Background: A couple months ago, back in late summer (probably in the last week of August) Marie and I went grocery shopping and decided to split a giant bag of grapefruits. These babies lasted me until about two weeks ago when I cut the last one in half. I then, however, decided that I didn't want to eat grapefruit that particular morning and stuck both halves in their own container and planned to eat them the next day.
That was two weeks ago, and today they were still in my fridge. I went to throw away the now-two-month-old grapefruit halves when I noticed that they looked and smelled perfectly fine. Could I still eat it?
I took the matter to my friend Marie, whom I often go to with food related questions ("How do you know if an avocado has gone bad?" or "Why can't I put nutmeg in the quiche?"*) She didn't pick up, so I left a message.
She called me back twenty minutes later.
Me: Word.
Her: DID YOU EAT THE GRAPEFRUIT? TELL ME YOU DIDN'T EAT THE GRAPEFRUIT!
Me: No, not yet. So--you think I shouldn't eat it?
Her: No!
Me: But it looks fine...if I put it next to a brand new grapefruit and you couldn't tell the difference, would you still refuse it?
Her: Yes.
We then took the matter to her roommates. One, Aliya, decided that she definitely would eat the grapefruit. Marie was still adamant that I should throw it out.
The other roommate, Catherine, asked, "Well why doesn't she just go out for dinner?"
Marie and I responded to this by bursting into violent, uncontrollable laughter. Marie, less afflicted than I, explained that I am incredibly cheap and that if I am considering eating a two-month-old grapefruit, I certainly won't be going out for dinner.
I kept laughing.
In the end, I threw it out, because I don't really like grapefruit anyway.
The moral of the story: I really should spend my money on fresh groceries, and not new records.
*Against Marie's wishes, I put nutmeg in the quiche and it was the hit of Thanksgiving. I did not let her, or anyone, forget this.
Delicious Thanksgiving Quiche
1 carrot
1 apple (medium sized)
1 pie crust
5 eggs
Milk
Dash of nutmeg
Dash of cinnamon
Peel the carrot and then cut it into slices. Toss in some boiling water for about 10 minutes or until tender. Meanwhile, whip the eggs and milk together, as if making scrambled eggs, and add in the nutmeg and cinnamon. Meanwhile, cut the apple into small pieces (you might want to peel it first; I didn't bother) and put the apple pieces and the cooked carrot slices, into the pie crust. Pour the egg mixture on top and toss it in the oven and cook until it's done. (I wasn't paying too much attention, so I'm not sure what temperature the oven was set at or how long it took--probably about 25 minutes, ish.)
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
I am only pretending to be a grown up, apparently
It appears that, at 21, for every baby step I take towards adulthood I end up being shoved two steps back.
Yesterday, while giving my apartment the old ten-second tidy in preparation for company (this would be the grown up thing) I bundled up all the old newspapers in my milk crate recycling bin and hauled them downstairs to toss them in the giant bin behind my building. In doing this, I somehow managed to bash my face with the milk crate and split my chin open.
Split my chin open. Like a child. It wasn't bad, just a little bleeding, but the bigger concern was this: what kind of person over the age of three splits her chin open? Splitting one's chin open is a toddler rite of passage. I don't know many people who don't have that same scar on their chins from some childhood accident.
In fact, the mark I got yesterday crossed the scar from my three-year-old days of jumping on the bed, so now it looks like a little red and silver plus sign on my chin.
Yesterday, while giving my apartment the old ten-second tidy in preparation for company (this would be the grown up thing) I bundled up all the old newspapers in my milk crate recycling bin and hauled them downstairs to toss them in the giant bin behind my building. In doing this, I somehow managed to bash my face with the milk crate and split my chin open.
Split my chin open. Like a child. It wasn't bad, just a little bleeding, but the bigger concern was this: what kind of person over the age of three splits her chin open? Splitting one's chin open is a toddler rite of passage. I don't know many people who don't have that same scar on their chins from some childhood accident.
In fact, the mark I got yesterday crossed the scar from my three-year-old days of jumping on the bed, so now it looks like a little red and silver plus sign on my chin.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Brofest (attempt 3)
A shitty video that I made as part of a job application. I had assumed if I didn't list any hot key words, no one would see it that wasn't supposed to. In 12 hours, 14 people have seen it. Who are these people?
