consider my day made

i just got ID'd at the dep. i shoulda known it was coming when i asked for cider and the woman behind the counter directed me to the apple juice.

now where did i put my skittles....

this is scary.

this is the current view from my parent's balcony in the okanagan, the 7000 hectare Terrace Mountain fire. at this point 2500 people have been evacuated and about 2200 are on alert. the fire is 30% contained - i don't know if that's hopeful really.

the birdhouse, massachusetts

i just got back from visiting alec at shire village camp in massachusetts where he's working for the summer. it was all misty and beautiful.

we nerded out. a lot.

the cutest kid there.

alec's birdhouse:

inside. notice his sarong draped over the chair.

it rained all day saturday so we checked out the Montague Book Mill whose slogan is "books you don't need in a place you can't find."


alec found a book on cooking with thistles (tough guy) and i got this:


do the words Starlight Llama Solar beckon you? they summoned alec and i when we read them in a phonebook in the B&B section. the place really lived up to its name - a magical solar-powered little farm, home to two amazing hosts, a handful of peacocks, two emus, llamas, chickens, a dog with ragweed allergies, one complicated teenager, a stack of pumpkin pancakes and a cat. these pictures really don't do it justice, go there if you can.

for the time-being

Some time after I discovered the silent “k” but long before I managed to string an English sentence together, I noticed a trend where items were swiftly removed from my hands and guarded “for the time-being”. My crayons were confiscated. Toys, sharp objects, inappropriate magazines, anything moderately exciting inevitably became the property of “the time-being”. Naturally I began to wonder who this great being of time was and when the hell was he gonna give me all my cool stuff back. I imagined it to be a father-time of the cartoons (I had no imagination) - a sort of lean, anamorphic Santa wearing a quieter outfit (a simple beige smock?) whooping it up with my Crayolas in some secret room made of marzipan.

westmount kids have bigger balls

jude and i went for a sunday ride around town today. we took some photos, drank some beverages, drew some conclusions - namely that westmount kids have bigger balls:



compared to what plateau kids have:



unlike above, outremont kids at least keep their heads on their shoulders - and they mature really fast. but balls you ask? hmm - not so big:




ndg kids wear sensible footwear:



hampstead kids are faster, more aerodynamic and have better muscle tone than i'll ever know. and depending how far from the decarie you get, some have pretty big balls too:



(whoa, slow down munchkin, you're in a 30-k zone)




and mile end kids know how to throw an outfit together:

spot spot.

i made a new friend.



his name is spot.



he's jude's new roomate.




he's remarkably speedy.



he LOVES snackles.


it could be that he was named "spot" because he picks a spot and then stays there for a really long time.

colourful juices

i have been seduced by an online computer game called COLORFUL JUICES. in the game, i play the role of a telepathic, juice-lady who pours slushes for dark-haired children-of-the-corn. i have a sort of nursy/chefy sex-appeal and i wear TEVAs. if TETRIS preps you to bag groceries after school, COLORFUL JUICES full-out trains you to work in the paint department at HOME DEPOT. once you've poured the bevvies for the kiddies, they sit down and adjudicate your work. what makes this game so mysterious is that conventional color theory is not really applied - i can't quite understand the pigment-mixing logic (yet i try and try again). red and blue do regularly make purple but if you mess with the ratio, sometimes you get odd shades of yellow. and sometimes the kids order unusual thirst-quenchers like goats-blood, morning pee and nuclear smoothies.

you can play it here: http://www7.jeux.com/jeux/jeux.php?VIDJeux=4667