Laura in Real Life

All in

2011-01-22T00:20:00.003-05:00

Have you ever heard the term "nut up"? It's a crass way of telling someone to get some courage and do what needs to be done. Right now I need to nut up, and in the worst way.
I am not lacking in the self-confidence department, at least not in a way that's noticeable. I can walk into a room full of people I don't know, introduce myself and have a meaningful conversation faster than most people can even find a chair or an unobtrusive spot of wall to stand against. But in some things, in some areas of adult life...I'm a mouse. That's the best word for it. I'm a mouse, the kind who hides in the little mouse hole, watching the vast expanse of floor in front of it, knowing that piece of cheese across the room is ripe for the taking but too convinced that the cat is going to come zooming over to eat me if I even put one foot outside the hole. For someone as mature and rational as I usually am, I find my own behaviour ridiculous and embarrassing.
My goal for this year is to collect experiences in some of the areas of life I've been lagging behind in. I won't share them here, but one thing is for certain:
I need to nut up.

-Laur

Moving

2010-04-27T13:15:00.002-04:00

So my Mom sold our house last week. I'm really excited, but also kind of sad. I think that's normal.
I have been blogging in these past few months, at Adventures in Delicious, my new food blog. Right now I don't have anything new or exciting to say, so I think I'll just leave it at that.

-Laur

A split

2010-01-11T20:51:00.003-05:00

So I didn't change blog providers, I simply started a new blog on Tumblr and will keep it for different reasons than this one. Come visit me here.
A lot of stuff has happened since I last posted. Sarah is almost completely moved out, and yesterday my mom and I moved my desk into the empty(ish) bedroom. We wound up having to take the doors to both bedrooms off their hinges in order to fit the two pieces of the desk through, and then wound up having to take the desk almost entirely apart to get it into the other bedroom at all. I know one piece of large, ungainly furniture that will NOT be coming to the new place with me. I guess that's not really a lot of stuff, but it was certainly an adventure.
I'm taking this cooking thing really seriously and I'm going to try to start a Wednesday night cooking club for my friends who don't cook. It's a life skill and when you get to be in your twenties, someone should be shaming you into learning how to cook if you don't already.
I do love food.

-Laur

Switching blog providers: do or do not?

2010-01-07T09:44:00.002-05:00

So I'm thinking about switching blog providers, if that's the appropriate term. I've been looking into Tumblr and a lot of what it offers really appeals to me. I find that Blogger doesn't let me do some things easily, and I think I could share a lot more if I went to Tumblr. I don't want to go to Wordpress because it seems to require a lot more technical ability than I possess, and I want something that is simple and doesn't give me a headache or ask too much of me. Question is, though, can I import all my old posts to a Tumblr account? Hmmm.
Opinions wanted and appreciated. Thanks.

-Laur

Preparing

2010-01-04T12:00:00.002-05:00

Yesterday after Sarah left the house with most of the remainder of her stuff (SURPRISE! My sister moved out! Cue huge sigh of relief) my mother and I cleaned out the upstairs linen closet, and then I went into my room and:

took down all my posters
removed most of the glow-in-the-dark starts and planets from my walls
cleaned all the sticky-tack off the walls
removed the white LED string lights from my window treatment
consolidated my shotglass collection into two small boxes
removed the pictures from all my standing frames, put them in albums, and stored the frames elsewhere
was sad as I looked around my bedroom and realized that it looked like it only had half an identity

Now that the sibling has moved out again, Mom and I can seriously begin preparing the house for sale and then moving. We tackled the basement storage room two days ago and got rid of a tonne of stuff, and tonight when we get home from work we're going to clean out the laundry room, which is subsequently our furnace room, because we're getting the furnace and water heater replaced tomorrow. Everything is going to happen so quickly from hereon in, and I can't decide if I'm excited or full of dread. I can't imagine packing up my bedroom; even though I get rid of stuff every few months, I have so many possessions that I have no idea where they're all going to go when we move. I don't even know what my new bedroom will look like. What if it's smaller than what I have now? I already feel cramped as it is; a smaller space would be downright claustrophobic.
But I digress.
We're preparing the house for a move and right now there are garbage bags full of junk strewn all over the main floor that should probably go in the garage, but garbage collection (a double-up day, thank goodness! We're probably going to drop some bags in our neighbors' driveways, too) isn't until next week. We're going to amass more garbage before then, so I'll have to think of something creative to do with it.
One last thing; when I was shoveling snow last night I noticed that my side fence gate doesn't close properly anymore. It was swinging open and shut in the wind and making creepy creaking noises. It officially gave me the heebie jeebies. Just another thing on my to do list.

-Laur

Welcome to 2010

2010-01-01T23:42:00.002-05:00

I don't have resolutions this year, as I find they set me up for disappointment. Instead, I have ideas

I want to learn how to cook better than I do. I will choose and follow more recipes instead of making things up, and hone some of my weaker kitchen skills such as knife handling and pan-cooking (sauteeing, sweating, frying, browning, etc.)
I need to get active again. My pants are getting tighter, something that hasn't happened in years, and my lung capacity is shrinking daily. I don't have enough money to rejoin the gym, so I will have to come up with a cheaper alternative.
I want to be a kinder person. I'm terribly hard on some of the people in my life, and now that I know that most people aren't going to live up to my expectations, I need to stop beating them up (mentally) and beating myself up for putting them on a pedestal.
I will abandon the idea of a best friend. It's an unattainable label to follow, and it winds up hurting me more than it comforts me. I read an article in Chatelaine that cleared a lot of my best-girl-friend misconceptions last month, and I feel a lot better now that I understand that best friends don't actually exist.

I will also try to post to this blog at LEAST once a week.
Happy New Year. Welcome to the next decade.

-Laur

Gingerpeople, to be politically correct

2009-12-10T23:16:00.001-05:00

I don't personally like gingerbread that much. I find it a little bit bland, like it needs to be sweeter or something. It does, however, make excellent cutout shapes which is why I continue to make it year after year.
This year seems to be a defining year for me in terms of my design and execution skills; last year my decorating cookies were a hot mess, but this year? Excellence. My pumpkin carving skills seem to have undergone the same transformation, but that's another story for an unexpected and hilarious time.
On Tuesday night I decorated sugar cookies with my mother until my student came for tutoring, and then once all students had been dismissed and my mom had gone to bed, I hunkered down in front of the TV with a rack full of gingerbread men (people, persons, its?) and two squeeze bottles of royal icing (note to all cookie decorating enthusiasts: THIS WAS THE BEST DECISION EVER! I will continue to use squeeze bottles instead of icing bags for as long as I only need straight semi-thin lines), a glass of milk and both Home Alone 1 and 2, and off I went until 1:30 in the morning.

I didn't get all of them finished, but what I did get done I quite enjoyed. I'll either finish the rest when I get back from my weekend in Rochester, or leave it up to mom to finish. Regardless, enjoy my pictures. I'm becoming a more efficient cookie-roller, and had all the gingerbread men rolled, baked and cooled in just inside of an hour.

I'm going to go curl up in my warm bed now and settle down for a long winter's nap.

-Laur

Classic Gingerbread Cutouts:

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup molasses
2 eggs
4 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar until smooth. Stir in the molasses and eggs. Combine 1 1/2 cups of the flour, baking soda, salt, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger; beat into the molasses mixture. Gradually stir in the remaining flour by hand to form a stiff dough.
Divide dough into 2 pieces. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes using cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cookie countdown

2009-12-06T13:48:00.002-05:00

So here's my first round of cookies: blue snowflakes. I think they're really pretty, and they happen to taste really great, too. The cookie cutter set came with 8 shapes but three of them are weird little tiny things that aren't much use. The biggest one, top left, is about the size of my hand and very sturdy. I made up a batch of Royal Icing to decorate them with, but didn't finish the job; I'll be using white icing and pretty sugar to complete the effect.
Here's the recipe for the cookies:

Best Rolled Sugar Cookies by Jill Saunders

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Directions
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

And now for the Royal Icing recipe:

Royal Icing by Veronica

Ingredients
3 cups confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 egg whites, beaten
Directions
In a bowl, sift together confectioners' sugar and cream of tartar. Using electric mixer, beat in 2 beaten egg whites for about 5 minutes or until mixture is thick enough to hold its shape.
I think this post is going to look a little strange, but what can you do.
Do you like my little Christmas tree? Or Hanukkah bush? It's blue and white, but it's a tree, so I suppose it transcends the lines of holiday religion. I like it, anyhow.

Happy baking!

-Laur

Christmas time is here

2009-12-01T23:39:00.000-05:00

It's December 1st. Well, it's almost over, but today was mostly December 1st. I've been ignoring my blog because of Nanowrimo, but that's over. I didn't win. I hated my book. Oh well, serves me right for not planning.
So today I decorated the house a little bit and baked half a batch of snowflake-shaped sugar cookies. They're really awesome snowflakes, and I'm going to bake and decorate the rest of them tomorrow. Mom and I also made the awesome centrepiece to your left, and we'll probably put it in the front vestibule to be festive and such. But only if I can find a table to put it on.
The other pictures are ones I doctored up with Picnik after my friend Samantha and I went to the Santa Clause Parade on November 15th. It was an almost balmy day and the parade was lovely and short, about 2 hours long, and we had a good spot right at St. George station across from the Bata Shoe Museum. We could see everything, and afterwards we went for a little window-shop in Yorkville.
I'm taking my holiday baking very seriously this year, and starting tomorrow I'm going to blog my cookie recipes and photos every time I bake a new kind.
Cheers!
-Laur

It's getting to be that time again...

2009-10-13T23:09:00.002-04:00

Well, when the web badges are up you KNOW that it's on its way...National Novel Writing Month 2009, in its 11th proud year, will be starting at 12:01 am on November 1st, and though I will probably still be partying my grass off, I will definitely be plotting this year's masterpiece in a small, inebriated corner of my mind.
This year I want more of my creative friends to get involved; I have so many people in my life who are capable of such greatness, and few of them every try to achieve it.
Here is my hit list for people who should do Nanowrimo this year:
Aleks Sagan
Marisa Williams
Samantha Feder
Aaron Armstrong
Robert Hull
There are more, but I can't think of them right now. So, my friends, this is an open challenge: write your hearts out in November, and see what happens. It may be one of the most meaningful experiences you ever have. Go sign up at the Nanowrimo website and find me, Lolowin, so I can support you through one of the most challenging and rewarding months ever.

Can you dig it?

- Laur

Thanksgiving experiments

2009-10-07T22:33:00.001-04:00

The Dulce de Leche cutouts cookies I made. I doubled the recipe and got all the conversions right except for the eggs. The dough, as a result, was extremely dry and hard to work with. But, in the end, I managed to get it all out onto the pans and they look pretty good, I think.
The works in progress.

Today I had the day off and I baked and cooked up a storm. I made that squash soup again, with some small changes; I forgot that I used up all my celery the other night in a pan-Asian stir fry, so I nixed it and made up for it with carrot and Spanish onion, which I sauteed in a very small amount of bacon grease (OH MY!). Then I figured out how to cut a pie pumpkin in half (above), gutted it and roasted it for an hour and a half. Then, using oven mits so I think I wasted some of it due to reduced dexterity, I scraped the flesh from the skin and mashed it and pureed it with my immersion blender (below). Pumpkin puree doesn't smell nice, just so everyone knows.

Below is the pumpkin cookie dough that I made with aforementioned pumpkin puree. I used real, fresh-ground cinnamon in it. I think I left some residue in my coffee grinder, but that cinnamon packs a punch, and leaves some heat on your tongue. WOO!

The finished cookies. They have oatmeal and chocolate chips in them. And a shitload of butter and sugar, woah now. They have a very cake-like consistency.

