Where are the zombies when you need them?

Sweetbreads.
Also known as the 'ultimate organ meat'.
Also?
Offal.

In preparation for my upcoming trip to Italy, I'm researching a variety of regional specialties to try while I'm gadding about.

Many of the varied areas have special cheeses and breads, or delicious fish dishes (and, mmm, wine) that they hold as their gifts to the world.

Not Rome, though.

In Rome, it's offal.
And I'm just not sure how I feel about this.

I like to think that I shouldn't be squeamish about eating things like brains, pancreas and the innocent sounding thymus gland.
Curiosity about these dishes makes me want to try them, but part of me is already making it's feelings know.
My stomach doesn't seem to care, it's my own brains which are causing the ruckus.

Considering that I like to partake in a plate of liver and onions (and the occasionally kidney has been known to pass these lips) one could argue that I shouldn't have any problem savouring a bit of pan fried brain.
But even casually disguised behind a delicious sounding 'smoked maple-buttermilk puree', I'll know it's still brains.

I know I will have to try them.

I mean, if Anthony Bourdain (my culinary hero) can eat freshly chopped off seal face, surely I can indulge in some delicately cooked, tender morsels of sweetbreads. No?

Hope it's not (oh, forgive me) awful.

Excerpt from: 'The Nasty Bits' - Anthony Bourdain

(If I may just interject here? This following passage is very...uh...juicy. May I suggest NOT eating while reading the following passage? Just, you know, in case.)

I WENT SEAL HUNTING yesterday.
At eight a.m., swaddled in caribou, I climbed into a canoe and headed out onto the freezing waters of the Hudson Bay with my Inuit guides and a camera crew.
By three p.m., I was sitting cross-legged on a plastic-covered kitchen floor listening to Charlie, my host, his family, and a few tribal elders giggling with joy as they sliced and tore into a seal carcass, the raw meat, blubber, and brains of our just-killed catch. Grandma squealed with delight as Charlie cracked open the seal's skull, revealing its brains -- quickly digging into the goo with her fingers. Junior sliced dutifully at a kidney. Mom generously slit open one of the eyeballs (the best part) and showed me how to suck out the interior as if working on an oversize Concord grape.
From all sides, happy family members were busily dissecting the seal from different angles, each pausing intermittently to gobble a particularly tasty morsel. Soon, everyone's faces and hands were smeared with blood. The room was filled with smiles and good cheer in spite of the Night of the Living Dead overtones and the blood (lots of it) running across the plastic.
A Bonanza rerun played silently on the TV set in the normal-looking family room adjacent as Mom cut off a piece of snout and whisker, instructing me to hold it by the thick, strawlike follicles and then suck and gnaw on the tiny kernel of pink buried in the leatherlike flesh. After a thorough sampling of raw seal brain, liver, kidney, rib section, and blubber, an elder crawled across the floor and retrieved a platter of frozen blackberries. She generously rolled a fistful of them around in the wet interior of the carcass, glazing them with blood and fat, before offering them to me. They were delicious.
Words fail me. Again and again.
Or maybe it's me that fails the English language. My depiction of the day's rather extraordinary events is workmanlike enough, I guess…but, typically, I fall short. How to describe the feeling of closeness and intimacy in that otherwise ordinary-looking kitchen? The way the fifteen-year-old daughter and her eighty-five-year-old grandmother faced each other, nearly nose to nose, and began "throat singing," first warming up with simultaneous grunts and rapid breathing patterns, then singing, the tones and words coming from somewhere independent of their mouths, from somewhere…else?
The sheer, unselfconscious glee (and pride) with which they tore apart that seal -- how do I make that beautiful? The sight of Charlie, blood spread all across his face, dripping off his chin…Grandma, her legs splayed, rocking, rocking a crescent-shaped chopper across blubber, peeling off strips of black seal meat…How do I make them as sympathetic, as beautiful, in words as they were in reality?
"Without the seal, we would not be here," said Charlie. "We would not be alive." A true enough statement, but not an explanation. You'd have to have felt the cold up there, have seen it, hundreds and hundreds of miles without a single tree. You'd have to have gone out with Charlie, as I had, out onto that freezing bay, a body of water nearly the size of an ocean, watched him walk across a thin, tilting layer of ice to drag the seal back to the canoe. Heard, as we did, the resigned calls from other hunters over Charlie's radio, stuck out in a blizzard for the night, realizing they would have no shelter and no fire.
You'd have to have been in that room.

