Remember That Time...?

... that I started a blog and then proceeded to go to Europe and forget all about it? (Except to really briefly in the fall promise to start posting again?)

I am actually the actual worst.

I am also a queen of hyperbole.

I really should delete all of those previous messages and pretend to start fresh and like I'm an amazing blogger. But I won't.

I just won't disppear on y'all this time. Let's finally follow through on a project that I start and become not the actual worst.

And as an apology, here's a picture of a puppy in a cup. (Apparently that is a legit search term...)

Sometimes My Life Gets Busy

And that's when I decide I want to blog.

Because A) busy times give me stuff to write about.

B) It allows me to settle my thoughts somewhere and really gives me a touchstone in a world of craziness. It gives me a place where I can direct my emotions rather than letting them explode out into the world, possibly in an inappropriate venue. If I don't funnel my inner being into witty prose, I might just cry at work... and you know that I can't be doing that. Unless it's in my car.

C) One of my very favourite bloggers Lindsey at Happy or Hungry once wrote about how she had never been in better shape than when she was blogging about her food/exercise on the daily and I want a little bit of that healthy living glory.

or D) I'm a masochist.

I'll leave it up to you to decide, my lovely readers.

Anyway, I don't really have a topic for today's post - I have to save my topic ideas for future blog fodder! (Keep a look out for hi-LAR-ious stories, pictures of my food, adventures in healthy eating/exercise, ruminations on being a twenty-something and going through a second adolescence, crowd-sourcing on all things and every thing.... Really, I'm offering everything that is wrong in the world of blogging. But it should be fun anyway.)

And in the meantime, some gifs!

I spend too much time watching Star Trek when I should be doing things like making the upper floor of my house appropriate for company. I also think Patrick Stewart is just so sexy.

Most Exciting Large Amount of Money Spent Ever!

I don’t often make big purchases. I like to spend a lot of money over many smaller purchases so that I think I’m spending less money than I am.

My delusions work for me.

Anyway, today I spent a large amount of money and it was very very exciting because…

I booked a plane ticket to London!

I randomly have been scheduled for 14 days off at the end of March. (My work schedule is very strange, it moves all over the place so 14 days off in a row, while surprising, is not entirely unexpected. I needed March 30 off for a girls trip to Banff and ended up with the 13 days surrounding that date off.. I only have to use 3 of my vacation days to do this!)

Anyway, I felt like if I had that time off, I needed to do something with it and travelling by myself is exactly what the doctor ordered right now. I’m still a little up in the air and crazy thanks to the drama I’ve been alluding to, so I definitely need to get re-centered in myself right now. I usually think I’m awesome (my brother always tells me not to tell people that) so I need to engrain that in myself right now.

I’ll be gone for 10 days total, so I’m thinking I’ll do Paris and London. I have always always wanted to go to England so I’m sure I could spend the whole time there, but I think I need to mix it up a little.

I also am dying for advice – what to bring, how to avoid being murdered, what not to miss – so now is the time for anyone and everyone to pipe in! I know people love to talk about travelling so I want to take advantage of that fact over the next month. I’m especially interested in people who have travelled alone, but I want to talk to all y’all!!

“I've got {blank} in my bedroom” Decoded

Now, I am not going to pretend to be an expert on the male psyche. In fact, I am probably the further thing you can be from an expert. I think that literally every guy who has ever liked me or come onto me has taken me by surprise. I’m always like “Whaaat? You’re kissing me? There were literally no signs leading up to this at all, especially not when you told me I looked fantastic the other night. Or when we went out to dinner. This is a shocking development!”

Yep. I’m clearly outrageously intuitive.

However, in my series of misadventures and missing hints, there is one thing I have learned.

If a guy invites you into his bedroom to see something, it’s because he wants to kiss you. It doesn’t matter what that thing is. It doesn’t matter if he actually kisses you… maybe he lost his nerve, he still wanted to. It doesn’t matter if it’s this…



… it’s because he wants to kiss you. (Ryan Gosling probably doesn’t need an excuse to get girls into his room, but he’s so classy that I’d like to think he’d come up with a semi-justifiable reason.)

Seriously though. It’s a good line. Check it. Here’s a list of things that have gotten me to check out someone’s room:

~ a projector
~ a photo collage
~ the fact that he had a sheet instead of a door
~ a plant
~ plaid shirts
~ and, yes, two full-length mirrors

In case anyone was wondering, my bedroom has two closets in it. I plan to use that as a selling point someday to see if this line works when the shoe’s on the other foot...

"Hey boy. I've got two closets in my bedroom. You wanna see them?"

Killer.

Barre and Bar

Friday was another jam-packed and awesome day. Actually, Friday was probably one of the best days I’ve had in a long time.

Again, it started pretty early – though not nearly as early as Wednesday – because my roommate, Tara, and I went to a Ballet Barre class at Barre Body Studio!!

