1,454 kms and counting

So, we're in our room in our motel in Arnprior, Ontario.

We are lying on the bed groaning in agony because we just ate the best ribs ever followed by the best chocolate cake dessert ever in a little diner in a little town in Nowhere, ONT.

Well, Queenie has managed to drag herself off the bed to put photos up on Facebook and write in the blog.

Himself is still lying on the bed groaning and watching Hurricane Kyle destroy what's left of his house on the island.

Here's a photo from Quebec City, from the Salon de Chasse.

That's the closest to a bear I ever want to get.

WE SAW A MOOSE YESTERDAY.

It was a bit sad, really, we drove the entire length of the interior of New Brunswick, and saw one moose. Well, whizzed past it as I screamed MOOSE, MOOSE, MOOSE.

Hopefully we will see some more tomorrow.

In Algonquin Park.

Which I have wanted to go to since I was about 10 and I saw a documentary on it on the television.

Road Trip time of year

In a big 'screw you' to the forces of recession and oil panic, Queenie and Himself are going on a 4,000 km road trip today.

From Halifax to Quebec, then to Ottawa, hopefully, and down Route 60 through Algonquin Park to Huntsville, Ontario. Queenie has to go to a conference on the digital economy and Himself is going to lay around the posh hotel and go riding on the horses and canoeing in the lake and all sorts of exciting stuff.

He is very excited about being Queenie's 'conference spouse attendee'.

Then we're going to drive home.

The leaves will be turning and there's two ridges of high pressure meeting for a chat right about where we're headed so hopefully we'll have some nice views and some good photos when we're back.

I'm assuming the digital economy conference will be in a wifi hotspot, so maybe there'll even be a blog or two.

Road trip across (approximately one third of) Canada.

Happy happy squirming ensues.

As I said to the Queen Mother last night, we may not even turn the Beast around when the time comes - we may end up in BC - and go shrimp fishing with Justin for the winter.

Farmer Brown, you have been warned. If you see a dirty red car lurking around your street, it'll be us!!

Anyways, stay happy till we're back.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop

This has to be my favourite jargon phrase ever.

What the hell does it mean?

I mean, I know what it means. It means something bad yet salvageable has happened, but the likkelihood of an escalation is immense, so everyone is just hanging around not making any decisions about anything...

... because they are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Before I research this, I am going to bet that it has something to do with hanging.


Time passes, while Queenie does the Google thing...

NOPE!! Queenie is wrong. People who are hanged don't have to endure their shoes falling off one by one, which is the visual image she had in her head for this phrase. It apparently has its roots in a vaudeville sketch. From Worldwide Words:

Its source would seem to be the following story. A man comes in late at night to a lodging house, rather the worse for wear. He sits on his bed, drags one shoe off and drops it on the floor. Guiltily remembering everyone around him trying to sleep, he takes the other one off much more carefully and quietly puts in on the floor. He then finishes undressing and gets into bed. Just as he is drifting off to sleep, a shout comes from the man in the room below: “Well, drop the other one then! I can’t sleep, waiting for you to drop the other shoe!”. This may come from music hall or vaudeville, though it would seem that nobody has been able to tie it down more precisely.

Anyways, that's what we're doing in our house, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The fact that we live under the top flat means that that happens at least twice a day, but that's not the shoe I'm talking about.

You learn something every time you log on here, don't you.

Hump Day, in more ways than one

Today is Wednesday, which means it's hump day of course.

Here's the urban dictionary definition of hump day:

Wednesday, or the hump of the week.

The absolute BEST day of the week, the day of maximum hope that maybe, you might make it out of this week alive. A particularly good hump day can last you the rest of the week, and by Doomday morning (Monday) you survive by anticipating hump day.

Nothing goes wrong on hump day.

Most other days can be defined by hump day.

Tuesday is the day before hump day. Thursday is one day after hump day. Except Friday is WOOOH!!! FREEDOM!!! Day, Saturday is Mostly Hungover day, and Sunday is PreDoom day.
'Xactly.


Today is also 16th September, which means it's hump day of the month too.


And today is the day the moon starts to decline again, which is another hump day.


I like the first one - Wednesday.


The other two, not so much.

I hate months going by. They make me feel old. Not that I feel old, particularly, I have hated months going by since I was a small little princess, not even a Queenie.


