Last Friday
- Winnipeg!
- Crossing the border post-passport requirement was quite easy. The man asked questions like where we were going, why we're going there, where are we staying, who's car is this, any drugs on board, etc. All without asking for passports. Or leaving the building. Apparently he said "eh" twice. I didn't notice.
- Once we got a couple towns in - St-Pierre or something - all the road signs had two copies, one in English and the other in French. Thoughts on this topic below.
- The lady at our hotel's desk had a really thick French accent and a bit of a language barrier. She asked how my [relatively common] first name is spelled, then tried spelling it with a P instead of a B; but I have a long Polish last name that, although it is pronounced exactly how it's spelled, everyone gets tripped up over. I usually tell people they pronounced it right when it was a bit off. But seriously, this lady pronounced my name clearer than I pronounce it sometimes. I think it was the clearest thing I heard her say. It was kinda cool.
- After fighting with rush hour traffic, a crappily-printed map, bright sun + wet roads + no sunglasses + lack of visor on driver's side, and figuring out how to pay for parking, we had dinner at Elephant and Castle, an awesome British pub that the bf recommended. I had the Union Jack chicken (a chicken sandwich with Guinness BBQ sauce), a long island (it was my first time not being carded!), and we split a Bailey's cheesecake. OMG yum. The only bad thing was that - possibly due to being drunk without realizing it - I dropped a piece of cheesecake, covered in chocolate sauce, on my scarf. It's still brown and crusty in spots. I have no idea how to get the stain out.
- Walked around downtown a bit. Found ketchup-flavored potato chips at the discount store. Stopped by a game/toy store, where I bought a stuffed Snuffy. We found a basket of Giant Microbes; the bf bought Black Death and spent the rest of the trip annoying us with a song that would the be theme to the Black Death's very own sitcom. Ivory, on the other hand, didn't buy anything, and spent the rest of the trip saying "I wish I would've gotten AIDS."
- Saw Volver at Cinematheque, a small indie theatre. It started with a preview of Curse of the Golden Flower, which had both the same director and lead actress as Raise the Red Lantern, which I really enjoyed. I'll have to try to see Curse sometime. Anyway, I really enjoyed Volver. I recommend checking it out once it hits the States. Ivory wrote a review, and I agree with her, except that I speak very little Spanish, I'm not familiar with Almodovar's work, and I don't see plot twists as easily as others do. I also thought it was weird that Penelope Cruz' character always had perfect clothes/hair/makeup while her co-actresses had very simple looks. I still recommend it though.
Last Saturday
- Tim Horton's for breakfast. They have baked goods that are delicious for a fast food chain, and weird but delicious menu items like hot smoothies. Why isn't this chain in the States beating the shit out of Krispy Kreme?
- Then a stop at The Forks market. Food downstairs, shops upstairs, an ice skating rink outside, and designated areas for buskers. There was an awesome accordion player there while we ate. I left with a smoothie, a skein of blue hemp, and a toy from a chocolate ball:
- Maybe it was just the gas station we stopped at, but learning how to pump gas in Canada was weird. You have to preset a dollar amount, or something. I'm sure there was a way to fill the whole tank, but I couldn't figure it out.
Final Canada thoughts
- The double-language thing was kinda weird. Like, if English is what's predominantly spoken in the province, shouldn't the French speakers at least know enough English to get around? And wouldn't it save money by not having to make two copies of every road sign, or save space for recipes on food products, or etc.? But on the other hand, it's kinda cool to see two different communities living in the same area like that. I suppose I should be used to it, being from the Minneapolis area and seeing a whole menagerie of non-English speakers, but it's cool that Canada acknowledges that both communities exist and is appreciative of them all.
- Canada seems much friendlier than the States, and I'm not talking about the people in this case. Let's say you're driving through a construction zone. In the States, you see a sign that says "end road work". In Canada, you see signs that say "end construction zone, thank-you". Another example: on buses in Minneapolis, there is a sign that says "yield to buses, MN statute [insert number here]". In Canada, the sign is a picture of a car yielding to a bus, and only says "thank-you" and "merci". Would people in the States be friendlier if the road signs were more respectful?
- In Minnesota, you constantly see license plates from different areas, namely Wisconsin, North Dakota, Manitoba, and Ontario, depending on where you are. I didn't see a single non-Manitoba plate the whole time we were there (although apparently we drove by a Saskatchewan plate, and we ran into a group of American girls looking for good bars). I dunno, I thought it was weird.
- In retrospect, it'd be cool if gas pumps in the States had that amount selecting option, so you wouldn't accidentally pump $10.01 when you only wanted $10. But only if there was an easy way to select the "fill up my whole tank plzkthx" option.
Last Sunday
- Got up at the asscrack of dawn. Drove to the cities, not remembering much of the trip. Got home just in time to leave again and...
- ...go to alcohol sales responsibility training at the 'dome. Paid training. It'll only cover like, a tank of gas, but still.
Last Monday
- SLEPT IN
- Sold my guitar for $57. It's not that I didn't like it, I've just moved on to other interests and I could use some extra money. I then went out and bought a laptop bag, two sets of knitting needles, and five skeins of yarn.
- Transferred files and knit (see pics below).
Tuesday
- Geek day with the bf and co. I bought five six-sided dice, and then we gamed with my new character in tow.
