Holy, holy crap

What a day, what a day
If you can look it in the face and hold your vomit
–Faith No More

Well, it was­n’t that bad.

You know it’s going to be a good day when you arrive at work and there’s a sign on the doors to your building:

POWER OUTAGE
Please keep out of building

The Big Equipment Bet­ter still is when they bring in the heavy equipment.

But the best is when the pow­er still isn’t on when you go home for the day.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Holy, holy crap”

Yum yum yum

My wife found a recipe for roast­ed veg­etable and chick­en chili in last mon­th’s Chate­laine mag­a­zine. We made it for sup­per tonight. Makes a lot–I had to trans­fer the onion-toma­to-bean com­bo to a stock pot just to have room in the pan to cook the chicken–and oh my word does it ever taste good. We served it up with sour cream, sal­sa, green onions, and some grat­ed cheese. Six peo­ple ate from the pot–a cou­ple with very hearty appetites–and there’s still near­ly six cups of chili left. Mmmmmmmmmm.

Cake Slice We also had cake. My wife’s birth­day was a cou­ple weeks ago, and my broth­er-in-law brought over a Safe­way cake. It’s kind of a stu­pid tra­di­tion that he and I have to try and eat mon­strous pieces of Safe­way cake. So we did. My dar­ling wife (whose new nick­name is The Enabler) cut us each a sixth of the cake.Tasty Pho­tos will come lat­er, once I’ve tak­en them off the cam­era, but for now, rest assured that the cake is all gone. All. Gone. Two lay­ers, ten eight inch­es diam­e­ter, half-inch-thick icing… I think my bro-in-law almost died, but after a quick break, he was back to fin­ish off his piece. Sug­ar shock, hell yeah.

Then we played cards, and then every­one petered out and went home, and here I am doing up a blog post. I’m almost done, I think. Ok, I’m done.

Birthday fun

So my wife’s birth­day fell last night. We had a qui­et sup­per at home, then I gave her a cou­ple of books–It’s a Dog’s Life, Snoopy and a giant, 30-foot fold­out illus­trat­ed his­to­ry of the world. Then we had some friends over for a game of canas­ta (which the dudes won, after a shaky start) while we drank two and a half bot­tles of wine and six shots of Blue Bols between us. A good time was had by all.

How can you tell it’s election night?

CBC.ca is was farked. Update–scant min­utes lat­er, I’m get­ting through. Still.

Appar­ent­ly I did throw my vote away, since the incum­bent got re-elect­ed. Not that I’m surprised.


Judo–only three of us there, me and a white/yellow striped belt and Dar­cy, the head instruc­tor. So we did­n’t do hane-goshi; instead, Mark–the white/yellow stripe–went through his throws for his yel­low belt, and I went over the ones I’ll need to know for my brown belt, and then I did the first three sets of nage-no-kata, which I will also need to know for my brown belt. Then I came home.

Voted.

Yeah. The can­di­date that usu­al­ly gets elect­ed ’round these here parts is not who I vot­ed for. I just can’t help hear­ing that Simp­sons bit, where Kang and Kodos are run­ning in the US elec­tion, and some guy in the audi­ence says, “Why, I think I’ll just vote for a third-par­ty can­di­date”, and one of the aliens says, in that delight­ful boom­ing voice they have, “Go ahead. Throw your vote away.

I tossed my vote into the æther. And now, because of a new/old law (I think it was struck down by a provin­cial court before last elec­tion, but rein­stat­ed before the cur­rent one), I have to wait till 9PM to see any results from any­where in the coun­try. Weird. Oh well.


Hane-goshi Tonight at judo: Hane-goshi, the spring­ing hip throw: one of my favourites. Video | Ani­mat­ed .gif. Whee!

The Great Vodka Experiment


More New Year’s pho­tos on flickr

So, it worked. That’s the first thing you need to know. I’m start­ing the sto­ry at the end, but some­times you can get away with that.


Quite some time ago, I read this sci­en­tif­ic paper on the fil­tra­tion of vod­ka. The gist of it is that you can fil­ter a cheap vod­ka through a char­coal fil­ter (such as, for instance, a Bri­ta water puri­fi­er) and get it to taste like a very expen­sive vodka.

I passed the link around to some friends, since it amused me, and then thought no more of it.

New Year’s Eve, my friend Kevin shows up at my place with three part bot­tles of flavoured Abso­lut (one rasp­ber­ry and two vanil­la), his Bri­ta jug, and a fresh fil­ter. He does­n’t even have to say any­thing to me. I know this is my fault.

I start smiling.


So after four fil­tra­tions, the rasp­ber­ry vod­ka was sig­nif­i­cant­ly smoother. Kath­leen’s the­o­ry was that the Bri­ta was leach­ing alco­hol from the vod­ka, which I thought plau­si­ble, but I fig­ured it was more like­ly that impu­ri­ties were being pulled out of the drink instead.

We also fil­tered one of the bot­tles of vanil­la, but with one thing and anoth­er (you know, New Year’s), we nev­er drank it. After the par­ty I put it in the freezer.

Where it froze solid.

So it appears that Kath­leen was right; it looks like the vod­ka los­es alco­hol, but tastes bet­ter, when it’s fil­tered like that.