My Dream House

Do you ever imagine what your dream house would be like? Me neither, but I do have a recurring dream about a house (which belongs to me in the dream). It’s like a sitcom of the continuing misadventures in Megan’s Nightmare House.

[P.S. I don't own any property IRL, especially not a house.]

The first thing you should know about this house is that it isn’t even located in the city where I live. I just go there occasionally to check on it and make sure no disasters have befallen it (spoiler: disaster zone is its natural state). And every time, I wonder why I haven’t gotten rid of it yet.

One of the house’s primary distinguishing features is that the doors don't quite latch properly—and definitely don't lock—so they frequently creak open of their own volition, admitting all kinds of inclement weather, rodents, and burglars. (Why haven't I gotten this fixed yet?) For some reason, there's always a passageway that connects it to other housing units, or occasionally to a college dorm (I don’t even know… terrible design if you ask me). So at any given time, random strangers might flow through the creaky self-opening doors—but mostly it’s just a looming, unrealized threat. The interior is usually pretty barren, with moldy carpet that is particularly weather-worn around the wide open window (which is flanked by tattered gauzy curtains billowing in the stormy breeze).

At some point during the dream, I inevitably recall with horror that I have a cat, which I have forgotten to feed or provide litter for. [P.S. I don’t have any pets IRL.] Usually the next phase is for me to foray into a shadowy basement that is one enormous room filled with boxes and old housewares—basically it looks like if you tipped a Value Village on its side so that all the contents accumulated in a giant heap. Then it's a matter of tentatively poking around and discovering that the single cat somehow multiplied into about a dozen cats, all in a gaunt and rabid white walker-esque form. On one occasion, the cats were in a crawlspace above the ceiling (in the absence of a basement). Then, at least some of the cats escape out of a self-opening door, and I spend the rest of the dream trying to chase them down.

I don’t read too much into dreams, but my takeaway from this one is Never Own A House.

What I Have Been Doing This Decade

1. Slowly Purchasing a Home
What feels like forever ago but is probably about 2 years, I signed an Agreement of Sale for a condo in one of the many new developments that were underway at the time. Progress has been very slow going with painfully few [near-zero] updates, but they're currently claiming fall 2019 occupancy (that's this year!). Becoming one of the landed gentry is a huge leap for someone who's happily skipped through life without any kind of debt. I get nervous even talking to friends about it because almost everybody I know (of my wage bracket) scoffs at the idea of being able to buy in this city. Although I've been pretty settled for some years, there's always been at least the possibility of nomadism. So, I'm plagued with the kind of anxieties that probably all new home-owners suffer: can I actually afford it without cutting every non-essential expenditure out of my life? will I like living in a non-residential area? will I be happy with a downgrade in size, however slight? will the sales pitch—e.g. rooftop gardens, sauna, amenities—live up to its promise? will I like the condo itself once I see it finally constructed? will it even be well-built and free of hassles/repairs for a while? is this a huge mistake that I'll be trying to recover from until the distant future? Presumably, this year will resolve most of these.

2. Music
A couple weeks ago, I finally bought a new recorder to replace the defective Zoom H4N that died on me years ago. After an aggravating exchange with a few service reps that started with "well we can sell you a new one, would that work for you?" and ultimately ended in "oh, you're in Canada... forget everything we said, and try talking to our Far North Outpost—let me google their email address," I let the whole thing sit for about a year. But now, armed with a new computer that doesn't sound like a wind tunnel, I'm hoping to do some more recording in future (possibly not until after I move... Upstairs Guy has stepped up his noise game). If nothing else, I hope it will motivate me to play more now, as I went at least a year without so much as uncovering my piano.

3. Work
Since my last post, I've been working at a different office on campus in a temporary capacity, first covering a maternity leave, and then a second secondment (a thirdment?) in the same position. I had to return to my "permanent" job in between, and in fact I had intended to go back (and stay back) after the first stint. But a concatenation of many factors made me realize that it was a toxic place for me, and the new office was working hard to serenade me back. With the combined push from Old Office and pull from New Office, I felt cornered—albeit serendipitously—into a decision. This week I officially locked in my permanent stake in New Office position, so that's a load off my mind.

