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05/26/2006
It's summer! (More or less)
It's not actually summer yet, but it's beginning to feel like it, in the typical Ontario way: hot and muggy and buggy. Today I was helping work on the deck that we're building for the house. Mostly it's been Dad and my brother working on it, and they've been sort of lucky to have cool overcast weather, because it's a lot of hard work. Today it was still overcast, but we've had some nice hot weather in the last couple of days, and it's still hot even without the sun. It's the humidity which is the killer at the moment, though. You sweat, but it doesn't evaporate. This morning we had some shovelling to do, and it was really quite gruelling. (Maybe it's just me and my twiggy arms, who knows...) The trouble is that the soil around here is pretty much all clay, and in our yard in particular, it turns out to be clay mixed with gravel in places. Let's just say that stuff is not easy to shovel. You swing the shovel as hard as you can into it, and the shovel pretty much just bounces off the surface. It was such hard work that at one point I actually felt light-headed, saw stars, and my ears were ringing, which likely means I was about to pass out if I didn't take a rest. It's unusual because I basically never get that feeling - not even when I'm dancing in the heat, or dancing after I've been sedentary for weeks at a stretch. It was weird. Luckily after a drink of water and a couple of minutes sitting down, I was fine again.
So this afternoon, I took a break from that and went downtown to shop for a wedding gift for my friends Henry and Chantale, who are getting married tomorrow. I tried to find them something a couple of days ago last time I went downtown, but I came home empty-handed. I'm not very good at gift-shopping in my opinion. I am a big fan of originality in gifts, which usually means I put myself through cruel and unusual punishment trying to decide on what to get someone, with the criteria that it be unique, original, and perfect - criteria that usually aren't quite met, but not for lack of trying! This was no exception. My original idea was to try to find a nice figurine (like Lladro) featuring a couple, that won't lose value over time, and that doesn't take up much space. Well, as it turns out, first of all Lladro is nearly impossible to find in this city, and second, it doesn't matter anyway because it turns out that even the smallest little Lladro figurine is well beyond my price range. Who knew the stuff could be so expensive?! I just love Lladro though - the figurines are so beautiful. My dad gave mom one of those once, and I think it's my favourite thing in the house.
Anyway, it took a whole afternoon of browsing all sorts of places at the Rideau Centre, on Sussex, and in the Byward market area before I found something at a cute little nondescript shop that I never knew existed until today. I hope they will like their gift! In any case, wedding season has definitely begun, given the jostling that was happening in the Hallmark shop in front of the display for the wedding cards!
Tomorrow it looks like it should be a nice sunny day for their wedding so I'm sure the whole thing will be very beautiful. I hope I don't cry during the wedding! (I'm such a sap... :-))
22:05 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
05/20/2006
Beauty and Ugliness
The other day I got a comment on my blog telling me I'm ugly. (Actually, it says "u ugly", so maybe this person ought to try the letter t or v to see if they like the look of those letters better. ;-)) Anyway, now that I'm finally done laughing at the poor shmuck, I thought I might as well share my philosophy about this topic, which I've been developing over the years.
I'm the first to admit it - I'll never be the supermodel type. When I was younger, I used to wish I looked different, that my hair was shiny and manageable, that I had a different nose, that I had better skin, straighter teeth, and so on. Later though, as I got older, hit university, and finally took my nose out of my schoolbooks long enough to look around a bit, I made an important realization: I'm lucky and happy I don't look like a fashion model. I see others around me who are very beautiful in the mass-media sense, and any pangs of jealousy I would be feeling evaporate very quickly when I see what sort of people seem magnetically attracted to them. Basically, everybody - the nice guys, but also the loser guys who really only want to score and/or who need a pretty object to hang off their arm as they prance around town. Since I'm not the so-gorgeous-guys-walk-into-parking-meters type, the latter don't bother with me and it's a win-win situation. They don't waste their time on me (other than to call me names once in a while, which is a waste of their time, but at least not mine), and I don't have to waste my time trying to get rid of these shallow losers who would otherwise be busy trying to latch on to me.
