Bowie's in Space

I'm studying for school - but photobooth is more fun

I heard it can be a side-effect...

Yesterday at work I lost my vision.

I was working along and suddenly I couldn't see out of my right eye.  It was scary.  An hour later my sight came back and everything's been fine since then.

Weird.

A note on the PDA

Dear nasty couple sitting across from me in the cafeteria:

It is not appropriate for you to make out at your table. I don't care how "in love" you are. We're in a cafeteria. If you need to make out, do it in some dark hallway. There's plenty of those at Grant MacEwan.

I'm trying to eat my grapes and you're making me want to barf them up.

My Grow Op

So I've been trying to cultivate some fresh herbs in my apartment but as I only get a minimal amount of light through my east facing patio door, they're not doing so well.  My mom must have felt sorry for me when I showed them to her on her last visit so yesterday she gave me a present.  It's an aeroponic indoor garden called (wait for it...) the AeroGarden.  Anyhow, it is the supposed fail-safe method to grow all sorts of plants indoors.  I'm going to track the growth of my traditional herbs, which I planted about a month ago, versus the AeroGarden herbs which I planted this morning.  The photo below compares the AeroGarden (left - obviously) to the old-fashioned herbs as they appear on day one of this study.  By week 9 I'm supposed to have a lush StarTrek-esque garden.  We'll see...

Here's what it's all about:

Bianca's look of unadulterated joy stems from her win at MarioKart moments before this was taken...

...and that's not a trophy in her hand, that's a pitcher of booze melange.

Francopains

Ou est la livre? A la bibliotheque,

Ou est la musique? A la discotheque!

It's so good!

On Video Games Live

For Christmas Bobby surprised me with tickets to go see “Video Games Live” which is a concert of video game music performed by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and the Kokopelli choir. It was last night.

I know what you’re thinking.  And you’re right - It’s the nerdiest thing in the whole world. But it was great.

Imagine 2500 of edmonton’s nerd-elite all in one place (other than the Engineering Building at the U of A.)  It was hilarious.

There was a lot of cheering and shouting when the tracks for games like Final Fantasy and Super Mario were played.  I think the game that received the least amount of fanfare was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – with good reason.  What gamer gets super excited amount movie franchises turned game?? No gamer – that’s who. Harry Potter, hmph.

Other games whose soundtracks were played were Metroid, World of Warcraft, Jade Empire, Halo, Zelda, and Mass Effect.  Having never played most of those games, I didn’t really care about their music – new games all seem to have the same epic score soundtracks that I tend not to notice.

Afterward, we went to the Starlite room for the after party which was basically a Gravity Pope night out.  Eric, Jasmine’s boyfriend, made my night when he played Chill from Dr. Mario and Flashman from Megaman 2 in his DJ set.  Somehow I find it strangely exciting to hear video game music at a bar.  It helped me discover that I share my secret hobby with a bunch of people I thought were too cool for games. But their not! And that makes me happy, just like the concert did.

Midnight Cookies

It's midnight on a Saturday.  Instead of ripping it up with Gary and Noel at Suite 69 (which I think would have been supa-fun) I'm at home making chocolate chip cookies. However, when I say that "I'm" making cookies, I mean that Robert is.  It was my idea, and I was going to do it, but he took over.  

I'm very impressed with him right now as cooking at midnight is so unconventional and usually he's so logical. It's a leap.  

Maybe he was hungry.

Warp to World 3-Fun

So if you read Bianca's blog, you would know that tonight she's coming over for an old timey Mario, Mega Man, Zelda showdown.  It seems she'll be taking the soiree quite seriously as she's decking herself out in an all-over Mario Print Sweatshirt that (I think) she got from Woodward's.  This could be problematic.  I can't let someone upstage me in my Nintendo Nerdiness and the sweatshirt I had with Mario in his frog-suit on it, from grade 3, is long gone.  So I think I'll need to make a new shirt for tonight.  I was thinking about ironing on a classic mega man logo - something that shows he means business.  Just like I mean business - Robo-attacking, power-upping business.

Mmm... Lentil Soup

When looking online for recipes that might help me use up the copious amount of dried lentils I bought, I came across this recipe.

It's from the Post-punk Cooking website (which I've never been to before) and it sounds awesome.  As soon as I make it, I'll let you know how it goes.  I anticipate it will go well thanks to the Dean & Deluca spices Bobby brought for me from New York.

Tomato Bocconcini Salad with Basilolio

You need:

Baby Spinach
Cherry Tomatoes
Mini Bocconcini

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
White Wine Vinegar
Basil Infused Olive Oil

You need to:

Wash the spinach and dress it in white wine vinegar and olive oil. Pile the spinach leaves in the center of a plate and top with a generous grinding of black pepper and sprinkle of kosher salt.

then

Wash and halve all the tomatoes. Scoop out the seeds and the extra flesh. Stuff each tomato- half with a mini-bocconcini ball. Arrange the tomatoes on a plate in a ring around the spinach salad. Drizzle with the basil olive oil.

A Salad for One...

Today my uncle, my cousin, my mom, and my grandma came over for an afternoon visit. In preparation, I picked up a few groceries and put together a light spread. While the ciabatta with spinach dip was wildly popular, nobody touched my personal favorite: The tomato bocconcini salad with basilolio.

And now that everyone is gone, I will eat it myself - and I will love it.

My first real post

Ok. I need to complain a little bit about my computer problems.  Anyone that's one of my facebook friends and makes some attempt to creep on my profile every now and again should be aware of the computer problems I have had since last August.  I'm sad to say that here I am, six months later, and I have made no significant advances in getting my computer fixed.  Granted, I kind of gave up after January, but either way I'm pissed off.

In an attempt to improve my computer on my own, I went yesterday to buy some more RAM for my iMac.  Now, if you know the iMac at all, you know it's stupid easy to upgrade the ram.  You undo ONE screw and pull of this protect-o-plate, slide in the new ram, and you're done.  That's it.  Anyhow, during one of my many trip to MyMacDealer (don't ever take you're computer here - they're technologically intept and will tell you that your computer is fixed on FIVE DIFFERENT FUCKING OCCASIONS when really they've done nothing) they replaced some defective RAM.  It seems that upon replacing the RAM, they also stripped the screw holding the protect-o-RAM-plate onto the iMac.  You can imagine then, that it was ridiculously difficult when I went to upgrade cause I couldn't get the bloody thing off.  In the end I wound up breaking the plate in two and possibly damaging one of my RAM chips in the process.  That part is my fault but I attribute the situation to them. I hate them.

Now I need my computer fixed and I need a new protect-o-plate.  I love my Mac and am happy with it despite the shit luck I've had getting it fixed (Why don't computer techs listen when I talk to them??) but I really need to do something about this situation.  Maybe on reading week, when I'm blogging the hell out of some shit, I'll do something about it.

3..2..1..

Alright.  Here it is.  My blog.  I'm hoping that over the course of reading week, I'm able to post enough wicked awesome content that more people subscribe to my blog than to Bianca's.  For real though, I will make an attempt to write something semi-regularly to keep at least my parents interested.