On Grocery Finds, Further Tin-Foiling, Cardio and Toes, Solitary Confinement, Wheels, and a TV Show That Shall Remain Nameless (At Least Until You Read This Post).

So I went grocery shopping yesterday - and found some very very cheap beef. Beef heart, to be precise. I cooked some up for my lunch this morning. It's very dense and filling. I like, I very much like. I'll have to get more when this runs out. Especially given how cheap it is. Bonus: it's organ meat. Apparently that's supposed to be good for you, or something. So that was a good find.

As per my last post, I'm still having bad feelings about internet privacy and/or safety, especially since Groklaw closed this morning. According to a blog post on the site, they closed because Lavabit closed, and they closed because, they say, email is not safe any more. I don't want to be watched by anyone, but I don't know what to do about it. I could, in theory, drop off the grid - it's just incredibly hard to do that when computers are my job. It might be easier if I was, say, a park ranger or something, you know?
Ah well. For now, I'll stick around, and wait to see how bad it gets.

I went out and bought a new pair of Vibrams last week: pink and grey ones. Partially for the Radiant Run on Saturday, and partially because I really like Vibram shoes and I wanted another pair. I actually went running in them last night, and managed a 5.something km loop, in 45 minutes. I have been known to complain about cardio and how much I dislike it. Well, I still dislike it, but I did get to a point after about the 3rd or 4th km where I just didn't care whether I kept running or not. Weirdest feeling ever. Course now my calves hurt. Yep.
Probably going to go running again Wednesday, and maybe a very short one Thursday, but Friday is definitely resting day and then Saturday night is the run. See? I have a plan ... I think.

Also, Vibrams make a very predictable, though amusing, conversation piece. Anyone who hasn't seen them before will inevitably ask what the hell they are and whether or not they're comfortable and doesn't it feel weird to have things between your toes all the time?; those who have seen them before but don't own a pair themselves will ask similar questions and then throw in things like, how is it running with them, and don't you feel rocks when you walk, and what about glass?; and then the people who also own them will happily tell you how much they like theirs and how comfortable they are for anything and everything, like it's a shared secret, or something. It's funny.

I'm all alone at work today, same as yesterday - my boss is on holiday for two weeks, and my other co-worker comes back to work tomorrow. It's been really quiet, fortunately, although yesterday I had some software that would not behave itself, no matter what I did to it. So then tomorrow I'm not alone, Thursday I'm not alone, and then Friday I'm alone again, because my boss at the secondary site takes every other Friday off - as I think I've explained before. At any rate, this is the week of Lizzi Runs The Show. It's terrifying, right up until the part where it actually happens, at which point most of the day is spent sitting in a chair at a desk, browsing reddit and occasionally answering the phone.

Another thing that's been on my mind lately is cars. I've been contemplating how much more convenient (particularly for groceries) a car is than a bicycle. The one thing that's stopping me is how much of a money dump such a thing would be, although I've seen a good handful of reasonable cars for less than $800 on craigslist. But money (or lack thereof) means, I guess, that I'll have to wait. In the meantime I'm browsing craigslist anyhow.
Speaking of wheels, though: my ugly little black mountain bike finally gave up the ghost. It had so many problems that I couldn't handle the thought of putting more money into it. So I walked down to the thrift store and picked up a nice old 10-speed street bike. Narrow tires, ram's-horn handlebar; I'm a happy happy duck. I didn't even have to think; I walked into the store, looked over the rack, and I knew that that was the one. Nice and easy. I pulled the kickstand and the new brake pads from the old bike and put them on the new one, and she works like a charm. The thing that makes me the happiest is that the gears and chain don't squeak as vilely as the old one did.

Still watching Supernatural like a fiend - most recently finished 6.12, the episode after Sam gets his soul back. A friend of mine made the comment that he didn't like season 6 and up, because in 6 the writers "jump the shark" - and now that I'm watching it, I have to admit, they do rather jump it. 1-5 was a good arc, and they could have ended it there without too much trouble. 6, so far, has been the writers reaching for story. Sam and Dean between them were total facepalm-worthy idiots at least until 6.06, possibly right up to 6.09/6.10. 6.11 was possibly the smartest Dean's been since season 5, and was definitely the dumbest Sam's been, ever. Really, going after Bobby? Dumbass. Even without a soul, there's no excuse for that crap.

Anyways, two hours left in the day, and I think I want to go organise some cables. We have a metaphorical rat's nest happening over on one table, and it's bothering me.

So, toodles, all.



Post Script: I didn't realise how long this post was going to be, or how multi-topic'ed. My bad, and good job if you got all the way through it! Guess I'm a little ADD when I'm writing ... ?

Stuff that surprisingly worked out well, and some factoids I found out.

Well, good morning.
It's Monday.

I had a somewhat interesting weekend.

After the events of Thursday (in which the wrong size inner tube was purchased and Math was used to explain why this is a Very Bad Thing), I did get back to Canadian Tire on Friday to exchange it for the right size. Saturday morning I put it on the bike (and adjusted the back brake callipers while I was at it, because those were all messed up) and rode off to the gym for the first time in a couple months.
Where, despite a couple-month break, I got within 10lbs of my highest weights on squats and deadlifts, and didn't go down in weight at all on bench press. So that felt good - well, up until Sunday morning, at which point the soreness started.... Still sore now, by the way, two days later. Whoops.
Anyways, I came out of the gym to find:
The same damn tire was flat again.
At this point I decided I would bite the bullet and attempt a patch. I'm terrified of patching inner tubes, because there's rubber cement involved and all kinds of weird things. But I wasn't going to buy a whole new inner tube a second time in two days. Not happening. So I stopped in at Canadian Tire again, while walking my bike home from the gym with rubber legs (so much fun). Got home and patched it. I know, it's a little anticlimactic. I also went over my tire to see if there was anything poking into the inner tube - and there was a tiny piece of wire stuck in the tire such that it wasn't visible from the outside (believe me, I checked), so I pulled that out with some pliers. It hasn't given me any trouble so far, and I got to ride to work this morning, finally!

Saturday was also my best friend's birthday, so I picked up a birthday present and went home to have a cup of tea before my ride showed up - and then realised 15 minutes before I was supposed to leave that I hadn't got a card for her. So I made a five minute card, but in the process of searching for materials for it, found something in a box that made my life so much easier.
And here I just need to introduce a rabbit trail that I promise makes sense: I own a Bernina 708 sewing machine. I call it a tank. It looks a little something like this:

And in the process of moving to my new little basement suite, I had lost the presser foot, which made me sad. On Saturday after the gym, Canadian Tire was not the only place I went; there was a quilting store on the way as well, and I stopped to inquire about the possibility of ordering a new foot. Well. Apparently presser feet for old machines like mine run about $50-$60 because it's a special order. So, at home, while looking for materials for a card, I found my presser foot - I had packed it in a smaller box of miscellany and had just never opened it since the move.
I almost did a happy dance.
So I'll be sewing stuff this summer. YAY.

In other news, why (or perhaps how) do Germans have a word for everything? I found out this weekend that they have a word for that feeling you get when you watch a movie/tv show, and you end up cringing on the characters' behalf. This is a feeling that my dad and I share; when anything particularly cringeworthy is on tv or whatever (particularly Mr. Bean and similar humour), we frequently find ourselves having to leave the room/fastforward/hide under blankets/plug our ears... anything to stop the cringe. But as I was saying, there is actually a German term for this. Fremdscham. In its constituent parts it basically means Other Shame; feeling shame on another's behalf, in other words.
German also has a word for the pain that some women feel when they ovulate: Mittelschmerz: Middle Pain. Seriously, they have a word for everything.

Anyways, happy Monday, everyone.
Toodles.

It's been a while?

And by a while, I mean two days. Two whole days without a blog from me. Oh dear, however did you survive? (says the girl who didn't blog for an entire eight-month stretch; yes, I'm laughing at myself.)

My excuse is, the last two days were legitimately busy at work. I was running around dealing with printers and monitors and PS2-type keyboards that may or may not have had a sticky key that was causing the computer to reboot constantly and it doesn't matter anyway because I just stuck a USB keyboard on the desk, plugged it in, and it magically worked. Who knows. I wiped a handful of computers, imaged a handful of computers, and would have ghosted a new colour photocopier but the firmware was newer than the one it was replacing, so I had to put settings in by hand.
I won't judge you if you only understand some of that. I won't even judge you if you don't understand any of that. I am just so nice and non-judgey.

Wednesday I got paid, at last, and I even got to keep some of it for myself. It was nice to finally buy groceries without limiting myself to $20 for a week's worth. Those who know of my paleolithic eating habits will know how bothered I was at having to eat KD and Mr Noodles simply because they're cheap. I bought a bag of breakfasty stuff to try, because why not, and laughed at it - it's ground flaxseed, nothing else, labelled PowerFlax in big red letters, and touted as being sponsors of the BC Lions. Damned Manly Breakfast, I call it, and texture-wise it's like cream of wheat and egg whites had a baby; but it's not bad. For groceries, I still eventually have to pick up some beef and bacon.
I am also tempted, for meat, to go rabbit hunting with my dad, he with his WristRocket and me with Gwenny.
Whoa. Hold up. I haven't mentioned Gwenny on my blog, have I? She got shared on Instagram and Facebook, but she happened during the eight-month Dark Night Of The Blog. The story is, I was researching stuff for fun and profit, and I happened to be researching bows. Like, the kind you shoot. And I researched, and researched, as I do, and I said to myself after the fourth hour, "I can do this."

So I did. I bought a long-enough piece of hickory to even lop off a 12" piece and glue it on the middle for a handle riser; I shaped, sanded, and tillered it, all in my living room; and I bought a couple small spools of B50 Dacron and made a white/black bowstring. All in all, took around 2-3 days. She pulls around 35lbs, which is not bad for a first bow, and I regularly take it into the backyard and kill a particular stump sitting there. I may yet back her with linen or silk cos that will keep her from exploding if she breaks, but for now I'm content.
Anyways, I might take her out and shoot rabbits one Saturday morning. For Science. Yep.

