More Random Thoughts

Chicken or Not?
Apparently Fluffy, the largest and ugliest of our hens, has started to crow. In the last week she(?) has developed lovely wattles (is that what they are called?) and a comb leading us to deduce that she is in fact a he. That explains a few things . . .

Work and the Weirdos
In order to fill the bank account a bit I've been taking whatever shifts I can at Vinoteca in addition to my time at la Pommeraie. I ended up doing Friday lunch at Vinoteca then zooming over to Merridale for dinner, Saturday was lunch and dinner at Merridale, then Sunday brunch at Merridale and an evening Christmas party dinner at Vinoteca. I am damn pooped! So far I'm still only Fri, Sat, Sun at Merridale though I've asked for more hours.

On to the weirdos: Sunday brunch we had a group of 6 that included two guys who didn't take off their ballcaps. Chris said it was the Clampett's Go to Town. They just about drove Tammy the server round the bend. First they needed to know if our eggs were organic and if so, what the chickens ate. Uh-huh. They also wanted to know what kind of duck was in the sandwich. Chris said "the kind that quack", I called our supplier but got the answering machine. They wanted a litre of cider to share, which seems normal until you realize that they were all drinking a different one. Ok-ay. Later they were asking how many apples it takes to make cider, how many trees there were, how many apples from each tree, etc, etc. I'm not sure how much was joking but it made for an interesting service . . .

Snow!
It snowed last night. Not much and it's quite wet, so should be gone soon. The bus driver must have been in shock though, seeing Selena wearing a coat this morning. //laugh//

Christmas Shopping!
I'd like to know how it got to be the end of November already. I'm now running around like a maniac trying to finish Christmas shopping. Can I say again how much I love Book Closeouts?!

Racism?
Yesterday I picked up a few groceries before getting Selena from the bus and was loading my car when this native woman appeared behind me asking for change. As I never have cash of any kind I politely said No. Then she asked for my buggy (to get the loonie) and I again politely said No. I've had that loonie for months now and if I give it away I'll be screwed next time I need a buggy. Anyway, the point of this little rant is that the woman moved on to the next white person in the lot completely ignoring the native lady parked next to me (who was better dressed than and had a nicer car that I do). Hmm . . .

Hydro Crews and the Trees
We have a Hydro easement through our property and every year the crews come through to cut down all the fast growing trees (maple, etc). They came yesterday, 4 guys with chainsaws (usually it's a big machine) and started cutting. No biggie, until I noticed 2 of them walking into the garden area between the two houses. Hmm. I thought they were reading the notes mum left on the big trees not to cut them. Nope, they started cutting down the cedar hedge! I phone mum and run out and start yelling at the same time, so they stop and stare. The lead guy is saying they were supposed to cut all conifers as well as the maple. Yeah, okay, but buddy that's a f-ing hedge!! Oh, sorry. I hear one guy in the background saying, "if it's under the wires we cut it" and another guy saying "we don't cut things people have planted!". Good God! After explaining that A) that was a hedge (an ugly one but still), and B) it wasn't anywhere near 15ft tall (which is what we are allowed), they apologized and headed off. Luckily we stopped them because they probably would have gotten the little arbutus too.

Which Celebrity Do You Look Like?

This was posted on a bulletin board that I read, it's a demo for face recognition software. You upload a pic of yourself and it tells you which celebrity has similar facial features.

I used the pic from my Blogger profile and appartently share features with Liz Taylor, Courtenay Cox, and Enya. Must be the cheek bones. //shrug// I also tried one of my self portraits and got Demi Moore, Chelsea Clinton, Carrie Anne Moss and Indira Gandhi (?!). This one I think was based on cheek bones and eye brows (I had drawn some on. //wink//). I guess they don't have Dawn French in their database . . .

Fog!

Darned fog! It's been hanging around for a few days now. While I actually don't mind fog per say, I like to walk out in it, but this fog has brought eau de pulp mill along with it. Yuck!

Also it makes driving a little difficult, mostly because the other drivers seem to have super vision and decide tailgating is fun or zoom past at the speed of light. And the darned school bus didn't come this morning, so I had to drive Selena to school. The nice thing is that here on our little hill it feels (and looks) like being in a cocoon. I think I'll make some hot chocolate and popcorn and sit looking out at the mist.

Finished at Last!

I've been fiddling with a website since 2002 and it's finally done! Well, almost anyway, I still have a ton of pics to add. I built this site about my trip to Pakistan for my Web Applications course final project in 2002, although I took the trip in 1994, so it has been a long time coming.

I only had 10 days so it was a very short site and left out half of the trip but I did get a good mark. I've been thinking a lot about Pakistan since the earthquake and decided to dust off the site and put it up. I've pulled a few of the programming features that I needed for the project but are very dated these days (guestbook, e-postcards) and added more commentary. There are lots of pics there but I took 14 rolls of film so I have more to scan and add.

Oh, I guess a URL would be handy, no? Pakistan . . . a travel diary.

Things Are Looking Up!

Yay! Finally!

I'm not full time yet at Merridale but will be going to 5 days a week lunch service, with two days all alone, next week. The restaraunt will be open seven days a week. I'm quite excited that the chef thinks I've done well enough to handle two days on my own. Mind you, weekdays are not overly busy, but still it's a step up.

After that we're going to be adding dinner service, probably by reservation only so it will be easier to staff but I'm not sure on that one. So again, I should be able to add more hours and slowly phase out going to Vinoteca. I'll probably take hours there whenever I can until they close at Christmas as the extra cash would be nice. On Friday I did the lunch shift at Merridale, then went to Vinoteca for the dinner shift. It made for a long day but at least I made a few more bucks than usual.

The other cool thing has a bit of story behind it:
Last week after Sunday brunch at Merridale we had a ton of leftover bread, so Chris and I decided to make bread pudding on Monday. Well, we only had one pan and it was huge, we ended up with the Mother of All Bread Puddings that took almost ALL day to cook. Ehem. So we thought we'd try again with ramekins or something. On the way home I remembered that we made bread pudding at school in ramekins and it was easy.

So I thought, why not muffin tins? Then I thought, the restaurant is on an orchard, we should have apples in the pudding. Then I thought, I hate raisins, maybe cranberries would be nice and give some colour too. Wednesday was experiment day, I put together the ideas and tried baking in a muffin tin and a mini bread loaf pan. After that it was off to the assorted family to force them all to eat bread pudding and gather some feedback. They all liked it and recommended a few changes. I cooled the puddings, wrapped them and took some to work on Friday. Chris and Tammy (one the servers) tried it and liked it. Chris said to save it for the chef to try on Saturday. Well, the chef tried it, liked it and said he would put it on the menu. How cool is that?!?