More books in the mail!

I got another book in the mail!!!

This time I knew who it was from though - my good friend V. from New Zealand. She was visiting a couple weeks ago and was reading an interesting book by a NZ author. So she sent it to me! It's next up on my list.

Last week I was getting close to finishing Guns,Germs and Steel (which is really good by the way) and I didn't have anything lined up afterwards. The reason for this was that I was waiting for a book from the library to come up on a hold and it wasn't happening.


We were over at a friend's house for dinner last week and I mentioned that I wasn't reading anything at that moment and suddenly I found myself with 5 books stacked in front of me to take home. I've already finished one of them (Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Gilbert) and I'm starting the next one tonight.

I've found myself needing to get away from emotionally-heavy-novels lately which is why I've been reading non-fiction. I'll work my way back into my usual reading material eventually. For now, the books from the book sale are on hold.

Stuff on my Ipod V

It's that time again, cause I know you're just dying to know. Here are links to my other four Ipod posts.
I
II
III
IV

Stars - The Five Ghosts

I've talked to a couple people who aren't totally impressed with this album, but I like it more than their old stuff. It's edgier, but as Rawbean says it's likely because they added one more synthesizer.

New Young Pony Club - The Optimist

Holy crap is this album ever good. As is the norm for me, it took 2-3 listens before I realized it. I love Chaos and We Want To the most so far.

Faded Paper Figures - New Medium

These guys are one of my favourite bands and their new album delivers. Although there are a couple moments of "Why am I listening to video game music?" overall it's a great purchase. Small Talk is the best example of this, but it mellows out after a minute or so. My favourite song is When the Book Ends.

Nneka - Concrete Jungle

And now for something completely different! My workmate D suggested this, almost forced it down my throat actually and am I glad she did. The song Walking gets in your head and won't leave and you won't complain about it either.

Holy Random

So.....gooood....I've got nothin' so I'm going to do a random post about stuff we've been up to.

We went to Qualicum Beach on the weekend for the day. Remember the post about the road trip with Chip to Parksville? Well, this was about a 10 minute drive further north than that.

The beaches there are amazing. We will go back another time but earlier in the day and take advantage of the low tides.

On the way back we took the 'shortcut ferry' to Brentwood Bay. Here is a shot of the ferry.

The weather has been amazing, so my beach bag has gotten some use! This was taken a few weekends ago on Willows Beach.

There is a little film festival here called The Free B Film Festival. The Victoria Film Festival sets up a big screen in the park and you can take your blankets and popcorn and go lay in the park and watch movies. We went last weekend and saw the original War of the Worlds. I love stuff like this.

I bought these earrings off Etsy a few weeks ago, I love them.

Kahlua

I'm on a sugar-kicking spree right now with Dana and it's actually going really well. We aren't going cold turkey which is just insanity. We're eliminating sugar gradually, kind of like this: one day we are allowed a small 'sugar item' (like a glass of juice or a latte with sugar), the next day we can have one dessert (like cheesecake) and the third day is NO sugar. Repeat.

So what do we decide to do on the first weekend of the no sugar challenge?

Make home made Kahlua!


I've done this before (it's super easy), and.....screwed it up. I think I added the vodka first and the entire mixture turned into this giant sugary ball. I was freaking out but eventually it worked out....I think.

So this time Brad insisted that he be the captain and I was the assistant. Here is the recipe:

1 26oz. bottle vodka
6 tbsp. instant coffee
6 tbsp. vanilla
2 tsp. glycerin*
2 cups water
3 3/4 cups white sugar
In a large pot, boil the water and sugar together for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and add (in this order) instant coffee dissolved in 1/4 cup of boiling water, vanilla, glycerin and vodka. Let cool and funnel into bottles.

And here is what you end up with:

Almost two 26 ounce bottles of Kahlua! Check the sugar content though - 3 3/4 cups?!


*You can get this at the pharmacy. It says 'for external use only' on our bottle but the pharmacist told us that if our recipe is from Europe they are way more relaxed over there than we are in North America so just use it.

The Perseids

For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I'm a super nerd. One of my biggest passions is astronomy. I have star charts, lots of astronomy books - even an atlas. I've taken a couple classes, in Vancouver I was a member of RASC....the list goes on.

So every year there is a meteor shower in August called the Perseid Meteor Shower. This year it peaked on Thursday night/Friday morning which meant that we missed the best of it. But you can still see meteors a couple nights before and after the peak.

