Holy Mother of Christmas my arm hurts. Got the H1N1 shot today. Thank goodness my weights class was last night. The sheet of paper they give you after they stick you with what must be a combination of lactic acid and muscle wasting disease says that to alleviate discomfort you can exercise your arm or put an ice pack on it. Are you kidding me? Right now I think I just want to cut it clear off. My horoscope today didn't warn me about this. It certainly didn't mention anything about making a public spectacle of myself either but I guess sometimes they miss these things.
This part is encrypted: ***
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Keeping one step ahead of the afghan trap
On Sunday night I hosted the first meeting of Book Club. A while back a novel caught my eye in the bookstore and I decided to use a gift certificate I had to pay for it. Beginner's Greek by James Collins was compared to works of Jane Austin and the story reminded me of Serendipity, one of my all time favourite movies. The back 20 pages featured an interview with the author and questions for book groups. I mentioned the book to Amara in an email and she replied with, "I'd love to do a book club!" We rounded up some friends to join us and set the date.
What a doozy. Is there anything worse than trying to plow through a book you don't enjoy? Yes, trying to plow through it on a tight deadline. I finished it on Saturday night.
I felt bad. I picked a lousy read and got three girls to come out in the sub-arctic temperatures to my house to talk about it. To make it up to them I made a cheeseball and rolled it in Cloddhoppers.
Everyone agreed that the book was a stinker. Me, I've slipped in my reading discipline but I consider Amara, Kerry and Erin to be well-read people. Kerry is a published poet and she wondered how Beginner's Greek got to print. But it seems we are alone in our evaluation of the book:
"Pure Pleasure Plus Wit: The arch and romantic read of any season, James Collins'Beginner's Greek makes you half-believe in miracles. With his triteness detector in high gear and his sights trained on social hypocrisy, Collins spins a chance encounter on an airplane (shy guy meets his dream girl) into a perfectly calibrated comedy of missed opportunities and muddled loves." (O Magazine 2008)
"unabashedly romantic" (New Yorker )
"A witty romantic comedy." (People Magazine )
"A satire of modern love that will charm both sexes equally" (Vanity Fair )
Admittedly, I have a hard time with satire so I thought maybe it was just me not getting the humour of the story, but again, nobody else seemed to pick up on it.
After a collective shaking of heads we all took a plate of snacks and I served up something to wash them down with. Amara took me up on my offer of some flavoured coffee and I decided to join her in a cup.
It was eight o'clock on a Sunday night. My body is not very familiar with caffeine. I don't drink Coke, or any soft drinks for that matter, and I take my Starbucks heavy on the milk and syrup with a splash of espresso as a once-in-a-while treat in the mornings or afternoons. I crawled into my warm, soft bed later that night, closed my eyes and willed my brain to please shut up as I tossed and turned my way into exhaustion. I know I slept eventually because I woke up from a crazy dream, checked my clock and saw that it was 4:45 am, exactly one hour before wake-up time, rendering any further snoozing futile.
I didn't exactly have my A-game with me today at work. At lunch it was like the girls were talking to me via satellite. Someone would say something to me and it would first take me a second to realize she was talking to me, and then another second to process that she was making a joke and respond appropriately.
When I got home I called my mom while I prepared a plate of food. It occurs to me now that I talk to my mom almost everyday. I used to be baffled by people who said they talked to their moms everyday. What could they possibly have to say on a daily basis? Zoom forward a few years and now my most frequently dialed number is filed under Mom and Dad in my address book. Book Clubs, cheeseballs, daily chats with mom, you know what comes next right? Afghans and multiple cats. Hello, I'm your crazy Aunt Shirley.
After eating I layered up again and headed to the gym. I didn't feel like doing the aerobics class today and, after recently relocating both Nan (my iPod) and her charger, I figured I would give the treadmill a shot. I've never been on a treadmill before so I had no idea what settings would be appropriate. Speed? Five miles an hour? Whoa! My heart rate soared to 190 beats. I knocked it down to three but then I just felt like I was walking with pep so I bumped it back up to four. I was still walking but with a bit more vigor. My heart rate seemed to be in the right zone though so I figured that was all that really mattered.
I started to sweat a bit and I could feel my face get flushed. God I am loving this gym thing right now. It feels so good to get hot and sweaty these days when it is minus a million outside. Sitting at home it seems that all the knitted afghans in the world can't keep the chill off.
After 30 minutes I didn't really know how to get off the treadmill so I pressed the red STOP button. That worked. My feet still moved the tread but quickly slowed and then stopped. I stepped off the machine and found that my feet had forgotten how to walk without a moving belt beneath them. I stumbled a little but regained most of my control. My arms were still kind of into it though and I accidentally swatted a girl on the bum as I passed her at the water fountain. I avoided eye contact with her when we met later at the sinks.
The next book club meeting won't be until February. We will probably choose our book in January. Between then and now I am going to try to do some reading in the Young Adult genre. This is my favourite genre and the area I'd like to work in as a writer. Kerry, the poet and fellow book club member suggested that I join the Manitoba Writer's Guild and apply for their mentorship program. Submissions are taken in October so it is my goal to get some share-worthy work done between now and then and hopefully get accepted. It seems pretty competitive, they only take five mentees each year, but even if I don't get accepted and matched up at least I'll have done some work and committed myself to my craft. The alternative plan is to take up knitting afghans...
What a doozy. Is there anything worse than trying to plow through a book you don't enjoy? Yes, trying to plow through it on a tight deadline. I finished it on Saturday night.
I felt bad. I picked a lousy read and got three girls to come out in the sub-arctic temperatures to my house to talk about it. To make it up to them I made a cheeseball and rolled it in Cloddhoppers.
Everyone agreed that the book was a stinker. Me, I've slipped in my reading discipline but I consider Amara, Kerry and Erin to be well-read people. Kerry is a published poet and she wondered how Beginner's Greek got to print. But it seems we are alone in our evaluation of the book:
"Pure Pleasure Plus Wit: The arch and romantic read of any season, James Collins'Beginner's Greek makes you half-believe in miracles. With his triteness detector in high gear and his sights trained on social hypocrisy, Collins spins a chance encounter on an airplane (shy guy meets his dream girl) into a perfectly calibrated comedy of missed opportunities and muddled loves." (O Magazine 2008)
"unabashedly romantic" (New Yorker )
"A witty romantic comedy." (People Magazine )
"A satire of modern love that will charm both sexes equally" (Vanity Fair )
Admittedly, I have a hard time with satire so I thought maybe it was just me not getting the humour of the story, but again, nobody else seemed to pick up on it.
After a collective shaking of heads we all took a plate of snacks and I served up something to wash them down with. Amara took me up on my offer of some flavoured coffee and I decided to join her in a cup.
It was eight o'clock on a Sunday night. My body is not very familiar with caffeine. I don't drink Coke, or any soft drinks for that matter, and I take my Starbucks heavy on the milk and syrup with a splash of espresso as a once-in-a-while treat in the mornings or afternoons. I crawled into my warm, soft bed later that night, closed my eyes and willed my brain to please shut up as I tossed and turned my way into exhaustion. I know I slept eventually because I woke up from a crazy dream, checked my clock and saw that it was 4:45 am, exactly one hour before wake-up time, rendering any further snoozing futile.
I didn't exactly have my A-game with me today at work. At lunch it was like the girls were talking to me via satellite. Someone would say something to me and it would first take me a second to realize she was talking to me, and then another second to process that she was making a joke and respond appropriately.
When I got home I called my mom while I prepared a plate of food. It occurs to me now that I talk to my mom almost everyday. I used to be baffled by people who said they talked to their moms everyday. What could they possibly have to say on a daily basis? Zoom forward a few years and now my most frequently dialed number is filed under Mom and Dad in my address book. Book Clubs, cheeseballs, daily chats with mom, you know what comes next right? Afghans and multiple cats. Hello, I'm your crazy Aunt Shirley.
After eating I layered up again and headed to the gym. I didn't feel like doing the aerobics class today and, after recently relocating both Nan (my iPod) and her charger, I figured I would give the treadmill a shot. I've never been on a treadmill before so I had no idea what settings would be appropriate. Speed? Five miles an hour? Whoa! My heart rate soared to 190 beats. I knocked it down to three but then I just felt like I was walking with pep so I bumped it back up to four. I was still walking but with a bit more vigor. My heart rate seemed to be in the right zone though so I figured that was all that really mattered.
I started to sweat a bit and I could feel my face get flushed. God I am loving this gym thing right now. It feels so good to get hot and sweaty these days when it is minus a million outside. Sitting at home it seems that all the knitted afghans in the world can't keep the chill off.
After 30 minutes I didn't really know how to get off the treadmill so I pressed the red STOP button. That worked. My feet still moved the tread but quickly slowed and then stopped. I stepped off the machine and found that my feet had forgotten how to walk without a moving belt beneath them. I stumbled a little but regained most of my control. My arms were still kind of into it though and I accidentally swatted a girl on the bum as I passed her at the water fountain. I avoided eye contact with her when we met later at the sinks.