It's just one of my little pet hates. Like Sundays at teatime, and Good Friday, and the day after Hallowe'en.


And I'm always sad when the moon starts to die. It must be the primitive in me, afraid that it won't come back.

This month's moon was a wonderful, super-sized, pumpkin-shaped reddish-brown globe in the sky, which was clear for the three days or so it was full.


The harvest moon.


Unfortunately, it was mid-week so we were stuck in the city and didn't get a chance to enjoy it properly.


The one disadvantage of the Melwood garden is that the house blocks the moon. So you have to sit on the front doorstep to look at it.


This week, Dexter Construction is digging up our road, so it' s not very pleasant sitting out there, surrounded by mounds of gravel, and silent machinery, and dirty cars with the taste of dust in our mouths.


So we just waved at the moon as we went in and out of the house.


Hopefully next month's will be just as good.


It usually is.


And then she gets all skinny for the winter.

Bloc Party had a very nice time in Halifax apparently

... and so did we.

At their concert.

Which was held in the Marquee Club, which was good, because it meant old arse Queenie and her old arse Himself could sit down and still see everything.

Himself pointed out that yet again, we were the oldest giggers in town. And the band look like they're twelve.

But he agreed they rocked.


And Queenie was most impressed at how tight the set was, and how like their albums they sounded. Which must have been tricky considering all the layering that goes on them.

Another one struck off the list.

Now, if only Radiohead would come here instead of Boston the next time.

Or even after Boston.

After a dry spell over the last couple of years, SonicBoom, whoever they are, and Live Nation are really stepping up to the mark with a series of great gigs in the city recently.

Last night, BP, Kathleen Edwards and Chris Isaak all played the city at the same time.

Hopefully Kathleen will come back soon so we can catch her too.

About time we had some good tunes.

The Curse of the Cubbyhole

Yes, well, that was a bit of a spell away from the Court, wasn't it. I didn't spend it all eating bacon, I assure you.

What happened was I ate my bacon and eggs and then went to put a load of laundry on. And when I got back, my spot at the computer had been taken by Himself, who was looking at jobs in British Columbia.

"Wages have gone up in BC", he announced.

"You are not going anywhere without me", I reminded him.

"Well, it would be a bit of a hoof home to see Little 'Un anyways."

"Yes, it would."

So I guess we're not going to BC this weekend.

Thank goodness for that.

We're going to Ontario in a couple of weeks and that looks far enough right now.

My world is getting a tad small right now. What with the price of gas and all the airlines in the world going bust. But I'm sure it will change at some point. Although I keep telling myself that inhabiting a small world is not a bad thing. Inhabiting the world you want is the thing, isn't it?

Anyhows, back to In Bruges.

As Farmer Brown said on Facebook, In Bruges is a fuckin' fuckin' fuckin' brilliant film.

It is.

We settled into the couch and put it on and it opened with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson arriving in Bruges and muttering at each other, the way Irish people do, about whether or not it was nice.

Colin Farrell thought it was crap.

Brendan Gleeson thought it was nice.

They sniped at each other throughout most of the movie, but in that loving way that Irish people do.

I could feel a lump that filled everything from my belly to my heart.

People just don't do that here.

People try to outdo each other with enthusiasm here.

People spend a lot of time and energy being polite and apologetic to each other here about the STOOPIDEST things, and then wonder why they die of stress-related cancers.

I'm going to definitely get a stress-related something or other if I have to do it much longer.

I swear to God, I can't do it anymore.

But at least, after watching In Bruges, I have been reminded that it's okay that I can't do it anymore. I am not crazy. I am not a bad person. I am not stupid. I am not wrong.

I am just a grumpy fuckin' Irish woman, with a penchant for sarcasm when I am in a situation I don't like.

Which is most of the time here.

Unfortunately, that's not going to bode very well for my future integration and the successful duplication at some point in the next few years of my wide Irish social circle.

Life is a tad dull here most of the time. Unless Himself and I have a party. Or Ms Maggie Beach. Everyone turns up to them. But either they don't have parties or they just don't invite us to them.

It's very strange here. I am surrounded by people who never invite us anywhere because we don't know the people who will be there (I know all my Irish readers will totally see the logic in this) and who actually say things like 'why would I want anymore friends? I have my elementary school friends' without a hint of sarcasm.

As I said to a colleague the other day, why would you do that?

