TDot and tired

I'm back, babies! And all the photos from the trip are uploaded to flickr. I am also unpacked. Yay me. Sadly the heat is broken (apparently it will be fully fixed tomorrow) so I'm recovering from my sun burns in my slippers. Kinda odd.

Ahh well, back to the real world and jet lag. Bye, bye sunny SoCal. I enjoyed your Disney, fruit, beaches and sun. And the fact that the always rad Wendy was my guide.

HRH

Photos posted! (posting)

I'm taking a moment to upload some photos between games of basketball and dips in the pool. I can't even tell you how nostalgic it is to have been at Disney yesterday and playing basketball today. It's like being in my teens, but fatter... and less dumb. Turns out I can still shoot a basketball pretty well. Woot.

Today looks like it's going to be a tea house and a movie once the pending rain rolls in. Until then, I'm at the pool. Photos are uploading to my flickr roll as I type and I'll add stories shortly. Until then, the sun and surf beckon.

HRH

SoCal girl

I've been in California for about a day and a half and if I had my way I'd move everything I need from Toronto here. I mean, I love the east and the snow and all that, but seriously, it's awesome here. I never used to like the beach, but now I get it. I so get it.

It guess it doesn't hurt that I have the best host on the planet, who has been cooking for me, showing me all around the Newport Beach/Laguna Beach area, sitting out on the beach with me and, oh yeah, being the awesome that is Wendy.

I'm getting into this SoCal thing too. Wearing less makeup, getting really laid back and eating a lot of organic produce. I mean, it's all grown right here. It's like it's August in Canada, but all year long.

I'll post photos soon. I picked up a camera today (as my cameras at home both went terminal on me before I left) so hopefully I'll get that all working soon.

Until then, it's back to the beach for me.

HRH

Bikini small. Heel tall. She said she liked the ocean.

Um yeah. The crazy just doesn't stop around here. With five days of birthday celebrations and packing M for his trip to Prague (and that job thing; man is that thing a time sucker) I've been very much down with the busy.

And that all comes to an end tomorrow.



I suppose one has to have actually been to Cali to go back. Meh, details.

I'm taking off for a week of ocean side chillin', dancin' and singin' in Newport Beach with my dear Wendy. She has promised to hover over me and utter Americanisms while I sleep so that I can come back to Canada talkin' all American like. She's also promised to take me to Disneyland, feed me and take me surfing.

I am so easily bribed.

HRH

The joys of being sidelined

Summer weekends, when you have little to do, are a reminder of how therapeutic stillness can be. It works even better when there's little you can do because you started your weekend off in the emergency room with a torn open toe.

Yes. That was how Thursday started. After a lovely evening's walk on my own, I came home thinking of all the things I would clean and all the ways I would exercise on the long weekend. I had a few passive goals; fall asleep reading a book, watch an artsy DVD and get a bit of sun on my skin; but mostly I had walks, swims and dates with a mop and bucket in my four day plan.

Thankfully (?) I hurt my toe. it was a bloody mess that couldn't be stitched and may take awhile to heal, but the health care system did me proud getting me in and as treated as I could be in less than three hours. Pretty amazing for downtown Toronto on the Thursday before Caribana.

While this injury is really tender and annoying, I'm not feeling completely negative about it. It is going to make exercise, specifically dance classes something I'll have to assess on a case by case basis. And yes, that means that every morsel of food I eat will be under even more scrutiny since I can't just dance away my bad choices. But for the last four days, limited mobility has been just the intervention I needed.

On Friday, I just sat around with my foot elevated, watching art films. From time to time I would just doze off, listening to Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg speak circles in French. M graciously did the errands for that day, made me an excellent steak dinner and I rested. Rested like I only rest on a Caribbean vacation. When I'm at home, if I can be doing something I will. But this was great because I really couldn't. The most high intensity work I did was reorganizing my toiletries shelf and finishing the ironing.

Saturday I hobbled to the car and met M's mother for lunch, had dinner with friends at Julie's Cuban and since I couldn't drive, I couldn't be the DD, even if I wanted to. I'm always happy to be the DD, but there was something pleasantly irresponsible about not doing it this time.

