I love cats.

And so does the internet. Check out this site, it's got both cats AND music :)

I am so proud.

I raised two incredible women!  They are articulate and speak their mind. I LOVE IT.  I am so incredibly proud.  They aren't fragile over coddled little snowflakes.

Today I'm all emotional and I'm a proud mama.

It was a meteorite that caused the loud boom

In fact it was a sonic boom caused by a meteorite entering the atmosphere faster then the speed of light. I wonder if anyone will find pieces. They suspect it was a meteorite the size of a basketball or something like that. See here.

My reaction when I heard the sound was "Wow some dumbass crashed some large vehicle into something larger" and then I went back to what I was doing. It barely registered until a friend asked me about it an hour later.

There was an earth shattering Kaboom!

As I hear Marvin the Martian in my mind when I say that, last night my feed on Facebook was abuzz about a loud sound that was heard from Montreal to Cornwall. The speculation at this point was that it was a meteor.

See this story.

Yep the Suzuki was in the garage

A photo of my garage with the my Grand vitara in it. Different angle from yesterday and from daylight as opposed to pitch dark and on my SLR rather then the cell phone camera.

Got my truck in my garage!!!!

Since owning my Suzuki in 2010, I have not been able to park it in the Garage. Tonight I tried to squeeze it in. I had to move a chair with an CRT on it, a CRT, stack a printer on another printer, put 2 of the 4 tires in the trunk of the truck and move the other 2 tires, but I got the Suzuki in the garage!!!! I have proof!!!

Grand Vitara squeezed inside my garage

For those curious about the hanging sonotube, I hung it there to have a visual cue to how far I have to back up.  It works really well. I stop when I hit the tube or see it move.

A husky comes for a visit!

This week-end I introduced my cats, to a hyper female husky, called Tayha. As you can imagine the cats weren't too impressed. I gotta love Jethro. So far I have not seen him be aggressive as his first reaction to meeting another animal. He's usually timid, but not aggressive

Teyha wants to play with Jethro

Jethro was fine around the dog, although a little nervous. A few more visits and he should be completely at ease. Ziva was another story. She did not want the dog anywhere near her...

Come closer and I rip your face off

I can smell food. Where is it?

All my cats for some reason where curious about the dog food. Jethro and Pixie both went to check out the bag on the table and Ziva figured she's check out the dog's bag on her own.

Quinoa is my new friend.

I'm enjoying quinoa as a substitute for Bulgar wheat in tabbouleh. I found that there are different colours of quinoa. Until today I had only made it with golden quinoa. Last week-end I picked up white, red and black quinoa too. This tabbouleh was made with a mixture, 3/4 white quinoa, 1/4 black quinoa. Gives the salad an interesting look.

 Gluten free tabbouleh with 2 colour quinoa

I also made some potato salad. That's going to be my lunch for this week at work. One cup of tabbouleh, one cup of potato salad.  In the potato salad, I put one large red onion cut finely, 2 sticks of celery, finely chopped, and 1 grated carrot.  I seasoned with all sorts of herbs and spices to give it some taste.

The last thing I made yesterday, was suggested by an Irish friend as a substitution for my aspartame sweetened ricola cough drops.  I used 1 ruby red grapefruit, 2 clementines and 2 lemons. I cooked them unpeeled in water with lots of cloves for an hour or two, to really cook it down. The resulting pulpy water was quite bitter, but tasted almost like marmalade. He had suggested to sweeten it with honey and use on my raw throat.  I liked the bitter taste of the mixture as is so much, just added a few tablespoons in Perrier and oh wow how awesome was that. Loved the taste and it was good on my throat. The high content of vitamin C in this should keep me from having to take vitamin C this winter, if I make some to use daily.

Grapefruit, clementine and lemons cooking with some cloves.

I looooooooooove black mission figs.

I love them dried, I can eat an entire bag. Loblaws sells them under no name label. I also love fig squares. I've been experimenting with making gluten free fig squares that are also high in protein, to offset the sweetness in the figs. I used a mix of almond and coconut flours, to make the batter. I still need to tweak the recipe, I used coconut oil as my fat and it did not work well enough for the consistency of the batter. The end result was too crumbly.   Once I get a good recipe going I'll post it. Fig squares are just as much like crack then Larabars.

I also made some socca, an Italian chickpea bread.  This time instead of making it with fresh rosemary I seasoned it with zaatar halabi, fresh ground pepper and dried garlic and onion flakes . It was ok. Still have to work to see if I can make it so it cooks more evenly with the olive oil, but it's still yummy for a flat bread.

In relation to my last entry

Where I say that societies where men and women are not free to associate as they wish that things get weird. Two men got arrested in Saudi Arabia for offering free hugs.  Brought to  you by the only country in the world where women are not given drivers licences to prevent them from driving... because we all know where that slippery slope of allowing women to drive will lead you.....

They can still hide it.

Sadly it seems that isolated communities where men and women aren't allowed to freely interact are often those that inflict the worse abuse on its members.

My life would really suck if I had to live with only women and rarely got to interact with men. To me it's normal that society be mixed. And just like there are bad men there are bad women. And just like there are bad Christians, there are bad Muslims and bad Jews.. just to harp on the "big 3".

While the Catholic church is mostly in the news about it's pedophile priests of the past, and Islam ends up in headlines because of it's fundamentalist "taliban" style members, and the whole fear of Islam since 9/11 in the west [it was communism that used to scare people 60 years ago], but how often do fundamentalist Jews end up on the front page of a news paper here ? Which brings me to this article.

You can watch the polar bears, how cool is that?

You can watch polar bears frolic in the snow or wander around the arctic on the polar bear cams.  

Something to try

Someone in the ADHD group I follow was talking about a millet flat bread, that got me excited as it sounds gluten free. I found a site with an easy to follow recipe. Will be experimenting with this on the week-end.

I have made before some rosemary socca, an Italian chickpea flour flat bread and it was delicious.  Next time I make socca, I want to make it with Zaatar Halabi. 

Need swift kick in ass

Despite being in bed and asleep around 9ish last night, and awake at 5 this morning, I'm still lacking all energy and enthusiasm. What I really need is a swift kick in the ass.

I tend to feel all sorry for myself when there is s much worse then me out there. I'm just a whiner with no excuses. Gotta love ADHD you can make an excuse literally for anything.

I have a job, I have my home, my health, my kids are visiting at Christmas. I get to spend time alone when I need it, so what the fuck do I have to be depressed or demotivated about?

Yes I got some cooking done yesterday. I made Quinoa taboule, batata hara and some hummus balila, but still need to add roasted pine nuts to that. I couldn't believe that I was all out of pine nuts. And I went to 3 different grocery stores yesterday morning. But I didn't think I was out of pine nuts. Went to IGA to get some when I realized I was out and they don't carry pine nuts. So bulk barn it is at lunch today. Need my pine nuts. It's not hummus balila without the pine nuts.

Yay me!

I did manage to go outside for an hour and move stuff around the compost heap, and put stuff away in the shed. It's not all finished but I shouldn't do too much stuff I risk hurting my back.

Fridays are overrated.

I tend to hate the time leading to Christmas. I tend to get really depressed. This year I'm particularly depressed. I was going to go walk in the woods at 3:30pm today after work but I had an upset stomach at that point so I really didn't want to walk in the woods.

I know walking daily will make me feel better but I'd need someone to drag me out there. Yet today I really wanted to go walk alone. I really enjoyed walking alone late winter, early spring through Bois de Liesse. I'd go in mid afternoon and walk 20 minutes most days, and often 1 hour on Fridays.

Next week I really have to push myself to go walk each afternoon and help myself get out of this mood. I know I hate this time of the year. Probably because I tend to spend too much time indoors.

Besides  I want to start cooking for my Yule dinner. Have to pick up some pork hocks and some ground pork meat. Also was told about someone who sells Bison meat, that is just fed grass, that it grazes in the field.  I need to get me some stewing bison.

I was asleep by 7:30PM last night, a Friday night. How sad is that?  I thought I'd be up at midnight, but somehow, despite waking up several times to go to the bathroom, I managed to doze in and out of sleep until about 5 this morning.

Yep have often been labelled all sorts of things

I've also been told that my feelings weren't relevant, or that they were misplaced. Interesting blog entry here. 

I have been known to say that the women who chase after me are crazy, and I don't mean it in the same way as in the above article. The ones that I've had problems with have had bi-polar disorder and borderline personality disorder. 

Quebec's proposed charter

Is Quebec going to rename most of it's towns, villages and cities? Especially ones that have religious connotations? I mean places like L"assomption, L'epiphanie,  and any Saint-Something are clearly religious names, and there should be no ostentatious religious symbols.

How about streets? I mean what's with Ste-Catherine street? Should be renamed, just "Catherine street", this saint, this saint that crap has to be removed too if you want to make everything secular.  Few places in the world have as many places named after Saints, then Quebec. Arguing that it's traditional is bullshit. Traditional is the native names.

In town leading to her birthday

One of my closest friends has been visiting since Friday night. She came into Montreal to celebrate her birthday with her friends because in New Brunswick where she lives she hardly knows a soul.

