Oh the insanity!

My homework life has become nutty, which in turn renders my life non existent. Sleep is for the weak, but can I at least be warm? My part-time-pay for-my-cell-phone-job is asking too many hours of me, my Nonna sees this as a repeat of my Zio Mitch's past - he ended up with high blood pressure. I don't know if I'm becoming agoraphobic or I've had too much coffee but that makes me nervous. The 8th of December is my upcoming reprieve, I'll be done this semester. Its both too far away and too close - that depends on whether or not I'm thinking about my schedule really. See you all in December! In the mean time check out Paul's vlog.

I had a list

of blog I wanted to make and right now I just cant find it, honestly I just can't remember where the heck I wrote it down! So I'm in the process of looking and I will find it because the topics will make up for my lack of blogging recently. I honestly meant to make a third blog in September and three this month to make up for 0 in August (I am after all trying to uphold a standard of two posts a month), but its looking like my blog debt is actually going to accumulate more X_X. I however am better at keeping up on my blog here than High Levels of Awesome, or Stuff and Rabbits, so there. That's right I went there.

Get your booing tomatoes ready because I still haven't beat FFXIII. I've made it to the third disk and since the game play changes I became torn between wanting to press on and just finish for story or do some epic leveling on Grand Pulse. I love the crystarium, and since I haven't played chronologically through the final fantasy games it is new to me an oh so fun. Not that I don't like the old school ways of leveling, the crystarium is just insanely cool. However it is kind of overwhelming, the sort of overwhelmed that you want to conquer not run away from. So I have finally decided to push through and finish the story for the sake of my co-player who is the "plays games for story plot" person, and if I go back to it one day I will be true to myself and fill up the crystarium for my favourite characters.

wishful thinking is so...fulfilling

Lastly I'd like to take a moment and mention Supernatural, it is so addictive. It sort of filled my reading week, always on in the background behind homework, and the addiction spread to the rest of my family. We really are TV people, we like to watch TV and movies and screw all you "I don't really watch TV" people because you are sort of excluding a means of transferring culture. Oh and I count picking specific shows and Anime as TV watching, even if you aren't seeing it in real time. Hypocrites! Anyway watch supernatural however you please the sixth season is on TV right now (Wednesday nights at 10pm on Space) so get watching.

I see you've noticed the face lift o_O

That's right last night I revamped the look of this page, its a little more robot like, but not quite what I envision. It'll get there... eventually!

SO back to bento boxes, for now were just going to start with the Jbox.com bento section. So bento boxes are the Japanese way of making lunch boxes attractive. They can get incredibly fancy and be made of incredibly fine woods and hand painted with matching chop sticks. They generally have two tears but can go up to four or more for special occasion serving ware like new years. You can get a store bought bento from convince stores and train stops but a lunch that is really special is moms beautifully crafted golden example of domesticity hand made lunches, complete with all the cute bells and whistles like having your veggies cut into little hello kitties. In Japan a girl can show a cool boy just how much she likes him by presenting him with her top notch bento skills at lunch time, you know how gramma says "the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach". The number 1 staple in bento is rice there is alot of it to eat with the other stuff being meat and vegetables (the vegetables can be pickled) and onigiri. Onigiri are rice balls! a ball of sticky rice, either in the shape of a circle, triangle with rounded edges, or a scoop. The circle and triangle have a bit of seaweed to act as hand holder and can be stuffed with a piece of pickled vegetable or something along those lines. Moral of the story is mass of beautiful deliciousness. So for more info on the contents of a bento click here, and go to google images to see some beautiful bento lunches, and to order some inexpensive bentos go to J-box (if you are over 18 and don't mind some pervy otaku stuff popping up everywhere J list is the place for you).

Long time coming!

Hey internets I'm still alive, and no one died on the way. I realize, that for the month of August I have sort of been MIA. Don't worry my co-workers did not feed my legs to a bear so I could never leave. I can't say I'm in one piece I've been much more scatter-brained than normal - seriously I went to turn off a TV that was already off. I ended up wasting efforts by having to push a button twice that I didn't need to push in the first place, how silly. Also, tre merde (Georgia Nicholson may also add poo).

Too sum up my last few week at Algonquin Park: Fuwar! It was crunchy, I had a lot to finish and SO little time but it happened and MAN did I learn alot. I would never trade what I learned this summer for anything and I want to continue to increase my knowledge so I'll do what I can to get back ^_^. But come to the end of my contract I'm an unemployed bum again -.- so back to the land of job hunting it is!

Job hunting really is not so bad, except for the million times that one has to fill out exactly the same information that is on their resume. We put so much work into a resume so its so unfair to have to go through all that work again, and in such an unrefined manner. I for one strive to have an attractive resume especially colour wise. BUT it must be done an we shall press on. I swear if I get a part time job that does not have a definite end of contract or anything of the sort I will absolutely not quit until I head off to Japan.

Oh Japan you wonder? I don't know if I've actually mentioned this but I will seriously be going to Japan to teach English for two or three years once I finish school. If I'm going to be off getting a college diploma after Uni then it won't be for some time but that just gives me the time to learn some basic Japanese ^_^.

Well other than considering my future and looking into my short term job goals I have been full force getting preliminary planning done for my new favourite expense, Anime North. We are taking on a monster of three cosplays, Black Butler, Full Metal Alchemist, and Gurren Lagann. We want to enter the skit competition and costume competition, in other words we have a lot of work ahead of us! But its SO worth it for the fun, community, and awesome.

My last bit of news is the upcoming aspect of School (Monday hello?). Actually I don't have anything interesting to say, just that I'm excited cus I love all my classes, well as I have not been in any of them yet, the idea of my classes. It's going to rock! I hope ^_^

Other wise I'm back on the Anime block (um yay much?) and my love of bento boxes has returned, hopefully that's the topic of my next blog. Anyhoo, Goodnight!

Here Moosey Moosey Moosey

Hey Interweb, so I'm half way through my north land adventure and so far I have seen a total of 5 moose, that being one cow with a baby and another cow with twin babies (so maybe it is three in a half if you only count babies a half a moose lol). No bulls to report however. Although I probably just miss them every time I drive by a moose jam (a moose jam is alot like a traffic jam, but there are people stopped on the side of the road and driving super slow to see a wild animal not some horrible act of city traffic). I've also seen two bears and one deer. There are supposed to be alot of wolves around right now too but the closest I have come to getting to see a wolf is fresh poo. Also there have been cougar sightings (!) which is pretty darn sweet. And birds of prey - very exciting.

Ambition has its costs and I'm very busy with my projects but I wouldn't have it any other way. So signing off from the unpredictable weather of hasting/algonquin highlands! See you b-dot kids this weekend ^_^

During Heat waves Road Kill is Like Barbeque for Scavenger Animals

Today is was feeling like well past 40 degrees, the sun was beating down hard, and I was chasing butterflies! Very fun I will in no way put down the awesome that is catching (or if you are a fool like myself and can't catch, photograph) butterflies. The only down side, super humid heat and a shit ton of deer fly.

Deer Fly... ugh. Everyone goes on about how the heat will kill off all the bugs, and that they aren't so bad this year. Tell that to my epidermal tissue, it is not believing. Why wont those bastards die by the sun? I'm taking an antihistamine to keep from scratching like a crack head, but I look like I have a flesh eating skin disease! So not cool, and the worst part is there's nothing I can do about it. They are immune to bug repellent!

So I don't mind the hot, hot is pretty sweet, it makes swimming epic! I just can't get away from the deer fly :(

That's all for now, except one more thing, Rodney the Cat is super Cute, photos to follow at some point. Also some butterlfy pics

Hail From The North Lands!

Hey there internet! I’ve been up North since Thursday night, and man does time go by slowly, I feel like I’ve been here for weeks! It is probably because I’ve done so much these last five days. It took us all day to get here, almost 4 hours plus stopping and all that. I wasn’t settled till 7:00 and we left around 12:30/1:00. Friday I took a ride out to the park to see how long my commute would be (it’s like 45 min going ten over the speed limit, but the few cars that I see usually pass me going like 30 over). The road is long and full of trees hiding wildlife and there aren’t too many roads but I bet that makes getting lost so much worse since the roads are so long. Anyway, after that we went into Bancroft to scope it out, it takes half an hour to get there (everything is so spaced out around here) and when we get back I did legit yard work. I don’t have a yard, I have a grass patch at home. This is a 5acre property, mowing the lawn is an adventure. But we get stuff done, mowing and fixing up the porch space, and getting the burn pile going, and dinner all on top of babysitting two little cousins – so ya more yard work that I’ve ever had to do (to my Gramma – you always have your yard pristine, there’s never a whole lot to do at one time). So its always hard to fall asleep right away in a new place, but man! When dawn comes at like 5:30 it makes me want to cry a little, however I can get through it, now. Saturday was a great Garage sale day! We were in town for hours checking out the yard sales that toughed out the rain and running errands- very fun I got a few books and a copy of galactic civilisation for 5 bucks (!). Sunday I painted a name plate sign for the one day grave of a friend’s of my aunts (He has good ideas and has already picked out his “head stone” which is a pretty wrought iron sign and another stainless steel sign. It is a little grim but it made the guy happy and that’s what counts. Later we went out for a boat ride, in the drizzle and ran out of gas, then, the battery propeller started to die out so we ended up having to paddle! And when I say we I mean me and my cousin’s brother in-law, haha. It was a fun experience. And on to today! I was up at 6 (my new rising time, ugh) and had my first day of work at Algonquin Park. Not much to report there it was all orientation but I get my own desk! And, on my way to work there was the cutest baby raccoon crossing the road, I didn’t see it’s mother but it seemed alright. With that I sign off to sleep cus I have to be up at 6 again tomorrow 

Stay tuned! Updates ahead!
p.s I have a mobile internet stick, blogs are hopefully not too far behind!

Algonquin Park

Happy news interweb! I meant to share the news much earlier but I was so busy with Anime North prep but I am employed! I got a summer job, 8 week period for three summers with Algonquin Park! It is apart of their aboriginal youth program, where we are exchanging experiences and knowledge between the ministry and aboriginal peoples. I am still learning my aboriginal heritage but I will try my best to give a more "spiritual" (for lack of a better word) look on how to interact with the environment. Coming from me though it will me influenced more by the arts than anything else ^_^. I start the last weekend of June and return the second last weekend of August, but between then I'll try to get to a computer and blog about all the cool stuff I am learning about wild life and plants! ^_^


P.S Good news on part of my friends who have also been unemployed because they are all getting jobs and interviews too! <('_')> (>'_')> <('_'<) <('_')>

Anime North... The Real Deal

Hello internet! After a month of silence and anticipation I can finally tell you about the journey to Anime North! The journey to anime north was a face paced race against time because we started so late in the game. The mass amounts of planning for a smooth ride took a long time between the end of school and helping out the rover team so when I finally booked the hotel and the tickets finally got bought things were official and exciting! Almost a month before the con we bought all the fabric and almost all the stuff needed to put together costumes but I had to spend the next week or so finishing up with the rover team so I could put all my effort towards making costumes, but that's where the late time period comes from.

While most cosplayers spend half the year on a costume we worked our butts off and made 12 costumes in two and a half weeks. It was intense, we met everyday at my house and even when there wasn't anyone over I was working anyway lol lucky me I was unemployed and had nothing else to do ^_^ We cosplayed as Bleach (Rukia, Urahara, Shusui, Matsumoto, Aizen, and Ishida) and as Ouran High School Host Club (Honey, Mori, Kyoya, Karu, Hikaru, and Bossanova), we only had 4 days to make our Ouran blazers, we made all the food the morning of and the rest of the time was making all the Bleach costumes. Lucky us the only time we had to scrounge any fabric was for Ishida's pants, and because of that he got lucky and his pants actually pleated the best (pleating all the samurai pants was not fun lmao). We now have a surprising amount of fabric left so once we decide if we need any of it for next year whatever we don't need I want to make everyone a little memento. Our eating habits were sooo bad! We all undoubtedly gained an unnecessary few pounds, and with all the work to be done who had time to exercise?
Not I said the Angie.



Friday morning was kind of hectic. But we survived! Thursday night we had one person and my mom go buy everything and start the stuff that would take a while to cook, so we were never waiting around doing nothing while cooking. My mom, me and one other of our group members were the cooks and the five others finished up last minute packing of cosplay, put on the Ouran badges, and looked over the cool panels, I don't know if they were busy the whole time or not cus everything went down at separate houses, hecticness occurred, thank goodness for phones! We finally go ourselves going then had to stop for some stuff, then came back got a few forgotten things and were on the road!

The drive was really smooth and quick since we took 400 series highways, the slowest part of traffic was the merger to 407 dealio. Then driving past the hot zone of cosplayers was the moment your body develops a fanboy/girl squee. It really is like stepping into a dream world fanfic where there is a super mesh of your favorite anime and anime style video game characters have joined forces for some kind of wonderful gathering (convention lmao). Suddenly the protective barrier of your car is a prison and you just want out to join in the merryment. I bet that is what it feels like to visit an elven village for the first time in a fantasy novel. Seeing cosplayers on the first day is a super hype up, it is so awesome!

The land marks on the way to the Hotel were questionable (regarding the pilots who usually use there places) The first was Cupid's a sex toy shop, then The Landing Strip a burlesque house, and then Hooters the restaurant, a little further down the road behind the brush of an evergreen plant is the lovely hotel. Then we got to the hotel, It really was a nice place, the web site is in no way misleading (Hotel Indigo for any of you who might want to stay there), we got the best rate in town, there was a pool, parking was cheap, room service brought us a news paper coffee and fresh towels in the morning, and once we were settled they pretty much left us to our own devices and didn't tell us we couldn't bring in our own food or coolers which was a bonus. We did have a little trouble when we first got there no thanks to an unnecessary amount of lack of communication on their part. When I checked in they only gave keys for one of the two rooms I booked even though I gave them both confirmation codes, then we almost didn't have enough beds because they apparently didn't hold two rooms with two beds each. Instead they were only going to give us two kings even tho I booked for 6 people (?) Lucky enough they had one room with two beds which is okay it worked out fine and we didn't loose out any money (but she tried to charge us extra fees) and we were almost charged twice for parking (facepalm) but I as very firm which is probably surprising to hear from a girl who looks like she is sixteen and speaks like a 40 year old to everyone over the age of 30 (lulz) Any which way thing would have worked out because I could tell Urahara wanted to give someone some UBER shit for inconveniencing us that little bit XD.

We took our time getting to the con, even though it was super exciting, being in my first real hotel was also super exciting! Don't get me wrong I have stayed in a motel a couple times and condo's before, but never a HOTEL, which is just so much classier, with those elevators, room services, and air conditioned hallways ^_^. The room was lovely and the bathroom was a pretty nice three piece, not quite heavenly but better than my three piece at home that's for sure. So we took a little moseying to get unpacked and prepared for the next day, since I know that as soon as we got back I would have liked to crash. Matsumoto and I shared the king and the four boys split the double beds. I think the only living issues I had was with temp. At my house we use AC to keep our house one degree below room temp, and I find that cold, but everyone else likes it significantly cooler. Whatever - it was two nights, no one got sick, so no harm no foul :).

