life, the universe, and donna

Home from Whistler, it was absolutely fantastic, and I strongly recommend spending as much time there as possible. In fact, go rent this fabulous condo when you do.

Today was another day packed full of adventure, albeit with less unexpected dunkings (but quite a few expected ones.)

We got up bright & early (you know, like 11am), got some breakfast in the village, then headed up (sans dog — she slept all day in her crate, zonked from yesterdays adventures) to Pemberton to go horseback riding with Adventure Ranch. Absolutely gorgeous with the mountain vistas, narrow tree-lined trails, open meadows, gorgeous rivers, and a lovely break at a stunning beach (where several of the horses had fun splashing most splashily.) We even saw a bear swimming along the fast moving river — he looked like an oddly shaped log until he climbed out not that far from us. Luckily, he kept his distance. I’ve heard horses and bears aren’t the greatest combo.

We got back to the ranch, sore, dusty, reeking of horse, pleased as punch and ready for the next stop in our fun: Scandinave Spa.

It was amazing. They’ve got a really neat setup, it’s a series of hot tubs, cold pools, saunas, steam rooms & relaxation areas with hammocks, chairs, benches, etc. Their recommendation is that you spend 10-15 minutes in a hot tub, then as long as you can handle the cold pools, and then 10-15 minutes relaxing, repeat x3. It’s a “silent” spa, so they strongly dissuade any talking, and at first I was a little put off by that… but after 10 minutes in the eucalyptus sauna (they had eucalyptus scented water that you could pour over the rocks), I was totally relaxed, “in the zone”, and had no interest in talking… or listening. It was just awesome, if you’re ever looking for a “total relaxation” type afternoon, this is the place to get it. They do massages and other such spa-type activities as well, but the baths is really all we needed (although it was rather disconcerting to get back into our horsey-smelling clothes at the end of it.)

All in all? A stunningly fantastic weekend. Many thanks to my wonderful, wonderful Nick, and to the fabulous kdot who is the worst third wheel ever. As previously mentioned, her husband cas was supposed to come with us, but a bike injury left him home while we went out and had fun without him (awww… next time, cas!) So you know, you’d expect that having a random third person along would be terrible, and she wasn’t. Nick & I had plenty of cutesy sickening romantic moments without being disrupted, kdot was charming and fun and a fantastic travelling partner, she even cleaned up MY shit while I was getting food for the trip home so I wouldn’t die… really, how am I supposed to get good blog fodder out of that? Where are the tales of “And then she…”? How am I supposed to bitch and complain when she was such an excellent guest? Thanks a lot, kdot. I mean really.

Also, she is now the 4square mayor of my dads condo, which amuses me greatly.

A few weeks ago, Nick & I were chatting with our friends, kdot & cas, and thought… hey, we should all go to Whistler together.

So, I managed to score my Dad’s condo for the weekend, and a weekend was planned! Sadly, the day before we were supposed to leave… cas had a pretty nasty wipeout on his bike, and his doctor recommended staying home with his leg elevated. Crap. Rather than come with us, and be super depressed and bored every time we left to go do something Awesome, he decided to stay home and play video games. So… here we are!

Today, we went on a pretty awesome canoe trip. They shuttled us from Green Lake to Alta Lake, and we paddled back to Green Lake. You may recall our last canoe trip last year was just a few hours tooling around Green Lake. So, we thought we could upgrade things a little…

and holy crap! NARROW FREAKING RIVER! Canoes, especially the 3 person canoe we had, corner like particularly wallowing bathtubs. We hit a fast moving section, got a little turned around, and a kayaker came up. She had dumped herself, and for some IDIOTIC reason … decided it was a good idea to GRAB THE SIDE OF OUR CANOE to right herself.

Unsurprisingly, this poured us directly into the river. There was a moment of panic when the dog would NOT get out of the canoe, and tried to crawl under the seat — note the canoe was upside down or on its side at this point, and she still wanted to be in it. But we got her untangled pretty quickly, and all was fine — then it was just a matter of getting all of our gear, paddles, the canoe, and the dog to the shore. Luckily, it was just over waist deep at that point.

So, we had a nice little break. Good news: The things that could be water damaged were in a waterproof bag they’d given us — like Nick’s 12 hour old $2k camera. Phew. Sadly, our lunch, in a soft sided cooler, was not so lucky. Well, my bananas survived at least. And the diet coke. Can’t live without the diet coke.

Anyway, we got righted soon enough and after a break to dry off/wring out our shoes, we were off and running. Glad I wore my bathing suit underneath, I ended up shucking the shirt (and loading up on sunscreen) and dried quite quickly.

It was totally awesome. Dumbass kayaker, but whatever. Now we can say that we’ve had a good dump in the river, and it wasn’t our fault!

She really was particularly dumb, too. As we were trying to gather everything up, she kept trying to help. By getting her kayak in such a place that we couldn’t secure the canoe at all. No, please. Really. You’ve done enough. Also, your presence is making the scared dog even more scared. Justice had her lifejacket on too, but even so she was shivering like crazy as I carried her from the middle of the river to the edge. but that might be cuz it was cold, too. Once we got out, she went directly to one of her “I need to handle this!” coping mechanisms, and starting gnawing on a stick. Good dog.

We have a few battle wounds from our adventure. Kathryn has a set of scrapes on her shoulder from where Justice tried to go THROUGH her when the canoe went over, Nick has a nice branch scrape on the back of
his neck, and I’ve got a very pretty knot on my foot… but we couldn’t stop laughing about the absurdity of the situation, so all is good.

Pictures forthcoming — thankfully, the camera was kept bone dry. But I’ll upload those later when I’m not on a netbook with stolen wifi. (Stolen wifi tastes like candy!) Stolen wifi still tastes like candy, but now there are pictures!

Parents of children in show biz, I have to ask: Why? How can you look at people like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, the Olsen Twins and so on… and think it’s a good idea?

A few weeks ago, Nick & I were trying to think of any current adult actor/actress who has successfully transitioned from child star to well adjusted adult star. Admittedly, you could argue that there are a lot of adult stars who aren’t well adjusted even if they weren’t child stars, but whatever.

The initial trigger was Christina Ricci. Sleepy Hollow was on, and I was wondering whatever happened to her, as she seems to have vanished off the face of the planet. (A quick look at Wikipedia shows that she has in fact been working… just not in anything I’ve heard of.) So I was trying to think of stars who are currently active and mainstream, who never went through a fucked up drug phase.

I came up with Wil Wheaton & Neil Patrick Harris. (And admittedly, Wil Wheaton is only “mainstream” right now if you’re an internet geek. Luckily, I am, so I’m counting it.) Drew Barrymore seems to have also managed to successfully transition, but only after spending her tweens coked out and hitting rehab at 13, so she’s off the list. (But hey, good for her — it’s hard to go from rehab at 13 to reasonably normal, well adjusted adult.)

I also thought of what Wil Wheaton & NPH have in common: Both of them vanished out of the public eye for most of their late 20s/early 30s. (Wil Wheaton was doing mostly voice work, and NPH was doing mostly musicals.) Either way, neither of them had nearly the fame & recognition they had in their teens and now.

So maybe that’s the key to avoiding train wrecks like Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. I honestly feel bad for them — seriously, how can you possibly stay normal when there are people whos JOBS it is to follow you around for every stupid mundane thing you do? Seriously — this is a video of Lindsay Lohan buying pizza. SHOCKING NEWS: PIZZA IS TASTY.

And all I can say is: Jesus christ, that poor girl. Yeah, she’s totally fucked up. But cut her some slack — she’s been starring in feature films since she was 11, and was already a show biz veteran at that point. I don’t know how you do that and stay normal.

I suppose one thing they have going for them is that none of ‘em are half as fucked up as Mel Gibson. Score one for the ladies!

Yeah, I’m that kind of cool.

So last night, I brought home our new minivan, a 2001 Ford Windstar, in bright-effing-red of course. Aww yeah. Her name is Rebecca (but only if I never use the name around Nick).

She doesn’t look like this. Much.

Anyway, so we do this SCA thing, and in the summer we’re out to events almost every weekend with my poor little car is loaded to the rafters. And while she’s got a fair amount of storage space, considering the itsy-bitsyness of her… it’s just not enough. Especially for our form of “camping” which includes sleeping in something like this.

What it came down to … was more space.

So originally, we were looking to join the ranks of the station wagoneers. (Can I call them that? I’m going to call them that.) But when I mentioned this to my parents, they reminded me that they had a couple of extra vehicles lying around. My step-father, the worlds most fantastic mechanic (he fixes my vehicles, which makes him infinitely better than ANY OTHER MECHANIC EVER) likes to buy broken cars on Craigslist, fix them, and resell them at a profit. Or at least, that’s the idea. Thus far, it’s been more like “buy broken cars on Craigslist and alienate the neighbours by having no fewer than 4 cars, a camper trailer, and a bus in the driveway at any given time.” (You think I’m kidding — they actually have two buses, but the second one is stored offsite.)

So one of the vehicles Ken picked up was the aforementioned Rebecca the Red Van. She wasn’t running at the time, and I’m told that the problem was a rubber band. Well, a very specific, expensive rubber band, but a rubber band nevertheless. Which has, of course, been replaced, along with some other general “make her more awesome” type things (new tires!) and now Rebecca is stylin’.

