Milk

Hey, remember how I made a post about how each grocery store has a different brand of milk, and nobody talks about it? And how there are usually several brands of soy milk in each market at the same price range as each other, but cow milk at it's standard price only gets one brand per location?

First of all, my aunt Lynna explained in a comment that this is because the each of the large commercial cow milk brands come from the same source, even if they're given a different name store-by-store.

But I also mentioned that the grocery by my student placement has a roster of value brand milks, including one that is different from any I'd seen before; Steen's Dairy.

(Did I use that semicolon correctly? I don't know how to use semicolons)

And on Steen Dairy's milk bag, they have a description of the Steen history:

"During the Great Depression a young hockey player named Fred Steen was asked to play hockey in Erin and found a job at the local creamery. In 1944, he bought the dairy portion of the creamery and moved it to the main street of Erin and Steen's Dairy began."

There's a second section but I won't bother you with it. I'll just mention that they refer to that as the "Fred Steem legacy". Kind of the most boring legacy I've ever heard, but there's something charming about how they so proudly advertise it. Appartently the brand comes from local Ontario farms, which is in keeping with the old-school feel of the market by my placement.

While we're on the topic of milk, I found a bag of milk in my fridge that's been sitting there since last year's roommates. This place has had such a high turnover rate, with three generations of people since I moved in, that it's hard to keep track of what belongs to who. There are a couple of girls using the basement, and there was a guy living in a room over the summer, so our three milk pitchers made sense. But then the girls moved their stuff to the downstairs fridge and there were still three milk pitchers. Then my other roommate moved out, my new roommates moved in, and there were still three milk pitchers. At this point I realized there was a problem.

Turns out, in the most recent generation of roommates, I'me the only milk drinker.

I figured it out fast enough that summer-roommates milk didn't spoil, but it looks like the mysterious third pitcher, and another bag at the back of the fridge, did not belong to either the new roommates or my summer roommates, which means they've been there since the last school year.

I'm the only one keeping track of what belongs to who, it seems. Makes no sense there are five types of jam in the fridge. Who loves jam that much?

I'm back at home right now. Since I celebrated in Kitchener last week, I had a home celebration this week.

The person with the ugly sunflower groomed it, so now there are no petals coming out of it's face.

And the cement pigeon mystery was solved by my mother. I'd been showing Guelph natives going to my campus pictures of the birds and everyone was freaked, not having noticed them before.

Here's a Guelph Mercury article on them:

http://www.guelphtribune.ca/community/four-sculptures-to-land-in-core/

I finished my first paper of the year last week. We all had to write something on an ethical dilemma that we've had to face.

And last week we had to wear a device that gave us auditory hallucinations, to help us empathize with people who hear voices. We had to walk around campus and have normal interactions with people, and we weren't allowed to let people know that we were hearing voices

It was not as overwhelming as I feared, although it was still a powerful experience with surprising influences on my interactions and ability to  manage myself. A lot of other people had more difficulty with it than myself.

25

So yesterday I turned a quarter century. Went out with some friends who all kind of gaped at my age (group of people between ages 20-24) I was reassured that I didn't look 25, but really, people used to think I was 27 when I was 17. People guessed 30 when I was 20. So I suspect I look at least 25. And I don't see anything wrong with looking 25 either. Anything younger is legally considered a youth in Ontario. I think 25 is still youth (25 and younger). You don't want to be so young that you have to watch special videos before being assigned work because you're considered "vulnerable" due to your lack of maturity. 25 is prime, and I'm going to enjoy this next year, I think.

At my placement, they baked me a cake to celebrate my birthday, and they sang me Happy Birthday. It was good times.

I looked over my previous posts since Summer Program ended and I don't think I spoke on my school schedule. Well.

Monday and Tuesday are placement, so that's a full day of work both days. Then Monday is 9-5 classes with a one hour break, so that's another full day. Thursday I just have one class, and Friday I have 8-3, so that's almost full day as well. But because I'm a Respect Intern, that means I work and extra three hours on Thursdays, so that day almost fills up, and then on Friday I go in for an hour at my lunch break and an hour after classes. So that becomes a full day without a break. And of course I have almost weekly Respect meetings. So ugh...

Get Involved Fair

Today I was officially required to wear my Respect vest for the first time. I was told to supervise the Get Involved Fair, volunteers were told to report to me, the whole bit.

The Get Involved Fair was an event where representatives of agencies in the helping professions came to facilitate informational booths on their organizations. We were handing out pieces of paper, on which people could collect stickers from each booth. If they went to three booth, they could enter a raffle to win some prizes.

I finished my Segu book. I think it will be my last book that I read for pleasure until the end of the school year. There's just so many text readings, I won't feel like doing any kind of reading in whatever spare time I get.

Mom took some photos of the giant Guelph cement pigeon to prove my sanity:

Camera Drone

Last week I was asked to be in a video at my school. Being in promotional material seems to be something I get to do as a Respect Intern. I'm also on a "Get Involved" poster at the school.

Video was pretty basic in terms of my involvement. They just got me to walk down a sidewalk with two other people, having a conversation while a couple of people walked past us from the other side, doing the same thing. Basically, I just acted as atmosphere.

The way they shot it was interesting though. They had a drone with four propellers fly above us with a camera. It was pretty Star Wars. They warned us not to look at it, and said it would sound like a swarm of bees flying overhead.

