merely talk

I went to the Persian Tea House here in lovely Vancouver last night. I was slightly nervous, mostly because I'm rabidly anti smoking and the whole point of this place was to suck flavoured tobacco out of one of these things, while sipping yummy tea and having great conversation.

Happily I found the smoking part thoroughly enjoyable. It didn't burn my throat or make me cough or anything. And it was actually quite tasty. I found the whole experience to be quite relaxing.

So I'm going to have to go again. My only hope is that there is one in Edmonton. If there isn't I guess I'll just have to open one.

So lots of stuff has been going on, but not a lot of it would really be interesting to post in a blog. So that's why I haven't really been updating lately. Instead I've been shopping and going to BBQ's and seeing movies and generally having a lovely summer. Well I would be if the weather ever decides to become summer like. Where is the sun?

I saw Batman Begins. That Christian Bale certainly is attractive. I've known it for ages, he was my first movie-boy crush (thank you Newsies!), but it's always nice to be reminded of the prettiness. Oh and the movie is really good too. Except for Katie Holmes and her lack of bras and weird biting lip thing. Otherwise awesome movie. Did I mention that Christian Bale is in it. And that he's hot.

I'm going to be heading to E-town for a few days. Which is tres exciting. I can't wait to see everyone and the city and Whyte Ave and DaDeO's and Max's and the mall and everything else that's wonderful about that prairie town. In fact going to Edmonton is so exciting I'm having trouble creating complete sentences or flowing paragraphs. Perhaps I should wait to update again until I'm there or back or something.

Interesting thought.


Anyhoo, I'm off to IKEA today for some lovely summer sale-ing. Hopefully the sun will begin to shine again at some point.

I went out last night. I ended up heading to the Brickhouse on Main, for a friend of a friend of a friends birthday. It's a pretty cool establishment and the beer wasn't even too expensive which was nice. It was a good way to spend the evening (and early morning, I didn't make it home until 3:30).

I did have a little mini adventure before going out though.

I was waiting in front of chapters to meet up with my dear friends. Just hanging out, watching for the 99. I was sitting on one of the conveniently located benches painfully aware of the drunk man who was hitting the newspaper boxes over at the 98 bus stop and yelling at people. I had a sinking feeling it would only be a matter of time before he came over and talked to me.

Which he did. He called me "babe" and asked me for cigarettes, then money. I said no on both accounts. Then he wanted to knock fists with me. Which I did, gently and with only my ring touching. My only reasoning on this was that he could barely stand and his hand (which was bloody, from hitting the newspaper boxes) was waving dangerously close to my shirt and jeans. He then wondered away to go and talk to other people.

Fine. I sat and waited and waited and willed the bus full of wonderful people to come. A 99 came by, but they weren't on it. Which was slightly worrisome, especially because the man was coming back. He was a little angrier this time. He tried to knock fists with me again and asked me for a cigarette again. Another man at the bus stop started to yell at him to leave people alone. The drunk man yelled back. And I wished whole heartedly to be somewhere else.

The drunk man decided he wanted to sit next to me. And started lurching towards the bench, I stood up, and told him he could have the entire bench. And at that exact moment a nice young man came from across the street, said hello to me and pretended he knew me. So he and I took a walk away from the yelling and it was lovely.

He had been having coffee with friends across the street and decided to go save the girl he saw sitting on a bench between two men yelling at each other. Which makes him an angel in my book.

So it was a bit scary and I feel bad, as I always do, that I didn't try to help the drunken man, but in a way it was good, because I made a new friend. He stayed with me until my wayward peeps showed up for which I am so thankful for, and we had a really good chat.

So overall I give Sunday night a thumbs up.

I went shopping today. A few days ago I went through my wardrobe looking for things to give away. It's a habit I've gotten into before moving. No need to bring stuff I don't wear. After going through my clothes I realized I had a grand total of two pants and one skirt that fit. And the two pairs of pants were getting pretty loose what with them being two sizes too big. So I decided I had to go shopping. Anna and I headed to Pacific Centre, but stopped at Tinseltown first to see "Mr and Mrs Smith"(it was a pretty enjoyable movie with lots of pretty people to look at).

I managed to find a decent pair of jeans at Old Navy. It helped that I swallowed my pride, admitted I had short legs and got the short jeans. I won't even have to roll up the bottoms on these ones. Which will be a novel experience. I also found a super cute skirt for the summer at RW & Co and a pair of shorts at Jacob Connection. I think this is the first time I've gone shopping and didn't find a single top I enjoyed. I tried a whole bunch on, but they just weren't right. Sigh.

I am also currently rocking out to the new Foo Fighters CD. It is wickedly awesome.

On Tuesday night a friend of mine had an art opening at Cafe deux Soleil on Commercial. She has three paintings up and they are all beautiful. For the opening there were a few live bands and general awesomeness. The first girl on stage was positively brilliant and had one of the most amazing voices I've ever heard. Her performance was flawless, I felt almost like I was listening to a CD. The second band was less good. It was made up of a cello, drums and an electric guitar. The guitarist also occasionally played the xylophone. Sounds cool, no? But they were not good. The lead guy needed to learn to not choke the mic and the poor cello was drowned out by the drums. It was their first gig though, so I guess I can cut them some slack. It was cool to get down to that neighborhood. I really love commercial it's just so hard to get down there.

