Soda Craze

You can find these things at British Import Shops and, for some reason, Bulk Barn. I’d never eaten one. Not homemade, not from a can.

“Everything about this sounds good,” I said.

“Wait, what are you doing? You can’t just…no, no. That goes against everything I’ve ever been taught. Parents, friends, books, the aliens that live in my dreams. Come on, let’s just open up the can and nuke it for a few minutes.”

“IF YOU PUT A METAL CAN INTO BOILING WATER IT WILL BLOW THE FUCK UP AND KILL US ALL.”

“No it won’t.”

“YES IT WILL. WHERE DOES ALL THE PRESSURE GO?”

“Look, will you trust me? I’ve made these before.”

“WHY HAVEN’T THESE THINGS KILLED EVERYBODY IN BRITAIN I’M DECLARING THE TERROR LEVEL TO BE BLACKWATCH PLAID.”

“Oh, all right. I guess I can’t fool you. Remember how the English said a thing called ‘The Blitz’ happened during World War II? Yeah, the truth was, it was three years of bad treacle pudding cans. They destroyed a few hundred buildings before they were stopped.”

“I’M GOING TO GO STAND ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY NOW.”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOOOOOING LET’S JUST TAKE IT OUTSIDE AND HIT IT WITH AN AXE THESE HAVE BEEN THE LONGEST GOD DAMNED  THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES OF MY LIFE”

“Can you stop shouting? You really do need to concentrate on this thing while you open it up. Can you grab a plate?”

“NO.”

“I’m not eating that. Why doesn’t it look like it does on the wrapper? Well, I mean, nothing looks like it does on the wrapper, but – ”

“Can you pass me that plate? Thanks. Here…we…go.”

Anyway, with my shameful hysterics over and the pudding actually inverted onto a plate, it did look a lot like the one on the wrapper. And it was good. After we had let it cool down from fresh magma to recently-lit napalm temperature, it was moist and fine-textured and almost creamy, like a not-too-sweet spongecake (from sampling various areas I determined that most of the sweetness comes from the treacle topping) with raisins in it that had disintegrated from the canning process or the fact that it had been boiled in a metal can for over half an hour. Actually, it was awesome. My young man opined that it tasted ‘like England’; I thought it tasted like burnt-up adrenaline and Defcon 2. My verdict is that I would make another one provided someone else can do it and I can stand way across the kitchen with my camera.

You all know I’m some kind of low-grade pop-culture dork, yes? Even just based on my posts here?

I’ve been to Video Games Live (once in Edmonton, actually, and once in Calgary) and I’ve got a stack of Conan and Thor comics next to my bed; I have a book listing the 500 Greatest Marvel Villains; there are four vintage sci-fi movie posters above my bed; I have an embarrassingly large number of Batman and Earthworm Jim action figures in a shoebox that I absolutely. cannot. give away. (I’ve tried. I ended up fishing it back out of the storage tote. Sorry, kids whose moms shop at the Goodwill by my house!)

So it may seem odd that I’ve never been to a comic expo till a couple of weeks ago, and in fact I hadn’t even planned the trip around going to said expo, even after I found out William Shatner was going to be there. But my road treep partner got tickets for Sunday, so I did end up spending most of the day there.

It was unexpectedly awesome! I did a lot less sniping at geeks than I expected, even though they gave me ample opportunity (about every ninety seconds, on average). This was because after a while I released my deathgrip on Dean’s arm and tried to give in to the geekery. The camera finally came out at that point and I started appreciating the time investment that went into some of the costumes, displays, dioramas, merchandise, and comics. There are a lot of talented people in this community, and I don’t just mean people who can draw comics, though they were my favourites. I  mean people who sculpt, weld, sew, paint, knit, forge, and LOTS of craft forms I’d never considered.

I didn’t take many pictures, though many encouraged photo ops – after all, if you spend hundreds of hours on a costume and only wear it once, you want to be the centre of attention, right? Also, I felt awkward about photographing the statues and comics and whatnot at peoples’ booths. I didn’t see any ‘No Pictures’ signs…I just felt weird.

(Not taken at the expo, obvs. I do recommend the crab cakes at Catch though. This was scrumptious.)

