Local News

Arr!

My pirate name is:

Mad Morgan Flint

Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.

Power Move

On Monday's The Show, Ze Frank asked for some power moves. Please note: Power moves are not about being cool, they're about being awesome.

Mostly because I could, I recorded my own power move:



P.S. I love my new Mac. <3

More JetBlue Awesomeness

If you can't make it to our Super Bowl party because you have to fly across the country, at least you can get some free beer!

Travel Bliss

On Friday night I flew to Toronto for the weekend. Before that, though, I spent a whopping 7 1/2 hours (no, that isn't a typo) at LaGuardia. Waiting. Sometimes patiently, sometimes, not so much. (Interestingly, both of the Air Canada flights from LGA to YYZ that were scheduled to leave after mine actually left hours before mine did. I chalk this up to something about airlines that I don't understand.)

Fortunately, I love traveling and I even love airports. There's an Ani DiFranco song that sums up my feelings quite nicely.

My recent flight home from California was on the Friday night redeye. I hate to admit this, but the older I get, the more aware I am that, while a good idea in theory, the redeye isn't so hot in practice. I hate the idea of spending a whole day traveling across the country, however, I just end up sleeping the whole day I get home. Anyway. The redeye on JetBlue has its advantages. In addition to the DirecTV and awesome snacks, passengers on these flights receive the Bliss Shut-Eye Kit.

My first experience with Bliss dates back to 2000, the year I first lived in NY. I was working at a company that shared office space with BBC America, and Ian, one of the radio reporters was doing a piece on Bliss. As part of the story, he had to bring someone to have a treatment at the spa. I eagerly volunteered to be his guinea pig, and the service (a Hot Salt Body Rub) was scheduled. (The weekend before the appointment, I fell asleep in Central Park with my t-shirt cleverly pulled up so that I could get some sun on my underexposed belly, which wasn't so smart, but we went ahead anyway.) The treatment was amazing, with the only drawback being that Ian basically saw me naked. It's kind of hard to jam a microphone in someone's face with your eyes closed, and it was a full-body treatment. (Trivia note: Bliss was started by a woman from Saskatchewan. Yay Canada!)

The Shut-Eye Kit is a brilliant cross-promotion between JetBlue and Bliss. It's a little ziplocky bag with an eye shade, earplugs, a teeny tiny sample of Lemon Sage Body Butter, and a one-use amount of minty lip balm. I love the Shut-Eye Kit. For one, it's free. Free stuff! On an airline! A discount airline, no less! Secondly, it contains really practical items. I'm not a huge fan of earplugs (they always fall out, except for those really squishy green ones, which these aren't), but the eye mask rocks, and wearing one really is the only way to sleep on an airplane. And, it's well-designed. Good design makes me happy.

So thanks, JetBlue, for kicking it up! I will admit though that I had absolutely no trouble sleeping, little kit of fun or not, when my flight finally left LGA at 1:30am on Friday. Er, Saturday.

On The Mat

While recent UFF postings have been sporadic, I'm sure that my faithful readers (both of you) are keeping up using the wonders of modern technology (Praise RSS!) and you'll be happy to know that I have many inspiring entries in store. That pesky day job keeps getting in the way of blogging. Donations are welcome.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

During my recent trip to California, I had the opportunity to attend an introductory Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class at the Ralph Gracie Academy in Mountain View. I'm pretty sure that had such an excursion been suggested to me a few years ago, my response would have been a firm "Thanks but no thanks." However, given my recent forays into athleticism (see: Triathlon, Marathon, and Boxing), and safe in the knowledge that knowing nothing about martial arts AT ALL meant that I'd have nothing to prove, when MFD suggested it to me, and I believe somewhat to his surprise, I enthusiastically agreed to try it out.

The Academy is located in kind of a strip mall on El Camino Real in Mountain View. I borrowed a gi and changed in the bathroom, in which hung the sign: "Please! If you must throw up, do it in the toilet, not the sink. Thank You." Heh. And, ew.

