travel

Soon, soon the conference will be done. And thank fucking god for that. It's actually not been half bad, though I'm exhausted from the stale air and the talking talking talking.

But there was soy milk for the granola this morning at breakfast. I felt like having giant glasses of it, just so the conference organizers would know how greatly appreciated that was.

In only a couple of hours now, Chris and I will be checking out and heading off. A couple hours at the Bata Shoe Museum, which is not a museum I would ever have really considered, but Chris says it's a good one, and she knows museums. And when I said I would go, she got so excited that we could that I will enjoy it just for her joy, even if I don't enjoy it for my own.

The museum is on my old strip. I lived in the Annex for 3 years, before I moved to Halifax and passed my way cheap rent-controlled bachelor apartment onto my brother. I loved living in Toronto, I loved the Annex. I still do. That strip of Bloor, between Spadina and Bathurst, still feels like home to me, the hours I spent on the Futures patio, drinking coffee, reading the paper. Wasting time in the best possible way.

And then home, my real home now. I can't wait.

One of the things I love about yoga is that it's pretty easy to do anywhere. A non-slip surface, enough space, you're ready to go. You can get some decent exercise in without leaving your hotel room.

Unless your hotel room is laid out so that there isn't 7 straight feet of space anywhere at all.

On the 27th floor, there's a pool and fitness room, quite a nice one actually. If you're on the treadmills or bikes, you're looking out over the city, the lake, the CN Tower within spitting distance past the glass, or so it seems.

There's one spot for stretching, which I just took over for yoga. I felt weird and show offy at first. It is impossible to to do yoga in a gym setting without being noticed. Particularly if you thought you'd be doing yoga in your room, so you only brought your wee shorts and deeply-v cut shirt that shows every single one of the tattoos on your torso.

I almost let that stop me, because while I certainly have an exhibitionist streak in me, I tend to keep it for select - queer - audiences.

In case you were wondering, the gym on the 27th floor of the Delta Chelsea is not queer space.

But I really wanted to breathe deeply, do sun salutations to scrape away the conference haze, twist the stiffness out of my mid back and shoulder.

It was a surprising pleasure to do yoga in a non-yoga spot. I wasn't comparing myself to the yoga stars with whom I usually do yoga, which surprisingly, allowed me to try going deeper into poses than I might otherwise.

There was a lot of outside noise: tvs, machine beeping, conversations poolside. It smoothed out into waves of white noise as I pulled myself into myself, the sharp chlorinated air into my lungs.

In terms of danger, etc. my flight here was absolutely fine. A bit of shaking every now and again, but nothing major.

In terms of irritation, however, it was mighty and fierce. This mighty fierceness came in the form of two little girls sitting directly behind me, probably about 5 and 8, in around there. Their parents were across the aisle from me.

I was set. I had This American Life queued up in the ipod, I had my knitting out. Good to go. And then they started screeching.

As an auntie in close contact with two of her toddler nieces, I have a pretty high tolerance for happy shrieking. I hoped that they might calm down during the flight. Instead, they started kicking the back of my seat and slamming the tray up and down. They'd go at it hard for 5 minutes or so, and then calm down. My heart rate and annoyance level would drift back down, and without fail, just as I thought, "Ah, they've settled-" one of them would land a mighty kick to the back of the empty seat beside me.

And so it went. I spent most of the flight trying to figure out if the annoyance of having the back of my seat kicked fiercely for short spurts was worth the mighty pain in the ass of talking to the very ineffectual parents. I discussed this with myself until there was no point in saying anything.

At the end of the flight, I was getting jumpy, waiting for the next slam.

"We're in Chicago!" the older one said.

"I LOVE Chicago!" the younger one said. "Kate, did you know? I LOVE CHICAGO!"

"I am not Kate. I am MONSTER KATE!"

Mighty and fierce.

If, in the world of blogging, one day equals 5 years, my trip to Portland now happened nearly a quarter century ago, and therefore is possibly the most boring thing I could write about.

So, I will- ah fuck it. Okay, just one story.

Before I go to the show I've found out about from the wicked cool girl in the wicked cool zine store beside the amazingly wicked cool cafe, the show which is, I find out, when I get there in my flashy glasses, tight jeans, tight shirt, neckerchief and lipstick combo, a scrappy punk show at a scrappy cafe full of scrappy punk kids and I look, not old, but certainly way out of my way - before the show I decide to go for dinner at a nice vegetarian restaurant called Farm Cafe.

