Dragonfly Cannibalism on the Dock

I'm just saying whoa dog.

You'll have to forgive me; I've never been anywhere.

Big news! Miklos and I are going to Hungary in April! This still really hasn't sunk in for me.

Except that tomorrow when I wake up, I'm positive I'll realize the reality of it.

I've never been on a big plane; I've never seen the ocean, let alone crossed it; I've never been in a total state of culture shock; I've never been in a country where I have so little a realistic idea of what to expect, except for what someone has told me. To summarize, it's ridiculously exciting, or it will be, once it hits me that (OMG) I'm actually going!

Actually I think that excitement is beginning to build, as I've just now begun to think of the endless new photo possibilities. (Speaking of those, go here.) And now, to prevent any further evidence of how much I look forward to spending part of spring in a totally new place, I'm going to go to bed. Enthusiastically!

**

New favourites:

• Lamebook
• The Oatmeal
• Yahoo Answer Fail

Back from Vacations

Photos:

• The Island
• Cottage 2009

It's friggin' late. I'll add some commentary later.

A Cigarette in Bed; or a Cookie, for Non-Smokers

It was a very gloom-and-doom weekend at the island, at least as much as an island on the border of Ontario and Quebec can be gloom-doomy. Allow me for a moment to be more specific: The sky spent a lot of time pissing down rain.

One bad omen was a horrible accident that had happened on the 400S the morning we departed for the island; a tractor trailer and a small car collided, spilling 400 litres of diesel on the highway and killing at least one person. The cars on the highway crept along for four kilometres, which took approximately one hour and forty-five minutes to clear. People were getting out of their cars, walking up and down the highway. Cars took a half hour to catch up with some of the walking temporary non-passengers. It was a sad sight when we finally could see it. By that time, there was no longer a 'teetering' tractor trailer balanced on the center guardrail as the traffic reports had suggested. Just a kind of banged up looking transport truck, a severely messed up guardrail, and a burned-out shell of a Mazda which had been cut apart to pull someone out. Horrifying.

After what became a staggering nine-hour drive, we arrived at Tee Lake. By this point I had re-read about a quarter of Timequake and remembered for about the fiftieth time why I have this affinity for the late Kurt Vonnegut's twisted cynicism. And yes, the piss-rain. We braved the weather, though. The lot of us:

• Took a billion pictures of frogs (even at one point seeing one frog eat another... wtf)
• Saw the incredible mountains and lakes from a lookout point in Ville-Marie and on the drive to it
  
• Drove all the way to Algonquin and saw some beautiful scenery but no moose (good thing Miklos loves to drive so!)
• Light-painted to our hearts' content on the dock by night after the lake had further filled itself with almost a foot of the previous night's precipitation.
  

It was only on the last night that my body was eaten to bits by vicious Quebecois mosquitoes. Fine holiday fun, regardless of dreary weather. And after a giant drive home, we've got two more days before we head up to my family's cottage, which I've not seen in a year. I'm excited. Hopefully less rain, yes?

"I'm going to Vegas!"

Man, I miss it up north! Luckily, I'll be heading there at the end of the week. And then again at the end of next week. Because I plan vacations real well.

I miss that cottage and that lake. But most of all, I think I miss being able to breathe easier, which is not something that is happening this week. I'm yawning just to get a complete gulp of air in me, which can't be good for the economy (but what can be these days? Hah-hah-hah).

Today a young spoiled looking gent with greasy-ish hair came in for a passport. While he and his mother waited, he kept saying things like "Vegas!", or "I'm going to Vegas! Yeah!" as I ignored him. He reminded me of a snot of a former friend of mine who had never worked a day in his life yet managed to spend all his family riches on ... jesus, I don't know, fancy belt buckles or something, and so I didn't want this replica to start talking to me about his stupid Vegas trip that I thought surely his daddy was paying for.

Then I made the mistake of trying to lighten things up while they stood in line by saying to his mother who looked at me directly, "Looks like you picked the busiest time to come in," to which the son replied "No worries, I've got til September..." and his mother chimed in, "Yeah! He's going to Vegas!" Shit.

So then I engaged in a million years-long conversation about how he was going to Vegas for free and how he makes $20/hour and how he fears for his liver during this Vegas trip, all of which he felt comfortable telling me within the first few seconds after I made the mistake of engaging in conversation with his mother.

Oi vey. At least afterward there was a more entertaining guy who ran into both the entrance and the exit doors.

Cripes.

1. Death
2. Taxes
3. If I apply for and get a job, the training will almost certainly always fall on the ONE scheduled week of vacation I will have planned all year.
   

Oh, hey.

By the way, I went up north for a week.

Andrew and I went to African Lion Safari the day before the holiday week started, and we got so many cool pictures that I don't know where to start with uploading them. I saw a million bears on my vacation. Zero bears, my ass. I want to live up north. Except that there is a distinct and utterly wrong absence of sushi in the wilderness. I do not support that.

I will update again shortly, but I think I am facing the driver's equivalent of jet-lag for another day or so.

Case and point: I am almost always hilarious.

As I open my email to see if Monster JobSearch Agent has found me any new Restaurant Manager "jobs matching my criteria", (ultimately matching none of the criteria I've listed at all,) I come to a realization. I'm at my wit's end, my breaking point, the point where it occurs to me that "Hm, yes, I do believe I need a break." That's it. I am slotting my vacation.

One week of Mother Nature, cottage living, and, thus, the absence of most modern technologies I'm used to should scare me back into appreciating reality.

Vacation time. Coming soon.

you ain't workin' anymore