Outdated!

Hello loyal readers! (By that I mean Fae and only Fae.)

As it turns out, as I have done a dozen times before, I got bored with Blogger and stopped posting. You may have noticed. After a while I got the urge to start oversharing on the internet again and, completely forgetting about my poor, ancient, neglected Blogger account, I started a Tumblr. As it turns out, I like Tumblr way better than Blogger, so I have kept up that one a little better than this one. (I said a little.) If I figure out a way to auto post to this from that I probably will, but until such time, you probably won't see any updates here!

Check out marbles24.tumblr.com instead. You'll find me there. (And I have yet to go into a long-winded description of a dream, so I am head and shoulders above the calibre of this blog already.)

Book versus Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Let me get this right out in the open so that there are no illusions about my lack of bias here: I hate Michael Cera. I hate looking at him, I hate listening to him talk, and I hate the only role that he has ever played: the awkward kid that is somehow supposed to be cool or funny or something. HOWEVER. I also acknowledge the fact that the role of Scott Pilgrim was pretty much made for him.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the books. I resisted reading them for a very long time based entirely on the fact that Michael Cera plays the main character in the movie, and that must mean that I will hate everything about the main character. Who wants to read about a protagonist that they hate? (For example: Holden Caulfield.) I was eventually swayed entirely by overbearing peer pressure. Contrary to my expectations, I really liked the comics. I found them a bit disjunct, but I think that was probably intentional. I liked that the characters had some emotional depth to them, each with their own back story and the emotional baggage therewith. Each character makes some kind of personal development, and there is a greater, overarching story line that is not really ever made completely clear until the very end. All of these things I thought were really great, in the comic.

You’ll notice that each of the things I thought were great in the comic were the things that were unceremoniously ripped out of the movie.

I was encouraged at first when the opening scenes were taken word for word from the beginning of the comic. I thought that the style of the movie in general was really true to the comic, but the story seems to have got a disfiguring face-lift. Every relationship between characters became a little simpler so that they could justify cutting out interactions. (For the sake of brevity, I imagine.) As a result, the whole story got much less complicated, and much shallower. The entire side-plot about Envy was pretty much dissolved. The band-mate with the cyborg arm? She got less than one second of screen time.

Don’t get me wrong. The movie was still entertaining. People like it. If it weren’t for my irrational hatred of Michael Cera, I might even be willing to say that I enjoyed it. My problem is that they took a good story, with at least somewhat three dimensional characters who develop, and dumbed it down into a simple, whimsical action movie. I guess I am just disappointed because the movie is kind of dumber than I was led to believe.

[Edit: I sort of truncated this post because I felt it was getting kind of babble-y, and I wasn’t sure if the internet world really needed my detailed and specific opinions on the subject. Since I have been told by a couple of people that this seems like it was going somewhere and then didn’t, I guess I will go into the detail that I intended to go into originally at some point in the future. There will be a link later.]

Chronicles of Camping (In Which I Kick Sand in the Face of Danger)

This year, I found myself thinking that I hadn’t been camping in a very long time, and that I might like to go. Tragically, I had this thought some time in the middle of August, and drastically underestimated the amount of people that enjoy reserving camp sites in the middle of September. I say ‘reserving camp sites’ rather than ‘camping’ because I can only assume, based on the number of reserved sites in the month of September (many) compared to the amount of actual live people at the campground (none), that people are getting their kicks from sitting at home on their computers and making campground reservations for the sheer thrill. As a result, Bryan and I got pigeon-holed into camping at the end of September. (This conveniently coincided with the week of his birthday so that I can pretend that we went camping for his birthday and not feel bad for not doing anything special even though he doesn’t really like camping.)

That is not to say that the camping trip was bad. It wasn’t. It was a great trip and, considering that it took place in the middle of the fall, could hardly have gone better. We were largely prepared for the cold weather, which surprised us by being balmy and beautiful (for September), and we didn’t expect to be able to swim or tan or anything like that, so we weren’t disappointed. The thing that I didn’t take into account was the fact that the last time I was camping I was literally responsible for absolutely nothing. I had no say in, nor responsibility for any of the organizational aspects of the trips. My parents ran the whole show, and I was pretty much completely oblivious as to all the finer details of camping. After hitting this realization like an electric fence, I asked my wonderful mom for some helpful advice. She proceeded to tell me things that I am sure seasoned campers will take for granted as common sense that I had not even begun to think of. For example, freeze things before you go. Don’t just put kind of chilled food in a cooler and expect it to keep. Keep your cooler under the bench of a picnic table so that animals can’t get into it. (That one I found to be particularly ingenious.)

