Home Sweet Canada... For 8 more days

Yes, my uneventful summer is winding down. Next Thursday Melissa and I will be hitting the long, dusty trail back to Clemson (if interstates can be considered dusty trails these days).

Today when I got home from work I found some new stuff in the house. I may have mentioned before that the house I live in is in a state of renovation- one that hasn't seen any work done since early July. I think my landlord must be on spanish summer hours. Anyway, it was a surprise and an ugly one so I snapped some photos to share.


But after I snapped these gems I realized I've never posted photos of the abode. So Enjoy these pictures of my home sweet house in Canada.

The Kitchen

Dining Room

From the kitchen through the dining room to the front door.

The front room, with the blinds I'm not allowed to touch.

Front porch, site of many a book read.

My room upstairs. Not as clean as it looks- there are piles in the corners you can't see, and that's not an accident.

My room from the other way.

My bathroom.

The tile in my bathroom is so cute I want to steal it.

Well, there are 3 other bedrooms upstairs and one on the first floor plus a office, but they all have locked doors. Maybe because I would steal from them or hide all my Canadian friends in them?

Spinsterhood

Best quote from Gone with the Wind, found on page 723.

The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely on her shoulders now. She was twenty-five and looked it, and so there was no longer any need for her to try to be attractive.

That pretty much sums it up. I am just 2 years and 3 months from being in that very position. In fact, at 22 I'm really past my prime. Scarlett was married twice before she was 22 and had a child for each husband.

Vacation is hard.

Okay, I've now spent 3 days chillaxing, sleeping in and vegetating and I got beef.

Watching tv in Quebec is tricky, more than half the channels are in French, and the US channels only stick to the regular schedules about 60% of the time. In my search for watchable TV I've taken up watching "CSI: Miami". Mostly its because its on every night against "CSI Las Vegas" which I hate.

But now I've watched 3 episodes of Miami and in every one they've shot a CSI and in two they killed off main characters. In the 3rd they killed off one of the CSI's wives who was the sister of another. How can I get into a show if they kill off all the good-looking characters? I still have to put up with Horatio, and I'm constantly in fear of the likable people getting shot. I cannot believe this is one of CBS's most successful shows. It hurts me.

I'm only slightly forgiving Canadian tv because I caught an episode of "My Name is Earl", and they have CMT. Late last night CMT showed "Great Balls of Fire", a fantastic movie which I highly recommend. If you haven't seen it, its about Jerry Lee Lewis. He's played by Dennis Quaid and Lewis' 13-yr-old cousin and bride is played by Winona Ryder. It is so disturbing, you'll love it.

So to summarize:
movies about incest and pedophilia - good
"CSI: Miami" - bad

Now back to Gone With the Wind, 1025 pages of vacationy goodness.

A Parade!

Last week I went to a parade in Drummondville. Drummond excitement?!?!?! Its true.

They've been having this Mondial festival which is an international dance festival and on Wednesday there was a parade. I went with Carolle, this nice lady that works at my office.

The parade started at 7:30 and the route was like 27 miles long, so it was more like 8:30 when we finally started seeing it. It was entirely composed of dance troupes from around the world and there were no floats, just trucks with big speakers. Interesting. I tried to take pictures, but by the time they were coming by it was pretty dark out so they mostly didn't turn out. I did get a few though and here they are:

The good people of Drummondville and Quebec, lining the streets in anticipation.

Traditional Quebecuois dancers, already its dark-ish, and this is the 1st group.

Apparently, clown school is considered a dancing troupe.

This is the only good picture I took in the dark, but it turned out f*cking awesome.

Well, this one turned out kind of okay, I think these were Russians.

After the parade there were fireworks down by the river, which started at 11pm. Coincidently this is also the time it started raining. Still, it was fun. Fun compared to other things I've done in Drummondville, of course. I got rained on at all of those too.

Hot Stuff

I'm bored, so I'm sharing a story from the Waller wedding. And as a bonus its a story about how hot I am.

On the day of the wedding all the groomsmen were doing their groomsmen thing with the groom so I was left to my own devices a bit. I ended up going down by the pool with mother Waller and her good friend, the preacher's wife. They were taking in the sun, but I know better, so I threw on a t-shirt and took my nail polish down to do a last minute touch-up.

We, of course, wound up having that discussion about how my nails are freakish and when the ladies last had manicures and if they were showing their toes at the wedding. Around then the preacher showed up. We moved on to wardrobe and the ladies told me about their dresses and I showed them my polish to describe mine. Naturally, I have polish that is the exact color of my dress- this is the 3rd wedding that dress has attended. After some oohs and aahs and more description the preacher interjects, "Well, Abby, I'm sure you have a very nice dress, but I hope you'll forgive me if I like my wife's better."

I say, "I don't know. This is a pretty fabulous dress. I understand that you are required to love your wife's, but you haven't seen this thing yet. Its amazing."

He insists he'll like his wife's best and we all laugh about how whipped he is after some 40 years of marriage.

Fast-forward 4 or 5 hours to the cocktail hour after the ceremony, which was great, in part because the preacher is a funny, personable guy. I'm chatting with someone, plowing through my 2nd or 3rd drink because its hot as hades out, when the preacher sort of sidles up to the conversation. He leans in all secretive like and gives a cheesy glance in each direction like he's looking for an FBI surveillance team. Then he says, "That is a great dress." and he walks off.

I collapse into a giggle fit, which no one understands, because no one could really hear him, and none of them were out by the pool with us. I considered explaining it, but finally decide to go with 'you had to be there' because it mostly just sounds like a guy in his 60s hitting on a 22-yr-old. But whatever. Its pretty funny. And who could blame him? I'm hot shit.

Dia's Travel Journal

Click here to see Dia's photo journal of our adventures in Canada (and her adventures in getting here.)

Her instructions for maximum photojournal enjoyment are, "Click on the first photo (in the upper left hand corner) and advance to each photo from there. They are in order, and there's commentary for each one."

Good times.

Today (Tuesday) I'm back in Canada after spending the weekend with the Wallers in the Poconos. It was soo much fun that I can't blog about it now. I'm at work, what do you want from me? Hopefully I'll have some photos by the end of the week to really fill out the stories. We'll see.

Checking In, Still Alive

I haven't been at the computer lately, because Dia came to visit (yay!) We had much fun, but instead of relating the whole thing, I'll link you over to her Flickr photo journal when its available. Just know we had fun, emptied bank accounts and got rained on repeatedly.

As for this weekend.... Off to Pennsylvania for my first encounter with the Waller family. Very exciting. And probably you'll have to hear about it afterwards, because the internet at the house is all messed up. Sigh.

For the second week in a row I'm doing almost no work, Monday was a holiday, Tuesday I took the morning off to deliver Dia to the airport, and yesterday Frankie and I were on site near Quebec City so we quit around 3 and spent the evening in Q-town. We drank some beers and toasted America in honor of the 4th. Goood times.

Until I get back my technology, entertain yourselves with the always improving dictionabby.