Meme...me me me!

I've been tagged by Maggie! It's an easy-peasy one, and kind of interesting, so I'll pass it along...

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Write down lines 6-8.
4. Tag 3 people.
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1. The nearest book was Wicked by Gregory Maguire. I haven't actually read it yet, but I'm working on it. Does it count that I saw the play last month?

2. *flip*

3. "self an interest in Shenshen or Pfannee, who certainly were coquettish enough. But they both seemed besotted with Avaric. At last Boq cornered Galinda on the porch and pleaded with her to"

Ohh, what did he plead her to do? Well, you'll have to read the book to find out. :)

4. Who to tag...who to tag...I think I'll go with Heather, Johnny (though I don't know if he's into doing memes, I guess I'll find out soon enough), and Connie!

Dancing in the dark

Well, not exactly...

Today I volunteered for an experiment (I can't say with who) to test estimation of distance in a night vision environment. TRES COOL!

Basically, I was in a simulated 'dark room' and I had to stare at a computer screen and judge the distance in metres between two dots on the screen. One metre is just over three feet, for you Americans out there.

So I made the assumption that all the distances were between 1-9 metres apart, well you know what they say about people who "assume", right? (You make an ASS out of U and ME). Each round consisted of about 25 instances where I had to judge the distance.

The first round - I punched in the numbers and got no feedback as to how close I was, I mean really, the dots looked REALLY close together. Plus, I wasn't given a reference point, so I really was flying by the seat of my proverbial pants.

The second round - I punched in the numbers and after each time I input the numbers the real answer would come up. So things that I thought in the first round were 2 metres apart were actually 18...oops.

The third round - I punched in the numbers and, again, got no feedback. But I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Overall, the experiment was really interesting and proved that I have absolutely no sense of distance estimation. :P

I have to go again next Thursday and then again in a month. On the upside, I get paid for basically getting everything wrong. While it's not a King's ransom, it's an extra $40 that I didn't have before, and any money that I get from these experiments is going in the "loonie/toonie" jar. :)

When I left, I asked the scientist if she had any other projects on the horizon or knew of anyone else that did. She said she would poke around and get back to me...by the time I got home from work today, I already got an email from her thanking me for my participation and with information for another project to do. Woo! Basically once I have my foot in the door, it opens up for more and more tests/experiments/research projects.

I'll keep that in mind...

Your Fortune Is

Man who live in glass house should change clothes in basement.

The Wacky Fortune Cookie Generator

What's yours? (Post them in the comment section.) ;)

Another day older and deeper in debt...

Well, not exactly, but we did celebrate our 4 month LIDiversary this evening since we were away all weekend. :)

Josh and I hit the road at 8:00 Saturday morning and headed into Buffalo for some weekend shopping fun. Well, fun for me at least. We started off at the Galleria Mall which we got to around 10:30 and I bought a couple sweaters, and some shoes for my mom. She had them in another colour but they didn't have her size the last time she was in, so I picked up two pairs for her.

After that we went to lunch at Applebees, and I had an oriental chicken salad. Yum! It's the one thing I really enjoy on their menu. (I can hear you saying, "yeah right, who enjoys salad?" But it IS really good.)

Then we went to Stein Mart where I got another sweater and a leather wallet. Josh noticed that there was a liquor store next door so we got 4 bottles of this. We acquired the taste for it when we last went to Buffalo to meet up with Nic and Tim. It's got a nice little kick on it.

We then headed over to Eastern Hills Mall where I purchased (yet another) sweater. I'm sorry people, but you can't beat buying a sweater for $12 or $13 at Macy's. ;)

Josh and I were kind of tired so we went back to the hotel (more on that later) to relax a little. We wanted to go here for dinner, but their location was closed. Grrr. So we settled on this restaurant instead. I've gone there before, it wasn't bad, but it certainly can't compare to the other.

I sent Josh over to put our names in for a seat and told him I'd be back in a few minutes. I went back to B&B and bought some more shower gels (I think my new favourite scent is pink grapefruit) and a bathrobe.

After dinner we walked around the mall, when I suddenly remembered we needed one of these. Yes, we're wild and crazy people...

Then we decided to go to Mrs. Field's and get four chocolate chip cookies to celebrate our four month LIDiversary. Not exactly a good combination though, sake and chocolate chip cookies...

