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So Hell froze over and I joined a book club . It's an open genre book club so I get to choose what I want to read, within the month's chosen genre. This is my first book review! This month's genre is True Crime. I go through periods in my life when I have to stop watching the news and shows like Dexter for awhile because life is sad and horrible and scary, so I wasn't really looking forward to reading a book about crime. I deliberately tried to find a topic that didn't hit too close to home (selfishly, I like to sleep at night), and eventually stumbled across the subject of honour killings. I found an entire book on honour killings in the world ( Murder in the Name of Honor: The True Story of One Woman's Heroic Fight Against an Unbelievable Crime by Rana Husseini), but then was reminded of the case the book I chose is based on. It seemed to fit, a true crime tale that didn't hit too close to home but that was still set in Canada and highlighted the unjust t...

It's officially time to plant my balcony garden! This year, I'm trying something different. In the past I've planted a lot of little pots. This led to a big jungle of a garden, but I never used half of it either because I'd planted crops which I never ended up eating or the bugs got to it first! So I decided to try a pallet garden this year. I asked my dad to help me find a pallet, but he insisted on making me a vertical garden to size. This was very nice of him, and he even added a bit of customization - but the planter is a heavy beast! Because I'm worried the weight will break my balcony (shh, don't tell the rest of the inmates), and because there is the potential for a lot of edibles, I decided to just plant my enormous vertical garden with violas, basil, lettuce, spinach, radishes and swiss chard, plus two zucchini. I'm a bit worried the vertical garden is too shallow, so I'm not sure if anything will grow well. We'll see. A friend also swappe...