We be famous

Our house is on the market as we speak!

Know of anyone looking for a swank place in Guelph?

Thesis Date!

Please think of me on Wednesday June 15th at 10 am.

It is then that I will be thrown to the Hounds of the Baskerville.

Come and watch if you are in Victoria! I promise an entertaining time. I might even pass out!

****Update: Ok, so, since Wednesday June 15th 2009 does not exist, my thesis defence is actually Monday June 15th.******

Guess what we got stuck in!

Sunday was a pretty good Mother's Day. I sang a solo in church, we went in to Toronto to visit with my brother, my brother and i cooked dinner. It was great. Until we went to leave.

We left my brother's house at 8pm. We did not get back to Guelph until 11pm. The trip is usually an hour and a half max.

Why the delay? well, the Tamil Tigers decided to walk onto the Gardiner Expressway and block all traffic into the downtown core. (here's a newspaper report). Guess which road we take to get home from my brother's? They also blocked University Ave. protesting at Queen's Park, and as a result of all this, the police closed the Don Valley Parkway so that they could move emergency vehicles around. Traffic was bumper to bumper and we were all locked into going around in circles. All routes that were designed to get people out of that part of the city were blocked.

Every way we tried, we inched along with the rest of the traffic, until we all discovered that the way was blocked by a police cruiser four blocks down. We were on the phone with my brother trying to find a way out of the city. It was like a highspeed police chase in an action movie, only really slow, and infinitely frustrating.

I respect the cause that they are protesting and I can understand the strain and desperation they feel trying to save their families in Sri Lanka when no one is listening to them. But when you come around the same corner for the fifth time and encounter more Tamil-Canadians going towards the protest laughing, with their children skipping along beside them like it is an outing to the park, you lose respect for the protest.

But you remain in awe of the organization. There were almost 3 thousand people on the Gardiner, and another couple of thousand at Queen's Park and the American Consulate. To organize a protest of that magnitude without the authorities knowing is impressive. Even more impressive is that there were no visible Tamil leaders to negotiate with.

Even scarier was that it was so easy to quickly and effectively shut down downtown Toronto.

Grace in Small Things: Day 1

Ok, I will finally break down and jump on the Grace in Small Things bandwagon. We shall see how long I stick with it. For those of you who don't know, you make a list of five things you are greatful for each day in order to look on the bright side of life.

1. Babies. A friend has been over helping get our house ready to go on the market on Monday, and she brings her 7 month old son with her. He is such a chubby cheerful baby! Who can resist a baby who smiles and giggles and makes rasberries all day! I have been doing much baby stealing.

2. A house to myself. i am housesitting for three weeks. Just having my own bed in an actual bedroom is a luxury. So nice to be able to watch what I want on TV for as long as I want at night. What's even better is that I don't have to make dinner for myself!

3. Job possibility. I had a phone interview on Tuesday, and got a call today to arrange to go down to meet the supervisor next Wednesday. This job would involve the need for a car and to convince a cousin that she wants a roomate for the summer. But it would mean the opportunity to help create a museum from the bottom up, so awesome!

4. More job possibilities. The job that I have written three exams for so far finally wants me to come in and do and interview! I it is in Toronto! I don't have to go all the way to Ottawa! This is a permanent full time job with the Fed Gov, so fingers crossed!

5. Finished! I am done my thesis, I have the names for my final two readers, and I will be defending sometime after June 8th. I am pretty sure my advisor just went into the department office and said "Who's around this summer?" cause my other two readers are an environmental historian and someone in women's studies.

This is what happens when i am not home

My friend QWP wrote about the interesting flavours that happen when you combine the wrong ingredients last week, and i laughed and laughed.

and then it happened to us this week.

I arrived at my parent's house from my housesitting gig for dinner last night and when we sat down for dinner my mom said "Let me tell you what I did to our dinner tonight."

Not exactly what you want to hear.

Apparently, she made a new hamburger recipe last night. Morrocan hamburgers, so they had morrocan spices, like cinnamon and cumin etc.

It also called for bulgur. She didn't have bulgur but she thought she had some couscous, and so she found the bag and added what was left.

We don't have any couscous in the house. We used it all up in a recipe for passover.

So, what did my mom add to our hamburgers you ask?

Coarse Sugar.

