In the name of...well, names

Girls weekend in Ottawa! From the moment we left home, to well, this moment now (because who knows when I’m going to get to post seeing as these big name hotels just love to charge you for EVERYTHING and NO ONE seems to have a free wireless network floating around that isn’t secure, or else the ONE that sometimes pops up on my network radar is just so WEAK that nothing will connect long enough to even load up GOOGLE...but I digress) it was a lot about the names. Names of places, things, people—ones that already existed or the ones that we decided to arbitrarily assign.

It all began when we started blazing our trail eastward. And by blazing, I really mean that—Avril shaved off over ½ an hour from our estimated arrival time. The first city name to catch our attention was...Bowmanville.


“THIS is the life and landscape I turned down with ACG, guys...”
“Man, you sure lost out!”
“You should call him up and get him to meet us now.”
“Hah. I bet it’d be the most interesting thing he’d done in MONTHS if we did that.”

And then we started to drive through places named things like Northumberland and Leeds-Grenville, areas that Dimps had nearly applied to work in but didn’t because she hadn’t recognized the area codes.

“So THIS is where these places are. Thank God I didn’t apply here!”

The ride was giggly and goofy, especially with playlists called “Old-School Pop” and CDs named “The Illest Shit.” Great things like Spice Girl solo performances happen with those on the speakers...but that's another post...with videos that were threatened to be deleted, but thankfully Jenny (not a new name, but a name nevertheless) was there to save such moments immediately.

While we had a general sense of how to get TO Ottawa, navigation within the city once we were there was another story; the concierge maps they gave us were NO help at ALL. We were so grateful by the end of our first day to our at-the-last-second-loaner GPS that we named her. She was a robust, reliable, solid presence, so we chose the name accordingly; Gertrude Prudence Solid (pronounced “soo-leed”)--Gertie for short.

It was the next morning when we were greeted by our next naming opportunity.

“Why don’t you tie up your hair?”
“Do I look like someone who cares?”

And so, we named Dimps’s cowlick--Amy, in honour of Amy Winehouse’s usual big hair. Decidedly, Avril had one as well (since they both slept with wet hair) and hers was named AJ--Amy Jr.

Breakfast was at Cora’s where soon after we were seated, a group of guys self-sat themselves at the table behind ours. Immediately we knew they were going to trouble and an instant headache for our awesome server and so we named them the Stupidos.

While much more happened over the weekend other than just a bunch of random re-naming, that's to follow in another post (though I really should just get to bed). I don't think I missed any, though Avril suggested changing a nickname that already existed to another--Lover Lover--but that one just didn't fly due to heavy x-nayage. :) Some class acts from some classy ladies.