Speaking of animals, since the park that we were able to scrounge up a reservation at was located on a tiny, sandy peninsula in lake Erie, one side of it was nothing but a great big beach, and the other side was nothing but a giant squishy marsh, with a bit of solid land in the middle to set up tents on. (Our campsite was on the beachy side, so the ground cover on the whole site was sand.) As a result there is a distinct lack of wildlife at this park aside from snakes, toads and seagulls, which we saw in abundance. Other than that we encountered approximately two animals. (Approximately.) One was a very tiny black turtle that I rescued from the middle of the deserted road and didn’t think to take a picture of. The other was a furry mammal of some kind that thought it would like whatever was in our garbage bag. (This goes back to another piece of what I suspect is camping common sense: Take out your trash every night. Or at least put it in the trunk.) Bryan and I were sitting around the fire on our second (or maybe third - I really don’t recall) night there, and there was a snuffling sound around the picnic table. I got up to investigate, forgetting that the animals of a provincial park are so acclimatized to humans that just walking near them is not enough to make them go away. I walked over to the picnic table, mostly blind as I didn’t think to bring a light, and thought to myself “What did I think I was going to do about this? I walked over here like I had some kind of purpose, and since my mere presence isn’t enough to scare it away, I guess I have to do something.” Except this whole thought process took place in about 0.4 seconds, so really it was something like “Oh-gawd-it’s-not-leaving-and-I-can’t-see-whatdoIdo?” KICK. My reflexive reaction was to kick sand at the beastie in hopes that it would go away. Immediately following this decision I realized that it was pretty stupid, thinking that it could be an angry porcupine at worst, or a particularly brave raccoon at best. To my great relief, rather than shooting quills at me or jumping on my face and maiming me, the animal trundled off and hid under the car for the next several hours. As it waddled away, I was still almost entirely blind, so I took the opportunity to check the animal out a little. All I could tell was that it was very light in colour, and I didn’t really think anything of it until I reached forward to pick up the garbage bag that it had been rooting through. Then I noticed the smell. I then ran away and hid behind the tent, babbling a little bit. Bryan was suitably confused, and I had to explain to him that “I just kicked sand in a skunk’s face.” He laughed at me and I came out from behind the tent and disposed of the garbage (armed with a lantern this time) and then we sat by the fire some more. So, like most of my stories, the end is a bit anticlimactic: “And then it ran away.” I didn’t get sprayed, and it didn’t come back, and I didn’t chase it down with a stick or anything, but it is the most interesting of my non-mushy camping stories, so there you have it. I kicked sand at a skunk and lived.

Red Hat Society Cupcakes!

I have been meaning to write about these cupcakes since they were made. The wonderful Lara and I made them for my mother’s 50th birthday party. (If you don’t understand the importance of the colours and whatnot, then you should read up on the RHS. Then they are quite funny.) Their creation was a bit of a fiasco, but as you can see, they turned out wonderfully, and with much leftover material.

Our initial shopping trip involved a lengthy visit to the bulk barn for baking supplies, (fondant, food colouring, bulk icing sugar…) and some other grocery store for an entire dozen eggs and two whole sticks of butter, all of which we used. (These cupcakes were healthy.) The baking all took place at my parents’ house, so I had a hard time finding things, so we wound up buying a large amount of unnecessary junk. (For example, four muffin trays and a giant bag of powdered sugar.) There was also a dart lying around in the kitchen mysteriously, so it got used as a baking instrument. (By baking instrument I mean poking thing to open stuff with.)

Our first step was to make the cake itself, which I am ashamed to say was cake-in-a-box. After using an entire container of red food colouring to make the batter the right colour, we popped the cake part in the oven and planned our next trip to the Bulk Barn. We made one batch of buttercream in the meantime, thereby making a complete disaster area and staining pretty much everything in my parents’ kitchen purple. (The meat cutting board will never be the same.)

My plan with the rec cupcakes was for the icing to be red as well, so the fact that we had already used up all of our red food colouring on the batter was an issue. Once the cupcakes came out of the oven we went on another Bulk Barn adventure and picked up another container of red food colouring and (on a whim) a tiny vial of strawberry flavouring. Seemed like a productive trip. We then drove fifteen minutes back to my parents’ house and started making the second batch of buttercream. One whole stick of butter (See? Healthy.) and a crazy amount of icing sugar later, we had some yellowish-white icing. Upon adding another entire container of red food colouring, we had some slightly pink icing. Frak. Two more trips and three more containers later, we came out with the right colour.

After icing them, which was totally the easiest part, I had to figure out how the frak to make things out of fondant without them falling apart. (And pray that the little bit of purple that we had left was enough to colour the fondant.) With an awful lot of instruction from Lara, I spent about a million years making tiny bows out of sheets of purple sugar. Lara felt the need to take a picture of my “trying hard face”, which, though you can’t really see it, features my tongue sticking out of the side of my mouth. It would have been neat if I had any tools besides a knife that was altogether too big for my purposes, but it wasn’t a complete disaster.

All the people who ate the red ones kind of looked like they had been eating people, but sacrifices must be made for aesthetics. If I hadn’t spent so much money learning to be a musician already, maybe I would consider learning to be a baker. (Maybe I will anyway?)

Vuvuzela Excerpts

Skip to about 1 minute, unless you would like a lesson in the finer arts of vuvuzela playing. As much as vuvuzelas seem to be the funniest thing in the world right now according to popular opinion, the only thing that made me want to post this is the fact that they are playing trombone excerpts. It makes sense. The mouthpieces (if you can claim that they have one) are roughly the same size, and the range seems similar. It still kind of hurts me.

It took some digging through German websites, but I have determined that the people playing are probably Uwe Saegebarth, a trumpet player, Helge von Niswandt, trombone, and either Stephan Stadtfeld (trumpet) or Stefan Gorasdza (french horn), all of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin. The spelling in the subtitles leads me to think that the Stephan in question is the trumpet player. I am at least satisfied that the person playing the Boléro solo was, in fact the trombone player.

A Day at my Desk

Structured chaos. I know where everything is.

I Really Like Getting Mail

Today I walked for half an hour in the blazing ten billion degree sun (that’s Centigrade, for anyone who’s wondering), braving road construction and unfinished stairs and heat stroke to pick up a package from the post office. That is how important getting mail is to me.
I was expecting my package to be full of shirts, because I ordered shirts several weeks ago from TeeFury.com. (For the record, their shipping to Canada is VERY slow.) Instead of my long-awaited tee shirts, I got computer decals, which are good too, I guess. I actually got two of them because I couldn’t decide which one I liked better, so for now I have the one pictured to the left on my laptop. I also got this one.

I bought them on the internet, because I don’t seem to believe in real stores and things anymore, and I am including a link to the store where I bought them because there are some other really cool ones there, and they are totally worth buying and I am not just saying that to get a discount. There is a really cool Iron Man one that was definitely my third choice. As it stands, I am pretty happy with my retro nerdery.

Cool Decal on Etsy.

Adventures in Deep Frying Pickles

I was having a conversation with a friend today about life and hoop scotch [sic] and other things, and eventually we got to talking about food. Being in Japan presently, he was talking about places from Kitchener that he misses eating at. Greasy food cravings, bacon (which apparently is not that common in Japan), and pickle fries. I suspect now that pickle fries are something completely different than I thought they were, but regardless, I started thinking (and talking) about deep fried pickle spears. (There was also talk of wrapping deep fried pickles in bacon and then oven-roasting them, but as I didn’t have any bacon, that will have to be an adventure for another day.)

I decided, as I hadn’t eaten anything yet (at 3 in the afternoon), that deep fried pickles were as good a lunch as any. I Googled “deep fried pickles” and briefly looked at one recipe, but before I had even finished reading the ingredients list I thought to myself “psh. I can do this. How hard can it be?” I know what you are thinking: “Oh no. Things that start with ‘how hard can it be?’ always end in disaster!” but not so! For once, it was really easy. If anyone cares to try it, I will send you my delicious made up combination of stuff that I used for breading and breading adhesive, but it would be easier for you to just look it up on the internet. (I’m sure there is a name for ‘breading adhesive’, but I don’t know what it is.)

So Operation Home-Made-Deep-Fried-Pickles was a great success. Successful enough that I felt the need to take an artsy picture to show them off. (I should be a food photographer.) As you can see, they are a little bit ugly. (Who knew that the technique for getting breading to stick to meat does not also work for pickles?) The ones that were double-breaded looked much prettier, but the breading fell off of them a lot easier. You can’t win them all.

All in all, a delicious way to spend half an hour.

Magic Eye Nostalgia

Remember magic eye? I used to struggle a lot with them as a kid, but now I can do it without really trying. This one took me a minute to work out. It is probably my favourite one that I have come across. I am now going to take its lesson to heart and crawl into bed like a sane person should be doing at 2 AM.

