Ocean phlegm and other oddities

So we are leaving Florida soon, and I'm totally cool with that. I'm over the spring breakers yelling at all hours of the night, stepping over vomit on the beach, and being hooted at everytime I walk anywhere. God I'm old.

I've spent most of my time here working away on my new website. I'll post the link up soon if any of ya'll are interested. I'm finding it to be a frustrating process, but my comprehension of HTML has improved a smidgen. I'm still messing about with colours and whatnot, and annnyways.

I'm driving back to Canada with my parents, and I really don't know how to feel about this. Dreadful? Nostalgic? Excited? Time will tell. I went on a shit load of road trips when I was younger, so this brings to mind those days of yore, when I almost always had a great time. However, 20+ hours in the car? That'll be interesting.

We will be in Savannah on Saturday and I cannot even wait. I've been wanting to check out Savannah for a long time now.

I was going through my pictures that I have taken so far, and to be perfectly honest...there's not a whole lot to take pictures of here, so I have about 100 pictures of sunsets, which are nice and all but look more or less the same. Anyway! I've parred down the pictures to just these few.




It's weird,I've seen deer at home, in fact we have a plethora of then. Why then, was I entirely obsessed with capturing photos of deer in St. Andrews State Park? I have no idea. Wildlife in other places always seems so much cooler than wildlife in your hometown. I also took about 20 pictures of a duck before I was like, "what am I doing???"



I thought this Pelican was cool. These we don't have at home, so I'm allowed to take 20 pictures of it.





This breakfast caused me to never want to eat pancakes again in my entire life. Ever. For some reason, whenever I see something made with pecans, I immediately have to order it. So I ordered "pecan pancakes", which was fine and all, until she brought them to me. There were three pancakes that covered the entire plate, and I wanted to vom as soon as I saw them. I could barely eat one, let alone three. When the waitress came to collect the plates at the end of breakfast, she was like, "I guess next time you'll have to order a short stack honey!". I was like, a) there will be no next time, and b) I didn't even know that was an option, thank you for mentioning that while I was ordering. Never again.



I stared at this jellyfish for a long time before I realized what it was. At first I was like, what is this? Ocean phlegm? Then I got closer and you could see through its body. Still, gross creature. They look so cool whilst in the water, but on dry land? yukkk.



Sunset #1



Sunset #2

And there you have it! Two weeks worth of pictures! I'm off to tackle the wonderful world of websites again!

Two more weeks, two more weeks...

Two more weeks of this, two more weeks. I cannot wait to be outta here.

I just took a walk to go grab something from the storage area and it is snowing like mad, but wet snow that blows diagonally, so it ends up directly in your face. I decided to stop and get a coffee on my way and a cute boy smiled at me and held the door at the store and it was pretty much the highlight of my day so far. Anyways...I eventually get back to the office and go to the washroom, and heidi ho, my makeup is running all over my face and I looked like I had been punched in both eyes, and I most certainly looked that way when I was in the coffee shop. FML. Anyone know of a good waterproof mascara? Clearly I need to stop cheaping out and buying the $5 stuff.

This weekend was so much fun.

We went to see the movie Valentine's Day and it was at this old school theatre that I loved. The people selling tickets were in actual booths and there was a "refreshment centre". And a preview for Sex and the City 2 came on before the movie...I cannot even wait. They appear to be in Egypt or something which seems odd, but I don't even care because I just miss that show. Valentine's Day was...meh. Way too many characters and different story lines for my liking. Plus, I had to pee so badly for the last half hour that I could not even concentrate. In retrospect, I probably should have just went to the washroom, but I have a thing about not missing any parts of movies. I hate being confused then having to ask people what I missed. I really don't want to be that person.

The drive home through the snowy steep mountains was hella scary, but I white knuckled my way through it. The roads are pitch black, and I couldn't turn on my brights because it just reflected the snow, so I couldn't see any potential deer eyes, and oh my god it was scary.

I found this game at Target called Quelf. I gotta say, it is the most hilarious board game I have ever played and was quite possibly the best $25 I have ever spent. It is seriously the most random thing in the world. And it is the best game ever to play when you are drunk. You basically pick up a card and have to do whatever it says or take the penalty. It's a little bit Girl Talk and a little bit Dweebs, Geeks and Weirdos (ummm was anyone else obsessed with that game??) We sang drunk renditions of kumbaya, take me out to the ball game and for one turn I had to make a halloween mask out of household materials and wear it for the entire game. And the cards always say, "you have to do this without laughing", which really, is kind of impossible. Stacey picked up a card at one point that said something like, "pretend you are a singing, rhyming prison guard, who has no lips, has his knees stuck together, and who is covered in maple syrup and feathers. You must make up a rhyming song about how you got that way". I almost peed my pants. Oh man.

Tubing was good times, and nobody broke themselves. It was flipping cold though. Apparently you are supposed to wear goggles while tubing? Who knew??

One night at around midnight, I got a sudden urge to go play in the snow, and two of my friends were like, 'ummm no", but luckily Sarah came out with me. We did some snow angels, and then made a pretty sweet snow carving. Well, as sweet as it can get when you've drank several bottles of rye/vodka.

All in all a great weekend! It made having to come back here even harder, but I just need to keep repeating-two more weeks, two more weeks.

Tonight, I'm off to the t.dot for a reading. Chuck Thompson, whom I have a huge crush on, and who is one of my favourite travel writers ever, will be reading along with some other authors. Here's hoping I can come up with a coherent sentence to say to him! And also that it stops snowing so we don't need to drive through a blizzard to get there!

Ahhh Weekend Away

I don't know if it has come through in my blogs, but I"m a leeetle stressed at the moment. Stressed in a good way if that makes any sense at all.

I'm going away with the girls this weekend up to Ellicottville, New York. It's only like two hours away, but it feels like a million miles and I can't wait.

We go every year, and it essentially involves hanging out in our pajamas, a whole lot of drinking and ridiculous drinking games, watching random 80s movies such as The Karate Kid and that's about it. Actually, last year we tried snowboarding, which let me tell you, was interesting. And by interesting, I mean incredibly painful.

There is also a place to go tubing which is just the about the most fun thing ever. You get towed up the hill on a pulley, and then race your friends down a huge ice hill. The potential for injury is high, but the potential for awesomeness is even higher.

ALSO, also, right next to where we stay there is a pub. The grossest, most rednecky pub you can imagine. Like, there is no way in hell you would ever use the washroom there or god forbid eat anything from the kitchen. Even the mixed drinks are questionable. The pub parking lot is usually full of trucks with gun racks. There is a huge sign out front that says "Welcome Hunters".

We stick out like sore thumbs, despite the fact that we in no way look spectacular.



But you know what? The people are nice. Except that one time we almost got our asses kicked by a skanky girl and her huge boyfriend. Apparently we "looked" at her boyfriend wrong, and one of my friends almost got a high kick to the face. Seriously, the girls boot was literally an inch away. After that happened we had some other lady create a distraction by waving her arms all wildly and we hightailed it outta there. I only win hypothetical fights. I can jab, jab, upper, upper with the best of them, but if someone's actual face was on the recieving end I would likely cry.

K, I so need to see if I can find a picture of the pub now....



Classy right? I can't wait.

Happy Weekend!!

Travel Tuesday-Peace, Love and Paris

"Jim. Jim. Jim. We need to go see Jim now!!" It was becoming a chant, and the rest of us were starting to get a little annoyed. Jess would not give it a rest.

Six of us. Me, Jess, Laura, Lisa, Rob and Asmir. We were leaning against the cool stonework at the bottom of the Arc de Triomphe. It was a boiling hot day in Paris, and the 284 steps to the top of the Arc didn't help with the sweatiness of the situation. Not that the view wasn't worth it; it was.

"Can we go see Jim now?? We've been wandering around Paris all day, seeing nothing but dumb tourist stuff!!” Jess was verging on whiny.

"Okay, okay, we'll go!" I said. Anything to get her to stop talking. I kind of agreed, because as great as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre was, sometimes you just want to get down deep into a city and away from the masses. Okay, that's a lie; I thought the Louvre was boring. We ran through the museum like we were in the Da Vinci Code, and we were still in there too long. And the Mona Lisa? It's cool and all, but it’s not worth getting elbowed repeatedly in the ribs for as crowds of tourists jostle for the perfect photo. You know what? It looks exactly like it does in pictures, and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the real and a copy. But hey, but I'm not an art connoisseur by any means, so take from that what you will.

"Asmir, you going to come with?" Lisa inquired. We all turned to look at the new friend we had made in front of Notre Dame that very morning.

"Oh. Of course!” He had wandered up to us as we all gathered in front of the giant church to stare, and he had stuck to us like glue ever since.

"Okay, we'll go. But first, I need to fix my pants somehow, they are driving me crazy." Laura gestured down to one leg of her khaki pants which now had a long flap of fabric dragging on the ground. "I have no idea how this even happened".

"Don't worry, I fix", Asmir crouched down and grabbed the hanging fabric in his hand. "Ready? One, two, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip, oops!" Laura's pants now had a huge tear going from her ankle to just past her knee. We all started cracking up, as Asmir hurried to remedy the situation by tying a haphazard knot so the tear didn't get any bigger.

"Okay then. Thanks!” Laura chirped. Laura was the nicest person on the planet. Always eternally optimistic about anything and everything. "One, two, ooooops" would soon make our way into every conversation we had.

Rob whipped out his guide to the Metro, and we planned our route to our destination: Pere LaChaise in the East end of Paris. Jess was practically jumping up and down by the time we emerged from the Metro station across the street from the cemetery.

We entered from the main gate and didn't bother getting a map. At this point, I think we all thought Jess would be divinely led to Jim's grave. No. The moment you walk into the cemetery, Paris changes. Row upon row of flower covered graves, with row upon row of trees lining the paths, make it a beautiful albeit confusing place to find your way around in. The trees created a shady canopy, blocking us from the summertime heat. It was silent, it was still and it was eerie. We slowed down; heck, even Jess slowed down. We stopped and looked at all the different graves, venturing inside some of the large dark tombs. None of us really knew anything about the cemetery, beyond the fact that it held the body of Jim Morrison, Jess's idol. The cemetery is one of the most popular places to visit in Paris, but as we walked in and out and around the worn paths, we barely saw anyone. It was an environment that forced you to stop and reflect on where you were. We couldn't rush in any direction, because no matter what, we were going to get lost. Better to just wander.

We stumbled upon Jim's grave mostly by accident; we rounded a corner and saw a small group of people in the distance.

Jess let out a happy squeal, yelled, "that's Jim!!!", and took off running, her sandals slapping the ground as she went. The rest of us took our time wandering up to the group, none of us being overly concerned with seeing Jim's resting place. That was Jess's thing. We chatted about what we were going to do afterwards: I was planning on doing some window shopping and people watching, Laura and Asmir were heading to an art museum, and Lisa and Rob were going back to the hotel to rest. We caught up to Jess, who was standing just outside the black iron fence that encased Jim's grave. One group of people were singing, and another group of people were passing around a joint.

"I can't believe we are finally here!" Jess was beyond excited. How great does it feel to be with somebody when they cross something off their life goal list? Pretty damn great.

We all got to chatting with two hippie esque Australian boys. One had long dreads, and the other a long pony tail. They were lounging on the ground by the grave, passing a bottle of red wine back and forth.

"Drink?” one of them nodded at me. I grabbed the bottle and took a swig, passing it to Jess, who also took a big drink. The cheap red wine made its way around the circle, ending with Lisa who gave it back to the dreadlocked Australian. We all turned to stare in silence at the grave of the rocker. Jess slipped off a ring she had been wearing for the entire trip, and threw it over the fence. It landed on Jim's grave with a clink.

"I've been waiting to do that for so long!".

We were all silent for a couple moments longer, linked by wine, pot smoke, peace, love and rock and roll.

Soon after, we said our goodbyes to our Australian friends and made our way back through the winding lanes of the cemetery.

"Okay," Rob said as we walked, "that was cool!"

"I told you!” Jess replied, grinning. "This was way better than any dumb church or museum!!"

And she was right, it totally was.

We found the exit, and stepped out onto the sun scorched pavement, horns blaring, people jostling. With one glance back into the cemetery, we exchanged “byes” and “see ya laters”, then all went our separate ways.

This is one of my favourite days of travelling ever. I almost can't describe how it makes me feel without getting ridiculously sappy, but in that moment, I felt really connected to the people I was with, despite how different we all were. That is one of my favourite things about travelling, because in a moment like that the world shrinks a little bit, and makes you question why people just can't get along. There is almost always common ground somewhere, be it a love of red wine, a love of a dead stoner rocker, or just the knowledge that the moment you are in is special, and will never, ever happen to you again. I tried to make this story as non cheesy as I could, but seen as I feel cheesy and nostalgic about the whole day, it's hard. But, I just, I loved that day and I loved those people, and even though I'm 99% sure I'll never see any of them again, I still feel connected because we were all there living in that moment.

Travel Tuesday-A brief German tour

Sorry, I've been slightly MIA. I've been consumed with thoughts of Haiti and consumed with thoughts of Pitbulls. My brain has been full.

Anyway! I've been meaning to put up some pretty pictures for a while, and now seems like an opportune time as I don't have a travel narrative in me today. So today I present to you, a photo tour of a very pretty part of my favourite country in the world-Germany.

My ancestors were from Germany, and I've felt a pull towards the country for a while, so I finally got my butt over there this spring. I had been before, on a Contiki tour, but that was filled with Jagermeister and beer and to be perfectly honest that is all I remember from the German portion of the trip. That and buying new Birkenstocks and watching the Glockenspeil like, "this is it??? Really???". Anyway, this spring I went back, alone, and I fell deeply, deeply in love. My travels went through the Bavarian part of Germany, and I didn't even cover it all by any means.


When I arrived at the Munich airport, I was so very proud of myself because I found the train to get into the city, and I got off at the correct stop. When I walked up from the subway stop, this was my view. Directly after this, I proceeded to walk through the streets of Munich for about two hours, pulling behind me the heaviest luggage known to man. Around and around I wandering, stopping in several stores and being like, "ummm where the feck do I go??? Danke, danke!!". I asked cabs, I asked in other hotels, and after several hours I was running on no sleep, and on the complete verge of tears. I opted to stop dead in the middle of the pedestrian area on a random street and kind of spin in bewilderment. Shortly after this, a kindly German man came up to me and pointed me in the right direction.


That giant billboard of a green hand was basically the saving grace of my day. I thought I had arrived at the correct hotel (note-hotel names are kind of similar in Munich), so I walked in, plopped down my stuff, and was like, "phewww, it took me forever to find you!", then the guy was like, "you are at the wrong hotel". Never have I wanted to cry like a small child having a tantrum more than at that moment. But he took me outside, pointed to the hand billboard, and was like, "walk towards that". Which I did, and I eventually found my hotel. All was well.



I am a huge history nerd, so the fact that Hitler used to rally his troops in this very square got me very excited. I spend a good while hanging out on those steps.



Hansel and Gretlish, right?



Another history nerd moment. This is a memorial to the White Rose Movement, which was a group of young adults who tried to organize an uprising against Hitler. Eventually they were caught and executed. But holy crap, if you interested in Germany history at all, check out the movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. These kids are my absolute heros. I can't imagine being that brave.







Have you ever gotten that email with all the pictures of the most beautiful places on earth, and you are kind of like, oh my god, if I could only go there, and then one day you find yourself up on a mountain top all by yourself, taking in just the most beautiful view, wondering how you got so lucky? Yeah.



This is my hotel room in the teeny tiny town of Berchtesgaden. I LOVED this little place. When I saw my hotel room, I may have jumped up and down a bit, for there was a window seat and a balcony, two of my absolute favourite things. I was in Berchtesgaden for about 4 days, and believe me, I spent incountable hours on that seat, reading and just looking at the mountains.



When I finally got brave enough to go to an actual restaurant by myself, this is what I got. Story for another day.





