I know, I'm crap....

So I haven't posted for over a week, although I keep meaning to. So while I am meant to be doing some work, I shall take the time to update, as long as I can remember what the hell I've been doing over the past few days.

There has been some more belly dancing, a fantastic indoor barbecue put on by one of Denise's friends (which was the most gourmet barbecue I have ever been to), lots of work, some tv finale watching, another trip to Seattle (purchases: facial cleanser, dinner at the Olive Garden and a ticket to the Experience Music Project), and then on Wednesday Denise's father, stepmother and sister came over. All of whom are really nice, and I felt like I had known them for a long time. Thursday was Denise's graduation (with the fantastic Raffi as honourary graduate - I grew up with 'The Corner Grocery Store') and a very nice dinner at The Keg on Granville Island, washed down with some celebratory champagne and a boat trip across the water to Denise's parents hotel. Friday brought some frantic last-minute packing of Denise's possessions before the movers came, a trip to Lynn Canyon suspension bridge (amazing) and final errands, prior to another wonderful dinner (I owe Denise's parents big time) at A Kettle Of Fish downtown. On Saturday I worked while Denise went to Whistler, then ate gelato when she came back. Sunday brought the departure of Denise's family, more belly dancing, a quick shower, and the last supper with Denise and her friends before she went back to Toronto. And then on Monday...... I lost Denise for the near future, when she departed at 6am to fly home. Sob..... come back Denise!

After going back to bed briefly on Monday after the trauma (well worth it) of getting up at 4:30am, I faced the prospect of moving myself to the new house. The process took me all day, from 10am until 6pm. I made two car trips with my possessions, went to the dump once with 6 garbage bags (they charge you here!) and dropped off some food at the Food Bank, as well as cleaning out the fridge, cupboard and general crap from inside the old house. Talk about traumatic. I was so tired that after some preliminary floor cleaning, I went to bed at 9pm, and slept for over 12 hours, punctuated only by listening to everyone going to work at 7:30am. So now I am in my new pad, although my crap has yet to be fully unpacked as I have no real furniture, other than a huge desk (no chair) a double futon (very comfy) and two two-drawer chests, one of which doesn't actually open. Lots of floor space, but no storage.....

Today I was meant to do work, but the database wouldn't let me in, so instead I did boring stuff like vacuuming, changing my address, going to the bank, unsuccessfully trawling the Salvation Army store for furniture that would fit in my car, and getting back into messenger conversations. None of which are good for my finances. Ikea comes later in the week, as will a TV purchase, as I am getting withdrawal symptoms already! Oh, and I purchased more concert tickets in honour of Denise, to add to the Sarah Mc Lachlan tickets I have for a week and a half's time - Green Day with Jimmy Eat World in September, and Def Leppard (yes, I know, but they have sentimental value) for August. Pretty much a day of slumming, but I just couldn't bring myself to do more cleaning, even though my room is a dust haven. I bought a dustpan and brush, I'm sure that counts for something.............

Pictures of the house to come when a) it's not raining, b) I have furniture and c) I know my housemates well enough for them not to be freaked out when I go around taking pictures.

I love Terry Wogan

Well I may be a good few thousand miles away, but I just couldn't miss the Eurovision song contest, could I? With the wonders of the Internet, it is now accessible even to us Canadians, so that we too can share in the sheer hideousness of all those countries trying to sing a decent song. For those of you who haven't seen Eurovision before, think of the worst songs you can imagine, dress them up in some skimpy costumes, translate them into a few different languages and then put them together on one night, live and with some really terrible presenters. It's an evening of sheer awfulness, in a really fun and cheesy way. Definitely worth watching.

Anyway, the best thing about the net is that I got to listen to Terry Wogan's commentary, which is fantastic, because he basically gets drunk and is extremely rude about the songs and the contestants. It's actually better than the event itself. Just so you can share some of the atmosphere of the evening, let me treat you to the best of his quotes from the last three and a half hours.........

