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Do you have a book that, when rereading it, causes you to vividly remember where you were the first time you read it? Wizard of the Grove is that book for me. I spent the summer of 2002 travelling in Quebec and Ontario. I remember picking out the book before I left Montreal, annoyed because I had finished Lord of the Rings v.1 but didn't bring v.2, and really all I wanted to do was keep reading that but there was no point buying the additional volumes that I already had at home. It took me forever to find a book that seemed long enough to last me for my trip in Ontario, and I also didn't want to start a massive series because assumably I'd be finishing up Lord of the Rings for the rest of the summer when I got home. Anyway, picking out this book was an ordeal. It was a fantastic read though. I remember sitting in the park near Niagara Falls, reading while I wasted time until it got dark and they lit up the Falls. I remember I was listening to La Bottine Souriante's Ant...

There's still one more week of March, but I pretty much quit this challenge right after I started. I barely made it a few days before breaking the March rule: only buy food from locally owned businesses. I don't think this was a waste of my time though, as I did learn a few things. First, I value convenience over all - over price, over time and over location. Second, it's easier to find locally owned restaurants than it is to find locally owned food marts, at least in my neighbourhood. Third, chain grocery stores trump locally owned stores in terms of variety (and in one case, lack of expired chocolate chips!). Fourth, I live in a food desert, and I'm mostly too lazy to go beyond my neighbourhood borders for groceries, though I'll go farther afield for restaurants. Pretty sure I'll keep trying to eat a locally owned restaurants. I feel that's a mostly manageable and sustainable goal. Groceries though, well I'll keep going to my chain supermarket for dair...

Laptop adalah jenis perangkat teknologi yang saat ini tidak bisa lepas dari aktivitas manusia, hal itu dikarenakan laptop adalah alat yang selalu ada di setiap kegiatan seperti perkantoran, sekolah, bank dan tempat-tempat lainnya. Agar laptop tetap tahan dan awet, maka perlu perawatan dan penjagaan yang ekstra agar laptop tidak cepat rusak. Jika laptop tidak dirawat, maka hal yang sering terjadi

We went camping as kids: I have many memories of waking up in a tent trailer or eating lunch outside the camper. My only memory of tent camping was when a bunch of dads took us girls camping in their big canvas hunting tent. For a couple summers when I lived in England, we went for a week long field camping vacation at a big Christian conference (another time, another story), which was my first camping experience since being a kid. Last summer, I borrowed a tent and went camping twice - once for a night in Drumheller at this cramped private campground, and once for a few days in Jasper. It's not like I love loved it, but it was enjoyable. Quiet. Pretty. Simple. And I thought about going camping again every day since Jasper...until I went to Iceland: now all I can think about is going camping around Iceland! So I bought a tent. And I'm planning on going camping this summer. I have a couple group trips tentatively lined up, and I might even get brave enough for a solo trip or two...

I already read The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck . Time for the next one... The Marvels By Brian Selznick 2015 672 pages I loved Hugo Cabret. Wonderstruck was good. The Marvels would be good too, right? Meh. Unlike the other two, which included pencil drawings and text all mixed together, this one was text bookended by the graphic story. And that's where it went wrong for me. The first part is art. It tells the story of Billy Marvel, how he got shipwrecked, then his career in theatre, then the stories of Billy's family through the generations. This part was really well done, complex, yet perfectly portrayed in all pictures, gripping, moving, almost adult ish. If the rest of the book was as good as the first part, well bring it on. Then the text happened. And I felt let down. There's a story about young Joseph and his uncle Alexander, and Alexander Nightingale's fantastic house, which is stuck in some fantastic time period. The story is not gripping, moving ...

