>>> and so it begins...

[Calgary. looks a lot like Seattle, huh?]

My cousins from Calgary, Chantelle and Nicko, and Nicko's friends Rick and Vin arrived in Seattle last night. They stopped at the Tulalip shopping outlet on their way down, which added up to about a 4.5-hr detour... This just gave me more time to clean my room (where Chantelle stayed for the night). I had planned on taking them to happy hour, but they were pretty tired so we ended up watching the last 30 minutes of Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay, and then buying pizzas and beer and staying at home watching America's Best Dance Crew. I actually liked that better than the original plan because it allowed me to be lazy and to sit around in sweat pants. :D

You may be wondering why the Calgarians came all the way over here when we're all supposed to be in Calgary by tomorrow... Well, they went to a huge music festival over the weekend called the Pemberton Festival, which is in north British Columbia, so they figured while they were on this side of the continent, why not spend a couple of days in Seattle and pick Tita up while they were at it? I was going to drive up to Calgary with my own family anyway, but I figured it'd be a little more fun driving over with the cousins so I agreed to go with them.

So the plan for today is that we are going to leave for Vancouver after I get out of work and spend the night at Nicko's aunt's house, and then wake up early to get started on our 10-12 hour trek back to Cowtown, where we will be dining with the whole fam (or rather, whoever is already there) at Chan's house. Yay! I know it's really geeky, but I love family reunions and I love spending time with the Calgary fam, so I'm really really really excited to get there. =D

There's this funny "game" that my brothers and I always play with our Canadian cousins. It's the "Do You Have...?" game --- we spend a lot of time asking the Canadians if they have certain stores/brands/policies/etc. in Canada/Calgary, and they ask us the same sorts of questions about the U.S./Seattle. In this round, I'm discovering that we basically have all the same things. They even have Palomino's there! The major differences are that the legal drinking age in Calgary is 18, they don't have natural bodies of water (just manmade lakes) and their full price movie theater tickets are $13.75 each. Yikes.

Maybe the reason why I like Calgary so much because it's a lot like Seattle, even in appearance. I just couldn't live there, mainly because of the movie prices. And the water thing, too.