Moot Point

So this weekend Alex and I were pretty rugged and Vancouver-y. We went on a walk through the storm-ravaged Stanley park, and then decided, basically on a lark, to walk across the Lion’s Gate Bridge. It was a warm, clear day, and we were right when we thought we’d be able to see everything from up there. But it was totally scary, because it’s really high up and you can feel all the cars driving by, and furthermore because it is basically flat, and there is totally a gap your foot could fall through between the surface of the bridge and the railing. Technically, I knew that like, hundreds (thousands?) of cars go over that thing every day, and I wasn’t actually in any danger of injury, but I couldn’t help being all fluttery and nervous.

Once across and in North Van, we basically had nothing to do but go to the sprawling North Van mall which we knew to contain a Whole Foods. And. I hit my knee on a display shelf thing holding some cute sweaters at Banana Republic. Like, really hard. There’s a lump just under my right kneecap and it still hurts to put weight on my leg when it’s bent (aka sitting down, standing up, going up and down stairs). I got fucking injured at Banana fucking Republic. It’s like, the upper-class yuppie milieu to which I occasionally aspire is actually attacking me.

I just want to get it out of the way, but: the moment when Ryan Seacrest had to duck to avoid getting hit in the face by this crazy kid’s juggling stick while he was hugging his mom is one of the greatest on television so far this year.

Other than that, it’s basically just been snowing and then stopping snowing in Vancouver. This is my story. Last week, I’m on the bus, coming home from school with the dude I TA with. It has just started snowing a little. So we’re on the bus, and there’s some lovely, fluffy snow falling, and we’re going on this slight incline. C. and I are chatting about the class, and whatever, and then all of a sudden the bus stops. The driver announces (not on the loudspeaker) that the bus is sliding, and, with an edge of hysteria in her voice, explains that she is just not driving any more.

We are not at a bus stop. We are just on the road, a few blocks away from the next stop. By some bushes. In the snow. I am wearing a skirt and my still-being-broken-in new Frye Boots. So we walk. Toward Alma we see one of the cable buses, just abandoned on the road, its front end literally in the middle of the street.

I would like to emphasize that these weren’t really white-out conditions. It was like, softly snowing, and the snow was mostly melting the second it hit the ground. No ice at all. There were no more buses in sight and a bunch of people at the first bus stop we came to, so we walked on, calling our respective homes. We saw one bus with actual passengers, packed to the gills, on our entire walk from before 10th and Alma to Broadway and MacDonald where we stopped for pizza and eventually caught a running bus.

I am going to tell this story forever. Seriously, the bus driver was like your mom freaking out because she’s going down a really steep hill that is sheer ice. But it was a slight incline, not all that icy, and also SHE IS A PROFESSIONAL BUS DRIVER. This is ridiculous. I don’t have a lot of problems with the Vancouver transit system, besides its crazed refusal to have rapid transit that covers the bulk of the actual city of Vancouver, and instead have two rail lines that run parallel to each other, but this? Is ridiculous.

Oh I totally didn’t do a 2006 best-of list! I like lists. This is for my own posterity, not because I think anyone cares about my bloggerly critical greatness. Best album: I got really lax with the new music this year, so my opinion doesn’t count for much, but The Body, The Blood, The Machine by The Thermals is my favourite new album in like, forever

Best Books I read (for fun): Oh, this is so hard! Turn, Magic Wheel by Dawn Powell, Heat by Bill, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, and Atonement by Ian MacEwan all made huge impressions; I also really liked White Teeth, in the compulsive-reading way, but it didn’t blow my mind

Best movies: Again, there’s lots of stuff I haven’t seen that counts for 2006. Stranger Than Fiction, Little Miss Sunshine, and Tristram Shandy would almost definitely be on the list, as would Brick, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, and maybe Shortbus but I still have high hopes for Children of Men

Best TV: Easy. Veronica Mars, Battlestar Galactica, Project Runway, the end of Arrested Development, The Office. No special order.

I don’t really hold with New Year’s Resolutions as an idea, because you know, if you want to do something you will do it, and if you kind of like the idea of doing something, you will resolve to do it on New Year’s Day and then do it really regularly for a couple of months before you slowly peter out and then give up, because it turned out to be hard and/or not that fun.

In our travels this Christmas, Alex and I ate a lot of terrible food. The result is: Alex and I feel kind of terrible now. I’m pretty sure I’ve put on weight and I just generally am revolted by the idea of heavy meals involving meat and cake, which are both normally things that I like very much. Between the insane essay-writing of early December, and the eating orgy of later December, I’ve decided I need a break. I was already planning on trying out one new recipe a week (because of the bounty of cookbooks I received for Christmas), but I have now further decided that for the next little while (by which I mean like, two weeks or something), that new recipe will be meat-free. As will all my eating. I went veggie for a month in second year, and by the end I was desperately craving chicken, but I was living in res and relying on the meal hall’s definition of “meat-free alternatives” for like, half my meals. I already don’t eat much meat, so I am re-trying the experiment now that I cook for myself.

Actually, I am already ahead on my one-recipe-a-week deal: Continue Reading »

“I feel old,” I said as we left the subway and got away from the crowd of teens, carrying bottles of booze in Old Navy bags.

“No more water bottles full of vodka and Crystal Lite for you,” Alex said, as we walked down Queen Street to go to the movies. (Yes, we went to the movies on New Year’s Eve; we went in to Dreamgirls in 2006 and came out in 2007.)

(The movie was all right. Like, it was well-directed, Beyonce is much better than I expected, and Eddie Murphy is killer in it; but it’s weird to retell the story of Motown as about black people needing to feel guilty for their success. Like, yeah, some musicians had to “tone down” their music for a white audience, but Motown took more commercial risks; it rings really false when Jamie Foxx buries the “message song” that Eddie Murphy records in his Marvin Gaye hat, because Motown really did release “What’s Goin’ On” and “Ball of Confusion” and “War” and stuff.)

After we walked through the club district to get to the subway at one AM, this drunk kid exhorts Alex to have a happy new year and get really drunk and smoke a big j or something, and then he’s like “You too, ma’am.” Ma’am.

Happy New Year.