Sailing on the Friend Ship

Since I got involved with blogging, I seem to also be getting sucked into all that is cyberspace. And like every other person that gets sucked in, I have ended up on MySpace, creating my own little page, with cute colours and pictures and bunches of stupid little information about me. What the heck was I thinking?

I am finding that for me, MySpace has turned into a place to look up old friends. These friends are considered “old” for a number of reasons. Some of them I have gone to school with and just haven’t seen in 10 or 20 years. Others I fell out of touch with for whatever reason. I do have another category of “old friends” that I look up out of sheer curiosity. These are the friends that have “fallen off”. So while I happily send ADD FRIENDS requests to just about everyone I haven’t seen in forever, it is those that have “fallen off” that I am trying to decide if it is worth the possible trauma to try and reconnect with. Doesn’t seem to be that hard of a decision to stick one’s hand out there as an extension of past friendships, but you need to know a little of my back story to understand.

I have always been a bit of a social creature, even though I am what psychologists would refer to as an introvert. I like having friends and meeting new people. It just took me a long time to realize that if I attempted to spend too much time around other people that my psyche couldn’t take it, and that I really needed some downtime in my social schedule, otherwise I start acting out. And most of the time, the people on the receiving end of my anti-social behaviour were my friends. It made me very controlling of social situations, and I can admit I was probably a pain in the ass to be around. Unfortunately most of the friends that I made between the ages of 17 and 23 were very bad at confrontation, so instead of advising me that I was being a hag, they just stopped calling or whatever.

When I was 18, my choice to dump my boyfriend of the time (to whom my friends of the time were intricately entwined) and date another guy amongst this group of friends was met with a reaction akin to that of a terrorist in the White House. Two of my oldest friends that I had gone to school with for years (and whose ties to the group had originated with me) were quickly dispatched to my home to tell me what I had done wrong (forcing the guys to possibly break the “guy code”). Okay, so maybe getting involved with two friends, one after the other, wasn’t such a great idea. A concept better broached with a 30+ woman who has now had some life experience, but not with an 18 year old who really only cared that she was allowed to date whomever she wanted. From that group I was immediately (though not completely in the long term) shunned. A few years down the road, I reconnected with some of these people, all was forgotten and we have all since moved on with our lives (all be it separately).

Then a few years later I was immersed in another group of friends, some of which were friends I had known from highschool. After hanging with these people for a long while, and after I had found myself very unhappy with the relationship I was in, the boyfriend I had been living with for the previous four years and I decided to part ways. As cleanly as we broke up, it wasn’t amicable for very long. I found out about his cheating ways, hours after we broke up, and from the people who were supposedly my friends (I had know these people since the 9th grade whereas he had known them for two years). Thanks for the heads up guys! Having a hugely sucky relationship with my parents at the time I naturally fell back on my friends in hopes that they would console me through the trauma of this breakup. All was fine until the girl I had known the longest, without any prompting from me, came up to me the day after the break up and in the snottiest possible voice said “Sorry you guys broke up, but if you make us choose between you and him, we’ll choose him!” Needless to say, I was in shock. First of all, who the hell was she to speak for all of our friends? Secondly, when had I even had time to open my mouth and ask them to back me up? I never did, and I had no intention of doing so. I told her right then and there, that I would never ask anyone to choose, that they had every right to maintain whatever relationship they had developed with him and that all I was hoping for was a little support from my friends. No…couldn’t even get that. I was summarily told, they didn’t want to listen to any of my whining (again, who are you speaking for?) and to just not talk about him or the breakup until I was over it. Luckily, my best friend at the time took one look at “longest known friend” and told her to shove it, that my true friends would take care of me without their help, and the four loyalist of my friends got me out of there, told them to screw off and we spent considerably less hanging out with these people until we all be lost touch with most of them. I heard that eventually some of the people ended up as roommates with my ex, and that the girl who had decided she didn’t want to choose, had really chosen him to begin with when she fell for him months before we had broken up. Luckily for her, she wasn’t the person he had been seeing behind my back, otherwise I may have actually committed a felony and assaulted the crap out of her. As it was, the girl he was seeing, I had introduced him to as she was a past girlfriend of one of my loyal friends. God just reading this makes me thankful that I have moved away from all that drama. Losing two sets of friends (people that I spent all my waking moments with) in a five year time period, really did a number on my ability to trust people and on my ego. It was in a word, traumatic.
Long story, even longer, I have been wondering how some of these people are doing. They are my past, but I am still curious to see how their lives have turned out. I recently sent and “Add Friends” request to one of the people I thought was more prone to want to communicate with me, and my request was denied. I didn’t think that would make me sad, but it did. I now don’t know whether to bother at all to extend a hand to the rest of the people I have found. It won’t kill me if I get denied at every turn, but do I really want to put myself and my fragile ego through that? It would be sad to think that these people can’t get past things that happened over ten years ago. I would hope that we had all grown up and changed. However I now have a great group of friends that have enough mettle to tell me when I am being a pain, without being afraid of me and I really don’t have a good reason to contact any of these people except for curiosity. I don’t know, maybe I have answered my own question. Anyone else out there curious about old “friends” but unsure about whether to proceed?

