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I voted today! Since I will be in Edmonton on election day I had to do advance voting today after work. There was a bit of an issue with my name, but I just had to fill out an extra piece of paper. Weird that Elections Canada somehow knew my new address, but didn’t know my new name, when I changed everything all at the same time. Anyway– sorted now.

We had a very nice long weekend. I relaxed on Friday and worked on party planning while Scott went to Metrotown with his aunt. She bought six Quatchi’s!!

(That isn’t Scott’s aunt!)

Then we watched two movies. Nearly finished our movie alphabet. Will post soon.

Saturday was a big day. Scott made hash browns, then we went up and did laundry and groceries. Then we stopped by Scott’s work so he could check on some servers, went to T&T, and then to Costco. They have SO many samples at the Costco here. Best one was the cheddar jalapeno sausage (for me). Mmmm. I ate half a poutine (was not as good as I remember) and then we bused up to SFU to help Rosemarie move out of residence. Funny that the only times we went to SFU this year was the very beginning and end of the school year. It really is quite far away.

After dropping her stuff at our house we got back on the bus and went back to that ice cream place with 200+ flavours. It was such a nice sunny day we thought it would be a good School’s Out treat for Rosemarie.

This time I tried CURRY, BALSAMIC VINEGAR, Go Canucks Go (?), and Bailey’s chocolate cheesecake. Eventually settled on a Ferrero Rocher cone, while Rosemarie got Toblerone and Scott got White Chocolate Cranberry.

The rest of the evening was spent playing lots of board games (Agricola, Settlers) and dinner (Rosemarie and I made spicy eggplant and pork).

On Sunday morning we made a yummy breakfast with beans, eggs, toast, hash browns, bacon and then tried to digest it for the rest of the day. It made us all SOOOOO tired! We met up with Scott’s aunt and went to the Granville Market but didn’t stay long as other people don’t seem to be as interested in looking at vegetables as I am, haha.

We came home and relaxed and played more games and I made salad and black bean burgers (recipe to come soon).

Rosemarie is off to Squamish now and I won’t see her again until the party in Ottawa. :( I miss her already!

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Just a quick update post before I have to get out of bed and actually start accomplishing things.

My epic 2.5 hour BCIT interview went really well. The first hour the guy gave me a crash course on nuclear medicine, and asked little questions all the way through that sort of tested your thinking skills. I got all of them right and he seemed quite impressed. I felt clever. For the second hour I followed nuc med techs around and watched them scan patients. It was neat to watch them deal with the patients and also ask them questions about the job. I really enjoyed it, and was glad to see it was more relaxed than I pictured the job before. Then finally I had to write a quick essay.

Anyway I could tell by how the guy was responding that I did pretty well. Then the next day I called the department head to follow up like I was supposed to and she was really really positive! She asked if I thought it would be a good fit (I said “YEAH! I had a lot of fun yesterday, I’m glad I got the opportunity to do that!”) and she said she had a chat with the dude and he thought I would be a great fit as well. She still wants me to write the bio challenge exam, and take a physics refresher course, but she said once I’m registered in that they can give me a provisional acceptance pending completion of the courses.

…..

YAHOOO!!!!!

Anyway, in other news:

– the Canucks suck now. Poo-ongo let in 5 goals last night and Scott cried as the Canucks chance at the cup slips away in the first round. The series is 3-2 for the Canucks at this point.

– Scott’s aunt is in town for a week, which is neat. We’ve gone out for dinner with her and had her over to our place. It’s the long weekend now so we’ll take her around to the Granville Market and things like that! Next week she leaves on an epic 3 week trip from Vancouver to Victoria to Whistler to Banff to Jasper, then on a train, and then a cruise all the way up to Alaska and back! JEALOUS!!!

– Scott and I booked our flights to Ottawa for the party. Air Canada had a sale so we decided to be optimistic about BCIT/NAIT and buy the tickets. If we end up having to move to Toronto I guess we will cash the flights in for credit and fly to Mexico in a year or something.

Anyway, still a lot of waiting to do. I won’t hear anything definite from any of the schools for another month or two, so we still can’t make any definite plans about this summer or next year. Cross your fingers for me though, we’d like it if I got in everywhere so we can just sit down and make the best decision.

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This week passed by quickly for me. Not that I’ve been doing much though, hence the lack of day-to-day life posts.

I was ultra lazy this week and only went running once. The program is getting harder a lot quicker than before. My next run I have to run 8 minutes straight twice, with 5 minutes of walking in the middle, and then the run after that I have to run TWENTY MINUTES STRAIGHT!! That is too big of a jump!!! At least the weather looks a lot better next week so I have less excuses not to go after work.

It’s still really cold here though, I think. Only about 10°C every day. I want summer NOW. We saw on TV 22°C for Ottawa last week. Did that actually happen?? I’m jealous!

I have booked all my flights for my epic 4 day travel weekend at the end of the month. I fly overnight to Toronto and then spend two days there, then fly stupidly early to Edmonton and then spend about a day and a half there too. Two interviews, plus catching up with J9 and my cousins and aunts, and maybe the West Edmonton Mall? Would going there by myself be fun?

Scott’s aunt is visiting next week and I have my second BCIT interview at the hospital. We also have homemade sushi and a new kind of veggie moussaka in our future.

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STUFF I LOVE #1

Audiobooks

I recently decided that I LOVE AUDIOBOOKS! I read listened to an entire book in two days, WHILE WORKING. How’s that for multi-tasking.

I’m sure I could have curled up in bed and read the whole book in two days too, but who has time for that!? Now I can earn money and “read” at the same time. I feel like I’ve opened up a huge new chunk of day for me to take advantage of. Plus it was also kind of… comforting… like the old days when dad used to read to me at night time. A nice feeling.

I was listening to Terry Fallis’ The Best Laid Plans which he podcasted one chapter at a time a while ago when he was having trouble getting it published. You can get it for free off iTunes. Then it won the CBC Canada Reads 2011 contest and I’m sure he’s doing a lot better now. It’s a good story, check it out!

I suppose some books are better for listening to than others. The Best Laid Plans worked well, but we also downloaded audio files of Jasper Fforde’s books and now I am thinking that they might not be as good since he does a lot of clever things with different fonts or intentional ‘myspelings’, which would be lost.

I’ve also listened to Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything which was also quite interesting, but that was a serious time commitment since it really is not short at all. Now I need some kind of audiobook library (does that exist? probably) to pick what next! Any suggestions?

The question is, does listening to a book have the same educational benefit as reading a book? It certainly is a lot more passive. But I think I personally absorb more from listening than reading.

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I had a major cooking disaster yesterday.

I was making smore squares. First you bake a graham cracker sugar cookie crust, then you melt milk chocolate over it, then top it with marshmallows and broil it a bit.

Everything was going well. I put it in to broil, went to get a drink of water, came back to take a peek…. HUGE FLAMES IN THE OVEN!! EVERYTHING ON FIRE!!

I ran around in a circle yelling ‘IT’S ON FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!’ then I came to my senses and turned off the oven and opened the doors and windows and Scott took the flaming pan out of the oven.

It’s funny (?) that our smoke alarm will go off at 4:00 AM sometimes, or when I am cooking perogies, yet didn’t go off when there was AN ACTUAL FIRE.

Unfortunately I did not get a picture while there were still flames. But I did get that “after” shot. Sorry it’s blurry, I was rushing. Scott said it looked like the surface of another planet or something.

Anyway I scraped off the entire burnt top in one piece, and then tried again, this time broiling with the oven door open and me staring at it. It took about 8 seconds. Success! I reckon the extra little burnt bits just make it more authentic.

They are REALLY tasty.

Smore Squares

  • 3/4 cup butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 1/4 cup flour
  • 1 cup graham cracker crumbs (I got them in the bulk bins at our supermarket)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda (I accidentally used baking powder. I don’t think it matters)
  • about 1 cup milk chocolate chips
  • about 2 cups small marshmallows

1. Preheat oven to 350º F. Combine butter and sugar. Add vanilla. Then flour, graham cracker crumbs, salt and baking soda. Mix!

2. Spread in bottom of large baking dish. I used an 8″x8″ pan but that was a bit too small. Something a touch bigger than that would be perfect. No need to grease the pan. Bake for ~20-30 minutes, until cooked. Mine took forever because it was so thick.

3. Immediately sprinkle with chocolate chips. Let it stand for a few minutes, then spread the melty chocolate around.

4. Set oven to broil. Sprinkle marshmallows over top of chocolate, and broil for about 8 seconds. WATCH CAREFULLY!!! They brown FAST. OK maybe they take longer than 8 seconds, but not much more. Allow to cool a bit, and enjoy!