Let me tell you something about Portland. There are queers everywhere.

I walk in, and there's a waiting list an hour long for a table. No worries, I brought a book, and there'll be a seat coming up at the bar in a few minutes, if that will suit. And because I'm in a part of town that's far away from my hotel and is just empty enough to put the edge of a scare into me, and because if I don't eat here, I'm fucked to know where I'm going to eat any time real soon, and because I've got two and some hours to kill before what is going to be a great show but an unsettling experience, it will suit, and well, thank you.

The people occupying my place are two girls, office-butch and your regular femme type, the butch running her hand up the femme's thigh, bare under a light skirt. The three men beside them are Gay gay, plaid-wearing tattooed indie rockers, which is odd for someone who comes from a town where the two categories rarely meet in one person. The two women on the other side of them aren't on a date, but look like dyke to me. Cra-zy. You just don't walk into a random restaurant in Ottawa and find it stacked to the rafters with queer.

But a mixed crowd, the bar be damned. The people who came in after me, for example, were not queer. They were, however, on a date. A blind date. Set up by Rachel. Rachel who must have been good friends with the guy. Because only a good friend would have thought this guy "should get out there." If the Russian - with her hot body, her lovely accent, and her Masters in Economics - ever speaks to either Rachel or the guy who didn't stop talking about how horrible his ex-girlfriend and her children were for the forty minutes they stood behind me, both Rachel and Mr. Bitter will be lucky people indeed.

I feel this guy's pain. We've all been there. It's shitty. Your tendrils are all torn and broken, bleeding sap, but you've got these phantom tendrils that still feel, and what they feel like is still wound all up in this other person. Then there's this other person in front of you, who doesn't even really remind you of your ex, but they're taking up the space that your real tendrils had grown into, so the sensation travels strong up your phantoms, into your brain, and what comes out is a litany of heartbreak disguised as complaints. It feels bad from every fucking side.

But jesus, I mean, come on. You gotta know that might happen going in, and do your best to guard against it. At one point, while eating my Giant Hedgehog Fungus, alternating between picking the unmentioned breading off, loving the taste, and being slightly nauseated by the texture, which was close to animal, but a little too squeaky, and so uncannily like animal, more like something that does, but shouldn't actually, exist, in between these moments I tried to make eye contact with her. Our gaze did meet, briefly, and although I was desperately telegraphing her the message "Go to the bathroom and I will point out, very politely, that you did not, in fact, sign up to go on a date with his ex-girlfriend," either my signals were not strong enough or her receptors were on the fritz. But the gay gay guys and the two bartenders caught the edge of it, and a shared glance bounced around between us.

Eventually, The Economist and Mr. Bitter got a table, and I ignored my categorical queasiness and concentrated on the delightful woodsy taste of the fungus, and daydreamed about finding some cute something or other at the show where I would be thrilled to find my people in Portland and they would be just as thrilled that I'd shown up.

Yes, about that. At least I didn't talk about my ex for forty minutes at the show. I'm just saying.

So tonight was the night I was going to tell you about Portland. But I'm too fucking tired. No reason to be, since my body thinks it's 7:40, which is not my usual bedtime. But my body also thought it was 4:30 when I pushed it out of bed this morning, so there you go.

Remind me to tell you the one about the bad first date while I was eating a giant fungus, or the one about how the people I think are my people are not the people who think I'm their people. And the one about being invisible, and the one about the human iditarod. And for sure the one about the great cafes, none of which were named Virginia, but all of which were open.

I love it here. Love. It. Ottawegians, I don't suggest you google "portland weather." It will break your hearts.

It would be rude to tell you how few layers I'm wearing, but what I will tell you is that I pulled my tuque out of my knapsack today, looked at it in bewilderment for a moment, and then thought "Faugh, bullshit!" before tossing it carelessly over my shoulder. Fuck tuques.

Right now, I'm sitting in Powell's bookstore, which is so damn big you need a map for navigation. It's independently owned. Today, after I skipped out on the very boring afternoon symposia, I wandered over to a neighbourhood called The Pearl - full to the brim of amazingingly cute girls and boys. Wherever you go! Everywhere you look!

