Not To Be Trusted With Knives

Perhaps this is just a sign that I don’t get out much, but boy do I love hotel rooms. Of course, the best part of hotels, imho, is the hot tub, but I like the room part too.

Here’s a little tour of my hotel room in Ottawa  for the next couple of days. (You’ll have to excuse the crappy photos – the batteries in my camera died, so I had to use the craptastic excuse for a camera on my iPhone, a lowly iPhone 3GS!)

First off, instead of key cards, this hotel uses keys instead of key cards, which I haven’t seen for ages in a hotel¹!

Granted, if you look closely, it’s actually a programmable key – so basically, the shaft² of the key has magnetic stripes that they program for your room. Essentially, it’s a key card that looks like a key. But it looks like a key!

Bedroom and living room – pretty comfy:

Cute little kitchen – not that I’ll be using it beyond the fridge-as-Diet-Pepsi-storage-area – but I can see how this would be handy if one were here for a more extended stay:

The room is rather lacking for workspace, as there’s no desk to work at. There’s this little side table to put stuff on:

And here’s the table that I’m working at – definitely not ergonomically set up!

The bathroom is pretty standard:

Though this “luxury vanity kit” made me laugh:

Its contents:

Three cotton balls and two Q-tips.

I think their definition of “luxury” and mine differ!

And speaking of luxury, I’m off to the hot tub!

1. When I mentioned the keys to one of the other workshop participants, she said it made her feel like she was supposed to throw them into a bowl at a party to see who she’d end up going home with! [↩]
2. Is that the right word here? If not, let’s just saying I’m using that word for it hilarity. [↩]

Is it just me, or does the “you are here” map become a lot less effective when *nothing* else on the map is labeled?

As I was looking at my photos yesterday, I realized that I had a bunch of screenshots and photos that I’ve been meaning to blog but never got around to. So today’s blog posting shall be a bunch of photo-y goodness.

Some of said images are of hilarious names that people give to their wireless networks, like “The I.T. Crowd”:

or “Broken Chicken Project”:

And of course this one¹:

Other good screen shots included:

Gotta love the blatant honesty of that one!

And thanks for this helpful direction, Google Maps:

I would never have known where I was if you hadn’t told me that 152nd Streets turns into 152nd Street.

And who wouldn’t want to receive a message like this:

Sadly, the No Pants Skytrain Ride occurred at the same time as a hockey game this year, so I was unable to partake.

And this just sounds dirty:

Under the heading “Things I Can’t Believe People Would Google”:

Um, if they didn’t use the scientific method, they wouldn’t be scientists!

Moving on from screenshots to photos, my mom sent me this hand cream:

Look what it says on the back:

Apply liberally as often as necessary? Isn’t it called “8 hour cream”? Shouldn’t that mean I only need to apply it once per every 8 hours?

I saw this in a store and couldn’t resist snapping a photo of it:

I pity the fool that doesn’t cook with Flavor Wave!

And I can’t believe I haven’t blogged this next one! It’s the shirt I had made for Dr. Dan for Christmas:

And finally, I saved the best for last: this drunk text I received over the Christmas holidays (with sender’s name redacted to protect her/him):

1. I still think that “Your mom is wireless” is the best one I’ve ever seen though [↩]

I was driving home from dinner tonight and as I got off the highway I noticed that the car in front of me had a license plate that started with “BJOB.” Knowing me like I know you all do¹, I immediately (a) laughed and (b) thought, “I need a photo of that!!”  And, would you believe that I drove behind this car for the next 8 km, until such time as I had to turn off to go to my house, without hitting a single red light?  Seriously, the *one time* I want a red light and I get smoothly sailing clear across the city! So unfair!

Also, I will neither confirm nor deny that photos were or were not taken in a vain attempt to capture said license plate while in motion. This is how much I may or may do for you, my fair blog readers!

1. i.e., sense of humour of a 12-year-old boy [↩]

Since the shoe buying ban of 2010 is now over, I am free to yet again indulge in my love of new footwear. And since it was today is Bething Day – the Bethmas equivalent to Boxing Day – it was only appropriate for me to take advantage of the awesome Bething Day sales.  Thus, I give you my new boots:

Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to wear them with to my Bethmas extravaganza on Saturday!

So remember last year how I cyber-baked with my family over the intertubes? Not this year! This year I got to do my baking in person!

Baking, and especially Christmas baking, is one of my fondest memories from childhood. Every year at Christmas time, my Aunt Wendy would come over to our house and bake with my mom, my sister and me. Over the years, various other people joined us for baking good times and we always had a blast AND made delicious treats to give out to people! Baking simultaneously in Toronto and Vancouver while chatting via Google Video last year was fun, but nothing beats baking together with the fam.

This year, my sister’s friend Daniel joined us. Daniel was an early childhood educator at the daycare my niece went to and later was a babysitter for her. And he’s a tonne of fun, so he graduated to friend status and when he mentioned to Nancy that he was going to be doing his Christmas baking alone this year, she invited him to join us. Of course, this made for five bakers – my mom, Nancy, Madeline, me and Daniel – all in one kitchen. And we each had three different things we planned to bake! So Nancy, ever the creative problem solver, recruited the oven of the next door neighbours for the afternoon!

In the end, we made 11 different items over a span of only 6 hours¹! Here’s the summary:

• lemon squares
• rolled oat chocolate hay bales
• thumbprint cookies

Beth made:

• surprise cookies
• shortbread cookies

My mom made:

• rugala
• chocolate-filled snowballs
• white chocolate and macademia nut cookies

Nancy made:

• black pepper cheese crisps
• triple chocolate sandwich cookies
• egg nog knots

And here are the photos!

Just *some* of the baking supplies for the day

Nancy and her chocolate sandwich cookies

Me and my mom!

My mom, Nancy & Daniel

Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies

Me and Madeline

Madeline and me

1. we started at about 2 pm and ended at 10 pm, but took a two hour break to hit The Friendly Greek for dinner. Because there was no way in hell any of us were going to be cooking any meals! [↩]

So I’ve got a few photos that I’ve taken recently thinking, “I need to blog that.” And then I haven’t. Backlog of photos to blog + not much time to blog = this blog posting.

First up, a Christmas tree ornament I got from my Secret Santa.

And I’d been wanting more ornaments for my tree!

The other day on the way to a meeting I noticed that Zaphod’s¹ odometer was approaching 33,333 km. And I totally meant to get a photo. And then I totally forgot about it after I got out of my meeting and missed getting the photo. I got this less cool photo instead:

I mean, 33344 is neat and all, but it’s cold comfort when I know how close I was to 33333.

Yesterday was our holiday luncheon at work. We got food from Green Lettuce, a Chinese-Indian fusion restaurant², which came with fortune cookies.  My fortune was pretty lame:

Until I remembered to apply the fortune cookie “in bed”  rule.  Then it’s kind of awesome.

And finally, I made a chocolate amaretto cheesecake for another work holiday party that I’m going to tomorrow night. I’m planning to blog about said cheesecake at some point and took a bunch of photos for that purpose.  Here’s the best of the photos:

I bake so that I can lick the spoon. In bed.  See! It does make every sentence better!

1. Zaphod = my car [↩]
2. plus some Greek and some samosas. Mmm, samosas [↩]

So 151 days ago I started the 365 photo challenge – and have taken a photo of myself every single day since then¹. A disproportionate amount of them are in my bed, since many days I only remember to do it at the end of the day!  On Thursdays I take a photo of myself in whatever outfit I wore to teach that night – it helps me make sure I don’t wear the same thing twice! – and you can actually see them appear diagonally through the set - I’m almost always in the same location and do the same pose.

Here are a few of my favs:

and yesterday’s:

which was inspired by Darren tweeted about sliding glass doors on bathtubs, which I happen to have.  So, yeah, basically I’m running on empty as far as ideas for photos go.  Do you have ideas? If so, you should probably tell those ideas to me!

Also, check out the set and let me know in the comments section which ones are your favs!

1. well, I haven’t taken today’s yet. But I still have time [↩]

Me, with a Flying Spaghetti Monster on my head.

One of the things on my 101 things to do list is:

38. participate in the “365 Day Challenge”<. This involves taking a self-portrait¹ every day for 365 days and posting it to the 365 Day Flickr group.

And since I need 365 days in which to do this, I figured I’d better start at it! So far, I’m up to day 4 – and if you are dying to see a new photo of me every day, you can follow my set on my Flickr.

My photos thus far:

1. where “self-portrait” includes any photo you take, including ones you line up but use a self-timer for, that include any part of your body in the photo [↩]