Corner of Bourbon & Division

I love dinner parties, but good Lord, they are so much work! They'd probably be less work if my house wasn't an absolute disaster that looks like several tornadoes and a tsunami went through it.

KK and I had a really productive day, though. I got up early and got started on the roasted red pepper soup, then left KK napping on the sofa in order to take Peggy to the vet. The great news is that the vet says Peggy's bum has improved a lot since her last visit! The Gland-X finally appears to be taking effect, which is a relief for all of us. Having to take her to get her anal glands expressed every month is expensive for me and painful for her. So yay for Peggy doing better!

Next up on the list was advanced voting. I expected it to be a little bit of a hassle because I didn't get my voter registration card in the mail, but it turned out to be super easy. I only needed one piece of photo ID and to just sign a form with my name on it for their records, and that was it. I asked about the voter registration cards, and the very nice lady from Elections Ontario gave me the most long-suffering look and said "Yeah... this was a little rushed." Say less, dear Elections Ontario person, say less. Anyway, I have now cast my vote for the candidate I find least objectionable and the likeliest to perhaps win against either the Liberals or the Conservatives. I keep holding out hope that one day people will realize that they can vote for third parties outside the binary that has dominated our politics since forever, and maybe THEN we can finally change things up around here. I'm not holding out a TON of hope, but I am holding out some.

From the polling station we went to M&M Meats where I wanted to get some crème brûlée for dessert, only to discover that they've discontinued it completely, which is extremely sad. So we went to Délice Royale and picked up four pastries instead, and KK was kind enough to stop at the library so I could drop off a book that was due today. 

The afternoon was a blur of cooking on my end and cleaning for both of us. KK put in a heroic effort and not only vacuumed the entire downstairs, she cleared the furniture out of the living room and programmed the new Roomba. It mapped the room, then vacuumed a couple of times, and then we set it to mop the floor. It did a very serviceable job, too. The tentative plan is to run it 2 to 3 times a week now to stay better on top of the cleaning. It's a bit of a hassle to move the furniture, but really it's just some chairs and the ottoman, so it's not too terrible. I cleaned the powder room just in case the guests needed it, and then we were off to the races! The dogs were DEEPLY unimpressed with the Roomba and spent the entire time chasing it, barking at it, and running away from it. It was very funny to watch them go. XD

The guests in question were my old boss and his boyfriend. They've been officially together for about a year, but I hadn't met the boyfriend yet, so I was pretty excited to get to know him. He is a delight, as it happens, and I think the dinner was a resounding success! The only thing I need to work on is my homemade mayonnaise--it was WAY too acidic, so clearly the recipe I used needs a fair bit of tweaking to make it taste better. We had a really good time chatting about their recent travels, catching up on what's going on at the RCMP (my old boss still works there but in a different department), and regaling the boyfriend about past work shenanigans. We went through a bottle of white wine, the guests made very appreciative noises about the food, and the evening wound down nicely over decaf coffee and pastries.

So, yes. I am calling it a resounding success, and I hope that I'll be able to have them over for dinner regularly. 

And now it's time for me to go to bed. I handled the announcements for Quaker Meeting a little earlier, and tomorrow I've committed to First Day School at the Meeting House in the nursery room. I didn't think I was signing up for the nursery room, which is definitely not my preference, but needs must, I guess, and at least it precludes me having to come up with a curriculum, since the nursery room is mostly designed for free play.

I need to put gas in the car and also get to Meeting super early because with all the snow we've had I'm sure the parking situation is absolutely atrocious, so the earlier I get there the better. Meeting starts at 10:30, but I think I will try to aim to get there by 9:30, which means leaving around 9:00 or even a bit earlier to factor in the time at the gas pump.

All righty. Bedtime. Good night, folks!

I used to joke about starting an asphalt company called Good Intentions, and at the rate I'm going, I will have paved a superhighway to hell by the time my life is done. 

Today wasn't a total loss or anything. I did manage to crowbar myself out of bed much later than I'd intended, and then levered myself out the door to go to Costco. There are several in town, and the closest one to me is a Costco Business Centre, which has the advantage of selling grated Parmesan in bulk (not real Parmesan, but good enough for the kind of cooking I like to do). My regular Costco has also been out of paper towels for a couple of months now, or at least they've been out each time I've gone. So I was able to pick up a bunch of stuff I can't get at the regular Costco, but at the expense of not being able to find another handful of items I needed, so I'll have to go on a separate trip for those.