I mean, c'mon on, the potential to reinvent yourself is severely limited if your social circle all knew you when you were seven.

I mean, that's why siblings often don't get on, isn't it?

Because one or other of them can't get past that time of life.

I have two good friends who have known me since I was four or younger.

I have another three or four who have known me since I was thirteen.

Everyone else I am proud to call a friend is from the time when I was actually capable of working on my personality to improve it.

Or beyond.

It's not that we don't have friends here in Halifax.

We do.

Good friends.

And thank christ for the island and all the wonderful folks who live there and stick with us through thick and thin.

It's just that we have one friend in this city who is actually from this city.

And he was introduced to us by a neighbour who is a 'come from away'.

And he spent ten years in Alberta.

And he's never invited us to his house.

Ever.

....anyways, enough of that.... enough of feeling sorry for myself and Himself.

I think I am going to buy a copy of In Bruges for every member of my work team and say, I am the Brendan Gleeson character, so just deal with it, okay.

Actually, I think I'll wait until I leave and then do it. So they can remember me fondly.

Which is so important.

In blogpost title-related news, Himself and I decided tonight that the Cubbyhole, which is the small apartment upstairs, has a curse on it.

According to Kitty, the newest occupants have split up.

One of them was doing the nasty on the other, according to the shouting and throwing of things.

And now there's only one inhabitant of the Cubbyhole.

What we know for sure is that our wonderful landlord has been to-ing and fro-ing like a headless chicken all week, banging on the door and leaving notes and stuff like that, so something's up.

There must be rent money involved.

Well, our friends and former neighbours who left to buy a house up the road didn't suffer from the curse.....

.... so maybe they laid it.....

Fess up now, Rescue Guys!!

Watching In Bruges in Halifax

Happy, empty, stretching out in front of us morning.

Kitty is gone to work. Little Un is not around this weekend. It's too wet to drive four hours to the island to go mackerel fishing as we had planned.

We are alone at home with nothing to do except stuff we want to do.

Just a matter of remembering what that is then.

First of all, we both slept in until almost ten. Which is unheard of in our house unless you are a teenager.

Second of all, we called the island and extracted ourselves from the fishing expedition.

Then I got myself a nice pot of coffee and read the papers online and tried to make sense of the maze that is the new Facebook interface.

Currently, Himself is bi-locating between the kitchen, where the unhealthy fried breakfast is underway and the living room, where Stephen Harper is standing in the corner rambling on about how a carbon tax would destroy the Ontarian economy. Himself is shouting at his Prime Minister with all the power in his lungs, but it's not working - possibly because Harper is not actually standing in our living room, but on the television which is situated in the corner of our living room.

We were driving home from Blockbusters last night, with In Bruges, of which more anon, when we realised that all the gas stations were wall to wall with queues of cars waiting for gas (with their engines running - what is that about?).

'Shit', said Himself, 'has that hurricane taken out Texas?'

We decided we'd better get gas in case something had gone terribly wrong.

This morning, the front page of the Chronicle Herald announced that the government regulator had used its 'interrupter clause' to increase petrol prices by 13 cents a litre overnight.

I wish someone would explain to me how linking the rise and rise (I mean fall) of pump prices to speculatory activity on the NYSE is the most sensible way to regulate gas prices to reduce rate shock.

Anyhows, we have one car with a full tank of gas and we don't live in Galveston so I suppose we're doing as well as we can expect under the circumstances.

As an Irishwoman, I am used to being gouged for petrol anyways, so I have often felt guilty in the past number of years about how little I pay for it over here in Nova Scotia.

Speaking of being Irish, several times in the last few weeks, a Nova Scotian has sidled up to me at some point during my day and said, 'I watched this great film recently, with Colin Farrell in it. It's called In Bruges. It's about two Irish hitmen in Bruges. Have you seen it? No? You should watch it.'

So we did last night.

Gotta take a short break for brekkie - back in a bit.

In the land of the blind, Julianne Moore is queen.

Himself and I went to the opening night of the Atlantic Film Festival last night.

I was never ever ever going to go to an AFF film again after last year, but someone gave us free tickets to Blindness, which is an adaptation of Jose Saramago's novel of the same name, which I loved.

Then when we got to the Oxford St venue, we realised that AFF seem to have electronically geared themselves up, so perhaps there won't be the same bullshit about seats and queues and tickets that there was last time.

