Kitty Corner

I have been to the symphony, and I have met cats. :)  Also their owner. *g*

The symphony was amazing and wonderful.  The soloist was this guy who's been blind from birth and looks sixteen (is in his late twenties, I think, but looks very young), and was playing Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto like it was easy.  His notes were LIQUID!!!  It was one of the most beautiful piano things I've ever heard!  He got an instant standing ovation and an encore. :)  The other major piece was a symphony by Shostakovich.  It was written as an effort to keep his family from getting killed or worse after his opera was declared uncommunist and bourgeois - a very serious charge in Stalinist USSR.  Knowing that, you could _hear_ the sarcasm in places, and the agony of fear in others...  Very effectively written, and it indeed saved his bacon.

The other excellent thing was the cats.  One was quite friendly and let me pet him, and the other was shyer but stayed around to let me admire her. :)  Their owner seems to be a great guy, too. :)  We chatted for a bit as I was on my way back from putting in laundry.  So yay, cats close by! :) :) :)

Back to assembling shelves!

Today, both as a consolation for leaving our current place and as a celebration of having (potentially) found a really good new one, we went out for sushi.  I had a roll I'd never heard of, but which looked neat.  YUM!!!

It had smoked salmon on the outside and (among other things) egg in the middle.  Tamago (the sweet omelette).  The salty/umami of the salmon was unexpectedly but perfectly balanced by the sweet of the tamago, and the textures also blended wonderfully!  I was surprised and delighted! :)

In other news, we saw a pickup truck with a giant spoiler the other day.  Not one with a canopy, just a regular pickup with an empty bed...  It was a very large spoiler...  We giggled. *g*

Finally, coolness.  Student performance the other day, Handel's "The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" - played by a saxophone quartet.  It was awesome!!!  The one I linked to isn't them, but it's a saxophone quartet so you can hear it.  So different, but so cool!!!

It's been a while since I posted a bunch of kitties. :)

Trivial purrsuit
drawer cat
zombies?
dinner is warming
not kid proof

In other news, China is opening up all PCs (but not Macs or Linux machines) to hackers because of compulsory software.  Bugs in the software include blocking sites from Explorer but not other browsers and, more seriously, "communications between the software and the servers at the company that developed the program were unencrypted."  To quote the BBC article: ' "Then you have every computer in China potentially as part of a botnet," Colin Maclay, also of Harvard, told BBC News. '

The point of the software is, in the government's words, to "effectively manage harmful material for the public and prevent it from being spread."

Oh, and the blocking is rather random, too.  All very lovely. :(

Happy stuff: we went to Ikea!  (thank you red_pen_girl and J!)  We have yet more shelving!  (Yay Ivar!  Yay as-is department!)  So now hopefully we can empty the rest of the boxen...  I'm looking forward to being fully moved in.

Have I mentioned that I have more counter space than my mom? :) :) :)  And Mom has a pretty decent kitchen!  I love this place.  And a double sink!!!!!  And underlay under the carpet!!!!  And windows that allow lots of light and amazing air circulation!!!!!

And that is my mood, too.  Yay!  I've never had a migraine and a tension headache before AT THE SAME TIME!!!  But that was yesterday, hence the day in bed.  But now I'm fine. :)  And it's sunny. :)  And we're going to Bernard Callebaut. :)  What else is needed for a fine day?

As a note, do not trust "fine" chocolate from a kid candy company.  This year's table favours at the Easter dinner at home were Allan 60% cocoa bunnies.  Smooth my foot!  They were harsher than Lindt 85% cocoa bars and not that good!  Guess that's what you get when you take poor quality chocolate and feature it. :(  Live and learn, I guess.

Happy stuff.  Right.  We have a place!  And it's official now!  We'll be going by tomorrow or Sunday to sign the lease agreement!  Now to start telling people!  (I e-mailed a friend about something, and mentioned the move by chance, and got the response "And wait a minute... you're moving???  What's going on?"  I was entirely too amused, but I suppose I shouldn't continue to fish for such responses... )  (though the one at church was hilarious - tell a couple of friends "We got a place!  We found it really quickly!" only to get blank stares, a pause, and "you're moving?!?")

