Special delivery? Funny.

Before I begin...I came up with the title for this post, as I often do, when I was done writing. I then realized the contextual aptness of the title, as my nearly year-long hiatus from the blog world can be attributed strongly to the small human who now lives in my house, having forced her way-ahem, into our hearts.
What did you think I was going to say?
Anyway, do not worry. It's not a post about my birth story. But maybe next time. Dare I say, I even have pictures?? Ha ha, I kid, I kid.
See what I did there? I digress...onward, to the entry at hand.

A friend of mine started a not-for-profit business and needed money to get it off the ground, so he turned to kickstarter for funding. His project was rad and all and ended up funded, but I'm here to tell you of something more important than those orphans he is saving or whatever.

You could check 'em out here if you like.

http://www.shawlwallah.com/

While toodling around on kickstarter after browsing my friend's pitch, I discovered one can post a plea for funding for pretty much any fool-headed idea- including "Stack of Pancakes".

This is not to be confused with some of the more famed kickstarter endeavours as "Pancakebot" or that guy who wants to make a French toast waffle pancake hybrid or some such nonsense.

Look at this ridiculousness.

Nay.

I refer solely to the dude who posted a picture of himself face down in what appears to be a huge hamburger, along with the proposition of creating a very large stack of pancakes. I can't find the page any more (thanks largely to Pancakebot being, apparently, very popular and saturating pancake-kickstarter related googles with itself) but it read something like this:

Goal: $100
For: making a big stack of pancakes
Why: to see how big it can get
Rewards: I'll mail you a pancake
Risks: it might fall over

...and that's pretty much it: a simple, straightforward presentation of the facts.

I loved it.

"It's....BEAUTIFULLLLL!"

I also thought it may very well be worth my ten bucks to support this guy simply so I could have pancakes mailed either to me, or, more hilariously, to other people.

Imagine, if you will...gathering the mail...but what's this? A plushy envelope, with no return address? A sample, mayhaps? A gift? Do I have a secret admirer?

(Sound of envelope ripping)

It's...a pancake?

WTF???

I think reactions might be mixed. Some, ordinarily the types to skip that most important meal of the day, may find their eyes widening only slightly less than their mouths as they cram the welcome gift in their salivating maw.
Others may wonder why I didn't pledge $20 and get the danged syrup.

 

So lonely.

I did not, however, support this good man's quest for stacking glory. Instead, I may embark on my own journey of unexpected mailables...

A single sock.

A very old letter, to someone else.

A picture of an ugly baby.

Thirty seven cents.

A slice of American cheese.

Coupons for a variety of useful household goods.

The heels of a loaf of bread.

A graded exam paper, with comments.

Getting mail is exciting in itself; imagine if every trip to the mailbox was like a guessing game of package roulette- what will I receive today? And...WHY???

It defies explanation!!!

I love messing with people. If I have your address, prepare yourself.

Moral of this story: I don't always have pancakes for breakfast. But when I do, they arrive in envelopes.

The Right Tool for the Job? Funny.

It has come to my attention that I have readers that eagerly anticipate each new entry in this blog, and when I go on funny hiatus for months at a time, it leaves them sapped of the very energy that allows them to live.  I don't want anyone to die, so I'll try to write more often.  You're welcome.

There is a strange phenomenon that happens when teaching Foods class.  Actually, I suppose there are many.  For example...

This:

I hate ALL vegetables.  You insult me by suggesting I include them in this dish.  I wish you were dead. 

Becomes this:

 

This is the BEST soup ever.  What's it called?  Minestrone?  It's made entirely of vegetables?  Can't be.  I wish you weren't such a liar.

  Or this:

 How can I possibly get these dishes clean????  I wish you were dead.

Becomes this: 

 

 I've discovered the wonders of soap!!! 

It's a place of endless discovery, the Foods room.  

It's also a place of weird, inexplicable obsession.

Obsession with...this.

 

NOT Wolverine's disembodied claw.  Or a potato masher.  But then...I am a liar, right?

And THIS.

THE GREATEST TOOL EVER CREATED.

 

I present to you...WHISK!!!

What is it good for?

Everything, my good man!!!

Everything?  It can't be true.  Tell me more!

It blends!  It mixes!  Use it for every recipe!  Even when you are told not to!

And is it easy to wash?

No!  It's fiddly and difficult and generally put back dirty!  But that's part of its charm!   

Is there NOTHING it can't do??

Probably!  But we'll use it anyway!  After all, our teacher is a liar!

 

 We are the best!  Whisk for the win!

I should really inspect all the whisks.  I suspect that they are laced with crack cocaine that is released when they are used.  There is no other explanation.  Seriously.  Every student is obsessed with the damn whisk.  They want to use it for everything.  It doesn't matter if I advise against it.  It doesn't matter if I hide them- they will find them.  The love affair with the whisk starts early and only grows stronger.  From the moment they plunge that whisk into a sticky, thick cookie batter to the first time they use it to knead pizza dough, they are hooked.

 

I don't know what it is about the whisk that they love so much.  I'm not sure what it is that I said or did that made them think that the key to culinary success lies in using, at all times, this innocuous little tool.

