happy traveller

it's a hard job...

...being as klutzy as me. Yesterday my body ran past a bookshelf. My hand didn’t. Busted blood vessels are so nasty. Now my left hand looks like is all swelled up and blue with red patches. Ewww.

christmas in summer

The way it's supposed to be.

Why oh why did I make my trip only 3 weeks? I should have made it 3 months! Go back to Canada when the worst of the cold and rain is over. Very sensible.

how to lose friends and irritate people

Invite them over to your house for dinner when you have stomach flu. Yes. Be so sick that you are upchucking but still have them over and cook dinner for them.  Now I know where my stomach bug came from! Ok well I am a forgiving person and I was only sick for 2 days or so. So D is forgiven though I made sure to give her lots of crap about it. I will never let her live it down. I'm the only one who got sick though out of the 3 of us who came over. Damn you weak immune system. At least I didn't miss any work which would have sucked as I don't get paid if I'm not there. 

Only 1 1/2 weeks now until I'm back home in Australia for Christmas. Sunshine. My own bed in my old room. All my stuff!! New (old) clothes!  Not sure what I'm going to do for 3 weeks. I'm sure I'll think of something. Be nice to get away from the incessant rain here. Though I've spent today all cosy inside snuggled up with a blanket and practice baking some Christmas cookies. Off to watch Lord of the Rings at a friends house tonight. Yay! We are up to number 2. 

my body is my temple

Every time I go to the farmer's market and look at the pretty organic apples for $2 a pound, or the smooth, plump tomatoes for $3 a pound I just have to keep reminding myself that 'No it's not actually that much to pay for good food and therefore good health'. I mean, you've only got one body.  You want shit to leave it, not be put into it. I find it infuriating that we douse our food in pesticides, that we basically torture the animals that we will consume by cramming them in cages and feeding them ground up bits of other animals. Newsflash! Cows are herbivores! They eat grass! Not other cows! 

People put food in their bodies that has completely unpronounceable ingredients. Apparently some chocolate now has something called polyglycerol polyricinoleate in it. What's this you ask? It's when you want to be all cheap ass and not use too much cocoa butter (which is what chocolate SHOULD be made of!).  According to Wikipedia it's a "yellowish, viscous liquid composed of poly glycerol esters of polycondensed fatty acids from castor oil. It may also be polyglycerol esters of dimerized fatty acids of soya bean oil". I don't know about anyone else but I don't want that in my chocolate.   

Yes I have been devouring books such as Fast Food Nation and Food Inc. recently. Well worth reading!

And don't even get me started on all the chemicals floating around our homes! Plastic is evil! Read Slow Death by Rubber Duck. You will be shocked. I'm not surprised that people are getting sicker. Even 25 years ago when I was a kid barely anyone had allergies or food intolerances. Now everyone seems to be allergic to something or has asthma or has cancer. 

 My eyes are open! I hope yours will be too.

summer has left the building......almost

I love summer and it's warm, clear, breakfast on the deck, blue sky days. Growing tomatoes in the garden, crunchy grass, t shirts and flip flops.  Long lazy days and balmy nights. I also love autumn. Or fall as they call it in this corner of the world. Rain and pumpkins. Trees that look like they are on fire with colour.  Wearing jackets and scarves and mittens again. My skin returns to it's normal milky hue. Dragging out the fuzzy blankets and hot chocolate with marshmallows. 

A few pictures from last autumn. 

summer weekend

Tea and cereal. Fresh blueberries. Mmmmmmm.

 

Farmers Market at Trout Lake. Squash and pumpkins, carrots, berries, corn. I love summer!

My first tomato!! It waited for me.

the sun has gone

Cooooold! The other day I wore my winter coat! I mean I know this is Canada but come on! At least Saturday was nice.  Went to the farmers market (yay!) and got some blueberries and cherries! Hooray summer fruits! I love the little markets with people selling their handmade woolies, candles and jewellry and all the fresh greens just out of the ground.  Met up with my friend who's just moved here from Oxford and we pretended we were cool on Commercial Drive. Also bought a ticket to see Les Miserables next week.

