Larocque and Roll

A playlist to lift the writer’s block September 28, 2005

Due to the fact I’m suffering through another bout of writer’s block, I’m going to post another playlist. Believe me, I know it’s probably boring you to tears, but it helps to have something to write about to get you started writing, and this is as good a way as any to start (does that make any sense?)

The writer’s block is starting to affect my work work. All yesterday and today (well, actually yesterday morning and this afternoon - my presence was required elsewhere the other times) I’ve sat and stared at my computer screen, waiting for inspiration to strike. I should be writing things like, “All libraries should have technology plans to clarify how they intend to offer services using their current equipment, and guide decisions to upgrade said equipment and/or offer new services.” Instead, all that comes to mind is, “Blah blee bloo blee blah blah bloo blurp.” Which is so very not going to look good if I give it to my manager.

Let’s go!

(Incidentally, this is the first set of songs I downloaded, back in February or March or something like that. I was new to the whole downloading legal music, and was giddy with excitement that I was able to find what I did.)

The Littlest Birds (Be Good Tanyas) - I probably heard this on the CBC at some point, but the first time I remember hearing it was when my sister played it for my mother and I, and the three of us dancing around the kitchen (maybe I’m the only one who remembers this?) I’d forgotten about it until Phillip played it on Mud Songs Radio, so I checked to see if it was available. Lo and behold, it was!

Sad Eyes (Liam Titcomb) - For a while, this song was in heavy rotation on MuchMoreMusic, and I liked it, but thought that I’d get bored with it if I downloaded it. Lo and behold, I didn’t! (And it doesn’t hurt that this kid is seriously easy on the eyes, either*.)

* I should warn you - if you click that link, turn your speakers down.

Mr. Brightside (The Killers) - Loved the video, loved this song. Moulin Rouge-ish, with Eric Roberts!

Accidentally in Love (Counting Crows) - Did you see Adam Duritz’s ‘do at the Oscars? Dude, Sideshow Bob called, and he wants his hair back! (Great song, from Shrek 2, and it should have won.)

Alert Status Red and In A World Called Catastrophe (Matthew Good) - Ironic last name, since I haven’t heard anything good about him. But I like these two songs, what can I say?

God is a DJ and Trouble (Pink) - “If God is a DJ, life is a dance floor, and love is a rhythm…” I’m fond of these lyrics, and the message of this song in general, despite the fact it’s a blatantly manipulative pop song. And while I’m not “trouble” in the ways Pink is, I’m certainly trouble in other ways (just work my only nerve**, and see what happens - c’mon, I dare you!)

** See, I only have one nerve - it’s a birth defect. So you can’t get on my nerves, because I only have one, and chances are someone else is already on it, so you will suffer the consequences without the pesky waiting or warnings.

Watch Your Money (The Waking Eyes) - Where did I first hear this song? I don’t know, but they rock, and this is a fun song.

Little Drop of Poison (Tom Waits) - Yet another song from Shrek 2. Waits at his menacing, creepy best, set to a tango!

London Rain (Heather Nova) - A good song for a rainy day, when you know you’re going home to put on your pj’s, make a pot of tea, and settle in for the night.

Booty Call (G. Love) - I caught part of this video on MMM, and thought it was a groovy, funky piece. Happily, the whole song was as good as the clip.

Debonair (The Afghan Whigs) - A song from my halcyon university days. I think they were from Ohio, which was unusual, and probably why I remember them.

Maggie May (Rod Stewart) - Oh, I just like this song! Probably the first pop culture reference to Cougars.

Shake Me (Vocal Mix) (Mint Royale & Various) - It’s a fun blend of 50’s-ish pop, techno, and dance. It reminds me of the colour pink with white polka dots, if that makes sense***.

*** Oh, it doesn’t. Just take my word for it!

And thus ends the drought. We’ll see how often I have to revert to using “blah blah blah” in an official document tomorrow.

Death by fiery hot chicken soup September 26, 2005

I know, I know - the title sounds like a headline in some trashy weekly, but it’s actually what I had for supper last night.