I did not take this picture.
Image copyright Rick Scott & Joe Orman

So last night we got up at 3:00am and drove to a close by "dark" spot. If we were smart we would have brought lawn chairs, but we aren't so we ended up draping ourselves all over the car.

It was a beautiful, warm, moonless night so it was perfect! I only saw about 4 or five meteors and Brad saw about the same, but every one that I saw, he didn't and vice versa.

Compare this to the Leonid Meteor Shower that we watched in 2001 when it peaked. There were hundreds of meteors every hour, that was fantastic!

So last night, the first meteor that we both saw, well that was it! "Let's go home to bed! Woo hoo!!" So typical.

Anonymous Package

On Thursday I got an anonymous package in the mail!

All that was in it was the book - which is super crazy and awesome! There are also several things that are intriguing about this.

The address seems to have been done with some kind of stencil or maybe a stamp. It was smudged and copied again in black pen. The stencil even looks like a creepy font.

This is the weirdest thing: the package came from Coombs, BC and is dated Tuesday August 3rd. Coombs is a little town about a 2 hour drive north of here. I don't know anyone living anywhere near there or anyone who has been up there lately.

So my immediate suspect was Brad. I thanked him for the book and asked him why and how he sent it. He denied it and was pretty adamant about it. So I started to go through my list of buddies who could have done it.

My next suspect is C. - the friend who took us sailing. But he lives on the mainland and I watched him walk into the ferry terminal on Monday. My third suspect is Rawbean, but she volunteered to swear on Lucy that it wasn't her. I believe her.

I've eliminated everyone on my list! It MUST have been Brad. He's a really bad liar, whenever I ask him about it he smiles and laughs. Finally I asked him to swear on Ziggy and he hesitated.

He's so adamant that it wasn't him and was screaming it as loud as he could into his pillow. Then he completely lost his mind and resorted to this:

He seriously thinks I've done it to myself to torture him.

Sailing!

We went sailing last weekend! My good friend C. invited us.

We started out early on Saturday morning and bought all the food we would need for two days....uh...$190 worth? One bag of cookies each? A $12 dollar block of cheese? (Actually I've always wanted to buy one those...)

Once we set out the waves were "big" and it was foggy and I got scared. I've been on this boat a bunch of times but we've never had much wind so this was new. I think I asked about 83 questions in 3 minutes
"What does that thingie do?"
"What happens if that boat crashes into us?"
"Is it normal for the boat to tip this far?"
"How is that mast bolted down?"

The water smoothed out and we decided that rather than head towards our destination (which was super far away) we should cut our trip short and go to one of my favourite places - Portland Island.

We anchored and we had lunch on the boat, went for a walk, slept and read on the boat and ended our first day with a round of Killer Bunnies. Perfect.

Brad and I camped on the island, C. slept on the boat. This meant that when we finished dinner and games Brad and I had to walk back to the tent. With flashlights. In the dark.

Yeah, I get the heebies. I get them bad. Even in my own house. And we're on an island in the middle of nowhere and it's seriously DARK.

Once we found our way back to the tent we wanted to use the outhouse. Ummm.....have you seen that episode of X-Files with the monster that ends up in the outhouse!? It's damaged me for life. So Brad went first! While he was in there I was left outside of the outhouse with my flashlight. Alone.

So I stood there trying to shine the flashlight in every single direction at once, sure that a werewolf was going to jump out at me any second.

Click.

The flashlight went out. Seriously.

It was just like a horror movie. So instead of screaming and waking up the other campers I waited for the UFO beam to blast down and beam me up. Or the werewolf to jump out and get me.

****

The next day we did the same stuff - hiking, beaches, lunches, Crib and lots and lots of visiting. That night we walked back to our tent just before it got dark so we could avoid the midnight walk. We watched the sunset from inside our tent.

We were right on the water which made for some interesting sounds in the night. Seals make the most mental sounds and throw themselves around in the water all night. There were otters too. The only other monsters on the island were a pack of three baby raccoons that ransacked our neighbours campsite for food.We took the long way home and sailed most of the way. The ferry passed us at one point and I gained a whole new respect for them.

Those things are FAST, and put up with a lot of bullshit from small boaters. We made extra sure to get the hell out of the way, I was glad to hear that being run over by one is one of C's worst nightmares.