The wicker suitcase full of sauce I received last week had both a flavour and a purpose: it was time for a meat wave!

President’s Choice is relaunching some of their meat prodcuts with fancy titles: air-chilled chicken, anti-biotic and hormone-free beef and pork, cow parts with certification, etc. The sauces (and the wicker suitcase, which keeps getting mentioned because it is completely awesome) were merely a bonus to go along with my real project: go to a Real Canadian Superstore armed with an assortment of coupons that would allow me to get FREE MEAT, then cook said meat for eating times. Hooray!

Ed and I made our way to the store on Saturday, where we picked up some Tender and Tasty steak, a package of Air Chilled chicken drumsticks, and a rack of Free From pork ribs. Also, I bought two tank tops and a bag of M&Ms. We loaded our scooters up with our FREE MEAT and made our way back home to begin the process of marination for delicious experimentation.

Fun fact: I am not good at buying ribs, either. It’s common knowledge that I cannot eat things off bone – I can’t do wings or ribs or t-bone steaks – but it would appear that I am also a fail at the purchasing of ribs for other people to eat. The first rack I picked up caused a massive meat tsunami that I had to fix, and then I had to choose and re-choose my pork – ribs look like spinal columns. I can’t cook spinal columns. It is just a great big NO.

The suitcase sauces were both President’s Choice brand: a steak marinade, and a “Memories of Dad’s Grill” sauce with maple, apple and beer flavour. We used the memory sauce on the ribs, the steak sauce on the steak, and my favourite jerk sauce on the chicken, then told Josh and Shan to get their asses over to our place because there was no way in hell the two of us could eat that much meat. It’s good to share, and also I am not interested in achieving death by protein. We were worried that the Dad Sauce was going to be too sweet, so we added some freshly ground chili pepper to the marinades and let it all sit in the fridge for several hours.

It did come to pass that grilling things inside the house is not a good idea. We used a stovetop grill (being too lazy to actually fire up the BBQ), which worked wonderfully but made the apartment smoky as all hell. We had to open all the windows and use several fans to clear some of the smoke, and everything sort of smelled like pork for the rest of the night which is not necessarily a bad thing. A little paranoid about uncooked meat and having the fire department called on us, we sent Josh downstairs to finish the cooking process on a real BBQ while Shan and I lounged about idly, eating fruit. Excellent.

With the meat all cooked and smelling wonderful and the air in our apartment clearing a little, we dove into the mountain of flesh with delight. It was all really, really good – the steak in particular lived up to the name “Tender and Tasty”. The Dad Sauce on the ribs actualy turned out to be lovely and not at all overly sweet, and the chicken drumsticks were fantastic with the jerk sauce. All in all, it was the tastiest selling out I’ve ever done. I would gladly eat a large pile of meat in the name of consumer science any time.

This is all fine and good for the North Shore crew, but the FREE MEAT isn’t just limited to the awesome (ie: us). President’s Choice will be giving out coupons for FREE MEAT this Wednesday in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax from 4 to 6pm. They’ll be moving from Skytrain/C-Train/Subway/Bus station to station until all the coupons are gone, so be on the look out for people dressed as butchers (see where I was going with that whole “beware the butcher” thing? yeah, I plan this shit out). I can probably guarantee that the butchers will most likely NOT chase you around a dungeon with a meat cleaver, but just in case, be ready to grab your FREE MEAT coupon and run.

FREE MEAT! Delicious.

saucy meat goodness

My weekend is going to be a marathon of errands – so many that I had to buy an iPhone app to keep track of all the stuff I have to do – but I am itching to get out of the office and get started. Everything I have to do this weekend will get me that much closer to VACATION, so it’s all for good instead of evil. 14 loads of laundry? Bring it on! Sitting in a doctor’s office for 2 hours waiting for a 30-second appointment to get a prescription refill? Hooray! Going to Real Canadian Superstore on a Saturday to do groceries? Fantastic!

Okay, that last one isn’t vacation related at all but it should be tasty nonetheless. I’ve been given an assortment of sauces to try on an assortment of meats (for which I have 100% off coupons), and since there is no meat like free meat I will be picking up some stuff to devour on Sunday. Free meat! Wicker suitcase! It is all kinds of awesome.

People often ask me how they can get free meat of their very own. Usually I offer to lend them Ed for a couple hours, but this time the free meat is literal and not pornographic. I will share the juicy details shortly, but in the meantime, I ask that you all take heed of my wordless warning below – Beware the Butcher.

He is coming for you.

Stay a while, and listen!

