Dynamic Dame

In the Beginning...

2010-04-13T21:38:00.002-03:00

I have decided to run a half Marathon!

Insane, I know. However, I am quite sure that only insane people run half or full marathons because what sane person would?

Last year I volunteered with the Queen City Marathon. Why? Well, I was new to the city and volunteering is a good way to get out and about in the city. One day at work I happened to glance at the back of a paper and saw an ad looking for volunteers, so I volunteered! It was a lot of fun and I had 3 great days! And I began to think, "This sure seems like a lot of fun. Everybody is so excited!" So then I wondered, "Can I run a half marathon?" I still don't know the answer to that question, but I'm going to run one anyway!

Why run a half marathon? Wouldn't walking one be the better starting point? Well, if you enter the half-marathon walk you are not allowed to run. But by entering the regular half-Marathon I can run of course, but also walk. So, it's like the walking one but I can run when I feel like it.

I've been reading up on marathon training and recently bought a book that includes a training schedule. I decided to start yesterday as that is 4 months exactly before the marathon and my book outlines a 4 month program! Handy! So, I look at my training program and oops! I missed Sunday. Oh well. Onto Monday. Oh look! Monday is a rest day! Awesome! Great way to start my marathon training!

So, today is Day 2 of training, but really my first day of doing anything. What a craptastic day to start. It's been raining all day and is still raining. And my running shoes are made of mesh. Lovely. But, I got on my clothes, looked myself in the mirror, said, "How cool! I look like a runner!" and set off. I think that was the last moment that I looked like a runner. I was supposed to run/walk 35 minutes. Here's how that went:

30 seconds in: Oh holy crap my calves are burning - this must be the pain that was mentioned.
1 minute in: Boy am I glad I've been working out and working with a trainer for a few months.
3 minutes in: Time to start running - had my warmup!
5 minutes in: That's enough running.
7 Minutes in: Splashed a bunch of water right on the mesh of my shoe - socks are now wet.
9 Minutes in: Starting to realize I was right before I left - I did have to go to the bathroom!
11 minutes in: Wondering why my body couldn't have just gone to the bathroom when I was home, but noooo, it just couldn't right then.
13 minutes in: Starting to head back - I know it's a bit early, but the path ahead is muddy and surely it will take longer to get back than it does to do the first half?
17 minutes in: Desperately have to go to the bathroom. Man those trees look tempting. Too out in the open though.
20 minutes in: Try one last desperate run. It doesn't last long. Walking from here on out.
23 minutes in: Don't eat Dairy Queen before going running.
25 minutes in: Home is in sight - contemplating whether I can walk 10 more minutes.
27 minutes in: Screw it, I'm making a bee-line for the bathroom!
29 minutes in: Ended 6 minutes short of my goal.

So, that was my first run. What a shitty day. There were lessons learned and positives and negatives. Here we go.

Lesson Learned: Having to poo while running is awful. Also, apparently running makes half the food in your body go downwards and the other half go upwards into your throat.

Cons: Did not finish my 35 minute run. Didn't run as much as I would have liked, much more walking occurred.

Pros: I got my running gear on and went out for a run in the wet, rainy weather! I began my training and now I can only go up from here!

S&A NYC - Day 4

2009-05-07T18:37:00.003-03:00

Last full day in NYC! YAY!

Today we headed down to Liberty Island! To get there, we took the Subway. The subway car there was brand new and announced everything and got us where we were going in style!

We hopped on a ferry and said hello to...Lady Liberty!!

I'd never looked using one of these before, so we spent a quarter and looked out at really boring stuff.

The ferry then took us to Ellis Island, where the immigrants to the US used to land. A very interesting museum! This is the registration room where they used to gather the immigrants for the start of their inspection.

We then were going to head to the WTCentre site, but it started to pour rain. So, we decided to go back. We hopped on the subway and got back to Times Square with no trouble. We also got some US $1 coins!

We stopped by the Hershey's Store b/c I wanted chocolate! I tried to take a picture with some points of reference so you could see how big it is! I'm not bringing it home...it's already half eaten. :P

Anyway, tomorrow we head back. From the time we leave the hotel until we land in Regina, it'll be a 24 hour trip. Oh well. We'll get there eventually!

S&A NYC - Day 3

2009-05-06T21:38:00.002-03:00

Hi!

So, I definitely wanted to sleep later today. But I've been setting the alarm for 9am so that we don't sleep all day. We can sleep when we get home from NYC. Most things don't open until 10am, so there's no point in getting up any earlier.

Today we were going to do Andrew's thing! He wanted to see Alex Grey's paintings - an artist he likes. Likes = IS OBSESSED WITH. So, off we trekked from 46th street where our hotel is down to 14th street. On the way we stopped by:

Toys 'R Us - Ferris Wheel INSIDE
Macy's - It's just a really big The Bay
Madison Square Garden - It's just a really big arena

We got to the art gallery and found out that it opened an hour later than the website said - they had just changed the hours recently. So, we went to find a place to sit and ended up here:

Union Square Park

So then we went back to the art gallery. There were only 2 room and a hallway full of paintings. The gallery is just a temporary location while the artist builds a new location, so not all his paintings are there. So, they had a movie playing where he goes through all his paintings and explains them and it showed them in a lot of detail. They had chairs to sit in on the floor and we sat and watched the movie which was about an hour long. So, that was a nice addition to looking at the paintings. We probably wouldn't have spent very long in there if it was just the paintings, so it was nice that the trip was worth it. We spent a few hours in there in all.

Then we wandered back to the hotel, going a different way. Along the way we stumbled upon:

The Empire State Building - we could see the top part that's pointy from farther away, but not from the base of it, which is where this picture is taken from.

And yet another Ghostbusters scene location - the public library!

We went to TGI Fridays for supper. It sucked. I highly don't recommend it. I non-recommend it.

We also wandered over to Grand Central Station - which is actually Grand Central Terminal. Andrew did say the line and it was funny.

Anyway, by this point we were tired of walking, tired of the crowds, and headed back to the hotel room to rest up for our last day in NYC.

S&A NYC - Day 2

2009-05-05T23:42:00.005-03:00

Day 2!

Well, we didn't go overboard or anything today. We got up and left around 10:15. We didn't sleep all that well - it's a loud hotel and the city is loud. But we got a bit of sleep.

It was pouring rain, so we decided to do an "indoor" activity today and go to the American Museum of Natural History. It took us an hour and a LOT of rain to walk there, but eventually we got around to the outdoor activity. :P On the way there we saw a couple places such as...

The Late Show with David Letterman...

Radio City...

The Rockefeller Centre...

And....this street. It made us laugh.

To get to the museum, we had to go through Central Park. Very pretty:

Andrew thinks this place is in Ghostbusters. But he wasn't sure, so we took a picture.

We finally made it to the museum!!

Spent a few hours at the museum. We went to the Planetarium there, which was really awesome! Then we walked home and saw a few more places such as the Trump Building and...a HERSHEY'S STORE!! Look, a Reese's only section!!

Then we went for supper at Planet Hollywood! Very cool and very good food. We got a picture from there, but you'll have to wait until I get a scanner to see it. :P

Then we went to Avenue Q on Broadway!! YAY Broadway play!!!! It was awesome! Was it worth $66? Probably not. But we couldn't have gotten better for the price. I just think plays are overpriced. :P But it was good!

Tomorrow we go do Andrew's thing and head to an art gallery!

Anyway, that's a quick recap of today. :)

S&A NYC - Day 1

2009-05-04T21:03:00.003-03:00

Well, we made it. That's a plus! This place is INSANE. I've never seen anything like it where I've been...which isn't much of anywhere. But I think I was comparing it in my head to Washington, DC where I went a couple years ago, and it's nothing like that at all.

We're mostly exhausted. Our first flight left at 6am, which meant we needed to be at the airport around 4:30, so we got up at 3:30. Suffice it to say, neither of us got much sleep. So, we got to the airport thanks to our lovely sister. We then got checked in and went through security. I got held up b/c of one of my carry-on bags, but finally got through security. I still don't know what was confusing her so much. But whatever. We got on the plane and to Calgary with no troubles. We then had to find our way to US customs and we finally did after a bit of confusion. In Calgary we did pre-clearance for US Customs and Immigration. So, that was done and we waited for our flight from Calgary direct to Newark, NJ. Our flight was half an hour late leaving and 40 minutes late getting in. But we did get in. We got our luggage no problem and found our bus into the city no problem. I had paid for a shuttle bus to get us from New Jersey to downtown New York. So we got off at the Grand Central Station stop and proceeded to walk to our hotel which was MUCH further than expected. But we finally made it.

We are at the hotel now and just need to eat something and then sleep. We'll begin our NYC touring tomorrow. The hotel isn't bad. It's not great, but from my pathetic research, anything around $200/night in NYC isn't going to be that great. So, it's acceptable and will do the trick. :)

For now, here a couple of pictures:

Before and After

2009-04-27T01:15:00.002-03:00

So, I took a picture of myself on my first day in uniform, so I wanted one from my last day too. Here are the before and after pictures.

BEFORE

AFTER

I Think I Will Live

2009-04-12T19:12:00.002-03:00

Well, I've been sick since about Wednesday. But had to finish out the week at school, then do some Brownies stuff. We were taking the girl door to door on Thursday to sell cookies but I had to stay back as I couldn't talk. We sold cookies for 3 hours yesterday at Sears as well, and that almost killed me. But I went out and got myself some better drugs and I'm feeling more like a human being now.

I'm flying home in THIRTEEN days. Finally getting voted off the island. Survivor makes it look easy to get voted off the island, but it's actually quite hard.

I bought the new Kelly Clarkson CD. I'm really desperate for new music, and I own all of her CDs. I'm surprisingly disappointed by it! It's nowhere near the quality that her last one was. Oh well.

It snowed here last night. Supposed to snow for the next two days too. What a crazy province.

Anyway...I need to go clean and start packing. I'm a couple days behind from being sick. Also, my apartment has been taken over by Kleenex, so I need to get rid of them!!

Running Out of Stuff - With Style

2009-04-06T22:10:00.002-03:00

The hardest part about moving when you can't just bring everything with you is trying to purposely run out of stuff. Normally when people move, you just bring everything with you - if you had a half-full box of pasta, that's fine! Bring it along! But when you're moving across the country, you don't want to pay to ship all that.

I've timed my laundry PERFECTLY. I only bought one jug of laundry detergent this year and it's going to last me EXACTLY as many loads as I need - no more, no less. I managed to plan out my laundry so that I only have 50 cents remaining on my card - not too bad - could have been $10 on that card, with no way to use it. And I've timed it so that I'll do my last load of laundry a week before I go - I do laundry every 2 weeks. So, I'll have enough clothes to last me the last week, plus one week back home - where I'll have access to laundry again!

I ran out of soap in the bathroom which sucked. Only ran out a couple days ago. Definitely not worth it to buy more. HOWEVER, I have way more dish soap than I could ever use. So, I just refilled my bathroom soap dispenser with dish soap. I figure soap is soap. And it's only 3 weeks.

My bubble bath should get used up in the next week or two, which is good.

Overall, I wasn't able to accumulate nearly as much stuff in the 8 months I was here as I had in the 5 years I was in Saskatoon. Which is good, b/c I don't have parents to dump stuff on this time. :P

What I'm Up To

2009-04-06T04:23:00.002-03:00

Figured I should put a little something about what I've been up to lately.

I just finished my 2nd Lucy Maud Dinner rotation. This is making plated desserts for the dining room for supper service, as well as doing any functions. I found this rotation to be the most stressful of all of them. It's stressful for a few reasons.

First of all, I just feel like the expectations for quality were higher on this rotation than any other. So when you mess up, it's a bigger deal.

Second, you have to stay in the evening 2 nights of the week to plate desserts when people order them. This just adds a bit to your exhaustion level, b/c it creates a 12-14 hour day at school. And service is very BORING. You just stand there for upwards of 5 hours waiting for people to order your dessert. This rotation I spent both weeks working Friday/Saturday which sucked. It takes up a lot of the weekend.

Third, it has the biggest and fanciest functions. Functions for this rotation tend to be for 120-250 people at a time, rather than the 40 person functions you get for lunch. We lucked out with our rotation and only had 2 functions. One was a small function for 40. The second was a function for 240 people for Sticky Date Pudding. This was a challenge to plate for the function because it's a warm dessert. So, you're trying to time 250 desserts. Now, everyone knows that any banquet for 250 people starts late by the time whatever event it is finishes going through opening remarks, grace, etc. So, as kitchen staff, you're waiting for them to start, and as pastry staff, you have to wait for them to go through 3 courses before they get to dessert. And you can't start plating too early b/c it will get cold, but neither can you plate too late or the serving staff will be waiting for you. It's tricky.

Anyway, I'm glad it's over. I'm starting to like plated desserts more and more. I'm thinking of making Friday night dessert-night when I'm at the parent's place. B/c having dessert every night is expensive and unhealthy. But once a week seems good.

I now move on to Chocolate. It's only a 3 day rotation, so I'm not too worried.

Thursday we have our written theoretical final. I'm really not worried about it. It's basically an amalgamation of all the tests we've already written, plus some food costing. Food costing is very simple - it's just memorizing the conversions from imperial to metric that can be confusing.

We have Friday-Monday off for Easter. Then we start practical exams. I'm scheduled to do my practical the next Thurday - one week after the theory final. For the practical we have to do something frozen, a cake, cookies, a custard, and a bread. The custard and the frozen dessert have to be plated with sauces and garnishes. We have from 6:30am until about 2:30pm to do this. Should be a fun challenge! I'm mostly worried about when you sit down with the chefs face to face at the end to discuss how you did. I have trouble being told I suck to my face. I prefer th university method of just giving me a crappy mark and letting me deal with it. Here they have to bring you in and tell you. It's like being on American Idol and having Simon yelling at you.

After that, we go in on the 24th to clean the kitchen and do some other wrap up stuff.

Then I fly home on the 25th. Sleep for a week. Then go to NYC.

So, yeah. That's an update!

Wish I Had my Scanner Right Now...

2009-04-01T23:07:00.003-03:00

Just found an airplane napkin I had drawn all over on my flight here back in September. According to the napkin, it only wasted 45 minutes of my flight, but I still had 45 minutes to go. Since I can't share the picture with you, I guess I'll share the limerick on it:

There once was a butterfly named Ben
Who never knew when to say when
He ate and ate
Until he ate a slate
And swore never to binge again!

I'm glad I didn't send my winter stuff home yet...

2009-03-30T21:03:00.002-03:00

Because it looks like this outside:

Water

2009-03-27T09:56:00.002-03:00

So, I was having a conversation with a classmate about taxes and how we keep having to pay more for stuff. It went something along the lines of this:

Shanna: "Welcome to adulthood."
Classmate: "Yeah, my hometown is paying to put water metres in."
Shanna: "...what do you mean? How do they track your water usage now?"
Classmate: "They don't."
Shanna: "...but how do you pay for your water?"
Classmate: "We don't."
Shanna: "...what!?"
Classmate: "Pretty much the entire maritimes doesn't pay for water. We're surrounded by it!!"
Shanna: "What the hell!? No wonder our fresh water supply is dwindling so fast!!"

There you have it folks. Turns out these people think they can just get FREE water. And then drink it all on us! *shakes my fist at the maritimes*

Homestretch

2009-03-24T08:15:00.002-03:00

Well, this is it. I have 11 more days of classes, one day for a practical final, and one final day which I'm assuming is for cleaning the kitchen. And THAT IS IT. :D

I'm glad I didn't ship my winter stuff home over March break, which was my plan, as we are currently in the middle of a giant winter storm. It's unsurprising though as everybody told me that there's always a St. Patrick's Day storm - it apparently just came one week later this year.

I'm slowly starting to sort out of my stuff here into piles for packing and piles for donating. The other pile is garbage, but I just take it straight down, so it's not really a pile that piles up. I think I'll ship my rubbermaids back sometime in the last 2 weeks of April, now that I know I don't have classes and will have time to get to the bus depot.

I definitely got back into my Puzzle Pirates addiction over the break. I'm not sure if that will continue now that I'm back at school. It's definitely not as bad as an addiction as before, as last night I didn't log on b/c I knew I had to do my laundry, clean, and get ready for school today. Of course, I wasn't in school last time I was playing Puzzle Pirates - I specifically didn't play it because I knew I'd get addicted, haha. Either way, it's been fun getting back into it. It can be pretty lonely here in PEI, especially when everybody leaves for March break, so it was nice to have people to talk to and play a game with.

Anyway, I know I could type more, but I also know that I have to go catch the bus and get to school. See ya!

Relapse

2009-03-21T10:01:00.001-03:00

Addiction, thy name is Puzzle Pirates.

March Break!!!!

2009-03-16T04:53:00.002-03:00

That's right. It's almost 5am and I'm up. No, not b/c I have to walk to school this morning...b/c I haven't gone to bed yet!! YAY! I freakin' love March break.

Now, am I bored? Hell yes. But it's way better than the hell I have waiting for me when I get back to school. I have 3 more weeks of class when I get back and it's the worst 2 rotations there are. Then for the final 2 weeks we just have our final practical exam one day and cleaning the last day, but the rest of the days are free! Wheee! So, I'm using this week to steel myself for the hellish 3 weeks, then it's smooth sailing homewards. Speaking of which, I should book a plane ticket...

So far I've spent my March break sleeping and then sleeping some more. I played some computer, some Wii, watched some curling, started a puzzle...it's been awesome so far. Here's to an awesome week!

Goooo Riders!

2009-03-11T14:17:00.004-03:00

Subtitle: Shanna is Exhausted

Well, I've spent the last two weeks working on my sugar showpiece. We had a choice for our showpiece to do either chocolate, sugar, fondant, or a combination. My big draw for sugar was that this was really our only opportunity to make something with sugar - it's not something you do a lot of in day to day work. So my showpiece ended up being a mixture of sugar and fondant. My goal was to finish it before March break. I had a few reasons. One, I'm a keener lately. Two, I wanted help from the chefs. Our showpiece is due only 2 weeks after we get back from March break, so I knew that after the break, people would be in a mad rush to finish and would be demanding the chefs' time. So, to help ease that rush and to help myself, I wanted to work on it early so they had time to help me. Third, we only have 2 sugar boxes - these are used when doing pulled and blown sugar. I knew lots of people wanted to do sugar showpieces, so those boxes would be in demand. Once again, I wanted to beat the rush. And finally, I just wanted to be able to sleep through March break without feeling guilty like I should be working on something.

