jenistranslucent

French Cancan cocktail recipe

2011-12-31T12:45:00.001-05:00

3 cl orange juice
2 cl strawberry liqueur
2 cl cognac
Champagne

Shake with ice, serve in flute.

GO ME!!

2010-03-26T12:00:00.002-05:00

I may have called my bank yesterday to find out why I couldn't access my online account. The proposed solution may have been to spell my name correctly. The helpful customer service rep may have laughed at me. I definitely deserved that.

In my head I'm hearing lovesongs.

2009-12-12T02:20:00.005-05:00

I don't know how we could be so lucky as to find a massive traffic jam on the QEW at 2:30 in the morning, but somehow we are. Still, we were in Toronto tonight to see the Constantines 10th anniversary show, so the commute is very worth it. I always count on the Cons live show to renew my love of live shows, and I've left Lee's Palace tonight ready for more. We started off the night with Sushi on Bloor (can't seem to stop going there no matter how many times they get shut down by Public Health) and then went to the green beanery to wake ourselves up after our self-induced sushi coma! We met up with some undergrad friends who were also headed to the show and then got to Lee's early enough to get right up front.

John K Samson of the Weakerthans started off the night, playing a mix of Weakerthans songs and his solo stuff, with some peotry thrown in to spice things up. That guy is in the running for cutest singer ever, maybe edging a slight lead over Band of Horses' Ben Bridwell by playing recordings of his cat purring as the between song banter!

Attack in Black were next - I hadn't heard about them other than their name and that they're from st catharines. They were a lot better than I suspected from the name ( in my head they were a metal'd up alexisonfire).

And constantines? All I'll say is that they lived up to their own high standard. They've given 10 tears of solid albums and shows and I'm hoping for many more. Also, they should always have John K Samson special guest for them - his crowd surf was pretty funny too, and I got to hoist him back to stage/touch his bum (ew/woo?). As a special bonus, we ran into more friends and spent the majority of the show sandwiched between wonderful people. I'll try to add pics soon!

It's raining squirrels.

2009-12-04T15:12:00.003-05:00

I feel like I'm getting in charge of my life again - thanks to an elective with a regular schedule and evenings that are mostly free. Today, I'm going to clean, and put up some Christmas stuff, and maybe even do a little bit of baking. I've also managed to just veg out for a bit, reading some blogs and starting out the window. You see, my next door neighbour has squirrels living in her roof. In the past hour, I've seen at least THREE squirrels trying to figure out how to get back into their tiny squirrel roof hole, and instead of figuring it out, they FALL OFF THE ROOF. And get back up to try, try again. Sadly for them, they are not flying squirrels. I'm enjoying my new pastime.

In other "happy with life" news, Mark and I have been dogsitting for my parents while they've been away on a fancy well-deserved vacation. They get back today, and are coming to pick up the dog tomorrow (hence the cleaning I'm planning to do), and I'm getting sad about that. It's been so nice to have Indy around, even though she is so farty and smelly. She's been really well behaved and sweet and funny, and I'm starting to really want to get a dog of my own. The only problem would be getting through that first rough year of training and puppy-terror.

PS - Indy has also been watching the squirrel show, and is enjoying it perhaps even more than I am.

a few things:

2009-10-22T11:41:00.001-05:00

I just want to point out a couple of things:

I'm unable to study ADHD for more than 15 minutes at a time
Winners is currently selling at least three different types of fake fur short vests. For all of your fake fur fashion needs.

That is all.

Can't we all just be green??

2009-10-15T16:18:00.002-05:00

I just had a very unpleasant encounter with my downstairs neighbor, who was so offended at my suggestion the maybe if people started throwing food into the green-bin with it's fancy locking mechanism instead of into the regular garbage in flimsy plastic bag then we would have less of a raccoon/squirrel/trash-all-over-the-backyard problem, that she proceeded to bitch me out for the last 10 minutes.

Her argument: Mark and I use the green bins because WE HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON OUR HANDS and thus are capable of sorting our garbage before we throw it out. She somehow is not phased with the time spent on the near-daily task of picking it up after it's been strewn across the backyard.

Seriously, it's like to her, the green bin doesn't even exist. I just can't understand it. It is a really good system, and it is useful both at home (locking food waste away from animals), and for the environment, as long as it isn't being used to heavy-up the regular garbage trucks. I stood my ground, saying that green-bins do take a little getting used to, but are really not that much more effort. It was really, really tough not to show how friggin irritated I was.

All I know is that with all the effort I put into preventing this kind of thing, I'm not cleaning up that mess.

2009-10-13T20:39:00.002-05:00

I just spent 12 hours at school, mostly studying mental retardation and dementia. I just got home and Mark made us some tea. I just asked him why he would put so little water in the pot (it was almost empty, tea bags just dangling around). It turns out that I must have some serious visual neglect or something, because he's only now recovering from laughing at how I missed the two full mugs of tea right beside the empty teapot.

Damn this semester is long and busy. I hope one day I'll get to the point where I can just relax for a few days, see some friends, and not worry about studying.

Been a while n

2009-10-04T13:56:00.001-05:00

East Coast Living

2009-08-09T20:45:00.004-05:00

(found on a beach)

I've been in Sydney (NS) for a week now, and have lots of photos and stories. Cape Breton is beautiful, but I have to admit that I'm a bit home- and Mark-sick. I've been doing a lot of working, and am trying to use free time to explore & start some good habits (like getting back into regular yoga, being active daily, etc.).

The rest of the MFRT (see below) was great - it was the perfect blend of having a destination and having the freedom to take random little detours (like spur of the moment "let's have lunch in PEI!"). Mark joined us on Thursday, and we stayed at a great B&B near Peggy's Cove. We played cards with my mom's 82 year old aunts (twins!) and her 92 year old aunt - they are crazy fun gamblers, and like a good dirty joke - LOL. Mom and Dad flew home on the Friday, and Mark and I headed back to New Brunswick for Sappyfest - another random, spur of the moment detour.

(oceanside on PEI)

We couchsurfed at a dairy farm in Memramcook, and I basically tripled my cow knowledge. We picked fresh eggs from the chicken coop for breakfast, and got licked by calves. And we saw a lot of great rock bands. And some live music videos. And Mark got a tattoo. All in all, a good weekend!

Instead of sticking around Halifax after Sappyfest, Mark drove with me to Sydney. Since we had less than twelve hours before he had to be on the bus to the Halifax airport, we decided to try to stay up all night and make the most of the little time we'd have together in the town. Lucky for us, it was the beginning of "Action Week!," and the end of some big motorcycle weekend, so there was a lot going on. The highlight? Parade of Lights, where various vehicles are strung with christmas lights and they drive around town. And people handing out breathmints. And there was a truck with a guy dressed like a giant sandwich. And two firetrucks: Awesome disco truck, and noisy annoying truck. Basically, best parade ever. We actually watched it twice.

Here are some pics:

(mark! and bubbles! and cape breton!)

Since Mark left, I've just been working and trying to see the region in the evenings. We've had awesome weather, so I've been able to bike around Sydney quite a bit, and went for a drive out to Louisburg yesterday. I'm hoping to get this coming weekend off so that I can go explore the Highlands and the Cabot trail. And in a weekend a half, Mark comes out again to help me drive home. This is officially the summer of road trips!

(if this were in ontario, this would be mown and not beautiful)

(the view from my placement)

Road-trippin'

2009-07-27T21:29:00.002-05:00

So here I am, in Moncton, and it is FINALLY vacation. Next week I'll be starting a Family med placement in Cape Breton, but right now I get to "sleep in" and "relax" since it is my my only week of vacation between last and next Christmas (by sleep in and relax, I mean wake up at 8 and sit in a car for 8+ hours, which both sorta count).

It's been a fun vacation so far, starting with Maggie's birthday on Saturday. For some reason, she loves the tiki bar on college. Maybe this is a sign of me no longer being a Toronto girl, but just being in a bar where drinks cost upwards of $8 and the jerk-face male servers with stupid ponytail'd hair are blatantly charging extra on top just pisses me off. Still, with a Maggie birthday occurring, things have a way of being awesome, and good times were had. From trying to walk out with the volcano glass (that I'd put a $20 deposit on) to deciding to go to Sneaky Dee's when everyone else was deciding to go home, I think she had a pretty awesome night. I did too, thanks to being around quite a few of my favourite people, and some old friends that I haven't seen in a while.

John, Ashley and I headed home to Maggie's while she went after greasy late-night Mexican, and made it into bed by 3am. For some reason, I was completely wired and couldn't get my brain to shut off until at least 4-4:30 - not good when I had to be in Whitby by 9 to start the Massive Family Road Trip (henceforth MFRT). I finally covered my face with the blanket in hopes that re-breathing my exhaled carbon dioxide would put my brain into sleep mode (it actually may have worked). After a very brief sleep, I was wide awake again, and it was ten to seven. With the help of a very sleep John, I got all of my bags down to the car and made it to Whitby by 8, and the MFRT began shortly thereafter.

MFRT:

Has actually been pretty awesome! I wasn't sure how well three days with mom, dad and I cooped up in a tiny Toyota Echo would go, but it has been a lot of fun so far. Yesterday we made it to Quebec City, but best of all we honoured the traditional road trip stop at the Big Apple. We made it through Montreal traffic, Montreal Construction, and Montreal tunnels. And then we got to our hotel and headed into Quebec City for drizzly exploration and yummy (but salty! so salty!) dinner. And then crepes for dessert. And I managed to go the whole day with a good mood and only a 20 minute nap.

Today has been just as good. After an awesome, amazing, wonderful, life-restoring 9.5 hour sleep, we got up, went for a dip in the hotel pool/hot-tub (lukewarm-tub) and then discovered that in Quebec (ok, maybe just this hotel), continental breakfast actually means a MAKE-YOUR-OWN-WAFFLE bar. Yum. After waffling it up, we hit the road again, stopping only for coffee, pees, and Grand Falls. We drove through St. Louis de Ha-Ha (HA!). We made in to Moncton in time for mom to watch the Bachelorette (barf - I honestly can believe that millions of people waste hours of their life watching the boring crap) and dad and I to find a wicked pizza shop.

And now I'm typing this out, polishing off the last of the surprisingly yummy 1L depanneur bottle of wine that went with an awesome Moncton pizza. I can't wait for the rest of this vacation!

So. Full. Of. Steak.

2009-06-18T20:29:00.003-05:00

Mmmmm.

I am not a big meat eater, but every once in a while it just tastes so good... tonight was one of those nights. As an end of term celebration, we were taken out to a crazy restaurant where the salad bar is made of awesome fancy salads (like mango salad with cilantro, seafood salad, marinated sundried tomatoes sald and about 30 other equally delicious thing). AND THEN... they come around to your table with sword-skewers of meat and shave pieces off for you. And it was good meat... I stuck to the basics (filet mignon with parmesan crust, garlic steak), but they also had crazy bacon wrapped stuff and mini philly cheese steaks. And grilled pineapple, also in sword form, to top it off. I think tomorrow will be a gym day.

Also, apparently while everyone else looks like a surgeon when they wear a surgeon cap, I look like a cafeteria lady. I can't even fake it!

Instead of a picture of me and my surgeon hat and my big steak belly, here is a picture of the cat. She would like steak too, please, it goes right here:

Countdown to "Summer"

2009-06-11T18:54:00.002-05:00

Only one more sleep till Montreal! It's been too long since I've been to that city, and I have Maggie & her conference to thank forgetting me back there. It'll be less than 48 hours... but that time will be filled with bagels and poutine and maybe going out, and most definitely a much-needed break from what's been filling my head recently (tutorials, exams, etc.).

Also: I am need of new music. Tonight, I am taking a few-hours break from studying prostates, and searching for some musical awesomeness. I am out of touch (with almost everything these days), and would welcome suggestions. Best find this week? Sub Pop's latest sampler - for awesome music and LOLZ.

Love Day!

2009-06-05T16:05:00.003-05:00

I can't decide if the overriding feeling of the past month has been happy, or crazy. I'm leaning toward happily crazy. School is still great, but it feels like a never ending race most of the time. A few of us have been feeling a little bit burnt out, and I for one can't wait until summer electives - still lots of work, but it will (for the most part) start in the morning and be DONE at 5 pm. No more feeling guilty if I'm not studying till 11 or 12.

I've been trying to fit in time for friends during all of this, and for Mark. We had a fantastic weekend celebrating 6 years together - he put together an awesome day of adventure. Choose-my-own-adventure, to be exact. My picks: breakfast? outside! How to get to the picnic? bikes! Where to go to dinner? secret restaurant #3! The resulting adventure? Good times!

We even managed to squeeze in some cleaning time mid-afternoon, because we are old and lame.

Baking!

2009-05-13T17:50:00.004-05:00

At long last, the mojito cake! (Recipe may be found HERE)

Prepping the layers with the mojito syrup:

And the masterpiece! It was yummy.

Bonus beginning of a rainbow cupcake:

Whoa!

2009-05-13T15:48:00.001-05:00

The place where Mark and I met has burnt down!

(And yes, I am the classy type of gal who picks up boys at sketchy bars)

Adventure day!

2009-05-08T23:31:00.002-05:00

After lecture this morning, Mark and I headed into Hamilton, each of us on a mission. Mine was to trade $50 for an awesome, massive textbook that I've been humming and hawing over buying for a few months. I finally found it for about a third of what it goes for new, and now it is mine! HOORAY! Now I can learn about ALL THE DISEASES!

Mark's mission was to visit lots of schools and hand out resumes and hopefully make some contacts. He was also successful!

We took the scenic road back (after FINALLY eating at 2 pm for the first time that day, we are moody beasts when we are hungry), driving up along the escarpment. I can't believe its taken us 8 months to explore whats on top of the big hill we see so often. Turns out that whats on top are waterfalls! and wineries! And pretty houses taking advantage of all of the pretty views! I can't wait to go back. We stopped to hike a bit to see the waterfall (as usual, I was well prepared with my hiking fip-flops). We then stopped at a winery and had a couple of half-decent samples. And then Mark got to see downtown Beamsville (gripping!).

We got back in time for some exciting rehashing of my old MA thesis, it looks like it will be presented in the fall in Philly! WOOOOO! And then R came over, whisked me away to the gym. I followed up by whisking her away to THREE different grocery stores, to prep for our yummy night of baking SECRET THINGS!