Things I Am Totally Into These days:

• The Boghouse Podcast about my favourite composer (and all-around inspiring human)'s epic adventure in buying a theatre. Beyond epic.


• Bullet journalling. Let's see if I can turn myself into a productive (and economical—gonna have a mortgage to pay after all) human through writing lists.


• Not that I'm particularly into it these days, but for some reason a couple years ago I found it necessary to start an Etsy shop and sell things made out of paper scraps. It never really seemed like a good idea, even at the time. Really all it's accomplished is fill most of my living space with crafting stuff.


• I've also been pretty into MOOCS on edX, specifically some nutrition courses and one on the science of happiness. Highly recommend!

Spring Clearing

In the wake of Floodgate II (although this post is really too late to be considered in the wake), I've been pruning my belongings in an effort to gain more order in my life. Not so much cleaning as clearing; making space so that life feels less cramped and stifled.

Part of the process has been obtaining an eReader, so I could feel free to get rid of books that take a lot of space on the (slim) off-chance that I might read them again. When it comes to technology, I tend to be misguidedly ludditesque for purely nostalgic reasons. Coupled with being a lifelong avid reader, literary scholar, effective library tenant, and codicology enthusiast, physical books have been the only form I have ever considered tolerable.

But that seems equivalent to stubbornly sticking with a horse-drawn buggy when motorcars are readily available. I'm staunchly pro-cultural-evolution (and becoming more so as time goes on), and embrace the integration of technology in modern life. Even better is how the convenience has brought infinitely more reading into my daily life. In one week alone I read more books than in the past 3 years combined.

Just when I feel free to discard the textbooks that I barely dipped into five years ago, I feel drawn back into the captivating lure of literary theory. Sorting through my old undergrad creative writing and grad school papers helped with the rekindling. I have to wonder whether I'm capable of completely leaving a phase behind.

Going through possessions is always bound to unearth a number of gems.

No Laughing Matter

There are two things that I will never joke at someone's expense about. (There are generally more than two, but these two are nolle prosequi material.)

1. A person's name. Even Drumpf. (Perhaps especially Drumpf; after all, it's not like you need to go excavating the ancestral past to find criticisms of that guy.)

No matter how unique you think your humour is, I guarantee you: the person has heard that joke before. Dozens of times. Maybe they even still give you a pity-laugh to stifle the sound of their eyes rolling.

2. What Bertie Wooster would call a person's "outer crust." Unless it's something foreign, like crumbs or something (which, you'll note, people never mention, and just leave you to discover it hours later in the mirror. Thanks.), you can rest assured that a person is much more intimately aware of what is on display than you are. There's simply no tact or sense in pointing out someone's unibrow, mole, acne, tendency to turn deep vermilion when embarrassed or just after the dreaded 20-minute-run PE class, birthmarks... the list goes on. I include tattoos in this, if the comment comes from a total stranger who would otherwise comment on the weather. For everything on this list, they know about it. They know you can see it. No need to verbalize.

There's something private about a person's body—even the visible parts—that merits respect.

Unproductivity

I just discovered that my writing tablet (or perhaps the stylus) has stopped working, so I had to haul out pen and paper for my annual drawing post. Then I discovered that I don't have any blank paper so I had to make do with cardboard, and then I discovered that I don't have any decent pens. At least it's still better than those very first MS Paint moments of my comic? Somewhat?

literally verbatim (one of those words is probably redundant)

Actually, I've been living in a slum of broken down electronics for quite some time, so it wasn't much of a surprise about the tablet. More of a gd... why is everything I own crap moment.

Despite being the legitimately best thing I've ever owned, my computer is very dated at this point and chugs away like a steam engine winding down its speed for an upcoming station stop. Add to that my "high speed lite"—which I honestly think my ISP is making liter day by day—and it's either impossible or frustrating to try to do any of my computer-related hobbies these days. It's like the old days of dial-up, but without the beautifully moving song of the handshake (no sarcasm. I'm nostalgic like that).

