Reading Week
This entry is overdue, but that's alright. My Reading Week consisted of no trips to anywhere tropical or European, or anything glamorous at all but it was quite enjoyable. Although I do hope that in one of my many Reading Weeks to come (seeing as I'm going to be in school for another lifetime), I can take a damn trip. I worked about twice as much as I do during a school week, which was good because it's more money (mo' problems), bad because well, it's work.
Monday I went to work and I was actually fairly excited because my shift was with another girl who I like but hardly work with. Unfortunately, a mistake was made earlier that week which resulted in us picking up the pieces the rest of the shift. Conveniently, it was Family Day so no one was at work to help us out, or back us up. This involved us calling people and being yelled at. Surprisingly, not that many people were as mad as I would be, but it's still never fun to a) call random people, and b) tell those people bad news. When I got home that night, I did a lot of heroine and went to sleep.
Tuesday I was at work again. My boss was really cool and offered me free tickets to see Sweeney Todd that night as a thank you for taking care of the problem the day before. I called Matt and he was interested in seeing it. I had never seen the movie, and barely knew the story, but I like musicals and using my superb logic skills, assumed I would like this musical. I ended up loving the musical and had the Johanna song(s) stuck in my head the entire week, and this will probably happen again now that I've typed those words. Matt dropped me off at home afterward because he made a commitment with his friends to play an online game. Beauty and the geek. Ha. (He probably just gave a dirty look the computer screen as he read that line.)
On Wednesday, Elisa and I had planned to hang out but I was feeling crappy and restless so I stayed at home. I watched the movie Sweeney Todd and I really enjoyed it, not to mention encouraged the song stuck in my head. I can't say which was better, the musical or the movie. Personally, I appreciate seeing live theatre much more, probably because of my dance background. They both had pros and cons, though I will say Mrs. Lovitt in the musical was much better than Helena Bonham Carter, in my opinion, though I think they were going for a different portrayal in the movie.
Thursday was the first day I returned to taking the busses, which was not a good decision. Since it was also the day Obama was visiting Ottawa, I thought I would bus out to Matt's house later in the afternoon to avoid any traffic. So, it's 3:30 and I'm on the 116 literally 2 minutes away from South Keys where I'll meet Matt and we've been waiting at the same light for about 5 minutes. The driver gets on the microphone and tells us that we have to wait here for another 20 - 30 minutes until Obama has made it to the airport. Honestly, I didn't really care because I was really into listening to my iPod at that time for some reason. It was a bit annoying, though, because all of these guys in their mid-20's (the type that wants to seem smarter than everyone else) start saying how their first impression of Obama isn't a good one because of this. Seriously? I don't think Barack was thinking, "Okay, I think it would be a nice gesture to my Canadian friends to hold them up in a bus for half an hour." It was his security, and hey, he's practically a celebrity. I don't mind waiting for Barack. I think they were just bitter that our own prime minister is so lackluster that, when he visits Washington, he'll probably be taking public transit.
I get to South Keys and Matt and I wait for the bus that will take us to the Museum of Nature to see the Jane Goodall exhibit. What was supposed to be a 30 minute bus trips turns out to take an hour and 15 minutes. By the time we get there, the museum would only be open for another hour and I hate feeling rushed. Since the exhibit is going to be open until the end of May, we decide to just get something to eat. I mentioned I saw a Vietnamese place a little ways up the street when we were on the bus so we go walking trying to find it. Eventually, the cold gets the best of us and we agree to just eat at the next restaurant that we're both mildly interested in. It turns out to be a Vietnamese restaurant although not the one I had originally seen. The first tip-off should have been that the restaurant was uncharacteristically clean and nicely decorated. In my experience with Asian restaurants, and believe me, I'm a culinary expert when it comes to Asian food, the seedier the restaurant, the better the food. We decide to get a dinner for 2 thing which comes with spring rolls, hot and sour soup, beef and lemongrass in chili sauce, and a chicken dish, along with steamed rice. We also ordered two lemon sodas. The spring rolls were one of the best I've tasted in the city. This was false advertising because things only went downhill once we got the hot and sour soup. For anyone who has had this soup, you should know the soup is brothy. This version of hot and sour soup was thick and almost creamy, though I did appreciate the big chunks of chicken in it. I was not at all impressed with the consistency of the soup though. Both the beef and chicken dish seemed like they were cooked in the same sauce, which tasted pretty much like a generic Asian sauce you can buy at Loblaws or something. And, to make matters worse, we never got our drinks nor could we catch the waitress for long enough to inquire about our drinks. So, that restaurant sucked. We did stop in at a Loblaws and there was a guy playing piano for spare change in there. It made me happy that Loblaws let the guy do this. I felt like a chump because I only had a dollar in quarters but I gave it to him, and was pleasantly surprised that his can had bills and tons of change in there. We bussed home and hung out.
On Friday, I had the shift to beat all shifts. I was in at work for 9:30 a.m. and closed at 7:30 p.m. Holy. For the first three hours, the two Benadryl I took about 8 hours before were still running through my system so I was delightfully unaware. The shift wasn't as bad as I'm making it seem because I worked with people I like, which is actually generally a constant seeing I dislike very few people at work. That night, Matt came over and we decided to make a recipe from the chicken cookbook he got me for Valentine's Day. We decided on a deviled chicken recipe which sounds kind of weird but essentially is a breaded chicken dish made with dijon mustard and worchestire sauce. Since I had a very minimal amount of food all day, I was grumpy, tired, and not very good at concentrating. I was preparing the different bowls we had to dip our chicken in to complete the breading process, and misread the recipe and added literally 4 more cups of oil than was needed. Well, the 4 cups was to put in the frying pan, and the one tablespoon was for one of the bowls and I ended up putting it all in the bowl. The chicken actually didn't taste bad at all, it was surprisingly good though it did burn quicker since it was oily. Pan-frying breaded chicken always frustrates me because I always seem to slightly burn the outside while the inside cooks so much slower. I think I'll have to look up an effective way of pan-frying since it's my preferred method of cooking chicken. The night ended with me falling quickly asleep.
Saturday I spent with Elisa hanging out at her house. We made chocolate chip cookies, read some Cosmopolitan, and then we watch Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist which I hadn't seen before. I thought it was a pretty good movie, especially since it had two of my very favorite people: Jesus and Britney Spears. Just kidding. Michael Cera and Andy Samberg. Andy's part made me laugh out loud for a long time. That night, we went to a poetry night in the Market with our friend and her boyfriend, who recited one of his poems in the open mic portion. We sat up in this balcony ish place, which looks cool but then you realize there's like a net of rope in front of you, just in case one of the poems makes you so depressed you want to jump. At these events, there are almost like poetry competitions and someone picks 5 judges from the audience to judge each of the poems. Elisa and I were trying to catch the guy's eye, but we didn't have any luck. A few minutes later, another guy comes up the stairs with a judge's white board and walks right to us and says someone requested we judge. I was afraid I'd have to do a strip tease with the judging, but alas, I didn't. I almost felt drunk with power and wanted to be a Simon Cowell judge, but apparently, it's an unwritten rule that you don't give below a 7 (and even anything lower than an 8 was rare). I have mixed views on that. Oh yeah, I also didn't get ID-ed at the door. Who knew. I really enjoyed the night, although there were a couple of "poets" who were a bit insane. Later on, Matt picked me up and we sang some rap in the car and watched SNL at home.
Monday I went to work and I was actually fairly excited because my shift was with another girl who I like but hardly work with. Unfortunately, a mistake was made earlier that week which resulted in us picking up the pieces the rest of the shift. Conveniently, it was Family Day so no one was at work to help us out, or back us up. This involved us calling people and being yelled at. Surprisingly, not that many people were as mad as I would be, but it's still never fun to a) call random people, and b) tell those people bad news. When I got home that night, I did a lot of heroine and went to sleep.
Tuesday I was at work again. My boss was really cool and offered me free tickets to see Sweeney Todd that night as a thank you for taking care of the problem the day before. I called Matt and he was interested in seeing it. I had never seen the movie, and barely knew the story, but I like musicals and using my superb logic skills, assumed I would like this musical. I ended up loving the musical and had the Johanna song(s) stuck in my head the entire week, and this will probably happen again now that I've typed those words. Matt dropped me off at home afterward because he made a commitment with his friends to play an online game. Beauty and the geek. Ha. (He probably just gave a dirty look the computer screen as he read that line.)
On Wednesday, Elisa and I had planned to hang out but I was feeling crappy and restless so I stayed at home. I watched the movie Sweeney Todd and I really enjoyed it, not to mention encouraged the song stuck in my head. I can't say which was better, the musical or the movie. Personally, I appreciate seeing live theatre much more, probably because of my dance background. They both had pros and cons, though I will say Mrs. Lovitt in the musical was much better than Helena Bonham Carter, in my opinion, though I think they were going for a different portrayal in the movie.
Thursday was the first day I returned to taking the busses, which was not a good decision. Since it was also the day Obama was visiting Ottawa, I thought I would bus out to Matt's house later in the afternoon to avoid any traffic. So, it's 3:30 and I'm on the 116 literally 2 minutes away from South Keys where I'll meet Matt and we've been waiting at the same light for about 5 minutes. The driver gets on the microphone and tells us that we have to wait here for another 20 - 30 minutes until Obama has made it to the airport. Honestly, I didn't really care because I was really into listening to my iPod at that time for some reason. It was a bit annoying, though, because all of these guys in their mid-20's (the type that wants to seem smarter than everyone else) start saying how their first impression of Obama isn't a good one because of this. Seriously? I don't think Barack was thinking, "Okay, I think it would be a nice gesture to my Canadian friends to hold them up in a bus for half an hour." It was his security, and hey, he's practically a celebrity. I don't mind waiting for Barack. I think they were just bitter that our own prime minister is so lackluster that, when he visits Washington, he'll probably be taking public transit.
