c/o PZB
You are Commander’s Palace, a grand old dame of the
Garden District. Traditional yet always
vibrant, you are never afraid of innovation but
you seldom carry it too far. Some locals claim
you have become a tourist trap, but your loyal
patrons know there is no restaurant in town
that treats its regulars with more finesse.
What Famous New Orleans Restaurant Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Marylynn, who is expanding my knowledge of odd Northern Ontario terminology despite the fact she’s in California, tagged me for a meme. It’s the music one.
Total volume of music files on my computer:
672 songs, or 2.49 Gb. Yeah, it’s not a lot right now, but I’m in the process of copying some of my CDs to the hard drive to boost the numbers. Back in the heyday of Napster, I had somewhere in the neighbourhood of 700 songs - I still have most of them backed up on a bunch of CDs, but I don’t always copy all of them back onto my hard drive after I reformat it.
The last CD I bought was:
Heh. I found out I’d been tagged Saturday afternoon, and earlier in the day I’d broke down and bought an actual CD (I’ve been doing a lot of iTuning lately). Rufus Wainwright’s “Want Two” is sitting on my desk in front of me, having listened to it quite a few times since then. It’s going to take a few more listenings to before it becomes my new favourite CD - I’m still hung up on “Poses,” which I downloaded before going to The Soo.
Song playing right now:
463 - Buck 65. It still reminds me of the five-hour drive between Timmins and Sudbury down the 144 - there are exactly two towns on that route, and before you turn onto the 144, there’s a big sign that says “Last Gas for 100km.” It kind of freaked me out, so I went back to the nearest gas station and filled up.
Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
You’re kidding, right? Just five? I’ll see what I can do…
Angel - Aerosmith. My all-time favourite power-ballad.
Barrett’s Privateers - Stan Rodgers. The best song to sing at full volume while drunk in a bar in Halifax.
April Fools - Rufus Wainwright. I was going to a job interview in Charlottetown, and decided to take the Confederation Bridge (aka The Span of Green Gables) across. What I didn’t realize was exactly how long it was and how high it was - and I’m afraid of heights and open water (don’t ask). The only thing that kept me from a full-blown panic attack was playing this song over and over and singing along.
Go - The Apples in Stereo. Reminds me of my trip to Edmonton - I heard this in a record store on White Ave. and bought the CD.
Not Ready to Go - The Trews. My theme song when I moved to Sudbury.
There’s one other song, but I don’t even know the song title or who sang it. On the morning I left for Halifax to go to grad school, I woke up and heard this song on the radio, just a singer and a guitar; something about a cathedral and a wedding. For the longest time, I thought it might have been Ron Sexsmith, but I can’t find anything of his that sounds remotely like that song.
Five people to whom I am passing the baton:
Lisa (since Denise still hasn’t done the last meme I tagged her for!)
Phillip
Julie
Amanda (I think you may have been tagged with this once before, but I can’t remember!)
Karen
The second part of Sunday’s festivities (see below for the first part) involved dyeing some white Briggs & Little single-ply Durasport yarn I’d had laying around for a few months. Lisa successfully dyed some Paton’s Kroy just after Easter, and inspired by her success*, I decided to dye my yarn. But while she used egg dye, I went with Kool-aid**.
First step - laying everything out.
(From l to r: the Kool-aid, measuring cup, glass pie plate, and metal bowl with yarn. The toaster oven and electric kettle watch on with interest.)
To get the yarn to soak up the colour, it needs to be “bathed” in warmish water with a splash of vinegar. The vinegar is very important - it prevents to colour from running later on.
(”Ack!” the yarn is saying. “Can’t you see I’m naked??”)
I divided the yarn into three sections, secured them loosely with elastics, and got the first colour ready.
I poured this over the first section and let it sit in the pie plate.
It was tricky dumping the dye out, gently squeezing out the excess moisture, and laying it out to dye the second section. Eventually, to prevent the colours from smearing on each other, I put them in plastic freezer bags, which also made the microwaving easier.
The next two sections went much like the first section.
So, now I put the whole thing into my teeny-tiny microwave*** and nuke it for two minutes, let it sit for two minutes, and then nuke it for another two minutes.
Now it comes out of the microwave and cools off. The yarn was kind of stressed out at this point, so I let it sit on the balcony and have the rest of my beer.
