• I stumbled upon Everyday People Cartoons (above), which perfectly captured my mood for this week.
• Apparently there are so many barfights in Britain, the government has spearheaded the development of new shatterless pint-glasses. This should save approximately $170 million a year in pint-glass related injuries (after factoring in the National Health Service, policing and court costs).
• I know it's super nerdy, but I totally want one of these.
• Take the Conscious Shopper challenge.
• Frances Bula clarifies the issue of homelessness in Vancouver.
• I'm totally going to make this Morockin' Stew for dinner tonight.
• Evolving Revolver posted the below video. It made me laugh and cry at the same time:
Weekly Web-Links
The calm before the storm
Our call centre guy is on vacation again, so I’ve been working 7-5 this week. I hate this shift; I feel like I have jet-lag for the duration. Contrary to my regular schedule, I have much more energy in the morning than the evening, fuelled in part by the beautiful sunrises reflecting off of Canada Place (above). I managed to go to school for one out of two classes, once to the gym, but my evening energy diminished to the point where I had microwave popcorn for dinner last night.
I could have ordered pizza, but Imm and I have decided to eliminate take-out for the month of February. Just a random decision, but probably a good one, healthy for both the body and the wallet. We have one birthday dinner planned with friends on the 20th, but I intend to make breakfast, lunch and dinner for a month. This means zero take out containers and endless calories that don’t need counting.
I’ve been pretty good about going to the gym since the beginning of January, and started a few guided programs last week. I started the Couch to 5K running program, the 200 Situp Challenge, and the 100 Pushups Challenge. If I can eliminate restaurant food (including coffee treats) and stick to an exercise routine for the month of February, I’ll be a happy girl. 
Still enjoying the Cultural Olympiad, I'll be going to see Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe on Saturday. As much as the city is fenced off and peppered with huge ugly white tents, the additional skytrain cars, the public art and the incredible theatre more than make up for it.
This has been an exceptionally boring post, but I've had an exceptionally boring week. The highlight was staying up late to watch the season premiere of Lost.
I don't know what to expect for the rest of the month. The Olympics are almost upon us, and I am torn between avoiding the unwashed masses and participating, at least a little. Apart from the public art, there will be free concerts every night and the aforementioned ugly white tents will be international cultural venues. Think Expo '86 on a city-wide scale.
Ug. but the people. I despise crowds. I can barely walk through the lobby of my building right now (I work at the seabus building, the Grand Central Station of Vancouver). Starting next week I think I'll start walking the 70 minutes to work, so I don't have to deal with the crowded transit. The thought of voluntarily throwing myself into crowds of people at a free Deadmau5 concert makes me grumpy, but not quite as grumpy as missing the concert altogether.
It's a conundrum that will pass me by if I don't make the effort to join in. You'd think I'd know myself well enough to be predictable, at least to me. I'll let you know as soon as I find out.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Weekly Web-Links
• Mean Girl Garage pointed me in the direction of MeanCards.com (above).
• Jo from A Cup of Jo recommends Unhappy Hipsters.
• I think that I might make these Oreo Cookie Brownies for my roommates today.
• These Sculptures in Motion by Peter Jansen are amazing.
• 50 Lifehacks to help you live longer and healthier.
• Lately, Cracked Magazine seems to be giving me more History and Humanities education than my entire Undergraduate degree program.
• The LoveHarder folks now have a shop. All proceeds go to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. Do a good thing and buy a cute T-shirt!
• I have no idea where I found the below short, but it's just hilarious:
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Bad Cat
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This is why I have to rescue my cat from a tree at least once every 2 weeks.
It feels like it was just yesterday that we had to keep the cats in the house to protect them from the squirrels. Nostalgia.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tuesday Tunes # 4 - Covers
I think that I've mentioned before how much I love covers. They're the perfect melange of my favourite bands and my favourite songs, all in one!
This lovely lady introduced me to a new band... Pomplamoose. Here they are covering "A Few of my Favourite Things" from The Sound of Music. They also do a terrific cover of Simon and Garfunkle's Mrs. Robinson. You can see some of their original music here.
Cat Power's voice is absolutely suited to this 1959 classic, originally recorded by Phil Phillips with The Twilights. Bonus - click through to the YouTube page and read the comments added by the poster.
I'm not actually a huge Tori Amos fan, but this cover of the Cure's Love Song is just beautiful.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Fiddle and the Drum
As I am typically at home in bed by midnight on weekdays, I often feel that my social life has shrivelled up to nothing. I used to go–go-gadget after work to dinners and films and parties and dancing, seven nights a week. Now I fill my blog with recipes and YouTube clips and feel like all I do is work and study.
