Joel and Rachel vs The Universe!

I know! I have been long gone. Holidays and such, you understand.

So, for the in-lawses we drew names this year, and put a $5 cap on the gifts. By the 23rd, Joel and I still had no gifts for everyone, and so embarked on the Joel and Rachel vs. The Universe adventure trip.

First stop: home, Craigslisting like bandits. Find styrofoam coolers, screwdriver (with LIGHTS on the end), and thermos for Joel's dad, wicked brass ladle for Joel's mom. All sweet gifts.
J&R: 1
Universe: 0

Second stop: somewhere in Vancouver to pick up styrofoam coolers (for free). No one is home. We phone, woman sends husband home to fetch coolers. Lose 10 minutes of valuable driving time, but acquire exceptionally large gift.
J&R: 2
Universe: 0

Third stop: home, because Joel forgot to bring the UBC hoodie he wants to exchange. Lose more valuable driving time. Point awarded to Universe, but remanded when heat is discovered to have been left on full, and fire to have surely ensued had we not returned home. Exchange considered a draw.
J&R: 2
Universe: 0

Fourth stop subsection A: UBC (Joel) to return hoodie. UBC takes hoodie, promises hoodie in larger size. Joel will have to do some serious angry phoning to actually acquire hoodie. Exchange considered a draw.
J&R: 2
Universe: 0

Fourth stop subsection B: UBC Staples (Raych) to return busted Palm Pilot. Staples manager is female, fails to be seduced by low-cut top. Refuses to exchange Palm Pilot based on long-expired warrenty.
J&R: 2
Universe: 1

(One week later, busted Palm mysteriously begins working again. Universe retains point for having caused week of inconvenience and mental anguish, J&R score point for luck.)

Fifth stop: somewhere in Vancouver to pick up $5 screwdriver with lights. While on the way there, Raych discovers old Scratch-n-Win in glove compartment, wins $3. Point awarded. Screwdriver obtained. Point awarded.
J&R: 5
Universe: 1

Sixth stop: some side street with eleventy feet of snow. Three-point-turn becomes quandry. Tiny Chinese woman offers shovel, and then assistance pushing car. Tiny Chinese woman and Raych fail to dislodge car. Futility and much sock-wetting ensues until passing man helps.
J&R: 5
Universe: 2

Seventh stop: same side street, some ways the other direction, to get free thermos. Beaten to punch, thermos gone.
J&R: 5
Universe: 3

Eighth stop: public library in Surrey to pick up sweet $5 brass ladle. Are pleasantly early, pass happy fifteen minutes watching enthusiastic ping pong players in rec center. Ladle arrives on time.
J&R: 6
Universe: 3

Ninth and final stop: Chilliwack, with all our goods. Everyone is thrilled with cheap, low-expectation gifts. Christmas is a success.

I am a master of the narrowly-averted disaster.

So, I feel like every time I post about cooking/baking/house cleaning, it's about how I set something on fire/broke the sink/seared off my eyebrows. I figured I should post a picture of something delicious I have made to help balance these stories out. Today is a bit of both.

Ok, so I like to make my own pizza dough because it's way easier to always have flour and oil on hand than to wedge frozen pizza crusts into our shoe-box sized freezer. PLUS I make a wikked-good pizza crust, and I like the way dough smells when it's rising.

Which brings me to today. Because for dough to rise, you need a warm environment. Basement suites = sub-arctic temperatures. I have, in the past, considered roosting on my dough to make it rise, but sometimes I got shit to do. ANYways, I figured out that if you turn the oven on for a minute, and then turn it off, it'll warm up enough to do the deed. I like to give the temperature a little flick again about halfway through the rising, because our oven has trouble retaining heat.

The trick is to turn the oven OFF after you've turned it on. Otherwise, instead of rising nicely, your dough will cook into a loaf-ball, and you will have to slice it and make those slices into pizza, because you have been Christmas shopping all day and are too hungry to start over. I was about eight seconds away from this happening to me today. I'm all, why is the oven smoking? Oh right, because I have a bowlful of dough with a dishtowel draped over it in there, AND IT'S ON!!!

Luckily, the dough was just this side of cooked, and I was able to spread it out and bedazzle it. So behold (a foodie photog I am not)! My sausage/red onion/tomato/cheddar and asiago cheese pizza! Covet it!!!

The most inspirational speech EVER!!

While, on the one hand, this is about the funniest thing I’ve seen in days, on the other hand, it totally brings a tear to my eye at the end, proof that I am completely willing to be emotionally manipulated by a handful of clichés and swelling violins.

This is why I run all the time.

Today, after having lunch twice, I ate a cookie that was 420 calories. I was at school and I had the pre-exam need to be chewing something, so I bought a 420-calorie oatmeal raisin bastard from the vending machine.

You know what else has 420 calories? A 5-oz steak! A quarter-pounder! Eighty-four baby carrots! Ok, that last one isn't really that impressive. I'd DEFS rather eat a giant cookie than my weight in baby carrots.

On the flip side, clocking in at a cool 90 calories are the lemon-fizzy-beverages Joel and I walked up to the IGA to buy, and then wanted to drink IMMEDIATELY on the way home, and had to pop the lids off of with my nail file, which broke the neck and cut Joel's lip. Should have just got sodas in cans.

I am a walrus

A lack of time desire any sort of cooking mojo, combined with cans of miscellanea lolling about in the pantry, multiplied by our impending move and the need to eat those cans, has led to such nutritious meals as 7-layer bean dip. Because nothing motivates studying like getting fatter. Or having mad gas.

#188 in Things I Fail At

I had $13 left on my Linens & Things gift card so I bought two wikked-sharp knives, and then cut myself getting one of them out of the package.

Twin brains! Also, sexy boots.

Me: *searching in vain for the Pot of Gold Mint Collection and finally giving up because, apparently, they're only available every fourth Christmas. For three days. At Shoppers.* Ah well, guess I'll just buy boo this chocolate orange for her birthday. Except the chocolate mint one, because the orange chocolate is gross.
.

Later on that day...
.

Boo: Darren has one of those chocolate oranges.
.

Me: Ick. Those are gross.
.

Boo: I know. The mint ones are good, though.
.

Me:...I may or may not have bought you one for your birthday.
.

Boo: Because you couldn't find the Pot of Gold Mint Collection?
.

Me: Yes!
.

In other news, remember last winter when I bought myself some wikked moon boots? And how pleased I was with myself for being so practical? We've come a long way, baby. Check these bitches out.

