Last night I dreamt that I was smoking crack with James Spader, and I accidentally set his headboard on fire. Make of that what you will, Freudians.

Was weirdly restless this afternoon, so I went for a walk. It's definitely fall. I was walking right around sunset; the light was almost purple and the smell of wood smoke was in the air and even though the trees are only just starting to change colours you could tell that fall is here. There's something weirdly melancholy about fall; it seems like a time of death, or at least hibernation. Summer and its infinite promise is over and you know that winter is coming ever closer. Graham of Tokyo Police Club once blogged that he always found fall very romantic, and I guess I could see that if you have someone, but I think if you're single fall is quite depressing. Fall and winter are the times when you want to nest and stay at home and cuddle under the blankets with someone, and if you don't have anyone you're just at home alone under a blanket. Le sigh.

In other news, I've been having major boy cravings lately. It's kind of a problem. I think I've finally figured out why, though; I went off the pill a couple of months ago and I'm now ovulating again for the first time in like ten years. I'd kind of forgotten what it's like. (Definitely high time to stop with the synthetic hormones, methinks.) But man, hormones fuck you up. Also I think it's pretty unfortunate that the pill that makes it safe to have lots of sex without getting pregnant makes you want sex less, and once you can get pregnant all of a sudden it's "Hey, you know what would be good right now? Sex." Not fair, I say. (Of course, that's why God invented condoms. No babies + sex drive. Yay!)

Okay, weird subject line but I discovered something awesome yesterday that seriously makes me feel like a grown-up for the first time. I'm not exactly full-on domestic goddess (although my love of sewing and crocheting and the like probably puts me ahead of a lot of my friends) but one thing that has always, always frustrated me is how to fold fitted sheets. Particularly since I finally replaced most of my old sheets that we ordered from Sears ages ago and the new ones all seem to be gathered all the way around as opposed to the old ones that were only gathered at the corners and flat in between. They never seemed to submit to the folding technique that (sort of) worked with the old ones, and I'll confess to some episodes of just balling them up hopelessly and shoving them into the closet ("Away! Away, demon sheets!"). But I finally found a technique that works. I came across this video yesterday afternoon. I happened to have sheets sitting in the laundry basket waiting to be folded and for the first time I was excited to go home and try folding my sheets. And it worked! My fitted sheet is now neatly folded and sitting primly on the shelf in my closet. I feel like June Cleaver or something! Next stop, vacuuming in heels and a frilly apron. (Okay, not really.)

But since I love you all out there in LJ-land, I will share this fantastic video with you. (I can't be the only twenty-something who couldn't fold a fitted sheet, can I?)


The full blog entry (explaining the cute kids and the 90s soundtrack) can be found here.

Also: I happened across this today and wow, is it ever inspiring. Not so much the actual content of the food (the concept of a Cobb salad is both full of some of the most indigestible things on my list and generally unappetizing to me, and her fear of carbs and anti-vegetarian position offend me; my stomach needs carbs, lots of 'em, or bad things happen, and yes, honestly, I don't like meat) but the concept and execution is amazing. I particularly loved the reimagining of the Jello shots. Those were the most elegant thing I've ever seen. Must try! I love Hypnotiq so that blue one looked amazing. Also I'd love to get some of those soy sheets and some strawberries and red bean paste and make concepty daifuku. Mmm, daifuku.

Going to dinner tonight, tentatively at a new ramen place in Chinatown. I don't necessarily expect authenticity although it would be nice. Ramen-ya is tasty but I don't usually order the ramen because it's not as silky smooth and delicious as the ramen I had in Japan and that makes me a little sad. (Also their zaru soba is soo delicious so I must have it! Om nom nom...) It's seriously almost impossible to find a recipe for ramen noodles. I've found only one and it uses eggs (real ramen noodles, or chuukamen, have no eggs; they're yellow from specific minerals present in the mineral water they're made with). I'd like to attempt it one day, so if anybody has an actual ramen noodle recipe, help a gal out.

Created by The Oatmeal

Totally zonked today because I stayed out late last night to play Monopoly. Already written one terrible pun today. More will undoubtedly follow.

Finally starting to feel better after a rather nasty cold. Tonight there's a hangout planned with the gang to celebrate my recovery by watching Wallace and Gromit and eating cookies, which sounds about my speed, really.

Woke up from an extremely weird dream this morning, am now somewhat disgruntled. It was a dream about Benny (remember him? the object of my University years' love/lust, whom I never see or talk to or even think about anymore, really, except when my subconscious dredges him up every so often. Yeah, that Benny) which are always sort of awkward to begin with, but this one was particularly bizarre. In it, my parents and I went for dinner at his parents' (and possibly his?) house, which was in the same suburb as I live in. His father had a very strong Eastern European accent and kept offering us sausages and doughnuts and stuff. I was quite surprised that Benny was there, as I hadn't expected him to be (for some reason, although I think I knew it was his parents' house) and we started talking and catching up. He ended up giving me this really cool sort of combination chainmail/metal plate ... okay I don't even know the word but those things that go around your wrist, over the back of your hand, and then attach over your finger? Not a glove, pretty medieval-looking... Anyway. And instead of just having a ring to go over the middle finger, his had a whole like armored finger-cover that came to a point. Very goth-chic. Anyway, in my dream I remembered him wearing this thing all the time in uni (which he never did, of course) and he gave it to me. Except that at some point he had glued or otherwise attached a huge handlebar moustache to it. Seriously, what has my subconscious been smoking? And he showed me this really nice chainmail ring and was like "This is from when I almost broke up with [gf name here]" and anyway throughout the whole of our conversation I never actually found out if he was single or not, which was annoying. Coy bastard.

