My name is Jocelyn, and I am a twentysomething graduate student at SFU, in the Global Health Program. I'm short, blonde, and chatty. I swim a lot, like road trips with my dad, meeting new people, and have a profound obsession with apple chips. My name is Jocelyn and this is my blog.
It’s almost embarrassing how happy I am about this but I’m not ashamed to admit it. Today a friend of mine gifted me with a box of 20+-year-old CorningWare Visions Cookware - a not-so-collectible line of super-high-temp withstanding glass-ceramic pots and pans that were popular in the 70’s and 80’s. Remember that iconic 80’s commercial where they burned the aluminum saucepan on the stove in a Visions Cookware pan?
I remembered this ad, but it wasn’t until last fall that I began to appreciate these pots and pans for their secret Gimp Trick hack: The large casserole dish and medium saucepan I found in a US thrift store for $10 became suddenly very useful when a badly-designed apartment I was living in combined with some hip problems that made my precarious cooking style a little more difficult. I discovered that my $10 Visions cookware was all I was using to cook for myself all of a sudden, because I didn’t have to lean precariously to see inside the pot, I didn’t need a mirror, and I was able to handle the pots more easily with one hand than normal saucepans with attached handles. Keep in mind, for the rest of you bipedal types: Cooking is a full-body exercise. When you lift a pot of boiling water over to the sink to drain it off, you use both feet and both hands. When you don’t have feet to move you, you require at least one hand to move the chair, and the other to hold the saucepan. Also, when I cook, my stove is approximately at my eye level. It’s rare for me to be able to get close enough to the stove to see inside the pot, even for a small one. With transparent glass cookware I can see how the food is cooking at my eye level instead of removing the pot from the stove and lowering it to take a look - a move which gives my dad the shivers every time I do it.
When I put the word out on facebook last November - more as a lark than anything - my friend Laurie mentioned it to her mother-in-law, who promptly produced a whole box of it for me. Visions Cookware went out of style because it gained a reputation for burning more easily… and I guess the whole smokey-amber glass thing didn’t match well with the pastel 1990’s. Anyway, file this one under “D’Oh!” and “I can’t believe I never thought of this before.”
Visions Cookware
And hey! It’s pink! (Those are my ugly thrift-store Amber-smoke pieces on the right.)
Almost two weeks ago I woke up to someone hammering on my door and a small amount of water on my bathroom floor… Turns out the contents of my toilet had overflown where it connected to the pipe in the floor… meaning an invisible toilet overflow all night long.
…she has an irrational displeasure with the colour purple in all its forms. Last time I went shopping with her, she pursed her lips and made comments like, “this… colour… is very… popular right now, I guess.” Every discussion with my mom about paint colours for my new place (for which I was contemplating a greyish purple for the bedroom or bathroom) came with pursed lips to one of two ends: “Well, dear, you don’t want something too dark in a small space, it will make it seem smaller” or “Don’t forget, you should always pick one shade lighter than the colour you like.”
My very artistic and talented sister has not made a pronouncement except to enable my yen for bright colours (she is responsible for the legendary advice that led to my favourite blue leather bag) and to share some swatches of paint she’d thought of using in her new place. …Oh, and to tease mom about her fatwa against purple in the midst of family dinner.
My best and most enabling friend S&P has put up with several lengthy and in-depth discussions about my new place, it’s various design idea iterations, and most nauseatingly, colour choices. We quasi-argued for about an hour in a yoga cafe in Portland about blue/green, what complements it, how light to go, to go with a bit of grey or not, ad nauseum. My thanks go to her boss who occasionally underwrites design consultations to me from her work.
In any case, I’m now losing track of my ideas and what with the Epic Condo Toilet Non-Flood of 2010, the various things to take into account have greatly increased. Here’s where I’m going with colour so far - I’m putting it below the fold (so to speak) because you may not be interested in any of this! [Read more →]
Two weeks ago (co-incidently, the first official day of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics) my heart got a whole bunch bigger:
This is Gertie. She is a 10-week-old mini Schnauzer, given a German name (Gertrud) to suit her breed and her cousin Wagner (The Dog by Whom All Others Are Measured). She is a pretty mellow, cuddly dog, but a few times a day she has the Random Frenetic Wig-outs of Puppyhood, combining an exhausting series of vertical jumps, toy-stalking, tiny pre-shrunk barking, and startling herself until she pees, poops and crashes into a heap in her kennel, exhausted. Then she sleeps for hours. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Did I mention she’s cute and furry?
