Sweet Mother of Jebuth!

Day 30! Shwing!

And to celebrate, this is my post.

I’m going to buy a winter coat and see a movie.

Also, on the agenda for the weekend:

Visit sister

One of a Kind Craft Show

Lettuce Knit

Lush

Oh, yeah, and NOT blog.

Take that, suckahs!

Squeezing Blood From a Stone

Second-to-last day of NaBloPoMo, but who’s counting?

Today I played soccer-baseball. Awesome.

And for a brief shining moment, I thought I had found a link claiming that soccer-baseball had captured the hearts of thousands of young Saudi Arabians, but I was wrong. Instead, please enjoy some child eye-candy. I give you the spawn of my brother…

               

Pass Me a Note in Study Hall

In one of the jobs that I work, I occasionally receive hand-written notes from other people doing the same job that I do. Let me try to be more vague. I do stuff. So do some other people. They give me notes to read, and stuff.

Anyhow, today I received a particularly amusing missive, and I wish I had saved it to scan right into this here bloggin’ fandango, names removed to protect the illiterate. But I didn’t, so I’ve reproduced it here, in typed format, as vaguely as possible, but with an attempt to keep the humour intact.

Please allow (insert name) to (do something involving writing) in your room. He may use the dictionnary if necessary.

Are you catching that? It’s not a typo on my part. That thing we use to check spelling and definitions? C’mon, it’s less funny when I have to point out the irony.

Woot! Woot!

My faith in the portion of the American public who spends money voting for reality television programming has been renewed.

Live from Hollywood…

…it’s too many Marie Osmond crotch shots.

Sorry, Osmond fans, but that bird has got to go. When she wears short dresses and does slinky moves I throw up a little in my mouth. I can hardly believe she made it to the final three, and I’ll be mighty ticked if she doesn’t get eliminated immediately following the show opening tomorrow night. Damn you reality TV. If you can consider random celebrities doing the paso doble with a professional ballroom dancer reality. Because I know that’s exactly what my reality is like. Hey, DM perfect 10 on showmanship, but you can you put a little more technique into the 13th coat of red paint?

And I surely must be the last person to hear that Ms. Osmond is one of the world’s top doll designers. Et comment!

Is the doll a child? If yes, why the fish nets?

The holidays are coming. I’m getting my niece one of these. Hunka hunka burnin’ love, indeed.

Pillow Talk

Some days, for me, there is a time between being awake and being fully asleep. Fortunately for DM, and now for the rest of you, this is when I am at my most hilarious. I don’t always remember these conversations or outbursts – probably some of them are carry-forwards of dreams that were just starting to take root.

KL (according to DM): It would be better if we used a cedar plank.

DM: What? 

KL: I thought we talking about barbecuing.

 

    I blame this entirely on an episode of Good Eats. We’re addicted to the science meets food quirkiness of Alton Brown, and a few nights prior to this “conversation” Alton was giving us the 411 on seafood, much to my delight, and DM’s chagrin. Another hilarious outburst involved me insisting that the chicken had lobster claws.

Speaking of lobsters…

Photo courtesy of the Gulf of Maine Aquarium’s How to Eat a Lobster page. Am I the only who thinks it’s funny that an aquarium is giving out instructions on how to do this (eat them, not give them the One Finger Discount)? Are there lobsters available in the gift shoppe?

Do-gooding

Tonight Wellspring Niagara is having their annual Starry Night Gala. DM sits on the board and does a great deal of work for the gala in particular, so we’re heading down there tonight to be a part of the big shin-dig. There will be food and wine and silent and live auctions, as well as musical performances by Carol Welsman and guitarist Pavlo.

This year, I’m helping out and while opening CDs to be autographed doesn’t phase me, the idea of being a spotter in the live auction makes me nervous. What happens if I say someone bid and they didn’t? What happens if someone wants to drop a load of cash and I didn’t see them give the nod. Uh, that guy may have bid, or he may have scratched his nose. You, sir? Adjusting your toupe, and not bidding $5000 on a case of wine? Right. My bad. Am I responsible for any bad spotting that I might commit?

That’s it, folks. We have $8 million, do I hear nine? Going, going. SOLD, to the crappy spotter in last year’s dress.

Let’s Burn Some Witches While We’re At It

So if you listen to the radio or watch the TV you’ve probably heard about this.

A few Catholic school boards in Ontario have made the decision to pull copies of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass from the shelves of their schools until a formal review of the material contained within can be completed.

Earlier this week, I had heard rumblings from Catholic groups in the United States about the content of the book as well as concerns for the author’s recent interview where he outs himself as an atheist. It made me angry, but I can’t say I was all that surprised.

But today, it’s come to Ontario, much closer to home and now I’m downright itchy. As an educator, I believe it’s a slippery slope when we start telling our students what they can and cannot read. My mind can extrapolate all to easily, and hundreds of classic books and more modern classics in the making, are eliminated from the shelves with the slam of a rubber stamp.

What ever happened to giving kids a bit of credit? What ever happened to education? How could we use books like The Golden Compass and the ideas contained within its pages to teach our children something about this world? Not everyone in this world is Catholic. I certainly am not. But not everyone in this world is Christian, or Buddhist or Muslim either. Are we so self-righteous in our beliefs that we cannot allow others to have their own, or teach our children about diversity and choices and hope that they’ll be upstanding citizens?

I have read The Golden Compass. I am currently devouring the second book in the trilogy, The Subtle Knife. And yes, I can see how some adults might interpret the book in a way that could suggest anti-religious, anti-Christian themes. I think a great deal of 10- and 12-year olds might be loving these books for a goodly number of other reasons – adventure, mystery, and magic. Heaven forbid… but that does mean we should.

PS… You can catch a two-part interview with Philip Pullman on Writers and Company on CBC Radio One, November 25th and December 2nd. For more information, visit the Writers and Company website.

Phoning it in…

Tonight I made cupcakes using this recipe from Gourmet Magazine I got way back around Easter. Obviously, I used a muffin pan, cupcake liners and other cupcake type accoutrements and they turned out swell. I also subbed vanilla yogourt for the sour cream. Just as tasty as the sour cream version only now with Activia Probiotic cultures. Does that healthy nugget excuse the fact that there are 3 packages of cream cheese and nearly 4 cups of icing sugar in the frosting?

Hells yes.

Comparing Apples and Apples

Tonight I had to stop in at the local large grocery chain to pick up a few things. We’ve been a little sidetracked by the wall that has sprung up in our home and have been bogged down doing things like, you know, making it look like the rest of the walls, and then deciding we should just give all the walls a freshen up, let’s dive in head first. When it comes to home improvements, that’s just how we roll.

Anyhow, I was swinging my buggy through the produce aisle scoping out eh apple selection. Now, DM and I have a couple of preferred apple vendors at the local market, but I saw a big, shiny stack of Braeburn and was drawn to it right away. When I was living in PEI, the main fruit staple was apples. I swear, one time, I went to get some lemons and “sorry, ma’am but the lemons are stuck on the mainland while this here blizzard drops 200 metres of snow on us”. The produce manager was allowed to live only because he bore a strong resemblance to one Jim Cuddy. Of all the apples available to me, I loved Braeburn and Cameo with a fire that kept my innards warm until the snow melted in May.

So I tossed a couple of these shiny, Braeburn “Born in the USA” Apples into my cart and kept on shuffling.  I couldn’t stop thinking about how these apples were going to taste. So crunchy and never mealy. Braeburn had never let me down in the frozen wasteland that is Charlottetown in January. I snatched one from the bag before loading the groceries into my trunk.

Never say never. Disappointment never hurt so badly. It was tart and right on the verge of being too mealy to eat. Blah! I half-heartedly finished the apple, waste not want not and all, but boy, there’s a lesson here. Fuji apples from Jim and Joe and Mutsu from Big Mama Beamer, even after being kept in cold storage all winter, are just so much better. More flavour. Better texture. All-round awesome. And grown 20 minutes from here. When it comes to apples then, there truly is no place like home.