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12/30/2006
Operation Resolution 2007
Wow, I can't believe there's only a day and a half left in 2006. Time has flown so fast!! As New Year's approaches, we all know what that means: New Years Resolutions! Actually last year, I don't recall even bothering to make any resolutions, but this year, not only am I going to make resolutions, but I have big plans. Or at least, elaborate plans. Or anyway, at least soon-to-be-elaborate plans. I have high hopes! So, like with any successful business venture, there's a business plan in the makings for a great 2007.
I figured I'd start off the year with a reasonably clean slate in a couple of ways, so I decided the first thing I wanted to do was clean out my closet: get rid of clothes that are worn out, I don't wear, or that don't fit. I thought I wouldn't come up with much, as I did something like this in the summer, but somehow that last category (things that don't fit) has actually turned up a lot of stuff this time around! It turns out, a whole bunch of my clothes are... too big!! I didn't realize so many of my clothes fit so poorly, but there are two reasons that I can think of. In the past, especially in late high school/undergrad, I liked to wear baggy clothes and didn't care what people thought of what I wear. So, as you can imagine, I tended to buy things roomier than they needed to be. The second reason is, and I only just noticed this now, I've actually lost weight since undergrad, about 10-15 pounds! I only very rarely weigh myself (maybe once or twice a year), so after I saw so many clothes were too big today, I decided I'd just check my theory. Sure enough, I'm physically lighter than I was. I'm not terribly sure why as I haven't been dieting, but I suspect it's because I do more dance and eat far, far less junk food now that I'm not stuck on campus eating cafeteria food.
Anyway, all that to say, I got rid of a whole pile of clothes that don't fit. Now I have room in my closet, but the downside is, especially with more business/formal type wear, I don't own much anymore! Things like my stash of t-shirts and exercise wear didn't suffer much, but the business clothes are supposed to be more tailored and classy, and most of that is either way too baggy now, or was picked up at Value Village before I knew the meaning of the word 'frumpy'. Theoretically the next step is to go shopping the Boxing Day/Week/Month sales for a few elegant replacement items which will complete my wardrobe and make me stylish at the same time, but there's one minor hiccup: I don't actually have lots of money. I don't really want to go back to Value Village, although once in a while there are some treasures there. On the other hand, I can't afford to buy very much at retail prices. Most of it might have to wait until later, or if not, I hope there are some really awesome sales in January!
Other resolutions for New Years include doing more exercise, staying in better touch with friends, reducing my to-read pile (which is currently huge), and procrastinating less. This last one just came back to bite me starting on Boxing Day, when it finally snowed. See, my family and I have different theories when it comes to shovelling the driveway. I think it should be shovelled clean any time it snows, so that way ice doesn't build up. They think it only needs to be done when it snows so much you can't drive over it with the car. What happens is, if I don't do the shovelling, it either doesn't happen, or they do a shoddy job of it. The problem with the it's-fine-if-you-can-drive-over-it theory is that the snow you drive over with the car compacts, and turns into ridges of ice - this makes it hard to shovel the driveway in the future because it's not a flat surface.
On Boxing Day it snowed, then it warmed up, turning things to slush; then it cooled off, turning slush to ice. So now we have some really nasty icy tracks from the car. Then it snowed a couple of days ago, and nobody did anything about it until yesterday, when I had enough and tried to do it myself. I couldn't use the broad scraper because of all the car tracks, so I did what I could anyway, then got the heavy flat shovel and tried to remove some of those ice ridges. That's hard work ("Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone..."), and I was tired, so I did about a quarter of the driveway and thought, well, it's not supposed to warm up til next week, so I'll do the rest tomorrow. After all, the ice isn't going anywhere! This morning, I woke up to find that... it has snowed again. Arrgh! So now I am going to have to shovel again, AND try to get rid of the ice that was originally there from before. This is the pain-in-the-butt part of snow, which is why I like to have some before Christmas, because at least for a while there's a bit of romance to it. Afterwards, it's just a lot of hard work!
Anyway, I'm off to shovel some more snow. I wonder if I can sweet-talk my brother into helping me...
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12/26/2006
I'm dreaming of a white... boxing day?
Unfortunately, we had a green Christmas this year, for the first time I can remember. Well, except the year I spent Christmas in Australia, but at least they had an excuse. Part of the reason for this year's green Christmas can apparently be attributed to our parish priest, who is from Nigeria and had been praying for a whole month that we'd have a green Christmas, which would remind him more of home. So, he was incredibly happy that we had a green Christmas, although to me, it's just not the same. It's hard to take Christmas seriously when it looks like Easter outside! And on top of it, when the snow does come, it doesn't get that grace period at the beginning when it's actually welcome, to contribute to the Christmas mood. Now it's just the stuff you have to shovel off the driveway.