This isn’t the case of course. It’s rare when I don’t have a lunch or a movie or something to do on the weekends. I may have chosen to stay home and chill on New Year’s Eve, but I went out drinking and dancing on January second. And it was fun.
This weekend was action packed. My Friday started after work with a quick bite with friends in Yaletown. After dinner, we headed out onto the new skytrain line to see Craig Ferguson do a stand-up act at a casino in Richmond. This is exciting in many ways, not the least that it only took 10 minutes to get to Richmond.
The skytrain stops *at* the casino – the exit feeds directly into the hotel. This is unique to the ALRT system in Vancouver - I wonder how many patrons use it. I’ve never been to a real casino before, so we took a little tour. I hated the noise, thought the people looked disproportionately disfigured and insane, and was surprised that there were virtual stations for the roulette tables. You don’t see that on CSI or the Bond movies. 
Craig Ferguson was awesome. He has brilliant timing, can be smutty and still classy, and he’s kind of hot. I know, it’s the accent. A hot Scottish accent is a plus 10 in my books. (I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this).
After the show, Imm and I went downtown to wander through some of the Olympic art. I’ll write more on that later, but overall I’m not an Olympic-hater and I’m enjoying the public art all over the place. In preparation for Chinese New Years, there’s a display of lanterns down Granville, and it’s pretty.
Imm and I parted ways at this point, and I went back to work to pick up a few things. I ran into an old friend on the skytrain, gave him a kiss and moved on. Once at work, I called another friend and met him at a nearby restaurant (about 11:30 now) and together we moved on to a house party. Met my p/t sweetie there, grooved to a few tunes he was laying town, drank an awful lot of homemade wine, and at about 2:45 am, slightly drunk and proud of my adventures, headed back to his place.
Mid-snog, my alarm went off. Server down. Hardware failure. Want to stomp on my phone with anger and utter disappointment. By 4:00am I’m at work, pulling servers out of racks. My boss has to come down, we swap out hard drives and he drives me home. My home. Yay for the customer, BOO for me.
Sleep 6am – 3pm. Apparently I’m a teenager again. Get up, make breakfast/lunch/dinner. Shower, look pretty. Go to the ballet. Hello my friends, I am now cultured!
Seriously though, the ballet was beautiful. The Fiddle and the Drum was brought to Vancouver to open the Cultural Olympiad. Based on the music of Joni Mitchell, it was very progressive - both in message and in dance.
Sunday was filled with errands. Groceries, laundry, Ikea etc. All in all, an (almost) perfect weekend!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Measurable Monday #5 - The Novels
Let's just take a moment to show some respect for the amount of reading I need to get done for the two classes I'm taking right now. In addition to 15 - 20 pages of PDFs required each week as secondary sources, I'm reading the above tower of novels required by my Humanities and English classes.
I'm actually a very quick reader, yet I must admit that keeping up with the schedule is using up all my spare time. Luckily, all the books so far have been decent, if not amazing. I'm a bit ahead in my English reading and a bit behind in my Humanities, but overall just astounded by the sheer number of pages that I need to absorb over the next two months.
Hubert Aquin - Next Episode
David Bezmozgis - Natasha and Other Stories
Sigmeund Freud - Civilisation and its Discontents
Lawrence Hill - The Book of Negroes
Ursula Le Guin - City of Illusions
Heather O'neill - Lullabies for Little Criminals
Michael Ondaatje - In the Skin of a Lion
Plato - Timaeus
William Shakespeare - King Lear
Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Weekly Web-Links
• Roger Ebert rocks my world. He's the only prolific quick-draw tweeter (yeah, I said it) that I haven't unfollowed, partly because he's always witty, partly because he reminds me to read his amazing blog posts.
This article really sings his praises in ways that I don't need to duplicate. This post demonstrates Ebert's writing brilliance and strong narrative voice.
• Possibly the most tear-wrenching website ever (in a good way): The Proposal Story.
• The National Film Board of Canada has put all their films online in high-def! Famous for it's documentaries, animations and of Canadian experimental film, there's something for everyone to enjoy. I'm still partial to The Log Driver's Waltz and The Cat Came Back.
• I've already mentioned this at least once on this blog but everyone needs to Love Harder.
• This commercial is not nearly as horrendous as the still shows:
