Broken Shit and Animals

 

As I write this Ghost and I are speeding through the Manitoba wilderness back to the grand city of Winnipeg!  Well, sort of.  While we are heading through the Manitoba wilderness and back to the grand city of Winnipeg there is of the less speeding more…moving.  With some stopping.  And the occasional going backwards!

We’re traveling back from Churchill via one of the two methods of moving between Churchill and Winnipeg; flying or training.  We are training it up.  This is a first time experience for both off us so we were pretty stoked to get onto the train and see what the trip is like. We’re in sleeper berths as the ride is 45 hours long and we decided sitting in a chair that entire time would be nothing short of hell-ish.  The beds, at least mine is, are quite comfy and according to the attendant, they are the largest ones on the train. 

Watching the Manitoba wilderness pass by is interesting.  Leaving Churchill we got lots of the expected flat, flat, flat barren swamp.  When I fell asleep last night the scenery had developed a few more trees but it was still WYDRAFAW flat (my fancy acronym for watch your dog run away for a week.  Aren’t I clever?).  The scenery this morning has developed to bumpy with tall, plentiful trees but is still most definitely wet, wet, wet. Manitoba should win some sort of award for this much water.  Or, we should just keep this in mind next time Alberta has a drought, come  and siphon it up. Still too far out for phone service (I checked) but I think we have a stop today in somewhere called Thompson and maybe I’ll be able to connect to the far away world then.

I just realized I didn’t explain my whole “moving, with some stopping”.  Apparently, in order for the train to not literally fly off the rails, we can only do a certain speed.  That speed is under 100km/hour. Sometimes we are heading along nicely and others we slow to a crawl.  Last night we stopped a few times, (don’t know why), and then would back up a bit and start again.  This reminded me of a story Ghost told me his dad told him about POWs in WWII.  The story goes that the POWs from Europe (or wherever.  Not Canada) were being transported via train across Canada to an encampment in Alberta.  Because Canada is so massive, the train ride took a while and the POWs swore that during the night, the train had to be being backed up.  I never really think about how big Canada is until I travel across it, but last night I started laughing when they put the train into reverse.

Speaking of reverse, I am going to take this story about our adventures and back it up a bit, specifically to yesterday when Ghost and I got to…(pause for dramatic affect) play with beluga whales!!!  It was awesome.  We were taken out on kayaks onto the Churchill river and paddled around while these gorgeous and rather funny, creatures came and bumped into the kayak, tailed the kayak, played with our paddles and splorfed water at us (splorf being the sound they make when they surface and blow air/water at you from their blow hole).  Ghost and I also discovered that when the guide says “feel free to go explore” she means “eh, tourists.  They won’t go that far.”  They sent the zodiac that accompanies the group out after us to tell us we had gone way too far.  Apparently they were not expecting people to be that successful at paddling.

This would be one of the whales about two feet from our kayak.

 

A slightly odd shot of looking down the whale's blow hole, but a good example of how close they got.  The yellow thing is the kayak.

The day before, Ghost and I rented a truck and headed out of town to go find a downed cargo plane called Miss Piggy, named because she carried pigs and because of her large carrying capacity.  The guide book says that on a landing she developed engine troubles and had to land amongst the rocks (where she is still sitting).  For those (myself) who are worried about dead people still sitting strapped to the seats, their eye sockets staring at all who trespass, haunting their dreams with their cries of grief at the lost chance in life….will be pleased to know that the plane landed without a casualty! 

We found the plane about twenty kilometres out.  We parked and then hiked the kilometre in to see it.  This is something, that apparently due to the risk of bears, one should not do without a gun. Being the left-wing people we are, we lacked a gun.  Thankfully we did not make the morning news as “those eaten tourists”.  The plane was exceptionally creepy and Ghost got to enjoy me being super wigged out and “not wanting to go any closer, isn’t this close enough, it’s really creepy!” He, wisely, did not listen to my protestings and we got close enough to take some awesome pictures and walk around it.  

Creepy-ass plane. 