My Strange Dream

Bryan and I are at a giant gathering of people. A lot of my extended and immediate family are there, so I want to think that it was a family reunion of some kind, held at a public place like a hall. We are sitting at a table and socializing with some members of my family, and we notice that in another part of this large place there is a big wedding going on. Lots of people watching, a small chamber group playing, everyone all dressed in black and white. We continue socializing for a while, talking to various members of my family, and then Bryan pulls me aside and says to me "Let's get married."
"I thought that was our plan already?" I am confused.
"I mean today."
"Right now?"
"Now."
I think for a few seconds, blinking stupidly, running over the plausibility of this idea. After a long moment of staring at Bryan and not saying anything, I nod slowly and eventually manage to spit out "...Yeah. Okay, let's do it."
We wait until the other wedding has finished up and cleared out, and Bryan goes to talk to the person who married the couple. I go and talk to some members of the chamber group. One of them turns out to be someone I know and she is glad to play for us. She asks me what song I would like for our processional, and I give her a very specific answer, but I wish I could remember what it was. After a few organizational things, I have somehow come up with a dress (it is light blue) and Bryan has found himself a suit. Our processional is very short, as the wedding party is composed of what family members we could come up with. My parents are there, in the wedding party. Bryan's father and brother are there, his father standing with my parents and his brother, as well as mine, in the makeshift wedding party. My musician friend plays the processional song that I had chosen on the piano. I remember it being very light and cheerful, and not at all solemn like processionals usually are. Once our families have paraded through the little hall, I step into the door, to the opening chords of the Bridal Chorus (of course), and see that there are almost no people in attendance. A few aunts and uncles, and that's about all. At first I am very sad about this, but then I turn my eyes to the front of the room and forget all about it.
I remember the room really vividly. The entire interior is a light coloured natural wood, the floors, walls and high ceiling all matching. Upon thinking about it now, it reminds me of the hall at the Milton Agricultural Museum. Off to the right of the main doors is a little alcove where my piano playing acquaintance is seated. The left wall is covered in high windows and the sun is pouring in. The hall is still decorated from the previous wedding; a long green carpet with gold edges rolled down the center aisle, yellow and green flowers on the ends of the rows of what are clearly dining room chairs. A small raised platform is set up at the end of the aisle where Bryan is standing with an older, grey-haired guy with glasses, dressed in a black suit. Presumably this is the man he has convinced to marry us.
I don't remember the ceremony itself, I just remember feeling so happy I could explode, and leaving the hall in a giddy run, Bryan holding my hand.
Later, I assume a couple of hours later, Bryan and I have both changed back into normal clothes and we are back to socializing with family members. I talk to several people, and the conversations are largely "I hear you just got married!" Apparently none of the family members here knew that it was happening at the time.
The dream kind of trails off at the end, finishing with me and Bryan leaving the hall at the end of the event and going home and getting into bed.

When I woke up this morning I was torn between being really happy and confused. The dream ended with me falling asleep, in much the same situation I was in when I woke up. For a second I lied there thinking "Did that happen?" and then I realized for certain that it was a dream and yesterday was just an average day.

This dream was mostly just weird because of how vividly I remember the whole thing. I usually forget everything about my dreams a few minutes after waking up. Not only that, but I don't usually have happy dreams; they are usually neutral at best. Especially not after being as down as I was yesterday. The other thing that makes it strange is the distinct lack of strangeness. Everything in this dream was a plausible thing that could happen in reality, and did not defy any laws of nature, physics or logic.

...Weird.

Drink Recipes Made Up While Drunk

Blue Murder-Death 5000: Approximately one eyeballed ounce of blue curacao, one of spiced rum, ice, fill with gingerale. 

Verdict: Actually kind of delicious. This has a real name, and real measurements, but we found it at a LAN party and couldn’t be bothered looking up the real name or recipe, so we renamed it.

Black Hole: (Originally called the Blue Murder-Death 9001) One small blue freezie, some strawberry syrup, pink lemonade, lemon juice, and a completely arbitrary amount of blue curacao.

Verdict: Tastes like syrupy sweetness. Started out blue with red at the bottom, then when it got stirred, it turned black. Hence the new name. Devised by Bryan when I told him to surprise me, with the qualifier “make it something delicious”.

Blue Cow: Blue curacao and milk.

Verdict: Kind of delicious also, but bad for people who are lactose intolerant… Like me.

Frobisher Bay

An arrangement (not mine) of Frobisher Bay, by James Gordon. Please keep in mind that I am not a singer, nor do I have any experience recording anything ever, and that this was recorded on a laptop using a Rock Band microphone over the course of about an hour. Judge accordingly.

Several people have asked me for an MP3 of this, so here it is. If you can’t right click the player and save the file, then right-click the link and select “Save link as”.

Adventures in Closing a Restaurant

I was really worried about my first close all by myself, and while I don’t think it was a complete failure, it was definitely a bit of an adventure. I’m not even going to embellish this one. It is pretty entertaining on its own merits.

(Note: I’ve decided to use fake names for my coworkers because I am not sure how they feel about me talking about them on the internet. Not that it will really help, but at least I can feel like I am providing some kind of anonymity.)