When we finally left the Hotel we went to Hooters for dinner! We lolled, ate noms, drank beers (or as pastafarians would say, grog... I actually came across grog flavored mints), and made alot of sexual innuendo jokes because we were at a Hooters! Come to think of it "that's what she said" was a common phrase the whole weekend... anyway Ishida with hat in douche bag mode + Urahara = many hilarious innuendos. Since we had been drinking we decided to walk.


One long ass walk later (remember, we have to do this walk back) our beer calories had been worked off and we went straight for the dealers room. Friday was supposed to be our designated shop day but since we had got there so late we did WAY more shopping throughout between panels, chasing cosplayers and socializing. Urahara did the most soacialising but he cant really help it lol but at an anime con it is so easy because people are SO nice, which is part of the allure. We did lots of cosplay chasing, or so I though until I saw the amount of photos on the official facebook site, I wish I had taken more photos and more photos of me with the cosplayers, because coplayers are like the mascots at wonderland but they are having fun.



My favorite cosplayers were these Gurran Lagann Kamina a Simon. I have a little bias because they picked one of my most favorite anime but they cosplayed SO WEll. They were both very suited to the roles, not that that is what is important in cosplay, but the costumes were SO good, they had me so convinced! So thanks to these two guys I got my biggest Fangirl squee of the convention. I didn't talk to them because we were looking for people and I was trying to supress the squee and not scare the poor guys XD I've noticed fan girls can be a little scary to boys. I think that kind of passion is admirable so those of you Kyoyas who got glomped be happy that, that girl was there making your cosplay feel that much more special!


~SQUEEEE~
We went to quite a few awesome panels, hung out with Lar Dasouza the Lartist from Least I Could Do and Looking for Group, chased cosplayers, and had mad shopping fun. Sure we missed alot, like the auction, and the manga library, and quite a few panels but it was so much fun, especially cosplaying as Ouran and having so many pictures taken and making so many friends ^_^ Actually as Ouran we were missing a Tamaki and Harui but we had a Tama-chan join our group for most of the day which was awesome! The one Haruhi we found left a day early so we couldn't conscript her but we would only have been missing Renge and Necozawa from the crew ^_^

The neatest thing we did was the Maid Cafe, a fundraiser for the Sick Kids Hosptial, here is a video of one of the dances they put on for us:


You can click here to see the rest of my photos and here to see the Official Anime North Facebook Page.

P.s we are already planning our cosplay for next year haha! FMA here we come!

I feel like I should blog more

but I don't really feel like it atm.

Anime North

It is adventure time as the greatest anime convention approaches, Anime North! (or so I'm told). This is happening people and I will be chronicling it on my page for the Tea House of the Maple Moon (aka the Anime North Forums) Find it here

For those of you joining me on the Anime North Adventure please join the Forum so we can get info from the admin and other cosplayers. I want to chronicle all of the process to get to our costumes and learning all the yummy Japanese Dishes so if you have any advice or recipies oh people of the internet please let me know here or on Yuku.

This is going to be a Stellar Adventure!

Science Fiction... Double Feature.. oh oh oh oohhhwooo

Okay internet so this last Monday was my last day of class (! yay) and I have one exam on the 13th (! huzzah). This last exam was for my science fiction class.

If your school offers a science fiction class do not hesitate and enroll it will be the nerdiest fun you'll ever have. Believe it.

Our last class was SO much fun. We did a fast exam review, made a hello video to Professor Paul Fader, the founder of the course, the guy who made it possible to study science fiction at 1000 level! Yeah he obviously = awesome.

Professor Weiss (aka Grammar Man) gave us a Grammar Man rap I plan to upload a video of it because I want to be able to relive the sillyness all the time! It was great science fiction is so awesome and you get to read so many great books and short stories. My Favorite reading had to honestly be Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. One of my next projects will be to create (either paint or digitally illustrate) a portrait of a Genthenian. I hope to have it done for Anime North next year so I can submit it in the art auction. I realize that it won't be an anime portrait but it is a piece of scifi/fantasy fan art so it counts.

Now on to the double feature part of this post:

WATCH HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

How to Train Your Dragon is honestly the greatest PG movie I have seen since I was a little kid. I like it to the amount if you stuck how much I like Up and 9 together. Then times it by 8. It is SO good. The script is amazing I applaud the person who wrote the script. Especially for Hiccup, the main character is so funny. His voice actor really brings him to life but it is all about the script. I super enjoyed this movie and if you don't see it in the theater I swear I will tie you up and force you to watch it. ^_^

The next kids movie I plan to see is Cloudy With a Side of Meat Balls.

Weell that is all the blogging I have for today, I have to get back to studying for my exam now.


oh P.S. planning for Anime North is well in progress as soon as I know all the details I will be SO happy to chronicle the adventure!

How to get a Cyborg Pirate Ninja Jesus

To get a Cyborg Pirate Ninja Jesus you must use a hadron collider and stick a Ninja and a Pirate in with the intention to stop the Pirates versus Ninja war by creating a hibrid. Good intentions are not enough however to stop what will be the apocalypse once the Ninja and Pirate fuse on impact. If however you do this at the second coming of Christ then in a desperate attempt to save humanity the pope will throw Jesus into the oncoming explosion. Jesus' magical abilities will have a magnetic effect on the apocalypse explosion and absorb everything into an implosion, thus canceling the disaster. What will arise from the crater where there was once a hadron collider is Jesus merged with the machine, the pirate and the ninja becoming Cyborg Pirate Ninja Jesus!

OK GO

I don't care if you like the music or not the video art is phenomenal!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w&feature=topvideos

and for and older awesome video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA

Procrastination

My history essay is due tuesday, My thumbnails for intro to design are due tonight, I need to be prepared for painting class tomorrow, I have a presentation on thursday, weekly design projects, and another essay due in three weeks, but here I am blogging. You are probably wondering why I'm being such a dumb shit? I think I may be programmed to do this procrastinate thing, it has been happening since elementary school math homework. It might be like a serious birth defect, some weird(er than usual) form of masochism, or maybe its a genetic trait, like junk collecting? What ever way that it happens, if there is anyone out there in the internet that can cure it without the use of mind altering drugs or an elastic band around my wrist (believe me, by the time I realize I have procrastinated it is probably to late to solve the issue by snapping elastic to my wrist) I would really appreciate some help for the sake of what is left of my sanity.

p.s one week after reading week and all I have done is homework...
this sounds like a contradictory statement, but so you know what I did over reading week? nothing! And now I am pying for my mistakes but my brain is like HOLD ON LADY, what the HELL is your problem? Have you not herd of ENDORPHINS you know that hormone that keeps you happy? well were out of crack and its time to restock!
And so out of punishment I have a mental block.

p.p.s Before I got the mental block at about 1:30 today in class when I just did not want to write notes any more I managed to get quite a bit of stuff done but not good enough yet. Anyhow for my painting class I will be doing a collage based on Hyronimus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, but instead of telling the story of man's fall from grace on catholic terms I have decided to take another creationist Idea of Flying Spaghetti Monster and reference how culture with the internet can become viral and reach people at the rate religion once did

Its Reading Week Bitches!

Hey everybody, so its reading week now, I got back home last night around 8pm and got stoked for the Olympic opening ceremony (whoo!) and as Wayne Gretzky went down the road to light the external cauldron my day running off 3 hours of sleep betrayed me. I stayed up till midnight and missed the moment I was waiting for! All well the show was pretty sweet (what I saw of it in and out of sleep) and for the next 16 days I will be periodically tuning in to CTV to see team Canada win gold on home turf!

X-Files was also supposed to ensue last night but no thanks to my project being due by 1:30 yesterday my tiredness got the better of me :( But it is effin reading week and I'm in B-Ford all week. Now don't get me wrong I have a shit load to do but I did promise myself the time to play video games (in belated celebration of Wintereenmas) and to get going on x-files because as far as I can remember we are only on season two of like seven.

So part two of the project that was due yesterday for my painting class was a pointilism piece. I decided to do my Nintendo Game Cube, it is now the craziest looking Game Cube out there but the tedium of painting it dot by dot was mind numbing. I put so many hours of my life into that part and on top of keeping up with my other homework (no late marks this semester) any free time I may have had was taken up. On the bright side I got to listen to a bunch of movies I had not seen before (A Scanner Darkly, The Frog Princess, The Lovely Bones, Fear and Lothing in Los Vegas) and re-listened to alot of other ones, for example I sat through all of the Chucky movies (I'm saying Chucky because the bride and seed aren't titled as childs play). Honestly a lot of freaking hours! As much as I wanted to die while making the project I think I am going to make a matching controller (one day).

I have also been spending the last little while preparing for my portfolio review which happened on Wednesday. I seriously think it went really well, I was able to really display myself as worthy of being in the Bdes program. I didn't get a chance to show everything I brought (probably 6 of 9 pieces) but I was thorough and I knew my shit, so now I really need to focus super hard on having grades of Epic proportions!

That has honestly been my life, homework and design, not that I am complaining I chose this lol. I have gone out a little and I got to see this band called KC Roberts play at a bar called the Revival on College Street, which happens to also be the little Italy section of Toronto so I will deffo be back there (but once the weather is warm). They were really good, its like stick Jason Mraz on a Jazz band and that's sort of what they are like plus coolness.

I plan on going to see Cage the Elephant on March 10'th at the Pheonix. It is $16 dollars to go if anyone is interested in joining me I really like them and MGMT lately like really enjoy listening to them which is nice to have. I have also been hearing a lot of Sloan on the radio lately, I wonder if that means upcoming new album? Probably, or not?

I plan on working on my Sadistic Little Girls this summer, getting them out there (there meaning the internet) and updating and refining them. Once I get around to it Im going to ask all of my friends to do me the favor of wearing some merch with them on it to spread it around locally but it may take me a while to finally get to that point :P

I know I'm pretty scarce on the new these days but it won't be like that forever

I went to the pickle barrel in Vaughan Mills

and thanks to my shitty waiter I got really pissed off by the end of the night. So I'm posting the letter I sent to them about him which is more or less a play by play of my night. I don't see myself going back :C

Hello Pickle Barrel Vaughan Mills,

I want to let you know about my first experience at a Pickle Barrel, which was at your establishment at Vaughan Mills, on the evening of Saturday January 30th 2010. I was apart of a party of 12 for a friends surprise birthday which was reserved weeks in advance under "Larissa" (she let you know that we would be paying in separate bill in advance as well, this plays an important role in the story of my experience). We were seated at the bankete tables right by the external door (which by the way is kind of a chilly spot) where we could see the full scape of the beautiful interior. I really love the look of the place and the light fixtures are especially lovely (my favorite ones look like hanging birds of paradise in the little booth) but it is a little loud. Understandably of course because it was so full. The birthday girl was late, which is too bad because our waiter was so eager to start taking our orders.

Our waiter is named Quinton, he is tall and not particularly articulate or loud, and the only reason why I know his name is because I finally got the chance to read his name tag while I was waiting for him to register my bill (but that is for the end of this recount) on the count of him not introducing himself. Now, Quinton tells us that he is not going to do separate bills because "that would kill him" and that he knows this is the best way to do things, he then decides for us that he will split the bill into two so six people on each side of the table can work it out with each other. None of us can quite understand this but we go along with it anyway because we just want to enjoy ourselves and have a nice dinner without any issues (really people are afraid of their waiters or waitresses doing something to defile our food). So he mumbles something about soup of the day that no one could hear, especially not the people on the other side of the tale and takes our orders. His method was questionable, he simply asked something along the lines of "who wants to order?" and managed to miss a couple people so we had to really yell to get him to come back. On a side note, the menus are lovely, very cute and nicely designed (I got a laugh out of the bar menu being at the very front), and the variety as well as healthy choices are nice.

Appetizers came, they were so nice, Quinton neglected to ask if any one needed refills or new drinks. The food was well displayed and I had a pomegranate smoothie which was really delicious. some time later Quinton came back to clear our plates and managed to neglect to take a few plates from the same people he neglected before. Another while after that Quinton saw fit to take our dinner orders. He again forgot the old plates, but his strategy for taking orders made more sense as he asked everybody what they would like for dinner. He again did not ask anyone if they would like refills. You only ask for drinks at the same time as your food in fast food places, in a nice restaurant your waiter usually asks after they have taken orders (well the ones who care do).

Dinner took some time but the restaurant was busy so that is totally understandable, no harm because it gave us more time to talk with each other (not that anyone could refresh themselves because we had all finished our waters by then). When we received dinner that was a disorganized mess, there were two other waiters bringing out food with Quinton but there seemed to be a lack of communication as to what was going where, almost like Quinton did not bother to even try to remember where what food was going or let either of his co-workers know where to send anything. I have worked in a restaurant before, and if I forgot or was not told where what food was going it really bugged me to see disappointed faces, and when you know exactly where food is going the impression on peoples faces really make their experience good which made mine good with them. The people whose appetizer plates were ignored were still there with nowhere to go so we had to juggle them ourselves. Some orders were forgotten for a bit and brought over I guess when Quinton saw fit, I say this because the last thing to come much later than anything else was an order of onion soup (which belonged to the guest of honor on top of that). When I eat at restaurants and my waiter knows where things are going I really want to tip him, so you can imagine how I was feeling about my anonymous waiter at the time. To the chef on the other hand, I personally really enjoyed my dinner, I had the shitake mushroom chicken pene and it was really nice, my only thought is that the sauce could be a little thicker because I came close to wearing it a couple times.

I am a very slow eater, I mean very slow, by the time I am two thirds way through my meal is when most waitresses have come around three or so times to see how things are. Quinton did not come by until about ten minutes after I had finished with time to play around with the leftovers on my plate. We were expected to wrap our own take home boxes, which has never happened to me in a restaurant. He took our plates and neglected a few people again (it was honestly the same guy every time who was sitting to my right) he ordered the maple salmon. To get a dessert menu we had to seriously badger Quinton, its as if he was ignoring us, by this time the restaurant was getting clear. Logically speaking when a place gets less busy service gets better but ours just got so much worse. Eventually Quinton came around with a dessert menu and eventually he came back to take our orders. Now we had a cake waiting to bring out as a final surprise to the birthday girl but like Quinton seriously took his dear sweet time bringing around coffee and dessert. We handed him the old dinner plates as he left, the machiato to the girl on my left who is a barrista was disgraceful (there was no foam where there should be but someone obviously tried to dress up the sad excuse for a nice coffee), however nice touch with the little biscotti. There weren't enough plates or any forks to serve the cake with at first so we had to wait for Quinton to come back to get some more.

At 9:25 we were ready to get our bill and go, I did not get out until 5 after 10, and I was the first to leave because my father had been waiting for me for that whole half an hour. It is one thing to make me wait but to make my father wait is flat out disrespectful. The reason why we had to wait so excessively long is all thanks to Quintons better way of organizing the bill. Firstly Quinton came out with one large bill, and then asked us to separate with 1 and 2 beside each item what belonged to who so he could split it into two. This alone took him a long time, and what I cannot understand is if he was going to split it up into two why not take the extra 5 minutes and split the bill into 12 (we had thee couple so it would only have been six anyway) but no, and then he comes back with the bills all mixed up anyway. My smoothie, espresso and pasta were on two different bills. So my father had to wait longer while Quinton fumbled around with the machine like it was his first day (I asked him, he has been there a while). Can you believe waiting half an hour to pay and leave? That is wrong. And, I am so incredibly offended at the fact that I had to pay a gratuity tip, FORCED to tip the worst service I have ever received from someone over the age of 15. Tips are earned by deserving people, they are NOT a right. Quinton never once apologized for his tardiness and was extremely rude right up until the end of the night. What offends me even further is that I honestly believe that he thought he could take advantage of us because we are students. It is the only thing I can think of because I cannot believe that such a nice restaurant could possibly hire and keep an employee like Quinton.

I do not believe I will ever be returning and if anyone asks me all I will be able to tell them is what I know from experience. If I ran a restaurant I would seriously reconsider Quinton as my employee. Thank you however to your chef for such great pasta.

sincerely,
Miss A. Paglia

I Really Need a Time Machine

Not the fast forward/rewind create a time paradox or visit alternate universes type of a time machine, I need a time pausing machine. I just want to be able to pause time for a couple of hours here and there so I have more time to be able to sleep or work (especially work). Now this machine will probably work by speeding me up faster relative to (mostly) everyone else. Now you might say that I will age faster than everyone else because I am receiving more time to work with but what actually happens is (because physics is totally bonkers) time will pass normally in my eyes which means that time has slowed down for me relative to someone else where time is moving at regular speed. I will actually age slower and when I turn the time pauser off I will actually be younger than someone who has been passing time normally. Now someone looking at me will see me being significantly sped up (if I am understanding the physics correctly). The end result is me having reached my goal and actually be biologically younger. Feels like a win-win situation to me. Heck I could have delt with aging, its not as if I will constantly abuse the time pausing machine. I would use it to make those hard to achieve deadlines or so I can balance my time better between work and play and for those time when I've taken on just a little too much.

My only problem now is not having one of those machines :(

Levels of Douchebaggery

I feel like I need to highlight the levels of Douchebaggery, this being because I would like everyone to call the people who deliberately try to piss people off for no apparent reason on their shit properly.

Firstly, there are three levels: Jerk, Douchebag, and Asshole.

A Jerk is a guy who is deliberately pissing people off in small scales, on occasion, generally that every now and again when immaturity strikes.

A Douchebag is for the large portion when a guy is just not quite an asshole.

An Asshole will go above an beyond to really make somebody miserable, like driving 90 in the fast lane, harassing a group of girls for over an hour, kicking out the canes from old people, and so on. Not fun, and they are like this 24/7. If they are not then they want something and once they get it, the asshole is full swing. I do believe that if I witness an asshole in action I will punch him in the nads, because he isn't good enough to receive my fist in the face.

Now Jerks and assholes are small margins compared the the majority of Duchebags. Douchebag covers enough that there are degrees of douchebaggery. Your average douchebag is probably somewhat tolerable enough for short periods of time, until he starts boasting about his latest act of doucebaggery. A really huge Douche will never stop the douchebaggery and occasionally cross the line into asshole. Then there are the in-betweens. I am convinced that all douchebags have fluctuation in their degree of douchebaggery. Douchebags hang out together, like in packs for two reasons, one because they can increase the amount of douche damage done in one sitting, and two because no one else will hang out with them.

The worst part about Douchebags is for some reason in places of concentrated immaturity (aka most high schools) are accepted and praised. It is not good cognitive development because they will be destroyed when they make it into the real world. So, for everyone to reads this post please, if you see a douchebag flag him to everyone around you to save yourselves all a little hardship and to hopefully save that damned personality from further haring themselves!


And that is all I have to say about that, tune in next time for my ramble on how much I wish I had a ime machine so I could write more blogs

21 days now...

it has been 21 days since my last blog update and I am SO SORRY. It's not as if I don't want to blog, I do, but my issue is time. I just don't have the time to blog as frequently as I would like. Right now however I am making a Deviant Art portfolio that I can submit as my portfolio for my design application (huzzuah, interview on February the tenth!). So while I wait for every image to load individually, I have blog time. So, to make up for the lost time, I'm going to have a few separate blogs tonight!

I wrote the date on my notes in class today

and i had to think twice about writing 2009 or 2010. I got it right of course, but that second of doubt make me remember the annoying thing where you have to get used to writing a new year at the top of things just like how when the month changes you feel like a total dumbass if it goes right over your head. And again looking at the numbers 2010 I feel an exciting change on coming guess we shall see. I want to add a new years resolution to stay connected with all the friends I reconnected with at the end of 2009. (la la la) <3 (on a side note I totally thought the <3 was a kiss for the longest time, but its a heart! Imagine that?)

Speaking of class its the second day of school and lo and behold homework rears its head. I don't mind its not that intimidating and I'm prepared this time around for the stress. I got an A on my art history midterm so I'm for sure feeling cocky. I imagine this is how a guy feels if told he has the biggest penis on the planet (and that he knows how to use it). Hmm, so how would I describe an A+? You feel like you can do back flips off a waterfall and fly gracefully to safety, however I don't recommend acting on that impulse. How does everybody else feel about it?
(The A+, not the impulse)
((well the impulse can also be counted in the discussion))
(((that's right I'm starting a discussion)))

Yesterday I had my first Design and Image class and it is going to be fucking amazing. For the first assignment we need to pick an object that has/is part of alot of connotations, detonations and, metaphors. I want a really awesome one that isn't quite obvious but not limited, but if all else fails I'm doing cats. Cats rock and if Doug wants to draw up instructions on how to jerk cats then I will add that in. I wouldn't mind seeing my classmates cry/cringe in fear. Either way I'm open to ideas.

On another note I watched Breakfast club yesterday while catching up on web comics. The guy they labeled 'the criminal' is poorly named. A)He is not a criminal by definition, and B)He should have been 'the douchebag' but I will forgive that because when the book was written (WHOO KURT VONNEGUT!) that word didn't exist then.

k, see you next blog!

Happy New Year Internet!

Well it is the new year and I feel like I have hit it off pretty good! It is officially the third of January so my salutations are a bit late but too bad because I don't have a time machine! Now the time machine is for a whole other post and will no doubt come when I'm overwhelmed with work and not enough time to get it all done comfortably. Any How, I am proud to say that I have hit the year off playing video games! So far I have personally enjoyed RE5, Fable, and currently a little bit of Dragonage. I'd like to get in some Oblivion and RE4 but we will see how things roll tomorrow. The only 'bad' thing to report is the strange disappearance of my toothpaste. How does someone loose toothpaste? It is honestly like my toothpaste just up and left some time before I got up new years day. I can't explain it.

Now here is an interesting prospect I bet everyone is either wholeheartedly accepted or is still trying to suppress, school is back in Monday Morning. I for one am unsure of where I stand because I understand that the day after tomorrow is school...

hmm actually school technically starts tomorrow. Scratch that, I have obviously been suppressing the knowledge of the on coming date so... sad face. I would have really enjoyed a much longer break. I really haven't finished everything I wanted to get done but I'm no stranger to my over ambition. All that can be done is to overlap the beginning of classes and what is still on my to do list. Speaking of which the highlight of the next couple months for me are on coming and I have much to prepare. The goal was to finish preparing before the end of the break but I really did need this to be a break for me.

January the 24th is my graduation from the Barbizon School of Modeling. This summer I chose to take on an extracurricular activity with the Barbizon School of Modeling, realy the prospect of a job in media was very appealing to me so of course I went and stuck it out. Even if it turns out to be a scham I figure I'm only 19, I can afford to make mistakes early in life, I will have more time to make up for it. And if it does then HUZZAH! Anyhow I have some minor prep for the show like the last little bits I need in my makeup kit and what to wear and say, but most importantly is my "Model Magic Magazine" which besides the practicals, quiz and exam its the thing that we actually hand in for marks and if its not done we don't graduate. I'm not to worried I know I can get it done but I would love to have the best because there is a prize for the best magazine. What I've more or less got from it is how to be a girl properly well look like one at least, and be able to apply it when I choose. Very nice, so Barbizon was alot like a finishing school type deal thing. I had fun!

Then, more importantly, on February 10th is my third portfolio interview with the design program at york. I'm still mulling over what I want to show and how. I really wanted a web page I designed myself, however Deviant Art has a portfolio page or I can actually print everything out. I am super nervous but extremely determined. And even if I don't make it this time (not that I wont btw) I'll be back and even if I end up with my bachelor in visual art I'll get a second bachelor or just do my graduate studies in design. I plan on getting my masters anyway and I'm going to be a designer (professionally I mean), period.

Side Note: how freaky Univeristy will be over in the next two-three years. We don't get a choice we are growing up. 2009 was kind of a write off year for me and it went by fast so I think that speed of time scares be a bit (damned relativity!)

Wintereenmas is the last week of January and there are plans to do our best to celebrate it, and that makes me really happy because even a couple days out of the whole week will help fulfill one of my resolutions.

Speaking of resolutions my resolutions this year are as follows:
1. Get into the Design Program
2. Get to a better level of fitness
3. Play more video games (make up for last years fail)
4. Enjoy more Metal

I don't see any of those as too hard to achieve and they are good reasonably goals.

Finally the last thing I'm anticipating for the new year is turning twenty. I will be an official numerical adult. Its a little intimidating because I don't know what is expected and I can leave behind childhood but maybe not youth? Who knows? In fact looking at the year, 2010 I cant help but anticipate change. What the future may hold is something I would like to think about and discuss in a future post.

Well its late/early now I think its time to end this post, in the men time happy adventuring to all until I write again!