Happy Hallowe'en! Part II!

As I felt the reverberations of pain from a certain blogger of not having a Hallowe'en event, I decided to make some caramel popcorn. Now, not knowing how to make caramel popcorn is never daunting to the caramel popcorn maker, as the treat itself is the golden buttery sugary crunchy tasty reward... OF THE GREATER GOOD. But let us analyse the physics and chemistry of making such caramel popcorn.

Too much sugar, not enough liquid, will make this virtually impossible to stir once the caramel from the pot hits the popcorn. The syrup will harden almost immediately after it's removed from heat, so this is why the last step is:
Bake while stirring. The caramel will melt slightly, enough for the stirring to occur while in the oven. Otherwise, the end result will be:
A big clumpy mess, which will be too hard to clean... normally. But harken, ye sugar lovers - hardened sugar will dissolve in water, and thus:
Stick the pans back in the still warm oven with water of course, and all will melt away like the last snow of spring. (Not the gross black pile that never seems to melt until July, no.)
THIS STUFF IS GOOD. Why? Perhaps it is the combination of fluffy, fresh popcorn covered in a thin, light shell of delectible sugar and butter; formed when the combination of melting and turning each popped kernel caused the white starchy puff to be completely coated in caramelty goodness. I don't need a reason. Whateva.

In the end, the result will be a tasty Hallowe'en treat that will disappear before you like the students who mysteriously disappeared when I asked them to put up their chairs yesterday.

Happy Hallowe'en!

I would never do this. Seriously.


As a bonus Hallowe'en thingy, here's a Flash Tub short Jorgh and I really like. Although I don't advise hitting "next" on that page.

Retro-Posted Post-Post... Post?

Here's a June 2006 post whose "Publish Post" button I just clicked today. I don't remember why I kept this in the draft stage and forgot it for so long, since I had written it all and clicked "Save as Draft." Moral of the story: publish whatever. Nevertheless, there's a Globe and Mail article in the post whose link still works, so read of the Demise of the Quebec City China Town.

Yeah, sorry about that. Ugh, well... The author, as far as I remember, writes about the fact that there was a Chinese community in Quebec City around the early days after the wars. They established themselves in Quebec near the old port, at the foot of the Citadel and the old city, and in the St-Roch area. They had built quite a few things there, and had been doing pretty well until the development of the giant overpass. The government made a highway that leads from upper town (directly from the National Assembly building) to Beaupré and beyond, but that meant making giant pillars and the overpass throughout the lower city; many buildings had been appropriated and thus started part of the the exodus of Chinese. Nowadays, you'll find the buildings but not the businesses nor any sign that they existed, despite the historical significance of the area. And the Wok-N-Roll. The old grandma from that restaurant passed on recently, and she was probably one of the last remaining "old ones" that would probably be able to tell first hand of these events. The last thing about the Chinese in QC is that they are still around, but not in any centralized area, so a Chinatown is not feasible to establish at this time. As far as I know, new Chinese immigrants to the city are mostly studying or working in the university, or looking to work in the restaurants.

There should be some discussion on the Quebec Urbain blog and the forum about the defunct Chinatown revival project, though I have no idea where it is.

RUN FOR THE CURE We Are Victorious I Mean Me i mean i

Update: I neglected to add some details about the chart. Basically, each point you see represents each time I trained (including the day when all I did was trot down the street for 3 minutes). I left in some times on the graph to show some sense of scale. You can tell when I extended the length of the runs, from around 1/2 km to a bit over 5 km, just before I started to plateau. You can also tell when I took vacations and forgot to bring my shoes, where the graph takes a long dip after a few empty x values.... Finally on October 1st, the date of the run, I pulled a new (but pretty mediocre) record of 31:43 for 5 km.

Those of you who sponsored me for the run, thank you so much. :) And those of you who have yet to sponsor (or choose not to due to insufficient funds or lack of interest), fundraising is always ON. Tell your friends! And I'd love to see that magic 150 reached...

Videotron and Cable Internet

I returned to Quebec City once again, after almost 2 weeks of Waterloo (non-?)adventures. Jorghnassen will be able to fill in the rest of the details, but I knew that I had to return here. For whatever reasons, I still had to return to settle some things.

One of the things I did before leaving for Hongtario was downgrade my internet service from Videotron, seeing that I would not be around for about half a month. There's three plans that home consumers would consider: the basic, the high speed, and the extreme high speed. When Big Pu signed me up for cable service eons ago, there weren't such distinctions and the limits were completely nonexistent. Once Videotron started getting more popular and people started downloading even more videos and crap like... well, you know... they created the other types of accounts. BASIC (or "Super Ultra Light") for the person who doesn't know any better; HIGH SPEED for the user who likes to do moderate browsing and downloading but still has to say "OMG WOAH HORSEY" every so often; and EXTREME (or "Pirates Ahoy!") where nothing is limited and the bandwidth should be enough for the, uh, Connoisseur of fine digital media.

Videotron rolled me over to the High Speed account, which I have kept until last month. I then decided to downgrade the account to Basic, which I knew would lower the down and up limits, from 20GB/10GB to 1GB/1GB. But I didn't know that the bandwidth would also go down from 7Mbps/820kbps to 600kbps/128kbps. Yay go cable >:( But at least it helps to not go over the limit too quickly, since everything downloads so fricking slowly!!! (*head exploding in frustration*)

Then to make matters worse, by the time I turned on this computer from 2 weeks of inactivity, there were 11 WINDOWS UPDATES, all security related. So I blew through about 1/10 of my limit in one day. (If it keeps up I'm going to have to call the guy and tell him to change my account again.)

/Internet account whining.

In other whining, I have yet to obtain a criminal record check that doesn't cost 60 bucks and two blisters only to be inadequate for the picky needs of the OCT.

Someone Got a Blog!

I'm hiding in Jorghnassen's Montreal condo right now, as his parents dropped me off here this afternoon, and they're not planning to leave the city until Tuesday. It's pretty lonely here without anyone around, especially Jorgh. :( On the plus side, Jorghnassen finally set up his blog, bleuetfjord.blogspot.com!

People keep wondering if I'm going to be in Waterloo with him, or stay in Quebec. Well, if I can secure a job for certain in Waterloo, then I'll go for sure since one doesn't drop a few (hundred? thousand?) bucks on furniture to live in a massive apartment by oneself...

KITTY KITTY KITTY KITTY KITTY

It has been a long day furniture hunting throughout the KW area, but we finally secured a mattress set, sofa set, and some more affordable furniture locations to furnish the apartment that, at the end of the day, was signed over to Jorghnassen. The super had a sweet white cat that she had taken in as a stray barely a week ago and was planning to keep, that jumped on my lap and was making all sorts of cute purring noises and nuzzling and was so adorable that it makes me almost weep from its adorableness and cuddliness. Too bad I'm allergic to cats :( and dogs :( and other various cute furry things :( and dust mite poo. >:(

Jorgh's parents were kind enough to come all the way to Waterloo to hang out here for the week, driving up to the outlet mall, driving down to southern Kitchener to the Brick, driving in circles around the area to the numerous (and pricey) furniture stores, and treating us to suppers abound. Tonight was the Raintree Cafe, where they were quite pleased that the waitress could speak en francais. It's not impossible to find people here who can speak French, but it probably felt like a godsend to Jorgh's parents who spent all this time trying to stumble around in angloland with whatever angloish they could muster.

Also, it snowed. SNOWED.

Is there snow yet where you are? 'Cuz this is just weird.

Readers' Most Anticipated Update!!!

Hello and greetings from Waterloo, to all 5 of you! Thanks to Norm and y'all for coming to the duck supper last week, and for Davy allowing us to invite ourselves to karaoke at his place afterwards. Jorghnassen and I arrived in Kitchener (Waterloo) safely without incident on Wednesday, and we were fortunate enough to have a temporary accommodation offered to us by the UWaterloo people, housed in the second level of the Health Services building on campus. [This will become a detail that will render the later part of my post quite ironic.]

We set about setting Jorgh up at the university bright and early, and also apartment hunting on Thursday. The rent around here is on average higher (or just on par) than living in NDG, although the quality of the apartment might be better here. Nonetheless, everything seems far apart because the entire city of Waterloo can be summed up as follows: bland, peppered with mini-malls.

It's not to say that there aren't any interesting details in Waterloo. There are those flocks of Canadian geese that live in and around campus. We saw a fox(!) running by as we walked north of campus, and a rabbit just around the HS building. (Oh yeah, UWat likes to use acronyms for everything here.) Chipmunks and squirrels galore eat the chestnuts and seeds that fall to the ground everywhere. Odd plants grow wild in the Research in Motion (RIM) park. And most importantly, rush hour traffic encourages pedestrians to cross the street. Whatever is considered their rush hour-I've seen more cars backed up on my driveway than that street considered as an artery.

But Thursday was unfruitful. We visited a very disgustingly overpriced 2 bedroom apartment between UWat and Wilfred Laurier University (WLU) that I very bluntly stated, "not worth 1XXX$ a month." We then walked a terrific 5 km to an apartment in Kitchener that was much better in comparison, but killed my feet with more blisters.

Friday, Jorgh called half a dozen places, and we had two apartment buildings to visit, also about 6 km apart. Lucky for me, I had a second pair of shoes, and lucky for Jorgh, he carried everything. We visited a place that was very tempting due to its proximity to a "plaza" (minimall) with a Sobeys, which just happened to stock...

Jorgh: OMG LOOOOOK WE HAVE TO GET THAT APARTMENT!
Ms. C: WHAT? WHY?!?
Jorgh: CRETONS!!!11!1!

Anyway, we visited the second building and also found it somewhat appealing due to a 1 bedroom apartment (that seemed to be rare in our apartment hunting) just recently vacated and readily available, once they cleaned it with an industrial vacuum or Swiffer napkin the size of a small planet. Nonetheless, it was a bit cheaper in the end, and seemed to be close to all sorts of different amenities - but no Sobeys across the street with cretons. It was a tough call, actually, but Jorgh decided to go with the 1 bedroom, as it was easier to furnish and I had already tired of this city...

I've yet to describe the temporary accommodations that we are occupying for another two days. It's a tastefully furnished apartment with furniture and decorations from another era, and accessories like a television and telephone from the times when people didn't care about how pointy things were shaped or how beige things could be coloured. It has a loud ventilation system, probably to keep out rodents from its ducts. Thankfully enough, it is equipped with a washer and dryer, and fridge and stove, and enough plates, utensils, cups, bowls and other kitchen things to not have to eat out every meal. All in all, tidy enough for temporary living.

The bed is another story. And probably the couch.

I developed a very sudden case of hives over the last two days or so, covering my shins, back, neck, scalp, and elbows. It looks very much like a bad allergic reaction, and from the looks of it, from the bed. Last night my throat happily obliged as well, and Jorgh and I have both stayed up in the wee hours trying not to go into massive panic attacks due to blocked airways and other happy fun events. [Recall previous post on paranoia.] We blew steam by cursing everything from the university HS building we were sitting on top of, to the poop of dust mites. I had washed all the sheets and pillow cases of the bed in hot water the day everything started itching like mad.

Today, I was advised by Jorgh's very nice doctor-parents to take (more) Benadryl, use non-perfumed Aveno lotion and wash without soap. Jorgh wanted to move into a hotel room but due to a certain beer festival in this region reputedly the biggest outside of the country of origin, it is nigh impossible to get any room now. Anyway, I'm spending as much time outside of the apartment as possible, as I found myself going nuts over lack of internet usage, something the apartment lacks. Not to mention the constant and cripping itching all over my poor wretched body that I spent so much time running into shape.

I know Jorghnassen promised he'd get a blog up and running, but I think he's still gathering his thoughts for a first post. ;)

I Ran for (Melted) You

I said I would post the overall progress and results, but since I have more recently lacked sleep and sanity, I took a 5 hour long nap after the run and it is now already the evening and I am still too tired to compile the data. The digital camera ceases to turn on, so I have no immediate photos to show you. (This is the reason I have not posted photos in a long time.)

But you can rest assured that despite the rain and the cold, and a certain Jorgh's epileptic chihuahua constitution, I completed the run and have photos of it. :)

The paper got wet, predictably, but the marker I used to fill in the bad printing quality of the letters ran like the makeup of a jilted prom queen. So the result is as you see below.



There weren't as many people as last year, as most of these missing participants may have wisely decided to hide at home with their hot cocoas and thick blankets rather than decide to stick it out to the cold and bitter end when all the participation prizes were handed out to everyone else but me. :( I got free food tho. :)

Fundraising is still ON though. Please help me raise the bar on the goal for next year!