Churchill is a weird place.  The tourist attractions seem to be, as Ghost put it “broken shit and animals."  Along the gravel highway that we were driving there are attractions like old broken plane, potential sighting of bears, old broken ship, adult Canadian eskimo dogs (we got to pat them.  They were cool) and old broken satellite thingy.  Broken shit also comes with its own lustrous art like the penis-dragon.  This is why this blog is adult content.  Penis-dragon.

 

Penis-dragon.

Churchill was definitely interesting.  The locals vary in how much they say you should worry about the bears, so use your brain.  Probably not a good idea to wander outside of the town but inside seems to be fine.  At least in August.  I’m not speaking for October-November.  That’s something else.  Oh be warned.  Shit be expensive in Churchill as everything has to get shipped up.  $10 for 4 litres of milk and gas at $2.16/litre.  Oh yeah.  Good times.  Beer is nice and cheap though, as it’s government regulated, so I say skip the milk, drink the beer.  

If you are considering a Churchill trip I would aim for about three days.  Seems to be the right amount of time to comfortably see stuff.  Where we stayed, Don and Hiromi’s Polar Bear B&B, has better rates than the hostel and they are really nice and the place is insanely clean, so go there (I’m pretty sure Hiromi sneaks in during the day and cleans.  It’s little things, like the top of the desk shining).  Do one of the animal tours, depending on when you are going to be there.  And go see the broken shit.  While broken, it is still pretty cool.  And, penis-dragon!  On that mature note, I will leave you and return to watching trees go by.

*this was written while on the train from Churchill to Winnipeg and I did not get internet until three days later, so it's a little out of date.*

Quaint But Not Diverse

The title of this post is in reference to something Ghost (husband, formerly Fiance for those of you keeping track) read.  It was a description to some place saying that it was "Quaint and Diverse".  After he read that he began to question whether something could be quaint and diverse. According to the all mighty online free dictionary (too lazy to go find a Websters) quaint means charmingly odd, unique, especially in an old fashioned way.  I would like to add in "small" as after discussion we decided that quaint generally refers to something small, unique and charming.  We also decided, post discussion, that quaint did not include "diverse" as it seems to generally be describing one specific thing like "oh look, isn't that a quaint old house?" or "oh look, aren't those old people spewing racist profanity quaint?". Quaint, but not diverse.

Ghost and I are currently into day four or five of our honeymoon, during which we are exploring Canada.  As I write this we are in Churchill, Manitoba.  So far we've been to Calgary, where we got to see the leftovers of the flood, Regina, where we encountered flat, watch-your-dog-run-away-for-a-week-prairies and Winnipeg, where we encountered what Winnipegians (Winnipeggers?) called a shopping mall, that turned out to be a Toys-R-Us and a beer store.  So after listening to the enthusiasm of little kids in the store you can enjoy a refreshing, pick-me-up beverage!  I call it well placed marketing.

What is quite neat is how massive Canada is.  To get from Winnipeg in southern Manitoba, to Churchill, 20 or so km south of Nunavut, one must cross a distance of 1700 km.  That's within one province.  You have two options; flying or train, as there is no highway that connects the two places.  We chose to fly up and we are taking the train back in a couple of days.  As we taxied down, we got a glimpse of why there is no highway.  Do you remember the aerial shot from the Lord of the Rings movie, when Sam, Frodo and Gollum are moving through the dead marshes?  It looked a lot like that.

(This photo stinks as an example but kind of like that.  Water everywhere)

 Just a little more green and with the occasional pine tree standing proud.  The trees here are barren on one side from the wind.  It's kind of impressive.

We landed around 2:30 this afternoon, got off the twin propeller plane

Twin Propeller Plane.  It was cool.

and immediately were hit with the wind.  Churchill has apparently decided that it should mimic the British Isles in weather with just a touch more rain.  It does make for a very active Hudson's Bay and it is pretty cool to see the waves come crashing into the massive rocks.  It's also fun to watch the ducks ride the crests of the waves and really not care when they get swallowed up.  Sadly, we weren't able to take a photo of that.

