Las Vegas, Redux

I don’t think that’s even the correct usage of ‘redux’, but no matter. If it’s good enough for John Updike, it’s good enough for me.

So, we survived Las Vegas. I don’t even know where to begin. It was a lot of fun, but it was also…bizarre. All the walking, the lights, the ads for porn, the delightful shopping…my mind nearly imploded. While musing on the flight home (US Airways – NEVER AGAIN), I wondered if perhaps Vegas is a microcosm for the U.S. as a whole. Doing a little people watching results in observing folks (not only women, gentle readers) in teetery heels and expensive suits, and then others in dirty sweatpants and sneakers. I hardly knew what to make of it. Fast food all over the place, and then meals at $150 a plate. So much excess, so much poverty…I don’t know. I’m sure I’m making more of it than needs be, but I’ve not encountered anything like it before in all my travels so it warrants a little reflection.

A friend commented on the filth and sleaze the city is known for, but really, I didn’t think it was any worse than any other city. It’s simply out in the open. I don’t kid myself into thinking that my little Canadian city is devoid of drugs, sex trafficking and gambling. It’s there, it’s just hidden a lot better. So maybe Las Vegas is simply honest. People will feed their vices no matter what you do, Vegas just makes it that much easier. In any event, it didn’t bother me. Because of the shopping! (Kidding. Sort of.) FYI – my greatest acquisition was a Calvin Klein dress, regularly $150 for $40. Merci, Ross: Dress for Less!  I will eventually add some photos, I got some pretty sweet shots of the view from the 39th floor of the Wynn.  Oh yeah.

Also, can I get a shout out for being able to use knitting needles on planes again?  Way to go, CATSA & TSA!  I’ll trade you one intrusive pat down for a set of 4mm bamboo double pointed needles.

Whelmed

I’m overwhelmed at the moment with everything.  But as I always do when I hear that word…I wonder to myself, “I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever be just whelmed?”  And the response is of course, “yes, in Europe.” Ahhhh, a little late 90′s teen comedy humor for you there.

But yes, overwhelmed.  There are millenarian papers to write (for this professor – ha!  He was kidding, folks, he told us he was giving the ‘tedious’ CBC what they wanted), fiction to critique, fiction to write, crafts to knit, vague semblances of social lives to pay attention to, trips to Vegas that interrupt all of the above – ACK.  In short, I wish an Obama-commissioned drone would assassinate me.  Unlikely, though.  I haven’t any sensitive documents.  Unless you count my journal from the 8th grade.  Hands OFF!

I’m cross I haven’t posted more, even crosser that the Etsy isn’t doing as well as I’d like because I don’t have time to produce product (see above for reasons for both) and it’s all just so much.  *sigh*

Okay, in an effort to buck up, here are some things I’m looking forward to:

• Staying at the Wynn for three days, only the swankiest hotel in all of Las Vegas
• Staying at said hotel with El Gingey
• Eating at In N Out Burger – yummmmm
• Cirque du Soleil
• Y.’s wedding!  Being the MOH!
• SHOPPING.  OUTLET SHOPPING
• Christmas
• Seeing my sister when she finally gets back here for Christmas.  We have plans, so many plans…
• Church with the Ginge on Christmas Eve
• The look on the Ginge’s face when he opens his present
• My stupid paper being done
• Taking the week off between Christmas and New Year’s
• Reading for pleasure during that week.  Ahhhh, epic novels…
• A full body search by a TSA agent with a bad attitude.  Oh wait, I’m not looking forward to that…

And thus concludes the whining of a woman with very little to complain about, it would seem, in the grand scheme of things.

Exeunt

Princess Purity

Why on God’s green earth is the sexual status of Kate Middleton an issue?  And why, again, was it news back in the day that Princess Diana was not sexually experienced before she married Jughead Prince Charles?  I’m speechless.  And retroactively embarrased for her.  It’s nobody’s damn business!   And it’s well known that her intended was a philanderer…it just seems so ‘lamb to the slaughter’-ish.

I don’t care if they’re royals and play by different rules; goes to show that there’s still an underlying belief that women are property, hence the concern about the ‘quality’ of the goods.  It’s really revolting.  No one gives a tinker’s toot about the Prince’s experience, apparently.  Ugh.

Having been raised in an extremely patriarchal religion, I could go off for PAGES about this…but I will stop.  Suffice it to say, here’s to the happy couple!

/rant

Women, Food and Canning

Readers, you would be so proud of me.  Well, I assume as such.  I can’t really know for sure, can I?  But the point is this: I have been given the recipe for heaven.  No, seriously.  I’m not going to qualify that.  Mock me all you want, but when you try it, you will fall at my feet and beg, nay, plead for more.

