Mr. BrownA just got back from Vancouver, where he had to spend a few days for work.
Before his flight home, he had time to go to the Vancouver Aquarium. Mr. BrownA says that as it was a snowy weekday morning, he had the whole place practically to himself.
The Aquarium's most famous tenants are the sea otters, who seem to live a life of enviably untroubled enthusiasm. They were in an especially playful mood, and were only too happy to frolic and pose for Mr. BrownA's camera:
Here's another one of the local stars, hamming it up:
Of course, I got a present, too:
I just got back from walking the dogs. There's a little park across the street we go to. There was nobody there tonight. Hector had just finished pooping in one of the far corners (funny thing about greyhounds: give them a football-field size area, and they will all still want to poop right up against the fence or wall). I was just bending over to pick it up when I hear this terrific crash and growling and snarling. Some hideous little pit bull cross I had never seen in the neighbourhood had come flying at my dogs and was molesting them most aggressively, jumping at their throats and snapping at their legs. My poor boys were terrified. This is not a behaviour that greyhounds ever learn or experience at the track. They are completely docile and passive and have no idea how to respond when attacked. So I flew into protective lioness mode. I put myself between the strange dog and my boys, and kept kicking at it to keep it away, waving my arms and yelling at it. Eventually its dumbass owner comes sauntering up. He had let the dog off the leash way over at the corner and had just let it run willy-nilly into the park.
"Duh, what happened?" "Your dog just attacked my dogs." He calls his dog over. "Whoa. You mean he just jumped on them?" Clueless idiot. At which point I lost it. I turned on him, eyes blazing, and yelled in my deepest, most impressive amazon voice: "if your dog can't be trusted off the leash, he shouldn't. Fucking. Be. Off. The. Leash."
"Uh, sorry," he mumbled, before snapping the leash on the dog and hurriedly leaving the same way he came. Wow. I think I actually scared him.
I went back to bed around one and slept for another four hours. Had a little chicken soup when I woke up. Then I drove to the grocery store to get some of my staple, bland convalescence food and drink: ginger ale, white grape juice, miso soup, oranges, rice crackers and Mott's sugar-free apple-blueberry snacks. I used to enjoy apricot and peach baby food, too, but now they've been adding something to it that makes it gummy and gross. It just doesn't taste the same as 10 years ago.
Oh, I also got some of this. It's not really upset tummy food, is it?
Around midnight last night, after I'd walked the hounds and was getting ready for bed, I started getting the most excruciating stomach cramps. You know when you feel fine one moment, a bit queasy the next, and within 10 minutes you're sitting on the toilet clutching a garbage can between your knees, feeling like everything you've ever eaten in your life is trying to fight its way back into the world? Yeah, like that.
Mr. BrownA is in Vancouver for work. Fucker.
After a super rough night, I still had to get up this morning and walk the dogs. Fuckers.
I've had some tea and a little toast, and so far it's staying down. I was feverish too, and I'm not anymore, so I'm hoping it's just a 24-hour bug thing.
Dammit! My plan today was to go to the barn this morning to spend some quality time with Beau, then go catch an early showing of Persepolis (I was going to go yesterday evening but it was so cold I just hibernated instead), followed by a nice dinner for one somewhere. I also have a ton of laundry to do and put away.
I'm going to go lie down some more, and see how I feel later.
What are 10 things you've done that other people probably haven't?
Submitted by Janette.For all I know, lots of people have done these things. But I still think they're pretty cool. In no particular order:
1. Worked as a nude artist's model
2. Wrote an article about being sexually harrassed by a world-famous orchestra conductor that made the cover of a major magazine
3. Had a new piano concerto dedicated to me
4. Spent a week in the hospital with a ruptured esophagus (Edit: no, I wasn't bulimic...I had had an endless bout of really bad bronchitis. I was coughing so hard that I was constantly gagging and puking. This went on for so long that I wound up with a tear in my esophagus. Not fun. I don't understand how some people could do this to themselves on purpose.)
5. Learned how to ride a horse when I was 30. Didn't learn how to drive until I was 32.
6. Sat in the cockpit on a commercial Heathrow to Brussels flight--I was literally the only passenger. I thought for sure they would cancel the flight, but no! For 45 minutes, I had my own personal jet.
7. Rescued a kingfisher
8.Was the subject of a National Film Board documentary on mixed race people
9. Had a semi-famous classical musician fly me to New York, after meeting me once, to hook up with him for a 2-day tryst.
10. Managed to spend my entire life in Canada without once ever going to a hockey game.
What is the worst city you've ever been to and why?
Submitted by Soup.
No doubt about it: LA (sorry, Leeeeenda, Aubrey and my other Angeleno peeps). Yes, parts of it are beautiful. The Getty Museum is unbelievable. But for getting around as a tourist without a car, it was the pits. It took me more than two hours on the worst, most hostile public transit system I have ever encountered to get to said Getty Museum. I was more afraid riding the LA city bus in broad daylight than I ever was taking the subway in New York alone at 2 in the morning. And nobody is helpful, or friendly, or remotely interested in you as a human being. Every single place I've visited in the world, I've met fantastic people, people who have overwhelmed me with their kindness and generosity of spirit. Everywhere, that is, except LA, where I felt unwelcome, invisible and ignored.
