There was a time I thought that I would write extensively about the Vancouver 2010 Olympics while they were here, but when they arrived I found myself uninterested in writing anything on the actual games, anything positive I had to say I could have turned around and written from the opposite stand point. I’m always up for good clean sports though I was never what you would call an Olympic supporter, but I wasn’t a bitcher either. I did however vote NO for the games. I’ll never forget it it because it turned the vast majority of people in the office I worked in against me, I was one of the only people who lived downtown (small office), I was also the youngest in this particular place and I ran competitively at the time and due to being an athlete people were appalled that I would vote NO. The fact has always remained the same, I voted from a political standpoint, the part of my mind that believed and still believes that it was a joke that only Vancouver got to vote on something that our children’s children’s children will still be paying for was the appalling thing. Granted, not MY children. My debt is payed off when I die.

I spent most of the games feeling depressed and creatively blocked. I considered doing a wrap up post of 17 photos for 17 days but I didn’t take photos every day of the games, and even the photos I did take were pretty lacklustre, there aren’t many that I consider to be good photos. I did Tweet a lot, it went over pretty well for someone who doesn’t make a point to live Tweet a trip to the bathroom.

For me the only real highlight other than so many top ten finishes and fourteen gold medals for Canada was getting to go see the Canadian Men’s Curling team plus seven other countries. When the information on how the Olympic tickets were going to be sold and the prices were announced it became clear pretty quickly we wouldn’t be seeing any events. We didn’t even entertain the idea of getting to see anything anywhere but on a T.V., let alone see one live that both my parents and myself have played in the past and one that Adam and me watch. One that Adam is developing an odd obsession with, comparable only to when he discovered Tennis. (long story) So, when the opportunity arose from a friend who most graciously gave us, yes gave us Olympic curling tickets came to pass there was nothing else to do but go and to go wearing matching sweaters, something that we both agree is only acceptable on this one occasion. Adam wore my dad’s old curling sweater that I started to let him wear years ago because even though I love it, it is way too big for me. Oddly enough one of my closest girlfriends has the same sweater and lent me hers! Awesome. Getting to see Canada’s undefeated mens team second row right over the button is up there with best memories ever. Thanks again Steve!!

Adam went out exploring and people watching more than I did. There was also a time I didn’t think I would stay in the city for the games, and although I am glad I did, I think Adam would have had a better time had a I left. I hate that about depression, I’d been feeling so well and bam it just hit like a load of bricks almost a week in. I’m not in break down mode but I’m feeling really shitty.

It is nice that the helicopters are gone. I don’t miss the games at all, we watch golf. It’s over. We just changed the channel, there is curling on this weekend. But they left us with the cheque and the feeling remains that we are the province the country doesn’t care about. They came, they went, and now we pay.

At the end of last year I was invited to attend an event put on by local blogger Emme Rogers she had organized a party for a Calendar she’d made called Reading is Sexy in support of the Canadian Chapter of The International Dyslexia Association and she’d put her heart into making something that mattered to her and she wanted to share it with her friends and fellow Calendar boys and girls. This was such a fantastic idea, if I were in the position to buy two calendars a year I would have bought one in support alone, but we are not, and therefore this year I stuck with the one and only solid tradition Adam and I have. But before I get to that I’d like to mention that if you still need Calendars get one here and support local Vancouver bloggers and a great cause. I simply don’t feel it is right to do a post specifically on our Calendar stemming from what we fondly refer to as Calendar Wars without mentioning such a great idea when reading and literacy are also extremely important to me and I’m still going to support every year to the best of my ability. Starting with having the post up in time next year!

You may want to read the original Calendar Wars post and the link in the first paragraph. Or I guess you can just take my word for it in my brief explanation to follow the end of this sentence. [this should be good, me trying to give a brief explanation]

It started innocently, no that doesn’t work, it started as a joke, or so I thought. After the Men with Buns calendar was on the wall for a full year of course it had been made clear by me that I should be allowed to pick the next years’ calendar. To say I got him good that year, would be saying I got him GOOD that year. Two words: Jeff Foxworthly. A few more words: You might be a redneck if….  [I am after all a pure bread red neck, Grandmother lived and died in a trailer park]. Poorly written, not even remotely funny jokes, with cartoons of plumber butts, clam slam skirts and shirts, but not hot ones, HOES; twelve months of them.