The recipe is this (Initially read here then modified.  FYI, I worship this woman):

Apple Butter
5lbs apples, peeled, cored and chopped
3 cups sugar
Couple of generous shakes of cinnamon
Couple little shakes of ground cloves

All ingredients.  Crock pot.  12 hours or so.  Let it cool.  Blend with handheld immersion blender or whatever you got.  Taste it and DIE because you know it’s unlikely you’ll ever eat anything this good ever again.  Bottle it, or jar it.  If you come from a long line of Mormon canners (well, hi!) you likely have the skillz necessary or access to someone who does.

As I was chopping apples last week, for what seemed like endless hours ticking away on Lucifer’s clock, I asked myself, “Why the hell am I doing this?”  Because, gentle readers, it’s just me.  Yes, the Ginge is around, but I can’t keep stuffing him like a prize pig with all the food I want to make but not eat.  I suspect my penchant for producing mass amounts of food has something to do with being the oldest of a large family and learning to cook for them.  I’m much more comfortable cooking in large quantities.  Going away to school at 18, I would prepare huge, family-size meals and my roommates would ask, “why don’t you just cook for yourself?” and I would stare dumbly at them, unaware that such a thing was possible.  I didn’t need to cook casseroles for 8?  Really?

But canning is another story.  As a 17 year old Mormon feminist, I secretly avowed that while I enjoyed fiber arts and  loved to cook, they could never, ever make me … can. *shudder*  I figured that was the last bastion, the one thing that would keep me from fully assimilating.  Not having row after row of canned fruits and veggies in my basement would somehow mean I was my own woman.

Which was a stupid idea. (Not to invalidate my 17 year old self.)  I realized eventually that it didn’t really matter if I canned or not, and that it’s actually very cost effective to preserve your own food.  And even satisfying.  I mean, you can make your own salsa and eat it through the winter!!!   What’s not to love?

The moral of this story is that I have finally overcome my fears.  I make jam.  I can (verb), bitches!

An Open Letter

Dear Blogosphere,

Something has been troubling me about you for some time.  I’ve tried to ignore it but can remain silent no longer.  It’s for your own good, really.  My requests are these:

1) “Tow the line” should be “toe the line”.

2) “For all intensive purposes” should be “For all intents and purposes”.

That is all.

M. x

Mmmhmm, Girlfriend!

Three Sisters Mountains - Canmore

I was fortunate enough to spend this past weekend in the little tourist town of Canmore, about 45 minutes outside of Calgary.  A group of my girlfriends and I crammed into a condo for the weekend to celebrate an engagement, a second pregnancy, to lend support for relationship sadness…and basically just be friends.

As we trawled the overpriced shops in the surprisingly frigid cold of a Saturday morning (locals were wearing shorts and flip flops - INSANE) we noticed other groups of women doing the same thing.  However, these women had about 15-20 years on us, and we said we hoped to be doing the same thing in as much time.  But then one of us felt the need to postulate about this in relation to a certain trite TV show-turned horrific movie and sequel which shall not be named.

My thoughts are thus: why can’t groups of girlfriends just go about their business without having to compare themselves to that show/characters?  I mean, really.  We were around before it hit HBO, and we’ll be around long after it’s nothing but a blip on some millenial pop culture recap show in 2048.  (I would like to clarify that I dislike the show not because it’s ‘scandalous’.  Please.  It’s simply because the show is trite, lame and over.)  And the fact that we have nothing more than an ultimately unfeminist television show about extremely unrealistic people in a fantasy land to compare ourselves to…dude, it seriously bums me out.

Rant over.  In any event, my girlfriends and I had a lovely time – tapas, candy stores and hot tubs, anyone?  And y’know, we’ve been a posse since 1994 and we ain’t going anywhere.  And none of us own a pair of heels over $400, as far as I know.

Finally, the Reason I Actually Started This Damn Thing…

Well, I finally got my butt in gear and I’ve started it.  Yes, it.  Or more specifically, my Etsy shop.  Mine, all mine!  Here it is.  Handmade gorgeousness for all.  Or all who want to shell out, I suppose.  I don’t give it away for free, people.  Wait a minute…

There will be more listings shortly – knitting takes a lot longer than you might think.  That’s why handmade knits cost so much.  And given I’m using 100% natural fibers, my prices are actually very reasonable.  Por ejemplo, there’s a shop on Etsy (based in Calgary, actually) that charges almost double what I do for products made of 80% acrylic and 20% wool.  Gah!  I sure as hell wouldn’t pay that much for substandard materials, so I wouldn’t expect anyone else to. 

