Where exactly does the weekend go??

Geeeeeez, the weekends fly by way to fast for my liking. Every Monday morning I wake up and I feel like poking my eye out.

Anyway, this weekend was pretty super! It involved playing in an arcade, dance dance revolution, caesars, gossip girl, musicals and lots and lots of baking.

First off, has anybody seen this movie?



I had never even heard of it before, but it caught my eye at the video store, and I'm so glad I rented it, because it was so cute. Seriously, see this movie. I now have the hugest crush on John Krasinski ever. Plus, the soundtrack is so good. Must get.

My friend K and I went to hang out on Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls on Friday. Living so close to Niagara Falls for most of my life, I have to say that Clifton Hill is a place I avoid entirely in the summer. Well, I try to, inevitably, I find myself there at least once. But it is so much more pleasant and less "get the hell out of my way" in the winter. For those of you who have never been to Niagara Falls, Clifton Hill is quite possibly the tackiest place on earth. Its juxtaposition right next to the actual Falls always struck me as rather poor planning, but I suppose I have grown to love it. I mean, here is this street filled to the very brim with haunted houses, fun houses, mazes, arcades, souvenir shops, candy shops, restaurants, rides, a total sensory overload, and then just down the street is one of the "wonders of the world", a sensory overload of a different kind. It's two completely different worlds. It's just so odd. Kind of great, but odd.

Oh, and this year they have built this new attraction called "Rink at the Brink", and it is an ice skating rink right next to the Falls. I cannot even wait to try it out. We were laughing because when you walk anywhere near the Falls, you get soaked by a very fine mist, so we were wondering how this might work in the winter whilst skating. We decided that it would be fecking freezing, but worth it. Niagara Falls in wintertime is one of the most beautiful things you ever will see. Everything freezes because of the mist, so benches, trees, lamp posts, etc are all covered in a layer of ice that is pretty damn magical, I must say. I've seen Niagara Falls approximately 1 billion times in my life, but it never gets less awe inspiring.

Anyhoo, that went completely off track. We hung out in the arcade for a while, playing guitar hero, dance dance revolution, skee ball and all those other wonderful arcade games. I believe I collected about 90 tickets, and for this I got a sticky hand, trick gum and some fake tattoos. Win! Afterwards we decided to go in the Funhouse, because as I remembered it from when I was 8, it was the coolest thing ever.

As we were entering, the lady at the entrance was like, "the exit is broken, so you can play your way back up to the entrance to get out". Blokay!

I have no idea if it has changed since I was eight, or my eight year old self was just impressed really easily, but the Funhouse is, well, it's shit. Don't get me wrong, we had fun, but it was just not worth the $10 it cost to get in.

Let's go on a little tour...you enter through a large spinning tube, step on a spinning disk (which stopped spinning when we stepped on it...guess we were too heavy), go over a moving bridge, then head downstairs. The first room you get to is a mirror room. I can tell you that this is the highlight of the entire Funhouse. Seeing yourself as a midget, extremely tall, fat, skinny, it never gets old. We stayed here until the girl brought the vacuum down and started cleaning. The universal signal for "we are closing now".

You then head down a hallway which is lined with doors, none of which actually open. Then you cross a rope bridge, and get to a room with 3 giant blow up balls in it. The floor is hard as rock, so you can't even jump on them without risk of injuring yourself. Then you crawl through a tunnel and come to a crooked room, then a black light room, then a room with a rope net. People, I could have built this thing in my basement, and it would be ten times better. Even children would go in here and be like "who came up with this crap???". I'm hoping it has changed drastically since I last went there, or else my 8 year old self was way to easily amused!

Anyway, I just wanted to warn ya'll in case you were in the vicinity of Niagara Falls and were enticed by the seemingly fun looking "Fun House". Don't do it.

Yesterday, I went to Toronto to see a musical called My Mother's Jewish Lesbian Wiccan Wedding. It was so good! The songs were catchy, the story was well told, and it was just one of those plays that make you happy. Well, all musicals make me happy, but this one did in particular.