After doing a bit of grocery shopping at Whole Foods, I wandered along Oak St and marvelled at the independent cafes and bookstores, and again with all cute people, sitting around outside, unjacketed, having coffee and looking relaxed. Outside. In February. The place I ended up sitting was called Stumptown Coffee, and though at first I totally loved it, it started to irritate me after I'd sat for a while. Something too slick about it, too much studied indifference. The art was heavily ironic. Still, they made a fucking good soy latte.

And I got to *pick* it. It wasn't the only option. It was the one I chose to go to, out of all the independent cafes I passed on a 10 block walk of very short blocks.

It is going to be very hard to come home to Ottawa with its cold and cafeless streets, its long grey blocks, and its strangers with no smiles. Though I've been so fucking happy to be here, it may be that people are just smiling back.

Feels a bit anticlimactic to be writing so much after saying I was not going to be blogging cause I'd be all busy, you know, what with the work and the g-spot hunting. But the thing that I forgot about work conferences is that they're fucking tiring. By the end of the day, I don't actually want to talk to other people. I want to drink mint tea in the whitewash buzz of cafe noise and tap tap tap you out a missive.

The only problem with this bookstore is that the cafe bit is in the Gold Room, and the toilet bit is in the Purple Room, which does not seem to be very near the Gold Room at all.

Time for me to pack it in, take a piss, and head on back to bed.

- that's a big mountain

- right, this is what 12 degrees and no windchill feels like

- people here look you in the eye and smile

If I were a reasonable sort of person, I would be asleep right now, seeing as how my alarm clock is going to go off at 6 am. At which point I will burst out of my nice warm cozy bed, perform my morning ablutions, finish the last bits of packing, swipe on some deodorant, make a smoothie, and race out of the house no less than one half-hour later.

I'm not entirely sure when I became the sort of person who needed to pack a full regular-sized suitcase for a 5-day trip. Probably when I became the sort of person who felt she couldn't manage five days without a run and/or yoga class. Or the sort of person who felt she needed three extra pairs of glasses, various pills and potions to keep her skin under control, an outfit requiring both spectator pumps and back-seam stockings, and last, but not least, enough rye thins, non-sulphured dried apricots, and cashews to see her through 3 days of a conference, functions notorious for only ever serving things she doesn't eat.

Fuck me. What that paragraph makes me want to do is throw one pair of pants, two t-shirts, a few pairs of underpants and socks and my toothbrush into a backpack and take off on another reading tour. Just to prove I can still do it, DIY style.*

The other creature in this house who got all packed up to leave was Freya. The 4th Dwarf swung by in his spaceship, stayed for a cup of tea, said many interesting things, laughed in all the right places, made good friends with my cat, and then squired her away to his abode. He's started cat-blogging her already, and I look forward to reading about her exploits for the rest of the week.

When I race out of the house tomorrow morning, I will be racing towards Portland, Oregon. It's not a city I know a lot about, except there's a vegan mini-mall there, Ian says to have a burrito should the chance arise, and apparently it's home to a vibrant dyke scene.

So, though my main purpose there is to attend a conference, 4D's assessment of my motives may turn out to be true, and I may spend at least some of my time looking for g-spots.

Hopefully, I'll be too busy to blog.

*Jennifer and Lesley? Thoughts?

The morning did not start well. When you've rolled out of bed around 10 am for 4 of the past 5 days, 6:30 is way fucking early. I didn't recognize myself when I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, due to, 6 of one/half dozen the other, either my disarray or my inability to focus my eyeballs.

But I finished my bits of packing, including getting all of my christmas presents into my two wee bags. Shelley and Steve gave me all sorts of lovely and delicious things made in Halifax, including a top which is a brighter colour than I normally wear, but makes my tits look almost shockingly large. And then these slippers, which I fucking love. Maybe I'll wear them with the merino socks my uncle gave me. Apparently, word on the cold feet has gotten out.

My cab was supposed to come at 7:20 or 7:25. I booked it yesterday, talking to a slow-talking and kinda confused sounding man. It worried me. My choice for the Share-A-Cab was to get there for 7 am - 1 hour early - or 8 am - 10 minutes late. I generally don't like to cut it too close, but the difference between 7 and 8 feels like more than an hour.

At 7:24 my nerves had nerved up and I thought "Okay, they've got till 7:40 and then I'm calling." At 7:37, I thought fuck it and dialed them. The slow-talking man came on the line.

"Hi, I'm Megan Butcher. I booked a cab to show up at Number Number This Street at 7:20 this morning."

