Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

I reached the 11 month mark over the weekend.  I’ll take this opportunity to give myself the ol’ JimmyT pat on the back.  I’ll be home for about 11 days, then I only have to suffer another two weeks to reach the 1 year mark.  Woohoo!  Quite the milestone for me.  Well, having said that, I was sitting around on my ass over the weekend, flipping through a little booklet on stores and eateries in my neighborhood.  I came across the listing for McDonald’s and this really surprised me because I hadn’t seen it since I moved here.  Many moons later, I finally found it, and I feel kinda dumb cause it is only three blocks from the Metro station and totally in sight at night.  I just wasn’t looking in the right direction.  In my defense, it’s totally out of my way to go to McDonald’s, so it’s really not a big find since I will probably never go.  I guess it was just a surprise cause I always thought it was weird that such a big town didn’t have one nearby.

This past weekend, we had our company Holiday party.  It was at another museum and the venue wasn’t as swanky and big as last years, but I thought it was a lot better overall.  With a smaller place, the event seemed a little more intimate and it was way easier to find people.  Here’s a picture of me and two of my office mates, Aaron and Kwaun. 
I thought that the food was actually better, mainly because it was hot.  Last year, the food was cold and craptacular.  I’d say that there was a little bit more variety last year, but given the choice between shitty food and hot food, I’d take tasty food over cold food any day.  They had pasta, beefy boneless tender short ribs, mashed potatoes, sushi, a bunch of little appies, and a couple desserts.  They didn’t spend a lot of time on the display of the food either; it was very no frills.  It was fun though.  I stayed for the whole event and went out to the after-party at the 18th Street Lounge.

So I was heading home from the party and I was riding the Metro with Mike Siegel, and we spotted a piece of poo on the first seat of the train.  Fricking disgusting!  It wasn’t a piece of chocolate and it wasn’t a truffle.  I didn’t taste it or get up close-and-personal with it, but I’m pretty confident with my visual evaluation.  Mike would agree with me.  I’m just glad he spotted it before I sat down on it, otherwise I’d have a real poo on clothes story to tell **shudder**.

Yesterday, a few of us decided that to try out the Maryland crabs.  I hadn’t tried the famous crabs here and it was long overdue.  We went out to this place called Steamers, just 2 blocks away from my apartment.  At first glance of the restaurant menu, it looks like it might be a decent, semi-classy place, but in reality, it’s just a bar that happens to sell a lot of seafood items.  It wasn’t anything I had expected.  For one thing, it was just the foundation and some walls.  It was kinda like sitting on a giant covered patio.  The floors were basically concrete and the roof wasn’t even a roof.  They had a giant tent-like canopy for a roof.  It started to rain and hail, and you could really hear it hitting the plastic roof.  I’m surprised it didn’t fly off with the gusty wind outside.  Anyway, we were sitting at our plastic patio furniture and we 
ordered a dozen large crabs.  This is what a dozen crabs looks like.  After I finished my first one, I wasn’t sure if I really liked it.  It was a lot of work to get a few morsels of crab meat and it was covered in Old Bay Seasoning which I didn’t care for.  I ended up shaking off the seasoning on the other ones.   By the end of it though, I thought it was quite enjoyable and a pretty decent way to burn an afternoon.

Last weekend, we went out to the Outlets and I saw some guy wearing a Vancouver Giants jersey.  I was pretty surprised cause I didn’t think I’d see anybody wearing one of those out here.  I figure he probably wasn’t really a fan of the team, but more likely to be just a fan of the jersey’s logo and colours.  I felt like asking him, but I didn’t think it was appropriate.  Alright, I’m gonna shower and get ready for bed.  I’m coming down with something and I wanna be better by the time I am home this weekend.  Cya’ll soon!

Well well.  Another month, another holiday and this time I went to Barcelona. I flew with Iberia Airline this time and it wasn’t too bad.  The TV monitors sucked but the food was decent.  One thing that was glaringly retarded was that nowhere in my itinerary did it say I was flying through Madrid.  On my return flight, they handed me a single boarding pass with no mention of Madrid, but that’s where I ended up again.  Does that make sense to anybody else??  I guess it didn’t make sense that my flight had a duration of 10-12 hours each way, but I wish they would have mentioned the layover somewhere. 

