Convocation v2.0!

Hurray for working so hard over the last 2 years for another degree!


I officially haven't been a student for over 3 months now, and although I miss being in the loop about all the grad student events, I'm really liking not getting paid shit and saving tuition fees.

Duane (one of my committee members) and I

Waiting

"What are you doing with your life?" she says.

"Waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

Then, she looks at the night above her. "When the emptiness stops haunting my mind; haunting my soul. That one moment when all darkness brightens; when the fucked up shit floating in my mind fades away."

STOP JOSEPH KONY

This is such an important cause.

Please please PLEASE watch this video. I implore you.

Take the 30 minutes to watch this. Really watch it.

And share it. Oh please, share it with everyone you know, on every form of social media networking that you have.

Let the world know.

Time is running out.

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

Surprise!

Kendra got engaged last month, and to celebrate it, Carolyne hosted her surprise engagement party.

We all eagerly awaited the guest of honour, trying not to be too loud as to give it away before she walked in.


There were plenty of treats to eat (including a fantastically nostalgic and appropriate bowl of ring pops!) and lots of champagne to go around.


We chatted about wedding plans and played some Apples to Apples! Super fun game and it's been a while since I played it. It made me nostalgic (as a few things that evening did) and want to go out to buy a bunch of my favourite games.


We had our Power Ranger (?) like photo op with all of our ring pops on and the evening was in full swing!


Congratulations!

Birthday extravaganza

My birthday was a special one this year, where I celebrated leaving the 18-24 age demographic and entering the new world of 25-34 (or 25-29).

I wanted to do something a little different than what I normally do on my birthday. What better way to say I'm growing up than to have a nice little grown up wine and cheese party!

I got these nice new plates and was (slightly too over-) excited for them.

I also now enjoy taking fancy photos of random non-fancy things. Like this:


And this (pretty wine glass markers):


I think my birthday went pretty well. My friends were there and we had a great time talking, laughing and eating delicious cheeses (nomnomnom!)

There was lots of dessert to go around too! I made french vanilla cupcakes with a whipped buttercream frosting, Kendra brought me a cake, Carolyne brought Jonny a cake, and Jonny made a Brown Betty.




Hurray for delicious food, lots of wine, and great friends!

Defense-ive grievances

Ah. So I forgot to write bitch about my M.Sc. defense.

Nothing much to report here. The same old grievances about the same old people throwing the same old stupid reasons for not being in attendance for something in the department and something important to a friend. Also known as, friends who once again fail to show up to important events and blame it on it being "too early" or "too far".

I don't think I'm one to really hold unattainably high standards for friends, but I do expect friends to be there for each other when needed. A time of need would be one where support is duly needed - such as a defense. The Guelph campus is not that big. We also don't live more than 15 minutes away from it, walking distance. It was disheartening to hear that I scheduled my defense too early in the morning and in a building too far away to attend.

It's such a slap to the face to hear that 915am in the building across the street is too difficult to get to. Especially when someone from the lab I work in, took the bus in from Markham at 7 in the morning, just to get to my defense on time.

There really is only one question left. Are these people really my friends? Do they really have my best interests in mind?

Perhaps I am a bit naive and expect things that just can't be expected. But coming from fellow graduate students, we all live and understand the importance that culminates in a thesis defense. And for it to be casually passed off with the flick of a wrist as "too early" and "too far"?

I would never use those as excuses for not attending something that was important to a friend. Especially after my presence was repeatedly stated to be important.

The take home message is that I'm not important enough to get up for. I'm not important enough to walk across the street for. I'm not important enough to give a passing glance to. I'm not important enough for 60 minutes of someone's time.

It hurts. It really does.

A whole year? Already?

Adam and I celebrated our 1-year anniversary this past weekend, so we decided to go back to where it all started...

Yes, my friends. We went to...

Greek Garden.

Delicious! I really do like that place so I was glad to get to have some Greek food again. As in, I was glad to once again have spanikopita that I don't have to labour over myself.

I left work a bit early so we could pick up a GPS from Future Shop on the way home.

That beauty of a baby set me back quite a bit, but all in good intention. This way we don't have to keep borrowing Jen's GPS and I get the excitement of owning a new fancy gadget.


I came home to some gorgeous delivered flowers, that was dropped off at the neighbour's since they came too early.