These babies couldn't hit the broad side of practical from three feet away. But they are sexy, and comfortable, and RED, and cost me a healthy chunk of my Christmas money. In advance.

Hail Dec. 2nd!

What I meant to mention yesterday and forgot, in all the Doohoohoohoohoohoo excitement, was that it's waxy-chocolate time! By which I mean, bust out your dollar-store advent calendars, folks. Christmas is coming.

In which I say nothing, really

Ok, I went to go see a movie today, and while I usually love me some pre-preview trivia, I think the trivia screen got stuck on a loop and we ended up watching the same cringy video twice. If you don't feel like clicking the link and having the inanely catchy chorus stuck in your head for DAYS, or if you haven't got speakers, let me sum up:





The whole video consists of this rather adorable but undeniably middle-aged woman surfing in high-waisted board shorts, gyrating awkwardly in a quasi-muumuu, and generally making something of an ass of herself. The song was irritating enough, with it's 'All I want to do-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!' (seriously, it goes on waaaaaaay longer than you think it's going to), but the video could have been much less painful if they hadn't been trying to paint her as a sexy teen. Sexy 40-year-old is totally do-able.

Basically, what I'm saying here is, that song is still stuck in my head, and I've eaten too much, and now I'm cranky. Stop making crappy videos, people.

Funny every year

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

You can pretend that you ran too!

Because being done classes usually = me getting fatter, I went for a run today. In the rain.

With an absolute dearth of anything else to talk about, let me take you on a guided tour of my running path!

The interminably-long, mostly straight bit: if this bit were at the end, I'd defs die of boredom. It's long, and straight, and goes on forEVER.

The fun, woodsy, many-bridged bit: this bit is all windy and darty and I have to dodge roots and branches, which is more exciting than it sounds. UnFORtunately, in the rain it's all run-run-run-walk-carefully-over-soggy-bridge-run-run-walk.

The shorter, straight, cobbley bit: this bit has cobbles. Cobbles terrify me because of that time I cankled, and the only non-cobbley bits are ankle-deep puddles. Rock and a hard place, etc. This bit is mercifully short, and is the place where my iPod batteries died today, leaving me alone with MY THOUGHTS for the next twenty-five minutes.

The perfectly straight, overrun-with-dogs bit: this bit is connected to roads on other sides, and is perfectly straight. Many people walk their dogs here. I only run on this road for about two seconds.

The long, winding, fool-me-twice second-to-last bit: this is my favorite bit, because in my mind it's the last bit (fool me once), and then about halfway down there's this bit that looks like the bit right before the end, and I'm all Wooooo! Almost done! And then five minutes later I realize that was the false-end bit (fool me twice) and that I still have a great deal of running to do.

The last bit: this is the bit I always forget about. I always make the turn a bit startled, like Oh yeah! I'm not done yet! But then, in my mind it's this uber-short bit, so I run pell-mell to get it done with quicker. By the time I realize that it's not as short as I remember, I've been running for so long that I figure the end must be just around the next bend. For a surprisingly long time, it isn't.

In a lot of ways, being more aware of my surroundings would make this run a lot more painful, because I'd have an accurate perception of how much longer I have to run at all times. Because I have total goldfish brain, I end up thinking I'm almost done half the time.

I write more things!

New Back of the Book column up. Check me out.

Bring on the Silent Nights

Now that American Thanksgiving is here, we can officially start thinking about Christmas, and you can all wish you had some of these bad boys. They would look much more awesome against a not-white background, but I'm not the photographer of the family. I'm the cookie-maker.


Candy canes do not go quietly.

UBC's finest

So...the engineering department, or whoever, is having a banana pancake fundraiser in the lounge. Which, awesome, do whatever you want to raise money for your program. But they're taking up the entire kitchen-area, AND using all the power outlets. I understand that at 10:30 in the morning, not a lot of people are going to be wanting to nuke their lunches, but I DO! And I don't have money for your damned pancakes either.

So I made my case, and they unplugged one of their griddles so I could plug in a microwave and faux-boil my oatmeal, except that a fuse blew halfway through and my oatmeal was barely softened and still swimming in oaty water, more of a tepid oat-soup than a hearty meal. But a blown fuse = a blown fuse, and also = me eating my starchy broth in silence while the engineering students scrambled around trying to figure out how to fix a blown fuse.

I think the irony is lost on them.

Plague-yoga

Sometimes when I'm sick, I am weak like the kitten, and sometimes I have superhuman strength. Either way, my balance is down the tubes.

In which I finally give my plague its due.

Friends, I am sick. The world is spinning, and I'M NOT EVEN ON ANYTHING!! I have 2 Buckley's (the pills, not the ass-syrup) waiting for me, but I don't want to take them until I have to go somewhere so for now I'm just staring loopily at the ceiling.

After last week's hellish run-around to get all my assignments done, and a rather satisfying Friday dropping shit off and handing shit in, I have had the awesome weekend of death (the good kind of death, except where that creeping cold caught up with me and sternum-punched me).

Friday night I went to Leah's to watch the America's Next Top Model finale and drink copious amounts of wine and eat a block of expensive cheese and try to reproduce some of the modelly gals' most famous poses (there will be pictures up on Facebook later) and then stumble to the bus and transit my way home feeling like a bag of sand. Being sick always dehydrates me so much, and wine is not what you call 'water.'

Saturday Joel and I ran all around town in the moderate sunshine, by which I mean to the aquarium and then to Joel's friend's wife's dad's place in Vancouver for appies and more wine and then down to Granville Island for dinner and theater sports and then back to Joel's friend's wife's dad's place and then home.

I am le drained. I would like to sleep for a month, and maybe I will. I think I'll go take that Buckley's now.

In which November is a bitch

So, yesterday I took all the files sent to me by the members of my group, spent an hour and a bit ship-shaping them up (read: almost entirely re-doing them) so that they'd match in format, and not overlap in content, and make some sort of sense. Then I Ctrl-S'ed them all into the ether, because where do files go when you save them off an email? I searched my whole computer, even the 'hidden documents' (what are those?) and no dice. So now I do again.

Also, as brilliantly cloudless as it was this morning when I took the time to blow out my hair and admire my sexy bangs, it is now pouring rain. I saw the forecast, and I ignored it.

I am entirely umotivated to succeed today.

My life is tedious.

Even though I have already biffed at NaBloPoMo, and even though school is eating my soul and I have three major assignments due in the next 2 days, I am here.

