Notes

I was just in Vancouver for a little while:

-Threw my dad a surprise birthday party and he apparently was truly surprised.

-In preparation for the party, my mom and I spent the day before barbecuing obscene amounts of chicken for hours and hours. It got to the point where barbecuing wasn't even fun anymore. I started burning them at that point.

-I bought running tights and a fanny pack. Because fanny packs are awesome and only nine dollars at MEC.

-This one night I saw an old friend and was about to say hi when I remembered we were at Pride ball celebrating all things gay. I had a brief crisis in which I self-consciously balked at saying hi. Luckily, she came over and said hi and we chatted and she's doing well and what do I care if she thinks I'm gay or if I wonder if she's gay. Then she said bye, smacked me on the bum and walked away.

-I went swimming in the water off Tofino. I borrowed my brother's girlfriend's wetsuit to do this. I didn't think it would really be that necessary, but then I found that the absence of wetsuit gloves was sharply painful and I was glad the rest of me didn't have to, you know, seize up and get carried away by a rip tide.

-I stepped on a bee.

-While walking down a trail at dusk a bat hit me on the chest and then flew away.

-I drank a lot of tea and beer in backyards, and on porches and couches.

-I listened to Phil Collins "No Jacket Required" while driving around in my mom's car. I'm nursing a little bit of a Phil Collins obsession, actually. When Kevin and Jeremy were in the back seat and Phil sang about how he's been a prisoner all his life, one or the other of them asked: "Of what, Phil, bad drum beats?"

-The other Kevin had a birthday and caused me to drink Jagermeister for the first time. What is the name of the game that is basically shuffleboard but on a table with cornmeal?

-Read all of Nick Hornby's 'How To Be Good' in what felt like a very short period of time. What does he mean by this book? That he hates everyone or just himself?

-Saw the new John Cameron Mitchell movie in a super-secret advance screening. It's no Hedwig, but it's fun and there are lots of funny sex scenes, especially at the beginning. Auto-fellatio, man. Crazy.

-Had an aisle seat on the way back and at one point woke up realising I had been sleeping with my head cranked over into the aisle and my mouth hanging open. First thought was disbelief at my mouth, second thought was: is anything in there? Because if I saw someone sleeping like a corpse with their mouth open, I'd have been tempted to put a little something in there. A ball of paper, maybe. Or an earplug.