Burrito West Blog

I was a seriously picky eater when I was a kid. Also, I had my Dad's beanpole genes (without the beanpole aspect) so I could get away with eating junk without getting fat, and man, did I eat some junk. I recall a lengthy period where I had ketchup chips for lunch on Saturdays. (that really only ended when they changed the flavour and now they're all wrong and I protest - you hear that FritoLay, it's WRONG now, go back to the 1995 recipe)

In light of that admission, you should realize the full extent of what I'm about to write. My mom will realize.

Some friends of ours had a baby recently and other friends arranged a schedule for us all to cook hot meals and deliver them to the new parents - so that they can eat well and not have the hassle of cooking during that first week or two of parenthood. Because one of the friends is vegetarian, I consulted other vegetarian friends of mine for recipe suggestions. This was actually great because Peter and I have been trying to cut down our meat consumption but were lacking any ideas on what else to make... so we're keen to have vegetarian recipes in our arsenal.

I got two recipes from my friend - one of the dishes I watched her cook, so had a head start on that one and I got to sample leftovers of the second. Both were very tasty. Both included foodstuffs I didn't know existed until I moved to Vancouver and hadn't ever tasted until she had me try them. Since then I've made both myself - successfully! I can now say that I like kale and quinoa. (I can also tell you that quinoa is pronounced kinwa.)

I've come a long way from my Dartmouth roots, where exotic food to me was trying something other than sweet and sour chicken at the 'chinese food' restaurant (which I probably never did). I've discovered new grains, new vegetables (chick peas are the shiznit, how have I been so ignorant about them for so long?), new cultures of food I love (Ethiopian food is so gooood). Also, how did asparagus get a bad rap? Blanched asparagus is dead easy and fast to prepare and is so tasty just drizzled with lemon juice and sea salt. How can a vegetable be so tasty?!

There's something about growing up that does this to you. It sneaks up on you when you aren't looking. I think it has to do with your body starting to fall apart and so you start to want to feed it quality stuff to prevent further falling apart.... so then when you eat a tomato, which previously you hated, you don't taste tomato... you taste healthiness. I find I crave healthiness and my brain knows generally what foods have it and what foods don't and my taste buds are finally adjusting so that I like some of those things.

I still don't like broccoli much though. But give me another 2o years and check in again, who knows.

Peter is off on a whirlwind business trip to Germany and Latvia this week. It's always sad when he goes away. I tend to turn into a hermit, I stay inside and do all the things I've been meaning to do for ages.... organize, craft, watch bad movies. Inevitably at some point I'll wander around the apartment aimlessly, wondering if he's due back soon, feeling like I should be making the most of my free time, but being unmotivated. That's just how it is.

In happier news - before he left we went to a party called Twestival.... a fundraiser that happened in 200 cities around the world on the same night to raise money for the charity Concern Worldwide. The local Vancouver Twestival aimed to raise $4000 but ended up raising $9000! The party was packed and fabulous. It was fantastic to see so many companies donating their goods (wine, sushi, venue space) and so many Twitter users coming out to party in person.... and all that fun ended up raising serious cash for a great cause - everyone wins! I bought some raffle tickets there and won an autographed Luongo t-shirt!!! (You might know Luongo from such events as being the goalie for the Olympic gold-medal winning men's hockey team!) Isn't that crazy?

One of the funny things about the Olympics that I'd never heard of until they arrived here was the pin trading frenzy.

Apparently it's a whole big thing. Venues give out pins to the public, people visiting bring pins from their home towns, people have pins from previous Olympics, sponsors have pins.... and for the duration of the Olympics, it's a big pin trading convention. You wear your pins when you're out and about and people will randomly approach you to see what you've got or to trade.

I wasn't hugely into this because I only had 1 pin to start with (given to me by the City) and I didn't want to give it up. But I slowly acquired a few and put them on my lanyard and occasionally had little kids asking me if I would trade, which I did. One day at work we had a pile of Canada pavilion pins to give out (finally - people were always asking if we had Live City pins to give away and we didn't - it's hard telling adorable, hopeful children that you don't have anything to give them). I was working the security gate that day and kept my eye open for people who might like a pin. There was a little girl who was very nervous about going through the security gate (metal detector) and so when she bravely walked through, I offered her a pin and she shyly took it. It was stupid adorable. Her dad tapped me on the shoulder a minute later thanked me and offered me a pin from a little bag he had. I felt quite special. Until the security dude ran over and asked if he could have one too. The dad looked very annoyed but gave him one. (That's the downside of pin trading - some people are quite obnoxious about trying to obtain pins.)

