Month: July 2004

but airfare is way the hell too expensive :P

I know I shouldn't let myself get all wound up about this, but this is just nuts. It's like talking a huge step backwards…

Reading from the Bible on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch endorsed a federal judicial nominee who wrote that wives should have a subordinate role in marriage, with the Utah Republican emphasizing “millions and millions of people will agree with” that view.

And my favourite quote from that article: Hatch also discounted criticism over a 1980 letter Holmes wrote to a newspaper arguing that rape victims should not be allowed to have abortions because “conceptions from rape occur with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami.” Holmes has since apologized for the comment.

Original link here: http://166.70.44.66/2004/Jul/07072004/utah/181590.asp

Hatch is also the asshat who's been ramroding legislation in the US favorable to the RIAA/MPAA on copyright law. Basically, if those bills go through, kiss fair use goodbye. Now I don't really care what happens in the US, to be quite honest. I do care what happens this side of the border and stupidity like that can just be an evil precedent.

Just came back from a walkabout with emjayne downtown. The girl is a natural storyteller and had me in stitches. Caught 30 seconds of a gypsy music show in Square Phillip (hey MJ, remember to come see the blues show next wednesday!). Bought a book at chapters for new reading material, and now I'm back at the office, munching on a roast beef roll.

That sounds really mundane, but you have no idea how long it's been since I've had a good sandwich. Basically, it's leftover roast beef from the sirloin roast I cooked this weekend, with dijon mustard, red onions, green peppers, romaine lettuce and slices or jarlsberg rolled up in a pita bread. You see, my allergies make eating processed meats an iffy thing (I had a bad experience with store-bought roast beef a few years back), so it's been a really, really long time since I ate a good sandwich. I can't honestly remember the last time. It's little things like that that make me happy. Rediscovering the joys of a simple, little sandwich.

*munch munch, happy sigh*

I'm meeting the head honcho of Genome Quebec tomorrow afternoon to go give him my CV! Now this isn't an interview – but at least he didn't slam the door in my face when I asked to see him :D

*crosses fingers and toes*

Edit: I also sent one to UofM for a job posting I'd seen on bioinformatics.ca and to a friend of mine with contacts at IBM. We'll see what happens.

Cheeky words such as arsed and bumfluff are now officially acceptable in Scrabble, it was announced yesterday. Players of the board game can also use their letter tiles to form shagtastic and sparrowfart. They are among 45,000 additions to the new edition of the Collins Scrabble Words dictionary.

That made my day.

In a word, I feel bleh.

Work crap, money crap, health crap, it's starting to get to me. I need a serious change of pace and scenery. I know I've been posting a few entries recently that sound whiney, and I do know that life could be a helluva lot worse, so I'm trying to just plod through it.

Still, right now, I feel bleh.

I don't know what's up with me these days. I went to bed really early last night, and I had the damndest time waking up this morning.

Well, I contacted the guy I know at Genome Quebec, asking him if I can have 30 minutes of his time (to go give him my CV in person and talk about a possible job), so I'm waiting for a reply. Alea jacta est. I don't plan on quitting my job here until I have something else to fall back on, but man, I need to settle things soon or my heart or my head will go boom.

I'm uber stressed out these days, and I really don't like that feeling. I get all sorts of aches and pains – just from being wound up all the time. It's driving me nuts :(

An Estonian couple has carried off the gold medal in the world wife-carrying championships in Finland. 20 year-old Madis Uusorg ran through sand, waded across waist-high water and scrambled over timber logs to win the prize of a portable sauna. And all with his 19-year-old “wife” Inga Klauso clinging on for dear life.

The couple used the famed “Estonian Carry” where the woman clamps her thighs to the sides of the man's face while hanging upside down on his back.

The long-standing wife-carrying competition, which took place in the remote village of Sonkajarvi, a few hours' drive from the Arctic circle, has its roots deep within Finnish tradition.

According to the town's website, carrying weights over an obstacle course was an initiation test for local brigands. And it was apparently also common practice for men to steal women from local villages.

Nowadays couples, who do not necessarily have to be married, come from around the world to take part in the competition.

Petite Inga Klauso put the couple's victory down to the fact that Mr Madis was simply very good at carrying women. “Its pretty unpleasant but not as bad as it seems,” said Ms. Klauso, who weighs just 48 kilos, one kilo under the minimum requirement. Mr Uusorg had to carry an additional rucksack to make up the weight requirement.

The couple completed the course in one minute and 5.3 seconds, narrowly beating a Finnish couple who had run earlier. The prize includes the “wife's” weight in beer but the portable sauna cabin is only big enough for one.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/3865227.stm

My favourite quote from that article: The couple used the famed “Estonian Carry” where the woman clamps her thighs to the sides of the man's face while hanging upside down on his back.

I outdid myself tonight, food-wise.

I was in the mood for roast beast, so I bought a 2.5lb sirloin roast. Pan seared it on all sides with lots of pepper and dumped it in the oven, pan and all, for 30 minutes at 400F, then another hour at 325F. That's basically, 35 minutes per pound, in total, which gives a medium-well roast – still moist, still juicy, not muck pink (figure 27-30 minutes per pound for medium-rare). Let that set for 10 minutes, while I did the gravy.

Basically, I just plopped a bit of water, some butter, some finely chopped red onion and a few pinches of sage in the pan (almost burning myself in the process – which is completely normal when you pick up a stainless steel frying pan that's been in a hot oven for more than an hour). Let that reduce until nice, thick and brown.

Served roast slices with veggie rice and steamed brocoli. Delish! I just wish I had a nice little red wine to go with it, but the SAQ was already closed by the time I started cooking :( Oh well, next time :)

The saga of my washing machine is now officially over. The sweet hum of laundry getting cleaned fills my apartment, oh joy, oh rapture.

The thing finally got delivered yesterday. Start to install it, figuring out which hose goes where, getting it leveled, all that crap. I go to plug it into the wall to get a load of laundry done and, woe of woes, it's only a two-pronged socket. Curses!

This is my major beef with this apartment. The electricity SUCKS! I've had to replace all the outlets in my room and the living room. Nothing is grounded. The cabling in this place is atrocious! I've been putting 3-prong outlets everywhere I needed to so I didn't have to cut the grounds off my power bars and it's the same situation every time. I'll never understand the concept of painting over power outlets. I mean, come on people, it only takes two seconds to unscrew the plate and mask off the damn thing. But nooooo, lazy buggers just slather paint all over it.

When you unscrew the faceplate and the thickness of 30 years of successive paint coats keeps it up on the wall, that's not good. When you have to chisel off the wall, that's really not good. When you can see tell all the colors your wall has been, that's even worse. Don't even get me started with the wiring. Instead of plastic-coated copper, this thing is like asbestos-covered copper. It's a pain in the ass to work with, because instead of clear black/white color coding, you have brown/smudgy-yellow. Oh, and I also forgot to mention that the fuse box isn't labeled for shit, so trying to figure out which one was for the utility room meant that I have to now reprogram every piece of electronics I own (because, as you know, the right one is always the last one you unscrew).

Anyway, it's all done and everything seems to work :) Excuse me while I go put my laundry on the drying rack now :D