First of all, I started the day thinking that I was going to be closing with Bill as my delivery driver. (Most times there are only a manager and a driver working on a close shift.) I was not excited about this premise because Bill does not know how to do managerial things, so if I couldn’t remember something I would be up the creek. The store manager called me that morning for an unrelated reason, and told me that Bill had quit, effective immediately, that morning. (I suspect that this is related the yelling match that he had with another driver two nights prior.) She also told me that it didn’t matter to me, because my closing driver was supposed to be Dimitar (who does know how to do managerial things). So I went in to work at 5:00 armed with that knowledge, thinking that my close might not be a disaster after all.

I got to work and the store manager informed me that Dimi was not my driver after all. It was supposed to be Diego. This was troubling, because he does not know how to do managerial things, or even basic non-driver things, so he would be no help at all. (Especially combined with the fact that I find his accentreally hard to follow.) Then about an hour into the shift, the manager gets a call saying that Diego has just found out that he is getting deported, so he has to quit, effective immediately. Dimi was at work at the time, so we asked him to stay and close (even though he had already been there since 10 AM) but he was feeling fairly unwell, so he opted to go home and sleep. We called in the assistant manager to close with me, which meant that I probably wasn’t going to fail. Bully for me.

The night went on fairly uneventfully. The store manager went home, the assistant manager drove deliveries, there was a little rush, we dealt with it, the night went on. Then, at about 9:30 or so, Mr. Assistant Manager called me up while he was on a delivery and told me that he had blown a tire and had no idea when he would be able to get back. At this point I had no idea what to do. I texted the store manager and she said to call Dimitar, so I did. I told him the story, and he grumbled and thought about it for about a second and then said “Fuggit. I’ll be right there.” (I later found out that he was only hesitant about coming in because he was in bed and full of Nyquil.)

I called all of my delivery customers and told them the story, and they were all very amicable about it, and agreed to come pick up their orders. Great. Now I had just called in Dimi and dragged him out of bed to not make any deliveries.

After that the night was fairly uneventful. Dimitar, in his true fashion, was not upset at all, (or at least didn’t seem it) and said that I should have called him right away instead of waiting. Assistant Manager came back after Dimi had been there for about half an hour, and then he left and the we finished the close, (very late,) after I dropped the scale on the floor and broke it. But that was one of the less concerning parts of my evening. Hopefully my next close goes smoother.

Banana Marshmallows

Some things make me unreasonably happy. For example, the song Missy, epic orchestral music, office supplies, cuddles, singing loudly, and banana marshmallows. (You know, those ones that are ALWAYS stale? I’m pretty sure they let them get stale right at the factory so that no one will ever know what they are like when they are fresh.) My relationship with banana marshmallows is a complicated one though.

I was walking through the kitchen, feeling kind of blah, and I decided I wanted something to snack on. After casting around for something to spark my interest in eating it, I remembered that we had bought a $2 bag of banana marshmallows (that were probably on clearance from Easter) and my face lit up like a frigging candle. There was no one in the kitchen to see how crazily happy I was about these stale banana things, so I continued to beam like an idiot for quite some time, until I walked into the bedroom with them and Bryan laughed at me. I’m not sure whether he was laughing at me because of the stupid grin I had on my face and the way I was holding the bag of marshmallows as if it were a teddy bear, or just at the fact that I’m sure he believed that I was going to sit down and eat that whole bag of marshmallows in one sitting. (Which I did NOT.) Anyway, that was a bit of a downer on my marshmallow high, but I still had them, and could be eating them at that very moment. So I cracked into the deliciousness and all was well in the world. After about two fifths of the bag of them, (I struggled really hard at picking a fraction for that number, because half was WAY to much, and a third was not nearly enough.) I decided that they were losing their appeal, and sealed them up and put them on the table beside my desk. My irrational glee at the idea of eating these marshmallows had passed.

This morning I woke up and sat down on my computer, because that’s what I do, and thought, without any trace of excitement, (because it’s really hard to be excited when you are just waking up, unless it’s Christmas,) that banana marshmallows for breakfast sounded like a smart idea. An hour or so later, I realized that I had devoured the entire bag. (Remember back when I was defending myself about eating the whole thing in one sitting? That’s because it took TWO sittings.) This made me depressed. At the beginning of the bag I was practically giddy with excitement about these marshmallows, and now I am downright sad about them. Partially because they are gone, but mostly because I feel like a bad person for sitting down and eating such a ridiculous amount of candy all at once, and partly because my stomach is upset because marshmallows and some freezies are the only things I have eaten all day, and also a little bit because I ate so many of them that I didn’t really enjoy them anymore.