Snarfle, sneeze, snort

So for the third time in a month I am again sick. I am pretty sure that it is the same cold that is just coming back again and again. I guess as far as colds are concerned I am a fun place to return to. Sort of like Cancun. But less sunny and with more phlegm. The first two times it was all head cold, but this time the cold has taken a side trip to my lungs. Uuuggh. So now I lay on my couch dreaming about being healthy and praying that the next time I sneeze it won't feel like the world is about to end. Really I'm not exagerating, it's been a lot of Armageddon sneezes.

I think it's time for my daily lunchtime passout. I'll be back with more phlegm related fun stories once I can convince this cold to evacuate to a less me climate.

Give Me Somthing Good To Eat

I am what you would generally call a foodie. I love food and I enjoy cooking, a task that has a calming effect on me, which in my life is very rare. I consider myself an amateur gourmet and am not beyond hosting wine & cheese events, caviar tastings and I am currently in the midst of planning a gourmet cooking instruction/foodware party with my husband in conjunction with his employer, a gourmet food suplier (more on that in another post). I delight in experiencing new foods, and I love that I live in a city that supports my addiction to all things food.

So as January approached I was very much looking forward to Dine Out Vancouver, a two week restaurant event that happens annually in Vancouver, BC. A selection of restaurants provide three course fixed price menus for $15, $25 or $35. Generally Dine Out has been a chance for people to try a selection of restaurants they wouldn't normally frequent, thereby increasing the business that goes through the restaurants during the rest of the year. From what I understand of the conception of this event, the idea was not intended to increase profits over the two weeks of the event, but to increase profits from increased traffic throughout the rest of the year. In past years the quality of the menus has definately reflected this. Most menus in the past have featured items that are features of their menus or fresh sheets at the time, and each meal no matter the pricing level was a good deal for the money (quality and innovation vs quantity). This year, the menus just don't seem to provide as much of a deal.

I am particularly disappointed with the $35 menus this year. This level of menu pricing reflects the cream of the crop of the participating restaurants. Some of the best known restaurants, haunts of the rich and famous, are participating in this event. However, what they are offering does not reflect the culinary standards that have made them the top restaurants in Vancouver. A large selection of the menus featured a soup and a Caesar salad as two of their three appetizer choices. That is not only not innovative, but also reflects a huge profit margin on their part. A quick two week buck during a time of year that has traditionally been pretty slow.

As disappointed as I was this year with those menus, there was one bright spot in the form of the Parkside Restaurant on Haro Street. Not only is the Parkside's menu innovative, but the restaurant is known for using only high quality ingredients and it's informal yet elegant atmosphere. Everything I have heard or read about this restaurant screams FABULOUS! I have reservations with my husband in the next couple of weeks, to celebrate our having been together for 10 years (do all married people still celebrate their dating anniversaries?). I promise to post a bite-by-bite review afterwards.

Despite my disappointment this year (there are still a great selection of places to try and the $15 menus are by far the best deals) I still love this event and will look forward to it every year as one of a few food events that define Vancouver as a mecca for foodies like me. Look for my thoughts on Eat Vancouver, the Food & Wine Festival and A Bite of Vancouver, later in the year.

Check Out My Gallbladder

The hubby and I just got back from Science World in Vancouver where we went to visit the Bodyworlds 3 Show. Wowee wow wow wow! That has got to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Even though I took Biology in both 11th and 12th grade, I am not really partial to the anatomical sciences, being a social sciences type of gal. My husband will walk around the house talking about stuff, using big science type words (he really enjoyed science in school) while I'm all "Yah so there was this thing on the back of his thing." This show was one of the most impressive things I have been able to witness and was actually really worth the $25 per ticket to see. For anyone that may not have heard about Bodyworlds, it is a travelling show (actually I thing there are five different touring shows) that feature bodies and body parts of actual human beings who upon their death have donated their bodies to be put through a plastination process that allows them to be displayed. The process was invented by Gunther von Hagens in 1977 and allows for display outside of large containers and without storing in formaldehyde. I was able to get right up next to a human body whose skin had been stripped away and look at every minute detail. If you are in Vancouver or are ever anywhere where a Bodyworlds display is being shown, I highly recommend seeing it. I could describe it for hours, but it really must be seen. Especially the comparison of the smokers lung to the healthy lung. Made me so happy that I had quit smoking a few years back.

