Ottawa: Part One

Needing a break from the normal nonsense of our busy Toronto lives, Alice and I decided to take a time-out, and head to Ottawa to visit Monique, who I haven't seen since my birthday in May.

Yay for five hours on the Greyhound bus!

When we got to Ottawa, Monique being the sweetheart that she is, had a gorgeous vegetarian meal prepared for us, including butternut squash, a fresh spring salad from the market with nuts and cranberries, and a sundried tomato pasta. Delicious!

I, however, being the dork that I am, felt the need to blog when I got to Ottawa. "I need to get through the past so I can move on to the present!" I insisted.

It was okay that I was being dorky though, because Melissa came over, and the conversation quickly turned to nothing but blogging. Here we were, Friday night. Monique was folding laundry and talking about blogging friends, Alice was sitting around in her pajamas and talking about being a main character on the blog, and Melissa and I sentimentally talked about how our friendship started. We were also surrounded by four computers at the time. Something had to change.

"We need to stop talking about blogging, right about. . .now." I insisted. This is the last time the word "blog" was mentioned.

We passed the time, easily. Melissa was Melissa.

And I demonstrated the sheer sex appeal of turning my pants into shorts which subsequently cut off the circulation in my legs.

We managed to go more than half an hour without talking about blogging. However, later in the night Melissa confessed that while I was upstairs getting dressed she had been moderating her blog comments.

My favourite thing about pictures of Melissa are what her hands look like.

Alice was uncharacteristically tired, probably a product of dancing at Mod Club the night before.

But Monique and Melissa were ready for action.

Thanks Scott. You were there in spirit. And somehow, even though you weren't there, you still managed to make it onto the blog.

I was trying to tell Monique that her cell phone really isn't that bad. She proved me wrong by comparing it in size to her home phone. (Really, can you tell which is which?)

Purely coincidental.

Also purely coincidental.

We left the house without any specific location in mind, so when we passed by this house and saw the kegger taking place, we looked at one another and thought, "Why not?"

Unfortunatly, they were out of beer, so it was time to move onwards.

But not before helping a random guy in the alley zip up his pants.

We went to a pub, Alice went home to sleep, then we had some nachos, before we decided we were done drinking. "What now?"

Three girls, slightly intoxicated and bored in the Ottawa? What was there to possibly do?

The math was simple. Get Off That Thing!: The Official Game of Cool Kids Everywhere. A game was in serious order, and I could tell Monique and Melissa were dying to play.

The random bystander at the bar, as the thing to get on has been done before, I really don't think it's ever been done this well.

We immediatly headed up to Parliament Hill.

The funniest part about this picture is there was a guy sleeping in the lower right hand corner by the statue. Now, just to clarify, a sleeping homeless guy is not funny, in fact, it's not even slightly humorous. The hilarity is directly correlated with the fact that we didn't even notice the guy sleeping there, despite the fact that Melissa basically had to crawl over him to climb this thing, until we went to walk away and realized we are terrible people.

Monique was nervous about getting on her first thing, but we insisted that there was no one around. As Melissa yelled out, "Get Off That Thing!" we heard a voice call out from above from the darkness, "Get Off!" Apparently he had heard of the game. It only makes sense, since it is the official game of cool kids everywhere.

Another random pulled into the game, while Melissa makes iconic religious figures a part of the game.

Around this time, I started pulling out the Highland dance moves. "What are you doing!?" Melissa and Mon asked me. "I'm dancing, can't you hear the bagpipes?"

"No, you're crazy."

Monique looked at Melissa shaking her head in disbelief, "Jessica hears bagpipes." The look on her face read, "What next? She sees bagpipers?"

But, I really did hear bagpipes. Mon and Melissa thought I had lost it.

My favourite picture of the night.

We were surprised that no one approached us while we jump over the ropes on Parliament Hill. Obviously they had to have security guards and cameras all over the place, but no one approached us, and we climbed each statue with the utmost ease.

It was almost too easy.

And then we saw the ultimate challenge - The Eternal Flame.

"Guys, I'm sure this is sacrilegious or something," Melissa said.

I gave her a look. "We just climbed half a dozen statues and now you're suddenly worried about being inappropriate?"

Melissa was up for the challenge. (If someone could photoshop this picture a few degrees light for us, that would be awesome.)

However, she was so busy trying to avoid falling in the oil-fuelled flame, that she totally forgot about the fact that she was standing on top of wet, slippery marble, and fell in on her way out, possibly breaking her toes and seriously hurting her knee.

Out of nowhere, three police cars show up, and out got two French Canadian police officers.

After going through the usual collection of information with us, the two women looked at Melissa, understanding that we were just having fun.

Being unbelievably nice, they decided to give Melissa a freebie and asked her leadingly, "So, you were just trying to get a closer look at the flame, then?"

"No, actually. . ." Melissa started.

Monique leaned into me, hiding her face, embarrassed. "Oh, no. Don't tell me she's going to. . ."

And then she did.

". . .actually, we're playing this game, where. . ."

Melissa could have just said, "Yes, I was trying to look at the flame closer." But instead, she opted to tell the cops the logistics and rules of GOTT. It was definitely a classic moment in time, although I really wish she would have used the phrase, "It's the official game of cool kids everywhere," in her explanation.

The police were embarrassed at having this explained to them to, it seems, and they didn't know how to react. "You know there are security cameras all over this place, right?" they asked.

It then became clear to us that we had been being watched the entire time. We were probably providing the Friday night security guards with some serious entertainment, between the climbing on statues, molesting statues, and the sporadic highland dancing.

Let free to go home, we started walking down the hill. And then I saw them.

The bagpipers! I wasn't crazy after all!

The bagpipers were all too eager to engage in some GOTT. Melissa, however, was confused and playing an entirely different game: LATT! (Look At That Thing!: The official game of confused GOTT players everywhere!)

Limping back into the house later that night, Melissa said to me, "I think you're a bad influence on me Jessica."

I only needed one sentence to fully shut down that claim: "Melissa, you peed in a cup."

"Oh. Yah."

And then we stayed up until five in the morning looking up pictures of people that we went to high school with on hi5 and made fun of their ugly babies and wedding dresses. It was awesome.