Anyway, I met up with Gladys at the Madrid airport.  That was convenient.  It made life simpler since I wasn’t sure how smoothly it would have been to track her down in Barcelona.  My first impression of Barcelona?  Well, while I waited in the baggage area for my luggage, I couldn’t help but notice the amazingly horrific odour wafting through the air.  Apparently the restrooms in the airport were filthy and disgusting because the smell emanating in the baggage claim area was unbearable.  I retreated to the far wall to prevent myself from throwing up.  Other than that, Barcelona was quite clean.  I love the culture and lifestyle there.  Mid-day siestas and closed shops on Sunday are a nice way to live.  We easily assimilated with the people and culture;
late lunches, afternoon coffee, tapas galore, and cheap wine.  We took each day nice and slow, never starting the day earlier than noon.  Our first meal was at the nearby Market.  The market resembled Granville Island, but they also had these wonderful
eateries mixed in with the food stands.  We didn’t know what to order but Gladys managed to order us some sardines, baby octopus, and meatballs.  Gladys was a great travel buddy and she moves at my pace; in other words we didn’t try to cram in too many things in one day.  The streets are small and all of them look and feel the same.  There were a few instances when we just walked around in circles for a 15 minutes, trying to get our bearings on where we were and where we were heading.  All of the shops are hidden behind garage doors when they’re closed.  A lot of shops were closed for a day or two or at odd hours, so we found it weird when we noticed new shops that we hadn’t seen earlier in the day/week.  On the last day, we went back to the Market to try another eatery.  It was fantastic.  I’ve never tasted calamari so fresh and tasty.  Their razor clams were amazing too.  As far as touristy
sites, we saw: the Picasso Museum, Casa Battlo, Casa Mila, Park Guell, and the amazing Sagrada Familia.  I’m mesmerized that they have spent about 100 years building a cathedral that no one has ever been able to use.  When it’s completed in another 100 years or two,
it will be an amazing ceremony to attend.  Ambitious is one word to describe it.  Other than the sightseeing, our other goal was to do a little shopping.  Gladys managed to purchase a couple clothing items and shoes.  I also bought two pairs of shoes from the Camper store.  FYI, there’s also a Camper Hotel in Barcelona.  It is really expensive to stay there and it doesn’t even look that nice. 
Anyway, it was a quick 4 day trip and I can sum it up as being full of good memories, great company, and wonderful food.  More pictures can be found on Facebook.

Friday evening, I got home took off my coat and I then I noticed a giant poo stain on my vest and t-shirt.  Somehow I had grown an anus next to my bellybutton.  I’m glad I didn’t go out that night cause it would have been extremely embarassing to pull off my coat and reveal the 3 inch stain in public.  Well, it turns out that my ass did not miraculously move itself to my torso.  Instead, the culprit was a piece of Lindt chocolate that someone had given to me before I left for work  I stuck it in my pocket and promptly forgot about it.  The chocolate itself was semi-intact.  It was actually the liquid filling that had escaped from the confection that was causing me grief. I tried to wash out the chocolate by hand and most of it came out, but I think it’ll take a couple of washes before it’s completely clean.  This is actually the second time I had a chocolate accident on my shirt this week.  I had splattered some on my shirt just a couple of days earlier.  I am one clumsy mofo.

So this weekend, the Safeway here is having it’s Grand Re-Opening.  It went through some renovations like all of the other stores across the nation.  So to celebrate, they have been giving away 200 Ipod Shuffles at random.  It shows up on your receipt if you’ve won.  I heard about 4 people win in a matter of 20 min on Saturday.  Instead, all I got was a numb fucked up finger for my efforts.  I was holding my grocery bags awkwardly and the strain from the weight must have cut off the circulation in my index finger.  It’s been well over 24 hours since this happened and it’s still feeling numb.  I don’t think the cold temperature helped it either.  I hope this problem resolves itself in the next little while.  Anyway, I didn’t pick up everything that I wanted yesterday, so I went again this morning.  I heard another 4-5 people win within 30 minutes and again, I did not win when I paid for my groceries.  I hate not winning and I am miffed!  I am tempted to go back and buy one item at a time until I win one.  But after thinking about things, it doesn’t really matter cause the Ipod Shuffle is useless to me and I don’t wanna look like a greedy chump.  I would not even use it.  Although it would probably make a great addition to a Secret Santa gift later this month.  I got a few more hours to go before they run out, but I don’t think I’ll do it.  The best deal of the week is their Roasted chicken.  It’s on sale for $4.99 and with the purchase of one, you get three 2L bottles of Pepsi products for free.  This morning I had purchased a lot of heavy items.  I was smart enough to bring a backpack though and it was friggin heavy.  I got home and I was kicking off my shoes when the weight of the backpack knocked me off balance and I came crashing down on my cardboard end table.  I wonder what it sounded like to my neighbours downstairs.  It probably sounded exactly like it was, like a 200+ lb man falling on the floor with his 40 lbs of groceries; or like someone dropping dead in the apartment above.  See, I am a big clutz!

Well, my sleeping pattern has been tottally whacky the past few days.  I don’t really blame jet lag, but maybe I generally feel fine when I’m awake.  I didn’t sleep a wink Friday night and I stayed awake all night.  It wasn’t til about 4pm on Saturday when I finally passed out on the couh.  I didn’t get up til 11pm.  Not surprisingly, I didn’t sleep again last night.  I watched several films and I started out my day quite early.  I hit Safeway at 8am and I was in crazy chore mode.  I’ve accomplished a lot this morning.  Along with the early trip to Safeway, I also did 3 loads of laundry (including the shower curtain), I vacuumed the apartment, I took out the garbage, I dismantled and recycled several boxes I had been collecting, and I even cleaned my toilet.  All before noon!  All I know is that I need to stay awake all day today in order to sleep later tonight.  Otherwise I’ll be a walking zombie at work on Monday.  Enough gabbing from me.  I’ll have another update before I come home in 3 weeks.  Peace!