The Good Samaritan?

Don't you love that moment when you catch someone doing something really awkward, and you know that at that exact moment all they're hoping is that no one is catching them doing it? I was sitting with my best friend in her car outside of Starbucks. We were finishing our conversation before we got out of the vehicle because both of us are equally paranoid about people listening in on our conversation - not that it was particularly top-secret, or incriminating, but we tend to use colourful language and superbly timed sarcasm and exaggeration that some people may take the wrong way. So she's telling me a story and I become slightly distracted by a woman who is standing infront of my bf's car. We are parked in front of a bank, and this woman is trying to find the entrance to it. There is no door where she's looking, the door is around the corner, but she is staring and exploring this wall of windows in front of us like they are a magic eye painting that will reveal a door if she stares hard enough at them. She walks back and forth in front of these windows, looking for a door that she might have...overlooked? She is stumped. I'm watching this, and I'm squirming, because I know this exact feeling, emotions flooding back from that fateful day in Portland when I approached a crowded cafe, in the middle of a crowed square, all four of its walls made of glass, presenting no obvious door structure, and I panicked. Do I paw at the glass? Do I knock? Throw a rock through the glass? (I needed coffee, bad.) I did that extremely awkward move, when you approach the place where there logically should be a door, and stand there, waiting for something to happen, and when nothing does, you feebly push on the glass in a couple of different spots, making you appear sort of mime-like....
So I'm empathizing with this woman and her situation, and hesitating to help, only to see if she will figure it out on her own, although it doesn't look promising. We have paused our convo and are now watching her every move. She steps back, gives the windows the final once-over, and begins her retreat to her car. She's giving up and the door is less than 10 feet away around a corner, but not even a sharp corner.
     "Ooh, I should tell her where the door is," I say, as I reach for the door handle.
     "Let's just wait a sec," bf says, stopping me, "You know, survival of the fittest."

After almost dying laughing, this is the type of conversation that ensued in the car: swap the robbery for a door-search, and the overweight man for a stupid woman, and you'll pretty much get the idea.





This is why we keep our conversations in the car.
(Don't worry, I ended up telling her where the door was...)

What's really at the end of the rainbow and other lies exposed

 Remember those little lies that your parents told you to keep you innocent and naive and make you believe that the whole world was made of gumdrops and rainbow sparkle cupcakes? You know, like Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and you being really, really good at everything? Well hopefully you still believe in the latter, unless of course you're tone deaf and one of those people who continues to audition for talent competitions in the singing category, pay for voice lessons, and remain perplexed when you just aren't making it to Nashville...but I digress.

Do you remember the moment you stopped believing in Santa Claus? Personally, I was always a skeptic. My suspicions were confirmed early on by my grandmother, who ever-so-tactfully blurted out,

      "She doesn't still believe in Santa, does she? " to my shocked and infuriated mother, right in front of me at around age 6. I was unphased, although I gave an Oscar-worthy performance of "devastated" and "will likely need therapy later in life."  This only served to perpetuate what would come to be known as my "know-it-all" phase...which is on-going, btw. While other kids were peacefully dreaming of Santa landing on their roof, or the tooth fairy sprinkling them with sleep dust, I was plotting ways in which I could disprove their existence, so that the charade could be dropped. Come to think of it, I was kind of an asshole kid. I did the normal tests of course: I asked my parents a billion questions so they would have to provide some sort of semi-logical explanation for the wonderment of money appearing under my pillow when I placed a tooth under there, or how Santa managed to get presents under our tree when we didn't have a chimney. I wasn't placated by their answers, however, regardless of how creative they were. I believe my dad made the mistake of telling me that the tooth fairy just "knew" when to retrieve the tooth and pay up. Rookie move on his part; so, naturally, I had to test it. I recall having an every-so-slightly loose tooth, one that no-one would have expected or suspected of falling out for a while. That tooth didn't see what hit it - I gave it hell right before bed one night and slyly placed it under my pillow.

The next morning, no dough, just as I suspected.