Of course, since it was opening night, we had to sit through more speeches than a GAA annual dinner. However, I particularly liked the Lt. Governor's speech, which was written of course by my friend Lori, who is now her communications advisor and speech writer. And the Chair of the Festival board made a fiery speech in defense of the arts (the federal government cut $60 million in arts funding the week before the election, which is a bit aggressive) in which she used her native Ireland as a shining example of how the arts can be nurtured even in times of chaos and war and recession.

Having spent quite a lot of the Queen Parents money studying Arts Administration and then never actually having a job in the field, that assertion of Ireland's specialness re the arts gave Queenie an opportunity for a long, quiet chuckle.

Maybe she was from the North......

Or maybe she was talking about the tax break for artist income....

Or maybe she just believed everything she read in the New York Times culture section...

I don't know.

Anyway, eventually the speeches ended and Blindness began and it was really great and all the bad reviews on IMDB were wrong.

WRONG, I say.

The producers were there and were obviously very nervous as the film bombed at the TFF.

I think it was re-edited, because they kept going on about how it was a world premiere.

Anyways, whatever they did to it, it worked.

- weird plague sweeps city/ world and everyone goes blind. Early victims are locked into a hospital/ prison type place and have to fend for themselves. Julianne Moore plays the only person who can see - the wife of an opthalmologist who has been incarcerated - she pretends she's blind to accompany him.

The result is a very powerful meditation on how a sudden crisis or change in the conditions under which humanity lives can bring out man's inherent cruelty and desire to dominate a little too quickly for most people's liking.

As Himself said on the way home, a cautionary tale.

Himself is hilarious when we watch apocalyptic movies/ read books like The Road. I get all freaked out and hope it never happens to us/ hope Himself figures out how to survive and tells me what to do. Himself always leans over at some point in the movie and whispers 'they really should get some guns right about now, eh!"

I do hope he knows where to get the afore-mentioned weapons when the end times come.

If that's the plan.

I must say, a lot of the complaints about the movie to date are stoopid, Yankee, 'moral' issues.

Yes, there's lots of random nudity.

Everyone thinks everyone else is blind. So why would one wear clothes if they're lice-infested and filthy?

There's a lot of cruelty, domination and some violence in the movie, but it's brilliantly done, nuanced rather than the bambambambambam of the latest Rambo.

The production design is fantastic. The cinematography is very intimate for most of the film, but it handles 'big city chaos' shots very well.

Julianne Moore acts her little socks off. She should get an Oscar for this role. Mark Ruffalo is pretty good as her husband too.

Fernando Mereilles makes a very good attempt at tackling Saramago's bigger themes of totalitarianism and control, particularly at the beginning of the movie, but it kind of falls off towards the end, whereas my vague memories of the book is that that claustrophobic feeling stays throughout the whole novel.

But that's Saramago for you. I read somewhere that he likes the film.

So did we.

Highly recommended.

Hilariously, after the speechifying about cultural policy, Queenie had her recurring dream again last night, after a long interval. The one where I make the speech on cultural politics to an audience of artists and they all boo.

Some day I will forgive myself for allowing myself to be scared by that day.

I was making a lot of sense.

Of bread, beets, potatoes and other organic delights

We've hit a new plateau in the attempt to grow/ make/ control what we eat, so Himself and I are feeling a little smug right now.

Firstly, though, we had to get our basic tools organized. After weeks and months of searching, we managed to get a nearly new breadmaker and a nearly new fridge in the same week.

It never rains but it pours nearly new appliances.

The nearly new breadmaker came from Himself's boss, who had bought it for his wife for Christmas. So it was never used. Which is almost new. I arrived home from work one day and there it was on the dining room table, complete with recipe book.

The fridge came from a neighbour up the road and was a little trickier. We had to find a dolly, wheel it up the road, strap the enormous fridge to it, wheel it back down the road (which is being dug up by Dexter Construction right now) and then haul it up two flights of stairs to our apartment.

Gnugh....!

Suffice it to say Himself was on the heavy end and I was on the balance it so it won't fall on my head end.

Himself's arms are still sore from hauling a fridge up the stairs (almost) by himself.

But ah, bliss, lovely newish clean fridge.

Secondly, we started harvesting the garden.

