What Do You Mean It’s Not My Favourite Anymore
I posted earlier about my newly discovered love of Audiobooks. I’m still enjoying them very much, but I’ve made a horrifying discovery. There is a book that I loved to read as a child, which is just dead boring to listen to as an adult. When did this happen? Why don’t I like it anymore?
The book is Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. I remember it as a charming story about a little girl living on a mountain who’s sent to a city, get’s homesick, takes her new friend back to the mountian, and everything is happy. What I’m listening to is an extremely dull story about a child who is too good to be true, living an exceptionally boring life on a mountain (boring to me, she was delighted with all of it) and then being sent to the city. In the city things don’t get much more entertaining. So far I’m only a quarter of the way through listening to it, but I’m not sure I’m going to finish. I think I’m happier remembering Heidi as a book I loved, and leaving it on the shelf, so to speak, at least until I’ve got a little girl of my own to read it to.
This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. I’m still not sure when I outgrew teen gross-out comedies for example. But it’s definitely the most devestating. Beloved childhood items like books should come with a warning “do not read again as an adult, you won’t like it.” (yes, I kow that’s totally impossible, no two people feel the same) Not because this problem is universal, but because it isn’t. Little House on the Prairie was awesome when I reread it a year or two ago, so it doen’t happen with all books. Which makes it even harder to avoid the ones that are so disappointing.
Bah Humbug
To start this post I need to be very clear on one point: I love Christmas. It’s absolutely my favourite time of the year. I love the decorations, I love the food, I love the presents (giving and getting). I even love the things that drive everyone else crazy like the super crowded malls, just because they’re part of Christmas.
In fact, I love Christmas so much that I have to set myself some very strict rules to keep from driving everyone around me crazy. This means that in my little world the holiday season MAY NOT start until November 25. That’s the date we put up the tree and start decorating. That’s the date I start shopping. That’s when things begin.
It doesn’t bother me when stores don’t follow my rules. Although I did think it was ridiculous when Hubby announced on November first that the Future Shop website was already changed over to a Christmas theme. I think it takes alot away from the specialness that by early November the whole mall is decorated up with lights and tinsel. But because it’s a company, not a person, I don’t let it get to me.
Real people however is something totally different. It’s mid November now, and I took it as a personal affront today when I saw several houses with Christmas lights on. I was absolutely indignant. It was as though, by breaking my rules, I felt that these people I had never met were somehow getting away with something they shouldn’t. Which is silly, because I was out shopping for a wreath. But dang it, that wreath won’t get hung up until November 25th. It’s different I tell you.
For the most part I keep these opinions to myself. Hubby tends to know how I feel, but I would never tell a stranger. Nor for the most part will I tell people I know, if I feel they’re violating the rules. The only exception is if you break the rules before Hallowe’en. When Mom asked me to put together a Christmas list in late October, I intentionally procrastinated until after Hallowe’en. I just think it kills the spirit of one holiday to start looking forward to the next.
So until November 25th, I say Bah Humbug! Put those lights away! After the 25th, I’ll be singing Jingle Bells. I guess I’m just an odd one.
Fantasy Novel Addiction
I’ve always been hooked on books. And for many years fantasy was among my favourite genres. A few years ago I went off fantasy a bit. This wasn’t for any particular reason, but I guess I got a bit sick of it. Earlier this year I got back into fantasy big time.
Hubby had a couple of books by Brandon Sanderson, and I had some of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth books. I’ve posted earlier about us guessing back and forth at the contents of books the other had already read. Well, I’ve caught up to him on Brandon Sanderson, and I’ve taken the lead with the Terry Goodkind.
After reading the first Terry Goodkind in about two days, the second took me almost three weeks, due to a visit from my parents in the middle. I’ve been rationing the books, as attempts to reread this series in the past have usually ended with me getting bored about 2.5 books in (not that the third book isn’t good, just too much of a good thing).
The result has been me going crazy. I’ve forced myself to read at least one non-fantasy novel in between each of the Sword of Truth books that I’ve been reading. I spent Friday night rushing through the end of a Susan Howatch family saga novel, so that I could start book 4, Temple of the Winds, on Saturday. Since I started it yesterday afternoon, I’m now 240 pages into it. I predict I’ll be done by the end of the week, and will then rush through a random other book until I can read book 5. Terry Goodkind=awesome. book rationing=works beautifully for me.
Stupid Computer
My computer, as they are known to sometimes do, has screwed up. For some unknown reason, my computer has decided that no one, including me, has permission to open the latest version of the research proposal that I have been working on for the last several days.
I’ve lost about a day’s worth of work assuming that the computer doesn’t decide to get it’s act together and let me in sometime soon. This isn’t the end of the world, obviously. It does however make me very, very annoyed. I have a super busy week coming up (at least the early part) even without this, so I’m thoroughly unimpressed. In fact, I’m so annoyed with Macspiffy (yes, it’s a mac, and I tend to think it’s spiffy, therefore MacSpiffy) that I’ve been “not talking to it” for the last few minutes. I’ve relented because I like the internet more than I’m mad at the computer.