My original intention had been to go to both Costcos and the grocery store, then come home, put all the meat in the fridge, and then go to the basement to get my seeds started. In order to keep myself sort of honest, I scheduled a 2pm Google Hangout with some local people with whom I've recently started forging ties. We're all members of a Facebook group that's run by Sharon Astyk, whom I think I've mentioned in a previous post. That group is over 1,000 people strong, but I wanted to seek out the members local to me who were interested in forming a more practical mutual aid group, and since then we've connected over the Signal app (just in case social media becomes too unreliable or starts selling our information even more than it already is).

Anyway, I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to get through Costco on a Saturday, so my second trip and the grocery store trip both had to get cancelled in the interest of getting to my Google Hangout on time. I also didn't quite gauge how the Google Hangout would go ahead of time. We had a really interesting time, with a good but small group of people. Not everyone was able to make it, but three friends were there whom I've known for several years, and two other people who were new to me (in person, I knew their names from online). We talked politics, mostly Canadian but also what was going on in the US, and provided a Canadian Politics 101 explainer to a new friend who has just moved here from the US (they had previously lived briefly in Nova Scotia, but were mostly unaware of all the ramifications of politics outside that province). We also talked farming and mutual aid, and what values we wanted to uphold in our little group, and Covid precautions. It was a really good first meeting, and I'm looking forward to having more in the future--I just need to keep my ducks more or less in a row.

I didn't get my seeds started, but I did start two mushroom cultures (a pink oyster culture and a lion's mane culture), and I pulled out my grow lights and cleared off the shelves in anticipation of being able to start at least some seedlings tomorrow. I need to get to bed pretty soon (it's 10pm now, so 11pm is probably the earliest I'll be able to manage), and my hope is to get up early enough to get to Costco and maybe even the grocery store before Quaker Meeting tomorrow. It'll be really tight, because Costco doesn't open until 9am, and Quaker Meeting is at 10:30am, so I have no idea if I'll be able to get it all done in time. Maybe I'll try ordering the groceries either for delivery or for pick-up tomorrow instead of going shopping, and see if that saves a bit of time. I'm also contemplating putting off the second Costco trip to Monday, when I will have all day before my night shift to get that done.

I bought extra meat and eggs today, and I'll be buying some extra pork chops tomorrow (unless I go Monday). I expect some prices will be skyrocketing once the new tariffs are in place. We're going to have to get used to doing more with less, I think, so I'm stocking up a little now and will be working on stretching our food more than I have been. I also need to get into the habit of making bread at home more often. I am actually bad at baking bread, but I have a bread machine, and that makes things considerably easier.

Once the groceries are dealt with, I need to vacuum pack all the meat into portions so I can freeze it (much easier than freezing all of it all at once), and make a bunch of shredded chicken to freeze as well, for future use. I've found that the boneless thighs from Costco lend themselves very well to shredded chicken, which I make in my Instant Pot. I must say that my Instant Pot has been one of my better purchases in the past few years. I think I got it in 2022, if memory serves, and I've been using it pretty much weekly ever since then. It's pretty fantastic for making food in a reasonably short amount of time. I also want to make some borscht because I have some beets and cabbage in the fridge that are likely to go bad if I don't use them up ASAP. KK won't eat the borscht (because beets) but I really love it and haven't made it in years, so that's what I've decided.

I also need to wet-block the Hubris Shawl, and if there's time after that I will get some seedlings started. I need to find somewhere to plug in the grow lights, as the outlet expander that KK installed on the current outlet doesn't accommodate the plugs for the grow lights. Luckily (?) KK has an entire Rubbermaid bin full of power adapters and power cords and outlet expanders, so I'm really hoping I'll find something suitable. Otherwise, I'm going to have to move around everything in this basement, which will be an absolute pain in my backside.

Okay, time to head to bed. I can't promise a more interesting update tomorrow, but there will be an update. ;)

I had dinner yesterday with guruwench and her "hunny N" as she calls him. I'd forgotten to post last week about my breakfast with her and le_maistre_e, and was subsequently thwarted for days by my lack of a functioning computer. Still, it was a lovely breakfast, and it served to remind me that I actually have friends who live in this city with whom I can socialise! It was very exciting.