A stupendous amount of work went into this Ghostbusters setup. The traps, decals, stickers, lights, everything. This guy stayed COMPLETELY in character, too. We chatted for a few minutes about the Ghostbusters of Alberta and their mission, etc. I seriously wanted to ask him out but thought it would be gauche, and distract him from his important work.

“Jesus. I think I’m hallucinating, man. I keep thinking I hear R2-D2.” “No, you’re OK. Turn around.”

I thought it was funny that this Joker came up behind this Batman and started randomly stabbing at him. They didn’t come together, so basically Joker would have been hoping that Batman stayed in character and didn’t just turn around and go “Fuck off, you mook!”  They had a little mock fight; Wonder Woman, hilariously, was no help at all. As we were leaving she was saying “Do you have a medium in this?”

Dork highlight for me, of course, running up to this guy and screaming “ARE YOU A MAN?” and him screaming back “I AM DEVO!”  (Other big dork highlight: getting a commissioned piece from the creator of Earthworm Jim!)

(I did take more pictures than this but I don’t want y’all to get geeked out and most of them are on Dean’s Facebook album anyway because he’s not slow like me.) (Also, can I just add, Tia Carrere is a freakin’ BABE still. I don’t know if it was a heavy layer of slap or just good genes but she looks like a million bucks in real life. No joke.)

This is definitely something I would consider doing again next year – and I would be more prepared, too (bring a backpack, snacks,  poster tubes, more cash, etc). Who’s with me?

(I am not sure but that this may be the post which qualifies me for true Soda Crazy status.)

So you know how “They” always say you need five to ten daily servings of fruit and vegetables? I actually looked it up the other day when Mom called during my lunch hour. The conversation started like this:

Mom: “What are you eating? I can barely hear you.”

Me: “Broccoli.”

Mom: “Raw broccoli? By itself?”

Me: “With the artichoke dip left over from the party.”

Mom: “You know, even when you were little you preferred veg to fruits. All my friends told me what a strange baby you were.”

Me: “I bet that wasn’t the only reason.”

Mom: “You know, you’re supposed to get equal amounts of fruit and vegetables in your diet.”

Me: “What? Really? Who says that?”

Mom: “The government. Everybody knows it.”

I pretty much had to look it up at that point. Anyway, if you don’t feel like clicking on the link, the short version is:

- She’s wrong

- And how much fruit/veg you need depends on how old you are

- And if you are a lady or a man

- And a serving size depends on the actual item

For instance, I’m supposed to get 7 – 8 servings of fruit and vegetables per day. That sounds pretty reasonable, right? At least it’s not ten! But then the curiosity started to get to me, so two weeks ago I tracked my typical fruit/veg intake for a week, and the results were dismal. Really – averaging fewer than four servings per day (3.7 if you want to nitpick).

Some of this was due to portion sizes (you know, less than a full cup of spinach in my omelet, a third of a tomato on my toast) but also – frankly – I just don’t eat enough produce. I don’t drink much juice. I also don’t snack much so even if I include a fruit or a vegetable with each meal, I don’t get anywhere near 7 – 8 a day.

Since I currently have no problem getting nearly the required amounts of everything else, I decided to see if I could eat everything else and all my fruits and veg in one day. I picked last Thursday to try it, since I had bought groceries on Wednesday.

Breakfast was the ever-popular toast with hummus (I counted the hummus as a meat substitute), a cup of tea, and a banana. But since I ate the banana last, I was too full to eat the apple I had also intended to go with breakfast. Servings: 1.

Lunch was a sandwich, a cookie, carrot sticks, celery sticks, two bananas, and the apple I neglected from breakfast. This time, remembering the lesson I had learned from breakfast, I ate the veg, then the bananas. Then I was so full I couldn’t eat the rest. Servings: 4.

By the time I got home, I still wasn’t hungry. But I made myself eat the apple from breakfast/lunch when I walked in the door. Servings: 1.

Around 7 pm, when I realized I hadn’t really managed to eat from the other food groups, I got out my sandwich from the fridge and ate that, then the cookie, and basically forced down some celery and a large handful of grapes. Servings: 2

Total for the day: 8 (5 fruit, 3 veg)

Sheesh! Getting in the full RDA of produce is not easy. By the time I had my servings in, I basically hadn’t eaten much else – about 3 small servings of grains, 1 of dairy, and 2 of meat or meat substitutes. And dinner was literally crammed down my throat amidst much gurgling and gagging; I spent half the evening on the couch groaning with indigestion. It felt like I had eaten neverending pounds and pounds and pounds of food all day. And I had to go pee like FIFTEEN TIMES.

