Okay, brace yourselves. I had a drink over the weekend. Specifically, half a glass (but a big glass) of sangria at a very schmancy place in Vancouver over the weekend. I havenât been keeping my New Yearâs Resolution to take to drink, and so since I was in a different city where no one knew meâŚin fact, a whole different countryâŚI went ahead and tipped it on back. It didnât take. I still donât like alcohol. Carl was eyeing me closely during our dinner, hoping, I think, to see what might happen were I to get at all tipsy. According to him, I was âjust like normalâ which was âvery disappointing.â I bet.
Yeah, we went to Vancouver on Saturday. Seattle is about three hours south of there, which makes it a pretty accessible overnight trip and so we went fairly spontaneously, meaning we decided to go the week before. Not so spontaneous that we just tooled up there without anywhere to stay or anything, no, no. Your friend Chiara likes things a little more predictable than that because she is deeply, deeply boring. Also she believes that planning a trip is half (if not more) the fun of the trip itself, and likes to reap the fruits of feverish searching for good hotel rates and touristy things.
Okay, wait. I have to stop here for a minute and tell you about my sixth grade social studies project. Chiaraâs Hometown Elementary School, Mrs. Yehleâs class. (Hi Mrs. Yehle! Love you!) We were doing Countries of the World or something, and frankly I donât remember much about the project except how hard mine rocked. My Friend Marah and this other girl Rachel who was a Mormon and moved away to Utah and me were all in a group, and for reasons which elude me now, decided to make up an airline for our project called EurAir that flew toâŚwork with me nowâŚEurope and apparently the captain would give you all sorts of interesting European facts while you were flying. Also snacks from many lands, which in our case was something Italian, butterscotch for England, and something completely else. Rachel and Marah and I went all out for this. We made paper cut outs of clouds to paste on the classroom windows (because youâre flying through the air, you see) and somehow coordinated our outfits to look like flight attendantsâ, and we had a tape of me being the captain telling the audience interesting facts (âThe major mountain ranges of Italy, over there on your left, are the Appenines, the Dolomites, the Alps, and the Jura. And, um, in England it rains a lot.â). And. And. We made a tape of the three of us singing a song that we wrote, all about the airline. Ready? Here it goes:
EurAir! Is youuuuuuuuuur airline!
EurAir! Is youuuuuuuuur airline!
Personable and pleasurable,
Getting there is half the fun!
EurAirâs fun for everyone!â
I just typed that from memory. Can you believe it? I was reminded of it because of what I said up there about my liking to plan my trips, about getting there being half the fun. See? Up there? I think we got an A on the project. Mrs. Yehle loved it.
So. Yes. Okay. All my planning was pretty much for naught because we left a lot later than I had originally wanted to, and had some mishap along the way, getting us there at about five. We went to dinner and to Lush, where I got a Hot Java bath bomb, and then to dinner. We ate dinner and tried to look cool and failed but managed to have a good time anyway, dorkily, as well as to eat some highly yummy food. We walked around Vancouver for a while and thenâŚwell, I took a bath with my new bath bomb, thatâs what I did. It was a very nice one and not only fizzed merrily but left all sorts of twigs and leaves and things in the tub, which I found entertaining. Itâs not too hard to impress me, is what Iâm saying. The next day we ate brunch and went back to Lush, where I got some nice olive oil soap as well as other miscellaneous bathy soapy things. That is seriously the best store ever, my friends. The salesgirls are all very coolâŚwhen I went back Sunday and was telling one of them how much Iâd liked the Hot Java, she nodded all knowingly and went âYes, those are very nice for hangovers.â I guess my breath still smelled like sangria? Dang it, Tomâs Of Maine. Help a sister out over here.
We spent the rest of the day at the Vancouver Aquarium happily looking at frogs and fish and beluga whales and big weird crazy Amazonian flooded-forest fish, as well as some ducks and a sloth (it was sleeping) and otters and some very loud sea lions. The frog exhibit was oddly compelling, but it was the beluga whales that were really exciting to me. Well. Well, I donât know. The frogs were pretty cool, and I have to say it was nice to see amphibians getting the same star treatment as stuff like big mammals. But yeah, the belugas were gorgeous and funny and it was really fun to watch them.
On the way home Carl and I started talking about what a marine mammal zoo would look like. Like, if dolphins and whales and otters and things made a zoo with people in it. And other land animals too, of course, like lions and tigers and horses and maybe dogs and cats, Youâd think theyâd want to represent a lot of different habitats, like City and Mountain Range (bighorn sheep?) and Desert. They would have little air bubbles where all the creatures lived, with tunnels full of water where all the whales with their kids could go on weekends. Maybe the zoo staff would put on reverse scuba outfitsâŚlike thereâs a helmet on them but itâs full of water so they can breatheâŚexcept how would they get around? On a cart with wheels or something? Oh well, theyâll figure it out. If they can build a zoo with tunnels Iâm sure they have some sort of plan for that. Anyway, maybe they would put on their reverse scuba outfits and train all the creatures to do tricks, using positive reinforcement and special whistles and treats. I wonder what kinds of tricks would be interesting for an audience of belugas. Cartwheels? Maybe something like a rodeo where you could see a lot of different species interaction. Maybe the people in the zoo would just sit around watching TV all day. Maybe the dolphins would tap on the glass to make them move around. The kid dolphins would have to write reports about what they observed. âHumans are bipedal mammals that are very small and boring and serve no obvious purpose in the magical world of the oversea.â
We had the following discussion about all this:
Carl: Well, how are they going to go above water to collect specimens?
Chiara (thinking hard): Um, well, they have a reverse submarine, of course.
Carl: A reverse submarine. I see.
Chiara: Yeah! Like, itâs a helicopter full of water and they can just fly it up out of the water and they have collecting nets on it and they just grab what they can.
Carl I think that would be a pretty heavy helicopter.
Chiara Well, okay, so?
Carl I think theyâd better start with just a Sherman tank or something and then work up from there.
While a lot of the trip was happy, some parts were sort of sad and bittersweet, I must admit, and some parts were annoying (donât you love how I can have all those emotions in just 36 hours?) Beluga whales, though. Those make pretty much anything all right. Combined with a bath bomb and my foray into grown-up adult beveragesâŚthatâs pretty good, right? For thirty-six hours? Imagine what I could do with a whole week.