Not To Be Trusted With Knives

This is just a test

2010-03-03T13:01:00.001-08:00

IMG_0337
Originally uploaded by Beth77

2008-01-18T22:59:00.000-08:00

So. I'm finally getting with the times and blowing this popstand otherwise known as Blogger. It's sort of like being called up from the farm team to play with the pros. Come on over and join me on my new Wordpress blog:

http://drbethsnow.wordpress.com/

Random Ramblings of a Very Tired Beth

2008-01-17T23:40:00.000-08:00

Typing this out on my Palm Pilot on the bus on the way to a free screening of Cloverfield. Won't have time to write blog posting when I get home as I have to finish my lecture for tomorrow. My wicked cool lecture about the BC Nutrition Survey, about measurement and about dietary assessment. But I'm so very, very tired...

So, some random thoughts. A recent study found that 75% of people in the study who called themselves vegetarians ate animal flesh sometimes. wtf? They put new floors in the hallway to the caf at my work. The new floors muffle the sound significantly compared to the old floors. I'm thinking they put the new flooring in because my new boots are like the loudest things ever when I walk down the hall in them. My ski buddy busted her knee & is out for the season; now looking for people with whom to ski. Is it wrong that I'm not done my lecture, but I decided what I'm going to wear to my class tomorrow 5 days ago?

2008-01-16T07:55:00.000-08:00

After a bit of a hiatus, Touch You Last has brought you the next installment of "Inside the Blogger's Studio," wherein TYLer Dave interviews the peeps on his blogroll. He kicked off the series with an interview of 'lil ole me and now his latest interview is with Jorge¹ from Barking Space. I provide you with this link because, well, because I think it's a funny interview. And because I'm insanely jealous that I didn't get to do an audio interview². I know I live on the other side of the country, but we could have done a double-ender³.

¹Pronounced like "George," not like "Hor-hey," just FYI.
²And from the sounds of it, only Jorge is going to get the audio treatment.
²For the record, a "double-ended" is *not* what you think it is. Get your mind out of the gutter!

Meet Marla

2008-01-15T21:19:00.000-08:00

As you know, I experience great difficulty in coming up with good names for things. But when I got this smoking hot new iPod for my birthday^1,2, I came up with a name rather quickly. In honour of my third annual 29th birthday, I watched Fight Club, one of my most favourite movies ever, and it became clear that my iPod could have only one name. Allow me to introduce you to Marla:

Since I now have about sixty trillion terabytes of space on my fancy new iPod, I added a whole bunch o'podcasts:

But I still have fifty-nine trillion, nine hundred and ninety-nine billion, nine hundred and nintey-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine terabytes (give or take), so if you have a favourite podcast that you think I should check out, let me know.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go print up a label with my name and phone number on it to stick onto Marla, in case she goes missing, so that whoever finds her can return her to me. And I will be printing said label on my fancy schmancy printer. Which I need to review here in blogland soon. I don't want to spoil this upcoming printer review, but suffice it to say, I'm disappointed that the printer doesn't attach to my vibrator.

¹Along with one of those adapter thingys³ that you plug into your iPod and then you can play your iPod over the car radio, which is wicked awesome for when I'm driving to hockey games.
²Thanks again, Giver of Birthday Gifts.
³Not one of these iPod adaptor thingys.

Clean Off Your Desk Day... Not So Much

2008-01-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

In defiance of Clean Off Your Desk Day, and because it for some unknown reason seemed to alleviate my anger at not being able to find a very important set of papers on my desk, I took these pictures of my office just for you, gentle blog reader:

I'd like to say that there is a system to this mess. You know, like ordered chaos. A method to my madness. Like it's one of those messes where it looks like a mess from the outside by the creator of said mess knows exactly where everything is in this shitstorm. I'd like to say those things, but if I did, I'd be lying. Sometimes I have to call my cell phone in order to find it on my desk. Seriously.

The Naughty but Nice Sex Show. And I did I mention they had lube?

2008-01-13T21:19:00.000-08:00

This weekend was the Taboo Naughty but Nice Sex Show. It's held every year and I've always wanted to go and so yesterday I finally got around to doing just that. And, I have to say, I was kind of disappointed. I'm not sure what I expected exactly. I guess I just expected more variety. Every single booth seemed to have the same thing - if you were in the market for lube, vibrators, lube, a sexy Catholic school girl outfit or lube, you were in luck. But how many vibrator-lube-sexyCatholicschoolgirloutfit-and-lube booths can one person really look at in an afternoon?

The show is supposed to be like a trade show. And aren't trade shows supposed to be about showing the newest ¹ innovations? I have to say that, based on this show, there really isn't any innovation in vibrator technology... with the notable exception of the vibrator that attaches to your iPod and then vibrates in time with your music. Seriously.

Other "highlights"² of the show include:

A show on the main stage that I didn't actually watch, but more was subjected to as I walked by. A show by Blyssful Productions - "Home of Blyss, the World's Only Dominatrix Clown." You know, Blyss, there's a reason why there aren't any other dominatrix clowns in the world. Because who the f@$#^ wants to watch a dominatrix clown???
At one booth, they were selling what were essential baby wipes for grown ups. The product was not so much what was interesting here as the explanation about this product's usefulness given by the saleswoman. And I quote: "These are great to keep in your car. You know, like if you have a quickie and he comes inside you, these are great for cleaning up." That's just not something you hear everyday. She also explained that they smell really good. Because you know, you smell bad. Similarly there was a cream to help "tighten" you up³. Can't you just see some guy buying that for his girlfriend? "Here honey, I bought you this cream 'cuz you are kinda loose. Oh ya, and you smell bad, so I bought these wipes."

All in all, I'd have to say that it would be better to spend an afternoon having sex than going to this show.

¹I've never been to a trade show, but that's what I always thought they were about.
²And by highlights I mean, um, lowlights.
³Honestly, I'm not making any of this up!

Because I have the sense of humour of a 12 year old boy, I share this with you

2008-01-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

glumbert - How to taunt a hockey player

2008-01-12T10:41:00.000-08:00

The class I'm teaching is a nutrition course. The classroom is in one of the engineering buildings. As I was setting up my laptop for my lecture yesterday, with the students from the previous class filing out of the room and my students filing in, one of the students from the previous class came up to me and asked bewilderedly, "What class is this?"

"Nutritional Assessment," I replied, somewhat confused as to why he looked so confused.

"Oh. It's just in engineering classes there aren't usually so many..." His voice trailed off.

"Ah. Not usually so many girls. You are wondering where all these women are coming from!"

* * * * *

Overall, the first lecture seemed to go well. It was waaaaay too short, as I suck at estimating how long it will take me to present stuff. But it's not like anyone is going to complain about leaving early on a Friday. Plus, it gave students lots of time to come up and chat with me, which several did. I love to see that kind of enthusiasm for learning!

Since this was the first class, it was just introductory/refresher stuff, so I was able to get through the material at a fairly rapid pace, as it wasn't the first time most of the students had seen this stuff. I'm hoping that I was able to convey my passion for the material by the high energy style. Or something like that. All I know what the I was fucking exhausted by the time I got home!

The rest of the classes will be more challenging, as more of the material will be new to them (and to me!).

First Day of School

2008-01-11T17:39:00.000-08:00

Picture it, a few years from now:

Person 1: UBC, 2008. You were in my class!
Me: I was your teacher.¹

Just like when you are a student, being the instructor brings up all the same insecurities:

Will I know enough? Have I forgotten everything I've learned before?
Will the other kids like me?
What will I wear?

I had the last one covered at least²:

May I direct your attention to my shiny new boots, which I bought to replace my beloved old boots, but that I can actually wear to such things as work and teaching, unlike my new eBay boots.

¹Good old '80s (or was it '90s) TV commercials!
²My head is cut off in this photo because I looked terrible! My face looked fat (because I wasn't doing my patented head tilt) and my horrible teeth were showing.

on robson

2008-01-10T09:26:00.001-08:00

on robson
Originally uploaded by random dude

Dave, I saw this photo and thought of you.

When are you and Sarah coming back to Vancuover to visit me?

couch potato

2008-01-09T23:49:00.000-08:00

Since some people around here don't seem to think that pasting a screen shot of the Cypress Mountain website is a sufficient blog posting¹and some people seem to think I'm not slothful enough⁰, and *despite* the fact that I'm totally exhausted and should be sleeping right now, I give you this blog posting (a) to ensure that no one tries to claim I missed a day of posting and (b) it was already three quarters written.

In the last month, I have watched approximately 4.5 seasons of various television shows. The breakdown goes something like this:

Lost - Season 1

Lost - Season 2

Lost - Season 3

Veronica Mars - most of Season 1

Heroes² - about half of Season 1

In my ongoing efforts to be the last person on earth to report on things⁷, I really liked Lost. Various people have told me that they like one season, but didn't like another one, but I've really liked all of it so far⁸ I especially enjoyed having the luxury of chainsmoking the episodes, as that show is (a) so damn interconnected and (b) full of cliffhangers, it helps me keep plotlines and characters straight and I like finding out right away what happens after any given cliffhanger.

VM Season 1 is a damn good mystery (well, a bunch of damn good mysteries really) and I can't wait to get to the end of the season to see whodunit. But I won't get to do that 'til next week 'cuz this week has been crazy busy what with all the time I'm spending panicking about my first lecture on Friday.

Heroes is quite enjoyable, but I have stay here and now for all the Internets to read, I cannot - I repeat, CANNOT - stand the part at the beginning and end when Mohinder does his voiceovers. You can tell that they think it sounds cool, but if listen to what he's actually saying, it never makes any sense. Gah!! On the bright side, the show is entertaining, there's lots of mystery (and who doesn't like mystery?) and, as of yet, there are no spiders in it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to sleep. Like right freaking now!

⁰my blog readers are starting to get so demanding, aren't they?
¹ which it *so* is, by the way
²In HD³. And Surround Sound. God damn, I like HD with Surround Sound.
³Speaking of HD, if there is anything better in life that Canucks games in HD, I haven't experienced it⁴.
⁴Well, other than the obvious. But HD hockey is pretty spectacular too!⁵
⁵My sister and her boyfriend were ordering a big TV when I was in Toronto with their Christmas gift money and I said to my sis, "Whatever you do, don't let "Grampa"⁶ watch hockey in high def on your TV, or he'll be moving into your house before you know it." My niece, hearing this, exclaimed with a great deal of concern in her voice, "But Grampa likes hockey!"
⁶We refer to my dad as "Grampa" now, because Madeline is, of course, the ultimate frame of reference.
⁷Everyone wants to bring you the breaking news, but it takes a real superstar, such as myself, to report on things years after they ceased to be news.
⁸With the notable exception of 2 scenes in the Nicki & Paulo episode that contained friggin' spiders.

Can't Blog. Skiing.

2008-01-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

Will report in later.

T minus 3 days....

2008-01-08T17:42:00.001-08:00

When I was in Ottawa, Sarah and Dave gave me this envelope, which is not to be opened until my birthday¹:

After shaking it, squeezing it, poking it and holding it up to a light, I have determined that it is not a kitten, a puppy or a Smart Car. Beyond that, I'm not sure what it could be.

In other news, having three jobs, while playing hockey once a week and having a one-night-a-week ski pass², makes a person very tired. You heard it here first, folks.

¹I tried to open it when they gave it to me, but Sarah was having none of that.
²I haven't even used my ski pass yet, but I'm going to tomorrow, which means that I've been scrambling to get my lecture ready in one less day than I would otherwise.

WTF

2008-01-07T19:55:00.000-08:00

Did you know that women's ski jumping isn't an Olympic sport? Did you know that there were any Olympic sports where men can play but women can't?

I had no idea until I read this news article and this news article. Apparently, female ski jumpers filled a gender discrimination complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission back in September and a decision is expected soon.

Remind me again what year this is? 1908?

In related news, what would possess someone to name their child "Dick Pound"?

2008-01-06T20:27:00.000-08:00

They weren't kidding when they called these habanero potato chips "Death Rain." I think they gave my internal organs third-degree burns.

This concludes my blog posting for today. You can blame the shortness of my blog posting on whomever scheduled my hockey game for 10:15 p.m. on a Sunday night. I don't know who they are, but they better hope I don't find them.

One Missed Movie

2008-01-05T08:37:00.000-08:00

This Margaret Cho vehicle had such promise - remakes of J-horrors usually scare the bejesus out of me. The Ring gave me nightmares¹. The Grudge freaked me the fuck out as well. One Missed Call - oh how I wish it had been One Missed Movie.

There were definitely a few points where this movie made me jump². But overall it was just cheesy. Cheesy cheesy cheesy. And plot holes. And did I mention the cheesiness? I'm sooo glad this was a free sneak preview and that I didn't actually have to pay for this. I cannot stress this enough - even for a free movie, it was not worth the price of admission.

What the hell was Margaret Cho thinking when she agreed to be in this movie? Did she lose a bet? I bet she lost a bet.

¹Yes, that's nightmares, plural.
²And, at one point, scream. But that was totally because Kalev screamed and scared me. Which he will now add a comment to deny and say that I screamed first, but it's totally not true.

My Apologies to Catrina

2008-01-04T16:10:00.000-08:00

Last night, I got a phone message for someone named Catrina. As we know, my name is not, nor ever has been, Catrina. Clearly, this was from someone dialing a wrong number. Unfortunately for Catrina, I have a slightly odd message on my voicemail. My message goes something like this:

"Hi. You've reached the voicemail of Dr. Beth. The doctor can't come to the phone right now as she's doing something very, very important. Please leave a message and she'll get back to you."

The message I received last night went something like this:

"Um, hi Catrina. Uh, interesting message. This is Tom from [unintelligible mumble]. Call me right away. I hope I didn't interrupt surgery."

I'm guessing, based on Tom's tone of voice, that Catrina is not a doctor. But didn't it strike him as extra odd that she referred to herself as "Dr. Beth"?

And speaking of messages I didn't want to get, I recently was able to get my old UBC email address back, what with the teaching there and all. And I discovered that, in my absence, crap that I'd subscribed to at that email address was still being sent there (despite the account being non-functioning for a year). And today I got a reminder from BirthdayAlarm.com, a website that reminds you of people's birthdays and suchlike that I signed up for ages ago:

"Reminder: It is [my ex-husband's name]'s anniversary on Saturday, January 12th."

As in, what used to be our anniversary. Like when we are married. Which we are not. The extra annoying thing is, I hadn't even remembered it until I got that reminder. Which is an accomplishment, as Jan 12 happens to be the day after my very own birthday, so I thought it might be difficult to forget it. Which it wasn't. Until I got that email. Meh. Anyhoo, I went to BirthdayAlarm.com and deleted that - we have Facebook to do all our reminding for us now, right?

Give me a P!