Becoming a Foodie

2009-10-05T23:04:00.003-04:00

I've been cooking up a storm in my house, woohoo! After a weekend journey to St. Jacob's Farmers Market, I brought home 4 butternut squash, 3 pie pumpkins, 6 huge leeks and 2 gorgeous Spanish onions. Mom and I proceeded to make the best soup of life, pictured above.
I find that I really enjoy cooking, moreso now than ever before. The thing I missed most about home in Europe was not being able to do my own cooking; mind you, a lot of the food I ate was stupendous and probably something I could never reproduce, but I still missed being able to make myself a simple omlette in the morning or a pan-Asian stirfry for dinner.
Tonight for dessert after a dinner of aforementioned squash soup I made cinnamon buns from a recipe I found on Allrecipes.com (my new recipe go-to site). Even though I had to alter the bake time (15 minutes was not enough to prevent some still-raw dough in their centres), they turned out far better than I ever could have imagined and I am so pleased. Being able to make interesting desserts is important to me; I don't have an array of parlour tricks or whatever to pull out when guests are around, but by golly I can cook a delicious 3 course meal! I'm not going to go all Julie Powell (Julie and Julia) on you, especially since I was reading Chatelaine and I found out that after her book became a success she went out and cheated on her husband, her biggest cheerleader during her cooking blog experiment, and ruined her marriage. Now, I don't exactly have a marriage to destroy, or even a romantic relationship, but I feel like this journey should be shared in bits and pieces. I'm learning; I didn't blog about every class I attended throughout my university career, so I probably won't do it for this particular segment of my education. I will, however, share with you, my faithful readers, a selection of my triumphs, and my failures.
The cinnamon buns are rolling unpleasantly in my stomach, but you know what? They were worth it.

- Laur

Quichey quiche

2009-09-28T16:00:00.002-04:00

Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of repentance. You're supposed to fast all day and reflect on the sins you have committed throughout the year. Being a non-believer, I've decided that you should reflect every day in an effort not to do things that hurt people so often, so I ate a delicious breakfast and lunch, and I just sampled the spinach and mushroom quiche I baked for tonight's feast at my house.
I've been cooking a lot lately, way more than usual, and using recipes properly so that I don't have as many screw-ups in the kitchen. The other day I made potato gnocchi all by myself, and my mom gave it her seal of approval. Now all I have to do is get a real Italian to tell me how to improve it and I'm all set! I made an Alfredo sauce from a recipe too, but it was awful and I'll never make it again. I like my own white sauce, that I make with butter, flour, garlic, salt, milk (or cream, when I'm feeling ultra-indulgent) and a little bit of Parmesan cheese. I've also been baking bread; I seem to be pro at white bread, but whole wheat isn't going so well. I'll try it again on Wednesday.
Anywho, I'm going to take a nap before getting up to vacuum, sweep, and shower. My house smells amazing.

-Laur

Slow return to reality

2009-09-23T14:48:00.002-04:00

2 weekends ago I helped put a famous pig-roast party into play in Muskoka on a family friend's island. It was fantastic, and the weeks leading up to it were spent focused on getting the right food together, prepping, packing, and mentally preparing ourselves for the madness to come. This picture is of Jessica Poland and myself, goofing around during the party (it's mostly me goofing around, but hey, someone had to!). But the party ended, and reality struck, and I realized something:

I feel really bad. That may not be the most profound statement ever made, but it's true. I realize that lately I've been really selfish, and it's time to stop.
Things haven't been easy since Sarah came home. She's been depressed, and was out of work for a while, and when she's home she sits in front of the TV all day or never gets out of bed. She doesn't contribute, and lately more than ever it's been apparent that Mom is going to need some more financial help running the household.
Yes, when I'm home I tend to do things. I clean, or I get rid of items that need getting rid of. I empty the cats' litter box, I vacuum, I organize the kitchen, I do handy-work...but that's not enough.
So, even though I said I didn't want to even look for a teaching job until January, I'm going to start putting my resume and cover letter out there, to see if I get any bites. Not just to public schools, but to private ones and tutoring companies, too. I feel burned out from last year, discouraged for sure, and my teaching confidence definitely took a hit (for those of you who don't know, last year's teaching placement experience was ANYTHING but positive, for the most part), but I'll do it.
So wish me luck! Soon I might have a classroom of my very own!

-Laur

Countdown!

2009-07-12T23:45:00.002-04:00

So I now have a widget at the bottom of this web page that is counting down to my departure for parts unknown, AKA London, England. 15 days and counting. HOW DID IT GET SO CLOSE???

I'm nervous but excited. I have so much reading to do! Time to shower and hit the books.

-Laur

Oh, and I also graduated on Monday

2009-07-01T14:32:00.000-04:00

I almost forgot, I also graduated on Monday. I guess the excitement from the weekend preceding sort of detracted from the actual event. Nevertheless, I marched across that stage to the cheers of my friends and accepted my Bachelor of Education gratefully.
Now I'm finished :)

-Laur

Feels like home to me

2009-07-01T14:27:00.000-04:00

So I spent the weekend with my family in Edmonton. We were there celebrating my grandmother's 85th birthday in what was basically a 48-hour party, though the official shindig was only 4 hours long. It was amazing, I got to see my old boss and my Edmonton friends and have great visits with my family and see some people I hadn't seen in over 9 years.
Feels like home to me.

-Laur

Skills

2009-06-16T22:55:00.000-04:00

So I got my new camera almost a month ago and it has been so much fun to play with. Please enjoy these pictures from the last few days, including Princess Xander under the patio table. It was actually too hot for him. What a princess.

-Laur

A year of firsts

2009-06-01T13:42:00.000-04:00

On Saturday I went to my first friend wedding. My dear friend Marisa Williams became Mrs. Josh Tierney. When I think about it my first instinct is to scream in terror, because I AM SO NOT READY, but it wasn't my wedding, and Marisa was ready. And now she's someone's wife.
I think it's so cool that she got married. She planned the whole event so perfectly, and it looked so beautiful and I know everyone there had such a great time. She should be so proud.
Today she and Josh flew to Paris for a 2-week honeymoon. I know they're going to have the most amazing time.

-Laur

It's not every day

2009-05-22T17:26:00.001-04:00

that you find an elephant in front of a museum. Not a taxidermied, stuffed woolly mammoth, but a real, live African elephant wearing a sign around its middle. No joke. I was at OISE for an interview-type thing and when I was finished I decided to take my new camera (yes, I bought it yesterday after school) for a walk over the the Royal Ontario Museum to take some pictures of the new building addition that I STILL haven't seen.
So I'm walking along and I inhale through my nose (something I try not to do downtown because my mucus turns grey, sorry for the TMI) and smelled...elephant. It's a very specific smell, elephant. I can't really describe it, but I can tell you that I've been to zoos with elephants enough times to identify that smell easily. So I look at the crowd forming down the street and lo and behold...an elephant.
Apparently the ROM is putting on an animal exhibit of some sort this summer and today was the kickoff; the Metro Toronto Zoo was kind enough to donate the time of some handlers and 1 large African elephant, 1 juvenile male Bengal tiger, 1 Grevy's zebra, 1 massive Clydesdale horse and a 1 tiny and spunky Shetland pony for the cause.
I was so close to that elephant that if I had stood in line long enough, I could have had the chance to feed it a pellet of hay and touch it. I was scared, I'm not going to lie, so I didn't do it. Now I really wish I had. I did take a bunch of pictures, though, until my battery died (first time, had to drain it) and I went back to the subway instead of going into the museum.
What an adventure!
-Laur

The upshot...

2009-05-20T16:59:00.005-04:00

Well, it's all over. It's amazing how a person can spend months building up to a certain day and then feel slightly bereft, because a day is only 24 hours no matter how you shake it.
Ed Formal is over and I feel bereft. Not in a weepy, unhappy kind of way, just in a gently missing kind of way.
The evening was AMAZING; from an organizer's point of view, it could not have gone any better. Dinner wasn't right on schedule but everyone got to eat, so there were no complaints; the music was good even though the DJ didn't stick to the playlist I gave him, and the professional photographer took hundreds of pictures. Both Don Dippo, the Associate Dean of Education and Steve Sedran, FESA's president, gave great speeches despite the lack of attention coming from one particular side of the room. Even the seating plans were relatively uneventful, again with the exception of one particular site.
We sold raffle tickets and gave away some gorgeous prizes, photos from the school in Kenya we support as well as several pieces of African art, and finally, everyone was very vocal in how much they enjoyed themselves.
On a sad note, there were a number of thefts committed at the event, one of them involving my own faithful pink Kodak V803 digital camera, so bye-bye pictures. My friends have been super about sharing their pictures with me, but it's not the same. I'm eyeing a Canon SD1200IS (yes, the one from the commercial with Avril Lavigne) as a replacement, but I'm going to have to cut into my Europe fund to get it. I can't go to Europe without a camera, after all.
There will be more pictures eventually, but for now I have to focus on my last 3 days of placement, my final evaluation, applying to more boards and cleaning my disgusting sty of a bedroom.

Forever in blue,

-Laur

Won't you please, please, please let me get what I want

2009-05-14T23:32:00.002-04:00

I feel like I've been waiting for this day forever. Everything that I've been doing for FESA since January has been geared toward May 15th, and in 20 minutes...well, it will be May 15th.
In the words of Penny Lane in Almost Famous, "It's all happening".
Tomorrow night Ed Formal 2009 will coalesce into red and black sparkle and shine, a ballroom full of music, lights and 500 people will spread out before me and I will be, for one brief evening, sitting on top of the world.
I hope it's amazing.
Won't you please, please, please let me get what I want.

-Laur

P.S. Grey's Anatomy just broke my heart.

Someday I'll fly away

2009-05-04T12:33:00.004-04:00

I'm going to Europe this summer. Isn't that just awesome?
Here is the trip I'm going on: European Highlights. I'll see England (but I'll be arriving 5 days in advance so I can take my time), France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands before coming back to London for an evening and flying home the next day.
I'm so, so excited. I think it's going to be so much fun!
Here are some pictures of some of the places I'm going to see:

Take me to the riot...

2009-05-03T15:29:00.001-04:00

because I'd rather be there than anywhere near here.
Been doing everything not to be doing what I should be.
My brain feels explosive and mushy.
Do I hate William? Maybe, but I would not like to.
Now to revisit the words and the lives of people that I find
less
than
fascinating.

These are the sacrifices we make for life. I'm doing my best, my god, I'm doing my best.

-Laur

Ottawa Opulence

2009-04-20T23:38:00.002-04:00

So, went to Ottawa last weekend, and a what a fine time it was! I got to see the Parliament buildings, a LTTE (Tamil Tigers) demonstration at said Parliament buildings, went to visit my lovely, wonderful great Aunt Mary, and saw inside the dreaded apartment of one of my oldest and dearest friends. And he has a cat named Bogart who is stone deaf. The very fact that he has a cat amazes me, because he's inherently a dog person. Who woulda thunk it?
To your left we have a great shot of the Tamil Tigers and their flags in front of Parliament. They were pretty peaceful, but Canada considers them terrorists. Hmm.
Tea and cookies with Aunt Mary in the sunroom.

Shap and Bogey. SO CUTENESS! He clearly adores this cat. He would shove his face in the cat's nose and yell "Don't love me, Dan, don't love me!" Priceless.

Ottawaaaaaaah

2009-04-05T12:50:00.002-04:00

I'm going to Ottawa on Friday for the first time since high school. I think high school, at least. Probably 7 years, I'm just going over it with Mom now.
I actually really like Ottawa. I used to go there a lot as a kid because my mom's best friend Julia and her family live there. I like the old-world feel of Ottawa, and I like the museums. Parliament doesn't really float my boat or anything, but the history of the place and of my country I definitely enjoy.
I look forward to taking pictures this weekend, even if the weather isn't nice. If it's really cold I'll probably limit my movement to places that I can catch a bus back to Julia's house. They live in Barhaven, a suburb of Ottawa that isn't exactly close to the downtown core.
Anyways, I'm excited to get away for a weekend. I haven't been away for real (longer than a day trip, I mean) since I went to the cottage over Labour Day weekend and I think this will be good for my head.

