Omi

We took a drive out to Rigaud yesterday and surprised Steph & Olaf. This is their allergy-causing furball, all curled up in the sun under the Christmas tree. AAHCHOO!

Christmas

Thank goodness I wasn't doing Christmas this year cos I was busy enough as it was last week. Lots of baking and some shopping. Tim and I did have my folks & brother over on Christmas morning for brunch but that's nothing compared to 12 for turkey dinner, way to go Cathy!

After the snowfall

Sunday after the big snowstorm we took advantage of the beautiful day and went toboganning in Lasalle. Unfortunately they had yet to mark out the usual lanes down the hil so things were a bit bumpy and Tim was our first casualty after only the first run down! He apparently drove himself home without incident to ice his leg and was walking normally again by Wednesday, I believe it was. Tuesday night's curling game took some improvising in the hack though!

Last day at Dawson

On Friday the 16th I had to brave the 2 blocks up to Westmount Square in the snowstorm to make my way to school for my stage presentation. All went well even if I was cut a bit short and couldn't show the pictures I had prepared which you can check out at Lallemand
(if you are a registered user, that is!)

We got a nice little reception with a bunch of people (deans of various dpts) we didn't know and our program coordinator took off before everyone had given their presentation and Sam who was our teacher for most of the classes was AWOL.

Stage

I guess I haven't blogged in a while as the month was busy but rather uneventful nonetheless. Here you can catch a glimpse of what I did during my stage at the yeast company. The bags are yeast samples that came in probably from the production plant in Estonia and I had to weigh out smaller quantities and send them to an outside lab for analysis (microbiological testing for things like Salmonella, mold, coliforms, you know, all that good stuff you don't want to be ingesting in food products!)

The stage was good but not relevant enough to my field so I will have to start job searching in the new year. I will try and see if maybe the bacteria division of the company will have something for me though. I figure I will take a long deserved break during the holidays as no one is interested in job interviews at this time of year...

Indian cooking class

3 Saturdays ago (already, how time flies!), we attended an Indian cooking class and learnt how to make all kinds of yummy dishes. Chole masala (chick pea curry), zucchini and green pepper curry, pakodas (vegetable fritters) and especially cool was cooking the puri (fried bread) and seeing it puff up in the oil. Unfortunately I had to settle for Kit Kats for sweets as dessert was topra pak, basically dried coconut (icky, icky, yuck!) covered in chocolate. We all went home stuffed and smelling of frying. Tim and I have yet to try recreating the dishes as we will have to take a trip to an Indian grocery before doing so. Bhanu, our teacher was great and has a very interesting background, she's a third generation Ugandan of Indian origin and she speaks something like 7 languages.

Where did those feet go?

A couple of weeks ago or so (and not on the day that it hit 17 degrees) as I was walking through the tunnel from Westmount Square to the metro, I glanced down to see a trail of wet footprints from someone walking barefoot. The trail kept up til almost the end where I was sure to see some homeless guy to explain it all. Yet the guy passed out in the corner was wearing shoes. It was not raining or snowing either. Where did the feet vanish to? We shall never know...

Three weeks later

Well my stage is coming along nicely. Lise, my supervisor, gives me the necessary instructions and then pretty much leaves me on my own to do what I have to do. Today I got to do the glutathione assay with the other stagiere and tomorrow I'll get to do it on my own so we'll see how that goes. It's not complicated but just involves a lot of mixing and timing things properly and the protocol is not written out too clearly.
A couple of Fridays ago, the bakers treated us to pizza and cinnamon buns for lunch and I brought home some olive & onion foccacia too, that was yummy. For some reason even if I really don't like olives, I like olive bread. Go figure!

I think I mentioned that my food processor died. Well, we shopped around to see the cost of a replacement but it turns out that no one makes an equivalent machine to the one we have. Ours is a mixer/blender/food processor all in one but they don't seem to exist anymore. I guess companies got wise to the fact that they can make more money if you have to buy 3 separate appliances. So the $125 to get the motor replaced in the old one seems like a bargain. The loser at Centre du Rasoir says it might take til January to fix it though. Good thing I don't plan on doing any major cooking for Christmas this year.

I finished re-reading the 4th Harry Potter & we went to see the movie for Ysabel's birthday and I even managed to stay awake the whole time! Now if France can only finish the 5th book, I need some reading material for the metro...I've been reading Popular Science magazine instead to pass the time. Zubbles are cool!

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