2008-01-04T10:57:00.000-08:00

Give me a P!
Give me an A!
Give me an N!
Give me an I!
Give me a C!

The class I'm teaching starts in 1 week!

The Cake, the Bad and the Ugly.

2008-01-03T00:28:00.000-08:00

How many times do I have to say this? SPIDERS DO NOT BELONG IN MY HOUSE!!!

This morning when I turned on the tap in my bathroom, I discovered one hella big motherfucking daddy long legs spider¹ sitting directly under the spout, so that when the water turned on, the motherfucking big spider came crawling out over the top of the spout²! After much screaming and throwing things at it on my part, the monster got what it deserved - death and a watery grave in the sewage system of Vancouver. Motherfucker.

And speaking of scary, I'm going to see this horror movie tonight. Sneak preview. You know you are jealous. Admit it.

Also, there is cake at my work today. It's one of my co-workers' last day of work at our office today and, well, we use just about any excuse to have cake. There is truly a lot of cake in my life.

In summary: spiders bad, cake good. Cake with spiders in it - very, very bad.

¹In keeping with my long-standing policy on refusing to look at pictures of spiders, I am not linking this to its Wikipedia page.
²Even just typing that out gives me the creeps!

Yup, I'm Home

2008-01-02T08:32:00.000-08:00

Fortunately for me, I'll take 9 degrees and rainy¹ over -11 degrees and sunny any day!

¹I'm not sure how this is possible, but I just noticed that I didn't have a tag for "rain" on my blog². How, exactly, one could blog for 2.5 years from the city of Vancouver *without* having a tag for "rain" is beyond me. But there you have it.
²As you can see, this situation has now been rectified.

New Year's Resolution, Take 2

2008-01-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year's all y'all. My New Year's was rung in in low key fashion, having caught some sort of nasty virus from, no doubt, germy Ontarians on my flight home to Vancouver. I'm sitting in bed, about to go off to dreamland, but *had* to blog today because I've decided to make the same resolution this year as I made last year:

"...to post something on my blog every single day of the year. Because god knows I need to be on the internet more than I already am."

Last year I made it for 88 days before I missed one. Do you think I can top that this year?

Goodnight, Sweet Monkey

2007-12-30T07:06:00.000-08:00

My sister's cat, Monkey, died yesterday. This is a picture of Monkey from better days. She never much liked anyone other than my sister and my niece, but one time I tricked her into thinking I was my sister and she let me pet her. She will be missed.

Rest in peace, little Monkey.

2007-12-29T15:07:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this on the train from Ottawa to Toronto. I'm too cheap to pay to use the VIA Rail internet access¹, so I'll post it later. But there's an electrical outlet at every set of seats, so I can actually use my laptop for the whole trip and not worry about the battery dying. It's sweet to be here in the future.

I put together the syllabus for the course I'm teaching in January and gone so far as to start putting together my first lecture. And I've even jotted down a few ideas for assignments². So I feel like I've actually accomplished something, sort of. So now I can goof off and blog and perhaps take a wee nap as I'm kinda sleepy³. However, I am suffering from a wicked case of writer's block⁴, so nap time it is! Night!

¹but it's nice to know that it's available in case I some day make enough money to both buy a train ticket *and* pay for Internet access.
²It's my first time teaching this course and I'm not in love with the assignments that were given last year, so I'm trying to come up with new ones.
³This may or may not have anything to do with staying up 'til 2 a.m. watching Veronica Mars.
⁴Which may or may not have anything to do with being distracted by the teenagers sitting next to me, yammering loudly about how they are in the cadets. It's all "drinking game" this and "drinking on army base" that.

2007-12-28T19:19:00.000-08:00

Either Ottawa hates¹ or loves me so much that it really, really wants me have a reason to return, because everything we tried to do today was a no go.

First, we couldn't go to the Diefenbunker as the tour was all booked up when we called to make a reservation. Then, The Green Door was inexplicably closed when we tried to go there for dinner. Bah!

It worked out in the end though. We hung out at Sarah's parents place, where we had lunch, chatted for a bit, and then Sarah's mom gave me three (3!) pairs of shoes²! Then we watched more Veronica Mars and we ended up going to another restaurant, a veggie Thai place, that made most delicious food, for dinner. And, honestly, Sarah & Dave are just fun to hang out with, no matter what you are doing. And now I have an excuse to come back to O-town - 'cuz I totally need to check out the Diefenbunker!

¹Since they put a giant spider in front of the National Gallery, I'm leaning towards the former.
²And you all know how desperately I need more shoes!

Choose My Own Adventure, Ottawa Style!

2007-12-27T22:07:00.000-08:00

For my Christmas present, Sarah and Dave offered me a "choose my own Ottawaian adventure." In the interest me not having to carry a bunch o' stuff back on the plane, they gave me some options of fun things to do in Ottawa, including:

Canada Science and Technology Museum
Museums of Civilization and/or War
The Green Door vegetarian restaurant
watching the Senators game¹
the Diefenbunker, Canada's Cold War Museum
National Gallery²
chainsmoking episodes of Veronica Mars

I chose: most of the above. I'm unable to go to the National Gallery due to the fact that they have sculpture of a giant spider outside. And you know how I feel about spiders. Museums of Civilization and/or War are out because, um, I'm neither civilized nor war mongering.

Today, Dave had to work today in order to keep us in the style to which we have become accustomed while Sarah & I picked up the cats from the cat spa³, then went to the Canada Science and Technology Museum. The C.S.T.M. kinda made us feel like Canada hasn't done a whole hell of a lot in science and technology that isn't related to snow and/or hockey. Although we did learn that Ernest Rutherford did the work which earned him his 1908 Nobel Prize while in Canada. Which, you know, you think they would have mentioned when we learned about the Rutherford model of the atom in high school and university chemistry classes, given that we went to high school and university in Canada. But whatevs.

After the C.S.T.M., we came home and Sarah made us some super delish veggie sushi. Just like The Eatery, but with much better service. We chain smoked the first four episodes of Veronica Mars, which Sarah has been telling me about forever, but which I had never watched before. Now I'm totally into the mystery and need - and I mean NEED - to find out whodunit. Then we watched the Sens game, followed by the Canucks game - both which had happy endings. And now I be tired. But before I head to bed, I give you me, in a stupid large snowbank. With a pink hat on:

¹although not live, since it's sold out. But with PVR-y goodness, we can watch it without pesky commercials
²I can't link to this site, because I am afraid that a picture of the giant spider will be on their site.
³Where they had been living a life of cat luxury while S & D were away for a few days of family Christmas visiting.

Reporting from the Nation's Capital

2007-12-26T21:29:00.001-08:00

I'm now on the second leg of my Christmas tour - at Sarah & Dave's place in Ottawa. Tired and should go to bed soon, but first I thought I'd show y'all a few Christmas photos.

Like this one, a picture of my niece with the stuffed Quatchi¹ that I gave her:

And here, she's tucking Quatchi into the new bed she got for Xmas:

And this is my sister's boyfriend, my niece and I, looking out the window of her new playhouse. The house is about 3 feet tall², and was packed with all the toys she got for Christmas, which she carefully placed into this house before insisting we join her in said house. Translation: it was rather crowded.

OK, Beth sleep now. Beth will blog more coherently tomorrow.

Update: For the record, I'm in Ontario, but my blog timestamps using Pacific Time. So I'm really not going to bed at 9:40 p.m.

¹Aunt Beth, spreading the love of Quatchi eastward!
²Disclaimer: I am completely useless at estimating heights.

Happy Holiday

2007-12-25T10:59:00.000-08:00

The Flying Spaghetti Monster wishes you all a Happy Holiday!

My sister's boyfriend, Jeff, made this for me. Apparently they came up with this idea a year ago and have been giddy with excitement about making it for me ever since. So. Friggin. Cool.

Definitely To Be Trusted with Gingerbread

2007-12-24T21:33:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, gentle blog readers.

I hope Santa brings y'all something awesome for Christmas.

Peanuts

2007-12-22T15:05:00.000-08:00

So, it appears that my blog will now be an aunty blog¹, at least until I head to Ottawa on the 26th. I can't help it though - my niece is just so damn cute! I'll try to throw in the occasional cougar reference, lustful thoughts about the Canucks or snarky comment about David Emerson that "Not to Be Trusted with Knives" readers have come to expect², so as not to lose my readership completely as I oooh and ahhh over my niece's brilliance.

Today, we baked cookies. In our pyjamas³. These are to be the "best cookies that I ate in the whole world." I think the secret is that my niece was rolling the dough "back and forest." Right now the cookies are cooling and my niece is napping, hence the opportunity to do the blogging, although I should be cleaning up the kitchen, which is a right disaster. There was also a pre-baking song and dance - the song went something like "I can do it all by myself! But sometimes it's OK to ask your parents for help if you need help because sometimes you are too tiny and you can't do it but it's OK because you can ask for help to get some milk and you can feed your pets if you have pets at home I have two cats at my home and they are named Pakita and Monkey and I can feed them but sometimes it's OK to ask for help from your parents." And the song must be sung while shaking maracas, must be sung completely out of tune and must continue on until Aunt Beth nearly collapses from exhaustion with all the dancing around the kitchen. I have no idea where the hell kids get that kind of energy!

But the really funny thing she said³, I wasn't actually there to hear. She went up to my sister last night and said, "Girls have vaginas. Boys have peanuts."

¹Not unlike "mommy" bloggers, just with less responsibility.
²I'm on vacation so, much to the disappointment of my email subscribing friend, I won't be talking about thigh highs.
³My pyjamas are hospital scrubs. They are very comfy.
⁴Are you totally sick of this yet? Is anyone still reading?

I Have A Lot of Cake in My Life

2007-12-21T13:56:00.000-08:00

Did I ever mention that my niece is the most brilliant, most adorable child ever to walk the face of the Earth?

Last night she told me a story. "Once up on a time there was a little girl named Aunt Beth and she had blue eyes and a black and silver shiny necklace. And she had a zipper that went up and hid her necklace and then down and you could see her necklace." Then the up and down of the zipper part of the story repeated for about a half an hour. I think this may have been related to her desire to avoid bedtime.

She also told me about the three birthday cakes she had this year: a flower one at her party with her dad, a Scooby Doo one when they went to visit my aunts & uncles in Montreal and a horse one at her party with her mom. "On my next birthday, I want a cow cake. And the next one, I want a sheep cake. And the next one I want a moose cake. And the next one, I want a snowman cake. [thougthful pause] I have a lot of cake in my life."

Staying at my sister's new place, my bed is a futon mattress on the floor of my niece's room. My sister said to her, "When you get up in the morning, be careful not to step on Aunt Beth." "I won't step on Aunt Beth's bones," she says, "It's not nice to step on people's

When my niece finally went to bed, she wanted everyone else to go to bed too. We told her we wished that we could be so luck as to go to bed, but we had to stay up and do laundry. Oh poor us! We may have neglected to mention that doing laundry involves about 30 seconds of work and 3 hours of Guitar Hero¹.

¹I have never played Guitar Hero before and I must say that I suck pretty bad. It took me about 27 attempts to get past the first song². My sister, on the other hand, kicked Slash's ass in a battle. Rock on, Fussness Business³.
²I did, however, rock at "Hit Me With Your Best Shot."
³"Fussness Business" being the name of my sister's band in Guitar Hero. My band is named "Rogue Scientist."

Double Think

2007-12-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

I have been telling myself for weeks that I have a good 5 hour flight to Toronto during which to start planning my course (the one that starts in January). I have also been telling myself that the reason I like to take the red eye flight is that I can sleep on the plane and thus don't feel like I've lost a whole day due to traveling¹. It only occurred for me yesterday evening as I was packing for my 11:50 p.m. flight that I can't do both of these things.

So, which of these did I end up doing on the flight? Neither. I spent most of the time chatting with the very friendly and very entertaining girl who was sitting next to me². A girl who just so happened to have seen this picture of me from last year's Northern Voice conference the just other day. Small freaking world.

¹It's about a 4.5 hr flight, plus a 3 hour time difference.
²Although I did sleep for about an hour, as we started to watch the in-flight movie³, which seemed entertaining, but apparently not enough to keep me awake at 2 a.m.
³Ratatouille.

Why Do I Find This Hard to Believe?

2007-12-18T12:50:00.000-08:00

Just received this message in my Facebook inbox:

Attention all Facebook membeRs.

Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,There have been many
members complaining that Facebookis becoming very slow.Record shows that the
reason isthat there are too many non-active Facebook membersAnd on the other
side too many new Facebook members.We will be sending this messages around to
see if theMembers are active or not,If you're active please sendto other users
using Copy+Paste to show that you are activeThose who do not send this message
within 2 weeks,The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more
space,If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until
then send this message to all your friends and make sure you sendthis message to
show me that your active and not deleted.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg

Call me crazy, but don't we all know that Facebook tracks everything you do and has a wealth of information on our every move? Why would they need me to send an email and then have to check every email to see if this specific one had been sent to see if my account is "active"? Don't they already know that I've posted on your wall, bit your zombie and Scrabbled your Scrabulous?
And isn't Facebook keeping every piece of data ever entered for some nefarious, but as of yet unspecified, reason? Why would they make me sign over the rights to my every status update, book preference, top friend, picture and first born child only to then want to delete it?
Isn't the whole point of Facebook to have as many people on it as possible? Why would they want to delete people? More people on Facebook = more ad revenue, no?
Speaking of revenue, you really expect us to believe that Facebook wants donations?
And what gives with the weird capitalizations and punctuation errors?

OK, clearly, I have way too much time on my hands today. It's not like I'm leaving on a jet plane tonight and haven't packed, wrapped my presents or planned the course I have to start teaching in January.¹

¹I had a nightmare on Sunday about this. I was in my classroom for my first lecture and I hadn't prepared and I had NO idea what I was supposed to be teaching. Perhaps I sign that I should learn the stuff I'm supposed to be teaching, eh?

The easiest donation you'll make this holiday season

2007-12-17T09:58:00.001-08:00

For every person that views this e-card: http://wwe5.bchydro.com/2007holiday/, BC Hydro is donating (up to $5,000) to BC Children's Hospital. It's a pretty cool little e-card - check it out and it will be the easiest donation you make this holiday season!

The Great Convexity 2.0

2007-12-13T17:39:00.000-08:00

A while ago, based on a suggestion from JB, I dubbed my work computer The Great Convexity. Two days ago, I.T. peeps came to my office and took away the Great Convexity, leaving me with a younger, sexier model. At first, T.G.C.2.0 seemed great. Bigger monitor that like swivels and goes up and down. Optical mouse. Keyboard that isn't full of crumbs. But then I discovered that:

I can no longer set my own picture as my desktop background. I used to have this photo as my desktop; now I can only use some lame Microsoft background images¹.
My entire email archive appears to have been wiped out.
My new computer sounds like it has a colony of hissing wolf spiders in it.

