The GirlAlive Blog

Happy Thanksgiving

November 23, 2006 on 1:13 pm | In Life In General | No Comments

I’ve taken the day off work for thanksgiving.  I’ve got a pumpkin pie in the oven and a pre-stuffed boneless turkey.  Thanksgiving dinner is pretty easy to do here.  Cranberry sauce is readily available and so is everything else except for pumpkin.  I got a can of pumpkin back in September because you have to go to this one shop called Lupe Pinto’s and you have to get there before all of the pumpkin disappears in october (for Canadian thanksgiving).  But next year, I might be able to get a pie by cooking and pureeing a butternut squash.  Those are good for pie too, and are available this time of year.

Mostly I’m glad to have a day off work.  I’m bored with my job.  It’s not a bad job and the people aren’t bad people.  I am just not happy sitting at a desk all day every day.  But I don’t have to go there until Monday.  Yay!

On a sad note, there has been a death in the family.  My brother and sister-in-law’s hamster Habeebi passed away.  I never got a chance to meet her, but she was incredibly adorable and I know Jaime and Matt will miss her.

Alana 

 

I’m officially old.

November 2, 2006 on 5:35 pm | In Life In General | No Comments

One thing I’ve learned about this country is that it is a country obsessed with newspapers and magazines, and they can be bought relatively cheap.  So I’ve been on a quest to figure out if there are any that I liked.

First, I tried SFX.  Instant success!  It is about sci-fi, and I never get tired of articles about Doctor Who and the latest Robert Rankin novel.  And one issue even came with a free book of short stories.  So that was good, but it is monthly, and I need to read things more often than once a month, so the quest continued.

Next I tried a few music magazines.  I quickly realized that I am too old for them.  They are all about British bands that are popular with teenagers.  I listen to American bands that no one has heard of.  So not so much.

Then I thought I’d try some fashion magazines.  I found that some of them were all about how to "find Mr. Right" (the ones written for 20-somethings) and some were very firmly in the realm of teenager magazines, with articles about beating acne and getting over the embarrassment of farting in class.  Clearly not for me.

I had some success with the knitting magazine I found, but that one is printed less frequently than SFX, plus I am not good at knitting and only about 1/3 of the articles are about crochet.  So I’m not so sure about that one.

I also tried a science magazine, and it was good, but I couldn’t get into the articles about throwing cows into a black hole.  Not exactly light reading. 

I was left in an awkward position.  I only categories left were the tabloids (which I cannot waste my money on because I don’t care who Jennifer Aniston is or isn’t sleeping with) or the Women’s Magazines.  The Good Housekeeping type.  I hate the idea that a woman is solely responsible for keeping her house magazine-spread perfect and that every meal should be cooked from scratch.  Basically, I hate the Martha Stewart ideal, so these magazines seem horrible.  Plus, they are meant for "mature" (a.k.a. "old") women.  I’m not old.  For the next 2 months I’m still in my 20’s!  I can’t be reading housewife magazines.

Of course I bought one.  And I kind of like it.  It has stuff about cooking, and I like to cook.  It also has articles about diseases, which I enjoy.  So I guess I’m an old married woman now.  Grr.

I think that when you’re young, like in high school and college or whatever, you read the fashion magazines and hipster music magazines and stuff, and then you meet someone and spend about a year reading wedding planning magazines.  And once you have done that, you can never read the other ones again.  The wedding magazines are a transitional genre from the single person fashion magazines to the old person household management magazines.

I’d rant more on the subject, but I want to finish reading that article about preventing skin cancer, and I need to finish reading the Christmas recipe supplement.

Alana