Most distressingly, my Zoom H4N spontaneously and thoroughly died due to a known bug death (you could call it a "feature") when I ejected it from my computer a couple months ago. I'm not sure it's worth sending it to the company to fix, which is apparently the only option. This means I can't do any more YouTubing until I get new equipment, which I was planning to do anyway because I've been wanting to do some vocals as well. But then I've also been stuck in the middle of a couple transcriptions for about a year, lacking the motivation to move forward in them. And what's the point of posting them anyway?

So then I had an ubi sunt moment. You know what I'm talking about: that how did it come to this kind of feeling. (Btw, if you didn't know, ubi sunt is a poetic device that basically communicates "where did the golden past go, and why is everything ruined forever?" Théoden knows how it's done.) Maybe studying elegiac Anglo Saxon poetry laid that tragic foundation in me. More likely it was a long process of myriad contributing factors. None of it makes particularly good drawing fodder, but if it ever does, I promise I'll start posting more.

Canadiana

The other day, I was reflecting on how very different Canada is now from the nation I grew up in. My family was staunchly (almost rabidly) pro-Canada to the fault of being anti-American. Canada was the best country in the world, and being Canadian filled your heart with all kinds of pride, warmth, and hope. The border was less than a 2hr drive away, but I didn't set foot in the US until a whirlwind conference trip when I was 23.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, when I spent an entire day trying to figure out how to emigrate to the US, wondering if Harper getting reelected might be passable grounds for a refugee application. Granted, there were myriad other (real) reasons I wanted to move, but nothing could sever my remaining shreds of patriotism quite like watching our own government cannibalize the body it inhabits.

(Turns out it's basically impossible for someone like me to live in the US, barring a complete upheaval of my life, which I'm not opposed to, but is full of complications.)

I'm not much interested in sports, but the thing that I find most infectious about them is the rivalry between fan groups. It's one of the arenas of our society where enthusiasm and energy seem to generate and perpetuate themselves. And when a team faces off against its biggest rival, there are only two possible outcomes, both of them extremes: crushing victory, or humiliating defeat.

Federal politics is rivalry at its most intense. Although there are a few teams at play, everybody won this round, because regardless of who actually won, the main thing is the rival—everybody's rival—lost. Gotta be honest, I seriously doubted Canada would come together successfully, but boy did we ever. There's nothing but hope right now, and relief. Congratulations to us all.

In other news, I've decided that my main goal for the present is to travel.

It's a shame traveling costs a lot, because I just returned from Las Vegas again a few weeks ago and was basically in need of a vacation from the moment I deplaned.

(For the record: traveling is more expensive if you can't get your shit together and end up fiddling with your flights multiple times. It's even more expensive if you spend 30 minutes suppressing your nausea in the taxi before you manage to croak out a request to turn around and take you home. Yep, it was the most ridiculous, needlessly complicated escape of my life. I'd do it every week if I could.)

Tales

Once in a while I find myself remembering something that I haven't thought about in a decade. I would like to linger over my memories more often so, to that end, I thought I would start writing them down. I've created a repository for tales from the past, which is mainly intended to be a memory lane in digital space for myself. This Tales blog is one of several writing projects I began this year, and I've been far more prolific in it than in the others.

Remember the Ides

The Ides of March is one of the only days I remember to write. For four years it's been a melancholy anniversary for me, but finally this year I think I've come to terms with it. What has happened in the year since my last post? Well, lots of ups and downs—as usual, and as typical of everyone I expect.

In the fall, I participated in a (not quite complete) month of intensive yoga challenge. Maintaining that kind of momentum is hard, but it's also not particularly appealing to me. I like my downtime, and spending up to 3 hours at the studio every day doesn't allow for much.

I didn't take much time off work during 2014. The weekend before Canada Day, my parents drove out to visit me, bringing the granite endtable that my dad built. Dad's tables are gorgeous works of art. I tagged along on their drive back east, which took two full days. It was a wonderful road trip through the Okanagan during cherry season, and I spent Canada Day weekend on the farm before flying back home.

In the fall, I took another brief trip for my cousin's wedding in Banff. It was a whirlwind trip, as I didn't take time off other than my regular flex day. My own family wasn't able to attend, so I wasn't overly eager to spend much time in Banff by myself, especially since the altitude difference added a migraine through the whole weekend.

