Burrito West Blog

Rather than whine about being sick, how about some photos of my kool-aid yarn dyeing experiment?  This is grape and cherry, and just for the record, you need a fair bit of kool-aid to dye this much yarn (8 packs of cherry, 10 of grape)!

Still, I'm pleased - nice vibrant colours.  I have more of this yarn to dye, but I think I'll wait until I start a project and see how much I need of what colour.

So being sick when there isn't anyone at home to dote on you (or help clean up the disaster state you make of the apartment), isn't awesome.  And this is a weird flu (I'm assuming flu) - started with a sore neck and mild cough but I felt fine otherwise. Then 8 hours after that I was on the couch trying not to move my head.  The muscle ache is really annoying!  Well, it's all annoying.

Can you tell I don't get sick much?  How do people do this?  It sucks.  All the parents with kids that have a revolving door for illnesses, I don't know how you survive.

Anyway, I'm better enough now that I can at least watch movies.

Hope everyone had a lovely holiday! 

I have been well taken care of by my friends over the past few days, and have spent many wonderful evenings in great company, for which I am very very grateful!

Testing the new blog format....

Okay - I've had the urge to wipe out my website for a while, thought I'd just leave up the blog and simplify.  Will take some getting used to, this new blog template. Needs customization, that's for sure.  For example, this font feels huge to me, does it look huge to you?

Results of the test dyeing with Kool-aid.... one yarn took the colour really well, the others had mixed results (means some synthetic fibres). very interesting & super easy.

Now to try the trickier bit where I try to dye a large quantity of yarn and get it to all come out the same colour....

So the downside to having a smoking hot young dance instructor teach your cha-cha group class? She can move her body in amazing ways that just... aren't replicable by mere mortals! She's amazing and makes it look so effortless.  Makes you realize how much more there is to learn. Partly inspiring, partly crushing. ;)
[This is not my instructor, but it's a great example of the kind of cha cha my instructor does.]

Tonight I'm off to my first Hanukkah party ever! I vaguely recall playing with dreidels in school once as we learned about various non-christmas holidays, but that's about all the experience I have with Hanukkah.

In honour of the season, I hereby post this photo of Bernoulli as a kitten, inside our christmas tree.  He took one look at the tree and ran straight up it, it was priceless.

I dropped Peter off at the airport today, which was weird. I've got plans for the next few days, to ensure I leave the house and don't turn into a hermit, starting with some dance classes tonight. 

On my way home from the airport, I picked up some Kool-aid, because apparently it's good for dyeing yarn with (doesn't that make you want to go drink some? ugh), and I've got way too much white yarn. So, we'll be trying some yarn dyeing this weekend, hopefully!

Today was my last day of work for 2011!  Yay!

Peter and have an inherent incompatibility when it comes to the holidays (I say  holidays rather than christmas because I'm not into the christ and figure I'm doing the pagan/secular version).  Anyway, the problem is this: Peter prefers to ignore the holidays right until the last minute, and then have a big day and enjoy the week or two after. I feel very strongly that once the holiday is over, it's over - and trying to celebrate it after the fact is just... weird, and I can't do it. Things are made worse this year by the fact that Peter is going to Poland with his family for Christmas (they're catholic so it's capital 'C', full meal deal Christmas), and he'll be crazy busy with work right until he leaves. He's thinking we can celebrate when he gets back, but - see point above about how that doesn't work for me. So that's kind of a drag, but, you can't have everything!

Anyway, I'll be on my own for the holidays, which will be an interesting experiment.  My friends have been fabulous and I have offers to join several family dinners, so I'm pretty sure I can keep myself occupied.  We'll see how it goes!

Unrelated and random: I've never purchased a set of towels in my life. I went away to university with 1 towel, then my mom bought me a set, then Peter and I combined our university-era towel collections, then we got hand me downs from Peter's family when we moved to Vancouver. So we have a hodge-podge of rather old towels (many of which are pink even though I hate pink).  Out of the blue the other day, Peter and I bought a set of fabulous bamboo-cotton towels at a mad discount. Seriously, they're awesome.  I'm very much looking forward to dropping off our very old towels at the animal shelter and never seeing them again.

Sometimes it's good to spend money on yourself.

We've been participating in an extra dance class every week for the past few weeks at our studio. It's the owner of the studio teaching a special salsa course. I love salsa and the owner of the studio both, so this is pretty fantastic. It means that our weekly schedule is Tuesdays: private lesson & studio party, Wednesdays: 2 group classes, Thursdays: special salsa group class. This means I miss a lot of time cuddling with cats and crafting in my cozy apartment and I instead spend a lot of time at the dance studio. But I feel like we've been dancing long enough that we're at a point where it's super fun. It was always fun, but in the early days that fun would be laced with
frustration at not being able to do more, or follow stuff, or turn correctly. Now, I feel like my base is solid enough that I can really enjoy myself in any situation; I'm picking up new things faster, I'm
starting to spin properly, I can follow better, etc. It's fun!

This post is neither here nor there but to share my happiness with dancing. And to say that learning new skills is awesome - especially if you stick with it long enough to get good. We've still got loads to
learn and improve, don't get me wrong, but we're having fun.

Now I just need to travel back in time to the 40s/50's when supper clubs with proper dancing still existed.

I've been in the process of becoming a volunteer at the Vancouver SPCA for... a while now. I think a combination of them being buried in applications and changing their protocols meant they stopped taking any new volunteers for a while.  Anyway, slowly I'm getting through the steps (workshops, training, criminal record check). Today was another day. I got home from the shelter and smothered my cats with love. It kills me to see those cats in cages. This will be the first shelter I've ever volunteered in where some cats are in cages all day long. All the other shelters I've volunteered at had the cats in communal rooms where they could run around (maybe putting the cats in cages for the night shift when no one is around). So this will be different. Also, the poor SPCA is in an old old building. I'm surprised they aren't fundraising for a replacement facility, they sure could use it. But I guess they need all their fundraising just to operate what they've got. So really, they need a wealthy person to donate a new facility for them!

Now I'm home and have Bernoulli on my lap; he's purring and wonderfully warm and soft. If only I could rescue them all.

Random.
Things that may be confusing to people who do not live in Vancouver:

these are all different places:
West End - this is a neighbourhood (area) near downtown Vancouver
West Vancouver - this is a different municipality than Vancouver (as are the City of North Vancouver, and the District of North Vancouver)
West side of Vancouver - this is a general geographic area in Vancouver that includes neighbourhoods like West Point Grey

Busy weekend!  I went out to a lovely dinner on Saturday with some ladies from the dance studio - part of a civilized stagette for one of them. Then we went to a club on Granville St.  Yup, a club. Stood in line, got ID'd by the bouncer, the whole deal. Had drinks spilled on me, got bounced around on the dance floor (and off the dance floor) by the MOB because it was insanely crowded. It was fun in a hilarious kind of way. At least the club we went to had a full range of people - from teeny-boppers up through adults - some of the girls even had pants on. (The current trend among the youth today is to not wear pants while clubbing - they go out in a shirt and call it a dress.)

I got home from the club at 3:30am.  Took a nap, then headed out at 8:30 to do a day long craft fair. The craft fair was fabulous and I sold a pile of stuff, which is always satisfying. After the fair I was off to dinner with more lovely friends. Fortunately for me, and my desire to sleep, this group of friends did not desire to go clubbing. :)

Anyway - I recommend all the people in their 30s go clubbing every now and then - I think it gets more hilarious as you get older... it's just, kind of silly really.