Things I Think Are Awesome: Part Two

Part two of no segues has arrived. (There will also be no segways. We've been over this.)

1. This Photo

For those of you born without the geek chromosome (oh, how boring your life must be), that's Nathan Fillion, Felicity Day, Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Anthony Head all in the same photo! On top of that, the photo was taken in the house of Joss Whedon!!

Throw in a Wil Wheaton, and I would have stolen a car and driven to that party... three days late, but whatever.

2. Sleeping masks

At some point this summer, I noticed that I was waking up really early regardless of what time I went to bed. I started sleeping with a shirt strategically placed across the top half of my head and noticed a huge difference. After a conversation with my mom, I got one of their free-from-a-plane-trip sleeping mask and it's love. Well, lust.

I've noticed that it's much easier to fall asleep and when I wake up, I've actually slept the whole night. I'm waking up at 7:00am (without an alarm clock!) feeling completely refreshed. I'm also not waking up through out the night because of various street noises. I'm attributing this to the fact that I'm reaching REM sooner and staying in it longer because the light from the outside streetlamp is no longer affecting my sleep patterns.

Of course, I'm not a scientist, so this could all just be mumbo-jumbo bulldroppings.

But it sounds impressive, right?

The only downside is that the cheep sleeping mask can occasionally get a little hot and sweaty. An upgrade to a higher calibre of mask is on the horizon (although I'll stick with this one for now).

3. Fernwood Village

I felt it was time I threw a little love at my little corner of Victoria. It's a funky area to live in and I don't always give it the props it deserves. When I first moved to Fernwood in 2003, the NRG was pretty much a non-entity,  the George and Dragon Pub was the site of the worst service I had ever experienced in my life (and I was spat on by a waitress in Paris, so, you know, the G&D was pretty crappy), the dark square and questionable 'residents' meant I never walked through the area at night, and the largest building sat boarded up.

I would tell people I lived in Fernwood and I could see that look in their eye.

Flash forward five years and I'm back into the neighbourhood. The NRG is a sizable organisation which has bought and developed the Cornerstone Building (which houses the awesome Cornerstone Cafe), all available building space has been taken up by independent, locally owned businesses, the Fernwood Inn is actually a decent pub with decent service(!!), and the more questionable residents have been 'encouraged' to vacate, leaving behind the fun, funky artist and Bohemian types who make this neighbourhood so awesome.

As a community, we came together for a day and painted the poles. How awesome is that?

The Cornerstone Building is hiding in the background.

From the annual FernFest to small street parties, Fernwood really is about making the neighbourhood a neighbourhood. It's impossible to walk around the area without meeting someone you know from random conversations in  the cafe, the pub, or one of the restaurants.

I'm so glad I moved back to the area and got to give it another chance. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

PS. One of the people who makes Fernwood awesome, is Terry.

4. TARDIS Cat scratcher

Doctor Who!

Cats!

Together at last!

My mind = blown!

Okay, so it's not really the first time they've been together. In fact, if google is anything to go by, most Doctor Who fans must also be cat-owners. But my mind is still blown!

Tip of the Catnip to THR for sending this my way. More pictures can be found here.

5. Bakingdom

I woke up to find this announcement on the Bakingdom facebook place:

I pretty much had to sweep up my mind so it could be re-blown.

Fingers crossed she finds a way to make this happen!

6. Munro's Books

In anticipation of possibly going to Guinea next year, I wandered into Chapter's to peruse their French section. I had two goals while I was in there: 1) create a mental list of the type of French books I'd like to take to the school, and 2) check out the selection of sewing books to gauge if there's any with lots of pictures and very little writing.

While the children's section in french took up a decent chunk of space, it was the same eight books over and over and over and over. Okay, so perhaps there were more than eight, but the point is that there was a lot of repetition.

I mentally noted a couple of books and then headed out to Munro's. It will never cease to amaze me that a book a book store that would take up less than half of one floor of our three story Chapters building has a better book selection. Not only did they have more options for children's books in french, they also had an adult section in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

When it comes time to actually think about ordering these books seriously, you'll find me at Munro's (or Bolen's, love them too).

Also, Chapters, you kinda suck. But that's a different post.

Things I Think Are Awesome: Part One

I’ve seen these lists posts on other blogs so I decided to do one here... mostly because I really don’t know how to segue through all the things I want to talk about. Although normally I think a well-crafted segue is awesome.

Not segways, though. They kinda suck.

(The only good thing to come from segways was G.O.B.)