What do you want to hear about? About how we kept our nicest TA for an hour and a half past his regular office hours because NONE of us (TA included) could figure out what was going on with the assignment?

Or how I have a poster due tomorrow that's worth 25% of our final grade (meeps) and she keeps giving us time in class to work on it when, unless someone brings posterboard and markers to class, there's not much we can do?

Or how I have the sorest of throats?

Or how this weekend I'm going to have the longest of sleeps?

In which I fail at several things.

Ah me, I have lost at NaBloPoMo. Alas.

Regardless, let's talk about taking the bus and how hard it is. So today I catch the 480 which is, like, eight miles long (the bus, not the route), and I worm my way all the way to the back because that's where the single functioning light is, and I have a quiz to study for.

The new talking buses are awesome, and they mean that you can happily immerse yourself in a linguistics text and know exactly where you are without looking up. EXCEPT! So I'm in the back plowing through vowel acoustics when the bus stops, says 'Thunderbird Boulevard,' and EVERYONE gets off.

I sit there for a minute because vowel acoustics is hard, y'all! But then I realize that everyone has gotten off AND that we're not moving, and I'm all, Awwwwww, does this bus not go all the way to the loop? ALL buses go all the way to the loop.

So I look up and hey presto! We're at the loop, Talking Bus was wrong. BUT! Now both back doors (see? Long bus) are shut because the bus is off, and I have to walk the eight miles up to the front of the bus where the bus driver is laughing at me so I can get off.

How did they know?

Rachel krueger's Dewey Decimal Section:

429 Old English (Anglo-Saxon)

Rachel krueger = 8138521815758 = 813+852+181+575+8 = 2429


Class:
400 Language


Contains:
Linguistics and language books.



What it says about you:
You value communication, even with people who are different from you. You like trying new things don't mind being exposed to unfamiliar territory. You get bored with routines that never change.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Open letter

Dear Yahoo Radio,

What part of 'never play again' don't you understand? Why even supply this option if you're going to keep barraging me with Bare Naked Ladies long after I've clicked the little circle-with-a-line?

I am confused. I hang out here instead of on the real radio because I can, allegedly, control what I listen to. While I love your 90's Rock Station, there is some dreck from that era I'd like to avoid.

If 'never play again' actually translates as 'play much less often,' kindly amend your labels. I won't be upset. All I want is clear communication, and more obscure bands from my Awkward Years.

Yours sincerely,

raych

Juuuuuuuuust missed the cut-off.

I know, technically a NaBloPoMo fail, but I haven't gone to sleep yet (except before supper when I accidentally had a nap) so it's still today. Besides, we went to see The Dark Knight and who knew it'd be almost 3 hours? Of creepy madness? I am disturbed.

Posting for the sake of posting!

Oh good, something I can blog. Ok, these are the 106 most unreadable books as compiled by...some library. Quite a few of these overlap with EW's list of New Classics, ergo, classics continue to be largely unreadable. For the list, you have to:

Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you started but couldn't finish, use red text on the ones you really sort of hated, put an asterisk* next to the ones you really sort of loved, and use blue text on the ones on your own personal To Be Read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion*
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities*
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife*
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha*
Middlesex*
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West*
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo*
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King*
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible*
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist*
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay*
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime*
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything*
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter*
Eats, Shoots & Leaves*
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake*
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas*
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Oh unreadable books, some of you are so fabulous. Cloud Atlas, you have no business on this list.

I am sucking at this blogging thing!!!

Remember this gal? The one in the middle? In the white burkah? My lovely Karen from that time I went to Thailand?

She came to visit! Well, ok, she and her family came back to Canada for some months, and she and her husband were in Van tonight, and Joel and I had dinner with them! And that's all I really have to say about that, because you aren't interested in my delicious gyro, and because it would take too long to tell you how all the boys are doing (short version: awesome), and I have to go write an online quiz now. But Karen? I totally love you, and hanging out was definitely worth missing male-models-and-potential-nude-shoot-awkwardness on America's Next Top Model.

Ah me, young love.

Sometimes, when the weather is dreary and various holidays keep us from being able to go outside, Joel and I like to drag out the DDR pads and dance up a storm. Soon the air is filled with endearments such as 'I'm going to murder you' and 'Watch me while I kick your ass.' It is a special time.

My other boyfriend is a bus driver.

Ok, whether I'm going to class which starts at 8, or to the pool which opens at 7:30, I have to catch the 7:07 bus or end up watching full buses drive by me without stopping for 45 minutes before someone takes pity on me and stops to let me wedge on. I'm somehow incapable of leaving the house before 7:00 and often the 7:07 bus will come at 7:04. Today I heard it coming up the road so I bus-sprinted and got to the stop just in time to tap the breaklight as it pulled away.

Enter the Not-In-Service bus. He starts his route at UBC at, like, 7:20, which means that at 7:10, while I'm standing forlornly by the side of the road, he dawdles past my stop on his way to work. And stops. To pick me up. And drive me to school. At least two days a week.

I seriously owe him a pony.

Finally! On several levels.

Hi! It's me! I know, it hardly counts as NoBloPoMo if all I'm doing is scrawling a quick 'nothing to say.' But today I bring things to say!!! With pictures!!

Ok, so. Who has ghey bangs? It's me! I have ghey bangs! Also boo does. See? See how awful our bangs are, and how sloppy and blah our hair colors are? I know. How do we even go out in public?



Here we are trying to take a serious picture, and looking terribly tired. Do you see? Seriousness = bag-face.




Ok, so! New hair colors!! And I know, we bought the same color. But different brands! We're trying.

Also, somebunny needs a shower!

Ok, so! New bangs! New hair-ends! Healthiness and bounce!!!!

Huzzah for sister-days!

Rain check?

Ok, I know, worst NaNoBloPo ever, but I do have stories for you. UnFORtunately, Joel and I just watched some spin-off of Get Smart that wasn't actually Get Smart like we thought it was, and now I'm going asleep. Toots.

Last-minute post!

Shhhh, it is late and I am the sleepy.

Schnuggles!

Dear live continuous stream of baby puppies,

Why are the puppies always sleeping? I would like to watch them romp. Please install a Facebookian 'poking' application, so that I can poke one of the puppies. Perhaps all of the puppies.

Sincerely,

Waster McTime

Time for some sleuthing!

I forgot to mention that my last post was my 500th. Woooo, 500 posts! 501!! Yeahh!

Ok, so there's a mystery, and it's quite late and I've had a bit of wine so it's possible that it's no mystery at all, BUT! I made potatoes with tuna and cheese for supper, and as I'm leaving I'm all, Joel, can you clean this up (meaning 'put it in the fridge so we can eat it again tomorrow'). I just got home...the potatoes aren't on the counter where I left them, but they aren't in the fridge either (we have a small, emptyish fridge, so I'd see them). They aren't in our tiny freezer, nor accidentally in the cupboard.

WHERE ARE THE POTATOES?

Joel is sleeping, and I'm obvs not going to wake him up to ask him such a dumb question, but I've looked ALL over the kitchen, AND the living room, AND snuck a peek in the bedroom just in case he took them in there to finish them off and forgot to bring the pan back out.

Ghosts have eaten our potatoes. I was going to have them for lunch tomorrow. Ghosts have some answering to do.

Candy = brain rot

Whew! I almost forgot! Blogging everyday is hard, y'all! But you wouldn't blame me, right, if I told you I just got home from school? Just now? It was a long day. These group projects are killing me.

In other news, Obama is president! So sad that his grandma died yesterday, but at least we can all heave a sigh of relief that this'll never happen. Now we can all laugh freely, instead of laughing uneasily while we voodoo her behind closed doors.

I et halloween candy for supper. I need to start swimming MORE laps. Did I mention that I bought a swim cap, and that I look like a purple-headed tadpole? Also, that I left my bathing suit top at the pool today? Hawhoops.

Oh, nope. I found it. It schwas in the wash.

Dear Raych, you are not making any sense.

Well you weren't at school all day, doing word-math! So give a girl a break, no?

It is time to find some salty.

It is time for function to triumph over form

Dear Girls Wearing Tights Under Your Short-Shorts,

I know. Every time I talk about how tights aren't pants and how you can't wear them as such, I mention both 'under skirts' and 'under shorts IF YOU NEED TO' as ways you can wear them. However, you no longer need to. I don't know how to convey this to you. We are no longer in the 'Let's still pretend it's summer' segment of fall. We have entered into the rainy-ass almost-winter portion, and it is cold. It is damp.

I KNOW! This means that all other legs are covered up, and your legs are getting all the leg-ttention. Bully for you. But you could just, I don't know, wear a pair of really tight pants, couldn't you? Even leggings would be better than this.

Sincerely, The Girl in Gumboots. No, the other one. Not the designer expensive gumboots, the ones from Superstore. Little-boys section.

It's the days after Halloween that make me fatter

Fun-sized chocolate bars are the snooze-button of the candy world. Are you going to sleep for another hour? Hells no! But I will sleep for these tiny, bite-sized, individually-wrapped seven minutes. And then these. And then these.

I kind of appreciate all the individual environmentally-havocal wrapping, though, because that way there's no lying to yourself. When you wake up in the morning and there're 19 tiny OHenry wrappers next to your pillow, you know what you did.

NaBloPoMo

Hey kids! As per usual, it's the day after Halloween and I'm doing this thing again where you have to listen to me talk every day for all of November. I know, fun!

Be prepared, though, for a lot of nothing. Today, par example, we'll be talking about persimmons!

So, all of a sudden last fall I'm allergic to apples and can't eat them anymore, because they give me the death. Frown. Since then, I've been looking for a new grab-and-go fruit with little success.

Oranges: peeling them is work, and then your hands are sticky.

Grapefruits: ditts.

Bananas: WILL bruise in your bag, no matter how careful you are.

Seasonal berries: are seasonal. Also, easily mashed.

Melon: requires pre-thinking and cutting.

H'anyvays, today I grabbed a persimmon or two from my happy Asian food mart. Persimmons are tasty! Who knew! And if you get the ones that look like tiny squashed pumpkins (why does all fall produce look the same?) then you don't even have to peel them!

I know that, like berries, they also are seasonal, and that in a few weeks I'll be back to my bruised bananas and my sticky grapefruits, but for now (provided they aren't some secret apple-kin and I don't get sick in the next hour), I'll be chucking a persimmon in the old backpack for mid-class snackerings. Zoot zoot!

I'm such a Suzie Homemaker

I need to have some babies so that they can grow up and go to kindergarten and have Halloween parties so I that can make apple-pie mummies for them.

Also punkins and ghosts.

Alas. I will have to eat these by my lonesome.

A little lexical switcheroo

It has come to my attention that the phrases 'douche-bag' and 'ass hat,' while inherently amusing, have become so overused that they have ceased to mean anything at all.

I move that, in order to preserve some very fine phraseology while introducing a bit of novelty, that we switch to 'douche-hat' and 'assbag.' 'Douche-hat' is a little awkward when spoken aloud, but 'assbag' makes up for it both in roll-off-the-tonguery and in visual image hilarity.

Anyone second the motion?

Because somethings are too funny not to share

H'ok, so for each of my classes we have an online discussion board. For two classes, the online discussion makes up part of our participation. The one that doesn't give us marks is, sadly, the most active of all the boards (although most of the post are some poorly-spelled variant of 'I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THE ASSIGNMENT PLS HELP!! [more sadly, a large majority of those posts are mine]). Alas.

H'anyvays, for my one linguistics class, we're all talking about the midterm and about linguisticky things, and then this one girl posts:

hi.i came across some religious languages...the archaic ones..thats used when writing holy books such as bible and ramayan...

andi was also watching this television series FRIENDS (the best comedy series ever :-D).........one of the characters in friends studies dianosaurs..

this brought a question into my head - why arent dinosaurs mentioned in the holy books?....they do mention evolution and othet animals...why not dinosaurs?...

To which: many things. How exactly did you 'come across' these archaic languages? Did you spontaneously learn them? Find them in the gutter? Inquiring minds...

Also, 'this television series' you speak of sounds dull. Who wants to watch a man study dianosaurs?

Also, in which holy book is evolution mentioned? The Origin of Man, in its original Sanskrit?

And then some guy is all, Man wrote the holy books and probably had not yet discovered dinosaurs by the time he did so, and then there's a bunch of other jibber-jabber and our prof comes on and seizes on some linguistic matter mentioned in passing and tries to steer the conversation thataway.

So then this same girl opens up a new discussion topic and is all:

hey....what do you guys think about UFO"S and aliens?....

are they realy out there?.....has anyone experience anything relating to aliens ;-p.........?....i hope not...

but britain just released some secret files about alien sighting experience by different people including a pilot who reported he almost crashed into something ......too big to be flying and was too fast.......

what do we ordinary people think? ( and the spelling of people is funny isnt it)...

