Leaving Calgary was the only time I got any photos, because I’m lazy. I tried a few coming into LAX at night, because it was amazing (more below) but I am not master of night photography in a moving plane.

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We got a little lost in LAX after being told to go to the wrong place. I almost lost the photo tube I was bringing. We tried to go through security without boarding passes. We ended up making it, though! Sadly LAX had no wifi near my gate, which annoyed the hell out of me. I like updating people while I’m traveling! Also, landing at LAX at night was amazing. Coming in over the city, watching it turn from a blur of lights to defined lights was like watching the tiniest world. I saw little blips of light that were helicopters and could imagine them as spaceships jetting out from this civilization that I was seeing from so far away. There was a point where I could just see police lights, when everything was still sooo small, that I just couldn’t get enough. And of course getting slowly closer, watching things grow, seeing the traffic. I’ve always loved this process, but at night in a huge city was the best ever. I was glued to the window the entire time.

LA to Sydney was surprisingly shortened by flying at night, because sleeping was so much easier. I remember previous trips being awake most of the time, watching a ton of movies and reading a lot. I watched about two movies total (all of “Season of the Witch,” half of “The Next Three Days” due to falling asleep, and half of “No Strings Attached” due to not being horribly interested) and a few episodes of Big Bang Theory. I did some reading. Chatted with my seatmate. Mostly slept.

Seatmate! I wish I’d taken a picture for my blog. Meet Chris, a very cute paleontologist and professor from the States. Heading to Aus for the first time, meeting his girlfriend there, who is also a paleontologist and professor. They’re going to be working at some museums here, and then doing some tours in the Sydney and Melbourne areas. He’s proposing to her while they’re here! How cool!! Anyway, chatting was great and he was sweet and they sound cool, so I asked him to keep in touch and gave him my card. :)

I forgot how amazing it smells once you walk out the doors of the Sydney airport. The vegetation was across roads but the air itself smelled like I had my face shoved in bouquets of fresh flowers. All I could do walking from one place to another was huff the air and make noises of love.

Sydney to Cairns involved learning that two of our four bags were still in LA. Thankfully it was just our hiking boots, sandals, and runners, and our bathroom stuff excluding medications we took on the plane. They’ll be arriving tomorrow, but the news involved standing in line for ages to fill out forms. It also, however, involved $100 in my pocket, so that’s cool. We learned that the sim cards we got with our VIP Backpackers packages don’t work (expiry Dec 2009 perhaps is the problem?) but got a phone on the cheap anyway. And then waited from about 8am until 1pm. We had lunch at the same place in Sydney airport that we did last time, pretty sure I had the same meal itself. I got some pens! We got some magazines and almost paid $50 for a shitty little aluminum wallet at a stupidly expensive airport store. Ugh. The flight was decent, curry was an odd choice of meal to serve and apparently everyone ahead of us thought so too, as the beef choice was gone quickly. And for once, we were not last off the plane!

It was muggy as soon as we stepped off the plane, and hot. Roni, Greg and Lily met us right outside. It was so great to see them!!!! Grabbed our remaining bags and off we went! Arrived at their beautiful house to greet Sue, Ash, and Kat! Sue brought ginger beer and made scones, and I promptly stuffed my face with both after a shower. All of the above had me thanking the gods – seriously, I think a shower after 20+ hours travel time, followed by ginger beer and scones, was heaven. Roni took a blurry iphone pic:

Greg made some tasty sort of hawaiian chicken… rolls of some sort. Empinada? Something? from a chicken place we lurve here, and they were tasty! Then I passed out…. until now. I woke up about 1:30 in the morning. I listened to the bugs and birds outside – gods, it sounds so lovely here. Never silence. I’m pretty sure the cockatoos were chatting it up with me earlier. I think it’s about 4:10 now. I’m gonna try to go back to seep for a while. Tomorrow will hopefully involve a beach, and possibly buying some pants.

Cheers from Cairns!!

xo

I’ve had the great pleasure to travel to some amazing places. I haven’t been all over the world – I have yet to see Mexico, or Hawaii, or Cuba, for example, common vacation spots for families and young adults – but the places I’ve been are magical. I have, however, managed to check FOUR of 12 places off this 101 Things list.

