i said Canadian 19 times in this post.

OK.

I have some pictures from my trip to Canadia, and some notes.

Some have asked why I went to Winnipeg. These people must not know me very well. There were two places within weekend-roadtrip driving distance I’d never been: Winnipeg and Branson. Winnipeg was closer, and also Canadian. Therefore funny.

1. We ate at a place in East Grand Forks called Whitey’s Wonderbar. No joke. I had the veggie wrap, which was basically coleslaw in a tortilla.

2. According to my trucker’s road atlas, North Dakota boasts the tallest structure in the universe. It was some 10 miles off the interstate, but I could still see it even in a rainstorm. I didn’t believe the claim of tallest structure to be true, but this seems to confirm it.

Check that one off my list, I guess.

3. You’ve already heard about the beginning of my Canadian adventures. After my serenade, we went to The Forks market. I had a very special Canadian Pretzel (I hear it’s what voyageurs eat) and bought this Canadian Tshirt, which is my new very favo(u)rite tshirt ever, and which Minnesotans seem to find very amusing.

4. We went over to France St. Boniface across the river. There’s a cool Canadian Cathedral there, but not much else. A pretty awesome Canadian Bridge connects the normal side to the French side.

5. Man, I dig Canadia.

6. There was really good shopping in Canadian Uptown. Stephanie wandered and I limped slowly behind. We had awesome Canadian Food more than once; she even ventured to try poutine, the Canadian National Dish (in the background).

7. My foot was kind of a mess. It’s hard to travel and do the Rest Ice Compression Elevation thing. My Canadian Sprained Ankle got a lot worse by the end of Saturday. I thought it was huge in this picture, but a week later it’s actually much more swollen. Please ignore my icky toenail. It’s been 9 months since I lost that from the 3day. Crazy.

8. Sunday morning, we went to find brunch and had a lot of time to kill because Canadians are way poky about opening their stores. Like, stuff is open 12-5 on Sundays, as if people want to spend time with their families or something. Hello. Anyway, we found this bakery place, and it turned out to be the Canadian clone of French Meadow. So it became French-Canadian Meadow, of course.

9. We walked around some, then went to the zoo. Stephanie told me I should get a wheelchair, which made me crabby because nobody’s gonna be pushing my ass around. The zoo was surprisingly good, even though there were about 15 rain showers while we were there. After dining, we went to Canadian Putt-n-Batt and played awesome pirate minigolf, bumper cars, nerf cannons, air hockey, and basketball. I found it less than amusing that my sprained ankle prevented me from racing go-karts (the brake is on the left), and my neck injury prevented me from playing in the batting cages. Cruel, cruel fate.

10. We left there at 5:30 and realized the entire country had closed, so we went to see Canadian Star Wars. It was pretty much the same as American Star Wars, from what I hear, except was preceded by a commercial about the grandeur of Canada.

11. After the movie, we totally ate at a restaurant featuring down-home cookin’. Which was actually good, and had Canadian Gardenburgers.

12. Since my sister won’t let me drive her SUV (it’s nothing personal, she won’t let anyone drive her SUV), I got a LOT of knitting done. I finished the entire front of make-it-up-as-I-go hoodie, as well as one arm.

13. This seems like a good segue into the fact that I haven’t posted pictures of my knitting projects for a while. At least, I don’t think I’ve posted these. I may be wrong. Here’s the flames sweater I made for Scotty, and a cute little flower purse and socks.

14. The bulging disk kept me from normal exercise for a month and a half, although I managed to still walk a lot. The sprained ankle has rendered me fully sedentary. I’ve racked my brains trying to come up with a way to still get something in, and the only thing I can come up with is swimming. Since you’re not going to be seeing my fat ass in a swimsuit anytime in this lifetime, I guess I’m pretty much screwed.

Note: I did walk 3 miles on Thursday night; that seems to have made it a lot worse. Don’t worry, I’m only 3/4 of the way to suicidal. There’s still hope. I think.

15. I transferred the domain hosting on this site and plinko.net today, so we may have some downtime hereabouts. That’s OK with me.

16. My birthday is on Wednesday. I’ll be 32.

Fuck.

And with that…
Jenni