A few lovely things because it’s Friday, and because I said so.
A few lovely things because it’s Friday, and because I said so.
The first thing we did when we arrived in Toronto, after a feverish race for the nearest Tim Horton’s (they didn’t have Nanaimo bars there, and I was very sad) was rent a car and head for Niagara Falls. We had no idea where we were going, our phones didn’t work, but we were just hoping for the best.
It was a freezing cold, extremely icy day, we’d had to sit on the runway for an hour after landing because it was too cold for the ground crews to come get us off the plane, and as we drove toward the Falls there were vehicles in the ditch left and right.
I was pretty nervous and wasn’t sure if we were being stupid to try to get down there, there is something to be said for seizing the moment and taking advantage of your situation when traveling, but there is probably an argument to be made for not being unnecessarily reckless, which is one I’m still not usually able to win with myself. If I want to do something, I’m usually doing it, regardless of consequences or changes in circumstance, but we made it there without incident.
I had to be back later that night for the bachelorette party, but we had a solid few hours to spend creeping around and checking out the Falls. I imagined us strolling around the walkway and taking in the view from all angles.
Those plans evaporated almost immediately once we set foot outside the vehicle, even though it had been a few hours since our plane landed, and it was very sunny outside, it was still bitterly cold. We raced down to the overlook, took some pictures and enjoyed the gorgeous view for as long as we possibly could, which was all of 10 minutes.
Still it was amazing to see Niagara Falls in person, it was especially neat to see parts of it frozen. I would have been sad if we’d been so close and wouldn’t have made the short journey, even if it was a bit treacherous.
A few things that are making me happy right now:
This list of countries that Canadians are eligible to work and live in via working holidays visas. There are so many amazing places in the world, I want to live everywhere. And if you want something bad enough, you’ll figure out a way to do it. There are a lot of opportunities out there if you are interested enough to seek them out, and brave enough to take advantage of them.
The fact that it is officially spring, flowers are starting to bloom and I can wear dresses and sandals without freezing to death.
Cherry blossoms on my neighbour’s tree on a beautiful California day
I came across The Dictionary of Obscure sorrows when I was creeping around the web one day. It is a dictionary of made up words that aim to define feelings or occurrences that have no real definition.
This amazing Eyeko eyeliner is life changing. I couldn’t use liquid eyeliner before because it took so long to get the tiny, wispy little strokes even, and I usually ended up looking like Derek had punched me in the eye. Eyeko has a nice, thick tip so it’s like drawing on your eyeliner with a Sharpie. It is way easier to get a consistent line, and it stays on all day.
Sometimes I get free samples from Sephora, and it reminds me that the world is a lovely place full of wonderful people
Most of the things we did in New York were pretty surreal, I’ve wanted to go there all my life, and it was neat standing in front of places that I’ve seen millions of times in photos and movies.
The most surreal thing was the 9/11 memorial. It’s such a beautiful, peaceful spot now with the water flowing and spraying in the wind, and people gathered silently around looking at the memorials and taking pictures. It’s very hard to picture it as the site of such a horrible thing.
I really tried to just stand there quietly and take it all in, and tried to imagine how it must have felt to be there that day, going from feeling safe and secure, in a familiar place you go to every single day, to horrible pain, terror and uncertainty in a split second.
I’m sure you can’t fully appreciate what it was truly like if you weren’t there, but I’m glad I was finally able to visit the site and see all of the names. Watching so much coverage of the attacks on the news, it almost felt like watching a movie, even though I knew it was actually happening. Being there in person reminds you that those were real people who died that day, somebody’s family, somebody’s friends. It could have been any of us.
And seeing the pools in the shadow of the new World Trade Center 1 tower reminds you that people are resilient, and that even if they’ll never forget, they will always rebuild.
On a bitterly cold morning in NYC, at the crack of dawn basically which seemed like a good plan when I was planning our trip, but didn’t take into account the drinking into the wee hours of the night before, we loaded onto a boat to go see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
We stood up at the very front of the boat, outside, to get the best view, but we were completely alone. Everyone else was inside the cabin, warm and toasty and looking at us like we were nuts. My mother pointed out that she lives in Canada and it’s way colder there. I reminded her that I’ve been living in Hawaii and California for the last seven years, and helpfully offered to push her in the water so she could remember what it felt like to be freezing.