Only 2 more weeks to Alaska!

the news today

So Michael Jackson kicked the bucket. To be honest it's not such a big surprise. I mean you can't do what he did to his body over so many years and not have some pretty major consequences waiting in the wings. It is a shame though. He was so talented but obviously never happy. He didn't need plastic surgery. He needed a good psychiatrist and to surround himself with good people who were genuine and honest. Not yes men 'enablers' who were only after his money and fame. And all that stuff with children? Seriously WTF? Who knows if he really did "like" children in the bad way or if he was just trying to create a childhood for himself in place of the one he missed. All I know is there is definitely going to be a lot of craziness around for a while.

mondayitis

Another day with nothing to do. It’s only 11.30am on Monday and already I wish it was the weekend. It’s getting harder and harder to get up in the morning. The first week it was easy as I was so rested from my weeks off. Now it’s just oh so tiring. Dragging myself out of bed. Had a bad dream last night and woke up around 4am. Then couldn’t get back to sleep for a while. Finally realised that it was because I was cold so went and got my thick blanket. Then I managed to get back to sleep.

Had a pretty quiet and lazy weekend. We didn’t end up going camping so instead my roomates friend came over on Friday and Saturday nights and we watched Pirates of Caribbean, Extras and then Harry Potter 1 and 2. Just bludged around on the internet, did some reading during the day. Read the last Dresden Files book. It’s the newest one, Turn Coat, released in April. Now I have no more to read. Don’t know when another one will be released. Probably next year sometime. (Just checked Wikipedia – April 2010. Damn!). I’m all addicted and want to find out what happens to Harry and co. I guess I’ll just have to live with reading fanfiction. Though the Dresden universe is not particularly prolific. Finished the fingerless mitt I was working on but it’s pretty crappy. Doesn’t look like the picture in the book at all. So I’m trying a new style from a different book. It seems to be working out a lot better.

I have about a million books out from the library at the moment. Hoping to have a chance to get through them before I go to Alaska at the end of next month. I need to save money so I guess I can spend my evenings and weekends just hanging around the house reading and knitting and web surfing instead of going out and doing expensive things. I suppose it was ok that we didn’t go camping this weekend as I ended up only having to put in $20 for food. Not also putting in for petrol, campsite etc. So it ended up being a reasonably cheap weekend.

Also planted my tomato plant and pepper plants as well as little lettuce plants in the garden on Sunday. Hopefully they will grow well there. It’s been cold the last few days. No sun. I think that will be good for the lettuces but not so much for the peppers or tomatoes.

living in the 70's

I went to the Art Gallery last week as I only worked half days and had a free pass that I won at the Juno Awards Volunteer party. It was pretty good actually. There was a show of Vermeer and Rembrandt paintings from the gallery in Amsterdam. Can’t remember what it’s called. It’s the famous one. Anyways that was quite good. Probably my favourite part of the gallery though was the installation they had going on in the centre up the middle.

On the bottom was a recreation of a 50’s house with kitchen, living room and bathroom. Then above that was a 60’s style flat, then above that was a 70’s style and so on upwards until there was a flat from the 2000’s on the top. I think my favourite was the 60’s and 70’s flats. So much warmth and earthy colours and textures. Very homey with old style pictures, furniture – corduroy! And thick carpet. Though the 60’s flat had carpet in the bathroom – Noooo! It was lovely otherwise. 70’s flat reminded me a little bit of my house in Aus before Mum and Dad renovated. Just the colours – the oranges and browns and greens and also the funny potted plants and wallpaper. It just felt like a home. Whereas the 80’s flat was just hideous! All white and plastics and chromey and pastels and mirrors. Ugly furniture. Horrible. 90’s flat was a bit better but 2000 flat was so clinical. Steel, leather. Plasma screen and laptop. Glass. Where 60’s flat and 70’s flat had funky personality, 80’s and 2000 flats were like robots. Though 2000 flat was preferable over 80’s flat. I think I would die if I had to live in a flat like that.