Gertie came into my life from a family in Surrey who have a lovely mama Schnauzer. I’ve been thinking of getting a dog (read: wanting to clone Wagner) for a long time, but as a renter with a track record of difficulty finding housing, a dog was out of the question. SO many people (usually dog people themselves) have asked why I don’t have an assistance dog, so that nobody can limit me from getting an apartment or taking the dog wherever I wanted to go… but assistance dogs are a whole other level of responsibility, and to be honest, I don’t need the help that much. I wanted canine company of the schnauzer variety, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t commonly used as assistance dogs. (Too much schnauzitude, I suspect.)
Getting Gertie was coincident with another large event in my life: closing the deal for my new condo - my very first home!
There was some major drama right before the sale to do with restrictions on renting your condo and having pets… it’s a new building but I could tell which way this strata was going - towards the uber-paranoid. I figured out pretty quick that if I give notice at my apartment now, get the dog, and do my best to train her, then I’ll have a mostly-trained dog by the time I take possession and slip in under the animal restriction bylaw change that has been on the AGM docket for the last two years (but thankfully gets bumped off for lack of time each year).
So - I put in my deposit cheque to the realtor on Friday Feb 8th, and went to see Gertie (or Betsy, as she was called at the time) right after. I wasn’t expecting the overwhelming sense of intimidation at being a good “parent” that owning a puppy entails. Having this little “person” follow you around, learning about the world through you, reacting to your reactions and understanding how to respond to others by watching what you do…. It broke my heart the first time she cowered away from me when I smacked her nose to correct her sudden jumping, teeth bared, at my face.
Gertie is my little shadow now. She is very silent (except during her moments of Random Frenetic Puppy Action) but a definite presence… let alone the tons of puppy stuff I now schlep around with me. One of the reasons I wanted a dog was that I loved the “nanny” effect that looking after Wagner has on my schedule. I get to bed at more reasonable hours, I don’t sleep in, I get more exercise… Gertie certainly does all that, though I’ve noticed as well that she is picking up my bad habits. Turns out dogs can be nocturnal as well.
Gertie comes to work with me, or will until she is reliably crate trained and I find a dog walker to take her out at mid-day. She’s a hit with my co-workers - even the ones who aren’t “dog people” stop by for visits. The biggest challenge isn’t Gertie, actually. It’s keeping the Gertie admirers from interrupting my work! She has a little spot under my desk, and a portable kennel bag she can tuck into if needed. She has become more adventurous, venturing out to explore the room I work in and interact with people on her own terms… this combined with the need to keep the peace and effectiveness going in my workplace reminds me that Gertie shouldn’t be a permanent presence in our office. It’s nice having her while it lasts.
Anyway - if you’ve been wondering where I’ve been these last few weeks, now you know. I’ve been cleaning up after a cute tiny furry licky ball of poop.
My friends and family are used to the familiar sight and sound of me throwing up my hands, exasperated at the utter madness that is the US Republican Party. Not so much the politicians, but the crowds who follow them. The more I hear about them, and the tea party “independents” who like to inflate their numbers so much, the more I fear for the capacity of the US Government to remain unclaimed by extremist ideology. Most people when they see me point to the 9/11 Truthers, the “Birthers” who deny that Obama is a US citizen and all the other disturbing and vaguely racist views as proof of this madness, refute my claims by indicating that these beliefs are fringe - common only to small portions of self-declared Republicans in the south, who are less educated, perhaps.
Well, a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll recently indicated the opposite is true. Self-declared US Republican Party members who hold these views are in the majority. A disturbingly small proportion of those agreed with some of the most common lies spread about Obama, lies that most hope are far less common than they appear in this poll.
A list of claims made about Obama that have been proven false (see links for more info), and the % of Republicans surveyed who agreed/disagreed/don’t know: Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the US or not? 42%/36/22 Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist? (see also) 63%/21/16 Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win? 24%/43/33 Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates white people? 31%/36/33
(The stats on this poll indicate it has a 2% margin of error - meaning that 95% probability that the sample of Republicans gives a response within 2% of the actual proportion response if the whole Republican population were sampled. This suggests that the sample is a reliable predictor of the responses of the population of Republicans as a whole.) [Read more →]
Betcha didn’t know that every Games has their own mascots?