That white stuff is water.

We're staying at a cute little B&B called the Polar Bear B&B and the theme here seems to be yellow.  Yellow walls, yellow bed spread, yellow doors etc.  But we have a lovely room with desk, beds, drawers, access to tea and a kettle, we can adjust the heating if it gets too cold and there are bicycles outside that we can play around with should we so choose.  Verdict is cozy, especially with the weather outside the way it is.  As we were walking to dinner, I commented to Ghost that I was pretty sure that I was going to take flight any second now.

Interestingly enough, we ran into some dogs who could not care less that the wind coming in should be downing power lines.  Outside of the Arctic Trading Post, or whatever it is called, are two Eskimo dog puppies and behind it, a kennel with a bunch of younger ones.  They are all insanely cute and once you pet them you can tell why they are able to sleep comfortably in this wind.  Honestly, as I told Ghost, I am surprised that people haven't been marketing their fur for warmth.  That stuff is thick!

PUPPIES!

Hopefully the wind dies down before we leave and we get to go kayak out onto the water and see the beluga whales. And even if not, we're off tomorrow to go find a former rocket testing site and a downed plane (and potentially polar bears).  

(With regards to my previous ramblings about quaint but not diverse, the arctic trading post is a prime example.  Definitely quaint with a wood burning stove, made in house moccasins and carved ivory earrings, but certainly not diverse.  And maybe even a bit ethically sketchy.  But still not diverse)

Sing It Mary Hopkins

Facebook, in spite of all of the grumbling about all of its issues and copyright and possession of photos and censorship, does have one fabulous part; you can use it to stroll down memory lane and look at yourself five, six years back.  It's kind of interesting to see, at least to me, what I was doing, who I was talking with, what I was saying, and what was important to me at sixteen.  That being said, it is true that what goes on the internet stays there.  Amidst the old photos of me dancing, me and my ex and me and my pets, there was a photo that I really wasn't sure how to feel about it.  It's a picture of me naked as part of an article done by a British teen magazine.  The article was on living at a naturist park (or nudist) and my experiences of growing up with that lifestyle.  You can't see anything exciting in the photo as naturally it was all very coy but you can definitely tell that I am naked. It's on my Facebook because a friend of mine saw it on the interwebs and posted it to my wall.

Luckily for me, it's not an issue that that photo came up but it did surprise me to see that on my Facebook wall and realize that pretty much anyone can find it.  My only regret is that I did not have time to wash my hair before the photo shoot and I can tell that it's slightly greasy.  Also the old bicycle that is in the picture.   Yeesh that thing is a piece of junk.  I am ashamed to be seen with it!

I did run into a couple of other things that were interesting in my Facebook-memory-lane-stroll besides naked photos.  I found a lot of pictures of myself and my now husband (we were dance partners) and it makes me smile to see us so close even back in our late teens.  I also found a lot of photos and notes and wall posts that involved myself and a person I used to be very close to.  We knew each other from two onwards and after we got past the fighting like demons phase we spent several years swapping boy stories, teasing each other, exploring the world of puberty and growing up together and eventually sharing the experiences of dating.  I can't remember who exactly I came out to first but I'm pretty sure she was one of the first people I did nervously tell. 

Seeing these photos on Facebook is strange because seeing them, I remember the various stories of what was happening at the time.  There is one of us dyeing her hair which happened just after she had just been dumped and we were trying to do something fun and distracting. There is another one of the two of us at my graduation and subsequent party afterwards and I remember her helping me as I struggled to deal with moving away and my disintegrating relationship with my now ex. 

It's weird seeing these photos and remembering the emotion behind them because I haven't spoken to her in over a year and two months ago, I ended up not inviting her to my wedding, something that at sixteen I could never have believed would happen.