1. Stir It Up

I wanted to give some love to a new-to-me restaurant in Fernwood, Stir It Up. I was finally enticed into trying the restaurant one day after smelling of their delicious food. It's Jamaican and Caribbean food. Sadly, the kitchen is very small and does not allow for prep in the space so some of the items are premade and then reheated but it tasted so delicious, I got over that very quickly.

GET IN MY BELLY!!

[Photo from their site]

It is cash only so hit up the ATM before you go (there's one across the street at the Fernwood Inn, so, you know...) and you either need to go on a sunny day when you can sit outside or get take out as the inside has about two 'cozy' seats. Meals run about $10.

2. XKCD

So, this webcomic is something that I always love but I was a little enamoured with this particular comic:

[Permanently borrowed from XKCD]

I know I may get some haters but based on the people I know who attend Burning Man, I have come to decision that the majority of attendees are socially obnoxious d-bags. Also, based on the number of stories those same people have told me about cheating or being cheated on at Burning Man, they're d-bags who can't stay faithful so... yeah...

3. THR

This falls into the list of things I always love but THR (who is also crafty) is back from her trip Down Under to see her family and she linked up to a great link of free organization tools. I thought it was so awesome, I decided it needed to be shared over here too. She linked to some crafty person who also had links to fee name tags/crafty items. The part I liked most is here. It's all free and all cute. What's not to love?

4. Star Trek (TOS)

Thanks to Darla over at Bakingdom (that girl is seriously talented and you should all have her in your reader even if only to look at the pretty pictures of things you'll never make... like me!) I learned that today is the 45th anniversary of the airing of very first episode of Star Trek.

I don't know if you guys have noticed but I am a huge nerd! I watched every single episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation growing up. I read a couple of the books (which I would only read at home so I wouldn't accidentally be caught with one by a 'cool' kid and mercilessly mocked for) and even dressed up as Counselor Troi for Halloween one year.

I dyed my hair black with one of those 'one wash' dyes and then I curled it.

The curls were gone in about 30 minutes (stupid poker straight hair) and

I was still washing the black dye out two weeks later. One wash my *ss!

I was a late-comer to The Original Series (called  TOS by those 'in the know' aka geeks) only starting to watch it about five years ago. I love it. Some day, when I meet my sugar daddy (so, you know, never), I plan to buy the entire series on DVD because I'm nerdy awesome like that.

Back to Darla's awesomeness. Also being of the geek-persuasion, Darla made these awesome TOS sugar cookies.

[Credit: shamelessly stolen from Bakingdom]

Seeing them in my reader this morning made my heart go pitter-patter! Also, she insinuated she was going to make some Firefly baked goods so that's my day made.

Captain Mal in edible form? If you insist!

So, those are some things I think are awesome right now. I have more to talk about but a) I have a lunch meeting I have to get to and b) The Guild isn't going to watch itself in the next 20 minutes before I have to leave, so, you know...

Sloppy Dismount,You Only Get a 6.9

After a gloriously sunny weekend and ensuing week, winter decided to poke its head out for one last hurrah today. It was overcast and down right chilly. I had to put on pants and a jacket just to go the coffee shop... in June... I KNOW!! Anyway, the clouds lifted a little this evening so now I'm enjoying a beautiful pink and orange sunset.

The upside to the less-than-stellar-weather is that I took my laptop to the coffee shop (jaunty beret and black skinny jeans not included) and actually did research for something I want to write. I momentarily felt like a student again until I remembered that I would never have spent eight straight hours researching anything in university. Hmm, maybe that was my problem. The research I was doing? Well, you'll soon see it on here.

The Canucks lost last night. I don't want to talk about it. Instead, I watched my sleeping cat roll of the back of her favourite chair and giggled. She jumped back up like she hadn't just displayed the grace and dexterity of a wired chihuahua and promptly returned to sleeping. I tried to sneak up to take some adorable photos but she was having none of that. I did, however, managed to talk her into some glamour shots.

"That's it, baby! Work the camera. Fierce. Give me fierce!"*

"The camera loves you, darling. Don't forget to smize!"*

As for the rest of this evening, I have some crafts I have to do in conjunction with the research I did today. I bet that piqued your interest!

Good night!

*These make a lot more sense if you've ever sat through America's Next Top Model.

Pole Position

Today was Pole Painting Day in Fernwood! There have been odd poles painted through Fernwood (the artsy-fartsy community of Victoria) but as the poles aged and needed touching up the Fernwood NRG decided to make a community event out it.

Due to previous commitments in the morning and throughout the day, I wasn't able to do commit to any painting but I wanted to share in the community spirit. After a mid-day beer and bite with friends at the Fernwood Inn, I grabbed my camera and wandered the streets.