O Canada!

I almost don't want to mention my "Labour" day weekend in Canada for fear that others will think I'm all snobby and too good for them. I mentioned to someone in Portland that I was headed to Vancouver, and they said, oh yeah? Five minutes up 1-5? Yeah, I hear they've got a big Wal-Mart there, and I said CANADA, man-child!

I like any kind of international travel I can do in our Volvo.

I was there for the Vancouver International Tap Festival, but I tell cool people that I was there for A Scooter Rally Called George, which was simultaneously occurring.

Tap dancing is fun, and affords one the opportunity to step really hard on one's own foot that rarely comes up in day to day life. Also, you can make a lot of noise with your feet. I enjoyed classes from Jazz-Tap clown prince Josh Hilberman, although he cost me a toenail and caused me to interact with 10 year old tap prodigies, who may be the most annoying persons in the world. If there's anything worse than children, it's really cute and talented children.

Spouse and I attended a gothnight called Blender, where they were blending some $8 drinks (thank goodness that Tylenol with codeine is OTC) with pop and old-school goth music. I met a pair of girls named Sarah and Jessica, and if they shared a boyfriend called Parker, I would remember their names forever.

This is the mad, mad world of downtown parking. You have to be able to count, tell time, and know what day it is while you're parallel parking, which is not as difficult as figuring out how much you're paying for gas in liters and loonies. Eventually, we just left the car with a dozen Loonies stuck in the windshield to ward off parking ticket fairies. I kind of like getting a ticket in Canada, because that means I have something to put my gum in when I'm done chewing it. We were near the "hip" walk-around-shopping-and-looking-at-hookers-area, Gastown, named for the founder Gassy Jack, whom I don't want to know any more about. There is a steam clock there, which is like a steam locomotive, but stationary.

We tried to go out for the evening from our hotel on East Hastings, and we learned that in Vancouver, there's no such thing as a neighborhood bar. We got dressed up like cancer patients going to Prom and traipsed up and down the block, and finally asked the hotel clark about local drinking establishments, and she said, no, this is a residential zone, and all the bars are downtown, and I asked, then why does everyone I interact with seem drunk? She remarked that there was a liquor store down the street, so people frequently enjoy their own portable bars, also known as "jackets".

But I'm the one with the drinking problem.