This year is UN Year of the Potato. As an Irishwoman, potatoes are incredibly important to me. Potatoes are what you eat with your dinner. Some days I do rice, but really, if there's no potatoes in my dinner, then I haven't really eaten.

But the potatoes you get in the supermarket are crap. Soapy, soggy, too small, wrong species. It offends me to have to buy them, like a heroin junkie forced to rob for crappy junk (well maybe not that life-destroying, but you get my drift).

So I planted my own this year.

They grew. The stalks died. I waited. Himself adopted his doom and gloom tone and said they'd never work. It rained. It was hot. Flashbacks of my famine folk memories started to assert themselves, but I forced myself. I waited some more.

Monday I dug them up.

Lovely, purple, large piles of potatoes.

WHAT I GREW BY MYSELF.

Words cannot express how smug I felt on Monday evening, arriving back from my tiny urban garden patch with a bucket of potatoes.

And that was just three plants.

Also, the beets are getting big and are really good.
The beans are being harvested (but I have to figure out what to do with them as I don't do beans normally).
The carrots are still growing, but they're looking good.
The garlic has started to grow, finally, so that will be ready for next year.
And our tomatos are finally putting out like healthy well-fed tomato plants should.

The other night, we had a tomato and mozzarella salad, with our own basil in the vinaigrette, stir-fried beef with vegetables from our garden, Lyse' garden and Ms. Maggie Beach's garden, and a rhubarb crumble made with rhubarb from a friend in Cape Breton.

And potatoes of course.

A big shout out to all the potato people in the world in this, their SPECIAL year.

May you finally figure out how to end the blight in your lives!!

Last night, I remembered to buy yeast and made my own bread for the first time in my life.

The Queen Mum used to make bread.

(She used to grow vegetables as well, and recycle everything. In the seventies and eighties, when you did that kind of stuff because there was a RECESSION. Not because it is a lifestyle branding choice.)

Anyhow, I started with the basic white loaf, and put the breadmaker on 'nice smell wafting into the bedroom at six am this morning).

At six am this morning I woke up and sniffed.

OHMYGOD!!

Nice smell wafting into the bedroom.

After Himself got up and put on the organic (caressed gently by a yak somewhere in the mountains before being lovingly cradled into a bag by an upwardly mobile coffee farmer co-operative member with happy, educated, clothed kids who don't know what it was like when mama and pappa were young) coffee beans, the smell coming from the kitchen was better than the best French boulangerie.

It made me remember my first ever (not for Queen Dad) job, back in 1984, when I managed the till in Griffin's Bakery, Main St, Birr.

There's nothing like sitting in bed feeling smug about your ability to produce your own food while drinking coffee and eating warm bread and jam.

Nothing.

Now, how do I go about opening my own coffee plantation??

Hannah has arrived

As usual, after doing all the stuff the EMO told us to including getting water, Hurricane Hannah turns out to be as fearsome as the prevailing westerlies that affect the score on Ballina rugby pitch on a wet Sunday in February.

Oi!

People in charge of disasters and weather and such!

Get it right, or stop telling me to count my candles.

Hurricane Summer makes way for hurricane season

So, Himself and the Little 'Un have gone mackerel fishing. Kitty has been dispatched to the mall to buy some clothes for the autumn. Low is blaring out of the speakers. Hurricane Hanna has announced her imminent arrival with some rain.

Queenie made everyone go out for the day in the rain, goddammit, because she needed to do some housework in peace.

That's what she said anyway.

PUNY MORTALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They fell for it.

Well, there's the fear factor too. Queenie's in that kind of mood lately that when she says I need you all to leave the house so I can do some housework in peace, they do.

It takes forever but.

"I'll clean the bathroom later. You don't gotta do it, Queenie."

"I'll sit here and keep you company for the afternoon."

"Don't you want to come fishin', sweetheart?"

No.

No.

No.

Eventually I convinced them all that housework was what I wanted to do. And by myself. So they all headed off to do their own thing.

Housework, schmousework.

Queenie just wanted them all out of the apartment so she could spend a few hours faffing around pretending like she's the old Queenie still.

The old Queenie.

She disappeared this summer. Caught up in a hurricane and deposited in the Land of Oz, she was.

This is the new Queenie.

All growed up.

About time, I hear some people say.

Probably.

Where are my goddamned ruby slippers, that's what I want to know!

