*Dances* I can Finally call smc2 my husband. I am one happy happy camper.

Gah! Seven Days Left.
And folks are arriving tomorrow. Time to clean like demons.

Amazing thunder storm last night.  Our apartment faces south west so we didn't see it coming until the edge started passing over. I have never seen the edge of a storm blow in that fast. It was absolutely spectacular to watch this big dark swirling mass of low cloud just eat up the sky and then rip it apart with lightning strike after lightning strike. An earlier storm had caused one of the breakers in our apartment to flip already so not wanting to unpack the cupboard a second time in the same day we turned off everything and just sat in the dark and watched the show.
Its times like this that I miss the view I had back in my old apartment. I was high enough up that I had a view strait across the lake to the downtown skyline. Perfect for storm watching.
Well with any luck our next place will have a balcony that doesn’t get too much exposure so we can sit outside and appreciate storms like that properly.

My main monitor is bricked. It suffers from White Screen of Death, a surprisingly common problem among LCD monitors. The good news is, it should be fixable. The bad news is neither Sean nor I are computer savvy enough to open up my monitor and poke around with a soldering iron ourselves, so I have to wait for the weekend so we can bring my monitor in for repair. In the intern, I’m down to one dinky little 17 inch screen. Guh,  this screen is so cramped compared to my main, it's damn near impossible to get any proper work done.

I've been listening to www.ustream.tv/channel/lartist-at-work on Friday nights. It's great for getting me working on my own stuff. I don't know why but I find that I always work better when talking to or hang around other artists.
Kinda makes me want to open up a ventrillo server so all the artists I know can get together and chat.

I've also acquired yellow and orange eye shadow, and I love it.


 

So, Sean is prepared to admit that Edmonton isn't that bad. The weather was a tad cool but no where as bad as he'd been dreading and my folks have a very good internet connection considering how far out of town they are.

We went for dinner at my mom’s friend Roberta's house and we all quickly agreed that Sean is a younger fairer kindred brat spirit of Roberta's husband Kelly. Roberta offered me her sympathies.
We also picked up a bunch of Bison my folks were splitting with a bunch of friends. 400 some odd pounds of frozen deliciousness had to get loaded into the back of the Jeep and then divided up equally among everyone. (we got a small cut of the goods as well. le nom)

Since it is one of those things every newcomer to Edmonton must do Sean and I spent an entire day doing the mall crawl at the WEM. Oddly enough we did very little shopping and mostly just took in the sites, some good food and a movie. We did a hell of a lot more shopping down on White ave. We hit the Scottish shop and Sean ordered everything he was going to need for his outfit for the wedding. Mostly I just drooled at the thought of MIK (man in kilt) At Steeps we picked up a couple more tins of tea as well as struck up a conversation with the owner concerning the favors for the wedding. ^^

Also while we were there my dad made me a deal. Every week I would have to match distances with him on the rowing machine and in return he would put a little money towards Sean and my house fund. Since I'd been having a rough time keeping motivated on my own I leapt at the challenge. I've been grumbling about getting back in shape for a while now and I'd yet to find a way to replace doing the stairs at my old apartment.

Sean is a brat. He is very good at it. But sometime, every once in a great while, it backfires on him. Last night he got what was coming to him.
He decided to scare me with a blast of compressed air that we had sitting in the office. It was cold and of course I jumped and squeaked, which he found very amusing.  What he forgot was the fact that I had a cocked and loaded nerf gun on my desk, which I proceeded to nail him with. The extra layer of icing on this lovely revenge cake was when he dove for his nerf semi automatic, pumped it up, pulled the trigger and discovered that I had made off with all the darts in the thing days ago in order to practice with my new nerf gun.
Sean made for a wonderful moving target.

Sean and I have been talking a lot about different holiday traditions that our families did when we were young and I was curious to see what everyone else did for the Holidays.
As for me and my family, here are some of the traditions I remember the most.
1.) Santa got cookies and a glass of Sherry rather than milk when I was a kid.
2.) You were never allowed to pick the present you were going to open; someone else had to give it to you.
3.) We were allowed to open one present the 24th, the rest, plus any deliveries from santa were opened on the 25th.
4.) You had to wait till everyone was gathered around the Christmas tree before the presents got touched.
5.) Save that paper! My family never ripped open presents. We always tried to recycle the wrapping at least twice. Dad and grandpa would pass around their pocket knives just so the tape could be sliced open without damaging the paper. (Sean thinks we're absolutely nuts for this one)

One of the many things I learned from my mom when it comes to doing anything in the kitchen* is always start your holiday baking early. With that in mind, I decided to make gingerbread cookies. **
Sean heartily agreed. ***
Ingredients were gathered, I dug out the cooking paraphernalia necessary for the task, and printed out the recipe for quick and easy reference.****
A little over an hour later I'm back in the computer chair, sweaty, disheveled, picking gingerbread dough from under my fingernails wondering why certain kinds of culinary endeavors aren't listed as good exercise. Seriously, there is a reason most bakers have arms any gym goer would be envious of. I mean it; if you want to work off a good number of calories try making something that required kneading dough. The only trick is to not eat too much of the end product yourself.

The gingerbread recipe I use, makes a lot of cookies I typically half the recipe.

Rolled Ginger Cookies
2 cups shortening (I used half shortening half butter)
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 cups molasses
4 Tbs vinegar
10 cups all purpose flour
3 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
4 – 6 tsp ginger (plus a two inch piece peeling and grated)
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp cloves

Cream shortening and sugar. Beat in eggs, molasses, vinegar & ginger juice. Sift together dry ingredients and blend in (kneading the dough works very well as you add more dry ingredients.) Chill for 3 hours. Roll dough 1/8” thick for cookies or ¼” thick for gingerbread house pieces. . Rollout on a lightly floured surface and cut to desired shapes. Bake at 375 degrees F for 5-6 minutes. Makes 10 dozen cookies




* Aside from one or two things, but that's got very little to do with cooking.

** I tried making a gingerbread house last year which didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. So this year I decided to scale back.

*** The eggs were also getting a little too close to the best before date to not do something with them.

**** Last year I spent a lot of time running back and forth between the kitchen and the office. It's a real pain in the ass to try and scroll down when you’re covered in flour and molasses.

A big big thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday.

To celebrate Lex Tiff and I went to Starkers to get measured for our corsets. Dianna, the owner and designer is absolutely fantastic. Very open to ideas and very forthright with suggestions. Plus her cats are very sweet.
And to top off the evening we grabbed Sean and went to Demetra's for dessert.