To top off the wonderful day, I got to experience the joy of running through a spring downpour! I'm not being the least bit sarcastic - I absolutely love the feeling of getting drenched by warm spring rain. By misjudging the location of the car, I got to run for quite a while trying to find it, getting myself a good, happy soaking.

Exciting weekend ahoy! Pics and more posts after that :)

Diggin' a hole (and fillin' it back up again).

2009-05-02T21:43:00.002-05:00

Today WAS the day. I've been looking forward to having a REAL garden for years, and now that I'm finally in a place with a lawn, it's finally going to happen. But not today. After grabbing some supplies, and chatting with our property manager (who happens to be my upstairs neighbor), Mark, Missy and I staked out a sunny little patch of lawn, and started digging. And digging. And digging. And then Gina and Jesse came over and watched us dig, and has some coffee and delicious cake with us. Since we only had two shovels, they got to talk with one of us at all times!

We were just about finished digging the patch when out landlord showed up to check on something in the basement tenant's apartment. And was clearly pissed that we were digging a garden. Apparently, since the lawn is small (10x the size of the plot we dug), he wants it to remain entirely grass (and quite a few weeds), and not other growing stuff THAT IS ACTUALLY USEFUL. I mentioned but didn't belabor the point about how we had gotten permission from the FRIGGIN' PROPERTY MANAGER about digging a garden in that spot. ARGH. So after spending the morning digging out the patch, we commenced filling it back in. Tomorrow I'm going to throw down some grass seed, and start a grass garden. And I will then get some big planters, and plant me a smaller herb garden (bitter herbs, anyone?

But, lest a beautiful, sunshiney day be ruined, we finished our outside work, moved our little party inside for a yummy salad made by Mark. And then my parents showed up! And then we went to a winery and tasted a white wine that was so light and refreshing it could be described (by Missy) as rosewater! And then we went out for yummy dinner! So, all in all, good day, and I cannot wait until I have a house of my own. NO GRASS ALLOWED.

Mark's outfit (top to bottom)

2009-04-23T16:35:00.002-05:00

teal and fuschia bike helmet
orange polo shirt
beige hoodie
green jacket
various shades-of-green plaid shorts
black socks, pulled up to mid-shin
brown loafers

2009-04-08T11:04:00.003-05:00

What to discuss? I feel like I've been denying myself a life lately so that I can stay on top of schoolwork. Downtime for the past month has consisted mainly of going to the gym, watching tv on the internet, making trip to the market and baking with the bounty.

I guess one new thing for me is my first ever book club. Unfortunately, geographic distance between myself and everyone I've ever wanted to book club (now it's a verb) with before has kept said book clubbing from happening. Now my Niagara crew, who, like me have been getting pretty wrapped up in all things medical, has decided to schedule in some hours that will force us to escape from kidneys and fetuses (fetii? I'm pretty sure the answer to that one is NO.) and spend some time with good books.

Our first was "Through Black Spruce," and I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the book clubbing that went with it. Our initial discussion started off a bit forced - this was the first time for most of us - but then fell into interesting, easy talk. I'm already looking forward to the next book, "The God of Small Things."

Also, I'm looking forward to Easter and THREE DAYS OFF.

Surprise!

2009-03-19T21:19:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I've written about music, which doesn't mean that I've stopped caring about it. In fact, I've fallen back head-over-heels into it. I do admit that for a while, I fell out of touch with music, and all of the joy it brought to me and all of the time I spent exploring it. Since I started school again, I've fallen back in love, with old bands and new (mostly old bands, with their new material; this is how I can tell that I'M getting old). Since September, I've been listening to Appleseed Cast, Why?, The New Pornographers, Bon Iver, Animal Collective, Lykke Li, Of Montreal, Mount Eerie (with Julie Doiron), Basia Bulat, Velvet Underground... my iPod must be getting tired. But damn, it's been fun.

I heard that the video for "People got a lotta nerve," the first single from "Middle Cyclone," Neko Case's new (and excellent) album was being released tonight on MTV, I hopped over to YouTube to see if I could find it. Instead, I found a video of someone playing it on expert on Rock Band! IT IS ON ROCK BAND. I've just finished singing it about eight times. I sucked royally at first; Neko has an amazing voice and mine is a timid mouse voice in comparison. After a few tries (and a few shots at Jimmy Eat World nostalgia on guitar) later, I was able to really belt it out and WOW it is fun to try to sing like her.

Do yourself a favour and try it (I cordially invite you to come over and play nintendo with me), or at least get the album!!

Things that I would write about if I didn't have to study:

2009-03-15T20:11:00.003-05:00

- How much I love having blocks of 24 hours packed full of wonderful people that I don't get to see nearly often enough.
- Going to really good shows.
- How awesome that Basia Bulat gal is at being an awesome person and great singer.
- Clafouti.
- Mrk and his blg.
- How I miss my other amazing friends that I also don't get to see nearly often enough, and all of the amazing things that they are doing and what strong, awesome women they are.
- All of the little seedlings I've planted recently, and how they are cute little sprouts now, and will be lunch soon.

Mmmmm....

2009-02-28T19:32:00.003-05:00

With Mark gone home for the weekend, I decided to make the 'most' of my Saturday. I'd planned on getting up early - maybe I'd go to the gym, get some work done for school, pot a houseplant, etc etc etc. While I only managed to do one of those things (potting the aloe plant, which took me all of three minutes), I did succeed in not being lazy, a rare feat for me on a Saturday! Ok... I started off lazy, sleeping in till 11:30 and then reading the New York Times over an entire pot of coffee (earlier this week, Mark roasted the beans himself!)

An hour or so later, I decided to walk down to the Chinese grocery and get some ingredients for soup, so that I could finally use up the chicken in my fridge. It was an unsuccessful trip - aside from finding some great-looking chilies and eggplants, I wasn't able to get much for the soup. On my way home, however, I decided to stop in at the newish African food store and check it out. Mark had been there in the past, and told me that it was worth checking out, but I hadn't gotten around to going in until today. It was so exciting! Not only was it an African shop, it was mainly Ghanaian! And the first thing I noticed? Shito!!!

(and what is shito you ask? it is simply the most delicious dried-shrimp-based-spicy-condiment-with-a-vaguely-dirty-name that you will ever taste, my friends)

After convincing the owners that I could handle the shito, I reworked dinner plans. The five minute walk to the grocery because a 3 hour odyssey as I walked around town, gathering more ingredients (and a couple of movie rentals too, movie night tonight!). Chicken soup became chicken stiry fry with a heaping forkful of shito mixed in. I made soup too, a delicious, simple mushroom soup with some of those awesome chilies. I even had enough rice left over to make rice pudding (white chocolate coconut!). So, despite knowing nothing new about kidneys (the school stuff that I could have worked on), I managed to fill my belly with loads of delicious, cheap, healthy food, and have a fridge full of leftovers!

Ps: here is my soup!

Procrasti-city

2009-01-28T16:51:00.002-05:00

Who would have thought that at 27, I'd still be procrastinating from school work? I have an impressive ability to wake up at a reasonable hour* (ok, this didn't happen today), and piss away the day until dinner without having done any actual work. Oh I find plenty of interesting stuff to read - the New York Times puts up new content fequently throughout the day and damn it makes me feel all smart n' stuff. I learn about new music, look at LOLcats (yes I sink that low, please don't judge), but when it comes to actual work,at times I have the attention span of a flea.

This isn't to say that I never get work done or that I never get some quality *on-topic* learning done, I just don't really have much control over when that happens. I also make up for days like today with days where I am up and at lecture/in tutorial/nose in a journal article from 8am to midnight. So maybe days like today are actually making up for those days?

Main point: thank you to my blogging friends, writers at the New York Times, and the LOLcats for helping me out.

* related to waking up at reasonable hours... yesterday I found what I thought would be the perfect 'wake-up-get-going-enjoy-yourself' song, one that would kick in hard immediately and not make me hit the snooze (FYI I'm talking about Contantines, something from Kensington Heights). EVEN THAT FAILED.

<3

2009-01-08T18:29:00.005-05:00

Wedding... where do I begin? It all happened so quickly, and so perfectly that it already feels like a dream. I remember various people warning me about how everyone hits the point where they just can't and don't want to smile anymore. I never got tired of smiling, I was so happy. I still am (even though I've been wrenched away from dream-land, landing back in school-land).

I approached this whole wedding business with a "float on" attitude - don't worry, because everything will eventually fall into place. While this may have puzzled some, and stressed out others, it was exactly what happened - thanks to everyone helping out in big and small ways. I mentioned this several times at the wedding, but the whole thing really was built on the love and talents of our friends and family. I feel like so many people made the most beautiful contributions, and the result was a night that many have described to Mark and I as an amazing event (some going as far as to call it the Best Wedding Ever!).

A few photos have started to trickle in, and I get so excited seeing every batch. I can't wait to show all the amazing little details... Matt's cake-topper, Gary's speech, Missy's cake box, other Matt's posters, Basia's songs, John's awesome MC-ing, Roche's photos (I am dying for those but am going to try my very hardest to be patient!) and my best friends' book, created for me, and so many other things! Between these and all the hard work going on behind the scenes by my mom, dad, Sharon, Paula, Megan, Seema and Maggie, it turned out to be an amazing party and the perfect wedding for Mark and I.

My main feeling right now is one of supreme luck. I'm always afraid to jinx this incredible luck that seems to stick with me, but I have to express it here. I'm SO lucky to have such a wonderful family, beautiful friends, and most of all, the most loving, thoughtful husband that I ever could have imagined.

Hopefully being incredibly thankful will counteract any jinxing. Here are few thanks, out of many!

Thank you to my parents who have welcomed Mark with open arms, and given me all the love and support a daughter could ever hope for.

Thank you to my new family - Maria, Ed, and Matt, along with all of the family in Poland. You've given me so much love already, and produced such a great dude.

To Paula: thank you for being beautiful, kind and graceful. You knew what needed to be done, and did it! You helped keep me on track, and were there for me when I was feeling stressed. You've ALWAYS been there for me, no matter what is going on in your life, and I am lucky to have you in my life.

To Sharon: thank you for being a wonderful role model. You make family life look so appealing! I love that despite all of the difficulties you face, you remain so loyal, funny, warm, and determined.

To Seema: What unbelievable grace and love. Everyone who meets you senses how loving and caring you are, and I'm so lucky to have you in my life.

To Maggie: Thank you for beeing so deep and so lighthearted. You are always willing to celebrate, and always willing to comfort. Most of all, thanks for coming to the wedding even though it meant missing the Chargers game!

To Megan: DUDE. Thank you for traveling across an ocean to be part of this. Thank you for making me laugh, and for helping me chill out when I got nervous and stressed about all the little last-minute details.

And Mark... wow. I am so, so lucky to have married that man. He worked so hard on making the wedding something that we would love, and it happened. I can't believe how amazing it feels to be able to call him my husband.

So thank all of you, including the many people I have yet to thank explicitly, for your love and congratulations. I'm so grateful for this life.

Ack! We are kinda almost adults now!

2008-12-04T14:47:00.003-05:00

Wow... less than one month until the wedding! There is still so much left to do (and hopefully most of it will be done this weekend), but one month from now, all of this craziness will be over.

In other "Jen'n'Mark are no longer big kids just playing house" news, we own a car. I guess technically, Mark is the one with the name on the ownership papers, but we both paid for it. We managed to hold out for one that suits us as much as possible (no, it is not just a bike with really awesome gears) - a 2004 Toyota Echo. Super fuel efficient, TINY, and... manual transmission. Neither of us drive stick. BUT with R's endless patience, and dad's regular patience, we are learning! We managed to take it around a few blocks near our house today, stalling it not too often, and only pissing off a handful of other drivers around us. R suggested getting some sort of sign for the back window asking people to please be patient because we are learning stick, and also to PLEASE NOT STOP TOO CLOSE TO OUR BUMPER.

Here is a picture of a car just like ours!

Soon, we will be able to drive it everywhere, and not just 1-5 blocks from our house :)

WOOOOO

Young Lions

2008-11-24T20:40:00.004-05:00

I'm sorry. It is silly of me to not post for a month and then do a non-post, but this meme is fun and i haven't written about music in a while. Fill it out yourself if you feel like doing a mad-lib with no worries about saying an adjective when you mean to say a verb.

1.Put your iTunes on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the meme as well as the person you got the meme from.

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY
Girl (built to spill)

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Pure Evil (P:ano - haha this one is great)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A BOY/GIRL?
SSleep (azure ray)

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Windsurfing nation (broken social scene)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Hold Hands and Fight (The Rosebuds) - wow this thing is good!

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Sleeping diagonally (Iron and wine)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Empty Shell (Cat Power - wow dudes that is HARSH!)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Redford (Sufjan Stevens - this is NOT TRUE)

WHAT IS 2+2?
Jigsaw Falling into Place (Radiohead)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
When we go, how we go. (Rock Plaza Central)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Listen to the Math (Tokyo Police Club; and he is writing a book about math!)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
All I have to Do is Dream (The Dandy Warhols, stubbs the zombie soundtrack)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Pressed in a Book (The Shins)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Lanterns (Microphones)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Jackie, dressed in Cobras (New pornos)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
A Visit from Drum

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Asleep. (The Smiths)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Fine Young Cannibals (Wolf Parade)

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
They are night zombies! (Sufjan Stevens - haha good call itunes)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Les Os (Unicorns; does that mean BEARS?!?!?! AHHH! Never mind, it just means bones)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Hart Crane (the anniversary)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Sun Spots (No Age)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Nude (Radiohead)

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
These are the Fables (New Pornos)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Think (James Brown)

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Recording a Tunnel (Bell Orchestre)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Reconstruction Site (The Weakerthans)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Steps and Numbers (appleseed cast)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Young Lions (Constantines)

Coffee Culture

2008-10-27T11:14:00.004-05:00

Those who know me tend to think I am somewhat of a coffee snob - although in my head I usually disagree. I think that I know far less about good coffee than an actual 'snob' would - I just happen to like it a lot. Yesterday, however, I truly felt like a snob. Mark and I decided to go check out the new coffee shop in St. Catharines, Coffee culture, because it is in a beautiful building, the premise sounded good, and I needed a place for caffeinated studying (my living room doesn't cut it sometimes).