So for the "unknown" person who left that comment the other day (and I do say I'm impressed - it really takes talent to make a spelling mistake and three grammar errors all in the space of two words), I do sincerely wish this person the best of luck finding a gorgeous airhead with a low enough IQ to actually tolerate knuckledraggers, particularly since, from what I've observed, this sort of person must be in very high demand.
15:31 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
05/13/2006
Peach: the honorary berry
Among other things, in the last few days there has been quite a bit of baking being done in this house, for two purposes:
1. Because we like to have something for dessert, and
2. Because we're trying to clean out the fridge and pantry.
The series of interesting events begins with a big jar of mincemeat, which my parents bought at Eastertime to make some sort of baked pudding. I was in Halifax at the time, so I didn't notice the mincemeat until about a week ago or so. It's a good-sized jar which is taking up a lot of space in our already-crammed refrigerator, so I conviced Mom that we should do some baking to get rid of the stuff. The first thing that popped into our heads was, quite naturally, mincemeat tarts, but since we didn't feel like making (or eating) those, Mom went looking for a different recipe. Aha! She proclaimed, Jean Paré's Muffins and More book in hand, I'll make mincemeat muffins. Which would be fine, except muffins aren't Mom's forte.
These proved to be no exception. I had the feeling something might be awry when I was sitting upstairs and started to smell something burning. Figuring Mom had things under control, or that the muffins were already on their way out of the oven, I did the stupid thing and just stayed where I was. Fact is, Mom and I are very different in our styles of cooking. She religiously uses timers; I approximate and determine "doneness" by inspection. She uses loads of dishes and measuring cups - I reuse (probably because when I lived on my own, I had no dishwasher, so it paid to minimize dishes). She uses a mixer for everything - I do almost everything by hand. As long as we're not cooking together, it's all good. :-) Anyway, back to the muffins. It wasn't long before they were nicknamed the "hockey pucks", and in fact, the night Dad and I managed to eat the last of the small, dense, burnt muffins, the Sens finally won their first game against the Sabres. I'm hoping there's no magical connection!!
Yesterday, we ran out of baking again, so I decided I'd take some time in the afternoon and make something. After scoping out the pantry and baking supplies left over from Christmas, I decided something with white chocolate chips and almonds would be handy, since we had tons of both hanging around the house (there are STILL pounds of almonds left in the house... what were they thinking??). Anyway, I came up with a recipe called "Berry Almond Bars", which are an almondy type crust and topping (with the white chocolate), and a layer of any type of berry jam in between. I pictured the great big jar of raspberry jam I'd seen in the fridge a couple of weeks ago and thought, this recipe will be perfect!
I went to the kitchen, whipped up the batter for the crust, and was just pouring it into the 9x9 pan when my brother came into the kitchen, got a bagel and proceeded to scrape the few remaining shreds of raspberry jam out of that great big jar that had been full two weeks ago. D'oh! (Moral of the story: check for all your ingredients *before* starting.) So I looked in the fridge for more jam. Raspberry was out, as there was basically none left. Strawberry - I thought I'd seen some at one point, but I guess I must have been imagining it. My brother's allergic to strawberries so I was hoping we'd have a jar of it that was unassaulted, but apparently, no such luck. I went downstairs, where we have loads of extra pantry supplies, and there was everything imaginable except jam. Back to the fridge. In the door was a small jar of peach jam, so peach and almond bars it was. (Peach, berry, same thing. ;-)) I polished off the peach jam AND the white chocolate chips, and was quite proud of myself. The bars are also pretty good, despite the fact that they're not quite berry almond bars anymore. (Pats self on back)
Later that afternoon, I decided to push my luck and rid the fridge of science experiments (NASTY!). In the process, I found *another* half-eaten jar of peach jam. Argh! Plus 4 jars of mustard (5 if you count the mustard-relish mixture my gran gave us the other day), 3 jars of BBQ sauce, 3 containers of cake icing, etc. Invasion fo the condiments! We've got a lot of cooking to do still... I'd gladly do it if I felt that it would de-clutter the fridge, but the reality is that my parents would see an empty spot in the fridge, freak out, and quickly find something to fill the hole. Oh well. I can always try! I don't know what I'm going to do about all that mustard, as I don't even like mustard to start with. I'm sure it will provide for some interesting blogs in the future!
11:10 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
05/09/2006
The Job Hunting Circus: Part 2
Quite a while ago, I wrote The Job Hunting Circus: Part 1, which was a rant about the seemingly common practice of posting a job listing when the reality is that the "competition" is rigged (or just a plain waste of time and money for everyone involved).
This time around, I feel like talking about some of the more general things I've come across in my little job hunt - things just make me shake my head, wondering if I should laugh or cry.
First up, a listing which, in the line below the job title, specifically said that the job was "entry-level". Reading further down the page, the requirements state that the candidate should have two years' experience in each of three different job-related things, plus "demonstrated experience" in a fourth. I think I'm going to just double-check a dictionary for the meaning of "entry-level", because I appear to have missed something. I wonder, then, what the term would be for someone who really does have no experience? "Please-gimme-a-job-because-you-feel-sorry-for-me level"?
Then comes my next pet peeve - job ads which say applications should be sent to: Human Resources [+ address of company], or emailed to hr@[companyname].com. Oh, and no phone calls please. Alrighty. So, assuming all those cover letter books are right, and that companies toss all applications which start with "Dear Sir or Madam", it basically means the company is wasting its time posting applications online. I also suspect that this would be a case of what I described in Part 1 - they already have someone in mind but can't hire them on a whim. They have to drag it out, spend money (bonus points if it's spending taxpayers' money), make the Chosen One wait, waste the time of 150 other candidates, and make the whole process like pulling teeth.
Now let's assume that a company is actually planning to at least look at the applications it receives from a public job posting. I've been to a few where actually finding the postings is already an achievement. Sometimes, the process goes like this.
1. Bring up the company web page (bonus points for having to skip a flash intro, mega bonus points if there's no way to skip the flash intro and you have to sit through the whole thing).
2. Try to find which header the job postings might be under. Usually it's in About Us, second most common is Contact Us. Bonus points if you have to bring up the site map.
3. Click on Careers.
4. Click on Opportunities.
5. Click on Current Opportunities.
6. This brings up a page which is blank except for a button which says "Current Opportunities". Click the nice button.
7. Click on the "Current Opportunities" hyperlink.
8. On the resulting blank page with one drop-down list containing "Current Opportunities" and "Completed Listings", select "Current Opportunities" and click Go.
9. A new window pops up with Search parameters. Leave everything blank and click Search.
10. Click the "View Results" link on the page that comes up.
11. Pull your hair out as the whole thing crashes and you have to start over. (Or, if you're me, find a different company.)
Hey companies, you wouldn't do this to your clients. Why do this to potential employees who are going to be the ones busting their butts to make your company rich and successful?! Your clients would see the warning signs - so will your brightest potential employees.
That's my two cents for the day. I've got more in my "Gotta Laugh.doc" file, so I'll pull more out of there soon. Happy job hunting!
15:45 Posted in Job Hunting | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
05/08/2006
Popcorn, foghorns, and 250-year-old cellos
OK, I've had a night to recover from yesterday's concert. Too bad my brain was too busy to shut down and use the night to rest... Ever had the problem where your body's exhausted but your brain's still frolicking, producing all sorts of hairbrained ideas or worse, stuck in repeat mode on a tune? Or two? Well, that was my night last night. I had Beethoven stuck in my head (see last night's post). I tried thinking of Phantom of the Opera songs to get that out of my head, which has worked in the past, but this time around it resulted in BOTH Beethoven AND the Phantom music stuck in my head. A few notes of one, then a few notes of the other, back and forth ad nauseum. It actually got so bad that at about 1:30 am (2 hours after I'd gone to bed), I turned on the radio to get my brain to at least focus on something non-repetitive. So all in all, I didn't sleep well.
Anyway, today I've decided to add some musical commentary that I wasn't in the mood to type out last night.
Yesterday before the concert I asked my stand partner about his cello - as it turns out, it's a French cello made around 1760. He told me the story about how it got passed to him through the family, which is pretty amazing. Then he asked if I wanted to try it out. (Does the sun shine? Is the Pope a Catholic?) It was awesome - I LOVE that cello!! What a difference it makes to have a well-seasoned, good-sounding, resonant cello. I felt like I suddenly became twice as good a player. The only downside to it all is that eventually I had to give him his cello back and go back to mine, which suddenly sounded like a kid's toy! Unfortunately I'm fairly sure I don't have any old family members with stray 250-year old cellos kicking around. I'll have to do it the hard way and save up enough money to buy a really good cello!
For some reason I seem to be magnetically drawn to older French cellos. I'm not sure what it is about them, since usually the Italian instruments are the ones people swoon over. You do have to be selective though. I once tried out a 100-year-old French cello selling for about $8000 which sounded worse than my 5-year-old $5000 cello. Also, older instruments, which have been around long enough to have been in existence through the world wars, sometimes look like they were right there at the front. You want to avoid those. :-)
That's it for my pontification about cellos for the day. On to.... popcorn and foghorn! These are orchestra terms. Popcorn is when everyone is supposed to play a note (usually pizzicato, or plucking the string) at the same time, but if different people pizz at slightly different times, instead of one unified "poing!" you get "pop-pop-pop-poppity-pop!" Hence the term popcorn. This is usually caused either by musicians not looking at the conductor, or the conductor not being clear about the beat. Popcorn best avoided in orchestra settings, though we had a couple of instances of it last night.
Then there's the foghorn, which is what happens when two or more people are supposed to be playing the same note, but they're not quite in tune with each other. Foghorns also have two main reasons for occurring - either one (or more) musician is having intonation problems, or someone's messed up on accidentals (e.g., sharps, flats, or lack thereof). Intonation problems happen to everyone, but I suspect they're harder to fix for wind instruments and consequently the most obvious foghorns last night seemed to come from the winds. The two oboes, for example, if the conductor calls them on intonation problems, will usually stop what they're doing, take the reed out of their mouth, readjust the reed with their hand, then compare again, until they match (IF they ever match). Trouble is, they can't just stop in the middle of a piece and do this, and I'm not sure how much you can control just with your mouth on an oboe, but... anyway, it's interesting. I always thought winds were lucky because they could just press the right keys and voilà, a ready-made note, but from experience, looks like that's not true. I think foghorns are also more obvious in the winds because they're just so LOUD compared to the rest of the orchestra. Even when the music is marked piano (= soft), they can (and often do) still completely obliterate the strings. I do have to say it's irritating that winds seem to only have two modes (loud, and off), but I think possibly it's just more difficult to play a wind instrument softly. String instruments are pretty adaptable that way.
Then there are foghorns which happen when someone messes up on accidentals. I've had some pretty bad cases of this. Once, the very first time I was playing at church for Christmas, Mom and I were going to do a rendition of Silent Night (Mom plays organ). She was doing a few other songs with the choir before that. Then came my turn, and as I started to play, it sounded awful. And I mean reeeeeaaaaaally, excruciatingly bad. I couldn't figure out how my entire cello could have gotten so out of tune. It was a disaster, and I didn't have the expertise to correct the intonation on the fly. As it turns out, Mom was playing on one of those handy-dandy electronic organs with a "transpose" knob, to make the organ sound lower than what you're actually playing on the keyboard. Mom had used this to bring the previous song down a notch, so that it fit the choir's voices better, but forgot to turn it back to normal when she started Silent Night. It sounded SO bad. I was soooooo embarrassed....
