Two and counting

Two years ago today I woke up at six so that someone else could do my hair and make-up and my minions could pack my bags (you guys were such good minions) and I could go get hitched.

One year ago today we were living in Dave and Shari's basement in Abbotsford, going to fishing derbies and food fairs and not knowing if Joel had gotten into med school.

Then Joel graduated...

...and then became a dementor.

Just joking. That dementor part never happened. But he did get into med school, which was a huge relief to us all.

(You can't tell, but that paper says 'You got into med school and may proceed to feel awesome about it.)

Then we moved in with Joel's parents for a few days, and ate all their food and stored all our stuff in their spare room while we went to Mexico.

Then we moved to Mexico, where we ate many sketchy meats and exotic fruits and I turned out to be not as allergic to cats as I had always claimed.

And then Joel turned into Sub-Zero.

Ok, that didn't actually happen either, but we did get to watch a surgery.

And then we moved in with my parents for a few days and ate all their food and rummaged through the stuff we'd been storing in their garage, and threw a bunch of it out.

And then we moved in with an enormous cat in Vancouver.

I know, the picture quality on this one is terrible, but I need you to see how massive this cat is. Also, how tiny our bed was. Joel is not a small man.
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Joel went to med school for a semester, and I did yet another semester of please-let-this-transfer.
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Then we went for a bit of a ski.
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Then we braved the Great Blizzard of New Years Day 2009 (a holdover from the Great Blizzard of Most of Christmas Break 2008) to move to Victoria, where it never snows and is always Christmas.

Now we live at Mile Zero, Beginning of the Known World. I have (almost) finished a full semester of Courses That Will All Apply To My Degree and Joel has (less almost) finished his second semester and first full year of med school. We are settling in and making friends and getting library cards and throwing lavish bbqs on our deck. Also, we have a deck.
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It has been the longest year, and I mean that in the best way. Here's to longer, better ones to come.

From my Outbox

Dear SparkNotes,

Thx for helping me pass more of my exams than I care to admit.

Luvvvvv, Raych


Dear Blog,

I have an exam this afternoon, but then I have a gap until the next one. I promise that somewhere in that gap, I will write you up the story of how Robyn and I visited many museums. There will be fotos.

Love Raych


Dear Facebook Profile,

I'm sorry I had to change you out of 'Pirate' and back to 'English,' but I had to create an event and I couldn't figure out what you were telling me to do. It is a measure of how long you've been piratized that I still think of events as 'grogfests' and am not entirely sure where to click to see my own profile.

Love Rrrrrrrrrrrrraych

Do you hear them chomping?

These exams are eating my soul.

How to make elaborate treats!

How to make excessively elaborate Easter treats, by Robyn and Rachel.
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Set aside entire afternoon. You will need it.

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Don stylish reversible apron.

Or stylish eyesore.

Cream together half a cup each of the following things: margarine, peanut butter, white sugar, brown sugar. Toss in an egg. Also, half a teaspoon vanilla, one and a quarter cups flour, three-quarters teaspoon baking soda, and a half-teaspoon salt. Mash together but good, throw in fridge until later.

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Toss coconut into oven. Crank oven up to arbitrary heat, because you think you know what you're doing. Turn away for a split second too long. Remove burnt coconut from oven.

Doff aprons, run to store to pick up more coconut. Toast properly this time (at, like, 275, checking and stirring every few minutes).

Pull peanut butter dough out of fridge. Roll into balls, toss in greased mini muffin tins.

Bake at 325 for 16 mins. Take out and IMMEDIATELY squish down with measuring spoon or melon baller or something suitably round-backed, to make delicious cookie cups. Let cool five more minutes, then pop out of pans.

Take deep breath and prepare to be freaked out. Throw a cup of butter, a half cup of corn syrup (corn oil won't do), two cups of brown sugar and a teaspoon of salt into a pot. Bring to a boil, stirring.

STOP STIRRING! Allow to boil WITHOUT STIRRING for five minutes. This will go against any basic kitchen instinct that you have. You will have minor heart palpitations. You will hope that you can still salvage the pot after you get THIS MESS out of it.

Realize that nothing bad has happened, sigh of relief prematurely. Remove caramel from heat. Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract and a half teaspoon of baking soda. Let out a little screamlet because you forgot that this causes fizzing. Stir to combine.

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Set up an assembly line of your cookie cups, caramel, and coconut (only dip out a bit of caramel at a time, as it will cool within MINUTES and this will take you a lot longer than minutes).

Dip rim of cup in caramel, then in coconut. Poof! A nest.

Fill nest with caramel, add mini-eggs (the micro-mini eggs work particularly well).

Stand back and observe your opus.

Look smug, and then share, because you will have MANY of them.

Robyn and Rachel have a Rumpus, part I

Hello chatzlings! As promised, Robyn came to visit and we had a rumpus. If we are FBF's, then you've probably seen photos and know that most of what we did was feed the bunns. But we did other things, and since all I'll be doing for the next 3 weeks is studying, I figure I'll spread our adventures out. Also, more posts = more pictures.

SO!

On Monday I went to school to look over my papers one last time before deciding that I didn't care any more and handing them in as-was. I may regret this when the marks roll in, but my brain was broken and my eyeballs felt like sand.

Robyn showed up around noon and we drove downtown to walk along the water and smell the waffles and generally remark on how beautiful Victoria is and what idiots the drivers are and how downtown doesn't look like a downtown at all, and why is this sign here?

We went into the Parliament Building, which was mostly full of perturbing signs and doors that said Do Not Enter. Also much Canadiana.

We checked out Russel Books and found this whole wall of General Fiction that I've never noticed before, distracted as I was by the OTHER wall of General Fiction on the other side of the store. Trust me to miss something this massive.

We snagged a bag of baby carrots and went to feed the UVic bunns (in a blatant flout of the many signs advising us not to). Things started slow, with a lone interested bunn, but pretty soon word got out and we were swarmed.

Excuse the darkness of photos. Dusk is prime bunn-time.

And then it got full-dark and then there were mosquitos and then we went home. Stay tuned tomorrow (or the next day! Or, you know, whenever) for the Day of Many Museums, or How to Make Elaborate Easter Treats, or something else!!!

It's like I'm in two places at once.

Guten tag, mes amis! While I was over here writing papers, another article I writ flew into the intersphere. I wish for all the world I could take credit for the title, 'Joaquin a Fine Line', but I would be a lying dirty bastard. Kind of like Joaquin.

What I actually do all day

While I'm over here puzzling out representations of the polymorphous body in 16th century literature, you guys can all go check out my new hero. Now even the aurally-impaired can enjoy everyone's favorite crazy ex-Mouseketeer.

(September, this is mostly for you.)

A nibble to get you through the weekend.

I know. I know! I pretty well am a food blog these days, except not one of those awesome ones that posts regularly and with recipes and pictures of the step-by-step process and a witty commentary and so on. But other than make tasty treats, I've pretty well just been writing papers for the last six days (two due yesterday, two due this coming Monday).

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Next week I will have many interesting things to post. Robyn is coming for a visit, and we will get up to all kinds of mischief.

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Until then, enjoy these pictures of times when I am a genius (i.e. put cookie dough into brownie batter):

times when I am predictable (i.e. make cinnamon buns because they are impossible to make wrongly):

and times when I exhibit how little I know about working with cream cheese (i.e. make undercooked brownies topped with delicious runny goop, which I totally saw as not one of my shiningest hours, but which one of Joel's classmates said were one of the BEST THINGS SHE HAD EATEN IN LIFE! So.).

Busy little dobby.

Our house troll elf mows the lawn every three or four days. I mean, I know it's spring and all now, but it's been spring for maybe twenty minutes. The grass is not, how you say, long.

He also gardens meticulously, and washes his car a lot. He's like a retired person.

This would be easier if I were schizophrenic.

It is Wrath of Papers week o'er here, and I have approximately 8000 words due in the next 8 days. I'm trying to convince myself that the one is due Monday so that I can get it over and done and tackle the next one (both these are due Thursday, and then the other two are due the following Monday).

But some part of me knows that the other part of me is lying, and that I have no papers due Monday. That part of me has spent the last half hour adding food pr0n blogs to my bloglines. And coveting.

Let the rumpus begin!

Have you seen the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are? If you have raging PMS, it will make you shed nostalgic tears.

More cultcha!

Sometimes watching The Daily Show = research, and it's then that I love my job.

Almost caramel corn

Attention everyone:

Corn oil ≠ corn syrup, and if you try to make home-made caramel corn using the former in place of the latter, your sugar will not caramelize and you will end up with sugar-coated corn. Which, while delicious, is not what you were after.

The theory of Approximate-Is-Good-Enough fails again.

Happy Clovers and Other Green Things Day

Because I am not a domestic goddess.