WOW does that place ever suck. I was so impressed walking in (it is a beautiful looking place) - and then had to wait 10 minutes for my turn to order, not because they were busy, but because the two employees had to both ring in the orders, make the food/drinks, bring them out to tables rather than have one person on cash and the other making the food. Perhaps I am too used to other coffee shops? The set up was just really, really illogical. And yes, I know that sometimes in life you have to wait, especially for deliciousness - so I was hoping that my eventual coffee would be delicious!

... And it wasn't! After seeing an automatic espresso machine (=push a button, get a latte), Mark and I both decided to just get the organic, fair trade drip coffee. This turned out to be a pretty bad idea. Does anyone remember when fair trade coffee first entered the market? It was terrible. People who felt too guilty to drink regular coffee were the only ones drinking it, because if taste buds entered the equation at all, there was no way a coffee drinker would touch that stuff. Since then, fair trade coffees have come a long way and are as good, and usually better than most coffees, thanks to a big fancy coffee/know your farmer movement. I think coffee culture has managed to find the last remaining bags of the old, hideous stuff. Our coffees tasted like they had been sitting out in a dirty pot for about 6 hours.

If someone in St. Catharines starts up a good coffee shop, I swear that I will keep it afloat.

PS - my living room is looking better - Mark just made me a brownie latte!

Hi

2008-10-10T10:04:00.002-05:00

Cars:
I. HATE. CARS. I was stuck in traffic for two hours yesterday, on what should have been a 35 minute trip. I basically missed my tutorial as a result. That sucks! Also, last week I got a flat! It was really scary because it sounded like it was my engine (I obviously know nothing about cars), but after waiting nearly two hours on the side of the highway, I was helped by some of the world's nicest tow truck people, and super-awesome people at the Wal-Mart mechanic shop. YEP I actually like Wal-Mart (well, the employees at least) for something.

Life:
I am getting lazy. I have not exercised more than walking for quite a while. This is not good. Hopefully when school stuff gets switched to St. Catharines, I'll be able to use at least some of the current 10 commuting hours/week to keep my body healthy.

Friends:
-Nothing! I didn't even get to talk to P on her birthday, although messages were left :) I have not seen friends in a really long time! Well, except for school friends, and Gina who happened to be in town last weekend! Next weekend might contain a Jaime!

Wedding(!):
-My dress is in! And it fits! It may need some minor, minor alterations but it seems like all is well on that front!
-Basia is confirmed! This is beyond exciting and I'm so happy that she will be at the wedding. Mark and I are so lucky to have such talented friends. It is helping turn what could be a pretty stereotypical wedding into something very true to us.
-We have a few more big items on our list (like catering/invites/cake/dj) but hopefully, they will have nice little check marks next to them by this time next week. OK - that is a lie. There is no actual physical list, because Mark and I are not organized people. There is a cloud of stuff that gets remembered every once in a while by my head, so that cloud will have more little lines through it?

Harvest time

2008-09-26T09:32:00.004-05:00

I wish that my camera was working so that I could show all of the beautiful produce Mark brought home. One of the surprising upsides of the terrible market for teachers in St. Catharines has been his job at an organic farm just outside of town. He's been working insane hours this week - >12 hours on market days - but he's been liking it. Yesterday, he went with his boss to the Dufferin Grove Farmers market. This was the market just up the street from us when we lived in Toronto, and it was full of amazing produce and organic products (and the most delicious bread I've ever had in my life) year round. The summer season is just wrapping up at the market, and Mark's farm will only be going there for one more week (so stop by next Thursday and say hi to Mark!). Too bad, because look what he brought home last night: peaches, plums, grapes (green and red), onions, garlic, a squash (possibly a small melon?), potatoes, peppers and MY BREAD. MMMMM. I just had a sandwich with it, complemented by TWO lattes, and I'm in heaven.

I shouldn't complain too much, this is what we have now, lining the streets in easy biking distance:

Sadness: Mmmmmegs flew off to France last night. Canada is now Megsless. That is a very sad thought, but I am happy for the French. Have fun and come home soon, lady!

New post up...

2008-09-24T12:34:00.001-05:00

Here: http://jengoestomedschool.blogspot.com/

Summer!

2008-08-22T11:02:00.003-05:00

Wow, I'm getting bad at this. It's been a full month, and so much has happened. I quit BOTH of my jobs (although SB managed to give me an extra two weeks of perks, hooray), Mark and I took a pseudo-honeymoon, since we won't have one when we're actually married, and I've officially moved out of Toronto. Major events: Seema had her baby Maya, who is so beautiful. Sharon is about a week away from having a new Wyatt and two weeks away from going back to law school to finish her degree (if it isn't done in a completely crazy way, it's not worth doing - Sharon, you'd better write a book about your life some day!!). Paula has defended her thesis (complaining that it was too easy, my friends are brilliant), and is moving back to London to start a PhD. Megan has written her novel (it can now be named!), defended it, and is moving to France(!!!) to teach/be inspired. Maggie has written her thesis, and will be starting her PhD in the Fall with one of Canada's biggest scholarships. Not sure if I've mentioned it here before, but I've certainly thought it many times - had I not gotten back into school, I'd be the least accomplished of my friends - as it is, we all have to keep going on and getting more accomplishments to keep up with one another.

The last month has been pretty great - I've been able to be a little bit lazy, I've gotten a lot of things done, and Mark and finally traveled a big summer music festival. He planned a big trip out of it, with a stop in Montreal, a farm party in Vermont, camping in Cape Cod, and finally, All Points West festival and NYC. The vacation was great - just what I needed after working so much for the past 7 months (although, after the trip, I don't have much in the bank to show for those months!). Here are some photos:

We're now living in St. Catharines, so be sure to look us up durng trips to wine country. Mark and I biked to the Lake yesterday, and a river, and very near to some excellent wineries. We went swimming! And all of this is so close to our new home, which is much bigger and cheaper than our place in Toronto (guest room!) yet still manages to be pretty cute.

Also, Orientation week is next week. More on that (and med school) will be found HERE.

2008-07-20T20:13:00.004-05:00

In less than a month, I'll be leaving Toronto and moving to St. Catharines. I've noticed myself entering that 'pre-nostalgic' phase where I start missing something before it is over... Toronto has been very, very good to me - especially my last 9 months in little Portugal, easily my favourite neighborhood that I've EVER lived in. It's hard to think that I'll be trading in my street, with its cute little shops, interesting people, organic farmers market for a city that is much smaller and will be lacking in so much that I've come to take for granted. That said, I'm so unbelievably excited (and nervous!).

Everything seems a LITTLE bit more real with every item crossed off of my to-do list. This weekend was CPR/First Aid, very very interesting - but it made me realize that I'm going to have to do something about my vivid imagination. Every cartoon picture, description, even thought of an injury made my stomach flip. I really should get over that as soon as possible. As we were learning how to do baby CPR, I noticed that the babies were of the brand "911 INFANTry" - amazing. I'm hoping that the heads of real babies don't pop off as easily as these babies' heads did (but just to be safe, I should probably avoid holding Maya and Wyatt until their necks fuse).

OK, time for the random pic dump:

Imminent backslap:

Mark is really good at frisbee, but only when I'm not watching. I think he worries too much about impressing me.

I can't even think of a caption. I just love this picture.

And this guy.

I mean, who wouldn't?

We have some serious love. Look at our serious faces!

A Strong Offence

2008-06-17T21:27:00.003-05:00

Mark and I lucked into a pretty awesome frisbee team this year - we've got a great mix of experience and personalities on our team. I've played two games with them so far and both of them were a lot of fun - not like the crazy hardcore team we started the season with ("You have to run HARDER!" - ok, I guess that may sound reasonable, but not in the context in which it was used). I feel like I'll probably get a lot better over the season, develop skillz and such.

One thing I am 100% sure of: no game will ever top yesterday's. We played down at Marilyn Bell Park, where the edge of the field is no more than 5 metres from the lake (and yes, this resulted in the frisbee going swimming, courtesy of Mark). It was soooo pretty. There was a light sunshower at the start of the game, so we even got a rainbow (looking like it started at the CN Tower and arcing over to mid-lake). For added fun, I convinced Melissa to come be a sub for our team, so she got to show off her super awesomeness during her first game ever! Look what else she is awesome at:

The game itself was good - we were playing a really young (=fast & stamina) team, so we were doing pretty badly during the first half. After a mildly depressing halftime, we started coming together really well and came back from 8-1 to ending the game at 16-11. Not too shabby. Ok but what's so great about that Well, during the last point, we had two (well, FOUR) bonus players. I have no pictures to prove it but please believe me - two mounted police AND THEIR HORSES joined the game. The one in the darker uniform with the darker horse joined our team (black jerseys) and the other team bot the other pair. It was incredible, they were right into it, passing and chasing the game down the field. At one point, a girl on the other team got the disc and our horseman covered her by racing around her in the tightest loop I've ever seen a horse make. This went on for about 5-10 minutes, and then they left us to finish the game. We lost, but hey (hay?), who really cared?

Paging Dr. J.E.R-K?

2008-05-16T16:26:00.003-05:00

Offer of Admission, McMaster University MD Program

2008-05-15T09:16:00.001-05:00

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Three things about today:

2008-05-01T13:24:00.000-05:00

1. As I biked past Much Music on my way to work, some lady/camera crew handed me a little pot of daffodils. It was like one of those pit stops in bike races, except flowers instead of water, and me nearly falling off my bike on camera rather than a seamless, graceful pass-off.

2. My coworker called me from TWO CUBICLES AWAY. It's not like there is even a person in the cube between us that he would be worrying about disturbing. I stopped talking into the phone and he didn't even notice because he is FIVE FEET AWAY.

3. I am going to the Farmer's Market with Gina, where we will trash talk Missy.

The Waiting Game

2008-04-17T11:34:00.002-05:00

It's been a week and a half since The Big Interview, and I feel removed enough from it now to be able to talk/post about it without crushing waves of anxiety rolling over me. I was pretty good about not getting too nervous leading up to the interview - I tried not to think about it too much on Friday and felt pretty calm and in control on Saturday during the interview itself, but now that all had been said and done, is when the real nerves have kicked in. I hate that I have absolutely no control over the application any more, all I can do is wait wait wait until May 15th, when I will hopefully get an email with AMAZING news, or even just 'not bad' news. Or no email at all, meaning bad news. But there is nothing that I could say or do between now and then that will speed up the process, or showcase me and make me seem like a wonderful, obvious choice.

Mark's parents kicked in with a couple things to help me through this time: a bottle of wine (helped the night of the interview!) and "Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Cures", a book that I have wanted to read for at least a year. I just finished it yesterday, and it was truly the perfect book for me to read at this point in my life. I'm unable to think about much other than medicine at the moment (unless I'm distracting myself with music or Mario), and the novel captured both my obsession with getting in as well as the feeling of having done (for this point in time) everything that I can and realizing that some things are out of my control, and life is just like that. Having read the book, I feel like I can move on a bit from thinking and worrying about my results, and just be happy while I wait. Hopefully, I'll get good news - if not, I'll hope for another year like this last one - it's been awesome.

A Short Message from Annie

2008-04-01T15:57:00.000-05:00

qq1aaaaaqaaaaaaqqaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzaaaaaaaaaaaa

Love and kisses,
Annie

Looking forward to a break.

2008-03-17T13:36:00.001-05:00

Last week, I had started to write a post about how I was looking forward to taking a break from 60 hour workweeks. Then, as it frequently happens these days, I got busy and never finished the post. I'm still looking forward to taking a break, but now I have no idea when that might happen. I've managed to find a new job within the same organization that I've been working for, and this time it will be an actual honest-to-goodness contract, meaning that I won't have 30% of my paycheque lost to a temp agency. That's good news! But... it does mean that I'll be phased into the new job starting this week, this crazy, crazy week. On top of it all, I caught some sort of something and feel pretty miserable at the moment. I'm hoping that it won't get worse, because I absolutely can't take time off this week.

Work is going to start to get a lot better though, and not only because of content. Mark and I took advantage of the beautiful weather (and my day off!) on Saturday to wander around the neighborhood. We wandered right over to Kensington Market, where we stopped in at Bike Pirates and found us some pretty new wheels. Mine is a gorgeous Ross 3-speed (from the 60s? I think so!), and even though I'd decided to get all mechanical this year, I bought it even though it is in great operating condition. I'm looking forward to learning how to repair/tune it up myself, and I also might put some sort of clear coat ont he frame to protect it from further rusting. Once the weather gets better, and my March Metropass runs out, I'm going to start biking to/from work, hopefully giving myself a healthy dose of activity and 'fresh' air a couple times a day. Also, I can join bike posses now.

We also walked across Queen West during our wanders, and since I've finally saved enough money, we booked our wedding band workshop!! I'm so excited - this should be a lot of fun, and we're hopefully going to end up with beautiful, original rings. I can't wait for our workshop day - it should be a lot of fun and will be something that we'll remember for a long time. Fun story: When we were shopping for an engagement ring and mentioned to a jeweller that we'd be making our own wedding bands at a jewllery workshop, he guffawed at us and said, in the snootiest voice imaginable, that at his shop, we could "actually get something that looks good." We didn't buy from him. (I'm not sure if I updated my ring thoughts here since my post about being 100% against the ring - well, I guess I am a hypocrite. I got a ring anyways, and it is lovely and not a typical engagement ring, and we did not spend the equivalent of a down payment for a house)

Random Thoughts for a Thursday

2008-03-06T12:04:00.002-05:00

Wow! There is less than one month to go until The Big Interview. I am trying to brainstorm, come up with talking points that showcase how Awesome I Am and how I Will Be An Excellent Choice. I am feeling fairly confident - let's hope that I can hold onto that feeling! My current day job has a ton of downtime, and while that can make it boring and monotonous at times, I've been trying to use it to research areas of professional interest and to make myself a smarter cookie (I just did a google image search to see if I could find a photo of cookies spelling out a math equation or something along those lines, and there WEREN'T ANY! This seems like an untapped market - if The Big Interview doesn't work out, maybe this can be my business).

