See Joel and Raych camp.

See the Beware of Bear sign.

See that sign not be lying.

See the bear come back five times to the campsite next to us where it had previously found a fine cache of Gatorade and Coke.

See Joel chase the bear away with a rock.

See Owen, who was equal parts Defender-From-Bears and Heart-Attack-Giver-Due-To-Resemblance-To-Bear-When-Emerging-Suddenly-From-Bushes.

See Raych put Owen to better use than terrifying campers.

See Raych discover a new camera setting and turn the trees blue.

See Raych discover full comedic use of said setting.

See Raych give Shannon the beginnings of a terrible sunburn.

See Shannon's agony.

See Shannon's lovely tan.

See Raych's chilli dog, which she needs to feed her fetus.

See said fetus.

This post is a paean to the dump. I'm sorry, The Environment.

You guys!  I have been to the dump, and it. is. amazing.  This is probably the opposite of the experience environmentalists want me to have, but I am loving the dump.

Ok so this last week I've been helping my professor clean out her basement, and it is a large basement with many rooms and almost no space to move.  THE THINGS!  The boxes of files, the old jolly jumpers, the Halloween decorations in various locations, the CANS OF PAINT.  It was daunting.

We'd been cleaning it for three straight days, and the chaotic mass took on some semblance of organization, but until you start hauling things out it is sort of disheartening to look at your three days' work and see boxes and bags.

We were disheartened.

Thursday morning we loaded up the van with cans of paint, and more paint we'd missed the first time, and bags of garbage which we promptly unloaded so we could load the twenty or so rogue cans of paint we'd found hidden in the crawl space.  And then the garbage and the rusted piping and the jolly jumper etc.

And then we drove to the dump, windows rolled down to keep from suffocating on the paint smell, apologizing to the forest we drove through for bringing gallons of toxic waste to DUMP somewhere in its midst.

The dump is very clearly organized.  Go here.  Turn here.  If you have this, go here.  Approach the scales when the light is green.  And then the man at the scales is all, GOOD MORNING!  Take your garbage up there to that fellow, and he'll tell you where to go from there!

And that fellow up by the bins is all, GOOD MORNING!  Welcome to the dump!  And he has our garbage out of the van and into a bin before we can even breathe, and is all, Take your van back to the scales now (so they can weigh you again and see how much garbage you dumped!  Oh dump, you are so foresighted) and then head over there to recycling!  They will tell you what to do there!

So we head back to the scales and it's only $20 for our load of garbage, and not the hundred-odd-plus we'd been anticipating, and then we head to recycling and pull up to the table marked 'Paint' and we're like, We have an absurd amount of paint?  (It is, apparently, free to dump your household toxins.  Probably to discourage clandestine garbaging of said toxins.  Clever you, dump.)  And the guy helps us cart the 80-ish cans of paint out of the van and shows us where to drop our metal piping and our ancient bottle of Round-Up and our defunct fire extinguisher, and we go on our merry way.

I know the dump is just A Thing That Exists and not the magical experience we'd both felt like we'd had.  Its just, we had all this crap, and now we DON'T have it.  I know a lot of it is just going into a terrible heap and is going to ruin the world for our children's children, but it isn't in the basement any more.  And everyone was so JOLLY and HELPFUL and it was the first sunny day in AGES.

I would visit you again, dump.  You have won my heart.

Have I mentioned...

that we (being my entire family) are going on a Caribbean cruise in August?

And that I found a maxi dress that is neither strapless nor exceedingly breasty?

And that I am going to swan down to breakfast in it every morning of the cruise, as though it were a very fancy bathrobe?

Recently.

We visited our friends' baby kitten.  I rubbed its face with my face and it did not mind.

I made blueberry muffins.  All of the blueberries died inglorious deaths.

Have I shown you my garden?  It's really just these three tomato plants.  I bought them mostly so I could go smell them periodically.  If they generate me some tomatoes, so much the better.

My final 29th birthday celebration.

We went to a cabin with some friends on my actual birthday, and then we went to Cirque for my birthday a few weeks ago, and then on Saturday we executed our original plan for my birthday.

Kayacks!

We have been wasting the last few years by living here and not kayacking.

You get to spy on the tourists!

And see the sights but from, like, lower down!

And then at one point you have to charge across open seas and it is choppy and there are large boats and you are small and badly steered.  But we lived to have dinner, so.

Joel promised to take me for tapas for my birthday, so we went to The Mint, which is very dark and very underground which results in poor, flash-riddled photos of the samosas

and choyela

and spicy noodle soup.

The choyela was particularly ridiculous.  I will eat all the spicy meat fragments you have.

Celebrations!

On Canada Day we wander around our province's capital like civilized people, and then on the 4th of July I force Joel to eat patriotic desserts and come wave sparklers with me on the deck and feel vaguely traitorous to his country.

Independence to all (who have it), and to all, a good night.

Georgie's First Canada Day

Georgie wants to Sniff All The Things (And, If Possible, Eat them).

Georgie and the whale!

Georgie does not like the copper girl.

The copper girl does not taste like people.

Georgie is an Immigrant Dog.  Welcome to Canada!  Bienvenue!

Georgie meets a Mountie Bear.

Georgie is seduced by an old sailor.

Georgie welcomes her master back from the war.

Georgie gets a drink, as the weather has finally turned hot.

Georgie is patriotic.

We went to the circus!

It was part of my birthday present.  We play pretty fast and loose with celebratory dates around here.

And ok, Cirque is never not amazing.  There are always wacky new elements, and they dream up the most unexpected shenanigans.  Like, so there's a jump-rope bit, and it's rad, and then these two guys pull out a long rope between them and these, like, SIX GUYS stand shoulder-to-shoulder, and then four more guys stand on THEIR shoulders, and then ANOTHER DUDE stands on THEIR shoulders, and then the rope turners turn and the whole shebang JUMPS.  And no one dies.