(”Black Label? This is all you got?”)
Then the rinsing. I was worried that the dye would run and ruin the other parts, but that’s why you use vinegar - it helps to set the colour and prevent run-off.
(The yarn is having its second bath of the day. But still no bubbles!)
Once it’s been rinsed off, you let it dry. Here’s the yarn hanging out in my shower for the rest of the night.
This morning, it was almost dry, so I put in on my drying rack beside my balcony door. Parts of the orange still aren’t dry, but it won’t be much longer now.
*It wasn’t until after I realized I’d used almost the same colours she did, but we have very different shades in the end.
**There are a myriad of instructions on how to Kool-aid dye yarn. I ended up using a variation on the more popular method. But, basically, they all say the same thing.
***Denise gave me the microwave when she upgraded. I wasn’t going to take it, but I’m glad I did. It may be small, but it’s big enough for what I use it for, namely, reheating leftovers.
Sunday afternoon I decided I didn’t have enough excitement in my life, so I decided to undertake two major, first-time projects, and call it “Operation Let’s See How Much Chaos I Can Create In My Tiny Kitchen.” The first project was to cook my very first pot roast, which doesn’t sound difficult, except that I’ve been known to badly screw up simpler recipies.
I started by browning the roast with a little oil and flour.
Then I added a half cup of beer. (Black Label, if you must know.)
I hit a little snag when I had to call my mother to find out what temperature I put it in the oven on. “Um, it’s called *pot* roast. You cook it on the stovetop.” Thanks Mom!
I cooked the pot roast on the stove for about an hour, with the cover on. After the hour, I added the carrots and the onion.
I also added a little more beer…
…and celebrated getting to this point without any major screw ups.
Now I let it simmer for another hour and a half. After that time, this is what it looks like.
I peeled the potatoes to make mashed potatoes.
And voila! The final product!
It was good. Very tasty and tender, and I’m having the leftovers tonight.
On Saturday night, I got caught up in an episode of “Cold Squad” (which was quite good, by the way). The only problem was that there were two actors who I knew I’d seen elsewhere recently, and it was bugging me that I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen them.
The first was a blond, bland-looking detective, and it only took a few minutes to remember that I’d seen Sonja Bennett on “Godiva’s” recently. (Can anyone tell me if it’s coming back? Except for Bennett’s character, I enjoyed the show.)
The second actor was much harder, and I didn’t remember until this afternoon. He was an officer, mostly a secondary character with a few lines, and no one said his character’s name, so it was going to be difficult to figure out who he was. While watching “Farscape” this afternoon, it hit me - it was the actor who’d played Helo on “Battlestar Galactica,” Tahmoh Penikett.
Whew. It would have bugged me a lot until I had figured it out.
It’s been an eventful day. And I have the photos to prove it. But first, let’s start with why I’m not prepared to share them with you just yet.
Last night, the fire alarm went off. I wasn’t going to go down but the sign beside the elevator says to go down as soon as you hear the alarm.
I took this one from the stairwell on the 7th floor.
Not many other people went down either.
And now, the guest of honour…
Tonight, as I was sitting down to upload my pictures from the day’s activities, the fire alarm went off again. I didn’t get excited, and was prepared to ride out the all-pervasive noise of the alarm in my apartment.
Until I wandered past the door and smelled smoke.
Proving once and for all that I am indeed the Gadget Princess, I grabbed my camera and the iPod and threw them in my purse (and then grabbed my wallet), threw on a sweater, and hustled downstairs.
There were a lot more people outside this time, and we were out there for almost an hour and a half. In the meantime, I wandered over to McDonalds for a McFlurry, of which I only ate about half before I got cold and bored, so I threw it out and wandered back to the building.
I didn’t take any pictures this time, because there was no subtle way to take pictures of the hunky firefighters (well, the two hunky firefighters) and the cute paramedic.
Over the past week, I’ve developed a fond relationship with my new iPod mini. I brought it with me last week, although I was disappointed how fast the battery runs out. One of the major reasons I bought it was so that I wouldn’t have to lug my discman and case of CDs with me every time I went on a road trip. To this end, I also got the iTrip for my long journeys. Essentially, the iTrip broadcasts a signal on an empty radio frequency so you can listen to your iPod through the car’s stereo. Brilliant!