I skipped Deerhoof/No Age last night. I'm pretty sad about it, because I love both of those bands... but I have been so tired this week that the last thing I could imagine was staying out till two am on a worknight. I justified it to myself by deciding that instead of going out and dancing all night, I'd go to the gym or do my new yoga dvd (yes, you can laugh at me for this one). Well, I didn't do either. I stayed home and flipped between Futurama and Iron Chef: America, and went to bed at 10. I think I made the right decision, despite Mark's tsk-tsk'ing this morning. My body and mind are happy and loving me today for resting both of them last night. I got so much sleep!

One final, very important note: Thank you so much to all of the people who congratulated me on my last post, and who helped out with the thing that led to the thing in the post (haha, I am being SO VAGUE!). You guys are awesome and make me feel good about myself and my friends and my life, and I wish that more kudos had been given to everyone who helped me get to Ghana, because there is no way I could have done it on my own.

I can't WAIT until I get a new computer so that I can start posting photos and music again. This blog has been so boring lately.

Not sick, but definitely tired.

2008-03-03T14:49:00.001-05:00

Daaamn, I need some r&r. The sleepiness is worth it though, because I have made many dollarz, enabling me to pay many billz. Also, I have hung out with, in only one week: Paula, Rafa, Sharon, Talon, John, Jenny, Ryan, Maggie, and BOTH sets of parents! And I worked 60 hours (dollarz!).

In other yay!-worthy news, Mark and I may have found our reception site. YAY!

Some people think I should link to this.

2008-02-28T13:43:00.001-05:00

I think I might be getting sick. Damn it, why can't I have sick days?

2008-02-25T14:33:00.005-05:00

The last few weeks have been absolutely amazing - I was going to wait until I uploaded some photos before I posted here, but since the last of our computers seems to have internally combusted (no, not really, but it might as well have), I guess you'll just have to imagine the images. I'll give prompts when you're supposed to imagine!

Starting with the boring: I've fixed my boots problem by only wearing office shoes, and leaving the boots behind. Yes, this has caused an increase in "# days shoes get snowy," but has also resulted in a %100 reduction in "# days Jen looks like an idiot clumping around in winter boots indoors."

(Image# 1: Black pointy toe shoes ON MY FEET UNDER MY DESK. Note the startling lack of similarity to clunky salt-stained winter boots!)

Moving on to the awesome!

An amazing meat-filled week (I'm officially designating March as 'Meatless March' to make up for it) was had with our favourite Austrians ever. We braved frigid temperatures, snow storms, and beautiful sunny days to have some of the best winter fun Toronto has to offer. I finally went to Phil's BBQ, and have some of the best bbq that I've ever had. It was a hit with Chris and Vera too, who pronounced it the best bbq ever.

Skating at Nathan Phillips Square was great, except for my size-too-small skates (how did that happen??). Correction - it was great AFTER I had them sharpened - my two laps before I had them sharpened led to 3 separate moments of Jen spawled on ice. I decided I'd had enough after about 20 minutes, and went back to my office to grab some things that we'd left there while C, V, and Mark finished up on the ice. On my way back, both arms loaded down with books and skates, I took atumble into a slush puddle.

IMAGE: Me, face down in slush, business types diverging around me while I brush off the dirty wet ice and try not to cry because I am very very embarrassed and my pinky finger is sprained. Poor me.

Our last night in Toronto with Chris and Vera was greta - they cooked us an amazing pasta (the sauce had nearly an entire bottle of red wine!) and I made us some chocolate volcano cakes before we headed out to my new favourite bar ever, the Crooked Star, for some of their awesome Caesars (they have FIVE different kinds! All blazingly spicy!) and a round of Oh Hell.

Thursday morning was very sad - V&C had cleared out before we woke up, and their absence was definitely felt. Toronto decided to cheer me up though - from the subway to work I was surrounded by little pink hearts spraypainted in the snow! (IMAGE: little pink hearts! In snow!). Our Valentine's day was nice - as usual we didn't really 'celebrate'- just cooked ourselves a nice dinner complete with wine and Cinema Paradiso.

On Friday, I left for Montreal with my two favourite Toronto M's (Mark and Maggie) to see my favourite Montreal M! Over the course of our three day weekend, we drank many (, many, many) bottles of red wine, saw some art (damn lack of student card!), cooked a lot of yummy food, went out for a lot more yummy food, and had front row seats for a hilarious taping of CBC's "The Debaters." We met up with Vera and Chris again for Poutine and smoked meat, finally saying goodbye and immediately starting to wish we were planning another trip to Austria. We also made the most of our one toboggan on top of Montreal:

(IMAGE: One bright yellow inflatable toboggan, a maggie lying on top of it, with a Megan and a Jen sitting on the Maggie. Five seconds later: A bright yellow inflatable toboggan, a Maggie lying on top of it, with a a Jen sitting on the Maggie, and a Megan sprawled 10m back. Ten seconds later: One bright yellow inflatable toboggan, with a Maggie sprawled beside it, a Jen sprawled 5m back, and a snowy Megan walking toward. You must put big smiles on all involved, and laughing onlookers in your image.)

GOOD TIMES!

I am currently in the midst of a Paula visit, so there will be more updates soon!

Forgetfulness

2008-02-13T11:42:00.002-05:00

I would like to fix whatever fault in brain is causing me to forget to bring shoes to work with me. Stomping around in my winter boots all day for the second day in a row SUCKS. Mark was helpful on the streetcar this morning, pointing out that I HAD remembered to bring my skates and could wear those instead.

PS - Looking forward to skating at Nathan Phillips Square this afternoon! If anyone is in the area, you should come! I'll be there with my amazing Austrians around 3:30-4ish, staying until we are in desperate need of hot chocolate.

BLOGS DON'T UPDATE THEMSELVES MISSY

2008-02-01T09:56:00.000-05:00

(side note - I've forgotten to bring my camera along for about a month, so there are no lovely pics to illustrate the fun stuff that I did manage to do in January)

Title credited to my writing coach, the slavedriver Ms. Megan F. I just noticed that I had almost posted a 'new' thing back at the beginning of January, but it never got past the draft stage. I do have very legitimate reasons for NOT posting though - at the moment I am working two jobs and I just calculated that in January, I worked an average of nearly 60 hours per week. Wowsa. I'm liking it though, and not feeling burnt-out. I've decided that the non-burnout is due largely to the fact that my two jobs are polar opposites of each other. My theory is that the hours worked at the one cancel out hours worked at the other - so if I work 20 at one, and 40 at the other in a given week, it's like I've only worked 20 hours. Wow, 20 hours - I'm so lazy!

The last time I felt this way was back at the end of high school, and for brief periods during my undergrad. Instead of being worn out by all of the hours of my day taken up by duties, I was energized and happy. That's pretty much how I'm feeling now. I'm also pretty thrilled that I've finally paid off the last of my trip/application debt, and I can start saving again and splurging on the little things I've been avoiding for the past few months, like going for nice dinners with friends, buying cds and concert tickets, etc.

The one major downside is that it's become very hard to plan my life to include as much time with friends as I'd like. I haven't seen Sharon in WEEKS, shameful since we are living in the same city and work two blocks apart. For that reason, I'm looking VERY forward to her superbowl party this weekend (it's certainly not for the football reason - I've honed my skill of attending s-bowl parties and watching fewer than 5 minutes of the actual game). There's also the hope that I'll get to see Paula and Maggie, and generally gave a kickass day.

Awesome things:
Sushi with friends.
Fancy dinners with friends.
Movies with friends.
Yoga (with friends).
Friends.
Sbux sandwiches, mostly.

Sucky things:
Pain in shoulder.
Working 26 out of 40 hours.
Sbux Antipasto Sandwiches (41! grams of fat, including 8! saturated! >2000 mg sodium! >750 calories! Eat it and you will die!)

Yes, I am THAT lame.

2007-12-13T14:55:00.001-05:00

moar funny pictures

Fruitcake!!!

2007-12-13T13:48:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again! I am eating my second slice of my mom's famous fruitcake, and it is wonderful. Luckily, it is one of the few foods that Mark doesn't like & won't eat, so I get all of it to myself, hahaha.

I am working like crazy lately, missing out on all sorts of fun stuff but making the much needed $$$ for the holidays, and the much needed lattes for stressed out holiday shoppers. I promise that in January I will also get a job that uses the years of education I've put into my head.

We had some more awesome couchsurfers here last week - Emily and Hannah from Washington. They were loads of fun, more so for Mark who got to hang with them and create all sorts of inside jokes - me, I was working, boo.

Currently, I'm looking forward to next Friday, which is a very special lady's very special birthday, and also the day that I leave for skiing with Mark's family. See, it's ok for me to do that because very special lady is going out to the movies that night, and doesn't want me home. I still feel guilty. I have good plans and ideas though!!!

Caption me.

2007-12-01T14:19:00.000-05:00

Courtesty of Megan's awesomely long update - my favourite photo of Mark and I! What were we looking at?!

Thursday Grab Bag

2007-11-29T15:27:00.000-05:00

Last night Mark and I headed out to Whitby for a belated birthday dinner. I gathered up my mom, dad, and grandparents, and we had some pretty wicked sushi. Ok, Dad, Mark and I had sushi, while everyone else opted for food that is cooked. It was really nice, and made me appreciate what a great family I have. I feel so loved and valued, and genuinely enjoy everyone's company. WARM FUZZY FEELINGS ABOUND.

Mark and I came back into the city this morning - he's at school and I've been having a pretty great day in the apartment. I did laundry, read the newish New Yorker, had myself a white chocolate mocha (mmmmm), a surprise call from my favourite Londoner - a dude who is renowned for his bad phone habits but has been making a habit of proving us all wrong over the last few months. Also, I checked out the gym that is a mere 2 minutes from my apartment. I think I will join, fingers are crossed for membership assistance. I've also checked out a bunch of job postings. My heart is currently not in it, for fear of landing some sort of mediocre position that will ruin my chances of attending the annual family-in-law ski Christmas. I'm still hoping for non-mediocre positions though.

I found a new internet radio player, Iceberg Radio, and the Canadian Indie station has been consistently awesome for the 30 minutes that I've been listening to it. They're currently playing the We're Marching On song that was in my head for 2 months this summer while I traveled. Speaking of traveling, I've not stayed true to my promise of posting pics. Here are some random ones:

KITTY!

2007-11-24T13:51:00.000-05:00

I am still sick, but ALMOST not sick anymore. I've spent a lot of the past week just lounging around the apartment, and this little gal has been an endless source of entertainment and company:

I caught Kurt's cold.

2007-11-16T13:30:00.000-05:00

I know I've been neglecting this space lately. It's not that I've been busy or anything, I've just been not in a very bloggy sort of mood. Lots of good stuff has (have? has.) been happening lately, like... getting engaged. That's probably why I've not been blogging - it feels so weird to write that on the internet. Mark and I are really, really happy! We haven't put much thought into planning yet, except for a rough 'next-fall' idea for the date.

I've also been thinking about the whole 'engagement' process. My current ring is from a No Frills vending machine (the first one was from Dominion, but it broke and was quickly replaced). I really love the sentiment of these rings - its very sweet and surprisingly personal. I'm not sure that I want to replace it with a 'real' ring though - I've always pictured myself as just a wedding band girl, no big shiny thing on my finger (also surprising, normally I am transfixed by shiny things whenever I walk past them). I also don't want poor Mark to feel like he needs to spend a small fortune on so that I can feel like I'm fitting in with expectations. I would much rather have that money put aside for something that will benefit US - like a house account or something like that. I guess my mind is pretty made up and this is all myself coaxing myself into bucking tradition.

In other fantabulous news, Rafael is finally here from Cuba!! After a year and a half, Sharon's Canadian family is complete! IT was so great to see Rafa again - the last time I saw him was their wedding, and I had never dreamed that it would take this long for him to get here. He and Sharon seemed so happy together, very much like an old (well, half-old HAHA) married couple. I can't wait for double dates and being there as Rafa experiences so many new things :)

Birthday shoutouts go to Megan, who is not nearly as old as I am, but still supercool. Mark and Kurt and I spent a whirlwind 24 hours with her and Derek in Mtl last weekend - good times were had despite we three Torontonians wimping out at midnight and leaving the Montrealers out partying till 4am. I think we made up for it on Sunday on our wonderful croissant-fuelled walk through Parc LaFontaine with its multitude of cute dogs.

AMBUSH!!!!:

Kurt has to sit by himself because he is a smoker:

There is a puppy nearby!

Heading home, with energy!

FINE

2007-10-26T12:21:00.000-05:00

Since somebody *cough*sharon*cough* has been hassling me about my lack of posts, here we go. In my defense, I've been too busy talking to people in real life to put stuff on the internet, and most of the stuff I want to talk about is not the stuff I want to be stumbled upon here.

Some things:

The Welcome Home Warming party that Mark planned was great. There was lots of fun, and great people, and vodka ahoy. Some of us were the worse for wear the next day, but some croissants in Trinity-Bellwoods made our stomachs happy anyways. All of our couches have been broken in by sleepover guests and I got to spend some good times with Paula who came all the way from Windsor for the night! It was great having her, Maggie, Sharon and John (all of my London 'girls') here for the night.

Now, I'm getting ready for a potluck. I'm thinking brownies and maybe something else...

I'm getting really excited for Sharon, who may have a husband in her house by this time next week. WOOOO!

Also: Atrish is coming to visit! YAY!!! I have to think of super fun things to do this weekend, hopefully involving Halloween parties and sushi. I made myself a hooded cape yesterday - I just have to decide whether to be red riding hood, zombie red riding hood (I know, it's stupid), or some yet to be determined superhero.

Speaking of making things, you may have noticed the quantity of housewifey things I've been up to. I'm unemployed, and starting to worry about it a bit. BUT I have an interview lined up for Monday, and hopefully some other prospects as well. Wish me luck!

And she's back!

2007-10-13T18:39:00.000-05:00

Wow. For the first time in almost four months, my feet are on Canadian soil. It really feels surreal - I can't believe that my travels, for the moment, are over. I've missed Canada, my friends, my family, for so long. It's good to be home, but I know I'm going to miss the freedom of my travels. But, now its time to find myself a job, pay off the bills, and settle into life in one place.

