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Friday, June 27, 2008

Flower Power Beetle

Posted by Melanie at 19:44 6 comments

So I was in this car accident, rather than accept a pitiful settlement, for my VW Golf, from ICBC because the damage too it ended up being to expense to fix. We were able to collect on the awesome insurance we bought. It's called replacement insurance, costs only $70, we got enough money, plus tax to buy one of those really cool, green, clean diesel 2009 Volkswagon Jettas.

We dreamed about it for a while. But reality, that annoying buzz in my ear, took control, told me no more car payments and to pick something on the Hub City Motors lot. We test drove an old Jetta and a beetle.

thy name is cool

We decided to go wth the 2003 beetle because of it's coolness factor, It is in excellent shape, better than the Jetta for the same price, and the sales guys knew the car, they said the previous owner had kept up it's regular maintenance schedule. It has all the options our Golf had and more.

The Beetle with be our 7th in a long line of VW vehicles we have owned.

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How to see a computer screen outside

Posted by Melanie at 09:52 0 comments

When the weather's hot and the sun is shinning I want to be outside in the middle of it. Unfortunately I still have to get work related things done on my computer. As everyone knows trying to see a laptop screen outside is next to impossible. I found this ehow primer, How the see a Computer Screen Outside, very helpful.

Their first suggestion, move into the shade, seems like an oxymoron. Helpful suggestions include, Lower the screen resolution, increase the contrast, enlarge the program display and enlarge the cursor.

Combine these suggestions with a pair of polarized sunglasses, sunblock, comfortable chair and a cold drink and you are ready to take your laptop outside.

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Summer Unfolds

Posted by Melanie at 19:30 1 comments

I couldn’t wait to get home from work, put on shorts and a tank top, grab a coke from the fridge and my book, Unaccustomed Earth. I took them outside to sit on the deck in the hot sun. You have to take advantage of the weather when it is acting like summer.

I was prompted to pick up this book after listening to Vicki Gabereau interview the award winning author, Jhumpa Lahiri. Lahiri writes about first and second generation Bengali families -immigrants to the United States coming to terms with their adopted culture.

I was a bit taken aback, after reading the first long chapter, to find the book wasn’t a novel but a collection of short stories. I had become so completely immersed in the characters of that first story I had just wanted it to go on and on. However, the rest of the stories were just as mesmerizing.

I find it amusing that the Bengali characters were always lighting cigarettes, or openly displaying bottles of scotch on their dinner tables. It was almost as if they had to do this to prove how Western and sophisticated they had become.

The stories are not so much about being Bengali and trying to become American so much as they are about dealing with things we all have to face, loneliness, family relationships and rebelling against parental expectations.

The central theme of the book is love. Love of parents, Love of children, love of ones spouse and how intricate and twisted love becomes when trying to find a balance between marrying for love or settling for an arranged marriage.

Each story is rich and satisfying, told with precision and detail as each characters life is tenderly unfolded and exposed.

I will now have to seek out a Jhumpa Lahiri's first collection of short stories, Interpreter Of Maladies and her novel, The Namesake. Both books have won many awards.

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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Sunday

Posted by Melanie at 19:37 0 comments

After breakfast I started hauling wood out of the bush. When the pieces got too big and even Robert had trouble lifting them, he used the splitting maul to cut them in half, I went to weed the garden. It was beautifully sunny and hot. A warm breeze meant no mosquitos so we ate lunch sitting on the deck.

I mulched the vegetable garden then went back to help with the firewood

mulched

We took turns stacking and spitting it.

split firewoodmore split firewood

my clover lawn is growing fabulously

clover lawn

For supper we had our first harvest of radishes and a mixture of arugula, borage and mizuna.

more from the garden first crop

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Friday, June 20, 2008

Medi -No- Care

Posted by Melanie at 20:07 0 comments

In the middle of the night I woke up sweating, my throat felt like it was full of glass, my head felt heavy like a football player was standing on it. There had been another hatch of mosquitoes and some of them had found their way into the house. I didn't know whether to throw off the covers so I could cool off or keep them over my head so I didn't get bitten. By the time 7:30 came around and the doctors office was open The searing pain in my throat was worse.

