Category: Life and Times

What a Week!

It’s been one hell of a week. I’ve been sick, first with an ear infection and then a touch of the flu. I’ve been all queasy and gross feeling all week, and still am a bit. I had toast for dinner today which helps.

My computer died again. I spent a good 6 hours between Monday and yesteday on the phone with Dell. On Monday they decided my hard drive was busted, and sent me a new one yesterday. It was still busted (which I could have told them) so I called them back and spent some time explaining and trying to get them to listen to me. Eventually they caught on that I have a piece of crap with lots of stuff wrong with it so they told me to send it in with most of the peripherals and they are going to check it all. It’s about damn time. I stole Dean’s iBook for the next week while they fix it so I can still do school stuff.

Tudor visited on Tuesday and delivered a copy of his book, which is amazingly wonderful. Go buy it. I was feeling icky and out of it and forgot about the offer of tea. Bribes work best when you deliver on them.

I crammed like mad in order to finish the WTC quilt squares before Wednesday, but they are done and mailed now. I’m so glad that I’m done. I never should have volunteered for the second one. It was really making my carpal tunnel act up. Oh well. Hindsight.

I got some Koigu KPPPM in the mail that I ordered a few weeks ago. It’s beautiful and amazingly soft. I’m going to love the socks I’m making out of it. It bugs me that it’s made in Ontario but you pretty much have to buy it from the US. *grumble* It’s worth it though.

My amusement for the day: Rocky talked about truthiness and the Colbert Report. Philosophy classes kick serious ass.


Boring Health Stuff Mostly

It’s been an interesting week. I missed specialist appointment on Monday though I’m not really bothered by it. I’ve managed to get an ear infection again but it doesn’t hurt this time and it seems to only be one ear so it’s alright too. I had to see the on-call doctor at Health Services about it on Friday to be sure. Much better than last year. I was only with the doctor for maybe a minute. One look and she knew it was infected and gave me a prescription. Now the only problem will be if the eardrops don’t work. I can’t really say how many times I’ve gotten them before, since I know I had a lot of infections as a child. If they don’t, it will probably mean another harsher kind of antibotics. My purse positively rattles now. It’s sorta disturbing. There’s something like five presciptions in there, and three other things that I need to take over-the-counter.

My pill-timer died on me in class. That was fun. It made this really loud disturbing beep and reset to defaults. I tried recharging the batteries and giving it another go, but it did it again the next day so I tossed it. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that. Most likely use the alarm on my cell phone now that I have one. Hopefully it inherits the vibrate settings of whatever mode it’s on. The last thing I need is my Zelda ringtone blaring out in class. I doubt many people would be impressed. I could also get a new watch, but I really like plain analog watches and would rather not. I’m up for suggestions from people.

My carpal tunnel seems to be under control for now. It mostly involves many breaks and not overly using my hands if I don’t need to. It gets difficult, especially latey. I’m trying really hard to finish my quilt square on time but I just can’t cross-stitch as much or as fast as I would like to. It’s a good three names behind now and I’m going to have to catch that up sometime. I’m making damn good progress on the socks in class (and at FR!NGE yesterday) since I’m stressing about all my essays and presentations (6 and 2 remaining, respectively) that need to be done before the end of the month. It’s a lot to do and there just doesn’t seem to be the time.

I’m longing for the summer. From then on I’ll only have three classes per term until I’m done, and will have much more time to myself. School is suffocating me at this point and I just need a break. Of course, give it six or seven months and I’ll probably be bitching extensively about grad school applications. There’s always something to unload on the blogosphere. 😉


The Tower Is Haunted

At least that’s what Felix tells me. After today I’m starting to believe it.

This morning I woke up with a kink in my neck, a sore and slightly dislocated jaw, and a swollen lip. I slept in and was almost late for volunteering. For the most part the majority of the day went fine. I went to the Pubs office (a rare occurrence in recent years) to try and get some work done and instead ended up playing with the pretty iMac.

Aside: The MacBook Pros got a free upgrade yesterday. I’m so excited! I’m totally going down to Carbon Computing after Reading Week to touch the pretties.

Once I got back home, I started going through my study notes again, but that didn’t last long. Eventually I gave up and decided to clean up the kitchen. While doing the dishes, one of the glass cups literally fell apart while I was washing it. Somehow I got cut on both the front and the back of my hand on a single piece of glass. I wasn’t being hard on it while washing it. I still remember the time last year when Ben lost a huge chunk of his pinky finger and the skin around it from putting too much pressure on Melynda’s cup. It was very weird.

Then I went to the Blueprint meeting, which was great except for the fact that the service at Wilf’s still sucks. It took them about twenty minutes to take our order after we were seated, and an hour after that for us to get our pizza. All in all, maybe fifteen minutes was spent actually eating. Needless to say, a shitty tip was left for them.