So yeah, very weird on a number of counts (not even considering moustachioed jewellery) since a: Benny is from Toronto and may be living there now for all I know, but is almost certainly not living in the burbs of Montreal, b: he's of Irish descent, not the child of Eastern-European immigrants, c: I know that his dad passed away before I even met him and d: I shouldn't even be thinking about this guy in the first place, since he does bad things to my head. Aargh. Luckily for me, my boss called this morning while I was FB-stalking him, debating about whether or not to add him as a friend, returning me to sanity. If I ever do add him as a friend (and he's a cool guy, it's not his fault I fixate on him) it'll have to be when I no longer get so worked up thinking about him.

I made the awesomest mac and un-cheese last night. I like to play around with the Minute-Man Cheese Sauce recipe from the Uncheese Cookbook, since it's quick to make and doesn't require cooking, and last night I think I found a really nice combination. The basic recipe involves nutritional yeast flakes, tahini, ketchup, salt and water, and then you can add other things to play around with the flavours and stuff. (If  you, like me, can't do dairy and miss cheese, I highly recommend the Uncheese Cookbook.) I've attempted using miso, and for a while I was using hot mustard, but last night I added extra ketchup, garlic powder and a sprinkle of ground chipotle (and also used a little less tahini than usual) and omg it was frickin' awesome. I am so in love with my ground chipotle stuff, I've started putting it in everything. It's so smokey and delicious! I was going to add some cut up chicken hotdogs to stretch it a little and add some protein but by the time the sauce and the pasta was ready I was like, I'm too hungry to heat and slice hotdogs! OM NOM NOM. I have the leftovers for lunch today. :D

I should probably not be writing this now as I have a lovely eye-strainy headache of the stabbing pain above my right eye variety, but I'm bored, oh well. And I have twenty more minutes until I can go home and enjoy the lovely weather we are finally having.

Speaking of going home, yesterday I was leaving a few minutes before everyone else and I was suddenly overcome with a powerful urge to yell "Fuck all y'all, I'm going home!" I didn't, of course, because a: I don't want to get fired and b: I'm not Southern and I really can't make that sound the way it did in my head. (Seriously, I tried later on and my beige Canadianness just made it sound lame.) But it set me wondering where these weird little destructive impulses come from. I think we all have them - that little voice that suggests the perfect thing to say to a boss or a teacher that will be satisfying for the second and a half before all hell breaks loose, or that thought of "What if I stepped off this metro platform when the train is coming" or "What if I jumped off this extremely tall building/cliff" etc. They are (in most cases) things that we have no trouble actually stopping ourselves from doing, but why is there a part of our brain considering it in the first place?

In other news, interesting things are happening. I've pretty much decided I'm going to apply to JET for next year, which means that if all goes according to plan, this time next year I'll be moving to Japan. I'm still a little freaked out at the prospect but I've decided to just keep talking about it until it sounds real and doable and not pants-shittingly scary. And I know that if I ever actually want to get into translation then my Japanese needs to be way better than it is now and that's only going to happen with a couple years of actually living in Japan.

Also my random greenification without actually doing it on purpose continues! I've decided to go off the pill, since I've been on it for nearly ten years (Shit, really? Dude, I feel old.) and I haven't been "needing" it for the past few and I'm kind of interested to see what my body's like without chemical interventions. Also <a href="http://todgertalk.blogspot.com">Todger Talk</a> said something about it messing with your sense of smell so that you end up in relationships with people who have incompatible pheromones, so that when you eventually go off the pill you're like "This guy's repulsive! What was I thinking?" and for some reason this had a greater effect on me than all the blood clot, stroke, cancer, etc. etc. stats. (Incidentally Todger Talk is the most awesome and hilarious sex blog I've found recently, check it out if you get a chance.) So yeah. I'm still technically on the "rest" period so my body doesn't technically know I'm off the pill yet I guess, but as of Sunday I will be pill-free. (I was doing some research and one woman said her body was so messed up she didn't get a period for A YEAR after she went off the pill, I hope it won't come to that as I would get extremely paranoid, not that there's been any hanky-panky going on, but that would be the time it would happen, wouldn't it?) Also, I have a mysterious plan that involves Batman in my pants. More details to follow (I hope).

Yay, time to go home! Have a good weekend, kids.

