Ethiopian Lentil Stew revisited.

This is the Ethiopian lentil stew that I make and everyone rants and raves about.

Operation Nanook

My daughter was taking part of operation Nanook. The ship she sails on is currently in the arctic.
There was a photo in the Ottawa citizen a few days back.

A CP-140 Aurora from 440 Transport Squadron, Yellowknife, flies over Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship SHAWINIGAN off the coast of Resolution Island during Operation NANOOK 2013 on August 20, 2013. Photo from Combat Camera.

Sales people must think we're dumb or something

Yesterday during lunch time we went to Canada computers and Microbytes to check out laptops as my friend was hoping to see the laptop she wants to buy to get a feel for it. 

They didn't have the laptop she wanted to see at Canada computers so we went to Microbytes. She's sweet on a particular Lenovo laptop. As you may know I'm pretty fond of my Thinkpad Edge laptop. Best laptop I've ever had.  Even though it runs hot now. It's still far more stable then any other laptop I've had and handles playing video files really well.

Anyways, my friend saw MSI laptops for the first time, as MSI hasn't been in the laptop market for that long. When we got to Microbytes, the sales manager probably saw she was sweet on Lenovo and he tells us, that it's not worth buying Lenovo anymore, that they were bought out by Acer and since then the quality has gone down and they get a lot of Lenovo returns now.

I found it hard to believe. I work in a technology company. I hear about who buys out who usually when it happens. I would have heard. Well as it goes apparently Acer helps in the assembly process of Lenovo laptops. That doesn't make it owned by Acer or their laptops designed by Acer.  No Lenovo is still it's own entity. Used to be known as Legend, until their rebranding to have a unique name world wide. They bought IBM's workstation and end user computer lines and while the systems keep a distinctive "IBM" feel  to them, Lenovo has done very well.

I've always been an IBM fan. Their PC's generally worked differently then Dell's or HP's and find lots of bugs for me.  They used to be bigger and clunkier but indestructible too.  I was always one of the few at work who actually liked the machines.  I'm currently the only one who has Lenovo systems in my team at work. I have quite the collection, the Workstations include the S20, D20, S30, D30, and then I have the ThinkCenters, including the M52, A57, M58, M78, M90, M91,  and M92. The M78 is my newest Lenovo and is AMD based. Sweet little machine so far. Even considering it for home, though only 2 hard disk bays and I tend to keep adding hard disks in my systems.

To get back to the salesman, shame on you to try to push my friend to buy MSI by telling us Lenovo is sucking monkey balls and being taken over by Acer. Way to misrepresent the truth.  I rarely trust what salesmen says anyways, but I still find it irritating when they think you're that dumb. Just because we dress girly does  not mean we are PC illiterate or clueless.

Symtoms of Celiac Disease

Poor Jethro, so misunderstood.

So Jethro was really insistent that he had to go into the house this minute. Somehow it was a matter of life or death.  He seemed so unimpressed when instead of giving in to his demands, instead I took out my phone and took the above video.

I took this video about 5 minutes after letting him back in the house. He leaves the house voluntarily and goes gallivanting across the yard with his buddy pixie. Really needed to get inside the house 5 minutes earlier didn't he?

Sad but true

For the record I couldn't care less who plays in batman, I'm never going to see it. I do care about the poor people in Syria though.

Syria Chemical attack makes news across the world.

Syria, will Bashar ever leave?

It doesn't seem likely anymore that Bashar Al Assad will ever leave his cushy spot as the head of Syria. It saddens me more that his army is using chemical weapons against it's own people.

It also saddens me that some of the 'rebels' are imported from other countries and are affiliated with AlQueda. But I bet you Bashar had a lot to do with it. He's been saying from the start that the people against him are terrorists and now that is true for some.

But the average Syrian is not interested in a country being run by Al Queda or fundamentalist Islam. They just want to be free from the shackles of the Assad family.

I'm glad I visited the Middle East in 2010, because I doubt it will be safe to do so for years to come. Sadly many countries have large youthful populations who have no political power and no jobs. This will continue to fuel revolutions throughout the region.

I think I'm an introvert

At least after reading this I'm almost sure I'm an introvert

2013 has been a good camping year

So far it seems this summer I have camped out 23 days. There could have been 4 more times but things just didn't turn out as expected.

I seem to sleep so much better out in the wilderness in a tent. There should be at least 4-6 more nights of camping , hopefully there's 10 nights of camping left this year.

More dragonflies at Whispering Pines

I managed to catch an elusive stripped dragonfly actually perched. Usually they don't stop flying around and never seem to land.

Dragonflies at Whispering Pines

We put flowers on Rick's grave yesterday

 

July 1st 2nd years ago our friend Rick passed away. Yesterday my gf and I went to see his grave and put some flowers around it. If he were alive, he'd kick them :)

So proud

I've blogged about my youngest daughter moving to the UK, somewhere in London.  This is the same daughter who was clingy as a child. Until I started working when she was 4, she spend a great deal of time sitting on me or being held by me. I never had to worry about losing her in a mall, she was generally velcroed to my leg, or so it seemed most of the time.

I couldn't fathom why she needed to be so close to me, but I accepted that it was a deep need and figured that if I tried to fullfill it as much as I could, she would grow up to be reasonably independent.

So to see my daughter, first move to the UK and now travel around Europe just blows my mind and makes me so incredibly proud.

I'm proud that she is capable of doing the things that thrill her gorilla. I don't know that I would have had the balls to travel around Europe in my early 20's but loving that she does.

Loving the fact that I have 2 very independent daughters who are following their dreams. I am beyond proud of both of them. I miss them but am so happy that they are happy and living their lives. We only have one life to live and its great to live it to the fullest.

What's with the stinking perfume?

I've always hated walking into huge department stores that have their entire perfume section in front of an entrance and you have to go through the section if you walk in through that door. This is the case with The Bay, Sears and whatever Eaton's might still be opened.  The thing is, you can  go in via another door, which is what I usually do to not set off my asthma.

However what brilliant moron decided it was a good idea to do this at a pharmacy? If I go into many Pharmaprix' you need to walk through their perfume section to get anywhere near the prescriptions. I tend to hold my breath and make a production of it, to make people realize that it's really not cool to set people's allergies like that. The thing about Pharmaprix is that there is NO OTHER entrance that I can use to get to the prescriptions counter. I MUST go through the perfume.

Main reason I get my prescriptions at Loblaws, where I need not walk through perfume and set off my asthma.

The red Dragonfly landed on me and hung out

On Saturday August 3rd, I had a red dragonfly spend about 10 minutes on my right forearm. How appropriate that I was at Kaleidoscope Gathering, which has a dragonfly as a symbol !

Eureka - the missing clothes resurfaces.

So while I kept thinking my clothes had hitchhiked a ride to Halifax with my daughter apparently, my clothes was in my sleeping bag compression bag. I never put clothes in there, and I rarely unpackage my sleeping bag compression bag at home.

So Thursday night or really early Friday morning at Raven's Knoll, when I took out my sleeping bag to sleep, I felt that there was stuff in the bottom of the bag, I looked, and low and behold my A&E shorts with the lace, my black bra, the green camisole, and a bunch of underwear I had not yet noticed were missing.   NOTE TO SELF: Never put clothes in the sleeping bag compression bag!

50 insane facts about Canada

Open the picture in a new link and then you can zoom in and read the text :)