I figured I may as well post it here for any lurkers that may or may not exist.
I didn't know Nicholas Hurlbut really well, just in that sort of running-in-the-same-circle kind of way. He and I were always at the same shows, and probably shared a few words. Many of my closest friends were close friends with him, so I felt like I knew him by extension. I was always in awe of how friendly and positive he was, even when I knew he'd been in the hospital earlier that week. I remember seeing him play a show with his band one summer evening in July 2006, and commenting on how good he looked. A couple weeks later he was back in the hospital, and a couple weeks after that, a week before I left for university, he passed away.
I knew his friends in Silverstein had been in the early stages of planning a benefit concert to help out his family, and when the "For friends of Nicholas Hurlbut" announcement came, I really thought it would be about the concert that would become Brofest 85. It wasn't, and later that day Marie and I quietly drove to the Burlington mall to buy clothes for the funeral. We ran into several of our friends somberly doing the same thing. We were 18 and 19 and it was August. We were used to wearing shorts and brightly coloured band t shirts. I didn't own dress shoes. I was too young to buy funeral shoes. The funeral was packed with kids awkwardly pulling at collars and ties, not used to wearing church clothes.
A couple months later I came back to Burlington to help out with Brofest. I donned my "Fuck Cancer" t-shirt and sang along with my best friends, and a year later, I did the same thing. It was a way to embrace the tragedy and turn it into something good, instead of letting it own us. For me, Brofest represented the strength and support that could come out of a music scene. The kind of community that often gets a bad rap for producing selfish, self-important, cookie-cutter musicians had produced something great, and I was grateful to be a part of it.
This year, I had planned on covering Brofest for my project. I'd arranged to come down and speak to the organizers and musicians before the show. I spoke with Ryan Henderson (one organizer, and guitarist for I Am Committing A Sin) at 2:00 and by the time I got there at 2:30, the City of Burlington was threatening to shut down the show due to ambiguous fire code regulations at the venue (24/7, a church that, in it's prior lifetime, was nightclub NRG that was notorious for producing problems for the police).
Assured that it would be resolved within the hour, I left and came back around 4:00. It still wasn't resolved then, but my friend Paul told me that Ryan was in talking to the mayor, and "the mayor likes Ryan, so it should be okay." It never occurred to me that the show might not go off, so I left to run some errands and spoke to Paul again at 5:45 (doors were to be at 6:00) when he told me that everything was fine, everything had been resolved and they were just running a little behind.
The City put the kibosh on Brofest 87 five minutes before they were about to open doors. That was that.
When I got there, not having heard the news, I flashed back to Nick's funeral more than two years earlier. It was the same crowd, the same disappointment, the same solemn faces just trying to accept what was and move forward. There was no room for feeling angry or bitter at the result, no time to think about the money that could have been raised for charity, the room was just filled with an unquantifiable sadness masked by Nick's endless optimism.
It was unfair. Life is unfair. We didn't rail against it, because we already knew.
From the first Brofest:
I figured I may as well post it here for any lurkers that may or may not exist.
I didn't know Nicholas Hurlbut really well, just in that sort of running-in-the-same-circle kind of way. He and I were always at the same shows, and probably shared a few words. Many of my closest friends were close friends with him, so I felt like I knew him by extension. I was always in awe of how friendly and positive he was, even when I knew he'd been in the hospital earlier that week. I remember seeing him play a show with his band one summer evening in July 2006, and commenting on how good he looked. A couple weeks later he was back in the hospital, and a couple weeks after that, a week before I left for university, he passed away.
I knew his friends in Silverstein had been in the early stages of planning a benefit concert to help out his family, and when the "For friends of Nicholas Hurlbut" announcement came, I really thought it would be about the concert that would become Brofest 85. It wasn't, and later that day Marie and I quietly drove to the Burlington mall to buy clothes for the funeral. We ran into several of our friends somberly doing the same thing. We were 18 and 19 and it was August. We were used to wearing shorts and brightly coloured band t shirts. I didn't own dress shoes. I was too young to buy funeral shoes. The funeral was packed with kids awkwardly pulling at collars and ties, not used to wearing church clothes.