I'm estimating that this showpiece took me 25-30 hours. I could definitely do it in less if I did it again, as I know where all the problems come up and I've now figured out how to solve them. The base is a poured sugar football field. I made one and it was perfect EXCEPT the sugar started to crystallize. Bad news. I piped the lines on the sugar base with royal icing - this sped up the crystallization. I ended up pouring it 3 times, but went with the first one. I decided to take my lumps mark-wise with the crystallization, knowing that it was the only thing wrong with that first one. The other two I poured had multiple issues that would have caused me to lose many more marks. Also, at the point where I was pouring the 2nd and 3rd ones, everything else was done with my showpiece and I just had to put it together. I had also been working on it for 2 weeks and was really exhausted from the 12 hours days and the walking to and from school. And I was just getting sick of working on this one project - it was getting frustrating. So, after staring at all the bases I had, I made the decision to go with my original base.

(Random Edit: Forgot to point out that the crystallization can be seen in the picture as the light green "splotches." But of course this just means that a game just ended and those are the scuffs on the field from all the tackles.)

I made the uprights for it out of pulled sugar. It wasn't ideal, but it was the one thing about the showepiece where I wasn't 100% sure about what material to use to make it. So, those were a bit disappointing to me, but that's ok.

The football was made out of blown sugar which is similar to blowing glass, but much safer, haha. In the end, the football was the easiest and quickest thing I did, which was VERY surprising. I got it right on about my 5th try with blowing sugar. It was a surprisingly difficult shape to achieve. The lines on the football were made with fondant. After 2 days of it being on the football, the colour from the sugar was bleeding into the fondant.

The logo was made out of fondant. I've been talking about that, but I suppose I should explain what it is for those who don't know. Fondant is a type of icing that has the consistency of playdoh, so it's used for modelling. That's what I used for my wedding cake - it's the big thing now for cakes as you can do just about anything with it. It's very, very sweet though. So yeah, made the logo out of fondant. This was potentially the most frustrating thing I did. I had to make it 4 times before I got it right. Although once I got it right Jamie (a classmate of mine from Moose Jaw and a HUGE Riders fan) saluted it, so I knew I was good to go with it. I spent at least 8 hours on this alone.

Then I just had to assemble it all. If I were to do it all over again, the biggest change I would make would be to do it all in 1 day or 2 at the most. Most of the problems I ran into were due to the fact that the sugar was sitting around and started doing wonky stuff. Another change I would make would be to use Isomalt for the base as it doesn't crystallize. I didn't use it here b/c the chefs didn't want us to use it - I'm guessing b/c the point is to learn how to make the sugar using normal sugar. But if you want a true "showpiece" that lasts a long time, then isomalt is the way to go.

I presented it today and I was really nervous. I got really upset when my wedding cake got picked to pieces by the chef b/c I had been really happy with it. And today I'm just VERY exhausted - I've been walking to and from school which takes a lot of energy and I've also been spending a lot of 12 hour days at school working on this showpiece. So I was in one of those tired "If you say one bad thing, I'm crying" moods. So yeah, nervous. Also, the entire time I was working on my showpiece, I was getting compliments from the chefs, so if they had done that and then turned around and when marking time came told me how bad my showpiece was, I would have been upset. So, I sat down with the Chef and I pointed out all the problems I saw. Many of them he told me are just things that are there that can't be fixed and "That's why you make them face the back." In the end, he really said not a single bad thing about it! He did say that it truly looked like a "showpiece." As in, if the President of the Riders came to me and asked me to make a showpiece, it's exactly the type of thing you'd give them. It's also something that could easily be made into a cake.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, I'm really pleased with the mark I got (He bumped me up even higher than what I gave myself!!), I'm exhausted, and I feel like I've just emerged back into life. I can now sleep like a normal person again and stop spending my waking hours at school only to go home, sleep, and return to school to do the same thing all over again.

Milestone

2009-03-08T23:13:00.002-03:00

Well, I made it here long enough to change my clocks BACK to the way they were before! This time I lost an hour. :( How sad. However, it is lighter out for much longer now, which is nice! Just in time for March break! Anyway, for those of you back in Saskatchewan, please note that we are now 3 hours apart.

Went out for a very fancy meal tonight with a friend. It was her 19th b-day and she wanted to go to this one restaurant, so we went! Had a very good banana/puff pastry dessert. YUM!

I'm trying to finish my showpiece this week, but I'm just not having luck. My sugar is crystallizing and making it look like crapola. :( But I'm going to go in early tomorrow and see what I can do.

I just counted...28 days of school left!!! And I don't even have to go for all of them. Tomorrow will hopefully be the last Monday I have to go in. Woot woot! I should probably book a flight home....hahahaha.

Oddities of PEI - Part 5 - Lingo

2009-03-06T00:13:00.003-03:00

Ahhh the lingo. Saskatchewan has some crazy lingo, I'll admit it. But it's fun to drive the Maritimers insane with my talk of bunny hugs and vico. Here's a couple things I've noticed that they say:

Kitbag - it's not a backpack and not a bookbag, it's a kitbag. Ex. "Let me just grab my kitbag out of the backseat."

Some Slippy - it's not slippery out, it's some slippy! Ex. "Yeah, I walked to school today, it was some slippy out!"

Getting Closer...

2009-03-03T22:41:00.003-03:00

Well, I'm on my last AM rotation and I'm walking. Which sucks. It adds a lot of time to my day. And moisture to my shoes/socks/feet.

I made a pretty sweet dessert today. I called it "A Day in the Tropics." What I did was I made a Coconut out of coconut ice cream and chocolate. Then I made some Passion Fruit Granita to go with it. And then topped it all off with a tropical fruit salad drizzled with Kalamansi coulis! Here's a picture!

After this rotation is finished, I have a week-long break. Then I've got 2 rotations left and I'm finished! We have a lot of stuff piled into the last month. Due between now and the end of the year are: Wedding Cake, Showpiece, Plated Dessert Assignment, One more small test, Final Theory Exam, and Practical Exam. I'm done the Wedding Cake and just finished the Plated Dessert Assignment. The small test is this Friday and my showpiece is underway. I'm hoping to finish the showpiece by Friday. So that would just leave me the Final Theory Exam and the Practical Exam and that's it!

I've sent my first box of stuff back to SK, so that's a start! I'll be sending more in the coming weeks and soon will be back out west! What I'll do once back out there remains to be seen. I do need to start applying for jobs, so I'll probably start on that during March Break. That's another reason for finishing all my assignments early...I'll have more time to focus on finding a job and moving back out west.

Not too much else going on. I'm on a team for the Big Brother Big Sisters Bowling Fundraising event this Saturday. *puts on my fundraiser hat* If you're interested in donating, even a little bit, please follow this link: http://pei.kintera.org/faf/r.asp?t=4&i=298858&u=298858-246085543. Any support would be much appreciated!

UGH!

2009-03-02T17:39:00.001-03:00

The rain is back. What a miserable walk home. I've gone back to detesting the weather in this place. NINE MORE WEEKS!

New Template

2009-03-02T02:26:00.002-03:00

Well, new but not new. I had this early on, but the pictures went missing. They are back, and so is this beautiful template! Credit for the design is at the bottom of the page!

In other news, I was productive with my homework tonight, yay!

Weather

2009-02-27T16:14:00.003-03:00

I have the Weather Network bookmarked on my computer so I can check the weather before I go out. However, I've never bothered to change the setting to bookmark it to Charlottetown instead of Saskatoon. So, the first temperature I see when I go is what it's like back home. This morning? -38C in Saskatoon versus +5C in Charlottetown!!

It's February and I didn't wear my winter coat outside. I could get used to this. Overall, I LOVE winters in PEI from a weather standpoint. All the rain turns into massive amounts of snow and I LOVE snow. And it's great snow! Not the powder crap we get back in SK...every single day the snow here is snowball/snowman consistency. Also the temperature never gets insanely cold. I think the coldest it ever was here was -25C.

Unfortunately, I have a massive hatred for rain. So no, I won't forgive PEI for it's crappy spring/summer/fall weather just b/c it has great winters. However, I might go looking for a place with similar weather but less rain! Or at least buy myself a car so I can drive in the rain instead of walking in it.

Ahahahahahaha

2009-02-23T16:04:00.001-03:00

SNOW DAY!

I've Been Lazy...

2009-02-23T02:40:00.003-03:00

Less than 10 posts so far this month! And it's almost over! Thank God!

So what have I been up to? I dunno. We had a crazy rotation the first 2 weeks in February. Then last week I spent at least 11 hours at school every day until I finished that wedding cake. But it's sooooooo good to have it finished!! I think I was the 3rd person in the class to finish. So now I can start on my final project. My plan is to do a sugar project, so we'll see how it goes.

We have a week off in March break. I'd like to go somewhere, but chances are that I won't. I'll probably spend that week packing up my stuff and getting ready to head out of PEI. I have 8 more weeks of class, 1 week for March break, and 1 week between end of classes and grad, then I'm heading out of here, so 10 weeks total. I'm very excited to be done so I can move on and go somewhere else.

Anyway, I don't seem to have much to say and I should be in bed, so I'm going to head that way. See ya!

Wedding Cake

2009-02-20T13:01:00.003-03:00

My sister just may kill me for not making this for her wedding. But it's her fault for getting married a year too soon!

P.S. The music piped on the top tier is the Legend of Zelda Overworld Theme.

ONE HUNDRED

2009-02-16T00:29:00.005-03:00

Well, with all the blogs I've done in my time, I think this is only the 2nd one where I've hit 100 posts! *pats myself on the back*

I suppose I haven't posted in a while. So what have I been up to? Not too much! I had to finish my occasion cake - the one posted below. Then we had a very busy week at school. During my last rotation we had 3 functions with a total of 490 people attending. So, I was on bread and we had to do dinner rolls for those functions. We made over 600 rolls last Friday and over 200 this Friday, although I was doing other stuff this past Friday, so my group members did the majority of that work. Also, during the first Friday when we did 600 rolls - we had two group members sick and a fire alarm in the middle of it!! But I'd say we made lots of rolls. Here's a picture of just a fraction of the rolls we made that day.

I tried to do a bread showpiece. I ended up doing it at home as I didn't have time at school to do it. I wanted a Valentine's showpiece we could display at school. But it turned out looking like crapola. I had to make it over 2 days, so the dough that had been sitting in the fridge overnight cooked differently than the fresh stuff, so there was a big difference in how it looked. You could pinpoint what had been made with the new dough. Anyway, here it is. I'm going to try another bread showpiece over March break. I'll just spend an entire day making it.

Oh! And since I'm uploading pictures, here's a picture of the outside again. This is a picture from our cafeteria of the water. Actually, since I'm at it, I'll put a comparison picture of what this looks like without snow.

I'm back on AM shifts for the next month. It's my last month of AM. Getting close to the end!!! We only have 9 more weeks of classes, 1 week for March break, and 1 week after classes are done until grad. Then I'll be home...11 weeks!! :D I don't really have a "home" to go to necessarily...just crashing with the parents. :P Hopefully for as short as possible. There are some recruiters coming to the school in the coming week, so I'm going to meet with the west coast ones if they interest me.

Tomorrow we get a day to just work on our showpieces, so I'm going to work on my wedding cake. My goal is to finish it by Friday and present it on Friday. I'll work on it tomorrow and then stay every afternoon until it's done. :) So hopefully pictures of that for you within the week!

But for the moment I have to go work on some other stuff. Ciao!

Sleigh Ride!

2009-02-08T12:37:00.001-03:00

Well, I went on a sleigh ride with my Brownies and Sparks on Saturday! The sleigh ride was about half an hour and then we had hot chocolate and hot dogs. It was a lot of fun and everything ran very smoothly! Here are some pictures for those who want to see some of the PEI countryside in the winter.

Check Another Thing off the List!

2009-02-05T23:03:00.003-03:00

Occasion cake done! This was my first attempt ever at a fondant cake. Fondant is a type of icing that you can roll out, shape, and do all sorts of cool stuff with. I'm not sure I'd ever really EAT it, but it is edible.

So, in all honesty, I didn't really have a "plan" for this cake or a vision of what I wanted it to be. I'm really excited about my next two big projects, but this one I just kinda wanted over with. I wanted to finish it within the first two weeks of January, but that didn't happen, so I only just finished it today - a day before it was due. :( Not the best, but at least it was on time I suppose. Anyway, the top just says Happy Birthday and the side says "No dream is ever too small, no dream too big." That was supposed to be referring to my tiny fairy. Overall, Chef Pam said that for my first cake ever, it was very good. I find her to be very supporting and encouraging - you can tell that she wants us to learn and be somewhat motivated. For things like this I try to remind myself of two things. First - I knew that the fancy stuff would be my weakness, so I should expect lower marks. Sure, I can get 99% on a test, but don't expect 99% on a cake, it's just not going to happen. And second - I could never do something this great before I got here, so this is huge improvement on anything I've ever done before.

I've still got quite a bit left to do for the semester. Next up is our wedding cake. I have that 100% planned out and I am quite excited. All I'll tell you is that it's music themed.

Anyway, I'm off to do...something! Toodles!

Stuff Happening

2009-02-04T22:38:00.004-03:00

First of all...SNOW DAY! Wow, and there isn't even that much snow. But I didn't complain! I made use of my day!

So anyway, stuff happening lately. Let's see...

Chocolate, Flour, and Starches test! Remember that one? The boring studying? Well, I only got ONE question wrong. How very frustrating. But anyway - I definitely ninja kicked that test! We have one coming up next Friday and I plan on doing the same thing to it!!

Skills competition results! Chef Richard has this weird thing where he won't hand you a sheet of paper to read - a test, judging results - he has to hold it, not let you see it, and read off it what he feels like reading off. Anyway, results are that one of my french pastries was crap, the birthday cake wasn't perfect (duh), and that I did surprisingly well on my chocolates!! Also, he said that I had the cleanest station in the kitchen, which I did. Haha, not to brag. It's just a fact. Some of my classmates are kinda messy. Chef had said that we could spend "a couple minutes" cleaning up after the deadline "if necessary." Which I took to mean exactly that. Try to be cleaned up in time, but if not, it's ok to just be wiping down your table and stuff at 6:02. Well, most of my classmates took it to mean that they could work right until 6pm and then spend 45 minutes cleaning up. Which sucked for me b/c I had to stick around and help them clean. BOO!

Snow day today! It started snowing yesterday, I walked home in it, it wasn't that bad, we ended up with maybe 15-20cm of snow - but they gave us a snow day today! SWEET. So, I used my day to put together and online portfolio that I can use when looking for jobs. I plan on starting to look for jobs this weekend - long weekend. I've got a line on a small contract job in May (thanks Dad!) so I'm working on that as well. :) Things are looking good. Statistics Canada recently released an update saying that regardless of the economic troubles, business for restaurants is climbing, so that's good news for me. I'm in a good industry. Anyway, if you want to check out my portfolio, it can be found at http://www.shannapilon.blogspot.com. If you have any feedback/comments let me know!

I had a request for some pics of what it looks like outside, so here are some I've taken!

Ok, this is my building from the back. The colour is weird...this was in the middle of the storm and taken with my cameraphone, so wonky things were happening.

This is the parking lot at my school. Also near the start of the storm - basically this picture was taken at the start of the walk, and the one above was taken at the end of the walk home. I'm finding walking home and to school to be less and less of a bother. I found that in Saskatoon too. At first when I moved there, having never really walked anywhere before, 20 minutes seemed like so long, then that became just a quick walk. When I came here, 40 minutes seemed so long, and now it seems so short. And if I get cold on the way, I just pop into stores to "shop" with no intention of shopping at all. I wander until I'm warm, then leave and continue on my way.

Picture of a picnic bench in the yard of a building across the street from my school. Kind of gives a better idea of how much snow there is. There's been more snow than this, but it's often above 0 degrees, so lots of the snow has melted/been rained away.

Walking up to my school. They were clearing the streets - pushing the snow into the middle then coming along to get rid of it.

Cute Joke!

2009-02-01T22:08:00.000-03:00

A loaded mini van pulled in to the only remaining campsite. Four children leaped from the vehicle and began feverishly unloading gear and setting up the tent. The boys rushed to gather firewood, while the girls and their mother set up the camp stove and cooking utensils.

A nearby camper marveled to the youngsters’ father, “That, sir, is some display of teamwork.”

The father replied, “I have a system; no one goes to the bathroom until the camp is set up.”

It's February!!

2009-02-01T13:44:00.005-03:00

YAY! One more month down! 3 more, that's it!! Woot!

Anyway, finished up the Skills PEI competition yesterday - what a long day! I don't know what my marks were - as a nice kick in the ass at the end of 2 days, they wouldn't tell us. We just know who got 1st-3rd and the rest of us were left out in the dust. But we did get a "Participant" plaque. Overall, I'm happy with what I produced. I think if I'd changed one of my french pastries, I would have done better, but oh well! Here are the pics!

First up is my chocolates, all presented! We had to do 2 chocolates, 12 each and a chocolate box that could hold at least 5 of each. On the left are Bahos which are a Ginger-Lime Caramel in a molded White Chocolate. On the right are my Anise Stacks which I had pictured before. My Anise Stacks turned out worse than in class - the smaller batch just didn't work as nicely as the big batch. The molded chocolates however turned out nicer. The box I wasn't so pleased with in all honesty. I liked my other one better. But Chef Pam had said that my last one was too thing, so I tried making this one thicker and it just made it a bit uglier. Bleh.

My pride and joy - Miniature Dobos Tortes. One of my french pastries. I was totally making this up as I went along and they turned out so nice! I love 'em! A Dobos is a classical torte that is layers of chocolate sponge cake and chocolate buttercream (typically about 6 layers of each...I cut it back to 3 layers) with pieces of caramel on top. These just looked so great and I was so happy with them!

