citizen of the planet

Just going to post a picture of the stand that was mentioned in the last post.  I’m quite happy with it since it seems to be smaller in depth compared to the old unit, and it has a lot of storage.  It means that I was able to clear out two different boxes from my Expedit shelf.  I still have to figure out what to fill those spaces with, but I like the fact that I have that option, know what I mean?  It feels sort of classy, and feels less of a stop gap measure than the other stand.

I put off writing about this yesterday because I was still getting used to a couple of things about the topic at hand, but I guess now’s as good a time as any.  I’ve never had a pet growing up, much as I wanted the responsibility and companionship.  As soon as I moved to my own place I decided that I’d make it a point to get one.  I considered adopting a dog, however, I knew that my situation and lifestyle wouldn’t be conducive to dog ownership.  It just would be fair to the poor beast.  As for cats, they were always an option, but I just never got around to adopting one.  Also, I kind of feared for my leather couch.  That’s pretty much how things have been for the past few months.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a friend and offhand I suggested that I wanted to get a cat at some point.  He jumped at the idea and suggested that I could take his cat if I wanted.  He was having trouble keeping the cat at his place with his mother not getting along with pet.  Well, I hesitated for a little while, but I decided that a trial run was in order.  It just so happened that he was going away this long weekend, so this would be my chance.  The deal is that if things go well this cat-sitting gig might turn into a permanent home.

Yesterday, my friend brought Gloria in with most of her things.  In the carrier, you can tell that she was feeling awkward.  When we opened the door, she slinked her way out before bolting for the kitchen.  After assessing the situation, she jumped up on the counter and hid behind the blender.  Apparently it gave her enough cover to be “hidden.”  After a while, my friend got her down, and gave her a brief look at my condo.  When he let her go, she dove under the couch.  After my friend left, I was just left on my own to figure her out.  Part of me was hoping to spend a little while getting to know Gloria and for her to get used to me, but I knew that she was kind of anxious and unsure of her new environment.  I knew that she had to come out on her own terms and that I couldn’t force her to come and say hello.  I couldn’t help myself though, every now and then I’d peek under the couch to see how she’s doing.  She’d stare right back.

Knowing that she wouldn’t come out I ended up retreating to my room early in hopes that she’d just start exploring right away.  I left out half a can of tuna for her to eat, and some fresh water to drink.  The litter box was clump free and ready to go for her.  I slept well.  When I woke up I checked the state of things.  She ate a fair bit of the tuna, and the litter box was used.  The leather couch wasn’t scratched at all, but I saw a few paw prints here and there, indicating that indeed she did explore.  I was wondering where she was, so I ducked under the couch, and yup, there she was.

I set out new food and water for her, so I was hoping that she’d go eat while I was awake.  She was too timid for that.  At one point I decided to just duck under the couch and say hi.  I called her name out a few times and enticed her to come closer to me.  She allowed me to start petting her and I obliged.  I was relieved to hear her purring as I scratched her head.  I tried to coax her out from under the couch, but when I did she scrambled back to the darkness.  That tells me that she’s kind of comfortable with me, but still scared of the environment.  I’ll take that.  It means that she’ll definitely come around once she gets used to the place.  Heck, I left my condo for an hour this evening and when I came back she moved the the darkness under my bed.  When I greeted her, she just stared at me.  When I sat on the bed she bolted back for the couch.  Small progress, I guess.  We’ll see how much progress she makes overnight.

So yes, this is the start of another journey for me, isn’t it?  I’m sure that she’ll do well and eventually realize that I’m there for her.  Meanwhile, all I can do is hope for the best.

One of the side effects of watching Food Network is that I often find myself with urges to take on various cooking challenges mimicking what I see on TV.  Heck, they make it seem so easy, right?  I have a small bit of skill with cooking.  I can do it!  When I’m flipping channels one of the shows that airs on Food Network that I will actively stop for is Eat, Shrink & Be Merry.  Why that show?  Well, they spend one show focusing on a single dish, which is always a healthier version of some restaurant counterpart.  The stuff that they make always seems to put up a good fight against the counterpart in a side-by-side taste test.  More often than not I’ll come out from watching that show thinking, “hey, I want to try that, too.”  You may recall that a while back I successfully made their Shockolate Cheesecake.  Low fat cheesecake that tastes rich?  How can you lose?  Anyway, this week the network aired the episode where they made shepherd’s pie.  Well, the recipe seemed simple.  It wasn’t that hard of a decision to try it out on my own.

