Seismic Twitch

Mr Janzen is bound by conditions pursuant to a Court Ordered Recognizance effective 2007-01-30. Among other conditions Mr JANZEN shall not have any unsupervised contact with any person under the age of fourteen years. Any supervision must be by an adult who is familiar with Leslie Ervin JANZEN’s criminal history. He is to abstain from consumption of alcohol and other intoxicating substances or drugs unless they are prescribed by a medical doctor and shall not attend any licenced premises. He is not to have any contact with past victims of his criminal offences or their families.

Mr Janzen is prohibited from the possession of firearms or explosives for life.

THIS INFORMATION IS INTENDED TO ENABLE MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC TO TAKE SUITABLE PREVENTION MEASURES, NOT TO EMBARK UPON ANY FORM OF VIGILANTISM OR OTHER UNREASONABLE CONDUCT DIRECTED AT THIS INDIVIDUAL.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS CONTACT THE PRINCE ALBERT RCMP DETACHMENT AT (306) 765-5500

So far today I’ve slept, and I watched Super Size Me and then I slept and slept some more and now I’m watching Happy Feet. That’s been my day. Oh, I also ate 2 grapefruit and some chips and chicken nuggets and drank a lot of water.

Apparently some penguins look like Skekzes from The Dark Crystal.

Ta-Ra

His later post of the day is a listing of movies that he can watch again and again. He got the idea from the Washington Post (See his site for the appropriate links and see the previous entry or my blogroll to get to his site again).

In his very proud tradition that just started today, I’m going to list the movies that I can watch again and again and again and again…of course, Bran would say that any move I’m watching already is a movie that I’ve seen time and time again because I don’t often watch new movies. So without further ado:

The Avengers
The Cheap Detective
Labyrinth
LOTR – all of them
The Dark Crystal
All the James Bond movies
Tank Girl
Tomb Raider both of them
Murder By Death
Any of the Disney cartoons that we own
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Hot Shots both of them

I’m sure there’s more, but for the life of me my brain is gone back to being tapioca…hmmm…that sounds yummy, and a whole lot like one of the Hanibal Lecter movies. Now it’s not so appitizing.

That’s what it’s like here. Despite the snow melting and puddles nearly everywhere, the dust is rampant and stirred up by cars, trucks, buses and, of course, the wind. So when buses pull up to the stops they bring with them a cloud of dust. When cars drive by, they leave behind a cloud of dust. When the wind picks up dust flies about. My eyes are sore from the particles that have come from the various sundry miniature dust storms.

The student loans came in so Bran and I got some groceries. We had a very long wait for the cab, but now we have milk, bread and other necessary groceries to carry us most of the way to Monday, when there is the usual coupon offer happening. We have picked up 3 bags of grapefruits so I can eat as many of them as I want. We also picked up my final book for Penology to read.

We stopped at the centre to eat our veggie subs and eat our Dairy Queen treats before returning home. I had a banana cream pie Blizzard. Oh my! That is one yummy treat. Next time I’m going to try the French silk pie Blizzard. It’s chocolate and sounds yummy. Since I have Dairy Queen stuff only a couple times a year, it’ll probably be sometime in summer when I’m able to test the other Blizzard.

Dad was going to come up to visit tomorrow, but he called to reschedule to Sunday. Apparently he’s going to be up to no good tomorrow and can’t make it here. I suspect that it’s something to do with the senior’s club he goes to. So, come Sunday, Bran and I will be out shopping with Dad. I’m thinking of seeing if we can go to Wal-Mart because they have cheap and huge balls of yarn. Thanks to VUBOQ I was able to figure things out with the shawl I was working on, but I decided to not continue working on that, tore it apart and am working on Urban Wrap (you may have to log on to see the whole pattern, if not, just search “Urban Wrap” on the site and you can see the picture of it. It’s pretty. I’ll get more cotton for it as well.

That’s about it from here. Boy’s in the shower (not that he wants to be, but he gets sent in every night except Sunday, when he doesn’t have phys-ed class and doesn’t deliver papers – of course, that will change come the hot weather when he’ll get sent into shower every night). Bran is having tea with Grace. Tali is eating an apple on the futon and I’m lounged out on the couch.

I’m off to read other people’s lives.

Ta-Ra

Danulai asked me about whether or not I use recipes for my cooking. Here is where I settle her curiosity.

Yes and no. I follow recipes when I’m baking or when I’m making something new to me. Baking cakes is a fairly exact thing when it comes to the ingredients and the steps involved. If you don’t do it right, the cake might not turn out as hoped. I also follow a recipe when I’m making bread (which is quite rarely now since I still can’t tolerate the smell of yeast). I also follow recipes for some of the vegetarian recipes I make (and no, I don’t use real vegetarians in them).

For pretty much everything else I make it by the “seat of my pants” or according to how things go together or how I was taught. Things like soup are something that I watch my mom make. Making a good stock is relatively easy, just boil the bones with some onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf and some spices. Or, if you’re a vegetarian, boild the vegetables together. A good way of adding additional flavour is to roast the bones and/or vegetables and then make a stock from them. That’s easy.

The spices I use are a bay leaf or two (depending on their size and the size of the stock pot, a dried chili pepper (sometimes), pickling spice (usually made up of crushed bay leaves, mustard seeds, and allspice), and pepper corns. I don’t use salt because that’s something that can become too much very quickly if the stock is boiled down reducing the liquid. Salt can be added when the soup is nearly ready to serve or before adding rice or potato. The pickling spice is one of my mom’s tricks that created the chicken soup of my childhood. Sometimes I toss in an allspice berry or two just because I can. You can also boil in the rinds of lemons or limes to create a citrusy type stock.

Boil the stock for about two hours then seive the stuff out. Add whatever it is that you want from there. As a short cut you can use bouilion cubes or canned broth instead of making it yourself. There are some broths that come in those tetrapack type containers that are pretty good too.

All of that is stuff that I learned from mom and over the years. The soups are made with ingredients that I know my mom or Bran’s mom used in their soups. From there I do the “does it taste like” thing and experiment until I get to something I like. That’s how the curry soup happened. Bran made the choli masala soup, and the lentil curry soup I made is an adaptation of that. The difference is that I use curry powder as it can be bought form the grocery store and he uses a combination of the garum masala, coriander, cumin and clove. I’m lazy.

My sister taught me how to play with flavours in the kitchen when I was living with her. I’d sniff something and if it smelled like it might taste good, I’d dump it in. I make a rockin’ good meatloaf because of that. It usually has onion, garlic (those two are in nearly everything I make), ketchup, mustard, wostershire sauce, steak sauce, bbq sauce, mushrooms (usually fried first), bread crumbs (to bulk up the meat and absorb some of the moisture), and egg (to bind it all together). I smush it all together (smush is a highly technical cooking term) and plop it into a pan and bake it until it’s not pink in the centre. We eat that with garlich mashed taters and some kind of vegetable.

There’s really not a whole lot to cooking. It’s just putting together foods that you like with flavours you like. Sometimes putting together things that you wouldn’t normally think of being good together match beautifully, like sour cream and pretty much everything else. Yogurt is a common accompanyment to curry, more accurately, yogurt and cucumber (also known as tzatziki (sp?)) to cool one’s mouth from the spice. Adding sour cream to a curry soup is just an extension of that. Sour cream on pizza…well, that’s just because sour cream does go good on nearly everything. It’s also great in beet borsht, beef soups and tomato soups.

So there you go. That’s how I cook. Bran’s better at the “there’s nothing in the house” cooking. He can make a meal of some dried up pasta, 1/2 a lemon and a slice of bacon. I tend to look in the fridge and ask if we can afford to order in. However, he doesn’t like cooking birds and nearly always gets me to check doneness. I don’t know why, he’s always gotten it right.

Yes, that’s right. If I’d looked at my class announcements on my university account, I would have seen the notice that tonight’s class was cancelled. Alas, I didn’t so I ended up at school sitting in a classroom with some other people and then we all left. I could’ve just stayed home. Duh! That’ll teach me for not looking first.