I didn’t have time to set it up last Monday, so I installed the program this morning. To test it, I set it up to broadcast through my stereo in my apartment - and it works! I can now listen to my mp3 collection without having to turn my computer on!
However, when I tried to get it to work in my car this morning, I ran into a problem. Even though there aren’t many radio stations in Sudbury, there seems to be a lot of blending, so that I had a hard time finding an empty frequency. Or I wasn’t setting it up properly. One or the other. So I tried plugging the iPod into the tape deck thingy for the discman, and lo and behold, that works with the iPod as well!
The moral of this story is that, even if I can’t get the iTrip to work in my car, it has household uses. The second moral of this story is that, even if I can’t get the iTrip to work in my car, I do have another device to make it work.
So yes, I’m back. The Soo still stands, although it’s a more organized place now. I’m still exhausted despite a day spent doing not much besides grocery shopping and napping. But enough about today! How was the last week?
Not too bad, actually. Work-wise, I felt that my first presentation fell flat on its ass, but the other two went quite well. I only saw one other presentation besides the ones I presented, and it was interesting. It was great to see some familiar faces, and put faces to names I’ve heard on the phone and seen in emails. It was also nice to see everyone from our TBay office in one place again.
Social-wise, we were all too busy and tired to do much socializing or painting the town any colour in particular. Karen and I went over to a midway Tuesday afternoon, but the rides were expensive and there wasn’t really much there. Karen, myself, and two other co-workers went out Wednesday night - I’d consumed three margaritas earlier in the evening and it turns out that I was tipsier than I thought (I wasn’t driving). In all, I drank this year’s and next year’s quota of margaritas and pina coladas. But I wasn’t driving and didn’t dance on any tables, so no harm no foul.
Monday I have an office full of papers to look forward to, as well as a list as long as my arm of things I need to remember to do and people to contact. I will be enjoying my last day of blissful freedom tomorrow, let me tell you.
Seriously, I wish I could give you more other than a brief wave as I dash off on another adventure, or promise you that I’ll write more later, but it’s going to be a while before I can do that. I can and will leave you with this:
I have a great family, and I had a great trip home.
I got a digital camera and an iPod Mini on Friday. I’ve played with the camera, but the iPod is charging right now.
The second oldest Jedi mind trick is the Cast-Iron Frying Pan to the Head. (The oldest Jedi mind trick is, “Look! Over there! What’s that?”) [1]
Toodles!
(Updated to add: Also, I got highlights put in my hair. Red ones. Bright coppery red highlights. They’re kind of cool.
[1] I should give credit where due - this was courtesy of an exchange between my sister and brother-in-law.)
(WARNING: there may be spoilers, depending on how much you know about what happens in episodes 4-7.)
It was okay. The action sequences rocked solid. The lightsabre duels, especially the final one, were things of beauty to watch.
The parts when characters spoke to each other? Not so good. I’ve never heard such wooden and forced dialogue. And the chemistry between Anakin and Padme? Non-existent. There was more chemisty between Anakin and Obi-wan. Hell, there was more chemistry between Yoda and Darth Siduous (the Emperor).
My biggest complaint? General Grievous. Okay, he was a cool bad guy, and his fight sequences were works of art. But why in the name of all that’s good and holy would you program a robot to have asthma? He’s part biological (a very small part, if I observed correctly), but why make him wheeze and cough constantly?
Overall, it was good - I was very sad when Anakin became Darth Vader, and he found out that Padme had died. Boo-hoo.
In general, I enjoyed the experience, although I’d kill for another three hours of sleep. The posse of us arrived just after 10:30 to stand in line, but they were letting people in right away. The ticket taker told us they had been letting people in since 6pm. Yikes! And it was showing on four screens - our theater was mostly full, and there was a great deal of camaraderie between us all. Some people (including Douglas) came with costumes and lightsabres, but I think Kris had the market on sleepwear - if I’d've been smart, I would have worn my pj’s as well. Would have saved me two minutes when I got home.
Anyways - go see the movie (*waves hand*). You want to go see this movie (*waves hand*). You will not get the large drink because it’s a long movie and you don’t want to have to go to the bathroom in the middle of an important part (*waves hand*).