One minute you're cruising along, doing just as you please, and the next you're starring in your very own movie with the Wicked Witch of the West (and East) and the Lion and the Tin Man and Scarecrow and some poxy wizard somewhere in the corner pulling levers and making everything go to hell in a handbasket.

So, Queenie, whatcha do all summer?

Damned if I can remember, the whole thing is a blur.

Let me see.

Well, Colombo opened the summer with a two week visit. We drove to the top of New Brunswick and looked at the mountains of Quebec and slept in a tent.

Then we drove back.

We did other stuff as well, of course, but that's the bit I remember most vividly. We had our first Melwood bonfire of the season too.

------------------------------------

Then Nancy left cos her work was done and Kitty had been hauled into Grade 12, so we took the girls camping to Hubbards.

That was fun.

Not.

Imagine a long narrow field with 147 campsites on it and RVs, camper vans, tents and trucks parked everywhere. Everyone playing their music at top volume. All day.

I thought I was going to lose my mind.

I nearly did.

I yelled at Himself and packed my rucksack and threw it in the car and went to drive home.

Only the battery was dead because the girls had been playing hip hop on the stereo all day.

So I had to stay.

Until Sunday.

Thankfully, when I yell at Himself he pays no heed to me until I calm down.

-----------------------------------

I spent most of June and July going to the dentist.

My teeth are a mess after three years of no medical insurance.

But they're all fixed now.

It took four and a half hours to clean thirty eight years of tartar off my teeth, including up inside my gums.

And none of the four anaesthetic injections they gave me for that part worked.

I tried to meditate and I got through most of it okay.

But eventually, I had to ask them to stop because I couldn't take the pain anymore.

And the hygienist started to cry.

Because her wrist was so sore from digging the tartar off my teeth.

She tells me I'll never have to go through that again.

Good.

--------------------------------------

Himself got divorced in the middle of July.

And we booked our wedding venue for 8th August 2009.

And I woke up one morning shortly after that and thought, I am getting married.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

Almost everyone I know started telling me how to organize my wedding.

As you can imagine, that went down well with the Queenie.

So I responded by refusing to think/ talk about/ organize my wedding.

So the aaagggghhh factor has subsided slightly.

But we are getting ready together, in our heads and hearts, to be married.

Which feels very grown up and makes me want to run like the wind down the yellow brick road some days.

But we are getting there, piece by piece.

Himself is better at this stuff than me.

Of course, he's had more practice.

Haha.

Both families seem to be genuinely happy about it, though, so that's a big help.

And the kids too.

-------------------------------

Speaking of.

Rearing kids is like having to watch someone play a never-ending game of hockey, using your sanity for a puck and your heart for a net.

At least it's not football. If it were football, there'd be no sin bin, and no sponsor break every 11 minutes.

---------------------------------

We went camping to Bear Cove.

We had a most excellent weekend. All of Himself's brothers and sister, and his sister-in-law turned up, as well as Ms Maggie Beach and some other friends from Halifax. And all our island friends. So we had a massive lobster and crab boil, and a roaring fire and the whales came in and blew at us and the seals.

And Himself went winkle-picking, and boiled a whole pot full, which nobody ate of course. Because nobody had a pin.

Himself and Little 'Un and Robbie have just arrived home, wet, with NO FISH.

Ah well, I got half an hour to myself.

-----------------------------------

We got new neighbours upstairs. Our nutty neighbour and Peter the Lover left at the end of July, and now we have Danny and Venus, who are nice and quiet and friendly and don't have any rows or tantrums or loud showers at three am.

Venus has a Harley and a pink helmet, as well as a cream VW Jetta with pink accessories.

They work on a building crew together.

Which is good because I noticed this morning that their shower is leaking into our hallway.

----------------------------------------

I drove all over Nova Scotia this summer for work.

I went to Queens, Shelburne, Yarmouth (twice), Digby, Cape Breton (twice), Amherst, Kentville, Windsor, Lunenburg and some other places I can't remember.

That's about 5,000 kilometres.

Man, that tired me out.

---------------------------------------

Then Ammonite arrived for a week.

Shopping ensued.

And Ammonite got all the killer killer heels.

She was showing them to Himself one night and he asked whether she wore them when lecturing.

"Yes", said Ammonite, "and a bullet bra."

I thought Himself was going to implode, so completely dumbstruck was he by her response.

Funny.

Not often he's dumbstruck.