What's up you guys. I think I am somewhat less tired today, hurray! I found out that I am not anemic but that my "iron stores", whatever that means, are low so I've been trying to bump up my iron consumption by eating more spinach and cruciferous vegetables and similar. I just had the most virtuous lunch I think I've ever packed - brown rice, spinach and eggplant. I know, right? In fact, it was pretty damn tasty and I couldn't even finish all the rice. Also I've started taking this rather odious tea that one of our many books on natural health etc. recommended for anemia (yellow dock root, if you're interested) although I was trying it brewed at medicinal strength and it seemed to be irritating my stomach a bit, so I took a break for 3 days and yesterday I tried it again brewed at normal drinking strength and so far so good. I got a pamphlet about iron for "teenage girls" from the doctor as well, and it seemed rather suspicious (emphasizing how important it is to eat heme iron from animal sources, especially beef, which is "leaner and more nutritious than you might think", because it's easier absorbed than non-heme; having only one tiny bullet point for what to do if you eat no animal products) and then I turned it over and saw that it's published by the Beef Information Centre. Niiiice. I know doctors don't really have to learn anything about nutrition but you'd think they could give out more balanced (i.e. not blatant beef industry propaganda) information in their offices. Oh well. Since I attempted to eat a tiny bit of beef after I heard that I had low iron and ended up with stomach cramps I think I'll stick to my non-heme sources.

Tonight I'm going for (if my calculations are correct) my penultimate laser hair removal treatment. I'm not completely sure that all the hair will be gone after two more treatments, but I've definitely noticed a huge improvement and if I have to buy another session or two as a sort of touch-up I don't mind too much. Last time I was all cocky because it was hurting less and less as the sessions progressed (the more hair you have, the more it hurts) and I was like, oh, this'll be the easiest yet, and then they went and jacked up the laser and I was like "Holy crap, ow!" or actually I was like "Seigneur!" because the technicians are all francophone, so I always end up in French mode and end up wanting to do my swearing in French, which is kind of weird when you think about it. Oh well. Anyway. So this time I'm expecting it to hurt a lot because I'm pretty sure they'll jack the laser up yet more, but I'm sure I can deal with it.

Tomorrow there is a plan for a girls only karaoke night, which I'm excited about. It's been ages since I last did karaoke and it's always hilarious. It's also supposed to be 28º and sunny tomorrow, which definitely beats the current 6º and rainy. (theweathernetwork.com is still rather optimistically maintaining that it'll get up to 20 today but considering that their hourly forecast is saying it should be around 15 or 16 by now, I'm not holding my breath.)

Oh fuck. I have mangled my tonsil. It really fricking hurts. I hope that it's still just annoyed at me for poking it too much but I am kind of nervous that it's retaliating by working itself up to full-on tonsillitis. Note to self: never start prodding your tonsils when you get home at 2 am after frying your brain on crappy movies (Bronx Warriors, of all things, and Dragonball:Evolution) and are too tired to make yourself cut it out and go to bed. Ow.

Also: yesterday I meant to mention, but forgot: on the drive to the hospital I passed a middle-aged guy in the industrial park near work who was jogging shirtless under a leather jacket. Yesterday it was about 30ºC. I stared at him as I went past. He stared back. After I passed him I watched in my rearview mirror as he removed the jacket, thus turning him into a topless man carrying a leather jacket while jogging through an industrial park. Slightly better?

I'm still alive, everyone! I'm still super tired, though, so I finally gave in and went to the doctor. Which is why today I spent over two hours sitting in the hospital waiting for blood tests. Le sigh. The blood tech also seemed to be having some trouble finding a vein or something, because I'm pretty sure it was more painful than usual, although I haven't had blood taken in a couple years. Anyway, in a couple weeks I will know if I have anemia or a thyroid issue or mono or, what is most likely, none of the above. The doctor agreed to send me for tests to rule things out but she zeroed in pretty quickly on the fact that my symptoms sound most like depression (the chemical kind, which I have both a personal and family history of) and as reluctant as I was to admit it to myself at first, I pretty much suspected it by the time I made the doctor's appointment. Anyway, we'll see. I've been on anti-depressants before and if that's what it takes to not feel like I have no energy to do anything, then I'll do it again.

While I was sitting in the hospital for two hours, I have to confess that I did have a couple of moments of paranoia about the whole swine-flu thing. At least I was in the blood test area, not the emergency room, but still. I started thinking that what we need is Dr. David Sandstrom on the case. (Any ReGenesis fans? Anyone?) I'm sure the sexy Dr. Sandstrom and his colleagues at NorBAC could come up with a vaccine! Man, I miss that show.

I have to do laundry tonight, sigh, but I think once I have a load in I might watch some Venture Bros.

Went to Ottawa last weekend with the gang for comic book shopping etc. I picked up two yaoi mangas, Kiss All the Boys vol. 1 and Hot Steamy Glasses. Kelly bought one called Hate to Love You. They were all shrink-wrapped when we bought them but when we got them home and got them open it turned out that Kelly's had no real sex in it (well, the characters are having sex but there's no real nudity) whereas both of mine have some good old-fashioned boy-on-boy cartoon fucking. What can I say, I know how to pick 'em. It's a gift.

This weekend is the Liberal Arts College 30th anniversary reunion. I went to the first lecture last night, about the U.N. and it was good but also pretty frightening/depressing. I wasn't aware of the degree to which countries with really crappy human rights records are involved in/control the Human Rights Council. Some pretty scary shit going on.

Anyway, there was stuff going on today during the day but I had to work, tonight there's a production of Wilde's Salome, which should be interesting, and there's more stuff tomorrow morning but again, I think I'm going to pass. Last week I told my Japanese teacher that I wouldn't be able to make it because of the stuff this week but I've been fighting off some sort of nasty cold or something for a while and I'm pretty tired, so I've decided to sleep in instead. Then tomorrow night it wraps up with a dinner/dance in Old Montreal. Should be fun! I don't know what to wear, but I'm sure I'll find something.