...? WTF? Secret files? And how big is 'too big to be flying'? Because space ships are, you know, big (side note: Paris Hilton is being sent into space I'm not even lying).

I wish I had some witty commentary on the state of our children, and how the internet is making us all dumber, but I really just wanted to give everyone a good laugh. Come, join me in the anonymous mockery!

Shameless self-promotion.

My new article is up at Back of the Book. I, uh...I give Britney Spears props. My seventeen-year-old self is spinning in its flannel-clad grave.

It must be mid-October.

I am the Duchess of MS Paint.

CLRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

The internet is full of people doing things together. Losing weight together, reading books together, getting shit done in their houses together. Tackle it Tuesday is a blogging kick in the pants for people who need to get off their asses and clean the garage or fix a pair of pants. I don't usually do it because I like wallowing in my own filth.

Then! CLR comes along and is all, We'll give some free CLR to your readers as long as they use it to clean something. Me, I'm all for free internet junk, AND my house is a disaster.

My plan was to let the kitchen get rully dirty before playing along, but instead I had midterms. Hey presto, dirty kitchen.

I know, right? I won't give you any close-ups because let's face it, kitchens are disgusting. Just imagine crusted sauce and dried cheese and and smears of nast. I will show you this:

My sink! The deepest sink in the world! The problem with deep sinks is that they hide all your dirty dishes, so you're lulled into this false sense of good-housekeepery. You finally get around to washing a thing or two, and you're there for hours. Also, deep sinks = mucho stooping. Who knew.

H'anyvays, I cleaned my sink with my regular generic-brand-with-bleach:

And then again with CLR Kitchen and Bathroom:

Ok, so it's not the blood of virgins, but it did a decent job. Half of that is missing paint anyways. CLR smells better than the death-bleach smell, and I wish I'd had it when we were moving out of Dave and Shari's and trying to get the soap scum off the shower by sheer force of will.

And the kitchen?

Ta-ta!!!!

Revel in it, folks. Luxuriate in my clean kitchen. This won't happen again until we move.

Obama roll

Ok, if I lived in the States, not only would I vote Obama, but I'd run around in the streets telling other people why they should vote Obama. I don't think I've ever felt this strongly about an election; I sure didn't about the recent Canadian one.

Political views aside, this me laugh so hard I almost cried. If you don't have 1:30 to spare, skip ahead to :40. You will positively die.

Also, who has this kind of time?

Things that I suck at, Vol. 278

If I've blogged about this before, you can skip to 'So today,' and if you're boo, you can skip the whole thing because I texted you in real-time.

Ok, so sometimes I suck at running errands. Most of the time, I am an errand champion. I take the bus and I have to haul everything around on my back, so I excel at plotting out my errand points from least-heavy/likely-to-go-bad to most-etc. Also, I like to streamline things so that I'm getting off and on the bus the fewest amount of times.

A couple of weeks ago, I head out erranding on a Monday. Wheee to the library! Except that the library isn't open on Mondays. Very well, whee to the bulk foods store! Except, also not open on Mondays. Errand fail.

A week or so later, I head up to the used book store which claims to buy used books, and I get there all, Hey, you guys buy books?

The lady behind the counter: 'Yes.'

Me: '...Want some books?'

Lady: 'No.'

Me: '...?'

Lady: 'We don't buy books on Tuesdays.'

????

So today, I'm going to take 2 buses to the library, and then one bus back to Dunbar where I have to get off anyways and switch buses, so while I'm off, I'm going to hit the bulk foods store, and then zip all the way down to Zellers for cans/boxes/snacks, and then the produce store (which will be awkward, because I will be full of cans/boxes/snacks as well as bulk food products and books, but it's either that or head to Zellers all bulky with produce, which is less forgiving) where I will also buy milk because milk! So heavy!

Except that when I get to the library at 9:30, it doesn't open until 10. I text boo all 'schnoo schnoo schnooo,' drop off my books, and head to the bulk foods store. I'd been counting on picking up some books since I finished the one I was on this morning, and now have nothing to do on the bus but try and avoid that guy's eye. H'anyvays, I get off at Dunbar and head to the bulk foods store...also not open until 10. Parallel lives, the bulk foods and library. While I'm staring at the store hours and growling, my bus to Zellers goes whizzing by.

Now, even if I go all the way to Zellers and the produce store, I'll still only have finished half my errands, and I'll have to spend the whole bus ride bookless. Also, I will have to wait for a bus. Sometimes, you just cut your losses, head to the IGA for cereal and milk, and walk home.

Boobie bake-off

Ok, so we've gotten to the point as a species where, if you've got boobers, you're almost guarunteed boober-cancer. So in an effort to save the ta-tas, the intarnets have introduced the Boobie Bake-off, wherein people bake (pink) things, other people pay to vote on them, and cancer loses.

SO! I made Mint-chocolate Mammograms. Deliciousness for all.

For the cookies:

1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 or 2 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350/180. Grease large cookie sheet.
Combine flour and cocoa. Cut in butter until fine. Stir in sugar.
Add enough beaten egg to form a soft dough. Roll to 1/8" and cut into rounds.





Bake about 15 minutes or until...they are still dark brown. Cool on wire rack.





For the frosting (this gets much less scientific):

A blob of butter, like, 2 golf-ball sized.
Powdered sugar...maybe a cup.
An eensy bit of milk or cream or half-and-half, whatever liquid dairy you have on hand.
Pink food coloring
Mint extract

Beaterize all the above. If too thick, add more milk. If too thin, add more sugar. I like it good and stiff for these, so that you can pile it on thick.



Blob frosting onto cookie.

Smoosh other cookie onto first (that's the 'mammogram' part).

Chuck into fridge until later so that frosting is less gishy.

Later, melt some chocolate - chocolate chips, chocolate bars, whatever - in the microwave until runny. Don't burn it.

Dip half of cookie into chocolate. Place on waxed/parchment paper and let set.

Eat and share with friends!

I am in a rut

All I have done for the last month, ALL I HAVE DONE! Is go to the doctor and phone Rogers.

So, I had to go to the doctor a few weeks ago for reasons that are personal and gross and which I will not share here. And then, remember when I rolled my ankle? I didn't go to the doctor then, because a rolled ankle isn't a big deal (even though it STILL HASN'T HEALED, FOUR WEEKS LATER!!!!!!), but then all of a sudden on Thursday the ball of my other foot is swollen, and then all of a sudden on Friday, the top of my foot directly above the ball is bruised, and that might be a big deal.

