Seven Random Things, and Lilacs Galore

 

Leanna so graciously gave me the Beautiful Blogger Award on her blog! I'm so touched, thank you so much! It's always great to hear that people like your blog, especially those people who aren't related to you and stand no chance of being quizzed over dinner one day about recent blog posts.

I never know who to nominate for these, you are all so awesome and I love going to your blogs. So I hope if you are interested, you'll consider yourself tagged! As part of the award, I'm to post seven random things about myself. So here you go!

• One of my overall life goals is to visit 50 different countries before I die. So far, I'm clocking in at about 19, which isn't too shabby. For those interested, they are in no particular order: Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia & Montenegro (although it was called Yugoslavia when I was there), Slovenia, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, England, Ireland (both parts), Spain, The Dominican Republic, The Bahamas, and the United States. Sadly I did the vast majority of those in my early twenties, when I was living in Istanbul and travelling a lot more. 

• Which leads me to my next little factoid- I taught English in Istanbul for two years. I think that having lived in Istanbul is easily one of the more interesting facts about me. 

•  My husband is British, and he moved to Canada so we could be together. We met here in Toronto when he was on holiday and  had a whirlwind 5 day romance before he had to fly back to England. He asked me to wait for him, because he was coming back for me. I didn't really believe him, but he convinced me by endlessly calling, emailing, texting, msn-ing,.... you name it.  He moved to Canada three months later. I've been ridiculously happy ever since.  

• Although this blog hides it very well, I actually want to be a novelist and poet. I write things, and then never talk about it except to very, very few people; although occasionally I publish the odd poem here and there. which brings me to another point that this blog hides very well....

• I'm terrible about self-promotion, or any kind of tooting of one's own horn. Except for things I've knit. Then I'll tell anyone who sees it that I knit that, and isn't it awesome. I really must learn to apply this trait to other areas of my life.

• I'm a total, full-on green tea addict. I do drink coffee sometimes as a special treat, but it's green tea that I drink from the moment I get up to when I go to bed. Right now I'm crazy about Iron Goddess of Mercy tea. How can you not be ready to face the day after you drink a mugful of something called Iron Goddess of Mercy?!

• Whenever I'm in a conversation about which superpower you'd love to have (I feel like I've been in a lot of those conversations over the years), I always, always choose invisibility. Of course, I'd like to be able to turn it on and off at will. Then I could totally fight crime or something- I'd be invisible, and filled up with Iron Goddess of Mercy tea. Nothing could stop me!!!

I'm currently recovering (catching up on lost sleep) from a work conference that consumed much of last week. The lilacs in the garden apparently realized I was away a lot and took the opportunity to explode into full bloom, in a bid for total neighbourhood domination. I can actually smell the lilacs in my garden from three blocks away.

Their perfume steals in through the open windows, and at night I love to imagine that they are lulling me to sleep with their scent.And in the morning, in the sunshine, they are quite simply the most beautiful sight to see.