 

But they are convinced, and no matter how many times I throw up my hands and tear out my hair and shriek

 

"FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, PLEASE DON'T USE THE WHISK!!!  STOP YOUR OBSESSION WITH THE WHISK!!!  WHY DO YOU LOVE THE WHISK SO MUCH?!?!?!?!?  BLARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH"

 

it does not seem to change their minds.  Whisk is where it is at.

 

Maybe I should put some time into developing whisk-related recipes.  Maybe for each recipe there should just be a whisking step..."Measure a cup of water.  Whisk it, because you are uncontrollably compelled to do so.  Continue as normal."

After all...

 

 

Moral of this story: If I don't bother saving pictures onto my computer before copying them into my blog, the formatting is weird.  But I'm too lazy to fix it.



Snow day? Funny.

Calgary has had a lot of snow this year.  More than usual, I'm fairly certain.  Of course, every year when we get even an inch of snow everyone seems to lose their minds and memories and react with shock and awe...





"SNOW????  IN CANADA????  OUTRAGE!!!!!!"

 

 

...it's like we've never seen it before.

Anyway, I'm no Darr Maqbool (former local expert in kilopascals), but I am pretty sure that I can say with confidence- hella snow in Calgary these days.

 

 

 Oh man.  That guy was amazing.

 

This excess of the "white stuff" creates an environment that can bring out the best- and the worst- in people.  An example of the worst:

Down the street from us is a rental house which is currently occupied by an unknown number of jerks.  The guy who owns it fixed it up and built a really nice fence and then apparently didn't spend a lot of time weeding out the crazy when he found a tenant.  One day, we were driving home after dark- but not really that late- and saw a couple police cars on our street.  Then we saw a few cops.  Then we saw a cop with a huge rifle.  Then we saw some scrubby, pantless dude being dragged down the street by two of the burliest cops I've ever seen.

Turns out, the pantless dude comes from the rental, and he had been beating up his wife.  I think she's since left and taken her kid with her- good.  He's still there- bad.

Anyway, he is generally sequestered to the inside of his domain, but the other day he had parked his work truck in front of his house.  This ordinarily is not anything that one would even notice, let alone care about.

This time, though, he had chosen to pull over after another huge dump of snow, in a pile of approximately five feet of snow, ice and the bodies of those who didn't make it.

And his work truck is no ordinary truck.

It is this truck:

 



 

Actually, that's not entirely fair.  This one is from a different company.

What you might not be able to see in this picture is that on top of the truck is a giant arm with a cherry picker on top.  The entire truck is huge.

The result:

 

 

...only with two raging dudes marching around, swearing about how they are morons.  In the end, they freed the truck, through the combination of brute force and dumb luck.  Their first strategy (well, second, after saying "FU*K!!!" a lot, and discovering that it was ineffective) was to jam the crane arm into the neighbour's yard over and over, hoping the truck would "jump" out of the snow.  That was not to be.

 

 

But it was SUCH a good idea!!!

 

Other people react more rationally.  Our neighbour Wayne, the greatest neighbour of all time, wears the cutest snowsuit a fully grown man can wear and wakes up at the crack of dawn (or much earlier, given that it's winter and sunrise is approximately half past never) and runs out and shovels the sidewalk for three houses in all directions.

 

If Wayne were a cookie...he'd look like this but with a shovel.

 



 

I also have an amazing snowsuit.  It's so amazing, in fact, that a friend borrowed it and then apparently a bunch of people wore it on his ski trip.  My hope is that no one wore it without underwear.  It doesn't breathe well.

 



As you can see, it is the utmost in fashion.  It will never go out of style.

 

I am always looking for opportunities to wear a onesie, and snow day provides many an opportunity.  I await the next winter wedding where I can show off my winter formal wear to the adoring eyes.  People will be all like this...









 

 

 That.  Is.  AMAZING.

 

Over the winter holiday, Bob and I went to the mountains and went skating, hiking and tobogganing.  We've also gone skiing, built snow forts and had snowball fights.  Playing in the snow is pretty much the best, as long as it isn't so bitterly cold out that you breathe in and all the moisture in your lungs freezes and renders you dead.

 

Calvin and Hobbes always made good use of wintertime. 

 

 

 

 

This last one is the very last Calvin and Hobbes comic published...it makes me all teary when I look at it.  What an amazing man Bill Watterson is.

 

Another thing that one can do in the snow is build an igloo.  It takes a certain quality and depth of snow to be successful, but one can sort of fake an igloo by digging out a hole in a big pile of snow and then hollowing it out from the inside.

 

A big pile of snow like the one in the MIDDLE OF THE ROAD at the end of my street.

 

Why, you ask, is there a big pile of snow in the middle of the road?  Surely it didn't fall that way from the sky.

 

Surely no one PUT IT THERE.

 

OR DID THEY???

 

The story goes like this...

Once upon a time, there was another jerk on Heather's street.  There are more than a few.  This particular jerk has a driveway.  He also has a yard.  He doesn't like to have snow on either, apparently.