On the plus side, I just used a program for uploading some files to my website and discovered that I appear now to have Java. Welcome me to the 21st Century².

¹After I wrote that line, but before I published this posting, I was bitching about this photo isue to the admin assistant and she told me that we can get around this by using an online pic. For some reason, I can't right-click and "Set image as background" with an image I have on my computer, but I can do that with a photo that's online. And fortunately, this photo is online! Problem solved! But the point is that I shouldn't *have* to do that!
².The down side of this is that Scrabulous might work on my work computer now. I've avoided checking because I refuse to play Scrabble on my computer at work. Refuse!

Not to Be Trusted to Click a Link

2007-12-12T22:16:00.000-08:00

Apparently not everyone cares to hear about my thigh highs. Today I received this lovely message over email:

WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE GOD DAMN NOT TO BE TRUSTED WITH KNIVES EMAILS I KEEP GETTING??????????
HO THE FUCK ARE YOU????
STOP SENDING ME YOUR FUCKING USELESS STUPID FUCKING EMAILS....I DONT GIVE A CRAP ABOUT YOUR HOLY MOTHER FUCKING NYLONS
YOU CAN SHOVE EM STRAIGHT UP UR ASS YOU STUPID FUCK
TAKE ME OFF YOUR FUCKING EMAIL LIST

Below this message was my latest blog posting, followed by this:

You are subscribed to email updates from Not To Be Trusted With Knives To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email Delivery powered by FeedBurner
Inbox too full? Subscribe to the feed version of Not To Be Trusted With Knives in a feed reader.
If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: Not To Be Trusted With Knives, c/o FeedBurner, 20 W Kinzie, 9th Floor, Chicago IL USA 60610

Perhaps if this individual took the time to READ instead of yelling and swearing at me, they would notice the lines saying "You are subscribed to email updates" and "To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now." I can see how it would be difficult to notice the link saying "unsubscribe now," seeing as it is underlined and in bright blue. Hell, there's even instructions on how to unsubscribe via snail mail, if you prefer.

Not having much faith in this person's ability to understand this very complicated procedure, rather than reply I've clicked the link to unsubscribe them. But they are now going to seriously miss out on some killer nylon stories.

Thigh Highs

2007-12-11T22:14:00.000-08:00

Remember last year when I bitched about nylons, specifically the fact that they are way too big for lil' ole' 5 ft tall me? Sarah provided me with some size "A" nylons (which apparently you have to be a Costco member to buy), which were an improvement over the size "B" ones I am forced to buy at any store to which I have access. But they were still a wee bit too big. So I've come up with a new and improved solution.

Thigh highs.

The nice things about thigh highs are:

although, due to my shortness, they are still too long for me, that just means that they come up higher on my thigh than the sort of mid-thigh location that they appear to come up to on the model's thigh in the picture on the packaging. Which is much better than full nylons, where the nylons totally bunch up at the top.
when I put a hole through a thigh high, I only have to throw out one leg (as opposed to regular nylons, where a hole in one leg means you need to throw out a whole pair).
they are damn sexy

That is all I have to report.

2007-12-11T09:52:00.000-08:00

McD's Newest Ad Platform: Report Cards

So McDonald's is advertising on kids' report cards now. Wow.

Second Only to Sex....

2007-12-10T20:22:00.000-08:00

... that was how the goalie who played for our team last night described hockey¹.

Also heard in our locker room yesterday:

Spit or swallow?^2,4

I can eat 6 men.^{3, 4}

We won 6-0, after losing the past two weeks (our first two losses of the season, after 9 straight wins). And *I* got an assist. I managed to get open in front, took a pass from the centre and shot a mighty shot⁶ which the goalie just barely managed to stop... it was too hot for her to handle and she let it rebound, a rebound that was then picked up by the other winger who shot it in the net. And the crowd⁷ went wild.

This entire posting was not just a lame excuse to talk about my assist, why do you ask?

¹although she did also say something to the effect of "my husband would kill me if I said hockey is better than sex," which makes one wonder, really.
²This was allegedly in reference to the Skittles gum that was being passed around the dressing room before the game. Gum which I, upon reading the label and seeing that it contained shellac⁵, declined to chew.
³This was allegedly in reference to gingerbread men. Allegedly.
⁴For the record, it wasn't me who said either of these.
⁵So I just learned something new! I didn't want to eat shellac because I have memories of spraying it on paintings in art class as a kid to preserve them. But when I just read that Wikipedia entry, I saw that it's made from bugs! Ick! Glad I took a pass on the squished bug gum!
⁶"Mighty" may be translated as "I actually shot it at the goalie"
⁷There may or may not have been a crowd that may or may not have gone wild.

Photo by notanartist on Flickr

What Not To Get Me For Christmas

2007-12-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

I keep hearing this commercial on the radio for a 7/11 gift card and how it is the greatest gift to give for Christmas. Seriously? A convenience store gift card? Can you think of a better way to say "I wish to put absolutely no thought into your gift"?

I <3 Winning Stuff

2007-12-08T10:21:00.000-08:00

I can't resist a contest¹. But a contest with Vancouver Giants tickets and two day passes to Mount Seymour for prizes and a chance to promote donations to the Vancouver Food Bank? No way I'm missing out on this

The contest is being run by Miss604 in honour of her blogiversary². You may remember Miss604 from such blog postings as: she beat me in the race to post a picture of oneself in a printer box and these overpriced Canucks earrings are cool!

You may remember the Vancouver Giants from such achievements as winning the 2007 Memorial Cup, getting into 5 simultaneously on-ice fights with Kamloops Blazer players and playing a team whose goalie smiled at me.

I've been skiing at Mount Seymour one time, last season, when they had free ski passes for women on Monday nights. My friends were all "meh, it's just a mountain" but I thought it was pretty awesome. Of course, I grew up and learned to ski in a mountainless place where they are called "ski areas" as opposed to Mount Such-and-Such.

And last, but certainly not least, a shout out goes to the Vancouver Food Bank. The Food Bank helps tens of thousands of individuals every week - you can click on this link to donate to them.

¹Procrastinate on getting around to writing my entry for a contest, yes. Resist, no.
²I would like to point out that I have fulfilled my contractual obligations³ for this contest at a mere 51 words into this blog posting. Yet I will continue to ramble because that's just how I roll.
³OK, technically, there is no "contract", but it just sounds cool, no?

Out Out Damn Report

2007-12-03T23:14:00.000-08:00

This is me and the report I've been working on for the last 87 months. It's a report about how great I am, and all the the wonderful things I do. In triplicate.

And writing it has prevented me from doing all the wonderful things that I do.

But now, mercifully, it's done and has been sent off to those who want to read about how wonderful I am. So I can get back to my real work. Well, for half a day anyway. Then I'm on vacation until next week.

12 Bars of Christmas - the Sequel

2007-12-03T23:11:00.000-08:00

So, I was wondering all day why no one commented on my engaging tale of the 12 Bars of Christmas. I get the comments on my blog emailed to me, so I didn't look at the blog itself - just didn't get any emailed comments. And just now when I went to write a new posting, I discovered that, although I finished writing the posting yesterday, I didn't actually click "publish." D'oh! Guess that kind of absentmindedness is a sign that perhaps one shouldn't go to 12 bars in one night. Anyway, here's the posting:

So, I have a confession to make. I did not successfully complete the 12 Bars of Christmas this year! *hangs head in shame*. I made it to all the bars. I sang all the verses of the 12 Days of Christmas at the appropriate times and in the appropriate locations, as per the rules of the 12 Bars. But I was not able to drink a drink at every bar! Well, I suppose I would have been able to, so I probably should say I was unwilling to given that my body was telling me that I needed a break after 8 drinks¹.

I think part of the problem as that I couldn't stick to the same game plan I had last year - which was to stick with a specific drink² for most bars, with the occasional shot when we got behind schedule and needed to get in and out of a bar really fast. Why couldn't I stick to that game plan, you ask? Because the 12 Bars got waaaaay too popular! Last year, we started out at Erika & Paul's place with something like 7 people and then ended up with about 30 by the last bar, as people joined us along the way. This year, we had somewhere around 30 people at the first bar!! By the end, we have no accurate count of participants as friends of friends had joined up and no one really knew who was with us and who were just randoms in the bar. But there had to be over 50 of us by the end. This resulted in two things: (a) we didn't get to meet as many new people, as you sort of had to stick with your little group in order to not get totally lost in the crowd, and (b) it's really hard to get a drink at a bar when 30-50 others are also all trying to get a drink in 30 mins³ - somehow always seemed to be the last people served and so had to take a few shots off the start because there wasn't enough time to drink an actual drink. I think this set a poor tone for the evening!

My night went something like this.

Bar #0 - Erika & Paul's place (UNOFFICIAL START) - Vodka & Sprite. I agreed to have a drink here. This was my first mistake!

Bar #1 - Las Margarita’s – OFFICIAL START - Jolly Rancher shot. I wanted a margarita here, but by the time we got to the bartender, it was pretty much time to leave, so we had to do a shot.

Bar #2 - Room 18 - Polar bear shot. Bar #2 was supposed to be Hell’s Kitchen⁵, makers of the best Amaretto sour at last year's 12 Bars. When Hell's Kitchen was called early in the day and asked if they would be open at 4 p.m., they replied "yes." Apparently "yes" means "no" at Hell's Kitchen, because when we go there, they weren't open. So we improvised and went to Room 18 instead. They didn't want to let us in at first, saying they couldn't handle 34 people with just one bartender. So we promised that we'd all get the exact same shot and be out in her hair in life 15 minutes, probably the fasted $300 that bar will ever make. So another unplanned shot for me, but a great photo opp!

Bartender at Room 18 makes 34 Polar bear shots.

Bar #3 - Brown’s - Amaretto sour. Finally! Although this one wasn't like any Amaretto sour I'd had before - it was brown rather than green. Weird.

Bar #4 - Kitsilano Restaurant – White wine. This is the place where we stop to eat. But it counts as a bar, so we have to drink their too. So I enjoyed a much too full glass of wine with my yam rolls, veggie tempura and teriyaki tofu. About halfway through the wine was when my brain took notice of the unnecessary amount of alcohol to which it was being subjected.

Bar #5 - Tatlow’s - Spiced rum & diet Coke⁶ - I don't think I have anything special to report about this bar.

Bar #6 - Darby’s - Amaretto sour! Yay! Darby's makes a tasty A.S. And it was green. Making for a very Christmasy photo of red and green drinks.

Casey shows off our Christmas coloured drinks -
Vodka cran + Amaretto sour.

Bar #7 - Nevermind - Spiced rum & diet Coke⁶ - Unlike it's sister restaurant, Hell's Kitchen, Nevermind was open. Unlike last year, where we convinced a #84 Express bus to pick us up and drive us to Nevermind despite the fact that Nevermind is not where the #84 bus is supposed to stop, this year we had to walk all the way to Nevermind. Which, by my calculations, is 872 blocks from Darby's.

Between bars #7 and #8 is where I officially decided to wuss out. My tummy was telling me that it was sufficiently stocked with alcoholic beverages at the moment and any further deliveries would be returned to sender. So, in the interest of not puking, I decided to skip the drinks at the next two bars.

Bar #8 - Gargoyles - No drink!

Bar #9 - The Fringe - No drink again!

Bar #10 & #11 - Coppertank - Spiced rum & diet Coke. We were supposed to go to Elwood’s for Bar #10, but they told us that brinigng 50ish people would put them over capacity, so they wouldn't let us in. So we decided that Coppertank could have more of our money and decided to stay there for an hour instead of the usual 30 mins, having two drinks (and sing two verses of the 12 Days of Christmas) instead of the usual 1. I felt better enough to have one drink, but decided that I didn't really need two.

Beth and Kalev tell us that we are at Bar #10.
Unfortunately, Coppertank counted as 2 bars, I forgot to take a "Bar #11" pic.

Bar #12 - Regal Beagle - Spiced rum and diet Coke. And thus ended the 12 Bars.

Bar #13 - Lola's - Spiced rum and diet Coke - In celebration of not having died, we went next door to Lola's to dance, and make fun of the other patrons fashion choices behind their backs.

Hooray for Bar #13. Go team!

You can view all the photos here.

¹In my defence, I would like to remind everyone that I'm somewhat on the small size. I don't think 115 lb people are meant to drink 13 drinks!
²In my case, Amaretto sour.
³And the 30 minutes includes travel time between bars. And, given that we were having a blizzard⁴, travel time was somewhat slower going than one would like.
⁴To my readers out east: "blizzard" in Vancouver vernacular means "it was snowing out."
⁵You may recall Hell's Kitchen as the location of my brief but celebrated career as a coat check girl.
⁶I think. If memory serves me, they didn't have Amaretto here so I had to improvise. But I could be misremembering - memory started to fuzzy for some unidentifiable reason.

Procrastination

2007-12-01T10:20:00.001-08:00

Sure, I could be working on, say, planning the course that I'm teaching in January, about which I know very little thus far¹. Or, say, developing the activities for the class of grade 3-5 students that I'm working with in January. Or even, say, doing my Christmas shopping. Or hell, I could be getting ready to go out for my pre-12 Bars brunch, followed directly by the 12 Bars itself.

But no. I'm playing this. Repeatedly. If I could last for at least 5 seconds in this game, I think I'd be satisfied. But I have yet to last longer than 4.8 seconds. Bah!

Update: The problem was I was trying to use my touchpad mouse thingy on my laptop. This does not work. Playing with a real mouse: 16.3 seconds!

¹Yup, it's true. Your university instructors have to teach themselves the material before they teach it to you. Only I get paid to do it, and then you pay for the honour of learning from me that which I taught to myself. Seriously.

He's #1!

2007-11-29T21:50:00.001-08:00

who has a better save percentage?
Originally uploaded by steveleenow

Props to Roberto Luongo for his team record-breaking three shutouts in a row!!

Due to his spectacular on-ice performance, I am obliged to offer to have his babies.

2007-11-29T12:38:00.000-08:00

I hate numbers. I hate crunching numbers. I hate writing reports, with minuscule page limits for the actual report and multitudinous pages of appendices, to be submitted in triplicate.

I am SO glad that I have vacation days next week! You have NO IDEA how excited I am about that.

Also, I don't care what my waistline says, I need a mocha. NEED!

I don't care what you say, I like Quatchi

2007-11-28T18:26:00.001-08:00

So, they unveiled the 2010 Olympic mascots yesterday and the general sentiment I've been hearing is one of three things:

they have nothing to do with Canada - there's no maple leafs/beavers/loons/moose
they have nothing to do with Canada - they're "too Asian"¹
what Olympic mascots?

But I don't care what the naysayers are saying². I like Quatchi.