I ventured out to Wal-Mart to gather the ingredients.  I wanted to use the Yukon golds like they did, but ultimately I opted for convenience by buying pre-cut cubed potatoes that just needed to be put in the microwave then mashed.  I wasn’t keen on peeling a proper butternut squash so I hoped to find something in the freezer aisle, but I came up empty.  So, in the end my topping consisted only of potato.  Maybe next time, right?  For the meat and sauce, they used chili sauce.  I decided to use sriracha because that’s what I had on hand.  Besides that, sriracha is so flavourful.  A little goes a long way.  When everything was assembled, they sprinkled some Parmesan cheese on top to get some melted and bubbling action going.  For mine I decided to mix in some panko bread crumbs with the Parmesan.  I figured that it would make the top even crispier and delicious.  Well, how did the end result turn out?  Have a look.

I totally made a good call with the panko.  The contrast in textures was just amazing.  The taste was very balanced and delicious.  I’m totally happy with the results.  And to think, I didn’t use a single bit of butter or cream for this.  Crazy.  I swear, the next thing I’m going to tackle from them is their Better Butter Chicken recipe.  It’s a bit more involved than this shepherd’s pie, but I want to see how well their spice blend in the recipe works out.

I was tidying up a bit around my place when I got a little bit derailed. I took a couple of sheets over to my shredder and tried to put them through the slot. Things wouldn’t budge. I tried switching the thing to reverse to see if it would spit something out, but nothing came out. Once again, I switched it out of reverse and tried to feed it a sheet. Still nothing. I thought I’d somehow broken the machine. Upon closer examination the thing was thoroughly clogged. So, I decided to open up the shredder and see if there was something I could do about it.

Generally, I’m not the type of person that really likes taking machinery apart just to see how things work. Sure, the guts of a machine can be interesting, but really I just expect things to work when expected, know what I mean? I wonder how the heck I ever got into engineering with that attitude, eh? Anyway, it took me a while to open the shredder up because there were unexpectedly a couple of screws hidden under stickers. When I got it open, it became obvious that the thing wasn’t just clogged–it was well and thoroughly obstructed. In the slot, I could see a dam of shredded paper jamming the thing, basically preventing the rolls from spinning at all. How did it get to that point? Well, I think a little while ago I switched the machine to reverse, just to see if something would get spit out. After a while, nothing. However, seeing what happened, I figure that the reverse motion picked up a pile of the shredded paper and jammed it up top. Well, of course, in retrospect that was a horrible idea. I guess that reverse setting is really only meant for emergencies. Seems silly when I say that, but at this point I see no other purpose.

Anyway, since the slot is thin I wasn’t able to fish out any of the paper with just my fingers. Nearby I spotted a thin allen key, so I used that to dig in and hook out as much paper as I could get. For the next half hour I was fishing out tiny shreds of paper. The paper was really lodged in there.  It wouldn’t come out that easily.  The strips were flying everywhere; a few even hit me in the eye. The end result was a mess on the carpet. How stupid, eh?

What’s the lesson here? Well, I guess the point is that I should know better than to use machinery for a purpose other than that intended. Secondly, I seem more than capable of taking shit apart without breaking it when I put my mind to it. Thirdly, I need to empty the damn shredder.

I’m not sure why, but this morning I liked what I was wearing such that I felt compelled to take a picture.

When I see this picture though, it’s kind of clear that I need to work on taking these kinds of vanity photos.  There are a couple of things that come to mind.

1. If I ever want to do another picture of this type in the future, I need to wear my damn shoes.
2. I could have spent a minute or two cleaning up some of the clutter in the background.
3. Next time get the compost bin out of the way
4. That’s pretty much my usual colour scheme–pretty neutral. Browns and blacks are common.
5. Need to work on where I’m staring.

