In here life is beautiful… The girls are beautiful…

Aka “Yoin us!”

Shannon already posted about it so my blog entry about our Cuba trip will be slightly different:

I loved it there. It’s nothing like Mexico, but it’s beautiful-tropical and lush. We met lots of animals, including goats, kitties, dogs, chickens, ducks, geese, lizards and millions-nay, billions-of mosquitos. If you do go, pack bug spray and use it liberally.

That lady dog is not dead, she’s resting. It’s hot in Cuba and there seem to be millions of these funny little dogs, terrier sort of things with stubby legs. This gal was taller than most and had a proper tail, which is also rare. The lizard is a blue anole, they’re everywhere. The kitties are all from the resort, a feral bunch who know how to use the little fellas to win over resort-goers hearts and food. Despite the signs asking people to not feed them. They’re a pack of skinnies and one morning I found out what they eat other than buffet-lizards. Yum.

Everywhere you drive in Cuba are roadside signs promoting government…business.

Seriously, I had so much fun. Thanks a million to Shannon, Saira and Michael.  It’s weird that I will forever associate this lovely country with the death of MJ.

This sign in the washroom of Whole Foods made me laugh.

I picture someone just…standing inside the washroom and getting bashed by another person in a hurry and then complaining to management. “There should be a sign, warning people about the hazard of standing near a door!” Ay. What has this world come to?

Anyway, it’s the end of the week and tonight, hopefully, I get to see The Hangover with my boss. Seems like lately we make plans and they get broken but I am trying to stay positive. Gym too-I do 30 minutes on the bike nowadays and burn about 700 cal. Or so the digital readout says, ultimately, it probably means nothing, but I do sweat my arse off.

It’s been a good week-2 exciting things last Saturday: my old friend Michelle finally had her baby Ruby Blythe 2 weeks late. It had become a running joke on facebook but there were people pushing her to be induced, which is insane (someone actually told her to just go to emerg and claim that she was worried about the baby and they’d just do it). Ugh. I kept my mouth shut as best I could, but really, stupid people like that…and she’s got 3 kids. The other excitement was my girlfriend Libs got married to her long term boyfriend Hugh, with whom she has an almost 3 year old. Yes, another finally.

Ari leaves for summer vacation today but is spending the day playing with her new best pal from next door. I walked past them as they were doing something and Ari says “We’re talking in funny voices!” And her friend says “MEOW!” Something about kitties…this is how a kitty eats, this is how a kitty walks, this is how a kitty…

An old friend gave me this shirt a million years ago. I’ve never worn it but I’m also not able to get rid of it. A close up:

Black Sabbath World Tour 1978. I was 6. It’s a pretty sweet shirt with micromesh sleeves.

burgeons and…hand print?

Luckily I live with someone who has far superior brain power than me and now I know that I really only need to type one of the 2 words anyway and it should (and did) work. Then I learned how captchas work, and that was very interesting too and I vow not to complain about this type any more.

It’s flying away from the onslaught of 5 year old zombies nearing the end of their day at Ontario Place.

Shannon’s already outlined all we did today-and boy are my arms tired! Wait.

Anyway, I am pretty burnt out but it’s not over yet. There’s a party in the building tonight starting in 5 minutes and going until 5am. Lucky for us, it’s not next door and we can’t hear it.

She totally cruised over and posed with her babes.

Today was Ari’s last day of school. There were sports in the morning and a barbecue and cake after. It was really nice, her teachers are very supportive and loving, and all the kids and family members (almost all, other than the stuff throwing kid) were great. She’s excited about starting at her new school in the fall, but I know she’ll miss her friends from kindergarten.

Tomorrow is her grad ceremony and we get to hear the pizza song done with a lot of voices.

I forgot to mention that I really only bought one present when I was in Montreal and it was for the fish. I was getting worried about the real plants floating in the pond and dying, creating muck. They seem to love these and hide underneath all the time.

I also cleaned their filter for the second time in just over a month, it was not pumping water properly and I am thinking it might be time for new filter media and in/out take tubes.

And I also think that I fawn over these fish a wee bit too much! (although I do love the medicine they’re getting, it’s made of bay and smells amazing!)

I think if I had to pick a Canadian city to live in, I’d pick Montreal. It’s beautiful, cultured, the people are polite and friendly, the art galleries are free and there are tons of green parks. I didn’t have one bad meal there and you can buy beer and wine at the corner stores.

In other words, it’s very civilized.

My first day there we (we meaning me, my sister and three of her friends from assorted corners of Canada) all went out to do a little retail therapy.  The apartment we rented was great, on a side street on the end of an amazing area, lots of independent retailers and restaurants, bars and deppaneurs. We stopped for lunch and I ate (almost) poutine.  Some stores made me laugh:

And I bought nothing. We came home due to excessive tiredness.

Wednesday we all trouped out to Old Montreal to visit Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal.  I know, maybe it’s hypocritical of me, but it truly is an amazing piece of architecture, full of beautiful paintings, sculpture and stained glass:

Then we went through the side streets and looked at street artists work and  wound up at the infamous Foufounes Electriques, which I thought was a full on punk rock bar, but seems to be a disco in it’s off times. And was originally a gay bar. Go figure. It was cool, sort of like Dee’s with less grafitti and more art. I ended up heading home  early, on my own, that night. I couldn’t take one more minute of sitting on a smoky patio. Ugh. Smoking.

I also bought my CJ bling that day.

The next day my sister and I went out alone to see The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, particularly to see the John Lennon/Yoko Ono show. It was so good, both Megan and I getting totally choked up in the first room. The show is split into a bunch of small rooms, each with a different theme, all with music, video, art, it was truly amazing. And because we went mid week, there weren’t tons of people jostling for a spot to see everything. AND the museum is FREE. FREE, Torontonians, can you even imagine that??? The room with the stamps (interactively, you’re supposed to stamp them on the maps provided) also has a phone that Yoko calls every day, just to check in. I would have DIED of happiness if I’d been the one to answer it. Just so long as she doesn’t sing. I also took a couple pictures of displays there illicitly. Oops.

Next day we all went to the village (read ‘gay’) for brunch and more stomping around. Megs and I went to the Insectarium in the afternoon and had a great time there too. Who’da thunk that bugs would be so cool? Yeah, maybe I am not such a huge fan of them crawling around in my house, but it was a great museum. Small enough to bring kids without them getting bored quickly.  It’s attached to a botanical garden so we took the (also FREE-or perhaps included in the cover) mini-train around the whole thing and wound up in the Japanese garden where I took, oh, a thousand pictures of the fish there. Have I mentioned before how much I love fish?

That was the last day-the next morning we caught a cab at 5am.

A million thanks to Shannon who paid for the trip for my birthday!

A great trip which I will report upon more fully later, after I have had some sleep. 7am flights are not fun or recommended to anyone in general.

My new necklace.

Spending time away from my family made me miss them and love them and remember why we’re a team.

2009 has been alternately incredibly joyous and unbearably unpleasant (and not for reasons most people would guess!) and I am taking a mini vacation to Montreal for a couple days. I will be meeting up with  my sister (who lives in Vancouver) and we are planning on being good tourists, visiting museums, shopping and eating lots of poutine. And bagels.

I wish my french was better, but I am sadly out of practice.

I will try to take lots of pictures.

I also hope no one forgets to feed the fish and Rose. Not that Rose is shy about asking for food/water.