And some bits repeat, because it wouldn't be Cirque without that girl on the pole.  You know the one, she stands on one arm on a pole and then just contorts around her one arm?  It's pretty much the same thing every time, and I totally love it.  Ok but then also, that couple hanging from the satin sashes?  With the guy in the high-waisted pants, and they're always very yearning?  I could totally do without them.

sooooooooooo mournful

But there's probably someone loving the sash-couple like I love the pole-girl.  Whatever.

Most amazing for me were these Chinese-dragon-lion-dog creatures, made of two people and a giant head (like when you make a donkey on family sitcoms?  And someone's always pissed to be the butt-end?), and they STOOD ON BALLS.  Like elephants do.

pretend this is a furry Chinese dragon with very dog-like mannerisms. but made of people

And then they WALKED AROUND on those balls.  Like, over a see-saw.  You will see it happening and you will still be like, No, this is not happening.  Especially when one stands on its hind legs.

And people jumped through hoops and there was some trampoline business involving a wall which they ran up and if Dralion ends up in your neck of the woods, guys?  You go.

I have been very busy.

But none of it makes for good blogging.  Like, this morning I went for a hike.  Monday and Tuesday I babysat my prof's kid.

Also busy, and making for better blogging?  Our Turkish bbq skewers.

Man, were those ever worth the, like, six dollars that we paid for them.

I am edumacated.

So I know I finished school ages ago, but yesterday I OFFICIALLY CONVOCATED!

I mean, I didn't go to convocation.  Convocation is long and dull and I've already convocated once (does that sound braggy?).  But I did go to the after-party, thrown by my one-time supervisor and current employer, Dr Leighton!

I have been the all-purpose research bitch for Dr Leighton And Other Colleagues, which has been hilarious but also exhausting and which I blame on the recent radio silence.  Thank goodness the hockey is over and I can have my evenings back now.

If you'll excuse me, my BA in English Lit and I need to go read Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later.  It is...how you say...so bad.

It's a sad day, y'all.

See you guys in 17 years.

New York: Day Six - I'm still doing these, right?

Right.  So.

There being two of us, I browsed the feeding frenzy for good-looking titles while boo got in line for Jimmy Fallon, who is exactly as giggly in real life as he is on tv.

He doesn't seem to have his slick, public persona in place yet, because after handing boo her book he was all, Please!  Thank you!  And she was like, What?

Then we got in line for the Mo Willems signing to get copies of Should I Share My Ice Cream, and we met Pig and Elephant, who are apparently a thing.

Then, there still being two of us, I went to the Maureen Johnson signing to get The Last Little Blue Envelope (the sequel to Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes, which came out FIVE YEARS AGO but which I only just read, like, two months ago THANK GOODNESS) while Bekah went to see Chris van Allsberg, and this was the first and only time we were both stuck in crappy lines with no one to chat with, and we didn't even have each other to make it better.

That morning we'd walked by the MacMillan booth and the woman is all, Here is a schedule for the Big Red Bag giveaways!  In previous years you had to be a book-seller to get a bag but this year ANYONE can get one, you just have to be here at the right time!  So we were all, I wonder what is in these Big Red Bags!  What kind of treats?  So we came back at, like, 2 or whatever to find that the Big Red Bag giveaway was a giveaway of big, red bags.  I mean, sturdy-ass bags, and Bekah used hers (re-named the Big Red Bitch) as a carry-on to haul more books home.  But just bags.

And then we were accosted by the Scientologist pirates from the L Ron Hubbard booth

which we had been trying to avoid but it was right by blackbirds so we kept accidentally wandering through it and then trying to skedaddle.

We went to a panel called Book Reviews Online (or some such), expecting it to be interesting and pertinent, but it was really just large print media like the NYRB explaining how awesome it is to be able to review online (you can fit more words!  For the same price!) and it was a little bit What are bloggers?  Oh yes we have one of those on staff.  So we left early, but I heard it never got any better.

We were heading back to that dodgy library on Jersey St where we'd gotten mad lost on Monday trying to get to the Teen Author Carnival, this time for a Writing for YA panel.  I'd seen Maureen Johnson earlier that morning (as I mentioned) and then later I saw her wander across the exhibition floor and was all, Oh, there's Maureen Johnson!  And she turned and I was like, *awkward wave* and when we got to the YA panel and took our seats (in the front row like keeners) and checked the panel, there she was again.  Sorry for accidentally stalking you, Maureen.

Last time we'd gotten lost leaving the library because we were so caught up in the panel we'd just seen, so this time we paid SUCH ATTENTION TO WHERE WE WERE GOING but Bekah failed to go through the turnstile quickly enough which invalidates your card for that station and all stations in the area, so we had to walk to the next station weeping over our empty stomachs, since we were STARVING OURSELVES for Brother Jimmy's

more about which another time, and after which we rolled home.

I got to wear my Canucks bathing suit ON GAME DAY

I went camping and burnt my forearms because I always think I'm so smart with the sunscreen and haven't burnt, like, the tops of my ears in YEARS and then I miss somewhere random and have to pay for it later.  But the weather was hot and the company was excellent and the pub in town to which we drove I can neither recommend for the food nor the service but the Canucks WON

and the market was markety

and the spicy peanut chicken was indeed spicy and contained both chicken and peanuts

and Ruckle Park is lovely in the gloaming

and we ate quite a lot of eggs fried in bacon grease in the morning (as well as, obviously, bacon)

and there was an unnecessary fence.

OH that fence made me laugh.  What are you guarding?  That grass, from the other grass?