So... I moved... and disappeared from this space entirely

I moved. I left my home city and have re-settled (sort-of) 300-ish kilometres to the south. It has been a hectic couple of months. I moved at the end of April. I am now into my third month of living here... My apartment still has boxes that need to be unpacked! And I have a monumental list of to-do's that aren't being done.

I've also been monumentally lazy in the house-cleaning department. I don't know how or why I haven't had the initiative to get unpacked. I look at the boxes, and the mess that comes with not having things put away and just get frustrated, but damned if I don't want to sit down and watch a movie instead. What a lazy ass...

Then again, I spend all day at work, often late, trying to wrap my head around my new responsibilities. It's been a lot to take in lately. So often I end up sitting in my chair at the end of the day wishing I didn't have to walk home, didn't have to cook supper, didn't have to do anything. ... which explains why I've been SO lazy on the homefront, but I still dislike my laziness. Hopefully soon.

Hopefully soon I can stop travelling all the time and actually spend time HERE, in the city and in my apartment, figuring out where I want to hang my pictures, adn where I want all my stuff to go, and what I still need to buy and how to arrange a good cleaning schedule and all that fun stuff. What a life! ha.

I don't mean to say life isn't good. ... though it wouldn't hurt if I had someone as lovely as Lloyd Dobler in it. ha. John Cusack sure did good in his early career.


Who could say no to his earnest devotion? ... and the fact that it's not creepy either!

Anyway... I digress. I get home and watch movies occasionally. ... particularly smarmy love movies like Say Anything. Life is pretty good.

The job is pretty good. The people I work with are rather great. The people I work for have been treating me well. I have been learning a ton, working really hard, and feeling overwhelmed in a good way (there IS a difference). ... and getting whisked off to other climes from time to time to meet a bunch of talking heads and get in some serious work. I saw Davis California at night because the meetings took all the daylight hours. I saw what one can see of San Francisco from the Bay Bridge... I saw cornfields in Ames Iowa, but did not manage to see the record-breaking 15 foot tall garden gnome. And I have yet to walk or bike to the river in my new, adoptive city.

These things will come, in time, I'm sure.

Anyway... some photos, and a Peter Gabriel song to leave you with... because Lloyd Dobler has stolen my heart (and he didn't give me a pen).

Moving day:


Iowa's corn:




And my favourite farm field photo:




And my favourite Peter Gabriel song... if only Lloyd Dobler was here!

The week of cake and changes

So... it's the 27th today. And thus ends (and starts) a week of monumental change in my life... and the end of a month that never really had a lion in it (despite warnings), unless it was more of a sheepish lion, like this guy:



But anyway, life has been an adventure this week... an adventure that has taken me for a ride such that I have not finished all my work (or focused on it) the way I want/need to. Which means this weekend is going to be CRAZY! But anyway, the reason for the craziness (in part) is that I have a paper due on the 31st (i.e. Wednesday) that I need to edit. And I NEED to work on it ASAP since it's about 130 pages long (aaaaa!). I have most of the edits already noted, it's just a matter of going in and fixing things on the document file on my temperamental computer. Oh, do I love computers!

This, however is only part of the craziness. Other parts have ranged from birthday celebrations prompting me to make two different cakes:

A Buttery Chocolate Chip Pound Cake


and a Flourless Chocolate Cake


Both from the Fine Cooking Chocolate magazine supplement. They were both fantastic. I would gladly make both again. Though I might opt to make flourless chocolate cupcakes instead of the cake. I only had an 8-inch round cake pan instead of the called-for 9-inch round, and thus had extra dough that didn't fit into the pan. So... I made cup cakes (5) out of the leftover, and they baked up much more evenly and nicely than the cake, I have to say. They also didn't form huge structural fissures that made the presentation less desirable. Don't get me wrong, the cake was to-die-for in all its chocolate-fudge-like dense glory, but the cupcakes were so much more pleasing somehow, both aesthetically and flavour-wise. Anyway, two cakes in a week is a lot. Add to that even more with a goodbye potluck for a friend, and an as-yet-to-be-celebrated birthday today, and I am NOT sticking to any semblance of a diet this week (unless there's one that says "eat cake, all the time"! But whatever. I'm sure the stress of the coming month will make up for it all, somehow.

That's right, stress. I have just experienced the weirdest confluence of events ever. Not only am I finishing up two contracts for two branches of government at the end of this month BUT I am starting a new job (yay!) less than a week later... in a different city. Why I signed on for this, I don't particularly know other than the offer is decent, the job sounds exciting, I am at the right point in my life to up and move and shake up everything, and, well, no body else seemed at all interested in hiring me. Stupid ego, always getting in the way, I looked at the offer of employment and thought "they want me to work for them, yay!" instead of being more rational. ... rationality hasn't fully sunk in yet. I'm still in the daydreaming stage of "gee, wouldn't it be nice to live somewhere else for a while" instead of figuring out the hard realities of rent and moving and new landlords and learning a brand new transportation system and directions and blah blah blah blah blah. My life is going to be turned upside down. BUT it's only a 350-ish kilometre move. I will be so tantalizingly close to home that I can come visit on weekends if I'm ambitious, and I won't miss out on any of the major holidays even if I don't get much vacation time.

Argh, I'm not supposed to be thinking about this right now! I need to focus on my impending contract deadline instead, and producing material for that, not dreaming about the apartments I'll be touring immediately after Easter, or the new boss and coworkers I'll be meeting. Thankfully I have a good contingent of friends in my soon-to-be new home, so I won't necessarily be lonely. I'll get to rekindle my best friendship from elementary school, and I'll get to spend time with a friend as she experiences new motherhood. (of course, this is supposing that I'll be able to visit etc. but I'm guessing that they'll welcome me since I was invited to both their weddings! haha!) Aaaa, my life is changing in ways I still don't even know! New job, new city, new circle of friends, new landscape, new everything. ... thankfully with the anchor of my past and my family not that far away, though. I don't think I could do this if I had to move to Ontario instead of simply Calgary. There are perks to being only 100km away from the mountains, in a city of equivalent size to Edmonton, and of equivalent draw to a large number of my friends. I have promised to keep a couch available for interlopers, whether for hockey games or stampede or skiing adventures. This looks to be the start of a very interesting new adventure for me.