Tomorrow, I get to see Mark for the first time in more than two months. I'm unbelievably excited - it's impossible to sit around home but equally impossible to focus on a task for long enough to get it done. Mark has found us a new apartment and I get to move in tomorrow. Little Italy, here I come! Today, I'm procrastinating from packing, but hopefully I'll manage to at least bundle together a coherent collection of clothes - I can worry about the rest later.

I'll post a trip update later, for now here's a random image from my day: I went to Chapters to pick up a New Yorker (yay! the one Western luxury that I've missed!) and glancing out into the mall, I saw a grown man (grey hair and all) riding a mechanical giraffe, with a soother in his mouth. Way to go Oshawa, you just got weirder.

OMG I am DONE

2007-09-28T12:33:00.000-05:00

A quick update before I head out to dinner: I have officially completed my program with Unite for Sight, and I have also just submitted applications for school next year. That is nuts. Also, I finished the applications 3 days early, unheard of for me! I am all kinds of happy right now.

I will post some thoughts on my experiences here in the near future - for now, I am going to be too busy enjoying my last 5 days in Ghana. I'm planning on traveling with some friends to a place called Beyin tomorrow - it is supposed to be a beautiful beach ton on the West part of Ghana's coast. From there, we're going to travel to Nzulezu, a village nearby built on stilts above the water. I'm excited!

I should be back in Accra by Tuesday night, and then I'll finish my preparations for leaving. And now, have a look at my Thursday:

-leave here at 01:00
-arrive airport b/t 01:30 and 02:00
-fly from Accra to Morocco at 05:15
-Arrive Morocco around 09:00
-Fly Morocco to Brussels around 14:00
-Arrive Brussels around 18:30
-Catch bus from Brussels to London (?) at 21:00
-Meet my cousin first thing Friday morning.

THAT IS NOT A FUN DAY.

But then, I get to see people who know me! And love me! And I get to hang out in England and Wales for a week with my mom. THAT IS FUN.

Akwaaba (you are welcome)

2007-09-12T17:22:00.000-05:00

Well, I've officially been here for four weeks! I'm having a fantastic time, and am so happy that I came here. This past week and a half has been our busiest yet, hence the delay in sending the email. Our work handing out flyers around Accra has paid off, because we're seeing about double the typical number of patients at our local screening centre. Outreaches have been especially busy, with the minimum number of patients still above 100, and the max at well over 150. We were very lucky this week to have two professionals with us. One is Dr. Lotfi Merabet, an optometrist/professor at Harvard Medical School - he's here to help out with outreaches as well as to teach our ophthalmic nurses whatever he can. Oddly enough, before going into optometry, he did a PhD in vision research in the same lab as Claudine (for those who don't know Claudine, she's a post-doc at York and a very brilliant/wonderful person)! One of the other new additions to the group is Roberta, a young doctor from Italy. Having more than one person doing the actual checkups is helping things run more smoothly. I saw the monthly report for August yesterday - over the month (I was part of the program for the second half of August), we saw almost 1500 people over the course of about 20 outreaches. 150 of those people were referred for surgery.

My most interesting day was probably last monday, when Maureen and I went with Margaret (a nurse from the Crystal Eye Clinic) to the Liberian refugee camp in Buduburam. Buduburam is home to approximately 46 000 refugees who fled from Liberia during the civil war. Most of them lost their homes and family, and likely will stay in Ghana for the rest of their lives rather than go home to try and start their lives from the beginning again. There is a full-time screening program there that is run by local volunteers, and once every two weeks Margaret spends a day at the camp to see the patients who need medicine or possibly referrals for surgery. The camp was extremely well-run and efficient. We saw well over 100 patients, with Margaret diagnosing, referring and prescribing at an average of 2.5 minutes per patient! Everybody was friendly, and it was a very positive experience.

Aside from work, we did manage to have some fun this week too. We visited the Wli waterfalls on Sunday, and it was probably the most beautiful place that I've ever seen. I waded through the water and got within about 5 metres of the falls. Apparently, you can stand right under them during the dry season, but since we've had a lot of rain, they were a bit too 'watery' to do that during our visit. Standing so close to the waterfall made me feel like I was at a spa - the wind and water coming off them felt like an intense body scrub, something I desperately needed after spending 4 weeks in the smoke and dust of Accra. On our drive back from the falls, we stopped at the monkey sanctuary and saw some monkeys. We brought bananas with us, and the monkeys peeled and ate them right out of our hands! That was a very good day.

Accra Week Two!

2007-09-01T03:25:00.000-05:00

I've had a very busy, and very good second week in Accra. I feel like I'm settling into my life here a little bit more - feeling more comfortable with my clinic and outreach duties, making new friends and getting more confident with exploring my surroundings. As with last week, my favourite part of the program is outreach. We did a few more local outreaches this week, seeing about 70 - 100 patients each time. I also completed my training, so I'm now able to dispense medicines and feel like I'm really helping our patients.

The most significant part of the last week was our overnight outreach. While Accra has a lot of need for eye care, regions outside of the greater Accra area are in even greater need. For this reason, a three night trip was planned to take us to New Edubiase, which is about 4 hours Northwest from Accra. We left Sunday afternoon and had a pretty relaxed night - got dinner and then went back to our hotel (The 'Holliday Inn' , haha) where we killed some giant spiders (they were really, really scary) and went to bed. Other than the spiders, the place was really nice! Our two outreaches went really well - on the first day, we met the local chief and then went to a village where we saw just over 100 patients, referring 19 of them for cataract surgery. The second (and final) day was really busy - we saw more than 200 patients over 9.5 hours, referring 30 of them for surgery. That was also my first day actually dispensing medications, and it went very smoothly. It was interesting thinking that the number of patients sent for surgery just from that one day of outreach would have used up all of the money we each raise for Unite for Sight - at the time it felt like a lot of money but I'm sure that the demand for surgery extends far beyond the money we bring in. We ended up staying in New Edubiase again that night rather than drive back in the dark to Accra (we were all too tired anyways). It's likely that we'll be going back there again next month, a trip that I'm looking forward to very much.

The rest of the week has been relatively low-key. On Thursday I went to a market to hand out some flyers advertising the Unite for Sight eye camp (and picked up some cool souvenirs to bring home). We had an outreach today that was pretty successful, and we'll be going on outreach again tomorrow. Aside from work, we've got some fun plans for the weekend - we're going to a beach tomorrow night, and hopefully we'll be doing a day trip to a canopy walk and a former slave castle on Sunday! While Accra isn't the sort of place to do 'sight-seeing,' its really interesting and after all of the sight-seeing in Europe, it feels like a really unique and lively place. Accra itself is huge, and the landscape surrounding it is very dry and barren, but as you drive outside of it for any distance the land changes and you see remnants of the rainforests that used to cover the area. I'm hoping that sometime in the next month we may get a Saturday off so that we can do a weekend trip to some other coastal places that are supposed to be really nice.

And on a completely unrelated note, I managed to get a care package from my parents! I've been pretty close to running out of a few necessities (contact lens solution etc) thanks to some bottles opening in my checked luggage. Mom and dad came to the rescue, and with my boxes of fancy granola bars, twizzlers, cookies (although apparently mom thinks that I need a diet, she gave me oreo 'thinsations,' with only 100 cal per pack and none of that great oreo taste!) I'm now the envy of the other volunteers. I also have some tea and a flashlight c/o my awesome neighbors Don and Colleen who arranged the shipping :) Thanks so much guys!

Hi again

2007-08-25T09:04:00.000-05:00

It's turned out to be quite a slow Saturday in Accra. We were up bright and early and ready by 7:45 to head out, but as sometimes happens, the driver was late to pick us up. I used the bonus time to: go to the bank (all by myself! go me!), do my laundry (by hand, go me!) and make my first hot chocolate (from Belgium, yumm. And the hot chocolate wasn't all by myself, I offered Atrish, my food soulmate, a sip, and he had three, but it's ok since he shares his spicy food with me). Finally, we headed to the outreach, only to find out that it hadn't been publicized at all and thus there were only 4 patients. Packing stuff up at noon, we headed back to the guesthouse where I am taking full advantage of the lack of power outages and internet outages to write this down.

Tomorrow we're headed off to parts unknown to do a three-day outreach. I'm a little bit apprehensive about where we'll be staying, what we'll be eating and that sort of thing, but I'm trying to not worry and just be excited. I'm really enjoying hanging out with the other volunteers, so really, this will be just like a road trip with friends where instead of just getting somewhere and drinking, we will get somewhere and be useful and helpful and make people not blind before we drink our box of $1.25 wine. Did I mention that we found wine, 1 litre, for 1.25? It's really bad. BUT: 1.25.

Also, I had a dream last night where I got married. I had on a really pretty lace dress, and I took a limo to the ceremony, and the next thing I knew I was waking up the next morning at home and telling people I couldn't remember what happened after I got out of the limo and nobody believed that I'd forgotten my own wedding so soon.

I'm feeling a little bit silly today, can you tell?

PS: OGC hahaha.

In Africa!!

2007-08-18T12:08:00.000-05:00

First things first: Congratulations to Sharon, Rafa and Talon!!! I am so happy for you guys! I can't wait to come home and have a celebratory mojito with you.

Ok, long time no update!!!

I'm not sure that I'll get much better at updating, but I wanted to let everyone know that I'm finally here! And also, Tai, the package I sent to you got returned to my home, so if you want, you can email me a new address :)

AFRICA!

I arrived here on Tuesday morning at 3am. After a little airport mix-up that left me hanging out by the taxi stand until 6:30, I finally was picked up and made it to the guest house that I'm staying at by 7ish. I pretty much slept the whole first day!

The next day was my first day working with Unite for Sight, and man do they ever throw you right in there! I went with some other volunteers to a village called Choechoe where we were running an outreach program. I went with another volunteer to set up the visual acuity tests, and after a few patients I'd gotten the hang of it. The only difficult part is that there is often a language barrier. We have translators, but they've been known to wander off at times! The day wasn't too busy (so i was told) - we only saw about 50 patients.

Thursday wasn't quite as good - I went with the other new volunteer (my roomate) to the Eye Clinic to watch surgeries. Well, it was pretty much just like the last time I watched surgeries, except it was after a questionable lunch and followed by a bumpy ride home. I went to sleep for the rest of the night. I think I am definitely going to lose all of the weight that I packed on in Europe.

Yesterday was uneventful, except that I ate a bit and wasn't sick :)

Today, however, was awesome. We had another outreach, and ended up seeing 140 patients. I did registration all day, which means that I did a basic interview with each patient to find out what their major eye complaint was. There was a bit of a lull in the middle of the day so I played frisbee with the kids that were hanging around - so much fun!

Now I think I'm going to have myself a shower. And by shower, I mean fill buckets of water and dump them over my head.

Wien!

2007-07-25T12:44:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the random writing style of this email, I only have a few mins before dinner!

Vienna (Wien) Day 1!
Arrived early in the morning after an interesting sleep on a night train. Vienna has a lot of free/near-free bikes that we signed up to use. Our couchsurfing host Martin (who, btw, is very nice) took us on a short bike tour of the the ring, or first district. When it started to rain too much, we ducked into buildings (had a great juice in the cafe of a museum). One of the buildings we went to was the Austrian parliament, where we ended up getting a 20 min video history of vienna/austria. Went out for a good, cheap meal, and then back to Martin's where we watched "The Third Man" for another taste of viennese history.

Day 2!
Mark and I had a fantastic time today. We got up pretty early and walked around the main district. We visited two museums: the Leopold, and the Secession. The Leopold was fantastic, they had a great exhibit of Kolo Moser's works, and a few other really great artists. We also went to Cafe Central, which is a very famous old coffeehouse (Wien has a great coffeehouse tradition, it's the perfect city for me!!) and had some great coffees and shared a piece of their signature cake (this was breakfast #2, after breakfast #1: gelato). We then walked to see the famous (and old) Ferris wheel from the movie 'the third man,' and then it was back to Martin's for an amazingly refreshing shower. We're just getting ready to go out for sushi now - hooray!!

Guten Tag!

2007-07-21T12:25:00.000-05:00

Hi from Berlin!

This is by far them most beautiful city that we've seen so far, which is saying a lot. Mark and I rented some bikes today and biked around the city (and for a few hours, joined a free bike tour that gave us so much info). There are so many incredible places here. Despite biking around for about 7 hours, I feel like we've only had the most cursory tour of the city. Tomottow we're hopefully going to see more places in more detail.

It's a bit incredible to be in a city that has been around for such a long time, but feels completely new. Even the buildings that look really old are new - most had to be rebuilt after the war. Also, it hasn't even been 20 years since the fall of the Berlin wall (of which we've seen many fragments), and you can feel the rebirth that is still occurring. The weather was fantastic today, but is supposed to be a bit rainy tomorrow so we will likely hit up some museums, and our favourite cafe. We'll be here until Monday night, when we catch our first overnight train (we splurged for the couchettes rather than the upright seats) to Vienna. I've found us a place to stay (couchsurfing again!!) and I'm very excited!

Dzien Dobry!

2007-07-16T15:44:00.000-05:00

Wow - loads of internet access here in Slupsk!! I'm trying to upload some photos now, if it works then I'll share them here or post a link :)

As with pretty much every trip that I go on, I leave updating until I've done so much that it's overwhelming to think of putting it all down. I think that the last time I wrote, I was in Krakow. Since then, Mark and I have been to Zakopane (in the South of Poland), on a farm near Wroclaw (aka Breslau) - with massive food poisoning from an ill-conceived idea to eat kebab from the basement of a train station, in Gdansk and many surrounding areas, and now in Slupsk.

Gdansk was really, really nice - mostly because Mark's family there was amazing. We spent almost the entire week with his cousin Bozena's daughter Weronika, who was our faithful guide and co-mischief-maker. We managed to see (I think) everyone on Mark's dad's side there, which was no small feat. A lot of time was spent on the coast of the Baltic Sea - testing the water, swimming a little, a lot of walking, and some amber-hunting (I found some!!) We also toured around the Stare Miastro (old town) where we snuck onto the roof of the famous 'Golden Gate' and had a beautiful, exclusive view of Gdansk's most famous street.

