Lost Bags and Tanned legs (slightly)

They lost my bag.

Fucking airline left my bag in Chicago. And I want it back. It has a boatload of shot glasses in it to give to people. And Sees chocolate....delicious.

You'd think they would've had time to take my luggage from one airplane to the other, seeing as how we sat on the runway for an hour getting de-iced. This after I literally ran from one terminal to the next because I thought I was going to miss my connection. Well, I needn't have feared.

So now I'm back in Canada. Bagless, and cold. But last night I went over to a friend's house and had real beer. Not lite and not disgusting.

In California, I was positively boggled by the number of people who gave me blank stares when I told them where I was from. This is how the situation would often play out:

(Cousin introduces me to person)
Person: Nice to meet you. Where did you say you were from?
Me: O I'm from Ottawa.
Person: um. [confused look]
Me: .....it's in Canada....
Person: O! Canada! What's it like there?
Me: (In my mind I say o you know, snowy, I live in an igloo, etc.) Right now it's quite cold actually...

And on it goes. Seriously though, Ottawa is the capital of this country. Theeee country RIGHT above the States. In fact, Obama was in Ottawa chatting up our PM, discussing trade and what not, whilst I was chillin' in his homeland. Apparently, ignorance of Canada is not uncommon among Americans, even the allegedly educated journalists. It cracks me up, to a certain extent.

Some things are just inexcusably stupid though. Like when one dude asked if Ottawa was anywhere near UBC where his friend goes to school. No buddy. BC, as in British Columbia, is on the complete other side of the country. But sometimes I snowshoe there in July when the weather is only about -14 degrees Celsius. AND Please don't even ask me what that is in Fahrenheit, because that is a dumb system that makes no sense in my brain.

Another person was quite taken by the colourfulness of our money. They were reading the poem on the purple ten dollar bill and I told them it was our most famous war poem, In Flanders Fields, and they said "War? Canada was in a war?" HAHAHA. I laughed and said, "Yes, the first world war, the second, the current madness going down in Afghanistan, many others..." "So were you guys supporting us?" Umm....how to put this in a way that doesn't sound completely condesending and also like I think this person is seriously deprived of a proper history lesson? "Not exactly. We were on the same team...but in the second world war, we actually joined two years before you did..." This is not coming out right...

Whatever. The world history classes in America apparently leave out the "world" part. It's not this person's fault they don't know anything, it's the government's fault for constructing a crap curriculum.

That there was actually an accidental alliteration. So was that.

Anyhoo. All in all, I met some lovely people, and one person who is, no joke, the neat-o-est* person I've ever met. I wanna go back.

So, I'm pretty sure I'll never find adequate Mexican food near me anymore. Thems down in SoCal really know how to make the shit out of that stuff. It's bomb.

And I tanned. I just could not tell while I was there.


The End. But not really.


*Neat-o-est means a mix of cool, delightful, and wicked-awesome. Interpret it as you wish, it doesn't really matter.