Tacos...in a bag

Exceeded our wildest expectations...need I say more?

I didn't think so.

Happy Belated Earth Hour!

I bought a jar of assorted buttons at the thrift store last weekend. As you may or may not have heard, Earth Hour was observed between 8 and 9:00 pm on Saturday, March 29, 2008, by people around the world. I heard about it a few days before and decided to observe my own little earth hour at home. My friend Rebecca and I had made plans to hang out that night, and she arrived at my house just before 8:00. I had boiled water for tea, and we sat down at the table to decide what to do for our hour of lights off. I had purchased a jar full of buttons at a thrift store earlier that day, and had dumped them on the table just before she got there to check out if I scored any cute ones. We started pawing through them, switched the lights off and lit some candles at 8:00 sharp, and sorted buttons by candlelight.

1) Red Buttons
2) Grey and black buttons
3) White buttons
4) Sheesh, I ended up with a lot of white buttons
5) Big buttons
6) Yet-to-be-sorted buttons
7) Buttons we liked
8) White buttons that Rebecca liked.

Above: White buttons with no holes visible

Above: Buttons we hated

Above: Buttons we liked

Above: Buttons with apparent disabilities

We ended up sorting buttons for all of earth hour, and then for another hour afterwards. It was a good night.

accidental addiction

The pictoral evidence below will, I realize, put me in a vulnerable position. I have an addiction to cream cable-knit sweaters that had gone unnamed for years until this weekend, when I showed Joel the new cream cable-knit delight that I found on sale and he looked at it with a sort of stunned, confused expression. It was that look that made me think about the other cream sweaters that I have acquired/bought/borrowed, so I decided to lay them all out and see just how many I really have. Here is the result. Don't be too harsh, please.

Sweater: Bought on sale (the one that started it all)

Sweater: Acquired in Swap-O-Rama

Bought for full price

Bought for $7

On loan from sister

Christmas from Mom

Bought in a shoe store (also pictured above)

Far from famous but feeling a bit celebrity

Months and months ago, I got an email out of the blue about a photo of my sister that I had posted on Flickr, asking if it could be used in Knitalong, a book about the social aspects of knitting, due out in 2008. Well, the book arrived today and my image is on the cover! And my name is in the thank-yous!

Planet Earth, Mole Rat

As a contrast to the late Veda, Click HERE to see something truly terrifying. I was expecting it to be scary from the thumnail, but not this scary. Did you know that the mole rat featured in the picture at the other side of this link uses the Earth's Magnetic Field when burrowing? Fascinating.

Further in the vein of being fascinated by the creatures of the earth, I think I would like to watch more "Planet Earth". I have only seen it once before, but it was incredible. And Mel was telling me about this bar in Calgary that she went to last weekend where they had it playing on their TVs after the hockey game finished. I thought that was a classy idea.

Veda

My old dog was put down today. She was beautiful.

A preview of spring

This weekend has graciously offered the people of Edmonton a preview of spring. Now, if we are realistic about our location we know that this is not the end of winter, but we also will know that that's not the point. The point is that yesterday I walked down Whyte Ave in a T-shirt and then came home and took my bike out for the first time since November. And to top it off, after our bike ride Bri fired up the BBQ and we had steak for dinner. It was lovely.


Speaking of other nice things that happened this weekend, on Friday afternoon I decided I was going to make real dinner and emailed Bri to see if she wanted to eat it with me. Seconds after I pressed the send button my phone rang and it was Bri, calling to see if I was coming home for dinner. She hadn't read my email yet, but had just called to check if I felt like having some of the appetizers that she was going to make. It was a good moment.

Bri made her personal version of bruschetta while I made a black bean stew a la Kevin D. The stew was fantastic, but ended up being a huge pot full. Fortuitously, my parents stopped by at the end of their walk to say hello and ended up staying to have a bite. Then, within 1/2 hour of my parents leaving, a ravenous Joel and a somewhat snacky Lewis showed up and had some of the stew, which was still warm.

Now as if this isn't all good enough, when I went to put away the leftovers, they fit PERFECTLY down to the mL into the container I had chosen for them. If you are not my sister or a former or current roommate, you may not know this about me, but I get an unreal amount of gratification from finding appropriate sized containers for leftovers or bits and pieces of life. I like it when things fit.