sun, shoes, veg and worms

I haven't posted anything in a while. It was my birthday, very fun but busy weekend. The weather couldn't be better. 20 degrees for the last 3 days has given me the first sunburn of the year. I went out for lunch and drinks with Whitney on Saturday after work, then off to the Vancouver Public Library booksale to increase my inventory. Then later to dinner at Anduccii's. Sunday was Sushi Lunch (breakfast) with Sarah and Shannon, followed by a trip to the liquor store to buy Champagne like it was new years or something! Honestly I don't know how Sarah and Shannon drink so much Champagne. Then off to watch Sarah and Sud's baseball team play, followed by a game of Botchi. Sushi breakfast and alcohol in the first real heat of the year, sent me over the edge. Spinning-head hit in the carride and didn't stop until I got home and ate 30 minutes later. Super glad I didn't continue on to the Burgon's!

But before all this I went to the annual Army and Navy shoe sale! you gotta be aggressive, those ladies push and shove and had mouths like sailors! Luckily I escaped with my life and three pairs of shoes and a purse. 2 pairs were $9.99 each and the 3rd pair was $29, the purse was $11. deal! looks like I'll be wearing heels all summer

Update on the garden- 2 types of lettuce looking good, the carrots have been reseeded after some sort of animal crawled in the window box and dug them up! I'm convinced it was the Easter Bunny. Peas are coming along, won't be long before I'm eatting them. Planted cucumbers, beans and radishes yesterday. The cucumbers don't grow on a vine, they grow on a bush! have you ever heard of such a thing? I still have to pick-up a tomato plant and strawberries. This is going to be the best garden ever! Last night I bought corn on the cob- first of the season- oh so good with BBQ'd potatoe!

As for the worms? who knows, I looked in last night, took a longtime to find the worms, doesn't look like they've done anything to the spinach I threw in last week. I gave them some tomato and water, we'll see if anything happens.

Genius!

I was repotting a Dhallia that I bought last year. I was topping it up with some organic potting soil, the potting soil I have noticed has lots of worms in it. Today it actually hit me. These worms are long skinny and red, they live in potting soil. If I wanted worms that would MAKE potting soil, then shouldn't these be the worms? Lightbulb moment. Now I just have to sort through the bag to find the worms. But I am now the proud owner of 8 worms, and 1 homemade worm composting bin. I am a happy monkey. I shall keep you all posted on the progress!

Can Tom's stock sink any lower?

After that whole "I like original baby names" post, things have changed. TomKat had their kitten- Surrey or maybe they spell it Suri. I'm sure everyone in Vancouver thinks it's a terrible name. Maybe I'll call my kids Whalley, Newton and King George. All of which are better than being named Scott Road.

Free Books

I have some books that I can't sell online for various reasons. Rather than storing them for the garage sale that I will never I have, I am offering the following:
PAPERBACKS:
Daphnis and Chloe by Longus
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde- 2 copies
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Tuesday's Jillaroo by Kerry Allyne (romance)
A Stone for Danny Fisher by Harold Robbins
Time Enough for Love and The Past Through Tomorrow both by Robert A Heinlein
Never Leave Me byHarold Robbins
My Private Detective -romance
In the Arms of the law-romance
This Far From Paradise-Philip Shelby
Mother in the Making-romance
Only You-romance
The Double Heart Diner-romance and comedy rolled into one fab book
How to Dump a Guy: A Coward's Manual-Fillion and Ladowsky- I think this one should be shared!!
The Last Man In Montana-romance
Only the Nanny Knows for Sure-romance
The Pirate-Harold Robbins
Heartstorm-romance
HARDCOVER
Black Notice-Patricia Cornwell- no dust cover
Word of Honor-Terri Blackstock
...And Never Let Her Go-Ann Rule
Christmas Joys to Craft and Stitch

No judgement if you're after the cheesey romance novels! I was given all these books (except Dorian Grey) so I don't know if they're any good. But they're FREE. Most of the paperbacks are either not in good shape, or are not listed on Amazon. All the hardcovers are in very good shape, but they aren't listed on Amazon.

