Things are looking 'Up'

I'm not a big fan of going to see movies in the theatre. You can't pause it to go pee, there's always someone who feels the need to chat with their friend, my knees start to hurt because I can't stretch my legs out, the a/c is almost always too cold ... you get the idea. I much prefer to watch movies in the comfort of my own home, so please understand that I'm not saying this lightly: if you haven't done so already,

GO SEE PIXAR'S 'UP'!

We went last night with a bunch of friends from our home church, and I can honestly state without any exaggeration that it was one of the best movies I've seen in years. And because it's done in 3D, you really need to see it in the theatre to fully appreciate it. I don't want to tell you anything about it - I went in having no idea what it was about, other than an old man and a balloon covered house, and it completely blew me away. So go. Now. I promise you'll enjoy it :)

Tripping down memory lane

There's a new meme doing the rounds over on facebook - you post a comment asking your "friends" to share a memory of you, good or bad (though unless your friends are jerks, they'll probably all be good). It's been fun to revisit those events and times, though there's been an unexpected side effect. All day today random memories have been popping into my head, things I haven't thought about in years. Like...

...sitting with my friend AG on the daily trip to high school on bus #27, listening to the driver's favourite radio station that for some unknown reason always played the same 2 songs at some point on the 30 minute journey: Breakfast at Tiffany's and King of Wishful Thinking.

...driving my mum's car the wrong way up an off-ramp at 12 am (I was completely sober) on a girl's night off from camp

...watching the Captian Power movie, and the cheesiest black & white movie on the planet with CH one summer Saturday ("Darling, you've given me a reason to buy orchids again." - they just don't write dialogue like that anymore!)

...cranking the music and dancing around the kitchen with cousin KL after making stir-fry for the very first time

...TC bringing flowers to my office at university because I'd emailed him about the rough day I'd been having - and how he got in trouble with my office-mate's boyfriend for raising the bar so high by delivering them while she was there to see him do it :)

...canoeing on the ocean one night with TC, Matt & Annie, while fervently hoping that Matt wouldn't flip the canoe

...getting lost with K & S on the way to Central New Annan, NS, because the instructions said to turn right at the big red store, which had been painted blue a few days before we arrived

...playing "Shark" with all the cousins - a game where one of us had to cross from one end of my grandmother's living room to the other, while the rest of us chose positions to lay on the floor and had to try to bring that person down using only our legs. Much bruising and laughter ensued.

...spending an entire day making tiny gourmet sandwiches with CL and JW for Sherrie's pre-wedding tea

I'll stop there, but the memories keep coming! What about you folks? What's the first memory that pops into your head when you start thinking back?

The adoption saga continues...

It seems that we have entered another busy season! Work and life have gone a little crazy, but it doesn't stress me out nearly as much as it used to. I think I've finally come to the realization that the world won't end if I'm not able to get everything done on time, or at all. As long as I'm spending time with the people I care about, the rest will either get done when it gets done, or I'll realize that it's not as essential as I had thought it was :)


Part of the craziness is because of the ongoing adoption process, which is pretty time-consuming. We're finally finished our end of the paperwork, and are now waiting for all the security checks and references to come in. In the meantime we're in the interview stage of our home study, which involves a series of meetings with our adoption practitioner to talk about our families, our current situation in life, our relationships, and all our hopes/dreams/plans insofar as they relate to raising a family - essentially, everything he needs to know to get an idea of who we are and whether or not we'd be good parents. The last interview will also involve an inspection of our home, just to make sure there are no sharp pointy things sticking out of the walls or rats running around. At the same time, we have to take a 4-day training course, done over the next 2 weekends, designed to help prepare us for the issues surrounding parenting an adopted child.


The whole process is pretty intensive, and it raises a lot of questions that are kind of surreal. One of the things we have to do is determine what specifications we'd like for our children with regards to age, gender, race, and/or number. And how do you answer a question like "Are you willing to care for a physically or mentally delicate child?" If I were pregnant, it's not like we'd be choosing any of these things - they'd all be pre-determined, and we'd love them no matter what. But to be completely honest, nobody wants their child to have physical or mental difficulties. Does that mean such children are less deserving of a loving home than 'normal' kids? What level of 'willingness' is required? For what degree of 'delicacy'? How equipped are we to provide the necessary level of care?