-Laur

Springtime in the shadows

2009-03-15T23:17:00.000-04:00

Lately I've forgotten about a lot of the things that I enjoy. I feel like I'm constantly struggling to keep up with just about all the normal everyday things I usually do around now. Maybe it's because my body feels like I should be gearing up for a teaching block, or exams. But this year is an anomaly, and neither of those things will be happening.
A lot of stuff has happened since I last blogged. For example, I returned to class from after exams. I did a presentation, the last of the academic-Arts class ones this year, on Austin Clarke's Love and Sweet Food and Stuart Hall's "Cultural Identity and Diaspora". I wrote my first essay for Inspiration, and was once again published in EDible News. I also got my convocation dates, and for 24 hours freaked right out about what was to be done.
We're having a big 85th birthday party for my awesome Gramma in Edmonton during the last weekend in June. It worked out really well because Mom would be done school, I would be done the AQ course I thought I was taking (more on that later) and Auntie Brenda would have been all moved home from Russia. The date was set for Sunday June 28th and it was going to be great. Auntie Bren bought our tickets using Aeroplan miles from Thursday the 25th to July 1st so we could all have some time together to visit; Auntie Reta, Uncle Jim and Maggie are coming over from Vancouver Island for the party so it would be the first time my mom and uncle had seen each other since we interred my grampa's ashes 7 years ago. I had been told convocation wouldn't be until July because of the messed up year, so we thought everything would be fine.
Well, turns out the powers that be at York managed to organize some tomfoolery and made the convocation ceremonies start on June 24th. My BA ceremony is on June 26th and my BEd ceremony, the one that is really important to me, is on June 29th. I would be in Edmonton over the whole convocation period. Crap.
After those 24 excruciating hours were up, everything had been rearranged. The party is now on Saturday June 27th and Mom and I fly back to Toronto on the red-eye flight on Monday morning. We'll sleep, shower, do our hair and makeup, and drive to school for 1:30 so I can get robed and put into the procession; the ceremony begins at 3:30, and we're invited to the Faculty of Education graduates reception afterward. Gramma, who was originally supposed to attend, will no longer be coming; it's too much excitement for her in too short a time and what if some of the out-of-towners stick around for a while after the party? It's not fair, of course, but it's what's right.
So like I said, I've forgotten about a lot of the things that I enjoy. This craziness has sucked all the fun right out of me, until last week when I randomly created the above image in Inspiration class during a particularly uninspiring discussion on plagiarism. I love to mess around with pictures and I thought the contrast between sunlight and shadows, caught on an afternoon in the watery spring sunshine, was particularly captivating. I also went out with friends for someone's birthday this weekend and my face hurts from laughing.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, kids.

-Laur

Third-World Myths Dispelled

2009-02-18T12:39:00.002-05:00

Check out this awesome video we just watched in my Teaching Geography class. It's long, but the first 6 minutes are simultaneously hilarious and enlightening:

Let me know what you think. Maybe I'm just a geography nerd but this stuff is gold, especially with his hilarious accent.

-Laur

P.S.

2009-02-10T16:50:00.000-05:00

It's not just men. It's women too. There's one talking right now. Showboaters.

-Laur

Blow haaaaard

2009-02-10T16:40:00.003-05:00

You ever meet a person who looks so good and so awesome and then he opens his mouth and he's just a bloooow haaaard? I'm listening to one of them right now. He says "I" and "me" a lot and goes off on strange tangents and to tell you the truth, as cute as he is, I'm not interested anymore. He's expressing admiration for his mother right now, and that's all fine and good but he's still a big talker.
Anywho, I don't care.

Today FESA had a cupcake sale organized by yours truly (and Adrienne, she was awesome about baking and setting up and booking the room) and it was a SMASHING SUCCESS! We made $366 for Wikondiek school in Kenya and that just makes me so happy. Part of my job description is to raise money for that school and I take pride in going the extra mile to really help them out when they are in so much need. Lindsay R says it's the best FESA bakesale to date, and that's AWESOME! Woohoo!

Now back to Bryna's house to exercise the bunnies and clean up. Not that I left it messy. Not at all, I just need to take out the garbage and collect the rest of my stuff.

-Laur

Back to school, back to school

2009-02-03T16:28:00.002-05:00

Back to school. After 3 long, bitter months, Queens Park legislated CUPE 3903 back to work. They should have done it 4 weeks into the strike when it was crystal clear that neither side was going to budge, but I guess we can just hope that the mistake will be a lesson.
SO, yesterday morning I woke up extra early and went to class (sick to my stomach on the bus, not sure if that had to do with the early morning or the dread) and surprisingly, it wasn't so bad. Acting was nice because I saw all my friends that I had missed for so much of the strike and being together again felt natural. Afterwards I rushed to my Teaching Geography class and my spirits began to flag because usually it sucks; not the case yesterday, however. We did mapping activities for 3 hours and it rocked. Halfway through that class I opened my FirstClass email account to the most amazing and ground-shaking news: our 4-week, 20-day teaching block, the one that we're supposed to do at the end of the school year, had been cancelled. I was overjoyed because I hate my placement; my MT is a cold, unhelpful woman who dislikes me and I think probably finds me tedious. The thought of teaching in her school for 20 straight days sent me skating toward the edge of a nervous breakdown. This is fantastic. This is the best news ever.
After class we had a Town Hall meeting in the Winters college dining hall to clear up any confusion about the Ed year. It was short but full of information, and to celebrate we (being a pile of FESA members who just kept getting bigger) went to Blueberry Hill (or Blueberry Mountain, according to Steve) for dinner before Mean Girls movie night. Move night was great, and then I came home.
Today is Tuesday. I lesson planned, went to the gym, and now I'm in class watching a video that suggests that breathing is God. Ha.
I don't need God to tell me that despite my doubts, everything is going to be okay. I just need me to say it.

-Laur

Snowy snow

2009-01-28T22:49:00.000-05:00

I'm tired of the snow. But this picture, taken in the bus shelter at Clark and New Westminster during that last intense cold snap, brings the beauty of winter to life.

Now I'm ready for spring. Come on, spring!

-Laur

P.S. To those of you reading this in Facebook, you'll probably have to go to the source for the picture: www.lauraadventure.blogspot.com

Legen- wait for it- dary!

2009-01-26T00:12:00.003-05:00

So this strike has been really hard on me. I didn't realize how hard until my mom pointed something out to me earlier this evening.
I've been going to the gym pretty solidly since the beginning of December, and semi watching what I eat (which is saying something because I usually don't watch at ALL) but since the beginning of January I've felt this general malaise sinking in. It really began to bother me a few weeks ago when I noticed I was tired all the time, actually exhausted when I was getting lots of sleep, enough exercise and pretty okay nutrition.
It got so bad that I felt like I could barely function; going out with friends felt like work when it used to be something I enjoyed, and the other day when I had a cup of coffee I bounced off the walls like a pixy on crack for 3 hours and then crashed and burned when the caffeine wore off.
I made a doctors appointment because I really thought something was wrong, but wound up having to cancel the appointment when the Education students were called back to placement with very little warning. I probably should have just told my MT I couldn't come in because of the appointment, but I decided against it because I wanted to make a good impression. Another whatever when it comes to my MT, but that's another story for another post.
Anyways, I bought some vitamin-type stuff today before I worked out because I figured maybe I should get a little more of the things I was lacking. I take a women's one-a-day vitamin every morning, but perhaps I'm lacking B12 or something, so we'll see how that works out. But when I told my mom about it, she had another idea: depression.
I hate that word. It's a dirty word in my books because I have a side of the family that suffers from mental illness, and it often goes untreated. Depression isn't a problem that I want to have to face right now, but when I thought it for a minute, I realized Mom might be on to something. If I am depressed right now, I'm damn well entitled to be. I'm watching my graduation, the pieces of paper that right now define my future, slide slowly and greasily down the drain as this CUPE strike drags on and on. My work hours are being cut back because of the economic crisis, my job options getting cut in half, and my school work is entirely unappealing. If I am going through some sort of mental health crisis, it is not without catalyst.
Something has been kind of helping me through it, though; this show, a half hour sitcom from CBS called How I Met Your Mother, never fails to crack me up and make me feel a little more in control of my world. That, and Neil Patrick Harris (the blonde guy sitting in the bathtub) rocks my world with his hilarious hijinks. The cast looks all hipster in that photo but in the show they're actually kind of real. The writing is brilliant, the storylines terrific and not too unbelievable, and the acting is right on par. I've worked my way through the first, second and third seasons and am just about ready to start the 4th and current season; who knows, I might even be able to start watching it in real time on LOL Mondays. It's preceded by another comedic jem called The Big Bang Theory, which started last season and I'm also caught up on, but that's another story as well.
Premier Dalton McGuinty introduced a bill for back to work legislation regarding the strike today, so I could be back in school by February 2nd. All is not lost, and I hope that once I get back into it this depression, or whatever it is, goes away. For now I think I'll just keep watching HIMYM and laugh my head off the next time Marshall slaps Barney.

-Laur

Powerlessness

2009-01-22T23:39:00.003-05:00

Life is shit right now.

The strike has gone on long enough.

I don't have time for this. I have plans. They've been ruined. I don't have time to make new ones.

FUUUUUUUCK.

Okay, no more profanity. Time to get myself out of this funk.

-Laur

I'm a terrible, terrible person.

2009-01-15T19:09:00.004-05:00

I'm a terrible person. Just to reiterate. I'm actually not a terrible person, but I'm a terrible blogger and I feel awful. Why have this blog at all if I'm not going to use it?
Sheesh.

January is halfway gone today. Madness. I had an exceptional day today; I went to Le Jardin Conference and Banquet Centre and booked the venue for this year's Ed Formal, an event for which I and my partner Adrienne are responsible. It's going to be bigger, splashier, and more gorgeous than ever before and I am so excited. Unfortunately, it's not until May 15th, so I'm going to have to find some crazy way to make it through the next few months until the magical date arrives.

Strike watch- still on. Hopefully by the end of next week classes will resume. If the labour disruption extends past that, I honestly don't know what will become of the academic year. I could list all the complications that already exist because of the extended school year, but it makes my head ache and my stomach feel sick to even think about it.

My grad photos came before the New Year, though, and I must say they are quite excellent. I've sent them all out to the family now and I keep getting happy emails and phone calls saying "I got your picture, you're so gorgeous!" Thanks, fam and adopted fam. I love you.

Dinner and then Grissom's last episode of CSI, and a new Grey's tonight. Woohoo. Work tomorrow, 10-4, gym, more dinner, and then other stuff. Like professional resume. I'm such a procrastinator!!!

-Laur

Festive Spirit

2008-12-15T11:20:00.002-05:00

Honest Ed's window at Bathurst and Bloor.
Yonge and Dundas Square.
The Swarovski Tree at Toronto Eaton Centre.

Around this time of year I start to get festive. Most people do, when it comes down to it, but I have a feeling my festivity isn't like other people's . Since I wasn't raised celebrating Christmas, it's not the religious aspect that attracts me (and there's stating the obvious!) but rather the sparkle and shine of it all. Gifts are great, but I prefer the sales because they mean I can get a necessary item for better value. This year it's either a television set or a dishwasher. I have a feeling that in terms of necessity, the dishwasher is going to win.
Sarah and Mom decorated the main floor for the holidays yesterday and it looks so warm and inviting. The little tree is all lit up on the buffet, the stair railing is adorned with gold tinsel (the kind NOT dangerous to stupid cats) and gorgeous red ornaments are hanging on almost invisible threat from the chandelier, making them look like they're floating above the holly-print tablecloth and pine-themed centrepiece. I'll take pictures. It looks great.
Today the weather is crummy and it makes me not want to go outside, but I told myself I would go to the gym and since I didn't go with mom in the morning, I need to go now. I figure I'll hit the library on my way back and pick up a few DVDs, and then clean my room a little once I'm home and put in some laundry. There's my play-by-play of the day. Oh, and I have work at 6 where I'll be buying a tiny Christmas tree for the family room for exactly $2. Good times.
Mom leaves for Edmonton on Thursday. I want to go with her, but since I can't I hope she has a really great time.