* "Here is the UK entry, Javine, with 'Touch My Fire' - kids, don't do that at home."
* (On the female host of the show) "Stop shrieking! This woman doesn't need a microphone. She wasn't picked for her voice, was she? Who are those two, Donner and Blitzen? Ant and Dec? Pinky and Perky?"
* "Turkey have gone for the bizarre once too often with that dance."
* (On one of the contestants thanking the crowd after singing) "Please stop shouting, your turn's over. Get your hair cut!"
* "God knows what those semi-finals were like if this made it through."
* "You know what's coming - some saucy lifting of skirts, and this time, as a bonus, some bounding about."
* "I could have sworn I heard a fiddler on the roof in this.....any sign of Topol?"
* "It's an awful shame that Sweden can't get any good looking girls to sing for them, rather than him."
* (Reading a lyric) "Oh for heaven's sake......"
* "Wasn't that awful, everybody?"
* "If half the women here tonight don't go home with a chill in their kidneys, I'll eat my hat - there's a breeze up on that stage that'll cut you in two...."
* "There's a woman in the audience who must have the flag of all nations in her drawers, as she's up for every song with every flag......"
* (On one of the entries) "Two refugees from a boy band........."
* (When Cyprus are voting, having just given four points to a near neighbour) "Don't look now, but there might be an element of tactical voting going on."
* (After Cyprus give five points to the UK) "I will not hear a word against the Cypriots."

Because I'm bored

Things I love about Vancouver:
- In every bar/club/restaurant I've been in, no matter what time we've been there, there is always toilet paper in the ladies toilets. ALWAYS!!
- Everything is cheap, so you can buy more.
- Although it's annoying, I find it funny that gasoline can be a certain price when you go past a petrol station on the bus, then half an hour later when you go the other direction, it's 10cents cheaper.
- One dollar is called a loonie, and two dollars is a toonie.
- Pedestrians do actually wait for the white man to flash before they cross the road.
- You can get cinnamon buns for 59cents in the IGA, and they're fantastic.
- There are hundreds of cable channels.
- My rent for a room in a house with a hot tub and swimming pool over here is the same as my rent for one crappy room in a dirty student house in Bradford.
- X-Men 3 starts filming here soon, and I think Hugh Jackman is rather attractive.
- Bars are non-smoking.

Things I don't love about Vancouver:
- Everything is cheap, so I buy more of it and don't save any money.
- Pedestrians have the right of way, which is damn annoying when you have to get anywhere in a car.
- When it rains, it rains for days on end.
- No-one wants to look at my resume.
- Even though there are hundreds of cable channels, there is crap on most of them most of the time.
- The minimum wage is $8 in BC, which compared to other provinces is good, but because I still convert everything back to GBP, it seems like nothing to me.
- Getting to other countries is obscenely expensive, and I can't just nip over to Paris for a weekend.
- Football (soccer) is on at stupid times of the morning because the Premiership is 8 hours ahead of us.

I was going to put a Google map of my new house here, but then I thought better of it, since that is basically showing my location and my exact address to anyone who cares to burgle me. But when I send you all my new address, you can Google Map it (I'm sure you can't wait), and even better, Google Satellite it. There is some nice woodland lurking nearby, as well as the Indian reserve down the road. As opposed to the Google Satellite of our current house, where all you can see is the cloud that was around when they took the picture..........

Best thing of the day: The commercial for the new Star Wars film, which consisted of a lot of the best scenes from the film, with the Tagline "SITH HAPPENS.........."

Actions and reactions

I kep meaning to post, but never actually remember to do so until I've turned my computer off at the end of the day. However, this morning I have been woken up by the builder, who decided to start work on the deck at 7:20am (I think he's behind schedule and panicking) so I am up early.

In brief, my week has been hectic. After Keane last Tuesday night, I had loads of work sent to me the next day, and indeed the one after that. Our landlords went away, so there was a lot of washing of clothes done, since we'd been saving it up for a good few weeks, and then on Friday I went to SFU to meet Sunshine for lunch. My little car barely made it up the mountain (and apparently it is actually classified as a mountain) but it was nice to lok around the Uni and consider it as a possible workplace/further studying place. The weekend was full of more work, handing over a deposit on my new room, checking the car's brakes and duct taping stuff back together, and taking my friends out to dinner for checking the car over and being generally nice people. And my second belly dancing course. I'm getting the hang of it now, and it seems to be doing wonders for my back ache and hopefully will also do wonders for the stomach....