Christmas in Saskatchewan was cold, malingering somewhere between -20°C and -30°C during my whole trip. Indoors was cozy, but I've never been much interested in being outdoors in the winter. This suits me just fine, and I'm content to while away the days indoors; but I always get the impression that this is unacceptable in my family, so it's tinged with guilt as well.

Christmas always leaves me with an unidentifiable feeling—kind of like wistfulness, and kind of like melancholy. My flight back west chased the sunset on New Year's eve, and I remember wishing we could just keep chasing it. I didn't want to land, to return to Victoria. New Year's is more on the melancholy side of wistfulness.

The big derailment at the moment is another burst pipe (same one?) in my apartment, much like the issue almost exactly one year ago but more alarming from the outset. I'm currently in the stage between the chaos of stopping the leak/drying out the carpet, and the wall repairs/painting.

I'm starting to keenly feel the lack of a vacation, and I'm close to the point where I simply need to get away. Somewhere with a white sandy beach and warm, clear water. Or somewhere with a wild, pebbly beach, crashing waves, and a warm cozy view. Somewhere with balmy evenings, neon lights, and 5am cheesecake. Somewhere with rolling thunderstorms and warm evening rain. Somewhere to recharge and let my emotions settle back to a milder level. Somewhere away from this town. Vacate rather than staycate. I spent a recent weekend in Houston (ah, warm evenings), but a weekend is pretty short—though it was a wonderful trip as always.

Less stuff, more cats

Two weeks later, the whole leak incident is finally wrapped up. I appreciate that the property manager took care of everything, though I still think that entering a suite without giving notice is objectively out of line. Leaving a job incomplete for days and a bunch of janitorial clutter in a corner of my apartment doesn't constitute sufficient notice, even if it is obvious that they'll need to enter in order to finish. Or maybe I'm just holding a grudge from last week when somebody actually unlocked my door while I was inside—without even knocking!—in the early evening. This is why I keep the door chained 100% of the time.

The last step was steam-cleaning all the carpets with what I assume was a concoction of toothpaste and mystery water collected during the leak itself (I was hoping most of the ants would get steam-cleaned too, but I've found some malingering still). They did give me express notice of that, mainly because they needed me to "can you please move everything off the floor :)". Moving as much as possible into the bathroom and kitchen (possession tetris yet again) has left things pretty tidy everywhere else, which makes me think it's a good opportunity to get rid of stuff.

And maybe get a cat. I wanted this one, but today's daily search indicates that she's not at the SPCA anymore:

The floor doesn't feel like the beach anymore, so that's a definite plus.

P.S. I optimized my dictionary recently, which you might have noticed since I keep linking to it.

A Million Things That Make Me Uneasy

I seem to be on some kind of roll here, so why not continue with the theme?

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

There probably are indeed at least half a million things that bug me. People who stand on the bus without hanging onto anything, for example (you just know they're going to blunder into you at the next unexpected halt). People who walk at anything less than a brisk stride (if they're in front of me). Little annoying human habits that drive me into a raging [wind]fury.

Because I endeavour to be a halfway-decent human, I keep my fury hidden as best I can until it subsides on its own. Sure, sometimes when random strangers are in close proximity I have to actively, repeatedly, inwardly tell myself don't knock them over, just don't do it—but that's a different conversation.

But there are even more things that are more than minor annoyances. Things that awaken a deep dread or terror. Things that make me sit in the pouring rain for 40 minutes rather than board a bus that might be uncomfortably crowded. And all these million things used to keep me at a well-maintained level of unease, which came to be increasingly broken by peaks of anxiety that set my heart racing in an infuriatingly unexpected and uncontrollable way.

Losing control over your emotions is a terrifying thing, and if those emotions end up affecting the way you can function in the world, then you are in a losing position indeed. I think it's shocking for everyone when that tipping point is reached and the most apparently sedate person lashes out—and perhaps most shocking to the person it's coming from. That's when I know it's time to get off the island for a few days.