I baked up a storm on Saturday for the bake sale coming up next weekend. All I need to do is make some more brownies tonight, make some cupcakes on Thursday and I'll be done.

I need to start writing more seriously. I'm thinking of signing up for some travel writing classes. They are pricey, but I think it might be worth it. I'm feeling massively stressy about money right now, so I keep flip flopping.

Anyway, this week is a leetle intense, but I will do my best to post a couple of times. (Travel Tuesday and Furry Friday for sure). I'm going to start working on my Travel Tuesday right now. Tune in tomorrow for a story about taking public transportation in Ireland!!

Happy Monday!

Random Hump Day Thoughts

Oh "hump day"...that phrase brought me back to high school!

I don't have it in me today to make one post about one particular topic, so I think I'll go for more of a random thought type of deal. Go with the flow, see where it leads me kind of thing.

I'm not going to lie, I spend 90% of my day fantasizing about either travelling or opening my own animal sanctuary. I just become increasingly bitter every day though, because I snap back to reality, and hey! I'm still here.

Trying to be a writer is brutal. I have enough rejection letters to wallpaper an entire room. It is so frustrating, some times I just want to be like, "screw it!", but then I think of my job, want to poke my eye out, and my resolve comes back.

The other day I went to the dentist, and this was the first time in three years that I had been. I have no dental coverage, don't judge me! Anyway, apparently I grind my teeth at night and now I need to wear a mouth guard at night. Attractive! I've only had it one day, and I hate the thing. But grinding my teeth while I'm sleeping? GROSS. I disgust myself. Apparently, grinding your teeth at night is an indication of stress, but I can't imagine what it is I'm str...orrrr maybe, it might have something to do with not knowing where the hell my life is going. Oh quarter life crisis, I want to punch you in the knee.

In an effort to make up for the extreme boriness of my daylight hours, I tend to try and find the most random things to do at night/on the weekend. Seriously, anything at all will do, as long as it's new. Extra points if I get to travel somewhere (anywhere). This past weekend, I dragged two of my friends to the World Championship of Rock, Paper, Scissors in Toronto. It was ridiculous. Like, I can barely put it into words, so perhaps I'll post pictures tomorrow.

I am trying to get one of my friends to go skeet shooting with me, but NO ONE will go for it. Seriously, anything random with the potential to be fun, sign me up!! Finding random and fun things to do in the Niagara area is kind of hard sometimes because for the most part, there is not a lot of stuff happening. But I found a nearby place to go skeet shooting, and nobody is sharing in my excitement.

Last week I made it my goal to get the autographs of all my favourite childhood stars (Fred Penner, Jeff from Today's Special, Jodie from Today's Special...), why, you ask? Because sometimes, at work, I am just that bored. Plus, having Fred Penner's john henry would be sweet. You better believe I would frame that and hang it on my wall. Anyways, so I was randomly googling "Jodie from Today's Special", whose actual name is Nerene Virgin, and it turns out she is a politician now. It also turns out she is on Facebook. So I randomly added her as a friend, and she accepted. Bwahahaha, Jodie from Today's Special is my friend on facebook. Is it wrong that this makes me so happy? Now I need to figure out the least creepy way to ask her for her autograph, preferably on a picture of her in the pink suit from Today's Special.

Last night, I went to see A Christmas Carol, the 3D version. Has anyone seen this?? I found it very....odd. I thought the setting was done very cool, London looked amazing!! It was some super cool animation. The story? You can't go wrong with the story, it's classic. However, this version was just...odd. First off, there are numerous parts in the movie that are scary. I'm talking oh shit, something just popped out and now I'm choking on popcorn scary. I hate scary movies with a passion, but I really wasn't going into A Christmas Carol expecting to jump out of my seat several times. I DO get easily startled, but this seemed excessive, especially for a movie that seems like it's meant for children. More importantly! What the shit was up with the Ghost of Christmas Past? The head twitch? The bizarre Irish accent? The eyes?? I couldn't concentrate during that entire part of the movie because the Ghost of Christmas Past was such a messed up mofo. Also...whoever made the decision to make the animated characters look a lot like their real life counterparts...wrong choice! It was creepy.

