Natalie Meteoroid

I woke up on the third day from the deepest most restful sleep I’ve ever had in a hostel. Antonia and I both fell asleep in our matching Enter Shikari shirts (cute) and wore them for a few consecutive days afterwards.
The last time I was in Seattle with my mom we went on the Underground Tour and i caught an orb in a picture! I wanted to show Antonia this awesome haunted underground so i sat through the same jokes a second time around, for the ghosts sake! There was a smart-alec kid there who was constantly raising his hand to ask/answer questions like “let me guess, the dynamite blew up and Seattle burned…AGAIN”. Come on, it was because of him that the tour guide didn’t go into detail of the prolific red light district of the 1900’s and the huge number of murders that occurred in the haunted part of the Underground. Well now you all know! I still recommend going on this tour, just make sure you are the youngest person there and bring your/a fake student id for a cheaper ticket!

It ended up being a really hot day, a whole 20 degrees! Spring as per usual was taking its sweet time to show up so up until this day we were used to a max of 10 whole degrees! We were quite dehydrated, blame it on the ghosts sucking out our essential nutrients, so we ventured to the nearest Starbucks to order the largest drink size they had! The size of drinks you can get in the States is the equivalent of a big gulp here. A ‘trenta’ sized shaken black iced tea, half sweet. Write that down, in case you ever want to surprise me with a drink before we go on our picnic/firstdate/roadtrip.

I had heard a lot about this Capitol Hill place. ‘Go there they said, it’s where all the hip kids go they said.’ So we went. Uphill all the way, with our gigantic drinks condensing all over our hands. In fifteen minutes we were there and thoroughly impressed! Beautiful people almost everywhere. It reminded me a lot of the new Gastown/East Van vibe, all hip and independent and delicious. We were advised by a cheeky hostel guy to eat at the Honeyhole. He told us it smelled like honey when you walk in, naturally I was intrigued, I mean I am half Pooh Bear. It didn’t smell like honey. There wasn’t even honey on the menu. What they did have were sandwiches, the best sandwiches I’ve ever tried. At least in the Top 3 of all the sandwiches I’ve ever had in my life. The atmosphere in there was as described by Antonia “its as if the Naam and the Eatery had a love child and it decided to make sandwiches for a living”. Perfect!

The gentleman in the green shirt at the back is wearing a Canucks shirt. I wonder if he could sense that we would be knocked out of the playoffs about 5 hours after this photo was taken. Speaking of shirts, we looked inside the Value Village in Capitol Hill and i found one that said “I take the ‘the’ out of Psychotherapist”. Wow, props to whoever tried to wear that in public.
We started on our way back down the hill to the hostel to pick up our bags and leftover baseball snacks. We bought more snacks at Kukuruza popcorn, because you really can’t have enough of that stuff. The DrySoda flagship store was closed when we walked past it, probably for the best as my backpack was started to weigh enough to suggest I was away for a week. We boarded the bus and ended up having the same old English bus driver. A note to anyone that isn’t a Canadian citizen yet and has a PR Card that has expired. Don’t worry, they let you back in the country anyways, as long as you sent the application to get it renewed you’re good to go. And yes, it does take 4 entire months to have a new one reissued. Hey Canada, I’ll work for you part time to process these type of things, it will reduce the overall stress of the entire country, I promise!

Goodbye Seattle, you were so gorgeous in so many ways.

The morning started with my ritual sneeze and tissue fest, enhanced by my sleeping heads close proximity to the one open window in the room which looked over a street of pollinating cherry blossoms. I’m not complaining! It’s a gracious display of seasonal change that I embrace wholeheartedly. If it means I get to wear one less pair of pants and only a t-shirt, my nose will gladly pay the price! This is Day 2 of our Seattle trip by the way, in case you didn’t realize I wasn’t done summarizing our adventures.