From The Nasty Bits. Copyright (c) 2006 by Anthony Bourdain. Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury USA.



Top Picture: Sweetbreads with smoked maple-buttermilk puree, smoked grapes, marjoram, caper-mustard chips and ground espresso. (But it's still a bit of brain.)

My favorite things (Part I *)

My blog has been a bit drab these days.

I thought ('cus it takes the pressure off having to really THINK) that I would present a few of my favorite things:

So here it goes!

I love fresh green peas.

Those sweet little morsels of green just waiting to be heated up and given a gentle bath in butter and lovingly sprinkled with salt and pepper.

Heck, even frozen green peas are fine as long as they retain that delightfully green explosion of sweet and fresh when they meet your teeth.

Nothing says spring quite like that.

(I know that some of you are wincing and recoiling, but I'm not talking about the mush of canned peas! Heaven forbid!! No, no! I speak of garden fresh succulence.

The essence of summer and forbidden garden raids.
Any other pea is to be shunned and reviled. Even in England where 'mushy peas' are proudly displayed on restaurant menus. Run.)

NEXT!

Unexpected people.
I've lived in this little city for almost half a year and haven't 'run into' anyone.

Then today?
They're popping out of the wood work.

First, a fellow pool player who used to live in my 'hood in Vancouver came up to me. "Excuse me, do you have an older sister who lives in Vancouver?"

It was pool playing Bob!
A quick chat about new times and old, then off he went; I'm sure both of us wondering if the old place still really existed anywhere but our memories.

Then?

My best friends younger brothers' wife (Hi Kira!)

I was dreaming near the broccoli when a voice announced itself.
My brain wasn't working exactly and it took me a moment to place her.
Ah! Kira!

So sorry I didn't have more time, but really...it was delightful to run into someone that I KNEW.
Someone I've had dinner with and whose in-laws I've known since time immemorial.
That's one of my favorite things.

Fleetwood Mac. Rumours. It makes me happy, it makes me weep. It's a beautiful and heart wrenching album.

My mom.

Of course.

It's as though I can't quite get enough of her.

She's happy and sweet and boy oh boy...I love that she knows how to curse.

If you were to work with her, you would find each of your birthdays replete with flower tributes and balloons and cake.

Her mission is to make people happy.
And she succeeds.

She makes people happy like no one else I know

Wow.

I just realized something.

There are so many things that I have in my life that make me happy.

My fabulous friends and What's-His-Face.

The fact that I can sit on a computer and tell all of you about all of my joys.

Oh!
My dinner tonight!

That made me happy. (Food seems to be a major part of my happiness!)
It consisted of a moist and flavourful pork chop, baby potatoes (whole heartily recommended by the green grocer), and (of course) crisp green peas. I can't think of anything else that might have been required.

Except a glass of white wine. Wine...which was wonderful!

Oh! More music.

I choose Jack Johnson.

One of my favorite albums today is his "In Between Dreams".

It's simple, happy music.

No complications and no issues; just easy melodies and light lyrics.

It's been called 'pap' and that's true.

I'm okay with that.

As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing that makes a sunny day a little brighter then the sweet, lilting lyrics of "Better Together".

Sometimes it's nice to have simple music to act as a background to new tulips and fresh mown grass...and that's how his music sounds to me.

So many things make me happy.

I have such a good life...and my joy is found in relatively 'minor' things.

Good food, good music, a happy home life and dear friends

I am rich beyond imagination.

I wish all of you the best of meals and the happiest of memories; including the ones that have yet to transpire.

*Yes. So that means that there will be a "Part II" Happy things. You keep your fingers crossed and so will I!

Blog-block.

This damned block has got to give at some point....right?

It's been said that a writer...ahem.

That is, a "Writer" ought to write some everyday just to keep the machine oiled.

I've heard that. So...does this bit of dribble count?

Well, here's a lovely picture instead. It's Dante's Dream. By Rosetti.

"It represents the episode in the 'Vita Nuova' when Dante dreams of seeing Beatrice in death. Dante is led to Beatrice by the winged figure of Love, dressed in red, wearing the scallop shell of a pilgrim. Love carries a branch of apple-blossom, a spring flower and a symbol of unconsummated love, plucked before it comes to fruit. Poppies, the flower of sleep or death, litter the floor. The veil is laden with may-blossom, perhaps alluding to the season of Beatrice's death (June 9). A view of Florence is seen in the background."

