Monday, March 31, 2008

ah, so many many many things about canada....

yesterday we drove to chateauguay (pronounced 'chateau-gay', which is what i originally wrote, before lorna pointed that out) to buy books and i warned lorna about the pitfalls of the blog - there will always be too much to write about. so if we have time, you will eventually get to hear about yesterday and:

- patati patata and their amazing and tiny hamburgers
- the coffee shop called π (pi), with the bathroom graffiti "thank you π, there's safety in numbers."
- first nations cigarettes. (no, we're not smoking them, but there were more discount cigarette stores along the 138 into chateauguay than strip clubs in springfield...a lot more...for the three miles into chateauguay, the highway was lined with (many) dozens of prefab shacks advertising discount cigarettes...)

then there's all that we did (or planned to do) while mom and mikeala were here, and the stupid beginning of their dreadful journey home. eventually there will be pictures and video and all sorts of wonder, but for now you must be satisfied with this small bit of amazing radio that piped in during out dinner last night. i'll give you only one warning: ella now thinks "penis" is the funniest word in the english language, especially if its translated from chinese. link here. (this uses real player. if you don't like real player, get Real Alternative. seems to work fine, and there's no spyware.)


-j.

Friday, March 14, 2008

The Philosophy of Randy Bachman

Yes. That Randy Bachman. He's got a radio show on the CBC. Have I mentioned that we don't have a TV up here in the Great White North? That would be Jeremy's fault.
Anyhoo, the theme tonight was "Vices". You can guess the playlist. But the words that will change my life, the words I will strive to live by:
"All I can say is, try to replace your vices with less vice-y vices."
Man, Randy's just takin' care of business.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Oldy McOlderson

just a short post: i (lorna) have not seen my natural hair color in like 15 years. but i just found a white eyebrow hair. WHITE EYEBROW HAIR. because children age you in dog years. and i am posting this for joy, because when she found her first grey hair, i had no sympathy. because i am a jerk. ARE YOU HAPPY PETTY?!

Friday, March 7, 2008

The Evolution of Friday Night

Look at us! It's a blog entry!

at one point, i know that my friday nights were indistinguishable from any other night of the week. and then there was Catfish. so, in austin, we developed a friday night routine: mama would go out with usual suspects, drink too much and wander about downtown. dada would stay home and drink too much, drunk dial his brothers in oregon, and watch his favorite AMN show, Loser's Lounge, which was a couple of 14 year old girls playing really rather fabulous videos and closing out their show by eating gummy worms. these nights made for fantastic text messaging. one night, while out and about, those of us at lovejoy's started getting what seemed at first to be senseless rambling. it started with a threat: "woman, where's my tequila?!" (mama didn't know what the hell dada was talking about), then showed a pattern: one person got "snake! i thought you were dead!" no, more than one person got that one. then we realized he was watching Escape from New York. then he apologized about the tequila: "I found it under the coffee table..." While mama admits to not being terribly trustworthy while out on the town, she did start to wonder if dada should be left alone with the child.

Then there was oregon. there was no "loser's lounge", no sixth street, and most of the people dada had grown used to drunk dialing were all sitting around the same table. crazy. and though we mourn the loss of AMN, there was a really fabulous show (on KLCC of all places) called Straight Street, old R&B and soul. awesome. we took to playing rummy and drinking brandy. it's amazing how hard it is to buy alcohol in oregon, even if yer pushing thirty. these nights turned into sitting around the famous van horn dining table with Kim and Will and martinis and discussing whatever came up: from why missing a testicle would keep someone from gaining entrance to heaven to how much vermouth one should use in the perfect martini (mama thinks one should only threaten said martini with vermouth, and that testicle count is really nobody's damn business).

now we're in quebec and know no one and have to buy our friday night liquor from the state. but what's so funny about our new friday nights is that it is still routine:
"You should totally go to the SAQ before it closes and get a bottle of wine and we will totally work on the blog tonight!"
"Really. Tonight's the night, huh?"
"I'm serious! It's all in my head, I'm totally typing it tonight and uploading the pics. You just have to go to the SAQ and get some wine. and to the metro for some chips."
"Fine."
And then we listen to the ipod while the kids dance and we play computer games all night.

anyway, short story incredibly long, we're posting! our friends and family will know what we're up to! which is obviously not much! and eventually, you will even see pictures of us in this godforsaken place, and of our trip up here! feel free to laugh and the impossibly high snow drifts around our car! the ten or twenty pics of the Fish's missing teeth! huzzah!

The point is, we miss and love you all, and wish we were better at keeping in touch, and hopefully this will help. maybe we will let dada write it in the future so it's not so... shall we say "wordy"? that would be the nice way of putting it.