It isn't. But I had to go to the doctor to find that out.

Ok, and then also, this is the phone I've been using for the last five years.

It is compact and unbreakable and it wouldn't die. For five years, nothing I could do would make it die, and then it died, and besides, I really should start paying for my own phone. So waaaay back in September, Joel phoned Rogers and told them he wanted to cancel his plan, and then when they threw themselves prostate at his feet, he outlined all of the things that we would need in order to stay. Like new phones. For free.

A week later, this sweet baby came in the mail!

SO PINK!!! But Joel's didn't come, and my number had to be switched over besides, so we both phoned Rogers for our respective reasons, and then sat down to wait. Some days later, Joel's phone still hadn't come, and my number still hadn't been switched over, so we both phoned Rogers again. Joel's phone came, and my number switched, but hello! Our voicemails weren't working! So we both phoned Rogers again. The next day, my texting wasn't working, so I phoned Rogers again!!!

It's now been three whole days since I last phoned Rogers. I could sometimes kiss them for how helpful and eager and useful they are, but I hope to not phone them again for at least a month. Two would be nice. I went to the doctor today, and Joel is going later on this week (did I mention that all he has done for the last month is go to the doctor and phone Rogers? We live parallel, rutty lives), and then hopefully we will live lives of health for a good chunk of time.

I am internet-famous.

Yes, awesome. After years of being able to google my maiden name and find myself all over the place, I was pretty pissed to see how many Rachel Kruegers were out there. Finally, I show up on the first google page again.

Also, have I mentioned that I write the culture column here?

Things that make me feel old:

As I reach my twenty-six-and-a-halfth year, there are a handful of things around that are making me feel geriatric.

The cold. When did winters get to be so damned cold?

Teenagers. Especially ones in college. That were born in the nineties.

The fact that people who were born in the nineties are now in college.

My ankle. Remember how, when you were young, you'd hurt yourself and then a few days later, you'd be all, Oh! That scab has fallen off/bruise has gone away/bone has healed. Rad. So, last weekend (two full weeks after I rolled my ankle in the first place), I looked down and was all, Huh. Ankle is still fat. So I've been icing and elevating the hell out of it, and taking ibuprofen like candy (my stomach lining feels like crepe paper), and now you can sort of see the bump where my ankle-bone is. And I can almost sit cross-legged.

On the other hand, at least I'm younger than:

- Barbie,

- the Air Force,

- minute-rice,

- Pop-Tarts,

- Medicare,

- the CIA,

- the Pentagon,

- the Slinky,

- Sweet-n-Low,

- breast implants,

- the UN,

- Velcro,

- Alaska, and

- Spaghetti-O's.

And not everyone can say that.

When I have a midterm coming up and so everything everyone else does makes me crazy

Sometimes, the one side of people's phone conversations that I can hear makes me want to smack them.

Like the other day: 'Black....No, black....A black one....black....yes.....no, black....a black one...black.'

And then today: 'Where are you....in the SUB?.....Are you going to stay there?.....Are you....Are you going to stay there?....Are you going to stay there?.....Huh?'

Like, do you have the world's worst phone connection? Ever? Huh? What? Go outside and you can hear better.

I'm such a crank.

Eyeballs!

I have a HUGE midterm tomorrow and no time to study this evening, so I definitely shouldn't be doing this. But I'm kind of good at it (I KNOW!) and it's more fun than phonetic theory.

Some people....

I'm on the bus today going to the library (this always dilemmas me because I have to take 2 buses to get there, each one for maybe three minutes, and I always feel so dumb getting off RIGHT AFTER I've gotten on, but it would take over half an hour to walk there and it's all uphill. Such is life) and this woman who gets on at the same stop as me is all, Can you open a window? to me, and then to this other lady, You need to open a window. We need some air. And in my mind I'm thinking, Why don't you open your own damn window? The bus is totally un-full, and there are many windows you could open besides this one I'm sitting next to.

But it's one of the new buses and they have wacky windows and I don't know how to open it, and I'm only on the bus for a few minutes besides (see above), so eventually I'm all, Sorry, can't do it. And I sit down and wait the two seconds til we're at my stop and then I get off. This woman gets off at the same stop as me, which means that either the airless bus was killing her, or that she needed those windows open for all three minutes she was bussing.

H'ANYvays, so I'm trucking along and I hear, Excuse me! I turn, and it's this same lady. Where did you get your haircut! she says, but it's not like, Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy, nice hair! Where did you get it cut? It's more like, Where's the friggin cash register in this store! Like that. Also, I feel I need to add that I don't have a particularly great haircut right now. In fact, I have a fairly awful haircut that has grown out into a reasonable cut. Also, it was pulled back and therefore not visible.

In, uhhhhh, in Abbotsford, I say. So not here, she says. Uh....no. Abbotsford is neither here in Vancouver nor here on this street.

This appears to be all she wants from me, and she strides off, presumably in search of someone else with hair to ask where they got it cut. At least now she has fresh air.

It's that time again!! Where I remember to blog!

So, today in belly dancing (did I mention that I'm taking belly dancing? I am. It's hard) we practiced flexing first our top-ab muscles, and then our mid-ab muscles, and then our bottom-ab muscles. Some things in life are difficult.

Also, the ankle is healing nicely. It's only a little bit fat and a little bit green.

This weekend was mad busy. Boo and Darren joined me and Joel in attending Matt's concert, because he is a rock star. We are all glaringly old, and going out to a bar at 11:00 made us feel quite put-upon, but the band rocked hard and nobody fainted. Joel performed in an a capella choir for a memorial service the med students put on for the people who willingly sign their corpses over to be dismembered by over-achieving 22-year-olds. We went to a Stephen Pinker lecture which was hilarious and who, if you ever get a chance, I recommend you go see. I flexed all of my ab muscles separately (see above).

Also, I have had a raging head cold and my soft palate feels like sand. I eat nothing but grapefruits and soup all day long. We only have 5 mugs, and all I want to do all day is drink hot things, and the LAST thing I want to do is wash a mug, so I've designated them as tea-mug, straight-up-coffee-mug, sweet-powdered-coffee-mug, hot-water-by-itself-mug, and Neo-Citran-mug. Now I don't wash nothing.