A couple months later I came back to Burlington to help out with Brofest. I donned my "Fuck Cancer" t-shirt and sang along with my best friends, and a year later, I did the same thing. It was a way to embrace the tragedy and turn it into something good, instead of letting it own us. For me, Brofest represented the strength and support that could come out of a music scene. The kind of community that often gets a bad rap for producing selfish, self-important, cookie-cutter musicians had produced something great, and I was grateful to be a part of it.
This year, I had planned on covering Brofest for my project. I'd arranged to come down and speak to the organizers and musicians before the show. I spoke with Ryan Henderson (one organizer, and guitarist for I Am Committing A Sin) at 2:00 and by the time I got there at 2:30, the City of Burlington was threatening to shut down the show due to ambiguous fire code regulations at the venue (24/7, a church that, in it's prior lifetime, was nightclub NRG that was notorious for producing problems for the police).
Assured that it would be resolved within the hour, I left and came back around 4:00. It still wasn't resolved then, but my friend Paul told me that Ryan was in talking to the mayor, and "the mayor likes Ryan, so it should be okay." It never occurred to me that the show might not go off, so I left to run some errands and spoke to Paul again at 5:45 (doors were to be at 6:00) when he told me that everything was fine, everything had been resolved and they were just running a little behind.
The City put the kibosh on Brofest 87 five minutes before they were about to open doors. That was that.
When I got there, not having heard the news, I flashed back to Nick's funeral more than two years earlier. It was the same crowd, the same disappointment, the same solemn faces just trying to accept what was and move forward. There was no room for feeling angry or bitter at the result, no time to think about the money that could have been raised for charity, the room was just filled with an unquantifiable sadness masked by Nick's endless optimism.
It was unfair. Life is unfair. We didn't rail against it, because we already knew.
From the first Brofest:
Friday, October 3, 2008
Are you between the ages of 18 and 25? Are you lazy?
From a blog entry I wrote for This Magazine:
I'm still recovering from keeping up with the antics of last night's leadership debate ("Where are you hiding your platform?" Layton prodded Harper. "Under the sweater?" Just one of the many, many highlights from last night's festivities, which can be viewed at CBC online.) so for today I'm going to take a break from policy and propaganda and focus on something else.
It's no secret that less than two-thirds of Canadians of voting age will be hitting the polls on October 14th, and as shameful as that is, the Toronto Star reported today that less than a quarter of youth under 25 vote. When it comes to those who just reached the age of majority, the numbers drop even lower.
That is over two million people that could be voting that are not. That could make or break the election. That could push Dion or Layton into the PMO or push Harper into a majority government. Whether you're lazy, uninformed or just planning on falling into a turkey coma, get out there and vote.
If you don't want to pull on your turkey pants and venture out the day after Thanksgiving (which also happens to be a Jewish holiday), then don't. Vote today. Or tomorrow. Or Monday.
The Young Greens of Canada are calling today, the first day of advance polls (October 4 and 6, also), Youth Voter Day 2008. Check out the website for solid instructions on how to vote quickly and easily. If you're a student living away from home, you don't have to worry about trekking it back, you can simply vote where you're living now (residence, student ghetto, whatever.)
But before you do that, go and educate yourself on what each party is promising (or, in Harper's case, not promising) and then just do it.
Then again, I'm just one little person hiding behind an online handle. Don't want to listen to me? I wouldn't want to listen to me either, so here are some celebrities advocating the vote:
Granted, these are all regarding the American election, but they still serve a pretty good purpose.
Check out Michael Moore's new movie, Slacker Uprising, which follows the filmmaker as he tries to inspire university and college students to vote in the 2004 election. You can download it for free, too.
Here's Leonardo DiCaprio urging you to vote by using some reverse psychology. Ohhh...tricky.
For those of you that don't care about washed up actors, here's Florida punk band Against Me! telling you to vote:
And finally, Christina Aguilera's spot for Rock the Vote. She's pretty hot, right? Do what she says.
I'm still recovering from keeping up with the antics of last night's leadership debate ("Where are you hiding your platform?" Layton prodded Harper. "Under the sweater?" Just one of the many, many highlights from last night's festivities, which can be viewed at CBC online.) so for today I'm going to take a break from policy and propaganda and focus on something else.
