Clicking here takes you to the Diptych Set on Flickr – where you can see the rejected pictures!

The theme of the project is Diptych and the idea is that every week Finn and Ren will each take a picture based on a predetermined theme and then we will display both pictures together on their blogs.

I’ll try my best to keep up with them. 

Today is also my mom’s Birthday. She turns one year older than last year.

So just like last year, please wish her a happy birthday in the comments, tell her how awesome of a job she did raising the fine young man that my brother is (I also have an awesome sister but I can’t seem to find a way to insert her in a joke even one year later), send her virtual flowers, do a little dance.

Please refrain from “I’d hit that” kind of comments. Avitable’s already been there, done that. It’s really awkward for me to call him dad.

Happy Birthday Mom! XXX

Funny how one year makes a difference, huh?

Sometimes I question my ability to blog.

I can spend hours thinking about a post, how I’ll find the perfect balance between funny, ironic and plain dumb to craft a masterpiece of self-reflexion. I can write and rewrite a draft until the event it’s based on is now a thing of the past. Sometimes I just post some Batman & Joker comic.

But seriously, the bests posts are always the ones that are written by others. Case in point, my morning routine consists of making my way to Tim Hortons and while buying a coffee (and sometimes a bagel with cream cheese), I chit-chat with my FavoriteCashier. This morning exchange was surreal.

Me: So, how’s my favorite cashier this morning?

FC: I’m grumpy, so don’t bug me today!

She sounds rough, but she’s adorable, really. Well, at this point of the story.

Me: Oh so this means I shouldn’t annoy you too much today then…

As I’m saying this, I poke her shoulder repeatedly – poke, poke, poke, poke, poke, poke, poke.

FC: Nah, you’re not annoying. I just didn’t sleep well last night.

Me: I’m sorry to hear tha-

FC: My roomate started her cancer treatments, and I was up all night.

Now I’m thinking: Shit! I’m annoying someone who spent the night up with a friend. Idiot.

Me: Well hopefully she’ll get better soon.

FC: She coughed all night long, keeping me up! I am not pleased!

Me: …

FC: I need my sleep!

Me: Have a nice day.

+++++

Maybe I should’ve closed with “I hope she dies quickly then!”… I’m telling you, I couldn’t make up that stuff.

Which brings me to:

What is the weirdest experience you ever had with somebody in the service industry? Did the sommelier offer to join you and the four girls you’re having dinner with for a post dinner drink? Did the mechanic offer to change your oil? Did the cashier told you she wished her roommate died?

Surreal kisses,

Mikey

So, it’s March break at The Abode.

That means I’m “babysitting” my kids and a friend’s kids today. w00t!

So here’s my plan:

Fill them up with espresso, and have them clean the whole house!

I’m taking back March Break bitches!

*Please don’t send Child Services to my house. The espresso pictures were staged – nobody touches my espresso! But they’ll still clean the house.

Well.

Once the first (Espresso) shot is fired, the plan goes out the window.
Some guy from some movie (I’m pretty sure)

I was going for that:

Nice and semi-automatic

But ended up going with this instead:

Really nice and fully automatic

Why did I go for a machine that costs twice the one I wanted? LovelyWife called it a Valentine’s Day gift.

Crap. That’s now what my gift to her will look like. Even after I special-ordered it straight from Japan.

Every other month or so, LovelyWife will get into her mind that we need to go on a diet.*

When that happens, we find a diet cookbook that will become our bible for the next foreseeable future.

The latest installment in the Bible of the Month / Diet of the Moment book is this really great looking pink thing:

Clicking will take you to the book’s website.
Warning: May contain some French.

Of course the first order of business is to go get the book. And good luck with that. That book was published in 2007 – about three years ago for you math-impaired folks – and never reprinted. Of course, we couldn’t order a copy online through our favorite bookstore:

Fortunately, we found out that there was supposed to be seven in stock in a store near our workplace. So over lunch one day last week, we made our way to the bookstore to go grab a copy of the famous Bible of the Month. After only twenty minutes of looking all over the store, we found the elusive book and brought it home.

And so began our journey into this extremely awesome religious diet program. I’m sure you’re dying for our review of the program, right? Well I can’t really speak for LovelyWife, so you’ll have to make do with my first impressions – since we only got the book last Friday:

The book is pink.

Well, that’s not really a critique as much as a comment on the looks we got when we walked around the bookstore with a pink book under our arm.

The book is expensive.

27$ Canadian dollars might not be a lot, but if you really think about it you’re getting 8 weeks of recipes (with some repeats) that could be found for free on the Web for that price. I did not read the “tips and tricks” section, but i highly doubt there’s a pearl of wisdom in there worth 27$. Keep in mind that it’s a three year old book, and then read the next point.

The “food you’ll need this week” is out of date.

The food list relies on brand name items that don’t exist anymore. It makes it really hard to replace it with something equivalent while in the grocery store. I don’t know about you, but I’m a wealth of useless knowledge, just not about the calorie count of yogurt that has not been produced in over a year. Maybe it’s just me…

The “food you’ll need this week” is ridiculously expensive.

As I mention in the previous point, the book relies on brand name items instead of the generic version. Instead of getting “low-fat yogurt” at 2.29$, you have to get “Yoplait ultimate light yogurt with 120% more probiotics” at 3.79$. All snacks are individually-wrapped single serving items, like “Ficello cheese stick” at 9.99$ for 28 sticks – a total of 588g instead of buying a block of low-fat cheddar, at 5.99$ for 600g. The end result is that the food we bought this week cost us a record-high 450$ and some change instead of the usual 250$ average.

The meals (at this point) were nothing to write home about.

I won’t even write about them here, except for my usual meh.

The lack of protein for every single lunch menu wants to make me kill myself.

I’m a meat lover (hello Google hits!). I can do salad ever so often. In fact, I did salad at least three times a week when I bought my lunch at the university crapeteria – because salad was quick, cheap, and came with some chicken or ham. Now for the next eight weeks, my lunches will be nothing but salad, fruits, veggies and soup. Kill me now.

Anyways. I’ll keep you posted. I don’t expect to simply disappear while on that plan, but you never know.

*I’m not saying I don’t need to go on a diet. As of this morning I now stand at 273 pounds and I agree that it’s a lot of pounds. But (and that’s a big butt), 9 years ago I weighted 383 pounds and I had never been on a diet in my life. I went down to 278 pounds in about six months and then slowly gained back some pounds, keeping my weight around the 300 pounds mark for the last 8 years.  On July 6th 2009 at 6:35 A.M. I tipped the scale at 315 pounds. That means I lost 42 pounds in the last seven months WHILE NOT BEING ON A DIET. So we know that works… Why not stick with that?

First thing first: Today is Avitable’s birthday. Way back when, Hilly tricked me into believing that it was Adam’s Birthday when it wasn’t. But today I’m pretty sure it is Adam’s birthday. So go over there and wish Avitable the bestest birthday wishes ever. Doooooooooo it. Then come back and read the rest of this post. Please?

Thank you.

And of course: Happy Birthday Adam!

I’m considering moving the stove over about six inches to the right in order to accommodate this baby. My current espresso machine is about 3 inches narrower. That would require rebuilding the counter top, moving the upper and lower cabinets – nobody wants the stove not aligned with the range hood, right – and doing some electrical work.

Seriously, is this sexy or just plain dumb? You’re with me right? Nobody puts that baby in a corner…

The alternative is to get a new house. Unless you see another option?

This year, instead of saying that we’re not giving each other gifts – but we always end up exchanging gifts anyways – we simply decided to upgrade our knives. And when I say upgrade, I mean really upgrade. Our knives were 15 year-old no-name bought at Wal-Mart type knives. They really had to go. The difference between the knives we had and the new ones is tremendous. Funny how we kinda knew we had crappy knives – I’ve been complaining about them for at least the past 10 years – but now that we used a real knife we will never go back to the other knives. Plus they look great!

Beautiful, right?

We went with MAC Knives, because those are the knives Ricardo uses. LovelyWife loves Ricardo, so she naturally wanted the same knives he is using. Actually, we had been trying to figure out which knives he was using for the past year, but he never mentions the name and the brand is never seen in any shots. Until last week’s Christmas Special (in French) where he did mention the name. Turns out they are based about 30 minutes from here – in Kanata. I phoned the place to ask if they had some stores in downtown Ottawa carrying them, and was told that there was a demo on Saturday at Chef’s Paradise.

We went with the Professional Series and got a chef’s knife, a paring knife and a bread knife. We also got a nice knife block (one with the fancy spaghetti-like insert) and a sharpener. We’ll keep adding a few knives over the next year, not because we need more than those three knives, but because there will be less fighting if we can both have a great knife to work with. Also, I’m a sucker for weird things, so I must get their cheese knife and black sushi knife.

Anyways, I have not been paid to do this post, but there was a 20% discount on the knives because we bought at the demo. Honestly, we didn’t need the demo to convince us, but getting a great deal is always a plus.

What about you? Are you a knife enthusiast? What kind of knives do you use?

Those were seriously hot chicken wings. I’m pretty sure you can smell them if you get closer to your monitor.

That looks yummy, right?

You know the fun thing about really hot chicken wings, right? They burn twice.

And it burns, burns, burns…

I’m guessing this will come handy soon for Pascal.

Hehehehe.

A few weeks ago the Africa Project Peeps gathered for one last time. We had drinks, exchanged a few stories, and wrapped-up the Africa Project.

The food was fabulous. Here’s a few pictures of some of the main courses:

Mystery Food #1

Mystery Food #2

Mystery Food #3

Can you guess what the meals are? Can you guess which of these three meals is mine?

Of course, this is not a contest, there will be no prize awarded as I suck at sending and/or getting prizes – just ask Poppy.

And sure enough, Tuck Tape was involved.

Hot & Naked. That’s how I bake. Also look a the pretty cupcakes! 

That’s the Vanilla frosting.

I should’ve used the actual frosting bag instrad of the cheap Ziploc.

This looks like albino crap.

They are were still very delicious.

Told ya Tuck Tape was involved.

Those cheap Ziploc bags were no match for my manly hands!