... Hilarity Ensues

Track Suit Boy

So, the other day I went to the mall to do some shopping cause my Visa did not get enough use in Italy. In the parkade I noticed a fellow who was by chance also going into the mall. I noticed him because he was wearing a matching track suit. From afar I gave him my, I do not approve look, and proceed into Aritzia while he went into Gold`s Gym. I must admit I spent quite some time in the mall that day and as I was leaving, feeling like I had made some quite successful purchases might I add,  who should I see but matching track suit boy. He had finished his workout and was standing by the doors enjoying a pre-packaged protein drink. How unfortunate. However I guess he took seeing me again as a sign of something and as we both walked back to our cars, he decided to talk to me.

Him to my back:  Uummm … so, excuse me. Did you go to Jasper Place High School?

Ok, props to the guy for cold opening a complete stranger in a mall parkade but you gotta have better game than that to get me to stop buddy. I kinda laughed, replied that I sure did not, and kept on walking. While maybe not blessed with great style or culinary tastes, the guy was persistent. He came back with another stellar question.

Him: Can I ask you a question?

I had to bite on that. My reply? Well, you just did, didn’t you? Poor, poor boy. He looked at me all stunned and did not really know how to respond so I took pity on him and told him to go ahead. If he was willing to continue after I had blown him off AND  insulted him I had to reward him by giving him a chance to prove himself. He came back with another winner of a question which completely justified the time I was taking talking to him.

Him: So, is that your natural hair color?

I actually laughed in his face. Or the vicinity of his face cause I was still a few feet in front of him. Could he not see the massive roots that must have been 2 inches long? Ok maybe only one inch and it was dark and he is a boy so maybe he doesn’t know about roots???? I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and kept talking to him. Eventually, after skirting the subject with such gems as do you live around here, do you come to the mall often, he asks for my number. I decide to give it to him. I will explain why later. He must be surprised that I said yes, or didn’t hear me cause he gets super awkward, yes more awkward than he already is and comes back with this.

Him: Uumm yeah I don’t really know how to do this.

I’m like what ask for a number? Cause you just did. Again I get the ??? face. Still not really realizing he should quite while he’s ahead he continues talking.

Him: So, I saw you on the way in and really wanted to talk to you then but didn’t. While I was working out I kept on thinking about that and totally regretted it. So, (and yes he does say so this much) when I saw you again on the way out I knew I had to talk to you.

Me: Well, if you were thinking about talking to me while you were working out, then you were clearly not working hard enough.

Him:???? uummm…

Me: It’s ok. I was just kidding but listen, I have to go.

Him: Ok, yeah. I’ll text you in a week or so and we can go out for coffee or dinner or lunch or…  after that.

So this is what a three week plan??? Ok, sure. Whatever.

So after all of this why give him my number? I look at it as a public service. It took courage to talk to a random stranger, especially to keep me talking when I didn’t seem that interested. Now while I may not be matching track suit’s soul mate, maybe he has one out there somewhere. I’m sure she would be in a valour juicy couture suit. I don’t want to be the reason he never meets her. How can that be on me? Well, what if my uber bitchy rejection weakens his confidence so much that next time he sees a girl, possibly his Juicy couture soul mate, he doesn’t talk to her for fear she will reject him in a harsh way like I did. I cannot live with that. I do not want to be responsible for him not meeting his soul mate. Thus I am doing a public service- padding his ego. Girls everywhere should tank me. Haha. I sound vain but it’s not about me being so hot that it’s amazing he succeeded with me. That is in no way what I am trying to imply. Instead, it’s about him thinking he succeeded. I am so altruistic.

Why am I ok with this? I mean now the awkward random has my number how can that be good? The way I look at is, just cause I give him my number does not mean he will text. If he texts it does not mean we have to go out. Just cause we go out once does not mean we will have to go out again. So, I ask why not pad his ego? Why not let him think he is the man and was awesome enough to pick up a random girl in the mall parkade (I sound so classy)? What is the harm? Oh man famous last words, I’m sure I will live to regret uttering them. Mark this moment, this may be the last time I ever do anything nice for a stranger cause if this comes back to bite me I am done. I will go back to being an uber bitch who lets randoms know how insignificant they are. Woe to all potential nerdy suitors. If this somehow turns bad and knowing me, it will, I will belittle all men without game who have the audacity to try to subject me to their awkward fumbling conversation. Oh well at least I’m sure I will get a good story out of whatever ends up happening. 

