Book dumb?

I have a problem, it is called book-buyingitis. That is the inflammation of my book buying arm. It acts up whenever I see used books for sale.

Today I went to a sale put on by the Winnipeg Public Library. I rode my bike. Brilliance! Really, was this me trying to keep the book-buyingitis at bay? Because when you ride your bike 7km to a book sale with a small backpack on, just how many books do you think you'll be carting home with you?

It didn't work. I gathered an armload and a half of the old, the dog-eared, the hard cover and paperback. A kind woman offered to take the stack for me and put them in a box at the cash desk so I could continue shopping, which I did.

Upon coming to terms with the situation of too many books, too little carrying power, I texted my sister, who lives nearby the school where the sale was being held. She and I were supposed to be going to my aunt's house today for a visit so I asked her if she had left yet, thinking that if she had not, perhaps she could come by and take the books off my arms. She had not, but lucky me, her fiance was out and about and could come by to help me out.

My box of books came to a meager $16.50. Everything was on sale for half-price, since today was the last day of the sale. You can hardly buy ONE book for that price, so I felt pretty happy with the finds.

Earlier in the fall Chapters Indigo came out with this flyer that featured the covers of 50 Books That Will Change Your Life. Oh yeah? Let's see about that. Since many of the books on the list are classic and/or massively popular, I've been having a great deal of luck finding the titles at these used book sales. I haven't exactly been limiting myself to only the books on the list though...

My latest picks (from my last two sales)

I realized tonight when I was setting this photo up that I have twice purchased Moby Dick and it isn't even on the list (which of those mistakes is the bigger crime? You tell me.)

Right now I'm reading The Great Gatsby. It's been a bit of a slow start, maybe not the best book to read before shutting the brain down for the night. Last week I got to the top of page 29 and I stumbled.

The living-room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapes-
tried furniture entirely too large for it...

I sat there and wondered, what is tapes-tried furniture? Well actually, first I mistook the hyphen for an em-dash and pictured a crowded room with a set of tapes and "tried furniture" (I don't know, furniture that someone placed with an honest attempt to make sense in the room, but obviously missed the mark?)

 

Finally, my sleepy eyes did see the furniture for what it was: tapestried. (It still looks funny to me.) I laughed and wondered what my interior decorating instructor would think if I were to ask her next week what 1920s tapes-tried furniture looks like.

A Fat Free Food (before you add them to your fat-laden whatever)

Okay, so I like browsing used books, but I truly love collecting cookbooks. I cannot stop myself from purchasing them, new or old. I have a preference for the ones with pictures, second priority is for nutritional information. Today I wanted to make Rice Crispie cake with some mint chocolate marshmallows I picked up the last time I was in the USA. I vaguely remembered that the recipe called for 1/4 cup of margarine/butter, 6 cups of Rice Crispies and the bag of marshmallows, but I wanted to verify the amounts for the margarine and cereal. I pulled out my go-to cookbook for all things basic and important--no recipe for Crispie cake. I pulled out an issue of Cooking with Kraft, which seems to feature some seasonal variation of the marshmallowy stuff in every issue--not this time. Argh! I didn't have the recipe on the back of the cereal box either because I had purchased the No Name brand box. I gave in, turned on Mac and Googled. Recipe found in 1.21745 seconds. Whatever, I still love my cookbook collection.

Sooo, the recipe was also not featured on the back of the marshmallow package, as it often is. Instead they offered some other rather no-brainer suggestions like, adding to a mug of hot chocolate, or melting over a pan of brownies. Yawn.

Add some tasty delight with Chocolate Mint Marshmallows!

Turns out, they might've been on to something. Do you know what melted brown and green striped marshmallows look like when mixed with Rice Crispies?

I was going to take this stuff in to work tomorrow as a Halloween treat, but my "fancy pants" Rice Crispie cake (made with faux Rice Crispies) looks more like Caca Cake. I decided to sample it tonight. You can hardly taste chocolate, but can get a bit of the aroma of the cool mint, so mostly it's like eating regular crispie cake after you've brushed your teeth. Caca cake indeed.

Also, don't buy the No Name brand crispy rice cereal. It doesn't look or taste like regular Rice Crispies. Splurge the extra 75 cents and buy the name brand stuff that also comes with the recipe right on the box, and probably fun, seasonal modification options that don't involve minty-fresh marshmallows.

Never a Doll Moment

Came home today from shopping for a Halloween costume with two options: Raggedy Anne or Sugar Plum Fairy.

I love the socks that came with the Raggedy Anne outfit.

I always thought I'd be cuter if only I had dimples

The outfit was fun but the skirt was super short. I wish the costume had come with bloomers. I tried on the Sugar Plum Fairy outfit next.

The package made me laugh. "Secret Wishes: Costumes for playful adults..."

My boobs don't look like the model's. I doubt that there is any ballerina out there with boobs like the model's. But she probably has different ideas about first and second position.

Trick or Treat?

Last Saturday: Good and Crumby

Last weekend I participated in the mock traveller experience at the soon-to-be-opened new Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport Terminal. I thought it might be fun. It was not. Here is why:

1. Instructions were explicit about where to park and when to be there, but did not mention that we would be spending time standing in an outdoor parkade. Wearing a skirt and tights with no jacket was a chilly mistake.
2. Experience was running behind schedule.  I was wave #8 of testers, but they were still trying to get waves 6 and 7 through. The poor volunteers seemed overwhelmed and stressed with no leader in sight to guide them.
3. I forgot my camera. The only photo I have of the experience is the one that happened to be snapped behind me by a friend I didn't know was going to be there.--> bottom right!
4. Free lunch was promised. I picked mine up upon completion of the tour, handed in my survey and headed back to Truck to go home. I reached over to the passenger seat to gently drop the packaged lunch on it. I missed, it hit the floor and broke open, sending pieces of a veggie delite sandwich and cut veggies everywhere. Boo hoo. (My bad, I know)

The new terminal looks spiffy though, it actually looks like an international airport now.

After the airport tour I had an appointment with the Genius Bar to get Mac fixed. The inside case had cracked in numerous places and was being held together with clear tape. I mentioned this to a Genius when I was in there one day and he told me that I could get it replaced for free. I like that price, especially when Mac is a ripe four years old, so I went for it.

Mac had to stay overnight (so sad!) but he came back with a new inside and keyboard. This was awesome because I didn't know how I was going to get the toast crumbs out of the keyboard.

Update: Residential Decorator in Training Week 5

So far I am a solid A student with two scores of 14 out of 15 on my assignments. Here is my value scale assignment:

For this assignment I had to do a grey scale (white to black), a blue value scale (light blue to dark blue) and a blue tone scale (blue plus its compliment, orange). This is harder than it would seem at first look. In this assignment I learned about mixing paint efficiently. Working on this week's assignment, a colour scheme for a room based on a given carpet sample, I found that the value study would have been more educational if we had to do a scale of two tertiary colours (like blue green and yellow green) because I had a lot of frustration trying to discern and match the undertones in paint and fabric samples.  The pink carpet sample I was given reminded me of the Barbie Motorhome my sister and I had in the early 90s. When I joined my classmates in the sample room I thought I had totally scored when I found a leopord-inspired  upholstery. Right away I knew I wanted to fill my room with rich, earthy colours and patterns. I pulled together a collection of other materials but wondered what my instructor would think. The only thing she liked was the dark wood trim (top of the above picture). I was crushed. She went to the sample books and pulled for me a pink paisley pattern with touches of green, khaki, blue and yellow. Not exotic, not rich. Not interesting at all. But I'm no dummy, if the class instructor hands you a place to start from, it's a pretty good idea to use it. It is the same in every profession where there is a client: you have to be able to check your personal preferences at the door and work by the basic principles of your craft, be it design or writing. Back at the drawing board, this is the new colour scheme I picked. I forgot to take a picture of the assembled piece and when I got home tonight I realized I forgot the thing at my mom's and dad's (the location of my "design studio"). I changed out some of the samples, including the dark wood trim after I went online and searched for "pink colour schemes". This was my big lesson for the week. When you don't know where to begin, go online and look at what other people have done. I discovered that a lot of people pair pink with green, which makes perfect sense to me now when I think about the colour wheel (the colours are complimentary). I also observed that they often fill the room with white furniture. Putting the sample board together this afternoon I started worrying that my wall colour was too peachy and my blind sample was not peachy enough (tone problems). Again, the best part about this class is that I know when to let go. To me, it doesn't matter if I get marked down for some off-colour choices if in the end I know the mistake I made and how I'd fix it if I had more time.

Hockey lives here and I do too

Went downtown to The Forks last night to take in the NHL Faceoff party with Lisa. We walked from her place in the Village, stopping for lattes along the way to go with the cookies I'd packed. Yesterday at one point I'd heard an estimated 70,000 people were expected, (really? 10 per cent of Winnipeg?) but today I read that turnout was still an impressive 15,000.

Photo: Bryan Scott

With temperatures in the high 20s this week, Winnipeggers are enjoying every minute of the last gasps of a perfect summer. I playfully kicked the crunchy, yellow leaves on the sidewalk of River Avenue, the anguish from being stuck inside a windowless, over air-conditioned classroom on Wednesday night forgotten.

I chatted along almost non-stop about my ballet class this week, work stuff and my new favourite cookies. Hockey was actually the last thing on my mind. I really was hoping  I could stand close to Canada's boyfriend and that evening's host, George Stroumboulopoulos.

By the time we got on location the sun had set but the energy in crowd that had been building throughout the afternoon had not gone down a bit. The Leafs and Habs game was playing on two screens on either side of the stage. Montreal was losing, much to the disappointment I imagined of their biggest fan, George.