So things have been good. A friend gave me a whole bunch of info on iron deficiencies so I feel a bit better prepared to face this now. And shopping today actually made me feel good about my body, so I guess that means I'm having a good mood day. Yay!

I had a lovely day yesterday. Well afternoon and evening at least. In the morning I had to go into the office and do lots and lots of busy work. But afterwards I went to Chapters and found the second Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book. Then I sat in a out of the way corner and read it cover to cover. I feel a little bad, you know for not buying it, but I'd feel a lot worse if I'd spent $12+ on it and finished it in 2 hours. It was good and I want others to read it because I have things I wish to discuss.

I think I'll go back next week and read the third one.

+ Sisterhood of the traveling Pants is a good movie.

- Boys suck and have made me sad, which really pisses me off.

- One of my kids is moving next week and I won't see him ever again, which makes me really sad.

+ Anna found a Gerry Butler look alike at one of our favourite restaurants. Best part is he works there, so we'll be visiting the spot several times in the next two months.

- I have to go into work tomorrow, and stay there for a long time catching up on busy work.

- I really need to get started on my essay.

+ I have wonderful friends, who want to hang out with me even though I'm going through a rough mood swingy time.

- I'm having a rough mood swingy time.

- I have anemia, and have to try to incorporate more iron in my diet. Which is really hard, because most foods high in iron also happen to be high in fat and I've trained myself to not eat them.

+ I've managed to stay on top of the mess my brother has made of my apartment and have contained the sloppiest bits to his room and his bathroom.

- Do to the increase in iron heavy foods, I've gained two pounds.

- The rain is not going away, no matter how much I sing the song.

So overall things aren't great right now. We're at a 2 to 1 bad stuff ratio. Perhaps if the weather improves my mood will too. A girl can hope.

I headed out on the town last night for my cousin Anna's birthday. We were going to go to the Roxy, but didn't get going fast enough and missed the cheaper cover. So we ended up going to the Royal instead. And I am very glad we did. First there was no cover, second there was some pretty awesome drink deals and third the bar was filled with lovely Irish gentlemen fresh from Dublin. What's a girl to do with all that awesomeness I ask you?

Have a kick ass time is what. I managed to drink a lot, but remain standing, dance a lot and make some lovely new friends. Sadly I didn't manage to make it home at a decent hour and therefore got approximately 3 hours of sleep before heading off to work this morning. I was actually fine until about 2. I'm still waiting for my second wind to kick in. Hopefully it will soon, what with me going to Miss Saigon tonight.

I finished Persuasion. It was awesome and achieved what I thought was impossible: rivaling Pride and Prejudice as my favourite Jane Austen. It was just that good. The main character Anne was a bit of a wimp, I just wanted her to speak up so many times, but over all it was great.

Speaking of Pride and Prejudice the trailer for the new movie starring Keira Knightley is up. I'm annoyed because it looks good and now I'm going to have to go spend my money on it. If you want to check it out you can find it here.

I invented a very yummy pizza like thing tonight. I made up some pizza dough when I got home, and used peanut sauce instead of tomato. Then I put on pineapple, peanuts, jalapeno peppers, onions, garlic, tofu and then garlic chives and lemon basil from my garden. And it was really tasty. I'm very impressed with myself. I thought it might be a disaster without some sort of cheese on top. I thought all the toppings were going to fall off. But they didn't. Which is good cause I couldn't really think of a kind of cheese that would go with the peanut sauce.

So yeah, just call me chef Tessa.

My first tomato. Isn't it beautiful?!

Pender was great and beautiful. Highlights included:

1. Me driving my parents SUV around the twisty turny roads on the island. I was really scared of backing out of our driveway, so I made my parents do that. Otherwise that car was my bitch!

2. The nice guy who bought us a round at THE bar. He had dropped some money on the ground, which I gave back to him. So he bought Lena, Anna and I some pints and then walked off. Free beer is the best beer.

3. Diving into my mothers Jane Austen film adaptation collection.

4. Seeing a Submarine on our ferry ride out. Very cool, and I impressed a pair of 5 year olds with that little tidbit today. Which makes me the coolest person ever.

Some lowlights

1. Fucking BC ferries. Our ride in was an hour late. We watched two ferries heading for Victoria board and leave before we managed to get going.

2. The gross guy at Magic Lake who berated his beautiful dog, encouraged another dog to bite his beautiful dog, and then let his dog shake it's self off right beside where the three of us were sun-bathing.

3. The creepy man who sat near us on the ride home and kept staring. Very unnerving.

Fortunately the highlights out weigh the lowlights. I had a lot of fun and Pender is so gorgeous, it's such a treat to go there.

In other news, I got around to seeing Star Wars tonight and didn't hate it. Which is something. I thought (predictably) that Ewan was wonderful. And the last hour (barring one or two moments) was (dare I say it) good. It was nice to wrap everything up and now I want to watch A New Hope. So I guess it did it's job.