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

Because it looks like this outside:

Water

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

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

Addiction, thy name is Puzzle Pirates.

March Break!!!!

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!

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

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

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...

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!

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

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!