How quaint!



Is anybody obsessed with the Amazing Race like I am? Then you might recognize this!!



This is in Berchtesgaden National Park. It was at approximentaly at this point in the hike that I was up on a high path with no guardrail and had to change my batteries in the camera. A German lady came up behind me and started getting positively mad that I was going to fall off the cliff. I pretending I didn't understand because I sure wasn't hiking down without getting a picture of this. Just...wow.





This is a battery operated boat, it moves very slow and makes no noise. You just glid peacefully through the water. The coolest thing was when the boat stopped and the driver got out and played the trumpet. The lake is surrounded by mountains, and the sound just bounced off and echoed.







Eagles Nest! More history nerd moments!



WWII Bunkers with D-Day graffiti.





This was my last day in Berchtesgaden. I was chilling on my balcony when this random parade went by.

Sorry this wasn't more detailed, I have to keep minimizing the window to ensure no one notices what I'm doing. I'm a good employee.

And that's the German portion of my trip! I have about 1 billion pictures, but I tried to par it down for you. Hope you liked it!

Furry Friday-Pupperonis

Only one more week of adorable, adorable puppies, because they are now all adopted (yay!!), and I cannot spend my Thursday nights squishing them any longer.

Maybe I got overly attached, but aren't these some of the cutest darn puppies you have ever seen?

Now their mommy just needs to get adopted!

Also...I have exciting dog related news guys. Guess where I'm going in May? Kanab, Utah, the home of the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. Holy shit ya'll. My fellow dog walking friend and I have been talking about going forever, and we are finally doing it. Plane tickets booked, hotel reserved and everything. Oh. my. lord. I have been wanting to do this for so long. There is a good chance that I will go to Best Friends and decide to just live there. I'll meet a nice Mormon boy and his other wives and I will be the best of friends. It could happen!

Dogtown!!! Add that to the absolutely insanely beautiful National Parks Utah has...I cannot even wait.

Travel Tuesday- Joyce Speedy, what a gal.

The plane touched down at London’s Heathrow airport, early, about 8 in the morning. I got up out of my seat and stretched my body after a long plane ride. I grabbed my overhead luggage, and bid a quick farewell to my annoying seatmate, who thankfully I would never have to see again.

I stepped off the plane and just took it all in. I was here, in England, all by myself. I could hardly believe it. Shortly after that, the elation wore off, and sheer terror set in. My mind became of jumble of anxious thoughts.

What am I doing? Why did I come here by myself? I don’t know anybody! What if I get lost? What if I get homesick? What if, what if, what if? I continued to curse my decision to travel solo, all the way through security and baggage claim. I was living my dream, but I had no idea it was going to be so scary.

I was going to be staying with a friend of a friend, a woman whom I had never met before. I had no idea what she looked like, and had only talked to her on the phone once. This experience was entirely new for me. As I dragged myself sleepily through the long hallway, and down into the greeting area, I scanned the crowd for Joyce, and spotted her almost immediately, as she was standing there smiling, holding a cardboard sign with my name on it. She was about 75 years old, and I immediately liked her, even though I hadn’t officially met her yet.

My luggage trailed behind me as I made my way over to her. I was scared, I missed my parents, I missed my friends, but there I was.

“Hi, I’m Megan!” I smiled as I held out my hand.

“Well nice to finally meet you Megan, would you like a cup of tea?” was her immediate reply.

As a person who never turns down tea or coffee, I agreed, and we made our way over to the airport diner.

“You must be exhausted after your plane ride! You sit here, and I’ll grab us some tea”. She shuffled her way up to the counter to place the order, and was soon back with two steaming cups of tea. I thanked her profusely and slid down in my chair. My body was tired.

“Well”, she started, “I think we should hop on the train, go back to Reading, unload all your stuff, then we’ll do some sightseeing!”

I sat there wondering how this woman could possibly have so much energy when all I wanted to do was sleep, but I liked her plan and we decided to spend the day in Windsor. We took the train there, and spent the day touring Windsor Castle, eating scones and clotted crème and getting to know each other.