- The Rifts game is kind of weird to me, since I'm used to sitting in or playing games like D&D and Heroes Unlimited, which can be described as slightly more cutesy than Rifts. Rifts is all futuristic, and you need a ton of armor, none of which looked overly appealing to me. My character's a psi-druid, though, so I'm playing a psychic with an affinity with animals/nature, and that's pretty cool. Hopefully the game will get more interesting as I play more, and hopefully I won't get tired and cranky as early as I did.
- Before I got tired, I was working on a couple knitting projects when I wasn't throwing dice or petting cats. The bf wanted me to knit a skull scarf for him, and I started it. Here's what I have done so far:
That gap in stitches is supposed to be the bottom of the nose hole. Those four stitches are bound off. Now, the next row in the pattern is telling me to do three yarn overs at that spot. I know how to do the stitch, but if I don't have any stitches on the needle in the first place, then what the hell do I do? Especially since the picture at the bottom of the pattern page shows strands of yarn going straight across the hole. If anyone has any advice, comments would be appreciated. You don't have to be a Blogger member to comment on here anymore. Yep.
Wednesday
- Hung out with the bf again.
- Went to a yarn boutique. I loved it; he was bored. I wish the yarn wasn't so expensive though.
- Went to lunch/dinner at a Thai restaurant by his house. Thai food is very similar to Chinese, but is just different enough that I'm not a huge fan. Their cream cheese wontons have onions in them. That's not right, yo. Thai iced tea is amazing, though.
- A friend of the bf's came over and played video games for a while. I knit, then took over the PS2 and played Katamari Damacy. I got pissed off at it and almost threw the controller at the tv. Yeah, I went back to knitting.
Thursday
- Made plans to hang out with the bf again. Got pissed when he didn't understand what I thought were simple directions and he got lost in St. Paul, causing a 20min trip to take over an hour. He took me to KFC and I got a Famous Bowl. I felt a little better.
- Met up with his sister and her bf. We ended up getting Viet food - which I wasn't overly thrilled about, since we just had Asian food the day before - and bubble tea.
- Went to buy booze. Got pissed when the bf interrupted me to talk to his sister. I didn't talk to him much for the rest of the night, except when I was too drunk to care.
- I finished one glove though:
I tried increasing the size of the thumb hole to fit my toe thumbs, but it turns out that not only did I not have to, the size difference made the whole glove sit differently on my hand. I wish the thumb and finger openings were longer, and I should've bound my stitches off in a looser style. So, I started over.
Friday
- Day to myself. Sleep in, avoid people, not buy anything. It helped my mood a bit.
- Spent the whole day transferring files like crazy, so I wouldn't have to bring my old comp back to school or leave files behind.
Saturday
- Watched the bf get a tattoo. I wanted one too. I'm jealous. But first I need to get my tax refund, which requires actually getting my taxes done. Yeah.
- Went to his friends' apartment to drink. I got comfortably drunk and watched some of the guys play a zombie killing video game. Some of the others played drinking games and got horrendously drunk. One guy was imitating either a T-rex or a zombie. He was puking half an hour later. I was that drunk once. I don't see the point in doing it again.
- I also scored a couple knitting needles from one of the girls. I guess someone had given them to her, but she already had those sizes, so she passed them on to me.
Sunday
- Had brunch with the bf's mom and stepdad. The food was okay, but hey, free meal. Then they gave me a few giant skeins of blue yarn and a few crochet hooks, leftover from an afghan his late wife didn't finish before she passed away. I don't know what I'm going to do with it all... maybe make a really long scarf.
- Drove back.
- Cut my hair again. It's now really short in the back, with no length difference on the top.
Today
- Holy shit, I need to get stuff done.
4 comments:
Ah! A cable glove! Awesomeness. I got so frustrated when I was trying to learn cables freshman year that I haven't tried since. But the book I used is also the one that didn't tell me that moving the yarn from the back to the front when changing from a knit to a purl makes your work unfuckingcrappy.
I'd say just wrap the yarn around the needle for the YO, but that sounds wrong and weird (although, knowing how vague those patterns can get, is probably the way to do it).
Now I want to go finish my sock and not do hw. Thanks. :^P
I didn't know to move the yarn when switching either. And then I learned that that's what a YO is. Heh.
I tried the yarn-wrapping method and it didn't work, cause you then have to knit stitches into the YO stitches. I'm wondering if I have to pick up stitches from the bindoff? Or maybe I'll just tweak the pattern so that I pull the yarn across the hole, like it looks in the picture, and do increases/decreases on the edges of the holes.
And tonight, I'll be working on gloves instead of doing all the other shit I should be doing, so don't feel bad. :D
Hmm. Maybe something like the backwards loop method would work:
http://www.littleturtleknits.com/backwardslooptutorial.htm
It's casting on, so it's got the nice clean bottom to go from. Google may have a better tutorial somewhere -- I can't remember if that's the one I used when I had to do that, but those pics help. That pattern's random that it says YO.
I successfully finished my sock this evening, business project be damned. So now I have two socks without pairs. Yay. :^D
Ooh, I might have to try that. Although I'm thinking of scrapping this project and trying a different kind of skull scarf, like this kind of pattern or something. Cause the holes where I made the increases on the sides? Not cool.
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