Quatchi is a young sasquatch who comes from the mysterious forests of Canada. Quatchi is shy, but loves to explore new places and meet new friends. Although Quatchi loves all winter sports, he’s especially fond of hockey. He dreams of becoming a world-famous goalie.

Dude, he plays hockey! And I think he's cute! And he's from the "mysterious forests of Canada." *I* live near a mysterious forest! Maybe he lives in my 'hood!

Although I do have to agree with Darren that if you go to the official site and hear the mascots say their name, which you do by mousing over the characters, it's a bit freaky. I like to run my mouse across all of them really fast so that they keep saying their names over and over in quick succession. It's kind of psychodelic.

Apparently, I need to get out more.

¹Seriously, I've heard that a lot - listening to open phones on the radio and reading comments sections on online new stories.
²Or naysaying, as the case may be.

Beth in a Box

2007-11-27T18:29:00.000-08:00

When someone has a giant box in their house, it's only natural that they will try to see if they fit in that box. The answer, my friends, is yes:

In fact, there's plenty of room inside that box - you could have a tea party in there!

So, I took this photo, but before I got a chance to post it I saw over on Darren's blog that Rebecca beat me to the punch. Not only did she have a picture of her inside her printer box, but she did it with comic strip complete with Dick in a Box reference. Clearly, I have much to learn in the ways of blogging.

In my own defence, I only just set up my printer last night, despite receiving it last week because, well, I was kind of intimidated by the fact that the "Quick Setup Guide" was 70 pages long¹. I was really busy last week and this past weekend² with work and it was much easier to leave it until a computer-y friend of mine came over and set it up for me. I chose the wifi printer because I didn't want to be hassled with such things as plugging the printer in and setting it up for wifi required knowing things like WLAN and WEP and WPA and other such acronyms. I'm sure I actually could have figured it out³ if I wanted to, but having someone else do it for me was much easier. I work smarter, not harder. Plus, it gave me more time to do things like play inside my new fort⁴.

On the plus side, it's all set up now and prints all nice and suchlike. At least, the few test pages that I've printed so far. I'm going to play around with it more this weekend/next week once my stupid big report at work is done. I'm very excited that it prints in colour and duplexes stuff. I heart duplexing.

¹Wait a sec, that's not really in my own defence. Unless my defence is that I'm a big baby.
²Ya, I was working on the weekend. Big report due. Boo to big reports!
³There are illustrated step-by-step directions. I'm sure I could have followed along if I actually tried.
⁴I have to keep the box to ship the printer back to them when my trial run is over. So I suppose I should keep my playing to a minimum to keep it intact.

Unending Jest

2007-11-26T18:59:00.000-08:00

Someone who rides the bus and does most of her reading on said bus and thus must carry her book to and from said bus probably should not get herself into reading a book this size:

The apple is in the photo to give you a sense of the size of the book.

Granted, it's a smallish apple, but it's still a really big book!

Fortunately, my health benefits package includes $400 a year of massage therapy and another $400 a year of chiropractic, no doctor's note required, as lugging this book around for last 87¹ months has really done a number on my vertebral alignment.

¹ At least it feels like I've been reading it for 87 months.

Products That I Just Don't Understand

2007-11-26T00:46:00.000-08:00

On my recent flight to Vegas, I found myself flipping through "SkyMall" - the catalog for those who can't last a whole three hours without satisfying their need to purchase stuff. And this catalog was rife with items that I just can't imagine anyone actually purchasing. Things like:

Seriously? Do people really want to brand their beef?

And you might think it's just because I'm a vegetarian that I wouldn't want to buy a beef brand. But I also don't want to brand my toast:

And while it was the branding of the toast by this product that first caught my attention, upon closer reading of the description of this item, I noticed this:

Seriously? We need a digital countdown to tell us when our toast is ready? Doesn't the "pop" of the toaster popping tell you all you need to know? And then I noticed this:

Are people really willing to pay $130 for a toaster that tells you when the toast is ready... just like every other toaster ever invented???

Here's another product I just don't get. Perhaps I'm missing something here, but I just don't understand why you would buy this:

If you have a device that uses wifi, doesn't it already detect hot spots and their signal strength? Why would you need a separate item, which doesn't do anything else, for this purpose?

Want to make sure your kid grows up to be a good consumer? Why not give them a fake ATM to play with:

Much like with cola, it's important to start kids' learning about how to spend-spend-spend early!

I think this picture speaks for itself:

Giddy up!!

And thank god I can finally "STOP COUNTING THUNDER!"

Because, you know, I spend so much time counting thunder, this is going to be a real time saver!

And can someone explain to me how, exactly, they get away with saying this is the "world's largest" storage tower?

Really? You've seen all the CD storage towers in the entire world and this one is the biggest? Really?

Next up, Items That I Would NEVER Use to Decorate My Place:

This totally makes me think of the "major award" that the father wins in A Christmas Story.

And what yard is complete without a two foot tall statue of Bigfoot? Creative gardening style indeed!

This is just sad. I don't want a "total environmental makeover"¹ - I want a Christmas tree, dammit!

Now we have Items That Allow You to More Effectively Neglect Your Pets:

Because cats are just so high maintenance that you need a device to keep them occupied "so you can do other things." Why do I suspect that the "other things" the type of person who buys this item has to do are, like, watching TV for 8 hours straight? "Momma's watchin' her stories, kitty, go play with your laser."

Also for people who are too busy for their pets, why not get this lovely 8 Day Autopetfeeder:

Going away for 8 days? Sure, you could do the responsible thing and have someone watch your pet, or put them in a cat-spa/doggy daycare/whatever you call those places where actual human beings care for your pets while you are away, but why not just leave them some food in an automated dish instead? I mean, what else could your pet need in EIGHT DAYS??

Finally, we have Items That Make Me Shake My Head in Disbelief at the State of Humanity.

Such as this brush that regrows hair:

It's "consistently seen in the news and magazines,"² so who I am to question that?

And this sure looks like good times:

"Imagine the faces of your pre-game buddies when they see you kicking back in this"?² Shouldn't that say "imagine the faces of your pre-game buddies when they kick your ass for spending $200 to look like an asshat?

This one just makes me sad.

This woman not only has no one to spoon her and has to use this pillow to simulate spooning, but she got herself a rose. Because clearly no one else loves her.

Perhaps she's alone because she "easily hid" this item in the car...

... to find out where her spouse was going³.

And finally, because you should always save the best for last:

It's about time we had cookies that make you lose weight! As a nutritional scientist, I can see absolutely nothing wrong with this idea. Nothing!

¹Who writes this stuff anyway?
²ibid
³Which reminds me, while waiting for luggage at Vancouver airport after the flight home, the man next to me was very loudly talking to his buddies about HIS MISTRESS! Saying things like "So my wife was kind of suspicious, but I said, "I can't even handle you, what would I do with two women??" and "Never admit it. Never. That's the two million dollar mistake." So if you (or someone you know) have a husband who flew from Vegas to Vancouver on US Airways on November 3, you (or they) might want to get yourself a good lawyer - apparently there's 2 million dollars in it for you.

Ladies & gentleman, start your livers!

2007-11-25T12:58:00.000-08:00

The 12 Bars of Christmas is back!

Next Saturday be on the lookout for a merry band of pub crawlers, singing, drinking and, well, being merry.

NHL All-Star Voting

2007-11-24T17:33:00.000-08:00

You know you want to go here to vote for all your favourite Canucks. And remember, it's not a beauty contest, so it's OK to vote for the Sedin twins.

And if you win the trip to the All-Star Game in Atlanta, you have to take me, k?

These Boots Were Made for Walking

2007-11-23T12:08:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time¹ I bought a pair of boots. And so beloved were those boots that I wore them everywhere - to work, to clubs, to job interviews, to a blogging conference. They were an integral part of my last two Halloween costumes. Hell, I even wore them to my Ph.D. defence.

Of late, I have noticed that the beautiful pleather² that gives my boots their shiny goodness was starting to flake off. 'No matter,' I thought, 'It's just flaking a little bit and you have to look quite carefully at them to notice. They're still good, they're still good.'³ But that was before I fell down the stairs. Twice in as many days.

OK, "fell" is probably a little overly dramatic. More like "slid" or "slipped." The first time I was rushing down the stairs at Granville Station to catch a Skytrain⁴. I figured that the stairs were just slippery or something. But then the next day I slid down the stairs at my massage therapist's office, right after getting a nice hour-long massage - and pretty much undoing all the good that the massage had done. 'What the hell?' I thought, 'Why am I suddenly incapable of going down a flight of stairs??'

Then I got a brainstorm: 'Perhaps I should look at the sole of these boots!' Um, ya, so the heels of my boots are *completely* devoid of tread. Like, totally, completely 100% tread-less. So I had to admit to myself that it might, just might, be time to find a new pair of boots, as continuing to wear this pair appears to be hazardous to my health and well-being⁵. So this newfound concern for safety, combined with my jealousy of Stacia's beautiful new boots, led me on The Search for A New Pair of Boots.

Only one small problem. My boots are too cool. I can't find anything even remotely as cool. And I went to every shoe store in downtown Vancouver. I found a pair that, while not as perfect in style as my current boots, I could have been happy with in this shoe clearance place in the basement of where The Bay is downtown, but they only had them in size 8.5 or 10, whereas I wear a size 6 shoe⁶. I found another one in the Shoe Warehouse, but same deal - too big. There were a couple pairs that I tried on at Winners, but they didn't fit properly - either they'd be way too big for my calves, or they'd put your foot in a weird contorted angle that you know would be very, very uncomfortable after about 5 minutes of walking around. The thing with my current boots is that they are super stylish, but also really comfortable.

All in all, I think I only tried about 5 pairs of boots that looked acceptable but turned out to be too big/small/uncomfortable/weird, but this number was completely dwarfed by the number of boots I had trouble even being in the same room as, let alone be willing to try on or, god forbid, consider buying. Apparently the style this season is stiletto heels⁷ and ridiculous pointy toes. And I'm not talking just a little pointed. I'm talking the shoe is so exaggeratedly pointed that the toe of your shoe is in a different time zone than you are.

Heading home, dejected, from the boot store which appears also to stock only stupid pointy toed, stiletto boots this season, the answer to all my problems hit like a stroke of divine inspiration⁸. Where did Beth find her most perfect pair of footwear? eBay, of course! A quick search led me to this pair, the auction for which I just won this morning:

Anyone want to take bets on which will get here first: the eBay boots or the vegetarian marshmallows?

¹A.k.a. November 2005.
²Being a vegetarian, I don't wear leather. Pleather is also way cheaper that leather, but it doesn't last as long.
³I may have been in denial about the impeding demise of my boots.
⁴Which, of course, begs the question that Sarah & Dave asked me on one of their visits to Vancouver: "Why are we going DOWN stairs to get to the SKYtrain?"
⁵Not that I've actually stopped wearing them. I just try not to run down stairs in them.
⁶Which,I was doubly choked that they didn't fit because they were $100 boots that had been marked down to $25!
⁷Read: ridiculous uncomfortable. Who the hell thought that putting an entire person's weight on two millimeter wide sticks was a good idea?
⁸As previously mentioned, my deity⁹ may vary from yours.
⁹and Her sexy shoe obsession.

My new printer!

2007-11-21T22:48:00.000-08:00

I arrived home today to discover that my new printer had been delivered! Well, it's not actually *my* printer - it's only mine to test drive for a couple of months.

A little while ago, Darren emailed me an amusing comic strip, asking if I wanted to try out a colour laser printer for two months. And, well, you know how I feel about free stuff, even if it's only free for a little while!

As you can see from the photo, it's a Brother printer and comes in an exceptionally large box. I swear, that box is bigger than me! What you can't see from the photo, it's the HL-4070CDW (Wi-Fi certified wireless network-ready colour laser printer with built-in automatic two-sided printing). I'm a big fan of printing on both sides of any given paper and I'm eager to check out the Wi-Fi'edness. I should point out that my current printer was purchased in 1995 when I bought my first computer and requires that you hand feed each paper individually (and even then it sometimes has a hissy fit and requires repeated shutting off and restarting of my computers before it will stop printing in tongues, and so if this thing actually feeds paper on its own, I'll be stoked.

I worked late tonight and then had to do some grocery shopping as I had no food in my place, so I was too exhausted to unpack my new printer and figure out where I'm actually going to put it, being that it's so huge and all. But Thursday is my Friday, so I will have the weekend to unpack it, hook it up and play with it! I'll keep ya posted

Real Time Canucks update

2007-11-21T17:27:00.000-08:00

I'm working late tonight - had to do some brainless work that needs to be done for this report that I'm writing, so I'm listening to the Canucks game as I work, as the Great Convexity¹has decided to let me stream the radio broadcast today³. And there's been 5 goals⁴. in 10 minutes and 30 seconds! Craziness! OK, I just had to share that. Now back to my regularly scheduled brainless work.

¹"The Great Convexity" = what I'm now calling my work computer now. It's the only one of gadgets that actually ended up with a name².
²Except for the ones that are, uh, named after Canucks.
³The last time I tried, it stubbornly refused to work, even after I turned it off and turned it back on again, which, as we all know, is the only thing that can fix a problematic computer.
⁴ Two Canucks goals that counted, one disallowed because of a too quick whistle; and two goals by the bad guys.

The Tale of the "Vegetarian" Marshmallow

2007-11-19T22:53:00.000-08:00

Today I received a most exciting email:

Dear Beth,

We are pleased to report that a product in the VeganEssentials Online Store, about which you requested notification, is now in stock.
Product: Vanilla Vegan Marshmallows by Sweet & Sara

About two years ago I decided that I really needed to find me some vegetarian marshmallows¹. I've been a vegetarian for over a decade and while I'm perfectly happy not eating meat, I really do miss marshmallows³. I can have marshmallow creme, as that is usually vegetarian, but you can't toast a jar of marshmallow creme! At that time, I found a brand called "Vegan Supreme Marshmallows." They were stupid expensive - if memory serves me, they cost something like US$8, plus shipping, for a bag containing 18 marshmallows. But it was oh so worth it to toast marshmallows on my stove again!

I was so excited, in fact, about the discovery of this product that I emailed both Choices & Capers, two local fru-fru organic grocery stores and told them that if they carried these 'mallows, I knew many, many vegetarians who would be more than happy to buy them. Choices ignored me, but Capers actually started carrying them, which meant I could just pay $8 a bag, no shipping. At that point, my life was basically complete⁵. Until one day, when I went into Capers and lo and behold, no Vegan Supremes! I asked one of the staff what was up with that and he said that "one of their ingredient suppliers went out of business so they can't make their marshmallows anymore." I'm not sure why, but I assumed that it was the maker of their vegan sugar⁶. I was totally disappointed, but I figured that in the long run it might be a good thing for my chequebook and my waistline to not have such ready access to these tasty treats.