After that I went and got some hot chocolate, and now I’m just wasting time. Again.

I’m going to be a good girl now and try to study some more before I feel completely useless.


Books!

I’ve started reading again. Working at the library can do wonders for a person’s recreational reading. I don’t have a huge amount of books out, but 8 is much better than none. I blame university for taking away my reading time. There was a time when I could easily read 30 books in three weeks. That’s a wonderful dream now, but not something I could realistically do without neglecting school. High school was easy. I want easy school back.


How to Make Mud Pie

My mom called me today with an unusual request: to write up a recipe to make pies out of mud. Apparently everyone invited to Erma’s wedding is supposed to submit a recipe for the favours, and my dad wanted to use this one as a joke. Since my mom has no sense of humour, the job fell to me to get it to seem like a legitimate recipe while still keeping the joke. Erma loves it. Her mother is the one planning the wedding and I don’t know how she’ll take it, but I don’t really care because it’s Erma’s wedding and I love her.

Mud Pie

This recipe is a family favourite, traditionally prepared in the summer months. You should not have to buy any ingredients as they should be things you already have around the house. For simplicity, I suggest obtaining the necessary materials from a neighbour’s yard on recycling day.

Materials;
1 dented aluminium pie tin
1 empty large stew can
1 stew can lid
1 empty soup can
1 mixing stick

Crust:
2 cups fresh cut grass
1 cup wet sand

Filling:
2 cups dry clay; strained
¼ cup mud-puddle water (may be substituted with ditch water in cases of drought)
12 live ladybugs (or whatever insects are handy)

Directions:

Mix grass and wet sand until evenly distributed. Press onto bottom and sides of pie plate. In the empty soup can mix dry clay and water with the stick until smooth. Pour into prepared crust. Place ladybugs on top of filling. Leave uncovered on picnic table in a sunny location for 4-6 hours. Cut into 6 pieces with stew can lid. Serve with pond-water tea.

Note: This recipe requires a unique sense of taste.

It’s essentially my dad’s recipe. I just took the loose version he had and spruced it up a bit.


Kool-Aid dye adventure

dyed yarn swatchOn Friday before I left for Cambridge my merino yarn came in from KnitPicks so I broke out the big pot and the grape and orange flavoured Kool-Aid to play around and get me some nice sock yarn. This was the result. Most of my favourite colours are in there, and the variegation is neat. I sort of expected the yarn to pool since I didn’t have any way of keeping the colours from blending, but I’m very happy with the way that it came out.


I Have Glasses!

After volunteering at the library for a couple hours I went for an eye exam for the first time in four and a half years. It was actually a really good experience. The doctor was friendly and nice and explained everything he was doing. Very helpful. I’ve known for a while that I’m nearsighted, I just didn’t know how much.

After I got my prescription I ventured for the glasses themselves. I looked at some frames, but for the most part I liked the first pair I tried on. They’re purple. Well, more of a fushia, but it looks nice. They were pretty danm expensive, but since they were having a two-for-one special on I got sunglasses as well. Things like anti-scratch coating and anti-glare coating were thrown in for free. It was a pretty sweet deal.

I haven’t really worn them yet, since they’re supposed to be for class and walking and driving and such. I won’t ever really need to wear them in the apartment. The lenses made a huge difference during the examination though. This weekend when I have access to the camera I’ll take pictures.


Marks!

I’m so excited I don’t care that everyone can see. Two A- and two B+! Averages out to an 80% for me. Now I just need them all to be As this term. Kathy wants scholarships for graduate studies.


Oh the goodies…and the baddies

It was a pretty uneventful vacation this time around. I think I needed that. I didn’t get to see Leya, or Meggie. Leya’s got a new job at Wendy’s and they made her work pretty much the entire time I was down. She got time off the weekend after I came back. I called Meg’s a couple times and got no answer, but considering it was Christmas and how much she has to do for it, I wasn’t all that surprised. It would have been really awesome to do stuff with her since I haven’t been able to pretty much at all in the last couple years.

For the most part, I spent most of my time at home with the family just sitting around and watching movies/tv. I got to see Spencer and Joey once. I was going to visit them more as well but got sick again, which also helped encourage the sitting around and doing nothing. We (Dean mostly) set up Stephanie’s computer. It got completely wiped and reinstalled which took a lot of time. We got her internet up and running too. We needed to download the service packs and doing that on really crappy dial-up is never easy. It took a couple tries because the breaker popped in the middle of the install the first time.

Pete stole the coat I stole from Dean. The little mooch. Though I let him have it rather than taking it back so I can’t really complain. It’s better than any of the coats that he has. They’re all really old and practically falling apart. He’s grown a lot in the last year and most of his coats are at least 6 years old. It’s safe to say they barely fit if at all.

