Burrito West Blog

Peter and I just finished our 2nd batch of soap this month. Whoo! First batch was cold process - because we like the texture of that better, but it takes weeks to cure and we need some to give away for Christmas presents more immediately, so we just did a batch of hot process (ready as soon as it cools). We love homemade soap, it's awesome. We have an orange/clove scent mixture that we both like, it's Christmasy (like a pomander) but not sickly sweet.

Making soap is actually quite easy. You just have to get the right oils, some sodium hydroxide, and be willing to blindly follow instructions the first few times until you build some experience. Willingness to fail is a key ingredient of most new crafts actually. Er, in this case you also need a scale and digital thermometer. And a dedicated slow cooker if you want to do hot process (i.e. not the one you use for food).

We've had great success using these tutorials.

The downside to shopping for one thing online (shoes) is that you come across 57 other things that you fall in love with. The internet is a dangerous place.

Take for example this website I found, ModCloth which has the cutest assortment of dresses I've ever seen in one place. It's nuts. I'm crazy about all of these dresses, some for work, some for play:






































Aren't they adorable?? I'm a size small and I'd like one of each, in case anyone out there is dying to get me a christmas present. Thanks! I shall now turn off the internet.

I was sitting at my desk yesterday when a strange feeling came over me. I was warm and cozy and felt suddenly elated and happy. I turned around, only to be blinded by a bright light coming in the window. I turned to my officemates in confusion and someone exclaimed "SUNLIGHT!".

It was glorious. We actually stopped and basked in the glory of the sun. Someone down the hall started singing "the sun is shining, in this crazy city".

That, my friends, is what happens when it rains for 4 weeks solid. You really really appreciate things you would otherwise take for granted.

It was only sunny for a bit yesterday but today is blue skies and sun. It's strange and wonderful.

Having talked myself into getting the Fluevogs, I went to the store to try them on and discovered that they don't have my size anywhere in Canada or the US. There's another style in the same line that they also don't have my size in but they think they may get more (whereas the style shown below isn't being made anymore).

*sigh* also: *sob*

I've also realized why I'm having an even harder time finding shoes that fit lately. It seems Canadian stores/shoe companies are switching to European sizing.... and I fall smack in between two European sizes. So everything is either a half size too small or a half size too big.

Bummer.

Every year I go through this quest for the perfect shoe. It's hopeless, and yet I need a good shoe, so I do it over and over and meet with failure over and over. I'm looking for a fashionable, comfortable work shoe. Something with a heel but not too high a heel, something that covers my feet, something that stays on my foot on its own without me having to think about it, and something that has some style/personality to it. This shoe does not exist for less than $200, according to my years of searching.

Usually I end up giving up and I go online searching for fun shoes that are outrageous or out of my price range. This year is no different.


I know I'm kind of crazy with this one..... but I really want a pair of these awesome boots (by Irregular Choice) They're over the top awesome. I don't know if I can pull off black and white polka dot boots, but I sure would like to try.

Look at that heel - I love the heel.



If I can't have those, and need something more sedate, I suppose I could make do with a pair of Fluevogs from the Wearever line. The $500 tall boots in particular are fabulous and look like boots you could wear all day every day.

Swoon.




I think perhaps the time has come to end my quest for suitable affordable shoes and just invest in a pair that meet my needs and will last forever.... but maybe I'm just talking myself into Fluevogs (I walk by the store every day on my way home, which isn't helping). =)

Okay, it's taken me all week but I figured out why the rain is bothering us all more than it normally does. Because in Vancouver it doesn't usually rain very hard - it's more of a drizzle that lasts a few months. But lately, it's been really raining, like you forget your umbrella and you'll be soaked, that kind of rain. We've had enough of that. It's not normal. It's not humane.

Dance is keeping Peter and I very busy lately. Had a dance thing on Thursday evening, friday evening, going out tonight, have a class on monday night, tuesday (maybe), wednesday (maybe), thursday (dinner and dance). It's a lot of dancing. I'm already very tired just thinking about it. But our tango is looking pretty hot.

Random - cool green product.... it looks like an ordinary tissue box but is actually stocked with organic cotton hankies. And the box has a drawer for you to put the dirty hankies in when you're done, until it's time to launder them.

I know when one chooses to live in Vancouver, one really forfeits the right to complain about rain.... I mean, we're in a rainforest after all.

But.

Dude, it has been raining for eleventy billion days now. The clocks went back, it got grey and overcast and started raining. It paused briefly on remembrance day and then went back to the raining. so. much. rain. I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't have to go outside - rain makes me want to stay at home and make cookies and craft and watch movies, so then I get a bit grumpy when I repeatedly have to go outside and do grown up things like go to work.

And I just made the mistake of looking at the longterm forecast. woe.

Peter and I went to the Vancouver Remembrance Day ceremony on Wednesday, like we do every year. I feel it's very important to go. Considering the sacrifices so many people made/make during wartime, it seems like very little to ask that the rest of us go spend an hour our two once a year at a lovely ceremony to pay tribute. Usually it is grey and raining in Vancouver, and still lots of people show up; that gives me hope about us as a community. This year, we had a perfect pocket of sunshine for the event.

Hello internetland, I'm about to share with you a little tidbit from my past....

We have to go back to my pre-teen/teenybopper days. While my sister had posters of NKOTB all over her room, I was more selective about where I directed my fan energy. I was a fan of the guy who played my favorite character on Star Trek, TNG: Wil Wheaton. (Did I mention I was a Star Trek nerd?) In fact, I was so much a fan of Wil that I joined his fan club. I would go through teenybopper magazines, past all the pictures of the guys from Saved By the Bell, hoping to find one of Wil. They were more elusive, and thus more worth the hunting.

I grew up but always stayed a fan of Wil's - kept my eye out for him on tv/movies. I took down the magazine posters from my walls and tossed them eventually, though I kept a few of Wil and tucked them away.

One day I came across Wil on the internet. I don't know what possessed me to search for him - I must have been procrastinating from doing homework or studying. But there he was - with a blog, just being a regular, cool guy. I remembered back to the fan club days where it was so long between newsletters - how he seemed so far away - and suddenly, via the internet, he fell into that strange category of blog-friends (people you don't really know at all but you read their blogs so you kind of know a weird amount about them and what they're up to).

When I moved away from home to go to university, I didn't take a lot with me. At some point though, I had one small box of miscellaneous memorabilia - yearbooks, penpal letters and the like. This box has traveled with me from Halifax to Ottawa to Wisconsin to Vancouver. In it is a binder of letters from a penpal of mine. In that binder, I don't know why, in plastic protective sheets (I'm not normally that organized) were some of my Wil Wheaton posters. You could still see the blue tacky stuff that held them to my walls.

Flash to modern day. I was hanging out with a friend here in Vancouver and she was really excited to be going to PAX - a big gaming convention in Seattle. She was especially excited about maybe getting in to Wil's panel because she is a big fan of his. I asked her if she'd take something of mine to show him if she got to his signing table while there. She was awesome and said yes and I gave her the posters - hoping he would get a kick out of seeing them, such a blast from the past.

She did take them and she did show him, and apparently, he did get a kick out of them, especially the one of him leaning on a Lamborghini - which elicited the phrase "fuck my life". Being awesome, he signed them all. I feel like I should put them up on my wall now, but I'm not sure people would understand why I have a shrine to Wil Wheaton. ;)

The moral of the story is that sometimes it pays to be a packrat.

Also, that I had excellent taste in fangirl crushes as a preteen.

And, the internet is cool.

And so is Wil Wheaton: