Man Alive!

Where has this summer gone? I swear, it's just flown by. I can't believe July and August are over! I mean, I remember just yesterday doing my training for the Summer Reading Club, and that was at the end of May! For crying out loud...

Not that I'm not excited to see you all... I am. I'm excited to go to Fort Edmonton Park and socialize with the sheep (remember that Jenny, Val?... Climbing over the fence to see them up close?) and "paying" for mini chocolate bars from the tuck box, and being in the computer lab until all hours of the night (any power point presentations we should start working on now, Heather?)...

... But I'm sad it's over and we have to go back to school. Sigh.

Oh well... We'll just have to buddy up this year guys... Keep each other sane. Right!?

My So Called Excitement!

They're replaying My So Called Life on the Family channel at 11:00pm! I loved that show, and never understood why they cancelled it?! Warren, you're gonna' be out of the loop on this one... kinda a girly thing. But Sonya? Jenny? Val? You strike me as ladies who woulda' liked it... Are you with me? Was there great wailing and nashing of teeth (as my father would say) when they took Angela off the air after only 19 episodes? Oh Jordan Catalano... How sexy you were.

I love...

... My mom's macaroni and cheese. I could eat it all day long. I could eat it in a box. I could eat it with a fox. Yummy. I think that's one of the things I miss the most when I'm in Edmonton.

Sorry to go off on a little tangent there... I'm feeling nostalgic for home these last few days school.

Umm... Yea...

Okay, so I just went to see The Manchurian Candidate. Anyone else see it? I don't know what to think... I think it was pooy... But I'm not sure. Hmmm... Warren? Have you and Wolf seen it? Very strange...

No Time

No time to type... Am addicted to Olympics... Will write more soon.

P.S. I wish my name was "Svetlana Khorkina."

Oooooo...

I want to go shopping. I want to go and spend gobs of money I don't have and buy new clothes and cast off all the stuff I've been wearing for years that I am constantly finding little spots on and tears in the armpits.

Maybe tomorrow I will just go and look...

Amanda vs. The Sneaky Kid

As a general rule, I like kids. And I usually get along with them pretty well... But there's this one kid at the library that really chaps my ass.

Really.

And I don't say that often.

The thing of it is... She's sneaky... Like in a nasty sneaky way, not in a "I'm-cute-I'm-pretending-to-be-a-spy" kinda way. I will spare you from the details of her daily plaguing, but let's just say my teeth grind when I see her enter the library. Like chewing on styrofoam. Like removing the little cotton ball that comes in a container of Tylenol. Like scraping ice from the side of a freezer. It's become that bad...

Am I awful?

I am awful, aren't I?

Poo.

I hate long distance relationships. They suck.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggidy Jog

Well, Heather and I had an amazing trip to Bon Echo (although, no doubt, not as amazing as the raging party I missed this weekend at Jenny and Val's House of debauchery!)

The park is very cool. It originates with an American couple in 1898, who came to the area on their honeymoon. They feel in love with the lake and the huge stone cliffs, and within a year, built a chic resort called the Bon Echo Inn. Eventually they turned it over to Merrill Dennison, a hard core liberal lady, huge in the Canadian feminist movement, and a follower of Walt Whitman. Dennison kept the structure, but revamped the atmosphere, making it into a haven for writers and artists like the Group of Seven. In 1936 the whole place burnt to the ground when lightning struck the main cabin, save two guest houses off to the side (which are now the visitors centres).

To top it off, the stone cliffs are amazing. The whole park looks onto these 100 meter high, 1km wide cliff ledges that rise straight up out of the water at 90 degrees. Not only that, but all along the bottom, in between the lichen and cedar trees growing from the rock (for real, and one of the trees in the rock has been tested and is OVER 975 YEARS OLD!), are 2000 year old Aboriginal pictorgraphs. Very neat. There's also a huge carved monument on one particular rock face, dedicated to the impact Walt had on Merrill's life. We took a guided boat tour of the whole thing, rented a canoe and paddled the lake, and hiked the 1.5km trail to the top of the rock. Oh so fun.

There was so much history, and so much story... I just loved it! (hard to tell, huh?Am I boring you with my vacation stories yet? If not, joy of joy's, here are some of my pictures--highlights of the weekend!)

THE VIEW FROM OUR CAMPSITE


THE VIEW FROM OUR CANOE


PICTOGRAPH OF THE WATER SPIRIT


WALT WITMAN INSCRIPTION


HEATHER AND "TURTLE ROCK" (PAINTED BY THE GROUP OF SEVEN)


THE VIEW OF THE PARK FROM UP TOP

Man, I wish you all could have been there.

So... what's new, pussycats?

At Last!

Tomorrow is my final day of work for 4 blissful days. I am going camping at Bon Echo Provincial Park, north of Napannee.


I am so excited!

I LOVE CAMPING!

I love cooking over a fire. I love sleeping in a tent. I love waking up and taking my morning shower in a wonderfully clear lake. I love it.

Yummy.

Have a good weekend, guys!

P.S. Keri, for real, I would LOVE to see you this weekend. I don't know if you have any plans, but camping in one of these parks is SO MUCH FUN! We (my best friend Heather and I) are going to be there from Friday at 2:00 to Monday at 2:00. Bon Echo is 80km south of Ottawa. It would be such an amazing way to finish your stay in Ontario. Please please please consider coming! If you rented a car, I would pay for half of it, for real! We have so much camping stuff, it's ridiculous--two tents, tons of food, everything! All you'd need is a blanket, a pillow, and yourself! I would love for you to come! Please consider it!

I Must Say...

... I'm a little jealous of all the funness going on elsewhere this summer. For example:

1) Sonya and Valerie are having an office romance. No doubt Sonya is wooing Valerie with her nostalgia song lyrics and vintage t-shirts (Mr. T). I bet Valerie takes Sonya to the Drug Store at lunch for a milkshake with two straws.

2) Jenny and Valerie's place sounds like the most fun. Pizza parties, giggle sessions, FELICITY AND NACHOS! (I love nachos). And Jenny now has, like, a million publications (what am I doing with all my time?)

3) Bess is always throwing parties full of hockey players. It's like the playboy mansion, for mercy's sake.

4) Warren is stalking everyone, apparently. And he and Fancy Wife took some sort of perfect vacation to the wilds of the Rocky mountains (no doubt full of gourmet picnic lunches).

5) Genevieve is going on helicopter rides with random men.

6) Michelle is canoodling with the smart and famous of the SLIS world. She's up for assistant dean of the school next year, didn't you know?

7) Heather's as close to a fast tracking career gal as you can come. The Chanel suits and brief case are only steps away. I think she said she spends her weekends in the Hamptons or something...

8) Keri's become an MPP. It's true. She told me. Ottawa has sucked her in. Her plans for leaving Ottawa are only a facade to fool us. Really she's in the final planning stages of a Parliament coup. You'll see...

I lead such a boring life.

Can I Toot?

Can I toot my own horn for a minute? I'm kinda puffy about the whole thing, really.

I have been doing some art work for the Catholic Children's Aid Society in Hamilton this summer, and I did a poster for them for their foster parent recruitment campaign, and it's on the website now... For downloading!

I'm kinda excited.

Um, so, you can go to the Catholic Children's Aid website to see it... It's on the right hand side of the page.

Hee hee. Does this mean I'm published? In terms of the C.L.A. guidelines, I guess not, right Jenny? It's you and me and our "alternative texts" Jenny!

p.s. See Warren, I do have a life outside of the blog. I'm not the raging loser blog-addict you might think.

p.p.s. I know I know. You were only joking yesterday, and so was I today, so don't give me that sigh that all guys give girls when the girl is being super sensitive.

eBay? Phooey.

Yes. That's right. I ventured onto eBay this weekend. My first time. I was so excited! I bid, I watched, and some schmuck beat me to the punch in the last 15 seconds.

Two days I waited to see if I won!