I didn't need to hear that.

We all do it, to some degree or other.
It's so EASY to do.
To judge someone.
To take a look at their exterior presentation and base our reaction, decision, judgement on that alone.

The other day while at the gym a young woman well she wasn't that young came in strutted in did a turn about the gym and then left thank goodness she left, I wouldn't want to have to stare at THAT all day

She was not very tall, and she had a rather stocky build with tits pushed up high enough to rest her chin on She was wearing a smallish gray sports bra and black tracks pants on which the waistband had been rolled down so that we could witness for ourselves the fact that she had a pubic bone and a butt crack

And she had a tan! All of her was the same gleaming brown, top to toe guess she's some one's idea of beautiful but she looks rather harsh maybe she didn't look at herself in the mirror before she left maybe she's trolling for something I think her pants are going to fall off

AND ON AND ON that nasty little voice in my head kept spewing ugly thoughts until I almost had to literally cry, "Cut it out!"
When did I become so judgemental and catty?
This is NOT the person I want to be.

Blargh.
So I'm trying to curb that.
It's not easy though.
I see the world through my perceptions, misconceptions and beliefs. The way I do things is the best way. It's difficult to view something that is alien to my strongly-held notions and be able see it as 'okay' and 'acceptable'.

I thought maybe thinking to myself, "What an interesting way to dress", or "That's a unique approach to manners" might help, but those are still judgements, aren't they?
So how to get around that.

Perhaps simply ignoring things that don't fit my beliefs is the way to approach the situation?
Whatever works I suppose.
I just want that horrid, judgemental voice to stop whispering in my ear because sooner or later it turns it's baleful proclamations on me and and I don't fare any better.

How it looks from here.

I've been travelling up and down Vancouver Island for the last week, visiting friends, hanging out with my mom, hunting ghosts and wolves and taking pictures along the way.
I'd been away from this place for such a long time; I'm really trying to reacquaint myself with every nook and cranny again.

It's so beautiful here.

Here's a collection of pictures from this week...and it may just be a built in excuse as to why I haven't been a diligent blogger as of late!

So, without further ado, may I introduce my much loved mom, and my much loved island.

This is the view from atop the 'Malahat'. The drive from Victoria to head north requires traversing a precariously perched highway. It's a tight cornered and sharp curved road, but the view from the top on a clear day is worth the white knuckles.

And, of course, my dear mom.

And the camillia's are out, spreading their pink blossoms everywhere.


This dark and brooding picture is from the opposite end of the island, closest to Washington State. (In fact, I think you can SEE Washington from there on the horizon. Or maybe that's Japan.)
This picture is the furthest point of Vancouver Island, the very southern tip looking across the gray expanse.

This is a...daffodil? I'd never seen one quite like it. In fact, it's the only one I've seen like it.

So once the Malahat is conquered and you continue driving north, Qualicum Beach is eventually reached. Between the blue and the green and the snow sits a lovely little town where everyone drives under 50km (realllly slow) but it's okay because the view is sublime.

The last photo looking out from Willow's Beach in Victoria. This was taken earlier this month.

In the immortal words of Dorothy, "There's no place like home!"

Overheard.

"Hey Aaron, what's your girlfriends last name?"

"MacLeod."

"Oh. Is she immortal?"

"Dunno, I haven't tried to cut off her head."

Still here!

While it may appear that I've fallen off the edge of the earth, in truth, I'm still firmly planted here.
Gravity has a way of doing that.

Since my job ended, it's as if I don't have time to blog any more. Interestingly, I did most of my blogging at work!

So, there you have it. I'm still out and about, still plugging along.

Oh! Good news!

My money (which had been depleted from my bank account by persons unknown) is going to be restored to me!
I guess they finally concluded that I didn't orchestrate this theft myself and after a further investigation (they weren't going to refund my money until I shed a few tears) they did find that my debit card had been compromised some where along the way.

I'm so glad...and I guess it shows that...that...I'm not sure. Shows that the 'system' works? Nah, that's not quite what I mean.
Shows that being a good person will eventually see positive results? Nope, that's definitely not it.
Well, anyway.
My faith in something is restored.

The answers to all your questions. (Sort of.)

