Seedlings

Gardening started early around our house this year.  Bri's got a flat of jiffy pots growing, and Joel and I have been working on our own seedlings too.  The first picture is of the tomato seeds in Joel's hand...we were amazed by the tiny-ness of the tomato seeds.  I've never taken the time to grow tomatoes from seeds, since it was always fun to pick them up at the farmer's market.  As an experiment, we used plastic egg cartons with holes punched in the bottom to grow our seedlings.  I'm not sure it was the best choice as they are pretty small, but the verdict is still out on that one. 

We've got basil, tomatoes, green beans, sugar peas, sweet peas, and lupin growing so far.  The rest will be planted straight into the ground.  At first I wanted to start some beets early but then I realized that if I did that, then I would have to transplant them one beet at a time into the garden, which would be ridiculous.  Glad I realized that one before I tried it!

I'm excited for my little garden this year. Yay.

Guilty (musical) pleasure

John Mayer concerts are turning into a guilty pleasure of mine.  You may recall the event of '07 when Kerry and I were transplanted from our nosebleed seats INTO THE FRONT ROW.  Because John Mayer is a lovely (if somewhat vile in magazine interviews) musician who likes to save the best seats for random fans with crappy seats. 

So, this time, NayNay and I scored 6th row tickets with help from my friend Matt.  The opener was Michael Franti and Spearhead, and I wouldn't normally bore you with details of the opener, but they were totally awesome.  Like rock-the-whole-place awesome.  Michael Franti ran off the stage and through the crowd high fiving everyone (including NayNay) as he ran past...

 
And his guitar player was the happiest little guy I ever did see.  He smiled at least this hard for almost the entire show, except for one song where he was totally rocking out too hard to smile...

And now some John Mayer, who put on  good show, except for a very, very long drum solo.  I'm talking possibly over five minutes.  The only other negative was his cargo pants.  He reallly needs to stop wearing those.  New fun fact: he is pretty good at whistling...

Dictionary Love

I recently discovered an awesome new section in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary that I hadn't noticed before.  It happened when I was looking something up at work, and just kept flipping to the back where I discovered a compilation of all of the words that have been most recently added to the dictionary!  So awesome.  Words like "cougar" and "bootylicious" are constantly emerging and coming up for review by dictionary editors, but I'm never sure which ones actually make the cut.  Anyways, some of the most relevant and entertaining ones, in my opinion, are below...

• Icicle lights (thank you 2001)
• Bad hair day (really?)
• Boy band (thank you BSB vs. 'N Sync rivalry circa 1999)
• Oxygen bar (ugh, people are so lame)
• Machiato (thank you Starbucks...and Italy, I guess)
• My bad (ew)
• Text messaging
• Yada yada yada (I want to say thank you Elaine from Seinfeld, but I'm not sure...anyone? Tash?)
• Talking stick
• TTYL
• IMHO
• Forensic accounting (thank you big business scandals of the 20th century)

Anyways, I thought it was pretty cool.  Some of the words totally suck, but I guess that's not a legitimate criteria for not including them in the dictionary. While we are on the subject, here is a word I would like to see REMOVED from all dictionaries: irregardless.  SHUDDER.

And here is something fun: The Pictorial Webster's Dictionary

Okay, one more thing, since I don't often indulge a dictionary blog post...I was flipping through the "C" section of the dictionary last week and happened to read the definition of Corona.  I had no idea that one of the definitions was "a chandelier of wrought metal, having the form of one or more concentric hoops". Did anyone else realize that this is why Corona LRT station is so named?  It totally has two huge corona style chandeliers above the escalators.  I never thought of it, although I always thought that the chandeliers were awesome and that it was a strange choice for the station name.

I love dictionaries.

Bicycle Love

I have always liked biking around, but many summers ago, I spent a summer biking an hour each way to work at the farm, and then two summers ago, my friend Rebecca decided to challenge herself not to drive for  the month of June except when it felt absolutely necessary.  She's cool like that and inspired me to start riding my bike to work.  I fell in love with the commute and ended up riding almost every day until it snowed in November.  I had purchased a new bike that spring and probably made its cost worth back in saved gas money that summer.

Anyways, it was a great summer, but then the next year I got a new job, and it messed up my biking groove, because I now work in a stuffier office tower downtown with nowhere to change and nowhere to stash my bike.  I haven't been able to overcome the obstacles, so my bike didn't get nearly as much use last summer as it had previously.  Sad.

Anyways, another strike came against my little bike when I got a flat tire riding home from my parents' house last fall. It sat in the garage all winter just waiting for me to fix it.

As much as I love biking, I don't know much about how to fix them.  I always feel a little embarrassed about it because generally I like doing little repairs on things and like to know how to take care of my stuff.  So, when my friend Caylie invited me to take a basic bike maintenance course at the Bikeworks, I jumped at the chance.  It cost only five bucks, and I took my flat tire with me and they totally showed me how to patch it!  So great.

Also, Caylie's tire was a bit wonky and wavy, so they showed her how to "true her spokes" as I breathed down her neck in fascination until she asked if I wanted to try.  It was so awesome. 

You just put your tire in this stand, spin it and carefully watch for the places that are scraping and tighten the spokes accordingly.  Caylie and I nerded out and compared it to editing, because it requires such careful attention and detail. Anyways, I ended up buying a membership and definitely plan on going back to learn more. I definitely recommend checking it out.  Like right now.  Go do it.

