Trapped

Have you ever felt stuck? Trapped?

Have you ever met someone and thought they were a certain way....then found out later they are the opposite of what you thought?

Titan

I read a book recently that kind of destroyed me.

I've been diving into a new genre that I hadn't considered before - which is surprising considering my love of physics and astronomy.

From what I can tell science fiction comes in two flavours - hard and soft. I'm not into soft sci-fi but it seems like it dominates the genre. So it's hard to find good hard science fiction. I found a book that looked like a perfect hard sci-fi read - Titan by Stephen Baxter.

Basically the plot is a few people go on a voyage to Titan, knowing that they won't return to Earth.  The majority of the book takes place around 2006 so the technology is current, which is why they won't be coming back.

Maybe the synopsis was misleading? Maybe it oversold the 'interesting adventure' I was waiting for? It also probably didn't help that I imagined something like the movie 2010. I also wasn't counting on all the back stories of what was happening on earth - which was completely ridiculous by the way.

He spent the first 400 pages just getting them into the spaceship on their way to Titan. After that, they land and walk around in the slush for a while and then....they die. The last 40 pages was so bizarre I'm not even sure what to make of it.

Basically I read 700 pages waiting for the "exciting thing that was going to happen". This book read like a space shuttle owner's manual. This guy knows his stuff - technically. But as a writer - forget it. There were paragraphs that were just lists of biochemicals?! Sometimes he spent entire pages describing how some part of a space shuttle was repaired.

Ugh. 

He didn't even begin to delve into how the astronauts were dealing with leaving earth.* I realize this isn't a novel but come on.

I've had a couple other colossal fails with this genre....future post. 


* I was waiting for someone....anyone to say they just wanted to see something green. Or they would kill for a glass of wine.**
** I sure as hell needed something alcoholic to numb the pain after reading this book.

Ardbeg and Cherry Garcia

Last weekend Christielli was in Vancouver! She got on the ferry with Rawbean and Becca T for a visit to Victoria. I was so excited. Spending time with a bunch of amazing women doesn't happen for me very often so it was a day to savour.

We had brunch, did some shopping and drinks and dinner later. Lots of chatting, catching up and generally enjoying hanging out together. It was fantastic, I'm so glad they all went out of their way.*

Rawbean gave me a belated birthday present and it was unbelievable. I honestly never thought I'd own one of these.....

Anyone who spends this much money on something they know I love and worship is top notch. She prefaced it with 'it's been a tough year and it's a milestone birthday'.

This is true, it's been a crappy year.

Last week was horrrible too. On one of the worst days I cracked the bottle open after work. Wow. When you have one of the best things ever at your fingertips all your troubles melt away.

On another note, when your husband says "You should go look in the freezer behind the ice cubes" you should be excited. I wasn't disappointed. My favourite ice cream!

I'm ashamed to say he hid it because if I actually knew it was there I likely would have eaten it all in one sitting. 

I'm hoping for a better week ahead. I'm filling my weekend with good books** and lots of nerdy science videos to ease the pain of last week.


*Even though it poured rain the entire time. Screw you weather!
**More on this later

Chocolate Tart Fail

Et tu, Chatelaine?

Chocolate ganache and caramel pie?! Hell yes! Seriously, what could go wrong?

There were three steps to this recipe and failure at every step.

Step 1 - make the crust. The recipe said it would come into a ball. Uh - not even close, the dough was powdery and dry. I crammed it into the pan anyway and hoped for the best, maybe it was a small oversight in the description....

Step 2 - make the caramel. I've never made caramel before, and I won't lie - I was intimidated. It said to boil until it turned a "light amber" colour.  I panicked and put the cream in too early. Now it looks like someone threw up in my pie crust.

I'll admit the caramel was my mistake.

Step 3 - make the chocolate ganache. This was the easiest step and the biggest fail. I think there was way too much cream in there because it wouldn't harden. After being in the fridge overnight it still has the consistency of maple syrup.

So by the time we cut into it - chocolate tsunami.
 

I've never had a recipe fail this bad with Chatelaine?!

Calculus

Don't run away screaming.

So you know I totally dig physics and astronomy. I'm not sure if you know this - but I suck at math. All I had to do is search on my blog for that phrase and I got three posts.

It likely has something to do with the fact that the choir teacher ended up teaching my beginning algebra class in high school. She tried her best, but she wasn't exactly into letting us know why we did things, just the tricks and secrets to remember.

So a couple weeks ago Brad dug out his old calculus text book.* We are both really interested so we decided to sit down and try the first chapter. We got through about 1/4 of the chapter in each session and our brains were tired.

Mine was overstimulated because I have lots of catching up to do, including trying to grasp basic algebra**. Brad's was overworked because a) he was remembering everything from his university classes and b) he had to teach me the basics.

One night during all this I went to bed and could not sleep all night. Every time I fell asleep I started trying to use calculus to figure out what was going to happen in the novel I was reading.

We've taken a break, but we'll get back to it soon. This is yet another example of stuff to do without cable!


* Yes, he still has it.
** I actually took a calculus class in tech school.

Book Review #21

I've just gone through a reading FAIL and need a break from a certain genre.* It's so bad that I'm now running to a book I know will be good** to alleviate the pain and make reading enjoyable again.

This has brought on another book review in the hope that I can reflect on some past good reads. 

Let's see what happens.

Annabel - Kathleen Winter

I had read this before Canada Reads last year so had reason to yell at the debates when they got interesting. This was a good book overall, but there is a big part of the story that doesn't make sense - because it's impossible and would never happen?! I don't think this had a chance when up against The Orenda, but it was a good contender.

The City and The City - China Mieville

My old boss was a good source for book recommendations and this one delivered. In fact he gave me this book! Super cool "parallel universe" concept combined with a bit of a cop chase/mystery. If you can get past the author's sometimes bizarre use of language, I'd definitely recommend reading this.

Half Blood Blues - Esi Edugyan
 

This was also a contender for last year's Canada Reads and I really enjoyed it. The writing is amazing, the history of jazz in Nazi Germany was so interesting. The characters were well developed and I could almost hear the music when I read it. Edugyan deserves the recognition she got with this book.

Hellgoing - Lynn Coady

I don't normally go for short stories but this one was getting a lot of attention at the time and went on sale on Kobo. It didn't do much for me, I read it and moved on. This is why I normally avoid short stories. I think it's me?

Defending Jacob - William Landay

Ugh. Seriously? You have a screwed up kid, then another kid is killed and you find incriminating evidence in your kid's room. So obviously you can't believe he would do anything so horrible so you completely deny his guilt. And you're a prosecutor.

Spare me.

The Kitchen God's Wife - Amy Tan

Really good read and and I love the perspective of a Chinese immigrant living in America. She tells the story well and develops her characters deeply. I'll read her again and would recommend this book for sure.

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

Oh man...what an incredible book. The effort that went into writing this book is worth recognition. The writing is fantastic, great characters and a fascinating setting. I would highly recommend and will likely read it again in the future.


* I'm looking at you Science Fiction.
** Kate Morton here I come!

Milestone

I had one of those "milestone" birthdays this year.

We decided to do something special to celebrate. We had a few ideas - San Francisco, a road trip to Portland or Maui.

I decided to ditch those ideas in favour of renting a waterfront cabin on Galiano Island for a week.

The cabin we rented was great. It was the perfect size for us, right on the ocean and private. It had a wood stove too which meant tons of quality reading time.

We spent the rest of the time going on beautiful hikes and visiting beaches. So relaxing, it really took the edge off.

On my birthday, Brad made me breakfast. Then we decided to stay in because the weather was rainy. Suited me just fine. We went to a really nice restaurant for dinner and they had creme brulee so my night was complete.

I got great gifts too including a membership to the RASC. Brad took a photo of me at the moment when I realized that's what he had given me - it's the nerdiest photo ever and won't be showing up on the internet any time soon.

We found a new/used bookstore on Galiano too! Brad offered me any new book she had in her store and she had the one I wanted the most - The Martian. It's really rare for me to buy new books so I felt like a kid in a candy store.

We also found an old Robert A. Heinlein with a super cheesy cover. I'm at the point where I won't buy a new classic sci-fi book because the modern covers are boring.

My Mom also gave me a Chapters gift card so I bought more new books! I've had my eye on Ready Player One forever. It comes highly, highly recommended by good buddies so I'm stoked.

Jaw Surgery - Six Month Update

Remember when I had double jaw surgery?

Do you realize that was almost six months ago?! Time flies when you're wired shut, lose feeling in half your tongue and almost all of your face, take six weeks off work and have to learn to eat and talk again.

I know you won't believe this, but I'm not over it yet. Obviously it's not as intense, but there are lots of residual effects that I'm still working through.

I haven't had my BLT, cheeseburger or otherwise fancy sandwich yet. I can only open my mouth 25mm wide right now. (That's 1mm more than I could before surgery.) My jaw muscles are also really weak so chewing hard things like steak or almonds is really tiring, if not impossible.

I started physiotherapy to deal with this. The problem is that my muscles haven't opened wider than this in six years. They don't know what to do or how to move anymore. So I'm working on opening wider and strengthening the muscles.

My poor tongue is still numb. I'm not worried because it normally takes forever to get feeling back when stuff like this happens. It's a little better than before but the improvements are so gradual it's hard to even measure it.

I have feeling back everywhere on my face but my chin is still tingly and partially numb. I would say I have 75% of the feeling back there. I have most of the feeling back inside my mouth but my upper and lower gums are still pretty numb. Upper palette and inside of my cheeks are hit and miss.

My lisp is almost totally gone. Sometimes I find myself saying certain words strangely but overall people tell me they don't notice anything wrong at all. Now I'm self conscious about my 's' sounds because I'm not used to making them!

I went for high tea at The Empress with my mom last year and I had a really hard time with these smoked salmon sandwiches. This year was a different story - look at that bite mark!!*

My orthodontist promised that the braces will come off "this year". I hope that doesn't mean December 31, 2015 but only time will tell.


*If anyone is reading this who struggles with an open bite, I know you will appreciate these photos.

A Blazer and a T-Shirt

I've been looking for the perfect blazer for a while now. I finally found it on the weekend.

It had to be more casual than professional (check), not too complicated with seams, fabric and fancy buttons (check) and most of all it had to have pretty fabric that shows when you roll the arms up. (Check!)

Here is my new favourite outfit:

Blazer. Funky t-shirt. Skinny jeans. Chucks. If I had my way, I'd dress like this every day but I only have one cool t-shirt so far.

Have you seen the documentary about the Helvetica font? It's really worth watching.

I saw a great video the other day about how Comic Sans is the worst font of all time. During the video he flashed this image:

He only showed it for about 10 seconds, but I went a little mental. Standing up, pointing madly at the screen and yelling "I must have that t-shirt!"

So I found it and bought it in black. I can't wait to wear it. It's so simple, not a lot of people will understand it. It's the perfect t-shirt!

Creepy Hiking

My parents were here for the month of January and we had the best time ever!!

This year they felt like they had seen enough of downtown Victoria and wanted to get out to do more hikes and beaches. So we took them out to some of our favourite places.

Remember the time(s) I was afraid of werewolves? Or the time my flashlight went out? Or the other time..... yeah I think you get the idea.

I forgot what hiking with my dad is like.

There isn't much that will hold him back from a good scare. The forest is a playground for him - he hides under bridges. And waits.....

Mom and I end up being perfect targets. Dad and Brad get ahead of us and Mom and I end up visiting, looking at plants and trees. In other words - totally distracted. Dad hid in the trees and growled at us as we walked by.

This seriously happened.

And I almost peed my pants.

It's ridiculous too because Mom and I end up screaming and bouncing off each other to get away. If it was a real bear we would have no chance.

The second time, he actually ran up behind us and grabbed us. I haven't screamed that loud since I was six.

Perfect Targets

On our last hike, they got ahead of us again and we couldn't see them. Mom and I literally couldn't move because we thought for sure he was going to jump out at us any moment. We just stood there and yelled "This isn't funny. Come out now, we're aware of you."

They were actually just innocently ahead of us.