You can drink tea, but no dancing with the devil...

Tonight I learned much. Polynesian dance. Trio rehearsal. I held a tiny red corn snake named Ruby. Gwazi shimmies.
And lots and lots of zill practice.

In learning zills, one must be careful to not strain your muscles.
Puppydog hands are OK.
You are also allowed to drink tea (stick out your pinkie)...but not dance with the devil (make the horns).

Jazz hands are right out... >:)

mmm...chili

Tonight when I get home there is a big slowcooker full of chili waiting for me.

Mmmmmm....

Ah. Yes.

Hmmm.
Yes.
Well...

After being an MSc slave all day saturday, I had a lovely walk at sunset on saturday, munching on sugar snap peas and sipping beer from a coffee mug while sitting on a big old rock in the middle of wandering along the river. Odd? Yes, but it was the perfect reward for a long hard workday on a saturday...I'm so glad it's warming up and we can go for walks again. It is super squishy out, but that's OK. It's welly time!

Lovely days off...sundays are sacred to me now that I've ramped up into insanity of work+MSc+pretending to keep it together. I make a point of working full saturdays on my MSc, so it's the day a week I get to spend with with J. Not that we do lots or anything spectacular as a rule-it's just the one day for him & me. No stress...just us. It was part of my deal with myself...that and eating well and working out at least 3 times a week. I snack my stress away, so I've gotta at least try and fight back. So far so good. My knee has not given me any problems since I started up workouts again last week. We shall see. I'm very hopeful I can get up to speed soon...

On sunday we went out to see "Walking With Dinosaurs" which was really spectacular. The dinosaur automatons and puppets were incredibly real. I loved it...made me feel like a kid again. Then we fired up the BBQ...cuz it was only -5C. Warm enough to melt snow in the sunshine. Lovely...burgers and tin foil potatoes ...mmm...I heart my BBQ.

I'm hoping it's warm enough on the weekend coming up that I can actually sand my cupboard doors outside and not fill the basement up with sawdust. I've moved my workstation downstairs now and the living room seems *huge* now that there isn't a giant table in the middle of it. It's lovely. I finally got my kitchen put back together on the weekend as well...I've purged about 3 boxes of "junk" and know where everything is now...so the doors should really go back on. Slowly the house is returning to normal. So very soothing to not see boxes of junk and random tools and tables of things in your house...

Aaaahhhh.

it's late

I'm on the internet too!

Lalalalalaaaaaaaaa!

FIfty Years is Really Not Enough

I am full of bittersweet memories this morning - Today would have been my parent's 50th wedding anniversary.

Strange.

My Dad is buying flowers and placing out their wedding picture on the table today to remember. Sweet man. He's doing better...so much better. He smiles when he talks of Mum now. The memories are growing sweeter.

He is down in Arizona with a bunch of friends, spending time together and golfing and they are making sure he is alright. Mum and Dad used to go down every March together. It must be strange to be down there alone this year, but I am glad he is there with people who care for him, and who knew and loved Mum and will take the time with Dad to honour Mum's memory today.

50 years is a long long time to love someone.

I hope I am as lucky.

Fifty Years Is Really Not Enough

Fifty years is really not enough

In which to plumb the depths of someone's soul.

Fifty more years, then, should be the goal:

To know the beauty of another's love,

Yearnings shape, and life-long shadows buff.
Yet life was never easy in those years.

Everest is sometimes hard to climb.

A will to love has brought you to this time,

Rich in joys that time cannot remove.

So may this day be filled with happy tears!

Nicholas Gordon

Shaken, not stirred

Since seeing this the other day, I am now convinced I need it.
I've been meaning to get a martini shaker for a while now and this one is well nigh perfect for me for making proper cosmopolitans and chocolate martinis.

Yes.
Then I can be all James Bond (or at least Bond Girl) with my martinis instead of my current 2 plastic IKEA childrens glasses held together for shaking or quick stir over ice, usually ending up with me spilling half of it on myself.
Definitely more classy :)

Too busy

Too busy for a real post. Have a lolcat. And this toon

What? Lolcats are high in fibre and a good source of riboflavins...or something...

The coolness!

I stumbled upon this post about scientific themed cookies.
Then this one...

Consider me totally blown away and utterly inspired.
MAN I want to make me some lab cookies right now!!

mee hee...

We come from the future

I finally made a dent in my kitchen last night. Seeing as today was grocery day and I didn't want to get home with a kitchen full of groceries and have nowhere to put them, I did some kitchen stocking yesterday. I'm organising things by *function* as I put it all back after the renos. There's an actual logic to it now, not just where I happened to shove things when we moved in. I'm also purging stuff I don't use, or storing it downstairs. It's really starting to come together...

The best part?
Shelf paper.

Makes me feel damn old, but I finally get what grandma meant when she said shelf paper made her happy because it made her kitchen feel fresh and clean.
Cause...it *does* :)
I hadn't bothered to paint the inside of the cupboards but they feel all clean and bright and new.
Because I can, I've used metallic shelf paper...so it looks like I have cupboards from the future, lined with aluminum.

So now all my dishes are in clean crisp spaceship cupboards...

*sweet*

I want to be a clone

Hmmm...I really have to get at finishing up the cupboards. My goal of being done the kitchen by March has not come to pass. In my quest to remain sane I have let it slip in favour of necessary for life chores and my MSc project. I'm not going to beat myself up about it...it's just the fact that it is really really inconvenient to have my kitchen in boxes in the living room... it is driving me crazy.

This weekend I slogged away at my MSc project, as it needed my attention. I got a lot done. It felt good. And as a result...my kitchen is still mostly in the living room.
*sigh*

So, tonight I need to get started on putting shelf paper (it's metallic. Oooh...) down and begin putting things back in the kitchen...and working on finishing up the door and trim painting. I think I'm going to work at it 1 hour a night whenever I can. Once the doors are prepped, that will be enough to do a coat of paint/primer etc every night. And it's enough to start actually putting my kitchen back together. This weekend when I couldn't make icing for a friend's birthday cake it really irked me that I still had stuff in the living room and not in the kitchen where it should be.
Yes. I admit to *buying* icing. Oh the shame.

If only I could clone myself I could get so much more done...

I still don't like hockey. Sorry.

Blah blah blah gold medal
blah blah hockey

Yes it's exciting we won gold. I agree.
Women's and men's teams both have Olympic victory.
Can we all please talk about something else now?
I've had my maximum 24 hour quota of hockey small talk.

We won medals in other things you know. Yes it's true.
We have the most medals this Olympics - more than any other Olympics. I'm very proud to be a Canadian right now.
Want to talk about the other medals?
No? Just the hockey game?
OK then.
*sigh*