But now I need to know, am I missing something obvious here? Is the gub-mint on crack? Do all of you guys get your five to ten servings a day? And if so, how do you do it without exploding at every meal? Are people chugging V-8 like it’s going out of style, maybe? Is everyone eating salad for every meal? If it’s not fruit/vegetables, which food group are you usually able to get your full RDA of?

Nosy people want to know!

I volunteered for a couple of shifts at the Ice on Whyte festival this year. They (very craftily) sign you up for it in, like, October, before you could know that your first shifts are going to be on nights when it’s like -32 and blowing snow. Thusly, I didn’t get many pictures because of the aforementioned conditions, also my camera froze a couple of evenings and the lens refused to extrude. Can’t really blame it.

There was an icy blue pagoda…

It snowed and snowed and then it snowed some more. Then I got frostbite on my spleen.

Then these guys, who were ice sculptors, also got frostbitten spleens and started staggering around the site screaming “Aiiiiiii! We should have stayed in Mother Russia!” (Or something like that.) Later I heard a rumour that one of them went mad and made the other one into a Buddha snow sculpture, then ran off into the blizzard making lemur noises, never to be seen again.

My bodyguard friend Dean also volunteered for the festival, so I was able to get a lovely picture of him embracing his Chinese zodiac animal.

Yes, we are twelve.

A giant robot showed up at one point, but it was so cold he froze instantly. A few enterprising guys from BC quickly slapped a sign on him and entered him into the sculpture contest.

And there was a legit ice sculpture of some young guy grabbing something away from a dragon, which I normally wouldn’t recommend. But he seemed to know what he was doing.

This perfume vase wasn’t as flashy as some of the other sculptures, but I just loved it. I came back to it again and again. That chain! Those handles! It was just so serene and balanced and perfect.

The giant dragon slide – it can be hard to see the view on this side if there’s a line. I got a shot of it a few minutes before closing on Tuesday night. This was definitely the most fun volunteer position ever, especially the little kids who were all “I can’t, I can’t, I’m scared, I can’t, it’s too high!” and then went down anyway and ran back to join the lineup as soon as they hit the bottom. So cute.

What do they say again? Happiness is a warm Buddha?

Or is it a cold Buddha?

Or is it a cold Bud?

Anyway, this is one of those things.

If you’re in Stabmonton and reading this, you still have a few days to go check it out, it runs till the 23rd and a fun local band is playing on Saturday night. (Sidenote: “Um, can you promise me that the bassist will be wearing pants this time?” “No. No I can’t. But I can confidently hypothesize that he will.”)

On Thursday I attended the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the University of Alberta.  Rather gratifyingly, the stands were packed.  Like, standing-room only.  My friend and I arrived a few minutes before things started and ended up sitting on the stairs.  I teared up at the wreath ceremony but recovered enough to go eat at Mike’s Famous Burgers and Donair (sidenote: since when has it been named Mike’s?  What happened to Marco?).  It was sad and lovely and the bands were fantastic and I sat next to a handsome young guy in the Engineering Corps whose dress uniform smelled like the same fabric softener I use.  (Doing our country proud, I think.)

I always think if I ever have kids I’ll try to take them to Remembrance Day ceremonies every year.  I feel like it’s a good thing for kids to experience and think of as important and valuable.  You know, see the forces and the mounties, sing the anthem and ‘God Save the Queen,’ see the fainting cadets and the veterans in their wheelchairs in the front row.  (Canada’s last WWI vet died this year!  I didn’t even know that till the ceremony.)

Today I attempted to go to the tree light-up ceremony at Churchill Square, which was supposed to run from 11 till 6 and involve some vendors from the City Centre Market, and I kind of had this mental picture in my head of an old-tymey marketplace followed by a lovely prairie sunset and then the mayor flipping a switch, the trees lighting up and everybody cheering, and for all I know that actually happened, but I stuck around for about half an hour and couldn’t stand it any more.  It looked like this when I left at 2:30 pm:

Wow.

Edmonton is so wet and depressing this time of year, good grief.  How’s everybody else’s November going?