My birthday cake! Can you spot the mistake?

My uglier "I can speel gud" birthDay cake! Overall, I suck at piping and so it wasn't so great. This was the absolutely last thing I did. As much as it sucks, this is WAY better than anything I could have hoped to accomplish prior to coming to culinary school, so that says something!

My mousse cake on a tile and with a piece presented. Man I was happy with this too! The checkerboard was PERFECT. Except something happened when I took it off the wire rack after ganaching it and the bottom square of mousse on the right got scraped away, causing my cake to be lopsided. Oh well. What matters is that if I could send you flavour over the internet, your mouth would be in heaven right now. It tasted DIVINE.

This is a picture of how dirty I was! The cameraphone kinda white-washes things, so this doesn't do justice to how dirty I was. I had dripped cherry juice all down one side of me.

One of my classmates, Josh. This is his Plan C for a chocolate box - paint a paper bag with chocolate and then pull away the paper. The funny thing is that if he had painted a few more layers of chocolate, it would have worked!

7:31!! All our stuff had to be out by 7:30, so 7:31 was a great time!

My stuff after the judges were done picking it over. A lot of people didn't like my Religeuse - the pink things. I took a chance with that. It's a classical but rare dessert. Oh well, it was something different, which is what I was going for!

Now for the competitors! Here's a few pictures of what my classmates produce. First I've got a picture of Josh's stuff. I don't actually know what it all is. But here's a look!

This is Stephanie's stuff. She got 2nd place. I was really impressed with her Chocolate Box.

And now for the winner. I was REALLY happy with who won - Courtney! She wanted to win SO bad and so I'm glad she did. Plus everything she made was wicked! Here is a picture of her Birthday cake which was just ridiculous. The piping of Happy Birthday is just amazing. Her chocolate box is beside it and it had a very unique shape, yet actually very easy to do. Looked great though!

The rest of Courtney's stuff. She made a (don't quote me on this) Rasperry Pistachio Opera Cake - that's what's in the white thingies. I don't know what the other 6 French Pastries are. Once again, the piping on the top of her Mousse Cake is just really impressive.

And here's the team! I was trying desperately not to fall into the sink during this picture.

More Pictures

2009-01-29T18:22:00.003-03:00

Well, school was cancelled for the little ones today, therefore Brownies is cancelled! I love going to Brownies, but I have to say that this week I am VERY happy that it's cancelled! I'm still sick and I have my Skills Canada Competition tomorrow and Saturday, so I don't mind having tonight off to do my last minute preparations.

Anyway, school was not cancelled for me so here are a few pictures from today!

This is the marble slab that we do chocolate work on. You aren't allowed to let water touch it - water ruins the couverture (ie. chocolate). So, to clean it we use a blowtorch to melt any chocolate on it, then wipe it with a dry cloth. Here one of my classmates was making White/Dark Chocolate Cigars for an order we have to finish.

This was my practice run for my Mousse Cake for the Skills Canada Competition. It's orange mousse with chocolate sponge cake. I need to tweak some things when I make it in competition, but overall, I accomplished what I thought I could.

My first attempt at molded chocolates. I will be doing these for the Skills competition this weekend. Few things were weird. You could see the filling and I thought it was b/c my chocolate was too thin, but apparently my chocolate was perfectly thin - it's just that when you coat with white chocolate and fill with a dark filling, it will always show. Not ideal, but I don't really much care at this point. Also, I overfilled them, so I couldn't seal them properly. I ended up painting them shut with a paintbrush and some chocolate.

We use a lot of "non-food" tools. I just mentioned paintbrushes which we use quite a bit. Also, if you noticed in the previous picture of the marble slab, we use a lot of paint scrapers for chocolate. One other thing that we use a lot of is sandpaper. Oh, and our blowtorches of course. :P

Here is a picture of some of what our chocolate group produced in the last couple weeks. I don't know 100% what all is there, but there are:

-Anise Stacks
-Lemon Chocolates
-Vanilla Truffles
-Caramel Truffles
-Hazelnut Milk Chocolates
-and others not pictured here, including a peanut butter one!

Finished chocolate box! I'm definitely going for simplicity. I don't like having a 5 foot tall chocolate box b/c of embellishments. I might make a couple changes for skills, but overall, this is the plan.

Countdown!

2009-01-28T18:16:00.003-03:00

Skills Competition is in 2 days!! So, the countdown is on. I'm confident about most things - I started a chocolate box today and it went much smoother than expected, so I'm quite pleased about that! I think I'll be practicing my mousse cake tomorrow but beyond that, it's just some organizational stuff I've gotta deal with!

I've been sick since this weekend. Yesterday was the worst day. Today I'm feeling a bit better - 2nd night of 12+ hours of sleep in a row, so I'm getting some energy back. But I still have no voice. Apparently it decided to go on vacation without consulting me first. What an ungrateful voice!

Anyway, I've gotta get my homework done before I run out of energy, so I'm just going to do a quick photo blog here! Mom asked for some outdoor pictures, but I forgot, so I'll get them soon! For now, here's some school pictures.

I finally hit my chocolate rotation. We have to make a chocolate box (ie. Box made of chocolate) for a stamp and also I need to do it for the skills competition. Here is my first attempt today. It went better than expected. Tomorrow I will be doing some detailing on it with white chocolate.

Here are the first chocolates I've ever made! I'll be making them for the skills competition - in the form on the left. They are Anise Stacks. Anise is black licorice flavour. On the right are truffles I made out of the leftover Anise ganache.

Flooding! This is for my special occasion cake! Flooding a technique where you pipe a border with thick royal icing then fill it in with runny royal icing, thus "flooding" it. It's horrible and repetitive and I think I've flooded this fairy about 10 times in my attempt to get 1 single good fairy.

Yup, here are some of the attempts. I'm also flooding a butterfly.

STAMP! Got my first stamp! About damn time too! This was for the rolls I'm standing by there. Just 44 more to go. Actually, I think I got about 5 more on that rotation, so...40 more to go!

Karate Chop!

2009-01-23T20:19:00.002-03:00

That's what I did to my Chocolate, Flour, and Starches test today! BAM! Kicked it's butt! If I don't get 100% it will be because some of the questions were worded funny so I might not have given them what they were asking for. I guess at the most 4 questions wrong. At the MOST.

Just cleaning. Taking a quick break. All I have left to do is straighten out my dresser, desk, and night table. And by night table, I mean the top of my rubbermaid container.

Having a roommate means an immediate gross bathroom. I don't know why, but it does. When I have my own bathroom to myself, I always wipe up splashed water and stuff, but roommates never do. So instead of staying clean, the bathroom gets gross. Scrubbed the bejesus out of the bathroom and now it's looking awesome. Let's hope it can last more than 24 hours.

Had Brownies last night. I was talking to one of my girls and said something along the lines of "What would do if a boy kissed you?" and she of course replied with "Ewww" and ran around. But then she sat down and just said, "I'm just not READY yet!" It was the cutest thing ever!

Having a few girls over tonight. Amanda has friends coming in on the bus at midnight and the bus station is just about 2 blocks behind campus where I live. So they're going to come hang out here and play Mario until we have to go meet the bus.

Starches and Flours

2009-01-22T21:34:00.001-03:00

They are very, VERY boring to study. I'm really trying. I have been for at least 3 days. I just keep falling asleep reading my notes.

I have a test on Chocolates and on Flour/Starches. The chocolate part I can at least read through without falling asleep. But I just don't CARE how flour is milled.

I Love Winter

2009-01-19T23:59:00.002-03:00

That's right. It's my favourite season. Good thing it lasts most of the year!!

For those of you who are winter haters, here is a list of awesome things about winter:

Snowball Fights
Tobogganing
Snow Angels
Snow Forts!
Taffy on Snow!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_taffy)
Clean, crisp air
Bright, sunny days after a fresh snowfall
Snowmen
Skiing/Snowboarding for those who aren't afraid of heights like me
Snowfalls

Day and Night

2009-01-19T16:53:00.003-03:00

Well, I guess I'm growing up. Slowly. Why am I coming to this revelation? (I totally just tried to spell that relevation...) Well, I am APPALLED at the quality of the produce at the Superstore across the street. And I can't believe the night and day difference between the fruits/veggies there and the ones I can get at the Sobey's down the street. Really, overall, everything is better at Sobeys. You even get Air Miles there! I get nothing at Superstore! Just half hour lineups. I only go there b/c it's closer. But man is it a treat when I take a day to walk home from school and stop at Sobey's along the way.

Of course, I'm only growing up slowly because I still don't bother to look at the prices of food. I just buy what I like.

Anyway, my point is that only adults give a crap about produce. :)

The weather here today is BEAUTIFUL. No idea of the temperature, but it's hovering somewhere around 0C as stuff is melting. I spent half an hour walking home from school and it definitely boosted my mood!

Jumping for Joy!

2009-01-14T23:18:00.002-03:00

I couldn't tell you how long I've been playing Mario games for, but it's been a LONG time. And in all that time, I have NEVER beat a Mario game. I think the closest I've come is to get to World 8 in Mario 3 for NES, but I've never been able to get through it. Well, today I did it.

I BEAT A MARIO GAME!!

Mario Galaxy to be specific. After all those years, I finally saved that damn Princess!!

The Streak is Over!

2009-01-13T19:23:00.002-03:00

A roommate moved in today. :( Damn. Oh well, I got more than a week without one. I have no opinion on this roommate as she's only been here a couple hours. My plan is to mostly avoid her and get through the next 3 months, 2 1/2 weeks. I've got some big stuff coming up, so I'll be spending some extra time at school.

This week I have a presentation. I did project on Scandinavia with a classmate. We did a 26 page report and now we're doing a presentation for it. We'll be doing a demo in the kitchen - probably an Almond Custard - as well as speaking about Scandinavia and handing out some Mead for people to try!

Friday we have a test on Yeast breads - including danishes, croissants, and puff pastry. This bothers me. It bothers me because we covered this information in September, yet they aren't bothering to test us on it until now. It's like they were too lazy or forgot to give us a test earlier, so they're just sticking one in now.

I'm competing in a Skills Competition at the end of the month. It's a two-day event. We have 6 hours each day to make our items and have to have them ready for presentation on Saturday at 7:30pm. We have to make:

1 Mousse Cake
2 types of chocolates - 12 each
Chocolate Box (box made of chocolate) - has to be able to hold 6 of each chocolate
Miniature French Pastries - 2 varieties, 6 each
Occasion Cake - Buttercream icing, floral decoration, Happy Birthday written

I'm still working on my menu, but I hope to have it solidified by the end of the week.

I also have an occasion cake due the first week in February. Whatever design I use for the Skills Competition I'll use for my occasion cake. That way I can do a practice run of it in the next couple weeks AND get my occasion cake assignment out of the way.

Overall, January will be quite busy. And that's fine with me! I want it to go by fast, as it's going to be the worst month. February is a short month as it is, plus we have 2 days off. In March we have a week off, and then April is the last month. So, I figure January will be the worst, so I'm just trying to stay busy.

Grrrrr....

2009-01-11T15:21:00.003-03:00

Apparently the law in PEI is that Sunday shopping is not allowed from Christmas until Victoria Day. Why you ask? I have no idea. I'm assuming b/c their clocks are ticking backwards to the 1980s.

On another note, my watch band broke. This is very uncool.

Challenge!

2009-01-10T23:15:00.003-03:00

I discovered a game called Funny Farm over the holidays. It took me and a friend 2 weeks to complete it, but we did solve it! I got one hint near the end, but other than that, we did NOT use a walkthrough.

I am putting out the challenge to anybody who is interested/has the time to SOLVE THIS PUZZLE. I highly suggest you find a friend to do it with - it's extremely hard and having only one brain work on it would be incredibly difficult.

To get further instructions on how to play the game, there is the word "Hints" in tiny lettering in the top right hand corner of the page the game is on which will give you instructions.

Beyond that, here is the link and good luck! Let me know how it's going!

Funny Farm

4 more months...

2009-01-05T02:30:00.002-03:00

That's it. The only reason I came back was because I figure I'll regret NOT coming back more than I'll regret coming back. Otherwise I would have flown here, packed up my stuff, and flown back to Western Canada.

So yeah, time to bitch about it, throw it up into words, then move on and stop being miserable.

REZ sucks! I hope my new roomie is good. I haven't been told her name or anything about her...I was promised an e-mail and have not received one. However, there is the name "Melisa" on our door, so I'm assuming I will be getting one named Melisa. She is not here now however.

Anyway...was supposed to fly home on Friday. Flight from Saskatoon to Montreal with a stop in Ottawa where I stayed on the plane. Then a flight from Montreal to Charlottetown. Get to the airport Friday morning - "That flight is cancelled." Turns out that it had mechanical problems in Ottawa the night before, and they couldn't get it out, so there was no plane for us to fly on. So, I told the lady that as long as I got there by Sunday I was good. Well, Sunday was the ONLY day she could get me there in a single day without having to stay overnight somewhere. So, I went for it. Fortunately my parents were already keeping their hotel one extra night b/c they were headed to Lake Lenore (and I tagged along) and didn't want to drive all the way back to Swift Current from Lake Lenore in one day. So, we really only had to extend the hotel one night which my parents awesomely did.

So this morning I wake up, check my flights...first one is ALREADY delayed an hour. Craptastic. My flight path today was Saskatoon-Toronto-Montreal-Charlottetown...changing planes each time. Estimated time of arrival in Toronto - 15 minutes before my plane there leaves for Montreal. Surprise, surprise, I missed my connection. Turns out the first plane was delayed b/c they got in late the night before and there's a mandatory rest period for flight crews, so they couldn't fly the plane until that time had lapsed. Anyway...we were all on and settled on that flight, but it took FOREVER to get the luggage on. Once we got going the TVs were working. I watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist...I thought it was good! I also got a free meal - it came with my ticket. Probably b/c my total elapsed time from leaving Saskatoon to arriving in Ctown was 12 hours. This was the first flight where I'd had a female captain...yay!

Once in Toronto, they rebooked us to another Montreal flight - basically one leaves every hour. So, in essence, instead of having a large Montreal layover, I had a large Toronto one. Which was good. The Air Canada terminal of Toronto Pearson is WAY better than the crappy WestJet one. But either of them are better than Montreal...what a DUMP! Clearly run down. I had to go through a tunnel to get to my terminal and it reminded me of the tunnel at the U of S. The flight to Montreal was not full, so I was alone in my aisle...it was the biggest plane I've ever been on. That was a quick flight...50 minutes in the air. It was also my first "Ugh, Canada is French, isn't it?" type experience. :P Just waiting for the plane there was a lot of French being spoken. And it was the first time where everything was said in French then repeated in English instead of the other way around. The flight attendant greeted us with "Hello. Bonsoir." And I think she could tell immediately with people like me who didn't know a lick of French. My clearly English, "Hi."

So, got to Montreal and just asked the person at the desk to help me find my gate since I'd never been in that airport before. She directed me to the tunnel and definitely as I went towards the tunnel the airport got crappier. I had about 50 minutes before my plane was supposed to take off, but of course it was half an hour late. The plane was late getting there, then there was a mixup and they came on and asked on guy to leave and some other guy took his place. Then they came back on and made that guy leave and put the first guy back on the plane!

Anyway...finally got back. There is definitely a crapload of snow. Some of the drifts are taller than me. However, they clear the streets really well here, so that's good. Had to wait for a cab, but got one and shared it with another lady who was waiting - they only had 2 cabs waiting there and probably 20 people wanting cabs.

Got back to rez safe and sound. Rez sucks.

This trip home was in some ways better than the first time I came here and in other ways worse. Better in that I wasn't nearly so depressed to have nobody meet me at the airport...I could have cared less. It was also nice to recognize the city as the cab drove through it. And nice to have a bed with a bedspread to come back to. Worse in that I didn't want to come back. The first thing that greeted me at rez was a poster about mandatory meetings. (I think it was tonight so I missed it, yay!) But it definitely reminded me of how much I hate rez. I'm hungry and nothing is open this time of night and I cleaned out my cupboards before I left b/c I'd be gone for 2 weeks (most normal people do this...). As much as I only have 4 months left and before I had 8, these 4 months seem like they'll be longer...I think b/c I know what I have coming up.

But, I AM excited to see my classmates tomorrow! Definitely missed that bunch! I really hope everybody comes back. A small part of me thinks that everybody will. But perhaps that will be wrong and 1 or 2 will be missing. Anyway, it is now 2:47am and I have class at 8am. I should try and nap perhaps. Night all!

Worth. Every. Penny.

2009-01-04T00:51:00.004-03:00

(I have kind of a thing for slippers.)

(And hell yes those are Grumpy Bear PJs...credit goes to Michelle for those!)

I Lied...

2009-01-02T11:01:00.002-03:00

I'm still in the west. My flight to Montreal was cancelled which means no going back to PEI today. The only flight I could get that got me there in one day without staying overnight somewhere was on Sunday so I took that one. Classes don't start until Monday anyway, so I won't be missing class - just be missing two boring crappy days in PEI. I get in at midnight on Sunday night which sucks - I'll just be a zombie in class on Monday. Oh well. Not like I haven't done it before.

Anyway...there's my update. Going to go nap on the couch now as I was up at 5:30 for a non-existent flight. :P

2009

2009-01-01T19:38:00.002-03:00

Wow, almost a decade into the new millennium. And apparently I can't spell millennium, as I needed the spellcheck to do it right.

I'm really into a game right now - I'll link it once I beat it. I kinda want to beat it before I tell anybody about it. B/c people will probably beat it quicker than me. :( Then I'll feel dumb. But look forward to that! But not too quickly...it's a tough game.

I like the hotel we're in - Country Inn and Suites. The suite we're in is nice and big, they have DVD players in each room with a big TV, books downstairs you can borrow to read, and a computer/printer downstairs which was handy when I needed to print off my boarding passes.

This post is taking forever to write. I'm watching TV - some home renovation show where they teach somebody who messed up a reno how to do it right. So this guy is hard at work while his wife bitches about how much he sucks and stuff. I think she should either shut the hell up or go do the renovation herself. I have no desire to ever do renovations. How tedious.