One day, Jerk went outside and discovered CALAMITY! 

 

Winter had come.

 

If only he were this attractive.

 

Shockingly, with winter also came snow.  ALL.  OVER.  HIS.  YARD.

 

UNACCEPTABLE!!!

 

He also, to his horror, discovered the snow had the AUDACITY to fall ALL OVER HIS DRIVEWAY.

 

What to do???

 

Well, as anyone with half a brain knows, that snow MUST BE MOVED.  As anyone lacking the other half the brain knows, it will be moved ONTO THE STREET.

 

We watched the dude heave approximately seventeen metric tonnes of snow onto the road directly in front of his driveway.  This is stupid because:

1. He could put it on his lawn.  Oh wait, I forgot, for some weird reason that is not an option.

2. He could spread it out.  Oh wait, I forgot, this would make sense.

3. He was unable to traverse this massive pile with his car after he had built it.  Essentially, he had blocked himself in with his own stupidity.

 

It was also terribly inconvenient for the hundreds of other people who need to pass that particular stretch of road and do not drive, let's say...a tank.  Or an airplane.  My little Pochecho doesn't do well when faced with mounds of snow larger than he is, so while this dude was building his impassable masterpiece, we came up with a plan...

 



STEP ONE:

Make an igloo out of the pile of snow.

 

STEP TWO:

Play in the igloo.

 

STEP THREE:

Profit.

It's foolproof!

 

Moral of this story: I don't always get a snow day.  But when I do, I like to make the best of it.













Being a "Professional"? Funny.

So you are all probably wondering why it has taken me so long to write another blog entry.

You're probably not wondering that hard, because you are a regular reader, and were thinking:

"Heather is competing on Masterchef Canada and is far too busy kicking  cooking kicking ass to write.  I eagerly anticipate the televised event of this century."

 

Uh, I think I won't comment on this picture, because it's too weird to type what I immediately thought about this kid's pose.

Yeah, that should be the reason why.  But NOOOO.

The reason why is far less exciting.  It's mostly because I've been uninspired.

 

I've been doing a healthy amount of this.

Now don't fret.  It is not because the world has lost its funny, or because I lost my fingers in a terrible fishing accident and can't type.

Nope, that happened to someone else.

A safety tip: Don't google "Fishing accident" in the images.  Just...don't.

It's simply because I have not managed to put into words the hilarity that I have witnessed over the last several months.

It is NOT because I was becoming Canada's first Masterchef.  Nope.

What what WHAAAAT???  You ask.  HOW CAN THIS BE???  It was...YOUR DESTINY!!!

 

I am outraged!!!

As fate would have it, that tricksy bitch, I am not able to compete on a show for amateurs.  This is because, according to the show, I am not an amateur.

I am...A PROFESSIONAL.

 

So, who the hell is this guy?  Well, I googled "The Most Professional Person" and this guy is numero 3.  So not quite the winner.

What what WHAAAAT???  You ask.  HOW CAN THIS BE???  What is it that you do again?

I'm a junior high teacher.  Last year, when I was applying to the show, I was teaching Science 7, Science 9, Art 7, Ceramics 7, Foods 7 and Foods 9.  This year, I'm teaching Spanish 7, Spanish 8, Foods 7, 8, 9 and French 7.

According to the show, it is my profession (junior high jack of all trades) that makes me overqualified for the show, no longer a mere amateur but elevated to the rank of PROFESSIONAL.

I present to you the following holes in the logic...
1. I teach science.  I am not a scientist.
2. I teach art.  I am not an artist.
3. I teach ceramics.  I am not a potter.
4. I teach Spanish.  I do not hail from Spain, or Mexico, or wherever else they speak Spanish.
An aside.  How many jerks have you met that think people in Mexico speak Mexican?  I bet more than five.
5. I teach French.  I am also not from France.  I didn't learn Quebecois, which I'm fairly certain is its own dialect, unlike "Mexican".
6. I used to teach other things: Health, for example.  I taught sexual health.  It is open to personal opinion whether or not I would rank as "professional" in that department.

 

...coming soon, to a TV near you.  Don't worry, I'm not going to apply.

But, alas, there was no arguing with them.  I am too pro for those bros.

It was probably for the best, really.  It's not like I don't have opportunity to cook if I'm not being filmed.  I also am happy to be at home rather than in some hotel, hanging out with weirdos and missing my friends and family.  I have my job at the school, which provides a reasonable amount of amusement.  

I will leave you with this recent gem from within the walls of my workplace...

So I see this kid wearing this shirt:

...but it was kind of folded, on the left, a bit.  So it read more like this:

...and I was all "WHAT ARE YOU WEAAAARRRRRINNNNNGGGG????????"

And he said, straightening it out- "Um, Nice Swag Bro?"

And I said, clearing my throat- "Um, I know.  I dig it.  Carry on."

See how I'm so professional?  This time, I didn't accidentally tell him what I thought his shirt said.  I used my words and asked a question before accidentally screaming "VAG!!!" in front of thirty teenagers.

Moral of this story: I'm so good at my job it makes me sick.