We didn't have a big fight, or a major blow out, just a loss of connection.  I lived in another province for a year and when I came back I moved in with my to-be husband and I began my first year of university.  This girl, now young woman, and I got together a couple of times but each time it felt like we had very little to say to each other.  We were growing up and our lives were moving very rapidly in different directions.  I was in university and living with my partner.  She was working on starting her career in tattoo artistry and was discovering dance clubs.  I didn't like the noise or expense of clubs (still don't.  Minus gay bars) and I hated the idea of wearing tiny clothing and getting hit on by strange men.  I was trying to save and was worried about finances whereas she still had the luxury of living with her parents and was able to be free of that concern.

I suppose I envied her somewhat.  She was able to dress up and make herself up and look extremely attractive and was able to go out and be free of monetary concerns.  I wanted to stay in and was tired and busy due to being in classes all day and then having homework in the evenings.

We stopped getting in touch with each other.  It was a lack of effort on both parts and four months ago when I was figuring out my end of wedding invites I chose not to invite her.  I am sure she knows that I got married; Facebook is very incriminating that way and I know she knows that I was engaged.

Yesterday I realized that she turned 21 at the beginning of July and I creeped her Facebook profile and saw her with her boyfriend and I saw that she had gotten a sleeve tattoo.  I don't know what it was about seeing that tattoo but for some reason it made me think a great deal about the passage of time and changes that come with growing up.

I used to hear people say that once you got out of highschool you'd find out who your real friends were.  For me, it wasn't the end of highschool but the removal of the constant presence of parents.  Since moving out three years ago I've had a couple close relationships fail and I have found that exploring these waters of adult relationships (not meaning sexual here, by the way) has been almost more tricky than anything that I dealt with in the mess of junior high.  There are no safeguarding parents that can step in when the going gets too rough, there is no guidebook on how best to proceed when things go in a way you never expected. 

As my Dad used to tell me, the only constant thing is change and as I explore change and do things like not invite old friends to my wedding I learn about the definitiveness of consequences.  Though I do have Facebook tracking some of my progress (I do try to keep the most incriminating stuff off of it) and in a few years I can use it once again as blog posting fodder to reminisce about where I have come from.

Shot Thing

I have a tumblr account!  That's right.  I gave in.  It's the same name, meridaandherarrows, just instead of .blogspot.com it's .tumblr.com.  Easy peezy.  To make it even easier, http://meridaandherarrows.tumblr.com/.  There. 

It's just my comics but I figured it was an easier way to share them.  As of tomorrow there will be new ones so hold horses on any complaining about them being repeats.

That is all for now, as I have stuff to go clean.  Ghost and I got married and moved all within a month.  Result is that our shit is still everywhere in our new place.  But the new place is awesome.  So yay to that.  Also we're married. 

Suit Shopping

Fair warning to all readers: I am currently downing a beer on an empty stomach.  If midway through this things get wonky, well, I am blaming Lead Dog Ale and it's tastiness.

With that out of the way let's get onto today's topic: suit shopping!  Friend, Fiance and I went suit shopping (for Fiance.  For our wedding.  That may be obvious but meh.)  Friend is fairly knowledgeable about suits and I like seeping knowledge from people so I tagged along and skulked amongst the suits admiring.

We started off at the Bay.  They are fun.  We wandered in and began inspecting various suits.  At one point we had a drive-by-salesing.  This is where the salesperson asks us if we need help, Friend starts to explain what's up and salesperson says "Ok, I can help" and flees.  It was actually pretty funny.  We did not see hide nor hair of him for our rest of the time in that store.

Not finding anything there that did not fit Fiance weirdly we headed off to Holt Renfrew.  Holt Renfrew also amuses me but for different reasons.  Ever seen the prices on their jeans?  Or their hand bags locked down to the counter?  Any time I am in there I start laughing.  I am a Value Village, occasionally other places when there is a sale, girl.  Anyways, Holt Renfrew.  Here had an actual saleperson.  Which was nice.  He introduced us to a couple of suit jackets but once again nothing really worked.  They did have a number of things that were garishly orange.  Or checkered.  There seemed to be an interesting cross of hick and hipster.  Mmmm.  Yeah, no.

