little bitty girl

I know.

It's been a really long time since I have written.

It is not for lack of things to write about but more the lack of time. I had been working on a huge deadline for an upcoming project the past few months and it was all I could do just to be normal. But now it's all over. The project was a success and now a couple of weeks of respite before working on the next one.

The hard thing for me to do now is to get back into the habit of writing. Don't you find that the less you write, the less you feel inclined to do it?

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Comments (3)
Posted in Me-ness, Randomness

As most people can probably tell, I really love food. I am almost always astounded that I am not some fat, stropping cow (which you know, one day I think I will be if I don't watch myself as I eat almost as much or more than Stef and dude is twice my size) especially since I love noodles - pasta, vermicelli, egg, rice, spirals, you name it and I love it. What comes as a pretty close second and is often cooked with my first love is seafood. What can I say? I grew up by the sea. I have many fond memories of going to the seashore with my mother on Saturday mornings and picking out freshly caught fish for the weekend meals.

I have a really odd (at least most people think so) habit and love of visiting wet markets when I travel. Sure there could be some beautiful park or exhibit somewhere, but give me a fresh wet market any day. I really do feel food is where the heart is and key of understanding any culture. I know for myself, there is so much love, thought and tradition that goes into the preparation of one's native foods. That's why I whenever I travel, I tend to ask locals where they would go to eat if they couldn't go to their mothers. I don't care if the place is small, dark, dank or a little dirty. Second rate pish posh restaurants in other countries are places fools go to pretend to "experience" someone else's culture.

Anyway.

I am so in love with seafood that I think the entire time when Stefan and I were visiting the Seattle Aquarium, I was pointing out fish that I've never tasted before. I think the kids around me were quite grossed out when I stated aloud that octopus was quite tasty raw, as well as cooked.

"You know, if you don't watch it, you're going to get gout one day," Marie mentioned when I was extolling some other virtue of some seafood I had seen.

Gout? As in Henry VIII? The fat, horny, sacrilegious, unscrupulous monarch from the 15th century?

I always thought that gout was a sickness of the rich in medieval times from eating far too rich foods?

Turns out both Marie and I are right.

Supposedly, "Gout (also called metabolic arthritis) is a disease due to a congenital disorder of uric acid metabolism. " It is caused from eating rich foods such as seafood, alcohol, gravy to name a few. One of the main signs of gout is that it attacks the big toe, then leads to other digits, then the feet and finally the entire leg and your whole circulation.

All I can say is my big toe is looking just fine and Japanese people eat seafood all the time, and you don't see them dying off by the masses from gout.

So I stick my tongue out to you Ms. Marie and will continue eating my gouty seafood.

Comments (2)
Posted in Homage to Hunger, Randomness, Travel

You too can get the look of collagen injected lips without going to the doctor. Guaranteed 100% effective. Look like Angelina Jolie with no financial cost.

Method: Drink beer that has wasp at the the rim without noticing. Feel fluttering against lip, pinch fluttering object, thereby incurring anger of said wasp forcing it to sting your bottom lip, causing swelling. To even out both bottom and top lip, try to get a wasp to sting the other lip at the same time. This is NOT recommended.

Side Effects May Cause: Possible death if allergic (Thank goodness, I was not), Not much attention from husband after he realizes you're not going to die, Serious stinging to the point of seeing stars as lip is very sensitive area, Internal itching (probably from the venom), Jokes about how Stefan and I should not take out our anger on each other physically, Swelling for longer than a day (if you are particularly sensitive to insect bugs like me).

Possible solutions: Ice and Meat Tenderizer (recommended by someone who got bitten a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately it's not something I usually carry in my bag but will give some thought to it for the future).

Comments (4)
Posted in Me-ness, Much To Do About Nothing, Randomness, Weirdness

Recently, I had to get rid of some of our furniture and miscellaneous things. We seem to be drowning in "things" right now. My parents had such success selling off their goods from their old house online that I thought I would also give it a try. Usually, I'm a Craigslist fan. I am constantly trolling it for miscellaneous things that I don't need.

After weeks and weeks of posting and reposting, I had some interest but no bites. I then remembered that my dad had mentioned this lesser known site called Kijiji. It works on the same principles as Craigslist but since barely anyone I knew had heard of it, I was a little skeptical on it's rate of success.

Boy! Was I wrong! I basically sold everything I listed within 3 days of posting the ad. Most of the responses were seconds after I posted them. I do wonder why this site has proven to be more effective than Craigslist though. Regardless, I am happy to be rid of those things.