Anyway, going to stop typing now. Next time I update, I'll be back on the East coast!

Mom Wants to Know How I Update

2008-12-30T22:38:00.002-03:00

So I showed her.

Watching Finding Nemo. Still stand by the fact that Monsters Inc. is cuter!

I suppose I should blog...

2008-12-29T05:11:00.002-03:00

Blog time!

Well, Christmas is over, New Year's coming up! Already half done my two weeks away from PEI. I just keep telling myself "4 more months." And since I had told myself "It's just 8 months, you can do it" back in August, I think I can handle just 4 months. I should be busy for the 4 months, so it should speed by fairly quickly.

Ugh, I'm thirsty and just got myself settled into bed...what a conundrum.

Got myself a GPS from the parents for Christmas this year. Didn't get a whole lot for Christmas - we didn't do sibling gifts, so that cut back significantly on the gifts...and I don't really miss them in all honesty. I miss shopping for the siblings, but I don't feel like I'm missing a big haul or anything. My GPS rocks and is allowing me to pursue a new hobby - goecaching!

Geocaching is a hobby where people have hidden things around the world and then put up the coordinates on the goecaching website (www.geocaching.com). Then the other players can type in the coordinates on their GPS and go find it! It's like a massive treasure hunt. I went with Andrew and we found one and then I went with him and the parents today and we managed to NOT find 5 of them. But it got us out and active, so that's good. I'll go look for the ones I didn't find again - tomorrow maybe. I think it's probably funner to go caching in the summer - we probably would have spent more time looking for each one today if it wasn't cold out.

I bought myself a Christmas present - Home Simpson slippers. Basically, they rock. I have a slippers thing - the way some women have a shoe thing. I restrain myself a lot, but I love getting new slippers. And I've been eyeing these ones for a few years now - finally broke down and bought them - managed to get them on sale too during Boxing week! Now I can walk around with Homer chewing on my feet.

Anyway, it's late...4:20 on my computer, which means 2:20 Saskatchewan time - I didn't bother to change the computer clock for this visit, just my watch. So yeah, I should probably sleep or play more of my computer game or something. :P

Have a good night/day all!

Brrr...

2008-12-21T23:00:00.003-03:00

Back in Saskatchewan and it is definitely COLD here!

Now, I stand by my opinion that I prefer the -30 to the rain of PEI.

But now that I've lived in both places, I wouldn't mind living somewhere that's as warm as PEI, but not as damn wet. I'll have to look.

Flight home was not too bad. We left Ottawa 1 hr 40 minutes late, but given the storms in Ontario and the cancellations going through Toronto, I think I'm pretty lucky that I was only delayed a couple hours. Being on a plane for 4 hours sucked though. Going through Toronto is nice b/c it splits the flying time evenly in two. Going through Ottawa means a quick trip from Charlottetown to Ottawa, but a long one from Ottawa to Saskatoon. However, the Ottawa airport is CLASSY! If I had to get stuck in an airport, based on the airports I've been to, I would absolutely pick Ottawa. They have business centres to set up laptops and couches for sleeping. Also, a waterfall.

Had some fun in Saskatoon - not nearly enough, but it'll do me for the moment. Went to a wedding - two my callers who met at the call centre and fell in love! Very exciting!!

I'm crazy tired. Slept for 12 hours last night, which I never do anymore, but I've been ready for bed since about 2pm. Hopefully one more good night and I'll be all caught up.

Overall, glad to have a break from PEI! I'm somewhat eager to go back, but not b/c I want to be there - just b/c going back means that I'm slowly making my way towards May when I will be once again free to roam wherever I please!

And the countdown continues...

2008-12-15T23:51:00.002-03:00

We finished our gingerbread village today! It's officially at the hospital! It turned out great and we got a lot of good comments! I'm supposed to be in the paper for it - they took a pic with two of us. Overall, I think the village looked great, and I'm just really happy it's done! One more thing to check off the list! Once we delivered it and got back to school, I cleaned up the room we had been borrowing from the golf program to store/work on the project and I also put away everything on our storage trolley. So gingerbread is officially put to rest for this year!

We only have 3 days of school left. They don't do production on Friday, so we're going to clean on Thursday and be done! On one hand I'm a bit pissed, as I would have flown home a day earlier if I had known we wouldn't have class on Friday anyway. But oh well. I still have my Brownie Christmas party Thursday night, and this just means I get to sleep until 10:30 on Friday instead of being in class until 10:30. It should make that day a lot less stressful.

Went out for pizza tonight with some of the girls. I think we're all at a point where we don't want to sit at home alone and think about how long this week is, so we keep going out. Which is fine by me! My classmates are awesome - by far the best thing about this place. If it wasn't for them, I'd be outta here by now for sure.

Anyway, I really should sleep. It's 11pm and I have to be up at 4:30, lol. We stayed out too late, plus the service was SO SLOW. Oh well! Only 3 more days of class!!

Who Throws a Shoe? Honestly!

2008-12-15T01:37:00.003-03:00

Apparently Iraqi journalists do. It took 11 years, but now we know Austin, now we know.

One Week

2008-12-12T13:55:00.002-03:00

Well, in one week, I'll be on my way to the airport to wait for my flight. I'm really praying the weather is good and my flight isn't delayed/cancelled. B/c if it is, I will be stranded with nowhere to live, b/c rez is kicking me out. Ugh, I hate rez. Turns out my roommate is moving out...today. And told me...yesterday. Wow. So now I need kitchen stuff b/c I was using hers. And I'll have to get used to a new roommate in January. Not cool. So not how I wanted my year to go.

I really just want the next week to go by really fast so that I can have two weeks away from it all.

Right now I'm just waiting for the rez office to phone me so that I can go pick up my keycard for next week so I can get in/out of my room. Then I think I'm going to just sleep away the rest of the day. :)

I Miss You So Much :(

2008-12-11T13:08:00.003-03:00

That's right. I'm talking about Old Dutch Sour Cream and Cheddar Potato Chips. I love them. They don't have them here and it's been crushing my soul a little bit every day since I've been here.

Please feel free to mail them to me.

Update?

2008-12-10T20:07:00.003-03:00

Apparently I'm supposed to update this thing. Oops.

School is going. It's been pretty drama-riffic lately but I really don't want to talk about that online. Online is very wide open.

My flambe dessert KICKED ASS. Whoooo!! Chef Pam helped me flambe it and it was about the coolest thing I've done in school so far...ever. Even cooler than the volcano thing. (Yes, that's right, I said it)

Ack, power flicker. It was flickering at school. It is pouring BUCKETS outside. Freakin' ocean places. I hate the rain, I'm sick of it. It's such a mix of rain and snow, it's baffling. I think the weather here is crazy...SK is nothing compared to this place. Want an example? It was snowing out, yet THUNDERING AND LIGHTENING. That's right. Insanity.

I'm on cafeteria now, sailing to Christmas. I have one assignment I want to get half done before I go home for Xmas. They gave it to us in October, it's not due until March, and I know it's going to slip through the cracks. But I have enough info now to get it half done, so I figure that if I have it half done and it slips through the cracks, that's only half left to do during the all nighter the night before it's due. :D

Brownies is still awesome! We're going carolling with the girls tomorrow, so that will be a lot of fun!

Anyway, other than a quick trip to the gym in the afternoon, I was at school for 12 hours today, and I'm tired. I'm on AMs this rotation and am walking, so that means I'm up at 4:30 and usually out of the house at 5:15ish. And it's POURING RAIN and has been both days so far. And it's not looking like it's going to stop before tomorrow. Stupid rain. So, I want to go try and get dry, sleep, then hope that my clothes/coat are semi-dry before morning so that I can have a sort of comfortable walk to school. Wish me luck!

Flambe!

2008-11-28T01:41:00.002-03:00

I get to make a dessert next week that I flambe! WOOT WOOT!

Tired, hungry, etc.

2008-11-26T18:57:00.002-03:00

Ugh. I've been procrastinating my homework all week and now I really need to do it. Might mean a bit less sleep for me tonight.

Surprisingly the week has gone well though. I think it'll be two days of hell for tomorrow and Friday, but that's just two days. Yesterday my dessert worked out great. Today Chef Pam was gone and we had Chef Hans who didn't really know what to tell us to do - he was more there to supervise and try to answer some questions. So, I ended up making a chocolate mousse, then I asked Chef Richard what needed doing and his #1 thing that he needed done was to cut out Christmas decorations from Patissiere (that's totally spelled wrong I'm sure...it's like playdoh but YUMMY). So, I spent like 2 hours doing that. Then we got out early! Which NEVER happens in the afternoon. Nice treat, since we were there 45 minutes late yesterday. :)

I work the Lucy Maud on Friday night and Saturday night and then next Tuesday. Basically that means I work with somebody and we just have to plate any desserts that are ordered in the dining room that evening. From what I hear, it's incredibly boringgggggg.

Managed to convince myself to go to the gym after class today which rarely happens. Usually my feet are sore after kitchen that I just trudge home. They were sore today, but I still made it to the gym. I needed to get my program back from my trainer anyway and I knew she was teaching a class tonight, so it was there. I probably would have done a bit more there, but I really wanted to catch the 5:35 bus, so I cut back on my cardio (I was on my feet in the kitchen anyway, right?) and busted out the strength to get done in an hourish. Not too shabby!

Rez is pissing me off. The rez person in charge of granting extensions for staying after the move-out date (of which I need one b/c my classes run a week later) isn't answering her phone and isn't answering the e-mails I send her. It's very frustrating. I'll give her until Friday, then I'm going to hunt down my RA and ask her to speak to her for me. I just find it very frustrating that the communications are so rough here. Before I can move out for Christmas, I have to have somebody inspect my room - to make sure the garbage is taken out, the fridge has nothing that will spoil in it, etc. (Not that anything in a fridge really spoils THAT badly that it'll create a smell in 2 weeks anyway...) This would normally be fine, but I'm moving out after the RAs are gone, so I have to find somebody from the management to do it, and I only have about a 2 hour window between my last class and when I need to be at the airport, so I need to be able to rely on them to be here on time to inspect my room. And I'm not too confident of that right now. I just wish they had their shit together a bit better.

Anyway, for now I should do some homework, eat, and perhaps clean. Ciao!

SUCCESS!

2008-11-25T19:48:00.003-03:00

My first successful plated dessert! I went for REALLY simple and still used the entire 4 1/2 hours we had to make it. Chef Pam helped me with the plating, but the basic idea was mine. The ice cream isn't in here - this is just the sample plate so that they know how to plate it. But the ice cream definitely turned out - it's very bourbon-y though. Although most people said "It's very nutmeg-y." I thought the bourbon was more overpowering. Either way - it's eggnog, lol.

The chocolate cigars were made by Chef Pam with the chocolate group. When we have chocolate garnishes, you just order them from the chocolate group and they make them for you.

The cookies are just sugared ginger snaps basically. The middle one is dusted with icing sugar.

The snowflake is just a dusting of cocoa powder mixed with icing sugar. I cut out a stencil and dusted using that.

Overall, a very successful dessert! Hopefully people order it!!

And since I blogged about my cheese tasting and my wine tasting I figured I'd better blog about chocolate tasting!! We did chocolate tasting in class - so I HAD to do it. (Totally forced :P )

We tasted only dark chocolate. There are 3 kinds of chocolate - dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate. Dark chocolate is made from pure cocoa beans. Milk chocolate has milk solids added and white chocolate is made from just the cocoa butter.

We went from 55% dark chocolate up to 75% dark chocolate. The percentage is the amount of cocoa in it - this means that there's less sugar. I think what made this really interesting was that we were truly TASTING them. Letting them sit on our tongue and melt - moving them around our tongues so that you caught all the flavours. And let me tell you...dark chocolate can be DISGUSTING. Some of them are very fruity - almost like wine in my opinion. Others are sort of smoky. It's really interesting.

Anyway - chocolate tasting was not as great as I had hoped/expected/assumed. But it sure was interesting!!

SNOW!

2008-11-24T15:34:00.002-03:00

Well, winter has come to Charlottetown. Winter is my favourite season, so I'm happy! The first day is always bad of course, but after that, you're used to the cold and then winter is awesome!

I've noticed one thing here...THEY PLOW THE SIDEWALKS. Wow. Never been somewhere where the sidewalks are plowed by the city, not just if somebody happens to do it. Usually the city plows the roads and puts the snow ON the sidewalks. But apparently they don't do that here in the Maritimes. They put the snow in the MIDDLE of the road and plow off the sidewalks. It's kind of a weird system overall. But I like it - mostly b/c I don't drive.

What the F...

2008-11-20T00:05:00.002-03:00

...is this weather? Seriously? Could it please just SNOW if we have to have precipitation? The wind here is INSANE. Way worse than in Saskatchewan. And that mixed with...I dunno...a mix of rain, freezing rain, sleet, and a touch of maybe snow...it creates disgusting, wet, cold weather that I hate. It can't even be classified as a single type of weather.

When I was typing that, I was thinking freezing rain, but typed frain and now I've decided that we should just call freezing rain, frain. Please go forth and do so.

Love

2008-11-18T21:21:00.003-03:00

I love my bathtub.

I spent the last 4 years with a midget bathtub that I couldn't really fit into and that wasn't in any way comfortable.

My tub now may not be the best tub. But I can fit in it. And I can be comfortable in it. I can actually sit IN the water, versus just having a couple inches of water to attempt to soak in.

I love my bathtub.

Monotony

2008-11-17T00:01:00.002-03:00

Well, the blog is getting boring, but so is life.

I'm starting to realize that I LOVE making bread. (Did I mention that in a recent post? Well, no matter, it can be repeated.) It can suck at times, but overall, I don't find it nearly as tedious to roll out 50 rolls as I did the first time I did it. And I'm slowly getting better at shaping my loaves. And there can be something a bit therapeutic about kneading dough - it's easy to just zone out in the kitchen and think about stuff.

Afternoon kitchen is interesting. I've got a different chef for it, so there are new rules and new expectations. Overall, it's not nearly as bad as what everybody made it out to be. On Fridays we spend an hour cleaning the kitchen really well. I heard of the horrors of that - it was nothing. I think some of these people have just never worked in a kitchen before and don't know how to clean. I have to say that cleaning the already clean barracks for three hours at the Dundurn Army Base when I was in cadets was wayyyy worse. Anyway, what I like best about the afternoon kitchen is that although the chef is a bit more harsh and yes, I do get snapped at, the fact is, everybody gets snapped at and overall I've thought it's mostly for good reason. She's whipping people into shape who I've been in kitchen with for weeks and been thinking "Ugh, I wish they would ________." Sometimes she could say things in a nicer way - but we all could, so whatever. The fact is, I like that she's making sure that we are doing what we should be. For example, it annoys me when somebody from another group comes and uses our area. She doesn't let that happen. So awesome. I also like that she is incredibly skilled and knowledgeable. She knows how to explain things very well. She just has an expectation that you are to pay attention.

Overall, I like morning kitchen better. The reasons being that it's a bit more relaxed, you come into a clean kitchen, and you're done by noon. But afternoon isn't bad. The worst thing about afternoon is that it makes for a shitty day. You are there from 10:30-4:30, so I often don't get home until 7:30 or 8pm by the time I do all my things downtown - hit up both libraries (I have become a total library fiend), go to the gym, go to any meetings I might have. It just seems like the days are longer and I'm more tired.

I went to a day long workshop for Girl Guides on Saturday. Some of the sessions sucked, but some were really fun! Myself and one of the other leaders from my unit went to one session on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) together. She's younger like me and we had a BLAST. We got to play with all sorts of fun stuff, like corn starch and water. Is it a solid? Is it a liquid? Who cares!? I went to a session on geocaching, which I had somehow never heard of. I now want to make it a hobby. Which means I need a GPS. I will be looking on EBay. :D Overall, I'm glad I joined Girl Guides - it reminds me a lot of SADD. Just a similar type of setup for a non-profit organization, just bigger. I think I'll be with it for many years to come, regardless of where I end up moving.

I've been looking at places to work in the future. I really like the look of the Fairmont in Whistler. My only problem is that the place where I'd live is fairly small. But it's the Olympic Venue in 2010, which is pretty kick ass. Check it out here and let me know if you have any thoughts/comments. http://www.fairmont.com/whistler/

I Love Fire Safety

2008-11-13T21:23:00.004-03:00

(credits are in the little copyright box in the comic)

4th Place!

2008-11-12T22:45:00.002-03:00

My pumpkin won 4th place in the contest I entered it in! And, b/c everybody gets to order the list of prizes in the order they want it, I managed to get my FIRST CHOICE! Score! I'll post my prize here once I receive it. Which might not be for a while.

Started my first PM shift today. I have PM for a month. Bu the first week should go by quite quickly - there's only 2 more days left in it already! Beyond that, a 3 week countdown to being done with afternoons, then 2 weeks with Chef Richard on AM, then home for Christmas! I'm on bread right now which, in the afternoon, is dumb. You get to make one recipe for bread and that is all. There is no way it takes 4 hours to make one recipe of bread.

The long weekend was good. My roomie went home for the weekend, so I had the place to myself, which was nice. Friday I had a pastry test (which went well), Saturday I had my final for bartending (which went well) and then I was off for the weekend! A few of us stuck around to drink all the drinks everybody had made for the bartending final, so I was definitely hungover by 3pm on Saturday. I spent the rest of the weekend basically playing video games, watching movies, and sleeping. It was great. However, I was productive too! I got most everything on my to-do list done. So, all in all, a good weekend. :) Although my Zelda game is going to drive me insane, now that I've actually started playing it.

Anyway, I need to go do homework and get some other stuff done before bed. I'll be back to write another spellbinding post another day!

Long Update Post

2008-11-05T15:38:00.006-03:00

Well I said I'd write a detailed blog, so here it is. I feel like I have so much stuff to talk about, I need an agenda - like in a presentation. Something along the lines of this:

Daylight Savings Time Breaking News
Riders Game
Gingerbread
Kitchen
Student Council
US Election
Wine Tasting

OK, so Agenda Item #1 - Daylight Savings Time Breaking News!