Then for a "fun" game of darts in the backyard where I clearly excelled. Darts because Adam was awful at winning me any prizes when we went to the CNE this year. So he made his own game so that he could "win".

Obviously, I am way better.

Some prizes didn't quite fit...

But clearly, I won them all.

Greek Garden was busy (busier than I'd ever seen). We were a bit early for the movie so we stopped in the bookstore first to peruse. I picked up another Michael Pollan book to add to my growing collection and we went to watch The Help.

I hadn't read the book so I was hesitant to watch it, but it was sort of the last chance to see it, so I figured, why not.

The movie was fantastic, and if movies are always worse than the books, then the book must be absolutely incredible.

It was a fun night and I was totally pooped out. Good thing everything in town is so close, home was only 10 minutes away!

Asia!

Going to Asia! See you in a few weeks!

A Canadian legacy

A day or mourning for Canada, at the loss of a great politician.

Rarely do I get teary eyed when someone in the media passes on, but this is something that really strikes a chord, even if you aren't an NDP.

The death of Jack Layton really was something like a dark ominous cloud in the sky. Since he announced he was temporarily stepping down to fight his 2nd battle with cancer, it really seemed like things were going to go downhill.

Dozens of articles and newspaper obits have hit the web on this particular topic and I don't doubt in my mind that this affects every Canadian.

At noon, the NDP released a letter written by Jack Layton just days before his death.

Read about it here: http://winnipeg.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110822/wpg_layton_letter_110822/20110822/?hub=WinnipegHome

For more, CBC has some articles as well: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/08/22/layton-obituary.html

Thoughts and prayers with his wife and family.

Gnomeo & Juliet

I love animated movies. Although I don't think I've actually seen any since last summer's "Despicable Me". I've been wanting to watch this for a while but never really found a time or mood to watch it.

Lucky me (really?), headaches have been ruining my life as of late so I took an evening off of staring intently at word processor documents for at-home mani pedi's while watching a movie.

Cute! I love the spin on a Shakespearean play, and animated!

Even the character names remain the same, I loved how true to the original this film was.

I recommend this for anyone. It's such a cute movie, with lots of entertaining bits to make it more modern. Even Shakespeare himself makes an appearance (albeit, as a statue, but still)!

Canada Day!

It was a beautiful day on Canada Day and we had planned to spend the day at the beach. Grand Bend and Wasaga were too far away to go and would be really busy, so we opted for Elora Quarry instead.

It was gorgeous and hot and sunny! I packed a very big picnic for us, with sandwiches, a veggie platter, a bunch of whole fruits and berries, watermelon and fresh lemonade.

I don't have a small cooler, so we opted to bring the massive one we went camping with. I managed to fill up most of it, but it was a ridiculous amount of food for just the two of us. I was hoping Matt would join us, but he had a long night of badminton so he opted to sleep.


We got to the beach around 1030 to beat the crowd, but it quickly filled up. I managed to finish reading a book and started on another. That didn't go far though, as it was filling up with sand and the heat was near unbearable.

After a few dunks in the (REALLY) freezing water, we headed out. Five hours in the sun was more than enough for me and Adam's really ridiculous tan warped into a burn.

The heat put me off on cooking so we went to Greek Garden for dinner. Yummmm spanikopitaaaaa.

Ending the night with fireworks at Riverside and a nice leisurely stroll back home from the park!

Hockey fans disgraceful

Show some class, will you?

I feel like Canadians might be particularly sore losers. I really think it's disgusting how hockey fans act out when losing the Stanley Cup.

Yes. I know. It's heartbreaking. I was there, 2006 when the Oilers lost. It didn't mean I went out and started throwing rocks at windows, setting things on fire and endangering the lives of lots of innocent people who are out on the streets or working.

Hockey fans can be batshit crazy.

The complete lack of respect of other people's property. The utter loss of control over oneself. These people should be held accountable for their blatant vandalism.

I know it's not only in Vancouver, that this happens every year. Edmonton was no exception. Drunk tanks were out on Whyte Ave every game night during the playoff run. I'm not discriminating against Vancouver. I don't think this behaviour is acceptable anywhere, for any reason.

If a hockey team can set off this type of emotion, I'm worried about what other reactions can be elicited in these people.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/06/16/bc-riot-thursday.html

Birthdays and cake!

Adam's birthday was yesterday, which is the main reason why we didn't stay overnight at Relay this year. I needed most of the day to bake the cake, so being awake and alert was necessary.

I made a simple white cake, a recipe I hadn't tried before. With a trick to help cakes bake evenly, I was pleasantly surprised to have a perfectly level cake when I was done with the baking!

Perfectly flat!

This made my life so much easier, because it wasn't absolutely crucial for me to crumb coat the cake. Although it would have been better with it, I was totally pressed for time.

I made a simple vanilla buttercream to start and slathered it all over the cake. To put the finishing decorations up, I added a packet of instant espresso to make a delicious buttercream and a slight colour contrast.

Delicious!

We went out for dinner at Wooly's and headed back for games and dessert. Hurray for birthdays!

Penguins! in a cookie =)

'Penguins! The ultimate cute bird. Now available in cookie form! For a limited time only, get them before they're gone!'

If I could have an infomercial, that could be what it sounds like.


Earlier this week I made penguin cookies. I couldn't post them until now because the recipient of them was still in suspense about what it was that I had made.

Anywhoo, Adam's favourite animal would be (you guessed it) the penguin. Having a big stash of penguin stuffed animals hidden away at his dad's, they've been around his whole life. We recently began the propaganda on his niece, last month while we were in Regina.

But herein lies the story of the penguin cookie...

They began as innocent gingerbread cookies, cut out from the top of a highball glass. It was irrevocably altered forever when it was iced *gasp* with black buttercream icing.


Then it was filled with flood black, only to be tainted with more icing, this time white.

Piped along the bottom and then filled once more, with flood white.

Finally, it was given a rest. But then more embellishments were added. To end up with, a penguin!

Beautiful!

Happy birthday Adam!

2010: a year in review

So it's the beginning of a new year, which signifies a fresh start for all the things from the previous year you weren't so happy with.

2010 was an interesting year. It was the first full year I was gone, and there were a lot of ups and downs with it. There were mistakes on my part, but I like to think that all was rectified by the end.

I have 14 more months to complete my Day Zero list. Better get on it!

2011 is the beginning of a fresh start and a new way of viewing life. Of not making the same mistakes as before, and not falling into the same traps.

Here's to the new year!

Christmas

I love Christmas. I love giving gifts, and I love getting gifts. =)

One of the better things about being the oldest of the cousins (and getting older in general), is that you start to get money instead of presents. This is great, because I can use it to get things I actually want, or to get things I need and am too cheap to get myself regularly. I get money from my grandparents and from some extended family, which goes a long way when you have to pay rent...

But there's always your parents and the die-hard aunt in the family who's bent on always getting an actual present. Even better when she manages to get something you want too.

From my parents and brother I got:

• Gucci purse
• Gucci wristlet
  
• lululemon pants
• t shirt
• sweat pants
• TYR swimsuit
  
• Sennheiser foldable headphones

From the extended family I got:

• Chi hair care set
• Bench zip up jacket
• shoes (??... if my aunt takes me to get the right size)
• money

The Bench jacket probably made me the happiest. I'm going to exchange the colour, but hurray for almost exactly what I wanted!

MCB Xmas Party and a busy day..

Last week was my department's Christmas party, and this week is Adam's.

It was a long day for me, as it started before 8am. The girls and I planned breakfast at Cora's at 8am, so Jerlene came to pick me up just before that. Ann and Wilson were already there and I was surprised that there weren't actually that many tables that were seated already. It didn't seem to pick up much more during our time there either..

I didn't like Cora's that much. The food was good, but I wouldn't go back. It was very heavily focused on the fruit portion of breakfast, which I think is great, but what I really wanted was my pancakes and eggs for breakfast. They don't have 'a la carte' on their menu so I couldn't just order my pancakes and eggs, and all their other set breakfast choices included ham, sausage, bacon or something that I couldn't have.

I ended up getting french toast, and it didn't come at all like how I was expecting. My toast wasn't dipped in egg and fried, it looked like it was just regular toast and topped with a HUGE amount of fruit. Don't get me wrong, the (essentially) fruit platter was delicious, but I wanted some subsistence to my breakfast, which I felt like I didn't get.

I had to last until lunch...