Skip forward a few months and, in a fit of procrastination no doubt, I decided to see if that company had ever found new suppliers. Googling "Vegan Supreme Marshmallows" yielded this: as it turns out, the company that he been supplying the vegetarian gelatin substitute to the company that made V.S.M. was just lying - they were just selling regular old animal bone & skin-derived gelatin! Which means that I had been eating gelatin! And, to add insult to injury, I was paying $8 a bag to do so! So gross!!!

Anyway, after a recent conversation I had about marshmallows in which I recounted this tale⁸, I got thinking about marshmallows again and Googled and found that Sweet & Sara was now making vegetarian marshmallows, but the dealer, the VeganEssentials Online Store, was out of stock! I was thinking that perhaps they had met a similar fate, but signed up for a notification in case they ever had them again... and apparently they do! And just now I found the following on YouTube which explains all:

Part 1 of the video:

Part 2 of the video:

So, mystery solved. Sweet & Sara marshmallows really are veggie and my life is, once again, complete. Or it will be in 6-9 days⁹.

¹Almost all marshmallows are made with gelatin², and thus not vegetarian.
²Gelatin is made from animal bones/skin/hooves. Yum!
³And Mini Wheats, which also contain gelatin. My kingdom for a gelatin free Mini Wheat!!
⁴And this was back when the US dollar was worth more than the Canadian dollar.
⁵I know I've said that about my Treo, my eBay shoes and various other purchases, but really, it was the vegetarian marshmallows that completed my life. No, really.
⁶Refined sugar is often processed through bone char⁷
⁷Yup, "bone char" is exactly what it sounds like it is - charcoal made from bones.
⁸I really only have about 5 stories that I tell (e.g, the veggie marshmallow story, the story about how my sister screwed me out of tonnes of money when we delivered newspapers when we were little, this time I bought these shoes on eBay). After that, I'm pretty much out of material.
⁹Estimated shipping time to Canada.

Nancy, don't read this post! You too Jeff!1

2007-11-17T16:55:00.000-08:00

My niece is turning 3 this month. So, being the super aunt that I am, I actually decided to buy her present well in advance of the date, in order to be able to it to her in time for the big day².

So, I’m standing in a toy store and another shopper notices my deer-in-headlights look and says to me, "Are you looking for a birthday gift?" and when I say "Yes!!" her immediate question is, "For a boy or a girl?"

"A three year old… girl," I say, with a bit of hesitation. To me, the "three year old" is the more important part, but to her, not so much.

"Oh, I only have boys, so I know all about toys for boys, but not for girls."

"I never buy girly toys," I say. "I prefer "boy" toys³ myself."

She shows me this air hockey toy thing were you get to kick the disc thingy, which floats on air of its own accord, around your house. Its edges are padded so it's OK to play inside.⁴

"Too bad it's hockey," she says, "They used to have a soccer one." "I play hockey!" I say, "This is perfect!"

And it was like she didn’t even hear me. Almost as if “girl” and “hockey” in the same sentence did not compute within her brain. She just kept going on about the soccer one.

We chat for a little while longer and then, as she leaves, despite the fact that I am holding the air hockey toy and have loudly declared “I am *totally* buying her this!”, she says "It really is too bad they don't have the soccer one, it would have been perfect for her."

WTF? I mean, the soccer one is the EXACT SAME TOY, just painted differently!

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve actually decided to give my niece the hockey toy for Christmas because I’m going to Ontario for the holidays, so I won’t have to mail it (it’s kind of big for mailing). This is in no way because I want to be able to play with this toy too, which I can’t do if I mail it to her now, but I can if I bring it with me for Christmas. I can’t believe you would even suggest that!

For her birthday I’m giving her this:

I found this toy in the same store while talking to the woman who is unable to understand that girls can play hockey. My sister had this game when we were little. You fill it up with water and then you press the little white button on the front to send the little balls floating up and you try to get them into the little plastic bucket in front of the crab. Simple, but I swear to you, hours and hours of fun!! And if Madeline doesn’t like it, I know that Nancy will!

I also got her this:

It’s bubbles that don’t burst when you touch them, so you can like grab them and carry them around with you. God knows what chemical is in them that allows this to happen and I’m sure we’ll all get cancer and die from it, but damn, that sounds like hours and hours of fun!!

¹That title is there because I don't want my sister and her bf to read this blog posting because it will ruin the surprise for them of what I got Madeline for her birthday.

²Unlike the rest of all y'all, who routinely receive your birthday presents from me a month after your actual birthday. Apparently I am a super aunt, but somewhat of a mediocre friend.

³By which I mean toys that are marketed for male children. Not the other kind of "boy toy." Not that I object to those personally, just not for my niece!

⁴If the idea of people kicking stuff around in your house is a problem, Nancy, speak now or forever hold your peace. Oh righ, I told you not to read this posting… hee hee!

I forget

2007-11-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

I have a terrible memory. I regularly lose my keys, my purse, I always accidentally leave things at people's places when I'm visiting them. I have been known to leave my oven on overnight because I forget to turn it off when I'm done cooking, or leave my hair straightener on all day because I forget to turn it off when I'm done straightening. My coffeemaker has an auto shut off feature so that when I accidentally leave it on, it goes off after two hours. My microwave beaps once every minute after its done until you take whatever you were nuking out of the oven¹.

My solution to my poor memory is to write myself notes, lots of notes. I have an intricate web of sticky notes on my wall a work to remind me of all the things I need to do ². All events in my Palm Pilot calendar have alarms set to remind me about them³. I'm kind of like that guy in Memento.

But this morning took the cake. I was knocking out a few quick emails before I left to go to a workshop on campus and was jotting down a list of things I didn't have the time to do before I left but needed to do as soon as I got back. "Post documents to course website." "Make November payment for hockey registration." Etc. And, as I typed out an email, I thought of something else I needed to do, but before I could write it down I forgot what it was! That's right, I couldn't remember it long enough to actually write it down on my reminder list!

I kind of thought it would come back to me. But it hasn't. So either (a) it wasn't actually that important, (b) I've remember and done whatever it was, but just didn't remember that it was the thing I was trying to remember or (c) I'm supposed to be in some really important meeting right now and I'm not.

¹Prior to this, I routinely found abandoned cups of tea in there, as I'd nuke my tea and then forget it was there until I went to nuke something else like the next day.

¹Mostly because my whiteboard is already full of an intricate web reminding my of how I'm trying to structure the course I'm developing.

²Except hockey games. I seem to be able to remember that I play hockey every Sunday.

Support My Hockey Team!!

2007-11-13T21:47:00.000-08:00

So, speaking of Vegas, want to support my hockey team to play in a tournament there? We are trying to raise enough funds to go to the Lady Luck Cup tournament in Las Vegas in April.

We are doing a fund raising raffle and I need to sell at least $50 worth of tickets (preferably many more than that).

Here's the 411:

Tickets are 1 for $2 or 3 for $5

First Prize: a beer fridge full of beer
Second Prize: two tickets to a Canucks game
Third Prize: a trio of 26ers (probably like rum, vodka and gin, or something like that)

We will be doing the draw at our fundraising pub night on January 19th and you don't have to be at the pub night to win. I know the prizes aren't very portable, so for my long distance readers, if you want to buy a ticket or seven and then you win, I could sell the prize and send you the cash!

Wanna buy some raffle tickets? You know you do! Email me: apo_b100 AT hotmail DOT com

P.S. If we raise enough money, I'm sure that my team will get up to all kinds of hijinks in Vegas and I promise to blog said hijinks. I would expect it would be something along the lines of this type of thing. So you could consider buying a raffle ticket to be an investment in your future blog reading enjoyment.

P.P.S. Another fundraiser possibility that we considered, but didn't have enough time to do this year was a calendar. Sort of the "girls of hockey" kind of thing. Would you buy a calendar of me and my teammates like, for example, wearing our hockey jerseys and looking all cute and suchlike? Just doing a little market research for next year....

Money that goes to Vegas, stays in Vegas.

2007-11-12T22:31:00.000-08:00

Yeah, so, Vegas. It's a place I went¹. And I heard that all y'all wanted to hear about it. So here goes - everything you've ever heard about Vegas is true. Overwhelming sights and sounds - check. Oxygen and delightful scents and free drinks pumped into casinos, where there are no clocks/windows/any way of telling how long you've been there, to keep you gambling as long as possible - check. People walking the streets with foot tall tubes of booze - check. Guy at the slot machine next to you getting "comped"² because he lost so much money that the casino is willing to give him a free hotel room so he'll stay and lose more - check. Giant pyramid with a light shooting off the top that can be seen from outer space - check. People standing on street corners flicking business cards of prostitutes - check.

The one thing that you hear about Vegas that isn't true - people carrying buckets of coins around. All the slot machines have been changed to run on paper money and when you cash out, they print a ticket that you have to redeem at a cashier's desk. No coins comes falling down when you win - it's just credits on the screen - and when the slot machine prints out your little ticket, it makes this lame noise that is supposed to sound like coins falling jdown into the little now-vestigial metal tray at the bottom of the machine. Lame city!! Maybe next time I go to Vegas, I'll bring my own bucket and put my little paper ticket into my bucket, just to screw with everyone's head.

Stuff seen in Vegas:

Magician comedian who was filling in for Mac King at Harrah's and whose name escapes me at the moment. Had a pretty funny schtick where he made it look like he'd screwed up the trick and then it would turn out to be a fairly neat trick after all.³
Dead bodies.
Mamma Mia - the musical based on ABBA songs. I swear, you'd think ABBA wrote their songs for that plot - it's soooo well constructed.
The Blue Man Group. This blew my fucking mind. Like nothing I've EVER seen before. OMG, you need to see this. NEED TO!

Blue Man & Me.
The fact that I wore a blue dress this day is merely coincidental.

Most nauseating thing seen in Vegas:

Picture this: You are playing your little $1 chips at the roulette table, mumbling under your breath that the $15 minimum really is too rich for your blood. A man walks up and lays 10 $100 bills on the table and asks for one chip. The dealer carefully counts the money out and hands over a $1000 chip. He lays the chip on black and walks away, doesn't even watch the little ball spinning around the roulette wheel. The little ball lands on red. Bye-bye $1000! Then he does the same thing again - another 10 $100 bills, another $1000 chip on black and another loss. Then, just for good measure, he plays $100 on splitting the zeros and loses again. It seriously made me feel sick. If someone is willing to part with $2100 in like 45 seconds, why not just give it to charity??

Things learned in Vegas:

Tony Danza, Barry Manilow, Toni Braxton, all the people you thought were dead are, in fact, performing in Vegas. I think this means (a) they are not dead after all, or (b) Vegas is the afterlife for third rate celebs.
When playing roulette, you may be tempted to play Canucks jersey numbers... 22 - Daniel Sedin, 33 - Henrik Sedin, 16 - Linden, 9 - Pyatt, 7 - Morrison, etc. Don't. Just don't.
Waitresses will only come by to bring you free drinks when either (a) your down to your last dollar on the slot machine or (b) you say, "I'm cashing out if I don't win on the next spin!" So that you'll have to stay around waiting that free drink and will put more money in the machine. They have it down to a freakin' science, I swear.
Vegas waitresses are not as hot as I have been led to believe. I'm willing to bet, though, that they make more money than I do.
If you walk around Vegas dressed as a bat, even on Halloween, you will get a lot of looks.
Everything in the Venetian is made of gold... including the toilets⁴.
The red carpets you see celebrities photographed on showing them going into Vegas nightclubs.... they don't actually go anywhere! It's just a bit of red carpet and a backdrop set up in the hallway for photo ops. As is my habit when I see ropes blocking things off or signs telling you not to go somewhere, I hopped over the ropes to get this paparazzi shot:

And speaking of photos, I took these pics for Sarah & Dave:

Saw our favourite arcade game, which is found in every bar, pub, tavern and daycare⁵ in Calgary, in one of the hotels in Vegas and just had to take a pic for you!

Then I noticed this poor man's Big Buck Hunter, called "Deer Hunting USA" right next to it. Apparently it also has "Animated Violence: Mild."

So that, in a nutshell, was my trip to Vegas.

¹Tip o'the hat to David T. McLean, Esq.
²comped = getting free stuff (like a free buffet, a free hotel room) when you lose lots of cash at a casino.
³Wow. My description makes it sound really lame, but it wasn't - it was quite good!
⁴Yes, I took a picture of the toilet. See, there is nothing I won't do for you, gentle blog reader. Nothing!
⁵OK, so we didn't actually go to any daycares in Calgary, but I'm willing to put money on them all having Big Buck Hunter.

Hockey Terms That Sound Dirty

2007-11-09T15:14:00.000-08:00

Listening to Canucks games on the radio, I've noticed quite a few terms that the commentators use while describing the game that sound dirty¹, including:

"he's got good hands"
"he stuffed it in"
"poke check"
"making moves"
"gets his stick in there"
"scoring"
"two on one"
"hitting from behind"

Any other ones that I've missed?

¹Proof, yet again, that I have the sense of humour of a 12-year-old boy.

You Must Have At Least $2.50 To Attack This Skytrain Rider

2007-11-09T12:19:00.001-08:00

My thoughts on this article: Free rides approach end of the line on SkyTrain

There may be no more free rides for fare-evaders on the Lower Mainland's SkyTrain system now that B.C.'s transportation minister is pushing to have gates or turnstiles installed at all stations.

There is still no official plan is place, but Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon said Thursday a system could be up and running sometime in 2008.

There's no official plan in place, but it will be up and running sometime in the next 13 months. Why do I find this hard to believe? Hmm.... perhaps because even when they do have an official plan, projects routinely take years longer to complete than they are supposed to. Translink and UBC were supposed to have an underground bus loop at UBC finished like two years ago and they've only just started it this fall. Or I think they've started it. They put up a fence around the area at least.

Turnstiles would make the system safer by keeping those who don't pay out, said Falcon.

"Young women in particular feel much safer when they're in what's called a controlled area, an area which has controlled access through gates or turnstiles," said Falcon.

Awesome. Now I can only be attacked by someone who has $2.50 to get passed the turnstile. Because you know if someone has $2.50, they are good people.

"Generally, thugs, punks, whatever they may be, [who] don't pay to go cause trouble for other people," he said.

Damn thugs and punks. And don't even get me started on ne'er do wells.

Falcon said the new plan is to have a company install the barriers for a share of the revenue.

Great. So now the overburdened, underfunded public transit system will be giving up some of the money to a private company to put in turnstiles. And/or they will jack up the cost of using public transit to make up the difference of what they have to give to the private company.

Oh yes, and speaking of Skytrain, go to Mayor Sam Sullivan's website to vote on if you think the Skytrain should be extended to UBC campus!