For the first time in a very long time we had Christmas dinner at my grandma’s house. All of us. It went surprisingly well. Everyone was well-behaved and there was no yelling or screaming or complaining. Good times. my grandma is big on Christmas, though my parents don’t really care. My mom swears she just went for Emile’s cooking. I got Tim Hortons gift certificates and some bath stuff, and a mug for the bicentennial of the chapel where I was christened. I was not expecting that last but it’s a great gift. I got my grandma a tealight lamp, and some cans of stew for when her and Emile go camping. She looked really surprised when she got those open. It was totally worth it. Dean and his family got me the Bumble, a scroll frame/floor stand, a nice white dress shirt, a red jacket thing, and Christmas dishes for when we have our own house. Pretty darn sweet. I like the pattern on them. It’s not too flashy. Considering most of the Christmas dishes I’ve seen are really showy, these are nice.

I got some other stuff, but not because of the holidays. A cell phone because I got out by myself a lot at night, and on the busses alone a lot, and it’s good to be able to let people know where I am/call for help if need be. A USB drive to back up the websites and my school stuff so that if my computer has anymore pleasant surprises for me I won’t lose anything important. I bought myself a new purse to fit all my pills and crap in. A new wallet while I was at it because I could never properly fit everything in the one I have. These are perfect. I caved and got a new razor since the one I have is obsolete and it’s almost impossible to get blades for it anymore. Fishies! Three (now two) fantails, a pleco, a black moor, and an albino clawed frog. The poor froggie is in a separate container for now because the fish keep eating his food. The other fantail ate a huge chunk after already being fed and died from overeating on the first day it was here. Stupid fucking fish. I’m mad at a dead fish, I know. But jeez. How dumb.

A person from the cross-stitch list I’m on sent me her spare Q-snaps. I’ve been using them pretty much since I got them. That was a wonderful way to finish up the year. Free stuff is always good. Useful free stuff is even better. I’m so thankful. She put her return address on the package so I’m going to make her something as a thank-you and mail that. I’m not telling her, so it’ll show up one day as a nice surprise.

I’ve been kind of spotty with my knitting this last week. I’m making my parents wool socks this time instead of the cotton ones. Wool holds its shape much better than cotton so these should not only be warmer but hold up better. I’ve ordered a lot of sock yarn in the last couple weeks. Probably 15 pairs worth. It’s selfish, but most of that is for me. I don’t like store-bought socks, but I wear them because I have nothing else. I have four pairs of socks that I’ve knitted for myself, but once those are gone my feet freeze. I hate buying socks, so most of the ones I have are a couple years old and getting holey. I get to spend the next couple months making me nice warm wool sockies.

Currently I’m making Sra a pair of anklets out of a really nice green shade I got from Elann. I bought some more of it last week for me because they are almost out and it’s really a great colour. I also got another Addi. Most of my knitting is done in class and if I’m going to be making all these socks with fingering yarn it’s got to be portable and two-at-a-time. Addis kick some serious ass in the magic loop knitting department.

I’ve got some Kroy for Dean that we got at Len’s Mills a couple months ago. I tried making socks with it at home using a chevron pattern and couldn’t get the right number of stitches to cast on. After frogging everything three or four times I think I’ve got it. I hope they work. It’s a nice pattern.

Tomorrow school starts and I proceed to have no life. I’ve insanely signed up for three seminar courses, two of which are kind of above my head. I’ll have class for six straight hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s going to be interesting. As a plus, still nothing on Fridays, and only one 80 minute class Monday and Wednesday. So not too bad. Still, tomorrow and Wednesday will be especially busy. I have to get up early to try and get used books before everyone else buys them all up. Then go to class all day, come home and get planner and binder and stuff ready for the term, then off to a Blueprint meeting. Wednesday I have to go through the OSAP mess, go to class, get my blood test done finally (I was supposed to do it in November), try and schedule and eye exam and dentist appointment, and then most likely start reading for the whack of seminar-ness on Thursday. Still, it’s good to get stuff done and start a routine now. Though it’s a lot I’m rather looking forward to it.

I’ve also got a volunteer job at the public library, so I’ll be doing that six hours a week. I still have to negotiate the schedule, but with any luck I’ll be allowed Wednesday and Friday afternoons. I’m excited about that, but a little nervous about screwing stuff up. It seems pretty simple though so I should do fine. My main concern is that I tend to work really fast once I get going. It’s kinda hard to do six hours a week if I can finish faster than that. I’m supposed to be putting out the books on hold as they come back in. Since that depends on books and movies being returned it’s not like I can create more work for myself once I’ve emptied the bin. Ah well. I’m sure there’s other stuff they can find for me to do.