Mexanese Mumbo Jumbo

As of late I've been running with Streefy and Kmay a lot. I've been pretending I'm going to run the Half Marathon in Kelowna in October, even though I haven't fully made up my mind.

As our long runs on the weekend have crept up to the 10km mark, I am amazed at how diligent I've been with running on my own when my running companions are out of town or cannot make it. I was so diligent one week that I decided it would be a good idea to run 10km on one of the hottest Saturdays this summer has had so far, that I ended up giving myself minor heat stroke and straining my calf forcing me to take a week off of all running and vball activities.

Having recovered from the calf strain, I managed a few weeks of perfect health and even managed a 10km run in just over an hour. I then had the brilliant idea to start working out in the mornings with Wayne. After our first morning workout, which comprised of running stairs and doing box jumps, the 8km run later that day wasn't so fun. I surprisingly didn't struggle with my cardio or leg strength during the run, my knee however started whinging around the 3km mark and continued for the rest of the run.

After a quick medical assessment with Streefy the next day, we decided it was probably the workout that added extra strain on my knee, and the run in the evening just aggravated it. Though I only had to take it easy for a couple of days, and still managed to do my long run on the weekend with the gals, it does pose the question - why am I doing this again? The only logical answer I can come up with is because I'm slightly left of normal and secretly enjoy breaking myself for a lofty goal that I haven't actually decided I'm aiming for yet.

This past week we took my boss out for a surprise birthday dinner with the gals. We opted for a restaurant with a decent vegetarian menu since we had a few veggies with us. The obvious choice was Nuba (though I'm sure if it was in Kits, The Naam would be the hands down choice).

I've been to Nuba Cafe on Seymour a few times, usually opting for the meat filled chicken tawook, but since we were going to the restaurant on Hastings, I decided a little research on up coming meal choice was needed.

I had a quick scan of vancouverslop.com since a) it's run by a friend, and b) he's a total foodie, I was sure he'd reviewed Nuba at some point. After reading their review and deciding that the crunchy cauliflower was a definite must have, I realized that when a group of ladies get together for a meal, birthday or otherwise, they are more likely to order a bunch of food and share. Thankfully the La Feast share-sies plates we got did contain the crunchy cauliflower along with many other tasty goodness.

The night progressed as we all stuffed our faces with the delicious hummous, crunchy cauliflower, falafels, mjadra, salad with feta cheese and drank to our hearts content. As everyone left, bellies full, the birthday girl once again thanked us for the lovely treat and still could not believe her natural nosy nature didn't suspect the evening we had all planned for her.

I'm not really good with pranks. Creativity in the practical joke department is definitely not my forte, though I really do appreciate them. I've always admired those who could come up with great ideas for pranks and - I'll admit, at times been a little jealous. At one of my previous jobs, there were a few co-workers who had the creative chops when it came to fun jokes and they frequently enjoyed executing their ideas on vacationing colleagues.

Although I do enjoy a good tidbit of mischief, pranks that scare the be-jesus out of you, not a fan of. It's one thing to TP someone's desk, or grow cat grass in their keyboard. It's a completely different story to scare the pants off of a naive passerby.

There is a building in Kits, conveniently located within an arms length of one of the beautiful trees that line most of streets in the neighbourhood. Apparently the residents of a certain balcony have taken to entertaining themselves by dropping a fake tarantula on unsuspecting pedestrians 2 stories below.

Though thankfully this has never happened to me, a friend was relaying a story once and since that day, I've decided to walk on the other side of the street just to be safe. Aside from not wanting to be pranked, and subsequently mortified in broad daylight in front of numerous strangers, I might actually pee my pants if a tarantula was ever dropped on me. Plus, that's just mean.

This was the lovely sound I woke up to at 2:30am last night, only 2 hours after having fallen asleep. Apparently the loyal patrons of the Beagle across the street had decided that though the bar was closed, and it was the wee hours of the morning, they were not prepared to call it a night just yet. As they loitered outside of the bar on Broadway, someone had apparently objected to the preferred location for their after hours antics and called the cops. Having grown accustomed to the 2:30am noise, I didn't actually hear it until 3 cop cars rolled up, sirens blaring. Following that, a voice over the loud speaker started shouting instructions to the crowd, one of which was "Get out of my way and go home or go to jail"

Since by then I was fully awake, I decided to check it out. There were actually 4 police cars stopped on the corner, I must have slept through the first siren, one car was actually on the sidewalk. There were about 6 cops lined up beside the Beagle patio trying to either convince people to go home or just look intimidating. Neither was really working.