Brought her home last night, and HOLY CRAP I’M SO TALL WOOO I COULD CRUSH YOU LIKE A BUG! A BUG!!! She also rides super smooth, and since my last … 4 vehicles, if you include the bikes, had a manual transmission, I tried very hard to stomp on the clutch and grasp uselessly for the stick shift. Right, minivan. Automatic. Ok.

So, got her home, and we decided to take the back row of seats out, and store it under our stairs. Holy CRAP there is a lot of space in there. Seriously, I could LIVE in this thing. And there’s definitely room for some good old fashioned minivan sex. The back windows are tinted VERY dark, so … aww yeah.

Other things that are awesome:
- SO MUCH SPACE. Seriously, I don’t know what I’m going to do with it all. Oh, fill it full of crap. Of course. (Kidding, honey!)

- Storage spots! Wow, I’ve got places to hide things that I didn’t know I needed. We hit up Safeway last night for our little “Stuff that lives in the van” kit, like sunscreen, bug spray, antihistamines, etc. This kit lives in the center console in the back seat (what would be the center row, if we hadn’t removed the back row.)

- Captains seats in the center row! Hence the center console there. Velly fancy. The dog will ride in style.

- Air conditioning! I haven’t had air conditioning in a vehicle I’ve owned since 2000, unless you count motorcycles. What? The air is perfectly well conditioned… and full of bugs.

- STEREO! My poor little car has no stereo. I’ve made do with shitty speakers plugged into my ipod, but now… now! Nick’s buying an ipod/car stereo hookup thingie today.

- Cigarette lighter plugs EVERYWHERE. We use these things a lot. We have a lot of devices that use them anyway, and an adapter to allow us to plug regular plugs into it. We can recharge our air pump with it, not to mention phones, ipods, etc. When the cigarette lighter in the car temporarily broke as we were driving out of town, we stopped in at my parents place to fix it rather than travel without it. I can think of 4 different plugs, and I haven’t even spent THAT much time crawling around it.

- Adjustable pedals. Hooray, I don’t have to sit so close to the steering wheel that the airbag will deploy directly into my nose!

- Did I mention how much space is in this thing? If it weren’t so nicely carpeted, I’d be expecting it to echo… echo… echo…

Things that need to be fixed:
- The hose for the windshield wiper fluid resevoir isn’t quite long enough, and doesn’t work. Oops. So if we get a bad bug splatter… well, get out and wash it off yourself. (Part of the car kit also includes: rags.)

- The gas indicator is inaccurate. To get it through aircare after replacing the battery, the van had to be … randomly driven around to get more data. So, Ken put $50 of gas in and drove around for a bit. That wasn’t enough. Mom then put $60 of gas in and drove more. (Finally went through and passed fine.) Except the gas indicator didn’t change throughout any of said gassing up. Hmm. Well, conveniently, I live next door to a gas station, so methinks we’ll just fill it up Every Time We Go Anywhere.

- I think the rear passenger door is wonky. I can’t open it from the inside, and the child locks aren’t on. Hmm. What is it with me and rear passenger doors?

- Generaly munge. Well, it is a 9 year old van, even if the last two years have been spent hanging out in my parents driveway. It’s got some … grime, to say the least. Must ungrime. Rebecca does not like grime.

Incidentally, this also means that within a few days, my little car will be for sale. I can’t afford to insure both of them for long, so the sooner I can get her out the door the better. I need to do a couple of little maintenance things (fix the spare tire, and maybe clean the two years worth of dust off the dash) but then she’s ready. Details for those interested (craigslist ad coming soon, once I wash her and get a picture):

’97 Chevrolet Cavalier, black, four door, manual transmission. No stereo or ABS. Engine runs great, no trouble whatsoever. Minor issue with the rear passenger door handle. E-brake doesn’t work (just park it in gear and no problem.) Second owner (first owner was a family member.) No accidents. Air Cared in March. 210,000km. Tires are a year old. Body is solid and in good shape, but rather unattractive (scratches, dings, etc) — she is 13 yrs old, after all. When I was 13, my body started going through some weird changes too. $500 firm. For the car, not my 13 yr old self. Note that similar cars go for $1000-2600 on Craigslist, but I got a good deal on it when I bought it and I’m passing that along. (Making a profit would seem weird.)

I should probably edit that before I put it on Craigslist. But honestly, that car has been SO little trouble it’s unreal. The only problems I’ve ever had with it (in the two years I’ve owned it) is that I’m apparently a nail magnet, which is why the tires are all new. Theoretically my curse with flat tires would not be transferred to the new owner, but just in case it is, it has a full size spare.

Wanna buy my car? You know you do!