I warmed up a little, and then one of the resident black-belts, Gumby, came over to help with my introductory lesson. He explained the principles of jiu-jitsu, and showed me a number of moves, including the oopa (mount escape), guard pass, and posture in guard. I practiced each one a bunch of times. I was kind of meh at some of them, including the bridge, which is strange because Urdhva Dhanurasana is one of my favourite yoga postures. He also showed me three attacks: the cross choke, the Americana shoulder lock (that's a good instructional video, but remember kids, these are trained professionals. Don't try this at home), and an armbar from mount. Watch out: If you lie still and don't defend yourself at all, I could really annoy you.

Both Gumby and MFD (who goes by Canada in these parts) were incredibly patient and encouraging, and the experience was surprisingly unintimidating. After about half an hour of instruction/practicing, Canada asked Don (whose nickname, if he has one, I didn't catch) to spar with me. Ack! So much for unintimidating. I kind of didn't want to do it, but hey, I was there, so I tried out my new moves.

In sparring that first time I learned something valuable: Jiu-jitsu is *hard*. Don, a brown belt, was very nice to me, and I'm quite aware of the fact that he could have kicked my ass from here to Sunday (read: effortlessly choked me unconscious and/or broken one of my limbs). Don, should you ever read this, thanks for not doing either of those things. I really like having two functioning arms. I tried to apply some of the stuff I'd learned, but in the moment, it was difficult to remember which hand went where and when. The technique seemed logical but complicated, and I really appreciated the amount of work these guys put into training.

To round out the experience, I watched Canada and Don spar for a while. To my untrained eye, these guys looked amazing. I also extra-want to keep both of them on my good side (see: unconsciousness, broken limbs).

Big thanks to everyone at the academy, including Batata (who runs the place), Gumby, Don, and Canada. I felt very welcome and would love to come back next time I'm in the Bay Area. ('Course then I wouldn't have that whole "know nothing" excuse to fall back on.)

Postscript: At lunch afterwards, almost immediately after we sat down, Don asked me how much I weigh. I told him, and he replied, "Yeah, you're pretty robust for a girl." I'm totally taking that as a compliment.

MAXIMum Embarrassment

Yesterday morning when I arrived at work, there was a magazine (face-down) on my desk. On the magazine was a post-it note which read, "This was delivered to our building by mistake," and signed by one of our developers.

I turned it over, and it was the latest issue of Maxim. (I have no idea if that link is SFW; the cover of the magazine certainly wasn't.) Oh, and my name was on the address label.

Last year I bought something online and got one of those offers for a free (or super cheap) magazine subscription. As a joke, and because I like to keep abreast (literally) of what's in vogue in frat houses, I subscribed to Maxim.

Turns out the guy who brought it in lives a few doors down from me and apparently, of all things, that piece of mail was misdelivered. I love ya, USPS, but, ouch. This one's going to hurt our relationship.

Firsts

Gillian (Yay it's really snowing!)
Originally uploaded by emptysquare.

First (big awesome) snowfall in NYC this year.
First blog post straight from Flickr.
First blog entry using my new MacBook.

I'm feeling awfully grateful these days.

(Thanks to Jesse for snapping this pic.)

Oh my.

I just discovered that my mom's on Facebook.

I'm even too old for Facebook, and I'm only on there because Little Lisa, our Waterloo Co-op student last semester, told me it would make me cool. It didn't work for me, and it definitely isn't going to work for my mom.

In related news, I'm pretty proud of Mom for sending her first Evite last week, for her retirement party. Next thing you know she'll have some kind of retirement blog. I fear the internet is getting too easy to use. Web developers of the world, unite in the name of obfuscation!

California Dreaming

My high school Geography teacher Mr. McDonald instilled the fear of God in me about the San Andreas Fault and told us all that California is non-ecumene* and that you couldn't pay him enough to live there.

Earthquake-schmearthquake: California kicks ass.

