The guy at a clothing store tried to pet my jacket today...It's a pity that they had nice clothes because I'm never going back again.

Cheers,

Good Readings

Well I've added a few more books to my collection since I got to Ottawa; some are even worth reading.

Medieval Romances
The book is a collection of Medieval stories 'translated' into a readable form of English. Now keep in mind that these are as much "Romances" as Danté's Divine Comedy was actually a comedy; the closest thing to a passionate love scene has been a dumb Welsh kid clumsily forcing kisses on an unwilling maiden on misunderstood advice from his mother. It's a great read and includes all the goodies from funny parts to gory battles, to admirably excessive degrees of chivalry and honour. I was impressed that the stories are still well worth reading even though "Perceval, or the Story of the Grail" which I'm in the middle of right now was written over 800 years ago. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good light read

The Modern Lover
I had to debate long and hard before I bought this one, it seemed absurdly cheesy to own anything with a title like that, but my copy of The Modern Gentleman looked so lonely sitting there without its sequel. I love The Modern Gentleman but only feel a strong affection to The Modern Lover, it's an okay read and reasonably witty but I wouldn't recommend it to too many people aside from aficionados of The Modern Gentleman.



Cheers,

*snap snap*

God made me not get home until six yesterday morning, screw up my sleep patterns and be up at 2:30 watching TV for a reason - the Addams Family is that reason. Addams Family Values was on TV and I had forgotten how hilarious that movie is; next time I'm out I'm going to have to try to track down a copy of that movie so I can watch it over and over again...plus the original Addams Family movie... anyways go to http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0106220/quotes for a bunch of random quotes from the movie.


Cheers,

No cook cooking

Since the residence I live in is still under construction, I've bitterly had to give up my typical cooking style of "putting as much fat and grease as possible into a frying pan then into my belly". Much to my dismay, I'm eating healthy food; far too much healthy food. My challenge though is to find ways of eating good food using only a microwave and small toaster oven; for an added challenge I have to compete against our pyrophobic smoke alarm which seems to object to steam nonetheless any attempt at real cooking.

I have thus far resisted the temptation to simply raid the frozen food section of the grocery store and am still TV Diner free. So what have I been living off of? Well here's an example of last night's meal.

Salad: Iceberg Lettuce with olive oil and parmesan, I forgot to buy some freaking fruit to add to it (usually some tomatoes and cucumber) and just a touch of salt to "bring out the flavour" as a german exchange student once told me.
Starch: A microwaved baked potato; dry and bland on its own but quite good with the addition of some olive oil, herbs and of course salt.
Meat: Ham was the meat du jour. I've been getting sick of chicken a particular hunk of black forest smoked ham was calling out my name. Since you buy them cold and wet, the toaster oven served well to take away the unwanted watery taste as well as to ensure that I ate a nice hot meal. It was quite good and only needed a little bit of extra salt.
Bread: I succumbed to my cheese urges and bought a fresh cheesebread bun for dinner last night; I love those things even without adding salt.
Drink: Last night I got sick of having water with every meal and decided to buy myself a bottle of white wine. I chose 'Gambellera' an Italian white wine, not bad but not particularily good; it was however significantly better than Debroi Curvée a Hungarian wine I tried a while ago. Upon a detailed inspection of the hungarian bottle I found that it was not actually white wine but "White Quality Wine", a term which should be emblazoned across the label like a WHMSS warning instead of hidden in fine print.


All said and done the meal was rather edible, nutritious, more than filling and required rather minimal clean-up/preparation. I worked out the cost of the meal and realized that it was about the same as if I had gone to a fast food joint and gotten a burger combo except that I ate exponentially better here at home.


Cheers,

This last week...

"MUPPETS! I'm dealing with $%#^ing muppets here!"

"Well there's only one sensible thing to do now...freeze these six loaves of bread and then club each other with them"

(posted in a store) "If it's in stock, we've got it!"

"Do you have loaded dice?"
"You mean like sex dice?"
"No these have nothing to do with sex, they're dice with weights in them so you can cheat at gambling"
"Oh...Have you tried the sex shop?"

"It's Yahweh or the Highway around these parts"

"How the devil did you manage that?"
"Tea...lots of tea..."
"That's it?"
"Well there were biscuits as well"

Words of Wisdom From St Paul University

"I'm not really trying to teach you anything here; merely trying to have you confused at a much higher level."

The River

When you sit by a calm river at night time, look carefully at what you see. When the light is right you cannot see the leaves floating, merely the river itself; the leaves appear merely as floating shadows. Floating down the river are shards of emptiness while beside you in the darkness the leaves are as they should be...There's a metaphor somewhere here but I really don't know what it is.

Cheers