This cold or whatever it is is pretty nasty. I've been feeling like a bit of a sore throat and stuff on and off for a while but the main symptom is tiredness. In the past few days my glands have felt pretty swollen and sore, but that's about it. My mum wants me to go get tested for mono and anemia and thyroid and stuff, but even if it is mono there's really nothing they can do for it anyway. I've been through the thyroid rigmarole before and I always test normal, so I don't particularly want to do that again. I guess it's possible that I'm anemic and iron would probably help with the tiredness, but it always takes so much effort just to make an appointment with my doctor (the phone lines are infallibly busy from opening to closing so it requires some pretty assiduous use of the redial button and a few free hours) that I really don't want to bother. Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

So addicted to these remixes of Christian Bale and Bill O'Reilly freaking out. Not only are they hilarious, they're actually just really good songs, too. Check 'em out:

Bale Out (Christian Bale) and Do It Live! (Bill O'Reilly).

Awesome weekend. I have purchased new glasses, which should be ready sometime this week. They are totally nerdy hot. I happened to be purchasing them from the optician's right next door to Samara's dad's art gallery, so I was like, I should go say hello. So I pulled my three friends along only to discover that I had crashed a verni and Sam's dad, mom and brother were all in attendance. Have you heard about this yet, Sam?

In my last post I mentioned baking skull-and-crossbones cookies. Well, there was a reason. I baked them to take on Saturday for a bunch of us to much while we watched... Pirates, the biggest-budget pr0n of all time. It was hilarious. (Really, people, what's with all the spitting? These people kept spitting on each other like there was no tomorrow.) It's a pirate-themed porno with CGI special effects, and the whole impression is not unlike Sinbad with sex. Apparently plans are in the works for a screening of the sequel.

Hello, sweetlings. It is finally March, which means that February is over, hurrah, and even though it isn't precisely springlike in my general environs yet, there is at least the feeling that spring is coming. Eventually. Also, lots of nice stuff going on this month. For example, the Liberal Arts College's 30th Anniversary Reunion weekend, to which I am going. (Better figure out what I'll wear to the dinner-dance.) Also, Tokyo Police Club's Montreal show. Squee!

Tonight I'm planning to bake cookies of such awesomeness as knows no bounds. Last weekend I went to the fabulous Bulk Barn and was unable to resist buying myself three teensy precious bento-sized cookie cutters (a gingerbread man, a gingerbread lady, and a strawberry). And THEN I caught sight of an awesome (not bento-sized, alas) skull-and-crossbones shaped cookie cutter! So tonight I am making shortbread cookies fit for the scurviest dogs to ever sail the high seas.

So I went to get a trim on Tuesday, and although my hairdresser was not completely grossed out by my no 'pooing ways, she suggested that I wash my hair every three days (instead of every four) because she recommends that all her clients, unless their shampoo is very drying, shampoo every three days and because (she said) the oil would build up on my head and pollution would stick to it and stuff. However the whole point of this exercise is to make my scalp cut down its oil production by not stripping the oils off it all the time (I am cautiously optimistic that this is working; certainly since upping my shikakai a bit and switching to lemon juice rinses my hair has been super soft and way less greasy than previously) so that eventually it will only produce just enough oil for healthy, shiny hair and no extra. The one thing that my hairdresser said that made me question my decision was that she uses crazy expensive scissors made by Japanese swordsmiths or something and that the scissors are so light and the balance is so delicate that the hair must be completely clean before cutting or else it can actually bend the scissors and screw up the balance. (Although she did say that I could wash my hair the day before or even bring my own shampoo for her to use on me.) Now the problem is that my hair is never completely "clean", at least not by shampoo standards, and even right after a wash it still is definitely coated with a bit of oil. Which made me consider buying a natural shampoo to use right before my haircuts only or something. I was having some serious doubts for a little while (compounded by the fact that I hadn't had supper yet and was probably on the low blood sugar emotional roller-coaster) but eating supper and cornstarching my hair made me feel much better (and made my hair look fantastic. Seriously, I cannot emphasize enough how magical cornstarch is). I was also helped a lot by my mum, who basically said that she thought I ought to stick to my guns and keep up the no poo. She also agreed that even shampooing once every six weeks or two months might throw away all the hard work I've put in re: reducing my scalp's oil production. So I had a great idea: instead of using natural shampoo before hair cuts, why not bring my own (less delicate but still sharp) scissors for her to use on my hair? As fantastic as her Japanese swordsmith scissors doubtless are, I think that my hair would probably come out just as nice when cut with regular hair cutting scissors from Jean Coutu. And the only thing that really gave me pause was the thought of my guilt at ruining her $400 scissors. So with this solution, everybody's happy: I don't have to shampoo and her scissors don't get ruined. What do you guys think?

So my dad was supposed to go to Calgary today for a job. He couldn't go, though, owing to the fact what he's sick as a dog. What really annoys the crap out of me, though, is that in spite of the fact I suggested to him, on Thursday evening, that he not have any dairy until his stomach quits doing unpleasant things, on Friday my mum told me that he went to Tim Horton's in the morning for a breakfast sandwich (featuring not only cheese but also egg and ham! Why not just punch yourself in the stomach, it's cheaper) and was then suprised that he spent the rest of the day with terrible stomach pain and running to the bathroom all the time. Plus he asked the pharmacist if there was anything he could do for his stomach and imagine what she said. It was something like "Cut out the dairy." Argh. If he'd listened to me the first time... Oh well, if he wants to put himself through this I guess that's his prerogative.