Jingling and cringling (whatever that means),

-Laur

The people that we meet...

2008-12-04T22:39:00.001-05:00

Nanowrimo is over. When midnight struck on November 30th I was awake and watching as word count validation shut down and my status as a 2008 winner was cemented. I felt tired and somewhat relieved; November was an extraordinary and month and while I had a lot of fun, I was kind of glad to be finished. The almost overwhelming feeling of bereavement and grief didn't hit me until the next night while I was at the TGIO (Thank God It's Over!) party at the Victory Cafe on Markham Street. The above picture is of the Nano Trifecta of Evil: Laura Winberg, Nelson Yu and Natalia Lopez-Woodside, three writers who met at the first Brunch social at Pickle Barrel Atrium a week after Nano began and will probably remain friends for the next 5, 10, or even 20 Nanowrimos.

This is Natalia. She is my other half. We figure we were separated at birth (though with the 3 year age difference [she's older] there would be a lot of explaining to do) because we're so similar it's scary. People kept asking us throughout Nanowrimo, did we know each other from before? You know each other so well, you probably go way back. Not the case, but a little creepy and definitely a lot of fun. This picture is of her at the all-night write session at Sanctuary on November the 22nd. We sat across from each other, both plugged into our iTunes as we wrote, and looked up at each other at the same time whenever we had something to say. It was neat. I hit 50K that night, and Natalia hit it right before the 30th. I love that we both won.

This is my super happy face from right after I hit 50,000 words. There isn't an adequate grouping of words to describe how happy winning made me. I only hope I can do it again.

I met a lot of amazing people during Nanowrimo, from my long-lost twin to a feather-duster survivor to a transgendered person to a 40 year old man with purple hair who worships bunnies. I hope that I'm in Toronto next year so that I can do it all over again with the same bunch of awesome people, but if I'm not, I'll find Nanoers where ever I am and think about my Toronto Nano team fondly as I write.

Until next year,

L. Rose Harrington, author, Halloween Firsts

Viking Pride

2008-11-26T15:01:00.002-05:00

I WON! When I uploaded the 50,000+ words of my yet-unfinished novel onto the Nanowrimo website just after midnight on November 24th (meaning it was actually November 25th) I was greeted with a lovely barrage of images telling me that yes, I had officially won the amazing challenge of National Novel Writing Month 2008. I could download all the little winners badges to brag on my Facebook and blog pages, I could fill out and print a paper certificate saying that I had completed the challenge and am now entitled to crazy sick bragging rights, and my progress bar, once blue with incomplete word count and then green with 50,000 words or more, turned purple and sparkly with victory.
There's going to be a party at Victory Cafe on Markham street on December 1st, aptly titled the TGIO (thank god it's over!) party, for all the Nanoers in Toronto. I can't wait to go, dressed in something festive and sparkling, to celebrate with all my new, kooky, crazy Nanowrimo buddies.
My novel isn't done yet, but it will be soon. I'm going to do my best to wrap it up in the next few days so I can get started on some long-ignored school work before the strike ends. I know how the story is going to end, but now that I've reached that 50K goal I feel like I might rush to finish the rest, or not do it at all. I've only ever finished one story that I've started, and that was because I entered it in a contest and the ending still was more ambiguous than anything else. This story needs a finite ending, or at least a beginning of a new world.
I'm off to York to do some professional development stuff. I'll do another blog entry on the All-Night Writing session I attended over the weekend and put some pictures up as well.

-Laur

Writer's Block

2008-11-20T22:50:00.002-05:00

Hey, so...my mom yelled at me to post something new on my blog. Here it is.

My university has suspended all academic activity due to a strike put on by CUPE 3903, the union that the TAs, GAs and contract faculty belong to. I'm also banned from my teaching placement because the Ontartio Federation of Teachers considers our attendance to be a form of crossing the picket lines and will not allow it. A lot of my friends are really upset about this strike and the lack of classes, but I think it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I won't go into the details about why it's so excellent, but I will tell you what I've accomplished since it started 2 weeks ago:

Remember Nanowrimo? Well, I've written more than 35,000 words of my novel so far. I have a lovely protagonist named Poppy Thomson, and delicious love interest named Coll Finlay, and a host of friends, co-workers and acquaintances to shake things up. If I submit what I've written for counting between November 25th and 30th, one of Nanowrimo's corporate sponsers, a self-publishing website called Createspace, will publish my manuscript in paperback form and I will have my very own book to carry around in my backpack and whip out to brag about to perfect strangers. That also means that my friends and cheerleaders will be able to read the finished product.

Shit.

I've also cleaned my room (slightly), baked a batch of cookies or two, and caught up on my sleep. Those are pretty big accomplishments considering I was absolutely unable to do any of it while school was still happening. Weird.

Now I'm faced with a bit of a problem, though; I was writing like gangbusters up until yesterday, and then I got distracted by some FESA stuff and a meeting and forgetting my laptop charging cords in the Senate Chambers overnight (never fear, I retrieved them this morning), and now I'm suffering from... dun dun duuuuuuun...

WRITER'S BLOCK! Oh those dreaded words!!!! Nanowrimo sends out pep talks by famous authors throughout the month and today's pep talk was from the lady who wrote the book White Oleander. She said that whenever she is really stuck, she gets her protagonist into trouble. So that`s what I`m doing. I don`t know what I`m going to do yet, other than try to figure out why my apostrophe key isn`t working properly, but she`s going to get in some sort of crazy trouble very soon.

Wish her luck!!

-Laur

Faith Restored

2008-11-05T09:22:00.000-05:00

Thank goodness. Thank goodness the Americans woke up and made the right choice. Obama-Biden 2008 was successful, and even though that wonderful man has many, many challenges to overcome in his first term, I think he'll be okay.
Thank goodness.

-Laur

November dreams

2008-10-28T16:33:00.003-04:00

This image is something I'll be referring back to constantly starting this coming Saturday. I registered at the National Novel Writing Month website last week in hopes that I will actually write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. With a TA strike looming, the possibility of reaching that goal is getting more and more real.
Nanowrimo is a fascination I've been courting since 2 years ago when a friend of mine tried it. He didn't succeed, but the idea of actually sitting down and writing in your spare time with the goal of 175 pages amazed me.
I don't have a plan yet; I figured this would be an exercise in using my imagination and letting go of my type-A tendencies to edit the living shit out of everything I write. Maybe I'll come up with something stunning and glorious as a result. Or maybe it will be absolute crap. All I know is that I want to do this and I want to succeed. This is important to me when a lot of things this year have suddenly become unimportant. I really want it to work out.
That means I need cheerleaders. Does anyone want to be my cheerleader?

-Laur

Sparkle: My champagne birthday

2008-10-26T20:51:00.000-04:00

Saturday night was my Champagne birthday party. Select friends and I celebrated in style at my house, mostly in my kitchen and family room. Laura and Hank brought extra sparkling wine and cut strawberries and after that, everything got really pretty.

The theme of the party was Sparkle; for sparkling wine, for my favourite texture, and for the intense sequins of my shirt. I asked everyone to wear sparkly clothing or makeup, and just about everyone brought it :D

My girls came a little late, but made up for it with wild photo shoots and huge laughs.

My sparkle wall was a photographic hit, and I feel like it really captured the spirit of the party: sparkly, bright and larger than life! All in all a very excellent birthday.

-Laur

Happy Birthday!

2008-10-22T15:00:00.000-04:00

That's it. I'm firmly entrenched in my 20s now. Today I turned 22 on this 22nd of October, my champagne birthday. I'm very excited. Party on Saturday night, and I'm going to sparkle the crap out of everyone!!!

-Laur

I'm sorry

2008-10-15T10:36:00.002-04:00

I'm sorry, Susan Kadis, Simon Strelchik and Norbert Koehl. I went to the polls yesterday morning and did my civic duty. I did what I could, but it didn't stop the Conservatives from overturning my traditionally Liberal riding.
I'm sorry, Stephane Dion, Jack Layton and Elizabeth May, that Canada cannot seem to figure out that the United States is a bad role model.
I'm sorry that Canadians choose to do what's comfortable instead of what's right. I'm sorry that they didn't research the other parties and realize quickly that there are better choices for our country.
I'm sorry that more Canadians than ever before chose not to go to the polls at all, silencing themselves and the power their voices could have held.
I'm sorry that we seem to be getting stupid and dull, and I hope it changes independently before something truly terrible happens to bring about that change.

-Laur

Bonding in the sunshine

2008-10-10T23:12:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow Mom and I are going downtown to explore Queen Street, Kensington Market and possibly St. Lawrence market. It should be so much fun! There will definitely be pictures to come :D

-Laur

Sunny autumn day

2008-10-07T20:14:00.000-04:00

Can you believe how gorgeous these leaves are? I was walking home from Bathurst and Steeles on a beautiful sunny autumn day and thank goodness I had my camera with me because it was just beautiful everywhere. I took 60 pictures from the park at the synagogue to the house, just of pretty sunshine on golden foliage and fun ways the light was coming through the branches. It was great, really refeshing, and a real change from how I've been spending most of my days in the past week.
A week ago yesterday I woke up and felt like there was a plastic bag over my head. I couldn't hear, I couldn't swallow, even my eyes didn't work properly. The next day I went to the walk-in clinic my doctor's office offers because my GP is orthodox and was home celebrating Rosh Hashana. The doctor who saw me didn't listen to me, and as a result I went back to my doctor yesterday, far sicker than I was the week before. Now I'm on the superdrugs, the kind that they only prescribe when you're really sick, and I'm slowly beginning to feel human again.

I did a presentation today in the only English class I like this year, Inspiration. I had to present what inspired me, and I chose Halloween. I feel it went really well, though we did get slightly off topic once in a while. I put a lot of effort into it, and I was only the second person to present, so now it's out of the way and I can relax for a while. Or at least until my Renaissance Theatre essay is due next Wednesday.
So that's the end for now. I'll try to blog more regularly.

-Laur

Pictures at last!

2008-09-17T20:23:00.001-04:00

Enjoy these! I spent time adding captions when I should have been listening at a FESA meeting.

-Laur

Drink the water

2008-09-15T12:06:00.003-04:00

This class is so disappointing. I have to say, it's a hard thing to sit in a class that is supposed to be teaching you skills, important geography-teaching skills, and be totally bored and disengaged. It's awful, and kind of pathetic. This class is such a terrible mix of I/S and J/I teachers, people who are only sticking around until December mixed with people who are here for the whole shabang, and I feel like I should march to the registrar and ask for my money back. Grr.
On a happier note, I rejoined the gym last week. I loved working out at the YMCA in Edmonton so I marched into Women's Fitness at Promenade and set myself right back up. I think I'm going to do the "Biggest Loser" fitness challenge in October and November. I'm so much more motivated now than I was, so I think it's going to be a lot easier for me to continue going.
I work until 9:30 tonight at Penningtons, so it's going to be a really long day, but I think I can make it through. With some coffee, for sure.

Picasa Web Album of BC pictures to come.

-Laur

A brief moment

2008-09-10T22:50:00.001-04:00

I'm the worst blogger ever, I know. I thought I would have time tonight to write a few thoughts down, but I really don't, so I'm here apologizing instead.
Tomorrow I start at Langstaff S.S. for my practicum. I will definitely blog about that.

