I see this sign every day in the public restrooms at the Harbour:
Come on, people– are those ellipses really necessary? (Especially so many of them?)
The suspense is killing me!
Where can I possibly find some feminine hygiene products?
Oh.
That was a bit anti-climactic, no?
PS: Do you know how difficult it is to take a half-decent photo inside a public restroom without looking like a total creep? Believe me. It’s not easy.
Well, dear readers, I’m a month and a half into my summer selling season, and what have I got to show for it? Bags under my eyes, a return to my daily ponytail habit, and an alarming degree of tightening in the pants that fit me fine in March. Heh. On the plus side (not to be confused with the plus size… yet), business is faring well so far and I haven’t inadvertently made any mortal enemies out of my fellow causeway workers. <– Again… yet.
I jest. (Not about the business part, but about the bitter rivalry part. Fingers crossed that I can emerge from this season unscathed by any drama!)
Anyone want to take a stab at Victoria’ primary industry?
Towards the beginning of April, when Harbour Season had just started up again, I posted a shining list of so-called “practical” goals for the summer. Hahahaha! Apparently my youthful naivete is a filthy habit I just can’t kick, because what I deemed “realistic” at the beginning of April seems laughably implausible now. Days off? Bwahaha! A cap on weight gain? I kill me! Let’s revisit my goals through wiser, albeit sorta bloodshot eyes, shall we?
1. Maintain a 3-day-per-week exercise regimen, at least until the end of June
Actually, I haven’t been doing so bad with this one. I renewed my membership at the Y when we moved back into town (so long, cheesy 80s gym at the lake!), and I’ve been hitting up the elliptical machine pretty steadily. I made the mistake of attending a few weight lifting classes early on, but when I rode my bike to work right after and realized that I couldn’t even apply my own brakes because my arms hurt so badly, I decided to focus more on solo workouts for the time being. 
I’m pretty sure all my classmates were impressed by my uber-fit ability to do a shoulder fly with measly 3-lb weights (right), but the full-body corset I felt like I was wearing after the class was totally not worth it.
Water taxis! At least our workplace is festive and charming!
2. Put a 3-lb cap on weight gain!
Sigh. Can we just skip this goal and move onto the next one? My weight must be solely determined by good sleeps and tons of herbal tea, because now that I am lacking both, I have already hit my cap. Yes! In six weeks! I realize that my weight is just a number and that it shouldn’t define me as an overall human being, but when I saw that particular number smiling up at me from the scale (most likely chirping “na-na-na-boo-boo” in a sickening, sing-song voice– jerk!), I went apoplectic! (<– FYI: “Apoplectic” just happens to be my favourite overused word in the NHL coverage on TSN. That, and “conniption fit”. Both terms were very applicable on the fateful morning when I dared step on my bathroom scale. That son of a gun!!)
3. Take one day off every week
Hahaha, I’m so funny! What means “days off”? Yes, I have taken most Tuesdays and Wednesdays away from the Harbour since April, but I’ve used those days to unpack our boxes, clean up crap, and run not-fun errands. Not technically a “day off”, agreed? The original plan was to cook up a storm at least once a week, but I’ve barely been able to make us more than toast. (Full disclosure: it rained buckets yesterday, which meant we had a day off of work. I made us a stellar Carrot & Ginger Soup.) Luckily, there’s a vegan restaurant not too far from the Harbour that sells amazing (and cheap!) soups and salads. I discovered that they also offer live/raw sauerkraut, and for reasons unbeknownst to me, I have been buying it by the pound and shoveling it back on a daily basis. It must be like sandwiches and salads: they always taste better when somebody else makes them. I can’t get enough of the stuff! Healthy intestinal flora for the win!
Photo of chard from when I actually had chard in the fridge… not in the past month and a half, sorry.
4. Dress snappier.
The plan was to wear more skirts and/or not-jeans outfits to work, but then Marty and I discovered that we had packed all of my “nice” clothes into storage in such a way that they can never be retrieved again. Seriously. I put everything nice into a box, which we placed into a cupboard, which we then proceeded to block with a bookshelf full of photo albums. The bookshelf, in turn, is blocked by a substantial dresser– a virtual Tetris of household belongings. The only way I can access my box of skirts and somewhat feminine attire is to take everything out of the dresser, move the blasted dresser out of storage, take everything off the bookshelf, somehow haul the gigantic bookshelf out of our storage unit, open the cupboard, fetch the box, and rescue everything delicate I own. Or I could buy all new skirts. Or I could just wear jeans to work. Guess which option I chose?
