Dork! Dork! Dork!

Le Vrai Swedish Chef

Voila extruder!

Recent self-portrait, very light-like.
Ha!
I've just given myself a haircut, as you can see, and look like I always have, with a few minor changes. I'm wearing seven more pounds and a new beautiful shirt that my last patroness gave me for looking after her condo and two emotionally-needy cats. I'm at a new place now where the cat is not as emotionally demanding, although she sounds like she has smoked two packs a day for twenty years. Perhaps she did, in her misspent kittenhood. And now she sounds like two cats fighting each time she alone opens her mouth. Exclamation!

Another one, even more light-like as the last? God, I love a good pun...heck, even a bad one!

Bicycletta!

The steed!

Old news?

Hey there every one;

So, I have been completely remiss in my blogocity and I still haven't discovered the art of picture taking. Here are a few, though, from a canoe race that took place a couple of weeks ago. It went on right behind the bakery where I work. I've been working there for about 2 and a half weeks now, so that gives you an accurate picture of how frequently I use my camera. I even didn't get to take photos of the great rubber duck race on canada day because my memory card was full. Boo.

Here are the survivor of breast cancer team, which is fantastic!

More later

Wonder no more!

The thesis is up here in June, for those of you crazy guys who said you wanted to read it.

Oh yea, the White Stripes

I forgot; the White Stripes were here. I didn't see them, but Robin did, and he took pictures even. Here they are, giving Whitehorse a free afternoon show.

So, I'm not as excited as I could have been. I have to say that the bakery took precedence, and I'm not sorry one bit about that.

By the way, there's always more news. I've also just cut my hair, and I still haven't posted the photos from Canada day, but I will as soon as I can. If you want a more realtime update, feel free to call me. I'm usually in from 3pm on. So yeah, I miss you guys, ok! I'll be getting a phone card today so look forward to some telephonic harassment. I'm also always looking for good recipes, so if you want to share them, there's always the comments section of the blog.

Peace out,
Pearly Barles

Fun, guys!

I will be staying in a house with a back yard and a garden, one that includes vegetables! The people who usually live there are plant lovers. The woman works on education policy, which is very interesting stuff, and related to my own thesis, and the man works on fungi, myxomycetes in fact. Myxomycetes are extremely interesting in their own right. If you don’t know anything about them, you should. Go now and find out:
http://www.myxoweb.com/

They are definitely some of the most interesting creatures on the planet. Personally, I like the way they defy categorization by us category-loving humans.
I mean, who knew those candy-coated licorices grew on miniature trees?

or that aliens walk among us? Well, slither, really.

For more pictures of the fantastic world of slime molds, go to: http://www.plant.uga.edu/mycology-herbarium/myxogal.htm

Random Thought No. 1

Whitehorse, for all its lawless frontier allure, is decidedly a government town. From all the people I’ve met or overheard, it sounds as though most of them are married or settled and have dogs or kids or both. Strange, when you think Soapy Smith and his gang thrived not so far away. Or maybe not, depending on your view of government.

So, like other government towns I know, there are a lot of very fit, very bright people around town, which gives me pause. I mean, not because a town populated by healthy happy people must be fundamentally rotten at its core, but because the latest fad and challenge for the health-conscious is to try to eat only food that grows within a hundred miles of where you live. A new form of urban survivalism, perhaps. This is much harder up here in the Yukon, particularly if you are vegetarian. I have heard of at least one poor soul who tried, but I don’t know to what degree they achieved dietary success.

Unlike other much larger and more crowded urban centres where food importing is already difficult enough, food supplies are less readily available here in the north. I find myself panicking when the grocery store shelves aren’t packed full of food. I wonder if this preoccupation will wear off, or if it embeds itself deeply in the minds of the more local too, prompting them to stock their home shelving units with enough dry goods to last an 8-month winter?

But, Whitehorse is a government town stocked with survival-oriented individuals who can work well in groups, so it may turn out ok even if there was a food & fuel shortage. (Soylent green, here we come?) And, I work in a food environment. I have keys to a walk-in cooler and commercial kitchen.