 Anyway, the weekend's nearly here (about two hours away now ^.^ ) and I get to sleep in tomorrow because it's spring break at the Japanese school. Yay! Don't get me wrong, I love my Japanese class, but sometimes a break (not to mention the opportunity to sleep late) is extremely welcome.

So I'm at work, I'm bored and I have cramps. Super fun times. Allow me to turn my moodiness into rants about the news.

A couple from Montreal were lost for nine days in BC. Two separate pilots (at least) on two separate occasions reported seeing SOS signals in the snow, but a search and rescue party wasn't sent out until a third pilot saw an SOS and the man waving for help. He was saved but by then his wife was dead. They were staying at a small ski resort, went out of bounds, and got lost. For nine days. With only two granola bars. Peter Mansbridge etc. kept calling it a "tragedy" but really, I think the only tragedy is how dumb these people were. If you're one of those skiiers who can't be content with staying on the trails and has to strike off in search of virgin powder/adventure or what have you, you should know that you're taking your life into your own hands. There's an assload of stuff that can befall you in the mountains of BC (avalanches, bears, your own inability to find your way back to the resort) and if you can't handle it, then don't go out of bounds, you dumbass. I feel bad for the family of the dead woman, but I really can't bring myself to feel bad for the couple themselves. If they hadn't been idiots in the first place, she'd still be alive and they'd be back at work like nothing had happened. I really don't think it's right to put yourself in danger through stupidity and then potentially endanger the lives of rescue workers by making them find you. My mum was saying that when it's your own stupid fault you should have to pay for the cost of your rescue, which I agree with.

Apparently the woman who gave birth to octuplets is now worried that the hospital may not release the babies to her. Gee, I can't imagine why not. Maybe it's because you're an unemployed single mom who already has six kids. She lives with her mom, who is financially tapped out, to the extent that her house might be foreclosed. I can't understand why any doctor would implant eight embryos in a woman who already had six kids in the first place, and especially a woman with no job or income. Isn't IVF crazy expensive? Who paid for this? Anyway, this woman obviously has some serious issues. I think the hospital would be negligent to release the kids to her. (And probably, if they released them and then the woman wasn't able to take care of all fourteen kids and something happened to one of them, she'd end up suing the hospital for releasing the kids to her when they should have known she couldn't take care of them!)

Finally, I have pretty much been forced to give up dairy in all its forms over the past couple of years, but yesterday I was doing some idle googling and I found www.notmilk.com which definitely reinforced that it was the right thing to do. Check it out if you're interested in why milk may not actually be good for you. It's not just vegan propaganda, either, most articles are backed up with lots of references to articles from reputable medical journals. Perhaps most interesting for a lot of women is the fact that milk is not actually good for preventing osteoporosis. I remember when Sally and I were in Japan, after about a week she had a major panic about the fact that she wasn't drinking any milk and "wasn't getting any calcium". In spite of the fact that I tried to reassure her that she was probably getting it from other sources (and offered to share my supply of calcium pills with her), she would not be persuaded that three weeks without milk or cheese would not condemn her to an osteoporotic old age. I kind of had to restrain myself from giggling and talking about dairy lobby brainwashing, but really. The vast majority of human populations (not to mention the entire animal kingdom) does not drink milk after infancy. Where are osteoporois rates the highest? Countries with high milk and protein consumption. But don't take my word for it, as our old friend Levar would say.

In no 'poo news, I felt like my hair wasn't getting quite as clean as I wanted and was getting oily pretty quickly, so I increased the amount of shikakai powder a bit and switched from a vineagar to a lemon juice rinse. It's awesome. My hair is really shiny and stays clean for longer, so I can stretch out washings to every four days and it only starts to look a bit greasy on the last day. Also, I've been experimenting with different ways to shave without using shaving gel/cream since I figured it's probably full of chemicals, too. Experiments with olive oil were not all I'd hoped. It wouldn't rinse off easily and I was paranoid that if I touched my hair with it still on my hands I would have majorly oily hair. Also, the hairs stayed in the oil and stuck in the razor, all over my legs, etc, and I ended up with a rather nasty ankle wound. However, I have found a solution! I cooked up a batch of flax seed shaving cream, and it's awesome. It's rather the consistency of snail slime, but it works perfectly and rinses off easily. I find it works best if I dip the razor into it rather than try to apply it to myself. Yay! Also, it's hella cheap since you only need a tablespoon of flax seeds to make about a cup of it. Hooray! I'm probably the cleanest dirty hippie in town.

Hey guys. Today's the day I become an adult. I'm going downtown after work today and starting an RRSP. Egad! Apparently this is one of those things that you do when you are a grown-up. Here's hoping that because of all the economy crap, I will end up buying low and then when things start to go up again I will make assloads of cash. Fingers crossed!