"Mind your P's and Q's!" Gnightgirl, that must have been a VERY bad date! My handy, dandy little book offered no explanation. But I did find all of this information:

The date of the coinage of mind your Ps and Qs is uncertain. The OED used to print a citation from 1779 but, as they have now withdrawn it from the online version of the dictionary, presumably they consider it unreliable.
So, the meaning, spelling and coinage of the phrase are all debatable.
Now we come to what is really uncertain - the derivation.
Nevertheless, it is one of those phrases that people know the origin of. When pressed all that really means is that the person they heard explain the origin had made a random choice from the list of proposed derivations below.
As no one knows the origin I'll just list those suggestions - mind your ps and qs derives from one of these:

- Mind your pints and quarts. This is suggested as deriving from the practise of chalking up a tally of drinks in English pubs (on the slate). Publicans had to make sure to mark up the quart drinks as distinct from the pint drinks. This is a favourite of folk-etymology. It is scuppered somewhat by the fact that drinks were rarely sold in quarts in English pubs.

- Advice to printer’s apprentices to avoid confusing the backward-facing metal type lowercase Ps and Qs. I've never heard any suggestion that printer should mind their Ds and Bs though and that has the benefit of rhyming which would have made it a more attractive slogan.

- Mind your pea (jacket) and queue (wig). Pea jackets were short, rough woollen overcoats, commonly worn by sailors in the 18th century. Perruques were full wigs worn by fashionable gentlemen. It is difficult to imagine who might be seen wearing both a pea jacket and a perruque.

- Mind your pieds (feet) and queues (wigs). This is suggested to have been an instruction given by French dancing masters to their charges. This has the benefit of placing the perruque in the right context - so long as we accept the phrase as being originally French. There's no reason to suppose it is from France and no version of the phrase exists in French.

- It is advice to children learning to write to take care not to mix up the lower-case letters p and q.

- It derived as reminder to children to be polite. This is supposed to be as a form of 'mind your pleases and thank-yous' - 'mind you pleases and kyous'. Pretty far-fetched that one.

"For Pete's sake!" Kimber, I think that everyone else is right about this, Pete is just a poor sod (well, maybe it's supposed to be St. Peter) whose name is evoked for no other reason than to avoid taking the 'Lords' name in vain. And my book contained no information about it. Which we shall see is a continuing theme in this post!


"Fill your boots." Ms. Eigler, this book just continues to disappoint! I did find this rather revolting little suggestion, however: I read one reference which suggested that the phrase originated with the English Cavaliers, who wore thigh-high riding boots. When drinking, rather than stepping outside to relieve himself, a Cavalier apparently had the option of doing so into his boots. Thus, "filling his boots" meant he could drink all he wanted without leaving the table. Gross, but is it true?

"It's a load of cod's wallop." I've heard this one before, LGS, and was wondering about it myself. But guess what, my amazing tome of information didn't have a word on this phrase either. But what I found was:
Entry revised for OED Online
codswallop
DRAFT REVISION Jan. 2006
slang.
Also cod's wallop. Origin unknown.It is often suggested that this word is from British soft drinks manufacturer, who patented several designs for mineral water bottles in the 1870s Codd + WALLOP n. (see sense 4c at that entry), and that it was originally used by beer drinkers as a derogatory term for soft drink. However, no evidence has been found for early use of the word in this sense, and derivation from the surname is not supported by early spellings.

"Bread and pull it." Blackcrag...I have to tell you, that sounds rather more crude than I can imagine your mother using! But then, I do have a knack of twisting things. Anyway, my perpetually useless little book didn't say a word about it, but I did look around a bit and found this conversation online:
Posted by Smokey Stover on June 02, 2004
In Reply to: Re: Bread and Pull it posted by ESC on June 02, 2004
: : My father, a man of Kent, used to use the phrase 'Bread and pull it' when asked what was for dinner/tea, whatever. Has anyone heard this phrase or know it's origin? Should the 'pull it' bit perhaps be 'poulet'? and if so, why bread and chicken?

: I'm from the U.S. and haven't heard that phrase. But my guess is that it was a joke. You may wish for bread and poulet for dinner. But all you get is bread and "pull it." As in pull off another hunk of bread.

Kentish folkways are out of my line, but it seems reasonable for a man talking about food to say "Bread and pullet." In the U.K., as in the U.S., a pullet is a young hen, and is usually considered quite edible, properly prepared. SS

"Now put that in your pipe and smoke it." Josie, I laughed when I read that! My grandma used to say that all the time, all the while looking very pleased with herself. You're right, it was a conversation stopper!
And guess what.
Nothing in the book. And nothing really anywhere. I mean, lots of places online had what it meant (not that it's difficult to figure out) but I couldn't find anywhere that explained where the phrase came from. If anyone knows....?

Here's a few that ARE in the book (which has sunk considerably in my estimation since I started this little project):

"Peeping Tom" Why do we call a person who makes a practice of peeping a "peeping Tom"? It's because the tailor who tried to get a look at Lady Godiva as she rode naked through the streets was named Tom. Though this particular Tom was struck blind.

"Hoodlum" How did ruffians come to be called 'hoodlums'? It's all due to illegible handwriting. In an attempt to coin a name for a San Francisco gang, a reporter took the name of the gang-leader, Muldoon, and reversed it making "Noodlum." The typesetter couldn't read his writing and set it up as "Hoodlum".

"Cheshire Cat" Where did we get the expression "grin like a Cheshire cat"? From Ireland. Cheeses once sold in Cheshire County, Ireland were molded to look like cats - and these "cheese cats" had very broad grins.

Ah, just the look I was booking for!

I have a new book in my possession.

"Why Do We Say It? - The Stories Behind the Words, Expressions and Cliches We Use."

The title is long. The book is...a bit odd.

BUT, it does have some very interesting information to dispense.

For instance:

Why is the center spot of a target called a "bulls-eye"? Aboard sailing ship, a 'bulls-eye' is an oval wooden block without a sheave but with a groove around it for the band and a hole in the center through which a small line may be drawn. A target with a center spot looks something like this block and the block looks something like an actual bull's eye-whence the name.

How did the word "lump" get into the expression "if you don't like it, you can lump it"? * A person's face will often look "lumpy" after crying. So to "lump it" is to sulk or look sulky-and the phrase "like it or lump it" means "like it or sulk".

Why do we say an apologetic person "eats humble pie"? Because of a pun. The entrails of deer ** are called 'umbles' and at one time these 'umbles' were made into a pie which the servants and huntsmen of a lord ate-while the lord and his guests ate the carcass. So a person who humbled himself was said to "eat humble pie".

Okay...one more!

What is the origin of the expression "I've got the willies"? The term comes from "wiffle-woffles." "Wiffle-woffles" are "collie-woffles" or "collie-wobbles." If your stomach is upset, you have the "colic" and it seems to "wobble". ***

This book has some strange reasoning in it, but it IS occasionally informative.

If anyone has any queries of their own, line them up in the comments for me and I'll see if the amazing "book of cliches" has an answer for you. Which I will turn in to my next post!

Because I am lacking in new and exciting post ideas and need help.

Seriously. I need help. ****

* Hmm. Yes, I do believe I heard my mom say that to me once or twice. It's nice to know that it really DID mean something after all.

(I mean, I could figure out, "You're cruising for a bruising", all by myself.)

** Wow, deer entrails again! ('Cus it it takes GUTS to make this blog what it is.)

*** Uh...no, I can't say I really get this explanation! But it's got to do with GUTS and that's enough for me!

****Have I mentioned needing help?

Life in a small town.

Remember that night we all snuck out?

Was it summer?

It might have been, I don't remember being cold.

Out into the night we went, out into the forest.
Up the old dark dirt road for no better reason than because.
I couldn't see a thing! Our steps were slow and cautious, and the rocks glinted; a fraction of a moon to show the way.

Off in the dim woods to the side of the path; a rustling sound.

It's a dog! "It's Jeremy!"

The happy mutt who shared so many of my paper delivery mornings found me again in the middle of the night and joined us for this dark trek.

Soon though, fretting over twisted ankles and worrying about angry parents we turned back down the path. Now we had to make our way down to 'civilization'.

That was just as difficult as forward progress.
Loose rocks, slippery slopes and Jeremy bounding under our feet made the return trip even more difficult.
As we made our way back to hard concrete and streetlights, we past a horrible stench buried deep in the woods.

We scampered past quickly. Fetid and disgusting weren't what we had planned on.

I idly wondered where the dog was as we emerged from the dark, when he bounded ahead of us making his presence known; a coiling stretch of something following behind him in a long line.
"What does he have?"

"I think...I think...oh my god!! That's intestine!!"

Sure enough, Jeremy the good dog was skipping along ahead of us with 2o feet of gut and entrails straggling behind him.
"That must of been that smell! Someone must of dressed a deer and left the guts there."