So last night after work I hied myself over there, and proceeded to snorgle all their cats (except for Kira, who was not overly pleased at the new invasive human in her home). N made a delicious jambalaya, guruwench made an equally delicious berry crumble for dessert, and we spent over four hours talking about cats and geeky things and work and cooking. N has promised me his recipe for jambalaya, and this is very exciting indeed.

After last night's dessert-y indulgence, I am back to the yummy salads I prepared for myself. I discovered this evening, much to my dismay, that my cunning plan of pre-chopping and pre-packing veggies for my snacks is not a great plan. My cucumbers went horrifically mushy. I think it's that I tried putting them all in sandwich bags ahead of time. Next week I'll pre-chop but keep them in Tupperware so they don't, um, disintegrate. :P So right now I'm uncomfortably hungry, because it's not quite dinnertime yet. If I eat my food too early, I'll be hungry later, and being hungry at 03:00 is way worse than being hungry at 21:00.

The plan is to look up some more creative salad recipes for next week. I'm not the type of person to get bored of eating the same thing over and over again, but I think a little variety will do me good, especially in the nutrition department. I want to try new and different and hopefully inexpensive things. Experiment a little. Or a lot. So that'll be on the menu for this weekend (both figuratively and literally!).

I didn't go walking either yesterday or today, partly to give my ankles a break. They have not been overly happy with me for the sudden burst in activity of late. Today's lack of a walk was also partly because of inertia and tiredness and procrastination. I did do those 10 minutes of yoga I've been threatening to do for days, though, so I feel pretty good about that. My conclusion so far is that I am in terrible shape. Even 10 minutes of very basic yoga poses made me work for it, though it was definitely doable. It was a little more difficult because I kept having to move out of position to see the video in order to figure out how I was supposed to be positioned. Practise should help with that, at least. I'm hoping to get to a proper 30-minute routine by the end of the month.

Unfortunately I had some errands to run today, so I wasn't able to do the sleep-until-I-can't-sleep-anymore thing that I try to do on the transition day between day shift and night shift. It's the only time I can really try to make up for the sleep deficit I constantly live with. On a good day when I'm working I can manage my full eight hours. Usually it's closer to six. When I work night shifts I average about five hours of sleep, but it tends to be very broken because my room is very bright and my landlords tend to be very loud when they're home. On my transition day I sleep about 10-11 hours, but that's because I don't sleep before my night shift, so it averages out to about 5 hours a night. I generally get 7-8 hours when I'm home in Montreal, but that's only because I don't get up at the same time as pdaughter and Bean, who are usually up at 06:00, or whenever Bean decides it's "sunny time." Last week I started getting myself up earlier, but the earliest I managed was 06:20, which was still long after pdaughter got up (though Bean slept until nearly 07:00 that morning!). So this week I am going to try harder to train myself to get up when it starts getting light out. Hopefully that won't backfire on me when I need to sleep during the day on my night shifts.

Honestly, these days I find myself almost wishing I suffered from insomnia, because at least then I'd get stuff done instead of sleeping. Almost. The thing is, I love sleep a lot. If I could get more of it, I would, but what I need to do is require less of it. All my life I've been the type of person who needs about 9 hours of sleep a night to feel properly rested and be a fully functional human being. These days, though, I need to be the type of person who not only gets by, but thrives on four hours of sleep per night. I've been resisting setting an alarm, because I'm paranoid that it'll go off and wake pdaughter on the one day that Bean decides to sleep in, but without an alarm I seem to be physically unable to get myself out of bed. I don't suppose anyone has a trick they use to wake themselves without an alarm?

So that's the daily report on me. Riveting, n'est-ce-pas? Now I have to get back to work. Maybe next time I'll tell you all about the new TV shows I've been watching, if you're lucky. ;)

Sorry, been AFK for a few days. Since Sunday, at the very least. It's been a bit of a busy week, what with Easter and Bean having the Gastro That Would Not Go Away, though pdaughter is the one who ended up dealing with the latter for the better part of the week, as I had to head back to Ottawa for work on Tuesday afternoon. I suppose that, aside from that, it hasn't been much busier than usual, though it felt that way.