If you haven’t heard of it before, Barre mixes together traditional barre exercises from ballet with pilates – it’s a lot of low-impact, light-weight, heavy-repetition exercises and oh my god is it hard! I was sweating by the end of class and shocked by the fact I was sweating. I mean, I danced all through school and so I thought it would be a piece of cake but let me tell you, I was mistaken. On some of the sequences, I could see my leg muscles just vibrating in the mirror!

I absolutely loved it. It was difficult (my thighs are still a little bit sore two days later) but I was utterly jazzed afterwards. I bought the introductory unlimited first two weeks and am planning on going almost every day. I’m pretty sure I liked it better than yoga.

So, what are two fabulous roommates to do after a great workout? Go to the bar that night and make all that work completely redundant, of course!

(Though first I risked life, limb and food poisoning by eating week-old chicken coconut soup for lunch. There was no gross smell and I didn’t want to waste food, so I ate it. I’m still standing so I think it was all fine.)

Anyway, that evening, Tara and I got all dolled up and headed off to Craft Beer Market. I have a love-hate relationship with that bar. I always try to go there on my birthday and it always lets me down… generally by being too busy. The last year, half my friends couldn’t get in because it was too packed and that made me angry-drunk. This year, my family planned to go there for dinner so my dad and I headed over right after work at about 4:00 pm… and we couldn’t get a table because there was a 200 person reservation and it was too packed. Clearly, when it comes to my birthday, Craft is cursed.


{Me and Tara, kind of dolled up, but mostly just in need of matte powder in the Mayan Riviera in 2012}

When it came to Friday night, though, Craft was awesome! We drank Wild Rose Wraspberry, discovered blueberry red bull, ate an amazing prosciutto and arugula pizza and stalked hit on guys.

Craft is always crazy busy, so we ended up sharing a table with two random guys (one of whom was very outgoing, the other of whom seemed to only listen to approximately a third of the words that came out of my mouth). They were friendly, but a little bit odd and we ran into an awkward moment where we were chatting with a girl we had known in junior high, one of the guys did something odd, she said “Sorry about the awkward boyfriends” and we blurted out “No no, we don’t know these guys, they just sat down!” So subtle. On the other hand, they flat out refused to let us pay for our dinner and allowed us to run away to hang out at the bar, so how can you complain, really? And I told them an amazing story about one of the most hilarious days of my life, so they were entertained for a good half hour by my antics.

I very very rarely actively pursue guys. I just send vibes out into the universe and the guys I am interested in come to me… or something like that. So, if ever I like a guy and he is ambivalent towards me, I am going to have a ridiculous series of misadventures trying to hit on him, I am sure. Because I will have no idea what I am doing, as witnessed by the following exchange:

Me: I’m sure you’re getting hit on a lot tonight.

Him: Oh? How come?

Me: Because you’re very tall and wearing a blazer.

Yes. Apparently that is my criteria. Tall and blazer wearing. Whatever. He was charmed by me.

Possibly because I am short and was also wearing a blazer. And a bustier. Maybe more so the bustier than the blazer…

Busy Like A Bee

That’s been me lately! (Though, are bees actually that busy? Most of the ones I’ve seen just hang out on flowers, not even hopping from one to the next… Anyway! Focus, Erin!) I’m coming off the most crazy but awesome four days and the blogging definitely suffered. As it generally does when life happens. I obviously need to work on dedicating time to the blogging (instead of playing Collapse on my laptop) or get some posts queued up or something. But in the meantime? You get a re-cap of the first two busy days!

I want to try to split this up for ease of reading. And getting that giant picture of me off the main page! I tried to re-size it, but apparently the interwebz are having none of that.

Wednesday
Wednesday began bright and early (before 7 am!!) when I headed into the Medicine Hat railyard to do some training and get as much done as possible before I took off to head back to Calgary at noon. And why did I leave at noon? Even though my job requires me to include my travel time (from home to location or vice versa) in my work hours, taking off halfway through the day seems a little bit excessive for a just over 3 hour drive.

But it was very very necessary because Wednesday was my dad’s retirement party!!! My dad actually worked for the same company as I do and he recently retired after 35 years of service so of course the company had to throw him a party! In his speech, my dad said that when he added it all up he’s had 17 different jobs and we’ve moved 7 times for the railway – we even moved right before my senior year of high school. The party was definitely warranted.



(My dad giving his speech!)

It was at Belgo in downtown Calgary – a restaurant where I have never been before but during the party they walked around with tiny grilled cheese sandwich appies so they are more than in my good books now! I also got a free glass of wine. And my dad gave a very lovely speech where he individually thanked all of his closest friends or mentors and told everyone how proud he was of his family (us!!) who joined him on his years of railway journey. We all almost cried. (And by “we all”, I mean myself and my boss and not the hardcore railroaders.) When the speech was done, my brother Bryan gave him a beer and hugged him and then ran off to his super-foods cooking class, which is why he is not in the below picture.


{Family pic!}

Which may be the most awkward picture known to man. I didn’t realize that only my giant baby brother Kevin was standing behind me so I tried to shrink myself and instead ended up looking like a turtle with some sort of tricep issue. Meanwhile, poor Kevin doesn’t even look like he’s part of the family. Hilarious!