As it turns out, Joyce had travelled all over the world by herself, and she still took a trip whenever she had the time. Back in her flat, her fridge was covered, absolutely covered, in magnets from all the places she had travelled too. There was hardly a spot of white left on her fridge. Well, I thought to myself when she told me of her travels, her flight in a Concorde jet and her hikes across Thailand, if she can do it, so can I. Here she was, my travel mentor, all wrapped up in a little old English lady package. I thanked fate for bringing us together.

We spent the next several days touring around London, and she never let me pay for a thing. I tried to pay for her dinner once, but she wasn’t having it. She started to call me her travel good luck charm, because we saw things together she had never seen in her life. The opening of parliament happened to be on the day we visited Buckingham Palace, and we got to see the Queen. A boat was passing through the Thames while we visited the Tower of London, and we got to see the Tower Bridge open. She was telling her friends about our adventures for weeks!

It was soon time for me to leave with a tour group and take a whirlwind trip around Europe. She made me promise to call her when I got back to London so she could come to the airport with me. She dropped me off at my hotel and was then on her way. As soon as she walked away, that familiar feeling of homesickness started to crush me, and I missed her terribly. She was one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life, and it felt like I had known her forever.

My tour of Europe went by in a flash, and I came back to London with new friends and tons of new stories. I rang up Joyce to tell her I had returned safely, and we made plans for her to meet me at the hotel the next day.

The next morning, me, my new friend Jess, and my old friend Joyce set off for the airport. I made the mistake of eyeing two stuffed bears that were dressed up as an English cop and guard respectively, and before I knew it she had bought them for me. They still are sitting prominently on my bookshelf, and every time I look at them, I am reminded of her, and of my first solo trip.

Soon I was back in Canada, and had resumed my normal, “boring” life. Joyce and I wrote to each other, and I began to think of her as my surrogate grandmother.

Four years after my initial trip to Europe, Joyce came over to Canada to visit. She stayed with a friend, but I went over to visit often. I took her out for Chinese and Thai food, and showed her around my hometown. I was so excited to show her the same kind of hospitality she had shown me. She was here for about a month, then she went back home to England.

A couple years after that (and countless letters in between), I found out that Joyce was sick, and she was not going to be getting better. She had no children, but tons of friends, so she was well taken care of. Joyce died last year after getting diagnosed with cancer, and there is no doubt in my mind she went flying straight up to heaven.

Joyce was one of those life changing people for me. She was a kind soul, and you couldn’t help but like her. She had a total lust for life, and it was contagious. She fed my love of travel, and she encouraged it.

It is because of her that I know I can go anywhere by myself, and be alright while I am there. I don’t think I ever thanked her for giving me that confidence. If I didn’t have her as a role model, I wouldn’t have seen half the things I have seen in my life. She remains a wonder to me, and I will always think of her as the person who almost literally gave me wings.

So now my fridge is slowly starting to become cluttered with magnets of all the places I have been, things I have seen, adventures I have had. It is my little shrine to her, my jet-setting grandma.

Hold on, one more time with feeling

I was thinking the other day about fun and anticipation. I was thinking about when I was younger and I just had a really fun day, I would lie in bed that night and just be so sad that the day was over, but at the same time be filled with this complete happiness, because I just had the funnest day ever! I was thinking about how it has been a while since I sat in bed and felt that sad happiness. I mean, I've had fun days, amazing days, but I can't recall a day in recent history where I was just heartbroken it was over. Then maybe I thought, it was just a kid thing, feelings were more intense then. When you are a kid, it feels like the whole world just revolves around you sometimes.

Anyway, I got to work this morning, dreading, just dreading, and I had the strangest feeling once I got here and sat down. It wasn't sad-happy, but it was extreme excitement, that started in my stomach and was wanting to wiggle it's way out of my mouth in the form of a shriek.

I don't even know what I'm so excited for, I just know that feeling it made me happy.

Anyway, I'm not even sure if I explained that in any kind of way that made sense.

I like 2010 so far.

