No, really, what have you been doing?

Okay, I'll post a proper update! It was silly of me to neglect it.

1. Skating is actually pretty fun! I never would have guessed it. I'll go ahead and say that Prof H and I are definitely tied with fellow adult beginner Vanessa for Best in Show Class because we effing rock the backwards crossover. Oh, you read that correctly, bitches: backwards crossovers. I've done TWO so far and Prof H likely dozens. Drills that aren't a good idea in ABC (Adult Beginner Class) include Skate Soccer (blood bath, I went down hard) and anything else having to do with a ball. Yep - we skated on the Canal! MH many times, in earnest, E and I once. Now that the weather has turned Slightly Above Freezing the Canal is closed. Slightly Above Freezing is the worst, it ruins anything good there is about winter: it is too warm to maintain decent snow and ice for snow-and-ice activities but too cold to do anything else. Things melt during the day and freeze at night turning the sidewalks into injury traps and it takes several minutes to decide which coat to wear. SAF temps are the shits.

Here are Night Canal pics. I "blemish removed" MH's eyes to maintain internet anonymity and the bottom pic is E purchasing delicious deep-fried, sugary goodness en français at the skate-up Beaver Tails stand (after I screamed like a toddler so she would buy me stuff). Yes, Beaver Tails, you read that correctly.

Best part of Canal skating.

For other Embracing the Winter! magic, I offer you this excellent video:

2. Purchases that have changed my life for the better!

Exhibit A: The Mandolin Kitchen Slicer. It is wonderful! To head off your first question: No! I haven't cut off any fingers yet or sustained any other injuries due to the guillotine-like quality of the mandolin slicer. The avocado-pitting incident of '04 (was it really that long ago! YIKES), was enough to make me super paranoid about kitchen cutting of any kind so I am very careful. What the mandolin has really given me is the ability to make the same fruits and vegetables I receive every week (3 apples, 3 *hard* pears, 1 shitpile of carrots, 2 disturbingly large parsnips, 1 bag of potatoes, 1 cucumber, and 2 tomatoes) seem new and exciting. Case in point: the fun mandolin salad pictured below! Which is just an apple and a pear but looks more fun than that.


Exhibit B: my sweet-ass Zojirushi bread maker that produces delicious 1 lb loaves. I *LOVE* it. The loaves are sufficiently small so that I don't feel pressure to eat bread morning and night before it goes bad and I can add grated carrots to the recipe to get rid of my carrot stockpile. I love it. Number of loaves made since purchasing bread maker: dozens! Too many to count! I love it.

Yes, the $284 worth of liquor I purchased in December 2011 combined with my bread maker and vegetable delivery means that the only thing I need to leave my house for, now, is toilet paper. I am one step closer to realizing my Shut In Dream!

3. Products that have not changed my life

Exhibit A: Snowshoes. They look awesome right? Snowshoeing is kind of exactly like walking. Only you're walking on top of deep snow. The thrill of walking on top of deep snow like Legolas goes away after about 5 minutes and then you're just left with a feeling of walking. Also, Monty can't follow so well and he's usually the reason that I'm out walking in the first place so while I don't rule out the awesome of the snowshoe in my life, it hasn't happened yet. Maybe when the Winter season as a yearly phenomenon is a thing of the past, we will all look back on these snowshoes with awe and reverence. But so far they've just been taking up space in my front hallway. I admit to purchasing them because E was purchasing the ice skates that I wanted but they didn't have in my size and in a fit of skate-envy I decided I really needed cool-looking snowshoes.

Exhibit B: The Apple Wireless Mouse. Eff you, you effing piece of Ess, Wireless Mouse! It keeps becoming "Disconnected" for no good reason and requires a battery change all too often. So I have my wired mouse on hand for whenever the iMaus of the Future craps out and I don't feel like spending several minutes fussing over getting it connected again. I'm so glad I didn't go the way of the wireless keyboard. Also - wtf do we need wireless keyboards and mouses/mice for? This goes along with my puzzlement over the remote control toilet flusher I saw a lot of in Japan. Because I am relatively close to my computer and toilet when I am using them, I do not require wireless options for their functions. Others may do things differently.

I now have to prepare my talk for JASNA. Yep, http://www.jasna.org/. Because that's my life now.

Embrace the Winter!

According to the (increasingly not) intrepid CBC, as I type, current 'Twa conditions are:

-20C

Feels like: -31, Mostly Cloudy

Visibility: 10 Km; Sunrise: 7:39 AM; Sunset: 4:43 PM

Wind: NW 24 km/h
Humidity: 68%
Pressure: 101.6 kPa -21C

For those of you early moderns, -20C = -4F and -31C = -24F

So this is a "cold snap." My car is plowed in, Monty is visibly cutting back on his water intake in order to minimize his pee output (that dog is S.M.R.T.), and I'm trying to decide which room of my apartment to spend the rest of the day in so I can situate the space heater and hot water bottle. Another pressing decision? Which of my 3 pairs of long underwear are least soiled and can be worn again. E is off for the weekend visiting her brothers in the T.O. (Toronto to those of you cool people who live free of Canadianese), so the personal-presentability bar is low for now. I'll go with the black pair from Monday. And Wednesday.

This is no way to live!

Michel, gawdblesshim, has launched his new campaign to Embrace the Winter and I am doing my best to get pulled into the frosty spirit. Because, really, what else can be done? When the weather forecast gives you a shittily low number and then tells you hey! guess what! it will feel even lower and shittier, you have to fight back. You have to say, "Fuck you, Weatherperson. You don't know me, you don't how I'll feel."

Of course, Michel is talking all kinds of nonsense like going cross-country skiing at night in some park where they have huts containing strangers and warmth and fondue at appropriate ski-intervals. As a high-functioning agoraphobe, this doesn't seem like enough to get me out of my house at night, especially when I can make fondue at home. Cross-country skiing is basically like running for a long time (unfun) and if you do it more than 3 times you have to join a cult (so it's exactly like running).
But he did talk me into taking skating lessons together! Remember when I told that job committee that I would gladly join their faculty hockey team and would make an excellent goalie? I'm still relieved that oncampus interview didn't materialize because that was some breathtaking interview lying - I can't skate. Yep, yuk,yuk, they still let me have a passport blahblahblahgreatwhitenorthhorseshithahaCanadarahrahbeercommercial whatever, yes I grew up in Canada. I was made to take lessons as a seven-year-old and I remember thinking how completely and utterly skating BLEW because it was cold and made my feet hurt. Also, the skates my mother made me get were fucked up. I wanted hockey skates because hockey skates are black and awesome and look like something Darth Vader would wear. Instead, because I am a girl and girls don't play hockey (I remember this conversation vividly), she made me get figure skates.
Darth Vader would NEVER wear these. They are the polar opposite of badass. Also, they have picks at the front of the blade that can suddenly catch on the ice, causing the innocent newbie skater to be bitchslapped onto a frozen surface and left for dead. Seriously, what was my mother thinking?

Yeah, like that was gonna happen.

But now I'm an adult and while I'm in Adult Beginners skating classes where my classmates are immigrants from hot countries and/or emasculated businessmen who have to learn to skate in order to make the scene at the Canal this winter, my instructor might be registered in my Hist 1001A class, and we have to wear helmets at All Times Or Else, even though there's that -

my skates effing RULE:

Right?! Also they have that awesome Reebok technology where you can pump air into them for extra...air? and be badass that way as well.

Michel's skates are equally awesome and we rock the skating class pretty hard. So take that winter! Our second class is today and I'm super excited for it! Also, we go out for food afterwards and what could be better than that?

Infected with Winter Spirit, I tried to get Monty in the mood.



His word for Winter Spirit might be "Torture."

Perhaps when all is said and done both he and I might find that we just prefer to observe winter from afar but for now we're doing our best to make the most of it.