Did I get up and tell my parents about the great injustice I had endured at the hands of the so-called "tooth fairy" and demand answers or sympathy? No, I was an asshole, remember? I didn't tell them, but I held them in silent and (to them) perplexing contempt, brooding and huffing and puffing for days, making outrageous claims, such as having never experienced a good day in my whole life...at 5. Worse than telling them the gig was up, I made them continue the charade, made them really work for the tooth fairy/ Santa Claus street cred for years to come. Sorry, mom and dad.

So here's what's really at the end of the rainbow:



End of the Rainbow



Rural America? Grain silos? Well, who knew? Maybe not the pot o' gold you were hoping for; but, technically, wheat is "Saskatchewan gold."

#100 of 100 things to do before I die: play DnD

Okay so I'm almost immediately regretting blog-admitting this, and am having cold-feet about whether I actually want to keep this in my top 100 list, since I just finished some light research on it, but before I really knew what it was all about, I wanted to partake in a DnD event, you know, just to say that I have, and to see what all the fuss is about.

What's DnD, you say? Well if you're wondering, you must not spend a lot of time in your parents' basement, glued to a computer screen. I'm talking about Dungeons and Dragons, my friends. Dungeons and freaking Dragons. It's one of those things that everyone's heard of, but that not many people actually know much about...myself included. For a long time when I heard "Dungeons and Dragons" I pictured "Snakes and Ladders" and still have difficulty not picturing that at the mention of DnD. Of course, I had also heard that there was a costume/role-playing aspect to DnD that was glaringly absent from SnL, which only led me to picture DnD as people dressed up as dragons, playing Snakes and Ladders, in dungeon-like places...obviously. This all seemed pretty weird, but somehow awesome, right? So, in the hopes of having my suspicions confirmed, I Wikipedia'd it. Having shed more light on the intricacies of DnD, I've come to realize that I was, in fact, wrong.
DnD is not SnL. Not even close.
And costumes? Not part of the game (although I'm pretty sure there are fanatics out there that make it part of the game...and I salute thee.)
Role playing? Check! So it's not a total wash....

I also found out that DnD is the best-known and best-selling fantasy role-playing game (according to Wikipedia), so I have left in my top 100 things to do...even though I was looking for something with mandatory costumes, and I always liked Snakes and Ladders.

Dragon playing Snakes and Ladders....but accidentally breathing fire on the board

So I'll be on the lookout for players...any takers?

Happy graffiti: my second favourite kind

Geneva, Switzerland

Geneva, Switzerland

Geneva, Switzerland

The key to feeling important.

Keys are the key to importance.

I have found that the amount of keys on my keychain is directly proportional to how important I feel. Less keys on your keychain doesn't say, "minimalist," it says "loser," and, "possibly untrustworthy." Sorry.

A field guide:

Two keys. A key chain with one or two keys is a sad and lonely sight. Two keys means you have access to your own home, and maybe a car, or a bike lock. You are not responsible enough at your place of employment to be trusted with keys.

Three keys. I think that it's essential to have at least three keys at any given time. Now you can get into your own house/apartment, drive a car or bike, and the mysterious third key could mean any number of things. It is most likely a work key, which is a start! But hey, it could be the key to someone else's apartment (wink wink), the key to a storage locker, the key to your diary, who cares! Each additional key makes you exponentially more important than the last.

Four keys. Now we're starting to feel a little important, right? When you whip your keys out of your purse or pocket in front of someone you've just met, don't think they don't do a quick count.

Five keys. You're in fairly safe standing here, but you could be much more important if you could open more locks.

Six +. Nice work, you are decently important. You can probably be trusted, or at the very least, you own lots of stuff that requires locking.

I have been known to keep keys on my keychain that no longer unlock anything. Changing the locks at work doesn't mean that I replace the old ones on my keychain. No no, I just add 'em right on there with the old ones because no one needs to know that some of the keys on my keychain don't work, this will be our little secret;)  You'd think that since I know that they're not really "keys" anymore, that this would lower my feeling of importance, but nope, it doesn't. There's something very satisfying about having so many keys on my keychain that I have difficulty putting them in my pocket. I have ten keys right now, and I feel especially important. (Three of them are mystery keys that I no longer know the use of, but one of them is a key card, which is worth at least 3 regular keys in coolness, so I'm good to go.)