Fufu

Guess what I have?

It's fufu!

What's fufu you ask?

It's a combination of yam, cassava, rice, and potato, or in the case of Tropiway, substitute yam with dehydrated tubers of the elephant's ear plant.

I've read enough literature on historical Africa to know that when palm wine and fufu are mentioned, it means we're inside what is now modern day Nigeria.

But looking at the ingredients, I'm wondering if I could make toh.

Toh was a signature Malian dish. It was a type of volcano shaped pastry with sauce in the centre (green, gumbo, or red sauce) and you would rip off chunks of the pastry, dip it in the sauce and eat. It was awful.

But wow, the nostalgia just hit me like a truck. What I would do for a taste of toh. I don't know how to make the sauces, but this has me very excited.

We just got our first hydro and gas bills. We have to pay deposits and installation fees for both, as those are added to the first bill, so it's another establishing fee. After this we should normalize. With deposit and installation, hydro is about triple and gas is... I dunno... five times over what it would normally be? I took the usage total and added it to my rent and in the end I wind up paying about the same average per month as I did at the old place and at student housing.

I just signed up for Air Miles. That's something that, for years, I always thought I might bother to do, but haven't. It just became such a part of my routine at any Sobeys, LCBO, or Staples to reject Air Miles that it never became a priority. But a girl at the grocery was pitching it and offered an immediate sign-up, so it finally happened.

I'm aggravating to fit on a form. She asked me what my address was. When she asked me how long I'd lived there, I said it was my second month. So she needed another one and I gave my old address. When she found out I'd only been there five months she needed my one from student housing. Then she wanted to know what my occupation was and I said I had three jobs. Then she wanted to know what my monthly wage was and I said that my main source of income is working individual-by-individual and depends on need.

I've been playing some Plants vs. Zombies lately. You might remember, just after or around my time in Katimavik, me praising this videogame? Real-time castle defense-style military strategy game, where you play as a garden against an oncoming horde of zombies. Back then, I was neither interested in plants or zombies. Now I'm interested in both! Just makes it all the more enjoyable.

We're dealing with a hard cold snap right now. Like, a seriously hard cold snap. As in, the winter that hasn't occurred up until now is condensing all it's unused cold into this snap. It's painful, but almost a relief. It wouldn't have felt natural to go the whole winter without season-appropriate weather.

There's an intersection that I have to use on the way to the home of someone I work with. First time I got to it, I pressed the button to trigger the cross signal, and I heard someone say "Wait..."

I turned, looked around, saw no one. Thought "Crazy how your imagination can run away with you this early in the morning. Still half-dreaming, haha". After a bit "Wait...". Now I'm kind of on edge. No one around for as far as the eye can see. I stay still and listen... Eventually, "Wait..."

This time I was specifically paying attention to the sound and phrase, and it definitely is "Wait". Don't know where it's coming from though. Fourth time and I realize it's coming from the button. It's an accessible button for people with visual impairments, and you're supposed to wait until it stops telling you to. Other accessible buttons beep until they stop.

49 Pennies

So yesterday I bragged about finding six pennies in one spot. I told this story to my roommates and one of them was all "I bet someone found those in their pocket and threw them on the ground because they're worthless". I said "They've been discontinued for years, you don't just 'find them in your pocket' anymore". To counter me, he produced 49 pennies from an old change jar of his. I told him that I would trade each of his pennies for a coin of a greater value. I took out my own change jar of nickels, dimes, and quarters, and without looking, pulled 49 random coins.

He counted them, pulled out some coin rolls, built $10 out of quarters, and he was still counting. Originally I'd offered to quadruple the value of his pennies, which would've been a toony ($2 Canadian coin). My "coin of a greater value" system was definitely a better deal for him.

Oh well, look at how many pennies I have now! 55 pennies!

Just as a side, I think my yellow roses are going to die. They won't drink water and are withering. Time to get an aloe vera.

Edit: This 49 Pennie post is actually my 649th post on this blog! Spooky!

Second edit: My previous post was six pennies! Put the numbers of each post together... 6 and 49, and this is the 649th post!

Six Pennies

I realize that in my past blog post, I repeated my commentary on my flavoured vitamins from a previous entry. Oops.

We got our new furniture. We now have a couch and a loveseat from the thrift store. One of my roommates got a coffee table from his family. The Planned Parenthood office is changing location and is having an office sale, and we scored two chairs and a four-shelf locking filing cabinet.

I'm really excited about the filing cabinet. Because of my work, I have documents of a sensitive nature such as consent to release information forms. I'm sure it doesn't matter, as no one I work with would know what system I have in place, but if they did, I'm sure they would feel a bit more secure knowing their information was behind lock and key. It's a good home office addition.