The next book club meeting won't be until February. We will probably choose our book in January. Between then and now I am going to try to do some reading in the Young Adult genre. This is my favourite genre and the area I'd like to work in as a writer. Kerry, the poet and fellow book club member suggested that I join the Manitoba Writer's Guild and apply for their mentorship program. Submissions are taken in October so it is my goal to get some share-worthy work done between now and then and hopefully get accepted. It seems pretty competitive, they only take five mentees each year, but even if I don't get accepted and matched up at least I'll have done some work and committed myself to my craft. The alternative plan is to take up knitting afghans...
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Those moments when you are reminded that someone loves you
Now that my birthday is done and properly documented for another year I can turn my focus to Christmas.
When we were little my sister and I would put out a plate of shortbread cookies and two beers for Santa before bed (Dad always made a fuss about Santa, the swine, drinking his beer). In our letters to him we would always ask him to bring something for our dog, and he would, wrapped in paper with puppies on it. During the years when we used to go cut down our Christmas tree Tracy and I would get our own little tree to put up and lay our stockings under. Remember how magical it felt to wake up on Christmas morning and find that special item you had been asking for, or that you didn't even know you wanted until you saw it there under the tree? I got a Garfield telephone once that I thought was the coolest thing ever. It was just like the one on the local TV program, Skiddle Bits. Another Christmas Day I got a Nutcracker the same year I first heard the Nutcracker story. I think I was eight. I was only a little disappointed when he did not later turn into the Nutcracker Prince.
I miss those years.
I got an email from Santa this morning. The old guy not only knows email but he's got an AV team up there too. I waited until I got home to play the video message which made me laugh and cry all at the same time. I don't know who called him up for me but I'll let you watch it here. Maybe you'll get inspired to ask Santa to send a special message to someone you know who would benefit from being reminded of the magic and spirit of Christmas.
When we were little my sister and I would put out a plate of shortbread cookies and two beers for Santa before bed (Dad always made a fuss about Santa, the swine, drinking his beer). In our letters to him we would always ask him to bring something for our dog, and he would, wrapped in paper with puppies on it. During the years when we used to go cut down our Christmas tree Tracy and I would get our own little tree to put up and lay our stockings under. Remember how magical it felt to wake up on Christmas morning and find that special item you had been asking for, or that you didn't even know you wanted until you saw it there under the tree? I got a Garfield telephone once that I thought was the coolest thing ever. It was just like the one on the local TV program, Skiddle Bits. Another Christmas Day I got a Nutcracker the same year I first heard the Nutcracker story. I think I was eight. I was only a little disappointed when he did not later turn into the Nutcracker Prince.
I miss those years.
I got an email from Santa this morning. The old guy not only knows email but he's got an AV team up there too. I waited until I got home to play the video message which made me laugh and cry all at the same time. I don't know who called him up for me but I'll let you watch it here. Maybe you'll get inspired to ask Santa to send a special message to someone you know who would benefit from being reminded of the magic and spirit of Christmas.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Black and Gold
I had been planning this party since before I had a house to hold it in. Finally, I did it. I had my black and gold birthday party.
The living room was painted and I even got some pictures hung on the wall. The cake was fabulous as I had imagined it would be. The spread of party food was plentiful. I put on my little black dress, brought out the Betseys and then the friends came and made my 28th birthday golden.
The living room was painted and I even got some pictures hung on the wall. The cake was fabulous as I had imagined it would be. The spread of party food was plentiful. I put on my little black dress, brought out the Betseys and then the friends came and made my 28th birthday golden.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Twilight: Full Moon
It's a full moon today, did you know that? I did, at three am when the sirens wailed by my house. With all the sensitivity of a toothpick I pulled the covers over my head and wondered why, if someone was going to have some kind of emergency, they couldn't wait until 5:30 at least.
I have a new recurring nightmare. It used to be the one where I was late for school and didn't have my gym clothes. I also occasionally had ones where I was shot. Haven't seen that in a while. No, lately it's been animal attacks, specifically grizzly bears. Both times now I've tried to hide in a public washroom but the bear somehow gets in anyway and grrr, attack ensues, I wake up. This is the interpretation the Internet gave me:
Hm. Let me think on that for a bit and get back to you.
