Love/Hate Relationship

My home town and I have a love/hate relationship with one another. I grew up in Birken, which is half an hour outside of Pemberton, which is half an hour outside of Whistler. Most people give me a blank stare when I mention Pemberton, so I usually just say ‘near Whistler.. you know, where the huge ski resort is..’ and usually receive a much better response. Throughout this post, I’ll just be referring to Pemberton rather than Birken. For one, Pemberton has a better ring to it. For two, Pemberton is where I went to school, and at least it’s on the map.

I loved growing up in Pemberton for many reasons. My parents moved there from Surrey when I was 7 to get out of the city, to somewhere where they could raise me without having to worry about me joining a Surrey Bitch gang when I turned 14. Pemberton was where I first learned how to throw a good punch. I can tell stories about how we had to walk 4 kilometres to get anywhere, played in the neighbours yards where we would find caves, snakes and the occasional bat. We spent our summers at Gates Lake. Summers where I would fall asleep on the porch with no sunscreen on, waking up to 2nd degree burns and a parent screaming ‘Awmb! What are you doinnng???!’.

I also remember the 45 minute bus ride to school every day. Until I bought a car when I was 16. There were 300 people in our school, and half of them were related (no incest jokes please).  As well, there were 39 in my grad class, including me, and everyone pretty much got along, with the occasional fight. And who can forget the rivalries between the rich Whistler bitches and Pemberton hick kids?

And the views are INCREDIBLE.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Some of the reasons why I hate Pemberton:

The only reason anyone knows where it is is because of the Pemberton Music Festival that happened this year. Basically, 60,000 city folk invaded my town, complained about having to walk everywhere, paid $7 a beer once they were in the gates, listened to some [I must admit] incredible bands (See also: Tom Petty, Jay-Z, The Flaming Lips, Death Cab for Cutie, DJ Shadow, Sam Roberts… I could go on), and left the biggest mess ever.

Exhibit C:

In Pemberton, everyone knows your name and your story. I remember one day when I picked up smoking in grade 9. I was afraid of anyone ratting me out to my parents, so we always went behind the school, on the road that wasn’t very busy. Obviously, my parents reemed me out about a week later, and I denied everything. I didn’t smoke any more after that, for fear of losing my pride when my parents would find out that I was lying.

There’s nothing for a young person to do there but start drinking when you’re 13. And there’s especially nothing to do when you live half an hour out of town. Whenever you wanted to go to a friend’s house on the weekend, you had to ask your parents for a ride into town. The only thing was, your parents work on the weekends, and the only ride you will receive is at 7:30am. You have to call your friend and ask them to leave the door open, and when you get there, you crawl into bed for another 3 hours until you actually do anything.

I basically lived under a rock and missed out on 1990’s pop culture because where of we lived. We weren’t within range of cable (and still aren’t) and we didn’t get Satellite television until I was about 16. When my parents actually decided to jump on the technology bandwagon they also bought a computer and had dial-up until about a year ago. 

Pemberton is so close to Whistler, that it is pretty much overshadowed. However, the 2010 Winter Olympic Games have shaped the town in the last 5 years. Every time I go back there, there are at least 2 new buildings.

Exhibit D:

Say whaaa?

My final reason for disliking Pemberton is that there are less people I know every time I visit. There’s definitely no future for young people, so they all up and leave, going to nearby cities. So even though everyone in Pemberton knows each other, everyone from Pemberton don’t know shit. Which is really sad. Because I like being recognized when I go back.

Rant complete.

Word.

Guess Who?

A couple weeks ago I busted out the old 1987 UK Edition of the Guess Who? board game Taylor, Stevel and I picked up at a garage sale at a local coffee shop on the Drive. Taylor and I ended up sitting there for a good 2 hours nearly killing each other with anticipation as to who the ‘Ultimate Champion’ should be. It is still to be determined.

Guess Who? is a two person board game where each person had a board with about 20-30 different characters that were all on little plastic flip things. You would both choose a card, which would be one of the characters and you would guess who the other person had by asking questions about appearance: eye color, hair color, glasses, etc. You would then flip down the characters that didn’t match the description.

I would love to know the people that designed the characters for this game, because in my mind, they are the most ingenious people in the history of design. Obviously, each of them had to have an easily definable aspect of their appearance, hence a huge number of hats, glasses and, on numerous people, very ruddy cheeks (clearly having been captured on a cold day). We suspect the current incarnation includes a rather larger ethnic mix than was the case in the original version, which was more or less entirely white and fair haired! I do not recall ever seeing that many gingers at once in my life! Not to mention creepers. After a while of the generic ‘Does your character have facial hair?’ started to get a little boring, we moved on to more entertaining and challenging questions such as, ‘Would you be sexually attracted to your character?’ and ‘Would you trust your character with your children?’ and ‘Could you see your character being a News Anchor?’

Ultimately, this game is definitely in my Top 10 for PG rated fun things to do.

