From highnesses to hicks.

Shannon PVR'd the Royal Wedding so we could watch it last night instead of yesterday at some ungodly hour, and so we could fastforward through the boring bits (i.e. most of it) and pause on all the hats.  HATS!

Hilarious!

I love a good wedding, especially one that I can attend in my jeggings and don't have to buy a gift for, and I love pomp and circumstance.  Where are the trumpets to announce MY entrance?

We made our own wedding feast of bangers and mash (except we don't really know what that is so we had sausage and potatoes and called it good) and royal-engagement-ring-themed tarts.

Ehh?  Anyone?

And then today Chelsea took me out driving in her truck because I need to learn to drive standard or be forever housebound and it wasn't the worst because Chelsea is very like my aunt Lois (i.e. calm and instructy) and driving a truck feels very badass.

That makes three.

I had another birthday cake last night.  I was too busy eating to take a picture but it was one of these:

The best birthdays are the ones that go on for DAYS.

I'm fine with whatever happens in the season now.

Ok see here's the thing.  Chicago has bumped us out of the playoffs for the last two years.  So there's that.  But then also there's something about them that makes you WANT to hate them and wish them ill.  Is it Patrick Kane's doucheface?

Kane might actually be a super-nice guy who just happens to have the face of a douche, but look at that face.  That is the face of every rich asshole in every teen comedy since 1985.  Jonathan Toews, on the other hand, actually seems like a legit jerk.

A jerk with dead, soulless shark eyes.

Yesterday I couldn't handle watching the game alone and Joel was on call so I went to Christie's with some friends and we all chomped on our fingertips and as much as it would have been SO SATISFYING to CRUSH THEM DECISIVELY in four games, it was also nice to let them rally a bit before we killed off their season.

Onward and upward.

My birthday and also do I look Crayola in this?

I had a birthday!  And at the last minute we were invited to a friend's parents' cabin on Gabriola Island, so we scuttled over there Saturday morning after Joel got off call, and it was sunny so we 'hiked' a little bit

and then lay on the beach like walruses and watched the dogs chase the childrens.  That night we had a campfire and birthday cake.

And the next day it was dismal

so we sat around a weird island cafe full of weird island art talking about how weird all the islands are and then Joel and I hopped the tiny ferry and drove back to Victoria to watch the Canucks game and I got another cake.

So many cakes!

Now that that's out of the way, can we talk about my outfit?  I wouldn't keep asking you guys for fashion advice if you weren't all so damned stylish.  You have only yourselves to blame.  (The other day I dressed myself and it was ALL WRONG but I couldn't put my BRAIN-FINGER on what was wrong and I thought, I will make the internets tell me, but I was late so I wore something else completely and I will have to recreate the Wrong Outfit for you some other time so you can weigh in.)

This is mostly a question of color.

I love the bright blue with all the muted, mustardy colors on the skirt.  However, I also know that I am prone to wanting to wear ALL THE COLORS.  So.  Bright and fine, or dressed by a four-year-old?

Neatable eatables.

We aren't going to talk about the game yesterday.  SUFFICE IT TO SAY that Joel and I left Cactus Club after the 2nd.  Alas.

We are instead going to indulge in some food pr0n, specifically tea pr0n.  Nic and I have been trying to go for tea for ages but tea rooms keep odd hours, and Nic as a med student keeps odd hours, and I keep hardly an hours at all.  The Empress is allegedly the place to go for high tea but word on the street says it's over-priced and under-good, while that same word highly recommends the White Heather Tea Room (and now, so do I).

Tower of Tasty Treats!  You guys, this is my ideal meal.  Many tiny bits!  May I take you on a tour?

On the lower tier we have the warm items: the fresh lemon scone, the spinach and gruyere crustados, the ham and mushroom quiche.  The lemon scone came with several spreadables:

Counterclockwise from front, a raspberry preserve, a lemon curd, some heavy whipped cream, and a lemon honey butter.  The scone was the only Thing On Which One Could Spread Spreadables, so I started just putting them all on.

