For those in search of the perfect bowl of oatmeal

I'm in a generous mood, and since I have no money, I'll give my oatmeal recipe. I'll admit I just eyeball my ingredients except for the water and oats, so hopefully this will taste the same for anyone who tries it. This makes one serving.

1 cup of water
1/3 cup of rolled oats
2 tbsp of table cream (or 50/50 2% milk and whipping cream if you're like me and that just happens to be what's in your fridge, but you can probably substitute just milk if you want)
1 tbsp of honey
1 tbsp of brown sugar (heaping)
Cinnamon to taste

Boil the water in a small pot. Once the water is boiling, add the oats, turn down the heat to medium-high and stir often. Once the oatmeal looks about 3/4 done (thicker but still runny), add the cream and/or milk, brown sugar, honey and cinnamon. Keep stirring until desired thickness.

Best of all, it's pretty damn cheap. A pound of rolled oats is $1.20 at Bulk Barn and provides 15 servings, so add up all the other ingredients and it's just over a dime for a meal.

If you wanted to be supremely cheap, you could even get your honey and cream from the bins of honey and cream packets at the coffee shop.

I've been knitting a lot of socks lately. They're much easier than you'd think, and I even developed a way of casting on using the magic loop method that doesn't create an ugly ladder in the middle. I just wish I'd known already how horrible wood needles are before I bought my circular needle with bamboo needles. It makes the most disgusting noise, the ends are sharper than they need to be and there's way too much friction. I might put some mineral oil on it once my OSAP finally comes in, provided it won't stain the yarn. From now on it's either metal or plastic, but I'll save it in case I'm ever crazy enough to buy silk yarn.

And that's all for tonight.

What's going on now?

Since I last posted, I've started classes, I'm playing in wind ensemble, I've perfected the recipe for non-instant oatmeal, two of my tea seeds rotted and I figured out how to crochet a multitude of things as well as knit hats and socks. My next knitting project will be an ugly Christmas sweater.

I'm taking two musicology courses and I am not particularly thrilled with the subject. I like subjects where I am either right or wrong and can draw upon factual knowledge to prove I am right, not where I have to pull an answer out of my ass and draw upon something that came out of someone else's ass to prove that I might possibly be right but it's a bit of a grey area. It's very much philosophy-based, and while I can respect anyone who studies philosophy, I find it becomes less profound as the subject progresses because the publish-or-perish mindset that plagues the scholarly world has resulted in a lot of (at least seemingly) pointless hair-splitting. I can understand these ideas, even if it means taking a brief look at the Simple English version of the Wikipedia page, but why exactly do the most minute details of human experience have to have all these fancy Greek and Latin terms attached to them? Why do these negligible aspects of our lives have to be defined at all? If you're a philosopher, you might already know that I'm ranting about phenomenology. If you're not a philosopher, I dare you to look it up. It's difficult to understand the different aspects of it, but once you can put it in terms you understand, it seems so basic.

Before I forget again, I forgot to mention last time that I packed up my balcony garden and brought it home. It's probably withering away because of the temperature/my parents and brothers don't water it, but when I was home at the end of August, the plants were doing better because they get better sunlight in my south-facing backyard than my east-facing balcony. I still have the peppermint and the remaining tea plants under a fluorescent light behind my laptop. I might end up ordering new seeds and starting over, but this time I'll scarify them before they've been planted for three months.

And that's my life right now. Tomorrow I have classes all day and on Wednesday I'm going to look through the discontinued yarn at the craft store for yarns that I can incorporate into my ugly sweater.

Where have I been?

I had to cut my intergalactic journey short because my Heisenberg compensator blew a fuse. You'd be surprised how hard it is to find one with circuit breakers, even if you pay over three million credits for it. I was expecting not to come back until the next galactic cycle, but at least I got to see Jupiter before I had to turn around and go back.

It's even harder to find fuses for Heisenberg compensators. With the trouble you go to find a replacement and the cost of paying the mechanic, it's almost better just to buy a new one.

If you're wondering how I managed to get to Jupiter and back in two weeks, it actually took a day each way, but there was roughly a 7:1 time dilation because I was traveling so close to the universal constant. Micro deuterium uranium reactors are the way of the future in space travel, man.

I hope you've figured out, and not based on the conclusion that the time dilation resulting from traveling to Jupiter and back in two days would be something completely different from 7:1 after your horribly time-wasting calculations, that I'm full of shit. I decided to go home (as in Whitby) for the last few weeks of the summer holiday and forgot my laptop charger, brought it back after my shift at the bar on Saturday, bought new knitting stuff when I got back and forgot all about my laptop until just now.

You've just caught a horrifying glimpse into my brain. How does it feel?

I've learned that the cable stitch is super easy, but I wish I'd known about slipping the first stitch before getting a third of the way through my scarf. I'll just sew along the sides when I'm done and hopefully that will cover it up. If it doesn't work, the sides are stockinettes and will curl inwards and cover it up anyway even though I did a garter stitch border. Oh well. I still like it. I'll have to get a crochet hook, double-pointed needles and a circular needle so I can make fancier things, and perhaps go back to Zellers and get crazy amounts of half-price yarn before the good stuff is all picked over.

So that's it. That's where I've been all this time. Now you know.

I bought a cardigan.

Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa is awesome. It literally means "In memory of my mother loquat syrup," but it's like swallowing a tablespoon of thick, liquefied Extra Strength Halls. It's a Chinese herbal cough syrup and it is the best cough syrup ever and I'm so glad the health food store in the mall carries it. I usually just take it by the tablespoon, but apparently you can mix it with hot water and drink it, which I think I will do before bed tonight. Hopefully I'll stop coughing soon.

So yeah, I bought a cardigan. It's yellow. Once every year or so I decide on an article of clothing that I have to buy and this year it was a yellow cardigan. In previous years it has been a white summer dress, an argyle sweater and a brown corduroy blazer. I've never given any thought as to why I do that, but I don't really care, either, as long as I don't decide on a beer shirt next year. Next paycheque, I'm going to go to the Suzy Shier outlet in Cambridge and get some pants for $10 a pair. That is going to be a good day.

I recently received a rather handsome OSAP estimate last Tuesday and gave my two-weeks' notice at Williams on Friday. I'm going to keep working at the gay bar for a bit of extra spending money. I am so glad to have a break from all this financial stress. Just imagine being able to afford to buy bread instead of sucking at making it! I'll still make yoghourt since it doesn't take much time to make and I'm picky about my yoghourt. If I can pull up the funds for a KitchenAid stand mixer, I might get back to bread making, since I can never seem to knead it fast enough by hand.

Wow. Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa is even better when dissolved in hot water. I can't believe I never thought to do that before. Thank you, Wikipedia! Holy shit. This is awesome. This is the best way to take the stuff. I kind of sound like Michael Wood when he drank the soma in The Story of India. Not that too many of you know what I mean by that. By that, I mean it's time for me to go to bed, and hopefully I won't be up all night coughing. Goodnight, world.

If I may say so myself

I make awesome food. I'm eating my second piece of a Kuchen I just made with fresh blueberries, cherries and raspberries. The decision to make one just came out of nowhere. I was sitting at my computer an hour and a half ago and decided I wanted a to make a Kuchen while blasting Wotan's Farewell out my laptop's speakers, so I did and the Kuchen is awesome.

Wagner approves. I'm sorry, were you expecting a picture of a Kuchen? Too bad. Wagner's creepy over-the-top-happy death mask it is.

Mind you, as thrilling as spontaneous Wagner baking sounds, this is nowhere near my best baking story. My best one happened in second year, back when I was slowly losing my sanity in a basement unit of a triplex. I was making some cookies and I had just put the first batch in the oven and was getting another one ready. As this was happening, my roommate walked by the kitchen and deeply inhaled while simultaneously performing a brief first arabesque.

I'm not a ballerina. At least, I haven't been since I was ten and I quit before having the pleasure of wearing pointe shoes.

What a beautiful story. It starts with baking cookies underground and ends in ballet. Now, here's the punchline - a second before my roommate walked by the kitchen, I farted. My roommate didn't make any indications that something was amiss, so as far as I'm aware, she didn't notice. Either way, this is both my best baking story and my best fart story.

Now that you're one step closer to achieving Nirvana, goodnight.

One-Handed Blogging

My left hand currently has a freezie sitting on it because I got a burn at work and it's the only form of ice I have in the house, so I'm writing this post with my right hand. Not that it's exciting news or anything, since it means I will have to wear a glove on that hand for my next shift if it doesn't heal by then. It has until Friday at 5 p.m. to heal adequately. And the gloves at work are dreadful, too...

Mind you, they used to give us those god-awful gloves with powder that is supposed to be an antiperspirant but actually forms a paste with your sweat. I was glad to see them go.

My life has become so much easier now that I have my bike. My legs might just get as strong as they were in high school. I was able to leg press 395 lbs - pretty damn impressive for someone who weighs just over 100. It's too bad most hard physical tasks hardly involve the legs at all, and the few sports that involve the legs more than the arms require lots of running and I'm asthmatic. It's much more convenient than the bus and the lock I got for it is pretty badass. It's long enough to fit through both tires and the cable is braided and coated in a thick layer of nylon. It was $30 after tax (on sale) but I figured that's cheaper than buying a shitty lock and then having to buy a new bike and a better lock when it fails.


But seriously, the summer bus schedule is useless, and since the main streets keep closing down for festivals, the buses keep getting rerouted. And, of course, it's impossible to read the map they posted and the times they give on the signs conflict with each other. What fun! I'd rather ride my bike. It's much more reliable and it means that I don't have to get a cab home from work anymore. I should get a basket for it when I can afford it.

And I'm too tired to write more. But I will later! I promise!

Come see how pretty I look!

I finally got around to making a real layout/I played around with the templates and came up with something I like. I took the background picture myself. It's some foxgloves at Stanley Park in Vancouver (just in case someone thought I meant the Stanley Park in Kitchener). I would love a fancier camera than the one I have, but it's just not in the cards. That being said, the quality can only be so good when the maximum file size for backgrounds is 300 kilobytes. Still, it looks freaking awesome.

I'm getting closer to being able to make a decent loaf of bread. I found a different recipe and made modifications so that it wouldn't be too sweet or too dry. It tastes alright, but I can never seem to slash it correctly. It always ends up torn by the oven spring on one side with pretty slash marks on the top. I'm wondering if the water I'm brushing on them isn't cold enough or if the slashes are too short. Maybe I should actually take a trip to Home Depot and get a pack of razor blades (and cheesecloth while I'm at it) because my kitchen knives, while very sharp, are still not sharp enough for the task. Maybe the flour I'm using sucks, or I get too tired to knead in enough flour (although that's not the worst thing because too little flour is always better than too much). Maybe it's all of those factors. Trial and error, dammit.

I really miss waking up in the morning, doing something productive during the day, coming home in the evening and sleeping at night. I never thought I would. There is nothing worth doing after 11 pm aside from this job, which, although part time, is wearing me out. I hear friends of mine in other jobs and even coworkers who don't work in the kitchen complain of boredom. What a luxury it must be to complain of boredom and get paid for it! I'll take that over nine hours without even standing still for a second and waking up with legs and feet so sore I can barely balance on them. I am so ready to be done with that for good but I can't afford it yet.

It's late. Gross.