I better be getting a big refund

I am soooo frustrated. It took me half an hour to get through to talk to a person at the tax centre and then I spent the next half hour yelling at the idiot that took my call. She kept going on and on about how they cannot tell me how much my student loan is, and if I want to know what my repayment amount is blah blah blah. I'm not in repayment- that's not why I'm calling. I don't owe them anything-right now. Anyways apparently one government agency gave me the wrong information. The revenue agency tells me to call BC Student loans and BC Student loans tells me to call the Revenue agency!!!!! I don't even do my own taxes!

To top it all off she was looking at someone else's tax return. I just went through the last 3 years over the phone with her- line by line. While she's telling me all about how because I had 8 employers last year blah blah....WHAT? No I only worked at one place! So we argue over this for like 5 minutes when she finally asks me what my name is. Oh (tee hee) Ooopps wrong person! Argh! meanwhile she just got paid $25 an hour to be a complete idiot!!!!!

Apres Easter- sunny days

Had dinner at Whit's. It was very good. Lots of drama. But Nummie. I particularily liked when one of the guests who was over an hour late for dinner, walked in and loudly commented on Whitney's place for like 5 minutes as if it was the Taj Mahal. It's nice, but it isn't THAT nice.

I notice I'm coming up to my 200th visitor to my blog! This is a momentus occasion. If it's you- let me know! I was Sarah's 100th visitor, she is now getting close to 400 visitors. It's amazing, I didn't think anyone would actually check out my blog. So thanks a bunch.

Correction

Not to Poo Poo the book that I worte about in the previous post, but it's bull.
They bought groceries, they bought essentials (like coffee, toilet paper, internet access, cable TV etc) Humpf! I buy less than they did in this book. The criticims that I read was that the author was in debt she owned an appartment in NYC and house in Vermont. The critic said that the author woke up one morning and realized that the $50, 000 nest egg in the bank wasn't enough to retire on so she wrote this book. I'm dissapointed. It would be much better if they hadn't bought anything.

Bunnies love carrots, not eggs!

So now that classes are over I got to watch Sunday morning TV. I dunno if it's because it's Easter or what- but there was nothing on.

I'm going to Whitney's tonight for baked tofu and parsnips. Let's hope she didn't make those Jewish Eggs again- for those of you who didn't have the pleasure- they were hardboiled eggs marinated in the shells in coffee, cinnamon and some other stuff for like a week. The shells absorbed the liquid resulting in grey/brown hardboiled eggs. They looked suspicously like rotten eggs.

I have found a book that sounds really good "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping" by Judith Levine. She literally didn't buy anything, no grocery shopping, no new clothes nothing. Apparently she managed to save $8000. I'm not too sure how she lived, but I think it sounds interesting. Maybe that's how I'll save $ for the cruise!

On a sunny note, my peas, carrots and 2 types of lettuce have sprouted! I decided that flowers are a silly thing to grow, this year I'm only growing food. I found a website that has tons of info about veggie container growing. If I can figure out how to rig it up, I'm going to suspend planters from my balcony, above the neighbours house and plant beans in them. Did you know that you can grow pumpkins, pickle plants, zuchini and squashes in containers? Neither did I, I'm not going to try it. Does anyone have any suggestions for what else I should grow?

Random

Ever have one of those days when everyone seems to be stare at you? And you don't have any idea why? Yeah, I thought I must have had a smear of mascara down my face or something. I whipped out my mirror to check, no everything in order. Very unnerving.

Exams are over, who knows what the results will be. I seem to either ace things or fail miserably lately. It's like I have dissociated or something. I got 100% on one quiz and then 40% on the next one- I thought I would get a B on both. And then I get my termpapers back. An A on one and C+ on the other. I think I might go back to last semesters strategy- not checking any of my marks because as long as I try my hardest my marks are irrelevant (especially since my grades are determined by comparison with other people in my class.)

Kids

Today I got to play daycare. Shannon had to have an operation, so I filled in. 7 kids in total. I knew for little kids its hard to remember names (even though they've all met me a bunch of times) so today I went by Shannon. The youngest is only a year old, but he was super easy except his parents use cloth diapers and facetowels- that was just too nasty for words. I had fed them all breakfast, got them toys, broken up about 5 screaming matches ( 2 of the kids don't play well together) when I started to think "how long till nap time?" It was 8:30. It's funny, when I finally got them all to sleep (12:30 nap time) I really wanted to smoke. It's been 7 months since I quit and today was the first day I thought of cheating. I didn't. I didn't even check to see if Shannon's secret stash was stocked or not. It made me think of an email Lila sent me, I don't remember what it was about, but it said "Mommy drinks because you cry." I would make a terrible mother!