But it sounds more like a chainsaw and when it's slowly flying toward you and you've never seen the drone in flight, it's impossible not to glance. So we all did and had to retake the shot.

Second time around, we had to take it again because it was apparently hovering over my head. That put me off a little, the implication that they weren't in full control of these four spinning blades hovering above my head, which I'm not allowed to look at.

Third take and we got it. Afterward, though, they lost control of the drone and it flew sideways into a tree and carved up a branch. I got out of there at my first opportunity.

Guelph Bird Statue

I was in Guelph over the weekend and when I was walking past the city bus terminal I noticed a giant statue of a bird perched on a lamppost. At first I thought I was seeing things. It looked old and deformed, with yellow paint peeling off it's wings. The bus terminal itself is only a few years old, and this bird looked older than it. I wondered how long I'd been walking past it and failing to notice it.

I met up with someone later that day and asked her if she'd seen the giant bird statue at the terminal. She said she'd seen it for the first time this past week and had wondered if it had been there a long time and she hadn't noticed. Together, we decided it must be recent, since both of us had noticed it at around the same time.

Later on we went to the terminal and saw the statue. But it looked different and was in a slightly different place from where we remembered. We were weirded out.

But we kept walking to the place we saw the original statue and there was one there, too. So we could scrap the idea thta the statue was alive and changed it's perch, and concluded that ther are actually two statues.

The birds are about as tall as a person, and much larger overall. They aren't majestic birds either. They look like giant pigeons with flaking white paint on their wings. Why are they there.

I took some photos, but my SD card won't upload to my computer. Half the time, the computer will make a sound to acknowledge the card. An eighth of the time, an option will show up for me to open the card. But it didn't goive me an option to upload, and when I tried copy/pasting it only gave me a shortcut to the card itself, so I can't upload the images.

My camera reads the card half the time. My mother's computer could read the card, but mine can't. I don't know if I need a new camera, SD card, or computer.

Plus even trying to read the card crashed my computer twice, and I managed to do it successfully only once. I've been working at this for over an hour. Very irritating.

I saw a really ugly sunflower. Should have taken a photo of that. My neighbour that grows giant sunflowers was not as fortuitous this year as he was the last. Last year he grew flowers that were substantially taller than me. Like, maybe eight feet tall. This year, they are only as tall as me. The only one to have blossomed so far has petals growing from within the are that the seeds grow. Just awkward, random petals sprouting from the "face". Ugh...

September 10th

Remember how last year, a friend of mine passed away suddenly due to an unexpected illness? Well, this past September 10th would have been her 19th birthday. It was also the birthday of her mother. Sometimes life feels too cruel to be coincidence.

I have another friend who has fallen ill with something which I'm to understand medical professionals have failed to diagnose. Another young woman, 22 years old.

And then of course we have September 11th.

Food

When I was making the coleslaw and had just had the other 5 guys move in, the household had previously been living like it was sharing fridge space with much fewer people, and my old roommate who'd moved out left a lot of food. So when I moved in my cabbages, carrots, onions, and dressing, I felt I needed to make space for it. My solution was to eat a whole bag of Romaine lettuce and a bag of baby carrots. Then I proceeded to hand-grate coleslaw for three hours. One of my roommates waited until about the third hour and was like "Dude, how much salad are you going to eat?"

I realized the guy had just seen me eat four bowls of salad and had no idea I planned to share the coleslaw. Must've thought all I ever do is eat salad.

It's hard when people leave you random food. I got two things of ice cream syrup, so now I'm going to have to buy ice cream to get rid of the syrup. And three types of jam were left behind. And I'm going to have to get something to dip in all this Thai sauce.

I made banana bread for the first time. My roommates commented on how I'm always experimenting in the kitchen and asked me how I know to do so much. I got called a "great cook". I don't feel particularly knowledgeable but am grateful for the praise.

I haven't bought meat from the grocery for months. I've developed some weird rule that I can't prepare meat but can eat it if I go out. So it's like a celebratory thing, not a staple of my daily diet, as it used to be. I don't know if this endeavor is useful at all. I feel pretty much the same.

Had my first day of placement today. First week is just paperwork and office stuff. I've been through it twice before because of my previous student placement and because of the summer program but my fellow placement student hasn't, and there are three university students working in main office going through it too, so they have me there as a show of solidarity or something.

Coleslaw

Had my Respect Leader training session yesterday. We aren't called Respect anymore, we're Student Life Leaders, and since that's the organization name, and Student Life Leader Leader would be a clumsy job title, I am actually a Student Life Leader Intern.

I spent three hours making a coleslaw for the Year 1 SSW BBQ. I don't have a food processor so I hand grated everything.

September Schedule

The past few days have been hectic. I got four new roommates, I caught up with an old friend, I went on a date, I had my first day of classes, I did Student Life training, I got my student card replaced and my four-month bus pass put on it. I've got a Field Meeting for my student placement tomorrow and I have my Respect Leader training. I'm partially in charge of registration of the First Year BBQ, and then I have the BBQ the next day. I will also probably see someone about a contract through EAF.

Before getting my student card replaced, I was told it would cost $10, $25, $20, and that it was a free service. Made me wonder if they just kind of eyeball you, decide on a price and give it. Because I paid $12, not any of the given prices. Still worth it.