One of the skirts which is currently being held for ransom in our storage locker. Haven’t seen this baby (or the matching tights… or the jacket) since our trip to Seattle last October.
5. Kinda sorta keep abreast of other people’s blog entries
I’m doing okay in this regard. Yes, I am falling behind and yes, there is still some catching up to do, but quite a few of my go-to blogs have decided to tone down their posting schedules this season, which has helped me tremendously. It’s so much easier to follow everyone I want to follow when they’re not all pumping out wordy, deep, or otherwise complex posts on a daily basis. Thank you, brevity! Bless you, not having to use my brain!
You know me: I don’t like to miss out. I will be sifting through handfuls of posts whenever I can sneak in a few minutes. If I’ve been absent from your comments sections for a while, please forgive me but know that I am plugging through the backlog in my inbox. I’ll get there, I promise!
That’s me in a nutshell, readers– same girl, but with less sleep and more weight!
How about you? Shall we commiserate about things? Share a laugh?
Borrowing the idea from Robin at Life in the Bogs, I’m planning a series of short ‘n’ sweet posts about signs. Random, amusing, thought-provoking signs… and did I mention short posts? What’s not to love?
Without further adieu, here is the first installment:
We saw this sign posted on a hike across the Kinsol Trestle on Vancouver Island. I hope this person eventually found their keys and GPS, but something tells me that virginity is a more difficult entity to recover… (On a related note: thank goodness I’m not the only person clumsy/forgetful enough to lose my virginity! Not that it happened like that.)
Join me on a photographic journey from our cabin on the lake to the local post office one sunny April afternoon. (Before you even ask– yes! Walking to the post office was the most exciting thing you could do on any given day. 45 minutes of sheer ecstasy!) Obviously, these photos were taken before Marty and I moved back to Victoria, but I hope you can use them– as I do– to beam yourself to a happy spot today! Enjoy!
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Before I even left the cabin, I was greeted by the incessant pecking of these two birds on our windows:
It was difficult to capture the spastic movements of these (crazy) birds digitally, especially from behind glass. Most of the photos I took were grey blurs with either a red or yellow accent. Ha.
These birds visited our cabin faithfully for a period of about two weeks, devoting several 15-minute intervals each day to hop around on the wire rack outside and tap our windows. I’m not sure if they were simply enamored with their own appearances or if they were trying (unsuccessfully) to alert us to dire circumstances on the horizon. In any case, they disappeared as mysteriously as they first appeared: after logging many hours at our side window and probably wounding their tiny beaks with all that pecking, they suddenly stopped coming. Maybe they got tired of looking at themselves in the glass, or maybe they finally realized that Marty and I– dim-witted humans that we are– weren’t catching on to their repeated warning signals. (In hindsight, we’re lucky we got out of that cabin alive! Doom and destruction could have been on their way!)
Anyway– back to the walk:
Standing guard about two country blocks from our cabin was the Shaman:
The Shaman was just a large, mostly nondescript stump when we first moved to the lake in December. However, when I returned to our cabin from a quick jaunt to Calgary in the spring, the stump had been transformed into the sacred guardian of our neck of the woods. (I actually first discovered this transformation in the pitch dark, when Marty and I were wandering around the country paths listening to frogs. I was focusing primarily on sounds that evening and suddenly came face to face with the Shaman’s gigantic, shadowy eyes in the moonlight. Scared the pants off me! It’s definitely better to discover the Shaman for the first time in daylight.)
Spring had sprung at the lake:
There were old leaves and new flowers at every turn:
I had secretly been hoping to discover some forest creatures on this particular stroll, and I wasn’t disappointed. I heard rustling in the bushes beside the road and turned to see this:
Not the best photo, I know, but it’s still proof that woodland creatures accompanied me on my walk like a regular Cinderella!
I also happened to catch sight of this guy on my way back from the mailbox:
Closer inspection revealed that he was just about to enjoy a substantial feast of mouse. Tasty! I debated switching to a zoom lens on my camera to get a closer view of the macabre scene, but my vegetarian sensibility and plain common sense won out eventually. (I was a little worried that the snake would lunge at me if I got too close, and even though he wasn’t very large, I didn’t want to subject myself to any scary run-ins with a serpent. Too biblical for this particular walk.)
As I neared the final stretch back to our cabin, I delighted in the blossoms:
Then I finished my rounds with a quick glance at the most random recycling sign ever:
Is this sign meant for me or for the truck driver?
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Today’s post was inspired by Robin at Life in the Bogs and Kathy at Lake Superior Spirit. You can join in the fun and post an entry with photos of your own local surroundings!