In the end, I have a nice little collection of pins to remind me of the Olympics and most have a particular memory of how I got it. But I'm actually more taken with the effect they had on people - because the pins became an ice breaker - if you wanted to strike up a conversation with someone, you could comment on their pins, or discuss trading or whatever. People who never would have conversed otherwise, had interactions - and that's something very valuable. Little metal pins that appear to just be souvenirs of a time and event.... actually became part of a city-wide scavenger hunt with thousands of players. Just another thing that unexpectedly made the Olympics so fun and friendly.

March 22 is World Water day.

The story of charity: water - The 2009 September Campaign Trailer from charity: water on Vimeo.

I recently came across the group Charity: Water, a group with the single purpose of bringing clean drinking water to the 1 billion people in the world who lack it.

In 4 years they've brought water to over a million people.

1 million people. Their stories are amazing. The incredible difference they make in the lives of entire villages by the simple act of drilling a well.... it's mind boggling. I watched some of their videos and immediately donated money, because, really... it puts things in perspective. What's $20 to me in comparison to it providing clean water to someone in Ethiopia for 20 years?

The brilliance of Charity: Water is that they are modern - they are young, design savvy, they use film and internet and social media and they understand the importance of connecting people to the impact their donation has... they are not an abstract idea of charity, they are a group out there doing something and you can watch what they do online.

They also have a unique new thing called mycharity: water where you can sign up and start a campaign yourself to mobilize your network to donate to the cause for you. You give up your birthday/wedding anniversary/etc and have people donate instead. Alyssa Milano did it and raised $92k. But it only takes $5k to dig a well and change 1 village. Isn't that a million times better than getting a pile of material stuff you don't want or need?

I discovered this amazing group because they were the focus of fund-raising efforts last year by Twestival. Twestival is a series of parties in cities across the world, by Twitter users, to raise money for charity. Word is spread via Twitter and all the organizers are volunteers. The party date is March 25. I know Vancouver is having a shindig that I'll be going to.

In 2009 Twesival raised $250k for Charity:Water and the Twestival organizer went to Ethiopia and filmed the drilling of one of the wells so the Twitter users could see their money in action. That's the power of social media - a whole bunch of people came together in 202 cities around the world and dramatically changed the lives of thousands of people in Ethiopia.

That's inspiring.

Not sure why all my posts lately are about material stuff. I guess I spend all day being cerebral and lately have been spending my evenings doing other serious paperwork and so when I have fragments of downtime I default to surfing the internet looking at pretty shiny things.

Like this insanely cute dress from modcloth*.

I've decided that if for some reason I should be restricted to only having clothes from one place, I would pick modcloth.






Because, seriously, check out these beauties.












* Probably a little too cutesy for me to actually wear.

One of the things I did not get to do during the Olympics was hold a torch. There were opportunities but usually with lines or having to bother a torchbearer after their run and I just never did.

The other night I was at a cafe with a friend and a guy at the table next to us had this strange long, narrow box, he opened it and pulled out an Olympic torch. He was just a dude from North Carolina who bought one as a souvenir. We had a great time watching them having a great time passing the torch around and Kim offered to take a group photo of them and so he offered to take a photo of us with it so we each got to hold it.

Holding the torch in a cafe after the Olympics had finished.... thanks to the generosity of a random visitor to town..... was awesome.

One of my minor tasks at work earlier this year was to try and find a way to provide tap water to the public during the Olympics. I feel very strongly that bottled water is a terrible waste of energy and materials so I was happy to see what I could do. Metro Vancouver recently started up operation of a new filtration plant so our water, which was clean glacial water to begin with is now filtered glacial water.

It's good water is what I'm trying to say.

In the end we got the water fountains turned on (they get turned off for winter so they don't freeze/break) and got a cool water truck located on Robson St (which was turned into a pedestrian street). Yay tap water!