Anyway, at least it's finally showed up a little bit, if only a day late! I'm not going anywhere today though. I'm staying in the comfort of my own home, because today's boxing day, and we all know what that means: crazed shoppers who, having left their brains at home among the debris of shredded wrapping paper under the tree, are out indulging in the full-contact sport of shopping the boxing day sales, driving around like everyone has a woman in labour in the vehicle, and in general proving to be the antithesis of the "peace on Earth, goodwill to men" Christmas wish. At least here in the house they can't touch me, unless they swerve off the road and drive through the wall of the house. Wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened! (Though luckily, our house has so far escaped such a fate!)
Christmas itself went pretty well - went to Mass on Christmas Eve at the local high school (our church runs two masses simultaneously, one at the church, one at the high school, because we have SOOO many more people coming to Church only for Christmas). It was generally nice, but I was thoroughly scandalized by the people who went and got some junk food from the vending machines during Mass. Right after communion, no less. And actually the 'communion crowd' was a phenomenon unto itself. Given the quantity of people who left after communion, you'd think the Mass was actually over. Except... it wasn't!! I don't know what possesses people to do this, but lots of people have convinced themselves they either can't stand, or can't bother, to stay the extra 5 or so minutes for the final blessing, which is an important part of Mass also. It drives me nuts!
Oh well. What're you gonna do. So Christmas itself was nice, we had a Christmas dinner with my aunt and uncle and their kids, who just flew in from Calgary. (They're the ones we helped move in the summer, with the massive amount of stuff.) I also got a bunch of books for Christmas, so my to-read pile just got even taller. I need to get some serious reading done!
So today, like I said, I'm hiding out at home and leaving the Boxing Day mayhem to those with the patience (and the body armour) to deal with it. I'm happily sitting here in the fuzzy reindeer pyjamas (that my friend Christina gave me: thanks Christina!! :-)), listening to, of all things, the live streaming audio of Útvarp Føroya, the national radio station of the Faroe Islands! I don't really have a clue what the commentator is saying, but at least they're currently playing better music than Couleur FM, which is what I normally listen to here in Ottawa. Even if 'O Holy Night' is sung in Icelandic. (The guy singing it had a beautiful voice though!! Wow!)
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12/23/2006
Louise's Christmas Baking Adventures, Part 2
Well, the day after my last post (i.e., December 20), we made the most infamous cookies of the year: the Poinsettia Cookies. Oh my goodness, did they EVER take a long time to make! Mom made the dough in the morning, and starting at about 2:30 in the afternoon, we began shaping the flowers. Thing is, each flower has 8 petals (well, some had 7 or 10, especially near the beginning before mom got the hang of making these things). There were in general 3 red (pink) petals, 2 mottled white/pink petals, and 3 green petals on each flower. Each petal had to be shaped by hand to look like a poinsettia petal, and once the whole flower was assembled, we had to take something pointy (we were actually using corn cob holders!) and make all the veins in the petals to make it look like a poinsettia. It took forever! Finally when my first batch of 6 cookies was done, we put them in the oven... where they promptly burnt. Arrrrrrrgh! At least we were able to learn from that and time the subsequent batches a bit better. Even towards the end, where we had the process all figured out and had gotten the hang of it, it took 35 minutes to make 6 cookies!
All told, mom and I made at least 72 of these things, and we were at it until past midnight (more like 1 am). I think we must've vowed about 100 times that evening never to make these cookies again! Especially as it takes 6 minutes to make a cookie and about 6 seconds to eat one...
So those Poinsettia Cookies now replace the Chocolate Cherry Cookies as the biggest headache of the year.
The next day I was still so wiped out I didn't do any baking. Dad made some fudge and some peanut butter bark, and yesterday we finished the baking with some pecan balls and some meat pies (those aren't for the goodie baskets, they're for the two Christmas dinners we're hosting).
Later in the evening yesterday I was up in my room when I heard this God-almighty scream come from the garage, and mom screaming "Help!!" Dad sprinted up from the basement where he was, I sprinted down from my room where I was, imagining all the horrible possibilities, imagining I was about to be on the phone calling for an ambulance, and so on... but when we got to the garage it turned out that in the process of retrieving the pie pastry balls from the plank we'd set up in the "big fridge" (since we were running out of room in the real fridge), she'd almost tipped the pans of peanut butter bark onto the floor and had barely averted disaster, simply needing help to right the plywood plank and balance the bark on it again! That woke me up quite nicely, anyway!