Monday was a bad day - I woke up to a lot of work, and my mouse wouldn't function. Denise and I went to London Drugs to get another one, which promptly refused to work when I got it home, so I had to take it back and get yet another one. Whilst parking my car had a small argument with a concrete pillar (I really need to get a right hand wing mirror....), after which thankfully the car came off as the winner, but the pillar left a small mark of remembrance to really piss me off. That was not an enjoyable day....

On Tuesday I had a meeting with my Emergency Social Services team and an exercise with another team. Our team is on call for the month of June, so if there is a fire, a gas explosion, the end of the world etc. we get called out to support the fire department and the police. No matter what the time of day or night. So I must remember to put my cell phone on at night, since I don't think my new roommates will be happy about answering the house phone at 4am.

Yesterday I had an interview for a job that I didn't want, in a place that I didn't want to work (sales job, in New Westminster) but I went along anyway for the experience. Then I got back to find that while I was out (typical) someone from UBC had phoned to ask me about another job. So I rang her back and she gave me a phone interview, prior to face to face interviews being done next week. She said she'd ring me on Tuesday, so I am keeping my fingers crossed. I seemed to have everything she was looking for, but you never know, so do about ten other people probably. At least I have people finally calling me about my resume, as opposed to chucking it in the bin :o) I then went to the doctor and had a mole taken off my neck - strangely painless, so god knows how they did it. And then more work, and then Denise and I gave in to takeaway Indian food.

So, dear reader, you can see why I haven't been posting - it has all been fairly mundane, apart from the possible job on the horizon. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get dressed and shout at the builder for waking us up so early.....

House 1, job 0

So first off, Keane were FANTASTIC. I think I've seen more British bands here in Canada than I ever did in England, but that's the way it goes I guess! I liked their lighting, very white and dark, just like their album cover and their general merchandising. The highlights of the evening were the old woman next to Denise falling asleep during the warm-up band (very loud rock), the fact that the Keane lead singer looks about 12, the girl who managed to climb up onto the stage and strangle the singer before the security guard wrestled her off him, and the fact that the drummer had a variety of facial movements which were almost as interesting to watch as the actual gig. Whilst watching the warm-up band, I realised that all drummers have their individual mannerisms, some of which are hilarious and some of which make them look as though they are seriously mental. Anyway, the Keane drummer did this kind of side twitch every time he drummed to the left side. It was an interesting night!

Yesterday I got confirmation that I can have a room in the house I looked round on Monday with Denise. We interrupted some poor girl in the middle of her study session with friends/general pizza fest, but she was graceful enough to show us round. Think two levels, parquet flooring, 8 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, pool table, wicked kitchen, huge airy living room, hot tub/sauna, swimming pool and huge deck. Need I say more? The room for rent was in the lower/basement floor, but it didn't feel basementy, and it was big enough to have a double bed, desk, chest of drawers and closet and still feel ok. The hot tub was not working, and the pool filter was broken so it had gone green, but apparently this is being sorted out. The deck could fit about 30 people on and everything was great. The two/three housemates we met were really nice, and all in all I was glad to find something I actually really liked. My rent will go up from $400 now (about £170) to $530 (about £225) in the new place, but I'll just have to get a shitty job to pay the extra. Screw poverty, I have a pool! Pictures will come, but not for a couple of weeks until I move in there. I meet the landlady on Saturday to sort out details, so hopefully she won't raise the rent or anything horrible. And there should be another room free, as there were only 6 people living there, so perhaps I can get out of the basement floor after all. It's so good to get something sorted out! Now I just need a job, new brakes for my squeaky car, better skin, the winning lottery ticket..... ;o)

Oh, on Monday night we saw Kingdom of Heaven. What can I say? Orlando Bloom wore his usual perpetually perplexed expression throughout, and it was ok. Not great, just ok. And at the end I was just left wondering why they didn't make a truce before thousands of people got slaughtered. But hey, maybe I'm just too simplistic!

As an aside, Denise and I were sitting in our flat about two hours ago, when the tv turned itself on. I assumed it was Denise, she assumed it was me. It was neither of us. Explanations?