Roger. Huh? Over. Huh?

I've never actually seen a cockpit before. This was on a blog that was linked to Sarah and Ryan's blog. One of the other pilots I think. Pretty cool. Click for a close-up. There's a lot of gauges and displays eh? Anyone ever seen the movie Airplane? You'll remember when Captain Oveur, Roger and Murdock got food poisoning and Ted Striker had to fly the plane, and there was the blow-up auto pilot? I don't see that button. Love that movie, just reading the quotes makes me laugh

"Surely you can't be serious."

"I am serious... and don't call me Shirley."

and

Rumack: Captain, how soon can you land?

Captain Oveur: I can't tell.

Rumack: You can tell me. I'm a doctor.

Captain Oveur: No. I mean I'm just not sure.

Rumack: Well, can't you take a guess?

Captain Oveur: Well, not for another two hours.

Rumack: You can't take a guess for another two hours?

Monotheism

I heard on the radio today that Gwyneth Paltrow had her baby. The report said that they had named him Carrot. I actually don't see anything wrong with that. But then I saw online that they named him Moses! So they went from Apple (very original) to Moses (very traditional.) I think I like Carrot better- I don't really like common names. Actually Carrot would have been fitting as Chris Martin and Gwyneth are both veggie-tarians. I'm thinking Nefrusobek or Hatchepsut are good names maybe that's what I'll name my first kid. Huge points to anyone who can tell me why or why this post is titled Monotheism.

new: Links

Thanks to Sarah, I have finally fixed my Links section. Check'em out

Worm Revolution

I think this worm thing is going to catch on.

So after a lot of hinting, Whitney caught on that I wanted to sign her (ie ME) up for the Vancouver City Hall worm program. I think I've managed to talk Shannon into taking some worms later and starting her own composter. She is a non-recycler. Hasn't recycled anything since she moved out from her parents 10 years ago. I have been trying to guilt her-telling her that she is destroying the world that Kassie and Kaitlyn will have to live in. But the worm thing is an EDUCATIONAL program for the daycare kids. Maybe she'll do it.

So after finals I'll sign up for the workshop and get myself some worms. After like 2 or 3 months, the worms will have done their work, voila dirt, and lots of baby worms. So in a few months, I can set YOU up with worms. I won't even charge you the $35/pound. Although maybe I should. I could become a worm farmer- maybe that's where I'll finally make my millions. Although to make 1 mill, I'd have to sell 28 571.43 pounds of worms- that's a lot of mouths to feed.

Who knew Worms were expensive?

So on a much sunnier note.
The co-op doesn't allow composting- fear of rats and racoons. So I have been horrible and throwing all my veggie scraps out. Which actually adds up to be a lot- I'm a veggie-tarian! I remember in one of the Katima-houses they had a worm compost. You set it up in a little rubbermaid tote, the worms do all the work, it doesn't smell and voila -dirt, recycling and happy worms. So where do you get the freak'n worms man? I dunno. Mail order apparently $25 for 1 pound, but 1 pound of worms sounds like too many mouths to feed. Plus $25? am I cheap, or does that sound like a lot to you too? Apparently they aren't earthworms, they're red worms.

Jeez, veggie-tarian, saving the seals and worm composting- sounds pretty west coast to me! Actually it's really west coast. Did you know that if you live in the city of Vancouver (which I don't) and attend a workshop (which I wouild), city hall will give you the bin and the worms? Hmm, whitney....don't you live in Vancouver? :)

~Under the Tahitian Sun~

This pic is from Sarah and Ryan's honeymoon in Bora Bora. You should check out their blog.
http://sudsandsarah.blogspot.com/


The question that keeps coming around in my head is: "Why the hell am I living in Canada?" Anyone else want to rent out scooters and jetski's to tourists rather than do whatever it is you're doing now? It's grey and rainy in Vancouver, I'm cramming for finals wondering why I bother.