So today, we're mostly in cleaning mode. Mom cleaned the oven, so hopefully it won't smell of kerosene every time we use it. (Now why it actually smells like kerosene in the first place is a bit of a mystery, as it's an electric stove/oven...)
I still need to wrap my Christmas gifts, and we need to wrap our famous (infamous?) Christmas baskets as well. I'll let my parents do the latter. They like fussing over that sort of stuff. :-)
More stats from the Christmas baking adventure:
Amount of time spent shaping Poinsettia Cookies: 10 hours
Number of Poinsettia cookies: around 72 (everyone was too wiped out to count, by the end of it)
Number of times we swore never to make these again: too many to count
Amount of time spent shaping Pecan Balls: about half an hour
Number of Pecan Balls: 111
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12/19/2006
Louise's Christmas Baking Adventures, Part 1
... I say "Part 1" because we have 5 more recipes to bake for the Christmas goodie baskets for the family, and if things keep going the way they're going, there will be a lot more adventures!
Every year for the past couple of years (I think this will be year 3), we have made goodie baskets full of home-baked goodies for my relatives' families - 5 baskets in all. We started doing this after a bit of a breakdown in the Kris Kringle thing, where everyone would draw a name and buy a gift for that one person. Problem was, we were supposed to spend $100 on the gift, and our family being the least affluent of my relatives', nobody in our family spends $100 on anyone in the immediate family, never mind the extended family! This sort of chugged along through gritted teeth for a couple of years, but it all came to a head when mom had a meltdown the year she drew my younger cousin's name, and was provided with a Christmas wish list that included fishnet stockings and a lava lamp. Some of you may know my mother, but for those who don't, she's quite a conservative person, a church organist, and patently not the fishnet-stockings-and-lava-lamp sort of person. The year after, we put our foot down and started making home baked goodie baskets.
So that's what we're up to at the moment, and I'm beginning to think shopping for lava lamps may not be so bad after all. We started last night, or at least, had a solid false start. It only took a few minutes before we learned lesson #1 of Christmas baking:
Lesson 1: Start with the right recipe.
I had this brilliant idea that I'd make these chocolate and cherry cookies that I remembered were so wonderful, but as it turns out, there are two recipes for chocolate and cherry cookies: one that is tasty, and the other that is like eating sandpaper. Unfortunately, last night, I started with the sandpaper recipe. Which brings us to lesson #2:
Lesson 2: If your intuition is telling you something isn't quite right, there's probably a good reason for it.
I didn't want to start over so I ignored my intuition, and made the recipe anyway. Thankfully, it was only a single recipe - we're doubling or tripling recipes to get enough for all the baskets, but I fortunately decided to do this recipe one batch at a time. So we have these cardboard chocolate cookies which barely taste like chocolate, and it was when they came out of the oven that mom discovered the other recipe for chocolate cherry cookies. We called it a night, and started the real cookies today.
Those went a lot better, and just when I thought I was done (72 cookies, all hand-rolled, fitted with a maraschino cherry, and lovingly hand-coated in a chocolate-cherry icing), that's when mom got us started on the second double recipe, for some sort of Scandinavian almond bars. At least we started with the right recipe this time.
Overall things haven't been going that badly - just a few small mishaps, like the wrong-recipe-cookies, half of which nearly slid right off the cookie sheet into the bottom of the oven, and the Scandinavian bars, which stuck to the cookie sheet like crazy glue and were nearly destroyed in the process of scraping them off. That was shortly before mom nearly melted her measuring tape to the inside of the oven door (don't ask).
Anyway.
So as of tonight, here are the stats on the Christmas goodie-baking adventure.
Number of chocolate cherry cookies baked: 72 of the good ones (70 now, after quality control ;-)), around 2 dozen of the sandpaper ones.
Number of Scandinavian almond slices: around 64 (too lazy to count exactly but that's about right)
Number of fingers permanently dyed bright red from Maraschino cherry juice: 3
Kilograms of chocolate purchased for the goodie basked baking: About 3 kg total
Number of different recipes on the goodie basket roster: 7
Number completed so far: 2
Recipe causing the most headaches: Used to be the chocolate mint fudge (I don't want to hear another word about dimensions of fudge boxes and whether foil wrappers come in square or round!!), but I think 1st place is now tied with those infamous chocolate cherry cookies.
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12/14/2006
The Holiday Season is upon us
Well, you can sort of tell it's going to be Christmas soon. It's not because of the weather, as we might actually have a green Christmas this year here in Ottawa, if things keep going the way they have been. (Stupid global warming...) I can feel it's nearly Christmas, because as usual, there's this air of irrationality which floats about, as people slowly but surely start to take leave of their senses.