Swap-o-rama

A couple of times a year for the past few years, my girlfriends have been getting together for an event we have come to lovingly refer to as swap-o-rama.  We unofficially practiced clothes swapping one-on-one, with my mom always being unable to keep track of whose clothes I was wearing, but this is our more official way of doing trades. 

Here's how it works: we get together at one house and all bring our reject clothes.  Anything goes from ugly, stretched out, tye-dyed tank tops (ahem, Natasha) to leftovers from ugly sweater parties.  And of course, we fully expect there to be some cuteness as well.  We organize the clothes into piles according to type, and then one person volunteers to be the auctioneer.  This time around it was Kerry, who entertained us all by holding things up and commenting with gems such as "And here is a tragic mistake in Jenny's past" and "this shirt looks like it belonged to someone with a desk job".  Inevitably, someone ends up with layers of clothes.  You can see it in the picture below where Kerry is wearing four or five shirts plus a bikini top.

This time, we hung the uglies off of the chandelier in my living room.  It started with a red tank top I had leftover from grade nine (it was my first item of clothing with spaghetti straps).  It continued with a 'wizard robe' left over from a costume party and a few other awful, awful items.

So, enough talking.  Here is a collage of the photo highlights from the evening.  In the bottom right, you can see the piles and piles of clothes.  We are ridiculous.  Kerry is drowning in them in that little photo on the right.  Click on the photos to see them bigger.

AGA!

My brother called me at 8:15 on Sunday morning to see if I wanted to come to the opening of the new (much anticipated) art gallery with them in 1/2 hour, as they somehow had an extra ticket.  Heck yes I wanted to come.  I have been waiting for this for YEARS.  Ever since they posted the three designs in the Edmonton Journal and asked Edmontonians to pick a favourite.  This one won out over the boring choice (think boxy bricks, without the antiquated charm) and the extra-zany choice (think neon). Ever since then I have been excited about us finally having an interesting building downtown.  I work downtown, so I regularly take my lunchbreaks and wander over past the gallery (due to not having any work friends. sob story.).

Side story: I overheard an awesome conversation between a bunch of middle aged women waiting for the LRT awhile back who were mystified by the design.  The question: "what are they going to do with all those curves, go sledding on it??" was thrown around a few times.  A bit of "tsking" and head shaking was present as well.

Anyways, what I didn't realize was that we were part of the very first tour through the gallery.  They counted down before they opened the doors to us and then everyone shouted "Welcome to the Art Gallery!".  It was super cute.  There was media crawling around everywhere and they had CKUA broadcasting live and doing an interview with the architect, who Francis got to meet on his way out.  Scott stopped him to say hi and then said "Francis, can you say 'hi Mr. Stout'".  It was pretty cute.

And, Francis was quoted on the front page of the Edmonton Journal giving his thoughts on the new gallery. 

Francis Benoit, age three, enjoyed playing on the curved metal walls in the stairwell before his granola-bar meltdown on the second floor."I like it," Francis said. More specifically? "I just like it," he explained.

I would not have called it a meltdown as there was no kicking or wailing, just a bit of short-lived yelling from a little guy who wanted a granola bar, but whatever.  

 

My verdict is that this gallery feels like the sort of gallery that they would have in a big, hip city like Sanfran.  We're not quite there yet, just give us another hundred years, but in the mean time, the gallery shop was totally awesome.  

And here is the media swarm.  Okay well maybe not a swarm. 

And the view looking up from the main floor. 

Terrariums

I love making Christmas gifts and I always try to make at least a little something for my sister.  This year my project for a couple of people were moss terrariums.  I had been wanting to make one for quite a while, and then I went to visit my friend Caylie and someone had made one for her.  So, the next week, I went hunting for jars to house my terrarium in. These were easily acquired at my favourites store, Value Village.  Yes, I am an addict.  Next stop was the pet store to buy some activated charcoal.  Coincidentally, this also caused me to have a lapse in judgment wherein I decided that I wanted a chihuahua.  The urge has mostly passed, but I can't get over the enticing idea of owning a mini dog.

Here is the list of my terrarium ingredients and a picture of them spread out in my kitchen:

Glass jars
Rocks or gravel (Dollar store)
Potting soil
Activated Charcoal (pet store)
Moss (garden centre)
Water spritzer
Magic modelling clay (Toys R' Us)
Paperclips

 It's pretty straightforward to make.  You just put some rocks in a jar.

Then you mix potting soil with some activated charcoal, which keeps things fresh.

Next, you get to place your moss.  The hardest part for me was getting my supermoss embedded in the soil so that it was standing up straight with the bottom portion all the way down in the soil.  I ended up using tongs to place it.

After all my moss was placed and my kitchen was cleaned up, the jars looked like this...

Next, it was time to cute-ify (kitsch-ify) them by making tiny mushrooms out of modelling clay.  I made each mushroom with a paperclip sticking out of the bottom of it so that the paperclip could be jammed into the soil to help it stand up straight.

 

 

 

Then the mushroom went in the jar!

In the meantime, I had spray painted the jar's lid cream, and covered the rest of the lid with red checked gingham.  And that's the end.