-Laur

Steaming cedar chips and the smell of the Pacific

2008-08-27T23:19:00.002-04:00

Fantastic. Tremendous. So many adjectives, so little time. My last days out West were spectacular and when I have more time I'll blog about them, but for now I'm settling back into Thornhill life and thinking about school, which is rapidly sneaking up on me. Tomorrow I'm on campus all day acting as a FESA rep for the consecutive program orientation. I made an awesome shirt. More pictures later on.

Welcome back!

-Laur

Sunshine

2008-04-18T10:44:00.001-04:00

Today I feel like I've been crawling around in the dark for the last few months, just kind of surviving with what I could find and accomplish in pitch blackness, and suddenly when I came outside this morning I was blinded by the sunlight and warmth on my skin.
Thank goodness Mother Nature has woken up again.

-Laur

Landmark day

2008-04-04T13:48:00.002-04:00

Today is the last day of my second last year of university. It's raining, there aren't many people on campus, and this lecture is dragging on and on but I'm content. I'm sick and coughing and sneezing but content.
I'm waiting right now for the last enrolment date I will ever have in my undergrad career. The wait is agonizing yet bittersweet; once I enrol in next year's courses, I will be finished, in a way. There will be nothing left to do but attend those classes, write those papers, complete those exams and walk across the stage at convocation 2009. I am quickly coming to realize that a year is a short amount of time.
Murlene and I were talking on Tuesday, celebrating our last lunch of the year at Blueberry Hill. We came to the conclusion that we have known each other for 8 years. 8 years is a long amount of time. We met in grade 9 and have known each other and remained friends through the years following. I can't boast of many other friends that I have maintained a relationship with for so many years. The ones I have, though, are very dear to me, and even if we aren't as close as we used to be, I still value their friendship immensely.
Last night I got in the Concorde, started the ignition and drove, by myself, to Bryna's house. From there I drove Bryna and I to the bank, and then to Promenade where I performed a fantastically perfect parking job (like my alliteration?) and bought some hot pink luggage at Bentley for my upcoming journey to Alberta. Then, after a leisurely celebratory dessert at Pickle Barrel, I took Bryna home again and pulled into my driveway by myself, triumphant and exhausted.

This is growing up.

-Laur

It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll :D

2008-03-31T16:38:00.004-04:00

The Painting Job

This is the slideshow of the paint job our house has been undergoing for the last week. Allan, the man doing the job, took this past weekend off, but he's very efficient and he'll probably be done tomorrow or the next day.

On another note: this morning I went for my G2 (again, I know) and passed. Third time's a charm, apparently. Thank goodness I passed.

If you were wondering about the name of this post, it's the title and chorus of a song by AC/DC that I happen to really like. The first verse and chorus lyrics are:

Ridin' down the highway /Goin' to a show /Stop in all the by-ways/ Playin' rock 'n' roll/ Gettin' robbed/Gettin' stoned/ Gettin' beat up/ Broken boned/ Gettin' had/ Gettin' took/ I tell you folks/ It's harder than it looks/ It's a long way to the top/ If you wanna rock 'n' roll/ It's a long way to the top/ If you wanna rock 'n' roll/ If you think it's easy doin' one night stands/ Try playin' in a rock roll band/ It's a long way to the top/ If you wanna rock 'n' roll

The driving part is why I mentioned it.

-Laur

To delicious creatures, great and small

2008-03-30T20:01:00.002-04:00

They don't come more delicious than this. So I touched up the picture in Picnik to show you all JUST how gorgeous and yummy she is.

The first picture I received of Erica with her eyes open. Precious.

-Laur

Straight flush

2008-03-30T19:59:00.001-04:00

I learned how to play poker from my friend Peter during Earth Hour. I'd say that's quite an accomplishment.
-Laur

Earth Hour

2008-03-25T13:09:00.002-04:00

Saturday night from 8 pm to 9 pm is Toronto's Earth Hour. Everyone in the city, and anyone else outside the city who wants to participate, is encouraged to turn off all the lights and electronics in their home (minus the necessary ones like fridges and furnaces and such) and enjoy an hour of very limited electricity use. I know I'm going to participate, I just don't know what I'm going to do.
I told my friend Irina she could come over and we could drink ourselves into a happy stupor by candlelight, but something tells me that's not so healthy. We can't watch TV because that's an electronic device. I wish this was happening in the summer because then I would take a blanket to the park and lay under the stars with some friends and a snack, or I would go down the street to my neighbour's house and roast marshmallows over their fire (which happens to be in the old body of a bbq). But it's cold, so I don't know what to do.
Any ideas?

-Laur

They call me mellow yellow

2008-03-23T17:26:00.002-04:00

We're painting the house, and guess what color? If you guessed brown, I'm going to have to disappoint you. The color is called Dorset gold, and it's a lovely warm tone of yellow. My entire main floor will be that color in a few days, with one accent wall in the family room painted Maple Syrup. I'll let you imagine what that particular shade resembles.
Anyways, the house already looks way better than it used to, and I'm so excited for it to be finished. We got new lighting for the kitchen and family room, and as soon as Alan, the man doing the painting, does the ceilings in that half of the main floor, we'll set about installing it.
I'm actually going to have one of those nice houses that I always admire when I go to my friends' houses. How exciting!
Pictures to come, from before and after.

-Laur

Big things on a sad day

2008-03-19T13:05:00.002-04:00

On Monday my very close friend Peter's father died suddenly. Peter is only a year older than me, recently graduated from the Shulich School of Business and now an accountant at the prestigious Ernst and Young. His younger sister, ages with Sarah, just started at York. Mr. Albert's death came as quite a shock, and I'm still unsettled, but mostly I feel badly for Peter and his family. The funeral is on Thursday.

But amidst this tragedy, good things are happening, and I don't know how to feel about it. I learned yesterday that I'm going to be FESA's (Faculty of Education Students Association) social director next year, so that's pretty cool. I'll be in charge of organizing fundraising events, socials, and the year-end formal. I haven't been involved at all in the last 4 years of my university career and I'm really looking forward to getting back into it next year.
Also, in terms of my home life, big things are happening. Mom finally decided that it was time to paint, so we hired a painter and he starts on Friday. YAY! Pretty colours on the walls! It's going to make our house look SO much better. And, on top of that, we're getting a new car, a 1999 Chrysler Concorde in beige. Our red Nissan Sentra is from 1990 and is threatening big time to die, so much so that it screams bloody murder every time we start it up, so this couldn't have happened at a better time.
I'm excited for all these things to be happening but at the same time I feel horrible about Peter's loss. I hate being so conflicted.

-Laur

Departure

2008-03-18T15:37:00.001-04:00

My flight leaves Toronto at 7:15 am on May 5^th. Gramma, according to her plan, leaves for Toronto on the 13^th.

What an adventure.

-Laur

Running over...

2008-03-16T22:49:00.005-04:00

On Wednesday March 12th, at 4:48 pm Edmonton time (6:48 pm Toronto time), my second-cousin Erica Kay Bell came squalling into the world, 2 weeks early but welcomed and appreciated nonetheless.

This is the closest I think I'll ever come to being an aunt. I'll be spending my whole summer close to this blond cherub, this tiny gorgeous being with incredibly skinny fingers and a squished face from her quick journey into the world. I'm going to take pictures like a fiend.

My cup runneth over.

-Laur

Approaching

2008-03-14T13:26:00.000-04:00

Canada Blooms 2008

Enjoy the slideshow. Mom and I had a lot of fun.

-Laur

10 degrees Celsius to my happiness

2008-03-03T16:45:00.001-05:00

The weather, as some of you Torontonians may have noticed, was just delightful today. On Friday as it snowed and blustered outside the bus on my way from school to work I just about cried, longing for the days of frozen precipitation and temperature drops to be over. Today, apparently, I got my wish :D

Next Thursday my mom and I are going to Canada Blooms at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Nothing shrieks SPRING! like Canada Blooms to me, and I'm so glad we're going this year. Last year we didn't go because Mom didn't want to (ergo was too overwhelmed with her newly single life) and I really missed it. Canada Blooms, for those of you who don't know, is a huge flower and garden show that takes place in the middle of March every year in Toronto. It's a multi-faceted show, with landscaping companies, horticultural societies, and big home and garden stores like Home Depot and Rona presenting their best garden and outdoor living designs. The flowers are GORGEOUS and the designs are breathtaking. Since I won't be around to help maintain the garden this summer I wanted to do this with Mom more than ever. And I want to test out my new camera on the flowers, to see if I can hone my photography skills just a little more.

I'll post some of the pictures after the show. For now I have to get back to work on my Filming Literature essay.

Cheers!

-Laur

The Ethics of Attending an Ed Class and other moral conundrums

2008-02-26T10:44:00.001-05:00

I'm in my ISIP class again and you know what? I hate it. It is a useless class with a useless teacher and I feel cheated having taken it. I feel this way about other Ed classes as well, and I don't really know what to do about it. I'm going to graduate with a BEd next year and what will I have actually learned about the theory behind teaching? I've learned from the practise part at this point, but that's about it. So should I even bother going to class when I so clearly do not learn anything? Should I bother getting up at 6:30 in the morning to attend my ISIP course to talk about cheating and how we SHOULDN'T deal with it? Useless.

Another problem I'm coming up against is the issue of my professional development portfolio. I'm not upset about this or anything because I know I can do it, but I'm just wondering about the technical aspects of it. I'm going to do a blog just like this one, but more professional. I need to figure out how to organize the blog so that it's not just all post and surplus; I need more text and less crap. I don't want to move to Wordpress because I don't think I know how to use it, but perhaps it's the smartest route to take at this point? Hopefully I'll find out enough about Blogger in the next month that my portfolio is bang up fantastic.

Class is over in 45 minutes. Excellent.

-Laur

2008-02-20T22:48:00.000-05:00

As much as I dislike winter, when you can get a scene like this at 6 pm, not a moving vehicle in sight, I tend to appreciate it more.
Still working on the blogging from Word sans pictures problem, but it will soon be solved.
There's a lunar eclipse going on outside right now. It's pretty awesome.
Nature astounds, unendingly.

-Laur

A Luddite I am Not

2008-02-20T13:56:00.001-05:00

I downloaded Microsoft Office 2007 on Monday, mostly because I think I'm going to be getting a new laptop this summer and I would rather have an office suite that is Vista compatible (ugh). Most of the time I'm averse to new technologies; I like the comfort of knowing exactly how to open a file, insert a header or footer, or double space a paragraph without having to search for the commands each time. I knew that it would be better if I switched to the new Office now and became familiar with it rather than having to fight both a new office suite AND a new operating system at the same time, so Mom and I decided to split the cost and go in on this together (as soon as the optional DVD arrives, I'll install it on her computer, too).

I love this new version of Office, and I'll admit it now. I can't get enough of it! I could play on Publisher, newly included in this version of Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007, for days, creating fliers, brochures, business cards and labels to my heart's content. The new Word is fabulously beautiful to look at, and does MORE and BETTER than the old version used to. As long as I remember to save everything in compatibility mode (so I can share notes with the poor saps out there who don't have this wondrously amazing program yet), I could rule the world with documents.

Now I'm trying something different in OneNote; I'm going to compose all my blogs here and see if I can upload them to Blogger this way.

We'll see if it works!