My husband never one to be outwitted got me back in 2009 with The Big Breast Calendar. This is where some of you are like WHAT you love tits. YES I LOVE TITS! But even he admitted he copped out and went for porn, couldn’t out horrible calendar me so he went for tits. Only backfired on him two months, Ms. September and Ms. December were a challenge for him. There wasn’t enough of the car for Adam in the Ms. September shot, although oddly I found Ms. September to one of the hottest women on there, and Ms. December just should have never happened. You don’t want a description. Both women still had big tits, they were great, it was the photos.

One day I was on Flickr and I saw the side ads which on Flickr don’t annoy me cause they are for cool shit like Moo cards. I saw, or was reminded that you could make a calendar. I wish I could tell you ladies that I filled it up with hot photos of my husband, but where would the fun have been in that? Given that we are both pretty big fans of over the top dorky photos of ourselves it was a no brainer and thus Adam Carlson in Calendar ~ #adam2010 was born.

Cover photo: taken by me up in Prince George over Christmas the last year my parents were still living in Canada. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he had the halter on wrong before taking the photo.

Mr. January: If you know Adam at all you know he is extremely calm, he doesn’t swear very often and is basically the complete opposite of me when it comes to that side of our personalities, so the fact that for whatever reason he gave me the finger while I took this was out of character for him and like nice wannabe smurf hat. Neither of us makes resolutions so out of my picks for photos I liked this one for January because it’s sort of a fuck you to resolutions or whatever.

Mr. February: Adam was sick or something so I went out and got him some treats and such and your guess is as good as mine as to why but I decided that we needed wax lips. HAD TO HAVE THEM.

Mr. March: The original photo on Flickr is entitled: impromptu C.J look-a-like contest winner C.J is family to us, he has seen this picture, and has been overheard saying :”it looks even more like me than me”.

Mr. April: This is a mish mash of classic Adam moments, Showerhawk Wolverine face with kittehs, trying to eat cardboard instead of the Pocky, He wore flowers in his hair golfing, and Potato mouth (in our apron wedding gift which states: It Takes Two Socks To Make a Monkey, stemming from a hilarious joke Adam cracked out at a friends place one night).

Mr. May: As a you just had a vas-nipper gift I bought Adam some stress balls two years ago this May 23rd. I didn’t know how much pain he’d be in and thought he’d appreciate still being able to play with some balls.

Mr. June: Last year I commented on how I continually feel ripped off by June year after year in calendars and it is MY birthday month, the 14th every year; it just doesn’t seem fair, it isn’t like I take it personally but I’ve said it once and I will say it again June is continually represented in a prejudice way against awesomeness, in my humble opinion. Again, I’d really have liked to have posted a photo of say this nature but it would have cheapened the entire calendar. This here, is the money shot. This is the day that I bought my husband the worst underwear on the face of the planet it was all my fault they were just, well, you can see the photo. One of those worst wife ever moments. There are two more prime shots that were supposed to be on this page but no matter what I did the program wouldn’t let me upload them so we are all stuck with this one gem instead of three. My sincerest apologies.

Mr. July: Classic Adam, you can see the dedication to his craft of making me laugh in his eye.

Mr. August: The photos here are taken from the day that we started what we call The Creepy Carlsons, now we go out of our way to take creepy photos like this one that Adam took. Two examples of how fun my husband makes our marriage are apparent in his dorkiness in the other two. It is also his birthday month so the photo of the crazy eyes is fitting.

Mr. September: Who doesn’t have photos of themselves pissing in the bushes. There is one kicking around of me in the Dominican Republic I just thought of now, hilarious.