Today was the day we had been anticipating for months, the Enter Shikari show. We had about ten hours to idle away, so we hopped on a water taxi and jetted over to West Seattle. From the city, West Seattle looks like an island, but its actually connected to the mainland if you looked at a map. Upon our arrival we find ourselves on a long seawall in a community that looks like the love child of White Rock and Tofino, with a few slips of DNA from Jericho beach. I found the temperate too low for my weak circulation, and my scarf turned headcover/shoulder cover was mostly a placebo, then again it was only 11 am. We decided to briskly power walk the rest of the way to the main part of the Alki Beach town. You won’t believe what we found. A store selling Toms. Of course we go in and both purchase a pair of Toms that were on sale. ON SALE. Who puts Toms on Sale? Alki Beach, thats who. I snagged the black and gold shimmers that have replaced my black sparkles as my fancy date shoes. We grabbed some drinks and snacks and headed for the sandy shores!

Can you tell from this angle that my nose is getting burned alive? We must have not moved from this position for hours because I ended up with a face/chest burn and Antonia got dealt a nice shoulders smoldering. We got lunch after this and I spent most the time with my ice water glass resting on my face. We hurried back to the hostel to make ourselves presentable for this evenings feature presentation. We christen the night with lavender Dry Soda and headed on our way to El Corazon.

After a surprisingly quick walk up (google maps told us it would be a twenty minute walk. It was more like eight) we found ourselves in the coolest all ages/21+ venue ever. Minus half the toilet stalls not having any toilet paper, you’re welcome Antonia, it was pretty legit. There was a lounge/bar for all us old people, all twenty five of us; at least we knew we wouldn’t be getting death punched by anybody in the crowd. The first band was pretty dang generic but you know what made it extremely sweet? The brother, dad, and grandpa of one of the lead singers, yeah…there were two, were all there looking like the proudest bunch of guys ever. My heart swelled at the outgoingness of his grandpa. I know for suresies that if any of my grandparents were alive they would not come to my hardcore screamo bands show and have a massive grin on their faces. Okay, my grandparents are from old country, it probably doesn’t count, but still, come on! Adorable! The second opening band was kind of psychotically intense, but they got us to move to the left side of the stage, this is important later on. Can I mention that this venue had carpet? This is a metal venue. What kind of magic carpet lives here that doesn’t need to be burned after every show? Take a deep breath because after this photo I’m about to get all emotional about the reason I’m still smiling.

Allow me to set the stage and mood. The lights go out completely, the cocoons in my stomach all explode at once with a thousand butterflies, and glaring searchlights start scanning the audience while a robotic Big Brother voice announces something about surveillance and I wish I could remember the rest but my brain has stopped most of its normal person functions by now. The light show suddenly starts and Enter Shikari are already on the stage starting up the songs System…/Meltdown. Within ten seconds I’ve slithering my way to the very front in front of Rory the dashing guitarist, far enough away from the stage divers but close enough to dance/flail and sing/yell in relative safety. Little background about why I love Enter Shikari so much: They are British. Rou brilliantly writes about the environment, sustainability, the zeitgeist movment, economical corruption and solutions, love, and unity. They morph post hardcore and dubstep like no one else. I’m pretty sure they are down with aliens. Basically all of my favorite things rolled into a musical experience.

Half way through the set I switch spots with Antonia who was right behind me and for the first time ever in my show going experience I have somehow created a half arms length radius around me that no one disturbs. I don’t know if it was because I was so into it, or because I was wearing my magic Shark Tank, or because it was the New Moon, but it was quite the luxury having my personal dance space. I am at a lose of words unfortunately at how to describe the whole show. You all have to come to the next one! That means you Ma! The set was a solid hour and half flash flood of colour that included a human pyramid, the guys hanging off the ceiling beams, Rou’s inventive dance moves, and love hugs from Rory. Life complete! At least for a few months.

On our refreshing night walk back we realized Seattle doesn’t have 7-11’s. We almost perished of thirst.

Hello Tyrannosaurus, Meet Tyrannicide.

