T12:57:00.001Z

Samburu was the first of three national parks we visited.

This was the first animal we saw upon entering the park. It's a gerenuk, or giraffe antelope, so called because it gets up on its hind legs to eat the bushes.

These were the first elephants we saw, and Andrew was grinning from ear to ear. After watching them for five minutes, he said that the whole trip had been worth it, he didn't care if he didn't see another animal and he could go home then and there happy.

20 minutes later, he's already getting blasé.

We saw tons of antelopes, gazelles, and these guys, which are oryx's. One of my favourite moments was when we stopped the truck, turned the engine off, and a herd of oryx crossed the road in front of us, the pounding of their hooves the only sound for miles. It was beautiful.

This was where we camped for the first two nights. Our site was just in behind the trees on the right.
A troop of baboons lived at the site, and plagued the cook, Isaac, by constantly trying to steal our food. Isaac spent a lot of time throwing stones at them to chase them away. They were also a handy early-warning system, because they would call in the middle of the night if they spotted a lion or leopard prowling around. If you heard the baboons yelling, you knew there was a "big cat" out there...

"Our" baboon troop crossing the river.

A crocodile watching their crossing...

Andy's spot throughout the whole safari: Standing up at the back of the truck, on the lookout.

Kenya

2008-01-01T17:58:00.000Z

Andrew and I had an amazing Christmas vacation in Kenya. The weather was incredible, meeting different Kenyans was fascinating, and the animals we saw were stunning.

It was really interesting to be there during the elections, where I saw for the first time just how important an election can be... Kenya regularly has 80% voter turn out, and is still quite new to the whole democracy thing (as we have now sadly seen). Unlike Western democracies, voting in the right candidate will have a direct impact on your quality of life -- if you vote in a corrupt MP or president, your village might not get a water bore, or school.

Our safari drivers and the tour guide spent a lot of time explaining the electoral process to us, and the different tribal alliances that complicate voting. Still, it was definitely eye opening to return to Nairobi the same day that President Kibaki had himself quickly sworn in. We were told to remain in the hotel because it was too dangerous to go out. Our drivers were particular anxious to drop us off and get home to their families, because most were of Kikuyu tribe, who have now been facing reprisals.

It's been heartwrenching to hear about the violence happening in that country now, and I hope that everyone we met on our incredible trip is safe with their families.

In defiance of the usual Amy-Andrew camera debacles, we brought it with us, kept it charged and never even dropped it! We took 250 photos, which is a staggering amount to us, but was NOTHING compared to what most people took -- one couple had hit 300 on their first day!

The next few blog posts will be of the photos we took. The ones below are from our first day in Nairobi. We were exhausted, jet-lagged and a tiny bit freaked at our first visit to a third world country. We ended up doing some very very touristy things, including visiting a "safari walk" which is a glorified zoo. Here are our photos from that:

A pygmy hippo. It sweats red, which you can sort of see glistening on his tiny, adorable nose.

Our zookeeper-guide person let us into the cheetah compound and encouraged us to pose with the big cat. He promised that it was thoroughly tame (they'd raised it from the time it was two months old). Still, I was extremely leery about the whole thing.

I kept envisioning the headline: "Idiot tourists go into a cheetah compound and get mauled by animal." I think you can read my misgivings in my face...

Andrew was more comfortable, except when the cat rolled over him. Yikes!

It was all worth it for this shot, though.
The zoo keeper said that they exercise the cheetah (and themselves) by tying a tennis ball to a piece of string and RUNNING through the park, with the cheetah chasing them... Crazy exercise regimes like that might explain why Kenyans are such renowned runners.

On our first night in Nairobi we met the group we were going to be traveling with. A bunch of us went out to this famous Nairobi restaurant that serves tourists and locals alike. It's called "Carnivore" and they serve huge amounts of meat on giant skewers. It's like a buffet, except you don't even get the exercise of walking to the table. Instead, they come to you with this mounds of meat. One man was carrying a whole turkey on the skewer, which he sliced off with an extremely sharp knife.

The next day we left for our camping safari, so stay tuned to the blog for more pics...

A New Car!!

2007-12-19T15:39:00.000Z

So, as some of you know, we finally got our car two weeks ago. It was of course extremely thrilling. We celebrated by tootling down to Liege so that I could give a paper at a conference (woo hoo!).

The following photo has nothing to do with our car, but was taken at this sad shopping centre in the middle of Liege where we went to the grocery store. They were putting on a really freaky Christmas show and I happened to have my camera (I don't bring it to London, or Vimy Ridge, but I remember it for the grimy, industrial town of Liege).