When it comes down to it, the list of Things That Bug Me is actually pretty short; I could elaborate on a lot of the points, but I think most things are encompassed by the following (in no particular order):

1. other people's opinions
2. the word "whinging"
3. the guy upstairs
4. other pedestrians who obstruct my own pedestering
5. close-mindedness
6. unnecessary noise
7. beards
8. invasive landlords
9. mayonnaise
10. when people believe that their likes/dislikes are objectively good/bad

And yes, negativity too. 

The Ten Plagues of My Apartment

I hate to break stride, especially since I've been in the middle of writing another angryrant, but maybe a little comic relief is in order (even if it's a dark sort of humour).

Thursday morning I awoke to a mysterious dripping sound, which I reported later, from work, to whoever was in charge of the building in the manager's absence. When I got home, I saw that he had helpfully placed a 5-gallon pail beneath the drip, which freed up the container I had originally put there so that I could use it under a second leak.

The paint on the wall developed an impressive blister as water welled up between it and the drywall, and worked its way downward alarmingly quickly. Luckily it burst itself before it got halfway to the floor, and the carpet sponged everything up very neatly.

I did speak to the actual building manager on my lunchbreak next day; she explained that they had had to open up the walls and take up the carpet. I was a little afraid of what I might find at home that evening, but it had not devolved into too sorry a state:

The walls are much more intact than I was led to believe. The billowing carpet is a little unsettling, but the workers barely pried into my belongings while relocating everything into random other locations. If I squint slightly and look at the fans out of the corner of my eye, they almost seem slightly soothing, which is fortunate since they need to be on 24/7 until Monday.

Between the noise, the bits of plaster all over, the gaping holes in the wall, the wintry industrial-grade breeze, the heap of furniture and other possessions tetrised into the living room, and the unrelated problem of ants everywhere, my apartment is really not a hospitable place at the moment.

On the other hand, the guy I reported the leak to in the first place noticed the ants "all over the kitchen counters" so they'll invite an exterminator to the party. I'll be glad to have that cleared up, though I'm not sure I believe it was as infested as that. I'm the one who squashes ants all day, after all, and I've never seen more than 5 on the counter at once, which I don't classify as "all over."

The silveriest lining is that the drone of the fan drowns out the guy upstairs, who acquired an electric guitar several months ago. While he demonstrates a complete lack of musical understanding (i.e. he thinks that the louder he amplifies it, the more it qualifies as music), I have to commend him for practicing constantly in an effort to perfect his technique. I've recreated a sample of his playing, and would be happy to provide a transcription if anybody is interested:


Back to the apartment invasion: I figured that they would probably also notice that the new "low-flow" toilet (which they recently installed as part of a building-wide conversion) runs 100% of the time, and would want to extend the invasion by another week or two to fix that. So, I finally took the 2 minutes necessary to glance into the tank and fix it myself, which on retrospect would have eliminated the annoying filling sound for the past few months, but also increased the amount of electric guitar audible in my suite. Life in this apartment is such a paradox.

February Day Rant

UH OH, a holiday celebrating families. Rant time.

Today was the second annual Family Day statutory holiday in BC (why we are different from the rest of the country is beyond me). This morning I was in line at the coffee shop near my house, and the fellow in front of me struck up a fairly one-sided conversation (because anyone who thinks I want to participate in social interaction when I'm not in customer-service-mode is gravely mistaken). In the midst of similarly bizarre utterances: "What do you think about having a holiday today? Do you like it? I guess nobody complains about a holiday."

No indeed. In truth, though, this holiday rankles with me. In fact, it's a pretty uninclusive week for those of us who are muddling through life on our own.

It isn't that I'm necessarily envious of what other people have that I don't. Maybe someday I'll find a very special guy, and we will mutually tolerate each other to a high degree. I hope so. But in the meantime, I'm happily single; I do what I want, go where I want, and these days focus on doing what makes me happy. I surround myself with fantastic friends, and have enjoyed as fulfilled a life as I could hope for (and of course still going strong).