-Laur

Kickback

2008-02-18T14:35:00.002-05:00

Do you believe in Karma?
A dear friend was the first to ask me this in quite a while after a personal hardship forced her to ask herself the same question.
I thought about the answer for a while, because keeping faith of any sort is a problem for me. I don't like religion or any sort of dogma for that matter, but Karma is a case I now realize I'm willing to keep faith for.
I have to believe in Karma. I have to believe that all those people out there who do bad things to other people, who make stupid choices and then blame the fallout on other people, and who do not learn from their mistakes no matter how many people they hurt in the process, will eventually get theirs. I have to believe that if I live well, and kindly, if I learn from my mistakes and make decisions wisely and try as hard as I can not to hurt other people and to make others happy, that I will be rewarded, somehow.
Another dear friend recently watched the movie "The Secret" after going through a rough breakup; I know the basics of what that philosophy is about, and I agree with a lot of them. After she watched the movie, I was happy to see that her outlook had changed, and she was feeling a lot better about the world and her circumstances. "The Secret" dictates this: if you put positivity out there, it will eventually come back to you and help you be happy and content. But if you put negativity out there, which I sometimes am guilty of doing, then all you'll get back is a kick in the pants, or worse.
So I have to believe that the people around me who constantly screw up and hurt other people, who don't learn from the mistakes they make and take to blaming other people for their failures, will eventually get their just reward. If I can't believe that, then I don't know what I'm going to do.

-Laur

Seat sale!

2008-02-13T12:49:00.002-05:00

I bought my ticket to Edmonton last night, the ticket that will take me to Alberta and leave me there for 3 and a half months. I leave at 7:15 am on May 5th, 2008.
This is a big deal. A very big deal indeed. And now that I'm announcing it, people are coming out of the woodwork from all over my life, asking me why I'm going, when I'm coming back, and expressing somewhat flattering (to me, at least) feelings of upset over my departure.
There's nothing like a few months away to make people miss you. I have big plans for this summer. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

-Laur

Free day

2008-02-09T23:23:00.001-05:00

My oh my, there is nothing quite like the sight of a wooden slab of raw fish on seasoned rice to get my mouth watering. This evening I went out to Sushi Fun at Yonge and Glen Cameron with my very good friend Laura and her boyfriend Hank.

Laura D, pictured above with yours truly, had her interview with the Faculty of Ed at York this afternoon. She's hoping to get into the Consecutive Education program, into which she fully deserves acceptance, and I'm rooting for her all the way because it means a) she gets to follow a career path she's dreamed about since she was a kid and b) I get one more year of school with her YAY!

One of these is a Black Dragon roll and one of them is a Red Dragon roll. Can you guess which one is which? I'm not telling.

Afterwards, when Hank and Laura drove home to Brampton, I came home and had 45 minutes to kill before "Die Hard" on AMC's DVD_TV started at 8, so I played with some of the makeup I bought over the holidays and took pictures. I probably could have been doing some readings, seeing as I'm now on reading week, but after careful consideration of my options, I decided playing makeover was so much more fun.
This is what I do on a Saturday night. AWESOME!

-Laur

2008-02-06T21:35:00.000-05:00

What a snowy day. Right now there's lightning. Very disconcerting.

A picture of the end of the Common through the orange glass of the Accolade Collonade. It looks almost sepia-toned.

Isn't this just the neatest thing? This is one of the cross-cultural workshops put on by York is U, our student alumni association. Regular people got to dress up in saris. It was so fun.

Pretty Lauras in a row! Today has been an interesting day.

-Laur

Miss Take-Me-Seriously

2008-02-05T21:28:00.000-05:00

Sarah says I look really grown-up in these glasses. I was never under the impression that I looked less than grown-up. But anyways, I am now known as Miss Take-Me-Seriously, and I think I'll test that particular theory out on my new grade 9 classes this Thursday.
How long has it been since I've had new glasses? Sometime in high school, surely. I like these new ones, I think they're a nice cross between funky and professional, so hopefully they'll serve me well. It was time for a change anyways, and I can only cut my hair so many times until there's none left to cut.
-Laur

Paradise

2008-02-04T10:52:00.001-05:00

I'm having a bit of a blast from the past right now. My old Caribbean Geography prof, Bill Found, is here in my World Geography class guest-lecturing on the Caribbean as a region. I really enjoy him, despite some of my complaints about last year's course, and after class I'm going to talk to him about the 4000 level Caribbean geog class he teaches now.
I've been thinking a lot about my course selection for next year; I only need 21 more credits in my BA to graduate, and 9 in my BEd...that's really not very much. That's one year of study. I need 2 4000 level Englishes, 1 4000 level free course, and one any-level half course. In Ed I need my Teaching Geography in the I/S division and another Ed elective, hopefully Inclusive Education or Education and Human Rights. When I put those numbers into perspective, I can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel; I can see the end of my university career.
I have mixed feelings about graduating; I'm intensely excited to be done with university, but at the same time my sense of trepidation is almost overwhelming. When I graduate I have to go out into the real world; I have to apply for jobs and interview and face more setbacks than successes. I can hope and wish all I want that this process goes smoothly, but I know that smooth is probably not what I'm going to get.
I was just on my friend Valerie's Flickr site checking out her very excellent pictures, and I noticed that she had found an album by a duo called Iron and Wine; these artists have a folksy, hauntingly sweet sound, and they sing one song in particular that I'm fascinated by because the same song is also covered by a techno-rock-indie band called The Postal Service. The song is called "Such Great Heights" and I love both versions; however, if I had to choose a favourite, I would choose Iron and Wine's version. The lyrics go something like this:

I am thinking it's a sign
That the freckles in our eyes
Are mirror images and
When we kiss they're perfectly aligned

And I have to speculate
That God himself did make us into
Corresponding shapes like puzzles pieces
From the clay

True, it may seem like a stretch
But it's thoughts like this
That catch my troubled head
When you're away, when I am missing you to death

When you were out there on the road
For several weeks of shows
And when you scan the radio
I hope this song will guide you home

They will see us waving from such great heights
"Come down now," they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
"Come down now," but we'll stay

I've tried my best to leave
This all on your machine
But the persistent beat
Sounded thin upon listening

That frankly will not fly
You will hear the shrillest highs
And lowest lows with the windows down
When this is guiding you home

They will see us waving from such great heights
"Come down now," they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
"Come down now," but we'll say...

Think of soft acoustic guitar and a man's voice, gentle and breathy and soothing. That's why I love this song. Paradise.

-Laur

Home home home

2008-02-01T20:40:00.001-05:00

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the meaning of home, and the comforts that term seems to bring to most people. Yesterday I began to read a book called "The Namesake" at Thornlea during my lunch break. I didn't finish it, nor did I bring it home because I had a test to study for, and I can't wait to get back to it next week and finish the story of Gogol, and young Indian-American learning to live his life with a sense of duality. Where is is home, in Cambridge or Calcutta? What is his good name, as opposed to his pet name? It's so interesting.
Yesterday, consequently, I fell as I raced down the hill to Willowbrook in order to catch the 10-minutes-early bus home. I slid in mud that had been frozen solid 7 hours before, and fell on my butt. It hurt, a lot, and as I fought tears of frustration as I limped down the rest of the hill and down another to head the bus, who's driver had seen me fall and driven away in spite of it, off at a different stop on Royal Orchard, all I wanted was to be at home. All the way to Clark and New Westminster, all the way down Clark to Tansley, and all the way down Tansley to home all I wanted, with my entire being, was to go home.
So what does home mean? I'm willingly leaving home this summer to go live 3 provinces away, thousands of kilometres from my superior bed, my gorgeous cat, and all my friends, so that I can make enough money to pay for my final year of schooling. I love my home, but I'm leaving it. Are the ties that bind so very strong, or can they be stretched for a time without becoming uncomfortably drawn?
We'll see. We'll see.

-Laur

Edmonton Adventure

2008-01-28T19:23:00.000-05:00

I took so many photos that I can't post them all, so here's a slideshow instead:

I have to get back in the swing of things now, so I'll post again later.

-Laur

It's back

2008-01-15T22:42:00.001-05:00

Winter, that is. How depressing.
So yesterday I saw Sweeney Todd with Lia at Silvercity Yorkdale, and while the acting was excellent I have to say there was something missing. Tim Burton doesn't like funny when the movie isn't supposed to be, and his removal of the Sondheim classic "God that's good!" from the score and soundtrack was a big mistake. The song, which brings much-needed lightness to the very dark play, would have changed the entire feel of the movie and it's a shame he decided to omit it. Johnny Depp is tortured and downright frightening as Mr. Todd, and Helena Bonham-Carter is charmingly self-centred and twisted as Mrs. Lovett. All in all somewhat disappointing, though the casting of Sacha Baron-Cohen (otherwise known as TV personality Ali G and Borat) as Adolfo Pirelli was a stroke of genius.

Anywho, winter has descended once again and while I always enjoy a good sprinkling of white on a fir tree, I can't help but sigh at the sub-zero temperatures and what they do to my disposition. Tomorrow I get to work on learning the series in my Pilates book. I promise.

-Laur

Horror in Song

2008-01-11T13:00:00.000-05:00

This ain't no Hairspray musical.

My friend Lia and I are going to go see Sweeney Todd on Monday. When I first heard that Tim Burton was making a movie version of a play I have been so fascinated and repulsed by since grade 11 when I saw it on Canstage. We arrived at the theatre hungry and harried after our school had been locked down due to some stupid kid with a BB gun. The theatre smelled like old, dead things and it was full of old people. The play terrified and thrilled me, and I never forgot it. The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, its main chorus song, has been reduced to background noise in the movie but I still hear strains of it whenever I think of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. There was a child character in the play and a young boy, probably 8 or 9 years old, played him and the whole time I watched I wondered why he wasn't in school.

I'm very excited to see it even though I've heard it's bloody and scary and thoroughly deserving of its R rating. More on this later.

-Laur

P.S. I love Johnny Depp.

Update: New Years Resolutions

2008-01-09T21:00:00.000-05:00

Such a gorgeous day, and now all the snow is gone. I have to admit that it's hard to be enthusiastic when everything around you is gray and drab, but I'm giving it a go. So far my resolutions are going alright; I bought a great book about Pilates, one of those "For Dummies" books, and it's chock full of all sorts of tidbits of insight and bits of wisdom that actually make me look forward to trying my first series. Hopefully I won't wind up laughing at myself like I did after the Winsor Pilates DVD.
As for the heart-shaped face, we'll see how well that goes. The above picture is an artistic photo I took of myself with my new camera; you can see that my chin is looking kind of pointy, so we'll see what happens from here.

I started a new class today. It's called "Critical Thinking in Curriculum" and so far I'm pleased with it. My last Ed elective experience was so awful that I seriously considered dropping this one and trying the other ones next year, but I was lucky enough to get into two Ed electives as an Ed2 students so I figured I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. The class is full of people I know and enjoy, and the prof seems like a scattered but rather loveable guy, so I'll stick to it and do my best.
Auntie Brenda left to go back to Moscow today and I hope that she gets settled quickly when she arrives. I really enjoyed her visit, and look forward to spending more time with her this summer. For now, though, I get to look forward to my visit to Edmonton at the end of this month. I miss my grandmother, and I really want to go to Carson (my cousin's) wedding. Even though it's going to be ridiculously cold there, I know I'm going to have a good time (and take lots of pictures!).
I'm writing a few things to be published in the next couple of days, and I hope it all goes well. I just submitted a quick piece to the EDible Newspaper, the Faculty of Education's biannual newsletter, and I hope they accept it. It's about pursuing other semi-professional goals while being a teacher during the day, and how it can be possible. The other two pieces I hope to write is one short piece for a writing supplement in Excalibur, York's student newspaper (and the one that chose my short story as the winner in its short story contest last year) and one for Stong College's student newspaper, The Flying Walrus. The theme for that one is Sex and Death, so I know I'll have a good time with it.

I'll keep you posted on the outcomes.

-Laur

V803, how I love thee!