( Cut for complaining )

( Food! And also nutrition! And general health stuff! )

I actually got out of the house today, for reasons other than errands! It's been a while since I saw someone who wasn't pdaughter, not that her company isn't lovely, of course. I just hadn't seen people apart from coworkers since Capricornucopia, which was three weeks ago. I'm trying to not go for long stretches of time in which I see no one, because otherwise I'll become a complete hermit, which is no good for anyone.

Pretty sure my friend is actually on LJ somewhere, but I don't know his handle. Oops? I'll have to ask him next time I remember. It's probably bullonir, knowing him... *checks* Yep! I am good. Not that he's updated since 2008, but whatever. Anyway, I drove to his place on the South Shore, we had lunch and then went out for coffee and a cupcake at a local cupcake shop. It was delicious. I should upload the photo here to show you, it was gorgeous on top of being super scrumptious. Anyway.

We had a really nice chat. He's my former shift partner from Montreal, the guy who got me into comic books and Breaking Bad, and to whom I introduced Supernatural and Fringe among other things. We geek out over Avengers and things, but we have a lot in common outside our geeky mutual interests. Like me, he was a temporary employee for a long time (and still is, unfortunately), and he has a young family too, so we share many of the same concerns when it comes to the kids' well-being. We also know what sort of toll working shifts takes on our mental and physical health, and on our romantic relationships, too. It's not easy, living with someone who's not there half the time out of necessity, just as it's not easy to be the person who's absent because of work.

So we had a good, productive chat, as well as delicious food. We got caught up on work things and family things and general gossip. He's also a writer, so we touched briefly on how things were going in that department too. All in all, a really great time, and we have a tentative date for the next time we're both off on a weekday to watch the last episodes of Breaking Bad together, since neither of us has seen it yet.

I was going to run some errands in Vaudreuil on my way home, but after an hour's driving I arrived just in time for rush hour, and I realised that if I tried to head to the Smart Centres I would be stuck in traffic for at least another hour if not more, and that I'd be getting home after dinnertime, which is no good. So errands have been postponed until tomorrow morning, and I have pulled dinner out of the freezer. Well, it'll be dinner supposing I don't get "Me not like it!" as a reaction. Bean has been off his food all week due to being under the weather, which has only strengthened his knee-jerk reaction to refuse any food I put in front of him. He's much better about accepting food that Mama makes, but 90% of what I make gets met with "Me not like that/Me not want that!" He's old enough now, though, that he generally doesn't get presented with other options. When he was sick it was a different story, since it was important to get something in him, but in general dinner is dinner, and we're not a restaurant.

This is one of my weekends at home, but as far as I know there aren't any firm plans. I have a game on Saturday (more people! In less than a week! What is happening?), but apart from that I'm not sure. Next weekend we have friends of mine coming for a quick visit with their daughter, who is about a year younger than Bean, and whom I haven't seen in absolutely forever, so I'm looking forward to that a lot.

So, that's today in a nutshell. A little more exciting than my usual fare, am I right?

After being off the bandwagon for a year, I'm getting back up on the horse, in order to properly mix my metaphors. ;)

First off, I'm going back to healthy eating, roughly following the guidelines of the Paleo diet. I will let fearsclave extoll its virtues to you at length. For me, suffice it to say that the idea of eating mostly fruit, vegetables and sources of protein seems like a pretty healthy choice.

Also, at fearsclave's prompting, I signed up for Fitocracy, which so far is quite a lot of fun. The basic idea is that it treats your fitness activities and workouts like a video game: you get a certain amount of points for your activities, and at a certain number of points you level up. There are also quests and achievements, which is a nifty feature. I'm levelling up slowly, and right now have to be careful not to push myself too far lest I do myself some sort of injury that would sideline me for weeks. Still, it's fun to come back after a long walk and find that you've gone up a level because of it.

I've been going for walks/runs with Sergent, who is thrilled with the added exercise. He's of the opinion that we're not going fast enough, and I'm doing my best to increase my speed little by little. I'm hoping that by the time spring rolls around I'll be able to run for 30 minutes straight with him, and increase that to an hour by the end of the summer. We shall see. Right now we're doing a sort of prelude to the Couch to 5K program, because my ankles are not yet up to running even the few short intervals required for the first day in the program. I figure I can probably start running in earnest next week.