As for family, wow. We spent one day with Mark's cousin Ella's family, where we got to celebrate the double birthday of her son and daughter. While we were there we also went to see Stuthoff concentration camp, which was just a few minutes away. We spent a day on Mark's uncle Stachu's (sp?) farm, where we picked raspberries (Maliny) and cherries (Wisnie) that I turned into a crisp for the aunt and uncle that we stayed with. Bozena and family took Mark and I to see Malbork - a famous castle about two hours from Gdansk that dates back to the 1200s. It had been destroyed completely during the war, but was restored in the following years. I'm feling a bit of old, beautiful building overload, but I'm going to soldier on because I know I have many, many more to see! After the castle, we went to a rented cabin on a lake, where we swam, kayaked and grilled kielbasa to our hearts content. Mark's aunt and uncle were wonderful - I will probably be full until Africa from all of the amazing food that his aunt made for us. Most of it was made from fruits and veggies from their garden and the farm! They also gave us some wonderful gifts - to Mark, a ring, and to me, an ambernecklace. I was blown away. And completely rivalling Rafa's grandmother for 'most adorable woman ever' was Makr's babcja Kowgier. From when she held my hand the whole way home from the train station the first day that we met, to the goobye hug today, I felt nothing but love from her. Awww... I miss her so much already!! It was so sad to leave them today, but we were looking forward to meeting Mark's mom's side of the family which made it a bit easier.

Slupsk, whie a bit more low-key, has been so nice. We've sat and talked (as best as we can with Mark's pretty good Polish, and my terrible Polish), ate, and went to their garden. They are so nice and I'm really looking forward to spending this week with them. Tomorrow, Mark and I are going to go to a beach, and possibly again on Wednesday. After a lot of rain during the first week in Gdansk, the weather has turned absolutely beautiful.

Ok, so if all goes well, I'll put up some pictures tomorrow. I'm off to bed now, and I'm sorry if there are too many spelling/grammar mistakes. I think the Polish spell check won't be of much use and I'm too tired to proofread :)

Love,Jen

In Poland!

2007-06-28T11:12:00.000-05:00

I can'tbelievethat I'm finally here! Mark and I flew out of Toronto sunday evening and after spending 3 great days in Glasgow, we'vemade it to Krakow. We met up withour couchsurfing host, Craig, in Glasgow on Monday morning. After dropping off our bags athis flat (after noo sleep on the plane) we wandered around the city until he finished work. We went to a few beautiful parks, ate some fish and chips, and Igot us lost on theway back to the flat - actually ending up back at the fish and chips shop an HOUR after we'd left it. On Tuesday we wanered around the city again, visiting the Botanic garden and having a great vegan lunch (Mark had Vegan haggis!!). That night, we went outwith Craig and his friends to a great back alley vodka bar, and later to the student pub for some dancing. After the pub, we had some true Scottish street meat: the Scooby Snack. It's a bun enclosing a potato scone, hamburger patty, a sausage patty, cheese, and a fried egg. Toronto need them - they're truly the perfect afterbar food! Needless to say, we had a good sleep-in on Wednesday (yesterday) morning and then Craig took us up to Loch Lomond for some countryside. To thank him for everything, Mark and I took him out for Indiam buffet, and then he dropped us at the train station so that we could get out to the airport, where we spent a very uncomfortable night. Poland has been great so far, but there'll be more on that later :)

For Bookish People

2007-06-12T16:25:00.000-05:00

I just got an email from McSweeney's, which is my favourite publisher due to it's consistently awesome releases (their Quarterly, The Believer magazine, as well as some swell books). Apparently they're having some tough times due to losing about 130K when their distributor folded:

"As you may know, it's been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney's included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000 -- actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big."

I don't usually get advertisey, but I seriously love this publisher and a) think more poeple should know about them, and b) would be sad if they went under. Anyway, since it's summer, and most people like to get summer reads, maybe you'll order them from McSweeney's? I highly recommend The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian (except that it appears to be out of stock so maybe you're interested in The Secret Language of Sleep instead?) and Mark highly recommends What is the What by Dave Eggers.

PS - I'm done Chemistry! Physics ho!

Quick Update

2007-06-11T18:52:00.000-05:00

(my mom - queen of the sale, on her throne :)

Our garage sale was a fantastic success!! Between people dropping off donations, and selling our junk, I managed to (I think) meet my base fundraising amount! Everything else is gravy (and by gravy, I mean cataract surgeries - don't serve them with turkey). I had a great time talking to people all day, which meant that not too much studying was done, so I've been cramming like crazy to make up for it. I think I'm in pretty good shape - I should finish up with Inorganic Chem tonight, which only leaves me with Physics to cover. Then, I'll hopefully have a day for review and practice tests.

I also happened to win an awesome contest hosted by an awesome music blog!! Hooray!! Tomorrow (eep! I'd better do a ton of physics before then) night I'm going to check out Pela (not, as I originally thought, Pele). To win, I had to make the best musical suggestion that Connor hadn't already covered. I knew if I suggested Basia Bulat, I'd be a shoe-in, and I was right. So thanks should go out to Basia and Co. for making such incredible music. At least its going to be not too long of a night... I think I'm only interested in seeing Pela due to the actual headlining band destroying my ears when I tried to listen to them.

PS - both Pele and Pela are great and deserve a good listen (as does Basia)!!

PPS - In other music-y news, YMG, I've finished your cd and hopefully will hit up a post office tomorrow!

Interaction with inanimates.

2007-06-05T21:31:00.000-05:00

Last weekend was the sort of weekend that I'd love to save up for times when my plate is empty. It was so full of wonderfulness that I even stopped worrying about studying for hours at a time! Seriously, why can't I save it? Why did it have to be right then? Oh well, at least it's pushed me into full-on panic and get stuff done mode!

By weekend, I mean weekend starting Thursday, which technically was my last day at York. I got a significant chuck of paper written (still have some brainstorming to do about the discussion, but that'll have to wait till post-exam), and was picked up by Mark in for our super-special anniversary dinner spectacular. Foregoing our typical fancy restaurant, we headed to a pretty sweet chinese supermarket where we split up and secretly gathered ingredients for our designated parts of the meal (me: appetizer, dessert, mark: main). We then headed back to his place and cooked in relative secrecy, and then feasted. Like crazy.

Course one (I really wish that I'd taken pictures): I made yaki nasu, which is one of our favourite things to eat when we go out for Japanese. I found the recipe through a google search, but it led me to a wonderful foodie blog, which I've added to my list of daily reads. It was sooo good, and will probably become one of my staples.

Mark's Mains: This is where it got crazy. Mark made a different dish for each of our four years together. And he made full portions of each. 1) Sesame-five spice grouper steaks. 2) Soy-ginger Mushrooms. 3) Asian pears poached in white wine. 4) Most delicious chicken that I've ever tasted. All of them were damn good, and we had a TON of leftovers.

After dinner we were getting kind of sleepy (like after thanksgiving, but worse) so we had some coffee and waited a while before dessert. I'd made a Shortbread-Blackberry pie (also inspired by tea&cookies), to try and recreate the magic of our BC trip. And then we basically exploded.

Happy 4 years, us.

Friday was mostly uneventful, except for the lovely lunch I had with, and courtesy of, Olivera. I'm going to miss working with her - I've honestly been so lucky in my lab to be surrounded by such warm, caring and intelligent people.

Saturday is when things really picked up: I dragged myself out of bed bright and early (ok, 9, it's still early for me) and made it into Toronto an hour and a half later. I met up with Paula at the ROM around 11am, joining the already-massive line to reserve tickets for the opening of the new addition. After an hour and a bit stationary, and another 45 minutes inching towards the front (past David Suzuki!!), we scored tickets for 2:30. In the morning. And then, we walked down to Travel Cuts and picked up my Brussels-->Accra ticket (by way of CASABLANCA).

OK now I am getting excited:

We finally headed over to Sharon's for some backyard relaxing (and guacamole eating). It was so good to just relax and hang out with Sharon and Paula, along with a few other characters who showed up along the way. We got ready without hurry, and at around 10 headed downtown to meet up with Maggie and possibly join a group of old friends from Western who were out for a pub crawl. I'm getting a bit overwhelmed thinking about recounting everything else that happened that night, so I think that I'll just link to Paula's post about it. And upload some pictures. And go to bed. Mmmhmm.

PS - going to be after the museum? 6:30 am. Paula and Sharon made it till about 3, but Mark and I wandered around until five, and then walked our way back to Sharon's. It was amazing - right before we left (maybe 4:30 am?) we headed down to the lowest floor, where there was an exhibit of Japanese art. It was probably the nicest exhibit in the museum, but aside from the security guard, we were the only ones in the room for the longest time. It was surreal and I loved every minute of it.

It's raining me, watch out!

2007-06-01T23:11:00.000-05:00

I really can't wait until I am on a plane and everything that needs to be done in the next three weeks is either done or I've at least moved past worrying about it. I am starting to feel like a little ball of stress, and its showing. My hair is falling out! And I'm falling over! Damn. Don't pity me though, I'm starting to feel a little bit more in control of my to-do list, and I'm not going to let any of it fall to pieces.

And speaking of falling, I watched my first surgeries the other day. For part two of my eye training, I watched my ophthalmologist perform 4 cataract surgeries. My two major impressions: 1) Oh wow it is so amazing that we can do this! Your lens got cloudy? No problem! We will just suction it out and insert a new one and by the way, you also won't need to wear glasses anymore because it fixes that problem too!; and, 2) There is no way to wrap your brain around the idea that suctioning out part of the eye can be a good thing, therefore, it conks out on ya.

I was watching (through a high-res microscope no less!) the first surgery, thinking about how absolutely amazing it was, when I started to feel funny. So I went to go sit down. And then when I started to get up, I realized that I wasn't on the chair like I thought I was... I was right out on the floor. Beside the surgery-in-progress. I had absolutely no recollection of not being on the chair, just of things being a bit woozy. Yikes. The other ones that I watched went a lot better (for me - for the patients all of the surgeries went extremely well). It really is incredible.

Also, I'm officially done at York. I still have more things to do there, and they'll get done, but at least for the next few weeks I can focus on studying and getting other stuff done that I've neglected for far too long! Tomorrow, I study, and see Paula, Maggie and Sharon all in one place, and see the opening of the new ROM crystal. Amazing!

PS the other faint was more of a close call - I had a funny reaction to a needle and went all woozy on the nurse. Buck up, body!

Thank yous!

2007-05-27T15:07:00.000-05:00

Damn... sorry for not posting for such a long time. Excuses: I'm finishing my paper, studying for the MCAT, and trying to sort out many things for the big trip. All of it is giving me stressy tummy aches and an acne'd forehead.

My main reason for posting now and not just forgetting about it until things calm down a bit (like, October) is that I want to express how floored I am by the generosity of my friends. Firstly, to Yellow Mustard Girl and to Phronk: you are amazing. While I've never met either of you in person, I enjoy your writings immensely and am quite convinced that you are super-cool people.

Megan: man, you rule. I've not been able to get you on the phone yet... but when I do, oh boy, there will be many squeals of gratitude and I promise that if I ever get to plan a blind date for Bryan Webb and Derek doesn't mind, I will hook you up.!

Seriously, you people are great.

PS: I shadowed an ophthalmologist this week, and learned how to use an ophthalmoscope to check for cataracts and corneal ulcers. Super cool!

PPS: Mark has a new blog! YAY! You should read it!

The Sales Pitch

2007-05-17T10:50:00.000-05:00

Not sure if I've mentioned it here or not... but... I'M GOING TO AFRICA!!!! After hanging out in Poland with Mark's family (we're heading over there on June 24th! Flights are booked!) I'll be going to Accra (the capital of Ghana) for 7 weeks! I've volunteered with Unite for Sight, an international non-governmental organization that aims to cure blindness and provide eye care to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it. I'm going to be conducting visual screening tests, and getting glasses for people who need them, or referring people for (free!) eye surgery if they need it. I'm so excited - after spending three years at the Centre for Vision Research, I'm finally going to be able to put the knowledge into action.

Ok, now this is the part where I ask for your help. I've committed to fundraising at least $1400. This is in addition to paying for my accommodations and airfare - that part has already come out of my pocket. The money is going directly to Unite for Sight and will pay for eye surgeries (mostly cataract surgery). Each surgery costs $50, so I (WE???) will be restoring vision to at least 28 people! I would be so grateful if you would be able to help me out, even if its just a couple dollars or what you would normally spend on a coffee! I promise that I, and definitely the people who have their vision restored, will be endlessly grateful to you.

I've created a fundraising page that you can check out. It allows paypal donations, and also has the address for sending cheques if you'd prefer to donate that way. I can also forward any cheques to Unite for Sight directly.

Click HERE to sponsor me!

Any fundraising ideas would also be greatly appreciated :) Let me know if you have any questions!

Flume Tunas.

2007-05-13T22:58:00.000-05:00

I just got back from a great weekend in Lake Placid with Mark, Ryan, Matt, Jenny and Jen. We stayed in an awesome little cabin and did an amazingly huge hike. It was stunningly beautiful and I can't wait to go back there, or somewhere like there. The weekend made me want to go live somewhere beside a river on a mountain.

We're going to Europe!

2007-05-06T10:29:00.000-05:00

I guess it's hard to top a post about experiencing near zero-gravity.

The last week has been insanely busy, what with moving out of the love apartment (including the house-cooling party), visits from Paula and Megan, hoboing around Toronto, travelling to/from Whitby, working, and going to shows (two today, and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone on Friday). Also, Mark and I booked out tickets to Europe!! We'll be flying into Glasgow (so exciting!) spending a few days there, and then heading to Krakow where our Polish adventure will begin. Maybe we will come back from our trip cultured and polished?

(yes I know that was a terrible joke)

Things deserving more detail: Leaving the love apartment. We had a really great last weekend there - the housecooling was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the camping feel of the last few nights. By the end, all that remained were candles, records, and blankets, and the simplicity was beautiful. On Monday, I cleaned that place SO well, partly because I loved living there and partly because I really liked the supers and didn't want to leave them with a lot of work. Taking a last look before closing the door on that space was pretty sad, but Mark took me out for a lovely sushi dinner and reconvinced me that our trip will make it all worthwhile.

Megan-visit! Megan came with me to Whitby for my first night back at home to make the transition a little bit easier. We met up in Toronto and had some Vegetarian Haven with Bronwyn and Maya (Bronwyn's friend/roomate) and then walked down to the Go Train and took it back home. It was awesome to have some good girl talk, sleepover styles. We made some strawberry rhubarb crumble pie, and went and picked up crazy Mark so that he wouldn't have to walk 10K to my house.