Also, this time we're getting a full year of mail forwarding instead of the six month thing we've gotten in the past.  It means that J&H won't get their Christmas card to us bounced a fourth time, and we'll avoid the huge hassle we had with T4s and charitable receipts that we had this year.  HOPEFULLY we won't be moving in 12 months! *sigh*

Must get out and enjoy the sunshine. :)  The one thing I'll miss about this place (during the summer, at least) is the huge windows.  During the winter, not so much - had to keep the curtains closed all the time anyway to keep the heat loss down.  But sunshine now. :)

He works in mysterious ways.  I believe that.  I can dig that.  But subtle?  Yeah, no.  About as subtle as a whale, as it were.  Not that I'm objecting. *g*

We were coming home from church today.  I'm tired, I'm kinda grumpy, and I need cats.  Well, apparently, 'cause that's what I got!  FIVE of them!

( CATS! )

And now, the reason for the mood tag: WE HAVE A PLACE!!!!!  I saw the kitchen and started pointing and elbowing Rob and jumping up and down...  :):):)  Lots of windows, very bright, newly renovated!  Down to sealing the cracks in the foundation!!!  I love it!!!  Just have to get our references to them and have them checked, and it's ours! :) :) :)

For more details, contact me personally.

*boingboingboingboingboing*

I'm posting this in part so I can refer back to it later when I start to think I'm lazy.

matociquala  is an excellent sci-fi writer.  Check out her short stories especially. :)

I have my bike back!!! :) :) :)

This is exciting because it was in a box a couple of weeks before we left Vancouver (for shipping), and then we didn't have time to unpack it and put it back together again (grrr... boxes) until just a few days ago.  Then take it in for the inevitable tune-up and safety check (couple more days, fortunately they weren't too busy - RedBike was booking for July last week already!) and now I have it back!  And it works beautifully!  And I have a shed to keep it in, so it won't get rusty! (grrrr... Vancouver winters)

I love my bike. :)

Caused a bit of excitement in the bike shop, too,  "Hey everyone, look!  It's a George's bike come home!"  Also multiple comments about what a nice old bike it is. :)  (it's not _that_ old!)

At the same place (Pedalhead), rpm45 also got his bike - first new one in years and years and years. :)  They have a two year service plan (all tune ups free for two years) that effectively knocks the price of a new bike down by a couple of hundred dollars.  Tune-ups are _expensive_ in Edmonton!!!  He's thrilled with it, and looks forward muchly to riding it. :)  It's even got light front suspension, so the terrible, horrible, pot-holey Edmonton roads won't bother him as much. :)

Distances are so much shorter on a bike, too. :)  Farmer's Market (Strathcona) is so easy to get to!  And Greenwoods, and Culina, and and and... :)

I must mention that Culina has a to-die-for flourless chocolate truffle cake. :) ($9/slice)

It's all good. :)

Okay, not really - not sure how much I'll be blogging in the next bit.  Rather overwhelmed with the unpacking.  But we have our stuff back!!!  All the lovely, wonderful kitchen toys that we've been missing for the past two years!!!  Yay!!!  And do we have SPACE!!!  (estimated 11000 sqare feet)  It is nice.

Granted, the previous tenant seems not to have given a hoot about the place - all kinds of problems are popping up that were obviously there for a long time.  But our landlady is amazingly responsive; we tell her about a problem (bent screen, doors that don't close, tap needing repair) and she's here the next day with her husband to fix things!  It's great. :)

And despite appearances, the mounds of boxes are going away.  Slowly, but they're getting unpacked and put away.  The place feels like home now, instead of an empty apartment with stuff shoved in.

And we have a Wii!!! :) :) :)  Rob's parents are wonderfully generous and gave him one for a grad gift. :)  (very sad they're not able to use it any more. :(  It is set up, and it has been played. :)  More to come, to be sure!

In honour of the Wii, a Lolcat. *g*  And three others that were just too cute. :)

Break over.  Back to it! :)

PS: BIRDS!  Lots of them!  Chickadees, magpies, the odd jay, and some very aggressive sounding sparrows.  CHIRP! CHIRP! CHIRP!  It's great. :) 

Just a quick note.  Got back from rpm45's defense party (hosted by his local supervisor).  Lots of excellent turkey, "foot-stomped hooch" (of both peach and grape varieties), and good conversation.  He works with good people. :)  Worked!   Done now!  It was pot luck, so we brought cinnamon buns.  Mmmmm...

Tired now.  But it was good.  And the day was good.  The fridge is squeaky clean now! *g*  (and the dust bunnies behind the couch have been VANQUISHED!!!)

Oh, and these were too cute not to post.

'Night, all. :)

What with moving very soon, I started a mental list of things (etc) I'll miss about Vancouver.  This post will likely be the first of a few - others thought of include things I wish I'd had a chance to do, and things I won't miss!  Also, things I'm looking forward to in our new home. :)


I'll likely be updating this as I think of things.  At any rate, I have the material for a couple more entries as listed above!