Anyway, I was stunned by how incredibly creepy this show was, with the prancing elf people and strange, loud, off-key singing. The man above is a chubby middle-aged Belgian, but there he is, near the food court, wearing a sort of metallic cone on his head, overly made up, and singing some fake "holiday" song that scrupulously makes no mention of Chirstmas. It kind of made me sad, but at the same time frightened... Like how I feel about the news that Britney's little sister is pregnant... I mean, is the whole world going to be populated by Spears-es? Those girls are FERTILE.

Ahem, I am digressing. The point of this post is to discuss our fabulous car. So here it is:

Look how pretty and red and shiny it is. Just like Santa's hat, or Rudolph's nose! Also, just a little FYI, but that very impressive building behind the car is the town hall for my neck of the woods. Pretty snazzy, huh?

This is the back view, from our underground parking spot. And your eyes aren't deceiving, you that's Andrew "Mad Max" Horrall in the driver's seat. He took us for a spin, yo and he's got killer driving skillz. (Killer as in good, not, you know, actual killer).

This is Andy looking smug after he has successfully navigated us through bizarro Belgian traffic, crazed roundabouts and a parallel parking job on his first attempt.

Pretty amazing for a man who has only learned to drive in the past year and is still figuring everything out.

I, on the other hand, have been driving for 15 years. You would imagine that thanks to my extensive experience I would not attempt to win a fight with the elevator jobby that brings our car down to our parking spot in the bowels of our apartment building.

You, would, however be wrong. I did this a mere three days after we got the car, and just to be clear those aren't adorable little smudges that can be wiped away, but deep GOUGES into the red paint. In my defense it's very tricky getting our giant car into the tiny Belgian elevator.

I tried to tell Andrew that having a new car was like getting a pair of new sneakers... You know, they're bright white and you need to scuff them up a bit to break them in.
I don't think he bought it.

(get me) Out of Africa

2007-12-14T10:19:00.000Z

Andrew has been gung ho to check out Africa since we got here. After all, there's no ocean separating us, so it's just a question of nipping down... Sort of like going to the corner store for milk, only with one 7 hour stopover at Heathrow and then a 9 hour flight...

Anyhoots, he succeeded in convincing me to go on safari to Kenya, which is what we're doing over Christmas.

It's our first trip, and so we decided to go on an organized safari , just to kind of get our bearings and see how things work. Since some of us (Andrew) have nothing but DISDAIN for organized trips, however, we had to go with a very bare bones kind of tour. So, we've opted for a low-budget, low-fuss, low-pampering 9 day camping expedition. We're required to bring our own sleeping bags, DDT-impregnated mosquito nets, water purifiers, and eco-friendly clothes-washing soap, they provide us with tents and, um, hopefully food.

I'm not an enthusiastic camper. I have car camped, grudgingly, on occasion. The one time I canoe camped I managed to avoid ever having to actually manipulate a paddle, which I am quite proud of. On that trip I also forgot my glasses, which meant that I wore my contact lenses for three days straight and looked like a red-rimmed, blear-eyed drunk after a week-long bender by the time we finally returned to the car.

When we were in Australia we camped in the outback (or the "Red Centah" as the Aussies called it). There we didn't even have tents -- just sleeping sacks we were meant to crawl into so that we didn't have to lie on the ground. I have to say, that trip was okay. We were again with a group, although we were the oldest people there, the others all being 19 year old Brits on their "Gap year." We spent a lot of time avoiding the inevitable messes brought about by British binge drinking and watching the various romances spark, take flame, sputter out and then die... Hey, a lot can happen in three days.

Anyway, after the Australian experience, I figured I was ready for Kenya. After all, this time I would have a tent. That was an improvement, right?

Then I read about this: http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2007/12/07/africa/OUKWD-UK-KENYA-COBRA.php

That's right, it's a record-sized, venom spitting cobra that has recently been found in the Kenyan jungles. This sucker measures nearly nine feet and contains enough venom to kill 15 people.

My lovely and supportive friend Dara pointed out that her favourite part of the article was this quote: "A new species of giant spitting cobra is exciting and reinforces the obvious -- that there have to be many other unreported species".

Not comforting.

Frankly, I got the chills reading this line about James Ashe, whom the species is named after: "Ashe, now deceased, was the first to catch a larger-than-normal spitting cobra in the 1960s and suggest it belonged to a different species."

"Now deceased"? I can guess what killed him...

Things can't be that grim, though, right? After all, we're going with a well-respected, long-established company that will make sure to keep the giant, venom-spitting cobras, not to mention the easily-enraged rhinos and speedy cheetahs, well away from us.

Um, except for this:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/11/23/antarctica.ship/

That's right, the company we're going with, G.A.P. Adventures, was responsible for the cruise ship that sank off of Antarctica a few weeks ago. Not exactly a testament to their competence.

Dum dee dum.

Still, we're not getting into any actual boats with the G.A.P people, we're staying on Terra Firma and unless they rub meat inside of our tents to attract the lions, we should be okay.

...right?