Before and After

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

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

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

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...

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!