We've been hanging out and being silly. Always fun to hang out. Last night she was feeling a little festive at Old Navy :)

She's also waiting for the company we both worked for and I still work for, to call her back and re-hire her. Our boss wants to but needs higher up approval and right now it's not happening. In fact I heard there were layoffs this past week so they won't hire her anytime soon. Which sucks she was really hoping to leave NB for good shortly.

For the record I didn't end up buying a thing at the Mall yesterday. But had a lot of fun looking at stuff.

Not sure how I feel about my Forever XXI bag.

If you look closely at the bottom of the Forever XX1 there is John 3.16 printed. They would not be the first who do this. Not sure how I feel about the practice.

Also not sure how that would fit with Quebec charter.... Something to think about.

What's happened to me????

Normally if alone and having decided to have potatoes and cauliflower for dinner, it would be really simple. The cauliflower would be put in a corning ware, slathered in Italian dressing and nuked from 5-8 minutes. The potatoes would have been forked and put in a corning ware and nuked for a few minutes as well. Voila dinner.

No... Tonight I took the time and made grilled cauliflower in the oven and batata harra [Lebanese spicy potatoes]. Was very yummy.

Tidbits for THursday.

I'm finally feel a bit better. Will probably not be on muscle relaxants today. My back isn't twinging this morning. But I'm sure by 2pm it will be. I was at work yesterday, though not particularly productive. However it was good that I went, as I ended up having 4 interviews that morning and my partner in crime didn't come in the morning, as he was meeting a new pediatrician for his son.  So I did the interviews alone. Most of them this time around I did alone. I liked 2 out of the 4 I saw yesterday a lot and that sucks because I only have 1 position left opened.  However I cannot complain, this is the most students that have applied for a winter internship.

Interestingly, I've noticed we get more students that were originally living in France. They either recently migrated and redoing their engineering degree, or alternatively studying in both France and Quebec depending on the year.   I've actually had one in an interview say to us because we started the conversation in English, that "aren't we in Quebec, shouldn't we speak French?".  Yeah. That didn't impress anyone. He was very full of himself. And where his comment shot him in the foot, is that I was called later and asked if this student spoke any English. When I mentioned his comment, he didn't get offered a job someone was considering him for, but hadn't checked his English skills.

I can't believe Montreal has bought an armoured car? To what end? To use against a few protesting students?  I know Montrealers like to protest but seriously, an armoured car?  Our tax dollars at work.

Targeted ads

They might think targeted ads work, but I don't see them working with people like me.

I happened to go to the Bushtakah website about 2 months ago to check something out. Now every single webpage I go to that has ads shows me a Bushtukah ad, almost all the time.   Thing is, their website has nothing I want to buy and I can guarantee you that I will never go to their website again, especially after seeing it EVERY FUCKING DAY for the past 2 months as a google ad.

I don't get to see ads of clothing stores as often as the Bushtukah ad.  I can go to Old Navy, Maison Simons, Smart Set, Suzy Shier,  H&M, Forever 21, American Eagle Outfitters, and a few other sites to check out dresses and never do their ads spam me as much or much at all.

Let me tell you I buy clothes far more often then I buy "cycling gear" which is Bushtukah's main business. I buy the occasional camping gear when I pass through Ottawa, but their website sucks.

Oh and I researched an MP3 player a month ago, and for the next couple of weeks I kept seeing the one I bought as an ad - how helpful is that in making a sale?  I already bought it and am using it. Showing it to me every day won't make me go out and buy 20 more.

Good luck with the targeted ads. And Bushtukah, enjoy wasting cash on those targeted ads.

Lopsided and tender

I made a point of not moving much last night. Moving was the difficulty so staying put was easy.  I still woke up this morning in pain and now it's primarily on my right side. To the point when I stand I'm completely lopsided.

Decided to stay home today. The effort required to move in that much pain is exhausting, I didn't sleep much the past few nights due to the pain, so going to try getting some sleep.

Last week or two weeks ago, I joined TWOO, which seems to have merged with Netlog, which used to have a name so close to Facebook that I originally mistook it for Facebook back in 2007. Not sure how much I like TWOO especially since using my hotmail to login , it took my over 200 contacts in hotmail and messaged each and every one of them. Without my permission. It says it asks. BULLSHIT.

There are people I've emailed with hotmail I would NEVER want to connect with ever. People I blocked even! I know it sent invites to everyone because it sent invites to my other email addresses. Like how would I benefit inviting MYSELF to connect?  What would be the point of connecting myself with my work email????

Like a lot of other companies and institutions and sites, they get access to an email address and they start spamming the person. They say you can option out, but often when you 'option out' it's like they confirm your email address and spam you more.