So we followed the bloody dog prints home that midnight.
The next day there will be gore and entrails all over our small town, and only we would know why.

Ripped off.

Yesterday was a lovely day. A long walk, a good lunch and a good dinner planned out.

Everything was proceeding nicely.

I bought a bottle of wine for dinner, and was id'd (carded) by the teller (at almost 35 I got ID'D!! If that isn't enough to make my month!) and then on to make purchases for dinner.

But...my bank card wasn't working at the debit machine at the cash register (it happens), so I went to the on site bank machine to withdrawal enough to cover my groceries.

"Insufficient funds." What ominous words.

I left the store, embarrassed and confused. I'm a little less than perfect in my account keeping, but I KNEW that something was dramatically wrong.

When I got home, I logged into my bank account online, only to discover...all of my money was missing.

In a single withdrawal from an undefined ABM machine, hundreds and hundreds of my hard earned dollars were stolen.

This morning at the bank they said it would take at least a month for the investigation to be concluded, and at that point they would be able to make the decision to refund my money. Or not.

I'm lucky. I didn't have three hungry children waiting for me at home to bring back dinner. There was only me and I have plenty of food, gas and everything else to suffice 'til pay day.

This theft left me annoyed and inconvenienced, but it could have left someone else in very dire straits indeed.

But I guess the people who do such things aren't thinking about anyone but themselves.

Narcissism 101

I blame it all on Spider Girl.
She said, "When we're old, we'll be happy to see good photographs of ourselves."
(Well, it's not exactly a direct quote, but it'll suffice!)

So here's lookin' at me!

Just a foggy day in Courtenay, BC. Eagle and fish skeleton included.

Ghoti is the new fish.

Ghoti = fish

laugh = f
women = i
fiction = sh

How is ANYONE supposed to figure this stuff out!?!

English is a hard language to learn! It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, really, when you pick it apart.
I've been speaking it, reading it and mangling it for my entire life. And it shows! I've always sufferd from 'bad' spelling.
But I kwestcheeon whethur my spelling is baad or just individualistik.

Wind wind wound wound pear pair pare tear tear tare were where wear read read

fawggy day

i before e except after c...and except in neighbour and weigh.
That's just great. The logic astounds.
Who made up these rules, anyway?

I read somewhere (perhaps Bill Bryson's "Mother Tongue") that many of the spelling decisions (desishuns) we make these days were merely put in place by some guy who preferred words to look a certain way (weigh, whey).
Take fulfill, for instance.
It's not FULLFILL, the second 'L' has been dropped. Why? 'Cus some guy deesided it luked better that way.
I give up.
If it whernt four spell chek, it's possibell that my posts wood be unreedible.

Ore allmost.
Becuz alltho thee spelling apeers hard on thee aye, it m(aches) cents.

We have so many rules and exceptions to the rooelles that English as it stands should not be the most spoken langwage in the world, it should be the leest.
Japanese has no exepshuns.
Maybee wee shud lern it, insted.

Arigato for yore thyme.

Revisiting Weird.

My friend Ian from 'Or So I Thought' tagged me with a list to do.

Those of you have read my blog for a while know that I did a blog dedicated to the fact that I'm NOT weird.

Well.

I'm re-thinking that.

So here's something weird.

1) My family had no phone while I was a child/teenager. How is it possible that I survived, you may be asking yourself. Sheer luck. Mind, that wasn't exactly something that I did that was/is strange. But it sure explains a lot of things about me, now doesn't it!

Here's two things that are weird about me (though I prefer 'quirky') and they both pertain to my car.

2) I have both a mini-disco ball AND a skull and crossbones air freshener hanging from my rear view mirror.

Here is the pictorial evidence:

I can explain the skull and crossbones. I can't explain the disco ball.

3) I have a menagerie of small rubber animals also in my car. This study in wildlife (picture shown) includes 3 tiger cubs (1 is missing from the picture at this time due to the fact that I had it on my person and was carrying it around. Because I am 7.) a bat and a lizard. And there used to be a playmobile vampire in there too. Oh. And a very small rock.

Okay. So I'm half way there.

Uh.

4) I can eat the same thing for breakfast for weeks, nay, months without tiring of it. Recently it 's been an English muffin with a scrape of peanut butter and a banana. And a cup of tea. Of course.

