More Maella pics!

Just in case you were wondering, Maella's still cute:

(Yet) more pictures here.

Meet Maella!

My sister Amanda gave birth to her lovely daughter (my niece! I'm an aunt!) yesterday at 5:08pm (Calgary-time).

Her and proud new daddy Brandon named their addition to the Kobie-Best household (Best-Kobie sounds funny, like there's a not-as-good-Kobie household out there) Maella Lauryn Elizabeth.

It sounds like it was an easier birth than it was a pregnancy -- which should suggest how difficult a pregnancy it was, given how not fun birthing must be.

But well worth the effort, I'm sure you'll agree:

More photos are here -- thanks to Michelle, who has taken all these, there shall soon be more. This child will be more photographed than Kate Moss, I tells ya.

The downside, of course, to me being so very far away is the things/people/events I miss. I've felt homesick before (and with good reason, I think -- last year was not an easy one for me) but none of the difficult times I've been through have made me feel as homesick as Maella. How can you love and miss someone you've never met yet?

Baby showered.

To mark the impending birth of the current occupant of my sister's womb, we had a baby shower down here in De Winton today -- the purpose of which seemed to be to literally shower her (or possibly drown her) in gifts.


Based on today's results, I predict one very spoiled child. Aside from the large piles of tiny clothes, stuffed animals and assorted other pastel-coloured presents, Amanda-and-the-baby (hyphenated as they, at the moment, remain one entity) were gifted a blanket with built-in simulated heartbeat, a tiny spa bath complete with "Victorian-styled" clawed feet, and a "Diaper Genie" which shrink-wraps dirty diapers for smell-less disposal. We really do live in a marvellous age.

Although the bulk of the shower was spent eating and watching my heavily-pregnant sister rip wrapping paper, we also played a few games. Natalie dominated, winning all three contests. She's either on a lucky streak or just genuinely good at counting q-tips, naming baby animals and guessing belly circumference -- useful skills, each of them...

More photos are here.

Christmas in Calgary, photographically

A few pictures -- hey, it's better than me rambling, right?

Looking out the back door

The view from the back windows of my parent's De Winton house.
They've seen deer and moose back there; I've heard coyotes.
Not bad for a golf course.

~

Christmas morning
Is my dad rather too excited to be getting a box of socks?
~

Michelle and her Bunny
My Grandfather bought her a frighteningly life-like stuffed rabbit.
Made with real rabbit? Who knows...
~

High Roller!
Brandon and one of two poker sets he was gifted with that day.
~

Lap dog
Can't even put the puppy down to unwrap gifts...
~

Preggers and me and Calgary
View of downtown -- and the mountains, if you squint --
from the parking lot of the Max Bell arena
~

Hockey!
Brandon's brother's team at the midget tournament.
No, that doesn't mean he's short.
~

Zamboni
My British friends, this is a zamboni,
in case it ever comes up in conversation again.
~

Action shot
Richard (little brother of Brandon) on the ice.
~

Action shot #2
Daorcey in action, with a perogy, after more beer
and vodka than he can usually take.
~

That's a lot of pictures. Sorry if you've got dialup -- but damn, get with the now, man!

Edit: Blogger did weird things to the photos. They've been reposted...

Foetus!

The internet is really rather amazing. This may seem a stupid, obvious comment, but when you actually use it for communicating -- rather than killing time, looking up porn, planning frak parties -- it's really rather stunning what you can do.

My sister Amanda is pregnant. Last week, she went for an ultrasound, which was recorded. After some fiddling, my other sister Michelle uploaded two clips to Google Video and sent me the links. So while I'm thousands of miles away, missing out on one of the most important events in my sister's life, I can still see footage of the alien-looking thing growing inside her.

Which I happen to think is pretty freakin' cool. This would have been damn near impossible to do even ten years ago.

So here's the footage of the little alien...



And:





That's four-months of baby right there, that is. The silly thing refused to move into a position where they could tell its gender, hence the non-gender specific pronoun.

We'll have to wait until February to find out if I have a niece or a nephew...

And despite the wonders of the interweb, I'm not sure even hightech communications technology is enough to keep me from feeling like I'm missing out when the little alien is finally born...

Die Deutschland Fotos!

And, finally, weeks later, here are the pics from Germany. We flew into Cologne, and went straight to Bielefeld, the town my mom was born in and hasn't been back to in 27 years -- the only other time she's visit since leaving as a seven-year-old.

We saw where she lived, where her dad drank, and the town's tourist attraction. Then, Cologne, which has a cathedral. And then a drive down the Rhine. Well, next to it. Cause it's a river.

Here are the pics. Mine are up and commented here, but something went wrong with Mom's and Michelle's during uploading, so they'll be added later.

Warning, Frogs?

Castle on the Hill

The pub Papa used to drink in!

My Mom's old house!

My scary father!

Garbage/art in front of Cologne Cathedral

My dad's car advertisement...

The Cologne Beer museum... with Moosehead?