But family (that is, the lack thereof) has started to become a thorn in my side. Here's a brief tour of the damage:

Less Bread, More Taxes

Usually my January resolutions for the year to come involve some sort of halfhearted attempt to "eat more healthily." It's a nice ideal and I support the theory behind it. The only problem is that usually that's as far as it goes, with me. Just an ideal that I can feel good about having.

But not this year!

In recent years, every time I go home to visit my family for Christmas or other vacations, I am always surprisingly migraine-free. This winter I took an entire pharmacy with me, medications for sinus congestion, anti-nausea, pain, emergency triptans. I didn't use a single one.

At first I thought maybe it was my parents' new air purifier that made the difference, and resolved to get one for myself. But then, while researching this year's annual healthy-diet-resolution, I started to become suspicious that I had overlooked something rather simple. My sister-in-law has celiac, and because the whole family congregates at holidays, all the edibles are largely gluten-free.

Not having an actual doctor, I consulted my friend Reddit, who usually supplies the kind of anecdotal evidence that is actually useful. Sure enough, things that people have noticed improvement in when eliminating gluten: migraines, chronic sinusitis, nausea, depression, moodiness, lethargy, tiredness. You know, me.

It was worth a try, and within just a couple days my sinusitis was totally gone and hasn't returned. Migraines aren't a daily threat anymore. I'm not queasy 100% of the time anymore. I don't need daily naps after work, and I don't need to spend my Saturdays huddled in bed cradling an ice pack under my head. Just hoping this is actually the solution I've been looking for.

Too Much Information

2013. And I thought the year before had been a rollercoaster. Looking back, 2013 had some pretty ridiculous highs and lows, and both ends of the spectrum ended up changing the course of my life.

But right now, I'm only going to talk about the lows. Right now is going to be a truthful glimpse into my mind. I'd turn back if I were you.

December

December was Christmas month, as is frequently the case. I headed back to Saskatchewan for a snowy holiday, skilfully evading the storms that delayed the whole country's travel plans like a seasoned mariner navigating fjords (or something; don't expect a good ocean-related simile from me, I only recently learned to not despise the sea). I spent Christmas Day flying, but that turned out to be a pretty great day to travel.

I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I love seeing my family and being on the farm, but I always struggle with a host of more unpleasant emotions that usually culminate in an impressive cocktail featuring guilt and inadequacy. But this has been an annual tradition for some time, and I've learned to take it on the chin. Whatever that means.

December was otherwise uneventful. The calm before the storm.

Edit: tired of this monthly post thing. not going to happen anymore.

November Adventures

November wasn't marked by any single major events like the past few months have been, but it was still one of the bigger months of the year.

The biggest news of the month is that I quit my job at the VCM and have started working at UVic. Some kind of career change or positive move has been an idea I've tossed around for a long time, and although there is a lot about my old job that I loved and miss, I really couldn't hope for a better opportunity than this. I'm glad I was able to get an interview at UVic; I knew it would be no trouble to wow them in person with my incredible poise and self-confidence.

Okay, so I distinctly lack poise and self-confidence. But they ended up overlooking that, so it worked out all right.

In the few days between jobs, I went to Vancouver with fellow NIN fan @ectobot for the concert. Taking the ferry seems like a mini-cruise—at least on the initial sailing. I head straight for the buffet, which I guess is what makes it seem most like a cruise. The trip back is always a little excruciating. Fortunately, they added unscheduled sailings both days, so we didn't have to wait around too terribly long. The concert itself was fantastic, as expected. Along with getting to visit a couple stellar Vancouver-based friends, in all it was a super trip.


Not too long after that, we went to the Vinyl Cafe Christmas Show, which I'm insistent upon making an annual tradition. The show was even more fun than last year, if possible.

So now I'm busy with work, learning all the new things that come with a new job, trying to remember a portion of the new people I meet every day, dealing with my own and other people's mixed feelings about the change. When I'm not at work, lately I've been coping with an onslaught of medication side effects, compounded by persistent problems like migraines, sinusitis, and other delights.  The whole ordeal leaves me with little time or energy to do anything other than cower in bed. It's like I'm 22 again.

October is Saskatchewan Month

Right on the heels of my last trip, October is Saskatchewan month. This was my 5th trip in under 11 months (3 of those being international) which is very atypical for me.

