Hello November!

The hard thing about writing about Derry is that the post almost always ends up sounding political. Truthfully, that could just be me reading my own opinions about Northern Ireland into what I wrote. Maybe other people wouldn't read it that way. Or maybe they would. Anyway, I wrote a post, sat on it for two days, rewrote it, sat on it again, reworked it... it's an on going struggle but I will get it up eventually; I think the one I've most recently wrote is probably the version I'll end up with but I want to sit on it and make sure.

In the meantime, it's November! Not only that but it's the fifth of November! When I was young, my dad always had a bonfire for Guy Fawkes day. The property is surrounded by a forest so we'd accumulate a lot of cuttings and underbrush* we had to get rid of. By November 5th, it was damp enough to have a bonfire. Two birds, one bonfire so to speak.

We don't have bonfires anymore because as the development around us grew, firefighter visits became more frequent (this is more a complaint from my dad and brothers. I usually called the fire department... joking!) so permits had to be obtained and that tends to be a pain in the butt. If I had thought far enough ahead to realise that this year it fell on a Saturday, I might have made an effort to get the permits sorted. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to rely on facebook to commemorate the day.

November is Adoption Awareness Month. Now that I've made you aware of that, my work here is done ;-) And I may or may not blog about it later.

I'm being crafty again and will hopefully have something soon to show you. Also, does anyone have any tips for getting spray paint flecks off of a wood patio? These two things are most definitely related.

*Nothing makes me feel better than watching broom burn. Burn motha-frakker, burn!**

**Um, the spell check wanted to change 'motha' to 'mothra'. I always knew my computer was a nerd!

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.

Merry, Holy Cr@p, It's 2011 Already!

Before I completely leave Christmas behind me and dive into the new year, I figure a few photos are in order.

Baking Grandma's Cookies means we drink tea from Grandma's Silver Tea Pot. It just makes good sense.

Lemon Meringue Pie. The official dessert of Christmas in our house.

There were never religious icons in my mom's house until they bought this carved nativity scene in Mexico a few years ago. It was more for the carving and less for the religious aspect that they bought it.  It will never be as awesome as my dad's nativity scene however. Scared he was going to lose the baby Jesus on one of his moves (as he has all the wise men and the angel), he decided to affix the figurine by nailing it to the manger! The mileage I have gotten out of that story, let me tell you!

My mom, Big Bro and I made these when I was about seven. Twenty-three years later, they're still looking pretty good

The thing I miss most about growing up now that I'm living in my apartment is having a fireplace. There's a warmth and comfort from a fire you just don't get from central heating. I also don't think you get it from a gas fireplace but that could just be a prejudice I have against anything that replaces memories from my childhood.

This is proof that my Baby Bro actually stopped playing FIFA 11 long enough to do dishes. Years from now, historians writing his biography will look at this picture and gasp. Debates will rage about whether or not it is photoshopped. I am here to settle the score: this picture is not photoshopped, he is actually doing the dishes!

During the summer we could never figure out the point of the man-made gully in my stepmom's backyard. Then the rains came. This mini-river leads to a pond which was empty this summer. The pond is currently overflowing and the backyard is still a little soft. I'd hate to think what the backyard must have been like before they dug the gully!

Before driving me and Baby Bro down to Victoria on the Tuesday, my stepmom treated us to lunch at the Dinghy Dock Pub on Protection Island (off Nanaimo). I was glad our original plan of going on Monday was thwarted by it not being open. Monday was bucketing down with rain, Tuesday was gorgeous and sunny. The food was decent although the service was a little slow, but on a sunny summer's day I'd go back in a heartbeat. Having a beer while looking out over the harbour really can't be beat!

This is the best completely-useless-but-it-looks-pretty present ever! It's a marionette cat in fancy dress. My stepmom and Baby Bro met up in Italy last November (he had been backpacking for eight months). When they found this in Venice, they agreed it must be mine. Useless and feline. Yup, that sounds exactly like something I would covet! Now, to find a permanent place where the living, useless felines can't get to it.











The first day of 2011 was fabulous. It was gloriously sunny all day although still very cold, I had a fabulous brunch with a fabulous lady at a place I had never been to before but would definitely go to again, and I wrote up and planned out all my resolutions and will be discussing them on here very soon but for now, it's getting late and I want to read before bed.

I hope you are all having a fabulous start to 2011!

Traditional Traditions

There are certain things I need to do to really feel like it's Christmas. I'm a sucker for traditions and I have a lot of them all year round but especially at Christmas. I am, after all, a self-proclaimed Fauxman Catholic. I started one of the traditions Saturday night by watching White Christmas and another one on Sunday by baking Grandma's Molasses Cookies with my mom.

