The more you know.

Boo and Darren came for a visit a few weeks ago. It was a trying couple of days, and we learned many hard lessons.

Like, it is difficult to see a statue of Terry Fox and not make fun of him just a little bit even though you know he did great things and was a warrior etc etc etc, because he always looks a bit...off. No? Or, like, it is difficult to understand signs sometimes. What exactly about this is wrong?

Or, it is difficult to see a pirate-y ship and not go over to investigate, and having investigated, not to make incessant 'arrrrrrrr' sounds and keep 'avast'ing each other. Also, it is difficult (unless you are facing the camera directly, as Exhibit Boo) to make your shin look like it has vanished and like you are in fact peg-legged. Instead, you will just look storky (see: Exhibit Me).

Also, it is difficult to fit entirely behind a pole. They are not precisely body-shaped.

Also, it is difficult to put one over on the bunns. They know when you have food you're not sharing.

Also, it is difficult (when the bunns are under your sway) not to try to make them do tricks...

Or to lure them into your lap...

Or to try to please every bunn at once.

Also, it is difficult to make fake-hair look like real-hair. Even improbable chest hair.

Also, it is difficult to stand near my sister without snorgling her.

For boo and Gillian

Campus looks for all the world like someone has taken a basket of baby bunns and heaved it onto the grasses.

Come visit, won't you?

I have no connected thoughts

THIS is why Up was so awesome and Monsters vs. Aliens was only so-so.

Also, I can't stop buying cherries and then eating half of them on the way home, but I'm totally freaked out by the thought that someone might see me spit out the pits, so I hoard them all up in my cheeks until I'm near a hedge and NO ONE is around, but this happens less often than you'd think and frequently I'm not sure what in my mouth I should and should not be swallowing.

Also, I am perfectly capable of dressing myself cutely in the winter, but somehow when it rains in the summer I'm all Do I own boots? Where are all my coats? And what of long-sleeved shirts!?!? And then end up leaving the house in a hoodie and a cap.

An exhuberance of photos! A dismal formatting fail!

Due to some sort of karmic face-slapping, both my birthday and our anniversary fall smack in the middle of PAPERSFINALSTHESKYISFALLING!!! So we celebrate these things in the summer when all the madness is over.

And even though we are po-po, we usually try to get at least an hour away from where we are currently living for el aniversary. This year we left it til the very last minute so that all non-organ-harvesty B&Bs were booked up and we ended up snagging a hotel room in nearby Sooke. Except that while the address of the hotel was in Sooke, the hotel itself was in downtown Victoria.

So we hopped in the car Friday evening and drove a whopping 20 minutes. Getting away from it all! It was probably for the best, though, because we haven't really had a chance to explore Victoria since we moved here SIX MONTHS AGO!

We pretty well spent two and a half days tramping around the city, somewhat hampered by Victoria's abundance of statues and our complete inability to walk by a statue without trying to look like it.
This is tricky when the statue is A.) very high up and B.) holding something that you are not holding (i.e. a sceptre or a gun).It becomes extra-extra difficult when the guy is just STANDING there.Slightly more successful...The old 'stare into middle distance'This inability to walk by a thing and not try to imitate it goes double for animal exhibits where we aren't supposed to be taking photos at alland triple for old-timey posters of Hitler...where we aren't supposed to be taking photos.

Because we have plenty of visitors coming over this summer we had to do a fair bit of 'field research' (read: eating tasty treats in new and exciting places).
It has been a dream of mine to eat one of these ocean-side waffles ever since Robyn came over in April and we walked by the waffle guy. So, maybe less of a Life Dream and maybe more of a Goal for This Year.

Do not think, because of the eating, that we are filthy swimming rich or have forgotten our frugal Mennonite heritage. We totally brought a whack of food from home but we are robust eaters, Joel and I, and there is something about stomping all over the city that says 'Eat a chimichanga the size of your head!'


Lessee, what am I forgetting. Oh yes, the street performers. Seriously, the third of Victoria's population that is neither a college student nor an retiree is a street performer.

Painfully unfunny and aggressively-money-grabby street acrobats that I hated so much I didn't even photograph? Check.

Man-stealing brass statuette from the other day? Check.

Air-brushers, caricaturists, and other on-the-spot artists? Check.

Fire-juggling unicyclist? Check.
Opera singers? Er...check. Buskers dressed inexplicably like lobsters? Checccccccccck!

Darth Vader playing the violin? Victoria, you so crazy. But yes, check.

So...it wasn't like last year when we went to Mexico for two months, or even like two years ago where we actually got out of the city, but it was cozy and relaxing and exhausting all at once.

Happy two years, two months, one week and six days, baby.

All times are for relaxing.

Friends! Who would have thought that time off would be so busy!?!? I have not got a single one of the useful, productive things done that I meant to get done, and Joel and I are skipping town tonight which means that nothing will get done this weekend.

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Because there are things to do, and those things are called Canada Day, and Canada Day in our province's capital is full of entertainments. Like unexpected peacocks.

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Or unexpected lizards.

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Or unexpected fountains.

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Or thieving crows. This happy bastard was rooting through that lady's purse before she came to shooo him.

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Also there are brass statues.

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Brass, husband-stealing, home-wrecking statues.

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Mile Zero is ever-present.
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As is this incredibly de-motivating sign.

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And dice. Giant dice will never lose their appeal.

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And then we lay on the grass and waited for the fireworks to start and hated on the teenagers and cheered when the cops came by to move them along and groused like old people when they came right back. Bonne fete, nation.

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