In related news, I bought myself a small bench press with some sand-filled weights from a guy on Craigslist. I loved weight lifting when I was going to the gym regularly: it was by far my favourite part of my workout. Therefore this weekend's project is --while I'm not passing out from working a nightshift-- to clean out the basement enough to set up a small area to use as a home gym. I bought myself some coloured foam mats for the floor, and with time I'd like to set up a bunch of equipment down there. I have a few free weights as well and a small TV, so I figure I can make it a pretty appealing little area. I need to find some mirrors to hang so I can keep an eye on my form, too, but that will come later.

In short, I am getting a kick out of getting back into shape. I promise I won't bore you with all of that here, except for sporadic and non-specific updates. If you're interested, I'm writing more in-depth about it at rocking_thing, but it's mostly numbers and tracking and whatever. Not all that interesting. ;)

Or, hey, if you're interested in Fitocracy, I am happy to figure out how to send out an invitation. Just drop me a line. :)

I am taking a page from owldaughter's book and writing a weekend round-up. It'll be easier than going back and writing individual entries.

Friday

After work I headed out to pick up my costume for Sunday's party. I got a car from Communauto, went to Laurier st., got the costume (lost my little paper, but they were nice and understanding) and drove back to get my dry cleaning...

...

... only to realize that I left my wallet on the counter of the costume shop across town. There was swearing. Lots and lots of swearing. It was 17:00, right in the middle of rush hour on a Friday afternoon, and I think I may have aged five years from sheer stress. I lucked out: they found and kept my wallet for me, and on my way out I met my old friend B, whom I hadn't seen in a very long time. So, bonus. I even managed to pick up my dry cleaning with five minutes to spare before the place closed.

After that I hied myself to the Parental Units' for dinner, where W., the mother of my childhood friends, had also been invited. We had a very nice time, although W. was in fine form, which meant I had to run interference for most of the evening because she seriously gets on my father's very last nerve. Damages his calm something fierce.

Went home and collapsed, after watching a couple of DVDs.

Saturday

Awoke on Saturday morning, feeling god-awfully tired and wondering what god I had angered that I would feel that tired after sleeping for so long. Then I saw that it was 10:00 and that I was LATE. So I jumped out of bed in a complete flap and made a beeline for the phone to call luvenditti to let her know I'd overslept and was going to be late. She answered the phone and sounded bemused, but agreed to meet me a bit later than we'd planned. She called back about three minutes later to see what the hell was wrong with me, and by then I had figured out that I wasn't late, but that my alarm clock was poorly set.

Not a great start to the day, but things improved swiftly after that. Saturday was a cooking day with Lu. I am not allowed to discuss much of what we cooked, because it is part of the Soopar Seekrit Menu for her next dinner party, but let me tell you it was SINFULLY DIVINE, OH GOD.

We also made stew and meatloaf and pizza. So. Much. Food. In between bouts of cooking we also watched part of the latest episode of Glee (meh), Eastwick (cute) and The Mentalist (so much love).

After the day of cooking we called it an early night. Turns out spending all day cooking is tiring. I went home, watched a few episodes of Supernatural, and then turned in for the night.

Sunday

I got up early-ish to do a minimal amount of tidying before tcaptain and maya_banana came for breakfast, and then realized belatedly that I had nothing for her to drink, since she can't have tea or coffee. One hasty phone call later, and they agreed to pick up some orange juice. They arrived resplendent in their costumes, and we set to breakfast with enthusiasm.

Breakfast was not a success. I was off-beat the entire time, and managed to burn the pancakes and came rather too close to setting fire to my kitchen for my own comfort. Luckily they were very understanding with me, and the bacon turned out delicious, so it wasn't a total waste.

maya_banana helped me get into my costume, since it's one of those Victorian dealies that hooks together in the back, and once I was all put together (photos will be forthcoming as soon as people who took them send them to me, I promise!), we headed out to Hurley's, where the murder-mystery Blood, Sweat and Gears was taking place.

I had a blast. I was playing Priscilla "Prissy" Swinton, who was invited to this scientific exhibit along with her husband Dunstable. The guy playing my husband never showed, but it turned out not to matter. I decided that Prissy was an amiable twit, and so I wandered around being insipid and saying stupid things in the loudest, most fatuous fake British accent I could muster. I *broke* people. Repeatedly. My rule of thumb was to think of the most inane thing to say at any given moment, and then to say that. It worked like a charm.

