Amusing tales from Alexandra, jet-setter.

1. The airport shuttle bus driver made a big deal out of telling me I was really beautiful. Like, seriously. He kept going on about me having some kind of glow about me and even consulted with the baggage handler guy about the nature of said glow. (I call it my patented “Actually, gentlemen, it’s 7:30 in the morning I’m running on about four hours of sleep and a half-litre of Earl Grey right now and boy am I looking forward to a fun day of sitting around in an airplane” aura.) It’s interesting to note that I tend to attract this kind of attention from big, burly black men in uniform (bus drivers, bouncers, security guards . . . for more corroborating evidence see here), which is not generally a demographic that I would consider my type, since I historically fall for hipster douchebags who plan to become the next Chomsky and/or Warhol and who attempt to realize this dream by sitting around doing nothing, so I am wondering if I should consider expanding my target market.

2. I stood waiting, impatiently, for my purse to come out of the security scanner. Oh, purse, where can you be? I thought to myself, mournfully. You contain all of my most important things! Like my boarding pass and passport and my immigration documents and my credit cards and my sparkly explosion lip gloss and my stuffed animal tiger that I have had since the age of seven who always accompanies me on long trips and whom I was carrying in my purse because I don’t trust the checked baggage system and that tiger is my most precious thing! Could you be stolen, purse? All of my other carry-on baggage was through, where could you be? So I asked a security officer. What colour is your purse, she said. Purple, I replied, with birds on it. You mean like the one that is currently hanging off of your right shoulder? She said. Yes. I’m an idiot. I replied. It happens, she countered, sympathetically.

3. Following the purse trauma I decided some retail therapy was possibly in order, and thus spent the last precious dollars of my grad student stipend for this term on an extravagant and utterly unnecessary tube of Christian Dior mascara at the duty free shop, which, having just tried some on, I can confirm has made my life so much better because it gives me eyelashes that are azure and appear to be approximately a meter long. I can justify this because I am currently at my parents’ house for a while, where life is free, and when I return to Los Angeles, the magical stipend elves will have miraculously replenished my bank balance.

4. The movie, said the captain over the loudspeaker, will be Love, Actually. Love, Actually! I thought. How is this so? That movie is a few years old and they usually show newer stuff. But the in-flight magazine confirmed that the movie was in fact, Love, Actually. Excellent! I thought. I really haven’t had enough this week of movies with Hugh Grant starring as Standard Hugh Grant Character, and then dancing around like an imbecile. This is going to make my plane riding experience so much better. But then tragedy struck. The movie started and it was . . . Ratatouille. Like, what is the point of that? Do you know who is pretty cute sometimes even though he’s kinda skeevy in real life? Hugh Grant. Do you know who is not cute at all? Anthropomorphic computer animated rats. So instead of watching the movie I read some Irigaray and brooded.

5. Actually, Irigaray can be much more lucid than I’d ever realized. Unless it was just the alititude.

6. First stop upon arrival in Canada – Tim Horton’s. How ridiculously typical. And what a wonderful reminder of what a classy place Canada can be. Why, yes, I would like some candy cane-flavoured whipped topping on that hot chocolate.

Anyhow, yes, I am home! For three weeks! I will be emailing interested parties sometime tomorrow about my impending visits to KW and Toronto, and fun will be had! By all!