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Camping Gear

Originally uploaded by peechie.

In anticipation of our upcoming canoe/camping trip, Neil and I went out this past weekend to stock up on supplies.

We’ve both done our fair-share of camping, though it’s all been car-camping - the backpacking thing is pretty new to us. Of course, that meant we have gotten away with owning bulky, heavy camping stuff and reappropriating household goods to see us through the trip.

Luckily, we’re going with a pretty large group (Neil’s family), so we didn’t have to equip ourselves with an entire backpacker’s arsenal of necessities. His parents are taking care of food, and have all the cooking tools, plates, utensils and dehydrated foodstuffs we’ll need for sustinence over the five days.

It also helps that we aren’t strictly backpacking, we’re canoeing, so things that would normally be a very bad idea (a regular-sized tent and sleeping bags) aren’t really that big a deal.

The big “areas” we’ve taken responsibility for, for the group, are clean water, first-aid, and ropes (this whole hanging food from trees thing should be interesting).

And between equipping ourselves with that, the necessary technical clothing (I may be okay with not showering, but I am NOT okay with not having dry socks or clean underwear) and a few other convenience accessories - holy crap it starts to add up.

And so, to lessen the burning feeling as funds leech away from our bank accounts, I figured I’d at least get some joy out of it by opening up a wee contest for my entertainment and yours!

Guess how much all the stuff in the picture cost!

If you click through to the flickr photo, there are notes on the details and quantity of each item.

All goods were purchased at either 3Vets or MEC. I can also tell you that the most we paid for any item on there was $75.

Leave your guess in the comments. All guesses must be in Canadian dollars. Winner goes Price is Right style - closest without going over.

The prize will be either a $10 MEC card (locals only, and you must give me your mailing address) or a $10 online gift certificate to Amazon (.ca or .com - depending on where you are).

I’ll post the winner when we return, on August 16th.

Happy guessing!

UPDATE: And the winner is Yvonne with a guess of $900, closest to our astronomical total of $987.50 (after tax). I couldn’t believe it either - everything we purchased fit into a single laundry hamper - but I think Neil’s $41-per-pair fancy-schmancy underwear might’ve had something to do with it…

Thanks for playing along - and it all did come in pretty handy on the trip, which I’ll get to in the next post.

A collection of random things, because I am seriously all out of drama for this week.

I’m typing up a fact sheet and for some reason, my brain thought “Monitoring” and my fingers output “Minotauring” - because it’s important you get all your half-man/half-bull needs taken care of.

We were supposed to be moving this month. Our condo is not finished yet (thus far the estimate is still December). This makes me very sad. Not because I want the penthouse views or better layout or hardwood floors. No - because I HATE the countertops here. They are all super porous laminate that stains like a mofo. The kitchen counters are splotched with red wine, coffee and other mystery stains. Know what the bathroom counter has absorbed? Smells. Including the smell of wet, nasty dog from the skunk incident last week. The new place has granite. And a damn dog-washing station in the parkade level, so she doesn’t have to shake all over our bathroom.

Three words that made my day: Man Eating Badgers.

I have taken to going outside and caressing our monster tomato plant, just because then my hands will smell like tomato plant - which is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the best smells in the world.

Remember the awesomeness that is the Bodygroom and the shaveeverywhere.com campaign? They’re back! This time with the Story of Sack! Now that the sun’s come out, are you beach ready?

I wish I could share more at the moment - I can’t, but soon!

In the meantime, enjoy this video of my dog, licking the dregs out of an ice cream container.

Dog! Eats Icecream!
from Jen

After my Food Network rant the other day, I must make a confession.

I use a lot of disposable plastics in the kitchen.

I do use a lot of plastic and glass re-usable containers, but I’m also guilty of using a great deal of zip-top bags and cling-film.

Not to mention all the tinfoil, now that it’s BBQ Season again.

What on earth can you do with used tinfoil?

Solutions I’ve come up with so far are to use as many re-usable containers as possible instead of baggies, and to try and get a couple uses out of baggies when I do need to use them.

But I’m at a bit of a loss for ideas when it comes to reducing my use of clingfilm (primarily for covering big casserole dishes or re-wrapping cheese, etc.) and tinfoil.

Do you have any brilliant ideas?

Someone was asking me yesterday about social networks. And what with the constant stream of emails and posts about facebook, twitter, et al, I figured I may as well chime in on my stance.

No.

Just no.

My feelings on social networks and web 2.0 in general strongly mirror Derek’s, who said it so well, I’ll just give you his words:

I have this thing about trying to keep my online existence stable, so if you link to something of mine, it will still be around in a few years. If I gave you my email address or ICQ account number in 1996, or my blog URL in 2000, it still works…. I like to have an archive that persists.

I have this blog. I have my photos on flickr. I have a profile on LinkedIn. I really think that’s enough. I’ve had the same email address and cell phone number for at least 8 years, with no intentions of changing them.

But when you get down to the nitty gritty of my reasons, it’s honestly mostly out of sheer laziness. It’s a universal truth that any product with staying power will do one of two things: Increase Pleasure or Reduce Pain. I enjoy blogging, I find WordPress easy to use. Pleasure Increased. I very rarely included pictures in my blog posts, because I found it a huge hassle to upload them to my webspace and remember the code to insert an image (doing it so rarely meant I never bothered memorizing it). Enter flickr, and whaddya know - an easy way to store my photos, and include them on my blog. Pain reduced.

As for LinkedIn - It’s an easy way for me to remain connected with past colleagues, especially now that I’m job hunting, and maintain a network in a fairly unobtrusive way. It also keeps professional networking easy for the socially uncomfortable (myself included) by setting the tone for a conversation. Asking my old boss for a recommendation on my LinkedIn profile is easy for both of us, rather than dropping him a line out of the blue and asking for referrals or references when we haven’t even spoken in 3 years. LinkedIn for me is reducing pain and increasing pleasure because I’ve gotten some great introductions through the service as well.

Don’t even get me started on Second Life. Dealing with Real Life is more than enough most days.

So while I’m not writing on walls, or tweeting, or soaring through virtual worlds, or whatever else people do on the myriad of social networks available - I AM on the internet. I’m googleable by about 12 different variations of my name, and not at all hard to find or get in touch with.

Also, curmudgeon that I am, I’m really trying to spend my energies on valuable and authentic social relationships. Someone who only finds me because I happen to be on facebook, and starts a conversation with “So, what’ve you been up to in the past… 10 years…” is, nine times out of ten, just curious about where people in their past are now. If there was actually a solid basis for friendship, we’d have probably kept in touch a little more regularly.

However, the person who takes the time to google, find my blog, photos or profile, and actually makes an effort to keep in touch a little longer than the lifecycle of the average social networking site (Friendster who?) - well that’s what I want online social networking to deliver.

Our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives.
~Paulo Coelho

It’s no secret to those who know me and care to ask that the whole job-hunt has me pretty miserable these days. I could say that I’m trying to harness the power of positive thinking and all that jazz, but in reality there are as many days that end with tears as those that end with smiles or just exhausted ambivalence.

Yet I still don’t feel compelled to blog about it.

About a year ago, you could hardly stop me from pouring out my misery online at being single and the horrible injustices I was suffering while attempting to find someone suitable to date. Or, if not suitable, at least not wanting to make me scoop my brains out with a spork to forget the encounter.

Then I found someone - and things were really steadily going up in my life. Great man, great job, great dog, great home. That lasted about a year - you’d think that wouldn’t be long enough to erase the cynicism, vitriol and spite in my wee, black heart when one of those ceased to exist in my world.

You’d be right. And still, I felt no compulsion to blog about it.

And I didn’t really understand why. Until now.

I attempted to throw a party last weekend. For all intents and purposes, most things about my social circle and the invite were the same. Early reports indicated it would be an even bigger success, since the location was far more desirable to potential party-goers. Last year, 90% of the people who RSVP’d “Yes” attended, plus a motley assortment of extras. This year, barely half the confirmed attendees bothered showing up.

What’s different?

This year I’m not nearly as interesting.

A year ago I was a dating blogging sensation, who had just entered into a relationship with a man who had his own fair share of scandal.

This year? We’re just another set of yuppies. For the most part, fortunate and exceedingly happy ones.

I could fill pages and pages with cutting testimony of my job-hunt frustrations and foibles.

But underneath it all lies a desire to keep these personal feelings for myself and those who have more than an idle curiosity about them.

I’d rather live quieter, knowing who my true friends are.

I’d rather be happy, than interesting.

Fiancé is sick
Fever, aches, chills - a big mess
Ginseng Pills. I’m well.

I keep meaning to write, but I really have nothing exciting or interesting to say.

But I got sick of seeing the Fiber Bar entry, so here is a boring, uninteresting update.

Read on if you dare…

Because I have no kids, and don’t know too many people who do, I was completely oblivious to the fact that March 15, 2008 is the first weekend of Spring Break. So plans to have a wedding at a destination resort that day were firmly thwarted. The weekend following that is Easter. Of the remaining March Saturdays we’ve decided on the 29th. So a year from today we’ll be gettin’ hitched. Kookookachoo.

I’ve enlisted the services of a professional resumé writer, and used the past week as time to get my portfolio together and get a bunch of other long-overdue errands done. I still don’t like being at home all day, but I am getting used to it.

We’re hosting the 2nd annual Cinco de Mayo fiasco. Hopefully with slightly less hostess-experienced fiascos this year. That said, if you were invited last year, check your email inboxes (or the spam folders - it was sent through evite). If you somehow didn’t get an invite this year, this is the one occasion I open my house for all and sundry to partake in the debauchery and tequila. Comment or drop me a line if you’d like to join us.

Today I’m also playing Florence Nightengale. There’s some sort of flu-like thing going around and Neil has it. We also had his youngest sister over last night, and she sounds pretty sick too. So far I’m calling it the Watkiss Death Rattle, and popping ColdFX like there’s no tomorrow in an effort to ward it off. Then again, Gill has it too, so perhaps it’s some kind of Nerd Flu.

See. Told you life was boring ’round these parts. Anything exciting up with any of you?

Update (5:26pm): I am feeling snotty, and a wee bit achey. This does not bode well.

Every now and again I’m sent products to review. The latest of these are a new granola bar product, the Fiber One Chewy Bars - Oats and Chocolate (made by General Mills - I’d link to a product site if they had one).

I haven’t personally eaten a mass produced chewy granola bar in years. Now I remember why. They just taste like cardboard and glue, and these bars were no exception. Bland starchy ingredients, held together in an amalgam of high fructose corn syrup and confectioner’s shellac. Oh, and some chocolate drizzled on top. THAT CHOCOLATE FOOLS NO ONE!

But I did eat the whole box (5 bars) over a period of a couple weeks. What can I say - they were in my desk drawer, and sometimes my hunger is only rivaled by my laziness. But they were obviously not that bad if I didn’t throw the box away upon the first bite - and I’ve been known to do that with stuff I’ve paid for myself, nevermind stuff that came to me for free.

I had a whole laundry list of pros, cons and ingredient horror stories about the bars once I saw the whole box - but then I saw the review up at Fitness Mantra, and realized it was far more inspired than mine ever would be - so I suggest you read it instead to get a better idea of the product.

The bar has what amounts to 1/3 of your daily requirement of fiber. I eat a pretty high fiber diet anyway, so the extra wasn’t noticeable to me - however the box did come to me with a disclaimer:

As you may be aware, health professionals often recommend gradually increasing fiber intake to help reduce gastrointestinal discomfort that initially may be experienced by some people when more fiber is added to their diet. Note that each Fiber One Chewy Bar has 9 grams of fiber—about 1/3 the Daily Value. If you’re not used to eating a high fiber diet, you may want to begin with just half a bar and gradually work up to a full bar as your body becomes used to the fiber.

Olestra-style anal leakage anyone?

Bottom line about the Fiber One bars - If you’re going to eat a chewy granola bar anyway, maybe hate your body a smidgen less, and get one that has some extra fiber in it. Because god knows if chewy granola bars are a diet staple of yours, you can probably use all the help you can get.

If you’re not a chewy granola bar eater, then just keep passing these on by like you would any other chewy bar. General Mills might not thank you (or me for that matter), but your body will.

I always knew there was a reason I liked tax accountants.

Neil was a bit… delinquent… in his taxes and hasn’t done his 2005 return yet. Considering the deadline for 2006 is now coming up, he sucked it up and called an accountant to deal with filing it all. He had some capital gains/losses and real-estate transactions that spanned the years to deal with, so it made sense to have a professional go through it all to make sure it was all tickety boo.

But thus far, the best piece of accounting service we’ve gotten is some advice on a way to move some money around that we already have and make thousands.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that we’ve put a deposit down on a condo that’s supposed to be completed sometime this summer.

Well we figured that because Neil has already owned a home, we don’t qualify for the New Homebuyer’s Plan to withdraw up to $20,000 from an RRSP, tax-free, for part of the down payment.

We were wrong. “We” don’t qualify - but “I” do. Each person on the deed for a house may contribute individually from their RRSPs, up to $20,000 to be repaid over 15 years. So if “We” qualified, we could each contribute that much (if we had it of course).

Since the initial deposit on the condo, Neil and I have been furiously dumping money into a high-interest savings account over the past year in order to minimize the amount of mortgage we’ll have upon completion and cover closing costs. Thanks to some shrewd finanacial management on both our parts, it’s a sum nearing the $20k mark.

Conveniently, thanks to my compulsive need to be employed, even when said employment didn’t yeild enough income to contribute regularly, my RRSP allowance had more than enough room to contribute that amount.

So, with 72 hours to spare before the 2006 contribution deadline, Neil and I wrangled together a bank draft and RRSP account, and moved our money in the nick of time.

What did this accomplish?

Instead of my usual $1000 tax return again this year, I’ll be getting a cheque from the Canada Revenue Agency for a whopping $6000+. The conditions of getting that money into the house, along with qualifying for the plan, are just that the money must remain in the RRSP for 89 days (no problem there) and the bank will have to write a cheque for the amount directly to the sellers of the property, to ensure it’s being used for a home purchase.

Of course it’s not all sunshine and rainbows and frolicking in large piles of cash. That extra $5k will be used for some significant expenses, including going back into the house account, so we can meet our savings goal if emergencies come up, or my unemployment lasts any significant period of time.

In the meantime, though, it’s nice to be able to use one of the government’s RRSP borrowing programs for a significant benefit. I had no idea the program could be quite as beneficial as it has been to us this year.

And we very nearly missed it - if not for a poignant question about our financial planning and some great advice from our accountant.

Tax accountants. Not only are they useful, they are also (from my limited experience working in a firm) HIGHLY entertaining when intoxicated.

I just wanted to interrupt your morning to gloat about the whole Daylight Savings thing.

I think it’s AWESOME!

Normally I’m a surly cow about the whole “losing an hour of sleep” thing - but that was before jetlag!

Since we got back, I have NOT been able to sleep past 4:00 or 5:00am (including the weekend). I was completely crashing out around 8:00pm. Naps were powerless against the jetlag.

And now? Last night when I was getting sleepy, the clock was well on its way to 10:00pm!

And this morning? I woke up mostly refreshed and ready to spring to life at 6:15am (which is when I normally wake up anyway).

Perhaps I should schedule some debilitating sleep deprivation before the time change every year!

You may now return to your regularly scheduled Monday.

Today is a good day in my world.

In fact, I’m in such a good mood, I’m going to do something completely uncharacteristic.

Blog about cats!

If you know me well enough, you know that usually the best thing I have to say about cats is that they “taste good with rice and teriyaki sauce.”

But I found a cat video that I actually liked enough to a) make me want a cat to do this with, and b) want to share with you!

So go forth, and check out this YouTube video.

Embedding has been “disabled by request,” but I assure you, it’s worth the clickthrough.

Darren wants to know. I answered the survey, so should you!

It’s going to be used in his pannel at this year’s Northern Voice conference, which I plan on attending this year - so answer, if only so I learn something new and entertaining about you during that particular timeslot.

And if you don’t have 10 minutes for a survey (and who doesn’t have 10 minutes?), just give me a bulletpoint answer in the comments. Because now I’m curious too.

I LOVE Music, but sometimes I have trouble articulating those tastes to others. I have no problem telling someone “I like this, give it a listen and maybe you will too,” but that generally isn’t terribly convincing - so I don’t share the music I love all that often.

However, I can share the music someone else loves!

From the book Pocket DJ by Sarah Lewitinn, I give you, a list of the Top Ten Motown Tracks, as picked by the Kaiser Chiefs.

Hopefully it adds a little groove to your weekend:

10 Edwin Starr - Twenty Five Miles
09 Stevie Wonder - Fingertips, Pt. 2
08 Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - The Tracks of My Tears
07 Junior Walker and the All Stars - (I’m a) Road Runner
06 The Temptations - I can’t Get Next To You
05 The Isley Brothers - This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)
04 Martha and the Vandellas - (Love Is Like a) Heat Wave
03 Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston - It Takes Two
02 The Temptations - Get Ready
01 Stevie Wonder - Uptight (Everything’s Alright)

I am exhausted.

That is all.

Goodnight!