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.

The Cake, the Bad and the Ugly.

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!

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!

Definitely To Be Trusted with Gingerbread

Merry Christmas, gentle blog readers.

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

Peanuts

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

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."

I <3 Winning Stuff

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?

The Tale of the "Vegetarian" Marshmallow

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 char^7
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.

Xmas Party's?

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.

Trying Another One On For Size

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.

Now I have two, two ouchies!

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.

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.

There's No "I" in "Team Cupcake"

...but there are two "I"s in "Team Icing." I'm not sure what that means, but I'm putting it out there anyway.

Having just revived from the sugar-induced coma I entered yesterday as a result of just the sugar that was being absorbed through my skin by the end of a day which included preparing over 60 cups of icing, which we then put onto 150 cupcakes (not to mention baking a layer for actual wedding cake too!), I can now share with you, gentle blog reader, the adventure that was Team Cupcake.

As you know, my friend Erika is getting married this weekend. And weddings require cake, in this case, of the cup variety. Erika's good friend and labmate, Linda, is making the wedding cake, and when I heard that she was to be making scores of cupcakes (for the eating) in addition to the actual wedding cake (for the ceremonial cutting and looking pretty), I offered to help out, as did some of Erika's other friends. Thus was born: Team Cupcake! Go Team Cupcake!

In addition to Team Cupcake, there was Team Icing, a sub-team of Team Cupcake, consisting of Linda and I. Team Icing spent the day retrieving un-iced cupcakes from the bakery, perfecting the protocol¹ for making icing, sending Linda's sister to the store to procure us further supplies², using this protocol to produce ridiculous amounts of said icing and preparing the facilities for large-scale assembly line cupcakery. Also, upon discovering that the ridiculous amounts of icing we had prepared were insufficient for our hyper-ridiculous number of cupcakes, we later whipped up another double batch during the cupcake assembly protocol, impressing our fellow Team Cupcake members with our domesticity and skill. Go Team Icing!

Of course, no event would be complete without me whipping out my digicam to take pictures of even the most mundane things, so now I give you a few pics of the day....

We used 4 lbs of butter...

This is just 1/2 lb. So picture this times 8.

... and 5 kg of icing sugar

Again, this is just a portion of the total used.

...to create over 60 cups of glorious white buttercream goodness...

...which then went onto assemble-line production of an effing large number of cupcakes, which were further garnished with hand-made icing decorations...

...and a good time was had by all!

So props to our fearless leader, Linda, the captain of Team Cupcake!

I'm very much looking forward to eating one of these cupcakes on Saturday!!

¹Linda is also a scientist and in the lab you don't have recipes, you have protocols. Like recipes, protocols are developed by trial and error and what works at any given time seems to differ from lab to lab (er, kitchen to kitchen) and from day to day.
¹ we ran out of clear vanilla. Clear vanilla is the secret to this icing.

Weddings

So, I'm going to two weddings in the next couple of weeks and I'm really excited about both of them.

First of all, both couples are AWESOME! You know how sometimes couples are together and everyone is always (behind their backs, of course) like "wtf? why is she (or he) with him (or her)? She (or he) is way too good for that schmuck!" This is not the case with these couples - I can honestly say that I'm totally happy for both of the brides, who are getting awesome husbands, and both of the grooms, who are getting awesome wives!

Second, these two weddings are going to be about as different as can be. The first one is a traditional Indian wedding, meaning that I'm going to four different events, spread out over a week and a half, some of which will have 700+ guests. There's a pre-wedding reception thrown by the bride's family, a party where all the girls get hennaed, a wedding ceremony (plus a ceremony for leaving the parents's house and another one for entering the new house) and the reception thrown by the groom's family (and probably ten thousand other things I don't even know about). I've never been to an Indian wedding before, so I'm very excited to experience it all (especially, the food! I *love* Indian food¹!)

The second wedding will (most fittingly for a bride and groom who got engaged after climbing the Chief and who registered their wedding on the gift registry at Mountain Equipment Co-op) be outdoors on a property out in Langley, and many people will be camping out that way that night. I tried to convince the bride that she should do a keg stand at her wedding, but apparently it will be cans of beer, not kegs, so that plan was foiled! There certainly won't be 700 guests (I think it's something like 100-150, but I might be totally making that number up). And no guests are allowed to attend that haven't met the bride and/or groom at least once (i.e., no bringing random dates just so you can have a date!). The idea is that the bride and groom want a great party with their family & friends, which is very in keeping with their personalities².

