Going Domestic

Behold ...

  Heart-Shaped Pizza 
  Originally uploaded by goingdomestic.

It really was heart-shaped! 

If anyone wants the details, this is a photo of the heart-shaped Popeye pizza from Boston Pizza. It's topped with a tangy tomato sauce, roasted garlic, spinach, and feta. My favourite.

Happy Hallmark Day

Bah! I'm not very attached to the whole Valentine's Day thing, but today I am really glad that I have a sweet card from my sweetie sitting on the kitchen counter and a tulip (my favourite!) bouquet sitting on the dining table.

Why do I need these cheer-ups? Well, today Avis called up because they want us to trade the Escape we're renting for an Explorer. Ugh. I despite everything about SUVs, so trading a small one for a bigger one doesn't sit well with me. Particularly because it's winter now, so 6-8 feet of nearly every road in St. John's is buried under huge snow drifts. Perfect time to start driving a wider vehicle, yes ...

Then, I tried to renew my vehicle registration online for my 14 year-old Ford Tempo back in Calgary, so that I would have the new sticker for my license plate all ready for when we arrive back home. The glitch in that plan is that my driver's license expires on my birthday, in about three weeks. Thus, I could not renew my registration, but frankly, that license is a bigger problem.  I'll probably be in Newfoundland for two weeks past that (knock on wood), so what do I do in the meantime? Be a hermit? Drive with an expired license? Get a Newfoundland license for two weeks? Beg the Alberta gov't to give me an extension?  Ughhhhhhhhhhhh ...........

And then, I had wrote a post about ninety minutes ago, only to have discovered that it didn't upload to Typepad properly or something because it's clearly not on this blog.

I really hope that Boston Pizza is still making heart-shaped pizza tonight, because I could use something fun to end this day on!

I don't believe my eyes ...

Our 2007 Property Assessment from the City of Calgary arrived in our mailbox here in St. John's today. Our house apparently increased in value by $97,500 over the past year. Just because. It's not like we were even there to maintain the lawn.

When will the insanity end? The oil may run out before your mortgage is paid off, Gentle Calgarians ...

Nice to meet you, 2007!

I'm happy to be spending the first day of the new year at our temporary home here in St. John's. The three of us got to experience the ups of last-minute holiday travel (seeing everyone) as we took a last-minute trip back to Edmonton over Christmas. We also experienced the downside, namely that our bill for airfare, car rental, and crib rental was roughly the cost of our trip to Australia a couple of years ago. We didn't win the lottery this past Saturday, but there is always next Saturday to hope for ...

I knit a lot while we were out of town, and once we were back home I went out to purchase two more balls of each of the yarns for my scarf, which I decided needed to be longer. I am a little surprised at how much yarn costs (and thus, how much my scarf cost to make). I guess that's the price of being able to choose my fibres and colours.

I've spent the last two evenings fervently putting together a blog book via Blurb - they had a promotion for Typepad users awhile back, and Dec 31st was the last day to use my coupon.  I'm kind of grumpy because the book-assembling software kept crashing when I tried to access Page 18 of my blog book, and then when I tried to place my order, it told me that my coupon has already expired. Argh! I sent a note promptly to technical support, so hopefully this story will have a positive ending instead of leading to a rant.

that's what I call service

Something happened about three weeks ago that I meant to blog about, but had accidently forgotten.

Madeline and I arrived home from the YMCA one morning to discover a pair of notices from Canada Post taped to our door, signalling that we'd missed a parcel delivery. According to the notices, the packages could be collected from the post office nearest to us the next day. I was kind of sad to have missed the mail carrier, but it happens sometimes.

About half an hour later, I was in the middle of making a quesadilla for lunch when the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find our mail carrier standing there with two large packages for us! "I was driving past down your street again, and I noticed that your truck was in the driveway," she explained, "so I thought I'd drop off your packages!" I was stunned, but not stunned enough to thank the mail carrier profusely.

You see, when we were in Calgary, our mail carrier there often wouldn't even bother to ring the bell when delivering a package. He or she would just assume that we weren't home, I guess, because on several occasions I found a parcel collection notice in our mailbox when I'd been home the entire day. Grr!

it's pretty, but I'll just watch the DVD ...

I might be the last person on the planet to hear about The Shire in Bend, Oregon.  That's okay. I don't mind. I mean, I used to be a medieval history fanatic and do think that the LOTR films are really well done, but storing my gardening equipment and my daughter's red wagon in a hobbit hole just seems silly. Everything I own would feel out of place in that community. How do the residents come to terms with parking their SUVs there? I can't imagine ...

decisions, decisions ...

I've been having an internal conflict. Tomorrow night there is a Stitch & Bitch at The Ship here in St. John's, and I wouldn't mind going, but I'd go to knit, not to drink. I'm not sure what the proper protocol is for knitting in a bar ...

I've also been pondering when the right time is to stop knitting my little swatches of different stitch combinations and start an actual project. I love this little baby poncho, and it looks easy, but I think it would be too small for my toddler already. The child-sized ones just aren't as cute ...

plastic wonderland

Yesterday Chris made a remark about the low profile that recycling seems to have in St. John's, and this brought up the topic of plastic grocery bags. You see, in Calgary, reckless use of plastic grocery bags is kind of frowned upon. Every grocery store sells reuseable bags made of canvas, hemp, or even a heavy-duty recycled plastic. One of the grocery store chains even charges customers for each bag they need, if they don't bring their own.

Here, it's a virtual wonderful of plastic bags. I can go into Sobey's to buy a carton of eggs, a package of chicken breasts, and a magazine, and I'll walk out with three bags. Well, I would if I didn't amalgamate my bag bounty before leaving the store so that I only have one bag to manage. One of our first purchases upon arriving in St. John's was a pair of larger Rubbermaid tubs to store Madeline's toys in. The clerk at the check-out counter at Dominion gave us a strange look when we said that we didn't need any bags for our groceries as they'd fit in the Rubbermaid tubs. I thought that her reaction was really strange at the time, but now I understand...

I did see a shopper with a reuseable shopping bag - once. Obviously, new to St. John's :)

chocoholics central

Yep, I think that our little street in St. John's is the epicenter of chocolate consumption in this province. Today, I had no fewer than four little boys ring our doorbell to try to sell me chocolate bars for some fundraiser that I didn't bother to ask about! Four! That has got to be a record! I think that they were all from the same school, too, as the boxes of chocolate bars were identical.

I think that there is still a little bit of a management science geek left inside me because I couldn't help thinking that what they needed was a good mathematical model to carve out delineated sales territories so that each chocolate bar shiller had a fairly equal expected revenue.  And then my doorbell would only need to be rung once. Simple.