As my toe got getter and better, I ventured out for a walk on Sunday. Brunch and some pick up shopping on Roncy before a hard afternoon of napping. That night brought friends over for dinner, again with M doing most of the prep and cooking. I think we had at least a bottle of wine each, which meant that Monday was again spent horizontal.

I feel so rested. Sure my toe is still far form healed, as it started to bleed again on my way to work this morning, but I feel like I was really able to recuperate. Largely in thanks to my wonderful husband and less in thanks to my damaged toe.

HRH

Planes, trains... you know where this is going

A further description of the vacation M and I just took to Bonaire (with an unscheduled 24 hour layover in Newark and New York City) will follow as we work our way through the photos. So, so many good times were had.

Until then, M thought it would be amusing to look at the modes of transportation we used in the eight days we were gone:

Car, Plane, Plane, Truck, Power boat (C only), Trimaran (Sailboat), Van (M only), Truck, Someone else's truck, Truck, Plane, Skytrain, Bus, Bus, Bus, NYC Subway, NYC Subway, Bus, Skytrain, Bus, Bus, Plane and Car.

No wonder I feel like I need a vacation to recover from my vacation. :)

HRH

Catching up, keeping cool

M and I have been on vacation since Wednesday. We're in Kingston, taking care of 50 pounds of cat (two 20-pound Norwegian Forest Cats and one 10-pound Zeus) and trying to stay warm. We came here to kitty sit while my parents took off on a nice little spring vacation. Our thinking was that we would take this time away from Toronto to go for walks, take lots of photos and I was going to teach M how to run. We thought since spring would be here, it would be the perfect time to get outside.

Needless to say our plans were seriously derailed by all the snow and wind that passed its way through this part of Canada in the last five days. Bird watching was relegated to looking at all the fowl through the windows, and walking, or even running? Humourous.

The weather has been miserable. However, when you're stuck inside, my parent's house is a great place to be and with the company of my favourite person and my favourite cats, it's been a nice break. The crappy weather has meant that M and I have been able to sleep/nap as much as we need to and watch all kinds of movies, TV and DVDs without feeling like we really should be outside.

I had plans to use this time to become physically renewed for spring, but instead I think I've managed to rest away that napping problem I was developing, at at the same time be entertained by some great movies and TV.

We're almost half way through season two of Twin Peaks, which has been more than a treat to watch, esp. here at my parents house, which is surrounded by trees. To be fair, watching it on a 52" plasma TV with a fantastic 5.1 system doesn't hurt the experience either.

To balance out my David Lynch obsession, we've also been watching a lot of Law & Order for M. When we watch a lot of this show we invariably get talking about what our dream team Law & Order team would be. For me, it would be Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson) as DA, Jack McCoy (Sam Waterson) as Senior Prosecutor, Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon) as ADA, Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson) as Lieutenant and Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin) as detectives. I almost could have had it if Angie Harmon had stuck around for just one more season. Imagine Jack as the moderate. He he.

Our break ends on Tuesday when we have to return to Toronto and the real world. It's been a nice break. Chris and Tash dropped by on their way to and from Ottawa, enabling us to raise a glass of bubbly in honour of Natasha's birthday last Thursday. Hopefully tomorrow the weather will be nice enough for us to get out for a little day trip and get home in time to watch "24" in HD. I hope there are a lot of explosions this week.

HRH

Very Victoria

When M and I were in Italy and we had collapsed in our hotel rooms for the evening, we would watch at LOT of MTV Italia. We're video junkies and our Italian being as pitiful as it was, MTV was one of the stations we could kind of comprehend.

Every night at 9 there was this show on called Very Victoria where this very cute Italian woman named Victoria Cabello, who has a most-awesome Wiki entry, would interview Italian celebrities. There would also be the requisite silly gags and risque segments involving people in their underwear that you can only see on TV in Europe or maybe also in Quebec.

Anyway, she was cute and well dressed. Her set looked like it had jumped out of Moulin Rouge and she was a very un-bimbo like TV presenter. A complete and total rarity of modern Europe.