I was making cream of broccoli/cauliflower soup, and when I got to the put-in-blender-in-tiny-amounts-and-blend stage, I hit the spew-all-over-counter button instead of the gently-puree button. Now I have boiling-soup-burns on my wrist and my collerbones. Good thing I wore long sleeves.

In which I forget the punchline.

Since everyone on the island listens exclusively to CCR and Sarah McLaughlin, Joel and I have resorted to internet radio, which is actually kind of awesome. Since YahooRadio refused to honor its 'Never Play Again' button, we've switched to aol radio, which has way better categories anyways.

Do I feel like hearing Bed of Roses every half hour? Rock Ballads it is.

Do I only want to listen to Dave Matthews ALL DAY? They have a channel for that.

They also have a channel for Rock Cover Songs, which is all I can listen to these days. Johnny Cash covering NIN songs, Social Distortion covering Johnny Cash songs, myriads of rock bands remaking Britney Spears songs, and a version of I Kissed A Girl that wasn't completely wretched (side rant: if I ever ran into Katie Perry in real life, I would punch her dead in the face. This is not a euphemism for me saying something cutting about how she tries too hard and how she's the poor man's Lily Allen and how the video of her falling all over herself cheers me up when I'm blue [although I would probably say all these things, too], but I would actually punch her in the face. And then she would slice me open with one of her stilettos, and I would have to get stitches and probably couldn't even sue her because I'd started it, but it'd be worth it).

What was I talking about? Cover songs. I totally had a point when I started this post, but Katie Perry ruins everything.

::thought-train derailed::

Oh the huge manatee!

Ok, things get stolen from me a lot and I know I'm really negligent and would always rather chance something getting stolen then actually PUT IT SOMEWHERE SAFE but shit, man. My boots!

So, I have these black boots that I don't think I have a picture of anywhere that boo gave me when she bought herself some Expensive Sexy Boots (which I totally appreciated, despite all the disparaging things I'm about to say), and they were cheap(ish) and kind of piratey and pretty well fell apart after maybe a month, and the soles were like paper towels and I couldn't even step on be-dewed concrete without them soaking up all the moisture and they totally refused to dry out even after weeks of being by the radiator and they always smelled like mold and if I wore them for five or six hours, they made the sides of my feets all tender and raw.

THAT BEING SAID, they were my boots. What with yesterday's snow and today's -weather and all the -weather proposed for the next week, it would seem that winter's not done with us yet. Boots are a BOON when you want another layer or two hugging the old calves.

Which is why I am so PISSED that someone jacked them from the gym locker room. I have a locker, but it fits my backpack and my purse OR my backpack and my boots. I think I made the right call on this one. Anyway, it's not like I leave them lying around on the benches like everyone in the yoga class (srsly, more clothes than I own were scattered hither and yon today). I tuck them away up on top of the lockers where you can hardly see them. Also I tuck my socks there, and that's how I know the boots were stolen and not just mislaid. The socks were secreted away in one of the day-lockers, like a kidnapped child's teddy bear (too much?).

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AND NOTHING GETS STOLEN FROM THAT LOCKER ROOM! Ever. The guys at the front desk were all, This is our first theft! How exciting for them.

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And then on top of that, I had no choice but to head home in my tennis shoes. I am no fan of jeans and tennis shoes, me. If that's your deal, fine. I have been known to wear this gorgeous turquoise dress I have as a shirt, and hink part of it into a hair-tie so that it isn't quite so long, but then I have a side-tail. What I'm saying is, we all have our fashion quirks. But my tennis shoes are white and look kind of awesome with shorts, and my jeans are straight-legged and look fabulous with flats or, say, boots. But when paired with the jeans, the shoes look a bit smooth and glowey, and when paired with the shoes, the jeans look a bit pegged. I mean, ok. Here:

Does that not look douchey to you? The answer is yes. Someone not only stole my boots, but they forced me to look douchey all the way home.

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*snarls*

More Things at Which I Suck, Vol. 229

You may recall that I suck at things, like running errands or giving blood. I am also bad at watching movies (as is Joel, by proxy).

Par example, a few months ago Joel and I wanted to watch Get Smart (online, because we're cheap like that), so we went to his favorite illegal-doings site and downloaded, not Get Smart, but Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control. Which, ok, was kind of hilarious. Some weeks ago, we finally got around to watching Get Smart, but the website only lets you watch 70 minutes or so at a time, so we had to watch in installments. Maddening.

