Xmas 2013

The 3 musketeers - as silly as ever, 23 years strong!

Pizza-making tradition - also still going strong!

 

Surprise birthday reunion!

A little snow at Doc Daniels' cabin

 xmas morning xcountry ski

gorgeous sunny blue skies

super cool ice crystals

I made a thing

It's about time! When was the last time I sewed anything? I miss it. I'm glad I sat down and did the making today - this thing is pretty awesome if I do say so myself.

 

What is this thing that I made?

 Let's unzip it and see...

Keep on opening it...

 Tada! It's a grocery tote (a bacon grocery tote) - YAY!

 I made it following this handy tutorial here. Very pleased with the results. The canvas is a bit tricky to stuff in there, but it'll be sturdy I'm sure. I think the next one should be a combo of canvas on the bottom and handles, and maybe a lighter cotton for the sides.

I went to Ottawa, watched kitties get their teeth brushed, and then I went to an awesome gay wedding in a barn in Port Hope

It's all true. In that order. Here's some photos to show off the short but fun trip!

 R soothes 18 in preparation for the procedure

mmmm... chicken flavour toothpaste!

the product

BEG brings 12 in for treatment

vampira!

center: me and the two happy grooms. clockwise from top left: km's happy mama, beet hummus, old friends from Kingston days, first dance, R being the grumpy cat (unknowingly - he'd never heard of grumpy cat before), R being his more normal self, blue grass band, really weird wine ingredients, BEG wearing the fun hat

Antarctic Adventures - Port Lockroy & Neko Harbor

This was our final landing in the Antarctic before heading north. Port Lockroy is a British research station that has been around for several decades, and naturally, being British, has a post office. Part of the station has a "museum" set up the way Antarctic scientific research was done in the 40's and 50's (it's basically just preserved, complete with food, from that time). It was really cool, and this is where I sent a few postcards. Mail from here goes by boat to the Falklands, then military plane to the UK, then enters the British postal system!

Day 18:
Postcards were sent from British Base A
Then back on ship for BBQ day
Humpbacks, zodiacs
Snowslides on our backs
Then from the Antarctic we sailed away

Food shelf!

Recipe book, complete with instructions for penguins, seals and cormorants

I knitted a vengeful fur seal, here it is looking satisfied after a hearty whale snack. Picked those bones clean!

Weddell seal

Neko Harbor sunset

Antarctic Adventures - Falkland Islands

I went on the GSA 125th anniversary trip to the Scotia Arc and Antarctica, and tried to make a limerick of sorts for each day... I'll include those along with my favourite photos for each day's post.

Day 1:
The Falklands are pelted with rain
And cruise ship tourists again
Among penguins and sheep
Are the stone runs that creep
And drove Charles Darwin insane

Day 2:
Penguins that hop on the rocks
And rain soaking through to our socks
But cookies and tea
Sound good to me
While the ellies are lounging in flocks

("Ellies" is the nickname for elephant seals, later we determined that they lounged in "wallows", but I left it as "flocks" because that rhymes...)

Stone runs - of Charles Darwin fame

Chips - did not taste good or like either of the flavours they proclaimed to be

Magellanic (burrowing) penguins among tussac grass that we would learn to fear and respect

Rock Hopper penguins hopping among rocks that display 3 directions of jointing beautifully

Catching up: Jardine Juniper trail

A few friends and I took a day and hiked the Jardine Juniper trail, just up Logan Canyon. The Jardine Juniper is one of these impressively old and twisted trees with barely a sprig of green on it to indicate that it is actually living. On the way back down we were delayed by an impressive morel mushroom hunt (and 1 puffball).

Catching up: annual 4th of July cabin trip

This year there was a smallish Crocuta crowd for the 4th, likely because it fell on a weekday, but we more than made up for it by finding nearly daily reasons to create (and gorge on) feasts. One of these was to employ as many sun ovens as we could rally and fill them with delicious things that made our mouths water all afternoon as they cooked away on the deck...