Embrace/Snow Patrol

Yesterday heralded yet another of the music gigs we had booked for ourselves - this time it was Snow Patrol, supported by Embrace. I have to say that I was equally excited about both, since I remember listening to 'Come Back To What You Know' in my no-doubt depressive teenage angst phase so many years ago when Embrace were on their first album. After eight years of being in the wilderness, they recently recorded another album, which is a different sound from the first, yet still evidently Embrace-ish. And they were damn good live, although the singer needed to turn his mike up so we could hear what he was actually singing (although maybe this was the Manc accent getting in the way?). Snow Patrol, of course, were excellent, bantering with the crowd throughout their set and liberally swearing (in a remarkably non-offensive way), making jokes about a good few things that Canadians appreciate, and injecting a lot of enthusiasm into their performance. I have to say that they overtook The Killers in my view, going on sheer gig enjoyability. A fantastic evening!

The morning of the gig had been marked by the long-awaited Spa visit, with Denise, Christie, Christie's mum, Patty and myself all going along to get some much needed relaxation treatment. I only got a Glycolic facial, but I immediately felt the benefits of it. Hopefully I can afford to do it every month, as it seems to have helped with the sadly termed 'adult acne' that seems determined to blight my face, even if the woman did spend a good ten minutes digging out large portions of my face with some godawful needle-pick thing, which was pretty much hell. But the entire facial was about an hour, and apart from that trauma, it was very relaxing. We then got lunch, and then some gelato, and the entire day seemed to be about indulgence :o) which is always good.

Today has been less successful, though potentially useful. This morning I was meant to see two rooms for rent in two separate houses - the first people were either all out, even though I had scheduled a time to come round, or they couldn't be bothered to open the door. Denise and I trespassed round the back of their house to get a better look - it has potential. Massive deck, what could be a nice pool if they cleaned the cack out of it, lovely hot tub that also needed some serious cleaning, and a very nice kitchen. Sadly we couldn't really see much else, but I left a message on the answer phone of the landlady asking to actually get into the place at some other point in time, so we shall see what happens. On to house number two, which Denise was very taken with but which I still have misgivings over, though it was a possibility. It was Victorian-ish, and the room was fairly nice, but the kitchen was small, the house was dark and there were 11 people living there. Which kind of bodes badly for bathrooms and cooking times. Who knows, I might take it yet, but I am still looking for the perfect place..... I saw another house at 5pm, which was ok, but came in behind the Victoriana house. I have e-mailed about 6 more people with rooms, and am seeing more tomorrow, so hopefully in the next couple of days my prince will come..... please?

I am alive

Thank goodness. It wasn't a certainty by any means, but I made it through the run alive. I got up at 5am, left the house at 5:30am, drove downtown and spent half an hour trying to get into the car park, then got hassled by some scary squeegee begging person and found out that the pay and display machine wasn't working. You were meant to ring the number provided and type in your credit card details, and it paid electronically for you. But as I cunningly hadn't brought my credit card (I was running a damn race after all) I couldn't do this. So I found a traffic cop and asked him what to do, then just wrote a note and stuck it on my dashboard saying the machine wouldn't accept my credit card and I had to go and race so couldn't pay. It seemed to work - my car was still there when I came out, sans ticket.

So the race wasn't too bad, or at least I don't remember it as too bad now the pain has subsided. I was following the 2hr pace bunny (girl from the Running Room sports store here, with bunny ears on and a suggested time written on them) until about 4.5 miles, when my feet decided to get blisters in a rather unexpected place - think inside of feet, about 2 inches below the big toes, on the side of your foot. This slowed me down considerably, and I dropped off the pace. However, I was still with the main pack, so I wasn't too bothered, until 9.5 miles when my digestive system decided that it had had enough and would like to expel everything possible from inside my body. Cue ten minutes inside a porta-loo, and I dropped even further off the pace. So I struggled through the last 3.5 miles determined that I wasn't going to allow myself the indignity of finishing in over three hours, and finally made it through in 2:54. The good side was that the actual running was quite easy, once I got into it, which gave me hope that without the blisters and the stomach upset, I would have done quite well. Or well by my standards. The scariest thing was that when I was on the last mile, coming into the stadium, the guy who won the marathon ran past me, having started half an hour later than the half-marathoners and done twice as many miles. His time was 2:15 - for 26 miles! That's just over 5 minutes per mile - ouch.

Anyway, I survived (though there were moments in the porta-loo where even this was uncertain) and I am still just about walking, or hobbling. I came home, had a shower, and then went shopping with Denise, Christie and Emily, since keeping active seemed a better bet than stiffening up by sleeping. And I feel ok today, if slightly achey and about 60 years older than in reality. Hoorah!!