5) I like transformers. Because I am still 7. Again, I have pictorial evidence of a mangled transformer that I bought for myself and then failed to correctly 'transform'. Please say hello to 'Snarl' the two headed, pigeon toed autobot.

Don't laugh. He's sensitive.

AND! At last!

6) whew! I didn't think I'd make it this far. But I have to tell you, I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

How bout this.

I've met many very famous people over the years and I don't have a single autograph to show for it.

I won't ask for one.

In fact, I generally introduce myself and ask them their name. Just to see what kind of reaction I'll get.

Interestingly, none of them ever rolled their eyes and asked me what rock I just emerged from under.

And that's my list. I'm tagging Spider Girl, Kimber and Pol. If they include their friendship with me as one of their 'weird' things, I'd be flattered. (I think.)

Pardon me while I lose my mind.

I went for a half an hour walk at lunch at came back to work a whole different person.

Seriously.

I have no clue who I am.

What an indescribable feeling; there's a dream-like quality to my life at this moment that I just can't quite bring into focus.

The edges are blurry and uncertain.

Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if I suddenly found myself on a ocean bound frigate, astride a great black horse galloping around the deck.

I would, of course, still be answering a phone trying to explain to someone named Pete that the door into summer doesn't really exist.

Oops! Where was I.

Right.

For one thing, this job I find myself at perplexes me.

How the hell did I get here?

It feels like an older woman named Hazel or Sally or perhaps Mavis should be sitting where I'm sitting, looking at the bright yellow tulips and occasionally staring at the computer screen with a slightly concerned look on her kindly face.

I am sure I don't know how I got here in her place.

Must be a mistake in human resources or something.

I'll have to look into that.

It's as if the last thing I remember was doing a brake stand at the local gas station in my old Charger when I was 17, then suddenly being woken up to life as an adult in an adult job doing adult things.

Paying car insurance, eating healthy foods...saving for the 'future'.

Exercising regularly.

Uh-oh.

I didn't suddenly just 'grow up' did I?

I thought that this was supposed to be gradual thing! I wanted to have time to get used to the idea.

Nobody mentioned to me that my 'adulthood' would occur at 12:38pm on a Thursday in late January!

What a surreal feeling!

Well, perhaps I'll wake up now and find myself 17 years old, wondering where my life is going to take me.

On the other hand, it could just be the fresh air going to my head.

Also?

During my sleep hazed morning today, I accidentally slid my work pants on without undoing them first.

Drycleaner must have stretched them out.

Tsk tsk.

Guess I'll have to speak to him about that!

Snowdrops!

I could smell it in the air today...spring!

As early as it is, the scent of warm earth was wafting about on the breeze today.

And my snowdrops have emerged!

Hard to imagine how such a delicate flower finds the strength to emerge in the middle of winter, but they do, and boy-howdy am I ever glad for it.

To my mind, they're the harbingers of a new season, even if it does mean another 3 months of slogging rain.

Camille's Restaurant - Victoria

This is what I had for dinner on Saturday!

Lemon, ginger and prawn bisque - thick, rich delicately flavored with an intriguing heat to it...there was a oil drizzled over which was the source of the heat but I forgot to ask exactly what it was

Warm duck confit salad (baby organic greens, sweet peppers, mandarins, sesame citrus vinaigrette - I LOVE duck. And I love it in tender little slices dressed with citrus and nestled on fresh greens

Rack of venison with a Sambaar spice rub, red wine jus, curried potato and spinach ragout, orange mint and mango relish. - This was by far one of the best pieces of meat that I have had. I hate to get all cliche about it, but it simply melted in the mouth. The spice added a depth of flavour without overwhelming the meat, and the meat was cooked as per the chef's recommendation...rare

Cheese plate - Natural Pastures Comox Camembert, Blue D'Auvergne, Parmigianno Reggiano, dried fruit brioche (balsamic vinegar reduction) - What a nice 'in-between dish', just a few bitefuls of very good cheese. The Blue D'Auvergne was wonderful; creamy and pungent. The flavour just filled the mouth, but didn't demolish the palate in the way that a too heavy blue can do

Burnt honey ice cream served with tulle cookies and fresh fruit - This was an interesting ice cream. It wasn't served 'freezing', so the layers of flavour really had a chance to show off. The honey was predominant, but underneath was a carmel taste (the 'burnt' aspect) I don't love ice cream, but it was a small portion and so unusually flavoured that I ate it all up happily

Each dish was paired with a wine from British Columbia, except for the port with dessert, which was Australian (and it was fabulous!).