Various reactions to the cops' presence could also be heard. You had everything from the angry drunks who were swearing and attempting to defy the cops while their friends tried to calm them down and put them in a cab home, to love drunks who love everyone and needed to yell at each other across the street about how much they love each other one last time before stumbling home.

While the 6 cops' attempts at disbursing the crowd were, "admirable", it wasn't really until the paddy wagon appeared that people finally got the hint that the cops were serious about arresting anyone who wouldn't vacate the area. Shortly after, the street was quiet and the police lights disappeared, and I managed to fall back into a restful deep sleep, at least until the cat decided to wake me up.

I'm usually not a fan of costume parties. I generally lack the creativity to think of a good costume in time for said event, and unless it's a Halloween party where mocking will ensue should you opt not to dress up, there's usually a good chance at least half the people at the party won't dress up. So when Tan Tan decided to change her going away party to be a themed one, I was a little hesitant to participate. She had opted for a 'Come as your favourite red head character' theme as, she herself, is a red head. After a couple of weeks of debate, I decided I would at least visit the local costume shop and see what they had, figuring, worse case scenario, I could just get a red wig and be proud of my attempt at dressing up.

After a tidbit of research, I discovered quite a few options for girls: Pippy Longstocking, Jane Jetson, Wilma Flinstone, Velma from Scooby Doo, Peggy Bundy, Ariel the Little Mermaid, Lucy from I Love Lucy, and of course, Jessica Rabbit. Having neither the boobs nor the legs to pull off Peggy Bundy or Jessica Rabbit, and after an exercise in patience while the lovely girl who worked at the store showed me pink capes and hippie outfits, (clearly having missed the 'favourite red head' theme), I finally settled on Wilma.

I started to get ready, only to realize that Wilma's signature necklace wouldn't fit over my head. Not surprising, it was after all a 'Teen' size costume. Realizing I could untie and re-tie the string for the necklace, I gave it a try, which would've worked beautifully if it weren't for the fact that I dropped one end of the string and had balls flying all over my living room floor, oh - about 7 times in a row. After almost throwing in the towel, I finally managed to put the wretched necklace on and was ready to go.

I headed to the party for a night of good laughs and booze, and while I ran into Ariel, Peggy and Pebbles at the party, to name a few, I was glad I brought a change of clothes so I could comfortably enjoy Tan Tan's goodbye. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, that my camera was dropped and subsequently broken, and amazingly - I have little to no recollection of this. Go figure.

I'm sure guys are, on occasion, boggled by the length of time it takes a girl to get ready. Sometimes it 20 mins, and sometimes it's 2 hrs. It usually leaves a tell tale path of destruction in its wake, involving various brushes, products, tools, make up, numerous outfits, shoes and purses. Sure it's a pain in the arse. It's time consuming. It's possibly even crazy. But really, the beauty routine is a sacred event and should not be messed with. Don't question it, don't complain about it and above all else - don't rush it!

Though my own routine has varied over the years, I have honed my skills to a fine art and rarely require more than 1hr to get ready for a night on the town, depending on how crazy the make up is going to be. However, I was recently reminded how easily time can get away from a gal when she's getting ready for an evening of full debauchery, and it involves a group of lovelies, all getting ready at the same time.

I headed out with some of the girls for a friend's stagette. The activity that kicked off our night was crazy fake eyelashes, so we headed down to Wink in Gastown. The owner, Viv, is the cousin of one of the girls, and graciously agreed to stay open past closing time for us. We enjoyed some tasty bubbly while a few of us got fake eyelashes done. Having never worn them before, I wasn't sure what to expect but after seeing the selection I had to choose from - I was more than excited. We all took turns in the chair as Viv touched up our make up, applied eye lashes and entertained us with dirty jokes. End result, almost 2 hrs later, was fabulous! Sure there was only a few of us that sat in the chair in total - but don't we look puurrddyy??