Last night I had a Neo-Citran before bed and then a pile of bizarre dreams, most of which I can't remember. I do remember getting my new cell phone in the mail, and it being the size of a tv remote. If this happens, I will smash something. Also, I will start vending my prescient dreams.

I've got a bit of a cankle.

One of my feets needs to go on a diet.









So, I'm a crappy runner and need to stop sucking at things. Yesterday I'm running in the park, and I come around this corner at high speeds because it's my favorite part of the trail and it comes just after my least favorite part of the trail, and also because it means I'm halfway home. So I'm gunning it around this corner and I roll my ankle on a rock.



It hurts for a second and I say a few swears, but I'm really far from home and sweaty and it's cold out, and after I walk on it a few minutes, it seems fine and I'm able to run home on it. It's a little swollen by the time I get home, but I have things to do. I figure my boots will help support it for the day by, I don't know, crushing it from all sides, or something.



So I go and meet Joel at school and we have a study date with some of his med-buddies, and after a few hours I realize that no blood is getting to my one foot. So we're in there studying and I've got my one boot unzipped all the way down, looking like a tool.

Finally, I leave to go home, and as I come out of the building I see the bus. All this sitting and not moving has stiffened my ankle up so that I can hardly put weight on it, but the buses only run every half hour on Saturdays, and it's cold. So I gimp-run until I get close enough to see that it isn't my bus at all.

I go run some errands because we haven't got any food in the house, and by the time I get home I'm hobbling under the weight of my backpack, my laptop, my groceries, and my ridiculously oversized purse. I finally get around to stripping off my boots, and my ankle is swollen to thrice it's natural size.



The bruising is already halfway to awesome.

You HAVE to be nice to me today

I have a sticker that says so. And this isn't like the time I made them give me a 'Be nice to me - I gave blood today' sticker even though I fainted after the pricking so that I could stick it on my bio final and get an extra 2%. I actually GAVE BLOOD!

Ok, well, 2/3 of a bag. And then the blood stopped coming out and they readjusted the needle and I went a little grey and they cut me off.

But 2/3 of a bag! We're calling this a triumph. Not, like, a mighty triumph, but one that deserves cookies and juice.

Tis better to give, etc.

So, remember how blood does not seem like it's in me to give AT ALL? Because I faint? Before they start vampiring my arm?

So, Joel and I are going to go give blood tomorrow afternoon, and upon weighing the pros and cons of telling them that I'm a fainter (Pro: they will keep an eye on me. Con: to make sure I don't hook myself up to a bag, because there is no way they will let me donate) I have decided to just follow the advice of the last kind nurse to put cold cloths on my forehead and wrists.

So I'm eating big meals tonight and tomorrow lunch, drinking tons of water, and plan on shotgunning a juice right before I go in, and avoiding coffee. I'm also doing my usual iron-doping (red meat and spinach!! Also, but less interestingly, oatmeal). My mom can't give blood because of low iron levels. My sister likewise cannot give blood because she is, like me, a fainter (caveat: she managed to fill a bag before going under).

I'm confident that this time, THIS TIME, I will make it past the finger-pricking. Whether or not I make it to the arm-sticking is a different story. I'll let you know how things go.

I am TRYING to build up your self-esteem

Re: crossword puzzles


Joel:...I just wish I were better at them.

Me: You're quite good at them.

Joel: I'm awful at them.

Me: You're surprisingly good for a science major.

Joel:...That's like saying, For a guy in a wheelchair, you do a surprisingly good pole vault.

A day in which I get drunk on things that are not booze

Ok, it might be because I'm drunk on the whales we saw on the ferry (ok, not...the whales weren't on the ferry. We were on the ferry, and we looked off the ferry into the water, and there were whales), and it might be because I'm drunk on the sunshine, and it might be because I'm drunk on THE PLACE IN WHICH WE ARE GOING TO LIVE COME JANUARY WHICH HAS A DISHWASHER AND A PLUM TREE IN THE BACKYARD!!!!!, but Victoria is just about the prettiest little city I think I've ever seen. And I've been to Europe.

Ok, so Joel and I went to Vic today to check out a place for next semester, and we left the house at 8:15 and got to the place at 1:15, because that's what happens when you have no car. You take the bus, and then you take the other bus, and then you take the other bus and then the ferry. And then the bus, and then the bus, and then you walk a bit. And then later you do it all backwards to come home.

H'anyvays, the place is gorgeous and we have a BBQ on the deck (we have a deck!) and a washer and dryer and a dishwasher and a full-sized fridge with an actual, seperate freezer on the top of it (not a shoe-box inside the fridge which less freezes things and more just keeps them very cold, which, ps, is the suck) and TWO bedrooms (and one of those bedrooms has double doors which lead to our deck!!!!!!!eleventy-one!!) and a dining room that is not just the kitchen in disguise and a place to hang our coats when we come in the door and AND!!! After showing us around the place, our landlords tossed us in the car and drove us around Victoria (...the grocery store is here, we really like this deli, the UVic campus is here, this is a nice bit of beach that we've found, etc.) and then went and got a ladder and picked all the plums out of the tree that I couldn't reach with my short arms. I think I'm in love with them.

Also, we rode in a double-decker bus. Victoria is so quaint.

Also, it is the home of solar-panelled trash compactors I'm not even joking we saw this at a bus stop. Quaint.

The more you know.

So, I signed up for yoga this semester because I have tons of free time right now, and better to spend it stretching and breathing than enjoying our new-found tv channels.

So for lunch today, I'm all, I'll have some cottage cheese with cut-up fruit and some granola in it, because that seems suitably yoga-ish.

High-fiber, high-gassss-making lunches are not yoga-friendly.

Some fotoes to lighten up your Monday morning

In the absence of anything really interesting to say (classes are going well, we are unpacked, I made sourdough but didn't let it rise long enough or cook long enough, so it is both dense and raw-ish), I would like to share with you some pictures.

This is Estella, my lovely lady-skeleton. I bought her in Mexico and she survived the trip home. All of her fingers broke off, and I had to glue them back on one by one. She's missing a thumb in this picture because I didn't find it until an hour or so later. She is the very picture of elegance.

This is my greatest space-saving solution yet. It is a placemat. It is also where I hang my earrings. Martha Stewart is my bitch.My foot-thong tan makes it look like my feetses' underwears are showing.

The enormous landlord-cat only comes by when Joel's not home, so I have to take pictures to prove that the cat is (surprisingly often) in our suite. Please to compare cat-size to laptop-size. Cat is a great big one.