We have proper curtains now, too. If you'll remember, we were using a set of bedsheets from a raffle win as curtains until recently. When I went into the store to buy them, I wasn't sure what the measurements were that I needed for the living room window. So I went to the bedding section and checked what the measurements were for a king sized set of sheets, since that's what we'd been using.

Since we were using that shoddy replacement for curtains, I started paying more attention to what other people use as curtains. I found a place where they were using a carboard box, and a few places that looked to be using tinfoil. Turns out there are worse substitutes than bedsheets.

Recently I found six pennies on the ground. In the past, I've blogged about my oddly good luck of finding the discontinued Canadian penny twice in fairly quick succession. But this time I found six on a sidewalk all in one spot. So weird.

A group of kind of "thug" themed people were walking behind me when I ran across these. I momentarily hesitated about jumping on them, in cased this might make myself look less "thug".

Didn't worry about it for too long. I am officially less thug and six pennies richer.

Cell Phone Charger

I believe this February the 1st marks nine months of survival independently out of school!

I take vitamins D and B12, and I take melatonin to help me sleep. My D is chewable orange flavou
r, my B12 is peppermint, and my melatonin is chocolate. No more flavourless vitamin experiences for me!

We've got furniture coming in. There's a thrift store called Worth a Second Look in Kitchener. They have really good prices on furniture, and more importantly, they deliver! This solves mine and my roommate's problem of not being able to move anything. It's happening this Wednesday.

Here is a pic of that cellphone charger situation I was talking about. See? To get it to charge, I need to tape a pen to the base of the charger, then tie a rubber band (although we're using two in this pic) to keep everything in place,

Memory Lane, Rotini, Group of Seven

Went through some old pics.

I should elaborate on why I'm doing this. This is the first time that I've had my own camera, computer, and Internet connection since well before student housing. So we're going to go over some Student Housing memories.

This statue stood at the front of our house for the entirety of my two year stay. You'll notice that he's missing an arm. I won't be the one to call this statue "creepy" because of his difference, especially considering the nature of my work. But what isn't captured in this image, and which might be called creepy, is that he at one time had a female counterpart, and her missing appendage was her head. While a missing arm isn't much to take notice of, most humans require a head to survive. Creepier still, for the first stretch of my stay, the boy's arm and the girl's head were laying next to them. Then the arm and head disappeared. Then the girl. No one ever spoke of this.

 During the Extend-a-Family Summer Program, this past year was the first to receive fanny packs. It was enough to earn our team the name "The Fanny Pack". A girl in the group decked ours out to be a bit more vibrant. You'll notice my pack lost the "W" in "Crew" on it, reducing me to a member of "The Fanny Pack Cre"

Here is a tupperware container full of snow peas from last years garden. Crazy to think I've moved twice since then, and gardening season is still not on the horizon.

 Here is a baggy of string beans from the garden.

My personal record breaking seven sunflowers. Indicative that good things are coming.

After the jiffy pots I left out in the sun were wrecked, I threw them into the garage, believing nothing could have survived. I left them in there for months. After going in for an unrelated reason, I saw that something had sprouted despite hardship and neglect. I fostered and cared for it, wishing to honour its resilience, believing that there may be some meaning behind that which could persevere without resources or support. It... turned into this.



 

 My giant zucchini. Pen for scale.

 Nice little passive aggressive note left by one of my roommates. I visited the place recently, and not only is this note still up (long past its scribe has moved out) but there are two other notes of a similar nature alongside it.

 But to be fair, her's an image of what is below the message.

Our landlord once threatened us, that if we did not move our dishes from the sink, that he would put it in a bin. I remember kind of having the impression that this meant he would throw our dishes in the garbage, but he literally meant a bin on the floor. This strategy backfired when my other roommates just saw this as a viable option and started leaving their dishes on the floor alongside the bin. I'm... finished with this stage of life.

Maybe I will add these images to that old "Gallery" blog I've not used in a while.

 I have an awesome calendar this year. Usually, I just get a free calendar from somewhere (last year was from Central Fresh Market), to acknowledge the passing of time. I have a calendar on my phone, where I keep all my schedule information. Not going to check my literal bedroom wall for that when I have something in the palm of my hand no matter where I go. But I can at least be bothered to flip the page on a monthly basis to give my room a sense of seasonal relevance.

I got a Fairview Mall gift card this year, and even when I'm struggling financially, I have sort of a policy that gift cards need to go toward something frivolous and less practical, or else they lose their gift appeal and reveal the ugly truth that they are only cash with a set restriction on where you can spend it, with a cut of the profits going to the company that chose to limit your options.

Anyway, I went to Calendar Club (how do they survive past January?) and looked at the different themes. I was considering a wildlife one and a castle-themed one, before I hit the Group of Seven calendar.