A couple of days ago I went to the post office, and all I needed was to have an envelope weighed and the appropriate postage affixed. Should take about 30 seconds, but I was standing in line at the post office for probably a good 15-20 minutes, in the middle of the afternoon. That is, when it should be deathly quiet as people are at work (this is a suburban post office). Instead, I was in line behind several people, all of whom seemed to take ages. One person had a thick envelope that happened to be just a bit too thick to fit in the 2-cm slot for letter mail, so she was told it would have to go parcel post at a cost of about $7 or $8. I felt for her, because I've ranted about this before. But while I just gritted my teeth and paid the money (after all, it's not the teller's fault Canada Post has a wonky system for this), this lady tried to cram the envelope through the 2 cm slot, until the teller had to tell her stop, there's no way it's going to fit. Then he suggested she put it in a bigger (i.e., wider, not thicker) envelope to see if it would spread the contents enough to fit through the 2 cm slot. So she got a big envelope and went off to do that... and when she was done, butted in line right in front of me just when I thought I'd finally made it to the counter to get my little envelope weighed. *sigh*. Another lady needed extra postage for her thick Christmas cards and was moping to the teller that the extra stamps weren't Christmas-themed and did he have Christmas-themed stamps he could put on there instead... and so on. Now I remember why I like to stay out of commercial venues around Christmas time!
Speaking of Christmas frenzy, Mom has decided we need a new centrepiece for either our dining room table, or for the little table in the entrance hallway of the house. This centrepiece itch happens almost yearly, so it's no surprise it's happening again this year. Mom loves the Michael's craft supplies shop, but she managed to find a whole bag of baubles and fake Christmas "picks" (little bunches of ornamentation) at Rona for 25 cents a pop. She's busy building a centrepiece as we speak, which is why I'm busy making myself scarce. Mom and I have very different taste when it comes to this sort of stuff. I like simple, elegant things. Mom tends towards more over-the-top things, whether she intends it or not. If I were to hang around while she built this centrepiece, we'd end up in a battle of wills stemming from our simple difference in taste, and one or the other of us would probably walk off offended and/or frustrated. So, since this is her house, I'll let her have her fun decorating the centrepiece and spend my time worrying about other things. :-)
I'm off to go write some Christmas cards, which I'll go drop in a mailbox far, far away from the craziness of the actual post office!
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12/08/2006
NaNoWriMo's Aftereffects
So NaNoWriMo is finally over, and I managed to write 64,000 words in total. That's more than the 50k challenge, which is great, but the downside is that my story is still not over, and now I don't have a deadline to get my butt in gear for it. Still, I'm really interested in my story so I'm hoping that for once, I can discipline myself to keep going and get the thing done. Then comes a major rewrite and lots of editing and, with any luck, a publishing contract with a huge publisher, zillions of dollars, a spot at the top of the NY Times bestseller list... OK, OK, I'm dreaming. But I like to aim high anyway. :-)
I went to the Thank God it's Over (TGIO) party here in Ottawa, and got to meet some of the people that I knew only by their online names on the forums. It's interesting how you can get a certain image of someone in your head, and then when you meet them they're totally different. Actually I should have known, any assembly of writers crazy enough to write 50k words in a month are probably going to be a weird bunch. Next to them, all of a sudden I felt so... normal! It was cool to meet people so passionate about writing, but on the other hand, there are some people who were absolutely obsessive, to the point where I was worried about them. (Usually the fanfic people. :-D) They're a nice bunch though, and I had a good time at the party, even though I was majorly late for an orchestra rehearsal because of it.
In other news, I've been on a couple of interviews at a company in Kanata. It sounds like it could be an interesting job, and I hope I get it, but on the other hand, man, does it ever take a long time to get there. The second interview was on December 1, when we had some really inclement weather. (Note to self: Check location of company on Google Maps before leaving home...) Fortunately I took an earlier bus to get there because I got lost and had to backtrack in the rain and sleet. And on the way back, the roads were slush and ice and it took 2 hours, 15 minutes to make it back home. It literally would be faster to commute from Ottawa to Montreal than to bus it from Orleans (East end of Ottawa) to Kanata (West end of Ottawa). Anyway, we'll see what happens.
Orchestra stuff is pretty busy these days, with the Christmas season and corresponding concerts, but in a week and a half it should be calm again, and I imagine I probably won't know what to do with myself and all that spare time! I already have a whole bunch of ideas and projects for writing that I'm considering, so that's probably what will happen, and hopefully also I'll be making a dent in my to-read pile, which just got a couple of inches taller, now that I found a used copy of Clavell's Shogun!
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