Posted at 02:26 PM | Comments (3)

How to be the Perfect Girlfriend

Laughtacular. :-)

Posted at 09:41 PM | Comments (0)

There's just something about my front porch. I'll walk out onto it and look to the West and say, "Wow, the outdoors look amazing. So amazing that I have to take a picture right now..."

Then I'll drive over to Safeway. Get some orange juice, bread, odd and ends. But by the time I get back, the scene has gotten so much more incredible that I must dash into my house, grab my camera, dash back into my car and zoom up the street to Boundary Road to take more pictures.

Click for larger version

The image above is made of three photos. It was meticulously stitched together in Photoshop for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy.

Posted at 09:44 PM | Comments (2)

Be honest, some of you are cynical about recycling. You think that whatever you put in that blue box just ends up in a landfill. Or perhaps you believe (for some baffling reason) that transporting and refining recyclables is more energy-intensive than the extraction of raw materials such as petroleum or ores. I even once heard one of you (who should know much better) say: "recycling is just a charade that makes us feel better about what we throw out".

You need to put your fears to rest and read this extensive article on the the effectiveness of recycling by The Economist. Much investigation and crunching of numbers shows that not only does recycling work, it significantly reduces the use of energy and, sometimes consequently, the emission of greenhouse gasses. Specific details are given about the recovery of paper products, plastics, metals, and even end-of-life technology.

So next time someone chuckles at me for plucking an empty toilet-paper tube out of the wastebasket so I can throw it in the recycling basket, don't laugh! I'm trying to make a difference...

Posted at 10:04 AM | Comments (4)

http://aq.server8.org/

27 = Above average

Doesn't particularly surprise me.

Posted at 09:37 AM | Comments (4)

Firstly, you should all be apprised of the fact that we have a new roommate. His name is David, he's from Sweden, and he's an engineer. Neato!

Now that our Conservative government has gotten nice and comfy over the past year and a half, it can turn from the basic aspects of governing and keeping the peace in parliament to what its members really want to do: push the Conservative agenda. And I argue that there is no more important agenda than health care.

I know a few of you have had unpleasant experiences with our health care system over the years. For non life-threatening injuries, getting treatment can be barred by arduous wait times. Our system is heavily used and our population is growing all the time, especially here in British Columbia. This frustration leads us to call for some sort of reform. Regrettably, this makes us curious about the possibilities of incorporating privatization into our public system.

Advocates of private health care argue that it can help to rapidly expand our base of care providers while reducing costs. But as Arnold S. Relman of the Globe and Mail points out, one needs only look at the American health care system to see how woefully wrong that assertion is. If you'll review the statistics from last week, you'll notice that 108,000 Americans have died since 2001 because they simply couldn't afford medical treatment. That's 36 times more people than have died from terrorism. It is the dysfunctionality of the American system that prompted Michael Moore to take it to task in his latest movie, Sicko.

Proponents of private health are often bandying out the phrase, "This is a complicated problem, you can't solve it by simply throwing money at it." This in itself is an oversimplification. Money pays for more doctors, more nurses, more equipment and more facilities. Money well spent can improve our health care system. And that burgeoning population I mentioned means that we have more tax dollars that should, as a priority, be spent on health care.

The time is going to come very soon when your voice will help decide which direction our nation's health system will take. Should we continue to provide Universal Health Care, a model used by many, MANY nations around the world, or should we move towards an increasingly privatized model like the United States? The pebble that starts the avalanche will be a small one: a bill regarding private clinics, perhaps. But make no mistake, once the box of private health care is open, it will be a lot harder to shut. After all, why would our government ever increase public funding again when there are private alternatives?

Ask yourself: in the lower mainland, where food, housing, fuel, transit, everything is exorbitantly expensive; where we often wonder if we will own a home in our lifetimes, can we afford to pay profit to private health care institutions? Ask yourself: when your son or daughter is dying of a curable disease, because the public system is too underfunded to treat them in time, and because the private system is so expensive it's out of your reach, will private health care still feel like a viable option?

That's not fear-mongering, that's how it works in the U.S.. The next time someone starts talking about private health care, be it a friend, a family member, or a politician. Tell them how grossly wrong they are. You may very well be fighting for someone's life... perhaps even your own.