Wicked cool pic taken from the Skytrain by this guy, from here. Hooray for Creative Commons licenses!

Xmas Party's?

2007-11-08T22:16:00.000-08:00

Went to Nevermind, my favourite place to see Canucks games, to watch my beloved Canucks kick some Calgarian ass^1,2 tonight. While the portabella mushroom burger at Nevermind is delish , their grammar leaves something to be desired:

Nevermind, perhaps you should go back to putting up signs about Chuck Norris.

¹See you in hell, Calgary.
²The cardiac Canucks pulled one of their patented let-the-opponents-score-2-goals-in-like-5-seconds-to-make-it-a-one-goal-game-and-give-Beth-a-coronary moves in the third period. But they managed to hang on for the win, so I still love them and would have all of their babies upon their request.

OK, so THIS is the least useful email I've ever received

2007-11-07T17:29:00.000-08:00

So, I get into work this morning and the hallway is abuzz with the fact that our computers aren't working. No email. No Internet access. No access to the one drive where everyone in our Centre saves all of our files. Nothing.

Two and a half hours later, when they finally got around to fixing the problem, I find this email in my inbox:

From: IT Services
Subject:
IMPORTANT NOTIFICATION - NON-SCHEDULED INTERRUPTION TO

OUTLOOK EMAIL AND FILE/APPLICATION SERVERS

Who is affected? All XXXXX clients across all XXXXX agencies.

What has happened? A power disruption occurred sometime this morning in one of the server rooms at XXXXX.

What is affected? Access to Outlook email servers may be intermittent.
However, the following applications are currently unavailable: X, Y and Z.
Other applications may be affected. XXXXX IT is currently in the process of identifying which applications are affected and will provide a further update as soon as more information is available.

You just emailed me to tell me that my email isn't working? Seriously??

So, without access to the Internet, email or any of my computer files, I did the only thing I could. File all the paper that's been piling up all over my office since the last time the computers weren't working.

This computer outage lasted so long, however, that not only did I file everything, I also wiped down all the coffee spills on my desk (of which there were many) and took apart my keyboard to get the crumbs out. Seriously, it was disgusting the amount of crumbs and dust and unidentifiable gunk that was in my keyboard.

While I had my computer apart, I took this photo for y'all:

Flu Shot Bribery

2007-11-06T20:10:00.000-08:00

On my way to purchase a celebratory¹ extra-hot-soy-mocha-with-whip yesterday, I walked past a grizzly scene in the hallway. People rolling up their sleeves to voluntarily be stabbed in the arm with a needle. A NEEDLE!!

Ya, so, they are trying to get people at my workplace to get the flu shot. Getting the flu shot at this hallway-based "clinic" will serve as your entry into a draw for:

Running Room gift certificates

a digital camera

an iPod

fancy pants treatment at Spa Utopia

a 3 hr charter sailboat trip²

This presents a conflict for me - a conflict between my desire for free stuff and my sheer terror of being stabbed with a needle. In this case, however, I'm coming down firmly on the side of "for the love of god, don't stab me in the arm!!!" But it's not just that I would like to avoid blubbering like a little baby, as I usually do when confronted with a needle, in front of co-workers. Generally speaking, I'm in favour of vaccines. I've had my MMR, tetanus and all those other delightful stabs in the arms that prevent much more painful conditions. But I'm not overly confident in the flu shot. The thing with the flu virus is, it mutates. A lot. And so every year when they design the flu vaccine, they try to predict what this year's flu will be. Sometimes they get it right (or at least close), but other times, not so much. As a healthy, immune competent adult, I don't feel it's worth getting a needle, possibly getting the "flu-like symptoms" as a side effect³, all for a vaccine that might be against a strain of flu that doesn't even exist.

What do you think? Do you get the flu shot? Would you if your workplace bribed you with fabulous prizes?

¹Celebrating (a) finally, at 2:30 in the afternoon, getting through the backlog of email/snail mail I had upon returning from my trip and (b) being awarded 3 assists in my Sunday night hockey game, two of which I remember actually getting⁴.
²A three hour tour. A three hour tour.⁵
³They always make a point of saying that you can't get the actual flu from the flu vaccine, since it's not made from a live virus. But if you are getting "flu-like symptoms," isn't that pretty much just like having the flu?
⁴ In fairness, I got screwed out of an assist that I clearly made a few games ago that the ref didn't record, so this just evens things up .
⁵Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Photo attribution: That photo of a big scary needle was stolen from this guy, from here. But it had a Creative Commons license on it, so it's all good.

The least useful email I have ever received

2007-11-05T16:46:00.000-08:00

Wow. I just got the following email message:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: FW: Guest Speaker Wayne Hall May 4th - please post
Sent: 4/11/2007 9:23 AM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

xxxxxxxxxxx on 11/5/2007 4:45 PM

Take a careful look at the "Sent" date. April 11. I am getting a notification on November 5 that an email I sent *seven months ago* didn't get to its intended recipient. That's so very, very useful.

Did Ya Miss Me?

2007-11-04T23:37:00.000-08:00

I'm back from my gallivanting. Too tired to write about it all now¹, but since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's 2K worth of words for ya...

This is me on Halloween night at, let's say, The Bellagio².

This is me and my beloved eBay shoes in, let's say, The Venetian³. This picture was taken especially for you, blog readers, because I know you *love* updates on the adventures of my ebay shoes.

¹Perhaps I'll pull a Dave and write about *my* trip to Vegas 472 days after said trip.
²I have to admit that I have trouble remembering which hotel/casino was which because (a) I saw one hell of a lot of hotels/casinos on this trip, (b) each hotel/casino was more ornate than anything I'd *ever* seen in my life, (c) the hotels/casinos were so friggin' big you could be walking for like half an hour and still be in the same friggin' hotel/casino, meaning that I often didn't know which hotel I was in at any given point in time. Also, (d) they give you free drinks.
³ibid

Gone Vacationing

2007-10-31T15:02:00.000-07:00

Don't wait up.

This Makes Me Want Eggo Waffles

2007-10-31T14:40:00.000-07:00

Hey Aunt Jemima, spoof of Hey There Delilah.

The Bestest T-Shirt Ever

2007-10-31T08:43:00.000-07:00

'member a long, long time ago I bought a T-shirt from T-shirt Hell.com? And then I asked y'all to guess which one I bought? And then I left you hanging for over 2 months without telling you which shirt I bought? Well, wonder no longer - I finally got around to taking a pic:

Transmorphers?

2007-10-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

Really?

How To Give Oneself A Heart Attack1

2007-10-29T17:19:00.000-07:00

Go to your hockey game and, when you get to the arena, discover that your beloved Palm Treo Smartphone is not in your jacket pocket. Look around your co-op car, but don't find it, and tell yourself, "oh, I'm sure it fell out of my pocket when I had my jacket on the couch. It's clearly just sitting on my couch." Arrive home, 5 hours later and don't find your beloved Palm Treo Smartphone sitting on the couch. In fact, don't find it *anywhere* in your apartment. Use Skype to call it, expecting to hear your beloved ringtone on your beloved Palm Treo Smartphone, but don't hear it. Keep Skyping it, and think you can vaguely hear it, but then decide you are just imagining it and feel the sinking realization that you may have lost your beloved Palm Treo Smartphone for good. Because it clearly is not in the apartment. Run back out to your co-op car, and search every inch of it, three times, but don't find your beloved Palm Treo Smartphone. Your $550 beloved Palm Treo Smartphone that you definitely do not have enough money to replace. Try Skyping it and running outside to see if you can hear it ringing in your co-op car and swear that you could hear it, very faintly as you run outside and curse your low number of rings before the voicemail picks up. Find a friend who is awake at 12:30 am and Skype them, telling them they have to keep calling your cell phone until you find it. Realize at this point that you have now lost the key to your co-op car at some point during your frantic running around looking for your phone. Run outside, just to see if you can hear it coming from inside the car, even if you now have no key to get into said car. Mercifully, mercifully, hear your beloved ringtone on your beloved Palm Treo Smartphone, run to the car, but then realize that the sound is not coming from inside the car. Look around in the darkness, listening.... where is that beloved ringtone coming from? Realize in horror that it's coming from across the road, where you had the car parked before you went to hockey, now some 5.5 hours hours ago. Find your beloved Palm Treo Smartphone sitting in a pile of wet leaves on the side of the road, where it must have been sitting for almost 6 hours! Where, mercifully, miraculously, inexplicably it was neither stolen nor run over². Pick it up, caress it, tell it you are so, so sorry and you'll never let it fall out of your pocket again.

Now face another half hour of searching for the co-op car key. Which it turns out you dropped on the front lawn, but this somehow requires you go over the lawn with a fine toothed comb like six times before it turns up. Finally, mercifully be able to return your co-op car at 1 a.m., face the walk home from dropping off the car knowing you still need a post-hockey shower and you have to get up at 6 a.m. *Sigh*.

I'm pretty sure this experience will increase my phone- and car key-losing paranoia, which was already at what I believed to be an unreasonable level, exponentially.

¹Alternative titles for this blog posting include, "Also Not To Be Trusted With Cell Phones," and "Truly the Dropper of All Things Valuable."
²The one benefit of living in the sleepy area of the city, where all the elderly people live. No one is outside past 5 pm and so no one can hear your cell phone ringing and steal it. If I'd dropped a $550 gadget on the side of the road in downtown Vancouver or Kits, it would have been gone within seconds!

Finally, I can pay off those student loans

2007-10-29T09:12:00.000-07:00

Just received this email:

From:DR NICK COLE.
Manchester M27 5FX, United Kingdom.

This is to inform you that your funds of US$10 Million has been approved for immediate delivery to you.For the purpose of clarification,you are advised to reconfirm:
(1)Your Full Names---------
(2)Your Direct Telephone Numbers--------
(3)Your Physical Address with Zip Code-------

So that there will be no error during the delivery of the funds to you in your country of residence.Your quick response will be highly appreciated.
DR NICK COLE.

Thank god. I can really use $10 Million, even if it is in crappy US dollars.

Three Months Worth of Recycling and My Biennal Apartment Cleaning

2007-10-28T13:54:00.001-07:00

Ever wonder what 3 months worth of recycling looks like? Well, wonder no longer:

This is the recycling that has been piling up in my kitchen since the city workers's strike started back in July. They are *finally* going to pick up recycling this week and I can't wait to put this stuff outside and get my kitchen back!!

In other cleaning-up-my-place news, I was struck with my biennial "I feel like cleaning" mood on Friday and did some tidying up and organizing. Apparently there is this new invention that's like a sponge on a stick and you put the sponge part in soapy water and run it across your floor. I believe they call it a "mop." So I tried that out and now have shiny kitchen and bathroom floors¹

Some other features of my newly semi-organized place include taking my shoe collection from looking like this:

To looking like this:

Although I do have to admit that even with a five-story shoe rack, I don't have enough room for all my shoes²

Also, I hung up a whole bunch of stuff on the walls, as seen here:

My two favourite pieces:

"Spirt Bear" by Joseph M. Wilson and
"Haida Killer Whale - Skaana" by Bill Reid

My friend Therese brought these two pieces,
which apparently I have not hung up straight,
back from San Fran for me.

The flower paintings were done by my cousin's husband and given out
as gifts to everyone at their wedding. The gingerbread man cutting board
was given to me by either my mom or my sister (I can't remember which).

This is my bragging wall... or, walls I guess, as I couldn't fit them all on one wall
(Go to the Flickr page if you want to see what each of these degrees/diplomas/awards are).

Of course, there are still piles of paper on various tables, chairs, filing cabinets and other available surfaces (photos not available³), but I'm sure I'll get around to cleaning them up in 2009, when the mood to clean hits me again.

¹Although the tile in my kitchen, like the paint on the walls and all the furniture, is older than me, so it still kinda looks like crap.
²Plus, there are four more pairs in my bedroom that I forgot to take a photo of and I'm too lazy to take a photo and upload it now that I've realized that I didn't take a photo of them.
³Because I don't want to document what a slob I am. Despite my claims to the contrary, I'm really not at all about fair and balanced reporting .

Oh Em Gee

2007-10-26T20:48:00.000-07:00

OMG. I just saw this over on Kris's blog and I had to share it with you. HAD TO.

Why I Am Not To Be Trusted With Knives - Exhibit A

2007-10-25T08:07:00.000-07:00

My Latest Publication

2007-10-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce the publication of my latest study!

Click here to read the whole paper (.pdf).

Seriously, you want to read this paper. I promise you won't be disappointed. It's even got pictures or, as we science-y types call them, "figures."

Trying Another One On For Size

2007-10-23T21:25:00.001-07:00

In response to this morning's posting, Dave did waaaaaay too much work sifting through my old blog postings not to use one of his suggestions for a new blog title. And seeing as how I just sliced the hell out of my thumb making dinner tonight, I laughed my ass off at the thought of naming my blog "Not To Be Trusted With Knives.¹" And seeing as the point of this blog, as far as I can tell, is to amuse myself, let's go with that and see how it works out.

¹For reference, this is the blog posting to which this title refers.

The One That Got Away

2007-10-23T09:47:00.000-07:00

As you can tell from the top the screen, my blog kinda needs a new name. I've never been good at naming things. As a kid, I had a stuffed bunny rabbit named Bunny, a stuffed frog named Froggy, a stuffed puppy dog named Puppy, and, believe it or not, a stuffed penguin named Pengy¹. Probably the low point in my naming things career came when my sister and I got this set of stuffed teddy bears with movable limbs; she had the big one, I had the little one. Their names? Mr. Movable Bear and Baby Mr. Movable Bear. My one great shining moment in naming something occurred in 2004 when I came up with a brilliant title for this article, but the instructor of the course for which I wrote that paper was not a Kubrick fan and thus my moment of naming-ability glory came crashing down.

My blog has been nameless for quite some time. I briefly tried out Total Perspective Vortex early this year, but it didn't stick. As you can probably tell, the only way this blog with have a name other than Bloggy is if I steal something from film or literature. But I'm OK with that, if only I could find something that I liked.

And then along came Infinite Jest. I've been reading IJ for about a thousand years now, ever since *somebody*² recommended it to me. Don't get me wrong, it's a *fantastic* book, just very, very long and quite dense, so it's been taking me a while to read³. As I was reading, a great name for my blog occurred to me when I read the following description:

"The monologues seem both free-associative and intricately structured, not unlike nightmares. There's no telling what'll be up on a given night. If there's one even remotely consistent theme it's maybe [hockey]⁴."

That's a description of Madame Psychosis's radio show, but don't you think it fits my blog perfectly? Don't you think I should change my blog name to "Madame Psychosis"?

Unfortunately, I appear to have missed the boat. By 4 years.

So, instead, I've decided to use the name Madame Psychosis for one of my other nameless things - my laptop. I brought Madame Psychosis to work today, because my work computer, which is currently nameless⁵, is a freaking piece of crap.