-I don't care what we have to do to our clocks...it's still dark out at 5am.

Agenda Item #2...we're moving along quickly! Riders Game!

-I missed the Riders game. However, they got another home playoff game! So I now have something to do on Saturday...as if I already didn't! I wrote an awesome note on Facebook featuring an article from CBC with some hilarious quotes. Here's one from there:

B.C. is 5-4 away from their dome and when you are playing in Regina, in the November wind, in the playoffs, in front of those guys with carved watermelons on their heads, you are decidedly on the road.

Agenda Item #3 - Gingerbread

We officially started our Gingerbread project. It's not for marks, just for fun, but we make a Gingerbread village for the hospital for Christmas. There are 8 groups and each group is responsible for a 2'x4' piece of the village. They will all be brought together to make one giant village!

I've volunteered to be in charge of this project, along with a classmate. We're in charge of making sure it's getting done and being the liaison between the students and the instructors.

My group is going to do the park, with a big Christmas tree, skating rink, carollers, dogs, etc. :)
Agenda Item #4 - Kitchen

Kitchen has been...interesting this week. Yesterday went well. I'm getting slowly better at decorating cakes, yet I still suck at it. And my dessert for today didn't have enough time to prepare, so it didn't turn out. :( But at least I know I had a nice plate design.

Tomorrow we have a function and Friday is buffet. So no individual dessert. I'm going to attempt mini Brioche fruit thingies. If not, I'll whip up some mousse.

Agenda Item #5 - Student Council

I somehow ended up on Student Council again. Not sure how that'll go, but we'll play it by ear. Good chance to meet a few new people at least.

Agenda Item #6 - US Election

Well, I stayed up for another election. This time my guy didn't win. :( I didn't expect him to. I did at the start of the campaign (you know, 2 years ago). But picking Palin sentenced John McCain's campaign to death. Anyway, it should be an interesting 6 months coming up with Obama coming into power.

Obama's resemblance to JFK is uncanny and quite creepy. He's young, relatively inexperienced, charismatic, has a pretty wife and cute kids, is an excellent orator...I really hope he doesn't meet the same end - and I would say that there is a very high risk of that.

Anyway, interesting election. The 2 year lead up is a little silly though.

Agenda Item #7 - Wine Tasting

That's right, we did a wine tasting for our Bartending Class. I've decided that red wine tastes like Worcester Sauce. And white wine is odd. Maple Dessert Wine is entirely too maple-y. But wine is in no way as bad as Brandy. Brandy smells JUST like wine, not too terrible. But it does horrible things when it hits your tongue. >:(

Well, that seems to be all I have to say. Just a quick overview of everything going on. Now for some pictures!

This is what my plated dessert was SUPPOSED to look like. With a Bavarian Cream/Mousse dome instead of that little cup.

This is what it turned into instead when it didn't unmold. :(

And a picture of our wine tasting in the Lucy Maud Montgomery Dining Room!

Daylight Savings Time!

2008-11-02T11:39:00.002-03:00

It's my first Daylight Savings Time! How exciting! I woke up at 11 and it was only 10! Craziness!

Today

2008-10-30T20:25:00.004-03:00

So, today! Let's chronicle it shall we? Chronological style? Sounds good!

5:00am - Alarm clock goes off
5:23am - Roll out of bed, dash to the shower
5:50am - Wait for my ride out front
6:05am - Get into the kitchen

-Kitchen today was not bad. I made 2 pound cakes which turned out ok. I also made up my last Millefeuilles which I am glad to NEVER have to make again. What a shitty dessert. Also I just remembered that I forgot to give them the chocolates. Oops. I then made an Italian Buttercream. This is a very complicated icing. Let me explain it. First you make a sugar syrup (Water+Sugar) and you boil it until it reaches 116C. Think this is easy? The thing got STUCK at 103. Took like 45 minutes just to get that up to the proper temperature. In the meantime, you need to whip egg whites to stiff peaks. Yes, egg whites can get there. Then, when the syrup is ready, you turn the mixer on low and as it is beating, you pour the SCALDING HOT sugar syrup into the egg whites, without the syrup touching either the side of the bowl or the whisk that is whisking. Then you need to whip it until cool. This is tough b/c not only did you just put 116C sugar syrup in, you're whisking it, which creates friction, thus more heat. Anyway, once it's a bit more cooled, you add a CRAPLOAD of butter and continue whisking until it's all together and creamy and then you add flavouring and VOILA! Not your simple "Water+Icing Sugar" recipe, that's for sure! Anyway, mine was a total success and I love it! Now tomorrow I need to use it and my cakes and DECORATE. Which is scary.

10:30am - Theory Class

-Chef Pam has been teaching theory while Chef Richard is gone. We wrote a test last Friday that I was 100% sure I failed. So, she says "I have your tests marked, but I want to meet with you individually to go over the results." Eep. Chef Pam is the tough chef, but I haven't had her in kitchen, so I don't really have my own opinion. Nonetheless, I am nervous. So, since I'm in AM, I can either wait until 12:30 and go back to the kitchen to talk to her, or I can wait until the next day.

11:30-12:30 - Mess around the school, because there is no way I'm waiting another day to find out I failed.

-I'll just lose sleep. So, I'm the first person in line to talk to her. I got 69%!!!! Whooooo!! And the meeting is mostly b/c we can't keep the tests, so she answers any questions we have about the test. So I got her to clarify a couple things for me and she was really good and explained everything really well.

1-2PM - Meet with Personal Trainer

-I really like my personal trainer. That is going well.

2-3PM - Walk home, stop for groceries, DRAG my butt home as I am about dying from exhaustion by this point.

3-4PM - Shovel food down, watch some Oprah.

4-5:30pm - Get my costume on for the Girl Guides Halloween party!!

5:30-8:30pm - Girl Guides Halloween Party!

-This was a lot of fun! I manned the station where we got the girls to wrap each other like mummies with toilet paper. We had food, fun, and plenty of hyper girls!

8:30pm - My feet died.

And now I'm off to do some homework and go to bed. Night all!

Breakfast

2008-10-28T19:33:00.002-03:00

So, I've talked about lunch at school, but now let's talk about BREAKFAST. Breakfast is awesome. Each day you get a meal consisting of:

Omelette or Scrambled Eggs
Bacon or Sausage
Hashbrowns
Pancakes, Waffles, or French Toast
Regular Toast - White or Whole Wheat
Sauce of some kind - strawberry, blueberry...
Fruit Salad
A drink

In other words, they HEAP your plate with food! Score.

I love breakfast.

Halloween is Coming!

2008-10-26T14:30:00.000-03:00

Florida vs. New York!

2008-10-24T23:06:00.001-03:00

So, I'm dragging the little bro on a vacation in May. We've whittled down our choices to either New York City or Florida.

Anybody have any suggestions about which one to pick? Things you've heard, have you been there? Please comment!

Hi!

2008-10-23T20:17:00.005-03:00

Hello! Long time, no type. Well, not so long. Let's recap what I've been up to!

So...kitchen stories! This is my last week on Bread and Retail 1 before I switch to something else! We had functions 3 days this week...all at 8am. This is horrifying. We have to have food made, proofed, baked, cooled, and on trays by 7:45am and we don't get into the kitchen until 6:30am. Which means that I've been in by 6am at the latest each day to give myself enough time. Horrible. Tuesday was a horrifying day in the kitchen for EVERYBODY. Not just bread, every group. But we survived. Chef Karen is so awesome. If it wasn't for her, I think we all would have gone home absolutely miserable. However, my Tiger Bread came out AWESOME! I've wanted to make that ever since I saw it in the book and I'm so happy it turned out! Unlike that evil, evil Rye Bread! *shakes my fist at it* Anyway, here's my Tiger Bread!

Today we made Baguettes. We halved the retardation time, and it still took 2 hours longer than the shift to finish them. UGH. I was in the kitchen until noon and then Chef Pam tried to yell at me. But I wasn't taking her shit. I'm not going to set myself up for being miserable working with her. I think I'll either get along well with her or horribly with her - she's just like me. So one situation could be great, the other could be horrifying. I have a plan of attack though. Not going to say it here though - it's a strategy I've used before on people, and I don't want it revealed!! It works awesomely good.

Next week I am on Lucy Maud Lunch, so I am making a plated dessert for the lunch service. That's all I'm saying. I'll post a picture next week of what I make. And I hope it turns out good. It could potentially be horrible. Haha.

On Tuesday I met with Sue who is our internship coordinator to talk about jobs. I'm going to meet with her again in a couple weeks after I go through all the information she gave me. She's going to be putting in a call to a chef for me. The one she was thinking of is in Whistler...that could be cool...if I had a car. Whistler itself isn't a big city, which is a downside, but it's close to big cities, so if I could drive places, I would probably survive. The other downside is that she was talking about a situation where I would sign a 3 year contract...I'm not sure I want to jump into signing employment contracts. I'm not really confident enough about where I want to end up and I would like to have the freedom to leave if I end up miserable. So, I'll have to think that over. At the same time, if it's a great opportunity, it might be worth it. We shall see what comes of that!

I started a Basic Bartending class last night! This class will be something I can put on my resume and also gives me my Responsible Beverage Server Certification. It's really good to have in the industry I'm heading into. The class is $250, but they offered it to any Tourism and Culinary Centre students for only $50...so I saved $200! It's only 2 1/2 weeks long, so doesn't really add to my work load too much. Here's a drink I made at the front of the class and a picture of the Bartending Lab we're in:

That's Brittany, one of my Pastry classmates making the crazy face in the front. There are 16 people in the class and 4 of us are Pastry...a quarter of the class. That's right...we make people drunk and fat. Yay Pastry!

Tonight I had Brownies again! We've finally passed the "getting to know you" stage and now the girls are all huggy and crazy and chatty which is awesome. :) I'm in charge of handing out badges, so they all need to come to me when they get one done. So, I'm really glad I'm volunteering with Brownies and I'll definitely do my best to get involved wherever I end up moving past here.

Anyway...I have test tomorrow! So I'd better go study! Bye!

It's 4:45AM...

2008-10-21T04:47:00.001-03:00

And I do NOT want to walk to school.

Too bad for me, I have to leave in 30 minutes.

Where to go...

2008-10-20T10:56:00.002-03:00

So, the big question that's been haunting me since before I even came here is...where do I go when I'm done? I can go live ANYWHERE! Right now what I'm most pumped to do is move to either British Columbia or the United States. Following behind that would be probably the UK or elsewhere in Canada.

Given that I hate Charlottetown so much, I figured I should look at what about it I hate so I make sure I don't move somewhere similar. And the glaring thing that I hate is how SMALL it is and how few people are here. The population, according to Wikipedia, is about 32K, and about 58K if you consider the "Metro." Either way, too fucking small for me. Saskatoon and Regina are both hovering around 200K - Regina lower, close to about 175K.

So, I thought I'd start by taking a look at a list of cities that have a population of at least 100,000 or more in Canada. Thanks to Wikipedia, I have a base list and there are 48 cities on it. From here I can start to eliminate the places I know I don't want to live. So, the maritimes are out of it, as is Quebec.

Right now, the top city on my list is Kelowna, BC. The population is 106K in the city, or 162K for the Metropolitan area. One downside to it is that it's a tourist city...but I think it's more of a "round the year" tourist city as it has the attraction of the mountains for winter sports, but also lakes and climbing paths for summer sports. Therefore it wouldn't just DIE in the winter, like it does here. It does have an international airport, so I would be able to fly places easily. It's warm there - the coldest recorded temperature according to Wikipedia is -36...psh! It's about half the size of Saskatoon, but I'm sure that population increases due to tourists. Because it is a tourist city, I would be able to get a job in my profession quite easily. Also, it's not right on the coast, which I consider an earthquake/death trap waiting to happen.

Anyway...those are my thoughts right now. Any other thoughts? Suggestions of places to move? I figure I should start doing my research now about what it's like there, what the job prospects are like, etc. I'm meeting with our internship coordinator tomorrow to discuss job opportunities, so that's a start in that direction.

6 1/2 More Months...

2008-10-20T10:31:00.003-03:00

Just met with the Residence Life Manager. I didn't get the written citation lifted, but she agreed to write on it that I slept through the alarm. I figure that way at least if I have a landlord in future who phones asking for a reference, it's made clear why I was issued a written citation. And that I didn't do anything wrong.

She basically told me to just not worry about it, it's going to stay there, but brush it off. It's not meant to be a punishment, regardless of the fact that it clearly is one. I'm not so good at brushing things like this off. I'm the goodie-two-shoes who never gets in trouble. Therefore, I don't handle getting in trouble well.

Basically her stance was, "It's not our responsibility to make sure people get out of the building." Which I was a little shocked at, but whatever. I'm not liking UPEI right now, so hey, why not just add to the reason pile? Their argument seems to be, "Well I lived there and it's pretty loud. I don't know how anybody could sleep through it." And my response is, "Well I did. So obviously it's quite possible." And when I mentioned that I hadn't even been around for a fire drill and that I was surprised at this as they were holding them over a week in September, she said, "I think there was only one that week and it was during the day." Which makes NO sense to me. Most residence students are at CLASS during the day, so that's a pretty useless fire drill in my opinion. Isn't the point for people to be home and to practice evacuating so you know what the fire alarm sounds like and where to go when it sounds?

Overall...I'm just not real happy right now. I'm not liking rez, I'm not liking Charlottetown...and I don't even know what to think of my course. I guess I'm liking it. It's the only thing keeping me here at the moment. Pretty much I'm just counting down the days until I can get out of here and go somewhere else. Unfortunately the days aren't going by all that quickly. 6 1/2 more months...

Oddities of PEI - Part 4 - Transit

2008-10-18T23:22:00.000-03:00

Ahhh, PEI Transit. This transit system only began in 2005, so it is very new. And from a conversation I inadvertently eavesdropped on, there were a lot of people who opposed it then and who still oppose it. So, the bus system is still fighting opposition.

My understanding is that the bus system is run by a private company, but paid for by the city.

The bus fleet is supposed to match the old time "tourist-y" feel of downtown. So, all the buses look like old trolley cars:

Oh, and that includes the inside. The seats are like park benches:

Where to start about the bus system? Let's start with the good things perhaps!

It makes me appreciate Saskatoon's bus system
The bus is always on time here, PROVIDING it's running
The bus drivers will drop you off anywhere you ask, not just at designated stops
The bus drivers are very friendly and there's not many of them, so they get to know you

Now the bad points:

The buses break down...and there are no replacement buses. And the only way you find out that the bus has broken down is by word of mouth from other people waiting for the same bus. If they replace it, it's with a 16 seater van.
They changed the schedule in the summer so that more buses run. But all the schedules they have posted around the city? They didn't update ANY of them. So, unless you happen to have a paper copy of the new schedule, you don't know when a bus comes.
The bus drivers are INSANE. I'm surprised a pedestrian hasn't been killed, as they don't really seem to give a crap about them.
The bus doesn't run on Sunday at all, nor on holidays.
They only recently upgraded to, wait for it...LAMINATION. The first pass I got was a 4 month pass that was just a piece of construction paper basically. Don't ask me how that was expected to hold up for 4 months. At the start of October they replaced that with a laminated pass.
The bus doesn't start running until 7am and stops at 10pm.
The way they label the routes is confusing. They don't say "Up and down University Avenue is Route #1. Any bus going there is labelled #1." Instead it's more like "The bus labelled #1 is going to be doing University Ave. for this hour. But next hour the bus labelled #5 is going to be doing it." I can't even explain it right, it's so confusing. The buses are labelled, not the routes.

Overall, I'm very grateful to have the bus system. But it could use a lot of improvement.

FIRE!

2008-10-16T22:15:00.003-03:00

So, I completely slept through a fire alarm tonight. My roommate even was knocking on my door to wake me up and she said she didn't hear a thing out of my room. I was just tired and asleep.

As a result of this, I got a written violation placed on my account for failure to evacuate the building during a fire alarm. One more and I have to pay a $100 fine and another after that and I get evicted and have to still pay all the rez fees.

I have to say I'm upset by this. It's upsetting to know that their fire system did NOT wake me up when there WAS INDEED a fire. Clearly there should be fire detectors/alarms IN the bedrooms.

And b/c of the failure of THEIR system to wake me up, I'm being punished.

Right at the moment I have to say I don't feel entirely safe living in this building knowing that.

Well!

2008-10-16T20:11:00.003-03:00

I couldn't think of a good title.

I'm quite pleased with the outcome of the Federal Election. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Conservatives did! The Liberals lost a LOT of ground - and not just to the Conservatives. The Liberals will have to take a step back and take a look at their party. I've heard from some who want to see Justin Trudeau step in as leader - if not now, in the near future. Should be interesting!!

School is going well! We've been hammering out the bread, delivering it all over the building! Tomorrow I am in charge of making rolls for the Lucy Maud Dining Room, so I need to find some cool shapes tonight!

Just got back from selling Girl Guide cookies all night! I somehow ended up with the ADD child. But since we were walking around, she was not too terrible - had a way to expend her energy.

Last night I crashed at 6:30pm and slept right until 4:30 when my alarm went off - awesome. I'll be lucky if I get to sleep by 10pm tonight. But, tomorrow is the last morning I have to wake up early this week - then my 3 day weekend begins! I actually have a lot to do, so I should make myself a to-do list so I don't forget anything!

Sorry for the lack of blogging. I have posts I want to do, I just don't have them written - perhaps I'll add that to my to-do list!

I saw my personal trainer again today - I'm going to see her every 2 weeks. Right now I have a very difficult circuit set up. More difficult than the one my last personal trainer gave me I think.

Oh yes...the parents were here! Yay! We toured around PEI - beautiful island, but eventually got tired of seeing, haha. Here's a good picture mom took. And here's the conversation that was going on in the process of taking it: Mom says, "Shanna, that's far enough. Shanna. Come back now. Shanna!" etc, etc.