So yesterday was the cookie exchange party and tonight I managed to bake, ice and ganache a cake to take to work tomorrow, so yes, here I am, back at the blog spot. I'm also currently being distracted by Kurt Browning skating sans shirt. Wouldn't that be kind of cold?
I did not win the cookie exchange contest. Amara did though, so I'm happy enough with that. But next year man, next year I've gotta get it. Funny though, Amara won with a cookie recipe almost identical to one I was considering. Doh! Or, rather, Dough! On the weekend I baked two recipes and decided to enter a chocolate shortbread cookie drizzled in caramel and topped with pecans. The other option was a cherry shortbread dipped in white chocolate and sprinkles. Here is the winning cookie:
Here is the cookie I did not enter:
Amara did get a much more uniform shape. Next time I would roll the dough into a log too.
Here is the cookie I did enter in the contest:
I never want to see caramel in my kitchen again.
Here is the 2009 Collection:
I'm getting tired, I can tell. I forgot an ingredient in the cake I baked tonight. More full moon madness, I think. I don't think it will make much difference really but we'll see. Tomorrow I will bake what will be the fabulously stunning cake that will grace my table on Saturday evening for my birthday soiree. Let's hope I have all my marbles about me when I attempt that one. When you come into my house these days it smells like sugar. I'm starting to think I am the witch in Hansel and Gretel and my house is made of gingerbread and gumdrops. Here's a pic of the cake I am going to use to try to win the affections of my co-workers with:
Chocolate fudge cake with peppermint butter cream icing and white chocolate ganache, garnished with crushed candy canes. Because I let it drop that I was bringing in cake this week in honour of my birthday on Saturday, a birthday lunch was organized for me. Nice huh? I've also been regularly eating lunch with some girls my age. My Sea Monkeys are flourishing again, I almost feel ready to name them, and yesterday in the mall I saw an old high school crush and he gave me the ol' elevator eyes. Things are coming around, yup indeed.
I have a new recurring nightmare. It used to be the one where I was late for school and didn't have my gym clothes. I also occasionally had ones where I was shot. Haven't seen that in a while. No, lately it's been animal attacks, specifically grizzly bears. Both times now I've tried to hide in a public washroom but the bear somehow gets in anyway and grrr, attack ensues, I wake up. This is the interpretation the Internet gave me:
To see a bear in your dream, symbolizes independence, the cycle of life, death and renewal. It may signal of period of introspection and thinking. The dream may also be a pun on "bare". Perhaps you need to bare your soul and let everything out into the open.
To dream that you are being pursued or attacked by a bear, denotes aggression, overwhelming obstacles and competition. You may find yourself in a threatening situation.
Hm. Let me think on that for a bit and get back to you.
So yesterday was the cookie exchange party and tonight I managed to bake, ice and ganache a cake to take to work tomorrow, so yes, here I am, back at the blog spot. I'm also currently being distracted by Kurt Browning skating sans shirt. Wouldn't that be kind of cold?
I did not win the cookie exchange contest. Amara did though, so I'm happy enough with that. But next year man, next year I've gotta get it. Funny though, Amara won with a cookie recipe almost identical to one I was considering. Doh! Or, rather, Dough! On the weekend I baked two recipes and decided to enter a chocolate shortbread cookie drizzled in caramel and topped with pecans. The other option was a cherry shortbread dipped in white chocolate and sprinkles. Here is the winning cookie:
Here is the cookie I did not enter:
Amara did get a much more uniform shape. Next time I would roll the dough into a log too.
Here is the cookie I did enter in the contest:
I never want to see caramel in my kitchen again.Here is the 2009 Collection:
I'm getting tired, I can tell. I forgot an ingredient in the cake I baked tonight. More full moon madness, I think. I don't think it will make much difference really but we'll see. Tomorrow I will bake what will be the fabulously stunning cake that will grace my table on Saturday evening for my birthday soiree. Let's hope I have all my marbles about me when I attempt that one. When you come into my house these days it smells like sugar. I'm starting to think I am the witch in Hansel and Gretel and my house is made of gingerbread and gumdrops. Here's a pic of the cake I am going to use to try to win the affections of my co-workers with:
Chocolate fudge cake with peppermint butter cream icing and white chocolate ganache, garnished with crushed candy canes. Because I let it drop that I was bringing in cake this week in honour of my birthday on Saturday, a birthday lunch was organized for me. Nice huh? I've also been regularly eating lunch with some girls my age. My Sea Monkeys are flourishing again, I almost feel ready to name them, and yesterday in the mall I saw an old high school crush and he gave me the ol' elevator eyes. Things are coming around, yup indeed.
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