This past unofficial long weekend Antonia and I embarked on our much anticipated adventure to our slightly older sister city, Seattle. We had one real reason to be there, to see Enter Shikari play on Saturday at El Corazon. The other days were completely open to spontaneous (mis)happenstance!
I obsess a little over the weather predictions and for a week beforehand it said that on Friday it would pour and soak and flood like never before in Seattle. Good thing I just bought new gumboots! We woke up at my house at the crack of dawn on Friday and sunlight poured in through the skylights. I made a last minute decision to scrap the gumboots and risk it in just my Toms. Luckily the weather prediction was completely wrong as per every time always and it didn’t rain a drop while we were there. It was a bit of a joke throughout the trip, thanking god that I didn’t haul my gumboots all the way there for nothing!
After a seamless border crossing complete with finger printing, scanning, and joke making we were on our way ahead of schedule! In case any of you plan on taking a bus down to the States, I highly recommend Amtrak busses and highly do not recommend Quick Shuttle or Greyhound. This is coming from experience and nothing else!
Our first stop was at the public library. I have never been so consistently amazed with modern architecture before! We explored every single floor and went all the way around the spiral! We caught a free showing of a documentary about undamming a major river in Washington. It was dammed about a century ago and ever since then the salmon stopped coming up it to spawn. Obviously, one does not simply catapult oneself over a massive dam. They have started the de-construction of the dam and in about 2 years it will be complete and free flowing like a river was born to be and I think the salmon will return and we can eat even more smoked salmon eggs benedicts! Everyone wins when we undam rivers, I’m telling you!

On a more consumerism note, has anyone attempted to shop at Nordstroms? I don’t think they could make the shopping experience any more traumatizing. A Ryan Seacrest walks up to you in a suit and microphone and introduces you to another Ryan Seacrest that will be helping you today. And by helping they mean false compliments and pushy salesman ship. They didn’t have the particular Toms I wanted but Antonia got her very first pair! Black burlap. You win this time Nordstroms…

We noticed a sign at the hostel that said a Seattle Mariners baseball game was tonight. Oh yeah, we stayed at the Green Tortoise Hostel we couldn’t recommend it anymore! Very comfy and warm beds, free breakfast and beyond perfect location. We can’t guarantee that you won’t run into a Californian lady who spills off twenty small California cities in a single sentence though. Anyways, baseball! We had no idea how much a game would cost but we set our budget at $30 and we ended up with the seats that you see us at above. Super sweet deal for us since we’re used to $150 nosebleed Canucks tickets, and by used to we mean we know it’s that much and know we can’t afford it, ha! We stocked up on food and snacks which actually lasted us to the bus ride home two days later. We couldn’t stop munching the entire game, but neither could anyone else around us so we figured we were doing it right. The game lasted until it was dark by which time we were freezing and now realized why all the moms had brought blankets and toques. Antonia made pant socks and i fashioned my utili-scarf into a hat-shawl-scarf. By the start of the ninth inning i couldn’t wait for the Mariners to finish losing so we could drag ourselves back to the hostel to warm up.

Earlier in the day we had stopped at Beecher’s cheese for some mac and cheese, or penne and cheese as it actually was and Dry Soda. We both got rhubarb Dry Soda and fell in liquid love. On our walk back from the stadium we found a Dry Soda outlet and promised ourselves we would buy a case on our way home.

P.S. The seventh inning stretch isn’t the home stretch of the game that I thought it was. Its actually a time for the audience to stand up and stretch. Brilliant!

The title of this post is named after the We Are Augustines album I’m listening to right now. I’m going to race it and attempt to finish this post before it ends. Hey, there’s a lot of proof reading that goes into this okay? I would also like to add that researching music festival playing bands is a really smart idea and you end up finding more new favorite bands than you can keep track of. Before I face plant right into the adventure I’m going to take you on, I’d like to update you on my current books. Nerd alert! I was done with not understanding all the Hunger Games jokes and memes on the internet so I had to read it, and read it I did in three days! I’m going to see the movie this Tuesday. Cheap Date alert! Just kidding, I’m probably going by myself. Unless you know, you’d like to come along, but only if you know what a mockingjay is! I’m not going to explain everything to you in whispers while the movie is playing because you didn’t have enough time/foresight to read this book before seeing the movie. Right now I’m reading a book called Hollow Earth by some guy you’ve never heard of. I picked it up at MacLeod’s book store, which I’m taking you to if you have never been! Even if you have been there, we are going again. If you don’t already know, I am a HUGE alternative science/dimension/reality fan. Some really smart people during the Scientific Revolution tried to prove the Earth is hollow in places and an advanced civilization lives down there. Have you heard of the Matrix? Zion? Yeah I thought so. Anyways, write me a postcard and we shall discuss this theory/fact further. Onto this weeks adventure!