I was designed for this sort of eating.  Moving on!

The middle tier has a smoked salmon on a lemon ricotta muffin, a goat cheese-tomato-basil phyllo cup, an asparagus and cream cheese tea sandwich, and a chicken-mint-red pepper jelly pinwheel sandwich.  I would have eaten many of those phyllo cups.  And many of those asparagus sandwiches.  I would have eaten this tier several times over.

The hierarchical tier is where they keep the goods.  Butter tarts, almond macaroons, carrot and mango cake, nutella and hazelnut birdsnest cookies, and chocolate-dipped strawberries.  And some chocolate eggs, which we pocketed because by this time we were rolling in our dainty chairs.  Carbs and cheeses and butters and sugars are, it turns out, rich.

It ALSO turns out that you need all that tea just to wash everything down.  And that everything is tiny.  The tables were tiny, the cups were tiny, we felt like giants with ham-hands.  There was a table leg right by my knee, and every time I moved I would bump it and all the tiny spoons would rattle in the saucers.

But verrrrrrrry worth it.  Also worth it?  Risking the wrath of the dollar store next door so I could snag a photo with their life-size Sam Skellington.

What a rogue, that guy.  Ok so I ate all that and then Joel and I went for a walk along the harbor to gaze lovingly at each other (as one does)

and then to Cactus Club, which we won't be talking about except that their Korean bbq braised pork lettuce wraps are very good.

All in all, an excellent anniversary and first-day-in-which-I-am-not-a-student.  Today I will eat nothing but vegetables.  (I am eating a bag of chips right now.  I can't lie to you.)

Four and going

Four years ago today Joel and I kissed on the sand while everyone pointed and screamed.

Then we went to Mexico and spent a hilarious amount of time trying to find a bar that would play the Canucks games for us (we lost to Anaheim that year).

Three years ago we were living in Dave and Sheri's basement and learning how to drink wine properly.

Two years ago we were...here in Victoria.  Newly entranced by the bunns and by being at Mile Zero.

One year ago we were...still here.  I had just finished having cancer and Joel was wrapping up third year and we were mostly glad just to still be ticking.

Then we went to Terrace and drove from Terrace to the lava beds and from Terrace to Prince Rupert for Seafest and from Terrace to Alaska to see the glaciers.

Then Joel wrote the USMLE while I chased kids on bikes.

Then we went to Prague.

And then Turkey.

And then Greece.

And then Prague again.

Then we came home and went back to school like grown-ups.

Then it was Halloween and Joel got eaten by a shark.

Then it was Christmas and we did all the Christmas things, like visit the German Christmas market, and go ice skating in Robson Square, and have chocolate fountain, and go out for Christmas Eve Chinese food.

Then we came home and had some springtime before it snowed again and we went tobogganing on inflatable snowmobiles.

Then both our sisters bought houses (parallel lives!) and we lost Grandma but got a puppy-niece.

Now Joel is trekking through the last lap of his third year and I am done maybe for ever and for all (and I wrote a thesis!) and applying for work at Boston Pizza because I've been out of serving for long enough that I remember liking it.  This year has been travelicious and Victoria is growing on me and I will be sad(dish) to leave.

Now if you'll excuse us, we have a hockey game to watch tonight.

Bullets.

In six hours I will be done my last exam.  MY FINAL FINAL.  Zoots.  I have two multi-use essays queued up in my head to be tweaked to fit whatever the essay question is.

Boo and I fly to New York in a month today.  ONE! MONTH!

I am The Thing That Doesn't Stop Eating.  C'mere, 2kg bag of chocolate chips.

We're getting an iPad2.  THANKS, PARENTS!  I will be squeeing more about this once it's actually in my hands but ok, what apps should I get?  Angry Birds, natch.  And the kindle app?

