Tuesday, October 31, 2006

NaBloPoMo

November is National Blog Posting Month and I have been challenged by a few of my friends (Kristin was the instigator) to participate in a little event. Participating means posting daily during the month of November - and I have officially registered.

If you'd like to keep up with all of us, you can check out Kern's, Kristin's, and Gina's blogs as well. Now we'll be like George, Elaine, and Jerry in the "Master of your Domain" contest .. except, well, not really.

I'm not sure I'll be able to complete this marathon of a blog posting race. Wish me luck and add another line to that list from my last post. Whee hee!

Talk to you soon (like - tomorrow),

B.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

It's Happened Again

Gary calls it my “tri-annual reality check” – and I’ve done it again. This is when I suddenly and often painfully realize that the list of things that I was planning to accomplish in a given period of time is just ludicrously absurd. There is just absolutely no way it’s gonna happen. Kind of an ‘eyes to big for my belly’ problem. You’d think by now I’d have learned. In a way though, it’s not so bad .. no one really gets hurt from my over-committing – I don’t really let anyone down but myself (or maybe Rob but he really only seems to mind the half day of panic that accompanies my reality check). To give a clearer sense of what I’m talking about, I’m including here the list of things that I thought I could get done all before January 1, 2007. This is in addition to working full-time, eating, sleeping, and general upkeep (groceries, laundry, vacuuming, keeping in touch with friends and fam, snuggling my honey). The list was prepared in no particular order and specific deadlines are noted.
  • Go with Rob to buy a washing machine and dryer and get it installed
  • Buy the tub, the sink, the faucets, counter, cabinetry and remaining odds and ends for our 3rd floor bathroom
  • Find the necessary people to do the renovation for our 3rd floor bathroom and get them to actually do all of it.
  • Fix the muffler on the car (before we drive to Montreal)
  • Paint the den, the guest room, and the office
  • Visit my brother in Huntsville
  • Go to Meredith’s party in Montreal (Oct 27-29)
  • Make 50 candy apples and a pumpkin cake for the party (Oct 27 – 29)
  • Finish knitting Nathan’s sweater, finish knitting my mum’s sweater and knit some mitts for Gramps
  • Buy a zipper and sew it on my felt purse
  • Produce and perform in a dance show (Oct 26 and Oct 30)
  • Teach 3, one-hour dance classes (one a month at scheduled times)
  • Choreograph and teach a 4 minute beginner tap piece (over 4 weeks from Oct – Nov)
  • Choreograph and teach a 4 minute modern duet (over 4 weeks from Nov – Dec)
  • Learn 3 new dances (for next year’s show)
  • Submit an application for FIDA
  • Attend dance class 3 times a week (improve flexibility)
  • Fix the fence
  • Fix the drain in the kitchen
  • Fix the heating on the 1st floor
  • Bake Christmas cookies
  • Make Christmas presents for 5 friends
  • Buy Christmas presents (Dec 25)
  • Buy Birthday presents (Dec 24)
  • Write and mail Christmas cards (Dec 18)
Now that I’ve calmed down a little and re-evaluated, here’s what I think I can realistically accomplish in that time (and yes, I appreciate that it’s mostly the stuff that HAS to get done):
  • Have Rob buy a washing machine and dryer by himself and help him get it installed
  • Buy the tub, the sink, the faucets, counter, cabinetry and remaining odds and ends for our 3rd floor bathroom
  • Find the necessary people to do the functional half of the renovation for our 3rd floor bathroom and leave the esthetic half (painting, new shelves) for winter.
  • Fix the muffler on the car (before we drive to Montreal)
  • Paint the den
  • Get Christian to come to Toronto
  • Go to Meredith’s party in Montreal (Oct 27-29)
  • Make 50 candy apples and a pumpkin cake for the party (Oct 27 – 29)
  • Knit some mitts for Gramps
  • Produce and perform in a dance show (Oct 26 and Oct 30)
  • Teach 2, one-hour dance classes (one a month at scheduled times Oct. and Dec)
  • Choreograph and teach a 4 minute beginner tap piece (over 4 weeks from Oct – Nov)
  • Choreograph and teach a 4 minute modern duet (over 4 weeks from Nov – Dec)
  • Attend rehearsals for 3 new dances (for next year’s show)
  • Submit an application for FIDA
  • Buy everyone Christmas presents (Dec 25)
  • Buy Birthday presents (Dec 24)
  • Write and mail Christmas cards (Dec 18)
What do you think? Am I forgetting anything? Is it do-able, now?

I have to admit, at this stage, I’m mostly worried about the choreography. It’s just such an unknown in terms of time. I need chunks of time to work on it to be proud of the result. And I’m still a little skeptical about the bathroom but it’s important enough that I think I can make some good progress on it in November.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Thanksgiving

Another Thanksgiving, another long time between posts, another really long post with all sorts of information that you guys will have to skip over to get to the good parts.

It's kind of fun to remember blogging on Thanksgiving last year. It's fun to remember back to what I was doing at this time last year. And having blogged about it, means that I remember all about it when I'm blogging this year. Fun!

So - this Thanksgiving was pretty good. I'm in Victoria this year. We flew to Vancouver on Saturday morning. The flight was normal. We arrived a little early actually and our bags were in the first 10 off the plane -- so maybe not that normal. Then we took the ferry to Victoria, arriving around 5:30pm. We celebrated Rob's birthday that night. On Sunday we all went to church and then for dim sum. Sunday was Rob's dad's 70th birthday and so we had a sort of tea ceremony. I don't know much aobut it, really, just that we served Rob's dad tea (and his mum too since her 70th is in April but we won't be here), received lycee, and received "advice". The eldest went first and the youngest last. It was fine - but I'm not really a big fan of many of these Chinese traditions. Maybe I don't understand them well enough. I made Rob's dad a Tiramisu for his birthday cake. (I didn't do a very good job this time. I've made it before, quite successfully, but something went wrong this time. Sadly, I'm still not even sure where I went wrong so I'm going to have to try again. I think it was a combination of having my ingredients at the wrong temperature and over soaking the sponge. )

On Monday we celebrated Thanksgiving. It was my chance to do some cooking. This year the menu was:
  • Creamy Mushroom Soup
  • Endive and Butter Lettuce Salad, with pumpkin seeds, olives, orange segments, and an orange dressing
  • Roast Turkey
  • Stuffing, baked and served in yellow peppers
  • Sweet Potatoes (sliced and roasted with olive oil and parmesan)
  • Cornbread
  • Brussel Sprouts
  • Snap Peas in garlic sauce
  • Gingersnap Crust Pumpkin Pie
Everybody really enjoyed it. Rob's family is polite enough not to say anything, even if they didn't like it that much. The pumpkin pie was unbelievably good. And the potatoes, sprouts and soup were also quite good. The rest of it needed some work. The turkey was tasty, just not quite as good as last year. The stuffing I made last year was much better and the garlic sauce on the peas was too oily. The olives in the salad weren't quite right and the oil I used in the dressing was too strongly flavoured for the rest of the salad. The corn bread was really yucky IMO but Rob and Cynthia liked it. Hmm .. I'll have to keep working on it.

Since then, there's just been a lot of hanging around, knitting, reading (Baggage by Emily Barr) and eating of leftovers. Not such a bad vacation!

Talk to you soon,

B.