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Posted in Randomness, Reviewing

We have this really weird attraction in Toronto called Medieval Times. As far as I can tell from TV ads, it's essentially a show where people reenact the medieval era. There are jousts, lots of pomp and pageantry. Audience members cheer on their knights from wooden tables surrounding the ring, while feasting on a "medieval" meal.

A former co-op student was forced to go as part of a high school class trip, and she said it was one of the most surreal experiences of her short life. She complained about the girls having to wear weird paper crowns, having to eat dry rotisserie chicken with her hands and endure a remarkably cheesy show.

For some reason, I REALLY, REALLY want to go to it. I only want to go with one person, and that one person is Marie. I just think that it's going to be so painfully embarrassing, that it's going to be fun. I told Marie that the next time she visited I would take her there.

Funny how she hasn't visited in two years.

Sure, she says it's because she was busy being pregnant, giving birth and now raising a child. I think she's just trying to avoid this delectable treat I have in store for her.

Comments (2)
Posted in Joy-Friends, Randomness

That's who I sound like right now. Stefan had a really terrible hacking dry cough for the past two weeks and, lo and behold, now I have it too. It's one of the many perils of marriage or living in close quarters with someone. I have barely been able to speak without having to cough half my oesophagus out. I am sure, secretly, Stefan is relieved that there is some semblance of quiet in our home.

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Posted in Family Shenanigans, Homage to Hunger, Joy-Friends, Me-ness, Randomness

I had a hard time being inspired to do a winter re-design for this blog. Except, I was getting really bored of the fall one. Why haven't I been inspired?

Well, because we haven't really had a winter until now, which is a mighty scary thing in my part of the world. It just makes me so aware that something is really, really wrong with the world and we have to do something to stop it.

Anyway this isn't going to be a lecture, just random thoughts that have been bouncing round in my head. I've decided that I'm going to make an effort to live a "greener" life, be more aware and educate myself on how to do this. So in the spirit of random thoughts on this topics, here are some links -

I watched An Inconvenient Truth. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend that you do. It'll change the way you think about our world (or at least I hope it'll have that effect).

Here's another really awesome site that has lots of interesting and educational info.

Even Mindy's going green! She's now using an alternative kitty litter and so far, no real complaints from princess perfinicky.

Last but not least, Louise did some great whimsical drawings of animals who are at risk. It makes you smile and sad at the same time. I love this, this, this and this, my personal favourite.

Background prints of redesign by Squidfingers.

Comments (2)
Posted in Delectable Design, Randomness

That's it. I am DONE.

We had my grandmother's annual birthday/Christmas dinner yesterday and the amount of food prepared and consumed was ridiculous. My stomach is now so stretched out that it requires food every 2 hours because that's what it's been used to for the past couple of weeks.

Then I get home and there seems to be some back to back showing of Madonna's latest two tours on our local music station. I remember going to her "Re-Inventions" tour and thinking,"How the heck does the woman do it for two or more hours? I mean she's in her late forties for Pete's sake and she has a better body than I ever did when I was sixteen!"

Madge always makes me want to work out. And so that's what I'm doing.

Tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've decided to keep a visual reading list of books I've read per week because it's handy. You know how sometimes, you forget what books you've already read? And you get all disappointed because you've settled down for a big read and you've already read it and didn't even like it the first time round? That's what just happened to me.

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Posted in Randomness, Reading List

Do you find that I complain about spam a lot? It really should be a category on it's own.

I think I am just flabbergasted by the whole spamming thing. What is the purpose of it? Do people make money? Or they get a kick out of being annoying? Somebody tell me as I really would like to know. I mean do people actually click on these links? And if they do...WHY, PEOPLE, WHY?

Anyway, spam seems to be overtaking my life right now. To be frank, it's coming out of my yin yang. Spam in my email accounts, spam in my work inbox, spam on my comments....I just can't seem to get away from it all. The weird thing is the spam thing was relatively containable until recently. Now it's just exploded. I get no less than 100 spam emails in my work inbox alone.

The interesting thing is, at least in terms of this site, I seemed to have graduated from the weird sex creep-o-la spam to mundaneness such as cemetery plots and pottery classes. Can you spell R-A-N-D-O-M?

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Posted in Randomness, What's Buggin' Me

Stefan always knows that I like nothing more than random pieces of information. Look what he just sent me! Isn't this the craziest sight? Thumbelina is only 17 inches high and was born at 8 lbs, which is the size of a human baby. You can read the rest of the story here.

Comments (1)
Posted in Randomness

I'm back! That didn't take long, did it? It's weird but those few days really helped clear up the verbal constipation within me.

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Comments (2)
Posted in Delectable Design, Randomness