By the end of the evening I was exhausted. I have no idea how the people running the show managed, because it felt as though I had been there for ten hours instead of four. It was a great time, though, and I understand that there will likely be repeat performances in the future.

The garden is booming. The tomatoes have made an appearance, and a few of them have ripened without my noticing. I have ninja tomatoes, apparently.

The peppers are sulking, but while they haven't grown, they have produced flowers, so I am cautiously optimistic.

I got one tiny cucumber off one plant, and the other plant has a cucumber on it too. I hope that next year the harvest will be better.

The herbs survived in spite of my not weeding the garden for about a month. The tarragon isn't very happy but it's hanging in there. The mint had a battle to the death with the bindweed, the clover, and the grass, and came out the victor once I cleared out the debris. I'm vaguely frightened. ;)

My garlic disappeared. I think something ate it. There is *one* bulb left.

The basil has gone nuts and is three feet tall. The carrots that moonandtree planted are doing well, as are the beets.

moonandtree and I got a lot of weeding done today. I am taking a break right now because I'm hot, tired and thirsty, but depending on how the rest of the day goes I'm going to try to get out there again to spread some cedar mulch where we weeded, to discourage the weeds from coming back too strongly again.

I also harvested the rhubarb, which I think I left a little late. I lost some of the stalks to... well, rot, I'm guessing. Still, I have a TON of rhubarb. I see canning in my immediate future. Gotta pull out my canning recipe for rhubarb and make sure I have enough jars for it.

Today's to-do list includes dishes, laundry, gardening, finishing the baby blanket, and getting in some writing. If I have time I'll be canning the rhubarb. If not, that will happen tomorrow at the latest. Oh, and I have to call my mother before she convinces herself that I've decided never to speak to her again.

In non-domestic news, I appear to have some sort of weird summer cold. I had a horrific sore throat all day on Thursday and it got a bit better yesterday, but today I woke up slightly congested and with the feeling that someone had settled a wildebeest on my chest: not quite an elephant, but big and heavy and inconvenient nonetheless, and the occasional racking coughing fits aren't as fun as you'd think. I'm feeling better now —being outside in the warmth helped— but I can feel whatever it is lingering in the background.

mangafairy and G (who has no LJ) arrived safe and sound last night. Their plane was even four minutes early! It was very exciting. :)

Given that we were all falling over with exhaustion, we made our way home with only a quick pit stop to buy some juice and some extra fruit (you can never have too much fruit), and arrived here in time to collapse in various heaps about the place. I made a chicken curry with spaghetti which was well-received, and then after a bit of chit-chat we all passed out for the night.

The morning started out quietly with a nice breakfast of fruit, cereal and croissants, and I was amused that none of us had the same thing to drink: I had coffee, mangafairy had tea, and G had hot chocolate (a Brit who doesn't drink tea!). We headed out to the ecomuseum where we met up with joane and shenlo and their gorgeous tadpole Jenny. shenlo's parents were there as well, and we spent a lovely couple of hours exploring the wildlife preserve.

Upon returning home I harvested some lettuce from the garden and made a salad for lunch (sadly all the other veggies were store-bought), and then mangafairy and G went on an explore of downtown Montreal while I went to the gym (I am attempting to be disciplined about this). They were very sweet and bought me a small box of Godiva chocolates. All that work at the gym! *sigh* ;)

We arrived back in plenty of time to greet jonofthewired, who managed to make his way here by public transit after his train arrived. After introductions were made all around, I settled everyone in with a small platter of fresh veggies and some ranch dip, which is apparently unknown in the UK, so G was quite impressed with it. I harvested some basil from the garden and made pesto, which I mixed into some linguini and then added a bunch of steamed broccoli, just to make sure the guests got enough vegetables into them.

Everyone has gone to bed already, and I am headed that way myself. joane and shenlo will be arriving in the morning, and once we've had a restorative cup of coffee (or whatever), we will be traipsing off to WorldCon to register and begin attending the panels and events that have caught our eye already. Very exciting!

I hope everyone is having a good week. I won't be around much to read or comment until next Wednesday, I wouldn't think, but I'll try to post regular-ish updates. I forgot my camera today, or there would be photographic evidence of all that's been going on.

Good night!