Yesterday, my cousin in Florida had a baby (her second). It was an emergency c-section but she and the baby are doing fine. She was in fact scheduled for an elective c-section tomorrow (more on that shortly) but she was having a checkup yesterday and they found something-my aunt didn't know exactly what last night, I'm sure we'll hear more tonight-and whisked her off to surgery. This is kind of an interesting outcome, actually, since I strongly disagreed with the idea of an elective c-section but if it really was an emergency then obviously they had to do what they had to do. Initially my cousin was only having a c-section because she'd had her first baby by c-section and there is a (very small) risk of uterine rupture when having a VBAC, or vaginal birth after c-section. Although, interestingly, this is usually only a problem when the doctors try to speed up labour by administering drugs like pitocin which cause extremely strong contractions. In spite of that, though, a lot of hospitals refuse to allow VBAC for insurance reasons so a lot of women who had c-sections for a first childbirth (and in many cases they were probably unnecessary c-sections) are finding themselves pressured into having so-called elective c-sections for all subsequent births. (There's a really great website called www.pushedbirth.com if anyone is interested in the details and politics of this issue.) In my cousin's case, I find it especially interesting because she actually is a doctor. My suspicion is that med school sort of indoctrinates doctors against the idea of a natural childbirth (the "more is better" approach when it comes to medical interventions) even when it's their own childbirth. Of course, I'm quite crunchy granola about a lot of things, birth being my most recent pet subject, but I really think that a system like Britain's that involves a lot more midwifery and a lot less medical intervention, except in high-risk pregnancies, seems to be a lot better for everyone. Also, it's cheaper, so Canada's overstressed medicare system would benefit a lot from it.

Speaking of money, the Conservative budget has passed. I actually wrote to my MP about this since I strongly disagreed with the clause that essentially gets rid of employees' rights to sue for pay equity. She hasn't written back. Frankly, I think it'll be a miracle if half the money Harper's promised to spend actually gets to where it's needed, but I think it'll be an even bigger miracle if Ignatieff and the Liberals actually call Harper on it and bring down the government when they request their little reports. Either way, I've voted Liberal for the first and last time.

Tomorrow night some friends are having a Clone High marathon. Very exciting, it's been years since I've watched any. I'm thinking of stopping by the Chinese grocery after work and picking up some steamed buns to take over. Also, I have persuaded Parker to come to the Tokyo Police Club show in March with me so I need to go to Admission and get tickets. I'm so excited! Parker has somehow managed to get backstage and meet people at several concerts (she even got onto the Swollen Members' bus and got propositioned. Her boyfriend did not get on the bus. I find this story hilarious) so my goal is to have her work her magic so I can meet Graham and seduce him.

Another way I am crunchy granola: my hair! I skipped the vineagar rinse for two washes because I thought it was making my hair too greasy. After the second wash, even though my hair was really clean-looking for the whole time, it was quite dry and got tangles (the first time since I've stopped using shampoo) so I tried a more diluted vineagar rinse. Greasy again. Gah. I'm due for another wash tonight, so I'm going to try clarifying first with 50% water, 50% vineagar, then do the shikakai and then maybe do a dilute vineagar rinse on my ends only.

On Sunday I bought a Wii. I'd been thinking about it for months, and I'm glad I finally did it. I have three games for it: Wii Sports, obviously; Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law; and Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 2. I was WiiDRing it up last night and even though I still totally suck, I was having a great time bouncing around to songs like "Tootsie Roll" and "Tribulations". Also the Wii version of DDR has hand-movement capability, and although I still haven't quite got the hang of it, I'm liking it. At the moment I have only one set of controllers (one Wiimote, one nunchuck and one dance mat) but maybe next month when I've got over the shock of spending all that cash on video games I'll invest in another Wiimote and nunchuck at least so I can invite others to play against me.

Also: My American chapters order arrived, hurray! I am now the proud owner of Tampopo, Sausagey Santa, and what I thought was the first Lucifer Box novel, but which is actually the first Lucifer Box graphic novel. Oops. That's okay, I am a comic book geek. But I'm going to attempt to hunt down the actual novel, too.

This morning I managed to find a mistake in the brochure based on my knowledge of kanji, which was pretty fun. I hope it isn't giving away state secrets to say that we'll be selling this "feng shui" thing (I will not reveal the nature of the product, howzat) which has chinese symbols on it. Which is all well and good, but I noticed that the item with 土 on it was labelled as "Wind" and the one with 木 was labelled "Earth". Now, I know that kanji in Japan and kanji in China evolved separately and all, but I could pretty much understand all the other ones and these were the only ones that seemed odd (土 is ground or earth, and 木 is tree or wood). So I dug a little deeper and I found something about the product that went by colour and sure enough, I was right. In fact, there was no mention of "wind" at all and it should have been wood. Go me! It's lucky that I happened to be the one to see that, too, because I'm pretty sure none of the other verifiers would have noticed, but all our Chinese and Japanese customers would have.

Waiting for stuff to do, gosh, what fun. I don't want to start any little projects because I should be getting something big any time now, but there's only two more hours before I go home so I don't know when it'll be coming. Le sigh.

In no poo news, I skipped the vinegar rinse last time I washed my hair in hopes that it would cut down on some of the excess oil between shampoos, which has kind of helped, but really I think it's just a matter of waiting until my scalp realizes that oil crisis is over and it can back off now, really. In the meantime I'm powdering with cornstarch to absorb excess oil and it's working well. Still in love with shikakai (and it's hella cheap, too!). Even without a vinegar rinse my hair still feels soft and conditioned after.