Oh wow I suck at this... Groceries On Thursday evening I needed to grab cookies for work on Friday and vegetables for Roller Derby Officials Rules Night BBQ. I was halfway done my shopping when I realized I was at Safeway and wasn't even allowed to be there! Major fail. I totally forgot. Safeway is just so damn convenient! Sure I could've gone to H&W , but then where would I have gotten the cookies? Two stops. Sigh. Oh the guilt. Saturday though I only needed fruit and bread so it was H&W for the win! Restaurants I didn't eat out at all this week. Miscellaneous I bought some vitamins from Optimum Health , which is a local chain of health food shops. And I bought some delicious natural sausages from them too. Random thing to have in a vitamin store! So yes, I failed again. But it did make me realize something: I value convenience over everything else, over time, over location, over money. I've still got two weeks left in this month, and though I'm pretty sur...

Normally I get my knitting patterns from Ravelry , but I recently took a couple knitting pattern books out of the library... Knitted Dinosaurs: 15 Prehistoric Pals to Knit From Scratch By Tina Barrett 2011 128 pages I'm really into dinosaurs lately, because apparently I'm a 10yr old boy trapped inside a 35yr old women's brain. Sigh. Anyway, this book was great because the patterns weren't stupid hard. That's usually how I feel about knitted toy patterns, so this book was refreshing in that respect. The illustrations are colourful, the text seems well laid out and easy to understand, and there were a few pages devoted to knitting/toy making techniques at the end. Each of the 15 dinosaurs got their own pattern, as well as a small section with interesting tidbits of info. I took this book to work to show to the library staff crafting group that I'm trying to get going...and they loved it! I'm sure many people of all ages will be getting dino gifts in the future...

Week 2 was somewhat less eventful than week 1 , but annoying nonetheless. Groceries So annoying. For my weekly shop I needed fruits/vegetables, which I happily got from my local green grocer H&W  - they were giving away a 10lb bag of potatoes if you spent $30, but since the deals are so good I never spend more than $10, I didn't have to lug home a bag of potatoes to eat for 2 months. From there I went straight to Elsafadi Market . Last week , I went to Safeway first, felt guilty, then went to Elsafadi and found everything I needed there anyway. This week was the opposite. I only needed beef, almond milk, butter and chocolate chips. That's it. They had butter, but it was kind of smushed. They miraculously had chocolate chips, but they had expired 3 months ago. And they didn't have almond milk. Ok, so I could go back to regular milk, but they didn't have that really either - they only carry 2%, 3% and homogenized. Um. No. Not drinking full fat milk. So I walked out. I...

My first week of buying food from local vendors turned out mostly good, with minimal guilt! Groceries I was near the southside location of Earth's General Store  on my way back from the airport last Monday, so I stopped in to get my weekly groceries. I'm pretty well stocked at home so only needed fruit and a few other ingredients. Earth's General Store is a locally owned organic shop with huge environmental leanings. I've shopped there on occasion for years for various things like my stainless steel Klean Kanteen water bottle, natural and chemical free shampoos and soap and other health supplies, and it's my go to place for bulk soaps etc to fill empty containers. But I don't usually shop there for food, mostly because the southside location is not convenient, and while the downtown store is closer, I'd have to really plan a trip on my bike properly to haul stuff home. Their fruit was more expensive than my local H&W produce market , but it was good qual...

I spend about two weeks a year working curling events around small city western Canada. While I'm there, I always try to visit local restaurants - I'd much rather give my money to a local, small business than a mediocre big box chain restaurant. Some of my favourite curling vacation eateries include Eats Amore food truck in Kamloops, the Gallery Cafe in Moose Jaw, and most recently El Norteno for tacos and Grande Prairie Coffee Company for sweet treats while in Grande Prairie last week. In Edmonton, of course my regular favourite place for lunch around campus is Filistix  - I make a weekly pilgrammage out to building nine for their solid coleslaw and tasty entrees. The guys have been really good to us over the years, and part of the reason I love going there for lunch is because they remember our names and treat us like friends instead of customers. But that's it. While I often profess my hatred for chain food, I don't make that much of an effort to eat out at more ...