Chicken soup is one of the easiest things to make. You take your chicken, you take your water, add the rest of the ingredients, simmer, and - voila! Soup! What you add is completely up to you, and is only limited by what you have on hand. Although I would hesitate to advocate the addition of asparagus or Brussel sprouts. I can’t see how either of those would be a good thing.

A few months ago, I experimented with different ingredients for a two weekends in a row. Neither was a smashing success, so I hesitate to mention them, except to say that sweet potatoes are a bitch to peel, and by the time they’re FINALLY cooked, everything else is soggy. Oh well. Since then, I’ve been reluctant to try any more variations. That, and it was summer, and thus too hot to make soup.

But yesterday was damp and chilly, perfect weather for a nice hot bowl of soup. Both temperature-wise, and, as it turns out, flavour-wise.

Start with:

• 2-3 tbsp oil - I didn’t measure this, so it’s really just a guesstimate
• 2 nobs of ginger, peeled and thinly-sliced - take a ginger root, and break off two medium-sized nobs, peel them, and slice them. Don’t grate them or chop them finely
• 2 cloves garlic - normally, I only use one, but I upped the number this time
• 1/2 tbsp dried chilies - okay, here’s where I went seriously wrong (or right, depending on your taste). That was waaaaaaay more than I actually needed; I think 1 tsp would have been wiser
• 1/2 tsp Chinese Five-Spice - again, I eyeballed this, so it’s not exact. Basically, I used the end of the tablespoon, dipped it in the jar, and dumped the little pile on the spoon into the pot. (I’m not sure what five spices make up Chinese Five-Spice, but I’m certain there’s cardamom in it. Possibly cinnamon. Maybe anise.)
• 1 chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces

Put this all in a pot over medium heat and cook until the chicken is browned. Try not to burn the garlic, okay? Because burned garlic smells awful.

Add:

• 8 cups water - too much. Use 6 instead (do as I say, not as I do - I make these mistakes so you will learn from them!)
• 3 medium potatoes, cut into cubes - again, learn from my mistakes: I used two medium and one gianormous potato, and it was about half a potato too many.
• 5 carrots, chopped
• 2 stalks celery - you can use more, but I don’t really like it, so I don’t use that much. It’s basically just crunchy water, and you burn more calories eating it than are actually in it. That’s just whack, people!
• two leeks, thinly sliced - I used some of the green parts, but not too much.
• 2 cups frozen corn - I like corn. I put it in a lot of things.

Throw that into the pot, stir, and let simmer until the potatoes are cooked to your satisfaction, however long that takes.

Let me warn you, though - I love spicy, hot food, but the tears were rolling down my face as I ate this last night (and even today at lunch).

Sunday night September 25, 2005

Things I have done this weekend:

1. Finished knitting a pair of socks.

If you are looking at them and thinking that the sock on the left is a little brighter than the sock on the right, you are correct. The sock on the right is the one that I knit and frogged at least four times. I don’t know if that affected the colour, but I did notice as I knit the second sock that the colour was a little brighter.

If you are looking at them and thinking, “Why hasn’t she woven in the ends yet?” - I’ll get around to it when I find my darning needles.

I can’t give you details about the yarn because I lost the bands somewhere. Sorry.

I also started work on another sock.

This is Fleece Artist Merino - it’s their basic sock kit. It’s a lovely colour and has a lovely feel, but it’s skinny yarn. I have to use 2.75mm needles (translation: tiny), and am using five of them (so, the stitches are divided over four needles, and the fifth is for knitting). I’m not sure they’re going to even fit me because I have really wide feet, and this doesn’t look like it’s going to make it over my heel.

2. Did laundry. At 12:30am.

The laundry room in my building is open 24 hours, and I was sick of tripping over piles of laundry, and I wasn’t tired (yet). But it’s done - yay!

3. Bought more yarn.

It’s all Briggs & Little. The white is sport weight (translation: more skinny yarn) and the red - and it’s a rich, wonderful shade of red - is called “Tuffy”, and is really good for mittens and socks. Except that wool socks are too warm for me, so it’s likely to become mittens, scarves, and hats.

4. Bought a laptop.

I don’t have it yet - it should be delievered on Thursday.