Lunch was a meeting with Martin Harry, the Eastern Marketing Manager for SeCan. SeCan is responsible for sponsoring the other scholarship I won this semester. As part of their campaign with the scholarship, Martin comes up from Ingersoll to personally hand me my scholarship cheque. There is also a press release written up about me, complete with photos and everything. And of course Martin takes me for lunch so we can chat. We went to Gryphon's Lounge, where I probably will never go again. There wasn't anything vegetarian on the menu, so I was so glad when she told me their special was a 'brie melt' and I would be okay for food. Unfortunately, she put real bacon on my caesar salad, so I had to pick that off. I couldn't get it all, so I eventually had to eat some bacon too, but that was disappointing.

The evening was full of being sober around lots of very UNsober people, aka. the MCB Christmas party. At the Italian club, we had to drive there. The plan was, Adam would drive us there, but he would drink, so I would drive home. And drink he did. Michael ended up dumping the contents of his entire flask into his glass of coke.

Class-y.

The dinner wasn't that great, as Adam's chicken looked super dry. The vegetarian meal was pretty yummy, but by no means was it scrumptious. The food from the Delta last week was a lot better. Regardless, after dinner, dessert and more prizes, the dance floor opened up and therein began the shit-show. It wasn't as bad as it was made out to be and that I expected though. As much as people were quite drunk, I'm sure the ridiculous antics didn't start until they all got to Apartment 58. We could fit another 3 people in the car, so I drove downtown to discover it was $5 cover to get into 58. Adam didn't really want to go, and I couldn't justify the $10 for 30 minutes inside, so we went home, much to Chris' disappointment.

A text at 2am from Chris mentions how we are his favourite. Awww yay! For that, Chris is the main feature of the photos in today's post. Enjoy! =]

Christmas Baking

As last year, we decided to do another baking session. The girls were coming over on Sunday, but of course, I started my baking ahead of time.

On Saturday I made:

• white and dark chocolate bark with pecans
• vegan chocolate cupcakes

On Sunday I made:

• chocolate peppermint cookies
• chocolate haystacks
• flourless snow mountains

Kris came with her shortbread dough, and Kendra made surprise cookies, which had marshmallow inside. Yum!

The house smelled delicious! It has been for more than a week since I had been making some pretty hefty dinners everyday, but it smelled even better because of all the chocolate going around.

We had a lot of baked goods going around, and I'm sure this was the day Adam's tummy felt by far the worst. His fault for all the 'taste-testing' (aka. snacking) in between!

I got the 9 bags ready for secret santa, and extra 3 bags for some people in the office, and I managed to get 3 smallish boxes and another bigger box stuffed full of goodies. The big box to the Yada lab, whom demolished the goodies in a day, and the 3 other boxes to Al, Vanessa and Adam.

So many goodies!

Chocolate peppermint cookies

#82: Invest

Time to cross another off the DayZero list. #82: invest.

I (finally) went got my appointment with Long at the bank the other day to start my investment portfolio with him. We discussed my options for the ScotiaBank RSP, and I decided on what I wanted exactly. We got it all set up with a lump sum deposit that day, and also set up my contributions that will come out of my bank account at the beginning of every month.

Woohoo!

PA Xmas Party

My department was holding our Christmas party on December 9 at the Delta Hotel. I got tickets for Adam and me to go, and we had to get there a bit early since I told Gale I would come help out a bit earlier than the start. We got there just after 7 and the laptop and podium was already all set up and ready for me. I loaded all the powerpoint presentations onto the computer and tested out the microphone and positioning.


Hurray for bring the MC for the evening.

The place looked great, and the food was delicious! The room filled up quite quickly, and the live music (from D Eve Archer) was absolutely fantastic. Diane did 3 sets of 45 minutes and another of 30 minutes, and she definitely kept the crowd growing. Heck, even people from the real estate party down the hall came to crash ours because ours was better! And I'm not gonna lie, I was very impressed and proud to have been part of organizing the event. It was superb, and I had a ton of fun at it.

In between all the music sessions, we had some speaking notes (from Peter), prizes and the agriculture trivia event that the girls helped gather the questions and answers for. The prizes for that were fun too, and there were a lot of bags of chocolate and candy going around the room. I was surprised by how quickly people knew the answers to the questions too. Darn Monica for knowing virtually all the answers!

Regardless, my feet were extremely tired wearing those super tall heels, but I had so much fun I didn't want to stop dancing. Gale loosened up a bit for it too and had quite a few drinks in him too. Him and Eric Lyons were dancing up a storm on the dance floor, along with the 80 year old man with the 60 something year old women from the real estate party. What a hoot!