¹I still have all of these stuffed animals, except Pengy. I don't know what happened to Pengy. Poor Pengy.
²You know who you are.
³I guess if there is ever a good time to be reading a really, really long book that takes you forever to get through, it's when the library workers go on strike for three months and counting...
⁴the real phrase here may or may not have been "film and film cartridges" rather than "hockey"
⁵although I can think of a few choice names for it sometimes

2007-10-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Every Other Driver on Highway 1 in the Pouring Rain Last Night,

That space between me and the car in front of me is there for a reason. And the reason is not that you can zoom into said space at a high rate of speed and then slam on your brakes because, lo and behold, there is a car in front, you asshat.

Sincerely,

Someone Who Actually Knows How Drive a Car

Behind the Visor

2007-10-21T14:56:00.000-07:00

For years, I've been using a visor on my hockey helmet that doesn't fit properly¹. In fact, I've been using it since I started playing hockey almost 5 years ago. It was a handy-me-down from my ex - he didn't like playing with a full face shield, so got himself a half visor and I acquired the ill-fitting full one². After 4 years of hockey, this visor is now scratched all to hell and it's always fogged up something terrible. And, really, when you think about it, it's probably not the best idea to have your safety equipment jury-rigged together. So I finally broke down and bought my own properly fitting visor.

Attaching said visor to my helmet, however, was no small feat. I mean, look at these directions:

Aside from the fact the chart that tells you if this visor will actually fit your particular helmet is *inside* the packaging (meaning you don't know for sure until you buy it if it's going to fit), you seem to need an engineering degree to assemble this damn thing. They appear to have one set of instructors for like 5 different types of visors, so it's all "For concept II protectors (type 1 and 2), thread the chin strap through the chin cup and face protector as shown in figures 2 and 4." And I'm all "mine is what concept? what type? whose figure? My cat's breath smells like cat food." I mean, for crying out loud, you need a 3 part picture, with multiple arrows, just to loop the chinstrap through the side of the visor:

... and that's before you even start attaching screws and clips and suchlike. Speaking of which, does anyone have any idea what these screws are for?

Because they were left over when I was done and I don't see anything in the instructions saying what I was supposed to have done with them.

Anyway, although it did take much longer that I expected, by some miracle I seem to have attached the new visor to the helmet in enough time to actually blog this before I have to go pick up my co-op car for tonight's game.

Also, I'm fighting off a cold, so I've affixed some warning signs to my water bottle:

Hockey players tend to drink out of any bottle on the bench and, since I'd hate to get any more people sick than I've already infected, I figured a couple of bright purple signs will help.

¹It's an adult-sized visor and all my equipment is junior boys.
²I'm of the opinion that this face is far too pretty not to have full protection.

Elizabeth

2007-10-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

According to Wikipedia, there are 69 nicknames for Elizabeth:

They kind of cheat by counting "Lili," "Lillie" and "Lily", and "Liz," "Lizz", "Lizzie" and "Lizzy" all as different names, but even still, that's a lot of names. But then they don't have "Bethy" or "Bethie" (which a surprising number of people actually call me, given that I'm 30), but they do have "Bethey," a way I've never, ever seen it spelled. Ever.

And from now on, I think everyone should call me Tetsy. Seriously? Tetsy is a name?

Hallelujah, It's Raining (Garbage) Men (and Women)

2007-10-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

In keeping with my recent, and what will hopefully be short-lived, trend of being the last to report on a long-broken piece of news, did you know that the Vancouver garbage strike ended this week, after almost 3 months? Which is unfortunate for my local Home Hardware, who had a sign proudly announcing:

Not unlike my reporting, it's just too little, too late!

Sadly, though, in order to catch up on the backlog of smelly garbage, the garbage collectors are not picking up recycling for two weeks. And since my landlord was getting rid of our garbage¹, we don't have a trash backlog at our house, but I am drowning in recycling. Unwilling to follow my mother's advice of "Just throw it all in the trash!", I had bags and bags of cans and bottles and plastics and paper fill my kitchen. I was seriously thinking I was going to have to move out soon, since there is almost no room left in my tiny suite!

Anyhoo, there's my much belated report on the end of the garbage strike².

¹I have no idea how. I put my garbage outside in the garbage bin and it disappeared. I decided to adopt a don't ask, don't tell philosophy.
²In reality, I just liked that title that I thought of like halfway through the strike, was waiting and waiting to use and then, once the strike was over, got too busy to write this post until now.

The saddest half marathoner ever

2007-10-19T10:39:00.000-07:00

Click here to see photos of the saddest looking half marathoner ever.

Of course they didn't get any photographs of me *before* I hurt my foot, when I was actually running. Instead, I get three photos of me limping along, looking all sorry for myself.

In happier news, my foot now feels 100% better. It was getting very slightly better each day last week, then I played hockey on Sunday and it really hurt Sunday night, so I iced the hell out of it and by Monday it was 97.5±0.5% better. Anyway, lesson learned - if you ever plan to run a half marathon, train for it. That's right folks, you heard it here last.

500

2007-10-18T15:17:00.000-07:00

Happy 500th blog posting to me
Happy 500th blog posting to me
Happy 500th blog posting dear Bethy
Happy 500th blog posting to me!
And many more!

Yes, that's right. Showers of Happiness for my 500th blog posting.

This photo is in no way taken out of context.

Now I have two, two ouchies!

2007-10-17T08:29:00.002-07:00

So I come home from Third Tuesday last night and, realizing that a Bellini and a few nachos do not a dinner make¹, I decide to cook some pizza. Now, since I lack a proper oven mitt², I took the pizza out of the oven using a dish towel. A very thin dish towel. And when I discover³ that it's rather hot and going to burn me through said dish towel, what do I do? I touch the damn cookie sheet with the index finger of my other hand, like as if I'm going to grab it with my bare hand because it's too hot to hold with a dish towel. Ya, that's right, skin directly on metal.

So now I have a burnt index finger to go with middle finger that I slammed the door on the day before. I think I may have burnt my fingerprint right off my finger. I'm now contemplating going on a crime spree in which I commit said crimes with only my left index finger, since they won't be able to get any prints.

So, yes, now I have two, two ouchies! The Count would be proud.

In a tangentially related story, when we were little, my sister was afraid to go in the basement because she believed the Count, who she was afraid of, lived in the drier in the laundry room. Which is funny, because it would have made more sense to be afraid of those things that really did live in the basement.

¹For the record, I was planning to get something to eat, but the people at 3T were too fascinating and I got all caught up in conversations and didn't get around to actually ordering any food.
²Note to self: put "oven mitt" on Christmas wish list.
³I say "discover" like I really didn't know that when taking a cookie sheet out of a 450 degree oven the cookie sheet is going to be, well, 450 degrees.

Canucks game recap

2007-10-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

My recap of last night's Canucks game:

Taylor Pyatt scored after a beautiful shot by Brad Isbister hit the post, bounced off of Taylor and went into the net. A Pyatt-Isbister double team - it's like my dream come true!

Then some other stuff happened, but we don't need to talk about that.

In other Canucks news, I want these earrings, which I just saw over on http://www.miss604.com/. The thing is, I don't $73.99-plus-tax-want them.

Seriously, 80 bucks? Seriously?

I have an ouchy

2007-10-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

You know what is a really good way to take your mind off your injured foot?

Slam the door on your finger. Don't just close it, but really slam it good and hard. Seriously.

Blog Action Day

2007-10-15T23:06:00.001-07:00

Although my previous post was, at least in part, about the environment it was not actually intended as part of Blog Action Day. I actually didn't know about Blog Action Day until Darren mentioned it in the comments on that post.

In his post, Darren asked "what is your big eco-sin?" Like most of his commenters, I try to be good to the environment:

I don't own a car - I take the bus to work and for most of my transportation around the city, and I joined the car co-op for getting to hockey games
even when I do take a co-op car, I usually try to do multiple things on a given trip (such as go to the grocery store after my hockey game) in order to minimize the number of car trips I take
I'm a vegetarian and I don't wear leather
I use a travel mug¹ to avoid using paper cups and I bring my own Tupperwear container to the cafeteria to avoid using Styrofoam containers
I bring my own bag to the grocery store so I don't have to take plastic ones
I recycle anything that can be recycled²
I turn the lights out in the bathroom, the kitchen and the photocopy room at work when I leave them³
I use the back of old printouts as note paper before I recycle them
I don't buy anything new if I can get it used instead and buy almost all of my clothes in consignment & thrift stores
I rarely fly anywhere⁴

But I do have one big eco-sin. I leave my computer on. All the time. 24/7. Even when I'm at work all day, my computer at home is on. And the main reason I do this is a rather ridiculous one - when I come home, I like there to be messages waiting for me. Even though I haven't had my landline and it's accompanying answering machine for months now, my natural inclination when I walk in the door is to look for the little flashing red light telling me that someone cared enough to call me! And since I don't have that anymore, my msn serves that purpose. With my computer on, people can msn me all day long and when I get home, I have messages waiting for me. OK, now that I write that down, I see it's silly. Starting tomorrow, I'm shutting my computers off when I leave.

On a related note: why, since the librarians have been on strike for four months, were all the lights on in the local library branch when I walked by there tonight?

¹A friend of mine said that he feels if he can't have his act together enough to bring his travel mug with him, then he feels that he doesn't deserve a coffee. I think this is a good philosophy
²and in light of the 4 month garbage strike that has, mercifully, just ended, this is a real sacrifice as I can barely fit in my kitchen because I have so much recycling piled up in there!
³and have noticed that some of my co-workers have started following my example
⁴Although, truth be told, this has more to do with my lack of money (thanks, $70,000 of student loans!) than with a conscience choice to fly less

Al Gore Would Be Ashamed of Me

2007-10-14T22:24:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. I like driving cars. I want to be good to the environment and I don't even own a car, but I really like driving! As you know, I joined the car co-op so that I can get to my hockey games out in Coquitlam. Well, for today's hockey game, I booked a 2007 Mazda 5. When I booked it, I had in my head a Mazda 3. I like the Mazda 3. The Mazda 5, however, is pretty much a station wagon¹. Boo! But the cool thing about the Mazda 5 is that it has a feature where you can drive the car as a clutch-less manual. Like with the Tiptronic™ transmission of my beloved Smart Car, you can drive this car like a manual, but without having to step on a clutch. I like to call it "idiot-proof manual," because if you don't shift correctly, the car will eventually shift for you. The system for shifting is a little wack - you put the gear selector² into "M" for "manual", a position from which you can then shift up and down by pushing the stick down or up. Ya, you read that correctly - to shift up, you push the stick down and vice versa. Shifting up shifts down, shifting down shifts up, people wear hats on their feet and hamburgers eat people³. Driving idiot-proof manual really reminded me how much I love driving a car with a manual transmission. The first car I ever owned, a 1989 Honda Civic, was manual and I loved that car. Interestingly⁴, I learned how to drive manual on that car and it didn't have a tachometer. Fortunately, it also didn't have its muffler properly attached most of the time, so I learned to shift gears based on the sound of the engine. Driving this 5 today was trickly as the engine is so quiet, you can barely hear it and I'm not used to looking at a tach to know when to shift.

Another point of note from my trip in the Mazda 5 is that the car has way too many cup holders. And if I, the woman whose only concerns when car shopping are "will my hockey gear fit into it" and "does it have a cup holder?", am saying that, well, you just know it must be true. Seriously, there are no fewer than FIVE cup holders accessible from the front seats. FIVE!! Granted, hockey and various other weekend activities may leave one somewhat dehydrated, but how many beverages am I expected to consume in a 45 minute car ride?

Oh ya, and in case you don't believe that I love to drive, here's the odometer reading on my old Honda Civic the day she died, some 7 years after I bought her for $2000. When I bought her, I believe she had about 150,000 km on her.

RIP, little buddy. I miss you.

¹on Wikipedia they refer to it as a "minimini van" because it's not as big as a minivan, but it has sliding doors and seats 6. But it felt like a station wagon to me! Ick!
²For the record, I had to look that term up. I usually just call it the "stick," but that feels like it's more for a manual than an automatic.
³10 points to the first person who correctly identifies where I stole that line from.
⁴If you don't think this is interesting, try learning to drive stick with a tachometer!

Your Mom

2007-10-13T17:59:00.001-07:00

Overheard at a bus stop this morning, after several buses went by, none of which were the bus that these kids wanted:

Kid #1: I think we missed our bus.
Kid #2: *You* missed the bus.
Kid #1: Your *mom* missed the bus.

Your mom. There's really no comeback to that.

Palmasutra

2007-10-12T03:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's what you think it is. And it makes a great conversation starter, like when you are out for dinner, out clubbing on Saturday night or around the water cooler at work: "Hey, what did you do this weekend?" "Well, let me show you!"

Exciting features include:

full colour pictures of each position
detailed description of how to do the position, in case you find the pictures confusing
checkboxes to keep track of which positions you've tried
note pages to record important information about each position (like, "tried this with so-and-so," "I <3 this position," and "causes serious injury; do not attempt"
searchable by posture (including "standing," "sitting," "kneeling," "from behind," and "preliminaries")

The Palmasutra - d ownload it to your Palm Pilot today! http://www.palmasutra.org/

What's Pissing Me Off Today: Radio Commercials

2007-10-10T18:38:00.000-07:00

I listen to the radio. A lot. As in while getting ready in the morning, all day at work, and often when I'm at home in the evenings and on weekends as well. And the radio station I usually listen to seems to like playing the same commercials over and over and over again. They seem not to realize that, even if it's a good commercial, hearing it ad nasueum will make me want to not buy their product. But when it's an annoying commercial, that's when I want to go postal.

Case in point - this one commercial which, although it mercifully appears to have been discontinued, was played so often, and was so friggin' annoying, that I think I'm permenantly scarred by the memory of it. It was part of a series of rather funny commercials for Haagen Daaz ice cream where "Haagen Daaz" was used as a sexual innuendo. Things like "My friends say they get Haagen Daaz everyday, but that can't be true, can it?" But this one commercial had a guy complaining that now that he was married, he didn't get "Haagen Daaz" as much as he used to. To paraphrase: "We are busy. Kids. A mortgage. Susan's career." But he says the words "Susan's career" with such contempt that I wanted to reach through the radio and throttle him. He's not complaining that his career takes up time. He's entitled to his career, but how dare Susan have a career. Gah!!