Tl;dr: I was happy because I had marshmallows, and now I am sad because they are gone, and because I ate all of them by myself. My feelings towards banana marshmallows are complicated. The end.

Distraction

I had originally written a long and elaborate series of words about the tiny herb garden that I recently acquired, and then I remembered that I have to close at work tomorrow, ALL BY MYSELF and I am terrified, and that is much more interesting than me not knowing how to identify a bunch of plants. Maybe I will talk about my plant-related confusion another day.

So work. I am SO SCARED to close tomorrow. It is a Monday night, so hopefully it won’t be busy, but I don’t have a good driver helping me, and I don’t want to have to call the store manager in the middle of the night and ask her what the crap I am supposed to be doing, so I will have to figure it out. I am just concerned that ten million people will decide that they want pizza at 10:30 on a Monday night and I will have to make them by myself because I will be the only one there because the driver will be out delivering ten million pizzas. I am also concerned that I will forget how to do all of the computer things that are necessary for a close because I still haven’t ever had to do them myself without some serious prompting from someone else.

I guess time will tell. I’m sure I will have a ridiculous story to tell tomorrow night, but I will be too tired to tell it, so maybe the internet will hear about my exploits on Tuesday. We’ll see.

The Work Day from Hell

(Note: I’ve decided to use fake names for my coworkers because I am not sure how they feel about me talking about them on the internet. Not that it will really help, but at least I can feel like I am providing some kind of anonymity.)
Today I ran the store for the first time. For eleven and a half hours. From opening, at 9:30, (after getting out at 12:40 AM on my close last night,) to a scheduled 8:00, which turned out to be 9:00 when I finally got out. I had Will there helping me out, but it was still largely my problem to deal with things that came up. It was a Thursday night, so needless to say, it was stupid busy. People like pizza on Thursdays. Something about it being pay day or something. Not only was it ridiculously busy, my first shift as manager, and my seventh shift ever, but I was saddled with the two worst drivers in the store.

The whole day was a bit of a fiasco, but the worst didn’t really start until the dinner rush. My drivers were alternating on boxing pizzas, which is always a bit dicey, because while one of them seems to be able to read the labels, the other just takes the first box and the first pizza and puts them together, regardless of what the label says. Needless to say, disaster ensued. At LEAST two pizzas were switched around and delivered to the wrong places. I only heard from two customers, at any rate. Who knows how many suffered in silence. I shouldn’t let the drivers box, but if they don’t do it we’ll be even slower. One set of people called back and were really good natured about it. We were swamped with deliveries, so they said that they would come out and pick it up, and all was well with that order. Another wronged delivery recipient called, and were much less friendly about the whole ordeal. (You can’t win ‘em all I guess.) At this point I had a lobby full of people, I was the only one on the phones and front counter, Will was buried in pizza orders, and my drivers were both out on unnecessarily long delivery runs. I am pretty sure I sounded like an absolute idiot on the phone with these people, as I had like ten people trying to talk to me at once and I was trying to get advice from Will on what to do for these people. In the end they opted to come pick up their order too, because god knows when my drivers were going to get back in. So they brought back their pizza and talked to Will about the order. I was too busy freaking out and being frazzled to talk to them, and Will seemed to have it under control. He took the old pizza, (though why that was necessary I am not sure,) gave them the fresh one, and all appeared to be well. After another little while of running around like an idiot because I didn’t know how to deal with it being as busy as it was, Will and I noticed that the pizza we had taken back had vanished. One driver had gone home and the other had no idea what happened to it. I just pray that it didn’t get brought out to a customer, but I am seriously worried that it might be the case. I suspect that I will hear about it later, and who knows what will happen, in that case. I know I would fire me, if I were the boss and that is what has happened.

The Most Interesting Part of My Day So Far*

Here I was, being all domestic and cutting up an onion in the kitchen, and this quiet sort of constant hum asserts itself on my awareness. I don’t really notice it for a while, cooking happily and blinking away onion-tears, but then I realize that it is getting louder. My directional hearing has never been very good, so I am not surprised that I can’t really identify where it is coming from. I assume it is a sound from outside somewhere and move on to crushing garlic in a damn poor excuse for a garlic crusher. As I listen to the ambient sounds of the house, I realize that this noise sounds something like a motor. In fact, it sounds remarkably like a small motor boat, skimming over water, complete with the pulsing rhythm as it skids over waves. For almost a whole second, my brain is satisfied with that answer. There must be someone boating. That’s fine.

Wait, what?