*************************************************

Another thing I saw today that was totally neat but kind of weird was the way our local stadium BC Place looks now that its domed roof has been collapsed. The roof is made of Teflon and is kept inflated by a complicated air system that keeps the air pressure perfectly balanced to ensure that the dome stays inflated. Yesterday a tear happened in a panel of the roof and the roof was collapsed. It will be a few weeks until the roof is repaired, and in the meantime it looks so weird driving by and not seeing the familiar rise of the dome above its concrete base.

The dome as it normally looks, with the tear, and while it was being deflated.

****************************************************

Now that I am comfortably home I have somehow become enthralled watching Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs make algae turn an angry red and squeezing a dogs anal gland. Damn Discovery Channel, sucks me in everytime.

Look What I Can Do!

Last year, the hubby and I bought ourselves a Christmas gift from ourselves, the Kodak P880 digital camera. This is by far the nicest digital camera I have every owned and I have had a lot of fun using it over the past year. I am also, in line with my New Year's resolution, attempting to learn more about how to use my blog's options and functions, currently attempting to learn how to post pictures. So here is a selection of my favourite photos from the year.



Fisgard Lighthouse on Vancouver Island



I love how black and white makes practically ANYTHING look cool.



This is my niece. I know that a real photographer would probably give me heck for my lighting and shadow and whatever else, but doesn't she look like an angel?




This is my "good enough to be in a calendar" flower shot.



Okay, not the best quality of my pictures, but I still can't get over this. My friend Selena got married this past summer and her mother presented her new husband with her dowry. Blankets, some sheepskin thing (representing fur?) and this lovely sheep. The wedding was open bar. Unfortunately this sheep was harmed in the making of a lot of dirty pictures.




The bride so worthy of sucha dowry, mac'n on my hubby!




My sister in law. As posed as it might look, I did catch her off gaurd and it made for a great picture.




My husband took this picture. I love the way the lights and the out of focus areas look. And the reason everyone looks so happy? This was one of the best weddings that most of us had been to. Outdoor ceremony and tented reception, steaks on the BBQ with a very nice buffet, and a DJ that was interactive and turned it into a mardi gras/club atmosphere, even with 80 year olds in the room.

Torture!

I believe that torture has got to be the best way to describe coming back to work after ten days of no work and no school. Now that I am back in school I rarely get long stretches of time off from school and work at the same time. Generally breaks from either do not match up very well. The past ten days were pure bliss, although a little busier than I probably would have liked. This led to an interesting discussion with my husband this past holiday season.

My past two weeks consisted of three dinner parties, two open houses (one which we threw), a card tournament, a full day shopping with my parents and a couple of nights where we had people over. Now over ten days that may not seem like much for most people. For me on the other hand it was hell. I finally lost my shit on Thursday night and refused to leave the house to join my husband at the card tournament. He took that opportunity to point out, and rightly so, that I have a tendency to not go to these events and that our friends would be disappointed that I couldn't make it. To this I replied: "Well for the 500th time, i'm an introvert. This is to be expected." Having spent the day with my generally lovely, but very, very, very, very trying parents (visualize a tiny, slightly OCD Chinese lady, and an overly opinionated, highly talkative, tall German man, make them seniors and you've got my parents) wild horses weren't getting my butt off the couch. "They're going to start wondering if you don't like them" he counters. "Well I am sure that most of our friends won't believe this is a direct snub. But seriously, all our friends know me well enought to know that if I suddenly didnt' like them I'd mail them a fish head or something" - cuz you know, with the Italians you get a horse head, with the Chinese, it's a smelly fish head or chicken feet, but then you have to check that they haven't just sent you dim sum. Unable to counter such heady logic he let me have my way and I proceeded to watch girly, Reese Witherspoon movies, eat as much tofu as I could stuff my face with and napped out.

Seeing our friends and family was a joy this year - especially the part where we chased around the under 2's at Christmas dinner, trying to figure out whose dirty diaper was making that horrid smell - but I am very much a person that requires and revels in my downtime, and those little pockets of the holiday season where I was able to just chill was heaven. The height of heaven was the last two days on New Years Eve and New Years Day. Since we had already thrown a party on the 30th we woke up really late on the 31st, transferred ourselves to our couch and ate left overs and had the most comfy New Years Eve possible. It was so good, we repeated it yesterday.