We then headed back to the hotel, when all of a sudden we heard what can only be described as a herd of elephants bowling upstairs. It went on for about 20 minutes, so I had Josh call the front desk to complain. They said they would call the room and tell them to quiet down.

It was quiet for a few minutes and then it started up again. We waited another 20 minutes, and again, Josh called down to the front desk. This time they said they were going to send someone up to talk to them.

It was quiet for a bit, then the noise started again. This time I called down to the front desk and I was told "Yes, we know about the noise and I believe there are about 12 police officers on the floor attending to the problem." I asked what happened and they said "We believe there are some underage people in the room." I told the clerk that I wanted them to do something for us with regards to the bill. She asked what I'd like, and I said "I'll let you ponder that overnight and come up with a solution when we check out in the morning."

I told all of this to Josh and he didn't believe there were 12 police officers on that floor, so we decided to go up and check things out. We can't confirm or deny if there were, in fact, 12 up there, but we did see 4 standing outside the room. ;)

I decided that we should probably talk to the desk clerk and manager then, just in case they weren't working in the morning. Well, guess what? They comped the bill for us. That's right. We got our hotel stay paid for because of those arses upstairs. Woo!

We went back upstairs and settled in for the night, since we were going to go out for breakfast with Nic and Tim!

We got to the restaurant early and waited for them, but unfortunately Tim couldn't make it since he had to take care of Ginger. But we had a lovely time with Nic and our pancakes. ;)

Lots of adoption talk (what else?) and talked to a couple sitting next to us who were considering adoption as well. What a small, weird world. When Nic said that we were adopting, the couple at first thought she meant her and I, but we ended up clarifying that. It was a cute misunderstanding.

After breakfast we headed back on the road and had an interesting drive home. It started out with rain in Williamsville, progressed to freezing rain in Buffalo (proper), and then near white-out conditions as we got to Hamilton. It was NOT a fun drive home...but we made it (and Nic made it home safely as well.) :)

Fourth down and Buffalo has the ball...

So today is our four month LIDiversary. Yup, we're logged in four months. We got an email from our agency yesterday confirming what I pretty much already knew or assumed. The wait has officially grown to 24 months, with a big question mark hanging over the Olympics. We still don't know what's going to happen with that, but whatever. There's nothing we can do about the wait, but wait. So wait we shall...

Josh and I are heading into Buffalo this weekend for shoppy fun (though he doesn't see it that way...MEN) and fun with Nic and Tim, I think at this point it's only going to be for breakfast on Sunday.

7000?!

Well it seems that I've gotten my 7000th hit, or will have it by the time I hit "Publish Post". So that means that since December 29th I've gotten 1000 hits - TWO WEEKS! Is my life really *that* exciting? ;)

I'd like to thank all the little people...

Sushi pizza

Ok, Kathy, are you drooling yet? A few of you asked in a previous post what sushi pizza is, well a picture's worth a thousand words.

Actually, this is the only picture that I found of sushi pizza. The one that Josh and I went out for looked A LOT better than that and it was oriented differently. I'm not actually enamoured with this picture, it makes it look, well, kind of messy.

Basically what it is, is grilled rice with a bit of sweetness and a little bit of a wasabi kick. On top of the rice is a tiny pat of wasabi, topped with avacado, then a HUGE piece of salmon (the salmon pieces were so long and thick that they hang over the edges of the rice), and then salmon roe on top. Josh had the salmon and tuna pizza. I'm really not a fan of the taste of tuna sushi, but he loves it.

We went to Ichiban Sushi (there are about 20 locations all around Toronto, plus there are more opening this year). We sat down and they served green tea and beans, then miso soup...Mmmm.

Anyways, you get 6 pieces and it's $9.95 (the tuna sushi pizza is $12.95), it's considered an appetizer, but the pieces are so large, we couldn't eat anything after that. Though sometimes, Josh indulges in a spicy tuna handroll in addition to that.

Anyways, when the bill came, it was $26.10 and for those of you that read my blog regularly know that I'm collecting loonies and toonies, so I handed him $40.10 and asked for loonies and toonies in the change. He came back with $23.90 in change. Oops. :P Gotta love paying $16.10 instead...

(Some of you think that the picture is what we had last night, it's not...it's just a picture I found online - for illustration. But next time I might take a picture of it. I wonder what kind of strange looks I'd get in the restaurant though.) ;)