Super excited for lunch today. I have sushi, because last night I went to the sushi-making class at Loblaw's and made three rolls! I stuffed some into one of my lovely lovely bento boxes last night and it is currently in the fridge in the cafeteria, but the teacher last night suggested taking it out of the fridge about half an hour before eating so the rice isn't hard. Must remember to do that around 11-ish.

Tomorrow, a bunch of us are going to have ramen! Super exciting! I hear the ramen at this place (Ramen-Ya on St. Laurent, if you're interested) isn't totally authentic but still. This was all precipitated by me telling one friend that she needed to watch Tampopo. Speaking of which, I have ordered Tampopo on DVD from Amazon US. I was planning to order a taiyaki pan as well, but shipping on the pan (which sells for US$26) would have been US$36, taking the order well over $100. As much as I'd love to make fresh taiyaki, I think that's a little steep. Who knows, maybe I'll find myself near a Japanese kitchenware store soon and be able to pick one up. Or if anyone sees one for around $25, say, pick it up for me and I will totes pay you back. Anyway. Instead of a taiyaki pan, I ended up ordering the first Lucifer Box novel, on Sam's recommendation, and Sausagey Santa, on nostrapotomus 's recommendation. Here's hoping customs doesn't decide my stuff is obscene or anything.

Going to Costco today after work. I am actually somewhat excited for this. I'm planning to check if they have any good DS games on the cheap, and also I'm thinking of maybe seeing if they have any light therapy lights because I think I may not be getting enough daylight here in my offsicle.

If anyone's interested in my no-poo adventures, (no shampoo, that is) I've started using shikakai powder from the Indian grocery and I LOOOVE it. Seems to get my hair cleaner than baking soda but it feels more conditioned after, and gives it really nice body. Still powdering with cornstarch between washes but I hope that soon my scalp will start to cut down on excess oil production. For a dirty hippy I have really clean hair. Incidentally, I'm totally enjoying the irony of giving up shampoo while working at a massive cosmetics company. Anyone else?

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you all had a good holiday. I had a fairly quiet Christmas at home with the folks, then on New Year's Eve I went to a party at a friend's house. I only had one glass of bubbly at midnight and didn't even go get high when a bunch of people went out to smoke up. Does this mean I am a grown-up? Of course, I smoked a bunch of shisha, blew smoke rings, and made out with a girl. Gotta find some ways to stay young at heart!

Back to work now, sigh. After two very short weeks (a two-day week and then a three-day week) in a row, I feel like it may be difficult to get used to working five days a week, every week again. Oh well. Lots of exciting things on the horizon, anyway. I've signed up for some cooking classes, two of which are next week. Japanese class starts again on Saturday. Plus I just bought "My Japanese Coach" for DS which I think will be good, for the vocabulary if nothing else. (Incidentally, tonight I think I'm going to Best Buy to pick up "Personal Trainer: Cooking", on the recommendation of pretty much everyone at the New Year's Eve party; Sally's sister had made sushi using it, Kelly had made awesome dora-yaki—from scratch!—and the hostess had made a very nice ratatouille, all from its many recipes. It's hard to find it in English, though. Stupid OLF.) Thursday, a bunch of people are heading to Chinatown for supper, barring any unforeseen weather disasters. But still. I totally didn't want to wake up this morning.

At work now, no work to do. Sigh. I brought in my new Doctor Who wall calendar (my mum ordered it from Amazon. Squee! There's a sexy picture of Ten at the bottom of January, very exciting. It's got all the British holidays, which is neat, but I would kind of like to know when I get Canadian time off.) and my new 2009 agenda and wrote in all the stuff for the next month or so this morning. That took me about half an hour. Now I'm wasting time on the internets, yay. I probably won't have any work for at least the rest of today and possibly tomorrow too. Perhaps I'll skip out a little early. In the meantime, I can always read manga and stuff online. Debating whether or not to download rikaichan to Firefox so I'll be able to read kanji and stuff. I did download Firefox v. 3 last week and I didn't get any angry calls from I.T. or anything, so it might be okay. I haven't quite progressed to watching anime and J-dramas online at work. I think that's probably crossing the line. But catching up on the complete Sailor Moon when it's totally dead is okay, right? i can haz shoujo manga?

It's election day. Again. At least, it is if you live in Quebec, which I do. It is also EXTREMELY FUCKING COLD, OMFG. Yesterday it snowed and it was maybe, I dunno, -2 or -3. When I woke up this morning it was -20 with a wind chill of -30, only going up to around -14 (with a wind chill, of course). And Wednesday it's supposed to go up to plus 9. I think I may catch the consumption or something.

Anyway, I don't particularly feel like going to vote this afternoon (I especially don't feel like walking over to the polling station in the freezing cold) but it's my civic duty and all so I will. The past two elections, Parker and I have gone to the movies rather than sit at home and watch the inevitable news coverage, but I haven't heard from her so I don't expect we will. Actually what I feel like doing is going to the mall to buy Who Killed Amanda Palmer? and possibly a white sweater and possibly flirting with cute Second Cup guy, if he's there, but I don't know if I will. Gah, we'll see.