2008-01-06T23:33:00.000-05:00

The dog at the top is named Daisy. She is a 5 year old Golden Retriever who belongs to my Uncle Ron and Auntie Dee. I love her even when she smells disgusting. She came over for dinner tonight because yesterday was Sarah's 19th birthday and my Auntie Brenda is here so we were all gathering for various festive celebrations. Isn't she gorgeous? Can't pose for a picture to save her life, though.
The next picture is of my Auntie Brenda and my mom. They're sisters, and sometimes the likeness is astounding. Though not right now.
The third picture is of Maggie, my Uncle Jim's Golden Retriever. She's 9 months old and is lucky enough to live in Nanaimo, BC, where she can chill by the ocean and find all sorts of interesting ocean debris on the beach to play with, including but not limited to: dead things, seaweed, garbage, driftwood, rocks, and other interesting and semi-disgusting stuff. This summer I'm going to meet her, by hook or by crook.
The last picture is an artistic one of my cat Emily, perched on my windowsill on a bright winter day. She's very small and can contort her body into all sorts of strange shapes. Sometimes she looks very striking, as she does now. She usually doesn't photograph very well because she's so solidly dark, but this time I caught her eyes at just the right moment. Scary, but beautiful.
Can you tell how much fun I'm having with my new camera?

-Laur

Welcome welcome welcome

2008-01-03T00:11:00.001-05:00

I need to learn more discipline. The funny thing is I'm a pretty disciplined person; I almost always go to class, I do my homework, I go to work and do my job, I keep my room clean and pitch in around the house, and I very rarely slack off. But when it comes to food and cosmetics, I'm just plain terrible.
I love food. That's part of the reason why I'm as large as I am. There are other factors, like height and bone structure, and unhappiness (I'm working on it) that contribute to the luciously large Laura, but it really boils down to my love of food. And not crap, either. I've been taking stock of what I eat and it's very rarely junk food (with the small exception of chocolate, which I cannot and WILL not ever say no to), so I figure I just have to practise more discipline.
And cosmetics, don't even get me started. I have a stockpile of body cream, a mountain of makeup, and I don't think I'll run out of deoderant for a while. The makeup part is a process, though, as I'm replacing all my cheap drugstore brands with high end, quality makeup that's better for my skin and better for the environment, but the madness has got to stop. So I'm keeping all my receipts and tallying them at the end of the month to see just how bad my habit is. Hopefully I can rein it in before it gets too out of hand.
Here's something amusing, though; I tried out a pilates DVD today and it was HYSTERICAL. I don't think I've laughed at myself so hard in a long time. I know I have to keep at it but while all those cracked out gymnasts on the screen were contorting themselves into pretzel shapes I was huffing and puffing and trying my best to emulate their otherworldly exercises and finally I kind of collapsed on the floor in the basement and just watched the rest of the workout. It was 20 minutes and I'm proud to say I got through 15 of them, but I want to call up that Mari Winsor and tell her that my bubble butt does NOT rest flat on the ground the way those women's flat asses do so she can forget about my "powerhouse" taking the brunt of the impact.

2008 is going to be an interesting year, kids.

-Laur

New Years Resolutions

2007-12-20T22:59:00.000-05:00

Did you know that my face is heart-shaped? I actually have a pointy chin. I couldn't cut ice, like some chins I've seen, but it definitely comes to a point, like the bottom of a heart.

Only you can't tell because of the roly-poly-olyness that's underneath my chin. Which brings us to New Years Resolution (NYR) number 1: to find my pointy face. Instead of making some vow to myself to drop 60 pounds by the end of next year, I would rather have a more tangible goal, one that I can see myself actually working to attain. So I will reach for my pointy face, and hopefully get it (because I've never really had it).

This is the only one I'm going to give you right now. I'm going to think of 5 resolutions for this year, and that's it. Any more than that is unrealistic and hard to follow, and any less is too easy, which means easier to get off track with. I'll think of 4 more between now and New Years. Any suggestions would be helpful.

So anyways, since it's been a really long time since I last posted, I'll get you hep to what's been going on since then:

On the 4th I got a gorgeous new haircut, which I am totally loving, and then ran to campus to hand in my last assignment of the year. After that I proceeded to totally veg out, do some housecleaning, organize some stuff, and plan my holiday baking.

I brought home a pretty little Christmas tree, which my sister and I decorated, and we're having a really nice Christmas dinner on Sunday night before my mom goes to Ottawa for a few days to visit my Auntie Jule.

I prepared a presentation on the human face of Fair Trade for my mentor, Ms. Morris's, grade 12 World Issues class, and then got sick the day before I was supposed to present it, but trucked ahead and did it anyways, despite the roads being a mess from the "storm of the century" that graced us with its wrath on Sunday (the 16th). On Monday (the 17th and the day I did the presentation) we had a few new windows installed, 3 in my mom's bed and bathroom and the main window in the living room. They're gorgeous and an energy efficient. Woohoo!

Anyways, that basically brings us to today, when I baked gingerbread cutout cookies and the pieces for 2 gingerbread houses all day. It was fun.

Here are some pictures to enjoy. Enjoy!

-Laur

Snow, ice, and all things winter

2007-12-03T23:07:00.000-05:00

I failed my second shot at my G2. I have to start back at the beginning now. Awesome.
Anyways, the weather in Toronto is literally frightful. This morning I came out of my house thinking that yes, of course the salt trucks have been by, didn't they know that it freezing rained on top of the plowed sidewalks yesterday and now they're all a solid sheet of ice?
It was not so.
25 minutes and a whole new world of swearwords later, I arrived at the bus stop at Clark and New Westminster. 30 seconds after that, the bus came. At least I didn't have to wait in the cold for very long.
But you know what? The horrendously boring classes I had to endure once arriving at school, even the painful trip home with my friend Lia to bake Toblerone shortbread cookies was all worth it because this evening I had the LOVELIEST dinner with my friends. We went to the Pickle Barrel Grand at Yorkdale and just sat and drank pina coladas and ate delicious food and shmoozed for 2 and a half hours, and it was wonderful. This is why I like being a grown up. And this is why I'm thankful that I have such fantastic friends.
I hope December is full of fun surprises this year. Tea dates with friends, baking bonanzas, latkes and Christmas dinner all promise to make this month quite memorable, and I can't wait.
Cheers!

-Laur

The Adventures of Laura in Edmonton

2007-11-26T10:35:00.000-05:00

I'm doing a presentation on blogging and travel in my Studies in Popular Culture class in a while. I don't have a travel blog but I think this summer I'll start a separate bit to this one about my experiences in Edmonton and the surrounding areas. Yay! Folk Festival here I come!
-Laur

The bitter taste of...

2007-11-19T22:42:00.000-05:00

So, as you may or may not have gleaned from my internet silence, I bombed my G2. I won't go into the petty details, so let's just say I did it to myself and will not be making that one fatal mistake ever again. I have another date set up on the 27th, and hopefully I will come to school triumphant that day.
It's funny how quickly things happen; the other day it got cold, and I mean COLD. Like bone-chilling, finger-numbing, lung-stinging cold. And you know what happened? All the leaves fell off the trees like a scene out of a cartoon season montage. I could almost imagine the "whumph!" noise as I watched them steadily cover my neighbour's car in a sea of brilliant yellow. I wish I had taken a picture.
We're past the midpoint, the point of no return, and I can't wait for December to get here.

We've started answering the phone with "Season's greetings" at work. It is upon us.

-Laur

On the road

2007-11-13T22:16:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow morning I go for my G1 exit test, which means that if I pass I will have my Ontario G2 licence. That's a pretty big deal, because for a while there nobody, including me, thought I would ever get my G2. I was pretty scared of driving for reasons that now amuse me, but no more. Thanks to an awesome instructor, I'm more comfortable than ever.
Wish me luck, and watch the streets!

-Laur

Mount Fashion

2007-11-10T22:28:00.000-05:00

I need to put my laundry away, ASAP. I think I started it on Tuesday. I'm fairly sure, in fact. It is now Saturday night, and there is this colossal mountain of laundry in a basket threatening to topple over on my bed and send shirts and jeans and a few bras (eeeeek!) sprawling all over the floor. I'll get to that. Soon.
To tell you the truth, I haven't been in my house all that often this week. Monday I was barely there at all, same with Tuesday. Wednesday was probably the only day I spend a really long period of time in the house. I borrowed Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now: the complete dossier" from SMIL at York because I skipped the screening of it in Filming Lit last Friday to do some other homework. I'm watching it because it is the film adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" that my prof chose to use. Watching it took most of the afternoon. It was a stunning, heart wrenching, mind-boggling film. I don't think I'll ever watch it again, but I'm really glad that I did see it.
Thursday I had a driving lesson after practicum. It was snowing. What an experience! Albert said I did fine, but I was definitely uncomfortable. I have my road test this Wednesday, so I hope his faith in me pays off!
Yesterday I wasn't really home either, I went straight from school to work. And then after work I was inexplicably ill. It was really bad. Maybe my job is finally making me sick to my stomach. Oh dear.
Anyways, this blog is just another distraction that is keeping me from putting away my laundry. I'm going to put on some music and fold and hang up and stash in drawers until my room regains some semblance of order.

Oh, and by the way, I went to the new Wal-Mart on Wednesday before my movie viewing. It was pretty awesome.

-Laur

Hmmmm, the past can sure haunt us...

2007-11-04T11:33:00.000-05:00

http://lauraadventure.blogspot.com/2007/05/wa-ma.html

Read this post from May. It is now November. Wal-Mart opens on Wednesday, and there is no Chapters/Indigo building in sight, though the Super Shoppers is gorgeous. Bathurst and Centre is going to become nigh on unnavigable as of Wednesday.
Tempus fugit, yet again.

-Laur

There's just something about a man in a corset...

2007-11-03T19:51:00.000-04:00

October is over, and so is the fun, at least until December 4 rolls around. I appreciate my kicks, no doubt, but gosh I wish it could be Halloween every month. As you can see, Mal and I had a pretty amazing time on campus. We were accosted by Spartans, watched Rocky Horror Picture Show in Winters, and danced until our feet bled in Vanier. It was fantastic.
November always gives me something to think about, though, and I have to respect it for that. I have to think about Daylight Savings Time, which starts tomorrow (yay extra hour of sleep before work!) and Remembrance Day, and dressing appropriately for the weather as well as all the assignments I have to do. My OSAP documents just arrived at York so this month I can breathe a little easier, and stop accumulating interest on my tuition account.
It's been interesting watching the months go by from a teaching standpoint, as well. Right now is only midterm for my grade 9 and 10 bebes, and soon I'll be losing my Civics kids to a new and rowdier batch of students. Boohoo.
Anyway, I need to keep on top of my work or there will be trouble, that's for sure.
-Laur

2007-10-30T13:56:00.000-04:00

Saturday night was my 21st birthday party, and what a party it was! I decided to have a costume party after a bunch of my friends expressed an interest, and I'm so glad it was successful. We had tonnes of food and drink, a lot of really great guests, and so many laughs I lost count.
I think I'm really lucky to have the quality friends I do. I'm so grateful I have them around.
Halloween is tomorrow night and I'm going to have even more fun with even more friends. Lucky me!
-Laur

Fudge-y?

2007-10-22T23:08:00.000-04:00

I had a pretty sweet day besides picking all my nail polish off in the Ed elective of DOOM. Had lunch with my peeps after our presentation, which was also nice, and then got to visit with Irina while we waited...and waited..and waited for the stupid bus to arrive. The weather was GORGEOUS, I love my friends, and I've had a great day.
And I got Pizza Hut and an ice cream cake for dinner. SWEET!!!!!!!
-Laur

21

2007-10-22T11:06:00.000-04:00

Today is my birthday! 21 years ago today my mom welcomed me into the world at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and waiting over a month after my due date to deliver. Sorry, Mom, I don't know how many times I can apologize!
I'm pretty excited to be 21 because it means I'm really, REALLY out of my teenage years. That makes me happy. I've come to the conclusion that up until I turned 18 I was basically powerless; I felt unable to exercise any control over my life and I really didn't enjoy it.
I have some power over the things that happen in my life, the choices I make and the people I keep around me, and I think it's going to be good. Really.
So tonight when I get home, after I vacuum and start my laundry and clean my room and drag the Halloween decorations out of the basement to take stock, I'm going to eat my birthday cake and appreciate how sweet it is to be 21.
And Rohit, if you're reading, I'm coming to have a drink with you in Seattle this summer BECAUSE I CAN :D

-Laur

And as I grow up...