More accurately, October is Thanksgiving month, but I've wanted to get back to Saskatchewan during the fall for several years now. There's just nothing like the gold of aspens on the prairies in autumn, or the burnt orange of pea stubble after harvest. And there's nothing like family at Thanksgiving.

Plus there are cats:

Autumn has always been my favourite season, and it was glorious to spend some time in a place where it's so vividly showcased. It always takes me a while to find it, but my tree is still alive and well :)

September is Las Vegas Month

Well September has long passed, but I've been severely lacking in inertia and haven't gotten around to writing until now. But September needs writing about, for September is Las Vegas Month.

Gotta admit, I really enjoy going to Vegas. I love the spectacle, and the soundtrack that accompanies you down the Strip, and the shows and the round-the-clockedness. I love the power I feel at traveling by myself, and the genuine contentedness I take back home with me after a trip with no objectives other than leisure. I love becoming completely nocturnal, and eating gelato for breakfast at 7pm or cheesecake and coffee at 4am. I love mingling with friendly strangers, and chatting with the bartender (who kindly let me stay hours past closing), and strolling in the night air without having to wear a jacket. Most of all I love the chance to hang out with one of my very favourite people.



One of the few things I don't like is the slow moving, counter intuitive, frustratingly unpredictable pedestrian traffic. I walk at a pretty good clip and invariably found myself behind a daisy chain of waddling packs, more often than not teetering for miles down the strip on stilettos. I don't know if it was deliberate, but every single couple seemed to walk as far as humanly possible apart from each other while still holding hands—and had the uncanny habit of weaving to cut you off if you tried to skirt around them. Seriously, it was like they had all set their armspan to /range 10.

On the other hand, some guy actually ran out of his store in the Fashion Show Mall, chased me down, and said he thought I must be European from the way I walked and dressed. Shrug. Harmless accosting happened pretty frequently actually, which is what I get for wandering around alone.

I didn't end up seeing any Cirque du Soleil shows this trip, but did catch Blue Man again and had a pretty awesome seat for it.

I wore these boots 100% of the time I was there... and we're talking extensive striding from one end of the strip to the other in 40ºC desert heat. The boots were a pretty big gamble considering I bought them the day before I went, but my feet were resilient the whole trip so it was definitely a more successful gamble than anything I achieved in video poker.

August is Birthday Month

[Second installment in the new monthly Thing of the Month series]

Most people who know me a little will probably tell you that I hate birthdays, and in a lot of the most ubiquitous ways it's true: I don't like the typical spammy Facebook wall of variously iterated "happy bdays"; I don't like the begrudging work posse who gather around a hastily assembled card and scatter the very instant that tact allows; I don't even like a simply and dutifully uttered "happy birthday" from most people.

Some people can appreciate this overwhelmth of polite sentiments, which is pretty admirable to me. But I also don't like how most greetings are accompanied by an insincere "how are you" whose answer is often left unheard or unwanted—and this is what "happy birthday" feels, to me, like it is becoming. I want my birthday wishes to be heartfelt and all the more special for their rarity. But I do want it to be special.

August may have been one of my lowest points yet,  but I'm grateful for super friends who took the time to make my birthday feel special—even (or  maybe especially) if they didn't even realize they were doing so.

When I was in high school, I had a tiny little tiger finch. We'd leave his cage door open so he could fly around the house whenever he wanted, and he loved to sit among the plants in the living room, look out the picture window, and sing about what he saw. Sometimes in the summer, we'd hang his cage out on the deck so he could feel the warm summer breeze and mingle with the goldfinches who clustered at a nearby feeder.

One day we hung his cage outside without noticing that the cage door was still open, and he flew away. It's a large farm with any number of predators; although I despaired of ever seeing him again, I spent the whole afternoon searching, cage in hand, in the hope that familiarity would entice him (even though he wasn't particularly tame and was certainly terrified whenever I had to handle him). I didn't find him.

The next morning, though, I looked out on the deck to see him back inside his cage, enthusiastically eating seeds. I guess he felt free enough in the home that sheltered him.