Rae Roy

It's playoff season and I'm a Habs fan, so it's been a little difficult fitting in time for some things. I'm super happy after Sunday's game though.

For some reason I do better during the playoffs. I'm good at getting things done around the house in between periods or during commercial breaks.

Things finished this weekend:
- prop for Comiccon
- edited chapter 4
- made fake cheese spread
- a load of laundry
- groceries
- two loads of dishes
- made soup
- attempted avocado and coconut ice cream
- watched some Agents of Shield

Today I:
- had a doctor's appointment
- had a decent meeting with my boss
- had good fortune with shoe shopping, which never happens
- went to the monthly meeting of the Ottawa Science Fiction Society
- cooked meat for empanadas

I'm now clomping around in my new boots to ensure they are broken in by Comiccon.

Ciao,
R~

Tuesday was one of those classes where I felt like I did very few things correctly. We're ramping up for the Sei Do Kai Spring Seminar in Guelph, so we're practicing setei kata or Zen Ken Ren Iai. I made tons of mistakes. Sensei Green said I wasn't getting worse, I am getting better because the mistakes were there before and I couldn't see them. Now I can see how awful I am and since I know how bad I am, I have a starting point for improvement.

It makes sense. I took a course on Learning How to Learn and part of a lesson was about how a period where one feels totally incompetent is often followed by a large amount of improvement. It's a normal part of the learning process.

So what am I doing badly? A whole lot.

I have this problem where I can do one thing or another thing, but combine the two and it's game over. This often happens with cutting and metsuke. With metsuke, I can't see my imaginary opponent, so I don't look down at the appropriate time as thou…

All right, I mentioned a while ago that I was looking into my family tree. I got a lot of information today.

I'm primarily focusing on my mother's side as it is the least well documented and there is a mystery to solve. We don't know who my mother's father was, but we know my mom was born and lived on a reserve around Sudbury. So far we've found little about why my mom was on a reserve beyond that her grandmother remarried a man who's family name of Hallock comes from Wahnapitae, which is a tiny town one blinks through on a trip from North Bay to Sudbury.

I wrongly assumed that our family name of White may have been bestowed upon them due to residential school or some act of forcing civilization upon them. Apparently, that piece of my family is from Scotland, but that isn't the only piece. There were MacArthur's in there too.

Now I knew we had Scottish roots on my dad's side of the family, but not on my mother's side. My great grandmother was Swedi…

Last Friday I made beef liver for the first time. I had had it before, but I remembered it tasting awful. I was younger then and I think my dad fried it up right from the package. I found a paleo recipe online with the word ultimate in the title as I figured ultimate was probably a good sign. It was a bit complicated and involved marinating for 8 to 24 hours in lemon juice (I did closer to 24 hours). The raw product didn't smell great even after marination. It had the hint of farm smell. I wasn't looking forward to eating it at all.
I had things to chop and slice like figs, bacon, and onions. My mushrooms were pre-sliced, which was awesome. I only cut myself once while slicing the onions.
With all the different flavours, it was delicious. It was like an ultra tender steak. It even reheats well in the microwave. I didn't believe the recipe when it said that, but it's true.
I'm glad it turned out, because I bought a few packages before knowing if it was good. It's a…

I visited my hometown for the Easter long weekend. There wasn't much down time in my schedule.

On Friday I chilled with some buddies from highschool. There were some new people there and one had a take on homosexuality that I really didn't appreciate. The person is under the mistaken impression that it's caused by over-nurturing children and somehow oblivious to all recent scientific studies in this area.
The board game we played, Shadows over Camelot, was fun. It's a collaborative one with quests. We successfully completed the quest for the holy grail because we're awesome.

On Saturday, I got 2 new summer tires and ran into an old friend from elementary school. It was nice seeing him and catching up.
After the 1.5 hours of tire stuff, I got ready for a party in Chisolm, Ontario. It was the most country place I've been to and while it was nice seeing some friends, I don't think I need to go there ever again. I had such a weird evening that I got inspiration for…

Most days I'm happy and things are pretty good.

Sometimes I have days that really frustrate me, like yesterday. I don't know why it was different, but I felt like everything I'm trying to do with my life is taking a long time. Especially my goal of getting published.

I have writer friends who no longer have to work day jobs because they've found a way to reduce their costs, are successful enough to prevent starvation, or have another passion that supplements their writing income. I want to get there someday. I don't believe I need to stay an office worker for life. Maybe I'll work part-time somewhere cool like a comic book store.

I have many friends in great relationships. I'm happy for them, but my reality is a return to the dating world in my 30s after a lengthy time away from it. It's not all bad, but time is precious to me and there are a lot of the wrong kind of weirdos out there.

Many friends are having or have adorable children. I want children somet…

My roller derby short story is coming along nicely, I think. I'm hoping to finish it in early April and get some suggestions for editing, so I can send it out. I'm not sure if the tense is right. I feel like something is wonky with it. There's so much for me to learn about writing and it seems there is new information every day.

I started cleaning up my tagging and categorizing on this blog. I'm hoping to improve my SEO some by doing so.

As it's April Fool's Day, I've been ignoring most social media unless it is clearly not an April Fool's joke. Someone created a hate site on Facebook in December and claimed today it was an April Fool's joke. That's highly unlikely. Facebook has since forced the removal of the site, thankfully.

I tried to buy dairy-free cheese popcorn today, but it seems that flavour is only available at Costco. I'm planning to double check that there is no yeast of any kind in it and see if my parents can pick some up for me t…