Good Intent

Hmm...I wonder if I can pull off a short black bob? This lady makes me want one real bad.

Movember is Coming

Hubby is clean shaven and I don't like it. His funny facial hair definitely contributed to his Halloween costume though.

Ten very good reasons why you should grow a giant beard.

Dreadful Lovely

Halloween night!

Since we don't expect any children in our neck of the woods, I've removed most of the spooky decorations that littered the house during Friday night's party. Despite being far away from town, we had a good number of people show up - dancing, drinking and arguing by the bonfire ensued. We bought tons of liquor, and I was serving up yummy pumpkin-inspired drinks all night. I danced in high heels until 4 AM, and finally had to corral the last stragglers to bed at 5:30 AM. I think the crowing rooster was what finally convinced them to leave the fire. I suppose one of the by-products of being "rurally located" is that people ended up crashing at the house, so we woke up with about 12 people littering the floors. I was up (as always) after a short three-hour sleep, cooking our fresh eggs and potatoes on the woodstove for everyone to enjoy upon waking up. Super lovely.

It was a beautiful day on Saturday, so while some left for home, others stayed behind to kayak on the bay* or help with our chores. I wish I had some pictures to share of the AMAZING progress on the barn demo, but I've misplaced my dead iPhone (it was used as an mp3 player on Friday night) so no pictures today. We stacked tons of wood too, simultaneously clearing out the workshop that was housing the chopped up tree trunks from last fall.

Then Sunday we had blizzard-like weather. Mostly rain, but some fat wet snowflakes too. Perfect weather for sleeping in, puttering around the house, having a long bath (washing my dreaded hair...leftover from the costume getup on Friday), getting groceries and playing games with friends by the fire. So that's what we did :)

*The kayakers ran into Christine Fellows, who apparently gushed about the area and insisted she wanted to buy a cottage up the street. Hee.

Another One

The new profs girlfriend is here from Toronto doing work in my old lab space, and GUESS WHAT? She has super elfin features and a cute, woods-y style. Gelfing!

Offshoot

Hilarious consequence of multiple degrees and chem courses: when your mother tells you she has a chemical sensitivity to PPD, you can draw her the chemical structure.

He Dances to Bring her Back

Hubby says I'm not a sap, but this video is still cute a decade later:

Higher Purpose

Does that make me, like, an angel is this scenario?

Coast to Coast

The trumpet is such a great addition, I love it.

More Statistics

As I sit here staring at 19 furiously writing undergrads, I can't help but take note:


5 are boys, 14 are girls.
4 are lefties.
Everyone is wearing a hoodie (7), a t-shirt (5), a long sleeved knit shirt (6) or a tank top (1). Nobody has a shirt with a collar.
12 are wearing running shoes, 2 rubber boots, 2 ugg-style boots, 2 people with slip-on shoes and one pair of sandals (!).
Of the girls there is one braided hair, 3 ponytails, five top buns and five have loose hair around their shoulders.
12 are wearing denim, 7 are wearing athletic/yoga/sweat pants. No skirts.


This is excluding me of course, the freak with a twisted blue side ponytail, dress pants and high heels :)

Halloween party

We are having a halloween party in our house and I want it to look like this:

No problem! Also I've been pre-occupied with spooky playlists and costume details. Instead of woodland animals we've decided on a somewhat related theme: characters from C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. I went so far as to order those crazy contact lenses...despite being a grouchy miser in real life, Halloween costumes get a pass. I have to make myself budgets before going shopping because it gets ridiculous. For example, I have no idea why I thought buying candy this far in advance was a bright idea, but I did. I can't stop snacking, and I've had fuzzy "refined-sugar" teeth for three days now, gross. Serves me right.

Muhaha

Last night I dreamt of Halloween parties with drink-o Plinko and overweight superheroes. I bathed children not my own, and went walking in a midnight garden.

Frog the Dawg - Take Me Away [Flo Rida vs. Napoleon XIV] [mashupy.pl] by MashUp World PL04

I'm going mad! Life is beautiful all the time, flowers and chirping birds.

Familiar

Herding Cats

This is just the type of music I like to listen to when doing annoying-as-fuck paperwork. I love my bosses, and my job, but MAN are they lacking in some organizational skills; specifically as it relates to the business. They're just too busy teaching, writing grants and traveling to worry about corralling everything into a single binder or file.

Most pertinent information on the business' intellectual property is stored 1. in the brains of said bosses and 2. sprawled all over the collaboration software we've been using for five years. If our (small) collaborator across the ocean goes bankrupt, or looses their key employee, we are f*cked.

So that's what I've been doing for the past week.

red room

Good timing - it's harder than it looks.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life

On Friday before the Thanksgiving long weekend I asked a visiting scientist whether he was going to any special Canadian Thanksgiving meals. When he said no, I spontaneously invited his family (of three) to a meal at our house. Then later on that same day, while at a wild BYOB bowling party (yes, they exist in small towns with lax liquor laws), I discovered too many friends in the same predicament. So I started inviting people over to eat a Thanksgiving lunch at our house.

This is how I came to cook a Thanksgiving meal for twelve using one wood stove, one convention oven, one small hotplate and a slow cooker.

Two very late evenings later (2 AM bedtimes), the table was replete with local goods: four small chickens, gravy, two heaving piles of seasoned roasted potatoes, similarly high piles of fried green beans with cashews, maple-glazed carrots, stuffing, our own cranberry sauce, squash, turnip, pickles, kale chips, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, apple crisp, berry crisp, and apple cider to drink. Our guests had brought some bread and cabbage dishes, as well as one Tiramisu dessert.

Compulsive Natalie ™ was terrified we wouldn't have enough food. She was being crazy.

It was unseasonably warm this weekend, so we toured the scene of pastoral bliss (as one guest put it), and ate our dessert in the grass while drinking tea from our own mint plants. As a byproduct of compulsiveness, house projects that had gone unfinished for the last few months were frantically completed before our guests' arrival. It was a very lovely weekend, and I'm looking forward to going home to a clean house & a refrigerator full of left-overs.

As an outsider...

...I wonder, is the Republican party full of incredibly vapid but pretty people who abuse the phrase "hard knock"?

Snowy Songs

Not a particularly fabulous song by Kings of Convenience, but I was struck by the similarities to the classic Girl from Ipanema song. Less sun, more snow:

Anyway, I found the above video because I was actually looking for this song by Jose Gonzalez (also Nordic), which I would really like to learn on the guitar. It was the reason I wanted to pick up the instrument again after a long hiatus. Sadly, this hasn't happened...while cleaning my storage area a few days ago, I found my dusty guitar. Sigh.

MidweekSlump

Rainfall warning, storm surges, high winds. I'm emotional and drained and just want to nap in front of a fire today. DFS.

Overwhelming.Urge.To.Snark.On.Facebook.

(this too shall pass)

SERIOUS business

It was still September, during the intermission of a live concert, where I first asked friends of mine:

"So, what are going to be for Halloween?"

I guess we take it seriously here at oceanedgeblue, and my husband and I have been trading ideas back & forth for at least two weeks.

My first idea, since I own a ridiculous pair of skin-tight faux leather leggings and have seen a perfect LadyGaga-inspired wig at the local hardware store (random, I know) - was Sandy from Grease. My husband could totally pull off the young Travolta look too:

In the end we decided this was too cliche, we both basically hate the musical Grease, and I'm not sure I'm confident enough in my ass to wear the pants with enough sass.

Second option was a inspired by a stuffed pink cat toy my husband found at a friends place. The crazy grinned Cheshire Cat! So if we stuck to the couples costume, I guess the logical pair would be Alice:

Cute, yes. Clever? Not really. He'd probably die of heat in the full cat costume too. Heehee.

The latest option is inspired by this picture:

Winner of a costume contest put on by a favorite online store, I think the face paint for the deer is adorable. If we continue with the Disney theme, then this is Bambi....and the partner costume could be Flower the skunk? A skunk costume is really cute, especially on kids!

Relive childhood innocence! Cute cuddly woodland creatures! No skanky costumes in sight! WIN!