There is no body of water within miles of here that could support that kind of boating, never mind within earshot through closed doors. What the hell could it be? Then suddenly… It stops. I shrug and move on with my life, stirring spicy things into my pot of pungent mush. I go into the living room to check up in the internet, when all of a sudden: BANG! - from above me. What the hell was that? Is the woman upstairs throwing furniture? Then comes a terrible sound like the house is going to come crashing down on my head - Have I told my family that I love them lately? I’m about to be crushed by the two upper stories of my house. Should I try and make my peace with god? The bookshelves are shaking, the light fixtures are trembling, the whole building is about to come down, I’m sure. - Oh no, wait. That’s a vacuum cleaner.

          *Aside from my conversation with my most faithful reader, of course.

Disaster Averted

Aside from some very minor, and not particularly amusing disasters yesterday, I would say that my first day of pizza-making was a success! Actually, I think it may have been one of the less awful first days on the job that I have experienced. Let me tell you though, rolling pizza dough is exactly as hard as it looks. (That is to say very hard.) A person needs a lot more hand-eye coordination than I possess, but I managed to avoid throwing any dough across the room, so good on me.

The fact that I will eventually hold the title of ‘manager’ at this place doesn’t seem to mean a whole lot. More responsibilities, like a quarter more per hour, and otherwise exactly the same work. But what can you expect at a place where there are never more than two people working at one time?

On a non-pizza related note, I made some really revolting cupcakes this morning for no reason whatsoever. I had a box of cake mix and a sleeve of cupcake… sleeves (?) so I made cupcakes. As it turns out, you really can’t substitute margarine for shortening in that kind of situation. You will wind up with frosting that is nothing but margarine and sugar, and it will not be at all delicious. At that point, Bryan showed up and saved the day with a stroke of genius a flash of inspiration chocolate syrup. Now I have a bowl full of watery, poo-coloured frosting that is fit for a king. Or maybe a starving baker.

I Don't Even Know What This Article is About

This article. I didn’t even read the article. All I know is that as soon as I saw the picture I was filled with terror.

(Note: Anyone who doesn’t know what I am talking about should watch more Doctor Who.)

Mufasa's War on Stagnant Water

I think that Mu has made an enemy of his new water dish. Either he is much smarter than I give him credit for, or much dumber. I haven’t figured out which. My parents gave us one of those water bowls with a little tank about it so that it refills itself through the magic of physics, and I don’t think Mufasa likes it. I haven’t figured out exactly what he does to the thing, but one minute he will be drinking peacefully from it, and the next minute half of its contents are somehow spewed out across the kitchen.

I have a few theories:

1. (This theory assumes that the cat is much smarter than I give him credit for.) Mu really does not like to drink standing water. When he had a normal dish, he would refuse to drink from it unless it was changed a couple of times every day. He would drink from the toilet, the sink, the shower, and ignore his water dish. My theory is that he has either figured out that when the bowl is sufficiently emptied, he gets new water or that when the bowl is emptied enough times, we will refill it with fresh water. As a result he somehow - I have yet to actually witness the actual emptying - forcibly ejects the contents of his bowl in order to get new water. 
2. (This theory assumes that the cat is even dumber than I think he is, which is a feat, as I think he is pretty dumb.) The water bowl makes a ‘glug-glug’ sound when it fills itself. I have seen him stare at the bowl wondering what is going on when it does this. I assume that he is startled every time it happens (despite it being a regular occurrence that happens every time he drinks), and tries to take off at a run, skidding on the hardwood floor and violently kicking the water bowl in his failed attempt to flee from it. 
3. Mu is out to make my life more difficult through any of the limited means he has available to him, and therefore sloshes water about for the sheer glory of watching me clean it up later. (Again, assuming he is smart enough to put together sloshing water with me having to clean it up.) 
4. He just really, really hates the water bowl and tries to end its life (such as it is) after every use. 

I figure it’s only a matter of time until he starts setting strategies against the washing machine and anything else that creates sounds that startle and confuse him. I am putting my bets on the washing machine though.

Thank You, Papa John!

I have just completed one of my shortest job hunts ever. I suspect that this is because I was willing to settle for whatever job someone offered me. Here’s the story:

Yesterday I did my first day of actual resume distributing in person. I went to about a dozen places, though only a couple of them were actually hiring. When I got home, Bryan called and told me that he read on a piece of paper stuck to a pizza box that the pizza place down the street is was hiring managers. Thinking that I really have no managerial experience, and didn’t really have a chance at all, I sent off a resume. An hour later, I got a call asking if I could come in for an interview. I went in for that interview today, announced that I wanted to be general manager, and the manager basically said “Okay. Can you start on Tuesday?” (There was a little bit of ridiculousness in the middle where I had the manager and my mom laughing at me simultaneously, but that’s a different story.) So… Now I am going to be a manager at a pizza place, despite having never made pizza nor been a manager before.

Sounds like an adventure to me!

