Prairie Girls Are Wild!

Short Version:
Home comforts and the Chinese have a physical effect, orange, wearing watermelons

Long Version:
We're getting fat. Or, more accurately, I'm getting fat. Fatter. Whatever. Nene's still lovely, of course.

We arrived back in Vancouver fighting fit but slightly gaunt; seven and a half months living in a van and riding nearly every day will do that to you. Since we've been back, though, the proximity of a refigerator full of food has proved dangerous, and the various charms of a warm house with comfy chairs, giant televisions, and access to the interwebs without having to purchase a shitty coffee have added up to not going out into the cold rain all that often. We have been running - Nene according to her marathon training programme; me randomly and with lots of falling over on snow and ice - but not nearly enough to counter the vast calorific intake. Especially not when eggnog - which is essentially liquid lipid - can be purchased from the supermarket, handily-packaged in a recyclable cardboard carton.

We do have the option to claim victim status though: apparently my rapid expansion is probably a result of climate change: scientists* have discovered the existence of a hitherto-undiagnosed global-warming-derived obesity epidemic**. Apparently the ever-increasing amount of pollution in the atmosphere - largely due, we're told, to coal-fired power stations in China - is to blame for the fattening of rats, mice, and lab primates. And, by logical extension, me.

To the tune of five new kilograms in two weeks.

Nothing to do with the non-stop eating and drinking, of course, and nothing at all to do with peanut butter confectionery, which is really really good. Over here it's BIG business, too; Hershey Corp (which makes top peanut-butter/chocolate line Reese's Pieces) is battling Mars Inc in the courts for trademark infringement because the latter chose to package their competing peanut-butter/chocolate product in Reese's-style orange packaging.

Also bedecked in orange are the Oregon State University Beavers, which makes them the Oregon College team I'm cheering for***. There's an orange-clad team in the Canadian Football League too - the BC Lions - but if you ignore the humour value of Head Coach Wally Buono's name they're kind of crap; much more fun are the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Quite apart from the fact that they're named after a ribbed condom, their fans are famed for carving gameday headgear from watermelons, often adding moose antlers viking-style to the sides or Mohican hair-strips to the top. Fruiterers import vast quantities of the bulbous, tapered seedy-fleshed goodness capsules ahead of each home game, and up the numbers significantly when the game is a big one (like the recent Grey Cup final, which the Roughtriders lost, for the second year in a row, to the dirty pseudo-Frenchies from Montreal).

The only other things we know about Saskatchewan are that "Prairie girls are wild," and that they refer to gin as "Panty-remover." Both these things we learned from my cousin. At our wedding.








* = We heart scientists!

** = Coexisting happily with the fast-food-and-TV-engendered one we already knew about

*** = Crush the filthy OU Ducks!