Monday night I went over to a classmate's house for Thanksgiving supper. It was good, but you can tell that all us Pastry students don't quite all mesh together. We have definite cliques. Some of us are trying to move into a another clique as we don't like the one we ended up in first off, due to knowing nobody, and I think we are all succeeding in that slowly. But yeah - a good group, just a lot of different personalities.

Anyway, I would write more, but I'm tired and still have a bit of homework to get done. Ciao!

Election Day!

2008-10-14T14:10:00.002-03:00

IMPORTANT ALERT: MSN Election Party

I have decided, on very late notice, to hold the 2nd Quad-Annual (? Every 4 years-ish anyway) MSN Election Party!!!

What we do is all log into MSN, get into the same conversation and watch the coverage together and discuss it! People from all areas of the spectrum are welcome!

If you want to come, just add soulfood77(at)hotmail.com to your MSN and put in your name/status "Invite to MSN Election Party" or something to that effect so that I know to invite you.

The party starts at 7pm EST (Ontario). That is 8pm Atlantic (where I am) and 5pm CST (Saskatchewan) and 4pm PST (West Coast).

***************

In pastry news, we began our regular rotations today. I had the "luck" of being the group leader for my first rotation.

At first I was not too freaked, as I'm on bread and bread is not that hard. Turns out bread is the hardest b/c of all the time we have to spend proofing everything. We just don't quite have enough time to finish everything. Also, I didn't think I had too much for our group to do. But I went in early so I could talk to Chef Karen and check the function sheets and it turns out we had a LOT to do. We made:

12 loaves of bread - 4 different varieties, so that means 4 different doughs
22 pizza doughs - 570g each - we still need 8 more - I just didn't get it all done (I was on pizza dough duty)
Danish Dough
Croissant Dough
Ciabatta
Focaccia
Sticky Buns

We had a group of 5 people and split it all up.

Things were going well until one of the girls in my group cut herself with her serated knife. It was bleeding a lot and she was getting lightheaded, so I got her into the office to sit down. Chef Karen then came to check on her and I stuck around to just watch her and make sure she didn't pass out. When Chef Karen came back to check on her again, she decided to send her to the hospital. My classmate did need a stitch, but b/c of where the cut was on her finger, they couldn't stitch it, so they just taped it shut and put a bandaid on it. She's doing fine, which is a mucho relief.

CRAZY DAY!

What a Start to a Week!

2008-10-08T17:11:00.004-03:00

Whew! Well, I am EXHAUSTED. My legs are just dying. Let me try to recap in a not too rambly way.

Worked the past 3 days at Zellers. When I was called to work my first shift we arranged that shift then I was told we would "Hash out a schedule for the rest of the week when you get in." Apparently that means, "I'll have a schedule for the next week ready for you." So, I ended up working the past two nights until 9:30pm then having to walk home...not cool considering I had to be up at 5am the next morning for school! After just standing in place at work and running my feet off at school, my legs are just tired and in pain today.

I haven't even hit a week of working there yet and I already got a call today to come in to cover a shift. Not a great sign. I'm going to give that place another couple weeks, then I'm going to re-evaluate whether or not I want to stay there.

My week did not start out so great. I could play the blame game, but that's a giant waste of time. Shit happens, you deal with it, that's life! I've been getting a ride to school from a friend at 6am and on Tuesday I was waiting for him and he didn't show! Ah! Takes me 40 minutes to walk to school, class starts at 6:30, so by 6:05 I was freaking out. So, I texted him, phoned him, nothing. I ended up just phoning a cab to get to school and managed to get there and get changed JUST in time for class...WHEW! Turns out the classmate just slept in...oh well! I'm quite sure he had just a bad a start as me that morning, so we just got to be slightly miserable together. :P I get to class and we're not making what I was told we'd be making! Which means I don't have any recipes to use. Which makes me mad because I SPECIFICALLY took the time to ask in theory class what recipes to bring and I was told cakes. Liars. So, fortunately my classmates rock and lent me some recipes.

Chef Richard, the main pastry chef, is headed off to Germany on Saturday for the Culinary Youth Olympics with the team from our school. He's going to be gone for a month! The Olympics aren't that long, but I have a feeling that he'll be visiting home while he's there - he's from Austria. Therefore, this week we've had his replacement come in to work with him and make the transition to taking over the class - she'll be here for the next 4 weeks. Her name is Chef Karen and she is AWESOME. She's very approachable and knows how to teach very well. I'm going to of course assume that this is because she is from the west. The last place she was working was at SAIT in Calgary, teaching the Pastry Arts course there. We were a touch worried about who we'd get as a replacement for Chef Richard while he was gone and I'm happy to say that I'm loving the replacement.

Today we started making cakes. We made Pound Cake, Sponge Cake, and Angel Food Cake. My sponge cake collapsed in the middle. :( Tomorrow we are decorating them and making the icings. So, perhaps I shall have pictures for you tomorrow.

Yesterday we had a day to just remake something, so I decided to remake the Vienna Rolls as my rolls turned out horribly the first time! I just don't quite get the rolling thing - the technique used is one that I'm pretty sure most of you don't use in your kitchens. Or if you do, none of you bothered to teach me which makes you just terrible! But yeah, after re-making the Vienna Rolls, I got the technique down! YAY! And now I have a picture for you that I'm willing to share!

Argh!

2008-10-06T08:34:00.002-03:00

A message to my bed:

What in the hell bed? Last weekend I wake up and I've pulled a muscle in my neck which STILL hurts more than a week later. Today I wake up and I've wrenched my knee! That had better work itself back to normal by the end of the day or I'm going to beat you with my pillow tonight!

Anyway...don't know that I have too much of interest to say, so I'm going to tell you my story of Bulk Barn!

The Bulk Barn Saga

Right across the street there is a store called "Bulk Barn." The sign in the window claims "High Quality Bulk Food!" I read that and scoffed. Mostly b/c the signage on the outside is all bright yellow with red lettering, making me think that it's of dollar store quality. Therefore I'm thinking..."Not trustworthy food."

For school we needed to buy some piping tips. And the name Bulk Barn kept popping up. "Go to Bulk Barn" or "I got mine at Bulk Barn." Which made me go, "Seriously?" So finally I went in.

It's Nutters! Holy crap!

Apparently the east (including Ontario, I asked my friend) has this Bulk Barn store and not Nutters.

This is awesome! This store has everything I could ever need for decorating and it's just a quick hop and a skip away from home. Also if I ever do need something such as what you would get at Nutters, it's right there - sweetness.

The End.

Cheeeeeeeeese

2008-10-05T09:21:00.000-03:00

I don't really like it. But, when a post went up saying there was going to be a presentation and cheese tasting, I said to myself, "You didn't come to Culinary School to sit on your butt and do nothing" so I signed up.

Now, I've heard that if you don't like cheese/milk that could be a sign that you're mildly lactose intolerant. I don't remember who told me that...I'm thinking Colleen though. Anyway...I'm almost wondering if that's true. Or if I was just to cheesed out that night. But by the end of the night I was sick to my stomach. But I controlled it and didn't puke all over Josh's car on the way home.

I did try about 5 new cheeses. Which for me is very good! My rules for trying new things basically is that if any of the following are applicable, I won't try a food:

It looks gross
Somebody told me it's gross
It smells gross
The name of it sounds gross
I think it's gross based on no real reason
Other things that would tip me off that it's gross

So, given those categories, the fact that I tried cheeses at all was impressive. Especially after the very first one tasted like sand in my mouth.

I was in the 2nd row - right behind the row of tables with the cheeses on them. When he opened up the Oka Mushroom, I could smell it from 3 feet away immediately. And it was rank.

But really, I tried probably 6 or 7 total - the only ones I had tried before was Mozarella and Cheddar. But by the time we got to the Cheddar, I couldn't even eat it. My stomach was churning and I was just passing all the cheeses by me. I had water but that didn't even help to get rid of the taste from my mouth. We needed mint gum or something.

So, I won't go to a cheese tasting again. But it was a good experience! Now here are some pictures!

This is Josh's perfectly organized plate. He went for the spiral method of organizing.

This is my plate - I stopped taking cheeses after the Cheddars as you can see. I went for the line method of organizing. Each line was a different grouping they had us do together.

Here was the table with all the leftover cheese sitting on it. Soooooo much cheese.

*Note for all those mothers/aunts out there - I know what you're thinking but just so you know Josh is a classmate of mine and he's happily married, so just take that train of thought and throw it away.

Milestones! (Subtitle: Happy Birthday Little Bro!)

2008-10-04T15:46:00.004-03:00

Well, this past week, I passed my one month milestone! So, what was "It's only 8 months" has now become "It's only 7 more months." Woot!

It's been a crazy, crazy week for me! I was asleep Monday night and got a call from Zellers that woke me up, asking me to come in for an interview on Tuesday. (OK, it was 7pm. I like to sleep early, deal with it.) So, interview Tuesday which went well. On Wednesday I was called and offered the job. Thursday I had my first shift in which I learned basically nothing. They were short people and just didn't have time to train me. So, I was supposed to be "observing" but it's hard to observe when the cashier's fingers are flying over the buttons and you don't know what any of the buttons do. I work again tomorrow for 6 hours, so hopefully I make a bit more progress then. And get some actual formal training.

As for what I think of the job...it's expendable. Not a job I'd want to be stuck in for any length of time, but it'll be ok for 15 hours a week. And I won't mind the cash to at least cover my phone bill each month. I'm also going to apply for some scholarships/bursaries and try to get some cash that way too.

So, due to the job, Thursday turned into a 16 hour day - not cool. I did not come here to get back into the habit of having days where I'm on my feet for 12-16 hours. But I just asked for Thursdays off in future. I was up at 5am so I could get to school for 6:30, was in kitchen until 11:30 - home to eat quick, then off to work. Work until 5. Home for food quick, then off to Girl Guides. It was a crazy day.

Girl Guides should be fun! I'm going to be working with the Brownies group. This is ages 7 and 8. It's every Thursday from 6:30-8, plus some weekend things if I can make it to them. And what I like about Girl Guides is that there are Girl Guides in almost every city, so wherever I end up moving, I can pick back up as a leader in the new place. Quick way to find volunteer work elsewhere. They're happy that I have my CPR/First Aid as nobody else does and one of us is supposed to have it.

We finished the evil puff pastry this week! *shakes my fist at it* My dough ended up turning out awesome. Too awesome. :( It rose so well that all my bouchees fell over! Oh well. I know how to make them not fall over next time now, even if my dough next time is just as awesome. Regardless of how it looked after being cooked...the stuff tastes like sin. So good.

After puff we moved to making Savarin and Brioche. I really like the Savarin. It's very easy to make and makes a very nice dessert. We finished off the week with Choux Paste (pronounced Shoe Paste) which so far is my favourite thing to make. SO easy, looks FANCY, and tastes DIVINE. It's not something I can ship out to you...but perhaps those I see at Christmas will get a taste. *hint hint* It tastes nothing like shoes or like paste of any kind.

Now we begin cakes! One more week of "introductory" work before we begin our rotations. So, the last week we'll cover cakes and I think a couple other things.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the week!

First off, here are some awesome cinnamon buns I made with my danish dough. The filling is a hazelnut filling with raisins and it's drizzled with a clumpy icing sugar icing. (OK, the clumpiness wasn't on purpose...*shakes my fist at the icing sugar)

I went to the Police Station to get a Police Record Check for Girl Guides. I'm given some forms and told to go into a TINY room with a really intimidating peep hole (it moves around and stuff...) to fill it out. Here's my attempt at a picture of the tiny room.

Adding the finishing touches to my Savarin. I did not make the sauce did...Josh did. I didn't like it. But it was heavy on the rum and cloves and I'm not a fan of either.

Picture Blog!

2008-09-30T16:17:00.003-03:00

So, I went crazy with my camera phone today, so I've decided to just do a quick photo blog of the day's adventures. Enjoy!

Today we made danishes. Here is a big braided danish I made. This is an in-progress picture. I didn't cook it, as I didn't want to take it home. So I just made it then tossed it into the freezer. It'll just need to be thawed, proofed, and baked and it'll be good to go!

Finished product before freezing!

Here are some danishes myself and a classmate made. Mine are on the left. Mmmmmm, cinnamon rolls made with hazelnut filling.

Here's a picture of that tray baked out. Something was different about our doughs and hers took much longer to cook. So, since we had to leave them in until hers cooked, that meant that mine were a bit overcooked. You can see mine clearly in the back as they are much, much darker.

I said I'd try and get some pictures of the kitchen, so here are a few. This is a picture of the bread making area. This has been my station so far this year as we're just sort of plunked anywhere for the moment. Once we start rotations, this is where I start, as I'm on Bread and Retail for my first 2 weeks.

Clearly you can see we are HARD at work. That's my knife kit right at the front with the pizza cutter. The rolled out dough you see with the square and triangle? Yeah, that was my failed attempt at making croissants. Apparently those aren't the type of triangles that you use to make croissants. The triangle needs to be more "pizza slice" shaped. What is that? And isosceles triangle? I think so.

This is facing over towards the other side of the kitchen. I think the Lucy Maud stations are over there. You can see all our little mixers lined up. We also have bigger mixers for making larger quantities of dough.

And what I think is my new favourite picture of myself. :)

Oh cruel fate...

2008-09-29T21:19:00.002-03:00

Apparently you do not want me to sleep tonight. Fine then. I shall blog.

Neck is...well, I don't even know. Sort of better but sort of worse. It's more of just a general pain now, but it's moved up into my head, which I'm not liking. I did get some Advil, and it helped for a bit.

I was supposed to go to a workshop on pears tonight, but apparently the bus broke down. And being that this is Charlottetown, there is no replacement bus. How very unhelpful. I could have maybe made it there somehow, but my head hurt anyway, so I just went home. It was an optional thing anyway. I will have a rant about the bus later. Oh, it's coming.

Charlottetown...what to say about it? Oh, I know. I don't like it. I really don't want to stay here. I'm mostly counting down the months until I can leave. OK, that came out really mean. It's a nice enough city, probably a good place to raise kids, but there's jack squat here to do. I've spent every weekend just bored out of my mind. I'm attempting to find stuff to do, but overall, I'm just sort of unimpressed with the city. Everybody told me I'd fall in love when I came out here. Well, in all honesty, it's not much different than back home except it's more boring. Perhaps it's nicer if you're just sort of popping in here as a tourist. But living here - not my cup of tea.

I did find out that the school hires 2 pastry students to work the summer. (Did I mention this last post? I can't remember.) So anyway, I would be willing to stay 4 extra months if I were to get that job, but that's it, then I'm outta here.

Oh, and everything here is SMALL, did I mention that? I went and got a library card today, and once I got in there and was looking at the books I was like "Seriously? This is it?" This is the capital of the province and the library is smaller than the one in Weyburn is. And Weyburn is 1/3 the size of Charlottetown. This place just isn't big city enough for me.

Had to go to school today for a "Library Skills " class. Just another "Here's the library, here are the books, here is how you find a book" class. As if I can't figure that out myself. What a giant waste of time. And it was MISERABLE out - thank you Tropical Storm Kyle.

OK, this blog is super negative...hmmm....need something positive...

I did hear back from Girl Guides and I'm going to meet with the coordinator tomorrow! They definitely need people, so once I get a record check done (working with kids, that's sort of a standard thing) and fill out some paperwork, that should be something for me to do!

I got woken up tonight at 7:30 (yes, I went to bed at 6:30, I was tired!) by Zellers who was phoning me for an interview, so I have that tomorrow afternoon. So perhaps I might have a job. Although I'm at the point now where I wasn't expecting one and now I'm not so sure I even want one. But I'll go - if it turns out I don't want a job, I can always quit. :) I just need to make sure I can balance everything. I do want to volunteer, so that's my girl guides, and I have school of course. So the question is if I can put a job on top of that. I think I can. I just don't want to go too insane. Need to find a happy balance.

I'm getting a personal trainer. I decided the money was worth it. I'm just going to be meeting with her once every two weeks to keep me on task in terms of working out while I'm here. So, hopefully that all works out well. I met with her last week and really like her, so I foresee good things with that. Didn't work out today though - mostly b/c my neck still doesn't really work and I don't want to strain it more before it heals.

I think I've run out of things to say for the moment. Tomorrow we take the dough we made last week and make final products out of it! So, hopefully I shall have some pictures for you. :)

Ouch :(

2008-09-28T12:30:00.002-03:00

I don't know which muscle is responsible for keeping my head upright and moving it around, but I pulled it last night. So I'm not feeling so great today. Took some Tylenol and that gave me a small amount of movement, but I'm still quite limited. I think I'll be spending a lot of time laying down today so that I don't have to hold my head up.

So! The rest of the week! Wednesday we made fillings - blueberry, hazelnut, and pastry cream. All quite simple and easy. Yes, I managed to boil my milk over but my pastry cream still turned out. There was a big banquet yesterday for the Olympic Youth Team, so the summer pastry students had been spending the whole week preparing for it. So, if we had spare time in between doing what was planned for the day, we helped them out. So, on Wednesday I helped with coring some apples for apple crisp. My first time using my melon baller...I suppose that's exciting. :P

Thursday we made Danish Dough! Thursday was definitely my best day in the kitchen. My dough turned out great and I got it done quickly. In my spare time I helped slice up pears - pears that had been soaked in a mixture of red wine and spices - so my uniform got a bit messy.

Friday...ugh, Friday. The downside - I let myself fall asleep for a couple hours when I got home Thursday (still trying to get used to the new sleep schedule) so I was up until 12:30 and then awake at 5am to get ready for school. So, grumpy and tired to begin with. Then we made Puff Pastry which is the devil. In the end, the puff pastry worked out, but it's definitely not my favourite thing to make. The way Danish Dough and Puff Pastry get the butter content in is to make the dough and then roll it out. Once it's rolled out you just put a block of fat in the middle, fold the dough around it, and then roll the fat into the dough that way. And if the fat doesn't stay in the dough, you have a problem. Therefore...I had a problem with my puff pastry. The upside to Friday was that I still had time to help out with the banquet stuff, so I got to help make Truffles! I piped chocolate into pre-made truffle casings and then when we ran out I got to make my first Ganache...basically a type of chocolate sauce to simplify it. So that was fun!