What a great way to experience a new restaurant at it's finest.
By selecting the 'tasting menu', you hand over your heart (and paycheck sometimes!) to the chef and let him feed you.
At a great restaurant like Camille's, you're guaranteed to eat well and for a long time. WhatHisFace and I sat at dinner for two and a half hours of relaxed, delicious luxury.
Worth every penny.

One of the other nice things about this restaurant is the fact that they are seasonally inspired; the waiter said that their menu changes as much as once a week, as well.
I really can't wait to see what their spring offerings entail!

(And by spring I shall have saved enough money to go back!)

Heavy shoes.

This going to the gym regularly (and right now, vying for precious gym equipment...what a bunch of treadmill vultures we are at this time of the year!) and eating healthy, nutritious foods in correctly sized portions certainly has it's draw backs.

One of these drawbacks is that I haven't lost a single pound.
Not a one.
In fact, I seem to be gaining them willy-nilly! ('Willy-nilly'. If anyone can tell me where that little phrase derives from I'd be mightily impressed!)

Squinting at the scale out of one eye and hoping that the last 8 is actually a 1 doesn't seem to be working very well for me at all.
Even subtracting the required 10* lbs** to allow for clothing weight doesn't seem to help in the way I wish it would, and I doubt very much that the gym would encourage me to strip down to get a more accurate reading.
(I don't own a bathroom scale. It saves scads of money. Just think of all the money I've saved by not having to continually repair the bathroom window each time I fling the scale through it! Always thinking ahead, I am.)

Anyway, this is annoying and distressful and counter productive and makes me want to throw my hands up in despair but I can't because my arms are sooo stiff and sore from lifting the heavy heavy weights eleventy times in a row.

Also?
My clothes no longer fit me properly. Skirts threaten to slip off...jeans hang in unattractive sags.
Bloody hell! I can't afford a new wardrobe!
(Guess I should have thought of this little side affect before I let Spider Girl drag me to the gym that gray day last November.)

So to sum up:
- I continue to weigh the same, if not more, despite frequent excursions to the torture cham...gym. To the gym.
- Am now financially strapped due to new clothing purchases to fit a body that, while it hasn't lost any weight, seems to be going through some sort of unorganized metamorphosis.

Great.

Oh! And I thought quitting smoking was a good idea too, until I learned that people who smoke are less susceptible to Parkinson's. What if I get Parkinson's!?! Gosh, then I'll regret quitting smoking, won't I!
(Funny, I was never that concerned about Parkinson's before.)

So this is how my future looks, huh?
I'll be this weight forever, dressed in ill-fitting clothes 'cus I can't afford to buy new ones AND I'll be shaking uncontrollably.

And I signed UP for this?

Actually, I don't recall signing anything...not even a waiver. (Really, a gym should make you sign a waiver. They're so susceptible to litigation, don't you think? In fact, I think I feel a definate but undefined training injury caused by facility carelessness coming on right. now.)

I guess I could lapse back into sloth and corpulence. (mmm, corpulence)
But the last drawback of all this damned exercising is that part of me actually feels good about doing it.

Bring on the endorphins...I'm gonna need 'em!









*It is 10lbs, right?
I've been sorely tempted to allow for 12 or even 15lbs as I believe that my running shoes are tragically heavy.

**Yes. I use pounds, despite living in a metric country. I also use inches, feet and miles. Buck the system, I say!

Ah. Sweet, sweet dreams.

My subconscious self certainly likes to mess with my mind.

Here, for instance, is a little message whispered into my ear during a battle * scene from my dreams last night:

"Better to go quickly than to die slowly in some friends bathroom."

Great.

Thanks, brain, for that warm and delightful thought delivered to me as I slumbered.
I surely needed to be reminded not to die in any of my friends' bathrooms, and instead ought to try opting for a quick death.
On a battlefield, say.

Nice.







*In truth, it was more of a skirmish than a full-blown battle.
We were preparing for a siege when the first wave of invaders hit.
Some of the enemy managed to make it through our first line of defense...squeezing through as our huge metal gates crashed shut.
It was at this point, with enemy forces rounding the corner, that the man in charge bellowed, "Ah, I can feel it in my gut this is the right thing." Then he dropped his voice to a whisper as he leaned toward my ear, "Better to go quickly...."