Once we got to Liberty Island, we climbed up about 250 stairs to the top of the platform. The Statue of Liberty is definitely smaller than I thought it was going to be, it looks absolutely enormous in all of the movies and shows I’ve ever seen, but it was still really neat to see it in person.
I was also surprised and a little worried that I was the only person I could see to have posted an upskirt shot on Instagram. You learn new things about yourself everyday, apparently, like the fact that you are a kind of a pervert.`
As we were leaving Liberty Island, we noticed an empty tour boat heading to New Jersey that nobody was on. We asked the guy where we would get tickets, thinking we might go over and have lunch in New Jersey, and he gave us the strangest look and said “New Jersey? You don’t need tickets for New Jersey. Who would pay to go to New Jersey?”. He was not wrong.
One of the coolest things we did in NYC was go up to the top of Rockefeller Plaza and look out at the city. We actually had tickets to go up right before sunset so we could see the day, the sunset, and the night views, but we had some issues with the hotel we were at so we ended up having to go later.
The view is really amazing from up there, you know there are a lot of people in New York, but seeing all of the lights stretching out for miles and miles in each direction is pretty humbling. It was a pretty warm night so we stayed up there for quite awhile just marveling at the beautiful view and taking pictures.
I was fairly devastated when I saw this a few days later. It was on The Tonight Show on Monday, and we were up there on Saturday, so it was likely filmed sometime over the weekend.
If we would have made our earlier ticket time, it would have been me he was photo bombing, and then I could have been in a photo with, and possibly met Jon Hamm. And then I would have probably just jumped off the roof and ended it, because there is really no where to go from there but down.
Love this poem:
We Who Are Your Closest Friends
We flew into NYC at 5:30 am last Friday. After a few hours of creeping around trying to figure out where we were supposed to be going, we found our hotel in Midtown, dropped off our bags, and set out to explore the city. The very first place we stopped was Central Park.
It was a gorgeous day, apparently it had been cold for weeks before we got there, so the park was full of people running, walking and playing hockey. It was amazing to see the huge, beautiful park surrounded on all sides by towering skyscrapers. We climbed up on top of one of the big boulders and just sat there people watching and sunning ourselves like lizards.
One of the things I liked most about New York was how easy it was to get around everywhere, either on the subway or just walking. We walked about 10 miles a day every day we were in the city. If I lived there, I would have legs of steel.
We visited Central Park several times on our trip, and just spent hours walking through and looking at all of the sites, including the Belvedere castle which I thought was in my imagination since we walked all over the park and couldn’t find it, but we eventually made it there on our last stroll.
There were lots of great things about our time in New York, but those first few hours in Central Park were definitely one of my favourite things. It reminded me so much of spring time in Canada, when you finally feel the sun on your face after months of bitter cold, and even though there is still snow on the ground you can finally feel the end in site. Everything smells fresh and clean, and you just want to go play outside.
Last week we had an onsite work training that our whole team flew out for from all over the country. At the end of the second day, we did a cooking class as a group for something fun to do together.
It was at Jordan’s Kitchen in San Francisco, and it was amazing. It is a full scale commercial kitchen, but they only do group cooking classes, so we had the place to ourselves. The staff were super friendly, and really knowledgeable.
We arrived, and they had trays of cheeses and smoked meats for us to snack on, and they were handing out wine before we even got our jackets off. We made mushroom risotto, flank steak with fingerling potato salad and chocolate mousse with sea salt for dessert.
Our group got to do everything, they taught us how to chop vegetables, season everything, and prepare, plate and garnish each dish. The food was delicious, mushroom risotto is one of my favourite things in the world. I may have gotten a little too deep into the wine because before I knew it I had nominated myself as the grill master of the group, and was picking up the flank steaks with my bare hands, and expertly (ish) maneuvering them around the flaming grill.
The chocolate mousse was delish, and we had a post-dessert mini-booze bottle pinata, which is not something I’ve done before but may well become a part of my supper routine every night. It was a really fun activity, and we got a copy of all of the recipes we made so we can re-create them at home. Not promising I will, because even though it was delicious it was a lot more work than boxed mac and cheese, but still it’s nice to have the option.
Our time in New York is going so fast, only two more days and we’re off to Toronto. It’s been such a busy, fun week though.
I worked from our Manhattan office today, it was really nice to finally meet a bunch of people in person that I’ve been talking to every day for months.
Also, I found a place that makes really good lemon drops so I’m pretty much all set.
loveliness. 