The main reason for this post is not to brag about our awesome water but to highlight a new product I just came across which I think it's quite smart - a collapsible water bottle..... so you can always have a bottle on you without actually carrying around an empty reusable bottle. I love smart products.

This product, unlike my previous post, is actually affordable. =)

I have fallen head over heels in love with this clock. It's called the QlockTwo and it's by some brilliant people in Germany.

It spells out the time in words to the nearest 5minute increment and then each white dot in a corner adds a minute (if you need to get more accurate).

Smart products like this make me swoon.

I think it's $1600. That makes me swoon in a different way.

So if any stupidly wealthy people want to buy me this clock, I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I would graciously accept.

Not to brag or anything, but I have the awesomest network of friends here in Vancouver. It's the upside of moving somewhere for school - you get plugged into a cohort's worth of possible friends, and I happened to seriously luck out because all the people who attended my program, especially the year I started, are seriously amazing people.

It's been really interesting for me - staying in Vancouver beyond the 4-year mark (4 years in Ottawa, 4 years in Madison) and seeing the benefits. I love that I have this network of people that I'm guaranteed to have a good time with. And the connections have been expanding as we all have finished school and gone to work - so now I know people through other people and when I go to work-related events I actually enjoy the social aspect of it because it's a chance to bump into all these people I've come to know who are smart and interesting to talk to. And you layer on top of that the friends I've made through my craft scene connections and the circle of wonderful people I get to interact with just keeps expanding.

As a non-social person by nature, this process has been very surprising to me. It's the thing I value most about Vancouver. Okay, that and the snow-free winters.

I was reminded of all this on Saturday night because 2 friends who went to Cambodia for their honeymoon had us all over for a Cambodian feast. It was amazing food, and wonderful to chat with everyone. I'm just really really lucky. Felt I should acknowledge that. =)

So I finally let go of my very old school html custom blog and updated to the blogger template style. It will take a while to get used to the new layout and the frustration of not being able to edit the code to get it to do what I want, but I'm just not interested in learning css code so we'll all just have to learn to love this new look. It's good to embrace change every now and then anyway.

The upside to this is that comments are back! Yay!

Let me know if things look excessively weird/funky to you.

It's very strange here with the Olympics over. Very strange. Everyone is kind of blue. What an extraordinary experience that was, I feel really lucky to happen to have lived in the centre of all that. How do you return to regular life after something so extraordinary?

While the Olympics were on, my gold delica ring was featured in an Etsy newsletter, so I had a slew of orders for it, which was lovely! I actually came home one day from work to find 8 orders and 20 emails about custom orders - that was quite the nice surprize! I'm still working on the backlog of custom orders. Thank you Etsy.

Thought you guys would appreciate this short video I took last week - some buskers set up on a closed street in Yaletown and started a dance party. It was pure awesome.

Wow - what a way to end it! I was working during the hockey game but had a perch up high where I could see both the big screens and the crowd.... and getting to watch the crowd get excited during the game was pretty awesome. I was part of the crowd when Crosby saved the day for us (again) and that was amazing. (Here's someone else's photo of where I was, to give you an idea.)

Peter came by later and we hung out and watched the closing ceremonies on the big screens (with a fireworks finale). I really enjoyed them - thought they were hilarious, and I like that we can poke fun at ourselves - roll out every stereotype and have a laugh. Anything that involves William Shatner is okay in my books. ;)

And now it's over. How strange is that? I think everyone in the city is exhausted and kind of empty feeling.... just like the day after a good party - you're sad it has ended but also kind of glad you can sleep in. I had a great time with my Host City role, simply because everyone was in such a great mood and super nice. Usually when I deal with the public at work they're angry and besmirch my character, so this was a lovely experience for me!

I'll miss people spontaneously high-fiving you as you walk down the street. I'll miss the spontaneous renditions of O'Canada. I'll miss chatting with ridiculously friendly strangers in lines. (I won't miss the lines though.) I'll miss the heartwarming tales of athletes overcoming adversity to win medals.

Maybe we can put in a bid for the summer olympics. ;)

[Note - my comment service has disappeared, it may take a blog redesign to get the comments function restored.]