Posted at 09:28 AM | Comments (7)

Hey, now we're talkin'!

We finally had people show up for roommate interviews. Yesterday a fellow from Montreal came by and today one from Sweeden was by. Both were quite nice and were definitely interested in our place. There's one more candidate coming by tomorrow, a local lady. After that I think we might just choose from the three of them, because I'm very done with this whole finding roommates thing.

Also, I booked my vacation time at the end of this month. I've decided to just enjoy Beautiful British Columbia. I haven't yet spent a sunny day in Stanley Park this summer, and I think a weekday might be an ideal time to do that. Also, I should be heading up to Garden Bay the first weekend. Mmmm, a full week of enjoyment.

I'm finally feeling optimistic about the near future.

Posted at 04:36 PM | Comments (1)

Another day, another no show.

Posted at 05:55 PM | Comments (2)

What. The. Hell.

Apparently I've got some kind of curse on me or something. People are dropping out after initially expressing interest in being our new roommate. Or perhaps they're committing to coming over for an interview, then flaking out without letting me know, only to call later and apologize, and schedule another interview which they ALSO flake out of!

I'm seriously stressed out here. This is not at all when or how I wanted to be getting a roommate. I am putting out a call to all of my friends here; if you can find me that special person who will live with us and whom is NOT unreliable or a freak of some kind, I will consider it a PERSONAL FAVOR to be repaid.

Seriously, I'm getting sick of this.

Posted at 07:51 PM | Comments (1)

Thank you Brian Gable of the Globe and Mail, for saying what I've been thinking about America's priorities for the past week.

When you're done with that, here's your extra credit assignment.

Posted at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

Hmm...

Now advertising our room on Craigslist. Scheduled a bunch of people to come see our place and do the meet and greet. Cleared the whole day. Ended up sitting around doing shit-all nothing because everyone flaked out.

That kind of thing can really get a man pissed off.

Posted at 05:28 PM | Comments (2)

I have a day off now where I'm not sick. Ideal time to get some blogging done that I've been meaning to do for a while.

So some of you know that I've been nurturing a little garden in my back yard this year. I've planted potatoes, turnips, carrots, radishes, peppers, and garlic. More potatoes and onions from last year's garden made an appearance on their own. Plenty of my stuff didn't work out. I've had a lot of failures (the garlic, for one). But I have had some serendipitous successes.

For example, the first crop of radishes I planted showed up but grew slowly. I found some Miracle-Gro in our basement and had the bright idea of applying some to the garden. It wasn't my best idea. As you can see, with the exception of the peppers, I have crop of root vegetables. Regular Miracle-Gro is primarily a Nitrate-based fertilizer, which encourages the growth of leaves. I found out later that I needed a primarily Phosphate-based fertilizer, which encourages root growth.

So my radishes bolted, that is, grew long stalks for flowers. In an attempt to keep them from going to seed, I pinched off the flower buds. But where I pinched one off, two grew on new stems. I kept up this futile process for weeks until it became too much to work. To add insult to injury, it was obvious that and root mass that had formed by this point was stiff from supporting the girth of the plant, and was woody and inedible. "FINE!" I threw up my hands in frustration and abandoned the plants. Over the next several days they the radishes celebrated their victory over my will by exploding in blossoms.

A week later I faced them in the garden and decided that they were serving no useful purpose. I started stomping them down flat. Then I noticed that the dense brush of radish was covered by seed pods. Big ones. A thought occurred to me. I consulted my trusty internets, and lo, I discovered that yes, you CAN eat them! People have been eating radish seed pods as long as they've been eating the roots. They taste delicately of radish and the texture is very similar to eating small snap peas or green beans. And because I fertilized the plants and frustrated them so by snapping off the flowers, there are TONS of them. So far I've made three or four meals with them, and I expect many more. They're great in stir-frys.

The death of my first round of potato plants (I think some bugs ate the leaves) hasn't been entirely in vain either. I dug up tons of little nuggety potatoes which have been quite yummy to munch on, baked and fried. There's just something about eating something I grew myself which fills me with pride. It'll be a long time before I'm able to compete with all the local Italians in Burnaby Heights, who grow immense beanstalks, huge zucchini plants, and trillions of tomatoes. But I'm learning!

Posted at 02:24 PM | Comments (4)