So, we made the doughs this week - next week we use the doughs to actually make the Danishes and the different types of Puff Pastries. Not too sure how that'll go, but we'll see.

Overall, kitchen is awesome. Some things are frustrating - two in particular. The first is just having to share things like the scales. Which I just need to stop being a baby about. I just like to work fast and I don't like getting slowed down b/c I don't have access to equipment. However, once we get into our regular rotations, everybody will be making different things, so that should alleviate the demand for all the equipment. It was very frustrating on Wednesday when we needed a burner to make our fillings and there weren't enough, so we just sat there with nothing to do. The second thing that frustrates me is trying to work with classmates who haven't done the minimum amount of work required to get ready for class - like finding their recipes. I'm hoping that stops soon and that people will get the idea that you need to spend 10 minutes each night getting organized for the next day. Really, there's very little homework - more just preparation for the next day. There's no excuse not to have a recipe ready when you know what you're making the next day.

At home I made perogies on my own for the first time. I've helped make them before, but never done it completely on my own. But I said I'd bring some for Thanksgiving - one of my classmates has invited everybody over for Thanksgiving supper so I'm looking forward to that. I'll have to make probably one more batch just so that we definitely have enough. I didn't think I had made that many, but after they were frozen and I put them all in the same bag, I found I had made a lot more than I thought.

I'm finding Charlottetown quite boring. I've sent an e-mail to the Girl Guides to see if they can use me as a volunteer to help run their programs - I'm hoping that works out. I found a list on the UPEI website of places to volunteer and that's the one that interested me the most, so we'll see if that pans out. But I really need to find SOMETHING to do. Clearly nobody wants to hire, not just me, but anybody in our pastry class. Our schedules flip flop too much and no employer wants to deal with it. I'm definitely going to be giving that as feedback about this new style they're trying with the pastry class. But yeah...I'm super bored here and I need to find something to occupy my time. I'm wishing I'd registered for a web class with the U of S to get a bit closer to finishing that degree. Next term I'm definitely registering for at least one, if not more, that I can do during my spare time here.

Anyway....my neck is giving out, so I'd better go lay down for a bit. Riders game in an hour - go Riders!!!

Oddities of PEI - Part 3 - Taxes

2008-09-24T19:15:00.000-03:00

Subtitle: WTH PEI?

Seriously? 10% PST? You make me sick.

And so it begins...

2008-09-23T13:41:00.003-03:00

Oh yes, I made those. And Chef Richard called them "Excellent Specimens" in front of the whole class. Granted, I didn't know they were mine at the time. And granted, most of you have probably made bread like this before. But, making something this simple was a good intro to the kitchen - where to find things, how to use the oven (which is GIGANTIC), and other handy things.

Now, the rolls I made. They actually taste better than these braided loaves, but they didn't turn out so great in the looks department. So, you don't get pictures. :P

Overall, waking up early wasn't so bad. I went to bed early, so it really makes no difference - as long as I got enough sleep! Also, a classmate was awesome and came and picked me up, so that saved me about 40 minutes of walking. :) His car is in the shop tomorrow morning, so I'll be walking but that's ok. I figure every day that I can get a ride is one less day I have to walk, so I should be grateful for it.

On one hand, my feet are going "You idiot! This is why you got a desk job. We hurt!" But on the other hand, the time flew by and I was glad I wasn't just sitting behind a desk anymore. :)

Voting and The Bus!

2008-09-22T17:54:00.004-03:00

Voting!

So I voted today! Yes! That's right! I went in to register, as I'm registered back in Saskatoon and that's not real helpful to me. So, after much paperwork the lady said I could vote right then, or on the 14th, and I was all like "Let's do it now!" So I did. Now, I've never advance polled before, so this was new to me and exciting. Yet very complicated. I am given a ballot with a blank line that just says "Write the candidate's name" or something to that effect on it. So, I was like "Oh shit, I don't know any of the candidates...I rarely do, I just look at the party beside the name and vote like that." So I piped up and asked if there was a list in the thingy that you vote in. You know...half of a cardboard box. And she says they can't make up a list of people - you know in case some scandal occurs and somebody drops out. ;) But she told me the names and I memorized the guy I wanted. Then I went in with my ballot and little envelope and write the name down. Then I had to stick the ballot in the envelope without folding it and seal it. Then I had to stick the sealed envelope into ANOTHER envelope, sign it, and seal it. Whew! But there it is! I've voted!

This means that when the results from advanced polls come in, they will reflect my vote! Which is, granted, insubstantial in the grand scheme of things. But hey, at least the dude I voted for will at least be able to go "Well, I didn't get 0 votes, whooo!" That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Or something.

Now it's your turn!

Bus Insanity!

A few short months after the murder of Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus, another stabbing has occurred! Here's my understanding of the timeline:

-Police in Ontario take a guy into custody for disturbing the peace, charge him, then release him
-He later that day comes back and asks them to take him to the hospital for psychological reasons
-The police do so, he's assessed by a doctor, deemed safe, and released
-He had a "strong desire to go home" so the police used social assistance funds to pay for a ticket for him to go home on the bus
-The police put him on the bus (this is misleading...not sure if they just bought the ticket, or if they dropped him off at the bus station, or what exactly happened there)
-He apparently has a knife and stabs somebody on the bus about 2 hours into the trip
-He goes to the front and asks to be let off the bus, the bus driver stops, lets the dude off, and then just drives away
-The police arrest him on the side of the road.

Now, I swear this is straight out of a movie. If it wasn't for the fact that people are getting killed, injured, traumatized and more, this would almost be hilarious. Instead it's just tragic.

What is crazy is some of the comments people are leaving on the CBC website in reply to the article. Let me quote some of my favourites:

"The police are funny. Like clowns. And seriously?! They let the dude off the bus and kept going??????? "

"I got off a bus in Moose jaw Sask this week end and a guy was selling crack on it."

"I really wish people would stop referring to criminals or other ungentlemanly men as gentlemen."

"The era of taking naps on Greyhound buses is probably now over."

"Again? Why is it these knife carrying crazies are always headed toward Winnipeg? "

And last but not least...

"Commenter wrote: "The OPP are out of control. If the police put that violent man on the bus, it was a fearmongering conspiracy to push people towards a neo con police state."

The bus was heading the right direction ;-)"

Exciting Week

2008-09-19T15:05:00.002-03:00

Well, sort of an exciting week.

Let's see...I last blogged on Monday. Yes, exciting news there - no need to take my 2 core classes - excellent!

Since then, let's see. Tuesday was CPR. Boring, but I haven't taken it since my Bronze Cross days, so it was very good to get a refresher and get officially certified. There have been changes to both CPR and First Aid in the past few years, but nothing crazy. Wednesday was First Aid. Overall, these two I'd taken before, but I find them interesting, so they weren't too bad of days. I did learn that one of the symptoms of a stroke is an impending sense of DOOM!

Thursday morning we did WHMIS. For those who don't know, that's Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System. Not nearly as bad as I expected! It's something you need to learn, but once you've learned it, it's a lot of common sense. Read labels, don't pour stuff into an unlabeled container, don't use anything if you don't know what it is, etc., etc.

So, once the paperwork goes through, I will be officially certified for CPR, First Aid, and WHMIS!

Onto Thursday afternoon! FINALLY we got to meet as a group with our chef instructors. There are a few classmates we hadn't met yet. People who took the culinary previously didn't have to sit through the core classes again, so we haven't seen them the first two weeks. And we had never been officially with our instructors. So, this was exciting! Oh, Thursday I also came down with a cold...so while exciting, I was also sitting there quite miserable with a sore throat. And I'm still miserable as I type this.

We got our officially "bibles" for Pastry - a GIANT binder with recipes, notes, and definitions. Now, nothing is ordered or indexed or anything - so it's up to us to go through it and put some dividers in and figure everything out. So, I'll be doing that with a couple hundred pages of recipes this weekend. We aren't necessarily given the recipe for everything. So if we're told that we're making a particular thing and don't have a recipe, it's up to us to go find a recipe from somewhere. Perhaps our textbooks, perhaps the library from a book, or perhaps just go online and find something.

We also FINALLY got our schedules for the entire year. The first three weeks we're doing basics - so we're either am or pm. I, of course, am scheduled for the morning. After that we start bi-weekly rotations. We're on one of 6 stations for 2 weeks, then we go somewhere else. 3 of the stations are in the morning, 3 of them are in the afternoon. And if you're on one particular afternoon station, there are also Saturday night shifts that you may have to come in for. Not cool. Chef Richard, teaches the AM class and Chef Pam teaches the PM class. Chef Pam is definitely more strict, but you can tell that you'll be able to learn a lot with her. Chef Richard has a lot of knowledge and sometimes it's a bit overwhelming as I'm definitely a beginner when it comes to professional pastry arts.

So, there are 12 bi-weekly rotations. I'm on mornings for 7 of them and afternoon for only 5 of them. And I only get one afternoon rotation this term and the other 4 are next term. Which I guess is ok since next term will be the colder/snowier one. So, for those of you who are texting me at 8pm Saskatchewan time, I can assure you I will have been in bed for at least 3 hours by the time you text/phone me.

Last thing on Thursday...UNIFORMS! Yay! How exciting! I am now wearing sweat pants to school every day - I just change when I get there anyway. So, our uniform consists of:

Checkered Pants - they're hard to see in the following picture, I had my apron too long. Suffice it to say, it's very small checkers. The pants are very poofy around the hips. And mine need at least 4-5 inches hemmed off them, which I'm hoping to accomplish this weekend. We get 3 pairs of pants and we're in charge of washing them.
Chef's Jacket - this is embroidered with our first and last name. Just a white jacket. There is a tiny white pocket in the upper left sleeve for pens/pencils. Other than that, no pockets. Just some in the pants.
Necktie - You think tying a regular tie is hard? Try a chef's knot. It's craziness. But I think I've got it down.
Black Steel Toed Shoes - these we had to supply ourselves. I found a pair that are like runners - paid about $75 at Mark's.
Chef's Hat - this is just made of paper. My understanding is that the taller it is, the more senior you are. Your hair has to be completely underneath it.
Apron and Side Towel - those are fairly basic. They're white and go around your waist. My apron in this picture is tied much too long. I think I'll shorten it a bit next time I tie it.

So, that's it! We get a new hat every Friday. For the jacket, necktie, apron, and side towel, we just go to laundry and we hand one in and they give us a clean one. Simple. (unless you lose something...then watch out!)

Anyway, here's the picture! I texted some of you. If you didn't get a text...well your phone doesn't do pics or I don't have your cell number. :P

Today was our first Theory class in the demo kitchen. You know those kitchens you see on TV with a chef behind them showing you how to make something? Exactly the same thing. In about 2 hours Chef Richard made 2 batches of bread, blueberry filling, hazelnut filling, and pastry creme. So, I'm assuming that's what we'll be making on Tuesday when we get in the kitchen. Theory class is cool, but it's obvious I've never done this professionally as I had no idea what he was talking about half the time. I definitely have to do a lot of reading. After theory was done, they took us on a really quick tour of the kitchens. And that was it! So, now I'm off until Tuesday! Hopefully I can kick this cold by Sunday. :)

Anyway, I have more to say, but I've talked enough for one post. I'll save the rest for another post.

Residence Life - Part 2 - Internet

2008-09-18T07:17:00.000-03:00

It sucks. It's slow and I hate it.

But I'm still happy I have it.

Whoo Hoo!

2008-09-15T15:54:00.002-03:00

I got exemptions for both of my Core classes, which are both on Mondays! I've already taken both courses at the U of S (or the same information at least) and gotten credit, so I can use that in place of having to re-take it. So, no Business Communications (writing memos, doing speeches) or Computer Skills (let's learn how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint!). Bleh! So boring, both of them! So happy to be exempt!

So, what does this mean? Well, I'll tell you!

First of all, I don't have to go anymore. So, my Mondays are free. In December I'll have to start going in the morning only for Theory, but my afternoons will remain free.

Secondly, I get reimbursed for my books. About $200 worth I believe. I'm not sure about tuition yet - the person who would know is out sick, so I have to wait for her to get back so I can ask.

Anyway - I'm really happy right at the moment! :)

What a Week!

2008-09-14T02:27:00.002-03:00

Well, that sure was on crazy week to start classes!

On Sunday, a federal election was called! Yay! I love elections, I have to say. I love watching the results pour in and I love the debates that happen throughout. Especially the nonsensical ones that I have with people! I'm too lazy to change my layout into a blue one, so we'll stick with my diary layout...but hey, the Conservatives have lots of secrets in a diary of their own, so I guess it's appropriate enough! Go Conservatives! I'm not going to get into a political rant right now...but it'll come, just wait. I haven't had a chance to read any platforms yet, so I'd be talking out my rear if I said anything right now.

Monday we started our first class and we're already finished it! No need to go into detail as I ranted about it a couple posts back, but suffice it to say, I'm glad it's done. The test went well...I know I passed, it's just a matter of how well I passed. We had to get 75% to pass - I'm hoping I got at least 85%.

On Friday we finally got to see the kitchens! Very exciting! Our kitchen is huge, has lots of fun equipment, and a lot of flour. I think I'm going to have a blast! My one chef instructor gave us a short little rant about how the chocolate you get at the stores is basically just pure crap. And that what we'll be using is quality. Yay for quality! Anyway, once we get in there, I'll sneak my camera in and get some pictures for you of our kitchen. I have say, having been here as long as I have - I picked the right institution. I don't think I could have picked a better one. For example, a team from my school won the World Youth Culinary Championships last year and are headed to the Culinary Olympics very shortly. So, being top in the world is nice - it definitely increases the value of the certification I will get as well as makes me confident that I will get the best education possible.

Everything here is quality. The food we use is quality. The chef instructors are some of the best, most experienced chefs in the world. The equipment is top of the line - our dishwasher is worth $80,000 - it's the only one east of Montreal. The oven the culinary students use is worth about $28,000. They have high expectations for us, but in return, we get to train with the best of the best.

I don't think I've mentioned this, but every day we get a free meal. Well, I'm sure it was worked into our tuition, but they didn't mention anything about it until we got here! Right now it's lunch, but I think if you work the early shift they also do breakfast. And by a free meal, I mean that we're getting a gourmet lunch every day. So far we've had things like stuffed porkchops and ratatouille. (Yes, ratatouille! We were excited too.) For most of the things, in all honesty, we have no idea what they are. We sort of line up and go "well, that looks good, give me that" and point to what we want. They write the names of the stuff on a white board, but we don't know what it means. So, every day we get a main course (meat, starch, vegetable), our choice of soup or salad (remember...gourmet...this is no plain lettuce salad), dessert (right now made by the culinary students...clearly not as good as what we'll be making, haha), and a drink. Pretty darn good! On first glance it almost seems like the students are sort of working for free, but it's actually a great setup. This way we get to learn by experience, actually making the food, but we don't have to pay for it and we have somebody to eat it, so it doesn't go to waste. I consider the free lunch a perk after those two other things. But anyway, for anybody who was wondering...yes, I'm eating healthy. They plate the food for us and everything, so you don't even have the option of taking big servings, therefore, it's a healthy, well-rounded meal that we get. Overall - one sweet perk to culinary school.

I spent some time on Friday touring around Charlottetown some more. I'll start that series of posts soon. So far my plans for "series" are the Oddities of PEI, Residence Life, and A Tour of Prince Edward Island. Hopefully I can keep them relatively interesting. My plan is to write those posts when I'm in a blogging mood, save them, and then post them to fill in when I'm not in a blogging mood!

Today I went out and did a bit of applying for some jobs. I'm mostly just looking for something for the weekends so that I have something to do. And the cash would be nice too. So, here's hoping that something pans out. Then I went to a movie with a friend. Just FYI - the movie Traitor is good...not great, but good. Then I decided to stay up for the Riders game - started at 11pm my time. We lost. :( But BC did play a good game - so at least it was entertaining!

Plans for tomorrow are to do some wandering around Charlottetown in the more residential areas that I haven't seen yet. Of course, that will depend on the weather. If it rains, I'll stick inside. I cleaned during the Rider game, so tomorrow can just be a lazy, lazy day I suppose!

Anyway, I'll probably post again tomorrow, but I hadn't posted for a while, so I figured I had better write something! I'm sure you all didn't mind the break in reading though - I can go on and on sometimes. Like this time. :P

Have a good day all!

Oddities about PEI - Part 2

2008-09-10T22:15:00.000-03:00

The license plates only have 5 characters, not 6. Also, there are 2 designs - one claiming it to be the green province and another with a picture of the bridge on it.

(Had this one pre-written. Still slogging through ServSafe. My brain is about to implode.)

Who's Idea Was This?

2008-09-09T20:12:00.004-03:00

Silly school and studying.

I have to say, I'm loving getting back into the whole "student schedule." The just completely messed up schedule that no normal person would love. But I love it! When I was finishing my degree, I couldn't wait until I had a Monday-Friday 9-5 job. Well, I sort of had one, and it's not as great as I though. I love the messed-up-ness of a student schedule.

The studying...bleh. Got hit with it hard this week. We are taking ServSafe (www.servsafe.com) this week. It's like the FoodSafe course you take when you work in a restaurant...except this is for managers/owners and is INTENSE. Instead of one day, it's a full week course. Problem though, is that our prof, awesome as he is, is a slacker. We take a break once an hour, have left at least an hour early every day, taken 1 1/2 hour lunchbreaks, spend more time telling stories than going over material, and are currently 2 1/2 chapters behind. And who gets to make up those chapter? Us, at home. And we're writing our exam on Thursday for some reason, not Friday. So, we have tomorrow and Thursday (before the exam...ie. no study time) to finish the next...8 1/2 chapters...and we've only done 6 1/2 in the 2 days we've had so far. So, I'm attempting to get through the material on my own a little bit ahead of him, but it's rough.

Food Safety is a mixture of really boring, common sense things and really hard to memorize biology/chemistry information. For example, they feel the need to teach us to send people home who are vomiting. Really!? Who doesn't know this!?? And then for a second example, I have to memorize pathogens, such as Clostridium perfringens gastroenteritis, what causes it, what food is commonly associated with it, the most common symptoms of the illness, and what the main prevention measure is for it. And that's just one.