Every once in a while I need a bit of a scare to keep me from getting far too complacent with my daily routine.  After work, after getting off the train I was walking home thinking about all of the things I needed to do when I got back to my place.  As I approached my building I opened my bag to fetch my keys.  After pawing around my messenger bag pocket, I noticed that my keys weren’t there.  I started fishing through my pants pockets, but they weren’t there either.  I didn’t want to look all frantic while standing at the side of the road so I decided to just keep walking around my building as I searched my bag.  I kept searching and walking but found nothing.  Soon I was back at the main road, at which point I decided to just trek back to work.  I figured that if my keys weren’t with me the next likely place would be at my desk.  Of course, right?  Thing is, it’s a 40 minute trip back.  Unfortunately that long trip gave me enough time to let the fertile soil of my mind sprout various scenarios.

The ride back in was a bit rough.  There was a delay along the east-west line so a lot of the ride was jerky.  As a result of the uneven ride I was feeling a little bit queasy.  The thought of me totally misplacing my keys was just compounding things.  I’m supposed to be the responsible one with everything together, right?  Yeah, I know that doesn’t exclude me from having mental lapses, but something this bad shouldn’t happen.  I started imagining worst case scenarios.  What if I’d dropped my keys somewhere such that someone could figure out where I lived?  Yeah, impossible since there’s nothing to link the keys to a specific address, but what if?  I was dreading the thought of having to call the manager to get me into my suite.  I was dreading the thought of having to change all the locks.  Doomsday!  End of the world!  All of this over-thinking actually made me physically sick.  Yes, I know: over-reacting horribly.

Anyway, I did make it back to my desk.  When I got there I was mildly disappointed to not see them on my desk.  I opened the drawer and there they were.  How the hell did they get in there?  Seriously, a weight was lifted off my shoulders.  Perhaps in a moment of quick celebration I stepped over to the nearby bar and downed a pint of Sapporo.  I wandered around from there and ended up sitting in front of Toronto City Hall eating a poutine from the blue chip truck.  I was kind of angry at myself for letting my emotional mind go a bit haywire.  I mean, it’s all totally irrational.  My mind was still a little bit muddled so I think I wanted to do something relaxing in a beautiful setting.  Hence the fries in front of ever awesome city hall.  From there I ended up wandering up Yonge observing random people going about their business, and observing them observing me.

Anyway, crisis was averted, and there was no harm done in the end.  Still, that doesn’t excuse the fact that I was a little bit insane.  I let my guard down.  Don’t want it to happen again.

Just a small post tonight.  As I was going through my Twitter list, I’ve been noticing that a good number of people have been updating their avatars.  I guess it has something to do with the change of season.  I kind of felt jealous so I opened up Photo Booth on my MBP and started taking random shots.  After some consultation, I decided to go with the following one.

I think specifically I like the hair and the intensity I have in the eyes.  Works for me!

Honestly, I haven’t really been cooking meals for myself in the past while.  Very frequently I’ve come home just feeling exhausted and not hungry.  And when I’ve been hungry I’ve just been opting for quick out-of-the-box stuff.  Yeah, kind of embarrassing, eh?  One of my coping mechanisms has been to just eat enough while I’m at work such that there’s no need to eat any more by the time I get home, except for, perhaps, a small snack.  Anyway, this afternoon I decided that I needed to break the cycle.  I wanted to make an effort and cook a proper dinner this evening.

I knew that I had a prime rib roast in the freezer that I could defrost pretty quickly.  I usually end up doing a pot roast, but this time I wanted to make it an oven roast.  And, of course, I knew that a good pairing for the roast would be a Yorkshire pudding.  I started working out my plan of attack at work.  The cooking method for the roast looked simple enough.  The recipe for the Yorkshire pudding was dead easy as well–I just dumped it all into a blender and let it do its thing.  So, after defrosting the roast, I put a spice rub onto the fatty part of the meat and stood it up vertically.  I put the roast in a 450°F oven for 15 minutes to sear the meat.  After that I turned it down to 350°F and cooked it for the remainder of the time.  After I took out the meat, I poured the batter into the pan with all of the meat drippings.  I stuck it back into a 400°F oven for about half an hour.  When all was said and done everything looked absolutely awesome.  I’m quite proud of the results.  It was all so tasty.  It shows me that I still know what I’m doing in the kitchen.

Of course, I took pictures of everything that I made.  Naturally!  Here: