Not To Be Trusted With Knives

I have a whole bunch of things to say, but nothing that’s worth an entire blog posting. Hence, I give you this bulleted list¹:

• I went out for a run after work for the first time in about a gajillion years. Seeing as I’m claiming that I’m going to run a half marathon in May, actually running is a pretty good idea.
• Related: I bought a new pair of Sugoi running pants, courtesy of a Groupon for Forerunners:

• The factory where my friend Kim works making freaking delicious fake meat products was on City TV. Check out the “tenders” (i.e., fake chicken fingers) that they are making in that video. So. Freaking. Delish.
• I went for my consultation with the dating headhunter on Monday evening and they called yesterday afternoon with info on my two matches. They told me some info about each of them and took info on my availability – the next step is for them to find a time that I can go out for drinks after work with each of them and then they’ll send me the date/time/place and a photo so I know who I’m looking for. Oh yeah, and my prize includes a session with their dating coach, so that will get set up soon too. I’ll keep you posted.
• I was Facetiming with Dr. Dan last night and, at the exact same time, my friend Patrice called on my cell and my sister & Jeff called me from Vegas on Google Voice. I hardly ever get phone calls² and somehow I got three at the *exact same time.*
• I totally want to make a Baked Alaska.
• I’m contemplating playing hockey for 10 days straight in late August/early September.

1. who doesn’t love a bulleted list? Hitler, that’s who [↩]
2. in part because my cell phone doesn’t get much reception at home and in part because people never talk on the phone anymore [↩]

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 [↩]

• Why is there a best before date on blue cheese? Are we worried it might get mouldy?
• Things not to name your daughter if songs are portents: Diana, Beth, Roxanne.

A camera crew should follow me around at all times because, like my niece, I’m constantly saying hilarious and witty things that really should be shared with all the world. I mean, it’s a crime against humanity when I say something like, “You definitely can’t plan a spontaneous orgy” or “You had me at “dirty Christmas tree”¹ and not everyone gets to hear it.

Moreover, a camera crew should follow me around at all times because I have hilarious accidents that really would be awesome if caught on film. Like, for instance, tonight when I came home from the laundromat², carrying my heavy basket of clean laundry³, plus a bag of groceries, down the steep steps to my front door⁴ (do you see where this is going?) and managed to think I’d walked down all the steps⁵, but really I had one more step to go, so I stepped forward as if the ground would be flat, but the ground was not, in fact, flat and thus I took a nice header into the concrete floor in front of my front door. Clean laundry all over the concrete floor. Gah!

Seriously, though, I bet that would have been hilarious to see. Would almost make the sore wrist & sore shoulder worth it.

1. For the record, both of these lines actually did come up in conversation. True story. [↩]
2. dear FSM, I hate going to the freaking laundromat. Curses upon you suburbanites and your unwillingness to share the house laundry facilities! [↩]
3. between hockey jerseys, running clothes, work clothes and causal clothes, I make an unholy amount of laundry for a single, and relatively small, person [↩]
4. dear FSM, I would like to someday live above ground [↩]
5. I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that if you are ever installing a motion sensor light, maybe you don’t want to make it so that people have to walk all the way down the stairs in the pitch black before they trip the motion sensor, at which point they are already at the front door [↩]

For most of this week, I’ve been unable to find this:

I mean, I had the cord that I use to synch my iPhone to my laptop (the end of which is seen on the right side of that photo), but I couldn’t find the end (that little cube looking thing on the left side of the photo) that you attach to the cord so that you can plug the iPhone into the wall to charge it (what is that thing called?).  I have been plugging my cord into my laptop to charge it, but it’s been driving me crazy that I couldn’t find the other piece. The last place I’d remember seeing it was in my car – I also have a car charging dohickey that I plug into my car outlet¹ and then I can charge my phone by attaching the cord to the dohickey, but to do so, you have to take off the little boxy attachment (what IS that thing called?). So I searched my car – I looked under the seats and in the glove compartment and, well, that’s really it.  I mean, it’s a small car, how long could it really take to search? But it wasn’t there. And I searched my apartment and couldn’t find it there either. I was expecting to have to go to the Apple Store this weekend to buy a new one. And then I found it and you will never believe where I found it.

It was in my running shoe.  Seriously. Any other week and I would have found it days ago, what with me doing the training for a half marathon and all. But after I got sick on Monday night, I was recovering on Tuesday, then Wednesday I had to get ready for my Thursday night class (and I may also have been watching the season finale of Big Brother while I worked on my course), then Thursday was class (which I only just made it to campus in time for, as I had an afternoon meeting that went waaaaay longer than scheduled, so I barely had time to grab a bagel for dinner, much less time to go for a run). Which brings us to today and despite the fact that I was heading into Vancouver for Raul’s birthday dinner, I was determined to get a run in after work – you know, since I’m supposedly training for a half marathon or something. Anyway, I’m rushing to get ready for my run and I grab my shoe to put it on and lo and behold, there’s my thingy, right inside my shoe! Not sure how it got in there – possibly I had it on my little table by my front door and it fell off into the shoe below, or maybe I absentmindedly dropped it in there when I was carrying my shoes, the thingy and a variety of other items from my car to my house after my Monday night run. Or perhaps the universe put it there to point out that I haven’t run since Monday²!

But regardless of how it got there, I’m happy to have it back again!

1. which in cars of days gone past would have been a cigarette lighter – now it just a socket for plugging in gadgets [↩]
2. stupid universe. It totally would do something like that [↩]

Hate

• when people don’t have out of office auto-replies set up when they are away for an extended period of time

Love

• Keyboard Cat:

Here’s a bunch of random stuff that each aren’t long enough to make a blog posting on their own, but collectively make up a bunch of random stuff.

• Some very cool people are getting honourary doctorates at UBC¹ this year, including satirist Rick Mercer, author Douglas Coupland, and astronaut Julie Payette. Also getting a UBC HonDoc is the person with the worst French language skills on the planet, John Furlong².  One name on the list that really caught my eye was Dr. Nora Volkow – she’s the Director of the US National Institute of Drug Addiction³. You can see her in this HBO documentary on addiction, where she does an amazing job explaining the science of addiction. Her work as a neuroscientist has gone a long way to show that addiction involves a pathophysiology of the brain – so addiction isn’t about strength of will or moral character, it’s a disease.
• Here’s some interesting information about how larger plates are making us fatter.  I’ve read quite a few studies recently on how portion sizes have increased over the years – both at restaurants and at homes.  Further, studies show that bigger portion size actually results in people taking bigger bites of food.
• I have a date for the Polar Bear Swim on January 1, 2011.  My friend Krista has agreed to join me!  And, as she says, we’ve said it on the intertubes, so now we *have* to do it!
• For some unknown reason, WordPress has stopped emailing me comments that are made on my blog. I have it set up to do so, as seen here, but I don’t get emails.  So if I’m slower at replying to comments than I used to be, blame WordPress.  I’m innocent.
• Today, my friend Dr. Jen officially became Dr. Jen.  Technically, you aren’t allowed to use the PhD behind your name, or call yourself “Dr.,” until after your convocation⁴. Even though once you’ve handed the final copy of your thesis into the Faculty of Graduate Studies, you’ve done all you need to do. But until the degree is actually granted on convocation day, you technically don’t have it.  Not like that stops anyone from calling themselves “Dr.” right from the moment the committee at the defence says “I’m pleased to inform you…” though. Congratulations, Dr. Jen!!

1. I hope to get an HonDoc some day. Because I have a fascination with collecting letters to put behind my name. [↩]
2. seriously, I have better French than that guys AND I DON’T EVEN SPEAK FRENCH [↩]
3. an aside: I was just perusing Dr. Volkow’s Wikipedia page and apparently she’s the great granddaughter of Trotsky! [↩]
4. same is technically true of Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, but since you don’t change your honorific with those degrees, it’s not such a big deal [↩]

Since I don’t seem capable of writing an entire cohrent blog posting of late, here are a bunch of random things that have been floating around in my brain lately:

• When I moved, I had my Internet service changed from my old apartment to my new apartment.  The service was changed, but not the billing address – they kept sending the bill to the old place¹.  Doesn’t it seem stupid for them to not just automatically change your billing address when they clearly know that you have moved??
• When we were little, my dad used to make grilled cheese sandwiches using a waffle iron for my sister and me.  I miss those waffle-shaped sandwiches!
• I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned this on here, but I recently joined a money group.  We talk about money stuff.  But that’s the most I can tell you, because the first rule of Money Group is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT MONEY GROUP!
• Awesome (imho) advice that just popped out of my brain recently: “Just be yourself.  Trying to be someone else is too exhausting and no good will come of it.”
• This weekend I’m going to a wedding on a boat.  Then next week I’m going to another social event on a boat. Motherfucker, on a boat.
• The second boat event is in Victoria, where I’m going for a conference next week.  So expect to read many a blog posting next week about Victoria and about evaluation (the topic of the conference).  And boats.

1. thankfully, I’d paid Canada Post to forward my mail and got the forwarding straightened out relatively quickly when they screwed it up and were sending me someone else’s mail [↩]

1. “O Canada,” as we know it, isn’t the original song. There have been different version and the line that was recently brought into question (i.e., “in all thy sons command”)¹ wasn’t always in there.  Other lines have included “May stalwart sons, and gentle maidens rise,” and “”thou dost in us command.”
2. You can build a computer on Apple.com that costs more than $125,000.
3. Canada will be getting plastic money (instead of the paper we now use) by next year.
4. Flu viruses can last on paper money for up to 17 days!
5. No matter how many bowls of water you have sitting around the apartment, cats prefer to drink out of your water glass.

1. though I heard on the radio that the Government of Canada, who proposed changing it, has already backtracked and said they won’t change it [↩]

Apparently technology hates me again.  In addition to having no internets and no cell phone reception at home, the internets/network /all the phones at my office were down for most of the day¹.  Stupid technology.

While packing up my kitchen, I discovered that I had orzo and a pleothera rice noodles.  I also have three bottles of balsamic vinegar².  Tonight I shall make an orzo salad for dinner, and I forsee pad thai in my near future.

I am delighted with the amount of counter space in my kitchen.  I have enough counter space for my coffeemaker, kettle, Magic Bullet blender, toaster oven AND KitchenAide mixer, with room to spare!  I’m most excited about the mixer have a permenant home on the counter, as it’s way to heavy to move on a regular basis, so it’s spent the past several years stored away in a closet and I’ve been mixing things by hand like a sucker.

I also have a bigger fridge and freezer, which means I can actually find things in the freezer rather than having it jammed completely packed so that any time I want something from there, I have to unpack the whole thing.

I nearly have my first full load of dishes and anticipate an inaugural run of the  dishwasher tonight!

Now I’m off to a quick trip to the grocery store on my way home.  Tonight I intend to make that orzo salad and unpack the rest of my kitchen.  Hooray!

1. It’s back up now, so I’m writing this after hours at the office before I go home and enter the land of incommunicado [↩]
2. I know that I inherited one from Kalev when he moved, but I have no idea why I had two bottles to begin with [↩]