What's for Dinner?

I am a nodder. I'm one of those students who feels the need to keep professors in a continuous state of reassurance that I understand what they're saying (even if I don't). I keep a constant rhythm of nods for them throughout class. It's fairly static, but the tempo can increase dramatically when/if they make eye contact with me.

It's come to my attention in recent times that most people don't do this, which makes me feel slightly alone, but every now and then I'm in a class where there is more than one of us nodders, perhaps even a few of us, and I know that we have an understanding. A message for all of those nodders out there, possibly nodding your comprehension of this very sentence: you are not alone; I feel you.

Now for food. Living in a townhouse this year has afforded me the opportunity to actually make food, and through the past three months I've managed to get visual evidence of my cooking skillz to share with the web. One day, I hope to look back on these culinary masterpieces and laugh heartily because I'll be eating so much better by then... right?

Yeah, eggs are pretty much all that I can do. However, I do do them rather well, if I do say so myself. My favorite part of these pictures is that you can clearly make out my laptop in every one except for toad in the hole. So please, future me, tell me that you eventually stopped slobbing every meal at your desk. Tell me we purchased a table. Please.

Also, grating cheese for that pasta was my being 'fancy'.

And now, a final thought: I'm doing better in all of my English courses than any of my Biology courses. This happened last year as well. Is this a sign? Should I be re-thinking my life?

Other final thought: My back does not ever crack, and I cannot remember it ever happening before, which leads me to believe that if my back were ever to crack it would be the most incredible crack in the world, ever.

Deep Orchid, you are the bloom of my life.

And now, after a rather unexpected return to infrequent blogging, I give you a post. To take up where we left off, my 19th was great, I had so much fun with friends and happiness was had. The mystery gift turned out to be a talking Dalek. When you squeeze him, he says "EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE!!!" and "YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD DALEK!"

Surprisingly the first shot has a way more awkward face than the theatrical grimace below. 

I also feel compelled to mention that I know, I know: power ranger Dalek, but the reality is that they were comical because they were so clearly meant for "collect them all" merchandising, and what better way to embrace that? If Doctor Who is anything, it's corny with a touch of lame, and that's why we love it!

Having a very good Thanksgiving weekend as well, and a lot of happy feelings can be attributed to the fact that I've finally had some real inspiration for writing my novel (trying so hard to say that without feeling like a twat). For a little over a year I've been trying to dig myself out of this plot-planning, world-building hole and get some actual work done. Without a doubt, all of the planning and research is important, but if you don't stop yourself it'll never end. There will always be something that you could probably flesh out a bit more before you put it into the story. No! Sometimes you just have to write the damn thing and see what wordlings come out. 

I like to say that I've been on the road to recovery for a while, but I can attribute a lot of my inspiration to the movie Looper, which I saw Saturday afternoon, and loved it despite the awkward eyebrows on Joseph Gordon Levitt. A lot of the ideas in the movie are present in my story, which I don't feel bad about, because first of all it means that they're probably pretty sweet ideas if they ended up in a cool movie, and second of all I started this story in 2010, so if I wanted to be the first to the idea (which, realistically, I wasn't in 2010) I should have maybe done a little more than I have in 24 months. (If you're interested, this picture is from what is probably the best scene in the movie. Love 'dat snappy dialogue.)

I'm at the stage where I need to turn my writing into a job, with schedules and deadlines and all that stuff, because I know that's the only way I'll ever finish anything at all. I've never been particularly skilled at schedules, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to give up. I can do it!

Also I've started watching Dexter and Andromeda, and I'm quite enjoying them both. Andromeda seems to be a proto-Firefly, so it's kind of an automatic win, and Dexter was a little surprising because ordinarily I'm not very attracted to "cop shows", but my brother insisted, and now I've found a new show!

In blog news, I think I might do a post recommending all of the webcomics I read, because that way I can justify the crazy amount of time I spend reading them.

Name-day is Coming

In a few hours it'll be my birthday, so I wanted to write-up a quick post about this:

I have no idea why the picture quality is so bad, but this is the birthday present that my Dad and brothers gave me the morning I moved back to Guelph. The ribbon-y bit is actually strips of A4, which, along with the rest of the wrapping job was courtesy of Colin. It was a lovely surprise, but I was charged with the seemingly impossible task of holding onto it without opening it until my birthday.  This seemed like crazy-talk, and it still kinda does, but because we all live so far apart there's no way for me to go home or receive any presents on my birthday, so my Dad wanted to make sure that I had something on the morning-of. Very sweet. Now, at long last, that day is tomorrow. I wanted to blog about this partly so that I can remember the month of diligence that was September 2012, and also to complain about not getting to open my prezzie yet.

Tomorrow I'm not doing much, might see a few peeps around campus, but sadly I have to focus on finishing the assignments that I should be doing right now. Friday is where the fun begins, and a small but delightful birthday celebrations is planned. Friends, food, Game of Thrones drinking games; a.k.a happiness.

We haven't decided on definite rules yet, but a quick Google search came up with some pretty good ones, even a picture:

I like the idea of playing as different houses, but poor student can't afford such a variety of drinks... Maybe my next post will feature the Ronnie Game of Thrones drinking game!

And because I know you've been waiting for it, and in case the title wasn't enough... Winter is coming.

Good Job, Bruce.

I applied to my first ever real-live (part-time) job today! I'm still not entirely sure whether or not I'll have the time for it what with school and Batman: Arkham City, but I finally decided that if I didn't take the plunge and give it a go, then I'd never have any money for my entire undergrad. So wish me luck!

Something that's been bugging me lately: poorly written textbooks. They cost so much money, and involve so much work, to have to cause so much pain as well? Now that I'm in my  second year of university (I'm in my second year of university!) I've been exposed to enough good and bad textbooks to know that the fifth edition of Vertebrates: Comparative Anatomy, Function, Evolution doesn't need to be the walls of text made of up of endless pages of big, dry terms that it is. It could be exciting. It could have colour! They could even plan out the formatting so that some of the figures and diagrams are on the same page that they're referenced on.

Sometimes I feel like I should be on Facebook more. I like the idea of being able to look back on these undergrad years when I'm livin' it up at 45 (totally gonna be livin' it up at 45) and see exactly who I was. In saying this, I'd like to mention that every time I go on Google+ and see how pretty/cool it is, I desperately wish people used it. So come on, people! Get on Google+! It's like totally super more prettier than Facebook!

Aaaand speaking of life updates, I went to the Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Godessess concert at the Sony Centre in Toronto last Saturday, and it was totally boss. I got this entirely cute blue dress for it over the summer; it had little butterflies on it. Pictures will be happening at some point. Back to the concert, not only did we get three encores (screw Montreal!), but the awesome Irish conductor used the WIND WAKER to conduct the wind waker songs. My friend and I spent most of the show trying to find an alleged Groose cosplayer mentioned on Twitter, whom we eventually spotted at the bottom of the escalator. After fighting through hoards of fans to get at him we were way too obvious about how excited we were to finally find him and I made the brilliant move of telling him we'd been talking about him on Twitter. I'd post the picture of the guy (t'was a grand cosplay), but I think I freaked him out enough already. Also I got hundreds of hits on streetpass, for realz. You can't really see it, but everyone in that picture is sitting there on their 3DS.

The #1 Cure for Lack of Joy

If you're all together with family this summer you may be experiencing cabin fever from doing nothing all day, or you may have discovered a sling-shot effect through time from doing way too much all day and staying up all night with sea turtles. In both of these cases, and in fact in any case at all, I'd recommend fairy cakes.

The addition of these fairy cakes increased household happiness by 41.83%.

My stomach hurts with the abundance of both joy and icing, and the best part is that I made them the completely lazy way using cake mix from a box and readymade icing. These cakes contain complete happiness and minimal effort; the essence of summer. 

Ocnophiloidea regularis

Found this little guy crawling around the patio table the day before yesterday. He's kinda hard to see but I think that was sort of the point. 

Eventually he settled down into his stick stance, shown here, where he straightened out his two front legs and antennae while letting his tail flick about in the breeze. It was very stick-like. After some research, I'm going to say that this is probably a 'Trinidad Twig', the Ocnophiloidea regularis species of stick insect.