Which went really well with the cinnamon that was already in the hamburgers.

It was kinda like apple pie with hamburger meat. It wasn't bad, just kinda weird.

And nothing that a diabetic should have been eating!

Forget one little thing.....

I am currently housesitting for friends who have a cat.

Tigger is a very good cat most of the time, especially if there is the potential for the involvment of food that will go into his tummy. Make any move during the day and he is convinced that it is dinner time. Even if you have only just fed him a few minutes before.

He generally ignores you for most of the day, unless you are having a bad day, and then he curls up on your lap.

But in the time when the promise of food is imminent, he is infinitely affectionate. He curls around and around your feet (stopping your progress to the food, but he has to make it look like he is good and deserves it). He'll jump up onto the counter and rub his head on your chin while you are trying to get out some kibbles. If you pick him up, he will give you a big hug, one paw on either shoulder, and purring, rub his head on your face. so sweet. I admit that during my bad day yesterday, i got up a few extra times just to get some kitty love. shameful, i know.

anyway, he has issues with food first thing in the morning. he is so excited about the morning that he can get a little sick sometimes. so first thing, he only gets 5 kibbles and no water until his tummy settles.

this morning, i was very tired, and forgot to take away his water, and then promptly went back to bed.

I thought all his meowing was to get the rest of his food, so i burrowed further under the covers, until he came in, and yaked up some spit on my carpet.

I eventually located no less than 8 spots of cat puke. 8! from 5 little kibbles! He even puked on the window! luckily it was mostly just clear liquid and half chew kibbles, but still! ewwww! and 4 of them were on the only little patch of carpet in the house of course!

cats are gross. i am imminently greatful that rabbits can't puke. i just wish they would cuddle more. the warm purring cat makes a much better water bottle.

Beltane, or the time I let my inner hippy out to play

Happy May Day everyone! I hope it is a nice day where you are, we have had moments of sun here, which is very good compared to the torrential rains of the past few days. The grass is green and the trees are blooming their little green fuzzies. There are a few magnolias out as well. Geee!

It brings to mind a May Day a few years ago (actually almost 10 years ago, but we won't talk about that)

My friends were taking "World Religions" together, and part of the requirements for the course was to research a holy festival of a world religion as a small group and present it to the class, complete with costumes and food and activities. So much fun to spend class time eating and singing and playing games!

anyway, one of the girls in my group of friends had a mother who was a pagan and a white witch, so we decided to do a pagan festival, and the one my friend liked the most, and the one that we would actually be able to attend before the end of the semester, was Beltane and May Day. We were very excited and had alot of fun researching and got very into our topic. we even got to have a sleepover so that we could attend Beltane in the evening and May Day at dawn the next day.

Beltane is the night before, and I don't really remember much of the significance, mainly because it was 10 years ago, and i had smacked my head very hard right before we were to go, but it did involve jumping over a fire as a kind of spiritual cleansing. You haven't seen anything until you have seen a bunch of women in long hippy skirts jumping over a fire. no one caught fire, luckily.

My friend's mother, and the mothers of a number of the kids we knew, was also part of a Morris Dancing troupe whose main performance was a May Day celebration. So, as part of our research, we joined the Morris Dancing troupe and learned all the dances and participated in the May Day celebrations. We even got a pancake breakfast afterward! And there was a Maypole! Morris Dancing is traditionally done by men, but this group was all women. so much fun! you get to have bells on your calves and wave hankies and hit sticks! all to the sounds of an accordion and a fiddle! yeah! There is alot of morris dancing on youtube, but here is some to get you started.

all in all, we had an awesome time, and then got to do it all over again for our class! We even borrowed a girlguide red lightbulb "fire", and adapted one of the morris dances to do with just the four of us (most are in sets of six or eight), and directed the Maypole. So much fun. A little embarassing, i must admit, practicing a morris dance in the quad at lunchtime. the one we chose used "Pop goes the Weasel" as the song, because that is easy to remember, and used sticks. we weren't allowed to practice at school with the sticks, so there we were, singing "Round and round the mulberry bush the wack, the wack, the wack, wack, switch! wack, the wack, the wackity wack, Pop! goes the weasel!" in the quad, where all three floors of classrooms around the quad had their windows open to enjoy the nice weather. hmmmm.

oh yes, fun times.