I get to South Keys and Matt and I wait for the bus that will take us to the Museum of Nature to see the Jane Goodall exhibit. What was supposed to be a 30 minute bus trips turns out to take an hour and 15 minutes. By the time we get there, the museum would only be open for another hour and I hate feeling rushed. Since the exhibit is going to be open until the end of May, we decide to just get something to eat. I mentioned I saw a Vietnamese place a little ways up the street when we were on the bus so we go walking trying to find it. Eventually, the cold gets the best of us and we agree to just eat at the next restaurant that we're both mildly interested in. It turns out to be a Vietnamese restaurant although not the one I had originally seen. The first tip-off should have been that the restaurant was uncharacteristically clean and nicely decorated. In my experience with Asian restaurants, and believe me, I'm a culinary expert when it comes to Asian food, the seedier the restaurant, the better the food. We decide to get a dinner for 2 thing which comes with spring rolls, hot and sour soup, beef and lemongrass in chili sauce, and a chicken dish, along with steamed rice. We also ordered two lemon sodas. The spring rolls were one of the best I've tasted in the city. This was false advertising because things only went downhill once we got the hot and sour soup. For anyone who has had this soup, you should know the soup is brothy. This version of hot and sour soup was thick and almost creamy, though I did appreciate the big chunks of chicken in it. I was not at all impressed with the consistency of the soup though. Both the beef and chicken dish seemed like they were cooked in the same sauce, which tasted pretty much like a generic Asian sauce you can buy at Loblaws or something. And, to make matters worse, we never got our drinks nor could we catch the waitress for long enough to inquire about our drinks. So, that restaurant sucked. We did stop in at a Loblaws and there was a guy playing piano for spare change in there. It made me happy that Loblaws let the guy do this. I felt like a chump because I only had a dollar in quarters but I gave it to him, and was pleasantly surprised that his can had bills and tons of change in there. We bussed home and hung out.
On Friday, I had the shift to beat all shifts. I was in at work for 9:30 a.m. and closed at 7:30 p.m. Holy. For the first three hours, the two Benadryl I took about 8 hours before were still running through my system so I was delightfully unaware. The shift wasn't as bad as I'm making it seem because I worked with people I like, which is actually generally a constant seeing I dislike very few people at work. That night, Matt came over and we decided to make a recipe from the chicken cookbook he got me for Valentine's Day. We decided on a deviled chicken recipe which sounds kind of weird but essentially is a breaded chicken dish made with dijon mustard and worchestire sauce. Since I had a very minimal amount of food all day, I was grumpy, tired, and not very good at concentrating. I was preparing the different bowls we had to dip our chicken in to complete the breading process, and misread the recipe and added literally 4 more cups of oil than was needed. Well, the 4 cups was to put in the frying pan, and the one tablespoon was for one of the bowls and I ended up putting it all in the bowl. The chicken actually didn't taste bad at all, it was surprisingly good though it did burn quicker since it was oily. Pan-frying breaded chicken always frustrates me because I always seem to slightly burn the outside while the inside cooks so much slower. I think I'll have to look up an effective way of pan-frying since it's my preferred method of cooking chicken. The night ended with me falling quickly asleep.
Saturday I spent with Elisa hanging out at her house. We made chocolate chip cookies, read some Cosmopolitan, and then we watch Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist which I hadn't seen before. I thought it was a pretty good movie, especially since it had two of my very favorite people: Jesus and Britney Spears. Just kidding. Michael Cera and Andy Samberg. Andy's part made me laugh out loud for a long time. That night, we went to a poetry night in the Market with our friend and her boyfriend, who recited one of his poems in the open mic portion. We sat up in this balcony ish place, which looks cool but then you realize there's like a net of rope in front of you, just in case one of the poems makes you so depressed you want to jump. At these events, there are almost like poetry competitions and someone picks 5 judges from the audience to judge each of the poems. Elisa and I were trying to catch the guy's eye, but we didn't have any luck. A few minutes later, another guy comes up the stairs with a judge's white board and walks right to us and says someone requested we judge. I was afraid I'd have to do a strip tease with the judging, but alas, I didn't. I almost felt drunk with power and wanted to be a Simon Cowell judge, but apparently, it's an unwritten rule that you don't give below a 7 (and even anything lower than an 8 was rare). I have mixed views on that. Oh yeah, I also didn't get ID-ed at the door. Who knew. I really enjoyed the night, although there were a couple of "poets" who were a bit insane. Later on, Matt picked me up and we sang some rap in the car and watched SNL at home.