I’m home now, watching murder and mayhem, hoping that the student loan money is going to be deposited tomorrow. This coming month is also GST rebate month, so we’ll have a little bit of extra money. I have to pick up a book at the university book store to read before the final near the end of April.

Besides the book I have to get, we also are in rather desperate need to get groceries and pay off some bills. Oh, yeah, we also have to get some lottery tickets. One must have their great Canadian dream.

That’s about it. There’s nothing really exciting happening other than I’m hungry and I can’t think of what to snack on. We don’t have much to snack on anyway. I guess I could make some couscous but there’s nothing really to put on it.

I think the Algae Eater (one of the fish) has no swim bladder. It is always resging on top of a leaf and watching it struggle to remain at a certain level in the tank is rather painful to watch. The other fish just sort of hover. This fish doesn’t. Right now it’s being a little psycho and upsetting the Convict parents that are guarding their babies. Oh, the drama of a fish tank that has a large number of cyclids.

Ta-Ra

Next week is the final week of classes for me this term. This one went by very quickly. Tomorrow I have my usual Stats and Penology as well as Aboriginal People in Urban Centres at night. Then it’s onto getting ready for finals. I have a lot of reading to catch up on and some catching up on Stats, but I’m in relatively good shape this time. Yay!

I have to get Bran to the doctor so that I can get my student loan forms in for the spring and summer terms of classes. It’s going to be an interesting next few weeks. Of course, with having to study for finals, I’m probably going to be making many, many entries and finding a new interest in curling, bowling and snooker as spectator sports. I might even get some housework done.

I got home from classes and washed out a pot. I made some chicken stock with leftover bones and some asparagus ends to make an addition to the curry I made the other night. After the stock was done, I added a few more handfulls of lentils and dumped that into the soup. That boiled away while I napped (a much needed sleep). Then I added brown rice to cook. That cooked away while Boy went off to return the video Casino Royale. By the time he got home the rice was completely cooked and he and I had supper.

Bran is sleeping, Tali is sleeping. I’m full of curry lentil and rice soup (I added sour cream to it). Boy’s busily filling himself. However, right now, I’m not sure that it’s physically possible to fill that child right now. He’s always hungry.

So, now I’m going to go and read other people’s lives and try to find as much murder and mayhem on tv as possible.

Ta-Ra

I’m done the obligations for my classes as of right now…well, about three minutes ago. That’s when I emailed my presention to my Criminology professor so that he can photocopy them for my classmates. I made a boo-boo though. I printed me a copy as is and I should have waited until I had changed the font to a larger size so that I don’t get lost in the smaller font. I find that when making a written presentation, the larger font is easier to read and not make stupid misreading mistakes.

Today was relatively uneventful. I decided on Monday night to not do the last of the 6 assignments. Only 5 of the 6 are used, the highest marks, and though I think my mark for the fifth assignment won’t be great, I didn’t have the energy to spend 3 hours doing two questions.

I decided to take a break from typing in Penology and made Tanya type most of the notes. I took over when her hands gave out. She’d already typed for 1.5 hours at another class. On Thursday I’ll be typing again. I prefer to use my own little beasty because I’m used to the keyboard. Her’s is weird and has keys in odd places. Mine is perfectly sized.

That’s the excitement from here. There’s not a whole lot going on right now. Starting this weekend I’ll be working on notes and doing the readings that I haven’t done before. I hope the motivation manages to hang around so that I can do these things. Perhaps if I sit at my desk, plug in my ear buds to my music and just plug away regardless. Then I might raise my marks and up my average above 80% again.

I hope I can.

Ta-Ra

Bran decides to eat a can of salmon. Kittykins decides that she must share it with him (or vice versa) and she stands on the arm of the couch attempting sniffing madly, staring intently at the bowl of fish in Bran’s hand. She begins to take a step onto his lap in preparation of “sharing” the bounty. He makes a hissy noise at her in an attempt to shoo her away. I laugh out loud. “You expect salmon breath to shoo her away?” And we both laugh heartily.

Then he pushes Kittykins off the couch and away from him. Kitty is now lounging behind me watching the fish in the aquarium. She’s not very pleased with him right now. I wonder if she’ll get the dregs.