I also got a corsage. The party organizers originally got it for my mom, but she hated it and gave it to me. And I proceeded to wear it through the entire party…


{Me and Kevin and the corsage}

… And afterwards to my theatre company meeting at Moxie’s!

Meetings are always the best when they are late at night and come with wine.


{Our cast parties always devolve into dance parties}

My meetings also come with the bonus of incredible co-workers. These girls are talented, smart and ridiculously funny. We were once running a rehearsal in my basement and the neighbours knocked on the wall because we were laughing so loudly. On Saturday, we are running auditions for our upcoming production of The Winter’s Tale and it is bound to be a great day.

They also didn’t even bat an eye about the fact that I was wearing a corsage. Stellar.

Thursday
Valentine’s Day!

This was a jam-packed day, filled with returning my rental car from the Medicine Hat work trip, receiving a box of chocolates from my dad (he does it every year so “[I’ll] always know that at least one guy is thinking of [me]”) and seeing off my baby brother Kevin at the airport as he headed off to India for 10 days to make a movie. (I know!!! He doesn’t even play it like it’s a big deal, but I know he’s just trying to play it cool. Silly 21 year old boy.) His flight ended up being delayed by a day, so we went through all the excitement again twenty four hours later, but it was still kind of a big thing!

This year I had two valentines. The first was one of my dearest friends from university, Jessica.


{picture of me and Jess feeding each other spinach dip in 2007. as you do?}

Jess is probably one of the smartest people I know – she’s currently in her second year of law school and still has mental energy to see me through my “the world is falling apart at my feet” freakouts. We’ve both been through some life drama lately, so we met at Higher Ground in Kensington for a late afternoon coffee and pseudo-therapy session. Our coffees came with little pink and red sugar hearts sprinkled on the whip cream… adorable!


{Picture of my coffee}

After that I was off for a date with the true love of my life… my mama! We had a leisurely dinner at Milestones – shocking on Valentine’s Day, I know, but apparently all you need to do is make reservations and show up at 5:45 pm and all goes well – and then saw The Kite Runner at Theatre Calgary. It was directed by one of my profs from university but we would have seen it anyway, since we are subscription holders to both Theatre Calgary and Vertigo Theatre. (Love my theatre!!) I had never seen the film or read the book, so I was definitely the annoying audience member who gasped through the entire show. I plan to read the book now, though, since I love to see how works change when they’re adapted for the stage.

Anyway, needless to say, there was no time for blogging. Only sleep. And chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.

My Greatest Fear Is Turning Into Taylor Swift

Last night, I was chilling out in my hotel room, waiting for my hair to be dry enough to blowdry, and watching Two Broke Girls. (I have an irrational and all-consuming love for this tv show for re-introducing me to the incredible hotness that is Ryan Hansen. He is so much prettier than he was on Veronica Mars.) Anyway, Caroline had this total one-off line that basically went “That's so exciting! My self-esteem could really use being mistaken for Taylor Swift right now! And what does that say about my self-esteem ?” And that reminded me that turning into Taylor Swift is one of my greatest fears.

After fire.

And zombies.

I mean, obviously I’m not afraid of growing six inches and turning blonde. I actually loved being blonde but my hair decided to start having none of it after two years. It was fun while it lasted, though!



See? Blonde. Bam! Trying to show off my purple drink which looks decidedly not purple and kind of like Coke in the picture. What can you do though, yanno? I also have song lyrics written on my arm in Sharpie because that’s what I was doing that summer. New lyrics every day!

That was Taylor Swift inspired too. My fear is beginning to make more sense.

Here’s my problem. Taylor Swift is just so… acted upon. You know? Boys just do things to her and “other girls” just do things to her and she is so sweet and so peppy and so cute, how can she help it if all these so sad and so mean things keep happening to her? I mean, to listen to her music, that poor sweet girl just cannot find a nice guy. She has dated, like, 13 guys in two years! Gasp! (I also don’t really care about the dating of thirteen guys… I love dating guys. I just want to be in control of some of it – only date those I like, end things on my terms too, be treated with respect, blah blah blah.)

I don’t know, there’s a very real subtext in her music (which is based on her life, a-duh) that terrible things just happen to her and she can’t control these things and she just doesn’t do anything wrong! A victim of life rather than choices. And, really, who wants that?? Whether or not it’s true, who wants to believe that?

But here’s the thing! Taylor Swift writes weirdly specific songs, because that’s how she processes things. (Which is fine, I have a blog where I talk about how turning into Taylor Swift is my greatest fear, so… don’t even have a leg to stand on when it comes to that.) And I listen to her weirdly specific songs… and they weirdly fit very specific instances in my life – and not in the crazy “OMG! I’m 16 and I once liked a boy who didn’t like me too!” but in the “Yes, that is exactly how that happened to me with absolutely no important details changed. In fact, I said those precise words. Damnit.” Clearly, I am going down the Taylor Swift route.

Also, I really love sparkly dresses.

So, here’s the million dollar question. How can I not turn into Taylor Swift? Or, alternatively, how can I avoid fire and zombies?