done.

i am a MACHINE.

Granny Time

I've been getting in touch with my granny side lately.
I'm pretty excited about my new stripey items.

This is the first of two wristwarmers.

I like the way they feel... the yarn is cotton with some stretch to it.

This is the scarf I've been plugging away at.
Scarves take so long. Now I'm 1/3 done and I'm
already wishing it was a creamy-coloured scarf.

Censorship at Work

Sorry if this is a bit rage-enducing.
(But I want you to feel rage about this.)

Home and English.

Here are some (but not all) of the hi-lights:

There was some beautiful weather.
(Which was lucky. The forecast was
constant rain the whole week.)

My cousins and uncle and me.
I spoke so much french my mouth hurt.

Me and my sweet Grandpere.

Sugar pie. Usually eaten after a meal of
meat and fries. It is what it says it is. (Say no.)

Gilles and his baby backpack.

A luminous Ted and a Gilles on the bus.


Someone bought the Dog the Bounty Hunter book.


Metro!


Bumpy Metro.


Heidi tamed the dogs while I was away.


The End.

En Francais!

The alarm went off at 3:10am. It felt like 3:10am. Heidi was so awesome to drive me to the ferry because at that time of night you really need some modern comforts like good music and friend with dog and Tim Horton’s. I finished explaining to Heidi how amazing it is to just drop off your bags and hand over all of the pre-travel stress to someone at the Air Canada counter (who is always wearing a crappy tie). “Here take my bags – they’re heavy and I’m on vacation now.” Then they just tell you where to go and when to be there. So I did just that and proceeded to my gate.

When I got to security they asked me if they could swab my laptop, which they have done many times before. This time they detected explosive materials. So immediately I graduated from simple Vancouver Islander with a backpack to somewhere between that and the Unabomber. They gave me an intimate pat down - but only after they got to know me a little better thanks to a procedural questionnaire that is probably already sitting in my master file in the world vault ready to haunt me when I apply for a visa.

I still have no idea:
1) How explosive material got on my laptop;
2) Why they let me and my potential bomb-encountering computer board the plane; or
3) If they lied to me for training purposes.

Regardless, I got on the plane and a little turbulence, one movie (Evan Almighty, meh), five sudoku games, one bag of pistachios, 15 hours and some awkward French-speaking later, I am at my Grandpère’s home in small-town Quebec winding down and thinking about sleep.

The French is going to be a challenge, as is vegetarianism and not smoking. By the end of this week I’m sure to be a meat-eating, Quebecois-speaking, chain-smoking Vancouver Islander with a backpack full of bomb dust.

No photos yet. Be patient.