A nervous tick.

My sister and I went for our first hike of the season through a marshy grassland area. It was windy and cloudy and it looked like it was going to rain, but we went anyway.

On the drive home, we were just coming into the city, when I saw a black spider crawling over my hand. I asked my sister to take it off and she freaked out. It was a wood tick.

We pulled up to a nearby pizza place and took off our sweaters and shook them out. Four more ticks.

Then, over lunch, I found another tick, so like any good responsible citizen would do, I flicked it across the restaurant. I should have put it in my salad to get a free meal.

On the drive home from the restaurant my sister found another tick on her hand, so she rolled open the window and stuck her arm out, shaking her arm and screaming. The guy who was standing on the street nearby found this funny.

We found three more wood ticks at home. I threw them outside for the family dog to pick up later. Wood ticks are virtually impossible to kill - have you ever tried stepping on one?

Coincidence?

Do you ever notice your bathroom items run out all at once?

So you find yourself at the story buying dental floss, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner and soap all at once.

Whenever I end up at the store buying these items all at once I have to refrain from telling the cashier: "I'm not new to personal hygiene. I've had showers before. Honest."

Drowning

I watched the David Blaine: Drowned Alive special and have since been pondering the phrase “drowned alive”

To drown one must be alive and in need of oxygen. You cannot drown if you are dead, so you would drown alive.

And to be drowned is the past tense of drown, in which case you would be dead. So it is impossible to be drowned and be alive, unless you are almost drowned. And David Blaine did not almost drown.

Drowned can also mean to be completely submerged in water, but that is no great feat. I can completely submerge myself in water if only for a moment and be drowned alive.

Also, the title is close to what he titled a stunt back in 1999 called Buried Alive, which was never really a creative title.

His other stunt titles could also be scrutinized: Vertigo, Frozen in Time and Above and Below.

Deconstruction is fun.

Foreshadowing

Sometimes I wonder if life, like movies and books, has foreshadowing events.

Like on Saturday afternoon I watched the First Daughter, which is a fluffy movie about the President’s daughter having a romantic relationship with one of her secret service officers.

Then, that evening, I got an impromptu invitation to go to The Sentinel, a movie that I knew nothing about. I agreed to go anyway.

As it turns out the movie was, in part, about a secret service officer who has an affair with the President’s wife. It was another fluffy movie.

Watching the First Daughter foreshadowed how I would spend my evening, but I did not heed the warning and ended up watching two very mediocre movies.

Association Games

It’s weird how television can influence our thoughts.

I’ve been making my way through the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time recently. There is a popular musical episode called “Once more with Feeling” about a demon that makes people dance and sing until they are so worked up they burst into flames.

In one scene, a dancing Buffy is spinning around so fast that she is literally starting to smoke.

So anyway, I was at a men’s figure skating event. While watching the skaters spin faster and faster, a weird thought walked across my mind: “The figure skaters could spontaneously combust doing those spins.”

I shook the thought out of my head.

It’s weird how our mind makes connections. It’s not so much word association as concept and image association. And it’s funny how and when those associations work.

Cops

Sometimes I wonder if cops get frustrated when they are driving.

The police might want to speed a little. You know, go 10 kilometres over the speed limit like the average driver does.

But the people driving in front of the police are deliberatly driving slower, because they fear getting a ticket.

Meaning police likely always have to travel 10 kilometres slower than the speed limit, because of people terrified of getting a ticket.

A New Taste

Peanut butter and pickle sandwiches—Yep, apparently there are some people out there who eat them on a regular basis.

And they think it’s normal.

Now I’m a regular consumer of the peanut butter and banana sandwich. And, occasionally, I will have peanut butter and jam. I would also not be above peanut butter and chocolate chip sandwiches.

But the thought of peanut butter and pickle sandwiches literally makes my stomach turn. It’s just wrong.

That said, I’ve met two people now, who work in the same office, who claim to love peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. They are how I learnt that such an abomination even existed.

