spoiled chinese girl

So it was my birthday last Tuesday, making me almost one week late for the post that I’m making, but it’s 51 weeks until I hit a quarter century. Crazy thoughts.

The birthday was low-key, not many people knew about it and fewer people cared. I traditionally hide away from the IAM/BME community by having my IAM page expire and I sit away for as long as possible whilst an account I’d pre-purchased to expire 6 months from the 5th tick away until I can no longer take it. This year it took less than 24 hours as I was back online fairly quickly.

However I avoided any and all “Happy Birthday” greetings through hiding the fact that its my birthday from the group. I’m pleased, as it always sort of irritated me, in that whole “Geez, go outside and do something” type of thing. I know people are just being friendly but that’s not my idea of friendly I suppose.

I was also invited out for dinner. The people I used to hang out with for most of my Ryerson GCM career we went out for Pizza Hut, which was a definate strange choice since we usually do something much more “Chinese” but they suggested it, and I wasn’t going to complain.

I got there early, and since getting there early, decided to go into the used cd/video store. Bought Season 7 of the Simpsons (which starts off with part two of who shot mr. burns… meaning I now need go get season 6 so I can comfortably watch part 1 as well.) and looked into getting a part time job there. It’d be interesting.

Did the pizza thing, and took home some pasta. The guys were great and got me a stack of cash for my day. (Generally we get gift cards whenever we know someone wants something, like a digital camera or a playstation… but since my general interests usually include unicycles, and drum kits, they thought it be wisest to just give me cash and let me figure out where to go shopping instead) which was uber-sweet.

That’s about it really I think. Also got a stack of cash from my parents. Both of which basically got put towards the phone bill that I racked up on the cell. Although in my wheelings and dealings to get a much better cell phone plan off the company, I scored myself a dark blue Motorola V3 RAZR… so it’s sort of like my present to myself I guess. It’s complicated to figure out.

Also on Thursday, my friend Alex got me the video game Guitar Hero for PS2.

I now need to purchase a PS2. 

So today was the company pot-luck for lunch.  I promised a pasta salaad because at the time there was only various kinds of meat on the menu and I needed at least something slightly vegitarian.  (I’m pretty sure my dish was totally vegan but I can’t be sure since some of it was prepackaged.  I know for a fact it was *NOT* GF though, le sigh.)

So what I did was get a bag of the twisty pasta, two packets of itallian cold pasta salad mix stuff (that tells you to add chopped veggies, 1/4 cup of vinegar & 1/2 cup of veggie oil to the package ingredients then toss with the salad) one green bell pepper, one orange and one yellow sweet peppers (which are bloody expensive) and two carrots, all of the veggies I chopped into as square shapes as I could.

I ended up making enough for two pot-lucks basically.  It was insanity. I borrowed a nifty salad bowl for serving in, and thought the contents of what I was making would fill the bowl.  IT more than doubled the bowl so I only brought half of what I made into work.  And seeing as how there was lots left over it’s not like I needed to absolutely kill myself over it.  But I have pasta for tomorrow anyways.

It was fun, nice to see that something I made looked pretty.  And I’m not sure if people who were complementing me were being facestieous, but they were kind about it.  And considering my entire cooking time was about an hour at tops, while others were talking about doing things one hour here and one hour there… crazyness.  I’m glad I picked something easy.

Some people picked easier.  Purchasing cakes or chips or pre-made salads.  I’m glad I was known to at least make an effort instead of jst shelling out.  Although for the next one I’m considering the shelling-out, and getting pop (soda to you americans) since no one thought to bring something to drink.  Although I’m thinking lots of that will get left behind as well.

Felt sort of rude dumping all the extra food with the warehouse people.  Like they are only good enough for our leftovers.  But alas, they work longer than we do and they hopefully will appreciate it!

So last night I wasn’t really in the mood for the pasta salad I made for the company pot-luck, and was eating earlier.  So I wanted to make some more fried rice since it’s easy and something that’s not really hard to make.  Only problem being I didn’t have any left over rice.

Yea I had always learned that the best rice to make fried rice with, was rice that had been chilled (basically… leftovers) because of something.  I can’t remember what.

To which I say fried rice is the best invention ever.  Because it just is a collection of all your leftovers in your fridge, plus some egg and soy-sauce.  It’s really a no-holds-barred type of dish.  And today… well… yesterday, I experimented to my heart’s content.