I’m reasonably certain that it is gone, because Hubby did his communing with electronics thing, and got no results. If he can’t get it to work, then no one that I know is going to get it to work, short of paying money which I’m not willing to do. Now I get to waste a whole day redoing that part of the proposal. And I can guarantee that I won’t be as happy with the redone version of it, as I was with the original.
The Week of Feeling Unwanted
This post may be a bit whiny, as it truly hasn’t been a good week. None of these things are a big deal on their own, but they did add up to me feeling a bit as though nobody wanted me (except Hubby of course, who has done a very good job of making me feel better.)
It started out with my parents heading home. Mom in particular really didn’t want to leave, so I cerntainly wasn’t feeling rejected per se, but I did go from being super busy with houseguests, to not having anyone around. Then my sis got sick, and moved some plans from Tuesday to Thursday, again no big deal, and she was sick, but the change happened Tuesday morning which kind of threw me off.
This was followed up by some school related issues. I need to put together a committee of people to supervise my thesis. I talked to my main supervisor about this, and he suggested the appropriate professors to ask, and approximately what to say. At this point, I was under the impression that it was basically a given that they’d say yes (I think my supervisor was too). The first guy said yes, however he first joked somewhat awkwardly (and I think somewhat seriously) about if there was any way he could get out of it. Not exactly flattering.
The second guy threw me for a total loop by saying that he didn’t think he was the right person to help on this thesis. I admit at this point I was a bit stunned. Luckily, my supervisor seemed equally surprised, so I felt a bit better about it at that point, but it did really throw off the rest of my week.
That night we had the departmental barbeque that happens every year. I like the barbeque, and I like the people in the department, but I’m quite shy. After a few minutes of having talked to the people I know, I spent a while following Hubby around. Overall I had a good time, but I did feel a bit like a wallflower. Normally wouldn’t have bothered me, but this week it was just one more thing.
Then, the piece de resistance on Thursday was when I got stood up for lunch by a girlfriend who completely forgot that we were supposed to meet. I’m still a little steamed about that one, as I stood around like a starving idiot for half an hour in the student union building before hubby came along looking for lunch himself, and we joined up.
The rest of the week was fine, and mostly I’m over it, but hopefully next week everyone will actually want me.
Weekend at Whistler, or Megan Rediscovers her Fear of Heights
We spent this past weekend at Whistler. It really was pretty awesome. I can totally understand why people love that place so much, and I wasn’t even there during ski season. Although I did discover just how much more outdoorsy most people who go there are compared to me.
We spent some time watching the end of the mountain bike runs, and went near the beginning of some hike trails, but my parents weren’t really up for hiking, and Hubby and my sister were busy. They chose to take advantage of actually having one another’s presence (as the only two daredevils in the family) to go Zip treking. As ziptrek sounded more like something that would make me cry than have fun, I elected not to join them. They claim it was awesome.
Instead Mom, Dad and I took the gondola to the roundhouse. This turned out to be a bit frightening. I haven’t been in a position to notice it in a while, but I am TERRIFIED of heights. Being up high on a mountain didn’t scare me. However being up above the mountain on a gondola did. I held on tight to the bar, and convinced myself that by holding on I was driving.
Once we got up that far, Dad went to sit in the Roundhouse, and Mom and I made the 5 minute walk down to where the chair lift to the peak starts. Originally I was just going to walk her down there, but then we saw a little old couple getting off the lift, and I figured that if they could do it so could I. That wasn’t my brightest moment.
I have to confess that I was in tears by the time we reached the top. The chair approaches multiple shear rock faces, where you think they must be the top, only to go over and have the ground fall away under it again. By the time we finally got there my knuckles were white. Luckily despite all my apprehension, down was significantly better than up. I was worried that facing downhill would make things scarier, but for some reason this wasn’t true. I did however make my parents buy me a beer for courage before I agreed to get back into the gondola down the mountain.
Final Fantasy X Finally Over
Hubby and I finally finished Final Fantasy X (ffx) last night. I say finally because it took us a long time (in terms of number of months we have owned the game) to get through this relative to other similar games. And frankly, we did the bare minimum.
I have to say that we aren’t huge fans of ffx, although I think that this is a bit unfair to the game. We got Final Fantasy XII about 8 month before we got ffx, and we went through it super quickly (by our standards). in four months we beat that game for the first time, we didn’t do all the extras (we played without a walkthrough, so we missed some things) but we did a lot.
The problem, when we got ffx was that while it was fun, it wasn’t as much fun as ffxii. There are things that XII simply did better than X in our opinion. X has a sphere grid, which when the game was new probably seemed like a lot of flexibility. However XII has a license board which allows even more flexibility, and is much harder to shoot yourself in the foot with.