Two weekends ago we went to a James Bond double-header, which was unfortunate in myriad ways. Casino Royale was first, which a) is the better one and b) I've already seen, so I could have slept through it with impunity. Quantum of Solace was, as I'm sure you're aware, much less good, and therefore harder to watch after three-odd hours of theater-movie-watching (you're kind of cold, your ass hurts, you can't get horizontal enough, there's nowhere to put your feet, and the guy next to you smells TERRIBLE). Also, we'd snuck in some Fuze Green Tea Healthy Infusion, which we'd bought on sale for cheap. Because it tastes like horse and sidewalk.

Last weekend we watched The Happening which has Marky Mark wearing a mood ring, saying 'duh,' and married to Zooey Deschanel like he's trying to pretend he's not pushing 40. Also, the movie resolves in much the same way War of the Worlds did, in that it doesn't resolve at all. It will freak your shit out in parts, though, and I would not have watched it had it not been broad daylight.

This will eventually lead to very low self-esteem

Hey, check-a me out! I say stuff.

Also, remember how last semester I would bus out to Burnaby every Wednesday, hit the Walmart hard, watch America's Next Top Model with my sisters-in-law and several bottles of wine, drunk-transit home with my groceries, and then take a semi-sober quiz online for my lame linguistics class?

How things have changed. Now on Wednesdays I go play squash at school, swing by the house to pick up some edibles, whip up dinner for some of Joel's classmates in exchange for their cable and company, and then we all watch Top Model and freely criticize taller, thinner bodies than ours, and make fun of the girl with the epilepsy.

Tyra Banks is my only constant in life.

Not so smart as my phone

Ok, so I took some wicked photos of the UVic bunns the other day (When will she shut up about the bunnies? Ok look. You spend an hour and a half wading through the Parson's Tale in Middle English, and then come out into sunshine and Thumpers and then you shut up about the bunnies) and now I can't get them off of my phone. You will have to imagine.

So there's bunnies, and they're fighting over a carrot, and I get down low to take a picture of them fighting over the carrot, and one of them runs over because he thinks my phone is food, and I get a picture down his nose.

Hilarious!

So now I'm headed home, and on the way I'm all, How many other bunns can I get to think my phone is food?

One. I know, totally anticlimactic. But by this point I was getting to the outer reaches of campus, where all the chary bunns live. Srsly though, these pictures are to smooch. How for can I not get them off my phone? This is ridiculous. What if I'm in the mall and a dog wanders in again (not a word of a lie, if I could send a camera-phone back in time so that I had something to document that mall-walking dog...)?

Maybe I will bluetooth them to Joel's laptop.

Things that I am fond of that are called 'squash'

We are just exiting the season of winter squash, so it sort of feels weird to be blogging about this now. But there are all kinds of things one can do with squash (most of the best things involve roasting), and also I'm starving. There is a small, raw squash sitting on the windowsill and I could probably eat it as is.

In other news, Joel and I have started playing squash. The game. With the tiny black ball, that you hit at the wall really hard. It involves a great deal of running around, more lunging than I'm comfortable with, and (when I play) a whole lot of swearing.

My dad used to play squash (obviously*), and gave me his old racquet, so I feel superbadasscore. Due to all the lunging involved, I have a fine Squash Ass (that is to say, a firm, sore one), and I hit the ball more than I miss it now. I have this sick move where, because I have a terrible backhand, sometimes I'll switch to my left hand at the last second. People who don't know my reasons for why are always really impressed when I do this.

*'Obviously' because he went to college in the 70s. 'Let's check our entrance list here, Mr Plett. Owns at least one pair of indecently short shorts? Check. Plays squash? Check. Can play guitar while strolling the grounds? Check. Looks like you're in, young man.'

Here come the saddlebags!

Poor little blog! I have abandonmented you! But I have been very, very busy.

I mean, first there was Superbowl, which isn't complete without little chocolate-mint-cookie-sandwiches shaped like footballs

and also a football-field bean dip.

And then I made a flan, but not like that time Robyn and I made a low-fat flan (and it was basically a caramel-covered omelette). This was a full-fat flan, and it was delicious.

And then it was Valentine's Day and I made cookies for Joel's class

And then I lapsed into a diabetic coma. But when I came to, I whipped up some individual-sized key lime pies

and then the World's Most Time-Consuming Bars (the recipe for which here, and which were TOTALLY worth the eleventy-one steps)

and also some two-bite brownies (for which no picture, since they look exactly like the ones you buy in the store EXCEPT that the ones you buy in the store don't have a Rolo wedged in the middle).

Also, I learned to play squash.

My paper will write itself while I dither on over here

Those of you lucky enough to be my Facebook BFFs (or FBFFs) may remember that time boo took that awesome, mascara-ridden, seen-my-own-death picture of me and I had it as my profile picture for ages.

And then someone took a terribly un-flattering picture of boo, and she photoshopped the two together to make this piece of deliciousness:

Womb-twins! Anyway, sometimes boo and I will put up the same profile picture so that when we facebook-chat, it looks like one of us is DOMINATING the conversation while the other one is conspicuously silent. I know, hilarious. ANYway, me and boo and Robyn were all facebook-chatting, and we were all, Wouldn't it be funny if we all THREE of us had the same profile picture? Let's find a picture with all of us in it. Isn't any? Let's (by 's I mean boo) photoshop Robyn into a picture of me and boo.

Presto!

My small bird has become a small blue fish. The wonders of technology.

In Which My School Is Ubiquitous, and I Have a Potentially Inappropriate Opinion

Peoples! My school is all OVER the intarwebs these days! By which I mean, in two places.

Firstly, go here to check out our infestation of buns. Seriously, these snuggly wumpkins are everywhere! The day I walk out of class, see a galloping bun and don't think *ahhhhhn* I want to be taken out back and shot.

And then go here to see the unnecessary quotes that I walk by on my way to the changeroom where No One is Ever Naked.

Can we talk about this? Have I been back long enough, or is my second post-haitus-post too soon to be discussing nudity? Because NO ONE IS EVER NAKED IN VICTORIA! And I know, this is not a big deal. But it took me a long time to feel comfortable walking around a changeroom in just my skin, and I'll be damned if this school full of prudes takes that away from me.

So, back when I was going to UBC and swimming all the time in the pool with all the seniors, the changeroom would be full of nakedness both because a.) it's way easier to just shower and then waltz over to your locker without having to swaddle all the time, and b.) seniors, who are the secret nudists. It was weeks before I was comfortable joining in the nude-party, and weeks more before I was ok with having naked-conversations with my favorite old Chinese lady, who always came in just as I was pulling clothes from my locker. (Side note: one time I was late, and I came in just after she came in, and I was all, Hi! And she was all, Oh! I didn't recognise you with clothes on [!]. Also, she referred to my swimsuit as my 'bathing costume.' I wanted to take her home.)

So now I'm at UVic, and its as though we're in high school again. Everyone comes back from the shower carrying their gym clothes, and wrapped in a towel under which they will dress. Which, fine. If they want to do all that extra work, it's no skin off my nose. BUT I'M STARTING TO FEEL SELF-CONSCIOUS!

This isn't actually going anywhere. I've sort of just been storing this up in my mind for the past few weeks, and I needed someone to tell me that yes, this is weird. Maybe it's the lack of seniors, or the overall youth of UVic students. Maybe it has to do with the infestation of buns. I don't know.

Rrrrrrrrrreturnment!

Other blog! Hello, you. I know, once my computer went down I never even fake-updated you from Joel's laptop, and even after I got a new(ish) one, I've sort of been ignoring you. But I have a paper to write, and as per usual, I've come to you to kill some time.

SO! What has happened since we last chatted? The dishwasher repairman came, and I almost offered him my first-born. Our dishwasher here is the He-man of dishwashers. I don't pre-rinse nothing.

Um...Joel had his birthday, and I bought him a George Forman Grill (among other things) and now I can't stop grilling sandwiches. Seriously, EVERYTHING tastes better grilled. Also, it squanches the bread down if you have tall bread, and makes the whole thing easier to eat. Also, it melts your cheese. The other day I made grilled garlic toasts, and they were nommable.

School is going well. I have one prof for 2 classes, and I find out after this that he's a bit of an arbitrary marker, so I submitted my first assignment with fear and trepidation because I knew that whatever mark I got on that would be the final grade I'd be getting in both classes. One assignment from each class and two identical marks later, I'm feeling ok about things.

I am writing a paper.

Did I mention that our car broke down? So, the car broke down and then Joel replaced some things and then it ran like the wind, and then we had to go to this conference in Calgary and we offered this other girl a ride to the airport, and about eight seconds before we were supposed to leave, the car broke down again. So Joel ran all over the map buying new parts and replacing them, and Asia and I looked up bus routes only to find that we'd already missed the last bus to the airport (we will talk about the Victoria transit system later, but for now know that I am unimpressed), and so we had to Phone a Friend and beg for a ride there. We got back from Calgary a few days later at around 7 pm, only to discover that the last bus from the airport to the Park 'n' Ride (where another bus would take us to another bus, which would take us home) had already left. WTF? Planes come in later than 7 all the time. H'anyvays, we were going to walk the half hour or so to the Park 'n' Ride, but some guy saw us trucking along the highway with all of our bags in tow, and picked us up, and THEN drove us all the way home. To our house. Zoot!