Needless to say, there's a lot of thinking, talking and soul-searching going on in our household these days :)

Yummy Recipe Alert!

My folks have been up visiting this week, and it's been great! Mum flew up on Tuesday night, and then my dad, because he's a crazy person, drove the 1492 km (he counted) and arrived Wednesday night. Just in time for a heat wave and a garbage strike :)

I love it when they come visit, which doesn't happen nearly often enough. If you've been reading this blog for very long, you know that one of the things that bothers me most about living in Toronto is that my family is so very far away, so it means so much to be able to share this little bit of life with them. Unfortunately I couldn't take any time off work, for various reasons, but I have been able to leave early each day, and then there's the weekend to look forward to.

Yesterday when I came home after work, I discovered these on the kitchen counter:

One major benefit of having Mum come to visit! These are rhubarb biscuits, and they're the yummiest thing I've had in quite a while. And because she's a sweetie, Mum gave me the recipe :)

Mum's Rhubarb Biscuits

Biscuit:
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup milk
butter

In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in shortening until it's about the size of small peas. Stir in the milk, and then roll the dough out into a roughly rectangular shape (approx. 12" long). Spread entire surface with butter, being sure to get the edges too.

Filling:
3 cups rhubarb, very finely chopped
3/4 cup white sugar
3 Tbsp. flour

Combine the rhubarb, sugar and flour in a bowl. Sprinkle mixture over biscuit, and roll it up. Using a sharp knife, cut it into 1" thick slices and place in a 9x13" pan.

Sauce:
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups boiling water

Stir sugar and water together until dissolved, and then pour it over the pan of biscuits. Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

Happy Weekend!

Passive Agressiveness

As a self-confessed passive agressive, I can completely commiserate with the people who wrote the notes on my new favourite website, Passive Agressive Notes. For example:

Okay, so that's one's not so much passive agressive as funny, but if you're looking for a chuckle you should really check it out.

Paris: Part 3

Okay, we're almost through - just a couple more days of photos to go! It's actually been kind of fun to relive the trip this way :)

Our third day in Paris was dedicated to 2 things: 1) Finding tickets to some kind of play/opera/show, and 2) the Louvre. We got up bright and early and started by looking around for a tourist bureau, since they tend to have information on all the happenings in the theatre world. Did you know that there is only one tourist bureau in Paris? And that it has virtually no useful information in it? We ended up traveling to every theatre icon on our map of Paris to see what was showing there, which actually turned out to be a good way to see more of the city. By noon, we'd found a play that TC wanted to attend so we bought the tickets, had some lunch, and made our way back to the Louvre.

If it isn't already there, make sure that visiting the Louvre is on your list of things to do before you die! Incredibly amazing, beautiful and overwhelming.

Even the courtyard when you first walk through the gates is beautiful, but then so is the rest of Paris, so I should have expected it. I know there are mixed opinions about the glass pyramid, which is where you enter the Louvre, but I quite like it. It's one of the few examples I've seen where modern architecture complements, and even adds to the existing structures, unlike the horrific ROM here in Toronto.

We were impressed by how efficiently the entry is run - it took no time to get our tickets and a map, and once we'd figured out what we wanted to see (because there's far too much to see everything in one visit) we set off. First up...

...the Cour Marly, a massive indoor courtyard filled with very impressive French sculpture. It was a really beautiful space, and one of the quietest sections of the museum.

This is the Code of Hammurabi, which is one of the most ancient examples of written law. We had studied about it in university, so it was quite exciting to actually see it. Can you imagine how long it took to carve all of that into the stone?

Here we have a statue of Ramses II, who is believed by some to have been the Pharoah of "Let my people go" fame.

Picture this guy, along with 35 of his friends, staring down at you from the top of a 21m high cedar beam as you entered the audience hall of Darius I of Persia. (Remember the king in the story of Daniel and the lions' den? That's him.) Methinks it might have been a little intimidating, yes?

