This just in: I'm a goofball. (Part 1)

Aren't you shocked?? I swear it's true: I am a goofball and probably one of the most random people you will ever meet...or blog-creep...or whatever it is you're doing here. And if you don't believe me now, you will at the end of this post. I have resolved to use less words and more pictures, even though it takes more time...although if a picture is worth a thousand words, technically I have less words but more words?

ANYWAY, I know, another new post, and it hasn't even been a week!! (Author's note: I don't expect anyone to be reading this but it makes it easier to pretend I have an audience.)I really have an excess of time on my hands now that field work is done. There's still some data entry to pick at but I'm almost finished with that as well so I haven't been going all day at it. I've been handed all this free time, and I'm having some difficulty filling the gap. I don't play sports. I don't play video games (although I would love to own an Xbox right about now, in order to learn). I don't do art. I've been skipping rope as a form of exercise, but at most that takes half an hour out of my day.

Thankfully, I DO read, and I have recently purchased the first four novels in the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin. I had already read the first one, but they came so neatly packaged all together that I didn't mind buying it as well. These are fantastic novels. They're the sort of story that's so rich in detail, without bogging you down I should say, that I feel like I've read at least half of one and I come back and find that I'm not even a quarter of the way through yet, which in this case is cause for extreme excitement. And I have three of them to read.

Life is good.

I take my book and my bird and go outside to read almost every day. Oh right, bird has arrived! Her name is Minnesota, and she says hello.

Although she isn't sure she likes what she sees.

I got Minnesota the summer after my second year at Dalhousie, so I've had her for two years now. She was only a few months old when I scooped her out of the bin-o'-budgies at the local Pets R Us, so she has probably at least another six-eight years left in her life, with any luck. Cripes, I might be 30 before she dies! Minnesota means "sky-colored water" or "cloudy water" in the language of the Dakota Sioux, and I named her that because of her feathers. It's probably tough to see in the picture but her upper half is white and her lower half is brilliant turquoise/blue, like clouds on water :). But mostly she's referred to simply as Bird. 

The other thing I've discovered I do when I have free time is bake. Which, in 35+ degree weather, is a bad habit to have. But I really wanted to so for a couple of mornings in a row I got up early to bake before it got too hot. The first day I made chocolate cake (gluten-free of course), for which I had all the proper ingredients and which turned out very well. I shared with my neighbours downstairs because there was no way I needed to eat an entire cake by myself...but I totally would have if it sat there. The second morning, I made "biscuits". Now, this baking also served a double purpose of getting rid of my milk before it reached its due date. But I didn't really have the proper ingredients to make biscuits, or bread, or really anything that has a valid name, so basically I mixed all-purpose flour, chickpea flour, oil, milk, and salt together, and baked it into little pucks on a cookie sheet. 

Are you not thrilled?

Needless to say, this did not go as well as my cake. They actually tasted pretty good (the chickpea flour makes them very savoury) but they were hard and dense and, after the first day, incredibly dry. To eat them they needed to be drowned in some sort of condiment or dip, and thankfully their interesting flavour meant they went equally well with things like jam, or things like hummus. I did give some to the neighbours again, but I strongly suspect they went in the bin after the first day. I do not blame them, nor am I insulted. That's where mine went.

Part 2 is forthcoming, in which I accept that I am addicted to food.

<3 S.