I have been to hell, and returned with (boring) stories!

Hell is freezing cold, smoky, and smells like soy sauce.

Okay, it was just an Asian trip up to a cabin in Georgian bay. And, I will concede, it was not that bad.

Day One
Directly after class, I hop into a car with my mother, and snack on cookies while we start the 5 hour drive. Stop off to pick up one pre-teen demon. Continue.
Switch cars around 40 mins in to ride with friend and his dad, clearly a deep believer in offensive driving. 3 hours later (you can shave a lot of time off when you drive at 140 km/h on an 80 road) I remember how much fun this friend was. Suddenly, this trip doesn't look that bad. Maybe.

Upon arrival, it is proven that Georgian Bay will always be colder than what you prepared for. But, it's a nice night, so we go for a stroll (we being me plus friend plus annoying pre-teen devil that we ditched) chilled on a dock, had some deep conversations etc etc. Nice, nice. Bed time, I am walked back because of my horrible fear of the dark. (shut up shut up)

It's cold, but I figure the blankets should be enough, right? WRONG

Day Two
Between 3am-6am I am woken once by my dad complaining about how he is going to barf (what do you expect after trying to consume an entire bottle of Asian liquor between 3 people?) and by crazy coldness. Apparently in the building of the cabin, fire safety and insulation were both regarded as "irrelevant". My mother tries to wake me up when the sun actually comes up. She then decides that it's appropriate to send the friend in. I am up, but very, very disgruntled.

"Hiking" is always a recipe for disaster with me. Insects, tiredness and cold equals "shiying has had a bad time" face. Needless to say, I sulked the entire time, and finally got my mother to agree to never take me on one of these pilgrimages again. I cheered up a bit when I get handed a Nikon D90 to take pictures with. (I do not have any of the pictures I took) and I take some sick pictures for the rest of the afternoon.

Upon return to the cabin, it is still very, very cold. I'm also too tired to think of anything interesting to do or talk about so most of the conversation goes like this

-poke-
Nuugggggghhhhh -poke-
Waaaaaah -poke-

Well, I think you get the point. Let's just say there isn't much to do when you get 5 channels and no internet. Though describe video on the accessible channel gets exponetially funnier as time goes on.

My father gets the bright idea to try and start a campfire. Of course, the only wood around is wood that just got soaked by a torrential downpour that started after we returned. Nevertheless, it does not discourage him. He rallies the minions (small children) to gather tinder and cardboard to try and burn and "dry out the wood". Unsurprisingly this does not work. However, I did witness many small Asians trying to "roast" their marshmallows in the smoke. Apparently smoked marshmallow falls under a "variation" and not "you're doing it wrong"

Oh, did I mention that I got bitten by some bug... that left a bleeding wound on my face?

Crawl into bed, it's fairly warm, but I load up on blankets just in case.

Day Three aka. Today
I wake up, frozen again. My brother is yelling.. and someone is cooking ramen in true Asian fashion. I go and take a shower to warm up, and notice that my breath steams. I get dressed... after heating up my clothes with the hair dryer. Eat a tomato for breakfast, because I can.

Mad packing and tidying enuses, and an hour later, we are all packed up and ready to go. I wanted to leave as early as possible to get to my biology assignment that I couldn't do thanks to lack of internet. So the mother and I embark on a 5 hour epic drive home. We pass lots of cows, horses, old houses, "Redickville" and other places with sketchy names and very few people. Upon return to 'sauga we stop off for groceries, and I grab some bubble tea. (nom nom nom)

Who knew bubble tea makes people want to pee all the time?

Althought it wasn't a totally sucky trip, it is not an experience I want to repeat. Though, usually I don't have much choice, and that is why I am forever going to places I hate going to, doing things I hate doing. I do not enjoy having "nature's splendours" pushed into my face, and forcibly aborbed into my soul, thankyouverymuch. But I did discover the wonders of describe video. You can watch TV while sleeping! Craaazzzyyyy.