In any event, I shall end this blatant self promotion NOW.  But really, what else is any internet presence, other than self promotion?  And shameless, at that?

"Ah, fall again! Time to wear too much makeup and perhaps this stunning hat..."

Seriously!

You know what’s really annoying?  Besides things like Telus, people who drive slow in the fast lane, and my brother S.?  Being thought a liar.  Or at least deluded.  Lemme ‘splain.  The Ginge and I were hanging about the Loose Moose theatre the other night, as we are wont to do.  El Gingey is a volunteer actor there and often displays his improvisational prowess to the masses…depending on the size of the crowd.  But this time we were just there to watch like the ‘common’ people.  “Stars!  They’re just like us!  They go to improv shows!”

The theatre was hosting a visiting comic, a former Calgarian back from Los Angeles to do a one-off gig.  Turns out it’s the guy from those Rogers commercials, you know, the one where the guy gets into the elevator and his phone stops working?  He’s kinda goofy looking?  You know who I’m talking about, right?  Okay.  BUT – when  I saw those commercials I said to myself, “Hey, I went to high school with that guy.”  And I did.  For realz.  He was a few grades ahead of me, but it was him.   Well, anyway, I didn’t know the comic we were seeing and high school-guy were one and the same because he seems to have changed his name.   So I said as much to the Ginge.  “I went to high school with that guy, except he’s changed his name.”  And Le Ginge did not believe me.  Or maybe he did but just put on a really good show (he is an actor, after all).  We argued for some time about it.  But seriously, it was incredibly frustrating and even annoying.  I was telling the truth!  Seriously!  I now have to dig out yearbooks to prove him wrong.

No, this isn’t a life/death sitch, but then I started thinking about movies and television shows where the audience is privy to the whole story and we know that the protagonist is telling the truth, but the other characters don’t believe him/her.  These situations have always left me with more anxiety than is probably necessary, so I suppose my reaction to the Loose Moose scenario is expected.  But I really hope nothing of a more serious nature ever occurs to me; I don’t think I could take it.

In other news, here’s that review I did.  I’m pleased that the photo credit made it.  I feel like my night of extreme grumpiness/discomfort was not entirely in vain.

UPDATE: My pal CR, who I’ve known since 10th grade, has confirmed that I’m not insane.  I said to her, “Hey, you know those Roger’s commercials with that guy…” and she said, “Oh yeah, that guy Chris we went to high school with?”  VINDICATED!!!

A Manifesto

Okay, this isn’t really a manifesto.  I’ve not been terribly motivated to update this little corner of blogdom as I’ve been slammed by that pesky little thing called…oh, what is it again?  Ah yes, life!  That’s it.

I find myself taking two Uni courses (an upper level Poli Sci on Millenarianism [Google it] and a swanky Creative Writing course with the illustrious Aritha Van Herk), moving (AGAIN!!!), working full time, attempting to canoodle with The Ginge and also have a social life/do laundry/cook instead of eating out/build stock for my elusive Etsy shop….ACK!  And again, ACK!!!

So, our first assignment in ENGL 496 (aka, the CW course) was to read an essay by Robert Kroetsch (Google him.  Seriously, people, do they teach you NOTHING in school?) about his attempt to write a manifesto, and then to attempt such an assignment ourselves.  So I wrote a manifesto.  And while I won’t post it here for a myriad of reasons, I was surprised what emerged.  I didn’t have any bold declarations to make about my intents as a writer.  It was far more about reading, from an autobiographical standpoint.  It was also about how autobiography is inherently flawed, as memory, at least my memory, is selective and faulty.

I mention this here because often the things we post in such a forum are autobiographical.  But they’re tainted and skewed as they’re viewed from our personal lens, a lens that often filters out the undesirable and enhances the rest.  I really wish others viewed me from that same lens.

In any event, I do plan to post more.  Soon, even.  In the meantime, here’s a pretty good shot of a show I reviewed the other week.  It was a band called Blitzen Trapper down at the Republik.   Two things I discovered: the Republik is my new favorite club in Calgary, and I am too crabby and needing of physical comfort to attend more than one live show per year.

Blitzen Trapper @ The Republik, Calgary

Just Making Textual Convo*

…or, ‘Another Reason Why My Sister Ought To Stay In Ontario’.

Texting:

M: Am about to embark on my first uni course in many moons…eek!  Wish me luck.

S: Oh right! Luck! I bet you’re the oldest one there…

M: I’ll have you know that the prof is considerably older than me…

M: But yes, you are probably right.

She was.  Humph.

*With apologies to Bschooled