Well, the doctor had taken a day off. I hung up feeling annoyed because even though I don't begrudge my doctor taking a day off it meant I would have to wait until 4PM, when the clinic opens. Besides, the last time I tried to see him he was fully booked, only available in the vague distant future. What is the point of being on a doctors patient list if you can never get to see him?

With everyone retiring the numbers of professionals and skilled workers coming up behind them is getting less and less. Should we import professionals and skilled workers from other countries, take them away from their brethren ? where they’re probably needed just as much, or.... what ?

My financial advisor told me to plan to live to be 100. I suppose if I’m fit an healthy and die of natural causes I’ll be fine.

I was the first patient at the clinic. I got my antibiotics in record time because there was no one at the pharmacy either. Now that I I've written this I'm going to bed.

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Under the bed covers with a torch( flashlight) and a book of course

Posted by Melanie at 19:40 0 comments

I love the public library. I love the fact their database is on line. I can sit in front of my computer screen typing in the titles of everybook I'm interested in. There seems to be no limit on how many I can put on hold. My books on hold list is longer than my amazon wish list. I keep adding to it with wild abandon because it is free and who cares if the book turns out to be a dud. Bring on the next one please.

The only flaw is they tend to arrive in stacks of two or three. You get a max. time of six weeks to read them. Today I picked up three books, so I stopped reading my current book to crack open one of them. Hot damn I love it, limited reading time and all.

Better a surfeit than a drought.

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Bad Luck

Posted by Melanie at 19:54 0 comments

This is the second day my laundry is hanging on the line.

I hung it up yesterday afternoon when it was warm and sunny, great laundry drying weather I thought. Two hours later it got dark and really windy and it rained. Oh Well.

This morning the clothes were wet with dew so I went off to work thinking I could take it off when I got home, when it would be dry. Only problem it rained just before I got home, there were puddles all over my driveway and when I felt the clothes on the line they were soaked.

Hmmmn maybe I will have better luck tomorrow.

On another note it seems ICBC may be writing off my car. Luckily I have replacement insurance but, I loved my little Golf diesel. Damn, you 3/4 ton truck driving maniac.

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Saturday, June 14, 2008

Down there at the thrift shop it's a nifty way to shop

Posted by Melanie at 20:03 0 comments funky

The kitchen is all finished. Robert went to Home Despot to buy supplies for the next project, the upstairs deck. I'm still painting. With all the rain today, and more is supposed to fall tomorrow I don't feel resentful about staying inside to paint. Besides it is freezing outside. I think the high was ten degrees today, shiver.

This Vase is one of my current thrift finds. I love its funky shape and retro colours.It cost a bit more than I wanted to pay but I had to have it.

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Friday, June 13, 2008

Knitted Clothes Only

Posted by Melanie at 17:22 0 comments finished

I love this pattern. I bought it from Anna Bell the minute I saw it on her blog. In February I ordered, online, 5 skeins of Debbie Bliss cotton angora, enough to make the smallest size. There is only one local yarn store, LYS, in Prince George and they do not carry Debbie Bliss yarn.

After swatching I realized I had to go down a whole needle size to get gauge, not bad. As I knitted I learned how to make cables, her instructions are exhaustive. After finishing the back and both fronts I realized I needed more yarn if I were to finish both sleeves and sew all the pieces together. I had to get it from another online store. The shipping cost more than the one skein I ordered, but what was I to do?

The yarn arrived in mere days and I resumed knitting. Soon it became apparent I had not ordered enough yarn. I got another skein. This is the most expensive sweater I have ever made. What with having to pay shipping times three to get enough yarn. I better like it.

I sewed on my lovely buttons bought on my last trip to Vancouver at Button Button, a groovy hole in the wall shop selling thousands of buttons for every occasion. Then I tried it on.

I love it's swingy shape the three quarter length sleeves and scoop neckline. The yarn is soft and I love the colour I chose except, it is too short. Sorry Anna. I should have paid more attention to the measurements with regards to length. I could unpick it from the bottom and knit an extra couple of inches except, I will need more yarn and I really do not want to pay another exorbitant shipping cost

But at some point, I suppose I will have to because there is no room in my wardrobe for clothes I'm unsatisfied with and after all this work and extra shipping cost...

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Canada Apolgizes

Posted by Melanie at 19:49 1 comments

Today Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, stood up in the house of commons to apologize to all of Canada's aboriginal people for the injustices they suffered in Government imposed residential schools. These schools opened in the nineteenth century, the last one was shut down in 1996. Aboriginal children were forcibly taken away from their parents and their culture, shut away in church run schools so they could learn to become white. Many of them suffered physical, mental and sexual abuse. If they spoke their native language they were hit. They were raped, denied food and locked away. Some of their stories are truly horrible.

As a result of all this abuse native people have lost their identity. Struggling to find their way and escape their pain many natives today are drug addicted or alcoholic. Canada's prisons are full of young native males. Most of the children in government foster homes are native. The cycle of abuse, started in residential school, is what natives learned as children. Now they are parents themselves and who can blame them for treating their children the same way.

It will take generations for the cycle of abuse to stop, for native people to remember who they once were and all their rich historical culture. Let us hope it does not take as long for us, the people of the rest of Canada, to learn to accept natives for themselves.

For the whole story and more go to this CBC archive

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Rejuvenation and a good nights sleep

Posted by Melanie at 17:38 2 comments

Its been a long three weeks of stuff all over the house and no kitchen. On Sunday the new kitchen was installed and the house cleaned up. I decided to take the garbage and recycling to the dump, down the road, to finish the job. On the way there I was in a car accident with a three quarter ton pickup.

The side of my car crumpled like an aluminum pop can. Apart from a seat belt abrasion and bruise on my pelvis I’m fine. I didn’t go to the dump I ended up talking on the phone to someone at ICBC and crying.

On Monday I got on my bicycle and rode 31.5 Killometres to the airport to pick up my truck. Robert is in Vancouver. On Tuesday I went to work. After about an hour I realized I should have stayed at home. My neck was hurting and my imagination working overtime conjuring up all kinds of horrible scenarios about possible damage the accident could have done to my neck. I realize now it was just stress. At lunch time I went to my doctors office. The nurses told me there was no chance I would be able to see him that day. They told me to go to the walk in clinic, except, the walk in clinic doesn't open until 4 PM. I debated with myself whether to go to emergency at the hospital. In the end I went home and took some headache pills and went to bed.

Today I woke up to sunshine, tonic for my soul. Apart from having to drive the truck, arrrrrrrrrrrgg, I smiled my way through my work day.

Now I’m at home with yes a glass of red wine, sitting in a comfortable chair doing something mindless and fun. Thanks Green Wellies and Penmachine for the inspiration.

Fun and Games

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Sunday, June 8, 2008

At Last

Posted by Melanie at 20:51 0 comments

I made Pizza and brownies for supper. I love my new Kitchen. It was designed and by both of us and hand crafted by my talented, loving husband. I'm so lucky.

It's finished  

Early Morning

Posted by Melanie at 05:31 0 comments

I've been awake since five AM I threw on my dirty clothes from yesterday went outside to turn the sprinkler on in the vegetable garden. I really need to get some manure in there, around the emerging vegetables, especially the peas which are now 2-3 inches high and the beets which are still only two leaves and looked starved.

The sky is clear for a change a pale watery blue. I think today will be hot.

I touched up my white paint in the kitchen, the exposed parts of gyp rock around where the logs have shrunk. While I was washing the brush the water for my tea started to boil and Robert came downstairs.

He's a bit annoyed I'm up so early, says I'm making too much noise for him to sleep. It was his idea not to put up walls and a door on the loft bedroom. At this moment I would rather have bedroom walls so he would stay in bed and I could have the quiet early morning to myself.

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Saturday, June 7, 2008

Circumstances

Posted by Melanie at 20:23 0 comments

After the third email I decided to succumb and help the Caledonia Ramblers hiking club with their trail building. I told myself it would be a break from moving manure onto the vegetable garden, weeding my gardens and painting my walls interesting colours.

Things started to go awry when the delivery truck with all the lumber was one and a half hours late. We had filled a hole in the road with gravel sand and rocks and eaten lunch before it showed up.

we moved the wood up with slings and backpacks. Then we set to work nailing it all together to make a boardwalk across the mustiest spots or rather the men did. Even though I had my hammer and can nail wood like any pro they wouldn’t let me help. Soon we women got tired of fetching and carrying for them. We went back to the trail head. Unfortunately we had not arranged the rides properly so we couldn’t pile into one of the trucks and go home instead we were forced to sit on the road road and wait.

Despite having a good visit with all my female friends I kept thinking of how my time could have been better spent at home

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Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Finding Inspiration

Posted by Melanie at 20:32 1 comments Finding Inspiration

Barbara kingsolver’s book, Animal Vegetable Miracle, is about a families year long experiment to produce all their own food or buy whatever they couldn’t produce from local sources. Usually small farms like their own and farmers markets. Sometimes their definition of local had to be expanded to include their whole state or another country for food like coffee and tea produced under a Fair Trade agreement.

I enjoyed this book. It inspired me to want to really take up vegetable gardening in a big way, try and plant as much food as possible so as to avoid buying out of season produce at the supermarket. Because if you are eating right you will not be eating tomatoes from Mexico in February. With a freezer you would have been able to freeze your tomatoes in August, when they were ripe, for use in stews and soups all year long.

For a while I was almost convinced to buy some laying hens and a couple of roosters. Robert soon set me straight by pointing out how much of a hassle it would be finding someone to look after them when we wanted to go away.

Back when I was a sheep farmer I had no trouble recruiting farming kids from the neighbourhood to water my sheep when we went on our annual summer holiday. Prince George is not as bucolic.

I was also inspired to make my own cheese. Apparently all I need is milk and bacteria. Each cheese has it’s own distinct bacteria. An amazing diversity of bacteria and recipes for cheese can be bought online. The Kingsolver family made mozzarella for their weekly Friday night pizza's. I don’t know if I will try this.

Camilla, one of her daughters, had little sections at various points in the book describing her own experiences with the her families eating experiment and she including some of her own yummy sounding recipes, the one for mozzarella cheese is included, all of which I enjoyed reading.

Kingsolver spent a lot of time delivering mini lectures on how bad large agri farms and the food they produce are, how terrible for you processed food and food additives are, etc etc. I already know this and, I suspect, does most of her audience. I found myself skipping over these boring parts especially the bits about shortsighted USA government policy, things like farm subsidies for growing corn and soybeans most of which are used to make processed food.

despite the lectures this book is a worthwhile read and really picks up when she starts telling the wonderful story of her heirloom roosters.

Like Kingsolver says If all you have are a few pots on your apartment balcony you can still produce some of your own food, tomatoes and herbs grow well in pots, and still have the satisfaction of playing your own part in producing your daily bread.

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Sunday, June 1, 2008

Colour My life

Posted by Melanie at 21:04 0 comments ready to paint

Since my kitchen is still unfinished and unusable, all the usual paraphernalia having taken over my dinning room table, coffee table and all the chairs except the two we sit in, and working on the assumption that it is better to get the pain of living in chaos over in one fell swoop, rather than eking it out for weeks, I decided to paint another wall in my bedroom.

ready to use the roller

On Saturday morning I taped it off and brushed blue paint around all the edges. I love all shades of blue and yellow together. The shades I have chosen are deep and rich reminiscent of the tropics, to me anyway. I like catching glimpses of the colour when ever I look up.

I'm planning to do more painting downstairs, very soon.

blue wall finished

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