Goodbye Georgian Bay, and I hope I never see you again.

p.s This post sounds whiny, but I really do hate these trips. I'd rather sit at home and get scurvy.

I can stop any time I want.

When you're falling asleep and all you can think about is tetris, you know you have a problem. Personally, I love tetris. If it wasn't for the imminent threat of carpal tunnel, I would play tetris all day. But there's other things I'd also do all day long. And so, here is a list of them, to appease the blogging gods.

1) Tetris (duh). I don't know why I like tetris so much, but I do.

2) Freecell. Or more specifically, winning at freecell. Currently I'm at 81 consecutive wins. (I need to get out more) Though, that number is partially achieved by cheating the system. For this, I can blame my parents. As a small child, they used to try and amuse me with freecell and minesweeper on our ghetto microsoft 19-something.

3) Sweetened Condensed Milk. I love the stuff, unfortunately it comes with enough sugar to melt your teeth on the spot.

4) Web Comics. First, it was just Cyanide and Happiness, common enough to not seem dorky I suppose. Then XKCD came along, and along with that came Questionable content, and Dinosaur comics, and... well. Let's just say, I spend a good amount of time on Monday, Wednesday and Friday checking the comics. (QC updates everyday. It's superb)

5) Caffarel Chocolate. Not just any chocolate it's italian. Okay, but really. This stuff is the best chocolate I've ever consumed (and I have eaten a lot of chocolate). The family first got some when we were returning from Italy. After some hardcore googling, my parents located a store in Windsor that sold it, so every so often, We aquire some more from my dad's friend in Windsor. (Currently muching through the millionth bag. Delicious.)

6) The internet. 'nuff said.

7)

(Okay, I posted that because I remembered it as "Hopelessly addicted to you" But Pushing Daisies is awesome.)

Boring Conversations.

(Or, I think creepy thoughts without realizing it is creepy)

A large percentage of conversations I end up holding with people I do not know well goes like this.

Me: Hello
Them: Hello, what's up?
Me: (thinks for a long time, comes up blank) nothing much, you?
Them: oh about the same.
-silence-

This works with a multitude of questions: "How are you" "How have you been" "How is life" etc etc.
The problem is, you can't reply with anything that is actually occurring in your life without sounding pompous/pretentious/damned depressing. Try replying with "I realized I live a boring life" it's simply too personal as a response to an automatic question and you usually get a "... that.. sucks?"
Thanks tips.

Replies I've tried out were "I've been better, been worse too" (apparently too depressing.) and "I don't know that's a really hard question" (Took too much explaining) "Eh" ("Oh what's wrong?" Nothing.) or "I've been spending a lot of my time thinking about beards" ("....what?")

Involuntary responses are also irritating, because it shows people really aren't listening.

"Have fun at your birthday!"
"Thanks, you too"

What? Yes I suppose I might have fun at my birthday 5 months later. Thanks for actually paying attention to my sincere desire for you to have fun, or anything else people have to say.

"Have fun at your birthday!"
"Oh I wasn't paying attention to what you were saying because I was too preoccupied with thinking about how awesome my birthday will be!"

This wouldn't be such a problem if "Hello, I've been watching you for a while, and I've noticed you like to wear shorts" was less of a creepy statement, and more of an acceptable greeting and a foray into an interesting discussion on the phenomena of wearing shorts in cold weather.

Alas, one day, people will be interesting.

I Declare a Dance War

So, last night was the AP tour 2009!
If you remember, I posted waaay back in February about how excited I was for it, well it turns out that all that excitement was totally justified! (You'll have to excuse excessive use of the exclamation mark here)

The saga begins right after school. I am getting ready to go out, and such, I leave the house at 4:20, perfect time if I want to catch the 4:48 train, right? Well, theoretically, yes, but we will never know. I get a text from Jess informing that the train is in fact, at 4:38. This puts me into a bit of a pinch see, there is no way that I can get there in 18 minutes at a nice walking pace and still expect to have enough time to buy tickets and all that. So, I pick up a bit of a jog. Turns out, I'm not in the best of shape either. I decide to run every other block for the next 1.4 km or so. (Wimpy, I know. Hush you) While neurotically checking my time, I realize that I probably won't make the train, but that's not going to stop me, no suh. Turns out, I did miss the train, but only by a minute or so. Luckily, the freak train came directly after that, so we got on that one.