My normal recipie for fried rice is as follows

• leftover white steamed rice
• honey-bbq’ed pork
• egg
• green onion
• soy sauce/pepper

Thing being, I didn’t have enough bbq’ed pork to really make the amount of rice I wanted to make.  I’ve also made fried rice with leftover roasted chicken, as well as hotdogs when there was nothing else that was interesting to be had.  Never have I heard such amusement from my “white friends” then by saying how I made them hot-dog-fried-rice.
A few nights ago I went and bought some bbq’ed pork, along with this “red sausage” that I had been warming up for quick breakfasts.  And I also had 3 slices of black-forest ham left from my week of sammich making for work.  And none of these meats really was enough on it’s own for the rice I was making.  So the decision came about to put ALL of them in all at once.  Yummy.  I think the funniest is that if I’m not mistaken, they were ALL pork products.  Or from some wonderful, magical animal, as Homer would say.

Add to that my usual green onion and beaten eggs.  But since I went shopping for peppers for that pasta salad, I still had one green bell pepper left.  So why not.  Chopped and tossed that into the mix as well.

Fry fry fry… and I had this gigantic, probably could feed four people helping of fried rice.  I also put some flaxseed meal into it, since it’s good for you and doesn’t really add anything to the meal.

I’ve learned that I can not only generally cook for myself (really simple meals anyways, I’ve eaten the same thing all week if I’m not mistaken!) but at least I’m also one who is able to keep a clean kitchen at the same time.  Sinks are pretty small.  And I figured out that I could very easily cook and wash dishes that were used but no longer are in use, to keep the sink relatively empty while still having stuff be done.

Tis my friend’s birthday yesterday.  For the past 3 years I’ve bought him the same birthday present, his name as a domain name.  It was cool the first year, and since has just become a very boring present.  Oh well!

Yesterday was also unicycle club meet day so me and Phil went there first after I picked him up from work.  From his house where I got to try out a very little bike, we went to the house to hang out with his puppy, another puppy-ish dog, the owner of said other puppyish dog as well as Kelly, the girlfriend to Phil.

Then we went to unicycle club to hang out, and notice how the membership for the club has totally exploded we were counting in the high 40’s for number of people who were on one wheel.  That’s a lot considering when I first started all this jazz I was remembering low-teens of people showing up.  The gym was definately feeling crowded and cramped.  I can now mount the unicycle with the seat in front of me, and hop, but I’m trying to learn how to ride with the seat out.  I seem to master everything hopping first.
From there we headed towards the bar for nacho night, where I invited my friend Alex to show up after work.  I was also a bit of a dunce and told him to call me, and also didn’t put my phone on viberate.  Without the viberate feature I couldn’t know that my phone had been ringing so oops, he called 3 times, then just sort of showed up.  He had fun though he says, and enjoyed the nachos even though he still claims he makes better at home.  I’ll…. I’ll believe him on that.

Conversations are fun though.  When Kelly got there me and her had one of the most boring conversations ever, we were discussing spiral bound notebooks and colour-coordinating binders from work and/or school. I was saying how I couldn’t do the giant spiral bound notebooks because I had too many handouts and printouts so I was forced to use lots of binders.  The conversation was awesome, and even moreso when we realized just how boring we were.

I didn’t get rip-roaring drunk since I had to drive home still but we stayed until about midnight.  I was getting tired and so was Alex so we ditched out early and drove home.  Stupid highways that shut down 4 of 5 lanes when there’s still lots of traffic on the road!!

So this is a full week since my mom’s gone to Hong Kong for about a month. Things are as normal. I had my unicycling Defect DVD release party on Sunday, the day that was listed for its release even though it wasn’t true. The DVD was supposed to release on the Monday so it was a pre-release party, which ruled. I got about 10 of the regular Toronto Unicyclists out, as well as B. from Strap-On Tools who’s featured as the credits track on the video.

I made a big thing of rice the day she left, or the day after, and ate that over the course of the week. I made as many lunches as I had tupperware containers to bring with me to work. Wednesday I was told to stay til this thing was approved, which made me stay til like 8:30, and then dragged B. out to go grocery shopping where I spent about 20 minutes completely lost in an unfamiliar grocery store buying sammich foods. Then at his house promptly was smacked upside the head with a cold accompanied by allerigic reaction to his cats. Thursday I was told to stay late to just babysit a press operator so a job would be finished on time.

Then we ended up at this church to unicycle where I practiced mainly idling when I practiced at all. I rode for a bit, and tried to also practice some tight turns but the floor was kind of dusty and slippery and I was generally sick and tired. But I will be purchasing parts to build up most of a new unicycle soon. Which is exciting.

Today’s a surprise birthday party for D.B. and I gotta go figure out how to make my hair look just right. And I need to go to MEC to get pedals for my unicycle.