Happy National Punctuation Day!

Bad grammar is my pet peeve in books. Nothing throws me out of a story faster than a badly placed comma. Nit-picky I know, but when the flow of language is interrupted I get cranky.

So Happy National Punctuation Day, everyone!

If the oldsters can do it...

I still want a Wii. It's not at the top of my list, but every once in a while I see an article like this and remember how much I want one.

Holiday

Happy New Year, y'all!

Edward Gorey's "Trouble with Tribbles"

Click on the picture and then scroll down a bit to see this amazing Edward Gorey adaptation of the classic Star Trek episode.

RIP Madeleine L'Engle

It's been flying around the internet that Madeleine L'Engle (author of "A Wrinkle in Time" among many others) died last night at the age of 88.

I am sad.

Yay!

Computer all fixed! I'm a genius!

Now I'm toying with idea of installing Linux, just because.

The (not-so-perfect) end to the weekend

Yesterday after coming back from Boston I decided to fix my computer. It had been running slowly and randomly giving me the blue screen of death for the past few months, and I decided that a complete reformat and reinstall was the way to go. More fool I.

I backed everything up and reformatted the partition, and then reinstalled Windows XP. After a few hours of various installation stuff, I was prompted to log in. Once logged in the screen went blue. Not the blue screen of death, but a lovely robin's egg blue background with nothing on the desktop. I had a mouse pointer but nothing to point to. The mouse buttons did not work. CTRL-ALT-DEL did work so I was able to access the task manager, but that didn't help me any.

I'm going to try to reinstall the reinstall tonight, but I don't have high hopes. This kickstarted my decision to purchase a new computer, but it will be two weeks before getting it.

If anyone has mad computer skillz and can help me out, please let me know.

And heck, if anyone has a spare laptop I can borrow so I won't be computerless for two weeks, that would be much appreciated as well!

Lesson learned: Don't mess around with the computer - I'm not smart enough for it.

Food equivalents

It seems to have been a stress filled weekend for some (I'm very happy you're still alive, Sebethis), so here's something to make everyone happy - at least the everyones that read romance. Enjoy:

If Romance Writers were Food

Flowcharts

The good folks at BoingBoing have been having a grand time posting funny flowcharts over the past few days. They make me giggle, so I'm passing the first few on to you:

Tactical usage of the phrase "Oh, snap"


Fuck-up flowchart

Oh, and in happy news, Superfresh now stocks Total Greek Tzatziki. Yummy!

Book of the week

I was given a prepub of a new book today called Free For All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library. It's always fun (and ego-stroking) to read books about your own profession.



Like any public service profession, librarians and library assistants deal with the weird, the smelly, the surly, and the deranged on a daily basis (along with the pleasant, the enthusiastic, the polite, and the people with good hygiene). Guess which make for better stories...

Chocolate update

I have tried the chocolate bacon bar and it is a revelation. Who knew chocolate and bacon went so well together!? It's a milk chocolate with bacon crumbs in it, as well as salt. You definitely taste the bacon, and the saltiness compliments the chocolate very nicely. I feel like I should have been revolted by everything about the chocolate bar, but I actually really liked it and it would probably be dangerous to leave me alone with it.

Friends and enablers

I have such nice friends who feed my unhealthy cravings when I ask them to. Sebethis just got back from Chicago and before she went she showed me the website of a chocolate place she was going to visit - Vosges. She was going for the bacon chocolate bar. I wanted to try the curry and coconut bar (evidently I'm not as adventurous as she is). She came back yesterday with chocolate in hand! I haven't tried the bacon bar yet, but she says it's delicious. I also haven't tried my chocolate yet as I only have one, it's fairly small, and I want to make it last. But I am now a proud owner of a Naga Bar - milk chocolate with coconut and sweet curry.



And no, I'm not sharing.

Dancing man

I have this friend, and she has this fiance, and when he feels the music, he dances. Until now I have been unable to film the dancing man in his natural habitat, but this weekend that all changed. Enjoy this (low-res, fairly dark) video:

In honour of Edmonton

Here's a snarky and slightly bitter (yet funny) search for a new Edmonton slogan, since "City of Champions" seems rather obsolete to some:

New Edmonton slogan

Leaving on a jet plane...

...hopefully it will take less time to get back then it did to get to Edmonton.

It's been a fabulous week back home, almost too full of running around and visiting with friends - I did not really sleep in once my whole holiday. I'm looking forward to my next full day off with no obligations so I can nap.

Highlights and one lowlight:

1. My flight from Philly was canceled, so they rerouted me through Cleveland and then Minneapolis. Then that first flight got delayed and I missed my connection to MPS so I go shunted back to Toronto from Cleveland and then across to Edmonton. My zigzag route across the continent ended up in 14 hours of travel time instead of 8 1/2. I was one sleepy Dena by the time that was over. But the day ended with Taste of Edmonton with the Family, so it was a happy ending

2. Discovering that Joe from The Real Canadian Superstore is indeed a great clothing line, and pretty inexpensive too

3. Birthday dinner with the fam and finally meeting the sister's very lovely boyfriend

4. Hanging out on campus with old friends and very old friends

5. Thanks to the power of Facebook, meeting up with high school friends I haven't seen since I graduated

6. Giving my dad a new obsession - digital camera shopping!

7. Hairspray - can't stop the beat!

8. Playing with babies all day on Wednesday - thank you to my friends for producing such adorable offspring

9. Catching up with the drama group and finding out what they REALLY think about the new Fringe ticketing system (and getting a list of book recommendations for when I get home)

10. Playing Guitar Hero (I suck) and hanging with the Ninja

11. Planning my New Zealand trip!

12. Quality time with the shvester, dad, and mom, individually

13. The Downtown Farmer's Market and the Whimsical Cupcake stand

14. Heritage Festival!!

Thank you Mom and Dad for my birthday trip home!!

Birthday Post

Yesterday was my birthday, so I did appropriately birthday-like things even though I did have to go to work. At lunch Jen and I tried a Venezuelan restaurant called Sazon, which was really good once someone actually came to take our order. We both had deep fried everything, which is just by nature delicious.

After work we hung around Reading Terminal Market until dinner time and I bought some marzipan for my sister (who evidently believes that marzipan only comes from one specific store in the world which happens to be in Philly).

Then we went to Vietnam Palace for our birthday dinner (Jen's birthday was on the 24th) with a bunch of friends and had the ever delicious "Seven Courses of Beef" appetizer and a huge amount food and drink (and an avocado milkshake). We finished everything off with an uber-delicious red velvet cake with sour cream frosting from Brown Betty compliments of Micaela and Liz and Sally.



Then it was time to go home and chat on the phone with those people who remembered to make the birthday phone call. That list does not include my parents, however. They either figured that since I'm coming to Edmonton tomorrow they will say Happy Birthday then, or just plain forgot. They did not call my sister on her birthday either. I had to call them and chastise them for not calling. Bad parents, no cookie!

Tomorrow I take off super early and fly home for my annual food festival holiday - hope to see many of you while I'm there!

Cannon in action

Here's a brief video clip of the Pirate Duck Book Cannon in action.

Booktruck bitterness

We wuz robbed!

Last night was the big library block party/Bling my Booktruck contest. Our little band of teammates led by sebethis and captained by Jim, and ably assisted by me and Grimmgirl, made the most kick-ass booktruck evah! We spun on the ubiquitous sight of the "Ride the Ducks" truck/boats that you see all over eastern Center City:



We figured that since sebethis likes pirates and Jim wanted to build a big gun, we were going to make a Pirate Duck with a cannon that shot books. Behold the Pirate Duck in all her glory:





You can't really make it out because of the reflective lettering, but the cannon reads "books to go" on the side. There was a lot of work put into the pirate duck - sebethis built a whole frame out of PVC and actually screwed it into the cart - we all inhaled more than out fair share of black spraypaint, and the cannon, which is a modified slingshot, actually works most of the time.

And we didn't win anything! And objectively (in my subjective opinion), we rocked the competition! I've been told that we didn't win because it took a few tries for the cannon to work in front of the judges. Grrr! I am not a happy pirate today.

Pu Pu Platter for Two

I forgot to mention this in my previous Boston post, but it's so hilarious it deserves it's own post. We were looking for a place to eat Friday night in Dedham, where neither of us really knew anywhere to go (easy for me, since I know nothing about any Boston suburbs). The plan ended up being to go to a restaurant where they cook the meal in front of you and were told that it was called Tahiti. Well, it's not. We went there and immediately walked into a time warp - Tahiti is the Chinese restaurant that time forgot - it looks like something that the Cleavers would go to if they had a Chinese restaurant in their lily-white town. The waiters were in bowties and the menu included items like "strange flavored chicken" and special cocktails in tiki cups. The decor was 50's wood-paneled basement meets diner. The restaurant was pretty empty and the bar was full of suburbanites drinking cheap drinks and playing Keno (I played my first game). We got something that evidently is a staple at Boston Chinese restaurants but what I had never heard of - the Pu Pu Platter for Two.



Deep fried almost everything! Chicken balls, chicken wings, egg rolls, spareribs, and beef teriyaki (it's already eaten in the picture - you can see the sticks they were on). I almost couldn't eat as I was giggling so much.

Boston, the Edmonton of the East

I have to say that while I was in Boston (and suburbs) this weekend, I was struck by how much I felt it was like walking around Edmonton.

The streets were clean (especially relative to Philly)

It's a university city, so walking around some of the neighborhoods felt just like walking around Old Strathcona - Harvard Square has a bit of a Whyte Ave feel.

The houses actually have yards and aren't all connected to each other

Walking around the financial district on a Sunday is like walking through downtown Edmonton on an evening or Sunday - dead.

The have a really nice park right in the middle of the city called Boston Common where throngs of people congregate to suntan, hang out, play in the playground and fountain. It has a little lake in it where you can take boat rides and has many buskers (including a bagpiper). It reminded me a bit of Hawrelak Park during a festival, but with more benches and paths and trees.



Faneuil Hall is like Street Performer's Central. It's the old city market turned into a big food court with lots of stalls selling stuff all around it. And even more street performers. We saw breakdancers, escape artists, hula hoop/yoyo/unicycle performers, and even more elaborate living statues.