It's no secret that less than two-thirds of Canadians of voting age will be hitting the polls on October 14th, and as shameful as that is, the Toronto Star reported today that less than a quarter of youth under 25 vote. When it comes to those who just reached the age of majority, the numbers drop even lower.
That is over two million people that could be voting that are not. That could make or break the election. That could push Dion or Layton into the PMO or push Harper into a majority government. Whether you're lazy, uninformed or just planning on falling into a turkey coma, get out there and vote.
If you don't want to pull on your turkey pants and venture out the day after Thanksgiving (which also happens to be a Jewish holiday), then don't. Vote today. Or tomorrow. Or Monday.
The Young Greens of Canada are calling today, the first day of advance polls (October 4 and 6, also), Youth Voter Day 2008. Check out the website for solid instructions on how to vote quickly and easily. If you're a student living away from home, you don't have to worry about trekking it back, you can simply vote where you're living now (residence, student ghetto, whatever.)
But before you do that, go and educate yourself on what each party is promising (or, in Harper's case, not promising) and then just do it.
Then again, I'm just one little person hiding behind an online handle. Don't want to listen to me? I wouldn't want to listen to me either, so here are some celebrities advocating the vote:
Granted, these are all regarding the American election, but they still serve a pretty good purpose.
Check out Michael Moore's new movie, Slacker Uprising, which follows the filmmaker as he tries to inspire university and college students to vote in the 2004 election. You can download it for free, too.
Here's Leonardo DiCaprio urging you to vote by using some reverse psychology. Ohhh...tricky.
For those of you that don't care about washed up actors, here's Florida punk band Against Me! telling you to vote:
And finally, Christina Aguilera's spot for Rock the Vote. She's pretty hot, right? Do what she says.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Coming home.
You know that old cliche of parents turning their child's room into a gym the second they move out? Well, my parents have apparently decided that when I moved out in May I moved out for good and wasted no time turning my bedroom into a storage locker.
When I came home for a week (cut to two and a half days) at the end of August, I could only open my bedroom door and peer inside at the cornicopia of stuff that was piled floor-to-ceiling in my formerly completely clean room (cleaned in May, at my mother's request, no less.)
Now I am home for the first weekend since then, a visit that my mom assured me would come with a relatively junk free bedroom, I was greeted by a clean bed and a narrow path to it. The piles of boxes and tupperware containers are still immensely high.
Whatever happened to empty nest syndrome? Whatever happened to the loving parents to erect a shrine to their once beloved daughter in hopes that she will return home once? Is this my parents' subtle way of telling me that once I graduate, job or not, I will not be moving back home? Perhaps they're just trying to make my visits home less and less comfortable. (Last time I was here I slept in my sister's room. It wasn't bad though; she's got a really nice TV.)
Maybe this is a sign that I need to make my own home in Toronto more permanent. Maybe now I'll get a cat. I relented before because they scare my mom.
Well you know what scares me, mom? The idea of mammoth crates crushing me while I sleep.
Now, the next order of business: what will I name the cat?
When I came home for a week (cut to two and a half days) at the end of August, I could only open my bedroom door and peer inside at the cornicopia of stuff that was piled floor-to-ceiling in my formerly completely clean room (cleaned in May, at my mother's request, no less.)
Now I am home for the first weekend since then, a visit that my mom assured me would come with a relatively junk free bedroom, I was greeted by a clean bed and a narrow path to it. The piles of boxes and tupperware containers are still immensely high.
Whatever happened to empty nest syndrome? Whatever happened to the loving parents to erect a shrine to their once beloved daughter in hopes that she will return home once? Is this my parents' subtle way of telling me that once I graduate, job or not, I will not be moving back home? Perhaps they're just trying to make my visits home less and less comfortable. (Last time I was here I slept in my sister's room. It wasn't bad though; she's got a really nice TV.)
Maybe this is a sign that I need to make my own home in Toronto more permanent. Maybe now I'll get a cat. I relented before because they scare my mom.
Well you know what scares me, mom? The idea of mammoth crates crushing me while I sleep.
Now, the next order of business: what will I name the cat?
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