"Oh. Huh. What's your name?"

"Megan. Butcher."

He's flipping madly through what sound like scraps of paper.

"Oh. Huh. When did you make the reservation?"

"Yesterday. With you." I was not my nicest self.

"Well. Well! It's just gone! I don't have your name anywhere. Huh!"

Silence.

I break.

"Oooohkay. My flight is at 8:50. Can you get me a cab?"

"Oh. Huh. Well. Unh, I can maaaaybe get someone to you by 8:20 or 8:30."

It takes around a half hour to get to the airport.

"No. Thank you. I will call someone else."

The first cab company I picked at random from the yellow pages had someone already in the North End and at the house in 5 minutes. I got to the airport with time to spare, but paid more than twice the price for the privilege. On the way there, I was thankful that I am now in a financial situation where that is an inconvenience and not an impossibility.

While I was waiting for the first cab, I flipped through the cookbook I gave Shelley: a copy of my go-to cookbook, The Vegetarian Express Lane Cookbook. It is getting damn hard to come by these days, and that is a damn shame for lazy cooks everywhere. 10 items or less! A limited but tasty palette of herbs and spices! Crazy that's it's out of print. After she opened it, I used bingo dabbers to mark the recipes I particularly liked. Last night, I made the White Beans and Sage, and we ate it at the beautiful table that Steve made, with a nice Pinot Grigio and candlelight. Like a date without the incipient heartbreak.

Steve's present wasn't necessarily the most thoughtful gift I've ever given him, insofar as it was originally a present for someone else. But these mittens are the most beautiful things I have ever knit, so I hope that fact and warm fingers makes up for the lack of thoughtfulness. I also gave him a scarf to match, though it came with the needles still in. The bazillion episodes we watched of The I.T. Crowd ("Hello? Hel-LO! Hel-lo, Computor!") helped me get through nearly another ball-unit of yarn. There's gonna have to be a lot more TV before the S's get here in a couple of weeks if'n I'm gonna get it finished.

If I'd been smart, I wouldn't have written much over the past few days, cause now I got these pictures, but I'm all storied out. Enh, it's late, so no story, just two of my favourite creatures on a spit of land at Cow Bay.

And generally, happily so.

My flight was fogged out this afternoon. On the Ottawa side apparently, though when I looked out Shelley's window, I couldn't see the bridge just a few kilometres away.

It was lucky that Jennifer was going to pick me up. I never check my flights, just assuming that things will run smoothly. But Jennifer was going to pick me up, and the timing needed to be reasonably precise and so I checked the flight online. When I saw it was cancelled, I was flabbergasted. It's never happened to me before. I had no frame of reference.

I did what any sensible person would do in such a situation, and asked Steve for advice. His advice? "Call them." Brilliant!

Easier said than done, however. The machine hung up on me twice while trying to transfer me to a person. When I did get transferred to a person, they really had to work at being helpful. Like it hurt, or something.

"Is that flight to Montreal tomorrow at 9:55 am?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied.
"Great, I can bus home from there."
Tappity tappity. Tap.
"Okay, your flight will arrive at 10:40 pm..."

Now, I have not flown between Halifax and Montreal ever before, but I'm willing to bet that it doesn't take more than 12 hours. The direct flights to Ottawa only started Wednesday morning at 6 am. I took a more reasonable 8:50 am flight.

Luckily, I'm all set up to work from home. And by home, I mean "my computer." So I won't take another holiday day, but will probably ensconce myself on the red couch, drink tea, answer email and call into the 1:30 meeting, all while wearing Shelley's housecoat.

I do miss my cat and my fish and my stuff. My regular routine is pretty important to my overall well being. But that's all there waiting for me yet, and I am lucky to have friends kind enough to take care of my animals for two extra days on a moment's notice.

Being here is lovely. Not so much Halifax, which is a great town, don't get me wrong, but I'm pretty much Ottwegian through and through at this stage. What I mean is here at home with Shelley and Steve. It's easy and fun. We split a couple beers, we made dinner. We talked about bathroom renos. We watched a few episodes of my new favourite TV show (The I.T. Crowd). We laughed a lot. We drank port and ate chocolate. Milo sat beside me on the couch with his nose on my thigh. I knit.

I definitely don't mind the cancellation.

Bonus Question: Did anyone get the late-80s music reference in the title?