Venice. Sometimes things just aren’t meant to be

Venice, for many a city of beauty, for me however its beauty was somewhat dimmed by the harsh realization that some things just don’t turn out how I want them to.  

 I am not meant to be on time.

The best laid plans seem to unravel when timelines and I are involved. Sometimes it’s not even my fault but it still happens when I am around. It’s like my absent-mindedness is contagious. How can that be possible you ask? Well, let me relate the story to you. I was going to Venice with five other girls but I had a mid-term that Thursday so I could not leave on the earlier train with them. Some of them left but we all agreed that leaving me alone to navigate the canals of Venice in the dark may not be the best idea, so the most responsible of the bunch, Iris, stayed back with me. Now, a little back story on Iris, she is a Peace Officer at the U of A and takes her job very seriously. The first word everyone uses to describe her is prepared; she plans her trips to the minute. So, after my midterm I lug my over-packed suitcase to the bus stop where she is waiting. We catch the infrequent bus down to Camucia where the train station is and wait the hour until the train arrives. Since we have so much time we think, hey, why not go grab a coffee at the nearby bar (think cafe not club)? We are sitting there “enjoying” our beverages (worst coffee EVER) and Iris, ever cognizant of the time suggests we pay and go back to the train station. This is when the reality that I am not meant to make it to Venice on time hits. When she is looking through her bag for her wallet she realizes that she does not have the name or address of the condo we are staying at. Normally this would not be a problem, just call on of the girls and get the address right? Wrong, none of us have phones. Ok, then check our reservation confirmation email, easy. Nope, can’t do that either. No internet. So, what to do? Get the owner to call us a cab and rush back up the mountain to the hostel to grab the info and hope we can make it back down in half an hour, Possible right? Maybe it would have been, if not for a random road closure by the cops. Long story short we miss our train to Florence but no worries because we should still be able to make our connection to Venice if we hurry. Well again, that was just not meant to be. Our train to Florence was delayed by five minutes and we missed our connection. Good news though, that was not the last train to Venice, all we had to do was trade in our assigned tickets for a new seat on the next train. The travel agent who sold us the tickets assured us this would be possible but something must have gotten lost in the translation cause turns out it was not possible to trade our tickets for new ones. Our option was to buy new ones at 50 Euros a pop or see if we could just get on at the ok of a Conductor. We went with the later. We flagged down a man who looked like he worked there and in broken Italian asked to get on. Without really even looking at us, he just waved us on. We were not sure if he had the authority to ok us being on that train but we decided to risk it anyway and if the people checking the tickets gave us flack we decided to pull the tourist card and hope that would work. I mean it wasn’t as if we didn’t have tickets and were trying to scam a free ride; we had tickets, just for the previous train. Fate must have realized it had put us though enough that day and thankfully the ticket checker didn’t even bat an eye at our ticket times. Only an hour and a half late we arrived in Venice, ready to celebrate Carnival.

I am not meant to own a camera (the saddest realization of the trip)

Cameras travel, and I just don’t mix. Every time I go on a trip I break my camera. Sometimes I even break two in one trip (Thailand).  I just need to accept the fact that I am not meat to own a camera. I received a really really nice one as a Christmas present from my parents last year and only managed to get one full months use out of it. Sad I know. Things had been going really well until the Saturday of Carnival when I dropped it. I had been out all day taking pictures, being really careful but one drop that night and it was broken beyond all repair. See, I did not just break it. I destroyed it. How you ask? Well, I won’t lie, I don’t know. I don’t even remember dropping it. All I know is, I tried to take a picture later that night and the screen was all black but the lens was out. That was when my friend told me I had dropped it and it was broken. I of course did not believe their lies and continued trying to use it but sadly to no avail. When we sat down at a restaurant I took out my camera to examine it and sure enough, it was broken. I must have dropped it when I was trying to take a picture which was super zoomed in and it landed right on the extended lens. The impact must have driven the one side back into the camera so the lens was no longer level and would not move from its quasi-extended position. What was I to do? Well drunk me thought it would be a good idea to consult the random drunk guys I was sitting with. Poor decision. I know that the camera was already beyond repair but they added insult to injury. Warning, mom and dad do not read the next sentences. They were convinced that all we needed to do was level the lens again and it would work. So, they put the camera on the table, lens down and pressed. The most awful gut-wrenching crunching sound followed and the lens retracted back into the camera never to come out again. Sadly, that was the end of the poor camera. It was beyond all hope of repair. I had treated it well before that night but we were just not meant to be. Thankfully my iTouch has a camera on it so I just used that for the rest of the trip and most likely will use it for the rest of my life because it is clear to me that I am just not meant to own a camera.