The scene with the bells leading up to this scene used to terrify me.

Actually, it still does.

My step-mom always watched certain movies leading up to Christmas. Eventually these films became a must for our family: White Christmas, A Child's Christmas in Wales, Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, and A Christmas Carol/Scrooge (depending on what country you're in). We have certain rules that have to be followed for each movie. The order in which we watch them is carefully selected as only White Christmas or A Child's Christmas in Wales are allowed be watched after Christmas. A Christmas Carol has to be watched as close to Christmas Eve as possible. On Christmas Eve is the best night but with two households to plan around, that's not always possible. Unfortunately, my step-mom moved up to Nanaimo earlier this year so many of these films are being watched alone.

They're about to fulfill their destiny of being tasty, tasty cookies!

Grandma's Molasses Cookies recipe goes back to at least my great-Grandma. My grandma always had them year round in her house (obviously not with Christmas designs like ours) but we only make them at Christmas. I like it more that way. Like Starbucks' seasonal flavourings, it builds the anticipation. I eagerly await for my mom to suggest a baking date every year and then I talk ad nauseum about how we're going to bake Grandma's cookies and how they're the best cookies ever (which they totally are!) and that the recipe is over 100 years old. It's not just that I love eating these cookies, I love making them. I love the process of rolling out the dough and fitting the cookie cutters to get as many cookies as possible. I love icing them and then adding sprinkles. There's something about that last step that just really seals the deal for me.

Best. Cookies. EVER!

My family is full of traditions, these are just two of them, but there's too many to talk about them all so I'll just leave it to the ones I actually participated in this year. Besides, who really wants to hear about my Baby Bro almost falling from the ladder with the chainsaw during our family tradition of cutting down our own Christmas tree?

Hiding a Full Moon With Something Other Than Pants

In case you've been living under a rock this past week (or on the moon *snort*), there's a full lunar eclipse tonight in a little under two hours (at the time of posting). Lunar eclipses are much different than a solar eclipse because a) you can view them with the naked eye and b) they take several hours to complete. There has been a fog cover over Victoria today and I can not see any indication of stars from my apartment at this time, but nonetheless, I will hike to Central High School and park myself out in the field to see if I can see anything. Please, please, please let the clouds be gone!

If the weather cooperates, I should see something like this.

Technically this lunar eclipse doesn't fall on the winter solstice because that happens at 3:38pm tomorrow, but in the grand scheme of things, most of North America will be seeing this eclipse on the 21st so... The last time this happened was 372 years ago. If you plan on raising nerdy offspring--I can't be alone in this plan--this will be something you can tell them about for years to come. Of course, there will be another lunar eclipse in approximately four years time but not on the solstice!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go brew a big batch of hot chocolate!

Ode to the Hot Water Bottle

As if the small dump of snow this morning wasn't enough, it is howling in Victoria tonight. My deck chairs are no where near where they were this morning and my windows are rattling so hard I keep thinking they're going to break. I know that a few people will probably throw a couple of curses my way for saying this, perhaps even burn an effigy from some leftover hair in their bath tub, but I like snow. I'm not a huge fan of the negative temperatures that come with it, but I like snow.

Given the dip in the temperature, I got out my hot water bottle a few nights ago. My dad lives in an old house with an old furnace and just-as-old radiators. My friends referred to it as 'the cold house'. Two fire places at either end of the building supplied most of the heat which left the bedrooms in the middle of the house with a mean winter temperature of about 5 degrees... on the Kelvin scale. Hot water bottles were a must in my childhood.

I no longer need a hot water bottle but it's a ritual that I can't break. The return of the hot water bottle heralds Christmas for me in a way that TV, radio and print ads never will. It is winter, I must have a hot water bottle. As I filled it up last night, I remembered a writing project from last year. Our professor would give us a topic once a week and we had to write 100 words on it. No more, no less. On the topic of 'winter', this is what I wrote:

The hot water bottle creates a small area of warmth at the end of my bed. I creep my feet towards it until I hit that spot where it gets too hot and I pull them back just a little bit. I don’t need a hot water bottle but it wouldn’t be a winter night without it. My feet dance to find that perfect location. I find it; my stillness signals my cats and they jostle each other for the best position on this heat source.  Tomorrow morning it will be cold, but tonight it is a comfort to us.

Oh, hot water bottle, thank you for holding not just heat but so many wonderful memories.