Now, it's a 90 question multiple choice exam. Only 80 of the questions count, we don't know which 80 though, and we need to get 60 of them correct. Chances are I'll pass, but I would like to pass with flying colours. Hence, the studying.

Anyway, figured I'd give an update. Now, back to studying! You'll see me on Thursday night when the exam is over. :)

Residence Life - Part 1 - Laundry

2008-09-07T14:44:00.000-03:00

Paying for laundry sucks. There's no question - everybody agrees. It's expensive, annoying, and you always have to wait for a machine. For the last 4 years, I've had free laundry right outside my door. Sometimes there was waiting, but there was also a good relationship in the house such that I could just cycle laundry through and put mine in. I would fold other people's laundry and they'd fold mine. It was a nice little thing we had going on.

The laundry here is pay laundry, but it's the best pay laundry facilities I have ever used. First of all, you don't need coins. That's right. You just take your student card to this machine and you load money on it. Now, the machine CLAIMS you can use your VISA, but I tried and it wouldn't read my card. I was warned that the machine didn't always work. But regardless, I was able to load cash onto my card. So, then you take that card and all the machines just take the cards. You put it in, it tells you your total, and then you push what you want, and off you go! Easy! Loads are $1.25 to wash and the same to dry. No more carrying around quarters and loonies! No more scrounging! And since you need your student card to pay for laundry and to let you back into your room, you'll never forget your room key. Because you need it for laundry! So, no getting locked out when you go to do laundry!

And the machines are in GOOD SHAPE. They're front loading washers and they hold a fairly large load. And unlike most laundromats, you can put a large load in the washers, and the driers actually DRY the load! WOW!

Now, my other secret to doing laundry in a laundromat, especially in residence or a building where lots of students live, is to go on a Friday or Saturday night. Yeah yeah, I'm a loser and I should be out. Well, the fact is that I don't like partying and I don't really like "going out". At least not very often. However, most other people do. So, while they're gone, nobody is using the laundry room, which leaves it open for me. No pushing, shoving, waiting, throwing laundry on top of machines - they're just there waiting to be used. It's great.

While it sucks to pay for laundry, I think I lucked out here and laundry is not going to be a concern at all.

Oddities of PEI - Part 1 - Waste Management

2008-09-05T21:12:00.002-03:00

See that? That's the norm here in PEI. All waste is separated into waste, compost, and recyclables. Even in fast food establishments. This is all part of the Waste Watch Program, the only one in Canada, as far as I know. It's run by the Government of PEI. Here is just a small excerpt explaining the purpose of the program:

The Waste Watch program enables us to effectively reduce the amount of waste being buried in landfills. By sorting the waste we generate in our residences and businesses, we are helping to preserve our farmland and drinking water. We are contributing to the solution of waste management and environmental protection.

It's a little bit confusing right now, but I think I'll get used to it fairly quickly.

I thought this would be a good discussion topic - good idea, bad idea, comparison to where you're living now? Feel free to comment and perhaps we can get a discussion going!

Knives!

2008-09-04T19:13:00.003-03:00

Yup! There they are! My $300 Wusthof's! :)

I need to get them engraved when I get a chance (and find out where an engraving place is).

Overall, a busy day. Was on the way to school by 7:30. Got there at about 8:15-ish. We were told to be there at 8:30, but of course they didn't start until 9am. You know, for the people who are late. I can't wait until class starts and the late people just get locked out of class. I shouldn't have to wait because somebody else can't read a schedule and get where they need to be on time.

So, this morning we got introductions for all the staff. I remember a few of them. Definitely remember the two Pastry Chef Instructors - Chef Pam and Chef Richard. I think my army cadet training is going to come in handy. You can definitely see how there's a specific hierarchy and behaviour that's expected. The chefs are either called, for example, Chef Richard, or sir or ma'am. Reminds me of cadets.

We got our schedules. So, next week we have Serve Safe (food and kitchen safety I'm assuming) from 9-5 every day. Then we have some core classes the next week (we have Computer Skills and Business Communications as far as I know). As well we have 2 and a half days of CPR/First Aid/WHIMIS. Then we start getting into Pastry Art Theory. And trust me, there's a lot. The textbooks are HUGE. Every Monday for the whole year basically is just core classes or theory classes. So, kitchen is really only 4 days a week for the most part (might be some exceptions). This means that the 6:30 days are only 4 days a week once they start. We don't know yet, once we get into the kitchen (September 23) if we're going to be going in the morning or later. Either we have kitchen from 6:30-10 and then theory from 10-12 or we have theory from 10-12 and then kitchen from 12-4. (Maybe only until 3:30 - the schedule isn't super clear). So, I only need to walk to class on the 6:30 days and only to class, not home.

The Pastry students are in charge of screating pastries for the Lucy Maud Montgomery dining room upstairs. The Culinary students create desserts for the cafeteria in the basement, but we support them when needed. So, if they're short on deserts, then we'll fill in the gap.

We also had a session on extracurricular activities - hopefully I can find something. Then a quick session on the health/dental plan.

After that, we went upstairs to fit for uniforms. Uniforms are a BIG deal. Regardless of where you are, you need a uniform on in class. But you cannot wear it off the property. If your uniform is dirty, you're not allowed in class. They wash everything except the pants - we're in charge of the pants. We get 3 coats (stitched with our names!) and 3 pairs of checkered pants. They wash the coats for us - it's a "dirty for a clean" exchange type model. So, it's important that you give the laundry people a dirty one or they won't give you a clean one. And if you don't have a clean one, you don't get into class. We also must always have steel-toed shoes on - the profs check before you come in the kitchen. The uniform consist then of - black steel-toed shoes, black socks, checkered pants, chef's jacket, bowtie. And when in the kitchen we also have an apron, side towel, and hat. And of course there's rules for piercings (none!), beards (you have to wear a beard net if it's too long...never knew such a thing existed), and other things. It's pretty intense, but I'm sure it'll become routine soon enough.

We then of course got our KNIVES! Yup, paid $300 for them - pretty exciting to get them. It's just one of those things that you carry with you everywhere.

Then we had free lunch. Yay for Orientation!

For the afternoon we had some group trivia, then a group scavenger hunt around downtown. Wow, thought we were going to die. It got REALLY hot out, we were walking alllll over the place, taking pictures at various places. Was really fun though - got a chance to talk to some people who will be taking classes in the building. Also gave me another chance to wander the downtown - I still want to go this weekend and check everything out a bit slower. But I found out where the Charlottetown Centre is - that's the main building for Holland College. That's where the gym is and the bookstore. The gym mostly sucks, so won't be using it. There are others around to use. And that one is really out of my way. Would only go there if it was good. But, good to find the place! After the scavenger hunt we were done, so a girl helped me find the Charlottetown Centre again. I bought a new bookbag - my U of S one was really pretty much wrecked, so I didn't bring it with. And I really need an actual bookbag, not a sidebag if I'm going to be walking. I also got a bus pass there. Only $75 for four months. Otherwise it's $50 a month. So, a pretty good deal! Took a bus back and all went well. Definitely a smaller bus system than Saskatoon. Which is in the end biting me in the ass because there's no bus running at 6am. It's such a small system that it apparently doesn't need to run that early. So, I'll be walking for my 6:30 classes. Oh well.

Anyway...just did some errands after that, had supper, and am hanging around here. Have to be back there at 8:30 tomorrow, but plan on taking the bus. The bus only takes me to the end of University Avenue. It's about a 5-10 minute walk from there to get to my school. Still, a whole lot better than 40-50 minutes walking.

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (Long Post Alert!)

2008-09-03T18:27:00.007-03:00

Well, I made it! Today is the end of my 3rd full day here and I think I'm mostly settled. It'll be about another 3 weeks before I'm really in a "schedule" but for the moment I'm doing ok. Where to start...

Saturday

Saturday was Michelle's wedding. Sort of the "beginning of homesickness." For those who maybe don't know - I get brutal cases of homesickness when I leave home. It only takes a few days before I'm fine, but for those few days, I'm a total mess. So, with basically EVERYBODY saying goodbye that night, I was in breakdown mode. It was multiplied by the fact that I had been averaging maybe 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night for a while. The wedding itself went well. Michelle is now married off and I'm letting everybody skip me with the "When are you getting married?" questions. Please feel free to direct these questions to Andrew.

Sunday

Well, Sunday started with waking up after about, again, 6 hours of sleep. Had to leave Weyburn at 8am to get to the airport in time. Fortunately dad took me, so that was awesome. Got to the airport and the whole trip went perfectly smoothly. All my flights were on time, all was well. I had a 4 hour layover in Toronto which was super short after my 14 hour layover in Minneapolis. However, the Toronto airport SUCKS. There's nothing to do - there aren't even business areas with desks to set up your laptop. So, I ended up sitting on the floor to use my laptop, in a random area where I could find a plug in. We got into Charlottetown at about 10:40pm local time. In Charlottetown you just walk down stairs right onto the runway and then into the building. It pretty much REALLY sucked to walk into the airport and have nobody there. It didn't seem bad when I did it last year in DC - but of course then I knew I was going to be home in 2 weeks, so whatever. Anyway, my luggage came through fine and I got a cab to my hotel. Loverly hotel, but expensive - that's me all over. I love to travel...in 5 star hotels.

Monday

Monday was raining. Bleh. So, I walked to the campus and got all checked in. Went into my room to check it out and met the roomie. Then I got a cab back to the hotel, grabbed my luggage, checked out, and cabbed back to my place here. So, officially moved in. The place seemed pretty shitty when I first got here. The walls are all cinder blocks and the floor is tile, no carpet. Feels a bit like a prison cell. But the more I'm here and look at it, it's not so bad. If we had drywall painted walls and carpet, the place would be quite nice. All the furniture looks brand new - I think it's only a couple years old, maybe less. I'm in a two-bedroom apartment - guess I should say that for anybody who isn't here. So, just one roommate.

Here's a picture of my bedroom:

Here's a picture of the kitchen:

And a picture of the living room:

The first night was a bit rough. Still in homesick mode. Nothing was open on Monday, so I couldn't do any shopping at all. Fortunately I had brought sheets, but I had no blanket - just one flimsy sheet.

Tuesday

Well, I got over my homesickness fairly quick! It's all about doing things and getting into the groove. I think I had about 3 bad homesick days in Saskatoon when I moved there - only 1 here, so not bad!

Tuesday was...SHOPPING. I just needed stuff for my apartment. So, off I went at 10am for shopping. I headed down to the RBC to change my address - found a Value Village and spent $11 there for a comforter, afghan, and lamp! I also went to Telus and got a SWEET new phone! Here's a picture:

So, the RBC is about 15 minutes walking from my place. That was the furthest I went in that direction. Then back home. Right across the street is a mall complex. It has a grocery store, Penningtons, Reitmans, Indigo (aka. Chapters...woot!), Mark's Work Wearhouse, some fast food places, etc. So, got a book I had been looking for at Indigo, my black, steel-toed, non-slip shoes for school at Mark's. Then I made 2 trips to the grocery store and loaded up with food and other things for the house.

After that I walked to Wal-Mart which is maybe a 20-25 minute walk the other way from my place. There I just got a few more things for my place - some posters for the wall, a mirror, tiny laundry baskets. So, I spent a bunch of money, but I think my place is looking a lot better now. A lot more livable.

That night I went to meet 2 of the girls that I knew were in my course, thanks to Facebook. One girl is just like me - not really sure what she's doing, no real pastry experience, kinda scared about the whole thing. The other girl managed to scare the two of us. :p She has been working in pastry for 5 years, has been here since January, and knows lots about the program/profs. So, apparently there are 2 chefs teaching - one is nice and the other is really strict. Also, there are going to be two classes. One starts at 6:30am and is in the kitchen until 10:30 and then at 10:30 the other class joins and the two classes do theory together. Then when theory is done, the first class leaves and the 2nd class heads to the kitchen. Then after Christmas we'll switch who goes at 6:30 and who goes at 10:30. So, I'm hoping for the strict chef and 6:30am for this term. Strict chef b/c it's easier to go from a strict chef to a lax one than the other way around. And 6:30 b/c this term is the warmer term - January/February are the horrible winter times. And I can't take transit to school at 6:30 - it doesn't start until 7am. So, for 4 months I'll be walking to school. I timed the walk tonight and going quickly it's a 40 minute walk.

Wednesday (Today!)

Today was registration. Brittany, the girl from the night before who was like me, came to pick me up so we could go together and have somebody to wander around with. Once we got there we met Andrew, who also came from Saskatoon. And there's another guy (didn't get his name) who is from Moose Jaw. So, there may be more Saskatchewan people. We didn't really get a chance to meet everyone - just if you went up to somebody and asked their name.

At registration I just confirmed that I paid my tuition. I paid $5 for a locker there - I have no intention of dragging my knives and stuff home every day. We then got our pictures taken for a student ID, but the card machine was broken, so they'll e-mail us once they're ready to be picked up. Then we picked up our books. Two huge pastry books, one that's on Microsoft Word, and there's one more to come that isn't here yet. The Microsoft Word one the guy said to keep in the shrink wrap because some people challenge it, and then if you want to return the book for credit, it has to be in the shrink wrap. And the missing book is for Business Communications. And the guy said that I could talk to my professor, but since I've taken Business Communications at the U of S, I could probably use that as credit and not have to take it again - which would ROCK. God that class was boring.

So, I've got some information to go through tonight and read - some textbooks to flip through. Tomorrow is where we get a bit more detailed information in terms of classes for the next few weeks. From what I've heard it's a week of Food/Kitchen Safety and 3 days of CPR (Woot!) so that's cool. And not at 6:30am from what I've heard. But I'll find out for sure tomorrow. We also possibly get our knife sets and we get measured for our uniforms. We have to wear a uniform at all times. Even when not in kitchen classes there is a uniform of black dress shoes/pants, etc. So, I think I need to go shopping this weekend.

We had a social at 4pm tonight, but not really anybody showed up. Just a few of us who had already met. So, we played pool for an hour and then all headed home. I walked to the school from where we were and then walked home so that I could time it. While there I took some pictures.

Here's a picture of the coast. This is a view from my school:

Well, I was told the dirt was red here and it is, but it's still weird. I feel like I'm always on a baseball field with shale. I don't know if this picture does it justice, but here's some dirt:

And here's a picture of my school:

So, I walked home and it took about 40 minutes. So, I'm thinking probably a 50 minute walk through snow. Which means I'll be leaving for school and hour early every day. Oh well. It's just 4 months really - the other 4, if we have 10:30 classes, I can take transit. And I can take transit home.

Then I got here and said "OK, I should probably tell people how stuff is going" since you've all been texting/e-mailing. So, here ya go! Feel free to ask questions in comments - I'll respond!

P.S. If you want a postcard, tell me!

7/11

2008-08-31T18:01:00.003-03:00

(I'm stuck in the Toronto airport currently on layover. There will hopefully be a full blog update when I hit PEI. I'm really hoping for a "Welcome to Charlottetown" sign that I can get a picture beside.)

Hug the Environment

2008-08-29T17:08:00.003-03:00

I spent 4 days in Swift Current, where my parents now live. While there, they took me out to see the new windmills installed by SaskPower to create electricity cleanly. They were very impressive and I got a chance to "hug the environment" by hugging the windmills! Here are some quick facts about the windmills:

There are 83 windmills
They were built on 7500 acres of land
The tip of the blade at it's highest point is 30 stories above the ground
2500 truckloads of concrete were used to pour the foundations

Now here are some pictures for you!

This is me hugging the windmill! I'm the little dot at the bottom. Give you a bit of perspective for how big they are!

Looking straight up at the windmill.

Field of windmills - it just wasn't possible to take a picture of all of them. They're so spread out.

One of the blades that fell down. They had it mounted at the office there. This is me and my mom standing beside it. She wouldn't hug it with me. :(

Blog Meme Challenge

2008-08-26T01:00:00.003-03:00

OK, Rhonda did it (see her link at the side), I'm too lazy to write a proper blog, and I'm a copycat, so here goes!

What were you doing five years ago?

5 years ago I had just moved to Saskatoon to start my Commerce degree. This specific day? I was at Orientation. Creepy that I remember that.

What are five things on your to-do list today?

Well, it's 10pm, so here's my to-do list for tomorrow:

Work out in the fitness centre
Soak in the hot tub after the workout
Go through my stuff and downsize/pack
Chat with friends online!
Watch TV

(what can I say? It's vacation time for me)

What are five snacks you enjoy?

Chips, Popcorn, Cheese Strings, Cheerios, Chocolate!

What are five things you would do if you were a millionaire?

Invest it and live off the interest
Donate some (yes, everybody says it, but most people do it, so there)
Travel!
Take a month or two off work to go to a "Boot Camp" and lose weight.
Buy a sweet bed!

What are five bad habits

Food
Gonna have to go with Rhonda's procrastination
Food
Interrupting people.
Food

Assuming these are MY bad habits.

Where are five places you've lived

Weyburn (Ash Drive House), Saskatoon (Temperance Apartment), Saskatoon (Wiggins House), The Streets (right now) - Sorry, haven't lived in 5 places yet.

What are five jobs you've had

Annual Giving Coordinator, Subway Bitch, Dairy Queen Bitch, Newspaper Bitch, Circus Bitch (yeah, that last one sounds hilarious)

Homeless

2008-08-24T00:44:00.003-03:00

Well, I'm officially homeless. I moved my things into storage and am living in hotels for a week until I get to PEI. I'm incredibly glad to have the moving thing finished - it's been really stressful.

Of course, being homeless is stressful too. It's weird not to have a place to go that's mine. I just feel like I'm floundering - I really just want to get settled.

For the moment, I have way to much stuff that I kept out of storage to bring with me, and I need to sort through it, pack it properly, and decide if I REALLY need it all with me. Right now I have 2 rubbermaid containers to ship, but I might have to get a third if I think I need everything with me. Right now part of the problem is that stuff is just shoved places and not packed properly. But another problem is that bunny hugs take up a LOT of room.

But I want my bunny hugs. :(