Hopefully, I'll write a bit more this week and post some pictures. Now, Mark and I are headed downtown for some Mount Eerie and some PB&J (that would be Peter Bjorn & John).

Edited to add:

Fun with Sharon: We had dinner a bunch of times and painted our nails in the sun on her porch and had wonderful chats AND THEN SHE DITCHED ME TWO HOURS BEFORE THE PETER BJORN AND JOHN SHOW and I had to sell her ticket. But seriously, we've had fun.

I'm a survivor.

2007-04-26T00:18:00.000-05:00

Well, I've successfully made it through my first set of mini-gravity flights!! I've been in Ottawa for the past 4 days, subjecting myself to crazy tests all for the love of science (and, the love of doing cool things involving big planes).

Our plane, the Falcon 20:

Day one of flying was absolutely terrible - I was so sick on each of my two flights, and I had absolutely no idea why ANYONE would want to do this sort of thing:

This is our plane, doing its thing:

Basically, we do that rollercoaster part between 3 and 5 times in a row, loop back, and do another 3-5. And by rollercoaster, I mean a rollercoaster that rises and falls 10000 feet. This is only fun when its perfectly smooth, which on Monday, it wasn't. We finished flying Monday in the early afternoon. I felt sick until about 10pm, managing to consume about 12 grapes, a pickle, and a ginger ale over the course of the day. I dreaded going to sleep, because I knew I'd be waking up to another day of flying.

On Tuesday, Rebecca had the BEST idea ever: Gravol. I took half of one about an hour before the flight, and OH MY GOD it was so much fun. I got to sit in the jump seat between the pilots for take-off, listening to the going over the pre-flight checklist and chatting away calmly.

Jump-seat Mona-Lisa:

We did ten parabolas (two sets of five in a row) and I loved every minute. It was such a rush to look out the window and see sky... then ground... then ground rushing up to meet you... and then the rise up to sky again. So cool.

We celebrated the good day with some Keg, some sauna & mojitos, and some pie. I was afraid that maybe we celebrated too much, and prematurely, but today was also wonderful. During my flight today, I decided to take a parabola off from data collection and just enjoy it. So, I watched the earth shift in ways that its not supposed to shift when you're looking out of a plane window. In the mini-G phase (1/6th Earth gravity - about what you'd feel on the moon), I tossed my (empty! yay!) sick-bag up in the air and watched it hover. I floated off my seat a bit. During the 2G (twice Earth's gravity) phase, Jeff took an amazing video of dropping a piece of foam - it fell like a stone! Its funny - nobody will ever lose or gain weight as quickly or as effectively as they do during these flights. Over the course of a minute, I fluctuated between weighing about 20 pounds up to 260 pounds!! At 260 pounds, I did NOT feel like moving.

Aside from the flying, we did a lot of other fun things. We spent a lot of time out eating (from fantastic thai to one of Ottawa's three kosher 'restaurants' - actually a cafeteria in a fitness club) and drinking. Phil, Mike and I spent a ton of time in the hot tub and sauna. After the flights yesterday, we went and explored a decrepit plane on NRC grounds - apparently they're using it for materials research and examining how its body and wiring deteriorate.

NOT our plane:

Trying not to fall:

And after we wrapped up today, we headed into downtown Ottawa to see the parliament buildings. We brought the frisbee along, so we spent about 45 minutes tossing it around and I got to feel spring grass under my bare feet.

The whole trip was wonderful, and I would so do every bit of it over again (but, always with gravol for the flying bits).

The Vomit Comet

2007-04-23T22:22:00.000-05:00

A quick update:
I am currently in Ottawa, participating in an experiment that most people think is completely crazy. I'm starting to think they're right. Right. So, there is research group that is located near the lab that I'm in, and they do a lot of vision research involving the vestibular system. Right now, they're trying to figure out hw we knoe that 'up' is up. To do this, they're trying to screw with our system, and take away normal cues to 'up.' First, they took away our visual cues: we're looking at a scene through a circular window and are unable to see anything else on the periphery. Then they rotate that scene. The whole time, you're making responses to images presented on the screen, and these responses are based on your perception of where 'up' is. Then, the clevel jerks decided that gravity probably influences this a great deal, so they decided to get rid of that (that = gravity).

Which brings us to the present: I am sitting in Ottawa, and today I have flown (twice) in an experimental airplane, and I have experienced near-weightlessness. The plane does these giant parabolas (like s' on their sides, and stretched out a bit) and when you come over the top of the curve, you get a bit of weightlessness, and almost no gravity. At the bottom, you get about 2x the normal gravity. That part SUCKs. This type of research plane is known as the vomit comet for a reason. Today,I think that I had a net total of four grapes (gross total was about a half bagel, 100 ml apple juice, and 16 grapes). But, it will be a cool story to tell the grandkids. I've completed two flights, and they're hoping to get six done in total. I've been told that they'll be able to get enough data out of three flights, so I'm hopefully only going to be doing one or two more (and hopefully tomorro.w's will be better than today's). Wish me luck!

Here is me on the plane:

It's not all bad, we did get to go to the big apple:

Somebody is trusting me with a hammer.

2007-04-19T21:50:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I'm going to be building a house in Scarborough with Habitat for Humanity. I'm kinda excited about this, it's definitely going to be an experience! I'm going to try really hard to not drop anything on myself ;) Anyways, I wasn't planning on talking about it on here, but a phone call changed my mind. I was asking my nana if she wanted to sponsor me, and as always, there were some hilarious results.

Some background: As a child, I was never allowed to carry my suitcase when I was traveling with my grandparents. My protesting that I was perfectly capable of carrying a suitcase led to this quote that is now entrenched in historical infamy: Put that down, you'll hurt your INNARDS. My innards. This quote has been tossed around in my family ever since! So, tonight on the phone, when my nana found out that yes, I would be building the house myself (not just fundraising), I promised her that I wouldn't hurt my innards. I then heard the rest of the story: according to nana, I have some sort of great aunt who allegedly hurt her innards by lifting something, and ended up with a tilted uterus. According to wikipedia, this is an actual condition (but, a condition that affects 20-30% of women). I promised that I would try not to tilt my uterus.

I'll wrap this up with the second gem from the call. My nana, still incredulous that I would be building something (me, who has TWO toolboxes, and uses them), asked me if I had ever nailed anything in my life.

I had to pretend to be rude and say that I was laughing at something on tv.

I love my nana.

*

2007-04-12T10:13:00.000-05:00

Awww, Kurt Vonnegut passed away. It's been a while since I read any of his books, so I can't recall any quotes off the top of my head other than *. Here's a good one that I stumbled across today, from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the
winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got
about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies —
‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”

Thanks for all of the wonderful words.

!!!

2007-04-10T16:15:00.000-05:00

There are some exciting things going on in my life right now, and duly, I am excited. I've finally found a volunteer program that makes my heart race with how perfect it is for me. I have travel plans. I have new books. I'm officially working part-time. I've been to the new Whitby Hooters (with old Whitby friends).

First things first: Unite for Sight. It's an international NGO that aims to provide vision health care to people in developing countries - and I've just spent the past 3 years learning about & working in the field of vision health. They have so many choices for placements - the ones I'm considering are in Chennai, India, and in Accra, Ghana. Amazing. I'm really excited about this - I have my letters of recommendation lined up and will be applying either tonight or tomorrow.

Another bonus with the program is the flexibility - they have a ton of different dates to choose from, so it will be really easy to work in my volunteering plans with other travel plans. Mark and I are almost certainly going to head over to Poland sometime mid- to late June, and spend as much time as possible getting to know his family. The family side of our relationship is currently unbalanced - he's met absolutely everyone who shares some significant portion of my DNA, and I've only met his immediate family. I can't wait to see grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.

Books: I now have a complete collection of Salinger novels. I'd read Catcher in the Rye years ago, but was recently re-convinced (Kurt tried once before, it didn't work) by Jaime to read Franny and Zooey. I plodded through it, and was won over a few pages before the end, and left with a feeling of love for absolutely every person in the world. It takes a good book to do that. Now, I'm starting on Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters.

Other: 1st weekday off is tomorrow: studying will be done. In a week and a half, I'm headed off to Ottawa to do some micro-g experiments, hopefully studying will be done there, too, but it will be dicey as my travel companions are some of CVR's funniest people. Hooters was great - we (4 girls: me, Kathleen, Andrea, and Molly; 1 guy: Anthony)had a fun time with our bouncy server who made plenty sure to only pay attention to Anthony. I guess it is the one place where you can't really complain about that kind of service ;)

2007-04-03T10:58:00.000-05:00

According to my stat counter, I have a repeat visitor from the metro toronto police. That's odd. Hi there police people, I promise that I'm not doing anything illegal. I hope you find my lame stories interesting. Also, thanks for keeping me safe in my city, and please be mean to drivers who endanger people on bikes.

Welcome to April, sucker.

2007-04-02T10:48:00.000-05:00

I was dog-sitting again over the weekend, which was ok, and nice for the most part. I was pretty blue yesterday about having nobody around to prank for April Fools - I could have put toothpaste or something in the dog's food but she wouldn't have gotten the joke. I complained about it to Adam, and then told him that the CN tower fell down (birds! Thousands of them! They all flew into it at once! They're ok!). I'm pretty sure that he neither believed me nor thought that it was a very funny attempt.

Later in the day (after noon! technically, April fool's was OVER), I was talking to Sharon in hopes of arranging a meet-up to see us some Ninja Turtles, when she dropped the bomb: She's pregnant, going to have a little bro or sis for Talon - likely sometime around Talon's birthday. I didn't believe her at first, but then got convinced and v. excited! raced downstairs to find her cell number, called her, and got laughed at for falling for it. Jerk. Though, I am kinda happy that I got pranked - I don't like it when perfectly good fun things get passed over.

2007-03-28T10:17:00.000-05:00

Woo! Spring is here! Mark and I have taken advantage of the nice weather gracing Toronto for the past few days by getting our defrosting asses outside (see how I kinda made a pun about frozen assets there? and it doesn't even make sense, because we have no assets frozen, or even available to freeze - HA). Monday was nice enough that we walked home from College and Yonge, running into some old friends and seeing how happy people were to be out of winter. The reason we were downtown in the first place was to see Children of Men - an amazing movie about a dystopian future. The whole thing was beautifully shot, and believable. I loved it and am still piecing bits of it together in my mind. I think it actually came ut on video this week - it's definitely a must-see.

Yesterday, we headed out to a park and played some frisbee. I'm hoping to do a lot of that this summer.... I want to set up some sort of drop in frisbee thing that's just for fun and really unstructured. Good idea?

H'okay, that's enough for now. It's time to get back to analyzing frustrating data, wrapping my head around bootstrapping, and other fun stats stuff.

Hola!

2007-03-25T21:25:00.000-05:00

¡Hola amigos del Sharon! Aquí están las fotos de su boda.

HAHAHAHA

2007-03-24T10:32:00.000-05:00

Seriously, LOL.

Pot Kettle Black

2007-03-23T13:28:00.000-05:00

I guess before I get on anyone's (*cough* Megan *cough* Sharon even though you're in Cuba) case about not blogging recently, I should at least get one post in myself this week. I haven't felt like writing much lately, mostly because I'm franticly trying to find some meaning from the data I've gathered over the past year and am getting slightly despondent over the fact that I may not be able to write a compelling story about it. Such is research, I guess.

On the upside of things, I had a reconnection with one of my favourite people from high school this week. Through the all-popular facebook, I started catching up with Smitha. We'd been pretty close friends in grade nine & ten, and ended up drifting apart a bit by the end. Well, needless to say, we both ended up on facebook and found that we still have so many similar interests, and on Wednesday night I met up with her to chat over coffee and then later check out Basia's show with Sarah.

I had a really amazing time, and I must say that as much as I love Mark (and I love him to bits!!) it is so nice to have amazing girl (and other) friends in my life with whom I can go out and have a ton of fun and feel comfortable being a bit silly with. I am constantly amazed at the accomplishments of my friends (grad schools, publications, conferences, amazing jobs, putting out cds etc) and feel lucky to be close to so many talented people.

Also: today is my dad's birthday (happy birthday!) and Im going home for the celebratory dinner and then to dogsit while the parents take off to barbados. I'm only slightly jealous.

A Terrible Grace

2007-03-14T09:22:00.000-05:00

Anyone familiar with my building at York knows of the tunnel. This is an important tunnel - it connects us to the building housing the Tim Hortons, oh, and a library. A miracle of modern construction, the tunnel (built about 5 years ago) floods with water every time it rains. While coming back from Timmy's this morning, large coffee in hand, I was trying to maneuver around the folks given the task of mopping up the water, and ended up slipping in the massive puddle that I didn't quite step over in my pretty new shoes. I ended up doing the splits (I'm not wearing something split-friendly today), BUT not only did I not fall, I didn't even spill my coffee. My clumsy years have finally paid off! I can not not fall! And I can do it all with a terrible grace. Unfortunately, this also means that I don't get to sue York for damages and retire at 25.

Give me my hour back.

2007-03-13T14:11:00.000-05:00

(will you let me keep the sunshine?)

I really, really love my friends. I've seen/talked to/heard from so many over the past few days that I'm almost feeling full of friends (a hard feeling to reach). Friday was spent with some unexpected wine, and newer friends. I somehow managed to convince people (me + wine interaction, I think) to come down to Lee's Palace to see Rock Plaza Central for an evening of robot horse rock, and it was amazing. People are fun (7 years of psychology summed up right there folks!).

I headed out to Whitby on Saturday, with a brand new batch of chocolate-ginger-grapefruit cupcakes and headed up to Mike's party with a whole bunch of old friends for some bonfires and milestone celebrating. I'm starting to feel fairly unaccomplished, like the letters following my name pale somewhat in comparison to the tangible accomplishments of my friends, who are getting good jobs, buying houses and starting families. I just hope that somehow it will be worth it, that I won't be just another Simpsons joke.

