Family Eats

I was listening to Expialidocious, the song by Pogo, and was thinking about Dick Van Dyke. I used to have a huge crush on him when I was younger, despite his ridiculous cockney accent. Suddenly, I wondered if he was still alive. I rushed to Wikipedia to find out, and felt this odd relief when I saw that he was. I just think the world would be less of a nice place if Dick Van Dyke wasn't alive, even if he's not actually a handsome chimney sweep with a dreadful accent.

My Auntie Helen (and Uncle David) are back from England for a spell, and we had a family dinner tonight with her daughters (my cousins) Heather and Jenny, and their husbands, Jamie and Ross. It was really fun, actually. The food was superb. We had:

• Bulgar wheat nicoisse salad
• squash, red pepper and apple soup
• lamb sliders (that had spicy mango chutney in them)
• scalloped potatoes
• our signature coconut and jam cake

Seriously, we always have that cake at every family gathering. It's just a plain vanilla cake that comes from a recipe of my grandmother's, with seedless raspberry jam in the middle, icing made from icing sugar drizzled over top, and then coconut sprinkled all over the whole thing. It does get a little messy though.

Family gatherings of my mum's are always the funnest. One thing that I love is that they get LOUD. Everyone starts literally shouting over top of one another. I never notice it at first, but then there's a point where you run out of things to talk about, and then you actually hear how loud it is. It's fun! I love talking to my cousins. It's easy to make them laugh. Also, Auntie Helen gave me my early 21st birthday present. I forget that everyone thinks 21st birthdays are important. I know why they're important in like, America, because that's when you can legally drink, but I don't see why everyone cares so much up here in Canada, since the drinking age is 19. I know a lot of my friends are excited about it so they can go to the States to drink, but it doesn't matter to me one way or the other. Anyway, Auntie Helen gave me my present, and it was a necklace... with a cross on it. It is pretty, but kind of a weird present from her, considering she's not very religious either, and she knows my family isn't. I thanked her, of course, but it was funny after she left, because my mum, brother and sister were all like "Dude, what was up with the cross??" And when I got back to my dad's I showed it to him, and he gave me this really weird look. I'm not sure if I'll ever wear it, because the chain also looks too small for my fat neck, but it was a nice gift.

I was going to write something else, but I'm getting preoccupied with other things, and I don't want to write a half-assed post, even though this one is already kind of half-assed, and I heard there are doughnuts downstairs, so I better go see to that. Also, run-on sentences.

PS. Got my money back from VCC! Now I have $200 in the bank, as opposed to $11. Whew.