Mr. October: I took this photo the morning after our wedding, he claims he is pretending to be Gus, I say either go on a fucking picnic together already or admit you were trying to run away from the marriage.

Mr. November: This time, he’s being more of a horse. Still wearing the halter wrong.

Mr. December: This photo is entitled Find the Dill-weed. Adam named it himself.

I’m the type of person who can’t buy something for someone without having to give it to them the second I buy it, this was coming via mail and was so hard to keep my mouth shut about you can’t even imagine. I was laughing at nothing constantly, I showed it to a girlfriend who was over via the photos who was very impressed by my selection knowing us both very well. Well shit, that just made it even harder to wait for it to arrive.

The day it did arrive I was doing an interview with the Liquid Inspiration Podcast boys C.J and Daz and was in the middle of telling the story when Mr. 2010 himself walked in the door from work and we were all privy to his “you got me” response right there on the taping. Since seeing it he has mostly been heard muttering to himself about how the hell he is going to top this. *coughs rubs lapel*.

Last week a box arrived from Rhonda, she already spoils us both, although mostly me, rotten to the core. This year for Crimus she sent us a Wii. And with no irony attached to it at all, the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 game that comes with the wee golf club. Priceless, it was bought before the scandal the photo they picked of good ol’ Tiger for the 09 edition is creepier and more arrogant looking than normal, fucking awesome it’ll likely be his last one ever. We stopped buying the Tiger games before we ditched the PS2 and made the switch to XBox because EA kept making weird changes or what we like to call un-provements so if memory serves we stopped buying them after the 07 edition.  We are both really excited about trying it on the Wii though, it is obviously very different. If it is ANYTHING like the Wii Sports Golf, I will suck so bad it should make for some very amusing rounds. The Wii Golf destroyed my skillz score. I’m better at Wii Baseball, these games remind me of my horrible hand eye co-ordination and make me wonder how it is that I have actually become a decent golfer in real life. Almost ten years of practice now I guess.

I started this hanging my hanky out of my pocket thing in Bali and seem to be keeping it up back in my home country. I am not trying to be cool or make any kind of fashion statement, we only allow nose tissue in here if we are really sick and have fire nose and thus have both switched to hankies. I say that wearing a leather belt, it was a gift, so it shall not be denied the awesomeness that is the attached guitar belt buckle. Like my Browns boots I got em before I went as green as we can afford to go.

It is hard when you have Ninja knee high socks AND Unicorns to say that you’ve found a pair that are cooler BUT I did. These socks have red foxes on the feet and happy little mushrooms and little trees and if I ever got a chance to meet Neko Case I would wear them and be sure and show them to her.  It isn’t my fault that they also match the t-shirt I got the first of four times that I have seen her live being the Fox Confessor Brings the Flood tour, the only other group I have ever seen that many times is the local super star husband and wife pairing that make up Mojave [I have their t-shirt too].

Dr. Vegas is taking a huge liberty here in wearing the very naked Hunter S. Thompson’s frames that will be the aviators he is being made.  You will also have a hard time not noticing that this is the first time that Dr. Vegas has appeared without his mask in quit some time, in fact if memory serves the last time he was photographed without it was because he was pretending to be Woody Guthrie.  Adam and I were just saying that Dr. Vegas is on a journey of some sort right now. I wasn’t the only one changed forever by a trip to Bali.

“He hasn’t been completely the same since he got back” said [father] Mr. Adam Carlson just as this was going to print.

Gus was very into the Wii and watched us play a lot.

If you’ve ever wondered if I’m an energetic person even though I claim to be a hermit though I also claim to be a runner and doer of the yoga and a player of the golf, then this video is for you.

C.J do check out the tunage in the Adam bowling videeeeo. Although seriously WTF, she is NOT growing on me AT ALL. We are really into iTunes Genius mixes right now, because I loaded the entire CD library onto the computer and C.J very generously gave us some CDs, Joanna Newsome shows up a lot, and it is never a good ending.

And get this, I’m going to backup all the music, soon.

Tis the season to look wrecked in photos.

While I was away in September, Adam started listening to iTunes radio, when I first got back I sort of scoffed, I’m not a big radio person. But when I started to like song after song after song that was coming out of the computer I asked with a curt voice, “what is this? what playlist is this, is this your Blip“? “no it is iTunes radio” he says. Right. I’m getting old I have trouble letting in new things, I don’t have any idea what the hip kids are listening to, give me my John Denver and take me home down a country road and I’m good.

Just because I have a hard time letting in new things doesn’t mean I don’t listen to good music (I can hear C.J. cringing across the pond). I used to claim I liked a little bit of everything but when C.J, Adam and I discussed the topic of people who say the will listen to anything I discovered I do not in fact like a little bit of everything. Quite the contrary.

50s and 60s Adam and I are pretty much on the same page music wise. 70s we veer off at Barry Manilow. Let’s just say it’s a testament to our marriage that we have no internet on our phones, one t.v., no working MP3 player and one computer, OH and let us not forget I’m an only child and I don’t share good. The t.v. and the laptop are generally in the same room, the only room other than the bedroom.

We had a 50s 60s and 70s station on one day, if we are working on monkeys or cleaning these are the easiest for us to agree on before we come into a situation where our love of music has to be enough to get us through each others playlists and keep an open mind to maybe even liking some new songs. No doubt I end up liking more stuff Adam listens to than he does me BUT I did introduce him to Tool and John Denver, so top that.

Rarely do lyrics the first time you hear a song stop you dead in your tracks. But this deep, sensuous, dirty, am I hearing these words right 70s soul started to embed itself into my cranium and when I looked at Adam I could tell instantly he was having the exact same what the fuck am I hearing reaction.

Ill be the other woman
All your life
Just as long as I am the only one
Other than your wife
Your wife how would she feel
If she caught us together
The same way I would feel
if I caught you with another
Home I know comes first
And second to that Ill be
When youre not there with her
I want you right here with me

Ill be the other woman
Just as long as I know
Im the only other woman
You make love to
Ill be the other woman
But Ive got to know
Im the only other woman
You make love to

The neighbors are whispering
Saying that you dont care
If you cheat on your wife for me
Youll cheat on me for someone else
Ill be your part time love
But thats as far as Ill go
To be your part time fool
Would be stooping a little too low
Loving a married man
This I really dont mind
But a married Casanova
Is a little out of my line

Ill be the other woman
Just as long as I know
Im the only other woman
You make love to
Ill be the other woman
long as I know
Im the only other woman
Ill open doors for you baby
long as I know
Im the only other woman
you make love to
Ill be your part time love
Ive got to know
Im the only other woman
you make love to
Oh yes I will
Yes I will

Here is a YouTube video so you can get a feel for how catchy soulful and awesome it is, but it doesn’t make it any less disturbing.

Now we are both addicted and can not stop listening to this song by The Soul Children and laughing. We aren’t assholes, I’ve even been the other woman but nobody was married so It wasn’t a home wrecker type situation it was a we lived in different provinces, we were both in our twenties and if he wanted to fly out to see me and tell his girlfriend he was going to see his grandmother and other choice lies then let him situation. At that age, I didn’t see the big deal, plus he made me feel like I was the main woman. But when it comes to marriage this song just kills me. When the relationship with his girlfriend ended, she still does not know about me and writing this she still won’t trust me or I would not be writing this, we tried to commit but because I ended up looking at him as more of a fall back guy, while I dated as well, I couldn’t trust him to be faithful to me after we had both been unfaithful from the very beginning. It was an extremely interesting three plus years but when it ended it ended badly. I never want to feel jealousy like that again in my life. In fact I’d have to say that is one of the things I learned the most about myself is how destructive jealousy can be.

This reminds me, I’m one of the lucky ones, if this were the 70s I may have gotten into some real trouble but the only other female I have to be jealous of in Adam’s life is Gus and that bitch better watch it too.