It’s officially Fall September 24, 2005

As usual, I went to the market this morning. What makes this mention-worthy is that I remembered to bring my camera with me. Oh, and it was the annual Fall Festival today. If I’d only remembered my cloth bags, I would have been all set. Anyways…

They were pretty good. Wish I knew who they were.

This lovely couple danced to the music, much to everyone’s delight.

To quote Big Rude Jake, “the sky was clear and Aqua Velva blue…”

Not everyone has pumpkins yet - it’s still a little early for that.

Such lovely plants! I almost want to have a front step to put them on.

More mums.

Ahhhh… Niagara grapes. The scent reminds me of driving past the vineyards on my way to school when I was in university.

This is inside, looking at the pottery display.

Of course, there are more, so you should go look at the whole set.

Does this sound familiar? September 21, 2005

Have you ever had one of those days? By which I mean one of those days where you get home from work and read and putter around for a while before deciding to go out and run some errands? Like, returning books to the library and paying some fines (shut up! Librarians have to pay fines too! Especially if they don’t work at the library in question!) and returning some videos to Blockbuster? And all afternoon you’ve had a low-level headache that blossoms into sinus-throbbing pain as your leaving your apartment? So when you leave the library to start heading back, you look up and see the gathering storm clouds, which explain the headache?

Then, you stop at Shopper’s Drug Mart to get shampoo and hair product so you don’t have any more lame excuses to skip blowdrying your hair and putting it in a ponytail in the morning, then go to Subway to get something to eat because you were too lazy to take anything out of the freezer or stop at the grocery store after work? (But, you couldn’t have stopped at the grocery store after work anyways because you had to go to the garage next door to your office to get the rear passenger-side tire patched, because it’s been going flat for like a week and a half, and your office partner keeps asking you every morning if you finally got it fixed, because you sort of asked him to do that to make you feel guilty about not doing it sooner.)

Is any of this ringing a bell yet? No? Okay…

So, after leaving Subway you notice it’s starting to rain lightly, and you still have a ten minute walk home, and your library books are in a cloth bag and might get damp if it starts to rain any heavier? And, of course, then it does? Then it starts to rain even more, and then there’s lightening and thunder, and you start to dash, but the bag of books, hair product, and Subway meal is kind of heavy and it slows you down? Finally, you make it back to your apartment and start cursing whoever the hell it was that said people who wear glasses are lucky because when it rains, you see stars (because what actually happens is that you can’t see a bloody thing and end up walking into doors. So in a way, you actually do see stars, but not in the way they meant.)

And so, after the mad dash in the rain (and cursing the jackass who once told you that kissing in the rain was the most romantic thing ever because you’re single and don’t want to be thinking about that right now - PMS and all that rot) you change into your pj’s to eat and settle in watch the season premier of “Lost”, which, of course, is going to keep you awake all night waiting for creepy visions of a dripping wet child to appear next to your bed whispering warnings?

Then you flip over to CNN and see that there’s another f***ing hurricane heading towards the Gulf of Mexico and it makes Katrina look like the Tooth Fairy, and you start freaking out all over again? And you think that maybe the American public should use this as an opportunity for Mother Nature to have a say in Bush’s presidency thus far - strap him to a post on the south side of Galveston and if he survives, then he can go back to being the President for the remainder of his term? And if not - well, Karma’s a bitch, to be sure.

Then you look down and see you got something orange on your shirt, and think, “When the hell did that happen?”

Or is that just me?

Short and sweetish September 19, 2005

Ten minutes - here we go…

I made a mini apple crisp tonight in a foil pan leftover from when I made peach crisps. However, when I went to take it out of the oven, I dropped it all over the floor. This makes me very sad, as I was looking forward to apple crisp tonight.

This week is Cinefest week - Sudbury’s film festival. Other than the Corpse Bride, there’s not much I’m interested in. (BTW, I’m not fond of their web site - the navigation is irritating, and the colour scheme is an odd combination of purply-blue and dark green.) There are a whole bunch of James Dean movies playing, but they’re on in the middle of the afternoon, and there’s no way I can get out to see any of those. Poo.

There are three new reviews posted - well, one post is for two books by the same author. I read/heard them back in March, so the reviews are pretty short since I can only remember my impressions of what I thought when I read them. And when I give something a bad review, it doesn’t mean that you won’t like it - it’s just what I felt when reading them.