In other news, I still haven’t found a job, and I have given up the whole Telephone Research Interviewer position for moral reasons (see also: A Streak of Bad Luck). I did, however, get another call back from a more promising position in Burnaby, and had an interview today at an office downtown. I’m not going to go to any length in detail on either, simply because I don’t want to get myself all excited. Just in case.

I NEED to pick up a better sleeping habit. All of this hanging out with Kaity isn’t really helping either, because we’re both in the same boat in that department. For example, she calls me last night and asks what I’m doing. I say I’m free after I drop my roommate off at the airport, and she ends up meeting me around 10. My computer is actually functional, so we decide to watch some stuff on Youchoob and hang out with Mr. Stinky (the rat) until 2:30AM when I tell her that I NEED to go to bed because I have a job interview in the morning. I go to sleep, and she comes tumbling in about an hour later. For some random reason that we cannot decipher, our inner workings are awake at 6:30AM and we cannot get back to sleep. After about an hour I say, ‘Fuck this, I’m making some coffee.’ We stay up for another 2 hours. My computer will not turn on and I have no faith that it ever will again. I get tired and take a nap until 9:30AM, when I get up, get ready, and leave for my interview. Kaity stays while I’m gone. I get home around 12:30PM, Kaity’s napping and am exhausted. But I don’t want to waste my entire day sleeping, so I stay up for about an hour, until I’m going crazy with boredom that I can’t help but nest in my bed. We end up sleeping until 5:00PM. I am now not even close to being tired, and it’s 1:00AM. I know that I won’t go to bed until at least 2:30-3:00AM, and won’t get up until at least noon.

BAD
HABIT!

Anyway, enough of my schpeeling. Here’s an interesting video Kaity and I stumbled upon last night.

Basically, think about the absurdity of Snoop Dogg being on the Martha Stewart cooking show.

I love how he mentions that he takes the danger out by changing the names of some objects, yet he calls the knife a ‘Shank‘. Awesome.

Friendly Faces

 

Today has been one of the best days ever! Once again, didn’t get a lot accomplished (probably less than yesterday) but it’s been great!

It all started when I got a call from Jessie saying that she was venturing out of her Surrey-suburban-abode to Vancouver to have coffee with me. I felt like I had the beginnings of a cold, so I pumped myself with vitamins and orange juice, got dressed and prepared myself for the day. 

When Jessie got here we went to Prado, our favourite coffee shop on the Drive. In between doing a cross-word and having girl-talk, I ended up seeing about 4 people I knew pass by, frantically waving as they walked. I feel so great when I see a bunch of people I know on the Drive. It definitely makes me feel like there is more of a community base here. Even though the city of Vancouver has approximately 605,902 people going about their business, I can still feel like I know the friendly faces that walk by.  

See also http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/. 

After about an hour Jessie told me that she had to go back to chickenland, so I met up with Josie for more coffee. We hung out for a bit, when to Turks for coffee and sat in the park watching the most ridiculously cute family pushing their toddler on the swings. She told me that her and Willy, her boyfriend, were going to go to Trout Lake for a mini Fairy photoshoot and asked if I would do her makeup. And did I ever! It was awesome! We went from barely-any-makeup-hippie-Josie to I’m-gonna-dress-up-and-be-a-fairy-whether-you-like-it-or-not-Josie. Awesome.

It was almost dusk around 4 so I told her to get the heck outta here and catch the rest of the rays while she still could. Then I took a nap. It was pretty delightful.  I awoke as energized as ever, and decided to finally make the big meal that I had been planning. I made rice, and chicken with mushroom sauce, and a makeshift broccoli, cauliflower, green bean casserole with cheese sauce and bread crumbs. It was so wholesomely delicious that Tom actually called me ‘A Legend‘. You hear that folks? A legend. 

After cleaning a bit, I caught up on my reading of lovely Kyla Bea’s blog, and watched a bit of youchoob. Now I’m about ready to commence the job search, yet again. 

Here’s a funny youchoob video that I hope makes you feel as happy as I have felt all day.

ps. Does anyone else get creeped out by these?

Shenanigans

Last night. Crazy, and awesome. Channing and I went to the Met and had a wicked fun time at Chelsea’s birthday bash. Ended up drinking quite a bit. A whole pitcher of beer to myself = karaoke time. After alcohol consumption, you think you’ll rock at the song you chose, until you get up there, mic in hand, the words are flying by on the screen, and you hate yourself for choosing ’99 Problems’ by Jay-Z because you know you can’t rap. Yep. Pretty much butchered. But it was hillarious nonetheless. Then, at the end of the night, about 10 of us got up and sung ‘Tiny Dancer’ choir-style. It was a definite moment to remember. 

This is the picture that came up on Google Image search when I looked for Tiny Dancer. Awesome.

One thing that I don’t understand, though. Why do some girls go commando in super short dresses when they’re drunk? You already look like a hoe, you don’t have to advertise. We saw this girl, probably around 19, completely loaded, being spun around by this chauchy guy, pretty much having sex with him on the (so-called) dancefloor, and she was hiking her dress up. Lo and behold, she pulled it up so we had view of her buttocks. Sure you’re hot, but c’mon. There’s a line that you shouldn’t have to be told not to cross. I mean, seriously. It’s a skeezy karaoke bar on Hastings. If you wanna do that kind of shit, go to the Granville strip for Christ’s sake. 

And, what is with guys that hit on every single woman at the table, knowing that nobody’s interested. These 2 guys hung around our table going after Leah’s cousin, and when they saw that she wasn’t interested, they just moved on to the next girl beside her. Chelsea’s ‘If you fucking ask me if my piercings hurt I’m going to fuck you up,’ didn’t even scare him off (he was just staring at her lips like he was going to ask). One of them said that he loved me, and that he was going to steal me away and marry me. Like, seriously? Does anyone find that attractive? They eventually got kicked out of the bar.

Anyway, Chelsea and Channing and I headed to my house around 2am and crashed. Hard. We got up at noon and started our recovery process. First thing we did, Cafe Deux Soleils breakfast. So good. After that the girls and I went our separate ways and I came home. Recovery days are so weird. You aren’t obligated to do anything, but in the back of your mind you feel like you should be. I took a nap for a while, woke up at 5:30, and now I’m here. Orange juice in tummy, things are good. I’m just going to relax. Movie night anyone?

 

 

ps. I just read Chelsea’s latest blog. Oh my god. If you haven’t seen this, and you’re a Jay-Z/Obama fan, take 47 seconds of your time and watch this.

Rat-attat-tat

Wow. I haven’t written since November 4th! What’s happening with me? My life is spiralling! Spiralling out of control! Haha. Nah… definitely not. I’ve just been procrastinating and having a good time. 

I called Kaity on Tuesday and she invited me over for movie/hangout time, so I made my way to Kits. I found out that she had a new pet! Charles Bukowski, the cutest fucking rat you’ve ever seen. At first I was really afraid of it, like most rodents. But soon enough, I was holding him and he was nesting in my pocket. 

We started drinking a little, then a lot, and then Kaity’s mom came home. Kaity hadn’t told her about the rat yet. When she found out, she basically flipped her shit, and we laughed. A lot. Here’s pretty much how it went.

Cynthia: ‘Kaity! This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done! There’s no way he’s staying here! It’s leaving, or you’re moving out. TONIGHT! … It’s not staying here tonight! I won’t be able to sleep! You know how I feel about those things.’ 

Amber: ‘Hahahahahah! I’m sooo sorry… it’s not funny. But it’s sooo funny! I’m sorry. It’s not funny. I’m drunk. Hahaha!’

Kaity: ‘Wanna pet him?! Hahaha!’

Awesome. Kaity’s mom drove us to my house with the rat after that. So yeah! That’s pretty much the story of how Amber acquired a rat! Kaity and I are going to share him. But, seriously. Me of all people? A rat? Really? But he’s soooo cute! Here are some pictures from our closet family photo shoot. 

 

 

 

He goes by Charles, Bukowski, Charlie, Duder, Schmooder, Pooder, Pooper, and basically any variation of a word that ends in ‘oo_er’.

On Wednesday Jessie called me at 9:30am (*cringe*) and I ended up going out to Surrey. What a commute! Man! But all was well. We went to Guilford Mall and had Taco Bell for lunch (which was delish), then went shopping and I got a few new tops for super cheap. I went back to Jessie’s new place and saw her sweet pad, but wasn’t too sociable because I was cold, miserable and had just spent the day in a mall. It was so great seeing her, though. I haven’t hung out with her in quite a while. And she got a Canadian cell phone! FINALLY!

After waiting in the FREEZING COLD for about 15 mins I was homeward bound. Kaity had taken Duder out all day and had met up with Jenn. They met me at Broadway and we hung out for a bit. Jenn helped me apply for her work, which was good, because I probably wouldn’t have figured out the online application myself. Kaity took a nap beside us. Afterwards, Jenn left, and Kaity and I watched a documentary on ‘Real Dolls’ on Youtube. Here’s the first bit. It’s so incredibly creepy, that it’s kind of intriguing at the same time.

I passed out shortly after the 4th part. Maybe it was my subconscience telling me to avoid anything to do with them. Or people involved in them. *shudder*

This morning Kaity’s mom called and invited us for lunch, so we went to the Templeton on Granville. Can I just say, POUTINE!!! They are so fucking delicious. I was in a really weird state of mind all morning, though. I was really tired. Tired to the point where I felt like I was hung over, but I didn’t have anything to drink. That pretty much disappeared after we left, though. 

The day proceeded by running around Vancouver, going to the doctor, getting a rat cage, hanging with the rat, showing the rat to Taylor, Kaity leaving, Amber job hunting, and now we’re here! 

I really hope I get a call-back about a job sometime in the next 2 days from somewhere that’s interested in hiring me. Seriously. It’s been a week, and I’ve been keeping myself really busy, but I can see myself getting really bored really fast. 

I’m going to get up early tomorrow and do Bons and laundry (baundry) with Josie. Yay!

I hope this guy’s here tomorrow. ‘Wo-oould you like any-mooore in therrrre? Alllright, Lassie!’

 

I don’t know these people. And who needs menus?