I'll give you some examples of why this year has rocked so far. For weeks now, I've been wanting to watch the movie "Love Actually". I hadn't seen it in forever, and I am in a Hugh Grant phase. When I went to get it at the video store, it was out. So I was sitting there one night thinking to myself, wouldn't it be grand if Love Actually was on tv? And I shit you not, I looked at the tv guide, and there is was, that very night, Love Actually, 9pm on the WTN. HUH!

Then today, as I was walking into work through piles of slushy snow, I very nearly wiped out on the sidewalk in front of a line of cars. Not only did I not wipe out, but I didn't even spill my coffee, which would have pissed me right off. Then, as I was rounding corner, laughing to myself about what a spaz I am, a woman walked by me and gave me the strangest look ever, probably because I was laughing to myself, but the funnier thing was, she looked just like Cloris Leachman ala Prancer. Crazy, awesome. Cloris Leachman! I just right now decided that come hell or high water, I'm going to find myself a t-shirt with Cloris Leachman's face on it.

THEN! I get to work, and after exchanging pleasantries with the boss about how the holidays were, she sat down, face very serious, and was like, "Sorry to tell you this, but we need to cut back your hours." She then apologized for like 10 minutes. All I wanted to do was burst out laughing, because that is amazing. I really could not have planned this better myself. So now I'll have Friday's off to work on writing and whatnot, and that excites me greatly!!

Anyway, we are only 4 days in, and I'm loving it.

My article about Pitbulls is going to be in the paper tomorrow, and I'll link it here if anybody is interested (I'm not actually a crazy dog lady, I just seem that way sometimes).

I'm applying to be a Local Expert with Nile Guides, and so far I've done these:
Best of Niagara
Winter in Niagara

So there's that.

As I mentioned, I've been watching lots of Party of Five lately. I never realized before how annoying Claudia is. I don't think a tv character has ever annoyed me that much, like, I almost want to fast forward through her whiny scenes. I don't know if this was just the way the character was written, or if the actress is just actually that irritating, but GAH.

Anyway.

You know what else has randomly happened in 2010? I bought the new Chuck Thompson book as I mentioned, and I also mentioned that I had been to a reading of his before. I checked out the Harbourfront Reading Series page, and low and behold, who is headlining this years Travel Writer's night? Chuck Thompson! You better believe I'll be dragging one of my friends to that. The tickets are only $8. Best deal ever. Last year, Augusten Burroughs was there, and I freaking missed it, and I've been kicking myself ever since.

I'm working on a travel story for tomorrow about my dear friend Joyce, but I'm not sure it will be done in time. I want it to be good, because she was such a good person. So if that doesn't get finished, I might just do a post/pictures on my favourite cities in Europe. We'll see how tonight goes.

Happy Monday! I've missed rambling in here...

Travel Tuesday-New York, New York

Once upon a time, a young girl named Meg dreamed of going to a place she saw only in the movies: New York. With it's skyscrapers, it's shopping, it's culture, it's history, it's people, it was so very different from the small Canadian town she grew up in. She dreamed about it for years, until one day, when Meg was 15 years old. She was going along with her family on a trip to Florida and while Meg does love the sun, she's not one for sitting on the beach for any length of time. At least she wasn't then.

"But", her parents said, "there's one more thing, "on our way to Florida we are stopping in New York City."

This was quite possibly the most exciting news Meg had ever heard in her 15 years of life. She burst into tears. So this is what it felt like to actually have a dream come true.

You might think that New York could never live up to such high expectations, but it did. That first trip began a love affair that will likely last until my dying days. New York City is hands down, my favourite place on Earth. And I have a lot of love for a lot of places. But oh, that city.

If someone were to ask me why I love it so much, I don't even know if I could put it into words. It's a bit like the love I have for Bette Midler; fierce, yet kind of unexplainable.

It was great to see the city at Christmas time. I mean for a city that bubbles with energy all the time, then it absolutely oozes it at Christmas time. If you go to New York at Christmas and don't leave filled to the brim with Christmas spirit, something ain't right.

So I present to you, a photo diary of my trip to New York City. I love New York, I love New York, I LOVE New York.













































I have several hundred more pictures, but I didn't want to go overboard. More stories to follow.