UVic is overrun with bunnies. Seriously, this will never get old. I come out of class...bunnies! I come out of the library...bunnies! I walk to the bus stop...bunnies! They are so tame, you could pet one (or punt one, as your preferences lie).

UVic has 4 microwaves on the entire campus, and they are all in one place. Which means that if I'm at Point A and want to microwave my soup before my class at Point B, I have to go to Point X. UVic kind of makes no sense.

UVic is a microcosm of Victoria, which also makes no sense. The roads change names every three blocks, and change direction every five. The roadmaps look less like spiderwebs and more like piles of silly string. I...am unimpressed.

The weather continues to be impressive. It has rained two days out of the twenty-seven that we have lived here, and then this morning it snowed for an hour and has been sunny ever since. I anticipate spring coming in eight seconds or so.

September, this was for you.

Enviro-friendly fail

For the first time EVER in our four days here, Victoria has let us down. Joel and I drove to the nearest Superstore to do our re-stock-the-house Big Shop (meat, condiments, razor blade re-fills, all the expensive stuff), and forgot to bring our selection of re-usable bags, which we definitely have because we're, like, totally all about the environment and stuff. You know who else is totally all about the environment? The city of Victoria!! So much so that their Superstore doesn't even OFFER plastic bags. Which we found out after we'd dragged our overflowing cart and two handbaskets full of carefully-chosen foodstuffs to the counter.

And ok, I understand. If you don't have plastic bags, people have to bring their own bags, and the Earth will be so happy with you that it will let you get to second base. I get it! But it was SO MUCH WORK loading every single item back into our cart, and then into our trunk, and then out of the trunk into a pile on the kitchen floor.

The upshot of all this is that we will never.make.this mistake.again.

I may never leave

HA! It's blizzarding where you are, innit? Wish you were here, don't you? In the Land of Eternal Summer? At Mile 0, where it's never snowing and always Christmas?

Where wild bunns snorfle your hands?

Where the manager of the Boston Pizza gives you free toques, just 'cause?

Friends, you should all come visit. We will barbecue on our deck. It's warm(ish) out.

More adventures! Or, We move to Victoria!

12:49 a.m., January 1, 2009 - Leave New Year's party to find 3 inches of fresh snow on car. Scoff, assuming that it will blow away in the night and that we'll be left to move to Victoria in peace.

7:02 - awake to find 3 MORE inches of fresh snow. Gnash teeth.

7:37 - get stuck getting out of driveway. Am an excellent car-pusher.

8:22 - are told by friendly talk radio several times not to be on roads unless strictly necessary. Are told that driving conditions are slippery and frozen east of the bridge, and slippery and frozen west of the bridge. Are on roads, must cross bridge.

9:45 - are still on roads. Longest Chilliwack-to-Vancouver jaunt in history.

10:02 - are throwing last-minute, uncategorizable items into last-minute boxes. Will end up with approximately six 'last-minute' boxes.

10:58 - run out of paper towels. Lone rag used to clean remaining quarter of house. Results largely satisfactory.

11:34 - truck is packed. House is cleaned. Keys are dropped into mail slot.

12:05 - make ferry in good time. Eyeball mounds of gelato, eat food brought from home.

12:45 - boarding begins for 1:00 ferry.

12:46 - hybrid in front of us fails to start due to dead battery.

12:48 - feel severe Good Samaritan guilt, offer to help dead hybrid.

12:54 - hybrid starts.

12:58 - are one of last cars onto ferry.

2:03 - arrive in Schwartz Bay.

2:28 - arrive in Victoria, land of Eternal Summer. Distinct lack of snow on ground.

2:31 - unexplicable box spring takes up half of living room. Moving in commences around box spring.

5:09 - last box is brought in.

5:10 - order pizza from dangerously-close Dominos.

5:37 - unpacking commences.

8:48 - trot over to Starbucks for a pick-me-up.

10:18 - as much unpacking as can be done (due to unfinished nature of house) is done.

10:21 - watch Aladdin.

10:54 - pick-me-up fails, Aladdin fails. Fall into freshly-made bed.

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.