Month: August 2024

That’s My Name

Last Tuesday, I was in full recovery mode from our trip—jetlag was over, the unpacking was finally done (yes, I took my time, don’t judge me), and we were back to routine. I was at the computer, working on the new book that DarkWinter Press is releasing soon (a poetry collection titled Ever Striding Edge by the wonderful Paul Brookes, and you can see the gorgeous cover, created by wonderful artist Jane Cornwell, at the end of this post) and revising my own manuscript for Nomads of the Modern Wasteland after receiving a lot of feedback from both Kate and Ken. I decided to take a break, as one does, and peruse my social media. Lo and behold, there was a notification that I had received a comment on a vacation photo (I believe the photo was one of the whale tails from our excursion). I checked the comment and it was this:

Not only am I charming, but also attractive and stunning? Wow! I was almost sold on this guy but then he said: “You have the name with my late wife”? Do you mean to tell me, James Sam Gibson, that your dead wife was ALSO called Suzanne Craig-Whytock?! What kind of crazy coincidence is THAT? And how did it come to be? Your last name is Gibson, so wouldn’t she be Suzanne Craig-Gibson? Or did she take on the name, kind of a nom de plume, after reading about the semi-famous writer, Suzanne Craig-Whytock?

Donna Gibson: My darling James. I have come to a sudden decision. I hope you won’t think it too impetuous of me.
James Sam Gibson: My darling honeyboobookins. Whatever is it that you have decided? A new hairstyle perchance? I do love a good bob, as you are well aware.
Donna Gibson: Alas, no. Please gird your loins against that particular disappointment. The decision is regarding my name. I have recently come across a marvellous writer—a strange person yes, but someone with a wonderful way of words, nonetheless, a true inspiration. And thus, I will be changing my name from the somewhat mundane Donna Gibson to…SUZANNE CRAIG-WHYTOCK!!
James Sam Gibson: Oh my darling! What an incredible choice! And of course, when you die, I shall reach out to your namesake and attempt to rekindle our love with HER!
Donna Gibson: It is indeed a wise path to take. And now I must go and buy several clocks.
James Sam Gibson: But my darling turtledove, we already have a clock.
Donna Gibson/Suzanne Craig-Whytock: As a wise, charming, attractive, and stunning woman once told me, you can never have too many clocks.

Anyway, as you can imagine, I deleted the comment and blocked the troll. What is with these bot accounts anyway? If you knew anything at all about me, you’d know that if I was single,  “former military Christian widower” is the very last thing I’d ever be interested in. Now, if the profile said “Retired clockmaker and man about town with a penchant for designer handbags. Ask me which bathroom in my Victorian mansion is my favourite”, then you might have a shot.

In other news, I forgot to tell you that the weirdest thing about our cruise was that one of the lounges was booked every day for a “Private Function.” And that function was “KNITOPIA”. Yes, a very large number of passengers on the ship were there as part of a large knitting group. No, not a company that specialized in woollen textiles—an actual unrelated factum of knitters. While the rest of us were on shore excursions exploring Greenland, they were sitting in their windowless lounge knitting. While we were watching incredible Cirque du Soleil type shows, they were sitting in their windowless lounge knitting. While we were enjoying the social activities or watching the glassblowing in the Hot Glass Studio, they were sitting in their windowless lounge knitting. At one point, Ken and I were coming back from a fun game show in the Observation Lounge—it was after 10 pm, and as we went by the knitting lounge, there were about 50 people in it and they were all watching A KNITTING VIDEO and following along as the person in the video knitted one’d and purled two’d. I ask you—what the hell is the point of spending that kind of money on a cruise, if all you do is sit in a room and knit? And apparently, they had to pay EXTRA to reserve the lounge for 12 days. I actually saw one of them when we were in Greenland—she was sitting at a café table inside the local grocery store and SHE WAS KNITTING. Seriously—give me 10 grand and I will make your meals and turn down your bed every day while you knit in the comfort of your own home. And I’ll be charming and attractive and stunning while I do it.

Now available for pre-order!

Land Ho!

I’m finally back from our trip to Greenland and Iceland, and it was an amazing time. The food and room were excellent, the entertainment was top notch, and the shore excursions—wow! Greenland is incredible and the north of Iceland is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. We went whale watching (saw 3 different humpbacks), toured around with locals, and renewed our wedding vows in a mass ceremony presided over by the ship’s captain. Overall, I couldn’t be happier. But of course, it wouldn’t be a mydangblog trip without some funny things to share as well, so today’s topic is Weird Signs That I Saw On My Trip:

This isn’t technically a sign–it was the name of the pilot boat that helped our ship get out of the bay in New Jersey. “Cape Fear” seemed like a very ominous name for a boat—personally, I prefer boat names like Boaty McBoatFace or Ship Of Fools, because they’re much less prophetic-sounding (I originally had Full Of Seamen but Ken said that wasn’t very PG-13, so I changed it. Sorry.). But we had nothing to fear—we said farewell to the Statue of Liberty under dark but beautiful skies and then we were on our way. (Also, if you look carefully, you’ll notice that the other boat seems to be named Double Skin 27, and I don’t know why but that makes me think of serial killers).

The reason this sign is hysterically funny isn’t found on the sign itself. You’ll notice that from 1875 until 1903, the building was used as a Catholic School for Girls. Beginning in 2001, it became The Cotton Club. What you can’t see is that The Cotton Club is a STRIP CLUB. So it’s still a “school for girls”—just naked, naughty ones. The Sisters of Mercy must be rolling in their graves.