We watched a lot of this show, even though we had NO idea what was going on. I was always mesmerized by the opening dance sequence. First because of the clothes and shoes and second because of the charmingly bad dancing. Every time I see it I am tempted to change the shape of my bangs.



Today's sing-a-long song: "Ruby Blue" by Roisin Murphy

HRH

Evidence

After a crazy week back I have finally found time to get the honeymoon photos up and organized on flickr. The stream is a bit of a mess now, so I would suggest looking at the photos in sets. Please enjoy!

Venice
Florence
Rome
Prague

Next step, honeymoon summary post. Forthcoming I promise!

HRH

A summary for people with short attention spans... or jet lag

Prague: Felt like we'd never left. Guess it really is my third home. Was so amazing to see everyone and revisit old haunts.
Venice: Still magical. So happy to he able to share it with someone I love so much
Florence: Up to our ears in art. Oh and it turns out I can drink cask wine. No preservatives. Boo ya!
Rome: Stunning, astounding, a tad tough after dark. So much good cheese.

Conclusion: Honeymoon perfection. More information and boatloads of photos to follow after westward oriented jet lag frees me from it's evil clutches.

HRH

Departure

Here we sit in the airport lounge at Pearson International. Maybe we should have played the “oh it’s out honeymoon” card at the ticket desk, but judging by the sourpuss that took our tickets, I don’t think that a young couple, oh so in love, would have had any kind of effect.

Our flight company seems interesting. There is a gaggle of older women, ranging in age between 40 and 60, no doubt off to see the wonders of the city of 100 spires. From the looks of it, there are about 15 women, all recenly loosed from their husbands. I don’t think Prague knows what’s coming.

Getting ready for this trip has been a busy-ass blur. But now that we’re about to get on the plane, all that can be done has been done, I actually have the time to be excited. Our trip will give us eight days in Prague, bisected by a whirlwind trip through northern Italy. Two nights in Venice and Florence each and then four days in Rome.

I’m really looking forward to seeing Venice and Florence again. I’ve never been to Rome, but I feel like I know so much of it from art history classes. We’re thinking of renting a Vespa in Rome to get the entire La Dolce Vita experience. I may need to procure a pair of absurdly large sunglasses if we do (not that my Italian-made Miu Miu glasses wouldn’t do in a pinch).

Another thing I’m considering doing is making a return visit to the Prada outlet store just outside of Florence. When I was studying art history in school and we’d taken a weekend trip to Florence, instead of spending the afternoon responsibly looking at divine frescoes, two other girls and I hopped on the Italian rail system and made our way to our own mecca. Sadly, outside of a wallet, there wasn’t much for me there (all the shoes were on sale for $50 and there were only three there in my size... all of them ugly).

So we’ll see what new things we discover this time. It will be great to be back in Prague and see our old home. I imagine it will shock me how much it has changed in three years (as I typed that, M said “I wonder how I’ll react to being back in Prague?” not even knowing what I’d typed. Not bad.)

Whatever it all turns out to be it will be awesome. I’m off on another adventure with my favourite person in the world (other than myself). I’ll try to update when I can, so watch this space.

HRH

Renewed-ish

I was able to sleep last night, as the oppressive heat was blasted away by a kick-ass thunderstorm, and I feel like a human being again. The melted parts of my brain are starting to return to their regular functions and I don't feel like my skin is on fire, which is nice.

I'm getting out of the city this weekend for some well-earned R&R. I think we'll be able to work in a good bit of rest with some the boating, shopping, golfing and (oh dear) bird watching on the side. Most importantly, I'm going home where my mother can intervene on my frazzled state, as she is the global expert at telling me to have something to eat and getting some rest.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Monster Hospital" by Metric

HRH

I've told every little star, why haven't I told you?

Not that it would appear any different to the blogsphere, but I will be away for weekend. I am taking my tired self up to a cottage for three days where I will see if I can enjoy the company of dear friends, swim away stress and hopefully, desperately, catch up on my sleep.

I hold a candle of hope that upon my return my world will come back to a place where I'm not racing to keep up with it and maybe, just maybe, I'll have time to write for my blog and keep the world (all 12 of you) in the loop.

Today's sing-a-long song: "I've told every little star" by Linda Scott

HRH