cute shoes and other surprises

lately the summer weather has ensured that my daily shoe choices have been limited to my birks or my flipflops. there's part of me that is a little reticent about putting on "full" shoes, no matter how great my footware prospects for the fall, as it will be an admission that the summer is over and it's time to settle down to another round of hard work. tonight, however, i had the pleasure of deliberating at great length over my shoe choice for the annual awards banquet for rowing. after a lot of internal struggle (yes, L ... it was an internal struggle! stop laughing!) i finally settled for my favourite pair of tan heels -- the shoes that i often refer to as my "cute shoes" because of the little bow on the side. i was genuinely surprised to find that having on my feet shoes that i associate with lecturing and other school joys wasn't all that uncomfortable. it was to be the minor surprise of the evening.

though it was no shock to anyone on our crew, our coach was surprised to be presented with the club's award of merit -- we've always thought she was pretty nifty, but the award came as a complete surprise to her. perhaps only slightly more surprising was our crew's rousing impromptu chorus of "we love you, leslie" with which we serenaded her as she accepted the award. though you can't see us singing in the background, believe me, we were loud. we reprised our hit again at the end of the evening.



a second surprise followed in short order. thankfully no one captured my absolutely gob-smackedness when my name was called for "most improved masters rower" on film. little did i know, the little brass man on the plaque isn't quite wholly attached and within minutes of receiving the award, i thought i'd broken it; the man's little brass feet had come right off his little brass pedestal. shani soon demonstrated that, lo and behold, he's actually quite an active little man who can be shifted around into a couple of funky positions on his polished wooden plaque. what a relief!



perhaps the biggest surprise of all was kelly's revelation of her gypsy heritage. seizing my pashmina from the back of the chair, she quickly transformed into madame kiki, she who knows and sees all. if we had wanted advance notice of this evening's surprises, we should have just consulted her. i wonder if she would be willing to divine how our crew will fare at the world's in a week and a bit?