We went whale-watching which was probably the one of the high points of the summer for me.

A whole pod of humpbacks hung out with our zodiac for an hour or more, including a frisky calf who kept nudging up to us.

There's something really awe-inspiring, yet peaceful about watching a whale roll to surface one dark eye and take a long, slow look at you.

----------------------------------------
My big mouth got me in trouble at work.

No change there.

Someday, I'll be growed up and that won't happen.

Really.

-------------------------------------------

We spent Labor Day weekend at Long Tusket Lake, deep in the woods.

That's when I found my centre again.

Just us and the loons.

And some nutty French camper van campers that insisted on starting a generator at 6am every morning.

What kind of nutter hauls a camper van deep into the woods and then uses electricity all weekend to shower and shit?

Anyways, it's all over for another year.

Time to tie the canoe down in case Hannah or Ike or Josephine blow it away.

As for Queenie, she almost untied herself in the eye of the storm, and let the hurricane blow her away again.

But she changed her mind.

Zogby's Walmart voters

Colombo tracked down this blog post about the US elections recently. Pretty good stuff.


http://sweatingthroughfog.blogspot.com/2008/09/some-on-left-understand-palin.html

Although, having burrowed further into his blog, he's a little Christian for me. However, Christians aren't all bad, now are they. There are worse people in the world.

Conservatives for one thing.

Listen, everybody! 2

Listen.

Hear that?

Silence.

Day off tomorrow.

Sorta.

Bliss.

Listen, everybody!

Nobody has to move out, you know!

We could all just live here together, you know!

Perhaps you are not able to compromise enough.

Well, you know, if neither of you feel you can move out on your own.

That's fine.

I would hate to think that either of you were dependent on me for money.

I am dependent on you for family.

Because you're my family I share my money with you.

There's a give and take to sharing.

We all give.

And we all take.

But we all have to do both.

It's in the bible.

At least I've been told it is.

I never actually saw it there.

But I digress.

Sharing is good.

I remember telling Gypsy that once or a hundred times.

Summer's nearly over

Electric Sunset

Moby the new/ old/ refurbished canoe

Electric City Picnic

While everyone in Ireland was busying recycling 30 per cent of the waste they had brought to Electric Picnic, we were all busy recycling our waste (by putting it in the car to bring home) down at our favourite secret camping spot near New France, Electric City.

Not so other people.

Other people arrived in trucks with camper units attached, set up camp, started generators at 6 am in THE FRIGGIN' MORNING and then left all their rubbish piled in their fire pit.

Other people burned pressure treated wood doused in two stroke oil (IN THE FRIGGIN' WOODS).

People who are from the same place as other people left a campsite on the far side of the lake full of rubbish - including ripped tarpaulins, Mr Noodle packets, and other plastic deitrus scattered around an area that is home to some of the most beautiful and rare toadstools in Nova Scotia.

Some people drove around with no helmets and no respect on 4 wheelers all weekend, frightening the children and ripping up fragile bog roads.

Some people should be taken out and shot.

And if that doesn't work, they should be forced to camp at the Shore Club in Hubbards for the rest of their lives.

Queenie hates it when she travels deep into the woods to camp au natural, to live off grid, to wash in the lake, to chill out and mostly to get away from other people and their noise and mess, and due to the inconsiderate bastard nature of most other people, ends up cleaning up after them.

Having said that, once all that was done, and the weird people in the campers had gone home, and the loons had come back to the lake to hang out near the kids, we had a wonderful weekend.

Lovely woods full of lovely woody things

Yes, I know I'm a bad Queenie

I do have all kinds of excuses though.

I am kinda busy.

First of all I have the incredibly morphing into a behemoth job that involves lots of travel.

Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly asleep at their desk.

Secondly, I have a busy domestic situation right now, that involves lots of hands on action.

Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly on vacation and relaxing.

And thirdly, I have company.

Well I do this week.

So that's my excuse for this week.

Right now, I have to get dressed so I can do some work, then drive to Yarmouth, go to a meeting, then drive to Digby to get lobster, then drive back to Halifax, then cook the lobster, then do evening stuff, then collapse.

In a good way of course.

Also, it rained for two weeks in August, so there was a lot of 'damn it's too damp to do anything' action going on.

But I'll try to haul my sorry ass into the blogging saddle again soon.

Ammonite is here for a week. Maybe I can get her to guest blog?!