As well, we found ffx to be quite a slow game, the battles took a long time, and they were super frequent. This made doing anything in the game a time consuming effort. We also could never get the hang of blitzball, which is the major mini-game in ffx. Perhaps if we’d managed to do blitzball we’d have had more fun.
Overall, I’m happy we played it. We’re generally big fans of Final Fantasy games and I’d have been sorry to have never done it. However I don’t think I’ll be playing it again.
Watching the Olympics
I love the Olympics, absolutely love them. I watch them constantly while they’re on. This is true for both the summer and winter games, but obviously at the moment it’s the Beijing summer games that are keeping me glued to the screen. I’m actually watching them now as I write this. We’re currently losing the baseball game to the USA, but I haven’t given up yet.
I’m actually starting to drive Hubby a bit crazy. We’ll be watching something, and he’ll suddenly realize it’s a rerun of an event we’ve already seen and look at my incredulously like “why do you still want to watch this?” It’s kinda funny actually. You’d think after a week of them he’d be used to me, but apparently not. We also don’t love the same sports, I get most excited when gymnastics and diving are on, and I think those two are among his least favourite. Oh well, he’s putting up with me anyways.
One thing I’ve found really interesting watching these commercials is the ads. I’ve never before been in the country, let alone the city, where the next Olympics is to be held. I honestly feel like I see as many ads (or more) promoting Vancouver 2010, or showcasing the winter sports or athletes as I do with the summer athletes. This might also be influenced by the fact that we don’t have a lot of big stars in this summer games.
I’m finding it a bit odd. I’m used to watching sports, and then seeing ads about those sports in the breaks. not watching some summer sports, and then seeing adds featuring a future biathlon contestant. Or Wonder bread ads with little kids dressed up as winter Olympians. Although I adore those Wonder bread ads, Those little kids are so cute, especially the little figure skating pair.
I’ll miss the Olympics when they’re over, but as the tv keeps reminding me, the next ones are only 18 months away. And Hubby will probably be glad for the break.
I had to edit this post to add that less than two hours after I finished posting this we were watching the olympics when Hubby exclaims: “Oh God, didn’t we watch this? Twice?!” after a short pause he followed this up with “no more swimming.” I think he thinks they’re replaying Michael Phelps too often.
How to make Cherry Jam
One of the most common searches that leads people to my blog is “how to make cherry jam.” I assume that this must happen because of my earlier post about the annoyance of trying to find a cherry pitter. Since I hate disappointing people, I thought that I’d write a post answering that question.
The short answer is: buy a box of Certo (fruit pectin) and follow the instructions included inside. At least that’s what I did. Other points to know include: pitting cherries without a cherry pitter is a pain, cherry pitters are hard to find. jam is basically equal parts fruit and sugar.
you’ll need about 7 cups of fruit and 7 cups of sugar for 1 pouch of liquid certo. I also use the liquid as that’s what my mom taught me to do. Also, one box of 12 125mL jars is not enough. You need more/bigger jars for one batch of Certo jam.
So there you are searchers, how to make cherry jam
A Tale of Two Sunburns
This is a story from last summer, but I’m writing it partly as something a bit funny and partly as a reminder and warning to myself, since I plan to go to the beach this weekend. Important background information that you need is that I got married last August, and that I had a strapless gown. I had be very careful all spring not to tan in anything with straps, or that would otherwise show.
A good friend and I went to Europe for three weeks in the spring of last year. We had a blast, but while we were in Zurich, I got a cold. I feel a bit bad for my friend, as I suspect she got a bit bored of sitting around in Zurich while I slept, but there’s not much I could do. Having read about the beaches around Lake Zurich, we decided to seek one out, so that I could nap, and she could hang out on the beach. We didn’t find any sand, but we did find a grassy area near the water. I promptly fell asleep on my stomach. The tag in my shirt must have been flipped up, because when I woke up I looked like this:
me attempting to fix the first tan line
Only I was red and started to peel almost immediately. It was pretty bad sunburn. Backpacking with a burned upper back is not fun. Really, really not fun. At first, I hope that maybe the back of my wedding gown would be higher than this tan line, but my first fitting after I got home squashed any hope of that, the line was a good three/four inches above the back of the dress.
So I determined that there was only one thing to do. I had my sister carefully apply sunscreen on the tanned area, and went out and burned the rest of my back to a crisp. Seriously, the second burn was actually worse than the first. It was very painful, I couldn’t sleep on my back for a few nights. But even worse, it didn’t work. It turns out that sunscreen bleeds a bit from directly where you apply it, so I ended up with a very brown back, with a single, finger width line of white running across it.
The end result. You can clearly see the lines on my back
The picture above is what it looked like on my wedding day. This was about a month (maybe a bit more) later, and I had done more tanning of my whole back, as well as giving it some time to fade a bit. Luckily, I had a two layer veil, which obscured the view of my tan lines most of the time. Although I did show them off to a few close friends.
I learned a few important lessons from this: The way to fix a sunburn is not to burn more, always wear sunscreen, and for goodness sakes make sure that your tag is not flipped up.