"Where is he?" Lisa asked as we moved further into the crowd. When we saw him on the live TV feed he was on some kind of platform, but we saw nothing like that where we were.

I forgot about my personal goal for the night and turned my focus to the crowd filled with Jets jerseys, logo'd shirts and red, white and blue light-up pom poms. People haven't stopped chanting the "Go Jets Go" cheer since they made the announcement we were getting a team again. I can't say I've ever felt attached to the movement, hey, I've never really felt that attached to Winnipeg (only the convenience of living here). Standing amongst 15,000 of my neighbours full of pride for their city and team, under the lights, between the office towers of downtown commerce and the waters of the mighty Red, in a place where people have been meeting for over 6,000 years, graced by the gift of an unseasonably warm night I thought, I feel at home.

There are things I want to do, people I want to see and words I want to say that may not happen here, but I can't deny how much of my life experience has happened here already. I have spent my entire three decades of existence living in the Peg. I have no affection for our notoriously frigid winters, I hate when a beautiful outdoor excursion is marred by mosquitoes, I wish we had a population that would throw their support behind public transportation over parking passes, and mostly I think The Forks is best left to the tourists, but once in a while this place wins me over.

We never did find George. But he was here, in Winnipeg, and he ate at the vegan hotspot, Boon Burger Cafe 'cause he's cool like that.

This one's for you and me
Living out our dreams
We're all right where we should be
Lift my arms out wide
I open my eyes
And now all I wanna see
Is a sky full of lighters

"Lighters" by Bad Meets Evil Featuring Bruno Mars

Back at the Meat Market

So I've been off the vegan wagon since Thursday now. Yup, I did my 28 days. Toward the end I was really into it and feeling anxious about going back to a regular diet. Where's the sport in eating whatever you want? The one thing that I was looking forward to was pumpkin pie ice cream at Sargent Sundae. I think I could eat vegan for the rest of my days, save for pumpkin pie ice cream from my favourite neighbourhood scoop and twist shop.


So did you really not consume any animal products for those 28 days?

Yes! Well, mostly. I found out late in the game that regular ol' margarine is not just made of vegetable and canola oils, there is whey, a milk product, in that stuff too. So I was grilling my skinny Elvis sandwiches and baking my scones with vegan-unfriendly product until last week. As soon as I realised my error I got my chickpea butt to a Vita Health store and paid a ridiculous amount for dairy free marg. Cristco shortening, I will note, is vegan.

I will admit that I did not give up honey, which is supposed to be a no-no for vegans. I am not convinced that harvesting honey causes the honey bee any harm that would keep me up at night. Also, my veganism only went as far as my diet. I did not stop buying leather or wearing wool. I could not see myself ever giving those things up.

Did you notice any benefits to eating vegan?

Perhaps. I did feel it was the most satisfying regime I've ever done. I felt happy because I wasn't hungry or running on fumes, starving for carbs. I noticed I upped my water intake too, like I found my thirst again that had been missing for as long as I can remember. But I don't know if any of these things were because of the diet or because I also took up running and dancing. I didn't notice my skin looked healthier or that my eyes looked whiter or anything like that. Maybe I would have if I'd stuck with it for another 8 weeks.

Have you gone back to eating meat, dairy and eggs again now?

Sort of. On Thursday I was at Lisa's for dinner and she made shrimp--that was my first non-vegan dish in 28 days. Which was weird because I have "pet" Sea Monkeys and they are a tiny breed of shrimp. Tonight I was at my mom's and dad's and we had beef. I'm still kind of avoiding dairy and eggs and am thinking of reintroducing them gradually, if I do so at all. (Aside from pumpkin pie ice cream, of course.) I discovered a few egg and dairy free baking recipes--brownies, cookies, pastry--that have me convinced I can happily do without those things. One thing I didn't miss so much that I thought I would was cheese. I tried vegan cheese and it was gross. Cheeseless pizza though is suprisingly delicious.

How was it eating meat again?

Weird. I had a really hard time convincing myself it was okay to do it again. And while I used to love grilled meat, I have to say it looked kind of unappealing on the plate. I saw it and it looked like flesh. I've never looked at meat that way before, never felt guilt about eating meat or anything, so I wasn't expecting to have that reaction.

Other thoughts on eating vegan.

Well the one thing I don't like is that it often went against my preference for unprocessed or minimally processed foods. Tofu and milk alternatives such as soy and almond milk for example have additives like salt, cane juice (sugar). I know cow's milk is supposed to be full of junk like hormones and antibiotics, but at least it doesn't have added sugar or salt. I think I will focus on upping my vegetables and legumes, stop fretting about eating whole grains because of the carbs,and probably consume meat in smaller quantities, but I will be cautious about adopting the substitutes for fear of trading one evil for another.