Post#406: A letter to a house plant called Grant
21 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: houseplants, how to take care of a spathiphyllum, plants, spathiphyllum
Dear Spathiphyllum (or peace lily),
I picked you up from Wal-mart last week, and I was especially pleased with your presence in my room because not only did
you add life to it, you were also here ready to purify the air. I am only refering to you as Spathiphyllum in the “dear” section of this letter because that is what biologists call you and also because I’ve yet to let you know that I’ve named you Grant. There is a person in my stats class named Grant, but he is probably not as pretty as you.
The reason I’m writing a letter to you is because I think I’ve formed an emotional bond with you. Today, when I walked into the room, and then realized that I’d forgotten to water you the whole weekend, I became quite anxious. This anxiousness was further heightened when I pulled up my blinds and saw just how wilted you were. Some of your leaves were yellow as well, and that was a tear-jerker.
Upon this atrocious discovery, I quickly hopped onto the interwebs to find out exactly what on earth I should do in my situation. Luckily, it told me that you were going to be okay, and once I added water, you would be okay in a couple of hours.
Well, it’s been a couple of hours, and you’re starting to perk up again. Thank goodness.
I promise that I’ll look up care instructions for you immediately I get a new houseplant instead of neglecting my responsibilities until you are suffering.
Oh, and to all the Spathiphyllum owners out there: In order to take care of your plant; be sparse with water, but remember to water; and keep out of indirect sunlight and make sure no drafts reach your darling during winter!
Yours lovingly,
Timezone Trekker
Post#404: Class, my dear, you ought to have- even if you don’t attend
21 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Floyd Cramer, music, musical discovery, piano, ragtimes
I must be missing playing around the piano a little too much. But by far my classiest musical discovery (that isn’t jazz) is Floyd Cramer who is an American Hall of Fame pianist and apparently (according to Wikipedia anyway) one of the architects of the “Nashville Sound”. He plays some popular oldies tunes, dixieland, and even ragtimes! His stuff is can be pretty upbeat, and some of it could even be loung-y music (i.e. his version of Tennessee Waltz).
And speaking of ragtimes; I finally met someone with an equal passion for the ragtimes as me. He lives in the same residence as I do, and the funny thing is before residence even opened up, I spoke to him once when he was making pancakes for dinner at the [crappy] hostel I was living at. Never would I have thought he was off to where I was… even less so my own residence! And we also happen to have 1 class together (linguistics). So far. I haven’t seen him anywhere after the first class…
So here is Floyd Kramer’s “The Old Piano Roll Blues”:
Sometimes I wonder why I’m at school if I could be having this much fun.
Post#402: To the astronomers out there…
16 Sep 2010 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: astronomers, astronomy, attractiveness, correlation
So I went to my astronomy class and I literally saw stars. Are all the males in astronomy hunks….? So, ready for a bad pun? I’m starry-eyed for astronomers 
So yeah. I’ll have to say that’s the best looking department around here… I wonder if there’s any correlation between staring at stars and.. being attractive.
Hmmmm.
Post#401: Inevitable Lessons You Learn at University
16 Sep 2010 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Inevitable lessons you learn at university, learning, lessons, life, school, toronto, university
#1: If you have to cook for yourself, either get a scrubber brush or a non-stick pan.
#2: If you can’t be in two places at once, and you don’t know how to teleport-learn to schedule
#3: There’s always someone dumber in the class.
#4: Scheduling 5 classes on Monday means that you will be anorexic once a week.
#5: MSN is not a good studying tool
#6: If you go through a box of cereal a week, it means you’ve had breakfast too many times during the week.
#7: However, if the cereal you’re eating is Kellog’s Special K Blueberry cereal, then you can have as many boxes as you’d like.
#8: Figure out your classes BEFORE you buy all your textbooks and then have to wait half an hour to return them.
#9: Understand that people in the satellite campuses have access to drugs, alcohol and nightclubs even though they are not of age. And yes, they’re partying harder than you.
#10: People from satellite campuses think you’re smarter because you’re at the main campus.
