the photos I didn't get to take

I've been sifting, slowly, through my recent photos and am now realising that it's the pictures I didn't take are the most obvious ones.

oh, how green IS that grass over there, eh?

So, here are the photos you will never see:

1. Cathedral Grove. I was convinced, by someone who shall remain nameless, that I didn't really need to take any photos of Cathedral Grove as I'd just taken so very many at Little Qualicum Falls and, really, all trees kinda look the same in photos, right? WRONG. The 1000 year old trees with stumps you can walk through and roots the size of your torso look a wee bit different.

2. Mountain spine. My name for the evenly spaced row of scrawny jackpines that ran along the ridge of one of the mountains we drove past between Port Alberni and Tofino. At the right angle, the ridge was against the sky and the pines stood out, black, like some gigantic dorsal fin remnant. It was very cool.

3. Sun-bleached tree trunks. These were precariously perched on top of large, soilless boulders and cliffs on the shoulder of the road. The roots were there, too, bleached and attempting to cling to the bare rock. Most post-apocalyptic.

Pictures number 2 and 3 were untakable simply due to the highway. There was no where to pull over and take photograph of either of these sites, though they appeared at several points along the drive. Single lane traffic and absolutely no shoulders: just solid rocks or solid forest. The best kind of drive with the best kind of scenery and nothing but my temperamental memory to show for it.

rested and relaxed

So, I made it back. I could have stayed, easily, but the whole not-working thing would have worked out against me.

We had a completely escapist weekend with what we would generally consider horrible weather, but on the west coast of Vancouver Island, it's exactly what you want in order to witness cliff-pounding waves and misty rain forests.

The weather was far more appropriate for the area on the May long weekend than it had been for those unfortunate travellers who had paid high-season rates this past February. Those guests were able to sit on the beach in shorts, but the storms that they had hoped for never materialized. We, on the other hand, saw some great epic wave action that we hadn't thought possible in May. The weather even prompted the power to go out one night: "why, this must be just like camping!" we thought, sitting in our easy chairs, in front of the fireplace and waiting for our room service (honey-mustard wild salmon and steamed clams and mussels in coconut milk and peppers) while the winds raged outside. Yeah... I'll have to be sure to look for the backpack-sized, fully staffed gourmet kitchen next time I'm at Canadian Tire.

I now have to sift through the mass of digital photographs that I took, although I didn't get any of the crazy surfers. They, I believe, were perhaps the only ones disappointed in the weather. Everyone else was out and about at all the sites we visited in Tofino, Pacific Rim National Park and Ucluelet. (A plug for the Ucluelet Aquarium, billed as the world's smallest. But, despite its size, this little shack is definitely the coolest. It's only open for a short time every year, all the plants, fish et al are local and returned to the ocean, unscathed after the summer. The water for their habitats is piped in directly from the sea to keep them extra happy.)

It was a decidedly luxurious weekend - not the kind the banks will allow me to repeat with any frequency, but one I'll have to keep in the back of my head in case of an unexpected windfall.

still slackin'

The provincial election is over, the federal election has been avoided and there's a long weekend on the horizon. Things have been too crazy with work, social things and extracurricular things for a few spare moments to blog and, this weekend, I'm taking the time to head out and recover. There'll be nothing new from me until next week.

Somehow, I'm sure you'll survive. And, this way, I will too.

further further deterioration

Further to my previous post on my rapidly impending dissolution, I am now fairly seized up and crippled after spending last Thursday, Friday and Saturday at a local conference.

Now, it was a great conference. There were a significant number of knowledgeable speakers and some of them had managed to wrangle out some entertaining power point presentations. However, in order to listen to them speak of their great knowledge and watch their fancy slide transitions, I had to sit, fixed for hours upon end, in the ubiquitous Conference Chair, sardined in next to my neighbours such that even the slightest movement threatened coffees, notetaking and, therefore, my career. Yes, the chairs look nice, but they are, I firmly believe, produced by chiropractors and physiotherapists in search of new clients.

In an effort to ease some comfort into the chairs, one does, of course, try to sit near an aisle, in the front row of a section or in a straight line of sight to the speaker or screen, so as not to twist one's neck any more than absolutely necessary. All of these positions within the room are conveniently located directly underneath the conference centre's formidable air conditioning systems.

So, now, not only did my muscles get to shake from being held still for so long, they also got to shake from the icy blast of air that was driving down at me for three days straight.

In response, I shut down on Sunday. I stuck to bed, bath and couch. The cleaning that I had planned, in order to discuss basement construction plans with a fellow (oh, what is he??contractor/cabinet maker/construction guy), did not happen and I'm sure that his foray into our pit-of-despair basement has left him a little shaken too.

Ah, yes. Doesn't misery just love company.

Someone is out to get me

An event happened last Thursday, prior to the U2 concert. An event so traumatic that I had to forcibly wall it up in my mind to get through the rest of the day without simply collapsing into a stuttering heap on the pavement. I can barely recount it now without feeling tingles along my neck, in my hair, along the backs of my arms...

It was a beautiful day. It was such a beautiful day that I thought I'd take a walk at lunch along the treed side streets, instead of the noisy main drag, as I made my way toward a clutch of restaurants. Leaves and blossoms fluttered down around me as I wandered down the road, eyes to the sky and proverbial spring in my step.

I passed a random woman on my way and she gave me a screamingly-obvious pained look. What-freaking-ever. It was a beautiful day and I had U2 tickets.

I turned the corner and looked down - at something on the sidewalk, toward my purse or perhaps at a pigeon in the grass. I have no recollection anymore of what initially caught my eye. The only things I ended up seeing were two large yellow hairy eyeballs and a set of nasty mandibles. A large (and no doubt, hungry) tree-coloured moth was making its way up my shirt. The vile thing had tricked me earlier by looking like floating foliage.

I then did, as any sane person would, the holy-shit-get-this-thing-off-me dance, much to the consternation and amusement of every other pedestrian within a three block radius.

Too shaky to continue, I settled into the nearest restaurant and contemplated whether I'd actually rid myself of the six-legged demon or whether I'd simply knocked it into my purse (why, oh why, did I have to get the ever-so-cute snap purse without a secure, but not-so-cute, zipper??).

I spent the majority of my lunch kicking my purse on the seat across from me to see if anything launched out at me, before having to stick a tentative hand in to pay at the end of my meal. No moth. I damn near wept.

After recent events, I'm starting to think this is a conspiracy. I only just realized that Marlo Girl commented on my last moth post and that (YAY!) my mother and I have company in our "irrational" fear. Irrational. Yeah. Just think about it a little more the next time one of their viscous, flailing bodies "accidentally" slams into you.

Here's to a week of nothing with more than four legs and avoiding bright lights in the dark.