Half-Way Review: The Valley of Horses

I am half way through reading the book The Valley of the Horses, by Jean M. Auel and I feel like my opinion of it is not going to change between now and the end of the book, so I am just going to talk about it now, while I have nothing better to do.

First of all, I really liked the first book in this series. (Clan of the Cave Bear.) The culture that Auel developed for the Clan people was interesting, and I found the characters to be generally likable and engaging. I read it straight through without getting bored, and the story certainly held my interest.

I am having a harder time with this one. It flips, every other chapter, between the story of Ayla (the main character from the first book) and a pair of brothers that seem to be completely unrelated to Ayla’s life. (I assume that she is going to meet these brothers at some point.) I find that, after the main plot point of each chapter has been revealed, I can usually figure out what is going to happen, and lose interest about half way through the chapter. By the time I get to the next chapter I am excited to start a new sub-plot, but the same thing tends to happen. I don’t find the story of Ayla befriending animals particularly engaging, and I have no emotional attachment to the two brothers, so at this point I am reading on waiting for the point when the two stories collide, hoping that it will get more interesting at that point.

I guess the short version is this: It hasn’t kept my attention. I’ll keep reading it because I hate not finishing books, and I’ll let you know if I change my mind.

On the Hunt

Today I am going to apply for jobs. In person. This is always a scary experience for me. I like to apply for jobs from the safety of my own computer where I don’t have to track down managers and try to articulate real words. I just have to proof read my resume and cover letter and click send, and then I am done! But it seems like employers realize that, and don’t like to hire cowards. It makes me wonder why so many companies put up online applications and then don’t actually look at them. Why not just be honest about it? “Look, we’re barely even going to look at your online application, because you were too lazy to come to our location and talk to a real person.”

At any rate, I am sinking to my most desperate of states where I walk over to the Tim Horton’s down the street and humbly submit an application there.Someone has got to want me, right? It’s a far cry from the executive assistant spot that I had a month ago. I am still kind of bitter about that, but you can’t win ‘em all.

The End of An Era

It has finally happened. I have been waiting for this for a long time, but here it is. Today, at approximately 14:35, I got bored of Farmville.

This is when it happened:

It hit me like a wall; an overwhelming sense of “why am I doing this?”. One second I was happily clicking away at my fully grown fields of peanuts, the next moment it seemed kind of dumb. Right now, my fields are sitting empty and fallow. That’s like a sin. I’m only one field-plowing away from level 40. Why quit now? I’m so close…

To be completely honest, I am not sure what draws people into this game. It doesn’t really need any skill; any person can be amazing at Farmville with enough spare time. It uses the same principle as games like WoW in that it rewards you frequently to begin with, and then spaces them out more and more as you progress, and for some reason that keeps people playing it. I will be the first to admit that I thought the game was the best thing since toast when I started it, and sunk an awful lot of time into it. I think it just registered in my mind that the whole game centers around just clicking across a screen around 1500 times a day, if not more.

I wonder if my level 50 friends will ever hit that same wall, or if I just only have so much attention span in me.

I bet you thought I was going to write about Mel’s burning down. Here’s a secret: I’ve never been there. I am kind of sad about Sugar Mountain though.

Sad Green Fairy

He is sad because he is green. (But he is perfectly comfortable with his body type, thankyouverymuch.)

Teal Deer

I made this. Sort of. It’s a present for the internet.

Edit: It seems that no one actually understands this on first looking at it, because every time I show it to someone it’s met with blank looks, so I should probably explain. First of all, the specific colour of this deer is teal. Secondly, the phrase ‘too long; didn’t read’ is often shortened to ‘tl;dr’. If you had to try and pronounce that, it would sound like…?

Unemployment

I need a job. Bad things happen when I spend my entire day sitting around by myself. I am still in a housecoat at two o’clock in the afternoon. I have determined that blogging is a good idea. (Again.) I have started talking to my cat as if I expect him to answer. In fact, I have reached the point where I start asking the cat questions. This actually just happened:

Me: (Noticing a gross smell) Cat, did you just barf everywhere, or is that just your natural perfume?
Cat: (Looking at me, most likely wondering why I am talking to an otherwise empty room)

That is the exact moment where I realized that sitting at home alone is bad for me.

On the other hand, the only reason that the place where I live is not a complete disgusting, squalorous hole is because I spend my entire day wondering what to do with myself. When faced with such a challenge, I will eventually resort to cleaning to keep myself amused. This leads inevitably to one question: Does my desire to live in a clean house outweigh my need to actually be able to afford food?

Up For Interpretation

So what do you think is going on here? I’m not telling the image I had in mind during its creation; how people interpret it on their own is too interesting. So, what’s behind her? (Or in front of her?)