One of those people brought in such a sandwich for me to try. You can imagine my horror when I saw the sandwich sitting on my desk.

I stared at it. It stared at me. I had to at least try it. It was made for just me.

I held it up to my mouth, and then put it down. I held it up to my mouth, and then put it down.

I finally took a very tiny bite. I tasted peanut butter and followed by pickle.

I contemplated the taste. It wasn’t horrible. But still my stomach was turning in discomfort.

I took another tiny bite. Again, not horrible, but my stomach, at this point, started screaming: “NO!”

I listened to my stomach and threw the sandwich in the garbage.

I tried, but my stomach just couldn’t do it.

Besides, perhaps the whole peanut butter and pickle thing was just a cruel joke, because no one really eats peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. Do they?

Girl Power

Why is it that males lead the way in competitive sports?

In snowboarding, if a female gets some big air, you will hear the announcer say: “Wow. You usually only see that kind of air with the men.”

Gretchen Bleiler, the 2006 Olympic silver medallist in the women’s halfpipe said:

“Men and women are built differently, and in the end, men are generally more powerful and technical than women.”

She goes on to contradict herself by saying there are some women who can hit the same tricks as men.

Women are always able to hit the same tricks as men. It just takes women longer to get to that level.

It is men who revolutionize the sport and women eventually follow in those footsteps.

Men have been landing the quad in figure skating for years. Men are required to do the jump. Women are required only to do triples. But when Miki Ando, a Japanese figure skater, landed the quad in international competition the door opened up. In the next 10 years, women doing quads will become commonplace. It would be nice to take these women and transport them back in time to compete in an era where men weren’t yet attempting quads. That way these women would be revolutionizing the sport instead of men.

It would be nice to take professional skateboarders Vanessa Torres and Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins and transport them to compete before the Z-Boys ever tore up the scene back in the 70s. Then it would be two women who revolutionized the sport instead of three guys.

In my experience doing karate, women are timid and afraid to try. They need time to build up their courage. Where as beginner men are almost suicidal – they’ll go at it full-tilt even if they have wrong technique. But when a woman realizes she is fully capable, she becomes equal and sometimes better than her male competitors. I’ve seen it happen more than once.

Still water runs deep.

I am not an emotional person. Actually, I take that back. I’m very emotional. It’s just I’m a “crying-on-the-inside” girl.

All my emotions are contained in a stainless steel cylinder. Occasionally, I surprise myself when a single tear falls down my cheek.

Think Warf from Star Trek Enterprise, or better yet Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. It’s just the way I am. If I was capable of expressing my emotions publicly, I would, but it’s too awkward for me.

As a result, people treat me like I’m not human. They assume I’m hardened and callous, which is not true at all. It’s a misunderstanding.

I cry during the sad parts of movies. It’s just on the inside. Just because I don’t show the hurt, doesn’t mean there isn’t pain.

People often don’t get me gifts, because they think I don’t appreciate them. But I do. I just don’t gush. No matter how grateful I am, no matter how cute I think something is, I won’t show it.

My lack of visible emotion is a disability. It keeps me distant from others.

I’ve come to believe the people who seem the hardest on the outside are probably the people who feel emotion the most.

Anger

Anger can be a weird beast.

It can sneak up on you when you least expect it. And you can explode over the silliest things.

Anger can be like living on a fault line. Mostly you experience little rumblings over the years. But occasionally there are large scale earthquakes that bring about disaster.

Spring can really hang you up the most...

Spring snuck up on me this year.

It feels like it should still be winter. I was wearing my heavy winter coat a few days into April when my co-workers pointed out that it was no longer winter. It was going up to 20 degrees Celsius (69 degrees Fahrenheit). And I was like "Oh. Really?"

Somehow, I was still living in March. I'm amazed it's warm out.

I've been in the cold for so long, I'm having a tough time adapting. And that's weird, because it was a fairly mild winter.

All blogged out...

Blogs are a lot of work, especially when you start getting regular readers that you have to entertain.

Regular readers can't possibly know when you're busy, when you're in a rut or when you've just plain old fallen off the band wagon, even if only for a week or two.

But a blogger should persevere and keep going, even when it gets tough. Because there is nothing worse than seeing a blogger commit blog suicide - deleting thier blog all together.

You gotta keep on blogging in the free world.

Fate

Does fate exist?

Do you ever notice that when you get on the wrong track, life seems to auto-correct itself? It eventually seems you end up being where you need to be.

But is it possible to get so far off track that life can't correct itself?

Are there really wrong decisions to be made in life? Everything is a learning experience. And learning is important.

C'est vrai?

The Frontier

"The future is called "perhaps," which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the only important thing is not to allow that to scare you." - Tennessee Williams, Orpheus Descending, 1957

It's the unknown that makes the future scary, which is why I wish I had a crystal ball. It would make tough decisions easier.

Getting there

Whenever I talk to high school kids going into university who say they are going to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, I tell them: "Wait and see."

It's not that I want to discourage them from their career goals. It's just life has a funny way of taking over, leading you to where you least expected to be.

If you look back over your last 10 years did things turn out how you expected them to for better or for worse?

There is no way of knowing where you'll end up next. Try as you may.

Sure you can plan, but things might not turn out to be what you expected.

Life is funny.

A Greater Message

I've always believe that the universe is trying to tell you something when you keeping running into an acquaintance you wouldn't normally see regularly.

Unfortunately, I've never been able to figure out what the universe is trying to tell me. Putting my run ins with people together, it seems nothing more than a strange coincidence.

Fast Food Nation

We were raised to crave the foods we crave.

What kind of sadistic society do we live in that raises us to crave chocolate and pop instead of carrots and eggplant.

We are continually being sold things that are bad for us - Big Macs and cigarettes.

Let's make a buck well we can. Who cares if the product gives people lung cancer and heart problems.

It's a sick, sick world.

Oh Canada!

I am always amazed at how Canadians have an identity and culture unique to Americans.

You would think being neighbours to the U.S.A., we would be completely absorbed. But yet we have our own issues.

Our politics are completely different. And we have our own TV shows that make fun of our politics and current events - like the Rick Mercer Report. Although Lorne Michaels, one of the masterminds behind Saturday Night Live, is Canadian.

When it comes to Canadian culture we have Tim Horton's and "Roll up the Rim." Tonight I caught myself counting my Canadian Tire money and contemplating what I would buy with it.

A lot of our popular music is often a part of the underground scene in the U.S.A.

The Bare Naked Ladies have been successful in Canada for over 14 years. But it took a long time for them to catch on in the U.S. The Bare Naked Ladies were first listened to by American college students before hitting it big on the American airways. The Bare Naked Ladies maybe only have been popular in America for half their career - but they were huge in Canada long before that.

Canadian television is often weird and I think it's starting to rub off on Americans. Was the American TV show Arrested Development really that new and innovative or had its creator watched a little too much CBC in his day.

Any Canadian can name any Canadian actor or actress that has made it big in the States.

I don't know maybe Canada influences the States as much as they influence Canada. It's just neither country really realizes it.

Although, then again my spellcheck tried to replace the CBC for CBS.

Forgiveness

"The things that people in love do to each other they remember, and if they stay together it's not because they forget, it's because they forgive." - Indecent Proposal

But the question is what is forgivable and what isn't?

Even if the two of you are deeply in love, one of you could still commit an unforgivable act.

Or can people that deeply in love really hurt each other? When in love, you are more likely concerned about what your loved one is feeling.

Or are you?

Ice and Rubber

Why is it when you are small you can fall to the ground with little injury?

Yeah, as a kid you might cry about it, but in terms of actual injury, you're fine.

I guess kids are closer to the ground.

As an adult, if you fall on the ice, you get more scrapes and bruises. Your back aches for four days and you've thrown out your shoulder.

As you get even older, the probability of breaking something becomes even higher.

As we age, we go from rubber to glass.