Also on my hit list: Carnation Breakfast. There are two commercials on the air right now - one featuring a man, one featuring a woman. In both of them, the voice of their "Busy Day" starts telling them about all the things they have to do that day and how Carnation Breakfast is sooo convenient to fit into said busy day. The man's day consists of getting to work, important meetings, getting promoted before lunch. And the woman's day? Getting the kids up, fed and ready for school. Now I have no doubt that in the majority of homes, women do more of the childrearing then men do. But it is by no means universal. And furthermore, it is not, in my humble opinion, a discrepancy that we should be supporting. News flash Carnation Breakfast - men can get their kids ready for school too!! Women have important meetings and get promotions too, you know!! Gah!!!

Ah well, at least I've gotten that off my chest. And, for the record, there is one radio commercial that I do like: the one for Mini Wheats. Everyone put your spoons together for new strawberry flavoured Mini Wheats. Sing it with me now: Mini Mini Mini Mini Wheats!

Hey! I just googled the song and found that, apparently, this commercial is also on that new fangled contraption, the television:

Foot vs. Brain

2007-10-09T18:11:00.000-07:00

In the battle between my injured foot and my brain's adenosine receptors, the adenosine receptors reigned supreme. Faced with the choice of hobbling all the way to the Tim Horton's on the other side of the building for an afternoon cup of coffee or resting my foot but forgoing my caffeine fix, there really was only one clear choice.

Limpy

2007-10-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

So apparently you really are supposed to train for a half marathon.

Yes, once upon a time, I registered to run the half at the Royal Victoria Marathon under the mistaken assumptions that:

(a) registering and (b) announcing to the blogosphere that I have registered should be sufficient motivation to get me up off my butt and back into running.

Note to self: the above assumptions are incorrect. Two weddings (and all the associated events), a softball league, wisdom teeth extraction and my general delinquency this summer all combined to give me sufficient excuses to not train adequately. And by "adequately" I mean "at all." But I registered, dammit, and I was going to run come hell or high water.

Another incorrect assumption was my belief that carrying one's CareCard with them during events in which they have the potential to become injured will protect them from injury. As it turns out, carrying one's CareCard only prevents injuries of the severity that require use of said CareCard. Injuries that don't quite require medical attention are fair game.

Also, when someone says something like "If you injure a foot, Beth, make sure it's the left one. I've injured my right foot, so if you injure your left, we can drive Lauren's car together - you on the gas and me on the clutch - if Lauren happens to injure herself" is just tempting fate.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First things first. I should tell you about how we were 15 minutes late starting the race. There were 6 of us staying at my old roommie¹ Dani's new place in Victoria. Another lesson learned on this trip: 30 minutes is not nearly enough time to get 6 people up, dressed, fed and out the door for a race. But the time we arrived, the start line looked like this:

Just a few volunteers standing around. The thousands of people running the half marathon - long gone.

Figuring "thank goodness for chip time!" we took a quick photo and headed out:

Jo, Dani, Sheila, me, Lauren & Tim.

Well, Dani and I headed out. Tim went in search of the bag check to leave his jacket before he started, Jo and Sheila, who were going to run the 8K² rather than the half marathon went in search of its start line and Lauren, who ran the full marathon which didn't start for another 45 minutes, went with J & S. We ran 3 km before we caught up with the slowest of the half marathon walkers, that's how far behind we were. And we were reported by the cops... as we ran past one of the cops stationed along the route to control traffic we heard him say into his walkie-talkie "10-4, I've got two runners coming along here." I said to Dani, "They are onto us! Quick, run!" Hee hee.. running humour.

Around about the time we caught up with the walkers, I told Dani to go on ahead of me. I'm not nearly as fast as her and knew if I continued to try to keep up with her, it would spell trouble, so she went off on her way and I continued to run at my slower pace. The route was very pretty, going through Beacon Hill and then out at a road along the water. My body started to realized that I was really, truly going to make it keep running and, for a while, seemed OK with this decision. Then a pain showed up in my left foot, but it decided to try out my right foot to see if it preferred that location, and next transferred itself to both my knees simultaneously, followed by my lower back. A slight headache showed up, but I'm pretty sure that was because they had very poorly spaced water stations and I was getting a bit dehydrated. I grabbed two cups of water at the next water station, and then found there there was another water station very soon after. Weird. Finally, the pain decided it liked my left foot best out of all the places it had tried out and took up permanent residence there. At first I figured it would go away as it had before and kept running. When it firmly stood its ground, I decided that perhaps a 2 minute walk (instead of my usual 1 min walk for every 10 minutes of running) would help. It did not. Finally, around about the 15 km mark I asked myself, "Is it worth continuing to run on this foot that is clearly unhappy about being run on and risking a more serious injury that could put you out of hockey?" Once I phrased it that way, I knew what I had to do. I had to walk, or rather limp, the last 6 km of the race. After all, any form of exercise that isn't hockey is just off-ice conditioning, in my opinion. And so I limped. And limped. And limped. I limped so much that my right hip and ankle started to hurt from overcompensation. And yet I continued to limp. Because really, what else are you going to do? I certainly wasn't injured enough to stop at the medical stop (although I did think about it) and I had to get to the finish line, where my friends would be waiting for me.

As I continued on my way, I started to resent the volunteers who were positive, cheering on the runners and walkers with a "good job!" When I ran the Vancouver half, I found these cheers to be really motivating, but as I limped along, berating myself for not having trained more, all I could think is "You people are so insincere! I'm not doing a good job! I'm doing a terrible job!!" A few volunteers along the way did seem to notice my limp and the grimace that I'm sure was on my face and gave me a sympathetic smile and that was muchly appreciated.

In the end, I hobbled over the finish line, got my medal and, surprisingly, found my friends who had finished a half hour before me. And that was the end of the race I never should have run!

My plan now, as I sit here icing my feet⁴, is to take a small break from running. I may do the occasional run if the mood strikes me once my feet are healed, but winter is time to focus on hockey and skiing. Come the new year, I'll start thinking about the Scotiabank half marathon, which happens in June. But I'm going to train for it. No really, I've learned my lesson!

¹Firefox's spellcheck tells me that "roommie" is not a word, but suggests that I actually mean "commie" here.
²I say "were going to" because they didn't, in the end, get to run. As it turns out, the start line for the 8K (which started at the same time as the half) was already taken down by this point.
⁴I'm icing my left foot, which was the main injury, and my right ankle, which feels strained from having limped on it for 6 km, as well as everywhere else I've had to walk since then. My feet are the thermostat to my body however, so making them cold is making the rest of me cold too, despite being in my warm bed with two blankets and a warm laptop on top of me!

Sugar Daddies, Inc.

2007-10-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

So I just saw an ad for this: http://www.seekingmillionaire.com/

From their site:

Seeking Millionaire is the premier Millionaire dating site.

The premier site for millionaire online dating. Not one of those cut rate ones.

You know, you'd think with all those millionaires paying to be on this site, they be able to afford and editor to tell them that the second "millionaire" in that sentence shouldn't be capitalized.

Smelling Like a Cupcake

2007-10-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

Slowly, and without my really noticing, most of my scented products have become vanilla. Well, I suppose they haven't actually become vanilla, but rather I've started buying vanilla scented things that I used to buy as a different scent.

It started when I bought Victoria Secret vanilla scented body spray on my first trip to Seattle. I've since maintained that VS vanilla scented body spray is my secret weapon for attracting the boys. Something has to explain the flock of hot boys that is following me around wherever I go.
When I stayed at my sister's place in Toronto last summer, she commented on the body spray as follows: "You smell like a cupcake!"

Then one day I discovered vanilla mint toothpaste. The mint part of vanilla mint is quite subtle and I like that because I drink coffee on the way to work, right after brushing my teeth and I have to say that the usual super-minty flavour of toothpaste does not go with the taste of coffee. Vanilla is much better in this regard.

And now I have vanilla chai anti-perspirant. And I mean, really, who doesn't want to smell like vanilla chai all day?

2007-10-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

Sunday night, 11 pm seems to be the time when hot Vancouver boys do their grocery shopping. Safeway was positively crawling with them. It's something I've been wondering about for a while, because I rarely see hot boys in the grocery store, yet I know they must acquire their sustenance at some point - you can't build those muscles without protein!

Unfortunately, Sunday at 11 pm was also the time that I, being on the way home from my hockey game, decided to take advantage of the fact that I had a co-op car by stopping in at Safeway for some groceries.

On the way home from my hockey game. As in my hair is in pigtails, tied back with a bandana, no makeup, sweaty and disgusting.

Sigh. Sometimes you just can't catch a break.

My First Ever Camping Trip

2007-09-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

So, once upon a time I went camping. And then a week of internet-less-ness went by. And then I got really, really, really ridiculously busy at work. And then I could finally blog about it.

While I was packing for my camping trip:

Me: I think I'll bring this little notebook and a pen, in case I have any profound thoughts I need to write down while I'm camping.

Dani: You mean in case you have any ideas for your blog.

pause

Me: Yes, yes I do.

Just to give you some background, this was the first time in my entire life that I ever slept in a tent. Seriously. I went to "camp" in grade 8, where we slept in cabins. And I've been to my friend Erika's cabin. And I went to someone's cottage once. And that's the extent of my "camping" type experiences up until now. My family never did the camping thing when I was growing up and, despite the fact that everyone in Vancouver seems to camp all summer long, no one has ever invited me to go camping with them until Rachel did three weeks ago.

Rachel has a lot of camping gear, so all I had to bring was my food, clothes and a pillow. Neither of us own a car and it turned out to be much cheaper to rent one than to use a co-op car (which seems to be true of the longer trips, and we were driving pretty far). Rachel did all the planning (did I ever mention that Rachel rocks??) and I honestly didn't even know exactly where we were heading when we left on the Friday afternoon. It turns out we camped at Nairn Falls Provincial Park on Friday night, then headed out to Joffre Lakes to hike on Saturday.

To give you some perspective, Nairn is about 150 km north of Vancouver. And Joffre, unlike what Rachel's hiking guide book told us, is about 40 km past that. Rachel's guide book said "Drive 190 km north past Whistler & Pemberton," so we got up quite early on Friday expecting to drive 190 km (as Nairne is near Pemberton). What the guide book should have said was "Drive 190 km north of Vancouver, going past Whistler & Pemberton." Minor details.

We left Vancouver in the afternoon and arrived at our campsite in time to pitch our tent while there was still some sunlight, with time to then enjoy the glorious sunset. We also had, in our opinion, the nicest campsite of all the sites in the park. We had a great view of the mountains and the water running by:

I really like this photo we took of ourselves:

Although I think the sunset makes it look like Rachel has a halo and, really, I should have some devil horns to complete the image.

Before and after photos of our tent:

Before

After

Am I the only one who is amazed that the tent, tent poles and tarp all fit into that tiny little sack?

After pitching the tent, we went for a little stroll in search of water and firewood and we don't get but three campsites down when we here "Beth?" It was my friend Alicia, and her boyfriend Paul, who had just arrived at their campsite. It amazes me that in the 7 years I've lived in Vancouver, I can count the number of times I've just run into someone I know while out in the city¹ on one hand², but I drive 150 km north and run into a friend three campsites down.

After finding water, but not finding the camp ranger³ to get our firewood, we returned to our site, and cooked some dinner on our wee little camping stoves. The ranger did show up later so we could buy some firewood and build a nice little fire. Rachel had booked the campsite in her name, so when the ranger showed up she asked, "Are you the Molls?" Apparently I took Rachel's name when we got married.

We had a very relaxed night of playing cribbage, watching the stars and chatting. And then we went to bed, since we were planning to get up really early. And I didn't sleep a wink. The water that was so beautiful was also unbelievably loud! Funnily enough, we had been chatting, among other things, about how both of us almost never have problems sleeping! That'll learn me to tempt fate! Also, it was a bit chilly and Rachel, meaning to ask if I knew where the extra blanket was in case I got cold, uttered the best line of the trip: "Do you know how to operate a blanket?"

We got up early and, after a quick camping breakfast, packed up and headed out for a drive to Joffre. From the Ministry of the Environment website:

Steeply rising from Lower Joffre Lake, the glacier-laden peaks are visible from an easily accessible viewpoint 500 metres from the parking lot. If you carry on, the trail becomes a rough, rocky and steep hike through the Coast Mountain range. Evidence of the park’s glacial history can be found in the U-shaped valleys, glacial silts and lateral moraines. This magnificent area of jagged peaks, icefields, cold rushing streams and turquoise blue lakes was established as a recreation area in 1988 and became a Class A park in 1996. A highlight of the park is the turquoise blue waters of Lower, Middle and Upper Joffre lakes, all three of which are located along the trail, and each more stunning than the last. Their striking, saturated blue colour is caused by “rockflour” - or glacial silt - that is suspended in the water and reflects green and blue wavelengths of sunlight. Joffre Lakes Provincial Park has opportunities for hiking, camping, mountaineering, wildlife viewing, and fishing.

If it seems like they are going on and on about the turquoise blue waters of the lakes, it's only because the water is really turquoise! Seriously, don't these photos look like we standing in front of a fake backdrop? It was hard to believe that something this beautiful really exists!

After reaching Upper Lake, we decided that for our next trip to Joffre we will pack our tent and other camping gear and carry it up there to camp out by Upper Lake. Then we could hike up to see the glacier at the top. How cool will that be!

If you ever decide to go to Joffre Lakes, though, I recommend you beware of the wildlife! Check out this ferocious beast we encountered near Upper Lake:

In all seriousness, though, there are bears in the area. And we saw these (what we are pretty sure are⁴) bear tracks:

There was also a very large pile of what we believe to have been bear shit on a nearby log - making us think these were bear tracks and not, as some fellow hikers thought dog or squirrel prints. Seriously, we told some other hikers we saw what looked like bear prints and they said, "maybe they were squirrel prints." I mean, really - how big do squirrels get up north??

Then we hiked back down. And the hike did require that we traverse some very loose rocks and I twice slipped and slammed my ankle into some not very forgiving rocks. Ouch.

And on the way home we were stopped on the Sea-to-Sky highway for over an hour just south of Squamish as there had been a big collision which required them to stop traffic in both directions. Rachel took a picture in the rearview mirror of the traffic behind us:

... and there were 3 km of cars stopped ahead of us.

Word to the wise - if you are ever stuck in traffic on the Sea-to-Sky highway just outside of Squamish, I recommend taking a walk down the road and chatting with each of the carload after carload of hot boys also stuck in said traffic. Good opening lines include "Can you see what's going on up there?" and "Where did you get that pizza?"

Anyhoo, we eventually made it home and I even went out on the town that night. There's something truly wonderful about living in a place where you can hike glacial lakes during the day and still get home to go clubbing at night.

¹not counting while on campus. 'cuz that's not really in the city.
²ok, maybe on two hands
³is that what they are called?
⁴can anyone confirm or deny whether these are, in fact, bear tracks?

2007-09-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

My friend James sent me a link to this over msn:

Do you think he's trying to tell me that I'm the prettiest girl in the whole wide room, or definitely in the top three good looking girls on the street, depending on the street?