Uluru, Australia – 2009

Also known as Ayer’s Rock, this is the landmark icon of the Australian outback, and perhaps Australia as a whole. The giant red rock jutting up out of the earth in the middle of nowhere, renowned for its mystical aura, its Aborigine origins. Uluru does not disappoint.

Mom and I took a tour out to Uluru and Kata Tjuta National Park when we went to Australia in 2009. It was amazing. Our tour bus was a thin thing, the road so holy that I thought I’d almost broke my spine a few times bouncing over ridges and gaping craters. The tour guide was a fount of information, knowing more Aborigine stories than he could possibly tell. I got to sit up front with him for a good portion of the tour and hear stories that the rest of the tour group didn’t. I was interested. I wish I’d thought to record them, or blog them or write them down, because there’s little more interesting than stories of how the world was formed and what things were seen to be.

Sydney Harbour, Australia – 2003/2009

We didn’t get to see a lot of Sydney Harbour in 2003. because there was a giant convention of doom going on. But I was there!
And in 2009, mom and I did a bus tour, and used Sydney as our base of operations for a couple tours outside the city. I’d really like to spend more time there, one day.

Great Barrier Reef, Australia – 2003
Unfortunately I don’t currently have access to my 2003 photos, or I’d share with you an awesome pic I have (from a National Geographic photographer) of me holding a starfish out on the Great Barrier Reef! It was an amazing event, to go out there and see the wonderful…. well, everything. I mean.. I can’t really say much about it, just that it was AMAZING. We even got to go in a helicopter and zoom about over the reef, and I have photos of rays and stuff from way up in the air! Swimming was spectacular, too. The only downside that I personally had is that I couldn’t scuba dive – I’ve had problems with water in my ears since I was a baby and the bubbles from the scuba mask hurt like hell and freaked me out quite a bit. I don’t really do well with deep open water, either, just fyi – I find it very unnerving. The two combined to leave me pretty shaky, and not to mention I’m an avid fan of reading about all the things that could possibly kill me – sharks, jellies, random fish that don’t even like the taste of people but sometimes bite them just in case they’ve changed their minds. I ended up snorkeling, somewhat, but the photographer surfacing to get a pic of me with the starfish nearly gave me heart failure. And I got a bit sea sick, and too much sun. All totally worth it, though.

That all being said, I desperately want to learn how to scuba dive and snorkel properly, get my scuba certification, and go diving. A LOT. I can’t express how much I want to hang out on the Reef, among other things. You possibly saw in my 30 Before 30, before I edited it out, that I want to swim with the whale sharks. So I mean, the ocean freaks me out but it’s also amazing and totally worth the fear because once you’re out there…. you see things you just really can’t experience anywhere else.

Grand Canyon, Arizona
This was back in high school, I think. My parents and I went to a ton of major US landmarks throughout my life, I have seen so many awesome places and sights. Grand Canyon remains one of my favorite stories to tell as far as an “I am crazy” story, or a “things I do for a photo” story (a selection which also includes lunging from a moving vehicle to get a photo of a bear, and chasing it up a hillside, but that’s a story for another post)…

I really, really wanted a good picture that everyone else wasn’t getting. So I kinda wandered off the path a little ways, through some bushes onto a little outcropping edge. I went to the very tippy top edge, put my foot half over the edge, just back enough to maintain balance, stuck my other leg out behind me, leaned waaaaaaaaay over, stretched out my arm and snapped a pic down into the Grand Canyon. I think I realized afterward that if I’d fell, no one would have seen me. I was rather hidden from view. My mom had a bit of a meltdown and still gets sweaty palms when I tell the story. It was pretty epic.

Alas, no photo either – this was way back in my film days, and while I hope to scan a lot of photos this summer, it just isn’t done now.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Fransisco
I think I went to San Fran the year I graduated high school, so 2000, but I could be wrong. I don’t remember a lot about the Bridge, except standing on a hill looking at it with some friends and my parents, and how chilly it was for summer. I’ll try to find my pictures when I scan them.

That’s it so far, of the 101 Things list. This is definitely one I’ll continue as I can.
(To come: Colosseum, Rome. Machu Picchu, Peru. The Pyramids at Giza, Egypt. Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro. Tah Mahal, Delhi. Angkor Wat, Cambodia. The Great Wall of China.)
(Bonus List: Iguacu Falls, Brazil-Argentina border. Yosemite National Park, California. Iceland. The Galapagos Islands. Stonehenge.)

I bought Dragon Age: Origins.

A couple things to know about me, in terms of video games.

Firstly: I suck. A lot. This is partially because I don’t play very often at all, and partially because I’m not a very tactical thinker. I’m an artist, not a planner. The extent of my planning is what tours to do and where to visit on vacation, or making lists. I have a good deal of games but I tend to play things like Rock Band when I’m alone or with most friends. My boyfriend and I play video games sometimes on date nights, or when I sleep over, which I love but it’s not very frequent. So I really kinda suck. I constantly blow us up. I get lost a lot. I don’t have the best control skills so I run around and if it was remotely realistic my character would be stumbling around drunkenly and flailing and possibly on fire.

My controls are getting better, but aiming is still my major downfall, and of course, I play on easy/casual because that’s really all I have the skills for (and that is giving me a lot of credit I don’t deserve! lol)… I am slightly shamed to say that I often need to employ walkthroughs to figure out what the hell I am supposed to be doing, where to find what I need to find, and how to defeat a foe. I seriously do not play video games often enough.

Secondly: I really like shooter games to play with my boy, but for personal play? Dragon Age: Origins is about as perfect as you can get. I used to play WoW often with various exes and I really loved it, but the above issues still applied: I tend to think that the people I was playing with thought I was perhaps a spastic monkey with a joystick. I was always getting lost (even in places I’d been fifteen times) and getting confused. My constant woe was “Where the hell did you go?!?!” And let’s not even get started on things like armor and weaponry! I understand the basics of stat boosting and levels of armor and all that, but I am a girl and I will go with lower armor if I like the look of it better. Or maybe that’s the artist in me – I always think about drawing my characters, and I prefer to draw them (or imagine them) in pretty outfits versus boring armor. But I love quests, and talking to people, and the RPG part of things. With WoW, what I didn’t like was the monthly price tag, no option for off-line play, requiring a party of other players to do a lot of the quests, and dicks ganking me constantly. If I must play with other people, I much prefer it be people I actually know and not random strangers (this would be why I don’t log into Left 4 Dead on my Steam account unless the boy or friends are playing with me) and it’s hard to organize people to play regularly.

I’d been resisting Dragon Age: Origins for a while. Mostly because I was very behind in school due to being sick, and neither of these issues has shown much sign of letting up. I caught up on previous semester’s stuff, however, and finding myself way, way, way more stressed than I thought I was (seriously, 8 on the pain scale for weeks will do that to a person), I said to hell with school work that I can’t do at home, and hello to Dragon Age!

Aaaaaand I’m addicted. I think I’ve had it a week or so, and I’m already gearing up to fight the archdemon. I have never played this much of a game before. (WoW perhaps, but I had it through two boyfriends and we played a lot.)  I am LOVING IT. I love the quests, I love the pretty graphics, I love the random conversations that my companions have around me. I love that you can romance characters. I love that things may come back to bite you in the ass (Zevran, you jerk!). I love that you can back a king or backstab him. I love that while your character is basically good, there’s such a huge range of personality there. It’s wonderful.

And when I close my eyes, I see things shining and I want to loot them. Oops, that means I’ve been playing too much, doesn’t it?

Of course, last night I learned that I completely bypassed Leliana somehow. I’m not sure how. I must have met her, but I don’t recall, and I certainly don’t have her in my party. So when Zevran decided to stab me in the back, I found myself Rogue-less. I can’t pick locks or do traps or anything. Augh! What the hell did I do? Tracy was laughing at me and boggling about how I could have possibly missed Leliana, and how Zevran could have gone against me. “You’re playing it wrong!” was her war cry, and obviously she was right, but I have no idea what I was doing wrong. I don’t game enough! This is what I keep saying! I have no idea how to play these things and now I’m missing a party member, one of my core companions tried to kill me and is dead, and I haven’t even bedded Alistair yet. Off I go to kill an archdemon – wish me luck.

In any case, I started talking to some amazing people. I eventually went vegetarian for a few months, and then vegan for three years. If I hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer, I may still be vegan, but as it was, that was a really hard time in my life and I ended up going back to eating meat.

That’s not the point, however. The point is that during this time, I tried really hard to get involved with local activists. I believe I did two fur protests and a Stampede rodeo protest.  I wanted to be more involved, but they were extremely disorganized with no real website to speak of (and kept refusing to let me update the website), and I found it very frustrating to deal with, so eventually I ended up losing interest.

But I’ve done a few! I will do more as the mood strikes and as opportunity arises with ideas I believe in.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Calgary Stampede, it happens for about a week every summer. The part that I like is the fair aspect: there are games, and rides, and typical foods like funnel cake and mini donuts. There are concerts, both country and my style (anything from Finger Eleven to Tea Party). There’s a big big shopping area that has everything from specialty clothing (and not just western wear: biker gear, corsets, everything), stuff you see on tv kinda thing, a big video game area… It’s just a lot of fun. I don’t mind the farming areas, where they showcase stock and stuff… The part I’m not a fan of is the rodeo, where horses get hurt and are put down every year (I think one year was 11). There’s some rodeo work that I don’t mind, like barrel racing, where people are actually concerned with how their animals do and making sure they DON’T get hurt and DON’T need to be put down. But at the Stampede? Enough animals every year get euthanized that I really have to wonder how much these people actually care about their animals.

So while I GO to the Stampede some years, I go for shopping and rides and funnel cake and mini donuts and games. Never rodeo.

That’s not saying I’ve never hurt anything while I was there. One year, I hit the balloon dart guy in the ass with a dart, it careened off and broke a balloon, and I didn’t get a prize.

Piercings:
- Labret. 18 years old? Maybe 19? First piercing. Still got it!
- Navel. pre-2003. I had to take it out in 2003 in Australia when it went nasty. Gone.
- Eyebrow. Didn’t heal well and started rejecting. Gone.
- Snakebites (both sides of lower lip) – 2006, celebrated finishing chemo by getting holes jammed in my lips. They didn’t want to heal properly. Gone.
- Nape x2. First one I got after first meeting Tracy, as she had one and I loved it. I got a second one a while later, pierced with a soft material rather than metal, and I switched my first one to the same thing, and they got irritated. Gone.
- Lip. I forget the name, but inside it sits just about my gumline and it comes out in the middle of my lower lip. I look like I have a vertical labret, with my two piercings. I love it.

Tattoos:
- Turquoise scarab beetle that I designed, lives between my shoulder blades. My first tattoo (but not my first design, heh) and I think I was 19 when I got him. Unfinished, as I haven’t designed his wings or decided what he will be holding (sun or moon or something else)…
- Quote on each wrist. On my right, “Light, in the absence of eyes, illuminates nothing.” Left, “What the flame does not consume, consumes the flame.” They are both quotes from the Aeon Flux cartoon, which sounds silly but I bet you thought they were kinda cool before you read that. I have always loved the oddness of that show, and these quotes specifically spoke to me. The first is my “art” quote, basically reminding me to LOOK, to really SEE, and that there is beauty in everything. The second is my “strength” quote, basically what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, which I need a reminder of occasionally when I’m feeling weak. Gods know I’ve had enough happen in my life that a reminder that it’s made me stronger is needed sometimes.

I have more tattoos planned, including cap sleeves of Cthulhu theme (though yet to be designed), an elder star tattoo that looks like a scar or brand on the back of my neck, and at least two more quotes, both from Aeon Flux again. “They say cats always land on their feet, but at this point there’s really no floor,” down around my ankle, and “That which doesn’t kill us, simply makes us… stranger,” possibly as a chest/clavicle/whatever area tattoo.

Have you had any piercings or tattoos? What have you got?
If not, why? Do you hope to in the future? How do you feel about body modification?