Dec

Smörgåsbord

So here’s a second-hand story for you: When I was a toddler, my mother made me a plate of food and set it in front of me and declared, “Look, Vanessa, a smörgåsbord!” Being no one’s fool, I quickly identified the varying items on the plate for her verbally (greens beans, bananas, peas, chicken, etc.) and demanded a clear explanation.

“Where’s the smörgåsbord?”

What? You don't make Mickey Mouse pancakes for full-grown adults where you come from?

You may be asking the same thing before this is over.

So I have fallen unusually silent and for no good reason except for the simple reason that ‘feeding the blog’ is a lot of work – an hour to two on the average day – and those couple hours have managed to elude me as of late. And not for any great reason (new job as a spy, book deal, time in a coma, etc.)

Mostly it’s that I have been entertaining an out-of-town guest in another friend’s extremely dark apartment and that has really thrown me for a loop. It’s like Vegas without the pizazz or the neon or the gambling or the Vegas.

To explain (and this may or may not be an accurate memory), but I have a memory that there was a study about body clocks and they found that humans left to their own devices without any input from the sun evolve to a 36-hour circadian rhythm. And I have been performing my own perpetual darkness experiment of sorts (in the aforementioned extremely poorly lit, more or less day-light free [even on the rare sunny day] condo), and I can attest that it’s true. At least for me.

Me on Robson Street in Vancouver B.C.

So imagine something like a 5am bedtime/noon wakeup schedule. So Hawaii time…for a late starter. And then add in general rain, cold, gloom, and other lethargy…and then throw in a heaping helping of Coors Light and you can more or less imagine how I could lose track of four days.

Along the way, there have been a few highlights as evidenced by these photos including (but not limited) to some Mickey Mouse pancakes I made the other day and some Bloody Marys and this pretty awesome Russian bath house (no, not like that. Like a real soaking tub/sauna [240 scorching degrees Fahrenheit!!!] steam room/cold bath/saline tub/weird tea place) and now I’m in Vancouver, B.C. (home of the 2010 Winter Olympics) where I went for a really long, amazing run in Stanley Park this morning and then walked around all over town and I’m worried my car is going to be stolen out of the parking garage and the guy at this hotel wasn’t entirely comforting and I bought an awesome navy blue sequin vest at H&M and had some soup with shrimp wontons and now am sitting in the room writing this for you.

Mickey Mouse pancakes and Bloody Marys. The breakfast of champions.

And this is not the greatest post ever.

But I hope you at least enjoy the pictures.

Adjö´ så lä´nge!

Slut.

(oh, it figures that the word for ‘the end’ in Swedish is slut. I’m not calling you a slut – or maybe I am? That’s for me to know and you to find out – I was just trying to be clever and say goodbye and the end and it backfired thanks to those damn Swedes. Figures.)