Blogosaurus Vex

Okay… so today I saw the weirdest commercial .  It’s for some kind of cat litter.  The catch is, it has odor alert crystals that turn blue when there’s odor.

It took me a moment to figure out why this is so bizarre.  I think I have it:

1. If there’s an odor, you’ll just smell it.  Colour is irrelevant.  If you need to look at it to see if it smells, it doesn’t.

2. Following the logic of the commercial, odor sets off the colour change.  How… would that happen?  I have this urge to put my hand up and say, “Isn’t it the wetness that changes the colour? And if so, does that mean the poops won’t set off the colour change?  And since poops are what smells worst… doesn’t that mean the litter will fail to alert me to the worst smells?  So, how will I know if the poo stinks?”

It’s official: if you buy odor alert cat litter for its odor alerting properties, you have officially been suckered by clever marketing.

Posted in Ranting, Watching | No Comments »

Today’s rant is brought to you by those jackasses who brake turning right, even though they’ve just been sitting at a red light and they are going about two kilometres per hour.  I am hating you!

Attention drivers: the algorithm is not “approach corner, brake lest you flip the car, turn right.”  The algorithm is “approach corner, ensure you are not going faster than about 25 km/h, turn right.”  You’re so clever I’m sure you can see that this means you don’t always need to brake.  If you’re going really nice and slow, you can even accelerate through the corner!  I know!  It’s fucking wild!

But watch, drivers who are not jackasses.  You will see the Brake Club in action on a daily basis.  Driving habit which does not reflect actual need is dangerous and irritating as shit.  Maybe if the rest of us all start rear ending those folks things will improve?

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Yes it is!  Happy birthday to me!  Today I turn 28.  I had to confirm the number with Husband because I always forget.

On my birthday, I must have a black forest cake.  Everything else is negotiable… but there will be cake!  I’ll have a slice on your behalf.

Today, do something totally unexpectedly kind for someone else.

Posted in Personal | 5 Comments »

I have discovered a Serious Christmas Paradox. Turns out if you put up billions and billions of shiny ornament balls, they block the billions and billions of sparkly lights. You can’t have lots of ornaments and lots of lights at the same time. Why did no one ever tell me this! I have been so lied to! I may need to turn to Jesus for comfort!

Comfort me, Jesus!

…It appears Jesus is not speaking to me. This may be related to that time I threw away the New Testament, which was given to me in the fourth grade by some proselytizers who came to my elementary school. I didn’t really want it but I didn’t have the guts to say no, though apparently I did have the guts to throw the Bible in the trash. You reap what you sow! I threw away Jesus so now he blocks my Christmas lights!

Which brings me to a related point: what do you do with your poppy after Remembrance Day? It seems wrong to throw it in the garbage because, unlike the bible, the poppy represents something important to me. But it’s annoying to have it hanging around. And it also seems wrong to collect a whole bunch of them. Or even to maintain just one year to year because then you might be tempted to not donate to the veterans as you do when you buy a new poppy. Oh the conflict! I usually let mine get lost somehow, which so far it has always done. But what do you do?

Posted in Domesticity | 2 Comments »

I’ve been sort of faintly nauseated all day.  You know, just enough that I’m not really interested in eating but not enough to necessitate a trip to the bathroom, hint hint.  Husband and I went out for veggie burgers but I really couldn’t enjoy mine because of it.

So yeah… that’s about all I have to say for now.  I promise to be interesting again soon.

Posted in Health, Vegetarianism | No Comments »

Okay, I finally got some batteries and took pictures of my trees. I have two: Mr Castlegar, decorated in traditional colour barf manner, and the auxiliary tree, which has exclusively bird ornaments. You don’t get a sense of the glowiness of these babies in the pictures, but anyway, here they are:

Mr Castlegar:

The bird tree, with Law and Order on to the left:

LEON:

Some of my many squid and octopus toys/ornaments:

The tree skirt that I sewed myself making (and now have a lightly infected finger which may require antibiotics… currently I wait and watch to see if it gets redder and more painful):

Posted in Domesticity | 1 Comment »

Today I did some christmas shopping.  My dad is redoing his bathroom and has decided he’d like white accents, so I figured I’d buy him some towels and other bathroom linens.  Imagine my excitement when I discovered the Bay is having a sale!  I bought the hugest, softest, whitest towels in the world.  They are, without a doubt, obese Aryan towels.  Hitler himself would be proud to dry off with these towels, though of course he’s dead, and anyway I wouldn’t share with him because, hello, mass murderer!  Since we’re small, Husband and I could share one easily, they’re that huge.  Not that I’m planning on keeping them…

Now I must study for an exam which is happening tonight, and which I haven’t really studied much for.  It’s ethics… what’s there to know, really?  I figure you can sum up all of the ethics of therapy in two words: NO SEX.  There’s some other stuff but it’s really quite peripheral.  Just NO SEX.  Easy peasy.

And… my christmas addiction is still operational because I couldn’t stop myself from buying about 30 or so new plain shiny balls for the tree from Sears.  They’re having a sale too!  Oh I am a consumer whore!

Posted in Domesticity | 1 Comment »

The tree decorating went pretty well.  There were a few minor snafus – I left a crucial ingredient (basil) out of the spaghetti, and when you’re not resting on meat flavour, you just can’t afford to leave out ingredients.  I also didn’t use enough salt.  It was flat and dull, probably the blandest spag I have ever produced.  I was disappointed because now everyone will think I make a bad spag, or perhaps that vegetarian spag is dull.  In the past I have produced veg spags that fool meat eaters (ha!) using my secret ingredients – I’ll give you one: French’s mustard.  But anyway that night the meal was blah and as you can tell I’m still dwelling on it.  I am pleased to report, however, that the mandarin oranges were much enjoyed.

But!  Mr Castlegar was very well received.  My elaborate and energy unfriendly lighting scheme was appreciated proved a fabulous background for the barf of ornaments we spewed all over it.  Things got a little hectic with five or so of us decorating at once, so some of the rules got ignored (such as, smaller ornaments near the top, and tinsel always last), but the results were pretty good anyway.  Last night I did a bit of fiddling, moving a few things around, adding a final string of lights, straightening the crooked tinsel, and now I’m pretty happy with the result.  Plus I had a really nice time having company to accompany the decorating.  Christmas is officially starting!

I also have a plan for the auxiliary tree, also known as last year’s tiny tree.  Esan suggested we make it the battle tree, which I was initially quite excited about, but in the end I wimped out and have decided to make it a bird tree.  I have quite a few bird ornaments and since most are sort of small, they tend to get lost on the big tree.  So I’m going to put all the birds on the little tree and make it just birds and maybe nuts and fruits – things you’d find on a tree in nature.  Except most of my birds are made of metal or glass.  But anyway, after I do some studying today I may reward myself with putting up this second tree.

Posted in Cooking, Domesticity | No Comments »

Last night I poured myself a rum and eggnog (cut with milk because eggnog is too powerful for me) and Husband and I assembled Mr Castlegar, our charming but fake tree.  Based on a tip from a friend I tried a new way of lighting the tree and holy crap it’s spectacular!  I was so overstimulated I nearly had a manic break.  I don’t know if manias arrive after breaks but if they did, I’d have got one last night.  If I was prone to mania.  Which I am not.  Anyway!  The tree was so well lit I nearly died of joy.

This is what I did.  Assemble the bottom most layer of branches (fake tree, of course).  Loop the lights once around the “trunk” just above the branches, then lay lights in a spiral on the branch layer, the spiral getting bigger as you approach the edge of the branches.  For the biggest layers of the tree (in my case the bottom 2) I had a spiral that went around three times before it reached the edge, which means there was about six inches between lights.

Now put on the next layer of branches, bring the lights up to that level, loop around trunk, spiral out.  Repeat right to the top and you get a tree that is actually a small sun.  It has “deep glow,” which is what I am calling a tree that sparkles with lights from the inside out.  Truly, it is a sight to behold. You need a lot of lights for this but OMFG it is seriously impressive.  No pics yet but I’ll get some tonight for sure.

Safety bear says: Remember to never leave your lit tree unattended!

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It is now December, and Christmas Madness can officially begin!  Today’s Christmas madness will be the clearing of a space for Mr Castlegar and his subsequent assembling.  He’ll go in the corner where the chair no one sits in currently resides (the chair will be relegated to the office, also known as the room that tidiness forgot).  I bought eggnog and Husband is bringing home some rum, so it should be good times around here by about 8pm when we soddenly try to put together our tree.  I will of course put on the Christmas music and perhaps take some pictures of the madness for your enjoyment.  I might even be lucky enough to score a snap of Husband giving me his “Jesus you’re crazy” face when I start mooning over the tree.

Tomorrow we’re having a few family members over for the official tree decorating party.  I already have some spaghetti sauce on the stove simmering, and salad stuff in the fridge.  I’m in classes tomorrow but after I get home it should be a snap to get dinner on the table for the 7 or 8 people we’ll be feeding.  After dinner we’ll pull out all my ornaments, most of which are new, and attack Mr Castlegar with them.  I need to get some emotional stuff into those ornaments, you know?  They don’t have any tradition associated with them because they’re brand new, but I hope to kick start that process with a group decorating event.

I still don’t have a tree topper though.  Might be a wired octopus again this year.  I also don’t have much in the way of household decorations.  I got a couple of Christmas themes dish towels and a hand towel for the bathroom, but I have a huge bare mantel with nothing on it, and no wreath for the door.  Must get a wreath!

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