2007-10-15T22:23:00.000-04:00

My mom said something to me earlier this evening that really struck a chord. She said "You will find, daughter of mine, that as an adult you must choose 50/50 friends, friends that give as much time and effort to maintaining your relationship as you do." Today I ended my lengthy relationship with a close friend who did not, suffice it to say, give her 50.
I felt really bad for a little while after doing it, like maybe it was my fault that our friendship had failed, that maybe I was the inept one, not her. But that is not the case. I have a group of wonderful, supportive, caring and understanding 50/50 friends who have showed me that. I have friends that know when the time to celebrate Me is, and I know when the time to celebrate Them is. We can talk for hours and never try to outdo each other; we can just listen.
So now I have stopped beating myself up. I hate to hurt people, after watching other people in my life hurt the people that loved them most, but I understand that there was more anger than hurt involved on the opposite side of this situation, and that they probably don't have the capacity to be hurt by my words anyway.
Ending this relationship was the hardest thing I've had to do in a long time, but in the words of Meredith Grey:
"It's over. It's over. It's so over."

-Laur

WEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

2007-10-09T22:50:00.000-04:00

The cold medication I took today made the walls move. I was sitting in my Teaching English class watching the blackboard dance from one end of the classroom to the other.
Pretty freaky.
I think I'll go to bed now.

-Laur

A-choo!

2007-10-09T08:52:00.000-04:00

I have a cold. It came at me out of the blue. One minute I'm partying at AlleyCatz for Emile's 22nd birthday and the next I'm sneezing around Walden Galleria in Buffalo, going through a pack of kleenex every half hour. WOO! Gotta love it! Though I have to say I'm much happier that I got it now instead of later in the month. Having a cold on my birthday would have sucked a lot.
On a happier note, I am glad to report that my Gramma is doing very well. She's in a sub-acute unit in Edmonton General Hospital doing some rehab stuff and generally just taking a breather. She has her own telephone line in her private room so we speak to her almost every night. She already knows the names of everyone in her unit and even has someone to watch the hockey games with. As for her elbow, it seems to be healing well. She says it's always sore, but then again, she did shatter it and they did have to surgically reconstruct the whole thing. The lesson here: DRINK YOUR MILK! Haha, I don't know how much that's going to help when you're 83, but she does have osteoporosis, so I'm sure that didn't help the situation.
Yesterday night we had a lovely turkey dinner with some friends. Everyone tried to stay away from me so I couldn't breathe on them, so I felt like a leper. YAY!

I hope I can kick this cold soon. Less than 2 weeks till my birthday!

-Laur

Black and Decker idolatry

2007-10-03T20:08:00.000-04:00

In the words of my absolute cooking show idol, YUMMO! Right now I am, among other things, baking a challah bread in my very new Black and Decker breadmaker, making a reading schedule to organize my troubled mind, and drinking a lovely mug of vanilla early gray tea.
I've been home all afternoon getting things done, this and that, some TV watched, a PowerPoint presentation on the Ontario Referendum completed, a shower taken, and other such things. Wednesdays are a rather wasteful day for me, and I don't appreciate them at all. I go to school for one hour, and then come home again. Sometimes I get back on the bus at 4:45 and go to work, but not today. I'm glad I was somewhat productive, though, because now I can teach tomorrow and I can also get back on top of my readings.
This year, I have to admit, is one I'm not at all enthused about. A lot of my classes are unexpectedly dull, and some of my teachers are downright terrible. I'm trying really hard to keep a positive outlook on things, to stay motivated and do my work, but it's more difficult than I had imagined.
Tomorrow I get to teach, and I'm really excited about that. I like most of the kids and since they don't know me very well yet, I hope that I make a good impression on them tomorrow. I haven't been as proactive as some of my other TC friends in planning lessons and taking charge, but I hope tomorrow marks the beginning of a semester full of learning experiences.
Right now I'm listening to "Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite" by the Beatles on beatlesradio.com. Quite a great site and some very awesome music.
I've also been planning my birthday parties recently, so that's something to look forward to. 19 days until I'm 21. Pretty crazy!
And of course Harry the horse rules the world.

-Laur

Ode to the Porcelain Gods and other such oddities

2007-09-30T21:22:00.000-04:00

Do I have to explain? No, but I probably should. From 7 pm to 7 am, September 29th and 30th, I roamed the streets of downtown Toronto searching for meaning in my life through art. The city was alive with Nuit Blanche, a self-proclaimed "all night contemporary art thing", and it was spectacular. The above pictures should give you just a sweet, addictive taste of my exploits that night. I was among friends all evening, and it was memorable.
On a less cheerful note, on Wednesday my grandmother, Amy, took a fall outside her home in Edmonton and destroyed her elbow joint. She's been in the hospital ever since and yesterday they surgically reconstructed it. Gramma is 83 years old, which I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate me divulging, but she's a real spitfire and I know she'll make it through this. I just hope she's able to come to terms with her own weaknesses in this situation and allow the people in her life to help her in every way they can.
Mom and I can't go out there; we can't afford it, financially and time-wise alike, so we have to depend on the kindness of people living 3000 kilometres away from us to get Gramma through this ordeal. I'm not a spiritual person, but I'm pretty thankful she wasn't hurt any worse than she was.
Right now I'm more exhausted than I've ever been in my life, and it's a pretty weird feeling. I need to clean out my backpack of any survival items that remain after last night, and then I can go to bed.
Tomorrow is October, by the way. Tempus fugit.

-Laur

2007-09-23T20:28:00.000-04:00

Perfection, plain and simple. She is a huntress, dark and deadly, scanning her domain with the heady power of a queen. Queen of my backyard, queen of my bedroom, and queen of my heart.
There is nothing quite like a cat on a windowsill on a sunny afternoon.

-Laur

Family...who says you can't dump them?

2007-09-18T21:47:00.000-04:00

So my sister is an unadulterated megabitch. She actually goes out of her way to annoy my mother and I into not even remotely liking her as a human being.
My mom got home from night school 10 minutes ago and I had some homemade chicken soup heating for her on the stove. What does Sarah do? She starts in on my mother about eating stuff with no nutritional value, how she should be eating good things for dinner. Maybe my mom, who has chronic IBS, doesn't want food with substance for dinner. Maybe her stomach can't take it after a long and stressful day working with ungrateful children. But no, Sarah has to sit on her high horse insulting other people's eating habits when she can binge eat an entire tub of Rolo Extreme ice cream in 10 minutes and then put the empty container back in the freezer.
She continues to grow more and more bitchy and hypocritical each day she lives with us, and I'm hoping soon we can drive her away so she goes and rains her misery on someone else's head.
What a megabitch.

-Laur

8:30 am :(

2007-09-11T10:19:00.000-04:00

Here I am in my ISIP practicum class (of course, I'm not wearing the purple wig. That's from when I was working at camp, but that's a whole different nightmare.) We meet once a month at 8:30 in the morning, McLaughlin College 050C. Godawful hour, really, and the traffic is horrible.

This year my practicum course is very different. It is much more serious than my CMYR course was. Lots of lecturing and professional development aspects, employment portfolios and the like. Craziness.

Today after this class I have an hour break, and then I start 6 straight hours of class. 2 hours of English lecture, 3 hours of Teaching English, and 1 hour of English tutorial. Yay!

This is going to be an interesting year.

-Laur

Awesome day

2007-09-04T23:08:00.000-04:00

Today I had my first placement day at Thornlea Secondary School and it was a SMASHING SUCCESS! This semester is going to be full of surprises because not only am I teaching English, but Geography and Civics too! I'll be prepared for anything they throw in front of me by the time this year is over.
The day started out with a short staff meeting after I followed my tiny, crazy host teacher around the main floor of the school photocopying, filling a kettle with water, and generally chatting. There was food at the staff meeting (YAY!) and a few speeches, plus I was formally introduced to the rest of the staff, which was really cool.
First period was Ms. Mirrlees' FYNE class, which basically means 12 grade 9 students who are taking English and Geography full year. Their elementary school teachers thought they would benefit from a slower transition into a semestered program, so I teach these kids all year. It makes for a stronger bond and a more accurate reading of skill improvement, so I'm not complaining.
Second and fifth period were both grade 10 Civics classes, which are definitely NOT English oriented. Those should be very interesting to teach. Both classes have some interesting kids in them, though, so hopefully I'll have a good time.
Anyway, even though I was only observing today I felt like I could get up and teach a class if so needed, which is a good start indeed. And the staff at Thornlea are first rate, which I'm really going to enjoy.
That's all until Thursday when I do my second day. Tomorrow I'm on campus all day buying used textbooks, going to a one-hour lecture, and chilling with friends.

-Laur

September

2007-09-01T11:00:00.001-04:00

Today is the first day of September. What a relief.
After a summer that was in most senses of the word a bust, I'm really looking forward to the coming year. I know that my experience working at summer school is going to help me in the classroom when I start at Thornlea on Tuesday (that's where my placement is, at Thornlea Secondary School), but for now I just really want to get back in the halls of academia and exercise my brain a little bit.
I have some funny pictures to post. I'll do that soon.

-Laur

Who needs sleep?

2007-08-26T11:23:00.000-04:00

The name of one of my favourite Barenaked Ladies songs off the album "Stunt", this song voices my desperate thoughts on the next week. I'm so horrendously busy with so many things to do on top of what I already have, I don't know how I'm going to make it through.
If I disappear for a week, don't try to find me. I'll resurface at Samantha's Labor Day party on September the 3rd, haggard, tired, and ridiculously excited for school to start.
-Laur

Laura in Real Life

All in

Moving

A split

Switching blog providers: do or do not?

Preparing

Welcome to 2010

Gingerpeople, to be politically correct

Ingredients

Directions

Cookie countdown

Christmas time is here

It's getting to be that time again...

Thanksgiving experiments

Becoming a Foodie

Quichey quiche

Slow return to reality

Countdown!

Oh, and I also graduated on Monday

Feels like home to me

Skills

A year of firsts

It's not every day

The upshot...

Won't you please, please, please let me get what I want

Someday I'll fly away

Take me to the riot...

Ottawa Opulence

Ottawaaaaaaah

Springtime in the shadows

Third-World Myths Dispelled

P.S.

Blow haaaaard

Back to school, back to school

Snowy snow

Legen- wait for it- dary!

Powerlessness

I'm a terrible, terrible person.

Festive Spirit

The people that we meet...

Viking Pride

Writer's Block

Faith Restored

November dreams

Sparkle: My champagne birthday

Happy Birthday!

I'm sorry

Bonding in the sunshine

Sunny autumn day

Pictures at last!

Drink the water

A brief moment

Steaming cedar chips and the smell of the Pacific

Sunshine

Landmark day

It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll :D

To delicious creatures, great and small

Straight flush

Earth Hour

They call me mellow yellow

Big things on a sad day

Departure

Running over...

Approaching

10 degrees Celsius to my happiness

The Ethics of Attending an Ed Class and other moral conundrums

A Luddite I am Not

Kickback

Seat sale!

Free day

Miss Take-Me-Seriously

*Paradise*

Home home home

Edmonton Adventure

It's back

Horror in Song

Update: New Years Resolutions

V803, how I love thee!

Welcome welcome welcome

New Years Resolutions

Paradise