Jessica, my friend who likes to walk just as much as I do, and I had quite a pleasant adventure last weekend. It was sunny for the first time in what seemed like and probably was weeks. Due to some really smart investigating and lucky eavesdropping I found out about a new donut shop in Gastown. It goes by the name of Cartems Donuterie. I only tried three of the donuts but my god I can not wait to try three more. They sell out all the time and use a cake-like dough, eavesdropping remember? We bought the earl grey one, pictured above, the vegan one, and a chai one that isn’t listed on the website. We pranced our delicious loot down to Dr. Sun Yat Sen gardens and sat on a ledge to gorge. Well, I gorged, Jessica politely nibbled. I was sneezing and sniffling basically the entire day. I’m one of those early bloomers when it comes to the spring time allergy attack. I basically pollinate myself.

Our next feast awaited us at Gorilla Foods. I discovered this place last year with my mom. It’s all vegan, all raw, all the time. Do not roll your eyes! The food is actually a living masterpiece. Five minutes in there and you’ll want to run away into the jungle and fend for yourself in a community of like minded people and do yoga and drink plenty of water. Don’t worry, I would come with you if you needed a jungle buddy. I walked out of Gorilla Foods feeling lighter and healthier than when I walked in. We went to MacLeod’s books up the street, where I did not buy anything! I am on a semi strict money diet right now. I am very impressed with their Harry Potter collection tho, I love how it’s perched really close to the entrance.
We meandered over to the Art Gallery, almost went in, but decided it was so rare that the sun was still out that we crossed the bridge and walked all the way to my house. WHAT A TREK. On the way home one of us came up with the brilliant idea of putting my couch on the porch. We totally did and it was one of the most perfect moments of this year so far. We made tea and watched the sunset and covered ourselves in blankets. It inspired me to make my porch really accommodating this summer. Tons of chairs and plants!

I took that last picture at the exact time my friend was flying to Cuba. I assume it’s him in there. Oh! The We Are Augustines album just ended. Touche…

You’ll have to excuse my prolonged absence from the interweb this last half of the winter. Something happens to me every single post winter solstice; my soul travels to the far reaches of space to recharge and leaves me here to watch an unhealthy amount of high quality tv series. I like to assume I have impeccable taste when it comes to television programming, we need to swap favourite characters and storylines!
Now that I’m done astral projecting myself around the galaxy it’s time to get down to some serious adventuring. This upcoming year is going to be my most jam packed thus far. I don’t even think you know half the places I’ve dedicated myself to going this year. I’ll give you a quick point around the map to know what to expect in the coming months as far as me littering this page with anecdotes and photographs. We start with a little Seattle trip with Antonia, Tofino with my mom and Sarah, Sasquatch with my sister and or anyone else that would love to take me, Portugal and Spain with Mateo, West Coast road trip including Disneyland with Sarah and I’m determined to make it to New York in late September. You want to be my best friend now don’t you?

I suspect this blog doesn’t have nearly enough pictures of my attic house. About a month ago, while I was in a not so positive life frame, I swear I had a religious experience with my place. I’ve never felt so connected with my place of dwelling before. It happened while I was lying on my couch, I had the fir incense going, all my candles were lit, and I think I was listening to Apparat. I was so overcome with gratitude for being in that place at that exact moment. It was like magic! Disney magic I say! Anyways, I think you should come over and experience it for yourself. I might even pull out the Dexter board game or show you an episode of Portlandia.

Check that sweater out! Seriously, that day I had struck vintage shop GOLD. You need to go to Community, I’ll even come with you. It’s the least pretentious vintage/thrift shop with prices that don’t make you question how many hours of work this would cost you. I’m a little peeved that Gastown got way more hip after I left but I guess it makes going down there on my days off more special. Back to my house! Does anybody else have to vacuum their ceilings for cobwebs? Not sure it’s because it’s slanted or wooden or because I’m in an attic but at a certain angle in the sunlight my ceiling is criss-crossed with silky webbing. Still want to sleep over? Only joking, my stuffed animals keep the actual spiders away from the bed. No guarantees about the floor tho, I vacuumed up a beast i caught under a mug today.

I’ll be right back to tell you about my last weekend!