Last night was fun too, but in a less fun way than groceries. My bike's back tire has been flat for the last week and a half or so, but Poor Me has had no money to get a new inner tube, so I've just been hoofing it everywhere. So last night I hoofed it to Canadian Tire to get said new tube, and didn't think beforehand about checking the size I needed. Bought a size too big. But of course, because tires and whatnot are all measured in diameter, not circumference, one inch's size difference in the diameter means it's actually 3.1415926 inches longer around. The end result being, the inner tube was too long to fit inside the tire. So I now have to exchange it for the correct size. I was mad though; it buggered up my plans for the evening, which were, namely, to buy myself a beer and go hang out at my parents' house because bicycle.

And this morning I had an odd dream: I had black corkscrew-curly hair that I had to brush flat before it would behave itself, and the tenants upstairs were digging holes in the walls of, and otherwise dismantling, my bathroom - they said there was a fly behind the wall and they had to get it out because it was bothering them. Then I had my youngest sister over and we went for a walk and passed some people I knew, but they didn't recognise me, and I blame the sunglasses I was wearing. Anyways.

So that brings me, with a terrible and fully unrelated segue, to my final thoughts of the day: I was interested, when I was looking at my blog stats (because I don't know about you, but I am intrigued by the blog visits/views/viewer statistics), to see that my feministic rant from last week is actually among the top five viewed posts on my blog, out of every post I've ever written here. The other four are my comments on pretty boys, on things I smelled one day, on the TV shows I like (though Doctor Who ought to now be at the top of that list), and (oh, the memories) on being a fitting room attendant. I don't know why I find that fascinating, but I do. Partly because people prefer to read particular things over other things, perhaps. At any rate, I'm glad you people appreciated my rant as much as you seem to have. I know one friend said I was her hero as a result of that post, which I am really not sure I deserve, but I'm definitely rather flattered by.

That's it. Toodles!

On Roundabouts. [profanity warning]

Dear drivers,

You are all fucking idiots, and you have not got a bloody clue between the lot of you of what roundabouts really mean.

When I'm standing waiting to cross the fucking highway entrance, and you got there before I did, don't sit there at the top of the bloody on-ramp like a dumbass, ESPECIALLY when I'm motioning you on.

Because here's the thing. While you're sitting there, being a goddamn Canadian, three cars are lining up behind you and filling up the roundabout in such a way that no-one else can get into the roundabout. You really think that being polite in that situation will actually help anybody? I can wait; it takes, what? thirty seconds for the roundabout to clear? Your idiocy (under the guise of politeness) is actually more likely to get people hurt, as they pile up behind you.

Yes, I realise, it's not entirely your fault, it's the fault of the rules of the road. In North America, pedestrians come first. In the UK, they don't, and the UK was our wonderful roundabout inspiration. So we have two different rule-sets intersecting, and it makes for not a great system. So I understand that.

But please, for fuck's sake. JUST GO when I'm motioning that you should go. Because I can see the lineup forming behind you, and yelling at me about it won't help an ounce. JUST FUCKING GO. Don't be so stubborn about it.

Much love to you, idiot drivers. Try driving in the UK sometime.

Toodles.

[disclaimer: if you're not an idiot driver, this was not addressed to you specifically. but please treat roundabouts the way they're meant to be treated anyways, idiocy aside.]

haHA. i laugh in your faces.

sillies!

... let me back up and explain.

my bike got a flat in the back tire. so today i had to fix it, otherwise i can't go to work. or - well - i can, but it'll either take me an hour's walk, or it'll cost me $15. since i'm cheap and i don't want to spend an hour on my feet, i'd rather fix my bike. so i went and bought a new inner tube, fetched the necessary tools, and removed to the parking area under our building where i keep my bike, whence i proceeded to remove the back wheel. you know. basic tire-changing stuff.

so i have the wheel and tire laid out and i'm just going through the tire with my fingers to find any puncturing culprits [which in this case was a blackberry thorn - gah. those things are murder!!], and along come two or three guys - in their mid? twenties? ish? - slightly older than me, anyways - and they're all giving me weird looks. one of them asks me if i need help. i'm all, "no thanks i got this :)" so they carry on heading for their car.
but it was so funny, i could see the phrase, "she's a girl! does she know what she's doing?" going through all of their heads.

but my tire is back on, the inner tube is properly filled, the chain is around the gear correctly, and i even straightened a wobble in the rim to top it off.

take that, male-gender-types who doubt the ability of female-gender-types to do dirty work. haHA. i laugh in your Hairy Faces.

[... please note that i do NOT laugh in the faces of the male-gender-types who Cheer For the female-gender-types who Do Stuff. you male-gender-cheering-types are okay. even if your faces DO grow hair.]

end of blog for today. must sleep.