dinos with my oatmeal

I have oatmeal 4 or 5 times a week. It’s not exciting, it’s nutritional. I keep telling myself this as I choke it down. My old trainer told me to try mixing protein powder in with the oatmeal to “liven it up”. What I got was a congealed mass that reminded me of plaster of paris and made me want to puke. It’s not exciting, it’s healthy.

Right.

It seems the fine folks at Quaker recognize that people like me (ok, 6 year olds, but that’s not what’s important here) choke the pasty blob at the bottom of their bowls as fast as humanly possible to avoid the texture and/or taste (or lack thereof). They’ve come up with a new type of oatmeal with hatching candy dinosaurs. I am not sure whether I should be embarassed or not, but if these make their way North I’ll be giving them a whirl.

I’m not proud, but at least I’ll be entertained the first packet or two until I discover how wretched said dinos taste. Thanks for the link goes to gizmodo.

a fitting finish

I admit, I’d giggle a fair bit ifthis rumour turns out to be true. When Tommy Hilfiger first started out, he had an awesome product. It was a domestically-made, high quality (I still have two from 18 or so years ago), reasonably – but not cheaply – priced product line, and came in a wide variety of colours and patterns. The logo was an afterthought, and stars and stripes were not incorporated into 50% of the available patterns.

Boy how times changed. Now, the knock-offs you find on Canal Street are better quality, everything has “TOMMY” and the tri-colour logo emblazoned on it, and I’m not sure what kind of acid the designers are hitting, but it ain’t good. Oh, and the $80-140/shirt just ain’t worth it (to say nothing of the $30 underwear and socks).

The product is nothing but advertising, and it’d be nice to see Wal-Mart buy the name up and put it where it really belongs.

1:12

Some days I wake up with a sense of complete loss, and today seems to be one of those days. Last week was a complete write-off with work, and I got very little accomplished. Things on the activity side are motoring along nicely, but everything else seems stuck in neutral. I just can’t shake this hollow feeling, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why (or I just don’t want to admit why, which is a strong possibility 🙂 ). I think it’s time to go play some disc golf*.

Oh, right – 1:12 – that’s how long Dead is.

* – heh, just remembered today is the day the ODGC is holding its Plaid Jacket tourney, so disc golf is out. At least I remembered before I left.

alive with bacon

A while back I posted about the breakdancing transformer ad for the Citroen C4. As with a lot of good things, the copycats come out after the fact. They’re usually worse than the original, and this one is no exception. It goes on way too long, knocks off both the original ad and the music, and I’m not sure I want my breakfast doing a jig, especially when I’m hungover. The jiggly yolk-belly is a nice touch, though, and some folks find it to be pretty funny. Who am I to argue what constitutes entertainment?

crap on the right

I’ve made a couple changes to the sidebar, adding a random pic from my photo gallery along with info on what’s currently playing on iTunes. Why? I dunno, it just seemed like a good idea.

The tunes info comes courtesy of Brandon Fuller’s Now Playing plugin for iTunes (Windows only, but there are a bunch of Mac plugins out there that do the same thing). The random picture is pulled from the Gallery of photos using the WPG2 plugin for WordPress.

I’ve also tossed my Gallery 1 installation finally. I was running two seperate instances, with two copies of every photo, which seemed kinda stupid. So, a lot of Google image searches will break for a little while, but I’m not terribly choked up about it. If you have a DS account and want to upgrade to Gallery 2, please drop me a line and I’ll give you the skinny on how to install G2 (and upgrade from G1, if necessary).

Playthings, really, but it’s all in the name of fun.

As an aside, the folks at WPG2 have announced that they’re not going to support Gallery 2 implementations that use URL redirects. I am pretty sure what this means is that they refuse to answer any more users questions about how to get WPG2 working with a Gallery 2 install that uses redirects. It’s pretty straight forward, and is even (poorly) documented. If you have such a beastie, and it’s not working, drop me a line and I’ll help ya out.

owie, owie, owie

I keep meaning to update, really. No, I mean it. Honest.

Sometimes things get in the way. This week it’s been a complete lack of motivation. I’m having a really hard time getting anything down on paper, whether it’s work, blogs, or schoolwork. I think it’s just one of those things, and it’s starting to pass. I also think it may be because I have two testplans to finish, and I hate writing testplans. There’s a couple other reasons I can think of, but the testplans are more than likely the culprit.

Walking down stairs has been fun the last couple of days. I played in my first and second ultimate games on Sunday and Tuesday, and ran on Saturday and Wednesday. My ankles are complaining just a little bit, as are my quads. Seems ultimate involves a completely different set of muscles than running. I knew this already, I just didn’t expect or need such a vivid reminder.

The games have been fun, with a close (13-15) loss on Sunday, and a closer than it had any right to be (15-11) win on Tuesday. It’s good to be back with the ‘toads, and I felt a lot better during the Tuesday game. I’ve taken it down a notch so I don’t kill myself, and hope to keep it that way.

Still, I’m sore, and old, and find myself wishing for the recuperative powers of when I was 12.

Running is going well, too, and I’m running 30-35km per week now. That’ll increase by about 5km every two weeks between now and the end of November, where I should be in really good shape for Seattle. Still have the plantars, but it’s not as intense, and I stretch using a swiss ball twice a day now. I’m getting there.

now that’s a good sammich

Taking a cue from Hobbes, I’m a fan of tuna salad sammiches. Unfortunately, most tuna salads are excruciatingly bland, lifeless, and dry. I’ve been playing with combos over the last couple weeks, and have hit upon a mix I love. The mix is not too dry, not too wet, and uses a minimum of fats. The lack of fat does make for a more textured mix, but I like that.

Here’s what I throw in my mix:

  • Two cans President’s Choice low sodium, chunk white tuna packed in water
  • One hard-boiled egg, finely chopped
  • One quarter red bell pepper, minced
  • Three tablespoons(ish) low-fat mayonnaise (“whipped spreads”, like Miracle Whip, are not good substitues, as they tend to be sweeter than mayo)
  • Three tablespoons(ish) vidalia onion, minced
  • One teaspoon fresh (or frozen) cilantro
  • One teaspoon(ish) Worchestshire sauce
  • One teaspoon(ish) wasabi
  • One teaspoon(ish) Dijon mustard
  • Black pepper to taste

Mix everything together, and add to your favourite bread. I highly recommend making an open-faced tuna melt using a seven or twelve-grain bread, with sharp white cheddar cheese as a topper.

Yummy!

unclear on the concept

So, I came across a quote today which left me pretty much speechless. I know some people just don’t get it, and I shouldn’t be surprised when I hear about them (especially when they’re in the Southern U.S.). A white kid at a high school wore a shirt with a picture of a couple black people being dragged behind a jeep in nooses. Naturally, another (black) kid took offense to this, and punched him upside the head. The white kid didn’t see what the big deal was; he was interviewed, and offered up this introspective gem:

“I’m not racist or anything,” he said. “It’s just, some people I hate, some people I don’t get along with. And black people just happen to be the ones because they think they’re better than everyone else.”

Well junior, I am truly sorry to be the one to tell you, but that is pretty much racism defined. I’m sure that conversely, you don’t think you’re better than them because they think they’re better than you. Gah! It’s probably good he moved on to a community college, because he obviously wasn’t learning a whole lot elsewhere.

My brain is still a-goggle. How do these people breed and survive? Oh, and it was really nice to hear he was planning to be a Marine. I know I’d feel better if they gave this half-witted Cletus a gun.

frankfurt i’m sorry

Back in the bad old Ingenia days, there was a bunch of Westies who came to visit, work, and play with us for a while. One of them had really stinky feet, and grew up to be CTO of a successful online jewelry company (where he scored a very cool desk).

He loved this westie band by the name of Spirit of the West, and shared the sounds of this band with everyone. This was a good thing, for I had never heard Home for a Rest before, and it’s now a kind of anthem. Over the years I’ve managed to pick up pretty much all of their CDs, and they’re all good listens.

My very favourite CD of theirs is “Open Heart Symphony”, a live performance with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. It’s not typical SOTW fare, in that it’s not raucous and there’s nary a drinking song to be found. It is quite beautiful, and to me the accompaniment of the classical instruments with SOTW’s mellow, Celtic sound and emotive vocals just works.

Frankfurt I’m Sorry is my pick of the litter from this CD. I don’t know what it is about this track (which is apparently an apology from the band to the residents of Frankfurt, who they labeled “losers” at one time because of a bad experience there), but it just has a certain power to it. It’s from the heart, and makes me strangely happy for something that’s essentially an open letter to a bunch of folks far away.

Open Heart Symphony doesn’t seem to be in the catalogue any more. I don’t pretend I went looking too hard for it, but none of the major online vendors here in Canada had it. So, I thought I’d share. Have a listen, and let me know if I’m on crack or not for liking it. If you’re not partial to it, have a listen to Milk, Tea, and Oranges, which is another one of my faves, despite its somewhat depressing subject matter.

Thanks Darrell, they are a damn good band.

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