No one was bidding!

I was a sure thing!

And then she did it... She wait 'till the last second to gouge out my hope with a dull spoon. Ruined my fun, I tell ya!

Sigh.

Lot 5511660943, 100 pieces of vintage Barbie clothes... It wasn't meant to be, sweetheart. It just wasn't meant to be. Good luck in your new home. We woulda had something, I just know it. Sniff...

p.s. Don't ask why I was bidding on Barbie clothes. To make a very long story short, it was a bit of a joke with my friend Allison from Pembina and I. We gave each other Barbies this year and... well... We rekindled our love affair with the past time. Not that we played Barbies at all (cough)... Cause that woulda' been just silly for two grown 24 year olds to sit around playing Barbies (cough cough). Right? Um, yea.

p.p.s. Welcome home, Warren. We've missed your stalking and such.

Oh god... Hysterical! HYSTERICAL!

Obsessed

I am a woman obsessed. I can't seem to stop resume-ing. I am so freakily addicted to making sure all of my commas are perfect and every space is exact that I am up 'till all hours of the night with it (not really, just midnight or so, but that's late for a gal who's surrounded with screaming, sticky toddlers all day.) Am I weird, or can anyone else feel my pain here? Heather, doll, I know you're with me, right, Oh spreadsheet queen?!

This One's For You, Jenny!

I have to say, I had a completely "Ontarian weekend." Cliche, some might say. But oh so good. I thought I might let you Western folk in on what we do out here in the summer.

Friday it was H.U.M.I.D. This seems to be an Ontarian curse. "It's not the heat" my mother says, "it's the humidity." I swear, you can never stay dry when it's this kinda heat... Sick, I know. But it was gross here. Plus, unlike out West, the air is, well, um, "not so good" so when it's hot and humid, it feels like the air is thick, like Jello. You feel incased in dirty Jello. Okay, enough description. To escape the grossness that is H.O., Heather (my oldest bud in the world) and I went out for dinner... To the MANDARIN! I've mentioned the Mandarin before, but I didn't really explain it. It's an all-you-can-eat Chinese food restaurant, with assorted goodies like shrimp and crab legs and waffle bars on the side. So basically, it's an eating fest. Heather and I got all hopped up on red dye number 4 and drove down the Q.E.W. singing our hearts out to Hotel California.

On Saturday we took the GO train (GO = Government of Ontario Transit) into Toronto for Caribana. Yes, that's right. The hugest calypso party alive. Scrap that, the hugest PARTY alive. It's the craziest experience ever, and even though my friends and I were farther from being Caribbean than anyone else there, it was good times. Huge parade. Huge dancing. Huge everything. We shopped down Queen street, ate at Mr. Greengenes in the Eaton Centre, and bought ice cream from a truck outside the old city hall. It was fantastic. But then we got stuck in 2 hour traffic on the 403 coming home... Oh Toronto... How I love you and your crowded, rage driven-driver ways.

On Sunday we went to Port Dover--beach town Ontario! Seriously, if any of you ever read "Mary Anne and Too Many Boys, #34" or "Sea City Here We Come, Superspecial #10" from the Babysitters Club series, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's on Lake Erie (which itself is not a swimable lake for any self respecting human--more dead fish than shells on the shoreline). But it's fun. Tacky, yes. Overcrowded, yes. But oh so good. It's full of bikers, and legendary foot long hot dog restaurants, and beach shops, and people in bikinis they should have thought twice about before wearing in public. But it's all good for me. I can't get enough. But I swear, I've never seen it busier than it was on Sunday! Everyone and their mother was there! And it wasn't even a Friday the 13th (every Friday the 13th bikers the world over--no lie--crowd to Port Dover. No idea why.)

So, that's my weekend in a nut shell (not literally, cause then both me and the entire weekend would be really small, but that's a conversation for another time, maybe). This one was for you, Jenny. A little somethin' somethin' to remember Ontario by. I hope you all had wonderful weekends too! Do tell! I want all the juicy gossip!