Oh - one more thing about the review page. I will post a list of what I’ve read so far hopefully soon. I started trying to review them in order, but that didn’t work, so I’m just reviewing them at random now - hey, as long as I review them, I’m not going to complain! So you should be able to see a list of at least January and February’s books by the weekend.

I’ve decided to go with the chick lit books next. I just need to dig them out and put the links up.

Knitting news! I finished a sock! It sucks because I messed up the top! Oh well! The second sock is almost complete, and there will be pictures once that’s done. There was a very cool sock pattern in the most recent Knitty - it’s a complicated pattern, but I have some Lorna’s Laces yarn which I got in February, and it would be perfect for this.

Ten minutes are almost up!

I’m thinking I might post another playlist I made early on - does this interest anyone or am I boring you with them?

Time’s up!

People sometimes puzzle me September 18, 2005

Out of professional interest, I’ve joined a listserv which deals with issues I deal with on a daily basis. Mostly, it’s full of information I can’t use or is of no interest, but occasionally there are gems. However, it is a high-traffic listserv and I don’t get a chance to read every piece of email every day, so I’m still getting caught up.

Back in July, a discussion about aid for the Third World (in response to the Live 8 concert) was started. The person who started the discussion mentioned wealthier African nations, like South Africa and Rhodesia, were also receiving aid, while countries like Zimbabwe, which is a war-torn place, didn’t receive as much attention.

Wait, back up a sec.

I had to double-check this, but I already knew I was right. Rhodesia is Zimbabwe. It has been since 1980.

Maybe the person was speaking in a historical context. They weren’t - the person used the present tense in all cases. Maybe they were confused. Nope - the person made a very clear distinction between two places which are actually the same place. It bugged me to end when I read this, to such an extent that I had to share with my office partner*. He looked puzzled, and said pretty much the same thing - they were the same place.

What irritated me the most? There were several responses to the initial message, asking for statistics** and debating the finer points of foreign aid. But not one person called the original poster on the mistake.

Gah!

* Oh yeah - I haven’t mentioned this have I? I share my office with one of the new hires now. It’s working out quite well - we get along famously.

** Including one request for current stats on Zimbabwe and Rhodesia.

Just your typical Saturday

Starts with: going to the market, going for groceries, going to Canadian Tire to see if I can score any more clay pots and potting soil, going home.

At home: clean kitchen, clean bathroom, clean laundry, clean room, clean self.

This afternoon: Karen comes over and we spend the afternoon watching Vin Diesel movies (Fast and the Furious, xXx, and The Chronicles of Riddick) and doing crafts (me=knitting; Karen=beadwork). It is officially dubbed “VD Day”.

Tonight: after the movies, Karen and I go our separate ways to get dolled up. We meet back up, and head out to Zig’s* to meet Kris and several other friends. We dance, we boogie, we shake our grove thangs. Last call is announced**, and we head out for greasy burgers. I drop Karen off, come home, and write this. Now, I go to bed.

*Because I’m too tired and having trouble typing, I’m not going to try and look up the entry about the last time I went to Zig’s, which for everyone just joining this blog in progress, is Sudbury’s one and only gay bar.

**How sad a comment on our society is this? At 2AM, when the other bars in the downtown area are clearing out, Zig’s locks its doors, and no one is allowed in or out. It’s to protect the patrons from being attacked or harassed. It makes me want to put a curse on the three drunk guys at the fast food place who were harassing the counter girls and everyone else.

Book Club Verdict: The Jane Austen Book Club September 13, 2005

Rather than repeat my whole rant about this book over here, I direct you to my review over on the site where I should be keeping track of what I’ve read. Alas, I’m lazy when it comes to writing the reviews, so I’ve only got about a third of them up so far.

Go read it - I’m at my vile-spewing best tonight!

Good news!

My Flickr account has finally been upgraded to Pro!

Because PayPal has issues with me (and I with it), I had to mail the parent company a money order, which I did weeks ago. I finally recieved notice that the upgrade has taken place! Yay! This means as many photo sets as I want!

(For everyone who was expecting a different piece of good news, the answer is that I haven’t heard either way yet.)