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It's not that there's nothing to talk about.

I could talk about how Greg has officially left the country.
I could talk about how I have less than 5 weeks left as a resident of London.
I could talk about how my life is on pause at the moment while I wait to hear about a job that might take me to New York City.
I could talk about how instant is the only coffee that I can drink black.

I have many things to say, but can't find the words right now. So I'll borrow the words of someone else:

"The way I write is who I am, or have become, yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rythyms a cutting room, equipped with an Avid, a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time, show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now, let you pick the takes, the marginally different expressions, the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetratable, if only for myself."

From The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

feeling lucky

Yogurt containers can be extremely volatile if provoked.

Based on past experience of having yogurt containers explode when dropped, I know to only peel off the foil on the top of a yogurt pot while it's pointed AWAY from me.

So why TODAY I decided to open my Muller while it was aimed directly at my chest, allowing it to burp cranberry and raspberry all over black shirt, is a bit of a mystery.

the price to be paid for vanity

As a direct result of the current heatwave that has hit England, I've been sweating a lot.

And with sweat comes pimples.

So, taking a cue from my beloved acne-days, I decided to blast the hell out of said pimple-on-my-cheek with Benzagel 5% (scroll down to see how it MAY BLEACH FABRIC). Strong stuff, I know, but I was sure that my translucent Scottish skin could hack it.

Admittedly, I may have been a tad profligate with said acne-blasting cream, but what a surprise when I awoke to find a stripe of rash in Pantone 178 down the left side of my face.

The question remains: what is worse? A fairly innocuous pimple the size of a pen tip, or an acute allergic reaction masquerading as a hideous birthmark/skin disease/sunburn that lasts 2 days?

You pick.

pic-a-pop

As ljcfyi has discovered, they've started making pic-a-pop again!

Yay!

I'm a bit slow on the uptake, because as pointed out in the above post, they started up the company again in 2004 - but still.

Yay!

I used to love pic-a-pop when I was a kid, and the concept has come up several times during nostalgic conversations.

It was tradition that we would stock up on pic-a-pop before heading to the cabin for the summer. I remember my parents driving my brother and I to the strip mall (not kidding) in our burnt-orange van that smelled of old carpet, where we would run amok through the stacks of day-glo bottles.

I was most likely wearing terry-cloth shorts.

Pic-a-pop will always remind me of a big orange van without air conditioning, the dry prairie sun, and the simple things that make being a kid so good.

Do you ever wish you could photograph a memory?

fidget

The photo of me above (taken by a person by the name of Hin who I've just met) was captured on Saturday night.

My immediate response was slight repulsion, because I tend to hate photos of myself laughing. We rarely see ourselves laughing, do we?

While this is most definitely not a photo of myself that I would typically share, we tend to only distribute those photos of ourselves that have been manicured, posed, perfected. This photograph, on the other hand, actually looks like me, for the following resaons: I'm laughing, most likely at something goofy, I'm either a) fidgeting (al.ways.fid.get.ing) or b) clapping with glee, I'm wearing polyester, and my hair is messy.

These things define me in some weird way - which, in some ways - makes this the best photo of me I've ever seen.

This photo just needs a soundtrack of cheesy 80's and 90's pop songs playing in the background and you would feel like you've known me for years.

Happy Canadia Day 2006

And, in honour of the occasion, a very special sepia-toned photograph of me wearing my "If I had a dollar for every time I had 60 cents, I would be Canada" shirt and eating a piece of the best sourdough rye bread I have ever tasted. Enjoy!