Other good things: Mark and I found some great cds at Deja Vu - Sunset Rubdown, Pele, and a find by Mark that I'll likely never remember the name of, but is good nonetheless. We took Indy to the Lake for some running around and stepping in mud. I tried skipping stones, with little luck! Mark took some really nice photos in celebration of the first really nice day of the year, and hopefully I can post those soon. Last night we got back to Toronto, and had dinner with Sharon and 24 with Maggie. A good weekend all around, and even though I'm tired for this week, I only have to make it through 3 more days before the next one :)

International Women's Day

2007-03-08T14:29:00.000-05:00

To all of you ladies out there, happy day!

VAGINA

2007-03-07T23:00:00.000-05:00

Three high school girls were suspended last week for saying the word vagina during a reading from The Vagina Monologues at a literary night. Apparently, the girls had been asked to not say vagina, and disobeyed the order.

OMG kids in the audience might have heard the word vagina!

GASP!

Next thing you know, people will realize that IT IS A BODY PART. Vagina is not a swear word, it's not inappropriate. Do people really want their kids to grow up not knowing proper terms for body parts? Should 15 year old girls go the doctor and call it a hoo-ha?

I wondered if this was a sign of the fall of feminism, but then realized that a real sign would be people ignoring things like this. Shame on the principal of that school, and thank you to those girls for disobeying a ridiculous order and for believing in your convictions enough to do so.

Dentists and Taxes

2007-03-07T13:52:00.000-05:00

I've realized that I'm not very good with those things. THIS IS ABOUT TO CHANGE! I have already (!!!) completed my 2006 taxes, almost 2 months before the deadline! Tonight, I will do my 2005 taxes and be all up to date. No more will I be ms. late taxes. And tomorrow, I'm going to my surprise (I booked 9 months ago... my memory span has been approx. 1 week lately) dentist appointment, even though I no longer have coverage. Hooray for responsibility. Also, I purged my personal files last night and found my long lost twi... birth certificate. This is a bold new page in my life - to celebrate, I'll make myself a heart-healthy dinner and go to bed early.

This is the type of blog post that happens when you only have a Monday and a Tuesday to write about.

In Wednesday news, I've spent quite a bit of time staring at the beautiful world map hanging in the office. I've getting drooly and my heart rate rises every time I think about the possibilities for next year. I can't wait to see a little bit more of the world and experience other cultures. Does anyone know of good (reputable) aid organizations that focus on health or women?

2007-03-05T13:28:00.000-05:00

Another weekend has been added to my list of good weekends. Unfortunately, there was no Paula sighting (does this mean 6 more weeks of winter? I hope not.), but fun was had at Sharon's party anyways. We played headbands (I refuse to spell it the silly, copyrighted way), and I had a tremendously difficult time guessing who I was. According to Talon, I was a boy, and there was a shark and a tank in the picture. My name started with C, and ended with a. Yup, Cuba. Apparently, pictures of people trump names of countries for deciding between "who, what and where."

On Saturday, Mark and I lazed around all morning, and then spent the afternoon at Starbucks with coffee and reading materials (the New Yorker anniversary edition was AWESOME, I'm so glad that I caved in and bought it). I've decided that I officially love David Sedaris, and I wish somebody would introduce me in the way that he introduces his characters. To cap off a lovely day, we went to the Bloor to see Volver, which was wonderful and very, very beautifully shot.

Yesterday, Mark and I made cupcakes (chocolate ginger with grapefruit frosting - yum!) and headed down to Kensington to meet up with Ryan, Jenny, Jen and Matt for some sushi, and later some movies at Ryan & Jenny's place where we ate the aforementioned cupcakes.

And best of all, today I got my purring ball of fur back - thanks mom!!!

A question.

2007-03-02T13:01:00.000-05:00

I've just realized that I have no idea where I'm going to be this time next year. In all likelihood, I'll be somewhere in the GTA, but that really isn't a given. I hope that I'll either be somewhere doing some good, or just returned from doing some good - but really, who knows?

Where do you think YOU will be this time next year? What changes/experiences are you hoping to have between now and then? I'm curious.

Bon temps à Montréal

2007-02-27T15:20:00.000-05:00

Mark, Jaime and I have returned not much the worse for wear from our mini-trip to Montreal. This one was slightly less whirl-windy than usual, the result of taking it easy and doing whatever rather than planning for every minute. We stayed in with M's homemade brownies and generously-poured 'drunks' and had a great night talking and peer-pressuring M into facebook.

Saturday was a beautiful day, and we took advantage of the mild (only -5!) weather and walked around the Plateau, listening to the church bells (they ring every hour, on the hour, for an hour!) and trying all sorts of delicious things readily found in the Mont. Seriously though, Mark had a BOWL of gourmet, organic, single plantation, 70% cocoa hot chocolate. Realizing that hot chocolate should be consumed in association with going skating, we headed to Parc Lafontaine and talked ourselves into spending $14 on skate rentals (way better than a movie!) and strutted our stuff around the ice for a while.

Last year:

This year:

Feeling good after our little bit of exercise, we headed back to M's place, grabbed a Jaime and a Dave, and ate some more brownies pre-dinner. Yum. We headed out to L'academie with Erin, Sebastien, Elodie and Dawson, and splurged on deliciousness, followed by more deliciousness at Rockaberries (mmmm... I'm really glad that I made mark get that crumble!). I may have eaten a bit too well - upon getting to the bar, I promptly fell into a state of barley awake.

Sunday morning included a sleep-in, some poutine for Mark, and a duct-tape wallet, and only semi-sad departure (see you in a month and a half, M!). Hooray for road trips :)

New shoes!

2007-02-23T09:47:00.000-05:00

I can't wait for warm weather to be here. I will bike around in skirts and cute shoes all day long.

Thursday side of the street

2007-02-22T16:45:00.000-05:00

Today has me thinking that I should completely redo my schedule and not work before noon. My Thursday night class has allowed me to start at noon rather than 9am, and I have had the BEST day. I woke up easily, before my alarm. I puttered around the apartment and hung out with Annie. I picked up my new jeans from the tailors, and was not rushed or late on my way to York. At work, I've been motivated, and productive (well, not RIGHT this moment) and feeling perkier and clear-headed than I've felt in weeks. Hooray!

Also, great things have been happening today. I was flipping through my Eye weekly on the bus and came across this picture, accompanied by a full-page article:

That guy there on the left? That's Michael. I met him through Mark, since they are and have been in many bands together. He is hilarious, and that photo made me laugh out loud on the bus.

A couple of minutes later, I *just* missed a call. When I checked my messages, there was a very urgent one from John. He was frantic, saying that it was of utmost importance that I called him back immediately. So, without even bothering to search for my long distance calling card, I called him. And asked whose house was on fire. Apparently, there was no real emergency, he just wanted me to call him back that day so he made it *sound* urgent (note to us - this may solve the all-too-common problem of trying to get in touch with him, just leave messages sounding like you're hanging off the side of a cliff and he's the only one who can save you).

His question: what is Sharon's new contact information?! "I can't find her number and I NEED to call her because it's almost her birthday!!!" I laughed at him and told him that he's going to run into problems if he uses facebook to manage his life. I reminded him that her birthday happened right before we went to Cuba, therefore, is in May. All because Sharon listed some random day in February as her birthday.

Lol.

In other news re: goodness, Mark and I watched Broken Flowers and Saved! last night. While he favors the former,and I the latter, they were both really good and worthy of watching. Saved was absolutely hilarious, and made me like The Macauley again. We managed to watch both of them in one night even though my Yorkdale stop turned into 2.5 hours rather than 0.5 hours. I scored though, using my Bay gift card to get some sweet tops, a skirt and a pair of jeans on really good sales, and I got the cutest ever black leather flats. I want to go back and get them in gold. I need to post pics so that everyone can agree that they are the cutest.

To top off a great week: I had the Best. Sammich. EVER. It was on dark rye from Kensington, and was topped with brie, tomatoes, avocados, and a slice of prosciutto. MMMMMMMM. In unrelated news, I'm getting fat.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2007-02-14T13:05:00.000-05:00

I hope that everyone finds the Mark to their Jenny!

Plans for today include eating yummy cookies packed into my lunch, and kid-watching. Not in a creepy way... in a helping out with homework and bribing with boardgames sort of way. Mark and I may find some time to watch movies and cuddle. It's going to be an experience.

Much love to you all :)

Here goes.

2007-02-08T17:22:00.000-05:00

At the moment, I'm killing some time on campus waiting for my night class (back in class! yeah!) and I figured there was no sense attempting to be productive. Also, my mom thinks I should blog more. Here goes.

Mark and I went to Edo again last night with some of his friends as a winterlicious thing. Now that w'lish is almost over, I'm feeling a bit bad because I didn't end up going with the people I'd originally planned on dining with. Jaime & Sharon: Next time! Edo was really great (again) - they really go the extra mile, and every course is consistently great. I'm SO glad we switched out reservation from the restaurant with crappy reviews. I know that winterlicious is supposed to be an event allowing people to try fancy restaurants on the cheap, but really - very few of my friends would normally even consider paying $25-35 for dinner, and wouldn't consider those prices to be cheap. And looking at my account balance, I shouldn't be paying that much for dinner either. However, I think when I am in the mood to pay those prices, I'll be going back to Edo. Yum.

Superbowl weekend was really good - turkey chili was consumed (and washed down with too much rum for my head to handle) and I paid attention to only about 5 mins of the game, as usual. Sharon's house is looking really good these days. I can't wait for housewarming fun!! (Housewarming fun x2! Ryan and Jenny are also warming up their awesome new place TOMORROW!)

Also: you know you're in Forest Hill when you walk past treehouses with Satellite dishes.

Dinosaur Comics = BEST.

2007-02-01T15:29:00.000-05:00

So, my favourite (BY FAR) online comic is releasing a set of greeting cards through Quack Media and the set contains the best card ever. If you want to show your love for somebody wonderful AND for Mark and I AND for dinosaurs at the exact same time, then you need this card.

PS: Mark, you're the Mark to my Jenny.

Monday

2007-01-31T22:54:00.000-05:00

Mark: comes after Sunday, before Tuesday.

Jen: Culinary highlight of the decade.

Mark: pfft.. decade.

... Monday was amazing. For Christmas, Mark gifted me with a "culinary experience"- a dinner at Edo that would take us "far beyond sushi." After spooking ourselves with bad omens (half hour for the taxi making us late for the reservation making us almost not have seats) we arrived at our places (which ended up being beside each other after all!) and stared dumbfounded at the THIRTEEN glasses in front of us.

The evening was narrated by the owner of Edo, who explained Japanese culture and cuisine, and about what we were eating. We were eating a lot. The first course was a shredded chicken and steamed egg salad, probably the prettiest dish of the night. This was followed by a gazillion other courses. They were:

- creamy potato and soybean soup
- tuna sampler (compare three types of tuna for taste and quality)
- Chef's choice sushi sampler (with Mark's favourite avocado and tempura yam rolls) and an amazing salmon mango roll.
- Sake dilled salmon in tinfoil pretty pocket think. This was also with an amazing sauce, and the tinfoil pocket came with an origami crane attached to a spear for easy opening.
-Chicken medallions with a Kobe beef pate filling
-rich chocolate mousse with a green tea and red bean cake

As for the glasses, three of them were filled with sake. One was a warm sake, one a cloudy sake, and one was a high quality 'polished' sake. Apparently, the highest quality sakes are made with polished rice, water, and yeast - and nothing else is added. Cloudy sake comes from unpolished rice, and is my personal favourite due to its subtle sweetness. We also tasted nine wines (three red, 6 white), and had a glass of champagne with dessert. It was incredible.

This post is nowhere near as elegant as I had hoped it would be, and doesn't do justice to the night. I had such a wonderful time and am so lucky that someone knows me so well. Thanks also go to Edo foor going above and beyond what would reasonable be expected of them.

Here are Mark and I with the wonderfully talented chef:

Loot from the goody bag! Awesome mini-martini/sake glass, or hilarious-yet-fragile clown nose? YOU DECIDE.

In case you were wondering.

2007-01-18T14:31:00.000-05:00

Every time anyone says they need me to "bring it," I always think (thankfully not out loud) "oh, it's already been BROUGHT." I never would have thought that Bring It On (2000 Cheerleading movie that I had to watch for work, really!!!) would be influencing my thoughts for so long.

I'm just saying.

Snow day!

2007-01-15T14:37:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting at work, having one of the quietest days ever. Except for the occasional student roaming the hallways, it feels like nobody is on campus. I'm probably not using the time as wisely as I should, but I am enjoying myself. It looks like the next few days will be nice and snowy too - hooray for winter!

Friends in Bellwoods

2007-01-13T01:48:00.000-05:00

Jaime, Mark, Sharon and I went down to the Tranzac tonight to see the Friends in Bellwoods release show (Sharon was a nice surprise - I'd expectd her to be knee-deep in bunk-bed parts all night!). It was a really solid lineup (The D'Urbervilles, Sebastien Grainger, OhBijou, and the Paramedics - a Bry Webb solo project HOW EXCITING) and it couldn't have been more packed if it tried. We managed to be almost first in line at the door, snagged some of the few remaining tickets, and wedged ourselves into the crowd to enjoy the show. The Paramedics, who might possibly rename themselves 'The Splinters' were really, really good, although with Snailhouse and Bry Webb on vocals they couldn't really have been otherwise.

The D'Urbervilles:

The Paramedics:

The paramedics sometimes have a Zylophoner (ullulater? what?):

And for Megan, Bry Webb:

Voice of an angel, that man.

Sebastien Grainger was good, and my feet took me home before ohbijou, sadly, because I love them (them being ohbijou, I was not pleased with my hurty feet tonight). Tomorrow, I get to sleep in, which is probably the best thing ever, and the study my ass off.

Photos!

2007-01-13T00:46:00.000-05:00

New Year's Eve:

Waterloo, on the way to Paula's in Windsor:

The girls, together at last:

Cooking GC dinner:

Eating GC dinner:

Someone is showing someone else some moves, I think:

Paula's new hat, on Sharon:

Paula's new hat, on Paula:

Mark and Laura, no hats:

Off to a good start:

Shake it...

2007-01-11T13:59:00.000-05:00

I miss polaroids - as great as digital cameras are, there's nothing like the instant gratification of a polaroid. Case in point:

Tonight: Mandarin, finally (it's only been a year in the planning). I'm taking bets on what colour Maggie will be when we leave... my money is on green.