We put up the Christmas tree yesterday, so it's official, Christmas is totally coming, yo. I wish I felt a bit more Christmassy, though. Maybe I should reread Hogfather again. I've been feeling pretty weird lately and part of the problem seems to be that I don't have any books that I specially want to read. I'm partway into a few now (most recently Clive Barker's Mister B. Gone which I was really looking forward to but has so far been a bit disappointing) and there aren't any that I really want to keep on with. Or maybe it's just a symptom of a larger disease. Maybe I should head for Tijuana with the cute Second Cup Guy and not come back until I've forgotten the meaning of "existential crisis". Feliz Navidad to me!

November, that is. I've been in such a fog all month, and I place the blame squarely upon it being November. It's been starting to improve this week, and I think it will continue to get better once it's no longer November.

Waiting for comments again. It's like these people are incapable of getting them back to me on time, and this time my department head actually sent out an email beforehand saying it was REALLY IMPORTANT that they come back on time and even though people would be in conference all week that they should do them at home if they had to. Naturally, only 2 out of 11 were back on time. *Sigh* I even tried making a deal with god that I'd stay late every day this week if I could get my comments back on time. Well, I stayed late and comments were not back, so I'm damn well not staying late today.

Tonight my parents and I are going to Sally's parents' house for dinner. The couple we stayed with in Japan are in town so we're all getting together, which will be fun. I'm looking forward to seeing them again. Then tomorrow I'm going to Japanese class, the dentist, and out for dinner for a friend's birthday. It's been a pretty insanely busy week, actually. Tuesday I went out for supper with Parker on short notice, Wednesday was an Editor's Association supper, last night I had my second laser hair removal treatment... you get the idea. At least Sunday I have no plans, or rather, my only plans involve sleeping in and then vegging out.

On a whim I brought both my old Matthew Good Band albums to work recently and put them on my iTunes playlist. Yesterday I listened to them in their entirety, and was pleasantly surprised at how well it's held up in the time since I was 16 and, like, totally into Matthew Good Band like omg. (Actually I was never a rabid fangirl for them, but still.) I'm fairly impressed at the quality of the songwriting. Ahh, late-nineties/early noughties nostalgia.

Okay, so I suppose it isn't quite fair to call this post Redux when I didn't post about the first pizza, but gorram, I'm too excited.

So I decided to try a recipe from Bryanna Clark Grogan's (awesome) vegan cookbook, 20 Minutes to Dinner for Spanakopita Pizza. It's basically spanakopita filling but baked on a pizza crust instead of in finicky little phyllo triangles. The recipe calls for a pre-baked pizza crust, but when I went to the grocery store last week I found that the pizza crusts are only available in 2 packs (or 4 packs, but I certainly didn't need four pizza crusts). So my mum, brilliant thing she is, said, "Well, buy the two-pack and we'll make another pizza." Anyway, spanakopita pizza was delicious and all, but it was spanakopita on a pizza crust, it really wasn't like pizza.

Today we made FUCKING PIZZA. It's kind of like a meat-lover's, although technically I suppose it's turkey-lover's, since it involves only turkey: turkey bacon and turkey soboro. (Does the inclusion of Japanese-style stuff make it fusion? I unno. Mostly it came about because mum decided at the last minute that she was too tired to make meatloaf out of the ground turkey so she would make soboro instead - it's easier and more versatile - and we decided to slap some on the pizza. It was a really great decision, incidentally.) We used the pizza sauce that came wrapped with the pizza crust, and I made Melty Pizza Cheese, also out of 20 Minutes to Dinner. Bryanna Clark Grogan is a fucking GENIUS. It felt a bit odd pouring "cheese" goo over a pizza instead of sprinkling on grated stuff, but I went with it, and a few minutes later what came out of the oven but pizza. The cheese was all gooey and it actually tasted like real pizza. OM NOM NOM NOM. This may seem like I'm overreacting, but I haven't eaten pizza (or at least anything that tasted like actual pizza) in a really long time and so this is kind of a huge deal. My mum and I were dancing around the kitchen going "It's pizza! It's pizza!" Incidentally, if you're a vegan and/or have problems with dairy and/or have my particular stomach issues, I highly recommend you go buy some of Bryanna Clark Grogan's books. They're all in the $10 range on Amazon and they're fabulous. Even if you're not, you'll probably still enjoy them. Unless you're highly suspicious of things like tofu and you consider a mealtime wasted if you don't get at least three kinds of animal protein down you.

In other news, I bought winter boots today. They're pretty intense (guaranteed leakproof for 1 year, comfort certified up to -20ºC, made in Montreal so they're designed for our winters, etc.) but they're still not horribly ugly. They satisfied my main requirements, which were that they be warm, have good treads, be somewhat attractive, and that they be either pull-on or zip up. I can't do another winter in my Docs, which are uninsulated and require tying and untying pretty often. Also I didn't really see myself going into work in them. The new boots also come up higher than my Docs, which means less chance of snow getting in them. It was kind of funny because the saleswoman was telling me that once people buy a pair of this brand, they tend to stick with them forever, and a few minutes later a woman in the store saw me trying them on and came up and said "Is this your first pair of [brand name]s? You're going to be very happy. I have three pairs at home!" I'm assuming the shoe store doesn't pay random customers to go endorse the shoes, so I think this is a good sign.

Yay, America, you did it! We knew you could!

Also, happy Bonfire Night to our sexy-accented friends across the pond.