Fotos phrom Phrance

As noted previously, between the three digicams we had on our travels, my parents, Michelle and I managed to take roughly 1,600 photos (not counting all the ones my mom took after Michelle left, as I forgot to get those ones.)


This is obviously completely ridiculous. I'd write a rant about how stupid it is to spend a whole vacation snapping away, looking at everything thru the viewfinder without actually seeing anything, rather than just being in a place, but hell, pictures are fun.

And, as my mom noted, while looking at pics from the DarNat & Ann trip last year, photos make for awesome souvenirs, much better than the pricey crap in the shops.

Still, a billionty and a half photos makes for a lot of editing and captioning. And, on your part, viewing.

So here's the first set, from France. I've only captioned mine, but pics from Michelle's and my Mom and Dad's cams are also posted.

But here are some of the best...

Us, in Montmatre (pic by my mom)

Michelle and I in Metz (pic by my mom)

Michelle under the Eiffel Tower (pic by me)

Michelle in the Louvre...
Because artworks are just props for our photos!
(pic by me)

Metz (pic by me)

Michelle, Eiffel Tower (pic by me)

Why I love Paris
That vending machine dispenses books...
(pic by Michelle)

Ooh, scary (pic by me)

If that's not enough, more here. Sorry for the slow loading time this is sure to cause... More pics from England and Germany to come...

Checked out

Before my parents left on Saturday, they/we did the following:

• Monday, got my flatmates drunk and fed in order to thank them;
• Tuesday, wandered around Regents Park and did some shopping and something else which escapes my mushy brain;
• Wednesday, met up with me near Spitalfields, then went on a Ghouls, Gaslight and Guinness walking tour, despite the rain -- which was good for the atmosphere, actually;
• Thursday, in keeping with the ghostly theme, saw Phantom of the Opera;
• Friday, went out for dinner and sat in a pub.
  

Among other things. Since they left, I've slept. I'm tired and I'm sick-- indeed, I'm sick and tired. I can barely remember what we did this week. Compiling the above list required more effort than it should have and I'm not even sure of its accuracy. A month of vacation is tiring. A month of work is tiring. Doing both, simultaneously, in one month, is exhausting.

But the thing is: a month long visit, it's just not long enough.

I want all the people I care about, love and miss in one place and I want to be in that place -- but that's not ever going to happen again, is it? Indeed, that wouldn't happen even if I still lived in Calgary, to be honest.

I remember the first person who "left" Calgary and was therefore to be missed by me: Jolaine, moving to Minot, ND -- of all the places -- for university. And since then, lots of people have moved, travelled, come back and left -- likely -- forever. Mel went to Olds and thankfully -- for me and for her -- came back again. Nat travelled to China, sure, for four months, but four looong months -- just ask Daorcey and the good folks at Boston Pizza. South, to Ottawa, crushing the happy Gauntlet family. Michelle, to Lethbridge, taking the living room furniture with her. James to Halifax and a perfect life. Sonia to Toronto and an MBA. Mike to China. Mary and Esther and even Rob to Edmonton. Kris to who knows where and who knows what. And then hell, I come out here, make shiny new friends. And then they move on, like Ann, who moved back to T.O. from London.

Okay, there might be a joke here about how everyone runs away from me no matter where I go.

But I guess you get used to it. Or more used to it? I remember when Jolaine left, man, did I feel devestated. Bawled my eyes out. I was, I should note, 17 and drunk. On two liters worth of Kiwi-Strawberry Coolers. But it was also the end of the summer after high school, so movie-like, it probably felt significant to my melodramatic teenaged brain.

But then, I still bawl like an idiot. Ask my parents about me crying in the airport. Or ask Nat and Daorcey about me sobbing after their wedding -- again, drunk and overemotional.

I'm not sure I'll ever get used to missing people and I suppose I shouldn't want to. If I didn't miss you lot, and had no one to miss, that'd be quite a bit worse, then, wouldn't it?

The Louvre, on wheels

After my sister's unfortunate tripping incident, her mobility was somewhat limited. Given Paris is meant for walking, this presented some difficulty. We left her and her painkillers alone in the hotel for day, but managed to get her to the Louvre in the rental car.

Despite the problems getting to the Louvre, the biggest obstacle was yet to be overcome: the museum is several blocks long, and on multiple levels.

Thankfully, they have free access to wheelchairs, so she had a seat and I had a ball rolling her around that massive maze.

That place is not set up for disabled people tho; I think it's a French thing, but that's based on very little actual knowledge or evidence. While easy enough to access, say, the Mona Lisa, there were some spots that were either impossible to get into or very, very difficult to get out of. Thankfully, the security guards are wicked-cool, and sympathetic, too. With the help of their security clearance and rings o' keys, we got to take some secret short cuts.

Aside: If you're going to Paris and are under 26 (I think), you get into the Louvre free after 6pm on Fridays -- we arrived at 530pm, and didn't find out about this freebie until we'd paid... because there are no signs, it is in none of the billions of guidebooks I read, and no one told us. It is printed, however, in tiny, tiny, tiny print on the back of the museum map leaflets. Go figure.

Something smells like cheese

So we're lost in Paris. Not lost, really. We know where we are; we're exiting a tunnel next to the Samaritans building by Pont Neuf, the famous old bridge.



The problem was that we were aiming for the Louvre. We somehow ended up in a tunnel which exited blocks behind the museum, couldn't turn left for several streets-- because the French designate one-way streets with utter callousness -- and then finally found a road to turn left on, which on my map went straight to the Louvre, but in reality went underground. To Pont Neuf -- and if you know Paris, this makes very little sense (and the tunnels really come out of no where, with little signage. No wonder Princess Di's driver had such, uh, difficulty).

So after driving in circles, and up and down underground, we found ourselves sitting at a light, before the bridge, hoping to turn right back towards the museum.

But then, the smell hit. My mom suggested it smelled like cheese; I countered it smelled like someone had eaten smelly cheese, gotten sick and farted it out... Michelle thought it might have something to do with the construction happening right next to us. We all agreed on this: it stank. I was gagging.

The light changed. We couldn't turn right -- damn one way roads! -- so we crossed the bridge. Stuck in traffic half-way across the bridge, the smell returned. It was following us... It was us. Pedestrians crossing the bridge made faces as they passed us; even they could smell it.

At this point, my dad realizes he's done something to the clutch while waiting on the ramp exit to leave the tunnel, burning something to cause that smell.

Creeping slowly across the bridge, tourists looking around as they pass the car, wondering
My god, what is that awful smell. Thankfully, we soon found a Louvre entrance, and Michelle and I exited, saying we'd be more than happy to take a cab back to the hotel if my parents didn't want to come back and pick us up... in the now stinky Audi.

Hospitalized in Paris

My sister tripped. There's no other way to say this. She tripped.

Now, the thing is: Michelle has crappy feet. So, her tripping = bad. As in, shooting pain, tears in the hotel lobby, and a trip to the emergency room.

So we spent the morning of our second day in Paris in the Hospital Hotel Dieu, across the street from the Notre Dame Cathedral. We could hear the church bells ringing, when the ambulance sirens weren't drowning them out.

This again severely tested my french, as I had to look up the words for "twisted her ankle" and "has had prior foot operations." But when the non-english-speaking man at the front desk heard my french, he smiled wryly and motioned me to shut up. Guess I was hindering more than helping...

Thankfully, her foot wasn't broken or anything horrible like that. She did get some crutchy things, and her ankle hurts a lot, so she's not going to be too touristy for the rest of the days in Paris...

One snore over the cuckoo's nest

While I toiled -- toiled, people! -- at work yesterday, 3/4 of my family were off galavanting around London, visiting Buckingham Palace, and touring the National Gallery.

When I was finally released from my drudgery, I met up with them, had a few pints, had dinner in a crypt, and then went to see a play, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, "starring" Christian Slater.


My younger sister seemed a bit excited, as (according to her) she used to have a big crush on (the formerly) hunky Mr Slater, back when he was A-list, and young. Now he is neither, but she appreciated the nostalgia, I'm sure.

My parents didn't appreciate the play, however. While it didn't suck, it wasn't quite captivating enough to keep them awake, and both slept through parts of the first half. My dad even snored.


It wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. Slater was decent, though I have to admit when his character dies at the end, I really didn't care. And Alex Kingston (formerly of ER) was annoying half the time, and great the other half of the time, which was frustrating. And confusing.

And the guy who played the Big Chief -- he hasn't been in shitty movies or big-name television, so I don't know his name, nor (apparenlty) care to know his name -- did a very funny voice. Kind of like shitty old Westerns, where the injun speaks in toddler-English ("Me Tonto. You ugly.") in a grunty, gutteral tone. I don't think they were being ironic.

It was funny in parts tho, but doesn't deserve the awesome reviews it's had. The best part was Slater at the bows, motioning for the audience to give him a standing ovation... which they (mostly) reluctantly did. Sad. Very sad.

Hotel Nicole, pt2

Yesterday, 3/4 of my family arrived (parents, and the younger sister) for a visit in London... which means I'm camping again, only this time, it's in the living room, because they've taken over my lovely bedroom. Sigh...

I met them yesterday post-work in Trafalgar Square, and we wandered around, had a pub dinner on the Southbank, took a convoluted bus route (oops...) to Oxford Street and Regents Street, and then walked around Picadilly Circus and down to Leisceter Square...

...where everyone's favourite actor, the midgety Scientologist Tom Cruise was working the crowd ahead of the premiere of Mission: Impossible 3. We didn't get to see him with our own eyes; he and his adoring fans were behind tall security fences. We had to watch on a big screen, which is probably good -- who knows, maybe Tommy boy is like the Medusa of Scientology... you look at him directly and start to worship L Ron Hubbard? Or maybe they were worried Cruise would try to escape their Scientologist clutches? Naah...

A very nice man tried to lift me up on his shoulders... you can imagine how well that worked out. I suppose it's a good thing people think I weigh less than I do, but yeah, he could have really hurt himself.