The Group of Seven is a collection of Canadian artists. Now, while I know I'm not the biggest advocate for Canadian contribution to the creative arts (especially when it comes to writing), this calendar gives a depiction of each month by different members of the Group of Seven, even managing to include a piece from each member. They just produced enough landscape work to make this possible. So now I have a stylistic rendition of each month put on my wall. Always stylish, always time-appropriate.

I've grown a real fondness for rotini pasta. You know, that corkscrew shaped pasta. I've always considered pasta as one of the more frugal food options, but really, the popular name "spaghetti" is only one size of a specific shape of noodle. For a while, I've been breaking strands of noodle in half so they could all fit in the boiling water at once, or waiting for one end to go limp so the other could go limp, ensuring one half would be over-prepared. With rotini, there's no need to break strands, as the pieces are small enough to land in a traditional pot, you can easily stab each strand with your fork and place it in your mouth without saucy strands falling on your chin,and sauce collects better on those corkscrew ridges than on regular pasta strands.

And if that's kiddy, than I guess I'm re-experiencing my childhood. I take supplements for vitamins D (all Canadians should do this) and B12, as well as taking Melatonin. My vitamin D is citris flavour, my melatonin is chocolate, and my B12 is Peppermint

PSW

I took on some Personal Support Work recently. I've already done two shifts, but they were kind of like training shifts, one where I shadowed a senior employee, and one where he shadowed me. This is work that deals with the more physical side of support, such as toileting, showering, helping with eating etc. I used to joke that, with all my training and certifications in First Aid and CPR, lifts and transfers, Safe Management, empathy training, and my experience with food service, toileting, showering, transferring, and administering medication, as well as the overlap causing me to work alongside PSWs, that I'd become a makeshift PSW myself. I guess this proves it. Recently, someone else who branched into the medical field from social work asked me if I wanted some work as a caregiver. I couldn't because I still don't have a car, but this is an interesting new dynamic to my work. It's not dealing with intellectual differences, just physical.

And speaking of not having a car, I've recently come across a way to fund some driving lessons, and then to get a car. Only concern I have is, is this the right time of year to be learning how to drive? I mean just from a weather perspective. Should I wait until spring?

And speaking of new employment, I just changed my resume font from Times New Roman to Garamond. Apparently using Times New Roman is a faux pas, since it was the default font on word processors for so long. Now it isn't. Word uses Calibri as default, and Google Docs uses Arial, but Times still has that novice reputation, and Word and Google attempting to get away from that is an example of this.

People who are passionate about fonts are interesting. I knew a girl who would only use Georgia. She was top of her class and concerned about her grades, just on the edge of getting an Honours grade, but when we got an assignment that specifically said that we would be docked marks if we didn't use Times or Arial, she drew the line right there. She was like "I only use Georgia" and risked jeopardizing her chances of an Honours grade by using a forbidden font.

I brought this up in a conversation with an old roommate, and he was like "To be fair, Georgia is an amazing font". It was actually him that recommended Garamond, as it had a similar style to Georgia, with a similar print size to Times.

I looked into it, and yeah, Garamond is a celebrated font by professionals. But if you put a list of "acceptable" fonts in front of me, I'm sure I wouldn't be able to identify them.

We... uh... have a dog over here. Her name is Winter and she's a husky puppy. My roommates got her. I'll post pictures in future updates.

Yellow Roses

My roommate bought me a pot of yellow roses. Fool doesn't even know the language of roses. Yellow means friendship and it might have been one of the most meaningful friendship gifts I ever got, and he didn't even know.

There really is a language to it:

http://www.rkdn.org/roses/colors.asp

Recently I made it back to my old place in student housing. I was there to get my mattress, bookshelf, and dresser. It occurred to me that there was a standing plant holder that came with my room, which I'd put in the shed because I couldn't find a use for it but would now work great for my yellow roses. When I went into the shed, not only did I find my plant holder, I found:

-Chicken wire
-A shovel
-A fake axe
-Seeds
-A watering can

All previously belonging to me. The guy who drove me saw me be like "That's mine... that's mine... that's mine..." and was like "How long ago did you move out?"

We only had a car, so I couldn't move my dresser or bookshelf, but I still got to pick up a lot.

Got my mattress back. I'd fooled myself into thinking that I was comfortable on my air mattress, but when I lay down on my old one, I instantly passed out. Too much comfort.

I was in Guelph a bit last weekend, and my family through me an old little CRT TV (like one of those tube sets with the curved glass). Found out my roommate had an old $8 DVD player from Value Village. Rigged it up today and it works. That kind of equipment has no value nowadays, when you can get videos for free and laptops have better screens anyway, but I'm still happy. Gonna start a little used DVD collection.

I forgot my solar powered snail, turtle, and toad lawn ornaments with glowing resin at my interim housing arrangement, so I gotta get those. And then yeah, kitchen table, dresser, bookshelf, waiting for me.