Needless to say, foghorns are best avoided in musical performance!
Anyway, I'm off to go practice some cello, and improve that intonation. :-)
16:00 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this
05/07/2006
Ode to an Orchestra
Well, tonight we just had another concert with the Ottawa Chamber Orchestra. I think the concert went well, featuring (well, the orchestra, and) four amazingly gifted pianists, and a stuffed sheep. Not sure where the sheep came from, but it just sort of appeared on the conductor's music stand before the concert. :-)
The four pianists were the finalists in our piano concerto competition. They're between 16 and 18, and they are all insanely good at the piano. Wow. Anyway, we played the first movement of the Grieg piano concerto, the whole Prokofiev piano concerto, and the first movement of Beethoven's third piano concerto twice (two of the finalists picked the same piece). They were all amazing, but in my head I had figured out a ranking of first through fourth, which, when compared to what the judges agreed on, turned out to be pretty much backwards. I guess I mustn't be good at detecting what makes for good piano playing. :-)
We also played Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture. I *love* that piece, but I think it needed more rehearsal before performing - it was a tad on the shaky side, but we held together and didn't make any major boo-boos so I consider it a success! Towards the end in the cello part there's a really tough section which is very fast. It's the kind of passage you can easily spot by squinting and looking at the big dark patch on the bottom half of the last page. :-) I'm actually surprised at how much of this I managed to get. I guess after a 2 hour warm-up, my fingers were nice and loose, and I was too tired to enter panic mode!
Anyway, I am about to go to bed and will write again soon. I have a feeling I won't be able to sleep too well though. First of all, I've got Beethoven stuck in my head. From past experience, Beethoven music tends to stick like crazy glue in my head, repeating over and over til I'm at the brink of insanity. I've found that this can be removed with a good dose of Phantom of the Opera music, but then Phantom music gets stuck in my head and I'm not sure which one's worse!
23:15 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
05/02/2006
Dance of the Sugar-coated fairy
Today I'm feeling better, after ODing on too many sweets. See, this is what happened. When I got back from Halifax, I found that my parents had left me some Easter goodies, which was very sweet of them. Problem is, they've found a home on my desk, which means that when I get hungry, I reach for mini-eggs rather than hauling my butt downstairs to go knaw on celery or something. Two days ago, I ate some of the cheaper mini-eggs, which are labelled "Milk chocolatey flavoured confection". This is kind of worrisome, but not worrisome enough to stand between me and chocolate-induced happiness. Sooooo, down the hatch with a few of these eggs. Later....... *itch itch itch* hives! OK, I get it, time to go easy on the milk chocolatey flavoured confection.
Yesterday, it was my brother's birthday, but I didn't clue into that right away. I had some Cadbury mini eggs in the morning (at least these ones are actual milk chocolate) and after a while, decided that I'd better go easy on those things too. However, the worst was yet to come. Being my brother's birthday, we ended up going out, as a family, to Montana's. I should have been smart and ordered a nice light salad, but I tend to ignore my stomach when it chirps in with its little "salad! salad! salad!" voice, and I ordered a big pasta meal. I tried to eat enough pasta to at least make it look like I've made a dent, but even then, I was stuffed silly and feeling spherical. We went home again and THEN came the big ol' birthday cake.
It's the same every year. We go out for dinner, stuff ourselves well beyond our comfort zones, and then come home and try to cram birthday cake into our already-overstretched stomachs. This time was no different. "I want a piece so thin it could go on a microscope slide!! I'm not kidding!" This results in a slab of birthday cake about an inch and a half wide, which is about as thin as it gets in my family. I struggled to eat it all, and at the end, was feeling distinctly unwell.
The next bit is the kicker. It was dance night. As in, irish dance. The moral of the story is: big heavy dinner + too much birthday cake + bouncy, blood-pounding, highly-anaerobic irish dance class = not a good combination.
Thankfully, today I feel better. And yes, I'm trying to keep away from the Easter chocolates and cake for now. :-)
13:53 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this