Post#400: Little Blue Pillows
13 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
I confess to cushioning myself with little blue pillows and waiting for the bed to catch me.
Post#399: There’s a place downtown…
12 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
Where there coffee ground. And it’s sitting in my espresso boiler. I need to sit down and keep my eyes open, and my head down.
Post#398: My new favourite cereal.
11 Sep 2010 3 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: favourite food, food, Kellog's Special K Blueberry cereal
Sitting at 100 calories per serving with some serious blueberry taste. Not too sugary, hugely crunchy.. I’d like to introduce you to my new favourite box of cereal: Kellog’s Special K Blueberry Cereal. It’s the new one that came out as well I think. But it is soooooooooooo good. I finished a box in 3 days.
I know what you’re thinking. Shut up.
Post#397:Today I was…
11 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
waiting for you to call.
waiting for an e-mail.
waiting for anything.
Post#396:Chez mon pere…
11 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: life, miami, travel blog, traveling, USA, walking
Miami’s a great place to be I guess. The first puff of suffocating heat hit me hard when I got onto the tarmac. The worst part was that it was humid. It was like being in a state of constant sauna.
Miami didn’t really look like what I’d picture it would be. But then again, what place out there looks like what you think it looks like? All I knew was that I’d probably been watching too much CSI Miami.
I was shocked at first.. at the number of people who wore little to no clothes. Some of the girls there only wore a bikini and a pair of short shorts. Gradually, as I walked around and did my fair share of heavy sweating; I understood why. I figured why people liked wearing white around Miami as well.
So a couple of places to go to while you’re in Miami is obviously MIAMI BEACH. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Even I would starve myself thin to look good on a beach that nice. It’s so long, but impossibly hard to run on.
Also, LINCOLN ROAD is a great place if you’ve got some extra cash to spend. They’ve got all kinds of shops there.. all on the high end side unfortunately.
It’s quite the crazy city too. My dad told me that if you wake up early enough, you’ll see the people who’ve passed out on the streets the night before get up and walk back home. Like the dead awakening…
I didn’t really meet anyone while I was in Miami though; just a guy from Belarus who gave me some directions. We talked a bit about his hostel and traveling. How do you tell if someone’s a backpacker? Well first, they’re foreign. And second, they’ll probably be hungover and looking for breakfast at the cheapest place possible at 11:30am.
I think the best part of Miami is my dad’s cooking. There was wine with every dinner and the first question he asked before cooking dinner the first night I was there: ” So do you want swordfish, salmon or shark?”
Post#395: Flirty, Fun Frenchmen
11 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: France, Frenchmen, hostels, traveling
You meet all kinds of nationalities when you’re traveling out in Australia; but I think I had the most fun with the French.
My friend J. lived at the Jolly Swagman Backpackers Hostel in Kings Cross while we were in Sydney; so I’d visit her occasionally at her hostel so that we could go out together. The first night I visited her, we’d just come back from the World Bar and walked into 2 guys who were all-made up.
“Oooo”, one said. “Une asiatique”. I surprised him by responding in French. I quickly found out his name was P. and he was from France. His friend also from France, but he had met him in his travels. He explained to me that he was dressed as a woman because the bar would give him 4 free beers. (Oh, backpackers. They’ll do anything for free alcohol). He asked me to go to the bar with him but I told him that I couldn’t because I’d just come back from one!
I didn’t see him until the next time I visited J. I talked to P. somemore and he obtained my number.
The next time I’d seen him was during my last night in Sydney and he had invited me over. I sat at the table and had goon from a mug with his friends. Then each of them told me who they were and we sat around; waiting to be drunk. P. told me that he was hopeless at English. He’d been in Australia for 4 months, but he had only picked up a bit of English. A Belgium guy was his translator for most of the time if he couldn’t remember his words.
We played beer pong for a bit. We sat in the courtyard and I wrestled with M. We watched the guy from Miami do tricks on his bike. I talked to the guy from Scotland.
I’d never felt so .. part of a group