5 sun ovens passively at work preparing an enormous feast

Carol's divinely good giant cookie bar of deliciousness

My best solar oven meatloaf yet

My cheesy potato & onion casserole

Goodbye 2011

In a last ditch effort to shove one backpacking expedition into the year 2011, I insisted on carrying my gear in to the cabin on skis despite the availability of a friend with a snowmobile and cargo sled. 4 of us went in to the mountains to have a peaceful and rustic New Years eve at "Doc Daniel's" cabin, built for USU forestry studies back in the 50's, and generally not used to its charming potential. We had gorgeous sun, and mostly nice snow (a bit of nasty ice in places), a lovely wood stove fire, and lots of tasty treats. It's really nice to shrug off the last remnants of my BC years and know that not one single part of 2012 will involve dealing with those particular administrators. Even though that's all part of the Gregorian calendar we currently abide by, it's still feels like a bit of closure somehow...

Solar Oven Saturday

Technically it started on Friday evening, but most of the serious and meticulous building occurred on Saturday. We went to a thrift store and browsed around for stuff we could re-purpose as the box-base, reflectors, swing-stand, etc. This is what we came up with:

Base: filing cabinet drawer (filing cabinet also came in handy as a work bench - a really loud and tinny-sounding work bench, but functional none-the-less)

Reflectors: mirrors from medicine cabinet thingies (medicine cabinet particle board also doubled as odds and ends to use as support frame, handles, hinge bases...)

Swing stand: random heavy duty springs plus corner hinge bits from medicine cabinets plus some sort of stand (possibly for a printer) that we ripped apart

Cook pot: got a great ceramic pot that was the inside of a crock pot, the crock pot was a house fire waiting to happen, so it was easy to rip the ceramic inside out and remove the wires

Glass cover: gaudy picture frame - no matter how gaudy the picture and the frame was, it was a pretty-near perfect size of glass!

Then we had to buy some new components such as mylar tape (aka foil tape), flame duck tape (ok, we didn't need it, but I really wanted to use it), hinges of the non-corner variety (of all the pieces on the 2 medicine cabinets we destroyed you'd think there would be useable hinges, but NO), epoxy, and a glass cutter.

Lots of dismantling going on...

East LA drills into the file cabinet drawer for our support frame.

The way the swing-stand swings when the solar oven gets tilted for catching the best sun angle - after all, we can't be having our food spill everywhere!

The medicine cabinet mirrors needed to be cut to size, plus we needed corner pieces to make a more funnel-shaped rather than box-shaped sun energy amplifier. All the sharp stabby mirror pieces we then covered with mylar tape for safety while also maintaining high reflectivity. The glass cutter ended up being a great option, but this was only after we called everywhere around to see if a pro could cut the mirror for us. My favourite conversation went like this:

me: hi! I was wondering if I could bring some mirror in and have you cut it down to size
person at glass shop: sorry, we only cut glass
me: it is glass
person at glass shop: I thought you said you had a mirror
me: mirrors are just glass with silver paint on the back
person at glass shop: we can only cut glass, not mirror
me: nevermind

Basically complete at this point, needs a) flame tape decoration, b) a trial run, c) fine tuning. Here you can see the contraption for changing the angle of the oven - a simple giant eye screw and 2 bolts, one above and one below the file cabinet lock loop thingy (which we moved to a more appropriate location)

Complete with flame tape, we gave it a trial run with some pre-made cookie dough. It was a little late in the day to be starting, but we had to do it anyway, and in the corner you can see the meat thermometer that I taped to the glass lid.

Max temp reached was 175 - I'm pretty sure with a couple of minor alterations (seal around the glass lid, starting cooking before evening, possibly expanding the reflector size with more mylar tape) we'll get this baby over 200.

but what does that MEAN???

With a complete an utter lack of language comprehension or means of communication, some parts of Japan are easier to get around in than others. Most recently we were in one of those nearly-impossible-to-successfully-communicate places, and to add insult to injury, the Lonely Planet book basically left that part out (that should've been a hint) and there was no internet to be found to supplement our extremely poor knowledge of where we were. We fumbled our way around and made all kinds of transportation errors (taking bus 32-1 is easy enough IF 32-1 is NOT written in Japanese characters...), basically throwing our yen out the window trying to get from train station to hotel and back again (and failing frequently), and were incredibly frustrated.

I decided that since all I could understand were pictures in signs, many less obvious than others, my solution for all future communication issues would be drawings, either prepped in advance if I knew what I would be asking, or done on-the-fly with the hopes that someone would grasp the meaning. I had lots of practice interpreting Japanese signs, so I figured I'd do just fine... Today we figured out our train to get to Beppu with the help of little drawings of trains and tracks with circles and numbers and things. Most effective.

"Below this sign you will find singing she-male cyclists in races" (though I was unable to find any)

"Slipping beneath gymnastics rings will result in explosion" (It's been quite rainy, so there've been lots of opportunities for slipping, but luckily, very few gymnastic rings)

"Ninja pig and samurai cow are guarding the chicken, onigiri, milk and sweet pototaes, do not attempt to pass or you will regret it! Eat mochi and sardines instead"

My way of ordering food that will not kill me, it has garnered chortles from waiters/chefs, and so far I haven't died, so it's obviously working. I'm going to expand by having a double sided happy face/dead face sign so that when I point at random stuff in the menu with the no crustacean sign, there's an answer "ok/dead" that can also be pointed to - this will be most helpful. Unfortunately, as I experienced tonight, it can also result in safe-but-extremely-weird foods that get brought your way. See photo below with the following caption "what the crap did I just order???"

For all previous dinners, I've gotten along just fine with chopsticks. Suddenly I have tongs and scissors... And chopsticks... anyway, I'm pretty sure I ate pig intestine or uterus or something, the sauce was delicious and - obviously - it didn't kill me.

rowing Japan

Tomorrow we will row the last of the 180 km route around Lake Biwa that is the 2011 FISA World Rowing Tour, so far the people have been great, some of the food has been awesome (some has been incredibly disappointing - but none has killed me yet), the rowing conditions have been excellent... in the mornings, and sometimes treacherous in the afternoons. Here's a taste:

The start of day one, at the south end of the lake, Seta Rowing Club & flags of most of the nations present (and some that were not, and some present nations' flags missing...)

The Swiss boat on day 6 (with 2 Aussies, a Dutchman and a Norwegian... only 1 Swiss) rowing by Takeshima island (the island of many views) in lake Biwa.

A delicious lunch for us on Mt Hiei... note the sign for us, please, I was dying of laughter for an hour I swear.

A silly photo I took of myself and Anne (Norway), in bow, during a water break... on day 3???

We were so famous in lake Biwa that the local paper in Moriyama (where we are stationed) had an article on the front page the morning of our second day rowing! That's my crew from day 1 pictured too - I bet you can figure out which one is me...

We rowed through this gate/shrine also, and this time Ursel (Dutch/Swiss) was in bow. Same day as the silly Anne picture, but apparently I can't remember which day we went through the gate. We have lots of seating changes in the boats on the water, and crew changes daily so that we interact with all the people from all over the world! FUN!

This was quite possibly the best tuna sashimi on the planet. It will be pretty much impossible to top this lunch.

Everyone warned that there would be vending machines everywhere, but no one warned what would be in them. This one clearly features the strangely named beverage "Pocari Sweat". I don't know what a Pocari is, but I picture something like the Alot and I was extremely skeptical about drinking its sweat. Naturally, with the prevalence of the product my curiosity took over, and it's actually pretty good! Sort of like the lemonade flavour vitamin water, only with more flavour, and possibly less high fructose corn syrup (I'm only assuming that since there's basically NO corn here that I can see, that sugar is cheaper to use in Japan...)

Finally, I couldn't resist snapping this before leaving this shop with my green tea soft serve ice cream, which was delicious by the way. The green tea stuff is everywhere, and I know from Kingston days that green tea mousse pocky is pretty fantastic. I'm not so sure that replacing the chocolate in Kit Kats with green tea is a great idea; and I could NOT identify what green tea "treat" was being sold under the hilarious name "Collon"... but it did give me the giggles.