Cost of Happiness...

Digital camera to take self portraits: $150

Three hours at the hair salon for two colours of hair dye plus a cut: $130

Hanging out at the playground with my husband and daughter and capturing this image on film:

Priceless.

This image was icing on the cake:

tags: silliness, selfportrait, narcissus, mock ad

Intense writing....

Wow. Nanowrimo not intense enough? How about punishing challenging yourself for a single long weekend?

The 3-Day Novel Contest comes with a first prize of publication... this year a dozen participants will actually sweat it out in front of cameras on BOOK TV. [Um, I know Canadians will apparently watch the most dull of events, but watching someone write a dubious novel? I think I'll pass.]

Though this is the first I've heard of the contest, apparently it's been going since 1977. Wow. That's a lot of pulp.

If you're in Vancouver, or can get there tomorrow, you can still sign up.

tags: writing, contest

Curious things...

The calendar says it's Wednesday... but it's kinda wierdnessday.

1. The Shire of Bend, Oregon; move to Bend, Oregon and for half a million or more you can live in someone's version of the Shire. Don't get me wrong, they are beautiful homes -- green design and all -- and I would happily live in one on my own acreage. But I shudder to think of the buyers who would be attracted to the Shire: LARP enthusiasts and hardcore 24/7 SCA-types.

2. Tofino has run out of water. The tourist destination on the West Coast of Vancouver Island -- smack in the middle of a rainforrest -- has restricted water use to residents only. All commercial water will be shut off by the end of the week. That means, for the big Labour Day weekend, none of the inns, restaurants, B&Bs or retail establishments will have running water. Why, you ask? Because there are too many new homes being built in the region without any increase to the service infrastructre. Oddly enough, all that kum-ba-ya attitude has come back to bite them in their collective asses.

3. Coffee Crisp crosses the border. Yes, there is a whole LOT of hoopla from Nestle (the makers of said chocolate bar) about the move. Now, I love Coffee Crisp -- they are my fave mini-bars to snag from Halloween stashes -- but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have set up a fan site to pressure the company if they had only been available in the U.S.




tags: architecture, planned communities, water shortage, chocolate bars

Party Stopover

My workplace has been invaded this morning by a Movie-of-the-Week called "The Party Never Stops." Curious, I phoned the production office this morning to ask what the movie was about. They told me it was about "sophomore (first year) college girls and the trouble they have knowing their limits with binge drinking." Oh boy.

They are filming in the stairwell and on the roof of the building; probably elsewhere on campus, too. There are crew trailers all over hell (as if the construction trailers weren't clogging things up enough). I suspect somehow it will screw up my day. We'll see.



tags: film production, victoriabc, movie of the week.

Cross-border Corn Pops.

Kiddo loves Corn Pops. This morning, when she asked for Corn Pops, I checked the cupboard but no luck. No Pops. Looking deeper though, I remembered we had one mini-box from one of the variety packs we bought in Bellingham last month. Only problem is that even though the box looks the same, the cereal inside is different.

Canadian Corn Pops are perfect round styrofoam-like little balls. They have a vaguely corn-like taste, but it is as far removed from corn as Rice crispies are from rice.

American Corn Pops are lumpen and glossy. They taste more like corn, but there's something else... and I couldn't put my finger on it until I looked at the ingredients. American Corn Pops include oil ("one or more of: coconut, cottonseed, and soybean").

Full Canadian Corn Pops ingredients:

Corn meal, sugar/glucose-fructose, fancy molasses, salt, oat flour, baking soda, colour, vitamins (thiamin hydrochloride, niacinamide, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, d-calcium pantothenate), minerals (iron, zinc oxide), BHT added to package material to maintain product freshness. Contains traces of soybeans.

Full American Corn Pops ingredients:

Milled corn, sugar, corn syrup, molasses, salt, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (one or more of: coconut, cottonseed, and soybean)***+, sodium ascorbate and ascorbic acid (vitamin C), niacinamide, reduced iron, zinc oxide, wheat starch, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), thiamin hydrochloride (vitamin B1), annatto color, vitamin A palmitate, BHT (preservative), folic acid, vitamin B12 and vitamin D.

You'll notice the other big difference right at the first ingredient: corn meal versus milled corn (guess that's why the American Corn Pops tasted more like corn); coincidentally, I also noticed that the American box had a little tiny union logo in the corner from the "American Federation of Grain Millers."

Of course this isn't the first time we've noticed that American and Canadian products differ (or Canadian and British products -- Smarties being the one that leaps to mind; the British Smarties have a flavoured coating whereas the Canadian ones just taste waxy on the outside). What I wonder though, is why they differ from country to country?


*Corn Pops is a registered trademark of the Kellogs company.

tags: food, global vs. local, Kellogs