This one is just funny in its simplicity:

Tourist: Whose food is this?
Icelander: Is Moe’s Food.
Tourist: What kind of food is it?
Icelander: Sheep eyes and rotted shark.
Tourist: You eat that kind of thing here?!
Icelander: Já. Would you like some sour milk and fermented testicles?

Yes, according to our one tour guide, Icelanders eat a lot of strange food. About the rotted/fermented shark, she actually said, “It tastes like shit, but we love it.” I can’t really judge though—I’m Scottish, and people say the same thing about haggis. It also explains why the restaurant looks kind of like a dumpster. (And yes, I know that IS is short for Iceland, but seeing it on all kinds of signs made it incredibly funny and had me randomly pointing at things and yelling “Is souvenir shop, Is seal fur processing plant, Is waterfall”, and so on.)

This sign was outside the oldest bookstore in Iceland. I was pretty hyped by the whole “magical world” thing, and it set up some pretty high expectations, which were immediately dashed when we went inside to discover that there was NO magic at all. Just an Icelandic guy selling books, candles, and jam. Still, he was very nice, and the other people in our taxi van were super-jazzed by all the Icelandic refrigerator magnets. We did see an actual magician on the ship who performed in the theatre. He came into the audience to get a volunteer and before I knew it, he’d grabbed my hand and hauled me up in front of about 300 people. Normally, I would have been terrified that he was going to cut me in half or make me quack like a duck but I’d been drinking a lot of free champagne at the art auction, so I went along with it. Turned out to be just a card trick, but it was really cool and fun, and for days after, people would see me in the elevator and say, “Hey! You were the girl on stage” so he made me kind of famous in a cruise ship way.

But now we’re back, and I’m playing catch-up with everything that I missed over the last two weeks, because ship wifi is crappy, as anyone who has ever been on a cruise ship will tell you. Oh, they HAVE excellent wifi, but to get anything other than the basic connection, you have to pay an exorbitant cost. So when they asked if I wanted to upgrade, I just said, “All signs point to NO.”

Little Bits of Me

So it’s been an interesting and stressful week as Ken and I get ready to go on a trip—we’re finally going to Greenland, so next week I’ll be coming to you from a boat! Recently, I’ve picked up a few followers though, so I thought it was time to provide a little more information about the quirks of the mydangblog universe:

1) I talk to myself in the car. I know a lot of people do that. For me though, it’s mostly swearing, a lot of the time at myself, like, what the f*ck is wrong with you—you should have taken regional road 7 and you would have avoided all this stupid construction!! Because it’s Canada, and when we aren’t ass deep in snow, we’re ass deep in asphalt. But often, the self talk is more about animals. I have been known to whisper “A  fox, a fox!” to myself after seeing a little vulpine friend at the side of the road. And on Wednesday, I exclaimed, “No, fly faster!” as a vulture crossed in front of my windshield and narrowly escaped becoming ironic roadkill. Personally, I really like vultures, and I had no intention of having one splat itself against my car, making me responsible for its demise (If a vulture dies on the road, do all the other vultures have an ethical debate about whether to eat it or not?) Also, I talk all the time to animals that I see, like “Hey, cat!” or “Wait a second, you silly chippie!” when I’m driving, and that’s a whole lot better than giving the finger to other careless drivers (which I have also done).

2) I like pillows. Last week, we had a family party, and there were some guests who hadn’t been in our house for a while, so I took them on a tour as one does when one owns a 1906 monstrosity with a secret library room. At one point, someone, I can’t remember who, said, “Wow, you have a lot of pillows on your bed.” And I was like, “I guess,” and then I counted, and Ken and I have THIRTEEN pillows on the bed. Only 5 are decorative—the rest are there to support various limbs, provide a visible barrier for the dog, and allow for the hitting of someone (KEN) who snores like a banshee. I don’t care. First, I love my pillows to the point where I will be taking one on vacation with me even if it means I can’t have extra shoes in my suitcase, and second, I’m a grown-ass woman so I can have as many pillows as I want on my bed. Fight me.

3) My bedroom ceiling is a galactic battle. Last year, Ken and I were in the attic and we found, in a bin, a digital clock radio alarm that projects the time ONTO THE CEILING. This is amazing in and of itself, because I never have to guess the time now when I wake up in the middle of the night because of Ken snoring. But the best part, like the ABSOLUTE BEST, is that at a certain time, the numbers look like Star Wars is taking place on my ceiling and that time is 3:33. And for some reason, I regularly wake up between 3 and 3:30 so I wait just a little longer, I can see the battle because the 3s look kind of like Starfighters and the blinking colon looks like lasers being fired, and every time I see it, it makes me inexplicably happy and then I say “Pew Pew” and I can go back to sleep. (Did you know that if you have an iPhone and you text the words Pew Pew to someone else with an iPhone, it will send them cool lasers and stuff? Try it—it’s amazing.)

4) I love stickers. Recently, I not only got the actual stickers to put on my humour book to show that it was longlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour, but I just got in the mail a bunch of stickers from my good friend Thomas Slatin. She writes a great blog which you can find here and also does photography, and her stickers are awesome, so thank you Thomas—I love them!

“Come for the laughter, stay for the lunacy.” That’s me. And now I’m on a boat!