How will we know when it's spring?

Friends, I haven't blogged on in a while and I do apologize for that but, frankly, you've missed nothing. It snows here everyday. If it's not snowing, it's raining. If there are days of blessed, blessed sunshine, they are accompanied by -20C or lower temperatures and a wind chill that whispers "I hate you" as it strips the outer layers of skin off your face. Monty and I are so fat and housebound and winterblown that we look like walking honeydew melons (he especially) and I have a massive rash on my ass from wearing long underwear all the time (that's just science).

In contrast, the Ottawans love it and keeping going on about how they skate all the time and skating is so awesome and skating on the canal is awesome and winter is awesome and Winterlude is awesome. Students come to my classes wearing skates around their necks because they just skated to school (really?) because the campus is right on the waterway. At least they're not riding their bikes in the winter time (one of my top 3 all-time pet peeves). This is not the Canal, just a skating rink on my way home from school.


People keep asking me if I've skated on the Canal yet. I probably will skate on the Canal someday, but it won't be this year. The reason is this: skating kind of sucks. Skaters will pretend that it's wonderful and they're having fun and that this is what life is all about but I liken them to pregnant people and parents of young children who have to pretend it's all so awesome and fulfilling so as to trick the rest of us into doing it so they won't be alone in their misery. Skaters need people to watch them skate so that when they do their special tricks (like stopping and going backwards) someone is there to be impressed. Everyone knows that if you skate down the whole Canal with out falling once and there are no witnesses, a kitten dies.

Here are Canal photos I took off the internet:

Skating hurts your feet, causes you to become both ridiculously cold and sweaty at the same time, will leave you bruised somehow (really - you're going to fall, don't pretend you won't), and will suck away your life because it takes 45 minutes of prep for 15 minutes of ice-time.

But the 'Twa love of skating has really helped me to identify a particular brand of douchery that before now I felt but could never put into words: the Canada Douche (or CanDouche for short). French Canadian ones are called Le Shower Canadien (Le ShowCan for short).

It's hard to really explicate exactly what CanDouchery is but you know it when you see it: it is douchery that has a particularly and proudly Canadian bent to it. For example: skaters on the Canal with the giant SUV baby strollers and a coffee in one hand are CanDouches. Another example of CanDouchery is when someone takes the effort to build an elaborate skating rink on their front lawn (complete with hockey nets and floodlights) and then posts a sign (presumably aimed at the rest of the neighbourhood kids) that the rink is for Private Use Only. I've seen this in my neighbourhood on a few occasions (was too scared to be seen taking a picture of it). Instead of front lawn pride, it appears that the CanDouche has front rink pride. I got in trouble from one of the CnDches for letting Monty pee on the tree by their private skating rink but I explained to the CnDch that because he'd just peed on the tree, the tree was in fact Monty's and the Douche should get away from it asap or one of Monty's lawyers would be in touch. Okay, I didn't say this, I only thought of this after the incident and now I wish to go back in time and say it.

Other instances of CanDouchery include when the CBC has a program on about Canadian Identity or Heritage - like how explaining a joke makes it unfunny, if you have to explain why something is a Canadian heritage moment then it really isn't.

There are 5 open and free skating rinks within easy walking distance of my apartment (8 if you count the "private" ones, example below) so I should get over my hate. But I haven't accepted that I have a problem, yet.


In other news, because the river is frozen over, Monty and I go walking on the river!!! The first time we did it, I almost threw up because I was so terrified. Stupid, I know, but when I was in jr high in Calgary one of my friends' older brothers drowned in the Bow River (at least one person drowns in the river every year in Calgary, or at least that's what it seems like, and so that year it was John's brother) and we had to go to all these River Safety presentations and the gist of the presentations was that if you go near the river (frozen, unfrozen, points in between) you will probably die. But we're fine! It will be satisfying when spring does finally come and Monty is perplexed about what happened to his awesome playground. Or he won't be.