At the platform, we observe a shocking amount of scene kids. It is evident that these are the kids that will totally be at the show with us. Mmmm scene. At the EX, the train conductor announces "This is the Fall Out Boy concert, have fun ladies. (pause) Shake your booties."

[I am too lazy to detail what happened between here and arrival at the venue]

So we get there right when Rocket to the Moon is playing, and they sound pretty awesome I must say, but we get in on their second to last song. After they're done, Jess and I hit the merch, and get FF5 CDs and shirts (unfortunately "All Ugly People Put Your Hands Down" shirt was sold out) When we get back, Hit the lights is setting up. We squish out way to the middle, and as we start getting into the music, I look up, and Chapstique was playing guitar for them?! So they were good.. Anyways, most of the time was spent nodding along/lightly moshing/making jokes about the swine flu

After more squishing, we were wedged right into the middle, where the people turn into one giant blog, and it feels like you're getting violated in all the wrong places from all directions by the same people that you're probably violating. But that's all part of the experience, right? FF5 comes on, and everyone goes crazy! There's a dance/mosh pit, which was pretty fun, and all the jumping and stuff. It was ridiculously hot in there, but too awesome to leave. Xanadu in the corner doing his thing, Chapstique looking awesome and Soulglow+Fatty+crouton being well, awesome. Needless to say, Family Force 5 puts on the most awesome shows ever.

3OH!3 comes on afterwards, and everyone's throwing the crazy 3OH!3 signs in the air and such. Here, I'll just say that I don't know that many of their songs, but they're pretty good. Anyway, they put on an awesome show too! I think my favourite comment of their was "I in like with you"

The Maine comes on and truthfully, a lot of the random people that came for 3OH!3 had left, so there was definitely less people out there, but still a sizable crowd. This time, the crowd's looser, and I'm pretty sure everyone is fairly tired by now. They sounded pretty good, but we had to leave after 3 songs to catch the train.

Back on the train, the weird old lady kept giving me disapproving looks, I'm not sure why?

Childhood enemies...

I was sort of an unpopular kid...

Of course, I actually don't remember the names of anyone from my childhood, mostly because I don't like them. But, I remember in particular a pair of identical twins. One of them thought my drawing skills were awesome, and the other one thought I was totally lame. So, it was always too confusing to figure out which one I could say "Hi" to without being shunned.

And of course, I had lots of other kids that picked on me, but that one was probably the most mind blowing. I did not have many friends... being the weird foreign kid and all. (not that I had friends when I wasn't the weird foreign kid..)

3rd grade: I had a huge falling out with my best friend at the time. I don't even remember what it was over, but it seemed like such a big deal back them. We both changed schools due to our families moving away at around the same time afterward, and we never kept in touch. She found me on Facebook recently, we turned out remarkably similar, except she likes Twilight.

Then, there are my crazy paternal Grandparents. They would quietly whisper to me about the dangers of leaving a door unlocked, and the murderers lurking around every corner causing most of my current paranoia. This was only made worse by my mother's addiction to "America's Most Wanted" at the time. As I get older, I hear more and more tales about the things my grandmother used to do because she thought it was good for me. ie, turning away all my friends that ever called me, or came to my door. Then again, she still does most of those things, without any explanation, ever.

I suppose you could say that my grandparents were a sort or enemy. The sneaky kind, that never lets you know that they are sabotaging your every move.

Makes me wonder about my dad's childhood a little.

p.s The other day, I found a bag of buns they had made a month a go stashed in a cupboard. I do not know what they did that for, but it got very, very moldy.