We next ended up at Henry Singer.  First off, it is fancy.  Dark wood, suits, couches.  Fancy. I liked it..  I felt like I should have a smoking jacket and a glass of Scotch.  Here we met Robbie.  He was fun.  Eager.  Flamboyant.  A drama minor.  And really good at his job.  He chatted with us about what we were looking for, the occasion, eyed up Fiance and boom!  Began producing suits that fit.  And  that looked AMAZING. 

Friend made the mistake of telling me that he thought Robbie was cute and so I began making sure to step aside and allow the two of them to flirt.  It was super cute as Friend got all red and I got to tease him afterwards.  But back to the suits!

One was found that was a lovely charcoal, somehow made Fiance looked taller and quite frankly, I was wondering if I could jump him in the dressing room.  I figured that would be on the inappropriate so I just took to staring at him creepily and making "num num" sounds. 

 

I am very excited to see what Fiance will look like on our wedding day.  Also, I want a suit that is that fabulous.  Clearly I need the ability to swap between genders physically so that I fit a men's suit and go get fitted.  And look equally handsome.  Suit shopping was so much better than dress shopping.

Afternoon

2 Easy Steps for A Splendid Afternoon

Les Adventures de Tintin

Earlier this week Fiance and I watched Tintin the movie and holy crap!  As a lover of the comics I was nervous sitting down to watch the film.  Super curious, but nervous.  I was scared they were going to horribly wreck and abuse the wonderful Herge stories of childhood (and, to be honest, stories of my present hood).

But they didn't, which means I don't have to write another angry letter to Peter Jackson (I'm very annoyed about certain things in the Hobbit).  In fact, the care that Spielberg and Jackson put into this film made me insanely happy.  They decided to combine three stories into one, The Crab with the Golden Claw, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure and they did so seamlessly.  It gave them the opening to have Tintin meet Captain Haddock and at the same time, enjoy the fun and beauty of North Africa.  The inclusion of the Milanese Nightingale made me squee with delight.  Poor Fiance; he is not as familiar with Tintin as I am and so he had to put up with me squeeing about little gems (at the begging of the film, there is a man drawing Tintin's portrait.  Not only does he produce the Herge portrait of Tintin but behind Tintin are the portraits of various other characters) and commenting on changes to the story.

Thankfully Fiance enjoyed the film as well and didn't just have to spend 90 minutes beside an over-excited fan.

The first thing he got very excited about was the CGI.  Some critics have said that the film crosses into the uncanny valley but the wasn't the experience for either of us.  The movements of the characters were very smooth and the animation of their expressions and mouths as they spoke did not feel uncomfortable.  The animation kept the cartoon feel of Herge's stories and allowed for the bending of physics and what would actually kill a human.  For example, Captain Haddock's parachute gets caught in the blade of a propeller at one point and we watch the Captain fly around and around.  It's fun, but as mentioned, bends what would actually kill a human.

And Snowy!  I was very excited to meet the hyper-intelligent, adorable sidekick of Tintin.  Snowy is based on a fox terrier and in the comics has his own thoughts and commentaries on what is happening around him.  Sadly, that was not kept in the film but Snowy stilled reined supreme in being extremely agile, humorous, and cute.

This movie was definitely made with the feel of Indiana Jones for kids, something I had never really thought of as Tintin being, prior to this film.  I suppose it is true though, only Tintin is pretty much asexual and I don't think he ever kills anyone.  Still with that in mind, it was entertaining to hear the John Williams Indiana-esque music and see Tintin and Captain Haddock racing through an exotic city on motor bikes with a tank following them.  It made me laugh.

If you are a fan of the Tintin books, I do recommend checking this movie out.  It's a great deal of fun to see these characters come to life.  Even if you aren't familiar with the Tintin books I recommend this movie.  It's a lot of fun (and then you should check out the Tintin books as they are so very much awesome).  This movie is available on Netflix, which is where we found it.  Good movie for a Friday night when you want something light and fun with a cute, spunky dog.