All of this talk of guests and whether or not the bride and groom actually know all the people at their wedding is sort of getting mashed up in my brain with recent conversations I've had about Facebook (i.e., how some people only add their actual friends, whereas other people add anyone and everyone they meet (and sometimes people they haven't even met)). And so I have a question for you, blog reader:

How many of your Facebook "friends" would you invite to your wedding? 100% of them? 50%? 10%?

¹I was talking with Dave the other day and mentioned that the bride & groom are vegetarian, so I'm going to get a wicked good Indian vegetarian dinner, and he said, "Nice to see that your dietary lifestyle choice will be met." (This was a reference to the MC at his & Sarah's wedding, who cracked us all up when he said, "Vegetarians and vegans, please inform the waitstaff of your dietary lifestyle choice."). I replied to Dave, "Yes, and my other dietary lifestyle choice too. Open bar."

² OK, as I'm proofreading this post, it almost sounds like I'm slagging on the one couple because they are having a less ornate wedding and/or slagging on the other couple because they are having a huge wedding with a lot of people that aren't close friends there... but I'm so totally not doing that! I really am excited about the two weddings and just think the contrast is very interesting, not that one is better than the other.

Adventures in Packaging

A few packages have made me go "WTF?" lately and so I thought I'd share them with you, gentle blog reader. First up, Veggie Patch Spinach Nuggets:

I was in the grocery store the other day, looking for some delicious and proteinaceous foodstuffs and as I was checking out which of the Yves Veggie pretend-meat items were on sale, I noticed a package of spinach nuggets that looked tasty. I started reading the packaging, as is the habit of the nutritional scientist (how many calories? how many grams of protein? are there any trans fat? for the love of all that is good in the world, tell me if there are any trans fats!!!) and saw a picture of the new - and, in my humble opinion, infuriating¹ - American Food Pyramid. Being that I'm in Canada, I found this a little strange - shouldn't it have Canada's Food Guide on there? And then I read what was written next to it - it actually does talk about Canada's Food Guide there. But that's not a picture of Canada's Food Guide!!! Canada's Food Guide is a RAINBOW, people, a RAINBOW! What is up with that???

Next up, Reversaflex tabs.

In the cupboard where the stationery items live in in my office, there was a box of those clear plastic tabs you use to label hanging file folders... you know, like this kind of thing:

Photo courtesy of some random on Flickr.

In one of my "I'm going to be organized" moments, I decided to use them file away some of my papers in an orderly fashion². I just printed up labels and stuck them on the tabs, but check out how the instructions suggest you deal with them:

A *typewriter*? Are you serious?? Or a *tapewriter*?? Do you remember those things? My parents had one and I thought it was sooo cool. Like when I was 5 years old. Sure, I found these in a supply cupboard and do not know how long they've been there so, in theory, they could have been produced in 1981, but I should point out that my program has only been in existence for like 4 years. And the organization in which my program is based for like 10. So really, they can't be older than that³. And I'm pretty sure that typewriters and tapewriters were not prevalent in 1997.

And now, my favourite of the packages that made me go "WTF" this week. This one is from a lipgloss that my mom sent to me:

Hook up lip color? My *mom* sent me something called hook up lip color?? I can only conclude that she either did not read the packaging or she does not know what "hook up" means. Seeing as this is a woman who referred to S&M as M&M, I'm betting on the latter.

¹infuriating because pretty much the only thing that people understood about the US Food Pyramid was that it's big on the bottom and small on the top... so the groups on the bottom (Grains, Veggies & Fruits) are what you should have more of and the ones on the top (Meat, Milk, Oils) are what you should have less of. People couldn't get their heads around portion sizes or figure out the specific numbers of servings from each group they should be getting or pretty much anything else about the damn thing, but at least they knew that you should eat more Veggies & Fruits than Meat. But in this latest incarnation of the Food Pyramid (as seen on the package above), they changed it so that the food groups run vertically instead of horizontally, with the (barely discernable differences in the) width of the groups representing which (unlabeled) groups you should have more of and which you should have less of. And the fact that the groups are each wider at the bottom means that some (unspecified) types of, say, Meats & Alternatives are better than other (also unspecified on the Pyramid) groups. And somehow you are supposed to get that from the unlabeled, different coloured slices in the Pyramid. Like I said, infuriating!
/rant

²As opposed to my usual method of throwing papers haphazardly on any available table, counter top or deskspace.