Now, I love Christmas movies as much as the next person, but if you are going to watch A Christmas Carol, stick with the Muppet version! Speaking of Christmas...there is no holiday I like better than Christmas. I am all for tacky decorations, cheer, wrapping presents, Christmas music, family and baking. I try to watch one Christmas movie a week up until Christmas Day to increasingly up my Christmas cheer. Up this week: Prancer. Also, we have one of those miniature Dickens villages, and I LOVE it. I am obsessed with it. Every year, new pieces are added, and I take hours setting it up and making sure everything/body is in a sensical position. We have a train that moves. We have a tunnel. We have a hoopa. If I could Honey I Shrunk Myself into that village, I would do so in a heart beat. I will post pictures of this years village once it gets set up. I cannot wait.

Wow, I was kind of in a bad mood at the beginning of this, but talk of the Christmas Village has made me merry!!



Okay, we are nowhere near this intensity. Yet. If I found a roller coaster and a ferris wheel to go in my village (and an extra room to house the entire thing in) I would die a happy woman.

Anyways, Happy Hump Day!

On Boards and Meetings aka, Why does that one person like their voice SO much?

I recently got chosen to be one of 12 people to write opinion pieces for our local paper, which is pretty cool. I mean, I need to pretty up my portfolio. Part of this deal though is you need to attend meetings of the Community Editorial Board, a board which discusses, umm, community editorial related things.

The first meeting was last night.

My experience with committees in the past has been that they are pointless. A bunch of people get in a room, talk, talk, talk, then you leave, and nothing ever happens. There are always one or two people who like to hear themselves talk for the sake of talking, and they do nothing but that for the entire meeting. You know, the people that have an opinion on everything. ON EVERYTHING.

The first thing we did last night was go around in a circle and introduce ourselves. Personally, I think it would have been more fun to play two truths and a lie, because then people actually listen to what you are saying, but instead they opted for the "Hi, I'm Megan, and I'm an alcoholic, errr I mean, I'm a writer" bio type of stuff. Which is fine, whatever, I know nobody is really listening to me anyway. I've never been around so many people that I have absolutely nothing in common with. Like, never in a million years will they get me, I just know this. Just like I don't get them. There are approximately 5 people that I think are pretty cool, but I dunno, I can see this getting tedious. This has a lot more to do with me, then it does with them, cause you see, while I am very easily amused, I also get bored extremely quickly if you are talking about towers or hospitals or zzzzzzzzz.

I'm not a big fan of debating for debatings sake. People talk, talk, talk about issues, but then don't do anything about it. I get in a very why are we still discussing this mood. I mean, I understand the need for debate and conversation, but sometimes it just gets to the point of silliness. We can sit here and argue with each other when we are essentially agreeing with each other, but what are we going to do about the actual issue? Anyway, there are a couple of people on this thing that irritate me...I will perhaps be able to better articulate why after I spend more time with them.

That being said, I think this board thing might be really cool in that I'll get to learn how a newspaper works, and pretend I'm an extra in His Girl Friday.

At one point an older lady was mocking how "kids these days" talk, and went on a rambling sentence inserting the word "like" after every word. I don't know about you, but I say "like" all the time. Not nearly as much as I used to, but it definitely still peppers my speech, along with "um" and "err" and all other kinds of non words, but I don't think that indicates I'm dumb by any means. Like is the verbal equivalent of a comma. Anyway, I was afraid to speak after that for fear that I would use the word "like" too much and be silently judged by a board room full of people. Bah, I say to that.

One lady was also talking about how she despises blogs, and basically how she thinks they are crap. Which fine, whatever, she's entitled to that opinion. However, I don't see how she can on one hand be all "opinion pieces from the community published in the paper are great" and all "blogs suck" on the other, because aren't they essentially the same thing? Aren't blogs just several opinion pieces from one large community? Does an opinion suddenly become more valuable and trust worthy if it is written in print? I tend to think not, but I suppose some people, mainly older people, would disagree with that.

ANYWAY! I think this community board will be a good thing/bad thing, which I suppose most opportunities in life are anyway.