We realized as we were climbing these stairs that they've obviously had a lot of visitors at the Louvre over the years! I wonder how long it will be before they wear through?

My favourite part was the section containing Roman sculpture. Before leaving for France, TC and I had just finished watching the BBC mini-series I, Claudius, which traces the history of the Roman imperial family from the perspective of Claudius, the emporer between Caligula and Nero. It's really quite excellent - I highly recommend it! Anyway, we were walking through the collection and lo and behold, there were the busts and statues of all the characters we'd been watching! Working clockwise from the top left, that's Claudius himself, Marcus Aurelius (who wasn't in the mini-series, but is the famous Stoic philosopher-emporer), Tiberius, and Livia (who did have a head, but the collage maker cut it off for some reason).

We visited some of the more famous exhibits as well, but as you can see in the picture above, they were quite crowded, which made it difficult to actually see whatever it was. That's as close as we were able to get to the Mona Lisa (it's behind the guy with the white shirt's head) without elbowing through the lot.

And, of course, the inverted pyramid of Davinci Code fame. I wonder how many of these people actually think the remains of Mary Magdelene are hidden below? Whatever else it may symbolize, I thought there was a nice symmetry in ending our visit to the Louvre here, since it began in the upper pyramid.

We were rather tuckered and culturally overloaded by the end of the day, but it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip!

Paris: Part 2

On a much lighter note, I finally had time to post the pics from day 2 in Paris, which also happened to be my 29th birthday :) After having breakfast at the salon du the right next to our hotel, and being highly amused by the cheeky little birds that sat on our table and took the food out of our hands, we set out to hit the major tourist attractions. First up:

L'Arc de Triomphe. It's a truly amazing monument - much larger than I had pictured it in my head. With our metro passes, we were eligible for discounted tickets to go up inside the Arc, so we decided that this would be the place we'd get our view of Paris from above. One thing we didn't consider was that there was no elevator. Just lots and lots of winding stairs. Fortunately, there are two stopping-off places on the way up - one is a display area with explanations of the various features of the Arc, and the second a gift shop - so we could take a breather. It was well worth the climb, though.

Isn't that gorgeous? The Arc is in the middle of a huge rotary, which didn't appear to have any kind of lines or guides. We had a great deal of fun watching the drivers go all over the place. One little green mini-cooper must have driven around the Arc five or six times before it figured out how to get where it wanted to go :)

We made it back down in one piece, and went for a walk up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, where we had lunch at a little outdoor cafe, and then headed off to that most famous of Parisian landmarks:

The Eiffel Tower. That's me, standing at the Eiffel Tower, on my birthday. Pretty awesome. We didn't bother going up, since the line was the length of two or three soccer fields, but it really is a remarkable structure. The pictures don't really convey the sheer massiveness of it - I've always thought it looked almost dainty, but up close it seemed much sturdier and more substantial.

Our next stop:

The Opéra Garnier. This is the opera house that inspired the Phantom of the Opera. Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures, but the lighting in the place was really bizarre, and our poor little camera couldn't handle it :) The picture above is the grand staircase (obviously) leading into the auditorium.

This is the foyer. Walking through the building, we were both completely overwhelmed by the sheer opulence of the place. Everything about it was showy and grand, which I suppose was it's purpose. Who wants to go to a shabby opera house?

When we came out, there was a full brass band on the front steps of the opera house doing their thing. Not a Salvation Army type brass band, more like a swing band. They were really good, so we stopped (along with about 100 other people) and sat on the steps to listen for a while. Then we headed back across the Seine to...

...the Jardin du Luxembourg. What a beautiful garden! One of my favourite things about it was that it was full of statues like the one above, many of various influential women in France's history. Queens, saints, noblewomen - but all women. This one is Catherine de Medici.

There were also a couple of beautiful water features. This one is the Medici fountain, but in the middle of the garden was a large pond-ish affair, where kids were sailing little boats.

After all the running around we'd been doing, we were pooped! Or at least I was - TC could keep going forever if he put his mind to it. Anyhoo, we decided to head back to the vicinity of our hotel to have dinner, which was a 2+ hour affair. They really take their food seriously - no rushing it! By the time we were done, we were ready to call it a day.