Ours were unveiled at a super-duper-uber-top-secret do at a Surrey performance space in front of a throng of hundreds of elementary school students. Ohmigawd QUAATCHI!!! MUKMUK!!! MIGA!!! SUMI!!!!
They are pretty cute, I have to say. The little legend that was made up to flesh out each of their stories? LAME.
These ones were drawn by S&P with her killer bathtub marker skillz.
Playing a little catch-up here, but never fear, S&P’s been on the case and there is no shortage of olympic-themed office decorations or stacks of merchandise to remind us that an incredibly huge wave of people is about to descend upon our city.
Today’s theme: the Inukshuk
While controversial when it was first selected to be the symbol of our 2010 Winter Olympic Games (not a BC symbol, “stealing” aboriginal symbolism without respect for meaning, not relatable as a logo, etc.), the Inuksuk is now a ubiquitous and go-to emblem for the games and by extension, for Vancouver. We’ve of course always had our own Inuksuk down on Second Beach by Stanley Park, but now they are cropping up all over the place - decidedly less transcendent versions made out of cases of Whistler Water at Whole Foods, and painted on office doors in bathtub markers by S&P. I didn’t take a picture of it, but there was also the rather strangely named product, the Inukie Cookie - boxes of plastic-framed shortbread rectangles with stencils so you too can build your own co-opted Inuit cultural symbols out of sugar and shortening!
Courtesy of S&P, we are LOUSY with inane signs of Olympic takeover of our city today (courtesy of Mother Nature, these shots are also lousy with signs of our lousy weather, too). These pics are some of my favourites in some ways - I really do love how the huge buildings in the downtown core have been transformed with the huge, HUGE banners and flags. I hope to get a pic of the Bay downtown with the huge vertical banners at some point.
I had to admit today that I’m getting excited about the games now, [Read more →]
S&P and I saw An Education on Saturday night - lest you think all of my days are about griping about transit and Olympic-related snarking. They aren’t. This week, anyway.
An Education is a fantastic film, I highly recommend it… sadly it’s not one that will make it to the big time, but the lead actress certainly deserves her share of attention. Imagine you are a 23 year old ingenue named Carey Mulligan - and you get pulled into a film project with the likes of Peter Sarsgaard, Emma Thompson, Olivia Williams (of Dollhouse fame!), and countless others, and you act the shite out of the role AND the film… what exactly would you be up to next? “Hello world, you are my oyster.” Well, actually she’s been in a bazillion other films and shows, but wow. Have to say, she OWNED this film.
It was stunning, really. It managed to be both delicate, sweetly romantic in that retro way, a little bit magical (but not too Disney like), and very, very smart… while at the same time allowing that discordant note that comes from a plot about a supposedly 16 year old schoolgirl swept off her feet by a somewhat dashing and very charming (much) older man. It doesn’t bludgeon you with a hammer in the way The Reader did… it slowly wraps you round its finger all the while you bite your lip and brace for impact. Go see it. GO SEE IT.
The stunning thing is that you come away agreeing with both sides - with Jenny’s very valid point that you can’t simply educate people (particularly women) with no point in mind, with no options left ahead of them, and expect them to lap it up. Youth seem to run on imagination, idealism, and dreams of things to come. It is really subtle, but you come away with a strong wonder if it wasn’t 1950’s “factory education” that ruined all of our parents… (okay perhaps “ruined” is harsh…) Meanwhile in the end you feel - even more strongly than you would from lesser films with far more blunt morality - that it really was education that got women where we are today, and that there truly is no shortcut.
There was this ever so slight pain in me to watch Jenny wince at what her headmistress said her options were, “You don’t have to be a teacher, you know…. there’s always the civil service.” How dispiriting it must have been to be a female educator (or student) in that time, realizing that you were educating young girls to use their minds, their skills… for what? How can you educate girls for what at the time were such limited prospects? Nurse, Teacher, Secretary… and/or Wife, Mother or Mistress (or all three). However fulfilling the last three are, you can’t forget there is more you came here for.
It seemed so much more poignant and clear when S&P and I were boozily singing its praises at Subeez afterward, but trust me, it’s an amazing film that will leave you charmed and thoughtful for days afterward.