The People you do not want to see again, you will

This one is probably the most embarrassing. Well, it’s not that bad but hung over me did not want to deal with this. You would think in a city the size of Venice you would not run into the same people repeatedly but you do. Oh synchronicity how you are not my friend. On the opening night of Carnival we were wandering the back streets of Venice looking for something that was open and ended up finding a random restaurant. Problem was, we were not the only ones. This place was packed and as such the seven of us could not find one table that would fit us all. We did find a table of six which happened to have a table across from it which had some open seats. Well, I took those open seats as an invitation to sit down and join the two random guys. Thankfully they did not seem to mind and soon we were engaged in a delightful drunken conversation. What did we talk about? I have no idea exactly. I just know I thought I was hilarious. Beyond that detail I seem to recall everything going ok, at first. Then the accents kicked in. Back story, one of the Cortona students had recently adopted a British accent for funzies and others soon followed suit. I guess as I sat there talking to these very American Americans some of the other people I was with though, hey if British is fun, American must be fun too. Why not test it out on these guys? I guess they did not take so kindly to this and one of them actually got really mad. I was super oblivious to this and kept on talking away about random nothingness to them until they got up and left in a huff. I thought that was the end of it until I went to the train station the next morning and almost walked straight into the non-mad one. Oh man was that ever embarrassing.  I was the girl who I’m sure made an ass out of myself and had asshole friends and now I had to face him again. Oh the shame. Any hopes that he would  not recognize me were dashed when he smiled, chuckled a little bit, and then turned to his friend and motioned my way as he said something imperceptible. His random friend, who I had not met that night stared at me in all my hung over glory for a second before they both fell into hushed conversation. I quickly turned around and walked away hoping to escape my shame. I mean what are the chances that the one event that you most want to forget (and kinda did until you saw him) is the one thing you cannot escape? In my life the chances are pretty good. Of all the awesome random encounters I have, few are repeat however when something is awkward I am usually faced with it again and again and …

Carbs, Carbs, and more Sugars.

Or, the reasons I can no longer fit into my pants. Thanks Italy. When you picture an Italian person, and I mean a REAL Italian person, the people from Jersey Shore DO NOT count, what do you envision? Tall tan blonde? No. Uber white red heads? Again, no. I don’t know about you but I think small, in stature and in weight. I’d go so far as to call them tiny even. They don’t have a McDiet or the obesity epidemic that goes along with it like we do. Yeah I mean I can think of some overweight Italian people but for the most part I think of Elisabetta Canalis (George Clooney’s ex girlfriend) she must weigh like 100 pounds. My question is, how do they do it? How do they stay thin? I sure didn’t. I came home and even my almost blind Grandma told me I had put on weight. Well, ok, she didn’t quite say it like that. She actually asked me if my arms were fatter now because they used to be so small and now they weren’t. I begrudgingly admitted that yes, yes I had put on some weight in Italy. With a satisifid tone my ever sensitive Grandma replied, yes I thought so. You look bigger. Thanks Grandma.

So, again I ask how to the locals stay so thin given the food here? It’s literally all white carbs and refined sugars. That’s ALL they eat: pasta, pizza, sandwiches on white bread, brioche, and gelato. Oh and coffee with full fat milk. Oh and I can’t forget wine. They have a lot of wine. So all super healthy options. Yet they all manage to stay tiny. How? I have no idea. They aren’t even that active that I can see. I went for 2 runs (yes 2 whole runs in the 3 months) in Cortona and they all looked at me like I was ape shit crazy. I never once saw them out for runs. I mean yes they walk everywhere, but so did I. So that can’t be it. I have come to the conclusion that I will never understand it. They must just be genetically conditioned to eat only carbs and sugars and not gain weight somehow. Sigh. Below are pictures of what I was eating which will explain why my pants no longer fit me.