³unless, I suppose, they were somehow inherited from another organization, but that's a pretty unlikely possibility

Free Stuff

So, on Sunday I got a bit of a surprise when I ventured out to the cheap Broadway produce stores in search of fresh veggies with which to cook up a bunch of delicious meals for the week. Broadway was closed to traffic as, apparently, it was Greek Day. And there were lots of vendors in the street. If this Greek Day is any indication, I'm pretty sure that Greece is a country full of nothing but restaurants, as pretty much every vendor there was selling food. And there were TONNES of people out, despite the fact that it was on and off raining the whole time. Weaving my way around the slow moving crowds on my quest for produce¹, I spied a non-food booth. And at this booth you could apply for a Vancity Enviro VISA⁴. And, as it so happens, I was in the market for a Vancity Enviro VISA. I recently switched from the bank I'd been at for years (I've only kept my student loan accounts there) to Vancity, as I really do feel that I'm more of a credit union kind of girl. And I'd been meaning to apply for one of their Enviro VISAs (5% of the profits go to environmental projects), but what with all the optometrist visits/dentist visits⁵/softball games/climbing of mountains⁶/etc., I hadn't quite gotten around to it. So I talked to the woman at the booth and she was like, "fill out this application form and I'll give you a bunch of free stuff." And you know how I feel about free stuff! As hard as I try to avoid my pack rat tendencies, I can't turn down freebies. So, for signing up for a VISA that I was planning to sign up for anyway, I got:

• a baseball cap - it's plain black with the words "Vancity Enviro VISA" in small red letters on the side (very subtle)... and I needed a new baseball hat!
  
• a ruler with a calculator in it - who couldn't use one of those?
  
• a water bottle - you can never have enough water bottles, imho
  
• a free pen - I don't believe in buying pens... people are always giving them away for free to advertise something or another, so buying pens seems crazy to me.
  
• another, even cooler free pen - this one is made from biodegradable plastic and biodegradable ink and when you are done with the pen you plant it in the ground and IT GROWS INTO A TREE 'cuz there is a seed inside!!⁷

So, that's my story about the free stuff.

In other news, I'm still sick. I was coughing and sneezing all freakin' day at work. I'm pretty sure that I must have the plague. Or possibly Ebola. Or possibly plague-infested Ebola viruses.

¹OK, I admit it. Produce and shoes. I bought a pair of "pewter" ²coloured flats³ at the Shoe Warehouse. Adorable!

²Not "silver", but "pewter". 'cuz there is *such* a difference!

³That's right, I said "flats." I was able to overcome my love of 27 inch heels and buy a pair of flats. For variety.

⁴I have *no idea* what Vancity has to do with Greek Day.

⁵oh ya, in case you were wondering, it turns out, as Dave so wisely predicted, I do not have oral cancer. In case you were worried.

⁶Crap. It just occurred to me that I never blogged about my recent trip up the Grouse Grind. Here I am writing about applying for a freaking VISA card (*yawn*) and neglecting to mention that I climbed a mountain that is 1.5X the height of the CN Tower. D'oh! Anyhoo, I climbed Grouse Mountain on Friday! Pictures to follow, hopefully... unless I forget to blog it again. I swear, I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached!

⁷sure, I'm a renter and will be for the forseeable future and so have place to plant a tree. But no matter! Minor details! I love my tree pen!

The healing powers of magic

My foot appears to have inexplicably healed itself. This morning on my walk from the bus stop to my office, it hurt as just bad as it has the past three days. Usually it is fine when I'm sitting (with it elevated) at my desk, but hurts as soon as I get up and take a few steps. But on my lunch break today, it occurred to me that it had stopped hurting. Completely.

Now, I'm not sure how exactly this happened, but I have three equally viable hypotheses:

1. Hockey tape. The lovely shiny black heels that I bought when I first got my job have not been fairing well. In fact, the little rubber thingys* on the bottom of the heels had completely worn away within about two weeks of me buying them. Like, worn away so completely that the metal post** inside the heel was poking out of the bottom. I'm too cheap to take them to a shoe repair place (they only cost $30, so I can't bring myself to spend any amount on fixing them) and I've been meaning to do a homemade repair job on them for ages. This morning, before work, I finally got the trusty old hockey tape out and put a few layers on the bottom of each heel to replace the aforementioned thingys. And now, after a few hours of wearing them***, my half-marathon foot injury has miraculously abated. Clearly, hockey tape has magical healing powers.

2. Alternatively, Shalu is magic. Shalu and I met up for lunch (as we work at the same site) and had gone outside in search of free veggie dogs, cake and chips.**** And it was while we were outside that it occurred to me that my foot wasn't hurting. Clearly, either hockey tape, or Shalu, is magic.