I'm here in the Bay Area this week, working remotely. The weekend included another feeble attempt at surfing (I got a bit further than when I tried last Spring, but still didn't get up on the board) and hanging out with this cool dude:

With 32+ years of experience at being a very enthusiastic person, I'm learning to that liking a lot of stuff is a pretty good problem to have. It's still a problem, though. Imagine, for example, if you went to Small Town, Iowa to visit someone. (Play along with me. Maybe it's your mom's cousin or something.) As you drive by the local diner, you glance in the window and see the locals sitting at the counter, and you immediately wonder what it would be like if that was *your* local diner, and they knew that on Sundays you liked your eggs over-easy and your bacon crisp and your coffee with milk instead of cream, and the waitress called you "Hon" (which, to me, is the sign of an excellent diner waitress). Anyway, that's kind of what happens to me whenever I go somewhere. I have imagined myself living everywhere from Paris, France to Paris, Ontario, usually much to the dismay of anyone to whom I've mentioned these grand fantasies. (On the large majority I don't actually follow through, but there were those 2 little cross-country moves.)

All of my wanderlust is particularly bubbly here in California, for a whole host of reasons, and also because even though I only lived here for 18 months back in 1998-2000, my friends here are like family.

Plus, the weather is really good. In January, 10°C is "cold." Everything is relative.

*Good word, eh? Despite his earthquake-alarmism, Mr. McDonald was a good teacher.

Round 2

This morning I met with John again for Boxing Day: The Sequel. He kicked my ass even harder this time. I shadow boxed! I jabbed! I uppercutted! I hit the speed bag! I did sit-ups and crunches and tricep dips!

Last week I picked up the book The Gleason's Gym Total Body Workout for Women, and learned that I was correct about the 3 minute rounds with the 1 minute rest in between. The point of this is to get your body used to going all-out for 3 minute intervals (the length of an actual round). It's really cool to learn about a whole new sport!

John told me today that his favourite boxing movie is Rocky (which I haven't seen!) and that The Champ made him cry. Another one I'll have to see is Raging Bull, which was filmed at Gleason's.

I'm going back on Friday. I hope I get to jump rope and try the sand bag soon!

Happy New Year!

We rang in 2007 with a lot of Guitar Hero and champagne. I can almost guarantee some kind of entry that's actually worth reading tomorrow, after I've fully recovered. In the meantime, go take the Superhero Quiz.

I hope that this year is your best yet!

I am Spider-Man:
Intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Spider-Man		90%
Superman		85%
Robin		80%
Wonder Woman		75%
The Flash		75%
Catwoman		70%
Supergirl		70%
Iron Man		60%
Green Lantern		55%
Hulk		50%
Batman		50%

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Vote Early and Often

Ultra Fine Flair is on the Z List on Squidoo. Go there and show your support for UFF. It'll motivate me to keep the high-quality (if by quality, you mean frequency) entries coming in '007.

That link again.

Boxing Day

In Canada, December 26 is Boxing Day. This year, I celebrated Boxing Day on December 29 with my first trip to Gleason's Gym for some real, honest-to-god boxing training.

Since my office moved to DUMBO in May, I've been thinking about going to Gleason's. But there was that whole marathon thing going on, and time was at a premium, so I didn't do anything about it.

On Wednesday, after a nice long holiday break filled with wine and cookies, I caught up with a couple of my co-workers, one of whom told me he'd been to Gleason's and thought I'd really dig it. He gave me his trainer's card, and I called him immediately to set up an appointment.

This morning I met the trainer, John Douglas, for the first time. On Gleason's Web site, John says, "I like training ladies because of their never say die attitude and I would never deny them the opportunity to box." Right on. I'd told him on the phone that I've never boxed before, and he was really reassuring. When I walked into the gym today I felt a little nervous and giggly about it, and John was super nice the whole time. I warmed up for 10 minutes on the treadmill, then got down to business. First, John wrapped my hands (which made me feel totally hardcore), then we climbed into an actual ring (!) and he talked me through some basic combinations (just into the air for starters). A bell rings every few minutes (I'm not sure of the exact timing, but around 3 minutes), and during the "on" time, people are training, and in between "rounds," everyone rests. There's a 40-second warning bell before the round ends.

After a few rounds of air-punching, I donned a pair of white 14 oz. gloves, and John held up pads for me to punch. That part was really fun, and really exhausting. We moved next to a bag that's suspended from the ceiling and floor, and John instructed me to left-right jab it for the next few rounds. I kind of started to get the hang of that. We then moved to the speed bag, which was tricky to get the hang of. I did get better after a few minutes of practicing, and I'm looking forward to trying that again. We ended with a few dozen situps and crunches.

The cost is really reasonable - today I paid a $15 gym fee, and $25 to John for an hour of training. If I end up going more than once/week, I'll join the gym for $80/month. I loved working with John - he called me "Champ" a lot and was really supportive.

And as I write this entry, I've finally settled on a New Year's Resolution:

Kick Some Ass.

Go Bills!

DLang's Christmas gift from me was a pair of tickets to the Bills game on Christmas Eve. The drive to Buffalo from Waterloo is about 2 1/2 hours, so a 1pm game seemed well-timed for us to get back for Christmas Eve festivities (and a good day-long respite from my family, although I must say, all of the 'bergs were quite well-behaved this year). We donned our Bills jerseys and headed out at 9:30, and with a brief Tim Horton's stop in St. Catharine's, made it to Buffalo at noon. Parking near the stadium was only $10, and DLang was practically moved to tears at seeing the plethora of Bills garb adorning the fans streaming into Ralph Wilson Stadium.

We found our seats and they rocked - 5 rows from the field! (I'd bought them from a season ticket holder on Two Bills Drive.) The guy sitting next to me was there with his son, and they very generously shared their fleece blanket with us. Sitting next to DLang was a kid around 10 years old, there with his mom. At one point, the Bills kicked a very unlikely field goal, and D commented, "That's the most improbable field goal I'll ever see in my life!" The kid replied, "That's the only improbable field goal I've ever seen, because I don't know what improbable means!" Aw.

I have to admit, the highlight for me was seeing the Buffalo Jills. There's nothing like a pretty girl to brighten up your day, and it's even better if she's in a totally cute little Santa outfit and waving around silver pom-poms. I really love cheerleaders. Apparently I have the pipes to be one, too, because at one point the guy next to me asked if I'd been a cheerleader. (He later asked me if I'd been a singer. I told him no, I'm just really loud.)

Despite The Bills' heartbreaking 30-29 loss to the Titans, we had a fabulous day, and I was reminded of how much I enjoy fandom - there is really nothing like cheering your heart out for something. I also really like high-fives. At one point I went to buy us hot dogs, and a bunch of guys sitting along the aisle were high-fiving everyone who went past. It was awesome, and I'm going to try to incorporate high-fiving into my daily activities in the new year.

Crackers

Every year my family includes Christmas Crackers with our holiday meals. Apparently this is a tradition adopted from the Brits, as DLang had never experienced such merriment until he was treated to a Christmas Chez Gutenberg. (I'm going to avoid reading the Christmas Cracker Wikipedia entry until after I've written this entry so as not to taint the reader's view with confirmation that my family really is a bunch of freakshows.)

For those of you not acquainted with Christmas Crackers, here's your primer. A Christmas Cracker is a tube about the size of a paper towel roll, tied so that it kind of looks like a big bon-bon. Running through the tube is a cardboard snappy thing, that when pulled apart, makes a snap kind of like a cap gun. All crackers contain a tissue-paper crown, a slip of paper with a joke, and a little prize.

My family has pretty strict rules about cracker usage. First of all, cracker-pulling is a two-person show. No exceptions. Each person holds one end of the cracker to pull it apart. My brother was particularly adamant about this rule this year. The next guideline is that you have to hold the end tightly enough to pull apart the cardboard snapper inside. This is kind of a given, but newbies tend to be light on the holding of the cracker, and it's disappointing not to hear the crack. (Sunny insists that you should hold the snapper between your fingers, but I prefer to just grab the whole end tightly.) And, you have to wear the paper crown. No exceptions to that, either.

This year we had two different brands of Chrismas Crackers. With Christmas morning pancakes at the Lesbians', we had extra-super-deluxe crackers from The Bay. Deniser brought these over and they were Fancy with a capital F. First, they were decked out with super-sparkly daisies, which I LOVED. Glitter everywhere. We cracked 'em open and found seriously the best prizes I've ever seen in a Christmas Cracker. For example: my prize was a little silver picture frame, and DLang got a little magnifying glass (that he actually really liked). The other sweet thing about these crackers is that each of the six crackers came with a different coloured crown! The jokes were corny, but hey, good clean wholesome fun often is.

Later at Shirley's, we had President's Choice Deluxe crackers. The prizes were considerably less good than The Bay's. My "prize" was a luggage tag (booooring). Dos got a keychain-whistle which wasn't bad, and a couple of the prizes were Christmas-themed (DLang got a little Santa tin), which is kind of OK. The crowns were festively red and green.

The PC version is a much better value (I don't know exactly how much they cost, but I'm pretty sure my mom wouldn't have paid more than $20 for the 8 crackers, while The Bay's version rang up at $30 for 6), but if you wanted to impress a date or something, The Bay's are worth the splurge.

I have grand plans to make my own crackers with kickass prizes for next year. I was thinking it would also be a nifty way to propose to someone (make your own cracker with the ring as the prize), but I also have visions of the cracker-pull resulting in the ring flying into some heating grate somewhere. I think I'll stick to mini-staplers and the like.

Black Christmas

A couple of caveats about today's post:

1. I've been in Waterloo for the past 3 days and the intarweb is a little hard to find in these parts. Seriously, I'm typing this entry on an iBook that's about 8 years old with a dial-up connection. (Sirrah! proudly told me yesterday that she'd ordered part of my Christmas gift from the internets. Then she said that actually she'd had Gregoire order it from work because their connection at home isn't secure. Aw.)

2. I've been drinking some wine. Probably more than half a bottle.

OK, on to your regularly scheduled programming. I have good things in store for you, Gentle Reader. The week in the Loo so far has been rather eventful, with Bartleby (Sirrah! and Gregoire's Labradoodle Extraordinaire) and Charlie (their in-utero baby who I've now felt kicking twice!). Yesterday involved some maternity shopping in which I tried on a faux-bump pillow (I'm going to be a supercute pregnant lady) and in which I cracked wise about a vibrating toy ("I have those, but mine aren't shaped like little lions."). Today I had a visit to Sunny's storage space to clear out a "few" (read: 15) boxes of my stuff that actually amounts to my entire high school memorabilia (totally kickass rocker picture of me to be posted next week when I have access to a scanner - I looked like Kim Mitchell for a while there) and, the highlight: My ABBA records. Awesome.

Anyway. As per usual chez Dr. Sirrah!'s, we like to watch a movie. We thought a seasonal film might be in order, but Sirrah!'s choice, "One Magic Christmas," wasn't available, so we opted for the Canadian horror classic (and recently remade) Black Christmas ("If it doesn't make your skin crawl, then it's on too tight!") starring, among others, Margot Kidder (of "Superman" - and her affair with Prime Minister Trudeau - fame). Incidentally, Canada has quite a good selection of horror films. Last year at Hallowe'en DLang and I found Ginger Snaps (Tagline: They Don't Call It The Curse For Nothing) at our local video store and were not disappointed. Hot redhead goes all werewolf. I recommend it. And then of course there's our very own David Cronenberg - Crash is one of the hottest thrillers I've ever seen, but I digress. And Sirrah! is yelling "The Changling, Gill!" at me as I write this, so check that out, too.

"Black Christmas" is the story of a sorority house terrorized by prank phone calls ("It's the moaner again!") and eventually, murder. [Gregoire just told me that because of their primative internet connection, as long as I'm writing this we can't use the microwave. Heh.] So yeah, if you like a good holiday horror flick (and really, who doesn't) this is a great pick. There are some good Canadian accents (although it seems to claim to be set in the US of A, as represented by the American flag on one of the detective's desks). There's good suspense. And you can enjoy this movie without having to endure Michelle Trachtenberg (Dawn in "Buffy The Vampire Slayer") or Lacey Chabert (of "Party of Five" fame), both of whom appear in the remake (and are really, really annoying).

I have to go because Gregoire wants to logon to his gaming newsgroup to write about our earlier game of Poison, of which The Wife (Sirrah!) won two games in a row. Tomorrow we're driving to Buffalo for the Bills-Titans game, and then we'll be back in the evening for The Box and hopefully a viewing of The Sound of Music. I bought extra Kleenex for the occasion.

Christmas Spirit

I really wanted to write about the Holidailies prompt for today, but then Christmas exploded on my dining room table and I kind of need to do something about that before I jet off to Toronto on Thursday morning. In an attempt to post before midnight, here are the day's highlights.

First stop: Barnes & Noble:

"Do you have a Barnes & Noble Card?"
"No."
"Would you like one?"
"No, thank you."
"You'd save 20% off of these hardcover books" [gestures] "and 10% off the rest."
"No, thanks."
"Would you like to know how much you would have saved if you had a card?"
"Sure."
[Scans books.] "$20."
"Oh. Actually, can you hold these books for about an hour? I have some other shopping to do and I don't want to carry them around." Read: My husband's business partner has a B&N card and I'm going to swing by their office and borrow it so I can save the 20 bucks.

Next stop: Lucky Jeans.

"I need some help."
"Sure, what are you looking for?"
"A new pair of jeans. Let me be honest with you. I'm 5'8" and 160lbs, and I don't want skinny jeans. Can you help me?"
"You're funny. And, yes." And, she rocked it. Awesomely, Lucky Brand jeans come with a fortune in the pocket!

Much of the rest of the day was spent wrapping presents. I cheated on my boyfriend by shipping some stuff via UPS, but, hey, all's fair in love and Christmas shipping. I am now in the midst of packaging up 40 (yes, 40) takeout boxes' worth of Christmas cookies for my lucky co-workers.

Stuff That Makes Me Cry

Movie:
The Sound of Music
I've seen this movie at least a dozen times, and still. Still! It doesn't take long, either. Opening scene. Maria on the mountain, twirling around in her apron. The last time I watched it with Sirrah! she looked over at me 2 minutes into the movie. "Gillian! I can't believe this!" Yeah. How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria does me in.

TV Show:
Once More, With Feeling (the Buffy musical episode)
I know! This one's a surprise to me, too, but I went to the sing-along this weekend and had tears streaming down my face practically the whole time. WTF? (Shut up, Brianna.)

Song:
The Babysitter's Here by Dar Williams
DLang and Buddy used to put this song on just to watch me cry. "She's trying not to cry." "How are you feeling, Gillian?" "Ooh! Are you biting your lip?" "Are you OK, babe?" "Is that a tear?" Jerks.

Album:
Christmas Songs
In particular, Boney M's version of Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord. I don't know what to tell you about that one. Do They Know It's Christmas used to have an effect, too, but I think I'm over it.

Food:
Onions
It's pretty bad. I think I might be somehow allergic.

Cookielicious

Today is my annual Christmas-Cookie Baking Day. (By "day" I do mean 24 hours, but they're usually not consecutive, because of bothersome things like sleeping and working that get in the way of the cookie baking extravaganza.) Every year I mark my calendar to spend the last, or second-to-last weekend before Christmas baking crazy-ass amounts of cookies. It's a family tradition, really. My mom does the same, and when we arrive at her house for the holidays she has stacks of Tupperware filled with baked goods. Family faves are peanut butter cookies and Nanaimo Bars, a delicious Canadian treat with a coconutty-chocolate base, a layer of vanilla custardy stuff, and a thin chocolate top. Delish. She also makes chocolate chip cookies, which used to be quite crispy, but not in the good way, in the greasy way. A few years ago I told her the truth about her chocolate chip cookies. Gently, of course.

"Mom, your chocolate chip cookies... aren't very good."

She looked at me and blinked. "I know they aren't. I don't know what to do about that."

I was so surprised! My infallable, domestic-goddess mom, didn't have a good chocolate chip cookie recipe! Crazy, that. I hooked her up with a couple of my favourite recipes, and her chocolate chip offerings have definitely improved.

My cookie to-do list this year includes Oatmeal Cranberry and Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread (both from the 2001 Martha Stewart "Cookies" holiday special magazine, which has proven to be an excellent investment at $5.95, Extreme Triple-Ginger Spice Cookies, Maple Stars (which I usually make as snowflakes), and my absolute favourites, Chocolate Chip and Peppermint Crunch Crackles (OK, maybe they're my favourites because I get to crush the peppermint candies with a hammer). Since I'm thinking about them (and my mouth is watering slightly), I think I might squeeze Nanaimo Bars onto the schedule, too. And I've been eyeing a recipe for Pecan Caramel Shortbread Fingers in that Martha Stewart magazine. We'll see how that goes.