Remember how our microwave and can opener and car were all broken at the same time?  We got new all those things (ok, the car is 'new to us' but also 'newer than any car we've ever owned' and thanks to Joel's parents for that.  We have excellent parents).  Now I can heat things and open cans AT A WHIM, but I can no longer drive, because the car is standard.

Once more over the notes, dear friends.

These are good days.

One of the best things about playoff hockey is that on game days everyone is out around town wearing their jerseys, even in Victoria where everyone is too old/disaffected to care about professional sports.  The other best thing about playoff hockey is that every second day is game day.

Also I am totally studying for my last exam ever (while I watch hockey).

This is where my blog starts to sound like a diary a little

but yesterday was All The Good Things!

I went up Mt Doug with Shannon and Chelsea and Seamus, which makes the third time I've done that 'mountain' in three days which means I can lie around all day tomorrow with exercisorial impunity.  Also, SEAMUS!  That sweet doggy.

And then Joel came home from call and we had brunch at John's Place and I had a waffle and how long has it been since I've had a Belgian waffle?  My dad used to make them all the time.  Next year, when I move in with my folks and their waffle maker?  Look out, waistline.

And then we went shopping for my birthday present but came up empty-handed (I want these but our Le Chateau didn't have them in gold OR my size and I am not a store and cannot therefore order them wholesale online) but we both bought new shades, so PARTIAL VICTORY!

Also, have I mentioned it has been both sunny AND warm?

And then we came home and had steak salad and watched the Canucks beat Chicago again.  W00t, you guys.

Self-deception.

I have been making smoothies, as one does when the weather begins to warm, and I have been putting spinach in them.  Because apparently this is A Thing One Can Do.  It turns out that you can put a ludicrous amount of spinach in a fruit smoothie before you notice it (I have yet to reach the outer limits of how much spinach you can put in).

Vegetables, I will sneak you in the body yet.

Up hills and down.

We went for a hike today.  The weather has been nice for a few hours every morning, and then cloudy FOREVER ALWAYS after, so our hike was gloomy.  Also, we are not terribly good hikers.

I'd heard the hike to the observatory is good, and every time we pass the Center of the Universe sign I want to go to there (even though I realize how disappointing 'there' is bound to be), but we accidentally drove up the part you're supposed to hike (because it is a street) and when we got to the top we felt disinclined to drive all the way down so we could hike back up to see the view we were currently seeing.

At least I got to go to the Center of the Universe.

It looks like this.

That picture in no way captures how HUGE and WHITE that building is.

Anyway, we were still hankering for a hike so we drove home and hiked Mt Doug, which I had hiked that morning with Shannon.  It's about 20 minutes of vigorous uphill walking and then you can see all of Victoria, including the giant hay sphinx.

Ha ha, what?

I am very hungry now, from our hikes, and in fifteen minutes I will go make kettle corn and watch the game and cross all my appendages.

One down.

I always thought it would be fun for the Canucks to have a real rivalry, like Calgary and Edmonton, instead of just a Team We Cannot Beat And Therefore Hate.  It was thrilling to beat that team last night.  In my 16 years as a Canucks fan I haven't had a lot of opportunities to gloat, but I've been gloating with ENERGY this season, and I hope to gloat for fifteen more wins.

One more thing off my Plate of Dread

Ok so, dentists.  Our old dentist used to give us laughing gas for fillings, so I've never actually been lucid for a filling until now, and today I was lucid for FOUR fillings.  I was doing a full-body clench for an hour and a half, I'm surprised I didn't poo.  NEEDLES IN MY GUMS.  So here I am with my mouth looking half-botoxed and trying not to drool everywhere or bite myself, BUT I ran through all my coverage so now I don't have to go to the dentist again until Joel starts residency, because we can't afford it.  Left side of the mouth, you wait your turn.

In other news, playoffs start today.  Sam Skellington is ready.

I am so very almost a BA (again).

So many things, you guys.  Ok, really only three things, firstly that I did the readathon on Saturday (and it was excellent, as always) and secondly that Joel and I had a movie-a-thon on Sunday (which I will talk about at a later date because most of the movies we watched were hilariously bad) and yesterday I fretted and today I defended my thesis.

Zoots!  It is done!  And I got an A, so high fives for me.

Ok but guys, very stressful.  Because when I got there at 10 the honors advisor was all, I am very sorry and this is horrible but your third reader thought it was this afternoon, so she hasn't read your paper yet.  Would you mind coming back at noon?  So I had to go away for two hours and FRET some more and also eat a snack because noon is hungrytime. I had worn a cap-sleeved cowl neck sweater because it looks officious and the cowl neck hides my nervous chestal flush, but it is also a Catcher of Snack Crumbs, so.

The defense itself went well and was semi-fun after I got over being HAND-SHAKINGLY NERVOUS and figured out that the one panelist's skeptical oh really face was actually just her interested face.  My supervisor's questions felt more like conversations, but the other two reader's questions were very ON THE SPOT-putting.  As, I suppose, they are meant to be.  They were kind, they were just...pointed.

At one point I found myself talking about the Twilight books (totally germane, since we no longer have such a clearly-delineated class system in North America and Bella's 'Cinderella myth' requires her to become a vampire as her sort of ascension of the class structure...whatever, it made all kinds of sense within the conversation) and I could hear myself talking about them in a Serious Literary Context but I couldn't seem to stop.  It was so terribly pertinent.

And then I left the room and they deliberated and then I got my grade and now I am DONE ALL THE HARD THINGS.  I have a CanLit final next week but pffffft (not pfffft in that I'm not going to put forth effort, but pfffft in that I'm not fussed).

Huzza!

Photo salad.

My cardigan, because blackbird needed to see it.

See?  SO dull!  *swoons*  Also, bb, how do you old-school bloggers not feel like idiots when addressing/referring to each other?  With your silly names?  (asks the girl with the extraneous 'y')

Also, I handed in my last (hopefully) paper of undergrad forever today.  Celebratory raspberries!

I was going to take a picture of it (the paper) but then I ran into two kids from my class outside the library and forgot, because we fell to bitching about same.

Speaking of bitching, I am making these:

because my theory class (all ten of us) is having a bbq tonight so that we can bitch about Dr Ross (Dr Ross not included, as that would put a cramp in our bitchings).

Also, what are these?

Are they a weed?  They must be, because I only see them scattered weed-pattern over people's lawns.  If so, they are the frailest of weeds.  This is the last specimen, and it was hale this morning but I guess the sunshine did it in?  Anyhoodle, I think they're lovely.  Or were.

Tomorrow is the readathon, and I am on TENTERS.

Tacos and sweaters!

There is a Mexican food truck in downtown Victoria, and I walked by it a few times before I facebooked my friend Kayleigh all, I'm not sure you're aware, but there is a Mexican food truck downtown.  And she was like, Do you mean *pause for effect* the Puerto Vallarta Amigos?  And I was all, I think so?  I must.  There's no way there are two Mexican food trucks in downtown Victoria.

We made plans to go there for lunch last week but I had the flu and the last thing you want to be throwing up is spicy food that you otherwise enjoy.  Today I went back downtown to continue my quest for a Plain Black Cardigan (more about which anon) and met Kayleigh at the food truck.

Arriba!  Etc.  So mobile and delicious!

I got the tacos, because there are many options for fillings and this way I could get two of each of the meats (beef, pork and chicken, obviously).

Muy bueno!

Moving on.  So I've been looking for a plain black cardigan, of medium thickness (neither crepe paper nor heavy knit), with a body to the hips and sleeves to the wrists and no gewgaws or ruching, and I've been looking for months because I don't want to pay $40 for a cardigan.  I finally found one today in Sirens, of all places, where everything is gewgawed and ruched within an inch of its life, and because it's Sirens it was only $15.  So I also got it in dark blue.

[No photo because it is literally just a cardigan.  The yawniest cardigan ever.  I am thrilled.]