3. Or, there is a synergistic effect of hockey tape + Shalu that is magic.

Of course, given the fact that my coffee ground vomitus-inducing stomach troubles also mysteriously cleared up with no help whatsoever from the medical profession*****, there is the possibility that the lab accident with the nuclear radiation, the genetically-modified spider, the particle physics machine and that goo from outer space has rendered me an invincible superhero*****, but I think there's really just an outside chance of that being the case.

Update: I had written the above on my Palm Pilot, sitting in a coffee shop on Dunbar Street after work as it was far too sunny and nice to be at home. I thought it was a nice posting - brief, to the point, pithy. Yes, pithy, as in of, like, or abounding in pith. And accurate. And then life sent in a monkey wrench, as life is wont to do. In order to post this, I had to come home and sync it to my computer (as I don't have wirelessness on my Palm). Coming home involves walking down a stupid hill (and just ask Kelly abou that hill!). And now my foot hurts again. Not a lot, but a bit. Boo-urns.

*I have no idea what the correct name of those thingys are. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

**Did you know that there is a metal post inside of high heels? I had no idea. Hadn't really thought about what would be inside the heels, actually.

***Yes, I decided to wear my heels today, despite having an injured foot. Don't judge.

****There was a celebratory BBQ at our work site where free food was given out. Good times.

*****No caffeine! As if!

******or super villian.

Half Marathony Goodness

In eight hours, I will be standing in a sea of 15,000* people, nervously awaiting the start of the biggest run, by far, I have ever done in my life! My bib with my race number is pinned on my new lululemon** triathlon*** shirt, my timing chip is firmly attached to my shoe and we have three different alarms set to ensure that we wake up in plenty of time to get downtown for the 7 am start. I've done my carb-loading (i.e., bellini last night, cinnamon buns today) and Kelly and I made a super delish dinner wherein I got to try brown rice spinach pasta and she got to try Yves veggie ground round. We also had some wicked delicious Indian spice tea that Kelly had brought with her (complete with warmed soy milk) and topped the evening off with garlic hummus & corn chips. I also treated Kelly to not one, but two walks to the grocery store this evening. First to get produce for dinner and second because Dani informed me that the grocery store had the "specially marked boxes" of Vector cereal where you get a coupon for a free Saucony technical shirt. So while I believe that $7 for small box of cereal is highway robbery, since I get a free $40 shirt, it makes up for it.

Wow, I can't believe this entire post is about food. You'd think I was hungry or something.

*I have this vague recollection from last year of hearing that there are about 15,000 people who run in the Vancouver International Marathon. I can't find this anywhere on their site, however, so I could be totally wrong.

**I bought it at the outlet store, so it wasn't *that* expensive!

***Yes, I realize that I'm not running a triathlon. But it has pockets in the back to hold my PowerGels. I *totally* need to keep my PowerGels somewhere, right?

Sushi Party!

Just got home from a sushi party. Wanted to post pics, but my computer is taking FOREVER to upload them to Flickr and I'm sleepy and want to go to bed RIGHT NOW. So suffice it to say that my girlfriends ROCK! We made delish sushi (not to mention Ali's marinated strawberries and chocolate ice cream cake!); had good wine; talked about food, boys we are seeing, boys we are not seeing and decided we need to have an aphrodisiac party*. Too sleepy to post more now... I'll post pics tomorrow, k?

Oh ya, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHEILA!!

*Yes boys, that is correct. A house full of hot women were discussing our need to have an aphrodisiac party in Sheila's bed. Everything you ever thought happened when girls get together really is true.

The Land That Vegetables Forgot

Start of our second full day in Calgary. Yes, we start our day at 11:35 am - do you have a problem with that? Actually, we've been up for a little while, feeding our Facebook addictions* and drinking tea and eating brekkie.

Oh ya, so Calgary has totally turned me into an environment-destroying monster. Yesterday when Dave and Justin went out to get us coffee, I forgot to give them my travel mug, so I used my first paper cup of the Roll Up the Rim to Win season**. And today I used the oven (as in the real, full-sized oven) to toast my English muffin. Before you know it I will be driving a stretch SUV.

As for the title of this post, I think you can guess what this means. It's not called Cowtown for nothing, folks. But it's OK, we went to Safeway and bought a bunch o' food. Here's a pic of the fridge when we'd been to the liquor store, but not yet the grocery store. See if you can spot the food in this fridge***:

Also, be sure to check out Dave's list of "things you didn't know about Cowtown" - I'm sure you will find it insightful and informative. Especially the stuff about the boot stores.

*Except Justin, who thinks that all this computer stuff is anti-social and why aren't we all just using messenger pigeons for communication and listening to records?

**For the record, I Rolled Up the Rim to Not Win.

***It's sort of like "Where's Waldo".