So I'm sitting in a café tonight eating some pumpkin pie and drinking a latte (I burned my tongue, comme toujours, but that's kind of irrelevant. Okay, completely irrelevant but I needed to mention it because it hurts). The pie arrived without whip cream - whaa? When I asked the server about the lack she explained that they didn't "do" whip cream there. Uh. Huh.

Really, there should be a warning about that sort of thing. I mean, pumpkin pie comes with whip cream. That's just the way it is. It's sort of like being at someone's house and they offer you coffee or tea but don't tell you they're out of milk until a steaming cup of black, undrinkable substance is before you. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the hospitality of being offered a beverage but I would have made a different choice had I had all the necessary information. Given the choice between black coffee and the murkiest tap water, I'd choose the water. Or recently at one of my favourite burrito places they didn't tell me they were out of cheese until my burrito was ¾ made. I'm just too polite to walk away at this point (though not too polite to bitch about it later). If they'd have told me at the beginning of the transaction, I'd have gone for sushi (I think I just realized why they didn't tell me). Eating that burrito made me feel bad for vegans because burrito minus cheese equals suck.

Like the pie. I wouldn't have chosen pumpkin pie had I known there was no accompanying whip cream. It just doesn't taste right. They could have a sign near the pie or the server could have mentioned it when I ordered it. C'mon, have you ever seen a photo of pumpkin pie sans whip? I haven't either. But once it's in front of me, I'm too uncomfortable to send it back and end up munching at it dejectedly. I just want my expectations managed - and apparently, as I read this rant back to myself, a lot of dairy.

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As I was thinking about my need to buy groceries tomorrow I got all obsessive this evening and created a master shopping list containing the things we buy most often, layed out in the design of our local Safeway. I tend write out my list in a sectional way to make the shopping more efficient but I seem to be writing out the same things all the time. Voila, the computer. I divided the page up into three parts, printed the list, then cut the pages to create convenienty-sized lists. I then stapled my grocery list pad together and put it on the fridge. I'm almost excited about going shopping now. Almost.

I'm posting the list here in case anyone else wants to adjust it to their own needs and grocery store - no, you don't have to buy Vegemite.

Happy Shopping!

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I'm pretty much the worst blogger ever. I just don't seem to be able to write about the daily stuff on a regular basis. I'm shocked and appalled whenever I realize how rarely I do actually write. My excuse du jour is that I'm crazy busy trying to get everything together to open my own clinic. Once I'm done with that, I'm sure I'll come up with something else.

I just got back from a fabulous trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I visited my friend Jessica and her fiancé Rob. It was a great trip and I was able to see a part of the country that I have never been to before. Well, considering I've never been East of Winnipeg, Manitoba, (which I considered Eastern Canada) it's not saying much. The day I flew over was incredibly clear so I got to have a good look at the country and the varied landscape from the air. The grandeur of the Rockies, the little boxes of the prairies, the rugged rockiness of the Canadian Shield and the Great Lakes. They're some damn big lakes. I mean, I knew they were big but they're BIG. By the time the plane hit Toronto it was getting dark so I didn't get to see the rest of the country but I sure enjoyed the first half - or 3/4 or whatever.

There are a lot of Tim Hortons in Halifax. I couldn't leave without having a doughnut and while I was there I got to hear my first person order a double-double. Tee hee. In the West, we put our own sugar and cream in our coffee. I love doughnuts but I had to scrape the chocolate frosting off chocolate dip because it was so absurdly sweet.

We had a great time wandering around the city. It's a lovely place. We saw the Queen Mary II cruise ship outside their living room window for a day (HUGE!). We wandered their seawall, saw very fat pigeons eating fries, went to the Citadel, saw relics from the Titanic and the Halifax explosion in the maritime museum, strolled through a gorgeous cemetary with gravestones from 1775, saw the Pastor's silhouette in St. Paul's church window, drank beer, drank more beer, enjoyed "Barret's Privateers" performed live (see previous mention of beer), drove to Peggy's cove and saw no waves, drove to Mahone Bay and hung out with Annelise's dad for the day and made silver rings with him in his workshop, and finally drank too much blueberry ale the night before returning to BC on an early morning flight. There was plenty more stuff but that's enough for now.

So, big thanks to Jess and Rob for being great hosts and tour guides. Hooray! But if I never hear another train making steam noises, it will be too soon.

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We went camping this past weekend to Uceulet (West coast Vancouver Island) with 2 other couples and all their kids. It was super-fun. I was a little nervous about the group camp thing because I'd never done it before but it worked really well. The largest problem with the whole thing was that I drank too much wine on Saturday night and didn't want to hydrate properly before bed because I didn't want to have to get up to pee in the middle of the night. Especially since there had been an ursine visitor (i.e. black bear) to the camp earlier in the day.

On the Saturday our fabulous host Paul - camp at Surf Junction if you're in the Tofino/Uceulet area! - took us surfing. It was awesome! Totally! Dude! We wore full wetsuits with gloves and booties and I was completely warm. I completely sucked at surfing and drank a fair bit of sea water (as well as the stuff that went up my nose) but I haven't had that much fun in the water since, well, ever. I am totally pumped about trying it again. The advantage of the water at Long beach being so cold in the summer is that it stays the same all year so we could go back and surf some other time over the winter. Yay! Surfing without risk of shark attack. If it wasn't for the necessary ferry ride to get there, I think I'd be heading over once a month or so. Thanks to the ferry ride, maybe twice a year.

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The fact that medical helicopters aren't able to land due to armed groups on landing pads and nursing home buses are being held-up at gunpoint is one of the strongest arguments for gun control in the US I've ever heard. I'm not saying there wouldn't be thugs in this kind of emergency in Canada but it certainly wouldn't be this out-of-hand because the majority of us aren't armed.

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