How I Met Homer and Bart Simpson in Real Life

For my thirteenth birthday, I went on a cruise with one of my childhood friends and her mother. One morning as we were heading to the elevator, I witnessed an exchange between an overweight, balding man in jeans and a white t-shirt and his blond son wearing a t-shirt and shorts. They might have been blue and orange, but I guess I can forgive a ten-year-old boy for not wanting to wear the same outfit every day, especially on vacation, in case I do not remember correctly.

Anyway, they were having a conversation about how the son knew where all of the "old people" were staying. The dad asked him, "How do you know?"

He answered, "I knocked."

I was expecting the dad to teach him a lesson in manners, but instead, he replied, "Let me try!" and proceeded to knock on a complete stranger's door just to see if the occupants were old. That's where the story ends. I never saw Homer and Bart again. Not in real life, anyway.

Now for the updates, since it has been a while.

I am scheduled to have my overgrown adenoids removed in the middle of December (finally). I cannot wait. The thought of breathing and sleeping better is simply amazing. I don't even care that I will be sore on Christmas, I just want them out.

I ordered one of Modcloth's Stylish Surprises. I have been meaning to try it out for a while, but I keep missing it every time. Not this time! I am excited to see what I get. I paid $15 for either a skirt, top, dress or jacket in my size that will be worth $30-300. Based on some blog posts and Facebook posts I have read, it is usually worth it, although some people get something totally horrible like this snake dress. I may or may not post a picture of what I get when it comes.

And now to plow through the rest - still no job, coloured my hair brown and got a new hair cut, harvested some dwarf sunflower seeds yesterday to plant later, tea seeds rotted again and are being eaten by worms but I will try again indoors when the bugs are away for the winter, successfully grew ghost chilies in Canada on the first try, started knitting curtains for my window but one of the needles went missing and hasn't resurfaced so I can't finish it yet, had the best grapes of my life today, can't fall asleep before 3:00 anymore.

That's it for tonight. I leave you with this awesome article about welfare.

The text in the second/broken image meme reads, "Oh, you spent your welfare check on the new iPhone and now you're broke? Better ask Siri where you can get a job like the rest of us!"

Spewing out my thoughts before bed

The garden is planted again with the exception of some spinach seeds, but I'll see to that tomorrow. My mom and I are growing peas, yellow beans, Swiss chard, lettuce, red and yellow tomatoes, strawberries, some flowers, some spices, bell peppers, carrots, green onions, radishes, naga morich peppers, and bhut jolokia peppers. We're mostly growing the last two as a joke, but we might make an intense hot sauce. I'm growing dwarf sunflowers again and making another attempt at growing tea. I soaked the seeds longer and weighed them down so that they'd stay submerged and cracked the seed coats this time, so hopefully they won't rot before they germinate.

I am ever so delighted at the way Jon Stewart blasted Rob Ford tonight. What a useless mayor he has been! I'm not going to miss him when this is all over.

News article for those out of the loop: http://read.thestar.com/#!/article/5195ab2e7b1eac38c806a9de-rob-ford-in-crack-cocaine-video-scandal

There's a lesson to be learned from all of this: if the fourth-largest city in North America is stupid enough to elect you as their mayor, don't get caught on video smoking crack and don't get photographed with a drug dealer who will be murdered some time after the picture is taken.

When Psy performed at the finale of American Idol, my mom and I couldn't tell if what he was signing sounded like diarrhea, gonorrhea or pyorrhea, so I renamed the song Psyorrhea. I don't care to remember what the song was actually called. That basically sums up my opinion of Top 40.

Call me old-fashioned, but I must say I really don't understand this fashion trend where women buzz a patch out of the sides of their heads. It just looks so ugly. I understand it for people who have had brain surgery, but if I ever had brain surgery, I would feel compelled to shave my whole head to make it even because the patch would bother me so much. Maybe it's the greatest thing ever and my disdain for it can only be attributed to my irrational need for symmetry. Either you have that or you don't.

Bach did. Handel didn't.

I'm no Star Trek fan, but I have a hilarious idea for a parody of the last two movies where William Shatner plays Captain Kirk's future self warning everyone that they're in grave danger and nobody believes he's Captain Kirk from the future.

Those are my thoughts for the night. I'm sure I'll have plenty more to keep me from sleeping until ass o'clock.

Over the last few days...

I've been meaning to post more. I've been going back and forth between Waterloo and Whitby over the last week and a bit and I just haven't got around to it. I will predictably start with the garden.

The tea plant came in the day after I made my last post. All five seeds are planted and hopefully they will all have germinated by September. Apparently, it takes at least a month and I have to keep them moist. Not having to pay for tea in three years will be amazing. Speaking of tea, I forgot to take some oolong from home before I left...

I now have more strawberry fruits, blossoms and buds than I care to count. I won't even bother counting the tomatoes. The chamomile is also blooming like crazy and I have enough fresh herbs to last a while. The sunflowers are getting big, but the marigolds don't seem to want to germinate - apparently, putting plastic wrap over the pot will prevent the soil from drying out too much as long as you remove it once they sprout. Perhaps I'll try that.

As for other things, take a guess as to what this is.

If you guessed a blueberry and cherry Kuchen, you're right! I made one last night. Here is a picture of it from farther away. It looks much more appealing from that distance.

I didn't get a picture of it before it ended up half-eaten because it looked and smelled so damn good. Tasted just as good, too. I got the recipe from this book here:

Isn't that cover ridiculous? Closeup on the photo of the authors:

Oh my. Now, this picture was taken from my camera phone, so it doesn't quite capture how ridiculous this is. But seriously, look at that hair! Look at that shirt! (Or pillowcase?) Look at those necklaces! I can't even identify the era this book was written by their clothes. I just can't bring myself to believe that was ever in style. I can imagine those ladies looking at it all these years later and saying, "What were we thinking?" Perhaps they still dress that way. That is scary to think about.

My curiosity got the better of me and I looked them up on Google images. They don't. Existential crisis averted.

Just before I left to go back to Waterloo, there was one small piece left. I had three pieces myself. I brought back with me my mom's like-new pastry cutter that she used just once when I was a baby (if I was even born then). The next thing I use it for will be buttermilk biscuits, which I will have with my breakfast over the next few days.

If you have not yet figured it out, I like baking and making fun of out-of-style outfits on cookbook covers. I'm pretty good at both.

And that's it for tonight. I am tired.

Took me long enough.

This time, I'm writing at a reasonable hour. I stay up late because my job keeps me up at night and I just can't rearrange my sleep schedule a few times a week. Hopefully the new Walmart going in down the street will give me a call so I can change that. I miss being able to wake up in the morning without feeling gross.

So, what's new...

Of course, my mind goes right to the balcony garden, but I can't help myself. I love it and I'll hate the winter even more this year.

The tea plant seeds have yet to arrive. They must be stuck in customs. Until they finally do, I'll keep checking every the mail box day. I want to plant them, dammit!

I thought I'd only be growing food, but on Thursday I caved and bought some flower seeds to bring in the bees. I planted dwarf varieties of marigolds and sunflowers. Today, three of the sunflowers poked their little heads out of the soil - so much for seven days to germinate! Sunflowers are my favourite flower and it will break my heart to have to thin them in a few weeks, but I suppose that's better than letting the roots get tangled.

The chamomile is starting to flower like crazy. I'm going to have so much tea by the time the summer is over. I'll have to buy a small window screen to dry the flowers on. Since I cut strawberry runner, the mother plant has blossomed like crazy, and even the baby has two buds of its own. I counted 24 strawberries - fruits, blossoms or buds - in total so far. I can't wait to eat them.

I had to thin the lettuce a week ago from three plants to two, so I put the whole plant I tore out on a sandwich. It will be a while before I can eat any more of it, but it was satisfying. I still have yet to figure out how to make a decent loaf of bread, but I'll get there. Eventually. The recipe I keep using and modifying calls for a tablespoon of yeast for one loaf, which I think is way too much. Once I figure it all out, I'm going to make a sourdough starter and start using that instead.

Aside from food and plants, I've been asked to substitute with the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra for their concert on Friday. It's opera excerpts and it just so happens to include one of my favourite scenes in all opera - the Te Deum from Tosca.

Cornell MacNeil (RIP) was the best Scarpia ever. You can't even look at him - that's how you know he did it right.

Seriously, I'm excited. This makes up for that horrible production of Tosca that I saw in Rome with my high school. Never again will I regret being sober at an opera quite so much as I did when it was finally over. They say that if a theatre is about to fail financially, putting on Tosca will save it - not that one. I went to look it up later only to find that it shut down and now houses one of those "Occupy" movements that seem to have gone out of style now.

How bad was it? Well, the singers were good, and the set was decently decorated, but even the condensed version of Tosca was too ambitious for this theatre, which was better suited to the more economical genre of opera seria (a type of Baroque opera that was popular when the theatre was built). By that, I mean the theatre was too small. The pit could not comfortably fit a full-sized orchestra inside it, so they just used a bunch of keyboards. Just imagine how hilarious a timpani roll sounds on a keyboard! It was enough to ruin it.

The moral of the story: when you go to see an opera, call the theatre before you buy the tickets to make sure they are using a real orchestra. Not that you should have to...

One of these days I'll get around to taking pictures of the balcony garden. In the mean time, have a wonderful day, everyone!