I might have told this story before, but I couldn’t find it anywhere in my archives. If you’ve heard this before, I apologize and will make it up to you somehow.

Contrary to popular belief (and it IS popular; eavesdrop on any water cooler conversation and people will be discussing it), my first job wasn’t at McDonalds on Saanich Road in Victoria (where most of the universe worked at one point in time) – rather, a friend of a friend of my mother hired me to work at her Mexican food stall in a tiny food court outside a movie theatre (University Heights, for those who wish to visualize).

The job was good for two reasons: it introduced me to the marvel of chips and salsa, and gave me a taste of what it was like to have my own pocket money. Other than that, it was nothing special. I took orders, made food, cleaned up. Simple.

I had to be trained, though. At that time, Mexican food was a complete mystery to me. I didn’t know a taco from a hole in the ground, and I needed to be shown everything. The owner did a bit of the training, but her attentions were much more focused on their main business: a Mexican restaurant, of which the stand was an offshoot. Her two daughters ran the food court side of things, and they delivered most of my training.

It soon came to pass that I was utterly hopeless at making burritos. Something about the art of rolling a tortilla escaped me, and I had to be shown time and time again how to do it to their standards. In my fear of creating taco chaos, I would inevitably skimp out on filling as to not strain the tortilla shell. After making many sub-par food rolls, the younger of the two daughters shared some advice with me that will stick with me for the rest of my days:

Roll your burritos like you like your men!

From that day on, my burritos were thick, meaty shafts of considerable width and girth.

Okay, that’s technically not true. I was a 14 year old virgin, and while I was extremely familiar with the birds and the bees (and their lesser known companions: the lonely housewives, the curious bears, and the double-ended black silicone snakes), I had never actually SEEN a penis outside the extremely blurry, partially obscured, flaccid image in one of my educational Penthouse magazines. I had no idea what I was doing. I learned about sex through these magazines – not so much the pictures, but the Penthouse Forums. So, I attempted to roll my burritos like what the men who wrote those letters imagined they were packing between their legs.

My burritos turned out to be extremely exaggerated.

Learning about sex at the age of 8 thanks to your dad’s Penthouse magazines can really fuck a girl up. Imagine my disappointment when I realized that sex is usually between two people only, rarely takes place on pool tables, penises are almost never 10” long and wider than my wrist, and having sex for 8 hours straight is more painful than fun.

My job as a taco slinger didn’t last very long, but the advice I received has become a beloved catchphrase – almost anything can be done like you like your men. Personally, I like my burritos like I like my men: covered in salsa, in groups of 5, and without lettuce.

How about you?

No grown woman should ever have to ask herself “is this shirt too see-through for work?” on a near-daily basis, yet here we are.

I spent most of my Saturday morning on the living room floor with a bowl of cereal and a “What Not to Wear” marathon on TLC. I was desperate for something to watch and Saturday mornings are not known for having a wide variety of programming choices, so this seemed like my best bet. It was pretty entertaining (even if I wanted to punch the girls I saw being made over). I tried to apply some of their tips to my own life, paying particular attention to the part when they go through the current wardrobe and throw it all away. It would be fun to be professionally made over, but I don’t think I could handle someone nitpicking every single thing in my closet – I KNOW I dress inappropriately and probably all wrong for my body type, but I try to have fun with it. Which is ironic, given that I strive to not be noticed because people scare me – yet every single aspect of my life and personality basically screams “HELLO! PAY ATTENTION TO ME PLEASE!” in large busty sticker-covered paisley print neon letters.

I make my head hurt.

We leave for San Francisco in 11 days, and I haven’t started packing yet. I’m not quite at the point of freaking out, but it’s getting close – I am so anal retentive about travel that if I’m not fully packed at least a week before I leave, I think the world is going to end. Yes, I am fully aware that this is incredibly stupid. I chalk it up to excitement – remember, I packed for our move to Vancouver 6 months before we left. I had to unpack my spice rack four times. Excitement is saucy, but I can’t make Sheppard’s Pie without paprika.

Hey, it’s Cinco de Mayo. In the southern US I am routinely mistaken as being of Mexican heritage, so I feel fully justified in celebrating Cinco de Mayo with gusto and extra salsa.  Arriba!

this counts as hiding my tattoos, right

I am wrist-deep in melancholy this morning, so I am attempting to cheer myself up by doing nice things for other people. I won’t get to see first-hand how this pans out, but the knowing is good and apparently also half the battle so at least there’s that.

I don’t really have much of a reason to be so down: things are pretty good. There’s a whole laundry list of weekend awesome that I shall now spell out for you because I’m sure it is more interesting than whatever you’re supposed to be doing:

• Salome was fantastically creepy and funny and disturbing
• Opera boobies! Nudity is awesome.
• Opera codpieces! The executioner was pure near-naked muscleman eye candy.
• Delicious post-opera meatballs!
• Ali and River drove up from Seattle on Sunday to visit us at Got Craft!
• Heather brought us CANDY!
• Fun people came by the craft show to visit us
• People were seemed to enjoy my Purl Necklaces
• I had fun watching the faces of people who read my signage; a few of them smirked or laughed to themselves so I know they got the joke
• Ed gets home tonight

See? Many good things. So what do I have to be bummed out about?

• People *enjoyed* my crafty things, but that didn’t translate to many sales at all
• I got caught in another downpour on my way home
• I was planning on ordering Thai food to cheer myself up but I fell asleep on the couch for three hours and it was too late for dinner when I woke up so I went to bed hungry
• I didn’t really expect to sell everything at Got Craft, but I sold a lot less than I hoped so now I have a lot of leftover shiny things
• I had a hard time falling asleep for the last two nights because my arms were hurting really badly, and around 3am I finally realized why: I had three white knuckle scooter rides in a span of 24 hours, and in trying to keep myself upright and in one piece I had strained my arm muscles so badly I couldn’t relax
• I spend a *lot* of time by myself and reflecting on that makes me sad

So .. basically, I’m a big whiny baby is all. I’ll get over it/myself soon enough; I am just tired and sore.

I’ll take pictures of the rest of my shiny inventory and put them online this week; if anyone wants anything let me know. They are cheap and shiny, just like me!

pendant tree

I’m at the Opera!

The Vancouver Opera is treating me to a performance of Salome and a Diet Coke, and I couldn’t be happier. I’m set up in the lobby of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre checking out the action – the doors will be opening shortly, and I’ve heard we’re getting another backstage tour.

Tonight my partners in crime are:

• Tanya Davis
• Tris Hussey
• Raul Pacheco
• Rebecca Bollwitt

I’m really excited about this performance. It’s the last one of the 2008/2009 Vancouver Opera season, and it’s going to be so much fun. If you aren’t familiar with the synopsis of Salome, I suggest you catch up: here’s the Wiki entry, and here’s the Vancouver Opera Manga.

We’ve been warned that tonight’s opera contains nudity, decapitation, dancing with veils (7 of them!), and my personal favourite (figuratively speaking of course), necrophilia. Salome is one fucked up girl, and I can’t wait to see the VO’s take on it.

There’s no intermission in tonight’s performance, so we won’t be able to blog our thoughts part way through. There’s a party afterward, and I’ll be taking as many pictures as I can during the tour. That’ll have to hold you until tonight or tomorrow, but I promise pictures and words and nudity.

It’s TOUR TIME!

hey baby, how about a kiss

Awesome. I have a lot more photos, but I’m restrained by the flaky internet – I will post them when I am home. This is going to be so cool!

I totally outdid myself, and I am SO PROUD.

Not only did I scoot to the opera in a fancy dress, high heels and a motorcycle jacket, I *stripped* in front of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

Hey, it’s supposed to rain tonight and it’s frankly just not safe to ride in a skirt. In the interest of public safety, I wore jeans and leg warmers under my dress on the way in.

I couldn’t very well walk into the opening night of Salome wearing a dress *and* jeans, so I did the only logical thing – I took my pants off outside on the street, next to my scooter. The leg warmers, too. Fancy people were watching my performance, but that’s okay. After all, If you can’t take your clothes off in front of perfect strangers from a society far removed from your own, when can you?

I am so very, very amused with myself – almost more than when I realized I’m wearing a $20 dress from Target and $300 Fluevogs.

I expect my invitation to meet the Queen to come ANY DAY NOW.

ale and whores for everyone!

I emptied my puggy bank this morning to try to string together a float for tomorrow. The last time I counted, there was $42 or so in there – today, there was $185.91. Nice. I’m rich!

I’m having myself a quiet morning before the opera tonight. I woke up feeling kind of blue, so I’m just chilling out and crafting and counting money. I don’t know what I’m wearing tonight – I should probably figure that out sometime soon. The forecast is calling for rain but I’m still planning on scooting to the Opera – there’s a hockey game going on tonight 2 blocks from the theatre, which means parking the Mazdabator would be an exercise in frustration. Oscar will fit almost anywhere, so I’ll just try to dress waterproofly. Worst case scenario sees me in layers – I can strip the plastic pants off when I get there.

I knew I should have bought that Gore-Tex dress.