As an aside, I would like to thank frozen plums for not giving me raging diarrhea like fresh ones do. Why is that, do you think?

And then there were cats.

Ok, so there was this enormous cat in Mexico that Joel totally loved, so you can imagine how stoked he was when we got to our new place in Vancouver only to find that the cat had followed us there (this giant fatty is exactly what our landlords' cat looks like). He's left the cat-door between our two places unlocked since we moved in so that the cat could come in if it liked.

This afternoon, while Joel was gone, the cat stopped by for a little visit. Joel was crushed to have missed it.

Now, at the risk of becoming that lady who only talks about her cats, please go watch this video. I'm serious. If you do nothing else for me as long as you live, watch this, at least until about the 25-second mark. I promise, you will die.

Another in a long line of sum-ups

Whew, jeez. Long time to talk, and stuff. And there have been so many things this week that I've been all, I should blog that! But then I forget.

Like how the first week of med school is all scavenger hunts and group-charades and wine-and-cheese parties and then wham-o! On Friday you cut up bodies. Real ones. That used to be people.

Or how there are trails all through the UBC endowment lands that I've been jogging, and how there are also creeks all through said lands which means there are dozens of wooden bridges, and how someone needs to lay down some chicken wire on those bridges so they aren't quite so slick in the rain. I mean, I know, chicken wire is uggers, and when it's not raining the bridges are totally functional on their own, but as that French-Canadian fellow said to Robyn when she neglected to bring her rain gear to work based on the slim promise of a sunny morning, This is Vancouver.

And also how, often when I am jogging with my headphones in, and some song will start up that has talking at the beginning but I'll just hear voices in my ear and think someone is right behind me and scream! Except that two days ago I was jogging, and I heard a voice in my ear and thought it was just pre-song chatter but then something pulled up on my right and THERE IS A MAN ON A BIKE! And I screamed and he apologized, all, I've been trying to get your attention so I wouldn't scare you when I biked past you, and I'm all out of breath and adrenaline-sick because ack!

And how Joel and I watched the entire fourth season of 24 yesterday. We started at 5:00 am and went hard straight through and finished before 11:00 pm.

And how our tuition is due on Wednesday and our student loans should come through any second now...but maybe not before Wednesday, in which case...

That's all for now, kiddies. I'll try not to be so absent in the future.

Moving is deathness

Ok, so I'm unpacking today, and it's taking me ALL day because I have a severe case of the dawdle and also because Joel's in school so I'm the only one to make all the executive decisions (like where the hell do I put all this junk?). And I start to run out of steam at around 5:00, and alls that's left to do is find homes for all the miscellanea and stack all the boxes and vacuum up all the leaves that I tracked in earlier and I finally get it all done and everything put away and the house looks awesome and liveable and then hrack! There's a box under the tv. And not even, like, this is a box of dishes I must put away or this is a box of clothes I must hang up, but this is the last-ditch box that we flung everything into that wouldn't fit anywhere else, viz. this box is full of agony. I almost cried.



And now, apropos of nothing, I had no cat allergies in Mexico but had TERRIBLE cat allergies previous, so we're conducting an experiment wherein we unlock the little cat door that leads to our suite and let the comically-oversized grey cat (if he so chooses) to come into our home, and then we see if I am miserable. Maybe I am only allergic to Canadian cats.



H'adios, kids.

Reading is crazy!!

If I had the balls to wear a t-shirt with swears on it, and if I hadn't already worked through my lifetime quota of ill-fitting-but-hilarious shirts, I would rock this for sure.

Also, we have moved! Huzzah! Escuse while I unpack ALL DAY!!!

She sums up!!

Hello friends! I know, this is the least busy I will every be IN LIFE, and yet I refuse to blog. But this is me blogging.

Hrrrum....we've been staying at mine and Joel's parents' places alternately, and while I'm eternally grateful to them for housing us and feeding us and giving us somewhere to plunk our suitcases, I will be SO EXCITED to have my own space in which to make a mess and hang clothes up and rummage through the cupboards. You know how it is.

We've spent much of the past six days getting fatter, as both our sets of parents feed us very well and I have taken up excessive baking. Behold my strawberry tartlets!

Behold my black-and-blueberry pie!

Behold my sugar cookies!

Behold my bavarian cream eclairs!!!!!

Due to the fattening, we've also been going for jogs. The other day I stopped to pet this old eastern European lady's dog, and we chatted, and I mentioned how cute her dog was. 'He ees too feht!' she replied, and then thwacking him in the belly with one of her canes, 'Hey, fehtty? Ve'll shlim you down.' You and me both, puppy.

In our spare time, Joel's been playing Call of Duty and I've been plowing through my pile of books. Also, we bought this beautiful clay orb for my mother from Mexico, but when we got back, oh no! Orb is in pieces!!!

Joel likes puzzles, and I like fixing things, so we sat down with a tube of Krazy Glue and set to. I think I lasted half an hour. Joel, on the other hand, is a spatial genius.

Joel starts school on Monday, and I start school a week from. Oh yes, school! So, long story short my transcripts were delayed and didn't get to UBC in time and my application was cancelled, and I had to write a Letter of Appeal and wheeeeeeeee! They let me in! But by then all the awesome classes were taken, so I'm taking....history, or something. Who knows.

Dog days

Unlike in Thailand, where the streets are clogged with stray dogs, the streets of Mexico are clogged with owned dogs. Everyone has, like, six dogs, and they all run wild and mangy. But at least they are loved, so I guess it's a step up. Behold, my friends, the dogs of Mexico.

This is Babs, Greg and Alyson's dog. She is quite earnestly cute, if a bit snobby and cat-like in behavior. Also, she has epilepsy.

This is Chico. Chico is the most nervous dog I know, except maybe Dag (who has less cause, really), and also he hates me. This is maybe because I chomp him.

This is Banana. Banana is hilariously long in the body, and also exceptionally round. This is because she is terribly spoiled and will only eat wet cat food. She is my favorite dog.

These are tiny puppies from the pet store. I palmed their heads.

This is Dag, and these are his ribs.

Dag only comes by the house for a meal every few days, and he won't eat if you're watching him. He won't even come in the house unless you round up the cats and lock them in the bedroom.

This is Perro. He is a dog from one of the housebuilds, and is almost certainly diseased, but he is also desperately cute. I lasted three days before I petted him, and I didn't tell Joel. He has paint on his forehead, but it's not from me.

Also, we arrived home safe and sound.